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[ "Palmitic acid" ]

[ "What Mattered Most", "What Hurts the Most", "what animal they see", "saturation", "MoST", "most recent common ancestor", "Found", "saturation booking", "microorganisms in milk", "phototrophic microorganisms", "degree of saturation", "live microorganisms", "Founding Provisions", "saturation diving", "the Founding Fathers", "Rick Founds", "fatty streak", "oxygen saturation", "communities of microorganisms", "Lost & Found", "zone of saturation", "nitrogen saturation", "commoners", "Found a Way", "fatty material", "the Animals", "animator", "the founding of the country", "Common", "fatty / yellow", "acidic", "ACID" ]

[ "AF2 is the minor league of the Arena Football League." ]

[ "which afl, the arena football league, or the american football league", "Played on a 50 yard field where running plays are near impossible makes for an exciting environment. Arena football is a fast paced game with a bunch of kids from D-III schools and failed NFL prospects. Despite the lack of star power Arena football is a game for all those who craze the deep ball, strategic passing patterns and creative defensive schemes. \\n\\nI was a big fan of the New Orleans Voodoo, but unfortunatly wasn't able to follow them last year because of the Katrina disaster. I hope that next year Arena football stays in New Orleans and the Voodoo will play again!", "Go man Go!!! Get somebody else to pay for the beers. Arena Football is a cross between back yard football, and hockey. THe fans go wild and if the ball goes into the stands, you get to keep it... THAT'S a LEAGUE RULE...\\n\\n\\nMost of the Arena League quarterbacks will end up in NFL training camps this year. Kurt Warner got his start with the IOWA BARNSTORMERS. Former Stanford quarterback Chris Lewis is with SAN JOSE and was just released by the 49ers. You'll see a lot of the WRs and DBs in NFL and CFL camps also.\\n\\nThe Arena League has a player developement contract with the NFL. Most of the coaches and executives of the league have NFL ties. GO MAN GO!!! \\n\\nI have been to AFL games in Chicago and Los Angeles and I was at ARENA BOWL 3... Have a beer and catch a ball.", "The average annual salary for an arena football player is $22,000, a far cry from the National Football League's minimum of $175,000.", "The only difference is that an NCAA football has a white stripe on both ends, while and NFL football is just brown.", "It is basically a difference in thier behaviour in different conditions. You can get a clear picture here: http://www.affa.gov.au/content/output.cfm?ObjectID=C1C9E941-4A9C-4A04-A7A747E8CA956365", "ice hockey is much faster play with better hits and fighting, football is slow and boring", "League seems to get the most injuries.\\n\\nUnion is more controlled and AFL has less contact.", "both are same game \\namericans call it soccer whereas other world called it football\\n\\namerican have other sports name football which play with wearing helmet and differ in some rule of soccer", "tryout for a arena football team.", "The rules are completely different. First of all, the same players play offense and defense. Second, because the field is so small, games can generate a total upwards of 100 points. Also, tackles against the wall are pretty cool. It's like basketball, hockey and outdoor football together. You should watch it sometime.", "what is the relation between ur question and this directory (English Football)", "no, i even checked AF2 (like minor leagues)", "seriously, they are completely different, one is a game, one is a right.", "Matches are shorter, 7 or 10 mins, (normally 7, finals longer) each way.\\n\\nPlayers who get receive yellow cards spend 2 mins in sin bin insted of 10.\\n\\nReferees give far less time to play the ball in rucks and mauls, to encourage quicker play.\\n\\nDrop kicks only, no place kicks at goal.\\n\\nThere used to be a rule where the team scoring kicked off rather than the conceeding team but I can remember if they still use it.", "NO CONTEST! FOOTBALL. In football, the action seldom stops. In baseball, the action seldom starts. In football, you'll usually see a play every 40 seconds or so. In baseball, the pitcher can look around, shake off signals and SCRATCH longer than that between each and every pitch.\\n\\nMentally the difference between football and baseball is like reading a page-turning adventure novel verus watching cheap paint dry...", "when a pick's called the defender catches up to the person on offense. the stall count resumes at where it was before the pick was called\\n\\nGO ULTIMATE!", "Because rugby and American football are two different games.\\nBoth are played here.\\nAmerican football ( the game with the pads and helmets ) is the more popular here. A lot of people here couldn't even tell you what rugby is.", "The Staples Center opened on October 17, 1999 and immediately won recognition as a two-time winner of the PollStar-CIC Arena of the Year award. It opened with a concert by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, but has gained fame as the home of the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA, the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA, the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, and the Los Angeles Avengers of the Arena Football League. It is the only arena home to five professional sports franchises.", "Kaka thinks that Iran stands no chance in the global footballing arena. Although he respects Iran, he finds that their team is too shallow in defence, too disorganised for midfield and too weak for striking.", "Foxsports.com, ESPN.com, Rotowire.com, and even USA Topday has some very good info on the subject.\\n\\nHope this gives you all the answers that you need", "OK - I don't claim to be an expert, but here is my version of what makes them different in terms of rules.\\n\\nLeague does not allow the ref to \"play the advantage\" as much. This means if someone does something wrong (such as a forward pass) the ref has to stop and penalise in league. Not so in union. The ref may let it continue on to see if the other team ends up in a better advantage than the other.\\n\\nRuck and Mauls - OK I don't get this with union. Something about depending on whether the guy with the ball gets rolled over or something, he has to release the ball whilst he is being tackled.\\n\\nScrums - actually still a point to this in union. In league a scrum very rarely results in a turnover in possession because the rules basically state that players aren't allowed to push in the scrum. In union they can.\\n\\nUnion has lineouts. Once again - I don't really understand union so I don't know why they do this. but basically each team lines up and one guy throws the ball and both teams throw one of their guys in the air anf try to catch it.", "Because in the UK and most of Europe it is Association Football. In the US their football is American Football so they call AF soccer", "Information? Yes, footballs are made in rubber and leather. What other informations do you want. They come in different sizes for different leagues.", "Let's give this one to June Jones for two reasons. First Jones is a former NFL player with the Chicago Bears under Buddy Ryan. The second reason being that the Run N Shoot has proven sucess on the PRO LEVEL.\\n\\nMouse Davis is the creator of the RUN N SHOOT. He started running it at Portland State with Neil Lomax. He took the offense to the USFL with Jim Kelly and the Houston Gamblers. Then he took it too the Detroit Lions. The RUN N SHOOT is core of every offense of the Arena Football League.\\n\\nThe Wishbone or FLEX-BONE offenseis one dementional. It's designed to equalize the playing field when you have a smaller offensive line. Players just have to hold their blocking assingments. While it gives you options running the ball, but limits your passing options.\\n\\n Barry Sanders ran for over 15,000 yards in the RUN N SHOOT. If there was eight men within five yards of the line of scrimmage, then you pass. Less than eight men you run. The screen pass was always a succesful play in the RUN N SHOOT.\\n\\nThere is a big difference in rating College talent vs Pro Level Talent.", "No one replaces Bruce Arena. US soccer is defined by Bruce Arena. In fact, US soccer history should be divided by BBA (Before Bruce Arena) and ABA (After Bruce Arena).", "Golf (gowf in Scots) is a game where individual players or teams hit a ball into a hole using various clubs, and is one of the few ball games that does not use a fixed standard playing area. It is defined in the Rules of Golf as \"playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules.\"\\n\\nGolf originated in Scotland and has been played for at least five centuries in the British Isles. The oldest course in the world is The Old Links at Musselburgh. Golf, in essentially the form we know it today, has been played on Scotland's Musselburgh Links since 1672, and earlier versions of the game have been played in the British Isles and the low-countries of Northern Europe for several centuries before that. Although often viewed as an elite pastime, golf is an increasingly popular sport that can be played for one's entire life.\\n\\nAmerican football, known in the United States and Canada [1] simply as football, is a competitive team sport. The object of the game is to advance the football towards the opposing team's end zone and score points. The ball can be advanced by carrying the ball, or by throwing or handing it from one teammate to the other. Points can be scored in a variety of ways, including carrying the ball over the goal line, throwing the ball to another player past the goal line or kicking it through the goal posts on the opposing side. The winner is the team with the most points when the time expires and the last play ends.\\n\\nOutside of the United States and Canada, the sport is usually referred to as American football (or sometimes as gridiron or gridiron football) to differentiate it from other football games, especially association football (soccer) and rugby football. American football evolved as a separate sport from rugby football in the late 19th century. Arena football is a variant of American football. Canadian football is a close relative to the sport with a few key differences; the word \"football\" in Canada can mean American football or Canadian football depending on context.\\n\\nAssociation football, soccer, or simply football is a team sport played between two teams consisting of eleven players each. It is a ball game played on a rectangular grass field with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by maneuvering the ball into the opposing goal. Other than the goalkeepers, players may not use their hands or arms to propel the ball in general play. The winner of the match is the team that has scored most goals at the end of the match. The sport is known by many names throughout the English-speaking world, although football is the most common. Other names, such as association football and soccer, are often used to distinguish the game from other codes of football, since the word football may be used to refer to several quite different games.\\n\\nThe origins of football are thought to be over 2000 years old. Indeed, in 2004, football's governing body Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) officially acknowledged that China was the birthplace of football, when people played the sport of cuju around 200 BC. Association football in paticular dervived out of games played at public schools in England in the Nineteenth Century.", "The sun is 1,391,000 kilometers. That translates to 1,391,000,000 meters.\\n\\nOne meter is 1.0936133 yards. That means the sun's diameter is 1,521,216,100.3 yards.\\n\\nAn American football field is 120 yards (with endzones) for a total of 12,701,800 football fields.\\n\\nA Canadian football field is 150 yards (110 field and 2 20 yard endzones) for a total of 10,141,400 football fields\\n\\nA Soccer field is between 100 and 130 yards for a total of between 11,701,662 and 15,212,161 soccer fields.\\n\\nEDIT:\\nThe Australian Rules Football field is between 135 and 185 meters for a total of between 7,518,918 and 10,303,703 Australian Rules Football fields.\\n\\nIf you would like width-wise calculations let me know.", "aussies play american football too mate, they call it gridiron over here. \\n\\nAs far as the need for pads go, we hit harder and have more constant contact than either rugby or AFL. The tackles in rugby and AFL are very soft by comparison. I know, I've played. They drag people down, they don't explode through them. And there's no blocking in either sport. Gridiron is the most physically demanding sport on the planet.", "I dont think so because then half of the teams would be in the playoffs, it needs to be only the elite teams. However, i think we should have a second leauge alltogether. Not nfl europe, arena football, or xfl but a second NFL. Sorta like minor leauge but better. It would take place during the offseason of NFL1. It would do that well at first, but once people started to get to know the teams and players it would be great. If people do good in NFL2 they could get drafted over to 1. And if people suck in 1 they could go to 2 (not europe or arena leauge). This would mean year round football!!!", "i dont think there is a difference between the two. =o", "I think he will definitely make a place for himself in the footballing arena, not only is he young and energetic he is also very focussed and determined to do well and infact is gaining more by playing along side the greats in football. I definitely see him as an idol, 4 to 5 years down the line, for young guns gearing to go on the field." ]

[ "Kenny Leon" ]

[ "You Made Me Believe in Magic ''", "You Like Me Too Much", "You Let Me Walk Alone", "But Not for Me" ]

[ "he is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz born and raised in illinois davis left to study at the juilliard school in new york city before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist charlie parker s bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948 shortly after he recorded the birth of the cool sessions for capitol records which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz in the early 1950s miles davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on prestige records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction after a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the newport jazz festival in 1955 he signed a long term contract with columbia records and recorded the 1957 album round about midnight it was his first work with saxophonist john coltrane and bassist paul chambers key members of the sextet he led into the early 1960s during this period he alternated between orchestral jazz collaborations with arranger gil evans such as", "it was recorded on march 2 and april 22 1959 at columbia s 30th street studio in new york city and released on august 17 of that year by columbia records the album features davis ensemble sextet consisting of saxophonists john coltrane and julian cannonball adderley pianist bill evans bassist paul chambers and drummer jimmy cobb with new band pianist wynton kelly appearing on one track in place of evans in part owing to evans joining the sextet during 1958 davis followed up on the modal experimentation of milestones by basing kind of blue entirely on modality departing further from his earlier work s hard bop style of jazz kind of blue has been regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz record davis s masterpiece and one of the best albums of all time its influence on music including jazz rock and classical genres has led writers to also deem it one of the most influential albums ever recorded the album was one of fifty recordings chosen in 2002 by the library of congress to be added to the national recording registry and in 2003 it was ranked number 12 on rolling stone magazine s list of the 500", "it marked his continuing experimentation with electric instruments that he had previously featured on the critically acclaimed in a silent way 1969 with these instruments such as the electric piano and guitar davis rejected traditional jazz rhythms in favor of loose rock influenced arrangements based on improvisation the album initially received a mixed response due to its unconventional style and experimental sound it gained momentum and became davis s highest charting album on the u s billboard 200 with peak at no 35 and also his fastest selling at the time when it was certified gold by the recording industry association of america in 1976 for selling 500 000 copies in 1971 it won a grammy award for best large jazz ensemble album in subsequent years bitches brew gained recognition as one of jazz s greatest albums and a progenitor of the jazz rock genre as well as a major influence on rock and funk musicians in 1998 columbia released the complete bitches brew sessions a four disc box set that includes the original album and previously unreleased material in 2003 the album was certified platinum for selling one million copies by 1969 davis s core working band consisted of", "it was davis first collaboration with arranger gil evans following the birth of the cool sessions along with their subsequent collaborations porgy and bess 1959 and sketches of spain 1960 miles ahead is one of the most famous recordings of third stream a fusion of jazz european classical and world musics davis played flugelhorn throughout evans combined the ten pieces that make up the album into a suite each flowing into the next without interruption the only exception to this rule was on the title track since it was placed last on side a this has been corrected on the cd versions davis is the only soloist on miles ahead which features a large ensemble consisting of sixteen woodwind and brass players art taylor played drums on the sessions and the then current miles davis quintet member paul chambers was the bassist a fifth recording date involved davis alone re recording material to cover or patch mistakes or omissions in his solos using overdubbing the fact that this album was originally produced in mono makes these inserted overdubbings rather obvious in the new stereo setting the penguin guide to jazz gave miles ahead a four star rating out of a", "it compiles eleven tracks recorded by davis s nonet for the label over the course of three sessions during 1949 and 1950 featuring unusual instrumentation and several notable musicians the music consisted of innovative arrangements influenced by classical music techniques such as polyphony and marked a major development in post bebop jazz as the title suggests these recordings are considered seminal in the history of cool jazz most of them were originally released in the 10 inch 78 rpm format and are all approximately three minutes long as of 2019 lee konitz is the only surviving member of the birth of the cool sessions from 1945 to 1948 miles davis played in charlie parker s quintet davis recorded several albums worth of material with parker during this period including parker s sessions for the savoy and dial labels davis first records released under his own name were recorded with parker s band in 1947 and were more arranged and rehearsed than parker s usual approach to recording by 1948 davis had three years of bebop playing under his belt but he struggled to match the speed and ranges of the likes of gillespie and parker choosing instead to play in", "since then he has pursued a solo career kenny garrett was born in detroit michigan on october 9 1960 he is a 1978 graduate of mackenzie high school his father was a carpenter who played tenor saxophone as a hobby garrett s own career as a saxophonist took off when he joined the duke ellington orchestra in 1978 then led by duke s son mercer ellington a few years later he performed in the mel lewis orchestra playing the music of thad jones and also the dannie richmond quartet focusing on charles mingus s music in 1984 he recorded his first album as a bandleader introducing kenny garrett on the crisscross label he then recorded two albums with atlantic records prisoner of love and african exchange student since 1990 the majority of garrett albums are co produced by pianist composer donald brown garrett signed to the warner bros records label and beginning with black hope in 1992 he has continued to record with them among his recordings on warner bros are pursuance the music of john coltrane recorded in 1996 and songbook his first album made up entirely of his own compositions recorded in 1997 and nominated for a grammy", "written in a flat it is based on the chord changes of the jazz standard back home again in indiana beginning with an unusual half bar rest donna lee is a very complex fast moving chart with a compositional style based on four note groups over each change donna lee was originally attributed to charlie parker on the original 78 rpm recordings and was copyrighted under his name in 1947 however in various interviews and publications since miles davis has claimed to be the composer among these is a statement davis made in his autobiography donna lee was recorded by the charlie parker quintet on may 8 1947 for savoy in new york city musicians with parker for the session were miles davis trumpet bud powell piano tommy potter bass and max roach drums donna lee was the first of four tunes recorded during the session and was recorded over four takes the fourth being the master take later in 1947 it was recorded for decca by claude thornhill and his orchestra which included gil evans lee konitz gerry mulligan sandy siegelstein bill barber and joe shulman some of these musicians were hired by miles davis for his album birth", "an extended version of the second movement of joaqu n rodrigo s concierto de aranjuez 1939 is included as well as a piece called will o the wisp from manuel de falla s ballet el amor brujo 1914 1915 sketches of spain is regarded as an exemplary recording of third stream a musical fusion of jazz european classical and styles from world music the album pairs davis with arranger and composer gil evans with whom he had collaborated on several other projects on a program of compositions largely derived from the spanish folk tradition evans explained we hadn t intended to make a spanish album we were just going to do the concierto de aranjuez a friend of miles gave him the only album in existence with that piece he brought it back to new york and i copied the music off the record because there was no score by the time we did that we began to listen to other folk music music played in clubs in spain so we learned a lot from that and it ended up being a spanish album the rodrigo the melody is so beautiful it s such a strong song i was so", "davis s solo received a positive reception from many jazz fans and critics his response to this performance was typically laconic what are they talking about i just played the way i always play george avakian of columbia records was in the audience and his brother aram persuaded him that he ought to sign davis to the label davis signed with columbia and formed his first great quintet with john coltrane on saxophone round about midnight was his first album for the label he was still under contract to prestige but he had an agreement that he could record material for columbia to release after the expiration of his prestige contract recording took place at columbia studios the first session was on october 26 1955 at studio d during which the track ah leu cha was recorded with three numbers that did not appear on the album this is the first studio recording of the quintet the remainder of the album was recorded during sessions on june 5 1956 dear old stockholm bye bye blackbird and tadd s delight and september 10 1956 all of you and the titular round midnight at columbia s 30th street studio during the same", "two sessions on may 11 1956 and october 26 in the same year resulted in four albums this one relaxin with the miles davis quintet steamin with the miles davis quintet and cookin with the miles davis quintet track 2 is a composition written for davis by eddie vinson see blue haze for more details trane s blues also known as vierd blues a tongue in cheek reference to blue note founder francis wolff s heavily accented verdict on it also credited to davis is in fact a john coltrane composition originally titled john paul jones and from an earlier session led by bassist paul chambers before the closing statement of theme coltrane and davis play a bit of charlie parker s the hymn as his star rose in 1955 davis formed a new quintet featuring saxophonist john coltrane pianist red garland bassist paul chambers and drummer philly joe jones in order to fulfill contractual obligations he recorded lengthy spontaneous songs with the quintet which were released over four albums workin cookin relaxin and steamin with the miles davis quintet prestige lp 7166 all tracks recorded on may 11 1956 except half nelson recorded on october 26", "it was released in 1958 by columbia records tenor saxophonist john coltrane s return to davis group in 1958 coincided with the modal phase albums milestones and kind of blue 1959 are both considered essential examples of 1950s modern jazz davis at this point was experimenting with modes scale patterns other than major and minor davis plays both trumpet and piano on sid s ahead a blues which is reminiscent of walkin he plays trumpet in the ensemble passages and solos on trumpet but moves to the piano to accompany the saxophonists in garland s absence billy boy is a solo feature for garland and the rhythm section in a five star review allmusic s thom jurek called milestones a classic album with blues material in both bebop and post bop veins as well as the memorable title track which introduced modalism in jazz and defined davis subsequent music in the years to follow andy hermann of popmatters felt that the album offers more aggressive swinging than kind of blue and showcases the first session between saxophonists coltrane and cannonball adderley whose different styles feed off each other and push each musician to greater heights jim santella of all about", "recorded at columbia s 30th street studio in manhattan it marked the only miles davis quintet studio recording session to feature saxophonist hank mobley keeping to his standard procedure at columbia to date of alternating small group records and big band studio projects with gil evans davis followed up sketches of spain with an album by his working quintet in 1960 however the jazz world had been in flux although davis had garnered acclaim for kind of blue the entrance of ornette coleman and free jazz via his fall 1959 residency at the five spot caf and his albums for atlantic records had created controversy and turned attention away from davis similarly davis touring band had been in flux in 1959 cannonball adderley left to form his own group with his brother reducing the sextet to a quintet drummer jimmy cobb and pianist wynton kelly had been hired in 1958 but most difficult for davis was the departure of john coltrane who stayed on for a spring tour of europe but left to form his own quartet in the summer of 1960 in 1960 davis went through saxophonists jimmy heath and sonny stitt before settling on hank mobley in december", "recorded at columbia s 30th street studios in manhattan and at columbia studios in los angeles it presents the miles davis quintet in transition after the unfinished sessions for quiet nights in 1962 davis returned to club work however he had a series of health problems in 1962 which made his live dates inconsistent and meant that he missed gigs with financial repercussions faced with diminishing returns by late 1962 his entire band quit hank mobley to a solo career and the rhythm section of wynton kelly paul chambers and jimmy cobb to work as a unit the departure of chambers especially was a blow as he had been the only man still left from the original formation of the quintet in 1955 with club dates to fulfill davis hired several musicians to fill in frank strozier on alto saxophone and harold mabern on piano with george coleman and ron carter arriving early in the year for shows on the west coast in march davis added drummer frank butler but when it came time for the sessions davis jettisoned strozier and mabern in favor of pianist victor feldman with a lucrative career as a session musician feldman declined davis offer", "it was recorded by davis and his second quintet at columbia 30th street studio in new york city on october 24 and october 25 1966 it is the second of six albums recorded by davis s second great quintet which featured saxophonist wayne shorter pianist herbie hancock bassist ron carter and drummer tony williams miles smiles showcases davis deeper exploration of modal performance with looser forms tempos and meters although the album did not follow the conventions of bop neither did it follow the formlessness of free jazz according to musicologist jeremy yudkin miles smiles falls under the post bop subgenre which he defines as an approach that is abstract and intense in the extreme with space created for rhythmic and coloristic independence of the drummer an approach that incorporated modal and chordal harmonies flexible form structured choruses melodic variation and free improvisation music theorist keith waters writes that the album accentuated the quintet s connections to both the hard bop tradition and the avant garde on three tracks from this album orbits dolores ginger bread boy pianist herbie hancock takes the unusual step of dispensing with left hand chords and playing only right hand lines wayne shorter s composition", "it is the third of six albums that this quintet recorded it also includes one track from a 1962 session with vocalist bob dorough which was the first time wayne shorter recorded with davis davis does not play on the second track pee wee the album s cover is a profile photo of actress cicely tyson who at the time was davis s girlfriend and many years later his wife the only tune from the album known to have appeared in davis s live performances is masqualero written by wayne shorter davis s groups performed it as late as april 1970 the last known version appears on the live album the tune has also been revived by wayne shorter by his quartet since the 90 s the cd reissue includes alternate takes of masqualero and limbo the alternate take of limbo was actually recorded in los angeles on may 9 several days before the final take was recorded in new york city this take also replaces ron carter with bassist buster williams both versions of masqualero were recorded on the same date and with the same personnel columbia cs 9532 the lineup differs greatly on the track nothing like you", "recorded on june 7 june 22 23 and july 19 1967 at columbia s 30th street studio the album was davis last fully acoustic album davis himself did not contribute any compositions which were mostly written by herbie hancock and wayne shorter the fourth album by miles davis s second great quintet nefertiti is best known for the unusual title track on which the horn section repeats the melody numerous times without individual solos while the rhythm section improvises underneath reversing the traditional role of a rhythm section c michael bailey of all about jazz cited it as one of the quintet s six albums between 1965 and 1968 that introduced the post bop subgenre shortly after this album hancock recorded a different version of riot for his 1968 album speak like a child in 1978 shorter recorded a new version of pinocchio with weather report for the album mr gone nefertiti was the final all acoustic album of davis career starting with his next album miles in the sky davis began to experiment with electric instruments marking the dawn of his columbia cs 9594 billboard music charts north america nefertiti", "for the album davis played with tenor saxophonist wayne shorter pianist herbie hancock drummer tony williams and bassist ron carter guitarist george benson made a guest appearance on the song paraphernalia the album s title was a nod to the beatles 1967 song lucy in the sky with diamonds for miles in the sky davis and his quintet pulled further away from conventional jazz and more toward jazz rock fusion the album s compositions are extended and groove oriented often with rhythms that according to stephen thomas erlewine are straightforward picking up on the direct 4 4 beats of rock and these are illuminated by herbie hancock s electric piano in the opinion of all about jazz s c michael bailey miles in the sky was one of six albums by davis quintet between 1965 and 1968 that introduced the poorly defined jazz subgenre post bop in a contemporary review down beat magazine called miles in the sky one of the best albums by davis and his second quintet because of how it shows he had been influenced by ornette coleman and john coltrane even as miles denies it for their assault on the popular song has pushed miles along", "produced by teo macero the album was recorded in one session date on february 18 1969 at cbs 30th street studio in new york city incorporating elements of classical sonata form macero edited and arranged davis s recordings from the session to produce the album marking the beginning of his in a silent way has been regarded by music writers as davis s first fusion recording following a stylistic shift toward the genre in his previous records and live performances upon its release the album was met by controversy among music critics particularly those of jazz and rock music who were divided in their reaction to its experimental musical structure and davis s electric approach since its initial reception it has been regarded by fans and critics as one of davis s greatest and most influential works in 2001 columbia legacy and sony music released the three disc box set the complete in a silent way sessions which includes the original album additional tracks and the unedited recordings utilized for production purposes by january 1969 davis s core working band had stabilised around wayne shorter on tenor saxophone dave holland on bass chick corea on electric piano and jack dejohnette", "it was released on february 24 1971 by columbia records the album was conceived by davis for bill cayton s documentary of the same name on the life of boxer jack johnson its two 25 minute plus tracks were produced from recordings made on february 18 and april 7 1970 at 30th street studio in new york city davis was inspired by the political and racial subtext of johnson s saga as well as the hard rock and funk sounds of his own era leading a rock inspired line up of musicians in the studio guitarists john mclaughlin and sonny sharrock keyboardists herbie hancock and chick corea clarinetist bennie maupin and drummers jack dejohnette and billy cobham jack johnson performed modestly on the record charts and was generally well received by contemporary critics it has since been regarded as one of the best albums from davis career and the jazz rock genre in 2003 the original album was reissued as part of the complete jack johnson sessions a five disc box set featuring previously unreleased music from the recording sessions in 1970 davis was asked by boxing promoter bill cayton to record music for a documentary he was producing on", "it was recorded in june and july 1972 and released on october 11 of the same year by columbia records the album continued davis s exploration of jazz fusion bringing together funk rhythms with the influence of experimental composer karlheinz stockhausen and free jazz saxophonist ornette coleman recording sessions for the album featured a changing lineup of musicians including bassist michael henderson guitarist john mclaughlin and keyboardist herbie hancock with davis playing the electric organ more prominently than his trumpet various takes from the sessions were then spliced together using the tape editing techniques of producer teo macero the album s packaging did not credit any musicians an attempt to make the instruments less discernible to critics its artwork features corky mccoy s cartoon designs of urban african american characters on the corner was in part an effort by davis to reach a younger african american audience who had left jazz for funk and rock and roll instead it became one of his worst selling albums and was scorned by jazz critics at the time of its release it would be davis s last studio album of the 1970s conceived as a complete work subsequently he recorded haphazardly and focused", "released by columbia records on november 22 1974 it compiled songs davis had recorded in sessions between 1970 and 1974 including those for the studio albums jack johnson 1971 and on the corner 1972 in the rolling stone album guide 2004 j d considine described the compilation s music as worldbeat fusion one track honky tonk was recorded in 1970 with musicians such as john mclaughlin and herbie hancock red china blues had been recorded in 1972 before on the corner while rated x and billy preston were recorded later that year with the band heard on in concert the remaining tracks were from 1973 and 1974 sessions with his current band including pete cosey he loved him madly was recorded by davis as his tribute to then recently deceased duke ellington who used to tell his audiences i love you madly british musician brian eno cited it as a lasting influence on his own work reviewing for rolling stone in 1975 stephen davis applauded davis adventurousness and direction of his rhythm band who he called a who s who of seventies jazz rock the same year robert christgau wrote in the village voice that although davis recent albums have", "it was released by columbia records on april 19 1974 and compiled recordings davis had made in sessions between 1969 and 1972 largely ignored in 1974 it was reissued on august 1 2000 by columbia and legacy records with additional material which led to a critical reevaluation big fun presents music from three different phases of miles davis s early seventies electric period sides one and four great expectations orange lady and lonely fire were recorded three months after the bitches brew sessions and incorporate sitar tambura tabla and other indian instruments they also mark the first time since the beginning of miles davis s electric period that he played his trumpet with the harmon mute which had been one of his hallmarks making it sound much like the sitar this contributed to creating a very clear and lean sound highlighting both the high and low registers as opposed to the busier sound of bitches brew which placed more emphasis on the middle and low registers ife named after james mtume s daughter was recorded after the 1972 on the corner sessions and the framework is similar to tracks from that record it has a drum and electric bass groove", "his major without bootlegs etc discography consists of at least 51 studio albums 36 live albums 35 compilation albums 17 box sets 4 soundtrack albums 57 singles and 3 remix albums davis initial appearances on record were mainly as a member of bebop saxophonist charlie parker s quintet from 1944 through 1947 and released on the savoy label davis made his debut as a leader in the 1947 sessions featuring parker pianist john lewis bassist nelson boyd and drummer max roach prestige records released davis major debut album the new sounds in 1951 he recorded many studio albums under that record label from 1951 through 1956 as well as blue moods issued by debut records in 1955 and three sessions for blue note records the earliest davis music released was recorded from april 4 1945 through august 14 1947 and reissued in cd format by savoy records under the title first miles from 1949 through 1950 davis recorded twelve tunes with a nonet consisting of other noted jazz musicians including arranger gil evans gerry mulligan lee konitz john lewis max roach and kenny clarke the arrangements for that group were scored for instruments rarely used in jazz such as french", "records it was recorded primarily at capitol studios in los angeles and clinton recording in new york except the song backyard ritual which was recorded at le gonks in west hollywood davis received the 1987 best jazz instrumental performance soloist grammy award for his performance on the album originally planned as a collaboration with pop singer songwriter prince davis ultimately worked with bassist multi instrumentalist marcus miller miller wrote and arranged all the songs except tomaas co written by davis backyard ritual by keyboardist george duke and perfect way by pop group scritti politti the music is strongly inspired by mid 1980s r b and funk with heavy use of synthesizers sequencers and drum machines as indicated in the notes accompanying the album tutu was produced by tommy lipuma and marcus miller with the exception of backyard ritual which was co produced by duke and lipuma the cover was designed by eiko ishioka and photographed by irving penn eiko ishioka received the 1987 grammy award for best album package for her work as the art director the original vinyl album featured a colored inner sleeve printed with the album credits on one side and a photograph of davis s left", "the album features arrangements by davis and collaborator gil evans from george gershwin s 1935 opera of the same name the album was recorded in four sessions on july 22 july 29 august 4 and august 18 1958 at columbia s 30th street studio in new york city it is the second collaboration between davis and evans and has garnered much critical acclaim since its release being acknowledged by some music critics as the best of their collaborations jazz critics have regarded the album as historic in 1958 davis was one of many jazz musicians growing dissatisfied with bebop seeing its increasingly complex chord changes as hindering creativity five years earlier in 1953 pianist george russell published his lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization which offered an alternative to the practice of improvisation based on chords abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of classical music russell developed a new formulation using scales or a series of scales for improvisations his approach to improvisation came to be known as modal in jazz davis saw russell s methods of composition as a means of getting away from the dense chord laden compositions of his time which davis had labeled thick", "in 2015 he was named an nea jazz master coleman was born in memphis tennessee he was taught how to play the alto saxophone in his teens by his older brother lucian adams inspired like many jazz musicians of his generation by charlie parker among his schoolmates were harold mabern booker little frank strozier hank crawford and charles lloyd after working with ray charles coleman started working with b b king in 1953 at which point he switched to tenor saxophone in 1956 coleman moved to chicago along with booker little where he worked with gene ammons and johnny griffin before joining max roach s quintet 1958 1959 coleman recorded with organist jimmy smith on his album houseparty 1957 along with lee morgan curtis fuller kenny burrell and donald bailey moving to new york city with max roach in that year he went on to play with slide hampton 1959 1962 ron carter jimmy cobb and wild bill davis 1962 before joining miles davis quintet in 1963 1964 his albums with davis and the rhythm section of herbie hancock piano ron carter bass and tony williams drums are seven steps to heaven 1963 a rare home town appearance 1963 c", "tracks 4 6 7 and 8 come from prestige prep 1326 the miles davis quartet recorded 19 may 1953 it features a quartet with john lewis on piano replaced on smooch by its co composer charles mingus percy heath the bassist throughout the album and max roach on drums tracks 2 3 and 5 from march 15 1954 with horace silver on piano and art blakey on drums were first released on prep 1360 titled miles davis quartet the first track on the album is from the 3 april 1954 session which resulted in half of the album walkin and was originally included on the 10 lp miles davis quintet prlp 185 the compositions four and tune up were always credited to davis although both were claimed by eddie vinson to be his compositions vinson was a known blues singer at that time and had no use for them and gave davis permission to record them no one expressed opposition to the false crediting until decades later prestige lp 7054 track 1 april 3 1954 track 2 3 and 5 march 15 1954 track 4 6 7 and 8 may 19 1953", "parts of the album featured music from davis concert at the cellar door in 1970 which producer teo macero subsequently edited and pieced together in the studio they were performed as lengthy dense jams in the jazz rock style while the studio recordings were renditions of hermeto pascoal compositions the album was originally released on november 17 1971 a number of famous jazz musicians feature on the album including keith jarrett and jack dejohnette one of the key musicians on the album john mclaughlin was not a regular member of miles davis s band during the time of recording miles called mclaughlin at the last minute to join the band for the last of four nights they recorded live at the cellar door as miles was looking for an element he hadn t quite nailed down on the previous nights davis had originally intended the album to be a spiritual successor to bitches brew but this idea was abandoned when it became obvious that live evil was something completely different the album cover was illustrated by artist mati klarwein klarwein had painted the front cover independently of davis but the back cover was painted with a suggestion from davis i", "the set collects all tracks davis recorded between august 19 1969 and february 6 1970 including the 1970 double album bitches brew in its entirety however the title of the box set is somewhat of a misnomer outside of the bitches brew tracks themselves none of the other tracks were recorded during the same august 1969 sessions that resulted in bitches brew furthermore additional material recorded for but not used in bitches brew mainly rehearsal takes and unedited performances of the six album tracks is not included in this set though they later appeared on bootleg recordings titled deep brew vol 1 and vol 2 when questioned by paul tingen why most of the material in fact was not recorded either for or at the same sessions as the original album re issue producer bob belden clarified how the team s thought process went according to him and the engineer all the songs miles davis recorded between august 1969 and early february 1970 used very similar line ups to those on bitches brew and the main thing they all had in common was the emphasis on keyboards every song in the set includes two to three keyboard players most often", "he worked as a session drummer for motown born in the south bronx reid started drumming at 16 his family moved to queens new york three blocks away from john coltrane before attending adelphi university in garden city new york he worked as part of the apollo theatre house band and recorded with martha and the vandellas under the direction of quincy jones in 1969 reid refused to register for the draft during the vietnam war he was arrested as a conscientious objector and sentenced to a four year prison sentence at lewisburg federal penitentiary where he served with jimmy hoffa after his release on parole in 1971 reid found work as a session musician with dionne warwick horace silver charles tyler sun ra and freddie hubbard in addition to broadway stage work in 1974 reid formed the legendary master brotherhood and his record label mustevic sound he lived in lugano switzerland for several years in later life and released several recordings for the english label soul jazz and the german label cpr for his final albums his band included chuck henderson soprano saxophone boris netsvetaev piano and chris lachotta double bass in 2006 reid and electronic musician kieran hebden", "it is the debut record by the miles davis quintet and generally known by the original title miles as indicated on the cover in the summer of 1955 davis performed a noted set at the newport jazz festival and had been approached by columbia records executive george avakian offering a contract with the label if he could form a regular band davis assembled his first regular quintet to meet a commitment at the caf bohemia in july by september the line up stabilized to include john coltrane on tenor saxophone red garland on piano paul chambers on bass and philly joe jones on drums still under contract to prestige an arrangement dating back to january 1951 davis convinced avakian to buy out his contract with prestige the terms of the deal between avakian and weinstock allowed davis to record for columbia but not release any of the material until davis fulfilled his remaining duty to prestige davis took the quintet into the columbia s studio first on october 26 to record titles that would be issued on round about midnight three weeks later the quintet entered the studio of rudy van gelder in hackensack new jersey yielding the six titles", "the album compiles material previously released on two 10 inch lps in 1954 along with one previously unreleased tune here credited to the miles davis all stars the songs were recorded on 3 april and 29 april 1954 by two slightly different groups led by davis both sessions were recorded at rudy van gelder s home studio the earlier session was a quintet with david schildkraut on alto saxophone and produced the three tracks on side two schildkraut is the only musician not credited on the cover and is otherwise almost unknown two of these tracks were originally released on the 10 lp miles davis quintet prestige prlp 185 the earlier release also included i ll remember april recorded at the same time now found on the prestige album blue haze prlp 7054 another tune from this session love me or leave me was previously unreleased and substituted here for i ll remember april the second session which makes up all of side one was a sextet with j j johnson on trombone and lucky thompson on tenor saxophone the rhythm section was the same as the earlier session these two tracks were originally issued on the 10 lp miles", "most of the material comes from a session on december 24 1954 featuring thelonious monk and milt jackson and had been previously released in the discontinued ten inch lp format swing spring was originally released on the 10 lp miles davis all stars volume 1 prlp 196 and bemsha swing and the man i love take 2 had been previously released on volume 2 prlp 200 round midnight is newly released and comes from the same sessions by davis s new quintet in 1956 which resulted in steamin with the miles davis quintet prlp 7200 and three other albums to fulfill davis s contract with prestige the 1954 session is essentially davis accompanied by the modern jazz quartet with monk in place of john lewis notable as the only time thelonious monk made a studio recording with davis the two men did not get on well as davis felt monk ought to be laying out refraining from playing during the trumpeter s solos ira gitler who was present at the session and wrote the sleevenotes for the album dispels the myth that the two men confronted each other physically but there was argument throughout the session the first take of", "bags was vibraphonist milt jackson s nickname the other tracks recorded during this session may be found on miles davis and the modern jazz giants prlp 7150 and all of them are also featured on the compilation album thelonious monk the complete prestige recordings the rest of the album was recorded earlier in the year on june 29 and four of the tracks had already been released as miles davis with sonny rollins prlp 187 with the fifth being a previously unreleased alternative take the title track was written by milt jackson bags is his nickname and the three compositions written by the young sonny rollins all went on to become jazz standards on oleo davis used the harmon mute to obtain a peculiar sound and it would become an important feature of his playing prestige lp 7109 on bags groove", "credited to miles davis and milt jackson this was an all star session and did not feature any of the members of davis s working group of the time sonny rollins red garland paul chambers and philly joe jones jackie mclean only plays on his own compositions after the release of the blue moods a collaboration with charles mingus on which davis only participated to pay back the fees to mingus davis recorded with his new band in new york s caf bohemia the band included the young sonny rollins saxophone as well as the backing band consisting of red garland paul chambers and philly joe jones who were later hired for his miles davis quintet with john coltrane davis however did not play in the august studio for the current working band but with the all star lineup with milt jackson vibraphone percy heath bassist and art taylor drums davis also hired the pianist ray bryant because he wanted a bebop sound together with milt jackson and percy heath davis recorded with thelonious monk during the 1954 winter session miles davis and the modern jazz giants art taylor was back then a kind of a house drummer for the", "all compositions and arrangements are by mikkelborg who created the suite in tribute when davis received the l onie sonning music prize in december 1984 the year decoy was released this was miles davis final album released in his lifetime the main theme consists of 10 notes yielded by the letters m i l e s d a v i s see bach motif and schoenberg hexachord eschbeg and the chart at musical notes accidentals it is introduced at the beginning over a sustained chord of these same notes the following 9 movements of the suite represent the colours mikkelborg sees in miles s aura the music is scored for an extended jazz big band and the core of the band is formed by the danish radio s big band featuring niels henning rsted pedersen thomas clausen and marilyn mazur notable international guests such as john mclaughlin and davis nephew vince wilburn are featured the sessions took place in copenhagen in 1985 at davis own initiative as he had been very honored and satisfied with the suite it was the first time miles davis had recorded with a big band for over 20 years aura however is not a conventional", "it was recorded with hip hop producer easy mo bee and released posthumously on june 30 1992 by warner bros records the album was received unfavorably by most critics although it won a grammy award for best r b instrumental performance the following year the project stemmed from davis sitting in his new york city apartment in the summer with the windows open listening to the sound of the streets he wanted to record an album of music that captured these sounds in early 1991 davis called up his friend russell simmons and asked him to find some young producers who could help create this kind of music leading to davis collaboration with easy mo bee at the time of davis death in 1991 only six pieces for the album had been completed easy mo bee was asked by warner bros to take some of the unreleased trumpet performances stemming from what davis called the rubberband session and build tracks that miles would have loved around the recordings the album s posthumous tracks as stated in the liner notes are high speed chase and fantasy a reprise of the song mystery rounded out the album s nine track length doo", "she has been nominated for a grammy award at the age of nineteen gardot was involved in a bicycle accident and sustained a head injury music played a critical role in her recovery she became an advocate of music therapy visiting hospitals and universities to discuss its benefits in 2012 she gave her name to a music therapy program in new jersey gardot was born in new jersey and was brought up by her grandparents her grandmother was a polish immigrant her mother a photographer traveled often so they had few possessions and lived out of suitcases gardot studied fashion at the community college of philadelphia while riding her bicycle in philadelphia in november 2003 gardot was struck by the driver of an suv and sustained head spinal and pelvic injuries confined to a hospital bed for a year she needed to relearn simple tasks and was left oversensitive to light and sound suffering from short and long term memory loss she struggled with her sense of time encouraged by a physician who believed music would help heal her brain gardot learned to hum then to sing into a tape recorder and eventually to write songs for several years she", "the album is considered a milestone in pepper s career according to pepper the album was recorded under enormous pressure as he first learned of the recording session the morning he was due in the studio and he had never met the other musicians all of whom he greatly admired he was playing on an instrument in a bad state of repair and was suffering from a drug problem purportedly pepper had not played the saxophone for some time either for two weeks according to the liner notes or six months according to pepper s autobiography straight life although the discography in straight life indicates that pepper had recorded many sessions in the previous weeks including one five days earlier michael g nastos of allmusic called the recording a classic east meets west cool plus hot but never lukewarm combination that provides many bright moments for the quartet during this exceptional date from that great year in music 1957 brian morton and richard cook writing for the penguin jazz guide 10th ed described meets the rhythm section as a poetic burning date with all four men playing above themselves between them they d delivered a masterpiece in previous penguin guide", "this aaba structure puts it in the thirty two bar format of american popular song the piano and bass introduction for the piece was written by gil evans for bill evans no relation and paul chambers on kind of blue an orchestrated version by gil evans of this introduction is later to be found on a television broadcast given by miles first quintet minus cannonball adderley who was ill that day and the gil evans orchestra the orchestra gave the introduction after which the quintet played the rest of so what the use of the double bass to play the main theme makes the piece unusual this arrangement was later performed and recorded as part of the album miles davis at carnegie hall the distinctive voicing employed by bill evans for the chords that interject the head from the bottom up three notes at intervals of a perfect fourth followed by a major third has been given the name so what chord by such theorists as mark levine while the track is taken at a very moderate tempo on kind of blue it is played at an extremely fast tempo on later live recordings by the quintet such as four", "in addition to davis he has played and recorded with marvin gaye aretha franklin stevie wonder the dramatics doctor john among many others henderson was one of the bass guitarists based in detroit along with bob babbitt and his primary influence james jamerson before working with davis henderson had been touring with stevie wonder whom he met at the regal theater in chicago while warming up for a gig davis saw the young henderson performing at the copacabana in new york city in early 1970 and reportedly said to wonder simply i m taking your fucking bassist after almost seven years with davis henderson focused on songwriting and singing in a solo career that produced many hit songs and albums for buddah records until his retirement in 1986 although known primarily for ballads he was an influential funk player whose riffs and songs have been widely covered his solo recordings have sold well over one million albums a track titled wide receiver on an album of the same name is highly favored by breakdancers the album along with others was reissued in 2015 he is also known for his ballad vocalizing on several norman connors hit recordings including you are", "by the time he recorded the album davis was 48 years old and had alienated many in the jazz community while attracting younger rock audiences with his radical electric fusion music after experimenting with different line ups he established a stable live band in 1973 and toured constantly for the next two years despite physical pain from worsening health and emotional instability brought on by substance abuse during a three week tour of japan in 1975 the trumpeter performed two concerts at the festival hall in osaka on february 1 the afternoon show produced agharta and the evening show was released as pangaea the following year davis led a septet at the concert saxophonist sonny fortune bassist michael henderson and guitarist pete cosey were given space to improvise against a dense backdrop of riffs electronic effects cross beats and funk grooves from the rhythm section drummer al foster guitarist reggie lucas and percussionist james mtume davis controlled their rhythmic and musical direction with hand and head gestures phrases played on his wah wah processed trumpet and drones from an accompanying electronic organ the evolving nature of the performance led to the widespread misunderstanding that it had no compositional basis while", "his fiercely flanged and distorted guitar invited comparisons to jimi hendrix cosey kept a low profile for much of his career and released no solo recorded works he appeared on davis s albums get up with it 1974 agharta 1975 pangaea 1976 dark magus 1977 and the complete on the corner sessions 2007 cosey was born in chicago illinois he was the only child of a musical family his father and mother wrote for louis jordan and eddie cleanhead vinson and his father played for sidney bechet and josephine baker following the death of his father cosey and his mother moved to phoenix arizona where he spent his teenage years and began developing his guitar style prior to joining the miles davis band in 1973 cosey was a busy session guitarist with chess records playing on records by etta james fontella bass rescue me rotary connection howlin wolf the howlin wolf album and muddy waters electric mud after the rain cosey was also an early member of chicago s association for the advancement of creative musicians aacm he was an early member of the pharaohs and a group with drummer maurice white and bassist louis satterfield that eventually evolved into", "it was recorded at le poste parisien studio in paris on december 4 and 5 1957 the album features the musical cues for the 1958 louis malle film ascenseur pour l chafaud jean paul rappeneau a jazz fan and malle s assistant at the time suggested asking miles davis to create the film s soundtrack possibly inspired by the modern jazz quartet s recording for roger vadim s sait on jamais lit does one ever know released as no sun in venice released a few months earlier in 1957 davis was booked to perform at the club saint germain in paris for november 1957 rappeneau introduced him to malle and davis agreed to record the music after attending a private screening on december 4 he brought his four sidemen to the recording studio without having had them prepare anything davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room and once the plot was explained the band improvised without any precomposed theme while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background in europe the soundtrack was originally released as a 10 inch lp on the fontana label in", "it was originally released as a double album in 1976 by cbs sony in japan recorded during davis electric period the album captures the second of two concerts he performed on february 1 1975 at osaka s festival hall as with the first concert captured on the 1975 album agharta davis led a band featuring guitarists pete cosey and reggie lucas saxophonist sonny fortune bassist michael henderson drummer al foster and percussionist james mtume both pangaea and its predecessor agharta were recorded on february 1 1975 in osaka japan at the festival hall the agharta concert took place during an afternoon matinee whereas pangaea was recorded in the evening this album s music was split into two tracks zimbabwe and gondwana the latter of which was the name of the ancient supercontinent as was pangaea according to music scholar enrico merlin the two tracks contain performances of the segments originally developed by davis under the titles moja willie nelson on tune in 5 nne zimbabwe ife and wili for dave performed in that order the album was first released exclusively in japan by cbs sony in 1976 it did not see release anywhere else until 1991 in may of that", "the album combines recordings from the first live appearances by davis in more than five years at boston s kix club on june 27 1981 other tracks were recorded at avery fisher hall new york city on july 5 and in tokyo october 4 of that year miles davis had returned to the studio in 1980 after a long hiatus during which he left the trumpet alone and focused on women and cocaine according to his autobiography changing some personnel while recording the man with the horn he formed a live band consisting of mike stern on guitar replacing barry finnerty al foster on drums mino cinelu on percussion he had replaced sammy figueroa bill evans on soprano and marcus miller on bass by this time it had been six years since he played live davis secured a two performance gig on july 2 1981 at the kool jazz festival the name given to the old newport jazz festival while it was held in new york city at avery fisher hall but first played four shows at kix a club in boston recordings from these shows with a recording from an october date in japan were used to compile we", "sony music entertainment released the album in 2001 although the concert had previously circulated as a bootleg recording the march 7 1970 concert consisted of two sets each of which is presented on one compact disc live at the fillmore east records the final concert with saxophonist wayne shorter in davis band at the same time it is one of the first recordings along with the 1969 miles festiva de juan pins to document davis use of electric instruments in a concert setting davis performed on the nights of march 6 and 7 at fillmore east columbia records recorded both nights concerts but as of 2008 has only released the march 7 show a number of the compositions performed during the concert appear on bitches brew which had not yet been released at the time of this concert these performances were as support to neil young and crazy horse and the steve miller band young s performance has also been released as a live album all compositions by miles davis unless otherwise indicated", "the performances featured the double keyboard set up davis toured with for a few months with keith jarrett and chick corea playing electronic organ and fender rhodes respectively the group opened for laura nyro at these performances compositions include besides the standard i fall in love too easily tracks from his fusion studio albums bitches brew and in a silent way the live performances were heavily edited by producer teo macero and the results were named for the day of the week the band performed only on the 1997 columbia cd reissue were the compositions and composers identified and indexed promotional lp copies divided the sides into short individually titled pieces but still did not identify the original compositions and composers on march 25 2014 the full recordings of the performances were issued as miles davis at fillmore was released on vinyl as a double album with liner notes written by morgan ames of high fidelity and mort goode it was released on cd in japan in 1987 but not made available on cd in the states until 1997 when columbia released it as one of five live albums from the same period the others being live evil dark magus", "despite the title the two artists do not perform together on the lp and they are represented on each side by separate live appearances at the newport jazz festival on the first side of the lp was a series of high tempo performances of bebop tunes and other staples of the davis live repertoire from 1958 the performance was contemporaneous with davis milestones album aside from the 1973 release jazz at the plaza also a 1958 concert during the lp era this was the only legitimate non bootleg recording of a live davis combo performance earlier than the 1960 blackhawk recordings as such this performance and jazz at the plaza were the only legitimate live recordings representing the kind of blue sextet on the second side were a few numbers by thelonious monk s combo from a 1963 newport appearance it featured an idiosyncratic appearance by clarinetist pee wee russell the miles set was recorded in mono and the monk set was recorded in stereo so the mono lp featured a fold down of the monk set and the stereo lp featured an electronically re channeled for stereo remix of the miles set in 1973 an expanded version of the", "it brings miles davis on trumpet together with charles mingus on bass trombonist britt woodman vibraphonist teddy charles and drummer elvin jones the arrangement of alone together is by charles mingus while the other tracks were arranged by teddy charles according to the original sleeve notes the relatively short playing time of the album was because the recording was cut at 160 lines per inch instead of the usual 210 to 260 lines per inch making the grooves wider and deeper and allowing for more area between the grooves for bass frequencies and was deemed necessary to reproduce the extended bass range and give the listener more quality to that of high fidelity tape recording it was also included in the charles mingus complete debut recordings 12cd box set the allmusic review by alex henderson stated blue moods is an excellent example of cool jazz however not all of the musicians who join davis on this album were full time members of jazz s cool school but even so blue moods offers considerable rewards to those who have a taste for 50s cool jazz", "one of two ballads on the lp the other being flamenco sketches the melody of blue in green is very modal incorporating the presence of the dorian mixolydian and lydian modes this is the only song on which cannonball adderley sits out it has long been speculated that pianist bill evans wrote blue in green even though the lp and most jazz fakebooks credit only davis with its composition in his autobiography davis maintains that he alone composed the songs on kind of blue the version on evans trio album portrait in jazz recorded in 1959 credits the tune to davis evans earl zindars in an interview conducted by win hinkle said that blue in green was 100 written by bill evans in a radio interview broadcast on may 27 1979 evans himself said that he had written the song on being asked about the issue by interviewer marian mcpartland he said the truth is i did write the music i don t want to make a federal case out of it the music exists and miles is getting the royalties evans recounted that when he suggested that he was entitled to a share of the royalties davis wrote him", "his grandfather rule oliver played trombone in territory bands and was a junior high school band director for 50 years in arkansas his mother lida beasley is a brass instrumentalist who for most of her career taught music at various public schools and colleges along with being band director and conducting operas earning a local emmy award for her work in faust growing up around musicians beasley learned how to play trumpet oboe drums saxophone and flute mostly because of his mother s need for wind instrumentalists for her bands his father rule curtis beasley b 1931 is a pianist and bassoonist who played with the fort worth symphony rule beasley also was a professor of music composition at university of north texas college of music and at santa monica college where he taught many musicians performing today beasley created a drum set with garbage can lids and kitchen pots and pans when he was around two years old his grandfather started bringing him drum parts which he put together and had a drum set from age four to high school beasley began piano lessons at the age of seven and stopped taking formal lessons when he started high school", "it was recorded at the 1991 montreux jazz festival and released by warner bros records in 1993 for the first time in three decades davis returned to the songs arranged by gil evans from his past albums including miles ahead 1957 porgy and bess 1959 and sketches of spain 1960 this album was also the last album recorded by davis though recordings from nine days later despite being recorded at lyon would be included on the complete miles davis at montreux box set miles quincy live at montreux charted at number one on the billboard top jazz albums it won davis his seventh grammy award for best large jazz ensemble performance miles davis who had never revisited past music from his career before surprised jazz fans when he worked with an ensemble led by quincy jones at the montreux jazz festival on july 8 1991 jones developed the idea of using two orchestras and conducted both the gil evans orchestra and george gruntz concert jazz band at the concert the performance also featured guest instrumentalists who played with davis including trumpeters benny bailey and wallace roney drummer grady tate bassist carles benavent and alto saxophonist kenny garrett davis was seriously", "it was recorded on april 10 1970 at the fillmore west in san francisco shortly after the release of the trumpeter s bitches brew album and the recording of jack johnson 1971 black beauty was produced by teo macero davis longtime record producer a jazz rock album black beauty captured one of davis first performances at a rock venue during the early stages of at the concert he led his band saxophonist steve grossman bassist dave holland keyboardist chick corea drummer jack dejohnette and percussionist airto moreira through one continuously performed set list which functioned as a musical suite for soloists to improvise throughout he signaled changes from one piece to the next with phrases played on his trumpet black beauty was first released only in japan by cbs sony in 1973 without individual songs specified in the track listing columbia records davis american record label had difficulty identifying the compositions for royalty purposes and the album was not released in the united states until 1997 critics were generally positive toward black beauty although some were critical of its sound quality and grossman s solos corea said the recording was an accurate document how that particular band of davis played", "it compiled outtakes from sessions across fifteen years of davis s career that with one exception had been previously unreleased all of its tracks have since been made available on album reissues and posthumous box sets two bass hit is from a 1955 session a 1958 re recording was released on milestones love for sale previously released on a 1974 japanese compilation features the same lineup that would play on most of kind of blue blues no 2 comes from the last session that davis and john coltrane would record together in 1961 although coltrane does not play on the track the title track circle in the round is the first studio recording in which he departed from the acoustic quintet and therefore marks the inception of his electric period recorded in 1967 it was the earliest released recording of miles that featured the sound of the electric guitar played by joe beck something that would become prominent in his music over the years edited here by seven minutes the full track was released on the complete studio recordings of the miles davis quintet 1965 1968 the first officially released davis track with electric guitar was paraphernalia from 1968 s", "the quintet underwent frequent personnel changes toward its metamorphosis into a different ensemble in 1969 most references pertain to two distinct and relatively stable bands the first great quintet from 1955 to 1958 and the second great quintet from late 1964 to early 1969 davis being the only constant throughout in the summer of 1955 davis performed a noted set at the newport jazz festival and had been approached by columbia records executive george avakian offering a contract with the label if he could form a regular band davis assembled his first regular quintet to meet a commitment at the caf bohemia in july with sonny rollins on tenor saxophone red garland on piano paul chambers on bass and philly joe jones on drums by the autumn rollins had left to deal with his heroin addiction and later in the year joined the hard bop quintet led by clifford brown and max roach at the recommendation of drummer jones davis replaced rollins with john coltrane beginning a partnership that would last five years and finalizing the quintet s first line up expanded to a sextet with the addition of cannonball adderley on alto saxophone in 1958 the first great quintet", "it was recorded in 1972 at the philharmonic hall in new york city columbia records original release did not credit any personnel recording date or track listing apart from the inner liner listing the two titles foot fooler and slickaphonics in a contemporary review of the album bob palmer of rolling stone magazine believed carlos garnett s saxophone playing sounded marginalized but wrote that the music is bracing popping at least one step ahead of the many davis imitators there are few real surprises but there s a continuing skein of rhythms themes and developments that makes fine extended listening robert christgau wrote in 1981 that although it takes a while to get into gear and is pretty narrow in function the album s urban voodoo has more going for it rhythmically than on the corner in an article for the village voice christgau wrote of the album upon its reissue in 1997 according to allmusic editor steve huey melody isn t the point of this music it s about power rhythm and the sum energy of the collective and of davis electric jazz rock albums in concert does one of the most mind bending jobs of living up to", "like other davis box sets the included material is taken from a wider chronology of sessions than the dates which actually produced the titular album the complete on the corner sessions compiles material from 1972 through 1975 which due to lineup changes davis made throughout the era features over two dozen musicians columbia has released a series of ten box sets containing recordings from the 1950s to the 1970s these contain material not available on other columbia albums following the complete in a silent way sessions the complete bitches brew sessions the complete jack johnson sessions and the cellar door sessions this release includes the funk jazz fusion album on the corner his band was made up of musicians trained not only in the basics of jazz but on the newer sounds of james brown and sly stone the box set includes more than six hours of music twelve of these are previously unissued tracks another five tracks are previously unissued in full they cover sixteen sessions from on the corner big fun and get up with it until davis s mid seventies retirement miles is joined in these recordings by chick corea herbie hancock john mclaughlin jack dejohnette billy", "it collects work from 1957 through 1968 at columbia records recording studios miles davis and gil evans had worked together on davis landmark 1949 album birth of the cool evans was a distinguished soloist but it was his role as arranger that is well illustrated here with alternate and working takes disc 1 miles ahead masters released on miles ahead disc 2 porgy and bess masters released on porgy and bess disc 3 sketches of spain masters released on sketches of spain disc 4 quiet nights and more masters released on quiet nights disc 5 the making of miles ahead disc 6 alternate and rehearsal takes miles davis trumpet flugelhorn gil evans piano arranger conductor bob dorough vocals piano steve lacy soprano saxophone lee konitz cannonball adderley alto saxophone wayne shorter tenor saxophone ernie royal bernie glow james jorda john carisi louis mucci trumpet jimmy cleveland j j johnson frank rehak joe bennett tom mitchell trombone julius watkins gunther schuller willie ruff tony miranda jim buffington french horn bill barber tuba romeo penque flute clarinet bass clarinet oboe hubert laws flute jack knitzer bassoon janet putnam harp wynton kelly piano herbie hancock piano electric piano joe beck electric guitar paul", "it compiled music davis recorded in studio sessions with his quintet in 1967 and 1968 including outtakes from his 1968 album nefertiti and recordings that foreshadowed his direction on in a silent way 1969 while covering styles such as jazz fusion and post bop water babies was released by columbia records in 1976 after davis had temporarily retired released during miles davis s retirement in the second half of the seventies it is a collection of stylistically diverse leftovers spanning eighteen months from the nefertiti sessions with the miles davis quintet 1967 to the experimental transitional period between filles de kilimanjaro and in a silent way late 1968 due to these recordings being released years after they were recorded the three wayne shorter compositions recorded during the 1967 session had made their first appearance in 1969 on shorter s album super nova in a much more free jazz avant garde style side 1 features the second great quintet of davis shorter hancock williams and carter on side 2 ron carter is replaced by dave holland and chick corea doubles with hancock on electric piano this line up is very similar to the one that recorded in a silent way minus", "it was recorded on march 30 1974 at carnegie hall in new york city during the electric period in the musician s career davis group at the time of the concert included bassist michael henderson drummer al foster percussionist james mtume saxophonist dave liebman and guitarists pete cosey and reggie lucas he also used the show to audition saxophonist azar lawrence and guitarist dominique gaumont dark magus was produced by teo macero and featured four two part recordings titled after swahili names for the numbers one through four dark magus was released after davis 1975 retirement upon which his label columbia records issued several albums of various outtakes after issuing the live recordings agharta 1975 and pangaea 1976 columbia decided that they did not approve of the albums and dark magus was released only in japan in 1977 by cbs sony the label s a r executive tatsu nosaki suggested the album s title which referred to the magus from the zoroastrian religion along with davis other records during the 1970s dark magus was received ambivalently by contemporary critics but it inspired noise rock acts during the late 1970s and the experimental funk artists of the 1980s the album was", "it was recorded at a concert at the philharmonic hall of lincoln center new york city ny on february 12 1964 miles also recorded a studio version of the title song muted with piano trio backing in 1956 the concert was part of a series of benefits staged at the recently built philharmonic hall now known as david geffen hall co sponsored by the naacp the congress of racial equality and the student nonviolent coordinating committee davis s set that night was ostensibly in support of voter registration in mississippi and louisiana but he also mentioned in a melody maker interview that one of the concerts was in memory of john f kennedy who had been assassinated the previous year kennedy s death had struck at the hopes of many in the civil rights movement a cause dear to miles who had expressed his admiration for the president in 1962 i like the kennedy brothers they re swinging people two albums were assembled from the concert recording the up tempo pieces were issued as four more while my funny valentine consists of the slow and medium tempo numbers davis biographer ian carr notes that the former were taken too fast", "the album compiled from earlier 10 inch lps or as 78rpm singles also features musicians such as lee konitz sonny rollins stan getz gerry mulligan and zoot sims the cover was designed by bob parent in particular the entirety of the 10 lp lee konitz the new sounds prlp 116 makes up all of side 1 prezervation originally released on the 78rpm single intoit originally released on the 78rpm single i may be wrong so what i may be wrong and so what were originally issued on the 10 lp chubby jackson all star big band prlp 105 although they are here credited to gerry mulligan odjenar hibeck yesterdays ezz thetic indian summer duet for saxophone and guitar all six lee konitz tracks were originally issued on the 10 lp lee konitz the new sounds prlp 116 which is reissued in its entirety here the tracks with miles davis as a sideman were recorded after davis first prestige session and before davis own debut album also called the new sounds prlp 124 konitz and davis had previously worked together on the birth of the cool sessions conception my old flame both miles davis tracks were previously released on miles davis", "it features tracks from a 1951 session at apex studios remastered in 1956 by rudy van gelder first released in the twelve inch format in 1956 dig was later reissued as a compact disc with additional tracks the original album was later released as diggin with the catalogue number pr 7281 and a different cover that later version is the one currently widely available on vinyl although the expanded version of dig is the one available on cd after inaugurating the school of cool jazz with the birth of the cool recording sessions in 1949 and 1950 davis almost immediately turned away from that sound in the early 1950s instead exploring hard bop dig was also the jazz recording debut of saxophonist jackie mclean and was one of sonny rollins s earliest recordings both men would go on to become major voices in jazz the material was originally released on two 10 inch lps except for denial released on a 1954 7 prestige prep 1361 dig and it s only a paper moon first appeared on the new sounds prlp 124 as did conception and my old flame bluing and out of the blue were originally released on blue period", "he ran his own record label douglas records in 1962 douglas took charge of united artists records jazz division one of his first projects was art blakey and the jazz messengers three blind mice albums recorded live at the renaissance club in hollywood he also coaxed trumpeter kenny dorham into the studio for matador a soul jazz classic shared with jackie mclean and bobby timmons douglas s qualities as a producer were already evident he would encourage musicians to express themselves and push the boundaries as when he teamed duke ellington with max roach and charles mingus for money jungle which george wein has described as one of the greatest piano trio recordings in jazz history douglas would produce other memorable releases during his short tenure with ua including albums by oliver nelson ken mcintyre king pleasure herbie mann and betty carter the bill evans and jim hall lp undercurrent was the first of their collaborations highlights from these albums can be found on douglas on blue note issued in 2009 douglas s production work on a few of hendrix s posthumous releases is controversial this is primarily due to tracks on the crash landing and midnight lightning lp releases", "it compiles sessions by the most recent edition of the davis sextet which were insufficient to comprise an entire lp with music previously released in france as a soundtrack this album was made available on cd for the first time as part of miles davis the original mono recordings box set side one is the american issue of material recorded on december 4 1957 for the soundtrack of the 1958 louis malle film ascenseur pour l chafaud and previously released in europe as a 10 inch lp on the fontana label the soundtrack was recorded in paris december 4 1957 using local musicians including american expatriate drummer kenny clarke side two consists of newly released material recorded by his sextet on may 26 1958 these were the same musicians who would soon record kind of blue excluding pianist wynton kelly the composition fran dance is named for davis wife frances taylor the complete fontana soundtrack was issued on compact disc in the 1980s using the original title and fontana artwork expanded with all studio takes from the session the sextet material was later rereleased in 1974 under the title 1958 miles with live recordings from the same year replacing the", "recording sessions for the album took place on may 26 1958 at columbia s 30th street studio and september 9 1958 at the plaza hotel in new york city 1958 miles consists of three songs featured on side two of the lp album jazz track which was released earlier in 1958 one song from the same session not appearing in the album love for sale and three recordings from davis live performance at the plaza hotel with his ensemble sextet the recording date at 30th street studio served as the first documented session to feature pianist bill evans performing in davis group the sessions for the album in mid 1958 along with the milestones sessions from earlier that year were seen by many music writers as elemental in miles davis transition from bebop to the modal style of jazz and were viewed as precursors to his best known work kind of blue following audio engineering and digital restoration by engineer larry keyes at sony music new york studio the album was reissued on compact disc in 1991 as part of columbia s jazz masterpieces series for later reissues the album was retitled as 58 sessions featuring stella by starlight or", "finnerty is also the author of books on music improvisation and a semi autobiographical novel finnerty was born in san francisco and raised on the west coast studying at the san francisco conservatory of music and university of california berkeley he lived in hong kong with his mother in the early 1960s when he was fourteen he began playing electric guitar and joined a band that opened a show for herman s hermits on returning to san francisco he became friends with guitarist jim checkley who invited him to join beefy red in 1969 he played in that band for several years he moved to new york city after attending berklee college of music for a short time in 1971 in 1974 he began playing with chico hamilton airto moreira and flora purim in 1975 he became a member of the joe farrell quartet and later in the decade played with hubert laws tower of power thad jones and mel lewis and ray barretto finnerty played and recorded with michael brecker and randy brecker 1977 81 and the crusaders 1979 84 in addition to touring in europe with billy cobham in 1980 he played and recorded with miles davis in", "there are two sessions collected on the album with largely different musicians the first 1953 session is compulsion the serpent s tooth two takes and round about midnight the second 1956 session is in your own sweet way vierd blues and no line the personnel for the first session were davis sonny rollins and charlie parker credited under the pseudonym charlie chan due to his contractual obligations to a rival label on tenor saxes walter bishop on piano percy heath on bass and philly joe jones on drums for the second session the tenor sax was rollins alone the piano was tommy flanagan the bass paul chambers and art taylor on drums according to ira gitler s liner notes the 1953 session was only the second time parker had recorded on a tenor sax according to the cd edition s liner notes that session was the only time parker and rollins recorded together davis describes the session with parker in his autobiography as having been very chaotic it was davis first session of 1953 and his heroin habit had gotten very bad parker had quit his own heroin habit following the arrest of his trumpet player red rodney instead drinking", "lawrence was the tenor saxophonist tyner used following john coltrane s death lawrence released summer solstice on prestige records in 1975 produced by orrin keepnews it featured raul de souza gerald hayes amaury trist o dom salvador ron carter guilherme franco on the songs novo ano and highway which were composed by amaury trist o and lawrence souza albert dailey carter and billy hart on all other selections bridge into the new age featured jean carn woody shaw ray straughter woody murray clint houston billy hart guillerme franco julian priester hadley caliman black arthur joe bonner john heard leon ndugu chancler mtume and kenneth nash people moving featured patrice rushen jerry peters michael stanton john rowin lee ritenour paul jackson jr harvey mason ernest straughter musician and screenwriter herbert baker taught music and mentored lawrence who recalled baker as one of the greatest pianists who ever lived with mulatu astatke with henry butler with miles davis with henry franklin with gene harris with freddie hubbard with elvin jones with franklin kiermyer with woody shaw with the 360 degree music experience with mccoy tyner with harry whitaker with eden atwood", "it marks the final part of the time of transition between the two great quintet formations john coltrane had left the band and davis searched for a new tenor saxophonist after dismissing hank mobley among others davis hired george coleman he is featured on the recordings on four of the seven discs part of the album seven steps to heaven was recorded in los angeles in april 1963 with victor feldman on piano ron carter on bass and frank butler on drums disc 1 the other part was recorded a month later in new york where herbie hancock ron carter and tony williams already established the rhythm section of the second great quintet coleman quit in spring 1964 and williams recommended sam rivers who then went on tour with the band in the united states and japan where the music on the sixth disc was recorded miles in tokyo then davis hired wayne shorter who was musical director of art blakey s jazz messengers miles in berlin represents the first recording of the second great miles davis quintet disc 7 disc 1 and part of disc 2 are the sessions that made up the seven steps to heaven album the", "tracks 5 11 and 13 were featured on the prestige 10 inch lp sonny rollins quartet 1952 prlp 137 which is reissued in its entirety here track 12 was released on the 10 compilation mambo jazz prlp 135 i know featuring miles davis on piano was recorded at the same session as four other tracks under davis s name using the same musicians including the young rollins this was davis s first recording session for prestige records and his first with rollins producer bob weinstock tried to dissuade davis from using rollins feeling he was not ready but davis persuaded weinstock to let rollins record a cut under his own name the davis tracks recorded that date were issued on the 10 lp modern jazz trumpets and appeared on the album miles davis and horns the allmusic review by lindsay planer describes the album as a fresh and vibrant baker s dozen of selections a vital component in any jazz enthusiast s collection author and musician peter niklas wilson called it patchwork but an interesting one tracks 1 4 tracks 5 12 track 13", "her music style can be described as a combination of jazz pop electronic dance music latin and world music the beginning laroo was born in amsterdam netherlands as the eldest of four daughters when she was six the family moved to den ilp a nearby village a year later she started with general music lessons and lessons on soprano recorder later also alto recorder at the music school in purmerend in den ilp she started age 8 to play the cornet in fanfare orchestra laroo went in 1971 at age 11 to secondary school het zaanlands lyceum zaandam she switched from recorder to cello and took lessons for 3 years with cellist olof groesz who became cellist of the metropole orchestra when she was fifteen saskia became interested in learning guitar and self studied classical and folk music on the instrument for a year a year later she was introduced to jazz music by the newly founded bigband on her high school and became member of the trumpet section this bigband was conducted by pianist jan molenaar who is owner of molenaar muziekuitgeverij she got her first lessons in jazz improvisation with this band and heard for the first time", "in 1992 patterson provided music for ntozake shange s the love space demands an adaptation of some of her poetry in 1995 patterson produced melvin van peebles 1995 album ghetto gothic in 2003 he was musical director for the play dream on monkey mountain presented at the harlem school of the arts in 2008 patterson was enlisted to produce a hip hop album for bill cosby known at that time for his comedic work and not for performing hip hop cosby s album came as a surprise to some patterson told the associated press that when cosby contacted him about making the album people started speculating is he going to rap about jell o pudding pops or what the resulting release titled came out on november 14 2009 on world alert music in 2016 spaceman patterson played guitar on multiple frank ocean recordings including the albums endless and blonde as of 2018 at least 20 hours of outtakes from patterson s frank ocean sessions have not been released per each album s liner notes with others", "stewart s photographs have graced more than 2 000 album covers stewart was born in henrietta texas on may 21 1927 and grew up in tucson arizona his father hugh paris stewart was a chef while his mother anne harris was a domestic worker he received a kodak brownie camera as a present when he was 13 years old and used it that same day to take photos of marian anderson who had come to visit his school after they were developed he was able to sell his photos for two dollars making him a professional photographer from his first day he took pictures he attended ohio university as a photography major one of the only two universities in the united states that offered the program at the collegiate level and the only one that would then accept african american students he would graduate in 1949 he was drafted into army and worked as a military photographer photographing atomic bomb tests in 1952 while in college his friendship with photographer herman leonard helped him make connections with record companies in new york city his clients would include impulse mercury reprise and verve for whom he took cover photos of artists", "the album title is presumably a reference to the 1950 film young man with a horn it was davis only official album recorded or released that year at a time in his career while he was struggling with heroin addiction this was the first of three 10 lps recorded by davis for blue note in the early 1950s davis says in autobiography that his contract for prestige records for whom he had recorded his first lp the year before was non exclusive but elsewhere he states the initial prestige contract was for only one year all cuts were initially issued as singles except how deep is the ocean the recordings were re released on 12 inch lps in 1956 after davis won the down beat readers poll as best trumpeter the original master takes were split and merged with davis two other sessions for blue note miles davis volume 1 and volume 2 young man with a horn was also released by vogue in france and the uk the lp was reissued in its original form as 10 lp in japan in 1999 toshiba emi and in 2009 by the american audiophile classic records", "it contains compositions from prior albums including in a silent way 1969 on the corner 1972 and get up with it 1974 remixed by bill laswell it is subtitled reconstruction and mix translation by bill laswell the album was composed as a dark continuous tone poem divided by four sections of davis jazz fusion recordings panthalassa received generally positive reviews from music critics and sold well charting at number four on the billboard top jazz albums an ambient jazz fusion album panthalassa is divided into four sections and composed as dark and continuous chronological tone poem of remixed songs recorded by davis during his electric period laswell was offered access to the original multi track tapes and occasionally deleted the rhythm sections brought up obscured instruments added indian and electronic droning sounds constructed moody transitions and premiered previously unreleased passages from davis sessions the album s first track was constructed as a reordered and truncated version of davis 1969 jazz fusion album in a silent way it is followed by 16 minutes of remixed music from the on the corner sessions and approximately half an hour of music from get up with it the on the corner section of panthalassa", "the deals are typically themed each week focusing on a particular genre or era of music such as british invasion folk rock legends american jazz soul and many others as of 2017 popmarket has been owned by directtou llc a subsidiary of alliance entertainment popmarket offers a new deal each day to its members who subscribe via email daily deals consist of rare and hard to find music products collectibles and box sets that are hand picked by the popmarket music team all deals run for 24 hours and are sold on a first come first served basis until sold out in 2011 popmarket introduced the complete album collection a new series of products specifically designed for popmarket members this new product line features complete artist catalogs on cd in a single box from legendary artists including the byrds return to forever sam cooke and stan getz with new artist collections added each month", "recorded mostly at columbia s 30th street studios in manhattan it is the final album by davis and evans keeping to his standard procedure at columbia to date of alternating small group records and big band studio projects with gil evans davis entered the studio with evans to follow up the latest studio lp by the working quintet someday my prince will come in 1961 davis had also released his first live albums two independent lps entitled friday night at the blackhawk and saturday night at the blackhawk in addition to the studio set another live set from 1961 miles davis at carnegie hall also with both the quintet and a large ensemble conducted by evans was issued in 1962 the genesis of this davis evans album however encountered far greater difficulties than its three predecessors bossa nova had recently become a commercial success in 1962 with the single desafinado from the album jazz samba by stan getz and columbia executives may have pressured davis and evans to attempt something similar with this album sessions were also protracted over long stretches of time two songs were recorded at the first session in july corcovado and aos p s da cruz", "the album was released in february 2011 and contains material compiled from two concert performances most of the songs on the album originally appeared on bitches brew the first three tracks were recorded at the newport jazz festival in july 1969 nine months before the release of bitches brew while the rest of the album was recorded at 1970 isle of wight festival the three cuts from newport miles runs the voodoo down sanctuary and it s about that time the theme were previously unreleased at the time and have since been reissued on the at newport 1955 1975 volume of the sony bootleg series this recording marks the first known time that miles runs the voodoo down was professionally recorded the final six cuts appeared on the miles electric dvd in video form and the audio portion was included in the box set a seventeen minute segment appeared under the title call it anything on the first great rock festivals of the seventies isle of wight atlanta pop festival compilation album in 1971 the band on the tracks recorded at newport includes davis chick corea dave holland and jack dejohnette wayne shorter missed this date because of traffic into", "it collects previously unreleased outtakes that davis recorded between 1960 and 1970 directions was the last of a series of compilation albums mostly consisting of at that time previously unreleased music that columbia released to bridge davis recording hiatus that ended with the man with the horn in july 1981 directions is a double album that features previously unreleased outtakes recorded over a 10 year period by davis apart from song of our country from the recording sessions for sketches of spain 1960 a 1961 recording of round midnight and so near so far from 1963 the album s songs are from davis transitional period during 1967 to 1970 when he was experimenting with a fusion of jazz and rock they feature sidemen such as saxophonist wayne shorter guitarist john mclaughlin and keyboardists herbie hancock joe zawinul and chick corea reviewing in allmusic critic scott yanow believed some of the tracks rambled on a bit too long but the music was nonetheless mostly quite fascinating and highly recommendable to collectors with an open ear toward fusion all tracks by miles davis except where noted song of our country recorded in new york march 11 1960 reissued on 1997 cd release", "hall helped davis arrange the man with the horn and its title track featured lead vocals by hall who also played guitar synthesizer and celesta on the track randy hall grew up in chicago his first instrument was the piano but at the age of 13 he switched to guitar taking lessons from british jazz guitarist peter budd despite budd s best efforts hall adopted a playing technique similar to wes montgomery whereby the thumb is used as a pick hall can play fast and explosively as in the opening number one phone call street scenes on the esp 2 dvd a tribute to miles hall met miles s nephew and future drummer vince wilburn jr in kindergarten and the two became lifelong friends wilburn s mother dorothy was miles s sister the two friends started playing together and at the age of 16 joined a local band called time space and distance that soon gained them a reputation around chicago and they did session work for local groups including the dells when hall and wilburn were around 17 years old pete cosey who had played in miles s band from 1973 to 1975 began giving them lessons they did", "the album includes tracks from davis s first recording session backing singer rubberlegs williams on april 24 1945 and the first session produced under his name leading the members of charlie parker s band on august 14 1947 davis plays no solos in the session with rubberlegs williams only being heard as part of an ensemble he says in his autobiography he was so nervous on his first ever recording he could hardly play and he forgot most of the details as he put the experience out of his mind davis had already recorded several sessions by 1947 as a member of parker s band for the savoy and dial labels but whereas parker usually recorded with no rehearsals davis had the group rehearse the material twice before recording davis wrote and arranged all four tracks which were released as 78rpm singles under the name miles davis all stars the four tracks have also been compiled on numerous charlie parker savoy compilations including bird the savoy recordings master takes sjl 2201 davis next recording session as leader would be the first of the birth of the cool sessions in 1949 after having left parker s band savoy jazz sjl 1196", "the songs it compiles were recorded between may 10 1957 and february 12 1964 robert christgau writing in the village voice gave love songs an a and said that miles s quiet cool and taciturn affection for the limits of the melody at hand summons a consensual intimacy that definitely won t kill the mood matt robinson of all about jazz felt that it explores davis trademark poise and lyricism that was best expressed in ballads and credited the compilation for revealing a diversity even in the broad unity of the love song q magazine gave it four out of five stars and stated the master of the art davis could push an entire universe of fragility into a simple love song and play the trumpet with such disarming candour it hurt in a mixed review for allmusic scott yanow gave the album two and a half stars and said that because of the slow tempos and the lack of variety in moods this set is really designed more for background music than for close listening in the rolling stone album guide 2004 j d considine gave love songs three and a half out of five stars and found it", "bonus features interviews with claude nobs carlos santana and herbie hancock about miles davis with monty alexander helen merrill betty carter charlie haden gil goldstein stanley clarke jean luc ponty al di meola michel petrucciani concert runtime 28 minutes bonus features runtime 114 minutes personnel miles davis trumpet organ dave liebman tenor saxophone soprano saxophone flute reggie lucas guitar pete cosey guitar percussion michael henderson bass al foster drums james mtume congas percussion dvd2 july 8 1984 afternoon tracks speak that s what happened star people what it is it gets better something s on your mind time after time hopscotch stars on cicely bass solo jean pierre lake geneva something s on your mind reprise runtime 98 minutes personnel miles davis trumpet bob berg saxophone keyboards robert irving iii keyboards john scofield guitar darryl jones bass al foster drums steve thornton percussion dvd3 july 8 1984 evening tracks speak that s what happened star people what it is it gets better something s on your mind time after time hopscotch stars on cicely bass solo jean pierre lake geneva something s on your mind reprise runtime 109 minutes personnel as dvd2 dvd4 july 4 1985 afternoon tracks theme from", "it was written in 1958 during davis s modal period to be played by cannonball adderley for the album portrait of cannonball the piece has come to be associated with pianist bill evans who recorded it repeatedly from 1955 to 1958 miles davis was leading what would come to be called his first great quintet by 1958 the group consisted of john coltrane on tenor saxophone red garland on piano paul chambers on bass and philly joe jones on drums and had just been expanded to a sextet with the addition of cannonball adderley on alto saxophone coltrane s return to davis s group in 1958 coincided with the modal phase albums milestones 1958 and kind of blue 1959 are both considered essential examples of 1950s modern jazz davis at this point was experimenting with modes i e scale patterns other than major and minor in mid 1958 bill evans replaced garland on piano and jimmy cobb replaced jones on drums but evans too left after eight months replaced by wynton kelly in late 1958 this group backing davis coltrane and adderley with evans returning for the recording sessions would make kind of blue often considered the greatest jazz album", "at the end of the war he returned to new york determined to make a career in photography and enabled by the g i bill studied with alexy brodovitch the renowned art director of harper s bazaar magazine spearheading the use of the 35mm camera and available light for the next 30 years koner s work appeared in leading magazines including life fortune look esquire and collier s during the course of his career koner received numerous awards from professional journals and served a number of terms as vice president of the american association of magazine photographers koner photographed many distinguished subjects most notably martin luther king robert frost margaret mead robert kennedy frank lloyd wright and eleanor roosevelt always eager to tell a story koner photographically retraced james joyce s ulysses main character leopold bloom s journey through dublin covered the exchange of prisoners at the end of the korean war for collier s magazine and in the early 1960 s followed the migration by boat of an italian family to new york when the interest in photojournalism diminished and virtually disappeared koner turned from magazines to corporate photography on an international scale his color images of industry architecture", "davis was quoted as saying dominique gave me that african rhythmic thing gaumont appeared on dark magus recorded in march 1974 at new york s carnegie hall and recorded with davis during subsequent 1974 studio sessions released on the lp get up with it and the later archival release the complete on the corner sessions he returned to paris in 1975 where he formed his own band le dominique gaumont energy with lucien sombe bass and joe harmer drums they released an eponymous album he also worked with the black artists group the art ensemble of chicago the human arts ensemble and michel portal he died of a drug overdose on 10 november 1983 at the age of 30", "it is his first album as leader and his first album for prestige records davis contributed three tracks to the various artists lp modern jazz trumpets and performed as a sideman for lee konitz s on the new sounds prestige would be davis label for the next five years with occasional recordings for blue note and debut until he signed with columbia in 1955 his previous label capitol had been disappointed with the sales of the nonet recordings released in 1949 50 and they had not offered davis more work when he was contacted by prestige s bob weinstock weinstock had just started his new jazz specialty record label and wanted davis on his label so bad he tracked him across the country to chicago where he was performing with billie holiday and offered him a one year contract the four tracks on this album were recorded at new york s apex studio on october 5 1951 along with two tracks bluing and out of the blue that would later be used on his next prestige album blue period prlp 140 and a seventh track denial which would later appear on the 12 lp dig prlp 7012 davis friends charlie", "it is his third album as leader for prestige and fourth altogether following 1952 s young man with a horn for blue note the four tracks were recorded at new york s beltone studios on february 19 1953 all the tunes were written by tenor saxophonist composer and arranger al cohn ira gitler s liner notes explain the desire to return to arranged music along the lines of the birth of the cool sessions following three albums focused more on soloing it was felt that miles needed a change of pace for his next recording date compositions and arrangements which would suit him and result in a happy combination of arranged music and solo work three of the pieces willie the wailer floppy and for adults only were written for this session tasty pudding had been written before but al arranged it specially for miles and this date in his autobiography davis suggests bob weinstock had pressured him to record a more disciplined album with more respectable musicians following the debacle of the incomplete session with charlie parker attempted earlier that year released in 1956 as collectors items prlp 7044 after the 10 lp format was discontinued the four tracks", "the first four tracks that comprise side 1 were recorded at new york s wor studios on may 19 1953 the last three heard on side 2 were recorded nearly a year later at new york s beltone studios on march 15 1954 the may 19 1953 session features bassist and composer charles mingus on one track playing piano this was to be davis final studio session until he finally kicked his heroin habit for good nearly a year later the march 15 1954 session davis was the second of two davis recorded immediately after successfully quitting his heroin habit he used exactly the same quartet he had also recorded with seven days earlier for his third blue note session released as miles davis volume 3 blp 5040 davis says in his autobiography that he arranged the two sessions quickly after returning to new york as he needed money fast and both blue note s alfred lion and prestige s bob weinstock had given him a fair chance earlier when his reputation was in decline this was the beginning of a new three year contract with prestige which davis would still be committed to when he signed a better deal", "the two side long tracks were recorded at rudy van gelder s studio hackensack new jersey april 29 1954 davis claimed in his autobiography that the release of this material turned his whole life and career around along with capitol records release around the same time of the birth of the cool tracks in lp form which made the critics notice him once again davis goes on to describe the goal of this recording to return to the fire and improvisation of bebop but combined with a more forward looking funky kind of blues davis says the concepts were worked out in horace silver s room at the arlington hotel j j johnson and lucky thompson provided a big horn sound on top of silver s funky piano and bad rhythms behind on the drums when the recording was complete all involved including bob weinstock and van gelder knew they had achieved something good after the 10 lp format was discontinued both tracks were included on side 1 of the 12 album walkin prlp 7076", "the two side long tracks on this lp and two others were recorded at rudy van gelder s studio hackensack new jersey on december 24 1954 this was the second of two 10 lps sourced from the same session which featured major be bop contemporaries milt jackson and thelonious monk along with the same rhythm section that had been used on davis other recent albums jackson heath and clarke were at the time of recording three quarters of the modern jazz quartet after the 10 lp format was discontinued both tracks were reissued on the 12 lp miles davis and the modern jazz giants prlp 7150 along with swing spring from volume 1 prlp 196 a previously unreleased alternate take of the man i love from the same session and an unrelated track from a later session with his first great quintet this would be the last miles davis lp issued by prestige in the short lived 10 format his next album musings of miles prlp 7007 would be his first 12 lp followed by dig prlp 7012 which would be the first to repackage the older 10 material alternating albums of new and repackaged material would follow until all", "the album was released on the 10 lp format and includes the first recordings by davis cover art was a text layout similar to other early albums on prestige later pressings used the same photo of davis also used on his first three 10 lps a side b side maxology studio technisonor paris france may 15 1949 the kenny dorham track was also issued by prestige on the following 78rpm single credited to james moody stop go wailing wall nyc september 20 1949 the fats navarro tracks were also issued by prestige on the following 78rpm singles thinking of you nice work if you can get it nyc september 16 1950 the dizzy gillespie tracks were also issued by prestige on the following 78rpm singles morpheus whispering down apex studios new york city january 17 1951 two takes of the tune blue room were also recorded at this session this was miles davis first recording session for prestige records for whom he would record many albums over the next five years as well as his first credited appearance as leader on an lp album davis had previously recorded one session under his own name with charlie parker s band for", "this heartfelt tribute album has enough unique moments to make it easily recommended on all about jazz c michael bailey observed golson s i remember miles covers five of the miles davis book standards and four golson originals the latter being more interesting than the former this disc on the whole is a sleeper it is well arranged and performed but with no fire it fairly pales when listened to during the same afternoon with shirley horn s i remember miles while golson and company offer a decent record i recommend the same expenditure for the shirley horn disc if the listener is trying to choose between the two all compositions by benny golson except where noted" ]

[ "the son of inventor jules nisenson he was born in new york city and raised in rye new york he attended new york university nyu where he studied english and then moved to san francisco where he worked on the staffs of alternative publications including the berkeley barb and heliotrope nisenson became a lifelong lover of jazz at the age of 15 when he listened to trumpeter miles davis s 1959 album kind of blue in the early 1970s after he had moved back to new york nisenson was introduced to davis although as nisenson recounts he was terrified of davis the first time he met him the two men became friends and davis asked nisenson to write his official biography by the time round about midnight a portrait of miles davis was published in 1982 however the friendship had ended davis was not easy to get along with though nisenson wrote in a second revision of the biography that miles had deserted him as cicely tyson was determined for miles to start a new lifestyle and cut his ties with the past in 1993 nisenson published a biography of saxophonist john coltrane entitled ascension john coltrane and his quest", "3 is a 4 cd live album compiling the four nights of miles davis performances at the fillmore east in new york city from june 17 20 1970 and three additional tracks recorded at the fillmore west two months earlier the concert series was originally released in part as a double album miles davis at fillmore columbia 1970 but was given the first complete unedited release on this box set miles at the fillmore miles davis 1970 the bootleg series vol 3 received mainly positive reviews on release at metacritic which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics the album has received a score of 92 based on 11 reviews which is categorised as universal acclaim thom jurek s review on allmusic stated the charts are loose but focused and the group s improvisational dynamic is breathtaking entirely different each night davis is exceptionally strong his playing is inventive full of questions and muscular statements popmatters matthew fiander gave the album 10 out of 10 saying it was a time of turmoil but for davis s music turmoil was a state of creation and these four nights give us four distinct and brilliantly built storms", "on a bet sky masterson takes sarah brown to havana to have dinner and gets her very drunk sarah s stiff social barriers fall away and she realizes she is in love with sky and he with her she sings this after they have an eventful dinner but sky refuses to take advantage of her drunkenness it was also recorded by lizbeth webb who created the part in the original london production in 1953 at the london coliseum it has become a jazz standard since it was featured by trumpeter miles davis on the 1956 prestige album relaxin with the miles davis quintet the miles davis quintet featured tenor saxophone player john coltrane pianist red garland bassist paul chambers and drummer philly joe jones the song became a miles davis specialty and it appears on several live session recordings and compilations in different versions the tune was taken up and performed by countless jazz musicians and is still a favorite in jam sessions so closely is the tune associated with miles davis that it is often miscredited as one of his own original compositions the miles davis version was also famously used in the final scene of the final episode", "rivele and christopher wilkinson which interprets the life and compositions of jazz musician miles davis the film stars cheadle emayatzy corinealdi and ewan mcgregor and closed the new york film festival on october 11 2015 the film takes its title from davis s 1957 album cheadle took a free form approach to the film s narrative skipping around in time it depicts davis attempts to get his career back on track following a period of inactivity and drug addiction in the 1970s fictional adventures with a journalist played by mcgregor who wants to profile him and his troubled marriage to a former dancer corinealdi the film s score covers in non linear fashion davis actual recordings throughout his career beginning with agharta 1975 before jumping back and forth in scenes featuring kind of blue 1959 someday my prince will come 1961 bitches brew 1970 and we want miles 1981 among others miles ahead received mostly positive reviews from critics reviewers generally praised cheadle s direction and performance although some were critical of the plot the film has grossed over 5 million adapted from sony classics in the midst of a prolific career miles davis don cheadle disappears from public view", "tingen wrote miles beyond the electric explorations of miles davis 1967 1991 published in 2001 he has a monthly column in sound on sound magazine and he writes music articles for other publications tingen studied guitar and recording at the royal conservatoire in the hague and completed a music degree at goldsmiths college in london tingen first gained notice as a rock critic based in scotland tingen researched and wrote miles beyond the electric explorations of miles davis 1967 1991 published by watson guptill in 2001 it includes testimonies of many famous musicians who worked with davis including herbie hancock chick corea dave holland jack dejohnette marcus miller and john scofield as well as members of davis 1973 1975 band including michael henderson reggie lucas and pete cosey all about jazz wrote that tingen s book serves as the definitive guide to davis controversial electric period kirkus reviews wrote that tingen s book was a valuable revisionist look at miles electric period though it was unlikely to convince hard core jazz fans to listen more closely to these albums tingen is a member of the order of interbeing the core order of vietnamese zen master thich nhat hanh and has", "he is known for his cartoon designs of urban african americans on miles davis album covers information on mccoy s life before meeting miles davis is scarce he was working as an artist when he met davis the two became close friends and davis and mccoy shared an apartment in new york city on west 77th street mccoy created the cover art for davis albums on the corner 1972 1973 big fun 1974 and water babies 1976 the artwork for the cover of on the corner was produced at davis instigation he was concerned that his music was not reaching an african american audience and wanted mccoy to create something that they would relate to the reaction from columbia records when they saw the result was not positive davis insisted on using mccoy s cover art davis recalled in his typical blunt interview style according to davis mccoy was reluctant at first but davis was enthusiastic about the art that mccoy produced mccoy s cover art for on the corner depicts a group of cartoon characters a scene of ghettodelic street life among the younger generation of african americans the post 1960s funk style fashions are similar to the spirit", "he started on piano and cello before switching to trombone he was a member of the gil evans band and worked with fellow member miles davis he also appeared with davis on the broadcast the sounds of miles davis his personal life proved problematic he had a failed marriage to nightclub dancer jerri gray more significant was his heroin addiction which combined with other financial problems led to his withdrawal from music and lapsing into relative obscurity in an effort to deal with these issues he spent time at synanon which led to his mention in art pepper s autobiography with art blakey with bob brookmeyer with ruth brown with al cohn with art farmer with dizzy gillespie with quincy jones with melba liston with mundell lowe with carmen mcrae with joe newman with the mitchells red mitchell whitey mitchell blue mitchell and andr previn with pete rugolo with a k salim with lalo schifrin and bob brookmeyer with idrees sulieman with randy weston with kai winding with miles davis", "foster played with miles davis during the 1970s and was one of the few people to have contact with davis during his retirement from 1975 1981 foster also played on davis s 1981 comeback album the man with the horn he was the only musician to play in davis s band both before and after his retirement he has toured extensively with herbie hancock sonny rollins and joe henderson foster was born in richmond virginia and grew up in new york he began playing drums at the age of 13 and made his recording debut on blue mitchell s the thing to do at age 20 he joined miles davis s group when jack dejohnette left in 1972 and played with davis until 1985 in his 1989 autobiography davis described the first time he heard foster play live in 1972 at the cellar club in manhattan he foster knocked me out because he had such a groove and he would just lay it right in there that was the kind of thing i was looking for al could set it up for everybody else to play off and just keep the groove going forever foster began composing in the 1970s", "state of oklahoma the population was 2 683 at the 2010 census davis is named after samuel h davis who moved to washita in what was then indian territory in 1887 davis owned a dry goods store which was four miles south of the current town of davis davis submitted a petition for a santa fe depot to be built near his store and the petition was accepted in 1890 he also successfully petitioned for a post office to be built the post office was supposed to be named after nelson chigley a chickasaw indian who owned the land on which the town was to be built chigley was already an indian territory name so it was named after davis the town was established on november 16 1898 it is located 23 miles north of ardmore and 23 miles south of pauls valley by 1900 davis had 57 businesses two banks 10 doctors three dentists and three lawyers cotton farming was a common occupation in davis which was in one of the best cotton producing sections in oklahoma later when u s interstate 35 was constructed it was built 2 miles to the west of davis by the year 2000", "the title was originally used for the first in a pair of compilation albums of recordings made by miles davis in 1952 1953 and 1954 released in 1956 and reissued many times as blp 1501 on the blue note records label miles davis volume 1 also refers to a cd compilation that contains the entirety of young man with a horn blp 5013 1951 plus three alternate takes plus the entirety of miles davis vol 3 blp 5040 1954 both released on 10 inch lp the album was identified by scott yanow in his allmusic essay hard bop in 2010 as one of the 17 essential hard bop recordings the 12 inch lp blp 1501 was originally released in january 1956 followed by volume 2 blp 1502 after davis won the down beat readers poll as best trumpeter the two volumes of rereleased miles davis material were the first releases in blue note s new 1500 series of 12 lps the music compiled on the two volumes was from three separate recording sessions made over 1952 54 some of which had been previously issued as singles and as three now discontinued 10 inch lps volume 1 contained takes of the", "since then it has become a jazz standard and has been played by numerous jazz artists including miles davis john coltrane and bill evans oleo is one of a number of jazz standards to be based on the same chord progression as that employed by george gershwin s i got rhythm other standards which use rhythm changes include charlie parker s anthropology dizzy gillespie s salt peanuts and thelonious monk s rhythm a ning the a section is transcribed whilst the b section is left empty either for the performer to improvise in or for the rhythm section to comp over the first version of the song featuring rollins was recorded by miles davis in 1954 on the album bags groove with john coltrane instead of rollins on saxophone it has been recorded again in 1956 on relaxin a live version from 1958 also with coltrane appears on two separate davis albums 1958 miles which was released in late 1958 and jazz at the plaza 1973 another davis live version from 1961 appears on in person friday and saturday nights at the blackhawk complete other artists who have made notable recordings of the piece include michael brecker eric dolphy lee", "it was the second recording by his golden quartet featuring pianist anthony davis bassist malachi favors and drummer jack dejohnette in his review for allmusic david r adler states both davis and dejohnette are credited on synthesizer but the sounds they employ are remarkably close to the old fashioned analog wurlitzer combined with favors resonant grooving basslines and dejohnette s loose straight eighth rhythms the result is somewhat akin to miles davis in the in a silent way period the penguin guide to jazz describes the album as a surprisingly straight ahead jazz record strongly influenced by electric period miles davis the all about jazz review by dan mcclenaghan says smith s horn work is very miles like the wounded open horn cry the plaintive and introspective mute work the judicious use of silence in his review for jazztimes duck baker notes that even though 70s miles is a frequent departure point for the year of the elephant jazz rock fans may not feel comfortable with the music while listeners who usually have trouble with rock type rhythms may be amazed to hear them used in such a creative context", "the name is often used to refer to the west somerville neighborhood surrounding the square as well davis square is located approximately four miles from downtown boston and two miles from mid cambridge the square is served by the davis square station one of the stops on the mbta red line davis abuts the powder house square magoun square and spring hill neighborhoods as well as tufts university davis square is today a vibrant commercial retail nightlife and dining district businesses in davis range from stores to restaurants to even a martial arts school davis fell into decline after world war ii after the red line was extended to davis in the mid 1980s however the area began to experience a prolonged renaissance davis square was officially designated as a square by the city of somerville in 1883 it was named for person davis 1819 1894 a grain dealer who moved to the area in 1850 and built his estate near the intersection of elm grove and morrison streets during the 1860s and 1870s roads were improved and rail connections strengthened which allowed west somerville to urbanize after the civil war between 1870 and 1910 people increasingly chose to live", "4 is a four cd album compiling five of miles davis performances at the newport jazz festival in newport rhode island and two european concerts branded under the festival moniker with one additional track recorded in new york city the first disc contains davis debut appearance at the 1955 festival and his headlining performance from 1958 which was originally released in part as one side of the lp miles monk at newport columbia 1964 and given its first complete release as part of the complete columbia recordings of miles davis with john coltrane box set in 1999 the second disc contains previously unreleased performances from the 1966 and 1967 festivals the third disc contains the newport festival concert from 1969 which was released as part of bitches brew live in 2011 a complete previously unreleased concert from berlin in 1973 and one performance from new york in 1975 the fourth cd contains a complete previously unreleased performance from switzerland in 1971 miles davis at newport 1955 1975 the bootleg series vol 4 received positive reviews on release at metacritic which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics the album has received a score of 92", "he was however a capable drum kit performer for example alias played drums on the song miles runs the voodoo down from trumpeter miles davis s album bitches brew 1969 when neither lenny white nor jack dejohnette was able to play the marching band inspired rhythm requested by davis alias performed on hundreds of recordings and was perhaps best known for his associations with miles davis and saxophonist david sanborn though he also performed or recorded with the group weather report singer joni mitchell pianist herbie hancock the brecker brothers jaco pastorius pat metheny nina simone and many others alias was born in new york city and arrived in boston in the early 1960s intending to study medicine but after playing congas in a number of local bands made an abrupt career switch with philip bailey with carla bley with uri caine with miles davis with bob mintzer with jack dejohnette with joe farrell with dan fogelberg with bill frisell with hal galper with kenny garrett with herbie hancock with elvin jones with dave liebman with joe lovano with joni mitchell with jaco pastorius with carlos santana and john mclaughlin with lalo schifrin with nina simone with jeremy steig with", "it is approximately long and flows through benton township the watershed of the stream has an area of the surficial geology in its vicinity mainly consists of alluvium alluvial terrace wisconsinan till wisconsinan lag illinoian flow till and illinoian lag davis hollow begins in a valley in benton township it flows southwest for a short distance before turning west for several tenths of a mile crossing pied piper road the stream then turns southwest for a few tenths of a mile leaving the valley and entering a plain it then turns southwest and crosses pennsylvania route 487 after several tenths of a mile at this point it turns south southwest and reaches its confluence with fishing creek a short distance further downstream davis hollow joins fishing creek upstream of its mouth the elevation near the mouth of davis hollow is above sea level the elevation of the stream s source is between above sea level there are two patches of alluvium which contains stratified silt sand and gravel near the upper reaches of davis hollow however the surficial geology in the area mainly consists of bedrock made of sandstone and shale as well as a glacial or resedimented till known", "1922 june 5 2010 was an american jazz saxophonist clarinetist and flautist he is credited on some releases as danny banks he was born on july 17 1922 early in his career bank played with charlie barnet 1942 1944 and would return to play with him repeatedly over the next few decades he played with benny goodman tommy and jimmy dorsey artie shaw and paul whiteman in the 1940s following this he recorded with charlie parker rex stewart the sauter finegan orchestra johnny hodges urbie green clifford brown and helen merrill art farmer wes montgomery quincy jones jimmy smith chico o farrill betty carter ray charles and tony fruscella bank is best known for his association with miles davis in gil evans s orchestra bank played bass clarinet on the albums miles ahead sketches of spain and porgy and bess he played with davis on his 1961 carnegie hall concert later in the 1960s he recorded with the big bands of charles mingus sonny rollins and stanley turrentine bank died on june 5 2010 with bob brookmeyer with benny carter with miles davis with art farmer with maynard ferguson with dizzy gillespie with benny golson with urbie green with chico", "the population was 2 373 at the 2010 census up from 491 in 2000 named for jeremiah davis it is located where the illinois railway rockford line and the canadian pacific chicago subdivision intersect along illinois route 72 jeremiah davis laid out davis junction in the 1870s and named the settlement for himself a post office has been in operation at davis junction since 1875 davis junction is located at 42 101928 89 093696 according to the 2010 census davis junction has a total area of all land as of the census of 2000 there were 491 people 165 households and 132 families residing in davis junction the population density was 129 6 people per square mile 50 0 km there were 172 housing units at an average density of 45 4 per square mile 17 5 km the racial makeup of the village was 98 37 white 0 41 asian 0 41 from other races and 0 81 from two or more races hispanic or latino of any race were 1 02 of the population there were 165 households out of which 47 9 had children under the age of 18 living with them 66 7 were married couples", "they had previously worked together on incident at raven s gate the story traces the pilgrimage of john anderson played by colin friels an average guy with a passion for jazz from his home in outback western australia to the jazz clubs of paris to meet his idol jazz trumpeter billy cross played by legendary trumpeter miles davis in the film s opening sequence davis and his band unexpectedly land on a remote airstrip in the australian outback and proceed to perform for the stunned locals the performance was one of davis s last on film the movie was filmed in meekatharra perth and sandstone western australia as well as paris france christian faure was the assistant director of the movie davis who plays the role of cross provided the film s soundtrack in cooperation with michel legrand dingo grossed 132 500 at the box office in australia according to ozmovies despite the presence of miles davis the film also didn t travel well internationally and struggled for attention though his presence also has ensured the film s ongoing status as a cult item offsetting the unfulfilled award critical and commercial hopes the film was at the time criticised for", "located in the town of rowe massachusetts once the largest iron pyrite mine in massachusetts davis grew to be a decent sized mining village at the beginnings of the second industrial revolution 1870 1915 but in 1911 a non fatal collapse of the mine due to poor mining practices ended the nearly 30 year run by 1937 the mining camp had faded and all that remained were a blacksmith shop and about 150 cellar holes davis is located at the abandoned mining village is located in the town of rowe in franklin county about three miles north of charlemont and two miles south southeast of rowe the area is east of davis mine road and west of davis mine brook both rowe 2000 pop 351 and charlemont 2000 pop 1358 are picturesque small towns in the rolling hills of northwestern massachusetts both communities have a long heritage rowe was established in 1762 and incorporated in 1785 and charlemont was established in 1742 and incorporated in 1765 it was in the wooded hills between the two towns that an iron pyrite outcrop was discovered and a mine developed by h j davis around 1882 the eastern section of rowe called davis", "the population was 677 at the 2010 census up from 662 in 2000 davis was founded in the 1850s when the railroad was extended to that point the village was named for one of its founders s j davis a post office has been in operation at davis since 1858 davis is located at 42 421216 89 414683 according to the 2010 census davis has a total area of all land as of the census of 2000 there were 662 people 254 households and 180 families residing in the village the population density was 1 546 7 people per square mile 594 4 km there were 266 housing units at an average density of 621 5 per square mile 238 8 km the racial makeup of the village was 98 64 white 0 30 african american 0 15 asian 0 15 from other races and 0 76 from two or more races hispanic or latino of any race were 1 21 of the population there were 254 households out of which 37 8 had children under the age of 18 living with them 60 2 were married couples living together 7 1 had a female householder with no husband present", "his mother was a pianist and had her son start on piano from an early age he attended school in new york city and barbados in harlem new york city he attended the high school of music art in 1946 coggins met miles davis while stationed at jefferson barracks in missouri after his discharge he began playing piano professionally working with davis on several of his blue note and prestige releases coggins also recorded with john coltrane sonny rollins lester young art blakey s jazz messengers ray draper and jackie mclean coggins gave up playing jazz professionally in 1954 and took up a career in real estate playing music only occasionally he did not record as a leader until 1990 when interplay records released gil s mood he continued performing through the 1990s and 2000s until 2004 when he died from complications sustained in a car crash eight months earlier in forest hills new york better late than never his second album recorded as a leader was released posthumously with miles davis with ray draper with jackie mclean", "he is one of the most recognized and respected jazz flutists in the history of jazz laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz pop and rhythm and blues genres moving effortlessly from one repertory to another with roy ayers with chet baker with george benson with kenny burrell with ron carter with chick corea with paul desmond with charles earland with gil evans with astrud gilberto with grant green with johnny hammond with eddie henderson with freddie hubbard with bobby hutcherson with solomon ilori with jackie and roy with milt jackson with the jazz crusaders with quincy jones with harold mabern with junior mance with herbie mann with arif mardin with gary mcfarland with helen merrill and dick katz with james moody with airto moreira with alphonse mouzon with milton nascimento with jaco pastorius with houston person with dave pike with mongo santamar a with lalo schifrin with don sebesky with melvin sparks with leon spencer with g bor szab with cti all stars with bobby timmons with cal tjader with stanley turrentine with mccoy tyner with walter wanderley with randy weston with gerald wilson with kai winding", "as a composer he may be best known for his grammy award winning orchestral jazz recording black dahlia 2001 as producer he is mostly associated with the remastering of seminal recordings by trumpeter miles davis for columbia records belden was born in evanston illinois but grew up in the charleston south carolina suburb of goose creek he briefly attended the university of south carolina where he met composer jay knowles who introduced him to the music of gil evans he then studied saxophone and composition at the university of north texas before joining the woody herman band he recorded his first album treasure island in 1990 this was followed by a series of adventurous albums featuring jazz tinged arrangements of contemporary pop songs culminating with black dahlia in 2001 in 2008 he arranged and produced miles from india a world fusion music recording based on the compositions of miles davis for which he assembled a group made up of davis alumni and musicians from india in addition to his work as arranger composer conductor and a r director belden contributed numerous liner notes for noted recordings such as lou s blues by lou marini and the magic city jazz orchestra", "he is the son of elektra records founder jac holzman in the early 1980s holzman founded the fents with ted hall in 1985 he was hired by miles davis to play keyboards on the trumpeter s tutu album and stayed with him for four years eventually becoming his musical director he can be seen performing in the davis concert video in the early 1990s he founded the band mona lisa overdrive which changed its name to brave new world due to copyright issues holzman has performed as a sideman with bob belden tom browne wayne escoffery charles fambrough anton fig robben ford jane getter randy hall ray manzarek jason miles marcus miller michel petrucciani wallace roney steps ahead grover washington jr lenny white ray wilson and steven wilson many of these performers he has also produced arranged and composed for with bob belden with miles davis with jane getter with michel petrucciani with wallace roney with grover washington with steven wilson with others", "he studied at juilliard and manhattan school of music but graduated from hunter college as a new york session musician he recorded with many jazz and pop musicians and also in symphony orchestras such as the new york philharmonic and los angeles philharmonic he recorded with dizzy gillespie max roach and john coltrane among other jazz musicians art davis was a professor at orange coast college davis is also known for starting a legal case that led to blind auditions for orchestras davis earned a ph d in clinical psychology from new york university in 1982 he moved in 1986 to southern california where he balanced his teaching and practicing of psychology with jazz performances davis died on july 29 2007 from a heart attack he was survived by two sons and a daughter with joe albany with gene ammons with count basie with art blakey with john coltrane with buddy emmons with curtis fuller with dizzy gillespie with bunky green with al grey with eddie harris with freddie hubbard with elvin jones with etta jones with quincy jones with clifford jordan with roland kirk with abbey lincoln with booker little with lee morgan with tisziji munoz with joe newman", "the song village blues is noted as a landmark recording as it marks the first session date of the early john coltrane quartet on record featured alongside coltrane are pianist mccoy tyner drummer elvin jones and bassist steve davis who would within 18 months have been replaced by first reggie workman and then jimmy garrison who would stay with coltrane until his death in 1959 miles davis business manager harold lovett negotiated a contract for coltrane with atlantic the terms including a 7000 annual guarantee after having recorded most of giant steps coltrane started having bridge problems and did not return to a recording studio for six months in the late fall he employed the rhythm section from the miles davis quintet for two atlantic sessions which yielded the bulk of this album and the track naima for giant steps like sonny is a tribute to colleague sonny rollins whose playing coltrane greatly admired having left the davis band for good in the spring of 1960 coltrane formed his first touring quartet for a residency at the jazz gallery club in manhattan eventually settling on the line up of tyner jones and bassist steve davis in september this group entered", "he is best known for his work with duke ellington and charles mingus he knew mingus from childhood but first worked with phil moore and les hite after service in world war ii he played with boyd raeburn before joining with lionel hampton in 1946 during the 1950s he worked with ellington as a member of ellington s band he can be heard on such sweet thunder 1957 ella fitzgerald sings the duke ellington song book also 1957 black brown and beige 1958 and ellington indigos 1958 in 1960 he left ellington to work in a pit orchestra later he worked with mingus and can be heard on the album mingus mingus mingus mingus mingus 1963 in the 1970s he led his own octet and worked with pianist toshiko akiyoshi in 1989 he was in the personnel for the album epitaph dedicated to the previously unrecorded music of charles mingus steve turre among others has cited him as an influence with gene ammons with ruth brown with benny carter with john coltrane with tadd dameron with miles davis with duke ellington with dizzy gillespie with benny golson with chico hamilton with jimmy hamilton with johnny hodges with hank jones and", "it serves as a major commuter road for cooper city davie hollywood and dania beach in central broward county paralleling the south new river canal for much of its route and is a primary access road for fort lauderdale hollywood international airport state road 818 begins at the corner of griffin road and flamingo road sr 823 with sr 818 paralleling the south new river canal heading east in a residential suburban area forming the border between davie to the north and cooper city to the south from its western terminus until an intersection with pine island road about three miles from the western terminus at that point griffin road fully enters davie and intersects with university drive sr 817 a half mile east of pine island road sr 818 continues east through davie having an interchange with florida s turnpike sr 91 before a curve dips griffin road slightly south and away from the parallel canal and leaves davie at the intersection with us 441 sr 7 entering hollywood east of the intersection entering a dense residential area on both sides griffin road enters dania beach retaining the dense residential areas until the interchange with interstate 95 east of", "he was an autodidact as a child though his father played piano and trumpet he graduated from the eastman school of music and began playing in new york city in the 1950s with oscar pettiford among others he played with mel powell in 1954 and teddy charles in 1956 he is perhaps best known for his work with miles davis on some of his gil evans sessions for columbia records he has done extensive work as a session musician and has recorded with moondog carly simon james brown urbie green jimmy cleveland ernie royal britt woodman don butterfield donald byrd john coltrane dizzy gillespie j j johnson quincy jones thad jones and mel lewis michel legrand lee morgan paul desmond eddie sauter oliver nelson wes montgomery jimmy smith the modern jazz quartet and grover washington jr late in the 1970s he played with freddie hubbard gato barbieri and george benson in 1980 he played on a helen merrill album buffington released some solo work but it is far less well known with manny albam with gato barbieri with donald byrd with teddy charles with al cohn with john coltrane with hank crawford with miles davis with paul desmond with bill", "minnesela was founded in 1882 and was located three miles southeast of present day belle fourche the railroad s decision to bypass minnesela and to continue on to belle fourche in 1890 caused the town to be abandoned by 1901 in 1876 american pioneer john t buckskin johnny spaulding and his brother in law thomas j davis built the first home a two story log cabin two and a half miles southeast of present day belle fourche it was constructed from logs felled in the black hills between crook city and deadwood the logs were then hauled to the site the house was made up of a living room parlor kitchen children s room and a main bedroom this cabin housed spaulding davis davis s wife lucinda and the davis children during the next five years homesteaders gradually settled the area after spaulding left his cabin was used by many settlers in the area until the late 1930s minnesela was plotted in 1881 by d t harrison and azby chouteau in early 1882 after the population of the area reached 100 the community decided to build the town on the east bank of redwater river at a location one half", "1 is a 3 cd 1 dvd live album of miles davis and his second great quintet saxophonist wayne shorter pianist herbie hancock bassist ron carter and drummer tony williams the cds contain recordings of three separate concerts in europe antwerp copenhagen and paris and the dvd has two additional concerts from karlsruhe and stockholm the first disc was recorded at the koningin elizabethzaal in antwerp belgium on 28 october 1967 the second disc contains the concert from 2 november 1967 at the tivoli gardens in copenhagen denmark plus the beginning of 6 november 1967 at the salle pleyel in paris france the third disc is the majority of the paris set the dvd contains concerts recorded in west germany on 7 november 1967 and sweden on 31 october 1967 live in europe 1967 the bootleg series vol 1 received positive reviews on release at metacritic which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics the album has received a score of 99 based on 7 reviews which is categorised as universal acclaim nate chinen of the new york times said the album captures davis s finest working band at its apogee straining at the limits" ]

[ "The Situation Between the U.S. and Saddam Hussein After the Gulf ... Aug 5, 2016 ... off-limits to Iraqi aircrafts after the Persian Gulf War President Bush ... After the Iraqi revolution in 1958 and after the country was declared ... the industry developed after World War II In 1961 Britain granted independence ... was part of southern Iraq argued that Kuwait had been separated from it illegitimately", "Kuwait iraq - Countries Quest history kuwait, emir kuwait, independence kuwait, nationalism palestinian, debt iraq, part ... In 1961 Britain granted independence to Kuwait. Iraq ... Kuwait was part of southern Iraq, argued that Kuwait had been separated from it illegitimately.", "Example Essays: Iraq British Army In 1921, Iraq became a separate nation under British control (Baram 1, ... In 1961, Britain granted independence toKuwait, along with a number of other countries. ... of southern Iraq, argued that Kuwait had been separated from it illegitimately.", "TRAVELERS GUIDE: KUWAIT Aug 5, 2010 ... Kuwait is a small, desert country, but it possesses a strategic stretch of Persian Gulf ... In 1990 neighboring Iraq invaded Kuwait, precipitating the 1991 Persian Gulf War, ..... In 1961 Britain granted independence to Kuwait. ... part of southern Iraq, argued that Kuwait had been separated from it illegitimately.", "jeopardy/1351_Qs.txt at master jedoublen/jeopardy GitHub IRAQ | In 1961, this country was granted independence, & Iraq argued it had been separated illegitimately | Kuwait. right: zgn. Wrong: Value: DD: $3,400." ]

[ "Iraq - Wikipedia Iraq officially known as the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: About this sound ... The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. ... A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932. ..... In the late 7th century BC, the Assyrian Empire tore itself apart with a series of brutal...", "Iraq - Wikipedia Iraq officially known as the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: About this sound Jumhryyat al-'Irq; Kurdish: Komari Eraq) is a country in ... Around 95% of the country's 36 million citizens are Shia or Sunni Muslims, with ... In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was...", "Global Connections . Timeline | PBS Established as part of the Treaty of Versailles, the mandate system entrusts ... Britain had promised Arab independence in exchange for their support in .... Iraq receives full autonomy after World War II, when British troops complete their withdrawal. ...... Iraq seizes thousands of square miles and several important oil fields.", "J! Archive - Show #4316, aired 2003-05-12 These 2 nations are granted independence by Great Britain ... This country's King Baudouin grants independence to its large Congolese colony...", "IRAQ vii. IRAN-IRAQ WAR Encyclopaedia Iranica Dec 15, 2006 ... Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been living in exile in Iraq after 1963, was ... Security Council called on both countries to refrain immediately from further use of force. ... month on lebd in the south, where several people were killed. ..... Iraqi forces, Iran demanded the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and...", "Iraq facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Iraq Get information, facts, and pictures about Iraq at Encyclopedia.com. ... Iraq reasserted its claim (which dated from the days of the monarchy) to that country and .... violence that ensued left at least 138 people dead in two days, and political .... to try national security cases were set up in 1965; verdicts of these courts could be...", "Eritrean War of Independence - Wikipedia The Eritrean War for Independence (1 September 1961 29 May 1991) was a conflict fought ... Ethiopia claimed that Eritrea was part of their country. ... In April 1993, in a referendum supported by Ethiopia, the Eritrean people voted ... In 1936, Italy invaded Ethiopia and declared it part of their colonial empire, which they...", "List of placename renaming in Zimbabwe - Wikipedia Place names in Zimbabwe, including the name of the country itself, have been altered at various points in history. The name Zimbabwe was officially adopted concurrently with Britain's grant of independence in April 1980. Prior to that point, the country had been called Southern Rhodesia from 1898 ... The capital city, Salisbury, was renamed Harare.", "Invasion of Kuwait - Wikipedia The Invasion of Kuwait, also known as the IraqKuwait War, was a major conflict between ... In 1990 Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling, ... Hussein announced a few days later that it was the 19th province of Iraq. ... Chalabi argued that higher oil prices would help Iraq increase its revenues...", "Trinidad and Tobago - Wikipedia Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is a twin island country ... Trinidad and Tobago (remaining separate until 1889) were ceded to Britain in ... The country Trinidad and Tobago obtained independence in 1962, ... The country's wealth is attributed to its large reserves and exploitation of oil and...", "Iraq - Wikipedia Iraq officially known as the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: About this sound ... The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds; others include Assyrians, ... Around 95% of the country's 36 million citizens are Shia or Sunni Muslims, with ... The Arabic name al-Irq has been in use since before the 6th century.", "\"af\",\"Afghanistan\",\"Ahmad Shah DURRANI unified the Pashtun ... The US formally occupied its portion - a smaller group of eastern islands with ... Seven have made territorial claims, but not all countries recognize these claims. ..... of the Congo gained its independence in 1960, but its early years were marred by ..... centuries as a Spanish colony, Guatemala won its independence in 1821.", "Independence Days of the Nations of the World 4. Olympic Country Codes. 5. Capitals of Every Independent Country. About.com ... Only 20 were independent before the start of the 19th century, a mere 10%. ... Many countries became independent following World War II when European powers granted independence to their vast colonial holdings, especially Africa.", "14 July Revolution - Wikipedia The 14 July Revolution or the 1958 Iraqi coup d'tat took place on 14 July 1958 in Iraq, resulting in the overthrow ... From 14 July 1958 until 2003, Iraq remained a de facto Arab nationalist and socialist one-party state. ..... By noon, Qasim had arrived in Baghdad with his forces and set up headquarters in the Ministry of...", "Trinidad and Tobago - Atlapedia Online Tobago Island has an uneven terrain dominated by a main ridge, which is a series of ... In 1961 Britain granted Trinidad and Tobago internal self-government and on Aug. ... In 1987 the NAR suffered internal divisions and three ministers were ... al Muslimeem were released from prison after the High Court had upheld the...", "To Unite or Not to Unite: That Is Not the Question: The 1963 ... - JStor In September 1961, when Syrian officers instigated a military coup that led to the dissolution of the ... Egypt dubbed an illegitimate 'secessionist' regime. ... reasons, were haunted by the lessons of the 1958 Egyptian-Syrian union. ...... Nasir after an exhaustive meeting that lasted for 14 hours.96 Presumably, he informed...", "December 6th 1917: Finnish independence On this... Dec 6, 2015 ... Located in-between Sweden and Russia, Finland had long been the object of ... The Finnish government became increasingly assertive, issuing its own ... making Finland the first European country to grant full political rights to women. ... Finland formally declared independence on December 6th, 1917.", "bolivar fuerte | Venezuelan currency | Britannica.com It replaced the bolvar, which had been adopted as Venezuela's monetary unit in 1879. Prior to 1879, independent Venezuela used three separate currencies:...", "Kuwait Map / Geography of Kuwait / Map of Kuwait - Worldatlas.com The small Middle East country of Kuwait, an independent Arab Emirate, ... Following the events of the Iran-Iraq war, Kuwait was able to fill the holes that had...", "Eritrean War of Independence - Wikipedia The Eritrean War for Independence (1 September 1961 29 May 1991) was a conflict fought ... Ethiopia claimed that Eritrea was part of their country. Ethiopia's .... On 28 May 1993, the United Nations formally admitted Eritrea to its membership.", "Baghdad's Kristallnacht - AJR Yet Iraq had come under British control in the First World War, when British forces ... of Iraq, and Britain effectively administered Iraq until its independence in 1932. ... the rule of the Seleucids, the successors to Alexander in that part of his empire, ... Vienna in 1529); the Turks finally established control over Baghdad in 1638.", "Kingdom of Iraq - Wikipedia The Kingdom of Iraq was founded on 23 August 1921 under British administration following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire ... Capital, Baghdad .... The civil government of postwar Iraq was headed originally by the High ... the condition that the Iraqi government would allow British advisers to take part in government affairs,...", "A Country Formed in a Day - eNews for May 09, 2016 May 9, 2016 ... On May 15, 1948, the day after Israel declared its independence, it was attacked by five Arab nations: Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. ... It has been fighting for its survival in both arenas ever since. ... The force of about 5,000 men was expected to take the kibbutz of 130 residents in three hours.", "Singapore separates from Malaysia and becomes independent ... On 9 August 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia to become an ... differences in the political approach and economic conditions between the two countries...", "South Arabia became independent November 28, 1967 & became ... Jul 13, 2016 ... Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia # Quiz # Question. 0:29 ... The neighbors of this country include Saudi Arabia & oh-oh, Iraq # Quiz # Question. 0:29.", "League of Nations mandate - Wikipedia A League of Nations mandate was a legal status for certain territories transferred from the ... The mandate system was established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League ... Ottoman territorial claims were first addressed in the Treaty of Svres (1920) and .... Iraq attained independence from Britain on 3 October 1932.", "History of Zimbabwe - Wikipedia Following the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 there was a transition to internationally recognised majority rule in 1980; the United Kingdom ceremonially granted Zimbabwe independence on 18 April ... Prior to its recognised independence as Zimbabwe in 1980, the nation had been known by several names: Rhodesia...", "Persian Gulf States - INDEPENDENCE - Country Studies With the exception of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Arab coast of the gulf was ruled ... This meant that the Al Nuhayyan of Abu Dhabi, for example, not only ... the Iranian claim to the island and to allow the Bahrainis to form an independent state.", "Prejudice in Iraq: Shites, Sunni, and Kurds - Dictionary definition of ... Shite Arabs make up 60 to 65 percent of the Iraqi population, or about 15.6 to 17 ... both Islamic sects held a set of political beliefs in the early twenty-first century that .... In 1958, Sunni rebels and army officers overthrew the monarchy, killing both .... Their desire for a Kurdish nation led to uprisings in all four countries of Iraq,...", "50th Anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of ... Dec 14, 2010 ... This is the site for 50th Anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, 14 December 2010. ... to the expansion of the United Nations membership, the UN General Assembly...", "HISTORY OF ANGOLA HISTORY OF ANGOLA including Angola and slaves, Colonial period, Independence. ... In Guinea rival Europeans grab much of the trade, while local African rulers ... All the Portuguese colonies in Africa are rapidly granted their independence. ... argues that Portugal must fulfil its last colonial duty and supervise elections.", "Iraq - NITLE Arab World Project - TeachMideast The modern state of Iraq was created in 1920 by the British government, whose ... That dictatorship came under the control of Saddam Hussein in 1979. ... The southern, southwestern, and western parts of the country are desert areas. ... Other major cities include Al Basrah, the main port, located on the Shatt al Arab, and..." ]

[ "A US man accused of stealing almost 9km of railway wire has pleaded not guilty to the crime while his alleged accomplice is still on the run." ]

[ "FARGO, ND A man accused of conning people and businesses has pleaded not guilty to a theft of property charge.", "A Blackfeet woman pleaded not guilty in federal court Tuesday to three counts of wire fraud after having been accused of stealing money from vendors participating in North American Indian Days.", "A 24-year-old man of Lusaka's Chibolya compound has pleaded not guilty to breaking into a building and stealing goods worth K20 million.", "A man accused of killing and beheading a passenger on a Greyhound bus has pleaded not guilty.", "The Columbus man accused of robbing and killing a cab driver pleads not guilty in his first court appearance.", "A Barron County man who's accused of stealing a dump truck and driving it into a duplex has pleaded guilty.", "A Clive man charged with stealing more than $1 million from his employer, including $58,000 used for a Web-cam pornography business, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal wire fraud charge.", "A Youngstown man, accused of preying on an elderly woman, is free on bond after pleading not guilty.", "A Byesville man accused of stealing narcotics from two Zanesville pharmacies last year recently entered ``not guilty'' pleas to four felony charges stemming from the alleged incidents.", "The former superintendent of a suburban Kansas City school district has pleaded not guilty to two felony stealing charges.", "A man accused of beating a woman outside a Grand Junction bar pleaded not guilty Thursday to second-degree assault.", "An Economy man pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to a charge of wire fraud, according to the US attorney's office in Pittsburgh.", "A Westminster man, charged Monday with retail theft and burglary, pleaded not guilty to the charges in Windham District Court.", "GREAT FALLS, Mont. A Great Falls man accused of stealing valuable documents from a library at a Washington state university to sell on the Internet has pleaded guilty in the case.", "A Bar Nunn man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to grand larceny and receiving stolen property, charges he faces after authorities say he took more than $9,600 worth of tools from a former employer.", "A North Adams, Mass., man pleaded not guilty Thursday in Bennington District Court to three felony counts of attempting to lure a child.", "A Colorado man accused of threatening to kill President Barack Obama and blow up a suburban Minneapolis mall has pleaded not guilty.", "An Indian techie, indicted by a federal jury of theft of trade-secret data of Intel worth $1 billion and wire fraud, has pleaded not guilty.", "A Findlay man pleaded not guilty to charges of burglary and criminal damaging in Fostoria Municipal Court on Thursday.", "The man dubbed the ``Granddad Bandit'' pleaded not guilty in Federal Court in Richmond this morning.", "The man charged with robbing a Bingham pharmacy at gunpoint in September pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon in US District Court to a handful of charges.", "A former clerk of courts in South Dakota has pleaded not guilty to grand theft for allegedly stealing more than $1,100 in fines paid for traffic violations.", "A Huber Heights woman, accused of stealing nearly $500,000 from her employer, has pleaded guilty to bank fraud.", "The rural Gurnee man accused of child battery pleaded guilty to a lesser charge Thursday morning.", "The man accused of starting the Crystal fire that destroyed 13 homes in April today pleaded not guilty to a felony arson charge.", "Ill. man charged with taking military data from NJ company to China pleads not guilty", "A Roseville man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud relating to a scheme to extract funds from American Express cardholders.", "The man accused of killing a puppy by stomping on its head has pleaded not guilty.", "The man accused of dragging a woman from her car and brutally attacking her in Saratoga Springs pleads not guilty to charges against him.", "A man accused of killing his mother has pleaded not guilty in Fayette County.", "An East Dorset man pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Bennington criminal court to multiple counts of burglary.", "Authorities say a Maryland man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud for his role in a scheme to defraud lenders and a title insurance company of at least $937,000." ]

[ "Firstly, it's BNP, not BMP.\\n\\nSecondly, the BNP is an extreme rightwing party. Slightly similar to the US republicans, except it's even more racist." ]

[ "An odd mixture of both. Although with the Tories now to the left of Labour and Labour to the right of the Tories UK politics is a bit muddled up at the moment !!", "Assuming that you mean politically, here's my take, and I know this has change from how the sides used to be:\\n\\nliberal: progressive in introducing legislation to fix issues/problems, bigger government/more involvement, federal rights, higher taxes on rich to support the needs of the poor\\n\\nconservative: more status quo, states rights, less government involvement (\"laissez-faire\") especially federal, lower taxes for people to use their money to fix their own problems\\n\\nI'm usually a left-leaning moderate, so I generally have likes/dislikes about both sides. Hope that helps.", "The terms Left and Right\" have been used to refer to political affiliation since the early part of the French Revolutionary era. They originally referred to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France, specifically in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.\\n\\nOriginally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was attitudes towards the ancien régime (\"old order\"). \"The Right\" thus implied support for aristocratic, royal, or clerical interests, while \"The Left\" implied opposition to the same.", "Normally, political beliefs are fixed somewhere along a 'spectrum'.\\n\\nUsually, from an economic perspective, the left is for equality in income: at its extreme, that means the goovernment giving everybody the same salary regardless of their job, at a more moderate level, it means higher taxes for the rich than for the poor. The right would be for less taxation and people earning money on a supply-and-demand principle.\\n\\nSocially, the left is generally for large government projects aiming to provide equal standards (in education, health, insurance, retirement pensions, etc.) to all people. These are usually centrally operated and require high taxes to maintain. The right believes in trusting private corporations to do this at whatever price they choose.\\n\\nAgain, socially, the left tends to support 'progressive' ideas like racial equality, immigration, gay marriage, drug decriminalisation, abortion, etc. The right percieves tradition as an important basis for lawmaking, and often is opposed to many of these things.\\n\\nNot everything can be categorised along a left/right spectrum. Globalisation vs. nationalism, for example: the left used to be more globally-minded than the right; now I'm not sure if that's true. Religiously-motivated politics are often thought of as 'the right', but there are groups like 'Christian socialists' too.", "Firstly it is Britain/UK not just England :-) \\n\\nDriving on the left is generally considered to be a historical leftover from horse mounted knights riding on the left so as to keep sword arm free - other classes had to stay to the right. Any colony would have rules that matched those of the Crown.\\n\\nI have a vague recollection of hearing that the European convention to the right is to be opposite from a system that was based on social class.\\n\\nI guess the correct answer is that it had to be one side or another - the UK is an Island so there would never be a problem at a border. In mainland Europe or North/South America/Canada everyone would have to standardise or there would be complete chaos at border crossings.\\n\\nJust my 5 Euro's worth :-)", "Veeery generaly speaking, the Left (liberal) and Right (conservative) of politics came out of the French Revolution.\\n\\nAt that time, the Left was more concerned with laws that protect people's rights, and the conservatives are more concerned with laws that protect property. \\n\\nFrom this, the traditional Liberal and Conservatives have arisen. No one politican or person exemplifies what the TRUE definition of the words are, but issue by issue, the sides of politics have been created by these factions.\\n\\nIf you ask me, the terms liberal and conservative are meaningless, because they can't capture the entire persons views, and a person who describes themselves as a dem, repub, liberal or conservative is doing an injustice to the political process.\\n\\nAll politicians agree that its not about sides, its about issues. Not about teams, its about debate and progress.", "In politics, where you stand depends on where you sit. - Unknown.\\n\\nProbably because depending on your view is how people were seated in the House of Commons.\\n\\nIn modern Western countries, the political spectrum usually is described along left-right lines. This traditional political spectrum is defined along an axis with socialism and communism, (\"the Left\") on one end, and conservatism and Fascism (\"the Right\") on the other. Free market liberalism is generally considered to be center-right; new liberalism or social liberalism is generally assigned to the center, center-left or sometimes (when viewed by conservatives) the left. Christian Democracy may be anywhere from center-right to center-left, depending on the country and era. When the left/right spectrum emerged in the early French revolutionary era the now familiar extremes of communism on the left and fascism on the right were simply not present and leftwardness and rightwardness were based on one's attitude towards the traditional monarchic style of government. The original laissez faire capitalist \"left\" would now generally be considered part of the right.\\nNational and cultural differences in the use of the terms left and right are common. In China, left and right have referred to different positions at different times, although the issues were often very different from those in Western nations.", "The left side of the brain controls actions on the right side of the body and the right side of the brain controls actions on the left side of the body.", "Anyone who supports democracy, freedom, and liberation.", "Historically they sat in the left side of the parliament in USA. Hence the name.", "Most of the world. Left hand side driving is the exception, and tends to be on islands. UK, Japan, and the like. \\n\\nNotably, Sweden changed from the left hand side to the right on a day known as Dagen H.\\n\\nThe second wikipedia link has a map showing right-hand driving countrys in red, and left hand side in blue. You'll note that most of the world is red.", "you don't need special program, jus select multiple files by pressing ctrl, then left clicking on the files, or boxing them, or the combination of them two, then right click on one of the file, click rename then rename on one of the file, the other files would be renamed as well in the form \\nAnyname.txt, Anyname (1).htm, Anyname (2).bmp, Anyname (3).bmp, etc\\n\\nTips: Press ctrl+a to select all files in a folder", "That's a very good question. The UK Liberal-Democrat party claims to exist outside of left-right lines but since the Iraq war has actually shifted to the left of Labour on a lot of issues.\\n\\nIn the United States, 'liberal' seems to be a word that more people use to tag their enemies than people apply to themselves. It seems generall y to apply to social freedoms - being pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-civil rights, etc. Economically, well I think American liberals used to be seen as spending-happy, but they run tighter budgets than conservatives these days.\\n\\nIn Canada, the (federal) Liberal party was once described by one if its leaders as the 'radical middle' - firmly centrist. But being pro-gay marriage, anti-Iraq-war and pro-cannabis-legalisation puts it quite on the left by American standards.\\n\\nAdditionally, the provincial Liberal parties are often significantly to the right of the federal equivalent (especially BC, arguably Québec, historically Ontario).\\n\\nIn France it seems to mean rampantly capitalist. Worried about only economic freedom at the expense of social welfare.\\n\\nI think the Australian Liberal party is right-of-centre and the Japanese Lib Dems are too.", "The term \"Left-Wing\" originates from the French Revolution, when liberal deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sat to the right. It is still the tradition in the French Assemblée Nationale for the representatives to be sat left-to-right (relative to the Assemblée president) according to their political alignment.\\n\\nAs this original reference became obsolete, the meaning of the term has changed, and is now used to denote a broad variety of political philosophies and principles. In contemporary Western political discourse, the term is most often used to describe forms of socialism, social democracy, or, in the sense in which the term is understood in the United States, liberalism.\\n\\nThe left-wing attribution is very broadly employed as a political descriptor, and a single definition is elusive. The use of the phrase in the democratic West is quite distinct from the usage in most Communist states - where the term has connotations associated with Bukharin and the democratization of all human activities (see also deviationism).\\n\\nCommunism, as well as the Marxist philosophy that many base it on, and most currents of traditional anarchism are often considered to be radical forms of left-wing politics. Many left-wingers reject any association with communism or anarchism. Others say that those who don't follow strict socialist or communist philosophies can't possibly be leftists.\\n\\nThe left is often seen to include secularism (that is, separation between state and religion), as in the United States, India, the Middle East, and in many Catholic countries, although religion and left-wing politics have at times been allied historically, such as in the U.S. civil rights movement, or in the cases of liberation theology and Christian socialism.\\n\\nPeter Singer (Princeton University, Professor of Philosophy) defines \"the left\" as being those who place minimizing suffering above other moral imperatives, such as tradition or rights.\\n\\nIn politics, right-wing, the political right, or simply The Right, are terms that refer to the segment of the political spectrum often associated with any of several strains of conservatism, the religious right, and areas of classical liberalism, or simply the opposite of left-wing politics. In some contexts, the term right-wing also can include authoritarian nationalism, but that is generally considered part of the far right, which this article does not cover in any great detail.\\n\\nThe term comes originally from the legislative seating arrangement during the French Revolution, when monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side of successive legislative assemblies.\\n\\nAs this original reference became obsolete, the meaning of the term has changed as appropriate to the spectrum of ideas and stances being compared, and the point of view of the speaker. In recent times, the term almost always includes some forms of conservatism.\\n\\nSome consider the political Right to include those forms of liberalism that emphasize the free market more than egalitarianism in wealth (formerly regarded as the Left), but many free-market advocates, including most libertarians, share certain political ideologies with the left-wing and conceive of a two-dimensional political spectrum that they say more accurately portrays their political position.[1] (See Nolan chart, Pournelle Chart). Many anarchists (including libertarian socialists) also avoid placing themselves on the classic political spectrum.\\n\\nIn the 20th century, outside the United States (where capitalism was always supported by many politicians and intellectuals), the most notable distinction between left and right was in economic policy. The right advanced capitalism, whereas the left advocated socialism (often dem", "left. most of these post/answers are to lame to come from a right winger....", "Creativity is on the right side of the brain. Right-handed people use the left side of the brain, and left-handed people use the right side. If you don't believe that, I'm left-handed and I am very creative.", "The umm, we can go either way party, kinda like the Democrats of the US", "It's just a way of describing two opposites sides, as in wings of a building.\\n\\nTraditionally, the \"left wing\" or the \"left\" describes those who are liberal in philosophy and politics. The \"right wing\" or \"right\" refers to those of a conservative bent.\\n\\nDuring the time of the Vietnam War, the left and right were known by their views on our involvement--\"doves\", or anti-war for the left, and \"hawks\", or pro-war for the right.\\n\\nHopefully you understand the liberal/conservative difference. If not, post another question and we'll tackle that for you.", "That's not necessarily true. It kind of depends on what side of your body you use most. Right-handed people tend to work the right side of their bodies more than the left side. So the right right side has slightly more muscle than the left therefore it's bigger. I'm right-handed, but I use my left hand for colorguard, rifle team and billiards, so my left forearm and hand are larger than my right. And, then again, humans aren't perfect. God (if you believe in Him) made us this way. No two things are exactly the same.", "Yes, just to back up Solvek. I believe they are officially called something like 'Her Majesty's Government's Loyal Opposition'. They are the party who came second in the British 'first past the post' system of general elections. There may be other opposition parties present too i.e. the other non-winners, but the term 'opposition' is commonly restricted to the no.2 party in the House of Commons.", "I'm a left handed, Right side of the brain user.So is my son.(left handed,right side of the brain)", "I only vote for the person, not the party.\\nBoth main political parties in the US today are captive to their lunatic fringes: the Democrats to the looney left, and the Republicans to the fundamentalist right.\\nBut there are good ideas on all sides. They are embodied in individuals, not the parties themselves.\\nAnyone who votes party line is either a fool or a political hack...but I repeat myself ;)", "generally, the right brain controls the left side of the body, and the left brain controls the right side.", "Ipsilateral in layman's term means 'same side'. I'm assuming you know what paralysis means. When there is a problem/lesion (upon investigation) on one side of the brain or nerve (e.g. right side), rendering a person paralysed on his right body part, it means, the person is affected on the same side of his lesion = Ipsilateral.\\n\\n Lesion on right/left side of brain/ nerve = Paralysis on right/left side of body = Ipsilateral Paralysis.\\n\\np/s: When a paralysis occurs on the opposite side (e.g left) of his lesion (e.g right), it is known as 'Contralateral' Paralysis.", "The main ones are Labour (currently running the country), Conservative, Liberal Democrats. There are a lot of other political parties in England, go to one of the sites of one of the parties, and it should give you some sort of .gov link to a list of others, I'm not sure if it will, but it won't hurt to try it.", "I don't know. Below is the UK's Ministry of Defense (Like the USA's DoD) which controls all branches of the British military.", "http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/691348/posts\\n\\nhttp://www.blythe.org/2months2.html", "British police force. See http://www.jgkeegan.com/papers/paper3.html. Also http://www.knowledgeoflondon.com/bobby.html", "There's a lot of info here...\\n\\nhttp://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page559.asp\\n\\nAs it's the UK Governments website the info should be pretty accurate. I haven't read it myself so don't know if it will answer your questions.\\n\\nGood luck.", "do dumbbell flys and bench, incline bench with just your right side. lay your bench next to something sturdy to hold onto with your left hand to support yourself", "You didn't say from which side you need our opinion ? \\nBut as u posed the question in the government section , \\n\\nOur Government is hated nearly by every body as it's not working good at all , and there's rotin in too many fields, \\nPeople need to know what's the meaning of hard work , and to positive regarding all the aspects of their lives, \\nnow there's presidential elections and it's a great step , we hope more better elections in the future , \\nThe Terrorism Attacks on Sinai , are completely bad , and the police is doing its best to stop it, \\n And Egypt after all is my beloved Country :)", "Generally we stick to the left. But it can vary." ]

[ "A man wearing a hat and vest is walking next to railroad tracks." ]

[ "A woman wearing an orange hat and vest is walking next to railroad tracks.", "A person with an orange hat walks down a railroad track.", "A man is wearing a orange vest.", "A man wearing orange hat and just walking", "A man is wearing an orange hat.", "There is a man on a railroad track.", "A man in a vest is walking.", "A man is next to the train tracks.", "Someone is on a railroad track wearing an orange coat.", "the man in the hat is walking.", "A man with an orange vest and pants pouring stones on railroad tracks", "A man walks on a train track.", "Man working on a railroad track and wearing a orange safety uniform", "The man in the orange vest drove across the railroad track", "A person is on the railroad tracks.", "A man is outside near some tracks.", "A man walks near a train station.", "A man wearing a vest.", "Near the railroad tracks the men with hard hats and safety vests stond.", "A man in an orange vest is sitting on a train track.", "A man is walking outside.", "The railroad tracks are being looked at by a man.", "A man in a top hat is walking outside.", "Workers are next to a railroad track.", "People are walking by a railroad track.", "A man is outdoors walking", "Workers are wearing orange vests.", "A man in an orange life vest is standing wearing a hard hat.", "The man is tied on the railroad tracks.", "A man is strolling outside.", "A man is walking", "A man wearing a hard hat and orange vest is working in a dusty environment." ]

[ "WASHINGTON - President Bush on Monday tapped the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Michael Leavitt, to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services." ]

[ "Father Leo O'Donovan, a Walt Disney Co. director and Jesuit priest, testified that he believed CEO Michael Eisner had the "proper authority" to boot Michael Ovitz from the company.", "Michael Schumacher ha ribadito che solo domenica annuncerà se continuerà o meno a corr...", "Channel 4 viewers name Michael Jackson's Thriller the top pop video in a television poll.", "Sono Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Mohamed Aboutrika, Nwanko Kanu e Samuel Etòo i cinque candidati ...", "Si saprà il 10 settembre, dopo il Gp d'Italia, se Michael Schumacher continuerà o meno...", "Marlon Brando's son Miko, a security guard for Michael Jackson, is named in the star's child abuse case.", "While spending on health has tripled over the last 20 years, poor countries are not reaping the benefits, experts warn. BY MICHAEL O BOYLE/The Herald Mexico.", "Michael Owen is named in the England B starting line-up to face Albania at Turf Moor.", "Michael Phelps has reached the stratosphere of sports stardom: He's on a first-name basis with fans. "People come up to me and say, 'Are you Michael?", "DRACUT -- Mike Leavitt made certain Dracut's drought against Central Catholic reached 18 years. Leavitt's tiebreaking 75-yard touchdown run with 1:09 remaining in the third quarter yesterday lifted the Red Raiders to a 28-21 victory and kept the Middies winless since 1988 in the rivalry.", "Alan O. Trounson, a top Australian stem cell researcher, is named president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine after a lengthy search. Australia smarts at the loss.", "NBC Universal yesterday named Michael Pilot, a General Electric executive since 2002, as president of its advertising sales division.", "If named the Liberal Party's leader this weekend, Michael Ignatieff would be a candidate to become the next prime minister.", "By Ted Vaden, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Feb. 4--Most readers don't want The N&O to name complainants in sex crime cases. But most do want the paper to name the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case.", "(Corrects reference to \"Six Feet Under\" character played by Michael C. Hall in 3rd paragraph)", "Insurance industry analyst Michael Dion of investment bank Sandler O'Neill & Partners LLP was a very busy man this week, feverishly tracking Hurricane Ivan as it rumbled", "Michael O'Leary, the irrepressible chief executive of Ryanair, may have his detractors in Britain for the ruthless way he drives down costs at the budget airline.", "Michael Tate, who also served as Marvell’s corporate controller and treasurer, was named interim chief financial officer in May.", "Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary claimed yesterday that rising oil prices would benefit the airline, as he announced better than expected half-year profits.", "Named to head NASA by President Bush in December 2001, Sean O'Keefe acknowledged he had no experience in astronautics. His management style aimed at practical economy.", "Returning Dell CEO Michael Dell continued a shakeup of his company by naming a Motorola executive to his leadership team.", "Electronic Data Systems Corp. named Ronald A. Rittenmeyer, president and chief operating officer, to succeed Michael H. Jordan as chief executive of the company.", "Salt Lake-based Kern River Gas Transmission Co. has named Michael G. Dunn its new president, replacing retired Kirk T. Morgan. Dunn joined the company in 1990 as a supervisor/chief inspector for the initial construction of the Kern River pipeline system.", "By W. Zachary Malinowski; Journal Staff Writer Michael Walsh, of East Providence, had accused an ACI guard of forcing him to taste his own feces.", "Irish low-cost airline Ryanair's Chief Executive Michael O'Leary on Wednesday called for BAA, the main operator of Britain's airports, to be broken up.", "Michael Vick's legal troubles prompt Nike on Thursday to suspend the release of its latest product line named after the Falcons quarterback.", "The United States is ready to help China tackle its rural health care problems and better integrate traditional with Western medicine, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said on Wednesday.", "CIA Director Michael V. Hayden yesterday named Michael J. Sulick to head the National Clandestine Service, bringing back to government service a veteran covert operator who left almost three years ago after a confrontation with aides to Hayden's predecessor, former congressman Porter J. Goss...", "Michael Stone's sister vows to clear his name after he loses an appeal against a conviction for the Russell murders.", "Daniel J. Solove, associate law professor at George Washington University and author of \"The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet,\" discusses the Megan Meier-MySpace suicide case and the growing issues of free speech, privacy and reputation on the Web.", "\"Fahrenheit 9/11\" director Michael Moore has signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to publish a collection of letters sent to him by U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.", "Michael Kidd was known for Broadway shows like “Finian’s Rainbow” and Hollywood musical like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”" ]

[ "Marlon Brando & Robert De Niro" ]

[ "the Don", "an actor", "actor", "Don", "Actors Studio", "\"Don Quixote\"", "Don Budge", "2 & 2", "Don Shula", "There are just small actors", "Don Adams", "Don King", "the Screen Actors Guild", "2", "6 (2 + 2 + 2)", "Don Cornelius", "Don Ho", "Don Rickles", "The Last Don", "Liv Ullmann & Ingmar Bergman", "(Don) Imus", "(Don) Drysdale", "Don Quixote", "Don January", "Don Knotts", "Don Pardo", "the mafia", "Don Quijote and Sancho Panza", "Tea for Two Gentlemen of Verona", "Brando", "Danny DeVito & Arnold Schwarzenegger", "Don Marquis" ]

[ "So you know how when you stick two different kinds of metals into a potato, like zinc and copper, you get a small amount of electricity out of it? Well... it turns out that the potato has very little to do with it, and just serves as what is known as an 'electrolyte' solution. It lets bits from one of those metals go to the other metal, and in the process, electricity flows. Lots of things would work just as well, potatoes are just cheap and firm. In alkaline batteries, that electrolyte is an alkaline paste, usually. In car batteries, it's a big tub of acid. Most batteries work something like this, but in alkaline batteries, it's much harder to turn the reaction around safely." ]

[ "Laptop batteries use a chemistry called lithium ion. This technology becomes very upset indeed if it's allowed to flatten totally. These batteries can explode if under charged, over charged and all manner of other things. That's why you can't buy lithium ion rechargeable batteries (different from plain lithium non rechargeables) in AA or AAA format in your local convenience store. This is why laptop batteries are so expensive, because they have to have a lot of built in electronics to protect the battery. One of these protections is not allowing it to go completely flat, and it does this by sending a Battery Dead signal to the computer. In reality the battery will still have a single-figure percentage of life left in it, which is kept in order to preserve the life of the battery.", "Ahoy, fellow redditor. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why does the battery on your laptop or phone degrade if you charge it too much or for too long? ](_URL_1_) ^(_55 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why can't batteries be recharged infinite times? ](_URL_0_) ^(_59 comments_) 1. [ELI5:Why do rechargeable batteries go bad? ](_URL_2_) ^(_11 comments_)", "1. (not necessarily in the case of your macBook, but) a lot of mobile devices _always_ run from the battery. Plugged in means the battery is constantly recharging. Which is not necessarily good for the battery, which is why a lot of laptop vendors will say don't leave it plugged in for an extended period. Run on battery, recharge. In fact I was just looking at Dell's support site for this. 2. the power supplies will have some kind of super capacitor in them which is capable of holding enough charge for just long enough to switch between AC and battery. And the switch really can happen near instantaneously, like milliseconds or faster.", "Yes as batteries wear out from recharging the amount of time they can produce current will get shorter, just like your laptop. How long the batteries will last is a question with a lot of variables, heat, how the person recharges and discharges it will change that number.", "Usually toys come with an \"extra heavy duty\" battery which is a generic name for [zinc-chloride](_URL_1_). These batteries are really bad. An AA might hold 1.5 watt-hours of power. Some really cheap toys come with \"heavy duty\" batteries or zinc-carbon. These are the worst and an AA might have 1 watt-hour of power. Duracell is an [alkaline](_URL_2_) battery. An AA might hold 3 watt-hours of power. Twice or three times as much! But there is an even better battery out there. The [NiMH](_URL_0_) battery doesn't hold any more power than an alkaline but it will never leak inside your stuff. And it is rechargeable so it can be used over and over. Saves a lot of money that way. To avoid a lot of fancy mumbo jumbo let's just say that NiMH can also \"push\" electricity a lot harder than alkalines can so they do better in toys with motors or flashlights or stuff like that.", "Remembering to recharge batteries is inconvenient. Rechargeable tend to lose power over time if the charge isn't topped up. Lots of people have had bad experiences with older (Ni-Cad) batteries and don't even want to waste time with them. Disposable batteries are still dirt cheap.", "Batteries don't operate by storing electrons. They operate by having chemicals in them that can undergo a reversible chemical reaction. A voltage is produced as the reaction proceeds, and applying an external voltage can reverse the reaction so that it can happen again. But that reaction takes time, and produces heat. The time factor alone slows down battery recharging. But the heat produced during charging also has to be dissipated so that the battery doesn't explode, and the best way to do that is to limit the recharging speed.", "In modern phones, it doesn't. They have smart systems that stop charging at 100% and let the battery drop some before charging again. It keeps the battery from being damaged. But phone batteries do like to be \"exercised\" and discharged down to 20 or 30% and recharged from there.", "**Capacity** Lithium Ion batteries (used in cellphones) have a higher *energy density* (the amount of energy stored vs the weight of the battery) about 25% better than the older rechargeable battery chemistry, Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH). So if you assume that the same size NiMH and Li-Ion batteries weigh the same amount, the Li-ion has 25% more storage. Older chemistry like Nickel Cadmium and Lead-acid (think car battery) have even lower energy densities than NiMH. **Re-charge cycles** Charge Cycles are measured by figuring out how many times a battery can be discharged fully and recharged before it won't fill up to full anymore. Specifically until it won't charge past about 80% of the original capacity. Li-ion can be charged about 300-1000 times, NiMH around 300-500 times. Older chemistry even less. Older batteries also had issues with \"charge memory\" where the battery would start to die early if it wasn't fully discharged before the last charging.", "Think of it like social batteries. An introvert has a phone battery. The battery drains when they interact socially with other people. They need to spend time to be by themselves to recharge their battery. An extrovert has a car battery. Their battery charges when it's being driven while they're interacting socially with other people. However, the charge will deplete if they are by themselves.", "1. Batteries need to be recharged, and there aren't many recharging stations across the country. Most of that infrastructure has to be built, and nobody will invest in it until it's profitable for them to do so... when there's more electric cars on the road. It's a catch 22. 2. Batteries are getting better, but they aren't yet strong enough to drive across vast stretches of land without recharging. If there's any chance of me wanting to drive from one major city to another, I risk running out off juice between charging stations. I'd have no interest in buying a car that limits where I can go.", "Surprisingly, this is not an urban myth and has in fact been tested and explained scientifically: _URL_0_ ELI5: a fresh battery contains a gel-like substance, and the gel acts like a shock absorber that dampens bouncing. Discharging turns the gel gradually into a solid ceramic, which does not inhibit bouncing. Note: it was only studied for alkaline batteries, lithium-based or rechargable batteries may act differently.", "It increases it, but not as much as you'd think because the new battery winds up charging the old battery, so energy is lost to heat that would otherwise be useable energy. You could actually damage the batteries doing this unless they are rechargeable batteries.", "Lithium Ion batteries are limited by the number of cycles (discharge-charge) that the battery experiences and by certain stress events such as extreme discharge. Batteries for tablets/laptops/cellphones are designed for many many recharges and do no exhibit a \"memory effect\". Beyond normal use I would advise you to not let the battery get severely low < 5% and reduce heat stress of the battery by waiting ~10 minutes between using it and charging it, and charge - > use to allow the battery to cool. Also avoid storing the battery in a discharged state as it will discharge slowly over time and could result in deep depletion. _URL_0_", "The Voltage of a battery depends on the charge. A five voltage battery may start with 5.1 Volt and slowly go down. When you're at 4.9 volt you'll know the battery is rather empty. I'm not sure if that is the case for all modern Rechargeable batteries. They might have special measuring and charging chips included.", "Batteries. They have a similar gadget, the hearing aide, and if you know someone who has them you know they go through a lot of batteries. Bigger Bluetooth headsets have more space for the rechargeable battery, so they only have to be charged a couple times a week. If you make the battery tiny, you either recharge all the time or you go through lots of expendable batteries.", "In all batteries, there is a chemical reaction that causes electrons to flow from one terminal to the other. When batteries are recharged, electrons are forced to flow through the battery in the opposite direction, which reverses the reaction so that it can happen again. Smart phones use lithium ion batteries. Unlike some older types of batteries, these batteries can explode if they are overcharged. Because of this, phones have a built in circuit to prevent overcharging. When the battery becomes fully charged, the circuit will automatically stop the battery from charging. It is safe to leave your phone plugged in for 8+ hours thanks to that circuit.", "They don't. That's why any machine that charges a battery has to include some fairly sophisticated electronics to make sure it doesn't *over* charge the battery. Put simply, how much charge a battery is holding affects both the *voltage* and the *resistance* across the battery. Both of those things can be measured with an electrical circuit. A machine that charges a battery will pump current into it while measuring the voltage across it, the resistance across it or both. When the voltage or resistance reaches a target, the charging machine will stop charging the battery.", "Putting batteries in a freezer has no effect on recharging them. I suspect that taking the battery out of your phone and replacing it a few hours later just let your phone reset its reading of the battery. The battery wasn't improved by freezing. Li-Ion batteries are non-aqueous so freezing temperatures shouldn't harm a drained battery, but a fully charged battery might be hurt because the maximum voltage they can handle is reduced at cold temperatures. Lots of good info: _URL_0_", "Yes there is, and it can be quite substantial. First of all, there are a number of different of different types of batteries. Rechargeable or not? Carbon cells, Alkaline, NiCad, NiMH, LiH, and more. Now that said, there can be a substantial difference in quality (i.e. longevity) between two batteries of the same type. A lot of it comes down to the stuff that's put inside, and the amounts. Internal resistance is another issue. Many years ago, Radio Shack was famous for their D-cells, because they were the only company that didn't put a C-cell inside a D-shell case. A surprisingly helpful resource for this is Consumer Reports. Check out their reviews of batteries.", "Car batteries come in different types and some cars use power while not being on for things like an alarm or a light on a dash or something to that effect. Eventually the batteries die like this. Sometimes if a battery has been storing for a really long time it will simply lose its charge. third is due to the battery losing done of its charge in other reactions which can eventually completely discharge the battery. Most car batteries are able to be completely recharged and run for a long time if properly maintained.", "Lots of devices aren't entirely off. They maintain a clock, volatile memory and such. So if you leave the batteries in there is a slow drain on them that isn't present normally. Of course, batteries don't strictly speaking keep their energy when stored. Single use batteries can hold a long time, but rechargeable often leak away their charge in a month or so.", "It's a rechargeable battery. When the engine is running, the alternator is able to use the power from the gasoline engine to recharge the battery. If the engine if off, the alternator is off, and the battery drains without being recharged.", "It used to be possible with older batteries, and you also had to avoid charging it too often as well, but modern batteries cut themselves out from the power when they're fully charged. They will also leave the battery with a very small amount of charge when the phone dies to prolong the battery life and keep the internal clock going too. Basically, lithium batteries would overheat when left plugged in, which would cause damage to the battery over time. * Source: [Older batteries shouldn't be allowed to overcharge because they would overheat -- \"modern devices are way smarter with managing power\"](_URL_0_) * Source: [Old batteries would have a limited number of recharge cycles -- \"with modern Li-ion batteries, you don't need to worry about performing shallow charges.\"](_URL_1_)", "With older types of batteries, that was recommended due to the memory effect. Where, if you used your device down to (let's say) 30% percent of use, recharged, then did the same over and over. With today's batteries, that's no longer an issue. It depends on the manufacturer's rated cycle. If a brand new battery in your device is good for 100 cycles, and you use the device down to 50%, recharged, 30%, recharged, then 20%, you've used only 1 of 100 cycles. If you can, I would suggest removing the battery if you're going to have the device plugged in all the time.", "This is true for all rechargeable batteries. The reason is that charging/discharging a battery effectively change its chemical composition forth and back. The process is not perfect, and every time some of the material becomes unusable, so you end up with less and less material to hold the charge. The real chemistry behind it is very complicated and varies depending on the type of battery. The electrodes corrode, lose their original shape, undesirable chemical compounds form, etc. For some battery types the \"inversion\" of the process (i.e. switching from \"charging\" to \"discharging\" and vice versa) is the most damaging process, so to completely run the battery down and then charging it completely rather than constantly plugging it in and out may prolong battery life.", "So the chemicals and components in a battery decay over time, and with extreme charge levels. Discharging more deeply, or charging to a higher level, both induce wear on the battery chemicals and the components, and over time, this will reduce the overall charge the battery can hold. This is the primary reason why a two year old phone won't stay charged as long as a new out of box phone will. The 40-80 rule is a way to maximize the lifespan of your battery by limiting wear; specifically it refers to not discharging below 40% and not above 80%. Charging above 80% becomes increasingly hard(you can notice this by how much slower a phone charges as the charge level gets above this) which wears down the battery. Cathode and anode are the terminals where power flows in and out of the battery to provide the juice to your device, by my understanding. I don't know I can help on 'what exactly happens', unfortunately.", "Laptops are designed to be able to run directly from the power adapter, even if no battery is present. So if you plug in your laptop when the battery dies, it immediately switches to using power from the adapter, while simultaneously recharging the battery. Phones, on the other hand, generally don't do that. They can *only* run from the battery. So when you plug it in, it can't start until the battery has been charged to sufficient levels to power the phone.", "Depends on the type of battery. The conventional wisdom is that Nickel-cadmium (NiCd or \"NiCad\") batteries should be \"deep cycled\", meaning you shouldn't charge them until you run them all the way down. If you recharge at, say, 50% many, many times, the battery life will be shortened. But the kind of batteries in laptops and cell phones are Lithium ion (Li+). These don't suffer from those so-called memory effects. In fact, you don't want to run down Li+ batteries all the way to zero (although most devices won't let you anyway). From personal experience, I charge my phone every night and have great battery life. At work, I even leave it plugged in all day. I'd recommend charging your phone as often as possible.", "This is not unlike the electrical system of an automobile. The battery is twelve volts, and the alternator produces slightly more, say, 12.5 volts. That extra half-volt trickles back into the battery, recharging it, while the rest of the car's electrical system is getting the current from the alternator. So with the two-battery scenario, 3 volts is going to flow back into the 9-volt battery if it is partly discharged (this might be hazardous unless the 9-volt battery is designed to be recharged). If the 9-volt battery is fresh, the higher electrical potential of the 12-volt battery will keep current from flowing out of the 9-volt battery until the 12-volt battery is depleted enough to produce only 9 volts. After that, the 9-volt battery would begin supplying current to the circuit.", "A battery stores its energy in the form of chemical potential energy, which means there are chemical reactions that take place at the electrodes that actually provide the flow of electrons that we can use. These chemical reactions are limited by diffusion of compounds and ions between the two electrodes and the actual speed of the oxidation and reduction reactions. Attempting to charge too fast can also have negative consequences on the battery component stability due to side reactions and too much heating, but plenty of research and development is working to improve charging speed. However, no matter how good we get our current battery technology can never reach a speed of light recharge.", "mAh or mili Amp Hour isn't a measurement of energy. Amps measure the amount of electrons flow per second, but does not take into account the \"Pressure\" behind those electrons Energy(Watt Hours) is Amp Hours X Volts. Volts is the \"Pressure\" behind those electrons. AA batteries are either 1.5V(alkaline) or 1.2V(Rechargeable), while the cellphone batteries are typically 3.7V Your 2700mAh X 1.5V = 4 Watt Hours. This is equivalent to only a 1095 mAh, 3.7V cellphone battery. Most phone batteries are > 2000 mAh" ]

[ "over 3 million" ]

[ "( How to Live ) As Ghosts", "How Not to Live Your Life", "Get It How U Live!", "how people reason", "Mani", "How Do I Live", "the many", "Many, Many Times ''", "how many levels of management are present in the organization", "How to Win Friends and Influence People", "How People Learn II", "how", "It's a Living", "Live", "as many as thirty", "as many as twelve", "how people learn from experience", "as many as 120", "Live Life Living", "many decades", "Turkish people who live in France", "living will", "Live Baby Live", "many centuries", "Mani Kaul", "Ehsan Mani", "Live and let live", "How Come, How Long", "as many as 900", "many hectares", "Many Clouds", "Mani, Greece" ]

[ "More transmissible forms of the coronavirus have emerged on three continents, and at least one is circulating across the U.S. But scientists are especially worried about a variant spreading in Brazil." ]

[ "A new variant of coronavirus first detected in Brazil has been confirmed in Minnesota. The variant was detected by the Minnesota Department of Health, which announced Monday that the new strain is thought to be more transmissible. This is the first documented case of the variant in the United States. The variant, called P.1, has been circulating in Manaus, Brazil, since at least December, Michaeleen Doucleff previously reported. Scientists have been concerned about this variant because it contains a cluster of worrying mutations. Some of the mutations make the virus spread more quickly. Others help the virus evade the body's immune system, which could make it easier for individuals to contract COVID-19 a second time and could hinder the efficacy of vaccines. A resident of the Minneapolis metro area became ill at the beginning of January, and a specimen was collected Jan. 9, an MDH news release said. After testing positive for COVID-19, the patient then reported traveling to Brazil before the onset of symptoms. \"These cases illustrate why it is so important to limit travel during a pandemic as much as possible,\" said state epidemiologist Dr. Ruth Lynfield. \"If you must travel, it is important to watch for symptoms of COVID-19, follow public health guidance on getting tested prior to travel, use careful protective measures during travel, and quarantine and get tested after travel.\"", "Different versions of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are emerging. Some are spreading quickly around the world, others more slowly — but several have the public health community and researchers worried because they are behaving differently than the older version of the coronavirus. Maddie talks with NPR science correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff about the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK in late 2020 — they discuss how big of a deal it is, how vaccines may be affected, and what needs to happen to slow its spread. Some of Michaeleen's recent reporting on variants: Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.", "Scientists have spotted yet another potentially worrisome coronavirus variant, a strain that has a mutation that may help it evade vaccines, and seems to be spreading fast in New York City.", "A coronavirus variant is spreading quickly in India, causing a massive surge in cases. Scientists are rushing to see if vaccines will be effective against this variant. So far, the news is hopeful.", "When will the pandemic end? How many more COVID-19 waves will the U.S. go through? Will we go back to \"normal\" in the fall? All these questions depend largely a one key factor: how the variants behave. As the virus spreads around the world, it mutates — which all viruses do. Along the way, variant strains emerge. Some of these variants are more effective at infecting humans and spread more quickly. Some variants may be better at evading the immune system and are more likely to cause a second bout of COVID-19. Variants with these properties have caused massive waves of COVID in Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom — and now India. And in our interconnected world, they are already spreading to many other countries. How does a mutated version of the virus improve its chances of being transmitted to humans? How does it avoid recognition by the immune system? If you imagine viruses as puzzle pieces, as this video does, that can help explain what's happening when a coronavirus variant comes into contact with human cells.", "Experts say there’s still a lot we don’t know about the new variant of coronavirus that scientists in the United Kingdom say they’ve discovered. The new COVID-19 vaccines are likely effective against this strain, and it might not alter how the pandemic has already rolled out, according to NPR. But there are still some elements of the variant that may cause some to worry. The new variant has prompted U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to tighten restrictions through the holidays. Now, dozens of countries in the European Union and beyond have cut off travel to Great Britain. Meanwhile, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has warned the new coronavirus strain is likely to already be in the United States. What does the new strain mean for the fight against the coronavirus? We’re talking to Angela Rassmussen, a virologist and research associate at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security about it.", "Scientists are growing concerned the U.S. may be headed for a fourth wave. COVID-19 cases are rising rapidly, mirroring an increase in many countries around the world. Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage tells NPR he's worried another surge in the U.S. will fuel the spread of the variant known as B.1.1.7 . In the meantime, there's new evidence that vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are effective at preventing viral spread — and that they produce \"robust\" antibody response in children ages 12-15. NPR's Joe Palca has more. In participating regions, you'll also hear from local journalists about what's happening in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.", "Brazil's scientists are warning about a dire increase in more coronavirus cases if a national lockdown isn't in place soon. Brazil has recorded more COVID-19 deaths than anywhere except the U.S.", "A look at how the delta variant and vaccine efforts are shaping the course of the coronavirus through three places - Brazil, South Africa and Israel and the Palestinian territories.", "The coronavirus variant first spotted in India appears to be spreading in the U.S., which is worrisome because this variant appears to be more contagious and better at evading the immune system.", "Scientists are evaluating domestic COVID-19 variants to see whether they pose a new threat, as public health experts warn the U.S. needs better surveillance to spot mutations and slow their spread.", "Less than 4% of Brazil's population has been vaccinated, and now a dangerous new variant has overwhelmed parts of the country's health care system. Duke University's Miguel Nicolelis tells NPR what it's like in Sao Paulo, where hospitals are turning patients away.Other countries are also struggling to contain the coronavirus, combat disinformation, and distribute vaccines. NPR international correspondents survey the obstacles: Diaa Hadid in Islamabad, Ruth Sherlock in Beirut and Julie McCarthy, who covers the Philippines. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.", "Brazil is experiencing the worst moment so far of the pandemic. Deaths are out of control and hospitals are at risk of collapse. The transmission rates of the virus and its variants are accelerating.", "Variants of the coronavirus have scientists in a scramble to assess the threat and prevent more surges. Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers are looking at developing booster shots to address variants.", "New coronavirus variants seem to be cropping up everywhere. There's one from the U.K., which is more contagious and already circulating in the United States. There's one from South Africa, which is forcing Moderna and Pfizer to reformulate their COVID-19 vaccines and create \"booster\" shots, just to make sure the vaccines maintain their efficacies. But for some scientists, the most worrying variant might be the newest one. A variant called P.1, which emerged in early December in Manaus, Brazil, and by mid-January had already caused a massive resurgence in cases across the city of 2 million people. On Monday, officials detected the first confirmed case of P.1 in the U.S., specifically in Minnesota. The state Department of Health picked up the case by randomly sequencing 50 nasal swabs from positive patients each week. The person infected with P.1. had previously traveled to Brazil. \"If you were to ask me right now, what's most concerning of all the things that I've heard so far, it's the fact that they are reporting a sudden increase in cases in Manaus, Brazil,\" virus expert Jeremy Luban at the University of Massachusetts told NPR two weeks ago before the variant arrived in the United States. \"Manaus already had 75% of people infected [in the spring of last year].\" The concern with P.1 is twofold: Scientists don't understand why the variant has spread so explosively in Brazil, and the variant carries a particularly dangerous set of mutations. While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true? \"While we don't *know* exactly why this variant has been so apparently successful in Brazil, none of the explanations on the table are good,\" epidemiologist Bill Hanage at Harvard University wrote on Twitter. Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies — especially the potent antibodies — like to bind. \"They are kind of the major targets of the immune system,\" said virus expert Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. \"So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape.\" That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak. To test out this hypothesis, Moore and her colleagues took blood serum from 44 people infected with the previous version of the virus and checked to see if the antibodies in that serum still worked against the new variant from South Africa. Or did the antibodies lose their sensitivity? \"Indeed that's what we saw,\" she said. \"In fact, it was really quite a dramatic drop-off in sensitivity. We saw that in half of the serum, the antibodies were significantly less effective against the new variant [from South Africa].\" So far, scientists haven't tested out P.1 in similar neutralization experiments, but P.1 has two mutations that scientists have already shown reduce antibody binding. And thus, now we have a game of \"cat and mouse,\" said virus expert Ravi Gupta, between the virus and the vaccine. The virus finds ways around the vaccine (and our immune system), said Gupta, and so the manufacturers have to reformulate the vaccines (or else we run the risk of getting infected twice). \"We've been here before with the flu. We're having to live with influenza and figure out a way of staying ahead of the virus by making vaccines on a yearly basis,\" said Gupta at the University of Cambridge. \"So I can imagine that we'll be doing something similar with [the] coronavirus. Eventually we'll need to design different vaccines that are targeting different parts of the virus — ones that the virus finds harder to change.\" This process is going to cost the world a great deal of money — and take time, Gupta added. \"I don't think there's going to be a single solution that just comes along in 2021 that says, 'That's it, we're done.' \"The coronavirus is going to cause a long-term disruption.\"", "All three coronavirus variants that appear to spread faster have now been found in the United States, raising concerns they could spark a new deadly surge and outrun treatments and vaccines.", "There were no new cases of Yellow Fever reported in Brazil last month, a change from earlier this year when the country reported more than 700 cases, including those near big cities like Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo. But scientists still fear a resurgence, especially as Brazil enters its summer months. Here & Now&#8216;s Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with writer Sam Kean (@sam_kean) who followed the trail of yellow fever and the push to prevent outbreak for Science magazine.", "Concern about new coronavirus variants has grown quickly in recent months. First, scientists in the United Kingdom spotted a more contagious coronavirus strain that spread like wildfire through the London area. Then, researchers in South Africa spotted one that appears to evade the immune system. Next, another variant was flagged in Brazil because it looked like it could infect people who had already been infected once before. And now there has been a flurry of reports about homegrown variants in the United States. What's going on? How worried do we really need to be about them? The short answer is, worried but probably not panicked. The virus is doing what viruses do: evolving to find new ways to continue to infect people. \"It's infected millions of humans around the world now, and it's probably just getting into a more intimate relationship with our species,\" says Jeremy Kamil of Louisiana State University, who spotted a mutation that the virus appears to have evolved repeatedly in different parts of the United States. The fear is that just as humanity appears to be finally turning the corner in the battle against the virus, the variants could give the pathogen the upper hand once again. They could trigger a new surge. And new, even more worrisome variants could emerge because the virus is still spreading so widely. \"They're definitely something that we need to be paying attention to and designing our pandemic response around,\" says Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. \"I don't think the sky is falling, but I think it's something that absolutely bears attention.\" Viruses mutate all the time. Most of the time, those mutations don't pose a threat. But the current crop of coronavirus mutations has made the virus more contagious and may have made the virus more likely to make people seriously sick. It appears the mutations may also make it more likely people could get reinfected and make the vaccines less effective. But we're fighting back: The vaccines are rolling out, and so far it looks like they work against the variants to protect people from getting very sick or dying. If enough people in the U.S. can get vaccinated fast enough while also keeping up safe behaviors, this could prevent another major surge of cases and deaths. It could also help prevent new, dangerous variants from evolving because the more the virus spreads, the greater chance it has to mutate. Here's a primer on the variants that scientists are watching most closely: Variant B.1.1.7: first spotted in the U.K. This variant is still the strain that public health experts in the U.S. are most concerned about. That's because it clearly is far more contagious than the original strain — perhaps 50% more infectious. This variant also looks like it may make people sicker. And it appears to be already fairly widespread in the United States. At least 2,500 cases have been confirmed in at least 46 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its real prevalence, like that of other variants, is assumed to be far more widespread. The U.S. isn't sequencing the DNA of enough virus samples to know exactly how much more prevalent. But the CDC has predicted it will become the dominant strain throughout the U.S. later this month. Variant B.1.351: first spotted in South Africa Scientists are also alarmed by this variant because it evolved a mutation that appears to make it stealthier. That mutation is known as E484K (sometimes pronounced \"eek\"), and it appears to make the virus better at evading antibodies produced by the immune system. That means some drugs don't work against this variant. It also might be able to infect people who have already recovered from the virus. And, most concerning, laboratory studies suggest the vaccines may be less effective against it. This variant has been confirmed at least 65 times in at least 17 U.S. states, according to the CDC. Variant P.1: first spotted in Brazil This strain, frequently called P.1, also has the E484K mutation. It set off alarms because it swept through the Amazonian city of Manaus, which had already been ravaged by the virus. That indicated it could evade the body's natural defenses and reinfect people. It has been spotted at least 10 times in at least five U.S. states so far. But wait, there's more: emerging U.S. variants More recently, scientists have started identifying homegrown variants in the U.S. that have raised red flags. Two have gotten the most attention: 1) A variant that has been spreading quickly in California, B.1.427, appears to be more contagious than the original strain but not as contagious as the variant first spotted in the United Kingdom. While researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, reported some evidence that it may make people sicker, that finding remains weak so far. 2) Another variant appears to have started spreading quickly in New York City in January. Called B.1.52", "Back in April, COVID-19 hit the city of Manaus, Brazil, extremely hard. In fact, the outbreak there was arguably the worst in the world. One study, published in the journal Science, estimated that so many people were infected that the city could have reached herd immunity — that the outbreak there slowed down because up to 76% of the population had protection against the virus. Now the city of Manaus is seeing another massive surge in cases. This time around, the outbreak appears even larger than the first one, says Marcus Vinicius Lacerda, an infectious disease doctor at the Fundação de Medicina Tropical Doutor Heitor Vieira Dourado in Manaus. \"You have much more people becoming infected and that includes people inside their [newly diagnosed patients'] households,\" he says. The surge is so large that hospitals have run out of oxygen, and patients on ventilators, who need extra oxygen to breathe, have literally suffocated in hospital beds. \"I'm really afraid. I'm seeing lots of people dying, people that should have had better support in the hospitals,\" Lacerda says. In many ways, this resurgence in Manaus doesn't seem to make sense because such a large proportion of the population was infected just last spring. In theory, these earlier patients should now be immune to the coronavirus. So why is the city seeing such a huge surge? The answer could lie in a newly discovered variant. Last week, scientists in Brazil detected a new genetic variant of the coronavirus that has been circulating in Manaus since at least December and is likely fueling the second surge. Called P.1, the variant has a set of about 20 mutations, including three mutations that are particularly concerning. These mutations could make the virus more infectious and could possibly decrease the efficacy of vaccines against the variant. There's growing evidence that new genetic variants of the coronavirus — specifically, the ones circulating in South Africa and around Manaus, Brazil — may be capable of evading the body's immune system. Both variants have three of the same mutations in the region of the virus that binds to human cells and to some antibodies (specifically, K417T, E484K and N501Y). The mutations decrease some antibodies' ability to recognize and neutralize the virus, a team of scientists reported Tuesday in a study on the South African variant. Specifically, the scientists looked at whether the variant from South Africa could be neutralized by blood plasma, which contains antibodies, taken from people who had been infected with older versions of the virus. In 21 of the 44 samples, the new variant was resistant to neutralization by the plasma serum. And thus, mutations in these new variants could make it easier for some people to get COVID-19 a second time, says virologist Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge. \"We know that you can get reinfected even with the same version of the virus,\" he says. The mutations could put even more of a dent in the barrier of resistance. No knows yet how common these types of reinfections will be, Gupta says. They could be rare. But reinfections could increase as time goes on — and a person's immunity to the virus naturally wanes, he adds. \"The bottom line is that we don't know yet what's causing the surge in Manaus,\" says virologist Jeremy Luban at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. \"The scenarios that people are worried about are plausible, and they're a cause for concern.\" But Dr. Lacerda from Manaus believes reinfections are indeed behind the second outbreak there, and he's concerned reinfections will fuel deadly surges in other cities around Brazil if widespread vaccinations don't occur quickly. Vaccinations will still work, he believes, but the efficacy could be decreased. And he thinks that if people had been vaccinated earlier the surge wouldn't have been so bad. \"Manaus is just a lighthouse that is pointing to what could happen in the rest of the country,\" he says. And perhaps what could happen in the rest of the world. NPR Correspondent Philip Reeves contributed reporting for this story.", "The U.K. is struggling to stop a more contagious version of the coronavirus. NPR discusses what might happen if the variant spreads across the U.S.", "President Biden will reimpose a ban on many non-U.S. citizens attempting to enter the country. The move is an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19 and contain new variants of the disease that have cropped up in several countries around the globe, according to media reports Sunday. The ban, expected to start Monday, would prohibit travelers from the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 countries in Europe that allow travel across open borders, called the Schengen Area, according to Reuters. It will also block entry to travelers from Brazil and South Africa, where researchers discovered new variants of the virus. Former President Donald Trump imposed similar restrictions on travelers from Brazil and Europe but ordered that those bans be lifted two days before his term ended. Biden's order rescinds that decision, marking the new administration's approach to coronavirus policies moving forward. It also follows early signs that Biden planned to turn back Trump's attempts to open U.S. borders to foreign travelers amid the still-raging pandemic. White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized Trump's announcement to lift travel restrictions, writing in a tweet last week, \"With the pandemic worsening, and more contagious variants emerging around the world, this is not the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel. We plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel in order to further mitigate the spread of COVID-19.\" New threats Just over a year after the first U.S.-based coronavirus case was detected, the nation surpassed a harrowing pandemic milestone on Sunday: 25 million confirmed cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center. A U.K.-based variant of the virus, first discovered in the U.S. in late December, is believed to be more infectious than the main strain. Other new variants have been found in South Africa and Brazil that could also be more infectious and may also decrease the efficacy of vaccines. The variant found in South Africa drove a decision by U.S. health officials to add that country to the travel ban list. \"We are adding South Africa to the restricted list because of the concerning variant present that has already spread beyond South Africa,\" Dr. Anne Schuchat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's principal deputy director, told Reuters. Tests before flying The CDC said that starting Tuesday it would also require all travelers flying to the U.S. from abroad to show proof of a negative coronavirus test before getting on a plane. The CDC is declining to consider temporary waivers requested by U.S. airlines that would exempt some travelers coming from countries with limited testing, Reuters reports. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC's new director, will sign a separate order Monday requiring passengers 2 years and older to wear masks on all airplanes, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis and ride-share vehicles, Reuters said. New global restrictions Countries around the world are implementing new lockdown measures to combat the pandemic's spread. Israel announced it would close its only international airport, Ben Gurion International Airport, for one week to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The only exemptions would be cargo flights, medical evacuations and firefighting flights, according to The Washington Post. Australia said it would suspend New Zealand's \"green zone travel status\" for three days after a woman acquired the coronavirus variant found in South Africa while in hotel quarantine. Passengers arriving in Australia on green safe travel zone flights are exempt from a requirement that travelers be tested for the coronavirus at least 72 hours before leaving their country of origin.", "The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control says the COVID-19 variant spreading across England appears to be more contagious. Scientists examine what that means for the rest of the world.", "Moderna says tests show that its COVID-19 vaccine offers protection against new variants of the coronavirus but that the vaccine is more effective against the variant first identified in the U.K. than the one found in South Africa. As a result, Moderna will test booster doses of its vaccine, including one that would be tailored to fight strains that have recently emerged. The newly identified strains have caused alarm, as health officials in the U.K. and South Africa say the strains appear to spread more easily than older variants of the coronavirus. They emerged in recent months, even as vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech raised hopes in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Moderna says that at current dosage levels, its COVID-19 vaccine regimen \"is expected to be protective against emerging strains detected to date.\" But the company also says that when its vaccine was used against the variant initially found in South Africa, known as B.1.351, the vaccine produced levels of virus-fighting antibody titers that were around sixfold less than when it's used against other variants. \"These lower titers may suggest a potential risk of earlier waning of immunity to the new B.1.351 strains,\" Moderna said. As for the variant found in the U.K., known as B.1.1.7, the company says it found \"no significant impact on neutralizing titers against the B.1.1.7 variant relative to prior variants.\" The findings result from lab studies in which Moderna scientists tested the ability of samples of blood serum from eight vaccine clinical trial participants to fight off the coronavirus. The studies also used samples of serum from nonhuman primates. Moderna says that out of \"an abundance of caution,\" it will launch at least two clinical efforts seeking to boost immunity to emerging coronavirus variants. The first step relies on the same messenger RNA vaccine that the Food and Drug Administration formally authorized last month. But in a new round of tests, the company wants to see if an additional booster dose of the vaccine will ramp up defenses against emerging strains beyond what the current regimen provides. In the second part of the company's plan, it's developing a new booster vaccine candidate that it will put into a phase 1 study in the U.S. \"to evaluate the immunological benefit of boosting with strain-specific spike proteins.\" Moderna believes its booster candidate could add protections against the coronavirus when used \"with all of the leading vaccine candidates,\" not just its own vaccine. \"As we seek to defeat the COVID-19 virus, which has created a worldwide pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves,\" Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement about the plan. \"We are encouraged by these new data, which reinforce our confidence that the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine should be protective against these newly detected variants.\" Both the variants found in the U.K. and South Africa have mutations that set them apart from the original SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. But the one first seen in South Africa has caused particular alarm. That strain has more mutations in its spike protein than the one from the United Kingdom. It also \"may be capable of evading the body's immune system\" — raising the risk of reinfection, as NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff recently reported. Several mutations that were found in the South African strain are also present in a variant that was identified this month in Brazil.", "A new variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in England and raising international alarms. This new variant now accounts for more than 60% of the cases in London. And scientists say the variant is likely more contagious than previous versions of the virus. Health officials have closed international travel to the United Kingdom. The British government has locked down much of the country. And scientists all over the world are rushing to figure out how the virus mutated and how big a threat the new variant poses. Here's what we know so far: The variant has a large number of mutations. Throughout this pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — has been mutating. It has accumulated about one or two mutations each month. That's not surprising. Viruses always mutate. But this new variant in the U.K., called B.1.1.7, has acquired mutations much quicker than scientists expect. The variant has 17 different mutations in its genetic code. And eight of those mutations occur in a critical part of the virus, called the spike protein, which reaches out and binds to human cells during the initial stages of infection. Several of the mutations in the variant are worrisome. Scientists have already studied several of the mutations occurring in B.1.1.7, and they are cause for concern. One mutation, called N501Y, makes the virus bind more tightly to human cells. This mutation has also appeared, independently, in a rapidly spreading variant in South Africa. Another mutation, called D614G, makes the virus more transmissible. B.1.1.7 also contains a small deletion in the virus's genetic code, called 69-70del, and that deletion helps the new variant evade the body's immune system in some people. These mutations, combined with the fact that B.1.1.7 acquired many changes simultaneously, suggest this new variant didn't arise by chance, but rather the mutations are giving it an advantage. They are helping it adapt to humans. The new variant likely is more transmissible than previous versions of the virus. When scientists first detected B.1.1.7 in late September, it rapidly took over parts of England, pushing out other forms of virus. By early December, the new variant had pushed out other forms of the virus in London and become the dominant one. This rapid rise suggests B.1.1.7 is more transmissible than other forms of the virus. \"There's no hard evidence, but it seems most likely,\" says biochemist Jeremy Luban at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. \"So if a person sneezes on a bus, the new variant is more likely to infect other people than the previous form of the virus.\" To figure out transmissibility for certain, scientists have to bring B.1.1.7 into the lab and see if it's better at infecting cells and spreading between animals. Even if the variant is more transmissible, it might not change the course of the pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 is already spreading quickly around the world. So a small increase might not make a big difference. It depends on how much better B.1.1.7 spreads. In the end, how quickly the virus spreads depends on many factors, including people's behavior in a community. That is, whether they wear masks, physically distance and avoid big gatherings. Those factors could be more important than whether B.1.1.7 arrives in a community, says virus expert Pei-Yong Shi at the University of Texas Medical Branch. \"With all these human interventions, it's hard to predict the course of the pandemic.\" So far, the new variant doesn't appear to cause more severe disease. Scientists don't know for sure because this variant has just emerged, but so far, people who catch B.1.1.7 don't seem to be getting sicker. \"There is absolutely no evidence that this [variant of the] virus is more deadly,\" Luban says. \"There's nothing at all to suggest that, and I don't think anyone that I know is worried about that possibility.\" The new COVID-19 vaccines will likely be effective against the new variant. Again, scientists don't know for sure if the vaccines will work as well with B.1.1.7. as they do with previous forms of the virus. They need to test out the new variant in laboratory experiments. But many scientists are optimistic. Why? When we get a vaccine, our immune systems make many antibodies against a big chunk of the virus, not just one small section that could change when the virus mutates. So even if the variant contains 17 mutations, some antibodies targeting the vaccine will likely still bind and neutralize the virus. \"So if you're in line for the COVID-19 vaccine, stay in line. Don't give up your spot. Take it,\" says microbiologist Andrew Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University. \"You know, everything is still looking good from the vaccine standpoint.\" The variant has likely spread to many countries around the world, including the United States. Researchers have already detected it in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia. The U.K. has been vigilant about looking for new variants and following them. ", "Scientists say accelerating deforestation and development may increase the risk of pandemic diseases, and the current coronavirus pandemic may actually make the trend worse.", "After months of data collection, scientists agree: The delta variant is the most contagious version of the coronavirus worldwide. It spreads about two to three times faster than the original version of the virus, and it's currently dominating the outbreak in the United States, responsible for more than 80% of COVID cases. A new study, published online this month, sheds light on why. It finds that the variant grows more rapidly inside people's respiratory tracts and to much higher levels, researchers at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported. On average, people infected with the delta variant had about 1,000 times more copies of the virus in their respiratory tracts than those infected with the original strain of the coronavirus, the study reported. In addition, after someone catches the delta variant, the person likely becomes infectious sooner. On average, it took about four days for the delta variant to reach detectable levels inside a person, compared with six days for the original coronavirus variant. In the study, scientists analyzed COVID-19 patients involved in the first outbreak of the delta variant in mainland China, which occurred between May 21 and June 18 in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. The researchers measured the levels of virus in 62 people involved in that outbreak and compared them with the levels in 63 patients infected in 2020 with an early version of the virus. Their findings suggest that people who have contracted the delta variant are likely spreading the virus earlier in the course of their infection. And the scientists underscore the importance of quarantining immediately for 14 days after coming into contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends. Or even better, getting fully vaccinated. Preliminary data shows that in some U.S. states, 99.5% of COVID-19 deaths in the past few months were among people who weren't vaccinated, said CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky at a White House press conference in early July. And 97% of those currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, according to Walensky. \"We know that the delta variant ... is currently surging in pockets of the country with low vaccination rates,\" Walensky said. \"We also know that our authorized vaccines prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death from the delta variant.\" Even though the variant is more transmissible, initial hospital data shows that it doesn't increase the risk of hospitalization compared to other strains, says Dr. Monica Gandhi, who studies infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco.", "NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Dr. Mauricio Nogueira with Faculty of Medicine of São José do Rio Pretol in São Paulo about the race to vaccinate Brazilians, and rampant disinformation.", "Mutations in the new coronavirus could reduce the effectiveness of vaccines against it. But vaccines themselves can also drive viral mutations, depending on exactly how the shots are deployed and how effective they are. So far, vaccines still appear to work against the new strains – though scientists are warily watching a variant that first appeared in South Africa since it seems to reduce vaccine effectiveness. And evolution isn't standing still, so scientists realize they may need to update vaccines to keep them working reliably. What's going on here is somewhat similar to a larger, and more concerning problem in medicine: Many bacteria have gradually evolved the ability to survive even when walloped by a large dose of antibiotics. That problem has created new strains of deadly, drug-resistant germs. Viruses also evolve, but the process is different and the result is usually much less severe when it comes to vaccines. When a virus such as the coronavirus infects someone, that person's immune system mounts a response. Viruses produce slight variations when they multiply, and if any of these variants can evade a person's immune response, those variants are more likely to survive and possibly to spread to other people. So far, the concerning coronavirus strains have appeared in individuals who have not been vaccinated. But this evolution can happen in vaccinated people, as well. Paul Bieniasz, a Howard Hughes investigator at the Rockefeller University, is particularly concerned this could happen between the time of an initial vaccination and a second shot to maximize the immune response. \"They might serve as a sort of a breeding ground for the virus to acquire new mutations,\" he says. This issue is part of a debate over the best timing of vaccine doses. Some scientists have argued that it would be better to use the scarce vaccines to give first doses to as many people as possible, so the maximum number of people have at least partial immunity. That could help slow the spread of the virus. Bieniasz worries that would also hasten the evolution of new strains of virus. Scientists simply don't know how this will play out. For one thing, it's unclear whether the first shot of a vaccine is strong enough to prevent the virus from multiplying inside someone and being abundant enough to spread to somebody else. If the virus can't spread, how it has evolved in an individual becomes irrelevant. It's clear that the vaccines reduce the risk of illness and death, but it's not known to what extent they prevent the virus from infecting an individual, or spreading from one person to another. Does this happen after the first dose? The second? \"There are really too many unknowns to really be definitive and positive about what the best way forward is, what the most effective way to use the available vaccine doses is,\" Bieniasz says. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease specialist, says the vaccines used in the United States are 95% effective when used as intended, and there simply are no data supporting any other approach. Fauci also says that a fully vaccinated person is apparently better able to fend off virus variants, so it makes sense to get people the maximum protection as quickly as possible. The flip side, though, is that the virus – including mutant strains – can spread through the population faster if fewer people are vaccinated. Extending the time between the first and second dose of a vaccine \"does run the risk of promoting evolution,\" says Andrew Read, an evolutionary microbiologist at Penn State University. But he adds, \"I must say, at the moment, that seems like a second-order issue compared to just reducing the transmission through the population as a whole.\" When it comes to new vaccine-induced variants, \"I know everybody's worried about it,\" he says, but history shows that viruses that have mutated generally don't render a vaccine useless. \"It's often got strong anti-disease properties, so you get less sick,\" he says. And even a fully vaccinated person can still play host to an evolving virus, in situations where the vaccine prevents illness but still allows a virus to replicate. That appears to happen even with the most effective COVID-19 vaccines. So, viral evolution doesn't just occur in the time between shots. \"I think there are a lot of options here for dealing with evolution, should it occur,\" Read says. For example, it helps that there are already more than half a dozen COVID-19 vaccines in use globally, and many others in development. \"One of the great things about having a lot of vaccine options is we might end up with a population which is heterogeneously vaccinated,\" Read says. Different people will have different vaccines, each stimulating a different immune response. \"That will really help hinder the spread of mutants that are good at [diminishing] any one of those.\" Also, a virus that has picked up a trait to evade one person's immune system will encounter a different set o", "NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Dr. Vineet Menachery, who studies coronaviruses at the University of Texas, about the potential risks associated with new mutations of the coronavirus.", "Updated Friday Jan. 15, 7:35 p.m. A highly contagious version of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading across the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports Friday. The country has a short window of time to curb the spread of the new variant, scientists say. If states don't act now, by issuing new restrictions, the variant --which emerged in the U.K. last fall — will likely cause a big surge in cases and hospitalization by March, the agency and other scientists warn. \"I feel a sense of déjà vu right now about the situation we were in back in the spring,\" says epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft at the University of Bern in Switzerland. \"I think a lot of countries are looking at the U.K. right now and saying, 'Oh, isn't that too bad that it's happening there,' just like we did with Italy in February. The new variant, called B.1.1.7, spread quickly across both the U.K. and Ireland after it emerged in England last fall. While restrictions and lockdowns largely suppressed previous versions of the virus in the U.K, they have not stopped B.1.1.7. Last week, the U.K. reported a record-breaking 419,000 cases. Ireland reported a record-breaking 46,000 cases. The governments of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland issued strict lockdowns, urging people to stay inside their homes. \"We've seen in this pandemic a few times that, if the virus can happen somewhere else, it can probably happen in your country too,\" Hodcraft says. Studies suggest the new variant increases transmissibility by about 50%. While restrictions have largely suppressed previous versions of the virus in the U.K., B.1.1.7 has continued to spread exponentially. Now scientists say the virus is already in the U.S. and circulating widely — albeit at very low levels, says computational biologist Trevor Bedford at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. \"A rough estimate, from across the U.S., would be about 1 in 1,000 frequency,\" he told NPR last week. \"So about 1 in 1,000 COVID infections is due to the variant.\" Bedford expects that percentage to rise quickly. In England, B.1.1.7 took about three months to take over and become the dominant strain in the outbreak. Scientists believed the variant emerged in September. By December, it had become the dominant version in London. \"So I roughly expect a similar timeline of three months, from the variant's initial arrival in the U.S. in December to starting to dominate the virus population around March,\" Bedford said. How dangerous is the new variant? With cases already surging in the U.S., having this new variant dominate the outbreak could be very problematic, researchers say. It could fuel another surge on top of the already staggering surge the country is struggling to stop. Hospitals are packed and health care systems are overstretched across the country with a less transmissible version of the virus. What's going to happen if a more contagious form starts to circulate widely, even dominate the outbreak? Right now scientists don't believe the new variant is deadlier. But its increased transmissibility could, in the end, be even more dangerous, resulting in a much higher number of deaths, says Hodcroft. \"Perhaps counterintuitively, I think that increased transmissibility is probably the worst of these two scenarios, because if something is more transmissible, then you just get it into a larger population,\" she says. One study suggests a person sick with the older version of the virus infects about 10% of their contacts, while a person sick with the new variant infects about 15%. So the new variant increases transmissibility by about 50%. To understand the impact of that, remember that viruses spread exponentially. Case numbers grow faster and faster. They accelerate. \"If you then crank that exponential growth up to a steeper curve, you very quickly start infecting many, many, many more people than you would have beforehand,\" Hodcroft says. \"And even though the percentage of people that end up in hospital or dying stays the same, a small percent of a big number is a big number.\" Small increases in infectiousness cause outbreaks to grow much more rapidly — and to much larger numbers. During the fall surge, each infected person infected about 1.3 other people on average, Bedford says. Studies suggest the new variant raises this value by about 0.5, so each sick person could infect 1.8 people on average. Two months to prepare According to Bedford, the U.S. still has about two months to prepare for — and slow down — the variant. On the surface, that timeline sounds like good news. But the findings are worrying, Bedford says. They mean the steep rises in cases and hospitalizations that are already happening in some states can't be blamed on a more contagious virus. \"I think it's not at all really conceivable that this more transmissible variant has contributed to surging cases in the U.S. this fall and winter, \" he says. \"We're kind of just barely getting started with this variant.", "A new variant of the coronavirus is sweeping through England. At the same time, the country is reporting a record-high number of COVID-19 cases – nearly 40,000 on Wednesday — as well as surges in hospitalizations and deaths. In London last week, an estimated 2% of people in private households tested positive for the coronavirus, The Independent reported. So the big question is: Are these events connected? Is the new variant causing this surge? Now British scientists are starting to answer that question. And the take-home message is sobering. The new variant, which contains 17 mutations, appears more transmissible and harder to control in terms of spread. \"Given all the biological and epidemiological evidence that has come together in the past few weeks, I think the picture is getting more and more consistent with something pretty serious,\" says epidemiologist Nick Davies, who led the study. Davies is part of a group of scientists in the United Kingdom, called SPI-M, whose job is to use mathematical models to predict how diseases will spread in order to guide policymakers' decisions. Last week, when health officials announced the rise of this new variant, Davies was skeptical it was responsible for the surge in the U.K.: \"Because one possible explanation for a rise in hospitalizations could just be that we've just come out of lockdown in these regions, and maybe people have gone back to more normal movement and contact.\" And besides, all viruses mutate. That's normal. The vast majority of time the mutations are harmless. They don't make the virus more dangerous. But then a few days later, Davies watched a news presentation from South Africa, and his skepticism evaporated. COVID-19 is also surging there. At the same time, South African scientists have detected a new variant, which shares surprisingly similarities with the U.K. one. Both versions contain a mutation called N501Y. This mutation has appeared in previous variants and is already known to increase how tightly the virus binds to human cells. And so Davies went to work. He inserted the data on the new U.K. variant into computer models. He wanted to know why the new variant was spreading so quickly. He tested out four key hypotheses. Could the new variant: Infect people who already had COVID-19? Infect children more easily? Spread more quickly than previous versions? Be more transmissible? (That is, when people catch the new variant, would they be likely to spread it to more people than when they're infected with other versions?) The mathematical models, published online Wednesday but not yet peer-reviewed, pointed to one of these four hypotheses. \"Increased transmissibility is the easiest way for us to explain what we're seeing,\" Davies says. Specifically, the study suggests the new variant is about 50% more transmissible than previous versions of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But the data can't yet rule out the possibility that other factors also contribute to the new variant's domination in England. There's also no evidence the variant causes more severe disease than previous versions. And scientists don't know why this variant is likely more transmissible. Previous studies, with another variant, suggest the U.K. variant may infect human cells more easily. And it may generate more copies of itself inside a person. \"When you swab people who have coronavirus infection, the people who are infected with this new variant tend to have more copies of the virus on the swab,\" says Davies, who's also part of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. No matter the underlying reason, policymakers should take this new variant very seriously, says epidemiologist Bill Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. If it's indeed 50% more transmissible, it will be difficult to stop its spread. \"Given the assumptions in their models, it's really quite hard to avoid a situation very much like what happened last spring, in terms of hospital bed capacity and surges, without a very high rate of vaccination,\" Hanage says. That said, Hanage says there's no reason for people to panic or be scared. \"It's not a magic virus,\" he says — that's the message virus expert Ian Mackay at the University of Queensland also wrote on Twitter. \"We have actually come across a large number of ways that we can use to stop it. However, we need to redouble our efforts in that direction.\" The variant will likely come to the U.S. — if isn't here already. The study strongly suggests that people should be even more diligent about preventive measures: avoiding large gatherings. wearing masks, physical distancing and washing hands. On top of that, Hanage says, \"the vaccine needs to be getting out at a very, very high rate.\" Because right now, scientists believe the vaccine will still be effective with this new variant. And Hanage says the quicker we immunize the vulnerable members of a community the safer the whole community will be from the original and ", "Updated at 2:35 p.m. ET Health officials have identified the first U.S. cases of the coronavirus variant that was initially detected in South Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the variant, known as B 1.351, has been found in South Carolina. \"CDC is early in its efforts to understand this variant and will continue to provide updates as we learn more,\" the agency said. \"At this time, we have no evidence that infections by this variant cause more severe disease. Like the U.K. and Brazilian variants, preliminary data suggests this variant may spread more easily and quickly than other variants.\" The two cases in South Carolina involve adults in the eastern part of the state, from the Lowcountry and Pee Dee regions, according to the state's Department of Health and Environmental Control. It did not provide more details about the patients, citing privacy concerns. \"At this point in time, there is no known travel history and no connection between these two cases,\" the agency said. Dr. Brannon Traxler, the department's interim public health director, said that the variant's arrival is an important reminder that the fight against COVID-19 is far from over. Noting the limited supply of vaccines, she added, \"Every one of us must recommit to the fight by recognizing that we are all on the front lines now. We are all in this together.\" The coronavirus variants have alarmed public health experts in recent months, posing a new challenge even as vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have raised hopes in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The strain of SARS-CoV-2 first detected in South Africa has now been found in at least 20 other countries. Discussing the variants in a briefing Wednesday, White House officials noted that in cases involving the strain, early studies suggest \"neutralization by vaccine-induced antibodies may be moderately diminished.\" Noting those findings, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, \"However, it still is well within the cushion of protection. So you could diminish the vaccine-induced antibody efficacy by a few-fold and still be well within the protective range of the vaccine. And that's the reason why you've seen announcements that the vaccines we're using are still effective.\" Earlier this week, Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine offers protection against new variants of the coronavirus — but that the vaccine is more effective against the strain first identified in the U.K. than the one found in South Africa. The company said that when its vaccine was used against the variant from South Africa, the vaccine produced levels of virus-fighting antibody titers that were around six times less than when it's used against other variants. As a result, Moderna said it will test booster doses of its vaccine, including one that would be tailored to fight strains that have recently emerged. Both of the variants found in the U.K. and South Africa have mutations that set them apart from the original SARS-CoV-2. But the one first seen in South Africa has more mutations in its spike protein than the one from the United Kingdom. Several of its mutations are also present in a variant that was first identified in Brazil. Researchers have found growing evidence that both of the variants circulating in South Africa and Brazil may be capable of evading the body's immune system, heightening the risk of reinfection, as NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff recently reported. The first U.S. case of the strain from Brazil was identified earlier this week in the Minneapolis metro area. A main concern now, Fauci said on Wednesday, is to look at how the coronavirus might continue to change and evolve." ]

[ "We'll hear members of the Drum and Bugle Corp of The United House of Prayer, a church in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Yesterday they were practicing for a parade that will take place during Memorial Day weekend." ]

[ "Michael Jackson is back. This is it. Well, sort of. Obviously, he hasn't actually returned from his final resting place (although that would make for an interesting movie). This Is It is the title of the newly-released film that chronicles the \"King of Pop\" during a three-month period leading up to his sudden death on June 25 at age 50. The film boasts rare, behind-the-scenes footage of Jackson as he rehearsed for his world comeback tour that was also titled, strangely enough, This Is It. The film's footage was originally compiled during the dress rehearsals for the tour. The concert series, which would have been underway now, was meant to be Jackson's final comeback. Now, the tour footage serves only as a memorial to the moon-walking, crotch-grabbing legend. And, of course, it will also help to answer those questions about whether Michael Jackson still \"had it\" -- as in dance moves -- at age 50. What do YOU make of all the hoopla surrounding this release? Is it a fitting tribute? Or, is all of this a bit over-the-top for the dearly departed? Tune in tomorrow. Tell Me More discusses This Is It. In the meantime, here's the promotional trailer: Tell us what you think.", "This week we're asking prominent musicians -- and you, too -- to tell us a story about the best musical moment of 2010. I'm one of the fortunate people whose days are filled with music: making it, studying it, listening to it, analyzing it. The day this \"Best Musical Moment of 2010\" question arrived in my inbox was the day of my Sitzprobe (seated rehearsal) for Strauss' \"Der Rosenkavalier\" at the Teatro Real in Madrid. My first instinct was to reply that these six hours of heavenly music making couldn't be topped -- which could be said for a lot of my experiences at \"work.\" However, just a few weeks before, one musical experience grabbed me by the throat, heart and soul all at once. It left me a changed person and imprinted itself on my musical memory forever:  Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, \"The Resurrection,\" live with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Read More And Hear Mahler's Symphony Believe it or not, it was my first time hearing the piece live, and I left the auditorium that evening overwhelmed beyond description. My senses were completely inundated and, blessedly, I'd been given the gift of a life-affirming experience that reminded me about the core goodness of humanity. I needed that reminder desperately since so much of the \"buzz\" today seems intent on showing the opposite side of our species, and I relished every riveting, soul-provoking moment of it. Please tell us about your best musical moment of 2010 in the comments section.", "In memory of the late, great R&B singer, rock historian Ed Ward gives us a guided tour of a famous Ray Charles studio rehearsal tape, circa 1953.", "David Greenberger is on a mission to speak for people living with Alzheimer's and other memory loss diseases, but he's not lobbying Congress or soliciting online donations. He's simple telling their stories. After a post-art school gig in a Milwaukee nursing home 30 years ago, Greenberger traded in his paintbrushes for the spoken word. He empowers Alzheimer's patients by giving voice to their stories and setting them to music. Some of the patients' stories embody deep loneliness and others project an incredible optimism, despite the gravity of the illness. \"One of the things I found to be true through this whole project, was that no matter how profound the memory loss was, everybody who agreed to sit with me and talk still possessed something of the dynamic of how a conversation works,\" Greenberger tells NPR's Joseph Shapiro in a piece to air this weekend on All Things Considered. The video above shows Greenberger and his guitarist collaborator Paul Cebar rehearsing \"Swung,\" the story of a woman who, at age 8, had the last laugh when her sister scolded her for twirling around too freely in a new dress. Check NPR Music for more.", "A lawyer, a doctor and an engineer walk into an orchestra rehearsal. It's not the set-up of a joke, it's what happens every week at rehearsals for the National Institutes of Health Community Orchestra. The volunteer group draws it's members from all over Washington, D.C., and is a creative outlet for government and private sector employees alike. NPR's Serri Graslie is a member of the group and has an audio postcard from their latest concert.", "The next album from the Austin, Texas, band Okkervil River will tell the childhood tale of its lead singer and songwriter Will Sheff, a self-described awkward, nearsighted, asthmatic kid growing up the small town of Meriden, N.H. The music on The Silver Gymnasium, out on Sept. 3, is some of Okkervil River's best, and you can hear it all beginning Aug. 26 as part of our First Listen program. For now, here's a first taste: the premiere of the song \"Down Down the Deep River.\" Another beautiful treasure this album has to offer is its artwork: Will Sheff collaborated with his dear friend William Schaff (yes, those names are a little confusing, but pretty funny, too) on a giant map of this tiny New Hampshire town. William Schaff has done most of Okkervil River's cover art; for The Silver Gymnasium, he hung around while the band was rehearsing. About 10 days later, he sent Will Sheff a beautiful fold-out map of Meriden. Will Sheff sent us the map of his hometown along with photos from his childhood and a recording of his memories. Now you can explore Meriden and hear Sheff tell stories from his childhood that inspired the album. See the map here &gt;&gt;", "A brain system that helps us find our way to the supermarket may also help us navigate a lifetime of memories. At least that's the implication of a study of rats published in the journal Neuron. It found that special brain cells that track an animal's location also can track time and distance. This could explain how rat and human brains are able to organize memories according to where and when an event occurred. The cells, called grid cells, appear to be \"laying down the sequence of space and time that provide a framework for events that are unfolding,\" says Howard Eichenbaum, an author of the study and director of the Center for Memory and Brain at Boston University. Grid cells were discovered in 2005 by two Norwegian researchers who won the Nobel Prize in 2014. Until now the cells have been known primarily for their GPS-like function, which helps the brain maintain an internal map of the environment. \"This is the first evidence that I'm aware of to directly show that grid-like representations are involved in representing time. And time is, of course, a critical aspect of memory,\" says Joshua Jacobs, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University who was not involved in the study. The finding appears to unite several different lines of research involving navigation and memory. Scientists have known for many years that areas of the brain involved in navigation are also involved in memory. And they've also known that these areas, the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, are among the first to be affected by Alzheimer's disease. \"People with Alzheimer's disease often have navigational problems,\" Eichenbaum says. Without a working GPS system in their brains, he says, \"they can't put themselves into the environment that they're in so they seem to be lost.\" The goal of the new rat study was to learn more about the link between navigation and memory, Eichenbaum says. So his team monitored grid cells while each rat ran on a treadmill. That meant the animal, though running, was no longer moving through space. As a result the brain's GPS couldn't rely on motion or changes in scenery to trigger activity in the grid cells. Yet most grid cells continued to fire in a different, but still predictable, way. They weren't responding to visual information anymore, but instead to the distance the animal had run or the amount of time that had elapsed. \"So at the beginning the animal might run for, say, five seconds and all of a sudden the cell fires in a burst,\" he says. And the burst would occur at the same time during every treadmill run. This suggested that instead of representing space, the grid cells had begun representing time. And time is one of the most important ways the human brain organizes and navigates episodic memories, the collection of personal experiences our brains acquire throughout life, Jacobs says. You can get a glimpse of how we navigate these memories if you imagine what happens when you realize you've misplaced your keys. \"You might think of where you were when you put your keys down,\" Jacobs says. \"You might think of the time of day you put your keys down and you might kind of start rehearsing back and forth in time around that moment.\" What you're doing, he says, is trying to figure out where you were in your day, much the way you try to figure out where you are in a city when you drive. Jacobs says it makes sense that evolution would take a brain system with a relatively simple job, navigating, and apply it to a much more complex task, organizing memories. Even so, he's cautious about reading too much into what happens in a rat's brain during a few seconds on a treadmill. If grid cells in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are truly helping us navigate our memories, they are \"not only representing a few seconds of time, but thousands and thousands of seconds of time over the course of one's lifetime,\" he says. \"And that's a significant jump.\"", "Let's take it from the top: Miles Hoffman, PT commentator and violist with the American Chamber Players, tunes up with Mia in the studio for a special \"rehearsal\" edition of \"Coming to Terms.\" Miles, Mia, and Martin discuss the differences between \"rehearsal\" and \"practice,\" and other issues.", "Ever since Tom DeLay signed on for this season of Dancing With The Stars, many have wondered what his foray into fancy footwork might actually look like. And so we present: the rehearsal photo. The thing he is strapped into in this photo, by the way, is a device that the pro teachers often use to get people to stand up straight and keep their shoulders back. It is on a day like this that a pop-culture follower wishes that someone had offered long odds a year ago that \"Tom DeLay's Dancing With The Stars Rehearsal Photo\" would eventually be a real thing. I am beginning to think I should look for someone who will give me hundred-to-one odds for on the equally likely \"Jack Nicholson Signs On To Play Gym Teacher In High School Musical 5\" for next year.", "The Los Angeles City Council is meeting today to discuss the price tag for Michael Jackson's July 7 memorial service. The LA Times reported this morning that the Council is expected to order an audit of city expenses, with special attention on the $48,826 spent on 3,500 lunches for police officers on security detail. Now we've just seen a wire report that the Council has gone into closed session \"after City Attorney Carmen Trutanich revealed that his office's investigation into the use of taxpayer resources during the Michael Jackson memorial tribute had 'taken an unanticipated turn that raises both civil and criminal aspects.' \" Trutanich reportedly declined to go into detail during the public session, though he did say he had talked to an attorney for the Staples Center, where the memorial was held. The wire report says Trutanich declined to go into detail during the public session, but said \"in regards to the civil litigation, rest assured that before I file any lawsuit to recoup taxpayers' costs, I will confer with you (the City Council) in closed session, to brief you and obtain your concurrence on any decision that is made.\" LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has said the city will cover what looks to be $1.4 million in police and other expenses for the memorial. That was before the LA Times reported that a concert promoter got an offer of $50 million for 1,200 hours of rehearsal footage for a planned 50-gig run by Jackson in London. Trutanich, the city attorney, has been looking into how the city came to agree to pay for security services.", "The audience at the Metropolitan Opera is expecting a little onstage drama tonight. Not just because it's the opening night of the opera Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. It's that the woman who was supposed to play the role of Ophelia dropped out suddenly. And the new Ophelia, German soprano Marlis Petersen, only had two days in New York to cram for the role. Petersen was in Vienna starring in a production of Medea when she got the call from the Metropolitan Opera. \"In the first moment I thought, I can't make it,\" she said. \"I thought, it's absolutely crazy.\" Her last performance in Vienna was Friday night. Even if she could rearrange her schedule, it would mean two days in New York to prepare for a major role. The rest of the cast of Hamlet had been rehearsing since mid-February. But soprano Natalie Dessay hurt her back, and New York needed Petersen. Suddenly, she had a change of heart. \"And then I thought, 'OK, you will do it. Be courageous. It's saving the Metropolitan Opera; come on — that's wonderful.' \" But Petersen might not have pictured this: Thirty hours before curtain, she is mobbed. Costumers, directors, vocal coaches all need a few minutes to fix this and suggest that. Normally, opera singers rest for the two days before an opera, like a major league pitcher. But yesterday, they brought in the whole orchestra just for Petersen. In one scene, Ophelia is going mad. She tosses flowers left and right and — spoiler alert — kills herself onstage. Perhaps it's the lack of sleep or growing panic, but Peterson has the crazy part down pat. But when she goes to cut her wrists, she misses a blood pack. \"It's not easy, because I can't look at them,\" she says. \"And this is why you don't get the right spot. It can happen, though.\" Sitting in the empty opera hall is Peterson's vocal coach for the performance, Pierre Vallet. He flew out to Vienna to prep Petersen on the music as she was packing to come to New York. Vallet says that she is cramming so much into her brain that it does make it exciting to watch. \"There is an intensity to her acting and singing that is very, very good. You can see. You read her very well onstage because she's very concentrated.\" She has to be. Giant 25-foot castle walls rotate in and out of this production, and you wouldn't want one of those smacking you. Petersen gets briefed on how to walk in her bell-shaped white gown. Little steps. Don't swing your butt. Every time Petersen comes out for a scene she's trying on a different wig — golden blond, ash blond, brunette. They are costuming her on the fly. The co-director slumps in a chair. Patrice Caurier says it's nerve-racking. His great fear isn't all these small mistakes. It's the biggie. \"It's the memory,\" he says. \"Suddenly you have a blank and you say, 'What's coming next?' Even if it lasts for two seconds it seems like an eternity and you panic. I hope she'll be safe from that experience.\" He looks around for a piece of wood to knock on. Because Petersen didn't arrive until after the final dress rehearsal, the director won't get to see the full production until the audience does tonight. The only one who doesn't seem nervous is the star herself. When Petersen makes a mistake, she laughs and raps her knuckles against her skull. She realizes, though, that this is a huge gamble. The more she crams, the harder she works in rehearsal, the more tired her voice gets. \"Your voice is telling you, 'OK, stop now.' And when you don't it gets hurt,\" she says. \"It's walking on the edge. I wasn't sure if this is a good idea. But of course, now I have to shut up.\" At the risk of ruining the whole production by making her answer one more question, I have to ask. After a week of almost nonstop singing, what will she do after tonight's opening? \"I think I'll fall asleep for another three days,\" she says. Petersen's performance in \"Hamlet\" runs through April 2, and will be shown in movie theaters March 27, as a part of \"The Met: Live in HD series. MELISSA BLOCK, host: The audience at the Metropolitan Opera is expecting a little onstage drama tonight. Not just because it's the opening night of the opera \"Hamlet,\" it's that the woman who was to play the role of Ophelia dropped out suddenly, and the new Ophelia, German soprano Marlis Petersen, only had two days in New York to rehearse. NPR's Robert Smith followed her as she crammed for the role. ROBERT SMITH: Petersen was in Vienna starring in a production of \"Medea\" when she got the call from the Metropolitan Opera. Ms. MARLIS PETERSEN (Opera Singer): In the first moment, I thought, I can't make it. SMITH: Her last performance in Vienna was Friday night. Even if she could rearrange her schedule, it would mean two days in New York to prepare for a major role. Ms. PETERSEN: I thought it's absolutely crazy to do that. SMITH: The rest of the cast of the French opera \"Hamlet\" had been rehearsing since mid-February. But soprano Natalie Dessay hurt her back, and New ", "What happens in our brains while we're asleep? That's one question neuroscientist Penelope Lewis is trying to answer. She directs the Sleep and Memory Lab at the University of Manchester in England. Her new book is The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest. Lewis joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about how sleep affects memory, and how REM sleep can affect depression. Interview Highlights On how sleep makes memory stronger \"When it comes to strengthening [memory], we know that the neural responses in your brain that are associated with things you've recently experienced are spontaneously replayed, or, we say, 'reactivated' while you're asleep. \"So that means, supposing you are learning to play the piano ... you're moving your fingers a lot. That's associated with responses in motor areas of your brain. ... Those areas will become active again while you're asleep, and that replay — or reactivation — is what we think is responsible for the strengthening. So it's kind of like your brain is rehearsing stuff without you knowing, while you're asleep.\" On the \"spring cleaning\" sleep does to the brain \"You clean up after you've made a mess, right? So that's exactly what sleep seems to do for the brain. ... \"Across the day while we're busy doing things, experiencing things, seeing things, hearing things, learning things, processing different kinds of information, the connections between neurons in the brain get strengthened because they're trying to retain all of this information. And an awful lot of it is garbage; it's stuff you don't want to remember or don't care about — what you had for breakfast, or the color of a stain on the cover of a book or something. It's really not useful or interesting. \"And the problem is, if you keep storing all of this stuff, you reach capacity and you can't keep storing more. And so what happens during sleep, and specifically during the deep stage of sleep that we call slow-wave sleep, is that all of those synapses get downscaled again. So where they've been strengthened up, they all get proportionally downscaled.\" On treating depression by suppressing REM sleep \"In some people who are depressed, it's a good thing to suppress their REM [sleep] because REM is associated with specifically strengthening emotional memories, and in many cases negative memories. So there's an idea that it might be that in people who have too much REM, as many depressed people do, these negative memories are getting over-strengthened, and that can actually be quite damaging and quite pathological.\" On what she hopes to learn about sleep \"My lab is particularly interested in how memories change while we're asleep. People might think that memories, once they're formed, they remain static and it's just kept like a library book on a shelf, and then you can pull it out when you want to. But actually that's not the case. Memories evolve constantly. They change, and a lot of that evolution seems to happen while you're asleep. ... \"We'd like to understand what sleep is really for. So, we spend one-third of our lives asleep as humans. That's a huge proportion. That's more time than we spend doing anything else. So it's got to be important for something. So part of the purpose of the research that I'm doing is trying to understand that. ... \"Another part of it is trying to understand something about memory. Memory is fundamental to the way our brains work. It's fundamental to our personalities, and there are an awful lot of unknown questions about memories. ... How they change over time, how do we extract this information? How do we go from an experience to having that experience integrated with everything else you know about the world?\"", "\"I . . .\" I can do this. Just keep breathing. There's that tightness in my stomach, like something is just twisting and twisting and it won't let go until the moment is over. And everything will unravel, and I'll feel free. \"I wanted to tell you two something.\" Dad looks at me now. This is it. It's kinda funny actually; the script I wrote for myself, the one I typed in Word so I'd cover everything I wanted to, it's just totally gone from my memory now. Like someone zapped it all away. Maybe that's for the best; maybe this is how I'll be the most honest with them. If it just comes from me and not some rehearsed version of myself, maybe that will help; maybe that'll be better? I tell them. Slowly. At first, relief floods over me. I think I can actually feel myself relax. I just wish that feeling could've lasted longer.", "The drill team at Barack Obama's old high school in Honolulu can't take that Aloha weather with them when they march down chilly Pennsylvania Avenue for the inauguration parade. So the Punahou School marchers will rehearse on Hawaii's only ice rink. And Americans in London on Inauguration Day can get a look at the new President at Madame Tussauds wax museum. U.S. tourists can get in free that day — with proof of citizenship. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. The drill team at Barack Obama's old high school in Honolulu can't take that Aloha weather with them when they march down chilly Pennsylvania Avenue for his inauguration. So, the Punahou School marchers will be rehearsing on Hawaii's one and only ice rink, at Honolulu's Ice Palace. And Americans caught in London on Inauguration Day can still get a look at the new president at Madame Tussauds wax museum. On that day, Americans get in for free. It's Morning Edition.", "The students in Judith Sloan's theater program in Queens, N.Y., are mostly new immigrants. Like any group of high school kids, they can be hard to motivate. A performance was coming up, and lines were supposed to be memorized. When Sloan arrived for rehearsal, she found some of her students playing games, the rest were sprawled on the floor. They were exhausted from speaking English. So Sloan asked them to show her all the verbal tricks they knew in their own languages -- songs, games and tongue twisters. Their energy came back, and the game playing also helped them to share and develop their stories of immigration. The result, says Sloan, were pieces touching on the themes of longing, memory, friendship, the future, and the homes they left behind. This piece was originally commissioned for the Third Coast International Audio Festival.", "A lot of people today are watching a videotape of the late Michael Jackson's last rehearsals at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The video, shot two days before his death, was released by AEG Live, the company that booked Jackson's planned 50-concert run in London. Jackson appears energetic and alert in the video but, of course, it only tells us so much. We have no idea what he looked like before or after the rehearsals captured in the video. Still, it's chilling to watch the video knowing what we now know.", "Violinist Heather Engebretson, 15, and cellist Rachel Gawell, 17, are two talented string players who appeared on From the Top as soloists. The producers decided to bring both of them back on another show for a special segment: They would work with host and concert pianist Christopher O'Riley on a trio that the three of them would perform on the show. Rachel and Heather each individually learned their parts of Johannes Brahms' Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major. They spoke to each other briefly on the phone, and then met with Christopher O'Riley two days prior to the show taping to rehearse the piece for the very first time. The rehearsal was taped, and the fascinating process of musical collaboration was captured for From the Top's listening audience. Heather and Rachel had never met before this rehearsal so they had some trepidation about how things would turn out. \"It was kind of awkward at first to sit down to play a piece I'd never played before with people I'd never played with before,\" explains Rachel. \"It was difficult to match sounds at the beginning.\" Chris coached Heather and Rachel to help them become comfortable and overcome the challenges of the piece. \"Rhythmically this piece isn't easy, but Chris was such a fantastic coach,\" says Heather. \"It was an amazing session,\" adds Rachel. \"We did so much in such a small amount of time, and the piece came together so well.\"", "Peter Brook is truly the grand old man of world theater. He became famous with his productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1960s; wrote the seminal theater text The Empty Space; and started the International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris, where he developed such plays as the nine-hour adaptation of the Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata. Now, at the age of 89, Brook has brought his company to Brooklyn with a new play all about the mysteries of the human brain. Brook may move a little slowly these days, but his fierce intellect and curiosity are very much intact. He calls his rehearsal process an \"investigation,\" whether it's a work by William Shakespeare, or a new play. \"Gradually, one comes to works which in their own right investigate so many aspects of human behavior: social, personal, intimate. I mean, it's the whole of [the] world that can be reflected. Shakespeare said it's holding a mirror up to nature. And nature is human nature and the natural processes — everything in nature.\" Brook's new play, The Valley of Astonishment, is the third part of a trilogy built around how our brains work and what they do to us. This piece looks at a variety of neurological conditions, including synesthesia, where two senses are inextricably linked; we meet a painter who sees colors when he hears music. Kathryn Hunter plays a woman with an almost limitless memory. In one monologue, Hunter's character explains to her doctors how she remembers words: You see, in order to understand the meaning of a word, I have to be able to see it. Take the word \"nothing.\" What I see is a huge pale cloud of steam that's completely transparent. I said to friend of mine, \"What is nothing?\" \"Nothing means that there is nothing,\" she said. \"You're wrong,\" I thought. \"If I can see nothing, it means it IS something!\" The character's gift is also a curse, says Brook. \"It becomes more and more painful, when she sees this extraordinary thing: this limitless capacity of the brain has its limits,\" Brook says. \"When the brain box is so full of what she calls \"garbage\" and she can't get rid of it ... this is terrifying.\" The characters, while composites, are based on real people – some of whom the actors met, says Marcello Magni, who plays a number of them. One of Magni's characters is based on a butcher who lost his proprioception – his ability to sense his own body. The man came to the rehearsal studio. \"When he came to visit us, Peter [said], 'Now, you're trying to copy him! No. Don't be him,' \" Magni remembers. \" 'We can learn some details, more about his experience, but not be a mime of him. No. It's only, you see his intention, his humor, his determination, his bravery. So, absorb those.' \" Magni says they met other people with neurological conditions. But he says Brook and his collaborator, Marie-Hélène Estienne, actually built the play on the three actors. \"They came with a script that was not a script. It was just the beginning,\" he says. \"And every day a new section or a new part or a new person was brought to us. And these people or these stories went through us.\" For actress Kathryn Hunter, playing someone with an extraordinary dilemma — the inability to forget — is a glimpse into something larger. \"In the end, the play is not about synesthesia or phenomenal memory,\" she says. \"It's about the human being being extraordinary, whether they have this ability or that ability ... the miracle that is a human being, in a way.\" Those human stories owe a lot to the doctors who first documented them, says Brook; people like Oliver Sacks, who told some of his patient's stories in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat, which became another Brook play. He says the very best doctors all share one thing in common. \"The real motivation is when they can feel an empathy with the patient, not just use the patient as a case study,\" Brook says. \"They listen, they feel and they understand\" — which, in addition to defining the best doctors, could very well sum up Peter Brook's approach to theater. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Peter Brook truly is the grand old man of world theater. In the early 1960s, his productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company made him famous. He then wrote a seminal book about theater called \"The Empty Space.\" And he went on to found the International Center for Theatre Research in Paris where he developed a nine-hour adaptation of the Sanskrit epic \"The Mahabharata.\" Peter Brook is now 89 years old, and his company has arrived in Brooklyn with a new play about the mysteries of the human brain. Jeff London has more. JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: Peter Brook may move a little slowly now, but he's fierce intellect and curiosity are very much intact. He calls his rehearsal process an investigation, whether it's a work by William Shakespeare or a new play. PETER BROOK: Gradually, one comes to works which in they, in their own right, investigate so many aspects of human behavior - social, personal, intimate. I mean, it's the whole of", "Memorial Day weekend is here, which means arts lovers are anticipating summer music, theater and dance festivals. One of the best known is in Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. Every summer since 1970, the event has featured the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Forty years ago, a 28-year-old choral conductor named John Oliver went to the managers of the Boston Symphony with a proposal. He wanted to create a permanent chorus for the orchestra. \"To my utter amazement now -- I wasn't so amazed then, because I was just a brash young man -- they said, 'Go! Form a chorus,' \" Oliver says. Four decades later, Oliver is still conducting that chorus. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, with 280 members, is the official year-round choir of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It performs in Boston, on tour and at Tanglewood every summer, and it's made up entirely of volunteers. Most live in the Boston area, but others commute farther. \"We have people that commute from Rhode Island and Maine and New Hampshire, Vermont. You know, it's astonishing how far they come to sing in this chorus,\" he says. Oliver says all of the singers are trained musicians, but they're also psychiatrists, lawyers and more. The chorus rehearses in a bunker-like room in the bowels of the Boston Symphony's complex in Back Bay. The walls are cinder block, the carpeting is industrial and the lighting's fluorescent, but the room is filled with music and life. Great Expectations Nick Brown, who just graduated from Brandeis University, is one of the chorus' youngest members. \"John's expectation of this group is different than, I think, a lot of groups,\" Brown says. \"When you come to his rehearsal and you're not prepared, he will make it known that you're not prepared -- not directly, but he expects the highest level of preparation, because we are treated like a professional chorus. We are performing with one of the greatest orchestras in the world.\" Most choirs perform while holding the score in front of them. John Oliver insists that his singers memorize the music for most performances. \"Memorization is not a trick. It internalizes the music for you; it makes the music, somehow, a part of your own physical being,\" Oliver says. \"And you can express so much more like that. If you don't see a singer's face and you don't see the posture of a singer, the address of a singer to the audience, you're really not getting what a singer can deliver in music and what composers expected the singers to deliver.\" Four times every summer, members of the chorus come to Lenox, Mass., for short residencies at Tanglewood. This will be the 27th year that bass Timothy Lanagan has sung in the mountains. \"Tanglewood, I always tell people, is like a summer music camp for grownups,\" he says. \"You know that it has that component of fun, of being out on the Tanglewood campus and being in the Berkshires, which are just lovely and endlessly interesting and full of nature.\" The chorus' next performance is July 9, the opening night at Tanglewood. In the meantime, to celebrate the Tanglewood Festival Chorus' 40th anniversary, a new CD of live performances has just been released. SCOTT SIMON, host: Memorial Day weekend is here and arts lovers are anticipating summer music, theater and dance festivals. One of the best known is Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. And every summer since 1970, the orchestra has performed with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Jeff Lunden reports. JEFF LUNDEN: Forty years ago, a 28-year-old choral conductor named John Oliver went to the managers of the Boston Symphony with a proposal. He wanted to create a permanent chorus for the orchestra. Mr. JOHN OLIVER (Choral Conductor): And to my utter amazement now - I wasn't so amazed then, because I was just a brash young man but to my utter amazement now, they took up on it and they said: Go, form a chorus. (Soundbite of music) SIMON: And 40 years later, John Oliver is still conducting that chorus. (Soundbite of music) LUNDEN: The Tanglewood Festival Chorus with 280 members is the official year-round choir of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performing in Boston, on tour and at Tanglewood every summer. And it's made up entirely of volunteers. Most live in the Boston area, but John Oliver says... Mr. OLIVER: Now we have people that commute from Rhode Island and Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont - you know, it's astonishing how they come to sing in this chorus. And they drive, you know, all the way home after rehearsal, and it's amazing. (Soundbite of music) Mr. OLIVER: They're all trained musicians. At this point we don't have anybody in the chorus that isn't trained in some instrument or some kind of music education. And I mean they do a million other things. They're psychiatrists and they're lawyers and we have the chief psychopharmacologist from (unintelli", "Director Sidney Lumet discusses his latest film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. He explains why he insists on working with actors who have \"talent and no madness\" and shares some of his favorite moments from decades of work, including Dog Day Afternoon and Network. MADELEINE BRAND, host: Back now with DAY TO DAY. Sidney Lumet is one of America's most prolific movie directors, if not the most prolific. At age 83 he has made 44 movies in 50 years, including such classics as \"12 Angry Men,\" \"Dog Day Afternoon\" and \"Network.\" His latest is the thriller \"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.\" It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. And Sidney Lumet joins me now from our New York studios. Welcome to the program. Mr. SIDNEY LUMET (Film Director): Thank you. Thank you, Madeleine. BRAND: Now, your latest film is really a very, very dark tale of greed, of despair, of family tragedy. What drew you to that script? Mr. LUMET: The comedy in it - no, no, no, no. It's very attractive because they are such passionate people. They've got such deep commitment to what they get involved in, and they don't even know that they're involved in the sense that it keeps constantly surprising them. And the pleasure of Hoffman and Ethan Hawke - I mean they're - I think Hoffman is really becoming one of America's best actors. (Soundbite of movie, \"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead\") Mr. PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN (Actor): (As Andy) I figure between the week's take, the jewelry in the cases, the vault, there's a $500,000 our haul, I figure probably six. That dumb old lady that works there, she's along till noon, she's not going to be a problem. Mr. ETHAN HAWKE (Actor): (As Hank) That's mom and dad's store. Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Andy) That's what they said, a mom and pop operation. BRAND: Did you originally envision him as - for this role? This role - he plays just a slick, money-grubbing, I guess... Mr. LUMET: Hungry, right. (Soundbite of laughter) BRAND: Real estate guy who conceives of this robbery in the movie. Mr. LUMET: Right. I knew that the piece had to be done at a very high level of intensity. And for that you need good actors. And as I said before, I think he's one of the best. So interestingly enough, Madeleine, I read the script and I sent it to him and I said pick either part. Play either brother, I don't care which one. BRAND: Because the other character, the other brother is the opposite of him. Mr. LUMET: Exactly, because he's the driving one, the one who instigates everything. The other brother is very weak and keeps collapsing under the pressure all the time. And as far as I was concerned, he could do either one. BRAND: And he chose the dominant one? Mr. LUMET: Well, he said, I hear you're going to send a script to Ethan. And I said, yeah. He said, why don't we wait and see what Ethan wants. It was a lovely way to do it, actually. BRAND: So, now, you are known as an actors' director. That has been said of you many, many times, and interest in developing the acting foremost in your movies. And I'm just wondering, what does that mean on set behind the scenes? What does it mean to you to be an actors' director? Mr. LUMET: Well, first of all, you stay away from lunatics. That's the important thing, because they're - you're going to work on a very intimate and close level, and the involvement is so complete on the part of the actors that if you've got a lunatic there, you're going to wind in trouble. So it means talent and no madness. BRAND: And you are also known for your strict rehearsal schedule, in that you rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, and then shoot. Mr. LUMET: Mm-hmm. BRAND: And that's unusual. Why is that unusual? Mr. LUMET: It's unusual because there's a cliche among moviemakers that in order to get spontaneity, you have to come at it with absolutely no rehearsal, totally fresh. That is not true, even though there are many different ways of working. The actors become more spontaneous when they know what they're doing. They feel freer and therefore able to trust whatever happens to them at the moment. BRAND: Give me an example, if you would, from one of your films of how that worked. Mr. LUMET: Well, in \"Dog Day Afternoon,\" for example, Pacino is a great improviser. We improvised during rehearsal, as a rehearsing technique, in order to find the truth about an emotion. And Al was brilliant at it. He then started falling in love with the language of improvisation. In other words, at the ability to use his own words instead of the words that had been written. And so that what we did was we found a good middle ground between the two. And then about two days before shooting, I froze it. (Soundbite of movie, \"Dog Day Afternoon\") Mr. AL PACINO (Actor): (As Sonny) Get over there. Go back there, man. Get over there, will you. He wants to kill me so bad, he can taste it. Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica! Attica! BRAND: In general with ", "Every January, as temperatures plummet, New York's Public Theater opens its doors to Under the Radar, a festival that features cutting-edge theater from around the world. Occasionally, these shows have moved onto the radar — like Gatz, an eight-hour adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which eventually had several runs at theaters across the country. Meiyin Wang and Mark Russell, co-artistic directors of Under the Radar, crisscross the globe every year trying to answer a single question. \"In this day,\" Russell says, \"when there's all sorts of great ways of telling stories and everyone's got a camera ... we're looking at: Why do theater now?\" Over 12 days, Russell and Wang present their answer to that question. It's kind of like a film festival, where audiences can see three, four or five shows in a single day. \"I am trying to demystify this downtown-y thing,\" Russell says. \"This is for everybody. All of these stories have an integrity of purpose; everyone should be able to approach them without having to know anything about the history of avant-garde art.\" This year, Under the Radar is presenting work from Chile, Japan, France, Canada, Rwanda — and Brooklyn, N.Y. In a rehearsal studio in the borough's Park Slope neighborhood, a company called 600 HIGHWAYMEN is rehearsing its new show, Employee of the Year. The cast consists of five young girls, but the tale they're telling is far beyond their years. Co-artistic director Abigail Browde says it's the life story of one woman. \"It's like a contemporary journey myth,\" she says. \"So it starts when she's 3 years old, and it ends in her 80s.\" Browde says the disconnect between the adult content and who's delivering it is what makes the show work. \"The performance is most effective when ... you get snapped back to reality and it's like, 'Oh wait, I forgot she was 10,' \" Browde says. \"So there's actually a friction and a collision between where the story goes and who the messenger is.\" The messenger in another Under the Radar work is also a pre-teen, but she's portrayed by 30-something Dorothée Munyaneza. Samedi Détente is about Munyaneza's 12-year-old self trying to survive the 1994 Rwanda genocide. In a phone conversation from her home in France, Munyaneza says she started to work on the piece two years ago. \"Somehow, symbolically, it meant a lot to me to address my memory, my history, 20 years afterwards,\" she says. \"And I chose to write and to create this choreographic, musical, historical storytelling piece.\" Munyaneza begins the production in a blue dress that's inspired by her school uniform. She's crouched on top of a table, singing a song to the accompaniment of a man sharpening his machete. \"This object, which was normally used as a tool for cutting wood or killing animals for food, suddenly became this tool for killing,\" Munyaneza says, \"and killing massively and killing people cruelly.\" The song was written by Munyaneza and it's based on a story her cousin told her about her aunt dying in a refugee camp. Munyaneza says she hopes to find some kind of peace through the work. \"I'm trying to share this story,\" she says. \"I'm trying to leave something in the minds and hearts of people who will carry it. And it's something I can only do through art.\" And that's just what Under the Radar's artistic directors want: to present work that is urgent and relevant, and stories told in a surprising, accessible way.", "In HBO's The Newsroom, John Gallagher Jr. plays Jim Harper, the senior producer of the nightly cable news program anchored by Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels). The show's second season, which began in July, takes place in 2012 during the presidential primaries. Ever since the start of the series, Gallagher's character has been in a will-they-or-won't-they relationship with one of the young producers of the news show. Right now, it's looking to him like they won't, and in an attempt to get away from the woman who's broken his heart, he's decided to go on the campaign trail and report from the Mitt Romney bus. But he soon discovers there's nothing to report, just repetitive stump speeches and daily spin delivered by Romney campaign aides on the bus. In a recent episode, Jim tried to get some real answers out of the aides, and ended up getting thrown off the bus. In addition to acting, Gallagher can sing and dance. He won a Tony in 2007 for his performance in the Broadway musical Spring Awakening. (Lea Michele, who went on to star in Glee, was also part of that cast.) Gallagher also played Johnny, aka \"Jesus of Suburbia,\" in the Green Day musical American Idiot as part of that show's original Broadway cast. He joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to discuss how he rehearses for The Newsroom, his appearance on the fourth season of The West Wing and the challenges of translating a Green Day album into a Broadway musical. Interview Highlights On rehearsing Newsroom creator Aaron Sorkin's dialogue \"It's hard because usually most of the rehearsal happens when I'm alone at home in my apartment. I'll work on the scenes; I'll walk around; I'll try to say them out loud. Sometimes I'll record myself saying all of the lines, even the characters that aren't mine, and I'll listen to that while I'm doing dishes or cooking dinner, doing something else just so that I'm trying to get it in my head in a way that doesn't feel like work. I've always been able to listen to a song ... once or twice and know all of the lyrics, and so I find sometimes getting audible cues in my head will help me learn it in a way that, I'll go to rehearse it again and all of the sudden it will be in there. It will start being a little more effortless. \"Because the truth is we don't have a lot of time to rehearse with each other. ... Shooting a TV series, you might have a long day of doing ... [a] scene ... which is kind of lengthy and verbose alone, that, I think, was one of four or five scenes we shot that day. So you have to kind of compartmentalize and learn a lot for one particular day, and you only really get a couple of times to rehearse them with your co-stars. So day one of season one of The Newsroom, one of the things Aaron Sorkin said to us, he said, 'The more rehearsed and prepared you show up in the morning, the happier and more confident you're going to be about your performance.' \" On his technique of recording himself reading all the parts \"It's more like ... a bunch of zombies reading a bunch of Aaron Sorkin dialogue. I try not to put any spin on how I'm going to deliver it. Usually I'll just read it kind of monotone without a lot of inflections or affectations. I'll just try reading it kind of plainly so that all the characters basically have the same kind of tone and voice just so I can get it, just so I can get the words in there.\" On his West Wing appearance when he was 18 \"Aaron did not remember that I had been on The West Wing. ... When I was about 18 years old, I ... did a small guest spot on an episode of The West Wing in Season 4, and I never met him on set because we shot it on location in Pittsburgh and he was back in L.A. writing the rest of the season. So whenever people needed to get notes from him, everybody would gather around a cellphone and he would give out notes for the scene and whatnot. It wasn't until the end of Season 1 [of The Newsroom], he came on set one day, I heard him come on set and say, 'Where's John Gallagher?' and I thought, 'Oh no, what did I do? I'm going to get fired.' And he came up to me and said, 'I can't believe I'm just now realizing you were our kid, you were our guy — Episode 1, Season 4 of The West Wing!' He was very nice, and he said, 'I'm so sorry I didn't put two and two together. You look a lot different.' And I said, 'I know, I had a very unfortunate haircut at that time.' \" On how his American Idiot role came about \"I did a show called Spring Awakening and the director of that was a guy named Michael Mayer, who became a really good friend of mine over the process of working on Spring Awakening for several years. And while we were doing Spring Awakening, Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of Green Day, came to see it. He got invited to come check out the show as kind of a potential 'Hey, would you like to work with us?' because Michael was a big fan of the record American Idiot and he saw that it had potential to become a musical or stage show because it's a concept rock album. And Michael and ", "Beethoven made his orchestra rehearse for 6 1/2 hours on the day of an important concert, a good case for Labor Day! On the program was his Piano Concerto No. 3. Our performance comes from the Grand Teton Music Festival. William Wolfram is the soloist, and Mark Wigglesworth conducts the Festival Orchestra in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in c minor.", "In 1953, 27-year-old Henry Gustave Molaison underwent an experimental brain surgery in an attempt to alleviate his severe epileptic seizures. The surgery left him with a form of amnesia; he could remember many things from the past, but was unable to form new memories. \"He could tell us about where he was born, [that] his father's family was from Thibodaux, La., his mother came from Ireland,\" says neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin. \"He talked about the towns in Hartford where he lived and about his specific neighbors. He knew the schools he attended, some of his classmates' names.\" Corkin worked with and studied Molaison for almost 50 years, from 1962 until his death in 2008. She writes about how his case has helped scientists understand how memories are processed and stored in her new book Permanent Present Tense. Her work with Molaison over those decades has taught us much of what we know about long-term memory. Corkin stresses that although his memory was almost nonexistent, Molaison was an intelligent man. This insight led to conclusions that intelligence and memory are not linked, that memory is compartmentalized, and that the ability to form new memories is localized to a specific part of the brain called the hippocampus and the surrounding cortex. While Molaison is considered one of the most important case studies in the history of brain science, Corkin says that a sense of his celebrity was understandably lost on him. \"Every now and then I would tell him he was very famous and a lot of people knew about him in the world of scientists,\" Corkin says, \" ... he would get this little sheepish grin and say, 'Oh, you know, isn't that nice.' You could see that it was heartwarming for him. But ... of course, as soon as he was distracted, he forgot.\" Interview Highlights On the signs of Molaison's intelligence \"We gave him IQ tests. In fact, he had an IQ test the day before his operation. A psychologist at the Hartford hospital had tested him. After his operation his IQ actually went up, which isn't a surprise because he wasn't having as many seizures. So we monitored his IQ over the years. We wanted to know that he maintained a particular level of intellectual ability. Aside from that, just talking to him in every day life, you knew you were talking to an intelligent person. Evidence of this is that he would spontaneously come up with very funny jokes. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he would come up with little quips that were appropriate to a specific moment, nothing that he had made up before, rehearsed or he knew from his preoperative life. \"One day a postdoctoral fellow in my lab was testing Henry at the MIT clinical research center, they walked out of the testing room and the door slammed, and [one fellow] said, 'Oh, I think I've left my keys inside.' And Henry said, 'Well at least you'll know where to find them.' One of his favorite past times was doing crossword puzzles. He always had one at arm's reach and a pencil, and so I said, 'Henry, you are the puzzle king of the world,' and he said, 'I'm puzzling.' \" On short-term versus long-term memory \"Short-term memory is misunderstood and mislabeled by most of us. It's really just [what] you can remember for 30 seconds without distraction. It's the right now. It's the immediate present. It's what's on your radar screen now, not what was on five minutes ago or five minutes from now. So Henry's immediate memory was preserved. So if I said to him, 'Henry, I have this favorite plant, white petunias, that I like very much.' And then I'd ask him to say back [to me] what I had just said ... and he was able to do that. ... [But] if I said to him five minutes later, 'What is my favorite plant?' he would have no idea. So anything beyond 30 seconds falls into the domain of long-term memory.\" On Molaison's later years \"He had to go to the bathroom a lot, so the nurses would take him and he would do what he had to do, and then 10 minutes later he would ask to go again, and they would say, 'Henry, you just went.' We learned from his full-body autopsy that he had colon cancer, and maybe this is why he had to go to the bathroom frequently. So yes, the later years of his life were sometimes unpleasant for him. At the same time, he had wonderful care in the nursing home. The aides really doted on him, and there were three in particular that they called 'The Island Ladies.' They were from Jamaica, and they loved Henry, and they called him their 'teddy bear,' and he had very caring people around him. His medical needs were for the most part met. So it was a mixed bag.\" On Molaison's postmortem scan \"The scans were beautiful. They were much clearer than what you could see in a living person, partly because we scanned him for so long. You can't scan a living person for hours and hours. But the other thing that made them so spectacular was that there was no movement. If you or I go into an MRI scanner we're still breathing, and our heart is beating, and we might have a twi", "<EM>All Things Considered</EM> brings you the voices of Americans paying their respect to military veterans at Arlington Cemetery and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington this Memorial Day weekend. As in previous years, thousands of Vietnam vets paid tribute with the \"Rolling Thunder\" military parade.", "Our colleague Elizabeth Blair had a lovely piece this morning on Morning Edition about how some very impassioned — and resourceful — young people have funded their summer at the very expensive Interlochen arts camp in northern Michigan. One girl spent months making and selling hairpins fashioned out of soda cans to help pay her tuition. Bass-baritone DeRon McDaniel, whose family has been enduring some very tough times — including losing their house to foreclosure — wrote letters to potential sponsors and gave a recital for donations. Read More And Share Your Experiences With Us It takes a very particular kind of kid to spend time in practice rooms and rehearsals rather than indulge in more traditional summer pastimes, but these enterprising and highly motivated young musicians have that passion on another level altogether. Did you attend Interlochen or another arts camp? Or a specialized arts school? What did you do to fund your passion? Share your memories with fellow Deceptive Cadence readers in the comments section below.", "In this week's podcast of weekends on <em>All Things Considered</em>, the student debt crisis, and the life and death of facts. Plus, the D-Day rehearsal that ended in disaster, remembering the LA riots, and pastor Joel Osteen. Also, \"Glee\" star Chris Colfer's new movie and country singer Carrie Underwood.", "When I first heard that David Byrne and St. Vincent's Annie Clark would collaborate, I imagined a quirky, guitar-based dance band. I never expected an eight-piece brass ensemble or a theremin duet. What's brilliant about their album together, Love This Giant, is what makes collaboration exciting: the desire to explore and challenge. We find both artists outside their comfort zones, making music that couldn't have happened independently of each other. It's unlike anything out there today. Byrne and Clark are taking the album out on tour, too. Last month, we went to the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, N.J., on the final day of rehearsals to get a glimpse into the nature of this joint effort. We saw two visionary artists, one just about twice the age of the other, making music one calculated step at a time. It's a big project, with those eight horn players in constant, choreographed motion as they play songs from the new album, music from Byrne's thrilling catalog (including a stunning version of Talking Heads' \"Burning Down the House\") and St. Vincent songs such as \"Cruel.\" They also worked with choreographer Annie-B Parson, who suggested eccentric dance moves for Byrne, Clark and the eight horn players. In these rehearsals, I could see the alchemy for a perfect two hours of quirk and delight. Watching a rehearsal is a bit like watching a magician rehearse a trick: You risk losing some of the enchantment, but gain insight into the process. It's a literal peek behind the curtain at two artists who generally maintain a mysterious veneer and a cool distance between personality and work — and each other. That was the part I found so interesting. Love This Giant is a true collaboration, a back-and-forth exchange of words and music, yet throughout the rehearsals and the show, there was little obvious eye contact between the duo. The staging — and the music itself — comes off as a work of two artists in parallel, not an amalgam. Sometimes that's a bit of a letdown, but it makes moments when they do come together, like their fiery theremin duet, so thrilling. As this giant work moves from rehearsal space to stages across the country and beyond, those calculated moves — from taped marks on the floor to mental notes in the head — melt away. I saw that happening at their recent show at Strathmore Hall in Maryland. (We'll have some video from that show for you soon.) What Annie Clark says in this video is so true: \"Magic takes planning.\" You're about to see the plan. Credits Producers: Mito Habe-Evans, Bob Boilen; Videographers: Mito Habe-Evans, A.J. Wilhelm; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Supervising producer: Jessica Goldstein; Special thanks to: Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, N.J.; Executive producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins", "Those who walk along the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., on recent Sundays can see a mock-gravesite honoring American soldier killed in the line of duty. Phillip Martin talks with the exhibitor-artist.", "For some viewers, the documentary Mad Hot Ballroom is a trip back to days they might long to forget. Director Marilyn Agrelo shot dance classes and rehearsals at 60 New York City schools, following young partners in an increasingly intense competition featuring the meringue, rumba, tango, foxtrot and swing. Agrelo, who also produced the film, has described it as a love poem to New York. It's about to open nationwide.", "It is hard to imagine a bigger or more highly choreographed spectacle than last year's Olympics in Beijing. But in some ways, China is trying to outdo itself with its 60th birthday celebration, although this time, the event is aimed at the domestic audience. In recent weeks, preparations for the massive National Day Parade on Oct. 1, marking 60 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, have consumed the nation's capital. During weekend rehearsals, the center of Beijing has been locked down, as China's newest battle tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles and self-propelled howitzers roll through the streets, heading for the city's main east-west thoroughfare, Chang'an Avenue. Legions of schoolchildren in spangled costumes have sweated through weeks of rehearsals to join the rest of the 200,000 marchers in the big parade. Dozens of elaborate parade floats will trumpet the country's achievements. It's part military review, part Rose Bowl. Beijingers are used to making way for official events. But this is a maximum security celebration like no other. Restrictions in place for the event include a ban on kite flying. No blimps, model airplanes or carrier pigeons either, apparently because they might interfere with military jets flying over the parade. Residents living along the parade route have been warned not to invite guests over during the event, or watch the rehearsals from their windows or balconies. Following a recent stabbing incident on a downtown street, many department stores have removed kitchen knives from their shelves until after the holiday. Some residents are chafing at all the restrictions. At one intersection, Zhang Juanwen and her friend were stuck behind police cordons with their suitcases. \"The police won't let my friend in to stay with me because she's from out of town,\" Zhang explains. \"Personally, I think the whole parade is unnecessary.\" Nearby, several residents pushing bicycles quarreled with a beefy policeman to let them past the cordon and go home. \"Are you a Chinese or not?\" the agitated policeman yelled at one woman. \"Don't you have any patriotic enthusiasm?\" Inconveniences aside, many Beijingers are looking forward to the celebration. Among them is Railroad Ministry employee Liu Zongyi, who came out to watch the tanks. Last year's Olympics, he says, was like throwing a party for the whole world. But this year's National Day is more of an in-house affair. \"We're not trying to proclaim something to other countries,\" he insists. \"This is simply our own affair. It's not about flaunting our wealth or military power. Chinese are humble and inward-looking.\" Li Shiwen, an employee of the Beijing municipality's culture department, sees it differently. He thinks China is reconsidering its low profile on the world stage. \"Now that we've got power, we've started talking tougher,\" Li observes. \"We dare to speak up where we didn't before. We used to espouse humility and harmoniousness, but that's changing.\" \"It's not so we can bully others,\" he adds, \"but so that we can be treated as equals and not be bullied ourselves.\" Most here agree that the parade is intended to boost patriotism and morale at home. But the idea that any message or event can be strictly for domestic consumption these days seems like a pre-Internet anachronism. There are times when every country turns inward, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world will look away. I headed home after watching the rehearsals and arrived just in time to catch the sound of fireworks. To the south, the sky above Tiananmen Square was bathed in floodlights. In the distance, I caught the final refrain of the patriotic song \"Ode to the Motherland,\" which predicts that: \"From now on, we're headed for prosperity, wealth and power.\" STEVE INSKEEP, host: You may remember the elaborate and spectacular ceremonies at last year's Olympic Games in China. The country may yet outdo itself for the 60th anniversary of the founding of communist China. The big day, known as National Day, is October 1st. The main event will be a massive parade through the streets of Beijing. NPR's Anthony Kuhn sent us this postcard about the ongoing preparations. (Soundbite of tank engines) ANTHONY KUHN: China's newest battle tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles and self-propelled howitzers roll through the streets, heading for the parade rehearsal. Legions of schoolchildren in spangled costumes, who have sweated through weeks of rehearsals, wait to join the rest of the 200,000 marchers in the big parade. Local residents snap pictures from behind police cordons. Beijingers are used to making way for official events, but this is a maximum security celebration like no other. (Soundbite of news broadcast) Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken) KUHN: Television news has announced that no kite flying is allowed for several weeks. No blimps, model airplanes or carrier pigeons, either, apparently because they might interfere with the mi", "\"You have to love dancing to stick to it,\" said the late modern-dance giant Merce Cunningham — and given the grueling daily schedule choreographer Randee Paufve works, it's clear that she's one dancer-choreographer who does. On most days, the California-based Paufve gets up at 5:30 a.m., eats breakfast and drives an hour to teach classes in Marin County. Then she eats lunch, rehearses a bit for that evening's meeting with her troupe, Paufve Dance, and heads back to the East Bay to teach afternoon classes. At 5:30 p.m., when most people are headed home from work, Paufve and her dancers are usually just arriving at one of Oakland's many rehearsal spaces. At one recent rehearsal, Paufve was giving notes about a performance the company had just done; the piece was her latest, a Romeo and Juliet-inspired work called \"That Obscure Subject of Desire.\" Paufve's dancers listened carefully, then tried some new moves. And as they went through their paces, it became clear that they bring a mix of humor and hard work to their rehearsals. They were experimenting with one particular move — dancer Brian Runstrom lowers down partner Katie Kruger with a long trail of red ribbon — when Paufve noted that Runstrom looked more like Rapunzel than Romeo. The entire troupe dissolved into laughter. Doing What Moves You, Even When It Doesn't Pay Paufve says to keep a modern dance company going, you have to inspire its members. Take dancer Rebecca Johnson, who says she knew she had to work with Paufve when she first saw her choreography nine years ago. Johnson and her fellow dancers stick with the troupe — one of hundreds in the U.S. that operate on the margins — even though Paufve can't always pay them. \"Five years ago, I was still kind of fighting that formula — thinking, 'Oh, if I could just find a full-time dance gig,' \" Johnson says. But Paufve's style of movement, which focuses on the relationship between dancers and uses performers of different ages, still speaks intimately to Johnson, and she's made her peace with needing to support herself in other ways. It has taken Paufve herself a long time to make a life in dance. When she was 23, she spent a semester in India, studying one of the traditional dance forms there. When she returned to the States, she realized she was hooked. \"I was also a senior in college,\" says Paufve, laughing at the memory. \"I was freaking out about the rest of my life, and so I picked this really practical solution of becoming a dancer.\" 'Things Completely Unheard Of,' And Things Newly Made Paufve, now 48, sees modern dance as America's own traditional dance form. It has its roots at the turn of the 20th century, with two radical women of the time: Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller. \"They were the women who, along with the suffragettes, they were taking off their corsets and going barefoot and wearing diaphanous clothing and dancing to Chopin,\" Paufve says. They were doing things that were completely unheard of in our grandmother's day.\" But if modern dance was born in the United States, Paufve says it often gets more support elsewhere these days. Over the past 25 years, she says, cutbacks in government spending on the arts have made it even harder to keep nonprofit companies alive. Paufve has a devoted audience, it's worth noting, and her reputation as a choreographer is growing. Her troupe performed in 2006 at one of New York City's premier dance theaters, The Joyce Soho, and earned a good review in The New York Times. At one recent performance, at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco, a couple of hundred fans turned out and gave that recent Romeo and Juliet-inspired piece a strong reception. But ticket sales are never enough to pay all the bills. Paufve keeps her company going by teaching — and with grants, most of which come from small private foundations. (Including one associated with Clorox, the bleach maker, which has its headquarters in Oakland.) And over the years, Paufve has also developed individual donors who support her work. And she has gotten bolder about asking them to help. \"I think it's taken me this long to become fearless about asking for money,\" she says. \"If we're going to survive, you have to ask for it.\" Steps Forward, And Steps In Another Direction Paufve says she's been able to cobble together a middle-class living, which allows her to buy her own health insurance. But she's about to make a major change in her life. She's realized that many of the best choreographers are making a home base at universities, so she's decided to take a tenure-track position as a dance professor at Sacramento State University this fall. She believes it'll be easier, under the new setup, to keep Paufve Dance alive. \"I'm going to be very, very busy, but I can't imagine I'm going to be busier than I have been,\" she says. And then, sounding a bit like a determined general, Paufve adds: \"I want to say that I am nowhere near done. I feel like in some ways that I'm just getting" ]

[ "Pull that up, Jamie." ]

[ "Native Americans make some of the best food.", "We wouldn't have some of the best and worse songs.", "Some of the best recipes come from mafia families.", "some of the best lessons come from the worst teachers" ]

[ "The skylines of the world, an African desert and even the barren landscape of the Arctic have been reimagined as part of an annual skyscraper competition. More than 480 design teams submitted entries to eVolo Magazine's 2015 contest and a jury of experts chose three winners and awarded 15 other designs with honorable mentions from 480 global entries. The first place was awarded to a Polish group called Bomp for its 'natural habitat' Essence Skyscraper, beating the designs for a giant 'Times Squared 3015' concept at the heart of Times Square, a Bio-Pyramid in the Sahara and Cybertopia - a project that blurs the lines between digital and physical worlds. The eVolo Magazine Skyscraper Competition was established in 2006 to recognise 'outstanding ideas for vertical living'. The first place in this year's contest was awarded to a team of Polish designers for its project Essence Skyscraper (shown). The main body of the building is divided into 11 natural landscapes including open floor plans, water floors, fish tanks lifted up to 98 feet (30 metres) above ground, and jungle areas . The eVolo awards were established in 2006 to recognise 'outstanding ideas for vertical living'. Since then, the publication has received more than 6,000 projects that use technology, materials, designs and space in novel and challenging ways to question how 'we understand vertical architecture and its relationship with the natural and built environments.' eVolo said the winners were selected for their 'creativity, ingenuity, and understanding of dynamic and adaptive vertical communities.' The first place this year was awarded to Bomp -  a team comprising of designers Ewa Odyjas, Agnieszka Morga, Konrad Basan, and Jakub Pudo - from Poland for the project Essence Skyscraper. The eVolo awards were established in 2006 to recognise 'outstanding ideas for vertical living'. eVolo said the winners were selected for their 'creativity, ingenuity, and understanding of dynamic and adaptive vertical communities.' First place: Essence Skyscraper by Ewa Odyjas, Agnieszka Morga, Konrad Basan, and Jakub Pudo - from Poland. The proposal is an urban mega-structure with a range of natural habitats. Second place: Shanty-Scraper by Suraksha Bhatla and Sharan Sundar from India. The project wanted to provide housing, work and recreational spaces to the inhabitants of Chennai city’s slum in India. Third place: Cybertopia by Egor Orlov from Russia. His design reimagines the city of the future as the combination of digital and physical worlds - a city that grows and morphs instantly according to its residents needs. The proposal is an urban mega-structure with a range of natural habitats. The designers said their design 'would serve as a place to briefly escape urban life and stimulate diverse and complex experiences.' The main body of the building is divided into 11 natural landscapes including open floor plans, water floors, fish tanks lifted up to 98 feet (30 metres) above ground, and jungle areas. Second place went to Suraksha Bhatla and Sharan Sundar from India for their Shanty-Scraper. The project wanted to provide housing, work and recreational spaces to the inhabitants of Chennai city’s slum in India. It was designed to use debris from the city's construction industry including pipes, corrugated metal sheets and timber. The designers explained: 'India’s Slum population is expected to surge to 104 million, or 9 per cent of the national population by 2017. 'As the nation’s disparity between the rich and poor deepens, the number of people living below poverty line has doubled over the last decade. 'Shanty-Scraper aspires to provide a unique solution. The vertical squatter structure is comprised of post-construction debris [and] the double height semi enclosures serve as utility yards and social gathering spaces.' They said that the 'lifts' are divided into multiple plank platforms made from a simple mechanically-driven lever and pulley. Third place was awarded to Egor Orlov from Russia for his project Cybertopia which reimagines the city of the future as the combination of digital and physical worlds - 'a city that grows and morphs instantly according to its residents needs.' He explained: '\"Tomorrow\" we expect a completely different topography of the city. 'It will be a map which includes cyber worlds with intrinsic geography, laws of physics, qualities and even its own residents. It is as though landscapes of computer games have woven into the city space. 'The residential area of the skyscraper represents a constantly growing and developing spatial complex...printed by 3D printer or by drone construction. Second place went to Suraksha Bhatla and Sharan Sundar from India for their Shanty-Scraper (concept drawings shown left and right). The project wanted to provide housing, work and recreational spaces to the inhabitants of Chennai city’s slum in India. It was designed, in particular, to use debris from the city construction industry including pipes, corrugated metal sheets and timber . The Bio-Pyramid: Reversing Desertification design (pictured) was created by David Sepulveda, Wagdy Moussa, Ishaan Kumar, Wesley Townsend, Colin Joyce, Arianna Armelli and Salvador Juarez from the US. They said it is a non-conventional skyscraper that not only operates as a 'bio-sphere' but also as a gateway from Cairo across the Sahara Desert . Meanwhile, the Noah Oasis: Rig to Vertical Bio-Habitat (pictured) was created by Chinese designers Ma Yidong, Zhu Zhonghui, Qin Zhengyu and Jiang Zhe. 'Our design transforms the original rigs into vertical bio-habitats, which aims to exert instant response to oil spills, restore damaged eco-systems and offer shelter from future disasters,' the team said . The 15 honorable mentions include skyscrapers designed for the arctic, structures that intend to reverse desertification, abandoned oil rigs transformed into bio-habitats, and atmosphere laboratories among others. The third place was awarded to Egor Orlov from Russia for 'Cybertopia'. It reimagines the city of the future as the combination of digital and physical worlds - 'a city that grows and morphs instantly according to its residents needs' These include the Bio-Pyramid: Reversing Desertification, created by David Sepulveda, Wagdy Moussa, Ishaan Kumar, Wesley Townsend, Colin Joyce, Arianna Armelli and Salvador Juarez from the US. They said their Bio-Pyramid is a non-conventional skyscraper that not only operates as a 'bio-sphere' but also as a gateway from Cairo across the Sahara Desert. The Unexpected Aurora in Chernobyl design was submitted by Zhang Zehua, Song Qiang and Liu Yameng from China. This project aims to build a skyscraper for people who return to Chernobyl and is fitted with air and water purification systems. The skyscraper itself is powered by solar energy. 'The skyscraper is just like a Garden of Eden, a new and safe life will start from here,' the designers said. Exploring Arctic: Multifunctional Complex in Dikson Harbour is based on transforming an Arctic hub port. 'It is necessary to create comfortable working and living environment of the Northern Sea Route transport infrastructure,' said designers Nikolay Zaytsev and Elizaveta Lopatina from Russia. 'The initial idea is to design a separate anthropogenic microcosm, detached from the harsh Arctic environment, but based on the dynamic equilibrium between people and nature. Instead of building on the ground, one entry imagined a structure built into the clouds to control the weather. Called Cloud Capture, Taehan Kim, Seoung Ji Lee and Yujin Ha from Korea said their design would catch and redistribute clouds 'where they are affluent to scarce'. This could transform the 'arid-yellow deserts into fresh green spaces'. A similar design was submitted by Shi Yuqing, Hu Yifei, Zhang Juntong, Sheng Zifeng and He Yanan from China called Air Monument: Atmosphere Database. They said the structure would obtain atmosphere samples throughout the year to monitor changes and highlight any concerns. Meanwhile, the Noah Oasis: Rig to Vertical Bio-Habitat was created by Chinese designers Ma Yidong, Zhu Zhonghui, Qin Zhengyu and Jiang Zhe. 'Our design transforms the original rigs into vertical bio-habitats, which aims to exert instant response to oil spills, restore damaged eco-systems and offer shelter from future disasters,' the team said. 'The original rig will become a reactor centre, where the spilled oil will be converted into catalyst and building materials, as well as a recreational centre and research facility.' Underwater, the structure will be secured to pipes. And in the US, a group of designers proposed a self-contained city featuring a stadium, forest, farm and beach on the top of a mile-high skyscraper in New York City. The Unexpected Aurora in Chernobyl design (pictured) was submitted by Zhang Zehua, Song Qiang and Liu Yameng from China. This project aims to build a skyscraper for people in Chernobyl fitted with air and water purification systems. The building is powered by solar energy . Exploring Arctic: Multifunctional Complex in Dikson Harbour is based on transforming an Arctic port (pictured). 'It is necessary to create working and living areas for the Northern Sea Route transport infrastructure,' said Russian designers Nikolay Zaytsev and Elizaveta Lopatina . The designers of the Exploring Arctic: Multifunctional Complex in Dikson Harbour (pictured) continued: 'The initial idea is to design a separate anthropogenic microcosm, detached from the harsh Arctic environment, but based on the dynamic equilibrium between people and nature' The giant 'Times Squared 3015' concept would be built inside a huge vertical tower at the heart of Times Square and would measure 5,687ft tall (1,733 metres). It was designed by Blake Freitas, Grace Chen and Alexi Kararavokris. The group said that as the planet continues to overpopulate, their entry explores spatial, environmental and experimental possibilities of vertical living. The proposed community would usher in a 'new kind of daily life', where farmers tended to crops which provided oxygen and food, visitors attend a football game by catching an elevator to the third floor and residents walk through a redwood forest thousands of feet above the city. The 2015 Skyscraper Competition was sponsored by Autodesk, real5D, and v2com and was judged by a panel including architects Massimiliano Fuksas and Benedetta Tagliabue and last year's winner Yong Ju Lee. Instead of building on the ground, one entry imagined a structure in the clouds to control the weather. Called Cloud Capture (left), Taehan Kim, Seoung Ji Lee and Yujin Ha from Korea said their design would catch and redistribute clouds 'where they are affluent to scarce'. A similar design was submitted by Shi Yuqing from China called Air Monument: Atmosphere Database (right) that would obtain samples during the year . And in the US, a group of designers proposed a self-contained city in New York City. The 'Times Squared 3015' concept would be built inside a huge tower in Times Square, would measure 5,687ft tall (1,733 metres) and was designed by Blake Freitas, Grace Chen and Alexi Kararavokris . Concept design drawings (pictured left and right) show the massive skyscraper would contain a beach, stadium, farm and residential apartments. The proposed community would usher in a 'new kind of daily life', where farmers tended to crops which provided oxygen and food, visitors attend a football game by catching an lift to the third floor, and residents walk through a redwood forest above the city ." ]

[ "New York (CNN) -- There are some very happy chefs and restaurateurs, cookbook authors, food journalists and other outstanding names in food and drink. They are the latest winners of the James Beard Foundation Awards, which are often referred to as the Oscars of the food world. The ceremony was held at New York's Lincoln Center on Monday night. The awards were established in 1990 by the nonprofit that bears the name of one of America's founding food writers and cooks. Although the journalism, media and cookbook categories call for self-nomination (and an entry fee), anyone can suggest a chef or restaurant via the foundation's Web site, jamesbeard.org, during an open call in the fall. Though there is no cash reward, a win -- or even a nomination -- can substantially increase the buzz for business, according to foundation President Susan Ungaro. Below are this year's winners: . Chef & Restaurant Awards . Best New Restaurant Marea in New York (chef-owner Michael White) Outstanding Chef Award Tom Colicchio of Craft in New York . Outstanding Pastry Chef Award Nicole Plue of Redd in Yountville, California . Outstanding Restaurant Award Daniel in New York (chef-owner Daniel Boulud) Outstanding Restaurateur Award Keith McNally of Balthazar, Lucky Strike, Minetta Tavern, Morandi, Pastis, Pravda and Schiller's Liquor Bar . Outstanding Service Award Alinea in Chicago, Illinois (chef-owner Grant Achatz) Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional Award John Shafer and Doug Shafer of Shafer Vineyards in Napa, California . Outstanding Wine Service Award Jean Georges in New York (wine director Bernard Sun) Rising Star Chef of the Year Award Timothy Hollingsworth of the French Laundry in Yountville, California . Great Lakes Koren Grieveson of Avec in Chicago, Illinois . Mid-Atlantic Jeff Michaud of Osteria in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . Midwest Alexander Roberts of Restaurant Alma in Minneapolis, Minnesota . New York City Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park . Northeast Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier of Arrows in Ogunquit, Maine . Northwest Jason Wilson of Crush in Seattle, Washington . Pacific David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos, California . South Michael Schwartz of Michael's Genuine Food & Drink in Miami, Florida . Southeast Sean Brock of McCrady's in Charleston, South Carolina . Southwest Claude Le Tohic of Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada . Book Awards . American Cooking \"Real Cajun\" by Donald Link . Baking and Dessert \"Baking\" by James Peterson . Beverage \"Been Doon So Long\" by Randall Grahm . Cooking from a Professional Point of View \"The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts\" by the French Culinary Institute with Judith Choate . General Cooking \"Ad Hoc at Home\" by Thomas Keller . Healthy Focus \"Love Soup\" by Anna Thomas . International \"The Country Cooking of Ireland\" by Colman Andrews . Photography \"Seven Fires,\" photographer Santiago Soto Monllor . Reference and Scholarship \"Encyclopedia of Pasta\" by Oretta Zanini de Vita . Single Subject \"Pasta Sfoglia\" by Ron and Colleen Suhanosky . Writing and Literature \"Save the Deli\" by David Sax . Cookbook of the Year \"The Country Cooking of Ireland\" by Colman Andrews . Cookbook Hall of Fame \"A Book of Middle Eastern Food\" by Claudia Roden . Broadcast Media Awards . Audio Webcast or Radio Show \"The Kojo Nnamdi Show,\" host: Kojo Nnamdi . Television Show, In Studio or Fixed Location \"French Food at Home with Laura Calder,\" host: Laura Calder . Television Show, On Location \"Chefs A' Field: King of Alaska,\" host: Rick Moonen . TV Food Personality Andrew Zimmern, \"Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern\" Television Special \"Food Trip with Todd English,\" host: Todd English . Television Segment \"ABC News Nightline,\" host: John Berman . Video Webcast \"The Greenmarket: One Farmer's Story,\" Seriouseats.com . Journalism Awards Craig Claiborne . Distinguished Restaurant Reviews Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly . Food Blog SeriousEats.com, Ed Levine . Food-Related Columns Rachel Wharton, Edible Brooklyn . Magazine Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs Anya von Bremzen, Saveur, \"Soul of a City\" Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes Francine Maroukian, Jon Reiner and staff of Esquire, Esquire, \"How Men Eat\" Magazine Feature Writing without Recipes Barry Estabrook, Gourmet, \"The Price of Tomatoes\" M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award Francine Prose, Saveur, \"Faith and Bacon\" Multimedia Food Feature Kevin Pang, Chicagotribune.com, \"The Cheeseburger Show\" Newspaper Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs Jared Jacang Maher, Westword, \"A Hunger to Help\" Newspaper Feature Writing Cliff Doerksen, Chicago Reader, \"The Real American Pie\" Newspaper Food Section The Washington Post, Joe Yonan . Reporting on Health, Environment, or Nutrition Rowan Jacobsen, EatingWell, \"Or Not to Bee\" Website Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurants, or Nutrition Chow.com, Jane Goldman . Writing on Spirits, Wine, or Beer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, Minnesota Monthly, \"Chardonnay Uncorked\" Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America: Leah Chase (chef/owner, Dooky Chase Restaurant, New Orleans, Louisiana); Jessica B. Harris (author and historian, California); Paul C.P. McIlhenny (president/CEO, McIlhenny Company, Avery Island, Louisiana); David Rockwell (founder/CEO, Rockwell Group, New York); L. Timothy Ryan (president, Culinary Institute of America, New York); Susan Spicer (chef/owner, Bayona, New Orleans, Louisiana) America's Classics Al's French Frys (owners: Bill Bissonette and Lee Bissonette, South Burlington, Vermont); the Bright Star (owners: Jimmy Koikos and Nicky Koikos, Bessemer, Alabama); Calumet Fisheries (owners: the Kotlick and Toll gamilies, Chicago, Illinois); Gustavus Inn (owners: JoAnn and David Lesh, Gustavus, Alaska); Mary & Tito's Cafe (owners: Mary Gonzales and Antoinette Knight, Albuquerque, New Mexico) Design and Graphics Awards . Outstanding Restaurant Design Andre Kikoski Architect, the Wright (New York) Outstanding Restaurant Graphics Pandiscio Co., the Standard Grill, NYC .", "Momentum is a key ingredient of sporting success. Being ‘on a roll’ can be the difference between winning and losing. And it’s the same in broadcasting. If a programme gets off to a flier there’s often little that can stop it. BBC’s The Great British Bake Off is a perfect example. It was an instant, if surprising, hit when it began on BBC2 and is now a BBC1 blockbuster. In its 50th year, BBC’s Match of the Day, which also started on BBC2, has a definite spring in its step. A strong World Cup folded into a celebration of Match of the Day’s half-century. The nation’s great and good queued up to wish the programme well. That, and the return of live FA Cup ties this season, and you sense an upbeat mood in the BBC’s football ranks. Gary Lineker (second right) is the current ringmaster of Match of the Day, and is perfect for the role . Jimmy Hill became Match of the Day presenter in 1973 and fronted over 600 shows . A montage celebrating the 50th anniversary shows all of the Match of the Day presenters . Its Saturday evening showcase is definitely feeding off the credence and confidence its anniversary has given it. And it also seems to be trying that little bit harder. The look is sharp and clean and a use of virtual reality to fill the foreground studio shots with the day’s key players works well, as does the enhanced graphics support for its pundits. Executives have used Alan Hansen’s retirement to cast the net around a range of former players turned rookie broadcasters. Phil Neville — fully recovered from his World Cup co-commentary nightmare — Danny Murphy, Robbie Savage, Ruud Gullit, Neil Lennon, and Martin Keown are now regular team-mates alongside Alan Shearer. Rio Ferdinand is on the programme too, but more often in a QPR shirt than in an open-necked number of his choice. The post-match analysis is insightful and contemporary — heat maps, player positions and touch maps, all available for selection. And if any encouragement is needed for the new ‘boys’ to play at the top of their game, just watching the opening titles probably does the job — or scares the living daylights out of them. That montage of the programme’s history, accompanied by TV’s most recognisable theme, is the challenge set for those in front and behind the cameras. The graphics for Match of the Day have come on a long way since the early years . Match of the Day 2 is also popular - pictured (l-r) are Gordon Strachan, then host Adrian Chiles, and Kevin Day . Brian Barwick spent 18 years at the BBC, and was an editor for Match of the Day . Saturday was not blessed with outstanding fixtures but there was still plenty for presenter Gary Lineker, Shearer and Savage to go at. Lineker is the ringmaster, seemingly involved in everything on the show, and it works. Shearer talked of the noted improvement of Hull City. ‘It takes time to establish yourself,’ he said. He could have been talking about himself but the fact he ‘led’ the analysis on the opening three matches suggests he’s made it. Robbie Savage rarely spoke in the first half-hour, but when he did it was a salvo at the officials’ highly dubious awarding of a West Brom penalty at Anfield. ‘Absolutely shocking decision,’ was his opener. Savage tends to speak in headlines but, with more experience and guidance, may find less is more. No bad thing. Sunday’s Match of the Day 2 offered four more games. The programme has its own identity and subtle differences, even down to Mark Chapman presenting right to left as opposed to Lineker’s left to right. All available graphics support and visual techniques were at hand for Neville, Trevor Sinclair and Keown, resplendent in shirt and tie, to unpick the action and the weekend’s output was rounded off with Angel di Maria winning the September Goal of the Month — a much-loved feature that began in 1970. Remember Ernie Hunt’s famous ‘donkey-kick’ goal? And that’s the trick of the in-form Match of the Day: blending the best of the old with the best of the new.", "It is the rolling countryside that inspired John Constable's most celebrated works, including his masterpiece - The Hay Wain. But residents fear that 'Constable country' is under threat because of a proposed development which could bring 160 houses to the small Suffolk village where the landscape painter was born. Developers have put forward plans for a mix of 50 affordable homes, 94 town houses and several apartments on the outskirts of East Bergholt. The homes would be built just over a mile from Flatford, where Constable painted The Hay Wain in 1821 as well as The Leaping Horse and The Lock. Developers hope to build near Flatford, where John Constable painted The Hay Wain (pictured) in 1821 . Constable recognised that his primary inspiration was the landscape surrounding Dedham Vale and once said: 'I should paint my own places best'. Residents are determined to protect the artist's legacy and have raised concerns that the great artist may have sketched the fields where the homes could be built. Patricia Wright, secretary of the East Bergholt Society, told The Times: 'We don't want a big development dumped down on a corner of the village. We would like a modest number of small developments.' 'Constable wrote, 'Those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful.' So are we, and we are determined that his legacy will not be lost on our watch.' Up to 160 homes could be built at the site in East Bergholt (shaded red area) - just over a mile from Flatford Mill, where Constable painted the Hay Wain . This is the spot from which Constable set up his easel to make preliminary sketches for The Hay Wain (pictured today) She conceded that the fields were on the opposite side of the village to Flatford Mill but said that they still deserved to be protected. The village sits within the Dedham Vale and Stour Valley - an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is 20 minutes from Ipswich. Developers Bidwells and Knight Developments have not yet submitted a planning application, as they are waiting for the results of a survey. Constable recognised that his primary inspiration was the landscape surrounding Dedham Vale and once said: 'I should paint my own places best' 'Once all the views are taken into account we will submit the application to Babergh District Council,' said the developers. Peter Dent, of the campaign group Action East Bergholt, said: 'We are not against development totally but 144 homes in one hit is absurd.' Constable completed The Hay Wain in 1821 and nearly 200 years on, you can still stand at the exact spot where he set up his easel beside the River Stour at Flatford. The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821, but failed to find a buyer. But when it was exhibited in France, with other paintings by Constable, the artist was awarded a Gold Medal by Charles X. For many years the Flatford site has been in the hands of the National Trust, which organises 'Constable Country' tours of Flatford and the surrounding countryside. The Mill was once owned by John Constable's father and the artist made the surrounding area the subject of many of his works. Constable was largely self-taught, but became a student at the Royal Academy schools at the age of 24. He exhibited from 1802 at the Royal Academy in London and later at the Paris Salon and influenced the Barbizon School and the French Romantic movement. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, Constable was never financially successful. He did not become a member of the establishment until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. Constable's View on the Stour near Dedham which was completed in 1822. An x-ray of the original sketch of the painting shows two boys fishing - something which did not appear on the final painting . Another one of his most famous works is The Leaping Horse (pictured) once described by Lucian Freud as 'the greatest painting in the world'", "Canada's Alice Munro -- called the \"master of the contemporary short story\" -- won the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences announced Thursday. The prize committee compared the 82-year-old author to Anton Chekhov, the 19th century Russian who is considered one of the greatest short story writers in history. She's the first Canadian-based writer to win the literature award. Saul Bellow, who won it in 1976, was born in Quebec but moved to the United States as a child and is regarded as a U.S. author. Munro is the 13th woman to receive the literature prize. \"On behalf of all Canadians,\" Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a tweet, \"congratulations to Alice Munro.\" After the prestigious award was announced, the Nobel committee said on Twitter that it hadn't been able to contact Munro and left a phone message to tell her the good news. But The Canadian Press contacted her, and she was quoted as saying the award was \"quite wonderful\" and she was \"terribly surprised.\" \"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win,\" she said, according to a Toronto Star story quoting The Canadian Press. Doug Gibson, Munro's publisher, spoke to CNN affiliate CTV and read a statement on the author's behalf. \"I am amazed and very grateful. I am particularly glad that winning this award will please so many Canadians. I'm happy that this will bring more attention to Canadian writing,\" she said, according to Gibson. Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded for work that led to complex computing . 'Our Chekhov' Munro's work long has been likened to Chekhov's. Another acclaimed author, American Cynthia Ozick, has referred to Munro as \"our Chekhov.\" The Nobel committee noted that \"some critics consider Munro a Canadian Chekhov.\" \"Munro is acclaimed for her finely tuned storytelling, which is characterized by clarity and psychological realism,\" the committee said. \"Her stories are often set in small town environments, where the struggle for a socially acceptable existence often results in strained relationships and moral conflicts -- problems that stem from generational differences and colliding life ambitions. \"Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning,\" the committee said. The author has won many honors over the years, including the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. \"Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before,\" the Man Booker judging panel said at the time. Lives near her childhood home . Munro, who lives in the southwestern Ontario town of Clinton, was born near there in Wingham, where her father was a fox farmer and her mother was a teacher. She started writing stories in her teen years and studied journalism and English at the University of Western Ontario. Munro took a breather from her studies when she got married in 1951. She and her husband moved to Victoria, British Columbia, and opened a bookstore. She published in various magazines starting in the 1950s. In 1968, she published \"Dance of the Happy Shades,\" a book-length collection of short stories. \"In 1971 she published a collection of stories entitled Lives of Girls and Women, which critics have described as a Bildungsroman,\" or a coming-of-age work, the Royal Academy of Sciences said. Other well-known works include: \"Who Do You Think You Are?\" (1978), \"The Moons of Jupiter\" (1982), \"Runaway\" (2004), \"The View from Castle Rock\" (2006) and \"Too Much Happiness\" (2009). A story in the 2001 collection \"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage\" was the basis of the 2006 film \"Away from Her,\" directed by Sarah Polley. Munro gained world renown for writing about everyday people. \"Here we have a world prize being won by someone who writes about housewives in Vancouver, booksellers in Victoria, bean farmers in Huron County and accountants and teachers and librarians -- ordinary Canadian people, and she turns it into magic,\" Gibson said. 'God particle' theorists receive Nobel Prize in physics . 'Dear Life' Munro's most recent short story collection is titled \"Dear Life.\" The New Yorker magazine, in an interview with her last year, said it includes \"several narratives in which women in some way shake off the weight of their upbringing and do something unconventional.\" She was asked whether it was \"normal for girls from rural Ontario to go to university\" when she did, noting that in her stories, there \"is often a stigma attached to any girl who attracts attention to herself. ... \" \"I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was 'call attention to yourself' or 'think you were smart.' My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson's disease. (The rule was for country people, like us, not so much for towners.) I tried to lead an acceptable life and a private life and got by most of the time OK,\" she said. Munro was asked how she came to focus on short stories. \"For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel. Then I found that they were all I could do, and so I faced that. I suppose that my trying to get so much into stories has been a compensation,\" she said. Munro has said in the past that she wanted to stop writing but continued. \"I do stop -- for some strange notion of being 'more normal,' taking things easy. Then some poking idea comes,\" she said. \"This time, I think it's for real.\" Last year's literature prize . Last year, Chinese writer Mo Yan received Nobel Prize in literature. Activists interpreted it as a nod to the hungry literary tastes in modern China, which could help spark more freedom. The beloved Chinese author -- whose pen name means \"not talking\" -- has captivated his countrymen by intertwining fantasy and gritty everyday life. Mo plies his trade in a country where running afoul of party lines could lead to censorship. His work packs a punch, but he walks a fine line. He is considered a writer within the system and even has embraced official restrictions on writing. And he's a Communist Party member who holds a vice-chairman spot in the state-sanctioned China Writers Association. Prize history . The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded 106 times since 1901. In recent years, Munro has been mentioned as a contender, along with Japanese author Haruki Murakami and U.S. writer Philip Roth. It is almost always awarded to one author and has only been shared four times, which stands in stark contrast to the science Nobels, which two or three scientists often share. The youngest recipient was Rudyard Kipling, who is known for his work \"The Jungle Book.\" He was 42 when he received the prize in 1907. The oldest was Doris Lessing, who received it at the age of 88. Incidentally, many think Winston Churchill received the Nobel Peace Prize, but he did not. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1953. Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel created the prizes in 1895 to honor work in physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The first economics prize was awarded in 1969. Nobel medical prize goes to 2 Americans, 1 German . Nobels this week . Two Americans and a German shared this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday. Americans James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman, and German Thomas C. Sudhof were honored for discoveries of how the body's cells decide when and where to deliver the molecules they produce. And on Tuesday, two men who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle 50 years before its discovery took the prize for physics -- Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom. Higgs and Englert's theories of the elusive particle explained what gives matter its mass and played a key role in completing scientists' understanding of the nature of all matter. On Wednesday, the Nobel Prize in chemistry rewarded three scientists for work leading to the computer programs used today to precisely calculate how very complex molecules and huge chemical reactions work. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday, followed by the final prize, the award for achievements in economics, on Monday.", "Danish restaurant Noma, crowned the world’s best restaurant three years running in one poll, on Friday apologised after 63 guests fell ill with sickness and diarrhoea after visiting the haute cuisine establishment. According to the Danish health authorities, the guests fell ill during a five-day period in February and the outbreak could have come from a sick kitchen staff employee. Health inspectors criticised the restaurant for not alerting authorities soon enough and for not taking proper action after the employee was struck ill upon returning home after work. Elite restaurant: But diners at Noma in Copenhagen were struck ill after eating there last month . Owner: Noma's co-owner, founder and executive chef Rene Redzepi pictured outside the Copenhagen restaurant in 2010 . Starters . Malt flatbread and juniperMoss and cepCrispy pork skin and black currantFruit leather (with pickled rose petals)Cooked musselsCheese cookie, rocket and stemsPotato and duck liverDried carrot and sorrelCaramelized milk and cod liverPickled and smoked quails eggRadish, soil, and grassGrilled cornSorrel leaf and cricket pasteMainsCooked fava beans and beach herbsCucumber and dill with cream and elderflowerTartar and sorrel with juniper and tarragonCauliflower and pine with cream and horseradishPike perch and stems, with cabbage and elderberriesThe hen and the eggSweetbread and bitter greens, with celeriac and mushroom . DessertBlueberries and antsPear tree . The two-Michelin-star restaurant . recognised in a report that internal procedures had not been good enough . and said an e-mail from the employee reporting his sickness had not . been seen. 'We are in the business of making . people happy and taking care of our guests, so this is the worst thing . that could happen to us,' Noma managing director Peter Kreiner told . Reuters. 'Since the outbreak we have worked . closely with the health authorities to get to the bottom of it and find . the source of infection. 'We are extremely sorry about all of . this and I have personally been in dialogue with all the guests who were . affected and discussed compensation for them,' he said, adding there . was never any danger of the restaurant being closed down. Food poisoning can have a major impact on top-end restaurants. In 2009 British chef Heston Blumenthal . received negative headlines and was forced to close his three-star . restaurant The Fat Duck for around three weeks after hundreds of guests . became ill. Noma, known for experimental . ingredients such as ants and fermented grasshoppers, has been voted . winner of The S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna World’s 50 Best Restaurants . in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Guests flock to the Danish restaurant . from all over the world and pay around £600 for a 12-course set menu for . two including appetisers, treats to finish, wine pairing and a tour of . the kitchen to meet some of the 50 chefs. When the restaurant releases monthly bookings, two-seater tables are usually snapped up in less than an hour. For the last three years it has . finished on top of Restaurant magazine's list of the best restaurants in . the world, winning its second Michelin star in 2007. The distinguished French food guide's decision not to award the restaurant a third star last year was met with criticism. By comparison Gordon Ramsay's eponymous Chelsea restaurant was awarded three stars. The restaurant is known for relying on fresh and locally sourced products. Danish newspaper Ekstra . Bladet said that a member of the kitchen staff had been preparing food . while ill and subsequently vomited. The worker apparently alerted the restaurant to the incident within a week, but it did not respond to his report. Organic: The £290-a-head restaurant is dependent on natural and locally sourced ingredients ." ]

[ "This paper uses scenario analysis method to construct short- term scenario and long- term scenario and adopts analytic hierarchy process( AHP) to analyze the each scenario. Research shows that fund is the most important factor for short- term scenario,while environmental condition can influence industry development in long- term scenario,and Wuyi new area should give priority to develop tourism,business service and forest industry." ]

[ "The Industrial Program Comprehension Challenge is a two-year-old track of the International Conference on Program Comprehension that provides a venue for researchers and industrial practitioners to communicate about new research directions that can help address real world problems. This year, 2011, a scenario-based challenge was created to inspire researchers to apply the best \"archaeological\" techniques for understanding the complexity of industrial software, and foster appreciation for the delicate \"anthropological\" scenario which drives the behavior of the software engineers, management, and customers. Participants had two months to work on the challenge and submit write-ups of their solutions. Acceptable submissions were exhibited as posters, while the best solutions were presented during the Industrial Challenge conference session. This new challenge format gives researchers the opportunity to present their novel techniques, tools and ideas to the community.", "Based on field survey data,and combined with the biological and ecological habits of plants,this paper made a selective analysis on the ornamental characteristics of the wild ornamental plant resources in Wuyi Mountain Nature Reserve of Fujian Province,and discussed the application of them in landscape greening in order to provide reference for the development and utilization of the wild ornamental plant resources in Wuyi Mountain.", "The 17th NCCPC is a very important meeting held in the key period of China's reform and development.Learning well the document in detail,understanding its new spirits,creating the new idea from practice,promoting the development step by step and striking the new victory and make an effort to create a new situation of Wuyi University development.", "The aim of this study is to suggest the strategy and policy to promote world class game industrial complex through the analysis of game contents business ecosystem in Seongnam. As a result of analysis, At present of the game contents industry in Seongnam as ecosystem is challenged in many-side as followings. 1)Lack of interaction between core game contents businesses and extended network businesses in same area. 2)Imbalanced relationships between game contents conglomerate and small and medium sized businesses. 3)Insufficient game contents optimized human resource and development program. This study provides a stepping stone for regional industrial ecosystem of game industry and new possibilities of application about regional industry analysis.", "The Iron & Steel industry is one of the biggest industrial CO2 emitters in the European Union. The present work analyzes the potential for the improvement of the energy efficiency and CO2 emission reduction for this sector up to 2030. Three scenarios are analyzed: baseline scenario (BS) representing the current evolution of this sector and two alternative scenarios (AS1 and AS2) to study the sensitivity of fuel and resource prices and CO2 emission prices. In the integrated production route all the scenarios highlight the importance of breakthrough technologies, such as Top Gas Recycling, to obtain performance improvement in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In the secondary production route conditions under BS scenario are enough for a suitable incorporation of the best technologies in this route making insensitive the possible incentives due to higher prices in fuel and resources or CO2 emissions.", "What is the importance of fossil fuels in the cement industry and how will they be designed in the future? Their increasing scarcity is a threat to the cement industry over the next 100 years and will lead to the search for new resources. .", "This paper proposes a new way of handling the uncertainties present in transport decision making based on infrastructure appraisals. The paper suggests to combine the principle of Optimism Bias, which depicts the historical tendency of overestimating transport related benefits and underestimating investment costs, with a quantitative risk analysis based on Monte Carlo simulation and to make use of a set of exploratory scenarios. The analysis is carried out by using the CBA-DK model representing the Danish standard approach to socio-economic cost-benefit analysis. Specifically, the paper proposes to supplement Optimism Bias and the associated Reference Class Forecasting (RCF) technique with a new technique that makes use of a scenario-grid. We tentatively introduce and refer to this as Reference Scenario Forecasting (RSF). The final RSF output from the CBA-DK model consists of a set of scenario-based graphs which function as risk-related decision support for the appraised transport infrastructure project.", "After Bhopal disaster, emergency planning in an industrial area has become inevitable. The off-site emergency plan is an integral part of any major hazard control system. Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion (BLEVE) leads to fatal consequences. This paper highlights some salient features of the emergency scenario, which ultimately leads to fireball with enormous pressure wave all around.", "The lead-time for the retailer's inventory system may be changed with different suppliers in chinapsilas low technology industries. A multi-agent simulation system is proposed to simulate this category of dynamic supply chain. In the simulation system, the retailer's stock was controlled by (S, s) policy, and then four categories of supply chain scenarios were suggested. Four propositions were achieved by the simulation system. With the decrease of s, the retailer's profit has different tendency under the four scenarios. Optimal (near-optimal) s, correspond to maximum profits, shows significant difference in the four scenarios. The results of the paper demonstrate that s can be significantly changed and financial benefits can be achieved while the retailer cooperates with different suppliers under the four supply chains.", "Human factors engineering and quality management are different research branches in the field of industrial engineering.A basis for interaction based on the concepts and techniques of human factors engineering and quality management with some practical examples of cooperative effect is defined in this paper.The specific challenges about the quality management in manufacturing and service are presented to demonstrate that the human factors analysis of quality problems leads to new tends for integrated development.", "By using system dynamic models,a quantitative study on how dietary adjustment effects demand and supply of Chinese cereal is conducted,which forecasts the population,land,irrigated water use,cereal yield and cereal demand in China during 1990 to 2050 under base scenario. The methodology of scenario analysis is used to illustrate the difference of base scenario and green and grey scenario under different policies. The result shows:( 1) population polices should be seriously taken,and agriculture technology improvement should be strengthen;( 2) the gap between cereal supply and demand will be a long standing problem,and demand of cereal for feed will increase dramatically in the future;( 3) a proper diet should be reasonable guide to ensure people's health and reduce the gap between cereal demand and supply which lead to the safety of national strategy.", "The strategic marine emerging industries in China are facing rare development opportunities. Study found that we should select the strategic focus of the strategic marine emerging industries scientifically. Hence, we should consider both the general principle of selecting leading industries and the principle of selecting emerging industry comprehensively, make adaptive innovations in the light of the characteristics of China′s marine economy and the current stage of development, and focusing on marine engineering equipment, marine biology, sea water utilization and marine new energy industries to create strategic marine emerging industries.", "Heuristic algorithms for mining large databases are being adapted to enable discriminatory analysis to be performed on biological data, accelerating the progress in understanding biological diversity and its industrial implications. A range of knowledge discovery algorithms are being applied to yeast characteristics data, providing new research leads and decision making tools. The research presented here is part of a project funded by the BBSRC 1 which involves the curation and data mining analysis of yeast species and strain data, including DNA data for 700+ yeast species. There is special industrial interest in the investigation of yeast species capable of causing food spoilage, including emerging spoilage food agents.", "This study combines quantitative and qualitative research methods to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of superior performance among the largest firms in the global oil industry during the 1954--2008 period by identifying new stylized facts. The combination of parametric and non-parametric analysis displays cyclical patterns of the different aspects of performance dynamics. Appreciative theorizing through qualitative historical analysis uncovers causal explanations that are based on an interplay of corporate, industrial, and institutional change, that leads to a succession of four competitive regimes. Copyright 2011 The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.", "In order to manipulate the new-industrialization of regional industrial structure easily,this paper adopts the binary relative evaluation method.Taking new-industrialization as the regional economic capability,a DEA model is presented to evaluate the industrial structure.A special new-industrialization evaluation system is constructed and applied in Heilongjiang province.The analysis shows that the model and index can distinct the regional subjective effort,and have high operability.The model can evaluate the regional new-industrialization capability nicely and can be used in practice.", "In recent years, general aviation industry has been listed as new economic growing point by a number of provinces and cities. China's regional general aviation development evaluation system coping with industry development is rare. China's regional general aviation development evaluation system is built from the economies scale, industry maturity, industry contribution, infrastructure and policy environment, calculating the 2012 index by cluster analysis and AHP_ entropy. It is found that the development of China's general aviation industry has over-reliance on government policy, meanwhile the imbalance of the industrial system reduces the national competitiveness. Developing gaps between different regions have been initially apparent, local resources and government support are the leading factors.", "The Industry 4. 0 with characteristics of Internet and manufacturing services is researched. The importance of Cyber-physical systems in the process of leading intelligent manufacturing is pointed out. The Industry 4. 0will definitely change the existing industrial structure,and the intelligent manufacturing will be reborn with full of new vitality.", "In the advancement of industrialization,many designs of Commodities don't consider their impacts to the environment,they lead serious environmental pollution,make the environment facing the destruction that never met.In the view of Extended Producer Responsibility,people become focusing on a new way of designing:green design,it has been mentioned as a kind of enterprise responsibility.This paper will analysis Green Design in our country,and show some suggestions that can advance it.", "Requirements specifications often make use of a number of scenarios that are interrelated and that depend on each other in many ways. However, they are often treated separately, one by one. We propose a new type of diagrams, named dependency diagrams, which are able to illustrate the various kinds of relationships existing between scenarios. We make use of a scenario matrix for each scenario and we describe the transformation process of scenarios into state machines, based on the information in the scenario matrices, and that in the dependency diagrams. The result is a number of state machines that can be used for detailed design models and code can further be generated from them. Using our approach, we can bridge the gap between analysis and design and we can bring the developer one step closer to the implementation.", "This paper studies an approach to identify representative operating and contingency scenarios for the design of underfrequency load-shedding (UFLS) schemes. In small isolated power systems, contingency scenarios are outages of generating units. Not only N-1 outages are considered, but simultaneous outages of several units must be considered. Cluster analysis and classification trees are used to group scenarios in terms of system frequency and power-system parameters and to identify representative scenarios. The approach has been applied to the design of the UFLS scheme of one of the Spanish isolated power systems. Clustering techniques yielded to satisfactory results, i.e. representative operating and contingency scenarios can be identified. In addition, classification trees are able to classify new operating and contingency scenarios according to the clusters obtained.", "The objectives of this project were to: ::: - Provide a short review of Queensland’s construction industry, including trends and change drivers impacting upon employment and training of apprentices and trainees. ::: - Identify and analyse innovative strategies used (or considered) in Australia and elsewhere to reduce the impact on the training of apprentices and trainees during periods of industry and economic downturn. ::: - Utilise scenario planning methodology to develop and explore plausible futures in the form of three future scenarios for the Queensland construction industry that could markedly affect the training of apprentices and trainees in the Construction industry. ::: - Provide recommendations to assist Construction Skills Queensland in dealing effectively with the implications of the outcomes of this project.", "This paper presents the possible development scenario of the Polish agricultural sector till 2020. It also assesses the impact of macroeconomic growth, CAP reforms and worldwide policies towards the agriculture on this development. The scenario is build using an extended version of the Global Trade Analysis Project model GTAP which is a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy. The analysis shows that the growth of Polish agri-food sector observed after accession to the European Union will be prolonged in the future and will lead to an increase of agri- food sector incomes. However, it is expected that the positive trade balance in agri-food products will decrease significantly in consequence of the world trade liberalization and the EU policy stimulating biofuels production.", "To develop the northeast and deepen the local reform of traditional industry base is the new hot point in recent China. This article is based on the present conditions of the traditional industry base of the northeast and combined with the new policy trend , starting with the innovation of property relations in the State-owned business enterprises and discussing the importance as well as the characteristics of the innovation property relation and some related questions.The article also bring forth some new opinions about the reform ,which would be consulted during the innovation of property relations in the State-owned business enterprises.", "In this Paper we analyse whether the emergence of electronic money is likely to affect the optimal size of monetary unions. We distinguish between two possible future scenarios. In one scenario, electronic money supplants the existing publicly supported monetary networks (including the national payments systems). This scenario is likely to lead to larger monetary areas. It is also likely to lead to monetary instability. In a second scenario, electronic payments systems free ride on the existing national payments systems, which remain firmly in place. We argue that in this case also, the size of unified monetary areas is likely to increase.", "This article carries out some theoretical analysis on the financial information industry's generation and development from industry convergence perspective. This article deep dives the evolvement mechanism of financial information industry and points out that finance information industry is a new industry. This article also proposes that during the development of finance information industry, China has big chances. It emphasis that finance information industry is a new industry; China should aware of this and grasp the opportunities to develop China's finance information companies to increase the competence of finance globalization.", "The paper focuses on the possible outcomes of privatization and considers how different scenarios of privatization lead to varied macroeconomic performance. Alternative scenarios involve changes in efficiency, taxation, wages, income distribution and interactions with the world economy. The consequences of pursuing different scenarios of privatization are simulated using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. Illustrative simulations with the model are carried out for a representative economy, intended to depict a country at the outset of transition. The simulation results suggest that privatization can exert a favourable or adverse impact on the whole economy, depending on the way in which the performance of the newly privatized sector changes. The simulation analysis for Poland shows that some developments accompanying privatization processes might have contributed to recession and budget deficit.", "Using economic location quotient,Kuznets ratio,and stratum clustering analysis,the paper investigates the per capita GDP and the people's disposable income of the 14 cities/districts of Gansu Province in the period of 1990-2004.Based on the result of the investigation the paper further proposes methods to be adopted in the economic augment of Gansu Province.", "Mineral resource-based industrial cluster is confronted with risk of resource curse, short industrial chain, single industrial structure and poor sustainability. On the basis of advantages of natural resource, policy, science and technology,and education, energy chemical industry of north Shaanxi has come into being mineral resource-based industrial clusters with characteristics of exploitation, processing and utilization of coal, petroleum and natural gas. Nevertheless, mineral resource-based industrial clusters of north Shaanxi faces risk of inferior capability of independent innovation,unreasonableness of structure and layout of industries, and high cost of environment. According to current situation of north Shaanxi, policies of enhancing capability of regional independent innovation, optimizing industrial structure and establishing industrial park based on cyclic economy can be adopted to propel sustained development of mineral resource-based industrial clusters of north Shaanxi.", "The Aerospace industry is seeking continuous improvements with respect to cost reduction and reduced time to market. Global competitive pressures are driving organisations to adopt concurrent product development processes. Whilst these processes have led to reductions in re-work and with overcoming congestion in the design process, they do have limitations in a distributed environment. This paper describes a new scenario for overcoming some of the limitations of current processes, using a Core Team - Task Team structure. The software to support this new scenario is also described. Special attention is given to the interaction between the organisation and technology, the human factors and the product development process. Some of these issues are discussed together with their possible solutions and their impact during the implementation of this process.", "This thesis should present CAD/CAM programs in footwear industry, a little bit of their history and evolution, but mostly about the present situation. and I will also mention some of new tendencies. In practical part I will present the leading programs in each field of footwear CAD/CAM systems and evaluate how the programs used in the footwear industry meet the requirements of shoemakers. And what the developers should aim at. This thesis should present CAD/CAM programs in footwear industry, a little bit of their history and evolution, but mostly about the present situation. and I will also mention some of new tendencies. In practical part I will present the leading programs in each field of footwear CAD/CAM systems and evaluate how the programs used in the footwear industry meet the requirements of shoemakers. And what the developers should aim at.", "The nature and size of the solar industry in New Mexico was investigated, the potential market in New Mexico for solar systems was estimated, and conclusions are drawn from the analysis which might be used by public policy officials in trying to expand this industry and its markets. The economic feasibility of solar energy in New Mexico is explored in detail. (MHR)", "A framework to develop inputs for production visualization and decision analysis was developed for a manufacturer of windows to renovation market (custom products). The proposed framework creates a pre-planning phase for analysis and production decision taking in a company currently implementing a new ERP system. This planning uses linear programming to model different scenarios for analysis as: (i) minimize the PVC material consumption by modeling the CSP (Cutting Stock Problem), (ii) minimize the assembly time in the line or optimizing the flow based on the window configurations, (iii) minimize the assembly workers solving the ASBL (Assembly Line Balancing) problem. A complete case study is presented for the CSP problem on scenario (i)." ]

[ "Me and my operation: The laser gun that burns away floaters from your vision. Around 75 per cent of the over-60s suffer from floaters — spots and lines that hover in our line of vision. For some they are a mild annoyance, but for others they can severely affect vision. Company director Neil Simpson, 58, from Ashford, Middlesex, underwent a new treatment, as he tells ANGELA EPSTEIN. Floaters can be a result of the ageing process and for some can severely affect vision. THE PATIENT." ]

[ "This entry was posted in Herbal Remedies, Natural Cures and tagged cures for eye floaters, eye floaters, eye floaters treatments, how to treat eye floaters naturally, natural cures for eye floaters.", "Related Articles: 1 Causes of Eye Floaters. 2 Eye Floaters Treatment. 3 Diabetic Retinopathy - Eye floaters can be a symptom of this disease. 4 Diabetic Retinopathy Treatment. 5 CMV retinitis - Symptoms include eye floaters.", "Uveitis is inflammation of the eye. Symptoms include blurred vision, eye pain, eye redness, photophobia, and floaters. Treatment may involve prescription; Eye Floaters. Eye floaters are deposits or condensation that forms in the eye's vitreous humor. These deposits cast shadows on the retina, and as the eye moves, the; Sunburn (Sun Poisoning)", "Nearsightedness is a common eye problem that causes blurry, distant vision. Benign eye floaters. Benign eye floaters are tiny floating specks or cobwebs in your vision. Cataracts. A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eye and can cause blurry or dim vision. Diabetes, type 2", "Blurry vision, ghost images and nighttime halos around lights all can be warning signs of eye problems. A flood of spots and floaters in your field of vision. Usually, eye floaters are due to a benign, age-related condition called vitreous detachment.", "Clumping in the vitreous humor is the most common cause of floaters, and it generally occurs with aging. Inflammation in the back of the eye, posterior uveitis, can be caused by an infection or an inflammatory disease, and it results in floaters. Bleeding or vitreous hemorrhaging is more serious, and it can be the result of an injury; one of the symptoms is the appearance of floaters.", "Squiggly Lines in the Eyes They are known as floaters or benign floaters or vitreous floaters: A blurry spot that seems to drift in front of the eyes but does not block vision. The blur is the result of debris from the vitreous of the eye casting a shadow on the retina. We call them Squiggly Lines! More info below.", "I have had a squiggly-line floater in my left eye for some time now. (several years I suppose), but have recently noticed the development. of a few new floaters, shaped like dots, one in my left eye towards. the upper left, and one in my right eye towards the bottom right. If I look hard enough, I can see a number of additional floaters.", "They are most apparent against a light background. If you experience flashes or floaters, we recommend you have an eye examination. Watch out for these conditions: 1 Floaters are the specs, bugs, and threads that dart in and out of your field of vision. 2 Floaters occur as the eye ages and, while annoying, are usually harmless. 3 Floaters that appear suddenly or are accompanied by flashes of light can signal a retinal tear or detachment. 4 Early diagnosis of retinal tears and 5 ... Float", "Squiggly Lines (or Floaters) in the Eyes Floaters, or squiggly lines, are deposits of various size, shape, consistency, refractive index, and motility within the eye's normally transparent vitreous humor." ]

[ "You don't know me or the student, why are you still here? You aren't being helpful. Either you have a gift idea or not." ]

[ "Some Med student went head first into a tunnel in a cave. He got stuck and died. His body is still there.", "Somehow managing my time as a med student, radio DJ and social healthcare worker", "ochem\n\nthe class that makes or breaks pre-med students", "Some meds have unfortunate side effects.", "They listen a lot and when they talk what hey say is decisive and relevant.", "Stress is a big one. Some meds can also screw with it.", "Start observing different subreddits and start to work out what the culture of each subreddit is.\n\nAfter a while you may grow in confidence and start adding relevant commenting on some of the posts in some of the subreddits.\n\nAnd if you are eventually feeling confident enough with something relevant you might decide to post it.", "What fan base? Is he even relevant anymore?", "As long as it's apparent that you put some thought into your gift, I'm sure your sister will apreciate your gift", "There are some good ideas there. Thanks!", "What relevance does someone else’s coffee preference have on me?", "This depends on what type and magnitude of mental issues, along with other normal relevant variables.", "Search for relevant, active subs.", "Pay off some of my student debt", "Most of what D.A.R.E. taught to elementary students.", "You have a hell of a fight in front of you. Therapy and some meds can help.", "Meds", "pre-birth", "Take schizophrenia meds", "The thumbnail is not in the video or not relevant at all.", "Yep! I'm on some great meds and its like I don't have arthritis at all. 😄", "I have no idea what it is?", "Depends what the survey is about, try facebook groups relevant to your topic always worked for me", "Can confirm, bought some dope with a 25 dollar xbox gift card once.", "Relevant username, I guess", "The pre-birth stage.", "Fuckin oath, mate. I love the idea of that so much, that if I was ever gifted with that ability, I'd share it with you. :)", "In pre-production", "Pre-ordering games.", "It's trial and error, some meds work for some and make others worse. It's not always a perfect science and it can take months to find meds right for you but usually once you do you mellow out and feel a little better. Some make you nauseous or unable to cum sadly", "This has relevance to this post how exactly?", "Pre-School Teacher" ]

[ "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is likely to announce this weekend that it has chosen a new president to succeed Kweisi Mfume, who resigned abruptly after nine years as chief executive to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. Former Verizon executive Bruce S. Gordon is expected to take Mfume's place and is the only confirmed candidate for the job." ]

[ "President Bush credited an amicable relationship with first-year NAACP President Bruce Gordon in deciding to address the group. Farai Chideya talks to Gordon about President Bush's speech, and the NAACP's new relationship with the White House.", "Topics on Monday's roundtable include: the NAACP chooses new leader; what happens if Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist steps down; and free rent offered to teachers in a troubled Maryland neighborhood. Guests: Joseph C. Phillips, actor and syndicated columnist; Laura Washington, <EM>Chicago Sun-Times</EM> columnist; and George Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service.", "National Urban League president and CEO Marc Morial and Bruce Gordon, president and CEO of the NAACP, talk about the NAACP annual convention, the latest news on the Voting Rights Act, and the Essence Music Festival's move from New Orleans to Houston.", "The NAACP has found its new leader. And instead of picking a \"politician, minister or civil rights icon,\" the group has chosen 35-year-old \"lifelong activist\" Ben Jealous. The AP has more: Jealous was born in Pacific Grove, Calif., and educated at Columbia University and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has worked as a community organizer for the NAACP; as managing editor of a black newspaper in Mississippi; executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the country's largest group of black community newspapers; and as director of Amnesty International's U.S. Human Rights Program. Since 2005, Jealous has served as president of the San Francisco-based Rosenberg Foundation, a private institution that supports civil and human rights advocacy. Despite his own successes, Jealous said blacks in America still have a hard row to hoe, and that the gains of recent decades have created a false sense of progress. What do you think of the NAACP's decision? What should Pres. Jealous do to maintain the organization's relevance? From Today's Show:NAACP Names New PresidentCan New Leader Jump Start the NAACP? Flashback:Julian Bond vs. Kevin Powell: What's Next for Civil Rights Movement?", "The NAACP turned 100 on Feb. 12. Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, talks about being a part of a new generation of African-American leaders, as well as his take on leading the NAACP on its centenary.", "The NAACP has been protesting Donald Trump's pick of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general. David Greene talks to Alabama NAACP State Conference President Benard Simelton.", "If the time might be right for Sen. Barack Obama to become the country's first black president, then maybe the struggling NAACP ought to consider a white person to lead the organization. How about brother Bill Clinton? (Commentator John McCann is a columnist for The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C.) CHERYL CORLEY, host: I'm Cheryl Corley and this is NEWS & NOTES. The recent resignation of NAACP President Bruce Gordon has some calling for big changes at the troubled civil rights organization. Commentator John McCann is one of them. (Soundbite of applause) JOHN MCCANN: That's right. That's right. Times have changed. (Soundbite of cheering) MCCANN: It's a new day. (Soundbite of cheering) MCCANN: A black man owns an NBA franchise. (Soundbite of cheering) MCCANN: So again, I say to you, my friends, that a black man can be president of these United States of America. (Soundbite of cheering) MCCANN: Just like a white man can be president of the NAACP. (Soundbite of cricket chirping) MCCANN: Wait, I thought this was supposed to be a new day? I mean, if it's high time for a brother like Barack Obama to be this country's first black president, then maybe the struggling NAACP ought to consider a white person, yes, to lead the organization. To outright reject the idea is to concede that Jim Crow era white folks were right in thinking that black people are just this whole other species. We can't have it both ways - well, unless you really do believe, like one of my aunts, that black folks and white folks aren't made of the same stuff. Then again, maybe my aunt is not as crazy as she sounds, since the Food and Drug Administration did in fact approve some heart medicine that work better in black folks than it did in white people. And even if that alone was conclusive, that black people and white people are made of different material, you still have to account for the white folks in this world with soul. Take singer Teena Marie talking about ooh, la, la, la and two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash looking like he's ready to make it three straight. Now don't you look at me like that, like I'm way off base for putting entertainment and sports in the same conversation about race and politics, because it's those NAACP board members who already have provided theatrical value by turning the once-upon-a-time serious workings of the organization into a game. If we are to believe recently resigned NAACP President Bruce Gordon, he would have even needed permission to sharpen his pencil. I mean, Gordon claims those board members jumped all in his stuff because he didn't get their approval prior to raising a couple million dollars and some change for Hurricane Katrina relief. Listen, don't confuse what I'm saying. The point is not that white people are smarter than black people; I'm just saying look at what tradition has done for the NAACP after all these years. There's a reason membership is declining. That reason is leadership. What makes sense to me is for the NAACP to avail itself to the best candidates. Who is to say that the right guy isn't a white guy? Because remember the prevailing thought was black coaches couldn't win Super Bowl until a black coach was given a chance. And there was the unspoken rule that black folks spoke only slang and Ebonics, but then Oprah Winfrey was given a chance to open her mouth and now the whole world tunes in to marvel at her eloquence. We're talking about roles traditionally hailed by white people reversed for occupation by black folks. So using that same logic, what's so unthinkable, really, about a white person being down for the calls? You mean to tell me black America's favorite soul brother Bill Clinton can't relate to African-Americans? Then again, choosing Bill Clinton would undermine my whole argument because the point here is the NAACP being run by, well, a white guy. CORLEY: John McCann is a columnist for the Herald-Sun in Durham, North Carolina.", "NAACP President Bruce Gordon resigned from the organization Sunday, after just 19 months on the job. Many hoped he would lead the venerable civil rights organization in a new direction. Gordon cited conflicts with the NAACP's board as his reason for leaving.", "Following last year's abrupt resignation of former president Bruce Gordon, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has chosen 35-year-old Ben Jealous to lead the organization. For more, Farai Chideya speaks with News & Notes contributor, Mary Frances Berry, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. Berry was part of the search committee that selected Jealous. FARAI CHIDEYA, host: From NPR News, this is News & Notes. I'm Farai Chideya. The search is over. On Saturday, the NAACP chose a new president and CEO. His name is Benjamin Todd Jealous, and he's only 35 years old, a civil rights leader who is not part of the civil rights generation. In fact, he'll be the youngest leader ever of the 99-year-old civil rights organization. Jealous was formerly the director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International. He also ran the National Newspaper Publisher's Association. And for more, we have regular News & Notes contributor Mary Frances Berry. She's a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, the former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a member of the NAACP's Search Committee. Hey, Mary. Dr. MARY FRANCES BERRY (Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania): Hello, Farai. CHIDEYA: So the NAACP board took an eight-hour closed-door session to make its choice. So what do you think were some of the pros and cons that were debated in choosing Ben Jealous? Dr. BERRY: Well, Ben Jealous is of course young, and he has good experience for a man that age. But you can't help being young. And to some people, and I think that's right, sometimes it's very risky when you get someone who has less experience than some other people who may be candidates. So that's something you debate. The other thing is to debate whether he meets the needs of the organization at this particular time. The NAACP needs money, it needs members, it needs vision, it needs to work with other organizations, especially some of the younger people who are running organizations and who do things like blogging and using the internet and all kinds of things that are new in terms of technology. So they had to debate whether to go with somebody who fit the old mold, or partly fit it, or to take a risk on a guy who's young, exciting, energetic, has good experience, well educated, vision, and is committed to civil rights. CHIDEYA: Well, you know, you just ticked off a lot of things. Money, vision, internet strategy. You know, that's a lot to tackle. Let's tackle vision first. You know, the NAACP's last president, Bruce Gordon, only lasted 19 months in office. And when we spoke with the former, well with the current, chair of the board of the NAACP, he said - Julian Bond said that he wanted to keep the organization civil rights-focused. You know, Bruce Gordon really wanted to focus on black economics. So what do you think about that divide? What is the vision that you want to see the NAACP develop and/or what do you think that Ben Jealous wants to do? Dr. BERRY: Well, Ben Jealous, insofar as I was able to tell on the Search Committee, understands that economic opportunity is connected to all other aspects of civil rights in general, that they're not really too separate. There's a nexus between race and class, and that these things both need to be worked on. And he understands that, so he wouldn't be in the business of trying to separate the two, or argue about whether one was more important than the other. He also understands that the NAACP is concerned about trying to help the people who have been more or less behind in the African-American community. That is, if you have to make a choice in terms of program, try to help those who have already made it, even though they may suffer discrimination and you can work on that. He would like to give a hand to those who still are the poor, those who are in communities that are devastated both by violence, by lack of jobs, drugs and all the things that we know. And I think he understands all that. CHIDEYA: Now, money. That's a big one. It's been tight for the NAACP. Do you think that he has the fundraising chops that the organization needs? Dr. BERRY: Well, he persuaded us on the Search Committee that he has both the connections, the commitment, the knowledge of people who want to be donors to the kind of vision that he has and that the NAACP has going forward, and that he understands the financial challenge. So one of the big specifications that we were looking for is somebody who was interested in fundraising, had a track record, understood it, and knew how to do it. And he has been running a small foundation and he has connections with people who are in the fundraising circles. So we think he can meet that need too. And it's also connected to membership. Increasing membership, which is connected to vision, that's why I ticked off all those things at the same time, is also connected to whether you can raise money or not. CHIDEYA: The ", "NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, about Tuesday's meeting between the NAACP and President-elect Joe Biden.", "Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain addressed the annual meeting of the NAACP on Wednesday in Cincinnati. He faces an uphill battle in his effort to bring African-American voters to his side. His Democratic challenger, Barack Obama, is the first African-American to be nominated by a major party. DEBORAH AMOS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Renee Montagne is away. I'm Deborah Amos. STEVE INSKEEP, host: And I'm Steve Inskeep, good morning. It would be easy to assume that black voters and John McCain have very little to discuss in 2008. The Republican is running against Barack Obama, who soon becomes the first ever African-American presidential nominee. That did not stop McCain from showing up at the annual meeting for the NAACP. It's a meeting that he skipped one year ago, but at this time he reached out, and that meeting was being held in the battleground state of Ohio. It's a state where President Bush got just enough of the African-American vote to help him win in 2004. We have more this morning from NPR's Audie Cornish. AUDIE CORNISH: Senator John McCain opened his speech with an apology of sorts. Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona): And I hope you'll excuse me for passing on the opportunity at your convention last year and not being here. As you might recall, I was a bit distracted at the time dealing with what reporters uncharitably described as an implosion in my campaign. (Soundbite of laughter) Sen. MCCAIN: But I'm very glad that you invited me again. CORNISH: It was a departure from the response the NAACP has had from Republicans lately. Last fall all but one of the ten Republicans running for president turned down the group's invitation to debate. Most in this audience also remember that President Bush showed up here as a candidate in 2000, then didn't come back for five years. Connecticut delegate Sheila Hayes says it would've been a real insult if McCain hadn't shown up. Ms. SHEILA HAYES (Delegate): I would hope that if he did become president of the United States, that he would not do what Bush did to this convention for so many years. I'm hoping this is a step in the right direction for the Republicans, that they are willing to sit and listen to our concerns. And I too would hope that he would embrace our issues should he be elected as president. CORNISH: The senator chose to tread lightly on civil rights issues. He mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King but didn't revisit his own vote against a federal holiday for the slain civil rights leader. By focusing his attention on education and the economy, McCain drew attention to issues in which black voters have been in sympathy with the GOP in the past. McCain pushed for a merit-based pay program for teachers, more money for online education, and more school vouchers to facilitate school choice. Sen. MCCAIN: Some parents may choose a better public school; some may choose a private school; many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity. CORNISH: There were no jabs at Senator Obama and no mentions of the Iraq War. Neither would have gone over well with this crowd, which mostly responded with polite and occasional applause. While the NAACP is officially non-partisan, Barack Obama T-shirts were almost an unofficial uniform in the hall. There's a devotion to the Obama candidacy and his constituency that is hard to overstate, and the pressure is on if you're a black Republican. Reverend MALITA SCOTT(ph) (National Black Republican Association): It's not easy being a black conservative Republican, whether he was running or not. CORNISH: That's the Reverend Malita Scott. She's staffing the booth at this convention for the National Black Republican Association. Scott and her colleague, Richard St. Paul, spend the day handing out CDs with speeches from black conservatives and literature detailing the various civil rights laws that have passed throughout American history under Republican leadership. St. Paul says having McCain actually attend helps him make his case. Mr. RICHARD ST. PAUL (National Black Republican Association): It's never a lost cause because not everybody thinks the same regardless of what ethnicity they are. You know, that's important to recognize. I've had people walk past our National Black Republican booth and say, hey, I'm happy you're here. I agree with you. Or hey, you know, I don't like Obama because, you know, he's a pro-choice candidate. You know, we're not homogenous in our thinking. CORNISH: So Senator McCain is reaching out. He's been to Alabama's Black Belt, to Memphis, and now to the NAACP. That enables black Republicans like Scott and St. Paul to hope that even in this year others will join them in reaching back. Audie Cornish, NPR News, with the McCain campaign.", "Ed Gordon is joined by Bruce Gordon, president and CEO of the NAACP and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Topics include: a minimum wage increase is voted down in the Senate, and President Bush addresses the NAACP Convention.", "Host Bob Edwards talks with Shannon Reeves, president of the Oakland chapter of the NAACP about the group's national conference that concluded last night in New Orleans. Reeves talks about the problems facing African-Americans today and the struggle to keep the NAACP relevant to new generations.", "NPR's Tony Cox talks with Ellie Gunderson, a sophomore at Georgetown University. Gunderson, who was just elected president of the campus' NAACP chapter, explains the reaction she's getting from students <em>and</em> from NAACP chairman Julian Bond.", "The venerable civil rights organization, the NAACP, is in the process of looking for a new chief. Commentator Todd Boyd believes the NAACP should do some soul searching as it searches for a new leader. Todd Boyd is a media commentator, author and professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television.", "The NAACP, America's oldest civil rights group, is replacing its president, Cornell William Brooks, and planning a \"transformational retooling,\" according to the group's board of directors. Brooks, who has been the president of the NAACP for three years, will not be retained once his contract is up at the end of June, the chairman and vice chair of the board of directors say. The NAACP says the change is part of \"an organization-wide refresh.\" The group is changing its structure and tactics in response to what it calls \"audacious challenges\" and \"today's volatile political, media and social climates.\" Brooks has been a high-profile leader of the group, engaging in protests — even getting arrested during a sit-in. The search for a new leader of the group will start immediately, chairman Leon Russell and vice chair Derrick Johnson told reporters on a conference call. In the meantime, Russell and Johnson will handle day to day operations, they say, and carry out a listening tour. \"We want to be informed by those who are the people we serve,\" Russell said. \"And to do so we have to see them, we have to meet them, and we have to listen to them.\" Explaining the choice to replace Brooks, Russell and Johnson didn't identify a particular thing that Brooks had done wrong — or even one thing that the NAACP, as a whole, had been doing wrong. But they said the group needs to be stronger in advocacy and education, and better equipped to support local activism. Brooks told the New York Times he was \"baffled\" by the choice not to extend his contract. The NAACP, once the most prominent voice for the rights of black Americans, has recently been accused of losing relevance as new groups — like the Black Lives Matter movement — take the spotlight. In 2015, NPR's Adrian Florido reported on the generational shift, noting that Brooks gave a speech forcefully rebutting the idea that the NAACP is out of date: \"Brooks gave a passionate defense against critics who he said think of the NAACP as a diminished organization: 'We do not crawl on the ground! We do not fall prostrate before problems! We are not relegated to the dust! We are not insects! We are an American iconic institution! We are the NAACP!' \"It is still one of the nation's most influential black organizations. After all, both Presidents Obama and Clinton attended this week's convention. So why the need to defend the NAACP so vigorously? \"For years now, some activists have said the NAACP has fallen behind the times. They recognize the crucial role it played in ending legalized discrimination during the Civil Rights Era. But they say it has been less effective in countering racism today, while Black Lives Matter and other protest movements have exploded.\" Brooks was arrested earlier this year in Alabama at a protest against the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. The Associated Press reports that Ernest L. Johnson Sr., president of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference, celebrated Brooks' leadership, saying Brooks \"brought some young energy to this 108-year-old organization.\"", "What now for Kweisi Mfume and the NAACP? He's stepping down as president of the nation's oldest civil rights group. NPR's Tavis Smiley talks to Mfume about his nine-year tenure with the NAACP, and the relevance of the group in today's political and social climate.", "The country's oldest civil rights organization begins its annual convention Saturday in Philadelphia. NPR's Wade Goodwyn speaks with NAACP President Cornell William Brooks.", "The NAACP hosts a rally this weekend in Washington D.C. with hundreds of other organizations. They're trying to promote good jobs, education and greater equality for black voters. NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous talks to Steve Inskeep about the march, midterm elections and the tea party.", "President Barack Obama addressed the NAACP annual meeting on Thursday. The national convention, held in New York City, marked 100 years since the civil rights organization began its fight for equality on behalf of African-Americans. NAACP board chairman Julian Bond offers a recap of the speech and responds to criticism that the organization is no longer relevant. MICHEL MARTIN, Host: I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, during her confirmation hearings this week Judge Sonia Sotomayor was repeatedly asked about how her past involvement with a civil rights group would color her performance on the bench. We hear from the new leader of another such group, the oldest Latino civil rights organization, The Mexican American Legal Defense And Educational Fund or MALDEF. But first, this week the NAACP celebrates 100 years of fighting racial discrimination. And last night President Obama recognized the milestone with an address at the group's national conference. BARACK OBAMA: There is a reason why the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob. It's because there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child's God-given potential. (SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE) MARTIN: But the very success that President Obama represents has some questioning the mission and the future of the NAACP. Here with us to talk more about that is NAACP chairman Julian Bond. He, of course, attended the speech last night and he joins us from New York. Welcome, thank you so much for joining us. JULIAN BOND: My pleasure. MARTIN: What did you think of the president's speech? BOND: Oh, it was fabulous. He touched all the right notes. If you had been there and heard the crowd respond to him, you'd know that we loved it. MARTIN: I was going to ask what the mood was there last night. I assume that members particularly appreciate the fact that the president attended on his first term in office, unlike President Bush, who I believe was five or six years in before he attended one of the group's conventions. So, how was he, how was he received? BOND: President Obama just a year ago at our convention that he would help us celebrate our 100th this year. And we held him to his promise and of course he kept his promise. MARTIN: There are some who are taking note of the president's call to this group to spend more time with their children, be more attentive to their children's education. I was just listening to some of the conversation about it on the morning talk shows. There were some who are saying, why was that message needed to this particular group? Did you feel that way? BOND: I don't think it's needed for this particular group, I think it's needed for all of people who have children. I mean every parent should do that. I didn't think it was something that black people don't do and need to be reminded to do. I thought it was a message for every American. MARTIN: In his speech last night, the president also mentioned discrimination experienced not just by African-Americans but by gays, by Muslims, by Latinos. How did the members respond to his sort of broader discussion of discrimination and intolerance experienced by other groups? BOND: I think enthusiastically. You know, the NAACP has always been interracial and interfaith from it's beginning 100 years ago until today. We've always thought that if we attack discrimination aimed at racial minorities that the victories benefit all Americans, make the country better. So, this was a welcoming - a welcomed message rather. And again, as they did to almost everything the president said, they responded enthusiastically. MARTIN: The president also kind of linked his achievement as president to the foundation laid by groups like the NAACP and NAACP in particular. But there of course are those who now say that with the President Obama occupying the highest office in the land, what is the need for a group like the NAACP? And of course I'm going to ask the same question to Thomas Saenz, who is following our conversation, the new president of MALDEF. What do you say to that, Chairman Bond? BOND: I say that we're never been the national association for the advancement of one colored person. We instead advocate for all people of color and, of course, remember that white people are people of color as well. And secondly, that just because we have a black president who can open the door to Air Force One, that doesn't mean his children can swim in a pool in Philadelphia. And as long as that's true, you need an organization like the NAACP and like MALDEF. MARTIN: What are your - what are your priorities now going forward in the - this is the beginning of the next 100 years for the NAACP, presumably. What are your priorities going forward? BOND: Well, next February my term as chairman expires. And I announced Sunday night that I wouldn't run again. I've doing this for 11 years and when I started my hair was black and we had a", "The NAACP — which at 108 years old must balance both its storied legacy as the nation's oldest civil rights group and the potential for irrelevance amid a fresh wave of racial justice groups born of social media such as Black Lives Matter — decided to shake things up a bit on Saturday. The organization announced its new president and CEO and its intention to alter its tax status to a non-profit category that permits more aggressive political lobbying. Forty-nine-year-old Derrick Johnson is familiar not only with the organization but also with the post he was unanimously elected to Saturday for a three-year term. Johnson had served as interim president and CEO since July. In February, he had been elected as vice-chairman of the board of directors. Before that, he served as state president of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP. During a phone call with reporters, Johnson also said the NAACP's national office would soon transition from the 501(c)3 non-profit status it currently holds to become a 501(c)4. The change will lift significant restrictions on the NAACP's ability to engage in political lobbying. IRS rules permit political actions by 501(c)4 groups, though not as their \"primary activity.\" Speaking with reporters, Johnson said the decision was in line with one of his organization's top priorities: promoting candidates and issues in local and Congressional elections ahead of next year's midterms. He added that the change would also allow the NAACP to speak to the needs to African-Americans across the country in an increasingly political climate. The NAACP said in a statement that it chose Johnson believing he could help the organization reinvent itself to more vigorously respond to \"new threats to communities of color emerging daily and attacks on our democracy.\" After more than a century in operation, the NAACP continues to face questions about its ability to connect with a new generation of younger, more technologically savvy racial justice advocates. Black Lives Matter leader DeRay Mckesson said he had seen the NAACP's name recognition on the wane during protests in Ferguson, Mo. three years ago. \"There was a younger person than me who was, like, just budding 20. And he was like, what is NAACP? And we were, like, shocked,\" he told NPR's Hansi Lo Wang in July. Johnson told reporters Saturday that, while the organization doesn't disclose its membership count, its rolls have seen growth in the past two years. He has previously conceded, however, that the NAACP needs to draw more young members, specifically those between the ages of 21 and 35. The NAACP made headlines in August when it issued a travel advisory for the state of Missouri, saying visitors should \"show extreme caution.\" The organization had never before done so for a single state. The move was in response to a newly-passed state law that made discrimination lawsuits harder to win, as well as racial incidents at the University of Missouri and statistics indicating black drivers were significantly more likely to get pulled over. Johnson was interim president in August when a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. turned deadly and provoked an equivocal response from President Trump on the moral standing of protesters marching to defend a Confederate monument. \"We shouldn't have a president - we shouldn't have a country that tolerates this type of situation,\" he told NPR's Morning Edition at the time. \"We have lived through this. We should've learned from our history. And there's no reason for us to repeat this history again.\" Perhaps signaling his willingness to also perform activism over more contemporary mediums, Johnson responded to Trump via Twitter.", "The board of directors for the NAACP announced it has selected Cornell William Brooks as its new president and CEO. \"Mr. Brooks is a pioneering lawyer and civil rights leader, who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Association,\" Roslyn M. Brock, Chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors, said in a statement. \"We look forward to leveraging his legal prowess, vision and leadership as we tackle the pressing civil rights issues of the 21st century.\" Brooks is a fourth-generation ordained minister and formerly worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. In 1998, he ran for Congress in Virginia. Brooks is replacing interim chief Lorraine Miller, who has been the caretaker since Benjamin Jealous ended his five-year term last year. \"In our fight to ensure voting rights, economic equality, health equity, and an end to racial discrimination for all people, there is much work to do,\" Brooks said in a statement. \"I look forward to working with the dynamic board and staff, and continuing the important work of the Association in advancing racial and social justice and equality for all.\" Brooks will be formally announced as the NAACP's CEO at the organization's July gathering in Las Vegas.", "President Obama delivers the keynote address at the NAACP's convention Thursday night in New York. It's the 100th birthday of the nation's oldest civil rights organziation.", "Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, reflects on the biggest events from 2016 in order to look forward into the new year.", "Despite a seemingly polite relationship just prior to the 2000 election, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People relationship with President Bush has turned frosty. Bush has snubbed repeated invitations to address NAACP meetings. NPR's Tavis Smiley speaks with NAACP leader Kweisi Mfume.", "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is holding its annual convention in Philadelphia this week. For much of its 106-year history, it has been the nation's preeminent voice for civil rights and social justice. Among the topics of discussion this week: recent events in Baltimore and Ferguson. But NAACP leaders have also addressed claims that their organization is losing relevance, especially for young people who are coming of age in an era of online activism and new protest movements like Black Lives Matter. On Monday, South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn stood at the convention's main podium. \"Sometimes you hear it discussed that the NAACP is outdated,\" he said. That \"all of its leadership are old fogies who are better sent to their rocking chairs.\" But that's not the case, he says, noting that the organization's chairwoman \"ain't but 50 years old. That's pretty young in my books.\" In a speech a few minutes later, Brooks gave a passionate defense against critics who he said think of the NAACP as a diminished organization: \"We do not crawl on the ground! We do not fall prostrate before problems! We are not relegated to the dust! We are not insects! We are an American iconic institution! We are the NAACP!\" It is still one of the nation's most influential black organizations. After all, both Presidents Obama and Clinton attended this week's convention. So why the need to defend the NAACP so vigorously? For years now, some activists have said the NAACP has fallen behind the times. They recognize the crucial role it played in ending legalized discrimination during the Civil Rights Era. But they say it has been less effective in countering racism today, while Black Lives Matter and other protest movements have exploded. Nat Chioke Williams is president of the Hill-Snowdon Foundation in Washington, D.C., which has started funding the Black Lives Matter movement as it works to move beyond Twitter and social media and become a national grass-roots network. \"One of the things that I think is really evident in the last year,\" he said, \"is that the Black Lives Matter movement has captured the hearts and minds and public consciousness in a way that the NAACP and other civil rights organizations have not captured.\" Williams believes that the NAACP is still a relevant organization, but he said it has to become more responsive to the way young people want to get involved. \"I think we're witnessing the birth of a new phase of the ongoing struggle for black freedom, equality and justice in this country,\" he said. \"Historic organizations like the NAACP have to find ways in which to connect with the new energy and the new formations that are out there.\" L. Joy Williams is the 36-year-old president of the NAACP branch in Brooklyn, and she agrees with that. But she says she's not really worried that the NAACP is becoming irrelevant, \"because there's no other organization like ours.\" That is, with offices nationwide and lobbyists roaming the halls of power. Williams sees the work of so-called hashtag activists as complementing the NAACP's work, and vice versa. \"There's a role for everyone to play in the work. If all you're capable of is spreading the word by retweeting, you're needed. If you have the time, dedication and fortitude to say I'm going to volunteer blood, sweat and tears, you're needed. It's not an either-or conversation.\" Still, Williams says engaging young people online and on social media is crucial to the NAACP's future. During a break in the convention, Williams introduces us to some student members of the NAACP. Anscia Brown and Ekow Nana-Kweson joined the branches at their universities. After a New York City cop was cleared in the killing of Eric Garner, Nana-Kweson's chapter at Hofstra saw on Instagram that Brown's chapter, at St. John's, was staging a die-in. \"Hofstra almost like copied St. John's,\" he says. \"It was like a catalyst effect. As we saw a lot of people were doing the die-ins, we were encouraged to do it as well.\" Brown says her school's NAACP chapter got the idea for the protest from Instagram, too, and posted Black Lives Matter posters around campus. That is, she tapped into her NAACP network to help spread #BlackLivesMatter messages that were blowing up her social networks. In other words, world converge. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: The NAACP is holding its annual convention in Philadelphia this week. Among the topics of discussion - protests sparked by police violence in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., and how the NAACP reacted. Leaders fielded questions about their 106-year-old organization's responses to those controversies and the challenges the organization faces in a new era of digital activism. Adrian Florido of NPR's Code Switch team reports from Philadelphia. ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: On Monday, South Carolina congressman James Clyburn stood at the convention's main podium and said this. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) JAMES CLYBURN: Sometimes, I hear it discussed ", "Today, we brought you coverage from the NAACP Convention ongoing in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sen. Barack Obama spoke on Monday (which you can see on our blog). NPR's Audie Cornish was there and gave us a debrief on his speech and the crowd's reaction. Meanwhile, we reported our way into some interesting news. Ben Jealous, who is scheduled to take over as the NAACP's president in September, has been pretty scarce these days, media-wise. We wanted to speak to him. We learned he had not been officially confirmed by an additional vote that was needed. (He'd already gotten the majority, but not unanimous, support of the presidential selection committee.) And this weekend, the NAACP's spokesman mentioned to us that incoming President Jealous had not signed his contract. He also said that the decision not to be more available was Jealous' choice, as he wrapped up some pending projects. We spoke on air today with NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, a civil rights icon who has extended his work in many venues, including with this organization. He also sparred with the NAACP's last president, Bruce Gordon, who quit the post over a year ago. So you have a 99-year-old civil rights organization that has named its youngest ever president (Jealous). They've chosen not to utilize him during their enormous, election-year convention... which features BOTH major party presidential candidates. I asked Chairman Bond if that meant the entire installation of the next president was in jeopardy, and if he, the powerful board chair, was prepared for the organization to have a strong president. Bond responded: I'm ready for Ben Jealous to come on board. I think we've only had 17 people in this job [i.e., NAACP president] in the 99 years we've been in existence....I'm looking forward to Ben Jealous. I think he'll be among the strongest [presidents] we've ever had, and may be the strongest we've ever had. He also explained some of the votes and contract issues needed to firm up the appointment of Jealous, adding: I'll be telling you more internal NAACP organizational matters than anyone needs to know. ... The executive committee needs to approve his contract ... and when that's done, it's done. If you're an NAACP member, what do you make of this? Any further info? And hey, if you're not a member, tell us what you think, too.", "Lynette Holloway is a Chicago-based writer. She is a former New York Times reporter and associate editor for Ebony magazine. Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and chief executive officer of the NAACP, strode into the media spotlight last month when he called on the Tea Party to \"repudiate the racist element and activities within'' its ranks. He immediately became the focus of attacks from the right and emerged as a visible advocate for racial justice, following the announcement at the organization's convention in Kansas City, Mo. The time was ripe. For about two years, Jealous, 37, has been working to earn his stripes as leader of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Among his favorite causes has been working with other groups to repeal mandatory sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders for possession of crack cocaine, which disproportionately affects African Americans. This week the effort received a victory when Congress approved a measure to reduce sentencing disparities for possession of powder and crack cocaine. He has also focused on defending blacks from racially charged attacks in the public sphere, most recently from elements of the Tea Party. But in July he stepped on the third rail. Without gathering all the facts, he spoke out against USDA employee Shirley Sherrod, based on a deceptively edited video of one of her speeches at an NAACP event. Released by a right-wing blogger, the video appeared to show Sherrod making biased remarks about her dealings with a white farmer, leading to her forced resignation by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Jealous retracted the NAACP's denouncement when he learned of a more complete video showing that Sherrod's story was one of racial reconciliation. Still, the misstep rankled some in the African-American community and blogosphere because the NAACP is supposed to be a defender of blacks and women, not the opposite -- especially in today's tense racial climate. Among those upset by it were George Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, who wrote in a column for Black Voice News that Jealous essentially served as a \"drum major'' in the attacks against Sherrod before doing enough research. \"The NAACP was duped by Fox News and the Tea Party?'' Curry wrote. \"That's a sad commentary on the NAACP and the state of black leadership. How could the nation's oldest civil rights organization allow itself to be 'snookered' by its avowed enemies? And if the president of the NAACP is that gullible, what else [has] he been snookered on?'' Writer Amy Alexander, who worked for the NAACP briefly in 2009, also wrote a scathing blog post that received widespread attention. She attacked the young president's leadership abilities and complained of dysfunction within the organization, including the communications team for which she had worked. Is there a fire behind the gathering smoke? \"I think that [Sherrod incident] was just a problem of inexperience on his part,'' said Stephen J. Thurston, president of the Dallas-based National Baptist Convention, based in Dallas. Thurston, a Chicago-based pastor who has been part of an NAACP religious committee for the past six months, told The Root, \"He also needs to do some restructuring to bring it up-to-date in relation to the communications team. I don't know all of the history there, but it would serve him well to have a team of advisers who know that sort of history [regarding Charles Sherrod, the husband of Shirley Sherrod who was a member of SNCC].'' Thurston added that Jealous' leadership could benefit from building closer relationships with NAACP units in various cities and states. \"They are the arms and legs of the NAACP, and they do not have this relationship with the local chapters,'' Thurston said, based on conversations he has had with some unit heads.\" Again, it gets back to communications, which is not tight enough between local and national chapters. '' Curry, who has been reporting on the incident himself, said on Saturday afternoon during a break at the National Urban League convention in Washington, D.C., that \"the NAACP Board of Directors is scrambling to see how to recover'' from Sherrodgate. \"He made the statement without even checking with local chapter president of the NAACP,'' Curry said of Jealous. ''That should have been his first call.'' He said that Jealous has another year on his three-year contract, and questioned whether it would be renewed. \"There is a lot of discontent with him on the board,\" Curry said. \"Members feel he has embarrassed the NAACP, and they are trying to see that it doesn't happen again.'' Hilary Shelton, who is director of the NAACP's Washington bureau and senior vice president for advocacy and policy, told The Root that technology was the real culprit in the Sherrod mishap, not communications or leadership. (Jealous declined our request to be interviewed for this article.) \"I'm not convinced there was a communications problem,\" he said. \"We ended up not ", "Rachel Dolezal, whose story sparked a national conversation over racial identity, is stepping down as the president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In a message to the organization's executive committee, Dolezal said her resignation is in the best interest of the NAACP. Dolezal made national news after it emerged that she had been presenting herself as being of mixed race when she was really born to white parents. Pictures showed that Dolezal had even undertaken a physical transformation through the years. \"In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP,\" Dolezal said in a statement posted to the organization's Facebook page. \"It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the presidency and pass the baton to my Vice President, Naima Quarles-Burnley.\" Over her time at the NAACP, Dolezal had become a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. On Friday, as the drama unfolded, the NAACP issued a statement in support of Dolezal. \"One's racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership,\" the statement read. In her statement, Dolezal does not directly address why she identified as black, Native American and white in a government form. She does say that many have opined without knowing the full story, but she doesn't give more details. \"While challenging the construct of race is at the core of evolving human consciousness, we can NOT afford to lose sight of the five Game Changers (Criminal Justice & Public Safety, Health & Healthcare, Education, Economic Sustainability, and Voting Rights & Political Representation) that affect millions, often with a life or death outcome,\" Dolezal wrote.", "The NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization, holds its annual convention in Houston this week. As in any election season, the group is focused on voting rights and voter turnout. But this year, there's another issue that's front of mind: the dramatically high rate of unemployment rate among African-Americans. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will address the NAACP convention on Wednesday, and Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak the following day. NAACP members are ready to hear their plans. The Race To Register The theme of the NAACP's convention is \"Your Power, Your Decision — Vote.\" As the national board of directors gathered in a hotel ballroom, the NAACP's Chief of Staff Roger Vann talked about the urgency of getting people registered and into the voting booth. \"Our goal is really to move about a million folks to the polls in November, which is a significant feat for the NAACP and really will be unmatched in the African-American space,\" he said. Vann and other NAACP officials say they've spent months fighting voting laws that the organization considers restrictive, and they've been working to protect the right of everyone to vote regardless of their race or economic status. At least 10 states, including Texas, have passed laws requiring people to show a government-issued photo ID card when they go to the polls. Supporters have said that will prevent voter fraud. Marvin Randolph, who heads the NAACP's get-out-the-vote efforts, calls it a newer version of a poll tax once used to disenfranchise black voters. \"What we're doing is at a time when other forces are trying to make voting harder, we're trying to make it easier for people,\" he says. \"And we're not just focusing on how many people we can register — but it's how many people we can educate on the issues that they have to be voting about this year.\" The Issues That Matter Among the top issues NAACP members are concerned about: the economy. The unemployment rate for blacks stands at 14.4 percent, while the overall rate is just over 8 percent. Thenise Marc, a 15-year-old from Naples, Fla., sits near vendors selling jewelry and African art. She says her father is working fewer hours. When presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Vice President Joe Biden come to town, she wants to hear how they'll create jobs. \"Because I don't want to have to grow up and have to deal with this economy. We can fix it if we actually try. So I want to know what their plans are,\" she says. This is a group that's been supportive of President Obama, but they come to this convention with a range of issues they say should be addressed. \"I want to hear what you're going to do about education. I want to hear how you plan on investing in the infrastructure and rebuilding this country,\" says Sue Wilson, a member of the NAACP branch in Williamsburg, Va. \"I want to hear how you are going to take care of the elderly and the sick. Those are things that are important to me.\" President Obama Sits It Out Wilson gives the president high marks on health care and says she's satisfied with how he has tackled other concerns. The NAACP had invited the president to appear at the convention, and Wilson's husband, Clarence, says he's disappointed he won't attend. \"This whole election is about enthusiasm and getting people really charged up to get out there and vote,\" he says. With a still-struggling economy, he continues, the president needs to talk about plans. \"Whereas progress has been made, there are still a lot of people out of work. I just think he would have been better served had he delivered those messages rather than the vice president,\" he says. But Rev. Terrence Melvin from Buffalo, N.Y., says there is no need for the president to be here. \"We know where he stands,\" Melvin says. \"He needs to go use his time — his valuable time — to get to those areas that are borderline, that need to be pushed over the edge.\" DAVID GREENE, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene. The NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization, holds its annual convention in Houston this week. Front and center on everyone's minds is the economy, and especially the dramatically high rate of unemployment among African-Americans. With the 2012 election fast approaching, the NAACP is also focused on voting rights and voter turnout. Only one of the two of the presidential candidates, Republican Mitt Romney, plans to speak at the meeting. In a moment, we'll talk more presidential politics. But first, to Houston and NPR's Cheryl Corley. CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: With the presidential election just months away, the theme of the NAACP's convention is Your Power, Your Decision, Your Vote. As the National Board of Directors gathered in a hotel ballroom, the NAACP's Chief of Staff Roger Vann talked about the urgency of getting people registered and into the voting booth. ROGER VANN: Our goal is really to move about a million folks to the polls in November, which is a", "NAACP officers Marvin \"Doc\" Cheatham and Rev. Nelson B. Rivers, III, talk about manipulation of African-American voters, and the efforts they are making to change the voting landscape. Cheatham is the seventh president of the NAACP Baltimore city branch, and an election specialist. He's also the founder and chairman of the Maryland Voting Rights Restoration Coalition. Rivers is CEO of the NAACP.", "NPR's David Greene speaks to NAACP President Derrick Johnson about Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination and how this will factor into the agenda for the civil rights group's annual convention this year." ]

[ "You are sure right - It can be pretty bad." ]

[ "Anywhere is the best answer. But, let's look at why. Orbitals tell us where the electron is most likely to be found, but there is no actual guarantee that it will be there, so it could be anywhere." ]

[ "Poems of Tao Yuanming were Considered as the unique artistic achievement by Su Shi after 600 years' spread. Su Shi wanted to be a hermit Like Tao Yuanming and contribute to his country. He never forgot to do some contributions when he was intoxiated with natural scenery. Su Shi often cherished the memory of being a hermit and kept a clear heart when he was banished during his official career. In his late years,Su Shi learned from Tao Yuanming to encourage himself so his poetry express his love for Tao Yuanming." ]

[ "Bringing idyllic life into poems is one of the significant contributions of Tao Yuanming to the ideological history of Chinese literature.The significance of idyllic poems to Tao Yuanming's life being consists in: idyllic poems were his ulitmate pursuit of life and also a means of seeking the end-result of life;idyllic poems were his way of dissipating his sense of life tragedy and going beyond reality;idyllic poems were his poetical settlement of contentment and were combined with nature.", "It is considered by many ancient and present scholorrs that Tao Yuanming drank for avoiding misfortune and disaster. But, in fact, it would be not so. It would be the reason that drinking was current and fashionable, or be sought freeing himself from spiritual suffering, or he made his artistic conception. The great contribution, which made by Tao Yuanming in alcoholic culture, is that he related wine with poetry. Tao yuanming expressed his truth of temperament in his poems by wine, and displayed his character and moral of \"jingjie\" in his poems by wine.", "Relationship and friendship was the important part in Su Shi's heart. He showed sincerity, frankness,loyalty and warmth in dealing with his family and friends.His poetry is a good proof to these qualities.", "Su Shi always saw the free expression of the author's main disposition as the rooted motivation and ideal state in cultural creation.The paper analyzes his frustrated life,open-minded disposition and works.The analysis explains the relations between his prose's main disposition and his experience suffered from hardships.Thus,the powerful and free style of Su Shi's prose can't break away from his special disposition.This is the charm of Su Shi's prose.", "It is long believed that Travel Notes to Shizhong Mount is aimed to advocate searching for thouth and firsthand practice but the implication is overlooked.In fact the true writing intention of Su Shi is the reference to the Poem Case in Wutai.The Travel Notes to Shizhong Mount shows Su Shi's implicit rebel after being demoted.Su Shi was persecuted by others' subjective speculation of his poem in the Poem Case in Wutai and the Travel Notes to Shizhong Mount is just the poet's sneer at the speculator.", "There is a creative tendency of \"taking poems as Ci-poems\"in Zhang Xian's Ci in early Northern Song Dynasty. This tendency is mainly manifested in three respects: practical function of remuneration and response,expression of literati's emotion and use of verse in Ci. Zhang Xian's Ci has a certain poetic emotion and taste,unlike Liu Yong's Ci. \"Taking poems as Ci-poems\"in Zhang Xian's Ci has important significance not only in transition from the Late Tang Dynasty,the early Northern Song Dynasty to the late Northern Song Dynasty,but in making a great contribution indelible of Su Shi finalizing the historic task of \"taking poems as Ci-poems\". We should pay sufficient attention to Zhang Xian and his significant and important contribution to the history of Ci.", "LI Guang is one of \"the four famous minsitors\" in Song Dynasty. His personality and poems are fundamentally influenced by TAO Yuan-ming. In relation to his late part of his life, a study is made on some of his poems, which leads to the conclusion that his poems are of individual style in spite of his learning from other poets.", "The natural Aesthetics of ancient China with the written records can be traced back Three thousand years ago.It is the literature work called \"the Book of Songs\".Since then,different theoretical views emerged in large numbers,such as Confucius' view of ambition sustenance;Confucius and Qu Yuan's view of moral metaphor;Qu Yuan's view of emotional sustenance;Tao Yuanming and Zong Bang's view of apperception of Taoism and Zong Bing and Wang Wei's view of free imagination.There are two of the most important persons:the first one is Liu Zongyuan of Tang Dynasty.He remarked that \"the beauty does not spring from itself,but it depends on somebody who sees it.\" The second one is named Sushi.He proposed the point of being together with the natural landscape in spirit of life.", "In Chinese literature history,it is Tao Yuan ming who shows the idyllic life's posture by individualized method for the first time.The original rural scenery described through his poet brings another brand-new artistic realm to the people.The natural and simple aesthetic,appreciation make Tao's Poem Present the natural character and earnest feeling in its content.And also the plain ,flesh and elegant language takes on its from makes the poet has an picturesque deauty.", "Zhao Mei Zhan Yan is a collection of lectures on poetics compiled by Fang Dongshu in his late years to his younger generation,which reflected the poetic theory of the school of Tongcheng.In this book,the comment on Huang Tingjian and his poems are the most typical and wonderful part,in which Fang Dongshu compared Huang Tingjian’s poems with those of Du Fu,Han Yu and Su Shi and discovered that Huang Tingjian’s poetics originated from Du Fu and HanYu’s poetic thinking.Fang Dongshu did not explore deep enough the connotations of Huang Tingjian’s poems,but he was good at analyzing their structure and syntax.His research on Huang Tingjian’s writing pattern as well as that on the introduction,elucidation of the theme,transition to another viewpoint and summing up of his poems is especially splendid.Moreover,Fang Dongshu criticized and raised objection to allusions and a few syntax pattern in some of Huang Tingjian’s poems.", "Among the poets of the new frontier poems,Li Yu is not only different from Yang Mu's passion,broad-mindedness,and boldness and Zhang Deyi's extensiveness,fantasy,and splendor,but also distinct from Zhou Tao's power,grace,and solemnity.Based on his own experiences and personality,Li Yu has formed his unique way of conveying his feelings,linguistic features,and even his own special form of poem,so that he is now one of the representative poets of the new frontier school of mildness and reserve.", "In her short life time (26 years all together), Shi Pingmei spent six to seven years on literature creation, leaving works of about hundreds of thousand words. Previous studies mainly focused on her prose, with only a few mentioned her po-em. In this paper, the author tries to discover the modernism feature in Shi's poem, and then explores her thought on the meaning of life through the poem. It is of significance to the study of modern chinese literature and poem.", "As one important literary form,poetic prose flourished in the Dynasties of Dong Han and Xi Han.From Wei dynasty on,writers created a lot of poetic proses.However,ever since the coming of Republic of China(A.D.1911),although poetic prose studies continued,creation of new poetic prose was deserted.Influenced by the regional culture,Jingzhou scholar,Qidiao Shicai loves Quyuan'poetic prose,imitates it,and creates some poetic prose.After observing the whole process of the painting of plum by a friend in midwinter,Qidiao created \"ode to Jingzhou'plum\",in which he delineates the spirit of plum,revealing his praise to the moral integrity of being faithful and unyielding.", "The identity of princes' instructor has a major impact on Shi Hao's poems written for the royal.First of all,there are two important standards for selecting princes' instructor.One is high moral character and outstanding scholarship,the other is political reliance.Actually,Shi Hao's sophisticated character forges a pithy and graceful style of his poems.And the appointment from the emperor Song Gaozong makes his poems full of appreciation.Secondly,moral education is considered as main teaching content,so writing poems is not important.Under this concept,Shi Hao's poems written for the royal are small in number and the language is not gorgeous and odd but rustic and elegant.At last,corresponding with the way of admonishiment in teaching,his poems implicated ridicule.During being Jian Wang's instructor,Shi Hao strengthened lyricism in his poems,which influenced both Jian Wang and his son.", "Liang Shigiu is also an outstanding scholar and prose writer. His view on prose are \"reality, individuality and succinctness\". His proses are ironic and critical,or sometimes tolerant and mild. He used his prosese to show his love on his hometown ,his relatives and friends, and his dear houses. These features not only on reveal his life-long search as a combination of eastern and western culture, but also demonstrate artistically his rich knowledge. His prosese are well documented, skillfully organized, humorously developed and elgantly presented, thus have a rich cultural implication.", "The emergence and development of the School of Song Poetry can’t be ignored, when poetry in the early Qing Dynasty is mentioned. This school, initiated by Qian Qianyi, has reached a new height in the creation of Song Poetry when Zha Shenxing joined. Zha Shenxing was famous for poetry writing, and his poetic thoughts, spread in his poetic works and literary criticism, lack systematic elaboration. However his representative opinions in poetics still can be found: learning poetic styles both from Tang and Song Dynasties, and based on sensibility, which are closely related with the poetic atmosphere as well as instruction and influence by his teachers.", "The \"mystery\" expression of religious feelings in eastern and western literatures is largely different,In contemporary root-seeking novels,many religious \"mysticism\" emotional elements are presented,however,its creation art is relatively short of the realm of the subliming for noble and \"sacred\" dimensionality,based on the root-seeking novels of Zhang Cheng-zhi and Shi Tie-sheng,the gain and loss of artistic creation transcendence are pointed out.", "The contemporary poet Ren Hongyuan's poetry is the typical example of poetic creation of the Chinese academism. His education and attitude towards life and art make his poetry quite different from other schools.The movement of language application he started is one of his important contributions to the contemporary poetry.. Of course,the contradiction between life and culture is also the main difficult prob- lem for the poets of the Chinese academism,including Ren Hongyuan.", "Su Shi visited a lot of places, associated with numerous Buddhist monks of different sects in his life,but he never thought of being an ascetic. His purpose to study Buddhism is to treat the frustration and tribulation in life Buddistically, that is, to see through the suffering in life. On the basis of absorbing the theories of HuaYan Sect and Zen,Su Shi developed a Zen thought characterized of emptiness,quietness and flexibility,emphasizing the equalness of all living creatures,pursuing the freedom and detachedness of disposition,so as to oppose the realistic unfreedom as a matter of fact. Su Shi accepted Zen from the point of view that Zhuang and Zen are unanimous. The Zen ideas of emptiness and quietness directly caused his outlook on life to be flexible and broad - minded, and it also permeated through his literary works as a result.", "The first three volumes of the magazine published in Song Dynasty Notes to Collections of SU Dong-po's Poems collected in National Library of China include ten scholiasts.They were the remains of ten persons' notes to SU's poems,which later developed into Various Scholiasts' Notes to SU Dong-po's Classified Poems by Scholar WANG.(classified notes version) Through the comparison between the two editions,we may decide the identities of ZHO Ci-gong,CHENG Yin,LI Hou,SONG Yuan,LIN Zi-ren,ZHAO Kui,SHI Yin and SU Zhuo.The notes in the version by ten scholiasts made by FU and HU are quite different from those in classified notes version made by FU Chen,HU Quan and HU Zai.And they appeared under the names of ZHAO Ci-gong,CHENG Yin,SHI Yin,LIN Zi-ren,ZHAO Kui and REN Ju-shi.These notes are in line with the styles of these scholiasts.Accordingly,we may safely say that these notes under the name of FU and HU were in fact made by other people.", "The term “shi” used in the field of literature comment, is from the theory of painting and calligraphy. In commenting this term, WANG Fu-zhi emphasizes the culture of physical and mental toleration and the artistic conception of holding limitless within small. His theory is more concrete, more practical than his ancestors, which is his greatest contribution.", "The article explores the relationship between theology and metaphysics in the light of Bonaventure's theology. His trinitarian theology grounded in self-communicative love and ontology of personhood renders new insight into his metaphysics of Christ the center. The emergence of creation ex amore through the centrality of the divine Word enables Bonaventure to recast metaphysics in terms of love. The import of his metaphysics of love grounded in the centrality of Christ is discussed in view of contemporary Christian life.", "Environment is one of the elementary substances for literary writing and literary writing cannot keep away from local culture and folklore, i.e the local cultural circumstances which the writer is in will form a great influence onhis her literary/ creation The revelation of specific local colors in literature is just the distinguishing feature of literaryworks ZHOU Tao is an important writer in the west region of China and one of the most important writers in Xinjiangwhose literary works are characterized by their distinct western spirit and style The paper employs the research methodof literary geography to analyze ZHOU's creation style from the geographic environment of Xinjiang and the localculture which is of significance for the research on the literary style of the western writers and literary, writing.", "Li Shangyin has achieved great success in poetry and Si Liu Prose, one of which is the diversity of it. In poetry he had his original ideas and borrowed others' as well. Jing Se is great and grand while Fallen Flowers is gorgeous minged with plainess. He had many great works learning from that of Han and Wei Dynasty, Six Kingdons period, Du pu, Han yu and Li He and also he had some works of Song style. His Si Liu Prose, similar with his poems, are exquisite and charming. The exquisiteness and lingering charm shows the diversity of his proses.", "This paper makes a survey on the category of\"Diao Yuan\" put forward in the early Tang Dynasty.Ling Hu De Fen tried to create a kind of literary work,whose content is substantial,taste is profound and style is vigorous.\"Diao Yuan\" was the features of literature creations in Emperor Tai zong's reign Tang Dynasty.", "This paper gives an analytical interpretation of the representative poems bearing philosophical ideas written by Robert Frost, a famous American poet, and reveals his unique creative technique and fresh but plain artistic style of his poems. On the basis of his flexible use of traditional metrical pattern of British and American poetry in his creation of modern poems, he develops his idea of poetic creation about \"sound of sentence\" that the mood and meaning of a poem can be conveyed and expressed through sounds, intonations and natural rhythms when a sentence is read. And his abundant use of figures of speech and symbols in his poems makes his poems seemingly describe the beauty of the nature, but indeed they contain a profound and meaningful philosophy.", "Zhu Tianwen's stories are popular in the mainland with her special writing style.In her stories one can find Zhang Ailing's bitterness of life and many Chinese readers enjoy her special touches of writing and emotions.The present paper discusses her narrative strategies in the story of Notes by A Gay.These include the narrative perspective of unfamiliarization,fragmental narrative style,and metaphorical narrative style.", "SummaryChenjerai Hove is one of the most prolific writers in Zimbabwe in the English language. Hove has written novels, poetry and some critical essays. He has also written in the Shona language. Although, Hove's creative ouvre has received some important critical evaluation, most of these evaluations are on his novels. However, recently, critics have taken an interest in Hove's poetic works. In 2009, Chenjerai Hove completed a collection of poems called Love and Other Ghosts (2009) which has remained unpublished to date. Sadly, Hove passed away on the 12th of July, 2015 while on self-imposed exile in Norway. This article is a tribute to Hove's poetic ingenuity and an exploration of the poetic shift registered in Hove's poetic creativity from poetry that defines itself as committed to issues of social justice and whose contradictions would be openly resolved through armed, class and gender struggles towards poetry that celebrates life through the trope of love. In Love and Other Ghosts (2009), the poet's ...", "As an academic prase,Li Yuanluo's“The Travel of Song Ci”is a rather special ph enomenon in the current“prose craze”.Baset upon the spirit of crificism,the aw areness of miserg,nosfalgia complex and mundane solicitude,it successfully applies the academic manipulation to the liferary creation,fherefon if has an obvious value on bringing forth new ideas in the creation of prase.In the meanfime,reading poems is a pracfice of reading people,reaaing hearts and reading history,which highly combines the personality of the aesthetic object with that of the creative subject together and perfectly infegrafes modern reading with liferal creation,hence it also has a far-reaching instructive influence.In one word,“The Travel of Song Ci”is an arficle of special liferary grace.", "Li Shang-yin was a \"subjective poet.\" Whatever he wrote views or objects,People or things with obvious subjectivism,that is,he expressed his personal feeling as the subject.It was either because of his personal subjective or the objective Cause of his time formed his kind of style.Which produced deely influence later ages.", "LI Yi was the top one of frontier poems of middle Tang dynasty.His frontier poem was modulated and magnificent,vehement and desolate,it express a great aspiration that die for one's country.His poem describe the military life in the desert,express a homesick feeling,all of them were modulated and magnificent,vehement and desolate.", "In the period of Eastern Jin(317-420),Wang Xianzhi was so fond of Cao Zhi’s Fu on the Luo River Goddess(The fu style is one of the Classical Chinese poetry forms) that he wrote it in calligraphy tens of times.His affection was closely connected with his belief in Daoism,his marriage and the then prevailing literary style.As a devout believer in Daosim,Wang once thought of becoming a Daoism priest and the heavenly world presented in Fu on the Luo River Goddess conformed to his aesthetics expectation;secondly,Wang’s tragic marriage was similar to the sad love story narrated in Fu on the Luo River Goddess,so he may have regarded his writing of the Fu as a way to express his sadness;and finally,as the sentimentally beautiful style of Fu on the Luo River Goddess was the predominant one of Wei and Jin Period(AD 265-420),Wang’s fondness of this Fu was influenced by this trend." ]

[ "The woman, who reportedly gave birth out of wedlock, was convicted by a magistrate's court on Sunday.\nHowever, the Supreme Court quashed the sentence late on Sunday, saying the ruling had violated legal procedures.\nThe island nation has previously issued flogging sentences to those convicted of extramarital sex.\nSunday's initial sentence had sparked outrage on social media and was criticised by rights groups.\nThe sentence to death by stoning was unprecedented in the country, which is known as a luxury tourist destination, the BBC's South Asia editor Charles Haviland reports.\nIn 2013, the case of a 15-year-old girl sentenced to 100 lashes after being found guilty of premarital sex prompted global concern. The High Court later overturned the verdict, saying she had been wrongly convicted.\nExtramarital sex is illegal in the Maldives, although the ban does not apply to tourists.\nWhat's not on the tourist brochure?\nThe Maldives attracted more than a million tourists in 2013 - but most foreign visitors are insulated from everyday life on the islands.\nLesser-known facts about the nation include:" ]

[ "Amnesty International condemned the sentence, handed down by a judge in Khartoum, as \"appalling and abhorrent\".\nLocal media report the sentence on the woman, who is pregnant, would not be carried out for two years after she had given birth.\nSudan has a majority Muslim population, which is governed by Islamic law.\n\"We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged to death,\" the judge told the woman, AFP reports.\nWestern embassies and rights groups had urged Sudan to respect the right of the pregnant woman to choose her religion.\nThe judge also sentenced the woman to 100 lashes after convicting her of adultery - because her marriage to a Christian man was not valid under Islamic law.\nThis will reportedly be carried out when she has recovered from giving birth.\nEarlier in the hearing, an Islamic cleric spoke with her in a caged dock for about 30 minutes, AFP reports.\nThen she calmly told the judge: \"I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy.\"\nAmnesty International said the woman, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, was raised as an Orthodox Christian, her mother's religion, because her father, a Muslim, was reportedly absent during her childhood.\nIn court, the judge addressed her by her Muslim name, Adraf Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdullah.", "The man, Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri, was found in possession of books and talismans, SPA said. He had also admitted adultery with two women, it said.\nThe execution took place in the southern Najran province, SPA reported.\nHuman rights groups have repeatedly condemned executions for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia.\nLast year, there were reports of at least two people being executed for sorcery.\nMr Asiri was beheaded after his sentence was upheld by the country's highest courts, the Saudi news agency website said.\nNo details were given of what he was found guilty of beyond the charges of witchcraft and sorcery.\nAmnesty International says the country does not formally classify sorcery as a capital offence.\nBut the BBC's Arab Affairs Editor, Sebastian Usher, says there is a very strong prohibition of some practices from the country's powerful conservative religious leaders.\nSome, he explains, have repeatedly called for the strongest possible punishments against anyone suspected of sorcery - whether they are fortune tellers or faith healers.\nIn 2010, a Lebanese television presenter of a popular fortune-telling programme was arrested while on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.\nThough sentenced to death, after pressure from his government and human rights groups, he was freed by the Saudi Supreme Court, which found that he had not harmed anyone.\nMore recent cases of death on charges of sorcery include that of a Saudi woman, executed for committing sorcery and witchcraft in December, in the northern province of Jawf, and that of a Sudanese man executed in September, despite calls led by Amnesty International for his release.", "Dayow Mohamed Hassan, 44, was buried neck-deep and pelted to death with stones by al-Shabab fighters.\nHe was convicted of being in an adulterous relationship with a woman and impregnating her, despite having two wives, an official said.\nAl-Shabab occasionally passes such sentences for sexual offences in areas it controls in Somalia.\nIn 2014, a teenage boy was stoned to death after being convicted of raping a woman.\nIn 2008, a young girl was killed in a similar manner after being convicted of adultery.\nIn the latest case, a woman filed a complaint of rape against Hassan, but the court tried him for adultery as it is easier to prove, says BBC Somali's Mohamed Mohamed.\nHundreds of people watched him being stoned death in Ramo Adey village in the south-central Bay region, said Moalim Geedow, the al-Shabab governor for the area.\n\"The man had a third woman who was a divorcee... He deceived her, saying that he went to a sheikh [religious leader] and that he married her,\" Mr Geedow told Reuters news agency.\n\"However, when the woman got pregnant, the two families debated and there was no trace of valid matrimony. The court ruled he did not marry her legally and he was stoned to death.\"\nAl-Shabab is fighting to overthrow the weak UN-backed government in Somalia and impose its own strict interpretation of Islamic law.\nIt has lost control of many towns and cities to a 22,000-strong African Union force supporting the government.\nBut the group, linked to al-Qaeda, still has a strong presence in many rural areas.", "The video was shot in Jowzjan Province a month or two ago, officials say, and has just surfaced on social media.\nA crowd listens as the verdict is given before the woman, sitting on the ground in a burqa, is shot in the back of the head. The Taliban have not commented.\nSimilar killings in the past were widely condemned.\nThe Taliban used to publicly execute women - usually over adultery - in the main stadium in the capital Kabul when they were in power in Afghanistan in the 1990s.\nLast year, a young woman was stoned to death in Ghor province in central Afghanistan after being accused of adultery.\nIn August 2011, a woman and a man she had eloped with were stoned to death in the district of Dashte Archi in Kunduz province.\nA Taliban spokesman defended the 2011 incident at the time saying: \"Anyone who knows about Islam knows that stoning is in the Koran, and that it is Islamic law.\n\"There are people who call it inhuman - but in doing so they insult the Prophet. They want to bring foreign thinking to this country.\"\nMob killings are not uncommon in Afghanistan.\nIn March, a woman called Farkhunda Malikzada was savagely beaten and set ablaze in central Kabul after being falsely accused of burning a copy of the Koran.\nThe murder triggered protests across the country and led to global condemnation of the treatment of Afghan women.", "Mohammad Kamaruzzaman of the Jamaat-e-Islami was found guilty of genocide and torture by a special war crimes tribunal in May last year.\nThe same tribunal sentenced party chief Motiur Rahman Nizami to die last week.\nAnother leader, Mir Quasem Ali, was also given the death penalty on Sunday.\nKamaruzzaman, 62, was found guilty of crimes which include a mass killing of at least 120 unarmed male farmers in the northern border town of Sohagpur.\nHe is due to be hanged.\nThe convictions of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders have outraged supporters, who have been on a three-day strike, due to end on Monday, in protest at Nizami's sentencing last Wednesday.\nThere are different estimates for the number of people killed in the nine-month Bangladeshi war of secession from Pakistan in 1971.\nGovernment figures suggest as many as three million people died, while some say that figure is too high and unverifiable.\nPrime Minister Sheikh Hasina set up the war crimes tribunal in 2010 to look into abuses during the independence war.\nThe first person the tribunal executed was Jamaat-e-Islami senior leader Abdul Kader Mullah last December.\nBut earlier this year the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence passed against another senior JI leader, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, commuting it to life imprisonment.\nCritics of the controversial court say the government is using the tribunal to target political opponents. But the Awami League, which leads the current government, says it is necessary to help the country come to terms with its past.\nViolent clashes across Bangladesh over the tribunal's verdicts in 2013 left about 100 people dead, BBC Bengali's Akbar Hossein reports.", "Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag married a Christian man and was sentenced to hang for apostasy earlier this month after refusing to renounce Christianity.\nShe is allowed to nurse her baby girl for two years before the sentence is carried out.\nBorn to a Muslim father, she was convicted by a Sharia court.\nSudan has a majority Muslim population, which is governed by Islamic law.\nMs Ibrahim was also convicted of adultery on the grounds that her marriage to a Christian man from South Sudan was void under Sudan's version of Islamic law, which says Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslims.\nFor this the judge sentenced her to 100 lashes, which will reportedly be carried out when she has recovered from giving birth.\nMs Ibrahim was raised as an Orthodox Christian, her mother's religion, because her father, a Muslim, was reportedly absent during her childhood.\nAccording to Amnesty International, she was arrested and charged with adultery in August 2013, and the court added the charge of apostasy in February 2014 when she said she was a Christian and not a Muslim.\nLawyer Elshareef Ali said his 27-year-old client had given birth to a baby girl in the early hours of Tuesday morning in a hospital wing at the prison.\nShe also has her 20-month-old son with her as he has been held with her in prison since late February, he said.\nCorrespondents say death sentences are rarely carried out in Sudan.\nMs Ibrahim's legal team lodged an appeal on 22 May as Mr Ali says the verdict contravenes the constitution's enshrining of freedom of faith, the Bloomberg news agency reports.\nWestern embassies and rights groups have urged Sudan to respect the right of the woman to choose her religion.", "The teenager, Huugjilt, was 18 when a court in Inner Mongolia convicted him.\nHis conviction was called into question after a serial rapist confessed to the crime in 2005, Xinhua news agency said.\nSuch rulings are rare in China. The murder happened during an anti-crime drive and detectives admitted being under pressure to secure a conviction.\nDelivering his judgement, the judge in the court in Hohhot apologised and bowed to the tearful parents of the executed teenager.\n\"The Inner Mongolia Higher People's Court finds Huugjilt's original guilty verdict... is not consistent with the facts and there is insufficient evidence,\" the court said in a statement.\n\"Huugjilt is found not guilty.\"\nAs an expression of the court's sympathy 30,000 yuan ($4850; £3080) was given to Huugjilt's parents.\nXinhua reported that Huugjilt had tried to help save the woman after hearing her cry out from a public toilet. He reported the crime to police.\nHowever, in April 1996, he was found guilty of raping and murdering the woman and in June of that year he was executed.\nIn 2005, a serial rapist and murderer, Zhai Zhihong, confessed to police that he had committed the crime after he was arrested for another crime.\nHuugjilt's retrial was held in November this year.\nCourts in China are controlled by the Communist Party and have a very high rate of conviction. Rights groups allege that confessions are often extracted under torture.\nCorrespondents say it is unusual for convictions to be overturned.\nLast year a man in the province of Anhui was found not guilty after serving 17 years of a life sentence for killing his wife.", "In April, a court ruled the defendant was a woman and issued an acquittal, saying only men could be convicted of penetrative sex with a minor.\nBut in a landmark judgment, the court of appeal overturned that ruling, saying the law was gender-neutral.\nThe defendant has now been sentenced to 10 years in jail.\nSingaporean media have reported the case as the first time a woman has been convicted of the sexual abuse of a female child.\nAccording to local news reports, Zunika Ahmad was born female in Singapore but had always identified as male, and in later life assumed the false identity of an Indonesian man.\nUnder that identity, the defendant had married two women and was also listed as the father of one of their children, who was actually fathered by another man, the court heard.\nThe women had said they did not know their husband was biologically female, and that when they had sex they were not allowed to touch or see his genitals for \"superstitious reasons\".\nIn 2011 Zunika Ahmad befriended a 13-year-old girl who lived nearby, and began to sexually abuse her.\nThe abuse lasted for two years and only came to light in 2014 when the two had an argument and the girl told her family about their relationship. Her family made a police report and Zunika Ahmad was arrested.\nThe victim told the Straits Times newspaper that she had no idea that Zunika Ahmad was biologically a woman.\nZunika Ahmad pleaded guilty in December last year to sexual penetration of a minor.\nThe trial court heard that the defendant had gender dysphoria and identified as male. But a judge said she was biologically male, and that the law applied only to men.\nSection 376A of Singapore's Penal Code states it is an offence for \"any person (A) who sexually penetrates, with a part of A's body (other than A's penis) or anything else\" another person under the age of 16.\nThe prosecution appealed against that ruling, arguing that the law was meant to be read as gender-neutral.\nAt Monday's hearing the appeals court agreed, sentencing Zunika Ahmad to 10 years in prison, with the possibility of further convictions for using a forged Indonesian passport and for fraud in birth registration.", "The judge cited a possible conflict of interest in the case of Asia Bibi.\nHundreds of riot police had been deployed around the Supreme Court in the capital, Islamabad.\nBlasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in Pakistan - critics argue laws are frequently misused to settle personal scores, often targeting minorities.\nLast year the Supreme Court suspended Asia Bibi's death sentence and gave her leave to appeal.\nA new date for the hearing has yet to be set.\nJudge Iqbal Hameed ur Rehman, one of three set to hear the appeal, recused himself from the case on Thursday.\n\"I was a part of the bench that was hearing the case of Salmaan Taseer, and this case is related to that,\" he told the court, AFP reports.\nMr Taseer was the liberal governor of Punjab province. He was killed by his own bodyguard in Islamabad in 2011 after speaking out for Asia Bibi.\nFamily in hiding\nAsia Bibi was the first woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy laws and her case is one of the most controversial.\nShe was sentenced to hang in 2010 for insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with Muslim women which began over a cup of water. She denies the charge.\nThousands have protested against her and said they would kill her if she were ever released - including the imam in her own village. Her husband and four daughters live in hiding and say they have received many death threats.\nAsia Bibi's death sentence had been confirmed by the High Court in Punjab province in October, although no date was set.\nCorrespondents said the granting of leave to appeal by the Supreme Court was the first glimmer of hope for her family.\nHer lawyers say the trial and subsequent appeal in the Punjab high court were flawed.\nPakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy but some people accused of the offence have been lynched by crowds. Lawyers, judges and those seeking to reform the blasphemy laws have also been threatened, attacked or even killed.\nSince the 1990s, scores of Christians have been convicted for desecrating the Koran or for blasphemy.\nWhile most of them have been sentenced to death by the lower courts, many sentences have been overturned due to lack of evidence.\nMuslims constitute a majority of those prosecuted, followed by minority Ahmadis.", "Reports say the couple were beaten to death by hundreds of locals who then burned their bodies in the brick kiln where they worked in Punjab province.\nPrime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the murders \"an unacceptable crime\".\nAllegations of blasphemy are often used in Pakistan to settle personal scores or to target members of minorities.\nPolice say the suspects are due to appear in court on Wednesday in Lahore. The victims have been identified as Shehzad Masih and his wife Shama.\nAbout 200 people in Lahore, mainly from the Christian community and human rights organisations, protested against the killings, which took place in the town of Kot Radha Kishan about 60km (40 miles) to the south-west.\nThey held signs saying \"Christian carnage in the name of blasphemy should be stopped\" and \"the government has failed to give protection to minorities\", BBC Urdu's Shumaila Jaffrey reports from Lahore.\nUnion leader Farooq Tariq told the BBC that the dispute was actually over money.\n\"The owner of the brick kiln gave it a religious colour, and they locked up the Christian woman Shama for two days, then attacked her with shovels, then tortured her husband and threw them in the brick kiln.\n\"It's the worst misuse of religion,\" he said.\nIn a statement, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said \"a responsible state cannot tolerate mob rule and public lynching with impunity\".\n\"The Pakistani state has to act proactively to protect its minorities from violence and injustice.\"\nPakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam.\nSince the 1990s, scores of Christians have been found guilty of desecrating the Koran or of blasphemy.\nWhile most of them have been sentenced to death by the lower courts, many sentences have been overturned due to lack of evidence.\nHowever, correspondents say even the mere accusation of blasphemy, or defending someone accused of blasphemy, is enough to make someone a target for hardliners.\nIn May gunmen in the city of Multan shot dead a lawyer, Rashid Rehman, who had been defending a university lecturer accused of blasphemy.\nLast month a Pakistani court upheld the death penalty for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy in 2010 - a case which sparked a global outcry.", "The accused, who were all Muslims, had pleaded guilty, the head of Kano's religious police, Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, told the BBC.\nThe trial was speedily done in secret after a section of the court was burnt down by angry protesters last month.\nIt is not known if they will appeal against the sentence.\nThe alleged offence was committed last month at a religious gathering in honour of Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse, the Senegalese founder of the Tijaniya sect, which has a large following across West Africa.\nThe nine, eight man and a woman, were reported to have said that \"Niasse was bigger than Prophet Muhammad\", triggering unrest.\nThe venue was burnt to the ground by an angry mob and the nine were arrested,\n\"There has been consensus among Muslims scholars that insulting the prophet carries a death sentence,\" Mr Daurawa told the BBC Hausa service.\n\"We quickly put them on trial to avoid bloodshed because people were very angry and trying to take law into their hands,\" he added.\nKano has a predominately Muslim population and Islamic courts operate alongside secular courts.\nBBC Kano reporter Yusuf Yakasai said people celebrated in some parts of the city when news of the judgement emerged.\nTijaniya at a glance\nThe Sufi sect of Tijaniya was founded in Algeria in 1784 by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tijani.\nIt spread all over the world, with large following in north and west Africa. It also has followers in South Africa, Indonesia and other parts of the world.\nThere are other Sufi sects in Islam but Tijaniya is the largest.\nThey have three main daily practices: Asking the forgiveness of God; sending prayers to the Prophet Muhammad and affirming the Oneness of Allah.\nSenegalese-born Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse was credited with reviving the sect in the 20th Century. People travel from across the continent to visit his shrine.\nThey have several factions including the Haqiqa (Realist) group, whose leaders were convicted accused of blasphemy in Kano.\nSeveral states in predominantly Muslims northern Nigeria have introduced Sharia law after the country returned to civilian rule in 1999.\nThis is the first time a death sentence has been handed down for blasphemy in northern Nigeria.\nThe sentence has been delivered for other offences such as adultery but none has been carried out.", "The woman - a 45-year-old mother of two - was convicted in August along with an unmarried Sri Lankan man.\nShe was sentenced to death by stoning, while the man was sentenced to 100 lashes.\nSaudi Arabia's decision to stone the woman was condemned in Sri Lanka, where protests were held.\nSri Lankan embassy officials visited the woman in a Saudi jail on Sunday, Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva said.\nThe country had appealed to Saudi Arabia's government to pardon the couple.\n\"Through our intervention, they have agreed to reopen the case,\" Mr de Silva said.\n\"This is a big victory. We will provide her with legal help.\"\nDeputy minister Ranjan Ramanayake added that the Sri Lankan government was informed about the woman's case only after she had been convicted in August 2015 - despite the fact she was arrested in April 2014.\n\"Islamic Sharia law says four respected Muslims need to be eyewitnesses for this type of case, but this has not been possible in this case,\" he said.\n\"Unfortunately, not knowing the law, she has confessed under pressure without any legal help.\"\nProtests were held outside the UN compound and the Saudi embassy in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo - with some calling for a ban on sending Sri Lankan workers to Saudi Arabia.\nThe Sri Lankan government says it is gradually reducing the number of women sent to work in the Middle East.", "Abdulazeez Dauda, popularly known as Abdul Inyass, was convicted after a trial held in secret to avoid protests.\nFive of his followers were also sentenced to death last year.\nThese are the first death sentences for blasphemy handed down by a Nigerian Sharia court; those delivered for other offences have not been carried out.\nMr Inyass is a preacher at a local faction of the Tijaniya sect, founded in Senegal by Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse, which has a large following across West Africa.\nHe was reported to have said that \"Niasse was bigger than Prophet Muhammad\" during a lecture at an event in May, leading to violent protests in the city.\nThe BBC's Yusuf Ibrahim Yakasai in Kano says he then fled to the capital, Abuja, and nine of his followers were arrested for their alleged part in organising the event.\nWhen they were arraigned in court, there were further clashes and the courthouse was set on fire, he says.\nAnyone who is not satisfied with the judgement of a Sharia court can appeal to the Sharia Court of Appeal in the state within three months. From there the case can be taken to the federal Court of Appeal, which is secular and, finally, to the Supreme Court.\nThere are judges of the Court of Appeal who are learned in Islamic law and who would be convened by the court's president to hear the case.\nThe Sharia courts only try Muslims. If a case involves a Muslim and a non-Muslim, the non-Muslim will be given the option of choosing where he/she wants the case to be tried. The Sharia court can only hear the case if the non-Muslim gives written consent.\nAmina Lawal, who was found guilty of adultery in 2002 and sentenced to death by stoning, was acquitted by a Sharia Court of Appeal.\nFour of the followers were acquitted and the five sentenced to death are appealing against their conviction at the state's high court.\nKano has a predominately Muslim population and Islamic courts operate alongside secular courts.\nMr Inyass, whose five-month trial was held in secret for security reasons, will also be able to appeal against the verdict at the high court.\nSeveral states in northern Nigeria introduced Sharia after the country returned to civilian rule in 1999.\nTijaniya at a glance\nThe Sufi sect of Tijaniya was founded in Algeria in 1784 by Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tijani.\nIt spread all over the world, with large following in North and West Africa. It also has followers in South Africa, Indonesia and other parts of the world.\nThere are other Sufi sects in Islam but Tijaniya is the largest.\nThey have three main daily practices: Asking the forgiveness of God; sending prayers to the Prophet Muhammad and affirming the Oneness of Allah.\nSenegalese-born Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse was credited with reviving the sect in the 20th Century. People travel from across the continent to visit his shrine.\nThey have several factions including the Haqiqa (Realist) group, whose members were convicted of blasphemy in Kano.", "The High Court ruled on Wednesday that the girl, whose stepfather is on trial for raping her, had been wrongly convicted by a juvenile court of having premarital sex with another man.\nPremarital sex is illegal in the Maldives, a popular tourist venue.\nThe case caused outrage among rights groups who welcomed the latest ruling.\n\"We are relieved that the girl will be spared this inhumane 'punishment' based on an outrageous conviction, which we hope has also been quashed,\" said Polly Truscott, Amnesty International's deputy Asia-Pacific director.\n\"No-one should ever be prosecuted for sex outside marriage in the first place.\"\nMs Truscott said that flogging amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. She called on the Maldives government to annul all outstanding flogging sentences.\nIn its ruling the court said the sentence of the lower court was based on a confession that the girl made while she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. It said that she had been \"unfit for trial\" after the alleged rape.\nThe Maldivian government appealed on behalf of the teenager following international outrage in February to punish her with 100 lashes when she reached the age of 18.\nThe girl - who cannot be named for legal reasons - was only charged after police investigating the rape allegations discovered that she had been having consensual sex with another man.\nPresident Mohamed Waheed said that he was \"overjoyed\" with the ruling, his spokesman Masood Imad told the AFP news agency on Thursday.\nMr Imad said: \"It is the government's policy to protect victims, but we had to do it within the framework of the law.\"\nThe case was sent for prosecution after police were called to investigate a dead baby buried on the island of Feydhoo in Shaviyani Atoll, in the north of the country.\nHer stepfather was accused of raping her and impregnating her, then killing the baby.\nThe legal system of the Maldives, an Islamic archipelago with a population of some 400,000, has elements of Islamic law (Sharia) as well as English common law.", "He was found guilty of inciting violence in a speech protesting against the jailing of former president Mohamed Nasheed. His supporters have disputed the charge.\nMaldives has seen political upheaval since Nasheed was ousted in 2002.\nHe was later convicted and jailed, also under anti-terror laws.\nBut he was temporarily freed earlier this month to travel to London for medical treatment.\nAbdulla, leader of the Islamist Adhaalath Party, had spoken during mass protests last year demonstrating against the jailing of dissidents, during which there were clashes with police.\nHis lawyer, Husnu Suood, told Reuters news agency: \"We believe the judgment is grossly unfair because he has not called for violence in his speech.\"\n\"He clearly asked the participants at the rally to refrain from violence and had taken all steps to prevent violence.\"\nHis lawyers said they would appeal against the sentence.\nThe Maldivian government has come under intense criticism for its jailing and treatment of political opponents, particularly Nasheed.\nA former human rights campaigner, Nasheed became the nation's first democratically elected leader in 2008, ending three decades of rule by former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.\nIn 2012, he was detained after being accused of ordering the arrest of a judge. He resigned months later amid an army mutiny and public protests over the judge's fate.\nNasheed alleged that he had been removed by a coup, but this was denied by his vice-president, who replaced him.\nThe current President Abdulla Yameen was elected in controversial polls in 2013 and is the half-brother of Mr Gayoom.", "Asia Bibi, who has been on death row for nearly five years, was given leave to appeal. No hearing date was set.\nShe denies insulting the Prophet Mohammed, saying her Muslim accusers were acting on a personal grudge.\nBlasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in Pakistan - critics argue laws are frequently misused to settle personal scores, often targeting minorities.\nThe BBC's Shaimaa Khalil in Islamabad says this is the first time in the case that there has been a glimmer of hope for Asia Bibi.\nShe was the first woman to be sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy laws and her case is one of the most controversial in Pakistan.\nThousands have protested against her and said they would kill her if she were ever released - including the imam in her own village. Her husband and four daughters live in hiding and say they have received many death threats.\nAsia Bibi's death sentence had been confirmed by the High Court in Punjab province in October, although no date was set. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court suspended the sentence until the end of the appeal process.\n\"The execution of Asia Bibi has been suspended and will remain suspended until the decision of this appeal,\" her lawyer told reporters outside the court.\nHe said key witnesses had failed to turn up during hearings by the High Court.\nPakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy but some people accused of the offence in the past have been lynched by crowds. Lawyers, judges and those seeking to reform the blasphemy laws have also been threatened, attacked or even killed.\nSince the 1990s, scores of Christians have been convicted for desecrating the Koran or for blasphemy.\nWhile most of them have been sentenced to death by the lower courts, many sentences have been overturned due to lack of evidence.\nMuslims constitute a majority of those prosecuted, followed by minority Ahmadis.", "Arash Sadeghi is serving a 19-year prison sentence in Iran for alleged conspiracy and propaganda against the state, but denies the allegations.\nHe began his protest after his wife, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, was jailed for writing a story about stoning.\nMr Sadeghi is one of eight prisoners said to be on hunger strike in Iran.\nConcerns over his health have increased in recent days and on Friday he was the subject of an international Twitter campaign under the hashtag #SaveArash.\nThe campaign received support from hundreds of users and became a trending topic on the social media site worldwide even though the platform is banned in Iran.\nMr Sadeghi has claimed that Ms Ebrahimi Iraee's six-year prison sentence was handed to her by the authorities to further punish him.\nShe was jailed last year on the basis of an unpublished story she had written about the stoning to death of a woman accused of adultery.\nAmnesty International called the conviction \"ludicrous\" and the trial \"farcical\".\nBoth husband and wife were arrested by men believed to be members of the Revolutionary Guard on on 6 September 2014. Authorities found the story, written in a private diary, at their home.\nMr Sadeghi's mother, who was also home at the time, reportedly suffered a stroke and later died.", "The death sentence was imposed after the three were convicted of robbery with violence.\nA further 25-year sentence for stripping the woman was suspended due to the death penalty.\nThe incident was recorded and shared widely on social media three years ago, sparking nationwide protests.\nHundreds of women, some in tight fitting clothes, marched through Nairobi, rallied by the hash tag #MyDressMyChoice.\nAfrica Live: More updates on this and other African stories\nMini-skirts and morals in Uganda\nStripping videos outrage Kenyans\nChief magistrate Francis Andayi said that those convicted had taken part in a \"senseless and uncouth attack that they seemed to enjoy because they were cheering as they stripped the woman\", the privately owned Daily Nation newspaper reports.\nThis episode was part of a wave of sexual assaults in Nairobi during 2014.\nAnne Soy, BBC News, Nairobi\nMost people have been in support of today's ruling, however, one man told the BBC that the sentence was unfair and that women need to dress according to Kenyan traditions.\nCases of sexual assault of this nature have greatly reduced recently. We have not had any reported cases of harassment for alleged provocative dressing since 2014.\nAnd while death penalties are still passed in Kenyan courts, no executions have actually been carried out since 1987. Last year President Uhuru Kenyatta commuted all death sentences in the country to life imprisonment.\nSo the three men may be set for a long time of reflection in prison.", "Outside the court in the capital, Khartoum, the men's families rejoiced and sang, AFP news agency reports.\nYat Michael and Peter Yen Reith had faced a possible death sentence if convicted.\nSudan has a majority Muslim population governed by Islamic law, and Christians often complain of persecution.\nLast year there was global condemnation when a Sudanese woman was sentenced to hang for apostasy - renouncing her religion - after marrying a Christian man.\nHer sentence was overturned by an appeals court and she is now living in the US with her husband.\n\"I am feeling free because I was in jail for many months,\" Mr Michael told the Christian Solidarity Worldwide advocacy group after his release. He added that he felt as though he was \"born again\".\nHe was taken into custody last December after delivering a sermon in the capital.\nHis colleague, Mr Reith, was arrested the following month when he came to look for the clergyman.\nThe two, who belong to the South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church, were found guilty of other minor charges.\nMr Michael was convicted of disturbing the peace and Mr Reith for participating in a criminal organisation.\n\"The sentence they served in prison is enough, release them immediately and return the mobile phones and laptops,\" Judge Ahmed Ghaboush is quoted by AFP as saying.\nBBC Sudan analyst Mohanad Hashim says many in Khartoum believe the spying charges were fabricated and that the real battle with the authorities is over land.\nGovernment officials want churches in the city to give up some of the vast tracts of land they own so that it can be used for investment, he says.\nChurches have been reluctant to part with the land, even though their position has been weakened since South Sudan became independent in 2011.", "Dr Meriam Yahya Ibrahim was condemned to hang for allegedly leaving Islam and marrying a Christian man.\nThe court said that by doing so, she had abandoned her religious faith and was guilty of apostasy, which carries the ultimate penalty under Islamic law in the country.\nBut some liberal religious scholars have argued apostasy is not even a crime.\nThey back up their beliefs by citing the Koranic verse which states: \"There shall be no compulsion in religion.\"\nOther more conservative Muslims refer to the words of the Prophet Muhammad in the Hadith saying: \"It is not permissible to spill the blood of a Muslim except in three [instances]: A life for a life; a married person who commits adultery; and one who forsakes his religion and separates from the community.\"\nIslam's legal system - Sharia - says apostasy covers a wide range of offences, including conversion to another religion, idol worship, or mistreating the Koran.\nWhile some scholars favour the death penalty, others say the punishment should be left to God on the day of judgement.\nThe late Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's religious and political leader, famously denounced the author Salman Rushdie as an apostate for his novel The Satanic Verses - and said he should be killed.\nSaudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan also uphold strict interpretations.\nIn 2006, an Afghan, Abdul Rahman, who announced his conversion to Christianity escaped a death sentence and was offered asylum in Italy.\nAnother Afghan citizen was granted asylum in the UK earlier this year after persuading the courts he faced the death penalty at home because he was an atheist.\nMeanwhile, non-Muslims such as the Bahai community have faced difficulties in countries including Egypt.\nHuman rights groups have condemned Islamic laws on apostasy.\nAmnesty International has described the latest case in Sudan as \"abhorrent\".\n\"The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice … should never be even considered,\" it said.\nWhen she was convicted on Sunday, Dr Ibrahim - who is said to be eight months pregnant - was given three days by the court to return to Islam.\nBut she again affirmed her Christian faith, and her lawyer says she will appeal against the sentence.\nFor now, her fate hangs in the balance.\nAnd the debate over apostasy - and whether she committed a crime in the first place - goes on.", "Arifa, 25, dared to stand up to her family, running away with the man she fell in love with and secretly marrying him.\nThe following day in a busy street in Karachi, Pakistan's most populous city, her male family members surrounded the newlyweds and, at gunpoint, dragged Arifa away.\nIt was five days before her husband, Abdul Malik, heard any news of his wife.\n\"I got a message that she had been murdered. That was the most difficult day of my life,\" he tells me, holding back the tears. \"After great difficulty I managed to establish that my wife was alive and had been hidden somewhere.\"\nFearing for his life, Mr Malik has lived in hiding for three months.\n\"In Pakistan, love is a big sin. Centuries have passed, the world has made so much progress - men have reached the heavens. But our men are still following age-old customs and traditions from the dark ages,\" he explains.\nIt is these traditions and customs - which focus on denying women freedom - that have growing acceptance in Pakistan and are encouraged by hard-line religious scholars.\nThe rule of law is often ignored.\nThis is a world where a woman has few rights in practice - she is the property of her family until she marries.\nThen ownership passes to her husband's family, with the risk of death if she brings dishonour to the family.\nThis year alone, more than 1,000 women have been murdered for so-called honour crimes - and these are just the ones of whom the authorities are aware.\nIn May, the case of the young, pregnant woman Farzana Parveen shocked the world. She was stoned to death by her family for marrying the man she was in love with, rather than the man they had chosen for her.\nWhat was most shocking was that it happened outside Lahore's high court, in front of policemen and passers-by.\nIn November, following worldwide media attention, Ms Parveen's father, brother, cousin and former fiance were all found guilty of murder and given the death sentence, while another brother got 10 years in jail.\nBut more often than not, those who commit these brutal acts against women are never charged, protected by tribal laws.\nSome hard-line religious scholars believe that only through the killing of an offending family member - usually a woman - can honour be restored to the rest of the family and tribe.\nThe most surprising point is that few people in Pakistan nowadays are willing to challenge these tribal traditions and customs. In fact, according to a recent survey from the Pew Research Centre, an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis support the full implementation of Sharia - Islam's legal system.\nIn the backstreets of Karachi, I find a madrassa where thousands of boys and young men receive their religious instruction. I want to ask the local clergyman about his thoughts on adultery, for which women have also been murdered in \"honour killings\".\n\"The punishment is what is prescribed in Sharia, which is stoning and lashes,\" the mullah tells me.\nOne of his pupils backs his teachings: \"Once it is proved, in Sharia, the punishment is either lashes or stoning.\"\nAt this madrassa, I find little sympathy for women who stray - punishing adultery is a clear-cut duty.\nBut what does the country's law say? In 1979, Gen Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's military dictator, introduced the so-called Hudood Ordinance - a controversial set of laws that attempted to Islamise Pakistan. Among other things, it made adultery punishable by stoning and lashing.\nIn 2006, the then President, Pervez Musharraf, tried to liberalise some of these laws to protect women, but the enforcement of his reforms has been limited and adultery is still a crime.\nKarachi's central prison for women is where many of those accused of adultery end up.\nSadia is 24. She arrived at the prison four months ago after her husband of nine years accused her of sleeping with another man. She is still awaiting trial.\n\"My husband divorced me, beat me and then kicked me out of home,\" she explains. \"Then he went to the police and told them that I'd run away with another man. In reality he and his family beat me and kicked me out.\"\nSadia tells me she does not have access to a lawyer and is not sure when she will be able to leave. At the time of my visit, there are 80 women in the prison - many have no idea why they are there and end up languishing in jail for years without trial.\nSome of the more lucky women end up at a handful of shelters across the country.\nI travelled to the Edhi shelter for women, a heavily guarded compound in one of the most notorious and dangerous neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Karachi, known for its Taliban sympathies.\nMost of the women here have run away from abusive relationships or have been thrown out on to the streets by their families.\nThe women live at the Edhi shelter peacefully, sharing chores, helping with the cooking, cleaning and taking care of each other's children. There are never any questions asked about why a woman has sought refuge at the home.\nThere is one strict rule that everyone abides by - nobody is allowed in without the say of the women, including the authorities.\n\"If she is having an affair outside of here, we don't care, we don't ask. She can stay as long as she likes,\" Samina, a volunteer at the shelter, tells me. \"If her family come to take her and she goes willingly, then she is free to go.\"\nWhat if the police are after her for adultery charges, I ask. \"No, we won't hand her over to the police,\" says Samina.\nDraped in a red headscarf, Ayesha says she has left her home five times with her two young children, fleeing to the safety of the shelter.\nEach time, her husband comes to collect her. But she tells me the abuse and torture she is subjected to when she returns with him force her to run away again.\nAyesha says her husband accuses her of having an affair. \"My husband would lock me up and then he would start to beat me, beyond any limit, forcing me to say that I was having an affair.\n\"My children would scream, 'Please someone save our mother.' But no-one would listen, no-one would come.\"\nAyesha tells me she has no intention of returning to her husband now. Although the future remains uncertain for her, she says she feels lucky to be alive.\nDespite a growing middle class, attempts at modernity and secular condemnation, combating ingrained institutional misogyny has become increasingly difficult in Pakistan.\nIn a society fighting to preserve patriarchal and tribal traditions, women face brutality and gender-based violence in both urban and rural districts.\nAnd as religious fundamentalism continues to gain ground, the freedoms of women are increasingly attacked.\nBBC Our World's Pakistan's Women - Punished For Love broadcasts on the BBC News Channel at 21:30 GMT on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 December - or catch up online.\nInternationally, you can see the programme on BBC World News on Saturday 13 December at 11:30 GMT and Sunday 14 December at 17:30 GMT.", "The couple, named as Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar, were found guilty of sending the text message to the imam of their local mosque.\nAllegations of blasphemy against Islam are taken very seriously in Pakistan.\nSeveral recent cases have prompted international concern about the application of blasphemy laws.\nThe imam brought a complaint against the couple last July.\nThe couple's lawyer told the BBC he would appeal against the sentences and said the trial had not been conducted fairly.\nPakistan has a de facto moratorium on the death penalty so it is unlikely the couple will be executed.\nThey come from the town of Gojra in Punjab, previously the scene of communal violence.\nQ&A: Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws\nIn 2009 the rumoured desecration of a copy of the Koran led to a mob burning nearly 40 houses and a church in Gojra. At least eight members of Christian community died in the violence.\nSince the 1990s, scores of Christians have been convicted for desecrating the Koran or blaspheming against the Prophet Mohammed.\nWhile most of them have been sentenced to death by the lower courts, many sentences have been overturned due to lack of evidence.\nCritics argue that Pakistan's blasphemy laws are frequently misused to settle personal scores and that members of minority groups are also unfairly targeted.\nMuslims constitute a majority of those prosecuted, followed by the minority Ahmadi community.\nIn 2012 the arrest of a young Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, on blasphemy charges provoked international outrage. After being detained in a high security prison for several weeks she was eventually released and her family subsequently fled to Canada.", "Dr Afrasheem Ali - whose party is a member of the governing coalition in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation - was stabbed to death outside his home.\nThe authorities have not named those held, but the former president says a party colleague of his is among them.\nThe Maldives has been deeply polarised ever since Mohamed Nasheed resigned in February, in what he says was a coup.\nHe left office in the midst of a police and military rebellion, but the security forces and his successor deny claims that he was forced out.\nMr Nasheed told the BBC's Charles Haviland in Male that one of those detained on Wednesday was a young woman whom he called a very active member of his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).\nDescribing the murdered MP as his friend, he said the woman's arrest was \"comical\" and a sign that innocent people were being blamed.\nThe MDP also says that a male activist is being held and that it fears being falsely framed for what it called the \"tragic and gruesome murder\", our correspondent reports.\nLiberal activists say they think the killers were Islamic radicals who disapproved of Dr Afrasheem's moderate Islamic scholarship.\nMeanwhile, the courts have ordered police to bring Mr Nasheed to trial on Sunday in a case in which he is accused of illegally ordering the arrest of a judge while president.\nOn Monday he ignored the scheduled court hearing and set off on a party campaign tour in outlying islands, forcing the case's postponement.\nMr Nasheed, who won the country's first democratic elections in 2008, says the charges against him are politically motivated.\nHis supporters hail him as a reformist moderate but his critics say he overreached his powers while in office.", "Media tycoon Mir Quasem Ali, 63, of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was sentenced to death two years ago.\nHe had been convicted of offences including murder and torture.\nThe tycoon was hanged at a high-security prison outside Dhaka on Saturday evening.\nHe was arrested in 2010 and convicted in 2014. He declined to seek a presidential pardon, which would have required an admission of guilt.\nA huge security operation was staged before and after his execution. Previous executions have led to huge crowds demonstrating both in support and against them.\nAn ambulance carrying Ali's body emerged from the jail in the early hours of Sunday and took it to his home village in Manikganj for burial.\nAli's wife Khandker Ayesha Khatun told reporters at the jail that the family wanted to bury him in Dhaka, but this request was refused by the authorities.\nHis execution follows several attacks by Islamist militants in Bangladesh, including an assault on a cafe in Dhaka in July in which 20 hostages, most of them foreigners, were killed.\nAt his trial, Ali had been accused of involvement in a \"reign of terror\" in the city of Chittagong. He was found guilty of eight of the 14 charges he faced including the abduction and killing of a teenager who supported the creation of a state independent from Pakistan.\n\"All along he said he was innocent. He said he is being killed unjustifiably,\" Tahera Tasnim, one of his daughters told the AFP news agency.\nShe was among 23 family members who met him for the last time in the prison just hours before he was hanged.\nSix opposition leaders have now been executed for war crimes since the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, set up a war crimes tribunal in 2010. Five were top leaders of the Jamaat party.\nThe International Crimes Tribunal have so far sentenced 24 people to death and 18 to jail for varying terms on charge of genocide and crimes against humanity.\nCritics of the court say the government has been using the tribunal to target political opponents. Human Rights Watch has previously said the court's procedures are not up to international standards.\nMs Hasina's government has defended the trials, saying they are necessary to heal the wounds of the conflict.\nGovernment figures suggest as many as three million people died in the nine-month war to secede from Pakistan, although some say the number of deaths is unverifiable and probably less than that.", "Police removed hard discs from Sangu TV's studios in the capital Male.\nThe video reportedly shows three masked men issuing a death threat against the president.\nPresident Yameen imposed a state of emergency on Wednesday after the military said it found a bomb in a vehicle near the presidential palace.\n\"The station has come to a complete standstill,\" Sangu TV's managing director Ibrahim Waheed said.\n\"They turned the whole office upside down in search of evidence. The office safe has also been broken into and searched. They've taken all the hard drives of all our computer systems.\"\nHe added that was certain Sangu TV's staff and management had not uploaded the video, Minivan News reported.\nThe court sanctioned the raid because of police intelligence reports and information received from YouTube, the warrant states.\nThe video - which was previously dismissed as fake by Maldivian authorities - allegedly shows three masked men issuing a death threat to the president and his former deputy Ahmed Adeeb, with the Islamic State flag in the background.\nMaldives crisis in 60 seconds\nThe men reportedly give the president and Mr Adeeb 30 days to agree to their terms, which include a call on the government to release the president of the Adhaalath Party, Sheikh Imran Abdulla, who is awaiting trial for terrorism charges.\n\"We are calling you to release Imran immediately without any terms or conditions,\" one man allegedly says.\nThe men also call for the withdrawal of the anti-terrorism bill from parliament, adding that failure to comply would result in \"deadly attacks\" for which the president and his deputy would be responsible.\nThere are growing concerns about radicalisation in the Maldives. According to local media, dozens of Maldivian nationals have joined IS, and at least five have died.\nPolitical infighting has led to growing unrest. On Wednesday, the country's parliament voted to remove Vice-President Ahmed Adeeb from office after he was charged with treason in connection with an explosion on the president's boat.\nHe denies trying to kill the president.\nThe country's first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, was jailed in March on terrorism charges, following a rushed trial which the UN says was seriously flawed. President Yameen rejected a UN call for Mr Nasheed's release.", "The men were found guilty of violating strict Islamic laws in conservative Aceh and will receive 85 lashes each.\nThe pair, aged 20 and 23, were found in bed together by vigilantes in March. They have not been identified.\nGay sex is not illegal in the rest of Muslim-majority Indonesia and this is its first such conviction. Aceh is the only province where Sharia is in force.\nThe sentence is due to be carried out next week.\nWhile the judges did not give the maximum punishment of 100 lashes, the sentence is heavier than the 80 lashes asked for by the prosecution.\nPublic caning sentences have been handed down previously only for gambling and drinking alcohol.\nAceh has become increasingly conservative in recent years. Strict laws against homosexuality were passed in 2014 and came into effect the following year.\nJudge Khairil Jamal told the court that the men had been \"proven legally and convincingly guilty of committing gay sex\", according to the AFP news agency.\nWhen the sentence was being read out, the two men covered their faces with their shirt and hands.\nLocal officials claim that Sharia law is in line with Aceh's long Islamic tradition. Munawar, an official in charge of overseeing the implementation of the law, says \"people want to implement comprehensive Islamic teachings including the enacting of its criminal code\".\nHe also says the Qanun Jinayat - as the Islamic criminal law enacted in Aceh in 2015 is known locally - is an effective deterrent.\nThe law covers the consumption, production and distribution of alcohol; gambling; adultery; extra-marital sex and homosexual acts.\nPunishments include caning and imprisonment, but not stoning.\nRights activists tried last year to repeal some provisions in the Qanun Jinayat, arguing that it was against human rights and Indonesia's national criminal code - but that was rejected by the Supreme Court.\nThe caning sentence handed down on Wednesday has been condemned by human rights groups and activists.\n\"I see this as a criminalisation, a step back for Indonesia and violation to human rights,\" Dede Oetomo, founder of Gaya Nusantara, an organisation advocating LGBT rights said after the verdict.\nAhead of the ruling, Human Rights Watch had called on Indonesia to release the two men, saying that \"the verdict will increase fear among LGBT people not only in Aceh but also in many other, especially conservative provinces\" in Indonesia.\nThe men will be caned during a public ceremony on 23 May in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh - where they were found by vigilantes.\nThe neighbourhood group filmed themselves kicking and beating the pair and the video was shared widely in Indonesia. Rights groups say anti-gay sentiment is growing in the country.\nAceh was granted special rights to introduce its own stricter Islamic laws more than a decade ago.", "Khong Tam Thanh, Vu Thai Son, and Michael Le went on trial this week for raping a woman in a hotel room in the city-state in September.\nThe three men, who are in their early 20s, later pleaded guilty to reduced charges.\nThey received sentences of up to six-and-a-half years in jail and eight strokes of the cane.\nThe men flew in to Singapore last year with a group of friends for a stag party and to attend a music festival.\nOne of their friends later met the woman, a Malaysian, at a nightclub and she consented to have sex with him at his hotel room.\nShe later passed out, and the three men then took turns to have sex with her.\nThe woman woke up while Le was on top of her, and lodged a police report later.\nThe men were eventually found guilty of aggravated outrage of modesty and wrongful restraint of the woman under reduced charges in an apparent plea deal, reported local media.\nThe BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Singapore said the three men looked visibly relieved in court after the judge delivered their sentences.\nOur correspondent says the case has generated some controversy in Singapore, with some on social media questioning how the Britons were able to get reduced charges.", "Li Yan, 44, was sentenced in 2011, but in a surprise move, a court in Sichuan province ordered a retrial last June.\nEvidence showed her husband had sexually and physically abused her, burning her with cigarettes and cutting off part of a finger.\nCorrespondents say it could signal a shift in China's approach to dealing with domestic violence.\nLi Yan's case sparked widespread debate online. Last month, new guidelines were announced on domestic violence including on sentencing of victims who commit crimes against their abusers.\nThe reprieve was given under the new guidelines and experts say the death sentence could be commuted to a prison term.\n\"The original judgment's determination of the facts and conviction was correct and the trial's procedures were lawful, but the assessment of the punishment was inappropriate,\" the Ziyang City Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province ruled, according to Reuters.\nDuring the initial trial, a court heard that Tan Yong, Li's husband, had begun beating and kicking Li shortly after they got married in 2009.\nShe complained to local police and officials but no action was taken.\nIn November 2010, Li killed her husband during a fight, hitting him with the butt of an air rifle that, Li's lawyer says, Mr Tan had threatened to shoot her with, and dismembered his body.\nShe was caught after a friend she confided in tipped off the police.\nEvidence of her abuse was presented in court but the court ruled that it was not enough to prove that she was a victim of domestic violence, and sentenced her to death in 2011.\nThe re-sentencing on Friday was hailed by rights groups.\nAmnesty International's William Nee said it \"could prove a landmark verdict for future cases where domestic violence is a mitigating factor\".\nHowever, he said a \"dark shadow\" was cast over the ruling by the recent detention of five women activists who had planned a demonstration against sexual harassment on public transport.\nThe women were released earlier this month.", "Abdul Kader Mullah is be hanged for crimes against humanity during the 1971 war of independence with Pakistan.\nHis party Jamaat-e-Islami called the two-day nationwide strike, describing the trial as politically motivated.\nHowever, his sentence was welcomed by his opponents.\nSchools and businesses were shut on Wednesday. Motorways were empty and bus services were also suspended, reports said.\nPolice fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters in the western city of Rajshahi, while the protesters threw bricks.\nOne man was killed in southern Bangladesh after being hit by a stone thrown by protesters, officials said.\nBorder guards have been deployed in the capital to manage law and order, the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka reports.\nDhaka's busy commercial districts are mostly deserted, our correspondent adds.\nMullah was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes by a special tribunal in February.\nHuman rights groups have said the tribunal falls short of international standards.\nThe sentence at the time prompted angry protests from critics who said it was too lenient. His supporters, meanwhile, said the charges were politically motivated\nMullah appealed to Bangladesh's Supreme Court against his life sentence, while the state appealed for a tougher sentence.\nClashes broke out on Tuesday after the court sentenced him to death.\nMany buses and cars were vandalised in the southern region of Chittagong, our correspondent says.", "The court made the decision after a case was brought by protester Samira Ibrahim.\nShe accused the Egyptian army of forcing her to undergo a virginity test after she was arrested during a protest in Tahrir Square in March.\nHuman rights organisations say the Egyptian military has used the practice widely as a punishment.\n\"The court orders that the execution of the procedure of virginity tests on girls inside military prisons be stopped,\" judge Aly Fekry, head of Cairo administrative court said, according to Reuters.\nThe ruling was greeted by cheers from hundreds of activists inside the courtroom.\nActivists had demanded that the authorities prosecute anyone responsible for subjecting protesters to such tests.\nEarlier this year, an Egyptian general was quoted as acknowledging that the military had conducted such tests, saying that they were used so women would not later claim they had been raped by authorities.\nHuman rights groups say such tests are a degrading form of abuse and the general's justification a legal absurdity.", "Morsi had been condemned to death for his part in a mass prison break during the 2011 revolution.\nHe was elected president in 2012, but removed by the military a year later after street protests against his rule.\nMorsi has separately been sentenced to life in prison for terrorism offences, and still faces trial on other charges.\nTuesday's ruling by the Court of Cassation means Morsi will be retried over the prison break.\nThe court also annulled death sentences for five leaders of his banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, including its supreme guide Mohammed Badie, convicted in the same case.\nTwenty-one life sentences for other members were also overturned.\nMorsi escaped from Wadi Natroun jail in January 2011 and was convicted of colluding with foreign militants in a plot to free imprisoned Islamists.\nThe death sentences were approved earlier this year by Egypt's highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam.", "Under Islamic law, courts can punish homosexual acts by stoning to death.\nBut the judge said he took into account that the Muslim man, Mubarak Ibrahim, 20, carried out the acts seven years ago, and had stopped the practice.\nIn Nigeria, homosexual acts are illegal under both Islamic and secular law and restrictions have been tightened.\nEarlier this month, President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill which bans same-sex marriages, gay groups and shows of same-sex public affection.\nThe new legislation applies throughout Nigeria.\nMost states in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria have adopted Islamic law, known as Sharia, since the end of military rule in 1999.\nAlong with Mr Ibrahim, 11 other Muslims and a Christian man were arrested last month accused by the authorities of being homosexuals.\nHe was also ordered to pay a fine of about $30 (£18).\nMr Ibrahim told the BBC he was relieved that Judge Nuhu Muhammad had been lenient on him and had not sentenced him to death.\nThe BBC's Ishaq Khalid was in court when Mr Ibrahim was lashed with a whip, made of animal skin smeared with oil.\nMr Ibrahim, who had pleaded guilty to the charge, was ordered to lie on a bench, and an official whipped his back in front of a packed courtroom, our correspondent says.\nMr Ibrahim screamed in pain while being lashed, but was able to walk afterwards, he adds.\nThe trial of two other men was adjourned to 23 January.\nThe fate of the nine other men arrested on the same charge is unclear but on Wednesday the Sharia Commission in Bauchi said the Christian would be tried by a \"conventional court\", not an Islamic court.\nNigeria is a deeply conservative country, with an influential Christian evangelical movement in the south and strong support for Islamic law among many Muslims in the north.\nHostility towards gay people has escalated since parliament debated the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act last year, Dorothy Aken'Ova, a rights activist with the Nigeria-based International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, told the BBC.\nShe said that she was aware of 38 people being arrested in Bauchi state last month, and was trying to confirm reports of more arrests in both the north and south of Nigeria since the new law was approved.\n\"What this act is saying is that they [gay people] do not deserve to exist,\" she told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme on Wednesday." ]

[ "The number of players on a fantasy football team varies from league to league usually from 15 to 18 players, it generally includes a starting lineup and a bench. So, that means a team might have at least two quarterbacks, three running backs, three wide receivers, two tight ends, one kicker and two defensive units." ]

[ "You've been avoiding those repeated invitations from friends to join their fantasy football league. Jason Smith tells you why that's a mistake and how fantasy football can enrich your life. No, really. Food, clothing, and shelter are necessities, the rest is just clutter getting in the way of fantasy football.", "Fantasy Football 101: Here’s what happens in a fantasy football season. You join a league. You can join a public league, where anyone can sign up for a spot, or a private league, where you need an invitation to play. Some people, typically beginners, play just for fun and some play for money (in some cases, serious coin).", "FANTASY FOOTBALL KEEPER LEAGUE FEES: Cost of a fantasy football team in a 12 team league is only $175 (62% prize payout). The price for a second team is $165 (66% prize payout) and each additional team is $155 (70% prize payout). There are no transaction or other fees at Fantasy Sports R Us.", "Register to Play Fantasy Premier League. With over 4 million players, Fantasy Premier League is the biggest Fantasy Football game in the world. It’s FREE to play and you can win great prizes! Pick Your Squad. Use your budget of £100m to pick a squad of 15 players from the Premier League.", "You can see a handy chart that breaks down all of the various CBS league features right here. There are many new features in Yahoo’s Fantasy Football for 2014. These new features include the ability to draft or mock draft 24/7 from your phone or tablet.ahoo allows you to play fantasy football for free. For those who want to join a Pro league, Yahoo charges an entry fee of between $20 and $250, depending on the type of league. You can sign up for as many Pro leagues as you like. Playoff payouts range between $20 and $1,250.", "We're just 3 weeks into the season in the 7News Fantasy Football League, but three teams have clearly separated themselves from the pack. [more]. We're just 3 weeks into the season in the 7News Fantasy Football League, but three teams have clearly separated themselves from the pack.", "Fantasy Football Glossary. What is Fantasy Football? A game which the players (owners) earn fantasy points for the statistical performances of the NFL players on their fantasy team. In most leagues, NFL players are assigned to teams via a draft. Usually, each player can only be on one team at a time and there are limits to the total number of players per team.", "Play right away vs. other people. Our contest lobby has over 25,000 one-week fantasy football leagues every week of the 2015 NFL season, so you can jump into an open league within seconds. Join one, pick your team, and you’re in.", "League types. There are many different methods of organizing fantasy football leagues, some of which may be combined. The two most popular league types are head-to-head and total points leagues. In head-to-head leagues, a fantasy team matches up against a different fantasy team from the league each week.", "However, have a league with too many teams and in order to field a lineup each week, you might have to know the names of fourth-string tight ends. That might be biting off a bit more than even non-casual fans might be able to chew. To me, 12 is the perfect size for a fantasy football league.", "Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups & Adds - Wide Receivers (WR) To help you dominate all of your 2016 fantasy football leagues, below are some 2016 fantasy football wide receiver (WR) draft sleepers & waiver wire pickups to consider adding to your fantasy football teams. Be sure to also check out our 2016 fantasy football rankings for standard, PPR and dynasty leagues.", "My duty here is to illustrate the framework of fantasy football and introduce what could become an enjoyable, empowering and enduring hobby for you. The Basics. Fantasy football participants are owners and managers of teams that engage in competitive leagues, accruing fantasy points based on the statistics of real football players. The vast majority of leagues are scored on a weekly basis, matching up teams in a head-to-head scenario in a rotating schedule.", "In 1903 how many Major League Baseball teams were there? There were 16 teams in MLB in 1903, 8 in the American League and 8 in the National League. I love to play baseball, watch football, and I go to church often to learn about God. I have a Fantasy football team every year.", "Fantasy football is a game of skill in which the participants serve as the general managers of virtual professional gridiron football teams. The competitors choose their team rosters by participating in a draft in which all players of a real football league are available.", "It's actually stopped an injury, and many what does fpts mean in fantasy foxsports fantasy a league football football other enjoyable features like live scoring. t felt like I ate the league champion at the end of the season PPR leagues by invite only. He is this eras Marvin Harrison Celek-Phi = @Det8.", "A matchup of early heavyweights is the battle worth watching in Week 4 of the 7News fantasy football league. [more]. A matchup of early heavyweights is the battle worth watching in Week 4 of the 7News fantasy football league.", "Locating how many football players on a football team in the professional league is not hard to do. Simply put, there is an 80 man roster and 53 active players. The offense has eleven players and the defense has eleven players with back-up players.", "2015 Fantasy Football PPR Rankings – Quarterbacks. A list of the top quarterbacks to draft for the 2015 fantasy football season in PPR leagues.", "Part 1. Picking a League. 1. Choose a league that fits in with your time and commitment. Fantasy football, like regular football, relies heavily on competition. Playing in a league allows you to build relationships and camaraderie, as well as providing an extra incentive to choose your players wisely.", "Fantasy Football Basics, Part 3 – The PPR Variation. In “Fantasy Football Basics, Part 2 – Scoring,” you learned how your fantasy football team accumulates points. In this article, you will learn about an important scoring variation which a large number of fantasy leagues incorporate. It is called PPR or Points per Reception.", "Fantasy Football Message Boards. Commissioner Corner-Discuss running a league, game settings, settling disputes, and other fantasy football Commissioner issues. Who To Start-Give and get advice on who to start on your fantasy football team.Draft Talk-Compare notes with other fantasy football players on draft strategy, sleepers, and busts.ommissioner Corner-Discuss running a league, game settings, settling disputes, and other fantasy football Commissioner issues. Who To Start-Give and get advice on who to start on your fantasy football team. Draft Talk-Compare notes with other fantasy football players on draft strategy, sleepers, and busts.", "Know the basics of fantasy football, the rules of the league and system of scoring thoroughly before drafting your team. Different systems could lead you to draft differently. You need a plan on draft day. Drafting by the seat of your pants is not usually a formula for success in fantasy football.", "Fantasy Football Player Labels. Just need fantasy football draft board player labels or stickers? If you do not need the entire fantasy football draft board kit with stickers, but only need the labels, try our standard kit of fantasy football player labels. Our fantasy football draft board player labels / stickers are made of a high gloss paper finish so they are distinctive and easily readable from a distance.", "Best Answer: You have to remove all the teams, then go to fantasy football, fantasy home for yahoo. Click edit teams and click remove or delete league. You may have to set the league to a re-draft and unlock teams to be able to remove them.", "More Daily Fantasy. Daily leagues for fantasy football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, NASCAR, MMA, soccer, college football & college basketball.", "In 2002 the first TV commercials by the NFL were broadcast for fantasy football featuring current football players. A 2003 Fantasy Sports Trade Association survey showed that 15 million people were playing fantasy football and spending about $150 a year on the pastime.", "ESPN Fantasy Football offers three different league types for you to choose from. The three league types are: Standard, ESPN Custom and League Manager. Each of these league types offer a rich and enjoyable experience for fantasy players of all levels of expertise.", "Standard draft leagues are the most popular fantasy football leagues and generally begin with teams selecting all their players in a serpentine style draft. Owners then set their lineups each week based on the number of players per position allowed by league rules.", "The beginner's guide to Fantasy Football draft success. So you've signed up for your first fantasy football league but have no idea what to do on draft day. Michael Fabiano has a few tips to make your draft experience less stressful and successful.", "January 25, 2011. Many people do not realize that fantasy sports have been around since the 1980s. While at a restaurant in Manhattan named La Rotisserie Francaise with friends, a sportswriter named Daniel Okrent invented the first fantasy league.", "Fantasy Football 101: Here’s what happens in a fantasy football season. 1 You join a league. 2 You prepare for your league draft by scouting players. 3 You build your fantasy football team via the draft. Your team competes against another team every 1 week. You make moves to improve your team. Your team (hopefully) makes the playoffs and wins your league.", "I actually want to decrease the number of leagues I have that use any other league management system than My Fantasy League. Ultimately, I still assume that I will be in close to 60 leagues in 2013, but most will be on MFL. The hardest thing with so many leagues is trying to keep on top of waivers each week,” says Day." ]

[ "It would have to lift its mass at least 40000 kilometers\n\n\nThis doesn't make a whole lot of sense. On Earth, a space elevator needs to have that sort of length because it needs to reach out to the geosynchronous point plus a bit more to the counterweight. A space fountain can be of more or less arbitrary size, which means you only need to build it long enough to be comfortably clear of the atmosphere and facilitate a rocket launch more easily than if you took off from the ground. On Earth, for example, if you could launch your rocket from the top of a tower at a few hundred kilometres altitude you wouldn't have to fight atmospheric drag or gravity drag, you wouldn't need substantial payload fairings and careful aerodynamic streamlining, etc etc. 4000km seems pretty excessive for a space fountain. 40000km is ludicrous.\n\nThere are other dynamically-supported megastructures suitable for spacelaunch which are smaller than that. The Lofstrom Loop is about 2000km long. A 40000km loop would be almost enough to make a complete dynamic orbital ring around Earth at a few hundred kilometres altitude, which is a far more useful device than a space fountain (and far harder to build). That latter paper, by Paul Birch, is worth a read, and I'll reference it a few times below.\n\nFor the altitude though, I'll assume you just hit the 0 key too many times.\n\n\n\nAt 400km, the force of Earth's gravity is about 8.67N/kg, which is the force the fountain must oppose. You can view the fountain as a continuous stream of momentum $p$, imparting $2p$ per second to the top of the fountain. $p$ is therefore ~17.35kgm/s per kilogram of station it supports. This can be imparted by small masses going fast, or large masses going slowly.\n\nEach discrete chunk of the fountain stream is on a ballistic trajectory, shot out of some accelerator at the bottom. It must have momentum $p$ at the station's altitude (again, using 400km). Lets assume the projectile travels for its entire trajectory in a vacuum (to avoid drag losses) and is travelling on a parabola (which isn't quite right, but it'll do for now).\n\nI'll ignore the reduced force of gravity at altitude for now, to simplify things (which will make my answer more pessimistic; in reality gravity losses will be lower so the projectile can travel slower). Vertical displacement of a ballstic projectile is $y = v_0t - \\frac{gt^2}{2}$ where $v_0$ is the initial projectile upward velocity, $t$ is the time after launch and $g$ is the acceleration due to gravity. Projectile velocity is $v = v_0-gt$. For a 1kg projectile, $v_0 = 17.35+gt$ and as we want a projectile velocity of 17.35m/s at a height of 400km, we get a nice quadratic to solve to find out when that occurs in the trajectory: $17.35t + \\frac{gt^2}{2} - 400000 = 0$ giving us a $t$ of ~284s and hence a $v_0$ of ~2.8km/s, which is Quite Fast... faster than modern day experimental railguns, to give you an idea of the tech-level here. This is probably a low-end estimate; to reduce the sheer amount of metal you have flying through the air you'll probably want faster projectiles. This should also give you some idea of the accuracy you'll need for your projectile launch system, and hence how big the receiver apparatus (a big funnel made of electromagnetic coils) on the station will end up being so that all incoming projectiles were caught.\n\nYou'll need a fairly powerful device to accelerate your fountain projectiles. A coilgun is probably a good choice, as it doesn't need to contact the projectiles and so there will be no wear issues when the thing is in operation. It doesn't really matter how long this accelerator is (except to the people paying for the thing, but they're not part of this specific problem), so all we need to do is a) boost each projectile up to speed and b) do so without heating it up too much. It has nearly five minutes to radiate away excess heat on its trip up, so we don't have to worry too much about (b).\n\nNote that powering the accelerator isn't quite as bad as it might first seem, because falling projectiles will be travelling at more or less the same speed as they were fired, so with a suitably clever set of steering coils you can bend their trajectory around and back into the accelerator which will only need to top up their velocity to the required 2.8km/s rather than accelerate every projectile to that speed from stationary every time.\n\nThe projectiles are likely to be smallish; there's no need for bigger projectiles unless you're limited by the capabilities of your accelerator, and at &lt;3km/s there's plenty of scope for faster projectiles with fairly modest science-fictional technology requirements. The projectile stream therefore won't affect the diameter of the tower very much.\n\n\n\nYou definitely do not want to have to shoot your projectiles through the atmosphere, because they'll lose masses of energy through drag, they'll be damaged, they'll heat up, they'll be nudged off-course and so on. You'll need to fire them through an evacuated tube up to some point where air density is negligible. On Earth, one definition of the edge of space is the Kármán line, which is ~100km up. Air density is 2 million times less than at sea level, which will do. This is obviously too high for a self-supporting structure, and too high even for a structure bouyed up by balloons. That's OK though, because we have two options for supporting the vacuum tube.\n\nOne is to hang it from cables dangling from the top station. Strong cables a few hundred kilometres long are entirely practical things, without even the need for fancy carbon nanotube supermaterials (though they'd make things lighter and stronger, of course). The \"Jacob's Ladders\" in Birch's orbital rings paper can be made of kevlar or glass fibres or even steel if they're a mere 300-600km long, though the latter is likely to be impractically heavy. Materials technology may also have marched on a bit in the ~40 years since the paper was originally written!\n\nThe other is to have the projectile stream itself hold up the tubes. The tubes can be built with parasitic magnetic coils in them that sap a little of the momentum of passing projectiles to support their own weight. Obviously this will need an even more powerful fountain to support both the top station and the vacuum tube. In the limit of course, the tubes could be held up by their own set of space fountains at a more manageable 100km long, making them a simpler engineering operation than the main affair.\n\nThe top of the tube would be a good place to have some steering coils to correct any inaccuracies.\n\nIn any case, supporting the tubes needn't be a problem.\n\nBirch has considered wind and weather effects on vertical tubular structures and came to the conclusion that even a 3m wide tube would be just fine, and not subject to excessive wind-driven wobbles, which is good, given that if the tube was deflected harder and faster than it could be corrected by magnetic interaction with the fountain stream, the whole thing would explode in a horrible mess. A three metre wide tube should therefore allow some wiggling of the tube, and some inaccuracy of aiming without being too big or implausibly difficult to engineer. You might get away with skinnier structures if your pointing ability was good enough.\n\nThe StarTram project, another non-rocket assisted spacelaunch megastructure, also uses vacuum tubes to contain the launched spacecraft in the thick lower atmosphere. They have an electromagnetically levitated tube with a 3m internal diameter (bigger than needed here, most likely) and ~240km long, which is more than long enough for your needs here. They too looked at movement of the tube caused by high-atmopshere winds, and came to the conclusion that the deflection in that case was small enough to be easily taken care of by the electromagnetic levitation system. Of course, pointing errors with the StarTram don't involve hosing down your top station with tonnes of projectiles. The top of a space fountain would therefore need some kind of active stationkeeping system via rockets, and radar observing the projectile stream below to ensure that things don't become unstable or unsafe, and the emission system at the bottom will similarly need to be steerable to some degree.\n\nIrritatingly, the papers I have on it do not discuss the weight of the levitated section of the StarTram tube, so I'll keep hunting for that. This paper seems like it might be relevant: StarTram: Ultra Low Cost Launch For Large Space Architectures but I'm not so keen to read it that I'm going to pony up $30 for the privilege. Donations welcome, though ;-)" ]

[ "I use fountain pens regularly, as do my friends over at Fountain Pen Network. I'm not sure how common it is, but writing longhand with a fountain pen certainly isn't dying out.\n\nI became a fountain pen lover when I realized how much easier they are to write with (my RSI improved immensely when I switched from ballpoints, roller balls, and gel pens to fountain pens). Writing with a fountain pen just feels good, and my handwriting is better. I spend less on writing instruments than when I used ballpoints and such, while I have a greater variety of inks available.\n\nAlso, working at the computer comes with a host of distractions. I can retreat with my paper and pen to some distraction-free place and get more writing done.", "SHORT ANSWER\n\nYou're not supposed to do the single-wall perimeter thickness test to calibrate Simplify3D. That screws up the extrusion volume. The correct volume calibration procedure for S3D is: \n\n\nMeasure actual average filament diameter and input that\nPrint a 100% infill calibration cubes\nIf the print is over-extruded (top or sides bulging), decrease Extrusion Multiplier by about 0.05 and try again. If the print is under-extruded or looks clean, increase Extrusion Multiplier by about 0.05 and try again.\nRepeat as needed to dial it in. The correct value of Extrusion Multiplier is the largest value that does not produce over-extruded prints. This produces minimum void volume and strong parts.\nIn the future, that specific material+extruder combination will always have the same extrusion multiplier. You only need to measure and input filament diameter and you will always get accurate volume output. (And if you use high-quality filament with consistent diameter, you don't even really need to measure the diameter.)\n\n\nIf you really want to measure perimeters, you can do 3 perimeters and divide the measurement by 3. That takes into account most of the overlap and will be much closer to accurate than a single-perimeter measurement.\n\nCOMPLETE ANSWER\n\nThe goal here is to fill the print volume as completely as possible (at least in the \"solid\" parts of the print like perimeters, roofs, and floors). Empty space between strands doesn't contribute to part strength. In fact, voids act as failure initiation sites by concentrating stresses. Because extruded strands come out with rounded edges, they have to be overlapped to squeeze plastic into gaps and minimize \"corner voids.\" That looks like this:\n\n\n\nWhere the bulges overlap, the excess plastic gets pushed into the corners to mostly fill the voids. It's very difficult to get 100% packing density, but you can get pretty close if you calibrate volume correctly.\n\n\n\nYou DO NOT want to space the strands without overlap. That makes very weak prints and looks like this:\n\n\n\nTo get the right amount of strand overlap, the slicer has to do some math and make some assumptions about how you're calibrating it. This is not uniform between software packages. So it's important to understand what \"extrusion width\" means to different slicers. For a couple prominent examples:\n\n\nSlic3r treats \"extrusion width\" as the measured outside dimension of a stack of strands. Adjacent strands are then positioned closer together than the nominal width according to a somewhat complicated equation to get sufficient overlap for bonding.\nS3D treats \"extrusion width\" as the average width of the stack of strands, which is the equivalent width if the plastic strands were extruded as ideal rectangles instead of a stack of ovals. Adjacent strands are positioned 1x nominal extrusion width apart. That provides the correct amount of overlap without any extra math. But each individual strand is really somewhat wider than the nominal \"width.\"\n\n\n\n\nBoth of these techniques can produce the exact same output if calibrated properly, but they require different calibration techniques because they calculate the plastic volume and adjacent strand spacing different ways. \n\nIt's important to understand that S3D spaces its strands 1x extrusion width apart. When you use the measured perimeter thickness to calibrate Simplify3D for extrusion width setting = measured thickness, you get under-extruded prints with no strand overlap. S3D's strands must measure wider than the \"width\" setting to get the correct overlap. \n\nIn practice, S3D's code is smart enough to know how this affects print dimenions, and will adjust perimeter positions to get accurate overall dimensions. But single-wall test boxes will be thicker than expected. \n\nThe downside to the way Slic3r calculates volume is that it is only accurate for strands that are shaped like ovals. And that is only an accurate assumption when [extrusion width > nozzle width + layer height]. The strand must be wide enough for molten plastic to flow sideways and develop the circular bulge cross-section. So people almost always print with wider strands in Slic3r than is strictly necessary. The volume calculations don't work all that well with thin strands. Whereas S3D's volume calculation method works fine with pretty much any extrusion width greater than layer height and greater than nozzle diameter. \n\nThere are pros and cons to both systems. You just need to understand the correct calibration technique for each.", "Fountain pen ink is more watery than the ink used in many other types of pens, and fountain pens put a lot of it on the paper. The combination creates a challenge for the paper that makes it difficult to have the &quot;perfect&quot; paper in every respect. You typically need to choose what you want to optimize, and use a paper that optimizes that.\nThe challenges created by fountain pens and their ink\n\nThere is a lot of very liquid ink applied to the paper. The liquid dries through absorption and evaporation. If it is heavily absorbed by the paper, it spreads sideways (the lines get wider), and it &quot;feathers&quot; (feathery bleeding so the line edges aren't sharp). It also soaks into the paper, which can cause it to bleed through to the back (you see some of the ink on the back surface, even the front surface of the next sheet).\nIf the ink is kept controlled on the surface of the paper, a lot of it requires evaporation to dry, which is a much slower process. As long as it's wet, it can smear and get picked up by your hand (and transferred to other surfaces). But once it dries, you get the crispest lines. In some cases, this can allow you to see a sheen, which some people find desirable. Even though the ink stays mostly on the surface, there is a lot of it, with a lot of contrast. If the paper is not fully opaque, you can see &quot;ghosting&quot; of the writing through the paper on the other side.\n\nThere are characteristics that make paper more fountain-pen-friendly. Heavier-weight paper helps with bleed-through and ghosting. Smoother paper reduces its absorbency (the fibers are more compressed). Sizing (chemical treatment, not the paper dimensions), and coatings reduce its absorbency so the ink doesn't soak into the paper as much.\nHowever, while super-smooth paper produces crisp lines, it also eliminates most of the friction of the pen nib on the paper, so you lose that feedback -- the feel of the pen moving on the paper.\nSo there are trade-offs in fountain-pen-friendly paper. Some people want the best possible lines. Others want more of the feel of the writing experience as long as they get good-enough lines. The crispest lines also tend to be more slow-drying. The best-optimized papers are somewhat niche products; they can be expensive.\nYou can expand the range of papers that will work well by using fast-drying ink and/or a finer nib.\n\n\nPaper Selection\nIf you use ink with a very rich color, you might also want to use paper that is extremely white.\nIf you're starting from scratch and want to try some random papers that you have ready access to, the best results will generally be with very smooth, heavier-weight paper, so start with those. But not all of them will be good, and there are lots of exceptions. Much depends on how the paper was made. It doesn't hurt to try almost any paper you can get your hands on just to see the results.\nFortunately, fountain pens have a dedicated following. There are lots of web sites devoted to using them. Among aficionados who have explored the available papers, a relatively small number of papers have risen to the top. I'll include links to a number of sites and paper evaluations and preferences (some have more detailed descriptions of the papers and the specific version recommended; some cover different &quot;formats&quot;, like notepads, stationery, journals, etc.).\nA large number of lists have these papers at or near the top (in varying orders): Tomoe River, Rhodia, Clairefontaine (made by the same company as Rhodia), and Midori, Also near the top of many lists was Oxford Optik. One that made a number of &quot;favorite&quot; lists because it generally works pretty well and is inexpensive was HP Premium Laserjet Paper (especially 32 lb).\nMany stationery stores will provide, on request, a sample pack of a mix of different papers of interest (a few sheets of each one, typically either free or for the cost of postage). It's a good way to compare high-end papers without spending a lot of money on full packages.\n\nFurther reading:\n\nThe Best Fountain Pen Paper | JetPens\nBest Papers for Fountain Pens - Inks and Pens\nWhat Is The Best Paper For Fountain Pens? - Fountain Pen Love\nIn search of the best paper for fountain pen use – Pennonia\nThe Best Paper For Fountain Pens | Unsharpen\nThe best paper... in the world – Nero's Notes\nWhat’s The Best Paper For Fountain Pens? – Savoir-Relier\nTomoe River Paper is One of the Best Paper for Fountain Pens (...but)\nIn Your Opinion What Is The Best Paper Brand For Fountain Pens? - Paper and Pen Paraphernalia - The Fountain Pen Network (just an online survey, but consistent with reports on other sites.)", "Gold nib fountain pens - invented around 1850 - were originally the standard as early (fountain pen) inks had corrosive properties. Although corrosion of nibs is no longer a problem, gold nibs have other advantages.\nPens of all kinds of metal (alloys) are often tipped with 'iridium' *, as the tip will have to endure the most. Apart from thickness and shape, the material qualities of the rest of the nib are decisive for the writing experience, as they determine ink flow and comfort of writing (that is, when compared to similar nibs of other materials on pens of equal size, shape, weight, balance, &amp;c.).\nGold is the most malleable of the metals, so pure gold tips will relatively easily deform under the pressure of writing. This is why standard gold fountain pen nibs are made of 14, 18, or 21 karat gold (out of 24k), meaning (+/-) 42%, 25%, or 12,5% respectively consists of other metal(s) to strengthen the nib.\nNevertheless, when compared to other nibs, gold nibs are known for their suppleness, springiness, and a softer writing experience that adapts to the writer's hand.\nGolden nibs are also praised for their durability. Gold (alloy) will last longer as it is less prone to corrosion than other metals, but modern steel alloys in combination with most modern inks will wear relatively slowly as well.\nWhether golden nib fountain pens are worth the investment is impossible to answer objectively: it depends on how often and much one writes, personal preference with regards to the writing experience compared to the (wealth and often comparable qualities of) alternatives and the aesthetics of the precious metal over that of other materials, the cost-quality and cost-durability ratios, and whether or not and to what extent one regards such a pen as a statement and symbol of prestige.\nOne author makes the compelling case that gold nibs are only really worth it when you want the additional flexibility for line variation.\n\n* More a synonym for 'fountain pen tip' than the actual metal, see https://www.nibs.com/blog/nibster-writes/wheres-iridium\n\n\n\nSources: \n\nhttps://www.penheaven.co.uk/\nhttps://www.writeherekitenow.co.uk/news/the-gold-standard-is-a-gold-nib-worth-the-money/\nhttps://www.nibs.com/content/what-fountain-pen-nib\n\nFurther reading:\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/4cfflr/gold_nibs_vs_steel_nibs_and_why/\nhttps://edisonpen.com/in-praise-of-steel-nibs-2/", "Yes, the computer needs to do a lot of calculations in order to able to render a 3D scene into a naturally 2D screen. \n\nThis can be done on the CPU but nowadays it's almost always done on the GPU. This entire process is usually referred to as the Graphics Pipeline which I've written about before. Read that post since I believe it summarizes most of the process.\n\nTo answer your specific questions:\n\n\n does it use maths similar to vector projection?\n\n\nIt uses a lot of different \"types of math\". It uses a lot of linear algebra which involves vectors and matrices. It deals with transformations such as converting coordinates between different spaces. It uses lighting model calculations to determine the shading of your scene. And it uses many other algorithms too.\n\n\n If so, is this calculation made everytime the screen is refreshed?\n\n\nTypically, yes. Most games run on top of a game loop, so the entire pipeline is processed every frame. But under some other environments you could also update it on demand whenever the scene changes (e.g. on WindowsForms by calling Invalidate() to force a redraw of your control).\n\n\n Just want to see if I can create a basic square that looks like its spinning in 3D space. Just for the challenge, not anything practical.\n\n\nYou could fake this by simply \"skewing\" the square as it rotates around, giving the impression that it's 3D. But if you'd like to model it closer to how a 3D graphics pipeline works, the bare minimum you'll need is:\n\n\nA vertex structure in 3D space\nA list of vertices to define your square in model space\nA world matrix to rotate your square\nA perspective projection matrix to convert it into 2D (clip space)\nA viewport transformation to adapt from clip space into your window/viewport\nA rasterizer to \"paint\" the rotated square\n\n\nDepending on which platform you decide to implement this, many or all of these steps may already exist for you to use.\n\nPS: And by the way, I think it's a really good idea from an educational point of view that you're trying to implement this sort of thing. I struggled for a long time with understanding how all of this 3D stuff worked, and the moment all of it really clicked was when I finally sat down and implemented my own graphics pipeline from scratch. One year later I did the same thing with raytracing, and maybe one of these days I'll try my hands at radiosity too. Or take one step backwards and create some Wolfenstein 3D-ish raycasting scene just for fun.", "The question, as amended, can be summarized as:\n\n\n If there are 2–8 protons in the mitochondrial matrix (as calculated\n from a pH of 8) is this sufficient for ATP synthesis, if 2–3 hydrogen\n ions are required for each molecule of ATP synthesized?\n\n\nThe initial deficiency in the argument was that it did not consider the inter-membrane space, and my answer was:\n\n\nAccording to the generally accepted Mitchell Hypothesis, the generation of ATP in the\nmitochondrion is due to an electrochemical gradient between the\nmitochondrial matrix and the inter-membrane space.\nThis gradient is predominantly a pH gradient — the [H+] is\nhigher in the inter-membrane space than in the matrix\nThe flow of protons down this gradient is responsible for the\nproduction of ATP.\nThe H+ gradient is maintained by protons being pumped across the inner mitochondrial membrane by the flow of electrons through the electron transport chain. (i.e. The H+ concentration is kept low in the matrix and high in the inter-membrane space, even though protons are continually flowing into the matrix.\n\n\ni.e. For ATP synthesis to occur there is no requirement for a high steady-state concentration of hydrogen ions in the mitochondrial matrix — quite the opposite (as is reflected by the pH 8). A relatively high concentration of hydrogen ions is only required in the inter-membrane space — as is indeed found. \n\nThe amended question assumes a pH of 6.8 for the inter-membrane space, and calculates 8.9 protons to be in this compartment. \n\nThe poster still does not state specifically what the problem is — there is still a concentration gradient of hydrogen ions, and a vast body of experimental evidence shows that it is this gradient of hydrogen ions that drives ATP synthesis. \n\nSo the implied question does not seem specific to ATP generation, but to the concept of pH in cellular compartments of small volume. There is obviously something wrong here, and the paper quoted — which addresses this question — suggests some possible explanations:\n\n\nThat the pH measured is incorrect because of the methodology\nThat the hydrogen ions are not free but associated with negatively charged species (possibly phosphate ions) from which they may be released, as required.\n\n\nThe latter point had occurred to me before reading the paper. In summary: \n\n\nThe steady-state hydrogen ion concentration gradient is sufficient to drive ATP synthesis, with many hydrogen ions at any time passing through the membrane in one direction or another.\nMany of the hydrogen ions in both compartments will be buffered in a manner that allows there release\nThe naive calculation is likely to be an underestimate because the pH in the inter-membrane space may be much lower.\n\n\nIf I were an ox-phos person I would know how many molecules of the ATP synthase complex there are per mitochondrion and the number of protons pumped into the membrane space per unit time. Such information would, presumably, bear on the problem.", "I would be surprised if any pen would be more sustainable than a sustainably sourced pencil.\n\nIn terms of sustainability, I still think that \"green\" pens should come after refillable pens, pencils and fountain pens.\n\nThere are also refillable cartridges for standard fountain pens, which usually come with plastic cartridges. For example, this middle one looks (and is) a plastic cartridge for a fountain pen, but the red end twists and is able to suck in ink from an inkwell.\n\n\n\nAt one point I used such a model for many years, which should be more sustainable than any other type of pen (feathers aside, I guess). Now I use almost exclusively mechanical pencils (and chalk on a blackboard).\n\nSo my verdict for your green pens:\n\"Green\"? Maybe more so than others.\nSustainable? Not really.", "I think you would have enough time to walk around a little bit. For the Taxi ride to Valletta i would calculate 30 minutes one way (i suggest to preorder an eCab, they will be waiting at the airport for you). If you have checked luggage, i think you should be back at the airport 2 hours before your flight, however with only hand luggage or if your luggage is checked through, 90 minutes should be sufficient. I never encountered long lines at the security check.\n\nFor Valletta itself, as a destination for the cab i suggest the Triton fountain. That's also where the Bus terminal is. You can then walk over to the Upper Barrakka gardens, where you have a nice view over the bay.", "I think everyone who has gone to the gym understands your situation, since we were all beginners at one time. Trying to figure out what a machine does can be kind of humiliating; what if you're using it wrong? For that reason I recommend talking to a personal trainer just to get a primer on the equipment. I have no conflicts of interest here -- a trainer can really help break the ice in the gym. If this isn't an option, it is easy to self-educate with videos these days.\n\nIn any case, here are some basic things I think everyone should know about using the gym, and how to act respectfully towards the establishment and other patrons:\n\n\nRead the gym rules\nThis is really important. If you don't read the gym rules, know that those around you probably have and aren't happy with you if you don't follow them. The rules will be posted conspicuously somewhere in the gym. Read them and follow them. Try to encourage others to do the same if you can.\nRack your weights\nThis is a pet peeve of every experienced gym patron. Put the weight back where you found it. Also, nobody likes hunting down weights, or having to dig through plates when the 5lb plate is buried behind four 35lb plates. Keep it neat. Put your weight back where it belongs when you're done. Leave things more organized than the way you found them.\nUse the equipment properly\nIf there's a squat rack and you're doing curls in it, you're preventing someone from using the equipment as it was designed. For example, you don't need a power rack to do curls unless you're curling so much you physically can't pick the weight up off the ground.\nBe respectful towards beginners\nYou were a beginner once too. Help them if you can do it in a friendly and non-intimidating way. Be a friend to a beginner. Then spot them, teach them, help them, be their workout buddy. Let's all be friends here, right?\nShare\nDon't hog the equipment. Let people work in if you're going to take a while. If you see someone who looks like they're waiting, ask them if they'd like to work in. If the gym is busy, be especially vigilant and try to be aware. \nCommunicate\nIf a piece of equipment you'd like to use is not in use, but out of place, ask others if they are using it, or have seen anyone using it recently. Also, in general, ask if a piece of equipment is in use in a busy gym if you have the opportunity.\nClean up after yourself\nIf you're sweaty, wipe it down with sanitizer! Even if you aren't, some gyms cultivate a very clean atmosphere. When in doubt, wipe it down.\n\n\nA couple of minor points: \n\n\nYield to people carrying weights\nEncumbered people have the right of way. Give them space.\nDon't hog the water fountain\nIt's impolite to fill your water bottle in the water fountain when people are standing in line and just want a sip.\n\n\nBasically it all comes down to respect. Respect the space in the way you'd like your own space to be respected by others, and everything will be fine!", "My biggest mistake was keeping my search on everything about ferrite and balun online, and receiving various piece of confusing information of mixed quality. Meawhile, I didn't even take a look at the most basic and authoritative reference material: The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communication.\nToday, I just obtained a copy of the 2014 edition, and immediately even before open the book, I saw six toroidial cores on the hardcover, aha! I think I can answer most of my questions now. If you are reading this, please help me to check whether my answer is correct, thanks.\nFirst, we assume the transformer required is (1) for reception only, so temperature/heat dissipation is not an issue, and (2) not a transmission-line transformer, but a conventional transformer, which should be enough for our purpose [Note 1] as a beginner's project.\n1. Is it a good toroidal core to use?\n\n\nWhat information can I learn from these parameters? Is it a good toroidal core to use for a HF receiver?\n\n\nThe most important parameter is the initial permeability, μi = 40. In Chapter 5: RF Techniques of the ARRL Handbook, it advice that...\n\n5.7.3 Broadband Ferrite RF Transformers: [...] The core-material permeability plays a vital role in designing a good broadband transformer. The effective permeability of the core must be high enough to provide ample winding reactance at the low end of the operating range. As the operating frequency is increased, the effects of the core tend to disappear until there are scarcely any core effects at the upper limit of the operating range. The limiting factors for high frequency response are distributed capacitance and leakage inductance due to uncoupled flux. A high-permeability core minimizes the number of turns needed for a given reactance and therefore also minimizes the distributed capacitance at high frequencies.\nOne of the most common ferromagnetic transformers used in amateur circuits is the conventional broadband transformer. Broadband transformers with losses of less than 1 dB are employed in circuits that must have a uniform response over a substantial frequency range, such as a 2 to 30 MHz broadband amplifier. In applications of this sort, the reactance of the windings should be at least four times the impedance that the winding is designed to look into at the lowest design frequency.\n[...] Ferrite cores with a permeability of 850 are common choices for transformers used between 2 and 30 MHz. Lower frequency ranges, for example, 1 kHz to 1 MHz, may require cores with permeabilities up to 2000. Permeabilities from 40 to 125 are useful for VHF transformers.\n\nIn principle, there's nothing to prevent one from constructing a RF transformer for HF using a core with μi = 40, however, due to its low permeability...\n\nIt requires one to wind much more turns than necessary to obtain the same inductance required, which is a a quite labor-intensive process.\n\nAs the number of turns increases, distributed capacitance and leakage inductance increases, which cause the high-frequency response of transformer to deteriorate.\n\nGiven the same number of turns, a lower permeability implies poorer low-frequency performance, because it provide lower inductance.\n\n\nFurthermore, the vendor claims the operating frequency of the core is 3-100 MHz, which is consistent with The ARRL Handbook's advise that &quot;Permeabilities from 40 to 125 are useful for VHF transformers&quot;.\n\nA good balun for transmitters?\n\nUnlike receivers, transformers used for transmitters must handle significant power (and temperature rise). Cores with low permeabilities often have a much higher Curie temperature. Thus, transmitters have to use cores with much lower permeabilities. A presentation from Amateur Radio New South Wales (ARNSW) claims &quot;permeability above 250 is not recommended as this will degrade high frequency performance&quot;, and that the T200-2 iron powder core with μi = 10 can well be used for &quot;baluns from about 7 MHz to 50 MHz&quot;, but recommends FT240-61 (μi = 125) for 3 MHz to 30MHz.\nAlso, Transmission Line Transformers, 4th Edition by Jerry Sevick, W2FMI suggests in Chapter 11,\n\nGenerally, the lowest-permeability nickel-zinc ferrites yield the highest efficiencies. These have permeabilities in the range of 40 to 50. But, these ferrites can limit the low-frequency response. [...] Limited measurements on 4C4 material (μi = 125) [...] showed the best efficiency at the 200-ohm level. Table 11-2 lists some suggested power ratings [...] These ratings should generally hold for permeability below 300.\n\nIt is quite consistent with ARNSW's recommendations, shows their claims should be reliable.\n\nWhat about using it as a EMI/RFI chock?\n\nNot a good option. The material from Fair-Rite's Type #67, a similar core, shows they are only useful for suppressing interference above 1 GHz.\n\nA low-wattage 50 Hz power transformer?\n\nAbsolutely not. A power transformer requires large inductance.\nIn Chapter 7: Power Transformer Design of the book Transformer and Inductor Design Handbook, Third Edition by Colonel McLyman showed various candidates for transformer cores. The 50 Hz transformer candidates all have permeabilities greater than 1500.\nRemarks 1.1\n\nThis toroidal ferrite core is only suitable for winding high-Q inductors. It can be used as a wideband transformer, but best be used for VHF, not HF.\n\nIt's not a good EMI/RFI choke.\n\nIn general, do not use build a transformer with ferrite cores that have permeabilities lower than 125 for transmitters, 850 for receivers.\n\n\nIn conclusion, the local vendor of the MXO series of ferrite offers cores of higher permeabilities, better cores should be purchased from the vendor for building a balun for the double-balanced mixer.\n2. Calculating Inductance\n\nIt's common to characterize toroidal cores in terms of AL and uH. What are they useful for (obviously, useful for calculating the inductance, but what purposes do it serve for RF transformers)?\n\nAlready mentioned and explained, and the ARRL Handbook continued to show...\n\nExample: What should be the winding reactances of a transformer that has a 300-Ω primary and a 50-Ω secondary load? Relative to the 50-Ω secondary load:\n\n$$ X_{S} = 4 Z_{S} = 4 \\times 50 \\Omega = 200 \\Omega $$\nand the primary winding reactance ($X_{P}$) is:\n$$ X_{P} = 4 Z_{P} = 4 \\times 300 \\Omega = 1200 \\Omega $$\n\nThey are not given by the manufacturer, how can I calculate them from the known parameters of the core?\n\nThe article Magnetic Materials for Broadband Transmission Line Transformers from High Frequency Electronics, January 2005, by Jerry Sevick says...\nIf a toroid is used for the core, the magnetizing inductance $L_{m}$ (in henrys) is:\n$$ L_m = 0.4 \\pi N^2 \\mu \\frac{A_e}{L_e} \\times 10^{-8} $$\nWhere $N$ is the number of turns, $\\mu$ is the permeability of the core, $A_e$ (in square centimeter) is the effective cross-sectional area of the core, and $L_e$ (in centimeter) is the average magnetic path length in the core.\nAnd according to this page, the cross-sectional area of a toroidial core is...\n$$ A_e = \\frac{(D_{out} - D_{in})}{2} H $$\nWhere $D_{out}$ and $D_{in}$ are outer diameter and inner diameter in centimeter, $H$ is the height in centimeter, and the average magnetic path length of a toroidial core is...\n$$ L_e = \\frac{\\pi (D_{out} - D_{in})}{\\ln (\\frac{D_{out}}{D_{in}})}$$\n\nThus,\n$$ A_L = \\frac{L_m}{N^2} = 0.2 \\mu \\ln (\\frac{D_{out}}{D_{in}}) H \\times 10^{-8} \\space \\text{H}/\\text{Turn}^2$$\nWhere $\\mu$ is the permeability of the core, $\\ln$ is natural logarithm, $D_{out}$ and $D_{in}$ are outer diameter and inner diameter in centimeter, $H$ is the height in centimeter.\nFor example, there's a 141-35 core, $D_{out} = 3.58 \\space \\text{cm}$, $D_{in} = 2.24 \\space \\text{cm}$, $H = 1.05 \\space \\text{cm}$, $\\mu_{i} = 35$,\n$$ A_L = 0.2 \\times 35 \\times \\ln (\\frac{3.58}{2.24}) \\times 1.05 \\times 10^{-8} \\space \\text{H}/\\text{Turn}^2 $$\n$$ A_L = 3.446 \\times 10^{-8} = 34.4 \\space \\text{nH}/\\text{Turn}^2 $$\nThe listed $ A_L $ in the datasheet is $ 33\\space \\text{nH}/\\text{Turn}^2 $, showing our calculation only has an error of 5%.\nTODO: recheck the calculation tomorrow, don't trust my formula until this notice is removed.\nRemarks 2.1\n\nThe reactance of the windings should be at least four times the impedance that the winding is designed to look into at the lowest design frequency.\n\nA formula for calculating the inductance of a toroidal ferrite core from its geometric dimensions and the number of turns is given. Plug the numbers in, inductance per turn can be calculated.\n\nAlternatively, wrapping a few turns of wires on the core and measure the inductance directly using an LCR meter is a solution.\n\n\n3. Core Replacement\n\nIf I need to replace a toroidial core from an American design in the future, for example, FT37-43, which parameters should I look, and what calculations should I do to find an equivalent substitution?\n\nFinding a core made of the same material with similar permeability shouldn't be hard. The question How does one read a ferrite datasheet? also gives good references.\n4. Measurements\nTODO: misleading instructions, only suitable for 1:1 balun, need to fix this section.\n\nWhat measurements can I take with an 100 MHz oscilloscope (w/ FFT) and a 10 MHz signal generator to test whether my balun is working as intended after I winded it?\n\nTurn on the signal generator, switch it to 10 MHz. Connect the primary side of the balun to the signal generator. Probe the primary side with an oscilloscope and save the waveform.\nDisconnect the probe. Probe the secondary side of the balun. You should see a AC signal (without DC bias), with minimum attenuation of its amplitudes. This check confirms whether the balun is working as a transformer correctly as expected.\nPossibly, feeding a tracking generator or a noise source to the primary side and checking the attenuation of the secondary side with a spectrum analyzer or oscilloscope FFT is also an option. \nHowever, for an authoritative characterization, a Vector Network Analyzer should be used to measure the S-parameter of the balun. Currently, there are a lot of low-cost options such as MiniVNA and NanoVNA on the market, which should do its job to a reasonable level of certainty, and not out-of-reach for most people. The measurement should be done on a test rig (e.g. a copper board with all components soldered, SMD resistors) to minimize parasitic inductance and capacitance.\n5. How to get started?\n\nAre there any resources for beginners like me to get started?\n\nRead the entire ARRL Handbook.\nRemark 5.1\n\nARRL Handbook has much more information and pointers to even more references than most beginners believes.\n\nNotes\n[Note 1] &quot;Conventional transformers have been constructed to perform over wide bandwidths. Losses on the order of one decibel can exist over a range from a few kiloherz to over 200 MHz. Throughout a considerable portion of this band, the losses are only 0.2 dB. On the other hand, transimission line transformers exhibit far wider bandwidths and much greater efficiencies.&quot; - Transmission Line Transformers, 4th Edition by Jerry Sevick, W2FMI", "Your method certainly works, but I agree that using nested/multiple loops and inner if/else blocks is inelegant, if only because it makes following the code somewhat harder. Also, as you point out in a comment, hard-coding the structure is a nightmare if you suddenly want a pyramid which is 46 stars high.\n\nAs an alternative, I've rewritten the code to break it out into separate methods which hopefully make the code easier to understand, and also to allow a variable pyramid height (any value from zero or above).\n\npublic static void main(String[] args) {\n drawStarPyramid2(8);\n}\n\nprivate static void drawStarPyramid2(int height) {\n if (height &lt; 0) {\n throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"Height cannot be negative.\");\n }\n StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(height * height);\n appendSides(sb, height);\n appendBaseline(sb, height);\n System.out.println(sb.toString());\n}\n\nprivate static void appendSides(StringBuilder sb, int height) {\n int baselineWidth = height * 2 - 1;\n int midLine = baselineWidth / 2;\n for (int rowIndex = 0; rowIndex &lt; height - 1; ++rowIndex) {\n int leftStarOffset = midLine - rowIndex;\n appendSpacesThenStar(sb, leftStarOffset);\n if (rowIndex &gt; 0) {\n int rightStarOffset = midLine + rowIndex - 1;\n appendSpacesThenStar(sb, rightStarOffset - leftStarOffset);\n }\n sb.append(\"\\n\");\n }\n}\n\nprivate static void appendSpacesThenStar(StringBuilder sb, int spaces) {\n for (int spaceIndex = 0; spaceIndex &lt; spaces; ++spaceIndex) {\n sb.append(' ');\n }\n sb.append('*');\n}\n\nprivate static void appendBaseline(StringBuilder sb, int stars) {\n boolean first = true;\n for (int starIndex = 0; starIndex &lt; stars; ++starIndex) {\n if (!first) {\n sb.append(' ');\n }\n sb.append('*');\n first = false;\n }\n}\n\n\nBecause the sides need to be rendered differently to the baseline, each chunk of code goes into its own method, with a name which clearly describes the different purpose of each.\n\nThe appendSides method is responsible only for drawing the left and right sides of the triangle. This calculates the baseline width (the number of characters on the console counting stars and spaces) and this will be equal to height stars (because the number of stars on the baseline must equal the number of stars along the height of each side) plus height - 1 spaces, which gives 2 * height - 1. Then it calculates the mid-way point (in terms of characters on the console line) and then places the first star at this point.\n\nFor all subsequent lines, the \"left\" side star is simply placed at the position which is one additional character further left of the previous position (starting at the mid-way position), and the \"right\" side star at the position which is one additional character further right of the previous position. The rowIndex is a convenient way to calculate how many places to move away from the mid-way point on each line. The mathematics being used to calculate all of these offsets is fairly simple, but I recommend you sketch it out on a bit of paper, one line at a time, to get a feel for how the numbers work together.\n\nThe appendSpacesThenStar method simply appends the specified number of space characters to the StringBuilder and then a star. This method does not append a newline, because this method is often called twice for the same line, to write the \"left\" and then the \"right\" stars.\n\nThe appendBaseline method just appends (to the StringBuilder) the required number of stars, separated by spaces.\n\nA StringBuilder is being used to make assembly of the final string sequence more efficient, allowing the building of each line to be split across multiple method calls, rather than trying to finish each line in a single statement.\n\n(Also note that the initial capacity passed to the StringBuilder constructor can be improved by giving exactly the number of characters that will be needed, once spaces, stars, and newlines have been taken into consideration, but I'll leave this as an exercise for you.)", "Since the question refers to a college campus in the USA, I will quote information from UC Berkley.\nDO NOT GENERALIZE TO OUTSIDE THE USA.\n\n[Question] The only tap water source available to me is the restroom sink. Is it okay to drink water from there?\n[Answer] Drinking fountains and sinks are all part of the same plumbing system. Drinking fountains, however, may feature chillers or filters to improve the temperature and taste. It’s okay to drink water from the restroom sink if there is no drinking fountain or kitchen sink available. There is no significant risk of water contamination from restroom faucets.\n\n(Personally, I would add that nowadays many of the restroom sinks provide only a blend of hot &amp; cold water, which are separately supplied, whereas the drinking fountains are only connected to cold water. Hot water leaches more contaminants such as lead from pipes. See New York Times article.)", "polarization loss\n\nIf the polarization of the two antennas are not identical, and they rarely are, then there's some loss. For linear polarization on each end:\n\n$$ P_r \\propto \\cos(\\theta) $$\n\nWhere:\n\n\n$P_r$ is the received power, and\n$\\theta$ is the angle difference between the antennas.\n\n\nIf each antenna is circularly polarized in the same sense, then there is no loss, regardless of angle.\n\nIf each antenna is circularly polarized in opposite senses, then loss is theoretically infinite.\n\nIf one antenna is circularly polarized (either sense -- it doesn't matter) and the other is linear, then there is a fixed 3 dB loss regardless of the rotation of the antennas.\n\nWhile polarization loss can theoretically be infinite, in practice \"infinite\" means around -30 dB since no real antenna is exactly linearly or circularly polarized, and reflections off other objects (the ground, the satellite's solar panels, etc) mean at least some of the received energy is in a different polarization.\n\nFaraday rotation can alter the polarization of the signal as it passes through the atmosphere, introducing polarization loss.\n\ndirectional loss\n\nAntenna gains are usually given in their direction of maximum gain. This is only valid for calculations if the antennas are aligned perfectly, which is rarely the case. The difference from the maximum, on-axis gain and the actual gain could be considered a \"loss\" in the calculation of a link budget.\n\nThe value of this loss depends on the particular antenna's pattern.\n\nmultipath interference\n\nAlthough this isn't as much of a problem as it can be for terrestrial communication, there's at least the ground to consider. For highly directional antennas the ground reflections can be negligible unless the satellite is very near the horizon. For less directional antennas a simple but effective model for this loss is the two-ray ground reflection model.\n\nDepending on the geometry of the satellite, there can potentially be significant reflections on that end, also.\n\nDepending on how the geometry works out, this can be a gain, not a loss.\n\natmospheric absorption\n\nThe atmosphere absorbs electromagnetic radiation. The absorption is frequency dependent. It also depends on the position of the satellite: when the satellite is overhead the path must go though less atmosphere than when the satellite is at the horizon. The atmosphere changes with the weather, too.\n\nFortunately, satellite communication frequencies are selected in regions of the electromagnetic spectrum where absorption is usually negligible.\n\natmospheric reflection\n\nThe atmosphere can also reflect electromagnetic energy as well as absorb it.\n\nAt VHF and higher frequencies, the reflection is very slight and diffuse. This can be exploited for terrestrial communications and is called troposcatter.\n\nAt HF, reflection from the atmosphere can be very significant. When used for terrestrial communications, this is called skywave propagation.\n\nIf you wish to calculate these losses for purposes of space communication, you can research these propagation modes, keeping in mind what is a \"loss\" for terrestrial communication is energy that made it past the atmosphere, which is good for space communication.\n\nSpace weather can exacerbate these issues, sometimes severely.\n\ninverse square law\n\nRadio communications, just like light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation, are subject to the inverse square law:\n\n$$ P_r \\propto {1 \\over r^2} $$\n\nwhere $r$ is the distance between the receiver and transmitter. In other words, for each doubling of the distance, power is divided by 4.\n\nother\n\nOf course, we can't enumerate every possible source of loss. Possibly significant:\n\n\nbirds landing on the antenna\nairplanes flying in the way\nice on the antenna\nheavy clouds\ndust storms\ntrees\nwind messing with antenna alignment\nspace weather and its many effects on the atmosphere\nsupervolcanos\n\n\nsummary\n\nPath losses for practical space communications are almost entirely a function of the inverse square law, antenna gain, and antenna alignment.\n\nMultipath interference can be a problem sometimes, if the antennas are not sufficiently directional to be isolated from nearby reflective surfaces (notably the ground).\n\nThe other sources of loss are small under normal conditions and complex to calculate. For amateur needs it's sufficient to add a few dB of margin in the link budget to account for these things. People investing millions of dollars in launching satellites perform extensive studies of space weather and other stochastic factors and calculate an acceptable margin based on a specified probability of failure.\n\nfurther reading\n\n\nWhat is a link budget, and how do I make one?\nWhat does the Friis transmission equation represent and how is it derived?\nIs free space path loss dependent on frequency?", "No, we live in a wet area, and we also plant chrysanthemums. They will not keep the mosquitoes away, or even help. Not just any plants from the genus Chrysanthemum will do. People derive the insecticide 'pyrethrin' from Chrysanthemum Cinerariifolium, which isn't the common garden chrysanthemum, and Chrysanthemum Coccineum, or painted daisy. Even planting one of these won't keep away the mosquitoes, much less planting one of the more common button chrysanthemums for fall decoration.\n\nFor more information on mosquito control, see:\n\n\nWhat plants will deter mosquitoes? \nWhat is this (allegedly) mosquito-repellent trailing plant with dark green heart-shaped leaves?\nHow do I keep mosquitos out of my fountain?\nHow can I keep mosquitoes out of my yard?", "The Terms Extradimensional Space and Nondimensional Space Are Interchangeable\n\nThis becomes clear when looking at how the terms are used in context. The most useful example is the portable hole (DMG 264) (20,000 gp; 0 lbs.), which says that it\n\n\n is a circle of cloth spun from the webs of a phase spider interwoven with strands of ether and beams of starlight. When opened fully, a portable hole is 6 feet in diameter, but it can be folded up to be as small as a pocket handkerchief. When spread upon any surface, it causes an extradimensional space 10 feet deep to come into being. This hole can be picked up from inside or out by simply taking hold of the edges of the cloth and folding it up. Either way, the entrance disappears, but anything inside the hole remains.\n \n The only air in the hole is that which enters when the hole is opened. It contains enough air to supply one Medium creature or two Small creatures for 10 minutes. (See Suffocation, page 304.) The cloth does not accumulate weight even if its hole is filled (with gold, for example). Each portable hole opens on its own particular nondimensional space. If a bag of holding (see page 248) is placed within a portable hole, a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in that place. Both the bag and the cloth are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens\n a gate to the Astral Plane. The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, the portable hole and bag of holding being destroyed in the process. (DMG 264)\n\n\nEmphasis mine. Thus, even within the portable hole's description, the terms extradimensional space and nondimensional space are used interchangeably. That's because such spaces are--no matter which term is used--technically demiplanes:\n\n\n This catch-all category covers all extradimensional spaces that function like planes but have measurable size and limited access. Other kinds of planes are theoretically infinite\n in size, but a demiplane might be only a few hundred feet across. Access to demiplanes may be limited to particular locations (such as a fixed gateway) or particular situations (such as a time of year or a weather condition). Some demiplanes are created by powerful\n magic, some naturally evolve, and some appear according to the will of the deities.\n \n In the D&amp;D cosmology, also known as the Great Wheel, the planes are connected in a specific fashion, as depicted in the diagram on page 153. (The diagram does not show demiplanes, because the location and even the existence of these extradimensional\n spaces is constantly changing.) (DMG 147)\n\n\nTherefore the extradimensional spaces of the bag of devouring (DMG 274) (n/a gp; 0 lbs.), the mirror of life-trapping (DMG 262) (2000,000 gp; 50 lbs.), the 2nd-level Sor/Wiz spell rope trick [trans] (PH 273), and the 7th-level Sor/Wiz spell Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion [conj] (PH 256) are the same kinds of spaces as the nondimensional spaces of the bag of holding (DMG 248) (2,500+ gp; 15+ lbs.), the pocket paradise created by the rod of security (DMG 236) (61,000 gp; 5 lbs.), and the quiver of Ehlonna (DMG 265) (1,800 gp; 2 lbs.).\n\nSpeculation\nThe Player's Handbook uses exclusively the term extradimensional space, while the Dungeon Master's Guide mixes the terms extradimensional space and nondimensional space freely. I think it was one of those things the authors never expected anyone to care about, hence not worth fixing... not expecting that over a decade after its release such term mixing would bother careful readers of their game.", "Good call, \n\nThe Tate modern turbine hall springs to mind for large acoustic spaces, as does St Paul's cathedral and the O2 (millennium dome)\n\nThe water fountains (if they're running) and general ambiance of the square at the Barbican \n\nTrains coming into underground stations sound great - be covert about this though as you usually need permission\n\nBorough market with the trains rumbling overhead\n\nPerhaps there are more ideas at the London sound survey, you might even want to contribute?\n\nYou could also visit Longplayer if you're here at the weekend\n\nWill add more if I think of them, \n\nMark\n\nEDIT: A few more ideas.. this is starting to turn into my to do list! \n\nThere's a dedicated sound art gallery opened recently called SoundFjord. I've been meaning to get there myself. A bit out of the way, but there's an exhibition on till Friday 22nd. \n\nFor markets there's also Smithfield meat market, Billingsgate fish market and Columbia Road flower market. These are more wholesale markets so probably sound a bit more industrial. These are all indoors.\n\nThe science museum currently have the oramics machine which was part of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It's a small display, but it's an interesting museum anyway.", "The one(s) that survive/thrive in your orchard. I don't know the specific answer to this and I don't know that anyone does. The reason being that \"apple tree\" and mycorrhizae are not the only variables in this equation.\n\nFor example,\nWhat variety of apple tree? Are the trees healthy? How old are they? Is the orchard neglected or intensively maintained? Is it an orchard or a single tree? What other species/organisms are nearby? Are the trees tightly spaced or well spaced? What is the weather like Hi temps? Lo temps? How deep is the freeze? How long does the freeze last? What other organisms including fungi live in the soil already? What does the soil consist of? How's the drainage? How much rain does the site get? \n\nThis is just the tip of the iceberg and only an example of the factors that may play a role in which fungi establish a symbiotic relationship with the trees. So when you buy mycorrhizae, to my knowledge, you get a great variety. You introduce them all and the best ones are the varieties that thrive survive multiply and get the job done.\n\nThis probably isn't the answer you were looking for and if not I apologize.", "Yes, it is possible to influence values of the E-parameter, even to make them integers.\nI see three possibilities:\n\nforce firmware to support units smaller than mm - suggested approach\nforce slicer to produce integer-like values - most of below explanation\nchange meaning of E - custom approach, including RPM interpretation\n\nEach of above needs post-processing of the G-Code output. There are some tools available, but required logic would need to be added (programmed). Some are simple scripts and this won't be difficult task. The rest of solution is much more difficult.\nBy the book, the E value is new coordinate on the E (extruder) on axis, in current units. Unfortunately, the only position units reflected in standard G-Code are millimeters (see G21) or inches (see G20). Therefore using integer values would mean very limited resolution, at least 1 mm of filament pushed at a time. Introducing smaller unit into firmware seems to be most reasonable approach.\n\nTools to post-process G-Code files\nThe G-Code generated by slicer would contain Ennn values as fractions in millimeters (or millimeters). Generated file may be post processed line by line to alter these values. There are many examples of scripts or tools doing similar job.\nOne example is simple python script metric-gcode-truncator stripping numbers to 4 decimal places. Simple changes to this scirpt could be sufficient in simplest cases.\nI found this script listed between other G-Code Utilities. Also, I found source code of grecode, which seem to be much more comprehensive G-Code transformation tool, but with no similar functionality out of the box.\nNext improvement would be to use the script as slicer plugin, to streamline the everyday process. Maybe some existing Cura plugin could be a basis or example.\n\nSupport for smaller units in firmware\nFirst task is to select smaller unit (like micrometre, nanometre, or even non-metric abstraction).\nSource code of existing firmware must be the supplemented to properly intereprete such values. In Marlin focus should be on parser.h and parser.cpp, following keywords INCH_MODE_SUPPORT, LINEARUNIT_MM and LINEARUNIT_INCH. Respective changes must be also added to configuration files.\nKey inspiration in parser seems to be following part:\nstatic inline void set_input_linear_units(const LinearUnit units) {\n switch (units) {\n default:\n case LINEARUNIT_MM: linear_unit_factor = 1.0f; break;\n case LINEARUNIT_INCH: linear_unit_factor = 25.4f; break;\n }\n volumetric_unit_factor = POW(linear_unit_factor, 3);\n} \n\nThe main difficuly would be to refine parser and the rest of code to ensure that new units are only used for E movements, not for other axes or G-Code commands related to speed or other settings.\nThen, each G-Code file must be post-processed with prepared tool, which will recalculate and alter Ennn values (or others), only for selected G-Code commands (this must relfect). For metric units it could be simple multiplication by 10n (visually it is shifting a decimal point).\nSummarizing, possibly the simplest would be to just introduce new unit for all, and re-process G-Code files accodingly changing each value X, Y, Z, E. I cannot advice how such changes would affect F (feedrate), speed and acceleration settings.\n\nSlicer producing integer values of E parameter\nLong story short: decrease steps/mm (firmware/printer), decrease filament diameter (slicer), then Ennn values in G-Code will shoot up and could be rounded to integers without drastical loose of quality. Units for extrusion become then fake (scaled).\nSoftware may not be ready to support adequately low values (configuration, rounding) or high values (calculations). So in practice the values configuration could not by as minimal as wished, which would more or less impact the quality. There are is speed setting trouble, beacuse extrusion speed is correlated with movement speed.\nDetailed theoretical explanation and example calculations are below.\nSteps/mm\nHowever this is still useful, because each printing firmware has configurable steps/mm setting (or some analogous constant value). Steps/mm is basic and known characteristic of extruder, representing number of (micro)steps of extruder's stepper motor to push this 1 millimeter of filament (traverse E axis). If this steps/mm constant will be set to 1, then extruder will make only 1 (micro)step for G1 E1. This change could be done in firmware configuraton, temporarily with G-Code M92 E1, or stored to EEPROM.\nVolume\nFilament is a long cylinder, and extrusion length is height of short cylinder (segment of whole): $l= \\frac {4 V} {\\pi d^2} R$, where:\n\nV - volume necessary to pring path, internally calculated by slicer software\nd - diameter of filament configured in slicer\nR - customized extrusion multiplier setting (R) a.k.a. flow rate. (It was introduced for fine tuning, in runtime or when chaniging filaments, to avoid workarounds like manipulating steps/mm or diameter to untrue values. This parameter is not really important for this discusion, included only for completness.)\n\nPrinter configuration\n1 mm of filament translates to actual volume of material (mm3). The correct steps/mm is very important, so the rotation of motor (travel along E axis) will really extrude the expected amount. If value of steps/mm configured in printer is reduced, then interpreted G-Code commands will be translated to too short distances (less steps). To ensure the needed volume, either more millimeters would have to be ordered (G1 Ennn) or filament would have to be thicker. Filament is what it is, so only the first choice is possible.\nFor example, using 1,75 mm filament and having extruder which needs to make 760 steps to push 1 mm (a fact, determined hardware characteristics), then to extrude 1 mm3:\n\nif printer is set for 760 steps/mm (correctly), then G-Code must contain correct E0.415752 mm for adequately long cylinder being pushed throught the nozzle\nif printer is &quot;misconfigured&quot; for 1 step/mm, then G-Code must contain edaquately scaled value E315.9713 for the same cyllinder to be pushed (760x bigger number). The value is actually an exact number of (micro)steps. And it is big. Decimal part is negligible. It can be safely rounded to integer.\n\nFor practical use, the printer's speed settings and limits would need to be also multiplied for extrusion and retraction. Otherwise extruder moves would be slower by scaling factor, with negative side effects of hot filament behaving on its own.\nRight place of scaling\nSo how to obtain this scaling? Simplest way is to increase flow rate in the printer (e.g. to 760%). This will scale Ennn values form G-Code in runtime. An original G-Code is needed for this, with tiny numbers. So this is not a solution for integers.\nThen how to force slicer to produce G-Code with scaled numbers?\nSlicer configuration\nSlicer calculates volume required to print some fragment and coverts it to millimeters of filament, basing on configured diameter. So this diameter is also very important. Everything must match. If very small diameter is set in slicer, this will drastically increase length of filament pushed.\nFor example:\n\nFor 1.75 mm filament, to extrude 1 mm3 volume, slicer will order to push E0.415752 mm.\nAfter changing configured filament diameter to 0.01 mm, slicer would order to push E12732.4 mm. This is big number. But not even similar to the above needed length E315.9713.\n\nSlicer usually adds speed (feedrate) information to G-Code. So any speed settings and limits for extrusion and retraction would need to be multiplied also in slicer. There are also other settings to modify, like retraction distance.\nMatching equation\nChange of diameter must reflect the change of steps/mm. The proportion could be derived from cylinder volume formula. Diameter to configure in slicer is $d= D \\sqrt { \\frac L l}$, where:\n\nD - real diameter of filament\nL - standard extrusion distance: height of cylinder having some referenced volume and D diameter, if steps/mm reflect actual hardware\nl - scaled extrusion distance: height of cylinder having the same referenced volume, if steps/mm reflect actual printer configuration\n\nValues for calculation need to be determined for some example volume. This was already done. Following previous examples, diameter required in slicer is: $d= 1.75 \\sqrt { \\frac {0.415752} {315.9713}} = 0.063479$. Then still providing 1.75 mm filament to the same extruder, slicer will produce big values like E315.9713, but printer will perform olny one (micro)step for one milimeter in G-Code.\nRemove fractional part\nThe generated G-Code would still include fractional part in Ennn values. The file should be post processed line by line to remove it. Simple script will do the job. It could be simple metric-gcode-truncator, after changing pattern to ([E][0-9]*)([.][0-9]+) (not tested). An improvement for quality would be to use rouding instead of truncating decimal part.\nCumulative discrepancies\nThere is serious disadvantage of such simple post-processing approach. The total of extruded material will vary, depending a bit on rounding approach. The fractional part is lost, so there may be impact on accuracy with over- or under-extrusion here or there. Post-processing could instead collect these rounded fractions and try to equally compensate for it in following moves, to minimize the total aberration.\nI believe that the same could happen inside printer's firmware program, when it traverse floating-number distances, but this is only an assumption. Wihout fractional part, firmware will no have data to compensate anything.\nEven more accurate?\nBecause firmware can accepts fractions below 1 for steps/mm (Marlin would accept 0.01), then theoretically the scale could be even bigger - and so Ennn values. Slicer must support adequately low diameter. (In extreme cases this could trigger unexpected overflows or errors or be blocked by software.) Printer will then multiply E values by fraction (steps/mm). Extruding resolution is still limited to 1 (miro)step. But if firmware acumulate rounded fractional parts in runtime and compensate, then total amount extruded per layer would be more precise.\nReal-live attempt to slice\nIt was possible to set 0,01 filament diameter in Cura, after tweaking the extruder profile for such very thin filament. Nozzle diameter must be set to real size, becuase it affects many parameters of slicing. The total use of filament in my sample G-Code was &gt;52km. File contains entries like:\nG1 X72.976 Y63.428 E2623.66351\nG1 X74.498 Y61.523 E2607.85791\nG1 F1500 E-608\nG0 F1800 X107.344 Y85.452\nG1 F1500 E608\nG1 F1200 X107.583 Y85.642 E326.54744\nG1 X107.988 Y85.938 E536.51282\n\nEstimated print time is &gt;5 days. The F parameter is presumably used also by extruder, then the whole print will still slow down. To make the print really happen, possibly all speed settings in slicer would need to be tweaked (i.e. print speed for walls, top/bottom skin, infill, etc.). Then only hard speed limits in firmware would block rapid movements. Outcome quality will be most likely compromised.\n\nCustom approaches (own G-Code flavor)\nSlicer will always calculate length (travel distance), otherwise it would be against the G-Code standard. At least I did not hear of any slicing software, which would output something else then length for extrusion.\nIn some own custom firmware value of E parameter could be defined in any own way. For example, the E value could be defined exaclty as number of (micro)steps for extruder's stepper motor, angle of rotation refleced as integer, etc. Distance calculated by slicer would need to be re-calculated in G-Code post processing, to match requirements of this firmware.\nOwn piece software would be then needed to perform re-calculations (simple or not) and overwrite the original E values. The code could be possibly inspired by some of listed above, but the calculation logic need to match specification from firmware. Possibly this could become own plugin to Cura or other slicer.\nRPM approach (critique of the idea)\nAn attempt to interprete E value as RPM (rounds per minute) is of no use, until it is synchronized with real speed of printing head movement, i.e. other motors performing movement along owne vectors to print the effective path. It is probably possible to calculate, but sounds like creating own G-Code flavor, which would ignore many other important parameters.\nOne of them is F parameter defined in several G-Code commands (including G1). It determines movement speed for traversing the path. It may change from move to move, making use of acceleration settings. What is worse then, it is expected to be remembered between commands and used for consecutive printer moves. Therefore focusing on single line of G-Code won't tell the whole plan of slicer, and the sophisticated plan reflected in G-Code file would be only partially executed.\nRPM approach could seem interesting, if it could ensure constant speed of extruder. This would be ideal for the pressure control. But it would also come at cost of printing speed, with no accelleration control.", "For Python and TLE propagation using SGP4 one very handy option is https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/\n\nAs you probably already know a TLE is a strange animal. It does not really contain proper orbital elements, but instead is engineered with one purpose; to be fed into SGP4 so that that will generate reasonable position information for at least a few days around the TLE's epoch. See @Tristan's answer to Is SGP4 propagation necessarily more accurate near the epoch chosen for TLE generation? and answers to How to obtain UTC of the epoch time in a satellite TLE (two line element)? and How does SGP4 work? for more on that.\n\nSGP4 includes approximations for several effects beyond Keplerian orbits, including a modest \"lumpy gravity\" model for Earth, continuous atmospheric drag, and gravitational perturbations from the Sun and Moon. For more on that last one see answers to SGP 4 for Geostationary Satellite and How do &quot;Deep space&quot; corrections in SGP4 account for the Sun&#39;s and Moon&#39;s gravity? and SGP4 on Systems Tool Kit (STK); how to check if SDP4 deep space correction is implemented? and maybe Differences between SGP8 and the standard SGP4? Is it ever used in practice?\n\nFrom these I would like to convince you that a direct interpretation of the numerical values in the TLEs should be taken with several grains of salt. Large, sudden changes in mean anomaly (especially to higher orbits) or in inclination from one TLE to the next might indeed indicate a propulsive maneuver, but smaller changes could indicate a change in atmospheric temperature and density in LEO due to solar activity or even a mixture of noisy individual position and velocity measurements from satellite tracking (radar, visual/telescope).\n\nSo I think it will be very difficult to flag a propulsive maneuver with certainty and distinguish it from day-to-day noise in TLEs unless it is large or unless one group of TLEs are inconsistent with a following group of TLEs.\n\nTo that end, what you can do is for each TLE use SGP4 to predict a position and velocity at the epoch dates and times of several TLEs before and after it, say within a few day or week-long interval around the given TLE's epoch. If you see a clear inconsistency over several TLEs that might warrant further investigation.\n\nFor more background before you start that, see\n\n\nCan the TLE epoch be listed as in the future? How?\nHow to obtain UTC of the epoch time in a satellite TLE (two line element)?\nTime, UTC, Julian Date, TLE epoch - how are they related quantitatively?\nWhat does it mean to ask for a date beyond epoch time?\nHow to find T₀ and other parameters from a TLE to calculate an approximate mean anomaly?\nIs the amount of accurate information in a TLE equal to that of a single state vector?\nHow frequent do TLEs of LEO satellites change?" ]

[ "Is it best for children to teach swim by parents?" ]

[ "Who need to teach children swim?", "How do you teach your kid to swim?", "When is a good time to teach your children how to swim?", "What is the best way to teach a child how to swim?", "Why would parents abandon their children?", "Why do parents lie to and deceive their children?", "Should children obey their parents?", "How do you attract parents of preschool children online?", "Why do most Asian parents want their children to become doctors?", "What are important things to teach children?", "What is helicopter parenting, and why do parents do it?", "Why do some parents believe spanking works?", "Is it true that parents like their children all equally, or is it a myth?", "Why do you like teaching?", "Why are kids smarter than their parents?", "Are today's parents overprotective parents?", "Do parents have a favorite kid?", "Do parents really mean it when they say they love all their children equally?", "Why is helicopter parenting good?", "What are good ways to teach children not to lie?", "Can children's looks be very different from their parents?", "What do Indian parents think of their married children having sex?", "Is it true that children are smarter /more intelligent than their parents?", "Why did you choose to be a teacher?", "How did you teach your children to read?", "What kind of parents will the next generation have?", "Why do you think some people choose not to have children?", "How do children learn from us?", "What personality disorders are common in children with narcissistic parents?", "Why do so many kids tend to lie to their parents?", "How can a parent identify their child's hidden talent?", "Do you love your parents?" ]

[ "the English Channel" ]

[ "body water", "oil water separator", "separateness", "a flowing body of water", "separation of a substance from a matrix", "Separators", "four bodies of water", "water from the Nile", "separately", "separator", "The Normandie Hotel", "water from Cologne", "separation", "anti-royalist deputies from Brittany", "the Normandy SR2", "Emma of Normandy", "to protect the body from rain", "Brittany Flickinger", "Normandy breakout", "Brittany Papple", "a deficit of total body water", "Ma Normandie", "Brittany Howard", "Brittany Mason", "Rouen, Normandy", "Brittany Allen", "landings in Normandy", "Brittany Snow", "Brittany Lange", "body", "Brittany Lang", "Brittany Murphy" ]

[ "Dharma & Greg" ]

[ "Objects Are Closer Than They Appear", "when spoken to", "Playing cards", "Play in the mud", "playing blackjack", "Play the field" ]

[ "Our knowledge about the extinction event at the end of the Cretatious Period comes from a sudden disappearance of fossils and a sudden appearance of shock quartz in the same layer of sedimentary rock. We know that these Quartz crystals are created through high pressure over a very short time which is typical for an impact, and we've found an impact crater that is large enough to kick up enough dust into the atmosphere to cause the extinction event and also comes from the same time period. So the theory of an extinction caused by the meteor impact is very sound and well-established. We do not know whether the dinosaurs (and most terrestrial and acquatic megafauna) died out within one year or if they were slowly outcompeted by other species that were better adapted to the changed climate afterwards, over a time period of ca. 100000 years. The fossils simply can't be dated that precisely." ]

[ "Yes. There are relatively few truly aquatic plants that spend their entire life cycle under water, but they do exist. The other commenter mentioned the sea grasses as an example of this. This is because plants originally evolved on land. Thus all aquatic plants had land-dwelling ancestors that had to adapt to an aquatic lifestyle. There are species of semi-aquatic plants like lily pads and cattails that have parts that grow up out of the water. There are also species of marsh plants that can tolerate long periods of being submerged under water. If you're interested in knowing exact species of true aquatic plants, I recommend looking at aquarium forums. Just remember that some of the plants used in aquariums are semi-aquatic and not true aquatics.", "There are lots of cases of land animals returning to the water. Penguins, whales, otters, dolphins, hippos, ducks... okay, the last two aren't really ocean going, but both are semi-aquatic. Animal life began in the ocean, and since then has moved back and forth on occasion.", "It used to be very uncommon for women to serve on juries. At one time, women had to take a jury class to be allowed to serve on a jury (men did not). And even after that legislation was struck down in the mid 1940s, women were allowed to opt-out of jury duty in some states if they were selected, until that was struck down in the 1970s. This was all part-and-parcel of the historical ideas of women being inherently \"lesser\" than men. They seldom had formal educations after high school, and often didn't work, being instead expected to be housewives and raise children.", "Semi-related, how did the populace react when the olympic games were ended in the first place?", "The super basic, non-mathematical answer: Torque is how much work you can do. Horsepower is how fast you can do that work. Think of a semi tractor-trailer next to a souped up Honda. Both engines could make the same number of horsepower, but the semi tractors engine makes a LOT more torque. The semi tractor can do a lot more work, but it takes longer to do it.", "24 hours is actually not the time it takes the earth to do one rotation. The Earth rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds (and a little bit of change). There is a difference between how long it takes the Earth to rotate and how long what most people consider a day to be, which is 24 hours. 24 hours is how long it takes for the Earth to rotate in relation to the Sun. The problem is that while the Earth rotates it is also orbiting the Sun. This means that after it has rotated once it has also moved in its orbit. It takes almost another 4 minutes to rotate the Sun back into position, depending on which position on Earth you had chosen to measure it against.", "A great account of how breweries adapted to Prohibition can be found in [this section](_URL_0_) of [Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition](_URL_1_) by Daniel Okrent. As others have posted, they experimented with various non-alcoholic products (with varying success), and by selling materials that allowed for legal and semi-legal home brewing. Most bided their time in hopes of the repeal of the 18th Amendment. Few were able to do so. When the legitimate beer market returned in 1933 after Prohibition, several mega-breweries that had survived Prohibition came to dominate the market. Great book, entertaining and informative, highly recommended.", "To broaden this just a little bit, what was the public awareness of the bomb's nature in general (as opposed to the long-lasting effects)? Did the public in the United States (or Japan or Europe) know that the bombs were not conventional bombs immediately after they were dropped? If not, when did the general public become aware that these bombs were fundamentally different in nature from regular bombs?", "We cannot. You actually need air to smell with your mammal nose (I don't know about non-mammals). This is why whales and dolphins have so [few functioning olfactory receptors](_URL_1_). [These](_URL_0_) semi-aquatic shrews and moles (seriously) make air bubbles underwater that they then smell in/through to find prey by scent.", "My limited understanding is that the earth's crust is actually quite homogenous if you measure on a large scale. The crust is on average the lighter minerals, but the same elements that are the most abundant for the earth as a whole are the most abundant in the crust. The proto-earth was mostly liquid at one point and underwent convention which did in fact sort the earth into layers. The crust later cooled and solidified but convection is still sorting the mantle and core (interestingly the moon was formed from a giant impactor in between these times - after layering but before solidifying - which is why it's relatively metal poor).", "[The axial skeleton of the snakes’ common ancestor, like most other tetrapods, had regional specializations consisting of cervical (neck), thoracic (chest), lumbar (lower back), sacral (pelvic), and caudal (tail) vertebrae. ... most of a snake’s skeleton is an extremely extended thorax. ... Neck, lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are very reduced in number ... while only **a short tail remains** of the caudal vertebrae. However, the tail is still long enough to be of important use in many species, and is modified in some aquatic and tree-dwelling species.](_URL_0_)", "[I think this old thread](_URL_0_) should just about answer your question. Probably, though, Suetonius' version (καὶ σὺ τέκνον), which he only reports as something that other people say, were not Caesar's last words. Despite the hearsay that Suetonius reports both he and Plutarch state as fact that Caesar did not speak after the first blow was struck. More likely his last words were his response to Casca's initial attack, which Suetonius reports were \"ista quidem vis est\" (\"Truly this is violence!\") but which Plutarch says were (if you'll excuse my rather loose translation) \"μιαρώτατε Κάσκα, τί ποιεῖς;\": \"Casca you bastard, what are you doing?!\" Plutarch says that Caesar said this in Latin...but he doesn't actually report the Latin, he gives the Greek. After that first outburst, though, both Suetonius and Plutarch are in agreement that Caesar said nothing.", "They are eaten by cats, foxes, birds of prey or struck by cars, what remains after that isn't normally recognisable as a bird. Birds don't normally die of old age in the wild.", "Think of a country. Individuals die off after about 80 years but leave progeny behind. As long as there is a reasonable supply of food and waste is removed, the country can last for millenia.", "No... at those sizes and speeds, things tend to act a lot more like liquids than solids. Think of a armor piercing bullet hitting water - it turns out that the faster the bullet is travelling, the less far it gets through water, because the energy of the impact just shreds the bullet. Same thing with this hypothetical impact: the impactor would be decimated, so while you could break fragments off the earth with a large enough impactor moving at sufficient speeds, nothing recognizable as the original impactor would be leaving the other side. This stops being true for very large (within an order of magnitude of the size of the earth) or very dense impactors.", "Hi, not discouraging others from contributing here, but I recall a thread on this recently * /u/taxum in [When did the original copy of the Declaration of Independence return to the United States, after having been sent to George III?](_URL_0_) ... and you may find these of tangential interest * /u/uncovered-history in [How long after July 4, 1776 did King George III receive the Declaration of Independence?](_URL_2_) * /u/k1990 in [How long did word of colonial independence take to get to King George in England after July 4th?](_URL_1_) * /u/Cdn_Nick in [How was King George III made aware of the Declaration of Independence?](_URL_3_)", "One thing to keep in mind was the reuse of arrows. Arrows were commonly gathered after battles and retooled or simply re used if they were not in poor shape. This lead to a couple things, first it lowered the cost of needing new arrows, second, if the arrow struck ground or other unclean things, it allowed for a build up of bacteria on the arrow, that way, even if this arrow hit someone in a non vital area in a future battle, it could cause an infection and ultimately disable the unit it struck. To answer your question further, there was a similar question here: _URL_0_", "Hi there, you may be interested in this comment thread from a few days ago: _URL_0_ which in particular answers this question: > Did knights in armor get struck remarkably more? **Other commenters in this thread**: I will repeat my plea (slightly modified) from the last thread: What the OP is asking is *if there are records of people being hit by lightning in the middle ages* and *If so what do they say, how did people see lightning, a natural phenomenon or a punishment by God?* In other words, s/he is not asking for how the physics of getting struck by lighting work, or how a suit of armor would or would not protect one, but rather for *historical evidence of the event and attitudes towards it.* Please do attempt to confine answers to those topics. Thanks!", "Not a historian, but my understanding is that the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles were so oppressive that Germany was driven into bankruptcy, and Hitler promised, and delivered, economic salvation. Jews were made scapegoats, and if you read history, Hitler did not invent that idea. Nor did hatred of Jews die with Hitler. Watch [Gentlemen's Agreement](_URL_0_) to see how Jews were discriminated against in the US both before and after WWII.", "hi! you may be interested in a related post from last week * [How did people conduct surgeries on patients in the days before pre-anesthetics? Can't they die from the pain?](_URL_0_)", "He won't become public domain. In 2022 they'll extend how long copyright lasts after the creator's death, just like the last two times.", "Piggybacking: In the immediate aftermath of abolition, how were slave-dependent industries (like the stareotypical cotton industry) affected? How did they adjust? Surely crops still had to be planted, harvested, shipped, and so on, right? Where did the labor come from? Did business owners suddenly just start paying their slaves-turned-employees, and everything continued as before? Or....? Also, what happened to the economies in the south? With free labor suddenly turning into labor costs, I'm guessing there were lots of bankruptcies and mergers and defaults...? How long did it take the economy/economies in the South to recover and normalize? How did the economic fallout in the South affect those individuals and businesses in the North? Thanks! **TL;DR: What were the immediate/short-term economic/market effects that resulted from Abolition? Assuming turmoil was among these effects, how long did it take for the economy in the related geographic regions to stabilize and normalize?**", "You're taking advantage of work already done by the semi. The semi did a lot of work to push the air out of the way. If you weren't there, this work would have gone to waste - but if since you **are** there, you get to take advantage of it.", "Often it is very arbitrary. The red die so associated with Britain was chosen by Cromwell for his new Model Army because it was cheap and long lasting. Charles retained the color after the restoration and it has been the symbol of British soldiering ever since.", "It has a pretty good chance (well north of 50%) of outliving the Sun, at least in some sort of semi-recognizable form. After trillions or quadrillions of years, I'm not sure, it will eventually essentially completely evaporate (even metals have vapor pressure). Although it'll cool down to the temperature of the CMB eventually, and the CMB itself will cool, so I have no idea how long that process will take, but it'll eventually happen.", "'Twas oft asked here. Ye may enjoy these: 1. [ELI5: Where does the concept of having a first and a last name come from? ](_URL_2_) 1. [ELI5:How were last names created? When did this start and how did we get our last names ](_URL_4_) 1. [ELI5: Where did surnames come from? ](_URL_5_) 1. [ELI5: How did everyone in the world come to get last names? ](_URL_6_) 1. [ELI5: How did last names come about? ](_URL_1_) 1. [ELI5: Where do all the thousands of last names come from? Every day, I hear hundreds of new and odd last names. And some peoples' are the same, but they aren't related by blood. How does all this work? ](_URL_0_) 1. [ELI5: Where did all the last names come from? ](_URL_3_)", "Car batteries actually don't last long at all. Leave your lights running with the engine off and see how long it takes it to go dead. The reason it seems like they last a long time is because whenever the engine is running, the battery is being constantly recharged. The alternator in the car is what does this. This is also why you can have a totally dead battery, get a jumpstart, and after a short while of the engine running, you're fully back in business again.", "The fall of saigon happened almost 3 years AFTER the last american troops had left vietnam. From an Amerian perspective, it did not end the war, the war was long over.", "Earth did have a ring, it turned into the moon (by one theory) [one semi-credible, I was laze source](_URL_0_) Edit: [A video!](_URL_1_)", "The most common isotope of uranium has a halflife about as long as the age of the Earth (give or take half a billion years), so comparing how much of that is in a rock - or a planet - relative to the amount of whatever isotopes it becomes after decaying gives a good estimate. For younger rocks, different radioactive isotopes are used. For example carbon-14 is great for dating relatively recent fossils (and non-fossilized dead stuff) as it's found in all living things and has a halflife of just over five thousand years.", "Hi, I just ran into this post while searching for something. You may be interested in this answer by /u/Bentresh * [Is it true that \"two hundred years after the last pyramid was reared in their country, Egyptians were as baffled by the big masonries as everyone else?\" In other words, did they forget how to build the pyramids? How/why?](_URL_0_)", "The earth doesn't give a shit what's happening to it. You do along with all the things that live on it because they've adapted to the conditions that existed after the last ice age and they don't want to adapt again to rapidly changing conditions because that means a lot of them and their offspring are going to die." ]

[ "Just for clarification, are you looking for evidence that the miners themselves.were violent, that they faced violence from the State, or a combination of both? In terms of evidence, there is far more evidence to support the fact that miners were attacked by the police/that police agitated things to the point of violence occurring. Remember of course, that while some could argue that miners created violent situations, the police were typically armed, and in instances like Orgreave, the police were on horseback and went in with an agenda of physically defeating the miners." ]

[ "Would anyone have some info on the Novocherkassk strike? My knowledge is only wiki-level, but it would seem to fit OP's question. Also the miners' strikes of 1991.", "An interesting article about this was posted on the BBC website a few days ago _URL_0_", "What makes a mineral older than another mineral is when that chemistry occurred to cause the mineral to form. So while everything is indeed ostensibly the same age, the formation of minerals, and the stratification of mineral deposits have distinct and determinable ages.", "I was fairly young at the time, but I remember people being pretty hacked off with the miners in respect of the [three day week](_URL_0_). My father went so far as to fit mains gas lighting in the kitchen of our house as he had no confidence that the issues with the supply of electricity would be resolved.", "I know little but found this BBC report that goes on to this same subject. _URL_1_", "Australia was given its independence by the United Kingdom in 1901. Australia was a merger of a number of British colonies on the Australian continent. Australia then gained more and more independence over the next 85 years with more and more severing of ties between the 2 countries (probably could be a topic on its own exactly what those ties were). There are now very few ties between the UK and Australia (we share a monarch but the monarch is separately the monarch of the UK and Australia and other Commonwealth Realms). Previously before 1901 there wasn't anything that could be seen as a fight for independence. There was the Eureka Stockade during the Gold Rush but that was just a small skirmish between miners and the military over the miners wanting more rights. It was not anything like a war of independence, uprising, etc. The years before Federation (1901), as it is called, was all about discussions and voting.", "Quick reminder: If you yourself don't have an answer to give to address OP's question, please refrain from commenting. And if you *do* have an answer, please try to make sure it's up to the standards of the subreddit. Answers need to be both informative and comprehensive, and not single sentence responses with nothing backing them up.", "I don't know about in ancient times, but in modern times many of the waters of the Dead Sea are high enough in sulfates that it often imparts an unpleasant sulfurous taste to the resultant evaporites. Additonally, the mineral content of the waters of the Dead Sea is very different from that of ocean water. The mineral salts in ocean water is usually around 85% sodium chloride, which is what ordinary table salt is made of. In contrast, the mineral salts of the Dead Sea are around 50% magnesium, and usually less than 30% sodium salts. Also, the Dead Sea has a large amount of bromine instead of chlorine, compared to ocean water. Source: this textbook page (_URL_0_), my own recollections.", "Rocks are often heterogeneous, composed of many minerals. Granite is a rock, with quartz, mica, feldspar, and other kind of materials in it. & there are many kind of granite from the red granites to white sierra kinds, to those containing pitchblende and other interesting minerals. Minerals are homogeneous, such as the above minerals in granite.", "You might like to try /r/AskUK this question if you don't get answers here....", "Could you perhaps present us with your original source so we can see what the author writes about it? I *think* I know the answer, but I would like to know what exactly the author wrote. Also, could you remove the bonus question? We do not allow discussions of events after 1993.", "It's more common to discuss [minerals](_URL_0_), as opposed to [crystals](_URL_1_). A mineral is a crystalline solid with a specific crystal structure and a well defined chemical composition. A common and simple example would be [quartz](_URL_4_). Rocks are aggregates of minerals, though a rock could be mono-mineralic, i.e. composed entirely of grains of a single mineral, most rocks are composed of several types of minerals. We classify rocks in part based on their mineralogy (types and abundances of minerals in a rock), along with how they formed and other properties. For example, [granite](_URL_2_) and [rhyolite](_URL_3_) are two types of rock that would have very similar minerals (and abundances of those minerals), but are formed by the crystallization of magma within the earth (for granite) and the crystallization of lava erupted from the a vent (for rhyolite).", "Your question is answered in this [Guardian article](_URL_0_).", "Certain rock types are more likely to have certain minerals than others, but for the most part they look around where they found some precious metals and hope there is more. Lot's of guesswork, gambling, and sampling. Maybe you find nothing, maybe you strike it rich.", "This thread from 4 years ago has the answers you need my friend. /u/Celebreth goes in depth. _URL_0_", "Here's a thread about a very similar subject answered a while ago. It should help: _URL_0_", "There was a gold strike in North Carolina in 1799 that resulted in a gold rush and placer mining. A more important discovery occurred in the North Georgia Mountains following a discovery in 1828. The Georgia mines were productive for over a decade, but they started to decline in the 1840s, so when the California strike occurred in 1848, the Gold Rush to the West, the following year, was well timed to attract experienced gold miners who had worked in the South. Other Georgia gold miners played roles in discoveries and mine development in Colorado and Montana. Gold mining continued in Georgia, on a smaller scale, through the early twentieth century.", "Water in bottled water is flavored with minerals to give it a specific taste. Other waters lack these minerals. So when you introduce the second fill of water you taste a difference because the two waters have different flavors. These minerals added can hide other tastes in the water, for example a plastic odor that is only revealed in the non-mineral water.", "A reminder for everyone: We ask that answers in this subreddit be in-depth and comprehensive, and highly suggest that comments include citations for the information. In the future, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with [the rules](_URL_5_), and take these key points into account before crafting an answer: * Do I have the expertise needed to answer this question? * Have I done research on this question? * Can I cite my sources? * Can I answer follow-up questions? Thank you!", "This topic has been discussed [before](_URL_0_). Since there seems to be no proper answer here as of now, I suggest you check the link out.", "[A similar question was asked on this subreddit a few years back](_URL_0_), it does a good job of answering this question.", "hard water has a higher mineral content than soft water. different sources of water have different levels of minerals and different purification processes remove or control different minerals.", "Hard water has more minerals dissolved in it (calcium etc); you soften water by adding salt, which binds to the minerals. Hard water can leave mineral deposits throughout the system, and makes soap difficult to lather.", "This is not a direct answer to your question but to signpost to an interesting individual case for which we have documents. Robert Blincoe was a pauper child in London who was sent to be an apprentice at Litton mill in Derbyshire in the early 1800s. His account of his time there including starvation, torture and abuse was published in 1828 and was a key source for those who sought to improve both conditions in factories and treatment of the very poor. It is impossible not to read Blincoes account and the distress the memories give him without wondering whether we would now consider this as ptsd. This is a link to a pdf of the memoirs produced by a local history group in Derbyshire, although the memoir is elsewhere on the web and was recently republished. The memoir starts at page 35, but there is much of interest in the early parts of the document. _URL_0_", "This falls completely out of the realm of this subreddit considering it's policy about issues within the last twenty years, so this will probably be deleted.", "It starts with a space in a rock. This can be a crack, or a void left after something organic was trapped in sediment and rotted away. Ground water carrying minerals flows through the rock, and the minerals are deposited. If they are the right minerals, you'll get opal.", "**Rock** is a more generic term for any kind of hard, brittle mineral composite. Usually they're mostly silicate with some impurities and their structure varies significantly between types. Rocks have classifications and types, but usually not a specific chemical formula. A **mineral** is more specific, they are naturally occurring materials with a defined chemical makeup. Some regularly form crystals, others do not. **Gemstones** and **crystals** are highly pure minerals that have formed large orderly structures. They may or may not be transparent, depending on the mineral and purity. Usually \"gems\" are transparent mineral crystals used for jewelry purposes. Take, for example, [Iron Pyrite.](_URL_0_) It's a *mineral* with a defined chemical composition, FeS2. It can form cubic *crystals* under the right conditions, but is also present as a trace mineral in some *rocks*. It's brittle, opaque, and not terribly attractive, so it's not going to be considered a useful *gemstone*.", "Your answer was removed shortly before you posted this question. It did not meet our standards. We ask that answers in this subreddit be in-depth and comprehensive, and highly suggest that comments include citations for the information. In the future, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with [the rules](_URL_2_), and take these key points into account before crafting an answer: * Do I have the expertise needed to answer this question? * Have I done research on this question? * Can I cite my sources? * Can I answer follow-up questions? Thank you!", "Mountains do not necessarily contain valuable minerals. The conditions required for valuable minerals to form are not present in every area with mountainous geography.", "It's a bit disappointing that no-one has given an answer after 5 hours, so I submit the following article: _URL_0_ Please feel free to downvote/delete if someone gives a proper answer.", "liquid water contains dissolved minerals. once the water evaporates, the minerals stay. that's what you see.", "A rock is basically a mixture of a lot of minerals. A mineral is a pure, sometimes crystalline, solid such as diamond, calcite, amethyst, etc." ]

[ "A couple in Salt Lake City, Utah were arrested in the middle of a wedding Sunday for having sex on the church lawn. The wedding party caught Wilson Benally, 56, engaging in a sex act with 60-year-old Sandra Kruser outside of Sacred Heart Catholic Church around 6pm. One horrified wedding guest ran out into the street to stop a police car to break up the couple. The worst kind of wedding crashers: Wilson Benally, 56 (left), was caught having oral sex with 60-year-old Sandra Kruser (right) on a church lawn in the middle of a wedding on Sunday . The officer who witnessed the sex act wrote in his report that 'Mr Benally had his tongue and finger inside of Ms Krusens [sic] vagina'. He initally tried ordering them to stop, but was forced to pry them apart when they didn't listen. At least four children in the wedding party saw witnessed Benally and Kruser at it. The two were booked at county jail and each charged with gross lewdness and public intoxication. Benally received an extra charge of criminal trespass. The couple remain in jail with Benally on $2,313 bond and Kruser on $2,093 bond. Both have criminal records and Benally has been behind bars in Salt Lake a shocking 102 times. Kruser has been booked on 15 different occasions. Innocents: The incident happened outside of Sacred Heart Catholic Church where four children were part of the wedding party ." ]

[ "(CNN) -- A Pennsylvania minister was found guilty in a church trial on Monday for officiating his son's same-sex wedding, according to church officials. Frank Schaefer, 51, the pastor at Zion United Methodist Church of Iona in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was found guilty by a jury of 13 ordained clergy members on two counts: officiating a same-sex wedding and being disobedient to the discipline and order of the church, according to Cathy Husid-Shamir, a Schaefer family spokesperson. Schaefer told CNN's Zoraida Sambolin that his son, Tim, asked him to officiate his wedding seven years ago, and he decided to do it \"out of love for him.\" Despite at one point believing that homosexuality was incompatible with his Christian beliefs, Schaefer told CNN his views on the controversial topic began to change over time. \"By the time our son came out I was ready to embrace him,\" Schaefer told Sambolin on November 14. The complaint was filed by one of Schaefer's church members and the church leadership decided to act upon it, according to Schaefer. The church told Schaefer he could avoid a trial if he agreed never to perform another same-sex marriage again, but he refused. \"I can't commit to a statement like that,\" Schaefer said. \"Especially in light of the fact that I have two more children that are gay.\" \"We want to express care and concern for everyone involved in this difficult process,\" Michele Bartlow, district superintendent of the United Methodist Church, said in a statement following the guilty verdict. \"We ask for prayer.\" The penalty phase of the trial begins on Tuesday and new witnesses will be heard, Husid-Shamir told CNN. The jury has full power to determine Schaefer's penalty, which can range from a reprimand or suspension to a full defrocking, Husid-Shamir said. With Hawaii and Illinois, U.S. crosses a same-sex marriage mark .", "By . James Nye . PUBLISHED: . 10:00 EST, 25 November 2013 . | . UPDATED: . 17:36 EST, 25 November 2013 . Accusations: Jhona Mathews, 33, has accused William McLaughlin of sexually assaulting and harassing her while they both worked at one of San Francisco's oldest Catholic shrines . Kinky sex in the sanctuary, embezzlement and racy photos are causing scandal at one of San Francisco's oldest Catholic churches. The accusations flying out of the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi have led to the 'comprehensive investigation of alleged improper behavior' involving the shrine's volunteer chairman, William McLaughlin and admin- assistant, Jhona Mathews, 33 - costing them both their jobs. According to shrine spokesman, Larry Kamer, a police report was filed last week alleging that Mathews had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church. Mathews, in turn, has filed a sexual harassment claim against the church, alleging that McLaughlin forced her to have sex with him inside the church's sanctuary. 'McLaughlin spanked her and forced her to engage in sexual intercourse with him' in order to keep her job, alleged Sandra Ribera, who is acting as Mathews's attorney. 'Paddling with a wooden paddle, getting spanked in the sacristy of the shrine of St. Francis, which Catholics know, it's just appalling to hear as a Catholic and having sexual intercourse in the shrine of St. Francis,' added Ribera. McLaughlin, who is believed to be in his 60s and is a wealthy Marin County real-estate developer, acts as the chairman of the shrine's volunteer program. Scandal: The National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi conducted a 'comprehensive investigation of alleged improper behavior' involving the shrine's volunteer chairman, William McLaughlin and Jhona Mathews, . He briefly reached national prominence in 2005, when he arranged for a massive airlift of New Orleans pets that had been stranded by Hurricane Katrina. According to Kamer, McLaughlin has been relieved of his duties following the scandal and Mathews has been fired. Mathews first met McLaughlin when the carpet firm she was working for helped to renovate the residence of shrine that San Francisco's Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone shares with the archdiocese's vicar general. Mathews was offered a job in February 2012 as an admin-assistant and Ribera alleges that her client was soon experiencing sexual harassment from McLaughlin. Face-off: Sandra Ribera, who is acting as Mathews's attorney claims the abuse occurred inside the church while shrine spokesman, Larry Kamer, says that Jhona Mathews embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church . 'She felt she had no choice,' Ribera said to the San Francisco Chronicle. 'He was dangling her livelihood over her head, and she had a daughter to feed.' Jhona Mathews is a single mother in her early 30s with a 2-year-old child. She worked as an assistant to the church rector Father Harold Sinider. She says the president of the church board of trustees Bill McLaughlin forced her into having sex with him . Mathews allegedly broke off the affair in October and filed her police report after she was fired last week. 'McLaughlin spanked her and forced her to engage in sexual intercourse with him' in order to keep her job, Ribera said. She also alleges that McLaughlin sent her sexy e-mails and photos - which she did not want or reciprocate. Church officials are claiming that Mathews was fired after evidence was found that she had stolen up to 'six figures' from the church. ABC7 News learned that early last week, the church filed a police report charging Mathews with embezzlement. Ribera categorically denies her client stole from the church. The church has now launched an investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment. ABC7 news tried to contact McLaughlin, the man Mathews says sexually abused her but he did not respond.", "'Bondage master' Bob Bashara has been found guilty of first-degree murder in a plot to kill his wife so he could devote himself to a life of domination with other women in an upper-class Detroit suburb. The salacious trial of the 57-year-old revealed his secret life in Grosse Pointe Park: a former Rotary Club president who used cocaine and hosted men and women at a sex dungeon underneath a bar called the Hard Luck Lounge. The father-of-two arranged the killing of his wife Jane Bashara who was strangled by a handyman in the couple's garage in 2012. Her body was then discovered in her Mercedes-Benz in a Detroit alley. Scroll down for video . Bob Bashara, 57, (pictured during a hearing in 2012) has been convicted of first-degree murder. Jane Bashara was strangled by a handyman, who Bashara coerced into committing the crime, in the couple's garage . Strangled: Jane Bashara, right, was found dead in her Mercedes SUV in January 2012 a day after her husband Bob, left, reported her missing. He repeatedly professed his innocence in the aftermath of her death . 'What man would make his own elderly mother hide a gun for him?' prosecutor Rob Moran said in closing arguments as he recalled evidence. 'What kind of man has two women come to the marital bed and have sex with them while his wife is out of town? Is that what a man does who's in love with his wife? No. It's the ultimate act of betrayal.' The handyman, Joe Gentz, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2012 and said Bob Bashara coerced him into committing the crime. But as the trial was set to begin in October, Gentz said he wouldn't testify. Bashara didn't testify but repeatedly professed his innocence in the weeks after his wife's death, even attending a candlelight vigil in her honor. Jane Bashara was a marketing executive with a long record of service to her church and community. Nearly three years later, there still are lawn signs that say, 'Justice For Jane.' Defense attorneys urged the jury to keep their focus on the killer, Gentz, not Bob Bashara. They said Bashara could have continued his affairs and alternative lifestyle without getting rid of his wife. 'She is the breadwinner,' Michael McCarthy said in his final remarks. 'Why would he want her dead? ... There is reasonable doubt in this trial.' Bashara's former business associate testified the married father of two had operated a sex dungeon under a bar he owned called the Hard Luck Lounge (pictured) Joe Gentz (right) is already serving 17 years in prison for the murder of Jane Bashara but has refused to testify against her husband, Bob . Bashara is already in prison for trying to have Gentz killed in jail in 2012. During the murder trial prosecutors called several witnesses to the stand including a bartender, a local Grosse Pointe business owner and a medical examiner who testified his wife, Jane Bashara, had very few defensive injuries - indicating she did not have the ability to fight back. Prosecutors told jurors on that the trial had revealed how Bashara lived a secret life in suburban Detroit. 'He created one world; he was living in another,' prosecutor Lisa Lindsey said during closing remarks. 'And when those two worlds collided, Jane Bashara ended up dead.' The prosecution said the life he created revolved around 'Master Bob' and his desire to maintain control and create a new life with his mistress. The prosecution used Bob's own words to tell pat of the story. First, pointing out how Bob worked to get police to investigate other theories, such as his wife Jane's alleged drug use and that she may have been killed by a drug dealer. Bob's own emails took center stage and revealed his intense desire to be with his mistress and not his wife. During the salacious trial Bob's own emails took center stage and revealed his intense desire to be with his mistress and not his wife (left) 'He would say anything and do anything to be with Rachel Gillett. Several people have indicated such,' said Lindsey. Bob's connection to Joe Gentz -- the calls, the text message and the desire to take him out -- was pointed out once again to jurors. During the long trial, jurors heard testimony from police, the Bashara children, friends and even girlfriends who talked about Bashara's sex dungeon below a bar, the Hard Luck Lounge. He was known as 'Master Bob.' Bashara's mistress, Rachel Gillett, told the jury that they had talked about bringing another woman into their relationship. The defense admitted that Bashara had major financial problems but he knew his wife had a job and savings. His defence argued that it would not have made sense for him to kill his wife when he had a steady stream of income.me. There is no dispute that handyman Joe Gentz killed Jane Bashara, but Lindsey said he was threatened and coerced to do it by Bob Bashara. Jane was murdered in their large home in the affluent Grosse Pointe Park suburb in Detroit . Jurors didn't hear from Gentz. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a minimum sentence of 17 years in prison, but then said he wouldn't testify against Bashara. In the second week of the trial, the court has heard how the 56-year-old was allegedly chomping at the bit to begin his new life with mistresses, Rachel Gillett and Janet Leehmann. During emotional and lengthy testimony on Thursday, Gillett revealed that Bashara blindfolded her and another unidentified woman in 2009 during the start of their affair and took them to his family home while his wife and children were out of town. The three then had sex in his marital bed, despite Bashara's alleged erectile dysfunction. But Gillett told the court she was so upset with herself that she slept on the floor afterwards, even though she had been told that his wife was dead and he was a widower. The assistant medical examiner in Wayne County, Dr. Francisco Diaz, told the court in during Bashara's first trial in 2012 that Jane Bashara died from a combination of injuries, which included repeated blunt force trauma and strangulation resulting in her windpipe being crushed. Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Lindsey told the court in opening statements last week that Jane Bashara's body was 'dumped in an alley like a piece of common trash.' During the first week his friend and fellow BDSM community member, Patrick Webb outlined how he met Bashara at a sex party he hosted. He told the jury that Jane Bashara, 56, clearly did not approve of his lifestyle and that Bashara told him he felt 'trapped' by the marriage to the mother of his two children. 'He wanted to do more with the lifestyle but he felt trapped with…Jane — with his wife. He didn't use her name,' said Webb to the courtroom. Mistress Rachel Gillett described details of the couple's kinky sex life during testimony. He reacted emotionally to testimony by some of the witnesses during the case . 'As people talked about divorce one night, it was let out that 'it would be cheaper to kill the b**ch,'said Webb according to CBS Detroit. Also on the stand during the trial has been Bashara's former mistress, Rachel Gillett, who he referred to as his slave as part of their BDSM relationship. She told the court that she met Bashara on a BDSM website and after initially telling her he was a widower, admitted that he was still married, but seeking divorce during their three year affair. During his prior trial in 2012, his other mistress, Janet Leehmann, told the court how 'Master Bob' would send her dirty letters, a leather collar and a T-shirt he had worn for three days straight so she could smell his scent. Leehmann, who Bashara met on a BDSM website told the courtroom she regular engaged in 'breath play' with the accused wife murderer and agreed to having a polyamorous relationship to stop him cheating. Leehmann testified that Bashara planned a trip from Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan to Oregon to visit her in January 2012, shortly before his wife, Jane Bashara, was killed. Prior to him arriving he sent her numerous notes and messages including one saying: 'Hello SJ (her alt.com name). Soon you will feel my strength and passion.' He also described how Gillett loved breath play - an erotic choking game. 'I can choke her just enough to make her woozy,' Leehmann recalled Bashara telling her of Gillett. 'I can do the same to you.' And when he arrived at her home he did. 'He was standing behind me, he wrapped his hands around my neck and I passed out cold,' she testified. When asked by Lindsay if she consented to the asphyxiation, she said, 'no, not really.' Leehmann said he responded: 'Well little girl you should have told me you were getting bad, I could have stopped.' Final arguements: Bob Bashara, left, speaks to his attorney Michael McCarthy during a break during closing arguments in this trial . When asked if they engaged in sexual contact, she said no, adding that she was surprised. 'It doesn't work, his private parts,' she told the courtroom. 'I was surprised. He said he thinks it has to do with his weight.' In their opening statements last week, Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Lindsey told the court that evidence will show that Bashara and Gillett were planning to buy a house where they could live with a 'second slave' - Leehman. The case has rocked the affluent community of Grosse Pointe, with its white picket fences and manicured lawns. Before his wife's death, Bashara was a successful local businessman, head of the local Rotary Club, a deacon at the local church and a backer of the Lochmoor Country Club in Grosse Pointe Woods. Indeed, one month before his wife's murder, Bashara allegedly called his friend, James Wilson and asked him to cover for him. 'Bob called and said … 'I need you to cover for me this weekend. If anybody asks you (tell them) I'm with you,' said Robert Bashara's longtime friend, James Wilson on Monday. According to CBS Detroit, the court heard how Bashara and Wilson would regularly smoke pot and take cocaine before they played golf at the club. Furthermore, Wilson told the court that Bashara confided in him that he liked 'to spank girls' but that his wife did not like it.", "By . Alexandra Klausner . A 68-year old resident of a Sumpter County, Florida 55-and-over retirement community was arrested along with her much younger toyboy, 49, for allegedly having drunken sex in the the community's town square. Residents of Lake Sumter Landing, one of the squares in the retirement community, called police and reported seeing Margaret Ann Klemm, 68, and David Bobilya, 49, engaging in sexual intercourse at 10:30 PM on June 2. The Smoking Gun reports that when investigators arrived at the scene, Klemm had her shirt pulled down and wasn't wearing any pants. Margaret Ann Klemm, 68, faces charges for public indecency and intoxication after allegedly having sex with her 49-year-old lover outside at her retirement community . David Bobilya, 49, was arrested along with Klemm for allegedly having sex in public . Bobilya's pants and underwear were pulled down all the way to his ankles. Police say that Klemm and Bobilya both seemed to be intoxicated but that they followed police officers' orders and put their clothing back on. Both face charges for public intoxication and indecent exposure. Klemm and Bobilya both were booked and jail on misdemeanor counts but were released on $1500 bail. Just four days before the alleged public sex romp, Klemm finished settling a prior criminal case. Back in April Klemm pleaded guilty to a DUI charge after she was caught drunk driving in a golf cart. The Smoking Gun reports that The Villages retirement community calls itself 'Florida's Friendliest Retirement Hometown.' Residents are not permitted to engage in 'friendly' naked behavior in public, however. The duo 'had sex' at Lake Sumter Landing--one of The Villages's three squares (pictured)", "A brother and sister have been arrested after allegedly committing incest in a church car park in Effingham County, Georgia. Christopher Buckner and her brother Timothy Savoy admitted to having had sex three times in a tractor trailer parked outside the church after watching The Notebook. The pair were discovered after police answered a call about a prowler near a highway in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Incest: Christopher Buckner, 20, and her brother Timothy Savoy, 25, admitted they had sex in a trailer outside a church in Effingham County, Georgia . Police came upon the pair walking down the highway at 4.30am and Savoy, 25, claimed he was walking Buckner, 20, home. The deputies learned the two were brother and sister, had just had sex in a tractor trailer parked outside the Countryside Baptist Church, the Savannah Morning News reports. The church in question is located across the road from the local high school. Scene of the crime: Buckner and Savoy said they committed incest in a tractor trailer parked outside the Countryside Baptist Church, opposite the local high school . The siblings say they had sex three times after watching 2004 romantic film The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams . Buckner, of Guyton, and Savoy, of Jackson, Georgia, ‘broke down and admitted they had sex three times after watching The Notebook’, a 2004 chick flick starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. Buckner and Savoy were arrested and charged with incest, aggravated sodomy and prowling, according to Sheriff’s Office spokesman David Ehsanipoor. Savoy remains jailed on the felony charges, held on $13,400 (£8,070) bond.", "A cop has described the horrific moment three ferrets attacked a one-month-old baby girl, leaving her with no nose, no top lip and just one cheek. Skyy Isabelle Fraime was reportedly placed in a car seat and left on the floor of the dining room at the house in Darby Borough, Pennsylvania, on Thursday while her parents went upstairs. A short time later, the family's three ferrets escaped from their nearby cloth-like cage and ran over to the lone infant. They attacked her, sinking their teeth into 25 per cent of her face. Darby Borough police Chief Robert Smythe told Philly.com: 'The ferrets did chew the infant's nose, top lip and its cheek area. They had eaten that area away. 'I got cops that couldn't sleep last night... You can't imagine what this baby looked like.' Scroll down for video . Tragic: Skyy Isabelle Fraime (pictured with her parents, Burnie Fraime and Jessica Benales, shortly after her birth) has lost up to 25 per cent of her face after being mauled by three pet ferrets at her Pennsylvania home . Life-changing injuries: The infant was reportedly attacked by the ferrets while she was sat in a car seat on the floor of the dining room at the Darby Borough-based house on Thursday. Above, Skyy in Facebook pictures . Enclosure:The ferrets escaped out of this cloth-like cage (left), before running toward Skyy and attacking her . Skyy was rushed to hospital with serious wounds. Although she is listed as being in a 'stable' condition, she is receiving assistance breathing in intensive care due to the injuries to her nose. She is also likely to need multiple surgeries in future years to rebuild her face, ABC 6 reported. Speaking to the news station, Skyy's father, Burnie Fraime, who is engaged to the baby's mother, Jessica Benales, said: 'I went over to grab the baby... half her face was messed up from the ferrets.' On Friday, Darby Police Chief Robert Smythe described the girl's injuries - which occurred at around 3.30pm on Thursday - as 'the worst' he has seen in nearly 45 years working for the force. 'I'll be 45 years in June in Darby [with the police department], and this is the worst I've ever seen,' he told the Delaware County Daily Times. 'I thought I'd seen everything. 'This child, the center of [her] face is missing. Her nose was gone, [and so was] part of her cheek and part of her lip. I don't know how much of that got replaced.' He added: 'Just imagine that one-month-old baby, that can't help herself, [and] two or three animals are eating it alive. Imagine the pain.' Scene: Skyy was rushed to hospital with serious wounds. Although she is listed as being in a 'stable' condition, she is receiving assistance breathing in intensive care due to the injuries to her nose. Above, the family home . Father: Mr Fraime, who is engaged to Miss Benales, said: 'I went over to grab the baby... half her face was messed up from the ferrets'. Above, the father pictured with Skyy, left, and one of his other four children . Engaged: The couple (pictured in a Facebook picture) - who have four other young children - are said to be in crisis. They were reportedly clients of Delaware County Child & Youth Services prior to Thursday's tragedy . At the time of the incident, Mr Fraime and Miss Benales were upstairs at their home in the 300 block of Poplar Street, Mr Smythe said. They reportedly rushed downstairs after hearing loud screaming. They found Skyy sporting serious injuries to her face and called 911. The baby was taken to the Children's Hopsital of Philadelphia, where two stents were immediately inserted into her nose. 'The ferrets ran when the mom came down,' Mr Smythe Said. '[The baby] had emergency surgery. The last I heard she was in stable [condition], but she was in intensive care.' He added that the couple - who have four other young children - are in crisis. They were reportedly clients of Delaware County Child & Youth Services prior to Thursday's tragedy. Street: At the time of the incident, Mr Fraime and Miss Benales were upstairs at their home in the 300 block of Poplar Street, Darby Police Chief Robert Smythe said. Above, the property in the 300 block of Poplar Street . Neighbor: When told about the incident, neighbors in Poplar Street were shocked. Thomas Collins (pictured) said: 'Oh my god, that's terrible,' while Josephine Pour said: 'It's really shocking to hear stuff like that' 'The parents, I believe, have problems,' he said. 'They are challenged. They can't take care of these kids.' The couple's four other children are now in the custody of Child & Youth Services. When told about the incident, neighbors in Poplar Street were shocked. Thomas Collins said: 'Oh my god, that's terrible,' while Josephine Pour said: 'It's really shocking to hear stuff like that.' Ferrets, which are part of the weasel family, are legal to own as pets in the state of Pennsylvania. No charges have yet been filed. An investigation is ongoing. Legal: Ferrets, part of the weasel family, are legal to own as pets in the state of Pennsylvania (file picture)", "Purity balls, in which a girl pledges to remain ‘pure’ until her wedding day, symbolically ‘marries’ God, and promises her father that she will remain a virgin until she's a wife, have become a phenomenon in America, now taking place in 48 out of the 50 states. The balls resemble giant wedding ceremonies, with the girls - all around the age of 12 - wearing white gowns and dancing with their fathers who promise to ‘protect’ their daughter’s chastity. During the ceremony, fathers present their daughters with purity rings, which they wear to symbolise their commitment to virginity. Ron Johnson, who is the head pastor at the Living Stones Church, kneels to present one of his younger daughters with her purity ring in the new documentary exploring the growing phenomenon of father daughter purity balls . Dancers carry a cross into the ballroom at the annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2007. Balls now take place in 48 states in the US, and in 17 countries worldwide . In the movement purity means no sexual contact of any kind, including kisses, until after marriage. One of the largest father-faughter purity balls - which is the subject of a Nightline Prime investigation - has been held for 14 consecutive years in Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. The event sees upwards of 60 fathers pledging to ‘protect their daughter’s choices for purity'. Fathers taking part are expected to sign a ‘purity covenant’ in which they, as ‘High Priest of their home and family’ pledge ‘before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity’ The daughters silently commit to live pure lives before God through the symbol of laying down a white rose at the cross, before engaging in a wedding-type dance with their father. An unidentified father and daughter kneel at a cross after the girls lay white roses symbolising their commitment to purity at a ball . Ron Jonson places the ring on the forth finger of his daughters left hand - her wedding finger . A new documentary follows two families who are taking part in this ritual; the Wilsons, whose father Randy is one of the founders of the father daughter balls, and the Johnsons from Indiana. While all seven of the Wilson children are home schooled, socialising mainly with other members of their church community, the Johnson children attend a regular high school. But while they might be exposed to normal teenage behaviour at school, at home they have the message of purity enforced by father Ron, who is the head pastor at the Living Stones Church. One scene sees Ron kneeling in front of one of his younger daughter, gifting her with her purity ring. ‘One of the things you’ve been asking daddy about is “when am I going to get my purity ring?” ‘One of things I think it’s important to remember is this is your desire to do it the Lord's way and really save yourself from kissing lots of toads along the way and wait for your prince charming to come along,' he says. 'You keep this on your finger and as this point you are married to the Lord and your father is your boyfriend,' Ron explains in the new documentary . A young girl signs the purity covenant as a witness: It states that her father, as High Priest of the household, will now protect her virginity . A father presents his daughter with her ring: Randy Wilson founded the first Father Daughter Ball in 1998 . Brandishing a gold ring, Ron continues: ‘This is just a reminder that keeping yourself pure is important. So you keep this on your finger and from this point you are married to the Lord and your father is your boyfriend.’ He then places the ring on the forth finger of his daughter's left hand – her wedding finger. The concept of purity pledges exists in in over 17 countries and across America, blossoming from the original purity movement that began in the USA in the 1980s. Adolescent members of church groups began taking vows of abstinence and wearing rings to symbolise their commitment as a backlash to the perceived sexual liberation of the past decades and the growing AIDS epidemic. They soon began wearing rings to symbolise their commitment, but the idea of girls giving their virginity to their father to safeguard until marriage, and the ceremonial purity balls, developed much later in alliance with Evangelical church movements. Watch the full story on “Nightline Prime,” Saturday, March 22 at 9 p.m. ET. I ………’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and my family as the High Priest in my home. This covering will be used  by God to influence generations to come.", "An Oklahoma couple were arrested after police searched their home and found a video showing a dog performing oral sex on the wife. Brenda Mettler, 42, and her husband, 44-year-old Robert Mettler, were arrested last Thursday on charges of crimes against nature/sodomy, cruelty to animals and distributing obscene material. When the Rogers County Sheriff's Office executed a search warrant at the Mettlers' home in Claremore, deputies reportedly came upon a cache of videos showing various breeds of dogs performing sexual acts on women, including intercourse. Dog people: Robert Mettler (left) and Brenda Mettler (right), from Oklahoma, have been charged with crimes against nature/sodomy, cruelty to animals and distributing obscene material for making a video showing their pet dog performing oral sex on the wife . Deputies described what they saw as 'detestable and abominable crimes against nature.' When interviewed by police, Brenda Mettler admitted that she and her spouse made a video a long time ago showing their white boxer performing oral sex on her, according to a police report cited by Tulsa World. Deceased: Mettler said her white boxer (likely similar to the one pictured) have since died) But the 42-year-old insisted that it was a 'one-time deal,' and that the pet in question has since passed away. The woman also claimed that she had no idea her husband had shared the video online. Under questioning, Mr Mettler said it was a fantasy of his to watch dogs have sex with women. The 44-year-old suspect initially said he did not know the video of his wife cavorting with their pet boxer was uploaded online and claimed that his account must have been hacked. But according to the probable cause affidavit, investigators were able to match the clip found on a bestiality forum with footage on Robert Mettler's cellphone. The couple were released from jail Friday after posting $60,000 bail. They are due back in court November 7.", "By . Mark Duell . Last updated at 8:38 PM on 25th July 2011 . The couple who allegedly had sex in a public pool in front of shocked parents have turned themselves into police. Myron Helms, 33, and Victoria Cross, 40, of Indiana, made love in Roberts Park Family Pool in Connersville, Indiana, last Sunday, police said. Helms is a reserve police officer with a neighbouring department. He allegedly had sex with Cross for around 30 minutes in the community pool. Charged: Myron Helms, 33, and Victoria Cross, 40, of Indiana, shocked onlookers while they allegedly had sex in Roberts Park Family Pool in Connersville, Indiana . The couple have been charged with . public indecency after going to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department, . reported The Smoking Gun. They were watched by dozens of onlookers at the swimming pool, including several children and their parents. One concerned adult stood nearby the . couple ‘to make sure her children didn’t get too close to the subjects,’ a police report said. Shock: The couple allegedly had sex for 30 minutes at Roberts Park Family Aquatic Center in Connersville (pictured here) before police arrived . After multiple complaints, pool manager Cindy Schwab approached the couple and asked them to stop the alleged act. According to the Connersville Police . Department report, Cross then moved away from Helms, which was when 'she . could see the male’s penis'. Authorities were called and issued Helms and Cross no-trespass orders at the scene. Cleared: A local sports and activities spokesman said the pool was cleared, workers recycled the whole water system and fresh chemicals were put in . Daryl Drew of Connersville Sports and Activities said the pool was cleared, workers recycled the water system and fresh chemicals were put in. Helms has been a part-time officer at Laurel Police Department for several years, but has been suspended . without pay pending the investigation. Police noted in a report obtained by The Smoking Gun: ‘All the witnesses were visibly disturbed by the incident.’", "By . Jason Groves, Political Correspondent . PUBLISHED: . 07:48 EST, 11 December 2012 . | . UPDATED: . 09:56 EST, 12 December 2012 . Gay marriage will be legal in some British churches by 2014, despite furious Tory warnings that the issue could split the party and cost it the next election. In a surprise move, the Church of England will be guaranteed a blanket exemption from holding same-sex marriages. But this failed to quell a major Tory backlash. Amid stormy scenes in the Commons, Equalities Minister Maria Miller vowed to fast-track plans to legalise gay marriage, saying the change was needed to keep the institution of marriage ‘vibrant and relevant to society’. Scroll down for Maria Miller's statement to the House... Culture Secretary Maria Miller promised a 'quadruple legal lock' to prevent the Church of England from being forced to hold gay weddings . She confirmed a government U-turn on . the issue which will allow religious institutions, such as the Quakers, . that want to conduct gay marriages to ‘opt in’ to the law and hold . ceremonies in their churches. But unexpectedly, she announced there . would be a specific legal ban on the Church of England and Church of . Wales holding gay weddings. Mrs Miller said this would give the Church ‘iron-clad’ protection against legal action by gay rights campaigners. Other religious institutions, such as . the Catholic Church, will also be allowed to refuse to hold ceremonies . for same-sex couples, as will individual vicars. Mrs Miller said the . legislation would include a ‘quadruple lock’, meaning no church will . ever be forced to conduct a gay wedding unless it wants to. The legal . protections include: . - A guarantee that no religious . organisation or individual minister can be compelled to marry same-sex . couples or to permit this to happen on their premises. -  A legal bar on allowing ministers . to marry same-sex couples unless their organisation’s governing body has . expressly opted in to provisions for doing so. - Amendment of the Equality Act 2010 . to ensure no discrimination claim can be brought against religious . organisations or individual ministers for refusing to marry a same-sex . couple. - An explicit statement that it will . be illegal for the Church of England and the Church in Wales to marry . same-sex couples and that Canon Law, which bans same-sex weddings, will . continue to apply. In the Commons, gay former justice minister Nick Herbert said same-sex marriage was backed by the public, but he was heckled by Tory MP Peter Bone who insisted it is not . Legislation will be published next . month. Ministers expect it to take up to 12 months to get through . Parliament, with the first gay marriage ceremonies taking place in early . 2014. But furious Tory MPs warned the . legislation would undermine the institution of marriage and cost the . party votes. Andrew Selous, ministerial aide to the Work and Pensions . Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, warned Mrs Miller that the proposal was . ‘directly contrary to what Jesus said about marriage’. Former defence minister Gerald Howarth . said ministers had ‘no right whatsoever’ to alter the definition of . marriage as being the union of one man and one woman. Fellow Tory Stewart Jackson said the . Government’s consultation process, which brushed aside a petition . opposing the move signed by 600,000 people, was a ‘constitutional . outrage’ and ‘reminiscent of a Liberian presidential election’. In an open letter to David Cameron . last night, senior Tory MP Brian Binley warned the issue could split the . party and cost the Conservatives the next election. Mr Binley said the issue was driving . supporters away, adding: ‘I am perturbed that our chances of winning the . next election are compromised by the pursuit of issues which serve to . divide the party, and detach the leadership from its support base in the . country.’ Nigel Farage leader of the UK Independence Party, said the issue would be at the heart of his election campaign. 'David Cameron's proposal has the potential to rip apart the traditional rural Tory vote. While UKIP wholly respects the rights of gay people to have civil partnerships, we feel the prime minister's proposals will present an affront to millions of people in this country for whom this will be the final straw,' he told The Guardian. 'The division between city and rural is absolutely huge. In my village pub in Kent they are just completely against.' Free vote: Labour leader Ed Miliband has granted Labour Mps a free vote on the issue . All Tory MPs, including ministers, are . to be given a free vote on what Mrs Miller described as an ‘issue of . conscience’. Privately ministers believe at least 40 per cent of Tory . MPs oppose the legislation. In another surprise move, Labour said . it would give its MPs a free vote. Only Liberal Democrat MPs will be . whipped to support gay marriage. But Labour condemned the decision to . put a legal block on the Church of England. Shadow home secretary Yvette . Cooper said: ‘Why is the Government now rowing backwards on equal . marriage? Having said churches would be able to hold same-sex marriages . if they wanted to, they now say it will be illegal for the Church of . England to do so even if it wants to in future. How can that be freedom . of religion?’ Speaking on behalf of the Church in . the House of Lords, the Bishop of Leicester Tim Stephens said: ‘Marriage . is not the property of the Government nor is it the property of the . Church. While the forms and legalities around marriage have evolved over . time, one fundamental feature has remained the same throughout – that . marriage is a union of one man and one woman.’ Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the leader . of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, and Archbishop Peter . Smith, the Archbishop of Southwark, voiced their opposition in a joint . statement. ‘The meaning of marriage matters,’ they said. ‘It derives that meaning from its function as the foundation . of the family. The union of one man and one woman for love and mutual . support and open to procreation has over the centuries formed a stable . unit we call the family.’ Opponents condemned the Government’s consultation on the issue and warned that ministers could face a High Court review. And veteran human rights campaigner . Peter Tatchell denounced the exemption for the Church of England and the . Church in Wales as ‘disappointing’, saying it  could be open to legal . challenge. He said: ‘Exempting the official . established Church sends the wrong signal. There is no reason why these . churches should be treated differently from other faiths. Discriminating . between faith groups is probably illegal under the Human Rights Act.’", "(CNN) -- A man and a woman have been charged by police in Italy after they were found having sex in a confession box, it was reported Wednesday. The Italian ANSA news agency said the young man and woman were taken into custody by police in the northern city of Cesena following a telephone complaint from a man attending morning Mass in the city's cathedral. Authorities were alerted after a parishoner heard \"rustling and groaning\" coming from inside the confession box and pulled back the curtains to reveal a goth-rock couple engaged in oral sex, ANSA said. The agency said the pair -- a 31-year-old laborer and a 32-year-old teacher -- defended their conduct saying: \"We are atheists and for us, having sex in church is like doing it any other place.\" However, Bishop Antonio Lanfranchi of Cesena-Sarsina took said the couple's behavior was \"an outrage of notable proportions which bespeaks unutterable squalor.\" He added that a special ceremony would be held to purify the confession box.", "Arrest: Lindsey Ann Radomski, 32, allegedly let seven juveniles fondle her breasts at a party . A yoga teacher with new breast implants flashed them at guests at a bar mitzvah and let underage boys fondle them before performing a sex act on a 15-year-old boy, police have said. Lindsey Ann Radomski, 32, told police in Scottsdale, Arizona that she was too drunk to remember what happened at the party on Saturday night. She was among 80 to 100 guests at the party when she allegedly exposed her new breasts to five adults and they told her to 'sleep it off', Sergeant Ben Hoster told The Arizona Republic. She then went to a pool area, where she flashed juveniles, police said. In the early hours of Sunday morning, while most of the guests were asleep or had gone home, she allegedly invited seven boys, aged 11 to 15, into a bedroom and let them fondle her breasts. When all of the children apart from a 15-year-old boy had left, she performed a sex act on him, the teenager told police. The victim's parents learned of the encounter and went to the police, Hoster said. Radomski, who teaches yoga in the Scottsdale area, was interviewed on Tuesday. She told authorities that she had been too drunk to remember the incident but did admit to flashing. But she arrested and booked on multiple sexual abuse, sexual conduct with a minor and indecent exposure charges. Bond was set at $10,000 at Radomski's initial court appearance on Wednesday.", "(CNN) -- A Pennsylvania minister was defrocked on Thursday after he was found guilty in a church trial for officiating his son's same-sex wedding, according to church officials. Frank Schaefer, 51, the pastor at Zion United Methodist Church of Iona in Lebanon, had already been suspended for 30 days in November after a jury of 13 clergy members found him guilty of officiating a same-sex wedding and being disobedient to the discipline and order of the church, according to Cathy Husid-Shamir, a Schaefer family spokeswoman. During his 30-day suspension, Schaefer was to decide whether his advocacy on behalf of the LGBT community would prevent him from fully complying with church law in the future, according to a statement from Bishop Peggy Johnson of the United Methodist Church. Schaefer told the Board of Ordained Ministry Thursday that he could not uphold the church's Book of Discipline in its entirety because it discriminates against gay people. Schaefer was asked to immediately surrender his credentials, but he refused, forcing church officials to defrock him, the statement said. \"I am somewhat in shock still,\" Schaefer said at a news conference Thursday. \"When I went into the hearing this morning,\" he said, \"I was hopeful that it wouldn't come to what it has come to.\" Schaefer previously told CNN's Zoraida Sambolin that his son, Tim, asked him to officiate his wedding seven years ago, and he decided to do it \"out of love for him.\" Although he once believed that homosexuality was incompatible with his Christian beliefs, Schaefer said his views on the controversial topic evolved. \"By the time our son came out, I was ready to embrace him,\" Schaefer told Sambolin. The complaint was filed by one of Schaefer's church members, and the church leadership decided to act upon it, according to Schaefer. The church told Schaefer he could avoid a trial if he agreed never to perform another same-sex marriage. He refused. \"I can't commit to a statement like that, especially in light of the fact that I have two more children that are gay,\" said Schaefer, who has four children. He said he has already filed an appeal and hopes to become reinstated to the Methodist clergy. Schaefer's case will now be reviewed by the appeals committee of the United Methodist Church's northeast jurisdiction. It could also go to the judicial counsel which is equivalent to the supreme court of the church, according to Schaefer's attorney, Bill Ewing. \"I have been a part of this church for more than 20 years,\" Schaefer said Thursday. \"Being a United Methodist minister is the only kind of minister I know how to be.\" Ewing expects the appeal to be tried some time in 2015. Asked of his plans until then, Schaefer said, \"I will continue to be a voice for the LGBT community.\"", "A couple who were taking their two-year-old daughter on a walk in the country were shocked to come across two men enjoying a spanking session in broad daylight. Parents Allan Pagan and Natalie Fairhurst stumbled upon the scene while they were taking their little girl out on her pony near Waterbeck in Dumfriesshire. They said their daughter was 'thankfully oblivious' when they spotted a man in a blonde wig and a cream dress tied to a farm gate who was being whipped by another man dressed in a spiked-studded collar, chains and a leather harness. Allan Pagan was shocked to see a man in a blonde wig being whipped by another dressed in a full bondage outfit while on a country walk with his two-year-old daughter near Waterbeck in Dumfriesshire . Mr Pagan, 39, told the Daily Record: 'We thought it was a woman until the person turned round and you could see his big Adam's apple. 'I've heard about things like this before but I never thought I'd see it with my own eyes by the side of a B road 50 yards away from my house.' Ms Fairhurst, 35, reported the incident on Saturday to police after noting the registration number of the car in which the two men, thought to be in their late 50s, fled. She said: 'It was broad daylight and my kids and other walkers and horse riders go along there regularly. 'It seemed like they wanted to be caught but I don't think they expected it to be us, because to say we were raging is an understatement.' A Police Scotland spokesman confirmed they were investigation a report of two men acting in an 'inappropriate manner'. He said: 'We are investigating a report of two males acting in an inappropriate manner near to a road end at a farm near Waterbeck at around 5.30pm on Saturday October 18. 'The first man, in his late 50s or early 60s, is about 5’8” tall, medium build, short thinning grey hair, and was wearing a white shirt, a spiked studded collar with chains and a leather harness. 'The second man is in his late 50s, 5’8” tall, wearing a blond wig and a cream dress. 'Both men left the scene in a grey coloured car when disturbed.' Anyone with information should call Police Scotland on 101.", "By . Louise Boyle . PUBLISHED: . 15:40 EST, 10 April 2013 . | . UPDATED: . 16:39 EST, 10 April 2013 . A couple have been arrested after they were caught having sex in their car in a parking lot following a church service, a recent police report has revealed. Jamel Grant, 26, and 21-year-old Michel Felix Casas were spotted partially clothed during a routine police patrol close to the entrance of the Kroger Grocery Store in Gwinnett County, Georgia on March 31. Officers approached the car on Easter Sunday around midnight to find Casas performing oral sex on Grant in the front driver's seat. Church-goers: Jamel Grant, 26, and 21-year-old Felix Casas were spotted in their car during a routine police patrol close to the Kroger Grocery Store in Gwinnett County, Georgia . Grant was naked from the waist down and Casas' breasts were exposed. According to The Smoking Gun, Grant told police that he and Casas 'were making out' and had driven to the parking lot 'from church where they attended the Easter Service'. It is unclear which church the couple had attended or which service they would have been to so late in the evening. The couple also admitted to police that they had not driven to the grocery store to purchase anything. Police officers detected a strong smell of marijuana when the car window was down and found the couple in possession of the drug. The couple were charged with public indecency, loitering and prowling along with marijuana possession. Full view: The couple were caught engaging in a sex act in the parking lot of the Kroger Grocery Store in Gwinnett County, Georgia .", "Voters support plans for gay  marriage and believe it is wrong  for the Government to ban the Church of England from conducting the ceremonies. And public opinion is evenly divided over whether marriage is a ‘sacred act between a man and a woman’ and cannot be regarded as the same between same-sex couples. But they are sceptical about David Cameron’s motives for backing the new laws – only one in seven says he is doing it because he thinks it is right in principle. Poll: Voters support plans for gay marriage and believe it is wrong for the Government to ban the Church of England from conducting the ceremonies . An overwhelming two out of three say he is trying to curry favour with those with trendy views. The results of a Mail on Sunday poll, conducted by Survation, suggest strong support for gay rights across a wide range of issues among most voters, but with sharp differences between the young and old. Overall, six out of ten support  the gay marriage plan. Among the under-35s, it soars to 73 per cent;  by contrast, 56 per cent of over-55s are against. The poll will intensify the debate over claims by Right-wing Tory MPs that the party’s stance on same-sex marriages is resulting in its traditional supporters switching to the anti-EU UKIP party, which opposes gay marriage. UKIP, led by Nigel Farage, now has nearly half as much support among the public as the Tories,  and over 50 per cent more than the Lib Dems. Labour is ahead on 38 per cent, with the Conservatives on 30, UKIP 14 and Lib Dems nine.However, the poll offers conflicting evidence over whether Mr  Cameron would have anything to gain by dropping his support for gay marriage. A total of 23 per cent said they would be more likely to vote Tory if the Prime Minister did a U-turn, against 14 per cent who would be less likely to vote Tory. However, among those who voted Tory at the 2010 election, 50 per cent back gay marriage, with 50 per  cent against. And when the sample is whittled down to those who back the  Conservatives now, a total of 56 per cent support it, with 44 per cent against. Unsure: The public is sceptical about David Cameron's motives for backing the new laws - only one in seven says he is doing it because he thinks it is right in principle . Survation pollster Damian Lyons Lowe said: ‘The results suggest  Mr Cameron’s supporters are increasingly socially liberal. If he changes his mind, traditionally minded Conservatives who have defected to UKIP and other parties may return to the fold, but others who like his more progressive approach may walk out.’ The increasing acceptance of gay rights is reflected in the two-to-one support for the claim that to deny same-sex couples the right to  marry is discrimination. Welsh Tory MP David Davies caused controversy last week by claiming most parents preferred their children not to be gay, partly so they could have grandchildren. A total of 53 per cent said they agreed with Mr Davies, with 41 per cent against. Many gay marriage critics have said a marriage cannot be sacred between two people of the same sex. A total of 42 per cent agreed – 42 per cent said they disagreed. The Government’s plan to allow gay marriages in churches, with the exception of the Church of England, is rejected by voters. While nearly six in ten say the Church of England has every right to oppose gay marriages, only one in three says Mr Cameron is right  to ban the C  of  E from conducting gay marriages. More than half say the C  of  E vicars should be allowed to conduct gay marriages if they wish to. But regardless of their opinion on gay marriage, most people think MPs should focus on more important matters. Fewer than one in four say it is a priority for Parliament; more than 60 per cent say it does not deserve such attention. Survation interviewed 1,003 people online on Friday and yesterday.", "A Florida couple were allegedly caught having sex in a parked truck in clear view of children at playground in Florida. The couple was reported in a phone call to the Greenacres Police Department around 5pm that day, according to the Sun-Sentinel. Multiple children were reportedly less than 200 feet away while the duo engaged in intercourse. Couple: Shane Johnson, left, and Danielle Stager, right, were allegedly having sex in a parked truck on Friday - with children at a playground able to see what was going on . Citing the arrest report, the Sun-Sentinel said a police officer discovered 26-year-old Danielle Stager and 38-year-old Shane Johnson as they had sex in a parked truck. Per the newspaper, Stager allegedly told Johnson 'Shane, we are going to jail' after she noticed the officer's presence. Police told WPTV that Stager and Johnson were 180 feet away from a daycare group. Children could clearly see the couple, authorities told the television station. The Sun-Sentinel reported that four children told cops the couple had been beside a tree and had their pants lowered. The newspaper reported that though the pair were outside near the tree when they began, they could still be seen after relocating. Stager and Johnson are facing lewd or lascivious behavior charges and were released from jail over the weekend, according to the Sun-Sentinel. Account: Four children were at the playground, and told cops the couple had been beside a tree and had their pants lowered (file photo)", "A kindergarten teacher who had sex with a 16-year-old friend of her daughter's has been jailed for six years. Cynthia Lynn Herr was also told she will be on probation for nine years after she has completed her sentence and must surrender her teaching certificate. The 36-year-old wept in court Brooksville, Florida, after pleading guilty under a plea deal that spared her being jailed for up to 45 years. Cynthia Lynn Herr wept in court as she was sentenced to six years in prison for having sex with a boy, 16. She will also have to serve probation when she leaves prison and lost her teaching certificate. She is married and has two children. The victim was a friend of her daughter . The parents of her teen victim approved the six-year sentence. Herr admitted to taking the teen to a hotel last September where they had sex four times during the day. She told a co-worker at the JD Floyd K8 school in Spring Hill, Florida, where she worked about the sexual liaison. The co-worker tipped off school authorities and police launched an investigation. The teen, who was a friend of her daughter's, initially denied having sex but after police checked his Facebook and cell phone discovered messages of a sexual nature. The messages also appeared to talk about the sex they had together. The teen later admitted that they had sex at a Weeki Wachee hotel on August 24. He said they had sex in Herr's van in Pasco and Marion counties. According to an arrest report in September 2013, Herr told investigators she knew that what she did was wrong and that she probably would lose her family and job and go to jail. She also allegedly said she would be in trouble if authorities were to access her phone and Facebook account. After her arrest Herr, who is married with two children, was resigned from her job as a prekindergarten exceptional student education teacher. Herr was charged with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. She pleaded guilty to all four counts as part of the plea deal .", "Washington (CNN)Nearly 6 in 10 Americans say that businesses that provide wedding-related services should be required to provide those services to same-sex couples in the same way they would all other customers, even if they have religious objections. A new CNN/ORC poll finds 57% feel businesses such as caterers or florists should be required to serve gay or lesbian couples just as they would heterosexual couples, while 41% say they should be allowed to refuse service for religious reasons. That's a shift from a Pew Research Center poll conducted last fall, which found just 49% thought businesses ought to be required to serve same-sex couples while 47% that they should be allowed to refuse service on religious grounds. Since the Pew poll last fall, Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law in late March by Republican governor Mike Pence, sparked a nationwide controversy over whether the law allowed wedding-related businesses to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples. Apple, Walmart and the NCAA all spoke out against the law, while some states and cities with Democratic leaders barred spending public money in Indiana. Pence and other Indiana legislators insisted discrimination was not the law's intent and a bill to change the original law was signed in early April. In the CNN/ORC Poll, most Democrats (70%) and independents (60%) say wedding-related businesses should be required to provide services to same-sex couples as they would different-sex couples, while Republicans break broadly the other way, 67% say religious reasons are a valid justification for refusing service. Full poll results . Looking at Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party, 60% in that group say wedding-related businesses should be allowed to refuse services to same-sex couples, but there are sharp divides within that group by age and ideology. Moderate and liberal Republicans and Republican-leaners broadly say wedding-related businesses should be required to serve all couples the same way (58%) while three-quarters of conservative Republicans favor allowing a caterer or florist to refuse service for religious reasons (74%). Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents under age 50, 56% say wedding-related businesses should be required to serve same-sex and different-sex couples the same way while among those age 50 or older, 72% think they should not be required to do so. The big gay wedding cake quiz . Age differences hold across party lines, but the generation gap among Republicans and Republican-leaners is larger than that among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Overall, white evangelicals are broadly in favor of allowing businesses to refuse service for religious reasons - 62% say they should be able to. But among whites who are not evangelicals, 61% say such businesses should be required to provide services to all couples the same way. The shift from the Pew Center results comes across demographic lines. Men, women, whites, younger adults and senior citizens all are more apt than in the Pew poll to say wedding-related business should be required to serve same-sex couples as they do others. The CNN/ORC International poll was conducted by telephone, April 16-19, among a random national sample of 1,018 adult Americans. Results for the full poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Michigan auto repair shop says yes to gun owners, no to homosexuals .", "(CNN) -- They came from all over, police say, and at least one carried condoms in his pocket. A middle school teacher, a tourist visiting from Turkey, college students, a businessman from North Carolina. All of them were arrested in a week-long law enforcement operation, which ended Monday, that targeted men seeking sex with children. About 16 Florida law enforcement agencies came together to create the ruse that the suspects were chatting online with children or parents offering up their kids for sex. The men drove down to a pristine home in the city of Oviedo, about 19 miles from Orlando. Footage released by authorities captured their surprise as their illicit date turned into a rough tackle by a posse of officers. The black and white footage shows officers slamming the men against the wall of the home before cuffing them. At least one man led police on a brief footchase in the front yard before they took him down. One of the men, authorities said, was a Florida high school English teacher who arrived at the decoy home with condoms in his pocket planning to have sex with a 14-year-old girl. Before coming to the home, he sent photos of himself to the undercover officer, Florida detectives said. \"He said he had a lot to lose,\" Seminole County Maj. Dennis Lemma told reporters. A middle school science teacher arrived, planning to have sex with a 14-year-old boy, authorities said. Another man arrested was an elementary school interpreter for deaf children, investigators said, who had posted an online advertisement for a 13-year-old boy. A school janitor also turned up, police said. In all, 50 suspects where arrested. They ranged in ages of 19 to 60. 245 arrested in U.S.-led child sex abuse operation . 2 arrested in child porn cases after request for public's help .", "A 34-year-old married woman has been arrested on charges that she had sex with a 17-year-old boy who attends the same school where she works. Tonya Harris is accused of engaging in felonious sexual acts with the student at a party last November and providing alcohol to minors. She works in the cafeteria at Falcon School District 49 in El Paso County, Colorado, but has been placed on administrative leave following her arrest last Thursday. Tonya Harris is accused of engaging in felonious sexual acts with a 17-year-old student at a party last November and providing alcohol to minors . An investigation into the incident had gone cold due to a lack of leads, until the El Paso Sherriff's Office received new information last week through Safe2Tell, an anonymous hotline for teens. That information lead to Harris' arrest. Harris, who has been married to a serviceman for 18 years, has been released on a $3,000 bond for sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, both felonies, according to the sheriff's office. Falcon School District 49 said in a statement that it was cooperating with the investigation and that Harris had been on administrative leave since the initial investigation. A special meeting has been scheduled to discuss terminating her employment. Harris has been placed on leave from her job at Falcon School District 49 and a special meeting has been scheduled to discuss terminating her employment .", "By . Associated Press . PUBLISHED: . 17:36 EST, 18 August 2013 . | . UPDATED: . 05:44 EST, 19 August 2013 . A career criminal and sex offender who was the last person to see a slain federal criminal investigator claims that the two planned to wed. The slain woman's family, however, says 56-year-old Randy Alana is lying. A reporter for the Oakland Tribune talked to Alana at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where he is being held on a parole violation. Career criminal: Randy Alana says that he planned to marry federal prosecutor Sandra Coke and that they were a loving couple who shared a home, and even attended church together the day she went missing . Prosecutor: Sandra Coke disappeared August 4th from Oakland. Her body was found five days later. Coke's relatives and friends have said that Alana had contacted her to ask for help getting his life together . Alana said that he met Sandra Coke two decades ago while she investigated a murder case. He denied harming her. 'We recently talked about getting married,' Alana told the newspaper. Coke, 50, was last seen with Alana on August 4th, whom she briefly dated about 20 years ago, police and Coke's friends say. Search and rescue crews found Coke's body five days later in a woodsy area near Lagoon Valley Park in unincorporated Vacaville in Solano County. Santa Rita Jail: The pair met 20 years ago when she interviewed him while he was incarcerated as part of a death penalty investigation. Alana is now in solitary lockdown because he is considered one of the jail's most dangerous inmates . 'This is a man with convictions for murder and kidnapping. He was the last person seen with my sister, but claims he has nothing to do with her disappearance and killing,' said Tanya Coke, Sandra Coke's sister, in a written statement. 'He is clearly someone who thinks nothing of lying and manipulating to serve his purposes. Why would we or anyone else believe what he has to say?' Alana appeared in an Alameda County courtroom on Friday to face allegations that he'd violated his parole by contacting Coke, a capital case investigator for the federal public defender's office in Sacramento. Alana was also accused of resisting arrest, failing to charge a GPS monitor he was required to wear on his ankle and absconding from parole. Alana was arrested on Aug. 6 for violating his parole, two days after Coke was reported missing after leaving her Oakland home and telling family members she was meeting someone with information about her missing dog. Judge Morris Jacobson did not say why Alana had been ordered to stay away from Coke. Alameda County prosecutor Paul Hora told reporters after Friday's hearing that he didn't know why Alana had been told to stay away from Coke, but said the condition is specific to her. Hora said Oakland police are still investigating Coke's death and Alana has not been charged in connection with the incident. Alana told the newspaper that his attorney advised him not to talk to anyone about the case, but he said he had nothing to hide. He said he had nothing to do with Coke's murder. 'We recently talked about getting married,' Alana said. Alana said that he violated parole five times and spent extended time in the Santa Rita Jail. Deputies told the newspaper that Coke was a 'regular visitor' of Alana. Coke worked for the federal public defender's office as an investigator on death penalty cases. She also had worked for the California Appellate Project, the San Francisco Public Defender Office, the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, and she had her own private investigation firm. According to a press release issued by the federal defender's office, her work contributed to a recent effort to overturn a 2001 Sacramento County murder conviction. 'She dedicated her work and her life to looking for the best in people, to give some explanation to why people do what they do - even the most heinous of acts, all based upon the belief that no person should be judged only by the worst act he or she committed,' the release said.", "A 41-year-old Missouri woman has been charged with repeatedly having sex with a teenager. Jennifer Lynn Baxter, from Fenton - a town 20 miles southwest of St Louis - was charged last week with second-degree statutory rape and two counts of second-degree statutory sodomy. Baxter, who is married, is accused of having sex with a victim younger than 17 years old. Accused molester: Jennifer Lynn Baxter, 41, has been charged with second-degree statutory rape and second-degree statutory sodomy for allegedly having sex with a person younger than age 17 . According to court documents cited by St Louis Post-Dispatch, the sexual encounters took place between March 6, 2013, and September 5, 2014. No information has been released about the victim's gender, exact age or how Baxter and her underage lover met. Online records show Baxter and her husband, Jeffrey, live in the 1300 block of Legacy Pointe Lane in Fenton. Jeffrey Baxter is the owner of a business specializing in turf products and lawn care.", "'The girl was predatory': Judge Nigel Peters, who allowed a paedophile to walk free after he admitted abusing a girl of just 13 years old . A judge allowed a paedophile to walk free after his 13-year-old victim was described as a 'sexual predator' who was 'egging him on' to engage in a sexual act. Judge Nigel Peters told Neil Wilson, 41, who pleaded guilty to the abuse, he had also taken account the fact the child looked older. Wilson lured the teenager to his home in Romford, Essex, where he watched her strip out of her school uniform before she performed a sex act on him. The abuse did not come to light until the girl confided in a friend who then told police. During a search of Wilson’s home officers also uncovered a stash of images and videos depicting child abuse and bestiality. He admitted a string of charges but was handed a suspended sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court. Judge Peters told him: ‘You have come as close to prison as is imaginable. ‘I have taken in to account that even though the girl was 13, the prosecution say she looked and behaved a little bit older. ‘You knew she was not nearly 16 as she said and your plea of guilty recognises that you knew. ‘Allowing her to visit your home is something we have to clamp down on and in normal circumstances that would mean a significant term in prison. ‘On these facts, the girl was predatory and was egging you on. ‘That is no defence when dealing with children but I am prepared to impose a suspension.’ Wilson was handed an eight-month jail term, suspended for two years, and will also be supervised by the Probation Service for the next three years. He has been banned from contacting children and must allow police to examine his computer, as well as attending a sex offenders’ programme. Wilson met the schoolgirl when she asked him to buy cigarettes for her while she was playing truant. He enjoyed a two-week ‘fling’ with his victim, during which he bombarded her with phone calls and text messages and she continued to visit his home, the court heard. Guilty: Neil Wilson admitted at Snaresbrook Crown Court that he lured the teenager to his home in Romford, Essex, where he watched her strip out of her school uniform before she performed a sex act on him . Prosecutor Robert Colover, told the judge: ‘The girl is predatory in all her actions and she is sexually experienced. ‘She appeared to look around 14 or 15 and had the mental age of a 14 or 15 year old despite being younger than that. ‘There was sexual activity but it was not of Mr Wilson’s doing, you might say it was forced upon him despite being older and stronger than her. ‘As for the images, there were eight found of child pornography, four of which fall in to the category three. ‘There were also 11 images involving horses and dogs found on his computer.’ Wilson, now of York, pleaded guilty to two counts of making extreme pornographic images and one count of sexual activity with a child.", "A United Methodist pastor was convicted Monday of breaking church law by officiating his own son's same-sex wedding and could be defrocked after a high-profile trial that has rekindled debate over the denomination's policy on same-sex marriage. The Methodist church put the Reverend Frank Schaefer on trial in southeastern Pennsylvania, accusing him of breaking his pastoral vows by presiding over the 2007 ceremony in Massachusetts. The 13-member jury convicted Schaefer on two charges: that he officiated a same-sex wedding and that he showed 'disobedience to the order and discipline of the United Methodist Church.' On trial: Reverend Frank Schaefer returns to the retreat house where a jury of pastors is hearing charges against him for officiating over his son's marriage to another man . The jury will reconvene Tuesday morning for the penalty phase, during which Schaefer faces punishment ranging from a reprimand to losing his ministerial credentials. 'Obviously, I'm very saddened. What we're hoping for tomorrow is a light sentence,' said Schaefer's son, Tim Schaefer, 29, whose wedding led to the charges. Testifying in his own defense, the 51-year-old pastor said he decided to break church rules out of love for his son. He said he might have lost what he called his 'ritual purity' by disobeying the Methodist Book of Discipline, but that he felt he was obeying God's command to minister to everyone. 'I love the United Methodist Church. I've been a minister for almost 20 years and there are so many good things about the United Methodist Church except for that one rule,' said Schaefer, of Lebanon. Schaefer's attorney, the Reverend Robert Coombe, told the jury that Schaefer had simply extended God's love to his son. 'It's important to him to practice in his family what he preached to his congregation,' Coombe said. 'He did this wedding as an act of love and not as an act of rebellion.' Schaefer pleaded not guilty at the beginning of the high-profile trial, which is rekindling debate over the denomination's policy on gay marriage. Innocent: Supporters of Reverend Frank Schaefer sing hymns outside as church officials and members of the jury pool arrive at Camp Innabah Rec Center for the start of Schaefer's trial on Monday . Punished: Schaefer could be defrocked if a jury comprised of fellow Methodist clergy convicts him of breaking his pastoral vows by officiating in 2007, his son's same-sex marriage . The church's lawyer, the Reverend Christopher Fisher, told the jury that Schaefer clearly violated the Book of Discipline. He said the complainant, Jon Boger - a member of Schaefer's congregation - was dismayed and shocked when he learned this year about the ceremony. Fisher used his closing argument to condemn homosexuality as immoral, and said Schaefer had no right to break a Methodist law that bans pastors from performing same-sex marriages just because he disagreed with church teaching. Fisher told jurors they were duty-bound to convict. 'You'll give an account for that at the last day, as we all will,' he told the jury, to audible gasps from spectators. Dozens of Schaefer's supporters stood in silent protest as Fisher spoke, then linked hands and sang 'We Shall Overcome' after the jury left to begin deliberating. Boger, the church's sole witness, testified earlier Monday that he felt betrayed when he found out that Schaefer, who had baptized his children and buried his grandparents, had presided over a gay wedding. A father's love: Reverend Frank Schaefer (right) and his son Tim, whose same-sex wedding he officiated at . 'When pastors take the law of the church in their own hand... it undermines their own credibility as a leader and also undermines the integrity of the church as a whole,' Boger said. He said he understood Schafer's motivation. 'It's his son. He loves his son. In a way I felt bad for him,' Boger said. 'But he's also shown no remorse or repentance, nor has he apologized to anyone.' When Schaefer chose to hide the marriage from the congregation, Boger said, 'It was a lie and a broken covenant.' Preaching love: Rich Kirk from joins other supporters of Reverend Frank Schaefer singing hymns as they gather outside Camp Innabah Rec Center on Monday . Deciders: Church officials and members of the jury pool arrive at Camp Innabah Rec Center for start of Reverend Frank Schaefer trial . But Schaefer testified he had informed his church superiors of his part in the marriage. He said he kept it from his conservative church's congregation because it would be divisive. 'I did not want to make this a protest about the doctrine of the church. I wasn't trying to be an advocate,' Schaefer said. 'I just wanted this to be a beautiful family affair, and it was that.' Schaefer faced no discipline until April - less than a month before the church's six-year statute of limitations was set to expire - when Boger filed a complaint. The nation's largest mainline Protestant denomination accepts gay and lesbian members, but it rejects the practice of homosexuality as 'incompatible with Christian teaching.' Schaefer's son Tim Schaefer came out to his parents at age 17, revealing he had contemplated suicide over his struggle with sexual identity and the church's stance on homosexuality. Law or love: Tim Schaefer (right), asked his father Frank Schaefer (left) to marry him and his partner . 'He had heard messages that were hateful from the church, from the culture around him, that told him you're not normal, you're not valid, you're a freak,' Schaefer testified. The pastor said he and his wife told their son he was a 'beloved child of God.' Years later, Tim Schaefer asked his father to marry him. 'To say no to his request would have negated all the affirmations I gave him over the years,' he said. The trial was being held at a Methodist retreat about 60 miles east of his church. Schaefer could have avoided a trial if he had agreed to never again perform a same-gender wedding, but he declined because three of his four children are gay. Supporters of Schaefer held signs and sang hymns outside the trial wearing rainbow stoles, holding signs and singing hymns. 'I'm in support of the church becoming a new church that welcomes everyone,' Bunnie Bryant, 64, told the Lebanon Daily News. She was holding a sign that said: 'Law or love? Jesus chose love.'She added, 'I question the church's law trumping a father's love.'", "By . Leon Watson . Beach-goers in a Jersey Shore town were left shocked after spotting a couple in the ocean allegedly having sex. Witnesses said the pair waded out into the water until it was about thigh height before engaging in the act in full view of the beach. The couple - a 27-year-old male and a 23-year-old female, both from Philadelphia - were charged with lewdness. Charged: A Twitter user with the handle @BerenstainGer captured this picture of the couple accused of a sex act in the ocean . The incident, which took place in front . of families with children, reportedly happened at about 4pm on Sunday on . a beach in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. Witnesses immediately took to Twitter to talk about it. One user, called Colin J, said: 'Wow there's a couple having sex in the ocean on 43rd st. Good Lord.' Police were called to the scene and attempted to wave the couple in from the water, CBS Philly reported. It apparently took the woman a long time to exit the water because she had difficulty tying up her bikini bottom. Once the couple exited the water, a witness said the couple were placed in handcuffs and taken off the beach. The names of the two suspects were not released. The Sea Isle City Police Department were not available for comment.", "By . Daily Mail Reporter . PUBLISHED: . 09:49 EST, 9 April 2012 . | . UPDATED: . 09:59 EST, 9 April 2012 . A couple has been charged after they were allegedly caught having sex in full view of children at a pediatrics office. Juliet Ruffner Bender, 39, and James Albert Mapstone, 45 were arrested after an employee at the doctor's office called police to report the children had seen the pair 'rolling around'. Both were charged with disorderly intoxication after the incident at Evening Pediatrics in St Petersburg, Florida on Saturday night, Pinellas County deputies said. Drunk and disorderly: James Albert Mapstone (pictured left) and Juliet Ruffner Bender (right) were arrested after allegedly having sex in front of a pediatric's office in St Petersburg, Florida . Both Bender and Mapstone were 'cursing and causing a disturbance', according to the Tampa Bay Times. Ms Bender was released on bond of $100 bond by authorities. MailOnline was awaiting a response from Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. It was not the first time that Bender has had a run-in with police. Last January she was charged with selling drugs, crashing a vehicle and property damage. Evening Pediatrics is a walk-in clinic that remains open until 11pm each night and treats patients from newborns up to the age of 21. Sick: The couple were allegedly seen having sex by children at the doctor's office in St Petersburg, Florida .", "A 56-year-old Southern California woman was charged Friday with driving intoxicated into a crowd exiting a church Christmas-related event, killing four people, including a 6-year-old boy, prosecutors said. Margo Julie Bronstein of Redondo Beach pleaded not guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom to four felony counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one felony count of driving under the influence of a drug causing injury, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office said. She is being held on $500,000 bail. Bronstein's attorney unsuccessfully asked the court that bail be reduced to $100,000; Bronstein client has no criminal record and a clean driving history, according to CNN affiliate KTLA. \"This appears to be an accident. It wasn't an intentional act on her behalf,\" attorney Jeffrey Gray said, according to the station. Redondo Beach Police Lt. Joe Hoffman said prescription medication was involved \"at the very minimum,\" according to the affiliate. Timothy Eakin, a friend of Bronstein, told KTLA that Bronstein \"takes a lot of pain medications, and she actually drives her vehicle with hand controls.\" Bronstein has had many hip and leg surgeries and had been in a wheelchair most of her life, Eakin told KTLA. Bronstein on Wednesday evening allegedly swerved around vehicles stopped at red light, crossed the light and plowed into a group in a crosswalk on Pacific Coast Highway as they left St. James Catholic Church in Redondo Beach, authorities said. The highway is the busiest street in Redondo Beach, police said. Bronstein kept driving before \"colliding head-on with a vehicle\" going the other way, police said. Killed were Martha Gaza, 36; and her son Samuel, 6; Mary Anne Wilson, 81; and Saeko Matsumura, 87, prosecutors said. In all, the felony complaint names nine victims. At least one pedestrian struck \"was moved up to where the head-on collision occurred,\" police said. About 12 ambulances rushed to find people lying in the street, suffering from injuries ranging from minor to critical, Division Chief Rob Rappaport of the Redondo Beach Fire Department said. If convicted on all charges, Bronstein faces about 40 years in prison, prosecutors said.", "(CNN) -- Police are searching for any other alleged victims of a Sunday school teacher accused of raping and killing an 8-year-old girl from Tracy, California. Melissa Huckaby is charged with killing 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, who was a friend of her own daughter. \"We are asking the public if they have any indication that any of their children may have had inappropriate contact with [the suspect] to contact us,\" Tracy Police Sgt. Tony Sheneman said Tuesday evening. \"There has been no indication that this has happened. But she is a Sunday school teacher and did have contact with children, so that is why we are asking.\" Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested and charged with killing and raping 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, a friend of her 5-year-old daughter. Huckaby, wearing red jail scrubs over a white T-shirt, was in court Tuesday for an arraignment. She was charged with murder, kidnapping, the performance of a lewd and lascivious act on a child under 14 and rape by instrument. If convicted, Huckaby would face the death penalty or life in prison without parole, San Joaquin County District Attorney James Willett told reporters after the hearing. A decision on whether to seek the death penalty will be made later, he said. Huckaby did not enter a plea or speak during the court hearing, although she flinched when Sandra Cantu's name was spoken, and she cried at times. Sandra's body was found April 6, stuffed into a suitcase and submerged in a pond at a dairy farm. Huckaby was arrested Friday night after questioning by police. Sandra was last seen alive March 27 in the mobile home park where she lived with her family -- the same mobile home park where Huckaby lives with her daughter. The two children were close friends and played together frequently, police said. Huckaby is the granddaughter of Clifford Lane Lawless, pastor of Clover Road Baptist Church near the mobile home park, and she taught Sunday school at the church, police have said. The church was searched as part of the investigation into Sandra's disappearance and death. Before her arrest, Huckaby acknowledged to a newspaper reporter that she owned the suitcase that contained Sandra's body. But Huckaby said the suitcase had been stolen. Willett declined to comment on any of the evidence or allegations in the case, saying evidence would be presented in court. A memorial ceremony is scheduled for Sandra at 1 p.m. Thursday at a high school in Tracy, police said. -- CNN's Ninette Sosa contributed to this report.", "By . Paul Bentley and Mark Duell . PUBLISHED: . 08:25 EST, 25 September 2012 . | . UPDATED: . 19:09 EST, 25 September 2012 . This is the shocking moment a man was caught on CCTV leading two young girls into a hotel for sex. The appalling video was shown during the trial of eight men who were yesterday jailed in Derby for a total of 42 years for preying on girls aged 13 to 15, picked up from care homes and the streets. The vile men, aged between 35 and 60, slept with the girls in exchange for as little as £5, cigarettes, drugs, mobile phones and treats - including a child’s toy and rides on a farmer’s tractor. Scroll down for video . Shocking: John Shaw, 54, is caught on CCTV with two girls at a hotel - one of whom is carrying a teddy bear . Anthony Lambert, 51, Stefan Godfrey, . 44, John Shaw, 55, Ijaz Ahmed, 35, and Mark Adaoui, 40, Colin Simpson, . 55, David Shardlow, 56, and Ian Yeoman, 60, were jailed for a series . of sex offences. The problem of teen prostitution in . the city suburbs of Normanton and Pear Tree was so rife, one girl . distressingly said that she thought taking money for sex simply ‘must . be part of growing up’. Disturbing CCTV footage played during the five-week trial showed one of the men, Shaw, checking into a Jurys Inn hotel with one girl and her friend, who could be seen clutching a large teddy bear. Shaw, who lives in a caravan on a farm in Kniveton, Derbyshire, was found guilty of paying the same girl for sexual activity on two occasions at Sinfin golf course, near Derby, when she was 15. CCTV footage shows John Shaw checking into a hotel with a girl who is clutching a large teddy bear . John Shaw, holding a cuddly toy, was found guilty of paying the same girl for sexual activity on two occasions . He was found not guilty of assaulting . the girl when she told him she did not want to have sex with him and he . was jailed for four years and 11 months. The video footage of Shaw was . from 2010. 'The message that crimes such as this are happening in Derby and Derbyshire is getting out to the public' Detective Chief Inspector Andy Stokes . Five victims were involved in the case . but it is thought up to 15 girls may have been targeted for sex in 2009 . and 2010. The men did not know each other, and carried out their . activities individually. They were all caught by officers under . Operation Kern, which targeted those seeking the services of children . for sex. Five of the men, including Shaw, had denied the charges. Married Mark Adaoui, 40, from Derby, . was found guilty of paying a 15-year-old girl on two occasions to . perform a sex act on him in his car. He brought cannabis along and they . smoked it together. He was jailed for seven years. John Shaw, left, was jailed for four years and 11 months and Anthony Lambert, right, got six years in prison . Stefan Godfrey, 44, from Pinxton, . Derbyshire, was convicted by jury of paying a different 15-year-old girl . on two occasions for sex knowing or believing she was underage. He was . jailed for six years. 'You did not only take advantage of these vulnerable girls, you did so to satisfy your middle-aged desires to have sex with them and you were prepared to pay the paltry sums they charged' Judge John Gosling . Ijaz Ahmed, 35, from Derby, was found . guilty of paying two different girls for sex when they were 15. He was . jailed for six years. Anthony Lambert, 51, from Derby, was . found guilty of paying for sex twice with the same girl. She said she . drank alcohol, smoked cannabis, ate a kebab and watched a film at his . house. He also gave her money towards a new mobile phone. He was jailed . for six years. Colin Simpson, 55, from Worksop, had . previously pleaded guilty to three charges of paying for sexual services . of a 15-year-old girl. He was jailed for four years. Stefan Godfrey, left, was jailed for six years and Mark Adaoui, right, was jailed for seven years . Ijaz Ahmed, left, was jailed for six months and Ian Yeoman, right, was given four years and eight months . David Shardlow, 56, from Derby, . pleaded guilty to nine counts of paying for sexual services of two girls . aged 15 and possessing indecent images of children. He was also jailed . for four years. David Shardlow, 56, from Derby, pleaded . guilty to nine counts of paying for sexual services of two girls aged 15 . and possessing indecent images of children . Ian Yeoman, 60, from Derby, had . also previously confessed to 12 counts of paying for sexual services of . two different 15-year-old girls. He was jailed for four years and eight . months. Sentencing the men, Judge John Gosling . said: ‘In recent times and recent years in this country, we have begun . to realise how the extent of the sexual abuse of children is becoming . more prevalent.’ He distanced the crimes to similar . ones in 2010, when 13 men were jailed for up to 22 years for a total of . 70 offences in a police investigation known as Operation Retriever. 'I am not dealing with a team of predators and there are no allegations that they forced themselves on the girls. 'But you did not only take advantage . of these vulnerable girls, you did so to satisfy your middle-aged . desires to have sex with them and you were prepared to pay the paltry . sums they charged.' Speaking outside court, Detective . Chief Inspector Andy Stokes said police were ‘really pleased’ with the . outcome - in part because the victims ‘have now seen justice and . closure’ on what happened to them. He added: 'The convictions have come about due to the tremendous work the investigating team did. The message that crimes such as this are happening in Derby and Derbyshire is getting out to the public, raising their awareness.' In victim impact statements read out . in the court Mark Achurch, prosecuting, said one of the girls felt her . 'trust in males was (now) non-existent” while another said she “could . not wait for the sentencing as it would be the first day of the rest of . her life'. Safe and Sound . Derby helps children and young people who are being, or who are at risk . of being sexually exploited and worked with two of the victims in the . case and the parents of one of the victims. Speaking . outside court Nathalie Walters, chief executive, said: 'The men . involved in this case were sexual predators who targeted and preyed upon . vulnerable young girls. 'We . hope that the sentences handed down to them today send a clear message . out that child sexual exploitation will not be tolerated. 'The . girls had to wait for two years to come to court where they had to . relive their horrific ordeal in front of the very men who exploited . them. 'Hopefully these . sentences will provide some comfort to the victims and their parents and . help them to move on with their lives.' Video: Defendant John Shaw checking two victims into a hotel in Derby in 2010 .", "By . Bianca London . PUBLISHED: . 08:00 EST, 24 June 2013 . | . UPDATED: . 09:58 EST, 24 June 2013 . A serial bride who has tied the knot eight times has found love again after TV presenter Eamonn Holmes told her never to stop looking for her perfect man. Wedding addict Sandra, 56, dubbed Scotland's answer to Liz Taylor, joined a singles website after being encouraged to look for love again by Eamonn. The presenter told Sandra not to give up when she appeared as a guest on This Morning last year and flirted with him on air. Mr. Right: Sandra McNab, who has tied the knot eight times, has finally found love with Alex McNicol, who she met online . Inspired Sandra set up a profile on the Zoosk dating site and was inundated with hundreds of messages from potential love interests. And she was left lovestruck after agreeing to meet new man Alex McNicol, 54, who had seen her profile and wooed her over the internet. Sandra, of Clydebank, said: 'After my last marriage, I never thought I'd ever love again. 'But after taking some time out I felt I was ready to believe in love again. 'After appearing on This Morning, Eamonn took me aside and told me not to give up. Advice: Sandra was encouraged by TV presenter Eamonn Holmes to join an online dating site, she was then inundated with interest from men . Wise words: Eamonn Holmes told her never to stop looking for her perfect man on ITV's This Morning so she took it upon herself to continue her search for Mr. Right online . 'So I decided to set up a profile and join Zoosk. I was honest with myself and wrote that I was looking to meet someone who was kind and trustworthy. 'I've always been known for having my make-up on, my blonde hair and for being a bit glam. But this time I uploaded a picture of myself looking much more natural, without my hair done and make up on. 'I wanted people to see me for who I really was and within hours I had over 400 messages. 'But Alex was the first to send me a little teddy bear as a present online and I thought it was really sweet,' she said. Sandra, who joined the dating site in April this year, met up with haulage contractor Alex, from Larkhall, Lanarkshire, days later at Cameron House at Loch Lomond. Better together: Sandra, who has walked down the aisle eight times with seven different men in 40 years, has finally found love with Alex, who doesn't mind about her previous marriages . But Sandra, who has walked down the . aisle eight times with seven different men in 40 years, admitted she was . a bag of nerves as she had never been on an actual first date. She . said: 'I have made it through many weddings but this was my first real . date and my hand was shaking uncontrollably as I tried to put my mascara . on. 'I hadn't told . Alex of my previous marriages until this point as I'd wanted to tell him . face-to-face. So I just announced that I had eight divorces behind me . and then added \"but only seven husbands.\" Young love: Mother-of three Sandra first said 'I do' to spray painter Joseph Mullen at age 16 in October 1973, with whom she had three children, Debbie, Gillian and Kenneth . 'He took it well and said he didn't . care if I'd been married 15 times. I let out a deep sigh of relief when . he didn't choke on his steak and run.' Within weeks, the smitten pair were enjoying candle-lit dinners and weekends away together. Sandra insists she is taking things more slowly this time although she has not ruled out walking down the aisle again in the future. She added: 'I thought romance was dead but Alex has treated me like a real woman should be treated. Clubbers: Husband number three was factory worker Andy Smith, 49, who she met in a Clydebank nightclub . Number three: Sandra's third husband, Andy Smith, pictured with her mother . 'He whisked me away on a romantic break a week after our first date. With us, it isn't about rushing or sex. 'There isn't any pressure, it's about being together and for once properly getting to know each other. 'But we get on really well and are very comfortable together, so you never know what the future holds.' Alex . added: 'I met Sandra online and we just clicked. We are just enjoying . each others company and we're really happy. We'll just see how it goes. 'Sandra . told me on our first date she had been married before but I don't care . how many times she's been married. The past is the past and it's time to . look forward.' Toyboy: Sandra then got hitched to younger lover Alex Mullen, 43, 11 years her junior . Deja vu: The unlucky-in-love grandma next wed George Pollock, 46, twice as husband number five and seven . Repeat of history: Wedding-addict Sandra, dubbed Scotland's answer to Liz Taylor, remarried George Pollock as her seventh husband . Mother-of three Sandra first said 'I do' to spray painter Joseph Mullen at age 16 in October 1973, with whom she had three children, Debbie, Gillian and Kenneth. The next up the aisle was taxi driver Richard Kearney, who Sandra wed after he collected her at her home as his fare. Number three was factory worker Andy Smith, 49, who she met in a Clydebank nightclub. Sandra's fourth husband was Patrick Wright, 62, who she met in a social club in 1991. They wed a year later. The unlucky-in-love grandma next wed George Pollock, 46, twice as husband number five and seven. Sandra then got hitched to toy-boy love Alex Mullen, 43, 11 years her junior. And lastly Sandra wed Jim Biggs but they split after just 10 days.", "By . Rachel Rickard Straus . PUBLISHED: . 10:56 EST, 21 November 2012 . | . UPDATED: . 03:02 EST, 22 November 2012 . Police are searching for two newlyweds after finding their wedding day pictures on a stolen iPod. The white iPod nano was recovered by police after it was stolen from a house in Hillingdon, London, by burglars earlier this year. But police have no idea who the couple are and are seeking to reunite them with the missing portraits. Found: An iPod nano in white was found to contain a set of wedding photos including this one of the couple saying their vows . Detective Sergeant Charlie Cairns of the Metropolitan Police, said: 'We’d really like to give back the pictures to the people they belong to. 'Somewhere there’s somebody who’s missing a set of wedding pictures, which no doubt they’re upset about. 'We’ve tried tracing the back the item to the property it may have come from but we just can’t find it.' The iPod was recovered from a haul of stolen goods and police sifted through the images to try and return the item. The happy day: The bride is pictured surrounded by friends on her wedding day . It includes a black and white picture of the newlyweds exchanging vows moments before they kiss. There is also a shot of the bride alongside nine women, believed to be her bridesmaids and maids of honour. Another image shows the entire party gathering on the lawn outside a country home in the sunshine. Celebrations: The wedding party is pictured enjoying the sunshine outside a large country house . The theft could have taken place in Hillingdon or bordering areas of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or Thames Valley area. Further property including expensive jewellery was also recovered, which may belong to the same victim. If you had an iPod Nano stolen which had these images stored, or if you know whose wedding this was, contact Detective Sergeant Charlie Cairns on 0208 246 1417. Alternatively, if you do not want to speak to police, you can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111." ]

[ "AMESBURY, England (AP) — The Latest on the major incident near Salisbury, England, in which two people have been left in a critical condition (all times local):\n12:20 p.m.\nBritish police say counterterrorism officers are working with local detectives after two people were sickened by an unknown substance in southwest England.\nThe Metropolitan Police says \"officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police\" on the incident in Amesbury.\nPolice say a man and a woman in their 40s were hospitalized after being found unconscious at a residential building in Amesbury. The town is eight miles (13 kilometers) from Salisbury, where ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent on March 4.\nPolice say they are keeping an open mind and do not yet know whether a crime has been committed.\n___\n6 a.m.\nBritish police declared a \"major incident\" Wednesday after two people were left in critical condition from exposure to an unknown substance a few miles from where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent.\nThe Wiltshire Police force said a man and a woman in their 40s were hospitalized after being found unconscious at a residential building in Amesbury, eight miles (13 kilometers) from Salisbury, where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned on March 4.\nPolice cordoned off the building and other places the two people visited before falling ill, but health officials said there was not believed to be a wider risk.\nThe man and woman were hospitalized Saturday at Salisbury District Hospital, where authorities initially believed they might have taken a contaminated batch of heroin or crack cocaine.\n\"However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident,\" police said. \"At this stage, it is not yet clear if a crime has been committed.\"" ]

[ "Earlier in the day, two people were hospitalized after being exposed to an unknown substance in the town of Amesbury, located not far from notorious Salisbury where the Skripal's had been allegedly poisoned four months ago.\nCounter-terrorism officers have joined the investigation opened by the local Wiltshire police after two people were taken to hospital in critical condition being exposed to an unknown substance in southwest English city of Amesbury, the Metropolitan Police said Wednesday in a statement.\n\"As you would expect, given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury,\" police said.\nMeanwhile, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that the emergency committee held a meeting in response to Wiltshire incident.\nREAD MORE: 2 Hospitalized After Exposure to 'Unknown Substance' in UK's Amesbury — Police\nHowever, the police noted that it has not yet been established whether a crime was committed.\n\"It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs. However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident,\" the statement reads.\nEarlier in the day, Wiltshire Police declared a major incident over suspicion that the two individuals Found unconcious in Amesbury might have fallen ill due to an unknown substance.\n\"There’s no indication that the incident is in any way connected to Skripal case at this moment in time. I haven't seen anything in this incident yet but I would consider to be an overreaction,\" a source in the police told Sputnik.\n© AP Photo / Matt Dunham The Curious Incident of Amesbury Pair Exactly 4 Months After Skripal Case Mooted on Twitter\nThe news about Amesbury incident broke on July 4, exactly four months after former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping mall in Salisbury on March 4.\nBack than the UK authorities blamed Russia for attempting to assassinate Skripal, who worked for the British intelligence, with what is believed by London to be the A234 nerve agent. Although the UK failed to provide evidence to substantiate its accusations, London rushed to retaliate, expelling Russian diplomats.\nRussia denied having any role in the alleged poisoning and offered to assist in the investigation. However, its request for samples of the chemical substance used to poison the Skripals was rejected. Both Skripals have since been discharged from the hospital.", "(CNN) — British counter-terrorism officers have joined the investigation into how two critically ill people came to be exposed to an “unknown substance” in a town in southern England.\nThe victims, a man and woman in their 40s, were found unconscious on Saturday in Amesbury, just a few miles from Salisbury, where former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in March. The UK government suspects the Skripals were victims of a Russian attack.\nIn a statement, London’s Metropolitan Police said: “As you would expect, given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury. As Wiltshire Police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident and will update the public as soon and as regularly as possible.”\nThe two victims are currently in critical condition, according to police in Wiltshire, the county in which Amesbury is located.\nThey were initially believed to have fallen ill after using crack cocaine or heroin, but are now “receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance,” Wiltshire Police said in a statement.\n“Further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident,” the statement said.\nBritish Prime Minister Theresa May and government ministers were treating the incident with “the utmost seriousness,” her spokesman told CNN.\nChurch, pharmacy under police guard\nOn Tuesday, Amesbury Baptist Church was cordoned off, with police standing guard at the entrance. Church secretary Ray Collins told CNN he believed the victims attended a family fun day at the church on Saturday, though he did not know who the pair were.\nA Boots pharmacy in the town center was also cordoned off, with police at the entrance telling CNN it was closed “as a precaution.”\nSalisbury District Hospital is open as usual and is advising people still to attend routine appointments unless they are contacted to state otherwise.\nA Public Health England (PHE) spokesman said: “The current advice from PHE England, based upon the number of casualties affected, is that it is not believed that there is a significant health risk to the wider public. This will be continually assessed as further information becomes known.”\nThe March incident in Salisbury sparked a diplomatic row between the UK and Russia after British investigators blamed Moscow for the attack.\nRussia has denied the allegations, but more than 20 other countries kicked Russian diplomats out of their countries in a show of support for the UK.\nSergei and Yulia Skripal have since been discharged from the hospital.", "COUNTER-terror police investigating a major incident involving two people who were left critically ill after being exposed to an “unknown substance” have sent samples to be analysed.\nA man and a woman, both in their 40s, were found collapsed at their home in Amesbury, Salisbury, Wilts, just miles from where ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were attacked with a nerve agent in March. Wiltshire Police initially believed the couple, discovered unconscious on Saturday, had taken a bad batch crack cocaine or heroin, but are keeping an “open mind” about the circumstances. The pair, who are being treated at Salisbury District Hospital, are fighting for their lives after they came into contact with the suspected “unknown substance”, police said. Scotland Yard's counter-terror team have taken over the investigation and will work in conjunction with Wiltshire Police after declaring a major incident – a rare occurrence. Samples of the mystery substance have been sent to chemical weapons experts at Porton Down, according to multiple reports.\nDS MAJOR INCIDENT: Anti-terror police have taken over the Amesbury investigation\nSWNS AMESBURY: A policeman stands outside the home where the couple were found unconscious\n\"Given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury,\" the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. \"As Wiltshire Police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident.\" The home of the couple, Muggleton Road, is around eight miles (13 km) away from where the Skripals were poisoned by military grade nerve agent Novichok on March 3. Cordons have been put in place around areas in Amesbury and and Salisbury where the couple are thought to have visited in recent days.\nDS MAPPED: The couple live around seven miles away from where the Skripals were poisoned\nWitnesses believe the couple, who have not been named, may have last been seen in public at a family fun day at Amesbury Baptist Centre on Saturday afternoon. The pair, who have not been named, are not thought to have any links with Sergei and Yulia Skripal or the Russian intelligence services. But detectives are investigating the possibility that the couple were exposed to an undiscovered sample of nerve agent Novichok used by assassins, The Sun reported.\nAmesbury Baptist Centre secretary Roy Collins said around 200 people attended the event at the church, including many families and children, but \"nobody else has suffered any ill-effects\".\nSWNS INVESTIGATION: Counter-terror and Wiltshire Police are probing the incident in Amesbury\nMr Collins said: \"Last weekend we held a community fundraiser and we understand this may well be the last event this couple went to in public. \"We are all quite puzzled and shocked - naturally the connection with and recent events there mean there is a heightened public interest. \"We are praying for the couple. One of our members knows them and clearly there are concerns for them and any others in the community. \"They are not church members or regulars.\"\nSWNS UNKNOWN SUBSTANCE: Chemical weapons experts from Porton Down are analysing the substance\n“They are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances” Met Police The address where the couple were found is on a new housing development on the southern edge of the town, which lies close to Stonehenge. Neighbours living near the scene were keen to find out more about what had happened to the couple. College student Chloe Edwards described seeing police cars, fire engines and people in \"green suits\" on Saturday night. \"We saw everything,\" said the 17-year-old, who lives near the cordoned-off flat. \"We were just eating our dinner and all these emergency vehicles turned up. \"They were putting on these green suits and we thought it was the gas as our electricity was turned off as well.\"\nWas it Putin? 'Poisoned' ex-Russian spy fighting for life in Salisbury Double Russian agent Sergei Skripal has been found unconscious after being exposed to an unknown substance. 1 / 25 REUTERS Former military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal is detained", "A British counter-terrorism unit has joined the probe after a man and woman were apparently exposed to an “unknown substance” near Salisbury, according to police.\n“Given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury,” British counterterrorism police said in a statement on Wednesday.\nGiven recent events in Salisbury, officers from the Counter Terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues @wiltshirepolice regarding the incident in Amesbury. As Wiltshire Police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident. — Terrorism Police UK (@TerrorismPolice) July 4, 2018\nEarlier on Wednesday, Wiltshire Police declared a “major incident” in the town of Amesbury, around 12 kilometers from Salisbury. The pair fell ill after suspected exposure to “an unknown substance.”\nThe man and woman were found unconscious in a property in Muggleton Road on Saturday, but the case was not made public until Wednesday. Both are in critical condition and are being treated at Salisbury District Hospital.\nPolice stated that they “are keeping an open mind” on the circumstances of the incident, while Public Health England (PHE) said that a “significant health risk” to the wider public is unlikely.\nThe Amesbury incident is “being treated with the utmost seriousness,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said as cited by Reuters. He added that the authorities are following the situation and British officials met earlier in the day to receive updates.\nWhile police did not link the Amesbury incident with the Skripals case, some in the British media were quick to add fuel to the fire. The Sun tabloid reported that the allegedly-poisoned pair are “showing very similar symptoms to the former Russian military intelligence colonel and his daughter Julia.”\nNews about the Amesbury incident comes exactly four months after an attack in nearby Salisbury, where ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by an alleged nerve agent (from the Novichok family). London claimed that it came from Russia, pinning the blame on Moscow for the incident as a result. However, the allegations lacked any solid proof that could be presented to the public. Moscow also said the UK blatantly denied access for Russian specialists to the samples and even “destroyed” evidence in the high-profile case.\nFollowing the alleged poisoning on March 4, UK Prime Minister Theresa May stated the government’s chemical laboratory at Porton Down had identified the “military-grade” nerve agent used in the attack as the A234 agent, a type of Soviet Union-developed Novichok. The claims were also backed by Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said that the lab had confirmed to him that the nerve agent originated from Russia.\nHowever, the bombshell statements were quickly rebuffed by the scientists themselves as Porton Down chief Gary Aitkenhead said that the facility was unable to determine the origin of the toxin. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was also unable to back those claims. The blame game was further undermined by the president of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman’s admission that his country has produced Novichok. Moreover, German media revealed in May that some NATO countries, including the US and the UK, have long been aware of the chemical formula of the nerve agent.", "Shutterstock\nNot since the end of the Cold War and the heyday of Tom Clancy novels has nuclear proliferation been so clearly a worldwide concern — between the ongoing pursuit of nuclear arms by states like Russia and North Korea and the potential for materials to fall into the hands of terrorists or other rogue actors. Turkish police may have prevented the latter recently after arresting four suspects who were in possession of a rare nuclear substance.\nAccording to Haaretz, Turkish police in the capital of Ankara have detained the suspects after the substance was found in their cars during a search (you can see photos of the substance here) as part of an anti-smuggling operation, and an investigation is underway. The substance, Californium, a synthetic radioactive element, is made in labs and is used to kick-start nuclear reactors (although it does have medicinal qualities and is used in some forms of cancer treatment).\nThe police found over three pounds on the suspects, with a value believed to be over $70 million. The source of the Californium is unknown, but the U.S. and Russia are the only countries manufacturing the substance. Turkish police haven’t revealed who the suspects are or who they were intending to sell the nuclear materials to. The substance was turned over to the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority, who will continue probing the matter.\n(Via Haaretz)", "London : A man and woman are in a critical condition after being exposed to an “unknown substance” and found unconscious close to where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with a deadly nerve agent, prompting British counter terrorism officers to launch a massive probe.\nThe pair, in their 40s, were found unconscious in a property on Saturday in what was thought to be in a drugs-related incident in Amesbury, Wiltshire, the BBC reported on Wednesday.\nFurther tests on the substance are being carried out to identify it, the report said.Amesbury is about 16 kilometres from Salisbury, where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with Novichok, a suspected military nerve agent, in March. The Metropolitan Police said counter terrorism officers are now working with Wiltshire Police “given the recent events in Salisbury”.Police said the couple were found at a house in Muggleton Road, Amesbury. While it was not clear whether a crime had been committed, the force said, a number of places in Amesbury and Salisbury known to have been frequented by the couple had been cordoned off.\n“It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs,” Wiltshire Police said.”They are both currently receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance at Salisbury District Hospital,” it added.\nThe couple are believe to have attended a family fun day at Amesbury Baptist Church on Saturday afternoon before they were found unconscious in the property. Roy Collins, church secretary, said “nobody else has suffered any ill-effects” from attending the community event and “there was nothing going on that was nefarious”.\n“There have been no reports of any other incidents,” he said. “We are all quite puzzled and shocked – naturally the connection with Salisbury and recent events there mean there is a heightened public interest.”", "LAHORE - Over a dozen suspects are rounded up in the Punjab-wide crackdown as counter terrorism department begins probe into the Monday’s deadly blast in the heart of Lahore.\nA senior official last night told The Nation that dozens of special teams comprising counter terror operatives and security officers have launched a major hunt as investigators were examining the evidences collected so far.\n“Several terror suspects are being interrogated in connection with the gruesome bomb attack. Police also seized arms and ammunition during the security sweep,” the provincial government official said. “Most of the arrests were made during pre-dawn raids in different districts of the Punjab province.”\nThe raids began as counter terrorism police filed a criminal case under anti-terror laws against unidentified terrorists. According to the police report, at least four men were involved in Monday’s bombing that killed thirteen people and wounded over 100 others.\n“One of the terrorists managed to reach close the crowds while his three accomplices managed to escape as the suicide bomber blew himself up,” says the FIR registered with the Lahore CTD police. The FIR was registered on the complaint of a police officer under sections 302, 324, 427, 109, 120-B/ 34 of the PPC, and section 7 of the anti-terrorism act 1997.\nThirteen people including a 20-year-old lady died on the spot and more than 100 were admitted to hospitals soon after the blast, according to police. Seven police officers were also among the dead.\nAuthorities re-opened The Mall on Tuesday evening as the crime scene was washed. Police also removed damaged vehicles including DSNG van of a private TV channel from the crime scene yesterday.\nEarlier in the day, several teams of forensic experts, police investigators, and intelligence operatives visited the site of the blast and collected evidences from there.\nThe officers were going through the CCTV footage of the incident. In the latest video clip, the young bomber could be seen going towards the target on foot along with another man. Police sources revealed that the handlers first identified the target – senior police officer – to the bomber who sneaked into the protesting crowd.\n“Actually, the bomber targeted senior officers who were busy in negotiations with the representatives of protesters at a considerable distance from the crowd,” a police investigator said requesting anonymity.\nOn the other hand, security was put on high-alert throughout the province on Tuesday following the bomb attack on police. Deep grief and sadness blanketed entire Lahore in particular and the country in general. Dozens of victims were still under medical treatment at different public hospitals.\nSeparately, a joint team of investigators has begun probe into the gory incident as they have got some important clues. Security sources disclosed to this reporter that intelligence officials had picked up some key suspects during successful raids launched in various parts of the province.\nThe police also stepped up snap-checking at all the entry and exit points of the big cities across the Punjab province yesterday. Similarly, additional police were deployed at important and sensitive locations in Lahore. Hundreds of police carried out security sweep to hunt down suspected elements in various parts of the metropolis.\nAccording to sources, the top police officers have called a special meeting to discuss and revamp the security plan in Lahore keeping in view the latest terror attack. The meeting will take place at a police facility on Wednesday.\nThe provincial home department yesterday directed the district administrations to ensure extreme vigilance with massive police deployment to thwart the nefarious designs of anti-Pakistan elements.\nAlso, special security sweep and combing operations would continue around important buildings and offices and particularly in Afghan settlements. The most sensitive areas/sites should be given proper security cover and snap-checking must be carried out especially in big cities of the province.\nBride-to-be and groom-to-be also died in Lahore blast\nA 20-year-old lady and a 24-year-old man died in the Lahore blast barely one month before their wedding were scheduled separately. They were identified by police as Bilal Ahmed, a resident of Ravi Road and Fatima Jamshaid, a resident of Ferozwala. According to their relatives, they went to The Mall for shopping.\nFatima died just two weeks before her planned wedding while Bilal’s marriage was scheduled for next month. The mother of Bilal has lost her mental balance since she witnessed the body of her only son.", "UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he would chair a special government meeting Thursday to discuss the probe into a nerve agent poisoning in the town of Amesbury, which left two people critically ill.\n\"Tomorrow (Thursday) I will chair a meeting of the Government's emergency committee COBR in relation to the ongoing investigation,\" he said in a statement on Wednesday.\nTwo persons who came down Saturday with symptoms of poisoning in the British town of Amesbury were found to have been exposed to the same toxin as the ex-Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skrial and his daughter in Salisbury, the head of UK Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorism unit said earlier on Wednesday.\nThe newest victims — a 45-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman — are critically ill in hospital. They were discovered unconscious at the same address in Wiltshire county in South West England, miles from where the Skripals were found collapsed in the park.\nChief Medical Officer Sally Davies told reporters on Wednesday that the risk to public health following hospitalization of two Britons in the town of Amesbury with symptoms of exposure to a Salisbury nerve agent remains low.\n\"I want to reiterate the police are still investigating how this incident happened. We want to reassure the public that risk to the public remains low,\" Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies told reporters on Wednesday.\nMetropolitan Police anti-terrorism chief Neil Basu said earlier in the day police had cordoned off as a precaution a number of sites in the Amesbury and Salisbury areas that they believed the two victims had visited before they fell ill on Saturday.\nSergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping mall in Salisbury on March 4. UK authorities blamed Russia for a murder attempt with what they believe to be a nerve agent of the Novichok class. Russia has denied any role in the poisoning.\nDETAILS TO FOLLOW", "Scroll for more content...\nBritish counter-terrorism officers have joined the investigation into how two critically ill people came to be exposed to an \"unknown substance\" in a town in southern England.\nThe victims, a 45-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, were hospitalized on Saturday in Amesbury, just a few miles from Salisbury, where former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in March. The UK government suspects the Skripals were victims of a Russian attack.\n\"Paramedics from the South Western Ambulance Service were called to an address in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, on the morning of Saturday, 30 June, after a woman collapsed at the property,\" Deputy Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police Paul Mills told reporters on Wednesday afternoon. \"They were called back later the same day, supported by colleagues from Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service, following reports a man had also fallen unwell in the same location.\"\nHe added it was not yet clear if a crime has been committed, but that inquiries are ongoing and that police are keeping an \"open mind.\"\nIn a statement, London's Metropolitan Police said: \"As you would expect, given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury. As Wiltshire Police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident and will update the public as soon and as regularly as possible.\"\nThe two victims -- both British nationals local to the area -- are currently in critical condition, according to police in Wiltshire, the county in which Amesbury is located.\nThey were initially believed to have fallen ill after using crack cocaine or heroin from a contaminated batch, but are now \"receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance,\" Wiltshire Police said.\n\"Further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident,\" the statement said.\nBritish Prime Minister Theresa May and government ministers were treating the incident with \"the utmost seriousness,\" her spokesman told CNN.\nChurch, pharmacy under police guard\nOn Tuesday, Amesbury Baptist Church was cordoned off, with police standing guard at the entrance. Church secretary Ray Collins told CNN he believed the victims attended a family fun day at the church on Saturday, though he did not know who the pair were.\nA Boots pharmacy in the town center was also cordoned off, with police at the entrance telling CNN it was closed \"as a precaution.\"\nAdditionally, the Queen Elizabeth Gardens and a nearby supported-living facility in Salisbury have been closed off, as has another property in Amesbury, according to Wilshire Police, who said the scenes have been shuttered \"as a precautionary measure.\"\nSalisbury District Hospital is open as usual and is advising people still to attend routine appointments unless they are contacted to state otherwise.\nA Public Health England (PHE) spokesman said: \"The current advice from PHE England, based upon the number of casualties affected, is that it is not believed that there is a significant health risk to the wider public. This will be continually assessed as further information becomes known.\"\nThe March incident in Salisbury sparked a diplomatic row between the UK and Russia after British investigators blamed Moscow for the attack.\nRussia has denied the allegations, but more than 20 other countries kicked Russian diplomats out of their countries in a show of support for the UK.\nSergei and Yulia Skripal have since been discharged from the hospital.", "Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said the substance which has left two people critically ill in Amesbury was nerve agent Novichok.\nIt is the same nerve agent used in the attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia just eight miles away in Salisbury, Wiltshire.\nMr Basu said it was ‘a line of inquiry’ whether the latest poisoning was linked to the attack on the Skripals in March.\nDawn Sturgess was hospitalised on Saturday after being exposed to Novichok, police have said\nCharlie Rowley was found unconscious at a flat in Amesbury hours after Dawn Sturgess was taken to hospital\nAmesbury victims Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley remain in a critical condition in hospital, Mr Basu said.\nHe added that nobody else has presented with signs of exposure to the nerve agent.\nWiltshire Police earlier revealed that counter-terrorism officers are helping them to investigate how Sturgess, 44, and Rowley, 45, were exposed to the nerve agent.\nAdvertisement\nAdvertisement\nIt was confirmed to be Novichok after being tested at Porton Down, the UK’s defence research laboratory that identified it as the same substance used in the Skripal poisoning case.\nOfficers were called to the flat where the pair were living in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, Wiltshire, on Saturday morning after Sturgess collapsed.\nThey were called back later that day when Rowley also fell ill.\nNeighbours described seeing Dawn and Charlie being removed from their home on stretchers by paramedics wearing Hazmat suits\nA police officer outside the home in Amesbury where the couple were found (Picture: AFP)\nTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video\nThe Metropolitan Police, which leads the national counter-terrorism network, is assisting ‘given the recent events in Salisbury’.\nA meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergencies committee took place at official level this morning to discuss the events and a second meeting took place this evening to update senior Whitehall officials.\nA Downing Street spokesman said: ‘This is an incident which understandably is being treated with the utmost seriousness.\n‘Ministers and the Prime Minister are being kept updated and there was a meeting this morning of officials to receive updates on the facts of the situation.’\nWiltshire Police initially thought that the couple had taken contaminated crack cocaine or heroin, but then decided to carry out further tests and today declared a major incident.\nDeputy Chief Constable Paul Mills today said a number of locations where the couple had visited before falling ill remained cordoned off in and around the Amesbury and Salisbury area.\nLocations that have been cordoned off Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury\nA property at John Baker House, Rolleston Street, Salisbury\nA property on Muggleton Road, Amesbury\nBoots the Chemist, Stonehenge Walk, Amesbury\nAmesbury Baptist Centre on Butterfield Drive, Amesbury", "British counter-terrorism officers have joined a police investigation after two people were found in critical condition from suspected exposure to an unknown substance near the English city where a former Russian spy was poisoned.\nBritain's Sun newspaper reported that the man and woman had been poisoned and were showing similar symptoms to those displayed by ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia who were victims of a nerve agent attack in March.\nThe Sun said samples of the toxin involved had been sent to the nearby military research centre of Porton Down for testing.\nThe pair, both in their 40s, were hospitalised in a critical condition after being found unconscious on Saturday in Amesbury, 11km north of Salisbury where the Skripals were found slumped unconscious on a bench on March 4.\nBritain has blamed the poisoning of the Skripals on Russia, something that Moscow has denied but which caused a serious diplomatic crisis between it and Western states.\n\"They (couple) are both currently receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance,\" Wiltshire county police, which took the rare step of declaring \"a major incident\", said in a statement.\n\"Based upon the number of casualties affected, it is not believed that there is a significant health risk to the wider public.\"\nThere was no word on the identity of the couple.\nA police spokeswoman declined to confirm whether the couple were believed to have been poisoned or whether Porton Down scientists were now involved. But London police confirmed that specialist counter-terrorism officers were helping the inquiry.\n\"As Wiltshire police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident and will update the public as soon and as regularly as possible,\" a London spokesman said.\nPrime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said the government's emergency response committee had met to discuss the incident and is being treated with the \"utmost seriousness\".\nThe pair, who were being treated at Salisbury District Hospital, were initially believed to have taken heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs. More than three days after they were found, tests were still being conducted to ascertain what substance made them ill.\n\"We are working with the police to understand the circumstances surrounding this incident and it would be inappropriate to make further comment at this time, while we establish how they became unwell,\" said Cara Charles-Barks, the hospital's chief executive.\nThe hospital is where the Skripals also spent weeks in a critical condition in the same hospital before slowly recovering and being discharged.\nBritain accused Russia of poisoning Skripal with Novichok nerve agent, the first known offensive use of such a chemical weapon on European soil since World War II.\nMoscow denied any involvement and suggested Britain had carried out the attack to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.\nThe attack prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War as allies in Europe.", "By UNI\nLUCKNOW: Even as Uttar Pradesh government has announced to recommend a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the death of Additional Superintendent of Police Rajesh Sahni -- associated with prestigious Anti-Terror Squad (ATS), in a new twist, an Inspector in the state police has tendered his resignation blaming Inspector General of Police (ATS) for the officer's death.\nIn a letter sent to state DGP O P Singh, UP Civil police inspector Yatendra Sharma on Wednesday said that he was resigning following harassment by the senior officials including the IG(ATS) and his close officials.\nMr Sharma, who joined in 2001 through direct recruitment and was presently working at the ATS headquarters in Lucknow, was also honoured with the President Gallantry Award.\n\"When an honest and dedicated officer like Rajesh Sahani met such fate, then there is no reason to continue on a police officer post for me,\" he said, alleging that the officials harass their juniors, abuse them and even demand money from them.\nThe police inspector, in his resignation letter, has blamed IG(ATS) Aseem Arun and his close officials alleging that they harassed Sahani following which the latter took the extreme step.\nAsking the DGP to accept his resignation as he was unable to work in the present circumstances and demanding a high-level probe into the death of Sahani, he also said that after this letter, if something happens to his family or himself, then IG(ATS) should be held directly responsible for it.\nMeanwhile, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath recommended a CBI probe into the mysterious death of Sahani.\nThe decision was taken at a meeting of Principal Secretary, Home, Arvind Kumar and Director General of Police O P Singh with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath here on Wednesday night.\nEarlier, Additional Director General of Police Rajeev Krishna was asked to probe the incident.\nSahani allegedly shot himself dead at the ATS headquarters in Gomtinagar on Tuesday.\nHis family members, many colleagues and journalists covering the crime beat cried foul over the unfortunate incident.", "Getty Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia may have been exposed to a deadly nerve agent through his car\nThe pair are still fighting for their lives after being exposed to Novichok in Salisbury on Sunday March 4. Intelligence officials said the nature of the substance, described as “dusty”, is now clear, according to ABC News. The US news outlet said UK officials now have a clearer picture of how the attack was carried out and that the Skripals may have been exposed to the substance through his BMW’s ventilation system. The development comes as counter-terrorism police renewed their appeal for sightings of Mr Skripal’s burgundy BMW 320D saloon car, registration HD09 WAO, in Salisbury on the morning of Sunday March 4.\nMetropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said: “We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia’s movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident.” Scotland Yard would not comment on the ABC News report. ABC also reported that intelligence officials said that up to 38 individuals in Salisbury have been identified as having been affected by the nerve agent, but the full impact is still being assessed, and more victims sickened by the agent are expected to be identified. This is not the first time the US media has reported updates from intelligence officials about incidents in the UK. British police temporarily suspended intelligence-sharing with the US in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing last May following a series of leaks to American media.\nReuters The Skripals may have been exposed to the substance through his BMW’s ventilation system\nCBS disclosed the name of the bomber, Salman Abedi, citing US sources, at a time when the British authorities were asking media to withhold the information to protect the investigation. The New York Times then published detailed photographs taken from the bomb scene which had been taken by British investigators. Security expert Philip Ingram has urged police to release further information about the chemical used against the Skripals. He also said it was highly likely that the pair had been poisoned through the car’s vents. He said: “Exposure via the car ventilation system is plausible - as is it being brought in Yulia's luggage, or put on the seats of his car, or smeared on the door handles of the car, or on his coat.” Jerry Smith, a security expert who has worked for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, said it was “plausible” that a “powder” could have been pumped through car’s air vents.\nGetty Intelligence officials said that up to 38 individuals in Salisbury were exposed to the nerve agent\nBut newly re-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin hit back and dismissed claims of Russian involvement in the Salisbury spy poisoning as “nonsense”. Mr Putin, who secured a fourth term in power amid widespread claims of electoral fraud, said he learnt about the “tragedy” from the media. He said: “The first thing that comes to my mind is that should it really be a warfare agent, people would have died instantly. It is an obvious fact. “Russia does not possess such agents. We have destroyed all our chemical arsenals under control of international observers.” His denials came after Boris Johnson accused Russia of stockpiling the nerve agent Novichok for a decade in breach of international rules.\nRussia spy poisoning: Latest pictures after Sergei Skripal puts Salisbury on lockdown Thu, March 8, 2018 Russia spy poisoning: Latest pictures after Sergei Skripal puts Salisbury on lockdown. Play slideshow PA 1 of 20 Personnel in hazmat suits secure a tent covering a bench in Salisbury's Maltings shopping centre", "AMESBURY, England (Reuters) - British counter-terrorism officers joined a police investigation on Wednesday after two people were found in a critical condition from suspected exposure to an unknown substance near the English city where a former Russian spy was poisoned.\nBritain’s Sun newspaper reported that the man and woman had been poisoned and were showing similar symptoms to those displayed by ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were victims of a nerve agent attack in March.\nSamples of the substance involved have been sent to the nearby military research center of Porton Down for testing, a source close to the investigation said.\n“At this stage it is not yet clear if a crime has been committed,” said Deputy Chief Constable Paul Mills of Wiltshire Police who took the rare step of calling it a major incident.\n“We are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances regarding this incident,” he told reporters.\nThe British pair, a 44-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man, were hospitalized after being found unwell on Saturday in Amesbury, seven miles (11 km) north of Salisbury, where the Skripals were found slumped unconscious on a bench on March 4.\n“They remain in a critical condition,” Mills said, adding that at least five different areas had been cordoned off, including a park and a property in Salisbury, and a pharmacy and a Baptist church community center in Amesbury.\nBritain blamed the poisoning of the Skripals on Russia, prompting a serious diplomatic crisis between Moscow and Western states. Russia denied any involvement.\nA Wiltshire police spokeswoman declined to confirm whether the couple were believed to have been poisoned. But London police confirmed that specialist counter-terrorism officers were helping the inquiry.\nPrime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said the government’s emergency response committee had met to discuss the incident and would meet again on Wednesday evening.\nTESTS ON NATURE OF SUBSTANCE\nMills said paramedics were called on Saturday morning to a house in Amesbury after the woman collapsed and returned later in the day when the man also fell ill.\nThe pair, who are being treated at Salisbury District Hospital, were initially believed to have taken heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch but tests are ongoing to identify the substance involved.\nPolice officers stand in front of Amesbury Baptist Church, which has been cordoned off after two people were hospitalised and police declared a 'major incident', in Amesbury, Wiltshire, Britain, July 4, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls\n“We are working with the police to understand the circumstances surrounding this incident and it would be inappropriate to make further comment at this time, while we establish how they became unwell,” said Cara Charles-Barks, the hospital’s chief executive.\nThe hospital is where the Skripals also spent weeks in a critical condition before slowly recovering and being discharged.\nBritain accused Russia of poisoning Skripal with Novichok nerve agent, the first known offensive use of such a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two.\nMoscow denied any involvement and suggested Britain had carried out the attack to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.\nRussia has said it does not possess such nerve agents, did not develop Novichok, and President Vladimir Putin dismissed as nonsense the notion that Moscow would have poisoned Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter.\nThe attack prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War as allies in Europe and the United States sided with May’s view that Moscow was either responsible or had lost control of the nerve agent.\nMoscow has hit back by expelling Western diplomats, questioning how Britain knows that Russia was responsible and offering its rival interpretations, including that it amounted to a plot by British secret services.\nSlideshow (6 Images)", "According to the statement of UK counter-terrorism chief Neil Basu, two people found unwell at a house in Amesbury on Saturday were contaminated by the Novichok nerve agent, the same toxin that was allegedly used against ex-Russian Intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter.\nAccording to Reuters, Britain's counter-terrorism head Neil Basu said on Wednesday that there was no intelligence to indicate that both of the British citizens, aged in their 40s, had been deliberately targeted. However, he emphasized that police did not yet know how the nerve agent was transmitted.\n\"Following the detailed analysis of these samples, we can confirm that the man and woman have been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok, which has been identified as the same nerve agent that contaminated both Yulia and Sergei Skripal,\" Neil Basu said in a statement.\n© AFP 2018 / STEPHAN JANSEN German Intelligence Knew 'Novichok' Nerve Agent Composition in 1990s – Reports\n\"We are not in a position to say whether the nerve agent was from the same batch that the Skripals were exposed to. The possibility that these two investigations might be linked is clearly a line of enquiry for us,\" he added.\nMeanwhile, England's Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies told Reuters on Wednesday that the risk to the public remained low after a man and a woman became exposed to the nerve agent in Southern England.\n\"These two patients are in critical condition following exposure to the nerve agent Novichok,\" Sally Davies was quoted as saying by Reuters. \"As the country's chief medical officer, I want to reassure the public that the risk to the general public remains low.\"\nOn Wednesday morning, the police of the UK county of Wiltshire said there had been \"a major incident\" in Amesbury involving the possible exposure of two people to an unknown substance, after a man and woman were found unconscious on Saturday and taken to Salisbury District Hospital in critical condition.\nThe Defense Science and Technology Laboratory in Porton Down told Sputnik on Wednesday that it was \"supporting\" the investigation into an incident involving two people found unconscious in the town of Amesbury, located close to the city of Salisbury, where former Russian Military Intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were contaminated in March.\nMeanwhile, Neil Basu Basu said a 45-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman had been initially thought to have fallen ill after using drugs from a potentially contaminated batch. But on Monday samples from both patients were sent for analysis to Porton Down laboratory, which also investigated the toxin used in the Skripal case.\nThe British anti-terror police chief emphasized the priority for the investigation team was to establish how these two people had come into contact with the nerve agent. He added any baseless assumptions should be avoided.", "News of the hospitalization of a man and woman believed to have been poisoned in the town of Amesbury, England under mysterious circumstances have prompted some British media to immediately start speculating that Russia was to blame, despite police insistence that there is no evidence to that effect.\nA UK police source has told Sputnik that British law enforcement have no information to link the Amesbury suspected poisoning of a couple in their 40s to the widely publicized Skripal poisoning case, which took place in neighboring Salisbury in March.\nThe source said he felt that the media's response to the Amesbury incident has already been \"excessive,\" adding that the investigation will continue and that the public will be informed based on the statements of police pending further developments. Police statements made to other media have been similarly conservative, emphasizing that they remain \"open-minded\" about the cause of the incident, and that further tests of the substance that poisoned the couple would continue.\nBritish Tabloids: Russians Did It\nHowever, despite police uncertainty, and just a few hours after the story broke, newspapers began comparing Amesbury to the Skripal case, whose poisoning the UK media and British government blamed on Russia, despite the fact that no evidence of Moscow's involvement has ever been presented.\nThe Sun's coverage may be the most blatantly accusation, running with the headline \"POISON RIDDLE: Amesbury pair could've been poisoned with SAME nerve agent used on Skripals – as terror cops brought in.\" The newspaper spent much of its coverage of the Amesbury case talking about the Skripals, and even included a picture of a devious-looking Vladimir Putin, whom The Sun had accused just a day earlier of harboring a \"two-man hit team\" it claimed poisoned the Russian ex-spy and his daughter.\n© Photo: the sun/screenshot Screengrab of The Sun's take on the Amesbury incident.\nThe Mirror too immediately jumped on the 'Skripal 2.0' bandwagon, categorizing the Amesbury news under its \"Sergei Skripal\" subsection, and even resorting to misquoting comments by Wiltshire Police Commissioner Angus Macpherson, who told the BBC that he had \"no reason to think\" the Amesbury incident was connected to the Skripal case. Instead, the Mirror paraphrased Macpherson as saying \"there's present indication that the incident in Amesbury is connected to the Skripal case at present…\"\n© Photo: mirror/screenshot Screengrab showing the Mirror's misquote of Commissioner Angus Macpherson's comments.\nThe Daily Express ran a similarly sensationalist headline: \"Wiltshire major incident: Could this be another nerve agent attack like Salisbury?\" and spent much of their article talking about the Skripal investigation. Last but not least was The Daily Mail, which mentioned the Skripals over a dozen times in its piece, including in the headline, and filled the story out with photos and video of Sergei and Yulia, along with a handy map of the region showing Amesbury's proximity to Salisbury.\n© Photo: express/sreenshot Snap of The Express's approach to the story.\nReaders Not Buying It\nHowever, judging by reader commentary, UK tabloid readers weren't impressed by coverage of Amesbury. The top rated comments in The Daily Mail called the story an \"overreaction\" to a likely drugs case, or a \"fake news story\" to \"wrongly blame the Russians to divert from [the government's] EU-friendly agenda…\"\n\"So you want to blame the Russians again? Or take a good look at the security of your own chemical warfare lab in the town,\" one reader recommended, pointing to the presence of the Porton Down chemical weapons facility 8 kilometers up the road from Amesbury.\nCC BY-SA 2.0 / Sebastian Ballard Entrance to secure facilities at Porton Down\nDaily Express readers honed in on the fact that the paper, like others, made no reference to Porton Down. \"If you mean another staged event, then yes, highly likely!!!\" one reader quipped, responding to the provocative question in the paper's headline.\n© AP Photo / Matt Dunham UK Counter-Terrorism Police Join Probe Into Alleged Wiltshire Poisoning\nMirror readers were similarly skeptical. \"Here we go again. The police aren't sure whether a crime has been committed, yet the media and security services are trying to link this with the Skripal incident; by the way Sergei and Yulia Skripal made a 'miraculous recovery' and haven't been seen in public since leaving the hospital. Which is to say this isn't just a diversionary tactic to give the government breathing space over their own problems with things such as the state of our NHS and Brexit and a divided government,\" Notbeingfooled wrote.\nBut tabloids weren't the only ones to jump to conclusions before any of the facts were known. Papers, news sites and television networks from The Guardian and The Evening Standard to NBC News, CNN, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail and the The Australian all went with just slightly more muted variations of the tabloids' aggressive attempt to connect Amesbury to the Skripal case.\nRussian ex-military intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping mall in the town of Salisbury on March 4 after being exposed to what UK experts claimed was the A234 nerve agent.\nJust days after the incident, Prime Minister Theresa May declared that it was \"highly likely\" that Russia was responsible for the poisoning, but presented no evidence to substantiate her claims. The allegations pushed London and its allies into a diplomatic spat with Moscow, leading to the expulsion of dozens of diplomats by both sides. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that Russia had not been provided with any evidence of involvement in the alleged poisoning. In May, President Putin said Skripal would be dead if he had been poisoned with a weapons-grade toxic agent. Yulia Skripal and her father were discharged from the hospital in April and May and taken to an undisclosed location.", "GETTY Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement have opened up a big poll lead\nThe anti-euro Five Star Movement (M5S) rocketed to 31.5 per cent of the vote in a recent poll, pulling well ahead of the ruling socialists who are languishing on 25 per cent. At the same time the nationalist Sweden Democrats, who have pledged to hold a Swexit referendum, saw their lead extend to four per cent in the first survey to be carried out since the horror attack in the country’s capital.\nThe latest results indicate that the populist uprising gripping some of Europe’s biggest countries shows little sign of abating, with both Italy and Sweden due to hold elections next year. They come at a difficult time for the European Union, which is facing a nerve-wracking contest in France which is being shaken up by anti-EU contenders Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon.\nGETTY The Sweden Democrats gained in the polls following the Stockholm terror attack\nGETTY Anti-EU Jean-Luc Melenchon is shaking up the French election\nSeven polls were released in the space of four days in the run up to Easter which lay bare a groundswell of support for euroscepticism in struggling Italy. One of the surveys, conducted by Tecne, gives the M5S a massive 6.5 per cent polling lead over the ruling socialists. The populist party has vowed to call an election on Italy’s membership of the single currency. In total an average of the seven polls, published between April 11-14, gives M5S a rating of 29.2 per cent compared to the socialists’ 26.6 per cent, with the anti-establishment party winning outright in five of them.\nThis week the party’s maverick leader Beppe Grillo laid into criticism of his pledge to hold a referendum on membership of the euro after one German journalist described him as a “charlatan”. He said: “Italian citizens were never asked if they wanted to join the single currency, and after nearly 20 years of failures, unemployment and trade imbalances now politicians must listen with humility.” Elsewhere a poll released by Sentio showed that the nationalist Sweden Democrats have increased their lead slightly in the aftermath of the Stockholm terror attack. The anti-EU party is up to 27.2 per cent of the vote - an increase of 1.2 per cent on the month before - whilst the ruling socialists slipped by a point to 23.3 per cent.\nThese are the most eurosceptic countries Fri, February 24, 2017 Rising disenchantment with the dealings of EU is not just confined to the UK. Play slideshow 1 of 8", "And why have police declared it a ‘major incident’? Is it another case of novichok?\nWhy the concern over the incident in Amesbury, Wiltshire?\nA couple living in Amesbury, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, were taken to hospital on Saturday night. The initial suspicion, according to police, was that it was drugs-related, but doctors were unable to identify the substance.\nPolice fear Wiltshire couple have been exposed to nerve agent Read more\nThe same hospital treated Sergei and Julia Skripal, the Russian couple targeted in Salisbury by the nerve agent novichok, and it was worried by similarities.\nOvernight on Tuesday, Wiltshire police, sensitive after the Salisbury attack, declared it a “major incident”.\nThe police and government stressed they were keeping an open mind: it might be something “sinister” connected to the Skripal attack or there might be a totally different explanation. They said they were awaiting the outcome of tests into the mystery substance.\nHamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commanding officer of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, said the key was Amesbury’s proximity to Salisbury.\n“If it had happened anywhere else, it is doubtful if anyone would have paid much attention,” he said. “The authorities are concerned it could be collateral damage from Salisbury.”\nSince the attack on the Skripals in March, work has been underway to clean up areas in Salisbury that could have been contaminated.\nWhy did the Wiltshire police statement throw Whitehall and Westminster into panic?\nThe statement took them by surprise. It was issued overnight and the first many officials knew about it was when they got up in the morning.\nAlthough the police statement described it as a “major incident”, that should not be read as confirmation that it is serious. It is a technical term applied to a whole range of situations, used by the police and emergency services when referring to an event requiring various agencies to coordinate their efforts.\nWhy are the tests being carried out at the secretive biological warfare centre Porton Down?\nNormally, such tests would be carried out in-house at the hospital or another NHS agency. But Porton Down is close by and identified the use of novichok in the Skripal case.\nWhat is the significance of the counter-terrorism unit of the Metropolitan police becoming involved?\nThe counter-terrorism unit deals with terrorism nationwide, but its involvement at this stage is purely procedural. Its members have the security clearance needed to deal with the intelligence agencies.\nIt does not mean terrorism is involved or that there is any link to counter-espionage operations. Wiltshire police retain the lead in the investigation.\nWhy did the government up the ante by calling a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee?\nCobra, which stands for Cabinet Office briefing room A, usually brings together government officials, intelligence agencies, police and ministers from relevant departments, and is often chaired by the prime minister.\nA Cobra meeting suggests there is good reason to be worried and a Downing Street spokesperson said the incident was being treated “with the utmost seriousness”. But such meetings are often just precautionary.", "Get Daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe See our privacy notice Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nFor the second time this year the eyes of the nation have turned to the West Country, after two people were reported as critically ill because of contact with an \"unknown substance\".\nEarlier this year Sergei and Yulia Skripal battled for their lives following their suspected poisoning with the chemical weapon, Novichok.\nThe father and daughter were poisoned in the Wiltshire city of Salisbury and nursed back to health - against the odds - at Salisbury District Hospital.\nToday (July 4) that same hospital is treating two people in an incident related to contamination.\nThis time the Wiltshire town of Amesbury, just a few miles from Salisbury and just off the A303, is the centre of a \"major incident\" declared by police.\nFollow our live updates from Amesbury\nThe link Amesbury already had to Skripal poisoning\n(Image: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire)\nWe should stress, police are not linking the Skripal poisoning - with all its connections to espionage, Russia and a former spy - to events in Amesbury today (July 4).\nBut an ambulance station not far from the Solstice Park Services in Amesbury, right next to the A303, did form part of the Skripal investigation earlier this year.\nThe ambulance station was sealed off on March 6, after reports of an ambulance which treated the Skripals being contaminated.\nSo it's not the first time residents of a usually quiet West Country town are waking up to very distressing news, making national headlines, right on their doorstep.\nAfter extensive cleaning by specialist teams, the ambulance station reopened in June - along with some other contaminated sites such as the Maltings shopping centre.\nArticle continues below timeline\nTime Line Sergei Skripal: How news of former spy's poisoning broke Sunday March 4, 4.15pm Wiltshire Police receive a call from a member of the public who was concerned for the welfare of two people. Officers arrive to find a man, 66, and a woman, 33, unconscious on a bench in The Maltings shopping centre, in Salisbury. The pair are taken to Salisbury District Hospital as a number of locations around the town are sealed off. Monday March 5, 11am Salisbury District Hospital declares a major incident and its A&E department is closed. Police say the pair are critically ill in intensive care being treated for suspected exposure to an unknown substance. Monday March 5, 6pm The BBC reports the man is Sergei Skripal, 66, an ex-military intelligence colonel who was convicted in Russia of passing state secrets to Britain Monday March 5, 7pm At a press conference Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Craig Holden tells reporters it is not being treated as a counter-terror incident. Tuesday March 6, 7.30am UK's top counter-terrorism officer, Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, says his specialists were supporting the investigation. Tuesday March 6, 12 noon Downing Street says that the Skripal case was not discussed at the regular weekly meeting of Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Theresa May at Number 10 and it was an \"operational matter\" for police. Tuesday March 6, 12.30pm In the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson refuses to point fingers in his response to an urgent question, but he warns governments that \"no attempt to take innocent life on UK soil will go unsanctioned or unpunished\" and labels Russia \"a malign and disruptive force\".\nAmesbury unknown substance on July 4\nWiltshire Police and partners declared the major incident early this morning after two people are suspected to have been exposed to unknown substance in Amesbury .\nEmergency services were called to an address in Muggleton Road on Saturday evening (June 30) after a man and woman, both in their 40s, were found unconscious in a property.\n(Image: Rod Minchin/PA Wire)\nA spokesman for Wiltshire Police said: \"They are both currently receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance at Salisbury District Hospital. They are both in a critical condition.\n\"It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs. However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident.\"\nBELOW: There's a police presence at Amesbury Baptist Centre on Wednesday (July 4)\nAn interactive map of Amesbury Baptist Centre View fullscreen\nA police investigation has been established, but at this stage it is not yet clear if a crime has been committed. In addition, a full multi-agency response has been co-ordinated.\nThe spokesman said: \"A number of scenes, believed to be the areas the individuals frequented in the period before they fell ill, will be cordoned off overnight in and around the Amesbury and Salisbury area as a precautionary measure.\n\"The public can expect to see an increased police presence in and around Amesbury and Salisbury.\n\"Salisbury District Hospital is open as usual and is advising people to still attend routine appointments unless they are contacted to state otherwise.\"\nAre you at the scene? Can you see anything? Let us know. Get in touch with our reporter covering events in Amesbury on July 4 by emailing james.wood@reachplc.com, call 07870 505 906 or tweet me @JamesWood24\nYou can also get involved by commenting below.\nWant news straight to your phone?\nFor Somerset as a whole: Somerset Live runs a WhatsApp group to help you keep up to date with the latest news from across the county. If you'd like to receive breaking news alerts, text NEWS to 07834 893492, then add the number to your phone contacts book as 'Somerset Live’. We will send you a maximum of four messages a day. Your phone number won't be shared with other members of the group or be used for any other purpose.\nFor Bath: Save the number 07939 497390 to your phone - we recommend saving the contact as 'Bath Live News' - then send the word NEWS to us via WhatsApp", "\"Lets see how long it takes for the media to point out Amesbury is where Porton Down is located,\" a commentator has pointed out on Twitter.\nThe UK police reported two people in a critical condition near the English city Amesbury, exactly four months after the case of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal unraveled in the neighboring Salisbury.\nThe pair are now in hospital receiving treatment for \"suspected exposure to an unknown substance,\" Wiltshire Police said in a statement. Amesbury lies seven miles (11 kms) to the north of Salisbury and about the same distance to the Porton Down science and technology laboratory operated by the Ministry of Defense.\nWe've declared a major incident after it is suspected that two people might have been exposed to an unknown substance in Amesbury. Full details here: https://t.co/yaaUqH97Te pic.twitter.com/xryG8Cy7nV — Wiltshire Police (@wiltshirepolice) July 4, 2018​\nThe Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, established in 1916, is known as one of the most secretive military research facilities in the country.\nREAD MORE: Top 3 Facts About Porton Down Lab as Its Chemicals Allegedly Found in Syria\nHave the BBC wheeled out Hamish de Bretton-Gordon yet to tell us that the Russians must be behind it?\nIf any media organisation decides to inflict HdBG's opinions on us, bear in mind his involvement with #PortonDown and his activities in #Syria:https://t.co/XUwgMSKGlg — Barden Gridge (@BardenGridge) July 4, 2018​\nIsn't Boscombe Down where the Army trains Apache helicopter pilots? — Steve Freeman (@stevefreeman20) July 4, 2018​\nof course russia again.. they have a dastardly plan to poison everyone in Wiltshire and then rule the world from there… https://t.co/Tx4891m9ri — tony_revsoc99 (@revsoc99) July 4, 2018​\nHave we any idea just how much taxpayers money was spent weaving this fairy story? — Northwich Guardians (@GuardiNorthwich) July 4, 2018​\nClose down Porton Down, too much dangerous stuff leaking out of that facility. — Hari SP (@Hari_Nuranian) July 4, 2018​\nThe two people are treated at Salisbury District Hospital, the same hospital where Sergei Skripal and his daughter spent weeks in recovery.\nREAD MORE: 2 Hospitalized After Exposure to 'Unknown Substance' in UK's Amesbury — Police\nSamples from the unknown substance the pair have been allegedly exposed to have now been reportedly sent to the Porton Down laboratory for investigation.\n\"As you would expect, given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury. As Wiltshire Police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident and will update the public as soon and as regularly as possible,\" the Metropolitan police said on July 4.", "PA Wire/PA Images The UK's head of counter-terrorism policing Neil Basu and chief medical officer for England Dame Sally Davies speaking at a news conference.\nThe Met Police has confirmed the substance which has left two people critically ill in Amesbury, Wiltshire, was the nerve agent Novichok. Both patients remain in a critical condition in hospital, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said, although nobody else has presented with signs of exposure to the nerve agent. Basu said it was “a line of inquiry” over whether the latest poisoning was linked to that of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March. The Skripals were poisoned with the military nerve agent in Salisbury, which is around eight miles from Amesbury. The couple left fighting for their lives were earlier named as Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess. Home Secretary Sajid Javid will chair a meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergencies committee on Thursday, Downing Street said.\nFacebook Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess.\nAsked if the pair may have been deliberately targeted, Basu said: “That is a theory but it’s speculation at the moment. “We don’t have any intelligence or evidence that they were targeted in any way. “There is nothing in their background to suggest that at all.” Basu said it would be up to scientists to determine if the Novichock was from the same batch which was used against the Skripals. The couple, who are both in their 40s, fell critically ill after being exposed to the substance that has now been tested at Porton Down research facility. They were found unconscious at a property in Muggleton Road on Saturday, with one friend describing how Charlie was “garbling” and acting like a “zombie”, the Mirror reported.\nRex Features Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.\nBasu said police had not found any items which showed signs of contamination and officers were piecing together a “very detailed examination of their movements… to determine where they might have been exposed.” He said: “We know what the nerve agent is but we don’t know what the transmission of it was. “We (the public) shouldn’t be picking up anything that we have no idea what it is because we have no idea what may have contained the nerve agent at this time.” He said the risk to the public was low and gave assurances that sites which have already been decontaminated are safe.\nFacebook/Dawn Sturgess Dawn Sturgess.\nThe address where the pair were found is on a new housing development on the southern edge of the town, which lies close to Stonehenge. Police and emergency services initially believed the pair may have taken heroin or crack cocaine “from a contaminated batch of drugs”, however further tests are now being carried out. A number of places in the Amesbury and Salisbury area have been cordoned off as a precaution.\nFacebook/Charlie Rowley Charlie Rowley.", "Vijay Mallya had fled the country and sought refuge in the United Kingdom, after a lookout notice was issued against him. (file photo) Vijay Mallya had fled the country and sought refuge in the United Kingdom, after a lookout notice was issued against him. (file photo)\nIn a major breakthrough for the Indian law enforcement authorities, the Scotland Yard on Tuesday arrested absconding liquor baron Vijay Mallya in London. Mallya is likely to be extradited to India at a later date. He is wanted in several economic offences cases, including defaulting on bank loans worth crores of rupees. Confirming his arrest, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement that Mallya, 61, was arrested on “behalf of the Indian authorities in relation to accusations of fraud”. The statement added that he was take into custody after attending a central London police station. He will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today. The Ministry of Home Affairs immediately directed the CBI and ED to apply for his extradition in IDBI bank loan fraud case.\nREAD | British PM Theresa May calls for snap general elections on June 8\nEarlier, the Indian government requested the Theresa May government to extradite Mallya. The request came when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met the UK Chancellor earlier this year. On February 21, the UK authorities conveyed to their Indian counterparts that the Secretary of State had certified their extradition request. “The UK Home department on February 21 conveyed that the request of India for extradition of Mallya has been certified by the secretary of state and sent to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court for a district judge to consider the issue of releasing of warrant,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said.\nIn the same month, a special court allowed the Enforcement Directorate to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) and face probe in a money laundering case. Despite its efforts the ED failed to corner Mallya. In the past they had obtained a non-bailable warrant, revoked his passport and unsuccessfully sought a Interpol warrant. The ED has attached his assets worth Rs 9,661 crore after he failed to appear before it, despite being issued several summons and asked to join the probe.\nThe CBI is also investigating Mallya for the alleged loan defaults under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption. Mallya had fled from the country in 2015 and sought refuge in the United Kingdom, after a lookout notice was issued against him. In November 2016, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court declared him as an “absconder” after he ignored several warrants and summons. In June, he was declared as a “proclaimed offender” by a special court.\nHis arrest incidentally comes on the same day British Prime Minister Theresa May called for fresh polls in the country.\nFor all the latest India News, download Indian Express App now\n© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd", "Counter-terrorism officers are now involved in the investigation of an incident near the southwestern English city of Salisbury which has left two people in critical condition, London's police force said on Wednesday.\n\"Given the recent events in Salisbury, officers from the counter terrorism network are working jointly with colleagues from Wiltshire Police regarding the incident in Amesbury,\" the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.\n\"As Wiltshire Police have stated, they are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding the incident.\"\nA major incident has been declared in Wiltshire after it was suspected two people might have been exposed to an unknown substance in Amesbury.\nThe man and woman, both in their 40s, are in a critical condition at Salisbury District Hospital, Wiltshire Police said.\nA number of places in the Amesbury and Salisbury area have been cordoned off as a precaution and the force said it was not yet clear if they were the victims of a crime, however detectives are keeping an \"open mind\" about the circumstances of the incident.\nPublic Health England (PHE) advised that it did not believe there to be a \"significant health risk\" to the wider public, although its advice was being reviewed.\nThe incident comes after former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were left poisoned by a suspected military nerve agent in Salisbury, which is around eight miles from Amesbury, in March.\nPolice said the man and woman were found unconscious at an address in Muggleton Road on Saturday evening.\nThe address is thought to be on a new housing development on the southern edge of the town, which lies close to Stonehenge.\nPolice and emergency services initially believed the pair may have taken illegal drugs, however further tests are now being carried out.\nA police statement said: \"Wiltshire Police and partners have this evening declared a major incident after it is suspected that two people might have been exposed to an unknown substance in Amesbury.\n\"Emergency services were called to an address in Muggleton Road, Amesbury on Saturday evening (June 30) after a man and woman, both in their 40s, were found unconscious in a property.\n\"They are both currently receiving treatment for suspected exposure to an unknown substance at Salisbury District Hospital. They are both in a critical condition.\n\"It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs.\n\"However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident.\"\nA number of scenes believed to be areas they frequented before they fell ill were cordoned off overnight.\nMeanwhile there was an increased police presence in and around Amesbury and Salisbury.\nSalisbury District Hospital was \"open as usual\" and officials advised people to attend routine appointments unless they are contacted to do otherwise.\nA PHE spokesman said: \"The current advice from PHE England, based upon the number of casualties affected, is that it is not believed that there is a significant health risk to the wider public. This will be continually assessed as further information becomes known\".\nMr Skripal, 67, and his daughter, 33, were left in a critical condition after they were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury city centre on March 4.\nThey spent weeks in Salisbury District Hospital where they underwent treatment for suspected exposure to the Russian-created nerve agent Novichok.\nThe British Government has accused Russia of being behind the attack on Mr Skripal, who settled in the UK after a spy swap.\nPress Association", "The case was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), a central probe agency mandated to investigate all terror modules in the country. The case was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), a central probe agency mandated to investigate all terror modules in the country.\nSuspected Lashker-e-Taiba operative Abdul Nayeem Sheikh, who was arrested last month from Lucknow, had spent some time in trouble-torn south Kashmir and filmed some Army installations, officials said. Sheikh, a resident of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, was on the radar of central intelligence agencies for quite sometime before he was nabbed with the help of Uttar Pradesh police in the last week of November.\nThe case was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), a central probe agency mandated to investigate all terror modules in the country. The central security agencies, which interrogated Sheikh at length, had told the investigators about his accomplice, Tauseef Ahmed Malik, in Pulwama district of south Kashmir. He was placed under arrest by the NIA on December 9.\nDuring interrogation, Sheikh disclosed that he had stayed in Pulwama, moved to various places with the help of Malik and even photographed some Army and para-military camps, the officials claimed. Sheikh, who was wanted in connection with a 2014 terror case and was since on the run, told investigators that some important power projects and railway tracks in the Valley were surveyed, they said.\nHe had also visited some places in Himachal Pradesh, especially Kasol, which is frequented by Israeli nationals visiting India, according to the officials. Security agencies have claimed that Sheikh was roped in for a recce mission similar to that undertaken by David Headley, a Pakistan-American, who is at present serving a prison sentence of 35 years at a US jail for his involvement in terror activities and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008.\nThey said Malik’s association with the Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba also came to light during Sheikh’s interrogation. Malik had shown to probe officials the places where Sheikh had stayed with the terrorists for over three months, they added.\nFor all the latest India News, download Indian Express App", "Officials said Sahni had worked with the NIA, UP Special Task Force and ATS and he could have faced a serious threat to his life as he had been part of several terror operations in UP and other states. Officials said Sahni had worked with the NIA, UP Special Task Force and ATS and he could have faced a serious threat to his life as he had been part of several terror operations in UP and other states.\nThe state government will send a recommendation to the Centre for a CBI probe into the death of ATS Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Rajesh Sahni, who allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with a service pistol in his office on Tuesday.\nOn Wednesday, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath discussed the issue during a meeting with UP DGP Om Prakash Singh and Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar.\nPrincipal Secretary (Information) Awanish K Awasthi said Adityanath was briefed about Sahni’s death, after which the Chief Minister directed that it should be investigated by the CBI, and a recommendation be sent to the Centre for the same.\nSahni’s last rites were held at Bhaisakund on Wednesday morning with a guard of honour in the presence of the DGP, UP Principal Secretary (Home), and other senior officers at Police Lines, Lucknow.\nThe Provincial Police Service (PPS) Association held a meeting at the Police Officers’ Mess in Lucknow and demanded that an FIR be filed in connection with Sahni’s death and the probe be transferred to the CBI. Sahni was a 1992 batch PPS officer.\nOfficials said Sahni had worked with the NIA, UP Special Task Force and ATS and he could have faced a serious threat to his life as he had been part of several terror operations in UP and other states.\nFor all the latest India News, download Indian Express App", "THOUSANDS of people have signed a petition calling for answers from Victoria Police over the death of stripper Stacey Tierney.\nUK-born Ms Tierney was found dead in Dreams Gentlemen’s Club in Melbourne CBD on December 19, 2016.\nEXOTIC DANCER FOUND DEAD IN MELBOURNE CBD STRIP CLUB\nSTACEY TIERNEY DEATH PROBE TO FOCUS ON CLUB’S OUT-OF-HOURS ACTIVITIES\nSTATE CORONER PROBE INTO EXOTIC DANCER STACEY TIERNEY’S DEATH\nIt is suspected Ms Tierney, 29, consumed drugs in a restricted area, and that in a cover-up attempt the area was cleared of illicit substances.\nA Victoria Police investigation is ongoing, but the UK Coroner now has primacy of the inquest.\nCamera Icon Dreams Gentlemen's Club in Melbourne's CBD. Picture: AAP\nAn online petition, titled “Demand answers from Victoria Police: What happened to Dreams dancer Stacey Tierney?”, had yesterday been signed by 5099 people.\n“She had been partying with several men after hours at Dreams Gentlemen’s Club where her body was left for 12+ hours,” the author of the petition stated.\n“A detective is overseeing the investigation but it has not been treated as a murder as it’s suspected she died of a drug overdose, however, no confirmation of this has been made.”\nThose close to Ms Tierney fear nobody will ever be held to account for her death.\nOne friend, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday Herald Sun : “I pray for justice for her but I’m sure nobody will ever know the truth.”\nCamera Icon Those close to Stacey Tierney fear nobody will be held to account for her death. Picture: Supplied\nIn March last year police arrested a man as part of their investigation into the death. The 33-year-old Ascot Vale man was detained and questioned on suspicion of perjury.\nThe man was released without charge.\nIn Victoria, perjury carries a maximum penalty of 15 years’ jail.\nPolice have interviewed a number of people including club managers, colleagues, and customers who spent time at Dreams, or with Ms Tierney.\nIt is unclear whether CCTV footage from inside the venue, on the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders streets, has been of assistance.\nThe online petition goes on to state: “How did she die? Who left her body there? What is the duty of care for an individual to call an ambulance? Why have there been no charges? Who let them into the club after hours? Why was Dreams Gentleman’s Club ­allowed to remain open?”\nThe police investigation has been led by detectives from Melbourne Crime Investigation Unit.\nA Victoria Police spokeswoman said: “The investigation remains ongoing. The UK Coroner has primacy in relation to an inquest.”\nDo you know more? Contact the reporter: david.hurley@news.com.au\n@davidhurleyHS", "London Bridge terrorist ‘attacked’ man he called ‘apostate’ at Eid event last yearDominic Lipinski/PA Wire\nOne of the London bridge attackers ‘attacked’ a man at an Eid event last year – and was reported to counter-terrorism police.\nHeartbreaking note found in debris of Grenfell Tower\nKhuram Butt was shouting ‘apostate’, according to anti-extremist think tank Quilliam – which means someone who has abandoned their religion.\nQuilliam founder Maajid Nawaz said that Khuram Butt attacked one of his staff at an Eid event on July 6 last year.\nNawaz said that Butt yelled ‘apostate’ and then ‘proceeded to lunge at him and physically attack him’.\nMaajid Nawaz, founder of Quilliam (Picture Getty)\nNawaz said, ‘He was eventually wrestled to the ground by passers by and we as an organisation reported Khuram Butt to the police as an extremist and said this man needs to be kept an eye on.’\nNawaz is a former Islamist, who joined an extremist group when he was 16, but now campaigns against extremism.\nNawaz says, ‘You’ve got 23,000 suspected jihadists who are, according to our own security services, running around the United Kingdom out of a population of only four million Muslims in the UK. So when you’re looking at these figures it’s terribly alarming.’\nNawaz says that the first step in the battle is a ‘civil society struggle against extremist ideology.’\nNawaz said, ‘By naming and shaming this ideology, the Islamist ideology, it helps us to isolate it from Muslim communities.’", "UK police forces are backing the Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) initiative to help raise awareness.\nPolice: Glasgow Airport was targeted by terrorists in 2007. © STV\nScots are being urged to look out for suspicious behaviour as part of a UK-wide campaign to prevent terrorism.\nThe Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) initiative has brought together Police Scotland and other UK forces led by counter-terrorism (CT) policing to give a united message in raising awareness.\nResearch carried out by CT policing found three-quarters of people who live in Scotland are concerned about terrorism but many are unclear about what they should be looking out for.\nPolice Scotland said examples of suspicious activity could include hiring large vehicles for no obvious reason, storing a large amount of chemicals, fertilisers or gas cylinders for no obvious reasons, taking notes or photos of security arrangements or inspecting CCTV cameras and looking at extremist material.\nThe ACT campaign features a 60-second film based on real-life foiled plots.\n'We want to provide people with all the necessary information they need to help them identify suspicious activity and, more importantly, keep themselves safe and secure.' Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson\nAssistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson said: \"We work tirelessly with security partners to identify and thwart the terrorist threat.\n\"The public can also play a crucial role in helping to keep communities safe and we would encourage anyone with suspicions to report their concerns.\n\"We want to provide people with all the necessary information they need to help them identify suspicious activity and, more importantly, keep themselves safe and secure.\n\"Any piece of information could be vital in helping the police prevent terrorism and save lives.\n\"That co-operation between police and the public is Scotland's greatest defence against the terrorist threat.\"\nJustice Secretary Michael Matheson said: \"Public vigilance is key to help Police Scotland keep our communities safe from terror threats.\n\"I very much welcome this campaign which highlights a number of ways in which members of the public can spot suspicious activity and how to make the authorities aware.\n\"I would urge the public to note the kinds of activity to be on the lookout for.\n\"Anyone who feels they may have witnessed and anyone who feels they have witnessed suspicious behaviour should report it immediately.\"\nOfficers said suspicious activity can be reported to Police Scotland on 101 or 999 in an emergency, or online at act.campaign.gov.uk/\nWant to receive the latest headlines straight to your inbox? Subscribe to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Subscribe This field is required. That doesn't look like a valid e-mail format, please check. That e-mail's already in our system. Please try again. Please tick the box below to confirm your subscription Thanks for subscribing to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Subscribed Want to receive the latest headlines straight to your inbox? Subscribe to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Thanks for subscribing to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Subscribe\nDownload: The STV News app is Scotland's favourite and is available for iPhone from the App store and for Android from Google Play. Download it today and continue to enjoy STV News wherever you are.", "[India], May 31 (ANI): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath called for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)-led probe into the death case of ATS officer Rajesh Sahani.\nYesterday evening, the Chief Minister held a meeting with Principal Secretary (Home) and DGP UP, where he took the decision.\nA recommendation in this regard has also been sent to the Central Government.\nOn May 29, Rajesh Sahni, a senior police officer of Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) committed suicide in Lucknow.\nSahni was Additional Superintendent of Police of Uttar Pradesh ATS. His body was found inside the ATS office with a bullet wound. \"Rajesh Sahni, Additional Superintendent of Police, ATS, committed suicide by shooting himself on the temple at 1245 hrs in his office with an official weapon. The reason for suicide is being ascertained, \"said, Additional Director General (Law and Order) Anand Kumar. Sahni was a 1992 batch Provincial Police Services (PPS) officer. (ANI)", "A wheelchair-bound Algerian terror suspect linked to Osama Bin Laden has won his 21-year legal battle to live in the UK in the latest blow to the Government’s efforts to expel foreign jihadists.\nThe father has repeatedly defeated attempts to deport him despite being accused of helping to send young British Muslims to terror training camps abroad.\nNow a judge has ruled that the threat of deportation has affected his mental health and quashed the Home Office refusal to grant him the right to indefinite leave to remain in the UK.\nThe judge has also overturned government restrictions which had forced him to stay at his home address and report to a police station once a month. He is also to be allowed to study Algebraic Thinking at the Open University.", "A couple who fell seriously ill near the English town of Amesbury were poisoned with the same Novichok nerve agent used in the nearby Skripal incident, British police confirmed on Wednesday.\nThe Skripal case caused a rift between the UK and Russia, after the UK concluded that the nerve agent used was Soviet-made. Moscow denied the claim and the confrontation led to an exchange of diplomat expulsions between both countries.\nNovichok is a series of highly toxic nerve agents developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, which has a slightly different chemical composition than the VX nerve agent and sarin poison gases.\nWhat we know so far:\nA 45-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman were found unconscious on Saturday at a house in a quiet neighborhood of Amesbury, just 12 kilometers (8 miles) from Salisbury, where the Skripals were poisoned.\nThey are in a critical condition in the same UK hospital where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia were treated.\nLocal police have established two help lines to take calls from those who may have concerns about a possible contamination.\nPolice have restricted access to five locations, including a park and a property in Salisbury, and a pharmacy and a community center in Amesbury.\nScientists are conducting tests on the substance to see if it belongs to the same batch as the one in the Skripal case.\nRead more: Skripal poisoning: Germany got Novichok chemical sample from Russia in 1990s\nEmergency meeting\nHome Secretary Sajid Javid said he would chair a meeting of the government's emergency committee on Thursday. \"(This) follows the reckless and barbaric attack which took place in Salisbury in March.\"\nBritain's counter-terrorism police chief Neil Basu said there was no indication the couple were deliberately targeted, based on what was known about them. But he said it was unclear how the nerve agent was transmitted.\nEngland's Chief Medical Officer said the risk to the general public remained low.\nA Downing Street spokesperson said the incident was being treated \"with the utmost seriousness.\"\njcg/aw (AFP, Reuters, dpa)", "Thousands of football supporters from all over the country will put team rivalry aside on Saturday (7 October) as they march against \"all forms of extremism\".\nThe Football Lads Alliance (FLA) says its event will see \"at least 30,000\" fans descend on London and walk in silence from Park Lane to Westminster Bridge.\nThey will be joined by Veterans Against Terrorism, with speakers on the day including ex-SAS soldier Phil Campion – a vocal critic of the government's tackling of Isis and other groups.\nThis is the FLA's second demonstration so far, with thousands peacefully taking part in a \"United Against Extremism\" march through the capital in June.\nThe FLA was founded by Spurs fan and property manager John Meighan in the wake of the terror attacks in Manchester and London Bridge. It quickly gained a significant following on social media, with it now boasting 70,000 supporters.\nCritics – including shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott – have accused the FLA of promoting speakers who stoke up anti-Islam hatred and of failing to speak out against right-wing terrorism.\nThey fear Saturday's event will attract far-right and racist activists.\nBut Meighan, 32, insists the movement is aimed at tackling extremism of all kinds and told IBTimes UK his primary concern is leading \"a peaceful, non-political protest\".\nHe hopes it will pressure the government to take more action against terrorism.\n\"The FLA is neither religious or political. Saturday's march is a coming together of people from all walks of life, from all over Britain with a common cause,\" Meighan said.\nHe added: \"We all wish to show our concern at the recent upsurge in terror attacks taking place across the UK and Europe.\n\"We will be remembering the victims and calling on the Government to take decisive action against the extremist threat. Both of these groups are opposed to all extremism and racism and totally committed to making a positive contribution to the great challenge we all face.\"\nFans are expected to gather at 1pm in Park Lane where speeches will be given by Campion, two former police officers, another armed forces veteran and a representative of the Sikh Awareness Society.\nThey will then march in silence to Westminster Bridge, led by children, veterans and representatives from numerous football clubs.\nSeveral of the fan groups will be laying wreaths on behalf of the clubs they support in memory of those who lost their lives in the recent attacks across Europe, including in London and Manchester.\nDespite carrying a motto of \"no racism, no violence\" and repeatedly insisting it is not far right, the FLA leadership has faced criticism from other groups.\nFollowing the march in June, anti-fascist organisation Stand up to Racism accused the FLA of promoting speakers known for stoking up anti-Islam hatred.\nIt also said the event failed to highlight the terrorist attack on Finsbury Park mosque or the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair.\nA letter condemning the FLA leadership for not doing enough to distance itself from the far right has since been signed by shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, MEPs and trade union leaders.\nIt said supporters of the group had made \"a series of racist and Islamophobic postings\" on the FLA Facebook page in recent weeks, adding: \"We believe that those leading the FLA are failing to take the threat of right wing extremism seriously.\"\nSabby Dhalu, Stand up to Racism Co-Convenor, said: \"We condemn terrorism, hatred, Islamophobia and racism. Many attending Saturday's FLA demonstration will not be racist and will not be connected to far right racist and fascist group.\n\"The English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First have failed to consistently attract large numbers in recent years. There is a danger that some groups will be using this demonstration to revive the racist, far right violent street culture.\"\nStand up to Racism activists will be handing out leaflets opposite Downing Street at 1pm on Saturday." ]

[ "Your usual foundation can be made lighter by the addition of other cosmetic items. The outcome will depend on what you use to try to lighten the foundation, so it may require some trial and error before you find both the right mixing agent and the amount needed." ]

[ "Powder foundation is lighter on the skin, absorbs quickly, and can come with less mess. If you're in a hurry in the morning, powder foundation can be a great choice for you.", "Tired of messy foundations that don't match your skin tone? Fortunately, you can make your own tailored foundation at home, one that matches your skin tone perfectly.", "Apply invisible foundation by choosing the right shade and type, and blending it in well. Allow your foundation to dry before applying any powder .", " Do you have a box of brownie mix and want to make a lighter, healthier , brownie (inspired) nutty, cranberry, coffee cake ? ", "Foundation is a great beauty product used to smooth out your skin, cover blemishes, and leave you with an even skin tone. Unfortunately, sometimes foundation comes out looking caked on.", "Foundation is a very popular cosmetic that helps create the illusion of smooth, even-toned skin. The problem is that store brand foundations are not always affordable or color-complementary.", "Foundation can help hide imperfections and make your skin look flawless. Whether you like to build more or less coverage, pressed powder provides a lot of versatility.", " Do you want a lighter and spot free skin? Do not fear; the steps in this article are guaranteed to work. ", "The foundation of your look deserves extra attention. While the idea is simple — to create an even surface and conceal blemishes — it requires a bit more attention in practice.", "Are you tired of losing your lighter, and having it \"pocketed\" by others? A lighter on a necklace will solve both those problems and give you a good conversation starter.", "You may struggle to keep your foundation looking effortless and natural throughout the day, especially when it has a tendency to turn a sudden shade of orange.", " Do you have olive skin, and it's a little too hard to find the PERFECT foundation? Worry no further! ", "Applying foundation on oily skin can be a challenge, especially when you want to mask any shiny or oily areas on your face. You may struggle to find foundation that sits well on oily skin and stays put all day or night.", "Got a Zippo lighter and want to get better or more creative with opening and lighting it? There are several cool ways you can flick a Zippo lighter open, from simply opening your lighter with your thumb, to flicking and lighting the Zippo on your pants.", "The quality and durability of Zippo lighters are what make the product appealing to many users. In addition to periodically replacing the flint and cleaning the lighter, it's essential to refuel a Zippo when it runs low on lighter fluid.", "Foundation does a great job at evening out your skin tone, but sometimes it is not enough. If you have any pesky pimples, moles, or unevenness that you'd like to conceal, read this wikiHow!", "\"Prison lighters\" were depicted in the Netflix series \"Orange is the New Black\". Making one involves a crafty use of resources by inmates to fashion a lighter from supplies they have available to them.", " This is a lighter stock suitable for lighter summertime dishes and a way to use up summer vegetables. ", "When summer comes, you can lighten up your makeup and make it natural and neat-looking. Ditch the heavy makeup and opt instead for a light summery makeup look!", " This chocolate meringue cup is a delicious dessert and the lighter the cheese used, the lighter the dessert. ", "Liquid foundation offers a beautiful, full coverage base for your makeup look. It can cover up any blemishes or imperfections, and make your skin look flawless.", "While make up can be your best friend, it can also be a hassle. If you have sensitive or stressed skin, you might not feel like caking layers of foundation, concealer, and powder on your face.", "Bleaching your hair makes it lighter and blonder by chemically reducing the amount of pigment in your hair's strands. Bleach is hard on your hair, so take good care of it.", "Foundation is the cosmetic base you use to cover blemishes and even out your complexion so that you have a uniform surface on which to apply the rest of your makeup.", "Darken your eyebrows to look younger and draw attention to your eyes. Darkening your eyebrows is easy and can really improve your appearance but it needs to be applied properly.", "If you have darker skin, you may want to contour your face to make it look slimmer and more defined. Contouring darker skin is slightly different than contouring lighter skin.", "Sometimes a lighter can get stuck or broken. Generally it's a quick fix, but it's also very easy to buy a new one. The first step is diagnosing what is wrong with your lighter, and then you can get to work fixing it.", "Liquid foundation is one of the most popular forms of foundation. It is easy to use and offers great coverage. This wikiHow will show you how to put it on.", "This is a very inexpensive and simple way to have a more radiant and healthier looking skin. Maintain it by repeating the process a few times a month.", "To get a glow-in-the-dark effect with hair dyes, you start by bleaching your hair a lighter color, since most dyes won't lift your color lighter. Then, you'll use neon colors to dye your hair.", "If you’d like your skin to be paler, using natural items can lighten it a few shades without the harsh side effects that come with chemical whitening products.", "If you have a standard disposable, long-stemmed, butane, or windproof Zippo lighter, you’ll eventually need to refill it. Refilling your lighters is easy and only takes a few minutes." ]

[ "Ruby is a genuine object-oriented programming language. In Ruby, everything you use is an object. Now a days it is very famous for it's simple English like syntax." ]

[ "The best way to learn programming is by writing the programs. Hello World! is the first program most programmers have to write before they start the lesson.", "This article will help how to write an algorithm for any programming language. Nowadays, programming languages play a vital role in the real world and use to develop real world applications.", "When learning programming in C or C++ beyond a simple \"Hello, World\" program, one of the hardest things can be to get the code to be compiled and linked properly.", " This is my favourite setup for jEdit with Ruby on Rails ", " Have you ever wanted to write a program using Microsoft® Visual Basic? In just a few steps, you can program a computer to wish you a Happy Birthday! ", "Coding in C++ can be very simple once you get the basics of it down. When you begin to learn C++ you are taught to code one of many fundamental programs, the most popular being the \"Hello World!\"", "Some simple C++ programs include the \"Hello World!\" and favorite number programs. Now that you have simple C++ programming down, it's time to create a useful, more advanced program, in this case a simple program that practices math problems and keeps score of them.", "This article will explain the process of writing a calculator program in C++ using the Xcode application on a Macintosh computer. The program covers the basics of C++ and will enable you to write similar or even more complex programs.", "Do you want to write a program in C or C++ that'll ask the user to input his age in years and months and the programs gives him his age in days? This is how you do it!", "This is a short tutorial on how to create a basic balloon object in the Java programming language on the NetBeans IDE (Integrated Development Environment), a common programming tool used to write and execute Java code.", "Ever wanted to Automate operations in your OS? Ever wanted to write a program that could create a file and copy that file to a directory? Ever wanted to do all this using the Famous BASH Shell in Ubuntu?", "In this article, you will learn how to install Tom Cat Apache server on Windows Environment where IIS is already installed and run your first Hello World JSP page.", "Writing your first program in Visual C# (C Sharp) can be a fun, but hard, thing to do. The best way to learn how to program is to write a program! It's time to write your first program in Visual C Sharp!", "Have you ever visited a webpage so much, you wanted to make this a button you can run right from your start menu's program list (just like of the many other programs already in your list)?", " Did you ever want to use JavaScript to make IRC bots too instead for web pages? Then this is for you! ", "Microsoft Word [1] is the world's most popular word document program. Depending on what kind of legal, formal, or personal paper you’re writing, each of these will need its own formatting guidelines.", " . ", "Ever played an online game and thought, \"I wish I could make one of these, I have some great ideas\"? In the past it was necessary to have learnt how to code in ActionScript 3, the language that powers Flash.", " Here is an easy method to level up a Pokémon in Ruby or Sapphire. ", " Hello soon-to-be brides! ", "Hello Kitty is a popular Japanese TV program. She is basically a cute kitty with a little bow and no mouth. Hello Kitty is usually recognized as a scene 'symbol' or 'icon', but she has also inspired products for make up companies like MAC and Sugarpill.", "You want to put a code in a scroll box? Copy and paste the code and don't end the code in style that will make the whole code pop up in the scroll box.", "This article will show you how to write a program to display the asterisk pattern of any alphabet in Java. There's no logical shortcut. You'll have to write the codes for every alphabet and sometimes, it will all be a programming mess.", "Do you want your computer to (running on Windows operating system only) greet/welcome you whenever you switch on or restart it? Follow some simple steps to do so.", "Java is a popular programming language that developers use to create web or mobile based applications. Developed by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems in 1995, the popularity of Java over the years has increased a lot.", "Sometimes, when writing a program, you need to create a way to get the attention of the user to bring their focus back to the program. Alerts are a very useful way to do that.", "If you're applying for a graduate or PhD program, you'll probably have to write a Statement of Purpose. It may be the most difficult—and most important thing you will ever write.", "This article is about creating a Java executable without Java being installed on the system. Java is a near universal programming language and runs on almost any system.", "Did you use Turbo Pascal in the past? Maybe now you still program in Pascal, but with Lazarus, or use more modern languages such as Python, but want to revive the good old days?", "It's every computer geek's dream to become a software developer. It's not too hard, but not too easy either. This is not another \"Hello World!\" tutorial, but rather, how to make a second desktop for your computer.", " This is how to get a Master Ball in Ruby. This also applies to Sapphire and Emerald. ", "In Pokémon Fire Red, you'll need to get the Ruby and the Sapphire in order to connect with Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. Getting the Ruby is fairly straightforward, but tracking down the Sapphire will lead you on a wild chase across several of the Sevii Islands." ]

[ "I kind of thought they were greater. Or st least this album. Their solo stuff is fantastic, but about 60 percent of this cd is to be fast forwarded" ]

[ "It works great and it perfect size - AND comes with a nice little cloth case! Solid and sturdy feel! Seems like it will last a while - purchased for high school student and she loves it!", "Great product for school for the Monster High fan. My granddaughter loves these. She also has a Monster High backpack she carries to school.", "dear amazon, i like the van wilder movie a lot. it is a funny comedy with a lot of sexy girls wearing pretty things. van wilder was the king of his school and all the pretty girls liked him, maybe except for that sexy reporter, she wasn't sure at first because van had been in school for too long. i thought this was how high school would be but its not true, my personal high school experience was not quite the same as van's. mom says it doesnt matter, she says i will meet the right girl in due time but i still want marcy.the van wilder movie makes me feel that the world can be a better place, full of frinds and nice people and pretty girls wearing sexy lingerie.\n\nyour frind kent", "It looks alright. Basically like a good high school artist's replica that was done in about 3 hours. The colors are off from the original, and there is basically only one layer of paint, where Van Gogh painted in several layers. All in all, comes across as flat. The frame is nice, but a high quality print in it would look infinitely better", "This is a must read novel! And should be on the national junior-high / high school reading list.", "Who doesn't love a vibraslap. This is a fully functioning vibraslap, but it isn't the quality of a vibraslap that you would use in a high school band. If you're looking to buy this for a high school band, where use/abuse is high, spend the money to upgrade to a more professional instrument.", "I like the music, but the sound quality seems subpar, at least on a high resolution sound system. Morph the Cat sounded better!", "Seems to work fine, the tape is very difficult to remove, but I can live with that as long as the ink cartridge works, price is so much better that HP originals, which are still too high.", "The Wilson Jones Frosted Report Covers seem to be very well-made and sturdy. I would think these would be ideal for High School or College reports and or presentation. We are using them to organize old tax returns.\n\nFor business presentations? It seems a little old fashioned to give someone a business presentation that was Xeroxed and put in a report cover.\n\nThe folders have three fasteners for three-hold punch paper and seem to hold the promised number of pages.\n\nNice product, just a little old-fashioned.", "This is a wonderful book written for a wide audience which includes high schoolers, educators, and anyone interested in Korea. Ms. Connor, who is a high school teacher herself, covers history, culture, politics, economics and more. Every high school library should have 'The Koreas' in stock. The book is well researched, well written, and serves as a great platform from which to begin study of North and South Korea. Bravo!", "Great for use at the gym or at home. I also teach jr high and high school girl's strength training. These cards have specific instructions on form, and reps for each exercise.", "doesn't really suck up the junk at the bottom of tank, its GREAT for sucking up water and refilling the tank with water, BUT i had better luck using the old school manual pump, hate using them but these fancy ones don't seem to suck up anything but water!!!", "Cute pattern, much loved design by the horse lover this is intended for; however, cheap construction; thinner material. One of the zippers broke the first time we unzipped it. :(\nWe ordered a High Sierra packback at the same time for the other kiddo. Much better construction, tougher material; stronger zippers. Cute printed design. Both about the same price at the time we purchased. Go to High Sierra and order one of theirs. It will last many years. The Wildkin one--we will be lucky if it lasts the school year.", "It attaches with velcro. I am not sure it will hold. Seems strong enough, but phone very well could crash especially with high impact sports or activities. I will probably look for a better solution", "It was exactly what I expected and wanted. One big open bag without sections. So far seems high quality with a quality zipper. Good bag to pack clothes in for a long weekend visit somewhere. Front pocket is large enough to stow toiletries. Keep in mind this is a pilot deployment bag, not a school back pack. That's why there is the one large area", "We recently moved to Japan and we see characters everywhere: road signs, menus, adds... I can't seem to memorize characters without writing them first. This book easily teaches you the proper stroke order for writing each character. My Japanese neighbor told me that the first characters in the book are what children start learning in grade-school. The characters get gradually more complex until by the end of the book they are high school/college level. You really do need to know characters to get by in Japan. I highly recommend this book.", "This should be required viewing in all elementary schools and high schools. I am old enough to remember schooling that taught the truth- before progressive narrative infected educational system.\nAll voters should watch this before voting. Thank you Dinesh for being brave enough to speak the truth!!", "I would like to see copies of this book in every high school library and history curriculums in the USA.", "The section on Confucius is my very favorite. Should be required High School reading. Every US politician should be required to read this section. He professes that politicians must be \"better\" than their citizens if they want to be followed. More enlightening is the idea of social norm/morays are the only way to control the population. Nice summary of all religions, unbiased. I keep few book but this is on my shelf", "I love a lot of classic fiction, but I have no idea how William Faulkner became popular! Popular with academics, I guess. Just excruciating to read, style-wise. And the characters had these occasional, lyrical thought processes inside their heads, but talked and acted like hillbillies with the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. People don't think like poets, then act like idiots. Faulkner seems to confuse lack of education with being an idiot. Why were the grown sons still there? They would have left to find a better life somewhere else. They would not have been STUPID enough to stay there. And did anybody love the dying woman? Really bizarre story. I know my high school English teacher told us Faulkner's work was metaphorically about the collapse of the South, but ugh, there are better ways to show it.", "Great product. Makes school supplies fun! Seems good quality. Daughter loves design and she was able to fit a bunch of school supplies inside.", "Thank you for writing the trilogy that got me through the hell of high school! I will continue to re-read these novels forever.", "Every high school student should be required to read Uncle Tom's Cabin. It puts a while new light on slavery in this country.", "I fit everything in this bag... I use it both when i play on Sundays and when I coach Babe Ruth and High School.", "We love this CD. It is very comprehensive and at an affordable price too! It brought back a lot of memories from high school choir!", "A young 18 year old boy, Brian accepts a call from God to evangelize the nations' high schools. Brian says \"yes\" to God, even though he does not know what the future will bring.\nBrian went into his old High School and he went to the Bible Club leader and told him that God had told him to reach high schoolers and the teacher let Brian speak two days a week. God told Brian to preach and he faithfully preached and God began saving students, a group of punk rockers who came to cause trouble came to the meeting, God told Brian to pray for them aloud about depression, suicidal thoughts, and addictions, and they and a large group of students got saved!\nYou will need to read the book for yourself to see how God used Brian and the Jesus Clubs to change the High schools in California!", "Great book for Graduates. We purchased them to give to our High School graduates each year at our church.", "The Fault in Our Stars is a emotional book made for for high school students. In this book it made you feel how the other person was feeling", "I love this belt, I wear it almost everyday, it's the same belt I used to wear for High-school baseball...... is that a coincidence I wonder!???", "Excellent. Novel but for older readers not high school. Dickens was a master at his craft and i look forward to reading more of his works.", "Great product! Heavy duty! Will work great to keep my sons high school papers organized. Thank you, for your quick service as well." ]

[ "The short answer: nurses can make less than $46,360 per year or more than $101,630, depending on their training or specialization. A nurse can specialize in specific health conditions or regions of the body, such as neonatology, rehabilitation, dermatology, emergency care, or oncology." ]

[ "[Anesthesiologist Make] | How Much Does an Anesthesiologist Make Per Hour? [Advanced Practice] | Advanced Practice Nurses vs. Nurse Practitioners [Nurse Practitioner] | How Long Does it Take to Become a Nurse Practitioner? [Registered Nurses] | How Much Do Registered Nurses Get Paid a Year? [RNs Make] | How Much Do RNs Make With 2-Year Degrees?", "How much do you make as a picc nurse? How much is the average cost for a picc line insertion in us hospiatls", "[RNs Make] | How Much Do RNs Make on Average an Hour? [Nurse Make] | How Much Does a Pediatric Nurse Make Per Hour? [RN Transition] | LPN to RN Transition in Hospitals [Make] | Does a Surgical Technician Make More Than an LPN?", "how Much Do CNA (certified Nurse Assistants) make In North … How much do CNA (certified nurse assistants) make in North Carolina (Chapel Hill/Durham/Raleigh) … How much does a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) make an hour in Abingdon,Virginia? More questions. Does a certified nursing assistant … How Much does a Phlebotomist make An Hour In North Carolina … How much does a Phlebotomist make an hour in North Carolina? I am certified Phlebotomist with less than a year experience.", "This entry was posted in Healthcare and tagged Average Pay For Nurse Practitioner, Highest Paid Nurse Practitioners, How Much Do Nurse Practitioners Make, Nurse Practitioner Salary 2013 on April 14, 2013.", "How much a registered nurse makes can vary from one state to the next and individual incomes can also vary based on experience, education and numerous other factors. This article will explore in depth how much nurses make, the factors that go into their incomes and why they earn what they do.", "Positive: 34 %. How much do RNs make working at a doctor's office ... to the nurse who said ... in the doctor's office is doing clinical hours as your clinical ... Read more. Positive: 31 %. The Average Pay for a Nurse in a Doctor's Office. Nurses can ... Registered nurses who work in doctor’s offices make $ ...", "How much would a nurse get paid for month? per yr? or How much does ur nursing job pay and what area of nursing do u do? thanks.", "How much do dermatology nurses make? As of 2015, the average annual salary for dermatology nurses is $55,000; average annual dermatology nurse salaries vary greatly on location, employer, education, experience, and benefits.", "So for instance How much do Full time Vet Nurse get paid How much do Part time Vet Nurse (15hr/week) and Casual nurses (8hrs/week) get paid)....and also, i hear this all the time..", "How much do LVNs make? The charts below will break down the average LVN salary even further by delving into how the specific FIELD of vocational nursing can affect pay. In many states, correctional nurses make substantially more than LVNs in other fields.", "How much do nurse administrators make? As of 2015, the average annual salary for nurse administrators is $49,000; average annual nurse administrator salaries vary greatly on location, employer, education, experience, and benefits (2).", "127,137 Views 44 Comments. Now, I'm not into nursing just for the salary. I'm in this for the long haul, and I want to do this for my career. But I've heard from several sources about how much money nurses make. Some say they don't make a lot, some say that they do.", "How much do wound, ostomy, and continence nurses make? As of 2015, the average annual salary for wound, ostomy, and continence nurse is $58,000; average annual wound, ostomy, and continence nurse salaries vary greatly with location, industry, employer, education, experience, and benefits.ow much do wound, ostomy, and continence nurses make? As of 2015, the average annual salary for wound, ostomy, and continence nurse is $58,000; average annual wound, ostomy, and continence nurse salaries vary greatly with location, industry, employer, education, experience, and benefits.", "At 2020, the employment opportunities of the registered nurse are predicted to be increase at the rate of 26% than in 2010. It is expected that there will be 711,900 new positions for this profession nationwide. Hence, there is no wonder for the increasing in the search of how much do nurses make a year.", "You shouldn’t consider license and certification reimbursements when determining how much travel nurses make. These are reimbursements for costs incurred, not income. You should exclude the value or cost of benefits when determining how much travel nurses make. Again, we typically do not add these values when discussing permanent pay packages.", "Want to find out how much do nurses make? At Hospital Jobs Inc, we provide the RN salary by state. Learn about what a registered nurse does and more!", "Did you find our how much does a registered nurse make page helpful? Be sure to check out HospitalJobsInc’s related nursing and other salary pages listed below. Related Nursing Pages: Nursing (RN) Jobs near Me Top Nursing Schools List for 2018 – RN, BSN & MSN How to Become a Nurse in 4 Steps How Much Does a Nurse Practitioner (NP) Make?", "More experienced hospice nurses will make as much as $75,000 a year, while beginners tend to make closer to $55,000 per year. Much of the determining factor on how much they get paid will hinge on how much experience they have.ost will admit that when it comes to how much does a hospice nurse make, the best payment that they can get is the fulfilling feeling of being there for people when they need help the most. According to the majority of hospice nurses, the thanks that they receive is one of the best payments of the job.", "1 68% - What does a visiting nurse earn? 2 46% - What is the going wage for a visiting nurse in ontario? 3 76% - How much do visiting reg nurses make? 4 25% - My husband is an indian citizen. he works in muscat and holds a resident card. he plans to visit malaysia in november 2011. 68% - What does a visiting nurse earn? 2 46% - What is the going wage for a visiting nurse in ontario? 3 76% - How much do visiting reg nurses make? 4 25% - My husband is an indian citizen. he works in muscat and holds a resident card. he plans to visit malaysia in november 2011.", "How much do nurse practitioners make? According to the May 2012 records from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual nurse practitioner salary in the United States is $91,450, which translates to a mean hourly wage of $43.97.", "If you enjoyed our how much does a physician assistant make page, check out HospitalJobsInc’s related healthcare career pages listed below. Related Physician Assistant Pages: Top Physician Assistant Schools List for 2018 – (PA) Programs. Other Pages: How Much Does a Nurse Practitioner (NP) Make? How Much Do CNAs Make?", "How Much Do CNAs Make? Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) provide patient care in a variety of settings under the direct supervision of a registered nurse (RN). The process of becoming a CNA is less intensive than that of becoming a registered nurse, but the workload is just as intense.", "I think our MDS nurse makes much more than $21/hr and I know she doesn't make $8/hr less than I do as the ADNS. We start the staff nurses-RN's _ at $23/hr and I know the MDS nurse is making more. I went from day supervisor to MDS nurse and didn't get any raise at all.ow much to you make as MDS Co (or if you're a DON/ADON-how much is your MDS person paid). I make $21/Hr and thinking that is not enough!", "So for instance How much do Full time Vet Nurse get paid How much do Part time Vet Nurse (15hr/week) and Casual nurses (8hrs/week) get paid)....and also, i hear this all the time..verage pay for vet nurse is @ $ 73,000.00 per year. Average minimum pay for vet nurse is @ $ 60,000.00 per year. Average maximum pay for vet nurse is @ $ 81,000.00 per year. Hope this helped.", "Source: http://www.registerednursern.com This video is about Registered Nurse RN salaries. I will be answering some questions on how much do registered rurses make and type of hourly wages you can expect to earn as a new nurse.", "How Work Weeks Affect Travel Nursing Salaries. Like any other job, the amount of time you spend working has an impact on how much you make as a traveling nurse. However, travel nursing is unique in this regard for two reasons. First, as mentioned above, agencies typically do not provide vacation time or paid sick time.", "{ seoText: <b>How much does a Family Nurse Practitioner make in New Jersey?</b> The average salary for a Family Nurse Practitioner is $100,813.", "How much do registered nurses make? Registered nurses are trained to provide medical care to patients. They are also charged with educating patients about different health conditions and follow-up care. Registered nurses generally have a bachelor’s degree in nursing and must be licensed in the state where they practice.", "About Nurse Salary – How Much Does A Nurse Make? The certified nurses provide comfort and solace to the patients in so many health care centers which include the hospitals, clinics and the nursing centers.", "3 [Phlebotomist Make] | How Much Does a Phlebotomist Make Hourly? 4 [Nurse Practitioner] | How Much Does a Nurse Practitioner Get Paid Per Hour? The primary duty of certified nursing assistants, or CNAs, is direct patient care, including attending to daily needs such as bathing and hygiene, assisting those with eating difficulties and helping patients with range-of-motion exercises.", "- Jc penneys cashier job duties. 1 How much parkig lot cashier make? 2 How is the cashier at jcpenney? 3 How much do retail cashiers make at jcpenney? 4 How much does a cashier at victoria secret make? 5 How much money do store managers make annually in jcpenney? 6 How much can a cashier make at jcpenney? 7 How much does a cashier at jcpenney? 8 How much do 9 ... Ho" ]

[ "Check the LINKS section on the first site it gives all the oraganisations dealing with Health and Health Issues\\n\\nUCD School of Public Health & Population Science\\n\\nBSc UCC" ]

[ "2006 estimate for health research and training is $29.362 billion.", "A public place is anywhere people allowed to go freely. This would include public transportation areas, such as subway terminals and train stations, parks, museums, libraries, and even stores.", "National Registry of EMT's and Paramedics website or individual state public health websites.", "The same day or previous day's diet provides the immediate fuel. Long term the health of the athlete and how well they can train.", "The United Kingdom is a country that consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In fact, the official name of the country is \"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.\"\\nGreat Britain is the name of the island northwest of France and east of Ireland that consists of three somewhat autonomous regions: England, Wales and Scotland.\\n\\nTherefore, England is part of Great Britain, which is part of the United Kingdom. The U.K. includes England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are not countries but the United Kingdom is. The remaining portion of the island of Ireland (that which is not the U.K.'s Northern Ireland) is an independent country called the Republic of Ireland (Eire).", "well that depends on where you. keeneland in kentucky probablly has the best strike rate for its july and september yeraling sales. after that tatts in newmarket is pretty good as is goffs in ireland. \\n\\nif you are looking to buy a horse in training already then i suggest yo try one of the horses in training sale at tatts. they have a pretty good history of selling other peoples cast offs to race elsewhere.", "http://www.treelight.com/health/exercise/BodyWgt.html\\n\\n\\nhttp://ronjones.org/Coach&Train/ExercisePhotos/index.html\\n\\nhttp://www.cbass.com/Furey.htm", "no doubt the british.they have the finest trained army in the world since the 18th century.all the training publications of all armis of the world have taken alot from the british.exellant deciplain,great training institutes.it is enough to say that you have been to sandhurst,kimberly,kornwall..etc", "Assure the safety and health of America's workers by:\\n1. Setting and enforcing standards\\n2. Providing training, outreach, and education;\\n3. Establishing partnerships\\n4. Encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health\\n5. Providing workplace inspections", "In 1997, the country had 4,434 physicians, 1,397 dentists, 3,923 registered nurses, 756 pharmacists, and 213 public health specialists.", "I am an African-America whose grandfather was from Ireland. My mother is Black Irish and I was told as a child that I could gain a passport and/or citizenship from Ireland by checking with the Office of Emigration in Ireland. I believe you can find that info on Yahoo Ireland.", "Institute of Medicine (http://www.iom.edu), for information about medicine and health. Not for specific treatments or procedures, but for issues, policies, and cogent analysis about issues regarding health and medicine. They also have links to hundreds of free publications -- from briefs to full books -- that can be read online in more detail, on lots of different topics related to medicine and health.", "Ireland Forever \\n\\nForever Ireland \\n\\nireland forever or ireland eternally. \\n\\nIt means Ireland Forever. It hangs in almost every bar/pub in Ireland. There are Gaelic/English dictionaries that you can look it up in if you wish. \\n\\nÉireann go Brách = Ireland Forever, Pronunciation: /Erin guh brawk/, Downloads: 19,370 \\n\\nThe popular phrases \"Erin go Bragh\" or \"Erin go Braugh\" mean Ireland forever. It's the anglicised version of the Gaelic phrase which would be known to some Irish Americans (although its English spelling is quite meaningless). \\n\\nI've been told and seen on greeting cards since I was a kid that the phrase \"Erin go braugh\" means \"Ireland forever.\" Something as beautiful as Ireland SHOULD last forever!! \\n\\nForever Ireland \\n\\nQuite literally, it means \"Ireland Forever.\" To put it in our very incompetent English terms, \"long live Ireland.\" \\n\\nIt is the anglicized spelling of the phrase \"Éireann go Brách\" (Ireland forever). \"Éire go Brách\" is also acceptable \\n\\n\\nMy Grandmother who arrived here in the states in the early 1900's via Ellis Island from Ireland told me it meant \"Ireland Forever\". That being said she also said that for the people of her generation it really said \"Green go the Irish\" \\n\\nGo bragh and go deo both mean forever though. And did you know that Fear = man and Féar = grass? \\n\\n\"Éireann go Brách\" which means \"Ireland forever\" More loosely translated, it would mean 'Long Live Ireland'. \\n\\nI believe ‘Erin go Braugh’ is actually Gaelic for 'Ireland Forever.' The term Erin means Ireland and go Braugh translates to forever. Hence 'IRELAND FOREVER'. \\n\\nerin go bragh means eire for ever,i have a tattoo of it on my chest beside my heart! \\n\\nit means ireland forever trust me im irish \\n\\n\\nOther meanings \\n\\nIt means Ireland be free \\n\\nIt means (Ireland go Brave) a battle cry, this information from a member of a Celtic Band who performs a lot of Scottish and Irish music and this lady's husband is from Scotland.", "I would try to affect some public policies on the enviroment, universal access to health care, and native american causes.\\nBut that's just me.", "Well first of all, I would help my family and friends in need, then on to bigger issues with the public at large and housing, food, health problems, and clothing...", "If your family has health insurance, you may be able to get a referral. Otherwise, call your local County Department of Public Health. They may be able to refer you to someone who will help on a sliding scale (based on your income).", "TRICARE covers 7 visits to a mental health professional without requiring a referral from your PCM. Additionally, the Base Chaplains are usually trained in some counseling areas.", "I'm not familiar with that area, but I would search the web for your local Land Trusts, Greenbelt Alliance rep, Nature Conservatory, Audubon, or public Open Space District, and then pick their brains and get more referrals from them. There are often preserved open spaces that are not publicized due to limitations in budgets for providing public access. Some properties have public outings for scheduled access, others allow public access after docent or permit trainings, and some have all-access trails. Good luck!", "people didnt eat pork in those days because they had no fridges and pork becomes poison very quickly in the heat ,the church put religious reasons behind it for a public health situation.\\n\\nnobody in those days new about the health hazzards of smoking.", "The 6 counties are not a part of England. They are a part of the United Kingdom which is something different. The UK is comprised of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.\\n\\nGaelic games are only shown on televisions in Northern Ireland and Ireland as well as some satellite channels, so few people are able to follow them outside Ireland. However it would be reasonable to expect that some people who are not Irish are big fans, just as a small proportion of Northern Ireland protestants follow the games also.", "Melbourne as it is more mult-cultural and has a higher density of International Students. Also excellent inner city public transport, Trams(cable car), Train, bus", "Do you want someone who isn't terribly competent giving you shots, etc? No. This is why it's difficult to get into health care programs. Also, the health care field is growing very fast and many people are recognizing this and want to jump on the bandwagon and schools can't train that many people at one time and have them get an adequate education.", "Just Ireland was affected by the potato famine, not England.\\n\\nBasically, Ireland was so dependent on Potatoes that when the harvest failed it led to famine. \\n\\nThe British govt were unwilling to help out as Ireland was just a colony to them.", "According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, there is no set distance, so he should be able to smoke right outside the door. Here's the state's description of the law: http://www.idph.state.il.us/tobacco/cleanq&a.htm", "Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in a frock : )\\n\\nohgma: Ireland is most certainly NOT British, (only Northern Ireland) is, nor does the term Britain refer to the republic of Ireland. \\nJRM was born in Dublin, so he's Irish.", "Only a part of it. England controls Northern Ireland, while the South is what we know as the Republic of Ireland.", "Chartered Accountant (CA) is a brand originated from British Royal Charter and widely spread in the Commonwealth since its inception in 19th century. The standard for UK CAs is said to be equivalent to a British degree.\\n\\nIn the accounting profession, there is no competitive league table similar to Master of Business Administration. As such, no accounting body can ethically claim to be the best in the world or equivalent to an MBA in the absence of a fair comparison. For non-British nations, Certified Public Accountant brands are the most popular. In the 21st century, CPAs or non-Chartered Accountants (even in United Kingdom and Australia) have become the largest bodies in terms of global membership. e.g. ACCA & CPA-Australia. As CAs can now freely merge with or reciprocate with non-CAs or non-audit bodies, equal treatment is given to all stakeholders. All auditing bodies recognized under statutes should have acceptable quality.\\n\\nIn the United Kingdom, there are five accounting bodies authorised by the Department of Trade and Industry under the Companies Acts to audit the accounts of a business as Registered Auditors. A member of these bodies will generally be known as a graduate member after passing all the necessary exams and then become an Affiliate, Associate or Fellow. Their counterpart in U.S.A is called American CPA or CPA of individual state board of accountancy (without mutual recognition agreement at Federal level). He or she should have been trained by a recognized qualifying body (RQB) such as the Association of International Accountants (AIA), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS),the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW), Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland or Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). The primary authority is the Companies Act while the traditional authority is a Royal Charter granted by Her Majesty the Queen. Apart from brand preference, all five registered auditors are with equal status under law, particularly by reference to EU directives for mutual recognition with auditors of all twenty-five EU member states.\\n\\nIn Britain, ICAS is the oldest and smallest of these organisations. The AIA is the youngest with just around 76 years. In terms of number of members, ICAEW is the largest in England and EU while ACCA is the British largest global accounting body. All five British registered auditors are recognized to be a member of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA) subject to certain requirements. As such, \"English Chartered Accountant equivalents\" in UK are AIA and ACCA, recognised by the DTI, and by mutual recognition agreement with HKICPA, China (as Hong Kong was formerly a British state pre-1997).HKICPA is the only accounting body which gained exemptions from China Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Beijing (CICPA)and with reciprocal with six chartered accountants.\\n\\nConsumers or employers may be confused by the standing of Chartered Accountants (CA) in various jurisdictions. CAs in UK and those in the Commonwealth may not be interchangeable or be regarded as equivalent standards. Many jurisdictions have their own accreditation programs for admission of foreign or out of state accountants for quality assurance.\\n\\nSimilarly in the Republic of Ireland, there are five audit bodies under the Irish Companies Act: the Institute of Certified Public Accountant in Ireland, Institute of Incorporated Public Accountants, Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, ACCA, and ICAEW, three of which are the same in the UK. \"Irish Chartered Accountant equivalents\" in the Republic of Ireland are the CPA (Ireland) and IIPA.\\n\\nIn United Kingdom and Ireland, there are other accounting bodies which have received the Royal charter or Royal Coat of Arms such as CIPFA,CIMA and ICEA but which are not yet authorised by the DTI to be Registered Auditors. It seems that such bodies will merge with", "St. Patrick, as a boy in England, was kidnapped and brought to work as a slave in Ireland. Since he was brought up in a Christian household in England, he used the time in Ireland to become closer to God. Somehow he was able to leave Ireland and go back home to England. It was back in England, that he went to live as a monk. One day he realized that he was needed back in Ireland to teach the heathens about Jesus. So, he did go back to Ireland and spread the gospel to a country that hadn't heard about Jesus before.\\n Whether or not he actually got rid of all the snakes in Ireland is something that I don't think has ever been proven.", "I heard in the news that half of the infected people were vaccinated. It was an interview with some public health offical on NPR. He was saying that because of this outbreak, it may be necessary to reevaluate the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine.", "England : 50.1 million\\nScotland : 5.1 million\\nWales : 3 million\\n------\\nTotal island of Britain : 58.1 million\\n\\nRepublic of Ireland : 4.0 million\\nNorthern Ireland : 1.7 million\\n-----\\nTotal island of Ireland : 5.7 million\\n\\nNorthern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, so the total population of the UK is 59.8 million.\\n\\nThe population of London is 7,465,100 (~7.5 million)", "British involvement in Ireland goes back at least 800 years - back to 1169 to be precise. \\n\\nParts of Ireland have been English speaking almost since that time. Dublin for instance was completely English speaking in the 13th century. \\n\\nNevertheless, Irish was still widely spoken in many areas even up to the 1700's. Ireland joined the United Kingdom in 1801 however, so all public affairs were then carried out solely in the English language. To improve your lot in life you would have had no choice but to speak English. By the mid 1800's, the language was in rapid decline. \\n\\nThere have been huge efforts to revive the Irish language since Ireland became an gained independence from Britain in 1921. There are Irish language newspapers, radio stations, television stations, road signs, compulsory Irish in schools and a requirement to speak Irish to get into the Civil Service. However all these efforts have had little success. In the end, people see the English language as much more useful in everyday life, purely because you can communicate with almost anybody in the world.", "Cork County Hall - 64m\\n\\n(Liberty Hall is 59m high)\\n\\nps. Belfast is in Northern Ireland, not the Republic of Ireland." ]

[ "Good honey with a mild, simple taste. I would have liked it to be a bit stronger in flavor. Great on a bit of goat cheese. Plastic lid was broken when it arrived, but none of the honey had leaked out." ]

[ "Lavazza coffee the best!! this package is an awesome deal got it in record time. The pods are so simple,fast and clean to use when I throw parties I can bang out coffee's faster that a Italian social club,", "Let me make this very simple. Unless you're spending $30/oz. on \"inexpensive\" sturgeon caviar, this may be your best option for flavor, and it's almost certainly your best option on a price / value basis. The black caviar is small (which you'd expect of white fish), but it's clean and crisp tasting, with the freshness of the sea. Works really well as a garnish. At this price and this quantity, you can't ask for anything more. Highly recommended.", "The Sohgave RAW Blue Agave Nectar is fantastic! The taste is very much like honey only more light and clean. It works fantastic in any recipe one wishes or needs a sweetener for. It is sweeter than sugar so I use 3/4 cup of the nectar for any recipe which calls for a cup of sugar. I use an online calculator to find the proper amounts I need when working with tsp and tbsp requirements. That makes it pretty simple. I have totally stopped using sugar or any other sweeteners. Agave Nectar is the best. The taste it gives to the food is a clean sweetness that is great while it has a much lower Glycemic Index and is therefore more healthy. I would suggest this product to anyone.", "I wanted a nice clean simple snack. What I received was pork rinds adulterated with MSG, several food dyes, Hydrongenated soybeen oil MSG and sugar. To put salt in the wound they plaster biblical quotes about Jesus on the package! They can do without this Buddhist's business! Total waste.", "For a guy who's been drinking coffee around 4 decades, the Cafejo \"My French Press\" is truly amazing! My wife does not like keeping appliances up on our kitchen counter. This simple but effective little guy, is easy to use, quick to clean and makes a great cup of coffee! I'm sold!!!", "I add 1 tablespoon to each dishwasher load. The citric acid keeps the mineral deposits in check and the glasses sparkling. Our city water is extremely hard, and the spinners in the dishwasher would get clogged with deposits. Not any longer! I also use it as a neutralizer when shampooing the rugs, but you have to rinse with water afterwards, or it stays a little sticky.<br />I try to use simple solutions to keep the home clean. This is a safe way to clean.", "This tuna is absolutely amazing. It tastes like fresh fish. It is worth every penny and i will not go back to bumble pee tuna or similar. something to note is that you do not drain the water like you do with normal tuna, plus the can has a easy pull off top, so the whole process of making tuna is clean and simple. with regular store tuna, between the top removal and water draining, i would need to take a shower after making the darn food.", "Mrs. Wage's Ketchup mix is the only brand I have found. It is simple and easy to make. Not to mention it taste good.", "Illy really got it right. I have tried the E.S.E pods from Illy and others. The taste of the IperEspresso Capsules is superior. The Creama is outstanding. I also have a Jura Z5 super automatic and it can't match the taste of IperEspresso even using Illy whole beans. The Illy IperEspresso machines are very simple to use and to clean. The downside is the capsules are expensive, about 75 cents a shot compared to 50 cent a shot from the super-automatic. But, using the Amazon's new subscription service the cost has dropped to about 63 cent a shot. If you like the taste of Illy coffee this is one of the best ways to enjoy it.", "Perhaps the previous reviewer is starting out with polluted water, because if anything, Revolution Teas have a very clean and simple taste. Their Golden Flowers version is no exception. Probably one of the best Chamomile blends that I've ever had, it has a very natural and un-adulterated flavor. It's not one of the most expensive teas on the market, yet manages to be steps above the crushed leaf standard teas that most people are used to. This is a very soothing tea, perfect for a post-dinner experience.", "First time trying this product, 5lb bag, and I was more than impressed. The flour is finely diced and clean white in color as it is blanched.<br /><br />Used it for a gluten-free brownie recipe and for baking some simple breads and macarons - Taste came out perfect. Definitely noticed a difference when compared to almond meal (which used the skin of the almond). Unblanched almond flour simply does not work for baking IMO.<br /><br />Product got shipped within hours of ordering as well - fedex ground ;)", "Was looking for caramel sauce to re-create my favorite coffee shop's caramel macchiatos. I made the mistake of trying the Smucker's brand caramel syrup which dilutes almost instantly in the coffee. The Monin brand however, does not and stays thick and adds a great flavor to any drink.<br /><br />This is worth the money and each comes in their own squeeze bottle which keeps clean up and ease of use nice and simple.", "Davidson's bulk Keemun tea can't be beat! Great taste and good price -- especially for organic tea. Packaging is simple and recyclable.", "I LOVE this machine so much! My mother- in- law purchased this machine and gave it to me.<br />I am a working mom and too busy all the times to cook. But just right after first cooking baby food with this Baby Brezza, I got to get love it!<br />This is super easy and simple to cook, i just toss the ingredients in the jar, press buttons, and feed my baby.<br />Every aspect got me satisfied - easy cooking/cleaning method, good size to store on the counter top, cute design and etc.<br /><br />And plus, Asian moms(like me) feed baby grains such as rice, barley and beans, very often, cooking grains with grain basket in baby brezza machine is also SO easy and simple - literally ONE STEP BABY FOOD MAKER.", "The My French-Press brews a really delicious cup of coffee! I have been holding off on buying an expensive Keurig machine, so this product is perfect for me. I have a kitchen with very little counter space, and it is SO easy to brew a great cup of coffee. It is very simple to clean up and store in my cabinet. Love it!", "Although it does the job well, it is extremely over priced for something so simple. Too bad they feel they need to jack the price up 5 times what it cost to make - including materials.<br /><br />I would have to say though, whoever makes it should have done the stitching on the side. It would make cleaning easier...just saying.", "This is a good, clean tasting syrup with mild pumpkin flavor. It does not, by itself, replicate the flavor of the pumpkin spice latte from *bucks, but it tastes good and is a nice seasonal flavor.", "I have been using Olewo carrots and beets for about a year now. The difference in my dogs is like day and night! Their coats are now shiny, luxurious and soft. Color and pigment are vibrant. I love the deep reds and dark blacks on my German Shepherds. Olewo also helps regulate the digestive system and their stools are better than ever. No more anal gland or digestive issues. Very simple to prepare and extremely cost effective as well. To top it all off, Olewo is very palatable and the dogs LOVE the taste. Bowls are licked clean after Olewo!", "Made this soup last night. It was sooo easy and yummy! I was not sure how much doctoring would be necessary to make it tasty for everyone and was surprised to find that it needed little help. I followed the directions on the bag and mixed with vegie stock/water (I had to add a lot more than listed!) and some of the basic vegies on hand - onions, garlic, carrot, celery - that was it! I tasted and it was delicious the way it was.(with salt and pepper to tase). I did not add milk to make the creamed version as I really liked the clean simple flavors of the mix. It was so easy, required no special ingredients or trip to the grocery store. Love it!", "Have been using these chews for the past year+ ever since the dog had her teeth cleaned. They not only taste really good (according to the dog!) but they're good for her per the vet!", "I wanted to start juicing this year, but didn't want to spend the money or the space on a juicer. So I googled how to juice veggies and fruit with a blender. I had the blend but all I needed was the bag. So I ordered this bag and it has been the best purchase! I blend, strain, then dump the pulp. So easy, fast, and the clean up is so simple. You don't need to invest in an expensive juicer right away. This is the best inexpensive option.", "I really enjoyed growing the wheat grass using this package. It was simple, clean, and the grass grew really well! I was pleasantly surprised at how lush and green the grass was. Though my dog doesn't eat it off the stems, I just cut them into smaller pieces over his food. Definitely recommended for the experience, whether your pet will eat it is a different stories, as we all know, the little ones can be picky. =)", "I've only tried making soymilk, and think the recipe I use may even come from an Amazon reviewer. Very simple: soak 1/3-1/2 cup of soybeans overnight in the fridge (or longer-- I've done this for up to 3 days, with a lid on), rinse and drain the beans and attach to the blade part, and fill the machine up to the top line with filtered water. It's not very hard to clean, and really the only pain in the butt is to make sure you scald your equipment with hot water (including the container in which you store your soymilk) to help keep it fresh and clean. I bought a used machine and the folks couldn't have been nicer. Recommended, especially since soymilk can be expensive over time.", "You haven't really tasted how good a gin and tonic can be until you've tasted your favorite gin (I like Hendricks)with this tonic water. No aftertaste. This is truly a clean and refreshing taste. I love this stuff.", "I found this product originally at Williams Sonoma and realized my quest for the perfect cornbread was finally over. I'm a baker and have never found a recipe or a mix that makes the truly delicious cornbread I dreamed of. Not dry and nominally tasty like Jiffy. Not overly sweet and fake corn tasting like Marie Callendars. Clean,clear corn taste, perfect crunch on the edge and so flavorful! And dead easy to make. The directions are clear and simple. Like any quick bread or pancake, don't overmix. A few small lumps are fine. I bake it in an 8\" cast iron fry pan. No problem in buying the case, friends and family are always begging to take a box home.", "The Bar Harbor canned fish products are of the highest quality and offer a great value. I've had this product, the Cabernet wine sauce and the cracked pepper varieties.<br /><br />Of the three, this is my favorite with the wine sauce a nice second. The cracked pepper type is essentially this one with black pepper added, which really doesn't work for me (but is still far better than most canned fish).<br /><br />The fish is soft and moist and is not overpowered by any heavy handed oils or weird additives. Very simple and pure ingredients give it a very clean taste with a wonderful texture.<br /><br />I highly recommend it!", "I have tried several of the Senseo brews, and I prefer this strong and aromatic blend to the others for a good morning bracer. It has a nice clean taste and pleasant aroma. To my taste, this is the strongest of the Senseo blends.+", "I've been using Folger's Coffee Singles for 3 years or so. Since I am the only coffee drinker in the house, they are so simple to use and taste as good as brewed coffee...but no leftovers! I also try to control my caffeine intake and what is more simple than a single serving of real brewed coffee made in your cup. I take them traveling, better than the hotel coffee anyday. The decaf is also great. The answer to camping, work and play.", "love the squeeze packs, love the jars even more!!! Great tasting healthy peanut butter is now a family staple in my kitchen. My family loves it and now my friends families love it also. Just shows how pure simple healthy ingredients can taste great and be good for you to.", "What caould be more healthy than leaving off the frosting? This simple pleasure needs frosting like a car does. Why, clean-topped pastry is almost like eating a salad. But it's still a Pop-Tart. A clever ploy. I can't wait to get my case of these so I can sit down for an evening of TV and chow down. Hmm. Maybe I should double my order.<br /><br />A finer desert, I cannot conjure!", "I was given a baby Brezza machine as a gift and I can honestly say I couldn't be happier. After spending just a few minutes cleaning it out and then getting familiar with the controls (very simple). I was off and making tasty and fresh baby food for my 6 month old son. Wow does he love the sweet potatoes. I<br />It is so easy and I know exactly what' he's eating.<br /><br />I couldnt be happier and have told all my friends about it.", "This baby food processor is the BEST baby item I own! It is really important to me to make my own baby food, but the thought of chopping, boiling/steaming, processing the veggies/fruits and then washing all these items is just another annoying item to add to the list of To Do's during the day. The Baby Brezza makes all that so simple and easy that I don't mind taking this extra step to give my baby the best nutrients AND save money! All you need to do is chop the food, stick it in the machine, and wait for it to be cooked and pureed. The clean up is simple and the machine is nice and compact for storage in my tiny kitchen. The food consistency is perfect and the recipe book gives some great suggestions for food varieties and quantities. Love this item and would highly suggest for you to buy one of your own." ]

[ "It's dangerous for both you and the person who may be at the top of the ladder. Something could be dropped on your head or you could possibly knock over the ladder. Don't walk under ladders." ]

[ "Positive- Walking up a hill. Negative- Walking down a hill. Undefined- Climbing a ladder Zero- walking across your kitchen floor.", "I'm an engineer, not a historian, but if an attacker were to use a ladder to scale a wall it wouldn't be hard to prevent the defenders from pushing it over. For one, all you have to do is angle the ladder at the wall. Remember, in order to push a ladder over you have to push the top up and over the spot where the ladder touches the ground. If the ladder is angled enough the defenders would have no way to push it over. I can also think of a few ways to quickly secure the ladder to the ground to prevent it from being tipped over, such as spikes for instance. Also, if you position the ladder so that it reaches to a foot or so below the top of the wall the defenders would have a much harder time reaching it to push, not to mention that they'd have to expose themselves by leaning out over the wall. I apologize if this isn't an appropriate answer since I'm not a historian, I just figured I could chime in with some ways these dangers could be mitigated.", "Mostly sort of bad luck, combined with the fact that they claim to be a chosen people, but *don't* try to convert people. A relatively rare thing from religions that some can take as smugness. The bad luck part, though comes down to things like this: Ancient Christians wouldn't be bankers, because it was a sin to charge interest, but there was a need... so they gave the dirty job to the Jews, who weren't allowed into \"honorable\" fields. Who then, as bankers do, made lots of money. So then they get blamed for being greedy money-lenders. It's a vicious circle.", "It's because of the superstition that the number 13 is bad luck. You're right that it's silly, because of course a 13th floor is a 13th floor, but was a fad for a while and has not yet entirely run its course. The superstition goes back to the 1690s, but most of the excessive customs like renaming floors are 20th century phenomena.", "On mobile, sorry for the formatting. Based on this Norwegian text (\"The Historical Northern Lights\") _URL_0_ There is disagreement on wether northern lights are mentioned in the Edda. According to some, NL in norse mythology are explained as reflected light from the shields of the valkyries. The first certain (Norse) mention of NL is in Konungs Skuggsjá (ca 1230 AD). Note that this is after the christening of Scandinavia. It presents three theories: 1) NL are due to a ring of fire surrounding the seas and the earth, reflected by the ice of Greenland 2) NL are beams of sunlight refracted through the ice of Greenland (from the far side of the Earth) 3) NL radiate from ice (glaciers?) due to a power/force in the ice In addition, there are some \"simple\" superstitions, bad luck for whistling under NL and things like that.", "I don't know for sure but I'd guess it's because the tunnel is under the road and the ladder down is on the side of the tunnel. Which more or less places the ladder under your tire, apparently.", "Depends on the place, some cultures have certain etiquette for which hand is meant for doing what (shaking hands, eating, hygiene, etc). For lefties, all of these would feel backwards, but a lot of it comes from them being the minority and the superstition that comes along with being different than most people around you. I would think that it would be easier to be left handed in places that use right-to-left writing, such as in Hebrew or Arabic.", "In short, divers have two main ways to ‘jump in’ from a scuba dive boat: The Giant Stride Entry (requires a stable platform from where to step off; common in larger boats) The Backward Roll Entry (preferred technique when the boat is smaller, less steady, and lacks a secure platform or ladder) Plus, think about this: walking around in fins is difficult and you're carrying the weight of a scuba tank (not light)- it's easier to roll backwards off the boat than to walk to the edge and stride off.", "Our brains like to find patterns. When they find good patterns of cause and effect, it's science. When they think there's a pattern where none exists, it's a superstition. We also like to learn from other people. When they share good information, that is teaching. When it's bad information, rumors and Speedos spread.", "I can give you a point to start your search. President Roosevelt traveled to the conference aboard the battleship USS *Iowa* under great secrecy. Because U-boats were a serious threat the battleship was escorted by several destroyers. Among the escorts was the bad luck ship [ USS *William D. Porter*](_URL_0_) which accidentally fired a torpedo at the battleship during exercises. The *Iowa* was alerted to the danger and avoided the torpedo but the *Porter* would bear her reputation as a bad luck ship till her destruction by a kamikaze in 1945.", "Much of Asia was an advanced civilization to begin with, having a strong understanding of mathematics, written word, and architecture. When these nations became colonized, this didn't change. Slavery was achieved by hiring tribes to capture rivals. Much of Africa has been tribally divided and deeply entrenched in superstition. When these nations became colonized, this didn't change. Societies that had written word and an understanding of mathematics were able to transition to productive nations much more easily than societies that had a strong belief in superstition, tribal feudalism, and lacked a basic understanding of fundamentals. Like the man that stands on a stack of ladders and still cannot see beyond the wall, it's not about the resources a country has, but how they use them.", "It really comes down to luck with the percentages of getting cancer. But first and foremost is genetics; some people have bad genealogy that cause cancers or other mess-ups in the human body.", "In order to move the magnet and the thing it's pulling on to a place where they'll interact, you have to do work *against the magnetic field*. If you put a bowling ball on top of a step ladder, you're doing work against the gravitational field. When the bowling ball rolls off and squashes a pumpkin or something, the energy comes from the work you expended putting the ball on top of the ladder. It's the same thing with magnets. A magnet in a room has some potential energy with regards to all the magnetic things and fields in the universe. Physically moving the magnet to that place is like putting the ball on the ladder. Hope this helps.", "If you are roughly the mass of the person on the ladder, and the ladder is approximately massless, footing a ladder shifts the ladder-system center of gravity from the person who is up on the ladder (12-30 feet up) to halfway between the two of you. If we take into account the ladder's mass, it will tend to shift the COG towards the center of the ladder. Having a lower center of gravity will make the ladder, generally, easier to control and more stable.", "You have a ladder, and a wall. When you put the ladder against the wall, the ladder's feet will be some distance away from the wall. And the ladder will touch the wall at some height above the ground. The ladder is easier to climb - less steep - when you pull the feet further out away from the wall. (Also, it's less likely to tip backwards when you climb it.) So you want some way to figure out how far back you can put the feet of the ladder from the wall, but the ladder will still go to the top of the wall and allow you to climb over. An old philosopher figured out the math for how to do this: LadderLength = sqrt(HeightUpWall^2 + FeetDistanceFromWall^2) I wouldn't expect pre-schoolers to actually be able to do the math. Just show them the formula so when they see it later, they recognize it.", "because we have ass cheeks. Most animals dont. This comes from walking upright. Being bipedal has its advantages. Poop is not one of them.", "In some places it comes from superstition. In others, they wish you health because a sneeze may be a sign you’re about to fall ill. However, there isn’t a word or phrase you say after someone sneezes in every language. If I remember correctly, they don’t do that in Japan/Japanese, for example.", "You are talking about the \"Terms of Venery.\" It comes from the Late Middle Ages and English hunting. The Book of Saint Albans, printed in 1486, was the first to compile them. Birds are not the only weird ones. Some weird ones: Grist of bees. Sounder of boars. Clowder of cats. Husk of hares. Zeal of zebras. Many of these terms came about from folk tales and superstitions, or some just describe the animals in a singular word. For instance, a bloat of hippos. Murder of crows most likely came for the superstition that they are omens of death. [Full list](_URL_0_) of Terms of Venery. Have fun.", "The other answer assumes a uniformly distributed number and is correct under that assumption. It is worth pointing out, however, that due to superstition, a human selected number can exhibit bias. In particular, if someone tells you to guess a number between 1 and 10, in my (annecdotal) experience 7 is chosen more than a third of the time, with 3 being the other common choice, and 1 and 10 being extremely rare. This is due to superstition holding that certain numbers are lucky, which makes people more inclined to pick them. (You will see a similar result if you look at lottery entries - entries including 7 and 13 are considerably more common than entries containing two different numbers, for example 25 and 41, and for many lottery structures this means prize payouts are lower when 7 and 13 are both selected). But /u/midtek has the correct answer for where there is no bias on which number is chosen. TL:DR - Assess whether there might be bias in how the 'random' number is selected.", "They knew it was coming, they just didn't know where. Under operation fortitude the allies created fake army camps, set up dummy tanks and landing craft, and created fake radio traffic to feed the germans bad intel. This managed to get the Germans to expect the invasion at the French port city Calais, where the English channel is narrowest.", "Nah, the rainbow is an optical effect of light going through rainy air and into your eye. If you move, then light is hitting your eye at a different angle through a different bit of rain - depending on the conditions, either the rainbow will move or it'll disappear from your perspective. What that means is that you can never get closer to the rainbow that you see. You can see someone else walking directly under *your* rainbow, but from their perspective, they're walking under empty air. Their rainbow (if they can see one from where they're standing) is farther off in the direction you're facing (opposite the sun).", "Because that's where the air that's come into contact with their body is. As they move through the air whatever scent they're giving off mixes with the air they leave behind. You walk into that cloud of scented air, and smell it. The air ahead of where they're walking hasn't touched them yet. This assumes that there's no wind blowing. If they have a light tail wind, (that is, a wind coming from behind them) you may indeed be able to smell them before they get to you. That's how predatory animals hunt, by staying downwind of their prey so they won't be alerted to their presence.", "Its toxicity comes from being absorbed by normal tissue, not just the amount that's free in the blood. Most of how they treat it is chelation therapy, where you give people chemicals that bind to lead, and then they excrete it. Also, bleeding people is a bad idea when one of the main symptoms of lead poisoning is anemia.", "In the mathematical/statistical sense, \"regression\" does not necessarily mean good or bad. It is a return to normal or expected behavior. In a small data set, you could see a random deviation (change) from the expected behavior just by luck. What regression means is that you should not expect that same luck to continue. Going forward, the normal or average behavior is to be expected. If you are calculating a running average, your overall numbers should 'regress towards the mean' as the old string of good-or-bad luck becomes less and less important to the average (less significant).", "How to reach the ceiling? A ladder. How to reach the top of a high wall? A bigger ladder. How to reach a really really high wall? A bigger bigger ladder!", "I think the arc sits at the closest point in the gap at the bottom of the ladder where it starts. No gravity to bias convection of ionized gas so no rise.", "It's just a coincidence, think of all the times you walked under a light and it didn't go off. Old gas type lamps on their way out will go off and on as they fail,cool down and try to strike again. If it lights it will get to a point where something fails again and the lamp goes off only to start it all over again waiting for you to walk under it.", "At least one mechanism I know of has to do with the shape of the molecule. You've seen pictures of your DNA that look like ladders, right? Well some chemicals are flat and can slip in-between the steps on the ladder. But these molecules also really really want to change so sometimes they can slip inside the ladder, then change and not be able to come out again. When your body makes new cells it needs to be able to slide easily along this ladder and make a copy of it. If there's a molecule that got stuck in there it's going to get in the way and mess up the copy. And if the copy gets messed up enough times in enough ways then it changes what your cell actually does and can lead to cancer. Hopefully that was ELI5 enough, it's a bit of a complex subject.", "[This](_URL_0_) Nature editorial suggests that practically nothing would happen; apparently mosquitoes don't hold up any particular ecological ladder. I'm not sure I agree that randomly killing a species is a good idea, but supposedly it isn't an outright bad one. Edit: A useful quote from the article: > \"They don't occupy an unassailable niche in the environment,\" says entomologist Joe Conlon, of the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville, Florida. \"If we eradicated them tomorrow, the ecosystems where they are active will hiccup and then get on with life. Something better or worse would take over.\"", "Most schools will opt for an in-house suspension where the kid is forced to sit in a room all day and do school work. Its a punishment tool used to deter bad behavior. Plus, a suspension isn't going to be a walk in the park. The kids parents will reign hell on him/her further deterring bad behavior.", "Because to climb the ladder, you need to lift a foot off it to go up a rung. That places all your weight on the other foot temporarily, meaning that all the weight is now on one side of the ladder, which can cause it to lean. If you have someone standing on the other side, it adds weight, keeping the ladder from shifting when you lift a foot.", "DNA is shaped like a ladder, with 4 types of rung. When a certain protein is needed, the ladder comes apart, and each rung attracts a certain kind of rung from a type of half ladder called RNA. These RNA rungs link together and float off to a factory called a ribosome. This is called [Transcription](_URL_0_) In the ribosome, the RNA rungs are grouped into threes, and each group of three attracts a building block called an amino acid. The amino acids form their own chain along the RNA, then separate. This step is called [Translation](_URL_1_ separation, the unique shapes of each link in the amino acid chain cause the whole chain to fold up into a special shape, that your body uses as either building material, or as a tool to make processes run or stop." ]

[ "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – 22News received a report from a viewer, claiming residents at one Chicopee apartment building are trapped in their own parking lot.\nThe parking lot at 53 Cabot Street was covered with snow Monday night. When 22News went to the parking lot Tuesday night, we saw little had changed. Cars were covered and some were even trapped in their spots by large snow banks.\nThe owner of Cabot Liquors, which is next to the lot, told 22News the snow has made it impossible for his customers to park there as well. Manish Patel said, “Whoever is responsible for it should be taking care of it because it’s really a pain. As a business owner right next to it, it affects the business also, because people are parking on the sides when they should be parking on the parking lot.”\nAt least one car attempted to leave the unplowed lot, but many are still waiting for a clearer path.\nClick Here if you’re unable to view the map above." ]

[ "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – Chicopee police have released surveillance video from a car break-in on Christmas Eve, which they hope will lead them to two suspects.\nChicopee Police Officer Mike Wilk told 22News that the suspects approached the Ford Mustang, which was parked in a driveway in Chicopee Falls. They opened the doors, and stole items that were inside the vehicle.\nIf you have any information, you are urged to call Chicopee Police at (413) 594-1730.", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – Two months ago, Springfield resident Bob Charland was given a terminal diagnosis. He has a neuro-degenerative brain disease. Instead of letting that diagnosis define him, he’s spending whatever time he has left helping others.\nThis Easter Sunday was no different. He made more than a dozen kids’ needs his priority.\nCharland told 22News, “It’s Easter morning and I know there’s a lot of kids that don’t have bikes, and I figured this is a way to make them happy on a holiday.”\nHe dropped off more than a dozen bikes to a Chicopee neighborhood in need. He spends his free time fixing up old bikes to give to children who don’t have one.\nBike recipient Hannah told 22News, “It’s awesome. I was almost going to cry because we got these new bikes, because our bikes got stolen from here.”\nCharland chose this Chicopee neighborhood with the help of his friend, Anouson Souvannasane, who works for the Chicopee Police Department and patrols this neighborhood regularly.\nSouvannasane told 22News, “I’ve been working in this area for years now, it’s the first area that came to mind. We need more people to step up, he’s setting the bar for those who aren’t sick to do something for the kids.”\nCharland has made it clear that, for as long as he can, he will continue his work to improve children’s lives through bikes. He concluded, “Why not? If it’s just my time, why not do it? It’s making these kids happy, it’s promoting something positive in their life, so I’m going to keep doing it.”", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – Chicopee police are investigating after a man was hurt in an alleged armed carjacking Thursday night.\nChicopee Police Officer Mike Wilk told 22News a man walked into 482 Springfield Street with an apparent head injury just before midnight Thursday. When officers got there, Wilk said the man told them two individuals approached him near his home on Springfield Street, pointed a gun at him, and struck him in the head before stealing his car.\nThe victim was taken to the hospital with a head injury. The stolen vehicle is a grey Toyota Venza with Massachusetts plates 5MRR20.\nIf you have any information or if you think you have seen the vehicle, call Chicopee police at 413-594-1740.", "Firefighters have been able to knock down a fire at a home on Simonich Circle in Chicopee that was caused by gasoline that ignited from a heater inside the garage.\nEmergency crews were called to the scene at about 11:10 a.m. Monday.\nThis was for 37 Simonich Circle.\nThe Chicopee Fire Department told our crew on scene that they were alerted to the fire by the homeowner who called to say they were working on a car in the garage when some gasoline ignited from a heater inside.\nThe fire spread quickly to the breezeway and a car parked in the driveway. It also melted some insulation at a home next door.\nOur crew said the car inside the garage, the garage, the right side of the home, and the car just outside, were all significantly damaged in the fire.\nFirefighters were able to knock the flames down and by 12:20 p.m. Monday investigators were working on figuring out the cause.\nThankfully, no injuries were reported.\nDamage was estimated to be over $100,000.\nMultiple fire trucks responded to this fire as well as police, and an ambulance.\nCopyright 2017 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – Chicopee police are looking for the driver of a car involved in a hit and run.\nChicopee Police Officer Mike Wilk told 22News the vehicle, believed to be a 2004-2009 Hyundai Sonata, struck a parked BMW in front of 63 Center Street on the afternoon of December 4.\nWilk said the driver traveled up Springfield Street after hitting the car.\nIf you recognize the car or have any information, you’re asked to call Chicopee Police Officer Eric LaFlamme at 413-594-1692.", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – A portion of East Street is blocked off as fire crews work to put out a fire Friday evening.\nOfficer Mike Wilk of the Chicopee Police Department told 22News firefighters responded to a structure fire at 105 East Street around 4:30 p.m.\nWilk said Chicopee officers are at the location assisting with blocking the roadway.\nDrivers and pedestrians are asked to seek an alternative route so the fire crew can work to put out the fire.\nThis is a developing story. 22News will bring you updates as more information becomes available.", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – 22News confirmed that the developer, Silverbrick LLC, withdrew their request for a special permit, which would’ve allowed them to rehab the Cabotville Mill in Chicopee.\nThe New York based company wanted to create 600 apartments and commercial space for businesses at the old Industrial Complex on Front Street, but ran into transaction issues with the developer months ago.\nThe Chicopee Planning Department said they hope to work with a new developer soon, but since they don’t own the property, they’re options are limited.\nHere’s a statement from the Chicopee Planning Department’s Executive Director Lee Pouliot:\nAs redevelopment of Cabotville Mills is a significant opportunity to revitalize Chicopee’s downtown, we are very much looking to work with any developer who has a vision for the project, including the current owner. As the city is not the current owner, we are limited what we can do with regards to looking for other developers.\nRelated Cabotville Mill Coverage:", "Crews battling a structure fire on East Street in Chicopee.\nFlames could be seen pouring out of an antiques and pre-owned furniture store.\nCrews continue to spray water on the building at 105 East Street from all angles.\nThe call came in around 3:30 p.m. Friday.\nNeighbors watched in shock as flames devoured the roof of T&L's Antiques and Pre-owned Furniture Store.\nWith a lot of furniture inside the building, it's only making the fire more difficult to knock down.\nChicopee Police Officer Michael Wilk said that police are responding to block the roadway.\nMotorists are being advised to seek alternate routes.\nNo other information regarding the fire is immediately available.\nWestern Mass News has a crew at the scene and we will have more information as it becomes available.\nCopyright 2018 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – 22News received several complaints from viewers about unplowed sidewalks in the City of Springfield, creating a safety hazard for pedestrians.\nTuesday night, we went to the Plainfield Bridge and saw that the sidewalks were not shoveled. Several people, including children, had to walk in the road to avoid the deep snow.\nWe also went to the North End Bridge and saw that only one side of the sidewalk had been cleared. One pedestrian told 22News this has been an issue for several days now.\n“It’s aggravating how they don’t clean the sidewalk and you have to cross the street, making sure a car doesn’t hit you. It’s been like this for three or four days already,” said Samuel of Springfield.\n22News will continue to cover this story and follow-up with Springfield Department of Public Works to find out why these sidewalks still haven’t been plowed.", "A Holyoke man was arrested in Chicopee over the weekend after police said he broke into a resident's work van and assaulted the resident who confronted him.\nChicopee Police Officer Mike Wilk said 42-year-old Luis Caez of Holyoke was charged with breaking into a motor vehicle in the daytime to commit a felony, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (shod foot), and another count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.\nWilk said a man and a woman were leaving their home on 542 Montgomery Street just after noon on Sunday when they saw Caez in the back of their son's work van where he keeps numerous work tools.\nWhen the male resident confronted Caez, he said he was looking for someone named Jason. While the female resident called police, her husband stood by Caez's car.\nWilk said once Caez heard sirens, he ran towards his car, kicked and pushed the victim aside, then attempted to flee.\nWhen police arrived, the female resident was yelling for help while her husband and Caez were fighting inside a car.\nCaez and the male resident were eventually separated. Caez was taken into custody and charged based on the resident's statements.\nCaez was held on $290 bail and was arraigned in district court Monday morning.\nCopyright 2018 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "Crews continue to battle a structure fire on East Street in Chicopee this evening.\nChicopee Deputy Fire Chief David Beauregard told Western Mass News firefighters were returning from a previous call when they saw flames coming out of the building on 105 East Street around 4:20 p.m.\nNeighbors watched in shock as flames devoured the roof of T&L's Antiques.\nWith a lot of furniture inside the building, it has only made the fire more difficult to knock down in addition to freezing temperatures.\nDeputy Chief Beauregard noted the weather impacted crews battling this fire. He said the cold created problems with their radios and ice on top of power lines had to be knocked down.\nDeputy Chief Beauregard tells Western Mass News there were no injuries.\nCrews were finally able to knock down the fire several hours later.\nWestern Mass News has a crew at the scene and we will have more information as it becomes available.\nCopyright 2018 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – A Chicopee man was killed in a motorcycle accident Sunday night in Springfield.\nSpringfield Police Sgt. John Delaney told 22News the crash happened just before 11:30 p.m. at the corner of Dwight and Carew Street.\nDelaney says the 25-year-old Chicopee resident was riding his motorcycle on Dwight Street before his bike and a car crashed into each other. He was taken to Baystate Medical Center, where he died.\nThe driver of the car has been identified as a 20-year-old Springfield resident. The name of the victim is not being released until family members are notified.\nDelaney says the cause of the accident is still being investigated, and that no charges have been filed at this time.", "Chicopee police are asking for the public’s help in identifying a two people involved in recent thefts.\nOfficer Mike Wilk told Western Mass News that the suspects stole items from residents on Clarendon Street and Riverdale Road.\nThe first incident took place on Clarendon Street around 3 a.m. when they attempted to steal a 3 wheeled trike and caused damage while trying to flee the area.\nThen on 4:30 a.m. the same day, the suspects went to Riverdale Road and stole items from unlocked vehicles.\nWilk describes one suspect as wearing an Adidas sweatshirt, and the other wears his hair in a large bun.\nThe Chicopee Police Department posted four surveillance videos of the suspects when the thefts took place.\nIf anyone knows these suspects, they are asked to contact the detective unit at 413-594-1730 or can private message the department’s Facebook page.\nCopyright 2017 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "CHICOPEE - A Holyoke man was arrested and charged with assault and battery after two city residents confronted him and accused of breaking into their son's van.\nLuis Caez, 42, of 56 Cabot St., was arrested at about noon Sunday and charged with breaking into a motor vehicle in the daytime to commit a felony, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a shod foot and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, said Michael Wilk, police public information officer.\nPolice were initially called to 542 Montgomery St. to respond to a complaint about breaking into a motor vehicle. When they arrived a woman was screaming for help and two men were fighting at a car.\nThe two victims told police they confronted Caez who was inside their son's work van which carried many tools. When they called police, Caez fled from the van, allegedly kicking and pushing the man. The victim then attempted to stop, Caez who ran into his car and tried to drive away, Wilk said.\nOfficers arrested Caez, who was held on $290 bail and arraigned in Chicopee District Court Monday, he said.", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – A section of East Street in Chicopee was closed for most of the day Saturday because of that devastating fire that began late Friday afternoon at a furniture company.\n22News cameras were rolling as the fire ripped through the T & L Pre-owned Furniture and Antique company.\nAnd because the building was filled with furniture, it only added fuel to the fire and took hours to put out.\nA fire department dispatcher told 22News, the owner of the furniture company was inside when the fire started, but fortunately he was able to get out safe.\nNo one was injured.", "WINCHENDON, Mass. (AP) — A driver whose car plunged into an icy Massachusetts pond has been rescued from the frigid water.\nThe Winchendon Fire Department says a man was plowing a parking lot in the town on Sunday afternoon when he saw the car leave a roadway and enter Hunts Pond. The man called 911, telling dispatchers the car was still in the water with the driver inside.\nThe fire department says the driver extricated himself and sat on the roof of the car, which was in about 8 to 10 feet (2.5 to 3 meters) of water.\nA fire lieutenant threw a rope to the driver as the car was quickly sinking.\nThe man was instructed to tie the rope around himself before crews pulled him safely to shore. He was unhurt.\nCopyright © 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.", "CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – A man from Connecticut is scheduled to be in Chicopee District Court Monday for a pre-trial hearing.\nTwenty-four year-old Jonathan Cotto of New Britain, Connecticut, sent three people to the hospital after causing a three-car crash in July.\nCotto has already been arraigned, and is being held on $25,000 bail. He plead not guilty to multiple charges including driving on a suspended license, operating an unregistered and uninsured motor vehicle, and negligence. He was arrested after the crash at the intersection of Granby Road and Grattan Street.\nCotto allegedly drover 100 miles per hour through a traffic light at the intersection, before hitting a mail truck. The postal worker had to be freed from his truck by the Chicopee Fire Department.\nThe crash sent four people, including Cotto, to the hospital. Two were released shortly after with minor injuries.\nThe postal worker and passenger of the third vehicle, however, had more serious injuries.\nCotto is currently being held at the Hampden House of Corrections in Ludlow.", "Two thousand students are going to be able to start school just like the rest of their peers.\nWestern Mass News, the United Way of Pioneer Valley, Peter Pan Bus Lines and you teamed up to help local kids get the tools they need to win this school year by ‘Stuffing the Bus.’\nToday, those supplies were picked up from our station at Liberty Street to be shipped off to schools in need.\nThis year's donations began in late July as a way to get local kids the supplies they need to have a successful school year.\n“It pretty good. It feels really nice to sort of see the community engaging with everyone and giving back to people,” said Chris Woods, volunteer coordinator with United Way of Pioneer Valley.\nResident after resident rolled through our station helping to stuff this Peter Pan Bus with essential supplies like pencils, binders, pens, glue sticks, notepads, backpacks and more, so students can get the job done.\n“I'm excited. You know all these supplies are going down to homeless students all throughout western Massachusetts,” Woods explained.\nThe goal was to fill over 2,000 backpacks and according to United Way of Pioneer Valley, you came through!\n“We're going to get 2,000 backpacks filled this year. I feel pretty confident on that. We have a lot of community donations and a lot of supplies just donated today, so it feels good,” Woods added.\nWoods grew up in western Massachusetts and he said that giving back to where he grew up was a big factor for him getting involved.\n“It feels great to be giving back to the community like this,” Woods noted.\nIn just nine days’ time, these donated supplies will be off to the children who need them most at schools in Springfield, West Springfield, Holyoke, Westfield, Chicopee and South Hadley.\nWoods told Western Mass News that people still have a few days to help out with the final donations being collected on Wednesday at Six Flags.\nThanks to the public's support, Woods said this bus can roll away knowing thousands of kids are benefiting.\n“We're making an impact on 2,000 students’ lives right now by doing this. Two thousand students are going to be able to start school just like the rest of their peers,\" Woods said.\nTo see more pictures from today's pickup by Peter Pan Bus Lines, you can CLICK HERE.\nCopyright 2017 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "Threatening notes aren't the way for residents to express their displeasure. Each year, hundreds contact City Hall to complain about space savers, ratting out neighbors who, they believe, reserve parking spots in violation of city rules.\nStart the conversation, or Read more at Boston.com.", "WATERBURY – A driver, attempting to pull out of the parking lot at the Hill Street Athletic and Social Club on Tudor Street Sunday, apparently did not go in the direction he intended. Instead of backing out of the lot…\nYou Need to be Logged in and have an Active Subscription to read the full article\nLOG IN Username Password Lost Password? Remember Me Register Lost Password\nRead more of this story and more!\nQualifying Print Subscribers have FREE access to everything on rep-am.com and our E-Edition.\nIf you are a print subscriber CLICK HERE to find out how to get access to the site and the E-Edition.\nNot a print subscriber?\nYou can purchase a single-day subscription for only $1.00 to read this and access all of our content and our E-Edition. CLICK HERE purchase a single day subscription.\nBecome an electronic subscriber to the Republican-American for only $8.67 a month. CLICK HERE.\nThere is no cost to Register\nRegistration is required to Post Comments, Purchase a Subscription, Post Reader Photos, Post Calendar Events and community news (comming soon).", "CHICOPEE - While one candidate for City Council in Ward 6 is promoting his youth and new ideas, his opponent said experience is needed now more than ever.\nDerek Dobosz, 21, of 70 Post Road, a correctional officer for the Hampden County Sheriff's Department, is challenging Timothy McLellan, 51, of 33 Robak Drive, an administrator at the Veterans Administration at Leeds, for the seat.\n\"Now is a time when Ward 6 needs experienced leadership with the MGM Casino coming,\" said McLellan, who has served on the City Council for 10 years. \"I'm a taxpayer, I'm a homeowner and I have two kids in the public schools.\"\nBurnett Road in Ward 6 starts at the Massachusetts Turnpike exit and where Interstate-291 ends. When the MGM Casino opens in September 2018, McLellan said he expects traffic to increase.\n\"There will be increased development and traffic in that area,\" he said. \"I have a special permit (requirement) in place to make sure any project they want to do is looked at by us.\"\nIn the immediate future, McLellan said he plans to continue overseeing the $11 million project that started this summer to add a second water main that runs from the Quabbin Reservoir into Chicopee. The new redundant water line runs through Ward 6 and McLellan said he will ensure roads and other areas that were torn up will be restored properly.\nHe also continues to work on several ordinances he began including one to ban plastic bags to improve the environment and reduce trash problems near some of the big box stores in his ward.\nDobosz said he has a wide range of issues he wants to work on if elected.\nConcerned about the amount of time police spend at Walmart, he said he would push for the business to hire more security to reduce calls and keep more city officers on the road. He is also concerned about the new trash system and how it impacts families.\n\"I believe families should be allowed to buy a second barrel. I don't like the trash system,\" he said.\nHe said he would support a proposal from City Council candidate Joel McAuliffe to work toward having Chicopee Electric Light provide high-speed Internet to residents and businesses and would work with the School Committee to ensure the budget is balanced without cutting programs.\nDobosz said he would also work to install a crosswalk at Chicopee State Park, an issue McLellan fought for years but was told it could not be done under state highway regulations because it would not lead to a sidewalk.\n\"I'm just promising to respond to my constituents, their issues are my issues and I will prioritize the little issues,\" Dobosz said. \"I don't promise anything to anybody but I will do my best to help people on an individual level.\"\nMcLellan, who also runs a business part-time, said no matter how busy he is he always does his best to help residents who call with an issue.\n\"I really like doing it. I always have time for all my constituents,\" he said. \"I care about my ward, that is the only reason I do this.\"\nDobosz is studying for his bachelor's degree at the University of Massachusetts, is a member of the Chicopee Zoning Board of Appeals and volunteers on Lorraine's Soup Kitchen Board of Directors.\nMcLellan, a disabled U. S. Navy veteran, holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and finance from Western New England College.", "In his Major League debut Boston Red Sox pitcher Brian Johnson delivers a pitch against Houston Astro Jose Altuve in the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, July 21, 2015, in Houston. CHICOPEE - The Chicopee Parks and Recreation Department is sponsoring a three-day trip to Baltimore to watch two Boston Red Sox games.\nStart the conversation, or Read more at MassLive.com.", "By: News Staff\nEmail: news@abc6.com\nTwitter: @ABC6\nWINCHENDON, Mass. (WLNE) — A driver had to be rescued from a Massachusetts pond after his vehicle took a plunge.\nThe Winchendon Fire Department says a man was plowing a parking lot in the town at approximately 4 a.m. Sunday when he saw the vehicle leave the roadway and enter Hunts Pond.\nThe witness called police telling dispatchers the car was still in the water with the driver inside.\n“The guy was still in the vehicle and trapped, I live less than a quarter mile away, I arrived on the scene and the kid had just self- ejected and was sitting on the roof,” said the witness.\nThe car was in about 8 to 10 feet of water.\nThe driver is now home, uninjured but first responders say he would not have stood a chance if that plow driver had not looked up at the right time.\n©WLNE-TV /ABC6 2017", "With the increase of urban development in Halifax and tourism season right around the bend, some residents say the city needs to better inform people of what parking options are available in the city’s busiest districts.", "WESTFORD, MA (WHDH) - A serious crash involving a tractor-trailer and a car in Westford left a motorist trapped inside their vehicle.\nEmergency crews responded to Powers Road at Littleton Road and Boston Road for a report of a crash and found a car pinned against a utility pole.\nVideo from Sky7 showed firefighters working to pull the motorist from the car. The driver’s condition is not known.\nIt appears the tractor-trailer collided with the car, causing significant damage.\nMotorists are urged to avoid the area as crews work at the scene.\nThe cause of the crash is not clear at this time.\nNo additional details were immediately available.\n(Copyright (c) 2017 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)", "Double yellow lines are vital to ensure emergency services can reach people quickly, according to residents of a Worthing apartment block.\nRetired postman Gerry Arnold, 87, lives in Oakland Court in Gratwicke Road, which has had double yellow lines in front of it since it was built 31 years ago, he said.\nBut now West Sussex County Council contractors have started replacing them with parking spaces.\nGerry said he has already had to chase them away once.\nHe said: “It is really putting the pressure on the old people here. It’s making me ill.”\nThe need for quick access to the flats was made real for Gerry when he was trapped in a lift and had to be rescued.\nTwo fire engines were able to park right outside the flats, but would have been delayed if parked cars had been in the way, Gerry said.\nHe added: “A lot of people wait for taxis, if there is parking there they will have to stand in the street.”\nA spokesman for West Sussex County Council said: “Local access and safety requirements were considered when preparing the initial proposals.\n“All in all, it was considered that access to/from the flats would still be possible. Drop-offs by taxis could be carried out within the grounds.\nThe spokesman said no objections to the proposals from residents were received, but that they could apply for a traffic regulation order (TRO) if they were unhappy.", "An Agawam resident has woken up to their car on blocks for the second time in the last two weeks.\nNow, Agawam police are stepping in and conducting an investigation to track down the possible suspect or suspects.\nWhen Agawam resident Chantal Bernard went outside to get into her Honda Accord, she noticed something was missing.\n\"I was confused at first, I rubbed my eyes, and looked again and [the tires] were still gone,\" said Bernard.\nShe posted a picture to Facebook, showing the car on blocks.\nChantal told Western Mass News that the last few weeks have been tough, because this isn't the only thing that's gone missing from her yard.\n\"Lights [were] stolen in our front yard a few weeks ago, so it's really frustrating these last few weeks,\" Bernard noted.\nSurveillance video at the home captured the suspect in the act.\nThe family wants answers not only because the tires will cost money to replace, but because they rely on the car for everyday travel.\nThe Agawam Police Department currently has one other open investigation involving tire thefts and they ask anyone who knows anything about these incidents to contact them at 413-786-4767.\nCopyright 2017 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "A woman trapped in a burning apartment building in New Orleans East threw her child from a second-story window to firefighters below Saturday morning (Feb. 3). The three-alarm fire injured five people, including a firefighter, the New Orleans Fire Department said.\nThe fire was reported at 12:25 a.m. when someone called 911 to say a vehicle was burning at the apartment complex in the 14400 block of Peltier Drive at Alcee Fortier Boulevard. Subsequent callers reported the flames spreading the the apartments.\nFirefighters arrived at 12:31 a.m. \"Almost simultaneously, 911 operators had begun to receive multiple calls stating residents were trapped inside the burning occupied building, which housed commercial units on the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors,\" the Fire Department said. Heavy smoke and fire were visible coming out of the structure's roof, heavy flames from the back of the building.\nGoing door to door, firefighters evacuated residents. A second alarm was sounded at 12:37 a.m., after which firefighters confirmed that some residents were trapped inside and that buildings adjacent to the burning one also were in danger.\n\"As firefighters began an aggressive interior attack of the fire, a company officer heard screams coming from a rear second-floor window located in the building's courtyard-parking lot area,\" the Fire Department said. \"As firefighters were raising a ladder to rescue the trapped residents, a woman threw her child out of the rear second-floor window to firefighters below.\"\nAt 1 a.m., the fire intensified and a third alarm was called in. Firefighters evacuated residents from a two-story, eight-unit apartment building that shared a courtyard and parking area.\nIn all, 77 Fire Department personnel and 26 fire vehicles responded, controlling the blaze at 3:09 a.m., officials said. Emergency Medical Services and Police Department personnel assisted.\nResidents in the rear building were allowed to re-enter their apartments after it was determined to be safe, officials said.\nThe cause of the fire remains under investigation.\nOne firefighter injured his right shoulder while fighting the blaze and was taken to a hospital. \"The full extent of his injury is currently unknown but not believed to be lifethreatening,\" the Fire Department said.\nTwo women and two children were taken to a hospital by Emergency Medical Services. One woman had a hip injury and was being treated for smoke inhalation, and the other woman and the children were being treated for smoke inhalation.", "A meeting was called Monday morning in Sandisfield, following a weekend fire that burned the town highway department to the ground.\nThe five-alarm fire left the community without snow plows and sand trucks and with more snow expected tomorrow, there is serious concern about clearing the roads.\nThere are tense moments as the town of Sandisfield plans for another snow storm - only this time, they will be without their highway department building and everything that comes with it.\nIt was burned to the ground Sunday morning. The fire department said that the cause is likely to be from a furnace inside.\nThe small town lost all four of its plows and today, community leaders turned to neighboring communities and the state for help.\nMassDOT is doing its part by sending in three 10-wheeler plows of their own, the ones you see on every state highway. The agency will be plowing all of the pavement roads.\nThe other half of in town are all dirt. With the help of mutual aid in neighboring towns, the highway department is scrounging up any leftover vehicles to finish the rest.\n\"Up here, you're worried about the snow, roads being plowed, people getting to work, and it looks like we will have more than enough help,\" said Larry Dwyer of Sandisfield.\nSandisfield may be small population wise, only about 900 people, but it covers a lot of ground - nearly 100 miles of road to be plowed.\nThe town itself cannot emphasize it enough; their priority is the safety of the students.\n\"A lot of kids are affected and there's a lot of side roads, long roads that kids have to take to get to school, so we want to make sure everybody is safe,\" said Farmington River Regional School Supt. Thomas Nadolny.\nNadolny told Western Mass News that the Farmington River Regional School District will have a two hour delay on Tuesday.\nBetween the devastating fire and the snowstorm, not one person has been hurt and they aim to keep it that way.\n\"We're formulating a solid plan. It's not just a quick knee-jerk reaction that we can look at because the winter season is just starting here, so I'm confident they will do the right thing,\" Nadolny explained.\nCopyright 2017 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "CHICOPEE - A Holyoke man accused of driving across a lawn and over some stairs before crashing into a parked car was arrested on his fourth drunken driving charge Monday.\nDaniel Robert, 56, of 27 Gates St., was arrested at about 5:50 p.m. and charged with drunken driving, fourth offense, and reckless operation of a motor vehicle, said Michael Wilk, police public information officer.\nRobert lost control of his pickup truck and drove over the lawn at 48 Sanders St., bumping over stairs and then striking a Honda of a worker who was delivering food, he said.\nThe owner of the Honda was not in the car at the time and was warned by another witness of the crash to \"Get out of the way, he is drunk.\" The Honda was badly damaged in the crash, Wilk said.\nWhen Officer Eric Sunny arrived he spoke to Robert, who was still in his truck. He allegedly smelled of alcohol, his speech was slurred and he was unsteady on his feet. He also did not have a valid Massachusetts license, Wilk said.\nRobert was arrested and held on $1,040 bail. He is expected to be arraigned in Chicopee District Court Tuesday.", "CHICOPEE - The School Department is preparing for the possible arrival of students from Puerto Rico who are victims of Hurricane Maria, but no children have come yet.\nIn response to a question about hurricane victims, Superintendent Richard W. Rege said he has had inquiries from relatives of two families that may be bringing children to Chicopee. One of the families has four children and the other has one, he said.\n\"If the children are in middle school or high school it is not a problem,\" Rege said, adding there is room in the schools to absorb the students without having to add extra teachers.\nBut if arriving children are in kindergarten or first grade it could be a little more difficult. The younger grades are full and a teacher likely would have to be added, which would have an impact on the School Department's already taxed budget, Rege said.\nThere is classroom space at Fairview Elementary, so a class for the youngest children could be added there if there is an influx of children, he said.\n\"I just want to make sure the school system is prepared,\" School Committee member Mary-Elizabeth Pniak-Costello said.\nHurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, which was already reeling from the damage caused by Hurricane Irma, on Sept. 20. The Category 4 hurricane caused widespread damage and residents are still struggling with a lack of clean water, electricity and adequate housing. Most schools remain closed.\nA sizable number of Chicopee residents have relatives in Puerto Rico. Statewide, officials are anticipating that victims of Hurricane Maria may move to areas where they have relatives while the cleanup is happening, Pniak-Costello said.\nAccording to the 2010 census, there are slightly fewer than 10,000 people living in Chicopee who are Latino. About 35 percent of the children attending schools in the city are Latino, according to state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education statistics.\nWhile some questions have not been answered yet, Rege said he hopes to enroll any children who move to Chicopee in school as soon as possible and get them any services they need, even if funding issues are not sorted out immediately.\n\"Knowing kids have not been in school for two and a half weeks to three weeks, we are not going to let them sit home. They need to be in school,\" Rege said.\nMassachusetts superintendents have been talking with state officials to see if any financial assistance will be available for those who may have an influx of children -- some of whom do not speak English and may need extra help because they have been traumatized by the devastation the hurricane brought.\nOne question being debated is how extra students will be counted. Each school receives state assistance based partly on the number of students in the schools and the official enrollment for every school is calculated on Oct. 1, Rege said.\nCurrently the Massachusetts Association of School Committees is working with state officials to receive approval to include children who are hurricane victims in the official enrollment numbers, even if they arrive after Oct. 1, Rege said.\nChildren may also qualify under the McKinney-Vento Act that sets regulations for children who are homeless, he said.", "Residents of one of Halifax’s busiest downtown districts are calling on the city to help ease parking congestion by rolling out a “parking congestion campaign.”\n“That [the campaign] will really help maybe take some pressure off of the downtown core,” said Joanne Corbett, an urban resident.\nREAD MORE: Halifax condo developer comes face-to-face with concerned Schmidtville residents\nCorbett, along with many of her neighbours, said increased development has put added strain on the limited on-street parking spots in the area.\n“It makes it a lot more difficult to find [parking] because when a building is being built, the surrounding right-of-way is often blocked off from pedestrians and vehicles,” said Christopher Breckenridge, another urban resident from the Schmidtville neighbourhood.\nThe city turned streets surrounding Schmidtville into “permit parking” last fall.\nIt’s a move Corbett applauds the city for. She said it has made a huge difference in the ability residents have securing parking spots by their homes.\n“People were house-bound because you had no place to park,” said Corbett, referencing the area before permit parking was implemented.\nCorbett believes there’s plenty of parking options in the downtown area but they aren’t being utilized because the general public is uninformed as to where they are.\n“They [the city] should have an awareness strategy letting people know where the underground lots are, how much they are per hour, which merchants give free passes,” she said.\nREAD MORE: Halifax business owner ‘infuriated’ by proposed parking ticket fine hike\nWhile concerns have been raised in regards to new bike lanes taking away from available on-street spots, cycling advocate Eliza Jackson said increased cycling infrastructure will help alleviate parking pressures.\n“For the people that do have the ability to walk and cycle, they’re more encouraged to do so, leaving the spots that are more available for the people who actually need it,” Jackson said.\nJackson adds that increased sustainable transportation helps ease the movement of traffic through cities.\n“I think there’s this kind of idea that it’s sort of “bikes versus cars,” but really it’s about providing more options to people to get around,” she said." ]

[ "May 3 Telecom Italia Chief Executive Flavio Cattaneo tells analysts in a post-results call:\n* group will need to invest 600-650 million euro in spectrum license renewal\n* does not expect any particular changes in Italian mobile market in next 6-9 months before Iliad's arrival\n* without shops, it's impossible to increase number of customers or have significant number of mobile clients in Italy\n* network spin-off is not an option on the table Further company coverage: (Reporting by Milan newsroom)" ]

[ "MILAN, April 13 Telecom Italia has signed an agreement with Italy's biggest regional utility A2A to help it roll out its ultrafast broadband network, two sources said on Thursday, as it squares up to rival Enel .\nTelecom Italia will rent Milan-based A2A's existing pipe infrastructure to help cut the costs of laying fibre, the sources said.\n\"Telecom Italia is keen to develop the business model and extend it to other local utilities,\" one of the sources said, adding the company had also held talks with Rome-based utility Acea and Bologna's Hera.\nThe utilities declined to comment.\nThe move comes as power utility Enel steps up plans to develop its own nationwide fibre network using the pipes and pylons of its distribution grid.\nLast year Enel set up OpEn Fiber which includes state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti as a shareholder.\nThe Italian government sees the development of an ultrafast internet network as a top priority to modernise the country's phone infrastructure and to support business.\nIt enlisted the help of state-controlled Enel to speed up the roll-out after accusing Telecom Italia of dragging its feet.\nTelecom Italia, whose biggest shareholder is French media group Vivendi, has pledged to spend 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) over the next three years to speed up its broadband plans.\nIt recently said it was looking for a partner to help it fund development of the network in economically non-viable areas of the country.\n($1 = 0.9398 euros) (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; editing by Jason Neely)", "May 3 Telecom Italia says:\n* Q1 group EBITDA up 16.2 percent to 1.99 billion euros\n* Q1 revenues up 8.5 percent to 4.82 billion euros versus 4.73 billion euros analyst consensus provided by company\n* Q1 domestic EBITDA 1.62 billion euros\n* adjusted net debt at 25.24 billion euros at end-March versus 25.31 billion euros analyst consensus provided by company\n* sees domestic revenues returning to growth in Q2 Further company coverage: (Reporting by Milan newsroom)", "April 5 TPG Telecom Ltd :\n* Successfully bid for 2 lots of 5mhz of spectrum in 2.5ghz band at general spectrum auction that concluded in singapore this week\n* Tpg telecom ltd - total purchase price for this new spectrum is s$23.8m, payable in april 2017\n* Tpg telecom -\"expenditure will be in addition to guidance previously provided by company for forecast capital expenditure investment in singapore\" Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:", "MILAN, March 28 Rothschild is working with Telecom Italia to find a partner to help fund part of the Italian phone group's broadband business in Italy, three sources said on Tuesday.\nLast Thursday Telecom Italia said it would set up a new company to roll out its ultrafast broadband network in non-economically viable areas of Italy. It said it intended to choose a financial partner as majority shareholder in the coming months.\nRothschild has no official mandate, one of the sources said.\nFinancial daily Il Sole 24 Ore said on Tuesday adviser Rothschild had identified around 20 players interested in investing in the unit.\n\"Teasers were sent out last week,\" another person familiar with the matter said, adding the aim was to find a partner in coming weeks. (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Agnieszka Flak)", "May 2 Tiscali SpA:\n* Reported on Friday FY revenue 207.2 million euros ($226.20 million) versus 202.1 million euros a year ago\n* FY net loss 45.0 million euros versus loss 18.5 million euros\n* FY net loss widened due to 19 mln euro amortizations for fixed wireless network in FY 2016, 7 mln euro losses for discontinued activities in FY 2016, and 12.8 mln euro positive impact on FY 2015 due to a one-off entry\n* To focus for the next few months on core business in order to strengthen its presence on the Italian market of fixed and mobile broadband\nSource text: bit.ly/2qzn5v7\nFurther company coverage: ($1 = 0.9160 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom)", "Telecom Argentina, Telefonica and Claro all expressed interest in a planned auction of 90MHz of 4G spectrum which could raise $800 million for Argentina’s government, Reuters reported.\nThe auction is likely to be made up of 60MHz returned by telecom company Arlink and 30MHz held by state telecoms company Arsat.\nArgentina’s Modernisation Ministry told Reuters a change in regulation is required to allow the government to auction off Arsat’s spectrum. This will happen around mid-year through either a law or a presidential decree.\nTelecom Argentina said in January it would invest $5 billion over two years to improve its infrastructure and communications service.\n“We view a government spectrum auction as good and necessary, keeping in mind the huge growth in the use of mobile data, with permanent connectivity demand from users,” the operator told Reuters.\nTelecom Argentina, which recently merged with cable TV provider Cablevision, must return 80MHz of spectrum as the merged entity exceeds the 140MHz limit. However, because the government wants to raise this cap, the operator will probably be alowed to participate in the upcoming auction.\nStrategies\nMeanwhile Telefonica, which operates in the country as Movistar, plans to invest around $2 billion in the country over the next year. It said in a statement it would be interested in “an eventual auction”.\nClaro, owned by America Movil, also plans to invest $400 million per year through 2020 and “has interest in growing and developing the networks that benefit service to its customers, be it through deployment or acquisition of spectrum,” the company told Reuters.\nPresident Mauricio Macri sought to attract investment to the telecoms sector to boost competition and improve connectivity since coming into office in 2015. He also pushed a change to laws allowing companies to offer multiple telecoms services.\nIn January telecoms regulator Enacom approved rules which will allow companies to offer converged mobile, fixed, pay-TV and internet services, as part of a wider push to boost competition in the country.", "April 24 (Reuters) - Telecom Italia:\n* ACTIVIST FUND ELLIOTT REITERATES IT FULLY SUPPORTS TELECOM ITALIA CEO AMOS GENISH - PORTFOLIO MANAGER Further company coverage: (Reporting by Milan newsroom)", "April 24 (Reuters) - Mediaset Chief Financial Officer Marco Giordani says:\n* IMPLEMENTATION OF GROUP’S INDUSTRIAL PLAN IS “WELL-AHEAD OF EXPECTATIONS”, ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO PAY-TV\n* DEAL WITH SKY ITALY UNIT WILL IMPROVE GROUP’S ITALIAN EBIT BY 60-70 MILLION EUROS PER YEAR, EFFECT ON 2018 WILL BE HALVED GIVEN TIMING OF DEAL\n* HAS BEEN IN CONTACT WITH TELECOM ITALIA, BUT ONLY DISCUSSING RETRANSMISSION OF FREE TO AIR RIGHTS\n* DEAL WITH SKY ITALY UNIT DOES NOT AFFECT FINANCIAL RESULTS OF TOWER COMPANY EI TOWERS\n* COST SAVINGS FROM SKY DEAL ALREADY INCLUDED IN GROUP’S 2020 INDUSTRIAL PLAN, NOT GOING TO CHANGE COST REDUCTION GUIDANCE\n* SAYS REVENUES FOR PAY-TV WILL START DECLINING FROM JUNE AFTER END OF SOCCER PACKAGES\n* SAYS WORST CASE SCENARIO FOR PAY-TV UNIT IS TO LOSE 7/12 OF PREVIOUS YEAR’S REVENUES Further company coverage: (Reporting by Milan newsroom)", "(Adds details, context)\nMILAN/PARIS, March 29 Vivendi is considering putting its chief executive Arnaud de Puyfontaine forward as Telecom Italia's next chairman, sources told Reuters, potentially aggravating concerns about the French group's growing influence over Italian companies.\nThe board of Telecom Italia, of which Vivendi is the top shareholder with 24 percent, comes up for renewal in May. Giuseppe Recchi currently serves as the Italian phone group's chairman, while de Puyfontaine acts as his deputy.\nVivendi's influence at Telecom Italia has come under the spotlight after it took a significant holding in Italian broadcaster Mediaset, leading to speculation over whether it plans to combine the two companies.\nNo final decision has been taken over who will be proposed as chairman of Telecom Italia and Recchi could be confirmed in his post, two of the sources said on Wednesday.\n\"There are only two rationale choices: either keeping Recchi or replacing him with someone who represents the interests of the No. 1 shareholder,\" one source said. \"Having a Vivendi guy as head of Telecom Italia's board would make sense.\"\nIf de Puyfontaine were appointed chairman he would likely assume the post without the executive powers held by Recchi in a bid to defuse some of the concerns over Vivendi's influence at Telecom Italia, the source added.\nVivendi and Telecom Italia declined to comment.\nAny proposal by Vivendi will have to be approved by Telecom Italia's shareholders and lists detailing the proposed candidates have to be submitted by April 9.\nItaly's communications regulator is already looking into Vivendi's stakebuilding at Mediaset, given domestic anti-trust regulations that prevent companies from having an excessive market share both in telecommunications and media.\n\"The choice of de Puyfontaine as chairman seems legitimate but Vivendi would run the risk of clashing with Rome and regulators in a country where the state still tends to exercise some undue influence over the private sector,\" Andrea Giuricin, CEO at TRA Consulting, said.\nVivendi is chaired by tycoon Vincent Bollore, who already has some sway in Italy's business world as key shareholder of influential investment bank Mediobanca, which in turn is the biggest investor in insurer Generali.\nSince becoming a Telecom Italia investor in 2015, Vivendi has increasingly taken an active role at the heavily-indebted Italian group and secured four seats on its board.\nFormer Telecom Italia CEO Marco Patuano was replaced by Flavio Cattaneo last year after what sources said were disagreements over strategy with the new top investor.\nAsked about rumours that Recchi could be replaced, Cattaneo said on Tuesday he would be happy if he stayed on. (Reporting by Paola Arosio, Stefano Rebaudo and Danilo Masoni in Milan and Mathieu Rosemain in Paris; writing by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Alexander Smith)", "April 20 Telecom Plus Plc:\n* Customer and service numbers for full year show further modest growth\n* Total dividend of 48p (2016: 46p) per share for year (+4.3 pct)\n* Launch of new home insurance service\n* Sees FY adjusted pre-tax profits from continuing operations around 53 mln stg (2016: 48.8 mln stg excluding OPUS) in line with previous guidance.\n* Cash flow remains strong, in line with management expectations.\n* Home insurance is expected to have a negligible impact on our profitability for current financial year\n* Anticipate number of services we supply will increase by between 5 pct and 10 pct over coming year.\n* Benefit from faster organic growth will, if current trends continue, be reflected in our reported results for following financial year Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Bengaluru Newsroom)", "April 12 Giglio Group SpA:\n* Signs 7.2 million euro ($7.64 million) contract with Persidera\n* The contract will run until 2020 for the distribution of the signal to the DTT Network\n* Persidera is a company of the group TIM (70 pct controlled by TIM and 30 pct by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso) Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: ($1 = 0.9422 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom)", "* EBRD backed Polish energy with 100 mln euros in 2016\n* This compares to around 250 mln euros in past years\n* Quotes law, subsidy system as reasons for investment slump\n* Still expects to finance Poland's first offshore wind farms\nBy Agnieszka Barteczko and Anna Koper\nWARSAW, April 13 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has cut its financing of wind farms in Poland because there are fewer projects as government policies have made them unprofitable, a top EBRD official said.\nPrivate investors spent around 34 billion zlotys ($8.5 billion) on the construction of wind farms in Poland in the past few years, helping the country become less reliant on coal and taking it closer to European Union carbon emissions targets.\n\"These investors are now suffering significant losses and are unlikely to incur new investment in Poland,\" Grzegorz Zielinski, EBRD's Poland chief, told Reuters.\n\"I'm afraid that this could translate into a negative perception of Poland as a country unfavourable for private investors in regulated sectors,\" he added.\nOverall investment in Poland, across industries, fell 5.5 percent last year, the biggest decline in 14 years, according to the statistics office data.\nIn the energy sector, the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) wants coal to remain Poland's dominant source of energy for many years. It sees renewable energy as unstable and has introduced laws on wind farms that have made many of them unprofitable.\nIn 2016 the government unexpectedly banned building wind farms too close to dwellings and imposed a higher property tax on wind farm owners.\nThe subsidy system for renewables, based on tradeable green certificates, has also become oversupplied and caused a slump in prices, which has hit wind farms' cashflows.\nCritics say such policies may lead Poland to miss the EU target of generating 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.\nEBRD provides financing for energy projects aimed at reducing emissions, mostly renewable sources and power distribution. It spent around 100 million euros on energy projects in Poland in 2016, down from around 250 million euros annually in the previous years.\n\"Following a fall in investment in renewables (in general) EBRD also reduced investment in the energy sector in 2016,\" Zielinski said.\nEBRD backed one of the country's biggest wind farms Banie, in northwest Poland, last year, together with local lenders Alior Bank and BOS. The latter said in March it booked a $25 million writedown on wind-farm related loans for 2016.\n\"We hope that 2017 will be an improvement when it comes to our investments in energy in Poland, but due to the investment uncertainty we do not expect a sudden increase in private investment,\" Zielinski said.\nPoland's biggest private utility Polenergia and state-run PGE are due to launch the country's first offshore wind farms after 2022.\n\"We hope that these projects will go ahead and that we will take part in their financing,\" Zielinski said.\nThis year EBRD expects to spend a similar amount in Poland to 2016 when it provided financing of 780 million euros across all industries. ($1 = 4.0013 zlotys) (Editing by Susan Fenton)", "April 20 Telephone And Data Systems Inc\n* Telephone and Data Systems - on April 13, FCC announced U.S. Cellular was winning bidder for 188 600 Mhz spectrum licenses for aggregate purchase price of $329 million\n* Telephone and Data Systems Inc says at inception of auction process in June 2016, U.S. Cellular made an upfront payment to FCC of $143 million\n* Telephone and Data Systems Inc says U.S. Cellular is required to pay remainder of purchase price of $186 million to FCC by May 11, 2017\n* Telephone and Data Systems - U.S. Cellular currently expects to make such payment using cash on hand and/or borrowings under its revolving credit agreement Source text for Eikon: (bit.ly/2pFUcAR) Further company coverage:", "BRIEF-Spectranetics announces election of new chairperson of the board of directors\n* Spectranetics announces election of new chairperson of the board of directors", "MILAN/PARIS, March 29 Vivendi is considering proposing its CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine as Telecom Italia's next chairman, four sources close to the matter said, at a time when the French group's grip over Italian companies is under scrutiny.\nThe board of Telecom Italia, of which Vivendi is the top shareholder with around 24 percent, comes up for renewal in May. Giuseppe Recchi currently serves as the Italian phone group's chairman, while de Puyfontaine acts as his deputy.\nNo final decision has been taken yet and Recchi could be confirmed in his post, two of the people said on Wednesday. Any proposal by Vivendi would have to be approved by Telecom Italia's shareholders.\nVivendi and Telecom Italia declined to comment.\n(Reporting by Paola Arosio, Stefano Rebaudo and Danilo Masoni in Milan and Mathieu Rosemain in Paris; writing by Agnieszka Flak)", "April 24 (Reuters) - Telecom Italia Chief Executive Amos Genish tells shareholders at AGM:\n* NEW NEGOTIATIONS WITH MEDIASET TO BUY CONTENT FROM BROADCASTER “WELL ADVANCED” Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Reporting by Milan newsroom)", "MILAN, April 5 Telecom Italia's Chief Executive Flavio Cattaneo plans to keep his current job at the Italian phone group regardless of whom shareholders choose to appoint as its next chairman, the top executive said on Wednesday.\nCattaneo made the remarks after a report said he could decide to leave if top shareholder Vivendi pushed for the French group's CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine to become Telecom Italia's chairman with at least the same powers held by current Chairman Giuseppe Recchi.\nTelecom Italia's board comes up for renewal in May.\n\"I will remain regardless of the chairman that shareholders decide to pick as I'm sure they will put me in a position to work well,\" Cattaneo said on the sidelines of an event in Rome, according to comments emailed by a spokesman.\nHe added there were no disagreements with shareholders, including Vivendi, and that they all shared a common vision for the company's strategy.\nSources have said Vivendi is considering putting de Puyfontaine forward as Telecom Italia's next chairman, potentially aggravating concerns about the French group's growing influence over Italian companies. (Reporting by Agnieszka Flak, editing by Valentina Za)", "The following factors could affect Italian markets on Thursday.\nReuters has not verified the newspaper reports, and cannot vouch for their accuracy. New items are marked with (*).\nFor a complete list of diary events in Italy please click on .\nECONOMY\nPrime Minister Paolo Gentiloni attends Culture G7 in Florence; visits Fincantieri plant in Monfalcone (1000 GMT) and Palazzo del Podesta in Mantua (1300 GMT).\nRome, conference on \"The Wealth of the Nation. Financial Education and protection of savings\" with Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan, Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco, market regulator Consob President Giuseppe Vegas (1300 GMT).\nTrani, last hearing in trial of Fitch analyst David Riley, with verdict expected.\nTrani, new hearing in case against ratings agency Standard & Poor's and five of its current and former managers, with verdict expected.\nEnergy Authority AEEGSI releases energy and gas fees effective from April 1, 2017.\nRome, welfare institute INPS President Tito Boeri attends conference (1415 GMT).\nDEBT\nTreasury sells 2.0-2.5 billion euros CCTeu bonds due Feb. 15, 2024; 1.75-2.25 billion euros 1.20 percent BTP bonds due April 1, 2022; 2.0-2.5 billion euros 2.20 percent BTP bonds due June 1, 2027; 0.500-0.750 billion euros 2.80 percent BTP bonds due March 1, 2067; 0.500-1.0 billion euros 0,65 percent BTP bonds due Nov. 1, 2020. Subscriptions close at 0900 GMT.\nCOMPANIES\nTELECOM ITALIA\nVivendi is considering putting its chief executive Arnaud de Puyfontaine forward as Telecom Italia's next chairman, sources told Reuters, potentially aggravating concerns about the French group's growing influence over Italian companies. The board of Telecom Italia, of which Vivendi is the top shareholder with 24 percent, comes up for renewal in May.\nTelecom Italia went live with a website for its new Kena Mobile brand on Wednesday, testing demand for a no-frills alternative to French carrier Iliad, which is set to launch its Free brand in Italy by early next year.\n(*) TELECOM ITALIA, MEDIASET\nVivendi will submit its proposal for Telecom Italia's new board before Italy's communications regulator AGCOM decides on the compatibility of the Frenh media group's stakebuilding at both Telecom Italia and Mediaset with Italian regulations, Il Sole 24 Ore said. AGCOM is due to debate the issue on April 11 but an ad hoc meeting could be called with a yet to-be-defined date given the sensitivity of the issue, the paper added.\n(*) VENETO BANCA, POPOLARE DI VICENZA\nThe managers of the two banks will meet officials of the European Central Banks on Thursday, several papers said. The ECB may use the meeting to indicate what the banks' capital shortfall is and whether they meet the conditions for a precautionary recapitalisation, the papers added.\nIn an interview with Il Messaggero, Popolare di Vicenza CEO Fabrizio Viola said \"given the size of the shortfall to be covered, the most likely option is that of public recapitalisation\". The manager also adds that given simulations carried out, the bank meets the conditions for such a solution.\n(*) ENI, ENEL, POSTE ITALIANE\nState lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti could take on the Treasury's stakes in listed companies, La Repubblica said in an unsourced report. The CDP would not pay in cash but issue privileged shares - giving the right to higher dividends and less governance - that in future would be sold on to institutional investors, the paper added.\n(*) BANCO BPM\nThe deadline for binding offers for a 750 million-euro bad loan portfolio called Project Rainbow put on sale by the bank will be April 10, MF reported.\nSAIPEM\nThe oil services group said on Wednesday it has launched a 500-million euro fixed rate non-convertible bond with a fixed annual coupon of 2.75 percent and a re-offer price of 100 percent.\nENEL\nItaly's biggest utility said on Wednesday it has started construction works at its 754 MW Villanueva photovoltaic plant, the largest photovoltaic facility under construction in the Americas and Enel's largest solar project worldwide.\nShareholders of Slovakia's biggest power utility approved a higher cost estimate for a long-delayed nuclear power plant but could not agree on how to finance the extra 800 million euros, company and government officials said on Wednesday. Slovenske is owned by the government, with a 34 percent stake, and a joint venture between Italy's Enel and privately-held Czech energy group EPH.\nFINCANTIERI The Italian shipyard said on Wednesday its 2016 full year revenues was 4.43 billion euros and its net profit non-recurring items was 25 million euros, versus loss 175 million euros a year ago.\nConference call (0700 GMT).\nENI\nPresident Emma Marcegaglia attends conference on \"International Workshop on Resource Efficiency\" in Rome (1300 GMT).\nEDISON\nAnnual general meeting (0900 GMT).\nCERVED\nCEO Andrea Mignanelli attends research presentation on \"The NPLs Market between Demand and Offer\" at Bocconi University in Milan (1530 GMT).\nBORGOSESIA\nBoard meeting to postpone approval of FY results.\nLANDI RENZO\nBondholders' meeting (0800 GMT).\nPREMUDA\nExtraordinary shareholders' meeting (1230 GMT).\nS.S. LAZIO\nBoard meeting on H1 results.\nUNIEURO IPO-UNE.MI\nIPO ends (started on March 20).\nBUZZI UNICEM\nBoard meeting on FY results (preliminary on Feb. 9), followed by conference call (1430 GMT).\nFor Italian market data and news, click on codes in brackets:\n20 biggest gainers (in percentage)............\n20 biggest losers (in percentage).............\nFTSE IT allshare index\nFTSE Mib index........\nFTSE Allstars index...\nFTSE Mid Cap index....\nBlock trades..........\nStories on Italy...... IT-LEN\nFor pan-European market data and news, click on codes in brackets: European Equities speed guide................... FTSEurofirst 300 index.............................. DJ STOXX index...................................... Top 10 STOXX sectors........................... Top 10 EUROSTOXX sectors...................... Top 10 Eurofirst 300 sectors................... Top 25 European pct gainers....................... Top 25 European pct losers........................ Main stock markets: Dow Jones............... Wall Street report ..... Nikkei 225............. Tokyo report............ FTSE 100............... London report........... Xetra DAX............. Frankfurt market stories CAC-40................. Paris market stories... World Indices..................................... Reuters survey of world bourse outlook......... Western European IPO diary.......................... European Asset Allocation........................ Reuters News at a Glance: Equities............... Main currency report:...............................", "MILAN, April 6 Italian market regulator has summoned Assogestioni, whose funds invest in Telecom Italia , after reports that it met with the phone group's top shareholder ahead of a shareholder meeting in May, two sources close to the matter said.\nA source confirmed Italian media reports that the CEO of Vivendi, which has a 24 percent stake in Telecom Italia, had met the minority shareholder group earlier this week. Vivendi and Assogestioni are due to present rival slates of candidates for Telecom Italia's new board by the end of Sunday.\nSources have said Vivendi is considering putting its CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine forward as Telecom Italia's next chairman, potentially aggravating concerns about the French group's growing influence over Italian companies. (Reporting by Maria Pia Quaglia and Agnieszka Flak)", "The following factors could affect Italian markets on Wednesday.\nReuters has not verified the newspaper reports, and cannot vouch for their accuracy. New items are marked with (*).\nFor a complete list of diary events in Italy please click on .\nECONOMY\nRome, Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan attends \"G7 Science Conference\" (0745 GMT) and a conference (0900 GMT).\nCOMPANIES\nATLANTIA\nManagers at Italian motorway group Atlantia and Spanish peer Abertis will meet this week in Italy to discuss plans for a tie up, two sources said on Tuesday. (*) Separately, Abertis said on Wednesday it has reached an accord to acquire 22.52 percent stake in A4 Holding for 125 million euros, leaving the company with a total stake of 85.36 percent.\n(*) MONTE DEI PASCHI\nThe bank's board will discuss an updated draft of its business plan on Thursday, when it meets to review first quarter's result, Il Sole 24 Ore said. To respond to European Commission's request to reduce costs, the bank has proposed 5,000-6,000 layoffs in the next five years, the newspaper added.\n(*) TELECOM ITALIA, MEDIASET\nIt is almost sure that French media company Vivendi will sell its stake in Italian broadcaster Mediaset to solve a dispute with the Italian communications watchdog AGCOM, Il Corriere said.\nTelecom group Fastweb could team up with Telecom Italia's mobile unit to compete with French group Iliad, Il Giornale reported.\n(*) ALITALIA\nFormer Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is studying a rescue plan for Alitalia which would envisage the government or a state-owned company or agency taking a stake in the carrier, La Stampa reported.\n(*) ENERGY, TELECOMS COMPANIES\nThe government is mulling the possibility to increase the fees for oil and gas concessions, Il Sole 24 Ore reported on Wednesday, adding that also lottery, telecoms and mineral water concessions could be revised up.\n(*) EXOR\nThe holding company of the Agnelli family could become the second-biggest shareholder in Italian publisher Gedi, MF said.\nFIAT CHRYSLER\nItaly car sales fell 4.62 percent in April to 160,359 vehicles, the transport ministry said.\nALITALIA\nItaly industry minister said the government is granting Alitalia a bridge loan of 600 million euros for 6 months.\nTERNIENERGIA\nThe company said it posted sales of 29.9 million euros in the first quarter, 4.59 percent down on the year. Net profits fell 60 percent to 0.2 million euros.\nMAIRE TECNIMONT\nThe company said the Calculation Agent had changed the conversion price of equity-linked bond to 2.0964 euros from 2.1509 euros.\nTECHNOGYM\nThe company said revenues in the first quarter of 2017 amounted to 124.1 million euros, up by 7.4 pct compared to 115.57 million euros in the same period of 2016.\nCOIMA RES\nMeeting with investors, with founder and CEO Manfredi Catella (1630 GMT).\nAGATOS\nCompany holds board meeting on FY results.\nCTI BIOPHARMA\nBoard meeting on Q1 results (press release after U.S. markets closing) followed by conference call (2030 GMT).\nLEONARDO\nBoard meeting on Q1 results.\nPIAGGIO\nBoard meeting on Q1 results, followed by conference call.\nRISANAMENTO\nBoard meeting on Q1 results.\nTELECOM ITALIA\nBoard meeting on Q1 results, followed by conference call (1630 GMT).\nYOOX NET-A-PORTER\nBoard meeting on preliminary Q1 results, followed by conference call (1600 GMT).\nFor Italian market data and news, click on codes in brackets:\n20 biggest gainers (in percentage)............\n20 biggest losers (in percentage).............\nFTSE IT allshare index\nFTSE Mib index........\nFTSE Allstars index...\nFTSE Mid Cap index....\nBlock trades..........\nStories on Italy...... IT-LEN\nFor pan-European market data and news, click on codes in brackets: European Equities speed guide................... FTSEurofirst 300 index.............................. DJ STOXX index...................................... Top 10 STOXX sectors........................... Top 10 EUROSTOXX sectors...................... Top 10 Eurofirst 300 sectors................... Top 25 European pct gainers....................... Top 25 European pct losers........................ Main stock markets: Dow Jones............... Wall Street report ..... Nikkei 225............. Tokyo report............ FTSE 100............... London report........... Xetra DAX............. Frankfurt market stories CAC-40................. Paris market stories... World Indices..................................... Reuters survey of world bourse outlook......... Western European IPO diary.......................... European Asset Allocation........................ Reuters News at a Glance: Equities............... Main currency report:...............................", "BRIEF-Service & Quality Technology to set up unit in Hong Kong via subsidiary\n* Says it plans to invest HK$7 million in its Hong Kong-based subsidiary to help to set up a new sub-subsidiary in Hong Kong", "April 28 Infrastrutture Wireless Italiane SpA:\n* Q1 revenues: 86.4 million euros ($94.13 million) (up 5.8 pct compared with the first quarter of 2016)\n* Q1 profits: 28.9 million euros (up 23.0 pct compared with the same period of 2016)\n* Confirms the guidelines, already disclosed to the market, in outlook for the 2017 financial year Source text: www.1info.it Further company coverage: ($1 = 0.9179 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom)", "MILAN, March 29 Telecom Italia went live with a website for its new Kena Mobile brand on Wednesday, testing demand for a no-frills alternative to French carrier Iliad, which is set to launch its Free brand in Italy by early next year.\nIliad's impending introduction has raised concerns over the impact its offers could have on an already competitive market and on the margins of operators such as Telecom Italia, which is Italy's biggest phone group.\nTelecom Italia, whose top shareholder is French group Vivendi, said earlier this year it would launch a second carrier to protect the premium positioning of its main TIM brand and exploit opportunities in the low-end segment.\nNamed after a warrior armed only with a spear, Kena Mobile aims to make transparent offers to clients who pay \"only for what they need\", Noverca, which manages the brand and is fully-owned by Telecom Italia, said on the new Kena website.\nKena Mobile will seek to attract customers with different price plans, starting as low as 3.99 euros every 30 days for 1,000 minutes of national calls and no activation fee. (Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; editing by Alexander Smith)", "The following factors could affect Italian markets on Thursday.\nReuters has not verified the newspaper reports, and cannot vouch for their accuracy. New items are marked with (*).\nFor a complete list of diary events in Italy please click on .\nDEBT\nTreasury announces sale of 12-month BOT bills, with relative amounts to be auctioned on April 11.\nCOMPANIES\nTELECOM ITALIA, VIVENDI\nFrench media group Vivendi has told the European Commission it could \"de facto\" control Telecom Italia after a shareholder meeting next month appoints a new board of directors, three sources close to the matter said.\nTelecom Italia bondholders' meeting (1300 GMT) (*) Vivendi no longer plans to appoint its CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine as Telecom Italia chairman to defuse the risk of having to consolidate Telecom's debt and of a freezing of its voting rights due to its dominant position, Il Messaggero reported. (*) Telecom Italia's top managers will meet Vivendi's Chairman Vincent Bollore before the presentation of the slates of candidates for the board of directors, Il Sole 24 Ore said. The number of board directors will drop to 15 from current 17, the newspaper added.\n(*) BANCA CARIGE\nIn a letter to the European Central Bank, the lender has said that its liquidity has increased since last year and it is now at a safe level, Il Sole 24 Ore reported citing sources.\nSavings shareholders' meeting (0830 GMT).\n(*) FINCANTIERI\nThe French government will decide on Thursday its official stance on a possible sale of STX France to the Italian shipbuilder, Il Sole 24 Ore said.\n(*) UNICREDIT\nTop investor Aabar has terminated a collar option on its stake in UniCredit, MF reported citing documents.\nFIAT CHRYSLER\nCar dealers on Wednesday added to concerns about the state of the U.S. auto industry and how tough any downturn might be if its six-year recovery has ended.\nCNH INDUSTRIAL\nCNH Industrial unit said on Wednesday it issued at par $500 million notes due 2022 paying a coupon of 4.375 percent.\nPOPOLARE DI VICENZA, CATTOLICA\nBanca Popolare di Vicenza said insurer Cattolica had unexpectedly exercised its right to sell its stake in common insurance joint ventures. It rejected Cattolica's complaint over Popolare di Vicenza's 2014 capital increase.\n(*) MONDADORI\nThe publisher will continue to invest in Italy and France with acquisitions and other initiatives, Chairman Marina Berlusconi told managers in a recent meeting, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.\nAZIMUT HOLDING\nAzimut said over 99 percent of its subordinated convertible bond repurchase had been tendered.\nIL SOLE 24 ORE\nItaly's Sole 24 Ore said it posted a 2016 net loss of 91.9 million euros and would propose a cash call up to 70 million euros.\nASTALDI\n\"Fitter for the future. Strategic update 2017-21\" (0900 GMT).\nPITECO\nPiteco buys controlling stake in American digital payment and clearing house operator.\nBANCO DI SARDEGNA\nAnnual general meeting (0800 GMT).\nBANCO DESIO\nAnnual and extraordinary shareholders' meetings (0800 GMT).\nFor Italian market data and news, click on codes in brackets:\n20 biggest gainers (in percentage)............\n20 biggest losers (in percentage).............\nFTSE IT allshare index\nFTSE Mib index........\nFTSE Allstars index...\nFTSE Mid Cap index....\nBlock trades..........\nStories on Italy...... IT-LEN\nFor pan-European market data and news, click on codes in brackets: European Equities speed guide................... FTSEurofirst 300 index.............................. DJ STOXX index...................................... Top 10 STOXX sectors........................... Top 10 EUROSTOXX sectors...................... Top 10 Eurofirst 300 sectors................... Top 25 European pct gainers....................... Top 25 European pct losers........................ Main stock markets: Dow Jones............... Wall Street report ..... Nikkei 225............. Tokyo report............ FTSE 100............... London report........... Xetra DAX............. Frankfurt market stories CAC-40................. Paris market stories... World Indices..................................... Reuters survey of world bourse outlook......... Western European IPO diary.......................... European Asset Allocation........................ Reuters News at a Glance: Equities............... Main currency report:...............................", "KOLKATA: The telecom regulator has suggested simplification of licensing and regulatory frameworks besides rationalisation of high taxes and levies by 2019 to attract $100 billion of investment by 2022, as much as $60 billion of this in the next two years itself.In its recommendations to the telecom department for the National Telecom Policy 2018 being formulated by the government, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai ) has also backed a review of licence fees, spectrum usage charges (SUC) and the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) levy to enhance the overall ease of doing business \"There is a need to review the rates of such levies keeping in view that access spectrum is now being assigned through the auction process and telecom networks have become an underlying infrastructure for growth of the digital economy,\" the sector regulator said Friday in its suggestions on NTP 2018, which it feels ought to be rechristened \"Information & Communications Technologies Technology Policy - 2018\".Trai, in fact, has suggested a 2019 deadline for simplification of licensing/regulatory frameworks and rationalisation of telecom taxes, levies and related compliance.Hefty telecom levies have been a key sticking point for India's telecom industry since nearly 33% of every Rs 100 earned by a telco is paid to the government as taxes. A cut in these levies is considered critical to provide some relief to financially stressed telcos, which have seen a sharp erosion in revenues and profits amid continuing price wars following Reliance Jio 's entry in September 2016.\"We... strongly support its recommendations on simplifying the licensing and regulatory frameworks and rationalising taxes, levies and related compliance by 2019 and we expect that the same would be done at the earliest, in this year itself,\" said Rajan Mathews , director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the apex industry grouping representing Bharti Airtel , Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio among others.COAI had expressed disappointment over the February 1 Budget ignoring the high levies at a time when the industry is plagued by brutal price wars and Rs 7 lakh crore of debt.Mathews said the industry hopes \"such simplification of compliance\" would include reduction in multiple audits, which would save cost and efforts of operators.\"While we support these objectives and strategies outlined in Trai's recommendations, we hope the level playing field and regulatory equality would be maintained amongst various players,\" Mathews said.Trai has also backed a review of the definition of gross revenue (GR) and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) -- revenue stemming from licensed telecom services - to remove ambiguities on the licence fee structure.The sector regulator has also advocated further \"simplification of One Nation - One License concept\" of telecom services, and exploring a potential separation of licences/permissions for telecom infrastructure, network, services and application providers.", "March 29 Init Innovation In Traffic Systems SE :\n* Incoming orders of 120 million euros to 130 million euros targeted for 2017\n* EBIT margin set to rise again sharply from 2018 after a decline in 2017\n* Propose to annual general meeting, to be held on 24 May 2017, an increase of dividend for financial year 2016 by 10 pct to 0.22 euros/share\n* In 2017, managing board is therefore expecting revenues to increase to around 120 million euros ($128.94 million)(2016: 108.6 million euros) Source text - bit.ly/2oaBMYf Further company coverage: ($1 = 0.9307 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom)", "Feb 14 Parques Reunidos Servicios Centrales SA:\n* Signs novation to syndicated loan worth 575 million euros ($610.3 million) at Jan 31 and revolving loan of 28.3 million euros\n* The novation entails reduction of financial expenses of about 2 million euros per year and maturity extension of nine months Source text: bit.ly/2leAo4F\nFurther company coverage: ($1 = 0.9422 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom)", "March 30 Nokia Corp\n* Nokia Corp says has been selected by altán redes to design, build and operate a new nationwide lte and 5G-ready wholesale network in Mexico\n* Nokia Corp says the project in Mexico will generate a total investment of more than $7 billion over nine years Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:", "* Southern Grid, Allianz, DIF in 2nd round of auction -sources\n* Encevo stake seen fetching around 400 mln eur -sources\n* Final bids due in early August -sources\n* Growing criticism of Chinese energy infrastructure investment\nBy Arno Schuetze\nFRANKFURT, July 4 (Reuters) - Southern Power Grid, one of two Chinese state grid firms, has been short-listed in an auction expected to fetch around 400 million euros ($467 mln) for a stake in Luxembourg utility Encevo, people close to the matter said.\nA stake in Encevo would give the Chinese state a foothold in a power company in the heart of Western Europe following several other state-owned Chinese utilities which have already made major investments in southern Europe.\nSouthern Grid is vying with insurer Allianz, Dutch infrastructure investor DIF and a second Asian bidder for the 25.5 percent stake, sources said, adding that final offers are due by early August.\nArdian, Southern Grid, Allianz and DIF declined to comment.\nEncevo comprises grid operator Creos and energy provider Enovos and was formerly known as Enovos. French buyout group Ardian had bought a 23.5 percent stake for 330 million euros in 2012 and in 2016 increased it to 25.5 percent, which it now plans to divest.\nThe private equity firm had bought the stake with a view to using Encevo as a platform for additional investments in grids, which account for the bulk of the company’s business.\nLuxembourg’s main energy supplier has invested more than 1 billion euros in grids and renewables since 2012. The employer of 1,500 staff in 2017 saw earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation decrease 26 percent to 194 million euros as margins slid and impairments on renewable energy investments bit.\nAny buyer of the Ardian stake, which comes with three board seats, will not have a blocking minority, which stands at 33 percent in Luxembourg.\nThe Luxembourg State owns 28 percent of Encevo directly, while state banks SNCI and BCEE hold a combined 26.2 percent and the City of Luxembourgas 15.6 percent. Luxembourg has a right of first refusal.\nThere has been growing concern in Europe over Chinese investment in key infrastructure.\nChina Three Gorges in May launched a bid to take full control of Portugal’s main utility EDP, in which it bought a minority stake in 2011.\nState Grid Corporation of China bought minority stakes in Portuguese power grid operator REN in 2012, in Italian gas transport group Snam and power grid firm Terna in 2014 and in Greek power grid ADMIE in 2016. It is also trying to buy a minority stake in German grid operator 50Hertz.\nIn Germany, policymakers have begun considering options to prevent Chinese utility State Grid from buying a 20 percent stake in 50Hertz.", "TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Taipei-based Global Mobile Corp. on Monday called on the National Communications Commission (NCC) to return frequency spectrum that was taken by the government last year.\nThe spectrum was returned to the government after the NCC revoked Global Mobile Corp.'s 4G WiMax (worldwide interoperability microwave access) service license last year.\nOn Feb. 9, Taipei High Administrative Court ruled in favor of Global Mobile Corp. in a lawsuit filed by the company against the NCC soon after the commission made the resolution.\nGlobal Mobile issued a call for the return of the spectrum four days later.\nThe court's decision had marked second time that a high administrative court ruled against the NCC.\nThe first was in June 2016, when the court issued a ruling favoring TATUNG InfoComm in a lawsuit against the NCC over the withdrawal of WiMax service license from the company, according to Global Mobile officials.\nOfficials said the court ruling was encouraging for the \"resurrection\" of the WixMax business, while also boosting the chances of companies seeking national compensation for business losses resulting from the NCC's license revocation.\nOfficials said they had asked commissioners of the NCC to return the frequency spectrum and help the company resume and upgrade the operations of some 1,000 idled WiMax stations.\nIn addition, Global Mobile called for the government to take the initiative to compensate the losses of the firm's employees, consumers, landlords of WiMax stations, and suppliers of related hardware equipment.\nChang Yu-ping, chairman of Global Mobile, said that there were 477 WiMax networks around the world, and the NCC was the only organization in the world to hamper the technical advancement and development of such networks.\nNCC Blasted\nChang said the Kuomintang central government had rapidly sold spectrum to telecom conglomerates at low bidding prices while doing nothing about as many as 2,000 WiMax stations left idle after all six WiMax service providers were forced out of the market after LTE technology went mainstream.\nThe six providers saw their total investments of NT$67 billion go down the drain as a result.\nIndustry insiders said that as Global Mobile had won the first ruling only and that the entire case would take time to be settled, as the NCC may appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court.\nThe 2600MHz formerly owned by Global Mobile has already been auctioned off to existing telecom service providers at the price of NT$2.16 billion, rendering the matter of returning the spectrum a thorny problem.", "Activist investor Elliott Management urged Telecom Italia to sell a stake in its fixed business and part – or all of – international wholesale unit Sparkle to reduce debt and increase returns, as it continues to crank-up pressure on the operator’s Vivendi-controlled board.\nIn the latest attack on the management of Telecom Italia, Elliott Management sent a letter to shareholders stating a plan to separate the operator’s fixed business into a new company called NetCo did not go far enough to address the issues facing the operator.\nRather than retaining the new company in its entirety, the investor said a minority stake should be sold through either a public listing or private sale. It added: “widening NetCo’s share register would create value for TIM shareholders and might hasten the creation of one single national network.”\nUK-based investment company Elliott Management also wants a new board at the Italian operator to investigate the sale of international wholesale business Sparkle. The proceeds, it believes should then be used to reduce debt at Telecom Italia or reintroduce a shareholder dividend.\nThe investor said it aimed to “catalyse change” at the operator rather than gain a controlling share, adding well-documented governance issues resulted in investors being unable to trust Vivendi.\nVivendi hits back\nIn a statement released shortly after Elliott Management’s latest claims, Vivendi (the largest single shareholder of Telecom Italia with a stake of around 25 per cent) said it would examine the comments with “an open mind”, but added Elliot was “well-known for its short-termist initiatives”.\nVivendi also defended long-term plans unveiled last month, including the spin-off of its fixed business and digital cost-saving initiatives, stating the strategy was “strong and promising for the future”.\nThe move is Elliot Management’s latest attempt to challenge the dominance of Vivendi on Telecom Italia’s board and follows its nomination of six independent executives to replace existing members – including chairman Arnaud de Puyfontaine, who is also CEO of Vivendi.", "Feb 13 Primi sui Motori SpA:\n* Launches capital increase for up to 4 million euros ($4.24 million)\n* To issue up to 2.3 million shares in one or more tranches by Dec. 31, 2018\n* Newly issued shares to be offered for subscription in a private placement\n* Board approves a bond issue program for up to nominal 9.5 million euros\n* Bonds will have the duration of six years and will bear an interest for the fixed annual gross rate of 5.5 percent Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: ($1 = 0.9436 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom)" ]

[ "['Akita Inu. [00:49]', 'Great Pyrenees. [01:38]', 'Rhodesian Ridgeback. [02:25]', 'German Shepherd Dog. [02:56]', 'Giant Schnauzer. [03:46]', 'Tibetan Mastiff. [04:32]', 'Komondor. [05:22]', 'Rottweiler. [06:19]']" ]

[ "Why Dogs Are So Protective Of Their Owner(s) Dogs are known to be 'man's best friend' because of their boundless loyalty and willingness to protect their masters. ... Protectiveness comes from a dog's wolf ancestors and centuries of breeding, which means that dogs instinctively know when a human child is in need of care.", "While both dogs and cats prefer routine and don't like uncertainty, dogs are much more adaptable than cats. ... You can even take your dog on vacation and know that he'll enjoy it rather than being stressed. Dogs will protect you. No matter the dog breed, all dogs feel protective and defensive of their owners.", "Chow Chow Dog Breed Information and Personality Traits. Chow chows are not usually social, outgoing dogs. They tend to be aloof with strangers and can be aggressive with other dogs, but are devoted and protective of their family.", "['How long have you been involved with the breed? ... ', 'Do you work or show your dogs? ... ', 'Why did you breed these two dogs? ... ', 'Do you breed to AKC (or breed club) standards? ... ', 'How many litters do your dogs have each year? ... ', \"How old are the puppy's parents?\"]", "['Nutro Ultra — Large Breed Adult Dry Dog Food. ... ', 'Blue Buffalo — Life Protection Formula Large Breed Adult Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe Dry Dog Food. ... ', 'Royal Canin — Great Dane Adult Dry Dog Food. ... ', 'Purina ONE — SmartBlend Large Breed Adult Formula Dry Dog Food.']", "Mastiffs can be territorial dogs. They will protect their yard, house, car and family from people or dogs. ... They are dogs that can be very good with other dogs and with cats as long as they have had good experiences with them and depending onthe Mastiff breed. Many of the Mastiff breeds are same sex aggressive.", "This varies from breed to breed and some male dogs can also be very loving and protective of children. Male dogs are most often more affectionate and seem to thrive on constant human attention. They are usually less likely to separate themselves from the attention and will take any bit of love you can give them.", "Lhasapoo. The Lhasapoo is a mixed breed dog–a cross between the Lhasa Apso and Poodle dog breeds. Protective, loyal, and playful, these pups inherited some of the best qualities from both of their parents. Lhasapoos also go by the names Lhasadoodle or just Lhasa Apso Poodle mix.", "There is one more reason why Malinois is used as a police dog. He has strong protection instinct. The dogs of the breed are very loyal to their owners, and once the bond was created, they will protect them. Malinoises aren't normally aggressive, however they can be taught to serve and protect their owners.", "Do dogs require sweaters in the winter, or are dogs naturally able to keep themselves warm? ANSWER: ... Breeds with thick coats generally do not require cold weather protection for short periods of time, whereas short-haired breeds will be more comfortable with a winter sweater and booties.", "German Shepherds are listed as a dangerous dog breed and Ukrainian laws forbid owning them due to their large size and aggressive/protective nature. They are also sometimes used for illegal dog fighting.", "Breed aficionados love the Bernese Mountain Dog's intelligence and devotion to family. They are protective but not aggressive, loyal but independent, and energetic but not exhausting. You'll never be lonely with a Bernese Mountain Dog in the house. The Berner, as it's affectionately called, wants to be with you always.", "What are Breeding Rights for Dogs? Breeding rights are the rights you possess to breed and register any puppies born with AKC (American Kennel Club), or alternative clubs. Breeding rights are a tool used by dog breeders to control the development of their bloodline when a dog is sold to a third-party.", "The intent of the law is to provide protection for dogs, cats, puppies and kittens within these breeding facilities. ... Licensing — Requires commercial dog and cat breeders in Minnesota to be licensed in order to operate and sell dogs and cats in the State of Minnesota.", "Belgian Malinois. Canines of the Belgian Malinois dog breed were originally bred to be herding dogs. Today, they also work as police and military dogs, protection dogs, and loving family members. In the hands of an experienced dog person, they are intense, intelligent, and athletic companions.", "If you've ever wondered what dog breed—or mix of breeds—your dog is, you can now find out in seconds with a new app called DoggZam! Michigan man Elderied McKinney developed the app, which allows you to identify a dog's breed with just their picture.", "Traditionally, the Puli dog breed was used as a herding dog and sometimes even as a livestock guarding dog, as well. They make very good guard dogs, since they are very protective of their masters and territory. The Puli is sensitive, fun-loving, courageous, but also, at times, tough and headstrong.", "A dog breed is a particular strain or dog type that was purposefully bred by humans to perform specific tasks, such as herding, hunting, and guarding. ... Other uses of the term breed when referring to dogs include pure breeds, cross-breeds, mixed breeds and natural breeds.", "A GSD is a dog bred to protect sheep. As intruders came near the flock, the dog instinctively and rapidly reacted to chase and/or kill them. This is GSD prey drive. ... However, even though this breed is not used much for protecting sheep, their instinctive prey drive is still present in them.", "When temperatures start to fall below 45°F, some cold-averse breeds will get uncomfortable and will need protection. ... Once it drops to below 20°F, all dog owners should at least be aware of their dog's well-being and look for signs that your dog is too cold, even if they are a breed that can take the cold weather.", "As family dogs, Catahoulas are protective of children and are excellent watchdogs. ... While Catahoulas can be good family member dogs with proper socialization and consistent training, the important thing to remember is that they are first and foremost, a working breed.", "There is Only One Species of Domesticated Dog. There are Many different Breeds of Domesticated Canines/Dogs, because Humans Bred dogs over thousands of years to be: working, protecting, or companion dogs. It was only in the last two centuries or so that people bred dogs Just for Show. ... All domestic dogs can.", "The Chow is one of the most primitive dog breeds on earth. This is the most dangerous of all dog temperaments, and it is widely common in the Chow Chow. This dog is protective over his territory and his family, and won't willingly allow people into his home and yard.", "Puppies mature into adults at a different time, which means that a large dog breed will mature into an adult at about 15 months, while smaller breeds will be puppies for only 9 months. So, you'll need to feed a larger dog breed specially formulated puppy food for much longer than you would a smaller dog breed.", "The Great Dane, also known as the Apollo of dogs, is a giant breed. The Dane is German in origin, not Danish. The breed is thought to have been around for more than 400 years. Great Danes descend from mastiff-like dogs that were bred by German nobility to protect country estates and hunt wild boar.", "Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Large Breed Puppy Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe Dry Dog Food. This Blue Buffalo formula is by far one of the best dog foods for a Great Pyrenees puppy.", "What is a Hypoallergenic Dog? ... So hypoallergenic mixed breeds are a bit of misnomer. Generally, the dogs that meet the requirements of a hypoallergenic dog are mixed breeds. A shedding dog is crossbred with a non-shedding breed (like Poodle) to develop a new breed that is more compatible with allergies.", "Most male dogs can breed until they are senior dogs, but it is difficult for older dogs to get females pregnant. After your dog is around 10 years old, you may want to stop breeding him. Some believe that certain small breeds shouldn't be bred after age seven, while other breeds can be bred up to age 12.", "Nobivac DAPPv: Canine Distemper, Adenovirus Type 2 (CAV-2 cross protection CAV-1), Parainfluenza and Parvovirus Vaccine (MLV). This vaccine is 5-way protection for any dog, including puppies and small breeds.", "Chow chows are not derivatives of any sort of bear or red panda. Dog breed origins are often shrouded in a “creation myth.” If you ever read an all-breed dog book, the official breed origins come across as awfully fanciful.", "A cross-bred dog is the offspring of two purebreds of different breeds. Mixed-breed (also called random-bred or, less flatteringly, a mutt or mongrel) usually refers to a dog with more than two breeds in its background. Purebred dogs, cross-bred dogs, and mixed-breed dogs all make excellent companions.", "According to the UC Davis Book of Dogs, small-breed dogs (such as small terriers) become geriatric at about 11 years; medium-breed dogs (such as larger spaniels) at 10 years; large-breed dogs (such as German Shepherd Dogs) at 8 years; and giant-breed dogs (such as Great Danes) at 7 years." ]

[ "Germany" ]

[ "What would be the two Star Wars stories?", "As a country of immigrants you could say what's wrong with the world.", "First world countries are just the Third world countries with more money", "If you mean another world war, yes it is very probable that there will be another world war. If you mean another war that is fought similarly to how WW2 was fought, then no. How countries fight wars have evolved since then, so the next war will be fought with faster, more powerful weapons, and tactics that uses more advanced technology.", "\"world war 3 starts in 2021\" \"please let me know within two hours if you are interested\"", "Two books: \n\n*A People's History of the United State*s, --Howard Zinn.\n\n*The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*, --Carl Sagan.", "The term *third world country* refers to countries that were not aligned with either the Soviet block or the Western block during the Cold War. Any other usage is meaningless &amp; subjective.", "In my country we are in a civil war", "Thank you! Dick art is heavily underappreciated these days.", "get this so this country had a war against Emus", "Desire to not be a third world country", "Sealand is the most powerful country in the world.", "More like third world problems in a first world country", "Living in a first world country.", "Commit a war crime against their country if it fits historically", "Yes. Modern medicine is totally underrated and underappreciated by most people.", "My country lost a war against a bunch of flightless birds", "Voice actors who aren’t screen actors go woefully underappreciated.", "The Christmas truce during world war 1", "Affordable health care in a 1st world country.", "World at War, MW1 and MW2, Black Ops 1.", "\"What problems are you currently facing in your role?\"\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\n\"How do you define success in this role?\"\n\n&amp;#x200B;\n\n\"What do my first 30, 60, and 90 days look like in this role?\"", "A certain president in a prominent first world country", "Declares what? War?", "No one would win. The world would be devastated. There are far too many alliances that would be dragged into the war, making it World War III.", "id be prepping to leave the country to one that is unlikely to be participating in the war", "Do you know what children went through in the 40's? (And many other times in different parts of the world)", "Fuck you. Kahzakstan is greatest country in world", "World War Z. \nI couldn't put it down.", "It's great. As someone from a third world country, USA is my dream country to visit and hopefully, to settle.", "Get rid of... no. \n\nWhat needs to happen is a broad reimagining of their role/duty.", "The US won't be the world most powerful country anymore" ]

[ "BroadwayWorld's Michael Sterling of BWW TV Los Angeles talks to the cast and creative team members during at rehearsal at the beautiful Pasadena Civic Auditorium for the world premiere of the Lythgoe Family Panto production of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - A CHRISTMAS ROSE, produced in association with Pasadena Playhouse.\nKelli Berglund of Disney XD's \"Lab Rats\" stars as Belle with Jonah Platt (Broadway's Wicked) as The Beast; James Snyder (Broadway's If/Then) as Gus; and Gedde Watanabe (Broadway's Pacific Overtures, John Hughes' Sixteen Candles) as Marcel. The production also stars John Tartaglia (Broadway's Shrek The Musical) as Louis Vuitton; Jared Gertner (Broadway's The Book Of Mormon) as Pierre; and Harrison White (Broadway's The Lion King) as Dame Chanel.\nBEAUTY AND THE BEAST - A CHRISTMAS ROSE is directed by Sheldon Epps and choreographed by Mandy Moore (La La Land), with book by Kris Lythgoe and music direction and arrangements by Michael Orland (American Idol).\nAn updated version of the classic tale, in the style of a traditional British family Panto, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - A CHRISTMAS ROSE features family-friendly magic, with a comedic twist, dancing (with \"So You Think You Can Dance\" alumni), contemporary music and more. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - A CHRISTMAS ROSE marks Lythgoe Family Panto's inaugural production at the venerable Pasadena Civic Auditorium and their sixth consecutive Panto presentation in Pasadena, five of which were presented at Pasadena Playhouse, the State Theater of California.\nBEAUTY AND THE BEAST - A CHRISTMAS ROSE will play from December 13 to December 24, 2017. One hour before the performance on select days, guests are invited to enjoy \"Winter Wonderland\" at The Pasadena Civic Auditorium, complete with holiday crafts and activities. Tickets start at $29 and are available by calling The Pasadena Civic Auditorium at 626-449-7360, or online 24 hours a day at Ticketmaster.com/PantoPasadena\nRelated Articles" ]

[ "Your quick guide to what to do in the Portsmouth area today and tomorrow\nCHARITY: PUPPY PARTY\nTitchfield Community Centre, tomorrow, 10.30am\nMeet some of Canine Partners’ amazing puppies and find out what being a ‘puppy parent’ means at this recruitment drive for more volunteers.\nHIP-HOP: GENESIS ELIJAH\nThe Edge of The Wedge, Southsea, tomorrow, 7.30pm\nTrash Arts presents British underground hip-hop star Genesis Elijah, supported by special guests Naan Breddaz, Sample C and Gypsy Mac and Andy Sargeant.\nOPERA: LA GAZZA LADRA\nChichester Cinema, tonight, 7pm\nScreened live from Milan’s La Scala 200 years after its premiere at the same opera house, Riccardo Chailly brings Rossini’s\nmasterpiece La Gazza Ladra back to the stage.\nSTAGE: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST\nKings Theatre, Southsea, today and tomorrow, times vary\nIt’s a tale as old as time, but Keith Chegwin is teaming up with Basil Brush for a hilarious new take on Beauty And The Beast in this Easter panto.\nCINEMA: THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS\nGuildhall Square, Portsmouth, tomorrow, 11am-3pm\nThere’s family fun with children’s activities including a free screening of the animated comedy The Secret Life of Pets on the big screen from 1pm.\nTHEATRE: THE LAST FIVE YEARS\nStation Theatre, Hayling Island, tomorrow until Friday\nCCADS puts on The Last Five Years – a two-hander tracing the story of a relationship from first date, to marriage, to break-up.", "Have your say\nStaff at the Kings Theatre have paid tribute to their former panto star after he died aged 60.\nThe popular television presenter made his Portsmouth debut back in April when he appeared in the theatre’s production of Beauty and the Beast.\nChegwin died at home after battling a progressive lung condition, his family have announced.\nIn a statement today the Albert Road theatre said: ‘The Kings Theatre is extremely saddened to hear the news regarding Keith Chegwin.\n‘We thoroughly enjoyed his visit to the Kings Theatre in April in our Easter Pantomime, Beauty and The Beast where Keith played “Jolly King Cheggers”.’\nThere were three showings of the Easter pantomime on April 18 and 19.\nA family statement said: ‘We are heartbroken to share the news that Keith Chegwin sadly passed away following a long-term battle with a progressive lung condition, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which rapidly worsened towards the end of this year.’\nIn an interview with The News in April, Chegwin talked about his first time performing in Portsmouth.\nHe said: ‘It’s really weird because I used to live near Newbury and I always wanted to do the Kings Theatre, but never had the opportunity.\n‘Even when I was in Newbury I toured places like Swindon, Reading, Basingstoke and just toured those year on end, and Portsmouth and Southampton were so close, but I never went there.’", "Dunstable is getting ready to wake up to panto season as Sleeping Beauty takes to the stage at the Grove Theatre.\nRunning from Friday December 8 to Tuesday January 2, the festive spectacular will star John Partridge, who is best known for his role as Christian Clarke in EastEnders but has become a West End star in his own right.\nJohn has worked with several rock and pop acts, including U2 and the Pet Shop Boys and he was invited to judge Lloyd Webber’s TV show, Over The Rainbow. He appeared in La Cage Aux Folles, A Chorus Line and Chicago, and will be turning on the charm as the Prince, having originally trained in ballet at the Royal Ballet Lower School.\nSally Lindsay, who played Shelley Unwin in Coronation Street, will take no nonsense as the wicked fairy godmother Carabosse. Sally has starred on screen in series including Mount Pleasant, Open All Hours and Scott & Bailey, as well as appearing as a regular panellist on Loose Women.\nBringing wholesome goodness to the stage will be CBeebies presenter Rebecca Keatley as Fairy Moonbeam in Sleeping Beauty. Rebecca is best known for her energetic and bubbly role in CBeebies’ Justin’s House and Swashbuckle, but more recently CBeebies fans will be watching her on the hit children’s TV show Let’s Play.\nTickets start at £12.75. Call 01582 60 20 80 to book.", "Sleeping Beauty, Royal Spa Centre (Leamington) Until December 30, call 01926 334418 or visit www.warwickdc.gov.uk/royalspacentre\nThose who got the programme for this year’s Spa Centre panto will probably be glad to see that when they flick to the last few pages of the booklet that they will see that JP McCue will again be returning to the stage for the same event next year.\nJP, who has appeared in the pantomime for the past five years and plays the dame again this season, gets the added kudos of having co-wrote the show this time around.\nHe’s obviously picked up on the successful formula from previous years and the show's main strength is the double act between him and his comedy sidekick Sean Dodds - playing the Jester.\nThe pair are the driving force of the production and it’s obvious why they keep being invited back to ply their craft with their ability to entertain and endear themselves to the full range of ages in the audience.\nIn regard to the story, Sleeping Beauty is a sweet and simple tale with a particularly spiteful villain in Carabosse played by Denise Pitter who was suitably sinister.\nTeddy Moynihan, playing her crow-like henchman Fran, also deserves a mention for an impressive display of devious physicality which showed talents which no doubt led to him performing at the RSC.\nThere are plenty of traditional elements of the show to please long-time and older panto goers including audience participation, a ‘look behind you sketch’, a slapstick and humorous take on The 12 Days of Christmas and a nice adaptation of Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1970s disco hit September, some more contemporary attractions, songs and gags for the younger audience members and an animatronic surprise for all.\nIt’s also well paced and has a running time so as to provide bang for you buck while not being too long for the youngest sat watching.\nWhat’s more, the show is supporting the Children’s Hyperinsulism Charity as its chosen good cause for the season, which is something we can all get behind.\nIt’s comforting to see that JP, and hopefully Sean along with him, will be returning for next year’s panto at the Spa Centre and also a pleasure to report that Sleeping Beauty is a big, fun, 'slumber party' and not a snooze fest.", "Theatre Under The Stars and Lythgoe Family Panto have announced that John O'Hurley of Seinfeld and Broadway's CHICAGO, and Lauren Taylor of Disney's Best Friends Whenever, will be joining the cast starring as \"The King of Houston\" and \"Princess Aurora\"!\nJohn O'Hurley is well known for his role on the TV show Seinfeld, for his run as the runner up on the the first season of Dancing with the Stars, and NBC's Host for the The National Dog Show. He also starred in CHICAGO on Broadway and Monty Python's SPAMALOT, both on tour and in Las Vegas. Lauren Taylor recently starred as \"Shelby\" on the Disney Channel's Best Friends Whenever. She also appeared on the Netflix series Richie Rich and is an accomplished singer who has opened for artists including Wilson Phillips, Michael Bolton, Vanessa Williams, and Debbie Gibson.\nO'Hurley and Taylor join previously announced cast members Garrett Clayton of Disney's Teen Beach Movie, and Vonzell Solomon who was the second runner up on the fourth season of American Idol who are starring as \"The Prince of River Oaks\" and \"The Good Fairy\" respectively. Joining the cast as \"Silly Billy\" is Ben Giroux, who has appeared on many TV shows including NCIS, Psych, Bones, House, and Anger Management. Along with Giroux, Jeff Sumner, whose credits include HAPPY DAYS - NATIONAL TOUR, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, and GODSPELL, joins the cast as \"Nanny Tickle\".\nAdditionally, 24 students from TUTS Humphreys School of Musical Theatre (HSMT) and The River Performing and Visual Arts Center (The River) have been cast as the children's chorus, along with a number of Houston-based dancers.\n\"Theatre Under The Stars is so delighted to have the opportunity to work with the Lythgoe Family Panto and bring this captivating production to our stage,\" said Hillary Hart, Executive Director of Theatre Under The Stars.\nThe students are divided into two groups who will perform on alternate days. The HSMT and The River students who will be performing in the production are: Julien Ames-Zuniga, Jade Brion, Andrew Burke, Abriel Coleman, Morgan Dallison, Brennan Emeka, Karli Fisher, Chase Fontenot, Sydney Gamarra, Bryce Gilleylen, Elle Graper, Sean Graul, Laci Hepler, Nevaeh Joseph, Michael Karash, Anneliese Kelly, Kelly Lomonte, Isabella Morrison, Hannah Pettit, Courtney Schmitt, Saylor Swick, Hope Vanderburg, Abbey Yadan, and Mia Zatarain.\n\"We are thrilled to be expanding to Houston this year with Theatre Under The Stars introducing more families to share in the magic of theatre!\" says Becky Lythgoe, Producer and Co-Founder of Lythgoe Family Panto. \"Panto allows the entire family to come together, ages 3-103, to share in the joy of LIVE theatre at the holiday season! We are especially excited to have students from HSMT and The River join our inclusive ensemble for this production and for us to offer an arts educational experience working alongside professionals from the industry.\"\nAs previously announced, the creative team for the production includes Director, Linda Goodrich (TUTS 2016 production of MARY POPPINS), Choreographer, Spencer Liff (Emmy nominee for So You Think You Can Dance), Music Supervisor, Michael Orland (American Idol), and Music Director, Jim Vukovich. SLEEPING BEAUTY AND HER WINTER KNIGHT is written by Kris Lythgoe, with unique Houston customization to the script. His producing partner and co-founder of LFP, Becky Lythgoe, also serves as Casting Director and loves to bring stars from stage and screen together with local artists in their productions.\nPreviously Lythgoe Family Panto established their reputation with productions including A CINDERELLA CHRISTMAS starring Lauren Taylor, Alex Newell and Morgan Fairchild, PETER PAN AND TINKER BELL - A PIRATES CHRISTMAS starring Sabrina Carpenter and John O'Hurley, SLEEPING BEAUTY AND HER WINTER KNIGHT (the original of this production) starring Olivia Holt and Lucy Lawless, ALADDIN AND HIS WINTER WISH starring Ben Vereen, Jordan Fisher, and Ashley Argota - and A SNOW WHITE CHRISTMAS starring Ariana Grande and Neil Patrick Harris.\nLythgoe Family Panto produces fun, musical theatre the whole family can enjoy. Known for their creativity and involvement in television hits American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, the Lythgoes are dedicated to bringing affordable theatre to families across America. Based on the Grimm fairy tales and others, each story has been modernized with topical scripts for parents and well known pop songs for kids. The Lythgoes pride themselves on creating a memorable experience a family can share together.\nSLEEPING BEAUTY AND HER WINTER KNIGHT tells the story of Princess Aurora who is cursed by an evil fairy, Carabosse, and of the handsome Prince who is on a quest to save his Sleeping Beauty before it's too late. An updated version of the classic Grimm fairytale, in the style of a traditional British family Panto, SLEEPING BEAUTY AND HER WINTER KNIGHT is a singing and soaring winter adventure that features family-friendly magic, with a comedic twist, dancing (with So You Think You Can Dance alumni), a live pony, interaction with the audience and contemporary music from Jessie J's \"Domino\" to John Legend's \"All Of Me\", Pharrell Williams \"Happy\" to Survivor's \"Eye of The Tiger\" and more.\nSLEEPING BEAUTY AND HER WINTER KNIGHT runs December 12 - 24, 2017 in Sarofim Hall at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. Special offers are available including opportunities for groups and Family 4 Packs for $99. Additionally, a limited quantity of Golden Tickets are available as an add-on feature. A Golden Ticket allows the ticketholder (children only) a special on-stage experience during the production. To learn more about any of these options, and to purchase tickets, contact the Theatre Under The Stars Box Office at 713-558-TUTS(8887) or visit TUTS.com.\nTHEATRE UNDER THE STARS (\"TUTS\") - (Dan Knechtges, Artistic Director; Hillary J Hart, Executive Director) - was founded by Frank M. Young in 1968 and is Houston's leading musical theatre company for performance, arts education and professional theatrical training; ranging from the classics to new work development. As a 501c3 performing arts organization, TUTS is dedicated to breaking down barriers to access by focusing on inclusivity, education, and community engagement through a commitment to artistic excellence, programs in the community, technique-based curriculum at the Humphreys School of Musical Theatre, and explorative, creative life-skills at The River Performing and Visual Arts Center. For more information, visit www.tuts.com.\nRelated Articles", "Get Daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nPantomimes are the perfect place to introduce young children to the delights of theatre.\nYou can't beat a live performance and many of the shows are audience interactive so what better way to spend a chilly winter evening than in the warmth of Nottingham's Theatre Royal, or Playhouse shouting \"he's behind you\"?\nThere are some amazing productions around the county and we've taken a look at some of the pantos taking place within an hour's drive of the city.\nBeauty and the Beast - Nottingham Theatre Royal\nOn now until Sunday, January 14\n(Image: Tracey Whitefoot)\nStarring the much-loved actress, presenter and Nottingham native, Sherrie Hewson as Mrs Potty , TV and stage star Ben Richards as the Beast and the welcome return of panto favourites Ben Nickless and Andrew Ryan, this year's spellbinding family pantomime Beauty and the Beast is performing at Theatre Royal, Nottingham.\nDreaming of a happier life, the beautiful Belle finds herself transported to a spell-bound castle held captive by a hideous beast.\nCan she see beyond the monster and fall in love with her captor before the last petal falls from the enchanted rose? Or will the Beast's selfishness cost him the world he once knew and the hand of the girl that has melted his heart?\nTickets are available here , priced from £19, or by calling 0115 989 5555.\nCinderella - Nottingham Playhouse\nOn now until Saturday, January 20\nA firm family-favourite panto is returning to Nottingham Playhouse this season and you would be foolish to miss it – oh yes you would!\nAs the well-known story goes, Prince Charming (Benjamin McMillan) is hosting a ball – with the help of faithful side-kick Dandini (Adam Pettigrew). Cinderella (Kelly Agredo) would give anything to go, but her evil stepmother Devilla (Rebecca Little) and ugly sisters Bella (John Elkington) and Donna (Darren Southworth) have other plans.\nCan Cinderella escape their clutches and - with the help of her Fairy Godmother (Claire Storey) and best friend Buttons (Tim Frater) - find true love?\nAudiences will boo, hiss and cheer as they see this traditional pantomime come to life on stage, and enjoy performances from 'one of the country’s greatest dames' John Elkington among other much-loved Nottingham Playhouse panto performers.\nTickets are available, via the website here or by calling the box office on 0115 941 9419.\nBeauty and the Beast - Palace Theatre, Newark\nOn now until Tuesday, January 3\nStarring Jonathan Wrather (best known as Pierce Harris from Emmerdale) as baddie Eugene, alongside Tim Freeman as Dame Dorothy-Do-It, Ryan Willis as Dame Dorothy's daft son, Willy Do-It, Isabella Rubin as Beauty, David Gilbrook as Beauty's father, Jamie Sheerman as Pimple, Adam Pettit as the Beast and Anna Mitcham as the enchantress, the show is set to bring plenty of pantomime pandemonium this Christmas.\nBeauty and the Beast has all the ingredients for a perfect family panto with a spectacular set and costumes, fabulous songs and dances, along with bags of slapstick fun.\nTickets are available by calling 01636 655 755 or via the website here\nVideo Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now\nPeter Pan, Guildhall Arts Centre, Grantham\nOn now until Sunday, January 7\nFly off to the magical world of Neverland with this enchanting family musical full of fun and festive cheer.\nJoin Peter, Wendy, Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys on their swashbuckling adventure to rid Neverland of the villainous Captain Hook, his bumbling sidekick Smee and their crew of dastardly pirates will enthral audiences of all ages!\nPrices start from £15 and can be purched by calling 01476 406158 or by clicking here\nJack and the Beanstalk - Palace Theatre, Mansfield\nOn now until Sunday, January 7\nHoping to achieve the dizzy heights of the success of last year's show, Peter Pan, there's no reason why it shouldn't - especially as it includes a huge beanstalk!\nThe cast is led by comedian Mark Little who will be playing Fleshcreep - the giant's henchman - and is instantly recognisable as former Neighbour's star Joe Mangle. He is joined by popular entertainer Adam Moss who has returned to the Palace stage this year as Simple Simon, Casualty's Rebecca Wheatley as the Vegetable Fairy, and Craig Ansell as Dame Trott.\nTickets are available, priced from £11 and are available by calling 01623 633133 or via the website here\nBeauty and the Beast - Derby Arena\nOn now until Sunday, December 31\n(Image: Robert Day)\nStarring Derbyshire's Gwen Taylor and Ben Faulks (CBeebies' Mr Bloom), the tale as old as time gets a new twist this Christmas.\nIn the little French village of Spondon-on-the-Seine Belle is pursued by the handsome but not too bright local heartthrob Gaston (Aston Dobson). She yearns for adventure, but soon gets more than she bargained for when, along with her neighbours Idle Jacques (Ben Faulks) and his mother Betty Brioche (Morgan Brind), she finds herself trapped inside an enchanted castle by a mysterious beast. Will true love conquer all? Will the Enchantress' (Gwen Taylor) curse ever be broken? Will Betty Brioche burn her baguettes?\nFeaturing shimmering sets, outrageous costumes, magic, mayhem and monstrous fun, this show promises to be Derby LIVE's most spectacular panto yet.\nTickets are available by calling 01332 255800 or via the website here\nPeter Pan - Derby Theatre\nOn now until Saturday, January 6\nJoin Peter Pan, the free-spirited child who never grows up, and the Darling children, as they embark on a spellbinding adventure to the magical and mystical island of Neverland.\nPeter introduces the children to a never-ending childhood and a new world of wonder with the Lost Boys, fairies, memaids, the mischievous Tinker Bell and the fearsome Captain Hook - and wait a minute, what's that ticking noise?\nAges 5+, tickets are available via the box office on 01332 593939 or here\nPrince Stroppy Pants and the Christmas Caper - Derby Guildhall\nOn now until Thursday, December 28\nThe Babbling Vagabonds are back at the Guildhall Theatre with a new family show Prince Stroppy Pants and the Christmas Caper.\nAudiences will follow the story of his Royal Highness the Prince, who is the bossiest, stroppiest, snottiest Prince that ever did live. He is rude and he is lazy and worst of all he is given everything that he asks for. Spoiled rotten by everyone he demands more and more until finally he demands the unthinkable: \"I want Father Christmas' Magical Sleigh and I want it now!\"\nWith this latest outrageous request his father the Right Royal King sets out to find it. After a week of waiting the Prince starts to worry, after a month he is scared.\nTheatre-goers will join the Prince on his Christmas caper sure to bring a ton of laughs and hijinks. Will the Prince get his daddy back? Will he learn some manners along the way?\nTickets are priced from £10 via the website here or by calling the box office on 01332 255800.\nVideo Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now\nPeter Pan - Pomegranate Theatre, Chesterfield\nNow on until Tuesday, January 2\nHoist the mainsail. Ship loads of pantomime-style nautical naughtiness is setting sail this Christmas as audiences have the chance to 'hook' up with the boy who never grew up.\nDefying gravity, Wendy, Michael and John Darling take the second star to the right and straight on until morning as they fly from the rooftops of Victorian London to join Peter, the Lost Boys and the fairy Tinker Bell in Neverland where the Jolly Roger is anchored and Captain Hook is on a mission to outwit and out manoeuvre our hero.\nSam Attwater (Eastenders and Dancing on Ice) will be playing the part of Captain Hook and Kelli Young (Liberty X) will be playing the part of feisty fun loving Tiger Lily, with Anthony Sahota (BBC's Let It Shine) starring as Peter Pan.\nTickets are available for matinee and evening performances by calling 01246 345222 or online here\nSleeping Beauty - Buxton Opera House\nOn now until New Year's Eve\nWelcome to Buxtonia – a happy land full of lovable characters where the beautiful Princess Aurora is planning her 18th birthday party.\nHowever, the vengeful fairy Maleficent has her own plans for Aurora, namely to fulfil a curse made when the princess was just a baby.\nWill Dame Nanny Nora, her daft sidekick Billy and handsome Prince Christopher save the day, or will Aurora sleep for 100 years? There’s only one way to find out!\nThe show stars James Holmes as (Clive from BBC's hit comedy series Miranda), Jessica Revell (Elektra from CBBC's Tracy Beaker Returns) and Johnathan Tweedie.\nTickets are available, priced from £19.50-£23 by calling 01298 72190 or visiting the website here\nAladdin - Lichfield Garrick\nOn now until Saturday, January 6\nThe mystical and magical tale of Aladdin will be brought to life in the Lichfield Garrick's 'high flying' family pantomime.\nCBeebies Cat Sandion will be playing the role of Jasmine in the festive offering. Cat has been a firm favourite on the show over the past few years, including performing in numerous shows and pantos most notably with her roles as 'Alice' in Alice and Wonderland and 'Tinkerbell' in Peter Pan and also now as a main character in the hugely successful 'Justin's house'.\nThe venue will also be welcoming back Sam Rabone as Dame Widow Twankey and Ben Thornton as Wishee Washee after their stellar performances had audiences in stitches in last year's sell out show, Sleeping Beauty. Known for their outstanding comical timing and the raucous bathroom scene, the duo promise to deliver even more fun and laughter to the Lichfield audience.\nTickets are available, priced from £14 for children and £23.50 for adults, and can be booked online here or by calling the box office on 01543 412121.\nCinderella - Birmingham Hippodrome\nTuesday, December 19, until Sunday, December 28\nThe Fairy Godmother of all panto casts is heading for Birmingham as 'leading lady' Beverley Knight makes her pantomime debut at the Hippodrome.\nJoining the soul diva will be Strictly Come Dancing finalist Danny Mac, Birmingham's favourite funny man Matt Slack, Suzanne Shaw, of Pop Idol, Hear'Say and Emmerdale fame in the title role of Cinderella, Robin Colvill and James Brandon, better known as The Grumbleweeds, will appear as The Broker's Men, and completing the line-up will be Ceri Dupree and Phil Randall as the Ugly Sisters.\nAudiences shall go to the ball this Christmas as Cinderella transforms from rags to riches, outwits her very Ugly Sisters, and with the help of her hilarious friend Buttons and one very magical Fairy Godmother, wins the heart of the dashing Prince Charming.\nCinderella will run from Tuesday, December 19 until Sunday, December 28 and tickets are available here\nPeter Pan – Christmas in Neverland - Arena Birmingham\nWednesday, December 20 until Christmas Eve\nFunny festive and a fantastic family treat, Peter Pan – Christmas in Neverland is set to perform at Arena Birmingham in December - oh, yes it is – and, due to popular demand, an extra date on Saturday, December 23 at 11am, has been added.\nStarring Bradley Walsh as Mr Smee, Martin Kemp as Captain Hook and Matt Knight as Peter Pan, JM Barrie's original story and characters will be brought to life in the show, by a cast of more than 100 performers, including a thrilling team of BMX riders, stuntmen and trapeze artists, along with a seven-metre-long animatronic crocodile!\nThe amazing new show will be performed across three arena stages on a stunning movie-style Neverland set.\nThe Jolly Roger Galleon will sail around the arena in front of a 10,000-gallon water wall, and from any position in the audience, you are close to the action, with a giant 60 feet-wide LED screen, computer graphic imagery and a live close-up TV-relay ensuring never a moment is missed.\nTickets, priced from £27.90, are available here or by calling 0844 33 88 222.\nBeauty and the Beast - De Montfort Hall, Leicester\nSaturday, December 16, until Sunday, January 8\nAfter breaking box office records last year, the De Montfort Hall pantomime returns with the spectacular family show Beauty and the Beast.\nThe cast includes Richard 'Dick' McCourt, of children's TV's Dick and Dom fame, David Lonsdale from ITV's Heartbeat, and Leicester's very own singing sensation Sam Bailey, who returns for a second year. Also returning is everyone's favourite pantomime dame, Martin Ballard, from BBC Radio Leicester.\nBeauty will be played by Sarah Accomando, who played Snow White at the hall in 2015. Karl Loxley - former contestant on BBC TV's The Voice and The Prince from 2015's Snow White - will be coming back to the hall as The Beast.\nThere's matinee and evening performances and tickets start from £13.50 adult, £9.50 under 16, £40 family of four.\nClick here to visit the website.\nAladdin - Regent Theatre, Stoke\nFriday, December 15, until Sunday, January 7\n(Image: Richard Johnson)\nFrom The Potteries to Old Peking, Jonny Wilkes and Christian Patterson are returning to the Regent Theatre, in Stoke, for the spectacular 3D pantomime – Aladdin.\nJonny will star as Aladdin with Christian as his mother Widow Twankey, bringing with them the laugh-out-loud comedy audiences have come to expect from the region's favourite funny men.\nAudiences will follow Aladdin, and his mother Widow Twankey, on a spectacular adventure featuring a wish-granting genie, an evil sorcerer and a lamp-full of laughs and, for the first time in a Regent panto, a spectacular 3D sequence which will send audiences flying over Old Peking and beyond on a magical flying carpet ride.\nTickets are available by calling 0844 871 7649 or online here\nCinderella - Brewhouse Arts Centre, Burton\nTuesday, February 20, until Saturday, February 24\n(Image: Peter Bourne)\nFor those who can't make a pantomime this season - perhaps you are starring in one - Burton Amateur Stage Entertainers will be performing Cinderella during February half-term school holidays.\nThe Baron is returning to the village of Much Idling with a surprise for his daughter Cinderella - a new wife and her lovely daughters. But Cinderella has other things to worry about - she’s met a handsome stranger in the woods and has been invited to a ball at the palace.\nWill the wicked Baroness manage to keep Cinderella from going to the ball? Will Buttons convince Cinderella of his love for her? Will the Prince and Dandini save the day? Can the Ugly Sisters get any uglier?\nFor more information, and to book your tickets call 01283 508100. Alternatively more information is available here\nRobin Hood - Loughborough Town Hall\nNow on until Sunday, January 7\nTravel deep into the heart of magical Sherwood Forest, where the men wear the tights and the women wear the trousers.\nKing Richard is away negotiating a trade deal with Europe. He may be some time, so the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham is hatching a plan to dispose of his niece and nephew to inherit a fortune and steal the crown for himself. It's all down to Robin, Marian and the gang to stop him in his tracks.\nThere's matinee and evening performances, at varying times and prices start at £13.50 adult/£11.50 concession/ £46 family. Click here to visit the website.\nCinderella - Melton Theatre\nFriday, December 15 - Thursday, December 21\nFollow the rags to riches tale where dreams come true thanks to Cinderella's Fairy Godmother.\nThis year's star name is Steven Arnold, who is best known for playing Ashley Peacock in Coronation Street for 16 years. He will be playing the role of Dandini alongside Britain's Got Talent Finalist Stephen Hall as one of the Ugly Sisters.\nTo make this year's pantomime extra special, there will be two real Shetland ponies to help Cinderella travel to the ball.\nThere's matinee and evening performances and tickets cost £14 adult, £12.50 concession, £46 family.\nClick here to visit the website.\nVideo Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now\nDick Whittington - The Little Theatre, Leicester\nFriday, December 15, until Sunday, January 7\nFilled with high expectations, Dick Whittington travels to London with his faithful cat, Tommy. On arrival they discover that the pavements aren't paved with gold as they had expected. Does Dick have any hope of becoming the next lord mayor of London? Or will the post be taken by the corrupt King Rat? Or will The Spirit of the Bells triumph enabling a harmonious ending to the story?\nExpect lots of beautiful costumes, stunning scenery, lively song and dance routines, loads of audience participation and lots and lots of laughs.\nDirector John Bale returns to play Sarah the cook in Dick Whittington, after his return to the role of Dame last year, and promises that his frocks and jokes will be as outrageous as ever.\nThere's matinee and evening performances, and tickets are £15.50 adult, £13.00 child.\nClick here to visit the website.\nVideo Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now\nSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs - The Y Theatre, Leicester\nMonday, December 18, until Saturday, Dec 23\nThe story of the Princess Snow White, who is hated by her step-mother the evil and vain Queen Caligula, but is saved by the seven dwarfs.\nAdd in a dashing prince, a talking mirror, a couple of inept murderers, a Dame to die for, the Queen's henchman and an apprentice fairy trying to earn her wings and you get a fast moving, action packed traditional pantomime.\nThere's matinee and evening performances and tickets are £8 adult, £6 concession, £25 family of four.\nClick here to visit the website.\nIf panto isn't your thing, there are a couple of shows taking place which are sure to entertain all the family:\nGeorge's Marvellous Medicine - Curve, Leicester\nOn now until Saturday, January 20\nMost grandmothers are lovely, kind, helpful old ladies. Not George’s Grandmother. George’s Grandmother likes to gobble up slugs and bugs, and is always telling George what to do.\nBut one day, when his parents leave him alone with the grizzly old grunion, George takes his chance and sets about creating a brand new medicine to cure her of her cruelty. Little does he know that his perilous potion will be the start of a rather marvellous adventure…\nFollowing the success of Fantastic Mr Fox, The Twits and The Witches, this new co-production with Rose Theatre Kingston promises to be yet another imaginative and entertaining stage adaptation.\nRecommended age 6+. Tickets range from £12 to £18, with discounts available. Click here to visit the website.\nScrooge The Musical - Curve, Leicester\nOn now until Sunday, January 7\n(Image: Pamela Raith Photography)\nCurve artistic director Nikolai Foster directs this magical new Made at Curve production of Scrooge the Musical.\nBased on Charles Dickens' much-loved A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is the perfect festive family treat, taking you and Ebenezer Scrooge on a spellbinding journey through Christmas past, present and yet-to-come…\nThis musical is a feel-good story about hope and the kind of happiness that money can’t buy - perfect for the season of goodwill.\nThe cast includes former EastEnders actor Danny-Boy Hatchard and X Factor finalist Anton Stephans.\nRecommended for ages 8+, there's matinee and evening performances and tickets range from £10 to £45, with discounts available.\nClick here to visit the website", "Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas has turned her appraising eye over a new musical based on Baz Luhrmann’s hit film Strictly Ballroom.\nThe TV star sported a plunging gown with a dark green bodice and pale green skirt for the opening night of the show at the Piccadilly Theatre in London.\nShirley Ballas arriving at the Piccadilly Theatre (Matt Crossick/PA)\nThe show stars former Pop Idol winner Will Young, Jonny Labey and Zizi Strallen.\nBallas was joined at the theatre by Jason Donovan, a former contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, who was accompanied by his wife Angela.\nJason Donovan and wife Angela (Matt Crossick/PA)\nBeauty And The Beast actor Luke Evans, former X Factor winner Matt Cardle and Luhrmann’s costume designer wife Catherine Martin were also on the red carpet.\nCatherine Martin (Matt Crossick/PA)\nLuhrmann himself has been present for rehearsal with the show’s director and choreographer Drew McOnie and earlier tweeted: “Dropped in on a rehearsal of @DrewMcOnie’s joyous production of @strictlystage which has audiences dancing in the aisles! Opens tonight at the Piccadilly Theatre.”\nDropped in on a rehearsal of @DrewMcOnie’s joyous production of @strictlystage which has audiences dancing in the aisles! Opens tonight at the Piccadilly Theatre https://t.co/AK4mOxEAsh #strictlyballroom pic.twitter.com/z18dyg44wR — Baz Luhrmann (@bazluhrmann) April 24, 2018\nStrictly Ballroom The Musical is booking at the Piccadilly Theatre until October.", "This just in! Lythgoe Family Panto (LFP) announces Ashley Argota (ABC Family's \"The Fosters\") as Tinker Bell, Riley Costello (NBC's \"Hairspray Live!\") as Peter Pan, Clarice ORdaz (NBC's \"So You Think You Can Dance\") as Tiger Lily, Mark Ryan (\"Black Sails\" on STARZ) as Captain Hook, David F.M. Vaughn (Broadway's Shrek The Musical) as Smee, and Audrey Whitby (Nickelodeon's \"The Thudermans\") in PETER PAN AND TINKER BELL - A PIRATES CHRISTMAS at the Balboa Theatre.\nThe production will be directed by Bonnie Lythgoe and choreographed by Mario Mosley, with book by Kris Lythgoe, Michael Orland (American Idol) serving as musical arranger and supervisor, and Andy Street serving as Musical Director. Chris Wood will serve as Associate Producer and Chris Wilcox will serve as Lighting Director. Casting is by Executive Producer Becky Lythgoe. This will be the second holiday season of Lythgoe Family Panto in San Diego, and their first in this larger venue.\nPETER PAN AND TINKER BELL - A PIRATES CHRISTMAS is a flying, singing and swashbuckling holiday adventure performed in the style of a British panto. Step into the Balboa Theatre and embark on a wild quest with Tinker Bell, Wendy and Peter Pan, as they try to put a stop to the plot of some dastardly pirates who plan to kidnap Peter as a present to Captain Hook. Filled with big laughs, magic, dancers and contemporary songs by everyone from Taylor Swift to The Bee Gees, this family show has a little bit of something for everyone.\nPETER PAN AND TINKER BELL - A PIRATES CHRISTMAS will play a strictly limited engagement of 12 performances from December 21 through December 31, with the official press opening on December 21, at the Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Avenue, San Diego CA 92101.\nTickets start at $25 and can be purchased in-person at San Diego Theatres Advance Sales Windows located at 1100 3rd Ave (corner of 3rd & B St) across from the Civic Theatre, via phone at (619/760/858) 570-1100 Mon-Fri 10a-6p, or anytime online at sandiegotheatres.org/peter-pan-tinker-bella-pirates-christmas. Golden Tickets, which allow the ticketholder (children ages 4 - 12 only) a special on-stage experience during the production, are available for an additional $60.00 each.\n\"I am so excited by the great cast of Broadway and television performers we have assembled for our second San Diego production,\" says Kris Lythgoe, the show's author and President of Lythgoe Family Panto. \"San Diego is a huge supporter of the Arts and we are proud to once again expand panto productions with San Diego Theatres.\"\n\"We are thrilled to be expanding to The Balboa Theatre this season allowing even more families in San Diego and the surrounding communities to share in the magic of Panto!\"says Becky Lythgoe, Producer and Co-Founder of Lythgoe Family Panto. \"Ages 3-103, children, parents, and grandparents all coming together to sing, dance and share in the joy of LIVE theatre. This for us encapsulates the spirit and beauty reflective of the holiday season!\"\nLythgoe Family Panto produces fun, musical theatre the whole family can enjoy. Known for their creativity and involvement in television hits \"American Idol\" and \"So You Think You Can Dance,\" the Lythgoes are dedicated to bringing affordable theatre to families across America. Based on the Grimm fairytales and others, each story has been modernized with topical scripts for parents and well known pop songs for kids.\nThe Lythgoes pride themselves on creating a memorable experience a family can share together. This December, Lythgoe Family Panto will offer their largest season yet, with four different productions playing concurrently in Laguna, Pasadena, San Diego and Houston.\nLythgoe Family Panto established their reputation with productions at Pasadena Playhouse including A Cinderella Christmas starring Lauren Taylor, Alex Newell and Morgan Fairchild, Peter Pan and Tinker Bell - A Pirates Christmas starring Sabrina Carpenter and John O'Hurley, Sleeping Beauty and Her Winter Knight starring Olivia Holt and Lucy Lawless, Aladdin and His Winter Wish starring Ben Vereen, JorDan Fisher, and Ashley Argota - and A Snow White Christmas (the original of this production) starring Ariana Grande and Neil Patrick Harris.\nAdditional casting for PETER PAN AND TINKER BELL - A PIRATES CHRISTMAS will be announced at a later date.\nRelated Articles", "A Plymouth hotel is offering an Afternoon Tea experience based on one of the all-time great Disney films.\nBoringdon Hall has re-launched its Beauty and the Beast-themed Afternoon Tea experience in October following its success earlier on this year.\n(Image: Boringdon Hall)\nIn addition to having the Beauty and the beast soundtrack playing in the background, visitors will also be able to enjoy a number of dishes based on the iconic story, including:\nLumière’s Special “Grey Stuff” (milk chocolate mousse with cookies and cream)\nEnchanted Rose (vanilla and rose scented cake pop)\nCogsworth Dulcey Caramel Tart\nBelle’s Chocolate Brownie Books\nFurther links to the film include its famous Bell Jar, which will greet guests with an edible rose and an array of succulent sandwiches, including Honey Roast Ham, Cucumber and Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon.\nAll the usual Devonian delights, such as the traditional fruit scones will also be served.\nLast week, Boringdon Hall’s Gaia Spa was named as one of the best in Europe.\n(Image: Matthew Hawkey)\nThe venue was shortlisted for the Hotel Spa of the Year prize in the Western Europe & Scandinavia category at the World Spa and Wellness Awards, and will now go head-to-head against venues in Portugal and France and Switzerland to claim the top prize.\nThe Beauty and the Beast Afternoon Tea experience is £27.00pp and is available between midday and 5pm every day this month.", "Get Daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nIt’s only the second time since 1867 that Beauty and the Beast has been performed here.\nYet with a hint of fairy tale magic, some sizzling special effects, colourful costumes and loads of belly laughs thrown in, it will surely be back before another 100 years is up.\nAs always, the comedy moments proved the biggest hits, with cheeky Ben Nickless – back for his fourth panto at the Theatre Royal – perfectly nailing a routine where his Apple watch filled in his missing words. Then later on his DVD collection provided some rather apt (if not altogether safe-for-work) commentary on panto dame Andrew Ryan’s night out with some poor fella in the front row of the stalls.\nA personal highlight was the traditional staple “If I Were Not Upon This Stage”. You can’t really beat the tried and tested routines, and this one left tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks well into the curtain call. Another set-piece, the pleasant pheasant pluckers, had the cast in stitches too – along with most of the adults watching, though thankfully this one went over the heads of all those kids in the crowd.\nThe lovely Sherrie Hewson, a local lass of course, provided the glue between the scenes as Mrs Potts-Temple-Savage, with some traditional audience interaction to help the fairy story along, although in truth there was already a fair pace to the action and a good mix of fairy tale, comedy and song.\nBenidorm’s Sherrie, previously a star of Coronation Street, sometimes looked a little alone on stage when she was chatting with the audience – it would only have taken a couple of dancers as her escorts to leave her looking less lonely on what is a very big stage.\nWe loved the baddie, Trent Bridge, played by Danny Bayne, already a veteran of musical theatre and TV entertainment news. Perfectly over-the-top, he took to the stage with just the right amount of fun to hit the mark as Deadly Nightshade’s henchman. Deadly herself (Natalie Spriggs) should really have attracted more boos from the auditorium but had so many lines the audience really needed to listen to keep up!\nNaomi Slights was a ringer for Disney’s Belle, helped along by some wonderful wardrobe. Her beau, Ben Richards from Footballers’ Wives and Hollyoaks, perfectly captured the torment of being the beast. And while the classic dining room scene came alive thanks to some nifty dance work from the young Theatre Royal Babes ensemble, my favourites were the dancing jammie dodgers.\nIf you’ve got some very young children you might need to hold their hand towards the end of Act One, when Beast slays the kraken – but not before an amazing piece of stagecraft brings it terrifyingly to life within inches of the audience’s noses.\nThen, in the second act, it’s time to slip the 3D glasses for the haunted Forest, complete with all its creepy crawlies to give the I’m A Celebrity critters a run for their money.\nBeauty and the Beast runs until Sunday January 14. Tickets start at £18. For more details call 0115 989 5555 or go to trch.co.uk.\nThe Post has launched a Whatsapp group to help you keep up to date with the latest news. If you'd like to receive one daily message with the main headlines, as well as breaking news alerts, text NEWS to 07790 586202. Then add the number to your phone contacts book as 'Nottingham Post'. Your phone number won't be shared with other members of the group.", "Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Scroll down for the latest news, and click HERE to learn more about how we've revamped our morning brief for 2017! Want our morning reports delivered via email? Subscribe here!\nby BWW News Desk - February 14, 2017\nFrom the melodies of Rodgers and Hammerstein to the lyrics of Jason Robert Brown, nothing says romance like a Broadway ballad, and it's that special time of year to celebrate the best of them. This is BroadwayWorld's 2017 Valentine's Day Special... and it's bigger than ever!. (more...)\n2) THE PRINCE OF EGYPT Will Take World Premiere Bow in San Francisco, then Play Denmark\nby BWW News Desk - February 14, 2017\nIt won't have to part a sea, but The Prince of Egypt will have to cross one to finally bow on stage.. (more...)\n3) BEAUTY & THE BEAST: Josh Groban Sings New Song 'Evermore' + Josh Gad & Luke Evans Perform 'Gaston'\nby BWW News Desk - February 14, 2017\nToday, Disney has shared a 30-second teaser of Josh Groban's all-new original song, 'Evermore' from the live action BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. The song will appear in the film's end credits as well as the soundtrack.. (more...)\n4) Photo Coverage: NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 Gets Some Help from Fans on Cast Album!\nby Jessica Fallon Gordon - February 14, 2017\nAs BroadwayWorld previously reported, the new Broadway musical NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 invited fans to be a part of the upcoming original Broadway cast recording. Just yesterday, fans joined creator Dave Malloy and members of the cast to sing group chorus sections and to play the show's famous egg shakers for the original Broadway cast recording. BroadwayWorld was on hand for the special recording session and you can go inside the singalong below!. (more...)\n5) Photo Coverage: Extra! Extra! NEWSIES Casts Unite to Celebrate Film Premiere\nby Jennifer Broski - February 14, 2017\nAudiences have a final chance to 'Seize the Day!' - tickets are now available for 'Disney's Newsies: The Broadway Musical!,' playing in U.S. movie theaters for three days only on Thursday, February 16 at 7:00 p.m., Saturday February 18 at 12:55 p.m. and Wednesday, February 22 at 7:00 p.m. (all local times). Captured live at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre earlier this year, the event reunites original cast members Jeremy Jordan, Kara Lindsay, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, and Ben Fankhauser.. (more...)\nToday's Call Sheet:\n- Max Vernon's new musical THE VIEW UPSTAIRS begins Off-Broadway.\n- The GAZILLION BUBBLE SHOW marks 10 years in NYC today...\n- Caryl Churchill's ESCAPED ALONE makes its U.S. debut at BAM this evening.\n- And Tracy Letts's MAN FROM NEBRASKA opens tonight at Second Stage!\nBWW Exclusive: Check out AMELIE star Phillipa Soo's fabulous response to our query: What's the Most Romantic Broadway Love Song Ever? Then click here to see what more than 1,000 stars had to say!\n\"Do You Love Me?\" from Fiddler on the Roof. It is one of the scariest things one can ask another person. It is brave and vulnerable. It makes your heart strings pull and your stomach drop. That song shows a different kind of love than the ones we usually see on Broadway. There is something beautiful about how unsatisfying Golde's answers are. But then at the end they say, \"After 25 years it's nice to know,\" we have a little glimpse of their deep love for each other. *sigh*\n- Phillipa Soo\n#WednesdayWisdom: A word on hard work from MAN FROM NEBRASKA playwright Tracy Letts...\n\"After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.\" - Tracy Letts (via BrainyQuote)\nSet Your DVR... for HAMILTON's Taran Killam, appearing on Bravo's WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE tonight!\nWhat we're geeking out over: Disney's upcoming live-action remake of MULAN, which just found its director!\nWhat we're listening to: Broadway vet Brooke Moriber's first single \"Up All Night,\" out now!\nSocial Butterfly: We're ecstatic about Laura Benanti's Valentine's Day gift - her little girl! No pictures yet, but here's a glimpse of her adorable nursery...\nA post shared by Laura Benanti (@laurabenanti) on Dec 11, 2016 at 5:42pm PST\nAnd a Happy Birthday shout-out to Amber Riley, who turns 31 today!\nAmber Riley is currently starring as 'Effie White' in the first-ever West End production of DREAMGIRLS. Her past stage credits include HAIR at the Hollywood Bowl and COTTON CLUB PARADE at Encores! She is best known for her SAG Award-winning portrayal of 'Mercedes Jones' in the musical dramedy series GLEE on FOX. The actress also won season 17 of DANCING WITH THE STARS and recently appeared in an episode of CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND.\nAmber Riley in DREAMGIRLS in the West End.\nPhoto by BRINKHOFF/MÖGENBURG\nSee you bright and early tomorrow, BroadwayWorld!\nRelated Articles", "Now that 2017 is finally here, we have a whole new year of movies to look forward to. And one of the most anticipated early releases is a live-action version of the animated classic Beauty and the Beast. Today, we have two new TV spots to get fans ready for this enchanted fairy tale slated to hit theaters on March 17.\nThe beloved tale will be retold for the big screen with a modern live-action lens and the help of transformative CG magic. Emma Watson and Dan Stevens will star as Belle and the Beast/Prince respectively, and Luke Evans will play the role of Gaston. Emma Thompson has joined the cast as Mrs. Potts and Kevin Kline as Belle's father, Maurice. These new TV spots debuted on YouTube today, but it isn't clear when more footage will be released as we continue the countdown towards what will surely be one of 2017's biggest blockbusters.\nThis live action adventure is based on the classic French tale centering on Belle, whose father is taken captive by the Beast after being lost in the woods. The young woman agrees to trade her life for her fathers and ends up falling in love with him. This releases a witch's curse on the Beast, which turned him into the monster. The supporting cast includes Ewan McGregor as Lumiere, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Plumette, Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, Josh Gad as LeFou and Stanley Tucci as Cadenza.\nEight-time Oscar-winner Alan Menken, who won two Academy Awards for the 1991 animated classic, will score the film, which will feature new recordings of the original songs in addition to several new songs written by Menken and Sir Tim Rice. Bill Condon will direct from a script by Stephen Chbosky, and the film will be produced by Mandeville Films' David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman. Production got under way last May at Shepperton Studios in London.\nThis fairy tale adaptation will be going up against Sony's action-comedy Baby Driver from director Edgar Wright when it hits theaters on March 17, 2017. The live action adaptation is also sandwiched between a number of high-profile releases, with Kong: Skull Island and The Boss Baby arriving a week earlier on March 10, 2017, and Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur and Power Rangers arriving on March 24. Take a look at these new Beauty and the Beast TV spots below.", "The video will start in 8 Cancel\nGet celebs updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nKeith Chegwin was breathless as he made what's thought to be his last theatre performance before his untimely death.\nThe star died last night after a ''long-term battle with a progressive lung condition.\"\nIt's now emerged that he was suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis - an incurable disease that grows progressively worse.\nAnd the TV presenter's failing health seemed to be evident when he appeared in panto just eight months ago as Jolly King Cheggers.\n(Image: BigWelshMark/Youtube)\n(Image: BigWelshMark/Youtube)\nKeith performed on stage alongside X Factor 's Stevi Ritchie and Basil Brush in an Easter performance of Beauty And The Beast.\nBut as he spoke to the audience at the Pavilion Theatre in Rhyl on April 14 last year, he struggled to catch his breath and lost his voice.\nHe was suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis which causes fibrosis or scarring of the lungs, making the organ stiffer and breathing more difficult.\nAs was the case for Keith, the condition worsened over time, and there was no cure.\nHis ex wife revealed that he was using \"portable oxygen\" to help him breathe at his sister's wedding just two months ago.\n(Image: WireImage)\n(Image: BigWelshMark/Youtube)\nSmoking is thought to be a contributing cause, along with pollution, acid reflux, certain viruses and genetics.\nBut Chegwin loved the panto and told the Shropshire Star at the time that the show was \"packed\" every night.\n\"I toured with it last year thinking it wasn't going to work, but it was ram packed,\" he said.\n\"It's just a fun take on the Christmas tradition, but don't expect it to be like the Disney film.\n\"One lady did and asked me afterwards, 'Why were you covered in gateau at one point? And why were you singing the 12 days of Christmas at Easter?' I love it.\"\nEarlier today, in a statement confirming his passing, Chegwin's family said: \"We are heartbroken to share the news that Keith Chegwin sadly passed away following a long-term battle with a progressive lung condition, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which rapidly worsened towards the end of this year.\"\n\"Keith died peacefully at home shortly after midnight on the 11th of December. His wife Maria, his daughter Rose and his son Ted were by his side.\"\n\"We would like to take this opportunity to thank Severn Hospice for the kindness, support and care they have shown us all over the last few weeks.\"", "This week you can set your imagination free with Disney's super-spectacular live-action adaptation of the animated classic Beauty and the Beast.\nENTERTAINMENT NEWS & VIDEO - This week you can set your imagination free with Disney's super-spectacular live-action adaptation of the animated classic Beauty and the Beast.\nThe live-action adaptation of Disney’s animated classic is a stunning, cinematic event celebrating one of the most enduring and beloved tales ever told, and one that has touched readers for centuries.\nNow, thanks to the artistry and imagination of director Bill Condon and a brilliant creative team, audiences of all ages are sure to be captivated by the story’s adventure, passion and romance once again.\nIt is the fantastic journey of Belle, a bright, beautiful, and independent young woman who is taken prisoner by a beast in his castle. Despite her fears, she befriends the castle’s enchanted staff and learns to look beyond the Beast’s hideous exterior and realise the kind heart of the true prince within.\nThe film stars: Emma Watson as Belle; Dan Stevens as the Beast; Luke Evans as Gaston, the handsome, but shallow villager who woos Belle; Kevin Kline as Maurice, Belle’s father; Josh Gad as LeFou, Gaston’s long-suffering aide-de-camp; Ewan McGregor as Lumière, the candelabra; Stanley Tucci as Maestro Cadenza, the harpsichord; Audra McDonald as Madame de Garderobe, the wardrobe; Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Plumette, the feather duster; Hattie Morahan as the enchantress; and Nathan Mack as Chip, the teacup; with Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, the mantel clock; and Emma Thompson as the teapot, Mrs. Potts.\nAlan Menken, who won two Academy Awards (Best Original Score and Best Song) for the animated film, provides the score, which includes new recordings of the original songs written by Menken and Howard Ashman, as well as three new songs written by Menken and Tim Rice.\nAccording to Condon, “The delightful animated film from 1991 plays as classic animation, but if you want to go a level deeper into the story and into the songs and into the emotions, that’s what this live-action film delivers: a greater depth of emotions.”\nWatch the Beauty and the Beast trailer below:", "Standing room only at Carihi’s Beauty and the Beast\nCarihi’s production of Beauty and the Beast last week was a great success with every show sold out.\nThe extensive cast as well as lighting, sound and other backstage crew members spent countless hours making the production happen.\nJaci McPhee played Belle. She said she joined theatre because she has been passionate about it throughout her life and there is the added bonus of the department being an awesome community.\nCole Devlin, who played Gaston and Luke Kingston who played Le Fou, agreed with McPhee. Kingston added that theatre was a good way to express himself in different ways as well as a good place to meet new people.", "It will be time to cheer the heroes and boo the villains as classic pantomime is performed in Gamlingay at the beginning of next month.\nSnow White and the Seven Woodcutters is performed at The Eco Hub from Friday to Sunday December 1 to 3 in a show that has been written and produced by Jan Cooper.\nThe beautiful and kindhearted princess Snow White charms every creature in the kingdom except one – her jealous stepmother, the Queen.\nWhen the Magic Mirror proclaims Snow White the fairest one of all, the queen orders her loyal but daft henchmen remove Snow White from the castle.\nLost in the woods she befriends the seven woodcutters of Gamilingay Wood.\nBut when the Queen tricks Snow White with an enchanted apple, only the magic of true love can save her.\nGamlingay Players is a friendly amateur dramatic group on the Cambridgeshire/Bedfordshire border who have been performing shows for the last 50 years.\nThe show will start at 7.30pm on the Friday and Saturday and there will be afternoon performances beginning at 2.30pm on the Saturday and Sunday.\nTickets for the show are £9 for adults, £7.50 for children and concessions. There are family tickets available at a cost of £30 for four tickets to include at least one adult.\nFor further details or to book tickets in advance visit www.gamlingayplayers.org or visit The Eco Hub.", "Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Scroll down for the latest news. Want our morning reports delivered via email? Subscribe here!\n1) New Cast Announced For The West End Smash Hit THE COMEDY ABOUT A BANK ROBBERY\nby BWW News Desk - February 01, 2018\nAhead of its second birthday in the West End this spring, the critically acclaimed and Olivier Award-nominated The Comedy About A Bank Robbery announces a new company. After a year of good behaviour at the Criterion the second company have been released on parole, with a new band of inmates starting performances from 27 February. Joining the cast are Samson Ajewole (Cooper), Jenna Augen (Ruth Monaghan), Jack Baldwin (Officer Shuck), Leonard Cook (Robin Freeboys), Matt Douglas-Hunt (Mitch Ruscitti) and Peter McGovern (Warren Slax). Continuing their roles as the bars-crossed lovers are Samuel Fogell (Sam Monaghan) and Holly Sumpton (Caprice Freeboys), and literally completing the cast is Chris Leask (Everyone Else).. (more...)\n2) VIDEO: Stephen Colbert Interviews Laura Benanti's 'Melania Trump' About the State of the Union\nby Stage Tube - February 01, 2018\nBroadway's Laura Benanti returned to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night as Melania Trump. Colbert prefaced her appearance by discussing the State of the Union, and the fact that Melania showed up alone, and wearing white, a symbol of feminism. Colbert then proceeded to interview Benanti-as-Melania about the state of her union with the president.. (more...)\n3) BWW Review: The Mad Ones' MILES FOR MARY Salutes The Understated Heroism of Public School Teachers\nby Michael Dale - February 01, 2018\nWith the past year bringing in a new administration with a new Secretary of Education, the national awareness of how overworked, undercompensated and financially burdened America's public school teachers are has fueled debate within discussions of federal budget restructuring and tax reform.. (more...)\n4) VIDEO: Natalie Weiss Joins Ben Fankhauser for Epic DEAR EVAN HANSEN and Beyonce Mashup!\nby Stage Tube - February 01, 2018\nNatalie Weiss joined Ben Fankhauser at his show at Feinstein's/54 Below on Tuesday night, January 30th. The pair teamed up for an epic mashup of 'You Will Be Found' from Dear Evan Hansen and 'Halo' by Beyonce. Watch the number below, including beautiful harmonies and Fankhauser on piano!. (more...)\n5) Debut of the Month: Mama Has Provided! ONCE ON THIS ISLAND's Alex Newell\nby Caryn Robbins - February 01, 2018\nToday, Alex Newell speaks with BWW about making his Broadway debut and explains why even in the bleakest of times, there's always hope for what the future can bring!. (more...)\nNext up in our \"mug shots\" series is James Snyder\n(portrait by Walter McBride). Plus visit our merchandise shop\nto get your own BWW mug, t-shirt, tote bag and more!\nToday's Call Sheet:\n-Kirstin Maldonado of the hit acapella group Pentatonix makes her Broadway debut as Lauren in KINKY BOOTS tonight!\n-The cast of GROUNDHOG DAY will reunite tonight at Feinstein's/54 Below for a special concert called Humans of Punxsutawney!\n-ROSEMARY AND TIME's New York City premiere begins performances tonight at the Paradise Factory Theatre!\n-Broadway alum Autumn Guzzardi and Danielle Sue Jordan lead the cast of DOG SEES GOD at the Matthew Corozine Studio Theatre, beginning performances tonight!\nBWW Exclusive: Check out our exclusive photos from the latest #EduHam! #EduHam is a series of HAMILTON Wednesday matinees made available to New York City schools with a high concentration of students from low-income families for the ticket price of only $10.\nPhoto Credit: Walter McBride\nCheck out more photos here.\nWhat we're geeking out over: Our own Richard Ridge will host an NYC screening of MY FAIR LADY at the United Palace of Cultural Arts!\nWhat we're watching: Vanessa Williams and the company of HEY, LOOK ME OVER! at Encores! rehearse \"Push De Button,\" originally from JAMAICA!\nSocial Butterfly: Get a behind the scenes look of a very WICKED photoshoot, featuring the show's current leads, Jackie Burns and Amanda Jane Cooper!\nAnd a Happy Birthday shout-out to Eden Espinosa, who turns 40 today!\nEden Espinosa is most recognized for her critically acclaimed portrayal of Elphaba in \"Wicked\" on Broadway and in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ms. Espinosa originated the title character in \"Brooklyn the Musical\", played Flora in \"Flora the Red Menace,\" and Maureen in the closing company of \"Rent\". Eden also originated the role of Sadie Thompson, \"Rain\", at The Old Globe Theater. She portrayed Eva Peron in TPAC and Studio Tenn's production of \"Evita\". Last year she toured Denmark and London playing Emma Borden in \"Lizzie\". Most recently, she played Mary Flynn to rave reviews in Maria Freidmans productions of \"Merrily We Roll Along\" at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. Her television appearances include shows such as Law and Order, Ugly Betty, and Elementary. Voiceover credits include Cassandra in the Disney show Tangled the Series, Robot Chicken, MAD TV, Elena of Avalor, and Titan Maximum Eden's debut album, Look Around, is available at all online retail outlets, and her second album will be released in 2018.\nSee you bright and early on Monday, BroadwayWorld!\nWhat Do You Think? Tell Us In The Comments!\nRelated Articles", "The busiest panto season in years kicks off tonight (Thursday) as the Key Theatre stages the first of 60 performances of Sleeping Beauty.\nSimon Egerton, a familiar figure at the Key at this time of year, is back as the director, writer, composer and lyricist.\nThe Key Theatre dame Iona trumpet\nRob Hazle also returns as the musical director and plays the part of Potty the Chamberlain, following his role as Uncle Billy in Dick Whittington last year.\nThe main lady in this year’s pantomime, Aurora, is being played by Rebecca Levy who has previously been on stage in Legally Blonde, Kiss me Kate and First Lady Suite.\nCarabosse, Aurora’s worst nightmare and the evil witch that cursed her is being played by Lauren Storer, fresh from appearing in the national tour of Footloose .\nLizzie Franks and Katie Pritchard also return. Lizzie played Fairy Liquid in Jack and the Beanstalk in 2015 while Katie was on stage at the Key Theatre in 2013 as the pocket-sized Dandini in Cinderella.\nAladdin panto launch at the Broadway Theatre. Cast members - Andrew Cannon - Aladdin Mark Hyde - Widow Twankey Ben Cupit - Wishee Oliver Broad - Ebenezer Dancers - Clarissa Payne, Hannah ?, Sam Woods and Adam Lavery EMN-170410-134123009\nPantomime isn’t a pantomime without a dame and this year it is played by the man of countless faces – Fred Broom. He will be donning the many frocks of Aurora’s mother, Queen Iona Trumpet.\nShow details at www.vivacity-peterborough.com.\nThe Cresset opens its season two days later, December 9, with a three-week run of Snow White.\nFormer soap star Kevin Kennedy , best known as Curly Watts in Coronation Street for 20 years, stars as Muddles.\n“Resident” dame Zach Vanderfelt – returns as Betty Bonbon, while Victoria Jane – who impressed as Wendy in last year’s panto Peter Pan- plays Snow White.\nShow details at www.cresset.co.uk\nAnd adding to the mix this year, The Broadway has Aladdin from December 14 to 31.\nKD Theatre Productions will be taking audiences on a magical carpet ride all the way to Old Peking.\nStarring as the title character is Andrew Cannon, who comes to the production from a run in “Imagine This” at the Union Theatre, London. Mark Hyde, a seasoned panto maestro is Widow Twankey.\nBen Cupit is Wishee Washee, and Oliver Broad is the villainous Abanazar.\nThe show promises spectacular sets, lavish costumes, a live band, and an amazing flying carpet. Youngsters from Tu Danse Studios in Peterborough will be joining the professional cast as the junior chorus.\nShow details at www.the broadway.today\nPolka Dot Pantomimes present a magical children’s classic Aladdin at the South Holland Centre in Spalding from Saturday until December 31. It is full of high energy dance routines, glittering costumes, spectacular scenery, and a great big dollop of audience participation.\nStamford Corn Exchange welcomes the Stamford Pantomime Players with Beauty and the Beast from December 27-January 1. Before then, on Sunday, there is Father Christmas Comes Up Trumps.\nThe Stahl Theatre’s festive offering in Oundle is A Very Christmassy Christmas Concert at Christmas performed by Telling Tales Theatre Company on December 22 and 23 at 3.30pm and 6.30pm. It is a fantastic variety show that’s sure to get everyone in the family ready for the holidays. Join Simon Aylin and a host of West End performers for a concert packed with cracking songs and plenty of laughter.\nTo book tickets, please visit: www.tellingtalestheatre.com", "Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Scroll down for the latest news, and click HERE to learn more about how we've revamped our morning brief for 2017! Want our morning reports delivered via email? Subscribe here!\nby BWW News Desk - August 13, 2017\nDiana Huey is currently starring in the national tour of Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID, and according to Gusto, the Asian actress is facing unfair criticism based solely on her race.. (more...)\n2) Oak Onaodowan Dedicates His Final GREAT COMET Performance to Charlottesville Victim\nby BWW News Desk - August 13, 2017\nOkieriete 'Oak' Onaodowan plays his final performance as Pierre in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 today, and in light of the tragic events taking place in Charlottesville, Virginia, he has dedicated his final performance to Heather Heyer who was killed when a car drove through the crowd.. (more...)\n3) Patina Miller and Husband David Mars Welcome a Baby Girl\nby BWW News Desk - August 13, 2017\nBroadway vet Patina Miller and her husband, David Mars, have just welcomed their first child. Joining the family is a daughter named Emerson Harper Mars born August 9 in New York City.. (more...)\n4) Javier Munoz Starts #DiversityOfBroadway, Broadway Responds\nby BWW News Desk - August 13, 2017\nJavier Muñoz, current star of Hamilton, has started the #DiversityOfBroadway hashtag and it has swept through social media. Casts across Broadway are sharing their group photos and celebrating the diversity that makes Broadway so great. Check out some photos. (more...)\n5) BWW Review: THE UMPO BRIDESMAIDS Totally Sings You Up the Musical Aisle to Hilarity\nby Gil Kaan - August 13, 2017\nWith UMPO BRIDESMAIDS, executive producer Kate Pazakis continues her unbroken string of audience-pleasing musical parodies of pop culture flicks. Tony winner Marissa Jaret Winokur ably takes the directorial reins with Christopher Youngsman leading the triple-threat talents through a fast pace, high-energy, side-splitting experience of incredible vocals, comic gems and clever choreography.. (more...)\nNext up in our \"mug shots\" series is Joshua Henry\n(portrait by Walter McBride). Plus visit our merchandise shop\nto get your own BWW mug, t-shirt, tote bag and more!\nToday's Call Sheet:\n-Casts of ALADDIN, BEAUTIFUL, ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE, and more will perform at tonight's Broadway In Chicago's 2017 Summer Concert!\n-Billy Porter brings an evening of songs and stories to Bay Street Theater tonight!\n-And Jenna Ushkowitz and Shoba Narayan are set for the INSOMNIA TV pilot private reading at the Music Hall of the Dramatists Guild Fund!\nBWW Exclusive: BWW's Caryn Robbins brings you the guide to Broadway stars and shows appearing on TV during the 2017-18 season!\nWhat we're geeking out over: Disney's newest Broadway queen and princess Caissie Levy and Patti Murin talk all things FROZEN ahead of the Denver premiere!\nWhat we're watching: HAMILTON's Mandy Gonzalez and DEAR EVAN HANSEN's Jennifer Laura Thompson show off their 'killer' harmonies in \"All That Jazz\" from CHICAGO!\nSocial Butterfly: The cast of ANASTASIA took over our Instagram story for Broadway at W yesterday!\nAnd a Happy Birthday shout-out to Steve Martin, who turns 72 today!\nAs an actor, comedian, author, playwright, screenwriter, producer and musician- Steve Martin is one of the most diversified performers and acclaimed artists of his generation. Martin has been successful as a writer of and performer in some of the most popular movies of recent film history-appearing in more than 50 films over the course of his career.\nIn 2013, Steve Martin released his third full-length album called Love Has Come For You, a unique collaboration with songwriter Edie Brickell. Love Has Come For You won a Grammy® for \"Best American Roots Song\" for the title track and inspired the Broadway musical Bright Star. Bright Star received five Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, and won the Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding New Broadway Musical and Outstanding New Score. Martin and Brickell's second album together, So Familiar, was released on Rounder Records and featured 12 remarkable new songs that bought the acclaimed duo's musical collaboration into fresh creative territory. Born in Waco, TX, in 1945, Martin was raised in Southern California and began working as a comedian and magician at area amusement parks, including The Magic Shop at Disneyland. Martin went on to Santa Ana College, and then earned his Theater Arts degree from UCLA.\nSee you bright and early tomorrow, BroadwayWorld!\nWhat Do You Think? Tell Us In The Comments!\nPlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.\nRelated Articles", "Disney’s classic tale Beauty and the Beast is making its way from the big screen to the Strathcona Christian Academy Auditorium.\nSCA Fine Arts Musical Theatre will be performing their rendition of the magical tale from May 2 to May 15.\n“Rehearsals have been going well. We are tying everything together right now and making sure all the transitions are smooth, making sure we are on top of all character development, and that the music is on the mark and choreography is tight,” said Cynthia Foster, the show director and drama teacher at SCA.\nFoster added a unique aspect of the production is that her students are acting as both cast and crew.\n“I started doing that a few years ago, and it just really helps the students own the importance of being very tight with all aspects — not just the character development and the choreography and everything else, but also with all the technical aspects,” she said.\nStudents are required to put in 20 hours of technical works, assisting with tasks such as costume and prop design, and building the set. Foster said her students tend to go above and beyond, and volunteer far more time than the minimum requirement.\nAdditionally, Foster noted that having students double up on their responsibilities helps them to be more well-rounded individuals.\n“It is like any experience that you have in life. The more experience, the more adventure, the more things that you try, the more opportunities are often presented to you,” Foster said. “I think it is a great builder into their confidence, into their vision as to how they can help out and be a good citizen, and it helps enhance their quality of life.”\nFurthermore, Foster said while selecting this year’s musical theatre production, she considered what would provide students an opportunity to improve skill development and personal growth.\n“What I do is try to create something where the students are working along with the teachers and parents with community professionals, and collectively building all aspects of the show so that they have a connection with all generations and people from different walks of life,” she said.\nBeauty and the Beast was also selected with the community in mind.\n“This is the year for the new release for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast movie, so it is an excellent tie-in,” Foster said. “You have seen the new Beauty and the Beast movie, now come and enjoy the Beauty and the Beast characters live on stage.”\nTo that end, Foster said the performance is one the whole family can enjoy.\n“It is such a magical show, and if I can say so myself, the audience will experience a high caliber of theatre, and one where they can be comfortable bringing their family and that is affordable,” she added.\nAs for Foster, she said she is looking forward to the show coming together.\n“It is so much work, so much time, so much commitment, and so it is such a collaborative effort as far as the team goes,” she said. “And when you see everybody’s efforts come together to produce a beautiful show where the students are proud, the parents are proud, and the community loves it, there is nothing better than that.”\nTickets to Beauty and the Beast are available at scafinearts.com/tickets. The performance will also include appearances by local charities TAVO — also known as Teens Against Violent Oppression — who will be serving hot dogs and drinks prior to the performances; and Jacob’s Wish, which will host photo opportunities with Disney princess characters available for a donation of $5.\nscomber@postmedia.com\ntwitter.com/SarahComber", "Indian stars Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone didn’t emerge as winners at the Teen Choice 2017 award ceremony, where TV show Riverdale and film Wonder Woman dominated the winners’ list.\nDeepika was nominated for her Hollywood debut xXx: Return of Xander Cage in the Choice Action Movie Actress category and lost the title to Gal Gadot, who won for her act in hit film Wonder Woman.\nPriyanka was also nominated for her Hollywood debut film Baywatch in the Choice Movie Villain category. She was competing with stars like Charlize Theron, Elizabeth Banks, James McAvoy, Javier Bardem and Luke Evans. Evans emerged the winner. The fan-decided awards were announced here on Sunday.\nThe annual ceremony, which recognizes teen icons in film, television, music, sports, fashion, comedy and the web, honoured film and TV titles including Wonder Woman, Riverdale, and Beauty and the Beast, reports ew.com.\nTrending :\nStars from Riverdale, Teen Wolf, and Pretty Little Liars dominated the TV categories, while Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 won big in the movie categories.\nPop band Maroon 5 also walked away with the second ever Decade Award, singer Bruno Mars was honoured with the Visionary Award, and actress Vanessa Hudgens was presented with the first-ever #SeeHer Award.\nHere’s a list of some of the winners:\nChoice Action Movie: “Wonder Woman”\nChoice Action Movie Actor: Chris Pine for “Wonder Woman”\nChoice Action Movie Actress: Gal Gadot for “Wonder Woman”\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie Actor: Chris Pratt for “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie Actress: Zoe Saldana for “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”\nChoice Fantasy Movie: “Beauty and the Beast”\nChoice Fantasy Movie Actor: Dwayne Johnson for “Moana”\nChoice Fantasy Movie Actress: Emma Watson for “Beauty and the Beast”\nChoice Drama Movie: “Everything, Everything”\nChoice Drama Movie Actor: Kian Lawley for “Before I Fall”\nChoice Drama Movie Actress: Emma Watson for “The Circle”\nChoice Comedy Movie: “Finding Dory”\nChoice Comedy Movie Actor: Zac Efron for “Baywatch”\nChoice Comedy Movie Actress: Ellen DeGeneres for “Finding Dory”\nChoice Summer Movie: “Spider-Man: Homecoming”\nChoice Summer Movie Actor: Tom Holland for “Spider-Man: Homecoming”\nChoice Summer Movie Actress: Zendaya for “Spider-Man: Homecoming”\nChoice Movie Villain: Luke Evans for “Beauty and the Beast”\nChoice Breakout Movie Star: Auli’i Cravalho for “Moana”\nChoice MovieShip: Emma Watson and Dan Stevens for “Beauty and the Beast”\nTelevision\nChoice Drama TV Show: “Riverdale”\nChoice Drama TV Actor: Cole Sprouse for “Riverdale”\nChoice Drama TV Actress: Lucy Hale for “Pretty Little Liars”\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show: “The Vampire Diaries”\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actor: Dylan O’Brien for “Teen Wolf”\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress: Kat Graham for “The Vampire Diaries”\nChoice Action TV Show: “The Flash”\nChoice Action TV Actor: Grant Gustin for “The Flash”\nChoice Action TV Actress: Melissa Benoist for “Supergirl”\nChoice Comedy TV Show: “Fuller House”\nChoice Comedy TV Actor: Jean-Luc Bilodeau for “Baby Daddy”\nChoice Comedy TV Actress: Candace Cameron Bure for “Fuller House”\nChoice Animated TV Show: “Family Guy”\nMusic\nChoice Male Artist: Harry Styles\nChoice Female Artist: Ariana Grande\nChoice Music Group: Fifth Harmony\nChoice Country Artist: Carrie Underwood\nChoice Electronic/Dance Artist: Calvin Harris\nChoice R&B/Hip-Hop Artist: Beyoncé\nChoice Rock Artist: Harry Styles\nChoice Song: Female Artist: Camila Cabello – “Crying in the Club”\nChoice Song: Male Artist: Niall Horan – “Slow Hands”\nChoice Song: Group: Fifth Harmony (Gucci Mane) – “Down”\nChoice Collaboration: Steve Aoki and Louis Tomlinson – “Just Hold On”\nChoice Summer Song: “Despacito” – Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee (Justin Bieber)\nChoice Summer Female Artist: Camila Cabello", "FOR James Tobias Clifford, panto is all about the audience.\nThe writer and director of this year’s Kenton Theatre pantomime, Robin Hood, which opens next Friday (December 15), is also one of the stars of the show.\nYou’d expect him to be playing the title role of the dashing outlaw hero, wouldn’t you? But oh no he isn’t!\nInstead, he’s cast himself as the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham.\n“I always like my panto villains to be slightly over the top,” says James. “As much for the adults as for the kids — with all our panto villains we should love to hate them rather than genuinely dislike them.”\nThat shouldn’t be a problem for James who, together with his girlfriend and Immersion Theatre Company producing partner Rochelle Parry, starred in the Kenton’s first three professional pantomimes.\nThis saw the pair play Buttons/Cinderella in Cinderella (2012), Aladdin/Genie in Aladdin (2013), and Captain Hook/Peter Pan in Peter Pan (2014).\nIt was during the course of the latter production that James decided to mount a one-man show of his own — commandeering the Kenton’s stage to propose to Rochelle.\n“It was the 23rd of December,” he recalls. “Once the show had finished and the audience had left the whole cast and crew were in on it. My mum had come down and I’d arranged for Rochelle’s family to come down as well.\n“My mum had distracted her by asking her to go shopping — yeah, very cunning! — and while she was out we were preparing it. So we had candles lit all on the stage and we projected a beautiful sky on to the backdrop, so it was atmospheric.\n“Everyone was hiding, so when my mum brought her back, someone from the cast showed her into the auditorium, because everyone else had disappeared, and I was stood on stage with this atmospheric lighting and with the candles, with a guitar.\n“Then as she walked up the aisle — quite literally — I started playing a little song that we’ve got together. I got her on to the stage, and then it was a private moment, just between us two, but it meant a lot, and she said ‘Yes’.\n“And when she came out everybody came down and surprised her — so that was overwhelming in itself. And then her family came down the stairs and she couldn’t believe it.\n“After that we eventually had a big meal out and it was probably one of the most magical nights that either of us have ever had.”\nAlthough the couple have yet to set a date for their wedding, James says they have set their sights on 2019.\n“The date is still TBC because of the amount of projects we’ve got on the go. Trying to squeeze the wedding in is quite tricky, but we definitely know that we definitely want to get married in 2019.”\nIn the meantime, given the history they have with the New Street venue, James and Rochelle are nothing short of delighted to be back at the Kenton.\n“In the past Rochelle and I have been at the Kenton in panto as actors, but this is the first time that we as a theatre company, Immersion Theatre, are actually doing the panto.”\nThe three years since they were last in pantomime at the venue have been good ones. “It’s been great,” says James. “ Essentially we’ve gone from doing Shakespeare and we’ve found our real passion, which is family theatre and pantomime\n“That’s where over the last few years we’ve really found what we’re good at, what we love to do, and what we want to focus on primarily. So we now produce theatre tours — we’re coming to Henley again in the spring with The Jungle Book. We do summer open-air musical and we do various pantomimes as well at Christmas.”\nDespite their time away, it seems that Henley is very much where the heart is both personally and professionally.\n“I want nothing more than to make this our home,” says James. “Like, our second home. And I want the Kenton panto to be a panto that is recognised as much as all the other big pantos are. I think we’re really well placed to work with the theatre to achieve that.\n“Not just for Henley — I mean, it is for Henley — but also for the surrounding areas, because they know that the Kenton panto is the one to come to. And that’s what I really want to achieve.\n“Yeah, the Kenton might be slightly smaller than some other theatres, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the work that gets put on there.\n“And Henley audiences are so upbeat and up for it and enthusiastic. I want nothing more than to see it thrive and if I can help achieve that then, yeah, I’d be very happy.”\nIn the meantime, as you’d expect, James is focusing all his energies on making Robin Hood a great show.\n“My absolute passion in life is our family theatre scripts and panto,” he says. “Because what you can do with it is involve the audience — like nothing else can.\n“I love my audience participation and I really like creating family shows that are literally for the entire family — so they’re not just children’s shows. They’re shows that you can enjoy whether you’re three, seven, 15, 25, 60, whatever! You know, they’re for everyone!”\nFor James, it’s precisely this bid to entertain people of all ages that, when done right, makes pantomime such a sophisticated artform.\n“It is! Panto’s got an unfair reputation of being this easy, kind of like, ‘Oh, you know, you phone it in...’ But that is so untrue — certainly the way we work. We drill our casts. The level of energy we require from them is exceptional really.”\n• Robin Hood runs from December 15 to 28. Tickets are £22 for adults, £16 for children and £64 for a family of four. For more information and to book, call (01491) 575698 or visit www.kentontheatre.co.uk", "This production of Dick Whittington, the first staged in Lytham by Paul Holman Associates, is by far the Lowther Pavilion’s best festive offering for years.\nWritten and directed by father and son team Ben and Keith Simmons - who also display all the tricks of a comedian’s trade on stage - the show successfully brings together many of elements of a traditional pantomime.\nMillie Hansford, from Thornton Cleveleys, stars in Dick Whittington at Lowther Pavilion, Lytham\nThe excellent dancers from Blackpool’s Langley Dance Centre, Adam Ludwell’s choreography and Simon Goldring’s live keyboard music with percussionist Michael Peters all provide accomplished support to a very strong principal cast.\nThe rich-voiced Matthew Wellman speaks and sings perfectly in the title role, with the angular and energetic Danny Rogers engaging as Idle Jack.\nMillie Hansford from Thornton Cleveleys belts out her songs as Alice Fitzwarren, while Gracie Stiling does her utmost with her rhyming couplets in the always unrewarding role of Fairy Bow Bells.\nIt’s a pity there are not just a tad fewer puns, and also a more active role in the script for the colourfully-costumed Sarah the Cook (Will Nightingale. Instead the comic honours belong to the Simmons pair as Captain Birdseye and his mate Findus. Their ‘disappearing cabinet’ routine may be straight from the musical hall, but it was a scene of wonderful visual, physical and verbal comedy.\nPleasingly, opportunities to engage with the audience are not overdone. The cast themselves clearly were enjoying the performance hugely, with an admirable ability to make fun of themselves, first night glitches and the script with some spontaneous ad libs.\nThe well-crafted script has something for those of all ages, with three endearing tinies invited on stage for a singalong, plenty of TV references, a spectacular finale and, throughout, a refreshing spontaneity.\nUntil December 30.", "The Theatre Royal Nottingham’s sensational family pantomime, Beauty and the Beast, stars Sherrie Hewson, Ben Richards, Ben Nickless, and Andrew Ryan, in an all-new spectacular production.\nIt opened on Saturday, December 9 and runs until January 14.\nActress, TV star, ex-Loose Women presenter, and Nottingham native, Sherrie Hewson leads the cast as Mrs Potty. Her roles in Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Crossroads, and the legendary Carry On films have all led to Sherrie becoming one of Britain’s best-loved and most popular faces on television.\nSherrie currently stars in the hit TV series Benidorm as Joyce Temple-Savage, the manager of the Solana Resort. She has been filming the tenth series since March and it is set to air in early 2018.\nAlongside Sherrie, television and stage star Ben Richards plays The Beast. After rising to fame on the ITV drama Footballers’ Wives, Ben went on to secure high-profile television roles in Holby City, The Bill, Doctors, and Hollyoaks. No stranger to the stage, Ben has appeared in theatres across the UK and the West End with leading roles in Grease, Saturday Night Fever, The Full Monty, 9 to 5, Rock of Ages, and The Bodyguard opposite Beverley Knight at the Dominion Theatre, London, which broke box office attendance records.\nZany impressionist and comedy actor Ben Nickless makes a welcome return to the Theatre Royal Nottingham pantomime this Christmas. This will be Ben’s fourth Theatre Royal Nottingham pantomime, having previously appeared alongside David Hasselhoff in Peter Pan (2013), Lesley Joseph in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (2014), and Christopher Biggins and Simon Webbe in Aladdin (2015).\nReturning to the Theatre Royal once again this year is pantomime dame extraordinaire, Andrew Ryan. This year marks Andrew’s fourth appearance at the Theatre Royal Nottingham having previously appeared in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 2014, Aladdin with Stephen Mulhern in 2010, and Jack and the Beanstalk with Nigel Havers in 2009. Andrew will also be directing the pantomime this year.\nMusical theatre stars Danny Bayne, Naomi Slights and Natalie Spriggs complete the principal line-up of the pantomime as Trent, Belle and Deadly Nightshade.\nDanny Baynes trained at Italia Conti Academy Theatre of Arts. He was the overall winner of ITV’s Grease is the Word and went on to make his West End debut as Danny Zuko in the new London cast production of Grease at the Piccadilly Theatre, and performed to sell-out audiences for over two years. He went on to star in A Chorus Line, Hairspray and Saturday Night Fever in the West End, touring the UK and internationally for Royal Caribbean International. Danny stars as Trent, the vain and villainous ladies’ man with plans to marry the beautiful Belle.\nNaomi Slights, also a former Saturday Night Fever star who appeared alongside Danny in the leading role of Stephanie on the production’s UK tour and subsequent international productions, will play Belle. Naomi also starred in the UK tour of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, 20th Century Boy - The Musical and Mamma Mia! in the West End.\nNatalie Spriggs joins them as the evil enchantress Deadly Nightshade, the sorceress who places a curse on the Beast’s castle and all its inhabitants. No stranger to playing the baddie, Natalie has previously worked for Disney as Ursula in The Little Mermaid and Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. She has also toured the UK in productions of Girls Night, Rock Around the Clock, Spirit of the Dance and Puttin’ on the Ritz.\nBeauty and the Beast’s executive producer Jonathan Kiley said: “We have assembled a sensational pantomime company for our spectacular Theatre Royal pantomime this year and we’re very much looking forward to a wonderful season in Nottingham once again. This year’s show will feature all the laughter and sensational song and dance audiences have come to expect and we’re also adding in some fantastic technical elements including a jaw-dropping 3D film sequence, the Beast’s magnificent transformation scene and some truly spellbinding special effects.”\nTickets are £18-£35.50 plus discounts for members, under 16s, families and Go Card holders. For more, go to www.trch.co.uk or call the box office on 0115 989 5555.\nPhotos by Whitefoot Photography", "Spectacular professional pantomime returns to Peterborough’s Broadway Theatre at Christmas for the first time in a decade - with Aladdin promising spectacular sets, lavish costumes, a live band and a flying - oh yes it is! - carpet.\nPlaying the title role of Aladdin will be the charming Andrew Cannon (currently appearing in ‘Imagine This’ at the Union Theatre in London.)\nJoining Andrew is seasoned pantomime dame Mark Hyde as the outrageously funny Widow Twankey .\nMark has played almost every pantomime dame role going, in many of the UK’s finest venues.\nMark will be hoping to have the audience rolling in the aisles along with Ben Cupit who plays his sidekick Wishee Washee.\nOliver Broad plays the baddie we all love to boo ... Abanazar.\nDaniel Bell, producer for KD Theatre Productions said: “We have been auditioning in London for the last few weeks searching for the very best performers that The Broadway deserves.\n“This pantomime is about quality - and we are delighted with the high calibre of talent that have joined the cast.\n“The production will be directed by pantomime veteran Scott Ritchie, who has directed large scale pantomimes all over the UK.\n“Added to this will be spectacular sets, new lavish costumes and a live band, and not many pantomimes have live musicians these days!\n“We also have an amazing flying carpet.”\nGiving the show a very local feel will be talented musical theatre students from Tu Danse Studios in Newark Road, Peterborough, who will be joining the professional cast as the junior chorus.\nBroadway Theatre manager Harrison Fuller said: “We are delighted to be working with KD Productions to bring pantomime back to The Broadway.\n“Aladdin is an enchanting story filled with magic, making it the ideal production for our first Christmas show. We look forward to welcoming audiences to the theatre over the festive period.”\nAladdin will run at The Broadway from December 14 - 31. Tickets are available online at www.ticketsource.co.uk/thebroadway, by calling the Box Office on 01733 306071, or calling at The Broadway in person.\nThe Broadway’s website can be found at www.thebroadway.today.", "GRAND BEND -\nJayme Armstrong is inviting audiences to be her guest at her directing debut leading a production of the musical Beauty and the Beast at the Huron Country Playhouse.\nThe veteran performer, who is in her ninth season with theatre owner Drayton Entertainment, went into rehearsals with her Beauty and the Beast cast right after finishing her own run on stage in the lead role in Thoroughly Modern Millie at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse.\n“It’s very exciting for me,” Armstrong said.\nHer chance to direct Beauty and the Beast comes after appearing three times as the character Belle in the popular Disney musical.\nThe 1991 animated film version was the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and won an Academy Award for best original score.\nJust a few years later, it was the first Disney animated film to be turned into a Broadway musical\n“What’s really nice right now is that the new live-action Disney movie just came out last year,” Armstrong said.\n“I think the story was sort of rejuvenated in that way for a new audience.”\nBeauty and the Beast is “an incredible love story, but it is about finding beauty that is not skin-deep,” she said.\nArmstrong grew up in British Columbia where she had her first experience acting at the age of six when she played a Munchkin in a hometown production of The Wizard of Oz.\nIn 2008, she made it into the top three on the CBC reality show How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria staged to find a lead actress for a revival of The Sound of Music.\nShe didn’t get that job, but did play Maria later in a production at Drayton where she has also appeared in Mary Poppins, Little Shop of Horrors, Peter Pan, Chicago, The Little Mermaid, Legally Blonde, Camelot and many others.\nArmstrong said one of the things she loves about the Drayton company is the variety of roles she is able to play.\n“I don’t know any other place where you would get such variety and such challenge in what you do,” she said.\n“One of the advantages of working at Drayton is I get to work with a lot of my colleagues and friends.”\nThe cast include Danielle Wade as Belle, Tony Edgerton as the Beast, Brent Thiessen as Gaston, Victor A. Young as Maurice, Valerie Boyle as Mrs. Potts, Zoe Brown as Chip and Patrick Brown as Cogsworth.\n“I know all of the people I’m working with fairly intimately from sharing the stage with them, so we just have a great rapport,” she said.\nCalling Beauty and the Beast a technical show “would be a vast understatement,” Armstrong said.\n“The set is enormous. It has to function as a castle, and a village and many, many others things along the way.”\nJohn Dinning is the set designer, Michael Barber is musical director and Robin Calvert is choreographer.\nThe show even has a fight director, Joe Bostick.\nBeauty and the Beast runs until Sept. 3 at the Huron Country Playhouse.\npmorden@postmedia.com\n--- --- ---\nOn the Web\nTicket info is available online at www.draytonentertainment.com", "Galer Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/02/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\n12 Weeks of Healthy Clean Eating Meal Plans 01/02/2017 08:00AM — 08:00PM Wishing you a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season and a New Year filled with Peace, Joy and Health! ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/02/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/02/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nDebtors Anonymous 01/02/2017 06:00PM — 07:00PM In D.A., our purpose is threefold: to stop incurring unsecured debt, to share our experience wit...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/03/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\n12 Weeks of Healthy Clean Eating Meal Plans 01/03/2017 08:00AM — 08:00PM Wishing you a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season and a New Year filled with Peace, Joy and Health! ...\nDrop in on Nature 01/03/2017 09:30AM — 12:00PM Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM-12:00PM Fall session: Thursday, September 15th thru Thursday...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/03/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/03/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/03/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/04/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/04/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/04/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/04/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/04/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/05/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nDrop in on Nature 01/05/2017 09:30AM — 12:00PM Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM-12:00PM Fall session: Thursday, September 15th thru Thursday...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/05/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nNature Studio 01/05/2017 04:00PM — 05:30AM Thursdays from 4:00PM-5:30PM Fall session: December 1st, 8th and 15th Winter session: Starts J...\nClutterers Anonymous 01/05/2017 06:00PM — 07:00PM Clutterers Anonymous℠ (CLA℠) is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strengt...\nCraft and Create 01/05/2017 06:30PM — 08:30PM 1st & 2nd Thursday of the Month at 6:30—8:30 PM Gather up your craft projects and get away fro...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/05/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/05/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/06/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/06/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/06/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/06/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/06/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/07/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nWinter Theatre Classes at People's Light! 01/07/2017 09:00AM — 01:30PM New plays are an exciting opportunity to discover your next favorite story! Our winter classes wi...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/07/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/07/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/07/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/07/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/08/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/08/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/08/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/08/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/09/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/09/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/09/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nDebtors Anonymous 01/09/2017 06:00PM — 07:00PM In D.A., our purpose is threefold: to stop incurring unsecured debt, to share our experience wit...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/10/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nDrop in on Nature 01/10/2017 09:30AM — 12:00PM Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM-12:00PM Fall session: Thursday, September 15th thru Thursday...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/10/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/10/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/10/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/11/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/11/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/11/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/11/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/11/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/12/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nDrop in on Nature 01/12/2017 09:30AM — 12:00PM Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM-12:00PM Fall session: Thursday, September 15th thru Thursday...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/12/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\n2017 56th Annual Wilmington Coin Show 01/12/2017 10:00AM — 06:00PM The Wilmington Coin Club presents the 2017 56th Annual Wilmington Coin Show January 12th,13th...\nNature Studio 01/12/2017 04:00PM — 05:30AM Thursdays from 4:00PM-5:30PM Fall session: December 1st, 8th and 15th Winter session: Starts J...\nClutterers Anonymous 01/12/2017 06:00PM — 07:00PM Clutterers Anonymous℠ (CLA℠) is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strengt...\nCraft and Create 01/12/2017 06:30PM — 08:30PM 1st & 2nd Thursday of the Month at 6:30—8:30 PM Gather up your craft projects and get away fro...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/12/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/12/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/13/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/13/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\n2017 56th Annual Wilmington Coin Show 01/13/2017 10:00AM — 06:00PM The Wilmington Coin Club presents the 2017 56th Annual Wilmington Coin Show January 12th,13th...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/13/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/13/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/13/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/14/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nWinter Theatre Classes at People's Light! 01/14/2017 09:00AM — 01:30PM New plays are an exciting opportunity to discover your next favorite story! Our winter classes wi...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/14/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\n2017 56th Annual Wilmington Coin Show 01/14/2017 10:00AM — 06:00PM The Wilmington Coin Club presents the 2017 56th Annual Wilmington Coin Show January 12th,13th...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/14/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/14/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/14/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/15/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/15/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nSleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto 01/15/2017 07:00PM — 09:00PM Sleeping Beauty: A Musical Panto By Pete Pryor & Samantha Reading Music & Lyrics by Alex Bech...\nThe Road: My Life with John Denver 01/15/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM The Road: My Life with John Denver By Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman Directed by Randal Myler Dec...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/16/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/16/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/16/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nDebtors Anonymous 01/16/2017 06:00PM — 07:00PM In D.A., our purpose is threefold: to stop incurring unsecured debt, to share our experience wit...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/17/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nDrop in on Nature 01/17/2017 09:30AM — 12:00PM Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM-12:00PM Fall session: Thursday, September 15th thru Thursday...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/17/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/18/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/18/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/18/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nFree College Financial Planning Seminar 01/18/2017 07:00PM — 08:15PM This free College Financial Planning Seminar will educate you on the ins and outs of financial ai...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/19/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nDrop in on Nature 01/19/2017 09:30AM — 12:00PM Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30AM-12:00PM Fall session: Thursday, September 15th thru Thursday...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/19/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nNature Studio 01/19/2017 04:00PM — 05:30AM Thursdays from 4:00PM-5:30PM Fall session: December 1st, 8th and 15th Winter session: Starts J...\nClutterers Anonymous 01/19/2017 06:00PM — 07:00PM Clutterers Anonymous℠ (CLA℠) is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strengt...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/20/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/20/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/20/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/21/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nWinter Theatre Classes at People's Light! 01/21/2017 09:00AM — 01:30PM New plays are an exciting opportunity to discover your next favorite story! Our winter classes wi...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/21/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nWildlife in Winter Part 1: Mammals 01/21/2017 10:00AM — 12:00PM From foxes and beavers to cats and dogs, all mammals benefit from open space! Discover the signs ...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/21/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...\nLoudon Wainright III's Surviving Twin 01/21/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM Surviving Twin Written and Performed by Loudon Wainright III Directed by Daniel Stern January ...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/22/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nGive the Gift of Creativity! 01/22/2017 09:30AM — 06:30PM This holiday season give the gift of creativity! Historic Yellow Springs offers classes in fine a...\nLoudon Wainright III's Surviving Twin 01/22/2017 07:30PM — 09:30PM Surviving Twin Written and Performed by Loudon Wainright III Directed by Daniel Stern January ...\nGaler Estate Vineyard & Winery Wine Club 01/23/2017 12:00AM The Galer Estate family invites you to join our Wine Club, a community of members who enjoy fine ...\nFun and Functional Ceramics at Chester Springs Studio, Chester County 01/23/2017 04:30PM — 06:00PM Great pottery class for 9 to 12 year olds. Register now to reserve you place in the class! Fun...", "WILMINGTON — Wilmington High School is planning to offer a unique theatre opportunity to its students as well as the community.\nThe goal of the “24 Hour Extreme Theatre Experience!” is to take a performance from concept to completion by creating a show based on the folktale and children’s book “Stone Soup.”\nStudents will begin on Friday evening, May 4 and during the entire 24 hours the students, under the direction of Mr. Ken Lydy, will write a script, cast the show, design and build a set, choose costumes, rehearse, set light and sound cues and then perform the show — on Saturday, May 5.\n“Basically we are going start to finish,” said Lydy.\n“The challenge is to only use items and materials we have available on hand, on stage, and in our scene shop storage,” he said. “There will be no purchasing new costumes, props or set pieces … all done in-house.\nHe said that another fun part of this event will be how the show is presented.\n”There are no advanced ticket reservations. Tickets will be sold at the door on a first-come, first-served basis,” said Lydy.\n“The Auditeria will be set with tables and chairs. In the back of the Auditeria will be a buffet line offering a small assortment of soups for audience members to enjoy. On the table will be crackers, and when people purchase their ticket, they are able to select a bowl of soup, sit at the table, eat and watch the show.”\nThe actual performance is Saturday, May 5 at 7:30 p.m. in the Wilmington High School Auditeria. Tickets are $10. The house opens at 7 p.m.\nCome enjoy a bowl of soup and watch a performance literally created in 24 hours. If you have any questions please contact the WHS Box Office at 937-283-7235.\nhttp://www.wnewsj.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2018/04/web1_Wilm-Letter-1.jpg", "Production chiefs have been inundated with requests from young people wishing to audition for this year’s festive offering at Derby Theatre.\nAll audition slots for August 18 have now been filled and a waiting list is in operation.\nSuccessful candidates, aged nine to 16 years, will form a supporting company to the main performers in Hansel and Gretel.\nThis family show will feature lashings of original music, heaps of colourful costumes and a super scrumptious talented team of performers.\nHansel and Gretel runs from November 30 to January 5. Tickets are priced from £12.50. Go to www.derbylive.co.uk or call 01332 593939.", "Sci-Fi\nChoice Action Movie - Wonder Woman\nChoice Action Movie Actress - Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman)\nChoice Action Movie Actor - Chris Pine (Wonder Woman)\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie Actor - Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2)\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie Actress - Zoe Saldana (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2)\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show - The Vampire Diaries\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actor - Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf)\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress - Kat Graham (The Vampire Diaries)\nFantasy\nChoice Fantasy Movie - Beauty and the Beast\nChoice Fantasy Movie Actor - Dwayne Johnson (Moana)\nChoice Fantasy Movie Actress - Emma Watson (Beauty and the Beast)\nDrama\nChoice Drama Movie - Everything, Everything\nChoice Drama Movie Actor - Kian Lawley (Before I Fall)\nChoice Drama Movie Actress - Emma Watson (The Circle)\nChoice Drama TV Show - Riverdale\nChoice Drama TV Actor - Cole Sprouse (Riverdale)\nChoice Drama TV Actress - Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars)\nComedy\nChoice Comedy Movie - Finding Dory\nChoice Comedy Movie Actor - Zac Efron (Baywatch)\nChoice Comedy Movie Actress - Ellen DeGeneres (Finding Dory)\nChoice Comedy TV Show - Fuller House\nChoice Comedy TV Actor - Jean-Luc Bilodeau (Big Daddy)\nChoice Comedy TV Actress - Candace Cameron Bure (Fuller House)\nChoice Comedian - The Dolan Twins\nAction\nChoice Action TV Show - The Flash\nChoice Action TV Actor - Grant Gustin (The Flash)\nChoice Action TV Actress - Melissa Benoist (Supergirl)\nMiscellaneous\nChoice Movie Villain - Luke Evans (Beauty and the Beast)\nChoice Breakout Movie Star - Auli’i Cravalho (Moana)\nChoice Movie Ship - Emma Watson & Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast)\nChoice Animated TV Show - Family Guy\nChoice Reality TV Show - The Voice\nChoice Throwback TV Show - One Tree Hill\nChoice Breakout TV Shows - Riverdale\nChoice TV Personality - Ellen DeGeneres\nChoice Breakout TV Star - Lili Reinhart (Riverdale)\nChoice TV Ship - Lili Reinhart & Cole Sprouse (Riverdale)\nChoice TV Villain - Janel Parrish (Pretty Little Liars)\nChoice Liplock - Dan Stevens & Emma Watson (Beauty and the Beast)\nChoice Hissy Fit - Madelain Petsch (Riverdale)\nChoice Scene Stealer - Camila Mendes (Riverdale)\nMusic\nChoice Male Artist - Harry Styles\nChoice Female Artist - Ariana Grande\nChoice Music Group - Fifth Harmony\nChoice Country Artist - Carrie Underwood\nChoice Electronic/Dance Artist - Calvin Harris\nChoice Latin Artist - CNCO\nChoice R&B/Hip-Hop Artist - Beyonce\nChoice Rock Artist - Harry Styles\nChoice Song: Female Artist - “Crying in the Club” by Camila Cabello\nChoice Song: Male Artist - “Slow Hands” by Niall Horan\nChoice Song: Group - “Down” by Fifth Harmony, featuring Gucci Mane\nChoice Collaboration - “Just Hold On” by Steve Aoki and Louis Tomlinson\nChoice Pop Song - “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran\nChoice Country Song - “Body Like a Black Road” by Sam Hunt\nChoice Electronic/Dance Song - “Know No Better” by Major Lazer, featuring Travis Scott, Camila Cabello and Quavo.\nChoice Latin Song- “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, featuring Justin Bieber\nChoice R&B/Hip-Hop - “I’m The One” by DJ Khaled, featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper and Lil Wayne.\nChoice Rock/Alternative Song - “Believer” by Imagine Dragons\nChoice Breakout Artist - Chance the Rapper\nChoice Next Big Thing - Grace VanderWaal\nSummer Artists\nChoice Summer Movie Actress - Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming)\nChoice Summer Movie Actor - Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming)\nChoice Summer Movie - Spider-Man: Homecoming\nChoice Summer TV Show - Teen Wolf\nChoice Summer TV Actor - Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf)\nChoice Summer TV Actress - Holland Roden (Teen Wolf)\nChoice Summer Song - “Despacito” Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, featuring Justin Bieber\nChoice Summer Female Artist - Camila Cabello\nChoice Summer Male Artist - Shawn Mendes\nChoice Summer Group - Fifth Harmony\nChoice Summer Tour - Ariana Grande, Dangerous Woman Tour\nSports\nChoice Male Athlete - Stephen Curry\nChoice Female Athlete - Simone Biles\nInternet\nChoice Female Web Star - Liza Koshy\nChoice Male Web Star - Logan Paul\nChoice Comedy Web Star - Logan Paul\nChoice Music Web Star - Jake Paul\nChoice Fashion/Beauty Web Star - NikkieTutorials\nChoice Gamer - Ryan Ohmwrecker\nChoice Twitter - Ellen DeGeneres\nChoice Instagrammer - Selena Gomez\nChoice Snapchatter - Ariana Grande\nChoice YouTuber - Jake Paul\nChoice Muser - Baby Ariel\nChoice Style Icon - Harry Styles\nChoice Female Hottie - Camila Cabello\nChoice Male Hottie - Shawn Mendes\nChoice Change Maker - Ariana Grande\nChoice Video Game - Overwatch\nChoice Dancer - Maddie Ziegler\nChoice Model - Kendall Jenner", "One of the most inspirational and uplifting shows on the county’s theatrical calendar returns to Leamington this week.\nWarwickshire’s Side by Side Theatre for adults with and without learning difficulties presents its 29th annual show, Ready to Go, at the Spa Centre on Tuesday, November 21, and Wednesday, November 22.\nThe show is an annual extravaganza of dance, music, drama, mime, poetry and comedy, with the emphasis placed on ability over disability. It aims to challenge common misconceptions, with every member of the company given the chance to have their moment on stage.\nThe show has won many plaudits in the press down the years, being described as “theatre that breaks the rules” and “a wonderful and unforgettable evening”.\nArtistic director Andy Bayliss said: In Side by Side there is no one star – everyone in the company is a star, always looking out for each other, caring, wanting to help, succeeding.\n“Side by Side is more of a family than a company. It makes a very real difference to people’s lives.”\nAnd Andy believes everyone involved benefits from the extensive rehearsals and the shows themselves.\nHe said: “Throughout the year, Side by Side members gain independence, but they are also interdependent team players working for each and helping each other.\n“Side by Side is a theatre group like no other. It is a real honour to work with them. The enthusiasm and sheer joy of being on the stage comes across very strongly to the audience.\n“It engages with the audience and really gives everyone a fantastic experience which they will remember forever.”\nThe show takes to the stage on the Tuesday at 7.30pm and on the Wednesday at 2pm and 7.30pm. Free tea and coffee will be provided at the Wednesday matinee performance.\nTickets cost £9, £9.50 and £7.50, £8 for concessions. Discounts are available for groups.\nVisit www.royalspacentreandtownhall.co.uk or call 01926 334418 to book.\nSee www.sidebysidetheatre.co.uk for more information about the company.", "Wonder Woman has been piercing her way to the top of the box office. The Gal Gadot-starrer has paved her way to become one of the most successful DCEU movies. And she is clearly winning more than just the box office. The Patty Jenkins directorial received its first set of nominations at the Teen Choice Awards and the Warner Bros movie has taken home almost every award it was nominated for.\nThe Teen Choice Awards just concluded and what a star-studded event it was. Right from Vanessa Hudgens and Maroon 5 to Rita Ora and Bella Thorne, the event saw some of the most popular faces in attendance. But it was the winners list that drew all the attention.\nAlso Read: Wonder Woman box office\nWonder Woman, Moana, Beauty and the Beast, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and many other popular shows from the past year won in major categories.\nApart from the movies, shows like Riverdale, Supergirl, Pretty Little Liars, Fuller House, Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf took home Choice TV Show, TV Actor, TV Actress and other major awards.\nIn the musical section, Harry Styles seems to be having a great year. After giving a memorable performance in Dunkirk, the One Direction star took home Choice Male Artist, accompanying Ariana Grande for the Choice Female Artist. Be it children, teens or adults, Queen Bey Beyonce rules hearts of all ages. And this was proved once again when she was awarded the Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Artist.\nThe Choice Summer Song obviously went to Despacito by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee (feat. Justin Bieber).\nWithout further ado, here's the complete list of winners of the Teen Choice Awards:\nMovies:\nChoice Action Movie: Wonder Woman\nChoice Action Movie Actor: Chris Pine – Wonder Woman\nChoice Action Movie Actress: Gal Gadot – Wonder Woman\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie Actor: Chris Pratt – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2\nChoice Sci-Fi Movie Actress: Zoe Saldana – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2\nChoice Fantasy Movie: Beauty and the Beast\nChoice Fantasy Movie Actor: Dwayne Johnson – Moana\nChoice Fantasy Movie Actress: Emma Watson – Beauty and the Beast\nChoice Drama Movie: Everything, Everything\nChoice Drama Movie Actor: Kian Lawley – Before I Fall\nChoice Drama Movie Actress: Emma Watson – The Circle\nChoice Comedy Movie: Finding Dory\nChoice Comedy Movie Actor: Zac Efron – Baywatch\nChoice Comedy Movie Actress: Ellen DeGeneres – Finding Dory\nChoice Summer Movie: Spider-Man: Homecoming\nChoice Summer Movie Actor: Tom Holland – Spider-Man: Homecoming\nChoice Summer Movie Actress: Zendaya – Spider-Man: Homecoming\nChoice Movie Villain: Luke Evans – Beauty and the Beast\nChoice Breakout Movie Star: Auli'i Cravalho – Moana\nChoice MovieShip: Emma Watson & Dan Stevens – Beauty and the Beast\nTelevision:\nChoice Drama TV Show: Riverdale\nChoice Drama TV Actor: Cole Sprouse – Riverdale\nChoice Drama TV Actress: Lucy Hale – Pretty Little Liars\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show: The Vampire Diaries\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actor: Dylan O'Brien – Teen Wolf\nChoice Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress: Kat Graham – The Vampire Diaries\nChoice Action TV Show: The Flash\nChoice Action TV Actor: Grant Gustin – The Flash\nChoice Action TV Actress: Melissa Benoist – Supergirl\nChoice Comedy TV Show: Fuller House\nChoice Comedy TV Actor: Jean-Luc Bilodeau – Baby Daddy\nChoice Comedy TV Actress: Candace Cameron Bure – Fuller House\nChoice Animated TV Show: Family Guy\nChoice Reality TV Show: The Voice\nChoice Throwback TV Show: One Tree Hill\nChoice TV Personality: Ellen DeGeneres – The Ellen DeGeneres Show\nChoice Summer TV Show: Teen Wolf\nChoice Summer TV Actor: Tyler Posey – Teen Wolf\nChoice Summer TV Actress: Holland Roden – Teen Wolf\nChoice TV Villain: Janel Parrish – Pretty Little Liars\nChoice Breakout TV Show: Riverdale\nChoice Breakout TV Star: Lili Reinhart – Riverdale\nChoice TVShip: #BUGHEAD (Lili Reinhart & Cole Sprouse) – Riverdale\nMusic:\nChoice Male Artist: Harry Styles\nChoice Female Artist: Ariana Grande\nChoice Music Group: Fifth Harmony\nChoice Country Artist: Carrie Underwood\nChoice Electronic/Dance Artist: Calvin Harris\nChoice Latin Artist: CNCO\nChoice R&B/Hip-Hop Artist: Beyoncé\nChoice Rock Artist: Harry Styles\nChoice Song: Female Artist: Camila Cabello – Crying in the Club\nChoice Song: Male Artist: Niall Horan – Slow Hands\nChoice Song: Group: Fifth Harmony (feat Gucci Mane) – Down\nChoice Collaboration: Steve Aoki & Louis Tomlinson – Just Hold On\nChoice Summer Song: Despacito – Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee (feat. Justin Bieber)\nChoice Summer Female Artist: Camila Cabello\nChoice Summer Male Artist: Shawn Mendes\nChoice Summer Group: Fifth Harmony\nChoice Summer Tour: Ariana Grande – Dangerous Woman Tour\nChoice Pop Song: Shape of You – Ed Sheeran\nChoice Country Song: Body Like a Back Road – Sam Hunt\nChoice Electronic/Dance Song: Know No Better – Major Lazer (feat. Travis Scott, Camila Cabello & Quavo)\nChoice Latin Song: Despacito – Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee (feat. Justin Bieber)\nChoice R&B/Hip-Hop Song: I'm The One – DJ Khaled (feat. Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper & Lil Wayne)\nChoice Rock/Alternative Song: Believer – Imagine Dragons\nChoice Breakout Artist: Chance the Rapper\nChoice Next Big Thing: Grace VanderWaal\nDigital\nChoice Female Web Star: Liza Koshy\nChoice Male Web Star: Logan Paul\nChoice Comedy Web Star: Logan Paul\nChoice Music Web Star: Jake Paul\nChoice Fashion/Beauty Web Star: NikkieTutorials\nChoice Gamer: Ryan Ohmwrecker – Ohmwrecker\nChoice Twit: Ellen DeGeneres\nChoice Instagrammer: Selena Gomez\nChoice Snapchatter: Ariana Grand\nChoice YouTuber: Jake Paul\nChoice Muser: Baby Ariel\nOTHER\nChoice Comedian: The Dolan Twins\nChoice Male Athlete: Stephen Curry\nChoice Female Athlete: Simone Biles\nChoice Liplock: Dan Stevens & Emma Watson – Beauty and the Beast\nChoice Hissy Fit: Madelaine Petsch – Riverdale\nChoice Scene Stealer: Camila Mendes – Riverdale\nChoice Style Icon: Harry Styles\nChoice Female Hottie: Camila Cabello\nChoice Male Hottie: Shawn Mendes\nChoice Changemaker: Ariana Grande\nChoice Videogame: Overwatch\nChoice Dancer: Maddie Ziegler\nChoice Model: Kendall Jenner\nChoice Fandom: Fifth Harmony\nChoice International Artist: BTS" ]

[ "a woman is getting dressed" ]

[ "the man wore all black", "A woman dressed in a beautiful dress sits silently reading", "A woman distracts traffic by being dressed in little clothes.", "The woman is being measured for a dress.", "A woman in a dress is being photographed.", "The bride has a beautiful purple dress.", "The woman is painting a beautiful picture.", "He was a well dress man with a beautiful face", "A beautiful woman watching TV.", "A woman is sitting in a beauty parlor.", "There is a woman in a dress.", "The statue resembles a beautiful woman.", "The dress is being worn by a girl.", "The man is handsome and the woman is beautiful.", "A woman is dressed in a wedding dress.", "A beautiful woman walks down a busy street on a beautiful day.", "The woman enjoyed the beauty of the ocean.", "A woman sleeping on a beautiful bed.", "A woman in a dress.", "A beautiful blond woman and brunette woman are not at a bar", "A beautiful blond woman and brunette woman are at a bar", "A woman in a dress is standing in front of a woman in a dress.", "A elderly woman is being mugged by a young boy dressed in black.", "Beautiful", "Women dressed nicely are being quiet", "There is beauty.", "A bunch of bike riders are dressed and riding on a beautiful day.", "A woman in a dress is standing.", "A baby being dressed to go out.", "The woman is dressed in a costume.", "A woman dressed in black.", "A beautiful woman is refueling her Mustang." ]

[ "Two air ambulances were called to the A4043 Cwmavon Road, near Pontypool, on Friday after eight people were hurt.\nGwent Police said two local men were being treated for \"serious and life threatening injuries\".\nTwo women were treated for \"serious injuries\" and a man, woman and two children have been discharged.\nInitial reports said four cars had been involved in the collision.\nGwent Police said a red Ford Fiesta, a blue Toyota Iago and a grey Ford S-Max were involved in the crash and officers have appealed for witnesses." ]

[ "Gwent Police said Thomas Lawrence died at the scene on Belmont Hill, Caerleon.\nThe teenager, from Pontypool, Torfaen, was taken to Newport's Royal Gwent Hospital where she remains in a critical condition.\nThere were no other vehicles involved in the crash, which happened at about 23:00 GMT on Wednesday, and officers are continuing to investigate.", "Four-year-old Violet Grace Youens died on Saturday, a day after the vehicle mounted the pavement in St Helens.\nThe girl's 55-year-old grandmother, Angela French, was also hit by the car and remains in a serious but stable condition in hospital.\nThe man held, 27 and of St Helens, is also detained on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.\nAnother man, aged 23, is believed to have left the country, said Merseyside Police.\n\"He left approximately three hours after the incident,\" said Det Ch Insp Chris Sephton.\n\"We have been in contact with the authorities of the country where we believe he is... We are doing everything we can to try and identify where he is now and get him back over here.\"\nA third man, aged 23 and of Prescot, was arrested on suspicion of being a passenger in a stolen vehicle.\nHe has been released pending further inquiries, police said.\nThe crash in Prescot Road involved a black Ford Fiesta, which then crashed into a lamppost.\nPolice issued CCTV images of two men, aged about 15-20, they want to speak to who were seen running away from the area.\nViolet's mother Rebecca agreed to donate her daughter's pancreas and kidneys following her death, police said.\nShe posted a tribute to her daughter on Facebook, saying \"my brave baby girl saved two lives by donating her kidneys and pancreas. I am truly heartbroken but proud of my little fighter!\"\nAn online page raising money for Violet's family has so far reached £9,000.", "The crash happened early on Monday in the city of Bareilly, 251km (155 miles) from the state capital, Lucknow.\nA senior police official said all 22 victims had been charred badly and could not be immediately identified.\nThe passenger bus had caught fire following the collision. Police are searching for the driver of the truck.\nThe AFP news agency quoted police as saying the doors of the bus jammed after the collision, trapping passengers inside.\nA few people managed to escape by breaking open the windows of the vehicle.\nThe chief spokesman of the Uttar Pradesh police, Rahul Srivastav, said the bus was carrying 41 passengers, and that those who were injured had been rushed to hospital.\nThe condition of many of them is said to be serious, and officials warn that the toll is likely to rise.\nIndia has the world's highest number of road deaths, with an accident taking place every four minutes.\nMost crashes are blamed on reckless driving, poorly maintained roads and ageing vehicles.", "Seven children and two adults were injured when the Tsunami ride derailed at M&D's in Strathclyde Park, near Motherwell, at about 15:37 on Sunday.\nThree boys and a man remain in hospital in Glasgow. Two of the boys are said to be in a serious condition.\nTwo boys and a girl are to be allowed home from Wishaw Hospital later.\nNine passengers were on board the Tsunami inverted rollercoaster when five gondolas detached from their rails at a bend and fell to the ground.\nA total of 10 people were taken to hospitals in Glasgow and Wishaw in the aftermath of the crash, although a 25-year-old woman was found not to be injured and released following an assessment.\nThe nine injured included a man and woman, both aged 19, and seven children.\nTwo boys remain in a serious condition at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow - a 12-year-old with chest, abdominal and leg injuries and an 11-year-old who suffered serious arm and hand injuries.\nAnother boy, aged 11, is in a stable condition at the same hospital.\nThe 19-year-old man, who suffered a knee injury, remains in a stable condition at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.\nThe three children who are expected to be discharged from Wishaw General Hospital are a 14-year-old girl who suffered chest injuries, a 16-year-old boy who injured his arm and a boy, aged 11, who was kept in for observation.\nPolice have launched a joint investigation with the Health and Safety Executive into the crash and the park remains closed.\nThey have also appealed for anyone who witnessed the crash, or has images and videos of the incident, to contact them at the dedicated email address: rollercoaster@scotland.pnn.police.uk\nThe park's director, Douglas Taylor, said on Monday that every ride was \"safety checked on a daily basis\" and underwent \"a thorough independent inspection every 12 months\".\nThe incident was not the first safety issue to have affected rides at M&D's.\nIn March, eight people had to be rescued by firefighters when the park's Tornado rollercoaster ground to a halt 20 ft (6m) in the air.\nIn July 2011, nine people were rescued from the park's Tsunami rollercoaster after being trapped for up to eight hours. The malfunction was blamed on a broken lift chain.\nIn 2006, firefighters freed 18 people who were trapped upside down on a fairground ride at M&D's.", "Two lorries and a minibus crashed near Newport Pagnell on Saturday.\nRyszard Masierak, 31, is charged with eight counts of causing death by dangerous driving and four of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.\nA second lorry driver charged in connection with the crash will appear in court next month.\nMr Masierak, a Polish national of Barnards Close, Evesham, Worcestershire, is also charged with causing death by careless driving while over the prescribed alcohol limit.\nThe crash happened on the southbound carriageway of the M1 near junction 14 at Newport Pagnell at 03:15 BST on Saturday.\nThe other lorry driver, David Wagstaff, 53, of Derwent Street, Stoke-on-Trent, has also been charged over the crash.\nMr Wagstaff is accused of eight counts of causing death by dangerous driving and four counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and is due to appear at Milton Keynes Magistrates' Court on 11 September.\nSix men and two women died when the three vehicles collided shortly before 03:15 BST on the southbound carriageway of the motorway between junctions 15 and 14.\nA five-year-old girl, a man and a woman were left with life-threatening injuries and remain in hospital. Another person was admitted to hospital with less severe injuries.\nThe minibus driver and owner of Nottingham-based ABC Travels, who was killed in the crash, has been named as Cyriac Joseph.\nHe has been described in tributes as an \"extraordinary father\" and a \"great leader\" within the south Indian community in Nottingham.\nMr Joseph had been taking a group of people from India to London, from where they were due to start a tour of Europe.\nThree other fatalities have been named as employees of IT company Wipro.\nThe firm said Karthikeyan Ramasubramaniyam Pugalur, Rishi Rajeev Kumar and Vivek Bhaskaran all died in the crash, while another employee was critically injured.", "Three of those people were involved in a two-car crash in Bangor-on-Dee, Wrexham.\nAnother person needed hospital treatment in Carmarthenshire following a crash, while in Welshpool a car overturned in tricky conditions.\nTwo cyclists needed treatment skidding on ice and fell from their bikes on the coastal path in Llanddulas, Conwy.\nElsewhere a gritting lorry overturned in difficult conditions and a school bus skidded on ice.\nThe lorry's two men onboard were not hurt. It ended up on its side on the B4299 between Trelech and Bryn Iwan on Tuesday night just before 20:00 GMT.\nCarmarthenshire council's Colin Evans said gritters would still be out in force where needed.\n\"This incident will not have an effect any future gritting as we have reserve vehicles,\" he said.\n\"Gritters will remain on primary routes until conditions are judged to be safe. They will then divert to secondary routes on higher ground, although conditions are expected to improve rapidly as the morning progresses.\"\nIn Wattstown, Rhondda Cynon Taf, a bus carrying six schoolchildren skidded and nearly hit a wall. No-one was hurt.\nAngela Slee said: \"The only thing stopping the bus sliding further down the hill were some rocks that the bus escort had put under the wheels.\"\nTwo other people needed hospital treatment a tornado hit their home.", "The coach was heading north on the A3 when it crashed near the Hindhead Tunnel, at 23:50 BST on Monday.\nIt was carrying people who had been to the festival Bestival, on the Isle of Wight, when it crashed between the tunnel and the Thursley exit.\nInjured passengers have been taken to a number of different hospitals.\nThree people, including the driver, were declared dead at the scene.\nBy Mark SandersBBC News\nThe coach itself is concealed under a large tent.\nOfficers wearing white forensic suits have been entering and leaving the tent at short intervals throughout the morning.\nThe focus at this stage of the police investigation is the delicate operation to remove the bodies of those who died.\nOnce the bodies have been taken from the wreckage the vehicle can be examined more closely, as Surrey Police try to piece together what happened.\nOfficers stressed that weather and road conditions were fine at the time of the crash.\nA fourth person was airlifted to Southampton General Hospital with life-changing injuries, said police.\nEight people are being treated at St George's Hospital and Kings College Hospital in London and East Grinstead Hospital in West Sussex.\nSurrey Police said many of the other passengers hurt in the crash, all aged between 22 and 28, had been released from hospital and were on their way home.\nNo other vehicles are thought to have been involved in the crash, involving a Merseypride Travel coach.\nInsp Richard Mallett said the vehicle had sustained a \"significant impact\" in the crash, which has been declared a major incident.\n\"I understand the road was dry. We cannot see any reason that the road conditions would have had any effect on what occurred,\" he said.\nThe road was closed in both directions and Surrey Police, Surrey Fire and Rescue and South East Coast Ambulance Service attended the scene, along with crash investigators.\nThe southbound carriageway was reopened at about 09:00 BST.\nDavid Hannell, owner of Merseypride Travel, said: \"Myself and the company offer our heartfelt sympathy to all the families of the passengers involved.\n\"We ourselves are devastated. I've been up all night worried sick about what's been happening.\"\nMr Hannell said a parent of one of the passengers called him at 04:00 BST to tell him about the crash.\nHe said the driver was semi-retired and had been with the company for six months.\n\"He was ideal for us because his sister lived in Portsmouth so he had somewhere to stay,\" he said.\n\"So it wasn't as if he had to drive down the day before, he was already there and according to his sister he was well rested.\"\nHe said this was the firm's first serious accident in 20 years.\nSurrey Police said it was working with the Merseyside force and the coach firm, to identify all passengers and notify relatives.\nJerry Kirkby, Assistant Chief Constable of Surrey, said: \"This has been declared a major incident. Our thoughts remain with the relatives of the dead and the injured at this time.\"\nOfficers were carrying out a \"thorough search of the scene including the coach and the surrounding area\", according to Surrey Police.\nA spokeswoman for South East Coast Ambulance (SECAmb) said: \"Three people were pronounced dead at the scene and a total of 50 patients, some of whom have serious injuries, have been taken to hospitals across the region.\"\nA casualty helpline has been set up by Surrey Police for anyone concerned about people travelling on the coach, on 0800 056 0154.\nIn a statement, the organisers of Bestival, which was held at the weekend, said: \"This is devastating news.\n\"Our thoughts are with the relatives of those affected. We are currently liaising with Surrey Police to establish the facts.\"", "The boys were in a vehicle on Saturday afternoon with two other 14-year-olds who suffered life-threatening injuries.\nThey were being driven by a 21-year-old man who police think picked up the boys without their parents' permission.\nPolice said the car had overtaken another vehicle before crashing on Gelderd Road in Morley at 13:50 GMT.\nWest Yorkshire Police said the two injured 14-year-old boys remained in hospital in a critical condition on Sunday morning.\nSupt Sam Millar, of Leeds Police, said: \"This is a terrible tragedy for two young boys who had their whole lives ahead of them.\n\"Specially trained officers are currently investigating the exact circumstances of the incident and helping the families in what is a terrible time for them.\n\"The two boys were from the local area and attended Bruntcliffe School and the Morley Academy and we are also supporting those schools at this difficult time.\"\nWest Yorkshire Police have appealed for any witnesses to how the car, a blue Peugeot, was being driven before the incident.\nSupt Millar added: \"It is thought that a 21-year-old man picked the four boys up from their homes without the permission of their parents.\n\"A blue coloured Peugeot was being driven along the road in the direction of Gildersome when the car left the road and collided with a tree.\n\"No other vehicles are believed to have been involved in the incident although it is thought the car overtook another vehicle at speed during the incident.\n\"The driver also remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition. Officers are appealing for anyone who saw the movements of the vehicle that day to come forward, especially at the Tesco Express store in Churwell.\"\nAny witnesses are asked to contact the Major Collision and Inquiry Team on 101.\nSupt Millar said: \"One of the passengers, a 13-year-old boy was killed instantly and one of the other boys in the vehicle subsequently died in hospital last night.\n\"Two other boys travelling in that vehicle remain critically ill in hospital.\n\"This is an absolute tragedy for these boys, their families and for the community and for our local community schools.\n\"What I would like to highlight was that several members of the public who stepped in and helped at the scene of this accident.\n\"As you can imagine it must have been one of the most horrendous scenes to come across and yet members of the public gave immediate support and first aid to these boys.\n\"Their actions yesterday are absolutely commendable.\"", "A 38-year-old man, who was a back seat car passenger, is in a critical but stable condition in hospital following the B9080 crash at about 22:15 on Wednesday.\nThe injured passenger suffered serious stomach and abdomen injuries.\nThe Vauxhall Zafira was travelling south when it crashed with a First bus between Kirkliston and Winchburgh.\nThe driver of the car, a 58-year-old man, suffered spinal injuries and a fractured ankle.\nThe front seat passenger, a 34-year-old man, had injuries to his face and leg. All were admitted to hospital.\nThree of the bus passengers were treated in hospital for minor injuries. They have all since been discharged.\nPolice said the driver and six other passengers on the single-decker bus were treated at the scene.\nThe bus had 26 people on board.\nA First Bluebird spokeswoman: \"We can confirm that one of our Service 38 vehicles was involved in a collision yesterday at around 22:15 between Kirkliston and Winchburgh. The bus was travelling to Falkirk from Edinburgh.\n\"Unfortunately the incident resulted in a number of injuries and our thoughts are with the injured at this time.\n\"We have launched an investigation to establish exactly what happened and are assisting Police Scotland with their inquiries.\"", "The dead driver was not a member of ambulance staff, police said, and working out how he was in the ambulance would form part of their inquiries.\nThe Coastliner bus driver was seriously injured in the crash on the A64 at Flaxton, near York, at about 20:30 BST.\nFive of the 16 passengers on the bus and one of two people in the Toyota Yaris car were also taken to hospital.\nYorkshire Ambulance Service said they could not confirm who the private ambulance belonged to but said it was not an NHS vehicle.\nThe driver was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said there was nobody else in the vehicle with him.\nThe bus driver was taken to Leeds General Infirmary, with serious but not life-threatening leg and abdominal injuries. The emergency services said the passengers were taken to hospitals in York and Scarborough and their injuries were also not life-threatening.\nThe ambulance service said it was thought other passengers may have gone to hospital without their assistance and about four people received attention for minor injuries at the scene.\nThe A64 has been closed while collision investigators examine the scene and police said it would remain shut for some time. They asked motorists to avoid the A64 near York.\nNorth Yorkshire Police are asking anyone who witnessed the crash or saw either of the vehicles before the collision, to contact them.", "TV footage showed an amphibious \"Ride the Ducks\" vehicle - a type used for tours in several US cities - smashed into the side of the bus on a bridge.\nThe four victims were foreign students from North Seattle College. Several people were critically injured.\nSeattle Mayor Ed Murray described the crash as \"a terrible tragedy\".\nIt happened at about 11:00 local time (18:00 GMT) on Thursday. Two smaller vehicles were also involved in the crash.\nMost of the victims were on board the charter bus. Officials have not said which countries they were from.\nForty-five students and staff members from the school's international programmes were taking an orientation trip ahead of the school year starting on Monday.\nFifty-one people were taken to hospitals. Fire department officials said 12 had critical injuries.\n\"Today, the North Seattle College community learned devastating news that four of our students were tragically killed in a vehicle accident on the Aurora Bridge,\" the school said in a statement.\n\"Additionally, several students remain in critical condition, and other students and a North employee sustained serious injuries.\"\nGovernment officials were working to contact next of kin.\nA witness said the duck boat signalled to move left when it lurched and the front left wheel came off. It then clipped a vehicle before colliding with the bus.\nTwo witnesses travelling in the opposite direction, Brad Volm and Bradley Sawhill, told the Associated Press news agency they saw the duck boat's left tyre \"lock up\" as it swerved into the charter bus.\n\"It all happened so fast. I got out of my car, and there were just bodies, just everywhere. People lying in the street,'' Mr Volm said.\nTim Gesner, who was on the duck boat, told The Seattle Times the vehicle started to fish-tail and he heard the driver say \"Oh, no\".\nMayor Murray said the company had voluntarily suspended trips for the time being.\n\"Ride the Ducks\" tours, using vehicles which can drive on roads and float on water, are known for guides who play loud music and quack through speakers when leading tourist groups.\nThe amphibious vehicles have been involved in multiple fatal accidents.\nTwo people died when one collided with a barge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2010.\nThe \"Duck\" name is derived from DUKW, the six-wheel amphibious vehicles used by the US military during World War Two.", "The crash, 120km (75miles) north-west of Philadelphia, left trucks and cars strewn across three lanes of traffic and the central reservation.\nThe Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency said 40 people had been taken to hospital and 70 to a temporary shelter.\nDrivers have been urged to use caution during the icy weather.\nA spokeswoman for Penn State Hershey Medical Center said three patients had been brought in in a critical condition, three more with moderate to severe injuries and four with minor injuries.\nAgency spokesman Cory Angell said drifting snow had been reported in the area of the crash, which took place in strong winds on the eastern carriageway of Interstate 78 near Bethel Township.\n\"You could be driving down the interstate and all of a sudden conditions change because the winds are drifting the snow,\" he said.\nWitnesses described a scene of devastation with reports that some people remain trapped in vehicles.\n\"The snow just started and it was a total whiteout. The car in front of us just disappeared,\" driver Ashley Fisher told NBC News. \"We were able to stop, but a couple cars slid and hit the shoulder. It was a mess.\"\nOfficials have warned people in the north-eastern US to stay indoors during what the National Weather Service described as \"life-threatening temperatures\".", "A black Mercedes, carrying a family of five, collided with the ambulance on Babs Oak Hill in Sturry just before 14:00 BST.\nTwo girls, aged 12 and 14, were cut free from the car and airlifted to hospital with serious injuries.\nThree other family members were taken to hospital with injuries not thought to be serious.\nA South East Coast Ambulance Service spokesperson said one male staff member was taken to hospital with an ankle injury.\nThe ambulance was not carrying a patient at the time of the crash.\n'Horrendous'\nThe two vehicles collided before leaving the road and ploughing through a fence into the garden of a property close to the A28.\nThe property owner John Lawrence told the BBC: \"It came straight through the fence and all chaos was let loose.\n\"We ran to see if we could offer help to the people in the vehicle... It was just horrendous to see.\"\nThe South East Coast Ambulance Service said: \"Our thoughts are with all those involved.\"\nAt 18:40 BST Kent Police said: \"If you are planning to drive in this area please be patient, as the road is likely to remain closed for a number of hours.\"\nAnyone who witnessed the collision, or saw either vehicle in the moments leading up to it, is asked to contact the Kent Police Serious Collision Investigation Unit.", "The collision happened near Delgatie Castle in Turriff, Aberdeenshire, at about 11:45 on Sunday.\nPolice said a 42-year-old woman who was a passenger in a red Volkswagen Golf, which was involved in the crash, was airlifted to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.\nA 30-year-old man who driving a black Citroen C2 was taken to the hospital by ambulance.\nPolice said they both remain in a critical condition.\nAn 18-year-old woman, who was also a passenger in the Volkswagen, sustained a serious leg injury and is said to be in a stable condition at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.\nThree other people who were travelling in the Volkswagen received treatment for minor injuries, police said.\nThe unclassified road was closed for around seven hours while officers investigated the scene.\nSgt Colin Matheson said: \"I would like to appeal to anyone who may have seen the incident and has not yet spoken to police to please come forward with any information.\n\"Likewise anyone who may have seen either vehicle in the time leading up to the collision should also get in touch with police on 101 as we try to piece together exactly what happened.\"", "The incident, which also involved five other cars and a bus, happened in Fernhill Road on the outskirts of Glasgow at 11:05.\nThe car driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The male driver of the agricultural vehicle is in a serious condition in hospital.\nThe road remains closed and police have appealed for witnesses.\nSgt Alison McAuley, of Police Scotland, said: \"An extensive recovery operation, which is expected to last for several more hours, is currently underway and Fernhill Road is closed with local diversions in place.\n\"I would appeal to anyone who witnessed what happened to contact officers.\"\nFirstbus confirmed that one of its vehicles had been at the scene when the crash happened.\n\"We can confirm one of our vehicles was caught up in the incident at Fernhill Road earlier today and we are providing assistance to the emergency services,\" a statement said.", "The 57-year-old, from Montrose, was killed north of Dunkeld, near Jubilee Bridge, in Perthshire.\nSeveral other stretches of the A9 have been the scene of fatal and serious accidents this year.\nNovember was marked by the death of a couple in a two-car crash near Dalwhinnie.\nCare assistant Dennish Michael and nurse Manju Dennish, both 32 and from Inverness, were originally from India.\nEarlier in the month, the parents of a five-year-old boy and three-year-old girl were taken to hospital after a crash near Calvine, in Perthshire.\nIn October, three people were killed in a collision near Pitlochry involving four cars. Firefighters described the accident as a \"scene of carnage\".\nDenny couple James Forbes, 73, and his 66-year-old wife wife Anne died when their car was involved in a crash with another car.\nThe driver of the other car - John Potter, 63, from Scarborough - also died at the scene.\nIn a separate accident, Roy Greene, 41, a joiner from Kilsyth, died in a collision between a van and tipper truck near Auchterarder.\nAugust saw the deaths of motorcyclist Peter Corris, 54, and wife Jacqueline Corris, 53, from Leyland, Lancashire.\nThe crash which also involved a car happened three miles south of Dalwhinnie.\nAnother motorcyclist, Fergus Cooney, 41, from Helmsdale, died in hospital after coming off his bike at Daviot.\nMother-of-two Sharon Topping, 38, from Moodiesburn in Glasgow, was killed after her motorbike hit the central reservation on the A9 near Pitlochry.\nThe accident happened just hours after buying her first motorcycle.\nHer 40-year-old husband Stephen, who was travelling behind her on his own motorbike, collided with her bike and was injured.\nIn May, two men were injured after a coach with 37 people on board crashed north of the Berriedale Braes.\nAnd in April, 13 elderly holidaymakers were hurt when their coach collided with a lorry near Dalwhinnie.\nThe same month also saw one of Scotland's most promising chefs was killed in a motorbike crash just hours before he was awarded a top accolade at the Scottish Hotel Awards.\nRyan Young, 38, who was nominated in three categories at the prestigious awards, died after his bike collided with a 4X4 vehicle.\nA 44-year-old pedestrian also died after being struck by a lorry a mile north of Dunkeld.\nWintry weather affected travelling conditions earlier this year.\nIn February, lorry driver Andrew Raeside, of Kirkintilloch, died after his cab plunged 40ft (12m) from a bridge into a loch.\nHe was driving south on the A9 when his fuel lorry jack-knifed as he was crossing Coronation Bridge at Faskally.\nEight people were hurt in January in two multi-vehicle accidents.\nFive cars were involved in a collision during blizzard conditions three miles south of Dalwhinnie, while the other earlier accident happened at the Cromarty Bridge.", "Police said a car had gone through the central reservation after colliding with a lorry and then crashed into traffic on the westbound carriageway.\nThe car hit two more lorries and another car at junction 21 at Milnrow just after 09:30 BST.\nPolice said the dead man was yet to be identified. A man and woman also suffered serious injuries.\nThe pair, who were travelling in one of the cars, were flown to Royal Oldham Hospital by air ambulance. Their conditions are described as not life threatening.\nEight other people suffered minor injuries but did not require hospital treatment, police said.\nThe crash has closed the M62 in both directions and another minor accident just after 11:00 BST near Huddersfield also caused further tailbacks into Yorkshire.\nPC Ed Lister from Greater Manchester Police said: \"Our officers are doing all we can to identify this man as quickly as possible so we can speak with his family, and also to deal with the other injured people and damaged vehicles at the scene.\n\"There are considerable traffic tailbacks following this collision and we are advising people wherever possible to avoid this area and use another route.\"", "The two Inverness fire crews were responding to a 999 call about a road accident when their vehicles skidded on the B9006 on 6 February.\nOf nine firefighters who were injured, five were taken to hospital.\nInvestigators have recommended there be a review of training for driving during icy conditions.\nThey have also recommended that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) make arrangements for the gathering and sharing of information on weather that could affect driving conditions.\nThe accident happened on the B9006 Inverness to Nairn road at about 07:15 while the two crews were going to the aid of two people trapped in wreckage following a road accident.\nThe first appliance to hit the black ice skidded 180 degrees on the road before it struck a raised grass verge and rotated 360 degrees and landed on its side in the field.\nThe driver of the second vehicle slowed down, but lost control after passing the point where the first appliance had skidded.\nThe second fire engine also came off the road and ended up on its side the same field.\nHowever, the crew managed to alert the crew of a third fire service vehicle and it was stopped safely and remained on the road.\nThree of those involved in the crash were not wearing seat belts, according to the SFRS investigation.\nLewis Ramasay, assistant chief officer at SFRS, said: \"The investigation established that the immediate cause of the crash was the two vehicles skidding on black ice.\n\"As a result, we are reviewing arrangements for gathering information on road conditions and how these may present specific route risks, in order to ensure that our crews are advised accordingly.\n\"We are also reviewing training in relation to driving in inclement weather and driver familiarisation with specific vehicles, although the investigation did not find this to be a contributory factor in the crash.\"\nThe senior officer added: \"The role of a firefighter is one that is often dangerous and our job is to ensure that the risks associated with firefighting and responding to emergency calls are managed effectively.\n\"This starts from the minute a call is received and appliances are dispatched; our report recognises this and, as a result, we fully intend to use its findings to protect our crews, the public and any other road users.\n\"This incident is a powerful reminder of the risks faced by frontline crews and it shows how even highly experienced emergency response drivers in state-of-the-art vehicles can be affected by inclement road and weather conditions.\"", "Latham Schofield was one of four people in a silver Renault Megane travelling along Plodder Lane in Bolton in the early hours of Thursday.\nHe suffered fatal injuries and died at the scene.\nHis family said he was \"cheeky and silly sometimes but that made us all love him even more\".\nAnother 17-year-old boy was taken to hospital and remains in a serious but stable condition, police said.\nThe 18-year-old from Bolton was also charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving, failing to stop at and report the collision, using a motor vehicle without a licence and insurance and using a vehicle with no test certificate.\nHe is due to appear at Bolton Crown Court on 11 March.\nA 19-year-old man who was also arrested has been released without charge.", "The vehicle burst into flames in the crash on Poppyfields Way, Branton, Doncaster, on Tuesday.\nAn 18-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.\nA 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy have also been arrested on the same charge. A woman, 21, was held on suspicion of assisting an offender.\nThe three people arrested earlier have now been bailed as police enquiries continue.\nAll four are from the Doncaster area, South Yorkshire Police said.\nThe dead men, who were in the car, have not been formally identified. A third male remains in a critical condition following the crash.\nSouth Yorkshire Police is trying to trace the occupants of an estate car which was towing a caravan close to the scene.", "Police were called out to the incident near the Annandale Water services at about 07:30.\nThe northbound carriageway between junctions 15 and 16 was shut for about five hours for recovery of the vehicle.\nDiversions had been put in place. The driver of the lorry was not hurt in the incident.\nThe A75 Dumfries bypass was also closed for several hours due to a three-vehicle crash between the Lockerbie Road and Bloomfield roundabouts.\nIt reopened at about 15:00 and one woman was taken to hospital with serious injuries as a result of the accident.\nA number of other accidents were also reported in the Newton Stewart, Whithorn and Glenluce areas due to icy conditions.", "They were Saadia Ahmad, 37, and her nine-year-old daughter Ayesha Ahmad.\nThree other members of their family - the 37-year-old father and two sons, aged 10 and 14 - are reported to be in a serious but stable condition in hospital.\nThe 42-year-old driver of the other vehicle involved in the crash, who also died, has been named as Mark Hansen.\nPolice said he was from Singapore but had been working in the UK.\nThe crash, which involved a silver Mercedes car and a white Vauxhall van, happened on the eastbound carriageway between Polmont and Linlithgow at about 21:00 on Friday.\nAnyone who witnessed the crash is asked to contact police.", "The incident happened on Kilbowie Road, in the West Dunbartonshire town, at about 07:45.\nThe 52-year-old male van driver was taken to Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital along with the teenager, a 42-year-old man and 48-year-old woman.\nThe driver has since been discharged but is the subject of a police inquiry.\nPolice have appealed for witness to the crash to come forward.\nIt resulted in the closure of the route between the A82 Great Western Road and Second Avenue. All four people injured remain in hospital, police said.\nInsp Adam McKenzie of Police Scotland said: \"It is quite clearly a serious incident from the word go when pedestrians are struck by vehicles.\n\"One person had been knocked completely over the small wall at the back of the bus stop.\n\"The driver was still partially trapped within the vehicle and debris from the bus stop was embedded in the vehicle as well.\"\nHe added: \"At the moment we are conducting the forensic side of the inquiry - photographs, measurements and every piece of physical evidence that we can gather.\n\"The vehicle will be removed and will be subject to a full mechanical examination as well.\n\"It's a busy area and I would ask that if anyone in a vehicle or a pedestrian has witnessed it this morning, and has not already spoken to police, could they please come forward.\"", "The crashes happened within a mile-and-a-half-stretch between the B4047 and the A415 at Witney, according to South Central Ambulance Service.\nFour other people were taken to hospital - one with life-threatening injuries.\nAbout 15 people were treated at the scene, the ambulance service said.\nAnother of those taken to hospital had suffered serious injuries, while the other two had minor injuries.\nThames Valley Police confirmed the collision via its TVP Roads Policing account.\nIt said: \"The A40, Witney is closed following a multi-vehicle collision. Emergency services are on scene and drivers are advised to avoid the area.\"\nIt is a cold and foggy scene here on the A40 heading towards Witney.\nWalls of thick fog are completely blocking the view of the fields to the right and left of the A40.\nOn the road, cars disappear from view a few hundred metres away.\nAs I approached the Ducklington turn off, the blue police lights cut through the fog. The road is closed and traffic is being directed towards the nearby service station.\nNikki Cowan was involved in the crash but was uninjured.\n\"As I tried to apply my brakes, I could feel that the car was just gliding across and realised there must have been black ice,\" she told the BBC.\n\"As much as I tried to either steer or brake, I just didn't stop.\n\"It felt like driving in slow motion. I tried to avoid the line of cars and aim for the central reservation, but it was very icy.\n\"I just careered into a VW that had a child and two adults in it.\n\"I remember seeing the shock on the driver's face, and then more cars hitting each other behind me.\"\nHGV driver Ben Starkey, who was at the scene but not involved in the crashes, said the road conditions were foggy and the road was icy at the time of the collisions at about 08:30 GMT.\n\"[The crashes] happened ahead of me and then behind, lucky enough I managed to stop my HGV,\" he said.\n\"I saw the emergency services performing CPR on a lady. The person who was with her in the car was walking around saying 'I can't believe this'.\n\"There was also another woman in front of me who was severely injured when a car collided with her when she stepped outside her vehicle.\"\nMr Starkey praised the emergency services, who he said had done an \"excellent job\" having arrived at the scene in about 20 minutes.\nAnother eyewitness, who did not want to be named, described \"carnage\" as she approached on the slip road from Carterton.\n\"I saw cars going zooming past me and trying to swerve out the way of the stationary cars, but crashing into them,\" she said.\n\"I saw one car try to swerve between a Mini and another car and end up crashing into the Mini and (flying) up in the air.\"\nMother-of-two Ami Gaston, from Carterton, was in the car with her partner when she saw the first vehicle crash about half a mile from the Witney exit, blocking the right lane.\n\"A man on his own had skidded and crashed into middle barrier,\" she said.\n\"My partner was driving - we had to swerve out of the right lane to avoid hitting him.\"\nShe said heavy fog meant the situation was \"really dangerous\", as it was difficult to see any other car until you were \"on top of it\".\nOne lane of the westbound carriageway of the A40 has now reopened and the second lane is due to reopen once repairs have been completed to the central reservation, Thames Valley Police said.\nThe eastbound carriageway was due to remain closed until about 19:15 to allow the last vehicles involved in the crashes to be recovered and the road surface to be cleared of debris, the force added.\nAll vehicles not involved in the collision have since been released from the site.\nOxfordshire County Council said the road had been gritted overnight.", "The A12 was closed northbound in Bucklesham, Suffolk, following a crash between a tractor and a car just after 09:00 BST.\nSuffolk Police said the drivers of both vehicles were taken to hospital.\nThe road was also blocked in Mountnessing, Essex, following a crash involving two cars and a motorbike.\nEssex Fire and Rescue Service said three crews were at the scene on the London-bound carriageway, along with an air ambulance.\nAn Essex Police spokeswoman said the crash happened just before 12:00 BST and four people, whose injuries were not believed to be life threatening, had been taken to hospital.", "The victim, aged 32, was hit by the car at about 11:30 BST on Friday in the McDonald's car park at China Garden, on Derby Street, in Bolton.\nPolice said he and friends were in a confrontation with another group.\nA man, 19, has been arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving and both failing to stop and report a collision.\nOfficers said four people the victim had been arguing with left in two cars but no-one in the vehicles stopped.\nHe is in a serious but stable condition in hospital.\nGreater Manchester Police is now investigating the circumstances leading up to the crash, including allegations of racist remarks made during the argument. Officers are also analysing CCTV images.\nA spokesman for the force said they \"were certainly investigating the possibility\" that the car was deliberately driven at the victim.", "They were the 21-year-old man driving the car and a 24-year-old woman passenger.\nAnother 25-year-old woman passenger is in a critical condition. A 25-year-old man is said to be stable in hospital. A 24-year-old man who was also in the car escaped serious injury.\nPolice said they do not believe any other vehicle was involved.\nThe Ford Focus crashed on Balmore Road in the Lambhill area to the north of the city at about 00:45 on Sunday.\nSgt Nicola Taylor of Police Scotland said: \"Our inquires are continuing into the circumstances surrounding this tragic incident.\n\"It would appear that no other vehicle was involved and I would like to speak to anyone who either witnessed this crash or anyone who remembers seeing the vehicle travelling in Balmore Road just prior to the crash.\"", "Joan Price, 59, from Troon, died and another woman was seriously hurt in the crash on the A77 near Ayr on Monday.\nThe driver of a second vehicle involved in the collision left the scene of the accident near the Holmston roundabout before police arrived.\nOfficers believe the man and his passenger escaped in a silver Audi A3 which was on the A77 at the same time.\nThe black Volkswagen Golf in which they had been travelling was \"undriveable\" following the crash, Sgt Kevin Blackley said.\nHe added that, given the extent of the damage to the car, it was likely that at least one of the men was injured.\nThe Golf was travelling southbound on the A77 when it hit the northbound red Nissan Pulsar at around 21:35.\nJoan Price, who was driving the Pulsar, died at the scene. Her 39-year-old female passenger was taken to Ayr Hospital with serious injuries. She is said to be in a stable condition.\nPolice collision investigators closed the road between the Whitletts roundabout and Holmston roundabout for several hours following the crash.\nSgt Blackley said: \"From witnesses, the two men in the VW Golf got out of the car and jumped into a silver Audi A3 that had been in the vicinity at the time of crash.\n\"The VW Golf was undriveable and recovered at the scene. Due to the extent of the damage to the car, it is possible that either one or both of the occupants could have been injured by the impact of the crash.\n\"A number of people came to the aid of the two women in the car and called the emergency services. However, we still would like to hear from anyone who was on the A77 around the time of the crash and who saw it happen.\n\"We are particularly keen to speak to anyone who may have seen the cars - all three - prior to the crash and who can provide information about the way they were being driven at the time - this can be either on the A77 or on the nearby roads.\n\"Anyone with information that may assist our investigation should contact the divisional road policing unit at Irvine through the 101 number or anonymously through Crimestoppers.\"", "The most serious incident took place at about 16:00 BST on Saturday when a car taking part in the motor racing event came off the road near Coldstream.\nTwo men and a woman died. Another man is in hospital in a critical condition.\nA collision two hours earlier left five people injured, one of them seriously.\nOrganisers of the event - the only closed road rally on mainland UK - said they were \"devastated\" and were working with police to \"establish the facts\".\nPolice Scotland said the rally was cancelled with immediate effect after the second incident, and that investigations into both collisions were \"ongoing\".\nOne eyewitness of the second incident, Tony Cowan, told the BBC how the car \"lost control\".\n\"It went sideways one way and then to the other side of the road and ploughed into four people.\n\"It was terrible, absolutely terrible. I ran to help but there was little I could do. The air ambulance arrived after about three quarters of an hour. There were police cars and ambulances. It was chaos, just chaos,\" he said.\nAnother eyewitness wrote on Facebook: \"Huge accident at rally. Not far from us. About 15 emergency vehicles here now and about 40 people stood working on the injured. Not good.\"\nRace marshal Anne Reay said it was the \"worst outcome you could have asked for\".\nLaura Bicker, BBC Scotland correspondent, said several witnesses had since contacted the BBC to say they were concerned about spectators standing in dangerous areas along the rally route.\n\"Clearly that is something the organisers will be looking at and something the police will be investigating as part of their inquiries,\" she said.\nSupt Phil O'Kane, from Police Scotland, said four men and one woman were injured in the first crash - which happened at 14:05 BST - after a vehicle came off the road near Eccles.\nHe said one man remained in intensive care at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, while two men suffered fractures and were being treated at Borders General Hospital.\nThe two other patients have been discharged.\nSupt O'Kane said the second crash happened at 16:07 BST.\nThree people were pronounced dead at the scene, while another man was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in a critical condition.\nSupt O'Kane said the force was co-ordinating a \"multi-agency\" investigation into both incidents.\nA statement on the Jim Clark Rally website extended organisers' \"heartfelt condolences and sympathy\" to all those affected by the \"tragic events\".\nA statement added: \"Berwick and District Motor Club, Border Ecosse Car Club and the governing body, the Motor Sports Association (MSA), are co-operating fully with the police investigation,\"\n\"As with any serious incident on a motor sport event, the MSA will conduct its own thorough inquiry once the police investigation is concluded.\"\nScotland's First Minister Alex Salmond called the tragedy \"desperately sad and difficult news\".\nHe added: \"The Jim Clark Rally is a long-standing event of over 40 years. It is much loved in the Borders and by the rally driving community who I know will share in our sadness at what is a black day for the Borders and for Scotland.\"\nLocal MSP John Lamont said his \"thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families\".\n\"I know the rally organisers place considerable emphasis on the safety of the spectators and drivers but, with any event of this nature, there will always be an element of risk,\" he said.\nMr Lamont said it was \"appropriate that questions are asked and investigations are carried out to ensure that in the future nothing like this happens again\".\nThe annual rally takes place over three days on closed roads in the Duns and Kelso areas of the Borders, attracting thousands of people from across the UK.\nIt is held in honour of Scottish former Formula 1 champion Jim Clark, who died in a 1968 motor racing accident in Germany.", "Ambulance crews said 36 patients had been treated after the collision on the southbound carriageway in Derbyshire.\nOne person was pulled from a vehicle by firefighters after the crash between junctions 30 and 29 at about 12:25 BST.\nThere are not thought to be any serious injuries and the road has reopened. The coach driver went by air ambulance to the Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham.\nPolice said his injuries were not believed to be serious or life-threatening.\nThe crash happened between junction 30, near Barlborough and junction 29, near Chesterfield.\nChesterfield Royal Hospital said it had treated 10 people for minor injuries.\nThree people were taken by ambulance to the hospital and a further seven \"walking wounded\" were taken by minibus. All were discharged shortly afterwards.\nA further 19 people were taken to a \"place of safety\" and treated at the scene.\nThe coach belonged to a firm called National Holidays.", "West Midlands Ambulance Service said the crash, between a single and a double decker, happened on Addison Road, Kings Heath just after 11:00 BST.\nBoth drivers had to be cut free from their cabs, while four passengers were taken to hospital.\nNational Express, who operate the buses, has apologised to passengers and vowed to find the cause of the crash.\nThe two buses - a number 11 and a number 27 - are believed to have been following their usual route when the crash happened.\nWest Midlands Ambulance Service said the drivers had escaped \"serious injury\".\nThe service said: \"Crews arrived on scene to discover two buses had been in collision, with the front driver's side of both vehicles having suffered significant damage.\n\"It quickly became evident both drivers were trapped.\"\nThey said both men, believed to be in their 40s, were treated for leg injuries before being taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the city.\n\"Both men appear to have escaped serious injuries which, given the significance of the collision, is extremely fortunate,\" the service said.\n\"One of the passengers on the single decker bus, an elderly female, had to be helped from the vehicle on a stretcher. She was treated for back injuries and taken to the same hospital.\n\"A man from the single decker bus was treated for elbow, shoulder and knee injuries, whilst two females were treated for minor injuries.\"\nA further seven passengers were assessed and discharged at the scene.\nNational Express said: \"We can confirm two of our vehicles were in involved in an incident this afternoon.\n\"We are sorry to those involved and will monitor the situation to ensure they have what they need. We are working with the authorities to assess the cause of the incident.\n\"We also apologise to local residents who are suffering from diversions and congestion.\"\nBoth buses are likely to have been fitted with CCTV.\nThe company said it was in the process of retrieving the buses.", "Dyfed-Powys Police said the collision occurred just north of Welshpool at about 14:50 GMT on Friday, leaving the road closed for several hours.\nThe woman, who was hurt in the crash, died at the scene. Her family have been informed and are receiving specialist support.\nAnother casualty was taken to hospital but their condition is not believed to be serious.\nEarlier on Friday, a two-vehicle crash on the A470, between Church Street in Rhayader and the Llangurig roundabout, left the road shut between 12:00 and about 17:30." ]

[ "Jose Mourinho watches from the touchline (Picture: REUTERS)\nJose Mourinho‘s fear of being thrashed by Manchester City translated to his players, according to Alan Shearer.\nUnited were brushed aside by City on Sunday as the Sky Blues set a new unbeaten record and extended their lead at the top of the Premier League table to eleven points.\nThe gap seems insurmountable, despite the fact it is still December, and many pundits have declared the end of United’s push for the title and dubbed City the champions elect.\nMourinho decided to go defensive against City despite starting an attacking trio of Anthony Martial, Romelu Lukaku and Marcus Rashford.\nThe presence of the strikers did little to inspire an attacking display and Shearer believes Mourinho’s team and tactics sent out a clear message.\nManchester United 2017/18 Fixtures West Bromwich Albion (A) – Sun Dec 17\nBristol City (A) – Wed Dec 20 (EFL Cup)\nLeicester City (A) – Sat Dec 23\nBurnley (H) – Tues Dec 26\nSouthampton (H) – Sat Dec 30\nEverton (A) – Mon Jan 1\nStoke City (H) – Sat Jan 20\nTottenham (A) – Wed Jan 31\n‘That’s a fear of being walloped, it is,’ Shearer said on Match of the Day.\n‘They know if they went out and tried to take City on in a football match, City would pass through them.\n‘And score more than they would have today. The way Mourinho played today, particularly first half, was because he felt he had to play that way because he couldn’t open up against that City side.’\nTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video\nMourinho raged after the game that the referee should have given a ‘clear penalty’ when Ander Herrera went down in the box with the game at 2-1.\nThe United boss also felt the result came down to two factors, referee Michael Oliver’s mistake and Ederson’s double save.\nThe chasing pack now need a complete collapse from City to have any chance of beating them to the title, but Shearer believes the race is over.\nManchester City beat Manchester United 2-1 (Picture: Getty)\nHe said: ‘I think that’s it [over, the title race]. I think United needed to win.\n‘There was a gulf in class today, the way they kept hold of the ball, the way they closed Manchester United down when they lost they ball.\n‘I felt as if United played with a fear and United looked an attacking team with the players he had in it, but it was in no way attacking.\nMourinho thought Ander Herrera should have been given a penalty (Picture: PA)\n‘Particularly in the first half, the number of times they resorted to long balls and no one within 30, 40 yards of Lukaku. There was a gulf in class.’\nUnited and City are straight back in league action with a busy Christmas schedule about to get into full swing.\nCity take on Swansea on Wednesday while Mourinho will look to get his side back on track against Bournemouth." ]

[ "Jazz Carlin wants to become the Zlatan Ibrahimovic of the pool in her bid for gold at Tokyo 2020.\nCarlin, 26, won double silver at the Rio Olympics and today returns to competition at the British Swimming Championships in Sheffield where she competes in the 200, 400 and 800 metres freestyle.\nBut the Manchester United fan has been looking to the 35-year-old striker for inspiration after opting against retirement. Carlin’s British predecessor in distance swimming, Becky Adlington, quit the sport aged just 23.\n“The older you get, the more you learn,” said Carlin. “I look after my body a lot more and I’m still learning about my body. I saw an interview with Zlatan Ibrahimovic the other day. He said ‘age is just a number’, and he still believes he can do it. That’s a great mindset.\n“People said he’s not going to be any good at United. But seeing what he’s doing when so many people had written him off, is incredible. He keeps proving people wrong. That’s a great motivator. If I look after my body, I can keep pushing myself.”\nCarlin has set her sights on a golden summer at the World Championships in Budapest in July, when her major rival will be Katie Ledecky. The American beat Carlin in Rio at 400m and 800m, and won five titles at the 2015 championships.\nZlatan Ibrahimovic signs for Manchester United\n5 show all Zlatan Ibrahimovic signs for Manchester United\n1/5 It's the sight Manchester United fans have been waiting for - Zlatan Ibrahimovic in their colours. Man Utd via Getty Images\n2/5 Manchester United will hope to sell plenty of shirts bearing Ibrahimovic's name. Man Utd via Getty Images\n3/5 Ibrahimovic poses outside his new club's training complex. Man Utd via Getty Images\n4/5 The Swedish international puts pen to paper on his new contract. Man Utd via Getty Images\n5/5 Ibrahimovic is set to remain among world football's best paid stars. Man Utd via Getty Images\n“Everyone wants gold but it’s tough when you have Katie Ledecky in your event,” said Carlin.“But if you go to a race knowing you’ve lost then that’s not right. Katie’s pushed times people didn’t think was possible for a female but I’m striving to be the best.”\nThe national championships double up as trials for the worlds.", "Man City and Arsenal battle for Iniesta\nBoth Manchester City and Arsenal are looking to convince Andres Iniesta to move to the Premier League rather than transfer to a Chinese club, AS reports.\nIniesta will leave Barcelona this summer after winning 31 trophies at the club, and Pep Guardiola is eager to bring him to City having worked together at Camp Nou. Similarly, the 33-year-old could link up with former boss Luis Enrique if the Spaniard is appointed at Arsenal.\nLigue 1 giants PSG are also in the race to sign Iniesta, who has spent his entire playing career at Barcelona up until now.\nMan Utd looking to sign Fred this summer\nManchester United are looking to sign Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Fred after local rivals Man City pulled out of the race, according to the Manchester Evening News .\nThe Brazil international was a target for City in January until Pep Guardiola decided to strengthen his defence instead, bringing in Aymeric Laporte from Athletic Bilbao.\nUnited have contacted Fred's representatives about a summer move, and Jose Mourinho sees the 25-year-old as the perfect addition to his midfield with Michael Carrick retiring and Marouane Fellaini expected to leave.\nMan Utd ready mega Ter Stegen bid\nManchester United are preparing to make a move for Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Don Balon reports.\nJose Mourinho's side are apparently fearful of losing David de Gea to Real Madrid in the summer and are making contingency plans should their current No.1 head for Spain.\nAnd the Red Devils are reportedly willing to pay as much as €150m for the Barcelona keeper, with star man Lionel Messi apparently worried the Catalans will part with the Germany international for that kind of money.\nMan Utd still want Rose\nTottenham's Danny Rose remains a transfer target for Manchester United, the Evening Standard reports.\nThe England international has struggled for game time since recovering from a serious knee injury, but Jose Mourinho is still keen to sign the full-back.\nAdditionally, it is said that the Portuguese boss is willing to listen to offers for out of favour defenders Matteo Darmian and Luke Shaw ahead of the new season.\nSpurs, meanwhile, have placed Fulham's Ryan Sessegnon high on their own summer wishlist.\nBatshuayi interested in Dortmund talks\nChelsea striker Michy Batshuayi is interested in discussing a summer permanent move to Borussia Dortmund, Goal understands.\nThe Bundesliga's efforts to secure an option to buy on their loan deal were rejected outright in January by Chelsea, but Batshuayi’s nine goals in 14 games have only strengthened Dortmund’s resolve to make a deal happen.\nChelsea will likely wait until after the World Cup to begin talks and could ask for as much as £50 million , as they aim to profit on the growing value of their loan star.\nRead the full story on Goal!\nGazidis wants Arteta to replace Wenger\nArsenal's chief executive Ivan Gazidis believes Mikel Arteta could be the right man to replace Arsene Wenger at Arsenal, Sky Sports claims.\nArteta, a former Gunners captain, has been working alongside Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and has seen his stock as a potential manager rise as a result.\nRaul Sanllehi, head of football operations at the club, is said to prefer former Barcelona coach Luis Enrique, while head of recruitment Sven Mislintat has eyes for Hoffenheim manager Julian Nagelsmann and Schalke's Domenico Tedesco.\n'Man Utd were looking at Germany trio'\nManchester United had identified Mats Hummels, Marco Reus and Ilkay Gundogan as potential transfer targets prior to Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure, claims Rene Meulensteen.\nFerguson was stepped down as United manager on the back of a 13th Premier League title triumph, David Moyes was appointed as his successor and attention shifted elsewhere in the recruitment market.\nThat change in direction led the Red Devils away from three star turns in Germany who were all on the books of Borussia Dortmund at the time.\nRead the full story on Goal!\nCity allow Stones to leave\nManchester City will allow defender John Stones to leave the club this summer, according to The Sun .\nThe England international has not started a Premier League game since January having fallen down the pecking order under Pep Guardiola.\nBoth Arsenal and Liverpool have been touted as potential destinations, with City keen to recoup most of the £47.5 million they spent on the centre-back in 2016.\nMan Utd defender to stay at Villa\nManchester United manager Jose Mourinho is prepared to let Axel Tuanzebe spend another season on loan at Aston Villa, according to The Sun .\nTuanzebe joined Villa on loan in the January transfer window, but has made just five appearances for the Championship club.\nHowever, Mourinho wants Tuanzebe to continue his development at Villa next season, irrespective of whether Steve Bruce’s side clinch promotion to the Premier League.\nFee holding up Rafinha move\nBarcelona's transfer fee demands are holding up a permanent move to Inter for Rafinha, Calciomercato reports.\nThe midfielder has stated he is happy in Milan and would like to stay, but the player's buyout clause of €35 million plus an additional €3m in bonuses is proving an issue for the Serie A club.\nThe Brazilian is said not to feature in Ernesto Valverde's plans for the Blaugrana, but sporting director Robert Fernandez is a keen admirer of the 25-year-old and will not settle for a cut-price deal.\nValverde considering Barca future\nBarcelona manager Ernesto Valverde is considering leaving Camp Nou this summer, according to AS .\nDespite guiding the Blaugrana to the Copa del Rey and managing them to the verge of an unbeaten Liga season, the former Athletic boss could yet walk away at the end of his first season in charge.\nThe 54-year-old is at odds with the Barca board following their quarter-final exit from Champions League and could now walk away.\nMessi tells Neymar: Join Man Utd!\nLionel Messi has told former Barcelona team-mate Neymar to join Manchester United this summer, according to Don Balon .\nNeymar is set to leave Paris Saint-Germain and has two offers - one from United and one from Real Madrid.\nMessi, though, is keen for the Brazil international not to sign for Barca's main rivals and instead has advised him to move to Old Trafford.\nNew Arsenal boss given limited funds\nArsene Wenger's managerial replacement at Arsenal will only have around £50 million to spend on their squad this summer, according to the Daily Telegraph .\nWith Wenger set to step down at the end of the season, the hunt is on for a new coach to take the reins at the Emirates Stadium.\nBut following the club-record arrivals of Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang over the past 12 months, funds are tight at the Gunners.\nWest Ham make massive Isco bid\nWest Ham have had a huge €90 million offer for Isco accepted by Real Madrid, according to Don Balon .\nThe Spain international has not always been first choice at Santiago Bernabeu this season and could look to leave this summer.\nManchester City have shown an interest but have not offered anywhere near the same amount as the London Stadium outfit.\nMou to give up De Gea for Ronaldo\nJose Mourinho is willing to use David de Gea as part of a swap deal to bring Cristiano Ronaldo to Manchester United, according to Diario Gol .\nMourinho is keen to reunite with Ronaldo, whom he managed at Real Madrid, and is willing to allow De Gea to leave given his goalkeeper's urge to move to Santiago Bernabeu.\nShould Madrid reject that, however, then Paul Pogba could be offered instead of De Gea.\nBale holds Inter talks\nReal Madrid forward Gareth Bale has held talks with Inter regarding a move this summer, according to Don Balon .\nThe Wales international is set to leave Santiago Bernabeu following a frustrating season with injuries and a lack of form.\nAnd the San Siro outfit want to unite Bale with Mauro Icardi as they look to make a splash both domestically and in Europe once again.\nAthletic keen on Llorente reunion\nAthletic Club are keen on bringing Tottenham striker Fernando Llorente back to Spain this summer, according to the Daily Mirror .\nThe Spain international has struggled to establish himself at Spurs given the form of Harry Kane up front.\nAnd Llorente, who left Athletic for Juventus in 2013, would be open to making the move back to Bilbao.\nLeipzig asked for Alexander-Arnold\nRB Leipzig were keen to take Liverpool defender Trent Alexander-Arnold to Germany back in January, according to The Times .\nThe full-back has impressed during his first full season in the first team at Anfield, with some even calling for him to go to the World Cup with England.\nAnd it has been revealed Leipzig asked for the youngster to be included after Liverpool bid to bring Naby Keita to Merseyside at the turn of the year rather than wait until the summer.\nMan City close to Jorginho\nManchester City are closing in on a deal for Napoli's £50 million-rated midfielder Jorginho and are ready to splash the cash on a marquee signing if the possibility presents itself.\nGoal understands City want to make just two signings this summer as they look to build on their Premier League-winning campaign.\nThey are pursuing a deep-lying midfielder - now likely to be Jorginho - and a forward; the same positions they attempted to strengthen in January.\nRead the full story on Goal!\nBayern to block Lewandowski sale\nBayern Munich are set to block Real Madrid's move for striker Robert Lewandowski this summer.\nThe Poland international is keen to move on from the Bundesliga champions this summer.\nAnd Madrd see him as an upgrade on Karim Benzema as they aim to bolster their forward line.\nRead the full story on Goal!\nLiverpool told 'sack of money' won't land Alisson\nLiverpool and Real Madrid have been warned by Roma president James Pallotta that “a sack of money” will not be enough to land in-demand goalkeeper Alisson.\nThe Brazil international has become a much sought-after commodity on the back of his consistent showings for club and country.\nBut Roma have maintained throughout the regular rounds of transfer talk that they have no intention of selling .\nRead the full story on Goal!", "Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nLlanrug United v Barmouth and Dyffryn United (Cookson Cup semi-final, Saturday 1.30pm)\nBarmouth are all fired up for one of their biggest games in recent years when they take on a Llanrug side unbeaten in their last 11 matches.\nBermo manager Carl Ryan summed up what the game means to his club.\n\"We travel to Llanrug for arguably the biggest game the club have faced in a few years,\" he said.\n\"Anyone with close connections to Barmouth and Dyffryn Utd will agree the past 2/3 seasons have been tough with fierce relegation battles.\n\"Once I was approached to take the manager's role my immediate task was to approach the talented local players who were for one reason or another, not playing.\nVideo Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now\n\"The club had lost a little bit of its identity and hopefully we have restored that this season, talented local lads competing in the Welsh third tier against a host of really good sides, many of whom have a large network of areas to source players from places like Llandudno, Bangor and Caernarfon.\n\"Saturday's match is a reward for our hard working chairman, Mr Will Huntley. He is the life and soul of the club along with his couple of steady leiutenants, namely Tom Hughes and Budgie!!!\n\"If I were asked to name the toughest away ground in the Welsh Alliance, Llanrug would no doubt be No1 on my list. They manage the pitch and surface so well that we will need to be at it 100% from the off and for 90+ minutes.\n\"We travel with almost a full squad so it’s up to myself and player/assistant-manager Paul Lewis to come up with a strategy to try and unsettle the odds and beat Llanrug in a massive game\n\"We were comfortably beaten earlier on in the season at Llanrug but with the help of my good friend Craig Papirnyk at Porthmadog FC, we have strengthened since then with new additions in keeper Tyler French and centre back Ste Bratt.\n\"Hopefully come 4pm on Saturday afternoon my lads will make our small town proud and give our loyal army of 5/6 away fans a cup final to look forward to.\"\nLast meeting: Llanrug 5 Barmouth 1 (league, Sep 16, 2017). Key man: David Noel Williams (Llanrug).\nRuthin Town v Caernarfon Town (Huws Gray Alliance, Sat 2pm)\n(Image: North Wales Weekly News)\nTwo teams who bowed out of the Welsh Cup in gallant fashion against higher-league opposition last weekend clash in the league on Saturday.\nHuws Gray Alliance leaders Caernarfon face a tough trip to Ruthin, who were so impressive in front of the live TV cameras in last weekend's 4-3 defeat against Llandudno.\nCaernarfon are undefeated in 17 league matches and have a four-point lead at the summit.\nLast meeting: Caernarfon 3 Ruthin 0 (Sep 27, 2017). Key man: Llyr Morris (Ruthin).\nLlandudno v Swansea City (FAW Women's Welsh Cup quarter-final, Sun 2pm)\nDespite having never beaten Swansea in 13 attempts, Llandudno will believe they can spring a surprise in the Welsh Cup on Sunday.\nThe Seasiders are coming back to full strength and are determined to give the Swans a bigger test than they managed in the league earlier this season when the reigning WWPL champions triumphed 6-0 at the Giant Hospitality Stadium.\nLast meeting: Llandudno 0 Swansea 6 (WWPL, Nov 19, 2017). Key player: Katy Hosford (Swansea).\nNorthop Hall v Cyncoed (FAW Women's Welsh Cup quarter-final, Sun 2pm at Flint Town United FC)\nCurrent North Wales Women's League leaders Northop Hall have been scoring goals for fun this season.\nThey will be out to show, as the only non-WWPL side left in the cup, that they can compete with the best.\nCyncoed will prove tough opponents, though. Five wins in their last five have included victories over Swansea and Cardiff City, and also a 3-0 success against Rhyl which booked their place in the League Cup Final.\nLast meeting: N/A. Key player: Laura Pennington (Northop Hall).\nPort Talbot Town v Rhyl (FAW Women's Welsh Cup quarter-final, Sun 2pm)\n(Image: Ian Fairbrother)\nHaving beaten Port twice already this season, once in the league and once in the League Cup, can Rhyl make it a treble?\nThe Lilywhites have a tough task on their hands against a home side who recently got a draw at Swansea, but Tom Jamieson's team are more than capable of booking a semi-final berth.\nLast meeting: Rhyl 2 Port Talbot 1 (Jan 21, 2018). Key player: Laura Williams (Rhyl).\nFIXTURES\nSaturday, February 3\nJD Welsh Premier League (4.15pm)\nBangor City v Cardiff Met, Barry Town Utd v Aberystwyth Town, Carmarthen Town v Prestatyn Town, Llandudno v Newtown.\nHuws Gray Alliance (2.30pm)\nAirbus Broughton v Porthmadog, Caersws v Gresford Athletic, Guilsfield v Flint Town United, Holyhead Hotspur v FC Queen's Park, Holywell Town v Llandudno Junction, Rhyl v Penrhyncoch, Ruthin Town v Caernarfon Town (2pm).\nGuy Walmsley Welsh National League (2pm)\nPremier Division League Cup: Cefn Albion v Mold Alex, Corwen v Brickfield Rangers, FC Nomads v Hawarden Rangers, Llay Welfare v Buckley Town.\nPremier Division: Lex Glyndwr v Chirk AAA, Rhostyllen v Penycae, Saltney Town v Llanuwchllyn.\nDivision One: Brymbo v New Brighton Villa, Castell AC v Overton, Llangollen Town v Rhos Aelwyd, Rhydymwyn v Maesgwyn.\nDivision One League Cup: Mynydd Isa Spartans v Cefn Mawr Rangers.\nReserves Division: Chirk AAA v Flint Town United, Hawarden Rangers v Corwen, Queen's Park v Ruthin Town.\nReserves Division League Cup: Gresford Athletic v Buckley Town.\nReserves & Colts Division: Brickfield Rangers v Cefn Albion, Coedpoeth Utd v Holywell Town, Rhos Aelwyd v Llay Welfare.\nLock Stock Welsh Alliance League (2.30pm unless stated)\nDivision One: Llandyrnog Utd v Greenfield, Mynydd Llandegai v Penrhyndeudraeth, Nantlle Vale v Llanrwst Utd, Pwllheli v Conwy Borough.\nDivision Two: Aberffraw v Cemaes Bay, Llannerchymedd v Gaerwen, Mochdre Sports v Glan Conwy.\nMawddach Challenge Cup round one (1.30pm): Llanfairpwll v Y Felinheli, Llangefni Town v Meliden, Llanrwst Utd v Blaenau Amateurs, Trearddur Bay United v Llanberis.\nCookson Cup semi-final (1.30pm): Llanrug United v Barmouth and Dyffryn United.\nTake Stock Van Hire Cup round two (1.30pm): Amlwch Town v Prestatyn Sports, Bodedern Ath v Llannefydd, Pentraeth v Penmaenmawr Phoenix.\nReserves Division: Denbigh Town v Llangefni Town, Llanberis v Holyhead Hotspur, Penmaenmawr Phoenix v Llanrug Utd, Prestatyn Town v Llandudno Junction.\nSalisbury and Co (St Asaph) Vale of Clwyd and Conwy League (2pm unless stated)\nPremier Division: Machno United v Abergele.\nDivision One: Henllan v St Asaph City Youth, Llandudno Amateurs v Denbigh Development, Llandudno Athletic v Rhos Utd, Llandyrnog Utd Reserves v Rhuddlan Town.\nPremier Cup second round (1.30pm): Kinmel Bay v Cerrigydrudion, Llanfairfechan Town v Y Glannau, Rhyl FC Youth v Rhyl Rovers.\nREM Jones Cup round one (1.30pm): Betws-y-Coed v Llanrwst Utd Reserves.\nCartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd League (2pm)\nLlangoed v Talysarn Celts, Llanllyfni v Gwalchmai, Menai Bridge Tigers v Llanystumdwy, Nefyn United v Beaumaris Town.\nCwpan Gwynedd Meditel round two (1.30pm): Bontnewydd v Holyhead Town, Waunfawr v Bro Goronwy.\nNorth East Wales League (2pm unless stated)\nAston Park Rangers v Bradley Park, Bellevue v Caerwys, Brymbo Victoria v Acton, Connah's Quay Nomads U18 v Rhosllanerchrugog, Flint Mountain v Mold Town Utd, Penyffordd Lions v Halkyn Utd.\nQueensferry Sports Presidents Cup semi-final (1.30pm): Mostyn Dragons v Plas Madoc.\nVeterans Cup Group A: Northop Hall Old Boys v Mostyn Vets. Group B: Flint Town Vets v Rhewl Vets.\nKon-X Anglesey League (2pm)\nArriva v Llandegfan, Bryngwran Bulls v Llangoed and Dist Res, Caergybi v Valley FC.\nCar Boot Trophy Group B: Bodorgan v Pentraeth Res.\nSunday, February 4\nFAW Women's Welsh Cup quarter-finals (2pm)\nAbergavenny v Cardiff Met, Llandudno v Swansea City, Northop Hall v Cyncoed, Port Talbot Town v Rhyl.", "ALL three Limerick sides suffered defeat on the third day of competition at the SFAI Kennedy Cup on Wednesday at UL.\nThe Limerick Desmond Schoolboy League suffered a 2-0 defeat to the Cork League in their well-attended quarter-final fixture.\nThe Desmond trailed 1-0 at half-time after Rob Walsh fired the Leesiders in front from a free-kick.\nDesmond keeper Ethan Hurley, of Newcastle West, produced a terrific penalty save mid-way through the second half to keep the score at 1-0.\nHowever, Cork made sure of victory when Alan Nagle netted his side’s second goal from close range.\nDesmond will now we involved in the 5th-8th place play-offs. The West Limerick side take on Kildare in their Plate semi-final at 12.30pm on Thursday.\nMeanwhile, both the Limerick District and Limerick County lost their play-off games after nail-biting penalty shoot-outs.\nLimerick District went down 7-6 on penalties to the Dundalk League after the sides finished 1-1 at full-time.\nAisling Annacotty’s Adam Cummins fired the Limerick District into a first half lead, before Emmanuel Ackgboyega equalised for the Co Louth side before the interval.\nLimerick District are now involved in the battle for 13th-16th places overall and will take on the Wicklow League in the Bowl at 12.30pm on Thursday.\nThe Limerick County Schoolboy League suffered a frustrating 5-4 defeat on penalties to the Mayo League in their Trophy play-off game.\nThe game had finished 0-0 at full-time.\nLimerick County, who are involved in the play-offs to decide places 29-32, face the West Waterford-East Cork League at 10.30am on Thursday.\nLIMERICK DESMOND KENNEDY CUP: Joey Rushe (AK Utd); Gary Sheehan (AK Utd); Conor Arthur (AK Utd); Jack O'Connor (AK Utd); Ethan Hurley (Newcastlewest AFC); Oisin Enright (Newcastlewest AFC) Leon Barry (Newcastlewest AFC); Jack O'Connor (Newcastlewest AFC); Ciarain O'Sullivan (Broadford Utd); Thomas Curran (Broadford Utd); Rob Szebeni (Broadford Utd); Kenny Lynch (Broadford Utd); Niall O'Connor (Shannonside); Jake Power (Shannonside); David O'Shaughnessy (Askeaton); Oran Kelly (Pallaskenry); Sean Ryan (Kilcoleman); Mike Molloy (Ballingarry); Jack Molloy (Ballingarry); Zach Behan (GB Rovers). Manager: John Fennessy (Shannonside); Coaches: Ed Gallagher (Ballysteen); Ray Lynch (Broadford Utd); Eunan McDaid (Shannonside); Goalkeeper Coach: Franny Walshe (AK United).\nLIMERICK DISTRICT KENNEDY CUP: Elvis Uzondu Duruji (Regional Utd); Kai Joyce (Limerick FC); Ronan O’Dwyer (Caherdavin Celtic); Conor Keane (Fairview Rangers); Wassiou Ayawe (Limerick FC); Josh Quinlivan (Limerick FC); Gary O’Halloran (Limerick FC); Jake Prendergast (Limerick FC); Riain O’Connell (Fairview Rangers); Fionn O’Dwyer (Regional Utd); Josh Twomey (Fairview Rangers); Ger Quaid (Limerick FC); Eoin Guilfoyle (Newport); Josh Shinners (Limerick FC); Eoghan Burke (Aisling Annacotty); Cian Fitzgerald (Caherdavin Celtic); Adam Cummins (Aisling Annacotty); Andri Haxhiji (Limerick FC); Cillian O’Shea (Fairview Rangers); James Killian (Mungret Regional); Management: Head of Delegation: Paddy Murphy; Manager: Declan EarlsCoach; Sean Maloney; Coach: Declan Considine; Coach: Alan Mitchell; Physio; Jimmy McNamara.\nLIMERICK COUNTY KENNEDY CUP: Finn Clancy (Holycross); Sean O'Neill (Kilmallock); Tiernan Hanley (Charleville); Diarmuid Looby (Cullen); Eoin McGrath (Kilfrush); Ben Murphy (Cullen); David Curtin (Herbertstown); Conor Hanlon (Charleville); Jay Ryan (Murroe); Kyle Tierney (Holycross); Stephen Walsh (Charleville); Seanie Herr (Charleville); Jake Quirke (Charleville); Zach McCarthy (Kilbehenny); Ciaran Kennedy (Cappamore); Paddy Kennedy (Galbally); Darragh O'Brien (Cullen); Harry Fox (Herbertstown); Noah Patterson (Holycross); Andrew Kearns (Herbertstown) Management: Head of Delegation: Dave Shanahan (Charleville); Manager: Ray Ryan (Murroe); Head Coach: Shane Ryan (Cappamore); Coach: Eoghan O'Donnell (Knockainey)" ]

[ "more than 2,000" ]

[ "attendant", "Mani", "Many, Many Times ''", "flight attendants", "Flight Attendant", "a train of attendants", "birth attendant", "human attendants", "car attendant", "crosswalk attendant", "how", "how many levels of management are present in the organization", "many decades", "many centuries", "Mani Kaul", "Ehsan Mani", "many hectares", "Many Clouds", "Mani, Greece", "many years", "Kalabhavan Mani", "How Come, How Long", "Many Mansions", "Mani peninsula", "many seasons", "Mani Ratnam", "many kilometres", "Many Moons", "The Path of the Mani", "Many a Mile", "Mani Sharma", "many days" ]

[ "The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the use of \"medical marijuana.\" In a 6 to 3 vote, the majority argued that federal anti-drug policy overrides laws in 10 states that allow use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Those states include California, Colorado, Montana and Vermont. For more on the high court's ruling, Farai Chideya is joined by one of the plaintiffs in the case, Diane Monson, a California accountant suffering from degenerative spine disease. Other guests include Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug-Free America Foundation, and Dr. Eric Voth, chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy and a specialist in addiction at Stormont-Vail HealthCare in Topeka, Kan." ]

[ "Fed Ex recently left a 33-pound box of marijuana on a doorstep in Washington, D.C. It was the wrong doorstep. So the couple that lives there -- a former Air Force intelligence officer, and a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office -- called the cops. Here's the story from the Washington Post. David Kestenbaum, Planet Money's chief drugs correspondent, brought the article to my attention because of its lucid explanation of why losing a big box of marijuana (which apparently happens all the time) is just part of the cost of doing business: Read More >> When undercover officers make wholesale buys, usually they pay about $1,000 a pound for medium-grade marijuana. So the 33 pounds that Anderson and Sloan received probably cost the local importer about $33,000. As a rule of thumb, a pound can be stretched into 360 $10 bags, meaning the shipment's retail value was nearly $120,000. That's a profit of $87,000 or so. Multiply that by, say, five shipments, and the overall profit is north of $400,000. If you lose one of the five packages, so what? You're still roughly $300,000 in the black. For more on the economics of illicit drugs, check out the podcast where Kestenbaum interviewed a Harvard economist about the economic implications of medical marijuana laws, and read this blog post on what drives the price of the drug.", "California workers who use medical marijuana are not protected by employment discrimination laws, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a former telecommunications administrator, Gary Ross, who suffers from chronic lower back pain and muscle spasms. In 1983, Ross — then enrolled in the U.S. Air Force — fell from the wing of a plane he was working on, fracturing two bones in his back and separating some muscles from the vertebrae. He says the only thing that works to relax the resulting painful spasms is marijuana. This was never an issue, he says, until he took a job at the telecommunications firm RagingWire. When he started, the company told him he would have to take a drug test. In the past, he had bypassed the process by showing employers his medical marijuana recommendation. Not this time. Instead, the company sent him a letter saying he was fired because traces of marijuana were found in his urine sample. The next step was obvious, he says. \"Oh, it was real easy. As soon as they terminated me, I was like, 'I'm going to get me a lawyer because you're wrong,'\" he says. Disabilities and Marijuana Ross' lawyer, Stewart Katz, argued his client had just the kind of illness Californians had in mind when they voted to legalize medical marijuana under Proposition 215. \"It seemed to us an absurdity where the people approved the use of marijuana for those medically in need of it so they can live as normal a life as possible, given their afflictions,\" Katz said, \"and then you say that you can't still keep working.\" Katz also argued that under California laws employers must make accommodations for employees with disabilities. In Ross' case, he said, that meant RagingWire must accommodate his need to control his chronic back pain. But the California State Supreme Court disagreed. In their 5-to-2 decision, the justices ruled disability rights do not extend to marijuana use. \"The court makes clear that California law, specifically the Fair Employment and Housing Act, does not require California employers to accommodate one's use of illegal drugs,\" RagingWire's lawyer Robert Pattison said. In 1996, millions of Californians voted to legalize medical cannabis under Prop 215. Critics of the ruling say it implies that the use of medical marijuana for \"compassionate purposes\" is intended only for people who are unemployed. \"That's just ridiculous,\" says California Assemblyman Mark Leno. Within hours of the court's decision, the San Francisco Democrat said he'll formally introduce legislation within the next two weeks to protect the employment rights of medical marijuana users. Legal Limbo \"Marijuana should not be treated any differently than any prescribed drug,\" says Prof. Marsha Cohen, who specializes in food and drug law at the University of California Hastings Law School. Even if Leno succeeds in getting those employment protections for California medical marijuana users, the legal limbo won't end, she says. \"They might be able to change California statutes, but then further questions arise. What if you're a federal contractor and you're required to comply with federal statutes, which require you to fire anybody who flunks a blood test, even for marijuana, even with a doctor's note,\" she says. Cohen says as long as the conflict between state and federal drug laws persists, the lives of medical marijuana users like Ross will be unsettled. ALEX COHEN, host: Here in California, in 1996 voters legalized medical marijuana. But ever since then, the state has clashed with federal prohibitions on pot use. Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled that employers can fire workers who use medical marijuana even if that marijuana was legally prescribed. Rachel Dornhelm reports. RACHEL DORNHELM: For four years, Gary Ross was in the Air Force. But then in 1983 while working on a plane, he fell from its wing. He says he fractured two bones in his back and separated some muscles from the vertebrae. Since then, he's had painful spasms, and the only thing that relaxes them is medical marijuana. It was never an issue until the systems administrator took a job at telecommunications firm RagingWire. When he started, they told him he'd take a mandatory drug test. He wasn't worried. Mr. GARY ROSS (Systems Administrator): No. I had been tested before for other employers, larger employers. Once I showed them my medical recommendation, then they were satisfied. DORNHELM: Not this time. Instead, he was fired. The company sent him a letter, saying he was fired because they found traces of marijuana in his urine sample. For Ross, the next step was a no-brainer. Mr. ROSS: Oh, it was real easy. As soon as they terminated me, I was like, okay, I'm going to get me a lawyer because you're wrong. DORNHELM: Ross's lawyers argued their client had just the kind of illness Californians had in mind when they voted to legalize medical marijuana under Proposition 215. Attorney Stuart Ka", "This week, Rhode Island became the latest state to legalize medical marijuana -- and the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that patients who use the drug can still be prosecuted under federal law. At that time, the White House drug policy office declared \"the end of medical marijuana as a political issue.\" But with Rhode Island becoming the 11th state to legalize it, pro-medical marijuana groups say the issue is still alive and well. MELISSA BLOCK, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. MICHELE NORRIS, host: And I'm Michele Norris. This week, Rhode Island defied federal drug policy and became the 11th state to approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The new law allows patients to grow or buy a small amount of marijuana for pain relief. Rhode Island is the first state to legalize medical marijuana since the US Supreme Court ruling last June. In it, the court said that patients who use the drug can still be prosecuted under federal law. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports. ANTHONY BROOKS reporting: Rhode Island's Republican governor, Donald Carcieri, had rejected the bill to legalize marijuana for medical use, but this week the State House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to override his veto. Representative Thomas Slater, a Democrat from Providence, was one of the sponsors of the new law. State Representative THOMAS SLATER (Democrat, Rhode Island): I myself don't have cancer, but I have seen a number of people in my own family come down with cancer, have their last few months of chronic pain and illness, and we've had so many people testify that they have gone to other states where medical marijuana was available and that it has helped them. So why wouldn't Rhode Island follow those other 10 states? BROOKS: The new law allows doctors to prescribe marijuana as pain relief to patients, who are allowed to possess up to two and a half ounces or grow up to 12 plants. State Senator Rhoda Perry, another Democrat, spent six years pushing for the law, which is named for her nephew, Edward O. Hawkins. He died last year after a painful fight against AIDS. Perry says the family offered him marijuana to ease his suffering, but he refused. State Representative RHODA PERRY (Democrat, Rhode Island): My nephew was emblematic of many other seriously ill and dying patients, and that is they are still fearful of the law. He did not want to do anything that was criminal. BROOKS: But the new law conflicts with federal drug policy. Last spring, the US Supreme Court ruled that patients who use marijuana can still be prosecuted under federal drug laws, even if their states allow it. That's why Rhode Island Governor Carcieri opposed it. He says the law will encourage criminal activity, spread illegal drug use and give Rhode Islanders a false sense of security that they can use marijuana when, in fact, they'd be breaking federal law. Dave Murray with the White House Drug Policy Office says the Rhode Island law is troubling for another reason. Mr. DAVE MURRAY (White House Drug Policy Office): The integrity of the medical approval process is what's being challenged. BROOKS: Murray argues that smoking raw marijuana weed is unsafe for anyone, especially the very sick. He says that's why the Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved it and why those using politics to push these laws are misguided. Mr. MURRAY: What these people have done effectively is when medical science would not give them their marijuana, people have adopted a political tactic to evade and go around the proper regulatory bodies that make these decisions. That tells you that they know they cannot win in the court of science and the court of medicine. BROOKS: But Rob Kampia, who heads the Washington, DC-based Marijuana Policy Project says it's the federal government that has politicized medical marijuana by threatening those who need it with arrest. Kampia's group pushed hard to make Rhode Island the 11th state to legalize marijuana and he says similar bills are pending in six more states. Mr. ROB KAMPIA (Head, Marijuana Policy Project): Our national strategy at the Marijuana Policy Project is to continue passing medical marijuana laws until there's a critical mass of states that are clamoring for change at the federal level, so that eventually Congress will change federal law to allow states to determine their own medical marijuana policies without federal interference. BROOKS: Following the Supreme Court's ruling last June, the federal drug czar, John Walters, said the decision marked the end of medical marijuana as a political issue. ", "The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may prosecute people who use medical marijuana, even if their state law says the treatment is legal. We explore the court's decision, what it means for the states -- and for patients who now use marijuana. Guest: David Savage, Supreme Court reporter for The Los Angeles Times Mike McGrath, attorney general for the state of Montana Robert Raich, a lead attorney representing Angel Raich and Diane Monson in the Supreme Court Case involving medical marijuana use; husband of Angel Raich Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Yesterday the Supreme Court declared that the federal government has the right to prosecute people who use marijuana for medical purposes. The case involved two chronically ill women from California, where state law allows patients to possess and consume cannabis on a doctor's recommendation. Ten other states have similar laws. Anti-drug activists hailed the decision as a victory. Proponents of medical marijuana say that little will actually change, that the doors of clubs that distribute medical marijuana will not be closing anytime soon. Though a lot of the talk about this case revolved around compassion and about morality, the central legal issue is the long-running argument over state's rights. Does the Commerce Clause of the Constitution give the federal government authority to regulate a substance grown at home for personal use? Yet today's ruling could affect state laws on other issues, including physician-assisted suicide. Medical marijuana now moves to Congress, but for now, patients who smoke it and doctors who recommend it must determine whether they're willing to risk federal prosecution. Later in the program, homicide rates fall for the first time in five years. We'll talk with a criminologist and ask why. But first, medical marijuana. If you or a family member use marijuana for medical purposes, how will the Supreme Court ruling affect your life? We'd also like to hear from doctors on either side of the argument. Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. The e-mail address is totn@npr.org. To get a better understanding of the decision, we turn now to David Savage, Supreme Court reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He's with us here in Studio 3A. David, always nice to have you on the program. Mr. DAVID SAVAGE (Los Angeles Times): Hi, Neal. CONAN: First of all, to begin with, to what extent are the laws that legalize marijuana for medical reasons in 11 states now moot? This decision did not strike down the state laws. Mr. SAVAGE: No, it didn't. It weakens them, but it leaves the laws on the books, and the laws still have real practical significance, because if you live in California, for example, and you're a medical marijuana user or someone in your family is, the law still stands that the state and local police should not arrest you, and those state courts should not prosecute you. Ninety percent of law enforcement in the United States is state and local, so those laws are still significant. On the other hand, you've got a problem if you run into a DEA agent or a federal prosecutor, because the federal agents can and they say they will come after you, but the laws are still significant because it keeps the local police from going after people who are using medical marijuana. CONAN: Did the justices explain in their decision why they said the federal government has this authority, but they did not strike down state laws? Mr. SAVAGE: Well, they were being asked to decide is--does the federal government have the power to enforce this kind of law in a state, particularly a state that's made a different choice? And they said `yes' on two grounds. One is the interstate commerce power does go this far, and number two, there's a Supremacy Clause in the Constitution that says the laws of the United States will be the supreme law of the land, and if Congress says something, then the federal law trumps the state law. But they didn't really need to go as far as to say the state can't--in the end, a state can sort of do what it wants to do with its own people. They don't have to go around and enforce federal laws if they don't want to. And in this case, California and 10 states have chosen not to enforce the law. CONAN: So those state laws are not unconstitutional. Mr. SAVAGE: That's correct. CONAN: OK. Now the case was also sent back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, because the women who brought this case, the two chronically ill women from California-", "Colorado&#8217;s Court of Appeals is overturning some marijuana convictions retroactively, now that recreational pot has been legalized. Last week, the three-judge panel overturned the ruling in the case of Brandi Jessica Russel, who was convicted in 2011 of possessing less than an ounce of marijuana and possessing marijuana concentrate, among other charges. The Court said since Russel was in the midst of an appeal when the amendment legalizing marijuana passed on December 10, 2012, her conviction should be overturned. It is unknown how many convictions this could effect, but lawyers estimate that Colorado prosecuted as many at 9,000 marijuana cases per year. Cases that were in the appeals process on December 10, 2012, could be eligible to use Russel&#8217;s case as precedent. Here & Now&#8217;s Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with The Denver Post&#8217;s marijuana editor, Ricardo Baca about the implications of Russel&#8217;s case. Interview Highlights: Ricardo Baca On whether Russel&#8217;s case could lead to other overturned convictions &#8220;That&#8217;s not the general feeling here right now. The general feeling is that, you know, this is a big deal. This is something that everybody has been talking about since marijuana legalization became a thing, even medically speaking. But the general feeling, especially among &#8230; the Colorado attorney general, is that this isn&#8217;t going to lead to anybody being released from prison.&#8221; Why other overturned convictions aren&#8217;t likely &#8220;Previous to Amendment 64 being passed in November of 2012, holding up to an ounce of marijuana was just a petty offense, so it was a small fine &#8212; I believe $100 and no jail time. Where this could come into effect, where &#8212; possibly with the idea of holding up to an ounce of marijuana concentrate, which was considered a felony back then, but now is legal under Amendment 64. Also, say somebody was arrested, you know, and jailed for home grows &#8212; you know, for a very small home grow, maybe in the closet. Maybe they had 10 plants between a couple. That would have been illegal then; that&#8217;s legal now in Colorado. So those are the things people are looking out for, but in general, the state attorney general&#8217;s saying this won&#8217;t lead to much, but he&#8217;s still taking it to the state Supreme Court, where another major marijuana case is being looked at right now.&#8221; Why the attorney general wants to appeal the thrown-out conviction &#8220;He wants to appeal just to make sure that this isn&#8217;t used in other cases. Of course, now it can be used as precedent, and he doesn&#8217;t want that to continue in future cases, whether they have to do with marijuana or not.&#8221; On reactions from marijuana advocates &#8220;Marijuana advocates are pleased with it. They want to see these people who are either incarcerated &#8212; on especially some of the minor charges, they want to see these people freed. And it was such an issue that even one of the fake news sites, recently, they published an article saying that the Colorado governor, John Hickenlooper, was going to let some of these people out of jail, and it caused a fury. You know, the story went viral. It was totally fake, but we followed up on it and called one of the governor&#8217;s aides the next say, and he said, &#8216;Yup, we&#8217;ve received about 20 phone calls and emails, and we just had to gently let these people down, tell them that the article was fake, and that nothing like that is likely going to happen in the near future.&#8221; Guest\n\nRicardo Baca, marijuana editor for the Denver Post. He tweets @bruvs.\n SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST: And now a story from Colorado. Now that recreational pot is legal there, what does that mean for people who were convicted of possessing marijuana before the law changed? Last week for the first time, a Colorado court overturned a marijuana conviction. Brandi Jessica Russel had been convicted in 2011 of possessing marijuana concentrate and less than an ounce of marijuana. But the Colorado Court of Appeals decided that because Russel was in the midst of an appeal when voters approved Amendment 64, which legalizes recreational marijuana, her conviction should be thrown out. Now the Colorado attorney general wants to appeal. Ricardo Baca, the marijuana editor for the Denver Post, joins us to talk about the possible ripple effects of this ruling. Ricardo, welcome back to the show. RICARDO BACA: Hey, thanks for having me. PFEIFFER: So tell us, do you think this will open the floodgates to overturning other marijuana convictions in Colorado? BACA: That's not the general feeling here right now. The general feeling is that, you know, this is a big deal. This is something that everybody has been talking about since marijuana legalization became a thing, even medically speaking. But the general feeling, especially among, you know, as you mentioned, the Colorado attorney general, is that this isn't going to lead t", "Faced with several lawsuits, petitions with thousands of signatures and heavy criticism, the Los Angeles City Council reversed itself yesterday. In a preliminary vote, members ended the city's ban on medical marijuana dispensaries. The ban was only enacted in July. The council vote was 11-2 and a final vote must be held next week, according to the Contra Costa Times. Members heard from one of their own: Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who has cancer and uses medically prescribed marijuana to deal with his treatment's side effects. Rosendahl wondered where he would find it if the ban remained in place. \"The fact is there are people like me who need to have access to it,\" he nearly whispered, according the Times. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions urging the medical marijuana store ban repeal, notes the Los Angeles Times. These were backed by activists, including a group of medical marijuana dispensaries and a union which has organized workers at more than 50 dispensaries. There may be as many as 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries in the Los Angeles area. Some of the pot shops are small - perhaps the size of a corner store. But others are much larger, including multi-million dollar for-profit businesses. Frank Stolze, who's followed this issue for SCPR, talked with L.A. police chief Charlie Beck. The chief worries that the bigger medical marijuana operators aren't following state law. \"(They) not only cause a nuisance to the community but cause a public danger because of a very toxic mixture of high-value narcotics and a lot of cash.\" The issue could come down to a federal - state tug of war over laws and regulations. It's legal under state law to obtain medical marijuana in California, and, under a recent state appellate court ruling, for licensed dispensaries to sell it. But it's still a federal crime to use and sell marijuana and there are no exceptions; federal authorities are still raiding some Los Angeles area pot dispensaries or ordering others to close, the L.A. Times reports.", "New York may join a group of states that have loosened restrictions on marijuana: Gov. Andrew Cuomo is reportedly considering allowing the use of the drug for medicinal purposes. The New York Times first reported the story. Here's more from the paper: \"The shift by Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who had long resisted legalizing medical marijuana, comes as other states are taking increasingly liberal positions on it — most notably Colorado, where thousands have flocked to buy the drug for recreational use since it became legal on Jan. 1. \"Mr. Cuomo's plan will be far more restrictive than the laws in Colorado or California, where medical marijuana is available to people with conditions as mild as backaches. It will allow just 20 hospitals across the state to prescribe marijuana to patients with cancer, glaucoma or other diseases that meet standards to be set by the New York State Department of Health.\" The newspaper reported that the state hopes to have infrastructure in place to begin selling medical marijuana this year, but it's unclear when the drug will be available to those with serious illnesses. Cuomo is expected to make the announcement Wednesday during his State of the State address. Medical marijuana is already available in neighboring New Jersey. It's also available in 19 other states and the District of Columbia. Additionally, Colorado and Washington permit marijuana use for recreational purposes. Many of these new rules run counter to federal law, which bans the use of marijuana in any form. But as NPR's Carrie Johnson reported last year, Attorney General Eric Holder has told federal prosecutors not to focus on casual marijuana users. That comes amid record public support for the legalization of the drug.", "The number of businesses that sell marijuana has increased greatly in Colorado, where use of pot for medical reasons has been allowed since 2000. A mix of confusing regulations and court rulings had kept its distribution in check — until earlier this year. Now pot stores are showing up in many neighborhoods — and there are calls for more regulation. A Lack Of Regulations Just outside downtown Denver, in a neighborhood that has become known as Little Amsterdam, there's a cluster of three marijuana dispensaries. Pierre Werner moved there from Las Vegas to open one called DrReefer.com. \"The laws here in Colorado are a lot more liberal than in conservative Nevada,\" Werner says. \"The state of Colorado gave me a business license and told me to pay my taxes. The state of Nevada put me in prison.\" Werner says he has three felony convictions for selling marijuana. But in Colorado, there is no regulation against felons opening a dispensary. There was one problem for Werner, though: His store in Little Amsterdam was near a church and a school. There are no rules against that, either, but he didn't want to upset the neighbors. So he moved his business to a spot that could be even more lucrative — right across the street from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Werner says the lack of regulations encouraged him to open shop. And he says the White House helped move things along. \"Thanks to President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for getting the feds off our back and allowing the states to implement their laws,\" Werner says. The Obama administration has said that busting medical marijuana operations will be low on its priority list. Status Quo Gives Way To Heated Debate Nobody knows how many dispensaries there are in Colorado; the best guess is about 150. In the past nine years, there have been efforts to regulate Colorado's medical marijuana industry. The state health department wanted to limit the number of patients using medical pot that a vendor could supply. And it planned to adopt a rule stating that a vendor must do more than just sell pot. The rule imagined them also performing caregiving services, like accompanying patients to the doctor. But nearly all of those efforts have been unsuccessful. \"It's not surprising at all that the so-called dispensaries are popping up everywhere,\" says Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. As the state's top Republican elected official and a law enforcer, Suthers was never fond of the medical marijuana concept. When folks complain to him about the number of dispensaries, he tells them there is almost nothing prosecutors can do. That may be about to change, because there is strong interest among some state lawmakers to regulate this fast-growing industry. But the next legislative session doesn't begin until January. \"I think the combination of what's going on right now and this — if you'll excuse the expression — legal haze that we're in, I think it's going to cause things to be somewhat status quo until the legislature convenes,\" Suthers says. \"Then I think you're going to have some very heated debate.\" Stricter Limits Coming? Already, law enforcement officials and district attorneys are lobbying for stricter limits on dispensaries. And the marijuana businesses have formed their own lobbying group, which is growing larger all the time as more dispensaries open. In Little Amsterdam, Nicholas Paul runs a marijuana dispensary called Walking Raven. He says the new competition doesn't worry him much. \"I believe there's enough people out there that need the medicine,\" Paul says. \"We're only going to have 500 patients that we take care off. We're almost full and ready to close our doors, which will leave room for another dispensary.\" Paul says his business expects to pay about $80,000 in sales taxes each year. He hopes lawmakers will consider that as they debate tighter regulations on marijuana businesses. STEVE INSKEEP, Host: The state of Colorado has seen a surge in the number of stores that sell marijuana. The state has allowed marijuana use for medical reasons since the year 2000. There's also been a confusing mix of regulations and court rulings over the years. And this year, it became clear to many that the risk of being put in jail had declined significantly. Now, pot stores are showing up in many neighborhoods, as NPR's Jeff Brady reports. JEFF BRADY: There's a section just outside downtown Denver that's become known as Little Amsterdam. In this neighborhood, there's a cluster of three marijuana dispensaries. Pierre Werner moved here from Las Vegas to open one of them. M: The laws here in Colorado are a lot more liberal than conservative Nevada. I mean, the state of Colorado gave me a business license and told me to pay my taxes. The state of Nevada put me in prison. BRADY: Werner says the lack of regulations encouraged him to open shop. And he says the White House helped move things along, too. M: Thanks to President Obama and the U.S. Attorney Genera", "The Food and Drug Administration has issued a statement saying there are no scientific studies to support the use of marijuana for medical purposes. But critics say the FDA is bowing to powerful political pressure. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have long held that marijuana should not be legalized for any reason. And last year the Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities could prosecute patients taking medical marijuana in the dozen states that have approved its use. FDA spokesperson Susan Bro said the agency issued its statement in response to inquiries from the public and Congress. \"For the FDA, there has not been enough clinical data demonstrating that either the drug is effective or safe in treating chronic, painful conditions,\" Bro said. Marc White works for a member of Congress who has requested more information from the FDA, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN). Souder opposes the medical use of marijuana. \"We've been asking them to look at the science of whether marijuana is really medicine for about three years, and asking them to weigh-in on it repeatedly,\" says White. The Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, is already on record with its verdict. The IOM report was not exactly what White was looking for. One of the authors of the IOM's 1999 study is John Benson, a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska. \"We thought there was sufficient evidence at that time to justify the statement that it had benefits in patients for pain, for the relief of nausea and vomiting from, for example, chemotherapy for cancer, or AIDS,\" Benson says. He adds that he's seen nothing since to contradict the panel's 1999 conclusion, though he is disappointed there haven't been more studies since then. The IOM report was carefully worded. It focused on possibilities and noted that benefits had to be weighed against potential harm from inhaled smoke. Opponents of medical marijuana, including Robert DuPont, drug czar in the Nixon and Ford administrations, point to the potential harm and say that without more solid proof of effectiveness, medical marijuana is a bad solution. To Bruce Merkin of the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-medical marijuana group, the FDA's decision had everything to do with pressure from Capitol Hill. \"This is not a scientific statement, this is a political statement. Nakedly, baldly political,\" he says. Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, says it's motivated by a concern that smoking marijuana might lead to drug addiction. \"I think it's ridiculous. The fact is there are circumstances where smoked marijuana may be helpful to patients who are desperately ill,\" says Kassirer. Whether it was politics or science that pushed the FDA, what happens next is not in the agency's hands, says FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro. \"That is the beginning and the end of what the FDA does,\" Bro said. \"The enforcement of a product such as this is done by other agencies, such as the DEA.\" Meanwhile, Souder will continue to ask the FDA to post more information on harmful effects of marijuana on its Web site. And U.S. Rep Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), who supports the use of medical marijuana, will send a letter to the FDA next week to find out why the agency apparently disregarded the Institute of Medicine study. FDA: Science or Politics? MELISSA BLOCK, Host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: And I'm Robert Siegel. The Food and Drug Administration has put itself in the middle of another highly charged issue, whether marijuana should be used as a medicine. The agency has issued a statement saying there is no scientific basis for medical marijuana. But, as NPR's Joanne Silberner reports, there are others who think it's a good idea. JOANNE SILBERNER: Marijuana is having a tough time of it these days in Washington. While about a dozen states have approved its used for medical purposes, the Supreme Court ruled last year that federal authorities could prosecute patients in those states. And now the Food and Drug Administration is saying that marijuana has no medical uses. FDA spokesperson, Susan Bro. SUSAN BRO: For the FDA, so far there has not been enough clinical data demonstrating that either the drug is effective or safe in treating chronic, painful conditions. SILBERNER: It's about time, says Marc White, who works for Republican Congressman Mark Souder, who opposes the medical use of marijuana. MARC WHITE: We've been asking them to look at the science of whether marijuana is really a medicine for about three years, and asked them to weigh in on it repeatedly. SILBERNER: The Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, is already on record with its verdict. The IOM report was not exactly what Marc White was looking for. One of the authors of the IOM's 1999 study is John Benson, a professor of medicine at the Univer", "Medical marijuana has been legal in Colorado since 2000, and for much of the last decade, providers of the drug have been able to operate more or less without direct state regulation. But in 2009, the state's medical marijuana industry took a turn. The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would no longer prioritize prosecuting individuals who comply with state medical marijuana laws. That same year, the Colorado State Health Board passed a rule making it possible for individual providers to supply marijuana to more than five registered patients. \"Those two things put together led a lot of people to say, 'hey, now I'm safe to open up a storefront,'\" Colorado Public Radio's Megan Verlee tells NPR's Neal Conan. The subsequent growth in medial marijuana centers was dramatic, Verlee says, jumping from less than 12 in early 2009 to more than 800 in mid-2011. The facilities run from what some might call \"the recreational culture ... to the high end side ... trying to look like health spas and organic food stores.\" The industry's rapid growth made both medical marijuana critics, and the state government, nervous, Verlee says. \"After seeing what was going on for six months or so of marijuana stores opening up everywhere, [the state] stepped in and started regulating.\" Colorado's new medical marijuana enforcement agency launches Friday, along with rules codifying the allowed sales volume per facility, the allowed sales per patient, and other regulations and enforcement mechanisms. Paul Schmidt is an agent in charge of medical marijuana enforcement for the Colorado Department of Revenue. He says he has no problem with the appropriate use of medical marijuana, but that those who game the system are creating a problem for the state. For \"individuals that are in a chronic need, whether it be cancer, whether it be pain, whether it be a terminal illness, there should be an application for it,\" he tells Conan. \"Unfortunately ... it's the abuse of the system that gets out of control.\" Too many doctors are tempted by the money they can make providing referrals to patients, Schmidt says. \"If you can simply walk into any doctor's office and say, 'I have a chronic pain,' ... it leads to one of the biggest problems,\" according to Schmidt: perfectly healthy individuals who are then able to legally purchase medical pot. Whether or not Colorado has a problem with fraudulent users \"depends on who you ask,\" Verlee says. \"There are certainly folks who say that everybody with a patient card should have one.\" But there are signs that a percentage of registered users in Colorado may not have an actual need for the drug. \"There are a lot of people who point out that the medical marijuana industry in the state is overwhelmingly young and male,\" Verlee says, which tracks with statistics for recreational users. And the vast majority of users list pain as their ailment, she says. \"Of the allowed conditions, it's the only one for which there is not a very clear [medical] test.\" Sixteen states and the District of Columbia currently allow marijuana consumption for medical purposes. Authorities in several of those states are watching Colorado's experience — and its new enforcement agency — closely. Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a voter referendum legalizing medical marijuana use in 2008. But the law has been interpreted very differently by different counties, Michigan Radio's Sarah Cwiek tells Conan, leaving courts and local law enforcement agencies across the state without clear guidance on how to manage the industry. \"It's driving the cops absolutely crazy,\" Cwiek says. Police officers complain that they don't have access to the list of authorized patients and caregivers [suppliers]. When attempting to verify if someone is legally using or selling the drug, Cwiek says, \"there's no way for them to see if that person is registered as a patient or a caregiver.\" Agent Schmidt says Colorado's new regulations will make his job, and that of the courts and police, much easier. \"It really takes a lot of the gray and ambiguity away ... of actually regulating.\" Schmidt says it's time for law enforcement agencies around the country to recognize the legalization of medical marijuana use is likely to spread. \"It's definitely not time to put our heads in the sand ... It's here, it's something we have to deal with ... We have to educate not only the public, but ourselves.\" NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, today at the studios of Colorado Public Radio. Tomorrow, the state of Colorado will start to regulate the hundreds of medical pot dispensaries around the state. Police will check to see if workers have the proper licenses and certificates, whether facilities meet cleanliness standards and make sure all the pot that's sold goes to clients who actually need it. Marijuana remains a Schedule I narcotic under federal law and the DEA, but under the Obama administration, the Justice Department decided enforcement of me", "When reporter Tony Dokoupil was a teenager, he found out that his father had sold marijuana, but he just thought his parents \"were hippies.\" A few years ago, while working on a story about his father's drug dealer past, he discovered that actually, in the 1970s and '80s, his father, Anthony Dokoupil, had been a big-time marijuana smuggler. \"He was arrested in the early '90s on a job selling 17 tons of marijuana,\" Dokoupil tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, \"which was enough at the time to roll a joint for every college kid in the U.S.\" Dokoupil is now writing a book about the controversial plant, and is the author of the recent Newsweek cover story \"The New Pot Barons,\" about the group of entrepreneurs who are growing medical marijuana in Colorado and hoping to cash in on the plant's recent legalization there for recreational use. On Election Day, Colorado and Washington became the first states to greenlight marijuana for recreational use, which is big news for the expanding marijuana industry. If legalization is here to stay, Dokoupil says Colorado's tightly regulated for-profit medical marijuana market will likely be the basis for the legalized recreational markets in other states as well. In Colorado, more than 1 million square feet of warehouse space outside of Denver are dedicated to growing marijuana, and hundreds of dispensaries sell it. To manage this growing business, the state has 200-plus pages of regulation to explain what is legal and isn't. Marijuana grown in the state, says Dokoupil, is tracked from \"the time it blooms to final sale — every single ounce is accounted for.\" Interview Highlights: On the initial \"Green Rush\" \"After Eric Holder and the Obama administration suggested that they weren't going to crack down on medical marijuana, everybody and their brother grabbed a trash bag full of weed out of their backyard and were like, 'All right, medical marijuana here for sale!' ... Then Colorado was really interesting ... because there's a core of young, educated, politically connected and well-financed guys who said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. We can't have former black market drug dealers and bikini girls as the face of our industry, because the community's not going to accept it. \"So they partnered with law enforcement. They partnered with state legislators. They hired incredibly high-level political consultants and lobbyists who have worked nationally. And they are the inside force that led to the creation of Colorado's regulated medical marijuana industry, which is unlike any in the country and which will be the basis for the legalized, regulated market. And so in response to the craziness that we saw in 2009 ... a movement toward controlled, regulated, not-in-your-face, nonconfrontational pot culture has begun.\" On Colorado's tightly regulated, commercial medical marijuana growing market \"So in Colorado, the medical marijuana growers have to have 24-hour video of their operations, and that video is accessible by the state at any time — they can tap into it. And they all have these badges, and they had to go through background checks to get these badges. So there's an attempt to keep black market money out of it ... in Colorado, you're unlikely to see a situation where a dispensary is, in fact, just a front for a Mexican cartel. And then they had this additional rule, which is pretty revolutionary — it's called a 70-30 rule, where 70 percent of all the marijuana that each store sells, they have to grow themselves. ... That goes a long way to eliminating the introduction of black market weed. ... Stores aren't just buying all their weed from Mexican cartels and marking it up. ... \"That's a huge reason why the feds have focused on California. California doesn't have tight regulations on who grows marijuana, where it comes from. So the feds move in, and what they claim is that these med marijuana businesses are fronts for what are in fact just old-school black market drug dealers. And they're not growing medical marijuana in small batches for patients. They're growing it in Mexico, or they're growing it in the hills, and they're just bringing it in, and it suddenly, magically becomes legal once it gets in the store. But in fact, it's based on illegality. Colorado doesn't have that.\" On the commercial pot-growing houses in Colorado \"I hope that in the future there are tours of marijuana warehouses in the same way that there are tours of breweries today, because it's really incredible. By law, you have to grow indoors in Colorado. And to do that, these rooms are rigged with lights that mimic the effects of sunlight to grow the plant, and different rooms have different seasons. And there's a perpetual grow, and different plants require different kinds of sunlight. So you walk into these warehouses, and at first you don't see anything because the actual plants are inside smaller rooms within rooms. And all you hear is the buzz of electricity. It's damp — you expect a forklift to come in from a side door. ", "Patients prescribed marijuana for medical purposes and their licensed suppliers \"will not be a priority\" of federal prosecutors in states that have legalized the practice, the Justice Department said Monday. The guidance from the department came in the form of a three-page memo that directed federal agents to take a hands-off approach to cases in which no state laws are broken. Prosecutors \"should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana,\" the memo said. The memo was sent Monday to federal prosecutors in 14 states that allow at least limited use of medically sanctioned marijuana and to top officials at the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. Attorney General Eric Holder gave a hint of the new policy in March, when he told reporters then that the policy should be to go after only those people who violate both federal and state laws. \"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,\" Holder said in a statement. The guidelines do, however, state that federal agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution extends beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes. The head of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws said he thinks the new memo is a harbinger of more lenient drug policies to come. \"There have already been invitations made to drug policy groups to meet with the drug policy director, something that hasn't happened in 20 years,\" NORML's executive director, Allen St. Pierre, said. The memo urges prosecutors to pursue marijuana cases that involve violence, the illegal use of firearms, selling to minors, money-laundering or involvement in other crimes. The change in policy is a shift from the Bush administration, when prosecutors arrested medical marijuana distributors in California even though some of them were operating legally under state law. California's laws are the most permissive. Thirteen other states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Advocates say marijuana is effective in treating chronic pain and nausea, among other ailments. Officials said the memo is meant to set priorities for U.S. attorneys in the states that allow medical marijuana but doesn't entirely rule out the possibility of prosecuting a case that is legal on the state level. From NPR staff and wire service reports", "In Washington state, regulators are putting the finishing touches on rules for the new state-sanctioned recreational marijuana market. And the man hired to help shape those rules is raising a warning to local law enforcement: toughen up on the black market. Law enforcement's mellow attitude toward pot was on display at this year's annual Hempfest in Seattle over the weekend. The cops were at the gate — handing out bags of Doritos. The bags came with stickers warning people against smoking in public or driving high, as well as some playful advice about listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at a reasonable volume and enjoying Hempfest. It's legal under state law for adults to carry up to 1 ounce of pot. The thing is, there still isn't any legal way to get recreational marijuana; the state-licensed stores won't open until next year. But the police aren't asking questions about that. \"We don't really concern ourselves with how they got it,\" says Sgt. Tony Bailey, operations chief for Hempfest. But maybe the cops should concern themselves with where the pot is coming from, argues Mark Kleiman, the UCLA professor hired by the state to help plan for legal pot. He recently warned the Seattle City Council that it may become necessary for local cops to be a little less groovy. \"The illicit market is a paper tiger. But a paper tiger doesn't fall over until you push it. And I don't see anybody right now ready to push,\" Kleiman says. Kleiman thinks Washington has an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that you can undermine the black market with regulated pot. But he says that opportunity may be lost if people continue to feel safe buying from dealers on the street corner \"or going to your untaxed, unregulated, not-really-legal-but-sorta-kinda-legal medical outlet.\" It seems to Kleiman, \"that circle needs to be squared.\" The mention of medical marijuana makes Kleiman's argument especially sensitive. Medical growers have become major suppliers to recreational users — sort of a \"gray market.\" People like Kleiman think that'll have to stop if the new state-licensed stores are going to succeed. But any suggestion of a crackdown on medical pot triggers some strong reactions. \"It's just an idiotic idea,\" says Doug Hiatt, an activist lawyer for medical marijuana producers. \"It's just asinine, it's ridiculous to say that we should be putting resources into busting people and stuff so that they can make their little state monopoly system work.\" On the other side of this is Alison Holcomb, the ACLU lawyer behind the initiative that legalized pot. She really wants to see the licensing system succeed. She doesn't think cities need to spend more on drug enforcement, but she would like to see local police make what she calls \"a political decision\" to push marijuana out of the shadows. \"Washington state voters wanted to do something different. Now we have a legal system for meeting the demand for marijuana. You gotta play by the rules,\" she says. \"If you want to make money growing and selling marijuana, great, get a license.\" Washington state's experiment starts in earnest next spring or early summer when the first licensed stores are likely to open. Only then will it become clearer whether people will switch to government-licensed marijuana voluntarily or whether they need to be pushed. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: In Washington State, regulators are finalizing rules for the new state-sanctioned market in recreational marijuana. But the man hired to shape those rules is raising a warning to local law enforcement. He says the state's experiment in legalized pot may not work unless cops toughen-up on the black market. NPR's Martin Kaste has that story. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Welcome to downtown Seattle. Welcome to Hempfest 2013, the largest free... MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Ah, Hempfest. It's practically a Seattle institution. They hold it down by the waterfront and it's a celebration of all things cannabis. This year, the cops were at the gate but they were handing out bags of Doritos. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Thank you, young man. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Oh, you're welcome. KASTE: The bags came with stickers warning people against smoking in public or driving high, as well as some other advice. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: The do's and don'ts, one of the do's is: do listen to \"The Dark Side of the Moon\" at a reasonable level. (LAUGHTER) KASTE: The Doritos thing was great publicity. It attracted every media outlet in town, and it gave Seattle cops a chance to display their mellow attitude. But there is no doubt that things are different now. Since last Hempfest, it's become legal under state law for adults to carry up to one ounce of pot. Adults like Richard Kimball. RICHARD KIMBALL: I just took a picture of me and a cop with a joint in my mouth. KASTE: The thing is, there still isn't any legal way to get recreational marijuana. The state-licensed stores won't open until next year. But the police aren't asking questions about that. Sergeant Tony Baile", "Recreational marijuana is legal in Oregon as of today. People 21 and older can now possess up to an ounce of pot when away from home and up to 8 ounces at home. It's also legal to grow up to four plants per household. However, there's no way to legally buy it unless you're a medical marijuana patient, writes The Oregonian. The newspaper says that \"the Oregon Legislature and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission are still crafting regulations that will shape the state's regulated industry. Sales of marijuana aren't expected to begin until late 2016, though lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to sell to recreational consumers this year.\" The Associated Press reports that this isn't a big change in some places: \"In populous parts of the state that have long been tolerant of marijuana, police don't generally bust people using it in private. Most important, though, is that under the new law it's still illegal to sell recreational marijuana. When Oregon voters approved Measure 91 last November, they left the job of writing rules for pot shops to the Legislature and the state liquor control agency, which so far haven't gotten it all figured out.\" The Oregon Liquor Control Commission plans to start accepting applications from farmers in January, the AP writes. So if you can't legally buy recreational marijuana in Oregon, where can you get it? \"Marijuana can be given away, so if you know anyone who has a medical marijuana card, they can legally share buds, seeds or plants with you,\" writes Lizzy Duffy of member station OPB in Portland. She says marijuana and its use is expected to stay out of sight and out of public places under the new law. Even if you're in your parked car, if it's out on public streets, you can't use marijuana. Here's more from her FAQ post: \"What will get me in trouble under the new law? Exceeding any possession limits Driving under the influence of marijuana Buying or possessing marijuana if you're not at least 21 Importing or exporting across state borders Distributing large amounts or selling marijuana without proper licensing Using, exchanging or growing marijuana in public Possessing marijuana in prison or jail\" Voters in Oregon passed Measure 91, legalizing recreational use of pot, last fall. The AP says three other states — Washington, Alaska, Colorado — and the District of Columbia permit recreational use of marijuana.", "People who buy medical marijuana products might not be getting what they paid for, a study finds. And evidence remains elusive on benefits for most medical conditions, even though almost half the states have legalized medical marijuana. The majority of edible cannabis products sold for medicinal purposes have labels that do not accurately reflect the amount of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, THC for short, infused in them. THC is the component that's responsible for the marijuana high. But it's also known as dronabinol, a prescribed medication used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. THC and cannabidiol (CBD), another chemical component of cannabis, are believed to be primarily responsible for therapeutic benefits, especially when the THC: CBD ratio is close to 1:1, according to the study. Of 75 products legally purchased in three cities, only 17 percent were correctly labeled, according to the report, which was published Tuesday in JAMA, the American Medical Association's journal. Accuracy for labeling was defined as the product having THC content within 10 percent of what's printed on the label. Twenty-three percent were under-labeled, meaning there's more THC than advertised. Sixty percent were over-labeled, where customers were not getting the bang for their buck. \"A couple of products that were supposed to contain 100 milligrams of THC but had only two to three [milligrams],\" lead author Ryan Vandrey, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University says. \"That was striking – these were not cheap products and were being sold as medicine.\" Currently 23 states and Washington D.C. have laws legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. Four states and D.C. allow legal recreational use of cannabis. Some laws are broader than others, and qualifications for medical marijuana vary as well. The rush to legalize medical marijuana tends to obscure the fact that it's not clear if medical marijuana has any therapeutic benefits at all. A review of studies on the topic, also published in Tuesday's JAMA, found \"moderate\" evidence that cannabinoids help with chronic pain and spasticity. But the researchers found little evidence that they help with nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, weight gain in people with HIV, sleep disorders, and Tourette syndrome. About one third of people in the studies reported side effects ranging from probably OK (euphoria) to distressing (vomiting, dizziness, hallucinations.) Does this mean all the cannabis-infused tea that you've been drinking doesn't help your anxiety disorder at all? It's really impossible to say. There's just not enough scientific evidence to prove that they do work, or to tell us how much THC is needed to treat a certain condition. For the people who are using medical marijuana to treat illnesses, the population affected by mislabeling is not small: an estimated 16 to 23 percent of medical cannabis patients consume edible products, according to the Vandrey study. Losing out on potential benefits is one thing, but potential overdosing poses a much bigger threat, especially when it comes to edibles. Undesirable side effects such as decreased short-term memory, panic, paranoia and even acute psychosis are possible, and the risk increases with higher dosages. In the natural cannabis plant there is a ceiling amount of THC, but edibles can contain much more. . A pot-infused brownie with over 1200 milligrams of THC can look the same as the brownie with only 50 milligrams of THC. Marijuana product testing, as Shots has previously reported, is a fairly new phenomenon. Oversight and regulations for testing medicinal cannabis varies from state to state. Colorado mandated potency testing for marijuana edibles last May, but the rule only applies to edibles for recreational purposes. As a result, labels for recreational marijuana are getting better at accurately stating THC content, according to Ian Barringer, owner of RM3 Labs in Denver, Colo. Products for both medicinal and recreational uses came in much weaker than labeled in earlier years, Barringer says, but most of the product the lab tests now fall within the acceptable range of 20 percent plus or minus the labeled THC content displayed on the label. And starting in July 2016, Colorado will require independent testing and certification for medical marijuana and infused products containing medical marijuana, according to a bill approved and signed by Gov. john Hickenlooper on May 29. The state of Washington followed suit, requiring testing for THC and CBD levels, accurate labels and child-resistant packaging specifically for medical marijuana.", "In a decision that may have sweeping effects, a judge has allowed an 11-year-old Illinois girl to use medical marijuana at school. Medical marijuana is legal in Illinois, and it is against current law for students to use it in school or have school nurses administer it. Now, Ashley Surin is the sole exemption. She overcame a leukemia diagnosis at 2 years old with extensive chemotherapy, but some of her treatments eventually led to having semi regular seizures. Her mother, Maureen Surin, told NPR that since starting medical marijuana treatment, her seizures have immensely declined in number. \"We're amazed with her progress,\" Surin said. Her parents filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday against Schaumburg School District 54 and the State of Illinois, claiming that the state's ban on taking the drug at school violates the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). On Friday, a judge ruled in their favor after hearing from the school district, which reportedly had concerns that its employees may be subject to legal penalties for helping Ashley with her medications. \"What people seem to misunderstand here is that medical marijuana is a prescription like any other drug,\" Glink said. \"Prohibiting it in school would be the same as prohibiting other medications such as Ritalin, Adderall or Concerta.\" Lawyers for the school district and attorney general's office will meet back in court next week to work on a long-term plan for Ashley and the school. Ashley uses a patch on her foot and an oil extract on her wrists. \"No one's saying she wants to fire up a bong in math class,\" the judge said, reported the Chicago Tribune. Medical marijuana is legal in 29 states, but only three — New Jersey, Maine, and Colorado — say schools must allow students to use their legal prescriptions in school. In Washington State, schools are not legally required to permit on-site medical marijuana use; instead, schools can decide themselves. \"Ashley cannot wait to return to school,\" Glink told NPR. \"Now, that will happen on Tuesday.\"", "Marijuana legalization is back on the ballot this year. California voters defeated a legalization proposal in 2010, but now similar measures have cropped up in three more Western states. This time around, some of the most intense opposition is coming from the earlier pioneers of legalization — the medical marijuana industry. In Colorado, Amendment 64 \"would regulate marijuana much like alcohol,\" says Howard Wooldridge, a retired police detective from Texas and a longtime campaigner for marijuana legalization. He has come to Greeley, Colo., to wave a sign for the measure. \"This would free up precious police resources to go after real criminals, drunk drivers, etc., as opposed to wasting time on a green plant,\" he says. Colorado already has a big medical marijuana industry, but this amendment to the state Constitution takes things further. It would allow people older than 21 to possess limited amounts of the drug for recreational use. People would be allowed to grow the plant for personal use, and the state would be directed to license and tax marijuana stores. The amendment is ahead in the polls, but that lead is eroding as it gets more pushback from business groups. \"We don't want to become the pot capital of the United States,\" says Roger Sherman, who runs the \"Vote No\" campaign. \"That's not the image our economic development leaders want to use to attract businesses and conventions and tourists.\" Luckily for those business groups, Colorado has competition in the race to legalize pot. Oregon has a similar ballot measure, though it's not polling well. Passage is looking likely, though, in Washington. Initiative 502 On a misty morning near Seattle, legalization campaigners pose for a group picture, shouting, \"Dismantling prohibition one state at a time!\" for the camera. They're in a good mood because their initiative — called I-502 — is polling above 50 percent. The initiative would permit the sale of small amounts of pot at stores regulated and taxed by the state. Alison Holcomb, a criminal defense attorney who has also worked for the ACLU, helped to draft the initiative, and she now runs the \"Yes\" campaign. \"We've reached a place in our society, nationwide, where now a majority support marijuana legalization,\" Holcomb says. She may be right: In a Rasmussen poll earlier this year, 56 percent of respondents favored legalizing and regulating marijuana. The Washington initiative is getting support from across the political spectrum, including two former U.S. attorneys, the Seattle city attorney and even the Republican candidate for Senate, Michael Baumgartner. The most vocal opposition, meanwhile, is coming from purveyors of medical marijuana. \"We're horrified,\" says Steve Sarich, who runs the \"No On I-502\" campaign. He is also a longtime producer of medical marijuana. At his Seattle \"access point\" — that's what dispensaries are calling themselves in Washington at the moment — he shows off a display case full of pot-infused products. \"We've got everything from caramels to peppermint patties to chocolate covered pretzels to Almond Joy,\" Sarich says. He even sells marijuana dog biscuits. \"We have dogs that have arthritis, and that really, really calms them down,\" he says. It's not clear how dog treats would be legal under the state's medical marijuana law, which requires a patient to have a doctor's recommendation. Sarich says this new world of legal medical marijuana will be in jeopardy if I-502 passes. That's because he thinks the initiative is really a Trojan horse. One of its provisions sets a maximum THC level in the bloodstream of drivers — essentially, a blood alcohol limit for the active ingredient in marijuana. The problem is that THC lingers in the blood, and Sarich says regular users of medical marijuana would never be legal to drive, even when feeling sober. \"I wake up every morning with four times the limit in my blood,\" Sarich says. He consumes marijuana to relieve back pain. He says he'd have to leave the state or find a full-time driver. \"All they have to do is sit a half a block down the street and wait for me to pull away from the curb, and I'm going to jail for [driving under the influence of drugs],\" Sarich says. Sarich says he doesn't believe the initiative is about legalization at all — he scoffs at the idea that the state would really follow through with official, state-licensed pot stores — and he says the whole point of the initiative is to use the blood level limit to put the screws on medical marijuana users. The initiative's sponsors say they had to include a blood level limit to win over cautious voters. Without naming names, Holcomb accuses some medical marijuana entrepreneurs of wanting to keep pot in a profitable gray area — unregulated and untaxed. It's a concern echoed by King County Sheriff Steve Strachan. \"For the rule of law, for a civil society, this ambiguity doesn't serve us well,\" Strachan says. Strachan calls the current medical marijuana law a \"twilight zone,\" one tha", "As some states become friendly to medical marijuana, many users are opting to eat their pot instead of smoking it. And that means marijuana dispensaries are doing heavy business in brownies, cookies, sodas, candy and other treats heavily dosed with THC. But unlike drugs that come in bottles, these tasty marijuana foods haven't been childproofed. And in Colorado, doctors say that kids who apparently get into their parents and grandparents' stashes are getting sick. Colorado legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes in 2000. When the Obama administration said in 2009 that state laws wouldn't be challenged by federal law enforcement authorities, the state's medical pot industry exploded. In the past few years, George Sam Wang, a doctor in the emergency department at Children's Hospital Colorado, began seeing kids in the ER with some pretty severe symptoms from consuming marijuana. And so he decided to look at whether there had been an increase in cases of accidental marijuana ingestion among children following the new drug laws. Wang found that after Colorado changed its marijuana laws in late 2009, 14 kids under the age of 12 came to his hospital to be treated for ingesting marijuana. Eight of the 14 cases involved medical marijuana, and seven of the kids had eaten pot-laced food. Their symptoms ranged from lethargy to respiratory problems. Two kids ended up in the intensive care unit. The results of Wang's study — one of the first to look at how changes in state laws that legalize marijuana affect kids — appear this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. \"It is ironic that we're seeing these unintended consequences of these [medical marijuana products] we decided to allow in public,\" Wang tells The Salt. \"But our goal was to educate the public so that we can try and keep things out of kids' hands and prevent these cases.\" He's not the first doctor to sound the alarm in Colorado. In 2010, Denver psychiatrist Christian Thurstone argued on Talk of the Nation that the state's relaxed laws have made the drug too accessible to many adolescents. Michael Kosnett, a medical toxicologist and associate clinical professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, notes that marijuana has grown much more potent over the years. Some of the candy bars and cookies sold in Colorado dispensaries contain over 100 milligrams of THC, which he says is well above the level known to cause adverse effects. \"There's a more serious risk to a child because they're smaller in size,\" he says. The solution, he says, is not to ban the products but to require child-resistant packaging for marijuana edibles. \"What was concerning to us was that here were dispensaries selling products very clearly labeled as drugs, but yet these stores were not packaging them like other medications,\" says Kosnett. \"We know from experiencing that use of child-resistant packaging has been highly effective at preventing poisoning of children.\" Kosnett and Wang have been talking with policymakers about this issue, and just this week, Colorado's governor signed into law a bill to require the child-resistant packaging for medical marijuana products. (That typically means a package that only 20 percent of 4- to 5-year-old kids can open in 10 minutes, Kosnett says.) The rules will be drawn up in the next week and finalized by June 1. Children's health experts in Washington state, which recently decriminalized marijuana, are watching Colorado's experience closely. \"The legalization of recreational marijuana, especially the solid and liquid-infused forms permitted in Washington, will provide children greater access to cookies, candies, brownies and beverages that contain marijuana,\" write Dr. William Hurley of the University of Washington and Washington Poison Center, and Suzan Mazor from Seattle Children's Hospital, in an editorial that accompanied Wang's study. The authors recommend training for physicians to recognize and manage toxic reactions to marijuana exposure in kids.", "Colorado is set to become the first U.S. state to regulate and tax sales of recreational marijuana, after lawmakers approved several bills that set business standards and rules. Legislators expect enforcement of the rules to be paid for by two taxes on marijuana — a 15 percent excise tax, and a 10 percent sales tax. Other measures included in the package set limits on how much marijuana visitors to Colorado can buy (a quarter of an ounce), as well as a limit on how many cannabis plants a private citizen can grow (six). Gov. John Hickenlooper has indicated he will sign the legislation, according to The Denver Post. Colorado voters first approved the legalization of pot for recreational use by people over age 21 in a ballot initiative last November. Voters adopted a similar measure in Washington state, where plans for regulation and taxation are still being formed. \"The first legal marijuana should be on sale in Washington in March 2014,\" reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, \"and Colorado will have its cannabis stores open as soon as Jan. 1.\" Like all new Colorado taxes, voters must approve the new taxation system in a ballot initiative this autumn. Other states are already taxing pot, but those levies cover medical marijuana. California reportedly raises more than $100 million a year on such sales. The Colorado legislation adopted Wednesday also includes a requirement that \"pot must be sold in child-resistant packages with labels that specify potency,\" The Post reports. \"Edible marijuana products will have serving-size limits.\"", "This week, Colorado lawmakers hope to pass the first comprehensive set of recreational pot regulations in the country. The proposed rules involve who can sell it, where and to whom, and also include a big new tax — one that voters must go back to the polls to approve. Most people who smoke marijuana smoke it out of a pipe or rolled joint. But not Dan Pope. He uses a vaporizer called \"The Volcano.\" The device, which he says \"resembles a kitchen appliance of sorts,\" is stainless steel with a plastic bag attached to the top. As it gently heats the marijuana, the vapors collect in the bag. Pope can puff on the bag to relieve the pain from his muscular dystrophy. \"You avoid the noxious gases associated with the smoke,\" Pope explains. \"It's a much lighter, healthier way to use cannabis. And my doctor actually prefers that I do it that way.\" When legalization passed in Colorado in November, Pope initially thought he could drop his medical marijuana license, which costs $35 a year, requires a doctor's visit and puts his name in a state database. But then he heard that taxes on recreational marijuana could be more than 30 percent. \"If a patient's budget is $100 a month on medical marijuana, that's a $30 to $40 a month increase,\" Pope notes. And that, he says, is too high a jump for his fixed income. Sellers Weigh Pros And Cons Of Recreational Sales No one knows how many of Colorado's 108,000 medical marijuana patients will hold on to their medical license for the cheaper pot it offers. And that's made dispensaries cautious about moving to recreational sales. Norton Arbelaez is a co-owner of RiverRock Wellness in Denver, where customers browse dozens of jars packed with bright green marijuana buds. Medical shops like this one get first crack at becoming recreational, possibly as soon as January. Arbelaez says his business will cater to both types of buyers, kind of like a chain drugstore. \"And so, if anything ... think about a Walgreens, where part of the Walgreens is over-the-counter and part is a controlled substance,\" Arbelaez says. \"That is more or less what, conceptually ... it's going to look like.\" Sure, many patients will choose to keep their medical license. But Arbelaez also expects big things from the recreational side of the business, which will be open to anyone over the age of 21 with a valid ID. Arbelaez is conflicted. He wants a low enough tax rate so the store's product can remain cost-competitive with the black market. But, he says, \"the industry wants to pay its fair share. The industry wants to contribute to the coffers of the state of Colorado. We want to pay our own way in terms of regulation.\" Fears Of Inviting Federal Oversight \"I think voters just assumed that this money would just be piped right in — just what the industry told them during the campaign. But obviously that's not the case,\" says Gina Carbone, a founding member of Smart Colorado, a group that opposes widespread retail pot shops. She says voters unfortunately must approve any tax the Legislature settles on. \"And I don't think that a lot of voters knew that they'd have to go back\" to the polls, she says. It makes Carbone nervous that those taxes could fail at the ballot box in November. She points to a recent audit of the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division that found the agency is severely underfunded — raising the question of just how regulated Colorado's current medical marijuana industry really is. State Rep. Dan Pabon says there could be dire consequences if the taxes don't pass and there isn't money to beef up enforcement. \"I fear the federal government would become involved,\" Pabon says. \"I fear black market concerns — diversion will happen.\" And that, he says, could force the Obama administration to put the brakes on retail pot. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. This week, Colorado lawmakers hope to pass the first comprehensive set of recreational pot regulations in the country. They spell out who can sell it, to whom and where. The rules also include a big new tax, which voters will have to go back to the polls to approve. And as Colorado Public Radio's Ben Markus reports, that's created a whole new set of concerns. BEN MARKUS, BYLINE: Most people who smoke marijuana smoke it out of a pipe or a rolled joint. Not Dan Pope. He uses a vaporizer called The Volcano. DAN POPE: It does kind of resemble a kitchen appliance of sorts. MARKUS: It's stainless steel with a plastic bag attached to the top. It gently heats the marijuana, and the vapors collect in the bag, which Pope can puff on to relieve the pain from his muscular dystrophy. POPE: So that you avoid the noxious gases associated with smoke, and it's a much lighter, healthier way to use cannabis. And my doctor actually prefers that I do it that way. MARKUS: When legalization passed in November, Pope thought that he could drop his medical marijuana license, which costs $35 a year, requires a doctor's visit and his name in a", "The Obama administration has denied a bid by two Democratic governors to reconsider how it treats marijuana under federal drug control laws, keeping the drug for now, at least, in the most restrictive category for U.S. law enforcement purposes. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Chuck Rosenberg says the decision is rooted in science. Rosenberg gave \"enormous weight\" to conclusions by the Food and Drug Administration that marijuana has \"no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,\" and by some measures, it remains highly vulnerable to abuse as the most commonly used illicit drug across the nation. \"This decision isn't based on danger. This decision is based on whether marijuana, as determined by the FDA, is a safe and effective medicine,\" he said, \"and it's not.\" Marijuana is considered a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, alongside heroin and LSD, while other, highly addictive substances including oxycodone and methamphetamine are regulated differently under Schedule II of the law. But marijuana's designation has nothing to do with danger, Rosenberg said. In a letter to the petitioners, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and New Mexico nurse practitioner Bryan Krumm, Rosenberg said doctors are responsible for treating patients, but the FDA makes decisions about drug safety: \"Simply put, evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs is a highly specialized endeavor.\" Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, said in a statement that the decision was disappointing. \"President Obama always said he would let science — and not ideology — dictate policy, but in this case his administration is upholding a failed drug war approach instead of looking at real, existing evidence that marijuana has medical value,\" he wrote. Most Americans support legalization, Angell wrote, and the federal government should at a minimum leave regulatory decisions to the states. Drug enforcers insist they are supportive of efforts to advance scientific research on marijuana. The DEA said it has \"never denied\" an application from a researcher to use lawfully produced marijuana in a rigorous medical study, and Rosenberg pointed out that research continues on a variety of subjects, including the effects of smoking marijuana in human subjects. A spokesman for the FDA said the agency shares \"an interest in developing therapies from marijuana and its components and have taken aggressive, coordinated action to do so.\" The FDA added that well-controlled clinical trials represent the \"most appropriate way\" to advance scientific understanding and that the drug approval process gives the agency the important ability to determine whether a product meets the FDA criteria for safety and effectiveness. In December 2015, federal authorities said, they made it easier for researchers conducting clinical trials on cannabidiol, a component of marijuana. Some scientists are studying whether the substance can help treat childhood epilepsy. \"That would be a wonderful and welcome development,\" the DEA letter said, \"but we insist that CBD research, or any research, be sound, scientific and rigorous before a product can be authorized for medical use.\" What's more, federal authorities said, they are increasing the amount of marijuana available for legitimate research. They said they will open up new avenues for more people and institutions to manufacture marijuana for scientific purposes. Currently, the University of Mississippi is the only such site in the U.S. \"As long as folks abide by the rules, and we're going to regulate that, we want to expand the availability, the variety, the type of marijuana available to legitimate researchers,\" Rosenberg said. \"If our understanding of the science changes, that could very well drive a new decision.\" Forty-two states and the District of Columbia allow some form of medical marijuana use, but the federal government has not taken that step despite prodding from federal lawmakers. Last month, the Democratic National Committee endorsed the idea of loosening federal restrictions on marijuana and \"providing a reasoned platform for future legalization\" in its platform. For now, there remain two ways to change the federal government's classification of marijuana: for a host of federal agencies including the DEA and FDA to sign off; or for Congress to pass a law, and for the president to sign it.", "The New York Times this week carried its first-ever full-page ad for a marijuana company. It&#8217;s a Seattle-based firm called Leafly, which is like &#8220;Yelp&#8221; for pot, giving reviews of different strains of cannabis and places where you can buy it. The ad is renewing the debate over how marijuana advertising should be regulated, as medical and recreational marijuana becomes legal in more states. Some physicians and public health leaders are concerned that unless rules are put in place soon, marijuana ads could follow the same path as big tobacco. From Here & Now contributing station WBUR, Martha Bebinger reports that tobacco addition increased after &#8220;innovations&#8221; that made it easier to inhale, more addictive and less expensive. \nRead more on this story via WBUR\n\nReporter\n\nMartha Bebinger, reporter for WBUR. She tweets @mbebinger.", "Please sign up here to get occasional updates from WBUR's ongoing series, \"This Moment in Cancer.\" Even three queasy pregnancies didn't prepare Kate Murphy for the nonstop nausea that often comes with chemotherapy. In the early months of 2016, the Lexington, Mass., mother tried everything the doctors and nurses suggested. \"But for the most part I felt nauseous 24/7,\" she said. Murphy, then 49 and fighting breast cancer, dropped 15 pounds from her already slim frame in just two months. Then, she remembered what a fellow cancer patient had advised while she was waiting for her first dose of chemo: \"Make sure you get some medical marijuana.\" Scientific research, mostly in animals, supports the idea that cannabis can effectively treat the nausea of cancer therapy, in addition to some types of cancer-related pain, according to the National Cancer Institute's cannabis information page. And roughly a quarter of cancer patients use cannabis in Washington state, where both medical and recreational marijuana is legal, a study from September found. In Massachusetts, medical marijuana has been legal for six years, but it's still a challenge for cancer patients to get a state-issued medical marijuana ID card, or then figure out what kind of cannabis to use. \"I was flabbergasted that there was no real resource A, B and C, and 'here's how you do it,' \" Murphy said. \"What I liken it to is, 'you need chemo, now go figure it out.' \" Like most patients, Murphy's first step was to ask her oncologist. Murphy said she loved her doctor and care team at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, but they had no advice to offer on medical marijuana. \"They said 'yes, you can look into it,' \" she said. \"But I felt sad because you're so lost and you're so sick and this is so not your area of expertise, that it was very upsetting to me to not get direction one way or the other.\" Only about 1 percent of Massachusetts' 25,000 doctors are registered with the state and allowed to legally prescribe marijuana. And only a fraction of those know much about cancer care. Last June, the Massachusetts Medical Society approved a new online curriculum for medical marijuana. Six months later, only 27 medical professionals have taken the section on cancer care and cannabis. Both the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center said they had no experts on staff to speak with us for this report. Murphy eventually found her way to Dr. Jordan Tishler, who runs medical cannabis clinics in Cambridge and Brookline, called inhaleMD. Tishler, a former emergency room physician and music producer, said he treats cannabis like any other therapy, meeting with new patients for an extended conversation and follow-ups. But some cannabis prescribers, he said, just want to sign the state paperwork and move on. \"By and large, physicians are simply saying, 'yes, you can have it,' and then stopping the conversation there,\" he said. Tischler explained that medical centers — particularly those that take federal funding — are in a tight spot because federal law still classifies cannabis as an illegal drug, despite its legalization for medical purposes, at a minimum, in 30 states and the District of Columbia. \"Most of those institutions are prohibited and/or afraid of the prohibitions from the federal government, so have opted not to pursue this within their domain,\" Tischler said. He set up his private clinic so he could operate outside of those systems, though he said he receives referrals from all the major hospitals. In early January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the nation's U.S. attorneys to resume aggressively pursuing marijuana growers and distributors, even in states where marijuana has been legalized. It's not clear yet what that will mean for Massachusetts' medical marijuana system, but a few days later, Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said he cannot and will not rule out prosecuting state-sanctioned marijuana businesses. As it currently stands, authorized doctors like Tishler have to fill out an online form with the state, which the patient then submits with a $50 check to request a license. Tishler said the process used to take several weeks, but now the state usually issues a medical card within three or four days of receiving a request. Then, the patient has to take that license to one of the state-approved medical marijuana dispensaries, which offer a wide array of products containing cannabis. New England Treatment Access, or NETA, whose Brookline dispensary is housed in an old bank building, sells 130 products. Garden Remedies, whose dispensary is in Newton about a block from a Whole Foods, sells 50 items, including bath bombs, lip balm and marijuana-infused honey they make themselves in their cultivation facility. Murphy said she would have been overwhelmed by those choices if she hadn't had a doctor like Tishler advising her on what to take. Tishler said he tells cancer patients, for example, that they should", "Recreational pot is about to become legal in Illinois, but Chicago's Housing Authority says not in our backyard or front yard or anywhere on public housing premises, for that matter. Housing voucher recipients received a letter from the agency last week, warning them about the ramifications of smoking or possessing pot on federally funded grounds even after it becomes legal on Jan. 1. In a nutshell, those who violate the federal law could face eviction. \"While federal law prohibits marijuana use and possession in federally subsidized housing, the [Chicago Housing Authority] is working to educate and inform residents so they understand all applicable laws related to cannabis and federally-funded housing,\" spokeswoman Molly Sullivan said in a statement. The statement continues: \"The CHA will work with the City of Chicago as it develops rules and regulations in accordance with existing state and federal laws in order to ensure a safe and responsible implementation of legalized cannabis in Chicago.\" But as Sullivan noted, under the Federal Controlled Substances Act, the use and/or possession of medical or recreational marijuana is considered illegal activity and as such is prohibited on federally subsidized property. \"Unless Congress decides something different ... we don't have an option,\" she said. The schism between state and federal laws around marijuana use is creating similar predicaments for public housing tenants across the country, including those with medical marijuana cards. And many say it is leading to an unequal application of the law that penalizes the poor who rely on federal assistance to provide housing for their families. \"This is absolutely unequal and unfair protection of people,\" Bruce Margolin told NPR. Margolin is an attorney and the director of the Los Angeles chapter of NORML, a national advocacy group striving to decriminalize marijuana across the country. Margolin recounted several instances of elderly people living in the greater Los Angeles area under Section 8 housing who are sick and rely on medical marijuana. \"They're sick, they're old and they're unable to travel,\" he said. \"So where are they supposed to go?\" Margolin said threatening people with losing their homes for doing what others are allowed to do is cruel. In April, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., introduced legislation that would permit marijuana use in public housing. Under the Federally Assisted Housing Parity Act of 2019, Norton wrote, \"Individuals living in federally funded housing should not fear eviction simply for treating their medical conditions or for seeking a substance legal in their state.\" Norton called on Congress to catch up \"with its own constituents\" whose views on marijuana have changed as more and more states make it legal.", "In California, the city of Oakland was the first to regulate and tax medical marijuana dispensaries. Now, some city leaders see the industry's profits and are proposing to take a bigger piece of the action. The Oakland City Council is voting later this month on a pot profit-taking plan. Harborside Health Center in Oakland is the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the nation. Its executive director, Steve DeAngelo, says his dispensary brings in about $30 million in annual revenues. \"We've created over a 150 well-paying jobs and we're the second largest retail taxpayer in the city,\" he says. DeAngelo says Harborside pays about $1.5 million in taxes every year. His operation is one of eight licensed dispensaries in Oakland. But there are scores of other pot businesses that operate semi-legally, meaning they pay taxes but they are not fully licensed. And now the city wants to license them, too, but at a price. The exploding cannabis industry has the city rethinking how much the dispensaries should pay the city to operate and who gets those licenses. City Councilwoman Desley Brooks is leading that effort. \"When you look at this industry across the United States and in Oakland, the vast majority of people who are making money in this industry are white males,\" she said during a recent city hearing. Harborside's DeAngelo says he's sympathetic with effort to diversify the industry. But he has problems with Brooks' other plan to charge dispensaries 25 percent of their profits. \"And the courts have really been very, very consistent in ruling that a government agency is not allowed to take private property in that fashion,\" he says. The debate over whether they city should demand medical marijuana profits comes as it is still grappling with how to promote diversity in the industry. Last spring, the City Council voted to expand the industry by giving preferences for licenses to pot entrepreneurs who did jail time for marijuana offenses or for those who live in certain East Oakland neighborhoods — like Brooks' district — that are predominantly black and Latino. \"We need to make sure that there is equity in this industry and we need to make sure that Oaklanders have an opportunity,\" Brooks said. For example, under current rules, drug felons applying for a cannabis license have to own at least 50 percent of their business. Dale Geringer, director of the California chapter of National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, opposes the preference program. \"These rules go well beyond what any other legal industry has to put up with and they are supposedly addressed at equity problems which are not even caused by this industry but rather by the laws that prohibited it,\" Geringer says. More than a few people around the city worry that the controversy over profits and preferences could drive away the medical marijuana industry from Oakland. Terryn Buxton is among them. He's an entrepreneur who sits on a commission that advises the city on how to deal with the marijuana business. \"I'm from Oakland and I'm born and raised here. I'd like my business to be here,\" he says. \"But I do not know if we're going to have an environment our business can survive in.\" ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Oakland was one of the first cities in the United States to regulate and tax medical marijuana dispensaries. Now some city leaders are proposing to take a bigger piece of the industry's profits. Critics say that could push the pot business out of Oakland. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports. RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: Imagine walking into a bright and airy retail shop like an Apple store, except the products aren't computers, but rather every strain of cannabis you might imagine. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hello, welcome to Harborside. What can I get for you today? GONZALES: Harborside Health Center in Oakland is the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the nation. Its executive director, Steve DeAngelo, says his dispensary brings in about $30 million in annual revenues. STEVE DEANGELO: We've created over 150 well-paying jobs and we're the second-largest retail taxpayer in the city. GONZALES: DeAngelo says Harborside pays about $1.5 million in taxes every year. His operation is one of eight licensed dispensaries in Oakland, but there are scores of other pot businesses that operate semi-legally, meaning they pay taxes but they are not fully licensed. And now the city wants to license them, too, but at a price. The exploding cannabis industry has the city rethinking how much the dispensaries should pay the city to operate and who gets those licenses. Leading that effort is City Councilwoman Desley Brooks, speaking at a recent city hearing. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) DESLEY BROOKS: When you look at this industry across the United States and in Oakland, the vast majority of people who are making money in this industry are white males. GONZALES: Steve DeAngelo at Harborside says he's sympathetic with efforts to diversify the industry, but he has prob", "Washington residents thinking about jumping into the state's new legal marijuana industry need to act soon. The deadline to apply for a state license to sell recreational pot is Dec. 19, and the applications are flooding in. Danielle Rosellison, a loan officer in Bellingham, Wash., applied for her pot-growing license on the first day. \"It's so cool,\" she says, laughing. \"We have butterflies in our stomach all the time. I feel like they're all shot up on adrenaline.\" To Rosellison and her husband, a stay-at-home dad, legal marijuana is an opportunity to change their lives. \"I want to spend more time with my kids,\" she says. \"I'd like my husband to be able to work for a while, and I would like to be able to stay home with my kids and be able to provide a private education for them.\" Rosellison, her husband and a partner have already formed a company they call Trail Blazin Productions. They've been working for months, lining up a loan, an investor and a commercial space that meets the state requirements. They're not complete beginners; medical marijuana has been legal in Washington for more than a decade, and Rosellison and her husband have grown pot for the medical market. But that was just a sideline for the couple, who grew around 10 plants at a time. Now they're talking about 1,700 plants — if they get the license. \"You don't get your license until it's done, until you have your final inspection,\" she says. \"That is a huge cart-before-the-horse, where you're investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and transformers and leases and everything else, and technically you don't know if you're going to get a license or not.\" Still, Rosellison thinks the potential payoff is worth the gamble. 'Just Too Much Risk' Jeremy Kelsey, who owns a medical marijuana store in the town of Mukilteo, disagrees. \"I've just concluded that it's just too much risk,\" he says, sitting in a back room surrounded by big jars of curing buds. Kelsey's store is across the road from where Boeing builds its 747 airplanes. Outlets like his aren't closely regulated in Washington state, and they occupy a legal gray area. Officially, medical marijuana \"collectives\" are allowed to produce limited amounts of pot for specific patients, who have medical marijuana cards. But those cards have become very easy to get — the issuers don't need to be medical doctors — and medical marijuana has become a de facto source for the recreational market. Kelsey predicts the state-licensed pot sellers will do less business than they think. \"I think it's going to be more of a novelty, you know, at first,\" he says. \"People are going to go, just because it's like opening up a Krispy Kreme in a market that never had one. Everyone wants to go try one. But then they're going to go, 'You know what? I'm just going to go back to my neighborhood guy because it really was just the same, and it was half the price.' \" Some Medical Growers Applying Supporters of state-licensed pot share the concern that customers will turn to medical growers rather than state-licensed stores. There's talk of legislation next year to level the playing field — to make the medical industry pay the same taxes and follow the same tight quality-control rules that apply to the new state-licensed businesses. But state Rep. Chris Hurst says reining in the medical marijuana industry doesn't require new laws. \"You cannot sell it for profit,\" says Hurst, who heads the Government Accountability and Oversight Committee. \"It was never allowed, under law.\" For the past few years, authorities have basically turned a blind eye to the illegality of for-profit medical marijuana sales in Washington, but Hurst says the rise of licensed pot businesses will lead to a crackdown on the medical producers. \"But it's going to be initiated by the license holders,\" he says. \"The police can't ignore that kind of a complaint when it comes from someone who's paying taxes and it's interfering with their business.\" Some of the state's biggest medical marijuana producers are probably thinking the same thing; they're applying for licenses, despite the burdensome regulations and taxes. By refusing to join the state system, Kelsey, the Mukilteo vendor, actually stands out — and he readily admits his decision is a \"roll of the dice.\" But that's always been the nature of the marijuana business. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: And I'm Robert Siegel. You've heard that it's been legalized and you figure there is money to be made. But if you want to get in on Washington state's marijuana industry, you had better act soon. The deadline to apply for a state license is December 19th and applications are now flooding in. But as NPR's Martin Kaste reports from Seattle, not everyone is convinced that legal pot makes good business sense. MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Danielle Rosselison applied for her pot-growing license on the first day. DANIELLE ROSSELISON: It's ", "In the last nine months, about 65,000 people signed up for Colorado's medical marijuana registry. And many have started shopping at the state's growing number of dispensaries. The booming industry is creating headaches for state regulators, law enforcement and for one other group -- Colorado's drug dealers. A Pot Dealer's Worst Nightmare To find out what's going on in the marijuana market, you could talk to economics professors ... or law enforcement ... or defense attorneys. But where better to look for experts than a jam-band concert -- like a recent show featuring the Disco Biscuits in Boulder, Colo. A group of girls was trying to score tickets, and talking about scoring pot from \"the clubs,\" or dispensaries. \"I haven't bought weed from anyone besides the clubs since I got my [medical marijuana] card a month and a half ago,\" one says. Andreana, Rebecca, and Libby might be a pot dealer's worst nightmare -- college girls with disposable incomes and medical marijuana cards. (These students, and others quoted in this story, didn't want their last names used.) \"It's just way safer, it's better quality, and ... I don't know, it's just way easier,\" one of the students says. \"I don't think I've dealt with, like, a drug dealer in, like, months,\" says another. So Why Buy From The Black Market? A year ago, Colorado only had a handful of dispensaries. Today there are hundreds. And the rules of economics usually dictate that as people move into the above-ground market, the underground shrinks. Patrons in Colorado seem to back up that idea. Dealers complain about a bad economy, about losing customers. But some people are still buying illegally. And they have their reasons: They're comfortable with a dealer, or they don't like the idea of putting their name on a government registry, even one that's supposed to be confidential. And then there are those like a young man who flew in from the East Coast for the Disco Biscuits show and spent the afternoon price-shopping marijuana. \"We found that if you go to a dispensary, it's more expensive,\" he says. \"You go through a buddy, least expensive. Speaks for itself.\" There's no consumer price index for pot in Denver, but police commander Jerry Peters has a pretty good idea of the cost. He heads a drug task force in the metro area. \"An ounce of marijuana goes anywhere between $270, $280 to about $400 an ounce... that we're seeing in the different dispensaries,\" Peters says. \"In the black market, though, when ... we buy an ounce of marijuana, it's about 150 bucks.\" That's a 100 percent-plus mark-up just to go legit. Challenges For Dealers With a difference like that, Peters thinks there will always be enough price-sensitive pot smokers out there to keep some kind of black market afloat. But the dealers who have stayed underground may soon be seeing a bit more competition. Until this week, Colorado had no statewide regulations for marijuana dispensaries or growers. And that led to a gold rush of entrepreneurs trying to stake their claim on the market. On Monday, legislators made it harder to get a doctor's recommendation. And the state is outlawing people with felony drug convictions from working in the industry. That could force some dispensary owners back into the black market. \"I've heard this from at least a half-a-dozen people in the past two or three days,\" says Denver attorney Rob Corry, who specializes in medical marijuana law. \"They say, 'I'm easily accustomed to doing it underground, I've done it underground for 10 years and I'll just go right back to it.' \" If Colorado succeeds in closing some of the loopholes in its medical marijuana law, it could be a mixed blessing for the state's dealers. They might regain some market share, but they may also have to fight harder for their piece of it.", "When the Obama administration recently announced it wouldn't challenge the decision by Colorado and Washington voters to fully legalize marijuana, criticism rained down. The administration's position, complained one Colorado congressman, was tantamount to allowing states to opt out of the federal law banning pot possession, cultivation and sale. Other anti-legalization activists predicted that the administration was waving the white flag in the war on drugs. The first claim is essentially true: The states will be creating their own regulatory regimes. As for the idea of a surrender in the war on drugs, the reality is a little more complicated. Whatever its effect, the administration's hands-off position in Colorado and Washington will reverberate well beyond those states. And it could actually end up imposing some semblance of order in what drug law expert Mark Kleiman describes as the \"Wild West\" of medical marijuana. \"And that would be a potentially very, very good result,\" says Kleiman, who previously worked in the Justice Department's criminal division and is author of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know. \"Medical marijuana is a free-for-all in many states,\" he says. \"On Venice Beach in California, you have guys in medical scrubs and with stethoscopes walking around offering to give you a prescription.\" \"The administration's decision may actually mean a crackdown on that kind of business,\" he says. So how does a move not to enforce federal drug law in Colorado and Washington help control medical marijuana sales and use in the 18 other states and the District of Columbia where it's legal? Simple, says Kleiman. To keep federal drug prosecutors at bay, Colorado and Washington have to come up with what Deputy Attorney General James Cole described this week to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as \"strict regulatory schemes\" that are tough in practice and meet eight federal enforcement priorities. The priorities address everything from the distribution of marijuana to minors and transporting pot across state lines to drugged driving and using marijuana sale proceeds for criminal activities. Don't meet those priorities? Sorry — your state is going to be in trouble with the feds, Cole says. The Senate committee has advised Cole to come up with metrics by which the DOJ can measure state performance in meeting the priorities. What's already happening is that some states with legal medical marijuana are devising regulatory schemes that would also satisfy federal priorities. They view it as the path to keeping federal drug prosecutors off their backs and also to full legalization. Cole issued a memo in 2011 that gave U.S. attorneys more authority to aggressively pursue medical marijuana distributors but also served to discourage local officials from adopting medical marijuana regulations. \"Suddenly, the politics of this has reversed,\" Kleiman says, \"and a lot of marijuana advocates are saying, 'Let's do something about the medical marijuana business; let's clean it up.' \" Now, for the first time, the feds have provided an incentive for states to more tightly regulate medical marijuana. California is contemplating legislation to create new oversight by a medical marijuana agency that would develop and enforce regulations for commercial medical marijuana activity, including for production and distribution. Businesses already operating legally under city or county laws would be grandfathered in. Other states that permit medical marijuana have gotten busy, too, armed now with a blueprint for how to clean up a messy industry. Federal officials also have more work ahead: The administration and Congress still need to figure out how to adapt federal banking and tax laws to account for the new cannabis-related businesses in Colorado and Washington.", "A year and a half ago, Dr. David Casarett did not take medical marijuana very seriously. \"When I first started this project, I really thought of medical marijuana as a joke,\" he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. But then the palliative care specialist began to look seriously into the issue, and his mind began to change: \"I've come to realize there really are medical benefits to medical marijuana. ... For many of the patients I spoke with, medical marijuana is not a joke. It's not funny. It's a treatment that they've come to rely on.\" While researching his new book, Stoned: A Doctor's Case for Medical Marijuana, Casarett examined the limited medical studies related to the drug's use, traveled to places where it is being used legally and tested it on himself. He also spoke to patients who had used the drug to treat a variety of ailments, including seizures, post-traumatic stress disorder and neuropathic pain. The book lays out the case for marijuana's medicinal use — as well as for more research into the drug's long-term effects. \"There's a fair amount of science behind it,\" Casarett says. \"Those are medical benefits that people in the medical marijuana world — including advocates and patients — really take seriously.\" Interview Highlights On the use of medical marijuana to treat neuropathic pain It turns out that some of the best evidence for medical marijuana is actually for what's called neuropathic pain, which is pain that's caused by the nerves themselves. So unlike pain that's caused by arthritis or sometimes some kinds of cancer in which the nerve endings of pain fibers are stimulated, which causes pain, neuropathic pain is caused by disruption of or damage to the nerves themselves. ... That kind of pain can be really, really difficult to treat. ... In my experience as a palliative care physician, it doesn't respond nearly as well as more traditional nociceptive pain does to drugs like morphine. So there really is a need to find newer, better treatments for neuropathic pain. And so there have been a lot of trials focusing on medical marijuana for neuropathic pain, because other alternatives for treatment are really pretty limited. On his own experience using medical marijuana for back pain I was really hoping for any form of relief whatsoever, even just a few hours of relief from those muscle spasms, and I found it. I found it though, at least for me, at the cost of most of the most common side effects of acute use of medical marijuana — confusion, hallucinations. I think — mostly because the dose I gave myself, being relatively unfamiliar with marijuana and very unfamiliar with the strength of what I managed to obtain — [I] was really blindsided by some of the acute side effects like confusion and hallucinations, which I honestly should have expected, but didn't. ... [I heard] air traffic controllers vectoring flights into and out of the Phoenix airport — those voices were coming from my living room, where there really weren't any air traffic controllers. On the two main cannabinoids in medical marijuana There are actually a lot of cannabinoids out there. There are dozens that are present naturally in medical marijuana, and there are probably over 100 synthetic cannabinoids, so there's actually a fairly large family of these cannabinoids, of which most we have no idea what they do at all. Many of the synthetics, for instance, have never been tested in humans. The two that we know the most about are THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] and CBD [cannabidiol]. ... So THC is most important and most popular because it's the cannabinoid that is responsible for the high feeling of euphoria. ... CBD is a bit more of a mystery because it doesn't have any of those really obvious effects that THC does. We know a little bit about what it does, because we know where those receptors are. We know that CBD binds to receptors in the brain but not on neurons; it binds to receptors on something called microglial cells which are the cells that wrap around neurons and are responsible for some of the neuron's structure, holding them together. But they also have an immune function. They're sort of the brain's immune cells. ... CBD also binds to cells in the immune system, so CBD receptors are fairly common in lymph nodes and also in areas of the body where there's a lot of immune activity like the [gastrointestinal] tract. On using medical marijuana but avoiding the high That's already happening in a couple of ways. There are strains of marijuana that have been tested, dispensaries sell these; so you can go into a dispensary where marijuana is legal and ask for a strain that is a low-THC high-CBD strain, for instance, if you're really interested in those effects. ... An anesthesiologist and a pain researcher I spent some time with, researching this book, is very interested in the use of marijuana to treat neuropathic pain. And he's becoming increasingly convinced that it might actually be CBD and not THC that's responsible for some o", "As communities across California crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries, a new business model has emerged: companies that will deliver pot directly to your doorstep. At a one-room packaging facility east of San Francisco, a worker in latex gloves pulls four brilliant green pot buds from a vacuum-sealed bag. She delicately places them on a small scale as her boss looks on. He's a local real estate developer who publicly uses the assumed name of Matthew Lawrence for his marijuana business. He says the pot will be shipped to customers around the state in unmarked packages. \"During the business week, any orders placed by 1 p.m. get there by midday the next day via courier,\" Lawrence says. This might seem like an illegal drug den — but so far, California's medical marijuana laws don't cover this type of operation. And delivery is booming amid a backlash against storefront dispensaries. This week, hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles face a deadline to close or risk criminal charges. And hundreds of other cities and towns in California have banned dispensaries altogether. No one's gone as far as Lawrence in trying to build a legal, statewide delivery network. He says his company — named c420 — has signed up 1,000 patients since April; some are seriously ill; others are what he calls \"the suits.\" \"They have families, kids who know parents who know each other. They see each other in the baseball field, and they really don't want to be seen going into a dispensary just because they have migraines, and they like to smoke a little marijuana once in a while in order to alleviate that condition, or whatever the condition might be,\" Lawrence says. There are hundreds of pot-delivery services now advertising on websites like BudTrader and WeedMaps. And not just in California. Delivery services are a growing alternative to brick-and-mortar storefronts in many of the states that have legalized medical marijuana, Lawrence says Allen St. Pierre with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says, \"As these Main Street dispensaries raise the ire of law enforcement [and] local politicians, delivering patient-to-patient or business-to-patient would appear to be the trend that is emerging around the United States.\" Lots Of Delivery Services, But Few Rules Driving the trend in California is a growing abundance of medical marijuana and a lack of statewide regulations covering how it can be legally distributed. So it's not surprising that many new delivery services are flourishing in places that have restricted or banned storefront dispensaries, like Los Angeles. Take Dann Halem and the nonprofit delivery service he founded called Artists' Collective. Each week, Halem logs hundreds of miles on LA freeways to fill phone and Internet orders. He says he started Artists' Collective because dispensaries were underserving seriously ill patients. \"The people who medical marijuana is truly meant for are not well enough to go into a store to get it,\" Halem says. \"So it's absolutely critical for there to be delivery services in some way, shape or form.\" He says most of his patients aren't on death's door — and the reality is that just about any adult in California can get a doctor's recommendation for medical pot or, for that matter, go into the delivery business. \"To start a delivery service, whether your intentions are good or bad, you need a car, a cell phone and marijuana. That's not the way we operate, but I'd say the majority of delivery services at this point are essentially just that. And they really are in a lot of respects glorified drug dealers, because there's no oversight, there's no accreditation, there's nothing,\" Halem says. In fact, for some underground dealers, starting medical marijuana delivery services is a way to come out of the shadows. Pot Parties For Patients On a recent afternoon at one former pot dealer's home in an upscale section of Los Angeles, guests nibbled on a buffet of fruit, bagels and pastries while others crowded into a backyard studio. \"These are bongs, pipes, whatever you want, help yourself,\" she tells her guests. The woman agreed to show us her operation provided we not reveal her name or where she works in Los Angeles. To comply with state law, she formed a nonprofit patients' collective last year. She then started throwing parties like this one to transform her former customers into medical-pot patients. She had a physician on hand to evaluate the guests and then sign off on recommendations for medical marijuana — all for $100 each. Later, the woman made a round of deliveries to these customers turned patients. She met up with a man waiting in his car in a Starbucks parking lot. And she made another delivery in a nearby office building. How much of this is legal is debatable. Advocates argue that laws enacted after California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act in 1996 cover transportation and distribution of medical pot, though not across state lines", "The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to shut down all of the medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. That's no easy task. There are more than 800 of them — more than the number of Starbucks coffee shops in Los Angeles. But after years of struggling to regulate pot shops, city officials have decided to prohibit them altogether. Jennifer Moran supports California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act, which allows people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. However, the new mother says things have gotten out of hand in her East Hollywood neighborhood. She's flanked on both ends of her block by medical marijuana dispensaries. \"When I walk home from the grocery store, I have to walk past a marijuana clinic where people are standing outside smoking marijuana,\" she says. \"People stand in front of my house smoking marijuana, and I'm right across the street from a K-2 school.\" In some areas of Los Angeles, dozens of pot shops crowd single zip codes. They feature myriad varieties of marijuana stuffed into plastic baggies, rolled into joints and cooked into brownies. Some are mom-and-pop nonprofits. Others are multimillion-dollar businesses serving more than 1,000 people. These patients easily obtain recommendations from a handful of doctors willing to write them for ailments ranging from cancer to back pain to stress. In testimony before the City Council, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck says he has no problem with medical marijuana. \"What we do have issue with is large, for-profit businesses that operate outside what we think is state law,\" he says, \"and not only cause a nuisance to the community but cause a public danger because of a very toxic mixture of high-value narcotics and a lot of cash.\" Since 2007, Los Angeles has attempted to regulate pot shops by limiting their number and placing restrictions on their operations. Pot shop owners have sued, arguing that state law allows them to create collectives that distribute marijuana. Courts have issued conflicting rulings, with one saying federal law prohibits any use of marijuana. Indeed, federal authorities periodically raid pot shops in California. Many on the City Council are conflicted over the issue. Councilman Paul Koretz says pot provides relief for his friends with AIDS. \"I'm not happy about the hundreds of illegal dispensaries that have been added, but I don't want to see us completely close access off to people that desperately need medical marijuana,\" he says. Outside City Hall, Michael Oliveri sits in a wheelchair, inhaling pot through a vaporizer. He suffers from muscular dystrophy. \"I don't like the illegal shops. I even have friends that own some of them, and I tell them, 'You know, you're the problem. You're the reason why I have so many problems in L.A.,' \" he says. The 28-year-old says banning medical marijuana dispensaries will make it too hard for him to obtain a medicine that relieves his pain and improves his appetite. \"I'm pretty much fighting just to stay alive. It's the only medicine that allows me to eat, and not weigh 84 pounds and be 6-foot-1,\" he says. \"It's not a very good combo. So I'm trying to put on that extra 100 pounds.\" Under the new ordinance, Oliveri can grow pot with one or two other people. Or he can travel to nearby cities that allow medical marijuana dispensaries. Those pot shops may be deluged with customers as L.A. moves to shut down its own. Medical marijuana activists in the city haven't given up yet. They say they may place a referendum before voters that would once again allow pot shops in L.A. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: The Los Angeles City Council has voted to shut down all of the medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. That's no easy task. There are more than 800 of them, and that's more than the number of Starbucks here in L.A. So after years of struggling to regulate the mushrooming pot stores, city officials decided to prohibit them all together. From member station KPCC, Frank Stoltze reports. FRANK STOLTZE, BYLINE: Jennifer Moran supports California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act that allows people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. But the new mother with a baby in her arms says things have gotten out of hand in her East Hollywood neighborhood. She's flanked on both ends of her block by medical marijuana dispensaries. JENNIFER MORAN: When I walk home from the grocery store, I have to walk past a marijuana clinic where people are standing outside smoking marijuana. People stand in front of my house smoking marijuana. And I'm right across the street from a K through 2 school. STOLTZE: In some areas of Los Angeles, dozens of pot shops crowd single zip codes. They feature myriad varieties of marijuana stuffed into plastic baggies, rolled into joints and cooked into brownies. Some are mom-and-pop nonprofits. Others are multi-million dollar businesses serving more than a thousand people. These patients easily obtain recommendations from a handful of doctors willing to write them for ailments ranging", "The Department of Veterans Affairs finds itself in a difficult position because some vets want to use marijuana to treat symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Pot possession remains illegal under federal law. The VA says that as a federal agency its doctors can't recommend using it. The problem is especially acute in New Mexico, where one-fourth of the state's more than 1,600 medical marijuana patients are PTSD sufferers. 'Medical Cannabis Saved Our Marriage' Paul Culkin of Rio Rancho, N.M., traces his PTSD back to 2004 when he was in Kosovo and part of an Army bomb squad. A car crashed into a business. The manager was inside trying to put out a fire. Culkin went in once to try to get him to leave, but he wouldn't go. \"The second time when I went in to get him out of there -- that's when the car bomb exploded and the glass hit me,\" Culkin says. He recovered from the physical wounds, but years later the trauma of that moment can come back without warning. \"Sometimes you'll see a car that's just not in the right place and it'll send me back to that thinking that it could, possibly, be a car bomb,\" Culkin says. Culkin started avoiding social situations and was quick to anger. He says the treatment he's received from the VA -- mostly counseling and antidepressant medication -- has helped. But, he says, marijuana also works well to relieve his anxiety. To be legal in New Mexico, he had to go outside the VA system and pay for another doctor and a psychiatrist to recommend him for the state's medical marijuana program. Then he spent more than $1,500 to set up a small growing operation in his garage. Culkin says he doesn't usually smoke the marijuana, instead choosing to dissolve an extract in hot chocolate or tea so he can control the dose better. His wife, Victoria, says the marijuana has made a big difference. \"He's a different person. He's a better person. He's more open. He's more communicative,\" she says. \"At one point, we almost got a divorce, and I can honestly say that I think medical cannabis saved our marriage and our family.\" The Quest For Solid Research Anecdotal evidence such as this hasn't swayed the VA. The agency responded to NPR's questions on the matter with this statement: \"Based on guidance issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice, VA General Counsel has advised that completion of a state medical marijuana form is in violation of the Controlled Substances Act and subject to its enforcement provisions. Therefore VA physicians and practitioners may not participate in state medical marijuana programs. VA has addressed issues/questions regarding medical marijuana separately as they have arisen but is in the process of developing national policy.\" Meanwhile there are still questions about marijuana's effectiveness, especially in the medical community. \"There is no solid evidence that cannabinoids -- that marijuana -- is, in itself, an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder,\" says Dr. David Spiegel, director of the Stanford Center on Stress and Health. \"Before anyone can claim that, there needs to be some more solid research on that topic.\" Spiegel says recovery from trauma begins with the victims regaining control, over both their bodies and their mental reactions to the traumatic event. Smoking marijuana could make that more difficult, he says. \"The last thing you want is to be losing control at a time when you're remembering an event in which you lost control,\" Spiegel says. Culkin says he doesn't use marijuana to a level that he loses control. \"There is a difference between medical cannabis and what you did back in college,\" Culkin says. \"Smoking in the dorm room and listening to Pink Floyd is not what medical cannabis is about.\" Culkin's experience has turned him into an activist. He started an informal patients group a few months back and has become a spokesman for others who believe they were helped by marijuana. The arguments around marijuana and PTSD start running in circles at a certain point. Scientists say more research is needed. Activists counter that the federal government has blocked research because marijuana is illegal. The American Medical Association has called for controlled studies to settle this and other questions about the effectiveness of marijuana. Meanwhile, policymakers in states with medical marijuana programs have to make decisions now, and they're reaching different conclusions. While New Mexico found there's enough evidence to approve marijuana use for PTSD, next door in Colorado lawmakers recently rejected a similar proposal." ]

[ "Philadelphia" ]

[ "Rowing", "Set", "setting", "that which burns", "in rows", "that which purifies", "sets", "that which is heard", "a set which is won without dropping a single point", "Harper & Row", "Brad Rowe", "Nicholas Rowe", "Holly Rowe", "Katherine Rowe", "Arthur Rowe", "Peter Rowe", "Autumn Rowe", "Michael Rowe", "row crop", "Birds in Row", "a rowing oar", "Debbie Rowe", "Alexander Rowe", "level set", "Andy Rowe", "Ronnie Rowe", "Candle sets", "working set", "Jamie Rowe", "set a precedent", "Jennifer Rowe", "Douglas Rowe" ]

[ "Triffin dilemma" ]

[ "No problem", "sheer idealism", "transcendental idealism", "An Ideal Husband", "throat problems", "What's Up?", "What a Friend", "What's Happening!!", "What's in It for Me", "What If Nothing", "things are what they are", "What a Life!", "What A Night", "What If It's You", "What Are Words", "What Car?", "what is visible", "What Part of No", "What So Not", "What If We", "What a Waste", "What Is a Youth", "What Tingsamitr", "For What It's Worth", "What to Audit", "At What Cost", "Be What You Are", "What Is Love" ]

[ "Two Halifax-area women are speaking out after they allege they were drugged at a bar over the weekend.\nBrittany Bernard and Paige Fitzpatrick went out Saturday night to celebrate Fitzpatrick’s upcoming graduation from college. The pair say they had a few drinks at home — but were not intoxicated — before heading downtown to the Toothy Moose on Argyle Street.\nAbout 20 minutes after they arrived at the bar, Fitzpatrick say a man offered to buy her a shot and drink. That’s when things turned from celebratory to scary for the lifelong friends.\n“We’re assuming it was the gentleman who bought me the drink because that’s the only drink we had that whole night. But I don’t know who he was. He was just buying me a drink and I thought it was innocent,” Fitzpatrick told Global News.\n“We’re normally very careful about these things,” she said. “I’m watching [the bartender] make the drink and I’m watching him pass it to me and I look away for one second and then he was able to put it in my drink.”\nREAD: How 3 women may have saved a stranger from date rape\nFitzpatrick says the man knocked Bernard’s drink from her hand and offered to buy her a new one, but she declined. Instead, the two women shared the drink that was purchased for Fitzpatrick.\n“Instantly the both of us were just completely out of it,” Fitzpatrick said.\n“We walked to the dance floor and we both fell on our faces and we lost complete feeling of our body and all consciousness, like we couldn’t remember where we were or what was going on.”\nFitzpatrick and Bernard say they went to the washroom inside the bar, where they both vomited. Bernard was able to call her mother, who picked the women up and took them to the emergency room.\nFitzpatrick says they had to be taken inside the hospital in wheelchairs, where they remained for several hours.\n“I don’t remember anything at the hospital. The only thing I remember is waking up in the hospital bed with an IV,” she said.\nThe women say they had blood work and an electrocardiogram (EKG) done to make sure their hearts were all right. Ultimately, Fitzpatrick says medical professionals were unable to determine what the women had consumed.\n“They weren’t able to determine what was in our system but they said from our story and how we were responding to what they gave us, it was definitely something that was, that we had been drugged,” Fitzpatrick said.\n“It was absolutely, probably one of the scariest nights of our lives honestly.”\nWATCH: USB-sized device can tell you if your drink has been spiked\nThe women reported the incident to police on Sunday after leaving the hospital.\nHalifax Regional Police Const. Carol McIsaac confirmed that officers were informed that two women reported having their drinks tampered with sometime after 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 22.\n“It’s concerning anytime we receive this type of report,” said McIsaac. “It’s certainly not something that commonly happens.”\nMcIsaac says officers are still in the early stages of their investigation and will be combing through any video surveillance the bar has in place. Police are encouraging anyone who may have had a similar incident to report it.\n“Often times, by the time they do attend the hospital or do realize their drinks may have been spiked, there’s not a lot of evidence still because it does leave their system very quickly,” she said.\n“It is important they they report it to us because we need to be aware that something like this is happening in our city.”\nPolice are reminding people to never leave your drinks unattended and not to accept drinks from people you don’t know.\n“If somebody offers to buy you a drink, great but attend the bar with that person and be present when the bartender makes the drink and accept the drink from the bartender as opposed to the person who’s offering to purchase the drink for you,” said McIsaac.\nREAD MORE: Dalhousie University issues warning after drinks allegedly spiked at party\nAs for Bernard and Fitzpatrick, they decided to go public with their ordeal in hopes of spreading awareness and preventing something similar — or worse — from happening to someone else.\n“You can never be too careful with who you trust when you’re out and about, especially when you’re drinking and you’re in that type of atmosphere,” said Bernard.\nAnyone with information about the incident over the weekend is asked to contact police or Crime Stoppers." ]

[ "A Liberal MP accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a bar in Halifax says that the accusation is the result of mistaken identity.\nFrancis Drouin, MP for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, was in town to attend the 2018 National Liberal Convention.\nIn a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, Drouin, 34, says he arrived at an establishment in downtown Halifax at approximately 2:00 a.m.\nHalifax Regional Police have confirmed to Global News that the bar in question is the Halifax Alehouse, a popular pub located on Brunswick Street, and is only a block from the Nova Centre, the convention centre that hosted the 2018 National Liberal Convention.\nREAD MORE: Police say alleged sexual assault happened in popular Halifax bar near Liberal convention\nDrouin says that at the Alehouse, his party approached the bar to buy a round of drinks.\n“While I was standing facing the bar, with my credit card in hand, I heard what I believed to be a woman’s voice coming from another area of the establishment behind me, yelling that her buttocks had been grabbed,” Drouin said in his statement.\n“Her comments were clearly not directed towards me.”\nDrouin says he turned around and yelled “Get that man out of here” to draw attention to the incident before turning back to the bar to pay for his drinks.\nThe 34-year-old says he and the rest of his party moved to another area of the establishment.\n“Several minutes later, while standing with a group of people, I was approached by a woman with a cellphone in hand, who mistakenly attempted to connect me with the alleged incident. We told her that she was mistaken,” Drouin writes in his statement.\nHe then says his party left the bar.\nOn Saturday, he says he proactively informed the Prime Minister’s Office and the office of the Liberal Party Whip of the alleged incident.\n“The police have been gathering multiple witness statements and I have been cooperating fully. As I have already said, I believe that it is important for individuals to have a safe environment to come forward and be supported. I am confident that the facts of the issue will lead to a clear outcome,” Drouin said.\nConst. Carol McIsaac, a spokesperson for the police department, said on Monday that police will not identify the victim or any suspects, but added that no charges have been laid.\nWATCH: Alleged sexual assault by Liberal MP being investigated by Halifax Regional Police\nThe alleged incident occurred on the weekend when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, along with many other high-ranking Liberal party members, attended a seminar on sexual violence prevention titled “From MeToo to never again: creating safe work environments.”\nThe 34-year-old has been described as a rising star in the Liberal party and moderated a panel at the convention on Saturday with Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay.\nMcIsaac is asking anyone who has information about the incident or who may have seen anything to contact police.\nTheir investigation continues.", "OTTAWA — A Liberal MP who is facing an allegation of assault after a weekend visit to a Halifax bar is speaking out, calling the whole thing a case of mistaken identity.\nFrancis Drouin, who represents the eastern Ontario riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, has issued a statement detailing his version of what happened in Halifax in the early hours of Saturday morning.\nStatement from Francis Drouin, MP for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell pic.twitter.com/ceiSh9sa3n — Francis Drouin (@Francis_Drouin) April 24, 2018\nIn it, Drouin — who was in Halifax for the federal Liberal policy convention — says that while he was chatting with friends, he heard a woman shouting from another part of the bar.\n“While I was standing facing the bar, with my credit card in hand, I heard what I believed to be a woman’s voice coming from another area of the establishment behind me, yelling that her buttocks had been grabbed,” the statement says.\n“Her comments were clearly not directed towards me.”\nDrouin says he then shouted for the alleged perpetrator to be evicted from the bar, paid for his drink with his credit card and proceeded with his friends to another area of the establishment.\nThat’s when he says a woman with a cellphone “mistakenly” tried to connect him to the alleged incident.\n“We told her that she was mistaken. We left the establishment shortly thereafter.”\nPolice con't to investigate a sexual assault that occurred on Ap 21 sometime after 2 a.m. at the Halifax Alehouse. Investigators ask anyone with info about the incident to please contact police. https://t.co/xKMaxisnGx — Halifax_Police (@HfxRegPolice) April 23, 2018\nDrouin says he proactively informed the Prime Minister’s Office and the government whip’s office, and has been co-operating fully with a police investigation into the matter. A number of witness interviews have been gathered, he added.\nHe reiterated statements he made over the weekend stressing the importance of ensuring individuals are supported in a safe way when they come forward with allegations — but insists that in this case, it was all just a big misunderstanding.\n“I am confident that the facts of the issue will lead to a clear outcome.”\nHalifax police confirmed Monday they are investigating a report that a woman had been sexually assaulted. But the regional police service did not specifically name Drouin.\nA spokeswoman said no charges have been laid in the incident, which took place sometime after 2 a.m. Saturday at the Halifax Alehouse.", "Brett Bundale, THE CANADIAN PRESS\nHALIFAX -- Five years ago, Melanie Mackenzie got pregnant. Her birth control had failed, and the then 29-year-old knew she didn't want to have a baby. She wanted an abortion.\n\"I found out I was pregnant almost immediately. You just get that feeling,\" the Halifax resident said in an interview. \"I hadn't even missed a period yet.\"\nAfter taking a positive home pregnancy test, Mackenzie went to her family doctor -- Nova Scotia is the only province in Canada where women must obtain a physician's referral before making an abortion appointment.\n\"I said flat out 'I'm pregnant and I don't want to be. I want an abortion.\"'\nMackenzie was told there was a waiting period, and was sent for a battery of tests including blood work and an ultrasound. It took two months for her to finally obtain an abortion, at nearly 12 weeks pregnant.\n\"It was the worst two months of my life,\" she said. \"The whole thing felt like a punishment.\"\nAdvocates say Nova Scotia is now one of the most difficult provinces in the country in which to access abortion, with women requiring a referral for a surgical abortion, lengthy wait times for the time-sensitive procedure and no provincial coverage for medical abortions using pills.\nThe province also has no private or freestanding abortion clinics located outside of a hospital. Halifax's Morgentaler clinic, where women had to pay out-of-pocket, closed in 2003.\nThe Termination of Pregnancy Unit at Halifax's QEII Health Sciences Centre -- where more than 85 per cent of the province's abortions are performed -- will only book appointments for women who are at least eight weeks pregnant.\nWith few doctors prescribing the abortion pill Mifegymiso -- and no universal coverage of the costly medication in the province -- women seeking to terminate early pregnancies are forced to wait.\n\"Nova Scotia is one of the worst places in Canada to get an abortion. The situation for abortion access is extremely grim,\" said Darrah Teitel, public affairs officer for Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.\nAfter her blood work came back positive, Mackenzie recalled the nurse congratulating her on the pregnancy in front of other patients.\n\"I never regretted my decision to have an abortion,\" she said. \"But it felt like that waiting period and all those tests were to shame me, to make me feel like an irresponsible slut, to punish me. It felt like it was a price I had to pay to obtain an abortion in a country where my right to choose is legally protected.\"\nIn Canada, abortion care is a patchwork of widely differing degrees of accessibility and options depending on the province and region. Abortion access is largely provided in big urban centres, leaving women in small communities or rural areas footing the bill for travel and accommodation.\nNova Scotia once had the region's least restrictive abortion access, but both New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have changed their policies in the last three years.\nIn 2014, New Brunswick lifted the so-called two-doctor rule requiring two physicians to certify an abortion as medically necessary.\nAbortions became available in P.E.I. for the first time earlier this year. Women on the Island can call a toll-free number to make an appointment without the need for a referral.\nWomen in Nova Scotia still require a referral and tests before obtaining an appointment for an abortion.\n\"We do require our patients to get referred to our clinic,\" Lianne Yoshida, medical co-director of the QEII's Termination of Pregnancy Unit, said in an interview. \"It's been identified as a barrier and it's an issue we're working on. The issue of referral and ultrasound does delay a woman's ability to see us.\"\nIt also may be unconstitutional, said Teitel.\nShe said the provincial rule requiring a physician's referral is at odds with the Supreme Court's 1988 R v. Morgentaler decision. Evidence presented during the trial showed that the unnecessary wait times involved in physician referrals were creating unsafe conditions for women, Teitel said.\n\"These delays are still being forced on women in Nova Scotia, and there is no earthly reason why abortions cannot be granted upon self-referral, as in the rest of the country,\" she said.\nIn addition to the referral rule, it's unclear whether delays are exacerbated by a policy enforcing a wait time, restrictions on early abortions or simply a lack of sufficient resources.\nWhile Yoshida said there are surgical issues with abortions performed too early, she said that tends to be around four weeks gestational age.\nStill, a receptionist reached at the QEII clinic said abortions are not scheduled before eight weeks -- something confirmed in multiple interviews.\nNova Scotia does not appear to keep statistics on how long it takes women to obtain an abortion after a referral.\nSeveral women interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of the stigma surrounding abortions and the backlash they could face at work or in the community.\nTheir stories had recurrent themes. The condom broke. The pill didn't work. The IUD shifted. Contraception fails. Accidents happen.\nWhile some were referred for an abortion by a family doctor without delay, others describe having to \"jump through hoops\" to get a referral. Wait times tended to be four to six weeks, a delay they described as \"agonizing\" and \"cruel.\"\nJennifer Fishman, associate professor in the Biomedical Ethics Unit of the Social Studies of Medicine Department at McGill University, said the ethical problems that arise from making women wait for an abortion are enormous.\n\"The idea that there is differential access to abortions across the provinces, given that abortion is funded and legal and a medical procedure covered under the Canada Health Act, which operates under principles of universality and accessibility, is incredibly problematic,\" Fishman said. \"It's unjust and inequitable to make some women wait while others don't have to.\"\nAnother ethical problem is the mental health impact of waiting, she said.\n\"There is definitely a psychological cost to carrying an unwanted pregnancy,\" Fishman said. \"Some research shows women will even consider some kind of self-induction, which can be dangerous.\"\nOne woman told The Canadian Press she had four appointments with her family doctor before she obtained a referral for an abortion. Her doctor quizzed her on her knowledge of the fetus and sent her to a psychologist before finally agreeing to refer her.\n\"At some point, before my doctor agreed to write the referral, I remember standing in the kitchen with a pair of scissors, thinking maybe I'd just cut it out. I considered going to the emergency room and saying I would commit suicide if they wouldn't give me an abortion. The waiting, and the threat of not being able to access an abortion, was emotionally traumatic.\"\nFishman said another troubling issue with making women wait until later in their pregnancy to obtain an abortion are the physical health risks.\n\"Second trimester abortions have much higher rates of complications,\" Fishman said. \"It's a much more complicated procedure. They are higher risk and they are more expensive.\"\nMeanwhile, a new method has emerged that would give Nova Scotia women another option in early pregnancy.\nMifegymiso, an alternative to surgical abortion, is an abortion pill that can be used to terminate a pregnancy of up to 49 days.\nAdvocates say the two-step process using the drugs mifepristone and misoprosto could increase access, provide women with more choices and shorten wait times.\nThe Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada says 171 physicians and pharmacists in Nova Scotia have either registered for or taken a training course on Mifegymiso.\nBut at a cost of about $350, the pill remains out of reach for many women.\nWhile Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have all said they would provide at least some coverage for the drug, Nova Scotia has stayed silent on the issue.\nA Health Department spokeswoman said the Nova Scotia government is looking at coverage for Mifegymiso, but a decision has not yet been made.\nMeanwhile, it's unclear why women in Nova Scotia must obtain a referral.\nHealth spokeswoman Sarah Levy MacLeod confirmed that a referral and an ultrasound are required before an abortion can be booked, but she referred questions on the policy to the Nova Scotia Health Authority.\nThe health authority referred questions to the co-director of the QEII Termination of Pregnancy Unit -- the same doctor, Lianne Yoshida, who called the need for a referral a barrier to access that needs to be addressed.\n\"I don't think it's necessarily political. It's sort of just the way it's always been,\" Yoshida said. \"It's recognized as a problem.\"", "HALIFAX—The oppressive heat wave that struck much of Canada last weekend and has continued into this week might have slowed some people down, but it’s prompted fast action from a group of Halifax advocates who say the extreme summer weather hits homeless people especially hard. Sheri Lecker, executive director of Adsum House women’s shelter in North End Halifax, said she saw the heat and humidity in the forecast last week and knew people would be in need of water, sunscreen and hats, or else risk serious health consequences.\nAdsum House executive director Sheri Lecker handed out about 2,000 bottles of water to homeless people in Halifax on Wednesday as temperatures in the city soared above 30 C. ( Zane Woodford / StarMetro ) People flocked to a new, mist-blowing cooling station on the Halifax Waterfront on Wednesday as temperatures in the city climbed above 30 C. ( Zane Woodford / StarMetro )\n“Last week we just ran around to find as much as we could,” she said of an impromptu hunt for supplies, which she’s been distributing to shelters and soup kitchens around the municipality since June 29. “I’m glad we can do something, and I think it’s really important that we are carrying around what people are needing. Water is really expensive to buy. Sunscreen is super expensive,” she added. She and her colleagues estimated they’ve given out about 2,000 bottles of water a day since they started last weekend. A donation of 400 hats from one individual came in Tuesday afternoon, and nearly all of them were doled out by Wednesday morning.\nArticle Continued Below\nLecker said the effort is an ad hoc collaboration between Adsum House, Mobile Outreach Street Health (MOSH), an accessible primary health care service, and Out of the Cold, an organization that usually sets up emergency shelters for extreme winter weather, but expanded its scope to deal with this summer’s unusual heat. Environment Canada issued a heat alert for Halifax on Canada Day, extending until Thursday at least. This came just two days after the province adopted a new heat alert system on June 29, citing the impacts of climate change as a reason to expect more frequent extreme heat events. This is the first year that Lecker and her colleagues have collected and distributed supplies for battling the heat; she said she doesn’t remember having such extreme summer weather to deal with in summers gone by. “I’ve been at Adsum a long time and I mean … we’ve had to cope with the shelter being really hot ... but I don’t actually remember a heat warning, and certainly not this early, and not for so many days,” she said. Last week, David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, told StarMetro that heat warnings for Halifax are rare.\nThe province’s new standard for issuing a heat alert is two consecutive days with a daytime temperature of 29 C or higher, a nighttime temperature of 16 C or higher, and a humidex of 36 C or higher. Those conditions pose a serious risk of heat stroke or heat exhaustion for everyone, according to Jacqueline Atkinson, a nurse practitioner with MOSH, but especially for people who have nowhere to go for relief.\nArticle Continued Below\n“People who are homeless are even more at risk because they’re out, they don’t have shelter, they don’t have places to go to seek shade,” she said. To prevent heat-related illness, the province recommends staying in shaded, cool or air-conditioned spaces, drinking plenty of water, wearing light-coloured clothing, and only exercising or working outside during the cooler parts of the day. For the homeless, those recommendations are hard to follow, Atkinson said. “It’s very hard for the homeless in Halifax … Just having a space where they’re allowed to be, where it’s shaded and cool, is more tricky than you would think,” she said. “They get kicked out of many coffee shops because they don’t have money to buy a beverage, so you can’t sit there all day.” Access to water is often limited, too, Atkinson said, because bottled water is expensive and refillable bottles are easily lost. Additionally, she said homeless people usually get around by foot, and can’t avoid exerting themselves during the most scorching hours of the day. “Homeless people don’t have cars or often even bikes,” she explained. “They’re walking around and they walk quite long distances, and so they’re often way more active than the general public.” Atkinson said addiction issues compound the problem further; alcohol and most drugs dehydrate the body, some increase core body temperature, and all drugs can compromise kidney function, which puts people at higher risk of dehydration, even in normal weather conditions. “This population is often starting out at a high level of dehydration, and so can easily then slip into heat exhaustion,” she said. The same heat wave that struck the Maritimes has also been felt in much of Central and Eastern Canada, and 11 deaths in Montreal have been attributed to heavy heat and humidity. In Toronto, advocates for the homeless called on the city to extend the hours of its seven cooling centres, which are air-conditioned, provide bottled water and juice, and have staff that can recognize the signs of heat-related illness. Erin DiCarlo, a representative for Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), said in an email the municipality has looked at Toronto’s cooling centre program as an example they might take from, although they haven’t initiated anything similar yet. Halifax Public Libraries are air-conditioned, and thanks to Lecker and her colleagues, the Halifax Central Library has been stocked with bottled water, sunscreen and hats during the heat alert. People can also seek relief from the heat at a cooling station on the Halifax waterfront, which sprays a fine mist of water over passersby. Kelly Rose, a representative for Waterfront Development, said the borrowed cooling station was installed last week in anticipation of the blistering heat. “It will stay up temporarily during this continued heat and we’ll reassess,” she said in an email, adding that the company is looking into acquiring a permanent station. For anyone looking for water, sunscreen, and hats, Lecker said they can visit any shelter or soup kitchen in HRM, Mainline Needle Exchange, Direction 180, the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre and the Halifax Central Library.\nRead more about:", "Mackenzie was told there was a waiting period, and was sent for a battery of tests including blood work and an ultrasound. It took two months for her to finally obtain an abortion, at nearly 12 weeks pregnant.\n“I said flat out ‘I’m pregnant and I don’t want to be. I want an abortion.’ “\nAfter taking a positive home pregnancy test, Mackenzie went to her family doctor — Nova Scotia is the only province in Canada where women must obtain a physician’s referral before making an abortion appointment.\n“I found out I was pregnant almost immediately. You just get that feeling,” the Halifax resident said in an interview. “I hadn’t even missed a period yet.”\nHALIFAX — Five years ago, Melanie Mackenzie got pregnant. Her birth control had failed, and the then 29-year-old knew she didn’t want to have a baby. She wanted an abortion.\n“It was the worst two months of my life,” she said. “The whole thing felt like a punishment.”\nAbortion clinic ‘safe zones’ to be introduced\nWomen should be told about their biological clock, says new guideline\nAdvocates say Nova Scotia is now one of the most difficult provinces in the country in which to access abortion, with women requiring a referral for a surgical abortion, lengthy wait times for the time-sensitive procedure and no provincial coverage for medical abortions using pills.\nThe province also has no private or free-standing abortion clinics located outside of a hospital. Halifax’s Morgentaler clinic, where women had to pay out-of-pocket, closed in 2003.\nThe Termination of Pregnancy Unit at Halifax’s QEII Health Sciences Centre — where more than 85 per cent of the province’s abortions are performed — will only book appointments for women who are at least eight weeks pregnant.\nWith few doctors prescribing the abortion pill Mifegymiso — and no universal coverage of the costly medication in the province — women seeking to terminate early pregnancies are forced to wait.\n“Nova Scotia is one of the worst places in Canada to get an abortion. The situation for abortion access is extremely grim,” said Darrah Teitel, public affairs officer for Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.\nAfter her blood work came back positive, Mackenzie recalled the nurse congratulating her on the pregnancy in front of other patients.\n“I never regretted my decision to have an abortion,” she said. “But it felt like that waiting period and all those tests were to shame me, to make me feel like an irresponsible slut, to punish me. It felt like it was a price I had to pay to obtain an abortion in a country where my right to choose is legally protected.”\nIn Canada, abortion care is a patchwork of widely differing degrees of accessibility and options depending on the province and region. Abortion access is largely provided in big urban centres, leaving women in small communities or rural areas footing the bill for travel and accommodation.\nNova Scotia once had the region’s least restrictive abortion access, but both New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have changed their policies in the last three years.\nIn 2014, New Brunswick lifted the so-called two-doctor rule requiring two physicians to certify an abortion as medically necessary.\nAbortions became available in P.E.I. for the first time earlier this year. Women on the Island can call a toll-free number to make an appointment without the need for a referral.\nWomen in Nova Scotia still require a referral and tests before obtaining an appointment for an abortion.\n“We do require our patients to get referred to our clinic,” Lianne Yoshida, medical co-director of the QEII’s Termination of Pregnancy Unit, said in an interview. “It’s been identified as a barrier and it’s an issue we’re working on. The issue of referral and ultrasound does delay a woman’s ability to see us.”\nIt also may be unconstitutional, said Teitel.\nShe said the provincial rule requiring a physician’s referral is at odds with the Supreme Court’s 1988 R v. Morgentaler decision. Evidence presented during the trial showed that the unnecessary wait times involved in physician referrals were creating unsafe conditions for women, Teitel said.\n“These delays are still being forced on women in Nova Scotia, and there is no earthly reason why abortions cannot be granted upon self-referral, as in the rest of the country,” she said.\nIn addition to the referral rule, it’s unclear whether delays are exacerbated by a policy enforcing a wait time, restrictions on early abortions or simply a lack of sufficient resources.\nWhile Yoshida said there are surgical issues with abortions performed too early, she said that tends to be around four weeks gestational age.\nStill, a receptionist reached at the QEII clinic said abortions are not scheduled before eight weeks — something confirmed in multiple interviews.\nNova Scotia does not appear to keep statistics on how long it takes women to obtain an abortion after a referral.\nSeveral women interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of the stigma surrounding abortions and the backlash they could face at work or in the community.\nTheir stories had recurrent themes. The condom broke. The pill didn’t work. The IUD shifted. Contraception fails. Accidents happen.\nWhile some were referred for an abortion by a family doctor without delay, others describe having to “jump through hoops” to get a referral. Wait times tended to be four to six weeks, a delay they described as “agonizing” and “cruel.”\nJennifer Fishman, associate professor in the Biomedical Ethics Unit of the Social Studies of Medicine Department at McGill University, said the ethical problems that arise from making women wait for an abortion are enormous.\n“The idea that there is differential access to abortions across the provinces, given that abortion is funded and legal and a medical procedure covered under the Canada Health Act, which operates under principles of universality and accessibility, is incredibly problematic,” Fishman said. “It’s unjust and inequitable to make some women wait while others don’t have to.”\nAnother ethical problem is the mental health impact of waiting, she said.\n“There is definitely a psychological cost to carrying an unwanted pregnancy,” Fishman said. “Some research shows women will even consider some kind of self-induction, which can be dangerous.”\nOne woman told The Canadian Press she had four appointments with her family doctor before she obtained a referral for an abortion. Her doctor quizzed her on her knowledge of the fetus and sent her to a psychologist before finally agreeing to refer her.\n“At some point, before my doctor agreed to write the referral, I remember standing in the kitchen with a pair of scissors, thinking maybe I’d just cut it out. I considered going to the emergency room and saying I would commit suicide if they wouldn’t give me an abortion. The waiting, and the threat of not being able to access an abortion, was emotionally traumatic.”\nFishman said another troubling issue with making women wait until later in their pregnancy to obtain an abortion are the physical health risks.\n“Second trimester abortions have much higher rates of complications,” Fishman said. “It’s a much more complicated procedure. They are higher risk and they are more expensive.”\nMeanwhile, a new method has emerged that would give Nova Scotia women another option in early pregnancy.\nMifegymiso, an alternative to surgical abortion, is an abortion pill that can be used to terminate a pregnancy of up to 49 days.\nAdvocates say the two-step process using the drugs mifepristone and misoprosto could increase access, provide women with more choices and shorten wait times.\nThe Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada says 171 physicians and pharmacists in Nova Scotia have either registered for or taken a training course on Mifegymiso.\nBut at a cost of about $350, the pill remains out of reach for many women.\nWhile Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have all said they would provide at least some coverage for the drug, Nova Scotia has stayed silent on the issue.\nA Health Department spokeswoman said the Nova Scotia government is looking at coverage for Mifegymiso, but a decision has not yet been made.\nMeanwhile, it’s unclear why women in Nova Scotia must obtain a referral.\nHealth spokeswoman Sarah Levy MacLeod confirmed that a referral and an ultrasound are required before an abortion can be booked, but she referred questions on the policy to the Nova Scotia Health Authority.\nThe health authority referred questions to the co-director of the QEII Termination of Pregnancy Unit — the same doctor, Lianne Yoshida, who called the need for a referral a barrier to access that needs to be addressed.\n“I don’t think it’s necessarily political. It’s sort of just the way it’s always been,” Yoshida said. “It’s recognized as a problem.”", "× Expand Joseph Shabason (far right) at Obey Convention 2018.\nOBEY CONVENTION at various venues in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Thursday, May 24 to Sunday, May 27\nYou know what’s great and also rare these days? Going to a show without knowing who the bands are. Spending half a week at a festival full of acts you’ve mostly never heard of. Being introduced to something for the first time in a live setting.\nOf course, those attending Obey Convention could’ve googled the various bands on the bills before arriving at the venues but I get the sense most of us didn’t. The surprise factor is a big part of the beauty of Obey, which takes place over four days on non-traditional Halifax stages.\nAt a time when Toronto has seen the loss of so many multi-day music events, Obey might also be a lesson in what a festival should be in 2018. Here are some takeaways from the four days.\n1. Fearless programming\nWith all the music in the world at our fingertips thanks to streaming services, YouTube and SoundCloud, and with the average music festival full of well-known marquee names, we’re getting lazy and risk-averse, tending to only buy an album or concert ticket by familiar favourites. (Or, more commonly, paying for nothing at all.) But hey, guess what? There’s so much out there to discover.\nBeing at Obey was a reminder to keep challenging ourselves as music listeners. The festival has been around for 11 years and has expanded its focus from punk to genre-less innovators who can’t be pinned down. The programmers seek out the weirdest stuff from the darkest corners, presenting us with mind-expanding lesser-knowns, this year under the theme of “radical joy.”\nSome notable personal discoveries for me included Wandarian, a psych-folk solo project out of the forests of Nova Scotia by Jesse Griffith, who stumbled upon his unique style of acoustic-guitar-playing after he caught his guitar as it fell from something (“not a guitar stand, though. That would be too… logical,” he explained) and the capo slipped off. The result is a kind of right-hand plunking and scraping at the strings amid hypnotic finger-picking. For fans of Steve Gunn, William Tyler and Michael Hurley.\n× Expand Steve Louie Ono\nOther standouts included Chicago’s ONO, a legendary collective formed in 1980 and continued live by long-time members P. Michael and Travis, whose oratorical/gospel messages about toxic masculinity, trauma and resistance are as loud and powerful as their industrial avant-garde songs – and multiple costume changes; Liu Fang’s performance on the pipa (a traditional lute dating back 2,000 years) was stirring and soothing under the cathedral ceiling of Fort Massey United Church; Halifax four-piece Cutie brought back memories of DIY all-ages shows of yore as they banged out mighty and harsh punk in the back-lot garage of the North Branch library.\nIs Obey’s programming sometimes patience-testing and sonically challenging? Yes, yes it is. (id m theft able’s explosively bonkers electro-voice project and Sarah Hennies’s “gruelling” vibraphone marathon are two examples.) But getting pushed outside of my melody-loving comfort zone was worth it.\n2. Inclusivity\n“We’re literally programming at the edge of the continent and in part of the country where many people live in a state of constant financial precarity, ourselves included,” writes creative director Andrew Patterson in the festival booklet.\n“Inclusivity” is an overused buzzword these days, but Obey puts the beautiful concept into action in the most integrated, least tokenistic ways. With financial precarity in mind, and with anti-capitalist ethics as a driving force, all shows were PWYC – and we were reminded at the door that they really meant that.\nThe majority of shows were also all ages. Almost all of the 15 venues had non-gendered washrooms and accessible entrances, with detailed info included in the festival booklet. Venues were all located downtown, a few to the north and a few to the south, and on transit routes.\nMusicians came from New York City, Montreal, Chicago, Sioux Lookout, Bordeaux, Winnipeg, Toronto and of course Halifax, among other places. We heard orchestral jazz, cubist funk, futurist-electro and so much more.\n× Expand Steve Louie Sacred Wolf Singers' opening ceremony.\nIndigenous acts were in abundance, with dancing and song woven seamlessly between performances by settler acts, like at the friendly opening ceremony featuring Sacred Wolf Singers (the audience was encouraged to circle the group while holding hands – and did) and Gina Burgess’s commissioned classical work about mental health. Or at the closing day healing concert with Toronto meditative new-jazzer Joseph Shabason and the traditional Mi’kmaq duo of Melissa Labrador and Corbin Hart.\n3. Unusual venues\nAs someone who has attended hundreds of shows in my lifetime, I can’t stress how sweet it is to hear live music outside of a bar setting. I took in Syrian singer/songwriter Hussam Al Assaf and Iranian composer Mohammad Sahraei’s lilting, dynamic set under the afternoon sun on a peaceful plot of land called Common Roots Farm, a community garden downtown.\nObey embraces unconventional venues, and so we also got performances at the bustling melting pot that is the Halifax Central Library (those shows in particular had as many children and grey-haired folks in attendance as in-the-know 30-somethings), the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, a rock climbing gym, a craft brewery and the aforementioned library garage. Strangest was entering cavernous high school Citadel High for a late-night dance party with France’s Nídia, Haitian-Canadian DJ/producer/singer Jerico and Halifax-based former Torontonian rapper Benjamin.\n× Expand Steve Louie Pharmakon\nBut popular bar the Seahorse (in the basement of the Sloan-referenced Marquee) was also deployed for Saturday night’s riveting Pharmakon and Vile Creature show, the most aggressive of billings and one that’ll be remembered for its ferocity. Don’t miss Pharmakon’s sure-to-be-confrontational return to Toronto on July 21 at the Garrison. Doom metalheads Vile Creature hail from Hamilton, so expect some local shows soon.\nThe calendar was stacked over the four days, but with zero overlap, allowing pass-holders to easily take in every performance, as well as afternoon artist Q&As, interactive kids’ event O’BABY, and a hilarious set by experimental comedian/sound artist Ray Fenwick about how to talk with plants. The careful attention paid to logistics, to the musicians (many told me they felt very well taken care of) and to music fans might be why audiences were so respectful, always listening with full attention no matter how challenging the sounds.\nAll in all, Obey was a reminder of the importance of weird, of actively pushing social constructs to the back burner unless they’re serving you, of the fringes as places for deeply unique creativity, of continuing to build safer places of community, of ambitious ventures not fuelled by the pursuit of profit, of getting older without losing vital aspects of who you are and what you believe in.\nIt can be done.\ncarlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis", "× Expand Photo credit: Gage Skidmore\nWisconsin Gov. Scott Walker accidentally came up with a perfect metaphor to describe his cruel proposal to require poor people to perform tricks before they can receive any publicly assisted health care in his state. “We should treat public assistance more like a trampoline than a hammock,” Walker declared.\nWalker got that ugly hammock image from his friend House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan portrays desperately poor Americans whose families need government assistance as lolling around on hammocks enjoying lives of leisure. Impoverished families are far more likely to be living in fear and despair.\nWalker’s trampoline for the poor is his own invention. No one knows what he really means. He’s surely not suggesting his state’s inferior version of Medicaid bounces poor people up into the Mercedes level of health care available to the wealthy.\nWalker actually turned down hundreds of millions of federal dollars to cover more people in his state when Democrats expanded health care to more than 20 million more Americans who couldn’t afford it previously.\nBut Walker’s perilous trampoline isn’t a bad description of the obstacle courses Republican governors want to set up to dismantle health care state by state since the nationwide effort by Ryan and Donald Trump to destroy insurance coverage for 23 million Americans appears headed for defeat in the U.S. Senate.\nAnyone familiar with trampolines knows they can be really dangerous. All they do is create an illusion of a lot of motion that doesn’t really get anyone anywhere. But it can be amusing to watch people performing tricks on them. That fits perfectly with Republicans requiring the poor to dance for their benefits. If Republicans can’t wipe out public assistance entirely, they can at least make the poor jump through hoops based on crude stereotypes of race and class.\nRepublicans believe the only reason minorities can’t afford health care is they’re either too lazy or too drug addled to work. Their stereotyping of poor whites in dying small towns and rural areas who voted for Trump is insulting in a completely different way. Republicans think those people are so dumb they’ll accept anything.\nContempt for impoverished working-class voters of every race is behind Walker’s mean-spirited proposal to make Wisconsin the first state ever to force low-income residents to submit to drug tests and get a damn job before they can receive publicly assisted health care through Medicaid.\nMutilating Health Care for 69 Million Americans\nIt’s an ugly right-wing mutilation of one of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s most successful remaining Great Society anti-poverty programs. Medicaid now provides access to health care and nursing homes for more than 69 million low-income, disabled or aging Americans.\nWalker doesn’t just want to reverse the public health gains for Wisconsin under Obamacare. He wants to reverse history more than half a century to finally abolish Medicaid itself. No governor has been allowed to do that for 52 years under any president, Republican or Democrat. But then, of course, Trump is not any president. Trump’s and Ryan’s vile version of states rights would allow individual states to abolish federal health care guarantees the same way they abolished democracy and human rights in their states with Jim Crow laws.\nRepublican hostility toward the poor has always been based upon a lie. Poverty has never been a comfortable life. Poverty is a lot harder work than most affluent folks have ever done. Affluent people also can afford a lot more drugs.\nState Sen. Lena Taylor noted about 1,900 women in Wisconsin’s W-2 welfare reform program were drug-tested as of March. Only nine women failed drug tests and were referred for treatment. Similar infinitesimal numbers found in other states show drug testing to qualify for public benefits to be an exorbitant waste of tax dollars.\nJon Peacock, research director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, points out requiring someone to pass a drug test to get access to health care is exactly backwards. Drug abuse is a health problem. “We need to get people into health care programs . . . and then get them the treatment they need,” Peacock said. Instead Walker is trying to make it more difficult for low-income residents in his state who need health care to get any.\nIn a bizarre twist, last week the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee voted to set aside $2.3 million over the next two years to try to reduce the number of frequent visits to emergency rooms by people with chronic illnesses.\nFor the past seven years, the U.S. has had a successful health care program that reduces emergency room visits by providing essential health services to anyone with pre-existing conditions regardless of income. It’s reduced the number of uninsured Americans to the lowest point in history.\nAll Republicans have to do is stop trying to destroy public health care and join with Democrats to improve it for the American people instead.", "Share this article with Google Plus\nShe allegedly did it after being refused shots (Picture: NCJ Media)\nA woman wiped her backside then scattered dirty toilet paper around a bar after being refused service, it is claimed.\nStaff say she became angry when they wouldn’t sell her shots, so took her unorthodox form of revenge by going into the toilet and coming back armed with dirty ammunition.\nThey had to put on gloves to clean up the mess at Tiger Hornsby nightclub on the Quayside in Newcastle.\n‘There were three [tissues] at the bar, some on the floor – one was even stuck behind the cushion as a surprise for whoever was there next,’ one barmaid claimed.\nThe bar’s boss has since slammed the ‘absolutely disgraceful behaviour’ which is said to have unfolded on Thursday night.\nManager Rachael Frame said: ‘I’ve never known anything like it in my time working in the bar trade.\nAdvertisement\nAdvertisement\n‘The closest thing to this was the time a sanitary item was put on the floor.’\nTiger Hornsby bar in Newcastle (Picture: NCJ Media)\nHowever, the difference in this case is that staff believe the alleged act to be malicious.\nAccording to workers, two women arrived at the upmarket bar at around 8pm and ordered drinks to watch live music.\n‘They didn’t seem too bad at first,’ the barmaid said. ‘But they got over-excited.’\nOne girl approached the bar to buy shots but was refused for being too drunk, the unnamed worker said.\nThe second girl was also refused service out of fear she would buy more for her friend.\nAt this point the suspected offender is said to have disappeared into the toilets for some time.\nThe bar worker said: ‘I thought to myself, “She has been in the toilet for a while now.”‘\nStaff believe she then scattered the used toilet roll around.\n‘They weren’t caught, unfortunately,’ admitted manager Rachael.\n‘My staff on duty were females and didn’t feel they were able to approach the women when they witnessed them doing what they did.\n‘So they let them leave and then cleaned up the mess.’\nCCTV images have now been released in a bid to track them down.\nOne of the women is described as being tall with crimped hair, while her friend – the one staff suspect carried out the act – is described as being shorter and skinner.\nNorthumbria Police says it hasn’t received a report of the incident.\nStaff say the pair are now barred.\nMORE: Greggs worker puts up fight against man trying to steel food\nMORE: Sister saves brother’s life from beyond the grave", "Photo: Premium Times\nDrugs (file photo).\nBreast cancer patients says the cost of some medication is so steep many with the illness simply cannot afford to treat it and this leaves them without the drugs and facing death sentences.\nLilian Dube, a multimedia producer for MultiChoice in Johannesburg, was found to be HER2 positive in 2015.\nHER2 is a specific type of breast cancer.\n\"But I thank God I am still employed and still have a home. It hurts me so much to think that there are people who don't even work because it means the drug is unaffordable and hence their days are numbered,\" Dube told News24 on Wednesday.\nPatients with HER2 have to cough up roughly R500 000 for drug treatment alone, while patients who rely on public healthcare may never be diagnosed.\nPrice fixing probe\nThe Competition Commission on Tuesday revealed it will be investigating three of the largest pharmaceutical companies in South Africa for allegedly fixing the price of certain cancer drugs.\nHER2 is a specific gene responsible for breast growth. In cancerous scenarios, the gene doesn't work correctly and makes too many copies of itself which causes breast cells to grow and divide in an uncontrolled manner.\nIt is estimated that 25% of cancer patients are HER2+.\nHER2+ patients, speaking to News24 on Wednesday, said due to the alleged price fixing of the Herceptin drug, specifically used in the treatment of HER2, it was effectively unaffordable in the private sector and basically unavailable in the public sector.\nHerceptin is also commercially known as Trastuzumab.\n'People have died'\nDube's medical aid covered only three of the 19 Herceptin treatments she required.\n\"Can you imagine, to put money first before life - people have died because of this [price fixing]. Can you believe that for this type of cancer there's a cure for, but it can't be used because these companies keep it unaffordable,\" Dube said.\nClaudette Moore, a public hospital patient who only found out she was HER2+ because she could afford a private blood test, said she feels like her days are numbered because she is unable to afford the Herceptin drug.\n\"It's heart breaking, it feels like you are worth nothing. It feels like there are things in this country worth more than you are - why does the state not care about me? What makes other people better?\" she asked.\nMoore, now in remission, was diagnosed with HER2 in 2015.\n'Red devil' treatment\nAs a public health patient, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, formerly known as the Johannesburg General Hospital, refused to supply her with Herceptin and she was treated with a heavy mix of chemo called the \"red devil\" because of its colouring.\n\"Who's to say that if I had access to Herceptin that my cancer could've been gone, if I was treated with the correct thing? In my case the cancer can come back any time. It is always in the back of my mind, there's a voice saying: 'listen here, you're living on borrowed time',\" she said.\nMoore and Dube are members of the Cancer Alliance, which advocates for a change in patent laws to make life-saving drugs such as Herceptin affordable to patients.\nThe association blames companies such as Roche Holding AG, which has a patent on Herceptin production in South Africa until 2020, for pushing up drug prices in the pursuit of corporate profit.\nRoche Holdings AG is one of the three companies under investigation by the Competition Commission.\nCancer Alliance coordinator Salomé Meyer told News24 that currently Kimberley Hospital is the only hospital in South Africa dispensing the Herceptin drug.\n'No one cares'\n\"My question is, when has it not been cost effective to save a person's life? To save a person's life is regarded as important enough when it's HIV, however if the same person gets HER2+ no one cares,\" she said.\nMeyer, who started with cancer advocacy after her best friend passed away from breast cancer more than 20 years ago, said public hospitals do not test for HER2+ as they are unable to administer Herceptin.\n\"It's not that they are not lying, they are just not disclosing the truth. The patient just doesn't know any better, that's the reality of where we are.\"\nMeanwhile, the head of Charlotte Maxeke Hospital's therapy committee, professor Guy Richards, confirmed that tests for HER2+ were not conducted because Herceptin is unavailable.\n\"No, the tests weren't completed because the drug was unavailable,\" he said.\nRichards, who is also the academic head for critical care at the University of Witwatersrand, however said that Herceptin is not primarily used as a HER2+ cure.\n\"It is not going to save people, it [only] results in a prolongation in a small group of patients,\" Richards told News24.\nDrug trial and 'no notification' of probe\nHe said the state has decided to roll out Herceptin to a small number of patients in trial centres starting in July.\nIn written answers, Roche Holdings AG said they have received no formal notification from the Competition Commission about its investigation.\n\"In case we receive a formal notification, we will be cooperating fully with the authorities, will provide all required information and will respond to the allegations,\" spokesperson Aadila Fakier said.\nFakier did not respond to questions specifically asking whether price fixing occurred for the Herceptin drug.\nNews24", "Canada's Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan made headlines recently when she expressed frustration over the lack of gender parity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. In 1987, women occupied only 20 per cent of STEM positions – more than 30 years later that number has only inched up to 22 per cent. What has gone so abysmally wrong?\nA few years ago, I saw a child walking with a T-shirt that said, \"smart like daddy and pretty like mommy.\" To me, it is the ubiquitous sentiment expressed in that T-shirt that is partly the reason why women have lagged behind in STEM.\nOf course, I am not a sociologist — I am a biotissue engineer. My area of focus is on the development of human tissue from stem cells that can enhance drug testing and help discover better and more effective drugs and service models of disease. While I cannot imagine doing anything else, this incredibly rewarding field of practice has proven a challenge for women scientists, and the lack of government action on this issue has exacerbated the problem.\nWomen face greater barriers when pursuing, entering and advancing in STEM fields. Prescriptive gender norms that prevent women from even considering the viability of STEM careers persist today. Girls are still implicitly learning that math and sciences are \"too hard\" or \"not fun\" for them. Even though it is 2018, women still do most of the unpaid care work in our society — including the care of home and children. STEM careers can be extremely demanding — professional demands combined with caregiving responsibilities can be incredibly difficult to manage and often serve as barriers for women entering, and advancing, in STEM fields.\nGirls are still implicitly learning that math and sciences are \"too hard\" or \"not fun\" for them.\nWomen in positions of authority are evaluated more harshly and at times unfairly — more so than their male counterparts. I am often thinking about how to say certain things in a manner where I do not come across as too forceful, or in a manner where I am not perceived in a certain light, and these emotional considerations can be taxing after a while.\nSo STEM fields can be difficult for anyone but especially for women. Having said that, I believe anyone can become anything they wish to be on this planet given the right circumstances. There are too many women who did not enter STEM fields because they believed, or were led to believe, STEM fields were not appropriate for them. It is so sad to think there were generations of women who did not reach their full potential because they were told women could not, or should not, be scientists.\nI fundamentally disagree with this! Fields should not be gendered or racialized. Babies are born with unlimited potential; it is up to us as a society to support them into becoming adults that feel empowered to pursue any path. Ultimately, our society will be more productive and better if everyone is empowered to contribute to their maximum potential.\nTo this end, we need to cultivate greater diversity and interest in STEM fields, especially among young girls. There is a strong moral and economic imperative to do so. This requires creating more supportive environments for women researchers in STEM and giving them opportunities to balance competing professional and family demands. This also requires encouraging young girls to develop an interest in STEM fields by creating spaces where girls can explore math and science without judgement. Safe spaces are ones where girls can have their interests positively reinforced and where instructors validate the ideas of girls. I believe this is how we foster a new generation of women scientists in Canada.\nI am optimistic that with greater government awareness about this issue, and greater funding to take action, gaps in science will narrow. The recent announcement to increase 25% of STEM graduates in Ontario is a step in the right direction, but we need specific policies to encourage young women to pursue STEM fields and create research environments that retain and promote women scientists. Science is situated within a larger socio-political context and what we choose to invest in is a reflection of our values – and we should value women researchers and the contributions of women scientists.\nUltimately, STEM fields can be incredibly rewarding for any researcher, trainee, or student. We are applying sophisticated tools to solve some incredible problems and using our imaginations along the way. It is a privilege to be doing this work, and I firmly believe any person – woman, man, trans, black, white, queer or whatever you may identify as – would benefit from being in this field. Greater diversity will help enrich our approach to solving some of the world's most pressing problems and teach girls that, they too, can be smart like mommy.\nOn May 24, Dr. Radisic received the 2018 YWCA Toronto Women of Distinction Award. For more information about this fundraiser, please visit www.womenofdistinction.ca.\nAlso on HuffPost:", "Speaking last weekend to 3,000-plus Liberals attending the federal party convention in Halifax, Justin Trudeau gave the kick-off speech to the 2019 election campaign.\nThe Liberal leader announced: \"I deeply believe that we are and should be a progressive party.\"\nThe party expects to own the constituencies that will rally to the progressive theme: specifically women and youth; and, overall, the majority of the 60 per cent who bothered to vote in the last election.\nAnd, yes, the governing party can fairly claim that when it comes to smoking pot legally, welcoming 50,000 Syrian refugees, or approving medically assisted death, the Liberals have introduced progressive policy measures.\nImportantly, the Liberals introduced the more generous and tax-free Canada child benefit (CCB) to replace the taxable, Conservative, so-called universal child-care benefit. In 2018 families with a net income of less than $30,000 (as income rises, payments are reduced) will receive $6,400 per year for each child under the age of six and $5,400 per year for each child aged six to 17. This compares well to about $2,000 per year for each child under six and $720 per year for each child aged six through 17 under the Conservatives' sad attempt to pretend they had a child-care spending plan.\nIn Halifax the party adopted policy recommendations that include universal pharmacare, a guaranteed minimum income, an environmental bill of rights, and an employee pension protection strategy.\nHowever this does not mean the Liberal government is committed to implementing any of these measures. Indeed, in the recent parliamentary past, it has opposed some of these and ignored others.\nThe Liberals recently voted down a study of minimum income when the proposal was raised in parliamentary committee by NDP MP Guy Caron.\nThe governing party voted against an NDP proposal to bring in a universal pharmacare program.\nThe finance minister has pushed measures to reduce pension security for federally regulated employees, not protect pensions stolen by footloose corporations.\nBill 69, legislation Trudeau introduced on the environment, looks nothing like a citizen's bill of rights, and falls far short of what green activists expect from governments.\nAny self-respecting progressive favours a decent minimum wage and a living wage strategy. Neither of these feature on the Liberal Party policy wish list.\nNot only does Canada not create enough child-care spaces or provide affordable child care, in Halifax, the Liberals did not make a recommendation about addressing how parents are supposed to participate in the labour market without access to nationally funded child care.\nCanada is a country without a national social safety net: the Liberals removed it in 1995, in the same budget where they ended support for social rental housing.\nHomelessness is a national disgrace; the deepened crisis was not addressed in Halifax.\nProgressive policy starts with progressive taxation: the more you make, the more you pay. Instead, in Liberal-governed Canada, the top one per cent get their own tax break.\nStockholders watching the market rise can claim capital gains when they sell stock. They then pay taxes at half the rate paid by Canadians busting their gut everyday for a wage.\nAs economist Andrew Jackson explains, Canadians with income over $200,000 took over 85 per cent of this nearly $7-billion tax break last year.\nThat is $7 billion a year Canada could use for social spending. In Canada social spending represents 17 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. That is less than half of what France spends, according to the OECD.\nDespite featuring two labour leaders as convention speakers and no corporate chiefs, the Liberals continue to push the 1980s corporate agenda of free trade, privatization and de-regulation, while ignoring the negative impacts on equality, jobs and incomes for working people.\nIn 2019, the Liberals plan a re-run of their campaign of 2015. The focus will be on women voters. The Liberal leader will contrast his \"feminism\" and the CCB with the retro family values approach of the Conservatives.\nFor Trudeau, rallying his party in Halifax, the Conservatives may have changed leaders, but it is still the party of Stephen Harper. Over the next 18 months, expect Trudeau and his government to remind Canadians regularly why they voted the Harper Conservatives out of office.\nUnder current leader Andrew Scheer, the Canadian Conservative party wants to allow gun owners more leeway, discuss limiting access to abortion, and on climate change is a non-combatant.\nThe Trudeau Liberals will campaign against this type of social conservatism, and why not? Though by most measures the Liberals fail the test, compared to Conservatives, they are progressive.\nDuncan Cameron is president emeritus of rabble.ca and writes a weekly column on politics and current affairs.\nPMO Photo by Adam Scotti", "ARGUMENT PREVIEW\nWASHINGTON (CN) – Much like attorneys have argued for the baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, the operator of pregnancy clinics that oppose abortion will bring free-speech claims Tuesday to the U.S. Supreme Court.\nThe National Institute of Family and Life Advocates brought the case at issue in late 2015 after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law called the FACT Act.\nTargeting pregnancy centers that provide free information and limited medical services like ultrasounds, the law requires unlicensed facilities to inform women they are not licensed, and it requires certain disclosures by state-licensed facilities as well.\nIn addition to notifying all of their clients that California offers “free or low-cost” family-planning and abortion services, the licensed facilities must give a phone number of a social services office where women can learn more about their options.\nThere are exemptions to the notice requirement for licensed clinics, carving out any facility that offers contraception, abortion or several other services. Furthermore, the clinics can choose to provide the notice digitally, hang it on a sign in the waiting room or hand it out on a printed sheet during the visit.\nNIFLA, which operates both licensed and unlicensed facilities in California, took its case to the Supreme Court last year after the Ninth Circuit torpedoed its demand for an injunction.\nSiding with a federal judge who found that the law regulates conduct, not speech, the Ninth Circuit found that the “professional-speech” doctrine allowed it to apply a less rigorous standard of scrutiny to the case.\nExplaining the distinction over email, University of Wisconsin professor Howard Schweber noted that the same doctrine keeps a doctor who gives bad medical advice from hiding behind the First Amendment.\nA political science and law professor, Schweber added that the Supreme Court has never directly weighed in on the relatively young professional-speech doctrine.\nTuesday’s arguments in the NIFLA case fall over three months after the Supreme Court heard a similar pitch in the gay wedding cake case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.\nAs in that case, NIFLA argued in its brief to the Supreme Court that the law compels the clinics to speak in a way that violates their core beliefs.\n“The very reason they exist is to encourage and support women in choosing to give birth to their unborn children and to advocate a broader social message affirming the sanctity of human life,” NIFLA’s brief states. “Petitioners’ ideological speech is protected at the highest level by the First Amendment. But the act undermines this advocacy and forces petitioners to speak a message not only detrimental to their cause, but in direct conflict with their purpose and core convictions.”\nSaying the law “unquestionably” compels speech, is content-based and viewpoint-discriminatory, the nonprofit argues the court should give it the closest level of scrutiny. Confident the law will not survive such strict scrutiny, NILFA also argues the state has not presented a compelling interest to justify the law because it has alleged only “conjectural harms.”\nSchweber said if the court were to strike down the California law on the grounds that it compels speech, other groups could use a similar argument to challenge a host of other requirements with which they disagree.\n“As a thought experiment, for ‘abortion,’ try substituting ‘alternative treatments,’ ‘inexpensive generic drugs,’ or ‘subsidized insurance coverage,'” Schweber said in an email. “If the issue is compelled speech those examples are just as open to challenge.”\nCalifornia meanwhile has argued in its opposition brief that the law serves the compelling interest of ensuring women have reliable access to health care information. Without the notices, the state claims, many low-income women might not know all of their health care options until it is too late to use them.\n“This court’s compelled speech precedents do not bar the state from requiring such non-ideological statements of fact, delivered in a context featuring pervasive government mandated notices that patients do not attribute to any clinic or physician and in a manner which will not interfere with or burden any clinic’s own advocacy,” the brief states.\nWhile the state insists the law could survive even the closest look from the justices, the level of scrutiny the court chooses to apply could be a decisive factor in whether the law survives, Schweber said.\n“So I would say that unless strict scrutiny is applied, NIFLA is going to face an uphill battle,” Schweber said in an email.\nThe federal government has filed a friend of the court brief in support of neither party in the case, suggesting the court should uphold the law’s requirements for unlicensed facilities, while holding the notices for licensed facilities unconstitutional.\nThe government’s brief tells the justices that, while the unlicensed facility notice simply states factual information about a clinic, the notices for the licensed facilities advertise other facilities with missions with which NIFLA fundamentally disagrees.\nLike this: Like Loading...", "Community drug projects are reporting that misuse of tranquilliser drugs is widespread, while certain parts of Dublin say crack cocaine is now a “very significant” problem.\nA conference heard that abuse of both drugs was linked to wider issues of gang intimidation and violence.\nThe Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign hosted a conference yesterday with local projects on the situation regarding use of benzodiazepines (a group of tranquillisers), and crack cocaine.\nCitywide co-ordinator Anna Quigley said that a survey they conducted of 21 local drug projects found “benzodiazepine and tablet use was widespread”.\nShe said that while most of the projects were in Dublin, they included community groups in counties Waterford, Cork, Tipperary and Wicklow.\nShe said the main benzodiazepine drugs mentioned were Valium, Xanax (including Xanax bars) and Zimovane. Xanax bars are the highest dosage of the medication and come in long, thin pills that can be divided.\nBenzodiazepines are legally prescribed by GPs, but are often sold illicitly on the street.\nMs Quigley said counterfeit tablets were also in circulation and that no one knew what they contained or their strength.\nShe said benzos were often used by people using heroin and methadone, but that there was a “significant number” of women who had no history of opiate use presenting to services regarding the drug.\nShe said local projects also referred to ‘recreational’ use of benzos by young people, or usage that the young people considered to be recreational.\nShe said it was difficult to get these young people into services when they develop problems.\nMs Quigley said that the young people say they often take the tablets for a “strong stone”, or because of the strong effects of them.\nShe said one Traveller project reported that 80% of people were using benzos and that 40% were using Lyrica (pregablin), often prescribed as pain relief.\nOne women’s project said that 90% of their clients were on benzos.\nMs Quigley said that there were “very serious concerns” about the long-term implications for mental health from abusing benzos.\nShe said projects reported “huge difficulties” in developing care plans with state agencies, but said there were examples of good practice in some areas.\nMs Quigley said that crack cocaine was a “very significant” problem in a small number of areas in Dublin.\nShe said it tended to be taken with other drugs, such as methadone or alcohol, or combined with heroin (speedball).\nShe said the drug was linked to “rapid” effects on the user’s physical and mental health and that users were harder for projects to engage with, as they could be volatile. The drug was also linked with intimidation, violence and criminal activity.\nMs Quigley said that projects needed budgets and resources, as well as increased training for staff (including in dealing with mental health), improved inter-agency working and relationships with mental health and youth services.\nThe conference followed the publication of drug treatment data by the Health Research Board which found a 70% jump in cocaine cases (including an increase in crack cases) in the last four years and a general rise in benzodiazepine cases.", "Three more young women have faced court over their alleged involvement in supplying MDMA to festival goers at Midnight Mafia, with one of the teenagers appearing via video from behind bars.\nThirteen people, many of whom were young women, were caught allegedly trying to smuggle drugs into the dance party held at Sydney Olympic Park on May 5.\nTwo of the alleged drug dealers, Grace Poo, 22, and Mimi Chu, 19, giggled and played with their phones in Burwood Local court on Wednesday before their lawyer asked for their bail conditions to be changed and their matters were adjourned.\nGrace Poo, 22, pictured arriving at Burwood Local Court, giggled and played with her phone before being called up over drug charges\nMimi Chu, 19, pictured, appeared nervous before finding Poo in the crowd on Wednesday\nTrisha Ngyuen, pictured, faced the court after she was charged over allegedly trying to smuggle drugs 'inside her person' into the same dance party\nNguyen allegedly hid 200 MDMA capsules inside condoms 'in her person'\nAnother woman, Felicia Ya Leong, who is facing more serious charges, including 'commercial quantity supply' and 'knowingly take party in a criminal group assisting with crime', appeared in court by video link.\nShe is also charged with possessing prohibited drugs.\nThe 21-year-old has been behind bars since she was allegedly found with 5,493 capsules at the festival.\nShe was dressed in black and appeared sweaty and nervous during her brief appearances on Wednesday, but smiled when the magistrate announced she had been granted bail.\nPolice told the Daily Telegraph young women are being targeted by crime gangs and drug dealers.\nPoo, pictured, allegedly had 1,600 capsules of MDMA and some cocaine, while trying to enter the festival\nPoo, pictured with her lawyer leaving the court on Wednesday, has no prior drug charges - according to bail documents\n'I am very concerned about how many young girls are being lured into this,' Chief Supt Viera said.\n'They meet through friends, they think it's a quick profit being paid on the night and that will be the end of it, well it won't. We're asking their friends and family to question them before they go out.'\nPoo, a marketing and social media officer for a Sydney meditation centre, was dressed in a fur-trimmed hoodie and wore a distinctive ring through her nose during her appearance.\nShe faces drug charges after police allegedly found her with 1,600 capsules of MDMA and 1.3grams of cocaine 'with intent of gaining entry to the festival' on May 5.\nBoth Poo and Chu, pictured, share the same lawyer - who had their bail restrictions changed before adjourning both matters\nPoo, pictured again with her lawyer leaving the court, the woman has two prior stealing charged according to her bail documents\n'This is the accused's first drug charge, with only two previous stealing offences recorded,' court documents said, specifying the reason for bail.\nThe young woman's bail address has changed several times since she was allegedly caught with the drugs - this was altered again on Wednesday.\nChu, looked worried as she entered the court - but was soon at ease when joined by Poo, who appeared to be a friend.\nChu was before the court to have her bail conditions altered as well - she doesn't have to live at any specified address for ten days in July.\nThe teenager was charged with supplying 47 grams of MDMA at the festival.\nTrisha Nguyen hid her face in her friend's scarf when she appeared before the court in May\nThe women appear to be from different suburbs in Sydney, it is not known if or how they are linked\nIn May Trisha Nguyen, 19, appeared before the same court after she allegedly hid 200 MDMA capsules inside condoms 'in her person' and smuggled them into the festival.\nThe teenager looked stunned as she appeared before the court, accompanied by a friend who helped hide her face from cameras.\nYen Nhi Tina Pham, 18-year-old, was allegedly carrying 28.53 grams of MDMA in 181 capsules at the same event.\nThe young women were some of the thirteen people charged with drug supply at the dance party which was attended by more than 14,000 people.\nThe women appear to be from different suburbs in Sydney. It is not known if or how they are linked.", "Accusations of sex attacks on a massive scale by dozens of Arab men presumed to be refugees on New Year's Eve in Frankfurt \"are completely baseless\", German police have said.\nThe fake incident was reported by Germany's most-read newspaper, Bild on 6 February. The organisation, which has the highest newspaper circulation in Europe, presented the non-existent group as a \"rioting sex mob\".\nThe article in question has since been removed from Bild's website. It was largely based on an interview with Jan Mai, a well-known chef in Frankfurt, as well as the account of a 27-year-old woman named Irina.\nMai claimed his establishment was invaded by \"around 50 Arabs\" who \"drank our guests' drinks\", assaulted women and behaved in a \"highly aggressive\" manner.\nMeanwhile, Irina alleged that she was grabbed under her skirt and on her breasts. \"Their hands were everywhere,\" she falsely stated.\nThe pair's account was flatly rejected by Frankfurt police, who told the Frankfurter Rundschau: \"Interviews with alleged witnesses, guests and employees led to major doubts with the version of events that had been presented.\nThey added: \"One of the alleged victims was not even in Frankfurt at the time the allegations are said to have taken place.\"\nIndeed, local business owners were taken aback by the news when it got picked up by other outlets, saying no such sex attacks had taken place during the night in question. \"It was absolutely peaceful,\" one employee at a bar close to Mai's establishment told the Frankfurter Allgemeine.\nExplaining the true version of events, police said: \"Masses of refugees were not responsible for any sexual assaults in the Fressgass over New Year. The accusations are completely baseless.\"\nBoth Mai and Irina are now being investigated by prosecutors.\nBild, a conservative national tabloid, has taken a battering for the report. It has been \"the bête noire of German liberals since the 1960s, when it demonised student protesters in West Germany,\" Bloomberg reported in 2015.\nWhile Bild's online editor-in-chief, Julian Reichelt, promised that the report would have consequences, some people pointed out that the damage had already been done due to the international extent of the report's reach.\n\"We apologise for our own work. I'll shortly announce what Bild will do about it,\" Reichelt posted on Twitter.\nAccording to thelocal.de, one commentator responded: \"Ah, Bild is apologising. You should do it more often given how many of your articles are fakes.\" Another said: \"It's too late\".\nThe Daily Express newspaper in the UK reported on 8 February that a \"'MASS sex attack' by over 900 drunk refugees led to women being sexually harassed on New Year's Eve in Frankfurt\".\nIt went on to report that it took \"over a month for many of the victims to come forward and talk about the event\", which in reality, never happened.\nIn 2015, women in Cologne were subjected to a wave of sexual assaults on an \"unprecedented\" scale which left the local and international community aghast. Hundreds of sexual assaults were committed against women during New Year's Eve celebrations during that episode.", "LONDON — Disgraced celebrity publicist Max Clifford, a confidante to the stars who fell from grace amid Britain's investigation of past sexual abuse, died Sunday after collapsing in prison. He was 74.\nOnce one of the most powerful figures in British entertainment, Clifford was convicted in 2014 of eight counts of indecent assault stemming from attacks on teenagers dating back more than 40 years.\nHe was serving an 8-year prison sentence at Littlehey Prison in Cambridgeshire when he died, Britain's Ministry of Justice said.\nClifford was once as well known as the people he represented — the go-to guy for celebrities looking to limit the damage from drug problems, legal issues or declining popularity.\nPublicist Max Clifford talks to reporters as he leaves Southwark Crown Court on April 28,in London. Mr Clifford has been found guilty of eight indecent assaults on women and girls as young as 15 by a jury at Southwark Crown Court. Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images\nHis clients included TV mogul Simon Cowell and former Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed, as well as dozens of ordinary people who found themselves in the news vortex and sought to sell their stories to the press — a common practice in Britain.\nThe public relations guru was arrested in December 2012 amid allegations that he lured girls as young as 14 into sex by offering them acting roles. Clifford immediately swung into damage-control mode, vowing to clear his name of the charges, some of which stemmed from the 1970s and '80s.\n\"The allegations in respect of which I have been charged are completely false — very upsetting, very distressing, but completely false,\" he told reporters outside his home at the time. \"I have never indecently assaulted anyone in my life, and this will become clear during the course of the proceedings.\"\nClifford was arrested as part of an investigation called Operation Yewtree, a wide-ranging inquiry into allegations of past offenses spurred by the case of Jimmy Savile, a well-known British entertainer accused of abusing hundreds of girls and women. He died in 2011.\nThe Savile case shocked Britain and embarrassed his employer, the BBC, which was accused of killing an investigation into Savile's alleged crimes.\nThe resulting upheaval is comparable to the stream of sexual misconduct allegations leveled at American actors, politicians and media personalities following revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.\nBefore he was arrested, Clifford told The Associated Press that he was receiving calls from many celebrities and entertainers who were worried they would be caught up in the widening Savile investigation.\n\"They're phoning me and saying, 'Max, I'm worried that I'm going to be implicated,'\" Clifford said at the time. \"A lot of them can't remember what they did last week, never mind 30 or 40 years ago.\"\nClifford's daughter Louise told the Mail on Sunday that her father first collapsed on Thursday as he was trying to tidy his prison cell. He collapsed again the following day and was taken to a hospital, where suffered a heart attack.\nShe told the newspaper he had been in a \"bad way\" in a critical care unit.\n\"It was just too much,\" she said.", "Get Daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nThese 27 men and women are some of the most wanted criminals and suspected criminals in the UK – with four of them hailing from London.\nPolice want to speak to some of these fugitives in connection with multiple murders, while others are thought to be responsible for multi-million pound drug rings.\nAll of these 27 people are wanted by police in the UK - and all of them are listed on the Government’s National Crime Agency (NCA) website as some of the country’s most wanted men and women.\nSome are thought to be abroad, but others could still be right here in London and in other parts of the UK.\nMembers of the public have been warned not to approach them if they see them.\nSome have already been convicted while others are wanted so they can stand trial.\nA spokesman for the NCA said: “In an emergency, call 999. If you know the whereabouts of a wanted fugitive please contact the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously, via the online form or by calling 0800 555 111.\n“Crimestoppers guarantee your anonymity; no-one will ever know who you are, you will not have to give a statement to the police and you will never have to go to court.”\nHere are the 27, as reported in the Advertiser’s sister title, The Leicester Mercury, and details of their crimes and alleged crimes.\nChristakis Philippou\n(Image: NCA handout)\nSome 20,000 people were scammed by the conspiracies of Londoner Philippou and his co-defendants between 2004 and 2006.\nThe gang repeatedly set out to acquire, or sometimes to set up from scratch, travel agency businesses.\nThe travel agencies attracted customers by offering cut-price holidays so low that legitimate companies could not compete with them.\nBut in each case, the travel agency ceased to trade, leaving customers without a holiday.\nJohn Barton\n(Image: NCA handout)\nBarton, from London, was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in 2003 after being convicted in his absence for conspiring to import a commercial amount of heroin into the United Kingdom between 1999 and 2000.\nBarton, in his 60s, is believed to have links to Fuengirola in Spain.\nErsin Mustafa\n(Image: NCA handout)\nBetween 2006 to 2008, Mustafa is believed to have been involved in insider dealing with seven other people.\nWhile employed at the London branch of investment bank JP Morgan Cazenove, he allegedly obtained information about future acquisitions and mergers, which were provided to others who then traded using this information.\nOver a two-year period, the group made approximately £2.5m.\nIn July 2008 Mustafa was arrested by the City of London Police and then released on bail. It is believed he fled the UK around December 2009.\nDaniel Bowes\n(Image: NCA handout)\nBowes and a number of co-conspirators were believed to be involved in importation of cocaine from the Netherlands to the UK, between March 2011 and January 2012.\nLondoner Bowes was allegedly involved in the day-to-day running of the operation and provided a link between the head of the organised crime group, their contacts and the delivery drivers.\nMark Liscott\n(Image: NCA handout)\nLiscott, who is originally from Great Barr, Birmingham, was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment in January 2005 for supplying cannabis in the West Midlands area.\nHe served part of his sentence before he was released on licence - but he breached the terms of his licence and it’s believed he became involved in the distribution of drugs, working with organised crime groups in both Nottingham and London.\nLiscott, aged 50 to 55 years, has brown eyes and a surgical scar on his back.\nShazad Ghafoor\n(Image: NCA handout)\nGhafoor was arrested after he took a courtesy car from a dealership in Manchester in August 2013 using a driving licence in another person’s name.\nPolice spotted the car and after a chase he crashed in the Halifax area - his wife and two children, who were also in the car, suffered minor injuries.\nCash to the value of almost £100,000 was recovered and there were traces of heroin, cocaine and cannabis on the notes.\nHe was charged with fraud, possession of criminal property, dangerous driving and disqualified driving. Ghafoor was also charged with possession of cannabis with intent to supply after a vehicle was searched in Withington in November 2013 and cannabis worth £245,000 was found.\nIn May 2014 Ghafoor pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and was due to appear at court in February 2015 in relation to the other charges but failed to answer his bail and a warrant was issued for his arrest.\nIn addition, Ghafoor was charged with possession of cannabis with intent to supply in relation to a separate seizure of cannabis worth £24,000 that was found at a house on Kingsway Avenue, Burnage, in September 2014. He failed to answer his bail and another warrant was issued.\nChristopher More\n(Image: NCA handout)\nMore is wanted in connection with the murder of a man in Tabley, Cheshire, in June 2003.\nWith a number of accomplices, More is alleged to have travelled to a remote farmhouse where, after demands for money were refused, the five people inside were assaulted.\nOne man was beaten so badly that he died at the scene.\nHe is also wanted for the attempted murder of a second man and for the false imprisonment and assault of other victims present during the incident.\nA number of More’s suspected accomplices have been arrested in relation to the incident however More left the United Kingdom in June 2003 and is believed to have flown to Spain.\nIt is thought More, who also uses the surnames Guest and Moores, has links to Spain and Malta.\nDavid John Walley\n(Image: NCA handout)\nBetween November 2012 and January 2013 several deliveries were made to an address in Manchester.\nIn January 2013 one of the parcels was intercepted by the authorities and found to contain MDMA and cocaine - and it is believed Walley arranged the importation of the drugs.\nDuring a routine traffic stop check by Amsterdam Police in September 2014, Walley identified himself as another person and produced a passport that was later found to be false.\nWalley has a northern accent, an upper tooth is chipped and others are rotten or missing, plus he has a tattoo of the name Natalie in blue and a tattoo of Manchester City Football Club's emblem with a dragon and lion.\nMark Acklom\n(Image: NCA handout)\nWanted by Avon and Somerset Police on suspicion of fraud by false representation, Acklom allegedly made a number of false representations after starting a romantic relationship with a woman from Bath in January 2012.\nShe said Acklom, described as 5ft 10in tall, of medium build, and with dark brown hair and green eyes, first claimed to work in the banking world in Switzerland and was very wealthy, and then later went on to say he worked for an intelligence agency.\nThe NCA say the pair even discussed marriage - and after saying he had cash flow problems that were hindering renovation work at one of the properties he wanted them to live in, the woman gave him numerous loans totalling £850,000.\nBut Acklom did not own the property. He disappeared and she never received any of her money back, the NCA said.\nSarah Panitzke\n(Image: NCA handout)\nHigh up in a crime group involved in a VAT fraud, Panitzke controlled the bank accounts of many companies remotely via different IP addresses.\nShe travelled extensively to further the fraud to places including Dubai, Spain and Andorra and HMRC say she was responsible for laundering approximately £1bn.\nPanitzke, who is 170cm tall with blue eyes and speaks with a Yorkshire accent, absconded in May 2013 prior to the end of the trial and was convicted in her absence and sentenced to eight years in jail on August 22, 2013.\nEighteen members of the crime group received sentences totalling 135 years.\nJonathon Kelly\n(Image: NCA handout)\nKelly is still to serve nine years and 10 months’ jail time for a number of serious assaults.\nKelly, who the NCA says is extremely violent and poses a high risk to both police and members of the public, was convicted at various courts of a number of offences between 2002 and 2010. He received sentences in excess of 16 years, and in September 2013 he was released on licence but failed to adhere to conditions set.\nIn one of the most serious assaults Kelly stabbed and paralysed his victim using a machete.\nPolice Scotland say he is 180cm tall, of heavy build, with blue/grey eyes and short brown hair. He has Scottish accent and occasionally has a beard. Kelly also has scars to the left and right side of the face, on his arms and his right hand.\nShashi Dhar Sahnan\n(Image: NCA handout)\nSahnan is accused of being involved in the importation of controlled Class A drugs, namely heroin, into the United Kingdom.\nThe huge quantity of illicit substances, which were concealed in packaging surrounding air conditioning units, was seized by HM Revenue and Customs during a joint operation with Leicestershire Police in July 2007.\nCustoms officers found the drugs hidden in the struts of pallets upon which the machinery was being transported.\nSimon McGuffie\n(Image: NCA handout)\nMcGuffie, 41, is wanted by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (Titan) on suspicion of being a member of a Merseyside-based organised crime group involved in the large-scale supply of cocaine, heroin and cannabis across the North West.\nHe has a scarred right arm and distinctive two-inch scar to the right cheek.\nMark Quinn\n(Image: NCA handout)\nWanted by Police Scotland on suspicion of supplying amphetamines between August 2013 and April 2014, Quinn was allegedly involved in an organised crime group concerned in the production, transportation and distribution of the drug with a street value of over £11m.\nThe 52-year-old is described as 5ft 9in tall, of large build and as having short brown hair.\nDominic McInally\n(Image: NCA handout)\nMcInally is wanted by Merseyside Police on suspicion of conspiracy to supply cocaine.\nThe alleged leader of a drug trafficking gang that expected to bank £1.25m every month, members of the gang travelled to the border of France and Belgium to pick up six kilos of cocaine.\nThe package, secreted in a hidden compartment inside a Seat Leon car, was intercepted by police officers when they swooped on the gang near Crosby in January 2014 - but McInally evaded capture.\nFive members of the gang have received sentences totalling 48 years.\nJamie Acourt\n(Image: NCA handout)\nWanted by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of conspiracy to supply cannabis resin between January 2014 and February 2016, Acourt is believed to be a principal member of an organised crime group involved in the large-scale supply of the drug.\nHe is described as 173cm tall, and of athletic build, with a pale complexion, dark brown hair and brown eyes. He sometimes wears glasses.\nShane O’Brien\nIn October 2015 O’Brien was in the RE Bar in Field End Road, Eastcote, Hillingdon, with several friends. It is alleged that O’Brien approached 21-year-old Josh Hanson, from Kingsbury, who was with his girlfriend at the bar, removed an item from his coat pocket and plunged it into his neck.\nMr Hanson was pronounced dead at the scene.\nO’Brien is believed to be in Europe and has changed his appearance since the murder. He has long hair, a full beard and a tattoo of an owl holding a skull.\nHe has been using the Italian aliases Enzo Melloncelli and Enzo Machado.\nA reward of up to £50,000 is available for information leading to O’Brien’s arrest and prosecution.\nDavid Ungi\n(Image: NCA handout)\nIn July 2015, Ungi and two associates were in a vehicle on Banks Road in Garston, Liverpool, which police believe rammed a motorcycle being ridden by two men.\nA single shot from a 12-gauge shotgun was fired, killing one of the men, Garston teenager Vinny Waddington, and injuring the other.\nUngi is also alleged to be involved in the unlawful distribution of controlled drugs in the Liverpool area.\nMehmet Salih\n(Image: NCA handout)\nSalih is accused of being involved in a conspiracy to supply cocaine between December 2010 and November 2011.\nIt is believed he was contacted on a regular basis by an associate for the purposes of buying cocaine, delivering it and collecting payments.\nIn May 2011 Salih allegedly visited Lincolnshire to deliver a quantity of cocaine that was subsequently recovered by the police. He was arrested and was in possession of £20,000.\nSalih was released on bail to appear at a police station later in the year, but failed to attend.\nMichael Paul Moogan\n(Image: NCA handout)\nMoogan, from Liverpool, is believed to be linked to a Rotterdam café raided in 2013 as part of a series of coordinated strikes in the UK and the Netherlands.\nIt is suspected the café was being used as a front for an operations centre for international drug traffickers where they could meet for negotiations with cartels and for arranging the financing and transportation of huge quantities of drugs.\nIt is alleged that during 2013 Moogan was involved in a conspiracy to import cocaine into the UK.\nTimur Mehmet\n(Image: NCA handout)\nMehmet is wanted for his role in a conspiracy to cheat the public revenue by operating a complicated VAT fraud - which caused a loss to the UK of £25m.\nMehmet appeared in court in June 2007 and was told that failure to return for his trial in October 2007 could result in him being tried and sentenced in his absence.\nHe failed to attend and was subsequently found guilty - and was sentenced to eight years.\nOzgur Demir\n(Image: NCA handout)\nDemir is wanted in connection with conspiracy to supply 17.83kg of diamorphine.\nThree others have already been convicted in connection with this offence.\nDemir, aged 35 to 40, is a Turkish national.\nOsman Aydeniz\n(Image: NCA handout)\nCypriot Aydeniz is wanted in connection with a conspiracy to supply 17.83kg of diamorphine.\nThree others have already been convicted in connection with this offence.\nAydeniz, aged 35 to 40, is also wanted for conspiracy to commit theft and transferring criminal property.\nKevin Parle\n(Image: NCA handout)\nParle is wanted in connection with two murders in Liverpool.\nThese are the killings of 16-year-old Liam Kelly in 2004 and Lucy Hargreaves in 2005.\nParle is of stocky build, with ginger hair.\nHe is also known as Hemp.\nAllan Foster\n(Image: NCA handout)\nFoster is alleged to have murdered David \"Noddy\" Rice at the Marsden Bay Car Park in South Shields on May 24, 2006.\nFoster, in his 40s, is also wanted for two offences of conspiring to supply controlled drugs and also for the theft of a diamond ring.\nFoster has links to the Canary Islands and Majorca. He is also known to use the alias Shaun Michael Wilkinson.\nDerek Ferguson\n(Image: NCA handout)\nFerguson is sought in connection with the murder of Thomas Cameron on June 28, 2007 at the Auchinairn Tavern, Bishopbriggs near Glasgow.\nFerguson was born in Glasgow in 1964.\nHe has green/blue eyes and short balding brown/grey hair, and is around 160cm tall.\nDaniel Dugic\n(Image: NCA handout)\nDugic is suspected of being involved in a conspiracy to import 255 kilos of cocaine.\nA number of other individuals were convicted in June 2011 over the conspiracy which involved a small UK vessel meeting a commercial container ship in the English Channel from which the drugs were transferred.\nAlthough Serbian Dugic was not on board either vessel, he is alleged to have played a major part in organising the importation.", "NORRISTOWN: Bill Cosby's lawyers on Tuesday (Apr 24) urged a US jury to acquit the disgraced star of alleged sexual assault and save him from \"ruin,\" savaging the case against him in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.\nThe frail 80-year-old could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, then a Temple University employee, in January 2004.\nWearing an orange embroidered coat and sunglasses, Camille, Cosby's wife of more than half a century, on Tuesday made her first appearance at his retrial, embracing him tenderly and beaming before taking a seat.\n\"Mr Cosby must be acquitted of all counts. He must walk out of here free,\" said defence lawyer Tom Mesereau. \"He's a distinguished man. He made some mistakes for sure but he is no criminal.\"\nThe case has trashed the legacy of the actor once adored by millions as \"America's Dad\" for his role as lovable father and obstetrician Cliff Huxtable on the 1984-92 hit television series \"The Cosby Show.\"\nThe defence brands 45-year-old Constand a \"con artist\" who pursued a lonely, grieving father and falsely accused the star to bag a US$3.38 million civil settlement in 2006 to escape debt.\nAdvertisement\nAdvertisement\nProsecutors in Montgomery County brought five other women to testify that Cosby was a serial rapist and predator who preyed on much younger women who looked up to him by drugging and assaulting them.\nCosby claims he gave the Canadian an over-the-counter antihistamine to relieve stress and that relations were consensual.\n'PATHOLOGICAL LIAR'\nConstand says Cosby drugged and assaulted her after she went to his mansion to ask for advice about quitting her job as director of operations for the women's basketball team.\n\"You're dealing with a pathological liar, members of the jury, you are,\" said Mesereau, calling it \"very, very serious\" that an 80-year-old man was \"looking at absolute ruin. Absolute ruin.\"\n\"They're not inconsistencies, they're lies,\" said Mesereau, calling the 2006 civil settlement \"one of the biggest highway robberies of all time.\"\nIn a case with no physical evidence, which essentially boils down to she-said, he-said, Mesereau drilled into the detail of inconsistencies in Constand's testimony to police and in sworn statements.\nCosby's first trial in Norristown, a Philadelphia suburb, ended in a hung jury in June, with a sequestered panel hopelessly deadlocked after six days of testimony and 52 hours of deliberations.\nThis time they have more testimony to consider.\nLast time the defence brought just one witness. This time the defence star witness is a former Temple University employee who claimed that Constand spoke of wanting to set up a celebrity for cash.\nThey have presented phone and travel records to suggest that Cosby was not in Philadelphia to carry out the alleged assault in January 2004.\n'NOT SNOWFLAKES'\nThey brought an expert who said Constand's side-effects were consistent with neither the over-the-counter antihistamine nor Quaaludes, a 1970s party drug that Cosby admitted during a 2006 deposition that he had obtained with a view to having sex.\n\"If they can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, our highest legal standard, the case is over,\" said Mesereau, ending a two-hour closing argument begun by former federal prosecutor Kathleen Bliss.\nBliss besmirched Constand as \"not a good girl,\" who fooled around with \"a married man old enough to be her grandfather\" and delivered a stinging attack on the five accusers as fame-hungry opportunists.\nIn an astonishing personal assault on the most famous of the five, Bliss called Janice Dickinson an \"aged-out model\" who \"sounds as though she's slept with every single guy on the planet.\"\nThe defence also sought to neuter any influence that the cultural watershed of the #MeToo movement may exert on jurors.\n\"Mob rule is not due process,\" said Bliss. \"Just like sexual assault, the denigration of women is real,\" she added. But women are \"not snowflakes. We're not like delicate flowers.\"\n\"As men and women we reject gossip and speculation and false promises,\" she said. \"That's what makes for due process ... Never ever let anyone or anything shame you into a conviction.\"\nProsecutors initially declined to prosecute the case, but reopened it in 2015, arguing new evidence had come to light, while an avalanche of women came forward publicly to accuse the star of decades of assault.\nThey will deliver their closing arguments later on Tuesday before the case goes to the jury.", "Mario Batali groped and forcefully kissed three women at New Orleans events, according to a new report Wednesday (May 30) from Eater, which details allegations from several fans and former colleagues of the star chef. With the latest report, Batali has now been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 18 women through various news outlets and social media, Eater noted, and the allegations vary from inappropriate touching to drugging and sexually assaulting a woman.\nIn New Orleans, Batali's alleged misconduct took place at food industry events, including an after-party for Emeril Lagasse's Carnival du Vin and twice at or following events for Bal Masque, a posh benefit for Donald Link's foundation.\nSara Watson ran into Batali at The Saint Bar & Lounge after the Link Stryjewski Foundation's Bal Masque in January 2016, Eater's Irene Plagianos reported. Watson considered herself a fan of the chef and asked for a photo. Batali \"allegedly made a comment about wanting to give her oral sex, tongued her face and ear, and put his hands 'all over my butt, thighs, the whole vaginal area,'\" Eater reported Watson saying.\nThe New Orleans Police Department confirmed Wednesday it did not respond to a sexual assault report at The Saint after the date of the Bal Masque in 2016. Police did not immediately have information about whether Batali was or is under investigation for any other New Orleans incident.\nAnother woman, Rebecca Marshall, said she was at a Link Stryjewski Foundation event the following January when she, too, requested a photo with the chef. Batali kissed her on the cheek and Marshall said he \"stuck his tongue in my mouth,\" according to Eater. Photos of the encounter were published on Eater's website with the report.\nWithin hours of the first reports of allegations of sexual misconduct against Batali in December, the Link Stryjewski Foundation replaced Batali as its featured chef for its 2018 event. He had previously cooked two private dinners for the event.\nJenny McCoy, a pastry chef who has worked with both Lagasse and John Besh, who stepped down from his company in in October in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations, prepared food for a Carnival du Vin event in 2007. She previously told Eater in an anonymous report that Batali rubbed her breasts after wine was spilled on her chest. She added her name to the report because of the number of women speaking out with stories of Batali's alleged misconduct.\n\"These men, men like Batali, who are powerful and delusional, won't back down, obviously,\" she told Eater. \"So we need to keep using our voices, women and men, to make a real change, a real cultural shift — and no longer tolerate this behavior.\"\nRead the full report from Eater.", "Bill Cosby's lawyers Tuesday urged a US jury to acquit the disgraced star of alleged sexual assault and save him from \"ruin,\" savaging the case against him in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.\nThe frail 80-year-old could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, then a Temple University employee, in January 2004.\nWearing an orange embroidered coat and sunglasses, Camille, Cosby's wife of more than half a century, on Tuesday made her first appearance at his retrial, embracing him tenderly and beaming before taking a seat.\n\"Mr. Cosby must be acquitted of all counts. He must walk out of here free,\" said defense lawyer Tom Mesereau. \"He's a distinguished man. He made some mistakes for sure but he is no criminal.\"\nCamille Cosby, center, walks to the courtroom in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for closing arguments in her husband Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial Jessica GRIFFIN, POOL/AFP\nThe case has trashed the legacy of the actor once adored by millions as \"America's Dad\" for his role as lovable father and obstetrician Cliff Huxtable on the 1984-92 hit television series \"The Cosby Show.\"\nThe defense brands 45-year-old Constand a \"con artist\" who pursued a lonely, grieving father and falsely accused the star to bag a $3.38 million civil settlement in 2006 to escape debt.\nProsecutors in Montgomery County brought five other women to testify that Cosby was a serial rapist and predator who preyed on much younger women who looked up to him by drugging and assaulting them.\nCosby claims he gave the Canadian an over-the-counter antihistamine to relieve stress and that relations were consensual.\n- 'Pathological liar' -\nConstand says Cosby drugged and assaulted her after she went to his mansion to ask for advice about quitting her job as director of operations for the women's basketball team.\n\"You're dealing with a pathological liar, members of the jury, you are,\" said Mesereau, calling it \"very, very serious\" that an 80-year-old man was \"looking at absolute ruin. Absolute ruin.\"\n\"They're not inconsistencies, they're lies,\" said Mesereau, calling the 2006 civil settlement \"one of the biggest highway robberies of all time.\"\nActor and comedian Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, arrive for the closing arguments in the retrial of his sexual assault case in Norristown, Pennsylvania DOMINICK REUTER, AFP\nIn a case with no physical evidence, which essentially boils down to she-said, he-said, Mesereau drilled into the detail of inconsistencies in Constand's testimony to police and in sworn statements.\nCosby's first trial in Norristown, a Philadelphia suburb, ended in a hung jury in June, with a sequestered panel hopelessly deadlocked after six days of testimony and 52 hours of deliberations.\nThis time they have more testimony to consider.\nLast time the defense brought just one witness. This time the defense star witness is a former Temple University employee who claimed that Constand spoke of wanting to set up a celebrity for cash.\nThey have presented phone and travel records to suggest that Cosby was not in Philadelphia to carry out the alleged assault in January 2004.\n- 'Not snowflakes' -\nThey brought an expert who said Constand's side-effects were consistent with neither the over-the-counter antihistamine nor Quaaludes, a 1970s party drug that Cosby admitted during a 2006 deposition that he had obtained with a view to having sex.\n\"If they can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, our highest legal standard, the case is over,\" said Mesereau, ending a two-hour closing argument begun by former federal prosecutor Kathleen Bliss.\nTom Mesereau, center, attorney for Bill Cosby, arrives at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for final arguments in the sexual assault trial of the actor and comedian Jessica GRIFFIN, POOL/AFP\nBliss besmirched Constand as \"not a good girl,\" who fooled around with \"a married man old enough to be her grandfather\" and delivered a stinging attack on the five accusers as fame-hungry opportunists.\nIn an astonishing personal assault on the most famous of the five, Bliss called Janice Dickinson an \"aged-out model\" who \"sounds as though she's slept with every single guy on the planet.\"\nThe defense also sought to neuter any influence that the cultural watershed of the #MeToo movement may exert on jurors.\n\"Mob rule is not due process,\" said Bliss. \"Just like sexual assault, the denigration of women is real,\" she added. But women are \"not snowflakes. We're not like delicate flowers.\"\n\"As men and women we reject gossip and speculation and false promises,\" she said. \"That's what makes for due process... Never ever let anyone or anything shame you into a conviction.\"\nProsecutors initially declined to prosecute the case, but reopened it in 2015, arguing new evidence had come to light, while an avalanche of women came forward publicly to accuse the star of decades of assault.\nThey will deliver their closing arguments later Tuesday before the case goes to the jury.", "The L'Arche community in Halifax has opened one of the first Snoezelen rooms in Nova Scotia, designed to bring a calming respite for people with disabilities.\nLike the Danish idea of hygge, which caught on last year, snoezelen comes from Europe. Depending on the translation, the Dutch word means sniffing and dozing, or seeking relaxation.\nTricia Scott is the home's co-ordinator for L'Arche Halifax, a community where caregivers live with people who have intellectual, and often physical, disabilities.\nShe says the multi-sensory room creates a similar experience to flotation tanks or meditation by using bubble tubes, lights, music, aromatherapy and projections of night skies or forest walks.\nAppreciating every moment\n\"It's really just an opportunity to use all of your senses in a way that helps your entire being to relax into something that is not normal in today's world,\" she says. \"We're just so hectic and busy, and always going. This gives people a chance to really appreciate every moment they have.\"\nShaun Moulton gazes into a reflecting light display at L'Arche Halifax. (CBC)\nShaun Moulton loves the big comfy chair in the corner of the room, which produces music he can feel in his body. \"It's more comfortable … than this chair,\" he says, indicating his wheelchair.\nOnce someone has slipped a sling under him, he can hoist himself over to that comfortable chair. Using buttons, he launches themes that tie together the music, lights and bubbles.\n\"There are all these accessibility options to make [it] possible for a person to come in here and be as independent as possible,\" Scott says.\nTricia Scott and Shaun Moulton chat before starting a session in the Snoezelen room. (CBC)\nThen, it's zen time.\n\"This is my favourite scene to hear,\" Moulton says as Greensleeves plays while the room shades green around a sunrise-inspired projection. A push of the button launches Vivaldi's Spring and a blooming landscape of reds and yellows.\n\"It makes me feel sleepy,\" Moulton says.\nThe converted bedroom off the main hall also has a big, soft mattress with a 30-kilogram blanket that gives a calming \"hug\" to people in distress.\nCalming karaoke, anyone?\nOne resident deals with intense anxiety that can cause him to lash out. He now spends 30 minutes in the room to start his day. Scott says he's found the peaceful feeling stays with him for hours.\nThe room can be set to a \"high energy\" atmosphere to match the wound-up moods people enter in, and then the room calms down, soothing the person as well. \"Or you can just have a good time — there's a karaoke version!\" Scott says.\nL'Arche started with a home-built relaxation room, but then got a chance to pitch the multi-sensory room to 100 Women Who Care in Halifax. Scott had five minutes to convince the philanthropists to help L'Arche create a high-tech Snoezelen room (Snoezelen is a leading company in creating the multi-sensory rooms). The women cut her a cheque on the spot.\n\"There's not been a lot of scientific evidence into how it helps or happens, but there is real evidence that it makes a difference to people,\" she says.\nIt's just for L'Arche members now, but they hope to open it to the wider community as a way to get to know their neighbours.\nThemed projections can take users on a guided journey. (CBC)\nRead more stories at CBC Nova Scotia", "(ABC News) — Three women who have previously accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct or harassment in the years prior to his election are calling for Congress to investigate the allegations against him following a week in which three U.S. senators and congressional representatives stepped down over similar claims.\nRachel Crooks, Jessica Leeds and Samantha Holvey appeared at a news conference Monday.\n“I ask that Congress put aside their party affiliations and investigate Mr. Trump’s history of sexual misconduct,” Crooks said.\nCrooks alleged that Trump “has escaped his past unscathed, but over a dozen women have come forward about his sexual misconduct, and we have video proof of him promoting such behavior,” referring to the Access Hollywood video from 2005.\n“In an objective setting, without question a person with this record would have entered the graveyard of political aspirations never to return. Yet, here we are with that man as president,” Crooks said.\nRelated Content: Haley: Trump’s accusers of sex misconduct should be heard\nTrump has denied allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct. He apologized last year for his comments recorded on the Access Hollywood video.\nAsked about the women’s claims Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders repeated the president’s denials and added that the White House felt the “allegations have been answered” through last year’s election since Trump was victorious even after the public was aware of the accusations.\nThe three women appeared earlier Monday on the NBC’s “Today” show, where host Megyn Kelly read a statement from the White House in response to the women’s allegations.\n“These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory,” the White House statement said. “The timing and absurdity of these false claims speaks volumes and the publicity tour that has begun only further confirms the political motives behind them.”\nCrooks first made her allegations in an article in The New York Times in October 2016. She said that in 2005 when she was a 22-year-old receptionist at a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, she encountered Mr. Trump outside an elevator in the building one morning.\nShe said she knew her company did business with Trump, so she introduced herself and they shook hands. But, she told the Times, Trump would not let go and began kissing her cheeks. Then, he “kissed me directly on the mouth,” she said.\n“I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” Crooks told the Times.\nCrooks said at the news conference Monday, “I was shocked. Devastated. It happened so fast.”\nLeeds, who also first went public in the Times article in October 2016, alleges that Trump groped her during the late 1970s while she was traveling first class on an airplane. Leeds was a traveling salesperson in her 30s at the time.\n“They served a meal, and after the meal was cleared, all of a sudden, he’s all over me – kissing and groping and groping and kissing,” Leeds said on the “Today” show.\nLeeds also told NBC today that three years after the alleged incident on the airplane, she moved to New York City and ran into Trump while she was working at a fundraiser gala. Leeds claims Trump recognized her as the woman on the plane and, using a profanity, “called me the worst name ever.”\nRelated Content: Mario Batali tripped up by sexual misconduct allegations\n“It was shocking. It was like a bucket of cold water being thrown over me,” Leeds said of the alleged interaction with the president.\nLeeds said in the NBC interview today that she chose not to tell anyone about the alleged incidents with Trump until he was running for president.\n“I wanted people to know what kind of person Trump really is,” Leeds said.\nHolvey, a former Miss USA pageant contestant, also went public with her allegations in October 2016 in an interview with CNN.\nHolvey was the 2006 Miss North Carolina in the pageant that year, she told CNN. During an event in New York City in the month before the pageant, Trump personally inspected each of the contestants, she alleged.\n“He would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people,” Holvey told CNN. “You know when a gross guy at the bar is checking you out? It’s that feeling.”\nOn Monday on the “Today” show, Holvey said that after going public with her story it “heartbreaking” to see Trump win the election.\n“We’re private citizens, and for us to put ourselves out there to try and show America who this man is and especially how he views women and for them to say ‘Meh, we don’t care.’ It hurt.” Holvey said.", "For political neophytes, getting the chance to work on a federal election campaign in Ottawa is something of a dream job.\nIt’s not glamorous work. They fill out forms. Answer phones. Monitor social media. Nevertheless, it gives young people access to the most important halls of power and allows them play a role in shaping the future of the country.\nIt also comes with a warning.\n“You were told to stay away from certain MPs. You were told to be careful about where you went with certain MPs, even myself as a young male staffer,” said Niagara West-Glanbrook Progressive Conservative MPP Sam Oosterhoff, who worked for the federal Conservatives during the 2015 election. “So, I can only imagine what that was like, and having those conversations with my female colleagues at the time, who expressed discomfort. And it was never a particular issue, it was always a general understanding that there was a toxic atmosphere in place sometimes that, in all parties.”\nOosterhoff,the youngest person to be elected to Queen’s Park, shared his experience of life in the political bubble of Parliament Hill with The Standard this week after the allegations of sexual misconduct precipitated the resignations of Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown and party president and former St. Catharines MP, Rick Dykstra.\nBrown resigned after CTV News reported sexual misconduct allegations made by two women against him.\nDykstra stepped down from the party a few days later just before MacLean’s Magazine published a story alleging he sexually assaulted a young woman in Ottawa.\nBoth men have denied the allegations against them.\nFederal Conservative leader Andrew Sheer has launched an internal investigation to determine why Dykstra was allowed to stand as a candidate for the party when the assault allegations were known and being debated by party leaders.\nOosterhoff, 21, did not say which MPs he was warned to stay away from and said he was never informed of a specific allegation about sexual assault.\nHowever, he said young staffers were keenly aware that it would be unwise to spend time with some politicians, particularly at night.\n“It’s a high-powered environment. There’s incredible expectations, very long work hours, alcohol flows freely in the evenings, at least it did federally,” he said. “And I think that that’s the type of environment where those types of behaviours can flourish unless there’s a change, and I think there is a change. I think, when I was there staffing, then younger staffers were saying this isn’t okay, this is unacceptable, and we’re not going to allow this type of situation.”\nOosterhoff said attitudes around sexual conduct sometimes break down along demographic lines: older, established politicians vs the younger generation.\n“What I talked about during my nomination already, back in 2016, is something that I think is really coming back to haunt some of these situations for the Old Boys club,” he said. “There’s a feeling in politics that people deserve to get certain things because of their status, whether they’ve been an MP for 10 years, or whether they have had an elected position for a while, or who they know.”\nOosterhoff said he is not painting all older, male politicians with the same brush, but said he believes that for some, acquiring positions of power allowed them to “take advantage of that position and use it for sexual harassment or sexual abuse. Because it was something that had always happened, it was an Old Boys club, this is what it meant to quote, unquote ‘have game’, or something like that, in some sort of twisted approach to masculinity.”\nOosterhoff, who said he was shocked by the allegations levelled against Brown and Dykstra and praised the bravery of the women who came forward, said political culture is changing because of the next wave of politicians\n“I think there’s a shift occurring in younger generations, such as mine, that understand the importance of equality, that understand the importance of dignity, and worth, and that see the need for men to hold themselves and to be held up to higher standards when it comes to their behaviour and when it comes to their treatment of women, and I’m very, very impressed by the number of women who have come forward with these allegations, which are serious, but are necessary to come forward with. I don’t think you can see meaningful change on these types of actions on these types of behaviours unless we have people that are willing to come forward and speak about their behaviour.”", "The average Brit consumes over 5,000 calories on Christmas Day, which would take the equivalent of two marathons to burn off.\nBut according to one fitness blogger, you can still enjoy a little festive indulgence without piling on the pounds.\nMother-of-five Simone Gately, 34, from Halifax, insists that with some careful planning - and a little cunning - it's possible to enjoy yourself without the dreaded festive bulge.\nOne of Simone's unorthodox tricks for avoiding over indulgence on Christmas day is to avoid clothes with elasticated or loose waistbands.\nSimone, who maintains her morning routine of a 5am run throughout the festive season, also encourages choosing 'outdoorsy' presents that the recipients will want to road-test immediately.\nSimone Gately, 34, from Halifax, North Yorkshire gets her family to run around outside on Christmas day to burn off calories\n'A fitted waistband will give you a benchmark of tightness. If the waistband fits in the morning, it should still fit by the evening,' said Simone.\n'It's a harsh wake-up call when you need to undo your top button to cram in another helping of roast potatoes or mince pies.'\nSimone is sharing her tips in the wake of a recent study by Forza Supplements, which found that the average person eats up to 5,241 calories on 25 December when snacks and alcohol are factored in - more than twice the recommended daily allowance for both men and women.\nGuests may not be too keen to spend their Christmas day running around outside with the children - especially after dinner - but fitness enthusiast Simone says there are subtle ways to twist their arm.\nSimone pictured with her children who she and her husband encourage to walk long distances daily to keep fit and healthy\nShe says that she buys presents like scooters, bikes, in-line skates that can be specifically used on Christmas day as a way to burn off calories\nSimone's tips for beating the festive bulge 1. Wear a fitted waistband 2 . Buy your guests outdoors-y presents 3. Swap TV for a treasure hunt 4. Play indoor sports on a virtual console\n'You can increase the chances of getting guests outside in your favour by buying gifts that are just begging to be road-tested,' she says.\nShe buys her children toys like bikes, scooters, in-line skates, footballs and frisbees to encourage them to keep active.\nWhile for many families across the country the after-dinner activity is often snuggling up and watching a festive film, Simone's tradition is to get all five children outside for her treasure hunt.\nShe says: 'I distract the children from the exercise element by taking them to a local park or trail and ensure plenty of running and raised heart rates.'\nShe takes her troupe of children to the local park for a treasure hunt in order to get them to run around\nShe wants to be a role model to other mums who are looking to shift baby weight\nIf the idea of leaving the comfort of your home is too much like hard work, Simone suggests encouraging the family to take part in an indoor game - like a virtual console where you can play virtual tennis with the family.\nThis should always be done after dinner according to Simone, as post-prandial exercise attenuates the glycaemic effect of food - minimising blood sugar spikes and dips and reducing the likelihood of further snacking later on.\nDuring the festive season, the busy mother typically starts her daily routine at 5am with a gym session, followed by a dog walk or hike, and even uses her children as weights for squats and press ups.\nSimone, who has more than 50,000 Instagram followers, claims her impressive physique and fitness regime does not rule her life and says she is on a mission to show other women that exercise doesn't have to be hard work.", "It was Saturday afternoon, and Abigail Spanberger was in a busy hallway at the Chesterfield County Public Library in Midlothian, Va., minutes away from training a room of about 40 campaign volunteers. She seemed ready for a quick interview, but then abruptly called out to her campaign manager.\n\"Hey Dana, Eileen Davis is about to come through. Can you head her off at the pass so she doesn't interrupt the — \"\nShe cut herself off and turned to me.\n\"That's my mother,\" Spanberger laughed.\nHer mom is volunteering for her campaign?\n\"Evidently.\"\nSpanberger didn't know she was coming?\n\"I just saw her walking. I did not know she was coming. But all her friends are in this county, so.\"\nDemocratic women (even those who don't have a daughter running for Congress) are amped up for 2018. It's visible in Spanberger's volunteers, about two-thirds of whom are women, and in this race's candidates as well.\nSpanberger is one of three women Democrats, along with one man, vying for that party's nomination in this district. And that mini-wave in Virginia's 7th Congressional District is a microcosm of something happening nationwide.\nAt latest count, 431 women were running for or were likely to run for the House nationwide — 339 Democrats and 92 Republicans. At this point in 2016, there were fewer than half that: 212. Likewise, 50 women are running for or likely to run for Senate, compared to 25 at this point in 2016. Many have not officially filed for office yet — filing deadlines have not occurred yet in many states. But thus far, this year is on track to break records.\nA largely Democratic phenomenon\n\"We've never seen anything like this. Ever seen anything like this,\" said Stephanie Schriock president of Emily's List, which recruits and trains Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights.\nAt this point in the 2016 cycle, she said, around 920 women had reached out to Emily's List saying they were interested in running for office. At that time, that was a relatively high number. And it makes this year's total all the more eye-popping.\n\"To have over 30,000 women raise their hand, it's unprecedented.\" That figure comprises more than just 2018 candidates, however. Some of those women are interested in running in elections in future years. Others may end up working on campaigns.\nWhether it's House, Senate, or governor's races, that energy is largely one-sided, according to Deborah Walsh, director of the Center on American women and Politics at Rutgers University.\n\"I think it's really being driven on the Democratic side,\" she said. \"I think the energy and the excitement and the determination, not just to run but also in terms of who's going to show up to vote, right now, that's on the side of the Democrats.\"\nOne other way Virginia's 7th District parallels national political dynamics: the man they elected last time has energized Democratic women. Republican Dave Brat, who holds the seat, made headlines in January 2017, when a video captured his remarks to a town hall about women opposing his policies.\n\"And now, since Obamacare and these issues have come up, the women are in my grill no matter where I go,\" he said, to laughter from his constituents.\nThat comment upset plenty of Democrats. And yet, in Alli's view, Brat is exactly right.\n\"Women are in his grill. We need to be in his grill,\" she said. The main issue on which she disagrees with Brat is health care. Brat voted for the Republicans' American Health Care Act, which would have undone key parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.\nBrat told NPR that that he was simply using language that he had heard voters use against him. Regardless, the quote has fired up women in the district, according to Abigail Spanberger, another Democratic candidate in the district.\n\"It was a bit of a rallying call for many people, and a funny comment, a funny turn of phrase that he used,\" she said, \"but I think it is representative of the fact that there are a lot of people, many of them women, who started this past year, in 2017, really being vocal about what was important to them.\"\nDonald Trump, 'the gift that keeps on giving'\nOf course, it's not just Brat firing up women in the 7th District. They, like many women nationwide, are fired up by Donald Trump.\n\"At one time, when the election happened, and the women's march, we all just by telepathy just said, 'No we gotta fix this. We're gonna fix it.' And we are,\" said Helen Alli, the third female Democratic candidate running in the district.\nDonald Trump's election and inauguration kicked off a nationwide movement among Democratic women. Women took to the streets by the millions in January 2017, bearing protest signs and wearing \"pussy hats,\" in reference to the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about sexual assault.\nAnd since his election, Trump has continued to dump gasoline on the already-roaring fire of Democratic women's enthusiasm, according to Rutgers' Walsh.\n\"I've often thought that if you were an organizer out there trying to organize what is called the resistance or the women organizing the women who are thinking about running,\" Walsh said, \"Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of motivation to stay engaged and stay involved and not lose your enthusiasm.\"\nEverything from policies on health care and immigration to scandals like former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter's resignation after allegations against him of domestic abuse were revealed, all continually combine to keep Democratic women energized, she said.\n'Conservatives are just not included. We're not invited.'\nDemocrats aren't the only ones having a big year when it comes to recruitment. Republican woman likewise have seen a surge in candidates, even if it isn't quite as eye-popping of a surge as Democrats' numbers. Twenty-one Republican women are running for Senate this year, along with 92 for the House, and 31 for governorships. In all those cases, that's more than in any year at this point since at least 2002, according to figures from Rutgers University.\nAccording to Missy Shorey, executive director of Maggie's List, which promotes and trains Republican women candidates, Republican women are excluded from many conversations about gender politics in the U.S. today.\n\"For so many of those marches, conservatives are just not included. We're not invited,\" she said. \"In fact, we're disinvited sometimes. That's fine, if that's the way the left wants [us] to be treated. But ignore us at your own peril.\"\nDespite the Democratic wave, Shorey is optimistic about November. She says Republicans are seeing increased energy as well, though it's different. And Shorey thinks some voters will perceive the newly galvanized Democratic women as too angry.\n\"I think when you see on the left the whole concept of 'the avengers,' I would argue that the avenger is an angry offering that in many areas will be rejected,\" Shorey said.\nOn top of that, she thinks high-profile sexual misconduct allegations against men in Washington will turn voters toward women candidates as a practical matter. She talks about a conversation she had recently with one Republican woman candidate.\n\"She said, I have more men coming up to me saying, 'I'm going to vote for you, because I am sick of the way these men have been behaving,'\" Shorey said.\nBut then, the sexual misconduct allegations against the president himself, by more than a dozen women, are a major factor pushing Democratic women to run for office.\nFor Emily's List's Schriock, that wave is a silver lining of Donald Trump's election...but, in her mind, it's cold comfort.\n\"It is not worth, it was not worth it. I would have taken our 920 who wanted to run [in 2016] to have a different president. I would have taken that.\"\nVoting on party, not gender\nAn influx of women candidates doesn't necessarily mean more women will be inspired to vote for those candidates. In general, political scientists say, people vote based on party far more than they vote based on gender.\nFor Breanne Woodson, a voter from Cumberland County, Virginia, that's definitely the case.\n\"Since I've been 18, I've never voted Republican. I probably never will,\" Woodson said.\nWoodson met Alli while the candidate was campaigning at a salon in Henrico, Virginia. Woodson said she wasn't sure who she might vote for in a primary election. But in the general election, party would mean more than a candidate being a woman.\n\"I don't really care about their gender, as long as they're a decent person and I know they're going to do what they're supposed to do,\" she said.\nThat said, there are some voters who do care about gender to some degree. One is Zahra Lakhani, owner of the salon Alli visited. While Lakhani declined to give her political party, she said she was happy to let a woman candidate like Alli come and campaign at her salon.\n\"Only a woman can understand a woman's challenges. And being a mother, being a daughter, a sister, a wife, divorced, single mom, business owner, leader in community as well, it's not just one thing that you do,\" she said. \"So a woman is the only one who will understand another woman and their challenges.\"", "LONDON (AP) — Disgraced celebrity publicist Max Clifford, a confidant to the stars who fell from grace amid Britain’s investigation of past sexual abuse, died Sunday after collapsing in prison. He was 74.\nOnce one of the most powerful figures in British entertainment, Clifford was convicted in 2014 of eight counts of indecent assault stemming from attacks on teenagers dating back more than 40 years.\nHe was serving an 8-year prison sentence at Littlehey Prison in Cambridgeshire when he died, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said.\nClifford was once as well known as the people he represented — the go-to guy for celebrities looking to limit the damage from drug problems, legal issues or declining popularity.\nHis clients included TV mogul Simon Cowell and former Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed, as well as dozens of ordinary people who found themselves in the news vortex and sought to sell their stories to the press — a common practice in Britain.\nThe public relations guru was arrested in December 2012 amid allegations that he lured girls as young as 14 into sex by offering them acting roles. Clifford immediately swung into damage-control mode, vowing to clear his name of the charges, some of which stemmed from the 1970s and ’80s.\n“The allegations in respect of which I have been charged are completely false — very upsetting, very distressing, but completely false,” he told reporters outside his home at the time. “I have never indecently assaulted anyone in my life, and this will become clear during the course of the proceedings.”\nClifford was arrested as part of an investigation called Operation Yewtree, a wide-ranging inquiry into allegations of past offenses spurred by the case of Jimmy Savile, a well-known British entertainer accused of abusing hundreds of girls and women. He died in 2011.\nThe Savile case shocked Britain and embarrassed his employer, the BBC, which was accused of killing an investigation into Savile’s alleged crimes.\nThe resulting upheaval is comparable to the stream of sexual misconduct allegations leveled at American actors, politicians and media personalities following revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.\nBefore he was arrested, Clifford told The Associated Press that he was receiving calls from many celebrities and entertainers who were worried they would be caught up in the widening Savile investigation.\n“They’re phoning me and saying, ‘Max, I’m worried that I’m going to be implicated,’ ” Clifford said at the time. “A lot of them can’t remember what they did last week, never mind 30 or 40 years ago.”\nClifford’s daughter Louise told the Mail on Sunday that her father first collapsed on Thursday as he was trying to tidy his prison cell. He collapsed again the following day and was taken to a hospital, where suffered a heart attack.\nShe told the newspaper he had been in a “bad way” in a critical care unit.\n“It was just too much,” she said.\nCopyright © 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.", "Actor and comedian Bill Cosby arrives for the closing arguments in the retrial of his sexual assault case Norristown, Pennsylvania\nBill Cosby's lawyers Tuesday urged a US jury to acquit the disgraced star of alleged sexual assault and save him from \"ruin,\" savaging the case against him in the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.\nThe frail 80-year-old could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, then a Temple University employee, in January 2004.\nWearing an orange embroidered coat and sunglasses, Camille, Cosby's wife of more than half a century, on Tuesday made her first appearance at his retrial, embracing him tenderly and beaming before taking a seat.\n\"Mr. Cosby must be acquitted of all counts. He must walk out of here free,\" said defense lawyer Tom Mesereau. \"He's a distinguished man. He made some mistakes for sure but he is no criminal.\"\nCamille Cosby, center, walks to the courtroom in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for closing arguments in her husband Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial\nThe case has trashed the legacy of the actor once adored by millions as \"America's Dad\" for his role as lovable father and obstetrician Cliff Huxtable on the 1984-92 hit television series \"The Cosby Show.\"\nThe defense brands 45-year-old Constand a \"con artist\" who pursued a lonely, grieving father and falsely accused the star to bag a $3.38 million civil settlement in 2006 to escape debt.\nProsecutors in Montgomery County brought five other women to testify that Cosby was a serial rapist and predator who preyed on much younger women who looked up to him by drugging and assaulting them.\nCosby claims he gave the Canadian an over-the-counter antihistamine to relieve stress and that relations were consensual.\n- 'Pathological liar' -\nConstand says Cosby drugged and assaulted her after she went to his mansion to ask for advice about quitting her job as director of operations for the women's basketball team.\n\"You're dealing with a pathological liar, members of the jury, you are,\" said Mesereau, calling it \"very, very serious\" that an 80-year-old man was \"looking at absolute ruin. Absolute ruin.\"\n\"They're not inconsistencies, they're lies,\" said Mesereau, calling the 2006 civil settlement \"one of the biggest highway robberies of all time.\"\nActor and comedian Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, arrive for the closing arguments in the retrial of his sexual assault case in Norristown, Pennsylvania\nIn a case with no physical evidence, which essentially boils down to she-said, he-said, Mesereau drilled into the detail of inconsistencies in Constand's testimony to police and in sworn statements.\nCosby's first trial in Norristown, a Philadelphia suburb, ended in a hung jury in June, with a sequestered panel hopelessly deadlocked after six days of testimony and 52 hours of deliberations.\nThis time they have more testimony to consider.\nLast time the defense brought just one witness. This time the defense star witness is a former Temple University employee who claimed that Constand spoke of wanting to set up a celebrity for cash.\nThey have presented phone and travel records to suggest that Cosby was not in Philadelphia to carry out the alleged assault in January 2004.\n- 'Not snowflakes' -\nThey brought an expert who said Constand's side-effects were consistent with neither the over-the-counter antihistamine nor Quaaludes, a 1970s party drug that Cosby admitted during a 2006 deposition that he had obtained with a view to having sex.\n\"If they can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, our highest legal standard, the case is over,\" said Mesereau, ending a two-hour closing argument begun by former federal prosecutor Kathleen Bliss.\nTom Mesereau, center, attorney for Bill Cosby, arrives at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for final arguments in the sexual assault trial of the actor and comedian\nBliss besmirched Constand as \"not a good girl,\" who fooled around with \"a married man old enough to be her grandfather\" and delivered a stinging attack on the five accusers as fame-hungry opportunists.\nIn an astonishing personal assault on the most famous of the five, Bliss called Janice Dickinson an \"aged-out model\" who \"sounds as though she's slept with every single guy on the planet.\"\nThe defense also sought to neuter any influence that the cultural watershed of the #MeToo movement may exert on jurors.\n\"Mob rule is not due process,\" said Bliss. \"Just like sexual assault, the denigration of women is real,\" she added. But women are \"not snowflakes. We're not like delicate flowers.\"\n\"As men and women we reject gossip and speculation and false promises,\" she said. \"That's what makes for due process... Never ever let anyone or anything shame you into a conviction.\"\nProsecutors initially declined to prosecute the case, but reopened it in 2015, arguing new evidence had come to light, while an avalanche of women came forward publicly to accuse the star of decades of assault.\nThey will deliver their closing arguments later Tuesday before the case goes to the jury.", "It was meant to be a place that kept her safe; a mental health hospital whose purpose was to treat the most fragile.\nJulie Preston was exactly that: a childhood victim of sexual abuse, a woman who never overcame the horrors of her past.\nSHARE\nShare on Facebook SHARE\nShare on Twitter TWEET\nLink Karen Field, the guardian for Julie Preston who was repeatedly abused and sexually assaulted while a patient in a mental health unit. Photo: Justin McManus\nBut not long after she checked into the psychiatric unit of St Vincent's Hospital, Julie was raped by a male patient in a communal lounge. That attack came just days after she had been physically assaulted by another patient at the same facility.\nHer carer, Karen Field, describes it as a tipping point. About a year later, aged 30, Julie ended her life.\n\"It was a physical sexual assault, yet no police were called, and I wasn't notified until 9 or 10 the next morning,\" Ms Field recalls.\n\"She was hysterical. From that moment on, there was no reprieve. Her suicidality and mental health spiralled out of control. The very place that was supposed to keep her safe failed her on so many levels.\"\nAdvertisement\nSince this incident, St Vincent's says it has modified its acute unit to include gender-specific areas and locks on doors, and consistently reviews its practises to ensure patients are safer.\nBut the tragedy is emblematic of a broader problem in mental health which, according to patients and and those who work within the system, appears to be getting worse.\nUnacceptable risks and cover ups\nFairfax Media can reveal that vulnerable people seeking psychiatric treatment in state-run hospitals continue to face unacceptable rates of sexual assault and violence, mostly from other patients, amid accusations that some staff are trying to cover up the extent of the problem.\nInsiders, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have accused managers of failing to log information properly, of doctoring and downplaying reports, or of not immediately alerting police.\nAnd Victoria's chief psychiatrist, in a rare public interview, has conceded that the number of serious incidents that land on his desk continues to rise, with a fresh review of guidelines now under way into how allegations of sexual assault should be managed.\n\"I've certainly got more reports,\" Dr Neil Coventry told Fairfax Media. \"Whether that means there's actually been more instances, or that there's a stronger cultural awareness around reporting, I can't say. But my view is that one assault is too many. Every story has a tragedy behind it.\"\nThe tragedy here is that the issue of sexual safety in the mental health system is not new, yet years of appalling abuses have failed to force the kind of sweeping reform that is needed.\nIndeed, alarm bells were ringing years ago, when a 2013 survey by the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council found that 45 per cent of women treated in psychiatric hospitals had been sexually assaulted in state care. The study found more than two-thirds – 67 per cent – had been sexually harassed and 85 per cent reported feeling unsafe.\nFairfax Media has spoken to patients and their carers, mental health lawyers, researchers in the field, and state watchdogs – and all fear that too many patients are still being put at risk.\n\"The situation hasn't changed; if anything, I'd have to say we're worse off,\" says Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, the director of the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, who has spent decades researching women's mental health and advocating for single-sex wards.\n\"It's disgraceful.\"\n'It's disgraceful': Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, Director of Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research centre. Photo: Justin McManus Accidents waiting to happen\nWhile the department has refused to release figures showing the scale of sexual assaults – or indeed, any critical incident reports from the mental health system – an analysis of publicly available data paints a troubling picture.\nStatistics from Public Advocate Colleen Pearce, for instance, show that Community Visitors – the independent volunteers who visit psychiatric patients as part of unannounced spot-checks – have recorded rising sexual assault and violence allegations every year, from 27 in 2011-12 to 101 last year.\n\"(That) is dangerous by any standards,\" Ms Pearce says.\nThe Mental Health Complaints Commissioner received 1638 complaints last financial year covering a broad range of matters - 249 more complaints than the year before. The office won't say how many relate to sexual allegations, but the issue sparked enough concern in the past 12 months that it recently commissioned Professor Kulkarni to help with an inquiry into sexual safety in mental health wards.\nWhether it paves the way for much needed change is yet to be seen. Part of the problem, after all, is cultural: the tendency for women with severe mental disorders to be viewed as \"too unreliable\" when they make complaints; the inability of some staff to recognise inappropriate behaviour; and an expectation by some that sexual activity in psychiatric wards is unavoidable because acute, drugged-up patients can be \"disinhibited\" and highly sexualised.\nBut part of it, too, is that basic protocols simply aren't being followed. If this happened in general hospitals, there would likely be a public outcry.\nLast November, when a woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a male patient in a seclusion unit of Barwon Health's Swanston Centre, it didn't take long for the chief psychiatrist to discover a litany of \"serious deficiencies\" in the way seclusion areas had long been used. It was an accident waiting to happen: little oversight by staff and too much risk for patients.\nPublic Advocate Colleen Pearce. Photo: Supplied\nConcealing a crisis\nOr take St Vincent's Hospital, when Julie Preston was physically assaulted in the weeks before she was raped. Her carer, Karen Field says she'll never forget arriving at the ward one afternoon to find Julie with a black eye. Yet, it took another two attacks before a male patient was finally removed, she says.\n\"We know that most women who end up in the mental health system have a history of childhood or sexual abuse, or in some cases both, so you're often dealing with exceedingly high-risk, traumatised individuals,\" says Ms Field, who now works in social services. \"Julie was supposed to be in their care, but it felt like we were on a hiding to nothing.\"\nThe lack of transparency in reporting has also led to fears that some managers are trying to conceal a growing crisis. Insiders have told Fairfax Media of cases where serious assaults have been downplayed by hospital staff, or of incident reports either being heavily redacted, delayed, or not provided at all. In the push to drive change, some of these concerns have even been documented in annual reports tabled in parliament.\nAfter the Barwon Health assault last year, for instance, it took Community Visitors from the Public Advocate's office five months to receive an incident report, despite a departmental code of practice reinforcing their right to view such information.\nCloser to town, at the Banksia Ward of the Royal Children's Hospital, Community Visitors recently waited an hour to view incident reports that ultimately were not provided. This was despite an agreed protocol in place that was prompted by an earlier assault. In that case, a male teenager was bashed after he refused to perform a sex act on another male patient. Both were in a high dependency unit at the time, with no staff present.\nAs one insider told Fairfax Media: \"If you don't know what's going on you can't monitor the situation, and you can't make improvements.\"\nIce, crowding and a lack of staff\nSo why has it come to this, and what is the solution when the mental health system is a such a complex beast with finite resources?\nVictoria has 39 acute inpatient units, delivered through 18 designated hospital services, from Eastern Health and Monash Health in metropolitan Melbourne, to Albury Wodonga Health or the New Mildura Base Hospital in regional Victoria.\nThe trouble is, beds and staff are so thinly spread that in order to cope with demand, hospitals have reduced a patients' length of stay and increased the threshold at which they can be admitted to a ward. As a result, the average mental health patient is sicker both on admission and on discharge than they were five years ago.\nAdd to this a chronic lack of funding, the proliferation of ice, and the design of inpatient units – most of which are mixed-sex environments in which male patients tend to outnumber females – and it's not hard to see why the system is under so much strain.\nA number of improvements have been made in recent years: gender-sensitive training here; a women's-only lounge there. But most agree there's much more to do.\nSome, like Health and Community Services Union official Paul Healey are pushing for more staff, with the union claiming there are about 350 state-wide vacancies.\nOthers, like Professor Kulkarni, believe that one way to improve safety is to establish single-sex units, which is how psychiatric wards operated in Victoria until the 1960s. Such a shift took place in the UK in 2006, when the government adopted a strict policy of gender segregation following escalating assaults in inpatient units. Others, however, are not convinced that women's-only wards are the answer.\nConsensual sex?\n\"One of my concerns is that people had a very black and white view that we're only talking about vulnerable women being preyed on by aggressive males. Yes that happens, but this cuts across all ages and all genders, including people in the LGBTI community,\" says chief psychiatrist Neil Coventry.\n\"My view personally, is that units need to be safe for everybody coming in.\"\nCoventry cites a range of measures that could be applied instead: more secure rooms with swipe-card-only access; improved staff-to-patient ratios; better risk assessment when patients are admitted and staff are well aware of their history and trauma \"triggers\".\nHe's also conducting a review of safety guidelines to ensure that staff properly report alleged incidents, admitting that in the past, such disclosures have been \"patchy.\" The new guidelines will encourage hospitals to be more open with families \"so there's no sense of a cover-up\" and will emphasise the need to fully consider the long term effects of trauma when treating patients.\nImportantly, they will also seek to clarify an issue that causes ongoing confusion among some staff: that consensual sex between psychiatric patients is appropriate. Put simply, says Coventry, it's not and never can be.\n\"People who come into psychiatric units are very unwell. One must assume they don't have capacity to be making decisions like that, so there's no point thinking about consensual versus non-consensual,\" he says.\nIt's a complex problem, the chief psychiatrist admits, and the answers aren't easy.\n\"I think we're getting there, but I think we have quite a way to go, to be honest.\"\nDo you know more? Contact: ftomazin@fairfaxmedia.com.au", "Deaths from opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 1999. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that over 64,000 Americans died from a drug overdose in 2016 alone, and almost half (46%) of the American population has a family member or close friend with a current or past drug addiction according to Pew Research Center. Drug addiction is a difficult and multifaceted issue that requires a similar solution. While it seems that there will be no substantive federal action in the foreseeable future, Connecticut College students, New London residents and non-profit organizations are working to bring some relief to those recovering from addiction locally.\nThe effort comes following a disturbingly frequent pattern of overdose deaths in sober homes—private residences advertised to be safe, structured, and drug-free environments which individuals recovering from drug addiction can utilize to transition back to normal life. Because neither the Federal nor the State Government of Connecticut regulate these sober houses, landlords often take advantage of the fact that they can rent out properties to more people and make a larger profit without being held accountable to provide promised services. Due to provisions included in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Fair Housing Act (FHA)—which prevent housing discrimination—governments are prohibited from mandating, restricting or otherwise controlling where disabled individuals can live. Activists in the New London community that include the non-profit Community Speaks Out (CSO), Professor of English Blanche Boyd, and the Roosevelt Institute chapter at Connecticut College are working to create a voluntary registration program that would legally bar health care providers from recommending any non-certified sober homes.\nNot too long ago, the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) used to provide trainings and certification programs for sober houses, but since the organization lost state funding, CSO has taken over the task. Boyd is currently in the process of certifying two sober houses she owns, one in New London and one in New Haven. She decided to remodel the homes after a friend, who owns a sober house for men, suggested Boyd convert her properties into safe spaces for the desperately underserved population of recovering women.\n“Did you know that jail is often the first safe place women live?” Boyd asked incredulously, in the midst of explaining the transition vulnerable women face as they attempt to recreate a drug-free life. All people need a safe and structured environment to live after getting clean in order to prevent relapse, and that is why the sober houses that Boyd runs have strict rules meant to “mirror real life.” Unregulated sober houses leave susceptible men and women at the mercy of landlords, who can have a big impact on tenants’ recovery.\nThis semester, two students in the Roosevelt Institute club on campus got involved by writing a policy proposal that suggested the creation of a state-funded certification program and prevent health professionals from recommending residences not on that list. Roosevelt Institute is a nonprofit which encourages students across the country to design and submit policy proposals in order to “reimagine the rules that guide our social and economic realities.” The club on campus submits policy proposals every November for the national “10 Ideas” publication, which features 10 member proposals from each of the seven issue areas.\nThe issue of the opioid epidemic came to the attention of Allie Kyff ’18, assistant chair for Roosevelt and the lead on the proposal, after watching the documentary Heroin(e). The Netflix original covers the struggles of three women in West Virginia to battle the devastating opioid epidemic there. “It [really] struck a chord in me” said the senior, who cited the documentary as what sparked her interest in researching the issue further. Both Kyff and Sarah Rakin ’18, Roosevelt’s chair, collaborated on the proposal entitled “Responsible Recovery: Creating a Certification Incentive for Connecticut Sober Homes” which explores the logistics and plan of implementing a program in New London to regulate which sober homes are referred.\nDespite how far stigma surrounding the discussion of opioid addiction has come, society still has a long way to go. There are still those who advocate a tough love and a “just say no” approach that has long proven to fail to solve the problem. Having the strength to ask for help is difficult, so we, the community need to make it just that much easier by not vilifying those who need the most support. Boyd put it plainly: “What did I think was so bad about needing help?”", "Advocates say Nova Scotia is now one of the most difficult provinces in the country in which to access an abortion.\nDarrah Teitel, public affairs officer for Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, said the “extremely grim” situation may be unconstitutional.\nIt is the only province that requires a referral for a surgical abortion, and there are lengthy wait times for the time-sensitive procedure and no provincial coverage for medical abortions using pills.\nLianne Yoshida, medical co-director of the termination of pregnancy unit at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, said it is recognized as a problem.\nREAD MORE: Ontario women to get free access to abortion drug Mifegymiso\nShe said she doesn’t believe politics are behind the barriers, so much as that it is “the way it’s always been,” and officials are working on it.\nNova Scotia once had the region’s least restrictive abortion access, but both New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have changed their policies in the last three years.\nSome women interviewed for this story said they were referred for an abortion by a family doctor without delay, but others describe having to “jump through hoops” to get a referral. Wait times tended to be four to six weeks, a delay they described as “agonizing” and “cruel.”\nOne woman told The Canadian Press she had four appointments with her family doctor before she obtained a referral for an abortion. Her doctor quizzed her on her knowledge of the fetus and sent her to a psychologist before finally agreeing to refer her.\nAnother woman, Melanie Mackenzie, said it took her two months to obtain an abortion when she got pregnant five years ago.\nMackenzie was told there was a waiting period, and was sent for a battery of tests including blood work and an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion at nearly 12 weeks pregnant.\n“It was the worst two months of my life,” she said.\n“The whole thing felt like a punishment.”\nREAD MORE: Reproductive Justice NB opposes Right to Life return\nMackenzie recalled the nurse congratulating her on the pregnancy in front of other patients.\n“I never regretted my decision to have an abortion,” she said. “But it felt like that waiting period and all those tests were to shame me, to make me feel like an irresponsible slut, to punish me. It felt like it was a price I had to pay to obtain an abortion in a country where my right to choose is legally protected.”\nIn 2014, New Brunswick lifted the so-called two-doctor rule requiring two physicians to certify an abortion as medically necessary.\nAbortions became available in P.E.I. for the first time earlier this year. Women on the Island can call a toll-free number to make an appointment without the need for a referral.\nTeitel said the Nova Scotia rule requiring a physician’s referral is at odds with the Supreme Court’s 1988 R v. Morgentaler decision. Evidence presented during the trial showed that the unnecessary wait times involved in physician referrals were creating unsafe conditions for women, Teitel said.\n“These delays are still being forced on women in Nova Scotia, and there is no earthly reason why abortions cannot be granted upon self-referral, as in the rest of the country,” she said.\nNova Scotia does not appear to keep statistics on how long it takes women to obtain an abortion after a referral.\nThe QEII – where more than 85 per cent of the province’s abortions are performed – will only book appointments for women who are at least eight weeks pregnant.\nMeanwhile, a new method has emerged that would give Nova Scotia women another option in early pregnancy. Mifegymiso, an alternative to surgical abortion, is an abortion pill that can be used to terminate a pregnancy of up to 49 days.\nWATCH: Sexual health advocates push for ‘abortion pill’ coverage by Nova Scotia government\nAdvocates say the two-step process using the drugs mifepristone and misoprosto could increase access, provide women with more choices and shorten wait times.\nThe Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada says 171 physicians and pharmacists in Nova Scotia have either registered for or taken a training course on Mifegymiso.\nAlberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have said they would provide some coverage for the drug. A Health Department spokeswoman said the Nova Scotia government is looking at coverage for Mifegymiso, but a decision has not yet been made.\nMeanwhile, it’s unclear why women in Nova Scotia must obtain a referral.\nHealth spokeswoman Sarah Levy MacLeod confirmed that a referral and an ultrasound are required before an abortion can be booked, but she referred questions on the policy to the Nova Scotia Health Authority.\nThe health authority referred questions to the co-director of the termination of pregnancy unit – the same doctor, Lianne Yoshida, who called the need for a referral a barrier to access that needs to be addressed.", "Dr. Laura Goetzl looks at a fetal heartbeat in the Maternal-Fetal Center at TUH on Wednesday, Feb. 8. KAIT MOORE FOR THE TEMPLE NEWS\nTo combat the rising rates of opioid addiction in North Philadelphia and the lack of treatment facilities for pregnant women, doctors from Temple University Hospital are working to create a treatment program to address both issues at once.\nDr. Mary Morrison and Dr. Laura Goetzl are working together to ensure that pregnant women addicted to opioids get the best care possible. Goetzl and Morrison have teamed up with Dr. Laura Hart and the Wedge Recovery Center, a center for mental health and drug treatment, to create a caring environment for these women.\n“Prior to this initiative there was only one program that treated pregnant women and that was the [Maternal Addition Treatment, Education and Research] program at Jefferson,” Goetzl said. “Now we have three coordinated efforts across the city for women to turn to.”\nThe Temple/Wedge Opioid Treatment Program will provide 300 women each year with prenatal care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, pain management and drug testing.\nThe group received a state grant of $500,000.\n“Because of the opioid epidemic, the state is looking to expand treatment,” Morrison said. “We put together a lot of parts that haven’t worked together to make it easier for the pregnant women to move on.”\nThe women can go to the Wedge Recovery Center at 2009 Broad St. for an evaluation by TUH and Wedge doctors. They will then see Morrison for their personalized psychiatric routine and Hart for medical care.\nThe center will also take patients from West Philadelphia until another center opens there.\nThe women are part of a buprenorphine treatment plan, which tricks the brain into thinking it’s receiving opioids, so the withdrawal symptoms stay away, Goetz said. She added that it stabilizes the women emotionally and physically and steers them away from dangerous lifestyles that can be associated with drug addiction.\nIt can keep the baby stable as well, because addiction and withdrawal can hurt the baby or even cause it to be a stillborn, Goetz said.\nThere is also an anesthesiologist on duty to control pain during pregnancy, birth and postpartum, covering every aspect of the women’s health care.\n“Our main goal is to get them through pregnancy, but we try to get them into a medical home, and they continue for treatment with Wedge after pregnancy,” Goetz said.\nThe center will also try to keep families together and women safe by incorporating their families into treatment as well, so they can heal as a family, Goetz said.\n“It could be really important, because we’re seeing so many people die, with a pregnant woman you have another life at risk,” said Goetzl. “Pregnancy is a great window to approach women about opioid use, they’re usually highly motivated [to stay clean].”\nMegan Milligan can be reached at megan.milligan@temple.edu.", "Article Tools Font size – + Share This\nRep. Matt Cartwright addresses audience in Pittston during the unveiling of a stute of President John F. Kennedy sunday afternoon. cv10jfk3 DAVE SCHERBENCO/CITIZENS VOICE\nThe official word will soon be in: Health insurance is going to cost a lot more for Pennsylvanians this year. It’s because the Affordable Care Act is being dismantled.\nI support the law because it covers people with pre-existing conditions, does away with lifetime limits, ends discrimination against women and covers children through age 26. More important, with its Medicaid expansion, it covers up to 30 million Americans who were previously uninsured.\nBefore the law fully kicked in, we were losing hospitals in Northeast Pennsylvania. In 2012, we lost Marian Community Hospital in Carbondale and St. Catherine’s Hospital in Schuykill County because of uninsured care they had to provide. When local hospitals close, health care suffers, even for people with insurance.\nAfter failing to either repeal or replace the law, congressional Republicans took steps to sabotage it, obstructing enrollment, undermining the risk corridors that stabilize prices and going after the provision that required everyone to contribute to our health insurance system. Unfortunately, those efforts have been mercilessly effective.\nWe were warned about this. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that these actions would cause 13 million Americans to lose coverage and a 10 percent spike in premiums in insurance markets. This trend is now fully upon us, with the younger and healthier leaving exchanges while older Americans with more complicated health issues are stuck paying more for less. This is simple, well-predicted, health care economics.\nIt’s the same story for prescription drug prices. Because Congress fails to act, prescription drug costs continue to skyrocket, especially drugs most commonly prescribed for seniors. A congressional inquiry found prescription drug prices rising many times faster than inflation, with brand-name drugs going up by double digits in multiple years, sometimes by more than 100 percent in just five years. These excessive changes harm patients, as studies show that many Americans skip essential medications due to cost.\nWe can and should take a hard look at other reforms, like examining predictors of health outcomes that can assist patients in making healthy lifestyle choices, the use of telemedicine in patient care and improvements to the way medical records are shared among providers. In the area of prescription drug prices, we need to evaluate the way manufacturers set prices and the role of patent law in defining competition in the marketplace. We should return to the broadly recommended idea of allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices.\nAll of this would be helpful. Any of this would be progress. I have listened to health care providers, insurers, small business owners and community leaders and their message to Congress is clear: Roll up your sleeves and work together to find solutions. Affordable, comprehensive health care should never be out of reach for anyone because of politics. It is a matter of life and death and it’s time to do a much better job of moving us in a positive direction." ]

[ "Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe /OSCE/ will send 300 observers at the elections in Macedonia." ]

[ "Spain and Switzerland will send observers to the parliamentary elections in Ukraine due on October 28, 2012.", "Over 300 thousands observers across the country, as well as over 600 international experts will be monitoring the presidential elections in Russia on March 4th.", "Authorities said Friday that the Council of Europe would send observers to monitor the March 2 presidential election that Europe's main vote watchdog has already declined to attend, accusing Moscow of unreasonable restrictions.", "Many international and local organizations will monitor the snap parliamentary elections in Macedonia on Sunday, FOCUS News Agency's correspondent Gergana Tomova reported.", "The situation ahead of the elections in Macedonia is complex, Den Doncev, an economic analyst in Macedonia, said in an interview with FOCUS Radio.", "The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Saturday to send 300 observers to Syria to observe what can at best be called a fragile cease-fire.", "Skopje, Mar 22 Macedonia is holding Sunday its presidential and municipal elections, whose development is determinant in the effort of this former Yugoslav Republic to enter the European Union.", "Opposition Albanian parties in Macedonia will unite after the elections, writes Macedonian Dnevnik daily.", "In connection with local elections May 30, the CE observer mission will arrive in Georgia.", "Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has invited Canadian observers to monitor the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, slated for October 28, 2012.", "The European Union and OSCE will support democratic general elections in Armenia in 2012 and 2013.", "The main group of Ukrainian observers arrived in Georgia to watch presidential elections, which the country will have on January 5, 2008, the Foreign Ministry's press service informed the media.", "Polls have opened in Macedonia's snap election as voters decide which parties will best lead them closer to the EU and get Skopje's bid to join NATO back on track.", "Observation mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Turkic-speaking countries declared that Azerbaijani elections meet democratic and international standards.", "Today the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov, Bernard Fassier and Robert Bradtke are to visit the region, the Personal Representative of the OSCE CiO, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk stated.", "Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday that he had agreed to the presence of OSCE observers in a temporary security zone in Georgia, the two men said in a statement.", "Ukrainian Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Leonid Kozhara has called to step up cooperation in conflict resolution, strengthen peace and security in the OSCE region on the occasion of the Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation.", "Azerbaijan is dissatisfied with the work carried out by the OSCE Minsk group and seeks the OSCE Minsk group's breaking up via the OSCE secretariat in Baku, the RA FM Vardan Oskanian stated at the RA NA.", "The 56 member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe agreed Tuesday to send up to 100 additional monitors to Georgia at a special meeting of its Permanent Council in Vienna.", "EXPRESS/FILE Pakistan on Tuesday said that it would welcome foreign election observers after completion of due formalities.", "OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunya Miyatovich's planned visit to Azerbaijan has been postponed, OSCE Office in Baku told APA.", "``We will exert every effort the elections in Kyrgyzstan will be held in calm atmosphere,'' the President Roza Otunbayeva stated at the meeting with a delegation of deputies of the State Duma of Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation arrived in the republic as the CIS observers at the elections.", "Raffi Hovannisian met today with Heidi Tagliavini, head of the OSCE/ODIHR Observation Mission to Armenia.", "Turkey sent two observers to South Ossetia within the scope of a mission under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, The Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.", "Pakistan has welcomed foreign observers from different countries to show them impartiality in the forthcoming general elections scheduled for May 11.", "Macedonia and Kosovo will exchange ambassadors within three months, said Macedonian foreign ministers Antonio Milososki and his Kosovo counterpart Skender Hyseni on Friday at a joint press conference in Skopje.", "I am sure that most MEPs will support the quicker start of EU accession negotiations with Macedonia, MEP and rapporteur for Macedonia Erik Meijer said before the start of the European Cultural Dialog forum, Focus News Agency's correspondent in Skopje reported.", "An OSCE delegation led by Senior Border Issues Adviser Mr. Henry Bolton visits Ashgabat.", "In Kyrgyzstan, the representatives of Lustration people's movement intend within 3 months to collect 300,000 votes for conducting a referendum on declaring the parliamentary election results as invalid, the organization's deputy chairman Taalai Aidarov informed 24.kg news agency.", "Election Commission of Pakistan Secretary Kanwar Dilshad has said that observers are free to visit polling stations and offices of the returning officers to monitor polling process.", "The CIS observation mission published its second internal report on Armenian presidential elections.", "Macedonians went to the polls Sunday to vote in local elections held against a backdrop of ethnic tensions, amid an ongoing political crisis between the conservative government majority and opposition socialists." ]

[ "Viral hepatitis varies in severity from a disturbance that is practically symptomless to a grave disorder marked by jaundice, prostration, and all the features of hepatic insufficiency. Treatment, therefore, cannot be uniform. There is abundant evidence, however, from studies in the armed forces and elsewhere, indicating that the average case is a self-limited affair and will run a satisfactory course irrespective of the details of clinical management. In recent years there has been a tendency to overtreat rather than undertreat this disease. Studies of the natural course of hepatitis, acquired either through the oral or the parenteral route, indicate that there is an initial viremia with subsequent development of functional and cytological derangements of the hepatic parenchyma. The process usually leads to necrosis of the more severely affected cells. Adding to the primary disability is involvement of the cells lining the sinusoids, creating local disturbances of blood supply within the" ]

[ "Objective To analyze the disease spectrum in the department of infectious disease in order to prevent and control infectious disease. Methods The diseases were classified according to international classification of diseases (ICD-10) and analyzed for composition and tendency. Results A total of 2 756 patients were admitted to the department of infectious disease from 2006 to 2009. Tuberculosis was found to be the top-ranked disease. Fatality mainly appeared in Tuberculosis and Hepatitis B. Conclusion The main infectious diseases in Houjie Hospital of Dongguan City were Tuberculosis, Hepatitis B and Bacillary dysentery. It is of great importance to prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases.", "Controlled U.S. trials of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) for improvement of heart failure status are in progress. This article provides the current year 2000 status of all clinical trials in the United States evaluating CRT with and without an ICD.", "Currently,communicable diseases can rapidly spread worldwide with ease,and many countries increasingly attach great importance to communicable disease surveillance,especially to laboratory surveillance.PulseNet China is the National Molecular Subtyping Network for Bacterial Infectious Diseases in China,which playes a critical role in respond to bacterial infectious disease outbreaks in China,and it is a model network for communication and collaboration among partners involved in communicable disease surveillance.This paper describes the current status of PulseNet China,and meanwhile,discusses the current challenges and the potential improvements for pathogen surveillance in China,including the needs to construct or adjust the system for Chinese pathogen surveillance.", "The purpose of measuring antibiotic concentrations in serum or other fluids is to ensure that dosage is sufficient for adequate therapy, while avoiding excessive concentrations that may be associated with increased adverse reactions. The relationship of efficacy to serum concentrations of antibiotics is complex and difficult to study. The clinical response of a patient to a specific antibiotic depends on several factors besides the serum concentration, including the susceptibility of the infecting organism, site of infection, age and immunological status of the patient, presence of other diseases, and whether concomitant therapy is being given. One particularly troublesome aspect of measuring efficacy is the fact that many patients with an infectious disease will recover with inappropriate or no antimicrobial therapy, while other patients, who receive presumably appropriate therapy, will succumb.15 Thus, it is impossible to define accurately a therapeutic concentration for an antibiotic.", "More than 1% of the world's population is chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). HCV infection can result in acute hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, and cirrhosis, which is strongly associated with development of hepatocellular carcinoma. Genetic studies of HCV replication have been hampered by lack of a bona fide infectious molecular clone. Full-length functional clones of HCV complementary DNA were constructed. RNA transcripts from the clones were found to be infectious and to cause disease in chimpanzees after direct intrahepatic inoculation. This work defines the structure of a functional HCV genome RNA and proves that HCV alone is sufficient to cause disease.", "The addition of phenobarbitone in therapeutic dosage to the drug regimen of prednisolone-treated subjects with rheumatoid arthritis produced measurable deterioration in the clinical status of the patients associated with a more rapid clearance of prednisolone from plasma. It is considered that phenobarbitone induced the hepatic metabolism of prednisolone, effectively reducing the steady state plasma level and resulting in clinical relapse. A slight but significant improvement in the adrenocortical response to tetracosactrin (Synacthen) was noted after phenobarbitone therapy.", "We discuss the current status and views of human gene therapy for urological cancer. The genetic causes of many hereditary diseases have been identified as a result of the remarkable advancement of genetic engineering, and the molecular mechanisms of these diseases have also been clarified. The concept is that it is possible to treat diseases at the genetic level by replacing abnormal genes or restoring lost genes when the causative abnormal genes involved have been identified at the deoxyribonucleic acid level. In this Symposium \"Current status and views of human gene therapy\", we invited contributions clinical physicians and researchers in the first line of gene therapy in the United States. In addition, young Japanese urologists researching basic gene therapy were invited to participate. Japanese urologists who often treat malignant tumors should aggressively pursue a treatment method in the new field of gene therapy for cancer in Japan. We are expecting the Symposium to yield significant findings.", "Clinical phosphorus-31 magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P MRS) of the liver requires the use of whole-body magnets and of spectroscopy techniques that acquire signal from defined volumes-of-interest within the liver. Such localization techniques and recent clinical studies are briefly reviewed. These studies indicate that (1) high phosphomonoester levels are present in liver diseases involving structural damage, and (2) that MRS of liver tumors may provide a sensitive and rapid indication of response to cancer therapy. Abnormalities of the liver such as alcoholic liver disease, viral hepatitis, and metastasis were analyzed to determine hepatic acid/base status (pH) and to derive absolute molar concentrations of hepatic phosphorus metabolites rather than metabolite ratios. These parameters allow diagnosis and differentiation of several liver pathologies, suggesting an increasing future role of MRS in medical investigation, clinical diagnosis, and patient treatment.", "Summary Childhood nephrotic syndrome is common in Africa where infectious agents are prevalent. This paper reviews the possible aetiological role of infectious agents in childhood nephrotic syndrome in Africa. There is a strong association, possibly causal, between childhood nephrotic syndrome on the one hand and Plasmodium malariae, Schistosoma mansoni and hepatitis B antigens on the other. Beta-haemolytic streptococci are less strongly associated with nephrotic syndrome, and a few other organisms are suspect. The many ubiquitous infectious agents and the prevalence of multiple infections make it difficult to define the role of any single infectious agent or to determine the interaction between the various agents. Control or eradication of infectious diseases should lower the incidence of childhood nephrotic syndrome in Africa.", "A recent target of cancer gene therapy is tumor angiogenesis. An appealing feature of gene therapy targeting the tumor vasculature is that it is readily accessible, particularly when the carrier and its gene are administered systemically. Several gene-based viral and nonviral therapies that target tumor angiogenesis have demonstrated the \"proof of principle\" of antiangiogenic therapy in preclinical models. The utility of antiangiogenic gene therapy in a clinical setting will depend in large part on developing vectors with minimal toxicity and with increased in vivo transfection efficiency. In this review, we discuss the current status and future directions of antiangiogenic gene therapy.", "Phlegmonous colitis is an acute suppurative infection of the large bowel that is rarely described, rapidly fatal and often escapes clinical attention. Patients with chronic hepatic diseases appear to be predisposed to this condition. We report a novel case of fatal phlegmonous colitis in a cirrhotic patient receiving combination pegylated interferon and ribavirin for chronic hepatitis C, highlighting the importance of early recognition of this aggressive infectious entity.", "Severe cholestatic hepatitis due to Q fever: Report of a case Abstract Severe cholestatic hepatitis due to Coxiella burnetii is a rare form of clinical presentation of acute Q fever that is only occasionally detected in association with this infectious disease. We report a case of severe cholestatic hepatitis due to acute Q fever, with clinical signs of hepatic insufficiency, marked cholestasis, and renal insufficiency. The results of the initial serologic study using a complement fixation test were negative on two occasions, and transjugular biopsy and serological analysis with indirect immunofluores- cence were required to establish the diagnosis. Despite treatment with doxycycline and", "Recently, a single center study conducted by Oiva and coworkers and published in Critical Care demonstrated that phospho-specific whole blood flow cytometry could be used to assess activated signaling pathways in leukocytes isolated from pancreatitis patients. The authors demonstrated that this methodology had the potential to determine the current status of a patient's immune state. Although the experimental cohort was clinically homogeneous, the observed data were heterogeneous. Altogether, these results suggest that prior to administering immune-modulatory therapies in inflammatory diseases, it will be beneficial to first determine immune status. Rapid results from whole blood phospho-specific flow cytometry may allow for determination of immune status, improve early diagnosis, and provide a rational basis for immunomodulatory therapies.", "Objective To investigate the epidemiological trend of class-B infectious diseases in Baoji city from 2001 to 2010,so as to provide basis for establishing prevention and control strategy.Methods Descriptive epidemiology was applied.Results Incidence rate of class-B infectious diseases showed a downward tendency,while the death rate showed a increasing tendency in Baoji city during the 10-year period.Tuberculosis,hepatitis B and dysentery dominated the trend of the city's infectious diseases.The incidence of the age group under 14 was the lowest,while the age group above 65 being the highest.Occupation distribution showed that the highest incidence were farmers(including migrant workers),students and children.Conclusion The spectrum and trend of infectious diseases showed a significant change,therefore,the control strategies and measures should be well adjusted accordingly.", "The results of clinical observation of children with lacunar tonsilitis treated with clarithromycin and cefazolin intramuscularly antibiotic therapy in an infectious diseases hospital. A comparable good clinical and microbiological efficacy of the two drugs was shown. However, clarithromycin demonstrated benefits. The results of clinical observation of children with lacunar tonsilitis treated with clarithromycin and cefazolin intramuscularly antibiotic therapy in an infectious diseases hospital. A comparable good clinical and microbiological efficacy of the two drugs was shown. However, clarithromycin demonstrated benefits.", "BackgroundElectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) raises the seizure threshold. This physiological change may benefit patients with seizure disorders. Whereas ECT has recently been used to terminate medication-refractory status epilepticus, there is little current literature on its planned administration as", "In this article, we describe the case of a 61-year-old woman who presented with altered mental status and was found to have Klebsiella pneumoniae meningitis, bacteremia, and hepatic abscess. Despite intravenous antibiotic therapy and percutaneous drainage of the hepatic abscess, the patient developed worsening meningitis with ventriculitis, which led to her death. This invasive Klebsiella syndrome is characterized by metastatic infections with a hypervirulent strain and a poor clinical prognosis. Important elements of this patient’s case—including the widespread and highly aggressive course—and of those reported in the literature are reviewed. Although the invasive Klebsiella syndrome is an increasingly recognized clinical entity, most often in the Eastern hemisphere, it remains rare in the United States with approximately 20 cases reported in the literature, and given its high morbidity, it is vitally important for clinicians to recognize.", "A 55-year-old woman developed symptoms suggestive of hepatitis 12 weeks after first receiving methyldopa for hypertension. Liver biopsy showed chronic aggressive hepatitis with subacute hepatic necrosis. Methyldopa was discontinued, but after exhibiting transient clinical improvement, the patient's condition progressively deteriorated until she died of hepatic failure, in spite of therapy with massive doses of corticosteroids and other nonspecific measures. During the terminal stage, a considerable decrease in the size of the liver was observed. At autopsy, the liver was found to be small, shrunken, and scarred; histological sections demonstrated postnecrotic cirrhosis. Such a rapid and relentless progression of methyldopa-induced liver injury is undoubtedly rare, but it may be prevented by careful supervision of patients who exhibit liver function abnormalities early in the course of therapy.", "Tumor necrosis factor-alfa levels are linked to disease severity in patients with inflammatory conditions, such as psoriasis. Inhibitors of this cytokine are commonly used with significant success in the treatment of such inflammatory disorders. Their use, however, can be plagued by infectious complications. An awareness of potential infections associated with these therapies is critical in order to maximize preventive efforts both before and during therapy. This review provides a guide for dermatologists caring for patients in need of this type of biologic therapy to preemptively address the infectious risks. Part II of this continuing medical education article reviews recommended screening methods for patients undergoing evaluations for tumor necrosis factor inhibitor therapy for psoriasis or other dermatologic diseases, and discusses possible prophylactic strategies to use, including the appropriate use of immunizations.", "Hepatic metastases of colorectal carcinoma are present at diagnosis in 20 per cent of patients and occur within two years in 80 per cent of those which will recur in the liver. Surgical resection of all hepatic disease can confer survival on 20 per cent of resectable patients, but there is no other curative therapy. No systemic drug treatment has been shown superior to 5-FU alone, and the benefit of hepatic artery chemotherapy with FUdR (in contrast with systemic treatment) remains unproved. External beam radiation therapy with 3,000 rads offers effective palliation with low morbidity. The combination of chemotherapy with radiation treatment or hyperthermia may prove beneficial, but such protocols represent research rather than established treatment.", "Delivery of potentially therapeutic drugs to the brain is hindered by the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which restricts the diffusion of drugs from the vasculature to the brain parenchyma. One means of overcoming the BBB is with cellular implants that produce and deliver therapeutic molecules directly into the CNS region of interest. In this paper we describe the current status of one iteration of cell-based therapy that uses xenogeneic cells encased within a selectively permeable polymeric membrane; this is known as immunoisolation. For the purposes of this review, cell immunoisolation for treating CNS diseases is presented in terms of device configurations, membrane manufacturing, characterization in relevant preclinical model systems, and the current status of clinical trials.", "A 68 year old woman with primary hepatic leiomyosarcoma, impairement of general status and right upper quadrant pain was diagnosed with liver tumor by sonography, CT scan and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. Angiograms showed a hypervascular tumor. The patient was treated by hepatic transplantation but died 15 days after operation. The diagnosis of leiomyosarcoma was established by immunohistochemical and ultrastructural studies; the primary nature was confirmed by necropsy. Diagnostic and therapeutic features of primary hepatic leiomyosarcoma--the 19th case reported in the literature--are discussed.", "A 42-year-old man was hospitalized because of an infectious giant bulla. The infected giant bulla did not improve by the administration of antibiotics. Some infectious bullae were considered to be difficult to allow for simple cutaneous drainage, so endoscopic drainage was performed to remove the infection. Our experience with endoscopic abscess drainage is excellent in patients in whom conventional therapy fails. We consider the endoscopic drainage an alternative to percutaneous drainage in patients who have an infectious bulla.", "A comparison of two groups of patients with acute laryngotracheo bronchitis, hospitalized before and after initiation of an educational program in infectious diseases, demonstrated no differences in severity or prognosis despite significant reduction in antirnicrobial usage. These observations show how a \"scientific\" approach to management of an infectious disease may reduce unnecessary and potentially harmful antimicrobial therapy.", "Men with non-metastatic prostate cancer have many treatment options. For over 35 years, radiation therapy has been a mainstay of treatment for this disease. With improvements in technology and better use of pretreatment prognostic factors, such as prostate specific antigen level and Gleason score, biochemical and clinical results have steadily improved. This article reviews the current status of radiation therapy in the treatment of prostate cancer. Results of treatment utilizing three-dimensional conformal and conventional techniques are compared and contrasted. The appropriate use of adjuvant hormones and particle beam therapy in the management of this disease is also discussed. Finally, the toxicity and future directions of radiation therapy in the treatment of prostate cancer are addressed.", "Unresectable liver metastases are a frequent cause of cancer-related mortality in a variety of solid tumors. While cytotoxic therapies may offer meaningful improvements in overall survival for some cancers (e.g., colorectal cancer), other tumor types, such as ocular melanoma, have limited effective therapies. Isolated hepatic perfusion allows for regional delivery of cytotoxic drugs to the liver with limited systemic side effects. Furthermore, isolated hepatic perfusion has been shown to improve outcomes in select patients with diffuse liver metastasis. The technique has been refined over the past few decades. When performed at specialized centers, isolated hepatic perfusion is associated with low morbidity and mortality.", "Pertussis is a bacterial infectious disease which has a higher mortality in children.The incidence of pertussis has declined to very low levels as a result of mass vaccination for a long time.However,in the past decade,there has been a strong and unexpected resurgence in reported cases in western countries.We reviewed the epidemiological features of pertussis and analyzed the underlying factors attribute to such changes.On the other hand,we compared current status and trend of pertussis incidence in China with western countries.It is strongly recommended to investigate the disease burden of pertussis in China by prospective studies in the near future.", "The acute hepatic porphyrias are diseases in which the production of heme is deficient because of inherited abnormalities in specific enzymes of the heme synthetic pathway.1 The goal of therapy for...", "Erythropoietic protoporphyria, caused by an inherited deficiency of ferrochelatase, results in increased free protoporphyrin concentrations in erythrocytes and plasma. Cutaneous photosensitivity is the primary clinical manifestation, but in some patients, protoporphyrin accumulation in the liver may lead to fatal hepatic failure. No treatment exists for this lethal complication. We report the case of a patient with erythropoietic protoporphyria and abnormal results of liver function tests in whom oral iron therapy led to a substantial decrease in free erythrocyte and stool protoporphyrin levels with return of liver function to normal. Iron therapy should be considered for preventing potentially fatal hepatic failure in patients with erythropoietic protoporphyria.", "OBJECTIVE ::: To improve hepatic function with Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in patients after liver-carcinomectomy. ::: ::: ::: METHODS ::: One hundred and twenty patients were divided into the CHM group (61 patients) and the control group (59 patients). CHM therapy for relieving blood stasis, invigorating Spleen and soothing Liver was given to the CHM group after liver-carcinomectomy continuously for 5-6 weeks, and hepatic function was examined in all patients 8-9 weeks after the operation. ::: ::: ::: RESULTS ::: The hepatic function indexes, including alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate aminotrasferase (AST), serum albumin (ALB), gamma glutamyl transpeptidase (GGTP), total bilirubin (TBIL) and direct bilirubin (DBIL), were improved in the CHM group more significantly than those in the control group, all P < 0.05. ::: ::: ::: CONCLUSION ::: Relieving blood stasis, strengthening Spleen and soothing Liver therapy has good effect in improving hepatic function after liver-carcinomectomy.", "Pneumonia is the most common infectious disease necessitating hospitalization of elderly patients. A number of misconceptions exist regarding the clinical and radiological features of pneumonia in elderly patients. Early recognition and appropriate therapy can reduce morbidity and enhance survival. This article explores the manifestations of pneumonia in the elderly, as well as the diagnostic approach and contemporary therapy.", "This study was set up to determine the susceptibility of junior medical staff to communicable infectious diseases. Thirteen female and 39 male staff were investigated. Antibodies to morbilli, varicella zoster, toxoplasma, cytomegalovirus, hepatitis B, mumps and rubella were determined. Hepatitis B surface antigen tests were also carried out. Twelve males were susceptible to mumps and 10 were subsequently vaccinated. No side effects were noted. Three of five females susceptible to rubella requested vaccination and all showed an antibody response without early or delayed side effects. The desirability of offering vaccinations to susceptible adult staff is discussed." ]

[ "season four" ]

[ "When Love Comes to Town", "When the World Comes Down", "Robert Erness", "When Christmas Comes Around", "When The Night Comes Down", "Come On Come On", "Ered Nimrais", "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", "When Love Comes Around the Bend", "DOE test", "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain", "A Doe subpoena", "ComEd", "it does not follow", "Ere Zij God", "Come", "Lightning Does The Work ''", "Roland Doe", "The Boy Does Nothing", "Doe B", "Come, Come, Ye Saints", "Moe Doe Entertainment", "Come Clean", "Samuel Doe", "Come in at the Door", "Come Over", "Daisy Does America", "Richard Comely", "does not build a web", "Come on down!", "Doe v. Bolton", "Come prima" ]

[ "The majority of what I use is only gasoline." ]

[ "The majority of what I use is oil.", "I don't consider gasoline a luxury, were in a part of the country where we all use it all the time", "A store that sells gasoline.", "I used mine to type documents when I was college.", "I'm mostly into something.", "I only have domestic vehicles.", "I hope it's mine.", "I believe that is mine.", "For the most part, just things I can use from my home.", "Strictly Visitor", "I hope it's not mine.", "I just have a gas stove.", "The tin mines have no use anymore.", "The car is being filled with gasoline.", "I don't live in mine.", "I have a mix of things.", "I live in mine.", "I own a car at the moment.", "I like using chemicals.", "I don't care about the gasoline credit card", "Most of what I do is out of necessity.", "I strictly follow the regular program's rules.", "I didn't do it before mine so I cannot use that as an excuse.", "There is not thing I really use.", "I can change oil and the spark plugs, the routine stuff.", "Vegas is strictly for adults.", "Ca'daan told us about the mines.", "I don't stir it up all the time.", "What about petrol engines?", "Yeah, I use gas cards now.", "I have to deal with gasoline taxes on my RV.", "Mostly stuff I go out to the store to buy." ]

[ "energy producers" ]

[ "subject", "subjective", "carbonate", "the Who", "a group of subjects who share a defining characteristic", "Who Made Who", "subject of instruction", "Ottoman subjects", "subjective variables", "subject area", "subject categories", "Subject Delta", "subjective contours", "subjective probability", "subjective case", "Subjective consciousness", "Subject indexing", "British subjects", "carbonate groups", "Sodium carbonate", "carbonate dehydratases", "calcium carbonate", "tax evasion or tax fraud", "barium carbonate", "carbon is trivalent", "Carbonate hardness", "carbonate bedrock", "carbon nanotubes", "Eddie Carbone", "copper carbonate", "carbonated water" ]

[ "Opera: The Queen Of Sheba Karl Goldmark - YodelOut! Music The Queen of Sheba, a grand opera in four acts, was first presented in ... The libretto is founded on the Biblical mention of the visit of the Queen of Sheba ... opens, a marriage is about to be splendidly celebrated in Solomon's palace in Jerusalem ... Priest's daughter, who is to be united to Assad, favorite courtier of the King.", "Free Flashcards about BIBLE - StudyStack ETHIOPIA'S ORDER OF THIS BIBLICAL KING IS USUALLY RESERVED .... BELSHAZZAR SAW ON THE WALL OF HIS PALACE, MENE, MENE, TEKAL, UPHARSIN ..... KARL GOLDMARK'S OPERA \"THE QUEEN OF SHEBA\" OPENS IN THE...", "Opera Flashcards | Quizlet \"Un Ballo En Maschera\" dramatizes the assassination of this country's King Gustavus III at a masked ball. Sweden ... Karl Goldmark's opera \"The Queen Of Sheba\" opens in the palace of this Biblical king. Solomon .... Hans Christian Andersen.", "Goldmark's Exotic Sheba Is A Once And Future Queen | Classical ... Dec 2, 2015 ... BUDAPEST The centenary of the death of Karl Goldmark was obviously ... This lavish and accomplished amalgam of Biblical spectacle and Wagnerian ... Judit Nmeth as the Queen of Sheba and Boldizsr Lszl as Assad. ... And, indeed, the King in Goldmark's opera is, from his first entry, portrayed as...", "Die Knigin von Saba - Wikipedia Die Knigin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) is an opera in four acts by Karl Goldmark. The German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal sets a love triangle into the context of the Queen of Sheba's visit to the court of King Solomon, ... triangle not found in the Bible between the Queen of Sheba, Assad (an ambassador..." ]

[ "Opera Flashcards | Quizlet Karl Goldmark's opera \"The Queen Of Sheba\" opens in the palace of this Biblical ... Biondello hides inside a mechanical goose in Mozart's unfinished opera ... In this composer's \"Don Giovanni\", the title character seduces women, kills a ..... At the end of Donizetti's opera \"Anna Bolena\", this woman is Henry VIII's new queen.", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone .... The former was the favorite opinion of the mystical interpreters to the end of the ..... Solomon and Balkis (1942), opera by Randall Thompson; Makeda (1998), French R&B by Chadian duo Les Nubians Acha (1996), by Khaled...", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone .... Baba Bathra 15b: \"Whoever says malkath Sheba (I Kings X, 1) means a .... tradition that the first Jews arrived in Yemen at the time of King Solomon, .... their ancestry to Menelik I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.", "Free Flashcards about BIBLE - StudyStack ACCORDING TO 1 KINGS, AFTER HER DEATH, QUEEN JEZEBEL'S BODY ..... IN A GOLDMARK OPERA, KING SOLOMON'S FAVORITE COURTIER FALLS...", "The Queen of Sheba (opera) - Expand Your Mind - Revolvy Place and Time: Jerusalem and the surrounding desert, 10th Century BC. ... The religious character of these parts of the opera may well have been influenced ... The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Arabian ... La reine de Saba (\" The Queen of Sheba \") is a grand opera in four or five acts by...", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone ... Sheba was quite known in the classical world, and its country was called .... Here Menelik I is the child of Solomon and Makeda (the Ethiopic name of ... of Macedonia (Ethiopic Meqdon) is said to have met a queen Kandake of...", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone ... Makada or Makueda, the personal name of the queen in Ethiopian legend, .... According to the Islamic tradition as represented by al-Hamdani, the queen of ... According to some sources, Queen Makeda was part of the dynasty...", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Arabian, and Ethiopian elaborations, and has...", "Queen of Sheba Course - Wendy Laura Belcher Wendy Laura Belcher's Representing the Queen of Sheba in the Islamic, ... down around 615 BCE as a mysterious female ruler who tests King Solomon. ... Isaac D'Israeli's Solomon and Sheba in Curiosities of Literature: Consisting of Anecdotes, Characters, ... Charles Gounod's opera La reine de Saba (orig. date 1862).", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Arabian, and Ethiopian elaborations, and has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in the .... Before the queen had arrived, Solomon had moved her throne to his place with...", "Queen of Sheba - Wikipedia The Queen of Sheba is a Biblical figure. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Arabian, and Ethiopian .... The Talmud (Bava Batra 15b) insists that it was not a woman but a kingdom of Sheba (based on .... According to one tradition, the Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel, \"Falashas\") also trace their...", "The Student Prince - TheatreHistory.com A synopsis of the musical by Sigmund Romberg and Dorothy Donnelly, plus links to ... THE operetta opens in the palace of the mythical kingdom of Karlsberg. ... The news arrives from Karlsberg that the king is dead, and Prince Karl Franz must...", "King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 1434 - Konrad Witz - WikiArt ... King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 1434 by Konrad Witz. Northern Renaissance. religious painting. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland.", "Daily Post: Who is Wise? | King Solomon, Solomon and The Queen Here is the Queen of Sheba offering a cupcake to King Solomon. ... Book of Kings (1 Kings 10:1-13) Solomon's great Wisdom and the queen of Sheba's great wealth. .... Konrad Witz King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba ..... famous work composed by Shams al-Dn Muammad al-s (fl. sixth century AH ... 15th century.", "Aida - Wikipedia Aida is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. ... Contrary to popular belief, the opera was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, for which .... Scene 1: A hall in the King's palace; through the rear gate the pyramids and temples of Memphis are visible.", "Ethiopian Treasures - Queen of Sheba, Aksumite Kingdom - Aksum According to Ethiopian traditional history the Queen of Sheba learned about the ... of Sheba had a son with King Solomon, but there is evidence of the Queen of ... Menelik told his mother that he wanted to go to visit his father in Jerusalem. ... The Ark of the Covenant is the most reserved holy relic of God's incarnate and...", "BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: The Queen Of Sheba Feb 17, 2011 ... Michael Wood explores the legend of the Queen of Sheba. ... Unpicking the clues; Islamic tradition; Ethiopian tradition; An enigma ... The first appearance of the tale of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon is a short narrative in the ... Solomon's son, who is named Menelik, meaning 'Son of the Wise'.", "Queen of Sheba - Wikiwand The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Arabian, ... There are five places in the Bible where the writer distinguishes Sheba .... Most of these riddles are simply Bible questions, some not of a very edifying character. ..... Lopold Sdar Senghor's \"Elgie pour la Reine de Saba,\" published in his...", "Salome - Metropolitan Opera 30 ... Overview; Creators; Setting; Music; Related. Richard Strauss's revolutionary score and scandalous Oscar Wildeinspired ... The action takes place outside the palace of King Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, in the early first century AD.", "Free Flashcards about OPERA - StudyStack KING SOLOMON IS A CHARACTER IN \"LA REINE DE SABA\", AN OPERA ABOUT THE .... ACT I OF A BIZET OPERA TAKES PLACE IN A SEVILLE SQUARE NEAR A ..... THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT TRIES TO STOP HER DAUGHTER FROM...", "The Legendary Queen of Sheba and Her Iconic Visit with King ... Jan 9, 2015 ... The Queen of Sheba is well-known as a Biblical figure. ... The Queen of Sheba meeting with Solomon (note: this is unlikely to be an accurate ... and the son who they conceived together and she raised, it omitted the stories of...", "Queen of Sheba facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com ... Make research projects and school reports about Queen of Sheba easy with credible ... and as Makedafigures prominently in Judaic, Islamic, and Ethiopian traditions. ... Modern-day Ethiopians believe her, as the mother of their first Emperor, ... century BCE visit to the grand court of Solomon, King of Israel and son of the...", "Ethiopian Treasures - Queen of Sheba, Aksumite Kingdom - Aksum Pictures of Aksum Stelae field, Palace of Queen Sheba, bath of Queen Sheba, ... in archaeological remains and great granite stone curved obelisks known as Stelae. ... Whilst it cannot be proved that the Queen of Sheba had a son with King...", "NETBible: 1 Kings 10 10:8 Your attendants, who stand before you at all times and hear your wise ... The quantity of spices the queen of Sheba gave King Solomon has never been ... 10:18 The king made a large throne decorated with ivory and overlaid it with pure gold. ... The throne had two armrests with a statue of a lion standing on each side.", "The Queen of Sheba and the Ethiopian problem - Creation ... The idea that the biblical Queen of Sheba ruled ancient Egypt and a land equating to modern. Ethiopia ... The region today called Arabia was not known by that.", "The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen by Tosca Lee Reviews ... To ask other readers questions about The Legend of Sheba, please sign up. .... This historical fiction is about Bilqis, also known as the Queen of Sheba, the Queen of ... These books tell of her hearing tales of King Solomon and his wisdom and ..... This didn't happen here, although as soon as I finished I started googling all...", "December 6, 2008 ... of Sheba;Queen Sheba At his home at Berggasse 19 in Vienna you can see where the ancestor of all psychiatrists' couches stood Sigmund Freud;Freud This...", "Sheba - Wikipedia Sheba was a kingdom mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the Quran. Sheba features in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, particularly Ethiopian Christian, traditions. It was the home of the biblical \"Queen of Sheba\", who is left unnamed in the ... Another theory suggests that the Sabaeans hailed from the southern Levant...", "King Priam - Wikipedia King Priam is an opera by Michael Tippett, to his own libretto. The story is based on Homer's ... It was premiered in Germany at the Badisches Staatstheater in 1963, ... German words \"Es mge uns das Schicksal gnnen, dass wir das innere Ohr von .... Helen herself now enters, and Andromache relieves her feelings with a...", "Aida: Libretto (English) - OperaGlass Dec 21, 2009 ... AIDA AM OPERA IN FOUR ACTS THE WORDS BY ANTONIO ... THE MUSIC BY GIUSEPPE VERDI CHARACTERS King of Egypt . ... A dream of proud ambition In my heart I was nursing Isis this day Has .... SCENE II Interior of the Temple of Vulcan at Memphis A mysterious light .... I shall be near thee.", "Queen of Sheba facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com ... Her legendary voyage to meet Solomon, King of Israel, has inspired centuries ... to be the ultimate maternal ancestor of the dominant Ethiopian royal dynasty. ... David, however, is well-attested in three major ancient sources: the Biblical Old ... The Islamic legend of the Queen of Sheba, or Bilqis (alternatively, Balkis) as she...", "The Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the LORD, and for the king's .... Solomon's commitment to building the Temple reflected not only his love of ... According to the Bible, he could talk about plants from the cedar in Lebanon to ... The questions she asked were probably riddles commonly used in Arab..." ]

[ "The 13th CGPM (1967) adopted the name kelvin (symbol K) instead of degree Kelvin (symbol °K) and defined the unit of thermodynamic temperature as follows: The kelvin, unit of thermodynamic temperature, is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water." ]

[ "Definition - What does Geothermal Gradient mean? Geothermal Gradient is the rate of change of temperature as the depth of an oil well or a gas well increases. It is a physical quantity denoted by temperature per unit length. The commonly used units to represent Geothermal Gradient are Degree Fahrenheit per 100 feet or Degree Celsius per meter.", "This definition explains what STP is and describes the properties of related phenomena. What is standard temperature and pressure (STP)? This definition explains what STP is and describes the properties of related phenomena.", "Kilocalories (Kcals) Definition. What is a Kilocalorie? A kilocalorie is a unit of energy - it's 1 food calorie, or 1,000 energy calories. It's the energy necessary to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1° Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).", "Medical Definition of CORE TEMPERATURE. : the temperature deep within a living body (as in the viscera). What made you want to look up core temperature?", "A formal definition from the Glossary of Meteorology is: In general, a lapse rate is the negative of the rate of temperature change with altitude change, thus: where γ {\\displaystyle \\gamma } is the lapse rate given in units of temperature divided by units of altitude, T = temperature, and z = altitude.", "Definition of President of the United States in the Legal Dictionary - by Free online English dictionary and encyclopedia. What is President of the United States? Meaning of President of the United States as a legal term. What does President of the United States mean in law? President of the United States legal definition of President of the United States https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/President+of+the+United+States", "Transcription unit | Definition Of Transcription unit By … Looking for online definition of transcription unit in the Medical Dictionary? transcription unit explanation free. What is transcription unit?", "1 Pressure - Introduction to pressure - psi and Pa - online pressure units converter. 2 STP - Standard Temperature and Pressure & NTP - Normal Temperature and Pressure - The definition of STP - Standard Temperature and Pressure and NTP - Normal Temperature and Pressure. en: converting kpa psi water mercury.", "unit meaning, definition, what is unit: a single thing or a separate part of something larger: . Learn more.", "Definition of contiguous United States in the Definitions.net dictionary. Meaning of contiguous United States. What does contiguous United States mean? Information and translations of contiguous United States in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web.", "Full Definition of KILOGRAM. 1. : the base unit of mass in the International System of Units that is equal to the mass of a prototype agreed upon by international convention and that is nearly equal to the mass of 1000 cubic centimeters of water at the temperature of its maximum density — see metric system table. 2.edical Definition of KILOGRAM. 1. : the base unit of mass in the International System of Units that is equal to the mass of a prototype agreed upon by international convention and that is nearly equal to the mass of 1000 cubic centimeters of water at the temperature of its maximum density.", "One dictionary definition of entropy is that it is a measure of thermal energy per unit temperature that is not available for useful work. For instance, a substance at uniform temperature is at maximum entropy and cannot drive a heat engine.", "This definition explains what a centimeter (abbreviation, cm) is, how it compares to other units of length or distance and the applications that depend on it for measurement. This definition explains what a centimeter (abbreviation, cm) is, how it compares to other units of length or distance and the applications that depend on it for measurement.", "On the other hand, “specific heat” sounds similar to heat capacity in terms of definition, but the former refers to the needed heat to adjust the temperature of a single unit of a substance’s mass by one degree. It makes use of energy / mass / degree units.. On the other hand, “specific heat” sounds similar to heat capacity in terms of definition, but the former refers to the needed heat to adjust the temperature of a single unit of a substance’s mass by one degree. It makes use of energy / mass / degree units. C = J / kg.", "This brings us to a definition for enzyme activity. specific activity is defined in terms of enzyme units per mg enzyme protein. An enzyme unit is the amount of substrate converted to product per unit time under specific reaction conditions for pH and temperature.", "What is inversion? definition and meaning - BusinessDictionary.com Definition of inversion: Atmospheric condition where a layer of cold air nearer to the ground gets trapped under a layer of ... Also called temperature inversion.", "What is the definition of the units by which energy is measured? Energy provided by food and beverages is measured in kilocalories, abbreviated kcalories or kcal. One kcalories is the amount of heat nessary to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1'C. The scientific use of the term kcalorie is the same as the popular use of the term calorie. Calories.", "furnace definition, meaning, what is furnace: a container that is heated to a very high temperature, so that substances that are put…. Learn more.", "An operational definition of a variable describes: What is observed. What is measured. These definitions are written quantitatively using: length, width, height, etc. time; distance; temperature; numerical value of something; To gain a better understanding of what an operational definition is, consider the following example: Researchers in sports medicine and exercise physiology study the effects of various variables on a person's endurance.", "a substance that forms a vapor is generally in what physical state at room temperature liquid or solid what state of matter has a definite volume and takes the shape of its container", "Definition of heat of vaporization. : heat absorbed when a liquid vaporizes; specifically : the quantity of heat required at a specified temperature to convert unit mass of liquid into vapor.", "Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get. Mean Daily Average Temperature. (note how the average temperature on Virginia's coastline differs from the average temperature in the mountains along the western edge) Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): Climate Atlas of the United States.", "heat absorption definition, heat absorption meaning | English dictionary. heat. Informal to increase the intensity of activity, coercion, etc. n the heat required to raise the temperature of a substance by unit temperature interval under specified conditions.", "In this article we will see the definitions of important terms like dry bulb temperature, wet bulb temperature, dew point temperature and also see what is sling thermometer. Dry Bulb Temperature of Air (DBT) The temperature of the air measured by the ordinary thermometer is called as the dry bulb temperature of air, commonly referred as DBT.", "The question about the definition for global warming or in other words what is global warming is relatively easy to answer. We hereby lean at the definitions and explanations given in Wikipedia: Global warming is the observed and projected increases in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans. The Earth's average temperature rose about 0.6° Celsius (1.1° Fahrenheit) in the 20th century, see temperature graphs below. Fig.", "By definition, a fever is considered any temperature greater than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in adults and children.o. While the normal average core body temperature is 98.6, there is a wide variation in what is a normal body temperature. By definition, a fever is considered any temperature greater than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in adults and children. P.S. It's actually 37 degrees Celsius for a fever.", "Tolerance biology online dictionary. What is tolerance in biology? Quorathe meaning of definitions united states environmental protection agency. What is a 9...", "incubator meaning, definition, what is incubator: a container that has controlled air and temperature conditions in which a weak or…. Learn more.", "freezer meaning, definition, what is freezer: a container, operated by electricity, that stores food at a very cold temperature so that…. Learn more.", "Feels Like Temperature Map The United States Feels Like Temperatures map show what the outdoor temperature will feel like for the current day. Thinking about the Frost? First & Last Freeze Map", "What is Mobile Unit? Definition of Mobile Unit: TV production unit that can be used outdoor, and can be located in different places. Learn more in: Broadcast Quality Video Contribution in Mobility Find more terms and definitions using our Dictionary Search.", "Flashpoint Definition - What does Flashpoint mean? The flashpoint of a liquid is the lowest temperature at which it will generate sufficient vapor to ignite when it is exposed to a source of ignition. It is the temperature at which the vapors coming off of oil catch fire." ]

[ "Kalman filtering represents formidable linear algebra computational requirements for each new input measurement vector. An architecture-motivated implementation of a discrete-time extended Kalman filter algorithm is presented. This particular formulation takes advantage of the following features of the optical processor architecture: the ability to perform matrix–vector operations, floating-point capabilities, and specially designed matrix–vector L U decomposition operations. A factorized L D LT algorithm is used to propagate the covariance matrices between sample times. The air-to-air missile guidance problem is used as a case study wherein an extended Kalman filter is required due to the nonlinear nature of the measurement equations." ]

[ "This paper addresses the problem of estimating the masses of Phobos and Deimos from Doppler and onboard optical measurements during the Viking extended mission. A Kalman filter is used to analyze the effects of gravitational uncertainties and nongravitational accelerations. These accelerations destroy the dynamical integrity of the orbit and multi-batch or limited memory filtering is preferred to single batch processing. Optical tracking is essential to improve the relative orbit geometry. The masses can be determined to about 10% and 25% respectively for Phobos and Deimos, assuming satellite densities of about 3 g per cu cm.", "Abstract The high-speed movement of missiles signal tracking system is strongly nonlinear systems. So while the system model can not be accurately established or the model error changes with time, the traditional extended Kalman filter (EKF) and its improved algorithm have large estimated errors and even bring filter divergence for estimating signal Doppler shift (frequency offset). In order to solve the above problem, a new adaptive fading extended Kalman filtering (AFEKF) method is put for ward based on the real time estimation of the covariance matrix of system noise using the innovation sequences. However, existing solver fading factor method too many constraints and the cumbersome calculation process, so it is not conducive to the missile signal tracking application. The small amount of calculation, and improve the reliability of the filtering algorithm, simulation results show the effectiveness of the method.", "An approach of autonomous navigation for satellites is described in this paper using refraction measurements of starlight passing through the upper atmosphere.An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is designed to estimate the satellites' position and velocity.Simulation for a sun-synchronous orbit satellite is done.Results show that the satellite's position accuracy is about 0.038km.Moreover,results show that the measurement error of starlight refraction angle and the uncertainty of the atmospheric refraction model are two principal factors deteriorating the navigation accuracy.", "In order to improve the positioning precision and reliability,extended Kalman filter(EKF),particle filter(PF) and unscented Kalman filter(UKF) algorithms were analyzed respectively.A new particle filter algorithm called unscented particle filter(UPF) algorithm was given based on the analysis of each algorithm's characteristic and the combination of PF's and UKF's advantages,and it was applied to GPS/DR integrated navigation system.Finally,the feasibility and calculation accuracy of UPF algorithm were proved with a simulation and comparison of UPF and PF algorithms in GPS/DR integrated navigation system.", "The inertial navigation systems (INS)/wireless sensor network (WSN) integration system for mobile robot is proposed for navigation information indoors accurately and continuously. The Kalman filter (KF) is widely used for real-time applications with the aim of gaining optimal data fusion. In order to improve the accuracy of the navigation information, this work proposed an adaptive extended Kalman smoothing (AEKS) which utilizes inertial measuring units (IMUs) and ultrasonic positioning system. In this mode, the adaptive extended Kalman filter (AEKF) is used to improve the accuracy of forward Kalman filtering (FKF) and backward Kalman filtering (BKF), and then the AEKS and the average filter are used between two output timings for the online smoothing. Several real indoor tests are done to assess the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can reduce the error compared with the INS-only, least squares (LS) solution, and AEKF.", "In the case of large misalignment angles,quaternion error equation and nonlinear filtering can improve the performance of the in-flight alignment of SINS.Iterative filtering can obtain higher alignment precision than extended Kalman filtering.Separate-biased algorithm of extended Kalman filtering is utilized to reduce the large computational cost of iterative filtering.The idea of iterative filtering is introduced to put forward a non-linear filtering algorithm,which is not only of the same accuracy as iterative filtering but also of lower computational cost.The non-linear filtering algorithm is applied to the SINS/GPS integrated alignment based on quaternion error equations.Effectiveness is indicated by numerical emulation.", "A novel nonlinear filter called square-root adaptive cubature Kalman filter is proposed to estimate the spacecraft attitude from vector measurements. The algorithm combines an adaptive process noise estimation with the square-root cubature Kalman filter, which has a consistently improved numerical stability because all the resulting covariance matrices are guaranteed to stay positive semi-definite. The process noise estimate for efficient square-root implementation is derived. The quaternion is used to describe the spacecraft attitude kinematics, while a three-dimensional generalized Rodrigues parameter is used to maintain the quaternion normalization constraint in the filter formulation. The simulation results indicate that the proposed filter provides lower attitude estimation errors with faster convergence rate than the square-root cubature Kalman filter.", "The GPS/DR(global position system/dead reckoning) integrated system can improve the reliability of the positioning data in virtue of advantage complementation.A software design of the extended Kalman filtering(EKF) algorithm for the embedded GPS/DR vehicle integrated navigation system is introduced.The gross errors in the navigation data are detected and removed based on statistic theory,and the navigation parameters are obtained with the extended Kalman filtering algorithm in real time.The GPS/DR vehicle integrated navigation system with EKF is advantageous to the stability and reliability of the navigation information and beneficial to real-time navigation.", "When the objects are in the background of higher maneuvering,multi-model,non-Gaussian,strong noise,the algorithms of Kalman filter and extended Kalman filter within the Gaussian background leads to the filter precision decrease and divergence phenomenon.As a nonlinear filter algorithm based on Bayesian estimation,particle filter has original advantage at treating the parameter estimation and state filtering aspects of nonlinear non-Gaussian time-varying systems.Thus a great development is obtained.With the background of object tracking,this paper focuses on the particle filter and compares it with the Kalman filter.", "This paper deals with the development of a robust filter known as H Filter , as an approach to provide alternative solutions in robotic localization and mapping problem. In this problem, normally the environment conditions and noise characteristics are unknown which makes the Kalman Filter approach suffers. H Filter is proposed due its advantage in estimating conditions in non-Gaussian noise which Kalman Filter cannot offer. The analysis is shown by comparing the performance between H infinity Filter and Extended Kalman Filter for the above problem. Based on the simulation analysis and preliminary experiments, there is a high reliability in estimation of H Filter compared to Extended Kalman Filter regarding the robot location and landmark positions. Hence, H Filter can provide better solution especially in specific environment conditions with unknown noise characteristics.", "This work deals with the development of an autonomous positioning system for mobile robots from RSSI values obtained in real-time of a RFID reader, and treated by an Extended Kalman Filter.", "The design of an extended complex Kalman filter for the measurement of power system frequency has been presented in this paper. The design principles and the validity of the model has been outlined. A complex model has been developed to track a distorted signal that belongs to a power system. The model inherently takes care of the frequency measurement along with the amplitude and phase of the signals. The theory has been applied to standard signals representing the worst-case measurement and network conditions in a typical power system. The proposed algorithm is suitable for real-time applications where the measurement noise and other disturbances are high. The complex quantities can be conveniently handled using a floating point processor. Comparison of the results of the proposed method with those obtained from a real extended Kalman filter reveal tile superior performance of the former method.", "According to the autonomous aerial refueling for UAVs based on GPS/Machine Vision integration navigation,the restrictions on the sensors during docking are analyzed.An adaptive federal Kalman filter is designed,which is based on extended Kalman filter algorithm,after modeling the sensors nonlinear relative position measurement models and further comparison is made between the proposed algorithms and centralized Kalman filter.The simulation shows that the outputs of the proposed algorithm are continuous and stabilized during sensor failure,and its precision can satisfy the requirements of UAV aerial refueling relative navigation system perfectly.", "Based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) algorithm, a new fusion method based particle filtering algorithm (PF) is presented, in which the importance density is generated by means of a fusion algorithm. To derive the importance density of samples, the state of each particle of the individual sensor is predicted separately according to EKF. An application example is given to draw a comparison between this new algorithm(Integrated Fuzzy Particle Filter, IFPF) and the traditional fuzzy particle filter (FPF) algorithm. The experimental results show that the IFPF algorithm is much higher than the FPF algorithm in stability, and especially when the mobile robot is turnning, the accuracy of movement speed increases about 69.2.", "Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is a recursive data process algorithm that uses continuous updating. It has been proven that EnKF is an efficient method for data assimilation, uncertainty assessment, and large scale problems in many engineering fields. However, there are two common limitations-filter divergence and overshooting/undershooting. These are due to reduction of cross-covariance between model parameters and measurements. We propose a streamline-assisted ensemble Kalman filter (SL EnKF) that uses covariance localization according to the types of well and measurement data. This method enables selective updates of permeability, therefore, providing more reliable permeability field estimations than the standard EnKF without overshooting/undershooting or filter divergence. In addition, it gives efficient uncertainty evaluations by considering the performances of each ensemble member.", "This paper presents a new robust adaptive unscented particle filtering algorithm by adopting the concept of the adaptive robust filtering to the unscented particle filter. This algorithm adaptively determines the equivalent weight function and adaptively adjusts the adaptive factor constructed from predicted residuals to resist the disturbances of singular observations and the kinematic model noise, thus preventing particles from degeneracy. It also uses the unscented transformation to improve the accuracy of particle filtering, thus providing the reliable state estimation for improving the performance of adaptive robust filtering. Experiments and comparison analysis demonstrate that the proposed filtering algorithm can effectively resist disturbances due to system state noise and observation noise, and the filtering accuracy is much higher than the extended Kalman filter, unscented Kalman filter, standard particle filter and unscented particle filter.", "Kalman filter has been widely applied for state identification in controllable systems. As a special case of the hidden Markov model, it is based on the assumption of linear dependency relationships and Gaussian noise. The classical Kalman filter does not differentiate systematic error from random error associated with observations. In this paper, we propose an extended Kalman filtering mechanism based on generalized interval probability, where state and observable variables are random intervals, and interval-valued Gaussian distributions model the noises. The prediction and update procedures in the new mechanism are derived. Two examples are used to illustrate the developed mechanism. It is shown that the method is an efficient alternative to sensitivity analysis for assessing the effect of systematic error. This article is available in the ASME Digital Collection at http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4030465.", "Based on the equivalent circuit model (ECM) of lithium-ion battery, this paper introduces an autoregressive and moving average with exogenous input (ARMAX) model. A recursive extended least square algorithm with forgetting factor is employed as the model parameter identification method, because there is a colored noise in operating process. Then HPPC test was conducted on a 20Ah LiFePO 4 cell and the RC ECM parameters available were identified under different SOCs and different current rates. For higher accuracy SOC estimation and uncertainty reduction, strong tracking filter based on cubature Kalman framework (ST-CKF) is adopted as the SOC estimator to compensate for the drawback of nonlinear Kalman filter. The experimental results in UDDS test show that the ST-CKF estimator is more accurate than extended Kalman filter algorithm with the maximum estimated error about 1.8%.", "A multilinearization procedure is described, with the use of which a new class of algorithms for nonlinear filtering can be realized. The methodology targets on adaptively selecting the best reference points for linearization from an ensemble of generated trajectories that span the whole state space of the desired signal. Through simulations, the approach is shown to be significantly superior to the classical extended Kalman filter and comparable in computational burden.", "Particle filters have been proposed as a new form of state-space filtering for speech enhancement applications. A crucial issue in particle filtering is the selection of the importance proposal distribution. In this paper, the iterated extended Kalman filter (IEKF) is used to generate the proposal distribution. The proposal distribution integrates the latest measurements into state transition density, so it can match the posteriori density well. We apply time-varying autoregressive (TVAR) models with stochastically evolving parameters to the problem of speech modeling and enhancement, which is superior to conventional AR models. The experimental results indicate that the new particle filter superiors to the standard particle filter and the other filters such as the extended Kalman particle filter (PF-EKF) in low SNR.", "The estimation of state-of-charge was the key part of battery management system(BMS). The control of BMS was influenced by the accurate estimation. Based on the combination of the open-circuit-voltage method and Ah counting method, the correction factor of the extended Kalman filter was used. Charging and discharging rate and battery temperature and battery aging problem were considered. Then the Kalman filter correction algorithm was proposed. Algorithm was applied in the BMS of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. The result indicates that the Kalman filter correction algorithm can make a further correction of the SOC which is estimated by open-circuit-voltage method and Ah counting method, then the accuracy of SOC estimation in order to provide a practical solution for the battery management system is improved.", "For the multisensor system with correlated measurement noises,unknown noise statistics and different measurement matrices with identical right factor,by correlated method,the online identifiers of the noise statistics are obtained.Based on ARMA innovation model,a self-tuning weighted measurement fusion Kalman filter is presented,which avoids Lyapunov and Riccati equations,reduces the computational burden and is suitable for real time application.By dynamic error system analysis(DESA) method,it is strictly proved that the proposed self-tuning fused Kalman filter converges to the corresponding optimal fused Kalman filter with probability one or in a realization,i.e.it has asymptotic global optimality.A simulation example for a target tracking systems with 3 sensors shows its effectiveness.", "This paper presents a new application of a recently developed self-tuned Kalman filter to the low-pass filtering stage required in some active power filter algorithms, so that they have a faster response than conventional running averages in certain circumstances.", "The applications of the Kalman filtering algorithm in data processing (range and speed) of quasi continuous wave radar are studied. A new adaptive Kalman algorithm is realized. It is shown by computer simulation that this algorithm is applicable for all kinds of moving targets, able to suppress coloured measurement noise largely, meets the requirement for real time processing, and improves the accuracy of radar measurement.", "In this paper, we propose a novel FastSLAM algorithm (named as IUFastSLAM) which is based on Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter (RBPF) framework and uses Iterated Unscented Kalman Filter (IUKF) to estimate the landmark locations. Iterated Unscented Kalman Filter (IUKF) can improve estimation accuracy over the Extend Kalman Filter and Unscented Kalman Filter. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has a superior performance in estimation accuracy and prolonged consistency when compared with the FastSLAM2.0 and UFastSLAM algorithms.", "A new measurement method using multidemension integrated inertial sensor for automobile motion parameters is proposed in this paper,and the measurement precision is improved based on the Kalman filter.The simulation results show that the Kalman filter algorithm is effective in calculating the attitude and velocity of automobile.", "A kinematic filtering method of Galileo positioning is proposed. Based on the thought that the various errors caused by different error sources can be equivalent to the total error of positioning results from the Galileo receiver and by means of a current statistical model for estimating maneuvering targets, a linear Kalman filtering model to process kinematic positioning data is built. An effective suboptimal adaptive Kalman filtering algorithm is used in Galileo kinematic positioning. The model is simple and has good real-time performance, and the positioning accuracy is improved.", "The extended set-membership filter (ESMF) for nonlinear ellipsoidal estimation suffers from numerical instability, computation complexity, as well as the difficulty in filter parameter selection. In this paper, a UD factorization-based adaptive set-membership filter (AESMF) is developed and applied to nonlinear joint estimation of both time-varying states and parameters. As the result of using the proposed UD factorization, combined with a new sequential and selective measurement update strategy, the numerical stability and real-time applicability of conventional ESMF are substantially improved. Furthermore, an adaptive selection scheme of the filter parameters is derived to reduce the computation complexity and achieve sub-optimal estimation. Simulation results have shown the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method.", "A new high dynamic GPS signal tracking algorithm was proposed.Based on current statistical model,a new model for the GPS signal transitional process was established.Since the system involved a linear state equation and a nonlinear measurement equation,a simple Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) algorithm was applied to estimation the signal parameters.For comparison purpose,an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm and a standard UKF algorithm were also applied to the system to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed filtering algorithm.Simulation results show that the new model can precisely represent the real signal process,and the simple UKF algorithm achieves high precision comparable to standard UKF with higher operation efficiency.Therefore,the new model and the proposed algorithm can satisfy real time requirement in high dynamic environment.", "This paper presents a method to model and analyze stochastic noises of fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) in a strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS). Auto-regressive and moving average (ARMA) model was constructed using the method of time series. AR(3) model was best suited according to Akaike Information Criterion, while ARMA(2, 1) model was more often used in general engineering practise. In order to compare the difference of the two models, Kalman filtering algorithms were constructed specifically according to parameters of the two models. Amplitudes and Allan variances of the five FOG stochastic noises were calculated and compared to validate the effectiveness of Kalman filtering method. Simulation results show that Kalman filtering method can effectively eliminate stochastic noises of FOG, but that parameters of Kalman filtering which are related with the type of ARMA model should be regulated specifically.", "This letter presents an extended Kalman filtering algorithm for position tracking with a radio map consisting of received signal strength (RSS) observations by a single device at known positions. The proposed algorithm is based on a time-varying RSS model, introduced in this letter, to track the position of a device and the RSS variation arising from device heterogeneity and environmental changes. The superiority of the proposed algorithm over the existing algorithms is validated with simulations and a real experiment.", "Presented in this paper is a detailed novel approach to tracking multiple moving targets from multiple moving platforms and fusing the individual estimates within platform centric nodes via covariance intersection. The approach presents a method of deconstructing the target model into a nonlinear element and a Kalman Filter, modelling the target position and velocity vectors of the targets. The method avoids the increased complexity of using Extended Kalman Filters. The model state noise covariance is restructured by considering the source of the noise within the simplified imposed model and the measurement noise covariance is estimated from a single coefficient optimized moving average filter. The filter coefficient is optimally determined by the minimization of the variance of the Frobenius norm of the current estimated measurement covariance matrix, via a fuzzy logic feedback structure." ]

[ "Tom Sawyer | rush vault Tom Sawyer Background and Commentary “Co-written with fellow Canadian rock band Max Webster’s lyricist Pye Dubois (originally he called it ‘Louis the Warrior,’ [and also “Louis the Lawyer”]), this song, widely recognized as the quintessential Rush song with its familiar dynamics, is about a detached streetwise rebel with mean, mean pride, partly inspired by Mark Twain’s character.”—Robert Telleria, Merely Players When Dubois presented the lyrics to them, the band was at the home of rock legend Ronnie Hawkins , who first made his mark in the late 1950s with Marylou” and then put together the back-up bands for Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, among others. He was born in Arkansas but moved to Ontario early in his career and remained there.—Rob Freedman, Rush Vault “Pye Dubois is an excellent lyricist. His original lyrics [for the piece that became ‘Tom Sawyer’] were of a portrait of a modern day rebel, a free-spirited individualist striding through the world wide-eyed and purposeful. I added the themes of reconciling the boy and the man in myself and the difference between what people are and what others perceive them to be. (Backstage Newsletter, 1985) There are parts of the song that I don’t necessarily understand. But I like the arrogance implied. But it’s a mistaken arrogance. There are . . . little games you’re expected to play that Tom Sawyer and I don’t have time for. (Sounds) The instrumental section grew from a little melody that Geddy had been using to set up his synthesizers at sound checks. (A Rush Newsreel) I’m playing full strength through the entire song and it took about a day and a half to record. I remember collapsing afterwards with raw, red aching hands. I had been playing the bass drum so hard that my toes were all mashed together and very sore. Physically, this was certainly the most difficult track, and even now it takes as much energy to play properly as my solo.”—Neil in Merely Players “I remember when we layered the opening [Oberheim OB-X ] keyboard thing on top [of the other elements], how cool it sounded, and what power and punch the opening had. And the toughness of the way Neil played in that opening, where it’s just basically the drums and Geddy with this synth rasping away in the background, then the rest of the band diving into it and screaming all the way through. I always thought that we had really, again, achieved what we set out to with that song, of having that real punky kind of rebellious attitude to it.”—Alex in Merely Players “‘Tom Sawyer’” was in many ways the most difficult song to record on [the album]. I remember even though the writing of the song came together pretty quickly, putting it down on tape was a little difficult. We were trying different sounds, and going with a whole different approach to lyrics—the kind of spoken-word thing, getting the right sound for Alex’s guitar, and so on. It was kind of a dark horse. And then in the mixing, it all came together. When we finished it, we were so pleased with what happened, because we kind of had the least expectations of it, because of the difficulty we had [with it]. I think a lot of musicians probably go through a similar thing, where they have this one song that they beat themselves up over, and then the next thing you know, it’s their biggest song.”—Geddy in Rolling Stone The piece, “swirling into the camera eye with vortextual sounds cycloning a slow and deliberate 4/4 beat, propelled Moving Pictures to lofty heights. Its ebbs and flows are legion, its totality Rush’s ambassador of a song. ‘I love that song and I never get tired of playing it,’ says Geddy. ‘The fact that it is so popular still just confuses the hell out of me. I love the fact that it begins with such a great backbeat, and there’s this kind of faux rap part. To me, the song is just about innocence more than anything, and I think that comes through. And it still holds through somehow; the slightly inscrutable lyrics still deliver that message to people, and people identify with it, and they dig it. And it’s got this weird middle part" ]

[ "Phil Collins Wins Oscar For Best Original Song - MTV mtv archive-Eric-Schumacher-Rasmussen 03/27/2000 Between indie pop singer Aimee Mann's \"Save Me\" and the raunchy \"Blame Canada,\" from the soundtrack to \"South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,\" the Oscars had at least two chances to break with tradition. In the end, though, Phil Collins' ballad \"You'll Be in My Heart,\" from the Disney film \"Tarzan,\" took home the Academy Award for Best Original Song on Sunday night in Los Angeles. Collins, a successful solo artist during and since his tenure in the art-rock band Genesis, accepted the award for the song ( RealAudio excerpt ) with a mixture of irreverence and respect. \"Now my life can go on,\" he said sarcastically. \"It's been hell, I tell you.\" But, he said before thanking his family, \"I didn't think it would be this hard. You don't know what this means to my kids.\" Collins was nominated previously in the Best Original Song category for \"Two Hearts\" (1988, from the film \"Buster\") and \"Against All Odds\" (1984, from the film of the same name). Cher (born Cherilyn LaPier), whose song \"Believe\" was a 1999 radio hit, wore a long, black garment that she tripped over on the way to the microphone to announce the Best Song winner. \"As you can see, I'm dressed like a grownup tonight,\" she said, in reference to her usual flamboyant and revealing dresses. \"I apologize to the academy and promise I'll never do it again.\" Unlike previous years, when songs were performed throughout the course of the awards show, this year's nominees sang the songs in a medley introduced by R&B singer/actress Vanessa Williams and rapper/actor LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith). Musical Variety Show The segment began with Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan singing \"When She Loved Me,\" from the \"Toy Story 2\" soundtrack. Wearing a midnight-blue, textured taffeta gown, McLachlan delivered her breathy vocals accompanied by the song's writer, Randy Newman, on grand piano. The Oscar nomination was Newman's 13th. Wearing a white silk cowboy shirt and a Native American-influenced beaded choker, Mann followed with a five-piece band accompanying her on \"Save Me\" ( RealAudio excerpt ), from the Paul Thomas Anderson film \"Magnolia.\" Dressed in a gray suit and black shirt, Collins sang \"You'll Be in My Heart\" backed by piano, acoustic guitar and strings from the orchestra pit. Songwriter Burt Bacharach and bassist/producer Don Was led the orchestra and were the evening's music directors. Sitting on steps, 'N Sync began singing \"Music of My Heart,\" from the Meryl Streep film of the same name. After the ballad's first verse, the steps split in two, revealing pop singer Gloria Estefan wearing a white strapless evening gown. The medley's finale featured the much-anticipated \"Blame Canada\" ( RealAudio excerpt ), an obscenity-laden number that gave the Academy fits trying to determine how to present it on national television. Actor Robin Williams began with black duct tape over his mouth, which he then pulled off and shouted, \"Oh my God, they killed Kenny!\" a recurring line in the \"South Park\" movie and television series. Williams sang lines that included the words \"fart\" and \"that bitch Anne Murray\" (a reference to the Canadian-born singer of the 1970s hits \"Snowbird,\" \"Danny's Song\" and \"You Needed Me\"), but he left out some of the song's more offensive lyrics. The medley ended with a cast of dancers dressed in costumes similar to those of the animated \"South Park\" characters, and a Rockettes-style chorus line on which the dancers wore outfits that resembled Canadian Royal Mountie uniforms, if only those uniforms included hot pants and sheer black tights. Many film aficionados were uninterested in the best song award, according to Duane Dudek, film critic for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. \"I haven't given it (the Best Song category) much thought,\" Dudek said before the program began. Revisiting The Past The awards show also featured a medley of 10 previous Oscar-winning songs, which Bacharach introduced by saying \"here are some songs to remind you of the best movies you'v", "Where Are They Now? Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show Where are they Now? Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show With smart-aleck hits and stage antics that included dressing up as their own opening acts, Dr. Hook and the Medecine Show gladly assumed the role of the clown princes of Seventies pop. Their off-center, sardonic approach to music making kept Hook and his cronies on the charts for over ten years, netting them thirty-five gold and platinum records. The band's loopy stagecraft took shape in the rowdy bars near a bus station in Union City, New Jersey, where New Jersey Native Dennis Locorriere and Southern honky-tonk veteran Ray Sawyer hooked up in 1968 (Sawyer's eye patch, the result of an injury received in a car accident in 1967, inspired the band's name). They got their start singing one of cartoonist-songwriter Shel Silverstein's songs for Dustin Hoffman's 1970 movie Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying All Those Terrible Things About Me?, and it was Silverstein's mock ballad \"Sylvia's Mother\" that first put the motley band on the charts in 1972. The following February, another of Silverstein's musical satires, \"The Cover of Rolling Stone,\" put Dr. Hook back in the Top Ten, and by March the band was on the cover of the magazine. \"The only thing I regret is that when we got on the cover,\" says Locorriere, \"we were a bunch of assholes and we had nothing to say.\" By 1974, though, the group's nonchalance about business matters led to bankruptcy. \"If we were in the black when we finished a tour, we'd party into the red,\" says Locorriere. Although the band, which had shorted its name to Dr. Hook, staged a comeback in 1976 with a Top Ten remake of Sam Cooke's \"Once Sixteen,\" both Sawyer and Locorrier feel that the band's original spirit had been lost. \"Our music got real safe in the late Seventies,\" says Locorriere. \"We were on Solid Gold until you wanted to puke. And we started to hate our albums.\" Their hitmaking continued through this period, but Sawyer finally left in disgust in 1983. \"I became a product with a patch and a hat,\" he says. The band did a few more tours to pay back bills before packing it in in 1985. \"Everybody knew it was time to do something else,\" says Locorriere. \"When we started to play clubs where our picture and Chubby Checker's were in the lobby, I would think, 'Is he coming back or are we on our way out?' \" Now living in Nashville with his son Jessejames, Locorriere, 38, retired from music for a while but resurfaced recently as a backup singer on Randy Travis's album Always and Forever. Sawyer, 50, plays clubs in the U.S. and Canada with an R&B oriented band and has opened in Las Vegas for longtime friend Mel Tillis. Sawyer, his wife, Linda, and their two children live near Nashville. Although Locorriere has fond memores of Dr. Hook, he's not about to hit the comeback trail. \"We could probably still be gigging somewhere,\" he says, \"whether it was in a club or on this tour with the Turtles. But we're semilegendary, and I'd like to keep it there.\" - David Browne", "Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’ Canadian Radio Ban Lifted Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’ Canadian Radio Ban Lifted By Amy Sciarretto September 2, 2011 11:20 AM REDDIT Dave Hogan, Hulton Archive / Getty Images The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) announced that the eight-month ban on Dire Straits ’ ‘Money For Nothing’ has been lifted! The song was yanked from national playlists on radio stations in Canada in January after a listener complained about the usage of the word “faggot” when said listener heard the song on CHOZ-FM in Newfoundland. Now, broadcasters can return to playing the song at will. ‘Money For Nothing’ was a hit for the band in 1985, and has enjoyed recurring status on the airwaves, but once the complaint was lodged, it was immediately deemed a breach of the Human Rights Clauses of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code. Much of the public didn’t quite agree with that labeling of the song and supported efforts to get it back on the air. Veteran radio broadcasters were also appalled by the decision. “It made us look silly in the eyes of the broadcast community around the world,” writer/broadcaster Alan Cross, a 30-year veteran of the Canadian radio biz, told Rolling Stone . “I talked to people from the US and the UK and they were like, ‘What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you get it? It’s a joke. It’s a satire. You didn’t understand the context?'” The decision to lift the band came about after the CBSC weighed what they called “considerable additional information” – such as learning that alternative versions of “Money For Nothing” have existed since 1985, proving “the band and the composer considered that there was a less offensive way of presenting the song to the public long ago” and the context in which the word is used demonstrates that “the composer’s language appears not to have had an iota of malevolent or insulting intention.” In layman’s terms, that means there were edited versions of the song created long before the Newfoundland listener made a fuss, indicating that Dire Straits were sensitive about the weight of the word. Station programmers have the choice to play the original or any of the alternates. The CBSC is not admitting it was wrong in yanking the song, though. The organization (or organisation, in Canadian English) said that the Atlantic Regional Panel was “correct in its view of the inappropriateness of the word” for broadcast on Canadian airwaves. Cross addressed the CBSC’s comments, saying, “When it comes to things like foul language and discriminatory language, it’s really tough for the CBSC to rule in any direction but for the plaintiff.” “Every single incident is taken as an isolated case,” Cross reasoned. “So what happens when somebody complains about the Tragically Hip’s ‘At The Hundredth Meridian’ with the F-bomb in it? What if somebody complains about the Who from 1978, ‘Who Are You’ with ‘Who the f— are you’ in it? Under the rules, the CBSC would have to rule those songs unplayable on Canadian airwaves because of language.” Talk about a possible snowball effect!", "What's In A Name? (How Canada and its Provinces came to be Named) How Canada and it's Provinces Came to be Named Sources: The Macmillan book of Canadian Place Names by William B. Hamilton (1978, Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, Ontario); Naming Canada by Alan Rayburn (1994, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ontario) A number of names were suggested for the new Dominion of Canada. Among the more interesting and most repeated names were: Acadia Albertoria (after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria) Albionora Borealia (after the aurora borealis, or northern lights) Britannia Efisga (acronym: England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Aboriginal lands) Hochelaga (original Native name for Montreal) Laurentia Tuponia (acronym: The United Provinces of North America) Ursalia Victorialand Victorialia Fortunately for Canadians, on July 1, 1867, the provinces of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were united as a Dominion under the name of 'Canada', but not before some debate, and none with more wit and humour and reasoning than Thomas D'Arcy McGee: \"I read in one newspaper not less than a dozen attempts to derive a new name. One individual chooses Tuponia and another Hochelaga as a suitable name for the new nationality. Now I ask any honourable member of this House how he would feel if he woke up some fine morning and found himself instead of a Canadian, a Tuponian or a Hochelagander.\" (February 9, 1865) A number of theories have been proposed in explaning the derivation of the name 'Canada'. In 1698, Father Louis Hennepin first recorded the similarity of the Spanish 'aca nada', meaning 'here, nothing'. This refers to the derisive name applied to the region by the Spanish who had found no gold or riches in Canada. This is also similar to the Portuguese 'cà nada', also meaning 'here, nothing'. The most commonly accepted version, however, derives from explorer Jacques Cartier in his writings in 1536. In the company of Taignoagny and Domagaya, sons of Iroquoian Chief Donnacona, Cartier was returning to Canada after having taken to boys to France as proof of the New World. As they approached the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the boys eagerly announced, \"That's the way to Canada\", referring to their 'kanata' (village) Stadacona (present-day Quebec City). Cartier learned that Chief Donnacona's territory extended over a number of 'kanatas' 50 kilometres beyond Stadacona. In his journals, Cartier appended a list of local Iroquoian words, noting particularly that 'kanata' meant 'town' and that the lands ruled by Donnacona incorporated a series of 'kanatas'. André Thever, a contemporary explorer of Cartier, expanded this idea to mean that 'kanata' meant all the lands ruled by Donnacona instead of the individual villages. With few exceptions, maps made in France following Cartier's 1536 expedition indicated Canada as being the vast territory north of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It seems, then, that Canada was named after the Iroquoian word for 'village'. Alberta In 1882, the District of Alberta was created and was later enlarged on September 1, 1905, to become the province of Alberta. 'Alberta' was in honour of Her Royal Highness Princess Louise Caroline Alberta (daughter of Queen Victoria), the wife of Canadian Governor General the Marquess of Lorne (1878-1883). British Columbia Originally, the province was to be called 'New Caledonia', but, since the name was already in use in the South Pacific, the name was discarded in favour of British Columbia. 'Columbia' derives from the Columbia River, named by American Captain Robert Gray for his ship the 'Columbia', and the name had been generally applied to the southern portion of the colony. 'British Columbia' appears to have originated with Queen Victoria. An official proclamation in 1858 designated the name. Labrador The most generally-accepted version of the derivation of Labrador is that applied to João Fernandes, a Portuguese explorer. Fernandes was also a 'lavrador' (landholder) in the Azores. The name originally applied to a portion of modern-day Greenland, but the name was later transfered t", "\"Masterminds\" - Manchester Evening News, November 7, 2015 | Online Research Library: Questia Read preview Article excerpt 1. Playboy Russia covergirl Maria Kozhevnikova, boxer Nikolai Valuyev, and tennis player Marat Safin shared which honour in December 2011? 2. What William S Burroughs 1961 book popularised the rock music term 'heavy metal', and provided the names for at least two rock bands of the 1970s? 3. What main religion celebrates festivals including Nuakhai, Yatra (or Zatra/Jatra), Pongal, Holi and Shigmo? 4. Which country experienced the Velvet Revolution in Nov-Dec 1989? 5. According to the UK General Teaching Council how many of the 28,000 newly qualified teachers in 2010 had a computerrelated degree: 3; 30; 300 or 3,000? 6. Spell the word: Remanisence; Reminissense; Remeniscence; or Reminiscence? 7. What ancient Sanskrit word loosely meaning 'region' commonly now refers to people (and culture, products, etc) of Indian sub-continent origins? 8. Whom did Forbes Magazine list as the most powerful woman in the Southern Hemisphere in 2011? 9. Unrelated, what is a set of slats and a museum? 10. What ship, whose name means thunderbolt, was Nelson's flagship 1799-1801, and later a training ship for boys? 26 11. The Showa period of Japan coincided with what Emperor's reign? 12. Michael Morpurgo, author of the children's book War Horse, on In state Luther which the 2012 Spielberg film (of the same name) is based, held what UK position from 2003-5? 13. What fashionable Mediterranean resort hosted the G20 international economics conference at the height of the Greek Euro membership crisis? 27 14. How many cubic metres is the space in a room four metres square and three metres high? 15. Which politician bowled faster than Dennis Lillee and Andy Roberts? 16. What element is also known as hydrargyrum? David shows around 17. Whose father wrote and sang the popular Secret Lemonade Drinker song in the award-winning British 1970s-80s R Whites Lemonade TV advert ? … Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details Newspapers Encyclopedia Subscribe to Questia and enjoy: Full access to this article and over 10 million more from academic journals, magazines, and newspapers Over 83,000 books Access to powerful writing and research tools Article details", "LondonJazz: Preview / Interview: Courtney Pine - House of Legends at the Jazz Cafe, Camden, Feb 7-8 Preview / Interview: Courtney Pine - House of Legends at the Jazz Cafe, Camden, Feb 7-8 Saxophonist Courtney Pine CBE talked to Alison Bentley about bringing Caribbean-influenced jazz from his latest House of Legends album to Camden’s Jazz Cafe, Feb. 7th and 8th. Alison Bentley: I heard you talk last year about learning on the bandstand with Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. The first time I heard you play was with the Jazz Warriors at the old Bracknell Jazz Festival. Are there still opportunities like that for young jazz musicians to learn on the bandstand? Courtney Pine: That was in the 80s, right? I remember that one really well. I'm about to launch another band called the Venus Warriors, an all-female band. And it's a version of the Jazz Warriors. I'm having to recount the story of this first show all the time. The musicians were scared of doing that gig. I remember that show, cause there was a great trumpet player called Harry Beckett. He didn't really want to do it. He's like, 'I don't really want to be with these young kids.' And I'm like, 'You're not going to have any pressure, we'll play your music.' I just remember going through this whole thing of convincing my elders, that this would be a good idea. And I'm going though it again with these women. AB: You're setting up new opportunities. CP: It's hard, but I've been doing the best I can. The guys who have come through, like Soweto Kinch, Shabaka Hutchings, they're all award winners, so the process does work. In terms of me, I just had to go and find it, I had to go and search. But I'm doing the opposite now, I'm going looking for youngsters who want to play, and even though I've told you because you asked me, I don't actually go out and make a big noise about it. But I think it's such a strong component of our industry that we inspire the young and give them a platform to play. I've a record label that does it now as well. There's a band called Empirical that released their début that won Album of the Year. AB: You produced that one? CP: Yes, I did, but they've had three other records out on another label. They've gone on to bigger and better things, and that's the idea, that the elders give them the opportunity to stand up. AB: Is the emphasis on elders training younger people a part of the Caribbean tradition? CP: I think so, yeah. If you look at Caribbean Music, it's all about communication and functionality. You can't really play grooves or scales or sounds that aren't relevant to your village, your town, your nation. It just doesn't work. You find that the music that comes from the Caribbean is from the essence of the community. That's what I've tried to do over the years. I've done my apprenticeship playing American jazz, playing classical music, using different approaches to become a better musician. When you start to play from the community aspect, you get a different feel, a different sound, a different kind of demarcation. We started this conversation talking about the Jazz Warriors, which is what that band was all about, a community-based band. I was lucky enough to play with Manu Dibango, a Cameroonian saxophonist who's a spokesman in France. He has a political show. He plays great saxophone, and he inspired me. I did a show with him last year, and the reasons why he plays music are what I want to do as well- to inspire others. AB: I was thinking, the Caribbean islands are so close to each other other but their sounds and styles are so different. Is that because the music's associated with individual towns and communities? CP: Very much so. That's made my day you saying that, because a lot of people think that the Caribbean is all Calypso or Bob Marley. It's not. When you think about Cuba and Martinique, and everything in between- there's a lot of variation. And for me what's inspiring is the fact that these Africans have taken their locality and they've developed something. It's like a scientist saying, 'What can I make out of this thing? What can I ma", "Lesotho: a Tale of Two Kingdoms - This Is Africa “We Do Not Want Her Kind Here”– Finding Queer Belonging in a Ghanaian Immigrant Community “Is this one of your daughter’s friends?” I overheard a woman I did not know ask in a language I only vaguely understand. To the woman’s relief, her interlocutor, let’s call her Auntie Ama, responded “No.” “Good, because we do not want her kind here,” the woman said. What is Lesbian Now? To answer this question, you will need to explain to your grandmother about “queer theory”and the “diffusion”of human rights and “international instruments” that hold states “accountable” to “macro obligations.” Problem is, these terms and phrases mean nothing to her. South Africa sex toy trade industry flourishing The sex toy trade is flourishing across South Africa as couples are increasingly relaxed with the idea of buying adult toys. The negative social stigmas around the adult toy industry seem to be slowly crumbling. Désir a luxury sex toy e-commerce store is recording month-on-month increases in the sales of couples’ sex toys, and the company says the sale of sex toys is now evenly balanced between both sexes, as the subject becomes more acceptable. SHARE ON: Lesotho: a Tale of Two Kingdoms By Peter Fabricius on July 6, 2015 — Lesotho is a disappointing country for democrats. One of southern Africa's two monarchies, the modern constitutional monarchy of Lesotho is making the absolute, tribal monarchy of Swaziland look good. Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, at his inauguration in March. Image: Elmond Jiyane, DoC viber Lesotho is a disappointing country for democrats. Southern Africa is dubiously blessed in having two of Africa’s three monarchies – and the only two in the African Union, since the third one, Morocco, stormed out in a huff many years ago. That invites comparison. Swaziland is almost a theme park of traditional, absolute African monarchy, even if it has a fairly recent constitution that ostensibly upholds the usual freedoms. From South Africa, you can pop over the border and see this sort of monarchy at work, including young women dancing for King Mswati III’s delight, a harem of beautiful queens, a royal guard of warriors – and, of course, a duly-suppressed political opposition. The latter is really just another way of keeping modernity at bay, so it’s quite consistent with the park theme. The coronation of King Mswati III of Swaziland in 1986. Image: AOP A few hours’ drive away, Lesotho is ostensibly quite the opposite. This is a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy . Its electoral system is more advanced than most. It contains elements of both the first-past-the post constituency system and the proportional representation system. It would be a perfect system for South Africa, because it makes MPs accountable to the specific constituents who voted them in, and not just the party bosses. The Lesotho system is the outcome of major unrest in the country in 1998. This was sparked by the fact that the opposition won about 40% of the popular vote, but only got one seat in what was then a purely first-past-the-post constituency electoral system. That provoked complaints of electoral fraud, sustained protests and triggered a mutiny, which only South Africa’s military intervention prevented from violently toppling the government. So Lesotho introduced proportional representation to ensure opposition parties got a real say. The next elections, in 2002, were widely hailed as an example to the region. And subsequent polls were also generally approved. So far, so good. The modern, sophisticated constitutional monarchy was humming. Yet now it all seems to be going badly wrong. The proportional representation system is causing instability. No party is winning a simple majority. And so in 2012 then Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili’s junior coalition party, Mothetjoa Metsing’s Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LDC) party, switched allegiance to Tom Thabane’s All Basotho Convention (ABC), which brought Thabane’s coalition into power. Then, last year, Metsing again switched back to Mo", "What song was The Pittsburgh Pirates anthem We are Family - IT - 402 View Full Document What song was The Pittsburgh Pirates anthem We are Family – Sister Sledge 27 Whit countries parliament is called The Storting Norway 28 Who directed Four Weddings and a Funeral Mike Newell 29 Which company developed the Laser Printer Cannon 30 Parsley is a member of which family Carrot 31 What does lager literally mean in German Storage 32 Franz Kafka wrote in German what nationality was he Czeck 33 Which car company produced the first front wheel drive 1934 Citroen 34 Who produced the Tom and Jerry cartoons until 1956 Fred Quimby 35 The name of which countries capital means good air Argentina – Buenos Aires 36 The sackbut developed into which modern instrument Trombone 37 The GRA govern which sport Greyhound Racing Association 38 Which record label signed the Rolling Stones in 1991 Virgin 39 In heraldry gules are what colour Red 40 Reginald Truscott-Jones became famous as who Ray Miland 41 What is the food of the secretary bird Snakes 42 What bridge links a Palace with a State Prison Bridge of Sighs – Venice 43 The African and French marigolds are native to what country Mexico 44 Who is the Patron Saint of Grave diggers St Anthony 45 What is Muckle Flugga Rock and Lighthouse on Uist 46 Mary Read and Anne Boney had what job in common Pirates 47 Short actors stand on what wooden object - to appear bigger Pancake 48 What is the commonest name for a pub in Britain The Red Lion 49 What does the word economy mean in original Greek Home Management 50 Pok ta Pok started in Mexico - what modern game/sport is it Basketball Page 30 This preview has intentionally blurred sections. 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View Full Document 10000 general knowledge questions and answers www.cartiaz.ro No Questions Quiz 15 Answers 51 George Simenon created Maigret - what nationality was he Belgian 52 Country singer Hank Wangford had what profession Gynaecologist 53 Pit Straight - Lesmo Bend - Roggia Bend - which Grand Prix Monza Italy 54 What is a Chuckwalla Lizard 55 Edward Whymper was the first to do what Climb Matterhorn 56 What is Pancetta Bacon 57 In what film did Bruce Willis play a time travelling criminal Twelve Monkeys 58 Who was the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 in Olympics Nadia Comaneci 59 What bird is sacred in Peru Condor 60 What was Colombo's dog called Fang - Basset Hound 61 What industry would use a mordant Dying - to fix a colour 62 Catherine the Great of Russia was born in which country Poland 63 What tanker caused a severe oil spill in 1989 Exxon Valdez (Alaska) 64 Which soul singer was Sittin on the Dock of the Bay Otis Redding 65 In which city would you find The Blue Mosque Istanbul 66 What country makes Sukhindol wine Bulgaria 67 The minnow is the smallest member of what fish family Carp 68 Lucille Le Sueur became famous as who Joan Crawford 69 In which city is The Abbey theatre Dublin 70 Which islands capital is Flying Fish Cove Christmas Island 71 Where in the world is Radwick racecourse situated Sydney Australia 72 What has a palimped got Webbed Feet 73 Treifa foods are forbidden to which religious group Jews - opposite of Kosher 74 Which metal is the best conductor of electricity Silver 75 This is the end of the preview. Sign up to access the rest of the document. TERM Kenyatta University IT 402 - Spring 2015 1 2 3 4 5 Sampling In Research What is research? According Webster (1985), to researc HYPO.docx", "Kung Fu Panda (2008) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The Dragon Warrior has to clash against the savage Tai Lung as China's fate hangs in the balance: However, the Dragon Warrior mantle is supposedly mistaken to be bestowed upon an obese panda who is a tyro in martial arts. Directors: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 27 titles created 24 Nov 2011 a list of 41 titles created 12 Aug 2014 a list of 40 titles created 30 May 2015 a list of 30 titles created 18 Oct 2015 a list of 35 titles created 16 Nov 2015 Title: Kung Fu Panda (2008) 7.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 14 wins & 38 nominations. See more awards » Videos Po and his friends fight to stop a peacock villain from conquering China with a deadly new weapon, but first the Dragon Warrior must come to terms with his past. Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson Spoiled by their upbringing and unaware of what wildlife really is, four animals from the New York Central Zoo escape, unwittingly assisted by four absconding penguins, and find themselves in Madagascar. Directors: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath Stars: Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer Set during the Ice Age, a sabertooth tiger, a sloth, and a wooly mammoth find a lost human infant, and they try to return him to his tribe. Directors: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha Stars: Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Ray Romano When a criminal mastermind uses a trio of orphan girls as pawns for a grand scheme, he finds their love is profoundly changing him for the better. Directors: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud Stars: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand After his swamp is filled with magical creatures, Shrek agrees to rescue Princess Fiona for a villainous lord in order to get his land back. Directors: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson Stars: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz A rat who can cook makes an unusual alliance with a young kitchen worker at a famous restaurant. Directors: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava Stars: Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt Directors: Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and 1 more credit » Stars: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz The animals try to fly back to New York City, but crash-land on an African wildlife refuge, where Alex is reunited with his parents. Directors: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath Stars: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer A hot-shot race-car named Lightning McQueen gets waylaid in Radiator Springs, where he finds the true meaning of friendship and family. Directors: John Lasseter, Joe Ranft Stars: Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Paul Newman A family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world. Director: Brad Bird When Gru, the world's most super-bad turned super-dad has been recruited by a team of officials to stop lethal muscle and a host of Gru's own, He has to fight back with new gadgetry, cars, and more minion madness. Directors: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud Stars: Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt Continuing his \"legendary adventures of awesomeness\", Po must face two hugely epic, but different threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to his home. Directors: Alessandro Carloni, Jennifer Yuh Nelson Stars: Jack Black, Bryan Cranston, Dustin Hoffman Edit Storyline It's the story about a lazy, irreverent slacker panda, named Po, who is the biggest fan of Kung Fu around...which doesn't exactly come in handy while working every day in his family's noodle shop. Unexpectedly chosen to fulfill an ancient prophecy, Po's dreams become reality when he joins the world of Kung Fu and studies alongside his idols, the legendary Furious Five -- Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper and Monkey -- under the", "How we made: Tom Robinson and Nick Mobbs on Glad to Be Gay | Music | The Guardian How we made How we made: Tom Robinson and Nick Mobbs on Glad to Be Gay The singer-songwriter and A&R man behind the 1978 song remember how punk energy fired up a gay-rights anthem 'Any tweeness vanished quickly' … Robinson in 1981. Photograph: David Corio/Redferns Close Tom Robinson, singer, songwriter I had a nervous breakdown when I was 16, largely due to the stress of growing up gay, which was illegal back then . I was sent to a sort of retreat , where I was taught to accept myself. It also exposed me to all sorts of music. In the 60s, there wasn't a single public figure who was openly gay, so we had no role models, no mentions of homosexuality. John Lennon sang You've Got to Hide Your Love Away , almost certainly about [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein's sexuality, but the gender was changed: \"If she's gone, I can't go on.\" Then in the 1970s, along came David Bowie who declared he was bisexual . He had all these songs where you could think: \"That's about me.\" I wrote a song called Good to Be Gay for the Campaign For Homosexual Equality in 1975. But it was a completely different song. I'd become politicised after becoming the musician with a theatrical troupe from New York called Hot Peaches , who were very camp. They exposed me to the notion of being proud of being gay. I also saw the Sex Pistols , who kicked open the doors for the art of confrontation. At the time, the police were regularly targeting London's oldest gay pub, the Coleherne in Earls Court , on a regular basis. When the editor of Gay News famously tried to take a photograph of one raid, he was charged and fined for obstruction. All these influences came together in the long, hot summer of 1976. I wrote Glad to Be Gay on an acoustic guitar in my flat, intending it as a one-off for a Gay Pride march. The title came from a slogan I'd seen on badges . I put Bob Dylan's Sara on my cassette deck and, over it, started singing: \"The British police are the best in the world,/ I don't believe one of these stories I've heard./ About them raiding our pubs for no reason at all,/ Lining the customers up by the wall.\" There was plenty of scope for anger and venom. The line about a friend getting beaten up by queer-bashers was true. But I realised I couldn't rip off Dylan, so I wrote new music, added the chorus and gave it that more upbeat swing. I first recorded it as a demo in a vocal harmony band I was in called Café Society. The keyboard player refused to join in on backing vocals. The demo sounded like the Kinks, but once you start playing something like that to audiences – and feel in fear for your life – any tweeness vanishes quickly. I formed Tom Robinson Band with [guitarist] Danny Kustow, a guy I'd met on that retreat. TRB were straight men, but Danny understood this was an important protest song. We tried recording it in a studio, but it sounded limp. It needed that thrill of \"Are they going to bottle us off the stage?\" which we captured on a live recording at London's Lyceum , released in 1978 on the EP Rising Free. John Peel was the only Radio 1 DJ to play it, even though it's a great singalong song. People would join in with what begins as an anti-police number and, by the time they're at the chorus, they're all caught up in it, belting out: \"Sing if you're glad to be gay.\" I'm now married with kids, but Glad to Be Gay was about anyone who didn't conform, from lesbians to transgenders, a way of recognising that most of us have complex sexualities. I never imagined that, 35 years later, it would be called the gay national anthem, or that we'd have openly gay pop stars and a Tory prime minister campaigning for gay marriage. I received a letter from a US teenager who had been disowned by his Christian parents. He'd just taken an overdose when Glad to Be Gay came on his college radio station. He put his fingers down his throat, threw up, and moved to San Franscisco, where he was now living happily. It would have been worth writing the song for him alone. Reading this on mobile? C", "Don't Make a Wave Committee members and Greenpeace founders (from left) Jim Bohlen, Paul Cote, and Irving Stowe. Bob Hunter 1941–2005 He was a relentless visionary and a mystic storyteller – the Canadian Bob Hunter infused the young Greenpeace with a magic that lasts to the present day. From day one, the long-haired, beardy journalist, who introduced the Cree Indian myth of the “Warriors of the Rainbow”, forced those around him to think big – and then go one step further. For Hunter, the limits of the practical or the probable didn’t count: Nothing was ever impossible. Combining creativity with strategic thinking and a hard-nosed journalistic sense for a good story, he helped to shape – perhaps like no other founding member – what would come be known, around the world, as a “Greenpeace action”. Fascinated by media theory, the often audacious Hunter wanted to change the world with “media mindbombs” – consciousness-changing sounds and images that would blast around the world in the guise of news. The approach worked brilliantly. Greenpeace quickly became a media household name around the world. Hunter’s spirit of courage, defiance and media-savviness continues to define Greenpeace up to the present day. The organisation he co-founded and shaped in a way few others have, will always be blessed with his spirit. Bob Hunter died of prostate cancer on 2 May 2005, aged 63. David McTaggart 1932–2001 He was pragmatic, driven and famously ruthless – David McTaggart took Greenpeace’s free-spirited founding ethos and translated it into an international organisation. Responding to a newspaper ad placed by a newly-founded group called Greenpeace, the Canadian-born former entrepreneur promptly renamed his sailing boat “Greenpeace III” and set sail to confront a French nuclear weapon test. It was what would become known as “classic Greenpeace” – a tiny boat challenged one of the greatest military forces on Earth. McTaggart’s pragmatism and shamelessly entrepreneurial approach built the organisation Greenpeace. Soon after joining, he began drumming up new support throughout Europe, and in 1979 forged a new international alliance, uniting the organisation’s separate factions: Greenpeace International was born. The founding ethos has been framed long before McTaggart came on board, but the relentless Canadian defined the growing movement’s structure and its methods like no other. By 1985 the organisation that started life on a small fishing boat had three ships and 50 campaigns around the world. Today, Greenpeace’s integrated structure means that global problems can be addressed at a global level. The foundations for this were laid by the man who sailed off on a whim – only to end up dedicating his entire life to environmental issues. David McTaggart died in a car accident on 23 March 2001 near his home in Italy. Dorothy Stowe Irving Stowe 1915–1974 As committed pacifists and life-long activists, Dorothy and Irving Stowe didn’t have to think twice when the idea came up to sail a boat into a nuclear test zone. Their tolerance united the Don’t Make A Wave Committee that discussed the plan; their experience inspired it. Their peaceful, committed spirit became the group’s. And that group became Greenpeace. “It is amazing,” Dorothy Stowe would later recall, “what a few people sitting around their kitchen table can achieve.” It was here that the disarmament movement got to know its nascent ecology counterpart – and it was the charismatic Quaker couple that hosted the meetings that held the loose, often disparate alliance of dreamers together. The Stowes brought ideas to the table that would become an essential part of the Greenpeace founding ethos. “Bearing witness”, they explained to the group, was a sort of passive resistance: You go to the scene of an objectionable activity to register your opposition by your presence. From the example of Gandhi, the Stowes believed that citizens acting with integrity and courage could defeat powerful forces. To this day, Greenpeace is “bearing witness” and “speaking truth to power”. Irving Stowe died of pancr", "the Band | Canadian-American rock group | Britannica.com Canadian-American rock group Levon Helm The Band, Canadian-American band that began as the backing group for both Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan and branched out on its own in 1968. The Band’s pioneering blend of traditional country , folk, old-time string band, blues , and rock music brought them critical acclaim in the late 1960s and ’70s and served as a template for Americana, the movement of hybrid, roots-oriented music that emerged in the late 1990s. The members were Jaime (“Robbie”) Robertson (b. July 5, 1944, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Levon Helm (b. May 26, 1940, Elaine, Arkansas, U.S.—d. April 19, 2012, New York, New York), Rick Danko (b. December 29, 1942, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada—d. December 10, 1999, Marbletown, New York, U.S.), Richard Manuel, Stratford, Ontario, Canada—d. March 4, 1986, Winter Park, Florida, U.S.), and Garth Hudson (b. August 2, 1937, London, Ontario, Canada). The Band (left to right): Garth Hudson, Jaime (“Robbie”) Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard … © G. Hannekroot—Sunshine/Retna Ltd. Robertson, Helm, Danko, Manuel, and Hudson were five self-effacing sidemen pushed into becoming a self-contained group by Dylan, the star in whose shadow they grew. Robertson was the group’s principal writer and guitarist. Drummer Helm was a “good old boy” from Arkansas , the sole American in a lineup of displaced Canadians. Danko was the amiable hayseed on bass and occasional fiddle. Pianist Manuel sang blues ballads in a wrenching Ray Charles baritone. And Hudson’s otherworldly keyboard doodles were the glue that held the whole operation together. At their peak, from 1968 to 1973, the quintet embodied better than any other group the sense of the American past that came to haunt pop culture after the hippie ideals of the 1960s had crashed to the ground. The real midwife to the Band’s birth was Hawkins, a rockabilly diehard from Arkansas who ventured up to Canada in the spring of 1958. As Hawkins’s lieutenant, Helm, still a teenager, helped recruit the young Ontarians—Robertson, Danko, Manuel, and Hudson—who replaced the original members of Hawkins’s backing band, the Hawks. At a point when Fabian ruled the pop airwaves, the razorback rock and roll of the new Hawks was welcome only in the scuzziest roadhouses. During these years on the road, Robertson absorbed much of the flavour of life below the Mason and Dixon Line that would permeate Band songs like “ The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down ” (1969). Similar Topics Black Sabbath In 1964 the Hawks figured they could make it without Hawkins. During their summer residency on the New Jersey seaboard, Dylan got wind of their reputation and, after playing with Robertson, hired the group to back him on his first electric tour—a tour so controversial among folk purists that Helm could not take the pressure and quit. For the Hawks it was a baptism by fire, and it all but burned them out. In 1967, in an effort to recuperate, the group (minus Helm) followed Dylan to Woodstock , New York . In nearby West Saugerties they gathered daily in the basement of “Big Pink,” a secluded ranch house. Here the five men put together a rambling repertoire of old country, folk, and blues songs that later leaked out as a series of “basement tape” bootlegs and then as the double album The Basement Tapes (1975). When Helm returned to the fold, Dylan began urging “the Band”—as they were now known locally—to go it alone. The immediate result of this separation was Music from Big Pink (1968), a wholly original fusion of country, gospel , rock, and rhythm and blues that, more than any other album of the period, signaled rock’s retreat from psychedelic excess and blues bombast into something more soulful, rural, and reflective. Yet it was The Band (1969) that really defined the group’s grainy character. Recorded in a makeshift studio in Los Angeles in early 1969, the album was a timeless distillation of American experience from the Civil War to the 1960s. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent After the many years spent backing Hawki", "York's ancient origins The City of York ORIGIN OF YORK The Roman name for York was Eboracum, based on a native British name for the ancient site. It is thought that the root of the early name was Eburos, an Ancient British personal name, which suggests that the site was founded by someone called Eburos. An alternative view is that the name is based on the Ancient British word Eburos meaning Yew, a sacred Celtic tree from which the personal name Eburos derives. In Roman times there was a tribe in Gaul called the Eburorovices, who were the 'Warriors of the Yew Tree'. When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the north from Germany and Denmark in the sixth century they made Eboracum the capital of Deira, a Northumbrian sub-kingdom. Eboracum was corrupted by Anglo-Saxon speech into Eoforwic meaning 'wild boar settlement'. The Anglo-Saxons confused the Celtic word 'Ebor' meaning yew tree with their own word 'Eofor' meaning 'wild boar'. In 865 AD the Danes captured the North and in 876 Halfdene the Dane made Eoforwic the capital of the Viking Kingdom of York . Later in 918 AD a mixed race of Norwegian-Irish Vikings settled at York and for many years York was subordinated to the Viking stronghold at Dublin. Viking influence can still be detected in the street names of York, where the suffix 'gate' as in Stonegate or Goodramgate derives from the Old Norse 'gata' meaning road or way. Stonegate follows the course of a Roman road through the city and Goodramgate is named after Guthrum, a Viking leader. Above: Bootham Bar and York Minster from an old postcard The Vikings interpreted Eoforwic, the Anglo-Saxon name for York as Jorvik. The change of the Saxon f to a Viking V occured in other words in the English language such as the Anglo Saxon word 'Seofan' which was changed by the Vikings into its modern form 'Seven'. In the late Viking period it is thought that the name Jorvik was shortened to something resembling its present form, York and in the medieval age the name York was generally used, although an independent form 'Yerk' is known to have existed at this time. One of the problems of studying York's name is that many early records are written in Latin and thus use the Roman name Eboracum in periods when Eoforwic or Jorvik were used in every day speech. Today the early forms of York's name are still well known and although the Viking Kingdom of York no longer exists, its natural successor Yorkshire - 'the county of York' still takes its name from this ancient city. Search the site", "Newspaper magnate Desmond's £1.25m bill for lost libel case | The Independent Thursday 23 July 2009 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Richard Desmond, the billionaire publisher, was last night facing an estimated legal bill of at least £1.25m after losing his libel case against the biographer Tom Bower. It took the jury four hours to decide that Mr Desmond was not defamed by Mr Bower's account of a confrontation with a rival newspaper mogul. Mr Desmond claimed that he had been falsely accused of interfering in the editorial policy of one of his newspapers to conduct a personal vendetta against Lord Black of Crossharbour, and that he had been equally falsely portrayed as a \"wimp\". The author claimed that the disputed passage, in a biography of Conrad Black, was broadly true, and in any case was not defamatory. After the verdict some members of the jury asked Mr Bower to autograph their copies of his book, which he did with obvious pleasure. \"I am very grateful to you. You have been an absolutely marvellous jury. You have done a great service to British journalism,\" he told them. Mr Desmond, who owns four national newspapers, including the Daily Express and Daily Star, plus OK magazine, put a brave face on defeat. \"I sued Mr Bower for defamation because he made inaccurate and damaging allegations about me, yet he refused to apologise and publish a correction,\" he said. \"[Mr] Bower made a series of errors about events and timings and even got the name of one of my newspapers wrong. \"His biggest mistake was in thinking I would not go to court to uphold my reputation and the resulting action has cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds to defend a few ill-thought-out remarks that were not even essential to his book. It was worth it to stand up in court and set the record straight.\" Despite the self-justification, the case leaves observers puzzled about why the case was brought at all. The hearing, which took almost two weeks, was over a single paragraph on pages 337 and 338 of a long book that was not even about Mr Desmond. So what drove this tough, buccaneering capitalist to launch an expensive court case over a paragraph in a book about an old business rival? One possible explanation was that he did not like what he had heard about another book Tom Bower was writing, which was to be a life of Mr Desmond. Interviewed by a newspaper in 2006, Mr Desmond was asked to name his favourite author, and replied \"Tom Bower\". He was obviously not being serious, but the writer with the reputation for destroying the reputations of rich men was on his mind even then. He did not want Tom Bower writing about him, and was prepared to use his vast fortune in an attempt to stop him. In court Mr Desmond claimed that he was reading Tom Bower's book Conrad and Lady Black, Dancing on the Edge on holiday and came unexpectedly on this reference to himself. He told the jury, he had not even thought to do what most famous people do when picking up a book about someone they know – look himself up in the index. After consulting his wife, he decided he must do something to protect his reputation. One of the many ironies of this case is that Tom Bower, despite his well earned reputation as a biographer who rips apart his subjects' reputations, did not mean to offend Mr Desmond. This became clear at the start of the trial – but could not be made public until after yesterday's verdict. There were actually two jury trials, but the first lasted less than a day, and had to be aborted after Mr Bower's quick witted counsel, Ronald Thwaites, had ripped apart the opening address to the jury by his fellow QC, Ian Winter, representing Mr Desmond. Mr Winter treated the original jury to an account of what sort of writer Tom Bower was, referring to him as an \"unauthorised\" biographer, and describing the book on Mr Black as an \"expose\" rather than a balanced account of his life. This might have been fair enough, except that Mr Desmond's legal team had already accepted that there was no malice in what Mr Bower had written about their client. By law, it wa", "Deepdale | Preston North End FC | Football Ground Guide Football Ground Guide Address: Sir Tom Finney Way, Preston, PR1 6RU Telephone: 0344 856 1964 Ticket Office: 0344 856 1966 Pitch Size: 110 x 77 yards Pitch Type: Grass Away Kit: Navy With White Sash External View Tom Finney and Bill Shankly Stands Invincibles and Alan Kelly Stands Tom Finney Stand Tom Finney Stand External View Tom Finney Statue WHAT IS DEEPDALE LIKE? With the addition of the new Invincibles Pavilion Stand in 2008, it now means that Deepdale has now been completely re-built in recent years. What was a great looking stadium, is now an even a better one as the new stand completely fills the remaining side of what was the Pavilion side of the ground. Three sides of the stadium are composed of some excellent looking all seater stands, complete with some spectacular looking floodlights. They are of the same height and style and are all large, covered, single tiered stands. Each has a likeness of a past player outlined on the seats and is named after that player. Tom Finney, Bill Shankly and goalkeeping legend Alan Kelly, are all honoured and this makes a welcome change from the boring letters outlined on most new stands. The first of these stands to be built was the Sir Tom Finney Stand in 1995. This was followed by the Bill Shankly Kop in 1998 and the Alan Kelly Stand in 2001. The fourth new stand, the Invincibles Stand (named after the legendary Preston team of 1888/1889 who went through the whole season unbeaten and were also the first in that season to win the League & FA Cup double), cost in the region of £9m to build. The design of this stand is slightly different to the other three. Even though it is of the same height and has a similar roof, it has a smaller tier of seating, with 22 executive boxes sitting above. Alas I presume that there was not enough space to incorporate another player image on the seating so instead we have to make do with the letters 'PNE FC' instead. Outside the stadium is a statue of former Preston legend Tom Finney. Whilst at the back of the Tom Finney Stand is a small cafe that also houses a collection of Preston North End memorabilia. WHAT IS IT LIKE FOR VISITING SUPPORTERS? Away fans are housed in the modern Bill Shankly Kop at one end of the pitch. Normally the allocation for away fans is approximately half of this stand (3,000 seats). However for teams with a large away support, then the whole end can be allocated, raising the allocation to 6,000. The views of the playing action and facilities within this stand are excellent. The stand is particularly steep, meaning that fans are kept relatively close to the pitch. On the concourse there are TV's by the refreshment serving areas showing the game live and with the bars being open during the game, this is too much of a temptation for some. There is a wide range of food available including; Cheeseburgers (£3.70), Burgers (£3.50), Hot Dogs (£3.70), Meat & Potato Pie (£2.80), Chicken Balti Pie (£2.80), Steak & Kidney Pie (£2.80) and the Potato & Butter Pie (£2.80). You can also get a pie, peas and gravy for £3.70, plus the Club offer a 'Pie & a Beer' for £5.70. James Prentice adds; 'I would recommend the 'Butter Pie', which is a bit of a local delicacy. It is just a normal pie but with a filling of very buttery mashed potato and onion. I was attracted to it by a flag at the top of the new Invincibles Stand that read 'True Prestonians Love a Butter Pie!' I particularly enjoyed my last visit as the fans, stewards and even police all seemed to be fairly friendly and there was a good atmosphere being generated within the ground. PUBS FOR AWAY FANS There is not a great deal in the way of pubs in close proximity to the ground. Further up Tom Finney Way (which used to be called Deepdale Road) from the stadium, is Sumners. This pub normally has a good mix of home and away supporters, although for certain high profile games and local derbies the pub does not admit away supporters. There is a good sized beer garden & car park at the pub. The pub does charge for parking (£3) but thi", "The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time | Rolling Stone The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time SEE THE FULL LIST Your browser does not support the video tag. Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson 100 100 10-1 Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson Benny and Björn had already been a songwriting duo for six years when they teamed up with their girlfriends Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog — who were both Swedish pop stars already — to form Abba. The two of them were hardcore about songwriting: they bought a cottage on the island of Viggsö where they could focus on making their music and lyrics as catchy as humanly possible. \"Each song had to be different,\" Andersson said in 2002, \"because, in the Sixties, that's what the Beatles had done. The challenge was to not do another 'Mamma Mia' or 'Waterloo.'\" Ulvaeus's lyrics grew progressively darker over the course of Abba's career, even as the band became so unbelievably popular that they were able to release an 18-song greatest hits album simply called Number Ones. After the band split up, Ulvaeus and Andersson went on to collaborate on several musicals — including the Abba jukebox musical, Mamma Mia!, one of the most successful in Broadway history. Tom T. Hall 10-1 Tom T. Hall Hall was an English major who said he learned to write songs by osmosis, soaking up everything from Dickens to Hemingway. His best work was charged with literary irony but unfolded with the ease of spoken language, as when the mini-skirted heroine of \"Harper Valley P.T.A.\" struts into the local junior high and exposes small-town hypocrisy by asking why Mrs. Taylor uses so much ice when her husband's out of town. A Number One pop and country hit for Jeannie C. Riley in 1968, it freed Hall to record his own work, which included songs about burying a man who owed him 40 dollars, mourning the death of the local hero who taught him how to drink and play guitar, and \"Trip to Hyden,\" a journalistic tale of a drive to the scene of a mining disaster that was part Woody Guthrie, part Studs Turkel. One of Nashville's most overtly political songwriters, he was a liberal who recorded \"Watergate Blues\" and turned a drink in a bar after the 1972 Democratic convention into a Number One country hit called \"Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.\" \"I couldn't write the 'Darling, you left alone and blue' or 'I'm drunk in this bar and crying' [songs]— I just didn't get it,\" he once said. \"And so I started writing these story songs.\" Otis Blackwell 10-1 Otis Blackwell A Brooklynite who was equally entranced by R&B and country (claiming his favorite singer was C&W mainstay Tex Ritter), Otis Blackwell began his career with 1953's \"Daddy Rollin' Stone,\" which has been covered repeatedly. But large-scale success as a performer eluded him. \"I didn't dig it. Got more into writing,\" he said. When Elvis Presley recorded one of his songs, the result was 1956's epochal \"Don't Be Cruel,\" which was simultaneously Number One on the pop, R&B and country charts. Blackwell subsequently gave Elvis \"All Shook Up\" and \"Return to Sender,\" and wrote a cluster of hits for other artists, including \"Great Balls of Fire\" for Jerry Lee Lewis. And even though Blackwell's own singing career never took off, it's been noted that his vocals on demos of songs that Presley recorded were followed faithfully by the King. \"At certain tempo, the way Elvis sang was the result of copying Otis' demos,\" said Blackwell's friend Doc Pomus. Oddly, Blackwell and Presley never met. Taylor Swift 10-1 Taylor Swift Many singer-songwriters reach the point where they have too many great tunes to fit into a live show. Taylor Swift reached that peak before she turned 21. And then she just kept going. She might be the youngest artist on this list — as you may have heard, she was born in 1989, the year Green Day released their first record. But she's already written two or three careers' worth of keepers. \"Hi, I'm Taylor,\" she told the crowds on her Red tour. \"I write songs about my feelings. I'm told I have a lot of feelings.\" Swift's first three albums display her emotional y", "Tom Morello: Rage Against the Machine May Not Play Again - Rolling Stone Tom Morello: Rage Against the Machine May Not Play Again Tom Morello: Rage Against the Machine May Not Play Again 'Once a year, the band discusses and turns down awesome offers to tour the world' Tom Morello backstage at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco Credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images All Stories \"This is the first Rage Against the Machine release of any kind in 12 years,\" Tom Morello says of XX , a 20th anniversary box set including their remastered 1992 debut album and original demos. The set also features DVDs capturing full live shows, from their first public performance in October 1991 at California State University in Northridge to their 2010 gig at London's Finsbury Park. \"That to me is the more staggering number than, 'It's been 20 years since the record came out.'\" More News From the Archives: The Battles of Rage Against the Machine The set may be the band's only activity for a while: there are currently no plans to record new music or tour. \"If it were up to me, I would've made two records a year,\" Morello says. \"As it is, we have just three records of original material over 20 years.\" Later in the interview, he adds, \"Whether or not we ever play music again in any capacity is unknown. I'm grateful for the music we played together, and thank goodness the cameras were rolling.\" In this exclusive Q&A, Morello discusses Rage Against the Machine's place in music history, why they aren't touring and his relationship with singer Zack De La Rocha. Did you ever get emotional watching the old footage? Yeah, in some ways, it's bittersweet. It's like, the very singular and combustible chemistry that made Rage Against the Machine the force of nature that it was, was the same thing that kept us from producing more. If it were up to me, I would've made two records a year. As it is, we have just three records of original material over 20 years. It's a testament to the strength of that material and to the mythos of the Rage live shows that there is an interest 20 years later in people looking at it. What this box set does is celebrate the exciting fusion of genres and politics that is Rage Against the Machine. It is something that is able to be a victory lap for fans of the band – and it's also a reminder for me of work left undone. What is there left to accomplish for the band? In some way, it's the 20th anniversary of the first record, and that specific cauldron of ideas and where we were on the graph of music history. Rage was maybe the first in that first wave of post- Nirvana bands. [There are] things that preceded Nirvana – Jane's Addiction , Soundgarden to a certain degree, Living Colour . . . commercially successful, but I believe it was Nirvana that convinced record companies for the first time in their history to just leave the artist alone. I'll tell you, they sure as hell didn't understand Rage Against the Machine, but they knew that if they got out of the way, it was going to be best for everybody. Were you guys big Nirvana fans? The first time I heard Nirvana was back when Tim [Commerford] played them for me at an early Rage Against the Machine rehearsal. They cranked that thing in the truck, and we listened to \"Smells Like Teen Spirit,\" like, 15 times. I mean, now it's a song and a band and a record that is oversaturated in a way that I don't know that I'm ever going to get off on \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" again. But I remember that first night, very clearly, those guys cranking it up. We were moshing around in the parking lot of our rehearsal space. Is the 20-year milestone weird to think about? Does it feel that long? Maybe I haven't entirely processed it. On the one hand, it feels like time has blown by. On the other hand it feels like lifetimes ago that we were writing those songs together in that small San Fernando Valley rehearsal room. It's sort of bizarre either way. On the one hand it seems like a very quick continuum, even with the seven-year break [from 2000 until 2007]. Here's the thing: this is", "Coca-Cola Slogans History | Coca-Cola GB . W.C. D’Arcy was associated with Coca-Cola for the next four decades (he even served on the Board of Directors for a time) until his retirement in 1945. Together with his creative director, Archie Lee, he crafted some of the greatest slogans in advertising history. While “Delicious and Refreshing” was part of the plan D’Arcy’s first big change was to add an arrow to all the advertising and packaging while adding the slogan, “Whenever You See an Arrow, Think of Coca-Cola .” In 1907 they added the slogans “Good to the Last Drop,” (yes, we beat Maxwell House with this one) to the advertising. [JM1] The team hit their stride by the 1920s when they created the “Thirst Knows No Season” (1922) and our longest-running tagline, “The Pause That Refreshes” (1929). That campaign was used in one form or another for almost three decades. Advertising began to change after World War II, when music and sung jingles played an increasingly important role in campaigns. Slogans became shorter to fit into a catchy melody. By 1955, Coca-Cola began to look for another agency who specialised in the modern radio and television advertising. In 1956, McCann Erickson was named the lead worldwide advertising agency for Coca-Cola . The changes in advertising were dramatic, and when the McGuire Sisters sang “Be Really Refreshed,” the company was aligned with the times. In 1963, Bill Backer, creative director for McCann, penned the jingle “Things Go Better with Coke,” and had the Limeliters record a demo in a run-down apartment on 57th Street in New York City. Backer had to splice together several tapes, and you could still hear several flaws in the recording. The company loved it and used that demo for the next six years! Backer also developed the slogan, “It’s the Real Thing,” for which he and his team wrote “ I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke ” in 1971. By 1993, with the constant evolution of advertising, The Coca-Cola Company once again switched agencies. We hired CAA (Creative Artists Agency) to develop ads for Coca-Cola . CAA would hire the best and brightest producers and directors in the field to produce ads based on the slogan, “Always Coca-Cola Polar Bears ) and Rob Reiner created the ads, and the jingle became an instant classic. Animated ads have always been a staple of Coca-Cola advertising, and the “Coke Side of Life” (2006) and “Open Happiness” (2009) campaigns featured some of the best the company has ever produced, including “Grand Theft Auto,” “It’s Mine” and “Happiness Factory.” Slogans, by their very nature, are supposed to be “mindstickers” or “earworms.” The purpose of advertising is to make people associate a slogan with a brand. Coca-Cola is fortunate to have had some of the greatest creative talent in advertising work on our marketing. While the fictional Don Draper from Mad Men could always come up with a slogan, in the real world, industry giants like W. C. D’Arcy, Archie Lee and Bill Backer produced some of the greatest slogans, jingles and ads of all time. Ted Ryan is director of Heritage Communications at The Coca-Cola" ]

[ "Syria has embarked on an \"unprecedented\" effort to bolster its armed forces with Iranian and Russian help, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday." ]

[ "Damascus said it fired on an Israeli warplane early Thursday morning after it dropped 'munitions' in northwest Syria.", "The Israeli army has decided that war with Syria is unlikely and is rotating forces out of the contested Golan Heights after months of cross-border tension, security officials say.", "The mission has revived fears of war between Israel and Syria. But the Israelis are keeping an uncharacteristic silence", "Members of the Druze community are to visit Syria - still officially at war with Israel - after a court ruling.", "ARSENE WENGER was today given a huge Premiership title boost after Arsenal agreed a multi-million pound sponsorship deal for their new £400m Ashburton Grove stadium.", "Pakistan has boosted security at nuclear facilities but there is no chance of Islamist militants getting their hands on atomic weapons, the official in charge of the country's strategic arsenal said on Saturday.", "The CBS News anchor Katie Couric is to travel to Iraq and Syria to report on the war, the executive producer of the broadcast, Rick Kaplan, said yesterday.", "Arsenal may be boosted by the return of captain Patrick Vieira against Man Utd.", "Israel will file a complaint with the United Nations forces in Syria after six mines thrown from Syria were found in the southern Golan Heights, the Israeli army said Sunday.", "Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have agreed to end the war of words that has erupted between them over the last week after a peace summit between directors of their two clubs, Manchester United and Arsenal.", "TEHRAN -- Iran and Syria, both locked in diplomatic battles with the United States, said yesterday they would form a common front to face challenges and threats. \"We are ready to help Syria on all grounds,\" Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref of Iran said in Tehran after meeting Prime Minister Naji al-Otari of Syria. Syria's ambassador to the United States, ...", "EIGHT days after the “Game of the Decade” gave way to the “Battle of the Buffet” before turning into a war of words between Arsenal and Manchester United", "The European Union will resume talks with Serbia on closer ties next week after Belgrade boosted cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the EU's executive said on Thursday.", "North Korea pledges to boost its \"war deterrent\", days after missing a deadline for declaring its nuclear activities.", "World leaders condemn North Korea for pulling out of talks and pledging to boost its nuclear arsenal.", "Syria and Israel last turned their guns on each other in all-out war a quarter century ago, but tensions are sky high after a mysterious Israeli airstrike deep into Syrian territory last week.", "Arsenal's Arsene Wenger will not blame his goalkeeper after the draw with Panathinaikos.", "Declining to step into a war of words between Israel and Syria, the Bush administration said Thursday it was not discussing with Israel any possible military action against Hamas leaders in Damascus.", "Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson vow to end their war of words.", "DAMASCUS, Syria - Twenty years ago Ahmed Shukmarra went to Lebanon as one of tens of thousands of Syrian soldiers, believing his presence would help halt a civil war in Syria's small neighbor.", "Defense Minister Amir Peretz, asked about the possibility of war with Syria, said Wednesday that the military was preparing for any scenario but added that Israel must not give up on diplomacy with Damascus.", "Arsenal claim their new position as Britain's richest football club shows no foreign takeover is needed to boost their finances.", "State-run media called Monday on the United States to begin a direct dialogue with Syria, a day after an influential U.S. senator said Washington could \"bridge the gap\" between Israel and Syria.", "North Korea said on Friday it would boost its war deterrent, a day after the United States said it was sending its nuclear envoy back to Asia to discuss an atomic disarmament deal on which Pyongyang has missed a deadline.", "Syria said on Wednesday it was suspending diplomatic cooperation with France on ending the political crisis in Lebanon, after similar action by Paris.", "Arsene Wenger says Arsenal will reach the knockout stages after nine-man Arsenal draw with PSV Eindhoven.", "DAMASCUS, Syria, Sept. 1 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had promised to enforce an arms embargo on Hezbollah under a U.N. resolution that halted Israel's war with the Lebanese Shiite militia.", "The reports of a fight on the Arsenal bus have been dismissed by Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger. After drawing 1-1 with Rosenborg in the Champions League police were called after an incident on the Arsenal coach involving Patrick Vieira and Lauren Bisen.", "Syria and Sweden discussed on Sunday means of boosting the bilateral cooperation relations and activating the agreements signed between them in the different fields of transport.", "Arsenal Football Club boss Arsene Wenger has backed his under-fire keeper Jens Lehmann after a poor display in Europe. Speaking to Arsenal official website, Wenger said: “When the goalkeeper concedes goals he gets criticised.", "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed cautious optimism today that the handing over of hundreds of weapons by militiamen loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr signaled an encouraging start ...", "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday during a tour of Israel's northern border that he was willing to start peace talks with Syria, declaring that \"we don't have any interest\" in going to war." ]

[ "Danielle Moonstar is a Native American mutant with multiple psionic abilities. Her most... Danielle Moonstar is a Native American mutant with multiple psionic abilities." ]

[ "Launch Connections. Danielle Moonstar grew up on a small ranch outside of Boulder, Colorado. She led a normal life until the age of ten, when her mutant powers began to manifest in the form of harrowing nightmares. Shortly after the disappearance of her parents, Dani's dreams were marked by the vision of a Demon Bear, which she believe played a role in the her parents' deaths.", "Danielle Moonstar was born in Colorado to members of the Cheyenne Nation. The first time Dani's... Danielle Moonstar was born in Colorado to members of the Cheyenne Nation. The first time Dani's powers manifested, she saw the image of her parents dying. She saw a huge bear standing over the bodies of a horse and an eagle; representing her mother came (from the horse clan) and her father (of the eagle clan).", "Notes. 1 Danielle's Illusions. 2 She was found by Kitty Pryde. 3 Danielle Moonstar lives on 760 Maggie Blue Road, which is a reference to Kitty Pryde's voice actor, Maggie Blue O'Hara. 4 Danielle Moonstar and Forge are the only Native American mutants to be shown in the series. 5 Dani Moonstar is a Northern Cheyenne Indian.", "what is: zantac, used for; and what is ... 59. what is: pepcid, used for; and what is ... 60. what is: bi-citra, used for; and what ... 61. what is: glucagon, used for; and what ... 62. what is: humulin, used for; and what is ...", "The featured group of students never refer to themselves as the New Mutants before the series relaunch as New X-Men: Academy X in 2004, and the reorganization of the Xavier Institute student body into various training squads. 1 The New Mutants, advised by Dani Moonstar, were: 1 Elixir (Josh Foley) – Josh is an Omega-Level mutant who can manipulate his or others’ biologies to heal or harm. 2 Icarus (Joshua Jay Guthrie) – Jay possesses red angelic wings on his back that allow him to fly and which grant him an accelerated healing process.", "20 words related to what it do whats up what s up what it is what up whats good hello wassup sup hi what s good hey whats crackin bay area how are you whats going on whats poppin c town holla hyphy what is it0 words related to what it do whats up what s up what it is what up whats good hello wassup sup hi what s good hey whats crackin bay area how are you whats going on whats poppin c town holla hyphy what is it", "What's your, what's your, what's your, what's your favourite. What's your, what's your, what's your, what's your favourite. What's your, what's your, what's your favorite. What's your, what's your, what's your, what's your, what's your.", "What is the opposite of modification? What is the opposite of modifiably? What is the opposite of modifiable? What is the opposite of modicum? What is the opposite of modica? What is the opposite of modesty? What is the opposite of modifies? What is the opposite of modify? What is the opposite of modifying? What is the opposite of modish? What is the opposite of modishly?", "whats good; whats gooday [whats good] B; What's good boys? whats good family? what's good for the geese? whats good in the hood; What's good mo; What's good nigga; What's good wit chu; what's good with the butt? Whats good wit it; whats goody; What's goodybags? What's Goy? What's Grapes? What's Gravity; What's gravy; whats gravy in the navy; what's growin' long; whats guanin", "what is: acetic acid, used for; and ... 57. what is: tagamet, used for; and what is ... 58. what is: zantac, used for; and what is ... 59. what is: pepcid, used for; and what is ... 60. what is: bi-citra, used for; and what ...", "What is the opposite of obtuse? What is the opposite of obtunding? What is the opposite of obtunded? What is the opposite of obtund? What is the opposite of obtrusively? What is the opposite of obtrusive? What is the opposite of obtuse-angled? What is the opposite of obtusely? What is the opposite of obtuseness? What is the opposite of obtusenesses? What is the opposite of obtuser? What is the opposite of obtusest?", "What is the plural of of decorum? What is the plural of of decose? What is the plural of of decoside? What is the plural of of decoupage? What is the plural of of decoupler? What is the plural of of decoupling? What is the plural of of decoy duck? What is the plural of of decoy-duck? What is the plural of of decoyer? What is the plural of of decoyinine? What is the plural of of decoyman? What is the plural of of decrease?", "What is Hosting? What do these terms mean? What is a Web Server? What does HTTP stand for? What is a Domain Name? What is an IP Address? What is a URL? What does DNS do? What is FTP? What does...", "What is the opposite of aisle? What is the opposite of airy hope? What is the opposite of airy-fairy? What is the opposite of airy? What is the opposite of airworthy? What is the opposite of airworthiness? What is the opposite of ajar? What is the opposite of AJAX? What is the opposite of AKA? What is the opposite of aken? What is the opposite of akimbo? What is the opposite of akin?", "It casts enough magnetic force to slow a locomotive from a quarter-million miles away--the distance of the Earth from the moon. The magnetar, or magnetic neutron star known as Soft Gamma Repeater 1806-20, is the most powerful known magnet", "Moonstone is popular for carving into decorative jewelry elements, such as cameos or the popular “man-in-the-moon” face that plays on the gem’s name. The uneven surface of the carving combines with the shifting adularescent sheen to create a delightfully intricate and lively effect.", "What is the opposite of devotional? What is the opposite of devotion? What is the opposite of devoting? What is the opposite of devote yourself? What is the opposite of devoured? What is the opposite of devourer? What is the opposite of devourers? What is the opposite of devouring? What is the opposite of devours? What is the opposite of devout?", "What is the singular of of cyclopropaphanes? What is the singular of of cyclopropenes? What is the singular of of cyclopropeniums? What is the singular of of cyclopropenone? What is the singular of of cyclopropyls? What is the singular of of cyclopropylamine? What is the singular of of cyclopsams? What is the singular of of cyclopterids? What is the singular of of cyclopyrrolones? What is the singular of of cycloramas? What is the singular of of cyclorelease?", "The Moonstone is the place where medicine cats and their apprentices go to if they want to talk to StarClan. It's also where newly made clan leaders go to receive their nine l…ives. In the new forest, The Moonpool is used in place of The Moonstone.", "Moonsign at the time of the birth is known as Rashi or Janma Rashi. Moonsign is the name of the zodiac in which the Moon was located at the time of the birth.", "Moonstone. The moonstone is characterised by an enchanting play of light. Indeed it owes its name to that mysterious shimmer which always looks different when the stone is moved and is known in the trade as 'adularescence'.In earlier times, people believed they could recognise in it the crescent and waning phases of the moon.he shimmer of light of the moonstone is something very special in the fascinating world of gemstones. Specialists refer to the phenomenon as 'adularisation'. The cause of it is the lamellar inner construction of the gemstone. Incident light rays are refracted and scattered in the stone.", "What is the Amharic word for conglomeration? What is the Arabic word for conglomeration? What is the Armenian word for conglomeration? What is the Azerbaijani word for conglomeration? What is the Basque word for conglomeration? What is the Belarusian word for conglomeration? What is the Bengali word for conglomeration? What is the Bosnian word for conglomeration? What is the Bulgarian word for conglomeration? What is the Catalan word for conglomeration? What is the Cebuano word for conglomeration? What is the Chichewa word for conglomeration? What is the Chinese word for conglomeration? What is the Corsican word for conglomeration? What is the Croatian word for conglomeration? What is the Czech word for conglomeration? What is the Danish word for conglomeration? What is the Dutch word for conglomeration?", "What is the Slovak word for education? What is the Slovenian word for education? What is the Somali word for education? What is the Spanish word for education? What is the Sundanese word for education? What is the Swahili word for education? What is the Swedish word for education? What is the Tajik word for education? What is the Tamil word for education? What is the Telugu word for education? What is the Thai word for education? What is the Turkish word for education? What is the Ukrainian word for education? What is the Urdu word for education? What is the Uzbek word for education? What is the Vietnamese word for education? What is the Welsh word for education?", "Please click the “Report” button below if the video on this page is not working properly. Report this video! NEVERMIND, TAKE ME BACK. Your cooperation in making Worldstar a better site is always appreciated.", "What's up, jerry? whats up, whats goin on? What's up boys? whats up bro; whats-up buddy; What's up? Day day up! whats up doc; what's up dog; whatsup douchebag; whatsuper; what's up fool; What's up guy?", "A Moon Salutation, Lunar Flow, or Chandra Namaskar, is basically the opposite of a Sun Salutation. Where the Sun Salutation brings heat and energy into the body, the Moon Salutation brings calm and relaxation. The Lunar Flow provides a counter balance to the Sun Salutation and is often done at the end of an evening Yoga asana session.", "Moonshadow's patented Ephemeris database technology powers in-the-blink-of-an-eye fast interactive graphical and geospatial data visualization of big datasets in both online and offline environments using desktop, laptop and mobile devices.", "What is the Shona word for passionate? What is the Sinhala word for passionate? What is the Slovak word for passionate? What is the Slovenian word for passionate? What is the Somali word for passionate? What is the Spanish word for passionate? What is the Sundanese word for passionate? What is the Swahili word for passionate? What is the Swedish word for passionate? What is the Tajik word for passionate? What is the Tamil word for passionate? What is the Telugu word for passionate? What is the Thai word for passionate? What is the Turkish word for passionate? What is the Ukrainian word for passionate? What is the Urdu word for passionate? What is the Uzbek word for passionate?", "lodestar, loadstar(noun) guiding star; a star that is used as a reference point in navigation or astronomy. lodestar, loadstar(noun) something that serves as a model or guide.", "What is the opposite of surpassingly? What is the opposite of surpassing? What is the opposite of surpasses? What is the opposite of surpassed? What is the opposite of surpassable? What is the opposite of surplusage? What is the opposite of surplusages? What is the opposite of surplusage. superabundance? What is the opposite of surplus cash? What is the opposite of surpluses? What is the opposite of surplusses?", "What is the opposite of biasedly? What is the opposite of biased? What is the opposite of bias crime? What is the opposite of bias? What is the opposite of biandry? What is the opposite of bi? What is the opposite of biases? What is the opposite of biasing? What is the opposite of biassed? What is the opposite of biasses? What is the opposite of biassing? What is the opposite of bib and tucker?", "Moonjar-Building Dreams by Learning to Save, Spend and Share. A Financial Literacy Company. The name Moonjar comes from the idea of “Shooting for the Moon” and creating Big Dreams, along with the ancient custom of placing hopes and dreams in a jar." ]

[ "Rubbing alcohol may dry out the wood of the fingerboard, and may damage certain plastic materials on the guitar, and in some cases, even damage the guitar's finish. We've found that it can even make your strings squeak more! Your best bet is to use a tried-and-tested string cleaner and lubricant." ]

[ "As a matter of fact, rubbing alcohol is often used for thinning paint, as well as, clean up. So, yes! Rubbing alcohol can be used for cleaning an airbrush but only for clean up of water based paints. Isopropyl Alcohol doesn't phase dried on solvent based paints.", "Cleaning sinks and chrome. Rubbing alcohol can make these surfaces clean and shiny again. Pour the alcohol onto a soft cloth and clean. You don't have to follow up with water to rinse because the alcohol will evaporate.", "It's simple and easy to use. Rub the tip across the strings and then wipe the strings with the included cloth. It's a good everyday solution for keeping your instruments in shape and playing their best. You can find FAST-FRET at Amazon, Guitar Center, Sweetwater, Music123, and several other stores and web stores.", "Rubbing alcohol is a very useful product for cleaning. Not only is it cheap, but its effective as a degreaser, disinfectant, and a general cleaner. ... In order to clean successfully with rubbing alcohol, you'll have to prepare the surface, apply it in an effective way, and be safe while doing so.", "Rubbing alcohol can make these surfaces clean and shiny again. Pour the alcohol onto a soft cloth and clean. You don't have to follow up with water to rinse because the alcohol will evaporate.", "Rubbing Alcohol If you don't have any vinegar on hand, the rubbing alcohol in your medicine cabinet can be just as effective. It works the same as using vinegar, pour some into a bowl and use a clean sponge or toothbrush to spot clean as needed.", "RUBBING ALCOHOL: You can use rubbing alcohol to remove dried on acrylic paint. However, this can dry out the brush hairs and you'll need to finish the cleaning job with the bar of moisturizing soap as mentioned above. MURPHY'S OIL SOAP: ... Follow with a proper rinse and a soap and water clean up.", "The CDC doesn't recommend using rubbing alcohol to sterilize needles or syringes used for injections. They also don't recommend using alcohol to sterilize medical equipment. However, you can use alcohol to clean your skin prior to an injection. This includes both ethyl alcohol and isopropyl alcohol.", "Rubbing Alcohol: if you are looking for a quick and easy way to clean toys, then use rubbing alcohol to disinfect toys. Just rub it on to the surface and rinse it off. You do not need to let it sit as in the case of bleach.", "Rubbing alcohol is excellent for cutting grease, so you can use it to remove makeup such as lipstick and oily foundation. You can also use it to remove nail polish. Rinse your face and hands with clean water to remove any makeup residue you can rinse away. Pour enough rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball to moisten it.", "If you want to take sanitizing a step further, you can use rubbing alcohol to clean the blades and parts of your razor. Dampen a cloth, Q-tip, or cotton ball with a little rubbing alcohol and apply to the blades and razor after you dry brush and clean.", "Clean the area with rubbing alcohol Rubbing alcohol has a cooling effect when it dries, which may relieve itching. Avoid using too much alcohol as it can irritate the skin.", "Isopropyl alcohol is a relatively safe cleaning agent. ... One of the most effective ways to use rubbing alcohol is to dilute it 1:1 in water, and then apply it with a misting pump. Give your solution a good shake, mist the controller lightly, and then clean it with a soft cloth.", "Rubbing alcohol. Rubbing alcohol is also known as cleaning alcohol because of its use in removing germs, bacteria, and ingrained dirt. Made from 70% isopropyl, the rest of the solution is mixed with water so it doesn't evaporate quickly on the skin.", "YES! I love vinegar for so many things, but it isn't used properly! Vinegar is a strong acid with amazing uses, BUT rubbing alcohol is better for all-purpose cleaning. Remember rubbing alcohol can be used on any surface to clean it.", "\"I'd only recommend using rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol), SD alcohol, or denatured alcohol as a disinfectant for a surface wound or to clean skin of bacteria,\" says New York City-based dermatologist Dendy Engelman.", "Use rubbing alcohol for stubborn stickiness. Although alcohol is an effective cleaner for most kinds of stickiness, you should only use this cleaning agent on rubber occasionally. ... Exposing rubber too often or too long to alcohol may cause it to break down more quickly than normal.", "3 Answers. Wipe away most of the thermal paste that you can and then use 99% Pure IPA to clean away any residue. Avoid using rubbing alcohol, which is just 70% IPA. ... 70% alcohol is fine.", "Two of the most common disinfectants are rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. ... So, while you may not use rubbing alcohol to get rid of stains, you can use either as a disinfectant on your earrings. Once you've picked your sanitizer, you need to grab a cotton pad or soft cloth to use for the cleaning.", "If your PS4 controller gets dirty, there are a few household items you can use to clean it off. For example, mix 1 part water with rubbing alcohol. ... If you need to clean small spaces on the controller, simply dip a cotton swab in rubbing alcohol and rub it between the controller's buttons and gaps.", "Rubbing alcohol Much like hydrogen peroxide, many families will have rubbing alcohol on hand to clean cuts. Like hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol can help kill off the fungus that's on the surface level of the skin.", "You must NOT use coconut oil, olive oil, lemon oil or vinegar on your guitar either the strings, fretboard or any other part. all of these products can cause unrecoverable damage to the wood of your guitar because they are acidic.", "Rubbing alcohol, aka isopropyl alcohol, is a common cleaning solution. ... As rubbing alcohol is a little more potent than soapy water, you'll just need to dip a cotton swab into the bottle, shake it out until it's almost dry, then start wiping at any dirt or wax on the earbuds.", "The standard alcohol for cleaning a gun is 91-99% isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol). Some gun owners warn that rubbing alcohol can ruin some finishes, although, most of the community has deemed it largely safe. Even on many polymer guns, like glocks, the rubbing alcohol does a great job of removing oil and any gunk.", "Try rubbing alcohol. This is an effective cleaning agent for scuffs, ink stains and other small stains. Dip a cotton ball into some rubbing alcohol and saturate the stained area. Gently wipe away the stain with the cotton ball. Repeat until the stain is gone.", "Buy materials to use when cleaning with rubbing alcohol. For surfaces that may scratch easily, consider microfiber rags. Such surfaces include plastic (like keyboards or mice), other computer accessories, or car components. For surfaces that are hard to access, you'll want to consider cotton Q-tips.", "Keep tools clean. Clean and sterilize your nail clippers, files, and scissors every time after you use them. Rubbing alcohol should work.", "MYTH: Rubbing alcohol and/or hydrogen peroxide will keep the wound clean. Fact: Rubbing alcohol hasn't been shown to be any better than using plain tap water to clean out a wound. Hydrogen peroxide is no better.", "Avoid using rubbing alcohol, which is just 70% IPA. ... @thekingcameron Yes, Isopropyl Alcohol will help to remove remaining residue, though I'd remove as much of it as you can using a lint-free cloth or similar before using it so you're not spreading the thermal paste or compound around and making a mess.", "Is rubbing alcohol safe for quartz countertops? You can use rubbing alcohol as a cleaner for tougher stains if you mix it with mild dish soap and warm water.", "When cleaning the wound, you want to avoid using hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, or iodine. These can be too drying.", "Any cymbal cleaner is best for just here and there use, but for tiny things lemon juice works well, and for not so tiny things a paste made of bicarb and lemon juice works well too. Just make sure you clean around the logo if you want to keep them." ]

[ "['Inability to urinate or only passing a small amount of urine.', 'Bloody or cloudy urine.', 'Loss of bladder control, dribbling urine.', 'Increased frequency of urination or visits to the litter box.', 'Straining and/or crying out in pain when trying to pass urine.']" ]

[ "A bladder infection is a UTI that only affects the bladder. It is not always possible to distinguish what UTI a person has because the symptoms of the different types can overlap. However, the treatment for most UTIs is the same. A doctor will typically prescribe antibiotics and recommend fluids.", "Add ½ teaspoon of vinegar with 1 teaspoon chicken broth to your cat's canned food each day. If your cat is currently suffering from UTI, the use of apple cider vinegar should alleviate their symptoms within a few days. If symptoms do not improve, consult a veterinarian.", "If UTIs go untreated, what can occur? If left untreated, some bladder infections will go away on their own. The main concern with delaying treatment for UTIs is the discomfort that they cause. Generally, UTI symptoms improve within a few days after starting antibiotics.", "UTIs can affect any part of the urinary tract, including the urethra, ureters, bladder, or in more serious cases, the kidneys. A bladder infection is a UTI that only affects the bladder. It is not always possible to distinguish what UTI a person has because the symptoms of the different types can overlap.", "The sudden and frequent urge to urinate is common in both OAB and a UTI. If you don't have any other symptoms, like discomfort while urinating, you may be experiencing an OAB rather than a UTI. The symptoms of OAB will be ongoing while symptoms of a UTI are sudden and may also be associated with a fever.", "Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) in Older Adults. The classic symptoms of a urinary tract infection (UTI) are burning pain and frequent urination. UTIs may not cause these classic symptoms in older adults.", "['Blood in the urine. This is the most common early symptom of bladder cancer. ... ', 'UTI-like symptoms. Bladder cancer can be mistaken for a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) because many of the symptoms overlap. ... ', 'Unexplained pain. ... ', 'Decreased appetite. ... ', 'Smoking.']", "Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are common in pregnancy. Not all UTIs cause symptoms, but in pregnancy even those without symptoms need to be treated to prevent problems later in pregnancy. This means all pregnant women should have a test for UTI early in pregnancy.", "Share on Pinterest A frequent urge to urinate is one of the symptoms of a UTI. Men with UTIs may have no signs or symptoms of the infection. However, when symptoms do occur, they can include: pain during urination.", "That's because, during pregnancy, symptoms of a UTI actually can mimic pregnancy itself: the feeling that you have to use the restroom more often, pelvic pressure and lower back pain. What's scary is that although often asymptomatic, UTIs during pregnancy are common.", "Unfortunately, the most common symptom of bladder cancer—blood in the urine—is also a common symptom of a UTI. Other UTI symptoms include irritation or pain when urinating or a frequent and urgent need to urinate and can also be symptoms of bladder cancer.", "Tampons and pads that are not changed regularly enough promote bacterial growth and can increase your chance of getting a UTI. Tampons will not directly cause a UTI though. Using tampons while you have a UTI can cause flare-ups in UTI symptoms.", "Urinary tract infection (UTI) UTIs are often caused by bacteria, which can contaminate the urine and cause it to develop a different odor than normal. Other symptoms of a UTI include: a burning sensation when urinating.", "Clinical Presentation Cystitis/Lower UTI Symptoms: The most common symptoms associated with lower UTI include dysuria or acute pain, frequent urination, urgency, and incontinence. Occasionally, hematuria, cloudy urine, or foul-smelling urine may be present.", "Yes. Symptoms of a UTI can vary, and it's not entirely uncommon for someone to experience no symptoms of a urinary tract infection. It's estimated that 1 to 5 percent of younger women experience asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB), which is a UTI without the classic symptoms.", "While alcohol does not directly cause UTIs, it can raise your risk of getting a UTI, as well as worsen your symptoms. Sometimes, alcohol use can even mimic the symptoms of a UTI, making you feel like you have an infection when you don't have one. Additionally, avoid alcohol use with medications that treat UTIs.", "How can you tell the difference between an STD and a UTI? Some STDs have several symptoms in common with UTIs. These symptoms can include pain or burning with urination. UTI's often have a frequent or urgent need to urinate, a feeling of incomplete bladder emptying, and cloudy, dark, or strange-smelling urine.", "Kidney infection symptoms vs. A kidney infection can share many symptoms in common with other types of UTIs, such as cystitis and urethritis. Symptoms common to any type of UTI can include: a painful or burning sensation when urinating.", "It's a good idea to see your GP if you think you might have a UTI, particularly if: you have symptoms of an upper UTI (see above) the symptoms are severe or getting worse. the symptoms haven't started to improve after a few days.", "UTI's are curable, but recurrence is common. Various symptoms are possible. These may include: painful urination.", "Symptoms of UTI include frequent or painful urination, wetting during the day or night, leaking or dribbling, and foul-smelling urine. Fever, stomach aches in the lower abdomen, and vomiting​ may also be present. If your child develops symptoms of a UTI, call the doctor to schedule an appointment as soon as possible.", "Check if it's a urinary tract infection (UTI) Symptoms of a UTI include: needing to pee suddenly or more often than usual. pain or a burning sensation when peeing.", "Acidic Fruits Can Worsen Symptoms of a Bladder Infection Fruit may be an essential part of a healthy diet, but fruits containing a lot of acid can irritate the bladder — and worsen your UTI symptoms. So try to avoid lemons, oranges, grapefruits, and tomatoes when you're treating a UTI.", "Urinary tract infection (UTI) A UTI can cause bacteria from the infection to contaminate the urine, resulting in a distinct fishy smell. UTIs are more common in women than men. Other symptoms include: urine that is cloudy or bloody.", "While pain, burning and irritability are the most common signs of a urinary tract infection (UTI), some people's symptoms aren't as obvious. In fact, some women only feel tiredness or fatigue when a UTI hits. \"Sometimes a UTI will present in a subtle way,\" explains Dr. Peeke.", "Symptoms of UTIs in Older People Symptoms of UTIs that may occur in seniors but not in younger adults include mental changes or confusion, nausea or vomiting, abdominal pain, or cough and shortness of breath. A preexisting health condition may further confuse the picture and make diagnosis difficult.", "Bloody urine, difficulty urinating, and licking of the area are all signs your dog might have a UTI. Some symptoms of UTIs may, in fact, indicate something worse, like bladder cancer or kidney disease.", "Studies show that UTI test strips may only be reliable about 30% of the time. Other studies have bluntly concluded that UTI test strips should be abandoned as a tool for the diagnosis of UTIs in patients with lower urinary tract symptoms.", "Once you have a UTI, home remedies and OTC medications will not cure a UTI. You will need antibiotics to cure your UTI. Once you start antibiotics, symptoms usually clear up in 2-3 days. Even though the symptoms should clear up quickly, you should still take all the antibiotics your doctor prescribes for you.", "Urinary tract infection (UTI) can cause bleeding from the bladder. UTI or bladder infection symptoms include: Pink or light-brown urine. Pain when urinating.", "Yes. One symptom of a UTI is blood in your pee. If you think you have a UTI, especially if you're peeing blood, it's really important to see a doctor or nurse and get treated right away. UTIs don't go away on their own.", "The clinical symptoms of UTIs in men are similar to women and include painful, urgent, and frequent urination. UTIs in men are usually complicated and warrant at least 7 days of antibiotic treatment to prevent complications." ]

[ "There is a woman's restroom in this building." ]

[ "The man's shirt is plaid.", "The man is playing an instrument next to a stand of oranges.", "A dog stands next to an orange.", "Shirtless man is standing next to shirted man.", "The man is standing next to two women", "Two women in shirts are standing next to one another.", "People standing next to an orange bus.", "A man in a shirt stands next to a wooden bowl.", "Two men are standing in a restroom.", "A man in a shirt standing next to a brick wall.", "A man in orange shirt is sitting", "Several women are standing next to a stand", "A man with a red shirt stands next to a woman", "A women stands next to a motorcycle.", "The women are standing next to a park.", "A man in a white shirt standing next to drinks and cigarettes.", "A women stands next to a car.", "Girl in shirt standing over rows of oranges.", "There are three blond women standing next to a man.", "A man in a red shirt is standing next to children on a swing.", "A man is sleeping in the restroom.", "A man in an orange shirt is drinking a margarita.", "A women s running.", "A man in a white shirt stands next to a fence eating.", "The women are next to a man.", "Man in a yellow shirt and Woman in a white shirt stand next to a food cart", "The man is standing on an orange raft.", "A man in an orange shirt is climbing a ladder.", "There is a man walking next to an orange van.", "The old man is wearing an orange shirt", "There are no orange shirts at the event.", "A man in a red shirt is standing next to a woman in a black shirt with a car nearby." ]

[ "Ebbw Vale schoolboy Page and 18-year old Tyler Rees from Llanelli have been invited to the qualifying rounds at Ponds Forge in Sheffield in April.\nBoth received wildcards to compete at last month's Welsh Open in Cardiff with Page reaching the last 32 stage.\n\"We look forward to welcoming Jackson to Sheffield,\" said World Snooker's (WPBSA) chairman Jason Ferguson.\n\"Jackson is an example of a player who has taken the opportunity presented to him with both hands already in 2017.\n\"Having qualified through the WPBSA's development work with national governing bodies and during the Welsh Open last month he won two matches against current professionals and gained enormous exposure in the media.\n\"Last week he became the 2017 European U-18 champion in Cyprus and he continues to battle it out in the European Championships to try and earn that golden ticket to the World Snooker Tour.\n\"We look forward to welcoming him and the other successful qualifiers to Sheffield next month and seeing who will be able to take full advantage of the opportunity and perhaps even make it all the way to the Crucible.\"" ]

[ "Media playback is not supported on this device\nPage beat world number 78 John Astley on Wednesday, having already overcome world 123 Jason Weston in the first round of his debut professional event.\n\"No English, most importantly, and no history,\" said the Ebbw Vale teenager. \"I am doing GCSEs, but the school know this could be a career for me.\"\nPage has already won £3,500 and will play world number four Judd Trump next.\nIt is great to miss some more school. No English, which is the most important thing, and no history\n\"I remember watching Judd Trump when I was a kid, he was at Newport and played Ronnie O'Sullivan on one of the TV tables,\" Page told BBC Wales Sport.\n\"I knew I could come here and get far and I looked at the draw and saw Judd and knew I could play him so my eyes were on that.\"\nPage, who attends Ebbw Fawr Learning Community in Blaenau Gwent, won £2,500 for reaching the second round and another £1,000 for progressing to the third.\nAnother win to reach the last 16 would earn him £6,000.\nPage trailed Weston 3-1 in round one, but recovered to win a tense deciding frame.\nThe youngster also held his nerve superbly to beat Astley with a break of 36 in the decisive frame.\n\"I am over the moon with the win,\" Page said. \"It is good to beat a player ranked so highly. But I just focus on potting the balls.\"\nFormer world champion Terry Griffiths\nWhen I saw Jackson play, it reminded me of when I was 15 years of age and how I thought about playing. He just loves to be there.\nHe takes on shots that other people turn down because he's excited at that age and to win two matches as he has done is exceptional.\nHe's a tremendous potter, he's got no fear at all.\nSign up to My Sport to follow snooker news and reports on the BBC app.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nWorld number 31 Davis looked to be heading out as O'Sullivan established a commanding lead in the best-of-seven contest.\nDavis took the next four frames to complete a remarkable comeback on a day of shocks at the tournament.\nLee Walker pulled off a surprise as he came from 3-1 down to beat world number seven Neil Robertson 4-3.\nFormer world champion and 2016 finalist Robertson made 143 - the highest break of the tournament - on the way to a two-frame lead before Walker came back.\nThe Welshman, ranked 94, won the next three straight frames to seal victory.\nMeanwhile, 15-year-old Welsh schoolboy Jackson Page reached the last 32 with a 4-3 win against John Astley.\nIt is the teenage amateur's second win in the tournament after beating Jason Weston 4-3 in round one.\nPage will now play world number four Judd Trump, who edged past Malta's Alex Borg 4-2.\nElsewhere, Northern Ireland's Mark Allen eased past Thailand's Boonyarit Keattikun 4-1, Ross Muir thrashed Marco Fu 4-0 while Anthony Hamilton beat Jamie Cope 4-1 to set up a third-round tie against Craig Steadman, who defeated Sam Baird.\nWorld Grand Prix finalist Ryan Day was knocked out by Thailand's Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, who reached the third round of the tournament for the first time.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nSign up to My Sport to follow snooker news and reports on the BBC app.", "O'Sullivan, 41, chasing a fifth Welsh Open title, recovered from going a frame down to beat Tom Ford 4-1 and set up a meeting with Mark Davis.\nFellow Englishman Selby, 33, did not drop a frame as he beat Liam Highfield.\nWales' two-time world champion Mark Williams suffered a surprise 4-3 defeat by world number 115 Elliot Slessor.\nThere was another surprise exit as China's world number five Ding Junhui was knocked out in the first round in a 4-2 loss to Finland's Robin Hull.\nWorld number four Judd Trump eased through 4-1 against Andrew Higginson, while Scottish Open champion Marco Fu beat Martin Gould 4-2.\nFifteen-year-old Welsh schoolboy Jackson Page is back in action on Wednesday, when he faces John Astley in the second round.\nThe teenage wildcard entry eliminated world number 123 Jason Weston in the first round of his debut professional tournament on Monday.\nFind out how to get into snooker, pool and billiards with our fully inclusive guide.\nSign up to My Sport to follow snooker news and reports on the BBC app.", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nOn Thursday afternoon, Jackson Page was meant to be taking part in a physical education lesson at Ebbw Fawr Learning Community in Blaenau Gwent.\nInstead, the 15-year-old from Ebbw Vale found himself in front of the television cameras at Cardiff's Motorpoint Arena, playing former world number one Judd Trump for a place in the last 16 of the Welsh Open.\nHaving beaten Jason Weston and John Astley in the first and second rounds, Page attracted a big crowd; the locals curious to see if this improbably bearded schoolboy could continue his improbable run.\nHowever, his match against Trump - the winner of six ranking titles - proved a bridge too far for the Welsh teenager.\nPage was brave in his shot selection and eager to match his opponent's attacking instincts, but was ultimately outclassed as Trump ruthlessly raced to a 4-0 win.\n\"It was great out there but there were a lot of nerves and pressure too,\" says Page, remarkably calm and level-headed for a 15-year-old.\n\"It's been great - I've loved every minute of it. My friends have been proud of me and enjoyed watching me. Now it's back to blazers and ties.\n\"No-one likes school really. When I'm there I just can't wait to get into the snooker hall.\"\nLuckily for Page, his teachers recognise his potential and are happy for him to forego as many lessons as is necessary for him to pursue his snooker ambitions.\nAfter a week in school, Page will travel to Cyprus for the European Championships, where winning the under-21 or senior competition would give him the opportunity to turn professional.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nWith Page in Cyprus will be his mother Clare, who along with father Andrew, has been integral to his snooker development.\nBeing the parents of a budding player has meant driving him from school to the local snooker hall every day, then for a whole day of practice on Saturdays and usually a tournament on Sundays - of which Page enters about 33 a year.\n\"We're so proud, we just can't believe it,\" says Clare.\n\"We came down here with no expectation. He did, he had expectation because he's got all the confidence in the world.\n\"We were just thinking we've got a couple of days off work, we'll come down with him, and my head was mostly down because I couldn't watch.\"\nAndrew was the first person Jackson saw as he left the table after his first and second-round wins, and he begins to well up as he reflects on his son's achievement.\n\"It's emotional. Even seeing him walk out on the big stage, you get a lump in your throat,\" says Andrew, his eyes glistening as he struggles to restrain his tears.\n\"When that last black went in - I don't know if it was the first round or the second, I can't remember - I was the first one out of there, before anyone could see me crying.\"\nThe pride, warmth and sheer enthusiasm with which Page's parents speak is infectious. They joke that it is just as well they have only one son - as they would simply not have the time to support another child as lovingly or committedly.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nPage, while equally amenable and friendly, is more reserved. His is a temperament made for professional sport.\nPerhaps it is a quality he has gleaned from two-time world champion Mark Williams, who is from Cwm - just a couple of miles away from Ebbw Vale - and has been helping Page train.\n\"He's very laid back, which is a good trait to have,\" Page says. \"I've played with Mark on the practice tables a few times. You learn off him and get tips off him.\"\nWilliams, a former world number one with 18 ranking titles and about £5m in prize money to his name, will be a valuable influence as Page aims to establish himself.\nThe financial rewards for leading snooker players can be great and, this week, Page got a taste of things which might be to come.\nReaching the third round of the Welsh Open earned him £3,500 - a far cry from the pocket money or paper rounds with which most 15-year-olds have to make do.\nTrue to form, the measured Page plans to put the majority of that sum in the bank. Surely, though, after such a remarkable week, he can afford himself a little treat?\nHe ponders his options, smiles and says: \"I might get a McDonalds later.\"\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nFormer world champion Terry Griffiths\n\"When I saw Jackson play, it reminded me of when I was 15 years of age and how I thought about playing. He just loves to be there.\n\"He takes on shots that other people turn down because he's excited at that age and to win two matches as he has done is exceptional.\n\"He's a tremendous potter, he's got no fear at all.\"\nFormer world champion Mark Williams\n\"He's played a few pros already and beaten them. I didn't do that when I was 15. What he is doing is incredible.\n\"He is a very fast player, he will slow down when he's older, but he is only 15. He keeps winning under-21 tournaments, so he doesn't need to change too much.\"\nDeputy phase director of Ebbw Fawr Learning Community, Paul Freeguard\n\"We are very, very proud of his achievement, but not surprised, as he is an under-18 world champion.\n\"The other pupils are following the tournament, they are all avid fans now. They are getting time to catch up and watch him.\n\"He will have exams when he comes back, same as everyone else, so he will be expected to catch up on the work he has missed.\n\"Jackson will make a professional career out of snooker so it would be unfair if we hadn't supported him. But I couldn't tell you why he doesn't like history or English, but luckily he's doing well in those subjects.\n\"He will get a hero's welcome when he returns to the school.\"", "Shaheen Jafargholi, 19, from Swansea, will play Shakil Kazemi, the son of Bonnie Langford's character Carmel Kazemi.\nHe shot to fame at the age of 12 when he sang a rendition of The Jackson 5's Who's Lovin' You on ITV's variety series in 2009.\nHe also sang at Michael Jackson's memorial service in Los Angeles.\nJackson had seen Jafargholi's performance on Britains' Got Talent and lined him up as a support act for his ill-fated This Is It tour. He died weeks later.\nIn EastEnders, Jafargholi will play the 15-year-old brother of Kush (Davood Ghadami).\nKnown as Shaki by his friends and family, and described as a \"cheeky teenager\", he arrives in Albert Square determined to reunite his divorced parents.\nHe said: \"I'm so excited to be joining the show.\n\"I've been a fan since I was a little kid so to now be a part of something so iconic is an honour. I'm also really excited to be working with a legend such as Bonnie Langford.\"", "The Games, which run from 7-18 September, will see around 4,350 athletes from more than 160 countries travel to Rio to compete in 526 medal events in 22 different sports.\nBritain enjoyed a hugely successful London Paralympics in 2012, winning 120 medals, including 34 golds, to finish second on the medal table behind China and Russia.\nGB athletes have already secured more than 120 unnamed slots, across 15 sports, with a team of more than 200 expected to be named for the Games.\nBBC Sport takes a look at some of the competitors who will be hoping to make an impact in their respective sports in 2016 on the biggest stage of all.\nDespite being only 17, Moore has been playing wheelchair basketball for eight years and is now a key part of the GB women's squad who will be playing at next year's Rio Paralympics.\nThe Counden Court student has a hectic life, combining her first year of A Level study in Biology, Chemistry and PE with training alongside the rest of the GB players who are based at the University of Worcester.\nIn 2012 Moore, who is also a talented wheelchair racer, was part of the Paralympic Inspiration programme and after London made getting to Rio her goal - and she is well placed to achieve it.\nThe teenager, who was left paraplegic by a form of cancer when she was just three months old, enjoyed double medal success in 2015, first helping the GB Under-25 Women to the world title before securing bronze at the European Championships, losing by one point to eventual champions Germany in the semi-final before recovering to beat France for third place. She also had the honour of being named in the tournament's All Star team.\n\"Having so many others on the team around the same age as me has been really good,\" she said.\n\"I never expected to play so many minutes at the Europeans and to make the All Star team was amazing and a real honour.\n\"To lose so narrowly in the semi-final was horrible but it is something that will spur me on for 2016. I would love to be selected to Rio and try and put in the same sort of performance that I did at the Europeans but under that bit more pressure.\"\nDid you know: Moore used to play the violin, reaching Grade 5\nIn January 2013 the then 27-year-old Giglia was working as fitness coach when she suffered a brain haemorrhage/stroke which left her with restricted movement down her right side.\nKeen to get back into sport, cycling formed part of her rehabilitation and after being spotted by British Cycling, she joined their development programme in 2014 and has gone from strength to strength.\nShe made her major international debut in 2015, racing in both the World Track and World Road Championships, and finished the year on a high at the Manchester Para-Cycling event, winning gold in the C3 pursuit, beating the reigning world champion.\n\"I knew it was a hard ride but when I looked at the scoreboard and saw it was a nine-second personal best where the week before I was way off the pace, I was so shocked but it gives me real confidence for 2016,\" said Giglia, who is now based with the rest of the GB squad at the Manchester Velodrome.\n\"At the moment, I don't allow myself to think too much about Rio because you never know what is going to happen.\n\"My next big competition is the World Track Championships in Italy in March and I just want to focus on each race as it comes until I know I have made selection and only after that will I focus on the Paralympics.\n\"I never dreamed I would get to this level but it has allowed me to turn what was a bad situation into a good one. It gives me something to live for and I hope what I am doing can give other people hope that that can do something with their lives.\"\nDid you know: Giglia is an animal lover and her and her partner have three dogs, four guinea pigs, two rabbits, two chinchillas and some fish.\nThe Norwich teenager is Britain's top ranked junior and is hoping to make his Paralympic debut in Rio at the age of 18.\nHewett was born with a heart defect, which required open heart surgery when he was six months old, and then aged seven he was diagnosed with a condition called Perthes Disease, which affects his hip joint.\nBut after picking up a racquet and ball aged eight, he found his sporting niche and as well as being the world number one junior, he is also British number two behind Gordon Reid and will be hoping to earn the chance to play with Reid in the men's doubles at the Paralympics as well as taking part in the singles.\nHewett's 2015 saw him play a key role in helping the GB men win gold at the World Team Cup (the equivalent of the Davis Cup) in May and make his debut in the Wimbledon wheelchair doubles event in July and also win singles titles in Berlin and Italy and the British Open doubles title with Reid.\n\"It has definitely been a roller-coaster year,\" he said. \"I had some good wins over top 10 players but also some sloppy performances so there is a lot to take out of it for next year.\n\"Wimbledon was huge for me and it proved that I could cope when the pressure was on. Playing there gave me confidence for the future.\n\"Getting to Rio would mean a lot. I've had to overcome a lot but this has been my goal and it would prove that all the hard work and the sacrifices my family and I have made were worth it and a medal would be a dream come true.\"\nDid you know: Hewett says he would like to play a match against John Isner to see if he could return the 6ft 10in American's serve, which regularly reaches speeds of 140mph.\nHaving won team bronze at London 2012, Kent's Wilson wants to add an individual medal to that if he is selected for Rio.\nThe 20-year-old was the youngest member of the GB table tennis squad in London, missing out on a medal in the singles before linking up with Will Bayley and Aaron McKibbin for the team event.\nBut Wilson has struggled with a series of injuries since London and this year's European Championships, where he won team bronze, was his first major and only his fourth competition since London.\n\"At London 2012, there were about 5,000 spectators watching. It was incredible, an amazing experience,\" he said. \"The main goal was Rio straight after London. The experience of London is a tiny advantage and all the advantages add up.\"\nWilson, who in 2011 was diagnosed with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, which affects the growing ends of the bones, is expecting to find out whether he has been selected for Rio early in 2016.\nHe said: \"After London, I suffered with a shoulder injury, and that meant a lot of rehabilitation. I also had knee and shoulder operations, so it has required a lot of patience and a lot of waiting around.\n\"That has helped me improve in the gym and improve psychologically and everything is coming together now.\"\nDid you know: Wilson's sporting hero is Olympic gold medallist and Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins.\nWatching Hannah Cockcroft and David Weir win gold medals at the 2012 London Paralympics proved a key moment in the life of Coventry teenager Kare Adenegan.\nHaving been excluded from participating in sports at school for health and safety reasons, the Games made her realise that she could take part in sport, despite her cerebral palsy, and she quickly discovered that there was an athletics club in her city.\nShe joined up and under the guidance of coach Job King, the Bablake School student is now a force to be reckoned with and in September became the first athlete in seven years to beat Cockroft when she triumphed in a 400m race in London.\nIn October, aged 14, she was the youngest member of the GB team at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Doha, winning two bronze medals including being part of a British clean sweep in the T34 800m where she was third behind Cockroft and fellow Briton Mel Nicholls.\n\"Sharing the podium with other GB athletes was great,\" says Adenegan, who turns 15 on 29 December. \"We had all thought of the possibility of securing a 1-2-3 in the 800m and to share that moment together as a team and with the nation was special.\n\"The World Championships were a stepping stone and I learned a lot about technique and tactics which should be beneficial for future competitions. The thought that I might be competing at Rio Paralympics is extremely exciting.\"\nDid you know: Music plays a key part in Kare's training regime and she is inspired by lyrics from the likes of Nick Brewer and Guvna B.\nHe may only have made his England debut a few months ago, but Crossen is already targeting gold with Great Britain at the Rio Paralympics.\nThe 25-year-old defender, from Stockton-on-Tees, impressed in June as England finished fifth at the Cerebral Palsy World Championships, their best ever, to secure a place for GB in Brazil, and he also was selected as a substitute on the team of the tournament.\nHe admits he almost gave up football \"10 times\" after a stroke at the age of 22 left him with restricted movement on his left side.\nCrossen also plays for Marske United in the Northern League First Division and works as a supermarket delivery driver.\nHe said: \"I am going for gold. Definitely a medal is the aim going into it. I am not going there to be a tourist, I am going for a medal.\n\"I would say we have got the third-best team in the world. I know the rankings don't say that but I think we could beat anyone on our day.\n\"The World Championships were the most inspirational moment for me, it was breathtaking.\"\nDid you know: Crossen is a big fan of boxing and his sporting hero is former world champion Mike Tyson.", "The Championship club say they have paid a club-record fee for the 23-year-old, having only broken their previous record by signing MK Dons defender Kyle McFadzean on Tuesday.\nIrvine, who has signed a three-year deal, made 45 appearances for Scottish top-flight side Ross County last term.\nHe won his fourth cap for Australia in their 2-1 defeat by England in May.\n\"He's an Australia international who has got good experience in Scotland with Celtic and most recently Ross County,\" Brewers boss Nigel Clough told the club website.\n\"He's still relatively young but he's one that we think can still improve with us and he wants a chance to play in England.\"\nRoss County manager Jim McIntyre said: \"After refusing a number of bids from Burton Albion, they submitted one that met Irvine's release clause and he has subsequently agreed terms.\n\"We reluctantly see Jackson head south.\"\nFind all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nBarclay is 30 years old and to say he's been around a while doesn't quite cut it. He was in his first Scotland training squad when he was only 18, he won his first cap when he was 20, he's been around the scene with his country for 12 years, or, put it another way, 40% of his life.\n\"That's actually a bit scary,\" he says, overlooking Scotland's indoor training pitch at Oriam in Edinburgh. Then he recalls a line that somebody hit him with recently, a theory about Barclay playing through three generations of the Scotland team.\nIt's a bit of an exaggeration - and no doubt was intended as a wind-up - but the truth is that Gordon Bulloch - who won his last cap in 2005 - was leading the team when Barclay first emerged as a teenager, then it was Scott Murray who was captain for his debut in 2007 - Murray's last season as a Test player - and, after that, Jason White, who hung 'em up in 2009.\n\"I do feel like I've been around a long time. It's all I've ever done, it's all I've ever known since school.\" Saturday against Ireland will be Barclay's 50th start for Scotland and his 56th cap in all. He's not going to ape the line about this being Scotland's best squad since 1999, a thought which is in vogue right now.\nHe says he doesn't care about that stuff. He's heard it before and it hasn't come off. \"A lot of people say Scotland could be dark horses and, for me, it's quite embarrassing afterwards if you have said that and you don't win lots of games.\"\nSo he won't say it. He'll talk about the class in the side, the game-breakers, the confidence he has in them putting their best foot forward, but this comparison with 1999? \"The 1999 team only became the 1999 team when they won the championship. You get respect only when you win.\"\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\n'Schmidt teams are organised - they won't miss Sexton'\nIreland's Johnny Sexton has been ruled out of Saturday's Six Nations opener at Murrayfield. It's a big deal, a very big deal.\nSexton is world class. Paddy Jackson, his replacement, is a fine player who played fly-half when 14-man Ireland beat South Africa in Cape Town in the summer.\nBut for all his qualities, Jackson doesn't possess Sexton's presence and influence. Sexton has played in four of the past five Six Nations meetings between the sides. That's four wins (and 15 tries) when he was in the Ireland team and one loss (and one try) when he was injured and Jackson was in place.\nBarclay is unmoved by all of this. He treats this news of a wounding blow to Ireland's chances with something approaching disinterest. He has years of experience of this stuff. False hope, false dawn, crashing fall.\n\"Teams under Joe Schmidt are very organised. The guys coming in tend to know exactly what they're doing. You've got a guy there [Jackson] who played very well in the summer and who plays very well for Ulster. I don't think it will make too much difference.\"\nThere's no wide-eyed innocence here. Barclay has been through the mill. A precocious youth who found everything easy in the beginning only to hit a wall in the autumn of 2012. In the next three years he won four caps, none of them in the Six Nations.\nHe watched from a distance the championships of 2013, 2014 and 2015. Word came through from Llanelli about his coruscating form and his leadership. There was mystification that Scotland could keep losing Tests and yet still ignore a guy who was pulling up trees for the Scarlets.\nHe got himself back in the frame ahead of the last World Cup only to fall out of it again. Five back rows were taken and he wasn't one of them. A sixth was required mid-tournament. He didn't get the nod then either. Missing the tournament was the biggest shoeing he ever got.\nHaving missed so much does it mean more now? \"When I was living in Scotland, I didn't take it [his Scotland place] for granted per se, but I felt like I was always in that bubble. Having had a couple of years of not being involved I feel like it's added to my career, mentally. I know it's not going to go on for ever, but you definitely want to make it last as long as you can.\"\nSince the return there's been the high of the victory over France in last year's Six Nations and the low of letting victory slip against the Wallabies in the autumn. Barclay was immense that day.\nThe overall record doesn't make a pretty picture, though. In his Scotland years he has won 43% of his games. In the Six Nations it's five wins from 26. \"I'm pretty embarrassed by that. It doesn't feel like that because we've toured well in the summer [a series win in Argentina and a victory against the Wallabies in Australia] or gone well over the autumn. It's disappointing.\n\"Part of the reason why it was really enjoyable to come back into the team is because I think we can really go somewhere and I'd love to be part of it. There's some genuine talent around, some guys who are playing out of their skin, some guys who have been hunted by big teams and that's not always been the case.\n\"There's some backs about it, isn't there? That back three [Stuart Hogg, Tommy Seymour and Sean Maitland] could mix it with anyone. There's a lot of options in the centre. Finn Russell has been tearing it up for Glasgow and Greig Laidlaw is steering the ship. There's a lot of promise. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen, but it's exciting.\n\"Outside of our group do people 100% expect us to do well? I don't know. People say nice things. Vern doesn't really care about that. You don't get anything for that, do you?\"\nIt's hard to over-estimate what the Scarlets mean to Barclay. By the time his contract is up he'll have been there for five years. He might even stay a while longer. The club looked after him when he needed looking after. They invested in him. The supporters backed him to the hilt in his wilderness years in Scotland. He's settled and happy with his wife and their two young boys.\n\"There's a lot of good young players there and if they can keep hold of them they could be a very good team again. It feels like home. My eldest goes to Welsh pre-school. He loves it. Everything is in Welsh.\n\"He comes home and says something and I record it and I send it to [Scarlets centre] Scott Williams or [hooker] Ken Owens and they say, 'Oh, he said this...' I've no idea. Or I'll bring him into the club sometimes and Scott will say something to him in Welsh and he'll say something back. It's bizarre. It's really strange.\"\nGoing into the Six Nations last year the lack of championship victories in the Scotland squad was stark to the point of being gobsmacking.\nRussell, Mark Bennett and Jonny Gray had never won a Six Nations match and Seymour had won just one. Laidlaw and Barclay had won a meagre 15% of their championship matches, Hogg had won 16%, Ross Ford 18%, Alasdair Dickinson 20%. Richie Gray had the best percentage - 23% - with five wins from 22 Tests. Add in John Hardie and WP Nel, who hadn't yet played Six Nations rugby, and they were a side that were strangers to winning.\nThe numbers are a little better now by dint of the victories over France and Italy. There's also the benefits of bitter experience.\n\"We did a bit of analysis of it [the 35-25 loss to Ireland in Dublin last year]. We didn't front up. We weren't physical. We pretty much got steamrollered the first 30 minutes. You know what's coming and you've got to be physical.\n\"That's one of Vern's big things - he doesn't want soft rugby, he won't stand for it. I'd be very surprised and disappointed if we were bullied. The first 30 minutes of the game last year we probably were. Look at the collisions. It's not a nice word to say about yourself - you can put any word you want on it - but, physically, we got outmuscled in the first 30.\"\nHe is laid-back and softly spoken, intelligent and warm, but Barclay is constantly striving to be the warrior his team desperately needs him to be.", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nAll the goals came in the third quarter, with Ricardo Sanchez giving Spain the lead, Alan Sothern levelling, and Alvaro Iglesias scoring the winner.\nIreland now take their place in the fifth to eighth place play-offs, their next game against France on Friday.\nThe team which finishes fifth will guarantee World Cup participation.\nIf Ireland fail to secure a top-five position, they must wait on the results of the continental championships to see if they can progress.\nIreland beat France on penalties in the final of World League 2 in Belfast in March.\nIreland accumulated 10 penalty corners but found Spanish goalkeeper Quico Cortes on top form, while Eugene Magee saw his final reverse shot skim past the post.\nThe Spanish appeared to come out with a bit more fire in the second half and Davy Harte had to make a smart save following a crash ball into the circle.\nSpain won their first penalty corner in the 37th minute and brave first running by Johnny McKee saw him block the shot but land hard on his shoulder, resulting in a stretcher being called for the young Banbridge player.\nDespite two great saves by Harte from the following penalty corner, Sanchez managed to flick the rebound into the net to give his side the lead.\nIreland equalised in the 44th minute from a powerful drag flick by Sothern.\nJust a minute later, Spain took the lead when a mis-trapped penalty corner was sent crashing back into the circle for the free Iglesias to sweep in at the back post.\nFine efforts from Magee and Jeremy Duncan called Cortes into action once more and the goalkeeper excelled again to parry away.\nIreland head coach Craig Fulton said \"We're happy with our performance, but they took their chances on the day and we didn't.\n\"It was a good game and it could have gone either way, we know the chances we created and on another day we'll definitely finish those\".\nIreland: D Harte, J Jackson, C Cargo, A Sothern, E Magee, S O'Donoghue, J McKee, P Gleghorne, C Harte, S Loughrey, S Cole\nSubs: J Carr, J Bell (Captain), M Bell, M Nelson, N Glassey, S Murray, J Duncan", "The 19-year-old right-back has not missed a minute's action since being handed his Wolves debut on 6 December.\n\"Making my debut was one thing,\" he told BBC WM 95.6. \"But having the fans chant my name - I couldn't believe it.\n\"We were at Fulham. I heard the fans chant and I thought 'Is that my name?'\"\nHe joked: \"I always dreamed of having my own chant but didn't think it would happen so soon.\"\nThe highly-rated England Under-20 international admits that his rise to prominence has been rapid, significantly aided by his development on loan under Mike Jackson at Shrewsbury over the final seven weeks of last season.\nShrewsbury were bound for relegation to League Two, but Iorfa learnt a lot, playing in the then unaccustomed role of right-back, having come through Wolves' system as a central defender.\n\"I've been playing centre-back longer,\" he said. \"But, when I went on loan to Shrewsbury, it was at right-back and it was a big step for me. You don't realise the tempo of it and playing in front of fans too. That helped me when I got my chance at Wolves.\"\nIorfa could not have picked a more dramatic match in which to make his Wolves debut, a 2-1 home defeat by Bournemouth, in which Wolves lost following a controversial red card, later overturned, to Iorfa's team-mate Rajiv van La Parra.\n\"I'd been training with the first team all season and to actually make my debut without going on the bench first was a surprise. But the manager has shown great faith in me,\" he added.\nSince that defeat, Wolves have turned the corner, having not lost in the league since - and only on penalties in the FA Cup third-round replay with Fulham.\nAnd the son of a Nigerian international, also called Dominic Iorfa, is now glad he made the move from his native Essex.\n\"I was playing for Southend at 15 when Wolves saw me and offered me a trial,\" he said. \"My dad had played all over the world and he wanted me to sign here as he thought I'd have better opportunities.\n\"I like to get forward and I think I'm getting better at it. And the team are doing well, which makes it even better.\"\nYou can listen to BBC WM 95.6's fans' forum with Kenny Jackett from 19:00 GMT on Friday, 23 January.", "The teenager was arrested after Katie was found injured on a playing field in York on Monday. She later died in hospital.\nThe girl was remanded in custody by York magistrates and is due to appear at Leeds Crown Court on Friday.\nShe has also been charged with possession of an offensive weapon, a knife.\nLive updates on this and other stories from North Yorkshire\nThe girl, who cannot be named because of her age, said nothing during the eight-minute hearing as her solicitor answered questions about her name and address.\nKatie was found by police after they were called to Alness Drive, in the Woodthorpe area of the city, on Monday afternoon.\nShe was taken to hospital but died a short time later.\nThe seven-year-old was a pupil at Westfield Primary School. Head teacher Tracey Ralph has described her as a \"kind and thoughtful child\".\nBoth the prime minister and the Labour leader paid tribute to Katie in the House of Commons.\nJeremy Corbyn said: \"I'm sure the whole House will join in heartfelt condolences to the family and friends [following] the tragic death of seven-year-old Katie Rough in York earlier this week.\n\"I think it's right we send condolences to her family.\"\nTheresa May said: \"I also join you in expressing condolences to the family and friends of little Katie, who died so tragically.\"\nFiona Trott, BBC News\nKatie Rough's mother and other family members listened carefully inside court one as a lawyer spoke on behalf of the accused teenager.\nHe simply confirmed her name and address.\nBecause of the severity of the charges this was a regular hearing, not a youth court one, despite the defendant's age.\nIt is understood that Katie was found near a playing field on Monday. Residents have reported seeing a woman crying in the street asking for an ambulance.\nKatie was taken to hospital but died from her injuries a short time later.\nThe death has hit the community in York hard. It has affected people in the area, even those who do not know the family.\nA fundraising appeal to support Katie's family has been established.\nMaggie Jackson, from York, writing on her GoFundMe page, said she did not know the family but just wanted to do something for them.\n\"It has shocked the whole of York,\" she wrote.\n\"I don't know if it's too early to say this but I'd like to raise money to give to her family to help them through this terrible time without any other worries.\"\nA relative of Katie thanked people for their support on the page: \"Just want to say on behalf of me and my family it is hugely appreciated and we can not thank all enough for being so kind and supporting towards us.\"", "The Championship leaders revealed they had spoken to the 34-year-old last week but said any move would depend on them winning promotion back to Super League.\nMcGuire has spent 15 years with Leeds, helping them to seven Grand Final wins.\n\"I feel I could have easily stuck around at Leeds and finished my career here but I feel like I've still got a lot to give,\" he told the club website.\n\"I'm still playing well, so I'm looking forward to starting afresh and putting a marker down at Hull KR. Hopefully, we can have a good season and create some good times there.\"\nEngland and Great Britain half-back McGuire is the leading try-scorer in Super League history with 233, and is fourth on the Rhinos' all-time list.\nSince making his Leeds debut as a teenager in 2002, McGuire has scored 262 tries in all competitions in more than 400 appearances and in addition to their Grand Final triumphs has also helped them to three World Club Challenge titles and two Challenge Cup wins.\nMcGuire will team up again with former Leeds team-mate Jamie Peacock, who is now the Robins' head of rugby, at KCOM Craven Park, while he will get the chance to play under World Cup-winning former Australia coach Tim Sheens.\n\"Danny will really add to our squad for next year,\" said Sheens. \"He's had a few clubs looking at him but I think he liked what he heard about us and the things we spoke about. We've had a good chat about how we see things and we were totally honest regarding our situation for next year, which wasn't an issue for him.\"\nRovers are guaranteed to finish top of the Championship but must now go through the Qualifiers to win promotion back to the top flight at the first attempt after being relegated when they lost to Salford in the Million Pound Game last October.", "Jackson, 29, joined Rovers on a short-term deal from Barnsley in January and scored twice in 19 games for the Championship club last season.\nHe will help plug the gap left by Tom Bradshaw, who has moved to Oakwell in the pursuit of Championship football.\nJackson is Saddlers' boss Jon Whitney's ninth signing of the summer.\n\"I want to come here, play as many games as I can, score goals and cause defenders problems,\" Jackson told Walsall's website.\n\"It's a new challenge for me being a senior in the changing room, but from what I know and have seen in my short time here, the set-up looks really good.\n\"The club just missed out [on promotion] last season and hopefully they can learn from it and be up there again this year.\"\nFind all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nIt follows his win in the European Youth Championships last summer.\nHeyward, 18, led from the front and never fell behind as Norway's pre-race favourite Jakob Ingebrigtsen fell on the final lap.\nThe Cardiff AAC runner broke a 33-year-old Welsh junior record to qualify for the Championships.\n\"It feels surreal to be honest. Coming in ranked 10th on paper just shows that times don't matter,\" Heyward told BBC Wales Sport.\n\"I knew [pre-race favourite] Jakob Ingebrigtsen was strong and everyone was raving about him. But I knew if I used my brain I could beat him.\n\"I don't go into any race not trying to win. The whole year, the times I've got up early to do gym sessions with the boys, all that hard work really does pay off and I'm just so happy.\"\n\"It's amazing [after winning last year's European Youth Championships too] but at the end of the day it's only Europe.\n\"Next year it's the World Junior Championships so hopefully I can look forward to that and see if I can pick up some medals in that one.\"\nFind out how to get into athletics with our inclusive guide.", "The 17-year-old from Ripon failed to qualify for the semi-finals in the 3m springboard event.\nHe told BBC Radio York: \"2016 is when I'm going to be at my peak performance, I hope.\n\"In the next couple of years I've got the World Championships, I've got the World Cup in 2014 and I've got the Commonwealth Games as well.\"\nThe City of Leeds diver was the youngest person in his competition and struggled for his best form in the Aquatics Centre, culminating in a disastrous final dive.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nDespite not recording the performance he had hoped for, the teenager has taken the positives from his first Olympics.\n\"The experience was unforgettable, totally brilliant but the competition didn't go the way I wanted it to go,\" he added.\n\"To be honest this Games was just a way to get experience and I've done that. I have to make sure that I don't make the same mistakes again.\n\"I'd been performing really well in all my other competitions so I suppose it was destiny that I'd have my bad performance there. It was a real shame but I can't do anything about it now.\"\nThe two-time European and world junior champion will be competing in the World Junior Diving Championships in Adelaide, Australia in October.", "McKibbin, 13, won the World Junior Championships in 2015, a tournament in which world number three McIlroy was victorious at the age of nine.\n\"Not only do I get a day off school, but I get to play alongside one of the best golfers in the world,\" said McKibbin, who takes part in the pro-am.\n\"I'm pretty excited. I've been practising as often as possible.\"\nMcKibbin, who comes from County Antrim, also won the Junior Honda Classic in Florida earlier this year.\nNorthern Ireland's McIlroy, whose foundation is hosting the Irish Open at the K Club in Dublin from 19-22 May, said: \"I played a round with Tom in Florida recently and he is the real deal.\n\"At only 13 years of age, I think he has a remarkable golfing future ahead of him. Having seen him play a couple of times now, he impresses me more each time.\"\nNever want to miss the latest golf news? You can now add this sport and all the other sports and teams you follow to your personalised My Sport home.", "But the 25-year-old believes an ankle injury has hit her chances of winning a world title in Seoul in March.\n\"I'm working on things that are going to make a big difference at the World Championships,\" said Christie.\n\"But the injury has taken me back. I'd have serious disbelief if [I won the world title] now.\"\nChristie was crowned overall European Short Track Speed Skating Champion in Dordrecht last year and is favourite to win honours this time round from 22-24 January in Sochi - where she suffered Winter Olympics disappointment in 2014.\nHowever, with the World Championships in Seoul coming less than two months later she is hoping to peak for that competition instead.\n\"Obviously I want to retain at least one if not all of my [European] titles but the tactics at the Europeans won't necessarily bring success at Worlds,\" she said.\n\"I've never really gone in as a favourite for anything. It's making me feel really confident that everyone believes in me.\n\"But the peak for this year are the Worlds, so I maybe have to take a step back from what I'm good at in Sochi and do the things that are going to make me do well at the World Championships.\"\nChristie is playing down her chances of attaining her goal of world success after she damaged ankle ligaments and tendons in training last summer.\nDespite that, she has still managed to win three World Cup medals this season as well as post a personal best time in training.\n\"Before the injury I was saying I wanted to be world champion and I believed I could,\" she said.\n\"But it's been almost like starting my season again.\n\"The first week back on the ice I thought there's no way I'll even be able to win medals again.\n\"I still have pain now but it's a lot better than it was and once I've finished the season I can rehab it properly and next year it won't be a problem.\"", "There was disappointment too in the one-day competitions - falling to progress in the One Day Cup and a one-run defeat to Lancashire in the quarter-finals of the T20 Blast.\nBBC Wales Sport cricket correspondent Edward Bevan and commentator Nick Webb give their end of season verdicts. All marks are out of 10.\nCaptain in the Championship and 50-over competition, Wallace's 68 victims were the most in the country and he was faultless behind the stumps, but short of runs again with a first-class average below 25.\nOnly batsman in the country to score 2,000 runs in all competitions. Set new one-day record with 169 not out at Sussex, though had a disappointing end to his championship season.\nOnly Glamorgan batsman with 1,000 first-class runs and won 50-overs place, but needs to convert his 50's into 100s.\nSuffered from early-season struggles, and though he made some runs late in the season, it was not close enough to his previous best to keep him playing. Retired to concentrate on business career.\nWas given championship chance and took it in style, grafting hard to top the averages. Provided usual entertainment in limited-overs game.\nShort of runs in the championship and dropped, before coming back with run of 50's in One-Day Cup. Not enough to keep the veteran's remarkable career going and announced his retirement.\nContributed with bat and ball in all forms of the game as well as leading the T20 Blast side to within one run of a Finals Day appearance. Third Most Valuable Player in county cricket according to PCA statistics.\nHalf his championship runs came in one innings, making it a disappointing season for a talented batsman. Limited-overs contribution came mainly as a fielder.\nPopular as a clubman but could not make much impact this season and left early with his contract ending.\nHigh profile signing for T20 Blast but enthusiastic approach was not matched by match-winning displays.\nContributed in all forms with bat and ball with batting average rising above his bowling average- always a good marker for an all-rounder.\nAnother steady season taking more wickets than the previous year. Shows no signs of losing his eye as one of the country's most reliable fielders.\nAttacking bowler who's already been noticed in higher circles and earmarked for England development, but figures did not really add up this year and missed out on closing games.\nGlamorgan's player of the year. It was a superb season again for the fast bowler, who almost reached a 100 wickets in all cricket again despite missing three championship games.\nAnother whose season was impeded by injury, and needs to improve his strike rate to become a more regular fixture. At least he has survived the long-term injury curse that saw Huw Waters and John Glover forced to retire.\nTeenager unexpectedly replaced Salter in September and turned in some promising spells.\nHas potential to become accomplished all-rounder, but held back by injuries and studies.\nPopular loan return from Middlesex and plugged a gap left by injuries, then returned to Lord's to save his county's Division One status with a fighting innings on the final day.", "But the 42-year-old from Cwm, near Ebbw Vale, has been reinvigorated by working with specialist coach Steve Feeney.\n\"I did think for the first time about packing it in - I wasn't enjoying it really, I suppose,\" Williams said.\n\"I went away and spoke to my wife about it. I got hold of Steve and... it's been amazing really.\"\nWilliams claimed the World Championship trophy in 2000 and 2003 but has not won a ranking title since 2011.\nThe Welshman failed to qualify for the Crucible last season, although he finished the campaign by reaching the final of the China Open and has returned to the Top 16 for the 2017-18 season.\nWilliams' improved form saw him reach the semi-final of last weekend's Riga Masters, where he lost to fellow Welshman Ryan Day.\nDay went on to win his first ranking title and the two will now team up to represent Wales in the World Cup in Wuxi, China.\nThe tournament runs from 3-9 July, with Chinese teenagers Zhou Yuelong and Yan Bingtao defending the title as the China B team.\nDay will be playing in the event for the first time but Williams played alongside Michael White in the last World Cup, also in Wuxi two years ago, and lost in the semi-finals against the eventual champions.\nZhou, 19, and 17-year-old Yan will be the China B team again, but Williams is not concerned about facing them in their group.\n\"They're a a good side but they beat us 5-4, there was only one frame in it. We've got as good a chance as anybody in the tournament,\" Williams said.\nDay echoed Williams's feelings about Wales's prospects: \"We're both in form, so we've obviously got a decent chance. I'm confident we can have a good run.\"\nAs well as China B, Wales will face Norway, Finland, Malaysia and Brazil in the group stage.\nThe top two in each group will go through to the quarter-finals and Day and Williams will start their campaign against Norway.\nSign up to My Sport to follow snooker news and reports on the BBC app.", "The 19-year-old beat 2014 champion Italian Matteo Fissore 6-4 in the recurve final.\nOlympic hopeful Huston, a former junior World champion from Belfast, had equalled his personal best score of 588 qualifying for the knockout stages.\nThe indoor circuit also visits Bangkok and Nimes with the final in Las Vegas.", "The 21-year-old has played in eight events since a 17-month lay-off with wrist problems, including the US Open.\nHowever, playing in New York - where she lost in the first round to Elena Vesnina - means the world number 555 can only use the protected ranking to enter one more Grand Slam.\nShe may now instead opt to wait for the French Open.\nIn the meantime, Robson is likely to try and build up her ranking at smaller events.\nFour other Britons - Andy Murray, Aljaz Bedene, Johanna Konta and Heather Watson - all gain direct entry into the draw in Melbourne.\nKyle Edmund is currently the third alternate for the men's singles, meaning he stands a good chance of avoiding the qualifying competition.", "The 22-year-old former British number one was forced to retire from her qualifying match against American Madison Brengle on Sunday.\nBut on Monday she tweeted: \"Getting solid treatment on my leg and will be all good for Wimbledon.\"\nRobson is currently ranked 308 in the world after missing much of 2014 and 2015 with a wrist problem.\nShe finally returned to action at Indian Wells in March this year, her first WTA Tour event since August 2015.\nThe Australia-born player had wrist surgery in April 2014 and as consequence was sidelined for more than a year. She then had further surgery towards the end of 2015, which led to her missing the 2016 Australian Open in January.\nThe 2008 Wimbledon junior champion achieved a career-high ranking of 27 in 2013, having reached the last 16 of Wimbledon that year and the US Open in 2012, before suffering the wrist injury.\nShe has been awarded a wildcard for this year's Wimbledon, which begins on Monday, 27 June.\nBritish women's number four Tara Moore and 17-year-old compatriot Katie Swan, who was the 2015 junior Australian Open finalist, have also been handed wildcards.\nSubscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox.", "When he was 15 and 253 days old, Odergaard became the youngest player ever to play in a European Championship footy qualifier when he appeared for Norway.\nBut he's not the only one to take on the sporting world at a young age.\nHere's our guide to some of the other youngest-ever sporting superstars.\nThe youngest on the list - US golfer Lucy Li became the youngest ever person to qualify for the US Women's Open.\nAged just 11, Li managed to win a spot in the 2014 competition.\nShe didn't manage to make it though to the second part of the event - but is definitely a name to look out for in the future.\nWho? You may well ask - but Matthew Briggs is the youngest footballer ever to play in the Premier League.\nAged 16 years and 65 days, he came on as a substitute for Fulham in their match against Middlesbrough in 2007. A flexible defender, he now plays for Millwall in the Championship.\nIf you're a tennis player, winning Wimbledon is seen as the ultimate prize. It takes skill, courage, determination and an incredible will to win in the face of massive pressure.\nSo when 16-year-old Swiss star Martina Hingis won the women's single title in 1997, she became the youngest ever winner of the grass court Grand Slam. She'd already been crowned the youngest junior Wimbledon champion, aged 13 in 1994.\nArsenal superstar Theo is the youngest footballer ever to play for England, when he played against Hungary in May 2006.\nAged 17 years and 75 days, Walcott had never played in the Premier League and had only played 13 matches of senior football. He then went on to be picked in the England squad for that summer's World Cup in Germany.\nRugby is a tough, physical game in which you need to be big, strong and brave.\nGeorge Ford was all those things, even though he was only 16 years and 237 days when he became the youngest person to play professional rugby in England. He played for Leicester Tigers in 2009, and is now a big part of the England squad.\nImagine having an Olympic gold medal at just 15. Well that's what happened to Tara Lipinski, who is the youngest woman to ever win a Winter Olympic gold. The American figure skater took home the medal at the 1998 winter games in Nagano.", "The world number one will miss this weekend's Dutch Open with a knee injury, but hopes to return for April's President's Cup in Germany.\nJones, 22, is all but qualified for Rio and is prepared to miss competitions to be ready for Brazil.\n\"It's frustrating when you get little niggles but it's better to be safe than sorry,\" she told BBC Radio Wales.\n\"The pinnacle is the Olympics, so it's do or die for me. I'll put every single thing I can into it and I really want to win.\n\"I want to be Olympic champion again and to be double Olympic champion would be amazing.\"\nJones, from Flint, was 19 when she beat China's Yuzhuo Hou to win the women's -57kg title at London 2012.\nShe also won gold at the 2015 European Games in Baku with victory over Ana Zaninovic of Croatia.", "Man-of-the-match Charles Piutau set up Sean Reidy for the only try of the game with a moment of genius which helped Ulster to a 10-6 lead at half-time.\nThe Chiefs trailed 16-15 when Gareth Steenson kicked a drop goal in the 77th minute to nudge his side into the lead.\nJackson replied a minute later and then Steenson missed with another attempt.\nUlster overcame the disappointment of last week's 28-13 defeat away to Bordeaux-Begles by dominating possession and territory for much of the game and were ultimately rewarded with a crucial home win.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nThe brilliance of Piutau, who scored a late try for Wasps to end Exeter's hopes at the quarter-final stage of the competition last year, proved the difference between the sides.\nTwo penalties from Steenson to one from fellow fly-half Jackson gave the English visitors a 6-3 lead, but an outstanding piece of play by New Zealander Piutau proved the catalyst to moving his side ahead.\nThe Ulster winger dummied three defenders and showed a lightning burst of speed to break into the visitors' 22 on the half hour and after he released the ball, flanker Reidy picked up and drove over the line, Jackson converting.\nThe Irish province suffered a setback when Ireland international Iain Henderson was forced to come off with a shoulder injury.\nJackson and Steenson continued to trade penalties as the outcome hung in the balance until the two fly-halves knocked over those perfectly executed drop goals, taking their overall tallies to 14 and 18 points respectively.\nSteenson, a former Ulster player, had the chance to secure victory for his side but his last-gasp attempt flew agonisingly just wide of the upright.\nExeter, who enjoyed superiority in the scrum, now face a major uphill battle to make the last eight knockout stages for a second successive year and have now won just two of their eight competitive matches this season.\nHowever, the performance of last year's Premiership runners-up will have given some encouragement to head coach Rob Baxter following their 35-8 trouncing by Clermont Auvergne in their pool opener at Sandy Park last week.\nPool leaders Clermont had beaten Bordeaux 49-33 earlier on Saturday, with both sides claiming a bonus point.\nUlster, who head the Pro12 standings, now lie third in the group, behind Clermont on 10 points and Bordeaux on five, with a double-header against the French Top 14 leaders to come in December.\nUlster: J Payne, A Trimble (capt), L Marshall, S Olding, C Piutau; P Jackson, R Pienaar; K McCall, R Best, R Ah You; P Browne, F van der Merwe; I Henderson, S Reidy, R Wilson.\nReplacements: R Herring, A Warwick, R Kane, A O'Connor, C Ross, P Marshall, C Gilroy, T Bowe.\nExeter: L Turner; O Woodburn, I Whitten, H Slade, J Short; G Steenson; D Lewis; M Low, J Yeandle, H Williams; M Lees, G Parling; K Horstmann, J Salvi, T Waldrom\nReplacements: E Taione, C Rimmer, T Francis, J Hill, D Dennis, J Maunder, S Hill, O Devoto.", "European Athletics wants historic records rewritten because of a lack of credibility following a doping scandal.\n\"If that's what it took for the good of the sport then that's the way I would have to go,\" said Warner.\nGB's Paula Radcliffe, who would lose her 2003 marathon world record, previously dubbed the idea \"cowardly\".\nBritain's Colin Jackson would also lose his 1994 indoor 60m hurdles world record of 7.30 seconds.\nRadcliffe said European Athletics' idea was \"heavy handed\", while Jackson said clean athletes \"should not get caught up in this\".\n\"They [Radcliffe and Jackson] love athletics and understand the greater good is what matters, but we've got to get to a better defined set of proposals, and we're not there yet,\" Warner told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.\nAthletic's world governing body - the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) - will discuss the proposals at a meeting in August.\nThe proposals are a response to last year's McLaren report, which uncovered widespread doping in sport - and athletics in particular. Russian athletes are banned from international competition unless they can satisfy strict criteria to show they are clean.\nWarner believes some of the records set prior to 2005 were \"iniquitous\", adding: \"Today's athletes can't get close to them because they were drug-fuelled.\"\nOne key proposal from European Athletics is that blood samples must be stored for 10 years after a record is set.\nThe IAAF has stored blood and urine samples only since 2005 and current records that do not meet the new criteria would remain on an \"all-time list\", but not be officially recognised as records.\nWarner, who took charge of UKA in 2007, also warned this summer's World Championships in London would not be \"100% clean\", stating the battle against doping was \"an arms race\".\nHe will leave UKA after 11 years immediately after the World Championships and has already handed over chairman duties to Richard Bowker.", "The 20-year-old, who has been with the Robins for four years, signed his first professional deal in 2015.\nThe former Hereford loanee missed much of the 2016-17 term with a knee injury.\n\"I want to make up for the last couple of years and get back playing. I am very grateful to the gaffer and the medical team. I really want to repay them now,\" Page told the club website.", "The 30-year-old Croatia international has made one Premier League start this season under compatriot Slaven Bilic.\nHe follows Chelsea's Ramires, who joined Jiangsu Suning for £25m last month, while striker Jackson Martinez joined Guangzhou Evergrande for £31m.\nThe Colombian left Atletico Madrid for the Chinese Super League side, breaking the Asian transfer record.\nJelavic signed for West Ham for £3m from Hull in August 2015, but has scored only once in the league despite making 12 appearances from the bench.\nHe previously played for Everton and Rangers.\nMeanwhile, former Everton midfielder Tim Cahill is leaving Chinese football after his contract was terminated by Shanghai Shenhua.\nFind all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.", "The 44-year-old Nottingham-born cueman has slipped outside of the top 64 and is in danger of losing his tour status.\nHamilton reached the third round of the Welsh Open this week and has shown glimpes of his best form after several years of struggle with a neck injury.\n\"Mathematically I'm against it now, but I am playing well,\" he told BBC Sport.\nHamilton is ranked number 68 in the world and his provisional ranking is in the 70s. He also seems unlikely to earn a place on tour through one of the eight places on offer through the Order of Merit on the European Tour events.\nBut if does miss out on a tour place, Hamilton, who has been as high as number 10 in the world, has no intention of giving up.\n\"I would try to get back on because I am playing well again and and I have been feeling fit body-wise since October,\" he said.\n\"Before October it was almost pointless, but now I can practise a bit. I am too good to be off the tour, in my opinion.\n\"It will be tough to get back on and I don't know what I would do next if it does happen.\"", "Bingtao, ranked 66, beat Selby 4-1 in the afternoon session on Thursday.\nFifteen-year-old Jackson Page's remarkable run also came to an end after he lost 4-0 to world number four Judd Trump in the third round.\nJust three of the world's top 16 players remain in the tournament after Ronnie O'Sullivan lost in the second round on Wednesday.\nWorld number two Stuart Bingham eased past fellow Englishman Ian Burns 4-0 to set up a fourth-round tie with Robbie Williams, who defeated Wales' Michael White 4-2.\nEngland's Barry Hawkins, ranked eight in the world, won 4-1 against Thailand's Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, who had reached the third round of the tournament for the first time.\nElsewhere, England's Ali Carter, ranked number 12 in the world, lost 4-1 to Iran's Hossein Vafaei Ayouri.\nMark Davis defeated Ireland's Fergal O'Brien 4-2, and will face Scott Donaldson in the fourth round after he beat Jimmy Robertson 4-0.\nRobert Milkins beat Josh Boileau 4-0 and Wales' Lee Walker edged past Graeme Dott 4-2.\nAnthony Hamilton lost to fellow Englishman Craig Steadman 4-2, while Stuart Carrington defeated Robin Hull 4-0 to set up a tie with teenager Bingtao in Thursday evening's fourth round.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nEbbw Vale schoolboy Jackson Page had been given a wildcard entry and beat Jason Weston and John Astley in his first two games.\nBut Trump, 27, recorded breaks of 61 and 96 in the first two frames on his way to a comfortable victory.\nPage, who attends Ebbw Fawr Learning Community in Blaenau Gwent, won £2,500 for reaching the second round and another £1,000 for progressing to the third.\n\"You can't ask for too much at my age against Judd... I'm glad it is half-term next week,\" said Page.\n\"I'd have been happy even if I got knocked out first round, as long as I gave it a good go.\n\"Even at the start of the tournament it was great, but as it went on it became more intense and real, it is all I want to do really is play snooker.\"\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nSign up to My Sport to follow snooker news and reports on the BBC app.", "The 19-year-old, from Cornwall, narrowly missed out on qualifying for this month's Open Championship.\nHe is studying for a degree at the University of Nevada and is inside the top 80 of the amateur rankings.\n\"I want to be in the top 10, and definitely want to be world number one amateur. In two years time that could be possible,\" Hall told BBC Cornwall.\nFind out how to get into golf with our special guide.\n\"I've had a few options recently about turning pro, but I want to turn pro when I'm one of the top amateurs in the world.\"\nHall represented Europe in June at the Arnold Palmer Cup, which pits the top 10 university players from the continent against America's best college golfers.\nHe finished in a tie for seventh place at an Open qualifying event in Kent on 3-4 July, just one shot from reaching a play-off to reach the major tournament.\n\"There's always next year,\" he added. \"My game hasn't been great this summer, but just to pull something out of the bag a couple days ago and be in contention was really nice.\n\"I'm getting a degree [in Nevada] and my plan is to finish the two years I have left, walk out with a degree and hopefully I'll play the Walker Cup and then turn professional.\"", "The 23-year-old right-hander could appear in their opening Championship game against Sussex on Sunday.\nAnd he will also be available for subsequent matches against Essex, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.\nThe opener marked his first-class debut for Nottinghamshire in 2014 by scoring a century against Sussex.\nHowever, he missed much of last season after suffering knee-ligament damage in Australia.\nHe recently made a century for Nottinghamshire against Hampshire during a pre-season tour to Barbados." ]

[ "I am new to the \"Kind\" family of products and ordered these bars after talking with a friend. WOW! These are amazing! They serve as a total meal replacement when I'm on the go, but still taste good enough to be considered a snack. I have now also tried the cranberry/almond (which are tasty, but sticky enough that I have learned not to eat them in the car)and the Vanilla Blueberry Granola and Cinnamon Oat Cereal as well. These are GREAT products and I recommend them highly. I've never written a review for anything before, but \"Kind\" words needed to be said!!!" ]

[ "It was in the 1920s that the H.B. Reese Candy Company first began manufacturing a product made with specially processed peanut butter and Hershey's milk chocolate. Back then the product was simply known as peanut butter cups, but today the popular candy is known as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Harry Burnett Reese was actually a former dairy employee of Milton S. Hershey, the founder of the Hershey Foods Corporation who was inspired by the example and went off to make his own fortune in the candy industry. Reese made a lot of other products, such as Johnny Bars (caramel-like molasses) and Lizzie Bars (coconut candy), but in the end his fortune was made by this single product, which offered a simple combination of peanut butter and chocolate.<br /><br />In the 1920s, from a factory located down the street from that of Hershey, Reese began selling his peanut butter cups in 5 lb. boxes to be used in candy assortments. In the 1930s he added the cups, which were originally sold for a penny each. During World War II Reese discontinued all his other products and just made the peanut butter cups, which were distributed through wholesale jobbers, vending machine operators and syndicated stores. After World War II the peanut butter cups, now in their familiar orange, yellow and brown wrapping, continued to gain national popularity. In 1963 the H.B. Reese Candy Company, Inc., was sold for $23.5 million to the Hershey Chocolate Company, and in 1976 the first variation in the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was made with the introduction of Reese's Crunchy Peanut Butter Cup.<br /><br />In 1992 Reese's started selling its own peanut butter in a jar, in 1994 it offered Reese's bits for baking, and in 1998 the company launched ReeseSticks to go along with the Fastbreak, Nutrageous, and Bites, not to mention peanut butter Christmas trees, pumpkins, eggs, and all the other seasonal products. Now even have White Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which pretty much defines heaven on earth for me in terms of candy making. But behind this growing array of candy products there remains the original Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. There is something to be said for the simple combination of peanut butter and chocolate, as immortalized in the \"you got chocolate in my peanut butter/you got peanut butter in my chocolate\" ad campaign that inspired many Americans to walk around eating peanut butter out of a jar.<br /><br />Now, you can certainly make your own peanut butter cups. You just need 12 paper muffin cups, a 12-ounce package of milk chocolate chips, a cup of reduced-fat peanut butter, 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, a 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt, a pair of scissors, microwave, and refrigerator. But it will take you a couple of hours to make 12 candies. Or you can buy this 6 pack of peanut butter cups and just enjoy eating them without resorting to making them." ]

[ "I am a Federal retiree. Will I still receive my monthly annuity payment during a government shutdown? Yes, Federal retirees under the CSRS and FERS retirement systems will still receive their scheduled annuity payments on the first business day of the month." ]

[ "Disability coverage through FERS Public employees are generally eligible for up to 30 days paid leave for sickness or injury, similar to short-term disability insurance plans. Outside of that, employees may be eligible for disability retirement benefits through the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS).", "A reemployed annuitant is a person who is receiving a Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) or Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) retirement annuity and, at the same time, is earning a paycheck as a Federal employee.", "The Federal Employees' Retirement Security Act of 1986 established the Thrift Savings Plan, or TSP. It is a qualified retirement plan made available to current and retired federal government and agency employees.", "It is neither. The USPS is a government agency that was created by Congress to achieve various public purposes. ... Additionally, the USPS's employees are federal employees who participate in the Civil Service Retirement System, the Federal Employees Retirement System, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.", "The USPS is a government agency that was created by Congress to achieve various public purposes. ... Additionally, the USPS's employees are federal employees who participate in the Civil Service Retirement System, the Federal Employees Retirement System, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.", "Retirement Coverage: Most new hires are automatically covered by Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). FERS is a three-tiered retirement plan consisting of a basic FERS annuity, Social Security (FICA), and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). ... NOTE: Temporary employees are not eligible for retirement coverage.", "Under EPF scheme, an employee has to pay a certain contribution towards the scheme and an equal contribution is paid by the employer. The employee gets a lump sum amount including self and employer's contribution with interest on both, on retirement.", "Employees impacted by the shutdown aren't making contributions toward their retirement because they're not getting paid. The shutdown won't have an impact on an employee's retirement-creditable service or high-3 average pay unless the lapse lasts for more than six months, according to OPM.", "The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board administers the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for Federal employees. The TSP is not covered by ERISA, but rather was created by the Federal Employees' Retirement System Act of 1986, codified primarily at 5 U.S.C. $ 8351 and $$ 8401- 8479.", "Federal Law Salaried employees are regulated by federal and state laws, and neither law requires employers to offer paid vacation or holidays for exempt employees, regardless of the size of the company. ... These benefits are a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee usually stated in a Paid Time Off (PTO).", "The Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP) is a voluntary, enrollee-pay-all dental and vision program available to Federal employees and annuitants, certain retired uniformed service members, and active duty family members.", "Holiday Pay Is Not Mandatory Federal employees, however, do get paid holidays. Many employers offer time and a half as incentive to work on holidays but that's just a custom, not a law.", "FDIC employees are covered by one of the Federal retirement systems and/or Social Security. ... The FDIC also offers a 401(k) plan (FDIC Savings Plan) in addition to the Federal TSP. Eligible employees may contribute a portion of their pay and receive agency-matching contributions.", "Currently, there are no federal requirements the employers provide sick leave to employees. Since there is no requirement under federal law that employees be given sick leave at all, there also is no federal legal requirement that sick leave, if given by an employer, be paid leave.", "Like many retirement systems, FERS uses the \"Rule of 80.\" This states that an employee must reach a combined 80 years when adding age and federal service to be eligible for retirement.", "['Employee benefits plans, such as health insurance.', 'Employee fringe benefits, such as paid vacation.', 'Federal, state, and local income tax withholding.']", "The Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) was organized in 1920 and has provided retirement, disability, and survivor benefits for most civilian employees in the United States federal government.", "Retirement Pension does not have to be paid back from an award of compensation, but if you get any of the benefits or lump sum shown above after retirement age, they may have to be paid back.", "When an employee needs to take paid leave, they will receive a portion of their regular wages. ... If an employee takes PFL, the wages they receive are subject to federal income tax, but not Social Security and Medicare taxes, or federal unemployment tax.", "The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires large organizations to offer employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child, sick relative or their own illness. ... The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, which Maloney sponsored, and would provide 12 weeks of paid family leave to federal employees.", "Salaried employees are regulated by federal and state laws, and neither law requires employers to offer paid vacation or holidays for exempt employees, regardless of the size of the company. ... In addition, private employers don't have to give employees unpaid time off for vacation or federal holidays.", "For general background, during the shutdown, most civilian federal employees (not uniformed military personnel) are furloughed and will not be paid. ... MSHA will have 1,099 employees working during the shutdown (out of 2,054 total employees).", "While on furlough, Federal employees may become eligible for unemployment benefits under the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) program. UCFE is paid by the states under the same terms and conditions as regular state unemployment compensation (UC).", "Most federal and state government employees are not required to work on Veterans Day, regardless of veteran status. Nonessential federal government offices are closed on Veterans Day, providing a paid day off to all affected employees.", "All non-essential federal government offices are closed on New Year's Day, and all federal employees are paid even if they receive the day off. Many private-sector employees will also receive paid time off or special holiday pay on New Year's Day. New Year's day is observed on the first day of the Gregorian calendar.", "Unfortunately, because Columbus Day is a federal holiday, it means that the only people guaranteed a paid day off are federal employees - as government offices will be closed.", "FedAdvantage | Supplemental Disability Insurance for Federal Employees. ... All Federal Civilian Employees, except Postal Workers (USPS employees), can enroll in group Short Term Disability (STD) and Long Term Disability (LTD) to supplement your leave and disability retirement programs and fill the gaps in your benefits.", "For eligible members of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and the Blended Retirement System (BRS), contributions “spilling over” toward the catch-up limit will be matched up to the 5% of basic pay to which participants are currently entitled.", "En español | Since 1984, all members of Congress have paid into Social Security and are eligible for the same benefits that all participants receive. Members elected after 1984 pay into and are covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and become vested after five years of full participation.", "ESOPs are one form of employee participation in corporate ownership. ESOPs are regulated by Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a federal law that sets minimum standards for investment plans in private industry.", "A thrift savings plan (TSP) is a type of retirement investment program open to federal employees and members of the uniformed services, including the Ready Reserve. The TSP is a defined-contribution plan that offers federal employees many of the same benefits that are available to workers in the private sector.", "Final wages paid within the same calendar year in which the employee died are not subject to Federal Income Tax Withholdings (FITW), but they are subject to taxes under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA)." ]

[ "Andy Murray must finish his fourth-round match against Nikolay Davydenko on Wednesday after rain hit the US Open." ]

[ "Seventh seed Taylor Dent of the United States has eased past Australian Peter Luczak in the first round of the rain-interrupted China Open at the Beijing Tennis Center.", "The start of the 121st Wimbledon tennis championships was delayed on Monday because of rain.", "Sport: This is a year of relentless rain, chippy players and ordinary tennis, says Steve Bierley.", "NEW YORK - It was as if the US Open tennis tournament took a deep breath yesterday morning (Singapore time). No remarkable upsets happened.", "US Open tennis champion Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia has advanced to the quarterfinals of the China Open tennis tournament in Beijing with a hard-fought win over China&#39;s Li Na.", "Andre Agassi's 20-year tennis career ends in defeat by Benjamin Becker in the third round of the US Open.", "With five players in tennis's top 10, Russia sees three women advance to the US Open quarterfinals.", "Serena Williams hits a return to Patty Schnyder at the US Open tennis tournament in New York, in this Sept. 5, 2004 photo. Serena will be the only Williams sister playing in the WTA Championships beginning Wednesday Nov. 10, 2004.", "Sport: Tennis: Andy Roddick succumbs to irresistible force of world No 1 in US Open quarter-finals.", "The proud grandfather of tennis star Andrew Murray followed the teenager's US Open victory point-by-point on the internet.", "IBM uses virtualization to cut the costs of running the U.S. Open Web site for the U.S. Tennis Association.", "A Scottish teenager who survived the Dunblane school massacre wins the US Open tennis boy's title.", "NEW YORK -- Jennifer Capriati has moved into the semifinals of the US Open after a three-set victory over Serena Williams. Serena Williams argues a call during the US Open tennis tournament.", "Following are short biographies of the leading contenders in the women&#39;s singles at the US Open tennis championships. Prefix number denotes seeding.", "Todd Martin, one of the oldest players in men&#39;s tennis, announced his retirement after his first-round loss at the US Open Tennis Tournament Monday night.", "Serena Williams and Andy Roddick produced some explosive tennis at the US Open on Sunday as their respective title challenges gained strength.", "Gli US Open di tennis sono temporaneamente sospesi per una pioggia abbattutasi su Flushing Meadows m...", "L'americano Andy Roddick, testa di serie numero 9, accede al terzo turno degli Us Open di tennis, qu...", "India struggled to 22 for two on the rain-hit first day of the fourth and final test against Australia on Wednesday after losing openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir.", "Russian Marat Safin reached the second round of the rain-hit China Open with a 6-4, 7-5 victory over American Alex Bogomolov on Thursday.", "La russa Elena Dementieva, numero 4 del seeding, aggiunge i quarti di finale degli Us Open. La tenni...", "For good or bad, tennis players&#39; fortunes change as quickly as the direction of the swirling wind at the US Open. Just ask major champions Jennifer Capriati, Roger Federer and", "MELBOURNE, Australia - Outraged tennis officials rushed to the defense of U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova on Tuesday and hit out at a Belgian government minister who claimed she had failed a doping test.", "The only shrieking Maria Sharapova wants to hear 10 years from now will be coming from her babies, with the newly-crowned Australian Open champion vowing to quit tennis before she hits 30.", "Top seed Carlos Moya got blown off court by a French teenager playing his first ATP Tour match at the rain-hit China Open on Wednesday.", "Serena Williams was all about show at the beginning of this US Open. Dress in what some would consider an outrageous manner. Tweak the tennis establishment.", "La belga Justine Henin, n. 1 del mondo, ha vinto gli US Open di tennis battendo in finale la russa S...", "Description: NPR&#39;s Jennifer Ludden talks to Tandelaya Wilder, host of She Got Game, about the results of the US Open tennis finals.", "Defending women&#39;s champion and top-seed Justine Henin-Hardenne of Belgium is out of the US Open tennis tournament in New York.", "Opener Alastair Cook hit a defiant century before rain washed out the last session to help England draw the final cricket Test against Sri Lanka here on Saturday.", "ANDY Roddick is no longer the US Open champion or the world&#39;s top-ranked tennis player, but he can salvage some wounded pride by leading the US into the Davis Cup final.", "NEW YORK (Ticker) -- Neither rain nor an empty Armstrong Stadium could stop Lindsay Davenport from another trip to the semifinals at the US Open." ]

[ "A total of 4,851 council seats are up for grabs across England, Wales and Scotland on 4 May.\nThe poll will give voters a chance to deliver verdicts on the major parties before the general election, which is being held on 8 June.\nThere are also eight mayoral elections, including elections in six new \"combined local authorities\".\nThe Manchester Gorton parliamentary by-election triggered by the death of Labour MP Gerald Kaufman was also due to take place, but has now been delayed until the day of the general election.\nTheresa May stunned the political establishment by calling a snap general election last month, saying she wanted a stronger mandate as she heads into negotiations on taking Britain out of the European Union.\nIt means that, unusually, the local elections are taking place in the middle of a general election campaign.\nMrs May will be hoping her \"strong and stable\" government mantra will help the Conservatives gain council seats and take outright control of a slew of councils that are currently hung.\nConservative Party Chairman Patrick McLoughlin said voters on 4 May have a \"clear choice\" between \"the competence of strong Conservative councils and elected mayors who will keep local taxes down with quality local services, versus the disarray of the rest\".\n\"Conservative councils and mayors deliver more for less, improving local services and standing up for local people,\" he said.\nJeremy Corbyn will be hoping to confound the polls and show Labour is moving forward under his leadership - while UKIP faces a tough battle to hold on to the seats it won in England in 2013.\nThe Labour leader accused the Conservatives of \"running our country down in every way\", adding: \"Labour councils are making a difference... stepping up where the government fails to act.\"\nUKIP leader Paul Nuttall said his party's councillors have a track record of fighting to keep costs down, opposition to increases in councillor allowances and always \"put local needs above party affiliation\".\nThe elections will also indicate whether the Liberal Democrats are beginning to rebuild support after taking a hit in these seats four years ago, and at the 2015 general election.\nLiberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who is heading to Oxford to rally activists ahead of the local elections, said his party was \"going into these local elections bigger than ever before, with a clear message and a growing sense of momentum\".\nThe party reached 101,832 members on Tuesday afternoon, eclipsing the previous watermark of 101,768 set in 1994. Mr Farron added: \"You don't need to agree with us on everything to agree that Britain needs a strong opposition to fight for you and your communities against Tory cuts to our schools, our NHS and our social care services.\"\nIn Scotland, the Conservatives want to repeat the 2016 Holyrood election which saw them replace Labour as the second largest party.\nHowever, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has urged voters to back her party in the local elections to protest against both Conservative \"austerity\" and SNP plans for a second independence referendum.\nBut Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon said the local government elections \"are not about independence\". Describing them as \"vitally important\", she added that \"a vote for the SNP in this election is a vote to protect local services\".\nThe Scottish Greens are fielding a record 218 candidates and say they are building on existing councillor numbers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeenshire, Midlothian and Stirling, and making breakthroughs in many other local authorities.\nAll 32 Scottish councils (1,227 seats) have elections. In 2012, the SNP won the most seats, but Labour was not far behind.\nApart from Anglesey, the Welsh councils (22 councils, 1,254 seats) were last contested in 2012, That was a very strong year for Labour, which made over 200 net gains at the expense of all the other parties.\nIn England, (34 councils, 2,370 seats) this is a year of county council elections - a traditional area of strength for the Conservatives.\nFor the first time voters in Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City region, the West Midlands, Tees Valley, the West of England and Cambridge and Peterborough will elect new metro mayors.\nThese mayors will mostly be responsible for economic development in their regions, but some will have powers over transport and housing.\nDoncaster and North Tyneside are also voting for local authority mayors, who are elected leaders of their respective councils.\nBBC senior elections and political analyst Peter Barnes urged caution over reading too much into the results of the local elections \"to project the outcome of the general election\"\n\"People vote differently in council elections - even in cases when they're held on the same day as a general election,\" he said.\n\"For example, the Liberal Democrats tend to do better at the local level. And there are still five weeks to go until 8 June. So while the results that are announced on Thursday night and Friday will give us some indications about how the general election might go, they won't tell us with any certainty what the outcome will be.\"" ]

[ "Despite returning 80 more councillors, 184 in total, at Thursday's local elections in Wales, the party only took control of Monmouthshire.\nWelsh Tory chairman Jonathan Evans said June's poll will be regarded as a Theresa May-Jeremy Corbyn battle.\nWelsh Labour's Chris Evans said the local election results gave the party a \"firm foundation\" to build on.\nAlthough Labour lost more than 100 councillors in Wales, taking its tally down to 472, and lost control of both Bridgend and Blaenau Gwent councils, the results were not as bad for the party as had been predicted.\nLabour was also three seats short of a majority in Merthyr Tydfil, but polling has been delayed until next month in the Cyfarthfa ward following the death of a candidate.\nIt means a five-week wait before the council's final political makeup is clear.\nThe ward elected two independents and one Labour councillor in 2012.\nEx-MP and general election candidate in June Chris Evans said: \"What's quite clear is Labour in Wales is much stronger than the polls are telling us at the moment.\n\"People haven't deserted the Labour Party - people still have faith and they're still strong with the Labour Party and that is what we will build on in the next four weeks.\"\nJonathan Evans, who is running the Conservative general election campaign in Wales, told the BBC's Sunday Politics Wales programme there had been a range of alternatives to Labour in Welsh elections.\nBut he said: \"In the general election it's my expectation that people will see this as a two party contest.\n\"The election has been presented as a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May.\n\"I see it that way, and the public see it that way as well and I think that is going to be very helpful for the Conservative Party in these elections.\"\nPlaid Cymru said gaining more than 30 councillors, meaning the party now has 202, was \"great news\".\nIt said voting patterns in some local election areas were a cause for optimism ahead of the general election.\nYnys Mon AM Rhun ap Iorwerth said it was \"pleasing\" to see gains \"in places where we aren't seen as traditionally strong\".\n\"Looking across the board it's got to be seen I think as a pretty solid result for Plaid Cymru and bodes well for the poll which is coming up in just a few weeks' time.\"\nThe Liberal Democrats lost 11 council seats and now have 62 councillors in Wales in what Lib Dem AM and Welsh Government Education Secretary Kirsty Williams called \"a mixed set of results\".\nBut she said local election voting should not be seen as a prediction of what will happen on 8 June.\n\"I think we have to be very careful not to make a direct read across from local government elections to the general election,\" she said.\n\"What's absolutely clear is that politics is in a state of flux and there are arguments to be made on doorsteps in the weeks to come.\"\nUKIP AM Gareth Bennett said his party still had a key role despite failing to win any councillors in Wales and losing 145 in England.\n\"UKIP should have a future because there are so many issues which will be unresolved in British politics which the main parties won't tackle,\" he said.\n\"Who the heck is going to tackle these if not UKIP?\"\nSunday Politics Wales, BBC One Wales, 11:00 BST, 7 May", "Mr Miliband was \"highly intelligent\" and a \"good debater\", the peer told BBC Radio 4's Week in Westminster.\nThere have been suggestions that David Cameron's chances of winning in May depend on squeezing the UKIP vote.\nBut Lord Patten said Mr Farage \"is probably a balloon which is deflating\".\nHis comments come in a week in which Mr Cameron vowed not take part in TV debates ahead of the general election unless the Green Party is also included.\nAt Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Mr Miliband called Mr Cameron's refusal to take part a \"pathetic excuse\".\nLord Patten told the BBC: \"I wouldn't be worried about the Farage factor; I'd be much more worried about the platform it gives Ed Miliband.\"\nHe said he was concerned that during the election campaign the Labour leader \"might come across a lot better\" than the press says he is.\nMr Miliband, Mr Farage and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg have urged broadcasters to press ahead with televised debates before the 7 May poll even if Mr Cameron refuses to take part. The three leaders have also written to the prime minister saying it would be \"unacceptable\" for him to refuse to appear.\nBut at Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Cameron said Mr Miliband was \"chickening\" out of facing the Greens and all \"national parties\" must be represented.\nThe BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said Mr Cameron was unwilling to do anything that gives Nigel Farage a boost.\nHe had long decided the debates at the 2010 election had sucked the life out of the campaign and given a boost to his opponents, our political editor said in a blog entry.\nUnder plans put forward by the BBC, Sky News, ITV and Channel 4 in October, the pre-election live TV debates would include the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and UKIP.\nMr Cameron would take on Mr Miliband head-to-head in one debate, another would feature Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg, and a third would also include UKIP's Mr Farage.\nOn the Week in Westminster, Lord Patten said Mr Cameron should not have taken part in televised leaders' debates before the last election, because \"once you start doing them, they are very difficult to stop\".\nUKIP secured two by-election victories over the Conservatives - in Clacton and Rochester and Strood - last year.\nResponding to Lord Patten's view of the threat from Mr Farage, a UKIP spokesman said the opinion polls suggested the party's popularity \"wouldn't descend any time soon\".\nConservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said the TV debates could go ahead if the Greens were included.\nHe told the Times there was \"still time for this all to be organised and I think it will\".\n\"What people would appreciate is a common sense debate between either the two guys who could be prime minister or everybody who is standing nationally.\"\nThe Week in Westminster is on Radio 4 at 11:00 GMT", "The Tories said David Cameron emerged \"clearly ahead\" as the best person to lead the UK but Labour said Ed Miliband had staked out an \"alternative vision\".\nThe SNP's Nicola Sturgeon has been praised for an \"impressive\" performance by some senior Conservatives.\nSeven million people watched the two-hour debate on ITV.\nIn the most high-profile event of the campaign so far, the seven politicians - also including the leaders of the Lib Dems, UKIP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru - were questioned on a range of issues including the NHS, immigration and the deficit.\nIn other post-debate developments:\nThe party leaders have returned to the campaign trail in the wake of Thursday's encounter - the only time before polling day on 7 May that Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband will share a stage.\nDuring the debate, the Conservative and Labour leaders locked horns over spending cuts, management of the economy, and standards of care in the NHS.\nMr Miliband vowed to \"save\" the NHS from the Conservatives, claiming David Cameron had \"broken his bond of trust\", while Mr Cameron said the Conservatives' economic plan was working and Labour would take the country \"back to square one\".\nAs the dust settled on the encounter, both the Conservatives and Labour suggested their man had come out ahead.\n\"The overall impression people will have got is if you want to look and say 'who is the best person to lead the country over the next five years', David Cameron will have come out clearly ahead,\" Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.\nBut shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint suggested that Mr Cameron had \"faded\".\n\"Given that David Cameron designed and demanded this debate... he didn't seize the opportunity to make his case... At the end of the day there was one alternative prime minister to David Cameron and that was Ed Miliband.\"\nAmid suggestions of a hung Parliament and possible coalitions and deals after the election, commentators have said that the debates made the British political system look very different from the traditional two or three-party set-up.\nBoth the Conservatives and Labour conceded that the three parties appearing in a national debate for the first time - the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Green Party - could have benefited the most from the primetime exposure.\nMs Sturgeon, Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood and Green leader Natalie Bennett all argued against austerity.\nThe SNP leader signalled areas, such as on tax, where she could work with Labour but said getting more SNP MPs elected to Westminster was needed to \"keep them honest\".\nSpeaking in Edinburgh on Friday, Ms Sturgeon said she had made the case for a \"progressive change\" in Scotland and across the UK.\nThe SNP, she suggested, could work with Labour to \"lock\" the Conservatives out of power but also make sure Labour did \"sell out its values\" in government.\nMr Gove said the SNP leader had done \"very well\".\n\"I think it is also legitimate to say Nicola Sturgeon emerged as the most impressive debutante on the stage,\" he said.\nLabour have suggested it is in the Conservatives' interests to talk up the SNP, as the more seats they win in Scotland, the less likely the chances of Labour getting a majority.\nThe BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said Ms Sturgeon had \"managed to project herself as a distinctive, articulate voice of anti-austerity in a way which we've not really had on the national stage\".\nBut he said both Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband's supporters were \"pretty pleased\" as \"they felt their men came through it relatively unscathed, they got over their core message, they both believed they managed to look prime ministerial…\"\nThis issue includes EU and worldwide migration, border controls and rules on work and benefits.\nPolicy guide: Where the parties stand\nOther notable clashes during the debate came between David Cameron and Nick Clegg on schools funding and between Mr Clegg and Mr Farage over immigration.\nSpeaking on Friday, Mr Clegg said it was clear politics was becoming more \"fragmented\" and no longer a \"game of pass the parcel\" between the Conservatives and Labour.\n\"I actually think that most people watching last night will have realised no-one's going to win this election outright so it's all about who's going to work with whom,\" he said.\nMr Farage was attacked by his opponents after highlighting the number of foreign nationals with HIV whom he said were treated by the NHS.\nBut the party's immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe said the debate had been a \"resounding success\" for Mr Farage because he had been \"straight-talking, honest and had set out commonsense policies for leading Britain and putting Britain's interests first\".\nSnap polls taken after the debate gave a mixed verdict.\nA YouGov poll of 1,100 people gave a clear victory to the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, with 28%, followed by UKIP leader Nigel Farage on 20%, Mr Cameron on 18%, Mr Miliband on 15%, Mr Clegg on 10%, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett on 5% and Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood on 4%.\nBut a ComRes poll for ITV made it a dead heat between Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband, Mr Farage and Ms Sturgeon, although Mr Cameron came out on top on the question of who was most capable of leading the country.\nMr Miliband was judged best performer in an ICM poll for the Guardian, taking 25% of support, just ahead of David Cameron on 24%.\nThis issue includes NHS funding, GP access and social care, particularly of older people.\nThe seven-way debate emerged from tortuous negotiations between the parties and the broadcasters, with Mr Cameron refusing a direct head-to-head with Mr Miliband.\nThe Democratic Unionist Party, which has eight MPs, has criticised its exclusion from the programme.\nA question-and-answer programme featuring Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband appearing separately was hosted by Channel 4 and Sky News last week, and a BBC debate involving opposition party leaders, moderated by David Dimbleby, will be broadcast on 16 April.\nThere will also be a special Question Time on BBC One, a week before polling day, with Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg appearing one after the other to answer questions from a studio audience.\n• Subscribe to the BBC Election 2015 newsletter to get a round-up of the day's campaign news sent to your inbox every weekday afternoon.", "Ms Bennett said she would not stand for re-election when her second two-year term in office expires this summer.\nThe Australian former journalist said she intended to remain \"fully engaged\" in the Green Party after stepping down.\nGreen peer Baroness Jones and London mayoral candidate Sian Berry have said they do not want the job.\nBaroness Jones tweeted that she had \"no leader ambitions\", while Ms Berry wrote on Facebook that she \"definitely will not be standing in the election for a new leader\".\nMs Bennett said she had been \"proud to lead a party through a period of phenomenal expansion and increased impact\".\nAn ex-journalist who worked for the Telegraph, the Independent, the Times and the Guardian, she became party leader in September 2012.\nShe succeeded Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's MP for Brighton Pavilion.\nEarlier this month, she defended her leadership after the Greens lost four councillors in local elections in England, and won a 2.5% share of vote in the Welsh Assembly elections, behind UKIP.\nIn a statement, Ms Bennett said: \"With the support of our passionate members and supporters we have been able to achieve much in a relatively short period.\n\"There's greatly increased public understanding that when you want the honest, caring, committed view - one that isn't guided by the views of the latest focus group or fear of a tabloid backlash but by fundamental principles and values.\"\nMs Bennett took part in televised leaders' debates ahead of last year's general election.\nLast year, she had to apologise to members following a radio interview in which she blamed \"brain fade\" for her inability to explain a series of party policies.\nSpeaking to the BBC following her decision to stand down as leader, she criticised the \"soundbite\" culture in politics and the media.\n\"I'm not smooth,\" she told Radio 4's World At One.\n\"Sometimes I get stuck for words. But what I think is, we also need to think about what kind of politics we want. Some of our political reporting is very much aggressive attacks on quite minor points, refusing to engage in the broader issues and that really doesn't do the public, the voters, any kind of favours.\"\nMs Bennett said she did not know who would run for Green Party leader.\nRichard Mallender, chairman of the Green Party Executive, thanked Ms Bennett for \"her outstanding leadership over the past four years.\"\nBaroness Jones said it was a \"really tough job\" and she was \"disappointed\" Ms Bennett was stepping down.\n\"What we need now is some new people to come forward,\" she said. \"There is incredible talent in the party who are not well known because they are not elected.\"\nNominations for Ms Bennett's successor will open on June 1 and close on June 30.\nA campaign period will run from 1 July until 24 July, at which point a one-month balloting period will begin with the result to be announced at the party's autumn conference in Brighton in early September.", "Labour just held on to the seat by 11,633 to 11,016 votes.\nMr Miliband said UKIP voters did not think the parties listened to them, or that the country represented them.\nAnd he predicted the next election would be a fight against \"disillusionment and despair\".\nSpeaking in Heywood, where he congratulated winning candidate Liz McInnes, Mr Miliband said Labour had changed and realised it was \"not prejudiced\" to worry about immigration.\nBut he said he did not think UKIP could \"represent the interests of working people\" because they wanted to cut taxes for the rich.\nEarlier he promised Labour would not have \"a shred of complacency\" after avoiding a shock defeat.\nHe said the Conservatives were in retreat in the North West and had lost to UKIP in \"their own back yard\" of Clacton in the other by-election.\nMs McInnes got 41% of the vote, up slightly on Labour's share at the 2010 election.\nJohn Bickley, for UKIP, came second with 39% of the vote - up from 3% in 2010. The Conservatives got 12% of votes, down from 27% in 2010 and the Lib Dems 5%, down from 23%.\nMs McInnes said she was proud to have been elected, saying \"our vote held up, but we had not anticipated the Tory vote collapsing quite so dramatically\".\nShe added: \"Our core voters turned out. We didn't take anyone's votes for granted and we have run a very strong positive campaign.\"\nVeteran Labour MP Frank Field said the result in Heywood and Middleton meant that \"all bets were off\" for Labour at next year's general election.\nBut Mr Field said: \"If last night's vote heralds the start of UKIP's serious assault into Labour's neglected core vote, all bets are off for safer, let alone marginal seats at the next election.\"\nShadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said the surge in support for UKIP underlined \"the scale of the challenge to traditional politics\".\nMr Alexander said both the Heywood and Middleton and Clacton by-election results showed none of the three main political parties could \"deploy the tools of traditional party politics\".\nHe told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the general election would be a fight against public \"disillusionment and alienation\" with Westminster politicians.\n\"There can be no ounce of complacency in the Labour Party or any other traditional party. We've got to earn the trust of every single voter,\" he added.\nMr Alexander pointed out Labour increased its share of the vote in the Heywood and Middleton by-election - from 40% to 41%.\nHe argued that the swing in support to UKIP was the result of a collapse in support for the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives in the constituency.\nHe also admitted that immigration had proved an important issue in the by-election.\nBut Mr Alexander argued that the National Health Service had also proved to be a big issue for voters in the by-election campaign, adding; \"We need to expose the fact that UKIP want to... charge people to see the GP and that they've got policies that are more Tory than the Tories.\"\nUKIP MEP Patrick O'Flynn later told the BBC's Daily Politics the party did not have any plans to charge people to see their GP, calling it a \"foolish idea\".\nHe claimed growing support for UKIP illustrated public anger at \"how politics was being done\".\nBut he said the way to beat UKIP was \"conversation by conversation, street by street\" and to \"acknowledge the alienation that people feel from politics\".\nLabour won Heywood and Middleton at the last general election with 40% of the vote - on a much lower turnout yesterday, they retained the seat with 41% of the vote.\nA small step forward for them but a giant leap for UKIP from a derisory three per cent and fifth place behind the BNP in 2010 to second place and 39 per cent of the vote now - a swing from Labour to Ukip of 18 points.\nThat would have been their best ever by election performance - but for Clacton\nSo Nigel Farage will claim he can take Labour votes in the north just as he can take Tory votes in the south.\nBut that's not to say he is harming both main parties equally.\nThe Conservative saw their share of the vote fall dramatically here - as did the Lib Dems.\nSo it's likely that UKIP took votes from David Cameron's party while Labour gained votes from Nick Clegg's.\nThat meant that Labour retained the seat and saw off the robust UKIP challenge.\nThat said, it was a much worse result than Labour anticipated.\nBut John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, told the Guardian newspaper Labour would not win a majority government unless Mr Miliband broadened the party's coalition to include working class opinion.\nIn his reaction to the by-elections, David Cameron said they showed that a vote for UKIP could let Labour in. Nigel Farage hit back by saying that the Heywood and Middleton result showed that in the north west a vote for the Conservatives could let Labour in.\nPeter Tatchell, who stood as a Labour candidate in the 1983 by-election in the south London constituency of Bermondsey, said Labour bore some of the responsibility for the rise of UKIP.\nHe said on Twitter: \"Labour has part responsibility for rise of UKIP. It played Thatcherism lite & neglected working class people.\"\nThe left-wing political blog Left Foot Forward also suggested Labour faced an uphill battle to hold its seat in Heywood and Middleton at the general election.\nIt said of the by-election result: \"More depressing perhaps is the fact that 40% of voters have backed UKIP and another 12% the Tories. That's a majority for the right whichever way you look at it.\"", "Earlier in the campaign, Sinn Féin's South Down candidate Chris Hazzard was endorsed by GAA senior football manager Pete McGrath, raising questions on BBC's Talkback programme about whether sportspeople should give their backing to politicians.\nNow, another high-profile sporting face, David Jeffrey, has given his support to the Ulster Unionist Party's Tom Elliott, who is facing a tough battle to retain his seat from Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew.\nOn Tuesday, the Ballymena United manager joined the Fermanagh and South Tyrone candidate on the trail and on Wednesday, the party issued a photo of the pair together, saying Mr Elliott was delighted to have the backing of the former Linfield manager.\nMr Elliott said Jeffrey \"never gives up so it was great to have him come down and meet the team\".\nA full list of candidates standing in each constituency in the general election is available here.\nThe leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland, Steven Agnew, has urged people to \"vote with their heart\" in the Westminster election.\nHe was speaking a day after heading out on the campaign trail to the constituencies of West Tyrone and Fermanagh and South Tyrone.\nHe said the party had chosen those constituencies because of the impact Brexit was likely to have there.\nHe also told the BBC he said the party was gaining \"good ground\" in the two areas, and denied suggestions that an electoral pact in Fermanagh and South Tyrone meant the result was a \"done deal\".\n\"I don't accept that - there's no doubt in a Westminster election with the first-past-the-post system, it makes it more difficult but that's no reason not to vote for what you believe in,\" said the party leader.\n\"Vote for what you do want - people should vote with their heart, for the party they believe in.\n\"Democracy is about demanding what you want - and you can only do that by voting for the candidate that you want.\"\nArguably one of the more interesting announcements of the campaign so far happened on Wednesday morning ahead of the BBC leaders' debate - with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn saying he will now take part in the event.\nTheresa May has refused to take part in any debates, so Home Secretary Amber Rudd will be representing the Conservative Party. The Lib Dems, UKIP, SNP, Green Party and Plaid Cymru are also on the panel, which kicks off at 19:30 on BBC One NI.\nMeanwhile, the BBC Northern Ireland leaders' debate takes place next Tuesday, 6 June at 21:00 on BBC One NI, which you'll be able to watch here.\nThere have been few election-related events in Northern Ireland throughout the course of this campaign.\nThis could be because of the surprise timing of the election, or simply that people here have had enough of elections?\nHowever, Belfast's Clayton Hotel is hosting a hustings with a difference on Wednesday at 19:00.\nWhat makes it stand out is that while representatives from the five main parties will take part in a debate, their answers will be translated in sign language by interpreters for an audience of deaf people.\nIt's been organised by the British Deaf Association - which says it will give the deaf community a chance to raise their concerns directly with the political parties.\nIf you're aware of any hustings events taking place across Northern Ireland between now and next Wednesday, get in touch with the team by tweeting @BBCevex with the hashtag #GE2017.\nElsewhere on the campaign trail on Wednesday...\nBBC News NI's Campaign Catch-up will keep you across the general election trail with a daily dose of the main stories, the minor ones and the lighter moments in the run up to polling day on Thursday 8 June.\nHear more on BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra at 17:40 each weekday.", "The DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP, Alliance and the SDLP will hold separate meetings with Theresa May.\nShe has already held talks with the DUP this week about a deal to support her minority Conservative government.\nSince last week's general election, Mrs May has spent much of her time talking about Northern Ireland - and Thursday will be no different.\nThursday's talks will focus on attempts to restore devolution at Stormont by the end of this month.\nSecretary of State James Brokenshire has said there was very little time left to reach a deal before a 29 June deadline, but that local parties had it in their hands to take control of their future.\nWhile the Downing Street discussions will focus on restoring devolution, the prospect of a DUP-Conservative deal at Westminster will undoubtedly be raised, says BBC NI political correspondent Stephen Walker.\nThe deal is now not expected to be announced before next week.\nDUP sources have told the BBC an announcement on a deal with Tories had been delayed because of the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower blaze.\nMeanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has demanded details of any Conservative-DUP deal, calling it a \"nonsense situation\".\n\"We want to know what is in the deal they are offering to the DUP and we want to know when it is going to be put before Parliament,\" he said.\nOn Wednesday, Mr Corbyn announced that Owen Smith would be his shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland.\nThe Conservatives are having to rely on the support of 10 DUP MPs after they fell eight seats short of winning an overall majority at the general election.\nIt means Mrs May will remain as prime minister and the DUP MPs will be central to the survival of a Conservative Party administration.\nDevolved government in Northern Ireland broke down in January.\nThe late deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, stood down to protest the DUP's handling of an energy scandal, in a move that triggered a snap election.\nThe DUP and Conservatives were close to reaching agreement to enable Mrs May to form a minority government and the talks were not in trouble, according to DUP sources.\nBut they added that the London tower block fire made an announcement on Wednesday \"inappropriate\".\nThe DUP source told BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith the two parties were now finalising the \"terms and conditions\" of an agreement after Mrs May and DUP leader Arlene Foster met on Tuesday.\nDowning Street sources told our correspondent talk of a delay in announcing a deal was \"not coming from us.\"\nGet news from the BBC in your inbox, each weekday morning", "The party certainly needs uniting after former leader Johann Lamont resigned, saying senior Labour figures had \"questioned\" her role and that the UK leadership ran Scotland like a \"branch office\".\nWhether or not Mr Murphy was one of those doing the questioning, there had been intense speculation since the referendum that he could run for the leadership.\nAs soon as Ms Lamont was gone, he was seen by many as the front-runner to replace her, with one figure saying \"if Jim doesn't stand it will be a disaster\".\nThe East Renfrewshire MP gained a high profile as he fought a tough referendum campaign, touring 100 towns in 100 days to deliver the \"No\" message.\nThe 47-year-old would bring experience of government and street campaigning to the job, but could a Westminster MP who is widely seen as a Blairite reach out to Labour's disaffected Scottish heartlands?\nBorn in 1967 in Glasgow and raised in a housing scheme on the city's south side, James Francis Murphy emigrated with his family to South Africa when he was a boy.\nHe returned to Scotland in the 1980s in order, he said later, to avoid having to serve in the South African army.\nHis involvement in student politics led to him becoming president of NUS Scotland in 1992 and NUS UK from 1994 to 1996.\nThe NUS dropped its opposition to the abolition of student grants during Mr Murphy's leadership, a move that was in line with Labour party policy but saw him condemned by student activists and some Labour MPs.\nThe NUS leadership is often a one-way ticket to a safe Labour seat, and Mr Murphy's graduation to Westminster was exceptionally fast.\nHe was elected MP for Eastwood (later renamed East Renfrewshire) in Labour's 1997 general election landslide, with a majority of more than 10,000.\nA government loyalist, Mr Murphy became a party whip, then a junior minister, before finally gaining a cabinet role as Secretary of State for Scotland from 2008 until Labour fell from power in 2010.\nBriefly moving to the shadow Scotland brief, he became shadow defence secretary in 2010, suggesting his star was still on the rise within the Westminster party.\nHowever, he was reshuffled to the shadow international development brief in 2013, which could be seen as something of a demotion.\nMr Murphy's current profile in Scotland is in part down to the key role he played in the campaign ahead of September's referendum on independence.\nBut he was also known for helping survivors after a police helicopter crashed onto the Clutha pub in Glasgow late last year.\nThe MP was in the area at the time of the crash and said he ran into the pub to help before emergency services arrived.\nInterviewed at the scene by the BBC, he said: \"Like other people, you just do what you can to help.\"\nWith the referendum campaign under way, Mr Murphy embarked on his 100 Towns in 100 Days tour, on behalf of the Better Together campaign to keep the Union.\nThis was old-fashioned soapbox politics, or Irn Bru crate politics in the case of Mr Murphy.\nThe tour did not quite run for 100 consecutive days, as it was suspended for 72 hours in late August, after Mr Murphy was hit by eggs while campaigning in Kirkcaldy, Fife.\nHe blamed \"co-ordinated abuse\" from \"Yes\" voters for the decision to suspend the tour, though the Yes Scotland campaign said it condemned \"all forms\" of abusive behaviour.\nWhile Mr Murphy's brand of street politics earned him much praise and gave him a high profile, it also marked him out as a divisive figure on the campaign trail.\nJust days after the referendum, the Daily Mail ran a story claiming that he was being lined up to replace Johann Lamont as Scottish Labour leader.\nThe paper said Labour Party sources had told them Mr Murphy would stand for the top job while still an MP - like Alex Salmond did with the SNP in 2004 - and then switch to the Scottish Parliament at the 2016 election.\nIn the leadership race Mr Murphy, seen as being on the right of the party, so far faces competition from MSPs Sarah Boyack and Neil Findlay, who are both seen as being on the left.\nHe has announced that he intends to stand in the next Scottish Parliament election \"if not before\", but has not yet indicated whether he will contest his UK Parliament seat in the general election next year.\nBBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor said that although Mr Murphy would be the front-runner, the timing would be \"exceptionally difficult\".\nHe says: \"If Jim Murphy is to stand and say 'my future lies at Holyrood', what exactly does he say to his constituents who are about to re-elect him, or possibly someone else, in May next year?\"\nAfter announcing his candidacy, Mr Murphy told the BBC: \"I'm determined to bring the Labour Party together and end the period of self-harm that we've had in the Scottish Labour Party and get on and improve our country.\"\nIf Mr Murphy wins, it remains to be seen if an MP seen as a former Blairite, who backed controversial policies such as student fees and the Iraq War, will be able to reach out to the Scottish voters Labour has lost in recent years.", "Mr Davis helped persuade Mrs May to call a \"snap election\" to strengthen his hand in Brexit talks.\nBut he now says the party did not have enough time to prepare \"and some very significant mistakes were made\".\nIt comes after ex-Tory chairman Grant Shapps called the party's manifesto the \"worst in the world\".\nSpeaking to an audience of business leaders in London, Mr Davis said: \"What went wrong was a badly designed campaign in a nutshell,\" adding both the party's lead and Mrs May's own personal lead in the polls had been \"undermined by a set of relatively simple mistakes\".\nHe said parties normally have several years to prepare for an election campaign but it was \"collapsed into a couple of weeks and some very significant mistakes were made\".\nMr Davis singled out \"the social care proposals, which pretty much switched off a very large Tory vote in the elderly sector\" as well as \"the proposals on doing away with free school meals for certain categories of children\" which, he said, \"hit another Tory vote sector in the sort of middle age group\".\nThat, he said, had \"knocked the whole campaign off balance and forced us into a U-turn which, in turn, undermined her (Theresa May's) standing, and the rest is history\".\nMr Davis also praised Labour for managing to \"galvanise a left-of-centre youth vote\" in \"a phenomenal way\" using a \"ferocious and powerful\" social media campaign. And he argued that Lib Dem, Green and UKIP voters had switched to Labour in a return to two-party politics.\nHe also suggested the terror attacks that occurred during the campaign, in Manchester and London, had taken \"huge chunks out of what would otherwise have been a very long campaign\" and meant the party's plans to talk about Brexit and the economy had to be shelved.\nAsked by Andrew Marr on Sunday if he had advised Mrs May to call a snap election, Mr Davis said: \"Yep. I take my share of the blame. Along with the other 20 members of the cabinet who also said it was a good idea.\"\nFormer Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps earlier rejected claims voters had turned against the Tories because they were \"fed up\" with austerity.\nInstead, in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he blamed the party's \"crazy policies\", describing Mrs May's manifesto as \"a long list of punishments for the public and our core supporters\".\n\"We were 20 points ahead and suddenly, in the space of two or three weeks. we lost that. And that wasn't down to people suddenly changing their minds on austerity, which none of us have ever liked.\n\"It was because we had forgotten the lessons of previous election campaigns,\" said Mr Shapps, who was Tory chairman between 2012 and 2015.\nHe said the party \"forgot to build a team of activists\" on the ground and should have put one person in charge of the campaign - but he reserved the most scorn for his party's \"appalling manifesto\".\nIf the party had not proposed policies such as ending the winter fuel allowance for better off pensioners and ending the guarantee that the state pension would rise by at least 2.5% a year - plus its social care reforms swiftly categorised as a dementia tax and \"raising the spectre of fox hunting as an issue... then we would have a majority today\", said the former minister.\n\"We had an unnecessary election and, actually, the world's worst manifesto from the world's oldest political party,\" he added.\nHe refused to be drawn on Mrs May's future but said he was speaking out now to ensure the party did not learn wrong lessons from the election result, which saw Mrs May lose her Commons majority.\nIf it repeated the mistakes it made in the run up to the 8 June polling day it \"would never win an election again\", he warned.\nChancellor Philip Hammond has highlighted growing \"weariness\" with austerity as a reason for the Conservatives' worse-than-expected results.\nLabour leader Jeremy Corbyn described his party's boost in vote share and seats as \"vote for hope for the future\" and a sign people were \"turning their backs on austerity\".", "Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said he would build on the support he received at rallies to reconnect the party to voters.\nHe rejected criticism from those who say he is mistaking the enthusiasm of his backers for wider electoral appeal.\nEx-leader Neil Kinnock said Labour appeared unelectable under Mr Corbyn and faced its \"greatest crisis\".\nLabour will announce whether Mr Corbyn or Owen Smith have won the leadership contest on 24 September.\nAhead of the vote, Mr Smith accused Mr Corbyn of seeking to \"deepen divisions\" between the party's membership - seen as overwhelmingly in favour of the leader - and its MPs - who are largely opposed to him.\nBut asked if he would quit as leader if he thought he could not take the party to power, Mr Corbyn told Today he was \"determined\" to lead it into the next general election and said it could win.\nReferring to the \"diverse\" crowds of tens of thousands of people who have attended his leadership rallies in recent weeks, Mr Corbyn said they showed \"there is an interest in politics... that then becomes surely a very strong campaigning base for the Labour movement\".\nHe added: \"I think you'll see it begin to play out, particularly in the local elections next year and after that.\"\nIn June, 20 members of the shadow cabinet resigned, and one was sacked, over differences with Mr Corbyn.\nFive told the BBC on Sunday they would return if asked by Mr Corbyn should he be re-elected, while nine others said they would stand if shadow cabinet elections were revived.\nMr Corbyn told Today he would \"reach out to\" Labour MPs who have opposed his leadership \"as I've reached out to them in the past\".\nHe said: \"I have made it my business to talk to quite a lot of Labour MPs and will continue to do so and I hope they will understand that we've been elected as Labour MPs...\n\"It doesn't mean everybody agrees on everything all the time - that I understand - but the general direction of opposition to austerity, opposing the Tories on grammar schools, those are actually the kind of things that unite the party.\"\nOn Tuesday, Labour's national executive committee meets and will consider a plan put forward by deputy leader Tom Watson to allow the parliamentary party - its MPs and peers currently serving in Westminster - to elect the shadow cabinet, as part of efforts to reunite the party as a whole.\nAt the moment they are appointed by the leader.\nNewspaper reports suggested that, under the new plan, a third of Labour's top team could be elected by the parliamentary party, another third by the party membership, and the final third chosen by the leader.\nMr Corbyn has not given his support to the proposal but has indicated he would back members having a say.", "Mr McDonnell accuses unnamed \"plotters\" and the \"Murdoch media empire\" of a \"coordinated and fully resourced\" coup.\nIn an article for Labour Briefing, he said \"the plotters\" were using \"an exceptionally well resourced dark arts operation\" to \"destroy Jeremy Corbyn\".\nOne former Labour minister described Mr McDonnell's comments as \"unhinged\".\nIn his article, Mr McDonnell accuses \"the coup perpetrators\" of \"a covert strategy\" to destabilise Mr Corbyn because they had failed to dislodge him directly through a leadership election.\nHe said their tactics included \"daily and constant behind-the-scenes non-attributable briefings against Jeremy\".\nIt is understood the article by Mr McDonnell was written before Labour's Copeland by-election loss but posted on the Labour Briefing website on Sunday night.\nA spokesman for Mr McDonnell said: \"This article was written over a week ago in response to the intervention from Tony Blair.\n\"It was published in print last week and only went online last night.\n\"However, as John said yesterday, he wants us all to focus on party unity following last week's by-election results.\n\"And he is looking to reach out in the coming days to those across all sections of the party and none.\"\nMr Corbyn, from the left of the party, was the overwhelming winner of Labour's leadership election in 2015, despite having the support of only a small number of the party's MPs.\nA challenge to him last year led to another vote of all Labour Party members and affiliated supporters, which he again won overwhelmingly.\nBut many of the party's MPs have continued to be unhappy with his leadership, and the party trails the Conservatives in opinion polls.\nBBC political correspondent Iain Watson\nAt Monday night's Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting, some MPs criticised Jeremy Corbyn's non-attendance, with one telling the BBC they would raise the Copeland defeat each week until the leader addressed it.\nA party spokesman said Mr Corbyn had given his apologies for being unable to make the meeting and didn't attend every time.\nAndrew Gwynne - the joint elections co-ordinator (with Ian Lavery) - oversaw the Copeland campaign and was supportively shouted down by MPs when he suggested taking responsibility for the defeat himself.\nHe was applauded for praising local activists and the neighbouring MP John Woodcock - a long-standing opponent of Jeremy Corbyn - for their efforts in the campaign.\nHe also said he looked forward to working with the PLP on the forthcoming local elections - the main issues would be health, housing and jobs.\nSources at the meeting suggested one of the more amusing questions came from former shadow transport secretary Lilian Greenwood, who read out a long list of reasons given over the weekend by party spokespeople for the loss of Copeland, and which hadn't included the party leadership.\nShe then asked: \"Have I left anything off that list?\"\nSome MPs were critical of shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti, who had outlined some of those reasons on television over the weekend but who hadn't attended the PLP.\nA picture of her drinking with shadow home secretary Diane Abbott in the nearby Pugin room while the meeting was taking place had been tweeted and was raised by MP Neil Coyle. One MP told reporters: \"Shami had a lot to say at the weekend. It's a shame she had nothing to say at the meeting.\"\nOn Sunday, Mr Corbyn said Labour's by-election loss showed \"the scale of how hard our task is to persuade people of our message\".\nIn a speech, he urged his party to \"remain united\" and not to \"give up\".\nLabour lost the seat of Copeland, in Cumbria, to the Conservatives last week - the first by-election gain by a governing party in 35 years.\nHowever, Labour managed to hold off a challenge from UKIP in a by-election, in Stoke-on-Trent Central, on Thursday.\nQuestioned about his future after the speech, Mr Corbyn said: \"I'm carrying on as leader because I'm determined that we will deliver social justice in this country.\"\nAsked if he would still be in place in 2020, when the next general election is expected to take place, he replied: \"I've given you a very, very clear answer - yes.\"", "The inquiry, led by Shami Chakrabarti, former head of campaign group Liberty, will consult with the Jewish community and other minority groups, Labour said.\nMr Corbyn will also propose a new \"code of conduct\" on racism at Labour's national executive committee in May.\nIt comes after the party suspended MP Naz Shah and ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone amid anti-Semitism claims.\nThe code of conduct will include guidance on \"acceptable behaviour and use of language\", Labour said.\nIt will make \"explicitly clear for the first time that Labour will not tolerate any form of racism, including anti-Semitism, in the party\", a statement said.\nThe inquiry's vice-chairman will be Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism.\nThe inquiry, which will report in two months, will set out \"clear and transparent\" rules on how the party should deal with allegations of racism and anti-Semitism.\nIt will also propose training programmes for parliamentary candidates, MPs, councillors and others, Labour said.\nWhat's the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism?\nQ&A: Labour anti-Semitism row\nBBC political correspondent Ben Wright said Jeremy Corbyn would be hoping the announcement would \"calm what was now a very angry, volatile atmosphere within his party\".\nMr Corbyn said Labour was an anti-racist party \"to its core\", and the Jewish community had been at the heart of the Labour party and progressive politics in Britain for more than 100 years.\n\"There is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour party, or anywhere in society, and we will make sure that our party is a welcoming home to members of all communities,\" he said.\nThe Labour leader, who insisted on Thursday there was \"no crisis\" over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, said he had taken \"decisive action\" over any such allegations since he became leader.\nThe row, which comes less than a week before local elections in England, and for the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, exploded on Thursday when Mr Livingstone claimed Hitler supported Zionism \"before he went mad\".\nHe made the comments in an interview with BBC Radio London, in which he defended Ms Shah, the party's MP for Bradford West.\nBy John Peinaar, BBC deputy political editor\nThere will be those Labour MPs who welcome the inquiry as measurable progress, but will it satisfy Jeremy Corbyn's most committed critics? No it won't.\nThey don't trust his instincts. They remember him sharing platforms in the past with militants from Hamas, or from Iran.\nThey resent the fact he draws support from some far-left individuals and groups who have been associated with anti-Semitism in the past.\nMore fundamentally, this is just one component of a charge sheet for them that touches on Jeremy Corbyn's pure left instincts and his basic competence.\nThe tension beneath the surface between these rival groups in the Labour Party borders and crosses over into hatred.\nIt will come to the surface after the local and national elections next week and will likely boil over when the European referendum is settled one way or another in June.\nMs Shah was suspended on Wednesday over comments on Facebook, including a suggestion that Israel should be moved to the United States. She later apologised.\nIn the interview, Mr Livingstone said: \"When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.\"\nHe was later confronted outside the BBC's studios by Labour MP John Mann, who accused him of being a \"Nazi apologist\" in front of TV cameras. Other Labour MPs also condemned Mr Livingstone's comments.\nSpeaking on Radio 4's Any Questions on Friday Jonathan Ashworth, a member of Labour's shadow cabinet, said Mr Livingstone's comments were \"deeply offensive, it was vile\".\nMr Livingstone was suspended by Mr Corbyn, who said there had been \"grave concerns\" about the language used.\nAnushka Asthana, political editor at the Guardian, who was following Mr Corbyn for an interview on the day the row erupted, told the BBC the Labour leader tried to carry on with his planned visits before advisors made it clear he needed to take action.\n\"It was obviously quite a difficult thing for him to do... he is an old friend of Ken Livingstone,\" she said.\n\"[Labour] had to set up this inquiry because of all the questions, but there is a reluctance, I think, among the inner circle to accept that all of this is around anti-Semitism. But they have to shut this down. There is fury throughout the party.\"\nOn Friday, Mr Livingstone told Sky News he would make his case citing a book by controversial American Marxist historian Lenni Brenner, who he met in the 1980s.\n\"I'll just produce the evidence and I mean it's hard for somebody to decide to suspend me from the party here when all this was there 30 years ago in the public domain and nobody raised a peep,\" he said.", "The local party in Brighton Pavilion had the \"democratic right\" not to oppose Green co-leader Caroline Lucas for her former seat, he says.\nBut the Lib Dem leader says he will not engage in any pacts, deals or coalition with other parties after the election.\nHe says Lib Dems would unlock £100bn by keeping Britain in the single market.\nMr Farron was quizzed about his thoughts on local party arrangements following ex-business secretary Sir Vince Cable's assertion that he would find it \"difficult to vote against\" a Labour candidate whose views were \"very close\" to his own.\nFellow Lib Dem, the Richmond Park candidate Sarah Olney also suggested the use of \"paper candidates\" or \"not campaigning\".\nIn Brighton Pavilion, the Lib Dems have agreed not to field a candidate in a bid to get Ms Lucas re-elected.\nMr Farron said he was \"an admirer\" of Ms Lucas and believed it was \"up to local parties to make those decisions\".\nBut he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: \"What I've been very clear about is the Liberal Democrats will engage in no pacts, no deals - there will be no coalition involving the Lib Dems with Labour or Conservatives or any other party following the election.\n\"The local party in Brighton made a choice as is their democratic right to choose to withdraw in order to support Caroline Lucas. I've always been a fan of Caroline Lucas and I'm relaxed about that decision.\"\nMr Farron side-stepped questions about his view on Sir Vince's claim that if he were voting in Ealing Central and Acton he would find it hard not to back Labour candidate Rupa Huq.\nInstead he insisted that like Sir Vince he was \"a pluralist, not a tribalist\" and recalled sharing a battle bus during the EU referendum campaign with Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, London's Labour mayor Sadiq Khan, Ms Lucas and other parties.\nBut Mr Farron said unlike Labour and Conservative plans \"to take Britain out of the single market\" which is \"costing the taxpayer £100bn\", the Lib Dems would fight for Britain to remain, which would mean \"we have the money we need to spend on our schools and hospitals\".\nThis cash would contribute to the party's plan to plough £7bn into schools and colleges, he said.\nHe refused to be drawn on whether he would step down if he did not achieve his ambition of doubling the number of Lib Dem MPs from nine to 18.\n\"As if I'm thinking about the ninth of June now,\" he said.\n\"My view is entirely fixed on the next four weeks - leading the Liberal Democrats, being the real opposition, the real alterative to a Conservative government that is taking the British people for granted.\"\nMr Farron said he predicted the 8 June general election would result in \"a Conservative landslide\", adding \"there's no point in pretending otherwise\".\nBut he claimed the Lib Dems had \"fire in our belly and a clarity of purpose\" to fill \"the real vacancy in British politics and that's for there to be a decent opposition\".", "He also said Britain should give notice to quit the EU before negotiations begin ahead of the in/out referendum promised by David Cameron.\nThe PM is under pressure to reduce EU migration and is expected to set out his plans in a speech before Christmas.\nMeanwhile, a think tank called for cuts to in-work benefits for EU migrants.\nOpen Europe said access to tax credits should be restricted, reducing migrants' take-home pay, making \"a huge difference to potential migrants' financial incentives\".\nThe prime minister's promise last year to hold a vote on Europe in 2017 if the Conservatives win the next election was seen as an attempt to halt the rise of UKIP, which senior Tories feared could prevent them from winning an overall majority at next May's general election.\nBut four days after UKIP defeated the Tories in the Rochester and Strood by-election, Mr Paterson suggested to Mr Cameron he had to be prepared to leave the EU if he wants negotiations on a new relationship with Brussels to succeed.\nHe urged him to give a manifesto commitment to invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.\nThis would give formal notice of Britain's intention to quit the EU and would spark two years of negotiations ahead of a 2017 referendum.\nMr Paterson, who lost his Cabinet job in the summer, used his speech in London to the Eurosceptic Business for Britain group to say making such a pledge could be \"enormously attractive to uncommitted voters\".\nAnd he said it would give the UK's negotiators a very clear mandate.\nMr Paterson made clear his own preferred option would be for the UK to withdraw from the political structures of the EU and instead, like Norway, forge a trade deal, which would include access to the single market.\nAfter his speech, he told the BBC that Britain had come to a \"fork in the road\" in its relationship with the EU.\nHe said: \"To sort out the nightmare of the euro, they have got to form a cohesive, effective new state.\n\"And meanwhile, we withdraw from the political arrangements and we concentrate on trade, which gives us an opportunity to get our seat back on the supra-national bodies which actually decide regulation affecting virtually every business in this country.\"\nDowning Street did not comment ahead of the speech but the BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said it would have been met with a \"collective groan\" given No 10's negotiating objectives were likely to be much more limited.\nDeputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Mr Paterson's proposals would be a \"spectacular own goal\", saying three million people's jobs depended on EU membership.\nAnd Labour leader Ed Miliband said the Conservatives were \"sleepwalking towards the exit door of the European Union\".\n\"David Cameron only has himself to blame because he's given encouragement to those people in his party who think that's the right option for Britain,\" he said.\nOn Sunday, Home Secretary Theresa May admitted the UK was \"unlikely\" to meet Mr Cameron's target of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands before the general election, saying the scale of EU migration had \"blown us off course\".\nMr Cameron has called for changes to the principle of free movement of people, but this has been rejected by some other EU leaders.\nOpen Europe said that rather than trying to cap free movement, the government should restrict access to benefits paid to EU migrants who are in work.\nThe think tank's director, Mats Persson, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme people could use in-work benefits to \"top up their basic pay\", meaning their take-home wages were higher than they would be in their home country.\nLast week, Labour called for changes to in-work benefits for EU migrants, saying tax credits were being used to undercut wages.\nBut Witold Sobkow, the Polish ambassador to the UK, said workers were attracted to the UK by the wages, not the benefits.\nAnd asked whether the Open Europe proposals were discriminatory, he said: \"Of course, because we pay the same taxes which pay for tax credits, doing the same job.\"", "Owen Smith faced a bigger helping of humble pie than most - the Labour MP had launched some pretty savage attacks on Mr Corbyn during an unsuccessful attempt to unseat him as leader.\nJust to show there are no hard feelings, Mr Corbyn has drafted him back into his frontbench team as shadow Northern Ireland secretary.\nThen: On Mr Corbyn's assertion the Tories were in retreat, Mr Smith told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg in September last year: \"I think that's delusional. I think Jeremy needs to think a bit more about that straight, honest politics that he started his campaign with. The straight, honest truth is that we are right now at our lowest ebb in the polls, ever. If there was an election tomorrow Labour would be decimated, and that's got to be a shock to Labour's system.\"\nNow: \"I was clearly wrong in feeling Jeremy wouldn't be able to do this well and I think he has proved me wrong, and lots of people wrong, I take my hat off to him.... I don't know what Jeremy's got, but if we could bottle it and drink it we'd all be doing very well.\"\nHilary Benn, who was sacked from Labour's frontbench by Mr Corbyn, following reports he was trying to organise a coup against the leader, has also been fulsome in his praise for Mr Corbyn's campaign.\nThen: \"He is a good and decent man, but he is not a leader.\"\nNow: \"I think he fought a brilliant campaign, which enthused a lot of people with a message of hope over the politics of fear,\" Mr Benn told the BBC's Newsnight programme.\nLabour's former deputy leader cheerfully admits she got it wrong about Mr Corbyn, replying \"delicious\" when Lord Prescott's son David tweeted a picture of a pie with the word \"humble\".\nThen: \"If you fail, you can't take the party down with you - that's not fair,\" Ms Harman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme in July last year, after a vote of no confidence in the Labour leader.\nNow: \"The atmosphere is verging from on one hand relief to jubilant, and the Tories are in disarray. And Jeremy Corbyn has to take the credit for that, because he was the leader and he's gone forward,\" she told the same programme after the election.\nJohn Woodcock disowned Jeremy Corbyn at the start of the election campaign - telling his constituents to vote for him rather than the Labour leader. The Barrow-in-Furness MP hung on to his seat, where Britain's Trident nuclear submarines are built, by a narrow margin. He said he had \"no idea\" what had happened.\nThen: \"I will not countenance ever voting to make Jeremy Corbyn Britain's prime minister.\"\nNow: \"I don't know what's going on in British politics!\"\nAnother trenchant Labour critic of Mr Corbyn's leadership, Jess Philips was returned with a massively increased majority last Thursday. The Birmingham Yardley MP thinks everyone in Labour needs to eat a certain well-known metaphorical dessert but also warns the party not to be uncritical in its support for its leader.\nThen: \"I mean, the polling rate is terrible, it would be crass to say anything else. It would be crass of me to say, 'He could rally!' It's like - what's it called? - Monty Python, where he's like, 'It's only a flesh wound!' It is getting a bit like that,\" Ms Philips told an Institute of Government event, adding it would be the \"ultimate selfish act\" for Mr Corbyn to remain as leader.\nNow: \"While I got his electability half wrong, I would be doing him and the country a disservice by donning the white robes of worship and ignoring my concerns,\" she wrote in the Guardian.", "The official Leave campaign had wanted one of its senior figures - Michael Gove or Boris Johnson - to take part and claimed No 10 had \"set the rules\".\nITV rejected claims of a \"stitch up\", while Mr Farage, UKIP leader, said Vote Leave should \"put their egos aside\".\nDowning Street says the PM will not debate against other senior Tories.\nA spokesman said this was because the EU referendum, on 23 June, was about much more than \"who's up and who's down in the Conservative Party\".\nLive televised debates featured in the 2010 general election, with the three contenders for prime minister - David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg - taking part.\nThat format was not repeated at the 2015 general election. But after protracted discussions between Downing Street and the broadcasters Mr Cameron took part in one with seven party leaders but no head-to-head with Labour's Ed Miliband.\nIn the run up to the in-out referendum on Britain's EU membership, ITV plans to hold two TV specials, including an hour-long live programme in which Mr Cameron and Mr Farage will appear one after the other to separately answer questions from a studio audience.\nVote Leave is the official campaign for those wanting the UK to leave the EU - a status it was given by the Electoral Commission after it saw off a challenge from the Nigel Farage-backed Grassroots Out.\nIts best known campaign figures are senior Conservatives such as Boris Johnson, Mr Gove and others like Iain Duncan Smith - and the thrust of its campaign seeks to be broader than the more immigration-focused UKIP approach.\nVote Leave's head of media, Robert Oxley, told BBC Radio 4's Today that while Mr Farage had done a \"tremendous amount\" in the referendum he was not the best person to win over undecided voters.\nBut Mr Farage disagreed, telling the BBC he could better appeal to voters in the Midlands and the north of England than Mr Johnson who he said was more suited to the \"home counties\".\nCriticising the decision not to include one of its senior figures, a Vote Leave spokesman said ITV had allowed the prime minister \"to dictate his own opponent\".\n\"The government has set all the rules for the referendum to give itself every possible advantage. It has also demanded of the broadcasters that the prime minister should not have to debate representatives from the official Leave campaign,\" the spokesman added.\nThis row matters because it highlights once again the central dispute amongst those wanting the UK to leave the European Union: is Nigel Farage an asset or a liability to their cause?\nVote Leave think he will put off those who are yet to decide who to support - and so are livid that the UKIP leader will appear on the same ITV programme as the prime minister at the beginning of next month.\nThey wanted Boris Johnson or Michael Gove to appear instead.\nBut it's long been thought Downing Street would be reluctant for David Cameron to be seen to be so publicly at odds with cabinet colleagues.\nIn other comments a Vote Leave source on Wednesday accused ITV of having \"lied to us in private while secretly stitching up a deal with Cameron\".\nThe source said ITV had \"effectively joined the official In campaign and there will be consequences for its future\", saying \"the people in No 10 won't be there for long\".\nAnd a Vote Leave spokesman said on Thursday: \"We are discussing legal possibilities to increase the chances that the public will hear the issues properly discussed before they make such an important vote on the future of their democratic rights.\"\nResponding to the criticism, ITV said in a statement that it had \"not lied to anyone, nor has there been any kind of 'stitch up'\".\nA spokeswoman said Vote Leave had been invited to take part in a separate two-hour programme on 9 June and would have \"every opportunity\" to air its view.\nThe ITV statement added: \"It was our editorial decision as to who would take part in the 7 June programme; the PM called the referendum, and the country wants to hear from him, and Nigel Farage has been a leading proponent of an exit from the EU for more than 20 years and his party received 3.8m votes at the election. We invited them both and they accepted.\n\"We think our viewers will find both programmes useful in providing information ahead of polling day. Our programming will, as always, be fair, balanced and duly impartial.\"\nMeanwhile, Mr Farage accused Vote Leave \"apparatchiks\" of trying to block him from appearing on the TV debate and said they were \"more interested in their careers\" in the Conservative Party after the referendum.\n\"I have consistently tried to bring our side together. They have consistently tried to marginalise UKIP and divide us. They need to put their egos to one side,\" he told the BBC.\nIn an appeal for \"unity\", he said he would work with anybody, within reason, to secure a vote to leave on 23 June.\nMr Farage also accused the BBC of barring him from its planned TV debates, which include a live event at Wembley Arena on 21 June.\nNumber 10 says David Cameron will not debate against senior Conservatives who back EU exit, saying it does not want the TV debates turned into a \"blue on blue fight\".\n\"This is a major national debate and it should not be reduced to a narrow argument within the Conservative Party.\n\"We don't want it to become an issue of who's up and who's down in the Conservative party or seen just through the prism of the Conservative party,\" a source said.", "A senior DUP source said the party could not be \"taken for granted\" - adding that if the PM could not reach a deal, \"what does that mean for bigger negotiations she is involved in?\"\nNo deal has been reached after 10 days of talks between the parties.\nBut sources told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg they believed a deal would still be done.\nThe Conservatives are hoping the DUP will sustain their minority government.\nThe warning from a senior DUP source to BBC Northern Ireland political editor Mark Devenport comes the day before the government's Queen's Speech is presented to Parliament.\nAlthough they have not reached a final deal, DUP leader Arlene Foster has said it is \"right and proper\" that her MPs support the Conservative government's first Queen's Speech.\nA Conservative source said it was important the party \"gets on with its business\" as talks continue by putting forward Wednesday's Queen's Speech.\nEarlier cabinet minister Chris Grayling predicted a \"sensible\" deal would be reached.\nThe transport secretary said the talks were \"going well\", adding that the DUP, which has 10 MPs, did not want another election or Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.\nTheresa May is seeking to negotiate a so-called \"confidence and supply\" arrangement whereby the DUP will throw their weight behind the government in key Commons votes, such as on the Queen's Speech and Budgets.\nIt is a week since DUP leader Arlene Foster visited Downing Street for talks with Theresa May, with reports that a final agreement is being held up by discussions over extra funding for Northern Ireland.\nShould Mrs May lose any votes on the Queen's Speech, which are expected to take place next week, it would amount to a vote of no confidence in the government and put its future in doubt.\nBut Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he did not expect this to happen.\n\"The talks are going on but one thing I am absolutely certain of is that the DUP do not want to see another election and Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street,\" he said. \"We are having good, constructive discussions and I am confident we will reach a sensible agreement.\"\nFormer Prime Minister Sir John Major has urged Theresa May to reconsider her approach, saying a deal with the DUP could threaten the Northern Ireland peace process and \"carry baggage\" for his party. He has said the Conservatives should be able to govern anyway with the DUP's tacit support.\nAsked about the repercussions if there was no agreement, Mr Grayling replied: \"I am not pessimistic about this. I think we will have a sensible arrangement.\n\"We have got some days until we have a vote on the Queen's Speech. It is not on Queen's Speech day. The vote happens many days later as we have an extended debate first and I am sure we will have a sensible arrangement between the parties when that time comes.\"\nThe DUP had made it clear, he added, that they did not want \"an unstable government undermining our union\" and wanted to see us \"go ahead with the Brexit negotiations with a sensible government in place\".", "The pro-European cabinet minister said UKIP had no positive policies and was just \"against\" foreigners.\nUKIP leader Nigel Farage hit back by accusing Mr Clarke of holding millions of British people \"in utter contempt\".\nHe said Mr Clarke was \"obviously not interested\" in winning back disaffected Tory voters at Thursday's local elections in England and Wales.\nIt comes as UKIP accused the Tories of conducting a \"morally reprehensible\" smear campaign against its local election candidates.\nThe anti-EU party has expanded rapidly, recruiting a record 1,732 candidates to contest Thursday's local elections. It admits it has not had the time or money to vet all of them properly.\nUKIP says it has evidence that smears about its candidates are being spread by Conservative Central Office, which it claims has been trawling would-be UKIP councillors' Twitter and Facebook pages for months.\n\"Were we inclined to return the favour, we would find even more examples to use against them.\n\"We deem that using our candidates as cannon fodder to undermine a political campaign (is) morally reprehensible and downright dirty,\" said a spokesman.\nThe party is investigating six candidates over links to the BNP and other far right groups or alleged racist and homophobic comments, following stories in national and local newspapers.\n\"I am glad they have found some candidates in the BNP because we don't want them. We are quite pleased. We don't want these people in the party,\" a UKIP spokesman said.\nHe said the row showed the Conservative Party was \"rattled\" by UKIP, which is hoping to make significant gains in Tory heartlands on Thursday, but added: \"This isn't scrutiny, it's smear.\"\nAsked on the BBC's Andrew Marr show about UKIP's claims, Transport Secretary Patrick McLaughlin said all candidates had to be scrutinised, but added: \"I don't know anything about a smear campaign.\"\nBut his cabinet colleague, Ken Clarke, minister without portfolio, added fuel to the row in an interview with Sky News.\nHe said: \"They of course have not been able to vet their candidates. Fringe right parties do tend to collect a number of waifs and strays...\n\"Some of them are saying quite different things now they are in politics than their actual views.\"\nAsked whether he agreed with David Cameron's 2006 claim that UKIP was made up of \"fruitcakes and closet racists\", Mr Clarke replied: \"I have met people who satisfy both those descriptions in UKIP.\n\"Indeed, some of the people who have assured me they are going to vote UKIP I would put in that category. I rather suspect they have never voted for me.\"\nMr Clarke said he was sure that \"most of the UKIP people are perfectly nice when they are having a drink\".\nBut he added: \"The trouble with UKIP really is it is just a protest party.\n\"It is against the political class, it is against foreigners, it is against immigrants. But it does not have any very positive policies. They do not know what they are for.\"\nHe added: \"The temptation to ordinary voters to UKIP is these are very difficult times, the political classes are regarded as having got us into a mess.\n\"It is very tempting to vote for a collection of clowns or indignant, angry people, who promise that somehow they will allow us to take your revenge on people who caused it.\"\nConservative backbencher Nadine Dorries criticised Mr Clarke's intervention, saying in a Twitter message: \"I suppose Ken Clarke's strategy of being rude to and insulting Tories about to vote UKIP means we don't want them back for general election?\"\nUKIP leader Nigel Farage echoed Ms Dorries' comments, saying: \"It is obvious that Mr Clarke holds millions of people in this country in utter contempt.\n\"UKIP are attracting supporters from all three main parties and, significantly those who have either not voted for over 10 years or have never voted before in their lives.\n\"Instead of slagging them off maybe he should try to wrap his head around the idea that UKIP are appealing to people due to the failure of the bloated self-satisfied political machine of which he is such a typical member.\n\"He obviously doesn't care and isn't at all interested in attracting those millions to vote for the Conservatives, well so be it. The way things are going they won't be doing so any time soon.\"\nLib Dem leader Nick Clegg said UKIP was a \"very seductive\" option for people who wanted to say \"to hell with mainstream politics\" but he urged voters to look at the party's policies.\nUKIP has also dismissed claims in The Observer that the party's policy-making process in chaos.\nThe newspaper published leaked e-mails between party treasurer Stuart Wheeler and MEP Godfrey Bloom, in which Mr Bloom advises UKIP to adopt policies \"off the shelf\" from right-wing think tanks, because trying to reach agreement on where it stood on issues was like \"herding cats\".\nA UKIP spokesman said: \"I am glad they are discussing policies. So they should be.\"", "Labour's Sadiq Khan said it must put internal squabbles aside to \"talk about the issues that matter to citizens\".\nMr Khan said Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith ran a \"nasty\" campaign which put minority groups off politics.\nBut Chancellor George Osborne defended the Tory MP, saying the \"rough and tumble\" was part of elections.\nMr Khan stopped short of condemning the Tories' London mayoral election campaign as racist.\n\"I was disappointed that the Conservatives party chose to have a campaign that was nasty, negative and divisive,\" he told the Andrew Marr Show.\n\"I have spent my entire life encouraging minority communities to get involved in civil society, in mainstream politics. I've been fighting extremism and radicalisation all my life.\n\"You should conduct [politics] in a positive way to enthuse people to get involved.\"\nAsked about the tone of the Conservative campaign, Mr Osborne told Robert Peston on ITV's Peston on Sunday: \"Politics is a robust thing in a democracy. Elections... There's a lot of rough and tumble.\"\nAnd he backed Mr Goldsmith, saying: \"I went campaigning with Zac, there was a positive campaign there, obviously it didn't work in the end.\n\"Of course he's got a future, he's a brilliant MP for Richmond.\"\nAlso responding to a questions about Mr Goldsmith's campaign, former communities secretary Eric Pickles said: \"I think the campaign's over now, let's move on.\"\nIn Sunday's Observer newspaper, Mr Khan described Conservative tactics of suggesting London was not secure with him as mayor as \"straight out of the Donald Trump playbook\".\nHe told the BBC he was instead concentrating on \"a positive vision for our city\".\n\"How are we going to tackle the housing crisis? What are the challenges in relation to fares going through the roof?\n\"How do we support businesses to grow and expand so more Londoners can get a living wage? How do we bring back neighbourhood policing, and the issue of security?\"\nLabour's mission was to \"change people's lives for the better\", he said, adding that they did that by winning elections.\nSpeaking later in the day at a Holocaust memorial event, at which he sat next to Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Mr Khan said: \"I see myself as a unifier.\"\nLabour leader Jeremy Corbyn was absent from Mr Khan's signing in as mayor on Saturday, instead choosing to visit Bristol's new mayor Marvin Rees. Mr Corbyn has been embroiled in a row over anti-Semitism within the party.\nMr Khan's victory ends eight years of Conservative leadership at City Hall, under Boris Johnson.\nMr Khan, who has confirmed that he will be standing down as MP for Tooting after win the mayoralty, said Labour had to stop talking about internal issues and reach beyond the core Labour vote.\n\"I want a big tent. We want to speak to everyone, there's no point us just speaking to Labour voters,\" he told the BBC.\n\"That means me speaking to chief executives, to people who voted Conservative last time, UKIP, or stayed at home.\"\nBBC political correspondent Eleanor Garnier said Mr Khan's comments would be seen as a message not just to Jeremy Corbyn but also to the Labour leader's critics.\nFormer Labour minister Caroline Flint said the Labour leadership needed to \"make a hell of a lot more progress\" after the local election results.\n\"This is the worst result for an opposition party after a general election in 30 years. We need to be making far more inroads to be within an opportunity to win in 2020,\" she told the BBC's Sunday Politics.\nShadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray, Labour's only MP in Scotland, backed the mayor. He told the BBC's Pienaar's Politics Labour needed \"a much wider viewpoint\" as feedback showed people \"don't see Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party at the moment as being a credible party\".\nAs well as the mayoral election, Thursday saw a total of 2,747 seats in English councils - spanning metropolitan boroughs, unitary authorities and district councils - up for grabs, along with seats in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies.\nScotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the SNP would try to find common ground with opposition parties as her party celebrated its third successive victory in the Holyrood election - though the result left the SNP two seats short of a majority in the parliament.\nIn Northern Ireland the Democratic Unionists remain the biggest party in the Assembly, with Arlene Foster continuing as first minister.\nIn English council polls Labour's vote share was down about 6% on average on 2012 - the last time the seats were contested - with 24 fewer councillors. But its share is up 4% on the general election in key wards, with the Conservatives down by a similar amount.\nIn Wales, Labour is likely to seek to form a minority government after winning 29 of the 60 seats in Thursday's election.\nThe party's vote is down by eight points overall, the Conservative vote is down by three points, and Plaid Cymru is up by two points. UKIP increased its vote by 12 points and saw seven candidates elected.\nThe new mayor did not have a privileged start in life. He was one of eight children born to Pakistani immigrants, a bus driver and a seamstress, on a south London housing estate.\nFrom an early age, he showed a firm resolve to defy the odds in order to win success for himself and the causes important to him.\nThat resolve has won him the biggest personal mandate in the UK, a job with wide-ranging powers over London and with enormous emotional significance for him.\nSome question whether he has the experience or record of good judgement necessary for the role.\nHe insists he is there to represent all Londoners and to tackle inequality in the capital, and now he has the chance to prove it.\nThe Sadiq Khan story", "In a BBC interview, the former first minister defended the Scottish government's record on schools.\nLabour and the Lib Dems said the SNP was failing to make improvements.\nThe Conservatives said Scotland was \"tumbling down\" international league tables.\nThe Scottish Greens said the SNP government \"doesn't yet have a grip on education.\"\nVoters go to polls in the local authority elections on Thursday, with a snap general election to take place on 8 June.\nOn the BBC's Sunday Politics programme, Mr Salmond was asked about cuts to local authority budgets in Scotland.\nHe said: \"You have to compare what's happening in Scotland and what's happening in England and there is no doubt that Scottish local authorities have been much better funded than those in England over the last few years, and that's been the ability of the Scottish parliament, the Scottish government, to protect services at local level.\"\nAsked by presenter Andrew Neil why, after a decade of SNP government, one in five Scots pupils leave primary school \"functionally illiterate\", Mr Salmond said Nicola Sturgeon had made it a \"top priority\" to \"address these challenges\".\nHe went on: \"Let's take another statistic, 93% of Scottish kids are now emerging from schools to positive destinations - further education, apprenticeships or into work.\"\nMr Salmond said: \"I'm arguing that in the round Scottish education is putting in some substantially good performances. You can't have a failing education system if you have that 93% going on to positive destinations and, incidentally, a record low youth unemployment in Scotland. These pupils are being prepared by the Scottish education system.\"\nHe was also asked about falls in the OECD rankings, teacher cuts and teacher-pupil ratios.\nScottish Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith said Scotland was tumbling down the international education league tables, under the SNP.\n\"Yet Mr Salmond's response is to insist - 'don't tell me the SNP is failing',\" she added.\n\"It shows just how out of touch the SNP has become. Mr Salmond may think his record on education is great - thousands of parents across Scotland beg to differ.\n\"We can send him and Nicola Sturgeon a clear message in this week's council elections: enough with the independence obsession, and get back to the day job we pay you to do.\"\nScottish Labour's general election campaign manager, James Kelly, described Mr Salmond's interview as \"car crash\" and said it \"exposed the reality of the SNP's record in government\".\nHe added: \"Since 2011 the nationalists have cut £1.5bn from local services like schools and care of the elderly.\n\"There are 4,000 fewer teachers, 1,000 fewer school support staff and 700 teacher vacancies that will take three years to fill under the SNP.\n\"Labour is the only party standing up against SNP cuts that put the life chances of our young people at risk.\"\nScottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: \"Sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting 'la-la-la' will not change the truth of Alex Salmond's government's educational performance.\n\"Education slipped down the international rankings when he was in charge because he was more interested in independence than the future of Scotland's children.\n\"Only with the Liberal Democrats can we change the direction of our country away from independence and hard Brexit and towards education investment.\"\nThe Scottish Greens' education spokesman, Ross Greer, said his party was willing to \"work constructively\" with the Scottish government to raise standards in education.\nHe added: \"So it's disappointing to see an SNP spokesperson, and former first minister, attempt to deflect from the serious challenges facing education in Scotland.\n\"While Greens have been calling on more resources for our schools, the reversal of cuts to teachers and tackling teacher workload, the Scottish government is instead spending time on a governance review that wasn't asked for or needed by teachers, pupils and parents.\"\nMeanwhile, analysis by politics professor John Curtice has suggested that the SNP and the Conservatives are likely to make gains in the local council elections.\nProf Curtice analysed candidate data, opinion polls, Holyrood performance and by-elections to predict how the parties would fare in the council vote.\nHe said Labour looks set to fall back heavily.\nThe Single Transferable Vote (STV) multi-member ward system means that parties try to avoid standing more candidates than they think can win as they can affect each other's chances of securing a seat.\nLabour is standing 44 fewer candidates in this election than it did in 2012.\nProf Curtice said: \"The changes in the number of candidates being nominated by the parties give us a strong clue as to how they see their chances.\n\"The Greens above all are evidently hoping to make a significant breakthrough, while the Tories and the SNP would seem to anticipate doing better than they did five years ago.\n\"Labour, in contrast, would appear to be expecting a setback.\n\"As a result of the sharp reduction in the number of candidates it is fielding, the party can only retain control of Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire if every single one of the party's candidates there secures election.\n\"And that will only happen if the party actually manages to outperform expectations.\"\nThe Liberal Democrats look likely to remain in same position as the 2012 local election, the professor said.\nHe added that despite good prospects, the only area the Conservatives were contesting for majority control was East Renfrewshire.\nIn the last council election in 2012, turnout was just 39%.\nProf Curtice predicted low turnout, often a problem at local elections, was set to continue, although it may be boosted by national concerns - including the general election, Scottish independence and Brexit.", "Labour leader Ed Miliband again ruled out a formal coalition with the SNP, saying he would \"never compromise\" on the issues apparently dividing them.\nSNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said people would not forgive him if he turned down the chance to \"lock the Tories out\".\nThe Conservatives say a Labour/SNP alliance would be \"a ragbag of chaos\".\nMeanwhile, UKIP leader Nigel Farage has said he did not lose his temper during the debate when he criticised the audience for what he perceived as their left-wing bias.\nThe political parties were back on the campaign trail on Friday after the previous night's debate, which was hosted by the BBC.\nPrime Minister David Cameron has hailed the last unemployment figures before polling day on 7 May, which showed the jobless total fall by 76,000 to 1.84 million in the three months to February, as a \"jobs miracle\".\nThe Conservatives have also seized on remarks by International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde praising the strength of the UK recovery compared with the rest of the European Union.\nMr Miliband has challenged Mr Cameron to a one-on-one debate in the remaining three weeks of the campaign in the aftermath of Thursday's second and final scheduled multi-party debate, in which the prime minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg did not take part.\n\"He won't come and debate me. He wants to duck, weave and dive his way back into Downing Street. And if he had guts, he'd come out and he'd accept my challenge to debate me one-on-one, head to head,\" he said at Labour's youth manifesto launch.\nBut David Cameron said: \"We've had 146 debates at Prime Minister's Questions, and I think people have seen a lot of those, to get the measure of us. But the key thing people saw last night is that Labour can only get into Downing Street with the support of the SNP.\"\nDuring Thursday's 90-minute encounter - which figures suggest was watched by an audience of about 4.3 million - Mr Miliband, Ms Sturgeon, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, Mr Farage and Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood clashed over cuts, the NHS, immigration and defence.\nA snap poll taken immediately after the debate suggested that the Labour leader had come out on top.\nYou can watch the full debate here\nAnalysis, BBC political correspondent Iain Watson\nWith polls suggesting a hung parliament - and potentially heavy Labour losses to the SNP in Scotland - it was inevitable that Ed Miliband would face questions about any deal he might strike with Nicola Sturgeon's party to keep the Conservatives out of power.\nHe has for some time ruled out a formal coalition. So has she. So speculation has moved on to whether they could reach an informal arrangement, where the SNP would guarantee a Labour budget in return for concessions.\nFor a time, Labour used relatively emollient language towards the SNP as it tried to woo former supporters who had voted \"yes\" in the referendum.\nThe rhetoric is now more robust, as the polls refuse to budge. But the underlying thinking is much the same.\nBut the trickier question is what happens if the Conservatives have more seats than Labour - but not a majority - and Ed Miliband could still become prime minister with tacit SNP support?\nConstitutionally it would be possible, but politically it could damage Labour's future prospects in England.\nIn other election news:\nDuring Thursday's debate, Mr Miliband dismissed overtures from SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon to \"work together\" to keep the Conservatives out of power in the event of one party not winning enough seats to form a government on their own.\nOpinion polls have suggested the SNP is on course to win a swathe of seats in Scotland and to be in a powerful position in the event of an inconclusive result.\nThe SNP has ruled out any deal with the Conservatives but said they would be prepared to support Labour on a vote-by-vote basis, with Ms Sturgeon suggesting they could \"work together to lock David Cameron out of Downing Street\".\nAt Labour's youth manifesto launch in Lincolnshire on Friday, Mr Miliband - who has previously ruled out a formal Labour-SNP coalition - was asked about the prospect of nationalist votes propping up a minority Labour government.\n\"It's not going to happen,\" he said, adding: \"I will never compromise our national security, I will never compromise our commitment to fiscal responsibility, I will never compromise on the nature of our United Kingdom.\"\nHowever, Mr Miliband did not explicitly ruled out a looser agreement, known as a confidence and supply agreement, where the SNP could potentially support a Labour government in key parliamentary votes.\nWork and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith predicted that any deal between the two parties would lead to \"a ragbag of chaos\" with \"a weak leader being hauled all over the place by the Scottish nationalists, who ultimately want to break up the United Kingdom.\"\nDavid Cameron's absence gave Mr Miliband the chance to taunt the absent prime minister for his lack of political courage.\nIt also allowed him to focus his fire on the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon, trying to create a distance which he has, so far, struggled to create.\nOn the other hand... the images of the night, the video clips and the memorable soundbites are all of Ed v Nicola.\nConservative HQ and the Tory press will take delight in using them to conjure up the spectre of a weak minority Labour government being forced to deal with and placate a rampant SNP.\nRead more from Nick here.\nBoth Mr Clegg and UKIP's Nigel Farage have also warned about the danger of the SNP holding the balance of power after the next election but Ms Sturgeon has said her party would use its influence to protect the NHS and other \"progressive\" ideals.\n\"Ed Miliband knows if there's an anti-Tory majority in the House of Commons after the May election, the only way David Cameron gets back in to Downing Street is if Ed Miliband stands back and lets him back in,\" Ms Sturgeon said on a campaign visit to Irvine, Ayrshire, on Friday.\n\"Now if Ed Miliband does that, Labour in Scotland and I suspect in other parts of the UK will never be forgiven,\" she said.\nAt one point in Thursday's TV debate, UKIP leader Mr Farage was booed when he complained of what he said was \"a remarkable audience even by the left-wing standards of the BBC\".\nAsked whether he had lost his temper, Mr Farage said he had not, telling the BBC News Channel: \"I was very calm about it. I didn't lose my rag.\"\nPlay our coalition-building game\nMr Farage said his protest had been sparked by the hostile audience reaction to his argument that high levels of immigration were increasing pressure on the housing market, something he said would be accepted by \"most rational people\".\nHe said it was a \"mistake\" for the BBC to give the job of audience selection to polling company ICM, but he stopped short of saying he would lodge a complaint, saying: \"I've got an election to fight.\"\nReacting to Thursday's debate, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said she was \"very pleased\", as it provided an opportunity to set out her party's policies.\nAsked about her performance, she said some Twitter polls suggested she did \"particularly well\", adding: \"I think what matters is obviously the poll on polling day, and that people heard the Green Party message.\"\nPlaid Cymru's leader, Leanne Wood, said she had achieved her aims in the debate: \" I managed to speak for Wales, speak against austerity and convey the set of values that Plaid Cymru holds dear.\"\nOn a campaign trip to Aberdeenshire, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said he had not watched the debate, but maintained that he would have liked to have taken part, because it lacked \"a sensible centre-ground voice - spelling out some of the realities of what we face as a country, and setting out a hopeful vision about how we can finish the job of balancing the books and doing so fairly\".", "Gender equality charity Chwarae Teg and campaigning organisation the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), who analysed the data, called it \"disappointing\".\nOn May 4, 3,438 people stand in Wales' 22 council areas, with 1,023 women.\nThe Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) said it was working to improve the situation.\nIn the 2012 council elections, 26% of elected councillors were women with 9% of leaders of authorities female.\nAction was called for ahead of the 2021 local elections, with Chwarae Teg and ERS Cymru saying a \"best case scenario\" would see men fill almost 75% of councillor roles this year.\nChief executive of Chwarae Teg Cerys Furlong said: \"Our analysis of candidates ahead of this year's election confirms that there has been little progress over the past five years to ensure that local councillors are more representative of the communities they serve.\n\"This is disappointing but ultimately unsurprising.\"\nThe lowest numbers are in Anglesey and Blaenau Gwent (17%) and highest amount is in Neath Port Talbot (36%).\nA third (33%) of all council wards have no women candidates, with 57% in Pembrokeshire and 55% in Gwynedd having men only on the ballot paper.\nERS Cymru director Jess Blair said: \"Wales risks falling behind on diversity.\n\"What this means in practice is that councils will not mirror the people they are meant to represent,\" she added.\nThe organisations want councils to look at their structures and culture, to promote relatable female role models and to dispel myths around what being a councillor entails.\nMs Furlong called on local authorities to help create change.\n\"Positive action, like all women shortlists or quotas, provides the necessary legislative nudge needed by some to prioritise action,\" she added.\n\"We would urge local councils to join us in this call and welcome such a move should it become a reality.\"\nIn total, 29.7% of candidates in 2017 are women, with Labour having 35.3%, the Liberal Democrats 34.3%, the Conservatives 30.5%, Plaid Cymru 29.2%, the Green Party 28.9%, 23.4% of independents and UKIP 18.5%.\nFuture Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe - a former councillor herself - said: \"What we know is that the vast majority of our councillors are in their fifties and sixties, and straight, white and male.\n\"They will have different experiences to, say, a single mum, or a young person trying to access work.\n\"It's really important that we have this kind diverse range of experiences amongst those people who are taking some really important decisions about what happens in Wales.\"\nThe Welsh Government has a diversity in democracy campaign that uses publicity videos, training and mentoring programmes to encourage more people from under-represented groups to stand for election.\nIt is being supported by the WLGA which said \"progress is disappointingly slow\".\nA spokesman admitted council chambers do not generally reflect the general population - with women and younger people particularly under-represented.\nHe added political parties have \"a key role to play\" in encouraging more people from more diverse backgrounds to come forward and called the idea of quotas \"controversial and not widely supported amongst political parties\".\nThe WLGA is surveying councillors standing down to look at barriers.", "Chills had gone up some Blairite spines when Mr Lavery himself had suggested at the weekend the Labour \"might be too broad a church\".\nBut he sought to calm nerves which had been further put on edge by comments from Mr Corbyn's close ally Chris Williamson, recently re-elected as the MP for Derby North having been narrowly defeated at the 2015 election.\nOn Thursday, Mr Williamson said: \"There are individual MPs in this party who think it's their God-given right to rule.\n\"No MP should be guaranteed a job for life. Labour is a big church, but we currently have a large bulk of MPs who represent one relatively small tendency in the congregation... it's unreasonable to think we as MPs can avoid any contest.\"\nHis words didn't sound like empty rhetoric to the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, Luciana Berger - seen as being on the moderate wing of the party.\nShe had resigned as a shadow minister when, a year ago, 80% of Jeremy Corbyn's MPs were expressing no confidence in his leadership.\nA left-wing \"slate\" of candidates had succeeded in taking almost all of the key offices on her local party's executive.\nAnd one of the winners - Roy Bentham - had shared his thoughts with the Liverpool Echo.\nHe suggested that Ms Berger, who was re-elected last month with an increased majority, publicly recant her criticism of the party leader and for the avoidance of doubt he declared: \"She is answerable to us now.\"\nThe local party secretary Angela Kehoe-Jones distanced herself from the remarks and suggested the branch was \"united\" in fighting the Tories.\nBut there is little doubt that Ms Berger - who is on maternity leave - feels her job is under threat.\nAnd she is not the only one.\nA Labour MP who held her seat against the odds at the election told me she was threatened with de-selection within 48 hours of the result.\nAnd you only have to visit websites which purport to back the Labour leadership to view a \"rogues' gallery\" of MPs who are seen as disloyal.\nFeaturing on most lists is Chuka Umunna, who upset those close to Mr Corbyn by pushing an amendment to the Queen's Speech to keep Britain in the EU single market - not official party policy.\nThis was seen as forcing the party leader in to sacking frontbenchers and was the first tangible sign of disunity following the euphoria of the election result.\nAnd while he wouldn't want to see Mr Umunna unseated, even Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson regarded that amendment as bad politics.\nBut some left-wing activists don't need new offences to be taken in to account.\nSome see those MPs who distanced themselves from Jeremy Corbyn as saboteurs of Labour's success.\nAnd they are building a narrative that had they been more loyal - and party officials more ambitious - they could have propelled the party from second to first place at the election.\nBut don't expect a mass purge of Labour MPs.\nIndeed, some Corbyn critics are likely to be offered junior spokespeople roles in the autumn.\nBut not all of those who are seen as beyond the pale are likely to be unseated.\nMr Corbyn has time and again stressed how much he supports party democracy.\nSo unless a local party has been - as in Luciana Berger's case - taken over by members and supporters of Momentum (the group set up to keep the spirit of Mr Corbyn's leadership campaigns alive) it would be difficult to dislodge the sitting MP.\nAnd it should be said, not all local Momentum groups favour de-selecting sitting MPs in any case.\nThey would point out that they have campaigned for the re-election of MPs who aren't ideological fellow travellers.\nMomentum nationally weren't chuffed with a Facebook post from the South Tyneside group suggesting MPs such as Chris Leslie and Jess Phillips should \"join the Liberals\".\nInstead of pushing existing personalities out, largely beneath the political radar there are attempts to move Labour more solidly and permanently to the left and to ensure that, when the time comes, Jeremy Corbyn would be able to hand over the leadership to someone who largely shares his political outlook.\nSo at this year's Labour Party conference, there will be a move to shift the power in future leadership elections from MPs to party members.\nThis would mean just 5% of MPs - not the 15% of MPs and MEPs at present - would be needed to put a candidate on the ballot.\nWith a snap election, most anti-Corbyn MPs were returned to Parliament so while a left-wing candidate still might struggle to get 15% support, 5% is considered no barrier.\nThis move has already been reported extensively.\nMr Corbyn's internal opponents call it \"the McDonnell amendment\" - as shadow chancellor John McDonnell is a red rag to any of the party's more moderate bulls.\nGroups of what were called Blairites and Brownites - they would call themselves modernisers or moderates - in organisations such as Progress and Labour First have been working hard to secure enough delegates to the annual conference to defeat the leadership changes.\nWith the deadline for deciding delegates drawing to a close, it's not clear yet who has the upper hand.\nBut something of a quiet revolution could be under way that would see the power of Jeremy Corbyn, and his supporters, entrenched.\nUnder Labour's rules, some topics need to be put on the table this year if they are decided next year.\nSo a slow burning fuse will be lit in the autumn that could blow up in to a more major row in 2018.\nThere are moves by those on the party's left to make it easier for local parties to oust sitting MPs in future.\nThis would involve party branches being encouraged to put forward alternative names for consideration, or for sitting MPs to be required to demonstrate they had 66% support locally to continue.\nThere will also be a move to increase the number members of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), who are elected not by MPs or the unions, but by the rank-and-file members.\nThe assumption is that they are more in tune with Mr Corbyn's agenda.\nThe NEC approves party candidates for elections - and a panel of its members chooses by-election candidates.\nThere was an attempt to disbar the pro-nuclear and anti-Corbyn candidate John Woodcock at an NEC meeting just before the election.\nThat failed, but if the balance of power on the body were to change, so could the career prospects of the leadership's critics.\nAnd indeed the career prospects of Labour's general secretary Iain McNicol would be called in to question by another proposed change.\nThere will be an attempt to give members the right to choose the party's top official in future.\nAgain, this can't be decided until next year but could put Mr McNicol on notice.\nHe is blamed for trying to deny new (and, it was assumed, more radical) members the right to vote in last year's leadership contest and for not putting enough resources in to Labour/Tory marginals at the general election.\nHe would contend that the party HQ's strategy of defending vulnerable seats - as well as swiftly moving resources to seats which looked promising as the campaign progressed - was a success.\nSo by its actions in the coming months, Labour - 8 points ahead in one opinion poll today - could choose to remain a broad church.\nOr further expose the fact that many of its MPs and grassroots members aren't really singing from the same hymn sheet.", "With most votes counted, outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has conceded victory to his rival, opposition leader Yingluck Shinawatra.\nMs Yingluck, who will become Thailand's first female prime minister, said there was \"a lot of hard work ahead\".\nShe is the younger sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a coup in 2006.\nWith 92% of votes counted, Ms Yingluck's Pheu Thai party had won 260 seats, giving it a majority in the 500-seat parliament.\n\"It is now clear from the election results so far that the Pheu Thai party has won the election, and the Democrat Party concedes defeat,\" Mr Abhisit said on national TV.\nBy Karishma VaswaniBBC News, Bangkok\nYingluck Shinawatra is a political novice. Her popularity has largely rested on the fact that she has been selling her brother's policies.\nMr Thaksin, speaking from self-imposed exile in Dubai, has said he wants to return to Thailand but will wait for the right moment.\nAnalysts say his return would aggravate the already tense political situation.\nIt could be a potentially destabilising factor, making it harder for the new government to get on with its task of reuniting this divided nation and healing Thailand's wounded democracy.\n\"I will give the chance to Yingluck, the first woman to form a government,\" he added. \"I want to see unity and reconciliation. The Democrats are ready to be in opposition.\"\nAfter Mr Abhisit admitted defeat, Miss Yingluck was cautious in her response. She thanked Mr Abhisit and said she would wait for the official results to be declared.\n\"I don't want to say it is victory for me and the Pheu Thai party but people are giving me a chance and I will work to my best ability for the people,\" she said at her party headquarters.\n\"I would like to reiterate that we are ready to deliver on all of the policies that we have announced. There is a lot of hard work ahead.\"\nShe said her party officials had been in talks with the smaller Chart Thai Pattana party with a view to forming a coalition.\n\"In the future there are more parties expected to come and work with Pheu Thai,\" she said.\nThe BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says the result is a clear rejection of the military's intervention in Thai politics and a bitter disappointment for Mr Abhisit.\nMr Thaksin told the BBC from his self-imposed exile in Dubai that it was clear the Thai people had voted for change.\n\"They want to see reconciliation, we want to have reconciliation,\" Mr Thaksin told the Newshour programme.\nAll parties will have to respect the voters' decision, he said.\nMr Thaksin, whose government was toppled in a military coup in 2006, said the military should also \"be listening to what the people think\".\nAsked whether he would now be returning to Thailand, the former prime minister said he was in \"no hurry\".\n\"I want to see reconciliation really happen,\" he said. \"I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.\"\nThe past few years have seen street protests, airport closures and clashes between the supporters of the two main groups, which our correspondent says have tarnished the country's economy and reputation for being a bastion of democracy in south-east Asia.\nLast year, protesters shut down parts of Bangkok for two months in a bid to force the government to resign. When the army stepped in to clear the capital's streets it degenerated into violence, leaving 91 people dead.\nIn pictures: Thailand votes\nMany of the red-shirt demonstrators were supporters of Mr Thaksin.\nMore than 40 parties fielded 3,832 candidates for the 500-seat lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives.\nIn a two-tier system of voting, 375 legislators will be elected by constituency, while 125 candidates will be chosen from lists according to the proportion of votes each party receives nationwide on a separate ballot. There are some 47 million eligible voters.\nMs Yingluck is a political novice and analysts say her popularity seems to rest on the fact she is campaigning on the policies of her brother, who many believe is Pheu Thai's real leader.\nHe is living in Dubai to avoid a corruption conviction.\nWith Pheu Thai's win all but confirmed, analysts say all eyes will once again be on the military, which has regularly intervened in the political process. Army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha on Thursday stressed that he would stay neutral.\nThailand has had 18 attempted or successful military coups since democracy was established in 1932.", "Mr Anderson, who became the city's first elected mayor in 2012, won again comfortably taking 53% of the vote.\nLabour also retained control of Liverpool City Council but ceded two seats to the Liberal Democrats.\nSefton, St Helens, Knowsley and Wirral also stayed under Labour control, as did Halton in Cheshire. The result of Merseyside's Police and Crime Commissioner election is due later.\nMr Anderson became leader of the Labour group on Liverpool City Council in 2003, and headed the council when the party regained control in May 2010.\nHe then campaigned for the cabinet system of city government to be replaced by a directly-elected mayor.\nMr Anderson said he hoped to make the city more self-sufficient in his second term.\n\"My vision is that we are sustainable in the future and not relying and dependent on government funding and we're able to look after ourselves.\"\nBBC News App users: tap here to see the results.\nIn Knowsley, the Liberal Democrats took three seats from Labour in Prescot North, with Labour losing three seats to Independent candidates and one to the Conservatives in Sefton.\nThe new make-up of Knowsley Council sees Labour holding 42 of the 45 seats, with the three remaining seats held by the Liberal Democrats.\nOne of the new Lib Dem councillors in Prescot North, Carl Cashman, told BBC Radio Merseyside: \"We're a real minority but this is the start.\n\"What people have got now is they've got a voice.\n\"One thing people told me is you're not just standing up for Prescot, you're standing up for Knowsley,\" he said.\nThere aren't many surprises in local politics on Merseyside these days - but today's local elections contained at least one shocker: The Liberal Democrats won three seats in Knowsley.\nSince 2012, Labour's been the only party on the council. Now, the three newly elected councillors representing Prescot North will be the opposition.\nThe ward was created as a result of boundary changes, which saw the number of councillors cut from 63 to 45.\nLocal campaign group First for Kirkby were just a couple of hundred votes shy of victory in Whitefield ward.\nLabour still holds 39 of the 66 seats on Wirral Council. Of the 23 up for grabs on Thursday, 14 were won by Labour with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats seven and two respectively.\nPhil Davies, leader of Wirral Council, said: \"We were defending a number of really difficult contests tonight.\n\"We maintain our majority of 12 seats on the council and I think it's a vote of confidence for the job we've done for the people of Wirral.\"", "His Scottish trip came after SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said Scottish voters would never forgive Labour if it allowed the Conservatives back.\nThe Tories said Mr Miliband's claim \"changes nothing\".\nThe Liberal Democrats have claimed the SNP views the election as a stepping stone to another independence vote.\nLabour leader Mr Miliband said during a special BBC Question Time programme on Thursday evening that a Labour government is \"not going to happen\" if the price of power was doing a deal with the SNP.\nHe added: \"I'm not going to sacrifice the future of our country, the unity of our country, I'm not going to give in to SNP demands around Trident, around the deficit or anything like that.\"\nMr Miliband has come under sustained pressure from the Conservatives throughout the election campaign over the prospect of a Labour-SNP deal in the event of a hung parliament.\nMs Sturgeon faced questions from a studio audience on BBC Scotland following Mr Miliband's appearance on Question Time.\nShe said: \"I heard Ed Miliband and he sounded awfully like he was saying, and I hope that I am wrong about this because I think people across Scotland and much of the UK will be appalled if I am right, he sounded as if he was saying that he would rather see David Cameron and the Conservatives back in government than actually work with the SNP.\n\"Now, if he means that then I don't think people in Scotland will ever forgive Labour for allowing the Conservatives back into office.\"\nPolls have suggested Labour is facing the prospect of a heavy defeat in its former Scottish stronghold, with the SNP on course to win the vast majority of seats.\nDuring the Labour rally in Glasgow, Mr Miliband evoked the names of Labour's Scottish founder Keir Hardie and the architects of devolution John Smith and Donald Dewar, and ask Scots who their parents and grandparents would want to lead the country.\nHe urged voters in Scotland not to \"gamble\" on the SNP and insisted \"you can guarantee change with Labour\".\nHe said his opposition to any post-election deal with Nicola Sturgeon's SNP is for \"principled reasons\", adding: \"We cannot do a deal with a party that wants to break up the UK when we want to build it up.\"\nMr Miliband said the UK \"could be on the verge of electing a Labour government\", and added: \"Nationalism never built a school. It never lifted people out of poverty. It never created a welfare state that healed the sick and protected our most vulnerable.\nMs Sturgeon has made campaign stops in East Lothian, Dundee and Fife as she takes the SNP's message to communities around the country.\nSpeaking on BBC Radio 4's World at One, the SNP leader said: \"The SNP is not going into Westminster to bring down governments or to stop budgets getting through.\n\"We would be going to try to get more progressive policies from a minority Labour government.\"\nElsewhere, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson joined Borders candidate John Lamont at a rally followed by a street stall event in Galashiels.\nMs Davidson said on Thursday that the choice facing voters in next Thursday's election was between \"a party which will keep Scotland's economy strong and keep Scotland in the UK and a weak Labour government haggling with the SNP over how to run the UK\".\nSpeaking in Leeds about Mr Miliband's assertion, Prime Minister Cameron said: \"Is he really saying that if Labour don't get a majority but if Labour plus the SNP is a majority 'I won't be PM'? Of course he's not saying that.\n\"The threat today is the same as the threat yesterday. Ed Miliband propped up by the SNP not governing on behalf of the whole country.\"\nMeanwhile, Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie met therapy animals as he revealed plans to boost mental health services.\nMr Rennie visited volunteers from Canine Concern in Edinburgh. The group's Therapet programme brings together pet owners with individuals struggling with mental or physical ill health.\nMr Rennie said his party would use their planned £800m investment in the NHS in Scotland to rebalance support between physical and mental health services.\nOn potential post-election deals, he said the voters faced a choice between a government influenced by UKIP's Nigel Farage, the SNP's Alex Salmond or the Liberal Democrats.\nMr Rennie insisted the Lib Dems would hold politics in the centre ground and help keep the economy on track fairly, and said Scotland needed to focus on the issues that mattered rather than a second independence referendum.\nWhat are the top issues for each political party at the 2015 general election?\nPolicy guide: Where the parties stand", "The UMP, led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, appeared set to secure at least 65 local councils, exit polls suggested, up from 41.\nMarine Le Pen's far-right National Front also appeared to have made gains, while the ruling Socialists and their allies may lose about 30 departments.\nThese elections are seen as a test case ahead of 2017's presidential election.\nParis and Lyon, France's two biggest cities, were excluded from Sunday's election.\nThe National Front appeared to have won a significant number of seats in Sunday's second round of elections, but did not appear to have gained control of any councils, the exit polls said.\nNonetheless, leader Marine Le Pen hailed a \"historic\" day for the FN, saying: \"I thank all our voters for this magnificent success.\"\n\"The goal is near, reaching power and applying our ideas to redress France.\"\nFrench Prime Minister Manual Valls admitted it was \"incontestable\" that the Socialist Party had lost ground.\n\"The French have declared... their anger at a daily life that is too difficult,\" he said. He vowed to redouble efforts to boost the economy, and said his focus was \"jobs, jobs, jobs\".\nHe added that the rise in the National Front's popularity was \"a sign of a lasting upheaval of our political landscape and we will all need to draw lessons from it\".\nMr Sarkozy said voters had \"massively rejected\" the policies of his successor as president, Francois Hollande.\n\"Never has our political family won so many councils,\" he told supporters. \"The repudiation of those in power is without question.\"\nMr Hollande has suffered from slumping personal ratings, boosted only briefly by his response to January's terror attacks in Paris.\nOne presidential adviser told AFP: \"Everyone is scared they will be eliminated in the first round in 2017.\"\nBastions of the Socialists like the Nord department around Lille have swung to the right, as has President Hollande's own fiefdom of the Correze in central France, the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris reports.\nHowever, as ever in France's two-round elections, voters from left and right united in round two to keep the National Front from power, our correspondents adds.\nTurnout on Sunday was 41.94% at 17:00 (15:00 GMT), three hours before polls closed. Surveys suggested about 50% of those eligible took part in the polls, Le Monde reported.\nVoters have been electing representatives in 101 departments, or counties, in the two rounds of the local elections. The departments are charged with issues like schools and welfare." ]

[ "Rutherford model The Rutherford model served to concentrate a great deal of the atom's charge and mass to a very small core, but didn't attribute any structure to the remaining electrons and remaining atomic mass. It did mention the atomic model of Hantaro Nagaoka, in which the electrons are arranged in one or more rings, with the specific metaphorical structure of the stable rings of Saturn. The plum pudding model of J. J. Thomson also had rings of orbiting electrons. Jean Baptiste Perrin claimed in his Nobel lecture[3] that he was the first one to suggest the model in his paper dated 1901." ]

[ "Atomic orbital Shortly after Thomson's discovery, Hantaro Nagaoka predicted a different model for electronic structure.[11] Unlike the plum pudding model, the positive charge in Nagaoka's \"Saturnian Model\" was concentrated into a central core, pulling the electrons into circular orbits reminiscent of Saturn's rings. Few people took notice of Nagaoka's work at the time,[15] and Nagaoka himself recognized a fundamental defect in the theory even at its conception, namely that a classical charged object cannot sustain orbital motion because it is accelerating and therefore loses energy due to electromagnetic radiation.[16] Nevertheless, the Saturnian model turned out to have more in common with modern theory than any of its contemporaries.", "Rutherford scattering The initial discovery was made by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909 when they performed the gold foil experiment in collaboration with Rutherford, in which they fired a beam of alpha particles (helium nuclei) at foils of gold leaf only a few atoms thick. At the time of the experiment, the atom was thought to be analogous to a plum pudding (as proposed by J. J. Thomson), with the negatively-charged electrons (the plums) studded throughout a positive spherical matrix (the pudding). If the plum-pudding model were correct, the positive \"pudding\", being more spread out than in the correct model of a concentrated nucleus, would not be able to exert such large coulombic forces, and the alpha particles should only be deflected by small angles as they pass through.", "Atom In 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that all particles behave to an extent like waves. In 1926, Erwin Schrödinger used this idea to develop a mathematical model of the atom that described the electrons as three-dimensional waveforms rather than point particles. A consequence of using waveforms to describe particles is that it is mathematically impossible to obtain precise values for both the position and momentum of a particle at a given point in time; this became known as the uncertainty principle, formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1926. In this concept, for a given accuracy in measuring a position one could only obtain a range of probable values for momentum, and vice versa.[22] This model was able to explain observations of atomic behavior that previous models could not, such as certain structural and spectral patterns of atoms larger than hydrogen. Thus, the planetary model of the atom was discarded in favor of one that described atomic orbital zones around the nucleus where a given electron is most likely to be observed.[23][24]", "Atom The physicist J. J. Thomson measured the mass of cathode rays, showing they were made of particles, but were around 1800 times lighter than the lightest atom, hydrogen. Therefore, they were not atoms, but a new particle, the first subatomic particle to be discovered, which he originally called \"corpuscle\" but was later named electron, after particles postulated by George Johnstone Stoney in 1874. He also showed they were identical to particles given off by photoelectric and radioactive materials.[7] It was quickly recognized that they are the particles that carry electric currents in metal wires, and carry the negative electric charge within atoms. Thomson was given the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. Thus he overturned the belief that atoms are the indivisible, ultimate particles of matter.[8] Thomson also incorrectly postulated that the low mass, negatively charged electrons were distributed throughout the atom in a uniform sea of positive charge. This became known as the plum pudding model.", "Geiger–Marsden experiment Accolades soon flooded in. Hantaro Nagaoka, who had once proposed a Saturnian model of the atom, wrote to Rutherford from Tokyo in 1911: \"Congratulations on the simpleness of the apparatus you employ and the brilliant results you obtained\". The conclusions of these experiments revealed how all matter on Earth is structured and thus affected every scientific and engineering discipline, making it one of the most pivotal scientific discoveries of all time. The astronomer Arthur Eddington called Rutherford's discovery the most important scientific achievement since Democritus proposed the atom ages earlier.[11]", "Atomic number The sum of the atomic number Z and the number of neutrons, N, gives the mass number A of an atom. Since protons and neutrons have approximately the same mass (and the mass of the electrons is negligible for many purposes) and the mass defect of nucleon binding is always small compared to the nucleon mass, the atomic mass of any atom, when expressed in unified atomic mass units (making a quantity called the \"relative isotopic mass\"), is within 1% of the whole number A.", "Bohr model In 1925, a new kind of mechanics was proposed, quantum mechanics, in which Bohr's model of electrons traveling in quantized orbits was extended into a more accurate model of electron motion. The new theory was proposed by Werner Heisenberg. Another form of the same theory, wave mechanics, was discovered by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger independently, and by different reasoning. Schrödinger employed de Broglie's matter waves, but sought wave solutions of a three-dimensional wave equation describing electrons that were constrained to move about the nucleus of a hydrogen-like atom, by being trapped by the potential of the positive nuclear charge.", "History of nuclear weapons In the first decades of the 20th century, physics was revolutionised with developments in the understanding of the nature of atoms. In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered that pitchblende, an ore of uranium, contained a substance—which they named radium—that emitted large amounts of radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified that atoms were breaking down and turning into different elements. Hopes were raised among scientists and laymen that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be harnessed.", "Atom The number of protons in the nucleus defines to what chemical element the atom belongs: for example, all copper atoms contain 29 protons. The number of neutrons defines the isotope of the element. The number of electrons influences the magnetic properties of an atom. Atoms can attach to one or more other atoms by chemical bonds to form chemical compounds such as molecules. The ability of atoms to associate and dissociate is responsible for most of the physical changes observed in nature and is the subject of the discipline of chemistry.", "Nuclear force The discovery of the neutron in 1932 revealed that atomic nuclei were made of protons and neutrons, held together by an attractive force. By 1935 the nuclear force was conceived to be transmitted by particles called mesons. This theoretical development included a description of the Yukawa potential, an early example of a nuclear potential. Mesons, predicted by theory, were discovered experimentally in 1947. By the 1970s, the quark model had been developed, by which the mesons and nucleons were viewed as composed of quarks and gluons. By this new model, the nuclear force, resulting from the exchange of mesons between neighboring nucleons, is a residual effect of the strong force.", "Bohr radius The Bohr radius (a0 or rBohr) is a physical constant, approximately equal to the most probable distance between the nucleus and the electron in a hydrogen atom in its ground state. It is named after Niels Bohr, due to its role in the Bohr model of an atom. Its value is 6989529177210670000♠5.2917721067(12)×10−11 m.[1][note 1]", "Alpha decay Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and thereby transforms or 'decays' into a different atomic nucleus, with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atomic number that is reduced by two. An alpha particle is identical to the nucleus of a helium-4 atom, which consists of two protons and two neutrons. It has a charge of 6981320435297400000♠+2 e and a mass of 7000400000000000000♠4 u. For example, uranium-238 decays to form thorium-234. Alpha particles have a charge 6981320435297400000♠+2 e, but as a nuclear equation describes a nuclear reaction without considering the electrons – a convention that does not imply that the nuclei necessarily occur in neutral atoms – the charge is not usually shown.", "Alpha particle The best-known source of alpha particles is alpha decay of heavier (> 106 u atomic weight) atoms. When an atom emits an alpha particle in alpha decay, the atom's mass number decreases by four due to the loss of the four nucleons in the alpha particle. The atomic number of the atom goes down by exactly two, as a result of the loss of two protons – the atom becomes a new element. Examples of this sort of nuclear transmutation are when uranium becomes thorium, or radium becomes radon gas, due to alpha decay.", "Six Sigma The term Six Sigma (capitalized because it was written that way when registered as a Motorola trademark on December 28, 1993) originated from terminology associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defective features per million opportunities). Motorola set a goal of \"six sigma\" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a by-word for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it.", "Extended periodic table The first two elements of period 8 are expected to be ununennium and unbinilium, elements 119 and 120. Their electron configurations should have the 8s orbital being filled. This orbital is relativistically stabilized and contracted and thus, elements 119 and 120 should be more like rubidium and strontium than their immediate neighbours above, francium and radium. Another effect of the relativistic contraction of the 8s orbital is that the atomic radii of these two elements should be about the same of those of francium and radium. They should behave like normal alkali and alkaline earth metals, normally forming +1 and +2 oxidation states respectively, but the relativistic destabilization of the 7p3/2 subshell and the relatively low ionization energies of the 7p3/2 electrons should make higher oxidation states like +3 and +4 (respectively) possible as well.[5][11]", "Atomic radius Atomic radii vary in a predictable and explicable manner across the periodic table. For instance, the radii generally decrease along each period (row) of the table, from the alkali metals to the noble gases; and increase down each group (column). The radius increases sharply between the noble gas at the end of each period and the alkali metal at the beginning of the next period. These trends of the atomic radii (and of various other chemical and physical properties of the elements) can be explained by the electron shell theory of the atom; they provided important evidence for the development and confirmation of quantum theory. The atomic radii decrease across the Periodic Table because as the atomic number increases, the number of protons increases across the period, but the extra electrons are only added to the same quantum shell. Therefore, the effective nuclear charge towards the outermost electrons increases, drawing the outermost electrons closer. As a result, the electron cloud contracts and the atomic radius decrease.", "Nuclear binding energy The hydrogen nucleus contain just one proton, Its isotope deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, contains a proton and a neutron. Helium contains two protons and two neutrons, and carbon, nitrogen and oxygen - six, seven and eight of each particle, respectively. However, a helium nucleus weighs less than the sum of the weights of the two hydrogen nuclei which combine to make it. The same is true for carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. For example, the carbon nucleus is slightly lighter than three helium nuclei, which can combine to make a carbon nucleus. This difference is known as the mass defect.", "Atomic nucleus The nucleus of an atom consists of neutrons and protons, which in turn are the manifestation of more elementary particles, called quarks, that are held in association by the nuclear strong force in certain stable combinations of hadrons, called baryons. The nuclear strong force extends far enough from each baryon so as to bind the neutrons and protons together against the repulsive electrical force between the positively charged protons. The nuclear strong force has a very short range, and essentially drops to zero just beyond the edge of the nucleus. The collective action of the positively charged nucleus is to hold the electrically negative charged electrons in their orbits about the nucleus. The collection of negatively charged electrons orbiting the nucleus display an affinity for certain configurations and numbers of electrons that make their orbits stable. Which chemical element an atom represents is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus; the neutral atom will have an equal number of electrons orbiting that nucleus. Individual chemical elements can create more stable electron configurations by combining to share their electrons. It is that sharing of electrons to create stable electronic orbits about the nucleus that appears to us as the chemistry of our macro world.", "Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and typically a similar number of neutrons. Protons and neutrons are called nucleons. More than 99.94% of an atom's mass is in the nucleus. The protons have a positive electric charge, the electrons have a negative electric charge, and the neutrons have no electric charge. If the number of protons and electrons are equal, that atom is electrically neutral. If an atom has more or fewer electrons than protons, then it has an overall negative or positive charge, respectively, and it is called an ion.", "Systems development life cycle The code is tested at various levels in software testing. Unit, system and user acceptance testings are often performed. This is a grey area as many different opinions exist as to what the stages of testing are and how much, if any iteration occurs. Iteration is not generally part of the waterfall model, but the means to rectify defects and validate fixes prior to deployment is incorporated into this phase.", "Hydrogen atom A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively charged proton and a single negatively charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force. Atomic hydrogen constitutes about 75% of the baryonic mass of the universe.[1]", "Biomedical model According to the biomedical model, health constitutes the freedom from disease, pain, or defect, making the normal human condition \"healthy.\" The model's focus on the physical processes (for example, pathology, biochemistry and physiology of a disease) does not take into account the role of social factors or individual subjectivity. Unlike the biopsychosocial model, the biomedical model does not consider diagnosis, which affects treatment of the patient, to be the result of a negotiation between doctor and patient.[1]", "Pauli exclusion principle The Pauli exclusion principle is the quantum mechanical principle which states that two or more identical fermions (particles with half-integer spin) cannot occupy the same quantum state within a quantum system simultaneously. In the case of electrons in atoms, it can be stated as follows: it is impossible for two electrons of a poly-electron atom to have the same values of the four quantum numbers: n, the principal quantum number, ℓ, the angular momentum quantum number, mℓ, the magnetic quantum number, and ms, the spin quantum number. For example, if two electrons reside in the same orbital, and if their n, ℓ, and mℓ values are the same, then their ms must be different, and thus the electrons must have opposite half-integer spins of 1/2 and −1/2. This principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 for electrons, and later extended to all fermions with his spin-statistics theorem of 1940.", "Atom The electrons in an atom are attracted to the protons in the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. This force binds the electrons inside an electrostatic potential well surrounding the smaller nucleus, which means that an external source of energy is needed for the electron to escape. The closer an electron is to the nucleus, the greater the attractive force. Hence electrons bound near the center of the potential well require more energy to escape than those at greater separations.", "Atomic radius Depending on the definition, the term may apply only to isolated atoms, or also to atoms in condensed matter, covalently bound in molecules, or in ionized and excited states; and its value may be obtained through experimental measurements, or computed from theoretical models. The value of the radius may depend on the atom's state and context.[1]", "Electron Interactions involving electrons with other subatomic particles are of interest in fields such as chemistry and nuclear physics. The Coulomb force interaction between the positive protons within atomic nuclei and the negative electrons without, allows the composition of the two known as atoms. Ionization or differences in the proportions of negative electrons versus positive nuclei changes the binding energy of an atomic system. The exchange or sharing of the electrons between two or more atoms is the main cause of chemical bonding.[12] In 1838, British natural philosopher Richard Laming first hypothesized the concept of an indivisible quantity of electric charge to explain the chemical properties of atoms.[3] Irish physicist George Johnstone Stoney named this charge 'electron' in 1891, and J. J. Thomson and his team of British physicists identified it as a particle in 1897.[5][13][14] Electrons can also participate in nuclear reactions, such as nucleosynthesis in stars, where they are known as beta particles. Electrons can be created through beta decay of radioactive isotopes and in high-energy collisions, for instance when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron; it is identical to the electron except that it carries electrical and other charges of the opposite sign. When an electron collides with a positron, both particles can be totally annihilated, producing gamma ray photons.", "Ionic compound Although ionic compounds contain charged atoms or clusters, these materials do not typically conduct electricity to any significant extent when the substance is solid. In order to conduct, the charged particles must be mobile rather than stationary in a crystal lattice. This is achieved to some degree at high temperatures when the defect concentration increases the ionic mobility and solid state ionic conductivity is observed. When the ionic compounds are dissolved in a liquid or are melted into a liquid, they can conduct electricity because the ions become completely mobile.[74] This conductivity gain upon dissolving or melting is sometimes used as a defining characteristic of ionic compounds.[75]", "Atom The electron is by far the least massive of these particles at 6969911000000000000♠9.11×10−31 kg, with a negative electrical charge and a size that is too small to be measured using available techniques.[34] It was the lightest particle with a positive rest mass measured, until the discovery of neutrino mass. Under ordinary conditions, electrons are bound to the positively charged nucleus by the attraction created from opposite electric charges. If an atom has more or fewer electrons than its atomic number, then it becomes respectively negatively or positively charged as a whole; a charged atom is called an ion. Electrons have been known since the late 19th century, mostly thanks to J.J. Thomson; see history of subatomic physics for details.", "Carbon-based life \"What we normally think of as 'life' is based on chains of carbon atoms, with a few other atoms, such as nitrogen or phosphorus\", per Stephen Hawking in a 2008 lecture, \"carbon [...] has the richest chemistry.\" [5] The most important characteristics of carbon as a basis for the chemistry of life are, that it has four valence bonds, and that the energy required to make or break a bond is at an appropriate level for building molecules, which are stable and reactive.[citation needed] Carbon atoms bond readily to other carbon atoms; this allows the building of arbitrarily long complex molecules and polymers.[citation needed]", "Atomic number The quest for new elements is usually described using atomic numbers. As of 2010, all elements with atomic numbers 1 to 118 have been observed. Synthesis of new elements is accomplished by bombarding target atoms of heavy elements with ions, such that the sum of the atomic numbers of the target and ion elements equals the atomic number of the element being created. In general, the half-life becomes shorter as atomic number increases, though an \"island of stability\" may exist for undiscovered isotopes with certain numbers of protons and neutrons.", "Atom The idea that matter is made up of discrete units is a very old idea, appearing in many ancient cultures such as Greece and India. The word \"atom\" was coined by ancient Greek philosophers. However, these ideas were founded in philosophical and theological reasoning rather than evidence and experimentation. As a result, their views on what atoms look like and how they behave were incorrect. They also could not convince everybody, so atomism was but one of a number of competing theories on the nature of matter. It was not until the 19th century that the idea was embraced and refined by scientists, when the blossoming science of chemistry produced discoveries that only the concept of atoms could explain.", "Atom Ubiquitousness and stability of atoms relies on their binding energy, which means that an atom has a lower energy than an unbound system of the nucleus and electrons. Where the temperature is much higher than ionization potential, the matter exists in the form of plasma—a gas of positively charged ions (possibly, bare nuclei) and electrons. When the temperature drops below the ionization potential, atoms become statistically favorable. Atoms (complete with bound electrons) became to dominate over charged particles 380,000 years after the Big Bang—an epoch called recombination, when the expanding Universe cooled enough to allow electrons to become attached to nuclei.[114]" ]

[ "A South Korean news report says a large explosion rocked North Korea&#39;s northernmost inland province of Yanggang last Thursday, sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air." ]

[ "BEIJING - South Korea and the US yesterday sought to play down fears that North Korea might have conducted a nuclear test after reports of a large explosion in the northern part of the communist country.", "SEOUL, South Korea - A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea, sending a plume of smoke more than two miles wide into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, a South Korean news agency reported Sunday. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the explosion Thursday was not a nuclear test but that it was not known yet what caused it...", "Video of the area where North Korea said a huge explosion had occurred last week showed dozens of workers swarming around a construction site resembling a large", "SEOUL : South Korea has said it is investigating sketchy reports of a big explosion in North Korea last week but was unsure what triggered the blast near a secret underground military base.", "South Korea said Friday that a massive explosion previously reported to have created a mushroom cloud in North Korea did not take place in the area that was originally pinpointed.", "SEOUL, South Korea - A huge explosion rocked North Korea three days ago but U.S. and South Korean officials said on Sunday it was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test despite a report the blast produced a mushroom cloud.", "Diplomats who visited the scene of a mysterious explosion in North Korea said the site was a hydroelectric construction project where they were told two explosions had been conducted, Kyodo news agency reported.", "Foreign diplomats taken to the scene of a mysterious blast in North Korea were shown a &quot;very, very large&quot; construction site where they were told two explosions were conducted, diplomats said.", "SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Monday that the large explosion near its border with China several days ago was a \"deliberate detonation of a mountain\" as part of a hydroelectric project, the BBC reported. The reclusive communist regime responded to a request for information from British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell, who is visiting Pyongyang, the British Broadcasting Corp...", "South Korea's latest assessment of a widely reported explosion in North Korea last week is that there was no blast at all at the suspected site, a vice minister said Friday.", "South Korea says there is no evidence to suggest any explosion took place at a site in North Korea, where a mushroom cloud and a suspected massive blast were recently reported.", "A cloud of confusion surrounded a widely reported explosion in North Korea last week with South Korea saying on Friday its latest assessment was that no blast at all occurred at the suspected site.", "A large cloud that appeared over North Korea in satellite images several days ago was not the result of a nuclear explosion, according to a US official.", "A MYSTERIOUS explosion in North Korea last week was a deliberate detonation connected with a power plant project, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said yesterday.", "As questions emerge over whether a large explosion last week in North Korea was nuclear-related, top US officials do not think it was a nuclear test.", "There are reports of two large explosions at a school in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia that is the scene of an unfolding hostage drama.", "North Korea says last week&#39;s massive explosion in a remote area of the country&#39;s north was the result of deliberate demolition work.", "Communist North Korea's claim that a huge and mysterious explosion was caused by a civil engineering project might be true, according to South Korea's intelligence agency.", "A large cloud appeared over North Korea in satellite images several days ago, but a US official told CNN it is &quot;no big deal&quot; and not the result of a nuclear explosion.", "The Bush administration has received recent intelligence reports that some experts believe could indicate North Korea is preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test explosion, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.", "Two massive explosions took place in North Korea&#39;s border area with China on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, Roh administration officials revealed yesterday, confirming earlier reports from Beijing.", "North Korea claimed yesterday that a huge explosion in the north-east of the country last week was the controlled demolition of a mountain to make way for a hydroelectric dam - not, as feared, a nuclear weapons test.", "The United States does not believe that a large explosion in North Korea was related to the communist country's suspected nuclear weapons program, President Bush's foreign policy advisers said Sunday.", "Amid skepticism over North Korea&#39;s claim that a large explosion in its remote northern province last week was part of demolition work, international diplomats are slated to visit the blast site this Thursday.", "The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is calling for North Korea to allow international experts into the country to completely verify that a large cloud recently spotted over the country was not caused by a nuclear explosion.", "The United States and South Korea have played down suggestions that a massive explosion in North Korea last week was caused by a nuclear device.", "North Korea on Monday reportedly told a visiting British diplomat in Pyongyang that a billowing cloud of smoke caused by an explosion last week was the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project, according to news reports.", "North Korea accused South Korea of mounting a ``smear campaign&#39;&#39; over an explosion last week in North Korea that prompted speculation of a nuclear test.", "Video footage of the area where North Korea said a huge explosion occurred showed dozens of workers swarming around a dusty construction site resembling a large dam project, while a foreign diplomat who visited the site said Friday he found no sign the", "BEIJING - The British and German ambassadors to North Korea on Thursday travelled with other foreign diplomats from Pyongyang to the site of a huge explosion close to North Korea&#39;s border with China, British officials said.", "A huge explosion in North Korea last week was a deliberate blast to pave the way for a hydro-electric dam, the BBC quoted the North's foreign minister as telling a visiting British official Monday.", "WASHINGTON—An explosion last Sunday in South Korea prompted huge warning signals, as all eyes shifted to North Korea glaring skeptically as to whether the blast was a nuclear test of some sort." ]

[ "St Annes Cricket Club’s first Colour Run and Fun Day was a spectacular success – and is to become an annual event.\nSome 100 runners of all ages took part in a circuit around the Vernon Road ground – being covered in powder paint as they went – to raise funds for their clubs and good causes.\nMeanwhile, families galore revelled in a series of old fashioned stalls offering a host of games and other delights.\nThe club’s events co-ordinator Rachel Higson said: “The heat was so intense, the length of the laps was halved – but it didn’t reduce the fun at all.\n“Everyone enjoyed seeing the senior players throwing the paint at all of the junior runners but got more excited as the juniors were then allowed to throw the paint at the older runners.\n“It was a great success and the great news is that it will be back next year.”\nClub chairman John Cotton added: “Alongside already-established features at the club such as the Beer and Gin Festival and our Guy Fawkes Night fireworks, we are trying to organise a calendar of events involving the local community.\n“The aim of the colour run and fun day to embrace our members and the local community in our family-orientated club and we look forward to it becoming an annual event.”" ]

[ "Middlesex Women were victorious over MCC as they made their historic first appearance on the main pitch at Lord’s in front of a record crowd.\nThe belated outing at the home of cricket, 85 years in the making, was part of MCC Women’s Day and the match lived up to the occasion with Middlesex hitting the winning runs with one ball to spare.\nThe attendance was confirmed as more than 5,000, easily trumping the previous best for a women’s match in this country, 3,413.\nMiddlesex Women celebrate a wicket during the MCC Women´s Day match at Lord´s Cricket Ground (Adam Davy/PA)\nChasing MCC’s 145 for three, Middlesex sealed a six-wicket success as Maia Bouchier finished 39 not out and captain Natasha Miles struck 38.\nHayleigh Brennan hit a boundary to finish the job from the penultimate delivery of the match.\nBhavika Gajipra earlier claimed the first Lord’s wicket for a Middlesex Women bowler, while Alexandra Rogers was the day’s top scorer with 72 in a losing cause.\nMCC were captained by former England captain Charlotte Edwards and included World Cup winners Sarah Taylor and Georgia Elwiss in their XI.", "WINLOTT Windward Islands Under-15 cricket\nSaint Lucia defeated Dominica by 19 runs, despite their measly total of 63 from 30.3 overs on Monday in SVG.\nResults:\nSt. Lucia U15’s – 63 all out (30.3)\nCaptain Ackeem Auguste 16 runs\nJerlani Joseph 5.3-4-3\nMorell Burton 5-13-3\nDominica U15’s – 44 all out (28.2)\nYawani Regis 11 runs\nRoyce Paul 10-11-5\nAmari Venner 4.2-1-2\nThis means that St. Lucia has won both their matches in the WINLOTT Windward Islands Under-15 cricket tournament, for which they are the defending champions.", "WITH the aim of imparting the rudiments of the game of cricket, the Demerara Cricket Club (DCC), in collaboration with the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC), yesterday kick-started the annual Cricket Summer Camp at the Queenstown-based facility.\nRoughly 80 youngsters aged 7 to 17 were part of the opening day as they seek to learn the fundamentals of cricket over the next ten days.\nPrior to the day’s activities, the camp was officially declared open by president of DCC, Patrick Harding, who welcomed the youngsters.\nHarding urged the youngsters to take full advantage of the opportunities being offered to them, adding that the camp aims to provide intensive cricket training to players who strive to discover new techniques, improve their mental, physical skills and better their overall cricketing skills.\n“You will be learning over the next ten days the art of cricket, you will learn the finer points of the game, and at the same time meet friends; so take full advantage of the opportunities,” the DCC president pointed out.\nSpeaking about the opening day of the camp, Garvin Nedd said, “I’m very much impressed with the turnout for the first day because this is the foundation we use to take players forward into the future”.\nMeanwhile, Paul Wintz in an invited comment said that he was happy to be assisting the various coaches and giving back to the club.\nApart from Nedd and Wintz, former Guyana batsman Mark Harper is part of the camp as the technical director.\nThe programme also involves classroom-style sessions, lectures by a variety of expert presenters, cricket and fitness drills, game simulations and matches.\nThe camp runs from 09:00hrs to 15:00hrs daily.", "The opening matches of this year’s WINLOTT Super Six Windward Islands Under-15 50-overs Cricket Championship took place yesterday, when defending champions, St. Lucia and host St. Vincent and the Grenadines won.\nSt. Vincent and the Grenadines defeated Dominica by 5 wickets at the Park Hill Playing Field.\nShare This Article: Facebook\nTwitter\nGoogle\nLinkedIn\nEmail\nTumblr\nPrint\nRelated", "Auckland: The first Test between New Zealand and England, starting at Eden Park in Auckland on Thursday, is the maiden day-night Test in New Zealand and only the ninth worldwide.\nHere's what we have learned in the brief history of Test cricket under lights:\nHOME ADVANTAGE\nSri Lanka are the only team to win a day-night Test away when they beat Pakistan by 68 runs in Dubai last year. The other seven have all been home-ground victories. Sri Lanka scored 482 and 96 against Pakistan who replied with 262 and 248.\nBAGGY GREENS IN THE PINK\nAustralia have played the most pink-ball Tests and are also the most successful side under day-night conditions with a 4-0 record. England and South Africa have both recorded a win and a loss, while the only other successful teams are Sri Lanka (1-0) and Pakistan (1-2).\nMAKING LIGHT OF DUSK\nPakistan opener Azhar Ali showed changing light conditions need not be a problem when he compiled an unbeaten 302 against the West Indies in Dubai in October 2016. He batted for nearly 11 hours for what remains the highest score in a day-night Test. But he went for two in the second innings and five in the first innings of his next Test under lights against Australia two months later.\nPAKISTAN PILE ON THE RUNS\nThe highest score in a pink-ball Test is Pakistan's 579/3 declared in 155.3 overs when Azhar performed his heroics against the West Indies. Pakistan only managed 123 in the second innings - when Devendra Bishoo took 8/49 - but held on to win by 56 runs.\nKIWIS' CALL\nThe first pink-ball Test was played between New Zealand and Australia at Adelaide Oval in November 2015. New Zealand won the toss, elected to bat and ended up losing by three wickets.", "Brad Hodge's 24-year professional cricket career is over.\nHodge, who debuted for Victoria back in 1993-94, has declared his latest season with the Melbourne Renegades was his last in the BBL at age 43 and he will no longer travel overseas to play.\n\"This will be the end of the road,\" Hodge told News Corp Australia.\n\"I'll represent (Melbourne club) East Sandringham in the finals and that will be it for my cricket career.\"\nHodge played his last of six Tests for Australia in 2008 and last represented Victoria in the Sheffield Shield a year later, spending the past eight years as a Twenty20 specialist.\nIn that time he has played for no less than 13 franchises, amassing the sixth most runs in T20 history with 7406 at an average of 36.84.\nHowever it came to an unexpected early end last month when he underwent surgery on a burst appendix, ruling him out of the Renegades' semi-final loss to Adelaide on Friday.\nHistory will likely remember Hodge as being unlucky not to earn more Test caps, playing in a golden era of Australian cricketers.\nThe fifth highest run-scorer in the 125-year history of the Sheffield Shield, Hodge's 10,474 runs for Victoria came at an average of 45.34 and earned him a Test debut against the West Indies in 2005.\nHe scored a half-century on debut, and turned his maiden hundred into an unbeaten double ton against South Africa just two Tests later in Perth.\nHowever less than a month later he found himself on the scrap heap and questioning selectors, destined to only ever play one more Test despite finishing with an average of 55.88.\nThe right-hander also featured in Australia's 2007 World Cup success among his 25 50-over matches for his country, while he played his last match in national colours during the 2014 World T20.\nIn total, he scored a remarkable 33,617 runs in 751 top-flight domestic and international cricket matches across all three formats of the game.\nBRAD HODGE'S REMARKABLE CRICKET CAREER\n* 503 runs at 55.88 in six Tests between 2005 and 2008 for Australia.\n* Played 25 ODIs and 15 T20s for Australia, compiling 575 runs and 183 in each respective format.\n* Fifth highest run-scorer in the history of the Sheffield Shield, with 10,474 runs at 45.34.\n* Totalled 17,084 runs across 223 first-class matches, with 51 centuries.\n* Sixth most runs in Twenty20 history, with 7406 across 277 matches at an average of 36.84.\n* Represented Australia, Adelaide Strikers, Auckland, Barisal, Duhram, Guyana, Kochi, Kolkata, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Melbourne Renegades, Northern Districts, Peshawar, Rajasthan, St Kitts and Nevis, Victoria and Wellington.", "Playing 300 ODIs is a major milestone for any cricketer. It's an exclusive club, one that not even legends like Brian Lara have been granted entry into, and which currently has only 18 members.\nOn Thursday, the elite club, which has the likes of Mohammad Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly, will have a new entrant in the form of Yuvraj Singh.\nIt has been a long roller coaster of a journey for the 36-year-old Yuvraj, who made his debut against Kenya in the 2000 edition of the Champions Trophy (then called the KnockOut Trophy). His ticket to the star-studded Indian team was on back of his all-round performance in that year's U-19 World Cup, for which he was adjudged the player of the tournament.\nFrom a promising 19-year-old lad to becoming the hero of the 2011 World Cup, from successfully battling cancer to making a stunning comeback into the ODI team, here are some of the best cricketing moments of Yuvi in India colours:\nA swashbuckling debut (7 October, 2000)\nYuvraj could not have asked for a better debut with the bat. At 130/4, India's top order was down and out. Then came Yuvraj, whose 80-ball 84 single-handedly helped India recover. His innings, which included 12 fours, accelerated the scoring rate. India eventually posted 265 in 50 overs — a good total in those days. The trio of Venkatesh Prasad, Zaheer Khan and Ajit Agarkar did the rest as the Aussies were bundled out for 245. No prizes for guessing who won the man of the match award!\nConquering Lords (13 July, 2002)\nIndia had generally been poor visitors. However, 2000s saw them breaking new grounds overseas. It will not be an understatement to say that the victory in the finals of the 2002 Natwest Series was one of the defining moments in India's cricketing history.\nOn the back of captain Nasser Hussain's 115, England set a target of 325 — a mammoth total in an era when T20 cricket was yet to make its presence felt. However, Yuvraj and Mohammad Kaif became the unlikely heroes that day. It was their sixth-wicket partnership of 121 runs that turned the tide in India's favour after they lost five wickets in quick succession. Being the dominant partner in the partnership, Yuvraj scored a 63-ball 69 to stabilise the innings. While Kaif stole the show that day, the southpaw's innings helped India conquer the \"Mecca of cricket\".\nDismantling the famed Aussie bowling lineup (22 January, 2004)\nIn the historic 2003-04 tour of Australia, several members of the new and emerging Team India made their presence felt. One of them was Yuvi. In the Sydney ODI, the southpaw scored 139 off 122 balls, building a 213-run partnership with VVS Laxman, who was then trying to stake a claim for a permanent berth in the middle-order. While Laxman played the sheet-anchor's role, Yuvraj blasted the Glenn McGrath-less Aussie bowling lineup, before he played a Brett Lee in-swinger on to the stumps.\nAll-rounder Yuvi (February to April 2011)\nThat Yuvraj is a decent all-rounder is beyond any argument. But except for being a \"partnership-breaking\" part-timer, his bowling was largely restricted. However, his bowling potential came to the fore during the 2011 World Cup in the sub-continent. With 362 runs and 15 wickets, his Ian Botham-like figures came at the right time for India, as they proceeded to lift the cup after 28 years. Two performances stand out. His 5-31 against minnows Ireland helped India restrict the traditional giant-slayers to just 207. Coming on to bat, he scored a patient 50* to guide India to a comfortable victory.\nA few days later, in the crucial quarter-final versus defending champions Australia, Yuvraj played the role of a senior statesman, seeing to it that the team cruises to the target of 261 with little damage. The southpaw, who came to the crease when the team was 143/3, scored 57* to end the unbeaten run of the Kangaroos across four World Cups and help India enter the semis. In this match too, Yuvi showed his skill with the white ball, scalping the key wickets of Brad Haddin and Michael Clarke.\nA comeback to remember (19 January, 2017)\nIt was the second match of the three-match ODI series against England at Cuttack. Yuvraj had made a comeback into the team after three years but failed to impress in the first ODI. The pressure was on Yuvi and he responded in style. Along with the seemingly out-of-form MS Dhoni, who had relinquished his captaincy a while back, Yuvraj added 256 runs for the fourth wicket. One could clearly see the vintage Yuvraj as he made his way to an aggressive 150, which included a staggering 21 fours. He also surpassed his previous best of 139 and proved his critics, who were vying for his blood, wrong. Fittingly, he called this knock one of his best.\nHis successful battle against cancer (mediastinal seminoma) has enhanced his charisma due to the fact that not even the disease could prevent him from playing for India. His comeback into the team is the testament to his endurance and determination.\nKnowing how he relishes playing in big matches, his 300th appearance against Bangladesh could possibly see more fireworks.\n​\nFor the latest updates from ICC Champions Trophy 2017 Click Here", "This week’s bowls round-up starts with news of a successful open day at Crablands Bowls Club in Selsey.\nWith outdoor bowlers getting out on the greens for the first time after a long winter, make sure you let us know what’s happening at your club this summer - email reports and pictures to steve.bone@chiobserver.co.uk\nIt was an unlucky ending but all at Arun are proud of their great effort.\nCRABLANDS\nThe club’s new bowlers’ open day was a fantastic success with many interested parties enjoying a fun-filled morning followed by refreshments. The weather was kind and upward of 30 have signed up for coaching sessions.\nARUN\nArun’s Chris Hobbs, Bridget Collins and Betty Spicer travelled to the national finals in Nottingham and played three rounds against strong opposition over two days.\nThey won to reach the final, where they lost by a narrow five shots. It was an unlucky ending but all at Arun are proud of their great effort.\nDONNINGTON\nDonnington invited Crablands to play in their last friendly of the season.\nOn mat one, Donnington’s Colin Dean, Ann Hulbert, Maggie Maggs and skip Peter Whale beat Mollie Back, Terry Axworthy, Denis Caiger and skip Dave Harding\n27-11, while on mat two, Chris Willson, Chris White, Peter Skinner and skip Colin Hulbert lost 21-19 to Wally Obermayer, Trevor Wilson, Jan Obermayer and skip Jim Saunders\nAfter the game the players enjoyed tea.\nSOUTHBOURNE\nSouthbourne Rovers 51 Bognor Goodwood Silvers 17\nSouthbourne Rovers finished their winter season on a high, taking all six points.\nOn the mat skipped by Alan Williams the scores were very close with the Rovers just managing to overtake Goodwood Silvers on the very last end. However on the mat skipped by Malcolm Keane the result was never in doubt, with an easy win for the Rovers, perhaps helped by Goodwood being one bowler short.\nScores: Mary Thornton, Colin Bulbeck, Margaret Odell, Alan Williams (s) won 16-14; Irene Jennings, Jim Spivey, Alex Horne Malcolm Keane (s) won 35-3.", "After a couple of frustrating weeks with weather causing abandonments, Ansty’s 1st XI came away from Bexhill with their first league win of the season.\nHaving been inserted, Ansty attained 201-8 with Leo Anderson top scoring on 60.\nSkipper Harry Towler (28) and Ed Coombs (11) had set up the innings with a 34 run opening partnership followed by 27 from Jethro Menzies but Anderson was the rock in the middle order and with 17 not out by Jack Palser Ansty were happy with their total.\nJake Wilson took 3-31 with two wickets each from Jethro Menzies and Charlie Rutter. Tim Hambridge opened Bexhill’s innings and proved a difficult wicket to take but was finally caught by Coombs off Anderson for 63. At 138-4 off 37 overs the game was in the balance with Malcolm Johnson striking 54 before he was run out by Menzies. This was the wicket that sealed the win for the visitors.\n2nd XI: A fine opening partnership of 151 by Jonny Young (86) and George Martin (45) sealed a win over Glynde & Beddingham by 106 runs.\nAnsty asked to bat by their visitors enjoyed the sunshine with Megan Janman (19), Adam Butler (15), Luke Davies (15) and Alex Beard (12no) all contributing good runs as Ansty’s innings closed on 250.\nGlynde’s reply started slowly with Tim Stirney’s 59 the top score as their innings subsided from 90-1 to 144 all out. Luke Davies took 5-18 and Shaun Janman 3-32.\n3rd XI: A humbling performance from the 3rd XI saw them crash to defeat by 7 wickets to St James Montefiore.\nDel Mundy top scored with 10 as the home side could master just 79. Ahmad Sameer took 5-10.\nSt James won thanks to 24no from Ned Mundy and 20 from Mike Ralph with 1 wicket each for Will Carr, Connor Silvey and Connor Mullins.", "Get Birmingham City FC updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nBlues were founded in 1875.\nSimilar to the formation of many football clubs at the time, members of the local cricket side wanted to play a sport in the winter. The team based at Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, on the east side of Birmingham, decided to form a football team.\nUnder the initial name of Small Heath Alliance their early games took place on a piece of waste ground off Arthur Street, then at a field in Sparkbrook, before they moved to Muntz Street in 1877 paying rent of £5 per year.\nThey became the first football club to become a limited company with a board of directors, under the name of Small Heath F.C. Ltd in 1888 before moving to St Andrew's in 1906 after changing their name to Birmingham Football Club.\nThe name Birmingham City F.C was adopted in 1943.\nA quick guide\nTheir blue kit colour was established right from the start with the first strip a dark blue shirt with a white sash and white shorts.\nSeveral variations were worn but the royal blue stuck and has been the club's main kit colour for well over 100 years.\n(Image: David Rogers/Getty Images)\nBlues' most famous achievement was lifting the League Cup at Wembley in 2011. They beat Arsenal 2-1 in the final, with Obafemi Martins scoring the winning goal after Robin van Persie's strike has cancelled out Nikola Zigic's opener.\nThat was the second time Blues lifted the trophy after their 1963 success. Blues have been FA Cup runners up on two occasions and won the Second Division four times.\nThe club have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions and in 1956 became the first English club side to take part in European competition.\nBlues' home ground St Andrew's has a capacity of 29,409.", "The family of a dentist who served the community for decades has paid tribute to him.\nPeter Joseph Saville cared for thousands of patients in Worthing for more than four decades at his practice in West Park Lane.\nPeter Joseph Saville cared for thousands of patients in Worthing for more than four decades at his practice in West Park Lane, Worthing.'He died peacefully at his home in Mill Road, Worthing, at home on June 27 aged 90.\nHe died peacefully at his home in Mill Road, Worthing, at home on June 27 aged 90.\nHis granddaughter Anne Saville, from Goring, said: “He enjoyed life to the absolute maximum and passed on a ‘joie de vivre’ on to his children and grandchildren with excellence. Peter was an exceptionally kind and gentle man who believed in love and giving love to all.\n“His life is a true celebration of all his achievements and how he set example to everyone. Those who were lucky enough to know him remember him as one of the kindest, most selfless men they’ve ever known. He will be very sadly missed by all his loving family and friends and will remain in their hearts forever.”\nPeter was born in Ilford, Essex on May 2, 1928, son to John H Saville and Mary Louise Macintyre, brother to Bernard, Margaret and Mary. He studied dentistry at Guys Hospital, London, before spending time in the army doing national service as an officer, where he was stationed in Cyprus and Egypt for a period of time in the early 1950’s as a dental surgeon.\nPeter was affected by the loss of his navigator brother; Bernard Saville 49th Sqdn. Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve who flew in a\nLancaster and was sadly killed in action during the war. Anne said: “He enjoyed his time in the Army Dental Corps immensely; the travel, the training, the serving and appreciation of the camaraderie.”\nHe married Josephine in 1954, his wife of 64 years, in her home town of Hull and immediately moved to Worthing in 1954 to start their family.\nHe joined a dental practice in Lancing prior to setting up his own practice in West Park Lane.\nAnne said: “He loved Worthing and the surrounding South Downs. The town became his home for the rest of his life and he gave much to it in his own subtle way.”\nA sparkling and energetic lover of life, Peter was an excellent sportsman and athlete. His first sporting passion being cricket, his father’s side of the family had enough Savilles for their own cricket team in Ilford.\nHe played for Worthing Hockey Club, eventually becoming president, he was also a member of Hill Barn and Worthing Golf Clubs and West Worthing Tennis and Squash Club.\nIn the early 1970’s he founded the squash section of ‘The Manor Sports Club’, named after The Manor Ground cricket and hockey club.\nOnce the West Worthing Club in Titnore Road, had opened in 1974, The Manor Squash members moved permanently to their new location.\nA typical week would involve, tennis, golf and hockey. He enjoyed playing tennis at least once a week right up until October 2017 with his regular Thursday night tennis group. Peter and Josephine’s friends also formed a monthly music night, which was featured in The Worthing Herald in late 1980’s, where their mutual appreciation and love of classical music flowed.\nHis dental patients would also recall the variety of classical music in the surgery.\nAnne said he had ‘a wide and fabulous circle of friends’, who together enjoyed touring caravan holidays across Europe, with good food, fine wine, a decent local beer and ‘endless good times’, which ‘were all part of his rich tapestry of life that was so incredibly joyful’.\nPeter was a devoted and active Catholic, and the church was an important part of his life. He was a Eucharistic minister, he visited the sick and elderly to offer up communion and in the later years of his life, went to mass every day of the week. He visited Lourdes in France for many years as a carer and then as a pilgrim. A member of the Catenian Association for over 50 years, Peter also supported a large number of charities, including Worthing Churches Homeless project.\nAnne said: “Highly regarded for many activities, he was well known and very much respected throughout Worthing. A man who didn’t just enjoy the ride but was involved, sitting on numerous committees; hockey, squash, PTA, Catenian and leading these organisations as captain, chair and president.”\nHe is survived by his wife Josephine, his children John-Pete, Jane, Paul, Theresa, Anna and Joseph, and his eight grandchildren.\nThe funeral mass will be held at Saint Mary of the Angels, Crescent Road on Thursday, July 12 at midday, followed by burial at Durrington Cemetery.\nFamily flowers only, donations for either CAFOD or St Barnabas House may be sent care of H D Tribe Ltd, 130 Broadwater Road, Worthing. Call 01903 249 913 for details.", "An explosive batting performance from Thame 1st XI was enough to see off a spirited Datchet outfit in their first Home Counties Premier League game of the season.\nHaving won the toss and elected to bat, opener Will Sutcliffe (67) and overseas player, Gami Kanishka, ruthlessly set about the Datchet bowling.\nKanishka went through to a superb hundred on debut before eventually falling for 121, but cameos from the rest of the middle order saw Thame set a club record 347-6.\nThe Datchet reply was led by captain Gareth Harte who blazed 101 off just 63 balls, but once he fell as one of five victims for Hassam Mushtaq, the chase fell away.\nTight spells from Mike Higgs and Andy Russell ensured that Datchet were bowled out for 242 to give Thame the ideal start to 2017.\nElsewhere, Thame IIs, newly-promoted to Cherwell Division Four, were put into bat by Stokenchurch on a cold day.\nAfter losing two early wickets, runs started to come from Richard Carr (21), followed by a gritty fourth-wicket partnership of 54 between Guy Holmes (27) and Ben Warwick (27).\nHowever, the last six wickets fell for only 38 in the face of good bowling by Maddock (5-29), leaving the total at just 138.\nIn reply, Thame were encouraged by two early wickets to John Phippen but their total never looked big enough and, with Maddock (69) again their tormentor, Stokenchurch reached 140-4 in 32 overs.\nThame IIs travel to Witney Mills this Saturday.\nThe IIIs kicked off the season at Lord Williams’s Upper School against Kimble IIs.\nWinning the toss, Thame opted to bowl and this proved a good decision with Vimal Desai taking three quick wickets.\nKimble rallied but then continued to lose wickets, ending on 156 all out on a difficult pitch. Lewis Ludlam, Ed Mather and Danny Thompson took two wickets each, with a run out finishing the innings.\nThame started poorly, losing two wickets early. As wickets continued to fall, and runs coming at a slow pace, only Matt Swain (12) and Lewis Ludlam (11) made double figures.\nThame knuckled down for the draw with gutsy knocks from Vimal and Mather.\nThame reached 71-8, taking 10 points for the draw and the bowling performance.", "Day/night tour game crucial to first Test prep, stresses Holder\nCaptain Jason Holder says West Indies will be looking to sustain their intensity as they head into the final three-day tour game against Derbyshire — which began here yesterday — ahead of next week's start of the 'pink ball' opening Test against England.\nSignificantly, the game will be a day/night affair bowling off at 2 pm (9 am Eastern Caribbean time), and will be a crucial warm-up to the inaugural pink ball Test at Edgbaston.\n“Batsmen got to spend some time in the middle, bowlers got the chance to get a good run out. Going into this last game before the Test series starts, it's important that we get accustomed to the pink ball here in England, see what it does, see what it doesn't do and try and formulate some plans going into the first Test.”\nRead the full article at the Jamaica Observer.\n0 comments", "For a team that has always made a virtue of its unparalleled attention to detail, the first ever day-night Test match in England will pose new and unfamiliar problems. Playing five-day cricket under lights, with a pink ball, is a “step into the unknown”, as Stuart Broad put it on Monday.\nBut the overwhelming sentiment in the England dressing room is that something larger is at stake here.\nEngland held their first ever pink-ball practice session under the Edgbaston floodlights on Monday night. It will also be their last – at least, before the first Investec Test begins on Thursday. It is hard to recall a modern-day England side going into battle with so little preparation, so little idea of what to expect, taking such a leap of faith.\nBroad admitted that his experience of the pink Duke ball stretched to a single delivery in a Sky television demonstration at Chelmsford. “I don’t know what to expect. We’re going to have to be so adaptable on the day, and figure out what’s going on.”\nThis is the fifth ever day-night Test, but the first to be played with a Duke. A trial round of day-night County Championship games was scheduled in June, with mixed results. Not all of the current England squad played in those matches, and of those who did, only Alastair Cook and James Anderson enjoyed significant time in the middle.", "Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nCambridge University captain Patrick Tice hopes a change in the Light Blues' approach will pay dividends ahead of their Greene King IPA Twenty20 Varsity Match against Oxford at Fenner's tomorrow (June 16).\nThey will be looking to bounce back from pretty comprehensive defeats at the hands of Oxford last year, including a 38-run defeat in the Twenty20 Varsity.\nAnd a good start to the year, including winning seven out of eight games against the likes of Cambridgeshire, the Armed Forces and Duke of Norfolk XI, Tice said his team are feeling confident.\nHe said: “I think we’re feeling pretty confident. Seven out of eight wins before exams is the best a Blues team has done in anyone’s memory, certainly in recent memory.\n“We’ve got the core of a really good cricket team with good opening batsmen and a great selection of bowlers and spinners.\n“One thing you’ve got to always say though is the reason Twenty20 is so exciting is any one team can beat another.”\nAnd Tice admits that an overhaul in the team’s tactics, which will include “six or seven” new Blues, has made him sure that they can lay down a marker before the one-day and four-day Varsity showdowns.\nHe said: “Losing last year is something which is driving us on. The guys who performed last year have stayed and some who have struggled have moved on.\n“It’s about digging deep and using our defeat to motivate us.\n“It’s a fresh team and we like to think of ourselves as a new cricket team playing a new brand of cricket.\n“It’s out with the old and in with the new as we have six or seven new Blues coming through.\n\"We’ve been beating teams handsomely this year where we’ve been beaten in the past and hopefully that’ll be the same with Oxford.”\nThe men’s match starts at 2.30pm and is preceded by the women’s Twenty20 Varsity at 11am.", "Mohammad Shahzad (born 15 July 1991) is an Afghan cricketer who is a right-handed batsman who plays primarily as a wicketkeeper. Shahzad represents Afghanistan in international cricket.\nShahzad played in the 2009 ICC World Cup Qualifiers, where Afghanistan gained ODI status. In August 2009, Shazad made his first-class debut against a Zimbabwe XI.\nDuring Afghanistan's tour to the Netherlands in 2009, Shahzad made Afghan cricketing history by becoming the first Afghan to score a century in a One Day International match, scoring 110 runs as Afghanistan won the match by 6 wickets, their maiden first-class win.\nIn January 2010, Shahzad played a key role in Afghanistan's win over Ireland, with scores of 88 in Afghanistan's first-innings and an unbeaten 42 to lead Afghanistan to a 7 wicket victory.\nIn February 2010, Shahzad made his Twenty20 International debut against Ireland, which Afghanistan lost by 5 wickets. Later in February, aged 18, Shahzad became the first Afghan to score a first-class double century when he scored 214* in Afghanistan's successful chase of 494 runs to beat Canada in the Intercontinental Cup.", "Visit St Marks School\nHolly MacNeil\nThe Country Teams’ tour of Hong Kong featured two games at Happy Valley, site of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Racecourse. A most spectacular venue, it hosted two fixtures this week.\nThe first round was against the Hong Kong Cricket Club hockey section and both Wattles and Venom enjoyed successful results. Both teams have come together well given that they do not play or train together until they arrive ‘in-country’ on tour. The teams are showcasing Australian Country Hockey and being well received by their hosts.\nThe return to Happy Valley the following night for a fixture against the Hong Kong Football Club was an eagerly awaited re-match from when the Wattles and Venom were in Hong Kong in 2013 when the Aussies went home with the prizes. The Wattles were victorious in a fast and skilful game against the local expats and maintain an unbeaten record on tour.\nThe men’s game was a hard-fought match reflecting the intent and commitment of both teams. The locals made the most of their opportunities in a match that could have gone either way, and eventually saw the locals finish on top.\nFollowing these games, and as part of the 165th Year Celebrations, St Mark’s College, Hong Kong, hosted a visit by representatives of the Country teams for an exhibition match and coaching session at the College.\nThe excitement amongst the students was amazing as they welcome the ‘Aussie’ team with great applause and enthusiasm. A 6-a-sde game played in the courtyard was the showpiece of a day that has proved to be a tour highlight. The atmosphere was electric hundreds of student watching on from the balconies of four floors of classrooms.\nHockey is a growing sport within the school and the teams were assured that the visit did much to enhance the standing of the sport within the school community. Follow up visits to St Paul’s are on the itinerary for future tours into Hong Kong.\nHockey Australia media release", "The video will start in 8 Cancel\nGet Birmingham City FC updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nBirmingham City were last in the Premier League in 2011 when they were relegated back to the Championship under Alex McLeish.\nBlues finished in 18th place following a final day 2-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur.\nThey won eight of their 38 matches, drawing 15 and losing 15 to finish on 39 points.\nBlackpool and West Ham United were also relegated.\nThat was Blues' 57th season in the top flight of English football, and their final campaign with McLeish as the manager.\nBlues have played in the Championship since.\nPodcast\nYou can subscribe to our podcast\nAudioboom: https://audioboom.com/channel/blue-noise\nBirmingham City - a quick guide\nBlues were founded in 1875.\nSimilar to the formation of many football clubs at the time, members of the local cricket side wanted to play a sport in the winter. The team based at Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, on the east side of Birmingham, decided to form a football team.\nUnder the initial name of Small Heath Alliance their early games took place on a piece of waste ground off Arthur Street, then at a field in Sparkbrook, before they moved to Muntz Street in 1877 paying rent of £5 per year.\nThey became the first football club to become a limited company with a board of directors, under the name of Small Heath F.C. Ltd in 1888 before moving to St Andrew's in 1906 after changing their name to Birmingham Football Club.\nThe name Birmingham City F.C was adopted in 1943.\nTheir blue kit colour was established right from the start with the first strip a dark blue shirt with a white sash and white shorts.\nSeveral variations were worn but the royal blue stuck and has been the club's main kit colour for well over 100 years.\nBlues' most famous achievement was lifting the League Cup at Wembley in 2011. They beat Arsenal 2-1 in the final, with Obafemi Martins scoring the winning goal after Robin van Persie's strike has cancelled out Nikola Zigic's opener.\nThat was the second time Blues lifted the trophy after their 1963 success. Blues have been FA Cup runners up on two occasions and won the Second Division four times.\nThe club have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions and in 1956 became the first English club side to take part in European competition.\nBlues' home ground St Andrew's has a capacity of 29,409.", "Get Birmingham City FC updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nBirmingham City returned to the Championship having been relegated from the Premier League in 2011 and are currently on their seventh manager since.\nChris Hughton, Lee Clark, Gary Rowett, Gianfranco Zola, Harry Redknapp, Steve Cotterill and now Garry Monk have occupied the dugout in that time.\nHughton led Blues to the play-offs in 2012 before they were beaten by Blackpool in the semi final. He left to become Norwich City's manager that summer.\nLee Clark was his replacement and lasted 28 months in the job - sacked in October 2014 with the club in a relegation fight.\nGary Rowett was the next man to take the hotseat and steadied the ship consecutive 10th-placed finishes.\nHe was sacked in November 2016 with Blues in and around the play-offs as the board moved to appoint Gianfranco Zola.\nZola was also given the boot - the Italian sacked after a disastrous run of form before Harry Redknapp came in pull off a survival revivial.\nSteve Cotterill was his successor earlier this season and current Garry Monk was brought in to replace him amidst another bottom of the table scrap.\nPodcast\nYou can subscribe to our podcast\nAudioboom: https://audioboom.com/channel/blue-noise\nBirmingham City - a quick guide\nBlues were founded in 1875.\nSimilar to the formation of many football clubs at the time, members of the local cricket side wanted to play a sport in the winter. The team based at Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, on the east side of Birmingham, decided to form a football team.\nUnder the initial name of Small Heath Alliance their early games took place on a piece of waste ground off Arthur Street, then at a field in Sparkbrook, before they moved to Muntz Street in 1877 paying rent of £5 per year.\nThey became the first football club to become a limited company with a board of directors, under the name of Small Heath F.C. Ltd in 1888 before moving to St Andrew's in 1906 after changing their name to Birmingham Football Club.\n(Image: David Rogers/Getty Images)\nThe name Birmingham City F.C was adopted in 1943.\nTheir blue kit colour was established right from the start with the first strip a dark blue shirt with a white sash and white shorts.\nSeveral variations were worn but the royal blue stuck and has been the club's main kit colour for well over 100 years.\nBlues' most famous achievement was lifting the League Cup at Wembley in 2011. They beat Arsenal 2-1 in the final, with Obafemi Martins scoring the winning goal after Robin van Persie's strike has cancelled out Nikola Zigic's opener.\nThat was the second time Blues lifted the trophy after their 1963 success. Blues have been FA Cup runners up on two occasions and won the Second Division four times.\nThe club have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions and in 1956 became the first English club side to take part in European competition.\nBlues' home ground St Andrew's has a capacity of 29,409.", "Sudbury’s Adam Mansfield will lead Suffolk this weekend for the first time since being officially appointed as the county’s youngest captain.\nThe 25-year-old was confirmed as Suffolk’s 22nd permanent skipper last September in succession to Sudbury team-mate Tom Huggins, who has taken on a coaching role with Essex CCC.\nWicket-keeper Mansfield takes charge of the team for the county’s opening Unicorns Trophy one-day match against Hertfordshire on Sunday, April 23.\nSuffolk have named a 12-man squad for the 50 overs-a-side fixture at North Mymms Cricket Club (11am).\nMansfield’s Sudbury team-mates Darren Batch and Ben Parker, who has joined the club this season from Hadleigh, are also included in the squad.\nEx-Essex batsman Jaik Mickleburgh, who will be playing as Suffolk’s professional this season, is poised to make his debut.\nDarren Ironside, an all-rounder who plays for Essex League side Buckhurst Hill, is also included for the first time.\nSuffolk squad: Darren Batch (Sudbury), Martyn Cull (Copdock & OI), Michael Comber (Frinton), Darren Ironside (Buckhurst Hill), Adam Mansfield (Sudbury), Dominic Manthorpe (Bury St Edmunds), Jaik Mickleburgh (Copdock & OI), Ben Parker (Sudbury), Tom Rash (Copdock & OI), Matt Salisbury, Jake Wakelin (Sudbury) and Matt Wareing (Copdock & OI).", "The video will start in 8 Cancel\nGet Birmingham City FC updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nBirmingham City have made 14 signings this season in the Sky Bet Championship.\nAll of their incoming business was done during the summer transfer window with no arrivals during January.\nBlues brought in nine players on permanent deals while five joined on loan.\nHere's a list of those that joined and from which club.\nCraig Gardner (WBA)\nMarc Roberts (Barnsley)\nDavid Stockdale (Brighton & Hove Albion)\nCheikh Ndoye (Angers)\nIsaac Vassell (Luton Town)\nHarlee Dean (Brentford)\nMaxime Colin (Brentford)\nJota (Brentford)\nJason Lowe (Blackburn Rovers)\nCohen Bramall (Arsenal) Loan\nSam Gallagher (Southampton) Loan\nCarl Jenkinson (Arsenal) Loan\nJérémie Boga (Chelsea) Loan\nLiam Walsh (Everton) Loan\nPodcast\nYou can subscribe to our podcast\nAudioboom: https://audioboom.com/channel/blue-noise\nBirmingham City - a quick guide\nBlues were founded in 1875.\nSimilar to the formation of many football clubs at the time, members of the local cricket side wanted to play a sport in the winter. The team based at Holy Trinity Church, Bordesley, on the east side of Birmingham, decided to form a football team.\nUnder the initial name of Small Heath Alliance their early games took place on a piece of waste ground off Arthur Street, then at a field in Sparkbrook, before they moved to Muntz Street in 1877 paying rent of £5 per year.\nThey became the first football club to become a limited company with a board of directors, under the name of Small Heath F.C. Ltd in 1888 before moving to St Andrew's in 1906 after changing their name to Birmingham Football Club.\n(Image: David Rogers/Getty Images)\nThe name Birmingham City F.C was adopted in 1943.\nTheir blue kit colour was established right from the start with the first strip a dark blue shirt with a white sash and white shorts.\nSeveral variations were worn but the royal blue stuck and has been the club's main kit colour for well over 100 years.\nBlues' most famous achievement was lifting the League Cup at Wembley in 2011. They beat Arsenal 2-1 in the final, with Obafemi Martins scoring the winning goal after Robin van Persie's strike has cancelled out Nikola Zigic's opener.\nThat was the second time Blues lifted the trophy after their 1963 success. Blues have been FA Cup runners up on two occasions and won the Second Division four times.\nThe club have spent most of their history bouncing between the top two divisions and in 1956 became the first English club side to take part in European competition.\nBlues' home ground St Andrew's has a capacity of 29,409.", "Filmmaker Karan Johar walked the ramp for designer label Falguni Shane Peacock on the third day of the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week. Karan Johar dazzled the runway dressed in a stylish jacket in silver and black colour but it was his striking hairdo, which stole the show.\nIt’s that time of the year again when the much awaited Lakme Fashion Week has begun. It was the third day of the LFW 2918 when filmmaker Karan Johar, who is known for his style statements and shining pair of shoes which he loved to show off, walked the ramp for designer label Falguni Shane Peacock on the third day of the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week. Karan Johar dazzled the runway dressed in a stylish jacket in silver and black colour but it was his striking hairdo, which stole the show.\nThe filmmaker took to micro-blogging site Twitter to share his new look with a spectacular grey hairdo and wrote, “50 Shades of Grey.” Karan has always been vocal about the fact that he loves to wear shining ‘OOTD’ but we never knew that he would go n experiment this with his hair n still look fabulous. Karan dazzled the ramp with his shimmery attire, grey hair and of course, the confidence that the filmmaker always carries be it any fashion show.\nOn the work front, Karan’s previous directorial venture after Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was a big success and now Dharma Productions has a huge line up of films that he has put his money in – Drive featuring Sushant Singh Rajput and Jacqueline Fernandez, Raazi featuring Alia Bhatt and Vicky Kaushal, Kesari featuring Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra, Brahmastra featuring Ali and Ranbir Kapoor. He will also be seen acting in the upcoming film Welcome to New York. He sure has his plate full. Last year, Karan Johar embraced parenthood and became a single father to twins Roohi and Yash, who were born via surrogacy.", "Afghanistan visit Zimbabwe for a five match ODI series full of confidence having knocked over their hosts in their last bilateral clash.\nDespite enjoying full member status in the ICC Zimbabwe occupy a similar status to that of their visitors but while Afghanistan are a team on the rise cricket the hosts are desperately trying to arrest their slide in status.\nZimbabwe recently appointed one of their most successful former players as the new head coach and this series will give the team a chance to show what they have learned under Heath Streak.\nAfghanistan come into this series for once not being considered as rank outsiders and are likely to consider anything but a series win as a failure.\nThe associate member nation have won three of their last five series achieving a tie against Ireland and narrowly losing to Bangladesh in a tight series in October.\nThe problem for both sides is that they don’t play enough cricket to build anything like the kind of continuity you need to challenge the big boys of world cricket.\nFor Afghanistan’s last visit to the country, then Zimbabwe coach, Dav Whatmore complained the pitches were tailor made for their visitors. That series defeat would contribute to the Australian being axed from his role by Zimbabwe Cricket.\nThis series promises to be a desperate scrap for relevance as both sides seek to play a brand of cricket that will earn them more invitations to bilateral series.\nKey men\nCraig Ervine has taken his game a huge step forward despite the sparse cricket on offer to him in the colours of Zimbabwe and the hosts will be looking to him to hold the innings together should the top order not fire.\nDonald Tiripano is fast becoming Zimbabwe’s most consistent bowler and his solitary ODI career five for came against Afghanistan, he and Carl Mumba have shown a lot of promise and will need to deliver if their team is to avoid a series defeat on home soil.\nMohammad Shahzad may look like a throwback to Arjuna Rantunga and David Boon but he is an exciting man to watch when he has the willow in his hands. He will take the attack to the Zimbabwe bowlers early and often.\nDawlat Zadran is a bowler capable of generating genuine pace and it has earned him the honour of being his country’s top wicket-taker in ODIs although he is just three scalps ahead of Mohammad Nabi.\nSquads\nZimbabwe squad: Graeme Cremer (capt), Peter Moor (wk), Ryan Burl, Tarisai Musakanda, Sikandar Raza, Malcolm Waller, Elton Chigumbura, Wellington Masakadza, Donald Tiripano, Tendai Chatara, Christopher Mpofu, Nathan Waller, Craig Ervine, Solomon Mire, Richard Ngarava, Carl Mumba\nAfghanistan squad: Asghar Stanikzai(C), Mohammad Shahzad, Noor Ali Zadran, Ehsanullah Janat, Rahmat Shah Zurmati, Hashmatullah Shaheedi, Samiullah Shinwari, Najeebullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi Essakhail, Rashid Arman, Gulbuddin Naib, Kareem Janant, Dawlat Zadran, Farid Ahmad Malik and Aftab Alam.\nLast five head-to-head results\n2016 Fifth ODI: Afghanistan won by two wickets in Sharjah\n2016 Fourth ODI: Zimbabwe won by 65 runs in Sharjah\n2016 Third ODI: Zimbabwe won by 117 runs in Sharjah\n2015 Second ODI: Afghanistan won by four wickets in Sharjah\n2015 First ODI: Afghanistan won by 49 runs in Sharjah\nFixtures\n1st ODI February 16 Harare Sports Club, Harare 09:30 (CAT)\n2nd ODI February 19 Harare Sports Club, Harare 09:30 (CAT)\n3rd ODI February 21 Harare Sports Club, Harare 09:30 (CAT)\n4th ODI February 24 Harare Sports Club, Harare 09:30 (CAT)\n5th ODI February 26 Harare Sports Club, Harare 09:30 (CAT)", "Virat Kohli unfurled the tricolour at Kandy. Virat Kohli unfurled the tricolour at Kandy.\nThe Indian cricket team led by Virat Kohli unfurled the tricolour at Kandy on the occasion of the 70th year of Indian Independence. Head coach Ravi Shastri and other members of the Indian team were also present as Kohli hoisted the national flag, after which the national anthem was sung. In a message on social media, the BCCI also shared the video and wrote, ” #TeamIndia gathered at Kandy to hoist the tricolour on the occasion of Independence Day #IndependenceDayIndia”\n#TeamIndia gathered at Kandy to hoist the tri-colour on the occasion of Independence Day #IndependenceDayIndia http://t.co/SyRLmE4Let — BCCI (@BCCI) 15 August 2017\nEarlier, the Indian cricket team pulled off a thumping win against Sri Lanka in the third Test as they defeated the hosts’ by an innings and 171 runs. In an all round performance, the Indian team ticked all the boxes and outclassed their opponents convincingly. After the win, skipper Kohli expressed happiness with the overall performance and stated that it always felt nice to have convincing wins.\nAnalysing his team’s performance, Kohli said, “The regulars have performed, but the biggest positive would be Hardik’s inclusion and the way he shaped up in these three Test matches. The kind of confidence he showed the with the ball and the maturity with the bat, it really gives us a lot of boost and the balance. The usual suspects are always there and thereabouts. We are a young side, we look forward to play Test cricket, we look forward to play every single Test match with the same kind of excitement and that is the only way you can be ruthless.\nFor all the latest Sports News, download Indian Express App\n© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd", "Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email\nPeter Green was one of Huddersfield cricket’s most liked and respected figures.\nThe 73-year-old gave a lifetime of dedication to Honley Cricket Club and only last month received the Drakes Huddersfield Cricket League’s highest award, the Fred Stallard Cup.\nPresented to an individual who has given long and outstanding service to his club and the game, guests at the league’s annual dinner gave a standing ovation when the award to ‘Mr Honley’ was announced.\nThe Drakes honour came just weeks after Peter received the Institute of Groundsmanship Special Recognition Award in front of 700 guests at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.\nHe has been groundsman at Honley’s pristine Far End Lane ground for the past 40 years.\nPeter, who was associated with Honley CC for over 60 years, will be sadly missed by the whole Huddersfield cricket community.\nBorn in Gilsland, Northumberland, in 1944 (because his father, Leslie, was stationed in the north east with the army at the time), Peter moved to Honley at the age of three – the Green family have been part of the village for centuries.\nHis father and uncles all played for the club and Peter, who went to Honley Junior School and Holmfirth Secondary (now High School), grew up loving cricket.\nHe couldn’t wait for his 12th birthday when he was officially allowed to join to play junior cricket and once through the gates he was never going to play anywhere else and his love for the club never waned.\nAfter leaving school Peter worked as a painter and decorator before joining David Brown’s at Meltham, but he then joined The Post Office and worked as a postman until retiring eight years ago.\nHe married wife Isabel at St Mary’s Church in Honley in 1970. They had a guard of honour with cricket bats and hockey sticks because Isabel played hockey for Huddersfield Ladies and then Colne Valley Ladies.\nThey passed on their love of sport to sons Martin and James, both of whom have followed in their father’s footsteps and become stalwarts of the Honley club.\nPeter had been encouraged by his father and uncles, who took a keen interest in his pathway through junior cricket in the 1950s to the Honley first team, and Peter did likewise for his sons.\nIn addition to his playing career, Peter served as groundsman, coach and committeeman and, having enjoyed a 50-year playing career, he was rewarded with the Lady Sykes Candlesticks in 1983 (son Martin received the same accolade in 2015).\nPeter scored at least 6,711 senior runs and took 88 outfield catches. A talented wicketkeeper, he also had 154 dismissals behind the stumps and twice won the league wicketkeeping prize, the Cyril Thorpe Cup.\nHe became club groundsman in 1977 and continued in that role until his retirement, due to ill health, earlier this year.\nHonley won the Greenwood Trophy (for most improved ground) on four occasions and Peter won the Tom Walker Trophy for best groundsman a record four times.\nHe forged a close working relationship with the Yorkshire County ground staff and his talents and dedication allowed Honley to regularly stage the Sykes Cup Final, league representative matches and Yorkshire junior games.\nReceiving the award from the Institute of Groundsmanship really was the ultimate accolade for all that work.\nWhile working full-time, playing every weekend and looking after the ground, Peter also found time to become a qualified junior coach, spending many hours at junior practice evenings and school indoor nets, not only helping his own lads to love the game, but countless other young players as well.\nFamily holidays have, for the last 38 years, included an annual trip to St Ives in Cornwall with good friends Bruce and Christine Jakeman – the last earlier this summer while Peter was still well enough to travel – but the Greens followed cricket all around the world.\nThey supported England on five Ashes tours to Australia – their favourite place being Sydney – in addition to watching the national side in the West Indies and South Africa, but they went to many other places to watch the game.\nPeter’s funeral will be at Huddersfield Crematorium on Wednesday, December 20 (10.30am) and Isabel, Martin and James would like everyone to wear colour in celebration of his life.\nThat celebration will continue at Honley Cricket Club.", "CRICKET: Tripathi Blue of New Delhi had a successful second day at the Alan Cooke Ground in Phuket yesterday (Apr 12) as they defeated Surfers Paradise Demons in fine style with Deepak Khatri showing quality with the bat, after an earlier 30 not out from former Queensland state player Chris Swan.\nFriday 13 April 2018, 10:07AM\nThe Phuket International Cricket Sixes has been competed for since 2004. Photo: Suppled\nThe Phuket International Cricket Sixes has been competed for since 2004 and forms part of the Phuket Cricket Week organised by the Asian Cricket Sixes Tour (ACST).\nHeritage Cricketers held off the challenge of Tayyarah Rangers to win a nail biting match by two runs as Salmon Hossain Emon held his nerve bowling the final over. Tayyarah.com maintained their challenge at the top with a fine win over previously soaring Gauhati Eagles as Ibrez led the way with the bat.\nIt was a fine day for the two local Patong CC sides, as Patong Blue had fine victories over CBB Postels and then Southern Stars with Matt Kohler showing imperious form with the bat. Patong White comprehensively defeated Gauhati Hawks as the veteran Dixie Joy bought happiness to his new teammates.\nThe afternoon saw the tournaments star players compete in a 12 a side T20 match; which saw an India XI demolish a Rest of the World XI. The World side managed just 90 all out from their 20 overs. The India team knocked off the required runs from just over seven overs as Deepak Khatri shone; scoring 44 not out, taking 2-13 with the ball and grabbing two catches.\nThe tournament takes a day off today (Apr 13) for the Songkran celebrations, as participants head to sponsor bar, the Aussie Pub in Kamala for a barbeque and get together.\nPlay will continue on tomorrow (Apr 14) at 9:45am at the Alan Cooke Ground. Admission is free for spectators, all are welcome and refreshments are available.", "West Indies batsman Sunil Ambris continued his unlucky introduction to international cricket on Tuesday.\nThe 24-year old cricketer made his Test debut this month, but it has not gone how he would have hoped. Far from it in fact.\nHaving been dismissed because of a hit wicket twice in his first three Test innings, Ambris faced only six deliveries in the fourth-innings of the second Test on Tuesday when the situation got even worse.\nNew Zealand paceman Neil Wagner hit Ambris on the wrist, forcing him to retire injured on just five runs.\nMedical tests afterwards revealed that Ambris had suffered a fractured ulna, one of the two main bones in the forearm, according to a team spokesman.\nGood news, however, is that it will not require surgical intervention.\nThe injury pulls Ambris out of the remainder of the second Test, where West Indies are facing a heavy defeat. It also means he is out of the one-day internationals against the Black Caps beginning next week.\nOn Sunday, Ambris became the first player to be dismissed due to a hit wicket in consecutive Tests, dismissed for two runs having stepped on his stumps while attempting to negotiate a short ball from Trent Boult.\nAmbris put himself in history for the wrong reasons during the tourists' first innings against New Zealand in Wellington, becoming the first batsman in the history of Test cricket to be out due to a hit wicket for a golden duck on a Test debut.\nHis second Test innings in Wellington were also full of emotions.\nHe faced two balls from Boult without scoring, before launching the fourth ball he faced in international cricket over the fine leg fence for a maximum, albeit courtesy of a top-edge, joining an exclusive club in the process.\nAmbris' retirement on Tuesday came as the Windies suffered another Test defeat. New Zealand have recorded a convincing 240-run win to wrap up their two-match Test series 2-0.\nA series to forget for West Indies and for Ambris.\nDo YOU want to write for GiveMeSport? Get started today by signing-up and submitting an article HERE: http://gms.to/writeforgms", "Stuart Broad and England step into the unknown this week in the first day-night Test match to be held in England. The historic encounter begins on Thursday when Joe Root’s side take on the West Indies at Edgbaston.\nIt is the fifth match of its type in the global game after three day-night Tests in Australia and one in Dubai, where the Windies were beaten by Pakistan.\nA 2pm start, with “lunch” at 4pm and “tea” at 6.40pm, raises the prospect of some attacking evening declarations and even juggling of the batting order, while the pink ball could behave very differently as the days progress.\nBroad, one promotional delivery aside, has never bowled with the pink ball – easier to pick up under the lights and without clashing with the players’ white clothing – which will be used in Birmingham.\nThe 31-year-old fast bowler admitted: “It’s stepping into the unknown completely. I’ve bowled one ball with the pink ball – I got it relatively straight!\n“I just don’t know what to expect. We are just going to have to be so adaptable on the day, and figure out what’s going on.\nClear mind\n“It’s an exciting concept. I watched the day-night match in Adelaide and enjoyed it. The exciting thing as a player is we are going in with a clear mind and learning on the job almost. The team which will come out successful this week will be the team which reacts quicker.”\nThursday’s Test is the first of three against a young West Indies side missing some star names such as Chris Gayle, Darren Bravo, Darren Sammy and Marlon Samuels.\nThe tourists have lost their last six Test series, and have not won one since beating Bangladesh in 2014.\nHowever, Broad added: “We’ve got a huge amount of respect for the way the West Indies play and the competitive spirit they bring. With a slightly inexperienced team you know they are going to be hungry for success, they are going to be determined to prove themselves, and that is something we need to be aware of.\n“Every ball in this series is going to be competitive, and we have to be switched on to that.”", "NETTLEBED ran out three wicket victors on Sunday in a match dominated by their youngsters against local rivals GREYS GREEN.\nBatting first Greys Green made a cautious start against a swinging ball with 14-year-old Owen Simmons removing the top three batsmen.\nVisiting skipper Matt Skilleter led the fight back with 85 and assisted by Mark Lambert with some lusty blows Greys Green put on 171-7 by tea.\nIn reply Mike McAllister showed promise in his second game after a 20 year break as Nettlebed were five wickets down with plenty to do.\nYoungsters Sam Butler and Jem McAllister took up the challenge with 15-year-old Butler timing the ball beautifully and 14-year-old McAllister chosing good shot selection as the pair put on a match-winning partnership of 63 until both fell just short of deserved half centuries. It was left to fellow youngster Simmons and the more experienced Micheal Butler to see Nettlebed home with three overs remaining.\nGREYS GREEN\nP Hoggart, c Vockins, b Simmons 11 T Cross, c M Butler, b Simmons 10 T Rooke, b Simmons 0 M Cusden, c Latter, b M Butler 6 M Skilleter, b S Butler 85 H Todd, b Vockins 9 M Lambert, not out 33 E Gray, run out 0 L Jenkins, not out 0 Extras 15 — TOTAL (7 wkts) 171\nBest bowling: Simmons 3-36.\nNETTLEBED\nA Warner, lbw, b Rooke 5 M McAllister, c Lambert, b Jenkins 28 A Osman, b Jenkins 14 R Corbett, b Rooke 16 D Buxton, run out 4 S Butler, lbw, b Gray 39 J McAllister, b Gray 43 O Simmons, not out 17 M Butler, not out 4 Extras 4 — TOTAL (7 wkts) 174\nBest bowling: L Jenkins 2-27, E Gray 2-34, T Rooke 2-41.", "For the second year Tipperary Racecourse held their Charity Colour Run last Friday the 11th August and under the starting orders of former Munster and Ireland Rugby legend Alan Quinlan the night was a huge success.\nIn just 2 years of hosting the run Tipperary Racecourse has raised just under €100,000 for charities, with this year’s benefactors being the Circle of Friends Cancer Support Centre in Tipperary Town, and Pieta House.\nAndrew Hogan, Tipperary Racecourse Manager, thanked everyone who took part on the night.\n“Tipperary Racecourse is proud to be able to support the two charities in hosting the event, and we would like to thank all the companies who donated as well as everyone who ran, walked or crawled for their hard work in collecting sponsorship. The money raised will go a long way to ensuring that the two charities continue supporting the community here in Tipperary.\n“We think everyone who was there on Friday enjoyed themselves, from the racing fans, to the participants in the Run, to those who stuck around for the music from the Riptide Movement and Handipak. The energy around the course was amazing and it was great to see everyone out to support the charities,” added Mr Hogan. If anyone looking for more details on how the night went please check out Tipperary Racecourse on Facebook or contact Robert Dunne, Tipperary Racecourse Operations Manager, Tel: 00353 86 3603241 Email: info@tipperaryraces.ie", "CRICKET: Tripathi Blue of New Delhi, India showed no signs of ceasing dominance at the 2018 Phuket Cricket Week. Several of the same side lifted the Phuket International Cricket Sixes crown a few days ago.\nSaturday 21 April 2018, 12:01PM\nAction from last weekend’s Cricket Sixes. Photo: Michael Way\nTripathi Blue saw off challenges from local sides Patong White and Village Cricket Team, with fine performances with the bat from Harshit Kaushik and Carmen, while Deepak Khatri weighed in with a retirement and three wickets in the final game of the day.\nThe event, now in its seventh year, has attracted participants from around the globe to the majestic Alan Cooke Ground in Phuket to enjoy a fine festival of cricket to complete the Phuket Cricket Week organised by the Asian Cricket Sixes Tour (ACST).\nEach of the nine sides will play four matches to determine which honours they will compete for at tomorrow’s (Apr 22) Finals Day.\nTripathi Group, one of the tournament sponsors, fielded two sides in the event; both mixing men and women. Seven women cricketers from India and South Africa, who have developed through the company were split; with two playing for Tripathi Blue and five in the predominantly female Tripathi Orange.\nHot on the heels of the leaders are the UAE Falcons who enjoyed victories over Gulshan Youth of Bangladesh, in a match that was lit up by the batting of Faisal Mohammad, and then the effervescent CBB Postels in a low scoring game.\nTripathi Orange also had enjoyed a good day, collecting two wins as girl power showed the way in wins against a bewildered Patong Blue and then Hong Kong’s Discovery Bay Sea Eagles, as skipper Vikas Rana steered his crew home.\nCBB Postels bounced back to defeat Gulshan Youth, while Patong White collected bragging rights in their local derby against Village Cricket Team. In the day’s other game Discovery Bay defeated Patong Blue as Ankur Soni wielded the willow.\nParticipants headed for a barbeque at the Aussie Pub in Kamala yesterday evening (Apr 20) as they continued to make friendships through cricket.\nDay Two at the ACG got underway at 10 today (Apr 21). Spectators are welcome, admission is free and refreshments are available.", "New Story\n(CMC) – Experienced fast bowler Ravi Rampaul believes knowledge of the conditions could give Trinidad and Tobago Red Force the edge over Jamaica Scorpions in their Regional Super50 semi-final on Wednesday.\nRed Force topped Group A which was staged here in Antigua while Scorpions finished second in Group B hosted in Barbados, and Rampaul said this familiarity with the semi-final venue – Coolidge Cricket Ground – would prove vital.\n“We will play our style of cricket. Jamaica haven’t played a game here yet so we will have the upper hand on them because we’ve played six games here,” Rampaul pointed out.\n“Hopefully we can come and do our stuff again [but] it’s not a matter of who we are playing but what we do with our skills and variations on the wicket.\n“Barbados as well didn’t play any cricket here … and Leewards played more games here. But it’s who bats better in the wicket and uses their skills more.”\nBarbados Pride, who topped Group B, take on Leeward Islands Hurricanes in Thursday’s second semi-final at the same venue.\nRampaul was adjudged Man-of-the-Match on Sunday night for his three-wicket haul as Red Force humbled previous leaders Hurricanes by five wickets to top Group A.\nThat success took his tally for the tournament to 17 wickets, only behind Pride off-spinner Ashley Nurse with 22, and he\ncredited his recent experience with English County Surrey for his improvement.\n“I think that playing in England in their County cricket has really lifted my cricket during the time I\nwas there,” Rampaul said. “Hopefully I could do\ngood for the team before I head off back to England this year.”\nRampaul has been the perfect foil for speedster Shannon Gabriel who has produced some fiery spells with the new ball to unsettle opposing batsmen and Rampaul was full of praise for his pace partner.\n“Shannon has been bowling brilliantly for us so far,” he said.\n“Throughout this competition he has really put up his hand and he’s been delivering. Me on the other end I just try to keep it tight for him to attack. I can’t fault him, he has given his all.”" ]

[ "I have been using Mountain Blend for several years. I do not like very strong, bold coffees (like Starbucks). I also do not like many of the instant coffees available in most stores because of the bitter taste. Mountain Blend eliminates both of these problems. It is flavorful, but mild, and has the smoothest taste - never bitter! I love this product but have been informed by King Soopers that the product is no longer available and they can't order it. I hope this is not true, but I have been unable to find it on the shelf anywhere. I hope you will forward this on to the Mountain Blend company and encourage them to continue producing this exceptionally good product. If Amazon will continue to carry it, I will certainly order it from you." ]

[ "It seems there is never a place where I can buy a good 100% Kona here in the States. At last I found it! GOLD Estate Kona is the best Kona I have EVER had. I gave some to a co-worker down the hall and heard instant raves; this coming from a coffee gourmet. This brand is excellent. The reviews were right.<br /><br />The directions in the package are just right. Follow them and taste the best coffee you've ever had.", "McCanns instant irish oatmeal maple and brown sugar is the best cereal ever. great iron and good for dieters. You can lose weight with this cereal.", "I can remember when SANKA INSTANT DECAFFEINATED COFFEE first came out. It was cold, in those far-off cave-days, and we had to be wary of the occasional roaming saber-tooth tiger.....<br /><br />OK, OK -- so I'm NOT THAT old, and neither, (despite being around for 50 years or so), is SANKA INSTANT DECAFFEINATED COFFEE. In actual fact, though I saw (what was probably the first) ADS for Sanka Coffee, I never got to drink it, because 1)I wasn't old enough to drink coffee then, and 2) In our house, we used up one jar of instant coffee before buying another, and then, only usually when it was on sale, and we had a coupon for it.<br /><br />From what I remember, SANKA was one of the first, (if not THE first), decaffeinated coffee around. But now -- so many years later -- I notice that there are TWO VARIETIES of SANKA instant coffee to be had: DECAFFEINATED, and NATURALLY DECAFFEINATED. I don't<br />THINK there were two types of INSTANT SANKA around then....but, when finally buying some for myself, I decided to opt for the NATURALLY decaffeinated instant -- both because I strongly suspect that this was the original, and because I, along with so many others, believe that \"naturally\" is the best way to prepare anything....<br /><br />The jar, of course, has changed. It always featured an orangy-coloured label --but to begin with, it had<br />a picture of what looked like a middle-eastern carafe on it. This, I suppose, put the image of good and rich Turkish coffee in the would-be buyers' minds -- though I'm not sure it ever contained any Turkish coffee....<br /><br />Well, the jar still has an orangy-label. The middle-eastern caraf, however, has long been gone from this label. This doesn't bother me that much. But -- IT NOW COMES IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY SHAPED JAR FROM THAT PICTURED HERE ON AMAZON, EVEN AS I WRITE MY REVIEW! Not only this.....but the jars of this coffee that I received are made of ---- P_L_A_S_T_I_C____!!!!!!<br /><br />Everyone today -- or most people, anyway, have, I think, some ideas in their mind of the things they think MIGHT herald the end of civilzation as we know it, for, after all, this IS 2011. And next year....!....well, who knows?<br /><br />Someone wrote that the end of civilization just MIGHT be indicated by the multi-nominated Susan Lucci actually winning a Daytime Emmy Award. (This happened --but NO-ONE, to my knowledge, ever predicted the CANCELLTION of the wonderful soap-opera, \"All My Children\", on which Ms. Lucci appears. (!) For myself, I've always had this idea that as long as the instant coffees produced by Maxwell House came in GLASS jars, we were somehow safe. But now, I find that SANKA INSTANT, NATURALLY DECAFFEINATED, in the 8 oz jars, (pack of 4), are presently actually being packed in ...(gasp!)....PLASTIC! And not only plastic -- but in No. 1 plastic! (Only No. 5 and No. 6 platics are reputedly safe -- to reuse that is. Still....I feel queasy about this. And now to my mind comes the even more horrible thought that perhaps ALL Maxswell House Instant Coffees will soon be packed in PLASTIC jars! PLASTIC NEVER KEEPS IN FLAVOUR A WELL AS GLASS DOES!<br /><br />....................As far as the flavour of THIS coffee goes, (and I'm sorry I took so long in getting to this main point) -- it's good....but not great. A mild flavour with just a hint of underlying deep richness is how I'd describe it. I made it the way instant coffee should be made -- with water that has been boiled as MUCH as possible, (when making tea, let the water boil as LITTLE as possible.) So -- this coffee is good -- but nothing really spectacular. As always, like other instant, (and regular), coffees, it's also best kept in the refrigerator after opening, to preserve whatever flavour is there....especially now, when it is in a (gulp!) PLASTIC jar!<br /><br />The new jar is easy to hold, with a cylindrical base, then half-way up, it slopes slightly inward. Around the upper portion are indentations, which look like drops of water, and, I suppose, are supposed to represent perked-coffee flavour.<br /><br />To me, however, they somehow look like tears... :_(", "Instant oatmeal can become soggy the minute the water hits the bowl. McCann's Instant Oatmeal holds its texture, has excellent flavor, and is good for you all at the same time. McCann's regular oat meal is excellent, too, but may take a bit longer to prepare than most have time for in the morning. This is the best instant brand I've ever eaten, and a very close second to the non-instant variety.<br /><br />McCann's Instant Irish Oatmeal, Variety Pack of Regular, Apples & Cinnamon, and Maple & Brown Sugar, 10-Count Boxes (Pack of 6)", "This won the Award for the Healthiest Oatmeal! I can see why 12g of Protein and it taste great! No added sugar or salt and it is so creamy it is by far the best instant Oatmeal I have ever had! And it hold me over past lunch. Love it!!!", "One of the best instant noodle soups I've ever eaten. But it is even better if you add a packet of Kikkoman's instant Wakame Soup (Amazon sells this too), and a few cloves of fresh garlic sliced about a minute before you take it off the burner. The Kikkoman's Wakame Soup is loaded with thinly sliced very tender and savory seaweed and spices that mix perfectly with this soup. The combination is scrumptious! I will be ordering both soups again.", "Ferrara Instant Espresso Coffee, 2-Ounce Glass Jars (Pack of 6)<br /><br />I have been using this brand of Ferrara, Instant Espresso Coffee for about a decade now, often daily in cool weather. You don't need to use a lot of the product to get a full body cup of coffee with crema on top, so the price is right for me! I have tried other instant espresso coffees and I prefer this one. Originally I was in a gourmet store and this is where I found this coffee. Then after trying to locate this brand at a place with a better price tag I found it at World Market, but then they stopped carrying it, however, perhaps they have it back on their shelves again, I do not know. Soon later I began buying it from Sunset Foods in Highland Park, IL. They, like World Market, had it in stock only now and then so I began to order it special from them. After a few orders I decided to check Amazon since Amazon has become so much more of a store for me than books and movies! Now I have an Amazon SUBSCRIPTION for this product to ship to me automatically. To get the BEST PRICE I put this item in my WISHLIST FOR THE PURPOSE OF WATCHING FOR THE PRICE TO LOWER, & WHEN IT DOES I ORDER FOR AN IMMEDIATE SHIPMENT AT THE BEST PRICE *STILL* THROUGH MY SUBSCRIPTION WHICH GIVES ME AN *ADDITIONAL* 15% OFF THE THEN SALE PRICE!! The product itself: I have found this instant coffee consistent over the decade I have used it. Normally you will find this in Italian stores or high-end stores. I like the CONVENIENCE of getting a GREAT cup of SMOOTH coffee just heating water in my microwave and then adding the Ferrara Instant powder. If the water is hot enough the drink will have a lovely thick crema on top. Note: This coffee does not taste like actual coffee, but it doesn't taste anything like any other instant coffee on the shelves either, not like any other instant espresso from any company, and certainly nothing like those grocery store brand instant coffees which I find gross..., however, I admit find grocery store brand ground coffee like Folgers and Maxwell House, etc. to taste like garbage in my opinion! For daily drip (real) coffee at my house we use Lavazza or the online subscription Gevalia brand. So why do I also use an instant coffee like Ferrara? Well, as I said, I love the SMOOTH taste, it gives a comforting hot drink that has a lovely flavor, and with hot enough water you will get a thick crema on top once you drop the powder into the hot water. It is fast, and quite wonderful. And may I add one more thing? It takes away hunger for a couple of hours! I just love it!!", "This is by far the best instant soup I have ever ate. It only takes 3 min to prepare. The best soup in less time than it would take to boil your water for ramen. Bonus only 290 calories for the whole bowl. If you like udon you'll love this.<br /><br />I hope amazon will start carrying the version with KATSUO!", "Anyone who's ever made cocoa the old fashioned way - with Hershey's powder, know what really good, 'real' hot chocolate tastes like. Of every brand of 'instant' hot chocolate I've had (and I've had them all!), Chip Davis's CINNAMON HOT CHOCOLATE is the very best. Thanks.", "NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS FROM THE 8-oz SIZE BOTTLE OF THE SAME COFFEE, SOLD BY AMAZON IN A CASE OF 2-OZ SIZES. BUT...IT'S THE SAME COFFEE!!!!<br /><br />\"Good To The Last Drop!\" has been Maxwell House Coffee's 'signature line' for a very long time. And, in the case of their regular instant coffee, it holds wonderfully true, even today! (Probably for all the rest of their coffees, as well!!!!)<br /><br />I truly feel for the author of the previous review. Maxwell House has changed the jar top (at least on the 8-ounce size). It is now YELLOW, and the top has \"Easy-To-Open\" printed in blue letterings. I don't know if they have done the same with the two-ounce size jar-top or not. But I do know -- after many years of drinking Maxwell House Instant Coffee....first with a red metal screw-on top (with a lovely 5-pointed white star printed on it), and then to the familiar red plastic screw-on top, (no star printed on it) -- that, despite the jar being somewhat easier to open, (it has been approved by the American Arthritis Foundation), that I sorely miss the beautiful red screw-on lids that I grew up with. (In fact, I KEPT the last one I was able to find....but, being plastic, it cracked and broke. So, now I must use the new, easier-to-open, yet somehow not-as-inviting yellow-with-blue-lettering jar top, if I want to buy and use Maxwell House Instant Coffee.)<br /><br />If the new, blue top, is on the 2 oz size as well, I hope that my mention of it can help both you, and your grandmother, to find Maxwell House Instant, if you wish to!<br /><br />The good news is that the Coffee inside is the same as ever! It is not the most \"gourmet\" of coffees.....but it does have a very nice flavour, if made correctly. (TO MAKE GOOD INSTANT COFFEE....OF ANY BRAND....THE NUMBER ONE RULE IS: BOIL THE WATER A LOT! You simply CANNOT over-boil water that you will later pour over instant coffee! The longer you boil the water, the better-tasting INSTANT coffee will be. One trick I learnt<br />to make the water boil longer...yet save on gas and electricity...is this:<br />Use a 2 or 3 quart SAUCEPAN to boil the water, NOT a tea-kettle. Then, first, put in just enough water to cover the bottom...plus an extra ounce or two. Put the heat on high, and wait until the water STARTS to boil.<br />(With a glass pan, you can COVER the pan and make it boil even faster, thus saving even more gas or electricity.) When the water just STARTS TO BEGIN TO BOIL, put in a bit more water. When that water just starts to begin to boil, add more. And so on...until you fill the pot with the right amount of water. You have to be careful -- especially at the beginning -- NOT to let all the water boil out, or your pot will be ruined! But if done correctly, this not only saves power, (as the smaller amounts of water, naturally, take less power to boil), but also boils the water far more than if you just put all the water in at once!<br />So, you get a better tasting cup of instant coffee....and also help preserve the planet, at the same time ! : ) (This method of boiling water is NOT recommended for tea, however. Tea needs water that has been boiled, yes...but boiled as LITTLE as possible. Indeed, I have read, (in \"The Little Princesses\", by Marion Crawford, which I have also reviewed for Amazon.com -- that Queen Mary, herself, used to wait until the water for HER tea had JUST started to boil, before using it for tea.<br />(I guess this boiling water LESS for tea, can help save natural resources, too!)<br /><br />The main thing I want to say, of course, is that MAXWELL HOUSE INSTANT COFFEE has a wonderful flavour, especially if you make it with REALLY boiled water! It is the least-expensive of brand name instant coffees...and gives a nice, invitingly-flavoured cup of coffee! If you like, you can always mix it with other, more expensive instant, (or even regular) coffees....but it's great all by itself.<br /><br />If you want a great tasting cup of instant coffee, yet want to save money, and yet still again, NOT buy a \"store brand\" instant coffee, then MAXWELL HOUSE INSTANT COFFEE is for you! It is, and always has been,<br />\"Good To The Last Drop!\"<br /><br />P.S.: I still yearn, however, to taste Maxwell House's more varied regular ground coffees in instant form. Please, Maxwell House...treat your instant-coffee customers to \"1897\" Coffee, and the other types of Maxwell House ground coffee, in instant form. I predict they will all be an \"instant hit\" with customers!", "\"Jamacian Mountain Peak\" Instant coffee has won a \"Monde Selection\" award, (Luxembourg, 1990), and has an impressive<br />reputation. I have seen \"Jamacian Blue Mountain\" ccffee featured in a \"By Appointment To The King of _____\", famous mail-order coffee company. This would be the GROUND coffee version, (they don't, sadly, offer any instant coffee in this famous mail-order house....although I have, several times, asked them to do so), but the fact is that their \"Jamacian Blue Mountain\" coffee is not only a \"by appointment to Royalty\" coffee....but it is also on their \"specialty\" list, and can only be ordered at certain times of the year! \"Jamacian Blue Mountain\" coffee is also listed in the book, \"100 Things To Buy Before You Die\", (by Maggie Davis). It is NOT the first choice in coffees, (that belongs to 'kopi lewca' coffee....which is produced with the help of certain insects), but IS choice Number 2.<br /><br />So, when I saw what looks to be, (both from name and description), an INSTANT COFFEE version of Jamacian Blue Mountain coffee, instant-coffee-drinking me could NOT resist it!<br /><br />Looking at the coffee before opening it, I noticed that this is a TRUE instant coffee....quite powdery, with no hint of the larger granules one finds in freeze-dried instant coffee. In the jar, it is a surprisingly light brown -- almost a hazelnut coolour, much lighter than most other instant coffees. If you look closely, SOME of the granules seem to sparkle, just a bit, as the light hits them. I remember hearing about \"flavour crystals\" in another brand of instant coffee, (forget which one at the moment), but also remember calling up the oompany, and discovering that \"flavour crystals\" were created by the way the coffee granules are cut....<br /><br />The suggested tags for this coffee include \"organic coffee\" -- and though I believe that a coffee with this much reputation MUST be organically grown, the words \"Organic\" or \"CertIfied Organic\", appear no-where on the bottle's label. Strange.....<br /><br />Anyway, though I usually blend all my instant coffees together, (dry), in a cannister, to get my own unique blend, (and also to disguise the taste of instant coffees I have bought and do not like, (such as Cafe Bustelo, Instant Decaffeinated Espresso coffee, which I found too strong and bitter), I decided to honour JAMACIAN MOUNTAIN PEAK instant coffee, and its reputation, by using it, and it alone, io make at least the first few cups of this coffee....<br /><br />I found the taste to be very, very mild. (It is no accident, that JACOB'S CRONAT GOLD instant cofee is sold by Amazon, as an option, with Jamacian Mountain Peak Instant Coffee...as it too, has a very mild flavour.) If you like MILD coffee, Jamacian Montain Peak Coffee should definitely be your choice. Jacob's Cronat Gold, (for which I have also written a review for Amazon), is excellent, mild coffee as well -- but this Jamacian Mountain Gold coffee, when imbibed, has surprising, fleeting moments of a darker, richer flavour on the tongue, amongst most of the moments, which impart a pleasing mildness....<br /><br />As someone who prefers a somewhat darker and richer blend, (my favourite -- though lazy me doesn't make it too often -- is regular, ground French Roast coffee), I found I had to add TWO rounded teaspoons of Jamacian Mountain Peak instant coffee to my 16 ounce coffee cup, to get even an approximation of coffee flavour...at least, coffee flavour as I like to drink it. Doing this, the Jamacian Mountain Peak coffee did have a very pleasant taste -- but a very mild one. It reminded me, somewhat, of a sweet and innoent girl making her society debut. Nothing loud, strong or raucaus, just a pleasant, mild sweetness -- not unpleasant at all, but not that mature, either.....<br /><br />I intend to have a cup or two of Jamacian Mountain Peak instant coffee mixed with my favourite instant coffee -- Taster's Choice Original. To my American taste, I suspect that the two will be perfect together. Or, perhaps, mixed with an instant coffee I have also liked, but found a little too strong and bitter for my tastes -- Taster's Choice Gourmet Maragor Bold. Tge rich, dark flavour of the Taster's Choice Instant Maragor Bold, and the delicate, warm flavour of the Jamacian Mountain Peak instant coffee should go very well together, I think! A \"marriage\" of two great instant coffees! I think they'll have their \"honeymoon\" in Jamacia! (When I buy the Taster's Choice Maragor Bold Instant coffee, and mix it with the item here being reviewed, I'll report on whether this will be a \"long and happy marriage\", or not. But from what I know of drinking both instant coffees individually, I have no doubt it will be! Stay tuned for the update! )" ]

[ "The outermost layer of Earth is the atmosphere. I say the atmosphere is the outermost layer, because it is as much a part of the of our planet as the atmosphere of other planets is a part of their definition." ]

[ "The layer of skin on the outside of your body is the Epidermis. The outer layer of skin is the epidermis. It is the human body's largest organ. epidermis. The outermost layer of skin is called the epidermis. That would be the epidermis. The outer covering of the skin is the epidermis.This consists of two layers, outermost layer is called the stratum corneaum sometimes called the horny layer.he outermost layer of skin is called the epidermis. That would be the epidermis. The outer covering of the skin is the epidermis. This consists of two layers, outermost layer is called the stratum corneaum sometimes called the horny layer.", "The outermost of the three primary germinal layers of an embryo (the other layers being mesoderm and endoderm) from which the eye is derived. It differentiates into outer surface ectoderm and inner neuroectoderm, which gives rise to neural crest cells.he outermost of the three primary germinal layers of an embryo (the other layers being mesoderm and endoderm) from which the eye is derived. It differentiates into outer surface ectoderm and inner neuroectoderm, which gives rise to neural crest cells.", "The pericarp is typically made up of three distinct layers: the epicarp, which is the outermost layer; the mesocarp, which is the middle layer; and the endocarp, which is the inner layer surrounding the ovary or the seeds.In a citrus fruit, the epicarp and mesocarp make up the peel.he pericarp is typically made up of three distinct layers: the epicarp, which is the outermost layer; the mesocarp, which is the middle layer; and the endocarp, which is the inner layer surrounding the ovary or the seeds.", "Acid mantle is the outermost layer of skin and act as a protection layer which protects the surface of the skin against bacteria, viruses and other potential contaminants.It is formed by the mixture of sweat and sebum secretion.unctions of Acid Mantle. Acid mantle is the outermost layer of skin and act as a protection layer which protects the surface of the skin against bacteria, viruses and other potential contaminants. It is formed by the mixture of sweat and sebum secretion.", "The epidermal layer is the thinnest of the layers and is made up of its own set of thinner layers. The outermost layer is composed of keratin (a fiber protein) cells. These cells combine with a thin layer of oil to create a water-proof layer. Beneath this is a clear transparent layer through which light can pass.", "Fruit anatomy - Pericarp layers. 1 The pericarp is typically made up of three distinct layers: the epicarp, which is the outermost layer; the mesocarp, which is the middle layer; and the endocarp, which is the inner layer surrounding the ovary or the seeds.", "Confidence votes 14. The fibrous tunic is the outermost layer of the human eye. In specific areas are the sclera, or white of the eye, and the cornea which is continuous of the sclera.onfidence votes 14. The fibrous tunic is the outermost layer of the human eye. In specific areas are the sclera, or white of the eye, and the cornea which is continuous of the sclera.", "Sclera. The eye consists of three layers of tissue which make up the wall of the eye. The sclera is the outermost layer of tissue, also called the white of the eye. This layer is a very stable fibrous membrane that continues to retain the shape of the eye and provides protection.he eye consists of three layers of tissue which make up the wall of the eye. The sclera is the outermost layer of tissue, also called the white of the eye.", "The epidermis is the outer layer of the skin covering the exterior body surface of vertebrates. The epidermis provides waterproofing and protection, produces melanin and keratin and maintains the body's hydration levels.The outermost surface of the skin is the epidermis.he outermost layer of skin is called the epidermis. That would be the epidermis. The outer covering of the skin is the epidermis. This consists of two layers, outermost layer is called the stratum corneaum sometimes called the horny layer. Below this is the stratum germinativum. epidermis. Epidermis.", "The inner serous pericardium is subdivided into what two components. parietal layer & visceral layer. Which layer in the heart adheres to the outermost fibrous layer. parietal layer. which layer in the heart is also viewed as the outer surface of the heart wall.", "The lithosphere is Earth's outermost layer, composed of rocks in the crust and upper mantle that behave as brittle solids. The rigid lithosphere sits on top of the asthenosphere, a layer of the mantle in which rocks are hot and deformable.he lithosphere is Earth's outermost layer, composed of rocks in the crust and upper mantle that behave as brittle solids. The rigid lithosphere sits on top of the asthenosphere, a layer of the mantle in which rocks are hot and deformable.", "The cuticle refers to the various forms of the outermost covering of organisms. In humans, the cuticle is the outermost layer of the skin epidermis and is comprised of keratinocytes. In some animals, such as the invertebrates, the cuticle is the superficial layer that covers the epidermis. For example, the arthropods' cuticle is the outermost covering above the epidermis and that which forms the exoskeleton. In plants, the cuticle is the waxy covering on the surface of many of plant organs, e.g. leaves and young shoots.", "The outer layer of an organ or body part, such as the cerebrum or the adrenal glands. 2. The region of tissue next to the outermost layer of plant stems and roots. The cortex lies between the epidermis (the outermost layer) and the vascular tissue.", "The kidneys are made up by three external layers, which include the renal fascia (the outermost layer), the perirenal fat capsule, and lastly, the innermost layer, the renal capsule, which then surround the space of the renal cortex.", "BCCs are abnormal, uncontrolled growths or lesions that arise in the skin’s basal cells, which line the deepest layer of the epidermis (the outermost layer of the skin).", "noun. The outermost, noncellular, protective covering of certain organisms. Supplement. The cuticle refers to the various forms of the outermost covering of organisms. In humans, the cuticle is the outermost layer of the skin epidermis and is comprised of keratinocytes.In some animals, such as the invertebrates, the cuticle is the superficial layer that covers the epidermis.oun. The outermost, noncellular, protective covering of certain organisms. Supplement. The cuticle refers to the various forms of the outermost covering of organisms. In humans, the cuticle is the outermost layer of the skin epidermis and is comprised of keratinocytes.", "2. The region of tissue next to the outermost layer of plant stems and roots. The cortex lies between the epidermis (the outermost layer) and the vascular tissue. In roots the cortex transfers water and minerals from the epidermis to the vascular tissue, which distributes them to other parts of the plant.", "The outermost layer of the Moon is called the crust, which extends down to a depth of 50 km. This is the layer of the Moon that scientists have gathered the most information about. The crust of the Moon is composed mostly of oxygen, silicon, magne...", "Layers of the Epidermis. The epidermis is composed of four main strata, or layers. The outermost layer is called the stratum corneum, which is Latin for ''horny layer.'' While we aren't literally covered in horny scales, this layer is tough nonetheless. It also varies in thickness depending on the body part it covers.", "the outermost layer of the earth that is solid rock and is the thinnest layer. what is the Earths outer core. the layer of Earth made up of liquid iron and nickel. what is the earths inner core. the layer of the earth that is in the center and is a sphere of solid iron.", "The outer skin layer is the epidermis, containing five layers of cells. The stratum corneum, which is the outermost epidermal layer, consists of dead cells and is the major barrier to chemical transfer through the skin. Although nonpolar chemicals cross the skin by diffusion...", "The innermost layer surrounding the earth’s centre is called core, which isabout 3500 kms in radius. Core is the most dense layer of the earth with its densityrange from 9.5 to 14.5 and sometimes even higher. It is composed mainly of theiron and nickel thus commonly known as Nife.", "The outer layers are the skin and then a bone layer with associated periosteum. This layer includes the skull and the vertebrae. Below the periosteum is the Epidural Space which lies between periosteum and dura in the vertebral canal.", "The outermost or upper layer of the skin is called the epidermis (this is the part that we see, feel and touch). The epidermis, which consists of several layers, is mostly made of dead epithelial skin cells. Directly beneath the epidermis, is the other primary skin layer, which is called the dermis.", "What is the outermost layer of the meninges? dura mater The dura mater , or pachymeninx, is the tough and inflexible outermost of the three layers of the meninges surrounding the brain and spinal cord....", "The stratum corneum (Latin for 'horny layer') is the outermost layer of the epidermis, consisting of dead cells (corneocytes).This layer is composed of 15-20 layers of flattened cells with no nuclei and cell organelles.he stratum corneum (Latin for 'horny layer') is the outermost layer of the epidermis, consisting of dead cells (corneocytes).", "This is the outermost layer of the atmosphere. It extends from the top of the thermosphere to 6,200 miles (10,000 km) above the earth. In this layer, atoms and molecules escape into space and satellites orbit the earth. At the bottom of the exosphere is the thermopause located around 375 miles (600 km) above the earth.", "The hair cuticle is the outermost part of the hair shaft.[1] It is formed from dead cells, overlapping in layers, which form scales that gives the hair shaft strength and provide protection for it.[2][3] Although the cuticle is the outermost layer of the hair, it does not give the hair its color because it has no melanin, which is the pigment ...", "The outer most layer of the Earth is the crust, which varies in thickness from about 7-70 km. Below that is the mantle, which of made up of denser rocks than the crust. At a depth of almost 3000 km, you reach the core, which is made of iron and nickel and is even denser than the mantle.", "Epidermis. The epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin. It is primarily made up of cells called Keratinocytes, which are stacked on top of each other, forming several sub-layers. Other cells found in the epidermis are Melanocytes and Dendritic cells.pidermis. The epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin. It is primarily made up of cells called Keratinocytes, which are stacked on top of each other, forming several sub-layers. Other cells found in the epidermis are Melanocytes and Dendritic cells.", "When the outermost layer lies adjacent to the peritoneal cavity, it is called serosa. 1 The serosa consists of ordinary connective tissue with a surface of mesothelium. 2 Serosa has the same composition as mesentery. 3 The serosa comprises the visceral peritoneum.", "Just like the earth, the moon has layers. There are three distinct layers of the moon namely the crust, the mantle, and the lunar core. Crust. The crust is the outermost layer of the moon and it consists of a dusty outer rock layer which is known as the regolith." ]

[ "Boeing" ]

[ "built environment", "frequency modulation", "batter who bats first in the lineup", "allosteric modulator", "reuptake modulator", "The House That Dirt Built", "spacing", "the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring", "Thomas Built Buses", "Modified frequency modulation", "The Who by Numbers", "Betty Who", "The Who's Tommy", "This Is the House That Jack Built", "who is singing", "quadrature amplitude modulation", "fascial spaces or tissue spaces", "Who Dat", "Police Station", "temporal light modulations", "pumping station", "Dr. Who", "bus station", "The Guess Who", "Who You Are", "Fruitvale Station", "Who Is Fancy", "Buchanan Station", "Who's That Girl", "Harbour Station", "Goshen Station", "Stage stations" ]

[ "One thing I'm trying to do here at Mixed Signals is have NPR correspondents write in occasionally with stories that they find out in the field... stories that don't necessarily make it onto the air. NPR's Mike Pesca sent this in this morning from the road: \"I am in South Dakota to do a story about abortion. Or, as I say to everyone I meet here in Sioux Falls, 'I'm here from New York doing a story...' \"'On abortion,' they say. \"Yup. But for a day, let that wait. Because today is a story about basketball. Not the NBA, a little lower. Not the NCAA, a little lower. WNBA? Uhhhmmm, probably a little lower. Rucker Park Summer League? Lower... OK, you give up? \"A-HA! The CBA, the Continental Basketball Association. Google it. CBA, there it is, right in between the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Christian Booksellers Association. \"The CBA is very minor league basketball and last night the playoffs came to Sioux Falls, as the local team the Sky Force played the Rockford Lightning. \"Going in, the only thing I knew about the CBA was that it had this bizarre scoring system...\" For the rest of Pesca's story and for game highlights, click here." ]

[ "South Dakota family doctor Tom Dean knows his community well &#8212; he&#8217;s been in practice there for 42 years. And he&#8217;s seen a lot in that time. But nothing like COVID. We get a South Dakota family physician&#8217;s message for his patients, his community and his state.   Guests Dr. Tom Dean, family physician in Wessington Springs, South Dakota. Jackie Hendry, health care reporter at South Dakota Public Broadcasting. (@JackieHendrySD) Nick Wendell, Brookings City Council member. Executive director of the South Dakota Board of Technical Education. From The Reading List Associated Press: &#8220;Surging virus cases get a shrug in many Midwestern towns&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Danny Rice has a good sense of how dangerous the coronavirus can be.&#8221; True Dakotan: &#8220;Do the basics. Protect each other. Avoid unnecessary risk.&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;So, where do we stand with regard to this evil virus? The answer is – not good. For the last two weeks North and South Dakota have led the nation in the number of new cases per capita. To make matters even worse, the number of deaths has steadily gone up.&#8221; Washington Post: &#8220;‘Election Day is over, and guess what?’&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Election Day is over, and guess what? The virus is still here. It didn’t just go away like the president said. We’re not rounding any corners. Nobody I know in South Dakota stopped talking about it because the voting is done. How could we? It’s right in our faces. It’s spreading. It keeps getting worse.&#8221; SDPB: &#8220;Sioux Falls Leaders Consider Role of Businesses in COVID-19 Prevention&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken is calling on businesses to set the tone for stronger COVID-19 mitigation efforts. He recently expressed frustration with the local Chamber of Commerce.&#8221; Associated Press: &#8220;Doctors fear more death as Dakotas experience virus ‘sorrow’&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;With coronavirus cases running rampant in the Dakotas and elected leaders refusing to forcefully intervene, the burden of pushing people to take the virus seriously has increasingly been put on the families of those who have died.&#8221; NPR: &#8220;COVID-19 Hospitalizations Surge In Dakotas: &#8216;It&#8217;s Like We Opened Up A Spigot&#8217;&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Hospitals are nearing capacity in North and South Dakota, two states where coronavirus has hit disproportionately hard for their small population size and where cases continue to rise daily.&#8221; The Atlantic: &#8220;‘No One Is Listening to Us’&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;On Saturday morning, Megan Ranney was about to put on her scrubs when she heard that Joe Biden had won the presidential election.&#8221; This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Allegation: A financial interest to reap federal aid drives the taking of Native American children from their families and placing them in foster care. Follow the money. This is what investigations so often rightly do, and in the case of Indian foster care in South Dakota, the money is mostly federal aid. The allegation made by the NPR reporting team is that the state unnecessarily takes children from Indian families so as to collect federal funds. This uncovering of what amounts to evil state bureaucratic greed has never been reported before and, if true, provokes outrage. The problem is that the allegation is unproven, and much of the language and storytelling used to make it are unfair. Let's look at how the charge is presented. On a superficial level, the wording can be seen as technically correct. On air, however, and online it comes off more as a chimera of wordplay that, added to the direct statements by Sullivan about financial motive, paint an unmistakable picture of wrongdoing. Sullivan introduces the theme early in the piece this way on-air: State officials say they're doing everything that they can to keep Native families together. But there's another powerful force at work: money. The online set-up offers a little more detail, but no qualification or change in nuance: State officials say they're doing everything they can to keep native families together. Poverty, crime and alcoholism are all real problems on South Dakota's reservations and in the state's poorest areas. But, state records show there's another powerful force at work — money. The federal government sends the state thousands of dollars for every child it takes. When Sullivan later returns to develop the point in the radio version, she begins: Most social workers care deeply about the children they work with, and few would voluntarily take on more cases. But a close review of South Dakota's budget shows there's a financial incentive at work. Every time a state puts a child in foster care, the federal government sends money. Because South Dakota is poor, it sends lots of money — almost $100 million a year. The parallel online sentences add a comparison to other states that I have italicized: A close review of South Dakota's budget shows there's a financial incentive for the department as a whole to remove more children. Every time a state puts a child in foster care, the federal government sends money. Because South Dakota is poor, it receives even more money than other states - almost a hundred million dollars a year. \"Money\" — filthy lucre, judging by the tone — is thus a driver to \"remove more children.\" But the first hint of weakness in the argument is that added comparison to other states. The claim that South Dakota \"receives even more money than other states\" is wrong. In FY2010, the year the story mostly deals with, South Dakota was 48th among the states in Title IV-E funding, the central source of federal assistance for foster and related care and adoption for all children, including Indians, according to the United States Government Accountability Office and the Department of Health and Human Services. The state was followed only by Delaware and Wyoming. One could technically argue that the two represent \"other states,\" but I have to believe that the reporters did not mean to be that disingenuous. South Dakota also didn't lead on a per capita basis. I didn't find a per capita ranking of all 50 states, but in the table below, I did my own calculations and looked at six other states with similarly small populations but most with relatively large numbers of Indians. South Dakota received less federal money than North Dakota and Alaska, the two states it is most often compared with on Indian and other matters. I also looked at California, the largest state by total population and the one that received the most federal funds for foster care. South Dakota received roughly a quarter of what California did on a per capita basis. 3.1: Per Capital Comparison Of Federal Title IV-E Funding Among Some States in FY10 Source: 2010 Census and the March 2012 GAO report, \"Foster Care Program: Improved Processes Needed to Estimate Improper Payments and Evaluate Related Corrective Actions.\" Nor did South Dakota lead on federal funding per child in foster care. According to Kim Malsam-Rysdon, the head of South Dakota's Department of Social Services, South Dakota in 2010 received $11,344 per child, less than half the national average of $25,019. This is for a child of any race. The comparative error by itself does not undermine the money thesis. What does is the almost empty case that follows. Let's look at just the radio transcript. I do this in criticism as much as in convenience. The Web version should have differed substantially from the radio one, but didn't. We as listeners don't want a radio report to get bogged down in numbers and other details, but we do expect the Web version to be complete. The total lack of supporting document", "Okay, it's time to hospitalize Mike Pesca. After yesterday's missive came my way, I told him to get more sleep. Instead, he got less, sleeping maybe an hour last night so he could bring you, faithful readers, his latest adventures in South Dakota. Pesca was there doing a piece on the state's recently passed ban on abortion. He had gotten most of the story, but needed one more element: the voice of ordinary people. He set out to get those voices... and well, I'll let Mike tell the story: \"As I was escorted into a conference room to face four National Park Service rangers worried that I was engaged in improper activity on federal lands, I had to wonder if I would have even bothered visiting if I had known this was what awaited me. Probably. But what if someone told me that the fruit of a nearly 500-mile round trip from Pierre, S.D., to Mount Rushmore would be a mountain so foggy you couldn't see the presidents? Probably not. \"Let me back up. Yesterday, the South Dakota abortion ban story brought me to the most famous place in the state, Mount Rushmore. In fact, it is Rushmore's iconic status that placed it in the news. The idea of boycotting the tourist attraction in protest over South Dakota's abortion ban has been floated, not by anyone prominent and not too loudly, but floated nevertheless. Mount Rushmore's superintendent gave what I thought was a very interesting quote to the AP. I had figured he'd say something along the lines of 'Whatever you think about the state ban, please keep Mount Rushmore out of it. It is a federal park and it belongs to all of America.' \"But instead he sounded another note about how protest and political discussion is patriotic: \"Superintendent Gerard Baker decided the messages from far and wide made sense because Mount Rushmore is a symbol of freedom. 'That's what we're all about here. That's what America is all about, people expressing their freedom and people expressing their choices and so forth.'\" \"But I thought I could use Rushmore as a good place to include an element that my report needed: the opinions of citizens, both South Dakotans and outsiders. Vox pop (short for vox populi, Latin for \"voice of the people\") is probably my favorite part of the job, and I try to conduct my interviews a little like a good civics teacher, challenging the answers, or poking or prodding a little, to get beyond 'I ain't fer it, I'm agin' it.'\" For the whole of Pesca's story, and his run-in with the law, click here.", "The company Moderna said Monday that preliminary data from its ongoing vaccine trial study shows its COVID-19 vaccine is 94.5% effective. The development comes a day after more Americans were hospitalized with COVID-19 than ever before. Here & Now&#8217;s Tonya Mosley checks in with Dr. Clay Smith, president of the South Dakota chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians and a frontline doctor in South Dakota, a state that has been hard-hit by the virus. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "A deadly fungus is fast wiping out bats in the eastern United States. The northern long-eared bat is even facing extinction. But the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota have been a kind of oasis of safety for the species &#8212; or at least it was. Now, the fungus has been discovered there, too. Wyoming Public Radio&#8217;s Melodie Edwards (@MelodieEdwards3) reports.", "Someone in South Carolina claimed the $1.5 billion jackpot from the Mega Millions lottery held in October 2018, ending the mystery of whether anyone would ever come forward to say they had won. The winner, who has elected to remain anonymous, chose the one-time payment cash option, making their prize worth nearly $878,000,000. It is the largest jackpot payout to a single winner in U. S. history, according to a statement by South Carolina Education Lottery Commission. \"We are delighted that the winner is a South Carolinian and has come forward to claim this remarkable prize,\" said Hogan Brown, the commission's executive director. South Carolina is one in only a handful of states that allows lottery winners to keep their identities secret. The others are Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and Texas. As the Associated Press reports, until now there was a great deal of speculation about why the winner had not yet claimed the prize, ranging from suspicions that he or she was a fugitive from the law, dead, or tied up in litigation. The winner has retained the representation of New York law firm Rivkin Radler. The winning numbers, by the way, were 5,28,62,65, 70 and the mega number 5. They were selected by a Quick Pick.", "On Wednesday, House Republicans picked South Dakota's Kristi Noem to serve as a freshman liaison to the GOP leadership in the new Congress. Noem (rhymes with \"home\") narrowly defeated four-term incumbent Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin on Election Day. She lives on a ranch near Castlewood, S.D., with her husband and three children, and plans to commute from there to her new job in Washington. While about one-third of the incoming Republicans have no previous government experience, Noem, 38, has served two terms in the South Dakota Legislature, rising to the post of assistant majority leader. While she was on the campaign trail, Noem said that if elected, her top priority in Washington would be the debt and the deficit. \"The first thing I think we need to start doing is come up with a plan for how to pay down our debt,\" she said during a visit to the South Dakota State Fair. \"And I think that when you do that, you need to start looking at the size and scope of government and all of the departments it has created and [is] continuing to give increases to, and start evaluating their effectiveness and how they're addressing the vision and agendas for why they were created.\" Tea Party Backing Noem said she is not a Tea Partier, but she welcomed support from Tea Party groups in South Dakota. In fact, she told a reporter in Washington this week that she wasn't sure if she'd join the congressional Tea Party Caucus being formed, but that as a hunter, she was interested in the Sportsmen's Caucus. Noem does not favor the full-scale dismantling of government departments, as some of the newly elected Republicans do. But she says each department's budget should be examined, with a special focus on earmarks. \"Lots of these earmarks that have been funded and paid for through the stimulus package or through other major spending bills, you know, leave us in situations where we don't have money when we need it for important things, such as our national defense, or money that was promised to tribes through funding, or money for programs in education that should be there,\" she said. Working Across The Aisle Noem predicted her experience in South Dakota's Legislature would enable her to work with Democrats in Washington. \"I've proven over the years in my service here in the state Legislature that I work across the aisle really well. ... I don't see any problem with making sure that we have a new environment in D.C., and I think that's one of the things that most South Dakotans are very frustrated with. They've seen both parties get very partisan, both parties very willing to poke each other in the eye -- and to the detriment of good policy for business and families back here in South Dakota.\" Mostly, Noem says, she wants to see government get out of the way of the people, who she says make better decisions about how to spend money than the government does. And that's the kind of language most of her new Republican colleagues in Congress understand. ROBERT SIEGEL, host: And Andrea mentioned the new Republican leadership positions, liaisons to the freshmen. One of the candidates for that position is South Dakota's Kristi Noem. She narrowly defeated a four term incumbent, Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. NPR's Brian Naylor covered the South Dakota House race and has this profile of the congresswoman elect. BRIAN NAYLOR: 38-year-old Kristi Noem lives on a ranch with her husband and three children. She plans to commute from there to her new job in Washington. I caught up with her during the campaign at the South Dakota State Fair. She said then that if elected her top priority in Washington would be the debt and the deficit. Representative-elect KRISTI NOEM (Republican, South Dakota): The first thing I think we need to start doing is come up with a plan for how to pay down our debt. And I think that when you do that you need to start looking at the size and scope of government and all of the departments that it has created and continuing to give increases to, and start evaluating their effectiveness and how they're addressing the vision and agendas for why they were created. NAYLOR: Noem said she's not a Tea Partier, but welcomed support from Tea Party groups in South Dakota. In fact, she told a reporter in Washington this week she wasn't sure if she'd join the congressional Tea Party caucus being formed, but as a hunter she was interested in the sportsmen's caucus. Noem does not favor the full scale dismantling of government departments, as some of the newly-elected Republicans do. But she says each department's budget should be examined, with a special focus on earmarks. Rep.-elect NOEM: A lot of these earmarks that have been funded and paid for through the stimulus package or through other major spending bills leave us in situations where we don't have money when we need it for important things, such as our national defense or money for, you know, programs in education that should be there. NAYLOR: About one-third", "Folks in the Mount Rushmore state may be used to seeing presidents' faces etched in granite, but at the beginning of the primary season, most didn't really expect to see much of the Democratic presidential candidates in the flesh. But even with the outcome of the nomination all but certain, South Dakotans feel that Tuesday's primary has put them on the political map, says Bob Burns, head of the political science department at South Dakota State University. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been campaigning heavily there, though their styles have differed. The former First Lady pledged that there would be at least one Clinton on the ground in the state every day last week, but, says Burns, she appears in venues with much smaller crowds — with several hundred attendees, compared to Obama's several thousand. But Burns says that Clinton's campaign message has become more effective as the economy has taken on more importance. He notes that there's only been one independent poll, but it gives Obama a double digit lead over Clinton. He's also gotten endorsements key South Dakota Democrats, including former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. RACHEL MARTIN, host: Tomorrow marks exactly six months since the Iowa caucuses kick-started the primary election season, and the season now is actually coming to a close, we hope. The people of Puerto Rico had their turn Sunday, and Tuesday it comes down to Montana and South Dakota. Let's now fix our gaze on the Mount Rushmore State, the great state of South Dakota. Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have had a heavy presence on the ground there in the recent days. Last week, Senator Clinton went so far as to pledge that at least one member of her immediate family - I guess that means Bill and Chelsea - would be in the state... (Soundbite of laughter) MARTIN: Every day up until the primary. To see if she's kept her promise, we check in with Bob Burns. He's the head of the political science department at South Dakota State University. Hi, Bob. Dr. ROBERT BURNS (Political Science, South Dakota State University): Good morning. MARTIN: Have the Clintons kept their promise? Has there been one Clinton on the ground in the state every day in the last week? Dr. BURNS: I believe they - indeed, they have, and in fact, I availed myself of the opportunity Saturday to attend a gathering in my hometown of Flanders, South Dakota, where President Clinton and Chelsea were present, and they were moving onto other smaller communities here and in eastern South Dakota, right after that visit. MARTIN: What's the vibe on the ground there? Are they generating a lot of buzz in those crowds? What's been the reception? Dr. BURNS: Well, they have taken quite a different approach, with respect to public appearances, than Senator Obama. Senator Obama tends to have his gatherings in large venues, whereas Senator Clinton and President Clinton and Chelsea have had their gatherings at much smaller venues, crowds of three and 400 people, versus crowds of three or four or 6,000 with the Obama gatherings. MARTIN: So, Bob, the big question, which way is the wind blowing in South Dakota? Obama's picked up some pretty key endorsements from some of the state's major political players, including former Senator George McGovern, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. How are things playing out there? Dr. BURNS: Well, there's only been one independent poll. That was done by the McGovern Center out of Dakota Wesleyan University several weeks ago, and that did reveal Senator Obama with a double-digit lead, and then, as you mention, Senator Obama has had the endorsement of former Senators McGovern and Daschle, as well as current Senator Johnson and House Member Herseth, and you know, with those things going, it looked like, indeed, Obama would go on to victory, but the Clinton campaign has been quite effective in South Dakota, particularly as the economy has taken on more and more importance as a major issue in this campaign. MARTIN: Well, let's talk about that. The economy, as it has in so many of these other primaries, has played a major role in shaping the primary race and the elections, but the purpose of this series is to visit the states and have conversations with people who can illuminate something we don't know about them. So here's your big chance, speaking to people who may not have ever been to South Dakota, myself included. What moves South Dakotans? What are the issues that drive them? And what's going to be a - the determining issues in this primary vote? Dr. BURNS: Well, among Democrats in South Dakota, I don't know that - what's important to Democrats in South Dakota is much different than what's important to Democrats across the nation. As I mentioned, the economy is taking on more and more importance. The war in Iraq is very, very important to our voters here. Farm issues, of course, are particularly important.", "Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota -- the second-biggest employer in the state -- is scheduled to be shut down as a result of the latest round of base closures. A hearing scheduled Wednesday will give critics of the closure a last chance to make their argument. Charles Ray of South Dakota Public Radio reports.", "Allegation: South Dakota receives almost $100 million a year in federal reimbursements for foster care of Native Americans. A cartoon poster summoned Lakota Indians to the May summit on foster care. \"South Dakota receives $100 million each year from Washington D.C. for foster care,\" declared the poster, and highlighted the amount in red. \"Shouldn't this funding go to the tribes so that they can handle their own foster care needs?\" It is a good question. A big red \"Yes\" followed. The sought-after $100 million cited in the poster comes from the NPR investigative series and shows how the size of the federal funding claim, stated on-air as fact by reporter Laura Sullivan, has taken on a life of its own. Yet, the number is almost certainly wrong. It may be an exaggeration by three to four times. The number is important because it is for this money that state social workers are portrayed as making pacts with the devil. In a poor state like South Dakota, which gets nearly half of its operating funds from the federal government, $100 million is a lot of money. But in addition to it being unproven that federal funds act as a motive for alleged state abuse in ripping Indian children from their families, as seen in Chapter 3, the dollar amount itself is based on mistaken calculations and misleading labeling. To show how we are misled, let's go back to the beginning. The website headline on Part One refers to \"Native Foster Care.\" Melissa Block introduces the series as being about \"how one state places Indian children in foster care.\" The framing and all the reporting on-air by lead reporter Laura Sullivan is about — or seems to be about — Native American children. To all of us in the audience, this is a story about Indians. Yet, the dollar amount is in fact for reimbursements related to children of all races and ethnicities. And it is not for just foster care, but for adoption and other related services, too. We are not told that these switches are being made in who and what the reimbursements are for, even though the changes inflate the total — in a big way. The unannounced switches are made when reporter Laura Sullivan opens the finance section of her story by saying: Sullivan: Every time a state puts a child in foster care, the federal government sends money. Because South Dakota is poor, it sends lots of money - almost $100 million a year. How are we supposed to know that when she refers to \"a child\" here, she means of any race or ethnicity? Or that \"foster care\" includes adoption and other services? The hidden nature of the definitional transition can be seen even more graphically online in a prominent box summarizing the very findings of the series. Each of the first four findings speak specifically and only about Native American children. Then the fifth says (ungrammatically): * A close review of South Dakota's budget shows that they receive almost $100 million a year to subsidize its foster care program. I — and I am sure most readers — took the reference to \"its foster care program\" to be referring only to Native American children, too, and only for what most of us think of as a foster child living with a foster family, or possibly also in a group center. What is the fiscal size of the exaggeration? In fiscal year 2010, 43 percent of the children in foster care in South Dakota were not Native American, according to the state. As the reimbursements for Indian and other children are roughly equal, this switch in measures alone drops the supposed total coming into the state for Native children to $57 million. No mean drop. In FY10, meanwhile, there were 1,473 adopted children of all races receiving state and federal support, compared to a monthly average of 792 in standard foster care in foster homes according to the state. Among Indian children, 767 were in adoption and an average of 484 were in foster care. At any one given point in time, in other words, foster children are actually greatly outnumbered by adopted ones — almost by double. 4.1: State Breakdown Of Child Placements, FY10 and FY11 Source: South Dakota Department of Social Services The editors explained the broader definition this way: In the story, we use foster care as an umbrella term that covers the treatment and care of children who are removed from their homes after allegations of abuse, neglect or assault. All children who are placed for adoption wait in foster care until the adoptive process is complete. Federal guidelines under the Adoption and Safe Families Act require states to move children into the adoptive process if they have been in foster care for the preceding 12 months. States can move earlier but few do. The majority of South Dakota children removed from their homes with little exception are placed first in emergency care or family foster care. What the editors are saying here is that the story counts as foster funding is all federal money for the care of children put in emergency, family, group, treatment, guardianship and a", "A new law in South Dakota requires voters to show photo identification at the polls. But many of the state's Native Americans live in poverty and don't carry photo IDs. They charge the law has prevented many Native Americans from voting. South Dakota Public Radio's Charles Michael Ray reports.", "An abortion-rights group in South Dakota has started a petition drive that, if successful, would stall that state's new abortion ban and give voters a say in the matter. The move could replace talk of a legal challenge of the law. Abortion opponents call it a desperate maneuver to avoid a legal confrontation. South Dakota Public Radio's Johanna Sailor reports.", "Officials at TransCanada say they are unsure why the Keystone pipeline leaked about 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota on Thursday. The company temporarily shut down the pipeline as it responds to the leak. TransCanada is also awaiting a decision today about whether another permission for controversial Keystone XL will be granted in Nebraska. NPR&#8217;s Jeff Brady (@jeffbradynpr) speaks with Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson about the latest.", "One of America's governors most skeptical about COVID-19 has been South Dakota's Kristi Noem. She's loudly refused to impose any shutdowns or a statewide mask mandate. Noem's devotion to keeping her state open has made her a celebrity in the Republican Party. She campaigned for President Trump in 17 states, and touted her own record along the way. \"What I did in South Dakota is what we say Republicans always believe,\" Noem says. \"We just did it. We just did it, and look at what is happening in our state.\" One of the things happening in South Dakota is an infection rate that's among the worst in the nation, at about 8,000 cases per 100,000 people. In Vermont, another small, rural state with a Republican governor, Gov. Phil Scott has embraced safety measures, and the differences are pretty stark. Like South Dakota, Vermont has fewer than 1 million residents, most of whom don't live in cities. It has about 500 cases per 100,000 people. That's the lowest rate in the nation. Scott has embraced statewide shutdowns and mandated masks. When he reopened the state's economy, he did it slowly. \"My decisions throughout this pandemic, from the closures and other mitigation steps in March and April, to the methodical reopening of our economy, hospitals and schools has been based on the data, the science and the recommendations of our health experts,\" Scott said. Vermont has recorded a total of 3,310 confirmed coronavirus infections since the pandemic began. South Dakota has recorded more new coronavirus infections than that so far this week, with 5,559 confirmed cases. And South Dakota has more than 10 times as many total COVID-19 deaths. Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine says his state chose a balanced approach. \"We felt we could reopen the economy and do the appropriate public health measures for the pandemic in parallel, and that you didn't have to sacrifice one for the other,\" he said. In September, South Dakota had the nation's second lowest unemployment rate. Vermont's was third. When the pandemic began, both states had low infection numbers for several months. Over the summer, things changed in South Dakota. Noem repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of masks. \"I'm opposed to a statewide mask mandate,\" she's said. \"I've been clear about that.\" In July, she hosted President Trump for fireworks at Mount Rushmore; 7,000 people attended. In August, Noem welcomed hundreds of thousands of people to the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally in her state. Around that same time in Vermont, Scott imposed a statewide mask mandate and gave away 300,000 cloth face coverings. \"I'm asking you to look at the data — the real data, not just something you see on Facebook — and realize that the science is real,\" Scott said, \"and that wearing a mask will not only protect the gains we've made, but also help your family members and friends stay healthy.\" Now South Dakota is suffering an extended COVID-19 surge. The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals has quadrupled in the past two months. But that hasn't changed Noem's outlook. \"Business lockdowns have not slowed down infection spreads and increases in positive cases,\" she said, despite evidence to the contrary. \"And even mask mandates [have] not slowed down the spread or prevented other states from becoming hot spots.\" Noem said that on a day when South Dakota reported almost 1,400 new coronavirus infections. Vermont recently had its first day with more than 100 new cases. Scott responded with new mitigation measures. \"I know this is incredibly difficult and frustrating, especially with the holidays right around the corner,\" Scott said. \"But it's necessary, and we need Vermonters' help to get this back under control.\" Vermont's new measures limit social gatherings. They restrict the operations of bars, social clubs and restaurants. They suspend recreational sports. And they mandate teleworking whenever possible.", "A Fourth of July hot dog eating contest in western South Dakota turned tragic when a contestant choked to death. Walter Eagle Tail, 47, of Custer, died at a hospital Thursday after attempts to save him at the scene failed. Speed-eating competitions are popular over the Fourth of July weekend. Eight-time champion Joey &#8220;Jaws&#8221; Chestnut managed to eat 61 hot dogs in 10 minutes at an annual contest in Coney Island, New York, on Friday &#8211; eight short of the record 69 he swallowed in the 2013 competition. Here & Now&#8217;s Robin Young speaks with Kate Najacht, a reporter for the Custer County Chronicle, about the incident. The Associated Press contributed reporting to this article. Guest\n\nKate Najacht, reporter for the Custer County Chronicle.", "The Federal Railroad Administration has denied a more than $2 billion loan for a controversial proposal for a train to run from the coal mines of Wyoming through South Dakota and Minnesota. The chief opponent was Rochester, Minn.'s Mayo Clinic - which the train would have run right by.", "Americans spent $70 billion on the lottery in 2014, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, which looked at spending in the 43 states where lotteries are legal. The Atlantic&#8217;s Derek Thompson calculates that&#8217;s more than $230 for every man, woman and child in states where the lottery is legal &#8211; more than Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets and recorded music sales. He writes in The Atlantic that the national average for lottery spending hides a lot of the variance: In North Dakota, per-capita lottery spending is a pittance at just $36 a year. In South Dakota, however, it's an egregious $755 per head. Lotto games bring in the most money per person in the mid-Atlantic and northeast: number-one Rhode Island (nearly $800 per capita!), Massachusetts, and Delaware are among the top five states, while New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania join them in the top 13 (so does Washington, D.C.). Thompson joins Here & Now&#8217;s Jeremy Hobson to discuss the states where lottery spending is highest, and the morality of states earning money this way. Guest Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic. He tweets @DKThomp.", "Updated at 11:45 a.m. ET Voters in more than a dozen states will vote on ballot questions next Tuesday to enact stringent laws on campaign finance and other government ethics issues affecting state and local lawmakers. The surge in ballot questions comes as national Democrats are embracing ethics reform issues. House Democrats have legislation ready to launch, with more than 100 Democratic congressional candidates signing a letter this month calling for reforms to be \"the very first item Congress addresses\" in January. And 120 Democratic nonincumbents on next week's ballots have pledged to reject contributions from corporate PACs. \"It's telling that we have so many challengers for Congress that are running on this issue,\" said Larry Norden, deputy director of the democracy program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. \"But to get real change now, the only way to do that is at the local and the state level.\" Some of the ballot measures would exceed federal standards, which have been steadily relaxed by the Supreme Court. Congress last passed a major campaign finance bill in 2001. One of this year's broadest measures is in South Dakota. Known as Amendment W, it's a rerun of 2016, when voters adopted major reforms — which the Legislature promptly rescinded. Proponents then drafted the current version as a constitutional amendment, Amendment W, which the Legislature cannot reverse. Among its provisions are restrictions on gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, a ban on campaign contributions from foreign sources, reductions in special interest money and creation of a more independent ethics commission with greater enforcement powers. Amendment W drops a proposed system of publicly financing campaigns, which was the most controversial piece of the 2016 measure. A well-financed national group, RepresentUs, is pouring money and other support into South Dakota. It also backed the 2016 initiative. \"What we do is we decide which are the states where there is a real possibility of impact, of victory, and protecting those victories post-passage,\" said RepresentUs Director Josh Silver. \"When we see that combination, then we get in and support them with time and treasure.\" Leaders of the opposition in South Dakota say RepresentUs and its allies exaggerate both the problem and the proposed fixes. They contend Amendment W would give the ethics commission too much money and power. \"I understand that people are concerned, and angry,\" said David Owen, president of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry. But he added, \"I think there's a growing sense that W is wrong, and we're trying to fan that flame with everything we've got.\" The pro-W effort is financed by RepresentUs, based in Massachusetts, and a Washington, D.C., PAC called End Citizens United. Disclosure reports show they spent about $200,000 this summer and fall, most of it raised from foundations and wealthy donors. Its biggest donor, former Microsoft executive Jon DeVaan, gave $50,000. The W Is Wrong campaign raised about $150,000 during the same period, mainly from South Dakota business and trade associations. It also got $25,000 from Americans For Prosperity, a politically active nonprofit in the Koch network. South Dakota may be debating one of the most wide-reaching ballot questions, but 18 other states are asking voters to deal with elections and politics issues. Colorado, Massachusetts, Missouri and North Dakota propose campaign finance reforms ranging from bans on foreign money in campaigns to restrictions on corporate and union money; in Denver, there is a proposal for public financing of local candidates. Tougher ethics rules are on the ballot in Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota. Voters will decide on proposed ethics reforms, such as creating new ethics commissions, in states including the Dakotas and New Mexico. Long Beach, Calif., has proposals for municipal commissions on ethics and redistricting. And in Baltimore, voters will decide whether to have a citizens commission consider public funding for municipal candidates. Silver, at RepresentUs, said the interest in reform is stronger than in the years after the Watergate scandal, which is considered a high-water mark for good-government issues. \"The reforms we're seeing across the country to elections and campaign finance and ethics are the most robust set of reforms we've ever seen in the history of the country,\" he said.", "The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case with huge potential impact on businesses &#8212; and anyone who shops online &#8212; across the country. South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. essentially pits the 45 states that impose a sales tax against the handful that don&#8217;t. There are billions of dollars of tax revenue at stake here, as well as a huge potential burden on small businesses. New Hampshire is one of the states that has no sales tax. So we asked New Hampshire Public Radio&#8217;s Todd Bookman (@toddbookman) to explain the significance.", "Senate Republicans are cutting deals to shore up support for their tax overhaul, which could get a vote as early as Thursday. Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson talks with Sen. Mike Rounds (@SenatorRounds), a Republican from South Dakota, about the bill.", "Scientists in South Dakota and Japan are using cloned cows with human genes to develop antibodies that will strengthen the human ability to fight diseases. The results of their research will appear in the new </EM>Nature Biotechnology</EM> journal. From South Dakota Public Radio, Curt Nickisch reports that this ground breaking research has scientists thinking of ways the new findings can be used to strengthen the dairy industry, as well.", "Blowing and drifting snow continues to be a problem for travelers in the northern Great Plains. Snow, freezing rain and high winds, which roared through the region on Sunday and Monday, were winding down. Authorities have issued warnings not to travel for much of North Dakota, where vast stretches of roadways have been closed. Windy conditions also led to power outages in both North and South Dakota as well as Nebraska. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses are reported to be without power. High winds in Michigan also knocked out power to thousands of customers. Forecasters say more harsh weather is moving east into the Great Lakes and New England. The National Weather Service reports: The storm is forecast to bring a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain across parts of northern New England overnight, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. \"Farther south, rain and a few thunderstorms are possible along and ahead of the cold front from the Ohio valley to the lower Mississippi valley and the Southeast tonight and Tuesday,\" it said. Even as the storm's grip weakened, authorities in North Dakota, where the front had dumped up to 18 inches (46 cm) of snow, urged travelers in much of the state to stay home because of hazardous conditions. In North Dakota, whiteout conditions led to the closure of Minot International Airport. Flights were also canceled at other airports in the state. The website of the Minot Daily News called the storm \"A Blizzard To Remember,\" and alerted readers that delivering the newspaper would present a challenge throughout the week. Gusty winds were a problem at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Monday. Spokesman Patrick Hogan told the Star Tribune that \"operations are pretty much at the mercy of Mother Nature, at least for now.\" Officials were forced to close one runway, and planes took off and landed at the other. More than 200 flights had been delayed and more than 50 canceled. In parts of the South, it was the threat of tornadoes that concerned people. Unseasonably warm temperatures were raising the risk of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., reported parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee could see damaging winds and isolated tornadoes.", "Despite pleas from cities across the state, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has held out on issuing a statewide stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. An outbreak of COVID-19 at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, S.D., has infected nearly 450 workers and caused the number of cases in the city to grow so quickly that the mayor, Paul TenHaken, calls it an explosion. \"The window of time for mitigation is certainly dwindling right now.\" Smithfield Foods is shutting its doors indefinitely, and TenHaken is asking for a shelter-in-place order from the state. By law, it would take Sioux Falls a week to enact an ordinance on its own, but he says the city is pursuing that if all else fails. \"Our time to act on this is right now,\" he says. But Noem — an ally of President Trump — has been hesitant to issue a shelter-in-place or statewide stay-at-home order. Instead, she says she's taking a \"targeted\" approach. \"I've been very clear about the fact that I don't think decisions for Sioux Falls are the same decisions that are correct and right for a town like Faith, South Dakota, or Lemmon, South Dakota,\" Noem says. Neil Pinnow is the mayor of Lemmon, a small city that borders North Dakota on the western side of the state. He says its nearest hospital is 25 miles away and serves small communities in both North Dakota and South Dakota. \"They get 50 people that are hospitalized with this, they're going to be full,\" Pinnow says. \"The doctors and nurses over there are going to be overrun. Then what are you going to do?\" And if that hospital is overrun, Pinnow says, the next closest one is 140 miles away in Bismarck, N.D. Pinnow is trying to make decisions without a lot of direction from the state or the Department of Health, and he says more guidance and help would be \"appreciated.\" So far, Noem has put out an executive order that says people \"shall\" follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She says that this guidance directs businesses how to operate if they want to keep their doors open. And in two of South Dakota's 66 counties, Noem has ordered all people over age 65 to stay home. But she has continually pushed back on the idea of a stay-at-home order, saying that it would flatten the curve so much that she would have to keep it in place until October for it to be effective. It is unclear what models the governor is using to make that prediction. \"If you're allowing people to mix within an establishment — essentially interact — then the virus is going to spread,\" says Drew Harris, a population health researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He says Noem's approach may not accomplish what the state hopes it will. Numbers in South Dakota are relatively low right now, but Harris says that without stronger mitigation, cases could rapidly increase. He likens the epidemic to a prairie wildfire and a stay-at-home order to a firebreak intended to suppress the flames. \"You always know that some embers are going to jump over the firebreak that starts new fires. But they're much more manageable, and you just put out those hot spots one at a time,\" Harris adds. Noem does have another idea for combating the coronavirus, though. She says she spent the last week urging the White House's coronavirus task force to allow South Dakota to begin a statewide trial of hydroxychloroquine — a drug touted by the Trump administration as a potential therapy for COVID-19. \"This would be the first-ever state-endorsed, state-backed, statewide clinical trial available in the United States,\" Noem says. But in what little research has been done on the drug to treat the coronavirus, there have been no reported results. Despite that, Noem says the trial will put the state on offense against the pandemic.", "As we head into Super Tuesday with Sen. Bernie Sanders as the front-runner, some Democrats concerned about his rise are comparing him to George McGovern, the South Dakota senator who became the party&#8217;s 1972 nominee and was then trounced by Richard Nixon in the general election. Here & Now&#8216;s Jeremy Hobson speaks with Derek Thompson (@DKThomp), senior editor at the Atlantic. Thompson writes that while Sen. Sanders is a lot like McGovern, &#8220;America in 2020 is not America in 1972. And Donald J. Trump is no Richard M. Nixon.&#8221; This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Early voting in the United States is giving voters easier access to the polls. But if you're a Native American on the Rosebud or Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota, early voting is not so easy. Voting rights advocates are crying foul. Charles Michael Ray reports for South Dakota Public Radio. ANDREA SEABROOK, host: Welcome back to All Things Considered. I'm Andrea Seabrook. As many as a third of Americans are expected to vote before election day this year. Early voting records have already been smashed in North Carolina and Georgia, two of the 32 states that allow advanced voting for any reason. In states like South Dakota, that policy allows residents from far flung rural areas to vote whenever they happen to be in town. But this year, early voting on two remote Indian reservations has been cut short. And voting rights advocates are crying foul. Charles Michael Ray with South Dakota Public Radio reports. CHARLES MICHAEL RAY: The Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations sit on two of the poorest counties in the United States. The county governments here are so poor that there's no court house. They can't afford to hire a full-time auditor or even extra election officials needed to run early voting. Most of South Dakota has early voting for a full six weeks. State residents can stop by their local court house and vote any time. But on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, voters will only get three days of in-person early voting. Locals like Cedric Goodman (ph) say this translates to unequal access to the polls. Mr. CEDRIC GOODMAN: I don't want to use the word discrimination, but it seems like that's what it is. RAY: But South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson doesn't see this as an issue of unequal access to the polls. Nelson says tribal residents can still drive to an adjacent county or vote by mail. Secretary CHRIS NELSON (Secretary of State, South Dakota): So, anybody that has access to the mailbox has very easy access to getting an absentee ballot mailed to their doorstep. RAY: But does this constitute equal access? In this wide open country, tribal voters may have to drive more than 100 miles one way in order to early vote in person. Even on election day, some residents will need to drive up to 40 miles to cast a ballot. Voting rights advocates note that not all tribal residents use the mail and multiple families often live in each home. All this leads state Senator Tom Katus to charge that the system is stacked against Native Americans. State Senator TOM KATUS (Democrat, South Dakota): It's what we used to call institutional racism, not that the individuals have meanness or racism, but doing business as usual, in effect, still has the same end result. RAY: Katus sits on the state's tribal relations committee and says federal funds that could have been used to pay for early voting didn't make their way down to the county level. Senator KATUS: People are concerned about what goes on in Florida or Ohio. You know, we should be concerned on what goes on in Shannon County and Todd County, respectively. RAY: Secretary of State Chris Nelson says it's the local county governments that made the decision not to open the polls early. Nelson says almost $100,000 in onetime federal election funds could have been used by these reservation counties to pay for early voting. But county officials didn't learn that they could use these funds until too late in the game. Mr. OJ SEAMANS (Four Directions): How can you ask for early voting if you don't think there's money available? RAY: OJ Seamans (ph) with the non-partisan group Four Directions is working to get more Native Americans to the polls. He's been trying to persuade local county governments to open the polls early. The Rosebud reservation will get one day of early voting. The polls were open early for two days on Pine Ridge. On the second day, they ran out of ballots due to high demand. The small reservation town of Pine Ridge village is dotted with stray dogs. And today, residents are bundled up against the cold wind. It feels like it's about to snow. The weather hasn't stopped Charles Poyer (ph) from casting his vote early today, but Poyer says many of his neighbors won't vote this year. He says the high gas prices and long distances to the polls make voting a burden for those in poverty. Mr. CHARLES POYER: Left out, you know, just left out of the process when we're a part of this state, and I just hate to say it, but we don't have the right to vote, you know, like everybody else in the state. They have the convenience. RAY: Local election officials can see that the lack of early voting will likely mean fewer Native Americans at the polls. While it's too late to fix the problem this time, they say they'll try to find a way to ensure that tribal residents have equal access to the ballot box for the next election. For NPR News, I'm Charles Michael Ray in Rapid City, South Dakota.", "In his State Of The Union address, President Obama outlined a program to boost the middle class, in part by raising taxes on the wealthy. Republican Senator John Thune blasted the president&#8217;s plan, calling it an &#8220;agenda of top-down policies of the past to tax, spend and regulate.&#8221; He joins Here & Now&#8217;s Jeremy Hobson with more reaction to the speech. Guest\n\nJohn Thune, Republican U.S. senator for South Dakota. He tweets @SenJohnThune.", "South Dakota voters rejected a ban on abortions last November. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers plans to introduce a modified version of the ban that would make exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the pregnant woman. Madeleine Brand talks with state legislator Brock Greenfield, who supported the earlier law, about why he is opposed to the new version. ALEX CHADWICK, host: This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick. MADELEINE BRAND, host: I'm Madeleine Brand. Another attempt in South Dakota to ban most abortions. Lawmakers today introduced a bill that would outlaw almost all abortions. Opponents of abortion hope this new bill will accomplish what a previous one did not. Last year, the state legislature and the governor approved a measure outlawing abortions in all cases, except to save the life of the mother. It would have been the strictest anti-abortion legislation in the country. South Dakota voters thought it was too restrictive. Last November, they rejected the bill. Brock Greenfield is a state senator. He's also the director of South Dakota Right to Life. He supported the previous stricter bill, and opposes the current legislation. He says because it includes more exceptions. State Senator BROCK GREENFIELD (Republican, South Dakota; Director, South Dakota Right to Life): One issue that I have to wrestle with is whether or not, you know, it's appropriate to include exceptions. We brought people out to our state convention this year here in South Dakota who had been conceived in rape, who had been conceived in incest, and who had - a girl who had conceived in rape and has chosen to give life to her child and to parent her child. And on some very profound levels, I feel as though this bill is a slap in their faces. BRAND: So you don't think it goes far enough? State Sen. GREENFIELD: Well, I understand that this is more politically palatable. But at the same time, you have to realize that there are some sense of embarrassment that we, pro-lifers, who stood strong in opposition to some of the exceptions in the previous year's bill, now we're the ones rallying behind those exceptions and looking to hurry them, you know, through the process and get another statute on the books. BRAND: Many polls conducted in your state, in South Dakota, have found that voters would have supported a bill such as the one that is being introduced now - a bill that would ban abortions with exceptions. So, wouldn't you like to have this rather than nothing at all? State Sen. GREENFIELD: I would like to support legislation that I believe has a strong likelihood of saving lives. And that certainly does include a bill such as this, if it meets muster of the courts at some point in the future. But you know, the November election not only told us here in South Dakota that you're going to have to include some exceptions and give them, you know, give those exceptions thorough thought as you proceed, but the November elections were also bad - as far as I'm concerned - for the pro-life community, given the change in the political climate out in D.C. BRAND: So if I understand you correctly, you're afraid that this might not withstand court scrutiny? That it'll be struck down on constitutional grounds. State Sen. GREENFIELD: That's absolutely one of the biggest concerns. Prior to November, I was very hopeful that the bill would be upheld, that the U.S. Senate would remain in the hands of people who were amiable to confirming a pro-life or a strict constructionist to the court. And that simply didn't happen. And that does really stand out as a strong reason to just hold off and decide strategically what is the best way to proceed. BRAND: That's State Senator Brock Greenfield, speaking to us from Pierre, South Dakota about a new abortion bill that a group of lawmakers have introduced, banning abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life and health of the mother. And thank you very much, Brock Greenfield. State Sen. GREENFIELD: You're welcome. Thank you very much.", "Police in Sioux City, Iowa, use photo enforcement to catch traffic violations. An automatic camera takes a photo of a violator's license plate, then police find the registered owner and send out a ticket. South Dakota legislators have passed a law that will not allow their state's Department of Transportation to release vehicle information for this purpose. South Dakota Public Broadcasting's Gary Ellenbolt reports that the bill was co-sponsored by a state senator who has reportedly received several of these tickets. The senator claims that with photo enforcement, there's no right for a defendant to face the accuser, as guaranteed by the Constitution.", "A few months ago, South Dakota was in the news for its rising coronavirus case numbers and deaths. It's a rural, less populous state. But the disproportionately high caseload strained the health care system. Now, as daily case numbers continue on a downward trend nationwide, the state is notable again, but for a different reason: the success of its vaccine rollout. When it comes to getting the doses from distribution centers into people's arms, South Dakota is in the top handful of states. It's administered roughly 80,000 of the 106,000 doses it's received so far, or 75%. Nationwide, that number is about 53%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though to be clear, South Dakota has received far fewer total doses than almost every other state, so there has been less vaccine to get out. Dr. Shankar Kurra is vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health Rapid City Hospital in Rapid City. The Monument Health system is responsible for distributing the vaccine for the entire western half of South Dakota. While centralization of the process did pose some logistical challenges, Kurra said, overall, the process — of distributing from a central point directly to vaccination sites — was key to getting doses out efficiently in his part of the state. Centralization \"made it simpler,\" he said, \"because we then had from one place to dispense that and message it out and make sure people got it.\" Kurra said Monument Health has been getting roughly 3,000 vaccines a week and by the end of the week is able to administer all of them. He said the state goal is for at least 80% of South Dakotans to get vaccinated, which at the current rate could happen in the late summer or fall. In an interview on NPR's All Things Considered, Kurra discussed South Dakota's progress on vaccinations. Here are excerpts: Do you think because people in South Dakota saw such a massive outbreak only back in November, it actually motivated many of them to get the vaccine as quickly as it was available to them? I believe so. One of the things we noticed was this huge rise in numbers in November. Per capita-wise South Dakota was leading all the states, both in numbers of cases, number of hospitalizations, unfortunately, even in number of deaths. I think it made a significant impression on the collective memories of South Dakotans and really, in my opinion, led a lot of folks to say, \"If the vaccine's out, I need it, and I will take it.\" And we also had folks leading up to the vaccine asking when it would be here. And once it got here, we got a lot of emails, texts, phone calls from everyone wanting to get the vaccine. So I think it played a role. What have been the biggest hurdles so far in distribution? I think not knowing what the number would be. So I'll give you a brief timeline on how we do this. ... Monday is when the state asks each health system — there are three in South Dakota, Monument being one of them — and they ask us: Hey, how's it going? Where do you think you need more numbers? And we have to justify that, obviously. And then also ask us what [vaccination phase] we are in. So on Tuesday, the state actually allocates and sends it out. So by Wednesday, we've got a list drawn, schedules opened, and Thursday and Friday it really picks up steam. So it's kind of a slow start, but then you've got to get it all done. Can you talk about any of the lessons that you've learned so far that you can offer to other states that are struggling a little more with distributing the vaccine? I think the key is to educate, inform as you go. We made sure we have daily forums at 2 o'clock that educates folks about the safety and the efficacy of this vaccine. I think the lessons we learned quickly was, you know, our mission is to make sure those [vaccines] don't sit in this cold storage. So I think getting them quick, not worrying too much about, you know — if you give five doses and you have an extra dose, find someone. And so a little bit of that is: How quickly, how flexible, how agile is the decision-making at the point of delivering those vaccines? And I think it helps to have one vision or, if you will, organization that's driving this. Jonaki Mehta and Christopher Intagliata produced and edited the audio interview. James Doubek produced for the Web.", "It's deja vu all over again in South Dakota, where voters are being asked for the second election in a row to approve or reject a ban on abortion. Two years ago, voters just said no to a ban so sweeping it allowed almost no exceptions. This year, the proposed ban is a little less rigid. But opponents say it's still too extreme. And partisans on both sides know it's not just abortions in South Dakota at stake: If the ban is passed, it could be used to mount a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the right to abortion nationwide. Strolling through a serene neighborhood in Sioux Falls on a pristine autumn day with volunteers canvassing door-to-door, it was hard not to flash back to nearly the exact same scene two years earlier. \"Are you William?\" asks Megan Moss, one of dozens of 20-something volunteers opposing the ban. She and her colleagues have been crisscrossing the state a house at a time. William Flanagan nods his head over the din of several barking dogs. \"I'm with the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families,\" Megan continues. \"I'm going around your neighborhood passing out information on Initiated Measure 11. Have you heard of that yet?\" Limiting Exceptions Initiated Measure 11 is the formal name of the abortion referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot. It would ban virtually all abortions in the state, with limited exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the life or health of the woman. At this house, Moss scores a hit, as Flanagan says he'll be voting against the ban. \"I don't believe in government telling people what to do,\" he says. But while a strong libertarian streak among South Dakota voters like Flanagan helped defeat the ban two years ago, South Dakota is still a very conservative state when it comes to abortion. That's apparent around the corner, at the home of ZoAnn Trumbull. \"I believe abortion is wrong, it's murder,\" she tells Moss' canvassing colleague, Hassan Ali. \"And according to the Bible, thou shall not murder. ... And there are a lot of people out there who need to adopt those babies that need to be adopted, and that's the way we stand,\" she says politely, but firmly. Across town, at the headquarters of Vote Yes for Life, the people working to pass the ban hope there are a lot more voters like ZoAnn Trumbull. The headquarters — once a Planned Parenthood clinic — is now decked out with orange and blue balloons, and little framed pictures of babies' feet decorate the walls. In what used to be the clinic waiting room, one whole wall is taken up by a massive map of South Dakota showing votes on the 2006 ban county by county, where they won and where they need to gain more support. A Revised Initiative Presiding over a row of volunteers combing through computerized voter lists on this particular day is Allen Unruh. He's one of the campaign's organizers and a longtime anti-abortion activist in the state. He says a big reason the 2006 effort didn't succeed was that the ban simply went too far. \"Countless people said, 'If you'd had an exception for rape and incest, then we'd have voted with you,' \" he says. So in version 2.0, he explains, \"we're giving the people of South Dakota what they wanted. This bill, this initiative, basically has exceptions for rape, incest and health and life of the mother.\" Unruh says he recognized that some compromise was necessary. \"Ideally, I'd like to save every child possible, but we don't live in that type of world right now. So to me, it's kind of like if the Titanic is sinking, would you say, 'Let's not lower the lifeboats because you can't save them all?' Let's save every person we can.\" Across town, at the current Planned Parenthood clinic, CEO Sarah Stoesz says all the talk of limits on the ban is nothing but a smoke screen. \"If this ban is passed, it means that there will be no abortions performed in South Dakota,\" she says. Currently, no doctors in South Dakota are willing to do elective abortions; Planned Parenthood flies in doctors from Minnesota once or twice a week. They perform between 700 and 800 abortions per year — one of the lowest rates in the country. Stoesz says the proposed ban's exceptions are so narrow that not only would it force an end to elective abortions, it would mean abortions could not be performed for any other reason, either. \"In the case of the so-called life exception, doctors will have to be so absolutely certain that a woman could fit through this narrow, narrow exception so they would not under any circumstances make a mistake — because if they make a mistake, they are subjected to potentially felony charges,\" Stoesz says. \"And I have not met a doctor in South Dakota yet who has said he or she is willing to perform an abortion under those circumstances.\" Strings Attached The rape and incest exceptions to the ban come with similar strings: They require the doctor to collect and preserve DNA samples from the fetus. Backers of the ban say that will help catch criminals. Opponents say it's just another way to deter wome", "Overview of a three-part investigation Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes under questionable circumstances. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is largely failing to place them according to the law. The vast majority of native kids in foster care in South Dakota are in nonnative homes or group homes, according to an NPR analysis of state records. Years ago, thousands of Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools, where the motto of the schools' founder was \"Kill the Indian, Save the Man.\" Children lost touch with their culture, traditions and families. Many suffered horrible abuse, leaving entire generations missing from the one place whose future depended on them — their tribes. In 1978, Congress tried to put a stop to it. They passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which says except in the rarest circumstances, Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes. It also says states must do everything it can to keep native families together. But 32 states are failing to abide by the act in one way or another, and, an NPR investigation has found, nowhere is that more apparent than in South Dakota. \"Cousins are disappearing; family members are disappearing,\" said Peter Lengkeek, a Crow Creek Tribal Council member. \"It's kidnapping. That's how we see it.\" State officials say they have to do what's in the best interest of the child, but the state does have a financial incentive to remove the children. The state receives thousands of dollars from the federal government for every child it takes from a family, and in some cases the state gets even more money if the child is Native American. The result is that South Dakota is now removing children at a rate higher than the vast majority of other states in the country. Native American families feel the brunt of this. Their children make up less than 15 percent of the child population, yet they make up more than half of the children in foster care. Critics say foster care in South Dakota has become a powerhouse for private group home providers who bring in millions of dollars in state contracts to care for kids. Among them is Children's Home Society, the state's largest foster care provider, which has close ties with top government officials. It used to be run by South Dakota's Gov. Dennis Daugard. An NPR investigation has found that Daugard was on the group's payroll while he was lieutenant governor — and while the group received tens of millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts. It's an unusual relationship highlighting the powerful role money and politics play in South Dakota's foster care system. \"They make a living off of our children,\" said Juanita Sherick, the tribal social worker for the Pine Ridge reservation. Some children are removed from their homes for legitimate reasons. But in South Dakota very few are taken because they've been physically or sexually abused. Most are taken under a far more subjective set of circumstances. The state says the parents are neglectful. But NPR's investigation shows that even Native American children who grow up to become foster care success stories, living happy, productive lives, say the loss of their culture and identities leaves a deep hole they spend years trying hopelessly to fill. Read the complete first part of our yearlong investigation here. MICHELE NORRIS, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris. MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: And I'm Melissa Block. For more than a century, the U.S. government forced Native American children into boarding schools, stripping them of their families and traditions. In 1978, Congress put a stop to that. The Indian Child Welfare Act says Native children should not be separated from their relatives or tribes. Except now, it's happening again. This time, it's foster care. Today, we begin an investigation that uncovers a disturbing pattern of how one state places Indian children in foster care. NPR's Laura Sullivan reports on the cultural and financial forces at work in South Dakota, a state where Indian children make up just 15 percent of the population, but account for more than half the children in foster care. LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE: It's not hard to find them. There are thousands of them - Native Americans with missing children. TANYA HILL: Well, my name is Tanya Hill(ph) from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. I lost nine grandchildren through the Department of Social Services. DELORES HIPINTS: My name is Delores Hipints(ph). I am from Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. I've got two grandchildren in the system. LIZ GUGLI: I'm Liz, Liz Gugli(ph). I have nine grandchildren, two of which were taken by DSS. WESTILA CUPIWIN: My name is Westila Cupiwin(ph). I come from the Mnikhowozu band. I had a grandchild and I haven't seen him - well, he was like, 4 years old. He's 16 now. SULLIVAN: These families want their g", "Lawmakers in South Dakota are poised to give final approval to the most sweeping ban on abortion in nearly two decades. The state's only abortion clinic performs about 800 procedures a year -- of the nearly 1 million done nationally. But backers of the bill say they intend for it to reach well outside the state's borders. Leslee Unruh has been working towards this moment for 21 years. She heads the Alpha Center and Abstinence Clearinghouse, which counsels women with unintended pregnancies on abortion alternatives. She says she didn't have much luck when she first started lobbying the legislature to restrict abortion. \"There was a time when it was tough to get even parental consent\" laws, she noted. But her work will pay off when the South Dakota House gives expected final approval to a measure that would ban all abortions in the state except those needed to save the life of the pregnant woman. The state Senate, which approved the bill Wednesday, rejected amendments to allow abortions in cases of rape or incest, or to protect the pregnant woman's health. Unruh says she's confident that Republican Gov. Michael Rounds will sign the measure. And she makes it clear she hopes the law will have a broader impact. \"We've been very successful to chip away at the laws of Roe v. Wade in South Dakota, and we think the rest of the country should really be following us, and following the heartland... and this is definitely planned to go after Roe v. Wade,\" she said. That case is the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Eve Gartner, senior staff attorney for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, says the only way the South Dakota law could take effect is if the Supreme Court were to throw out Roe. \"This law is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade,\" Gartner said. \"And if this law is upheld it would mean that abortions could be banned anywhere in this country.\" This isn't the first time a state has tried to outlaw abortion since Roe was decided: Utah, Louisiana and the territory of Guam all passed measures in the late 1980s that were subsequently blocked. That flurry of state laws came after the Supreme court signaled that it might be willing to accept more restrictions on abortion in the 1989 decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services of Missouri. Gartner says the timing of the South Dakota measure is no coincidence either. It's coming just as two potentially anti-abortion justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, have joined the court. \"Clearly the people that want to make abortion completely unavailable in this country have timed this so that a newly constituted Supreme Court can overturn Roe v. Wade,\" she said. But that strategy carries a big risk -- one that has divided abortion opponents. The question has been whether to pursue incremental changes -- including the so-called partial-birth abortion ban the Supreme Court just this week agreed to hear -- and hope to chip away at the right to abortion, or to go for the big change. John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, says that by making the big move, anti-abortion forces could very well face a setback even with the newly configured court. \"Based on the records of Judge Roberts and Justice Alito, it looks very unlikely that they would institute sweeping changes in abortion law or, in fact, in any other area, because these are strict constructionists, very careful judges that believe in incremental change, whatever their personal philosophy might be,\" Green said. There's another aspect of the South Dakota law that makes it potentially significant: It defines human life as beginning at the fertilization of egg and sperm. \"Most of the debate so far has been about what is legal, whereas most of the debate has not been about defining when life begins or what life exactly is. And that could have broader ramifications in other areas of the law as well,\" Green said, including areas such as assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells, or even other areas of medical research. And he says there's one more risk for abortion opponents in trying to ban the procedure outright. Every time the core right to abortion appears to be in jeopardy, public opinion has tended to swing the other way -- towards abortion rights. STEVE INSKEEP, host: Lawmakers in South Dakota are poised to give final approval to the most sweeping ban on abortion in nearly two decades. As NPR's Julie Rovner reports, this legislation is intended to reach much further than the borders of just one state. JULIE ROVNER reporting: After 21 years of cajoling South Dakota State legislators, Leslee Unruh has victory in her sights. Ms. LESLEE UNRUH (Pro Life Advocate): Momentum is everything and I think that we have momentum. ROVNER: Unruh heads the Alpha Center and Abstinence Clearinghouse, which counsels women with unintended pregnancies on abortion alternatives. She says she didn't have much luck when she first started lobbying the legislature to restr" ]

[ "How they can cause fatigue: Blood-pressure medications may slow down the pumping action of the heart as well as depress the entire central nervous system, or, in the case of diuretics, deplete electrolytes that the body needs." ]

[ "['Primary, or essential, high blood pressure is the most common type of high blood pressure. ... ', 'Secondary high blood pressure is caused by another medical condition or use of certain medicines.']", "In newborn babies, high blood pressure is often caused by a blood clot in a kidney blood vessel, a complication of having an umbilical artery catheter. Other causes of high blood pressure in infants may include: Certain medicines. Exposure to illegal drugs such as cocaine.", "A high BUN value can mean kidney injury or disease is present. Kidney damage can be caused by diabetes or high blood pressure that directly affects the kidneys. High BUN levels can also be caused by low blood flow to the kidneys caused by dehydration or heart failure. Many medicines may cause a high BUN.", "This is called blood pressure. High blood pressure (also called hypertension) happens when your blood moves through your arteries at a higher pressure than normal. Many different things can cause high blood pressure. If your blood pressure gets too high or stays high for a long time, it can cause health problems.", "Decrease your use of nonprescription medicines. Overuse of medicines may be the single biggest cause of memory loss or confusion in older adults. Keep your blood pressure at or below 130/85 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). Untreated high blood pressure can cause memory problems and affect problem-solving abilities.", "If your doctor thinks your blood pressure is high enough to need medicine, you'll get a prescription. There are no FDA-approved OTC medicines for high blood pressure.", "The Bottom Line The most common medication error is taking - or giving - a double dose. For some medicines, a double dose can cause significant problems. Examples include medicines for high blood pressure, ADHD, and diabetes.", "Having high blood pressure is a risk factor for vascular dementia. If you can lower your blood pressure through lifestyle changes and medicines, you can reduce your risk. Vascular dementia is most commonly caused by the effects of a stroke.", "Blood vessels damaged by high blood pressure can narrow, rupture or leak. High blood pressure can also cause blood clots to form in the arteries leading to your brain, blocking blood flow and potentially causing a stroke.", "Blood loss: Blood loss during birth, or from injury or other medical problems can cause hypotension. Heart problems: A heart infection, abnormal heartbeats, or patent ductus arteriosis (PDA) may cause hypotension. Medicines: Infants born with high BP may be given medicines to lower the pressure.", "Nifedipine is a medicine used to treat high blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure, taking nifedipine helps to prevent future heart disease, heart attacks and strokes. Nifedipine is also used to prevent chest pain caused by angina.", "Many different things can cause high blood pressure. If your blood pressure gets too high or stays high for a long time, it can cause health problems. Uncontrolled high blood pressure puts you at a higher risk for stroke, heart disease, heart attack, and kidney failure. There are 2 types of high blood pressure.", "Blood pressure can damage your arteries by causing them to become thicker, or even to burst. This can restrict blood flow to your penis, which may then cause erectile dysfunction. Some blood pressure medicines can also cause erectile dysfunction.", "Treatment for low blood pressure depends on the cause For example, they may suggest: changing medicines or altering your dose, if this is the cause. wearing support stockings – this can improve circulation and increase blood pressure.", "High blood pressure in dogs It can be caused by a variety of factors, including renal disease, obesity, hormonal issues and hyperthyroidism. Diabetes can also cause high blood pressure, although this is rare in dogs. Symptoms of high blood pressure in dogs include: seizures.", "Diuretics - blood pressure medication. Diuretics are medicines that are often used to treat high blood pressure. There are different types of diuretic, but the type most commonly used to treat high blood pressure are called “thiazide” diuretics. Most of these medicines have names that end in “ide”.", "Atenolol belongs to a group of medicines called beta blockers. It's used to treat high blood pressure and irregular heartbeats (arrhythmia). It can also be used to prevent chest pain caused by angina.", "High blood pressure complications High blood pressure can cause many complications. High blood pressure (hypertension) can quietly damage your body for years before symptoms develop. Uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to disability, a poor quality of life, or even a fatal heart attack or stroke.", "Virus Linked to High Blood Pressure. A common virus might be a major cause of high blood pressure, a new study found. Researchers discovered that cytomegalovirus (CMV), an infection affecting between 60 and 99 percent of adults worldwide, can cause high blood pressure.", "Cough medicines can cause problems for people who have other health conditions, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, glaucoma, or an enlarged prostate. Cough preparations may also interact with other medicines, such as sedatives and certain antidepressants.", "A diet high in salt can cause raised blood pressure, which can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke. High blood pressure often has no symptoms, and many people who have high blood pressure don't know it.", "High blood pressure can seriously affect the circulation causing pain in the legs with walking, cold feet, and stroke. Fortunately, when high blood pressure is detected early, treated, and monitored, the consequences of high blood pressure can be avoided.", "Left undetected (or uncontrolled), high blood pressure can lead to: Heart attack — High blood pressure damages arteries that can become blocked and prevent blood flow to the heart muscle. Stroke — High blood pressure can cause blood vessels in the brain to clog more easily or even burst.", "A heart attack and a rupture of a large blood vessel can cause excessive yawning. These heart conditions can stimulate the vagus nerve, and a vasovagal reaction can result as the heart pumps less and blood pressure lowers. Narcolepsy and hypersomnia are two disorders that cause constant sleepiness.", "You're taking a diuretic and at least two other blood pressure medicines. But your blood pressure still isn't budging. This is called resistant hypertension. Simply put, it means that your high blood pressure (HBP or hypertension) is hard to treat and may also have an underlying (secondary) cause.", "AZOR is a prescription drug used to lower high blood pressure (hypertension). Medicines that lower blood pressure lower the chance of having a stroke or heart attack. AZOR is not for use as the first medicine to treat high blood pressure for people who are 75 years of age and older or have liver problems.", "High blood pressure can impair the function of the kidneys, leading to fluid retention and swelling of the legs, and even kidney failure. High blood pressure can affect the eyes, causing vision loss. High blood pressure can seriously affect the circulation causing pain in the legs with walking, cold feet, and stroke.", "Celery might lower blood pressure. Using celery in medicinal amounts along with drugs that lower blood pressure might cause blood pressure to drop too much.", "Diuretics medicines such as furosemide or bumetanide used to treat high blood pressure and heart failure can also cause hearing loss. The medicines are more likely to result in hearing loss if you take more than one at a time, ASHA reports.", "Amlodipine is a medicine used to treat high blood pressure (hypertension). If you have high blood pressure, taking amlodipine helps prevent future heart disease, heart attacks and strokes. Amlodipine is also used to prevent chest pain caused by heart disease (angina).", "High blood pressure and preeclampsia. Gestational diabetes raises your risk of high blood pressure, as well as preeclampsia — a serious complication of pregnancy that causes high blood pressure and other symptoms that can threaten the lives of both mother and baby.", "Damage to your brain But high blood pressure can cause several problems, including: Transient ischemic attack (TIA). Sometimes called a ministroke, a TIA is a brief, temporary disruption of blood supply to your brain. Hardened arteries or blood clots caused by high blood pressure can cause TIA ." ]

[ "SNO Telecommunications" ]

[ "What's Your Mama's Name", "What Yo Name Iz?", "Grahamstown, South Africa", "South Africa Sevens", "Statistics South Africa", "South Africa and Zimbabwe", "the Constitution of South Africa", "The Academy of Science of South Africa", "names", "Stadium Management South Africa", "The Naming of Names", "Rose Capital of South Africa", "name ''", "Judo South Africa", "their names", "naming", "No Name", "Interim Constitution of South Africa", "East London, South Africa", "The Constitutional Court of South Africa", "South Africa national football team", "full orchestra", "South Africa's white minority", "full professor", "academic boycott of South Africa", "Full Throttle", "My Name Is My Name", "a full week", "full power", "Telecommunications policy", "Colleges of Medicine of South Africa", "optical telecommunication" ]

[ "According to the national guidelines and recent research, losing weight can lower both systolic and diastolic blood pressure -- and potentially eliminate high blood pressure. For every 20 pounds you lose, you can drop systolic pressure 5-20 points." ]

[ "Being overweight or obese increases your risk of developing high blood pressure. In fact, your blood pressure rises as your body weight increases. Losing even 10 pounds can lower your blood pressure—and losing weight has the biggest effect on those who are overweight and already have hypertension.", "As your body weight increases, your blood pressure can rise. In fact, being overweight can make you more likely to develop high blood pressure than if you are at your desirable weight. About 70% of adults in the United States are overweight. You can reduce your risk of high blood pressure by losing weight.", "Heavy drinkers who cut back to moderate drinking can lower their systolic blood pressure by 2 to 4 mm of mercury (mm Hg) and their diastolic blood pressure by 1 to 2 mmHg. Heavy drinkers who want to lower blood pressure should slowly reduce how much they drink over one to two weeks.", "Left ventricular hypertrophy is often found in obese people regardless of blood pressure. Losing weight has been shown to reverse left ventricular hypertrophy. Keeping a healthy weight, or losing weight if you're overweight or obese, can also help control your blood pressure.", "Alcohol and Its Effects on Blood Pressure In moderation, alcohol can possibly lower your blood pressure by 2 to 4 mm Hg. However, this is clinically insignificant in most situations. The effects of alcohol on lowering blood pressure are also quickly lost if you drink too much.", "Excessive sugar and calorie intake leads to weight gain and other metabolic issues like high blood pressure. These metabolic changes in turn can make it harder to burn fat and lose weight. By cutting soda out of your diet, you lower your risk for weight gain, and may possibly lose weight as well.", "Besides losing weight, Zumba can help lower your risk of heart disease, reduce your blood pressure and bad cholesterol, and boost your good cholesterol.", "['Eat a healthy diet and lose weight . Losing even 5% to 10% of your weight can make a huge difference.', 'Exercise . ... ', 'Stop smoking .', 'Get your blood pressure and cholesterol under control.', \"Take medication like metformin (Glucophage) to lower your blood sugar if you're at high risk of diabetes.\"]", "If your heart can work less to pump, the force on your arteries decreases, lowering your blood pressure. Becoming more active can lower your systolic blood pressure — the top number in a blood pressure reading — by an average of 4 to 9 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). That's as good as some blood pressure medications.", "Losing weight has been shown to reverse left ventricular hypertrophy. Keeping a healthy weight, or losing weight if you're overweight or obese, can also help control your blood pressure. Heart-healthy diet. Eat a heart-healthy diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, poultry and fish.", "Regular physical activity — such as 150 minutes a week, or about 30 minutes most days of the week — can lower your blood pressure by about 5 to 8 mm Hg if you have high blood pressure. It's important to be consistent because if you stop exercising, your blood pressure can rise again.", "['What is my blood pressure?', 'What should my blood pressure be?', 'What kind of diet should I follow to help control my blood pressure?', 'How much should I weigh?', 'Can you recommend a diet or eating plan to help me reach that weight?', 'How much exercise should I be doing?']", "['is a natural laxative and it can improve digestion;', 'lowers blood sugar levels;', 'improves insulin sensitivity;', 'increases satiety and helps people to lose weight;', 'reduces belly fat;', 'lowers cholesterol;', 'lowers blood pressure and improves heart health;']", "Type 1 Diabetes and Veganism A healthy vegan diet won't cure your diabetes. But it may help you keep your blood sugar more stable. If you lose weight, it can lower your glucose levels. This may change how much insulin you need to take.", "Low blood pressure is when your blood pressure falls much lower than is normal for you. You may be a person who has naturally low blood pressure which isn't causing any problems. But if your blood pressure becomes lower than usual for you, it can cause symptoms such as dizziness and fainting.", "Low blood pressure: Goji might lower blood pressure. If your blood pressure is already low, taking goji might make it drop too much. High blood pressure: Goji might lower blood pressure. It might cause blood pressure to drop too much if you are taking medications for high blood pressure.", "Renin is an enzyme that is involved in increasing blood pressure. The researchers suggest that the acetic acid in the vinegar was responsible for reducing renin levels, which in turn, caused the drop in blood pressure. ACV may indirectly lower blood pressure by helping people lose weight.", "Eating a diet that is rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products and skimps on saturated fat and cholesterol can lower your blood pressure by up to 11 mm Hg if you have high blood pressure. This eating plan is known as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.", "Exercise regularly. Walking briskly for 30 minutes to 45 minutes, five or six days a week, can lower your blood pressure up to 10 points. We recommend combining an aerobic activity that you enjoy - such as walking, swimming, running or biking - with some type of resistance exercise, such as lifting light weights.", "Usually, aldosterone balances sodium and potassium in your blood. But too much of this hormone can cause you to lose potassium and retain sodium. That imbalance can cause your body to hold too much water, increasing your blood volume and blood pressure.", "Within 1 week: Your blood pressure may drop back to normal A single week of eating a totally plant diet consisting of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes can often reduce blood pressure by 10 mmHg or more and allow medications to be reduced, Kahn says.", "Diet changes can quickly lower blood pressure in many cases. A study in the journal Hypertension reported that people following the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet lowered their blood pressure by 1–4 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) in 1 week.", "Improved blood pressure A 2016 study involving a group of overweight women found that after a 12-week Zumba fitness program, participants experienced a decrease in blood pressure and significant improvements in bodyweight.", "Weightlifting can cause a temporary increase in blood pressure. This increase can be dramatic, depending on how much weight you lift. But, weightlifting can also have long-term benefits to blood pressure that outweigh the risk of a temporary spike for most people.", "Atkins Reduces High Blood Pressure Better than Weight-Loss Drugs. If you need to lose weight and also have hypertension, Atkins is more successful at reducing blood pressure than certain weight-loss drugs, according to a new study.", "['Supports Weight Loss & Metabolism. One of the biggest benefits of ACV is that it can aid in weight loss. ... ', 'Lowers Cholesterol. A happy heart is a happy body. ... ', 'Reduces Blood Pressure. When your blood pressure is high, your heart is working harder. ... ', 'Lowers Blood Sugar. ... ', 'Potential Anti-Cancer Properties.']", "High blood pressure: Goji might lower blood pressure. It might cause blood pressure to drop too much if you are taking medications for high blood pressure. Diabetes: Goji root bark might lower blood sugar.", "Unless it is close to the time to take your next dose. Do not take 2 doses at the same time. Your doctor will tell you how much BYSTOLIC to take and how often. Many people with high blood pressure take 2 or more blood pressure–lowering medications.", "Take apple cider vinegar. Most importantly, it helps with weight loss by improving metabolism and reducing water retention -- and a healthy weight is key to normalizing blood pressure. Easy fix: Three teaspoons per day of apple cider vinegar can lower your blood pressure significantly within a week.", "Studies show that eating protein can also help you lose weight and belly fat while increasing your muscle mass and strength ( 1 , 2 ). A diet that is high in protein may also help lower blood pressure, fight diabetes, and more ( 3 ).", "4. Reduce sodium in your diet. Even a small reduction in the sodium in your diet can improve your heart health and reduce blood pressure by about 5 to 6 mm Hg if you have high blood pressure.", "Exercise helps people lose weight and lower the risk of some diseases. Exercising regularly lowers a person's risk of developing some diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. Exercise also can help keep your body at a healthy weight. Exercise can help a person age well." ]

[ "Ben Emmerson QC is believed to disagree with its new chairwoman, Professor Alexis Jay, over its future.\nThe Times reports that he wants to reduce the inquiry's workload, but Prof Jay and the home secretary have both said its scope will not be changed.\nProf Jay is the fourth person appointed to lead the inquiry.\nAn inquiry spokesman said Mr Emmerson had not resigned as counsel to the inquiry, while Mr Emmerson told the BBC he was not in a position to comment.\nBBC political correspondent Glenn Campbell said losing Mr Emmerson would be \"another serious setback\" for the inquiry.\nThe inquiry was set up to examine whether public bodies including the police have failed in their duty to protect children from sexual abuse. It will also examine claims of abuse involving \"well-known people\".\nClaims of paedophiles in Westminster in the 1980s sparked the inquiry, and the first two women chosen to chair it resigned over claims they had links to senior figures at the time.\nThe third chairwoman, New Zealand judge Justice Lowell Goddard, resigned last month, citing the \"magnitude\" of the inquiry and the \"legacy of failure\" from its beginnings.\nShe was replaced by Prof Jay, who previously led the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.\nMr Emmerson, who represented the widow of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko at the inquiry into his death from radiation poisoning, is a deputy High Court judge, a visiting professor of human rights law at Oxford University and a leading international lawyer." ]

[ "BBC Newsnight understands that Aileen McColgan has quit because of serious concerns over the inquiry's leadership.\nShe was the barrister leading the inquiry's investigations into the Anglican and Catholic Churches.\nThe inquiry said that lawyers come and go according to their professional obligations - and a spokeswoman declined to \"comment on specifics\".\nIt is understood Aileen McColgan had concerns over the competency of the inquiry's leadership and the way it had previously responded to the resignation of lawyers instructed by it. As well as working on the inquiry, she is also a Professor of Law at King's College London.\nIt is understood that two other barristers have told the inquiry of their desire to leave because of similar concerns.\nThe inquiry has suffered a series of setbacks in recent months, including the departures of a number of senior lawyers.\nResponding to the latest revelations the Labour MP Lisa Nandy said: \"The loss of so many senior members of the inquiry over a short space of time should sound alarm bells for government.\n\"It really is time that there is some oversight and accountability of this inquiry which is too important to fail.\"\nShe added: \"We have had a whole series of ministers and civil servants and members of the inquiry panel telling us that the inquiry is back on track and yet repeatedly we learn that there are still issues with the inquiry and it is no wonder that a number of survivors don't have confidence that the inquiry can succeed.\"\nHugh Davies QC - deputy counsel to the inquiry (December 2015)\nToby Fisher - joint first junior counsel to the inquiry (August 2015)\nElizabeth Prochaska - joint first junior counsel to the inquiry (September 2016)\nBen Emmerson QC - lead counsel on the inquiry (September 2016)\nAileen McColgan - lead barrister on inquiry investigations into the Anglican and Catholic churches (November 2016)\nYvette Cooper MP, who chairs the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said what went wrong must be made clear, adding: \"This has got to be about getting it back on track for the survivors of child abuse because they really need to know that this inquiry's going to be effective.\"\nIn August the inquiry's third chair Lowell Goddard resigned. She has instructed lawyers to fight newspaper claims that she had made racist remarks.\nThen in September the inquiry suspended its most senior lawyer because of concerns over his leadership of the inquiry team. Ben Emmerson resigned from his position 24 hours later.\nLast month BBC Newsnight revealed that an investigation into Mr Emmerson's conduct had been dropped despite the inquiry leadership being made aware of an accusation of sexual assault against him - an accusation he strongly denies.\nWhen Mr Emmerson resigned it was agreed that he would continue to work for the inquiry for two months of a handover document. It is thought the inquiry will pay him around £55,000 for his work since resigning.\nThe inquiry's current chair Professor Alexis Jay is yet to announce a successor to Mr Emmerson. She had faced criticism from survivors' groups because of her background in social work - a profession that they say failed them.\nTwo weeks ago it emerged that Toby Fisher, one of the first three lawyers on the inquiry, had resigned because he was concerned about the inquiry's \"progress and direction\".\nThe inquiry is currently reviewing how it will carry out its investigations.\nAileen McColgan declined to comment.\nThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said in a statement: \"We have a large legal team comprising a number of junior counsel, senior counsel and solicitors. They come and go subject to their professional obligations and we are not commenting on specifics.\"\nMore on the story on BBC Newsnight at 22:30 on BBC Two - or catch up afterwards on iPlayer", "In his resignation letter, Mr Emmerson said he was no longer the \"right person\" for the role, but denied he had stepped down due to a difference of opinion with chair Prof Alexis Jay.\nThe Shirley Oaks Survivors Association said it was \"devastated\" by the news.\nPrime Minister Theresa May has said she still has confidence in the inquiry.\nMr Emmerson had been suspended on Wednesday due to \"concerns about his leadership\".\nHis resignation on Thursday evening came hours after it emerged that his colleague Elizabeth Prochaska - the inquiry's second most senior lawyer - had stepped down on 15 September.\nIt had been suggested her departure was unconnected to Mr Emmerson's resignation. However, BBC Newsnight understands there were \"serious problems\" in the working relationship between Mrs Prochaska and Mr Emmerson.\nThe two resignations are the latest blows to an inquiry that has already been beset by problems - Prof Jay is the fourth person to be appointed to lead the inquiry after three chairwomen stood down.\nThe inquiry was set up to examine whether public bodies, including the police, had failed in their duty to protect children from sexual abuse, and to examine claims of abuse involving \"well-known people\".\nAbuse survivor Ian McFayden tweeted: \"Honestly this is truly a sad day for victims & survivors of abuse, when we lose one of the worlds leading civil rights lawyers @BenEmmerson1.\"\nMr Fayden, who was abused at school, also said: \"Truly upset tonight! Not for myself, but for those survivors who thought we might actually have an inquiry worth engaging with!\"\nA spokesman for the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, a group representing 600 people who allege they were abused in south London children's homes, said: \"We are devastated for all those victims who were hoping to finally get justice, but I cannot say it is surprising.\"\nHe said the group always harboured concerns about the inquiry's \"everlasting remit\".\nBarrister Michael Mansfield told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the inquiry had been \"chaotic from the very beginning and appalling appointments had been made\" without consulting survivors.\nHe also agreed that the inquiry needed to be split up into \" very obvious parts\".\nAnswering calls for Mr Mansfield to replace Mr Emmerson, he added: \"I am very willing to consider it.\"\nBy Tom Symonds, BBC home affairs correspondent\nMorale among victims of child abuse who have been waiting for this inquiry to make progress is at rock bottom. It is not hard to see why.\nThe inquiry now has no counsel, the senior lawyer who will question witnesses.\nBen Emmerson's replacement must be found and prepared for hearings, which are due to start early next year.\nAnother challenge is the need to reshape the inquiry's working methods to make its huge task more achievable.\nSeveral of the inquiry's critics are considering court challenges to aspects of its work.\nMeanwhile, newspaper articles and blogs question the existence of the inquiry on a daily basis.\nBut the prime minister - who started this in the first place - insists it has to go ahead, its wide-ranging remit intact, because children were failed in the past. And lessons must be learnt.\nIn his resignation letter to Prof Jay, Mr Emmerson said he was \"sad\" to leave the inquiry after two years.\nHowever, Mr Emmerson said he had had doubts about whether he was the right person for the inquiry when he was reappointed to the role by Prof Jay earlier this month.\nHe wrote: \"Since then, it has become clear to me that I am not the person to take this review forward on your behalf.\n\"It is now time for someone else to take the helm with a different leadership of the counsel team.\n\"There is no truth in suggestions that I have resigned due to a difference of opinion with you about the next steps for the inquiry.\"\nMr Emmerson, who represented the widow of Alexander Litvinenko at the inquiry into the Russian dissident's death in London from radiation poisoning, is a deputy High Court judge.\nHe is also a visiting professor of human rights law at Oxford University and a leading international lawyer.\nProf Jay said Mr Emmerson would \"continue to be available to the inquiry whilst his replacement is recruited and brought up to speed\".\nThe prime minister said the \"really important\" hearings would still go ahead as planned. Preliminary hearings began at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in March.\nSpeaking during a visit to Wiltshire on Thursday, Mrs May said the inquiry's original terms of reference \"were the right ones\".\n\"We should always remember why it is that the inquiry was set up in the first place and when those terms of reference were set they were agreed with victims and survivors and it is victims and survivors who are at the heart of this inquiry.\"\nHowever, Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who is standing to become chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said it was \"frankly not credible\" to claim the inquiry was functioning properly.\n\"This is a dysfunctional inquiry and we need urgent reassurance by the chair that she is getting a grip of the situation,\" he added.\nIn a statement following Ms Prochaska's departure, the inquiry described the recent events as \"unsettling, particularly for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and all those who are engaged with the inquiry's work\".\nThe statement added: \"It has been said that the inquiry is in crisis. This is simply not the case, and the chair and panel are united in their determination to see this important work through to a conclusion.\"\nThe inquiry has launched 13 investigations into a broad range of institutions. They are named as follows:", "The prime minister said she and Home Secretary Amber Rudd still had confidence in the inquiry.\nShe spoke after the lead counsel to the hearings, Ben Emmerson, was suspended on Wednesday and the inquiry's second most senior lawyer resigned.\nElizabeth Prochaska's resignation is said to be not linked to recent events.\nMs Prochaska told BBC Newsnight's programme: \"I can confirm that after 15 months working on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, I resigned from my position as junior counsel with effect from 15 September 2016.\n\"I very much valued the experience of working with the inquiry and I wish all my former colleagues the best as they continue their work.\"\nHer resignation from her role as first junior counsel follows other problems faced by the inquiry, which was originally set up in 2014.\nOn Wednesday the inquiry said it had \"recently become very concerned about aspects of Ben Emmerson QC's leadership\" of his team and he had been suspended so these could be properly investigated.\nThe BBC understands more than one complaint has been made against him.\nPreliminary hearings for the inquiry began in March at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.\nBut Prof Alexis Jay, the current chairwoman, is the fourth person to have been appointed to lead the inquiry, following three earlier resignations.\nPrime Minister Theresa May said the \"really important\" hearings would go ahead as planned.\nSpeaking during a visit to Wiltshire, she said: \"I set the inquiry up when I was home secretary and the current home secretary has made clear the original terms of reference were the right ones and I think that's important.\n\"We should always remember why it is that the inquiry was set up in the first place and when those terms of reference were set they were agreed with victims and survivors and it is victims and survivors who are at the heart of this inquiry.\"\nIn a statement, the inquiry thanked Ms Prochaska for her \"commitment\" and \"the valuable contribution that she made to its work\".\nIt also described the recent events as \"unsettling, particularly for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and all those who are engaged with the inquiry's work\".\nThe inquiry added: \"It has been said that the inquiry is in crisis. This is simply not the case, and the chair and panel are united in their determination to see this important work through to a conclusion.\"\nThe inquiry was set up to examine whether public bodies including the police have failed in their duty to protect children from sexual abuse. It will also examine claims of abuse involving \"well-known people\".", "The Shirley Oaks Survivors Association described the decision to quit by Ben Emmerson QC as \"devastating\".\nIt said some survivors were losing faith, believing the investigation's large remit was designed to fail.\nPrime Minister Theresa May has said she still has confidence in the inquiry.\nIt was set up to examine whether public bodies, including the police, in England and Wales had failed in their duty to protect children from sexual abuse, and to examine claims of abuse involving \"well-known people\".\nMr Emmerson had been suspended on Wednesday due to \"concerns about his leadership\", and in his resignation letter he said he was no longer the \"right person\" for the role, but denied he had to step down over a difference of opinion with current chairwoman Prof Alexis Jay.\nHis resignation on Thursday evening came hours after it emerged that his colleague Elizabeth Prochaska - the inquiry's second most senior lawyer - had stepped down on 15 September.\nA spokesman for the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, a group representing 600 people who allege they were abused in south London children's homes, said: \"We are devastated for all those victims who were hoping to finally get justice, but I cannot say it is surprising.\"\nHe described the inquiry's remit - investigating 13 separate strands ranging from the Roman Catholic Church to \"the internet\" - as \"everlasting\" and said some survivors believed the inquiry's framework was \"default by design\".\nGabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said Mr Emmerson's resignation was \"disappointing\" as it was likely to reduce public confidence.\nBut she said suggestions that the inquiry was in crisis were \"wrong\" and rejected calls for its scope to be reduced, saying an \"overarching umbrella\" was needed to bring the inquiry together.\n\"It's not about scaling back and reducing the terms of the reference - it should be about better operational delivery of the terms\", she said.\nShe added that she thought time \"will be the healer\" for confidence in the inquiry.\nA spokesman for the Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors group said the resignation of Mr Emmerson was \"concerning\".\nHe added: \"It's the latest in a long line of problems and I think it's important the inquiry has somebody of the experience and calibre of Ben Emmerson at its heart, because whether you are a fan of Alexis Jay or not she's essentially a senior social worker - she does not have the legal expertise or experience to make snap judgements in a public inquiry.\"\nA spokesman for the White Flowers Alba group, which helps survivors of abuse by the clergy in Scotland, said Mr Emmerson had been the \"glue\" that kept the inquiry together.\nHe said members were \"absolutely devastated\" by Mr Emmerson's resignation and now felt the inquiry was in \"meltdown\".\n\"Ben Emmerson was the one constant. This [the inquiry] isn't rocket science but we seem to keep getting it wrong. That's weird to me.\"\nAbuse survivor Ian McFayden tweeted: \"Honestly this is truly a sad day for victims & survivors of abuse, when we lose one of the world's leading civil rights lawyers @BenEmmerson1.\"\nBarrister Michael Mansfield QC told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the inquiry had been \"chaotic from the very beginning\" and \"appalling\" appointments had been made without consulting survivors.\nHe said the inquiry needed to be split up into \"very obvious parts\" and said he was \"very willing to consider\" calls for him to replace Mr Emmerson.\nBut Labour MP Sarah Champion, whose Rotherham constituency was the subject of a sexual abuse scandal, said there was merit in keeping the inquiry \"overarching\".\n\"We ought to be more supportive\", she told the BBC.\n\"The reason that we want to be whole... is we need to know in this country is the establishment predisposed to cover up child abuse? I think if you separate the inquiry we're going to lose a lot.\"\nBy Tom Symonds, BBC home affairs correspondent\nMorale among victims of child abuse who have been waiting for this inquiry to make progress is at rock bottom. It is not hard to see why.\nThe inquiry now has no counsel, the senior lawyer who will question witnesses.\nBen Emmerson's replacement must be found and prepared for hearings, which are due to start early next year.\nAnother challenge is the need to reshape the inquiry's working methods to make its huge task more achievable.\nSeveral of the inquiry's critics are considering court challenges to aspects of its work.\nMeanwhile, newspaper articles and blogs question the existence of the inquiry on a daily basis.\nBut the prime minister - who started this in the first place - insists it has to go ahead, its wide-ranging remit intact, because children were failed in the past. And lessons must be learnt.\nRead more from Tom Symonds.\nIn his resignation letter to Prof Jay, Mr Emmerson said he was \"sad\" to leave but that he had had doubts about whether he was the right person for the inquiry.\nHe wrote that \"it has become clear to me that I am not the person to take this review forward on your behalf.\n\"It is now time for someone else to take the helm with a different leadership of the counsel team.\n\"There is no truth in suggestions that I have resigned due to a difference of opinion with you about the next steps for the inquiry.\"\nMr Emmerson, who represented the widow of Alexander Litvinenko at the inquiry into the Russian dissident's death in London from radiation poisoning, is a deputy High Court judge.\nHe is also a visiting professor of human rights law at Oxford University and a leading international lawyer.\nProf Jay said Mr Emmerson would \"continue to be available to the inquiry whilst his replacement is recruited and brought up to speed\".\nIt had been suggested Mrs Prochaska's departure was unconnected to Mr Emmerson's resignation. However, BBC Newsnight understands there were \"serious problems\" in the working relationship between Mrs Prochaska and Mr Emmerson.\nThe two resignations are the latest blows to an inquiry that has already been beset by problems - Prof Jay is the fourth person to be appointed to lead the inquiry after three chairwomen stood down.\nPrime Minister Theresa May said the \"really important\" hearings would still go ahead as planned.\nPreliminary hearings began at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in March.\nSpeaking on Thursday, Mrs May said the inquiry's original terms of reference \"were the right ones\".\nHowever, Labour MP Chuka Umunna, said: \"This is a dysfunctional inquiry and we need urgent reassurance by the chair that she is getting a grip of the situation.\"\nThe inquiry has launched 13 investigations into a broad range of institutions. They are named as follows:", "Michael Mansfield QC told the BBC the best way forward was to have separate chairs overseeing different areas.\nThe inquiry has been battling to keep the confidence of victims after losing its third chair, Dame Lowell Goddard, and a succession of senior lawyers.\nMr Mansfield represented the families of victims in the Bloody Sunday inquiry and the Hillsborough inquest.\nA number of lawyers have expressed concerns over the leadership and direction of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse which has been charged with investigating allegations of child sexual abuse in a wide range of institutions from the Anglican and Catholic churches to Westminster.\nMr Mansfield told BBC Newsnight: \"We've got to a stage now where it's crumbled, there's no other word for it.\n\"What has gone seriously wrong here is a dismal failure to consult with the survivors' groups from the beginning about appointments and about the substantive materials to be assembled, secondly the actual appointments of the chair have been inappropriate, one after another.\n\"Of course some of the groups are saying 'are these mistakes being made on purpose?'\"\nThe inquiry can expect more attention later this week when correspondence between the Home Affairs Select Committee and some of the inquiry's former lawyers is published. Newsnight understands that the inquiry told the lawyers not to engage with the Committee.\nHugh Davies QC - deputy counsel to the inquiry (December 2015)\nToby Fisher - joint first junior counsel to the inquiry (August 2015)\nElizabeth Prochaska - joint first junior counsel to the inquiry (September 2016)\nBen Emmerson QC - lead counsel on the inquiry (September 2016)\nAileen McColgan - lead barrister on inquiry investigations into the Anglican and Catholic churches (November 2016)\nHowever, it understood the inquiry's former deputy chief counsel, Hugh Davies, is highly critical of the its handling of an alleged incident of sexual assault of a staff member by the former lead counsel, Ben Emmerson.\nLast month Newsnight reported that the alleged incident had been disclosed to the panel which oversees the inquiry but Mr Emmerson was allowed to resign with no investigation of the allegation, or any other concerns.\nMr Emmerson has robustly denied that he sexually assaulted a colleague, or any other improper behaviour.\nThe inquiry has denied that it received any complaint about a sexual assault, although it has not commented on whether it was notified of an alleged incident.\nMr Mansfield said the best way of saving the inquiry was to have \"a panel of chairs, maybe half a dozen, with at least two lawyers in there, teams of lawyers doing different modules, dealing with different areas including different geographical areas as well as historical periods\".\nHowever he said it was not clear whether the inquiry could be rescued: \"All we get are assurances that it's going to be all right on the night. Well I'm afraid I don't accept that.\n\"It looks extremely bad from outside and I can't see it ploughing on without the main actor [the victims]. This is Hamlet without Hamlet.\"\nThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said: \"It would not be appropriate for us to comment on Home Affairs Committee business.\"\nJake Morris was reporting for BBC Newsnight - you can watch his report here", "The independent inquiry has been beset by controversies, including the resignation of three of its chairwomen.\nProf Jay said that - although some measures would be taken to speed up the inquiry - it was \"still very interested in the past\".\nShe said she expects \"significant progress\" by the end of 2020.\nProf Jay - who led the inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham in 2014 - was appointed in August.\nOn her second day, she ordered an internal review into the inquiry. But today she rejected calls to tighten its terms of reference.\n\"I treat with some scepticism calls for us to forget the past,\" she said.\n\"Only by understanding the lessons we can learn from that and the possible failings and cover-ups that might have taken place in certain institutions will we go forward with confidence.\"\nPrime Minister Theresa May, who set up the inquiry as home secretary in 2014, said it was important to remember why it was established.\n\"This is about people who suffered abuse as children, who for years - for some, for decades - have never found justice,\" she said.\nProf Jay said the inquiry would not hold public hearings into every institution it was investigating, as it would take too long.\n\"If we were to pursue the traditional public hearing model - which people associate with inquiries of this kind - to the thousands and thousands of institutions in England and Wales, we would fail,\" she said.\n\"There is no possibility we would do that.\"\nInstead, she said the inquiry \"intends to use different models and ways of working\".\nDame Lowell Goddard, the inquiry's third chairwoman, resigned in August.\nIn her resignation letter, she said the inquiry had a \"legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off\".\nShe has since been accused of using racist language, something she has strongly denied.\nHome Secretary Amber Rudd told MPs on Monday that the inquiry's secretary reported concerns about Dame Lowell's \"competence and professionalism\" on 29 July.\nMs Rudd said \"less than a week elapsed\" before Dame Lowell resigned.\nShadow home secretary Diane Abbott said \"no inquiry in modern times has been mired in such chaos\".\n\"At the very least it suggests a certain incompetence both in setting the terms and selecting the personnel to lead it,\" she said.\nBut Ms Rudd said there was \"no paralysis\" - insisting that the inquiry was working \"at full speed\".\nEarlier this month, the most senior lawyer on the inquiry, Ben Emmerson QC, also stepped down.\nIn response, a survivors' group said it had concerns about the inquiry's \"everlasting remit\".\nThe inquiry is examining how state and non-state institutions in England and Wales protected children from abuse.\n7 July 2014 - government announces independent inquiry into the way public bodies investigated and handled child sex abuse claims. Baroness Butler-Sloss chosen as head\n9 July - Baroness Butler-Sloss faces calls to quit because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general in the 1980s\n14 July - she stands down, saying she is \"not the right person\" for the job\n5 September - Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf named the new head of the inquiry\n11 October - Mrs Woolf discloses she had five dinners with Lord Brittan from 2008-12\n22 October - abuse victim launches legal challenge against Mrs Woolf leading the inquiry, amid growing calls for her resignation\n31 October - victims' groups tell government officials they are \"unanimous\" Mrs Woolf should quit. She steps down later that day\n4 February 2015 - Justice Lowell Goddard, a serving judge of the High Court of New Zealand, announced as the new head of the inquiry\n13 July - Dame Lowell's pay is revealed as more than £480,000 a year\nNovember - inquiry begins hearing directly from victims and survivors\n4 August 2016 - Dame Lowell writes to Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign from her post\n11 August 2016 - Prof Alexis Jay announced as new head of the inquiry\n30 September - Ben Emmerson QC, the most senior lawyer working for the inquiry, steps down", "Justice Lowell Goddard said councils in Lambeth, Nottinghamshire and Rochdale councils will also be examined as part of 12 separate investigations in England and Wales.\nThe scale of the inquiry was \"unprecedented\" in the UK, but she was determined it would succeed, she added.\nThe inquiry is due to take five years.\nThe 12 investigations will look at:\nAnyone wishing to contact the inquiry with relevant information can use a dedicated NSPCC helpline on 0800 917 1000.\nJustice Goddard said she was confident the range of investigations into \"people of public prominence\" would \"give a voice to victims and survivors\".\n\"To run 12 investigations in parallel represents an organisational challenge that is unprecedented in a public inquiry in the United Kingdom,\" she added.\n\"We are determined to succeed.\"\nLambeth council's leader, Lib Peck, said it had previously investigated crimes committed at its children's homes prior to their closure in 1983, which led to a number of criminal convictions.\nBut she added that in light of \"new national concerns\" about how child abuse issues were investigated, \"it is right that the very serious events of the past are being looked at again\".\nSteve Rumbelow, chief executive of Rochdale Borough Council, said it would give its \"full support\" to the inquiry.\nOther institutions to be investigated as part of the inquiry include Medomsley Youth Detention Centre in County Durham, and Cambridge House boys' home and Knowl View in Rochdale - including claims relating to the late Cyril Smith, a Liberal MP.\nAn investigation will be held into allegations of child sexual abuse involving \"people of public prominence\" associated with Westminster - including MPs, senior civil servants, and members of the security services. Allegations of cover-up and conspiracy will also be looked at.\nAnd there will also be an investigation into whether there was, within the highest levels of government, a \"culture of tolerance\" towards those suspected of child sexual abuse.\nLiz Dux, a child abuse lawyer whose firm represents many of the victims to whom the abuse inquiry now applies, told BBC Radio 5 live they wanted to see \"positive reforms come out of this inquiry to ensure that no other person suffers the way that they have done\".\nAmong religious orders and institutions to be investigated are English Benedictine congregations, and the Anglican Diocese of Chichester in West Sussex, which have both been the subjects of child sexual abuse allegations.\nThey will be used as case studies to establish whether they are representative of wider child protection failings within their respective churches.\nIn relation to the Church of England, the case of Peter Ball, a former bishop who was jailed after admitting abusing 18 young men, will be investigated to see whether there were attempts by prominent people to interfere in the criminal justice process.\nThe Church of England said on Friday that it welcomed Lord Justice Goddard's statement, and referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury's request in July that the Church be one of the first institutions to be considered in the inquiry.\nJustice Lowell Goddard, who is leading the inquiry, has described the task ahead of her as daunting. She wasn't overestimating the challenge.\nHer terms of reference mean she will have to examine the causes and effects of child abuse in all state or non-state institutions, as far back in history as required.\nThat could take 10 years. No-one really believes the official estimate, that it could take five.\nOver the last four months, her team has been working on the tricky job of setting up a structure capable of achieving this task.\nThe inquiry still has its critics - but the once-vociferous campaign by victims and survivors who say they don't trust it to get to the truth is less visible than it was earlier in the year.\nRead more from Tom Symonds\nBritish institutions abroad, including the armed forces, Foreign Office and British Council will form another investigation strand.\nOther investigations will look at how well abuse victims were treated by the authorities after making allegations, and institutional responses to internet abuse.\nAll 12 investigations will begin with immediate effect and most, if not all, will culminate in public hearings, Justice Goddard said.\nThe independent inquiry was launched by Home Secretary Theresa May to look at how institutions and organisations, including the BBC, police, armed forces, schools and children's homes, handled abuse claims.\nThe scale of the work the inquiry has set itself is staggering, BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said.\nIt will be the UK's largest-ever public inquiry and is expected to cost tens of millions of pounds.\nThe time-frame of five years was ambitious, but possible, Justice Goddard said.\nThe Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel to the inquiry said the investigations would give \"public voice\" to people who had suffered in silence.\nIt would also \"bring greater understanding of why so many horrific crimes went unreported and undetected for so long\", it added.", "Toby Fisher, one of the first three barristers appointed to the inquiry, said he wanted to stand down in August.\nIt is understood he was concerned by the inquiry's \"progress and direction\" and was not otherwise planning on leaving.\nA spokesman for the inquiry would not comment on specifics and Mr Fisher declined to comment.\nMr Fisher had served as first junior counsel - the joint-second most senior barrister on the inquiry - and previously worked on two of the inquiry's most high profile investigations - into Lord Janner and alleged abuse in Westminster.\nHe notified the inquiry of his intention to step down more than two months ago.\nMr Fisher's decision to leave came about a fortnight after the departure of the inquiry's third chair, Dame Lowell Goddard and days after Newsnight disclosed the inquiry had been told of an alleged sexual assault by the inquiry's lead counsel, Ben Emmerson QC.\nThe alleged victim did not wish to complain about her claim that Mr Emmerson groped her in a lift, but the inquiry has been criticised for failing to investigate wider concerns about Mr Emmerson's behaviour and for allowing him to step down but continue working for two months on £1,700 per day.\nThe BBC understands that Matrix, the set of chambers to which Mr Emmerson belongs, has launched its own independent inquiry into the allegations, to be carried out by an external figure.\nMr Emmerson categorically denies sexual assault, bullying or other misconduct.\nThe inquiry has denied that either Prof Alexis Jay, who was appointed in August as the fourth head of the child sex abuse inquiry, or the panel received any complaint about an alleged sexual assault, however they have declined to comment on whether an alleged incident was disclosed to them.\n'Stop knocking inquiry'\nOn Monday, Labour MP Lisa Nandy asked Home Secretary Amber Rudd about the inquiry's handling of the disclosure of the alleged sexual assault.\nMs Rudd said it was a question for the head of the independent inquiry, adding: \"I would urge [Ms Nandy] to stop knocking the inquiry and get behind it.\"\nThe troubled inquiry, launched by Theresa May when she was home secretary, has already seen the departure of three chairs as well as its most senior and second-ranking counsel.\nAsked about Mr Fisher's departure, a spokesman for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said the inquiry had \"a large legal team comprising a number of junior counsel, senior counsel and solicitors\".\n\"They come and go subject to their professional obligations and we are not commenting on specifics,\" he added.\nThe spokesman for the inquiry added that Toby Fisher remains instructed by the inquiry. However, the BBC understands that this is to allow Mr Fisher to answer any queries that arise related to his previous work.", "Philip Temple, 66, admitted seven charges committed in the 1970s when he appeared at Woolwich Crown Court.\nHe pleaded to 20 similar charges and two of perjury at Croydon Crown Court in April.\nIn all, he admitted abusing 12 boys and one girl while working in south London care homes and a north London church.\nHe also admitted lying on oath in the 1990s when he was cleared of child sex abuse charges following accusations by a teenage boy from his church.\nA spokesperson for the Catholic Church in England and Wales said that when concerns were raised it was limited in the measures it could take because as a monk he was answerable to the head of his order in Italy rather than the archdiocese here.\nBut the church said it believes he worked in Christ the King parish between 1999 and 2002 while the commission of inquiry was ongoing, meaning he would have had continued access to children.\nThe BBC has been told that in recent years Temple spent time at monasteries in Italy and France.\nRaymond Stephenson of the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association said: \"If Temple had been caught at Shirley Oaks he would not have been able to abuse anyone else.\"\nThe BBC is still awaiting comment from Lambeth Council which had responsibility for Shirley Oaks.\nThe BBC understands the Temple case will now be investigated by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, currently without a chair after the resignation of Dame Lowell Goddard.", "In the Times, Prof Alexis Jay wrote: \"I have fought for this... I don't intend to stop fighting for it now.\"\nThe Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, for 600 victims who lived in children's homes in London, said it did not have confidence in the inquiry's leadership.\nBut Home Secretary Amber Rudd has backed Prof Jay's leadership.\nProf Jay, who is the fourth chair of the inquiry following earlier resignations, wrote that she was \"genuinely saddened\" by the group's decision to withdraw \"but our work continues\".\nShe wrote: \"I have fought for this inquiry - for its independence, its reputation and its vital capacity to right a terrible wrong - since it opened, and I don't intend to stop fighting for it now.\n\"There are some people who would like to see us fail because it suits their agenda to not want dark institutional failings brought into the light.\n\"But shine that light we will, because there are many, many people in this country who spend every waking minute of every day living with the damage and the pain caused by child sexual abuse.\"\nThe treatment of children in care in Lambeth, south London, from the 1950s onwards is one of 13 areas the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is due to look at.\nIt will investigate the claim that a large paedophile network infiltrated children's homes in the area, run by Lambeth Council, with the Shirley Oaks group due to have been a \"core participant\" in the process.\nOn Friday the group called the inquiry a \"stage-managed event\" and an \"unpalatable circus\" which had \"lurched from crisis to crisis\".\nRaymond Stevenson, who has spoken about being physically abused during his time at the Shirley Oaks home in the 1970s, said: \"The inquiry needs to sort itself out. They need to get rid of Alexis Jay, who's been parachuted in by the Home Office. She's not the right person.\"\nLabour MP Chuka Umunna called for a new head, but inquiry panel member Dru Sharpling defended chairwoman Prof Jay as being \"qualified for the job.\"\nProf Jay wrote that the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association \"condemns me for having been a social worker and asks how this inquiry can truly be independent.\n\"But anyone who knows me, has worked with me or is familiar with my record at other inquiries knows I have vigorously scrutinised the work of social workers and all other agencies.\"\nThe inquiry said in a statement: \"Our investigation will continue and will examine the scale and nature of the abuse that may have taken place under the care of Lambeth Council with pace, confidence and clarity.\"\nThe inquiry has been beset by difficulties since it was set up in July 2014 to investigate allegations made against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions in England and Wales, as well as people in the public eye.\nThree chairwomen - former president of the High Court Family Division Baroness Butler-Sloss, her replacement, leading lawyer Dame Fiona Woolf, and Justice Goddard, a New Zealand high court judge - have already stood down before Prof Jay took charge.\nA number of senior lawyers on the inquiry have also quit - the most recent of which was Aileen McColgan, who resigned on Wednesday amid concerns about the inquiry's leadership.", "This is the correspondence which passed between the two on Thursday 4 August.\nDear Home Secretary,\nI regret to advise that I am offering you my resignation as Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, with immediate effect. I trust you will accept this decision.\nHon Dame Lowell Goddard QC\nDear Dame Lowell,\nThank you for your letter today, offering your resignation as Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.\nI know that this will have been a difficult decision for you to make, and something you will have carefully considered. I was sorry to receive your letter, but I accept your decision.\nWe all recognise that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is the most ambitious public inquiry ever established in England and Wales. Under your leadership, the Inquiry has already instituted and made progress on each of its three core projects: the Research Project; the Truth Project; and the Public Hearings Project. I am grateful to you for bringing your experience to bear in devising how the Inquiry will operate, guided by its three fundamental principles: that it will be comprehensive, inclusive, and thorough.\nI know how personally committed you have been to ensuring that the Inquiry is a success for those at its heart: the survivors and the victims. You have consistently demonstrated your desire to leave no stone unturned in order that the voices of those victims might be heard. It is a testament to your commitment that you have taken the difficult decision to stand down now, having set the Inquiry firmly on course, and allow someone else to lead it through to the end. With regret, I agree that this is the right decision.\nI know you will want to be reassured that work continues without delay, and most importantly that victims and survivors know that the Government's commitment to this Inquiry is undiminished. I want to be absolutely clear. The success of this Inquiry remains an absolute priority for this Government. I am determined to keep the process on track and am taking immediate steps to appoint a new Chair as soon as possible. I will, of course, consult with victims and survivors groups before making a public announcement about the appointment.\nI would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your commitment to the Inquiry over the course of the last 16 months. Your hard work will have a lasting impact on the Inquiry and, ultimately, in getting to the truth about the institutional response to child sexual abuse in this country. Of that, you can take pride.\nWith my thanks and very best wishes for your future endeavours.\nRt Hon Amber Rudd MP\nI announce with regret my decision to resign as chair of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, effective from today.\nWhen I was first approached through the British High Commissioner in Wellington in late 2014, and asked to consider taking up the role, I had to think long and hard about it.\nAfter carefully discussing the matter with the home secretary and her officials and seeking the counsel of those people in New Zealand whose opinions mattered to me, I decided that I should undertake the role, given my relevant experience and track record in the area.\nIt was, however, an incredibly difficult step to take, as it meant relinquishing my career in New Zealand and leaving behind my beloved family.\nThe conduct of any public inquiry is not an easy task, let alone one of the magnitude of this. Compounding the many difficulties was its legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off and with hindsight it would have been better to have started completely afresh.\nWhile it has been a struggle in many respects, I am confident there have been achievements and some very real gains for victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse in getting their voices heard.\nI have nothing but the greatest of respect for the victims and survivors and have particularly enjoyed working with the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel which I established.\"", "Thousands of children were relocated to Australia and parts of the British Empire up to 1974.\nMany experienced \"unacceptable depravity\", the first hearing in the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales has heard.\nOne migrant, David Hill, called for perpetrators to be \"named and shamed\".\nMeanwhile the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has apologised and referred itself to the information commissioner after mistakenly sending out confidential information relating to abuse victims.\nMr Hill was 12 when he was sent with his two brothers to the Fairbridge Farm School in Western Australia.\nHe told the hearing: \"We'll never be able to undo the great wrong that was done to these children.\n\"But what is important to the survivors of sexual abuse is where this inquiry is satisfied with the evidence - name the villains.\n\"Many of them are beyond the grave and therefore beyond the law.\n\"But it would bring a great deal of the comfort to the people who as children were victims of these people if they were named and shamed.\"\nInquiry counsel Henrietta Hill QC said claims of \"systematic sexual abuse\" in institutions and work environments would be heard throughout the inquiry.\nThe children, she said, were sent without consent of parents, wrongly told they were orphans, and denied basic details about their family backgrounds during their future lives.\nFor the government, Samantha Leek QC said: \"Child migration is wrong. It should not have been sanctioned or facilitated...\n\"The lifelong consequences for those involved are a matter of deep and sincere regret.\"\nIn 2009, the Australian government apologised for the cruelty shown to the child migrants.\nBritain also made an apology in 2010. The apology contained no specific mention of sexual abuse.\nThe abuse scandal of the British children sent abroad\nBy BBC home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds\nOne of the many criticisms levelled at the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual abuse centre on the view that it is too focused on the past.\nThis investigation dates back to 1945, but some of the child migrants are still alive, and their mistreatment as children is undeniable.\nPerhaps, then, this is safe ground for a public inquiry hoping to demonstrate its value following two and a half years of controversy.\nThe hearings may well be able to establish the wider pattern of sexual abuse, which permeated the institutions abroad which received children.\nThis has never been attempted by a previous official investigation.\nThe inquiry panel will also be able to draw conclusions from the sheer length of time it has taken for some of those abused to disclose what happened, something that is likely to be a common theme in the inquiry's work.\nHowever, on a day when this troubled project really started to be making progress, it managed to shoot itself in the foot by leaking sensitive data - not for the first time.\nThe first phase of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) inquiry is looking at the way organisations have protected children outside the UK.\nBetween 7,000 and 10,000 children were moved to Australia after World War Two.\nThey were recruited by religious institutions from both the Anglican and Catholic churches, or charities, including Barnardo's and the Fairbridge Society, with the aim of giving them a better life.\nMany, however, went on to suffer physical and sexual abuse in homes and so-called farm schools run by religious orders and charities.\nAswini Weereratne QC, representing the Child Migrants Trust (CMT) support organisation, said this \"long overdue inquiry\" would hear of a \"crushing catalogue of sexual abuse, deprivation, violence and abuse\".\nMs Weereratne said the inquiry will hear from 22 former child migrants - their average age was nine when deported and one was aged only three or four years old.\nThe abuse that some of the children sent abroad were said to have suffered included \"torture, rape and slavery\", Ms Weereratne said.\nSpeaking on behalf of former child migrant Oliver Cosgrove, who was sent to Australia in 1941, Imran Khan said: \"(It was) a scheme to populate the empire with good, white British stock and which led to the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of countless children, many thousands of miles away from their families.\"\nA £6m family restoration fund was set up to allow the migrants to travel to the UK and ministers are now considering extending it.\nThe independent inquiry was set up after the death of DJ Jimmy Savile in 2011 when hundreds of people came forward to say he had abused them as children.\nThe IICSA has apologised after mistakenly sending out confidential information.\nPeople who had registered an interest in attending victims' forums - which are being organised by the inquiry - were sent an email on Monday that revealed the email addresses of others who had registered.\nThe BBC understands that 90 people were affected.\nNigel O'Mara, an abuse survivor and core participant in the inquiry, told the BBC that \"this breach of data is very concerning to survivors as these are the very people we are supposed to trust with the details of our abuse\".\nThe hearings are taking place at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in central London, with the first phase concerning Australia expected to last 10 days.", "Dame Lowell Goddard is alleged to have said Britain had so many paedophiles \"because it has so many Asian men\", according to a report in the Times.\nThe senior New Zealand judge has hit back at the claims, calling them \"false\" and \"malicious\".\nThe Home Office said it had received no formal complaint about Dame Lowell.\nShe resigned as head of the inquiry on 4 August, after 18 months in the role.\nThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is investigating the extent to which institutions in England and Wales have failed to protect children from sexual abuse.\nThe Times also reported allegations that Dame Lowell had expressed shock at the size of the UK's ethnic minority population and mentioned having to travel 50 miles from London to see a white face.\nThe paper said senior Home Office staff and advisers knew about the alleged derogatory comments and other complaints.\nDame Lowell said: \"I confirm my absolute rejection of this attack. I am confident that in New Zealand my known reputation from my work over many years will provide its own refutation of these falsities.\"\nIn a detailed statement issued later, she added: \"The specific allegations of racially derogatory remarks are totally false. I categorically never said that 'Britain has so many paedophiles because it has so many Asian men'.\n\"I never expressed shock at the number of ethnic people in Britain. I have never held the views and opinions attributed to me, nor is the language in these allegations vocabulary which I either used or would consider using.\"\nDame Lowell said any suggestion that she \"threatened at any time 'to take this inquiry down with me'\" was \"totally untrue\". She also rejected claims of being rude and abusive to staff.\nAndrew Norfolk, chief investigative reporter at the Times, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the sources for the story were \"several people who are at a senior level and have a detailed awareness of what has been going on within the headquarters of that inquiry\".\n\"These people, over many months, were thinking 'what can we do about this? This judge is seriously impacting on the work of the inquiry,'\" he said.\n\"They forwarded those concerns to a place they thought was a fit place for them, the Home Office, and Theresa May had the power to terminate her contract. The frustration intensified as nothing was done.\"\nThe Home Office said it had been \"made aware of concerns about the professionalism and competence of Justice Goddard\" on 29 July, six days before she was to resign.\n\"The permanent secretary advised the inquiry that as they were independent they should raise this directly with the chair,\" its statement said.\n\"It is understood that they did this. No formal complaint was made to the Home Office.\"\nLabour's shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said Mrs May and her former department had \"serious questions to answer\" over \"suggestions that Home Office officials turned a blind eye to allegations of impropriety\".\n\"How can the victims expect this inquiry to uncover child abuse when it has faced multiple setbacks of its own?\n\"After years of waiting for justice, they deserve better. It is crucial that this inquiry gets on with its vital task.\"\nLabour MP for Streatham Chuka Umunna, some of whose constituents are among the abuse victims, said concerns about the scale of the inquiry could be addressed by giving it a \"federal\" structure, with a national body overseeing the work of several smaller investigations.\n\"That's the way to change the scale of the inquiry, but to change the scope would very much worry the survivors,\" he said.\nPeter Saunders, a member of the Victims and Survivors' Consultative Panel, which forms part of the inquiry, said the accusations reported by the Times were not behaviour he \"recognised\" with Dame Lowell and he worried about the effect the claims would have.\n\"[The inquiry] has had far too many setbacks, far too many people sniping at it,\" he told Today. \"There are people out there listening to this programme who most definitely want this inquiry to fail.\n\"It has evolved a lot in the last few weeks. It has turned a big corner and there is a determination.\"\nNorfolk said: \"I know for certain that the people who have been speaking to me and my colleague only have an interest in ending the deep frustration of people, men and women, who for years, for decades, have been waiting for the institutions that turned a blind eye to their abuse to be held to account.\n\"I think what really compounds all of this is the sense that an inquiry set up to oppose a culture of secrecy and cover-up has become itself an exemplar of the sins it was supposed to expose.\"\n7 July 2014 - government announces independent inquiry into the way public bodies investigated and handled child sex abuse claims. Baroness Butler-Sloss chosen as head\n9 July - Baroness Butler-Sloss faces calls to quit because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general in the 1980s\n14 July - she stands down, saying she is \"not the right person\" for the job\n5 September - Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf named the new head of the inquiry\n11 October - Mrs Woolf discloses she had five dinners with Lord Brittan from 2008-12\n22 October - abuse victim launches legal challenge against Mrs Woolf leading the inquiry, amid growing calls for her resignation\n31 October - victims' groups tell government officials they are \"unanimous\" Mrs Woolf should quit. She steps down later that day\n4 February 2015 - Justice Lowell Goddard, a serving judge of the High Court of New Zealand, announced as the new head of the inquiry\n13 July - Dame Lowell's pay is revealed as more than £480,000 a year\nNovember - inquiry begins hearing directly from victims and survivors\n4 August 2016 - Dame Lowell writes to Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign from her post\n14 October The Times reports accusations of racist remarks being made by Dame Lowell when in the job. She denies the claims.", "The Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, for 600 victims who lived in children's homes in London, is pulling out of the inquiry because of its leadership.\nBut Dru Sharpling said it would not prevent the inquiry from carrying on.\nLabour MP Chuka Umunna has called for a new head, but Home Secretary Amber Rudd has backed Prof Jay's leadership.\nThe inquiry said its work would continue with \"confidence and clarity\", and Prime Minister Theresa May this week said she had absolute confidence in the inquiry's leadership.\nThe treatment of children in care in Lambeth, south London, from the 1950s onwards is one of 13 areas the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is due to look at.\nIt will investigate the claim that a large paedophile network infiltrated children's homes in the area, run by Lambeth Council, with the Shirley Oaks group due to have been a \"core participant\" in the process.\nMs Sharpling said Prof Jay, who also led the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was the right woman for the task ahead.\n\"One woman uncovered that abuse and that was Alexis Jay,\" she told the BBC. \"I think she is one of the few people qualified for the job.\"\nShe added: \"I'm very sorry Shirley Oaks Survivors Group has decided to withdraw but it is not going to prevent us from continuing the investigation. To be frank it gives us all the passion that we need to take it forward and although it has been a difficult start for this inquiry, we are determined to see it through no matter what.\"\nRaymond Stevenson, who has spoken about being physically abused during his time at the Shirley Oaks home in the 1970s, said the group's members had voted \"overwhelmingly\" on Saturday to pull out of the inquiry.\nMr Stevenson told the BBC that the group \"felt relieved not to be part of this mangled attempt to get belated justice for our members\" and he called the inquiry an \"unpalatable circus\".\nHe added: \"The inquiry has just lurched from disaster to disaster and we do not believe Alexis Jay, the chair, is the right person to wrench open the Pandora's box of historical lies and cover-ups that have happened over the decades.\"\nThe inquiry has been beset by difficulties since it was set up in July 2014 to investigate allegations made against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions in England and Wales, as well as people in the public eye.\nThree chairwomen - former president of the High Court Family Division Baroness Butler-Sloss, her replacement, leading lawyer Dame Fiona Woolf, and Justice Goddard, a New Zealand high court judge - have already stood down before Prof Jay took her place.\nA number of senior lawyers on the inquiry have also quit - the most recent of which was Aileen McColgan, who resigned on Wednesday amid concerns about the inquiry's leadership.\nShirley Oaks Survivors Group had threatened to withdraw before, questioning the inquiry's independence and claiming that the Home Office, which sponsors the inquiry and provided some of its staff, had a role in covering up abuse in the past. Now it is planning to publish the results of its own investigation.\nMs Rudd has also come out in defence of Prof Jay and said: \"We owe it to victims and survivors to get behind the inquiry, and its chair.\"\nShe added that the inquiry had a \"vital role to play in exposing the failure of public bodies and other major organisations to prevent child sexual abuse\".\nBut the group said she was planning nothing more than a \"social work talk shop\", which it said would achieve nothing, and described her as \"an uninspiring leader\".\nTheir local MP for Streatham, Mr Umunna, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he was also concerned whether Prof Jay would be able to \"bring the heft and forensic capacity of a judge\" to the inquiry.\nHe also said there was concern about her social work background because \"for many of the survivors... a lot the perpetrators came from that profession\", and further concern about the \"severe dysfunction\" in the legal team.\n\"So for all those reasons I don't have confidence in this chair and I think we need a new one,\" he said.\nPeter Saunders, the founder of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood who sits on the inquiry's victims advisory panel, told Today the inquiry should not be \"distracted by just one group\".\n\"This inquiry, for all its challenges, is the best chance that we've all got and we need to support it, not keep having a go at it.\"", "The appointment was announced by the home secretary after the resignation of judge Dame Lowell Goddard last week.\nProf Jay was already among the panel of advisers taking part in the independent investigation into claims made against public and private institutions.\nShe becomes the fourth head after the three previous chairwomen stood down.\nHome Secretary Amber Rudd said: \"The independent inquiry has a vital role to play in exposing the failure of public bodies and other major organisations to prevent systematic child sexual abuse.\n\"I'm delighted Professor Alexis Jay has agreed to chair the inquiry. She has a strong track record in uncovering the truth and I have no doubt she will run this independent inquiry with vigour, compassion and courage.\"\nMs Rudd added that the government's commitment to the inquiry remained \"undiminished\".\nProfessor Jay, 67, led the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham which found that at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexual exploitation in the town between 1997 and 2013.\nProfessor Jay said: \"I am committed to ensuring this inquiry does everything it has set out to do and does so with pace, with confidence and with clarity.\n\"Be in no doubt - the inquiry is open for business and people are busier than ever working hard to increase momentum.\n\"The panel and I are determined to make progress on all parts of the inquiry's work, including speaking to victims and survivors.\"\nThe inquiry has been beset by difficulties since it was set up in July 2014 to investigate allegations made against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions in England and Wales, as well as people in the public eye.\nJustice Goddard, a New Zealand high court judge, was selected following the resignation of two previous chairwomen in 2014. Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former President of the High Court Family Division, and her replacement Dame Fiona Woolf, a leading lawyer, stood down over their links to establishment figures.\nIn her resignation letter, Justice Goddard said conducting such a widespread inquiry was \"not an easy task\" but \"compounding the many difficulties was its legacy of failure which has been very hard to shake off\".\nProf Jay, who has worked in local government for 30 years, is the first of the chairwomen who is not a lawyer.\nBBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman said Prof Jay was regarded as having done a \"very fine job\" of leading the Rotherham abuse inquiry.\nBut he said questions would inevitably be asked about her lack of judicial experience as she oversees a \"mammoth inquiry\" that will require her to exercise quasi-judicial powers.\nOur correspondent added that many legal experts consider the inquiry to be too large, with some saying it will take 10 years or more to complete.\nLabour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, said Prof Jay was \"clearly a suitable candidate with vast experience\" but he said the public still needed a \"full explanation\" as to why Justice Goddard resigned.\nSarah Champion, Labour's shadow minister for preventing abuse and domestic violence, said Prof Jay was an \"honest and fearless woman\" and called on her to \"swiftly bring about investigations and changes in practice so that more is done to prevent these horrific crimes\".\n7 July 2014 - government announces independent inquiry into the way public bodies investigated and handled child sex abuse claims. Baroness Butler-Sloss chosen as head\n9 July - Baroness Butler-Sloss faces calls to quit because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general in the 1980s\n14 July - she stands down, saying she is \"not the right person\" for the job\n5 September - Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf named the new head of the inquiry\n11 October - Mrs Woolf discloses she had five dinners with Lord Brittan from 2008-12\n22 October - abuse victim launches legal challenge against Mrs Woolf leading the inquiry, amid growing calls for her resignation\n31 October - victims' groups tell government officials they are \"unanimous\" Mrs Woolf should quit. She steps down later that day\n4 February 2015 - Justice Lowell Goddard, a serving judge of the High Court of New Zealand, announced as the new head of the inquiry\n13 July - Dame Lowell's pay is revealed as more than £480,000 a year\nNovember - inquiry begins hearing directly from victims and survivors\n4 August 2016 - Dame Lowell writes to Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign from her post\n11 August 2016 - Prof Alexis Jay announced as new head of the inquiry", "The home affairs select committee said, given the inquiry's task, it should have treated the issue with \"rigour\".\nA woman on the inquiry team alleged she was groped in a lift at its offices.\nInquiry chair Prof Alexis Jay, the fourth person to lead the inquiry, apologised for any unnecessary anxiety caused to victims or survivors.\nThe troubled inquiry, launched by Theresa May when she was home secretary, has seen the departure of three chairs as well as its most senior and second-ranking counsel.\nIn the latest setback, one of the largest victims' groups involved withdrew from the inquiry, calling it an \"unpalatable circus\".\nThe move prompted calls for Prof Jay, who has the government's backing, to be replaced.\nBen Emmerson QC, the most senior lawyer at the inquiry, resigned in September.\nThe BBC's Newsnight programme has previously reported that the inquiry was told in September of a claim that Mr Emmerson had assaulted a woman working at its offices in a lift - a claim he has strenuously denied.\nThe alleged victim did not want the incident investigated.\nIn its report, the committee said it made no judgement on the claim, and suggested an external person could be appointed to examine the matter.\n\"We are not in a position, and it is certainly not our responsibility, to assess either the facts of the case or the details of the processes that the inquiry pursued,\" the report said.\n\"However, we do not believe that IICSA [the inquiry] has taken seriously enough its responsibility to pursue allegations of bullying or disclosures of sexual assault within the inquiry,\" it added.\n\"Nor do we believe it has done enough to demonstrate publicly that it has a robust approach to such matters.\"\nIn a letter published by the committee alongside its report, Hugh Davies QC, a barrister who worked for the inquiry until December last year, said as a body judging how institutions dealt with this sort of allegation, it should \"expect to be judged by the same standards it will doubtless set for others\".\nLabour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the select committee, said the inquiry needed to sort out its problems fast and be less defensive about what had gone wrong.\nShe said it was \"shameful\" that the previous chair, Dame Lowell Goddard, was refusing to give oral evidence about her sudden resignation this summer.\nThe New Zealand high court judge previously told the committee that for her to be summoned would compromise the inquiry's \"independence and integrity\".\nMPs also urged the inquiry team to appoint new lawyers as soon as possible and suggested it split its workload into two strands - legal matters and child protection.\nMs Cooper said: \"We found there was an unresolved tension over how far the inquiry should focus on uncovering the truth about past abuse and cover-ups and how far it should focus on current child protection policies.\n\"Both are important but they need different skills, experience and styles of work.\n\"This inquiry is far too important to be sunk by problems. That's why urgent action is needed to sort them out. Survivors of abuse deserve nothing less.\"\nIn response, Prof Jay said an external senior legal figure would be invited to review some of the issues raised in the committee's report.\n\"While I am confident that our safeguarding and dignity at work procedures are robust, I recognise the impact of recent speculation and commentary about them,\" she said.\n\"Nobody is more determined to deliver a successful inquiry on behalf of victims, survivors and the wider public than the panel and myself.\n\"We recognise that the past few months have been difficult for the inquiry and for the victims and survivors who have placed their trust in it.\n\"I am personally sorry for any unnecessary anxiety the inquiry may have caused to victims and survivors during this transitional period.\"\nShe is expected to publish a review of how the inquiry operates in the coming weeks.", "The inquiry aims to investigate claims against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions - as well as people in the public eye. But it has been dogged with controversy since being announced in July 2014, be it chairwomen coming and going, lawyers quitting their posts or victims' groups losing faith in the process.\nFollowing the death of BBC DJ Jimmy Savile in 2011, hundreds of people came forward to say he had abused them as children. The spotlight has also fallen on sexual assaults carried out in schools, children's homes and at NHS sites.\nAt the same time, there have been claims of past failures by police and prosecutors to properly investigate allegations.\nThe inquiry was announced by the then Home Secretary Theresa May to \"expose those failures and learn the lessons\" from the past.\nThe inquiry is expected to take about five years to complete, with a report containing recommendations being published at the end.\nIt will be divided into public hearings into specific areas of concern, with witnesses giving evidence under oath; research into institutional failures in child protection, and the so-called Truth Project in which victims will share their experiences with the inquiry either in private interviews or written form.\nThe inquiry will not seek to determine civil or criminal liability of individuals or organisations but may reach \"findings of fact\" in relation to this.\nAllegations of child abuse received by the inquiry will be referred to police and material related to Scotland, Northern Ireland or British Overseas Territories will be passed on to the authorities there.\nA separate inquiry looking at the abuse of children in care in Scotland has been set up by the Scottish Government.\nThe inquiry is being led by Prof Alexis Jay, a former director of social services who headed the inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.\nShe is being assisted by a panel of advisers: law professor and human rights expert Malcolm Evans; child protection barrister Ivor Frank; and lawyer Drusilla Sharpling, a former Chief Crown Prosecutor for London, who has worked as an inspector of constabulary since 2009.\nA separate panel will represent victims and survivors.\nBrian Altman QC is lead counsel to the inquiry.\nThe inquiry is opening with hearings over two weeks looking at the cases of British children in care who were sent to to parts of the British Empire including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and what was Southern Rhodesia between 1920 and the 1970s. The UK government issued an apology in 2010 for its role in the child migration programmes.\nThe hearings will take evidence from former child migrants and form part of a wider investigation into the way organisations have protected children outside the UK.\nThe hearings are being held at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in Fleet Street, central London.\nPreliminary hearings in the inquiry began in March at the nearby Royal Courts of Justice.\nThe first phase of the inquiry consists of 13 separate investigations over a period of about 18 months.\nIt will also consider:\nThe evidence given at the public hearings is expected to cover a number of other cases that have attracted headlines in recent years, including late MP Cyril Smith and claims of sexual abuse at care homes in north Wales.\nThe main bone of contention has been the turbulent history over the past two years surrounding who is in charge.\nThe first chairwoman of the inquiry appointed in July 2014 was Baroness Butler-Sloss. However, she resigned just one week later after concerns arose around her links to the establishment - namely her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, who was attorney general in the 1980s.\nIn September 2014, Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf was named the new head, but after disclosing she had been to five dinners with the late Lord Brittan - one of the people facing accusations at the time, which have since been dropped - she quit by the end of October.\nIn February 2015, Justice Lowell Goddard, a serving judge of the High Court of New Zealand, took over the reins and was in charge as inquiry began hearing directly from victims and survivors. But by August 2016, she had resigned her post as well due to \"compounding difficulties\" and her family life.\nA number of lawyers have also resigned or been removed from the process.\nIn November 2016, he largest of the victims's groups involved in the inquiry, the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association, pulled out and said it had lost confidence in the inquiry's leadership.\nAnd public hearings into allegations of abuse relating to Lord Janner that were due to start in March have been delayed because of an \"overlap\" with a criminal investigation. His family are still calling for the strand of the inquiry to be dropped.\nThe IICSA has a budget of £17.9m in its first year, funded by the Home Office, with staff accounting for 41%.\nProf Jay is to be paid £185,000 - almost half her predecessor's salary - while panel members will each receive £565 a day.", "The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry is examining allegations of abuse at Rubane House, Kircubbin.\nThe inquiry estimates that 200 of Rubane's 1,050 former residents have made allegations of serious sexual or physical abuse.\nA total of 13 Northern Ireland institutions are being investigated.\nThe Kircubbin home was run by the De La Salle religious order, which has already accepted some children were abused.\nA lawyer acting for the inquiry said more than 200 children had claimed they were abused at Rubane House, which was open from 1950 to 1985.\nA total of 55 former residents have come forward to the inquiry to allege that they were physically or sexually abused.\nTheir public testimony will begin next week.\nOther documentation, including police reports, suggest that a further 150 boys also made allegations of abuse in the past, but have not contacted the inquiry.\nThe sex abuse allegations ranged from watching children in the shower to rape, while physical abuse ranged from corporal punishment to serious assault.\nThe inquiry has heard that the paedophile priest, Fr Brendan Smyth, was among the offenders.\nSome children also alleged that they were sexually abused by older boys in the home.\nThe lawyer added that in 1997, a senior police officer, Det Ch Supt Eric Anderson described the sexual abuse of children at Rubane House as \"rampant\" and likened the scale of the abuse at Rubane House to that of Kincora Boys Home in east Belfast.\nKincora Boys Home was the subject of a high-profile child abuse scandal in the 1980s.\nThree senior care staff at Kincora were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys in their care.\nIn 1997, Mr Anderson wrote to the director of public prosecutions about the Rubane House allegations: \"I consider the complaints made to show it to be on a par with, if not worse than, the abuse at the Kincora children's home.\n\"Sexual abuse by a considerable number of the De La Salle brothers on the children, and consequently between children was rampant.\"\nThe HIA inquiry was set up in 2013 to investigate child abuse in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 73-year period, up to 1995.\nThe Rubane House allegations form the third module of its public hearings.\nIt had previously been examining what happened to children sent from Northern Ireland to institutions in Australia.", "Dame Lowell Goddard quit in August but denied a report on Friday alleging misconduct and racism against her.\nThe most senior civil servant in the Home Office has also been asked to explain to MPs what the government knew about her resignation.\nPrime Minister Theresa May and the home secretary may also be asked to appear.\nAsked if the inquiry was now an embarrassment, Mrs May told the BBC: \"No, it's very important.\n\"We have to remember about all the survivors and victims of child sexual abuse who deserve justice.\"\nThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is investigating the extent to which institutions in England and Wales have failed to protect children from sexual abuse.\nDame Lowell was appointed in February 2015 and became the third inquiry head to quit, resigning in August after 18 months in the role.\nHome Secretary Amber Rudd told the Home Affairs Select Committee at the time that she believed Dame Lowell left because she was homesick.\nBut on Friday, the Times reported that Dame Lowell had been accused of making racist comments and being rude to junior staff, and that senior Home Office staff and advisers knew about alleged comments and other complaints.\nThe senior New Zealand judge hit back at the claims, and called them \"false\" and \"malicious\".\nThe Home Office later said it had been \"made aware of concerns about the professionalism and competence of Justice Goddard\" on 29 July, six days before she resigned and several weeks before the home secretary appeared before the committee and made no mention of the concerns.\nThe committee has asked Dame Lowell to appear either in person or by video link from her home in New Zealand.\nLabour MP Chuka Umunna, who is a member of the committee, said: \"Not only would this help with the smooth running of the inquiry going forward, but I believe she owes it to the survivors and their families.\"\nPermanent secretary Mark Sedwill will be asked to appear in front of the committee, possibly as early as Tuesday.\nMP Tim Loughton, the committee's acting chair, said Mr Sedwill would be giving evidence \"on the basis that he was sitting alongside the new home secretary [Ms Rudd] when the committee questioned her about the Lowell Goddard situation.\"\nMr Loughton said the committee would also need to \"decide whether to call Theresa May, rather than Amber Rudd, as she was home secretary when the whole thing came to a head about Lowell Goddard\".\nDiane Abbott MP, Labour's shadow home secretary, said they were \"grave allegations\" and demanded an assurance there had been no attempt to cover up the accusations made about Dame Lowell.\n\"Because if true, it would mean that the home secretary knowingly put at risk the integrity of the entire inquiry,\" she said.\nThough the child abuse inquiry is independent of the government, the Home Office would have had the power to remove the judge from her post, but a Home Office statement said it had received no formal complaint.\nA source on the committee said it did not have the power to compel Dame Lowell to appear but suggested it could announce a formal censure if she failed to give further evidence.\nThe committee is to question the new chair, Prof Alexis Jay, on Tuesday.", "Earlier this year, Mr Blenkiron relived the horror of his school days, telling an inquiry into child abuse about how he would be pressed against the wall at the back of the classroom while his teacher physically and sexually abused him, with the other students ordered to look away.\n\"If there was no sexual abuse after the belting, then you knew you'd had a good day,\" the 53-year-old told a hearing of Australia's landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.\nGiving testimony from his hometown Ballarat, in regional Victoria, and hearing harrowing stories from other survivors of child abuse brought back the pain, Mr Blenkiron told the BBC.\n\"I was a mess for about two months,\" he says.\nBut he was determined to shine a light on the abuse that has claimed the lives of many of his peers, through suicide and substance abuse, and that turned him into \"a ticking time bomb\".\nThe Royal Commission is an historic opportunity to draw a line in the sand under that pain, he says.\n\"It has to uncover the horrors of the past, it has to help those who were affected to get the best possible ongoing support today, and it has to make sure all our children are safe in future,\" he says.\nThat's a measure of the huge challenge facing the Royal Commission, set up in 2013 in response to public outrage over allegations the Catholic Church had for years covered up evidence about paedophile priests.\nThe then Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised the investigation into how government and private institutions responded to allegations and instances of child sexual abuse would \"change the nation\".\nThe signs are hopeful, with the Commission acting on a scale and scope that few expected, and with a sensitivity to those abused that the UK's fledgling Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has indicated it may follow.\nBut the stakes are high. Many victims - or survivors as the Commission describes them - want people at the highest levels to be held accountable, and they want meaningful compensation.\nOver the past two and a half years, six commissioners have held 32 public and 4,000 private hearings at sites across the country, from an outback orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy to one of Australia's most prestigious schools, Geelong Grammar, once attended by Prince Charles.\nIt has documented abuse by teachers, priests, nuns, foster carers and fellow students, and this year, extended its investigations into sporting bodies and the entertainment industry.\nIt will make recommendations on how to improve laws, policies and practices to prevent and better respond to child sexual abuse in institutions.\nCommission's work so far\nLast year, the Australian government granted the Commission's request to extend its work for another two years, for a total cost of about A$500m ($351m, £231m).\nIt has called high-profile witnesses to give evidence about what they knew of abuse in their institutions, most notably Australia's most senior Catholic Cardinal George Pell, who is now the finance chief at the Vatican.\nThe Commission, which will report at the end of 2017, has exceeded expectations by highlighting abuse \"from almost every area of society, every walk of life\", and by showing that such abuse continues today, says Sydney University Law Professor Patrick Parkinson.\n\"They've been very wise and shown beyond reasonable doubt the level of the problem in Australian society and the level of cover-up,\" he says.\nIts impact is apparent, he says, with organisations \"scrambling to review their policies and procedures\" about child protection and very senior people \"embarrassed\" by their failures to prevent or report abuse.\nBut he says there are big issues to settle, including the Commission's call for Australian governments to set up a single national redress scheme for survivors.\nSuch a scheme is estimated to cost up to A$4bn but would still only pay compensation of, on average, A$65,000 per survivor. Many say that is not enough.\nIn any case, the federal government has said it will not be part of a national scheme, a response that shocked many survivors who fear they will have to deal with the very institutions involved in their abuse if they want compensation, says lawyer and doctoral researcher Judy Courtin.\nIt is too early to judge whether or not the Royal Commission will meet survivors' expectations, Ms Courtin says.\nHer research shows survivors want to tell their stories and have them publicly acknowledged, to hear the truth from institutions about what happened, to be compensated for the long-term impact on their lives, and for those in senior positions who concealed abuse to be held accountable.\n\"They want the bishops and others who have covered up crimes to be criminally accountable,\" she says. \"That's high up on the list.\"\nThe Commission's work has prompted more police prosecutions of historic cases of child abuse, says lawyer Warren Strange.\nIn the past, a lack of witnesses and the fact it can take most victims up to 20 years to report their abuse have been stumbling blocks for police investigations.\nBut Mr Strange says any long-term systemic change about how institutions deal with claims of abuse will be more important than the number of prosecutions that result from the Commission's work.\nHe is an executive officer of knowmore, a government-funded independent free legal service that is often the first point of contact for victims who want to give evidence to the Royal Commission.\nThey come, he says, from all backgrounds - from great disadvantage to people with successful careers.\nThey want the scale of what happened and the failure of institutions to respond appropriately exposed. But the main motivation for many of the people who tell their stories is not about themselves, he says.\n\"They say 'I don't want what happened to me to happen to any other children in future'.\"", "A pilot phase of the Truth Project, part of the inquiry headed by New Zealand judge Lowell Goddard, will begin in Liverpool next week.\nVictims and survivors will be able to share their experiences in a private session or via a written statement.\nJustice Goddard said it would help the inquiry understand why many crimes went unreported and undetected for so long.\nThe pilot scheme is part of the independent inquiry launched by Home Secretary Theresa May, looking at how institutions and organisations, including the BBC, police, armed forces, schools and children's homes, handled abuse claims.\nJustice Goddard will visit organisations supporting victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to hear how they hope the inquiry can provide an opportunity to share their experiences.\nAny allegations of ongoing abuse uncovered during the Truth Project will be referred to police, but the private sessions are not part of a legal process. A series of public hearings, when witnesses will give evidence under oath, will be held separately.\nThe identities of victims taking part will be kept private.\nSpeaking at the launch, Justice Goddard said: \"It will help us gain a better understanding of the patterns of abuse, and will assist in explaining why many crimes went unreported and undetected for so long, often leaving other children at risk of abuse in later years.\n\"If you have suffered, because any organisation within England or Wales has failed in its duty to protect you as a child from sexual abuse, we want to hear from you.\"\nThe first institutions publicly named as under investigation by the inquiry will be announced at the end of the month.", "Dame Lowell Goddard, who resigned last month, said in a memo to MPs that the inquiry needed overhauling.\nShe said the inquiry should focus less on the past and more on current standards of child protection.\nNew chairwoman Alexis Jay said its terms of reference would remain but an internal review of it would be held.\nLast month, Dame Lowell became the third chief to quit the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which was set up to investigate allegations made against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions in England and Wales, as well as people in the public eye.\nThe inquiry was set up after a string of scandals involving celebrities such as BBC DJ Jimmy Savile, who since his death in 2011 has been exposed as one of the UK's most prolific sexual predators, and the targeting of vulnerable children by organised gangs in towns such as Rotherham, Oxford and Rochdale.\nThe spotlight also fell on sexual assaults carried out in schools, children's homes and at NHS sites.\nThe inquiry was then launched in 2014 and it has announced 13 initial investigations, which include inquiries into the allegations of abuse by people of prominence.\nIn her memo to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Dame Lowell said she had stepped down in order to challenge the way the probe was running.\nThere was \"an inherent problem in the sheer scale and size of the inquiry\", she said - adding that its budget did not match.\n\"Its boundless compass, including, as it does, every state and non-state institution, as well as relevant institutional contexts, coupled with the absence of any built-in time parameters, does not fit comfortably or practically within the single inquiry model.\"\nShe said there should be a complete review, \"with a view to remodelling it and recalibrating its emphasis more towards current events and thus focusing major attention on the present and future protection of children\".\nDame Lowell also said:\nInquiry sources have told the BBC she lost the confidence of senior insiders.\nHowever, Prof Jay said the panel would not be seeking any revision of the inquiry's terms of reference or introducing any new restrictions on its scope.\n\"To ensure that the inquiry can meet the challenges it faces, I have already initiated a wide-ranging internal review of the inquiry's ways of working,\" she said.\n\"We are currently looking at different approaches to evaluating the information we receive.\"\nBut Lord Macdonald of River Glaven QC, who was director of public prosecutions from 2003 to 2008, said the probe's \"overwhelming focus on the past\" was \"ballooning out of control\" and called for its terms of reference to be rewritten.\nPeter Saunders, founder of the charity National Association for People Abused in Childhood and a member of the victims' advisory panel for the inquiry, said it remained the \"best hope\" despite its scale.\nThe prime minister's official spokeswoman said the government believed the inquiry was \"absolutely vital and we remain committed to doing it\".\nA spokeswoman for the Home Office said: \"We owe it to victims and survivors to confront the appalling reality of how children were let down by the very people who were charged to protect them and to learn from the mistakes of the past.\"\n7 July 2014 - government announces independent inquiry into the way public bodies investigated and handled child sex abuse claims. Baroness Butler-Sloss chosen as head\n9 July - Baroness Butler-Sloss faces calls to quit because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, was attorney general in the 1980s at the time of the alleged paedophile scandal. MPs and victims claimed she was too close to the establishment.\n14 July - she stands down, saying she is \"not the right person\" for the job\n5 September - Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf named the new head of the inquiry\n11 October - Mrs Woolf discloses she had five dinners with Lord Brittan from 2008-12. The former home secretary faced questions over his handling of child abuse allegations during his time in office in the 1980s. Before his death in January 2015, Lord Brittan insisted proper procedures had been followed\n22 October - abuse victim launches legal challenge against Mrs Woolf leading the inquiry, amid growing calls for her resignation\n31 October - victims' groups tell government officials they are \"unanimous\" Mrs Woolf should quit. She steps down later that day\n4 February 2015 - Justice Lowell Goddard, a serving judge of the High Court of New Zealand, announced as the new head of the inquiry\nNovember - inquiry begins hearing directly from victims and survivors\n4 August 2016 - Dame Lowell writes to Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign from her post\n11 August 2016 - Prof Alexis Jay announced as new head of the inquiry", "Police forces \"cannot cope\" with the \"huge\" rise in reports, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, of the National Police Chief's Council, told the BBC.\nFigures show the number of child abuse reports is up by 80% in three years.\nHis comments came as the national inquiry into child sexual abuse began its full public hearings on Monday.\nChief Constable Bailey, the head of Operation Hydrant, which is investigating multiple allegations of historic sexual abuse across the UK, said he knew his view would cause nervousness and draw headlines.\nBut he said the numbers of reports of abuse were at \"huge proportions\" - an NSPCC study in late 2016 used figures which suggested the number of individuals looking at such images could exceed half a million.\nHe told BBC Radio 4's Today programme about 400 people were arrested by police in conjunction with the National Crime Agency every month, for looking at indecent images.\n\"There are undoubtedly tens of thousands of men that are seeking to exploit children online with a view to meeting them, with a view to then raping them and performing the most awful sexual abuse upon them,\" he said.\n\"That's where I believe our focus has got to be. They are the individuals that pose the really significant threat.\"\nOffenders who viewed online child abuse images should be placed on the sex offenders register, cautioned and managed in the community undergoing rehabilitation, he said.\nHe added: \"Every time viewed, the victim abused again. But we have to be able to manage the totality.\"\nNot using the court system would \"speed things up\".\nThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales (IICSA) started its public hearings on Monday.\nThe wide-reaching inquiry will look at child abuse claims against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions - as well as people in the public eye.\nIt began with an examination of allegations made by children in care who were sent abroad.", "In a series of Freedom of Information requests, BBC Scotland asked how many cases, concerns and complaints of child exploitation, and child sexual exploitation were recorded in the past four years.\nBut the force said the figures were not held on a single system.\nScotland's Children's Commissioner said the revelation was \"disturbing\".\nIt comes on the day that officers launched a new unit to help with what police acknowledge is the complex problem of child abuse and neglect across Scotland.\nIt will provide expertise to allow local teams to robustly investigate cases, including child sexual exploitation, online offences and other types of abuse.\nIn its response to the BBC's FOI requests, Police Scotland said: \"Child exploitation covers a broad range of criminal activity and doesn't correlate to a specific offence, but rather can involve a range of differing offences...The level of data you have requested is not held on a single system.\"\nIt comes after the publication last summer of the Jay report into sexual exploitation in Rotherham in South Yorkshire.\nIt revealed that more than 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual abuse.\nLast year Glasgow City Council said 97 children in the city were victims, or at risk of, sexual exploitation.\nThe Association of Chief Police Officers said most forces in England and Wales now put a marker on such offences in their records, but senior officers here say that it is not easy to do.\nChildren's Commissioner Tam Baillie said: \"I am disturbed that we do not yet collect police figures on children who are the subject of sexual exploitation.\n\"This was a recommendation of the Scottish Parliament and features in the Scottish government action plan on child sexual exploitation.\n\"The reason this is so important is that unless we know the scope of the problem we are trying to deal with, then we won't have the appropriate or proportionate response.\"\nAssistant Chief Constable Malcolm Graham, from Police Scotland, said the nature of child sexual exploitation made it highly unlikely that young people would come forward to report being abused.\n\"Our priority is to be focussing on identifying as many victims as we can and identifying perpetrators who have the intent to commit these devastating crimes so we can prevent the abuse from happening,\" he said.\n\"Scotland is at the forefront of approaches to child sexual exploitation.\n\"Sexual exploitation is a form of abuse and it is not a specific crime type recorded as such. Children and young people may be victim of repeated rapes, physical assaults or grooming offences and we categorise all of these in crime recording.\"\nHe added: \"But what is most important here is our focus on identifying who these victims are.\n\"Our focus is always on where there are child protection issues, and on keeping children safe.\"\nMartin Crewe, director of Barnardo's Scotland, said: \"Rotherham was a real wake-up call and led to the Scottish government's national action plan last year but we could and should be doing more.\n\"Our concern is that we don't know the full extent of the problem. We welcome the work of the police.\n\"Since the publication of the Barnardo's Scotland petition in 2011 we have been pushing for a better understanding of child sexual exploitation in Scotland.\"\nIn January 2013, Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People, responded to the Public Petitions Committee inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Scotland, and announced four points including, action \"to improve the way child sexual exploitation is identified by Scotland's new single police force to make this form of abuse more visible\".\nHowever, sexual exploitation per se is still not recorded or centrally collated.\nThe Scottish government said figures are available on the wider problem of child abuse.\nA spokeswoman said: \"The safety of our children is a key priority for the government and an issue we take extremely seriously.\n\"The launch of the National Child Abuse Investigation Unit will help to target and bring to justice those who seek to harm our young people.\n\"The unit has been set up to tackle all forms of child abuse, and child sexual exploitation is one aspect of this. We have robust legislation in place to cover a wide range of these offences, including online abuse and are working to strengthen the law even further.\"\nShe added: \"The extent of the problem is often difficult to assess because abuse by its very nature is concealed. That's why prevention and swift action to safeguard children are a big part of our strategy to tackle these terrible crimes.\n\"This includes robust National Child Protection guidance, action to tackle emerging forms of child abuse including child sexual exploitation, a national public awareness campaign and guidance for night-time workers such as taxi drivers and hotel staff who may come into contact with those at risk.\"", "The Met says officers from Operations Midland and Fairbank had identified \"people and locations\" in common.\nIt says it is \"operationally important\" to have the same officer in charge.\nOperation Midland is an inquiry into claims of child abuse by establishment figures, while Operation Fairbank is a wider child abuse inquiry.\nThe homicide and serious crime detectives working on Operation Midland are merging with the expanded Fairbank team.\nThe merged operation will investigate child abuse and allegations of police cover-ups and support the Goddard Inquiry - the independent inquiry into historical child sex abuse in England and Wales, led by Justice Lowell Goddard.\nThe combined investigation team will be led by Det Supt Ang Scott, from the Met's sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse (SOECA) unit.\nDet Supt Kenny McDonald - who had been overseeing Operation Midland - was widely criticised for describing the allegations as \"credible and true\".\nBBC home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds said Mr McDonald was being moved to other work investigating murders.\nHe said the Met denied the move represented a downscaling of Operation Midland, its most sensitive investigation into allegations of child abuse and three child murders.\n\"Midland has been a separate team until now, made up of 27 officers focused on claims that a high-level paedophile operated in Westminster and other locations in the late 1970s and early 1980s,\" he added.\nThe new team will continue to investigate historical allegations of impropriety by police officers dealing with sexual abuse in the period 1970-2005.\nTo date the force has received 48 such allegations - the Independent Police Complaints Commission is currently managing 29 of these.", "The allegations were made to South Wales Police and have been passed to another force, the BBC understands.\nMr Abse, a gay rights champion and ex-Labour MP, died in 2008, aged 91.\nLast year, police said they were investigating allegations Mr Thomas - a Labour MP and ex-Commons Speaker who died in 1997 - abused a boy, aged 9.\nThe Sunday Times reported that the fresh claims are understood to have been passed to officers leading an investigation into an alleged \"network of politicians\".\nIt says a Church of England review into historical sexual abuse had also passed Mr Abse's name to detectives from Operation Fernbridge - a Met Police inquiry into alleged child abuse involving senior politicians.\nLast year, South Wales Police confirmed officers were investigating claims against Mr Thomas - who later became Viscount Tonypandy - dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.\nAn alleged victim, who now lives in Australia, told the Mirror newspaper he had been raped by the late MP.\nViscount Tonypandy, a Methodist preacher, held the role of Secretary of State for Wales from 1968 to 1970 and was Commons Speaker between 1976 and 1983.\nA Labour MP in Cardiff from 1945 to 1983, he died of cancer in 1997, aged 88.", "White Flowers Alba and In Care Abuse Survivors Group both called for urgent answers from the Scottish government on the future of the inquiry.\nThe probe has been plagued by problems and all three original panel members have now resigned.\nDeputy First Minister John Swinney said he understood the concerns but told the BBC the inquiry was gathering momentum.\nGlen Houston resigned from the panel on Tuesday. He said his new appointments to the boards of two public sector organisations meant there was potentially a conflict of interest with his work on the abuse inquiry.\nThe other two original panel members, Susan O'Brien QC and Prof Michael Lamb, stood down within days of each other last year, complaining of government interference.\nIn July 2016, senior judge Lady Smith was appointed as the new chairwoman following Ms O'Brien's resignation.\nThe spokesman for the survivors' group White Flowers Alba, Andi Lavery, claimed there were fewer than 200 survivors now in contact with the inquiry and said there was \"no trust left\".\n\"It's an absolute disgrace and it's so terribly sad. I don't know anybody that's left that wants to testify and we're in contact with quite a number of survivors,\" he told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme.\n\"At the end of the day, if you're abused in Scotland you face no prospect of either justice, accountability or redress. But if you're abused in Carlisle or Belfast, you face them in their inquiries.\n\"That's not right, it's not equality and it's not justice.\"\nThe inquiry was launched in October 2015 and charged with examining historical allegations of child abuse in residential accommodation in Scotland.\nIt is due to report in 2019.\nAlso speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Alan Draper, of the In Care Abuse Survivors Group, said survivors were concerned about the resignation of Mr Houston and the Scottish government's decision not to replace him on the panel.\n\"It looks too legalistic to us. All we've got now is a High Court judge, QCs and solicitors involved in the inquiry team and no external expertise. This looks far too narrow,\" Mr Draper said.\nThe group have also demanded that Mr Swinney tell them why the inquiry will not consider redress for victims.\nMr Draper told BBC Scotland: \"We've continued to ask John Swinney that this be part of the remit. We've been denied this remit.\n\"What survivors tend to feel [is that] we were failed when we were in care. We continue to be failed by the Scottish government and we continue to be failed by the inquiry - why should we engage with it?\"\nBut Mr Swinney insisted the inquiry had a \"very broad remit\" and would ensure justice was delivered to abuse survivors.\nHe also defended the decision not to appoint a successor to Mr Houston, saying that survivors' groups had told him \"very strongly\" they wanted the inquiry to be led by a senior judge.\nThe deputy first minister told the BBC that Lady Smith also had the ability to appoint assessors to \"enhance the expertise of the inquiry\".\n\"I completely understand the concern of survivors and I've engaged with survivors on a number of occasions since I took over responsibility of the Child Abuse Inquiry and I will continue to do so,\" he said.\n\"The inquiry is gathering evidence, it's gathering momentum, it's gathering input from individuals who were the victims of abuse.\n\"So the inquiry in that respect is doing exactly what it was commissioned to do which is to pursue justice and accountability for the survivors of abuse.\n\"On the question of redress, I acknowledge this to be a significant issue, but it's an issue for the government to address in consultation with the survivors. It's not for me to pass this to the inquiry.\"", "Justice Lowell Goddard was speaking as she opened the independent inquiry, which she said could last until 2020.\nIt will examine how public bodies handled their duty of care to protect children from abuse.\nJustice Goddard said there were suggestions that one child out of every 20 in the UK had been sexually abused.\nShe said many who are sexually abused as a child do not tell adults - and that if they do \"their reports may go unheeded\".\nThere may also have been systematic under-recording and mis-recording of child sex abuse by the police and other agencies, she added, meaning that \"the true picture may be even worse than the current figures indicate\".\nSpeaking about the scale of the problem, she said: \"The need for accurate recording is one of the issues that the inquiry will have to confront.\"\nThe inquiry was first announced by Home Secretary Theresa May in July 2014.\nIt followed claims of a high-level cover-up of historical child sex abuse involving public figures, including politicians.\nThe New Zealand High Court judge, who led an inquiry into police handling of child abuse cases in her own country, was the third person named to chair the inquiry - her two predecessors resigned over concerns about their links with the establishment.\nIn her opening remarks, she said the task ahead was daunting, but that it could expose past failures of institutions to defend children.\nJustice Goddard said the sexual abuse of children \"has left permanent scars not only on successive generations, has left permanent scars not only on victims themselves, but on society as a whole\".\nBut she added: \"This inquiry provides a unique opportunity to expose past failures of institutions to protect children, to confront those responsible, to uncover systemic failures... and to make recommendations that will help prevent the sexual abuse and exploitation of children in the future.\"\nJustice Goddard also said it was important to emphasise that this was the largest and most ambitious public inquiry ever established in England and Wales.\nDespite the size of the investigation, she was \"determined to ensure that it does not become bogged down in the delays that have bedevilled some other public inquiries in this jurisdiction\".\nIn July last year, Labour MP Simon Danczuk called on Leon Brittan to say what he knew about paedophile allegations passed to him when he was home secretary in the 1980s.\nThe files were given to Lord Brittan, who died in January, by the late Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens, a long-standing campaigner against child abuse.\nMr Dickens's son has said the files - now missing - contained \"explosive\" paedophile allegations about powerful and famous figures, including politicians.\nSince Mr Danczuk's comments brought the so-called \"Dickens dossier\" to the fore, the focus has moved to the wider issue of how historical child sex abuse allegations were dealt with by public bodies and other institutions across the country.\nPreviously there had been calls for an overarching investigation into historical abuse claims in the wake of revelations that TV entertainer Jimmy Savile abused hundreds of victims at hospitals, children's homes and schools.\nRead more on the \"Dickens dossier\" and other ongoing inquiries\nThe inquiry, which was given statutory powers and a new panel in February, will investigate whether \"public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales\".\nJustice Goddard has decided abuse victims will not sit on her advisory panel, but there will be a separate Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel.\nThe advisory panel comprises Prof Alexis Jay of Strathclyde University, Drusilla Sharpling of the police inspectorate, Prof Malcolm Evans of Bristol University, and child protection barrister Ivor Frank.\nJustice Goddard said she was determined to put as much information into the public domain as she could, as soon as possible. She also referred to annual reports being published, the first of which would be next year.\nAs she was giving her statement, the office of Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC confirmed that immunity from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act will be offered to current or former public servants prepared to testify about allegations of child sex abuse.\nIt will not protect anyone who admits taking part in child sexual abuse.\nJustice Goddard ended her statement by issuing a call for anyone with information about sexual abuse cases to come forward.\nAnd she urged institutions responsible for caring for children, which may come under scrutiny, to take a \"proactive stance towards the inquiry\".\nThe NSPCC said a team of trained counsellors would operate a free dedicated helpline to offer support on its behalf.\nPeter Wanless, the charity's chief executive, said many victims had \"harrowing stories to tell\", adding that the charity wanted to make \"what could be a tortuous journey as easy as possible\".\nThe chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, Keith Vaz, said the inquiry, which he described as a \"once in a lifetime opportunity\", could last a decade.\n\"And of course we wish [Justice Goddard] luck in the very difficult job that she's got, which could take up to ten years. I mean, this is going to be a very long inquiry.\"\nIn February, it was announced Justice Goddard had been chosen to lead the inquiry because she was \"as removed as possible from the organisations and institutions that might become the focus of the inquiry\", Mrs May said.\nBaroness Butler-Sloss, the first inquiry chairwoman, resigned a week after it was set up.\nThis followed calls for her to quit because her late brother, Sir Michael Havers, had been attorney general in the 1980s.\nHer replacement, the then Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf, stood down on 31 October amid concerns over her links to former Home Secretary Lord Brittan.", "An inquiry official said there was \"significant overlap\" between its investigation and criminal proceedings, which could cause prejudice in court.\nLord Janner's family are calling for the \"deeply flawed\" inquiry into him to be dropped.\nLabour said the whole abuse inquiry was facing a \"crisis of credibility\", but the PM said she had confidence in it.\nLord Janner died before a court could examine 22 allegations against him of sex offences against boys between the 1960s and 1980s.\nLeicestershire Police are still investigating other men, who have also been accused by those who made allegations against Lord Janner.\nThe Independent Police Complaints Commission is also investigating the way the Janner case was dealt with by police.\nThe IICSA had been due to start public hearings on 7 March but officials say these need to be delayed because they might involve alleged victims of Lord Janner who also have to give evidence in other investigations.\nThe IICSA said in a statement that it wanted to \"avoid potential issues around witness overlap\" with police and the IPCC, but was still committed to holding oral hearings.\nLord Janner's son, Daniel Janner QC, said the delayed hearings were part of a \"deeply flawed and disgracefully unfair strand\" of the inquiry and they should be dropped.\n\"The correct place for justice is a court of law and not the inquiry, where proper cross-examination of false allegations is not allowed,\" he added.\n\"My father has been silenced through death and so any pretence at fairness or justice is a farce.\"\nThe IICSA was set up to examine whether public bodies, including the police, had failed in their duty to protect children from sexual abuse and to examine allegations of abuse involving \"well-known people\".\nThe inquiry has suffered a series of setbacks, including resignations of three chairwomen and senior lawyers.\nOn Wednesday, another of the lawyers involved, Aileen McColgan, quit amid concerns about the inquiry's leadership.\nIt is now on its fourth chairwoman after Professor Alexis Jay, who led the Rotherham child abuse inquiry, replaced New Zealand judge Dame Lowell Goddard in August.\nShadow home secretary Diane Abbott said Prime Minister Theresa May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd needed to explain to MPs what was going wrong.\n\"The inquiry was established by Theresa May and it clearly isn't working,\" she said.\n\"The victims of child sex abuse have put their faith in this inquiry. The very least they deserve is some openness from government and an explanation for what is going on.\"\nEarlier, Labour's Yvette Cooper said the home affairs select committee, which she chairs, had contacted the lawyers who had left and Lowell Goddard to learn what had gone wrong with the investigation.\n\"What's unclear is how much this has been about legacy problems - and clearly some personality issues - and whether there have also been structural issues over the last two years, or whether there are ongoing problems for the future,\" she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.\nThe inquiry's third chairman, Lowell Goddard, resigned in August. She has instructed lawyers to fight newspaper claims that she had made racist remarks.\nProfessor Jay has also been under criticism from survivors' groups because of her background in social work - a profession they say has failed them.\nAt Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Mrs May said it was important the inquiry continued and that she had \"full confidence\" in Prof Jay and her ability to lead it.\nMeanwhile, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has confirmed it is investigating the conduct of five officers linked to the Met's Operation Midland investigation into paedophile allegations against VIPs - which closed in March without a single arrest or charge.\nThey range from a deputy assistant commissioner to a detective sergeant.\nOne of them will also be investigated over his involvement in Operation Vicente - which looked into allegations made about the late Sir Leon Brittan.\nThis IPCC investigation is separate from the one looking into the handling of the Lord Janner case.\nAn independent review of Operation Midland by Sir Richard Henriques, released last week, found \"numerous errors\".\nOperation Midland was launched after claims that boys had been sexually abused by a group of powerful men from politics, the military and law enforcement agencies at locations across southern England and in London in the 1970s and 1980s.\nIt relied heavily on evidence from a complainant known by the pseudonym \"Nick\", who is now being investigated by the Met for allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice.", "Lord Janner's son Daniel says that, as civil proceedings by several alleged victims are \"already in train\", the courts are the best place to hear them.\nHe says the inquiry will not offer his family an opportunity to fully cross-examine those who accuse Lord Janner.\nLord Janner's children plan to use the proceeds of his estate to defend him.\nA former Leicester MP, Lord Janner is accused of sexually abusing more than 30 men and women during visits to childrens' homes, schools, hotels and Parliament between the mid-1950s and late-1980s.\nLord Janner was not prosecuted despite three police investigations, all started in the 1990s.\nA fresh attempt to prosecute him was halted by his death in December last year.\nBut the ongoing independent national inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales has identified the Janner case as one of 13 separate strands it intends to investigate fully. Others include allegations of abuse in Rochdale, assaults carried out in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, attacks by people exploiting children in foreign countries, and abuse facilitated by the internet.\nDaniel Janner QC, himself a criminal barrister, told the BBC the child abuse inquiry was wrongly focusing one of its most high-profile investigations on a man who was now dead, had never been convicted, and could not defend himself.\nHe has prepared a submission for the Home Affairs Select Committee, which will question the former chairwoman of the inquiry, Dame Lowell Goddard, and Home Secretary Amber Rudd, next month.\nHe and his two sisters, Marion Janner and rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, are furious that the inquiry will consider their father's past, as part of an investigation of potential \"institutional failings\" within Leicestershire social services.\nA review of the case by retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques found opportunities had been missed and the Labour veteran should have been charged.\nBut Daniel Janner says he has been told that under the terms of the inquiry, the family could only question those who accuse Lord Janner \"sparingly\", rather than subjecting them to a full cross-examination.\n\"This process actually discredits the important work of the inquiry\", he said, \"This makes a mockery of justice.\"\nHe said the inquiry was \"working on an assumption of guilt\".\nDozens of people are considering suing the estate of Lord Janner, and Daniel Janner said it was right that the civil courts should hear their evidence, ahead of the inquiry.\n\"Our family has decided this is what we want, to use such inheritance as there is to clear his name,\" he said.\nThe family believes Lord Janner is innocent and that all of the 33 men and women who have accused Lord Janner have fabricated their accounts.\nDaniel Janner said the earliest claims, investigated by three police inquiries, were \"rubbish\".\nHe believes they prompted others to make allegations, tempted by the prospect of compensation and \"bolstered by the weight of numbers\". Some, he claimed, had colluded to falsify their accounts.\n\"I have no doubt that some of them have been abused and of course, my heart goes out to them but they were not abused by my father and it is here where we have to fight back because these are false allegations.\"\nHowever Liz Dux, who represents some of those accusing Lord Janner, said there was a risk a court would not be able to rule on the truth of the allegations because of legal time limits for bringing a civil action.\nShe said the inquiry would have decided to consider the case regardless of whether Lord Janner was prosecuted.\nPeter Saunders, one those representing child abuse victims within the inquiry, said it was vital the Janner case was fully investigated.", "Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) chairman, Sir Anthony Hart, said possible \"systemic failures to prevent such abuse\" will be investigated.\nHe said that a number of state bodies will be examined including the RUC.\nHe also confirmed that MI5 and MI6 will be investigated and both are legally represented at the inquiry.\nIn his opening statement, Sir Anthony, said the inquiry will investigate the \"nature and extent of sexual abuse perpetrated on residents of Kincora, abuse that resulted in the arrest, conviction and sentence of Mains, Semple and McGrath.\"\nWilliam McGrath, Raymond Semple and Joseph Mains were senior care staff at Kincora. They were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys.\nAt least 29 boys were abused at the east Belfast home between the late 1950s and the early 1980s.\nThe HIA inquiry is expected to look at claims a paedophile ring at the home had links to the intelligence services.\nThere have been allegations that people in positions of authority and influence knew what was happening at the home and that they covered it up.\nBoth MI5 and MI6 have agreed to be central participants in the HIA inquiry but some campaigners had wanted Kincora to be investigated as part of the wider Westminster inquiry into historical child abuse, which they argue has more powers.\nThe Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, led by Justice Lowell Goddard, is investigating whether institutions including local authorities, the police and the BBC have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales.\nLast year, Home Secretary Theresa May ruled out extending the Goddard inquiry to include Kincora, stating that child protection was a devolved matter.\nAnd last week victim Gary Hoy, 54, lost an appeal to overturn a ruling to keep investigations into child sex abuse at the home, which is now closed, within the remit of the HIA.\nNorthern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers has insisted that all state agencies will co-operate with the inquiry.\nIn a statement, the Northern Ireland Office said: \"The sexual abuse of children, or tolerance of it by people in positions of authority, is utterly abhorrent.\n\"The government is absolutely committed to ensuring that allegations surrounding Kincora are fully investigated and that anyone who has broken the law faces justice.\"\nKincora survivor Clint Massey has told BBC Radio Ulster he hopes the inquiry will acknowledge that the authorities could have halted the abuse.\n\"I'm hopeful that the inquiry will say, yes, there was a cover-up, there was state collusion in what was going on in Kincora. It should have been stopped.\n\"There were people wanted to stop it. They were blocked. So, I want that to come out,\" he added.\nThe HIA is led by retired judge Sir Anthony Hart and was set up in 2013 to investigate child abuse in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 73-year period, up to 1995.\nThese included a range of institutions, run by the church, state and voluntary sector.\nThe HIA is sitting at Banbridge Courthouse and inquiries into Kincora are expected to last up to four weeks.", "The controversial Operation Midland ended as ex-MP Harvey Proctor was told he faces no further action over claims against him of child abuse and murder.\nHe called on four Met chiefs to resign, but the force said it had been right to look into the single source claims.\nThe inquiry has cost over £1.8 million.\nMr Proctor, 69, who was MP from 1979 to 1987 for the Essex constituencies of Basildon and then Billericay, was interviewed under caution last August as part of the Operation Midland. He had always vehemently denied the allegations.\nThe investigation, which began in November 2014, was triggered by allegations made by a man in his 40s known as \"Nick\", who claimed he was abused for nine years from 1975, when he was seven, to 1984.\nHow one man's claims sparked inquiry\nMore people came forward to provide information but there was not enough evidence to charge anyone - although there was nothing to prove police had been knowingly misled by a complainant, the Met said in a detailed statement.\nThe 31 officers assigned to the inquiry have been released to work on other investigations, it said.\nA freedom of information request made last year states that staffing costs for the inquiry were in the region of £1.8 million at that point.\nAmong allegations made by \"Nick\" was a claim that three boys were murdered by members of the supposed paedophile ring - including one resembling a boy called Martin Allen, who disappeared in November 1979.\nSpecialist investigators will continue to look into his disappearance - although as a missing person inquiry rather than a murder inquiry, the statement said.\nMr Proctor's lawyer was told the former MP would not face any charges in a three-minute phone conversation with a senior Met Police officer.\nIn a statement, Mr Proctor said Operation Midland should now be the subject of a \"truly independent public inquiry\".\nHe also called for the resignation of Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse and Det Supt Kenny McDonald, the officer leading Operation Midland.\n\"Nick\" and ExaroNews, a news agency which had reported on the story, should be prosecuted for allegedly \"seeking to pervert the course of justice\", he added.\nDetectives working on Operation Midland had questioned Mr Proctor twice - in June and August last year.\nMr Proctor, who admitted gross indecency after a newspaper sting in 1986 when the age of consent for gay sex was 21, categorically denied the later allegations, and said they had \"wrecked\" his life.\nWhen questioned last year, he blamed a \"homosexual witch hunt\" by police for the claims.\nEstablished in November 2014, Operation Midland was set up to examine historical claims of a Westminster VIP paedophile ring, with allegations boys were abused by a group of powerful men from politics, the military and law enforcement agencies.\nThe inquiry was also intended to examine claims that three boys were murdered during the alleged ring's activities. Operation Midland related to locations across southern England and in London in the 1970s and 1980s, and focused on the private Dolphin Square estate in Pimlico, south-west London.\nHistorical child abuse: Key investigations\nAmong others accused by \"Nick\" were Sir Edward Heath, prime minister between 1970 and 1974, former home secretary Lord Brittan. and the then commander in chief of UK land forces, General Lord Bramall.\nLord Bramall was cleared in January this year. Police said they had found insufficient evidence even to justify passing the case to prosecutors.\nHe told the BBC he was \"thankful\" the operation had been closed down, and he had been caused a \"very great deal of distress\" on the \"single, uncorroborated allegation of one man\".\nLord Brittan died last year unaware that an investigation into a rape claim against him, which he denied, had been dropped.\nThe police took Nick's claims very seriously and appealed for witnesses. Det Supt MacDonald said in 2014 that detectives considered what \"Nick\" told them to be \"credible and true\".\nThe Met later acknowledged that the phrase could have given \"the wrong impression\" that the outcome of the investigation was being pre-empted, and insisted an open mind was retained throughout.\nAs it announced Operation Midland was closing, the Met said it recognised it had been \"unpleasant\" for those investigated to have their innocence publicly called into question.\nHowever, the force said it would not apologise \"for carrying out its duty to investigate serious allegations of non-recent abuse\".\nDeputy Assistant Commissioner Rodhouse said non-recent investigations were challenging, but it was \"absolutely right\" that the claims had been investigated.\n\"Victims of non-recent abuse should have the confidence to come forward and know that we will listen to them, take seriously their allegations and investigate without fear or favour.\"\nAn NSPCC spokesman said: \"It's vital that child sexual abuse allegations are fully investigated by police with an open-minded approach. Whilst many cases are extremely complex, swift resolutions with charges being brought or the accused told they will not be prosecuted is in the interest of all parties.\n\"It has taken many years for the public to believe that child abuse is a prolific problem but with disproportionate attention given to some cases over others there is a danger the progress that has been made will be tragically undermined.\"\nHe added: \"Amidst all of the inevitable blame and counter blame as this operation ends we mustn't forget the victims of sexual abuse who will have suffered life-damaging experiences and, in many instances, are still seeking justice.\"\nThe founder of The National Association for People Abused in Childhood, Peter Saunders, called for a line to be drawn under Operation Midland so that police can continue to go after child abusers.\n\"The initial investigation and initial accusations obviously carried enough credibility and weight that the police felt justified in launching an investigation.\n\"Where they made an error was to refer to somebody's testimony as 'credible and true'. That was very, very unfortunate,\" he said." ]

[ "So funny and I love it! (espsially Levi)I read it many times(like 154 times). I'm STILL love it! I give five stars! At first I think its a crap, but when I read it, I laughed like hell!" ]

[ "I bought this game as something new to do versus BF2 and BF2: Special Forces. I've had the game for about two months now and it's pretty fun. The maps which are mainly infantry only are a bit interesting. They're harder than BF2 because you don't get quite as much nade spamming but at the same time, the landscape and terrain make for better fire fights. Takes some getting used to.\n\nI personally prefer the Titan mode, myself. That's where this game really comes alive. Normal Assault mode (described above) is pretty much just BF2 but with futuristic weapons and Infantry Only (for the most part). But Titan mode provides the most action and ... creativity. You can move the Titan around the map to gain the most strategic point for the main guns that players can control to attack and defend missile silos (ie. Flags) and being able to launch in a pod from the Titan and land directly in the middle of the battle makes for some interesting tactics.\n\nOnly real con that I can think of is that in Titan mode, if you get a half decent squad inside the enemy Titan to play defense, it can be really boring. Just keep getting blown up and killed in many cheap ways. Usually much better to just be a ground pounder or a pilot and attack and capture silos.", "I am a Titanic fan, therefore, it says Titanic, I love it, and devour it....photos, movies, books, etc. This is another thing I found to read, wonderful! Thanks for having it!", "Canadian author V. C. King has put painstaking research of Titanic fact and lore to great use in penning a fast-paced page-turner. Pulling the Titanic story forward into the 21st century, seemingly without effort, King has crafted a great yarn that captures your attention at Page One and doesn't let go. The characters are interesting; the plot is engaging; there's lot's of action - Titanic: Relative Fate is a fun summer evening's read.", "I bought this book soon after seeing the movie. Everything I wanted to know about the movie, I now know. I saw more pics. of the real Titanic, as well as behind the scenes shots. This book is a great accompany to the movie, as well as just anybody into Titanic or moviemaking.. its one of the best books like it I've read, and Titanic is certainly the best movie I've ever seen... 6 times!", "Now this is a quality book. So many fablous pictures and information about the Titanic. The photographic quality is excellent. I had another book, where everything seemed to be out of focus. Not so with this one and so interesting to see actual photographs of items and the people aboard the Titanic. Highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning more and more about the Titanic. So sad that so many lost their life. But as long as we remember them, they will live on. They are peaceful now and at rest.", "Excellent for a first look at Forensic Science!\n\nThis text was created with introductory, Junior College and High School courses in mind. The many branches of forensic science are each touched on and experiments and activities are proposed. This is not the place to find in depth answers to deep forensic questions, but it is a great place to get started in learning about what forensics is and what a forensic scientist does.", "I was deeply disapointed with this album. It doesn't even sound like Blink. Once upon a time Blink was an awesome punk band. But all this album shows is that Blink sold out. What kind of Punk band has a song on Dawson's Creek? I'm sure you'll like this album--if you're a junior high girl who listens to the Backstreet boys.", "Great book, am now reading A Night to Remember, a non-fiction book about the Titanic.", "I spent yesterday looking at all the recipes in this book. My husband's cholesterol was high last year. He chose not to address it. His brother had a heart attack last month. My husband's cholesterol was still high last week & his doctor put him on a statin. I'm so thankful that I had this book at home. We have new recipes to try.", "Two of the absolute Titans of Hindustani vocal together on one CD. What a fantastic treat. And both in rare form. Sabash!", "I've been a long time fan of both NVIDIA and EVGA; buying numerous products produced by both companies. As with any card at this level I had high expectations, and this card blew them all away. There is literally no game that I cannot run on the highest settings at 60+FPS on a 1080P monitor (I don't have a 1440P or 4K monitor at this time). Witcher 3 is pretty much pegged at 60FPS, with it very rarely ever dipping down below that. Not only is this card powerful, it's quiet as well, much quieter than my old card at the exact same power draw of 250W TDP.\n\nThis product is very high quality, and a bargain when you compare it to the newest Titan card that basically has the same GPU while being more than $400 cheaper. Did I mention the 980 Ti is just a bit faster than the Titan in gaming? Because yeah, it is; making this the fastest and most powerful GPU you can buy for gaming right now. So if you want the best performance you can possibly get and you have the money, I say this is the card for you!", "This book is well written and has high production values, with good pictures, interesting layout, and the like. The reading level is appropriate for my advanced six-year-old. My only criticism is its sensationalistic focus. The book emphasizes unusual facts about sharks, which often border on trivia, and especially shark attacks, rather than science and biology. For instance, the book describes great white sharks as \"highly\" dangerous because there have been 451 recorded attacks on humans since 1580. That's a little more than one attack per year, a statistic that could more reasonably be used to characterize the shark as \"not dangerous.\" Nevertheless, if you want a shark book that a kid will enjoy, you probably will be happy with this one.", "Many aspects to this story. Enjoyed them all. The Titanic's story well told from a different perspective. Many interesting character.", "This ice cube mold makes excellent models of the Titanic. It isn't especially difficult to remove the ice ships from the tray without breaking the smoke stacks, and if your drink is chilled before the ice is put into the cups, the ships retain their Titanic shape for an exceptionally long time.\nHowever, in my experience presenting the ice boats in drinks at a party is a short-lived joke. People laugh at first before the conversation of the party sinks into a depressing state as people empathize with the many people who died when the Titanic sank. The last time I used these ice cubes at a party, people ended up leaving my house in tears. I almost think that using these ice cubes at a party is the equivalent of having a candle shaped like the World Trade Centers.", "Keeps my lunch safer than the Titanic.\n\nIt washes well, is very sturdy, and it is simply fantastic! Get the green one, you won't regret it!", "The info is overall pretty good, if somewhat basic stuff. The writing itself is about at the level of a junior high language arts paper. Seriously. It's horrible writing. The author lets in a little bit of the \"Fiscally Conservative Christian\" BS opinionated prattle as well, but that's at least more tolerable than the writing.\n\nBuy the book as a sort of checklist of preparedness situations and gear... but don't necessarily expect anything to blow you away by being info you probably haven't heard somewhere before, if you're into survival and preparedness.", "I have read a lot about the sinking of the Titanic but was not aware of this aspect of the story. Through the lives of the selected individuals, the reader sees in microcosm the enormity of the tragedy.", "I was worried it would be too small at first. I'm 5'5\" and 130 lbs and usually buy XS tops in women's, or s-m in junior's. I intended to only wear a tank or t-shirt underneath, and for that it is fine. It is very snug, but very stretchy. I wouldn't be comfortable with it buttoned, but I never intended to do that either. I'd suggest a size up if you'd like to button it. It's a cropped length- I'm high-waisted and it barely reaches my waist.", "My husband loved this shirt for Disney. It looked great! I was worried it would be a junior fit but it wasn't.", "If you are a Titanic buff, as I am, then this book is a must have. The Introduction was written by none other that Walter Lord the author of the haunting classic \"A Night to Remember.\" Ballard starts his book by asking and answering: \"What Happened That Night\" and concludes his book with an analysis on how the ship actually took it's final plunge to the ocean's floor. Who better to write a book on the Titanic than Dr. Robert D. Ballard who located the wreck in 1985? The many pictures and diagrams in the book are stunning. The book is good enough to be left out for guests to thumb through - it is a coffee table keeper.", "I own five battery tender junior chargers. They work great, are compact and my vehicle batteries are always fully charged.", "Made of high quality machined aircraft aluminum, with an extremely bright lumens light also safety or emergency strobe operated on the main switch of unit.\nThe straight up kicker is the concealed 5mil stun gun probe less & glass breaker, which will immediately take down your attacker. Whereas you can run to safety and call the police or you can stomp the attacker in their face also head with your steel toe boots, awhile your attacker twitches on the ground from the initial shock of this thing and henceforth begging you to stop beating their ass!.\n\nNote: This isn't by any means a toy and there are legal consequences for being an idiot with a concealed stun gun, which within states where they are legal, their still classified as a deadly weapon!. (Therefore use common sense before deployment of the stun feature on this Diablo 2.)", "Works great on my racket and my kids assures me that it also works great on their junior rackets.", "I enjoyed how the story took me back to the early 1900's where the Titanic was the most elegant of vessels traveling the waters. The characters were well depicted especially given the quick read. Kudos!", "I recommend buying a couple of TITAN Z's in SLI to get the best performance out MS Paint and Minesweeper. I have found the better the card you have the more chances of wining Minesweeper you have.", "This was by far the best video card I've ever purchased and I've had quite a few. I was actually pretty surprised at the performance increase over my SLI gtx780. I can't wait to get a second Titan X", "Hi Mason and Ethan,\n\nYour Titanic story was great! I really enjoyed reading it. Why did you\nguys choose to write on this subject, rather then another part of\nhistory?\n\nI liked your writing style and I will definitely recommend this book!", "The Titanic is beautifully written according to what was happening on that famous voyage. Robin Gibb and his son RJ Gibb wrote music together so wonderfully. I think a true music lover would enjoy this album.", "No one will ever accuse \"Raise the Titanic\" of being a great or even good movie, but for those of us who are obsessed by the Titanic, we will always treasure the (very well done) scenes of the film when the great ship is raised and, of course, her poignant long-delayed arrival in New York (with the World Trade Center as a back-drop). I have a copy of the UK release of the film and although its in widescreen, the colors are very washed-out and the undersea photograph to dark to really understand what is going on. With the centenary of the sinking arriving soon, it would be appropriate to restore and re-relese the film - hopefully in blu-ray.", "This shirt is Amazing and came quickly! After reading the many reviews that this shirt ran small, I ordered a Medium and it fit me perfectly. - I normally wear an XS in Women's or a Small in Junior t-shirts. ( I am 5-1, 110 lbs, and a 34-B in bra size) The Medium fit me exactly like the model's picture. It is a nice long t-shirt. Fitted, but not too tight. Great style for fans of all ages, just keep in mind that it is a fitted style and is listed as 'Juniors' T-shirt.", "Shark Attacks, Alex MacCormick\n\nOver half the attacks on humans by sharks occur in water less than five feet deep (`Introduction'). How safe is going to the seashore or a river? This book presents examples of shark attacks. The fear of an attack and death by a monster goes back to prehistory. [Bears and big cats preyed on humans on land, and left bones in their caves.] Attacks by sharks can occur on oceans or even bays. It was only in 1958 that a research program began. The International Shark Attack File is based at the University of Florida in Gainesville, it is accessible only to qualified scientists. Searching news reports has the problem of shark attacks unreported for fear of damaging tourism by bad publicity. This book has six chapters for its 241 pages. The author seems to have searched newspaper records during the 20th century to compile this book. There is a chronological list of attacks with its page number (the date is in dd.mm.yy format).\n\nChapter 1 is \"Holiday Snaps in the Shallows\". It lists attacks in Great Britain, Hong Kong, Somalia , Texas, Florida, Virginia, Australia, Italy, and South Africa. Chapter 2 is \"Down into the Deep\". It tells about attacks by great white sharks in Tuscany, Italy; Tasmania; and New Zealand. Florida and California are famous for attacks. Note how often fishermen are bitten in the water. Chapter 3 is \"Ships and Boats and Planes\". What if a shark takes a bite of your boat? Canoes, kayaks, and rubber dinghies are vulnerable to attacks. If bait was thrown into the sea to attract sharks there is a danger for any small boat. A shark can jump into a boat or on a deck. This tells about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in July 1945. Only 316 out of 1,196 survived.\n\nChapter 4 is \"Swimming Out of One's Depth\". Swimming at dawn or dusk can be harmful. Shark attacks at tourist resorts are usually censored. Cooler waters have fewer shark attacks. Bait fish close to shore mean sharks are in the surf. A \"safe bathing area\" is no guarantee either. Stories about a person drowning from a cramp is really a shark attack when the body is never found (p. 179). Chapter 5 is \"Surfing the Waves\". Swimming out into the ocean for surfing can be dangerous. Surfers also spend more time in deep water. Warning signs don't mention \"sharks\" (p. 191). A black wet suit looks like a seal to a shark (p. 203). Even a safe beach can be attacked (p. 217). Chapter 6 is \"Stranger than Fiction\". A shark attack four miles from the ocean on dry land (p. 227). A diver in a giant aquarium giving lettuce to fish was attacked by a tiger shark. It never happened before (p. 231). Fumes from a dead shark injured a mother and her three children in a London home (p. 233).", "I bought it for my 06 Nissan Titan and it has a gap on both sides when u install it. Almost like it doesn't wanna stay there and pop out. Other than that it matches the color in the interior but I wish they would fix this problem." ]

[ "Border collies are notoriously energetic dogs. A hyperactive, exuberant nature is considered a breed trait, particularly noticed in the first half of a border collie's life span. But even a border collie can be TOO hyperactive, and such an instance might be a symptom of a more complex issue, such as separation anxiety." ]

[ "Border collies are extremely energetic dogs and must have the opportunity to get lots of exercise. They love to run. They also need ample attention from their owners and a job to do, whether that be herding livestock or fetching a ball. ... Border collies are considered average shedders.", "Smooth Coat Border Collies are purebred BC dogs Regardless of what type of coat and color a Border Collie has, smooth or rough, long or short, they're all Border Collies. They just differ in length and texture, and of course, the way to manage their fur.", "Staffies are hyper and destructive. They love to run and play, however other breeds such as Border Collies are very active. Any dog can be destructive if not trained correctly or if it is bored.", "As a loyal and faithful breed, Border Collies are very much “one person dogs”. They will develop an intense relationship with one individual, often to the exclusion of others. ... Border collies can be affectionate toward friends but reserved toward strangers and make excellent watchdogs.", "Border Collies and Working Sheepdogs (WSD) in general are medium-sized dogs. ... in general a dog's appearance is considered to be irrelevant. Border Collies bred for the show ring are more uniform in appearance to each other than working sheepdogs.", "Border Collies are not the only dog breed that dislikes being around other dogs. ... Historically, Border Collies are one of the few dog breeds that were selectively bred with herd animals. This means that the dog reacts aggressively to any animal; it considers a threat to the herd.", "Standard Collies are called in different names such as Long-haired or Rough Collie, Lassie Dog, English Collie, and Scottish or Scotch Collie. ... Border Collies are also known for their skills in herding sheep, but they originated from the border regions of Wales and Scotland.", "The Border collie raises your family's IQ but as well as its work ethic. This dog is an extremely smart, hard-working and task-oriented breed. The Border collie is loyal and can be good with children. It's also wary of strangers, making it a good family watchdog.", "Intelligence. Both the Australian Shepherd and Border Collie are intelligent dogs. However, the Border Collie is undoubtedly more intelligent. Aussies are tied for the 42nd smartest dog breeds, while the Border is the king of dog intelligence – sitting at the number 1 spot.", "Some can become nuisance barkers. Borders are very people-oriented and are wonderful family dogs. Some Borders are not good with other dogs or cats, and some are great. Border Collies are the best working breed in the world for sheepherding.", "Herding dogs like border collies have been specially bred to chase and organize animals. This modified predatory behavior incorporates the beginning of the hunt (stalking, crouching, nipping), but without the killing. Border collies make particularly good herders thanks to their independence and intelligence.", "The Border collie ranked highly because of its intelligence, obedience, and average lifespan of 12 years. Developed in the Scottish border region for herding livestock experts say they have unlimited energy and stamina.", "Borders are very people-oriented and are wonderful family dogs. Some Borders are not good with other dogs or cats, and some are great. Border Collies are the best working breed in the world for sheepherding. They also excel at performance activities such as agility, obedience, flyball, and freestyle, among others.", "They are similar in appearance to the popular English Shepherd and Border Collie breeds, and research has found that Australian Shepherds and Border Collies are closely related to each other; both the Border Collie and Australian Shepherd are slightly more distantly related to other kinds of Collies from the Basque ...", "['Border Collie. The majority of obedience champions, agility stars, flyball wizards and sheepdog herding winners are Border Collies. ... ', 'German Shepherd. ... ', 'Toy Poodle. ... ', 'Papillon. ... ', 'Shetland Sheepdog.']", "They are caring, loyal and can be obedient; all you need is to train them well. Every Border Collie dog would need proper obedience training and guidance which is not easy because of their over-enthusiastic behavior and because of that it takes time to train them well.", "Border collies are amazing dogs that make amazing pets, but for some people, they just might not be a perfect match. They require lots of daily exercise, attention, and care. They are the smartest breed of dog and when they don't get the stimulation they need, it shows.", "Border Collies are considered the most intelligent breed in the entire world. They are excellent at learning new tricks and will be obedient to an owner that takes proper care of them. ... This means that they are one of the very best breeds to leave off of a leash in outdoor areas.", "['Border Collie. Prized for its instincts and working ability, the Border Collie is thought to be the most intelligent and easy to train dog. ... ', 'Poodle. Poodles are highly intelligent and obedient, so as a result they are typically easy to train. ... ', 'Miniature Schnauzer. ... ', 'Labrador Retriever. ... ', 'German Shepherd. ... ', 'Bearded Collie.']", "Although any dog can have a seizure, idiopathic epilepsy is more common in border collies, Australian shepherds, Labrador retrievers, beagles, Belgian Tervurens, collies, and German shepherds.", "Border Collies are the world's smartest dog breed when it comes to obedience & working intelligence. In fact, the world's single most intelligent dog was a Border Collie who knew over 1,000 nouns. And because they're highly adaptable dogs with superb herding intelligence, it's no wonder they're number 1.", "The Border Collie, like the Australian Shepherd, can become very attached to their family and are very loving. ... However, the Collie is said to have superior herding instincts to that of the Australian Shepherd, and they have been known to attempt herding small children or other pets in the household.", "Find out what are the diferences and similarities between Bearded and Border Collies. Short Border Collie description: Border Collie is medium sized dogs with height up to 22 inches and weight up to 45 pounds. ... Bearded Collie has the same height as the Border Collie, but they are little bit heavier.", "Red Border Collie Although it's rare, this Border Collie color is recognized in the US. The red color is a recessive gene, and Borders, who have this color, have parents who also have the same hue.", "Everybody knows who Lassie is; and everybody knows that Lassie is a Collie. ... However, Border Collies have nothing to do with Lassie – we are actually talking of two different breeds. Lassie is what we would call a “Standard Collie”. Standard Collies also come in two varieties – Rough Collie and Smooth Collie.", "Because Border Collies are bred to herd rather that protect livestock, they are not reliable guard dogs. They can be protective of their families and generally bark if they hear or see something they don't like. (There are, however, some Border Collies that have been trained to advanced Schutzhund degrees.)", "In general, border collies are medium-sized dogs with a moderate amount of coat, which is more often thick and prone to shedding. They have a double coat that varies from smooth to rough and is occasionally curled.", "['Border collie.', 'Poodle.', 'German shepherd.', 'Golden retriever.', 'Doberman pinscher.', 'Shetland sheepdog.', 'Labrador retriever.', 'Papillon.']", "The Border Collie is a working and herding dog breed developed in England's Scottish-bordering county of Northumberland, for herding livestock, especially sheep. Considered highly intelligent, extremely energetic, acrobatic and athletic, they frequently compete with great success in sheepdog trials and dog sports.", "['Basset Hounds. ... ', 'Bull Mastiff. ... ', 'Chow Chow. ... ', 'Poodles. ... ', 'German Shepherd. ... ', 'Labrador Retriever / Golden Retriever. ... ', 'Doberman Pinscher. ... ', 'Border collie. A Border collie is probably one of the hardest working dog breeds out there and is regarded as the most intelligent dog too.']", "Great Danes are not hyper. In fact, they are anything but hyper. Like all dog breeds, they will have periods of excess energy as puppies, but this quickly resides once they reach adulthood. Most need minimal exercise and are quite content to relax around the house with you.", "If you are not a precise sort of trainer (most people aren't), then trying to train an intelligent Border Collie can be a frustrating task. ... Border Collies have a difficult time learning to generalize, basically because it takes a dog that is less \"critical\" to be able to follow a sloppy command." ]

[ "President Bill Clinton" ]

[ "The Sign ''", "A sign", "the Who", "Who Made Who", "Signs", "Who?", "On the Beach", "Signs of Life", "shaka sign", "sign of the cross", "wanted sign", "donut sign", "Prehn's sign", "electric signs", "Collier's sign", "Babinski sign", "dollar sign", "a repeat sign", "currency sign", "The V sign", "Lhermitte's sign", "signed distances", "Sign of Hertoghe", "gateway sign", "on a traffic sign", "Tinel's sign", "Sign Language", "The Sign of Rome", "welcome sign", "Carnett's sign", "Sign of the Times", "The Drehmann sign" ]

[ "Some do but a lot don't think that. When it comes right down to it people seem to pick not only by looks but by personality & compatabilty which in the end is more important" ]

[ "Agreed. Not being a psychology expert or even close, I've also always believed that intelligent people tend to be very understanding, non-judgemental and not opinionated...almost indecisive, if you will. My reasoning for this is that an intelligent person tends to look at the whole picture of everything and to try to understand why things are..not just to take them at face value. Very few things in life are truly black and white and I think that intelligent people realize this and try to look at things from many different angles.", "No I don't think that that should be done to ANY person from any country. Why can't some people understand THAT THEY ONLY WANT A BETTER LIFE? Why is this so hard to understand? Did they sent the white back to Europe? No. I wonder what did the native Americans wanted to do.....", "Actually I see white girls with Asian guys. But I live in a big city where folks tend to be more progressive. I think it mostly has something to do with American white girls being very provincial.\\nAnd overall I think Asians tend to be more attractive, so I'd have to disagree with the comments left above.", "honestly, \\n\\nI think white people are hated the most. Ever notice that it is the white people who are accused of being racist? You never hear of a minority being accused of being racist. Don't worry about it, come on over here, everybody else is doing it. Nobody will hurt you. It's an exagerated idea in America. Minorities declare racism to explain their failures or to better their chances of getting what they want. It's called the race card and they all play it here.", "People who mistreat hispanics or hispanics who don't like whites are both racists. We should not have likes/dislikes towards other people because of their nationality/race. I know some people in USA mistreat hispanics because they think they are better than them, citizens of a richer country. It's just not right. Due to this mistreat, hispanics tend to dislike whites. I think this should stoop. After all, we are all humans.", "I know that you are not going to like this answer, Black people can be just as racist. But while the same way for whites not all black people are racist. I do think that the repuglican party and George Bush is though as decisions that they make tend to favor the rich and hurt the poor.", "White entertainment tv and white history month is all over the place! The problem to me seems to be people, why isn't there \"people tv\" and \"peoples history month\"!!! Why does everything have to be divided between black and white?? We are all human beings with red blood running through our veins. White organs work as well in Black organs and viceversa. Why oh why, is there always a division between different colors of skin? They have their beliefs and cultures as well as we have, so why can't it just become \"people\" instead of \"them versus us\"?", "Angelina Jolie is so much prettier than Cameron Diaz and she is doing a lot around the world by getting rid of landmines in Cambodia and by working as an ambassador for United Nations. Even though they are both talented actresses, I think Angelina Jolie is the better of the two.", "Being proud of who you are can be good, but if people see your tattoo of \"white pride\" they are going to judge you without getting to know you that you are indeed racist. You are labeling yourself as a racist even if you don't mean to. Everyone who sees you can see that you are white. Why do you neeed a tattoo to say it again? What you need to think about is why do you need to have the tatoo say that to feel that you are defining yourself to someone. We all see races but if you see people for who they really are then you may not need that tattoo. \\n\\nSince you said, \"I just like being who I am,\" Why do you like about being white? What did you do besides be born white to merit being proud about it? Think about that. Try to be proud of what you have accomplished, not what you have been born with, because that is no accomplishment at all and nothing to be proud of. The wiser you become the more you will see this. \\n\\nAlso, go rent a fantastic movie that has a bit about racist tattoos: American History X. You will like it.\\n\\nTake care\\n\\nTake care", "you can only do the best you can..right or wrong..no regrets--no reverse gear only forward..\\n\\nhappiness is being content with your lot..there will always be somebody better off/happier/prettier/etc...but we are all unique and special and make our own niche in life....", "I don't think your mom can call the cops, but more importantly--how old are you and why would you want to shave your eyebrows? What's wrong with the ones you have? Do you have someone who could help you tweeze and shape them--that's much prettier.", "I don't understand it. Why would people think anyone is different because of the color of their skin? If you're white and you get a tan, does that change your personality? No! So why would being a different skin color mean anything? Unfortunately I think there will always be racists...makes me sad.", "Although your question doesn't specify a lot of people just assumed that you meant whites being racist against blacks. I beleive that that assumption is racist in itself.\\n\\nI am white and grew up in a primarliy Mexican community. I can spend hours talking about the racsim I experienced at their hands. \\n\\nThere are more reasons than can be answered here but one big one is that the media is so obsessed with the differences in groups instead of their similarities. They are quick to point out an ethnicity or race when doing a news report. They also only show one side to racism (whites against blacks) instead of all sides because it is politically correct to do so. After hearing the same thing over and over you tend to believe it. People then become distrusting of those that are different from them. If the media left race alone people would get along better.\\n\\nAnother big reason is that activists (Nativo Lopez, Jesse Jackson, etc.) are so quick to scream racism at every perceived injustice. This puts people off and causes them to not care about the other groups. Hell, if I'm going to be called racist just for being white then why should I ever do anything to help anybody outside of my race (i.e. Hurricane Katrina)? \\n\\nBasically I say quit pointing out the differences and everyone will get along better.", "It is true that people tend to have an affinity for people who are like them, so that may explain why careers tend to have certain groups associated with them. \\n\\nJust because people may have the same background, does not mean that they will necessarily think the same way.", "Totally Ashlee Simpson she is prettier and i like her songs better", "I don't think liberals like Islam any better than they like any organized religion. Most liberals I know tend to be atheists, or agnostic.\\n\\nHowever, they are willing to defend the right of Moslems to follow Islam. They respect the freedom of religion of all people (not just Christians).\\n\\nSo I suppose the real question would be why do Conservatives not respect the right to freedom of religion for Islam?", "I think not coz being brokenhearted once is enough. If a person really loves me, he would never ever do something that could broke my heart. why reconnect when there tons of other people out there thats far more better", "People want to simplify and categorize things... black and white, Republican and Democrat, right and wrong... but it's not always that simple... extenuating circumstances always exist, for every action there is a cause... I think the causes must be examined in every circumstance... \\n\\nPeople don't like gray, but that's what most of everything out there is... it's a world of gray inhabited by people who only want to see in black and white\\n\\nI think it's getting better, I mean this is why we have judges, to see the sides of the issue that are outside of the law and to take those into account... do all judges to a good job, probably not, but I would rather be in the justice system now, than 100 years ago... it seems we're getting better slowly, but better... and it's not always an easy thing to do...\\n\\nBut the court of public opinion often is a very dangerous one... and should be dealt with very cautiously... if the majority of people think one thing, that doesn't mean it's wrong, but it also doesn't mean it's right... and odds are it means it deserves more inspection...", "The goal of running for office is to win. Unfortunately, people tend to respond better to emotional appeals rather than to logical arguments. That's the reason why politicians use emotional appeals when they address the voters. It works!", "Alaska has lots of native Americans, and they are probably the lowest in numbers of any of the minority. So I don't think Alaska will have any all white towns either, but I did like your take on the question :) saying that snow makes it white :)\\n\\nHonestly, there are like 40 different kinds of \"white\" either way. Look at Swedes, they tend to have blond hair/ blue eyes, and tend to be slightly taller.. Dutch on average are the tallest of any race. Irish tend to be slightly shorter, and naturally stronger due to a higher percentage of Type II b muscle fibers. The gene for red hair only exists in Scottish people. So if you have read hair, you have at least some Scottish in you. Italians tend to have black hair, and their body hair tends to grow faster. Russians, are less likely to get hypothermia, and have a thicker epidermis, this helps their bodies retain heat better, and makes them less likely to suffer skin abrasions. These are not racial stereotypes, these are genetic facts, which have been proven.\\n\\nNot all \"light skinned\" people are the same. Grouping all light skinned people together, is like grouping Iraqi's, Indian, Chinese, and japanese, and saying they are all the same. They are in fact all different, though there skin colors may all be similar. \\nOnce more, look at blacks. People from the virgin islands, though considered \"black\", and very dark in skin tone, tend to be a lot shorter, have higher pitched voices, and have small physical frames. While people from Nigeria are taller, larger framed, and have deeper voices. Ethiopians tend to have slightly recessed hair lines, and along with Kenyans, they both tend to have a higher percentage of Type II A muscle Fibres, which is why they have produced so many world class distance runners.\\n\\nI don't like the idea of grouping all \"white\" people together, I'm Swedish, not \"white\", out of a family of 7, all of my brothers and sisters have blond hair and blue eyes. My father, both of my grandfathers, myself, and all 3 of my brothers are all over 6'1 as well.\\n\\nIf by \"white towns\", you meant all the buildings were painted white, I can't help you there, maybe someone with a can of white spray paint got bored? and painted a whole town?", "Hoops is prettier and New York has too many issues. But I can't see why ANY woman would want him!!!!!!!!", "That happened right after the 1st season. The new Claire is much prettier and a better actress, so maybe that was it.", "Hmm, that's a slightly controversial one, but not nearly as much as say, er, other stuff, so I'll jump in. Why not? ^_^\\n\\nIt may depend slightly on the type of affirmative action you're talking about, but in general I don't feel that it's right. Especially relating to job acquisition, this is a bad idea. If a white guy applies for a job and a black (forgive the terms, but \"white\" and \"black\" DO take less time to type...although this sentence kinda already made that a useless excuse...but meh) guy applies for the same job, and the white guy is more qualified but they take the black guy because they have to \"meet quota\" or they \"don't want to appear rascist,\" then that both hurts the economy as well as being a bad moral practice. Also, if the place those two were applying at WAS just trying to \"meet a quota,\" and later the same white guy tries to apply and another black guy of slightly lesser qualifications also applies (please don't infer that I'm saying that non-white people are less skilled; this is merely an example), they are going to hire the white guy, or at least they should, as he meets the criteria better (not because he's white; I stated that his qualifications are better for the purposes of this example). Anyway, if the second black guy is technically more skilled than the first black guy, then the end result in this situation is that a white guy and a black guy were hired, but the company could have had a better black guy, and the black guy that had mre qualifications did not get the job he could have had if the company had hired on what I think is a moral basis: ability. And yes, this is a very far fetched example. However, hiring on the basis of race is completely unjustified. I also think hiring on the basis of need is unjustified, which of course immediately leads me to the aforementined race conclusion. If a person really needs a job, then they need to convince their employer that they can do a darn good job of it. Thing is, if they really need it, they will try harder to get it AND will work harder at it, which will make them at least in part better cantidates for employment. I hope that this made sense; I tend to ramble a lot. Anyway, I'm gonna move on to education.\\n\\nAs for education, there are a lot of grants out there, and I have seen stats about how African Americans and Hispanics (hmmmm, I chose to type it out NOW, but not in the earlier...oh well) are oftentimes at a disadvantage in paying for school compared to white people. However, I really feel that we should not be labeling people like that. there are white people I'm sure that are in just as dire straights as some of the people who apply for \"race-only\" scholarships. I think scholarships should be based on merit and need. If the people of certain races really are more needy, and they are willing to get the grades or reccomendations (and/or write good scholarship application essays), then they should get those scholarships anyway. As it is, white people who need scholarship money are having to compete with everybody for them, but other races can enter both into \"everyone\" scholarships as well as scholarships that are only for their race. Also, having quotas for letting other races into colleges can be hurtful to the people who actually try to get good grades. I'm not saying that white people always get better grades or anything like that, but if say for one year the applicants at a university are a little more slim on the \"non-white\" side, and the \"white\" side is better qualified to get in, the unbiversity may still have to \"meet quota,\" which is not necessarily PUNISHING ability, but is certainly not rewarding it. If people are not rewarded for their ability and work, then something is wrong. If minorities want to get into college, then they should (and many do of course) work h", "I'm a white guy, and I can say with conviction that if a girl is good looking (black, white, asian, hispanic) I \"find her attractive\". But in general I think white guys are raised in sheltered environments and tend to stray away from black girls. A lot of it has to do with how you were raised.", "Speaking as a Black female I think there is a very strong double standard in our (African-American) culture. Black men will date a white female in a New York minute, but cry foul the minute they see us with a white or any other man. We tend to get hassled more by other Blacks for dating outside of our race. Also, many (not all) white men are raised to appreciate a more Euro centric standard of beauty (blonde hair, blue eyes, big boobs, skinny body, small butt, etc); in spite of the \"browning\" of America this beauty standard still dominates. Black females don't fit into that particular beauty standard so I think it's hard for some (again some not all!) white men to see our beauty. I also think it's hard because of the painful past that Black women have with white men. When white men do approach us, some of us tend to be suspicious of them. This is just my opinion for why you don't see more Black females with white males. If you're really serious about interracial dating, there are websites that are dedicated to this.", "The United Negro College Fund is a hypacritical racist organization. No get me wrong, I'm not at all racist, but I think the U.N.C.F. is ridiculous. If someone tried to start a Caucasian College Fund, people would see it as racist just becuase white people supposedly have it better or something? I'm a white college student and I don't have any more advantages than my fellow Arican-American students. Why shouldn't I have the same financial-aid opportunities as an African-American student? I think it is terrible what African-Americans have endured in past history, but I had nothing to do with that, so I shouldn't be disadvantaged for it!", "Firstly why do you want to leave it?\\nIf you are born that way why not simply accept the fact & live by it. \\nYou dont say why i want to leave my eyes or ears or any other thing that you are born with.\\nAlso being Gay is not a character it is a psycological property of a man, who tend to get attracted towards the same sex, its not something that you can pull out of your system.\\nOf course if you think that being gay or so is a stigma then you need to work on that.", "crazy-me do you think we treat tamil people unfairly ? Why not visit Sri Lanka and see if it's true.Do you think we treat them like the way White people treated African people ? Or like the way Germans treated Jews ? I know that some people abroad have given the ideas like they can't even read a tamil paper in public without being molested,but that's not true. Tamil people live every where in Sri Lanka,not just north and east. They have the freedome to live but can people of other races live in areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers ?", "Well, you probably act like an adult. People your age tend to not like when people do that. It's because they don't think on the same level that you do.\\n\\nJunior high sucks, it's true. You just have to push through it. People do get more mature and they stop making such a big deal about you being wise beyond your years. Just hang in there.", "i love getting older. im 36 now and i wouldnt want to be younger, not even if someone paid me. as i age i get smarter and prettier. i dont know why, i just do.", "Non smokers tend to think they are better than smokers. They seem to think that cancer will never get them because they don't smoke. Not true. They are just being self-righteous a-holes. Just write them all off as pompous self righteous a-holes and be done with it.", "I find most people tend to vote based on what their family or peers do. Why do the Liberals act so conservative? Why do the Conservatives act so liberal? Simple. Votes. They appeal to a wider range of the population this way. Plus this just tells you what you want to hear. Which proves what most of us think...they are all the same." ]

[ "A Tannery" ]

[ "That is the weirdest assumption I\\`ve ever heard.", "visit any place in europe", "Been there a dozen times, quite a fun place to visit", "I just tell them. What’s the worst that happens, you get a rejection? Shrug it off, wasn’t meant to happen in the first place.", "You knew what you were signing up for when you visited the site", "I think its a lovely old ship. Great place to visit.", "\"What's the worst that could happen?\"", "His spray tan isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen.", "[of fu-](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vE-JwmDrTNI)", "Ok you know what? I quit I'll see you at my place", "What ever age you die at. Smooth sailing from there", "The point of vaccination is not to help you get better, it's more that you don't ever get sick in the first place.", "If you visit Australia, leave", "Just so you know 2020 isn’t the worst thing to happen in the existence of human life... have you not ever read history?", "I love the smell of what The Rock is cooking.", "Visit you local\nBar", "Ummm, you support her by what ever means necessary... what other answers are you looking for here?", "Trick question. The right answer is what ever you have the most fun playing.", "I believe that aliens are likely to exist. However, there's no evidence that they've ever visited Earth or communicated with humans.", "There's an old joke that if you can't find the time to visit Germany just wait because eventually Germany will come to visit you.", "yes. And you don't lose all of it if you visit the hospital. \n\n(sorry)", "If you do this, you are the worst of the worst. Everyone around you hates you. And if you suddenly needed help, no one would offer it. Stop doing this.", "Calling places you park driveways and places you drive parkways." ]

[ "TEWKSBURY, MA (WHDH) - A dump truck driver was injured Monday after slamming into a home in Tewksbury.\nThe truck crashed into a home on Shawsheen Street, causing serious damage.\nThe truck driver suffered minor injuries. It’s not clear if anyone was inside the home at the time of the crash.\nFire crews have responded to the scene.\nThe cause of the crash was not immediately clear.\n(Copyright (c) 2017 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)" ]

[ "Police in Stoneham, Massachusetts, are searching for a man they say assaulted an officer and hit a cruiser while fleeing the scene Monday morning.\nA warrant is out for the arrest of 33-year-old Tewksbury resident Matthew Macinnes on charges including assault and battery on a police officer, operating to endanger and resisting arrest.\nPolice responded to a disturbance on Main Street around 2:15 and attempted to place Macinnes into custody.\nHe then punched an officer and escaped to his truck, where he locked himself in and struck a cruiser parked in front of him.\nMacinnes fled onto I-93 at speed over 100 MPH and a pursuit was ultimately called off.\nAnyone with information on Macinnes is asked to contact police at 781-438-1215.", "A dump truck burst into flames after it collided with a pickup truck on the New Jersey Turnpike Wednesday morning, causing traffic delays near exits 7 and 7A.\nLanes were closed as firefighters fought the blaze around 11 a.m. in the southbound lanes and caused a 2 mile delay, according to 511nj.org.\nThe crash took place in the outer lanes near mile 54.9 in Chesterfield just before 10 a.m., said Trooper Alejandro Goez, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Police.\nA video posted to Twitter by Marcin Wyszogrodzki just after 10:15 a.m. showed crews working on the charred wreckage near the exit for Bordentown and Florence.\nThe dump truck was fully engulfed in flames, Goez said. Both the dump truck's driver and the driver of the Dodge Ram pickup got out of their vehicles, sustaining injuries that weren't considered life-threatening.\nThey were taken to area hospitals, Goez said. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.\nThe inner lanes were reopen as of 11:45 a.m. The left and center lanes of the outer roadway remained closed, Goez said.\nAmanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.\nHave a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips", "Emergency crews were called to a home in Meriden Monday afternoon after a truck crashed into it.\nIt happened at a home on Britannia Street, around 6 p.m., while there were nine children inside the home.\nAccording to police at the scene, the driver of the truck was allegedly high on heroin when he crashed into the home.\nNeighbors said drugs have a grip on this community and that was evident on Monday evening.\nWhen Joseph Torres first heard the utility pole snap and the porch of his home splinter, he said he rushed outside only to see the driver of the truck ttrying to get away.\n\"I had to grab him out of the car and put him on the floor because he was just rying to run and he tried to put his hands on me,\" Torres said.\nMeriden police confirmed the driver was high on heroin.\nAt the time, Torres didn't know that, but by looking at his pupils, he said he knew something wasn't right.\n\"When I approached him, he seemed scared, he jumped, he looked like he didn't know what was going on,\" Torres said.\nPolice don't know how long the driver was behind the wheel, but they said he refused to stop, slamming into the house at least one more time.\n\"I have siblings who play on this porch, so I'm glad none of them were outside when this accident happened,\" Torres said.\nEveryone. including the driver, were uninjured. Torres said he had to wrestle the keys out of the ignition in order to get the suspect to stop, and even then he said the ever was combative.\nTorres is happy no one was hurt, but seeing the power of drugs up close was sobering.\n\"That hard of a substance really breaks my hear to know that it's around this community and around these children,\" Torres said.\nPolice haven't released the driver's identity, but they do said he will be charged with driving under the influence.\nThe building inspector is looking at the home to see if it is structurally sound.\nCopyright 2018 WFSB (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "Authorities have identified two women killed in a crash with a dump truck filled with 20 tons of sand Monday morning in Plumsted.\nDriver Nancy Harris, 79, of Newtown, Pennsylvania, and her passenger, Helen Conover, 84, of Hamilton in Mercer County, were pronounced dead at the scene following the 10:50 a.m. crash, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.\nPedestrian struck and killed by 2 tractor trailers on Route 1\nThe driver of the truck, a 58-year-old Little Egg Harbor man, was treated at an area hospital for minor back pain, officials said.\nThe dump truck was traveling north on Route 539 when it struck an SUV that turned into its path as it made a left from Woodruff Road onto 539, authorities said.\nPolice arrived to find the dump truck overturned in a field along the side the road and the driver's side of the SUV heavily damaged.\nThe crash closed Route 539 for about four hours while police investigated.\nJeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.", "WESTFORD (CBS) – A driver was saved by firefighters after he ended up trapped in his car following a frightening crash in Westford.\nA witness told WBZ-TV it appears the Toyota crossed in front of a dump truck on Route 110 late Friday morning, taking out a utility pole and leaving the front of the car pinned underneath the truck.\nThe Toyota driver could not get out because of the extensive damage to his car.\nIt took firefighters about a half-hour to tear it apart before they could free him and get him to an ambulance.\nThe fire department said his injuries are “non-life-threatening.”\nThe road was shut down in both directions after the collision.\nThe truck is owned by Onyx Trans Inc., a shipping company in Acton.\nNo other information is available at this point in the investigation.", "Photo of the dump truck in the water (Source: David Uchiyama)\nThe NCDOT said one of their large dump trucks was swept off the road and into the Catawba River in McDowell County Tuesday night.\nDavid Uchiyama, Communications Officer for NCDOT Western Mountains Area, said it happened around 10 p.m. on Catawba River Road.\nThe dump truck was using a snow plow to clear mud from a slide when another mud slide pushed the truck off the road and into the river.\nThe truck went into the water on its side.\nTwo DOT workers in the truck were able to crawl out of the passenger-side window and wait on the top of the truck until rescue crews arrived.\nThe workers were not hurt but were taken to the hospital as a precaution.\nMORE - EVACUATIONS CANCELED: Dam deemed safe, people returning home in McDowell County\nCopyright 2018 FOX Carolina (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "A pickup truck hit a house in Suffolk Monday, according to city spokeswoman Diana Klink.\nA Ford F150 was driving in the 3300 block of Holland Road/Route 58 that was turning right when it was hit in the back by a semi-truck, causing the F150 to drive into a house, Klink said.\nHe truck's driver was treated at a local hospital for minor injuries, and the road was temporarily closed, she said. The house sustained some damage to its structure, but no one was inside during the crash, she said.", "Several days before William Tighe allegedly dragged a woman out of her car at a Tewksbury gas station, stole the vehicle, and set off a regionwide manhunt, the 32-year-old had a very different interaction with police: They revived him with Narcan. The Tewksbury man had overdosed on opioids at a home in the Highlands neighborhood of Lowell, The Sun has learned, and the Narcan almost certainly saved his life.\nStart the conversation, or Read more at Lowell Sun.", "A homeowner has some repairs to make after a truck crashed into their house on Monday.\nThe crash happened in the 30th block of South Highland Street near Walnut Grove Road.\nEmergency crews on the scene said a woman appeared to have driven into the home as she was leaving a shopping center across the street.\nShe was put into an ambulance, but is expected to be OK.\nCopyright 2017 WMC Action News 5. All rights reserved.", "BELCHERTOWN, Mass. (WHDH) – A pickup truck crashed into a building in Belchertown, Monday morning.\nPolice say they received multiple 911 calls reporting that a pickup truck struck a Subway on North Main Street.\nAuthorities say the truck had crossed the parking lot and struck the front wall of the building. The Subway, along with other businesses in the plaza, were closed at the time of the crash.\nAccording to police, the building and the truck both suffered major structural damage.\nThe driver was transported by ambulance to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield.\nThe crash remains under investigation. A building instructor is evaluating the building’s damage.\n(Copyright (c) 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)", "NEWTON, MA (WHDH) - Officials responded to a home in Newton after a car drove into it.\nThe incident happened shortly before 11 p.m. on Newtonville Avenue.\nPolice said the car drove over the lawn before hitting the home.\nBoth the house and car sustained serious damage.\nThere is no word on any injuries.\n(Copyright (c) 2017 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)", "STONEHAM, MA (WHDH) - Police are seeking a suspect accused of assaulting a police officer, striking a cruiser with his car, and driving away at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour.\nAccording to officials, police responded to a disturbance on Main Street in Stoneham, at which point they told Matthew MacInnes, 33 of Tewksbury, that he was to be placed under arrest.\nAfter being told he was being arrested, MacInnes allegedly punched an officer and ran away.\nPolice chased after MacInnes, who ran to his truck and locked himself inside, then drove at a cruiser parked in front of him, pushing it into an intersection, before speeding away.\nPolice attempted to pursue MacInnes but called off the chase after speeds reached more than 100 miles per hour.\nPolice have requested a warrant for MacInnes on charges including assault and battery on an officer, resisting arrest, leaving the scene of a crash, and several other charges.\nAnyone with information on MacInnes’ whereabouts are asked to contact Stoneham Police.\n(Copyright (c) 2017 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)", "​The recently published report titled ​Global Off-highway Dump Truck Industry 2018 Market Research Report is an in depth study providing complete analysis of the industry for the period 2018 – 2025. It provides complete overview of Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market considering all the major industry trends, market dynamics and competitive scenario.\nThe Global Off-highway Dump Truck Industry Report 2018 is an in depth study analyzing the current state of the Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market. It provides brief overview of the market focusing on definitions, market segmentation, end-use applications and industry chain analysis. The study on Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market provides analysis of China market covering the industry trends, recent developments in the market and competitive landscape. Competitive analysis includes competitive information of leading players in China market, their company profiles, product portfolio, capacity, production, and company financials. In addition, report also provides upstream raw mate rial analysis and downstream demand analysis along with the key development trends and sales channel analysis. Research study on Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market also discusses the opportunity areas for investors.\nThe report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.\nClick Here To Get Request Sample: ​http://globalqyresearch.com/download-sample/360158\nReasons to Buy this Report\nThe research report will enrich your decision-making capability by helping you to –\nDesign and improve your product development and sales strategies and enhancing your marketing activities\nDevelop business strategies by understanding the market dynamics and developments driving the Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market\nDevelop market-entry strategies and effective ways to sustain competition\nCreate merger and acquisition opportunities by identifying the market players with the most innovative pipelines\nIdentify the regional market potential which would further help in designing regional market strategies\nUnderstand the competitive scenario in the Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market\nTake more informed business decisions by relying on the insightful opinions from industry experts\nWhy Global QY Research ?\nTechnically acclaimed Analysts with complete industry knowhow\nRobust research methodology followed by our publishers to arrive at market estimates\nFocus on technology trends\nExtensive repository of market research reports to meet our client’s needs\nBased on extensive research, we provide clear view of real market scenario and help clients with making informed business decisions\nAsk Query Here:Jay@globalqyresearch.com or Sales@globalqyresearch.com\nTable of Contents\nGlobal Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Market Report 2018\n1 Off-highway Dump Truck Market Overview\n1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Off-highway Dump Truck\n1.2 Classification of Off-highway Dump Truck by Product Category\n1.2.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2013-2025)\n1.2.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 2017\n1.2.3 Rigid Frame\n1.2.4 Articulating Frame\n1.3 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market by Application/End Users\n1.3.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2013-2025)\n1.3.2 Construction\n1.3.3 Mining\n1.3.4 Other\n1.4 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market by Region\n1.4.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)\n1.4.2 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Status and Prospect (2013-2025)\n1.4.3 China Off-highway Dump Truck Status and Prospect (2013-2025)\n1.4.4 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Status and Prospect (2013-2025)\n1.4.5 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Status and Prospect (2013-2025)\n1.4.6 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Status and Prospect (2013-2025)\n1.4.7 India Off-highway Dump Truck Status and Prospect (2013-2025)\n1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Off-highway Dump Truck (2013-2025)\n1.5.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2025)\n1.5.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2025)\n2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application\n2.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market Competition by Players/Suppliers\n2.1.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2013-2018)\n2.1.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2013-2018)\n2.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume and Value) by Type\n2.2.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n2.2.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n2.3 Global Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume and Value) by Region\n2.3.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)\n2.3.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)\n2.4 Global Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume) by Application\n3 United States Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume, Value and Sales Price)\n3.1 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Value (2013-2018)\n3.1.1 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n3.1.2 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n3.1.3 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)\n3.2 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)\n3.3 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n3.4 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)\n4 China Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume, Value and Sales Price)\n4.1 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Value (2013-2018)\n4.1.1 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n4.1.2 China Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n4.1.3 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)\n4.2 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)\n4.3 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n4.4 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)\n5 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume, Value and Sales Price)\n5.1 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Value (2013-2018)\n5.1.1 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n5.1.2 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n5.1.3 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)\n5.2 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)\n5.3 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n5.4 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)\n6 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume, Value and Sales Price)\n6.1 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Value (2013-2018)\n6.1.1 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n6.1.2 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n6.1.3 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)\n6.2 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)\n6.3 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n6.4 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)\n7 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume, Value and Sales Price)\n7.1 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Value (2013-2018)\n7.1.1 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n7.1.2 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n7.1.3 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)\n7.2 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)\n7.3 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n7.4 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)\n8 India Off-highway Dump Truck (Volume, Value and Sales Price)\n8.1 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Value (2013-2018)\n8.1.1 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n8.1.2 India Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)\n8.1.3 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)\n8.2 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)\n8.3 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)\n8.4 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)\n9 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data\n9.1 Caterpillar\n9.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.1.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.1.2.1 Product A\n9.1.2.2 Product B\n9.1.3 Caterpillar Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.2 Terex\n9.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.2.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.2.2.1 Product A\n9.2.2.2 Product B\n9.2.3 Terex Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.3 Komatsu\n9.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.3.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.3.2.1 Product A\n9.3.2.2 Product B\n9.3.3 Komatsu Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.4 Hitachi Construction Machinery\n9.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.4.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.4.2.1 Product A\n9.4.2.2 Product B\n9.4.3 Hitachi Construction Machinery Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.5 John Deere\n9.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.5.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.5.2.1 Product A\n9.5.2.2 Product B\n9.5.3 John Deere Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.6 Doosan\n9.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.6.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.6.2.1 Product A\n9.6.2.2 Product B\n9.6.3 Doosan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.7 Belaz\n9.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.7.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.7.2.1 Product A\n9.7.2.2 Product B\n9.7.3 Belaz Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.8 Volvo\n9.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.8.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.8.2.1 Product A\n9.8.2.2 Product B\n9.8.3 Volvo Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.9 Hydrema\n9.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.9.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.9.2.1 Product A\n9.9.2.2 Product B\n9.9.3 Hydrema Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.10 Bell\n9.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors\n9.10.2 Off-highway Dump Truck Product Category, Application and Specification\n9.10.2.1 Product A\n9.10.2.2 Product B\n9.10.3 Bell Off-highway Dump Truck Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)\n9.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview\n9.11 Liebherr\n9.12 Freightliner\n9.13 NHL\n9.14 BZK\n9.15 Shougang Heavy Truck\n9.16 XEMC\n10 Off-highway Dump Truck Maufacturing Cost Analysis\n10.1 Off-highway Dump Truck Key Raw Materials Analysis\n10.1.1 Key Raw Materials\n10.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials\n10.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials\n10.1.4 Market Concentration Rate of Raw Materials\n10.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure\n10.2.1 Raw Materials\n10.2.2 Labor Cost\n10.2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Off-highway Dump Truck\n10.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Off-highway Dump Truck\n11 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers\n11.1 Off-highway Dump Truck Industrial Chain Analysis\n11.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing\n11.3 Raw Materials Sources of Off-highway Dump Truck Major Manufacturers in 2017\n11.4 Downstream Buyers\n12 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders\n12.1 Marketing Channel\n12.1.1 Direct Marketing\n12.1.2 Indirect Marketing\n12.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend\n12.2 Market Positioning\n12.2.1 Pricing Strategy\n12.2.2 Brand Strategy\n12.2.3 Target Client\n12.3 Distributors/Traders List\n13 Market Effect Factors Analysis\n13.1 Technology Progress/Risk\n13.1.1 Substitutes Threat\n13.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry\n13.2 Consumer Needs/Customer Preference Change\n13.3 Economic/Political Environmental Change\n14 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Market Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Price Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.1.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.1.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.1.3 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Price and Trend Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast by Region (2018-2025)\n14.2.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume and Growth Rate Forecast by Regions (2018-2025)\n14.2.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast by Regions (2018-2025)\n14.2.3 United States Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.2.4 China Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.2.5 Europe Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.2.6 Japan Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.2.7 Southeast Asia Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.2.8 India Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2018-2025)\n14.3 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type (2018-2025)\n14.3.1 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Forecast by Type (2018-2025)\n14.3.2 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Revenue Forecast by Type (2018-2025)\n14.3.3 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Price Forecast by Type (2018-2025)\n14.4 Global Off-highway Dump Truck Sales Volume Forecast by Application (2018-2025)\n15 Research Findings and Conclusion\n16 Appendix\n16.1 Methodology/Research Approach\n16.1.1 Research Programs/Design\n16.1.2 Market Size Estimation\n16.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation\n16.2 Data Source\n16.2.1 Secondary Sources\n16.2.2 Primary Sources\n16.3 Disclaimer\nTo Purchase this Premium Report: ​​http://globalqyresearch.com/checkout-form/0/360158​\nAbout Us:\nGlobal QYResearch is the one spot destination for all your research needs. Global QYResearch holds the repository of quality research reports from numerous publishers across the globe. Our inventory of research reports caters to various industry verticals including Healthcare, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Technology and Media, Chemicals, Materials, Energy, Heavy Industry, etc. With the complete information about the publishers and the industries they cater to for developing market research reports, we help our clients in making purchase decision by understanding their requirements and suggesting best possible collection matching their needs.\nContact Us:\nUnit1, 26 Cleveland Road, South Woodford, London, E182AN, United Kingdom\nContact: +44 20 3239 2407", "Metro police are investigating a crash at Nellis Boulevard and Sahara Avenue on June 14, 2017. (Source: LVACS)\nPolice are at the scene of a crash on June 14. 2017. (Roger Bryner/FOX5)\nA moped driver died after a crash involving a dump truck Wednesday afternoon, according to Las Vegas Metro police.\nPolice responded to the incident at 2:17 p.m. at the intersection of Sahara Avenue and Nellis Boulevard.\nCiting witnesses and evidence, police said a 1994 Freightliner Dump Truck was heading northbound on Nellis crossing Sahara on a green light when a 2016 moped traveling eastbound on Sahara approaching Nellis did not stop for a red light and hit the dump truck. The front of the moped hit the side of the dump truck and the driver was ejected onto the pavement.\nPolice said the 73-year-old driver of the moped was taken to Sunrise Hospital with critical injuries but later died.\nThe driver of the dump truck did not sustain any injuries. He remained at the scene.\nMetro's Fatal Detail is investigating the crash.\nPolice urge motorists to use alternate routes because the intersection has been shut down.\nThe intersection of Sahara at Nellis is temporarily closed due to an injury crash. Please find alternate routes. #LVMPDnews — LVMPD (@LVMPD) June 14, 2017\nThe Clark County Coroner's Office will later release the identity of the deceased.\nThis marked the 64th traffic-related fatality in Metro's jurisdiction.\nStay with FOX5 and FOX5Vegas.com for developments.\nCopyright 2017 KVVU (KVVU Broadcasting Corporation). All rights reserved.", "According to @houstonpolice, the cyclist was leaving lunch with her husband at @RiceUniversity when she was hit by a dump truck. Initial info shows the cyclist was at fault. More info: https://t.co/E41oVXFrc4 #abc13 — Pooja Lodhia (@PoojaOnTV) April 24, 2018\nA female cyclist is dead after she was hit by a dump truck driver near Rice University. https://t.co/E41oVXFrc4 #abc13 pic.twitter.com/poVcdEeDKz — Pooja Lodhia (@PoojaOnTV) April 24, 2018\nYou can see books and binders by the crushed bicycle. @houstonpolice say the cyclist and dump truck driver were both on Sunset Blvd when he hit the back tire of her bike. #abc13 https://t.co/E41oVXFrc4 pic.twitter.com/S3ZefnoY2e — Pooja Lodhia (@PoojaOnTV) April 24, 2018\nPolice said a woman on a bicycle had just left after having lunch with her husband near Rice University when she was fatally struck from behind by a dump truck in the Museum District.Houston police said the crash happened just before noon in the 6000 block of Main at Sunset Boulevard.According to police, the bicyclist and the dump truck were about to turn right when the incident happened. An initial investigation appeared to show the bicyclist may have been at fault.Police have not immediately identified the woman or the truck driver. The company of the dump truck has also not been identified.HPD urged people to avoid the area as investigators process the scene.", "LAND O’ LAKES, Fla. (WFLA) — Another home near the site of last month’s massive sinkhole in Land O’ Lakes has met criteria for demolition.\nOn Monday, Pasco County officials announced a home on Canal Place was condemned Friday. It’s the same home that 8 On Your Side told you about last week, when the family who lived there said they were worried their home had not yet been condemned.\nThe family moved out voluntarily at the time.\nThere are now eight homes total near the site of the sinkhole that have met criteria for demolition, including the two homes that were originally swallowed and destroyed.\nCrews cleaning up around the sinkhole ended debris and water removal on Sunday. The demobilization phase began Monday.\nDuring debris removal, crews dumped 758 dump trucks of uncrushed lime rock into the sinkhole.\nThe University of South Florida will continue data collection and surveying throughout the week as needed.\nSTORIES OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON-\n>> BACK TO TOP STORIES", "An elderly driver is in hospital after smashing into a truck on Churchill road on Wednesday afternoon.", "INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Seven dump trucks quickly caught fire Wednesday morning on the east side of Indianapolis, causing more than a million dollars in estimated damage.\nAccording to IFD, firefighters were dispatched to 5917 Massachusetts Avenue for a reported building fire around 7:30 a.m. When they arrived, they discovered several dump trucks had caught fire.\nFive of the trucks were lined up next to one another while two more were in separate locations, according to IFD Battalion Chief Rita Reith. Crews had the fire under control in about 30 minutes.\n“[It’s] unclear what could have started the fire at this time. Most of the dump trucks were running with the keys in them. We’re not sure if they simply overheated and one caught the next truck on fire,” Reith said.\nThe trucks sustained extensive damage totaling an estimated $1.2 million. The investigation is ongoing.\nReith said the fire broke out before the heat of the day, meaning firefighters didn’t encounter any additional problems with excessive heat. They remained hydrated and tried to keep as cool as possible, she said. Firefighters took off their gear as soon as the fire was out to cool down.\nNo one was hurt.", "SUFFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — A pickup truck hit a home in Suffolk Monday.\nDispatchers received a call at 12:29 p.m. about an accident in the 3300 block of Holland Road.\nPolice say a Ford F-150 was traveling on the road, trying to make a right turn when it was hit in the rear by a tractor-trailer, causing the F-150 to hit a home.\nThe man behind the wheel of the Ford had minor injuries. He was treated at the scene and then was taken to a local hospital.\nNo one inside the home was injured.\nPolice are still investigating.", "MERIDEN — A man was arrested after crashing his vehicle into a house Monday afternoon.\nPolice and EMS responded after receiving reports that a pick-up truck collided with multiple objects at about 5:30 p.m. in the area of 133 Britannia Street.\nUpon arrival, investigators determined that a man in a pick-up truck collided with a utility pole before being ricocheted into a home. The front porch of the residence was heavily damaged.\nOfficers took the driver into custody and brought him to the Meriden Police Department for processing on related charges.\nThis is an active investigation. Stay with FOX 61 as we continue to provide updates.", "We saw the article about dump trucks going through Cookstown.\nWe live on Church Street and see dump trucks coming down the hill so fast, they run red lights.\nWe have a two-year-old boy, and many of our neighbours on this street have multiple kids between one and nine years old.\nPeople talked about their businesses, which we support, but the dump truck and speeding issue is also impacting families here where we live.\nI have emailed South Simcoe Police about it last month and also followed up with a call, after we witnessed three dump trucks travelling more than 80 km/h and running yellow and red lights one Tuesday.\nThey said they would need to send someone out to “observe” and then report back to the traffic department. They said they would only send enforcement if they had other calls around here to deal with.\nWe are home all day and we have seen no action. We also invited police to use our driveway, as it’s set back at the bottom on the hill on Church Street. The story and issue brought focus on our town, but I feel there needs to be more of a family-based safety perspective.\nDallas Dunkley, Cookstown", "MELROSE, MASS. (WHDH) - Melrose police officers are responding to the scene of a crash involving a driver who appears to have driven through the front door of a house.\nVideo from Sky7 showed a sedan sticking out of a three-story home on East Emerson Street.\nThe driver caused extensive damage when the vehicle jumped the front porch and knocked down support beams.\nEMS and fire crews are on the scene. A tow truck has been called in to tow the car away.\nThe cause of the crash was not immediately clear. It’s not known if anyone was injured.\nThis is a breaking news story; stay with 7News online and on-air for the latest developments.\n(Copyright (c) 2018 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)", "Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close\nImage 1 of 10 Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 2 of 10 Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 3 of 10 A man, sitting on the curb, reacts as Houston Police officers investigate the scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. less A man, sitting on the curb, reacts as Houston Police officers investigate the scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, ... more Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 4 of 10 Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 5 of 10\nImage 6 of 10 A man, sitting on the curb, reacts as Houston Police officers investigate the scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. less A man, sitting on the curb, reacts as Houston Police officers investigate the scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, ... more Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 7 of 10 A man, sitting on the curb, reacts as Houston Police officers investigate the scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. less A man, sitting on the curb, reacts as Houston Police officers investigate the scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, ... more Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 8 of 10 Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Houston Police officers investigate he scene where a bicyclist was fatally struck by a dump truck on the intersection of South Main Street and Sunset Boulevard Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in Houston. Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez, Houston Chronicle\nImage 9 of 10 A woman has died after she was hit by a dump truck while she was riding a bicycle, on Tuesday, April 24, 2018. A woman has died after she was hit by a dump truck while she was riding a bicycle, on Tuesday, April 24, 2018.", "A Subway restaurant in Belchertown is closed indefinitely after a truck crashed through the building this morning.\n\"It's just amazing to see that there's a huge whole in the side of the siding,\" said Gail Belanger.\nIt is a huge whole indeed - about the size of a Nissan pickup truck, which police said drove straight into the Subway on North Main Street in Belchertown.\n\"I just don't understand how somebody smashes into a window at 7:30 in the morning,\" said Lew Holzman of Belchertown.\nThe damage was so severe that nobody can get inside, not even the owner, who told Western Mass News he was getting ready for work when a group text claimed a truck had driven through his restaurant.\nPolice said that the middle-aged female driver was the only one in the truck. She was taken to the hospital for her injuries, though it's unclear how badly she was hurt.\nThe closure leaves one less lunch spot available in town.\n\"There's not a lot of places to eat, so a lot of people go there,\" Belanger added.\nThe impact is already being felt, as dozens stopped to take a look at the damage, some who eat there all the time.\n\"I eat here probably once a week, and if I was sitting in there, I probably wouldn't be talking to you right now,\" Belanger explained.\nBelanger works just down the road and could not believe the damage she was seeing.\nThankfully, nobody was inside. The store doesn't open until 9 a.m. with the first employees arriving at 8:30, just an hour after the crash.\nHad the incident been the middle of the day, Belanger told Western Mass News the result may have been much different.\n\"I'm sure people would've been killed. From the hole in the side, I'm sure if you were sitting there, it would've been an awful thing.\" Belanger said.\nPolice do not believe the crash was intentional, but are continuing to investigate.\nWestern Mass News will be keeping in touch with the owner and will give an update once this Subway is back open.\nCopyright 2018 Western Mass News (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.", "PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Emergency crews are on scene after a car rolled over and crashed into the front of a Providence home.\nThe crash took place just before 4 p.m. Monday on Prairie Avenue, in the area of Colfax Street.\nNo word yet on any injuries or what may have caused the crash.\nEyewitness News has a crew at the scene and will have a live report at 6 on WPRI 12.\nRollover on Prairie Ave in PVD. A neighbor shared this photo with me. More tonight on @wpri12 at 6 pic.twitter.com/M72uW4kttb — Kim Kalunian (@KimKalunian) April 17, 2017", "MELROSE, MASS. (WHDH) - A man who drove down a walkway, up a porch and through the front door of a house in Melrose Wednesday morning was on his way home from the hospital when he suddenly blacked out.\nAuthorities responding around 11:30 a.m. to a crash on East Emerson Street found a grey sedan sticking out of the front of a three-story home.\nThe driver told 7’s Byron Barnett that he had just left Melrose-Wakefield Hospital after having blood drawn when he lost consciousness, veered off the road and crashed.\nThe man could only remember waking up in the front hallway of the home next to an unscathed grandfather clock. He was not hurt and was able to walk out of the home on his own.\nThe driver caused extensive damage to the front porch and knocked down support beams.\nThe homeowners were not inside the house at the time of the crash.\nA tow truck has since pulled the totalled vehicle out of the home.\nThis is a breaking news story; stay with 7News online and on-air for the latest developments.\n(Copyright (c) 2018 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)", "HOLYOKE -- Two people had to be extricated from the wreckage of a pickup truck after it crashed into a tree Tuesday afternoon on Northampton Street near its intersection with Lincoln Street.\nHolyoke Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cavagnac said the 3:30 p.m. crash pinned the two occupants of a Nissan pickup in the wreckage until firefighters were able to use hydraulic cutters, spreaders and rams to peel the top of the truck away and lift the dashboard off the lap of one of the occupants.\nCavagnac said the two occupants were transported to an area hospital with what he called \"non-life threatening\" injuries.\nThe cause of the crash remains under investigation.", "Police say a Chevrolet Silverado (not the one pictured) hit a cab driver in Falmouth, Massachusetts. DAVID ZALUBOWSKI AP", "More Videos 1:17 Loved ones remember Lorenzo Parks, man killed during attempted robbery by group of teens Pause 1:30 Harbor Greens finds niche in crowded grocery marketplace 1:13 Puyallup would be left holding the bag after lawsuit, lawyer tells city council 16:39 Firefighter/EMT from Tacoma saves lives at Las Vegas shooting 1:40 Nordic Festival features buttery treats 3:48 Heroic Tacoma doctor stayed while others ran during Vegas shooting 1:20 1 dead after Tacoma warehouse fire 3:08 Russell Wilson on his, Seahawks' state of mind 1:40 Kentwood's Justin Seiber, Hazen's Jaxon Ingram and Kennedy Catholic's Sam Huard are NPSL's prolific passers 1:49 High-tech firm says Tacoma could become \"a primary hiring place\" Video Link copy Embed Code copy\nFacebook\nTwitter\nEmail\nCrew works to clear overturned dump truck Crews respond to an overturned dump truck that spilled a load of gravel near the intersection of 19th Street and Market in Tacoma, Wash., on Friday, Oct. 6, 2017. Crews respond to an overturned dump truck that spilled a load of gravel near the intersection of 19th Street and Market in Tacoma, Wash., on Friday, Oct. 6, 2017. Joshua Bessex jbessex@thenewstribune.com\nCrews respond to an overturned dump truck that spilled a load of gravel near the intersection of 19th Street and Market in Tacoma, Wash., on Friday, Oct. 6, 2017. Joshua Bessex jbessex@thenewstribune.com", "PORT BRUCE – A plan to remove a dump truck marooned on the collapsed Port Bruce bridge for nearly a month has been delayed.\nThe province’s Ministry of Labour first wants to approve the plan for removal of the truck, which was scheduled to go ahead today.\nElgin County Warden David Marr said the contractor and the insurance company were to submit a detailed plan today and if everything goes according to plan, the truck will be removed Wednesday.\nRelated\nCrews were out Friday removing the fuel from the truck. Monday workers were taking the gravel from the back of the truck.\nThe bridge on Imperial Road collapsed Feb. 23 as the dump truck carrying a load of gravel was crossing. The driver was unhurt.\nThe collapsed bridge cut off the main access route to the 200-$resident lakeside village.\nAn initial investigation identified anchor rod failure as the suspected cause of the collapse, which occurred during heavy flooding of Catfish Creek.\nSt. Thomas Times Journal", "Tue, Feb 14: Two people were sent to hospital after a stolen pickup truck slammed into a cab along Northmount Drive in northwest Calgary.", "PLUMSTED TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — Authorities say an elderly Pennsylvania woman and her passenger were killed when their SUV collided with a dump truck in New Jersey.\nOcean County prosecutors say 79-year-old Nancy Harris, of Newtown, was trying to turn on to Route 539 in Plumsted Township around 10:50 a.m. Monday when she pulled in front of the truck, which was northbound on Route 539 and carrying 20 tons of sand.\nHarris and her 84-year-old passenger, Helen Conover of Hamilton Township (Mercer County), were both pronounced dead at the scene a short time later. The truck driver, identified only as a 58-year-old Little Egg Harbor man, was treated at a hospital for minor back pain.\nAuthorities closed the roadway for about four hours while the crash was investigated." ]

[ "A group of voting rights advocates and felons has filed a lawsuit after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a law that could make it more difficult for felons to vote. The new law requires felons to pay any outstanding court fines or fees before they can cast their ballots — a requirement that the American Civil Liberties Union describes as creating \"two classes of returning citizens: a group wealthy enough to afford their voting rights and another group who cannot afford to vote.\" Last November, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment that would restore voting rights to more than 1 million felons. The amendment approved by voters said that \"voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation.\" It excludes those who have been convicted of murder or felony sexual offense. Democrats have argued that requiring payment of all fines and fees \"goes against the spirit of the constitutional amendment voters passed in November,\" as The Associated Press reported. After signing the new bill into law on Friday, DeSantis said in an accompanying letter that it \"confirms that the amendment does not apply to a felon who has failed to complete all the terms of his sentence.\" \"Over a million Floridians were supposed to reclaim their place in the democratic process, but some politicians clearly feel threatened by greater voter participation,\" Julie Ebenstein, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. \"They cannot legally affix a price tag to someone's right to vote.\" The lawsuit filed Friday accuses the election officials of being motivated by racial discrimination, because felons in Florida are disproportionately black. Ten felons are part of this lawsuit, saying they will not be able to vote because of the new law. The felons owe different amounts of money, ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of millions. Among them is 61-year-old Betty Riddle, a former addict with multiple convictions, \"mostly for possession of controlled substances\" and related offenses. She now works for the public defender of Sarasota and has more than $1,000 in court fees that the complaint says she is unable to pay. Therefore, she \"fears that she might be removed from the voter registration rolls.\" The new law also says that a court may convert financial obligations to community service, in which case a felon may vote after completing those hours. In January, Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux told NPR's Greg Allen that he saw trouble ahead because of outstanding questions about whether felons needed to pay outstanding costs and fines to vote. \"Clearly there are things we do not know and things that we cannot know until someone provides us with better definitions,\" Lux said. Before the vote last November, \"people who served their time could apply for clemency to a board headed by the governor,\" Allen reported. \"But the cumbersome process and a multiyear backlog meant that only a small percentage applied.\"" ]

[ "Kentucky's new governor has restored voting rights to felons in the state, in an executive order signed days after he took office. With Thursday's order, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear returned the right to vote and hold public office to more than 140,000 nonviolent offenders who have completed their sentences. \"I think it&#8217;s critically important,\" Beshear says. \"Not just for democracy but also an understanding that people can make mistakes, yet they can rebuild their lives, and they ought to have the dignity of voting once they do.\" The pledge fulfilled a campaign promise from Beshear, the former attorney general who ran a close race this year against the unpopular incumbent governor, Republican Matt Bevin. Beshear won by a slim margin in a contest where Republicans swept down ballot races and President Trump threw his weight behind Bevin. Beshear says he issued the order in part to reduce Kentucky's disenfranchisement rate, one of the highest in the nation. Nearly 10% of adults in the state – and around 25% of African Americans – can't vote because of a felony record, according to The Sentencing Project, the criminal justice advocacy group. \"It is an injustice,\" Beshear says. \"It is a racial injustice. And this executive order helps get us on track to writing a lot of wrongs.\" Kentucky was one of just two states with a blanket, lifetime voting ban on felons. Now that category includes just one state: Iowa. And the move follows a wave of voting rights expansions for felons across the country, at the peak of a decades-long movement against disenfranchisement. Last year, Florida restored voting rights to more than a million people with felony charges, but quickly became caught in a legal battle when the state legislature passed a law requiring felons to pay court fees, fines and restitution before voting. Civil rights groups sued over law, which they said amounts to a \"poll tax.\" A federal court has temporarily blocked the law. Beshear stresses that Kentucky's executive order does not require felons to pay fees or fines in order to exercise their right. \"The fact that someone owes money will not keep them from getting their voting rights back,\" he says. \"Those that have less money shouldn&#8217;t have their voices squelched.\" Beshear says the state will work to avoid putting an excessive burden on felons, who register to vote and turn out at lower rates than the general population. \"Our goal is to streamline this process to where someone ... in the near future, can walk into any clerk&#8217;s office across Kentucky and get registered to vote,\" he says. \"No forms, no hassle. This is their right.\" Matt Bevin, the outgoing governor, also spoke recently about redemption in the criminal justice system, though from a different angle. Between his loss in November and the end of his term, Bevin pardoned more than 400 people, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, including some convicted of violent crimes. The Kentucky New Era reports that one sentence commutation went to Dayton Jones, a man who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy and distributing \"matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor.\" Bevin told The Washington Post the United States were founded on the concept of redemption and that he's \"a big believer in second chances.\" But the pardons drew concern from some state attorneys. Jackie Steele, a prosecutor for the commonwealth, told the Post the governor's actions were \"an absolute atrocity of justice\" and that the pardons put Kentucky communities in danger. Others told the Post they were blindsided and shocked. Speaking with Here & Now, Beshear refrained from commenting on the pardons as a whole, noting that he doesn't want to criticize his predecessor. But he says one pardon involved a case that his office had prosecuted when he was attorney general, apparently referring to Dayton Jones. \"It was an awful case where a young man in high school was attacked, was violated,\" Beshear says. \"It was filmed. It was sent out to different people at his school.\" Beshear calls the case one of the \"worst crimes\" his office had ever seen. \"I fully disagree with that pardon,\" he says. \"It is a shame. And it&#8217;s wrong.\" In his executive order on felon voting rights, Beshear excluded people who were convicted of rape and sexual abuse, as well as other violent offenses – and some nonviolent offenses such as bribery in an election. Some Kentuckians may be experiencing déjà vu. Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, the current governor's father, issued a similar order at the end of his tenure in 2015, though it was promptly overturned by Bevin. Beshear acknowledges the next governor could similarly roll back his order. But he points out that permanent, automatic restoration of voting rights in Kentucky would require a constitutional amendment. Beshear says he'll pursue that amendment legislatively, though the process, if it succeeded in the Republican-controlled state legislature, could", "Civil rights lawyers are using a new strategy to change a common court practice that they have long argued unfairly targets the poor. At issue is the way courts across the country sometimes issue arrest warrants for indigent people when they fall behind on paying court fees and fines owed for minor offenses like traffic tickets. Last year, an NPR investigation showed that courts in all 50 states are requiring more of these payments. Now attorneys are aggressively suing cities, police and courts, forcing reform. Since September, six lawsuits were filed against New Orleans; Rutherford County, Tenn.; Biloxi and Jackson, Miss.; Benton County, Wash.; and Alexander City, Ala. In the past year, lawyers have also won settlements that have forced courts to change practices in Montgomery, Ala.; DeKalb County, Ga.; and St. Louis County, Mo. Biloxi is the latest city to be sued. Nusrat Choudhury, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who filed the lawsuit, charges the city runs an illegal \"debtors' prison\" when it puts indigent people in jail without adequately trying to determine whether the person has the means to pay court fines and fees or without then offering adequate alternative ways to pay off a fine, like being offered the chance to do community service. \"We believe the ACLU is mistaken about the process in Biloxi,\" Vincent Creel, a spokesman for the city, says. \"The city of Biloxi treats all defendants fairly under the law.\" Qumotria Kennedy, the lead plaintiff, questions that. She says she was arrested in July when she was a passenger in a car driven by a friend. The women were on their way to pick up their teenage daughters when a police officer stopped the car, saying the friend ran a stop sign. The officer asked both women for identification and a check showed an outstanding arrest warrant for Kennedy. She was arrested, handcuffed and spent five nights in jail before she appeared before a judge. She owed $1,000 on unpaid fines and fees from an earlier traffic stop, two years prior, when she was caught driving without a license or insurance. She says she wanted to pay but didn't have the money. Kennedy, a 36-year-old single mother of two, works sporadically whenever she can find cleaning jobs. She had a part-time job at a motel but lost it when she missed work while in jail. After her release, she got occasional calls to clean the ballpark after Biloxi Shuckers games, but now the baseball season is over. She still has outstanding court fines and worries that the city will issue another arrest warrant. \"It's scary,\" she says. \"You have to sit there and worry, wondering over your shoulder if you're going to get picked up this day, if you're going to get picked up that day. It's a really upsetting feeling. If I can get the money, I will pay for it. But I can't give nothing that I don't have.\" City officials say they offer alternatives like community service. But Kennedy says it was not offered to her and when she found out about the option, she says, her probation officer discouraged it. Joseph Anderson, Kennedy's boyfriend, who is also a plaintiff in the ACLU case, says he was at home when police came to his door to arrest him on a warrant for an unpaid $170 speeding ticket. Anderson, 52, is disabled from multiple heart attacks and a stroke. He cannot work and lives on a disability check. He spent seven nights in jail. \"People are being arrested in their homes or at a traffic stop, told that they need to pay money,\" Choudhury says. \"They're never informed of their right to a lawyer. They're not given a court hearing until they've been jailed for days, sometimes weeks at a time.\" Choudhury says these court fines and fees set up an unequal system of justice. She says people with money pay their court fines and are done with the court system. But people who are indigent, unemployed, homeless or living on disability checks are put on payment plans. Those often come with added fees. If they don't keep up the monthly payments, they can go to jail, putting them further into debt. \"People like Miss Kennedy,\" says Choudhury. \"A single mom, who is struggling to find work and then loses her job — her part-time cleaning job — when she's jailed for being poor.\" Also this week, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a complaint against a judge in Alabama who gave impoverished people who owed court fines a choice: Go to jail or donate blood at the bloodmobile across the street. Choudhury says lawyers are filing more of these cases as the issue gets more attention. A key moment came in March, when the U.S. Department of Justice released a report highly critical of such court practices in Ferguson, Mo. There are also more lawsuits because lawyers are starting to win. The ACLU settled a case in March in DeKalb County, Ga., over the jailing of Kevin Thompson, a teen who could not pay nearly $1,000 in fines and fees from a traffic case after he was caught driving without a license. The settlement led to new court p", "At Florida's Capitol in Tallahassee, four times a year, dozens of anxious people gather to hear a decision that will affect the rest of their lives. Felons whose sentences and probation are complete stand before the governor and other Cabinet members to ask for clemency and the restoration of their right to vote. After waiting for years, Joanne Calvarese made her case to the clemency board in June. \"I feel that I have paid my consequences,\" Calvarese said. \"I know I don't deserve your mercy, but I beg you for it.\" The panel congratulated Calvarese on turning her life around and gave her back the right to vote. Most of the 100 others making the same request that day were not as lucky. Across the U.S., most states restore voting rights to felons after they've completed their sentences. Some wait for probation and parole to be complete. In recent years, many states have updated and streamlined the process. Florida, however, has gone in the other direction. When Gov. Rick Scott took office seven years ago, he rolled back reforms put in place by his predecessor, Charlie Crist. More than 150,000 Floridians had their voting rights restored during Crist's four years in office. In the seven years since then, Rick Scott has approved restoring voting rights to just over 3,000 people. In Florida, more than 10 percent of the adult population is prohibited from voting because they've had felony convictions. Under a law that dates back to the Reconstruction era, Florida bars felons from voting, unless officials approve a request to have those rights restored. That means nearly 1.5 million people in Florida can't vote, even though their sentences are complete. At a hearing in 2016, Scott tried to explain to one man why he was denying his request to have his rights restored. \"Clemency is — there's no standard,\" Scott said. \"We can do whatever we want. But it's ... tied to remorse. And ... understanding that we all want to live in a law-abiding society.\" Jon Sherman, with the Fair Elections Legal Network, says that's the problem with Florida's system. \"There's no rule, no standard, no criteria governing their decision-making,\" he said. \"Sometimes, the governor simply says, 'I don't feel comfortable at this point.'\" Sherman believes the inconsistent way in which Florida restores voting rights violates the U.S. Constitution. He represents a group of former felons that's suing the state. \"A lot of people have seen how unfair and arbitrary the process is, how delayed,\" Sherman said. \"I mean, we've met people who are waiting for up to 10 years for a hearing on their application. And they see that and they decide, 'You know, it's not worth it to even apply.'\" One of those suing Florida is Yraida Guanipa. She served 11 years on a drug trafficking conviction before being released in 2007. Since then, she's gone back to college, earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, and started a business in Miami. Her probation ended in 2012, but Florida's law requires her to wait an additional seven years before applying to have her rights restored. \"The seven years is not up until next year,\" Guanipa said. \"And after that, I have to get into the line of the backlog, of maybe 10 years. I probably would be dead.\" Part of the reason Florida withholds the right to vote from felons, Guanipa says, is political. She believes it's aimed at suppressing the vote in minority communities. \"It's not only punishing me,\" she says, \"but it punishes my family and my community because it's blocking us [from having] a voice.\" In Florida, more than 20 percent of otherwise eligible African-American adults are unable to vote because of the law. Earlier this year, a federal judge said Florida's process for clemency and restoring voting rights was unconstitutional. The state appealed and arguments in the case are scheduled in a few weeks. But before there's a final decision on that, Florida voters will weigh in. Another group that has been working to restore voting rights for felons, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, gathered more than a million signatures for a constitutional amendment that will be on the November ballot. It would restore voting eligibility to most felons once they'd completed their sentences. \"This is an issue that transcends rural-urban-suburban divide. It transcends the partisan divide,\" said Neil Volz, with the coalition. \"And it really is something that impacts all communities and all walks of life.\" Many believe the referendum may offer the best chance of overturning Florida's ban on felon voting. Recent polls show it's supported by more than two-thirds of state voters. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Next, we have an update on voting rights for people who've been convicted of crimes. In the state of Florida, more than 10 percent of the adults in the state - more than 10 percent of all adults - are prohibited from voting because they've had felony convictions. This is because of a 150-year-old law. It bars felons from voting unless officials ap", "Federal appeals court Judge Barbara Lagoa is high on President Trump's list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court seat left open by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Although she has been a federal judge for less than a year, Lagoa has a background and judicial philosophy with attractive qualities for the president and conservatives. She's Cuban American and speaks fluent Spanish; she's a conservative Catholic, thus appealing to an important religious constituency; and perhaps most important of all, she is from Florida, a pivotal state in the upcoming presidential election. \"She's excellent,\" Trump said Monday on Fox News. \"She's Hispanic. She's a terrific woman from everything I know ... [but] I don't know her. Florida — we love Florida.\" Daughter of refugees The 52-year-old Lagoa is the daughter of parents who fled Fidel Castro's communist regime in 1966 after the revolution. She got her law degree from Columbia University in 1992, and she practiced law in Miami for 10 years before, representing, pro bono, the Miami relative of Elián González in 2000. González was the 5-year-old boy found floating in the ocean after his mother and others drowned while trying to flee to the United States. Elián's father then sought to return the child to his custody in Cuba. The political flap over González's case highlighted tensions over federal power in the United States and the political influence of the Cuban American community in South Florida. Republicans sought, and continue to seek, support there by promising a tough policy against Havana. Appointment to Florida Supreme Court In 2006, then-Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Lagoa to Florida's 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami, where she served for 13 years, rising briefly to chief judge. In 2019, newly elected Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Florida Supreme Court, making Lagoa the first Latina on that bench. She served for less than a year before President Trump nominated her to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta later that year same year. During her 11 months on the 11th Circuit, she has written seven opinions, the fewest of all of her colleagues during that same period. Recusal controversy Lagoa pledged in her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing that she would recuse herself from any case in which she had participated as a judge. At the time she was not viewed as a particularly controversial nominee, and she was confirmed by an 80-15 vote. Once on the federal court, however, Lagoa did not recuse herself from a case that she had heard while on the Florida Supreme Court. Though she was gone from the state court by the time the advisory opinion in the case was issued, judicial ethics rules require a judge to recuse herself if she has previously participated in any \"proceeding\" at \"any stage of litigation.\" The case was a consequential one. It involved a Florida referendum, passed by a large majority of Florida voters in 2018, that amended the state constitution and restored the right to vote to more than 1 million ex-felons in the state. The federal courts upheld the measure three times against a law passed by the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature that sought to neuter the constitutional amendment. But the 11th Circuit, with Lagoa participating, intervened earlier this year to prevent the ex-felons from voting. That prompted Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to write a letter asking for an explanation for her apparent contradiction of the pledge she made at her confirmation hearing. \"We ask you to explain how your involvement in the decision ... and your continued participation in the case — is consistent with the commitments you made to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the code of conduct,\" the 10 Democrats on the committee wrote. Here's how the Tampa Bay Times described her position: \"Lagoa and her supporters counter that the cases were technically different — even though the issue was basically the same. While she had heard arguments and commented on the case as a Florida justice, she did not vote on it because she was appointed to the federal bench before the state court ruled.\" Record supporting Republicans In addition to the controversy over felon rights, Lagoa, per the South Florida Sun Sentinel: Upheld DeSantis' decision to oust the former Broward County sheriff from office in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. \"Declined to take up a lower court's ruling striking down a Miami Beach ordinance that would have raised the city's minimum wage to more than $13 per hour.\" \"Was part of a Supreme Court flip-flop on a foreclosure case that made it harder for homeowners to collect legal fees in disputes with the mortgage industry. With Lagoa's support, the court reversed a previous decision favoring homeowners on the grounds that it didn't have jurisdiction over the case.\" \"Joined in a ruling that Uber drivers are not entitled to unemployment benefits because they are independent contractor", "(Updated 8:10 p.m. ET) The Associated Press reports that two convicted murderers from Florida who used phony documents to escape prison were arrested Saturday night without incident at a motel in Panama City, Fla. According to the AP: \"Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker, both 34, were taken into custody about 6:40 p.m. at Coconut Grove Motor Inn. They were apprehended just a couple of hours after their family members held a news conference urging the men to turn themselves in.\" \"The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not immediately release any other details about their capture or investigation.\" (Our original post below) A story that already sounded like something out of the movies has gotten even harder to believe: Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker — convicted killers who were recently released from a state prison in Florida thanks to faked documents featuring forged signatures of a judge and prosecutors — later walked into an Orlando County jail to register as felons. According to The Associated Press: \"They signed paperwork. They were fingerprinted, and they were even photographed before walking out of the jail without raising any alarms.\" As The Orlando Sentinel says, the killers went to the jail in Orlando \"not to turn themselves in, but to re-enter society.\" The AP adds that: \"Felons are required to register by law. When they do, their fingerprints are digitally uploaded to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and a deputy at the jail verifies that they don't have any outstanding warrants, said jail spokesman Allen Moore. \"By registering as the law required, they likely drew less attention. \" 'If there's no hit that comes back, they're free to go,' said Isaiah Dennard, the Florida Sheriff's Association's jail services coordinator. If felons do not register, a warrant is put out for their arrest, Dennard said.\" Jenkins and Walker are still at large. NPR's Greg Allen tells our Newscast Desk that a nationwide alert has been issued. He adds that \"Florida's Department of Corrections says it's now changed its procedures — requiring verification by the sentencing judge before any inmate is released.\" Authorities are also, obviously, looking into who created the forged documents. According to the Sentinel: \"Jenkins, 34, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1998 killing and botched robbery of Roscoe Pugh, an Orlando man. ... Walker, 34, was convicted of second-degree murder in a 1999 slaying in Orange County. He told investigators that 23-year-old Cedric Slater was bullying him and he fired three shots intending to scare him.\"", "Little Rock, Ark., is the latest front in the ongoing battle over Ten Commandments monuments on government property. A six-foot-tall granite monument of the Commandments was installed on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol on Tuesday, flanked by the state senator who raised the money to pay for it and sponsored the legislation that required it. \"We have a beautiful Capitol grounds but we did not have a monument that actually honored the historical moral foundation of law,\" Republican Sen. Jason Rapert told reporters. \"And today we have now, through the support of people all over the country, mostly from Arkansas, been able to erect this monument at zero taxpayer expense.\" In 2015, the Arkansas Legislature passed Rapert-sponsored legislation that paved the way for the monument. The Ten Commandments Monument Display Act requires the Secretary of State to permit and arrange for the monument. The law cites the Supreme Court's 2005 Van Orden v. Perry decision, which allowed the Texas State Capitol to keep its Ten Commandments monument in place. Nonetheless, the Arkansas law anticipates legal challenges: \"In the event that the legality or constitutionality of the monument ... is challenged in a court of law,\" it says, the Attorney General may either \"prepare and present a legal defense of the monument\" or hire Liberty Institute to do so. The American Heritage and History Foundation, an organization founded by Rapert, raised the money to pay for the monument. Rapert says he is on the foundation's board and that he makes no money from it. The ACLU of Arkansas says it will sue to remove the monument from the Capitol grounds. \"At a time when we do not need any more religious conflict and divisiveness in the world and in this country, it violates the First Amendment promise of religious liberty to all,\" Rita Sklar, the group's executive director, told NPR. \"By placing a monument to a particular set of religious beliefs, it appears that the state enforces one particular set of beliefs over others and over no religion. And it makes people who fall into those categories — no religion or other religion — feel like second-class citizens in the state of Arkansas, which they are not.\" The monument suggests that the Commandments are the basis for American and Arkansas law, she says, even though \"several of the commandments are wholly religious in nature, like 'having no other gods before me,' or keeping the Sabbath. Those have no purpose in U.S. or Arkansas law.\" Rapert has made headlines with his legislation before. In 2013, he sponsored the country's strictest abortion law, which was eventually blocked by a federal appeals court. And earlier this year, he sponsored a bill to take Bill and Hillary Clinton's names off the Little Rock airport. Does Rapert believe in a separation of church and state? \"We have freedom of religion, that's not freedom from religion,\" he tells NPR. \"You have to remember, the State of Arkansas, through a legal process, said that they want to have a monument to the Ten Commandments for the Capitol grounds.\" He calls the expected lawsuit by the ACLU \"foolhardy.\" \"The ACLU has a history of what I call frivolous lawsuits. It's very sad in this day and time,\" he says. \"The Supreme Court of the United States has said these monuments don't violate the Establishment Clause. This is America, and if they want to spend their money on this, they can do that. But it's not the right thing to do.\" Sklar says the ACLU of Arkansas has won similar battles over the Ten Commandments in classrooms and courtrooms, and she says the Van Orden decision doesn't protect the new monument at the state capitol, either. The court distinguishes between longstanding, historically significant buildings, she says, \"that have had religious monuments or symbols for decades and decades, which is the case in Texas, and erecting a completely new religiously divisive monument [like that at] the Arkansas State Capitol. The Court sees a huge difference between the two, and so do we.\" And she says that it's Arkansas lawmakers who are wasting money – taxpayer money. \"It cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars when we challenged their abortion ban. Talk about foolhardy.\" Sklar says the Ten Commandments monument does what she believes Rapert and others intend: to assert \"that Christianity in part has some special place in American tradition, has a higher place, has a more important role.\" \"It does what it sets out to do, which is to get people from other religions to feel unwanted and unequal.\"", "In Florida, only the state is allowed to regulate firearms. Local government officials who ignore that law — posting signs prohibiting guns in city parks, for example — face stiff penalties. They include removal from office, a $5,000 fine officials must pay from their personal funds, and lawsuits from any person or group affected. That's effectively stopped local governments from taking any action on guns, until Parkland. Following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, like the students, local government officials are speaking up. Two weeks after the Parkland shooting, Raul Valdes-Fauli, the mayor of Miami suburb Coral Gables, proposed a law that would ban the sale of high-velocity semiautomatic rifles. Valdes-Fauli said he was prepared for the state-mandated penalties. \"Our Legislature is cowardly,\" Valdes-Fauli said. \"They are sold to the NRA. And it takes cities, or individuals or communities such as ours to do something.\" The law passed, but lasted just three weeks. It was overturned after some commissioners reconsidered their votes. Coral Gables gun collector Raul Mas Canosa came to a commission meeting with a threat. \"If you pass this law, we will sue you,\" he said. \"Chances are, as your own city attorney has told you, we will win. And you will end up paying not just your attorney's fees, but you'll be paying our plaintiffs' fees as well.\" Coral Gables is now taking another approach. It's joining with at least eight other cities to challenge the penalties in a law that pre-empts cities' ability to regulate guns. It's a lawsuit initiated by Daniel Stermer, the mayor of Weston, a community about 20 miles from Parkland. In Florida, local governments are part of a growing movement to adopt tougher gun laws. Weeks after Florida's governor signed a bill imposing a three-day waiting period and raising the age for all gun sales to 21, some cities want to go further. Stermer believes that in a state as large as Florida, with big cities and a large rural population, local governments should have a say in regulating guns. \"The northern part of our state may view guns differently than we do down here,\" he says. \"Folks north of Lake Okeechobee view firearms differently than people south of the lake, where it's more urbanized. Local governments should have a choice.\" If his lawsuit is successful, Stermer says he will ask his city commission to pass an ordinance that would prohibit guns in Weston's public buildings and parks. \"If you walk into city hall today or a park today, we can't even put up a sign that says 'No Firearms Allowed.' We used to have them there. But once the pre-emption came in, we had to take it down,\" says Stermer. The penalties targeting local officials were added in 2011 to a law that already pre-empted cities and counties from regulating guns. NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer helped write it and get it passed. \"Elected public officials put themselves above the law, so the Legislature had to come back and put penalties in,\" she says. Hammer has no comment on this lawsuit or a second one challenging Florida's pre-emption law planned by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But in a state where more than 1.8 million people have permits to carry a concealed weapon, she says it's important to have a single set of gun laws. \"In a mobile society,\" Hammer says, \"citizens could inadvertently violate local ordinances by simply traveling our state with no way of knowing what these local ordinances were.\" If the lawsuits are successful, some cities are considering bans on high-velocity semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines. Gun control advocates unsuccessfully tried to get those provisions added to the law recently passed by the state Legislature. There's now a move to put those two measures on the ballot for voters to consider statewide. To put the measures on the ballot in Florida, Coral Springs Mayor Skip Campbell says proponents will need more than 1 million signatures. And to pass it, they'll need 60 percent of voters to approve it. Campbell concedes it's a high bar. \"I'm hoping the young people who have shown up and have taken this issue on will stay engaged and will in fact help us get by the signature issue,\" he says. \"And I'm hoping the same young people, because they're turning 18, will get out there and vote.\" Campbell says organizers want to put the measures on the ballot in 2020, a presidential election year.", "Updated at 6:10 a.m. ET Voters in Missouri have overwhelmingly rejected a right-to-work law passed by the state's Republican-controlled Legislature that would have banned compulsory union fees — a resounding victory for organized labor that spent millions of dollars to defeat the measure. With about 98 percent of the precincts reporting, the \"no\" vote on Missouri's Proposition A, which supported the law, was running about 67 percent, with nearly 33 percent voting \"yes.\" In 2017, the right-to-work law passed Missouri's Republican Legislature and was signed by then-Gov. Eric Greitens. However, union organizers gathered enough signatures to keep it from going into effect pending the results of a statewide referendum. The rejection of Proposition A effectively kills the law. \"It's a truly historic moment,\" said Mike Louis, president of the Missouri AFL-CIO. \"Tonight we celebrate, but tomorrow we're getting back to work. We're going to take this energy and momentum and build more power for working people across Missouri.\" Currently, 27 states and Guam have laws allowing employees in private-sector unionized workplaces to opt out of union membership and union fees. (In a case involving public-service employees, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that unions cannot require workers to pay union dues or fees.) As The Associated Press notes, \"At issue are so-called fair-share fees, which are less than full dues but are intended to cover unions' nonpolitical costs such as collective bargaining. Unions say it's fair for people to pay the fees, because federal law requires them to represent even those employees who don't join. But supporters of right-to-work laws counter that people should have the right to accept a job without being required to pay a union.\" The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: \"Voters in rural and urban areas all showed strong support for scrapping the law. In St. Louis City, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, 88 percent of voters landed on the 'no' side. \"Labor-friendly parts of southeast Missouri also showed strong opposition to the law, with more than three-fourths of voters in Iron, Reynolds, St. Francois and Ste. Genevieve counties voting to shoot down right to work.\" The Post-Dispatch reports that even deep-red St. Charles County saw nearly 72 percent of voters rejecting the measure. Missouri went heavily for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election and the rejection of right to work — a core Republican aim — could have wider political implications. According to the AP, \"unions powered an opposition effort that had spent more than $15 million as of late July, well over three times as much as various groups that support right-to-work. Advertisements generally have focused on economics, with supporters claiming right-to-work would lead to more jobs and opponents claiming it would drive down wages.\"", "Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was sued Monday over his state's public defender system, which plaintiffs say violates the U.S. and Louisiana Constitutions by denying effective representation to poor people accused of crimes. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court describes defendants kept in jail for months before seeing a lawyer, public defenders who are so overworked they cannot provide adequate counsel and multiple instances in which people accused of minor crimes did not receive an attorney at all. Similar lawsuits are active in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Utah, Idaho, New York and other states, Dan Kolb, a partner with one of the law firms involved in Monday's filing, told The Associated Press. The latest suit was brought by The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and two law firms on behalf of 13 criminal defendants. One, Joseph Allen, has been in jail since Aug. 28, 2016 facing firearms charges. In the more than five months he has been incarcerated, Allen has met with his public defender once, and the suit alleges the attorney \"was so careless\" with a motion on Allen's behalf that the motion \"referred to the wrong case and discussed a search warrant that had no relevance to the charges against Mr. Allen.\" Another plaintiff, Ashley Hurlburt, has been held in jail since June 6, 2016, and said she has never met the public defender appointed to represent her more than three months ago, and has \"no way of contacting him.\" She and her husband are facing a negligent homicide charge for the death of their one-year-old child. In addition to the 13 plaintiffs listed on the lawsuit, the lawyers' groups are seeking class-action status, which would cover all indigent defendants accused of non-capital crimes in Louisiana. Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Law told The Associated Press that as many as 20,000 defendants could be affected. The suit comes just over a week after a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit brought last year by the American Civil Liberties Union against the New Orleans public defender's office, as we reported. In his decision, the judge in that case acknowledged \"the undisputed inadequacies of a state funding system,\" but said that the funding crisis was not his court's responsibility, according to The Times-Picayune. The chief public defender in New Orleans told NPR's Audie Cornish last year that budget cuts had led his office to stop taking some felony cases. \"It is clear that the Louisiana legislature is failing miserably at upholding its obligations\" to provide lawyers for defendants unable to afford private counsel, the judge wrote in his decision dismissing the ACLU's case. \"Budget shortages are no excuse to violate the United States Constitution. The legislature must resolve the crisis and locate a stable source of funding.\" The latest lawsuit approaches the same problem in a slightly different way, suing state officials, including the governor, on the grounds that Edwards and other state officials control funding for the entire public defender system. \"The insufficient funding for public defense can be traced to how the funding system is structured,\" the lawsuit argues, continuing: \"In 2016, at least thirty-three of the forty-two public defender offices stopped accepting cases or placed clients — many of whom were incarcerated — on waiting lists for extended period of time. In stark contrast, district attorneys often receive more than twice — and sometimes three or four times — the funding for public defender services in the same district. In Orleans Parish, the District Attorney has historically had a budget more than twice the size of the Orleans Defenders. ... \"The level of funding for each district office depends primarily on a user-pay system of local fines and fees and, as such, varies widely based on geography and the number of traffic tickets written in a particular judicial district in any given year. No other state in the United States relies primarily on local court fees and fines to fund public defender services.\" An NPR investigation found that Louisiana's system was symptomatic of a national trend. As of 2014, an NPR survey found most states allowed poor defendants to be billed for their public defender, and those who could not afford to, or chose not to, often ended up incarcerated for failing to pay fees or keep up with terms of plea agreements they agreed to without the guidance of an attorney.", "Updated at 5:55 p.m. ET The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Friday that it would hold a statewide recount of the presidential vote. The move was in response to petitions from two candidates, the Green Party's Jill Stein and independent Rocky Roque De La Fuente. Federal law requires that all recounts be finished 35 days after the election, which is Dec. 13. One or both of the candidates will be required to pay for the recount. \"We have assembled an internal team to direct the recount, we have been in close consultation with our county clerk partners, and have arranged for legal representation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice,\" said Wisconsin Elections Commission Director Mike Haas in a statement. \"We plan to hold a teleconference meeting for county clerks next week and anticipate the recount will begin late in the week after the Stein campaign has paid the recount fee, which we are still calculating.\" Haas added that the process is very detail-oriented and he is concerned that some counties will be challenged to finish on time. In a recount, ballots must be examined to determine voter intent before being counted. Stein has been leading the effort to force general election recounts in certain swing states. Her effort continues to gain steam — and money. On Wednesday she announced she would demand recounts in three states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. President-elect Donald Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As my colleague Domenico Montanaro reported, Michigan was still finalizing its results Friday, but will officially certify Trump the winner on Monday. To cover the cost of the recounts, Stein launched a fundraising campaign, which has raised more than $5 million in less than three days. Stein's fundraiser website explicitly says the campaign is not an effort to help Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but to \"ensure the integrity of our elections.\" Clinton has not commented on the efforts. The deadline to file for a recount in Pennsylvania is Monday and Michigan's is Wednesday. Before the announcement was made, Haas called a potential recount \"uncharted territory,\" according to Laurel White with Wisconsin Public Radio. White reported: \"State law allows any candidate on the ballot to request a recount, but if the margin is more than 0.25 percent, the candidate must pay for its cost. \"Haas said the recount would cost at least $500,000. \"The commission is reviewing state law to determine when that money would be due. \" 'There's a little bit of ambiguity in the statutes,' Haas said. 'In one place, it states that the fee must be paid at the time the petition is filed; another statute indicates once the petition is filed, that's when our agency calculates an estimate.' \"Once a recount order is issued by the commission, clerks across the state have 13 days to complete it, Haas said.\" Stein initially set a fundraising goal of $2.5 million. As donations started pouring in, that goal jumped to $4.5 million, as New York Magazine's Yashar Ali pointed out on Twitter. By Friday, the goal had jumped again, to $7 million. The campaign says that will go to cover filing fees, attorney fees and other associated costs. Donations are still rolling in, but as Stein's fundraising website states, money doesn't necessarily mean the recounts are assured: \"We cannot guarantee a recount will happen in any of these states we are targeting. We can only pledge we will demand recounts in those states.\" If the recounts don't happen, what will become of all that money? Stein's website says any \"surplus will also go toward election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform.\" It did not specify what those efforts would be. As NPR's Camila Domonoske told the Newscast unit, \"Some security and election experts have publicly called for paper ballots to be checked in Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan, to make sure that the computers that counted those ballots weren't hacked.\" But, she says, \"There's no evidence that the electronic machines were hacked or the election was compromised.\" This post was updated Saturday Nov. 25, 2016 at 10:30 a.m. to include new reporting that Trump will be certified the winner in Michigan.", "Like any fireworks show on July 4, state laws taking effect Friday are certain to deepen some Americans' patriotism — and leave others feeling cheated. From Connecticut to California, new regulations to be enacted on July 1, when most states begin a new fiscal year, will change how people live in ways big — Illinois is repealing its death penalty law — and small — California is mandating carbon monoxide detectors. While each state has distinct needs, legislation approved across the nation addresses many of the same issues, such as budget shortfalls, immigration, voter eligibility, health care and workers' rights. In this nascent economic recovery, many states found ways to raise revenue without taking the politically suicidal step of raising taxes. So, people may not see more money removed from their paychecks, but they will shell out more at the cash register in the form of higher sales taxes. For instance, Connecticut residents will be taxed on yoga sessions, manicures and even valet parking. (Unlike other states, Connecticut didn't flinch in imposing the largest tax increase in state history.) \"The key issue has been money and budgets. Everybody is dealing with that,\" says William Pound, executive director of the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. \"It has been through reductions or increases in fees. Like raising tuition at higher education institutions, or fees at state parks. We're putting more of the cost of the service on the individual using it rather than on the taxpaying public at large.\" Immigration was another common target. More than 1,500 related bills and resolutions were introduced in state legislatures this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. By the end of March, 26 states had enacted 63 laws addressing the education and employment of illegal immigrants, human trafficking or enforcement of existing laws. Here's a sampling of new laws taking effect Friday: Immigration: Crackdowns And Expansions Job candidates in Georgia now face felony charges for submitting false information and documents to potential employers. That's the only major provision in the new state law that takes effect Friday. The other provisions, which include allowing local police to verify a suspect's immigration status and detain them, are under temporary injunction by a federal judge as part of a lawsuit aimed at overturning the law. On Sept. 1, a similar law takes effect in Alabama. That state's version is regarded as the strictest in the nation in part because it requires public schools to determine the immigration status of pupils. On the other side of the immigration divide, Illinois will enact its version of the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), becoming the first state to establish a private scholarship fund for the children of illegal immigrants. And, in Connecticut, illegal immigrants who are high school graduates will be eligible for in-state tuition at state colleges. A similar law passed in Maryland and was scheduled to take effect Friday but likely won't because of an ongoing petition drive aimed at forcing a voter referendum to overturn it. Both laws require students to be on a path to gaining legal status. Digital Don'ts: Gabbing, Bullying And Sexting Connecticut raised fines for talking on a cellphone and texting while driving. A first offense will cost $125, up from $100, a second offense between $150 and $250, and future citations could reach $400. Connecticut also banned school bullying, both in person and virtually, via the Internet and digital devices. Florida eased punishments for minors caught \"sexting,\" the practice of sending lewd photos via text message. The law, aimed at protecting children from prosecution for more serious crimes such as child pornography, imposes a $60 fine or eight hours of community service for first-time offenders. A second violation is a first-degree misdemeanor. Dead People Do Vote ... Others Must Show ID In Virginia, if you send in an absentee ballot but die before Election Day, your vote still will be counted. In Oklahoma, voters now must present identification at the polls. Separately, new voter ID legislation was introduced in 20 states and passed in Kansas and Wisconsin, where the laws will take effect in 2012. Pot Or Not Minnesota outlawed synthetic marijuana, otherwise known as K2 or Spice. These herbs are sprayed with synthetic chemicals that mimic the effects of the real stuff, and were sold in stores with no restrictions as incense or potpourri. Connecticut went in the other direction, eliminating criminal prosecution for adults caught with up to half an ounce of marijuana. The offense now carries a fine, and no jail time. In Virginia, patrons may be allowed to bring their own wine to restaurants. The law is voluntary, leaving the decision up to the individual restaurant. Establishments can also charge a fee for corka", "While Congress fights over next year's federal budget, a new lawsuit is charging that this year's budget bill is unconstitutional and should be declared void. The bill to cut $39 billion in federal spending over the next five years was controversial from the start. It passed the House by only two votes and the Senate only after Vice President Cheney broke a tie. And although President Bush signed the bill last month, the fight over its validity is far from over. A clerk's error led to the House and Senate passing slightly different versions of the bill, which, says Adina Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, is more than a minor problem. \"It's simple elementary-school social studies that, under the Constitution, a bill has to pass both houses of Congress to become law,\" she said. \"This is an unusual circumstance in which the government has bypassed that specific Constitutional requirement.\" Millions of Americans stand to lose federal benefits under the budget bill, including those who get Medicaid health coverage, welfare and child support payments, and student loans. Public Citizen represents many of those interests. But in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., the group takes aim only at a tiny provision that raises the filing fee for federal civil cases from $250 to $350. That alone gives the group standing to sue, Rosenbaum said. \"As an organization that files numerous cases in the district courts each year, we are going to be injured by that raise in filing fees,\" Rosenbaum said. Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook says that because of the Constitutional question, the entire law -- with all its billions in benefit cuts -- is invalid, so it doesn't matter which provision actually gets it into court. \"We think that members of Congress and the president ought to obey the law. And when they don't, that they have to be brought to account,\" she said. Republicans, however, say groups that opposed the budget bill are overreaching. \"The House and the Senate passed the bill, the President signed it, aware after significant discussion with all kinds of counsel what this technical problem was, and it is now the law,\" House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) told NPR last month. The White House late Tuesday reiterated that sentiment in a written statement. \"Congress presented a bill certified by both chambers. It's been signed into law and we consider the matter closed,\" said Scott Milburn, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget. Public Citizen officials say they hope to hear back from the court within the next few months. Meanwhile, the issue of the law's validity has been raised in several other lawsuits around the country, and decisions in some of those cases may come first. ROBERT SIEGEL, host: A new lawsuit charges that this year's federal budget bill is unconstitutional and should be declared void. Included in the bill are billions of dollars of cuts in federal health programs. NPR's Julie Rovner has more. JULIE ROVNER reporting: The bill to cut $39 billion in federal spending over the next five years was controversial from the start. It passed the House by only two votes, and the Senate only after Vice President Cheney broke a tie. And while President Bush signed it last month, the fight over its validity is far from over. It seems that a clerk's error led to the House and Senate passing slightly different versions of the bill, which, says Adina Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, is more than a minor problem. Ms. ADINA ROSENBAUM (Public Citizen): It's simple elementary school social studies that under the Constitution, a bill has to pass both Houses of Congress to become law. This is an unusual circumstance in which the government has bypassed that specific constitutional requirement. ROVNER: Millions of Americans stand to lose federal benefits under the budget bill, including those who get Medicaid health coverage, welfare and child support payments and student loans. Public Citizen represents many of those interests. But in a lawsuit filed this morning in federal court in Washington D.C., the group takes aim only at a tiny provision that raises the filing fee for federal civil court cases from $250 to $350. That alone gives the group standing to sue, Rosenbaum says. Ms. ROSENBAUM: As an organization that files numerous cases in the district courts each year, we are going to be injured by that raise in filing fees. ROVNER: Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook says because of the Constitutional question, the entire law, with all its billions in benefit cuts, is invalid, so it doesn't matter which provision actually gets it into court. Ms. JOAN CLAYBROOK (Public Citizen): We think that members of Congress and the president ought to obey the law, and when they don't that they have to be brought to account. ROVNER: Republicans, however, say groups that oppose the budget bill are overreaching. Here's how House Majority Whip Ro", "Texas has imposed strict new regulations on the insurance helpers, or navigators, who work in the community to enroll people in health plans under the Affordable Care Act. The navigators must register with the state, undergo a background check and fingerprinting, and complete 20 hours of additional training — beyond the 20 to 30 hours of federal training they've already received. There are more than 400 navigators working across Texas, and they have become a symbol of Obamacare as they fan out across neighborhoods armed with laptops and brochures. Texas Republicans pushed for the requirements, citing security concerns. Navigators help uninsured people shop for plans and subsidies at HealthCare.gov. By its nature, the work involves entering sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers and income information. Still, the final regulations are less stringent than originally proposed. After pushback from Democrats and community groups that employ navigators, the Texas Department of Insurance reduced the training requirement from 40 to 20 hours, and dropped a $50 registration fee. Navigators will also have until May 1 to complete their training. That means coursework won't interfere with an expected enrollment rush before the March 31 deadline. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, praised the work of the Texas Department of Insurance, which released the final rules Tuesday. \"Obamacare presents enough problems for Texans without the risk of a convicted felon handling their personal information,\" he said in a statement. \"These are basic requirements for screening individuals hired with taxpayer money to handle sensitive consumer information, and there is no excuse for the Obama Administration's failure to implement them from day one.\" But others criticized the regulations as an attempt to block the law. \"It's a federal program,\" said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat. \"The state has no right to interfere with burdensome regulations. It's almost similar to blocking someone from the right to vote because of the color of their skin. Now you're blocking a sick person, or a person that is uninsured, from getting access to information.\" Some navigators questioned the necessity of the rules, and the associated image of navigators as potentially untrustworthy or unqualified. \"It's misinformation that's being put out to the public. Sometimes hysteria can be created; it's not legitimate,\" says Alysia Greer, a Houston-based navigator with United Labor Unions Local 100. The union employs 17 navigators in Texas, most of them around Houston and Dallas. All of those navigators, and many employed by other groups, have already undergone background checks. Cedric Anthony, another navigator with the union, said the rhetoric around navigators is \"giving a bad name to actually good people.\" He says the additional training will be redundant and distract from the mission. \"We're getting out in the community, we're outreaching, and I just feel it's just going to be more hours in the classroom actually learning instead of the hours we could be putting manpower on the streets getting people signed up,\" he said. The department estimated that the additional training could cost up to $400 per navigator. The community groups will also have to obtain liability protection for their navigators, such as an insurance policy or surety bond. The regulations also prohibit navigators from: Charging consumers for providing information Selling or soliciting insurance coverage Recommending a specific health benefit plan Taking part in political campaigns or electioneering activities Orell Fitzsimmons, field director for United Labor Unions Local 100, says his navigators would never have engaged in those activities anyway. \"If they want to challenge us, that's fine,\" he said defiantly. \"If they want fingerprints, they can have them. We're not hiding anything.\" But Fitzsimmons says he believes the regulations are a blatant and partisan attempt to hinder enrollment. \"It's pretty clear to me that the governor wants sick people to stay sick, and he doesn't want to have well care, and he doesn't believe in Obamacare,\" he says. \"And that's fine, but we do live in a democracy. And the democracy back in 2010 voted (for the law.)\" Seventeen states have passed laws regulating navigators. Two states, Tennessee and Missouri, have already faced lawsuits over the restrictions. A federal judge ruled on the Missouri case Thursday, saying that states that opted to have the federal government run their exchange could not actually impose state regulations on top of the federal ones. This story is part of a collaboration among NPR, KUHF and Kaiser Health News.", "This month federal regulators fined Wells Fargo $185 million for opening checking and credit card accounts on behalf of customers who had no idea that was happening. The bank has promised to try to make restitution. But that's a lot harder than it sounds. A big question is how to compensate people whose credit scores were hurt by what the bank did. Regulators say that over a five-year period some 2 million credit card and deposit accounts were opened that may not have been authorized by the bank's customers. And though no one knows for sure, it's almost certain that the accounts had a big impact on customers' credit scores. For one thing, each time a credit card is issued to a consumer, it's noted on that person's credit report. And that's just the beginning of the potential problems. \"If that account had an annual fee, the consumer doesn't know about this account, they don't pay the annual fee,\" says Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. \"So now the consumer has these late payments showing up on their credit report and that's pretty damaging.\" In some cases, Wells Fargo employees would transfer funds into the new accounts from one of the customer's existing accounts. That could result in late fees or fines for insufficient funds. Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, says that would have had a direct impact on someone's credit score. \"You may not have qualified for a mortgage or you might have been dinged by getting charged a little higher interest rate because of what was reported wrongly on your credit report,\" he says. But the potential impact goes beyond the customer's finances. These days, credit scores are routinely checked by potential landlords, by employers — even by cellphone companies. Wu says someone who has racked up too many overdraft fees because of unauthorized accounts may have trouble getting another checking account. \"Once something affects a consumer's credit report and credit scores, it has the potential to have a lot of impact across the consumer's entire economic life,\" she says. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing last week, Democrat Jon Tester of Montana warned Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf about what was at stake. \"I am telling you that if information was sent into the credit bureaus because of these falsely opened accounts, the impacts on this are far far far more than the fees or fines that could be associated with that,\" Tester said. Wells Fargo is already contacting customers to find out whether they wanted the accounts opened in their names, and it has promised to do right by those who were hurt. But unwinding the damage won't be easy. \"What happened to the consumer who, the employer looked at their credit report and didn't give them a job because they saw they had all these credit cards open? How do you figure that out?\" says Rheingold, the consumer advocate. Likewise, he says, how does Wells Fargo calculate how much it owes someone who had to pay a higher mortgage rate because of the inaccurate information it sent to the credit bureau? It would mean contacting the person's lender and trying to determine why it charged the interest rate it did, and that would require a lot of detective work. Wells Fargo says it wants to make good by its customers, but figuring out how to do that will be a tall task. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: This month federal regulators fined Wells Fargo $185 million dollars for opening checking and credit card accounts on behalf of customers who had no idea that was happening. The bank has promised to try to make restitution, which is a lot harder than it sounds. One big question is how to compensate people whose credit scores were hurt by what the bank did. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports. JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Regulators say that over a five-year period, some two million credit card and deposit accounts were opened that may not have been authorized by the bank's customers. And though no one knows for sure, it's almost certain that the accounts had a big impact on customer's credit scores. For one thing, each time a credit card is issued to a consumer, it's noted on that person's credit report. And that's just the beginning of the potential problems. Chi Chi Wu is a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. CHI CHI WU: If that account had an annual fee, the consumer doesn't know about this account. They don't pay the annual fee. So now the consumer has these late payments showing up on their credit report. And that's pretty damaging. ZARROLI: In some cases Wells Fargo employees would transfer funds into the new accounts from one of the customers' existing accounts. That could result in late fees or fines for insufficient funds. Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, says that would have a direct impact on someone's credit score. IRA RHEINGOLD: You may not have qualified for a mortgage, or you might have been dinged by, you know, getting ch", "Teachers unions are breathing easier after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a deadlocked vote, rejected an effort to restrict public sector unions from collecting fees from nonunion members. The 4-4 vote, the second such tie since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, lets stand an appeals court decision in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. As a result, the ability of unions like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers to collect fees from all teachers to subsidize their collective bargaining efforts remains unchanged. \"This case was never about what was best for students,\" Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the NEA, said in a teleconference today with reporters. \"We've used collective bargaining to improve the learning conditions of students, class size, school nurses.\" The NEA, with more than 3 million members, is the nation's largest teachers union. The lead plaintiff in the case, Rebecca Friedrichs, a public school teacher in Orange County, Calif., argued that being forced to pay union dues violated her free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution. The Center for Individual Rights, the public interest law firm that brought the case on behalf of Friedrichs and nine other teachers, vowed to seek a rehearing. \"We believe this case is too significant to let a split decision stand and we will file a petition for re-hearing with the Supreme Court,\" the group's president, Terry Pell, said in a statement. The president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, blasted what she called \"the right wing's efforts to bust unions.\" As NPR's Nina Totenberg reported: Nonunion teachers made up 9 percent of the teaching workforce in union districts in California, \"but because the union contract must, by law, also cover them, they are required to pay an amount that covers the cost of negotiating the bread-and-butter benefits they reap from the contract: wages, leave policies, grievance procedures.\" Even though nonunion members are not required to pay for other union activities, such as lobbying, the plaintiffs argued that the fees violated their rights of free speech and association. In their remarks today, neither Weingarten nor Garcia addressed that question of the free speech rights of teachers. For now, nonunion teachers in 23 states and Washington, D.C., will continue to pay anywhere from $600 to more than $1,000 a year in dues, whether they want to or not.", "States using a federal immigration database to purge noncitizens from voter lists are starting to get results, which so far include few illegal voters. In Florida, which was first to gain access to the database after fighting the federal government in court, an initial run of roughly 2,600 names has turned up \"several\" violators, according to a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner. \"We are seeing that there are definitely noncitizens on the voter rolls, but we're still very early in this review process,\" says Chris Cate. A much larger list of suspected noncitizens soon will be fed through the database, Cate says. The list will be an updated version culled from cross-checking voter rolls and driver's license data, a method that produced about 180,000 names last year. Read More Colorado, which along with Florida was initially denied access to the database, says that an automated check of more than 1,400 names has flagged 177 people as possible noncitizens. Colorado has asked the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains the database, to assign a person to verify their status. \"For the moment, we have no confirmed noncitizens, but I would expect that most of those people would come back as noncitizens,\" says Andrew Cole, a spokesman for Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler. Colorado also sent letters questioning the citizenship of more than 3,800 registered voters. Cole says 482 people have responded with proof of citizenship, and letters to about 1,000 others were returned undelivered due to wrong addresses. Florida obtained access to the database nearly a month ago, and Colorado starting using it two weeks ago. Voter purges are among several election-related efforts that Republican-led states and the Obama administration continue to dispute in courtrooms across the nation. Republicans say the purges and other restrictions, such as photo identification requirements for voters, are intended to prevent fraud. Democrats argue that the measures are designed to suppress turnout among minorities and others who tend to vote for Democratic candidates. Some of the states with the most aggressively tightened election laws, such as Florida and Texas, also have the largest Latino populations. The purges are under way in about a dozen states, all of which have Republican election officials. They are using the DHS database to distinguish between foreigners in the United States on visas, green cards or other permits, and those who have become naturalized citizens and now have the right to vote. The database, known as the SAVE system, or Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, contains information about immigrants who are in the country legally. The states have drawn criticism for using flawed methods that ensnare more eligible than ineligible voters. Voting rights groups say list purges this soon before an election could leave too little time to find and correct errors on the rolls. On behalf of a Latino civic group and two naturalized citizens, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against Florida, arguing that its use of the database must be approved by the federal government under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters. The ACLU cites a Miami Herald report that found that nearly 60 percent of the people on Florida's suspected noncitizens list are Latinos (who make up 13 percent of Florida's active registered voters). The Department of Justice, which took separate court action to unsuccessfully block Florida's purge program, has filed a \"statement of interest\" in the case supporting the ACLU's complaint. Florida officials have denied that the purge targets minorities. The state has filed a motion for dismissal, arguing that its purge program provides due process to voters and was approved by the Justice Department years ago.", "Americans are paying high prices for poor quality Internet speeds — speeds that are now slower than in other countries, according to author David Cay Johnston. He says the U.S. ranks 29th in speed worldwide. \"We're way behind countries like Lithuania, Ukraine and Moldavia. Per bit of information moved, we pay 38 times what the Japanese pay,\" Johnston tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. \"If you buy one of these triple-play packages that are heavily advertised — where you get Internet, telephone and cable TV together — typically you'll pay what I pay, about $160 a month including fees. The same service in France is $38 a month.\" In his new book, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use \"Plain English\" to Rob You Blind, Johnston examines the fees that companies — such as cellphone and cable — have added over the years that have made bills incrementally larger. Johnston says that telephone and cable companies worked the regulatory process and the legislatures and Congress to get the rules written for their benefit. \"Over the last 20 years, we've paid at least $360 billion in higher rates to the traditional telephone companies, and well north of $100 billion more to the cable companies, who all testified before Congress, made filings with regulatory agencies, bought ads on TV that told us we were going to have this information superhighway and it was going to be everywhere,\" he says. \"Instead, what they built was a system in very limited locations.\" Johnston cites Verizon as providing fiber-optic service to 16 million Americans with no plans to build more. \"Whole huge parts of the country — all of northwestern and central New York [and] everything away from metropolitan New York — is not scheduled to get the high-speed Internet that we paid for and we were promised,\" he says. An investigative reporter, Johnston worked for The New York Times for 13 years and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for exposing loopholes in the American tax code. He is a columnist for Reuters. Interview Highlights On additional fees in phone bills \"The phone companies, first of all, have begun adding all these additional fees. If you got a single bill and they raised the price, you'll tend to notice. But if there are lots of little fees built into the bill, and they raise this one this month, and another one two months from now, and then they raise another one two months after that — you tend not to notice this. \"One of the items on the phone bill, one that's more than doubled in real terms in price, is often referred to as 'FCC line charge.' Now, that sounds like the Federal Communications Commission is imposing a fee on you — presumably to finance the FCC. In fact, that is the charge paid to connect to the long-distance system: It goes entirely to the phone companies; it doesn't go to the government. And the FCC has something called 'a requirement for plain English language,' so people can understand their phone bills. And here is a perfect example of the misuse of language to confuse people and not have them understand what they're really paying for.\" On how a city built its own municipal electrical system \"They created a municipal electric system. Well, they also built a municipal Internet. ... The response from AT&T, Verizon, Cox, Time Warner and the other cable and telephone companies has been to go to legislatures and say, 'We want a law passed that either blocks or makes [it] virtually impossible to build municipal systems. That's competing with our business interests.' And that's part of the whole strategy they have: 'We want to be monopolies without competition, we want to run the system in our interests, to maximize our profits,' with no regard for the overall economy of the United States.\"", "Ohio's House of Representatives has approved a bill requiring fetal remains from surgical abortions to be cremated or buried. After the state Senate agrees with amendments made by the House, Gov. Mike DeWine is expected to sign it. The American Civil Liberties Union spoke out against the bill, saying it will put a new burden on abortion providers and their patients. The measure will \"impose requirements on the final disposition of fetal remains from surgical abortions,\" as its title states. It would require women who choose to have an abortion to make a determination in writing about how the remains should be handled. If a patient opts not to decide, the task would fall to the abortion provider. Critics note that the bill creates new expenses. The medical facility would have to pay for a cremation or interment, unless the patient makes third-party arrangements for which she pays. The bill is \"nothing more than legislative harassment,\" ACLU of Ohio lobbyist Gary Daniels said in his testimony against the bill. He noted that the legislation would not apply to embryos disposed of by fertility clinics, or to fetal remains from medical abortions, miscarriages or stillbirths. The ACLU of Ohio opposes the bill \"because it serves no legitimate medical purpose,\" Daniels said, \"and is an obvious attempt to inconvenience patients, shut down abortion providers, and imprison doctors who do not comply with the numerous nonsensical regulations found in this bill.\" Ohio Right to Life, an anti-abortion-rights group that says it spearheaded the legislation along with its original sponsor, welcomed the bill's approval, saying it was a matter of common sense. \"Human decency requires that we treat every member of our human family with respect, something that, even in death, the innocent unborn will now be afforded,\" Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis said in a statement. Other states have enacted similar laws in recent years. A Texas law from 2016 went even further, mandating that fetal tissue from abortions, miscarriages or ectopic pregnancy surgery must be disposed of through burial or cremation. A federal judge blocked that law in 2018. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law – reportedly a model for the Ohio legislation — that limited its requirements to aborted fetuses and it omitted miscarriages. But as they issued that ruling, the high court justices also left the door open to \"a possible challenge to the burial and cremation provision of the law on different grounds in the future,\" as NPR reported. Ohio's Senate approved the bill in March 2019; the House of Representatives approved an amended version of the measure on Thursday. \"Gov. Mike DeWine is expected to sign the bill once the Ohio Senate agrees with changes the House made,\" NPR member station WOSU reported. \"As attorney general, DeWine investigated how fetal remains from abortions were being handled after complaints from abortion opponents, although his investigation resulted in no charges or health citations against abortion providers.\" The House endorsed the measure by a 60-36 vote. The Senate had voted 24-7 in favor. Every Republican voted to pass the bill, along with one Democrat, state Sen. Sean O'Brien. The bill's main sponsor was state Sen. Joe Uecker, R-Loveland, who resigned from the Legislature last year to take a new job at the Ohio Department of Transportation. Dozens of co-sponsors joined Uecker in supporting the measure.", "Some universities on the U.S. mainland are offering assistance to students in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean affected by Hurricane Maria. Several schools have gone as far as waiving tuition, others have offered reduced tuition by granting in-state status. Eighteen-year-old Mariela Serrano arrived in Miami to attend Florida International University a month before Hurricane Maria devastated her home in Puerto Rico. Then, FIU announced it would give students from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in-state tuition, extending the offer to current students like Serrano. After the category four hurricane hit Puerto Rico, Serrano says it took weeks before she could hear her mother's voice. All the while, having to keep up with school work and exams. \"I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't sleep,\" she says. \"The only thing I could think of was my family's well being.\" Serrano was relieved when she finally heard from her mother, but because she hasn't had electricity or water, her business has been devastated — she's a dentist. \"I have no family here,\" Serrano says. \"I am [financially] dependent on my mother.\" With FIU's refund, she says she was able to send about $4,000 back home and she also began working at FIU strong, a hotline for students in the Caribbean affected by the hurricane. About 200 students have already registered for a fall semester at FIU, says Maydel Santana, a university spokesperson. Santana says the university decided to extend in-state tuition to current students, too, because of hardships at home. \"It's important that these students don't stall and that they continue their education,\" she says. In New Orleans, the University of Tulane announced last week it would offer one free semester for Puerto Rican students as a way of \"paying it forward,\" after Tulane's students were taken in at other schools after Hurricane Katrina. Tulane will accept applications for the spring semester until Nov. 1. After the first semester, though, tuition and fees for one academic year are around $53,000. Other schools offering tuition assistance are: 64 campuses of the State University of New York, 17 Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, five state and six community colleges in Florida and also the University of Arkansas. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo requested SUNY and City University of New York allow students from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to continue their college education at the in-state tuition rate. \"This action will alleviate a huge burden for these families as they try to repair and rebuild their lives,\" Gov. Cuomo said in a statement, adding \"New York will continue to ensure the bright light of opportunity shines on everyone.\" SUNY announced it would follow the governor's request and CUNY board members will vote Monday on a resolution to allow those students to receive in-state tuition for the 2017-2018 academic year. Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, asked the same of his state. State colleges in Florida offering in-state tuition include the University of Florida, University of South Florida, Florida State University, University of Central Florida and Florida International University. Community Colleges in the state have also jumped on board, including: Miami Dade College, Broward College, St. Petersburg College, Valencia College and Seminole State College. Broward College in Miami and Hillsborough Community College in Tampa have also extended in-state tuition to students affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Florida State University's law school has offered an exchange status for five law students from Puerto Rico. That status means the students pay tuition to their home institution rather than the visiting school. Those students will attend FSU Law school tuition free for the Fall semester. Undergraduate students from Puerto Rico can also receive in-state tuition at FSU. \"FSU is providing a scholarship that will cover out-of-state tuition fees,\" says FSU spokesperson Susan Hansen. \"This scholarship is also offered to citizens from other Caribbean countries that were severely impacted, including the Dominican Republic, St. Maarten and Barbuda.\" University of Florida is also giving 1,000 students access to online courses for the next two semesters at no charge, says UF spokesperson Steve Orlando. Once those semesters are completed, those students can decide to transfer to UF's campus and continue to pay UF's Online tuition. The application date to apply for UF has also been extended to Nov. 15 because much of the island still has no power, making it difficult for students to send in applications and transcripts. Miami Dade College is also delaying transcript requirements for students, says spokesperson Juan Mendieta. \"The important thing is that they enroll,\" he says. \"We're gonna continue this program for Puerto Rican students until the island is back on its feet.\" Students can also obtain in-state status through families, says Valencia College spokesperson Linda Beaty. She says the c", "In a new challenge to police practices in Ferguson, Mo., a group of civil rights lawyers is suing the city over the way people are jailed when they fail to pay fines for traffic tickets and other minor offenses. The lawsuit, filed Sunday night on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown, alleges that the city violates the Constitution by jailing people without adequately considering whether they were indigent and, as a result, unable to pay. The suit is filed on behalf of 11 plaintiffs who say they were too poor to pay but were then jailed — sometimes for two weeks or more. NPR got an advance look at the lawsuit, filed by lawyers from Equal Justice Under Law, ArchCity Defenders and the Saint Louis University School of Law. It charges that Ferguson officials \"have built a municipal scheme designed to brutalize, to punish, and to profit.\" In 2013, Ferguson collected $2.6 million in court fines and fees, mainly on traffic violations and other low-level municipal offenses. That was the city's second-largest source of income, or about 21 percent of its total budget. The lawsuit challenges the practice of jailing people when they can't afford to pay those fines. When tickets go unpaid, people are summoned to court and usually offered a new payment plan. If they fail to show up or make the new payments, the city issues an arrest warrant. In 2013, Ferguson, a city with a population of 21,000, issued nearly 33,000 arrest warrants for unpaid traffic violations and other minor offenses. Many of those were for people who lived outside the city. Ferguson officials did not respond to requests for comment. But the city has made some recent court reforms. In September, the City Council, in its first meeting since the Brown shooting, announced a proposal to cap revenues from tickets. And in December, the city ordered a partial \"amnesty.\" People could pay $100 to get an arrest warrant lifted and then agree to pay their fines on a new payment plan. Last year, NPR's investigative series Guilty and Charged revealed that all 50 states add long lists of fines and fees for court services, including the cost of a public defender, and room and board for jail stays. The investigation also found that when the poor struggle to pay those fees — often with penalties that push costs to hundreds or thousands of dollars — they are sent to jail for not paying the fines, even though debtors prisons were outlawed before the Civil War. City officials say traffic fines protect public safety, and they need to punish the many people who can pay but simply refuse. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit say they were indigent and got caught up in a cycle of increased fees, debt and jailing. Just over a year ago, Tonya DeBerry was driving her 4-year-old grandson in her daughter-in-law's car. A St. Louis County police officer saw that the license plates were expired and pulled her over. He ran a background check and saw an arrest warrant for multiple unpaid traffic tickets in Ferguson. Among those old violations were tickets for driving with a suspended license — lost for earlier unpaid tickets — and driving with no registration, insurance or proof of inspection. DeBerry was arrested and handcuffed in front of her grandson. After someone came to pick up the boy, she was taken to jail. \"Just traffic tickets. No criminal act. Nothing,\" says DeBerry, 52, who doesn't work and depends on a disability check and food stamps. \"If you have the money, you would never go through that type of situation. If you don't have the money, it's jail, jail.\" She says the jail cell was moldy and dirty. \"There was blood on the walls where people cut themselves and wiped the blood.\" She spent two nights in a Ferguson jail in January 2014, until her daughter arrived with $300 borrowed from a neighbor to pay her bond. She was then transported to Jennings, Mo. — which is also being sued in a companion lawsuit — where there were more unpaid traffic tickets. DeBerry still owes a few thousand dollars on those unpaid traffic tickets. She says she worries that she could be picked up again and go back to jail, so she's careful about where and when she drives. DeBerry says the arrest warrants are a problem not just for her, but also for her son and daughter, who live with her. Both Herbert Nelson, DeBerry's 26-year-old son, and Allison Nelson, her 23-year-old daughter, are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, too. Herbert Nelson has been jailed at least four times in Ferguson over the past four years and owes the city a couple of thousand dollars for unpaid traffic tickets. He was last arrested in September and released after his mother borrowed $300 to pay for his bond. Nelson says jailing him for unpaid tickets is disproportionate to his offense. \"We're not criminals. It's just driving. ... And we're paying these big punishments. It's not fair. It's holding us back. It's like a cycle. Once you put us in trouble for something so petty ... [it's] just digging a hole and p", "A federal judge in New Orleans ruled on Friday that it is unconstitutional to jail people who fail to pay court-ordered fines and fees associated with their convictions without giving them a chance to plead poverty in a \"neutral forum.\" U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance rebuked Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judges for deliberately ignoring the financial conditions of a vast majority of criminal offenders before levying additional court-related charges, then locking them up when they don't or can't pay the debts. \"The undisputed evidence in this case establishes that the Judges have a policy or practice of not inquiring into criminal defendants' ability to pay before those individuals are imprisoned for nonpayment of court debts,\" she wrote. Additionally, Vance found that it is unconstitutional for judges to order the payment of money that they themselves will spend. She noted an abundance of evidence \"further establishes that because of the Judges' institutional conflict of interest, the Judges fail to provide a neutral forum for determination of criminal defendants' ability to pay.\" Vance cited the 14th Amendment in her ruling, writing that it \"prohibits a state actor from arresting or detaining a criminal defendant solely for failure to pay a court-imposed debt absent a determination of ability to pay.\" The decision concludes a three-year lawsuit against the OPCDC and the \"debtors' prison\" practice, that the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has argued unfairly impacts the poor which make up nearly all criminal defendants in New Orleans. But it does not indicate how the courts should establish a neutral forum moving forward. According to a statement of facts included in court documents, an OPCDC judge estimated about 95 percent of criminal convicts in the parish are considered indigent — lacking assets and steady income — and are represented by public defenders. According to court filings, judges can order fees such as $14 for court transcripts, $100 for court costs, $500 for those convicted of a misdemeanor and $2,500 for those convicted of a felony. In the case of some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, indigent defendants were asked to pay for drug treatment and drug testing, as well as other debts, as a condition of their probation. Most of the proceeds of fees collected by the court and individual judges total approximately $1 million a year, the lawsuit states. That money is largely funnelled into a general expenditure fund that the OPCDC taps into for to supplement salaries and benefits for employees, including those hired as debt collectors. Judges are prohibited from drawing from the pool to pay their own salaries but they can apply the money to cover benefits for themselves and their spouses, according to the court documents. \"We believe this judgement will have an effect across the state of Louisiana,\" Myesha Braden, Director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told NPR. She noted several districts throughout the state have implemented similar practices. \"This is a victory for the people of New Orleans and for those committed to fixing the breaks in the criminal justice system,\" Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told NPR in an emailed statement. She said, \"America treats being poor as a crime, disproportionally victimizing people of color. This ruling ensures that people can no longer be thrown in jail in New Orleans Parish for their poverty alone. State officials should take this as their cue begin the necessary work required to end this 'user-pay' justice system, built on the backs of the poor, once and for all.\" In December Courthouse News reported: \"Similar lawsuits have been filed across the country in the past two years. The spate of constitutional claims began after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Ensuing claims revealed that Ferguson and nearby towns disproportionately targeted black motorists for citations and fines, and used the money to fund their courts.\" In an opinion issued by Vance the same month, the judge acknowledged the \"unfortunate financial structure\" of the courts, which she wrote, \"forces the Judges to generate revenue from the criminal defendants they sentence. Of course, the Judges would not be in this predicament if the state and city adequately funded OPCDC.\"", "The Supreme Court decided Monday that a small utility district in Texas may be exempt from provisions of the Voting Rights Act, sidestepping a decision on the constitutionality of the 1965 law that protects the voting rights of minorities. Under the law, all or part of 16 states — which are mainly in the South and have a history of discrimination in voting — are required to get advance approval from the Justice Department or a federal court if they want to change their voting procedures. But the justices ruled that the tiny Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 in Austin may apply to opt out of the advance approval requirement. The 8-1 decision may mean more governmental entities in the 16 states covered under the law will seek exemptions. Chief Justice John Roberts said the utility district could apply for exemption, even though it does not register voters. The law was primarily intended to ensure that black and other minority voters were not prevented from voting by states, counties and parishes where voter registration takes place. The law was adopted at the height of the civil rights movement, and Congress voted in 2006 to extend it for 25 years. Roberts, writing for the court, said the larger issue of whether dramatic civil rights gains mean the advance approval requirement is no longer necessary \"is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.\" Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. He said he would have held that the provision, known as Section 5, is unconstitutional. \"The violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains,\" he said. During oral arguments the court seemed closely divided, and some legal experts incorrectly had predicted the justices might gut the Voting Rights Act. In other Supreme Court actions Monday: • The justices agreed to decide the constitutionality of a federal law allowing the continued imprisonment of sex offenders even after their sentences have been completed. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled earlier this year that Congress did not have the authority to allow indefinite imprisonment of \"sexually dangerous\" persons as a provision of the 2006 law. The law was challenged by four men who served from three to eight years in prison for possession of child pornography or sexual abuse of a minor. Their confinement has been extended for more than two years because the government determined they posed a risk of violence or sexually violent conduct if they were released. The Justice Department challenged the 4th Circuit decision, and Roberts granted a government request to block the release of up to 77 inmates at a federal prison in North Carolina while the high court considered the appeal. The case will be argued during the court's next term, which begins in October. Other provisions of the Adam Walsh law — named after the son of America's Most Wanted television host John Walsh — which established a sex offender registry and increased the punishment range for some federal crimes against children, were not challenged. The case does not affect state laws that permit such commitments. • The court said it will decide whether police have to inform suspects that they have the right to have an attorney present during police questioning. The case involves Kevin Dwayne Powell, a Florida man who was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Police gave Powell Miranda warnings, which include telling him he had the right to have an attorney, but they did not tell him he had a right to have a lawyer present during his interrogation. Florida's Supreme Court said the police erred in not informing Powell of his right to have an attorney present during questioning and overturned the conviction. • The justices decided in a 6-3 vote that parents of special education students may seek reimbursement for private school costs from public school districts, even if they did not first try the public schools. Federal law requires districts to reimburse families for education costs, but schools have argued that the law says parents must give public school special education programs a chance first. But advocacy groups and parents of some special education students contend that forcing them to try public schools first could force children, especially poor ones, to spend time in an undesirable situation before getting the help they need. • The court refused to reinstate a lawsuit that former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, brought against former members of the Bush administration. A lower court threw out the suit last year. Plame had accused former Vice President Dick Cheney, top Cheney aide I. Lewis \"Scooter\" Libby and others of leaking information to reporters that she worked for the CIA. • The court narrowly decided that Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. may dump rock debris from the company's gold mine into a lake on fed" ]

[ "Legacy of the Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine was the prevailing American foreign policy during the next 45 years of the Cold War. The United States determined that it would go to whatever lengths to prevent the spread of Communism." ]

[ "Surprisingly, this plot is actually similar to what happened with the Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine was issued by President Harry S. Truman in 1947. In this doctrine, President Truman said that the United States would go to whatever lengths possible to contain the spread of communism and stop the United States' former ally, the Soviet Union. So, just like in the movie, the Truman Doctrine said the United States would pull out all the stops to ruin the plans of its former friend. Historical Background", "truman; truman capote; truman doctrine; truman, harry s. truman-macarthur controversy; trumbo; trumbull; trumeau", "The two events most associated with Truman and the Cold War are the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. 1 The Truman Doctrine emerged in a speech in March 1947. 2 The Marshall Plan was a major programme of economic aid offered to all European states to help them recover from the war.he two events most associated with Truman and the Cold War are the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. 1 The Truman Doctrine emerged in a speech in March 1947. 2 In this speech Truman promised help to any country fighting a Communist takeover.", "How is the language of the Truman Doctrine similar? 2. Is it possible to get a detailed understanding of the political and economic situation in Greece and Turkey from reading the Truman Doctrine? 3. How might other countries of the United Nations view the Truman Doctrine?", "The Truman Doctrine has to be assessed against the background of what had happened in Europe at the end of World War Two and in the immediate aftermath.", "As a result, in 1947, President Truman issued the Truman Doctrine which stated that the United States would supply aid to any country as long as they pledged to be democratic. The Marshall plan was enacted in 1948 and it was similar to the Truman Doctrine except it provided financial aid to these countries....", "Quick Recap.  The goal of ***Containment*** was to keep Communism from spreading.  The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan are both forms of. ***_________________________________________***.  The Truman Doctrine was aimed at Turkey and Greece.  Be able to identify ___________________________________________.", "Addressing a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey and established a doctrine, aptly characterized as the Truman Doctrine, that would guide U.S. diplomacy for the next 40 years.ddressing a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey and established a doctrine, aptly characterized as the Truman Doctrine, that would guide U.S. diplomacy for the next 40 years.", "Best Answer: The Truman Doctrine President Truman believed the US needed more than a get tough on the Russians policy following the war.Russia's history was one of expansion as much as possible and the Soviet Union was following that same idea.est Answer: The Truman Doctrine President Truman believed the US needed more than a get tough on the Russians policy following the war.", "The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. The first step was the “Truman Doctrine” of March 1947, which reflected the combativeness of President Harry Truman. Truman wanted to “scare the hell” out of Congress.", "Truman maintained a strong stand against the Soviets and the danger of Communist intervention in Europe. In 1947 he announced the Truman Doctrine, which promised U.S. aid to countries that resisted Communist aggression. Based on this doctrine, Truman provided military and financial assistance to Greece and Turkey to help them to remain independent. Truman followed up this initiative with the Marshall Plan of 1947.", "The Truman Doctrine was part of containment. Under the Truman Doctrine the U.S. gave Greece and Turkey $400 million in economic aid to help these nations resist Communism or what President Truman called armed minorities or outside pressures.orea became divided along the 38th parallel with North Korea being supported by the Soviet Union and China while South Korea was supported by the United States and eventually the United Nations when North Korea invaded South Korea to start the War.", "Truman Doctrine is announced. In a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman’s address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War.", "Truman s Speech to Congress, March 1947 On 12 March 1947, President Truman spoke to Congress. His speech is very famous. What he said became known later as the Truman Doctrine.Truman began by outlining the situation in Greece.onsequences of Truman s Speech (= Results of the Truman Doctrine) Truman s Speech was an event of immense importance in the Cold War, and it set out many of the principles by which the USA was to fight the Cold War for the next 30 years.", "(Information excerpted from the National Archives’ Truman Presidential Museum and Library web site .). For more information, visit the The Truman Doctrine Study Collection at the National Archives’ Truman Presidential Museum and Library.", "Theycan be used to involvemilitaryforce, as with the Truman Doctrine, threaten the use. ofmilitary force, as with the Carter Doctrine, or even minimize militaryforce, likewith the. Nixon Doctrine. Yet, the ties between presidential doctrines and militaryaction are undeniable.", "Marshall Plan. On 12th March, 1947, Harry S. Truman, announced details to Congress of what eventually became known as the Truman Doctrine. In his speech he pledged American support for free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.", "A containment policy would prevent the spread of communism past the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries. This theory became the basis for the Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine constituted the United States' foreign policy for the next 45 years - throughout the Cold War.", "What three things did the Truman Doctrine set out to do? provide military assistance to Greece and Germany provide economic aid to several foreign nations - 543645 1", "x20-11-12 | Rosa Mulloy Assess the importance of the Truman Doctrine and Mashall Plan to the development of the Cold War. The introduction of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were an important turning point in the path of the Cold War. It made a smooth solution to Stalin and Truman's aversions towards each other impossible, as the two powers could no longer compromise.", "If you were already thinking “Truman Doctrine,” give yourself a point. Obama’s ‘No Containment’ AIPAC Speech Made War With Iran Inevitable Michael Tomasky March 6, 2012 The Truman Doctrine was never meant to be applied to Vietnam.", "Truman's plan was called The Truman Doctrine.. Truman's secretary of state, George C. Marshall, believed that the struggling nations could only survive if the U.S. supplied the resources needed to return them to self-sufficiency.", "He looks closely at the Truman Doctrine and the war in Korea, doctrines of intervention, nondeclared wars and the Vietnam conflict, nation building and freedom fighting, and Iraq and the doctrine of first strike, among other topics.", "During this time, President. Harry S. Truman wanted to contain Communism before it. spread world-wide. He felt that this was the crucial point. and Truman responded by issuing the Truman Doctrine in. 1947. Truman feared that third world countries would. accept Communism.", "The Harry Truman Doctrine Truman doctrine Tone The tone stayed serious and informal throughout the speech. Former President Harry Truman was very determined that we can turn Greece and Turkey's economic problem around. Rhetorical Devices - “The Greek Government has been operating in an atmosphere of chaos and extremism” (¶ 13) - Harry Truman uses this hyperbole in order to make people realize the situation Greece is in throughout this time period.", "For example, the Truman. Doctrine was aimed at communist regimes, while the Bush Doctrine was directed towards. terrorism. Doctrines are usually reserved for times ofintense international political crisis or. upheaval; therefore, not every president issues one. However, once doctrines are issued, there is.", "1 Truman (in Harry S. Truman: Succession to the presidency) Spartacus Educational - Truman Doctrine Complete text of this speech delivered by U.S. president Harry S. Truman during his address to the Congress on the issue of providing financial and military aid for fighting against communist insurrections world wide.", "Determined not to let the Soviet Union spread Communism, Truman adopted the idea of containment, announcing his own Truman Doctrine in 1947. His characterization of the Soviet Union as a force of “ungodly” evil helped shape the Cold War of the next four decades.etermined not to let the Soviet Union spread Communism, Truman adopted the idea of containment, announcing his own Truman Doctrine in 1947. His characterization of the Soviet Union as a force of “ungodly” evil helped shape the Cold War of the next four decades.", "With the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine of March 1947 and the launching of the Marshall Plan, the United States was clearly leading the western nations to resist Russian Communist expansionist activities in Europe. Cold War had begun.2) Immediate Causes Leading to the Cold War. Incipient conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States began at the peace-time conferences. Their conflict was intensified after President Truman declared the Truman Doctrine and launched the Marshall Plan in 1947.", "The Truman Doctrine (1947) was designed to support anti-communists and resist the spread of communism.", "The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; Superpowers Collide, 1961-1981. The End of the Cold War, 1981-1992", "Harry Truman was elected President of the United States of America in April, 12th, 1945, following Franklin Delano Roosevelt who died the same month, on the eve of Victory. In this extract, Truman is addressing the Congress, the 11th of March, to expose the doctrine of containment and express the political conception of the US contrasting to the soviet government system, as expressed in the Jdanov doctrine." ]

[ "Literally supernatural. From Wiki:\n\n\n John Carpenter has described the character as \"almost a supernatural force - a force of nature. An evil force that's loose,\" a force that is \"unkillable\"." ]

[ "You can use the Help action to give an ally advantage on an ability check.\nThe Help action is what you are looking for:\n\nYou can lend your aid to another creature in the completion of a task. When you take the Help action, the creature you aid gains advantage on the next ability check it makes to perform the task you are helping with, provided that it makes the check before the start of your next turn.\n\nTelekinesis says:\n\nYou can try to move a Huge or smaller creature. Make an ability check with your spellcasting ability contested by the creature's Strength check. [...]\nOn subsequent rounds, you can use your action to attempt to maintain your telekinetic grip on the creature by repeating the contest.\n\nSo the NPC ally would use the Help action on their turn, and the target of telekinesis would have advantage on the next Strength check contest for the spell. Note, most DMs, myself included, would rule that the helping character has to be within reach of the helped character at the time of the ability check.\nHelping on subsequent rounds\nThis will be the most common use case, I think. BBEG casts telekinesis on the paladin, we'll call him Rick.\nAfter Rick's turn, it is Laurie's turn. She moves next to Rick and uses the Help action to help Rick escape telekinesis. On BBEG's turn, BBEG uses their action to maintain control of Rick. With Laurie's help, Rick has advantage on the strength check to be free from the telekinesis.\nHelping with the initial check\nThis situation is a bit odd. From a purely mechanical perspective it works out just fine. On Laurie's turn, she moves next to Rick and declares &quot;I'm using the help action to help Rick break free of a telekinesis spell, should one come his way.&quot; Then, if BBEG casts telekinesis on Rick, he has advantage on the initial strength check.\nBut this is a bit of an odd scenario. It takes some forward thinking from Laurie, which may not make sense if she is unaware of the BBEG's telekinetic capabilities. If she is totally unaware of the BBEG's ability to cast telekinesis, from a roleplaying perspective, it's probably much more likely that Laurie spends her action doing something else.\nOn the other hand, suppose Laurie knows BBEG is inclined to shaking his enemies about with some telekinesis. Then it may seem reasonable for Laurie to preemptively declare that she is going to Help Rick.", "Does anyone ahve[sic] any idea of where to start looking\n\n\nYou fell victim to one of the classic blunders. Never use a vec3 in a UBO or SSBO.\n\nWhile vec3s take up 12 bytes, they always have the alignment requirements of a vec4. Yes, even under std430 layout, they always have vec4 alignment. So if you have an array of vec3s in a U/SSBO, what you really have is an array of vec4s where one of the elements doesn't get used.", "The structure of the Godfather Part 2 is to tell two stories about two men in parallel, Vito and Michael Corleone.\n\nIn one strand we see Vito, who comes from tragic beginnings as an orphan to being head of a \"family\". Vito's path is noble, his \"fall\" is when he \"does what he has to\" for his family, and it could be argued he doesn't fall that far, the man he kills is a bully and affecting everyone in the area, and the Corleone rule brings peace and prosperity to the area, so might even be seen by some as a good thing.\n\nIn the other we see Michael. We already know Michael was destined for different things (been in the army and educated, and distanced from the Corleone business). We have seen in the first film how inconsolable Vito is when he finds out Michael has turned assassin and \"done what he had to do\".\n\nIn the final flashback, we only then realise just how far he has actually fallen. The flashback happens just after Pearl Harbour. At it we see Michael arriving to talk to his father, his intention is to leave college and join the army to fight in the war.\n\nWe see here that when he \"does what he has to do\", it is actually far more noble. He has no NEED to do this and could easily avoid it (and Sonny actively tries to dissuade him), but his morals compel him to do it.\n\nWe also see a further sign of tragedy, in that the supportive brother is Fredo. He is actually the heart of the family (so never had visions of being Don), and the sign of how far Michael falls is his death at Michael's hands.\n\nThe final irony is (and why Michael is thinking about it) that this is HIS defining moment (like Vito killing Fanucci). If he hadn't gone to war, his (and his family's) life would have turned out very different, and in this noble act he ended up worse than any of them (and this leads onto part 3 where he tries to legitimise).", "There is no rule currently known which prevents any person from killing the owner of a death note under normal circumstances. \n\nThe only reasons a death note will not work on a person assuming that the victims name and face are known are: \n\n\n \n the victim is very young\n the victim is very old (124 years old or older)\n the victim is already about to die in the next few seconds\n someone already misspelled the victims name too many times\n the victim's name was written in a second death note simultaneously (victim still will die)\n the victim's name was already written in any death note in a valid way (time of death before end of natural life span).\n \n\n\n(Please edit if I missed any.)\n\nI almost always have to note on these questions that the rules available to us about the Death Note are not complete. In fact, the rules themselves state that even the shinigami do not know all of the rules about how a death note works.", "Often \"victim\" is the legal term most often used in criminal law. Another term which doesn't always precisely mean victim, but usually does, is \"complaining witness.\" There are probably other terms used, but none that are used universally come to mind.\n\nOf course, not all crimes have victims.\n\nThe term \"victim\" is frequently used in restitution statutes and in states that have a \"victim's bill of rights.\"\n\nIn civil law, someone who is hurt by conduct is a \"plaintiff\", a \"counterclaimant\", a \"crossclaimant\" or simply a \"claimant\" or a \"creditor\".", "\"First we moved the BGP IP prefix,\" said Gargula as he detailed the attack, \"I tried to isolate legit human traffic from bot traffic and not to mix it up. We sacrificed one of their three BGP uplink layers as a 'canary' to test the sophistication of the attack. Then we changed the configuration for the IP uplink.\"\n\n\n\"How does moving the BGP IP prefix help?\"\n\nI believe they are refering to a sinkhole--a sacrificial router, in this case a BGP router, since BGP may not require much authentication. By configuring the sinkhole to \"advertise routes with bogon destination addresses, you can set up a central trap for malicious traffic of all types\" [Hacking Exposed 7: Network Security Secrets and Solutions, 2012]. Lists of bogon addresses can be found online: www.cymru.com/Bogons, slides\n\n\"And also, what other sophisticated DDOS techniques are there?\"\n\nThere are a number of sophisticated DDoS techniques. DDoS leverages DoS methods using a distributed attack surface. Most of us probably know about SYN flood, where a syn packet is sent with a spoofed source address and the receiving system tries acknowledge it does not receive a response and is left with partial connection in a short queue that is easily disabled by flooding. Similarly, a UDP flood is designed and source IP addresses are often spoofed to target DNS servers which rely on the UDP protocol.\n\nReflective amplification is another DDoS attack (DRDoS) that again uses spoofing. Often botnets send the packets, the source address is the victim IP address, and the packets are sent to machines that try to respond to the victim simultaneously, generating a flood of packets sent to the victim. For example, DNS servers respond to small requests with a large amount of information and DNS amplification can overwhelm the victim's system.\n\nApplication-layer DDoS attacks use the same ideas at a higher level, such as the web level, rather than the transport or communication level. Here the goal of the attacker is to find an easy and short request that generates lots of work in the victim's API. For example, a single-word search request can eat up lots of cycles on the victim's machine. Or a database-driven site, might have pages that trigger database queries when the URL is requested. Now, the attacker can use just a few queries per second, either making the requests in a distributed manner or not, and bring the victim's machine grinding to a halt.\n\nThere is also a low-rate DoS attack where the attacker causes a TCP connection to enter a retransmit state. If enough connections enter this state, the victim's machine suffers declining performance.\n\nSee Hacking Exposed 7: Network Security Secrets &amp; Solutions for more discussion of DDoS attacks. See Wikipedia for more attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack", "I don't think it's much of a tradition, but rather convenience. Unless you transcribe it, i.e. write it phonetically (as it should be read) as the closest approximation using characters Esperanto has to offer, you won't really know how to read it. This is because names are just words in other languages: you can't pronounce them unless you are familiar with the language.\n\nTranscribing names is also done in many other languages, so it's not an unknown thing to do. As a native Serbian, I can confirm we always transcribe names; I've also seen it in Russian and Greek. Another (more extreme and more obvious) example is Japanese, where we also transcribe (romanize) characters.\n\nFor example, take the name Michael. You can't be sure how to pronounce it unless you know which language the name is taken from (could be English, Italian, French, German and probably many more) -- it's written the same in all those languages, but it follows different pronunciation rules. So it could be Majkl, Miŝel, etc.\n\nI'm not aware of any existing strict rules for transcribing names, so I usually go \"by ear\".\n\nSome people like to add the final o to make it look like every other noun in Esperanto. Personally, I don't like using it because then it loses the original pronunciation of the name; also female names tend to look ugly or masculine (like Maria becoming either Mariao or Mario). I usually add o only when accusative seems awkward or impossible (John would be Ĝon and Ĝonon in accusative).", "Too many bad things happen in a case like this. I believe for the development of both children this is a critical moment. Because these are children we are training, teaching, and molding, making peace is not the number one goal as it may be with co-workers, spouses, roommates, etc. The number one goal is the growth of the children.\n\nIssue with the Bully\nFirst, child 1 thinks he can manipulate adults and in a way 'punish' another kid by creating a story. This will increase his desire to manipulate others in general as it is a sense of power and success. Obviously this trend is self-feeding and non-sustainable. Which means this bad behavior will grow worse with time, and eventually fail. \n\nThe greatest issue of when it fails is, how will the kid handle this trick of deception not working anymore? In most cases it will bring about anger and not getting the desired effect and being caught in the lie. Anger brings about even more issues. It is critical this be caught early.\n\nThere is a long chain of events being started in this moment which leads to a corrupt spirit - if you will. \n\n\n Just as some people say the threat of global warming is so severe that\n we must take action now, so is the threat of the future corruption of \n spirit so great that action should be taken now.\n\n\nIssue with the Victim\nSecond, the kid who has been lied about also is at risk. First, he will become a victim quickly as the threat of being told on will bring about compliance. If a pattern of bullying develops and is sustained not only will the shy kid give in, he will also learn that the teacher will not protect him. \n\nWhen more serious problems occur he may not have the trust to bring them to the attention of those whose job it is to protect him. This extends to his parents if they stand idly (hopefully they are at least 'getting his back' at home when they talk about the situation).\n\n\n As with the bully, the long term threat for the victim is a spiritual\n problem of a crushed spirit and the loss of hope in being safe and\n protected.\n\n\nThe Teacher\nChances are that the teacher (just like we parents) don't want to deal with the issue and probably doesn't have the time for it. 7 year old's are expected to do a lot in school (in the USA) and are already being tested. Issues like this seem small and truly the educational system in the US does not prepare teachers for this type of situation. \n\nEveryone should work together on this situation and while it is possible that the other parent will be defensive, an attempt at the truth should be made. The parent of child 1 deserves to have a chance to know about the behavior or at the very least know to start being a little more attentive to what the child is doing and saying. \n\nPotential Resolution\nA 15 minute parent conference where there isn't any blaming but rather an understanding of what each kid believes happened would be helpful. Probably something without the kids there, where the teacher simply explains the two sides of the story with the only goal of letting everyone be on the same page and know what to look out for in the future. (i.e. where there is smoke...)", "You may want to do more reading about the concept of 'love languages'. It seems you want to show and receive love by giving, which is one of them. Check to see if your girlfriend fits any of the others. Maybe she shows her love by touch? Spending lots of time with you? Words? Small acts of service? Maybe she already does one of these and you just don't notice because it's not how you express love?\n\nI would suggest that you ask your girlfriend to take one of the many free online tests available to see which your love languages are together. That can lead into a discussion about how she can make you feel appreciated as well as how you can make her feel appreciated. Love languages, just like Myers-Briggs personality tests and similar things should of course be taken with a huge grain of salt. There is to my knowledge no science behind them. They can however give insight into your though patterns and be a good way to notice which little ways your girlfriend expresses her emotions. Not everyone fits neatly into one category, but it's in my experience a good way to notice what your partner does for you if you have different ways of showing love.\n\nThe idea is not to completely change how you show love, but rather to become aware of how your partner shows love so you can feel more appreciated. And so you know how to really make your partner feel loved. If it turns out she prefers words, then you can try to tell her how you feel more often, and she can remember to pick up little gifts for you and organise events to make you feel better in the relationship too.", "Chromosome splits (or fusions for that matter) might not mean that much for reproductive success since genes can still line up and recombine. To quote the science blogger P.Z. Myers:\n\n\n [C]hromosome numbers can change dramatically with no obvious effect\n on the phenotype of the organism.\n\n\nHe illustrates it thusly:\n\n\n\nSo to answer your first question, changes in the number of chromosomes aren't always fatally deleterious (as you seem to think).\n\nAs for how a change in chromosome number might spread, the explanation is likely random drift and inbreeding. To quote P.Z. Myers again:\n\n\n So our two chromosome individual will have a reduced fertility as long\n as he or she is breeding with the normal one chromosome organisms, but\n those split chromosomes can continue to spread through the population.\n They are not certain to spread — they’re more likely to eventually go\n extinct — but by chance alone there can be continued propagation of\n the two chromosome variant.\n\n\n\"Evolution\" by Mark Ridley, p. 361 similarly points out that reproduction will be an uphill battle until the new variant becomes more common (often through inbreeding or drift in small populations):\n\n\n When a new chromosomal fusion mutation arises, it will be selected\n against because of its disadvantage in heterozygous form. But if it\n drifts up to a locally high frequency, as may easily happen in a\n local, small, and perhaps inbreeding, mouse population, natural\n selection will favor it. Natural selection favors whichever\n chromosomal form is locally common[.]\n\n\nThis might in the end lead to speciation due to the two populations becoming incompatible.", "As in everything in psychology and the studies of behaviour and the brain, there are many interpretations for the extremely complicated process of learning. If you want to check a basic (But detailed) book on most of the early understandings on the subject of Learning, I recommend anything written by Michael Domjan; specially &quot;The Principles of Learning and Behavior&quot;.\nAlso, the studies showed in &quot;Cognitive Psychology&quot; by Robert Stenberg (Mainly memory and perception) could shed some light. If these books are not enough, you could always look for more specifics in some books in neural science, like: &quot;Principles of Neural Science&quot;, written by Eric Kandel (Chapter 9 covers mostly learning, but I still recommend Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8)\nIf you want a more casual answer, learning is something we don't wanna do sometimes because it is very frustrating, exhausting and hard. Even more, if you're trying to study a very difficult subject, where you start to acknowledge your own cognitive limitations and falling victim to our impatience.\nHope this helps.", "This will not work due to the 23 day rule.\n\nHow to use XXVII\n\nIf you write, die of disease for the cause of death, but only write a specific time of death without the actual name of disease, the human will die from an adequate disease. But the Death Note can only operate within 23 days (in the human calendar). This is called the 23 day rule.\n\n\nNow lets say the person's lifespan will end in 23 days or less. Then the question could be rephrased as What would happen to a person whose name is written in a DN, but whose lifespan is recalculated to be before the date written in that DN? This could be caused by both the shinigami deal or by indirect influence of other people's deaths by DN. In this case we would again end up at the situation where a person's lifespan is before the date set in the death note and as we know from this answer, it is impossible to increase your lifespan by killing yourself with the death note.\nHow to use VLII\n\n\nIn the Death Note, you cannot set the death date longer than the victim's original life span. Even if the victim's death is set in the Death Note beyond his/her original life span, the victim will die before the set time.\n\n\nTherefore I'd assume Bob to die within 11 days and a half.", "I haven't seen any publication discussing Stockholm Syndrome in relation to stalking, but I have seen the syndrome discussed in relation to domestic violence. I reproduce below the criteria for occurrence in cases of domestic violence\n\n\n \n The victim perceives a person threatening her\n survival. The threats may be physical or psychological.\n It is not important whether others\n view her survival as threatened, but rather\n whether she does.\n The victim perceives the abuser showing her\n some kindness, however small. For example,\n the kindness may be that for one day out of\n the month he does not abuse her.\n The victim is isolated from outsiders. This isolation\n may be physical—she is not permitted to\n have contact with family or friends—and/or\n ideological—she is permitted exposure to\n only the abuser’s perspective.\n The victim does not perceive a way to escape\n the abuser. Batterers use violence to help ensure\n that their partners do not leave them.\n \n\n\nIn my opinion, it could also happen in cases of stalking... however criterion 3 (victim isolation) seems much less likely to happen in cases of stalking. However, stalking is known to increase the social isolation of the victim in some circumstances (altering her/his pattern of social interaction to avoid the stalker), so stalking could potentially lead to 3... but again, I'm just theorizing off the top of my head.\n\nSource:\n\n\nNA Jackson (ed.), Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence, Routledge, 2007", "Attachment spirits. In Native American and Eastern European shamanism, they attach to people either to vicariously live through them, or to whip up the emotions so they can feed off them. This happens in relationships where the argument whips into a frenzy seemingly on its own. (Aside from hormones.) I don't have a citation, I was married to a native shaman who talked about it.\nIncubi and succubi are generally represented as being sexual pest spirits that feed off the victim's sexuality, but in the Wikipedia entry for each one, the end result is death. The experience for the victim is pleasure, until they are drained of life force. Sexual pleasure is not quite the same as \"emotions\", but definitely involves emotion.\nIn Christianity, demons. \"Demons survive by feeding off of emotional vibrations such as anger, fear, joy, excitement and any emotion that vibrates at the frequency needed for the feeding entities. The greater the emotional vibration, the better the feeding session for those feeding. A book by John Klein and Adam Spears titled Devils and Demons and the Return of the Nephilim published in 2005 is a great source for understanding how and why entitles feed off of human energy.\" \nhttp://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread531240/pg2\n\n\nI know this is part of older esoteric traditions. Qabbala? \n\nI know at least one Christian who strongly believes in this as a reality:\nhttp://gnosticwarrior.com/demons-who-feed-on-human-energy.html\n\n\nIn new age speak, there are Collective Consciousness group-entities that gin up and feed off of any strong \"team\" related identity -- sports, religion, politics. When you are trying to talk to someone who just won't hear an opposing view, and it almost seems like something is talking through them, and they seem to get a great deal of energy from their group identity, like being a sock puppet for something more powerful. In psychology terms, I'm sure there are specific diagnoses, but still.", "If an attacker is able to access a wifi network (either an open one, or has the security key for it), he or she is able to see all of the traffic that is being sent to other users on that network segment, even if he or she is not connected (associated) with the access point. Additionally, the attacker may also be able to perform a Man-in-the-middle or Man-on-the-side attack where he/she is able to alter the data that is sent to the victim's machine. \n\nAdding the encryption key only adds security if the attacker does not know it. Once the attacker has it, it's basically the same as an open wifi network.", "There is no game-mechanic definition of \"bears\" as the word is used in the spell description. It is going to be up to you and your group how to interpret the spell wording, and loose wording of spell descriptions does seem to be a common device in 5E - I suspect it is deliberate policy to support \"play as you like\".\n\nThis does open the door to allowing many creative uses of spells, possibly not foreseen by the game developers, and very likely taking different interpretations at different tables. \n\nPersonally I don't buy your argument for prepared spells counting as \"bearing magic\", I think it stretches the language and intended use too much. I would restrict detection to spells and items after they have been created, and not include the latent magical ability within a creature before it has been manifested.\n\nLike a house-rule, it helps to think through consequences of applying your reading of the rules consistently. To be clear, I am not saying this is a house rule, it is an interpretation, and I do not believe there is a strict reading of RAW that says \"no\". \n\nFor your suggested use of the Detect Magic spell I can think of the following:\n\n\nIt somewhat boosts the utility of Detect Magic. For campaigns with otherwise low amounts of magical items and effects, where the spell might be dropped for lack of use, this could be welcome.\nIt might be a relatively cheap and easy way to resolve plots involving mysteries. This is always a danger with divination spells - there is a tension between making them useful versus allowing them to solve a whole plot through creative thinking. So if you allow Detect Magic to detect spellcasters, make sure that knowing who is or isn't a spell caster (especially secretly a spellcaster) is not a plot spoiler. Or at least make it a difficult task to find and confront the suspect before using Detect Magic to reveal, that yes not only did he have motive, but also knows the Necromantic magic that caused the victim's death.\n\n\nNeither of these are a game-breaker in my opinion, so I think the door is still open. However, I advise discussion before this one is used. A good rule of thumb is that you don't want to be having a rules debate at the same time as when the outcome of the rule decides the fate of a player character. And this interpretation is debatable enough that you could lose game time to it.", "Is there any in-universe reason for this ?\n\nYes\n\nIn the episode 'Category 55 Emergency Doomsday Crisis' Michael scolds Tahani that the manual for the neighbourhood is only to be viewed by Architects and Janets. This implies there are multiples of Janet at any given time, potentially one per neighborhood. Other facts about Janet also seem to imply this (e.g. that she loses most of her abilities when outside of her assigned neighborhood) and it is finally confirmed in the episode &quot;Janet and Michael&quot;.\n\nThe Medium Place was specifically created for Mindy... and it does not have a Janet of its own.\n\nAfter her death, Mindy's sister found her plans and used her money to start up the Mindy St. Claire Rescue Alliance which became the largest relief aid charity in the world. Both The Good Place and The Bad Place argued over whether or not Mindy should receive credit for the charity. Unable to agree where Mindy should go, they compromised and created a new neighborhood just for her: The Medium Place.\nWikia\n\n... and the Medium place is just that: medium. Nothing in it will truly satisfy anyone.\n\nThe Medium place was created to be neither comfortable nor painful for Mindy. It has the appearance of a single beige house with one small garden in the middle of a barren plain resembling that of the Great Plains in America or the Australian outback.\nWhen Mindy was first admitted to the Medium Place, she gave The Good Place a list of the things she wanted and the Bad place made a few modifications to the list, like how they gave Mindy her favorite beer but it is always warm, or how her jukebox has every song ever but only by the Eagles (live versions only), as well as spoken word poetry by William Shatner, which Trevor describes as deeply terrible.\nThere is no sign that the Medium Place has its own Janet, though it is known that there are different Janets for the Good and Bad Places. Since Mindy is the only occupant of the Medium Place, it is possible that a Medium Place Janet was not created for the sole use of one person.", "Fix the litterbox situation.\n\nIt's often the case that if a cat is bullying, it's over some particular thing, just like how two kids might get along perfectly until you add in some really cool toy to the mix, and all of sudden they're fighting over it. \n\nIn your case, almost certainly your cats are fighting over the litterbox. Perhaps the bully sees it as a great way to trap the victim, or perhaps the bully doesn't want to share. The result is the victim is now afraid to use the litterbox, and going all over the house.\n\nYou should attempt to address both possible reasons, by making the existing litterboxes less of a place to be trapped, and also adding additional boxes. I would remove the lids from any existing boxes and move them when possible to be more central in the room. That way, your cats can escape the box from any direction. \n\nFind and fix any other points of contention.\n\nThere may be other places where bullying incidents tend to happen around your house. You should keep note of the exact spots where the incidents happen. If you notice any spots where there's a pattern of bullying, now you need to stop and think what may be the cause, and what you can do to make it no longer be a cause. For instance:\n\n\nThey're fighting over something they all want to use. Water bowls, beds, litterboxes, and so forth. In this case, it helps to just buy more of the thing they're fighting over.\nThe bully is ambushing the victim in particular spots. For example, the bully likes to hide under furniture, or around corners, and then when a hapless victim walks by, they strike. In this case, try to either block access to the area, or provide an alternative route, so the victim doesn't have to walk right by it to get to the other areas of the house.\nThe bully traps the victim in some place they can't get out of without going past the bully. Cat caves, cat trees, cat shelves, and so forth, are all places where the victim cat could be potentially trapped. In these cases, you should use more cat furniture or rearrange your existing furniture so that the victim has more than one exit route, and so they can't be trapped anymore.\n\n\nMake sure the bully is entertained.\n\nSometimes cats bully simply because they're bored, so make sure to play with the bully especially until he is tired out. Cats will play in a series of short bursts. In between bursts, they'll sort of sit and watch, but that doesn't mean they're actually done. You should keep playing until your cat truly seems uninterested.\n\nIt's also a good idea to provide your cats with things to keep them entertained even when you're not around. Keep a variety of toys out. You might even rotate toys. Also make sure they have access to windows, which is a great form of cat entertainment. Or you might even try food puzzle toys. Whatever keeps them from getting bored.\n\nTry to encourage the victim to be more confident.\n\nBully cats like to target victims that look weak. Therefore, it helps a lot if you can get the victim cat to feel more confident. Seeing a more confident cat makes the bully less likely to bully, and it reinforces the victim to be confident.\n\n\nIf there are areas the victim avoids due to the bully cat, try to spread the victim's scent in those places. You can do so by moving things like blankets or beds the victim sleeps on into those places. With the victim's smell more spread around, the victim cat will feel it owns the space more, and help make it more confident.\nGet both the victim and the bully cat together in the same room, but keep them both distracted from each other as much as possible through play, in regular sessions. You will need a second person to help you do this, one person per cat. A cat playing uses much more confident body language, and the bully will be able to observe that. Meanwhile, the victim will feel more confident because they were in the same room as the bully, and nothing bad happened.", "The need for consistency can be met without having everything be the same: have a template each, for example… \n\n\nopinion pieces (byline at the top)\nregular articles (no byline) \nfeatured writers, if you have any (byline at the bottom, maybe a bio)\n\n\nThe key to avoiding confusion is that you actively design the patterns in each case, rather than just have a variable element come and go arbitrarily. Make every design element count within each design and know how each fits together.\n\nCase study: newspapers differentiate their opinion content with a headshot (interestingly, NYTimes shows the author pic for opinion pieces on the front page, but not the article page). Growing up, I always knew Michael Olesker was a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, and not just a regular reporter, because they always had his picture by the article. Doing this in your articles isn't just an old-timey carryover, it's good design: users will appreciate the visual cue that lets them know when they are reading opinion versus \"factual\" reporting.", "Lead vocalist and songwriter Greg Graffin gives a description of where the title originated along with the different names and meanings mentioned in the song.\n\nSong Meaning:\n\n\n Greg Graffin: \"If you ever get a hold of our first EP, a 7\", there's a guy with a jacket - a leather jacket - in the audience and it says,\n 'You don't belong' on it. That's where we got the title from. And it\n was sort of the attitude all through the punk era; none of us felt\n like we belonged. But we certainly felt like we should belong, because\n we had something to say.\"\n \n Missy - \"Blue movie\" is another term for a porn movie. There's one famous porn star named Missy in particular.\n She's in the encyclopedia as the only porn star with that name. She\n lived in San Fernando Valley, where also the origin of Bad Religion\n lies. It's possible that they knew each other from school as they were\n all of the same age.\n \n Tom - Tom Clement One of Brett's friends who died in a car accident in 1986 (Brett thinks he committed suicide). The song Give\n You Nothing has an alternate name called \"Tom Clements\".\n \n Milo - Milo Aukerman The singer of the Descendents. \"Milo goes to college\" is the title of one of the Descendents albums.\n \n Rodney - Rodney Bingenheimer A famed Hollywood radio DJ on the notable Los Angeles rock station KROQ. Famous from his \"Rodney on the\n roq\" show on which he played Bad Religion for the first time on the\n radio.\n \n GG - G.G. Allin or Greg Ginn Either G.G. Allin, an American punk rock singer-songwriter who performed and recorded with many groups\n during his career, or Greg Ginn, the founder and guitarist of Black\n Flag, is meant.\n \n Laurie - This could possibly be Laurie Anderson, the only one alternative/punk music in the business I can think of with the name\n Laurie.\n \n Jack - Jack Grisham The singer of TSOL. He was known to wear a skirt on stage.\n \n Billy - Brett Gurewitz Billy is an alias for Brett himself (as in No Control / Into the Unknown's Billy Gnosis). This is a reference to\n when he was caught with ten balloons of heroin and was ordered by the\n court to go to rehab.\n \n Wendy - Mr. Brett's daughter's name is Wendy\n \n Eugene - Eugene A skinhead who appeared in the 1981 punk rock documentary film \"The Decline of Western Civilization\".\n \n Mugger - Steve Corbin Mugger was his nickname. He was a roadie for Black Flag.\n \n Mary - Mary Harron, news reporter/publisher, possibly sarcasm with the line here.?", "Put your pauses wherever you wish but know that they will tell the reader how to read it.\n\nPoetry is meant to be read aloud. Or at least imagined so in the mind. Tell your reader how and where to pause.\n\n\nA comma.\nA final punctuating mark (period, exclamation mark, question mark).\nA line break.\nA stanza break.\n\n\nThese are the primary methods by which a poet indicates a pause, in order of length.\n\nThe line you quote comes from Michael Drayton's poem Poly-Olbion, \"a topographical poem describing England and Wales,\" first published in 1612. He wrote it in alexandrine couplets, which explains the odd punctuation mark in the middle that serves as a pause.\n\n\n Whereas the French alexandrine is syllabic, the English is\n accentual-syllabic; and the central caesura (a defining feature of the\n French) is not always rigidly preserved in English...The strict\n English alexandrine may be exemplified by a passage from Poly-Olbion,\n which features a rare caesural enjambment (symbolized ¦) in the first\n line:\n \n Ye sacred Bards, that to ¦ your harps' melodious strings\n\n\nWhen others quote this stanza, they inevitably leave out the comma-like ¦. Why? Because that strict rhythm of alexandrine isn't necessary anywhere else. Like you say, it breaks the natural flow of the verse.\n\nFor Drayton, the rule wasn't that he couldn't put the caesura where he wanted to, but that he felt himself forced to add in a caesura where it otherwise wouldn't belong. And in a particularly awkward way to boot.\n\nSo pause where you want the reader to breathe.\n\nIf you choose a strict style and wish to adhere to it exactly, that's your choice, just know that sometimes it makes the reader do things you might not want.", "For your title question, there's this:\n\n\n Under federal law, banks generally must make funds available to you from U.S. Treasury checks, most other governmental checks, and official bank checks (cashier’s checks, certified checks, and teller’s checks), a business day after you deposit the check. \n\n\nhttps://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0159-fake-checks\n\nThat law appears to be Expedited Funds Availability Act. Since the banks are required to provide the funds relatively quickly, they often don't have time to fully vet the checks before cashing them. So a law that presumably was intended to make things easier for people has been hijacked to run scams. It does seem to me, however, that banks could be more transparent about the funds being provisional.\n\nAs for your question about why no one is doing anything about it, the banks are generally able to push the cost onto the victims, and the victims don't generally have much power, and there's probably an element of victim-blaming going on.", "One finds a full explanation of this formula and much more about the connection between random walks and electric networks in the little gem Random walks and electric networks by Peter G. Doyle and J. Laurie Snell, freely available.", "It's true that in the show, Michael does explicitly call Toby out for being part of \"corporate\". There are a couple reasons why I don't think that meant he should have been removed when Sabre took over (though the two reasons are tied together).\n\nFor one, Michael himself claims that he is part of Corporate. Since it's Michael that brings it up both times, it seems like if Sabre fired Toby, they also would have fired Michael. This happens in S02E02 - \"Sexual Harassment\". Michael Scott says:\n\n\n \"I am so used to being the bad boy. I am so used to fighting corporate, that I forget that I am corporate; upper management.\"\n\n\nVideo of scene from The Office Youtube channel, timestamped 2:39\n\nThe other reason ties in why Michael, Toby and Holly all kept their jobs. It was as David Wallace said when he told Michael about the buyout; they bought Dunder Mifflin specifically for the sales offices. Those were what worked.\n\nAs far as I remember, not a single office worker was fired when they merged with Sabre. Sabre just added their own oversight and communication by having Gabe around, and many things about the office remained essentially untouched. After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.", "For case 1, the unstated assumptions are that prostitution will take place regardless of the government's attempts to stop it, and even if there are illicit massage parlors populated with victims of human trafficking, there are also illicit massage parlors with voluntary prostitutes. The voluntary prostitutes will not be \"rescued\" because, they don't need \"rescuing\" and if they keep doing sex work they will do it elsewhere. There are many values of \"elsewhere\" more dangerous for the prostitute and less desirable for society than an illicit massage parlor, e.g. city streets.\n\nFor case 2, most mandatory reporting laws require that the mandatory reporter's personally identifying information be taken and made available. This information may be published to other law enforcement personnel and may appear in court documents depending on how a case proceeds. The reporter therefore can be subject to intimidation. Also, if you know who the reporter is, it is a trivial exercise for a criminal organization to determine when and where that person works and therefore determine who is likely to be the victim that caused the report to be filed.", "I won't speak to your own particular situation; there's not enough information to make any kind of judgement on whether the moderators are right or not. But as a general rule, I can think of at least one situation where a permanent ban is indeed the right thing to do. In the case of harassment, allowing a harasser back onto the site will often make the victim feel unsafe again. The victim doesn't know for sure whether the perpetrator has changed or has simply learned to say the right things to con the moderators into thinking that they have done so.\n\nThere's also the simple issue that if the moderators don't hold by the rules for one person, you'll get others complaining that, \"if X was let back in, why shouldn't Y be?\" regardless of how similar the situations may or may not be. It opens up a can of worms that the moderators may not want to deal with.\n\nI do agree with Chris F that any site with moderation should keep a record of moderation decisions.", "light spoilers ahead for We Own the Night, Inglorious Basterds and Michael Clayton ahead\n\nBe careful not to get too lost in the technical details. Be mindful of the overall purpose of the sound design. I brought this up in another question a couple years ago... the movie, We Own the Night, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg has a very compelling car chase sequence in the rain where the viewer gets the sense of claustrophobia as the unwilling passenger in the car that's being chased thanks to great editing and sound design.\n\nIn Inglorious Basterds, the scene where the Nazi officer gets beaten to death with a bat is pretty intense. You get this great buildup as Sgt. Donny Donowitz beats his bat against the wall of this long tunnel for an eternity... before he even appears on screen. Accompanying his entrance is this epic music that heralds the Bear Jew and just when the tension and music builds up to its highest point, the music is pulled out and all we hear are the cheers of the American Soldiers and the brutal pummeling of the twitching Nazi officer. It kind of makes for a rather dystopic experience if your sensitive to such brutality. At the same time, the movie does not really tell you how to feel about the scene. It's pretty much determined by how you feel about the situation as it unfolded.\n\nLastly, there's a scene in Michael Clayton near the end where Michael's Car blows up in the background. You see his car in the distance and out of focus blow up and almost a second later you hear the explosion. Perhaps someone accidentally slipped the explosion SFX behind a second or so by accident. Or, was it done on purpose to create a surreal effect. As if to ask yourself, \"Did my car just blow up?\" only to get the affirmative answer a half second later with the explosion. Or perhaps that happened as recorded because light travels faster than sound and to get that delay, Michael was far enough away from the effect to watch that delay occur (shrug) \n\nAnyway, my point is to also consider the context or the role sound design plays in supporting or telling the story.", "The exact number of date rape is not known since there is fear of inflated statistics in accounting for rape numbers in USA. Also according to a 2013 global review, 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence and more often than not, cases of violence against women go unreported. \n\nDate rape is a subset of acquaintance rape where nonconsensual sex occurs between two people who are in a romantic relationship. \"Acquaintance rape also includes rapes in which the victim and perpetrator have been in a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship, for example as co-workers or neighbors. Date rape is particularly prevalent on college campuses, where it frequently occurs in situations involving alcohol or other date rape drugs, which may facilitate the execution of drug facilitated sexual assault DFSA\". \n\nPer CDC in 2010, the annual estimated number of completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration rape victims is 780,000 out of estimated rape victims of 1,270,000. The life time estimated number of Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration rape victims is 9,524,000 out of estimated rape victims of 21,840,000 in USA. About 5% of women (5.2%) experienced attempted forced penetration, and 8.0% experienced alcohol/drug-facilitated completed forced penetration. One percent, or approximately 1.3 million women, reported some type of rape victimization in the 12 months prior to taking the survey. \n\nPer CDC in 2013, the annual estimated number of rape victims in USA (Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration) is not reported since relative standard error > 30%. The life time estimated number of rape victims in USA (Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration) per CDC 2010 is 4,098,000 out of estimated rape victims of 11,162,000. Nearly 1 in 10 women in the United States (9.4%) has been raped by an intimate partner in her lifetime, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.\n\nHowever, National Crime Victimization Survey by Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013 quotes a different total annual rape victims number of 96970 (students 31302 and nonstudents 65668) where completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration numbers are not exactly known since survey does not specifically ask about incidents in which the victim was unable to provide consent because of drug or alcohol consumption.", "Dr Manhattan doesn't perceive time as coexistent, he EXPERIENCES it as such. \n\n There are clues in the syntax Alan Moore uses to articulate Osterman when he is speaking in the first person: notice the tense.\n\nNo matter where he is, he always expresses himself in the present tense: 'I am watching the stars', 'The Photograph IS in my hand', 'It IS 1985, I am on Mars'.\n\nHe never makes a statement using the past participle, because for him he is experiencing the past simultaneously as the future and as such it is all very much the present for him.\n\nHe's a deliberately obtuse creation, and that's why he's discussed so much, because he holds a position and standpoint outside of human experience and understanding.\n\nHe cannot travel through time, because he is IN and ACROSS time simultaneously. All moments occur simultaneously, and as such time has become an abstract construct for him, one in which the idea of a sequence of moments becomes meaningless.\n\nThis doesn't mean he can alter or change time; no more than his very personal history anyway. Whilst he can see what is about to happen as far into his own experience as possible (before tachyon interference, hence his distress that this foresight is impinged upon), he can do nothing to stop its steady march, its progress.\n\nHence his muted sorrow when Laurie decides to go to dinner with Dan. He knows it is the beginning of an affair that will separate them, but can do nothing to stop it because he has seen into the future and KNOWS that it happens, because he is already experiencing it.\n\nHe perceives the world as a 'Watchmaker' would, so to speak:\n\nHe knows that 4pm is coming, and nothing he can do will stop 4pm from arriving shortly after 3, and before 5, which is also just as certain to occur. He doesn't try and skip 4pm and move straight onto 5pm, because he knows that's not what happens.", "It's some rarely-used meme. Despite living in Kyiv, I've never heard it before. Searching through Internet shows few Russian-language references (though it doesn't mean that Ukrainian-speaking people don't use it; also the area of this meme is unclear for me: either it's used in Ukraine only, or in larger area like ex-USSR).\n\nThe full phrase seems to sound like:\n\n\n Sorry, Michael, [it's] just business.\n\n\nI've found two versions about it's origin:\n\n\nIt's a distorted phrase from The Godfather (1972) movie:\n\n\n It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business.\n\n\n(which might sound like “Sorry, Sonny, it's just business” in some localizations). Despite this phrase is directed to Sonny, not to Michael — Michael Corleone is actually the one who says it — but it got strongly associated to Michael.\n\nSource: this discussion.\n\n(Similar phrase also seems to appear in The Godfather videogame.)\nIt's from one of anecdotes about Vovochka. Vovochka is a Little Johny-like character of anecdotes, popular since the Soviet era. Some of these anecdotes are political and mock specific-day realities (though often such anecdotes outlive their context and get new names/references/etc when the original context becomes outdated), other are just about human relationships.\n\nThe specific anecdote is:\n\n\n (Somewhere in USSR, Russia or etc during lesson in school.)\n Teacher: “Who is the most popular person?”\n Vovochka: “Michael Jackson!”\n Teacher: “No, you're wrong. It's…” — teacher voices the name of a that-day official authority (Brezhnev, Putin or etc) and continues: “Vovochka, you get the lowest mark!”\n \n The next day…\n Teacher: “Who is the most popular person?”\n Vovochka: “Michael Jackson!”\n Teacher: “No, you're wrong. You get the lowest mark again!” \n \n The next day…\n Teacher: “Who is the most popular person?”\n Vovochka voices a name of that-time authority.\n Teacher: “Excellent! You get the highest mark!”\n Vovochka (stealthily taking Michael Jackson's portrait from his schoolbag and looking onto it with great regret: “Sorry, Michael, it's just business…”\n\n\nSource: this blog item.\n\n\nWhich one of these versions is correct (and maybe none of them, the meme might come from another movie or another source) — I don't know.", "Disclosure: I work for one of vendors participating in NoMoreRansom.\n\nMost modern ransomware indeed implements proper cryptography. Earlier versions were using rand() for key generation, seeding the random generators with variants of time() - this is why it was important for successful decryption to know when exactly the infection happened; ideally down to minutes. Those could be decrypted with brute force. But most modern ransomware indeed uses either Windows Crypto API, or bundled crypto libraries.\n\nHowever, no matter how correctly ransomware is implemented, there is always a weak point - to facilitate decryption, the key(s) have to be stored somewhere. This location could be traced by security companies, who would work together with law enforcement to take it over. Access to the server gives the security company the ability to decrypt the ransomware victims files. This is for example the case with GangCrab ransomware.", "Meh, I work at a HQ of a large multinational company that is in EU. It has been a topic here. The thing is: these politicians are not aware about the technological feasibility of enforcing these new copy right laws. They are not IT'ers like we are. They think that you can say to a computer that \"this image shall not be uploaded because it exists (partially) on site X\".\n\nTry to explain the technological limitations of enforcing that rule in layman's terms. That is damn hard to do. There was a moment where I almost broke my bic (a pen) when trying to explain why that rule - despite that I do understand the need for it - is hard to implement to a lawyer.\n\nPlease be aware that the vote did not happen so far. And the next scheduled vote might be delayed due of Brexit / lobbying / ... It is just the uncertainty. That is not fun. It took a while when GDPR got voted. Fortunately, they gave companies time to comply the new regulations. The whole GDPR is a good thing IMO. Even if it has led to some annoys, technological problems, budget impact, ... Yet I have heard from a GDPR lawyer (got contracted to check the company) that there is a lot companies that are not in compliance with GDPR. That day was some weeks before the final deadline.\n\nHowever - please don't read this as something that would happen - assume that Article 13 gets voted. It is possible to have a approach like this: A site owner provides a link (most companies have these anyways) where you, as a copyrighted owner of a content (via a patent or another legal document) want to see some content removed. And the site owner then clears it. That is what happens nowadays. Well, mostly. It has happened often that a large company (le Google or Facebook) refuses to remove content from their site, despite the copyright infringement. That article is just a legal means to protect a person more. This regulation gives him better tools to protect his - registered - creation. If yours request got denied, you can go to the court to issue an order to remove the content. Then the judge can order the removal. Possibility with a small fine. And a monetary value to pay back the victim (there is a specific term for it, but idk how it is worded in English). Yet that is often time consuming for both courts and the victim. Not to mention the cost. The victim does not always have money to \"fight\" against large companies that have a team of skilled lawyers at their appeal. Assume that Article 13 gets voted, then the victim has more chance of protection and the judge can order a huge fine, at a level that it really would hurt companies in their pocket. To \"encourage\" them to remove content if there are copyright infringements.\n\nIn essence, that article 13 is just for hurting large companies in a sensible spot: \"their wallet\". Courts can order a huge fine if eg Google refuses to remove some content." ]

[ "The permanent incisors, canines, and premolars are called succedaneous teeth because they replace (succeed) the primary teeth." ]

[ "['Upper front teeth close in front of the lower teeth.', 'Lower teeth protrude past upper front teeth.', \"Upper and lower jaws don't line up.\", 'Extra spaces between teeth.', \"Top and bottom teeth don't meet.\", 'Crooked Teeth. ... ', 'Generally Straight Teeth.']", "They're Called Mamelons! We are excited to inform you that those little ridges on the chewing edges of some of your teeth are called mamelons. What you didn't experience in regard to your dental development was the way that your teeth formed beneath your gums.", "The teeth most frequently removed for orthodontic reasons are the first bicuspid (premolar) teeth. These are the teeth right between the cuspid or eyeteeth (under the eyes) and the molar teeth (the biggest back teeth). In some cases premolar teeth can be removed without sacrificing future cosmetics or function.", "What are molars? Your 12 molars are your biggest and strongest teeth.", "The premolar teeth, or bicuspids, are transitional teeth located between the canine and molar teeth. In humans, there are two premolars per quadrant in the permanent set of teeth, making eight premolars total in the mouth.", "A child's mouth contains 20 initial teeth, called primary teeth, baby teeth, or deciduous teeth, consisting of the following teeth types: 4 second molars. 4 first molars. 4 cuspids (also called canine or eye teeth)", "Natal teeth. Natal teeth are teeth that are already present at birth. They are different from neonatal teeth, which grow in during the first 30 days after birth.", "Refers to the six upper and six lower teeth located towards the front of the mouth; includes incisors and cuspids. The anterior teeth and bicuspids are the teeth showing when you smile.", "What are the risks of teeth whitening? No matter what treatment you use, there's a chance your gums will be sensitive to the chemicals used in teeth whitening, particularly if you already have sensitive teeth. There's also a chance of burns to gums and some of the whitening kits used at home can harm tooth enamel.", "Your Teeth Compared to Animals. As humans, our teeth are made to break down the meat and plants we eat as omnivores. For animals, their teeth are also based on what they eat, but the different diets of herbivores and carnivores cause their teeth to be different from ours.", "Microdontia. What term is used to describe two teeth that are joined together? Fusion.", "['Incisors – The four front teeth in both the upper and lower jaws are called incisors. ... ', 'Canines – There are four canines in the oral cavity. ... ', 'Premolars (Bicuspids) – These teeth are located behind and adjacent to the canines and are designed to crush food. ... ', 'Molars – The most posterior teeth in the mouth are the molars.']", "What's typical? Although timing varies widely, babies often begin teething by about age 6 months. The two bottom front teeth (lower central incisors) are usually the first to appear, followed by the two top front teeth (upper central incisors).", "What are amber teething necklaces? Amber teething necklaces are most commonly said to be made from Baltic amber and to work by reducing inflammation in the baby, which then decreases their pain from teething.", "Answer: An ear that is erect and now is floppy could be due to teething. What's happening in these pups is that their bodies are using their calcium for teeth development instead of developing ear structure.", "Usually, the top teeth should slightly overlap the bottom teeth. But in an underbite or deep bite, the lower teeth sit in front of the upper jaw.", "['one pair of incisors in each jaw (upper and lower)', 'incisors grow continuously.', 'incisors lack enamel on the back of the tooth (and are worn down with use)', 'a large gap (diastema) behind incisors.', 'no canine teeth.', 'complex jaw musculature.', 'baculum (penis bone)']", "Two peg-shaped teeth may form behind a child's top incisors. An entire extra mouthful of tooth buds can grow alongside a child's actual teeth. These are examples of a condition called hyperdontia. Whether the extra teeth form near deciduous or permanent teeth, they're called supernumerary teeth.", "What are amber teething necklaces? These are necklaces strung with amber beads, sometimes with a magnetic fastener or another kind of clasp, and designed to help with teething pain. (There are also amber teething bracelets.) Amber is a natural substance created when tree resin becomes fossilized.", "\"Wolf teeth\" are the vestigial/rudimentary 1st premolar teeth in the horse that have been bypassed in evolution meaning they have no known function, unlike the 2nd , 3rd and 4th premolars which are full size cheek teeth and form part of the \"grinding unit \" in each dental arcade .", "['Incisors. There are four incisors in each arch- two central incisors and two lateral incisors. ... ', 'Canines. There are two canines in each arch. ... ', 'Premolars. There are four premolars in each arch- two first premolars and two second premolars. ... ', 'Molars.']", "RWBY is a 3D indie anime made by Rooster Teeth, but what makes it so special?", "Introduction. Natal teeth are teeth present at birth, and “neonatal teeth” are teeth erupted within the first month of life.", "An entire extra mouthful of tooth buds can grow alongside a child's actual teeth. These are examples of a condition called hyperdontia. Whether the extra teeth form near deciduous or permanent teeth, they're called supernumerary teeth.", "Sutural bones are sporadically found in the course of cranial sutures and fontanels or isolated. They are supernumerary irregular, accessory and abnormal small bones interposed between cranial bones, most commonly located in the lambdoid suture.", "At birth, the baby has a full set of 20 primary teeth (10 in the upper jaw, 10 in the lower jaw) hidden within the gums. Primary teeth are also known as baby teeth, milk teeth or deciduous teeth.", "What has teeth but can't bite? A comb. Other inanimate objects with teeth like a saw, zipper or a gear can “bite” you. ... It's a rare event that anyone would be injured by a comb.", "There is, however, what we would consider a normal range for the appearance of baby teeth. You can usually expect to see the first tooth between 4-15 months, with your baby having, on average: four teeth by 11 months old. eight teeth at 15 months.", "He said: “Kate Middleton's teeth are what we would call practically imperfect, perfect teeth. “They are straight but not perfectly aligned, they are a good size and shape although the proportion of length to width looks slightly out.”", "Teeth are used to bite, tear, chew and gnaw. In this regard, teeth symbolize power. And the loss of teeth in your dream may be from a sense of powerlessness. ... This dream may be an indication that you need to be more assertive and believe in the importance of what you have to say.", "Cuspids (Canines) – conical with a pointed tip for tearing and slashing. Bicuspids (Premolars) – have one or two roots and flattened crowns with prominent ridges for crushing, mashing and grinding. Molars – have three or more roots and broader crowns with ridges for crushing and grinding.", "1) The implant: A screw that serves as a root for your new teeth. This is what permanently attaches to your jaw. 2) The abutment: A permanent, but removable by your doctor, connector that supports and holds a tooth or set of teeth." ]

[ "Shahzad Shah, 56, died following an incident at Mirchi Indian takeaway in Mintlaw on Monday 11 April.\nHidayet Ozden, 52, of Falkirk, appeared at Peterhead Sheriff Court charged with murder and assault.\nHe made no plea or declaration, was fully committed, and was released on bail." ]

[ "Arkadiusz Jozwik, 39, was assaulted on 27 August in The Stow, Harlow, and later died in hospital.\nThe teenager, who cannot be named because of his age, will appear at Chelmsford Youth Court in January.\nMr Jozwik, who was also known as Arek, was with a friend outside a takeaway when they were attacked. His friend, 43, suffered hand and stomach injuries.\nMr Jozwik was taken to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge following the attack and died from head injuries.\nHis family described him as a hard-working man who loved spending time with them.\nPolice said they had been authorised by prosecutors to charge a 15-year-old boy from Harlow with manslaughter in connection with Mr Jozwik's death.\nHe has been released on police bail until his first court appearance.\nIn a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said police had decided to take no further action in relation to five other youths who were at the scene.", "Andrea Lewis, 51, was discovered at the home in Fairyland Road, Tonna, Neath, at about 08:00 GMT on 30 January.\nRhys Trevor Anthony Hobbs, 43, of Tonna, appeared at Swansea Crown Court on Friday charged with her murder.\nHe was remanded in custody until his next court hearing on 24 March.\nA second man, 46, also arrested in connection with her death, has been released on police bail.", "Paul Pass, 49, died after an attack in Gloucester last Friday.\nTwo teenagers are charged with his murder and kidnap and other charges relating to the death, at Marian Court flats in the city's Archdeacon Street.\nRezwan Islam, 18, of Derby Road, Gloucester, and a 17-year-old male from Woolwich in south-east London are due to appear before magistrates.\nThey have also been charged with the kidnap and section 18 wounding of another man, all in connection with the events leading up to Mr Pass's murder.\nBilal Ebrahim Moosjiee, 19, of Podsmead Road in Gloucester, was also charged with two counts of kidnap, while a 17-year-old Gloucester man has been charged with assisting an offender.\nDetectives are continuing to question an 18-year-old Gloucester man in connection with the murder, while five other males arrested in connection with the case have been bailed to return to police at a later date.", "The man and woman were arrested after the child was taken to hospital from Rochdale with multiple injuries on Tuesday and later died.\nThe man has been charged with murder. The woman has been charged with causing or allowing the death of a child.\nBoth have been remanded in custody to appear at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court on Saturday.\nThe man and woman cannot be named for legal reasons.", "Qiang Gao, 39, attacked the co-worker in the kitchen of the Szechuan Express takeaway in Thatcham, Berkshire in May.\nThe victim, 40, suffered severe head injuries including a fractured skull and had a finger partially severed.\nGao, of Acorn Drive, Thatcham was found guilty of attempted murder at Reading Crown Court.\nAdrian Foster, chief crown prosecutor for Thames and Chiltern Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: \"There is no doubt that, with the force used, Gao intended to kill the victim.\n\"Gao clearly acted out of blind retaliation in a grossly disproportionate manner and is undoubtedly an extremely dangerous man.\"\nGao was arrested on 28 May and charged with attempted murder the following day.\nHe denied attempted murder, claiming self-defence, but was found guilty by a jury after a five-day trial.", "Abdul Hadi Arwani, 48, was found dead on 7 April in Wembley. He was believed to be a critic of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.\nA 36-year-old man was arrested on Friday on suspicion of conspiracy to murder and has since been bailed.\nTwo people arrested remain in custody and a man has been charged with murder.\nLeslie Cooper, 36, appeared in court charged with Mr Arwani's murder.\nAt Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court Mr Cooper, of Nightingale Road, Brent, was remanded in custody.\nLast week, officers said they were searching a number of addresses including the mosque at the An Noor Cultural and Community Centre in Acton, west London, where Mr Arwani had been an imam.\nMr Arwani, who was a British national, was found with bullet injuries to his chest in a parked car at the junction of Greenhill and The Paddocks.\nThe father of six had been an imam at the An Noor mosque from 2005 to 2011, and is believed to have attended protests against the Assad regime outside the Syrian embassy in London in 2012.\nIn 1982, he claimed he was forced to flee Syria after being sentenced to death for photographing damage in his home city of Hama following government suppression of a rebellion.\nA 61-year-old man held in connection with the murder has also been arrested over terrorism acts.\nA 53-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of terror acts in connection with the death.", "Police were called on Monday to reports of a sudden death at an address in Wellington Court, Burnley, where the body of a baby girl was found.\nA post-mortem examination showed she had suffered a number of injuries, Lancashire Police said.\nThe infant's mother, Rachel Tunstill, 26, was charged with murder on Friday and is due to appear before Preston Crown Court on Saturday.\nA 30-year-old man from Burnley has been released without charge and police said they were \"completely satisfied\" he had no involvement in the baby's death.\nDet Ch Insp Jill Johnston said Ms Tunstill was charged \"following a complex investigation and after consulting with the Crown Prosecution Service\".", "The Metropolitan Police said the 33-year-old had also been charged with the rape, attempted murder and kidnap of a woman in her 20s.\nAnother man, 28, has been charged with the kidnap of both women.\nThe teenager's body was found at an address in Coombe Lane West, in Kingston Upon Thames, on Wednesday night, three hours after she had been reported missing, police said.\nThe second woman had earlier been treated for stab or slash wounds at a south London hospital.\nPolice had visited the women's addresses in Sutton and Merton following a concerned call about their safety at about 17:00 BST on Wednesday.\nThe teenager's name has not yet been released, but her next of kin have been informed.\nA post-mortem examination revealed the cause of death was a neck wound.\nThe two men, who have not been named by police, will appear at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on Monday.", "George Elwood Tschaggeny, 51, was found wearing the wedding ring of one of the victims, Ricky Best, police say.\nMr Best, 53, was killed when he intervened to protect two young women from anti-Muslim abuse last week.\nHis ring and backpack were stolen after the stabbing on Tuesday.\nMr Tschaggeny has been charged with theft, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse. He is due in court on Monday.\nMr Best, an army veteran, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, have been hailed as heroes for their actions.\nThe pair intervened to protect two young women, one of whom was wearing a hijab, from a man shouting abuse at them.\nJeremy Joseph Christian, 35, is accused of stabbing both men, as well as another victim who survived.\nThe news that someone had stolen belongings from Mr Best prompted an outcry and an appeal from police to help recovering the items.\nPolice department spokesman Pete Simpson had tweeted: \"Find this man Portland. This family has already suffered too much pain.\"\nPolice said they received \"numerous tips\" about a man matching the suspect's description, including one from a pizza restaurant employee who directed them to where he was staying.\nPolice also recovered Mr Best's missing backpack, but his wallet and phone were missing.\nEarlier in the week, the accused in the stabbing incident, Jeremy Joseph Christian, appeared in court charged with murder, attempted murder, possession of a weapon and intimidation.\nDuring a brief court appearance on Tuesday, he made no plea, but shouted slogans such as: \"You call it terrorism. I call it patriotism\" and \"death to the enemies of America\".\nHe is due to appear in court again on 7 June.", "Five days later, police investigating her disappearance confirmed her body had been found and an extensive search was under way for a second possible murder victim.\nThe following shows the key events in the search for the 22-year-old and the investigation into her death.\nSian O'Callaghan is last seen leaving the Suju nightclub in Swindon alone at 0252 GMT to walk half a mile home to the flat she shares with boyfriend Kevin Reape, 25.\nAt 0324 GMT Mr Reape sends a text message to her mobile phone. Cell site analysis later reveals her phone was in the Savernake Forest area, near Marlborough.\nAt 0945 GMT Mr Reape contacts police and reports Miss O'Callaghan missing.\nPolice issue an appeal for information and reveal they have been searching the 4,500-acre Savernake Forest.\nDet Supt Steve Fulcher, who is leading the investigation, says it has been established that Miss O'Callaghan's LG E900 Optimus mobile phone had activated in a six-and-a-half mile radius of the mast at Cadley.\nAt 1500 GMT Mr Reape appeals for information to help find her at a news conference.\nAlso present are Miss O'Callaghan's parents Mick, 51, and Elaine, 48, and younger sister Lora, 19.\nDetectives release CCTV of Miss O'Callaghan leaving the Suju club.\nAbout 400 people, including Miss O'Callaghan's friends and Mr Reape, help search Savernake Forest after police appeal for the public's help.\nAn anonymous donor offers a £20,000 reward for information to help find her.\nPolice say further use of mobile phone technology had produced several \"hot spots\" that specialist search teams are examining.\nThe public are asked not to join the searches.\nDet Supt Fulcher says the inquiry is moving at a \"rapid pace\" with \"significant lines of inquiry being developed\".\nAbout 200 people attend a vigil for Miss O'Callaghan.\nSpecialist dog teams are brought in to aid the search through woodland.\nPolice make an \"urgent\" appeal to anyone who saw a green Toyota Avensis estate taxi on the day Miss O'Callaghan disappeared to contact them.\nThe reward to help find her rises to £40,000.\nA man is arrested on suspicion of kidnap at a supermarket in north Swindon where police also seize a green Toyota car.\nA police tent is erected in the front garden of a house on Ashbury Avenue in Swindon.\nPolice confirm a number of locations are also being searched as part of the inquiry.\nPolice find Miss O'Callaghan's body and search for a second possible victim after arresting a 47-year-old man on suspicion of double murder and kidnap.\nPolice investigating Miss O'Callaghan's murder say they are searching for the body of another person who went missing from Wiltshire \"several years ago\" at Eastleach in Gloucestershire.\nPolice are granted until the early hours of Monday to question the man being held in connection with Miss O'Callaghan's murder.\nPolice searching for a second body near Eastleach in Gloucestershire find human remains.\nAt 2120 GMT, Christopher Halliwell, 47, of Ashbury Avenue, Swindon, is charged with the murder of Miss O'Callaghan.\nMr Halliwell is remanded in custody by Swindon magistrates to appear before Bristol Crown Court on 30 March.\nMiss O'Callaghan's father Mick says the family's pain at hearing of her death is \"raw and overwhelming\".\nMr Halliwell is remanded in custody to appear via video link at Bristol Crown Court on 8 April. No application for bail is made.\nAn inquest into Miss O'Callaghan's death is opened and adjourned at Oxford Coroner's Court. The hearing is told she is likely to have died of head injuries.\nHundreds of people march through Swindon in memory of Miss O'Callaghan.\nPolice say they have identified a woman whose remains were found near Eastleach in Gloucestershire.\nPolice name the woman whose remains were found near Eastleach as Becky Godden, from Swindon, who had been missing for eight years.\nKaren Edwards, Becky Godden's mother, is joined by about 20 friends and family to lay flowers and a teddy bear at the site where Miss Godden's body was discovered.\nMr Halliwell appears via video link at Bristol Crown Court from Long Lartin prison.\nThe case is adjourned until 14 July for a plea and case management hearing.\nHundreds of people line the streets of Swindon for Sian O'Callaghan's funeral.\nHalliwell denies murdering Sian O'Callaghan at Preston Crown Court but a charge of murdering Becky Godden is removed from the indictment. Mrs Justice Cox rules that evidence gained following his arrest was inadmissable.\nHalliwell pleads guilty at Bristol Crown Court to murdering Sian O'Callaghan. He is sentenced to life imprisonment and must serve a minumum of 25 years.", "Danielle McLaughlin from Buncrana in County Donegal was found dead in a field close to tourist resorts in the western state of Goa.\nOne man has been charged with her murder.\nThe campaign has assembled an international legal team, headed by Londonderry solicitor Des Doherty.\n\"I spoke with the chief investigating officer in relation to the case before the Easter break and he assures me at this point, subject to any further evidence coming to light, that they are not looking for any other suspects,\" he said.\n\"That is something we are obviously looking very closely at in view of all the statements and video footage and photographs we have received ourselves to date.\"\nA post-mortem examination concluded that brain damage and constriction of the neck caused the 28-year-old's death in Canacona.\nA 24-year-old man, whose name has been reported as Vikat Bhagat, appeared in court last month charged with murder, and will also face rape charges.", "Armed police were called to reports of gun shots being fired on Shawclough Way in Rochdale, at about 21:50 BST on Tuesday.\nA 35-year-old woman was found with stab injuries and treated by paramedics, but later died in hospital.\nJosphat Mutekedza, 35, has been charged with murder and firearms offences and is due to appear in court later.\nA 45-year-old man also arrested in connection with the death has been released without charge.", "Keal Richards, of Francis Street, Chapeltown, appeared before Leeds magistrates charged with the murder of Raheem Wilks, 19.\nMr Wilks, the brother of Leeds United's Mallik Wilks, was found seriously injured on Gathorn Terrace in Harehills at 13:20 GMT on Thursday.\nMr Richards, 21, was remanded to appear at Leeds Crown Court on Thursday.\nMore on this story from BBC Leeds and West Yorkshire\nIn court, he spoke only to confirm his name and address and answer the charge of murder.\nA post-mortem examination revealed Mr Wilks died as a result of a single gunshot wound to the chest.\nA 49-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman previously arrested in connection with the death have been released on bail.", "Makram Ali, 51, from Haringey, was hit by the vehicle after leaving a prayer meeting at Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park on 19 June.\nAn inquest at St Pancras Coroner's Court heard that he is believed to have had a \"medical episode\" shortly before.\nDarren Osborne, 47, from Cardiff, has appeared in court charged with murder and attempted murder.\nHe appeared at the Old Bailey on Tuesday charged with killing Mr Ali and the attempted murder of others at the scene.\nNine other people were injured as a result of the attack.\nDetective Inspector Edwin Hall of the Metropolitan Police told the court that the incident was being treated as a terrorist-related murder.\nA post-mortem examination found Mr Ali's death was caused by multiple injuries.\nAccording to his family, Mr Ali had suffered some form of collapse due to a weak leg and was \"sitting up and expressing a wish to return home\" when the attack happened.\nHis relatives have previously described him as a \"quiet, gentle man\" who \"spent his whole life without any enemies\" and who regularly attended the local mosque.\nMr Ali came to the UK from Bangladesh aged 10 and was married with four daughters, two sons and two grandchildren.\nThe inquest was opened and adjourned by senior coroner for Inner North London Mary Hassell, until any criminal proceedings have finished.", "Arunasalam Arunothayan, 48, from Coventry, died in hospital on Thursday after being assaulted in Foleshill Road.\nA 31-year-old man from the city has now been arrested on suspicion of murder.\nKirithas Sriskantharajah, 34, of Church Way, Bedworth, has appeared in court charged with murder and two other people have been arrested.\nMr Sriskantharajah appeared at Coventry Magistrates' Court on Monday, was remanded in custody and is due to appear at Warwick Crown Court sitting at Leamington on 11 March.\nA 39-year-old man from Holbrooks and a 20-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion of murder. The woman has been released on police bail.", "The body of PC Gordon Semple, 59, was found in a flat at the Peabody Estate, in Southwark Street, on Thursday - a week after he went missing.\nStefano Brizzi, 49, appeared via videolink at Bromley Magistrates' Court. No indication of plea was given.\nHe was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 13 April.\nMr Brizzi is charged with murdering PC Semple at his flat at some time between 1 April and 7 April.\nWearing a grey prison issue tracksuit, he confirmed his name, age and address as he appeared next to a lawyer at Lewisham Police Station.\nDuring the brief hearing, bearded Mr Brizzi told the court: \"I'm an Italian citizen but a UK resident.\"\nFollowing the hearing it emerged police are keen to speak to a man seen at Mr Brizzi's flat on 1 April - he was only there for one minute and did not go inside.\nDet Ch Insp Cliff Lyons, who is leading the investigation into PC Semple's death, said: \"I am keen to trace a man who went to Brizzi's flat in Southwark Street on Friday, 1 April at about 15:00.\n\"It is incredibly important that we speak to him.\"\nPC Semple, from Greenhithe, Dartford was originally from Inverness in Scotland.\nHe had worked in banking before joining the Metropolitan Police.\nA post-mortem examination was carried out on 8 April but the cause of death was not determined. A further post mortem has been scheduled for Wednesday.", "Former nurse Malcolm Webster, 52, was found guilty in May of murdering Claire Morris in Aberdeenshire in 1994.\nWebster, of Guildford, Surrey, had also denied attempting to kill Felicity Drumm in New Zealand in 1999.\nHe was jailed for life for the crimes, committed as part of a plot to claim almost £1m in life assurance money.\nAt the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Lord Bannatyne said Webster - who must serve 30 years before he can apply for parole - had committed \"cold-blooded, brutal and callous\" crimes for financial gain.\nHe said: \"The murder of your then wife was an appalling one and all right-minded people will be utterly shocked.\"\nMs Morris' family said Webster was a \"monster\".\nHer brother, Peter Morris, said he believed that 30 years was \"the correct sentence for an extremely dangerous criminal\".\nHe told BBC Scotland: \"It's more important that he's taken from society because of the damage he can cause to women.\n\"I would hate for that to happen to anyone else.\"\nHe also announced his intention to set up a foundation in his sister's name, aimed at improving the after-care for people involved in serious court cases.\nMr Morris said he wanted bereaved family members to be treated as important people rather than \"second-class citizens\".\nWebster was found guilty after Scotland's longest-lasting single accused criminal trial, which began on 1 February at the High Court in Glasgow.\nThe jury, of nine women and six men, took less than four hours to find Webster guilty of all the charges, as part of frauds to obtain hundreds of thousands of pounds in life assurance.\nThe fatal crash in 1994 was originally treated as an accident.\nWebster said he had swerved to avoid a motorcyclist.\nHowever, the crash was later reinvestigated, after concerns were raised in the wake of the second crash, in Auckland.\nNew tests showed Ms Morris had traces of drugs in her system.\nMs Drumm, who also suspected that Webster had also been spiking her food and setting fire to their homes, alerted the authorities in New Zealand after surviving a car crash in which Webster was driving.\nAfter the crash she realised he had cheated her of her life savings and was set to gain a huge payout in the event of her death. Webster then returned to the UK.\nIn a chance meeting, Ms Drumm's sister later told a UK police officer of her concerns, and this proved to be pivotal in the case.\nWebster was also found guilty of intending to bigamously marry Simone Banarjee, from Oban, Argyll, to gain access to her estate.\nHe pretended to have leukaemia, and during the deception he shaved his head and eyebrows.\nIn January 2008 police warned her about Webster's past as they closed in on him.\nShe told BBC Scotland that at first she found what they were saying hard to believe.\n\"I thought it was complete nonsense. This could not be the Malcolm Webster that I had known and loved,\" she said.\nBut looking back Ms Banarjee said she now realises the danger she was in.\n\"I do believe I am very lucky,\" she said. \"I think if it wasn't for Strathclyde Police things may have turned out very, very differently.\"\nMs Banarjee described Webster as a \"clever man\" and said people's first impression of him was of a \"fine, well spoken, nicely dressed person with nice manners\".\nBut she said she thought his intelligience made him very dangerous.\nShe added: \"He learns from everyone he meets. If I had my way I would make sure that he is in solitary confinement for the rest of his days because he will learn and if he is ever released he will be an increasing danger to anybody else he meets.\"\nAdvocate depute Derek Ogg QC said in his closing speech that Webster was \"a most cruel, practised deceiver\" who, if convicted, would become one of the most notorious murderers of modern times.\nHowever, defence counsel Edgar Prais QC said that although Webster was a \"liar\", a \"thief\", a \"philanderer\" and a \"rat bag\", he was not a killer.\nThe family of Webster's first wife have since asked him to hand over her grave.\nClaire Morris' brother Peter wants to replace her headstone in Aberdeenshire, which still bears her married name and refers to a \"dear wife\".\nMr Morris asked Webster, through his solicitor, to hand over the lair - but the request was rejected.\nAberdeenshire Council had earlier confirmed that changes to the gravestone, at Tarves, needed the authority of the owner.\nMeanwhile, police are also investigating concerns over the deaths of three children at a hospital in Abu Dhabi where Webster worked in the 1980s.", "Army veteran Ricky Best, 53, was killed when he intervened to protect two young women from anti-Muslim abuse last week.\nPortland Police have released an image of a man they say carried Mr Best's backpack from the scene.\nMr Best and fellow victim Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche have been widely hailed as \"heroes\" for their actions.\nOfficers said the backpack contained \"personal items important to the Best family\".\nThe department's official spokesman, Sgt Pete Simpson, tweeted: \"Find this man Portland. This family has already suffered too much pain.\"\nSgt Simpson told Portland's KOIN-6 television: \"We really kind of want to lean on the humanity if there is any there.\"\n\"Turn yourself in, bring the property back so this family can have it,\" he said in an appeal to the thief.\nThe attack happened on 28 May on Portland's Max train, when a man began shouting \"hate speech\" at two young women on the train, one of whom was wearing a hijab.\nWhen passengers attempted to intervene to protect the pair, the man produced a knife and stabbed three people, killing two.\nOne of the two women, 16-year-old Destinee Mangum, said: \"Without them, we probably would be dead right now.\"\nJeremy Joseph Christian, 35, has been charged with murder, attempted murder, possession of a weapon and intimidation.\nDuring a brief court appearance on Tuesday, he made no plea, but instead shouted slogans such as: \"You call it terrorism. I call it patriotism\" and \"death to the enemies of America\".\nHe is due to appear in court again on 7 June.", "Thomas Fox, 29, of Rutland Court in Dublin, is charged with unlawful possession of a handgun.\nThe offence is alleged to have happened at Avondale House on 23 May, the day before Gareth Hutch was killed in the same area.\nGardaí (Irish police) asked that Mr Fox be remanded in custody for a week.\nChief Supt Pat Leahy told the court gardaí were objecting to bail due to the nature and seriousness of the charge.\nHe said the offence carries a potential sentence of up to 14 years in prison and he said a further more serious charge may be brought against Thomas Fox.\nDefence solicitor Yvonne Bambury told the judge that her client had presented himself voluntarily to gardaí, which was \"highly unusual\" in such circumstances.\nShe said he did not appear to be a man who did not intend to stand trial. He has no valid passport and would undertake not to apply for any travel documents. She said his partner was due a baby in six weeks' time.\nGareth Hutch, 35, was shot dead outside flats on North Cumberland Street in Dublin, where he lived, on 24 May.\nHis murder is believed to be the seventh connected to a feud between two criminal gangs.\nA woman was remanded in custody accused of withholding information on Tuesday.\nMary McDonnell, 44, of Avondale House on North Cumberland Street, was charged with failing to disclose information that could assist police.\nShe was remanded in custody to appear in court again on 7 June.\nGareth Hutch was the nephew of Gerard Hutch, a notorious Dublin criminal known as The Monk.\nSix people have died in the greater Dublin area since February as a result of a violent dispute between the Hutch and Kinahan gangs.\nEarlier this month Patrick Hutch became the first man to be charged with one of the murders.\nHe is accused of killing David Byrne in a shooting at a boxing weigh-in event at the Regency Hotel in Dublin in February.\nThe murder of Gerard Hutch's brother, Gary, in Spain last year is believed to have been the first death in the feud.", "Promise Ndlovu's body was found in Charter Street in Leicester on the morning of 29 October.\nLeicestershire Police has referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission as Mr Ndlovu had contacted them prior to his death.\nThe cause of the 40-year-old's death has not been confirmed.\nTwo other men, aged 34 and 55, have previously been charged with conspiracy to murder.\nThe three men charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice are aged 27, 28 and 36, and were due to appear at Leicester Magistrates' Court earlier.\nA fourth man, aged 48, was arrested in connection with the death but has been released with no further action.", "Andrew Coulter, 35, admitted in court he had served six years for killing another man in an unrelated attack.\nHe also admitted to hitting Mr Chhokar with a home-made bat on the night he died but denied fatally stabbing him.\nMr Coulter's uncle, Ronnie Coulter, 48, denies murdering Mr Chhokar. He has blamed his nephew and another man.\nHe has lodged a special defence blaming Andrew Coulter and David Montgomery over the death of Mr Chhokar in Overtown, North Lanarkshire, in November 1998.\nThe murder trial, at the High Court in Glasgow, has already heard that Ronnie Coulter, from Wishaw, was tried and acquitted of murdering 32-year-old Mr Chhokar in 1999.\nHis nephew Andrew Coulter and David Montgomery were tried and acquitted of the murder in 2000.\nThe court previously heard from Mr Chhokar's partner at the time of his death, 56-year-old Elizabeth Bryce.\nShe told the court that Andrew Coulter had broken into Mr Chhokar's flat in nearby Gowkthrapple and stolen and cashed a giro cheque for just over £100.\nMr Bryce said when she had raised the matter with Mr Coulter, he had replied: \"If anything happens to me, Chhokar is getting it.\"\nAndrew Coulter gave evidence on Monday as the trial entered its second week.\nBefore starting his evidence, judge Lord Matthews told Mr Coulter that he did not have to answer any questions that might incriminate him in Mr Chhokar's murder.\nMr Coulter told the court that he had killed a man, Patrick Kelly, by stabbing him in the leg on 11 September 1999.\nHe was originally charged with murder, but convicted of culpable homicide and sentenced to six years detention.\nThe witness also admitted being jailed for six months in 2006 for possession of a knife.\nHe said that on the day Mr Chhokar died, 4 November 1998, he was looking for money to buy alcohol.\nThe witness said that he broke into a flat at Caplaw Tower, Gowkthrapple, which turned out to be Mr Chhokar's, and took a giro cheque he found there.\nHe told the court that he then cashed the cheque, after his uncle had forged Mr Chhokar's signature on it.\nLater that day, Andrew Coulter said he had spoken to Ms Bryce, who had learned of the giro theft.\nMr Coulter said that when police involvement was mentioned, he told her that, if that happened, Mr Chhokar would be \"getting it\".\nWhen asked by prosecutor Alex Prentice QC what that meant, Mr Coulter replied: \"Battered\".\nMr Coulter later admitted that he went to meet Mr Chhokar later that night amid the row over the stolen giro.\nHe said he was accompanied by his uncle, murder accused Ronnie Coulter, and David Montgomery.\nThe witness told the jury that he took a bat with him made out of an old table leg, which had been filled with lead and covered in tape.\nHe said: \"I took the bat. If I couldn't talk to Chhokar, I was going to hit him with it.\"\nThe court has heard that before the three men set off to see Mr Chhokar there was discussion about what they were going to do to him.\nWhen asked what this involved, Andrew Coulter answered: \"Breaking his legs. I was trying to act the hard man.\"\nMr Coulter told the court that he, Ronnie Coulter and David Montgomery - known as Chez - arrived at Ms Bryce's house in Garrion Street, Overtown, at about 23:30.\nThey had driven to a nearby street and then climbed over the back fence into the garden of the house.\nAs Mr Chhokar arrived home from his shift at a local restaurant, the three men walked down the garden path towards him.\nAndrew Coulter told the jury he told Mr Chhokar not to get the police involved and Mr Chhokar had swung a bottle at him.\nHe added: \"He swung the bottle at me and missed me. I struck him with the bat on his arm.\"\nAndrew Coulter said he then slipped and fell to the ground and his view of the street was impeded by the garden gate.\nHe added: \"David went to pick me up and I did not see where Ronnie was.\"\nAsked how Mr Chhokar appeared, Mr Coulter said: \"He looked all right he didn't seem to be injured or nothing. He was walking. Liz Bryce came out shouting, and me and Chez ran.\"\nHe said the last time he saw his uncle, Ronnie Coulter, was seconds before he fell.\nAndrew Coulter added: \"Ronnie just disappeared.\"\nWhen asked what he thought had happened that night Andrew Coulter said: \"Nothing. That was it. Just assault.\"\nWhen asked if Mr Chhokar appeared injured in any way, he replied: \"No. He didn't look as if he was injured in any way. I think I said to Chez that Chhokar would have a a sore arm in the morning with the bat.\"\nAndrew Coulter told the jury: \"I never stabbed him.\"\nHe also said that he never saw anyone else stab Mr Chhokar, saying: \"I never even saw anyone hit him, bar me.\"\nThe witness also said that he did not see Ronnie Coulter or David Montgomery carrying any weapons.\nRonnie Coulter denies murdering Mr Chhokar by repeatedly attacking him with a knife or a similar weapon and a further charge of forging Mr Chhokar's signature on a £100 giro cheque.\nHe also denies breaking into Mr Chhokar's home at Caplaw Tower, Gowkthrapple, on the day of his death and stealing a cooker and attempting to defeat the ends of justice by destroying or disposing of a knife and clothing.\nThe trial before Lord Matthews continues.", "Colin Horner, 35, was shot dead in front of his three-year-old son on Sunday afternoon.\nPolice said the man was arrested in Bangor on Friday night.\nSeparately, a 28-year-old man appeared in court on Friday charged with the murder.\nAlan Wilson, of Ballyrainey Road, Newtownards, was also charged with possession of a firearm and ammunition.\nHe appeared at Newtownards Magistrates Court on Friday. Bail was refused in the case.\nHe denied being involved in the murder of Mr Horner.\nA 45-year-old man arrested on Friday morning in the Newtownards area over the murder has been released unconditionally. A 47-year-old man also arrested over the killing was released on Thursday night.", "Gerard Quinn, a 24-year-old father of one, was attacked at Milldale Crescent on Saturday night, the court heard.\nHe was taken to Altnagelvin hospital but later died of his injuries.\nA 16-year-old appeared in a Derry court on Tuesday charged with murder. He cannot be named because of his age.\nThe defendant was also charged with attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to Mr Quinn's twin brother, Michael.\nA detective constable told the court the PSNI received a report that a man had been stabbed in the throat at Tullymore Road at 22:26 BST on Saturday.\n\"When the police arrived, they observed a man lying on the ground. He was not breathing and he had lost a lot of blood,\" she said.\n\"Members of the public were observed administering first aid. The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service arrived and took charge.\n\"A man was treated at the scene before being conveyed to Altnagelvin Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for his injury.\"\nThe det cons said that at 00:13 BST on Sunday the defendant attended Strand Road police station on a voluntary basis.\nAfter Gerard Quinn was pronounced dead at 04:20 BST on Sunday, he was charged with his murder.\nDuring his interviews, the defendant admitted striking two men at Milldale Crescent, the court heard.\nThe court was told that prior to the the incident, which gave rise to the two charges, there was a \"melee\" involving Gerard Quinn, his brother and another 16-year-old.\nThe det cons also said the defendant had raised the issue of self defence during police interviews.\nA defence solicitor said the youth's family wished to express their condolences to the Quinn family.\n\"It is a tragedy for the Quinn family and for themselves,\" he said.\n\"They have asked the police officers to confirm that the defendant complied fully with them during his interviews and they thanked the community for their support and they have asked, at this difficult time for both families, there should be no repercussions.\"\nThe district judge said the incident was a \"complete tragedy and the court would wish to add its condolences to the Quinn family on the death of Gerard\".\nThere was no bail application and the defendant was remanded in custody until 7 June.", "Jamshaid Khan, 30, was repeatedly turned down for permanent UK residency.\nWhen his wife, EU citizen Milena Yulianova, refused to support his latest bid to stay in the UK he stabbed her to death in their London home.\nMr Khan, of Forest Gate, east London, must serve at least 20 years in prison for her murder on 28 January 2014.\nHe arrived in the UK in 2011 after witnessing Taliban killings where he lived on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Old Bailey heard.\nSentencing him, Judge Stephen Kramer QC said he was \"a manipulative, devious and deceitful man\" who had \"wriggled and writhed\" his way through the trial.\nThe court heard Khan had applied more than once for permanent UK residency after converting to Christianity and had grown increasingly dependent on his wife of 15 months for her help to stay in the UK.\nThe jury was told they rowed on 28 January over the opening of a bank account and Khan stabbed his wife with a kitchen knife on the arm and chest 14 times. She ran into the street and a man in a takeaway shop nearby in Nigel Road and two others tried to help and revive her, but she died later in hospital.\nKhan denied murder and claimed he had stabbed the young masseuse in self-defence because she had produced a knife but the jury did not believe him and convicted him of murder on Monday.\nDuring the sentencing, Judge Kramer said: \"You killed Milena in anger because she would not help and support you in your application. While the marriage existed in 2014, you were already looking for other eastern European women who you thought could help.\n\"You were chatting with them on Facebook. You told one of the women on Facebook that Milena had died in a car accident. Those conversations indicate you were already contemplating you might feel the need to replace her.\"\nThe judge praised the \"immense public service\" of the three trial witnesses who went to the aid of the victim and awarded each of them £500.\nFollowing Khan's release from prison, he is likely to be deported.", "The 23-year-old woman was found injured in the Redfern area of Sydney on Tuesday, at about 15:00 local time.\nNew South Wales Police have said the British backpacker fought back with a knife after she was allegedly stabbed repeatedly by her attacker.\nA 27-year-old man has been charged with grievous bodily harm with intent to murder, and aggravated sexual assault.\nThe man - who is from Mexico - was refused bail during a court hearing and will appear at Sydney's Central Local Court on 5 May.\nHe is being held in hospital under guard, police said.\nThey said on Wednesday the woman was in hospital and was expected to undergo surgery.", "Arkadiusz Jozwik, 40, was attacked near a row of takeaway shops in Harlow, Essex, on 27 August 2016. He died in hospital two days later.\nA 16-year-old boy - who was 15 at the time and cannot be named for legal reasons - denies manslaughter.\nChelmsford Crown Court heard he had used \"the whole force of his body\" to hit Mr Jozwik. The trial continues.\nRosina Cottage QC, prosecuting, said: \"The prosecution does not say that (the youth) thought for a moment that what he did would result in the death of a man.\n\"However, we say he moved deliberately around the back of Mr Jozwik to take him by surprise and to hit him from behind.\n\"From what looks to be like a 'superman punch' that he threw, he must have intended to send the man to the ground.\"\nThe jury was told that Mr Jozwik - who was also known as Arek - had been drinking vodka with his friend and they were both \"speaking loudly and appeared to be drunk and smelt of alcohol\".\nShe said a third friend drank beer and appeared to be sober.\nMs Cottage said the men sat on a bench to eat pizza near a group of teenagers on bikes at about 23:30.\nShe said two boys cycled close to the men, which \"seemed to spark a disagreement\" between the two groups.\nCCTV footage of the attack was shown to jurors and some of Mr Jozwik's family left the court room as it was shown.\nThe trial continues.", "The badly beaten bodies of Imran Khan, 27, and Ahmedin Khyel, 35, were found on the side of the road in New Lane, Tong, in May 2011.\nMohammed Zubair, 36, has been held in custody in Pakistan since 2013.\nIt was the first time in more than 10 years a suspect had been extradited to the UK from the country, police said.\nMr Zubair appeared at Bradford Magistrates' Court earlier where he was remanded in custody to appear before the city's crown court on Friday.\nLive updates on this story and others from around West Yorkshire\nA man was convicted of manslaughter in 2012 over the deaths and jailed for 10 years.\nSabir Hussain, of Wensleydale Road, Bradford, went on trial accused of murder but was cleared of those charges.\nDet Supt Simon Atkinson said: \"After five years, West Yorkshire Police has managed to arrange the extradition of Mohammed Zubair, who has been held in custody in Pakistan since November 2013.\n\"I would like to praise the Pakistani authorities for their assistance and endeavours in not only securing his arrest, but also ensuring his extradition back to the UK.\"", "Eamonn Ferguson, 35, was found dead in a flat at Ardoyne Place in March 2014.\nLouis Maguire, 28, formerly of Ardoyne Place, was given a minimum term of 17 years for the \"unprovoked\" attack.\nA second man, Christopher Power of no fixed address, had been convicted of assisting an offender. He was released due to time already served in prison.\nFollowing the sentencing, police released a recording of a 999 call which Maguire made after carrying out the murder, in which he claimed to police that he had returned home and found Mr Ferguson badly injured in his house.\nMaguire told the 999 call handler there was a lot of blood and can be heard asking Power to check if Mr Ferguson was dead.\nBefore the murder, Mr Ferguson went to a flat in north Belfast with Maguire and Power. They had all been drinking heavily.\nThere, the victim was subjected to a brutal attack - the court heard he was beaten up to 20 times with a claw hammer.\nMaguire and Power were both originally charged with the murder and blamed each other during the trial.\nHowever, a jury found Maguire alone responsible for carrying out the murder, while Power was convicted of assisting an offender.\nSentencing the pair, the judge said the violent attack appeared to be completely unprovoked.\nHe outlined to the court that Maguire had a poor upbringing and that his father was currently serving a life sentence for murder.\nBut he concluded that with 64 previous convictions, including violent offences, Maguire had been given many chances to change.\nQuoting the poet Philip Larkin, the judge said: \"Man hands on misery to man.\"\nPower was told by the judge that his participation in an \"elaborate charade\" to try to cover up the murder and his persistent lying to police meant he deserved every day he had spent in prison.\nHowever, he decided the tariff he would impose would be covered by the time he had already served.\nIn a statement to the court, the victim's mother, Mrs Pat Ferguson, said: \"Eamonn was a loving son, brother and uncle. He had worked as a painter and decorator and liked to play the guitar.\n\"He was intelligent and enjoyed reading. He loved to laugh and to make people laugh. Now, there is not a minute of the day when I don't think of him.\n\"His death has impacted on every part of our family's lives, lives which have been turned upside down, never to be the same again,\" she said.\nThe officer who led the investigation, Det Ch Insp Justyn Galloway said: \"I want to pay tribute to the Ferguson family who have shown great dignity over the past almost three years and during the harrowing evidence at last month's trial.\n\"I also want to acknowledge the local community in Ardoyne for the assistance they provided in working with the Major Investigation Team dealing with Eamonn's murder.\n\"People came forward, whether they were neighbours, friends or associates of Eamonn, and helped us. They told us what they knew, helping us to build a case and gave evidence.\n\"These convictions are an example of what can be achieved in the criminal justice system when communities and police work in partnership.\"", "Nicola Cross, 37, was stabbed to death at her home in Dunlin Road, Hemel Hempstead on Monday night.\nMarcin Porczynski, 23, of Claymore Avenue, appeared at Hatfield Remand Court charged with murder, two counts of kidnap and trespass with intent to inflict GBH.\nIn a tribute, Mrs Cross was described as \"kind, generous and brave\".\nMr Porczynski was remanded in custody to appear at St Albans Crown Court on Friday.\nUsing a Polish interpreter, he spoke only to confirm his name, age and address.\nOfficers were first called at 22:30 BST after receiving reports a man was acting suspiciously, police said.\nThey later admitted a man had been spoken to an hour before Mrs Cross's death but they let him go.\nHer body was found when police responding to a separate call about a burglary at a neighbouring home heard a disturbance next door.\nHertfordshire Police have referred the incident to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.\nA tribute statement issued by police on behalf of her family said: \"Our Nikki is the heart and soul of our family.\n\"She was kind, generous, brave and incredibly talented - the most beautiful person inside and out, Nikki was the perfect wife and the most amazing mummy.\n\"She installed core belief in our children to never give up and we will continue what she has built, which is a solid loving family who will remember her with undying love.\"\nA 19-year-old man arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to burgle has been released on police bail until 24 September.", "The teenager was last seen near a deli on Saturday morning after setting off for her part-time hairdressing job.\nHer body was found just off Great Western Road at lunchtime on Monday.\nPolice Scotland said a 31-year-old man had been arrested in connection with Paige's death. He is expected to appear at Dumbarton Sheriff Court on Saturday.\nForensic teams are still present at the scene where Paige's body was found, just off the A82 Great Western Road, at about 12:45 on Monday.\nPolice Scotland said on Tuesday that they were treating her death as murder.\nOn Wednesday night, police cordoned off the Delicious Deli in Clydebank's Fleming Avenue where Paige had been last seen on Saturday morning.\nThey also searched and sealed off a flat in nearby Brown Avenue.\nAs forensic activity continued at both locations on Thursday, police confirmed that they had been following a positive line of inquiry and had arrested a 31-year-old man.\nHe is expected to appear in court on Saturday to face charges in connection with Paige's death.\nThe teenager's mother released a statement on Wednesday asking for the public to help the police investigation.\nPamela Munro said her family were \"devastated\" and called for public help in getting \"justice\" for her girl.\nPaige's death has had a profound impact on the Clydebank community, with many people leaving floral tributes near the site where her body was found.\nTwo fundraising web pages set up to help her family had raised more than £18,000 by 16:00 on Thursday.\nIn memory of Paige, the landmark Titan Crane in Clydebank is being lit pink at dusk on Thursday until dawn on Friday.\nWest Dunbartonshire Provost Douglas McAllister said: \"Our community is in shock at this tragedy and our thoughts and prayers are with Paige's family and friends.\n\"This is a small gesture of support for everyone who knew Paige.\"", "A second man fell to his death from the flat at Donside Court shortly after police officers arrived at the scene on Tuesday night.\nThe Police Investigations and Review Commissioner will investigate the circumstances surrounding his death.\nPolice Scotland said the incident presented no threat to the wider public.\nThe force also said officers were not looking for anyone else in relation to the deaths.\nEmergency services were called to the flat at about 20:15 on Tuesday after reports of a disturbance.\nDet Ch Insp Keith Hardie, from Police Scotland's major investigation team, said it had launched \"a thorough investigation\" to establish the full circumstances.\n\"Officers attended at Donside Court following reports of a disturbance and found the bodies of a man and a woman within a flat,\" he said.\n\"Both of these deaths are being investigated and treated as murder.\n\"At this stage, we can also confirm that a second man died at the scene a short time after officers attended. The circumstances of this death are likewise being investigated.\n\"Given that officers were present at the time of the death, the procurator fiscal has instructed the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (Pirc) to review the circumstances.\"\nDet Ch Insp Keith Hardie said the involvement of Pirc was in line with procedures when a death occurs when officers are in attendance.\nHe told BBC Radio Scotland the officers' discovery of the man and woman and the other man's fall from the flat happened \"almost simultaneously\".\nThe senior detective said there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing on the part of the police.\nDet Ch Insp Hardie said that at this stage police were not looking for anyone else in relation to the deaths.\nHe said it was a \"contained incident\" and there was no wider threat to the community.\nThe officer added: \"There will continue to be a police presence in the area as we continue with our investigation into this incident and I want to thank the community for their patience.\n\"A report will be submitted to the procurator fiscal in relation to all three deaths later today.\"\nA spokeswoman said the Pirc investigation \"will focus on the circumstances leading up to the death of the second man following the arrival of police officers at the scene.\n\"A report on the commissioner's findings will be submitted to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in due course.\"", "Daniel Johnson will serve a minimum of 23 years behind bars for killing David Wilson, 49, as he lay in bed in his Sunderland flat.\nJohnson, of Morris Street, Gateshead, who had earlier been drinking at a nearby house party, had denied murder.\nBut he was found guilty of the \"brutal\" killing at Newcastle Crown Court.\nThe hearing was told how Johnson was at a party on 14 December 2014 and footage was shown in court of him pouring alcohol into his eyes and dancing.\nWhen he left the party he came across Mr Wilson's partner, who had left their Southwick Road flat to get a takeaway.\nCCTV footage showed Johnson lead the man to a cash machine to try and force him to get money out but this failed.\nJohnson then took the man's house keys before running off and letting himself into the flat where his victim - who had also spent the night drinking - was asleep.\nHe then straddled his victim and repeatedly stabbed him through his duvet as he slept.\nDet Chf Insp Mark Ord, of Northumbria Police, said it was a \"stranger\" murder and Johnson did not know his victim.\n\"David was brutally murdered when he was most likely asleep. We focused on CCTV footage showing the attempted robbery of David's partner at a cash point\", he said.\n\"The second key piece of evidence was a call being made to the police that morning from David's phone at 04:41 asking for a lift - these were the two pieces of a complex jigsaw that we needed to fill in.\"" ]

[ "Andy Moran netted to give Mayo the early advantage before Kerry hit back with a Stephen O'Brien goal.\nColm Boyle added a second Mayo goal but Kerry finished the first half strongly to leave it 2-5 to 1-8.\nJohnny Buckley netted for Kerry and Mayo equalised in added time before Bryan Sheehan missed a last-gasp 55-metre free to win it for the Kingdom.\nIt was a thrilling encounter at headquarters with Mayo aiming to stay on course for a first Sam Maguire Cup success since 1951.\nThe Mayo management made the surprise tactical move of switching Aidan O'Shea to full-back in an attempt to curb the aerial effectiveness of Kieran Donaghy.\nTo an extent the ploy worked with O'Shea competing well in the air but Donaghy still made a massive contribution to the Kingdom attack while the Mayo star was a big loss to his side's offensive options.\nMoran's early goal helped Mayo lead by four but Kerry scored the final four points of the points to go in level at the break.\nAs ever resilient, Mayo regrouped to lead by three helped by Boyle's goal but against the run of play, Buckley's goal helped the Kingdom take the lead after a botched kickout.\nA dramatic finale saw Paddy Durcan equalise for Mayo three minutes into added time but there was still time for Sheehan to clinch victory for Kerry.\nBut the long-range fell short to the relief of Mayo, who get another chance next weekend to reach the decider.\nTyrone and holders Dublin will contest the other semi-final at Croke Park next Sunday." ]

[ "The Ulster county had gone into the Croke Park quarter-final as favourites but lost by one point, 0-13 to 0-12.\nHarte said he hoped 33-year-old skipper Sean Cavanagh would continue playing at inter-county level.\n\"Sean needs time to reflect, because it is a difficult and challenging time for him,\" said Tyrone boss Harte.\n\"Hopefully, he will be able to look a things through a different lens in the time to come.\"\nCavanagh, who has won three All-Irelands in a glittering Red Hands career, cut a disconsolate figure on Saturday, having been sent-off for getting two yellows cards.\nMany are expecting the five-times All Star to retire from inter-county football, but manager Harte believes he has more to offer.\nThe long-serving Tyrone boss admitted that despite winning league and McKenna Cup honours earlier in the year, the 2016 campaign had ended on a sour note with the narrow defeat by Mayo.\n\"Winning the league this year was nice, but in Tyrone people want the All-Ireland,\" he said.\n\"It is not considered a really successful season if you do not get the All-Ireland, and this is another year gone by when we don't have it.\n\"We are a developing and evolving side and maybe it was a bit premature to expect them to have enough quality and experience to win the All-Ireland because it does not happen easily.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\n\"But I believed this team was capable of at least getting to the semi-finals.\n\"There are a lot of people in that dressing room who are hurt about the outcome of the game.\n\"There was a degree if under-performing, but also a degree of the opposition not letting you perform the way you want to.\n\"Mayo were very much on their game in certain aspects of their play.\"", "Cork's early running caused Donegal problems and the Rebels led by five on 17 minutes when Paul Kerrigan netted.\nHowever, Donegal regrouped to lead within 15 minutes helped by McBrearty's stunning exhibition of scores.\nCork regained the lead by the break but Donegal's greater composure in the second period proved the difference.\nPoints from wing-backs Tom Clancy and Kevin O'Driscoll exemplified Cork's early vigour with only McBrearty's superb scoring keeping Donegal in touch as their defence looked decidedly shaky.\nCork were having little difficulty in punching holes in Donegal's defence and the inevitable goal arrived in the 17th minute as Kerrigan stepped inside Neil McGee and rifled to the root after being set up by Tomas Clancy.\nTo their credit, Donegal responded by hitting seven of the next eight scores in a 15-minute period with the McHugh cousins Eoin and Ryan, Michael Murphy and Karl Lacey finally getting in on the scoring act alongside the on-form McBrearty.\nMcBrearty was tormenting Eoin Cadogan from the off and it seemed strange that the Cork management opted some 28 minutes to make a switch as Tom Clancy was delegated to pick up the Kilcar man.\nPoints from Tom Clancy and Donnacha O'Connor helped Cork edge 1-9 to 0-11 ahead by the interval but there was the suspicion that the Rebels had let Donegal off the hook.\nThe two defences tightened up after half-time and the shackles contributed to a number of wides at both ends.\nWith Colm O'Neill and Paddy Kelly now introduced for Cork, the Rebels led by two after 50 minutes after successive points by Clancy and O'Neill.\nHowever, a silly foul by Cadogan gifted McBrearty his ninth point and Eoin McHugh levelled proceedings in the 54th minute.\nThe remainder of the contest saw Cork struggling to breach Donegal's massed defence, with the Ulster champions breaking at pace to set up scores after the inevitable turnovers.\nMcBrearty's 11th and final point was arguably his best as he ran onto Murphy's quick free although he blotted his copy book in the closing seconds as he received a black card on top of his earlier yellow which meant Donegal ended the game with 14 players.\nDonegal's defensive struggles for much of the contest means that few will give much chance of upsetting champions Dublin next weekend but that was also the case two years ago when Jim McGuinness masterminded a shock quarter-final triumph over the then All-Ireland holders.\nDonegal: MA McGinley; P McGrath, N McGee, E McGee; R McHugh, K Lacey, F McGlynn; R Kavanagh, M McElhinney; A Thompson, O MacNiallais, E McHugh; P McBrearty, M Murphy, M O'Reilly.\nCork: R Price; C O'Driscoll, E Cadogan, S Cronin; T Clancy, T Clancy, K O'Driscoll; A O'Connor, I Maguire; P Kerrigan, D O'Connor, M Collins; S Powter, P Kelleher, M Hurley.\nWEEKEND FIXTURES\nSATURDAY\nAll-Ireland SFC Round 4B Qualifiers\nDonegal 0-21 1-15 Cork\nMayo 3-15 1-14 Westmeath\nAll-Ireland MFC Quarter-Final\nDonegal 2-13 0-13 Cork\nSUNDAY\nAll-Ireland SFC Quarter-Finals\nKerry v Clare, Croke Park, 14:00\nGalway v Tipperary, Croke Park, 16:00\nAll-Ireland MFC Quarter-Final\nKerry v Derry, Croke Park, 12:00", "The two Connacht rivals cancelled each other out in a gripping first encounter but Roscommon were unable to contain Mayo's goal-scoring threat during their second meeting at Croke Park.\nThree Mayo goals in the space of just six minutes effectively ended the contest before the half-time break.\nCillian O'Connor's goal in the 46th minute helped to seal a 22-point win.\nAfter Roscommon's Donie Smith scored a late equalising point in the drawn match, Mayo appeared determined to avoid another sluggish start.\nDespite the surprise absence of Footballer of the Year Lee Keegan from their starting team, Mayo raced into a six point lead as they held Roscommon scoreless for the opening 20 minutes.\nRoscommon's Enda Smith and Niall McInerney both scored to briefly reduce the gap to just four points.\nBut the Connacht champions were left reeling when Kevin McLaughlin and Andy Moran both netted for Mayo within the space of 60 seconds and Keith Higgins added a third in the 28th minute.\nMayo led by 3-08 to 0-04 at half-time and any prospect of a Roscommon revival were ended when O'Connor netted with a low shot.\nIn a further blow for Roscommon substitute Fintan Cregg was sent off for a second bookable offence after punching Diarmuid O'Connor while he was on the ground.\nHaving laboured to victories over Derry, Clare and Cork in the qualifier series, Mayo advance to their seventh successive All-Ireland semi-final and will now face Kerry in Croke Park on 20 August.\nMayo: D Clarke; B Harrison, D Vaughan (0-01), K Higgins (1-00); C Boyle, C Barrett (0-01), P Durcan; T Parsons (0-01), S O'Shea; K McLoughlin (1-00), A O'Shea (0-02), D O'Connor (0-01); J Doherty (0-02), C O'Connor (1-06, 0-06f), A Moran (1-01).\nSubs: C Loftus for Doherty 46, D Drake (0-01) for McLoughlin 56, A Dillon for Moran 61, S Coen (0-01) for Vaughan 61, D Kirby for A O'Shea 62, S Nally (0-02) for Barrett 65.\nRoscommon: C Lavin; S McDermott, N McInerney, D Murray; J McManus, S Mullooly (0-01), B Stack; T O'Rourke, E Smith (0-01); C Fitzmaurice, N Kilroy (0-01), C Devaney (0-01); Cathal Compton, D Murtagh (0-04, 0-02f), C Connolly.\nSubs: C Murtagh for Compton h/t, G Patterson for McDermott h/t, F Cregg for Connolly h/t, D Smith (0-01) for B Stack 46, I Kilbride for Devaney 60, Colin Compton for E Smith 62.", "It has nothing to do with the skills and abilities of the players but a belief in a 62-year-old curse.\nMayo, the three times All-Ireland champions have cruised into Sunday's semi-final, annihilating Galway, Roscommon, London and All-Ireland champions Donegal on their way.\nIt is in stark contrast to the typical Mayo story.\nIt has been a depressing six decades for the team's supporters, and it all stems back to their All-Ireland win in 1951.\nSo what is the supposed curse?\n\"When the 1951 team were returning to the county after their All-Ireland win, they apparently reached a funeral taking place in one of the towns approaching Castlebar,\" former Mayo All-Ireland finalist Liam McHale said.\n\"Apparently some of the lads, maybe enjoying the trip home, angered the local priest who cursed them saying they would never win another All-Ireland while any of the '51 team are alive.\"\nSince Mayo lost another All-Ireland final in September 2012, two more of that famous '51 squad have passed away.\nJohn McAllister died in September 2012, Mick Mouldering in June.\nToday, Paddy Prendergast, Fr Peter Quinn and Paradigm Carney are the only three still alive.\nBefore Mick Mouldering died, he refuted the curse in James Laffey's book The Road to '51.\n\"Don't let any anyone tell you, we didn't stop for a funeral,\" he said.\n1989 - lost to Cork\n1996 - conceded a last-minute goal to draw against Meath\n1996 - lost to Meath in replay\n1997 - lost to Kerry\n2004 - lost to Kerry\n2006 - lost by Kerry\n2012 - lost to Donegal\nWhether it is an urban myth or has a little bit of truth, the \"curse of 51\" has a vibrant heartbeat in western Irish folklore, and with the current players too.\n\"I first heard of it around the mid-nineties when Mayo reached the All-Ireland final, it's something you hear about, but it's something you take with a pinch of salt,\" said Mayo player Keith Higgins.\nSuperstition is rife in sport, particularly the GAA.\nFormer Kerry player and manager Paídí Ó Sé lived his whole life believing in it.\nHe took the same train, at the same time, to Dublin on match day and visited the same church at the same time.\n\"He would wear the same suit to every game, he would wear the same togs to every game he played in,\" said Paídí 's daughter Neasa.\nPaídí wasn't the only one.\nMichael Jordan, considered the greatest basketball player of all time, wore his University of North Carolina shorts under his uniform to every game for almost two decades.\nTennis player Björn Borg grew a beard before Wimbledon every year.\nHe won five straight titles at the All-England club between 1976 and 1980.\nSerena Williams is another.\nThe three-times Wimbledon champion insists on bringing her shower sandals to the court, tying her shoelaces a specific way, bouncing the ball five times before her first serve and twice before her second.\nSuperstition - reverential to some, to others, it is nonsense.\n\"I don't believe in the curse,\" the Mayo manager James Horan said.\n\"There's always a lot of talk about it in Mayo and specifically the 1951 (squad) and much folklore surrounds that great team. As regards the curse, it's a good story but not one I believe in.\"\nIn reality, most supporters agree with Mr Horan. It is a good story, one perhaps not to be taken too seriously.\nBut with every passing year without All-Ireland success, urban myth can become ingrained in culture.\nIn 2011, Mayo playwright Mick Donnellan's first scene in Shortcut to Hallelujah was about a Mayo-Kerry All-Ireland final, where only one of the '51 team was alive.\nIt was a sell-out in Mayo.\nThe captain of the Mayo team, Andy Moran, laughed when I asked him if he believed in curses.\n\"I worked with kids visiting schools last year and they were telling me about the curse,\" he said.\nIt's all bit of fun. But the reason I've been in three All-Irelands and haven't won any of them is because we haven't been good enough. It's as simple as that.\"\nSixty-two years have passed since Mayo last won the All-Ireland.\nThey are now two steps away from capturing the Sam Maguire Cup for a fourth time in their history, and putting to bed the urban myth which continues to lurk in the background.\nTyrone will hope the myth continues, at least until after the match.", "Monaghan were six points up midway through the second half but Dublin hit back to win 2-15 to 1-15 and remain on track for a fifth title in a row.\nDonegal also enjoyed a healthy lead but eventually lost to Mayo by 1-12 to 0-13 and missed out on points difference.\nKerry's 1-21 to 2-11 win over Tyrone was enough to grab a final place.\nThe Kingdom had started the day sixth, but their margin of victory at Fitzgerald Stadium meant their points difference of 13 was three better than that of Donegal.\nCavan were beaten by Roscommon and are relegated to Division Two.\nFor much of the afternoon it looked there would be an all-Ulster meeting in the Division One decider between Monaghan and Donegal.\nBut at the end of the dray, remarkably no Ulster counties had qualified for any of next weekend's four league finals at Croke Park in Dublin.\nMonaghan took control of their match against All-Ireland champions Dublin when man-of-the-match Jack McCarron netted from an acute angle in the second half.\nBut goals by substitutes Bernard Brogan and James McCarthy saw the Dubs secure a comeback victory.\nMcCarthy's effort came as the match was entering stoppage-time with the teams level, and proved a heartbreaking end for Monaghan.\nCillian O'Connor netted an early penalty and also contributed five points as Mayo made sure of their top-flight survival by beating Donegal by two points.\nDonegal were 0-13 to 1-6 up early in the second half but, after they had Eamon Doherty sent-off, the match swung Mayo's way.\nTyrone's slim chances of reaching the Division One final were scuppered in Killarney, where Kerry ran out winners by seven points.\nInstead it was the Kingdom who benefited from other results to book a place in next weekend's decider against holders Dublin.\nThe Red Hands got off to the worst possible start, conceding a goal with less than two minutes on the clock. David Moran picked out Michael Geaney with a clever pass, and the Dingle man beat Mickey O'Neill with a low shot.\nTyrone failed to score from play while playing with the wind in the opening half, and it was Kerry who displayed all the attacking flair to open a 10-point advantage.\nKerry led by 1-12 to 0-6 at the break, but Tyrone struck for a goal for only the second time in the current league campaign, Peter Harte collecting a Frank Burns pass to smash the ball into the roof of the net in the 44th minute.\nTyrone grabbed a second goal through a Peter Harte penalty after Ronan Shanahan was sent-off for hauling down Frank Burns.", "The 32-year-old St Eunan's clubman won the All-Ireland title with Donegal in 2012 and was in the side which lost to Kerry in last year's decider.\nKavanagh also helped Donegal to three Ulster Championship triumphs and a National League title.\nHe made his debut against Cork in 2001 and clocked up 132 Donegal appearances.\nKavanagh's last game for Donegal came in the defeat by Kerry in September's All-Ireland final at Croke Park.\nThe highpoint of the Letterkenny man's career was winning the Sam Maguire Cup two year earlier thanks to victory over Mayo.\nKavanagh, who will continue to play for St Eunan's, has become the first member of that All-Ireland winning squad to retire.\nHe played 49 championship games for Donegal, starting with his Ulster SFC debut in 2002.\nEamon McGee, Karl Lacey and Mark McHugh have been among the Donegal players to pay tribute to Kavanagh's service to the county.\n\"Rory Kavanagh was one of the best players I've played with. A true professional on and off the field. Taught me so much,\" said McHugh on Twitter.\nMcGee described Kavanagh as \"without a doubt one of the best I've played with\" while Lacey said the St Eunan's club was \"still an unbelievable athlete\".", "Monaghan duo Darren Hughes and Conor McManus and Donegal's Paddy McBrearty are also included a strong squad.\nThe 23-man panel includes nine of this year's All-Star teams.\nFootballer of the year Jack McCaffrey is joined by his Dublin team-mates Philly McMahon, Rory O'Carroll and Bernard Brogan, who captains the side.\nThe other 2015 All-Stars in the squad for the one-off Test at Croke Park on 23 November are Donnelly, McManus, Mayo pair Lee Keegan and Aidan O'Shea plus Kerry player Donnchadh Walsh.\nDiarmuid Connolly is the fifth member of Dublin's All-Ireland winning side to be included while other notable inclusions are Clare's Gary Brennan, Tipperary's Ciaran McDonald and Longford's Michael Quinn.\nIn all, there are 12 counties from across all four provinces represented in the 23.\nIreland manager Joe Kernan has also named eight stand-by players including Monaghan pair Dessie Mone and Kieran Hughes plus Cavan duo Killian Clarke and Gearoid McKiernan.\nLast year's captain Michael Murphy and Tyrone's Sean Cavanagh were both unavailable because of injury.\nKernan is confident that he has assembled a strong squad capable of competing with the Australians.\n\"We've been delighted with the response and the hard work put in by players from all over the country in the last eight weeks in a bid to represent Ireland,\" said the Ireland manager.\n\"Unfortunately injuries and club commitments have ruled some players out, but I am happy that we have still managed to assemble a very strong squad.\n\"It was a difficult job to reduce numbers down to the squad and the standby list.\"\nAustralia have already named a strong squad for the Test.\nIreland squad:\nNiall Morgan (Tyrone), Colm Begley (Laois), Gary Brennan (Clare), Bernard Brogan (Dublin, capt), Eoin Cadogan (Cork), Mattie Donnelly (Tyrone), Eoin Doyle (Kildare), Peter Harte (Tyrone), Darren Hughes (Monaghan), Lee Keegan (Mayo, vice-capt), Paul Kerrigan (Cork), Jack McCaffrey (Dublin), Ciaran McDonald (Tipperary), Philly McMahon (Dublin), Conor McManus (Monaghan), Rory O'Carroll (Dublin), John O'Loughlin (Laois), Aidan O'Shea (Mayo), Michael Quinn (Longford), Donnchadh Walsh (Kerry), Diarmuid Connolly (Dublin), Paul Cribben (Kildare), Paddy McBrearty (Donegal.\nStand-by: Paddy O'Rourke (Meath), Killian Clarke (Cavan), Ray Connellan (Westmeath), Kieran Hughes (Monaghan), Gearoid McKiernan (Cavan), Dessie Mone (Monaghan), Colm O'Neill (Cork), Enda Smith (Roscommon)", "The Ulster sides - along with Dublin and Tyrone - are among four counties topping the table on seven points.\nNiall Morgan and Padraig Hampsey replace Mickey O'Neill and Cathal McShane in two Tyrone changes from the defeat by Donegal for their Mayo game.\nCavan earned a superb away win over Mayo last weekend but a home defeat by Kerry on Sunday could relegate them.\nMayo boss Stephen Rochford makes two changes from the Cavan defeat with Chris Barrett and Evan Regan replacing Donal Vaughan and Conor Loftus.\nAlso in Division One, Dublin are odds on to stretch their unbeaten run to an all-time record of 34 league and championship games by beating relegation-threatened Roscommon at Croke Park on Saturday evening.\nAll three Ulster counties in Division Two are in relegation trouble going into their games on Sunday with bottom-placed Derry and Fermanagh occupying the drop spots at the moment and Down just ahead of the Ernemen on scoring difference.\nHowever such is the tight nature of Division Two that two closing wins for Fermanagh and Down could put them in contention for promotion.\nDerry look set to include Slaughtneil duo Chrissy McKaigue and Brendan Rogers in their squad for the vital home game against Cork, who are only a point ahead of the Oak Leafers in fifth spot.\nMark Lynch and Danny Heavron will also be available to Derry boss Damian Barton after injury.\nAfter three successive defeats, Fermanagh got back on the winning trail by beating Clare last weekend but a reverse against unchanged Meath in Navan would keep them very much in the relegation mix.\nTomas Corrigan has been passed fit to start for Down while Chris Snow returns in goal in place of Thomas Treacy.\nDown are in the same category as Fermanagh going into their home contest with Galway, who currently are in second spot in the table on seven points.\nGalway boss Kevin Walsh has named an unchanged team from the win over Derry with Michael Daly set to play on Sunday after lining out for the county's under-21s in the Connacht semi-final against Mayo on Saturday.\nIn Division Three, there is a crucial all-Ulster clash at the Athletic Grounds on Saturday night with promotion contenders Armagh facing an Antrim team still in the relegation mix despite last weekend's win over Laois.\nArmagh go into the weekend in third spot - a point behind leaders Tipperary and Louth.\nBut Tipperary face Louth on Sunday so Armagh will find themselves in a promotion place if they beat the Saffrons and there is a winner at Semple Stadium.\nKieran McGeeney makes two changes from the impressive 3-15 to 0-11 win over Louth as Gavin McParland and Stefan Campbell take over from Ciaran McKeever and Aidan Forker.\nForker's straight red card from last weekend's game has been overturned by the GAA's Central Hearing Committee so he could yet play a part in Saturday evening's game.\nMonaghan (v Donegal): R Beggan; F Kelly, D Wylie, R Wylie; R McAnespie, N McAdam, K O'Connell; D Hughes, K Hughes; D Ward, S Carey, G Doogan; K Duffy, J McCarron, C McManus. Subs: C Forde, O Coyle, K McQuaid, V Corey, J Mealiff, B Greenan, T Kerr, O Duffy, C McCarthy, S Gollogly, M Bannigan.\nTyrone (v Mayo): N Morgan; P Hampsey, R McNamee, C McCarron; R Brennan, Justin McMahon, T McCann; C Cavanagh, D McClure; K McGeary, N Sludden, P Harte; M Bradley, S Cavanagh, M Donnelly. Subs: M O'Neill, C McCann, A McCrory, D McCurry, HP McGeary, R McNabb, P McNulty, C McShane, C Meyler, J Monroe, R O'Neill.\nMayo: D Clarke; B Harrison, K Higgins, C Barrett; C Boyle, L Keegan, P Durcan; T Parsons, D Kirby; F Boland, C O'Connor, C O'Shea; K McLoughlin, A Moran, E Regan.\nKerry (v Cavan): B Kealy; F Fitzgerald, M Griffin, R Shanahan; P Crowley, T Morley, P Murphy; D Moran, J Barry; A Spillane, K McCarthy, D Walsh; J Savage, P Geaney, S O'Brien.\nFermanagh (v Meath): C Snow; M Jones, C Cullen, K Connor; CP Murphy, B Mulrone, A Breen; E Donnelly, L Cullen; P McCusker, R Jones, R Lyons; E Courtney, Sean Quigley, T Corrigan.\nMeath: P O'Rourke; D Keogan, C McGill, D Tobin; W Carry, B Power, P Harnan; B Menton, J Toher; A Forde, C O'Sullivan, R Ó Coileáin; B McMahon, G Reilly (capt), D Lenihan.\nGalway (v Down): R Lavelle; L Burke, D Walsh, C Sweeney; G O'Donnell, G Bradshaw, J Heaney; P Conroy, F Ó Curraoin; T Flynn, M Daly, E Brannigan; G Sice, B McHugh, D Cummins.\nArmagh (v Antrim): B Hughes; P Hughes, C Vernon, G McCabe; A McKay, B Donaghy, N Rowland; A Findon, S Sheridan; R Grugan, A Duffy, N Grimley; J Clarke, S Campbell, G McParland.\nAllianz Football League Fixtures\nSaturday - 19:00 GMT\nDivision One\nDublin v Roscommon, Croke Park\nDivision Three\nArmagh v Antrim, Athletic Grounds\nLaois v Longford, Portlaoise\nDivision Four\nWaterford v Limerick, Fraher Field\nSunday - BST\nDivision One\nCavan v Kerry, Breffni Park, 14:00\nTyrone v Mayo, Healy Park, 15:00\nDonegal v Monaghan, Ballyshannon, 15:00\nDivision Two\nDerry v Cork, Celtic Park, 13:00\nMeath v Fermanagh, Pairc Tailteann, 15:00\nDown v Galway, Pairc Esler, 15:00\nKildare v Clare, Newbridge, 15:15\nDivision Three\nSligo v Offaly, Markievicz Park, 15:00\nTipperary v Louth, Semple Stadium, 15:00\nDivision Four\nLeitrim v London, Carrick-on-Shannon, 13:00\nWexford v Westmeath, Wexford Park, 13:00\nWicklow v Carlow, Aughrim, 15:00", "The Connacht county have been beaten in eight All-Ireland finals since 1989.\nMayo lost finals against Donegal and Dublin in 2012 and 2013 and the current squad blew a great chance to beat the Dubs in last year's semi-final replay.\nIn that game, Mayo led by four with 15 minutes left only to be sunk by three late Dublin goals.\nAfter that latest heartbreaking defeat, a players' putsch led to the departure of manager Pat Holmes and his backroom team and Stephen Rochford was then installed as boss.\nA surprise defeat by Galway in the Connacht semi-finals put Rochford's reign under severe pressure but helped by former Armagh star Tony McEntee, the new manager successfully navigated Mayo through the back door to another final appearance.\nMayo have been unconvincing for much of the summer with their surprise 0-13 to 0-12 quarter-final win over Tyrone by far their most impressive performance.\nA couple of weeks later, the men from the west were lacklustre for much of their semi-final against surprise packets Tipperary before eventually earning a 2-13 to 0-14 win.\nWithin a week, the Dubs were producing a stunning comeback to beat Kerry 0-22 to 2-14 in an epic semi-final.\nOn the basis of those two semi-finals and indeed of the respective form of both sides this year, there can only be one winner this weekend.\nYet there is that lingering suspicion that Mayo may be capable of ending the curse which has saw them failing to win the Sam Maguire Cup since their 1951 triumph over Meath.\nFor Mayo to win, Lee Keegan is probably going to have to play the game of his life during his expected dual with Dublin attacker Diarmuid Connolly, who is probably the best player in the current game.\nGranted, Dublin are by no means a one-man attack with Bernard Brogan, Kevin McManamon and Paul Mannion among other potential match winners and Dean Rock's free-taking also almost guarantee to punishing Mayo defensive fouling.\nBrogan had a poor game by his standards in the semi-final so could be ready to fire again on Sunday.\nMayo's 2-12 to 1-14 final by the Dubs in the 2013 decider summed up their frailties over the past decade as wrong options and missed chances saw Jim Gavin's side edge victory despite looking nervous themselves for much of the contest.\nGiven the scars in the squad, Sunday's occasion is surely a mental battle as much as anything else for the Mayo players.\nWhile Dublin are capable of blitzing any team, Mayo travel to the game knowing that they are capable of competing with the Dubs, even though they have failed to beat them in several tight championship contests in recent years.\nIn terms of the team news, Rochford has made one change from the Tipperary game with Tom Parsons replacing Barry Moran at midfield in a side which has nine survivors from the 2013 final.\nJim Gavin has yet to name his side with wing-back James McCarthy understood to be a fitness doubt.\nTEAM\nMayo: D Clarke; B Harrison, D Vaughan, K Higgins; L Keegan, C Boyle, P Durcan; S O'Shea, T Parsons; K McLoughlin, A O'Shea, D O'Connor; J Doherty, A Moran, C O'Connor.\nDublin: tba", "The Tyrone captain, 32, insists he has no plans to retire in the wake of the county's All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Kerry in Croke Park last month.\nCavanagh is Tyrone's longest-serving player, winning three All-Irelands and four Ulster titles since making his debut in 2002.\nHe expects manager Mickey Harte, who is in discussions with the county board about his future, to remain in charge.\nSpeaking to the Daily Mirror, Cavanagh said he wished to play on \"as long as my body can hold out for another season\".\n\"I feel there is a good team in the county at the moment and a team that is capable of challenging for honours.\n\"If my body holds out and the management team wants me for another year I'll certainly make myself available.\"\nHe believes Mickey Harte, whom he has played under since 2003, will still be in charge next year despite recent doubts about his future.\n\"We didn't have any major silverware this year but in our eyes we had a pretty good year and feel we're building and can challenge for trophies in 2016.\n\"I don't foresee a change in the management, but at the same time, it's not within our hands.\n\"It's the county board's job but I suspect that he will still be in charge in 2016.\"", "The sides were level four times before a James Doyle hat-trick helped Carlow to a 3-12 to 1-7 half-time lead, with Eoghan Campbell netting for Antrim.\nCarlow remained in control with Martin Kavanagh and Doyle netting while Ciaran Clarke (2) and Neil McManus scored the Antrim goals.\nThe win sees Carlow progress to an All-Ireland qualifier against Laois.\nCarlow posed a strong threat to Antrim's rear-guard, and following their opening goal from Doyle after 22 minutes, the Barrowsiders failed to trail in this game.\nDoyle pounced for his side's second goal six minutes later, to push his side 2-8 to 0-6 ahead.\nAntrim responded from the resulting puck-out, as Campbell finished to the net past Carlow keeper James Carroll, after a goalmouth scramble.\nCarlow responded well, and tagged on 1-4 without reply, with Doyle completing his treble in the 34th minute after sending an unstoppable shot past Saffrons keeper Chris O'Connell.\nEleven points ahead at the interval, Carlow pushed 13 clear on the restart, following a brace of John Michael Nolan scores.\nAntrim failed to give up with Clarke netting in the 38th minute, but Carlow's fourth goal arrived eight minutes later, with captain Kavanagh firing to the net.\nAgain the Ulster side responded to a Carlow goal with one of their own, this time McManus ploughed a close-range free past a crowded goalmouth.\nTen points separated the sides at this stage, and while Antrim cut the gap to seven points, with Clarke netting his second goal in the 56th minute, Carlow drove on.\nAntrim were outscored by 1-4 to 0-1 over the next 11 minutes, with Doyle firing his fourth goal to help Carlow to a 5-22 to 4-12 lead.\nThe Saffrons finished strongly with three of the final four points, but it wasn't enough as Kavanagh accepted the cup from GAA president Aogan O Fearghail after the game.\nWEEKEND HURLING RESULTS/FIXTURES\nSaturday\nLory Meagher Cup Final\nWarwickshire 0-17 0-11 Leitrim, Croke Park\nNicky Rackard Cup Final\nArmagh 2-15 3-23 Derry, Croke Park\nChristy Ring Cup Final\nCarlow 5-23 4-15 Antrim, Croke Park\nLeinster SHC semi-final\nWexford v Kilkenny, Wexford Park, 19:00", "The dramatic late intervention gave the Tribesmen a 0-22 to 1-18 win in a keenly contested All-Ireland hurling semi-final at Croke Park on Sunday.\nThe sides were level 13 times but Canning's 11th point of the game sent the All-Ireland champions crashing out.\nGalway will play the winners of next week's game between Cork and Waterford.\nThe final will be staged on 3 September.\nJohn O'Dwyer had a chance to snatch an equaliser in the final play but his effort from the right tailed off and Galway's passage to the final was secured.\nGalway may not have scored a goal for a third championship match in a row but their ability to pick off points when they were most needed saw them home.\nIt's the third year in a row that the All-Ireland semi-final has been decided by a single point between theses sides, with Galway gaining revenge for last year's loss.\nNow they will fancy their chance of a first All-Ireland title since 1988 after surviving a thrilling conclusion.\nThe sides were level six times in the opening half but Tipperary, playing with the breeze, led by 1-10 to 0-12 at the interval.\nThe goal came after 24 minutes when John McGrath pounced on an error by Galway goalkeeper Colm Callanan and corner-back Adrian Tuohy to flick the ball to the net.\nGalway: C Callanan; A Tuohy, Daithi Burke, J Hanbury; P Mannion (0-01, 0-01f), G McInerney, A Harte; J Coen (0-02), David Burke; C Mannion (0-01), J Canning (0-11, 0-06f, 0-01 sideline, 0-01 '65), J Cooney (0-01); C Whelan (0-04), N Burke, C Cooney (0-02).\nSubs: J Flynn for N Burke (45), J Glynn for C Mannion (53), S Moloney for C Cooney (70), G Lally for McInerney (71-73).\nTipperary: D Gleeson; D Maher, J Barry, M Cahill; S Kennedy (0-01), R Maher, Paudie Maher (0-02); B Maher (0-03, 0-02f), M Breen; D McCormack, Patrick 'Bonner' Maher, N McGrath (0-02); J O'Dwyer (0-03), S Callanan (0-05, 0-03f), J McGrath (1-01).\nSubs: S Curtin for Patrick 'Bonner Maher (7-10), J Forde (0-01) for Breen (34), N O'Meara for Forde (62).", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nThe Ulster champions were deserving winners against a fancied St Vincent's team, outscoring the Dubliners by seven points to four in the second half .\nChrissy McKaigue was the star, and outscoring Dublin forward Diarmuid Connolly by four points to one.\nSlaughtneil will play Dr Crokes of Kerry in the final at Croke Park.\nThe team from Killarney beat Galway club Corofin 2-11 to 0-8 in Saturday's second semi-final.\nEight of the Slaughtneil team are excepted to play for the club's hurlers in their All-Ireland semi-final on 25 February.\nThe club are on course for a remarkable hat-trick of All-Ireland titles as the camogie team are already into their final.\nOf all the victories they have managed in hurling and football in the last three years, this was perhaps Slaughtneil's finest moment.\nThey played as a team with a collective spirit and hunger that left the Dublin champions trailing in their wake.\nMcKaigue was immense, choosing his moments to drive forward and landed three monster scores in the second half with the wind.\nThis was not the outcome St Vincent's had expected and they lost their discipline in the last quarter with black cards for Brendan Egan and Cormac Diamond, while Connolly and Ger Brennan were also booked in that spell.\nConnolly had spells at full-forward against Brendan Rogers but mostly at centre half-forward against Chrissy McKaigue.\nHe found both to be tough customers, and most of the scoring damage in the opening half was done by Mayo's Enda Varley who scored two points from play and converted two frees.\nChristopher Bradley scored the opening point for Slaughtneil after four minutes but Vincent's had a good first quarter and led by 0-3 to 0-1, with Nathan Mullins and Connolly scoring from play.\nAn accomplished defensive spine has helped Slaughtneil to the top of the pile in Ulster, and they grew in confidence as they came to terms with Vincent's attacking strengths.\nChrissy McKaigue showed great leadership to surge forward, throwing off the tackles to shoot from 40 metres and his shot into a strong wind curled inside the far post.\nThe Dublin champions got a lot of men behind the ball forcing Slaughtneil to shoot from distance, which they did with mixed success.\nFive first-half wides and Paul Bradley's poor 25m free which dropped short were tempered with Christopher Bradley's tremendous left-footed point to tie the scores at five points each.\nVarley dropped the shoulder and his left-footed point edged Vincent's back in front, 0-6 to 0-5, at the break.\nSlaughtneil outscored St Vincent's by five points to one in a 13 minute spell after the interval, McKaigue with two points and Christopher Bradley and Shane McGuigan also finding their range.\nVincent's go-to men were being bottled up by Slaughtneil's well-drilled defence but Gavin Burke found the space and accuracy to score twice with his left foot.\nVincent's carved out the game's only goal chance with Shane Carthy flicking the ball towards goal but goalkeeper Anton McMullan dived to his left to turn the ball round the post.\nVarley pointed his only score of the second half but Vincent's couldn't get back on level terms. Slaughtneil confidently played out the clock and Paul Bradley's injury-time free was the insurance point to see them through in search of a first All-Ireland crown.\nSlaughtneil: A McMullan; F McEldowney, B Rodgers, K McKaigue; P McNeill, C McKaigue (0-4), K Feeney; Patsy Bradley, P Cassidy; Shane McGuigan (0-3, 2f), Paul Bradley (0-2, 2f), M McGrath; C Bradley (0-3), Se McGuigan, C O'Doherty\nSubs: R Bradley for Se McGuigan (54), B McGuigan for K McKaigue (BC, 64)\nSt Vincent's: M Savage; M Concarr, J Curley, C Wilson; B Egan, G Brennan, Cameron Diamond; N Mullins (0-1), S Carthy (0-1); G Burke (0-2), D Connolly (0-1), Cormac Diamond; R Trainor, E Varley (0-5, 2f), T Quinn\nSubs: A Martin for Trainor (46), J Feeney for Cormac Diamond (BC, 61), K Golden for Cameron Diamond (67), F Breathnach for Mullins (58), S McCusker for Egan (BC, 62)\nReferee: Paddy Neilan (Roscommon)", "The St Eunan's man stepped down from inter-county football last January, citing work and family considerations.\nIt is understood that the 33-year-old has met with Gallagher and is set to join collective squad training.\nKavanagh won three Ulster titles, a 2012 All-Ireland medal and a National League crown under Jim McGuinness.\nThe Letterkenny man has worn the county colours on 132 occasions, with the last of his 49 championship appearances coming in the 2014 All-Ireland final defeat to Kerry.\nThe high point of his career so far was winning the Sam Maguire Cup in 2012 thanks to a victory over Mayo, a triumph which came 10 years after he made his Ulster SFc debut.\nGallagher's first year in charge in 2015 yielded an Ulster final appearance against Monaghan, before an All-Ireland quarter-final reverse at the hands of Mayo.\nDonegal will open their Football League campaign with a Division One game against Down on Saturday 30 January.", "The Breffnimen could escape if they beat already-relegated Roscommon next week and Mayo lose against Donegal and Kerry are beaten by Tyrone.\nMayo boosted their survival hopes and hit Tyrone's chances of reaching the final by winning 1-10 to 0-12 in Omagh.\nA late Conor McManus penalty snatched Monaghan a draw against Donegal.\nDonegal appeared to have weathered a strong challenge from Monaghan - helped by seven points from Michael Murphy and an early Micheal Carroll goal - but against the run of play, the Farney men earned a late penalty and McManus, who had been subdued at Ballyshannon, held his nerve to send Mark Anthony McGinley the wrong way from the spot.\nDonegal looked set to put themselves in pole position to clinch a final spot only for McManus' penalty to mean that a plethora of permutations remain heading into the final series of round robin games next weekend.\nRory Gallagher's side remain in second place on eight points, level with Monaghan, but as it stands, even sixth-placed Kerry and fifth-placed Mayo could qualify for the decider by beating Tyrone and Donegal, respectively next weekend.\nTyrone drop to fourth spot, after their narrow defeat on Sunday, and will clinch a final place if they win in Kerry and Donegal and Monaghan are both beaten next weekend.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nCavan led 0-3 to 0-1 early on at Breffni Park but then lost their way as Kerry fought back to lead 0-6 to 0-4 at half-time.\nBoth teams had players black carded in the first half with Kerry defending Kevin McCarthy departing early on and Cavan's Killian Brady then falling victim following a fly-hack on a loose ball.\nDara McVeety's move to full-forward boosted Cavan as his goal helped them move 1-7 to 0-9 ahead.\nKerry fought back to lead by two but late points by Conor Moynagh and sub Seanie Johnston helped Cavan level.\nMichael Geaney has a difficult late free chance to snatch victory for Kerry but was off target.\nPaul Geaney hit five of Kerry's points while substitute Barry John Keane also notched two scores for the Kingdom.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nCarroll struck Donegal's goal in the fifth minute after good work by Ryan McHugh and Eoghan Ban Gallagher but six Jack McCarron points helped Monaghan fight back to lead 0-9 to 1-5 at half-time.\nFour unanswered points after the resumption, including a score from substitute Patrick McBrearty, helped Donegal move three ahead and while McManus' first point of the day contributed to Monaghan closing the gap to one, the home side looked home and hosed as they moved three up once more.\nBut a moment of slackness in the Donegal defence, as Martin McElhinney push Darren Hughes, saw Monaghan being awarded their late penalty which McManus coolly converted.\nBoth teams suffered worrying injuries with influential Donegal star Ryan McHugh stretchered off in the second half with Monaghan defender Ryan McAnespie having endured a similar fate in the opening period.\nKevin McLoughlin's late winner helped Mayo repeat last summer's narrow win the Red Hands.\nTyrone were left to lament 14 wides, with Mickey Harte's side also dropping short a series of chances.\nWith Mattie Donnelly restored to his favourite midfield position following a brief experiment as an inside forward, the Red Hands pressed forward with pace from deep, but their finishing was poor\nA Niall Sludden point was immediately followed by him being black carded for a challenge on Lee Keegan.\nKeegan himself also received a black card for hauling down Kieran McGeary ten minutes later, with Sean Cavanagh edging the home side two points clear from the resultant free.\nBut Mayo crafted a superb 28th-minute goal as Cillian O'Connor's inch-perfect pass found Andy Moran, who spotted Tom Parsons' run, with the midfielder slotting past Niall Morgan.\nAfter Mayo led by 1-6 to 0-8 at the break, Tyrone missed a goal chance as Conor Meyler scuffed his shot.\nWith Chris Barrett beginning to find the measure of the jinking Mark Bradley, Tyrone's attack started to labour before Kieran McGeary landed a long range point to bring the sides level for the fifth time.\nAs both teams retreated when not in possession, a 14-minute period without a score followed Bradley's 48th-minute leveller.\nTyrone dropped a couple of glorious chances short before McLoughlin edged Mayo ahead in the second minute of injury-time.\nAt the death, Tyrone had claims for a free turned down as Sean Cavanagh went to ground but Conor Lane instead awarding Mayo a free for over-carrying as the visitors held on for a gutsy win.\nALLIANZ FOOTBALL LEAGUE RESULTS\nSunday\nDivision One\nCavan 1-10 0-13 Kerry\nTyrone 0-12 1-10 Mayo\nDonegal 1-11 1-11 Monaghan\nDivision Two\nDerry 2-10 0-20 Cork\nMeath 3-15 0-6 Fermanagh\nDown 1-13 3-15 Galway\nKildare 0-18 1-14 Clare\nDivision Three\nSligo 2-10 2-14 Offaly\nTipperary 0-12 0-16 Louth\nDivision Four\nLeitrim 2-16 0-15 London\nWexford 0-9 3-24 Westmeath\nWicklow 0-10 1-18 Carlow\nSaturday\nDivision One\nDublin 2-29 0-14 Roscommon\nDivision Three\nArmagh 1-12 0-13 Antrim\nLaois 1-13 0-13 Longford\nDivision Four\nWaterford 0-8 0-14 Limerick", "Rock, whose goal was scored by Paudie Ward, led early in the second half but Glenbeigh-Glencar won 1-14 to 1-11 after a close tussle at Croke Park.\nRock's Enda McWilliams was dismissed for two yellows in the first half.\nThe Tyrone men ended with just 12 men as Niall Mullan and Diarmuid Carroll got second bookings late in the game.\nGlenbeigh's Daniel Griffin had been shown a straight red before the break.\nIt was the second the small rural club from Tyrone had lost an All-Ireland Club JFC final at GAA headquarters.\nThey lost in the 2008 decider and had high hopes of winning the trophy this time.\nHowever, it was Kerry side Glenbeigh-Glencar who finished strongly to take the title at the end of a drama-packed decider.\nThe Munster champions got off to a flying start when Kerry star Darran O'Sullivan fired in a goal, but the Red Hand men fought back with points from Aidan McGarruty, Conor McCreesh and Ciaran Gourley.\nGlenbeigh had attacker Griffin sent off, and Rock finished strongly with scores from Aidan Girvan and McGarrity to draw level at 0-9 to 1-6 at the break.\nMcGarrity gave Rock the lead for the first time, and Ward's 48th minute goal gave them genuine hope.\nBut the late dismissals of Mullan and Carroll, both on second bookings, and Enda McWilliams (yellow/black) was a major blow.\nThe Kerry men finished with points from O'Sullivan and Jason McKenna to take the title.", "Cavan boss Terry Hyland recalls Seanie Johnston, Padraig Faulkner, Ciaran Brady and Liam Buchanan for their game against Carlow at Breffni Park.\nThomas Mallon, Chrissy McKaigue and Ciaran McFaul return to the Derry team for the tussle with Meath at Owenbeg.\nMonaghan face Longford at Clones with Fermanagh against Mayo at Castlebar.\nThe Farney County may face a tougher task than Cavan in regrouping from the Ulster semi-final replay defeat last weekend.\nLongford may have needed extra-time to account for a woefully out-of-form Down at Newry two weeks ago but the Leinster county were full value for their victory.\nFor their part, Monaghan were decidedly second best against Donegal in the provincial semi-final last weekend even though they were only a point behind at the finish.\nMalachy O'Rourke, who has yet to name his team, has the job of rallying his side after they lost their Ulster title and it may prove no easy task against the Longford side led by inspirational skipper Mickey Quinn.\nCavan shipped five goals in their defeat by Tyrone last weekend in an uncharacteristically sloppy defensive display but they should regroup to see off Carlow.\nThe inclusion of Faulkner, Brady, Buchanan and the mercurial Johnston sees James McEnroe, Niall Murray, Martin Reilly and David Givney dropping out.\nDamian Barton's Derry changes mean that Mickey Conlon, Neil Forrester and Liam McGoldrick drop out of the side that defeated Louth.\nMeath were not disgraced in their 0-21 to 0-11 Leinster semi-final defeat by Dublin but Derry will still believe that they are capable of overcoming the Royals.\nJames Kielt hit 1-9 in Derry's 1-18 to 2-10 win over Louth three weeks ago and Oak Leaf fans will hope the Kilrea man can have another influential afternoon.\nThe pick of Saturday's six qualifiers is Fermanagh's tussle with Mayo at Castlebar as the home side aim to bounce back from their surprise Connacht semi-final defeat by Galway to see off Pete McGrath's Ernemen.\nMost pundits are tipping Mayo to keep their All-Ireland title hopes alive but the noises from the Fermanagh camp suggest they are convinced that they can pile more misery on Stephen Rochford's squad.\nMayo will also go into the contest minus midfielder Tom Parsons who tore a hamstring in training in midweek while Ger Cafferkey and Jason Gibbons also remain out with Chris Barrett and Conor Loftus also unlikely to feature despite returning to training after injury.\nIn contrast, Fermanagh appear to have no major injury worries, apart from long-term absentee, Ryan McCluskey.\nCavan: R Galligan; K Brady, R Dunne, P Faulkner; F Flanagan, C Moynagh, C Brady; T Corr, L Buchanan; D McVeety, G McKiernan, K Clarke; C Mackey, E Keating, S Johnston.\nDerry: T Mallon; G McKinless, C McKaigue, K McKaigue; C McFaul, B Rogers, C Mullan; C McAtamney, N Holly; D Heavron, C Bradley, E Brown; J Kielt, E McGuckin, M Lynch.\nSATURDAY'S ALL-IRELAND SFC QUALIFIERS\nDerry v Meath, Owenbeg, 14:30 BST\nCork v Limerick, Thurles, 15:00\nMayo v Fermanagh, Castlebar, 15:30\nCavan v Carlow, Breffni Park, 17:00\nMonaghan v Longford, Clones, 18:30\nKildare v Offaly, Newbridge, 18:30", "Padraig Cassidy's goal put Slaughtneil ahead but his sending off in first-half injury-time was a key moment after he lashed out at Kieran O'Leary.\nHis retaliation, after being fouled, left Slaughtneil on the back foot.\nDr Crokes played keep ball late on as their goalscorer Colm Cooper completed his set of major football medals.\nSlaughtneil had been aiming to add to the club's All-Ireland camogie triumph two weeks ago in a season which also saw their hurlers lifting the Ulster title.\nThe Emmets players were also aiming to atone for their 2015 All-Ireland final defeat by Galway side Corofin.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nEven before Cassidy's dismissal, Slaughtneil were struggling to get their key man Chrissy McKaigue on the ball but the sending off made that a virtually impossible task in the second half.\nWith Gavin White operating as the spare man, Dr Crokes largely dictate the second half with the Derry champions struggling to break through the Kerry club's defensive shield when they did venture into the Killarney team's territory.\nShortly after the resumption, the Ulster champions did have a penalty appeal after Meehaul McGrath ended up on the turf but referee Maurice Deegan looked to have made the right call in waving play on.\nGaelic football purists will have been uneasy with the finale to the game as the Crokes, basketball-style, held on to the ball for close to four minutes to run down the clock.\nCassidy's dismissal made that an obvious tactic and there was little a tired Slaughtneil outfit could do about it.\nThe Slaughtneil goalscorer could have few complaints about his red card as he appeared to catch O'Leary with a strike to the groin area - after a barge on the Crokes player by Patsy Bradley had led to the Kerryman being pushed against Cassidy.\nSlaughtneil full-back Brendan Rogers' upfield charges were a feature of the first half as he was involved in his team's opening three scores - including Cassidy's 13th-minute goal.\nCassidy showed great composure to round Crokes keeper Shane Murphy and score after running from halfway following Rogers' initial burst.\nHowever, Cooper's goal levelled proceedings seven minutes later after Daithi Casey had run through the centre of Slaughtneil's defence.\nIn fairness, Slaughtneil had been warned a few minutes earlier when White missed a pointblank chance after charging unchallenged from halfway.\nThe half ended in the worst possible fashion for the Derry champions as two quickfire Brian Looney points were followed by Cassidy's dismissal, as the Kerry side led 1-6 to 1-5 at the break.\nPaul Bradley's free got Slaughtneil on terms eight minutes after the restart but as scores began to dry up, points from young substitutes Micheal Burns and Jordan Kelly helped Dr Crokes take a three-point lead which proved enough to land the Kerry outfit's second title, after their 1992 success.\nBurns' 46th-minute score was a morale-sapper for Slaughtneil after McKaigue had hit two wides from difficult positions as the Ulster side struggled to set up scoring chances despite dominating possession for a couple of minutes.", "The 58-year-old school principal from Dublin won 144 out of a possible 278 votes and was 98 ahead of his nearest rivals Sean Walsh and Frank Burke.\nHoran will take over from current president Aogan O Fearghail in 2018.\n\"Aogan is the president for the next 12 months so I'll support him and learn from him as best I can,\" said Horan at Croke Park.\nThe other candidates for the post were Martin Skelly with 22 votes while 20 went to Robert Frost.\nThis weekend's annual congress will be dominated by new championship proposals in football and hurling.\nThe plans put forward by GAA director general Paraic Duffy include completing the All-Ireland Senior Championships by the end of August.\nAlso included is a new round-robin format for the All-Ireland SFC quarter-finals, which would mean more games.\nThis proposal has proved particularly controversial in recent weeks.\nBoth the Gaelic Players' Association and recently formed Club Players' Association have come out against Duffy's plans, although not necessarily for the same reasons.\nOstensibly, the main reason for these mooted changes is to try and ensure more regular games for club players but there is a certain amount of bafflement as to how this can be squared with the motion to have a round-robin stage in the All-Ireland Football quarter-finals.\nThe new club players' body has been angered after the GAA's top brass refused to grant it a speaking platform at the Croke Park gathering.\nHowever, that may change at further annual gatherings of GAA delegates if a motion for the club players' body to be officially recognised is passed in Dublin.\nAll the indications are that the votes on both the so-called new 'Super Eight football round' and the proposal to bring forward the All-Ireland finals will be exceptionally close, with a two-thirds' majority required for the format changes to be tried for a three-year period.\nTo make matters even complicated, congress will also hear a number of motions calls from the two-thirds majority to be scrapped, with one call suggestion a simple majority and another calling for the figure to be lowered to 60%.\nInevitably, those motions will require a two-thirds majority to be passed.\nGoing into the weekend, Croke Park's desire for replays to be scrapped - in favour of extra-time - in all championship games bar provincial and All-Ireland finals looks likely to be comfortably passed.\nAt last year's congress, motions to move All-Ireland Finals to earlier in the year and scrap replays were both defeated, although the finals proposal fell narrowly short after getting support from 60.8% of delegates.", "The holders looked in control as they led 0-9 to 0-4 but goals from Darran O'Sullivan and Paul Geaney helped Kerry move 2-8 to 0-9 ahead by the break.\nDublin levelled by the 49th minute only for Kerry to twice move three up again.\nHowever, Dublin hit six of the last seven scores over the final 14 minutes to set up a final meeting with Mayo.\nFree-taker Dean Rock finished with 12 points although the two clinching scores from substitute Eoghan O'Gara and Diarmuid Connolly, were both from play as Dublin completed a fourth championship triumph over Kerry in six years.\nKerry's Donnchadh Walsh had a sniff of an early goal chance only for Davy Byrne to avert the danger with a firm shoulder but Dublin quickly moved into a 0-4 to 0-0 lead helped by three Rock points.\nDavid Moran's score from play opened Kerry's account in the 14th minute but with the Kingdom struggling badly on their own kick-outs, the champions appeared to have a grip on the contest as they led 0-9 to 0-4 after 24 minutes.\nHowever, the match turned dramatically in the remaining 13 minutes before half-time as Kerry hit 2-4 without reply.\nIn shades of Donegal keeper Paul Durcan's horror moment in the 2014 All-Ireland Final, Stephen Cluxton's errant short kick-out gifted Kerry's opening goal as Walsh set up O'Sullivan for a simple finish to the roof of the net.\nCluxton was involved again for Kerry's second goal as Geaney nipped in ahead of him after a high ball from Anthony Maher, with an umpire ruling that the Kingdom forward's palmed effort had crossed the line.\nDublin would have been entitled to have exhibited shellshock at the break but to their credit, the champions quickly cut the Kingdom lead to only two after the resumption and Brian Fenton's score levelled the contest by the 49th minute.\nKerry were three ahead again by the 57th minute with substitute Barry John Keane stroking over a glorious score and the margin was still three on 62 minutes as a Paul Murphy point cancelled out another Rock free.\nBut two more Rock frees and a Philly McMahon score had Dublin on terms by the 66th minute and they were ahead as the game entered injury-time when the outstanding Kevin McManamon stroked over a glorious score.\nA minute later, Kerry substitute Stephen O'Brien levelled again as he fisted over when there was a hint of a goal chance but the closing points from O'Gara and Connolly, which was a glorious curling effort, ensured the Dubs will face Mayo on 18 September.\nIn between the two clinching scores, Kerry were left furious as referee David Gough waved aside claims for a free after a big hit by McManamon on Peter Crowley near Dublin's 21-metre line.\nIt was one of a number of tight calls and Kerry boss Eamonn Fitzmaurice said he would \"bite his lip\" when asked for his views on the officiating.\nReferee Gough was reported to have been pelted with match programmes and other items as he left the field to a chorus of boos from Kerry fans after the final whistle.", "The sides were tied at 0-7 apiece at the interval and were still equal on 0-11 each when Sean Cavanagh was sent-off for a second yellow card on 59 minutes.\nA fine David Clarke save from Connor McAlliskey in the second half proved vital while Darren McCurry wasted a good chance for a late levelling point.\nNiall Morgan was unable to convert three long-range frees, one late on.\nTyrone's eight-year wait for Sam Maguire Cup success continues and this defeat will be particularly hard to take as they went into the game as favourites after an impressive triumph over Donegal in the Ulster final on 17 July.\nTyrone named the same team which beat Donegal in the Ulster provincial decider almost three weeks ago, but Mayo manager Stephen Rochford recalled Diarmuid O'Connor, while Jason Doherty and Alan Dillon were late additions to the starting line-up.\nMayo were shocked by Galway in the Connacht Championship but since then saw off Fermanagh, Kildare and Westmeath in the qualifiers.\nMayo also had a good record against the Red Hands in the Championship, having earned a third victory in four games between the counties when they won the 2013 All-Ireland semi-final 1-16 to 0-13.\nAn evenly-contested first half saw the sides go in all-square at the interval, Mattie Donnelly kicking three points for the Ulster champions and Cillian O'Connor contributing four for the Connacht men.\nAidan O'Shea and Niall Sludden traded scores to make it 0-1 apiece after 10 minutes but points from Andy Moran and an O'Connor long-range free edged Mayo into a merited lead as the game began to open up.\nRonan O'Neill and Peter Harte (2) joined Donnelly on the score-sheet for Tyrone but, crucially, goalkeeper Morgan was off-target with a couple of long-distance free attempts.\nColm Boyle knocked over the final point of the half to leave the score 0-7 each at half-time.\nThe second half was as keenly fought as the first and there was never more than two points between the teams.\nMcAlliskey squandered the best goal-scoring opportunity of the match, although credit must go to Clarke, and soon after a high challenge by Cavanagh saw him dismissed with just over 10 minutes remaining.\nSubsequent points from O'Connor, with a free, and Lee Keegan with his second point, proved enough to see Mayo through, a McCurry free being Tyrone's only reply.\nO'Connor finished with seven points, with substitute Tom Parsons also pointing for the victors, while Peter Harte (2), McAlliskey (2) and McCurry were the Ulster county's second-half scorers.\nFormer Tyrone player Enda McGinley on BBC Radio Ulster: \"Tyrone are out of the Championship without hitting top gear and this is a huge blow to the momentum Mickey Harte had with this team.\n\"Tyrone struggled right throughout the game and when their plan of counter-attacking football failed, they had no plan B. Mayo didn't even need to be at their best.\"\nMayo will play Tipperary in the first of the All-Ireland semi-finals on 21 August, with Kerry facing Dublin, conquerors of Donegal on Saturday, in the second last-four tie a week later.\nMayo: D Clarke; B Harrison, A Dillon, K Higgins; L Keegan, C Boyle, P Durcan; S O'Shea, D Vaughan; K McLoughlin, A O'Shea, D O'Connor; J Doherty, A Moran, C O'Connor.\nTyrone: N Morgan, A McCrory, R McNamee, C McCarron, T McCann, J McMahon, P Harte, C Cavanagh, M Donnelly, C McShane, N Sludden, R McNabb, C McAlliskey, S Cavanagh, R O'Neill.\nReferee: David Gough (Meath).", "They include a new Super 8 round-robin format for the All-Ireland SFC quarter-finals, meaning more games and opposed by both player bodies.\nExtra-time will be played in Championship games with the exception of provincial and All-Ireland finals.\nAll-Ireland finals will be moved from traditional September dates to August.\nAnother change to the GAA rulebook will see a reduction in the size of the voting majority required to change a rule from the traditional two-thirds to 60% at future congresses.\nCroke Park's top brass mounted a high-profile campaign in support of the championship changes and all three votes comfortably exceeded the necessary two-thirds majority.\nThe Super 8 proposal got 76% support, with the All-Ireland final dates motions backed by 78% of delegates and the end-to-replays proposal receiving overwhelming 91% support.\nGaelic Players Association chief executive Dermot Earley was a vocal speaker against the proposal to introduce the new round-robin format for the All-Ireland Football quarter-finals.\nOstensibly, the reason for the raft of championship changes was to ensure more games for the ordinary club player but the decision to have a round-robin stage in the All-Ireland Football Championships appears to contradict this.\n\"The Super 8s will do nothing to help weaker counties, do nothing to close the gap between haves and have-nots,\" said Earley.\n\"It will reduce the likelihood of unexpected results in knock-out games and reduce the incentive for winning a provincial title.\"\nCork were also against the Super 8 plan but the majority of the speakers, including former Armagh star Jarlath Burns, spoke strongly in favour of the proposal, which in the final analysis, will lead to more big championship games and additional revenue for the GAA.\nCork chairman Frank Murphy also spoke out strongly against the motion to move the All-Ireland Senior Football and Hurling finals forward but again Croke Park's top brass got their way.\nThis decision means that All-Ireland Hurling Final is likely to be played on 13 August next year with the football decider on 27 August.\nFormer Donegal defender Eamon McGee and ex-Tyrone player Philip Jordan were among several prominent GAA players to strongly criticise the decision to introduce the round-robin format for the All-Ireland Football quarter-finals.\nMcGee said that the \"level of disrespect shown to both club and county GAA players today is staggering\".\nJordan added the Congress decision was \"depressing\".\nIn terms of other motions, a proposal to recognise the recently-formed club players body was withdrawn.", "The Mourne County led 0-3 to 0-0 but Cork hit back to hand a sixth straight defeat to Down on a 0-12 to 0-7 margin.\nAfter being level 0-6 to 0-6 at half-time against Kerry, Monaghan collapsed to a 1-17 to 1-9 defeat at Clones.\nA Darren Hughes goal gave Monaghan hope in the second half but David Moran's immediate penalty sealed Kerry's win.\nKerry dominated the second half as Moran and the outstanding Kieran Donaghy lorded possession in midfield.\nWith Mayo beating Roscommon 1-11 to 1-7 at Dr Hyde Park, Monaghan are now in the relegation spot ahead of next weekend's round of games.\nEven victory over Donegal at Castleblayney may not be enough to save Monaghan from the drop as Mayo, who like the Farney County are now on four points, will be fancied to account for Down in their final game.\nDonegal are not even guaranteed safety on six points although their scoring difference is considerably superior to that of both Monaghan and Cork.\nHowever, Donegal will be fancied to win in Castleblayney against a Monaghan team whose form has dipped alarmingly since their opening wins over Roscommon and Down.\nThe Mourne County's expected relegation was confirmed as Cork rarely had to get out of second gear to record a comfortable victory at Pairc Ui Rinn.\nTwo Donal O'Hare frees helped Down to an early three-point lead and Cork didn't open their account until Colm O'Neill's 22nd-minute free.\nMark Collins tied the scores at 0-3 apiece with the game's first point from play a minute before the break before O'Neill edged Cork ahead in injury-time.\nHowever, Down keeper Michael Cunningham had needed to make two fine stops to prevent Cork goals in the first period and the home side hit four unanswered scores after the break to establish firm control.\nCork led 0-10 to 0-5 with eight minutes left and the margin remained five at the finish.\nMonaghan looked a far cry from the side which defeated Donegal in last summer's Ulster Final as they were outclassed by the Kingdom at Clones.\nThe first half was even, but Monaghan once again had to rely on Conor McManus for more than half their scores as he contributed four frees.\nHowever, Kerry cut loose after the break to hit six unanswered points as Monaghan were starved of midfield possession with Donaghy and Moran winning a series of Farney kick-outs.\nHalf-time substitute Alan Fitzgerald also made a significant contribution as he fired three points from play.\nTotally against the run of play, Darren Hughes, who like several Monaghan forwards struggled for the most part, bundled in a 57th-minute goal to cut Kerry's lead to three.\nHowever, Donaghy's superb long-range point in response was quickly followed by Moran's successful penalty after a misdirected Rory Beggan kick-out had forced Drew Wylie to concede a penalty, as he bundled over Paul Murphy.\nColm Cooper was taken off late on after notching six points and his replacement Barry John Keane, who surely would be a regular starter for virtually every other county, contributed two late Kingdom scores.\nTo finish off a miserable afternoon for Monaghan, they had Dessie Mone sent off late on after he was handed a second yellow card.\nKerry's victory puts them on course for the semi-finals although they may need to avoid defeat against Cork in Tralee next weekend to be absolutely certain of progressing to the last four.\nALLIANZ FOOTBALL LEAGUE RESULTS\nSunday\nDivision One\nCork 0-12 0-07 Down\nMonaghan 1-09 1-17 Kerry\nRoscommon 1-07 1-11 Mayo\nDivision Two\nDerry 2-12 2-12 Meath\nCavan 1-17 0-15 Laois\nGalway 0-15 0-15 Fermanagh\nDivision Three\nWestmeath 1-09 0-09 Offaly\nClare 1-17 0-15 Longford\nSligo 3-10 1-12 Limerick\nDivision Four\nWaterford 0-12 0-13 London\nWicklow 1-12 2-13 Antrim\nLouth 0-13 0-11 Wexford\nSaturday\nDivision One\nDublin 1-10 0-07 Donegal\nDivision Two\nTyrone 0-13 1-10 Armagh\nDivision Three\nTipperary 1-05 2-13 Kildare\nDivision Four\nLeitrim 1-04 0-12 Carlow", "Donnelly suffered concussion playing for his club last weekend but has been given the all clear to resume training.\n\"He has got clearance now, it will be nine days since his hit before he goes into any contact again,\" Harte said.\nTyrone cannot appeal the black cards Donnelly and Cathal McShane received in the Ulster final win over Donegal.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device\nBoth players were dismissed by referee David Coldrick within five minutes of each other in the first half.\nDonnelly was deemed to have taken out Eoin McHugh with a body check while McShane was sent off for tripping Neil McGee while he was on the ground.\nHarte said: \"I don't have to tell you that I was never an advocate of the black card anyway\".\n\"I really did not see the value in it and it adds another degree of difficulty to the job of referees.\"\nA rule change introduced by the GAA this year means black cards cannot be appealed until a player accumulates three, resulting in a one-game suspension.\nTyrone have no new injury worries heading into their first championship meeting with Mayo on Saturday (16:00 BST) since the 2013 All-Ireland SFC semi-final.\nDonegal play All-Ireland champions Dublin in the second part of Saturday's quarter-final double bill (18:00 BST).", "Mickey Harte's men next face Division One champions and All-Ireland holders Dublin on Saturday at Croke Park.\nDublin looked impressive as they ran out 0-18 to 0-11 winners over Cavan in front of a big crowd at Breffni Park.\nA young Donegal side were outclassed by Kerry in Letterkenny although they managed to finish just three points behind.\nFull-forward Paul Geaney scored both goals for the Kingdom who had corner-back Shane Enright carried off on a stretcher after he was injured in an early challenge with Donegal captain Michael Murphy.\nGeaney's first-half goal was set up by young corner-forward Jack Savage who looks an exciting prospect for Kerry.\nThe visitors led 1-1 to 1-5 at half-time thanks to a run of five points without reply.\nGeaney's second three-pointer had Kerry up by 2-14 to 0-8 but, with the visitors bringing on six subs, Donegal stuck to their task and in the end there was just a goal between the teams.\nUlster champions Tyrone were stunned by Niall Daly's early goal for Roscommon but recovered to win with ease.\nMickey Harte's men lost All-Star Mattie Donnelly early on, and he looks likely to miss the clash with Dublin due to concussion.\nThey moved into a four-point lead by the 25th minute, with Peter Harte, Darren McCurry and Niall Sludden making them tick.\nRoscommon went 17 minutes without a score, before Donie Smith landed an excellent point.\nOnce again, a fast-moving Red Hand side got going, with wing backs Tiernan McCann and Johnny Munroe pushing forward to score, while Harte's fourth, and first from play, sent them in with a 0-10 to 1-2 interval lead.\nSmith fired over two wonderful scores inside two minutes after the restart to kick-start Roscommon's challenge, but they continued to pay a price for indiscipline at the back, with Ronan O'Neill knocking over a couple of frees.\nTyrone's point scorers in the game were Harte 4, O'Neill 3, Sludden 2, McCurry 2, Mark Bradley 2, McCann, Munroe, Colm Cavanagh, Conor Meyler and Conall McCann.\nDean Rock landed eight points for Dublin as they ran out seven-point winners over Cavan in front of a crowd of more than 16,000.\nSeanie Johnston, who finished with five points, helped Cavan take an early lead but scores by Rock, Kevin McManamon, Jason Whelan, Ciaran Kilkenny, Niall Scully, and Jack McCaffrey saw the Dubs enjoy a 10 points to seven interval advantage.\nDublin extended their lead to 0-16 to 0-10 and late scores by Brian Fenton and Cormac Costello saw them win with ease ahead of next weekend's showdown with Tyrone.", "Mickey O'Neill, Niall Sludden, Conor Meyler and Lee Brennan are all chosen.\nThe inclusion of O'Neill and Sludden are two of seven changes from the team which beat Derry after extra-time in last Saturday's Dr McKenna Cup final.\nAidan McCrory, Rory Brennan, Peter Harte, Conor Meyler and Connor McAliskey return to the side.\nWith Mickey O'Neill named in goals, Niall Morgan is named on a replacements bench which includes Sean Cavanagh, Mark Bradley, Conor Clarke and Ronan McNamee.\nCavan manager Terry Hyland hands league debuts to goalkeeper Raymond Galligan, Padraig Faulkner, Ciaran Brady and Conor Moynagh while Eugene Keating is named at full-forward after rejoining the county panely.\nFermanagh boss Peter McGrath has named an experienced side for their Division 2 opener against Derry at Celtic Park.\nThe starting line-up contains no Football League debutants although there are six changes from the 15 which took to the field against Dublin in last summer's All-Ireland quarter-final.\nChristopher Snow replaces Thomas Treacy in goals with Aidan Breen and Che Cullen taking over from Martin O'Brien and Niall Cassidy in the full-back line.\nDamian Kelly replaces Ryan McCluskey in the half-backs Conall Jones taking over from Richard O'Callaghan in midfield and Ciaran Flaherty in for Ryan Jones in the half-forward line.\nDerry will be without Enda Lynn following his ankle break in last Saturday's Dr McKenna Cup final defeat by Tyrone.\nThe throw-in time for the Celtic Park contest has been put back to 14:15 GMT.\nArmagh manager Kieran McGeeney has named three league debutants for Sunday's game game against Meath in Navan.\nRuairi McCaughey and Shea Heffron are named in defence with the other newcomer Niall Grimley selected at midfield.\nThe Armagh side has a stronger look than during the recent McKenna Cup campaign with Charlie Vernon, Brendan Donaghy, Aidan Forker, Aaron Findon, Stefan Campbell, Miceal McKenna and Gavin McParland all included.\nKevin Dyas and Ethan Rafferty are named in the substitutes but those unavailable include Ciaran McKeever and Rory Grugan.\nMeath, who are still managed by Mick O'Dowd, go into the contest boosted by their victory in the O'Byrne Cup final last weekend.\nTyrone: M O'Neill, A McCrory, J McMahon, C McCarron, N Sludden, R Brennan, T McCann, C Cavanagh, M Donnelly, C McShane, P Harte, C Meyler, L Brennan, C McAliskey, R O'Neill. Subs: N Morgan, M Bradley, S Cavanagh, C Clarke, P Hampsey, HP McGeary, K McGeary, C McCann, R McNamee, P McNulty, B Tierney.\nCavan: R Galligan; P Faulkner, K Clarke, K Brady; C Brady, C Moynagh, F Flanagan; D Givney, G McKiernan; M Reilly, N McDermott, D McVeety; C Mackey, E Keating, J Brady.\nDerry: T Mallon; K McKaigue, C McKaigue, C Mullan, N Forester, G McKinless, C McFaul, E Bradley, C McAtamney, C Kearns, J Kielt, B Heron, D Heavron, C O'Boyle, R Bell.\nFermanagh: C Snow; M Jones, A Breen, C Cullen; D McCusker, J McMahon, D Kelly; E Donnelly, C Jones; B Mulrone, R Corrigan, P McCusker; C Flaherty, Sean Quigley, T Corrigan.\nArmagh: M McNeice; R McCaughey, C Vernon, M Shields; S Heffron, B Donaghy, A Forker; A Findon, N Grimley; S Campbell, M McKenna, S Forker; G McParland, C O'Hanlon, E McVerry. Subs: P Morrison, S Connell, N McConville, S Sheridan, C Watters, J Hall, J McElroy, E Rafferty, A McKay, O MacIomhair, K Dyas.\nWEEKEND ALLIANZ FOOTBALL LEAGUE FIXTURES\nSaturday - 19:00 GMT\nDivision 1\nDown v Donegal, Pairc Esler\nDublin v Kerry, Croke Park\nSunday - 14:00 GMT unless stated\nDivision 1\nCork v Mayo, Pairc Ui Rinn\nRoscommon v Monaghan, Kiltoom\nDivision 2\nDerry v Fermanagh, Celtic Park, 14:15\nMeath v Armagh, Pairc Tailteann\nTyrone v Cavan, Healy Park\nLaois v Galway, Portlaoise\nDivision 3\nClare v Sligo, Miltown Malbay\nLimerick v Tipperary, Kilmallock\nOffaly v Longford, Tullamore\nWestmeath v Kildare, Mullingar\nDivision 4\nLouth v London, Gaelic Grounds, 13:00\nCarlow v Antrim, Dr Cullen Park\nWexford v Leitrim, Bellefield\nWicklow v Waterford, Aughrim", "Ryan McAnespie and Daniel McKenna replace Vinny Corey and Kieran Hughes, who struggled to make an impact in last weekend's Clones defeat by Kerry.\nEven a win may not be enough to prevent Monaghan from being relegated.\nDonegal are not themselves safe in Division One but a win is likely to earn them a semi-final place.\nAfter two opening wins, Monaghan have lost their last four games to slide deep into relegation trouble while early Division One pacesetters Donegal go into the match on the back of three straight defeats.\nIf Mayo, as expected, hand Down a seventh straight defeat at Castlebar and Cork avoid defeat against Kerry at Tralee, Monaghan will be relegated even if they beat Donegal.\nMatters are just as tight in Division Two with Cavan needing to avoid defeat by Galway at Breffni Park to secure promotion alongside Tyrone.\nFermanagh need to beat the Red Hands at Enniskillen to be absolutely certain of avoiding the drop while Armagh may need a big win over Derry at the Athletic Grounds to retain their Division Two spot with bottom-placed Laois facing Meath in another big relegation clash at Portlaoise.\nArmagh will go down along with Meath if they both lose against Derry and Laois but a Fermanagh defeat plus wins for Armagh and Meath will see the Ernemen and Laois dropping to Division Three.\nDerry are not mathematically safe but anything other than a heavy defeat at the Athletic Grounds should be enough to keep Damian Barton's side in Division Two.\nBarton makes two change in personnel from the draw with Meath with Emmet Bradley and Niall Loughlin replacing Shane Heavron and Emmet McGuckin.\nA positional switch sees Mark Lynch moving from midfield to full-forward.\nFermanagh showed tremendous battling qualities to earn a draw in Galway last weekend, in a result which did no favours to Armagh's chances of avoiding the drop.\nNiall Cassidy is suspended for Fermanagh after his dismissal against Galway so Marty O'Brien is drafted into the full-back.\nPete McGrath has opted to make three other changes with the McCusker brothers Declan and Paul and Daniel Teague drafted in and Ryan McCluskey, Aidan Breen and Ruairi Corrigan making way.\nArmagh manager Kieran McGeeney has kept faith with the side which earned a battling draw against Tyrone last week after hitting an injury-time goal.\nDefender Ronan McNamee is in the Tyrone team for Sunday's Division Two clash with Fermanagh after recovering from an ankle injury.\nThe full-back replaces Padraig Hampsey in one of four changes made by manager Mickey Harte from the side that started against Armagh last weekend.\nMickey O'Neill replaces Niall Morgan as Harte continues rotating his keepers.\nBarry Tierney is preferred at wing-back to Niall Sludden while Padraig McNulty is in for the injured Peter Harte.\nHarte has been ruled out by the shoulder injury which forced him out after just five minutes of the drawn clash with the Orchard men at Healy Park.\nThe Red Hands have already secured promotion and a place in the league final, but they will be looking to extend an 11-game unbeaten run.\nAlready-promoted sides Antrim and Louth meet at Corrigan Park in a dress-rehearsal for the Division Four final which will take place on Saturday, 23 April.\nMonaghan: R Beggan; C Walshe, D Wylie, R Wylie; D Mone, F Kelly, K O'Connell; N McAdam, D Hughes; S Carey, D Malone, T Kerr; R McAnespie, D McKenna, C McManus. Subs: M Keogh, C Boyle, J McCarron, K Duffy, V Corey, D Clerkin, K Hughes, O Duffy, C McCarthy, B McGinn, F McGeough.\nArmagh: P Morrison; A Mallon, C Vernon, S Heffron; M Shields, S Connell, J McElroy; A Forker, E Rafferty; R Grugan, M McKenna, C O'Hanlon; C Watters, S Campbell, G McParland. Subs: M McNeice, S Sheridan, P Casey, M Murray, A Findon, R McCaughley, S Forker, N Grimley, T Kernan, N McConville, J Hall.\nDerry: T Mallon; O Duffy, C McKaigue, K McKaigue; G McKinless, B Rogers, D Heavron; C McAtamney, Emmet Bradley; B Heron, C Bradley, J Kielt; N Loughlin, M Lynch, SL McGoldrick.\nTyrone: M O'Neill, A McCrory, R McNamee, C McCarron, B Tierney, R Brennan, T McCann, C Cavanagh, M Donnelly, P McNulty, R O'Neill, R Donnelly, D McCurry, S Cavanagh, C McAliskey.\nFermanagh: C Snow; M Jones, C Cullen, M O'Brien; D McCusker, J McMahon, D Kelly; E Donnelly, B Mulrone; P McCusker, R Jones, R Lyons; D Teague, Sean Quigley, T Corrigan.\nALLIANZ FOOTBALL LEAGUE FIXTURES\nSaturday\nDivision Four\nWaterford 0-10 1-06\nSunday - 14:00 unless stated\nDivision One\nMonaghan v Donegal, Castleblayney\nRoscommon v Dublin, Dr Hyde Park\nKerry v Cork, Tralee\nMayo v Down, McHale Park\nDivision Two\nFermanagh v Tyrone, Brewster Park\nCavan v Galway, Breffni Park\nArmagh v Derry, Athletic Grounds\nLaois v Meath, Portlaoise\nDivision Three\nLongford v Westmeath, Pearse Park\nLimerick v Offaly, Newcastlewest\nKildare v Clare, Newbridge\nSligo v Tipperary, Markievicz Park\nDivision Four\nLondon v Wicklow, Ruislip, 13:30\nAntrim v Louth, Corrigan Park, 13:30\nWexford v Carlow, Wexford Park, Carlow", "This Sunday, London's Gaelic football team play the biggest match in their history when they contest the Connacht Senior Football final.\nIf they win the match, their next game could be at the 82,300-capacity Croke Park in Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.\n\"It's hard to explain and put into perspective. It's a dream,\" Noel O'Sullivan, the chairman of the London County Board, told BBC London 94.9.\n\"I've been involved for over 40 years and we always aspired to win one game in Connacht.\n\"To reach the final has been unbelievable.\"\nThe London GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) was formed in 1896 to give the Irish community in England's capital an opportunity to play Gaelic football and hurling and has formed the focal point for what is now a thriving youth and club system.\nTheir formative years were successful, with the side winning the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship in 1901, but prior to this year they had only won one senior game of Gaelic football.\nSince the 1970s the club have competed in the Connacht Senior Football Championship, one of four similar competitions in the provinces of Leinster, Ulster and Munster, which culminate in the All-Ireland Championship.\nSuch is the size and spread of the Irish diaspora that a team from New York in the United States also compete in the Connacht SFC.\nLondon's recent success has been down to an increasingly professional approach, retaining the core of last year's side and attracting players from Ireland who are looking for work during the recession.\nTheir current team features players from Cavan, Derry, Galway, Longford and Sligo as well as a London-born player in Phillip Butler, who was introduced to the game by a friend from school.\n\"This London team have written history,\" said Kevin Kelly of the London Supporters' Club.\n\"It has created a buzz around London, and Ireland.\n\"It is a game-changer and has put London on the map. It will make people in Croke Park realise we were here.\"\nHaving beaten Sligo and Leitrim, the latter via a replay, London face last year's All-Ireland final runners-up Mayo in the Connacht final in Castlebar this weekend.\n\"We've had three hard games and they are hot favourites,\" London manager Paul Coggins said.\n\"The lads are all willing to be the best they can be.\n\"It's down to the last 12 and it's knockout football. We're hoping for a huge performance.\"\nGaelic football is one of the biggest sports in Ireland: a 15-a-aside field game which is played on a pitch up to 145m long and 90m wide.\nThe goalposts are the same shape as on a rugby pitch, with a lower crossbar, and a goal tended by a keeper.\nThe ball can be carried in the hand for a distance of four steps and can be kicked or \"hand-passed\". After every four steps the ball must be either bounced or \"solo-ed\" (an action of dropping the ball onto the foot and kicking it back into the hand). Players may not bounce the ball twice in a row.\nTo score, you put the ball over the crossbar by foot or hand / fist for one point or under the crossbar and into the net by foot or the hand / fist (in certain circumstances) for a goal, the latter being the equivalent of three points.\nLondon beat Leitrim by a one point margin last month - an experience Coggins believes will prove useful in the Connacht final.\n\"We are well up for it,\" he said.\n\"Belief is a powerful ally. We had two games against Leitrim which were fierce and competitive.\n\"Playing close games and getting over the line against good, competitive teams who have a great tradition in Connacht gives belief and determination.\"\nThe run has caught the imagination of the Irish population in London, including good luck messages from Mayor of London Boris Johnson and London-based comedian Dara O'Briain, as well as in Ireland itself.\nEven should they lose to Mayo, London will have another chance to reach the quarter-finals of the All-Ireland Championships.\nThe losers of this weekend's match at Castlebar will play the winners of Derry and Cavan for a place in the last eight.\nHaving written London GAA history in 2013, Coggins and O'Sullivan agree the potential is there for London to have an even better team in the future.\n\"We have to build on it and get more people playing Gaelic football and hurling in the capital and get it into more schools,\" Coggins said.\n\"It is a great game and am so happy I learned to play.\"\nO'Sullivan added: \"It's been a fantastic achievement by the team.\n\"For years you'd see kids wearing the jerseys of the teams from counties in Ireland. It is joyful to see kids in London wearing the London shirt.\n\"With proper management, training and funding, there's no reason we can't be there or thereabouts in the future.\"\nInterviews with Paul Coggins, Kevin Kelly and Noel O'Sullivan by BBC London 94.9's Phil Parry.", "Journalists in Croke Park felt the score in Croke Park was 2-17 to 1-20 which would have meant extra-time.\nBut Meath were presented with the cup as the Antrim county team's malaise of recent times continued.\nSean Quigley hit a late 1-1 to spark Meath celebrations.\nHowever, the doubts over the scoreline suggest that this fixture may not be quite over yet and Antrim have indicated that they will view the match video before deciding whether to appeal against the result.\nThere are suggestions that the problem arose when the stadium scoreboard incorrectly Meath and Antrim point in the 63rd minute.\nThe scoreboard was quickly adjusted to register an Antrim point but there is a suggestion that the Meath score wasn't taken away.\nAntrim appeared totally in control early on as Conor Johnston's 15th-minute goal and scores from Niall McKenna, James Connolly and Ciaran Clarke helped them lead 1-7 to 0-1 after 19 minutes.\nHowever, four James Toher points saw Meath cutting Antrim's lead to 1-10 to 0-7 by the interval.\nMeath were right in the contest five minutes after the restart as Neil Heffernan smashed in a superb goal.\nAntrim seemed to have regained the initiative as four successive points - including two Eddie McCloskey efforts - left them five ahead.\nHowever, points from Joe Keenan and Adam Gannon kept Meath very much in touch before substitute Quigley's late scores saw the Royals snatching the county's first Christy Ring Cup title.\nBut the doubts over the accuracy of the final score could mean that Meath's celebrations prove premature.\nArmagh suffered a second straight Nicky Rackard Cup final defeat as Mayo earned a 2-16 to 1-15 victory.\nKenny Feeney starred with a 1-9 haul for the Connacht men as they headed west with the silverware\nDarren McTigue's third-minute goal gave Mayo a great start before David Carvill, Ryan Gaffney and skipper Cathal Carvill responded with Armagh scores.\nMayo regrouped to lead by four but Armagh fought back to trail by the minimum, 0-9 to 1-5, at the interval.\nArmagh took the lead straight after the restart as Eoin McGuinness finishing clinically to the net after Coulter had made a searing run through the heart of the Mayo defence.\nMayo responded with three points in the spin from Shane Boland, Feeney and substitute Fergal Boland had them back level.\nArmagh eased back in front through Coulter and Gaffney, but Mayo found another gear, with Cathal Freeman and Keith Higgins providing the impetus from deep.\nIn the 57th minute Feeney banged in a goal, but Armagh responded with three more points, the best of them from Coulter, brought the sides level.\nHowever, that was as good as it got for Armagh as Feeney, Sean Regan and substitute Corey Scahill hit spectacular points to clinch Mayo's win.", "Media playback is not supported on this device\nPeter Harte scored a first-half penalty and replacement David Mulgrew added two more goals after the interval.\nTyrone will meet All-Ireland holders Dublin in the semi-finals with Mickey Harte eyeing his fourth Sam Maguire success as Red Hand county manager.\nCathal McCarron of Tyrone was sent-off late on for two yellow cards.\nArmagh had three players black-carded on what was a miserable afternoon at Croke Park for Kieran McGeeney's men.\nThey had gone into the last eight clash as 4-1 outsiders but were expected to give their neighbours a sterner test.\nTyrone, beaten in last year's quarter-finals by Mayo, were on top from the start with Colm Cavanagh landing a lovely point from play in the first minute and Mark Bradley quickly adding two more.\nSean Cavanagh's free and Tiernan McCann's score from play stretched the lead and, when Harte despatched the penalty, 4-1 outsiders Armagh were faced with a massive eight-point deficit.\nThe penalty was awarded by Meath referee David Gough for James Morgan's foul on Bradley, and Harte's reliable left boot did the rest.\nIt took Armagh 18 minutes to score their first point, through a Niall Grimley free, and Mark Shields and Rory Grugan also scored before the break.\nBut Armagh's cause was not helped by the black card issued to centre half-back Shields for hauling down Peter Harte from behind.\nTyrone held a 1-8 to 0-4 at half-time and they piled more misery on Armagh after the break.\nArdboe man Mulgrew, who had been dropped from boss Harte's original team selection, came on as a replacement and made his point with two goals.\nHe collected a high ball and slipped a cool finish past keeper Blaine Hughes in the 55th minute and eight minutes later raced through to net again.\nMcCarron's dismissal didn't matter in the grand scheme of things and, because it was for two yellows, he will be available for the semi-final.\nThe last four clash against Dublin on 27 August promises to be Tyrone's first real test of the 2017 Championship.\nArmagh: B Hughes; J Morgan, C Vernon, P Hughes; B Donaghy, M Shields, J McElroy; S Sheridan, N Grimley; R Grugan, C O'Hanlon, A Forker; J Clarke, G McParland, S Campbell.\nTyrone: N Morgan; A McCrory, R McNamee, C McCarron; T McCann, P Hampsey, P Harte; C Cavanagh, C McCann; D McClure, N Sludden, K McGeary; M Bradley, S Cavanagh, M Donnelly.\nMedia playback is not supported on this device", "The Ballygawley man has guided the senior team to three All-Ireland titles, winning its first ever Sam Maguire trophy in his debut season in 2003 - defeating Ulster rivals Armagh.\nThey would repeat that triumph in 2005 and 2008, both times defeating Munster giants Kerry in the Croke Park final.\nHarte has also led Tyrone to four Ulster titles and one National League.\nThe former pupil of Omagh Christian Brothers School, who was born in 1952 and became a teacher, also represented his county as a player between 1975 and 1982.\nHarte was appointed manager of Tyrone minors (under-18s) in 1991 and guided them to victory in the Ulster minor championship two years later.\nHowever, tragedy hit the team in 1997 when player Paul McGirr collided with the goalkeeper of another team.\nMickey Harte helped stretcher him off the field, but he died that evening.\nVowing to win the all-Ireland minor championship in McGirr's memory, Harte achieved that honour in 1998, and was named manager of the county's under-21s a year later.\nHe guided the Under 21 team to two All-Ireland titles and three Ulster titles.\nHarte's success meant it was no surprise that he was named senior manager in 2002 after the departure of Art McRory and Eugene McKenna.\nThe team regained the National Football League title that April, defeating Laois in the final, before their historic victory against reigning champions Armagh in the All-Ireland final.\nBut tragedy would strike the county again a year later when its young captain Cormac McAnallen - a former minor teammate of Paul McGirr - died suddenly due to an undetected heart condition.\nAt the time Mickey Harte spoke of his shock at the tragedy.\n\"It's simply unbelievable and no words could explain what has happened,\" he said.\n''He was just a gem of a man, and it's going to be very difficult to pick up the pieces.''\nIn October 2008, Harte was hospitalised after suffering a broken rib, as well as cuts and bruises, after his car left the road and crashed near Carrickmore.\nThe following year the Tyrone legend, who is also a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, wrote his autobiography 'Harte'.\nIn the book Harte wrote of his daughter Michaela: \"She loved her football.\n\"She was with me and my Tyrone teams from the beginning, helping with little jobs at training sessions, shredding tissues and rosary beads in the stands during matches.\"\nSpeaking after news of Michaela's murder in Mauritius, Father Gerard McAleer, a life-long friend of Mickey Harte said: \"She would be the first person he would hug when that final whistle would go.\"", "Cooper's decision was widely expected after he helped Dr Crokes win the All-Ireland Club title last month.\nThe All-Ireland club medal completed all the list of major honours available to the eight-time Allstar.\nCooper, now 33, made his Kerry senior debut in 2002 and played in four All-Ireland winning teams and helped his county win four National League titles.\nThat included a Division Two title in his debut season with the Kingdom.\nCooper, who was nicknamed the Gooch, scored a remarkable tally of 23 goals and 283 points in his 85 championship games for Kerry and has to be regarded as one of the greatest forwards in gaelic football history.\nA statement from Kerry GAA described Cooper as \"an exemplary sportsman\".\n\"He endeared himself not only to the Kerry faithful but also to the wider GAA community where he was the perfect role model for our youth,\" added the statement.\nCooper described his his career as \"an amazing journey and one that I never wanted to end\".\n\"However, I feel that this is the right time for me to step away from intercounty football,\" said the Dr Crokes star.\n\"To my Kerry team-mates that I have soldiered with throughout the years, thank you for your guidance, patience and friendship.\n\"I feel extremely lucky to have experienced so many wonderful highlights with you all.\n\"To get the opportunity to play with, and against, some of the greatest players in the history of the GAA has given me memories that I will always treasure.\"\nCooper added that he was \"fortunate to work with some outstanding Kerry managers\" and also thanked the Kerry county board and fans for their support.\nThe 33-year-old added that he will continue to play for his club." ]

[ "NPR's Scott Simon talks with <EM>Washington Post</EM> reporter Karl Vick in Najaf. An agreement to halt fighting in Najaf was reached between the Iraqi government and Muqtada al-Sadr this week. U.S. forces and militants loyal to al-Sadr battled for weeks before the deal was brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani." ]

[ "Fighting between followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and U.S. forces left much of Najaf heavily damaged. Sadr described the fighting as a struggle to defend the holy city. But in Najaf, a backlash is growing against the young cleric and his violent tactics. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.", "Alex Chadwick speaks with reporter Charles Duhigg of <EM>The Los Angeles Times</EM>, who has been joining patrols by American troops in Najaf and other cities that have been centers of conflict between U.S.-led forces and fighters loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.", "U.S. forces arrest a key aide to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and wage battles with militia loyal to the Shiite leader. The aide, Riyadh al-Nouri, was taken captive at a house in Najaf. He is al-Sadr's brother-in-law. An Army spokesman said a \"very large number\" of youths -- members of al-Sadr's militia -- were killed in fighting in Najaf and Sadr City. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.", "BAGHDAD (AP) — Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall, with some demonstrators calling for U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq. The rally was ordered by powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who a day earlier issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces, and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating \"your archenemy.\" Demonstrators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, with two cordons of Iraqi police lining the route. Some at the rally waved small Iraqi flags; others hoisted up a giant flag 10 yards long. Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: \"Yes, Yes to Iraq\" and \"Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq.\" \"The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people,\" said lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, as he marched. \"After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.\" A senior official in al-Sadr's organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a \"call for liberation.\" \"We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq with full sovereignty,\" he said. Al-Sadr did not attend the demonstration, and has not appeared in public for months. U.S. officials say he left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the Feb. 14 start of a Baghdad security crackdown, but his followers say he is in Iraq. Iraqi soldiers in uniform joined the crowd, which was led by at least a dozen turbaned clerics — including one Sunni. Many marchers danced as they moved through the streets. The demonstration ended without violence after about three hours, but two ambulances could be seen moving slowly with the marching crowd, poised to help if violence or stampedes broke out. Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman and aide to the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, praised the peaceful nature of the demonstration, saying Iraqis \"could not have done this four years ago.\" \"This is the right to assemble, the right to free speech — they didn't have that under the former regime,\" Boylan said. \"This is progress, there's no two ways about it.\" Monday's demonstration marks four years since U.S. Marines and the Army's 3rd Infantry Division swept into the Iraqi capital 20 days into the American invasion. Cars were banned from Najaf for 24 hours starting from 8 p.m. Sunday, said police spokesman Col. Ali Jiryo. Buses idled at all entrances of the city to transport arriving demonstrators or other visitors to the city center. Najaf residents would be allowed to drive, he said. Security was tight across Iraq, with a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in Baghdad starting from 5 a.m. Monday. The government quickly reinstated Monday as a holiday, just a day after it had decreed that April 9 no longer would be a day off. In a statement distributed in Najaf on Sunday, al-Sadr called on Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with America. \"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,\" the statement said. Al-Sadr, who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government, urged his followers not to attack fellow Iraqis but to turn all their efforts on American forces. \"God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them - not against the sons of Iraq,\" it said. Al-Sadr had reportedly ordered his militia to disarm and stay off the streets during a Baghdad security crackdown that began Feb. 14, though he has nevertheless issued a series of sharp anti-American statements, demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. Sunday's statement was apparently issued in response to three days of clashes between his Mahdi Army militiamen and U.S.-backed Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad. American troops continued operations in Diwaniyah on Monday, detaining four guards at the office of a Shiite political party and scouring two neighborhoods in the city's northern and eastern sections, police said. At least 24 suspects were detained, police said. U.S. officials had no immediate comment. On Sunday, thousands of residents in Baghdad's largest Shiite slum, Sadr City, boarded buses and minivans bound for Najaf. Iraqi flags flew from most houses and shops in Sadr City. Drivers and motorcyclists affixed them to their vehicles. Police escorted convoys of pickup trucks overflowing with young boys waving Iraqi flags, en route to Najaf. Despite the curfews, violence persisted Monday. In southern Baghdad, a sniper killed a civilian and a policeman, and a mortar round killed one person and wounded two others, police said. Police in Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, said clashes broke out between unknown gunmen and al", "Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr moves into Najaf in southern Iraq Tuesday, surrounded by supporters. In a statement, Sadr promised more violence unless U.S. troops pull out of populated areas and release all Iraqi prisoners. American officials have branded Sadr an outlaw. NPR's Philip Reeves reports.", "U.S. and allied forces clash with supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The worst violence was near the southern city of Najaf, where 20 Iraqis were killed when al-Sadr's supporters opened fire on a Spanish garrison near the city. There was a similar demonstration in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. The violence flared after U.S. forces detained an associate of Sadr. Hear NPR's Philip Reeves and NPR's Howard Berkes.", "The U.S. military in Najaf gears up for a major assault on insurgents loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. forces say they intend to enter Najaf's old city, site of the shrine of the Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Hear NPR's Noah Adams and Alex Berenson of <EM>The New York Times</EM>.", "An aide to Muqtada al-Sadr says the radical cleric has offered to hand over control of the revered shrine of the Imam Ali in Najaf to Iraq's senior Shiite leader. Sadr's offer follows a night of deadly fighting around the mosque. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and Karl Vick of <EM>The Washington Post</EM>.", "Six more American troops died in Iraq Sunday, while dozens of Iraqis died in attacks around the country. The soldiers were on patrol in Diyala province when they were killed by an explosion near their vehicle. No vehicles will be allowed in Baghdad Monday, on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's statue in central Baghdad — an event many say marked the end of his regime. Authorities hope to thwart violence at any large gatherings commemorating Monday's anniversary. A number of rallies are planned. A protest in the holy city of Najaf called by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will likely be the largest. Thousands of Iraqi Shiites have descended on Najaf. Many are coming from Baghdad. The main road linking the two cities has been clogged with buses, cars and pedestrians. Some are choosing to walk the roughly 100 miles to Najaf. Sadr himself is not expected to attend the protest. He rarely attends public events. But he is expected to issue a statement condemning what he calls the \"occupation of Iraq\" by U.S. troops. Sunday, Sadr called on Iraq's security forces to stop fighting alongside American troops in the southern city of Diwaniyah. Sadr's militia recently took control of Diwaniyah. U.S. and Iraqi forces have clashed with the Mahdi Army there for the past three days, hoping to regain control of the city. Sadr has also asked Iraqis to hang the country's flag at their homes and businesses as a sign of unity among sects and ethnicities.", "The southern Iraqi city of Najaf is the center of the Shiite Muslim faith — the sect's equivalent of the Vatican. About a million pilgrims from Iraq and abroad go to Najaf every year to worship in its gold-domed shrine or to bury their dead in the world's largest Muslim cemetery. The Shiite sect's key clerics and ayatollahs also train at seminaries in Najaf, and they issue decrees obeyed by millions of people worldwide. But a number of Iraq's political power brokers believe Najaf should be more than a religious epicenter, and they have quietly begun expanding the city in hopes of turning it into a capital of the south. It's an expansion some fear could hasten a partition of Iraq. A Changing Face In Najaf Last month, an Iraqi Airways jet carrying the country's prime minister landed in Najaf to inaugurate the city's new airport. A band played while Najaf residents waved and shouted greetings. It was a rare celebration of the changing face of Najaf — a change that is evident all over the city, but little known elsewhere in Iraq. Officials here say the race is on to finish work on the airport before scheduled service begins later this month. Officials say that by next year, this airport should accommodate up to 3 million domestic and international passengers. That number could eventually climb to 13 million passengers, says airport director Kareem al-Abdaly. That would make Najaf International Airport the largest in Iraq. \"Let's face it,\" Abdaly says. \"Najaf is now more important than Baghdad. There, everything deteriorated because of the violence. Here, we have stability.\" A Stable City There's no doubt things have been more stable in this city in the past three years than anywhere else in Iraq except for the Kurdish north. Iraqi police keep a tight watch over who comes and goes, making it safe for residents and visitors to walk the streets at all hours of the day and night. Also key is that radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has stuck to a cease-fire he imposed on his Mahdi Army militia last year. The quiet has left the city government, run by Sadr's opponents, free to pursue plans to make Najaf the capital of the south. Plans like those in the field of medicine, where, in a clinic in Sadr Hospital that claims to be the best in Iraq, technicians use saws and hammers to fashion prosthetic limbs. The clinic is part of a sprawling, single-story complex of specialty care growing up around Sadr Hospital, the main medical facility in Najaf. It is named for a grand ayatollah assassinated during Saddam Hussein's reign. Abdul A'al is deputy director of the hospital. \"All of this is being done by an Iraqi company and another one from the United Arab Emirates,\" says A'al. \"This year we've opened a clinic for heart catheterization, and today we started work on a center for neurological sciences.\" As with the airport, A'al says the goal is to make this medical complex in Najaf better than any other in Iraq. Already word is out about the kind of treatment available here, and patients are pouring in. A'al says the entire medical complex should be completed by the end of next year. Giving Najaf A Chance To Shine He and airport director Abdaly say they couldn't be happier about Najaf's transformation. Abdaly says that under Saddam, Shiites were oppressed and Najaf was falling apart. Now, he says, the city has a chance to shine. He adds: \"Why not let residents build like crazy here with a Shiite-led government in charge in Baghdad?\" This is a sentiment Abdul Hussain Abtan shares. The deputy governor of Najaf is determined to see his city's reputation extend beyond Iraq's borders. Abtan oversees the reconstruction effort in the city. He says so far, $1.5 billion has been spent on improving Najaf. He's especially excited about an industrial zone planned for the western edge of the town. He says the seven-square-mile complex will be the largest industrial zone in Iraq. Abtan says the city government is also planning a new, $38 billion suburb to accommodate Najaf's growing population. \"Najaf is now No. 1 in Iraq in terms of reconstruction projects and economic power,\" Abtan says. \"It'll take another decade for us to be No. 1 in the Middle East.\" Skepticism About The Expansion Some people here are skeptical of that prediction, despite the ever present cranes and scaffolding and construction on new buildings and streets. But whatever the Najaf government's ambitions, there are many residents who are unhappy about what is happening to their city these days. Those for and against the expansion are pretty much divided along political lines. Those in charge, like Abtan, belong to what is known as the Supreme Council, the most powerful Shiite party in the country at the moment. Opponents like Liqaa al-Yasseen, a medical doctor and parliament member, belong to Sadr's bloc. Sadr's supporters have been relegated to the sidelines, but they are hoping to gain more power through planned provincial elections expected next year. But Y", "Some reports suggest Iraqi police now control the shrine of the Imam Ali in Najaf, but others say it's still in the hands of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia. Dozens have died in fighting around the mosque in the last 24 hours. Hear NPR's Ivan Watson.", "Four years ago, Baghdad fell to American forces. They pulled Saddam Hussein's huge statue to the ground, and Iraqis danced for joy in the city square. But these days, many Iraqis blame the United States for the insurgent attacks, sectarian bloodshed and violent crime that have followed. A fear of suicide bombers led the Iraqi government to ban vehicle traffic Monday in Baghdad. Many Iraqis turned out on the anniversary to demand that U.S. troops leave their country. Anti-American sentiment reverberated Monday across Iraq's south, where tens of thousands of Iraqi men and boys congregated in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kufa. The crowds chanted \"No to America\" and \"Yes to Muqtada al-Sadr,\" the radical cleric who commands Iraq's largest Shiite militia and whose political clout has grown steadily over the past four years. Sadr called on Iraqis to unite and demonstrate peacefully. But Sadr's militiamen fought U.S. and Iraqi forces in another southern town, Diwaniyah, about 45 miles east of Najaf. U.S. commanders dispatched troop reinforcements there last Friday, after Sadr supporters clashed with another Shiite militia. Sadr's whereabouts are disputed. American officials say he is in Iran; his aides say he's still in Iraq. Sadr issued a statement Sunday condemning U.S. troops and their coalition allies, calling them the armies of darkness and accusing them of provoking strife among Iraqis. He called on the Iraqi police and army not to cooperate with U.S. forces. Brothers are not to fight each other, he declared, and it is not right for some to defend the invader.", "NPR's Alex Chadwick speaks with Scott Baldauf of <EM>The Christian Science Monitor</EM>, reporting from Baghdad on the religious significance of the city of Najaf and the ongoing skirmishes between militias loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, U.S.-led forces and the newly minted Iraqi army.", "NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with <EM>Los Angeles Times</EM> reporter Alissa Rubin, reporting from Baghdad on the whereabouts of Iraqi insurgent leader Muqtada al-Sadr and the uncertain end to the siege of the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf.", "Protesters taunt former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi during a campaign visit to a shrine in Najaf. Bodyguards clashed with supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who were carrying clubs and knives.", "Authorities in Iraq announce that an arrest warrant has been issued for Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in connection with the murder of a rival cleric last spring. Attacks by Sadr's followers left at least eight coalition soldiers dead in Najaf and Baghdad Sunday. Hear NPR's Philip Reeves, NPR's Michele Norris and professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan.", "NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Hussain al Sharistani, a prominent Iraqi Shiite, about the push for a resolution over control of Najaf's Imam Ali shrine. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has been holed up in the mosque for weeks. Sharistani was sent to Najaf 10 days ago as an emissary of Shiite cleric Grand Ayotollah Ali al-Sistani.", "After about four years of exile in Iran, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is back in Iraq. Al-Sadr, as the Associated Press reminds us, \"led several Shiite uprisings against American forces in Iraq\" before leaving for Iran. Now, the BBC adds, \"his political movement [has] secured a deal to be part of the new government, with 39 parliamentary seats and seven ministries.\" Al-Sadr is now in the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. According to the AP, \"hundreds of al-Sadr's followers were gathering at his house. Others flocked to the holy shrine of Imam Ali, revered among the country's Shiite majority, amid reports that al-Sadr had traveled to the shrine and visited his father's grave before going home.\"", "The interim Iraqi government has sent a delegation to Najaf for talks with radical Shiite cleric and insurgent leader Muqtada al-Sadr, looking for a peaceful resolution to the current standoff with U.S.-led forces. NPR's Alex Chadwick discusses the situation with <EM>Los Angeles Times</EM> reporter Ed Sanders, who spoke with Iraqi government delegates as they traveled to the Islamic holy city.", "NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with Phillip Robertson, a reporter for the Internet magazine Salon.com, who is currently in the Shrine of Ali in Najaf -- one of the holiest site for the world's Shiite Muslims. Within the walls of the mosque, Islamic cleric and insurgent leader Muqtada al-Sadr is negotiating terms for ending his militia's current battle with U.S. led forces.", "Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of a radical anti-American Shiite sect in Iraq, has returned home after nearly four years in exile. He has long been one of Iraq's most vocal critics of the U.S., and his militia, the Mahdi Army, clashed repeatedly with American forces. Sadr loyalists were also thought to be behind much violence during Iraq's sectarian war. Sadr left Iraq in late 2006 or early 2007. Now that he's back, the cleric says his role in Iraq is political, not violent. His return has been uncharacteristically subdued -- no rallies, no speeches, just a visit to a holy shrine in his hometown of Najaf and meetings with aides behind closed doors. On local TV, the story was mentioned only briefly. Sadr reportedly has been doing intensive religious study in Iran. His spokesman says he will continue those studies in Najaf. Now, questions are turning to what Sadr's political role will be in Iraq. His party won about 12 percent of the seats in Parliament in last year's election. But it was Sadr's support for Nouri al-Maliki that gave the incumbent prime minister enough of an edge over his rivals to secure a second term. Analysts say Sadr is looking to style his group as the next Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that now wields considerable power in Lebanon's government. The reasoning that both groups give for maintaining an armed wing is resistance. In Lebanon, it's resistance against Israel. In Iraq, says Sadr political adviser Balqis al-Khafaji, it's resistance against American troops. \"Let me here clarify ... it's [a resistance] against the occupation, and not against the people, the Iraqi people. While on the other hand, the political committee has another path, which is peaceful,\" she says. That means peaceful activities, in the form of services to the poor and previously disenfranchised Shiites of Iraq. Young and loyal Sadrists like Uday Awadh Kadhim are thought by many to be the future of Sadr's movement. An electrical engineer from the Shiite-majority south, Kadhim was recently elected to Parliament. He says the fact that Sadr's party took just a few, minor ministries in the new government -- labor and public works among them -- is all part of the plan. \"Other parties are looking for authorized ministries and security ministries, while our aim, according to the announcement of our leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, [is that] we are looking for service ministries, to serve people,\" he says. Some Iraqis, many of them Sunnis, say this new image of the Sadr movement as one that resists Americans but serves Iraqis will never sell, especially among people who well remember when Sadr-affiliated death squads terrorized Iraqis during the sectarian war. But other Iraqis, like Abu Aya, who owns a wedding shop in an upscale Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, are willing to give Sadr a chance. \"If he's here to do good for the Iraqi people, then I say, 'Welcome,'\" Abu Aya says. But if he's here to hurt the people, he adds later, then God protect him against our fury.", "NPR's Alex Chadwick talks to <EM>Los Angeles Times</EM> correspondent Ken Ellingwood from Iraq about new developments in the siege of Najaf. Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, brokered a peace deal with radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.", "NPR's Ivan Watson reports from Baghdad that a resolution of the conflict over who controls Najaf's Imam Ali mosque appears to have finally been reached. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has announced that a deal for the peaceful transfer of the mosque has been reached that calls for dissident Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to turn over the keys of the mosque to representatives of Ayatollah Sistani, one of Iraq's most esteemed clerics.", "The U.S. troop surge in Baghdad reached its peak last summer without establishing a real presence in one of the city's most turbulent districts — the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City. Across the rest of the capital, U.S. and Iraqi forces have set up joint security stations and established relationships with locals on the ground — everywhere, except Sadr City, which is home to 2.3 million Shiites loyal to the fiery anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Maj. Thomas Cipolla has a folder somewhere in his office at Camp Liberty, headquarters for the 1st Cavalry Division. In it is a plan drafted in 2004 for taking on Sadr City and the militia that controls it, but the plan was shelved when violence flared elsewhere in the country. At the time, Cipolla says, the U.S. military was still figuring out the fighters in Sadr City, known as Jaish al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi Army. \"I don't necessarily know that anybody knew what Jaish al-Mahdi was back then. It was still in its early stages of development,\" Cipolla says. Madhi Army Gains Recognition Now, three years later, the strength of the Mahdi Army is well known. U.S. military presence in Sadr City is limited to one security station on the western edge of the district. There won't be anything more without an OK from Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, says Brig. Gen. John Campbell. \"It's like anything: If you have a plan and you don't have Iraqi(s) buy in, it has to be their plan,\" Campbell says. \"What we haven't been able to do well in the past is get the Iraqis to engage. They run checkpoints outside Sadr City, and they wouldn't go inside Sadr City, either.\" As a result of that, Sadr City's residents have missed out on the benefits other neighborhoods have received because American soldiers are now living among them. Those other places are experiencing an improvement in essential services, including electricity. The experience of Sadr City residents has been completely different. What they've seen of the U.S. military is mostly nighttime assaults, Special Forces raids and airstrikes against what are described as rogue militiamen. They're now demanding more, says Campbell. \"People are putting pressure on their local officials saying they want the same thing those people have down there. And so, that pressure is going to cause them to engage, not only the coalition, but the Iraqis. We have to get the Iraqis involved and provide essential services,\" he says. The demands for change from Sadr City are growing louder. Contacted by telephone, resident Mohammed al-Sudani complains about the piles of trash, the ponds of sewage and the occasional flicker of electricity his street gets. \"I wish the government would give us such things,\" al-Sudani says. \"I wish the government we voted for would help us, not the Americans. The Americans try to help us, and, then, their planes bomb us at night. I don't want anything from the Americans.\" U.S. Military Approaches Sadr City The U.S. military is slowly inching its way into Sadr City's web of dirt roads and squat apartment blocks. American troops now make regular visits to four of the nine police stations in the district, which is about half the size of Manhattan. U.S. commanders want to establish at least four joint security stations in Sadr City with Iraqi troops, but they acknowledge that will take some time. Cipolla says the cease fire Muqtada al-Sadr ordered four months ago has helped calm things down. With Sunni insurgents in Baghdad now largely under control, he says it is up to the Shiites to decide if they to want to cooperate or risk a return to the civil war that raged here before the U.S. troop surge. \"I don't have to go through that history lesson, but you had hundreds of people dying every month to vehicle-born improvised explosive devices. It was insane, and I don't know if there's anybody —Shia or otherwise — who wants to go back to those times. It's available. It's an option,\" he says. For his part, al-Sadr has kept a decidedly low profile since the surge began. The U.S. military claim he has traveled to Iran, while his aides insist he remains in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, south of Baghdad. In his most recent statement, al-Sadr praised his followers for abiding by the cease-fire and called on them to be patient.", "The crisis in Najaf has major implications for two Iraqis in particular: Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Hear NPR's Scott Simon and Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.", "Salon.com writer Phillip Robertson spent three days in the shrine of the Imam Ali in Najaf, at the center of fierce fighting between U.S.-led forces and Muqtada al-Sadr's militia. Robertson talks to NPR's Alex Chadwick about risking his life to get inside the shrine.", "At least eight coalition troops and 20 Iraqis are dead as demonstrations turn bloody in cities around Iraq. Shiites protesting the arrest of an aide to Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and outlawed armed militia clashed with U.S. and Spanish-led forces in Baghdad and Najaf. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep.", "U.S. troops and Iraqi forces storm into the center of Najaf in what Marine commanders are calling a final push to crush a rebellion by supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The cleric and hundreds of his followers are believed to be inside the Imam Ali shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and NPR's Ivan Watson.", "As an impasse continues at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq -- Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani -- prepares to lead a mass march on the city Thursday. He's seeking an end to fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. NPR's Ivan Watson reports.", "It has been a month since radical Shiite cleric Muktada al Sadr called on his militia to cease fire for six months so his Mehdi Army could reorganize and clean up its ranks. There has been a drop in violence since Sadr's announcement, and the U.S. military sees that as a possible opening it can exploit.", "Khalil Naimi, first secretary to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, is shot and killed in his car by unnamed assailants. The assassination comes as an Iranian delegation is in Iraq to mediate in the standoff between U.S. forces in Najaf and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Hear NPR's Philip Reeves.", "Spanish-led troops in Iraq fire on protestors and armed militiamen near Najaf, killing at least 14 and leaving more than 100 wounded, according to witnesses. The protestors gathered at a Spanish base to express anger over the arrest of an aide to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Hear NPR's" ]

[ "By . Emily Allen . Last updated at 12:23 PM on 14th November 2011 . The seven-year-old star of this year's John Lewis Christmas advert is as kind and thoughtful as his on-screen character, say his parents. Lewis McGowan, from Hamilton, near Glasgow, appears in the 90-second commercial impatiently waiting for Christmas morning to arrive. But when it finally does the little boy doesn't rush to open his presents, but dashes to fetch the gift he's got for his parents. The ad, dubbed 'one of the greatest ever,' ends with the strap line 'For gifts you can't wait to give'. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO . Tearjerker: The £6m advert has been dubbed 'one of the greatest' ever . The £6million production, which went . online on Friday and appeared on television during the X Factor, has . already received more than 500,000 hits on YouTube. Lewis's father Stuart, 37, said: 'He is just like the boy in the . advert - so kind and always thinking of others.' And his mother Julie, 36, told the Daily Telegraph that last year . her son asked Father Christmas for a tea-cup for her and this year . wants to give his brother Connor, 11, an iPod. 'Always thinking of others': Lewis McGowan is as kind as the character he plays, according to his parents . Lewis was picked from 250 . other children and hopes to build on his success, signing with acting . agencies. He filmed the advert over five days in London. It uses a new version of The Smiths' classic Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want sung by Slow Moving Millie. Lead singer Morrissey was said to be 'very happy' with the finished product. Impatient: Lewis is pictured in the advert eagerly waiting for Christmas to arrive . Anxious: The little boy can't wait for Christmas so he can give his mother and father a present . The new version has divided fans of the 1980s' anti-establishment band with many saying they can't believe the singer has allowed the song to be used so the department store can sell 'middle-class tat'. Last year, the John Lewis ad was viewed around 440,000 times in 11 months. The department store chain said strong . sales of e-book readers have helped its Christmas trading season get off . to a 'resilient' start. It said it was 'clearly going . to be a very techy' Christmas after seeing a strong rise in demand for . electronics, including Apple's iPad and Amazon's . Kindle. Magic: The little boy is seen trying to cast a spell on the clock to make time go quicker in the John Lewis advert . Happy ending? The advert has divided die-hard Smiths' fans but the majority of viewers have praised it . Sales of Christmas trees, home . furnishings and bedding were also up in the week to Saturday November 12 . as shoppers started gearing up for the holiday season. Overall sales were down 0.8 per cent . compared with the same period a year ago, but that represented a resilient . performance given the state of economy, it said. The retailer, which has 32 stores, also claimed the recent mild weather had weakened demand for winter clothing. Retail director Andrew Murphy said: 'Shoppers are cautious but not nervous. 'I think people have got the measure . of how things are and they understand that the mood music is going to be . a bit volatile, but it takes an awful lot to knock people off their . stride before Christmas. 'Given the external factors at work we are pretty happy with that performance.' He said gifts such as food hampers . were also in demand and, in a sign of the times, sales of executive . stress-busting toys were also up." ]

[ "The Army fell short of its recruitment target in 2014, despite the Ministry of Defence's £30million spending on TV adverts. It has also emerged that up to a third of the Army's top brass will be cut in a command 'revolution'. The MoD splashed out £14.5millon on Royal Navy commercials, £6million on the Army and £8million on the Royal Air Force. But despite the lucrative campaign, only 6,000 people signed up to the Army last year - falling shy of the 10,000 it needed. Big spenders: The Ministry of Defence spent £30million on TV adverts for the armed forces in 2014 . Revelation: The TV ad figures were revealed after a parliamentary question by Labour's Kevan Jones . Failure: espite the lucrative drive to attract recruits, only 6,000 people signed up to the Army last year - well shy of its 10,000 target. The TV advert figures were revealed after a parliamentary question by Labour's Kevan Jones. It has also emerged that up to a third of the Army's top brass will be cut. The plans by General Sir Nicholas Carter, the new head of the army, will see many of the army's 500 colonels and 200 brigadiers axed. The changes will be in place from April and are designed to reduce bureaucracy and make the force more professional. It follows revelations in Parliament that another 20,000 cuts to soldiers are also in the pipeline. Sir Nick Harvey, a former defence minister, told MPs last week that the Ministry of Defence had drawn up secret proposals which would see another 20,000 troops axed. Under an Armed Forces shake-up, ministers are already cutting the strength of the regular Army by 20,000 to 82,000. They are also planning to double the part-time Territorial Army – now called the Army Reserve – to 30,000 by 2020. But the further cuts would reduce the army to just 60,000 regular soldiers. As well as axing senior officers, General Carter wants to see 'more professional' senior officers which are trained to be loyal to the army rather than to their regiment. Recruitment drive: The MoD splashed out £14.5millon on Royal Navy commercials (right), £6million on the Army (left) and £8million on the Royal Air Force . He also wants to end obligatory two-year job rotations, allow career breaks for women to have children that do not affect the chance of promotion and also introduce performance reviews with more honest feedback. The plans have been set out after decades of weak leadership where commanders are rarely held to account, according to more than a dozen former senior and more junior officers interviewed by The Times. They added that bureaucracy takes precedence over common sense and people are not encouraged to take risks. One defence official told The Times: 'It is the revolution.' Gen Carter's Army Command Review will bring sweeping changes across the whole army. However, General Rupert Smith said it may not go far enough. Streamlining: Plans by General Sir Nicholas Carter (left) will see many of the army's 500 colonels and 200 brigadiers axed, while former defence minister Sir Nick Harvey (right) has drawn up secret proposals to cut 20,000 troops . 'Revolution': Under an Armed Forces shake-up, ministers are already cutting the strength of the regular Army by 20,000 to 82,000 . He said: 'The [Army] may have improved itself, but it won't make any difference if it isn't put in an improved centre or joint arrangement.' A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said last night: 'The Army Command Review is the next step in the development of Army 2020. 'It builds on the delegated model that Defence has implemented as a result of Lord Levene's report on Defence reforms. 'It will ensure that the Army's command structure and its staff are best placed to meet future challenges in an agile, imaginative and effective manner.'", "Online blogging sensation Zoella has come under fire from Jamie Oliver's company over adverts for unhealthy foods that appear next to her vlogs on YouTube. Internet star Zoella, real name Zoe Elizabeth Sugg, has enjoyed meteoric success after her blog and video posts amassed a huge teen following on social media. Jamie Oliver's company, an enduring advocate for promoting healthy eating, has warned that young stars such as Zoella, 25, and fellow vlogger and boyfriend Alfie Deyes, 21, should be more aware of the adverts that appear alongside their posts. Wise words: Jamie Oliver's company has said that influential vloggers such as Zoella (right) should try and ensure adverts for unhealthy foods don't appear next to their posts . It comes after an investigation found that video blogs - known as vlogs – popular with children aged 11 to 17 are being hijacked by 30-second adverts for junk food and online gambling sites. Although some of these are for harmless products such as Dolmio pasta sauce or hair dye, others are for Haribo, Coca-Cola and for an online gambling website, according to the Independent newspaper. Oliver's own company says it has a deal with YouTube that ensures that the chef's channel on the video sharing website actively stops sugary food and drinks from being promoted next to his videos. On Sunday, Brighton-based Zoella posted a video entitled 'Stuff Your Mouth' with ThatcherJoe (My Brother). The video showed the star and her sibling trying to guess what each other was saying while filling their mouth with marshmallows. The post has already attracted over 1.5million views. The video blogger describes herself on her Twitter profile as 'YouTuber, Blogger, Friend & Pizza Addict'. Last year, she published her book Girl Online, which recorded record sales for a first-time author. On the back of her social media success, Zoella has also created her own beauty line. Her boyfriend has achieved similar success with more than three million subscribers signing up to his YouTube channel. The couple share a £1million Brighton home. Although the Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) currently prevents food that is high in fat, salt or sugar from being advertised on television shows that appeal to children under 16, there are no guidelines about video bloggers, despite their growing influence. Matt Wilson, spokesman for the ASA told FEMAIL that while 'television-like content' posted on YouTube was not yet subject to the same guidelines, the ASA was 'keeping an eye on the situation'. He said: 'A recently commissioned Independent Review into the impact of online advertising of food and soft drink products on children showed that the available evidence on advertising’s impact on children’s dietary choices is limited, and does not merit a change to the existing rules.' 'Where the TV and online rules differ is on scheduling. As the available evidence shows, media differ; with TV having the most persuasive, albeit a moderate, impact on children’s food preferences. 'This is why there are currently scheduling restrictions on TV (for foods that are classed as ‘high in fat salt or sugar’) that don’t apply online and to other non-broadcast media.' Star couple: The young web-savvy entrepreneurs can count a beauty line and several books between them but should they be more conscious of what they're promoting to their young audience . Zoella's boyfriend, Alfie Deyes, a hugely successful blogger in his own right featured Jamie Oliver on a vlogging post last year. Ads for McDonalds and Coca Cola ran alongside the footage . A virtual career has brought bricks and mortar: Zoella splashed out £1million for her first house last year. The luxury property is in the seaside town of Brighton . The vloggers are unlikely to have control over which adverts appear next to their posts although Oliver's company is suggesting that such influential stars should be proactive in requesting that certain brands, such as Haribo and Coca Cola, do not appear. When Jamie Oliver appeared alongside Alfie Deyes, who is dating Zoella, ads for McDonald's and Coca-Cola appeared. A representative from the chef's company told the ipaper that while they couldn't control what appeared on others' channels, they did have a 'firm agreement' with YouTube about what could appear on Oliver's own Food Tube channel. FEMAIL has contacted Zoella for a comment. Professor Jason Halford, a health behaviour expert at the University of Liverpool, said: ‘Advertising does affect children in terms of what they purchase and reinforcing the brand. ‘But even beyond brand, our research has found it makes them grab the nearest sugary thing around, irrespective of their appetite.’ The couple aren't the only ones to feel the wrath of the Naked Chef in recent weeks. While at his Ministry of Food cookery school in Sydney, Australia, Oliver was drawn on his ongoing feud with Gordon Ramsay and couldn't resist stoking the embers. Oliver said of his one-time friend: 'He's just a ranter, he's paid to rant. He's paid to shower negativity and all his proteges don't talk to him because he's like that and it's a shame.' He added: 'To be honest, I'm annoyed that I said anything because I did bite for a few years and it felt quite good but I don't think it's very responsible of me to take the p*** again because I don't want his kids to get upset because I'm slagging off their dad.'", "A South African children's charity has been forced to apologise after running a controversial advertisement which showed a white woman feeding a black child like a dog. The one-minute video features the child sitting on the floor almost begging for food as the woman feeds him from the table. Another clip has the woman feeding the youngster a treat as he lays in her lap on a couch like a puppy. The young black child is fed by the wealthy looking white woman in a manner she would treat a dog . The youngster gets down on his knees and is fed a 'treat'  as the woman has her afternoon tea . Later, child is seen below the dining room table getting fed by the woman like a dog . Offence: The charity has been forced to apologise for the scenes which it claims were well-intentioned . The video was produced for South African charity Save A Child by advertising giant Ogilvy and Mather. Save A Child's chief executive Alza Rautenbach apologised for any offence caused by the advert. She said she wanted to raise the issue of child hunger in South Africa. She said: 'What if this advert changed a child's life? What if this advert changed 3.5 million children's lives? What if this was your child going to bed hungry tonight, and this advert can change that? 'The child was a character that the agency used. It wasn't chosen for any specific reason – and yes, the idea was to use multiracial people, just as our country is. It doesn't help to have an advert that is not representative.' The charity's chief executive Alza Rautenbach, pictured, said it was never her intention to cause offence . The controversial advert was scheduled to be broadcast between news programmes in South Africa. It claimed that the average domestic dog was better fed than millions of impoverished children in South Africa. The charity said that the real message of the advert got lost in the controversy. The charity apologised for the advertisement claiming their core message had been 'diluted or lost altogether' According to a statement: 'The management and associates of Feed A Child extends our unreserved apology to any person or group who have been offended or hurt in any manner by our recent commercial that was shown on national television and YouTube. Our intention was not to cause offence. 'We acknowledge the fact that the advert could have been seen as insensitive or distasteful and we take heed to the fact that many perceived the advert as racist. This was most certainly not the intention, and again we apologise. 'Unfortunately the core message of the commercial became diluted or even lost through the interpretation thereof. 'The core message of the commercial was to draw attention to the extremely important issue of malnutition and raise awareness of the plight of many children in South Africa who go to bed hungry. 'The commercial requests assistance to help us as an organisation (and many other organisations who do similar work) to address the situation. 'The decision has been made to withdraw the advert from all media. We realise that the advert has gone viral on social media however, with the effect that it is no longer in our power to pull the advert from all media altogether.'", "You don't have to wait until Thursday to see Marks and Spencer's new advert starring Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, David Gandy and Helena Bonham-Carter. Online viewers can get a sneak peek here of the festive fare, which has been inspired by some of our most loved fairy tales, before it's broadcast on TV. For the first time the brand is using . social media channels to debut its multimillion pound advert. The full two minute version, which you can view below, has been released on YouTube as well as the M&S website this evening. Leading ladies: Helen Bonham-Carter and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley star in the M&S Christmas ad . Online first: Rosie flaunts her curves in lingerie from her range as the advert is unveiled on the internet before airing on TV . Get the look: Rosie is seen in the M&S Collection Jumper, £45, left, at the start of the advert while her lingerie in the Arabian Nights scene is a bra, £25 and knickers £12.50 Autograph set with floral dressing gown, £69 . Behind the scenes footage and interviews with the stars are also online. Set to an enchanting orchestral . soundtrack, the ad is shot in a filmic style as it takes the viewers . into a world of 'magic and sparkle' from Alice in Wonderland to the . Wizard of Oz. Rosie- of course - the leading lady, is first seen . pursuing a pretty little dog across a city street before tumbling from . the real world through a manhole into a snow dusted enchanted forest, seated at a . fantastical feast. The ad . then follows the lingerie designer and model through a red riding house . scene, an Arabian Nights flight and finally a walk along the yellow . brick road, with a little help from the ever handsome David and a . bewitching Helena Bonham Carter, whose appearance is seen as a huge coup for the retailer. Wizard style: Helena wears twisted front dress, £45, and coat, £110, both Per Una . Magical entrance: After falling through a hole in the road when chasing her dog, Rosie makes a stylish crash-landing in the giant's new Christmas campaign . Glamour: Welcome to the Mad Hatter's tea party, hosted by model David Gandy in Autograph menswear . David wears, from left: Autograph Jacket, £99, Autograph Dress Shirt £29.50 and Autograph Top Hat, £35 . The Daily Mail's Liz Jones - often the High Street's harshest critic - gave the ad a glowing review after she was given a peek on Sunday. She said: 'From my sneak preview, the ad is a triumph. But will other viewers agree? 'For . M&S’s vocal shareholders, this cannot just be a vanity project, an . escape for a few moments into fantasy. It has to make those cash . registers burst into song. 'This time, I think M&S has done . its homework, and pulled off quite a coup: while Bonham Carter is known . for her rather eccentric style of bird’s-nest hair and socks worn with . flip-flops, of late she has become something of a fashion icon. Seen here first: The retailer has released the multimillion pound advert online ahead of the full TV airing . Social media interaction: Online viewers will be able to vote for the name of Rosie's dog via Facebook or Twitter . 'Here, Helena makes a hilarious appearance in a fairytale that, although only two minutes long, cost many millions to produce. 'Teamed cleverly with Rosie, she’s a classy, . unexpected ingredient in a perfect mix that will appeal to Everywoman, . being neither too frumpy, nor too unattainable. 'The . product placement — dresses, dresses and more dresses — is perfect, and . there is nothing cheesy about the production, apart from the Cheddar . truckles at the tea party. It’s fun, and, given the chemistry between . Rosie and Gandy, super sexy. Rosie in Wonderland: In a £49.50 M&S Woman dress . Fairytale to shop floor: Rosie as Red Riding Hood wears Autograph Coat, £139 . Follow the yellow brick road: Rosie as Dorothy in a Limited Edition embellished white dress, £59, while David wears a £119 jacket and £37.50 cords as the scarecrow . 'Rosie . is a reliable cash cow (excuse the term) for Marks, with her own-label . lingerie selling more than any other brand in the store’s history. And . the chiselled features of David Gandy will keep mums, who will be the . ones lugging those Magic and Sparkle carrier bags home, very happy . indeed.' The brand will be hoping the Christmas offering will boost sales after it was reported that their Autumn 'leading ladies' campaign has failed to engage consumers. Forecasts for their results suggest a 1.5 per cent drop in sales of homeware and clothing for the three months to September 30. This is despite a big push to appeal to different generations with their latest model signings who included Ellie Goulding and Helen Mirren. But the Christmas campaign seems set on targetting the younger market by engaging them online. As well as releasing the advert over the internet before it airs on TV, they are giving their Facebook fans and Twitter followers the opportunity to vote on a name for Rosie's dog in the advert.", "A betting company has been inspired by the film release of erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey to produce a slightly disturbing advertisement. The ad 'stars' a greyhound playing the leading role of the raunchy movie's sadomasochistic billionaire Christian Grey, which they promise will leave you ‘hot under the collar’. In the advertisement, a demurely dressed journalist is shown to Mr Grey’s high-rise office - just like in the best-selling book - but when the camera pans to the desk, a greyhound in a tie sits with his pink tongue hanging out in the place of the handsome Mr Grey. What happens next is even more bizarre, as a dark haired woman seductively paints red lipstick on her lips and begins some kind of illicit encounter with the dog Tilly - who is actually a rescue dog. Scroll down for video . Sportsbet has created a bizarre Fifty Shades Of Grey parody starring a woman and a greyhound . The pooch sprawls out on a cushion-covered bed as the woman playing the role of Anastacia Steele scoops peanut butter from a jar, licks her lips and rolls around. But animal rights group Animal Liberation have slammed the advertisement, saying it is exploitative and demeaning to the greyhound. 'We completely oppose the whole notion of bestiality, which is clearly implied in ambiguous light in the clip,' a spokesman for Animal Liberation told Daily Mail Australia. 'It is a federal offence and penalties are severe. 'It is likely that exploitation would could have occurred in ‘training’ the dog to make the clip which is also not acceptable. 'Also, dressing the dog up demeans the animal,' the spokesman added. Fifty Shades of Greyhound has already been viewed over 200,000 times on Facebook . The parody video begins with a greyhound in a tie is sat with his pink tongue hanging out in the place of the handsome Christian Grey . The pooch sprawls out on a cushion-covered bed as the woman playing the role of Anastacia Steele is seduced . She scoops peanut butter from a jar, takes off the dogs clothes and licks her lips . The woman is seen enjoying herself alongside Tilly the rescue dog . Later in the advert a dog’s paw is then seen opening the door to a red room of pain akin to the one in the novel but featuring doggy treats, chains and chews. ‘I want your chum,’ the woman shouts with her hands tied. The ad then cuts to a race track scene, with the woman wearing a white bunny costume. Tilly is released from the gates titled ‘the red box of pain’ and chases the woman to the sound of ‘who let the dogs out’. Seemingly catching up with, the pair is then shown between the sheets. ‘You sure went wacko,’ she says with ruffled hair . A dog’s paw is then seen opening the door to a red room of pain akin to the one in the novel . The room features doggy treats, chains and chews . The gambling company said: ‘Well, if you thought last week’s office sex romp between those two New Zealand co-workers was a “dog act”, wait until you see this. We promise it will leave you satisfied. ‘Sportsbet is giving doggy style a whole new meaning in a production that will leave you hot under the collar.’ Sportsbet’s YouTube channel highlights how Tilly the greyhound was adopted from the Greyhound Adoption Program. Finally Tilly chases the woman playing Anastasia along the race track . She is dressed as a rabbit and runs to the soundtrack of 'Who Let the Dogs Out' ‘There are many greyhounds like Tilly looking for a home, you can apply to for adoption at gap.grv.org.au,’ it states. The real Fifty Shades Of Grey movie starring Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele and Jamie Dornan as the enigmatic Christian Grey is out in Australian cinemas on February 12. The official trailer has been viewed more than 50 million times on YouTube and also opens with the line 'so this is just an interview for the newspaper. I just have a couple of questions.'", "Wholesome video bloggers who advise their fans about a variety of topics including lifestyle choices, fashion and video games are taking the internet by storm - with some earning over £20,000 a month for their online musings. Some of the more high profile video bloggers, or vloggers, have up to 26million subscribers - with some of their posts watched by over 11million. Some vloggers can earn around £4,000 for mentioning a specific product on one of their entries. Others are raking in up to £20,000 for adverts placed on their YouTube sites, according to one digital marketing firm eight&four. Scroll down for video . Zoe Sugg - a shopping and beauty vlogger who earns thousands giving advice to over 4million subscribers . Tanya Burr's makeup blog was so popular, she has now launched her own range of makeup . One of the UK's best-known 'vloggers' is 24-year-old Zoe Sugg - known online as Zoella. With around 4.5million YouTube subscribers, Ms Suggs specalises in shopping advice - but also helps her fans on topics such as career choices and friendship via her weekly Chummychatter entry. Ms Sugg, who is based in Brighton, told Monique Rivalland of The Times: 'After you go shopping and you discuss what you got with your friends - it's like that, but millions of people watch you doing it.' Another high profile vlogger is Tanya Burr, 24, - who blogs about beauty. She has now launched a range of makeup, which is stocked in high street store Superdrug. Ms Burr has around 10m views per month on her channel - which has almost 2m subscribers. Speaking to MailOnline in March, she said: 'I'm not entirely sure how my YouTube channel has become such a success, but I think it could be to do with my positive, friendly personality. 'I think the girls who watch my videos can relate to me as I'm not a traditional celebrity that seems unattainable, I'm still just a normal girl despite my large following. Marcus Butler a lifestyle vlogger who regularly joins forces with Ms Sugg and Ms Burr . Alife Deyes - Zoella's boyfriend and fellow blogger. One digital marketing agency says some young bloggers earn up to £20,000 a month for adverts around their YouTube pages . 'People say that when they watch my videos thy feel like I'm their friend and I love that. When I meet fans in the street I always feel like we could be best friends as we seem to always have lots in common which is lovely.' Other top beauty bloggers include Fleur from Fleur de Force who has 1,020,224 subscribers, The Chapman sisters AKA Pixiwoos, with 1,503,906 subscribers, and Lisa Eldridge with 793,528 subscribers. Felix Kjellberg's blog about video games has 26m subscribers . Young women are not the only ones making their mark in the vlogging world. Zoella's boyfriend Alfie Deyes, 20, has 2.1million subscribers to his Pointless-Blog - where he and friends set one another silly challenges. He and his girlfriend blog together as 'Zalfie' on occasion. Lifestyle blogger Marcus Butler uploads new musings every Saturday to his 2.3million subscribers. The 22-year-old regularly joins forces with Ms Burr and Ms Suggs to appear in postings. But the trio's subscribers pale into virtual insignificance compared to video games blogger Felix Kjellberg. The 24-year-old from Sweeden broadcasts commentary on video games under the pseudonym PewDiePie. He has 26.3million subscribers - with his videos viewed a total of 4,222,593,245 times. Kate Ross, managing director of the digital marketing agency eight&four, says the rise of the wholesome blogger appears to be a reaction to 'booze culture' and 'sexulatisation' of teens. She told The Times: 'It reflects more of a general trend among the younger generation.They seem to be reacting against booze culture. Teens can see sexualisation anywhere on the internet. This differentiates itself from all that.' She added: 'They are commercially very savvy. For example, they agree to vlog about a product, Instagram it and then Tweet about it for a certain price.' It's not just the young who are embracing the power of YouTube. Peter Oakley became an internet sensation with his quirky and often heartfelt YouTube videos about life. The prolific vlogger from Bakewell, Derbyshire, was catapulted into internet stardom when he uploaded a two-minute video to the site in August 2005. In the footage - titled 'First Try' - the former serviceman explains how he 'got addicted' to watching YouTube videos - so decided to take up making videos to 'grumble about life in general.' In the eight years that followed, the former Second World War radar technician uploaded a total of 434 videos to the site. He sadly passed away aged 86 last month.", "An incredible country estate with a 38-bedroom main house, its own loch, a golf course and 19 other homes has been put on the market for £6million. The Dall Estate, in the Scottish Highlands, was earmarked to become the world's most expensive private members club, with annual fees of £2million, and was dubbed the 'Monaco of The Glen'. But planning permission was rejected and the owner, Malcolm James, decided to continue to use it as a family home. Scroll down for video . Inside one of the grand rooms: The opulently decorated interior was earmarked to be the stage of the world's most expensive member's club - preemptively dubbed  'Monaco of the Glen' He has now put the mammoth estate on the market for 'in excess of £6 million', the same as several three-bedroom flats in Mayfair and significantly less that a £6.6million one-bedroom flat in Kightsbridge which went on sale last month. The Dall Estate is bigger than many villages - and comes with Dall House, its own loch, an assault course, an old golf course, a boat shed, a boat house, dormitories and 19 additional homes. There are labs, a hydro power station and even an indoor sports centre with its own five-a-side football pitch on the estate - which dates back to 1346 and is located on the south shore of Loch Rannoch in Highland Perthshire. The sprawling property is dominated by the 38-bedroom main home and whoever takes over the estate gets riparian rights on the loch. The owner is Malcolm James, a secretive Cornishman who made his millions in property speculation. He bought the property for around £1.3million in 2002. View of the castle: The main building has 38 rooms and is currently occupied by its enigmatic multi-millionaire owner Malcolm James . Views of the loch: The site offers stunning views of Loch Rannoch, pictured above, in Highland Perthshire . Mr James bought the estate in 2003. It had previously been Rannoch School, whose former pupils include the current Earl of Cardigan. The Dall Estate, now on the market for £6million, was previously Rannoch School - until the institution closed in 2002. The school was founded in 1959 and was immediately welcomed as the perfect private school environment for a robust regime of outdoor pursuits. Pupils flocked to the remote surroundings with its beautiful lochside setting. But by 1999, many parents were questioning the value of a boarding school education and the only private schools that were flourishing were those that could guarantee top grades and a ready supply of day pupils. Rannoch performed averagely in exams and was seen as too remote by most parents. From a high of around 300 pupils, by 2001 the school roll had declined to just 140. But the private school, opened in 1959, was forced to close in 2002 due to falling numbers and insurmountable debts. The businessman had hoped to turn Dall Estate into a playground for billionaires and, in 2009, unveiled ambitious plans for the ultimate private members club. He wanted to charge people £2million per year to be a member, leading to the proposed site being dubbed the 'Monaco of the Glen'. The entrepreneur boasted about how Tiger Woods wouldn't be able to afford to be a member, but he would be allowed to use the golf course 'as a guest'. But there were a number of protests and Perth and Kinross Council voted against the plans. Mr James uses the main mansion as his private home but has now instructed Asset Properties to sell the entire estate for more than £6million. Kyle Cockburn, boss of Asset Properties, today described it as 'a really special place with fantastic history'. He said: 'A clan seat estate is a very rare thing and I hope someone spots its potential as a corporate retreat or a hotel. 'Now the referendum has been decided it is time to find it a new owner. We have interest from all over the world and finding a buyer is very much what I aim to do. 'It is likely to attract wealthy hoteliers from China but it would also be an ideal billionaire's retreat. The estate has so much. It practically has the services you would find in a small town. 'There is the old golf course, curling rink, chapel, sports centre, hydro station and even a small library.' The estate lies on the edge of the ancient Black Wood of Rannoch, which is one of the largest remnants of ice age forests in Scotland. View across the estate: It has been described as larger than many villages yet is on the market for just £6million . Outbuilding:  Dall Estate had previously been Rannoch School, whose former pupils include the current Earl of Cardigan . It is set in grounds of approximately 90 acres, which contain many mature specimens of trees, including giant American Red Woods, and abundant wildlife. The house was commissioned by Clan Chief George Duncan Robertson and built by the renowned architect Thomas Mackenzie, who was responsible for Aldourie Castle (1853), famous for being where the Loch Ness Monster was first seen. Dall House was the only home he designed and built himself from scratch in the Scots Baronial style, known for its 16th Century features, including turrets. The house, which is B-Listed, retains many original Victorian features including the magnificently wood panelled hallways, staircases and reception rooms. Massive: It is set in grounds of approximately 90 acres, which contain many mature specimens of trees, including giant American Red Woods, and abundant wildlife . The house was commissioned by Clan Chief George Duncan Robertson and built by the renowned architect Thomas Mackenzie, who was responsible for Aldourie Castle (1853), famous for its location being that of the first sighting of the famous Loch Ness Monster ." ]

[ "Liquid crystal thermography (LCT) generates two-dimensional temperature information in a fluid layer. A three-dimensional temperature field can be reconstructed using the two-dimensional temperature fields obtained at various locations with the help of synchronized movements of the light sheet and camera. However, in many cases it may not be feasible to generate a large number of two-dimensional liquid crystal thermographs that are needed to represent a high-resolution, three-dimensional temperature field. In the present article, a tomographic reconstruction method is suggested that can be used to produce a high-resolution, three-dimensional reconstruction from a limited number of two-dimensional images of the full temperature field. The two-dimensional temperature fields generated from the LCT experiments can be used to obtain integrated information of the three-dimensional field from various directions. These estimated projections of the actual three-dimensional field can be used to reconstruct a high-r..." ]

[ "A detailed knowledge of surface temperatures is vitally important in many fields of science and engineering. Thermochromic liquid crystals have become widely accepted over the past decade as a simple, low-cost, and accurate tool for temperature measurement, but their potential in biological surface temperature monitoring or heat production, or biomechanics, has not been fully exploited. In this paper, the principles and practice of using liquid crystal thermography for noninvasive temperature measurement are discussed. Types of liquid crystal materials, their application to surfaces, chromatic interpretation, and associated advantages and limitations are summarized. Finally, the application of liquid crystals to particular fields of interest in biomedical engineering is reviewed and potential applications are identified. Based on this review, the suitability of using liquid crystals in medical applications is assessed.", "This paper presents an approach to reconstruct the three-dimensional transient temperature field for fusion welding processes as input data for computational weld mechanics. The methodology to solve this inverse heat conduction problem fast and automatically focuses on analytical temperature field models for volumetric heat sources and application of global optimisation. The important issue addressed here is the question which experimental data is needed to guarantee a unique reconstruction of the experimental temperature field. Different computational-experimental test cases are executed to determine the influence of various sets of discrete experimental data on the solvability of the optimisation problem. The application of energy distributions utilised for laser beam welding allows reconstructing the temperature field efficiently. Furthermore, the heat input into the workpiece determined by the simulation contributes to the evaluation of the thermal efficiency of the welding process.", "Order reconstruction has been presented by our group in the past as a useful tool to obtain a transition among different liquid crystal textures: the contribution of ions mobility, dielectric reorientation and order reconstruction has been well characterized using electric measurements across the cell. In this paper we present for the first time its temperature dependence and we show the features of the phenomenon.", "This paper presents an original method to measure ultrafast voltage transient responses and electric field distribution in liquid dielectrics. The capacitive probe is employed to record the fast voltage transient responses. The electric field is reconstructed with multiangular laser scanning of the space between electrodes and a modified arithmetic reconstruction technique. The finite-difference method (FDM) is used to compare and verify experimental results for symmetrical and asymmetrical electrode configurations. Numerical verification confirmed that the experimental results are accurate enough to be used in the design of oil-immersed dielectric systems.", "Algorithms for reconstructing three-dimensional temperature distributions inside an object from its intrinsic thermal acoustic radiation are studied. A regularization method for solving the inverse problem, taking into account the specific physical behavior of the temperature distribution inside the human body, is proposed. A comparison between results of reconstruction obtained by different methods reveals that, using the Fourier transform in combination with algorithms of signal and pattern reconstruction modeled with the help of differential equations, one can construct a passive thermograph with a rather low rms error and high spatial resolution. In this technique, the major part of the error is determined by the reconstruction algorithm rather than by the accuracy of the physical instrument.", "Using tomographic synthetic schlieren, we are able to reconstruct the three-dimensional density field of internal waves. In this study, the waves are radiating from an oscillating sphere positioned eccentrically at the surface of a paraboloidal domain filled with a uniformly stratified fluid. We find that the prediction by ray tracing corresponds well with the observed intensities of the wave field. Remarkably, for a specific value of the forcing frequency, we observe convergence of internal wave energy to an internal wave attractor. The attractor is found to dominate fluid motion in the plane perpendicular to the plane spanned by the symmetry axis and the oscillator position.", "This paper presents three-dimensional tomographic imaging system by using low-coherence terahertz (THz) sources. In contrast to conventional THz-pulse tomography with femtosecond pulse lasers, the proposed method requires compact and low-cost broadband optical signals such as amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) sources. Operation principle and the first experimental demonstration of tomographic imaging using 300-GHz-band sources are shown.", "In this paper we discuss a tomographic procedure for reconstructing the density field around a helicopter rotor blade tip from remote optical line-of-sight measurements. Numerical model studies have been carried out to investigate the influence of the number of available views, limited width viewing and ray bending on the reconstruction. Performance is measured in terms of the mean-square error. We found that very good reconstructions can be obtained using only a small number of views even when the width of view is smaller than the spatial extent of the object. An iterative procedure is used to correct for ray bending due to refraction associated with the sharp density gradients (shocks).", "Abstract It is generally accepted that the faces of ice crystals in equilibrium with the vapour undergo reconstruction to a quasi-liquid transition film at temperatures above about–20°C, though experimental evidence is equivocal. At much lower temperatures it appears that the free energy can be reduced by a less drastic surface reconstruction involving the orientation of surface dipoles to a superlattice. Calculations suggest that this superlattice should be energetically preferred on (0001) basal faces below about 30 K and on (0110) prism faces below about 70 K. On (0001) faces, twin boundaries have very low energy and may exist in profusion. The rate of such a reconstruction is probably slow because of the low temperature involved, though molecular interchange with the vapour may facilitate it. It is possible that this structure could be observed by electron diffraction or by fine-focus infrared spectroscopy. A more radical reconstruction is also discussed, but considered to be energetically unlikely.", "Abstract A three-dimensional (3D) lattice Boltzmann model is proposed to solve 3D natural convection with solid-liquid phase change. The total enthalpy-based thermal lattice Boltzmann model are incorporated in the D3Q19 particle velocity model to handle the temperature field. For the velocity field, the smoothed profile method is applied to implement the no-slip boundary condition at the solid-fluid phase interface. The present method is used to simulate several 3D natural convection problems with solid-liquid phase change, including 3D simulation of melting in a cubical cavity, 3D convection melting in an enclosure with inner rectangle cylinders and solid sphere melting in an cubical enclosure. The 3D effects on the temperature field and phase interface are discussed.", "Localised changes in the temperature of the skin are a valuable guide to the condition of tissue subjected to ischaemia. Thermography has significant advantages in the detection of these temperature abnormalities, but environmental and other factors may influence thermographic results. Accessories to enhance thermographic researching and interpretation are suggested. Three clinical applications of thermography are discussed.", "Numerical modeling of the temperature distribution, the velocity fields, and the dopant (Ge:Si) concentration during germanium crystal growth by the floating zone method under microgravity is carried out. The time-dependent three-dimensional problem is solved using the difference method. The deformations of the free surface of a liquid bridge and of crystallization and melting fronts are neglected. The relaxation of axisymmetric flow regimes to a steady state is observed, whereas the unsteadiness of three-dimensional flows develops with time.", "For the three-dimensional reconstruction of cultural relics,a kind of three-dimensional reconstruction technology was proposed based on Cartesian grid.The reconstruction technology adopted the hexahedron grid as the basic unit,then calculated solid models contour lines layer by layer and made use of the scanning line filling algorithm of computer graphics to reconstruction the three-dimensional imaging.Meanwhile,the public surfaces of grid elements were removed in the drawing process to implement quick blanking display of meshes and beautiful effect,and it also would reduce the computation time and storage space.The feasibility of the technology was verified through the numerical simulation of drum stool and rattan vase.", "Modifications to a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a commercially available heating stage permits in situ imaging at temperatures as high as 1450 degrees C. Here we report on the technical modifications necessary to allow such high-temperature in situ imaging. In addition, in order to underline the potential of this technique in the field of materials science, three heating-stage experiments are presented, which reveal microstructural changes occurring at high temperature. The respective in situ experiments are: (i) surface crystallization of a cordierite glass at 1050 degrees C; (ii) thermal recovery of asbestos (chrysotile) fibers at 1250 degrees C; and (iii) residual pore-structure evolution of tricalcium phosphate during sintering at 1450 degrees C.", "Abstract Building further upon the high spatial resolution offered by ultrasonic imaging and the high optical contrast yielded by laser excitation of photoacoustic imaging, and exploiting the temperature dependence of photoacoustic signal amplitudes, this paper addresses the question whether the rich information given by multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) allows to obtain 3D temperature images. Numerical simulations and experimental results are reported on agarose phantoms containing gold nanoparticles and the effects of shadowing, reconstruction flaws, etc. on the accuracy are determined.", "Acoustic tomography has been applied to observation of winter convection in the Gulf of Lion during the THETIS‐1 experiment conducted during the 1991–92 winter by a European group (IFM Kiel, IFREMER Brest, and IACM Heraklion). A global analysis of all types of temperature measurements collected during THETIS 1 will be presented. Data issued from temperature sensors, thermistor chains, and CTD have been merged with the tomographic measurements in order to recover the time evolution of the full 3‐D temperature field. The method relies on inversion and Kalman filtering methods. It can be considered as a new step toward ‘‘observation systems.’’ Monitoring of the whole area during the ‘‘preconditioning’’ phase shows the influence of surface cooling on the vertical stratification. This effect is inhomogeneous and the situation evolves with time, influenced by horizontal advection. The relative importance of surface forcing and advection is responsible for the intermittent nature of convection which happens with...", "This paper is concerned with a simplified system, proposed by Ericksen and Leslie, modeling the flow of nematic liquid crystals. We establish a blowup criterion for three-dimensional compressible nematic liquid crystal flows, which is analogous to the well-known Serrin's blowup criterion for three-dimensional incompressible viscous flows. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.", "A rigid motion correction technique is applied to both PET and CT data from the Siemens mCT PET/CT scanner. Motion was applied to a Hoffman brain phantom during both the CT and PET scans, as well as between them. The motion data, which was tracked by an external motion tracker, was used to correct the motion corrupted tomographic data during reconstruction. The motion corrected CT reconstruction was used for attenuation correction in the PET reconstruction. The subsequent reconstructions are compared to scans taken without motion to show the effectiveness of the motion correction.", "An improved tomographic algorithm in the scheme of Tikhonov-Phillips regularisation method, has been employed for multi-pixel bolometric measurements in order to get as much information as possible while keeping the assumptions to a minimum. The effects of finite detector size have been taken into account with a full three dimensional treatment of the detector geometry. The application of tomographic imaging was implemented to a two-array AXUVD (Absolute eXtreme UltraViolet photodiode) camera on the Large Helical Device (LHD) and a two-dimensional infrared imaging bolometric (IRVB) pinhole camera on JT-60U. Pertinent examples of the results are presented both to illustrate the analysis techniques and to demonstrate the wealth of physics which can be studied.", "To improve the resolution of radio tomographic image and get more details of the target, this paper introduces nonuniform interpolation, projection onto convex sets and structure-adaptive normalized convolution approaches for image reconstruction from a series of radio tomographic images. We compare these approaches in three aspects: time consumption, visual inspection and similarity calculation. Experimental results show that super-resolution reconstruction algorithms enhance the resolution of radio tomographic image while preserving the detail and edge of image, and the structure-adaptive normalized convolution approach is appropriate to radio tomographic imaging system.", "In this paper, an inversion method is proposed to determine simultaneously the electrical and thermal properties of a given isotropic material from the time‐temperature data obtained from the Tone‐Burst Eddy current Thermography (TBET). A multi‐physics forward model for computing the surface temperature data was used in a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based inversion technique to determine the material properties such as electrical conductivity (σ), thermal conductivity (k), density (ρ), and specific heat (Cp) simultaneously. Different trials were carried out initially with simulated temperature data (with and without noise). A typical case of inversion of anisotropic material properties using a 2D finite element model is also discussed.", "Abstract We consider a three-phase inverse Stefan problem. Such a problem consists in a reconstruction of the function describing the coefficient of heat-transfer, when the positions of the moving solid and liquid interfaces are well-known. We introduce three partial problems for each phase (liquid, solid and mushy) separately. The solutions of these problems are used for the determination of the unknown heat-transfer coefficient. The missing data for a mushy (solid) phase are computed from over-determined data at the moving liquid (solid) interface taking into account the transmission condition. At the end we present numerical calculations in one dimension using piecewise linear continuous finite elements in order to demonstrate the efficiency of the designed numerical algorithm.", "According to brazing characteristics of the thin tube-to-plate structure of stainless steel,a three-dimensional model for finite element analysis of scanning electron beam brazing(SEBB) temperature field was established.Calculated results of finite element were consistent with the experimental results,which verified the established temperature field model.The effects of processing parameters including beam diameter,scanning radius and beam current on SEBB temperature field were forecasted by means of the model.The locally uniform temperature field brazing required could be achieved by using large beam diameter,large scanning radius and small beam current.SEBB experiments of thin tube-to-plate structure were carried out by applying the optimized processing parameters from finite element analysis,and a good brazing joint was acquired.", "Infrared thermography (IRT) is one of the promising remote and whole field inspection techniques for nondestructive characterization of various solids. This technique relies on the mapping of surface temperature response to detect the presence of surface and subsurface anomalies within the material. Due to its fast and quantitative testing capabilities, the IRT has gained significant importance in the testing of fiber reinforced polymers (FRP). A carbon FRP sample with flat bottom holes is considered for inspection using nonstationary digitized frequency modulated thermal wave imaging technique. Furthermore, depth scanning performance using frequency domain-based phase approach has been compared with recently proposed time domain phase approach.", "We use a femtosecond pump-probe Z-scan technique to measure the thermal lens (TL) signal in a homologous series of primary alcohols. The trend in these experimentally measured TL signals deviates in a counterintuitive manner from the ones calculated using theoretical models that are only based on the macroscopic parameters. Introspection shows that the present TL theories are based on heat conduction for low absorbing samples without considering any convective mode of heat transfer. Our studies on highly absorbing samples indicate the importance of convective mode of heat transfer in TL studies.", "A new liquid crystal technique for full surface skin friction measurements is introduced. With the new technique, the transmission of light through nematic liquid crystal viewed in reflection provides a quantitative measurement of the skin friction. The measurement technique is discussed with the aid of a model which describes the rotation dynamics of the liquid crystal molecules. Calibration experiments performed in a laminar flow duct demonstrate that the model captures the essential physics of the new technique. The measurement of skin friction downstream of a three dimensional roughness element in an incompressible laminar boundary layer is then presented as a demonstration of the utility of the technique.", "An algorithm for computer restoration of thermograms obtained by the method of calorimetric measurement of heat flows is proposed. The problem has been solved using Tikhonov`s regularization method. A software package for calculating the curve of {open_quotes}actual{close_quotes} heat evolution and determining the dependence of the accumulated energy and relative accumulated energy on the degree of deformation by the results of a continuous test of a single specimen in a laboratory testing machine for uniaxial tension is described. The results of processing the experimental data obtained for a specimen of steel St3 at the test temperature 290 K are given.", "There is a demand in the livestock industry for alternative assessments of feed efficiency. Infrared thermography was tested for predicting heat production, methane production and for the detection of physiological events (e.g. heat increment of feeding) in dairy cattle. Multiple body locations were infrared scanned concomitantly with the measurement of the animals’ gaseous exchange. Infrared thermography can be successfully applied for assessing heat and methane production, through the analysis of feet temperature and temperature difference between left and right flanks, respectively. This technology is also useful for assessing physiological responses to milking and feeding.", "We have studied the formation of topological defects in liquid crystal (LC) matrices induced by multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and external electric fields. The defects are ascribable to a distortion of the LC molecular director in proximity of the MWCNT surface. The system is analyzed macroscopically using spectroscopic variable angle ellipsometry. Concurrently, confocal micro-Raman spectroscopy is used to study the system state at the microscale. This allows to acquire a three-dimensional, spatially-resolved map of the topological defect, determining scale length variations and orientation topography of the LC molecules around the MWCNT.", "In this paper, non-destructive testing of CFRPs using induction heating thermography was examined, and phase images obtained by applying Fourier transform to the temperature data was used in order to achieve higher defect detectability. Experiments for a CFRP specimen with delamination defects revealed that, though nonuniform heating caused by the shape of induction coil disturbed to detect defects in temperature images, its effect was suppressed in the phase images. Analytical results suggested that phase data obtained by applying Fourier transform to the temperature data during both heating and cooling steps were oscillated with a period of the reciprocal of the heating duration. This means the influence of the non-uniform heating is periodically suppressed in the phase images, and the defect detectability should be improved at such images.", "The preliminary results of the characterization of nematic liquid crystal coated photonic crystal fiber (PCF) ::: interferometers are presented in this paper. Two types of interferometer were fabricated; one by sandwiching a small ::: section of PCF between standard single mode fibers and the second one is formed by tapering a small section of a PCF ::: by collapsing the air holes, and thinning down the air hole collapsed region to a micron size. The interferometers are ::: fabricated from different types of the photonic crystal fiber and temperature studies are carried out to select an ::: interferometer to be coated with the liquid crystal material. The requirement for a suitable liquid crystal materials to be ::: used for PCF interferometers are also discussed. The behaviour of liquid crystal (LC) coated interferometers with ::: temperature and applied electric field is studied to determine the feasibility of using such interferometers in sensing ::: applications.", "Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological charge, the particles are either confined to a two-dimensional circular cavity with homeotropic boundary or to the surface of a three-dimensional sphere. Both systems exhibit halfinteger topological point defects. The isotropic defect core has a radius of the order of one particle length and is surrounded by free-standing density oscillations. The effective interaction between two defects is investigated. All results should be experimentally observable in thin sheets of colloidal liquid crystals." ]

[ "The music industry is, and always has been, dominated by men. Over the last several years, strides have been made toward a more equal gender mix on radio playlists and festival line-ups, but one area where women are still underrepresented is behind the scenes, in the studio. My guest on this episode, Trina Shoemaker, is a trailblazer, an inspiration for women, or anyone who might be interested in getting behind the mixing board. We're going to dive into her career, some of the albums she's worked on – and what it was like to be the first woman to win a GRAMMY for Engineering, which she won in 1998 for Sheryl Crow's The Globe Sessions. Shoemaker is an engineer, a mixer and a producer. Here's a quick overview of what that means: The engineer records the audio, often individual parts being played, one at a time or in smaller groups. The mixer takes all of the audio and combines it into what you end up hearing when you listen to an album, making certain instruments louder or softer, adding effects, and polishing up the songs. But what exactly is a producer? That's the first thing I asked Shoemaker in this session." ]

[ "Latino USA hears from music mogul Diana Rodriguez on making it on Billboard's list of Most Powerful Women in Music in a male-dominated industry.", "The women of Flor de Toloache share what it's like to be an all-female mariachi in a male-dominated music industry.", "Willie Sugarcapps appears on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Culture Center in Charleston, W.Va. The band consists of singer-songwriter Grayson Capps, guitarists Will Kimbrough and Corky Hughes, and husband-and-wife duo Sugarcane Jane. What began as a jam session in southern Alabama quickly became something more: The chemistry among the five distinct musicians inspired a repertoire that demanded to be documented, so they recruited Capps' longtime partner, Grammy-winning producer and engineer Trina Shoemaker. The addition helped spawn the band's self-titled debut album. Many of Willie Sugarcapps' members have played on Mountain Stage separately over the years — including Kimbrough, who appeared with Todd Snider's road band The Nervous Wrecks during his Mountain Stage debut in 1995. Set List \"Willie Sugarcapps\" \"Energy\" \"Oh, Colorado\" \"Poison\" \"Trouble\" \"Bring It On Home To Me\"", "When Mikaela Straus, who records as King Princess, says \"I've never been subtle. I don't think now is the time,\" she means it. Straus is a producer, multi-instrumentalist, writer and emerging gay icon with incredible confidence charisma and the musical chops to back it up. Straus literally grew up in a NYC recording studio built by her dad, Oliver, and would sleep there on the couch as a kid. She learned about the music industry from people who were immersed in it and explains how that has helped in her own career. In this session, Straus also shares what happened when she first verbalized being queer at 5 or 6 years old, what she thinks pop music can offer the gay community and why she's glad to have done the heavy lifting on her own identity before entering the music business. King Princess performs songs from her debut EP, Make My Bed, which features a song called \"Talia.\" (You can bet I asked her about that one.) Hear it all in the player.", "Tristen Gaspadarek and Buddy Hughen share a house in the graveyard of a golf club, where they make music that captures the stubborn hope and creeping obsolescence at the heart of modern life. Tristen, who performs and records under her first name, was raised in Chicago but moved to Nashville a decade ago. There she met the guitarist and producer Hughen, and the pair was soon collaborating. They've made three albums of deeply catchy classic pop, with Tristen's crystalline voice and empathetic, incisive lyrics at the center. The latest, Sneaker Waves, is her best yet – a meditation on the tragic habits and tender aspirations of people stumbling through the rapid changes of 21st century life. Recording nearly all the instruments themselves in their Inglewood bungalow studio, Tristen and Buddy have created a subtle masterwork worthy of comparisons to Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom or The Voyager by Jenny Lewis, who took Tristen on her latest tour. In this session, the couple talked about making pop in Nashville, and the rich indie-pop community that supports them, at Sound Stage Studios on Music Row.", "Happy 2019! If you're a long-time listener, you might know we have a tradition of doing a special show around New Year's, full of our favorite music stories of the year. Today, a selection of music pieces, including several that have not been previously aired on the podcast. We begin with the dreamy nostalgia pop of Cuco, then move on to a Los Angeles remake of a Peruvian chicha classic, \"Cariñito.\" Mexican rapper Niña Dioz shares how she navigates a male-dominated music industry, and Grammy award-winning salsa legend Eddie Palmieri gets personal in a one-on-one conversation with Maria Hinojosa.", "This week's <em>All Songs Considered</em> features a gorgeous, solo piano instrumental from Rhye, Tiny Desk contest winner Quinn Christopherson's unique look at male privilege, psych-pop via Ari Roar and more. 1. Ari Roar: \"Let Out\" from 'Best Behavior;' 2. Quinn Christopherson: \"Erase Me\" from his winning entry for the Tiny Desk contest; 3. Rhye: \"Malibu Nights\" from 'Spirit;' 4. Tōth: \"When I Awoke\" from 'Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary;' 5. Joanna Sternberg: \"For You\" from 'Then I Try Some More;' 6. Another Sky: \"The Cracks\" from 'Life Was Coming in Through the Blinds;' 7. Marika Hackman: \"I'm Not Where You Are\" from 'Any Human Friend.'", "Here's a statistic for you: According to Fender Guitars, women now make up 50% of all entry-level players who buy their products. Why am I sharing that? Because today our guest is the Portland-based Fabi Reyna, who is not only a very talented guitar player — she currently has two projects, Reyna Tropical and Savíla — but also the groundbreaking publisher of a magazine called She Shreds. It's a publication dedicated completely to women who rip on the guitar or bass (or who would like to), and in it Reyna interviews women you may already know and others who you should know. After 6 years running, She Shreds has shaken up the publishing and music industries. Naturally, we had lots to talk about.", "Brandi Carlile has toured virtually non-stop for eight years, sharing the stage with Dave Matthews Band, Ray LaMontagne, The Indigo Girls and The Avett Brothers, among others. She's released four well-liked albums and several EPs in the span of six years, and now she's back with a personal and down-to-earth new record, titled Bear Creek. Produced by Grammy-winning engineer Trina Shoemaker, Bear Creek finds Carlile in her element: She recorded it in a rural Washington barn, surrounded by family and friends. The result is a great mix of classic rock, folk, bluegrass and soul. Out this month, Bear Creek represents a step forward for Carlile, who took on a greater role in helping to produce the album. Here, Carlile performs a concert at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia, as part of WXPN's Non-Commvention. Set List \"Raise Hell\" \"Hard Way Home\" \"Keep Your Heart Young\" \"That Wasn't Me\" \"The Story\"", "Farai Chideya leads a discussion about the women of hip-hop with Tricia Rose, professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, and rappers Monie Love and MC Lyte.", "NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with Chris Douridas of member station KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., about up-and-coming musician Ray LaMontagne, a former shoe factory worker with a distinctive singing voice and signature songwriting style who now has a hit debut album, Trouble.", "At the 1995 Source Awards, André 3000 issued a proclamation, or a prophecy: \"The South got something to say.\" Inspired by his words, this list represents some of the most impactful songs, albums and mixtapes by Southern rappers. It was assembled by a team, led by Briana Younger, of Southern critics, scholars and writers representing the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Virginia. We offer this list not as an authoritative canon but as an enthusiastic celebration that recenters the South's role as a creative center of hip-hop and presents the region for all that it has been and given to us. 2000 Trina dropped her debut album, Da Baddest B****, in March 2000 on the historic Slip-N-Slide Records, marking her official foray into the male-dominated hip-hop industry. Capitalizing on her appearance on Trick Daddy's \"Nann N****,\" Trina offered up a showcase of slick and explicit lyrics that put her in dialogue with New York's Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown. But Trina injected a distinct Southern flavor into her rhymes; tracks like the album's title single had an aggressive edge, and she didn't shy away from rapping about her sexual appetite and the grand life she lived in Miami. On \"Pull Over,\" she proved capable of continuing her own momentum with catchy, unforgettable bars just like the chorus. Da Baddest B****, equally as brash as it is sexy, would go on to be the blueprint for female rappers for years to come — at present, acts like the City Girls and Megan Thee Stallion are extensions of her legacy, reminiscent of Trina's unflinchingly shameless style. Raw and assertive, Da Baddest B**** is a rallying cry for women to embrace their sexual selves. —Robyn Mowatt At the time of its release, the most popular version of this song used the melody from Disney's 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to recognize twerking as labor and inspire a positive attitude in the dancers of Atlanta's strip clubs. While Disney's litigiousness is likely to blame for this version's absence from the official record, it is delightfully discordant to hear the Ying Yang Twins' lyrics about farting pussies over the wholesome if exploitative ones of a snow-white princess who has broken into a house and entreated the animals and birds present to whistle as she orders them around and they do most of the labor. In some ways, the Ying Yang Twins offer a more progressive gender and labor vision than their fairytale inspiration, narrating some of the resistance practices of the club's various dancers — women who are skilled, don't play and demand top dollar. \"Whistle While You Twurk\" is an ethnography of the Atlanta strip club scene, its people, practices and places, that prefigures the stylized and obligatory slow-motion shots of the space that would come to characterize at least one scene in many mainstream rap videos in the 2000s. It is the essential link from Florida to Texas, 2 Live Crew to Megan Thee Stallion, coming right on the heels of the transformative stop in between the two: Louisiana's Juvenile. On the South's twerk anthems, like this one and Ying Yang Twins' catalog's worth of others constructed in its image, we find the engines of pleasure, fantasy, capital and crossover. And if we listen on the lower frequencies, we will hear the familiar whistles of the complex intersections of race, sex and labor exploitation that have always operated in the region. —Zandria F. Robinson Released in June 2000, Three 6 Mafia's fourth studio album, When The Smoke Clears, featured the collective at its creative and physical peak. With this being the group's first offering since its 1997 breakout effort Chapter 2: World Domination, the album was the result of three years of tooling up and polishing its sound via Hypnotized Minds/Prophet Posse compilations (especially January 2000's Hypnotize Camp Posse that featured the hit \"Who Run It?\") and solo albums from group members and affiliates. Living up to its title, When the Smoke Clears simultaneously introduced underground \"Triple 6\" to a wider national audience and further established the group's standing with longtime fans, all while the perfect storm of a Southern hip-hop takeover was brewing, making listeners, DJs, radio stations and anyone else with two ears realize that they were key architects in the movement. While Lil Jon was marketing and packaging crunk with party records, Three 6 showed that not only were they making it before it became popular, but that it could be made with varying levels, lyrics and concepts besides call-and-response and big hooks. Love it or hate it, the album also unapologetically introduced a new drug culture to mainstream rap with tracks like \"I'm So Hi\" and \"Sippin on Some Syrup\" featuring UGK openly showcasing cocaine, pill and lean use at a time when weed was considered the drug of rapper choice. When the Smoke Clears would also be the last time that Three 6 Mafia operated at full strength. After the album's re", "Fabi Reyna, founder of Sheshreds Media, highlights artists often left out of history books in her article <em>7 Guitarists That Prove Black Women Were Pioneers In Music History.</em>", "This Sunday the annual Grammy Award winners will be announced. One of the biggest categories is Song of the Year, which goes to a songwriter. Every day this week, we'll give you a little intel on one of the nominees. Today, Bruno Mars' \"Grenade.\" The Grammys love down-the-middle pop stars who appeal across genres and generations. They also reward industry insiders, and Bruno Mars is no stranger to the business. Last year he had a bunch of nominations, but he won only Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The Recording Academy drastically cut back on categories this year (its stated end being the \"continued competition and prestige\" of the awards), and one of the changes did away with the separation of male and female performers in the pop, R&B, rock and country categories. In the past, this might have forced female artists to compete in a boys' club. But pop is now so female-dominated that this year Mars is the only guy up for Best Pop Solo Performance. Mars wrote \"Grenade\" with his very successful songwriting team, the Smeezingtons, plus three more songwriters. Pop songwriting is a group effort these days. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: And we still have a week to wait to find out the winner of the Grammy for Song of the Year. Until that moment, NPR Music's critic Ann Powers will be introducing us to the nominees. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"GRENADE\") ANN POWERS, BYLINE: This is Bruno Mars singing \"Grenade.\" (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"GRENADE\") POWERS: The Grammys love down-the-middle pop stars that appeal across genres and generations. They also reward industry insiders, as Bruno Mars is totally one of those. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"GRENADE\") POWERS: He's co-written so many songs. Last year, he had a bunch of nominations but he only won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The Grammy organization drastically cut back on categories this year to make them more competitive. In the past, this might have forced women artists to compete in a boys' club. But pop is now so female-dominated that Bruno is the only guy in this category this year. Bruno Mars wrote this song with his very successful songwriting team, the Smeezingtons, plus three more songwriters. Pop songwriting is a group effort these days. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"GRENADE\") MONTAGNE: NPR Music critic Ann Powers. She'll be telling us about other Grammy nominees all this week. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, \"GRENADE\") MONTAGNE: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News.", "This essay is one in a series celebrating women whose major contributions in recording occurred before the time frame of NPR Music's list of 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women. Rock 'n' roll was bred between the church and the nightclubs in the soul of a queer black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was there before Elvis, Little Richard and Johnny Cash swiveled their hips and strummed their guitars. It was Tharpe, the godmother of rock 'n' roll, who turned this burgeoning musical style into an international sensation. Perhaps it's no surprise that Tharpe was always surrounded by music growing up. Born Rosetta Nubin in Arkansas to Willis Atkins and Katie Bell, Tharpe came from a family of religious singers, cotton pickers and traditional evangelists. She picked up the guitar at four years old, and at the age of six she accompanied her mother to perform with a travelling evangelist troupe in churches around the South. By the mid-1920s, Tharpe and her mother settled in Chicago, where they continued performing spiritual music. As Tharpe grew up, she began fusing Delta blues, New Orleans jazz and gospel music into what would become her signature style. Although Tharpe's distinctive voice and unconventional style attracted fans, it was still the mid-1930s. Female guitarists were rare, and even more so was a musician who pursued both religious and secular themes, a fact that alarmed the gospel community. But Tharpe — young and innovative — was determined to keep experimenting with her sound. Her persistence and grit paid off, and by 1938, she had joined the Cotton Club Revue, a New York City club that became especially notable during the Prohibition era. She was only 23 at the time, a feat that was only amplified when she scored her first single, \"Rock Me,\" a gospel and rock 'n' roll fusion, along with three other gospel songs: \"My Man and I,\" \"That's All\" and \"Lonesome Road.\" Tharpe's lyrics unabashedly flirted with her openness of love and sexuality, an approach that left her gospel audience speechless. \"Rock Me,\" which showcased Tharpe's distinctive guitar style and melodic blues mixed with traditional gospel music, made her a trailblazer — as did the range of her voice, which resounded with conviction as she sang the words \"rock me!\" With this song, she made it plain that her words could not only transcend lines of faith, but could also represent a shift in popular music in real time. As a young black woman working within a heavily male-dominated industry in the 1940s, Tharpe wasn't shy about rattling conventions. She collaborated with heavy-hitting artists of the time, like Duke Ellington and the Dixie Hummingbirds. In 1941, she began travelling widely with the Lucky Millinder Orchestra, a notable swing band, and recorded the likes of \"I Want a Tall Skinny Papa\" with them. She even teamed up with the Jordanaires, an all-white male group, and began performing for mixed audiences. Despite her fame, institutional racism in the mid-1940s was still rampant. On tour, all restaurants and hotels were still segregated, so Tharpe slept on buses. She went around the back end of restaurants to pick up food because they wouldn't let her in. Yet the spirit in her music never broke. She soon gained a celebrity status and even became a legend amongst black soldiers fighting in World War II. After the war, Tharpe started working with Sammy Price and produced a famous spiritual single, \"Strange Things Happening Everyday,\" with Decca Records. As Gayle Wald's biography Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe puts it, the song specifically references what was happening in the mid-1940s: WWII was ending; the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima; Jackie Robinson had just been signed to the major leagues. The expression \"strange things\" helped to express the uneasiness of the bewildering events going on in the world, and Tharpe translated that seamlessly through her music. \"Strange Things Happening Everyday\" would become one of her most well-known records, as well as the first gospel song to cross over into the R&B top 10 charts. Some even argue that it was one of the first rock 'n'roll recordings. By the time she was thirty, Sister Rosetta Tharpe had survived two marriages (including one to a preacher she married at age 19) and various relationships with both women and men. Although she was open about her sexuality within the industry, she kept this secret from the public. Tharpe eventually met her partner, Marie Knight, when they teamed up with their hit \"Up Above My Head.\" The duo began touring by themselves (along with their band) and started taking control of their own business decisions. They toured, collaborated and performed as two queer black women in a relationship in the late 1940s; it was a radical act. In 1950, the duo and partnership split. One year later, Sister Rosetta Tharpe married Russell Morrison, her manager. The wedding took place in a ", "Lost Midas is the work of producer Jason Trikakis, a Boston-born, L.A.-based drummer who grew up on J. Dilla, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and 1980s New Wave. On his new album, Off the Course, Lost Midas cherrypicks from funk, chillwave and dream-pop to make off-kilter (but on-point) soul music. \"Head Games\" is the lead single from the album, and it's reminiscent of the best stuff by Neon Indian or Bibio. The vocals, delivered by the singer Audris, float above intricate, irresistible drum patterns. The track is emotional, idiosyncratic, aurally magnetic and all-consuming — a brilliant and melodic gumbo that reveals different elemental textures with each listen. Download \"Head Games\" from Heavy Rotation.", "Award-winning chef Barbara Lynch succeeded in what traditionally has been a male-dominated industry. She spoke to NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro about her amazing life, and her new memoir, <em>Out of Line</em>.", "It&#8217;s the familiar story of the difficult-but-brilliant artist, and the woman he loved &#8212; only not this time. &#8220;Godard, Mon Amour&#8221; is a new French film about trailblazing director Jean-Luc Godard, told through the eyes of his first wife and muse. NPR contributor Andrew Lapin (@AndrewLapin) says the movie lets some of the wind out of the male ego&#8217;s sails.", "Though he's here to perform live music from his latest solo album Thrum, Joe Henry is also well-known as the producer of a lot of music. It might even take you longer to Google and browse all of his credits, than it would to listen to this complete session! Joe was mentored by legendary producer T Bone Burnett in the '90s, and has gone on to work with Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Glen Hansard, Aimee Mann, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Meshell Ndegeocello ... and loads more. Keep on scrolling down that list of Joe Henry credits. Many of those artists passed through Joe's former studio in the basement of the house where he lived with his family. Joe and his family recently left that house — we'll talk about why. Joe grew up in a suburb of Detroit, but now lives in LA with his wife Melanie Ciccone. Recognize that last name? Melanie is the sister of Madonna Ciccone, aka Madonna. Joe and the Ciccones have known each other since they were in high school in Michigan. Joe will talk about his personal and professional relationship with his very famous sister-in-law, including why it works so well. This session starts with a live performance of a song from Joe Henry's new album, called \"Climb.\" Hear it all in the player above.", "This week, <em>News & Notes</em> producer Devin Robins remembers three of her favorite songs from high school: \"Bust a Move\" by Young MC, \"Vision of Love\" by Mariah Carey, and Bel Biv Devoe's \"Poison.\"", "Frontwoman Donita Sparks talks about L7's newest release after 20 years, <em>Scatter the Rats</em>, and about women in rock.", "Ahead of Sunday night's 60th Grammy Awards ceremony, a new study published by University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative finds that more than 90 percent of Grammy nominees in the past six years have been male. Stacey Smith, co-author of the study — titled Inclusion in the Recording Studio? -- says there is an \"epidemic of invisibility\" in the music industry, particularly in songwriting and producing. \"When it comes to songwriters, only 12 percent are female, and perhaps most egregiously, only 2 percent of 651 producers were women,\" Smith says. \"And only two of those producers were women of color.\" The study wasn't only about the Grammys: Researchers also looked at the 600 most popular songs since 2012. The evidence suggests a heavily male-dominated industry overall — and when you consider that the music industry tends to favor the songwriters with a pedigree for churning out hits, that pool becomes even more shallow. \"There are nine male songwriters that are setting the agenda for popular culture across a fifth of the most popular songs over the last six years,\" Smith says. \"Nine men! I think consumers should know this, and I think there should be concern that such a narrow slice of humanity is responsible for and driving our ideas in music.\" Heba Kadry is a mastering engineer based in Brooklyn. She says she doesn't believe the Grammys are the best indication of what's actually going on in the music industry right now, and that some advances in diversity have been made — but that even so, she is a still a minority in her field and faces uphill battles in getting work. \"Any time you're in a room with a bunch of people who are considering hiring you, there is this immediate assumption, like, 'Who do you manage?' or 'Whose girlfriend are you?' ... They don't think of you as potentially a person who knows what they're doing,\" Kadry says. \"And so you feel like you kind of have to prove yourself twice as much as males.\" Kadry says that the major labels, the hitmakers, rarely go outside their comfort zones in her experience — but sometimes their hands can be forced. \"They usually go for their rolodex of the same dudes,\" she says. \"I think when the artist has enough clout to be like, 'You know what? No. I want to work with this person,' then can the tides really change.\" STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. The music industry honors its best this weekend. It's Grammy time. But a new study reveals a persistent gender gap in the industry. USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative did the study and found that more than 90 percent of Grammy nominees in recent years have been men. STACY SMITH: We're really seeing an epidemic of invisibility, particularly in songwriting and producing. RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Stacy Smith is one of the heads of the study. And they didn't just look at the Grammys. They also looked at the 600 most popular songs since 2012. Again, the evidence suggests a heavily male-dominated industry. SMITH: When it comes to songwriters, only 12 percent are female. And perhaps most egregiously, only 2 percent of 651 producers were women, and only two of those producers were women of color. INSKEEP: And if you make the focus a little narrower and just look at the songwriters who churn out hit after hit after hit, well, the pool becomes even more male. SMITH: There are nine male songwriters that are setting the agenda for popular culture across a fifth of the most popular songs over the last six years - nine men. I think consumers should know this. And I think there should be concern that such a narrow slice of humanity is responsible for and driving our ideas in music. MARTIN: Reading a study is one thing, but we also wanted to get the perspective of someone who has felt this disparity firsthand. HEBA KADRY: I mean, of course, we are a minority. But I think the Grammys are not an indication of what's actually really happening in the music industry and the diversity and how much better it is now. INSKEEP: Heba Kadry has a job making songs sound great. Her job title is mastering engineer. She works in Brooklyn. KADRY: Since I first started, you know, there really weren't that many women in studios. But, you know, really, in the last five years or so - maybe five to eight years - like, I'm seeing, like, the trend is switching. And I think it's because, you know, women are kind of fed up, and they're kind of taking matters into their own hands. A lot of them are producing their own records. MARTIN: That's not to say that she still doesn't face uphill battles in getting work, though. KADRY: You know, anytime you're in a room with a bunch of people who are considering hiring you, there is this immediate assumption - like, who do you manage, or whose girlfriend are you? Or, you know, they don't think of you as, like, potentially a person who knows what they're doing. And so you feel like you kind of have to prove yourself twice as much as males. INSKEEP: No matter the talent of women producers or engineers or", "Ryan Adams, a prolific singer-songwriter and producer who first rose to prominence in the early 2000s, has been accused by seven women of using his professional influence to lure them into sexual relationships, including one when the woman was a minor. The women's stories were first reported by the New York Times in an article published Wednesday evening; each claims that Adams, as a well-known musician, would suggest artistic collaborations as a way to pursue or preserve the relationships. Through his lawyer, Andrew B. Brettler, Adams denied each allegation in the Times piece. In separate interviews, the women told the Times that Adams offered to work with them before pursuing them sexually or emotionally manipulating them to remain in the relationship. The accusers include Adams' ex-wife, the actress and singer Mandy Moore; singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Courtney Jaye; Adams' ex-fiancée, Megan Butterworth; and two unnamed individuals, also singer-songwriters. In a series of tweets sent after the article's publication, Adams apologized to \"anyone I have ever hurt, however unintentionally\" but called the article \"upsettingly inaccurate\" and denied having \"inappropriate interactions with someone I thought was underage. Period\" and the assertion that he has the ability to make or break careers. According to the newspaper, Brettler called some of the accusations \"grousing by disgruntled individuals.\" Brettler did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NPR. Much of the reaction to the Times' article pointed to how common stories like these have become. \"I've heard every detail of this story in composite about numerous other men in the biz,\" wrote Ann Powers, NPR's chief music critic. \"Every gatekeeper is a man,\" remarked The Weather Station, a folk group led by Canadian artist Tamara Lindeman. Adams \"didn't get away with this for so long because he made awe inspiring, impossible-to-criticize music,\" observed singer and Kickstarter head of music Meredith Graves. \"He got away with it because 95% of the music industry from DIY on up are completely mediocre pervert dudes just like him.\" The \"saddest part\" about the Times' article, wrote Bethany Cosentino of the band Best Coast, \"is that it could literally be written about so many dudes in music.\" Natalie Prass, a singer-songwriter with whom Adams has toured, tweeted: \"Believe women, believe survivors.\" A study released by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative this year documented a striking lack of gender parity within the recording industry: 21.7 percent of artists are women, 12.3 percent of songwriters are women and just 2.1 percent of producers are women. The study found that of 75 female songwriters interviewed by the authors, 36 percent found the industry's male domination to be a barrier and 39 percent reported being stereotyped and sexualized. A similar study of the film industry — which has been affected noticeably more by revelations of misconduct and abuse of power within it than the music industry has — found a similar disparity in power, with white male producers behind 72.3 percent of the 300 top films released between 2016 and 2018. Adams is the latest name on a relatively short list of powerful music industry figures who have been accused by multiple people of sexual misconduct or psychological manipulation, including former label executive Charlie Walk, Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons, former Epic Records executive L.A. Reid and rhythm and blues artist R. Kelly.", "Despite advancements in the dance world, the construction of toe shoes has remained pretty much unchanged since the late 19th century. Eliza Gaynor Minden explains how her dance shoe company successfully overcame controversy and finally gained acceptance among the world’s leading dancers. Jessica Harris also speaks with Simon Pearce, the founder of a successful glass blowing company.", "At 25 years old, Trixie Whitley is already a veteran of the music industry. Growing up, she toured the world with her late father, singer-songwriter Chris Whitley, and gained repute as a DJ in Europe, spinning records in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and New York City. Whitley established her jazz and alt-rock tendencies on her first album, Strong Blood, in 2008, and garnered attention after touring with Daniel Lanois' Black Dub in 2010. Since then, Whitley has created buzz with emotionally compelling songs, fueled by passionate honesty and searing guitar and piano. She released her latest EP, Fourth Corner, earlier this year. Here, she performs songs from Fourth Corner and talks with host David Dye about her musical upbringing.", "<em>All Songs Considered'</em>s Robin Hilton is joined by NPR Music's Rodney Carmichael, Stefanie Ferndandez, Lars Gotrich and Stephen Thompson – along with special guest Talia Schlanger, host of WXPN's <em>World Café </em>– for a quick run through the best new albums out on May 25. This includes the highly anticipated (and instant classic) album, <em>Daytona </em>from rapper PUSHA-T, reggaetón mega-hit maker J Balvin, raw and ragged rock from Thunderpussy, effervescent synth-pop from CHVRCHES and more. FEATURED ALBUMS: Thunderpussy: <em>Thunderpussy,</em> PUSHA-T: <em>Daytona, </em>Aisha Burns: <em>Argonauta, </em>CHVRCHES: <em>Love Is Dead,</em> J Balvin: <em>Vibras, </em>Zaytoven: <em>Trap Holizay, </em>Witch Mountain: <em>Witch Mountain. </em> Other notable releases for May 25: Sudan Archives: <em>Sink,</em> Graveyard: <em>Peace, </em>Jenny Hval: <em>The Long Sleep, </em>Ari Roar: <em>Calm Down, </em>Chad Valley: <em>Imaginary Music, </em>Wand: <em>Perfume </em>", "NPR's Madeleine Brand pauses to pay tribute to R&B pioneer Estelle Axton, a co-founder of legendary Stax Records, who died Thursday at the age of 85.", "Making music in a band is always and experiment. The players throw different elements into the enzymatic mix, let it all bubble together, and come up with a new compound every time. Recording these interactions for something as self-promotional as a music video can feel intrusive, like freezing something volatile. But a creative team can have fun with this awkward encounter. Fly Golden Eagle is one of Nashville's most dynamic young rock bands. Joshua Shoemaker is one of the town's most sought-after filmmakers. Their latest collaboration puts a scientific spin on the video-making process – Shoemaker actually appears among the crew wearing pseudo-Hazmat suits as singer-songwriter Ben Trimble and the rest of the band impassively smash through the bluesy, brawling \"Stepping Stone,\" from Fly Golden Eagle's new album Quartz Bijou. Shoemaker thought of the suits before America's current wave of virus-panic took hold; the video's commentary on today's news is coincidental. \"We wanted to pull the curtain back on this video and use the production as part of the aesthetic, but for all the crew to remain as anonymous as possible,\" Shoemaker explained in an email. \"The idea was that we were exposing a bigger picture- a band performing a song with a crew producing a video because of the necessity for media and how that can overlap or hinder artistic expression. I think it's most explicit in the shot where we see me pushing the dolly in front of the vocal shot as Ben sings, 'Me and my friends do whatever the f-- we gotta do to get paid.' It was important for Ben to look in the camera and address the viewer the whole time. We could have made this a 'music video,' but it was also important to us to do it live and make it as real as possible. This is all one take. No cut-ins. This is what was happening in the room.\" The video's frame draws the viewer in and also creates a subtle mood of alienation. At its heart, however, is Fly Golden Eagle's dynamic interplay – and awe-inspiring fashion sense. \"Fly Golden Eagle is such an amazing band to work with because they're so in tune with their image and style,\" Shoemaker said. \"Ben is so hands-on with everything they put out, so working with him is even more so a collaboration than normal.\" Call it better living through psychedelia – this experiment paid off.", "Madeleine Brand talks to Bob Moon of <EM>Marketplace</EM> about the Adidas shoe company's move to buy rival shoemaker Reebok for $3.8 billion. The purchase could give Adidas about 20 percent of the U.S. athletic shoe market, and positions the company to challenge industry leader Nike.", "Fashion designer Kate Spade set trends for generations of women. Her work was timeless, colorful and fun. Her designs were appropriate for work but never sacrificed a sense of personality. Spade was also one of only a few prominent women to lead her own line in the male-dominated fashion industry. Spade was found dead on Tuesday, prompting many fans to share stores of their first time buying a Kate Spade design. We talked about her life and legacy. What made her designs so successful? How will fans remember her? And what are the hurdles for women in the fashion industry?", "For the first time, a woman has been named CEO of a major U.S. automotive company. Mary Barra, 51, breaks a glass ceiling in one of the most male-dominated industries in the nation. But women buy more than half the cars in America, so the question is why it took so long.", "The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. With one quick glance, you can guess Madame Gandhi's favorite color. Surrounded by her yellow bongos and congas, a yellow desk from her youth and a yellow nightstand, her Tiny Desk (home) concert lighting nods to the lavender-lemon artwork of her 2019 Visions EP. She's intentional with everything she does, including activism that focuses primarily on gender liberation. She uses music to help elevate and celebrate female voices, from working with primarily queer women BIPOC on tour and video sets, to writing socially-conscious lyrics that challenge the white male-dominated music industry.. Madame Gandhi's clear, soft voice and swells of percussion give you the necessary space to meditate on her message of inclusion and equality. SET LIST \"Waiting For Me\" \"Moon in the Sky\" \"Bad Habits\" CREDITS Videographer: Aroy Productions; Audio Engineer: Aroy Productions; Producer: Kara Frame; Video Producer: Maia Stern; Audio Mastering Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Associate Producer: Bobby Carter; Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey; Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann" ]

[ "A special legislative session in Texas drew to a close late Tuesday without passing a bill to limit transgender people's access to bathrooms. The now-dead bill had the support of the state's governor and Senate, but it was opposed by powerful business interests and the Republican House speaker. The proposal was for a law similar to the one North Carolina passed and later partially repealed. It would have required trans people to use a bathroom that corresponded to the gender marked on their birth certificate. Supporters of such bills reject transgender identities and appeal to privacy concerns and the hypothetical risks of predators. Opponents of such bills point to the violence and harassment that trans people face when using a bathroom that doesn't match their identity. The \"bathroom bill\" debate in Texas has carried on for months. After efforts to pass a stand-alone bill didn't advance, the Senate and the House previously attempted to use amendments to unrelated bills to push a version of the bathroom ban forward. But support for the measure couldn't overcome business concerns about economic fallout (like North Carolina experienced) or the opposition of one influential Republican. Houston Public Media reports that the idea of the bill \"largely dominated the regular legislative session between protests, lobbying days, two overnight hearings, legislative bickering among Republican leaders over proposed bathroom bills and, eventually, a forced special session\": \"Restricting bathroom use in public facilities was deemed a legislative priority by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. But House Speaker Joe Straus, with the increased backing of the business community, emerged as his most prominent foil on the issue. \"Gov. Greg Abbott — who for months during the regular session was reticent to voice his support for a bathroom bill — eventually took the lieutenant governor's side and added the issue to his 20-item agenda for a special session that Patrick forced him to call by holding hostage legislation needed to keep open the doors at a handful of state agencies. \"But amid concerns for the safety of an already vulnerable population and statewide economic fallout, those efforts did little to sway the speaker. ... Just like during the regular session, Straus has refused to refer that bill to a House committee — the first step in the legislative process.\" Straus has infuriated Texas conservatives with his opposition to the bill, as Ben Philpott of member station KUT reported earlier this month. \"I try to encourage cooperation. I try to encourage bipartisanship. I know that's not a very fashionable thing today,\" Straus told Philpott. For some Texas Republicans, that's \"downright treasonous,\" Philpott reported: \"When Straus focuses on bipartisan efforts, like a plan to increase public school funding, he's attacked by some for doing so at the expense of 'real' conservative priorities.\" \"I use the office and the authority that the members have given to me, on occasions, where I think it's necessary,\" Straus told Philpott. \"This bathroom bill is a perfect example of that.\" Another of Abbott's legislative priorities — a limit on how much property taxes can rise, which he had identified as his No. 1 goal — also failed to pass during the special legislative session. But Abbott achieved many other items on his wish list, the Texas Tribune reports, including \"proposals to crack down on mail-in ballot fraud, extend the life of maternal mortality task force, reform the municipal annexation process, limit local ordinance regulating trees and impose new restrictions on abortion.\" Those abortion restrictions include banning insurance coverage of abortions unless women pay a separate, extra premium. There's an exception for emergencies, but no exception for rape or incest, which has led critics to say the bill will force women to purchase \"rape insurance.\" \"The bill's supporters say the idea is that people who don't support abortion shouldn't have to pay for a product that goes against their conscience,\" NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports." ]

[ "Texas House Democrats left the state on Monday in a second high-profile effort to block controversial GOP legislation that critics have slammed as voter suppression. The Democrats, in an attempt again to break quorum and stop votes on two election bills, said they were flying to Washington, D.C., where they planned to push for federal voter protections. \"Today, Texas House Democrats stand united in our decision to break quorum and refuse to let the Republican-led legislature force through dangerous legislation that would trample on Texans' freedom to vote,\" a statement from several House Democratic leaders said. \"We are now taking the fight to our nation's Capitol. We are living on borrowed time in Texas. We need Congress to act now to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to protect Texans — and all Americans — from the Trump Republicans' nationwide war on democracy.\" The statement was attributed to Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner, Mexican American Legislative Caucus Chair Rafael Anchía, Texas Legislative Black Caucus Chair Nicole Collier, and state Reps. Garnet Coleman and Senfronia Thompson. What the bills would do Texas already has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country. The two new priority voting bills for the state's Republicans would ban drive-through and 24-hour voting, make mail-in voting more difficult and give partisan poll watchers more authority at voting sites. Another provision, which would increase criminal penalties for voting mistakes, has garnered additional attention after the arrest last week of a Houston man, Hervis Rogers, over allegedly voting while on parole, which is illegal in Texas. What happens now It was not immediately clear if Democrats would remain out of the state through the end of the session, which is set to run through the beginning of August. Under the Texas Constitution, if lawmakers are anywhere in the state while the special session is ongoing, they can be arrested and physically brought back to the Capitol to provide a quorum. State Rep. John Bucy, one of the Texas Democrats who fled the state, said he and the others are willing to stay out of Texas for the rest of the special session, if needed. If successful, it would be the first time in 18 years that Democrats left the state to break quorum. In 2003, lawmakers fled to New Mexico to block Republican-led redistricting efforts — before one of the Democratic legislators ultimately returned, allowing the Legislature to proceed. Additional GOP priorities blocked In response to their move, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott accused the Democrats of abandoning their responsibilities. In addition to the voting bills, a walkout would block passage of other GOP priority legislation, including a measure that would make it harder for people accused of crimes to bond out of jail. \"Texas Democrats' decision to break a quorum of the Texas Legislature and abandon the Texas State Capitol inflicts harm on the very Texans who elected them to serve,\" a statement from Abbott said. \"As they fly across the country on cushy private planes, they leave undone issues that can help their districts and our state.\" Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan said the House \"will use every available resource under the Texas Constitution and the unanimously passed House Rules to secure a quorum to meaningfully debate and consider\" the bills that were on the agenda. \"The special session clock is ticking — I expect all Members to be present in our Capitol in order to immediately get to work on these issues,\" Phelan said. Harris shows support During a voting rights \"listening session\" Monday in Detroit, Vice President Harris praised the Texas Democrats, saying they were showing \"extraordinary courage and commitment.\" \"I applaud them for standing for the rights of all Americans and all Texans to express their voice through their vote unencumbered,\" she said. \"They are leaders who are marching in the path that so many others before did, when they fought and many died for our right to vote.\" Similar voting legislation was killed at the end of Texas' regular legislative session in May when Democrats walked out in the final moments, breaking quorum. Texas Democrats then visited Washington and met with Harris and others to push for federal voting protections. The following week, Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked consideration of Democrats' sweeping For the People Act. In response to the May Democratic walkout, Abbott vetoed funding for the Legislature and put the voting bill on the agenda for this first of two special sessions. Abbott could again place the agenda items on a planned second session later this year, which is meant to address redistricting. Houston Public Media's Andrew Schneider, David Martin Davies of Texas Public Radio and Ashley Lopez of KUT in Austin contributed to this report.", "During this month-long special legislative session, Texas Republicans are hoping to pass several red meat campaign promises, such as a ban on transgender bathroom access. But in a state where every statewide elected official is Republican and the party controls the legislature, there's one Republican trying to slow those efforts. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus had made himself enemy number one among the state's most conservative voters. His crime? Bipartisanship. \"I try to encourage cooperation. I try to encourage bipartisanship. I know that's not a very fashionable thing today,\" Straus said. It's not just unfashionable, for some Republicans it's downright treasonous. When Straus focuses on bipartisan efforts, like a plan to increase public school funding, he's attacked by some for doing so at the expense of \"real\" conservative priorities. \"There's a growing number of conservatives in the House that don't understand why Speaker Straus is blocking a conservative agenda,\" said one critic, state Rep. Matt Schaefer. The GOP divide That line — \"blocking a conservative agenda\" — may sound familiar. From the Republican Senators who blocked a repeal of Obamacare to fights in Republicans state legislatures around the country, votes against the party line have brought a swift and often angry response. Straus has always said that if something doesn't come up for a vote in the Texas House, it's because the bill didn't have enough support. But, he admits he has blocked some legislation. \"I use the office and the authority that the members have given to me, on occasions, where I think it's necessary,\" Straus explained. \"This bathroom bill is a perfect example of that.\" The bill is also a perfect example of the divisions among Republicans — and the business interests that have backed the GOP over the years. And in Texas, those business leaders, from local chambers of commerce to giants like IBM and ExxonMobil, want nothing to do with the bathroom bill. That's because of what happened in North Carolina, where a similar bill led to consumer boycotts and prompted some companies to avoid investing in the state. Straus quotes from a recent editorial from a North Carolina newspaper. \"Why would Texas after seeing the example in North Carolina want to walk headfirst into a giant cactus? I think it's a good question and I hope that we don't go there,\" Straus said. But the governor, lieutenant governor, state Senate and some in the House do want to go there. Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin, says that tug-o-war between activists and business groups shows up in Straus's record as speaker. \"What you see is an ability to balance what different factions of the Republican Party want,\" Henson said, \"while acknowledging that some of the issues that he may not put at the top of his list, are at the top of Republican primary voters lists.\" Straus points to opposition from business groups and law enforcement, when explaining why he's kept the bathroom bill from getting a vote. But those same groups opposed another bill that priority for Republicans that Straus did help pass this spring. \"The House delivered anti-illegal immigration and border security measures, that are their most important issues for primary Republican voters in Texas. Full Stop,\" Henson said. Election backlash? But right now it's all or nothing for the most conservatives Republicans. To them, passing an anti-sanctuary cities bill is great — but unless Straus passes the bathroom bill, nothing else he's done matters. And Representative Schaefer says that's what voters will focus in primary elections in 2018. \"Are you with Lt. Governor Patrick and Gov. Abbott? Or are you with Joe Straus who's blocking a conservative agenda,\" Schaefer said. \"He's really making it simple for people to understand.\" Straus intends to run for re-election, and support in his Northern San Antonio House district remains strong. But if he returns to the House, Tea Party members and even the lieutenant governor, appear ready to support someone else for speaker.", "North Carolina's Legislature is poised to repeal the controversial \"bathroom bill,\" after the Charlotte City Council unanimously voted to repeal its local anti-discrimination measure. The state law, called House Bill 2 or HB2, was passed in March as a direct response to that Charlotte measure — over the course of 12 hours, in the state's first special legislative session in 35 years. Now the law might be rolled back in another special session, again following a decision by the Charlotte City Council. Among other things, HB2 blocked local jurisdictions from passing anti-discrimination laws affecting to anyone not protected at the state level, including gay and transgender people. It also required trans people in government facilities to use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate. The Charlotte measure that HB2 blocked would have expanded the city's anti-discrimination measure to protect LGBT people from biased treatment by businesses. It would also have allowed trans people to use the bathroom that matched their gender identity. Since HB2 was passed, leaders in Charlotte had considered a deal with state lawmakers under which they'd repeal their measure and then the state would repeal HB2 — but rejected the proposal, member station WFAE reports. Then, on Monday morning, they had a surprise session — not announced to the media — and changed course. \"This morning, the City Council repealed that ordinance, but made it contingent upon the Legislature repealing HB2 by Dec. 31,\" Will Michaels of member station WUNC reports for NPR. \"Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the bill into law, says he will call a special session this week to repeal it,\" Michaels says. In a statement the Republican governor framed the repeal of the Charlotte ordinance as a victory. \"This sudden reversal with little notice after the gubernatorial election sadly proves this entire issue originated by the political left was all about politics,\" McCrory said. Gov.-elect Roy Cooper, the Democrat who defeated McCrory in the recent election, said in a statement Monday that he hopes legislators \"will keep their word to me\" and repeal HB2, member station WFAE reports. \"Full repeal will help to bring jobs, sports and entertainment events back and will provide the opportunity for strong LGBT protections in our state,\" Cooper said, according to WFAE. As Michaels notes, \"HB2 has been the subject of corporate boycotts ranging from PayPal reversing a decision to expand in Charlotte to the NCAA pulling tournament games out of North Carolina.\" State Sen. Jeff Tarte called the planned repeal of both the Charlotte ordinance and HB2 a \"reset.\" The update on the HB2 controversy comes as North Carolina's Legislature was already making headlines — for a law, signed by McCrory, to limit his successor's influence and authority. Cooper defeated McCrory by about 10,000 votes, and McCrory didn't concede the race for nearly a month. Then, as the Two-Way reported last week, the Legislature met \"for a special session called by Republican lawmakers ostensibly to pass a disaster relief bill for Hurricane Matthew.\" But once that bill passed, they passed measures to strip Cooper of a variety of powers. WFAE reports that McCrory has signed some of those bills into law, including one that blocks Cooper from appointing mostly Democrats to the State Board of Elections and State Ethics Commission. That law also puts Republicans, as the party with the second-most registered voters, in charge of the Board of Elections during major election years.", "Thousands of demonstrators ringed the White House on Sunday afternoon, demanding that President Obama deny permission for a proposed pipeline to carry crude oil from the tar sands of Canada to refineries in Texas. Business and labor groups support the Keystone XL project; many environmentalists oppose it. But deliberations in Nebraska may play a decisive role. There, lawmakers have introduced bills in response to concerns over the pipeline's projected path through an important source of water. One bill would prevent companies from building pipelines over certain ecologically sensitive areas; another would require pipeline companies to set up a $500 million indemnity bond in case of any leaks. Opposition To Pipeline Route On one recent afternoon, a small crowd gathered in the vaulting rotunda of Nebraska's towering state Capitol in Lincoln. Light streamed into the space from arched windows high above, bouncing off the floor where a marble mosaic depicts Mother Earth yielding gifts of food and water. \"Nebraskans live here because we choose to be here,\" Nebraska author Mary Pipher said about her state. \"Our state is not glamorous, exciting or an easy place to make a living. What we have in our state is our history, our relationships, our land and our water.\" The occasion wasn't an abstract celebration of civic pride: It was a news conference preceding a special session of the Legislature meeting a few steps away to discuss the pipeline. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman recently reversed himself and called the Legislature into special session to deal with this issue. \"Many Nebraskans, including myself, support the pipeline, but we are opposed to the route that goes through the Sandhills and over the Ogallala aquifer,\" Heineman explained. \"We ask: Why would you risk an oil spill or leak over the aquifer when TransCanada already has a pipeline route on the eastern side of Nebraska?\" The vast Sandhills in the northwest region of the state are home to more cattle than people. Beneath the grass-covered dunes is the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies about 80 percent of Nebraska's water for drinking and irrigation. Upcoming Legislative Issues Concerns over a pipeline carrying 700,000 barrels of oil a day through the aquifer have produced an unlikely coalition against it. \"You have conservative farmers and ranchers, you have progressive environmentalists, you have independents who care about eminent domain and private individual property rights,\" says Jane Kleeb, who helps coordinate the opposition. The pipeline company, TransCanada, promises state-of-the-art safety systems. It complains that nearly three years into the federal approval process, it would now be impossible to change the pipeline's route. TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard says opponents are just being unrealistic. \"Anybody who looks at this objectively knows that we're decades away from being able to turn off a fossil fuel switch and flip on an alternative energy switch without affecting our quality of life,\" he says. TransCanada encountered almost no opposition when it built a similar pipeline across eastern Nebraska two years ago. That one skirted the Sandhills, though it crosses a small portion of the aquifer. But legislative Speaker Mike Flood, who opposed this special session, says the earlier pipeline was built before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. \"It's a different environment than it was even a couple of years ago,\" Flood says. The question remains whether it's different enough to persuade the usually pro-business Legislature to pass a bill aimed at changing the route. And if the Legislature does act, the almost-certain legal challenges could provide their own detour in getting Canadian oil to Texas.", "With Jane Clayson In the wake of the mass shootings in Virginia Beach, the governor is calling lawmakers back for a special session on gun control. The nation is watching. Guests Ben Paviour, politics reporter for WCVE, Richmond’s NPR station. (@BPaves) Sen. John Edwards, Democratic state senator representing Virginia’s 21st District. (@SenEdwardsVA) Sen. Amanda Chase, Republican state senator representing Virginia’s 11th District. (@AmandaChaseVA) Gov. Ralph Northam, Democratic governor of Virginia. (@GovernorVA) William Pelfrey, chair of the homeland security and emergency preparedness program at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. (@VCUnews) From The Reading List WCVE: &#8220;Committees Control Outcome of Virginia’s Special Session&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to consider a package of gun control bills when they meet on July 9th. &#8220;But his success hinges on a small group of GOP lawmakers who control key committees, and who have traditionally shown no appetite for passing Democratic bills on to the broader legislature. &#8220;Northam and other Democrats argue that Republican leaders are sparing their caucus from taking votes on potentially controversial legislation by killing bills in committee. In some cases, Democrats believe they have the votes to pass bills with support of a few Republicans who represent swing districts. &#8220;To get around the impasse, Northam has urged GOP leaders to allow votes by the full House and Senate chambers.&#8221; Washington Post: &#8220;Northam proposes gun-control bills for Tuesday’s General Assembly session&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday announced the gun-control policies he will work with legislators to propose in next week’s special General Assembly session, including universal background checks; a ban on assault weapons, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines; and limiting handgun purchases to one per month. &#8220;Northam (D) ordered the July 9 session after a gunman killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building on May 31. The governor said the massacre highlighted the need to restrict the availability and deadliness of guns in the state. &#8220;Republicans who control both houses of the General Assembly have charged that Northam is playing politics with the tragedy, with an eye on elections this fall for all 140 seats in the legislature. The GOP has thin majorities in both houses, and Democrats hope to change the balance of power.&#8221; The Roanoke Times: &#8220;Northam releases final list of gun control proposals ahead of special session&#8221; &#8212; &#8220;Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday rolled out his final list of gun control measures he wants legislators to take up next week during a special session of the General Assembly. &#8220;Northam, a Democrat, called the special session, beginning Tuesday, in the wake of the May 31 shooting at a Virginia Beach municipal building that left 12 dead. Many of the eight proposals on his list have come before the Republican-controlled General Assembly in the past, but have not made it far. &#8220;&#8216;Now is the time to act — Virginians deserve votes and laws, not thoughts and prayers,&#8217; Northam said in a statement. &#8216;I urge the members of the General Assembly to engage in a thorough, meaningful discussion about these proposed bills and to allow every member to cast their votes on the floor.&#8217; &#8221; Grace Tatter produced this hour for broadcast. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "Remember when protesting Texas House Democrats abandoned the state Capitol, then fled the state to Washington, D.C., to block proposed voting restrictions during a special session? Well, major developments late Tuesday mean they might not be able to escape the long arm of the law for much longer. Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan signed off on dozens of civil arrest warrants for Democrats late Tuesday after a majority of the remaining representatives in the chamber voted to authorize this step, The Dallas Morning News first reported. The move came hours after a ruling by the all-Republican state Supreme Court that said law enforcement can round up rogue legislators and bring them back to the state Capitol's House chambers. The state Supreme Court's decision undid a lower court ruling that said lawmakers couldn't be arrested. The 52 warrants seeking the arrest of the fugitive Democrats will be delivered to the House sergeant-at-arms on Wednesday, according to Phelan spokesman Enrique Marquez, who spoke to The Dallas Morning News. Critically, it wouldn't take many arrests for the House to return to business, the newspaper reported. A quorum is reached when two-thirds of the 150 members are in the chamber. Since Monday, 96 House members have recorded themselves as present, leaving it just four votes short of a quorum. On Monday, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa called out Democrats who had returned to the chamber and urged her party colleagues still absent to stay away. \"Quorum is still not met. Praying no other Democrats willingly go to Floor,\" she tweeted. If the Democrats are successful in denying the House its quorum, Republicans could be forced to end their second 30-day special session without voting on any bills. Tensions flare up in both parties This protracted battle started when Democrats fled the state last month to deny the chamber a quorum that would allow the Legislature the ability to vote on Senate Bill 7. The proposal, which had appeared poised for passage, would cut back polling hours and reduce access to mail-in voting. Democrats and voting rights advocates say those and other provisions of the bill would make voting more difficult in Texas and could disproportionately burden people of color. Texas Republicans maintain the bill is meant to reenforce election integrity, but there's been no evidence of significant voter fraud in the state or elsewhere. Some members headed to Washington to avoid returning to Austin and lobbied for federal voting reforms while there. A federal bill would limit the state's ability to enact local legislation. Many Texas Democrats remain defiant against efforts to bring them back. But after a month away from Austin, reports indicate that solidarity among members of the party has begun to fray. State Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos tweeted a picture Monday of state Rep. James Talarico and other Democrats on the House floor and said: \"You all threw us under the bus today! Why?\" At least one member of the Republican Party in Texas this week objected to the direction his colleagues were heading. State Rep. Lyle Larson tweeted after the chamber voted to arrest his Democratic colleagues: \"Have we got to the point where we believe our own bull shizz so much that we arrest our own colleagues. Civil discourse took a nasty turn today.\"", "When the South Dakota state legislature passed HB 1217 in early March, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that she was \"excited\" to sign it. That bill would have stopped transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams designated for girls and women. These types of bills have been introduced in 25 states nationwide and have become a nationwide cause for social conservatives like Noem. So it may have surprised some of her supporters when on Friday she sent the bill back to South Dakota's legislature asking for changes. Among those is making sure the bill does not apply to college athletes. On Twitter, she pointed to the NCAA as one reason. \"Competing on the national stage means compliance with the national governing bodies that oversee collegiate athletics,\" she tweeted, later adding, \"While I certainly do not always agree with the actions these sanctioning bodies take, I understand that collegiate athletics requires such a system – a fifty-state patchwork is not workable.\" The ongoing fight in South Dakota is indicative not only of the way the issue of transgender girls in sports has become a nationwide phenomenon, but of the way that the NCAA looms over debates over transgender rights, and especially over the fight over transgender sports bans — even when the NCAA doesn't say much. That was evident when Fox News' Tucker Carlson accused Noem of \"caving to the NCAA\" when she appeared on his show. \"I'm not going to let anybody from the NCAA, from any big business, I'm not even going to let conservatives on the right bully me,\" she told the host. This year, four state legislatures have sent bills restricting transgender girls' sports participation to governors' desks. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed one bill this month, and Tennessee and Arkansas statehouses passed their own bills this week. Legacy of the \"bathroom bill\" The NCAA has come up repeatedly in debates over transgender sports bills in state legislatures this year. In February, Democratic Utah state Rep. Andrew Stoddard brought up a men's college basketball game from more than 40 years ago. \"In 1979, Salt Lake City hosted the NCAA Final Four. Michigan State played Indiana State in the championship - Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird,\" he said. \"This game is important to me because my grandpa was an associate athletic director at the University of Utah and helped organize it. If this bill passes, we won't have any more moments like that.\" Stoddard was afraid the NCAA would pull sporting events from Utah, and he pointed to North Carolina as an example. In 2016, that state passed a bill restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use. Because of that law, the NCAA and other sports organizations pulled events from the state. That included seven NCAA championship events, among them two rounds of men's March Madness basketball games. In state debates over transgender rights, that makes North Carolina a recurring example of the NCAA's economic power. In 2017, when Texas proposed its own \"bathroom bill,\" a study for San Antonio found that the city could have lost $234 million, were the NCAA to pull men's Final Four games. That study made news even without the NCAA even commenting on the bill. Thomas Lee knows this well — he worked in bringing sports events to Charlotte, N.C., when its so-called \"bathroom bill\" passed, and now he holds a similar role in South Dakota, as executive director of the Sioux Falls Sports Authority. \"That really hit the hardest in Charlotte, and who it's going to hit here is the hospitality community — the hotels, the taxis, the restaurants — anything and everything that is associated with visitors,\" he said. He's worried now because South Dakota's state legislature has passed a bill restricting transgender women athletes. Lee spoke to NPR before Noem sent the bill back to the legislature, and he listed the NCAA events that he fears the state would lose. \"Two of those are going to be D1 hockey events, which are quite large in impact,\" he said. \"And as well as D2 wrestling and D2 women's volleyball have impact as well.\" In other words, it's a variety of NCAA events — well beyond March Madness — that can affect a city's economy, especially a small city like Sioux Falls. For now, people like Lee will be watching closely to see what the South Dakota legislature does next with the bill. The NCAA's unique role Proponents believe the laws will keep girls and women's sports free of unfair competition. Opponents point out that overwhelmingly, the bill's backers can't show examples of transgender women's participation creating fairness issues in their own states and that these laws may further marginalize transgender youth. The NCAA is uniquely situated in this debate in that it is an economic force and a sporting organization - one that already has a policy on transgender athletes. That 2011 policy does allow transgender athletes to participate on their gender's teams. \"The NCAA kind of is one of the places ", "Amid Republican efforts to enact new state-level election rules, President Biden on Tuesday gave a stark warning about the future of voting rights. \"This is a test of our time,\" Biden said in a long-promised speech from Philadelphia. The president spoke a day after Texas Democratic state lawmakers left their state in protest of GOP voting legislation and traveled to Washington, D.C., where they hope to put pressure on Biden and Congress to take federal action on the topic. Biden portrayed the current fight over voting rights as one of the great moments of morality for the United States and said the issue would require support from across the aisle. \"We'll be asking my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up, for God's sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote,\" Biden said, referencing Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. \"Have you no shame?\" he asked of his GOP counterparts. Biden warned that Republican-led efforts across the country to restrict voting access threaten democracy, but he largely sidestepped the many challenges in Congress to pass the voting rights legislation that's prioritized by Democrats. Texans come to Washington More than 50 Texas Democrats arrived in Washington on Monday night, depriving the Republican-led state House of Representatives of the two-thirds of the 150-member body needed for a quorum to conduct a vote. The Democrats are seeking to block action on a GOP-sponsored voting measure they say amounts to voter suppression. The Texas legislation would eliminate some provisions put in place during the coronavirus pandemic to make it easier for voters to cast their ballots, such as drive-through voting. It would also empower partisan poll watchers and add new requirements for mail-in voting. In a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol ahead of Biden's speech, the Texas Democrats put the ball squarely in Washington's court. \"We are living right now on borrowed time in Texas, and we can't stay here indefinitely,\" Texas state Rep. Rhetta Bowers acknowledged outside the Capitol. \"We need Congress to act now.\" They left Texas under the close scrutiny of the nation, including the state's Republican governor, Greg Abbott. Abbott has threated to arrest the lawmakers upon their return to Texas and compel them to participate in the current special session, which was set in part to take up the voting bills and ends Aug. 7. Abbott vowed to call \"special session after special session\" to force lawmakers eventually to take up the measures. \"Texas Democrats' decision to break a quorum of the Texas Legislature and abandon the Texas State Capitol inflicts harm on the very Texans who elected them to serve,\" a statement from Abbott said. \"As they fly across the country on cushy private planes, they leave undone issues that can help their districts and our state.\" Calls for a \"Lyndon Johnson moment\" Many Republicans say new voting measures are needed to restore confidence in and the integrity of election processes changed during the pandemic. They cite concerns about fraud, even though there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In response, Democrats have coalesced around sweeping federal voter protections. The U.S. House has approved the primary Democratic bill, the For the People Act, but it has stalled in the Senate due to a GOP filibuster. Texas state Rep. Senfronia Thompson said she did not come to Washington, D.C., \"to take a vacation\" but to make sure \"that my constituents' rights will not be stripped from them.\" She added that Republicans in the Texas Legislature \"may have changed the messiah from Jesus to Trump, but I haven't.\" U.S. Rep Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, called on Biden to act to preserve voting rights. \"What we really need today is a Lyndon Johnson moment,\" Doggett said, referring to the late president's signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. \"We need the president and the vice president and every Democrat in this Senate working together to preserve American democracy,\" Doggett said. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, dismissed the Texas lawmakers' move as a \"political stunt.\" \"Rather than do their jobs in Texas, yesterday House Democrats abandoned both our state and the millions of Texans that they represent,\" Cornyn said on the Senate floor, noting that other legislation besides voting is also now stalled. Progressives protest Progressive activists are also turning up the pressure on Biden. They planned to rally to push the president to use his bully pulpit more forcefully to make the case for enacting the For the People Act. \"He could go around the country and give speeches about it very specifically that would educate voters so that they get on board and they tell their senators that it needs to be passed, and he can rally support for it,\" said Vicki Miller of Indivisible Philadelphia, one of the groups protesting outside of Biden's speech. \"", "Updated 10:14 a.m. ET The Wisconsin state Legislature is scheduled to officially convene Monday for a special session on police training requirements and policy standards. But GOP lawmakers aren't expected to be present, nor are any debates or votes expected to happen. The special session, called by Gov. Tony Evers, who Sunday asked President Trump not to visit the state, puts on display the policy stalemate between the Democratic governor and the state's Republican-controlled Legislature after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., a little more than a week ago. The shooting spurred several days of unrest in the city, including the shooting deaths of two protesters. For months, Evers has urged lawmakers to consider bills that would set statewide standards for police use of force and ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, but Republicans have argued they need more time to craft their own proposals. Less than 24 hours after Blake's shooting, the governor signed an executive order compelling the Legislature to convene in a special session. However, neither state law nor the state Constitution requires lawmakers to participate in debate or to vote on any bills during a special session. They may simply convene and immediately adjourn. They did just that for a session Evers called last November to address state gun laws. Republican state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who is in the middle of a campaign for Congress, was silent for several days following Blake's shooting and the governor's call. On Friday, his office confirmed the Senate will officially convene on Monday without any senators present. In a prepared statement, Fitzgerald said he expects lawmakers to consider a variety of proposals related to policing \"in the coming months.\" He said he would like those bills to include legislation to increase penalties for violence against police. \"The riots in Kenosha and Madison this week further demonstrated that first responders are performing their public service duties at great risk to their personal safety,\" he said. Another proposal from a different Republican state senator, unveiled last week, would penalize local governments for shifting money from their law enforcement budgets to other things such as public health or education initiatives — a move many activists are calling \"defunding the police.\" State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos argues that Evers is being disingenuous and partisan in calling the special session. \"We have an opportunity to bring people together to find solutions,\" Vos said shortly after Evers called the special session. \"Instead, the governor is choosing to turn to politics again by dictating liberal policies that will only deepen the divisions in our state.\" As an alternative, Vos announced a legislative task force on \"racial disparities, educational opportunities, public safety, and police policies and standards.\" Similar past initiatives on subjects such as homelessness and adoption have taken several months to produce legislation. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Democrats are meeting Republicans' resistance to convene with anger and frustration. \"We've got 400 years of systemic racism in this country, and if we don't do something about it, we'll be repeating Kenosha in cities all over our country and in our state,\" Evers said Thursday. \"I'm counting on the Republicans to show up next Monday.\" Democratic state Sen. LaTonya Johnson of Milwaukee issued a statement last week that she was \"sick to [her] stomach\" at the GOP's resistance. \"The question for us, Wisconsin, is when are we going to make Republicans do their jobs, or do we continue to sit idly by and watch this state burn?\" she said. Late last week, a woman from Burlington, Wis., began a petition drive to try to recall Gov. Evers, citing in part his response to the aftermath of Blake's shooting. The state Republican Party is not affiliated, but state Democrats did sharply criticize the move.", "President Biden says the \"incredible intensity\" of focus behind recent Republican state voting laws is an \"unprecedented assault\" on U.S. democracy, rallying voting rights groups to redouble their efforts to register voters and urging the U.S. Senate to pass new legislation. Signaling the importance he puts on voting rights, Biden is putting Vice President Harris in charge of the administration's campaign. \"To signify the importance of our efforts, today I'm asking Vice President Harris to help these efforts and lead them, among her many other responsibilities,\" Biden said Tuesday while commemorating the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. \"With her leadership and your support, we're going to overcome again, I promise you. But it's going to take a hell of a lot of work,\" Biden said. It's a tough job, given the narrow majorities that Democrats hold in Congress. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Harris asked the president for the assignment. \"It's an issue that she is personally committed to and passionate about,\" Psaki said. \"He's confident in her ability to take on a robust agenda.\" The move comes as a number of Republican-led state legislatures have pushed to enact more voting restrictions, arguing that voters are concerned about the integrity of elections. Voting rights activists and many Democrats counter that the \"election integrity\" push is more about making it harder for communities of color to vote. Democrats in Texas staged a dramatic walkout over the weekend, denying a final vote on a restrictive voting measure. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said he will call a special legislative session to consider a voting measure anew. The efforts in Texas follow the enactment of voting restrictions in states such as Arizona, Florida and Georgia. The Biden administration has faced increasing pressure to do more to combat these state voting bills. Biden has been urging Congress to pass sweeping legislation that would expand voting rights and change campaign finance rules. A bill passed the House of Representatives, but it has stalled in the Senate, where Democrats would need the support of at least 10 Republicans. The voting rights campaign is the latest addition to Harris' growing portfolio. Harris has been tasked with addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, expanding broadband access and overseeing space policy. On Thursday, Biden also said Harris would lead a tour across the South and Midwest this month to try to encourage people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus. In a statement, Harris said she would be working with voting rights organizations and the private sector on the voting issue. \"Our administration will not stand by when confronted with any effort that keeps Americans from voting,\" Harris said.", "In Austin, Texas, a new raft of anti-LGBT legislation is working its way through the state legislature. One of the bills would allow state licensed professionals of all stripes — from doctors and pharmacists to plumbers and electricians — to deny services on religious grounds. Supporters say the legislation is needed to protect religious freedoms. But opponents call them \"religious refusal bills\" or \"bigot bills.\" Last week, on the steps of the capital in Austin, business leaders gathered to announce their opposition to the series of bills which they say would sanction discrimination against their LGBT employees. Mike Hollinger, an executive at IBM, tried to warn the legislature against the legislative efforts. \"I'm proud to speak on behalf of IBM, a company with an 80-plus year legacy in Texas and a workforce of around 10,000 here in the Lone Star State. This license to discriminate will damage the state's reputation and prevent people, including IBMers from wanting to live and work here.\" A coalition of more than 1,000 Texas and national businesses called Texas Competes are also lobbying against the bills. It includes many of the nation's biggest tech companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon. One of the bills, Senate Bill 17, specifically allows licensed professionals to discriminate based on sincerely held religious beliefs. Dale Carpenter, a constitutional law professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, says the bill would allow licensed service providers to discriminate without worrying that their state occupational license might be threatened by their actions. Carpenter says the list of professionals included is prodigious: \"There are literally hundreds of them in Texas ... They include athletic trainers, doctors, nurses, surgeons, dentists, orthodontists, physical therapists, counselors of all kinds, accountants, engineers, landscape architects, real estate agents, tax consultants, air conditioning repair personnel, electricians, on and on and on it goes.\" While the legislation might be designed mainly for Texas Christians to withhold their services from LGBT people, Carpenter says it would allow discrimination against anyone as long as the motive is a sincerely held religious belief. One person's discrimination... The word \"discrimination\" gets used by both sides of this political fight. Supporters of the legislation say this is about safeguarding religious freedoms and ensuring that those who wish to exercise these freedoms aren't discriminated against as a consequence. Jonathan Saenz is the president of Texas Values, a religious liberty organization which is lobbying in favor of passage. He says the legislation has broad support. \"Texans are very concerned about the attacks on religious freedom and people of faith, particularly people that believe in marriage and sexuality as it's defined in the bible,\" Saenz says. \"Senate Bill 17 just makes it clear that you can't force someone to choose between their work and their faith. You can't use the government to punish people that have to get a certain license or authorization just because of some of the personal religious beliefs that they have.\" Tough for business For Republican legislators, this type of legislation puts them in a tough spot. Two years ago a bathroom bill, which singled out transgender public school students and other transgender Texans, tore the Texas GOP in two. The business community and chambers of commerce hated it. San Antonio was about to host the NCAA Men's Final Four Basketball Tournament and the city was terrified the NCAA would pull out if the bathroom bill became law. It passed the Senate but then Speaker of the House, San Antonio Republican Joe Straus, killed it. A hero to business but loathed by his party's powerful evangelical wing, Straus retired from politics not long after. Tourist industry and rural residents The convention and travel industries in particular tend to be the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to these types of bills. Phillip Jones, president and CEO of VisitDallas, says they'd be the first to keel over if the controversial 'religious refusal' legislation passes. \"One in ten trade shows held in America are held in Texas. I've got a hundred million dollar's worth of business that's currently at risk, if this legislation were to pass,\" says Jones. \"Based on our experience with the bathroom bill they have a provision in their contracts that spells out that, should Texas pass any form of discriminatory legislation, then they can cancel their meeting in Texas or in Dallas without any penalties.\" Rural communities are most vulnerable if doctors or pharmacists refuse service because alternatives are usually scarce or non-existent. Moreover, opponents of the legislation worry that municipal non-discrimination ordinances in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso and San Antonio could be rendered unenforceable if the bill were to pass. SMU's Carpenter says that other than th", "A controversial bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in California is headed to the governor for consideration, after almost nine months of intense — often personal — debate in the legislature. If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill, California would become the fifth state to allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who request it, after Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana. \"Our hope, our fervent hope, is that Gov. Jerry Brown will sign this bill and bring relief to hundreds of dying Californians,\" said Toni Broaddus, state campaign director for advocacy group Compassion & Choices. The California bill was modeled after the Oregon law. It requires two different doctors to determine that a patient has six months or less to live before prescribing the drugs. Patients must be physically able to swallow the medication themselves, and must have the mental capacity to make medical decisions. Numerous additional safeguards were added to the bill in recent months to sway opponents, including a sunset clause that ends the law in 10 years. Patients must request the drugs three times to receive them — once in writing before two witnesses — and they must sign a form two days before ingesting the medication. \"I can assure you that the joint and co-authors on this bill ... have endeavored to build in protections in this law that are stronger than the protections in any of the states where this has been practiced,\" said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel. The bill continued to face fierce opposition, however, from religious groups and disability rights advocates. They are concerned that elderly and disabled people, especially those who are low-income, could be pressured into taking the drugs in order to end or avoid expensive, life-sustaining care. They fear the protections are not enough, and that family members or other heirs could slip the drugs to the patient without their knowledge or consent. \"The legislation effectively paints a target on the back of each and every elderly and disabled person in our state,\" said Sen. Joel Anderson, R-San Diego, paraphrasing an elder abuse advocate. \"The promises and assurances of the safeguards and protections from the representatives of those in favor are based in innocent ignorance.\" Opponents also criticized the procedure for getting the bill through the Legislature. During the normal legislative session, the bill stalled in the Assembly Health Committee when authors couldn't get enough votes. Several Democrats from Southern California would not support it. But proponents managed to navigate through that roadblock by re-introducing the bill during a special session on health care financing, where committee memberships were different. The bill passed the Assembly on Wednesday 44 to 35, and it passed the Senate on Friday 23 to 14. Gov. Jerry Brown's office also criticized the political pathway, saying the special session was not the appropriate venue for the physician-assisted suicide bill. But Brown has not indicated where he stands on the issue itself, nor whether he will sign or veto the bill. If he does nothing, after 30 days the bill will become law. This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.", "Following a string of GOP losses in special elections nationwide, Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker is locked in a battle with prominent Democrats over Walker's refusal to call elections for two vacant state legislative districts. Walker faces a court-ordered deadline of Thursday to call elections for the seats, which opened in December when the officeholders resigned to take jobs in the governor's administration. Voters in both districts sued Walker with the help of a group led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. So far, they've won. Walker has been admonished by two state circuit court judges for dragging his feet and, in their view, violating a state law that requires Wisconsin governors to call special elections for vacancies \"as promptly as possible.\" Republicans control the governor's office, Legislature and state attorney general's office. Conservatives also hold a 5-2 majority on Wisconsin's Supreme Court, which is officially nonpartisan. Lawyers for Walker announced they would appeal the court order Wednesday, while Republicans in the Statehouse made a legislative push. They moved to change the special election law — and make it retroactive. The bill they could pass as soon as next week would apply regardless of any existing court orders. It would also lead to longer legislative vacancies. Walker said he would sign the measure, arguing that elections in these districts could wait until November because Wisconsin's Legislature has already finished its work for 2018. \"It's a waste of taxpayer's money,\" Walker told reporters Tuesday. \"And it's one of those where I think outside groups like Eric Holder's are really trying to push it to raise money and draw political attention to Wisconsin.\" Florida Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, relied on a similar argument when he declined to call special elections last month. Lawyers for Walker asked Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Richard Niess to delay the governor's court order until after the Legislature acts. Niess rejected the move. \"I am not ruling on what the law might be in the future,\" Niess said Tuesday. \"I am enforcing the law as it is now.\" Democrats contend Walker is dragging his feet because Republicans fear losing the seats. When Wisconsin last held special elections in January, Democrats won a surprise victory in a state Senate seat in an area that Donald Trump carried by 17 percentage points. \"Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans are so desperate to maintain their grip on power that they are changing laws to silence voters,\" said Jennifer Shilling, a Democrat from western Wisconsin who leads the minority in the state Senate. \"The Republican-led efforts to prevent court-ordered special elections from being held is the height of corruption and the public should not accept this abuse of power.\" Judge Josann Reynolds, who issued the initial order last week, said at the time that Walker had a \"plain and positive\" duty to call elections in these districts. Reynolds noted in her ruling that while the Legislature's regular 2018 session had ended, Walker had a history of calling lawmakers back into special session to debate specific issues. The most recent example happened just this month when Walker called a special session to address school safety bills, and Reynolds said it was \"very conceivable\" that the Legislature would have to come back into session later this year to address a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Wisconsin's landmark redistricting case. Even if Republicans were to lose these seats — which is hardly a given — they would still hold an 18-15 majority in the Wisconsin Senate and a 63-36 majority in the Wisconsin Assembly. But plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit to force these elections say there's more at play here than just partisan politics. \"Why shouldn't we have a state senator?\" asked Alvin Meyer, who lives northeast of Green Bay in one of the vacant districts. \"Somebody resigns, quits, or dies, you fill the job. Is the view that the role of the legislator is so insignificant that we don't need one for a year?\"", "When Republicans go looking for leaders, Texas has long been one of their first stops. The Lone Star State is something of an incubator for the GOP, and one of the newest stars there is just finishing his first year as speaker of the Texas House. Republicans hold every statewide office in Texas and have for years. But when Joe Straus was born, the Texas GOP could practically caucus in a phone booth. His mother, Joci, was in that phone booth from the very beginning. \"I came from a pioneer Republican family,\" Straus says. \"My mother in the '60s, when I was a very young child, she was the organizer of the Nixon Girls in San Antonio.\" Straus was raised on Republican politics — growing the party was part of growing up. He played golf and rode horses; his family owned and raced prized thoroughbreds. After Vanderbilt, he went to Washington to work for Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1982. In his 40s, Straus turned to a career he had been groomed for much of his life. In a special election in 2005, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from San Antonio. Although Republicans controlled the Texas House, Senate and governor's mansion, there were deep divisions inside the party, especially in the House. \"We became a little arrogant, and a small minority in our party went on a bit of purge,\" Straus recalls. \"They were looking for Republicans that didn't fit their mold and I very strongly disagreed with that approach.\" Unseating The Old Guard While some of this had to do with ideology — conservatives purging moderate Republicans — most of it had to do with raw power. Tom Craddick, the speaker of the Texas House during the last decade, had a reputation of ruling with an iron hand. Straus took his impeccable Republican bona fides and joined forces with the Republican opposition group called the Gang of 11. It was a bare-knuckle political fight, but with the help of the minority Democrats, the renegade Republicans pulled off a palace coup: Craddick was voted out and, to nearly everyone's surprise, Straus was elected speaker in January of last year. \"It was stunning when they picked Straus because he'd only been there two terms,\" says Paul Burka, senior executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine. \"He's very smart. He's very public spirited. I think Straus is somebody who listens. He doesn't bring his own agenda, which is very refreshing for a speaker.\" If the previous speaker fashioned a reputation for putting the Republican Party's political interests before other considerations, Straus struck more of a balance. He let legislation bubble up from the members; he included Democrats in negotiations; he played the politician, not the autocrat. Proudest Moment Standing on the dais of the Texas House of Representatives, Straus says the proudest moment of his young political career came at the end of his first session as speaker. \"I remember looking out at this scene: It was about 4 in the morning in May at the end of the session. We took a final vote on the budget and it passed 150 to zero — 76 Republicans and 74 Democrats all voted yes to the budget,\" Straus says. It was a singular achievement — as improbable as members of the House of Representatives in Washington voting unanimously on the next budget bill. But the next session will not be so easy. Texas is looking at a $10 billion shortfall, and once again the Legislature must redistrict the state's congressional seats. If Straus can hurdle these fences, more of his mettle will be revealed. \"I think he can go wherever he wants to go because of his family connections,\" Burka says. \"And the fact that he gets along with Democrats and Republicans. Another thing is that he's from San Antonio, which is the action city politically. That's where you have the mixture of Anglos and Hispanics that have learned to share common ground, which is really the future of the state.\" Straus is a Republican more in the mold of the first President Bush than the second. Whether he will appeal to and can lead a party that has been pushed further to the right by the success of the Texas Tea Parties remains to be seen. MELISSA BLOCK, host: When Republicans go looking for leaders, Texas has long been one of their first stops. The Lone Star state has served as an incubator for the GOP. One of the newest stars there is just finishing his first year as speaker of the Texas House. NPR's Wade Goodwyn has his story in our series On the Next Generation of Republican Leaders. WADE GOODWYN: Republicans in Texas hold every statewide office and have for years. But when Joe Straus was born, the Texas GOP could practically caucus in a phone booth. His mother, Joci, was in that phone booth from the very beginning. Speaker JOE STRAUS (Texas House of Representatives): I came from a pioneer Republican family. My mother, in the '60s, when I was a very young child, she was the organizer of the Nixon Girls in San Antonio. GOODWYN: Joe Straus was raised on Republican politics. Growing the party w", "A group of Democratic Texas state lawmakers traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with congressional Democrats and Vice President Harris as part of a broader effort to pressure those in their party to pass far-reaching voting rights and election reform legislation. The Texas lawmakers met Tuesday with staff of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a key opponent of the bill, called the For the People Act. Manchin himself did not attend. \"I think they heard us,\" Texas state Rep. Jasmine Crockett told reporters, referring to Manchin's staff. Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer called it an \"extremely productive visit.\" The Texas legislators also had a private meeting with a group of Senate Democrats. \"They must have gotten five or six standing ovations,\" Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday. \"We were really taken by their courage, their bravery and, most importantly, their mission.\" Last month, Democrats in the Texas statehouse walked out on the legislative session and deprived Republicans of a quorum needed to pass a restrictive voting bill. The move was lauded by Democrats and voting rights activists across the country. The legislation would have made the state's already-restrictive voting laws more strict, by reducing polling hours; pushing back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers vote; and eliminating drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, which had been offered in the 2020 election in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold. The Democratic walkout handed a rare — if temporary — defeat to Republicans who control all the levers of power in the Lone State State. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has the authority to call the legislature back in for a special session to pass the bill, and has indicated he plans to do so. Republicans say the legislation is necessary to uphold election integrity, although there is no evidence of significant fraud in the state's election results. Abbott told a local NBC affiliate that the bill would apply uniform standards across the state and not allow counties, as Harris County did, to implement new voting rules on their own. He also showed little interest in finding compromise with Democrats. \"All it takes is a majority vote. I think Republicans will agree to support it in both the Texas House and Texas Senate,\" he said. In Congress, most Democrats support two pending pieces of legislation: the For the People Act, which is a sweeping overhaul of federal election and campaign finance laws; and a bill named after the late Rep. John Lewis that would restore and modernize parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013. The House has already passed the election overhaul legislation, and Schumer intends to bring up the Senate version of the bill next week. \"Congress must take action to defend our democracy,\" Schumer said Tuesday. He said Senate Democrats will meet again this week to discuss their voting rights strategy. The measure is all but certain to fail and this week's visit from the Texas lawmakers is largely symbolic. Republicans overwhelmingly oppose it, as does Manchin, a critical swing vote, because it does not have bipartisan support. Manchin has vowed publicly and repeatedly that he will not support changing Senate filibuster rules to make it easier to pass the bill, but he does support the measure named after Lewis. Manchin's opposition, and a growing cascade of GOP-led efforts to pass restrictive bills in states across the country, have intensified Democrats' push for new, federal voting laws. \"Sadly, the clock is ticking on our democracy with respect to the sanctity of the vote, unless we act to combat the actions taken by Republicans across the country to suppress the vote,\" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to House Democrats this week. \"This assault on the vote will not only harm our freedom but America's example of freedom around the world.\" Harris, who was tapped by President Biden to lead his administration's efforts to protect and expand voting rights, hosted more than a dozen Texas Democratic lawmakers at the White House Wednesday. She thanked them for their efforts to block a voting overhaul in their state, and added: \"President Biden and myself and our administration are here to make very clear that we will do everything in our power as an administration to lift up the voices of those who seek to preserve the right of the people to vote.\"", "The North Carolina state Legislature has passed a law blocking local governments from passing anti-discrimination rules to grant protections to gay and transgender people. The law comes a month after the city of Charlotte passed a measure protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from being discriminated against by businesses. That measure was set to go into effect on April 1. The state's General Assembly wasn't due to meet until late April, but it scheduled a special session — for the first time in 35 years, member station WUNC reports — on Wednesday to respond to the Charlotte measure before it went into effect. Over the course of 12 hours, the state legislators introduced, debated and passed the bill, and Gov. Pat McCrory signed it into law. The new law establishes a statewide nondiscrimination ordinance that explicitly supersedes any local nondiscrimination measures. The statewide protections cover race, religion, color, national origin and biological sex — but not sexual orientation or gender identity. WFAE's Tom Bullock noted a possible implication of those categories: \"Since religion is a protected class, and the definition of religion is broad enough, this could be a kind of backdoor religious freedom restoration act — allowing businesses the right to refuse to serve customers based on the owner's religious beliefs.\" One word dominated the debate over the bill and the Charlotte ordinance before it: \"bathroom.\" Charlotte already protected residents from discrimination based on race, age, religion and gender. On Feb. 22, the city council voted to expand those protections to apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, too. The most controversial element of Charlotte's expanded ordinance was the fact that it would allow trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Opponents argued this would make bathrooms unsafe for women and children. WFAE's Sarah Delia, reporting on NPR in February, spoke to Pam Burton of Charlotte. \"I'm not scared of transgenders. That's not what I think the problem is. Sexual predators are not good people,\" Burton said. \"They don't do the right thing. They're going to see this ordinance as a golden opportunity for fresh victims — our children. My 16-year-old daughter swims at The Y year-round. I'm not going to be able to confidently continue to allow her to use that locker room if this passes.\" Charlotte resident Lara Nazario, a trans woman, said critics of the measure have it backward. The idea that it would be dangerous to defend trans people's rights to use the bathroom of their gender identity \"is opposite to the reality that I live in,\" Nazario said. It's forcing trans people to use the bathroom of the opposite gender that is dangerous, she said: \"If I were to walk into a men's bathroom, I would either be told that I'm in the wrong bathroom or I'd be outed as a transgender woman. This can often lead to violence or harassment, especially when there's no protection in place for people like me.\" The Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance extends protections to LGBT customers at bars, restaurants and stores, and in taxis. The heated debate over trans access to restrooms led to it being labeled by some as the \"bathroom ordinance.\" And North Carolina's response, in turn, is being called the \"bathroom bill.\" The law opens by requiring all government-controlled facilities — including schools and universities — to assign all multiple-occupancy bathrooms and locker rooms to a single sex and prevent anyone who doesn't match that biological sex from using the facility. It later declares nondiscrimination \"an issue of general, statewide concern,\" and says local jurisdictions can't craft their own nondiscrimination measures. That nullifies Charlotte's ordinance — as well as existing LGBT nondiscrimination ordinances in a half-dozen other jurisdictions in North Carolina, WFAE reports. It also blocks any other city or local government from extending such protections to LGBT residents in the future. Biogen, which employs more than 1,000 people in North Carolina's Research Triangle, and the Dow Chemical Co. have both tweeted their objections, as employers, to the new law. The law bars local governments from passing other ordinances, as well. Again, WFAE's Tom Bullock, from the station's extensive coverage during the bill's debate and passage yesterday: \"The bill would bar cities or counties from imposing their own minimum wage. So any move to establish a local minimum wage higher than the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage would be a nonstarter. This has been done by other cities such as Seattle, which is phasing in a $15 an hour minimum wage. \"Cities and counties often have employment rules for companies seeking contracts. This bill also bars counties or municipalities from requiring these companies to pay a higher minimum wage in order to qualify for contracts. ... This provision also bars requirements like companies provide paid sick leave", "The Republican-controlled Florida legislature — at odds over the question of whether to expand Medicaid — abruptly ended its session three days early on Tuesday, leaving hundreds of bills that are unrelated to health care unfinished. Andy Gardiner, president of Florida's state Senate, says he's disappointed with the House's decision to stop negotiating and leave town. \"The House didn't win, the Senate didn't win and the taxpayers lost,\" Gardiner says. \"There are a lot of issues that aren't going to make it, and it's unfortunate.\" But Steve Crisafulli, speaker of the Florida House, says it was the right thing to do. \"We've made every effort we can to negotiate with the Senate on a budget,\" he says, \"and at this time they're standing strong on Medicaid expansion.\" Shortly after the adjournment, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over health care funding — a move that was promptly derided by the leadership of the state Senate. \"I don't think it changes anything,\" says the chairman of Florida's Senate appropriations committee, Tom Lee. \"Once he announced he was going to file a lawsuit against the federal government, I think everyone sort of shut down and lawyered up, and all that sort of thing.\" Here's a brief overview of the fight: The Republican-led state House is firmly against Medicaid expansion, while the Republican-led state Senate supports it. Scott once supported expansion but is now against it. And the federal government raised the stakes of the battle by refusing to negotiate on the renewal of a $2 billion fund called the Low Income Pool, which reimburses hospitals for unpaid bills. \"The pool money was about helping low-income people have access [to health care],\" U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told northern Florida's WFSU in January. \"I think we believe an important way to extend that coverage to low-income individuals is what passed in the Affordable Care Act ... this issue of Medicaid expansion.\" The governor's lawsuit over the low income pool accuses the federal government of trying to coerce the state — requiring Florida to expand Medicaid or lose $2 billion. That sort of pressure was expressly forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court, Scott says, when it upheld the federal health law in 2012. House appropriations chief Richard Corcoran recently delivered a 20-minute anti-Medicaid speech to fellow lawmakers that underscored his side's determination to block the expansion. \"Here's my message to the Senate,\" he said. \"They want us to come to the dance? We're not dancing. We're not dancing this session. We're not dancing next session. We're not dancing next summer — we're not dancing. And if you want to blow up the process because you think you have some right that doesn't exist? Have at it.\" Now, the central task that state law requires of the legislature — to pass a budget— remains incomplete. Scott tried this week to pressure the legislature to the bargaining table to craft a budget. He threatened to veto Senate priorities, but the Senate remained unmoved. Scott has said he will call the legislature back for a special session to complete the budget. This story is part of NPR's partnership with WFSU and Kaiser Health News.", "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will sign the permitless carry bill headed to his desk, which would allow anyone over 21 in the state to carry a handgun without a permit or license. The majority of Texans oppose the measure, as do many state and local police. Texas would be the 20th state to adopt a permitless carry law. Critics of the so-called constitutional carry law, including many in law enforcement, say it will put citizens and first responders at risk at a time when there&#8217;s a nationwide surge in gun violence. But supporters maintain it protects Texans&#8217; constitutional right to carry handguns to defend themselves. The bill was pushed through the first legislative session since the 2019 El Paso shooting, where a gunman killed 23 people in a Walmart. On Sunday, state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat who represents northern El Paso County, described on the floor of the legislature how he waited in a room with Gov. Abbott and the victims&#8217; families for news on who had been killed. Watch on YouTube. After the tragedy in his county, Moody recalls the state legislature promising to work together and take gun safety seriously. He’d worked on the issue before, but he says he felt “consensus in the room” around background checks and promoting safe weapon storage for the first time. “These are all things that people agree on — Republicans, Democrats and independents,” he says. “But when we got into the thick of legislative session, you know, there was no room for nuance. There was no room for a policy discussion because absolutism is the only thing that prevails in this political environment.” The legislature passed one gun safety measure that allows the state to prosecute people who lie on background checks. Only the federal government could do so previously. But if people don’t need a permit to carry, the state won’t have opportunities to catch people lying on background checks, he says. The permitless carry bill will make the state less safe, he says. The bill does not extend the right to carry to people prohibited by law, but Moody says there’s no way to enforce that. “Unfortunately, it&#8217;s going to lead to other communities across Texas going through tragedies like we experienced in El Paso,” he says. The El Paso border community has not yet fully healed from the trauma suffered in August of 2019, he says, just months before the coronavirus pandemic hit. He feels that this bill adds to the existing trauma. A recent University of Texas and Texas Tribune poll found that nearly 60% of Texans surveyed oppose permitless carry. As a gun owner himself, Moody says he thinks most Texans share his views on guns: believing in safe storage, training and background checks. “That&#8217;s what most Texans believe. But those are not the people that vote in political primaries,” he says. “And that&#8217;s why a poll can read that way. But the politics of it and get pushed in another direction.” Republican state Sen. Matt Schaefer, co-author of the bill, argued for the necessity of the bill, which he co-authored. “This bill should be called common sense carry because this bill is about common law-abiding citizens being able to carry commonly owned handguns in common public places for the common reason of personal and family protection,” he said last month after the bill passed the Texas House. “Sensitive places where the unlicensed carry of a handgun is prohibited will still be prohibited,” Schaefer said. “But if you are a law-abiding citizen age 21 or older that can legally possess a handgun, you will be able to carry that handgun in a holster in public places where it is not otherwise prohibited.&#8221; Some will argue wider open carry laws could have allowed someone to stop the shooter in El Paso, or point out that gun restrictions in California didn’t stop the shooting in San Jose this week. Under this new bill, Moody believes people who get rejected at one gun store will continue exploring other options to get one. And people break criminal laws all the time, he says, but that doesn’t mean legislatures should eliminate them. “I think that&#8217;s the all-or-nothing approach that we need to start rejecting,” he says. “There is a way to accomplish safety and protect people&#8217;s rights, but also say that those rights come with responsibilities.” Karyn Miller-Medzon and Alexander Tuerk produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web. This article was originally published on WBUR.org.", "With the stroke of a pen, California Gov. Jerry Brown made it legal for physicians in the state to prescribe lethal doses of medications if their terminally ill patients wish to end their lives. Brown signed the \"End of Life Act\" into law on Monday, and in doing so California joins four other states — Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Montana — where patients' right to choose doctor-assisted death is protected either by law or court order. In a statement Brown referred to the measure as \"not an ordinary bill because it deals with life and death.\" He also said he considered a wide range of perspectives on the matter, including two of his doctors, champions of disability rights and even Archbishop Desmond Tutu. \"In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death. \"I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others.\" As the Los Angeles Times reports, approving the bill \"appeared to be a gut-wrenching decision\" for Brown, a former Jesuit seminary student who at one time studied to enter the priesthood. The LA Times also reports California's law is similar to Oregon's. \"It permits physicians to provide lethal prescriptions to mentally competent adults who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and face the expectation that they will die within six months. \"The law will take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns its special session on healthcare, which may not be until next year. The earliest likely adjournment would be in January.\" As the Two-Way has reported, similar bills failed to make it out of the California Legislature. But proponents of right-to-die rallied around a new champion in Brittany Maynard, who moved from California to Oregon to end her life last year through legal suicide. Maynard, who suffered from incurable brain cancer, was 29 when she died. The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the rules for terminally ill patients who are eligible for a physician's help to end their life. \"Before the drugs can be prescribed, two California doctors must agree that such a person has no more than six months to live. \"It is then the patient's choice whether to take the drugs. Those who want to must affirm their intention 48 hours in advance and must take the drugs on their own, without help. \"California has seen five previous efforts to pass an aid-in-dying law since 1992, when state voters rejected a ballot initiative by a 54 to 46 margin. Similar laws failed to make it out of the state Legislature four times between 1995 and 2008.\"", "It's the weekend, and that means our rollup of education news around the country — starting this week with some rollbacks. Freeze of for-profit college regs The U.S. Department of Education is rolling back two regulations introduced during the Obama administration and designed to protect students, especially those at for-profit colleges. In a statement, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said previous rulemaking \"missed an opportunity to get it right. The result is a muddled process that's unfair to students and schools, and puts taxpayers on the hook for significant costs.\" The first rule, \"gainful employment,\" was announced two summers ago. Colleges and universities were to be evaluated based on how many graduates are able to pay back their loans. The logic being, if too many students end up with low incomes and high debt, the program is not offering good value for money. Programs that consistently failed the test were supposed to lose access to federal student-aid dollars. The Obama administration released the first data set in January, which found one in four courses of study reviewed either failing, or borderline. The vast majority were at for-profit colleges, yet as higher education scholar Robert Kelchen pointed out, a graduate theater program at Harvard also failed. The second rule, \"borrower defense to repayment,\" was supposed to go into effect on July 1. In part a reaction to the shutdown of large for-profits Corinthian and ITT Tech, it was meant to make it simpler for students at colleges found to be fraudulent to get their loans forgiven. The regulatory clock will be reset on both rules, a process of hearings, public comment and negotiation that can take months. Some student advocates decried the news, while historically black colleges were among those that supported it. Quiet rollback on civil rights efforts According to an internal memo obtained by ProPublica, the Department of Education has loosened the requirements for campus investigations of civil rights violations and complaints related to sexual assault. Advocates fear the move will limit enforcement. Candice Jackson, the acting assistant secretary for the Office of Civil Rights, wrote in the memo that the department, in an attempt to \"clear case backlogs,\" will decide the scope of investigations on a \"case by case basis\" rather than \"one size fits all.\" In particular, it will no longer automatically obtain three years of previous complaints and files to determine the context of a reported violation. DeVos has also called for staff cuts to the civil rights division. \"At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,\" Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ's civil rights division under President Barack Obama, told ProPublica. The Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment. The Office of Civil Rights has 335 open campus sexual assault investigations, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. DeVos addresses charter school leaders Secretary DeVos came to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools conference this week with a familiar message: \"A system that denies parents the freedom to choose the education that best suits their children's individual and unique needs denies them a basic human right. It is un-American, and it is fundamentally unjust.\" She praised charter schools, which are free to students, have open admissions, run independently of districts using taxpayer money, and are bound by federal and state accountability. She also praised private schools, which are generally none of the above. Florida passes controversial education law; Texas to vote on 'bathroom bill' in July Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has signed a large and controversial education bill into law. HB 7069 allocates more money to charter schools: both local tax revenue and federal Title I funding intended for poor students. It also expands a homeschool scholarship program NPR Ed has covered. DeVos has repeatedly cited Florida as a national model for school choice. In other state news, this summer, Texas will again try to pass a \"bathroom bill,\" which would require transgender people to use the public restrooms that correspond with their biological sex instead of their gender identity. The bill failed during the regular legislative session, but Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has now called for a special session and the bill is back on the agenda. Harvard University president to step down Harvard University announced this that its first woman president, Drew Gilpin Faust, will step down next year after 11 years, leaving behind a legacy of change. Faust was appointed in 2007 to succeed Lawrence H. Summers, who departed in a cloud of controversy after claiming that women are innately ill-equipped for math and science. Faust was hailed for increasing diversity and inclusion efforts among s", "Across the country, recently elected GOP lawmakers are pushing hard to get new abortion restrictions on the books. About 570 bills have been introduced in 48 states this year to restrict abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks the laws. In Texas, the Legislature passed a bill that requires women to have an ultrasound before an abortion and requires doctors to provide a verbal description of the fetus. \"The law was written to require that women undergo a sonogram 24 hours before an abortion, and we know anecdotally that most of the time when women see their unborn child, 70 to 80 percent of the time [they] end up continuing their pregnancy and choosing life,\" says Elizabeth Graham, director of Texas Right to Life. Texas Right to Life pushed the ultrasound bill for five years, but Graham says this session was different. \"There's an overwhelming pro-life majority in the statehouse and then, the fact that the governor drew more attention to the bill and put it on his own agenda was helpful,\" she says. Oklahoma passed a similar bill last year, which is being challenged in court. This year, four other states have passed ultrasound laws saying doctors must offer women the opportunity to see the image or hear a description of the fetus. New Republican legislators in many states and newly elected GOP governors have made this issue a top priority. A new South Dakota law requires an unprecedented 72-hour waiting period before an abortion, and several states are debating bills to ban abortion at 20 weeks. \"We're seeing bills coming through that are some of the most extreme we've seen in years,\" says Nancy Northup, whose group, the Center for Reproductive Rights, filed suit to keep the Oklahoma ultrasound law from taking effect. \"It's blocked until the trial goes forward,\" she says. \"And we're seeking to show that that law is unconstitutional. And we're getting ready to sue in Texas because these laws don't trust women to make the decision that the United States Supreme Court has said women are allowed to make.\" In Iowa, GOP lawmakers are trying to force debate on a bill that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks based on the theory that fetuses feel pain. Republican legislators say there's urgency in part because they're trying to keep a Nebraska doctor from opening a clinic in their state. \"Iowans' sense of decency and compassion and our common humanity dictate that we as a state protect these vulnerable individuals,\" said Iowa Rep. Mary Hanusa recently on the House floor. The strategy was successful last year when Nebraska became the first to enact a 20-week ban. More than a dozen states have introduced similar bills this year. Jenifer Bowen with Iowa Right to Life says that although few later abortions are reported in the state, the bill is vital. \"We want to see a day when abortion is ended and, you know, this is a pretty good start in that direction,\" she says. But Jill June with Planned Parenthood of the Heartland calls the laws \"bad laws.\" \"They're dangerous bills for women because they take nothing into consideration regarding the health and welfare of the woman,\" she says. \"It's very sad. It's very political. It's very misguided.\" The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed states to enact restrictions and even bans after a fetus is viable, but the Nebraska law sets a new standard and has not been challenged. Anti-abortion activists say that's because the issue of fetal rights would likely end up at the nation's highest court where they predict they'd win. But abortion-rights supporters including Northup say they're looking for the right circumstances to challenge the 20-week ban. \"We don't jump just because the anti-choice movement says jump,\" Northup says. \"We're not going to file a legal challenge just because our opponents try to bait us to do so.\" Still, she insists the 20-week ban is unconstitutional. But that hasn't stopped lawmakers in Idaho, Indiana, Kansas and Oklahoma from adopting the measures. ROBERT SIEGEL, host: In 48 states just this year, legislators have introduced hundreds of bills that would restrict abortion. That's according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks the legislation. NPR's Kathy Lohr reports on the kinds of laws that are gaining traction. KATHY LOHR: Across the country, recently elected GOP lawmakers are pushing hard to get new abortion restrictions on the books. In Texas, the legislature just passed a bill that requires women to have an ultrasound before an abortion and requires doctors to provide a verbal description of the fetus. Elizabeth Graham is director of Texas Right to Life. Ms. ELIZABETH GRAHAM (Director, Texas Right to Life): The law was written to require that women undergo a sonogram 24 hours before an abortion. And we know anecdotally that most of the time when women see their unborn child, 70 to 80 percent of the time end up continuing their pregnancy and choosing life. LOHR: Texas Right to Life pushed the ultrasound bill for five years", "From now until November, President Obama and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney will emphasize their differences. But the two men's lives actually coincide in a striking number of ways. That includes struggling with their respective legislatures. Earlier, NPR's David Welna explored Romney's time as governor of Massachusetts. In this installment of \"Parallel Lives,\" a look at Obama and Congress. When President Obama first campaigned for the office he now holds, he promised to change the tone in Washington. But that tone has only gotten nastier during his 3 1/2 years in office. Obama once used big Democratic majorities in Congress to muscle through major legislation, but he's increasingly been stymied by a wall of GOP opposition. The Early Days The day he was sworn into office, Obama proclaimed a new era of bipartisan cooperation. \"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,\" he said on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The new president demanded bold and swift action to fix a battered economy. Eight days later, the Democratic-led House approved an $825 billion stimulus package — without a single Republican voting for it. \"Everything got off on the wrong foot, essentially,\" says Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate from Maine who was one of the few Republicans the president lobbied on the stimulus. It would have helped, she says, had the president widened his outreach. \"But that, for some reason, never really occurred,\" she says. \"I mean, I don't know if the outreach didn't occur on the part of the White House or they just decided to try to secure, you know, enough votes to get it through the United States Senate with the 60-vote requirement.\" It took the votes of Snowe and two other moderate Republicans to reach that 60-vote threshold, and only after Democrats agreed to shrink the package by $38 billion. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democrat in charge of rounding up votes on the stimulus, says most Republicans had no interest in helping the bill move forward. \"I don't think they wanted the president to have any success at this, and the net result of it was the recession went on for longer than it should've,\" he says. Problems On Both Sides Of The Aisle Obama did, in fact, reach out on other matters to many of his former GOP Senate colleagues, including the man he beat in the presidential race, Arizona's John McCain. But McCain says there was no follow-through. \"After the election, I was invited over to the White House with a large number of congressmen and senators on the issue of immigration reform,\" he recalls. \"I pledged that I would work with him. Never heard from them again.\" And some of Obama's national security decisions proved too much even for members of his own party. In his first address to a joint session of Congress, the president declared a new approach to overcoming extremism based on American values. \"That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists,\" he said. Despite the applause that followed, Senate Democrats later stripped a defense bill of the money the president had requested for shutting down Guantanamo. The Senate also voted 90-6 to bar the transfer of the facility's inmates to U.S. prisons. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., explained why: \"The United States Senate, the Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States — that's very clear.\" The Health Care Push A month later, just as current GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney had done as governor of Massachusetts, Obama pushed Congress for legislation vastly expanding health care coverage. He announced his intention to do so a year and a half earlier, the night he won the Iowa caucuses, promising to bring \"Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done.\" But once again, Republicans balked at the president's plans. He tried rallying support for his health care bill in an address to Congress in September 2009, only to have South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson publicly accuse him of lying. In the end, not one Republican in Congress voted for the final health care bill. Presidential and congressional scholar George Edwards of Texas A&M says Obama essentially gave up on the Republicans. \"The president spent a lot of time negotiating with Republicans to try to get bipartisan support, but he couldn't. He couldn't achieve that,\" Edwards says. \"Ultimately, he did what is necessary in these days, and that is you, in effect, ram things through on a partisan vote.\" No More Mr. Nice Guy Republicans ran against the health care law and won control of the House in midterm elections; they picked up half a dozen seats in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., then issued his fellow Republicans these marching orders: \"Our top political priority over the next two y", "Polls show a majority of Floridians support Gov. Charlie Crist's call to put a ban on offshore drilling on the ballot. But that wasn't always the case. Two years ago, years of high gas prices -- and accident-free drilling in the Gulf -- led a majority of Floridians and their governor to support drilling off Florida's coast. But, as the saying goes, that was then. Outside the state Capitol in Tallahassee on Tuesday, a couple of hundred people gathered for a rally calling on the Legislature to put the drilling ban on the ballot. Crist was in the middle of the protesters, helping to lead the chanting. He's not just a former drilling supporter. He's also a former Republican -- now running as an independent for the U.S. Senate. Since he left the party a few months ago, Crist has been about as popular with Republicans as oil on Florida beaches. Inside the Capitol, House Speaker Larry Cretul, a Republican, reluctantly convened a special session to ask lawmakers to consider the proposed constitutional amendment. But he soon made it clear he wasn't there to do Crist's bidding. The governor's special session and the drilling ban, Cretul said, were more about politics than about helping Floridians. Of the governor's proposal, he said, it \"will not put a single new skimmer off the beaches of our coast, won't produce any new boom to protect our coast, won't save a single business or create a single job.\" Republicans pointed out that Florida already has a ban on drilling in state waters. That’s true, but a bill lifting the ban passed the House last year and, before the BP spill, it was gaining ground in the Senate. Drilling proponents now promise they won't push to lift the ban for at least two years, so there's no reason to put it on the ballot in November. A few hours after the special session was convened, Republicans in both the House and Senate voted to adjourn without taking any action on the proposed amendment. At a news conference shortly after, Crist was visibly angry, calling the Legislature's behavior \"arrogant,\" \"illogical\" and \"embarrassing.\" Since he dropped out of the Republican Senate primary and declared himself an independent, Crist has increasingly reached out to Democrats. There's speculation that, if elected to the Senate, he'll even caucus with the Democrats. Tuesday, he compared himself to a Democratic president. \"When President Truman was president,\" Crist recalled, \"he called the Congress the do-nothing Congress. Well, I call this Legislature the do-nothing Legislature, and I'm going to give them hell for it.\" Republican leaders say they have nothing against holding a special session on the oil spill. They plan to return, maybe in September, to consider economic measures that could help people and businesses hurt by the fallout from the spill. That would be too late to put anything on the ballot for voters in November, however, including a drilling ban. After the adjournment, the leading proponent of offshore drilling in the House, Republican Dean Cannon, denied the action had anything to do with politics. About Crist, he'd say only: \"Listen, he's got to do what he thinks is best. The legislative branch, I believe, is committed to getting real relief to the people.\" Although the Republican leadership carried the day and Crist went away mad, it's not clear yet who the winners and losers are. Ron Saunders, the incoming House minority leader, says he'll wait until November to tally the score. He says this vote may make a difference in coastal districts where he believes House Republicans are vulnerable. \"Anytime members of the Legislature ignore the will of the people, they do it at their own peril,\" he said. \"And I think today we obviously have a record now of who we feel ignored the voices of the voters.\" Crist is also likely to keep the issue alive. It's one that can help him reach out to Democrats and Independents -- and to differentiate himself from his likely Republican Senate opponent, Marco Rubio, who supports offshore drilling. MARY LOUISE KELLY, host: This is MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Mary Louise Kelly, in for Steve Inskeep. RENEE MONTAGNE, host: And I'm Renee Montagne. In the waters of the Gulf, BP's damaged oil well remains capped. But on land, there's still plenty of political fallout. We have two reports this morning on the politics of the oil spill. On Capitol Hill, House lawmakers question members of the Bush administration about how it dealt with the oil industry, and we'll hear more about that in a moment. KELLY: First, though, we go to Florida, where tar balls are washing up on some beaches in the Panhandle, and parts of the tourists industry appear to have taken a hit. Florida Governor Charlie Crist called a special session of the state Legislature, and it met yesterday to talk about a possible amendment to the state constitution that would ban offshore drilling in state waters. NPR's Greg Allen reports from Tallahassee. GREG ALLEN: Floridians ", "Lawmakers in Illinois are headed back to work next week to address the state's $100 billion pension crisis, the worst unfunded pension liability in the nation. While almost all states faced pension funding issues during the recession, none of them are looking at a predicament as severe as in Illinois. Every day it doesn't get fixed, the burden on taxpayers grows larger. \"They are in the most dire situation of all the states,\" says David Draine, a senior researcher at the Pew Center on the States. \"Illinois is facing a growing bill that it hasn't figured out how to pay for. The other poorly funded states have at least some sort of plan.\" Illinois Stands Alone The pension issue boils down to simple math. States failed to put away enough money to pay what they've promised their employees for their golden years. Since many public sector employees aren't covered by Social Security, their pensions are often their only retirement safety nets. When the recession hit, dozens of states saw hits to their pension investments and found themselves overburdened. The National Conference of State Legislatures says that since 2009, 48 states have passed what they consider \"significant\" reforms to commit themselves to pension payments going forward. Not Illinois. Just how dire is the situation now? Each day without a fix digs the Illinois pension hole at least another $17 million deeper. After two recent downgrades, Illinois' bonds are only a few steps above junk status. S&P say that only three states — California, Louisiana and Massachusetts — have ever had ratings as low as Illinois' current level in the last half century. The low rating makes the fiscal situation even more grim, as the state will see its borrowing costs, already among the highest in the nation, rise yet again. \"Every time they want to build a bridge or new school, it's going to make it more expensive, and possibly a lot more expensive,\" Draine says. Less Money For Schools, Roads, Seniors The news doesn't get better from here. The longer action is delayed, the heavier the burden on the Illinois taxpayer. If costs keep rising at the current rate, balancing a budget would require crowding out funding for core government services. \"That leaves less money for schools and roads and bridges and prisons and everything the state should be doing,\" says Draine. Already, public university debt grows steadily, prison populations are at all-time highs, and nonprofits serving the needy are experiencing delays in getting state payments. Since the state constitution says public employee pension benefits \"cannot be diminished,\" that means any changes to the way benefits are calculated will likely be met with a slew of lawsuits. Worse, workers may have to delay retirement in order to make ends meet. And then there's an extreme consideration: \"In theory, if it gets bad enough, the money won't be there for retirees,\" says Draine. If the pension fund becomes insolvent and that state really can't pay up someday, today's middle-class public servants could wind up tomorrow's impoverished seniors. Failed Efforts At Reform The specter of these situations hasn't yet moved leaders to agree on a path to reform. Since last summer, Illinois leaders have failed three times to pass pension reform bills. The most recent blown chance came just weeks ago, when the Legislature adjourned without getting a bill passed. \"Their inaction was the equivalent of tying a 32,000-pound weight around the neck of every taxpayer in Illinois,\" Madeleine Doubek of Reboot Illinois, a digital effort to engage citizens in the fiscal crisis, told NPR's David Shaper. She said $32,000 is what every Illinois taxpayer would be responsible for in order to cover the pension shortfall and pay off a backlog of bills. To try to resolve the crisis, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, called lawmakers back to work for a special session of the state Legislature. \"This is an alarm bell for the speaker of the House, the president of the Senate, all the members of the Legislature, to come together and get the job done. The job is, put a bill on my desk so I can sign it into law,\" Quinn said. Political Paralysis It's unclear whether that job will get done. The reform plans previously put forth by the Democratic-led House and Senate differ widely. While both proposals made up some money, the House plan was significantly more aggressive and would dig the state out of debt faster. But no compromise is in sight, even in a state where one party holds all the levers of power. During the regular session, political infighting between leaders in the two chambers kept the House bill from getting a vote in the Senate. \"I'm not sure what dynamics have changed in this pension reform discussion,\" Illinois Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno said in a statement. She's not the only one unconvinced. \"The Democrats control everything in Illinois, but they are not unified. They are beneficiaries of labor support, and labor is not very happ", "A Texas voter ID law considered one of the strictest in the country will stay in effect for the 2018 elections. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the law in their ruling Friday. It's been twice blocked before, but will hold up for the midterm elections. Previous successful bids to stop the law cited it as discriminatory to minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The current law — S.B. 5 — updated a 2011 measure — S.B. 14 — that was blasted as a \"poll tax\" by opponents. The Texas legislature passed S.B. 5 in what it said was an effort to address the complaints raised against the 2011 measure. But lower courts still weren't satisfied, and challengers successfully blocked that version. The panel of three judges, in a 2-1 decision, deemed S.B. 5 as a legal and acceptable replacement. According to the court's opinion, Texas lawmakers aimed to \"cure all the flaws cited in evidence when the case was first tried.\" \"The legislature succeeded in its goal,\" Circuit Court Judge Edith Jones wrote in her majority opinion. The newly unblocked bill allows voters without one of the seven accepted forms of ID to sign an affidavit confirming their identity and swearing that a \"reasonable impediment\" kept them from obtaining legal ID. Those voters must also provide an approved \"supporting form of ID.\" Acceptable documents include original utility bills, bank statements and paychecks. Opponents to S.B. 5 say that criminal penalties for lying on an affidavit could have a chilling effect on those who are more likely not to have the requisite identification — most often black and Latino voters. The Circuit Court labeled this argument \"infirm evidence,\" meaning that it wasn't strong enough to uphold the appeal. A Texas woman was sentenced to five years in prison for voting in the 2016 presidential election when she was ineligible because she was on probation, as The Two-Way blog reported last month. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the court's latest decision in public statements and on social media. \"The court rightly recognized that when the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5 last session, it complied with every change the 5th Circuit ordered to the original voter ID law,\" Paxton said in a statement. \"Safeguarding the integrity of our elections is essential to preserving our democracy. The revised voter ID law removes any burden on voters who cannot obtain a photo ID.\" Democrats across the state and the country bemoaned the decision. Some, like former Dallas County sheriff and current gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, are working to sustain voter turnout momentum despite the perceived setback. Circuit Court Judge James E. Graves Jr. wrote the dissenting opinion. He cited the majority's decision that S.B. 5 addressed undue burdens to voters. \"S.B. 5 does not fully remove the burden disproportionately placed on poor and minority voters; it just creates a new and different burden,\" he wrote.", "TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida's Republican governor signed a bill Tuesday barring transgender females from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes born as girls, plunging the state into the national culture war over transgender rights. \"In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports,\" Gov. Ron DeSantis said as he signed the bill into law at a private Christian academy in Jacksonville that would not be subject to the law. \"We're going to make sure that that's the reality.\" The new law, sure to be challenged as unconstitutional, inflames an already contentious discussion unfolding nationally as Republican-controlled states move to limit the rights of LGBTQ people, whose advocates were particularly annoyed that the legislation was signed on the first day of Gay Pride Month. The NCAA, which oversees college athletics, has said it has \"a long-standing policy that provides a more inclusive path for transgender participation in college sports.\" The NCAA currently requires transgender women to get treatment to lower their testosterone levels before they can compete in women's sports. When the Florida Legislature was considering the measure in April, the NCAA said it would commit championship games to \"locations where hosts can commit to providing an environment that is safe, healthy and free of discrimination.\" High-profile athletic events, such as football bowl games and basketball tournaments, generate millions of dollars for local communities. The measure approved by the GOP-led Legislature takes effect July 1. It says a transgender student athlete can't participate without first showing a birth certificate saying she was a girl when she was born. It's not clear whether all females must show their birth certificates, or only those whose gender is questioned. The proposal allows another student to sue if a school allows a transgender girl or woman to play on a team intended for biological females. The final wording of the \"Fairness in Women's Sports Act\" stripped away some of its most contentious elements, including a requirement that transgender athletes in high schools and colleges undergo testosterone or genetic testing and submit to having their genitalia examined. But the legislation signed by the governor advances an underlying principle asserted by supporters: Biological differences between males and females make it unfair for athletes identified as boys at birth to compete on teams for girls and women. The law would not bar female athletes from playing on boys or men's teams. Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David said the new law would not only harm transgender girls. \"All Floridians will have to face the consequences of this anti-transgender legislation — including economic harm, expensive taxpayer-funded legal battles, and a tarnished reputation.\" Democrats and LGBTQ advocates said the law is discriminatory and will be challenged in court as unconstitutional. \"This is yet another hate-driven attack from the governor and Republican legislators, and it's insulting that they've staged this morning's photo-op on the first day of Pride Month,\" said state Sen. Shevrin Jones. \"At the end of the day, transgender kids are just kids.\" The ban was tucked at the last minute of the legislative session into a measure allowing public universities and colleges to sponsor charter schools — a point the governor did not mention during the bill signing. It was the transgender athletes provision that was front and center in Tuesday's rhetoric. \"This bill is very simply about making sure that women can safely compete, have opportunities and physically be able to excel in a sport that they trained for, prepared for and work for,\" said state Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Republican who championed the bill. \"This is nothing about anybody being discriminated against,\" she said. \"It's solely so that women have an opportunity to compete in women's sports.\" The Florida law mirrors an Idaho law, the first of its kind when enacted last year, that is now mired in legal challenges. GOP governors in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee recently signed similar measures. Efforts by conservatives to restrict rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people have spawned numerous battles in key arenas — not only in legislatures and courtrooms but also across the economy, and critics warned of looming consequences. According to a 2017 Associated Press study, North Carolina stood to lose $3.8 billion over a dozen years because of a so-called \"bathroom bill.\" Those losses were averted when a 2019 settlement kept the state from barring transgender people from using bathrooms that conformed to their gender identity. \"Let me say very clearly: In Florida, we're going to do what's right to stand up to corporations, they are not going to dictate the policies in this state,\" DeSantis said while flanked by students at the religious school. \"We will stand up to groups like the NCAA who think th", "Colorado's legislature approves bills on illegal immigration that will require many recipients of state or federal aid to prove their citizenship. The vote followed a five-day special session to consider the bills after the state's Supreme Court threw out a ballot measure that would have curtailed public services to illegal immigrants. The new bills provide for some aid to minors, and offer voters a say on the issue. Nancy Greenleese reports. MICHELE NORRIS, host: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. It is being called the toughest package of immigration laws in the nation. Last night, legislators in Colorado passed a number of bills that will cut state services to an estimated 50,000 illegal immigrants and penalize the businesses that employ them. The laws were the result of a compromise between Democrats in the Legislature and the state's Republican governor. Nancy Greenleese from member station KUNC reports from Denver. NANCY GREENLEESE reporting: Democratic state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff said the state couldn't wait for Congress to act. State Representative ANDREW ROMANOFF (Democrat, Colorado): This is tough, effective, practical, enforceable, reasonable, and I think a model for the country. My hope is that Washington takes a hint. GREENLEESE: The cornerstone measure of the legislation requires that all applicants for state services in Colorado prove their legal status. It's estimated this will effect tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who will be cut off the roles for state-supported healthcare, food stamps, unemployment, and other benefits. However, illegal immigrant children, the homeless, and the sick are exempted. Senate President Joan Fitzgerald said the measures are morally sound. State Senator JOAN FITZGERALD (Democrat, Colorado): I don't think that we did anything that we would be ashamed of. I don't think we did anything that in the light of 10 or 20 years, you know, down the road that we would look back and say my God, you know, what kind of Colorado did we just make? GREENLEESE: Businesses took a hit with measures requiring verification of employees' legal status. Businesses could also lose tax benefits if they hire illegal workers. This created some heated debate, but a large part of the controversy centered around whether voters - not the legislature - should be deciding this issue. The Republican governor called a special session after the State Supreme Court rejected a November ballot measure. That measure would have asked the voters to change the constitution to bar illegal immigrants from accessing state services. The Republican's House minority leader, Mike May, is disappointed that voters won't get to decide. State Representative MIKE MAY (Republican, Colorado): We thought citizens were deprived of access to the ballot, and I think it is good public policy to have in our constitution that services aren't provided to illegal immigrants. We didn't get that. GREENLEESE: Many Republicans hoped a ballot measure in November would draw GOP voters to the polls and erase the Democrat's narrow margin in both houses. Prof. JOHN STRAAYER (Political Science, Colorado State University): It was just a political chess game. GREENLEESE: Colorado State University Political Science professor John Straayer said lawmakers panicked, feeling they needed to weigh in on this national debate. He said hysteria is no way to craft public policy, especially when it could trickle down to other states. Prof. STRAAYER: Colorado has been launched. No doubt, there will be a copycat legislation introduced in a number of other states. How many and how fast, I'm not quite sure. But I think, you know, come January when most of the states reconvene for the 2007 sessions, yeah, you're going to see Colorado copied and cited across the country. GREENLEESE: Governor Bill Owens is expected to sign the main law, which will go into effect August 1st. For NPR News, I'm Nancy Greenleese in Denver.", "An irony of the recent Texas political theater: Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis' filibuster aimed at stopping anti-abortion legislation raised not only her profile but that of Republican Gov. Rick Perry. Shortly after Davis' talkathon ran out the clock on a bill that would potentially have made abortions much harder for women in Texas to obtain after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Perry put himself back in the national headlines. First, the 2012 presidential candidate called for a special, 30-day session of the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature during which the members will focus solely on passing the bill. Then, on Thursday, Perry raised eyebrows with his comments to an audience at the National Right To Life's convention in Dallas. Speaking of Davis' rise from a hardscrabble earlier life, Perry said: \"The fact is, who are we to say that children born in the worst of circumstances can't grow to have successful lives? In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day, was born in difficult circumstances. She's the daughter of a single woman. She was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate. It's just unfortunate that she hasn't learned from own example that every life should be given the chance to fulfill its potential and that every life matters.\" That set off a predictable social media cascade of tweets, many but not all of them negative, about the governor. It was almost like old times during the 2012 Republican presidential nomination fight, when Perry was nearly constantly in the headlines for one statement or another before gaffes caused his candidacy to flame out. So Davis' filibuster not only helped raise her own stature — which allows her to raise more money — it also advanced Perry among his fans. \"The elevation of Wendy Davis as a statewide and, at least for the moment, a figure getting national attention, actually provides Perry a vehicle for reintroducing himself to a national conservative audience. And certainly on much better terms than when he last visited with that audience,\" Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Institute at the University of Texas, told me in an interview. One of Perry's political strong suits has been his effective use of other politicians as foils, Henson notes. And Davis plays right into that. Indeed, she kept the feud with Perry alive with this statement Thursday: \"Rick Perry's statement is without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds. They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view. Our governor should reflect our Texas values. Sadly, Gov. Perry fails that test.\" This all happens at a key moment for Perry. Observers of Texas politics await his decision on whether he will seek another term in the governor's mansion. Meanwhile, there's strong speculation that Perry may be eyeing another presidential run, if not to win then as redemption for his poor 2012 showing. As Henson suggests, Perry's uncompromising abortion stance helps him with conservatives, many of whom had doubts about him in 2012 (and not just for his debate performances). Perry's support for mandatory HPV vaccinations of Texas girls and in-state tuition for the children of people illegally in the U.S. caused many conservatives to question his commitment to their cause. Indeed, as Henson reminded me, during the Republican primary campaign, Perry was sometimes booed by GOP audiences for these positions. They weren't booing him Thursday but cheering and applauding. That was in line with what Henson and his University of Texas colleague, Joshua Blank, have found in their polling. According to a piece they wrote in The Texas Tribune, Perry maintains relatively high approval ratings among Texas conservatives. Stances like the one opposing Davis go a long way toward assuring that support continues. Another irony of Davis' filibuster: While she may be riding high in terms of name recognition and fundraising, she has fired up Texas and national conservatives. That, in turn, could make it harder for her to win re-election to her state Senate seat or to win the bigger prize she is thought to be interested in: the governorship. So it could all prove a Pyrrhic victory. Or maybe it was more like the Alamo. Indeed, even Davis' victory in stopping a vote on the anti-abortion bill was probably only a speed bump to its final passage in a very Republican legislature. \"In the initial aftermath of the drama for both sides, it's easy to forget the immediate context of this is a very Republican state,\" Henson said. Sure, she'll be able to fire up her base. But there's already a counterreaction among Republicans. \"They'll be able to use her in mailers as a fundraising point,\" Henson said. \"And they'll be able to redouble their already pronounced efforts to get her voted out of office. She had a pretty tough fight last time.\"", "This year is setting new records for late flights and inconvenienced passengers — and the delays are only expected to get worse. Consumer rights advocates want Congress to step in and protect customers by adding a \"passenger bill of rights.\" The woman leading this grass-roots movement is Kate Hanni, a former real estate agent from Napa, Calif. Her inspiration? Nine and a half hours sitting on a tarmac after her family's American Airlines flight was diverted to Austin, Texas. She had nothing to eat or drink but a glass of water from the bathroom sink — \"the same sink in the bathroom where the toilets were overflowing,\" she said. Passengers got sick on her plane and others parked nearby. Tempers flared, but no one could get off. \"It just got to the point where all of sudden that trigger went off, and I thought, 'We're being lied to. We're being victimized here,'\" Hanni said. \"There are ill people, diabetics that are shaking, that have absolutely no choice in the matter.\" Hanni also was feeling jittery — because she had been assaulted a few months earlier, cornered inside a house by a man posing as a homebuyer. \"I started having flashbacks and thinking, 'Here I am trapped again. I'm trapped again,'\" Hanni said. 'We've Got to Get Out of This Plane' That's when everything changed for Hanni. She stopped selling real estate and is now working full time for a group she founded, the Coalition for Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights. The group has a Web site, a blog and a theme song written and performed by Hanni and her band. The lyrics include lines like: We've got to get out of this plane / If it's the last thing we ever do / We've got to get out of this plane / Boy, there's a Cinnabon for me and you. Hanni's old real estate office is now a command center, cluttered with government reports, testimony and arranged in binders, nearly 18,000 stories of passengers being stranded. \"Literally, from the moment she wakes up, she's on the computer. At the end of the evening ... there she is, still working away, phone calls flying from all over,\" Hanni's husband, Tim, said. \"It's just wild.\" And it takes a bit of getting used to. Not long ago, someone called introducing himself as Jerry Costello, a key lawmaker on aviation issues. \"I nearly said, 'Right, and I'm Pamela Anderson,'\" Hanni said. But it was the congressman, and he offered to help. Hanni is still working to win over others. Several lawmakers, including Hanni's congressman, California Democrat Mike Thompson, have introduced passenger bill of rights legislation. But her coalition may not get its main demand: a law giving stranded passengers the right to get off a plane stuck on the tarmac for three hours or more. The airline industry adamantly opposes it. Industry Official Sees Misguided Effort David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents the major carriers, says to think of a plane waiting in a long line to take off. \"When you get out of that line to go back to the gate, you don't get to come back up and get in the front of the line, you go to the back of the line, so your delay ... will be much greater,\" he said. Castelveter said Hanni and her supporters are misguided. \"I think she's quite effective in terms of, you know, getting her message out to the consumers, but unfortunately, she's grossly misinformed, and what she is asking Congress to do is going to have many unintended consequences for travelers,\" he said. But travelers and Hanni likely will get something from Congress. Lawmakers have drafted legislation likely to be adopted this year that would require airlines and airports to provide stranded passengers with food, water and sanitary conditions while they wait. But Hanni says she will keep fighting for more. ROBERT SIEGEL, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel. MELISSA BLOCK, host: And I'm Melissa Block. This year is setting new records for late flights, cancelled flights, and inconvenienced passengers. And the delays are expected to get worse. Consumer rights advocates want Congress to step in and protect them by passing a passenger bill of rights. The woman leading this grassroots movement is a former real estate agent from Napa, California named Kate Hanni. NPR's Kathleen Schalch has a profile. KATHLEE SCHALCH: Nine and a half hours - that's how long Kate Hanni and her family sat on the tarmac after their American Airlines flight got diverted to Austin, Texas. She had nothing to eat or drink but a glass of water from the bathroom sink. Ms. KATE HANNI (Founder, Coalition for an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights): The same sink in the bathroom where the toilets were overflowing. SCHALCH: Passengers got sick on her plane and others parked nearby. Tempers flared, but no one could get off. Ms. HANNI: It just got to the point where, all of a sudden, that trigger went off. And I thought, we're being lied to. We're being victimized here. There are ill people, diabetics that are ", "Five years after the Affordable Care Act passed, the law's provision allowing the expansion of Medicaid coverage to more people is still causing huge fights in state legislatures. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia said yes to Medicaid expansion when the law went into effect. Since then, just six more have signed on. States that say yes get billions of additional federal dollars, but many Republican lawmakers are loathe to say yes to the Obama administration. The expansion enables adults with incomes up to 138% of the poverty level to receive Medicaid. The federal government picks up the whole tab for their care through 2016, then tapers its support down to 90% of the costs. The fight's come to Florida and also out west, where four Republican-majority states took up Medicaid expansion this year. Wyoming said no. Alaska and Utah are still wrestling. Montana said yes. Montana lawmakers have been stewing over Medicaid expansion since they said no to it in 2013, the last time they met. When they reconvened in January, Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by David and Charles Koch, staffed up in the state and targeted moderate Republicans, organizing anti-expansion town hall meetings in their districts. But AFP didn't invite targeted lawmakers themselves, leading to a backlash. Many voters saw AFP's tactics as meddling by outsiders, and some AFP meetings were disrupted. Lawmakers affiliated with the Tea Party in the Montana House fought hard against Medicaid expansion. They killed a proposal by Democrats, and then nearly derailed a Republican-sponsored compromise. The House had to bend its rules to even bring the bill to the floor for a vote. But in the end, 20 Republicans crossed party lines and voted with all the Democrats to pass it. Still, at the bill's signing ceremony, state Sen. Ed Buttrey, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said, \"This is not Medicaid expansion.\" Buttrey says Republicans won important concessions from Democrats to make Montana's bill more palatable to conservatives. People will have to pay small premiums, and the bill also sets up job training and education programs. Buttrey insisted that Montana isn't just doing the bidding of the White House. \"I'll say it again, and I hope the media will report this exciting and unique story,\" he said. \"This is not Medicaid expansion.\" Montana's approach is now on its way to the federal government, which will have the last word on whether it's legal under the Affordable Care Act. In Alaska, Gov. Bill Walker, a former Republican who is now independent, has made Medicaid expansion a top priority. But Republicans leading Alaska's state House and Senate blocked expansion during the legislative session that just wrapped up. One of them was state Sen. Pete Kelly. \"I think everyone agrees that Medicaid is broken,\" he says. \"To put more money into it, to bring more people into it, that's certainly not going to help its brokenness.\" But 65 percent of Alaskans favor Medicaid expansion. Supporters testified in large numbers at legislative committee hearings and attended rallies. In one, organized by an interfaith church group, Lutheran pastor Julia Seymour turned the crowd into a choir. She led them in singing, \"Medicaid expansion, I'm going to let it shine\" to the tune of This Little Light Of Mine. Even though the measure didn't pass this session, Seymour says she's more determined than ever to make sure all Alaskans have access to health insurance. \"The Bible tells us that faith, hope and love go on and do not end. And I'm keeping the faith and I am hopeful, but my love for some of the leaders is waning now and then,\" she says. As soon as the regular session ended, Gov. Walker called lawmakers into special session but legislative leaders decided to take a recess. The state is currently facing a massive budget deficit because of the plunge in oil prices. And Walker says even in better financial times, Alaska doesn't usually decline more than a billion federal dollars. \"If that was a road project or if that was some infrastructure project, we would be all over that,\" he says. \"This is health care.\" Walker has proposed expanding Medicaid on his own if lawmakers don't act, but it's not clear he has the authority. About 40,000 people would qualify for Medicaid if the state expands it and about 30 percent of this group are Alaska Native. This story is part of a partnership with NPR, Montana Public Radio, Alaska Public Media and Kaiser Health News.", "Gun control has emerged as a key issue in next month's off-year elections in Virginia, a state that is seen as a bellwether of what could come in national elections in 2020. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in both houses of the state legislature, and with all 140 seats on the ballot this year, Democrats hope to turn those chambers blue. One race where the discussion of guns is especially fraught is in Virginia Beach, the 8th State Senate district. Virginia Beach was the scene of a mass shooting on May 31, when a longtime city employee stalked through a municipal building armed with two .45-caliber pistols, killing 12 people and wounding four others before he was killed in a gunbattle with police. That crime has amplified the debate over gun laws as the campaigns head into the final weeks before the Nov. 5 election. The race in the 8th Senate District in Virginia Beach pits two U.S. Navy veterans against each other. Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal, a 41-year-old political newcomer, is challenging the incumbent Republican, 54-year-old Bill DeSteph. Cotter Smasal served as a surface warfare officer in the Navy before opening an Italian ice shop in Virginia Beach. DeSteph was a naval special-warfare intelligence officer who later served on the Virginia Beach City Council and in the state House of Delegates. Four years ago, DeSteph won his Senate seat handily, beating his challenger by 18 points. But this year, Democrats — bolstered by large cash infusions from gun control groups — think they have a good chance of unseating him. With the city's mass shooting fresh in residents' mind, Cotter Smasal is campaigning hard on gun control. Last week, she began airing a TV ad that features Karen Havekost, who worked in the building where the shooting took place. \"I walked out of the bathroom, I saw the gunman on the other end of the hallway, and I saw a co-worker in the middle, and he looked at me and he yelled, 'Go!' \" Havekost says in the ad. Havekost goes on to fault DeSteph for protecting gun rights. \"He blocked the Senate from even voting on gun safety laws,\" she says in the ad. \"He has a chance to make a difference, but he refuses to do it.\" Within a couple of days, DeSteph hit back with a response ad. \"Missy Cotter Smasal is using our local tragedy for her political gain. It's shameful,\" the narrator says. \"A veteran, Bill DeSteph is the only candidate who will defend our Second Amendment rights.\" DeSteph is a gun collector and a licensed firearms dealer. He declined to be interviewed for this story but sent a statement that says, in part, \"My opponent has a lot to learn about our community if she thinks that voters will be fooled by her attempts to gain a political advantage from this tragedy.\" In July, weeks after the mass shooting, DeSteph spoke at an NRA town hall meeting in Virginia Beach that was closed to the media. Afterward, in a video posted on an NRA Facebook page, DeSteph urged NRA members to call their elected representatives: \"Tell all of 'em there's no level of legislation that they can present that would have stopped what happened here.\" The week after that NRA meeting, Democrats were outraged when Republican legislators shut down a special session of the Virginia General Assembly after just 90 minutes. Virginia's Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, had called the session to consider a package of gun control bills, including universal background checks and a red flag law. Instead, on a party-line vote, Republicans voted to adjourn until after the November elections. They asked the Virginia State Crime Commission to examine the Virginia Beach shooting and report back with recommendations. A few weeks later, right after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, DeSteph appeared on the John Fredericks Show, a conservative talk radio program and warned against what he called a \"knee-jerk reaction\" to mass shootings. \"This isn't a gun control issue,\" he said. \"This is a mental health issue.\" \"What's gonna work the best?\" he said. \"Is it more discipline in schools? Is it more fathers in the families? I don't know. ... I don't think there's one type of thing that will work here.\" DeSteph's views align with those of Virginia Beach resident Bruce Johnson, a retired Naval officer who's a gun owner and an NRA member. \"The NRA is a polarizing organization. I get it,\" he says. But when it comes to gun violence, Johnson echoes DeSteph: The problem, he says, isn't the firearm. It's what he calls \"broken people.\" \"Sen. DeSteph is absolutely on point with his message,\" Johnson says. \"We're in a world of hurt if he doesn't win.\" For her part, Cotter Smasal says her push for tighter gun laws is right in step with the views of Virginia voters. She points to polls showing Virginians overwhelmingly support legislation requiring universal background checks and red flag laws. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. Pausing for an interview as she canvassed a wealthy Virginia Beach neighborhoo", "One week ago, people celebrated in the streets of Minneapolis as a judge read the guilty verdicts in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murdering George Floyd. In the days since, the Justice Department announced it would investigate whether the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, where Breonna Taylor was killed by police, engage in a \"pattern or practice\" of discrimination or excessive force. But even as advocates and family members of those killed by police welcomed those developments, they said the need for structural change to policing has not disappeared — a point underscored, they said, by the police killings of Black people during and since the Chauvin trial in Brooklyn Center, Minn., Columbus, Ohio, and Elizabeth City, N.C. \"I don't want there to be any more George Floyds. It seems like this is a never-ending cycle,\" said Philonise Floyd, who since his brother's death has spoken before Congress and the United Nations Human Rights Council about police reform. A flurry of legislative and policy proposals at every level of government in the U.S. followed last summer's protests. Cities such as Minneapolis, Seattle and Austin committed to rethinking police funding. Lawmakers in all 50 states put forward more than 2,000 bills related to policing in the last year. But successes have been patchwork, mostly concentrated in blue states and cities facing outcry over local incidents of deadly force by police officers. Many other statehouses have seen little concerted effort to reform policing. And in Congress, partisan disagreements have so far prevented any bill from passing. Reform in the U.S. has frequently come in bite-size portions as each high-profile death prompts scrutiny of a specific slice of policing. Bans on neck restraints or chokeholds, called for by activists after Eric Garner was killed by police in Staten Island in 2014, gained renewed attention this summer after Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck, another type of neck restraint. And after Breonna Taylor was killed in her apartment late at night by Louisville police who had obtained a no-knock warrant, several states and cities moved to ban such warrants, including Louisville. In Cleveland, where a police officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice within two seconds of arriving at a park where Rice was playing with a realistic toy gun in 2014, officials are reportedly preparing to roll out new policies around how police should interact with anyone under 18 years old. Last year's nationwide protests turned up the pressure on lawmakers nationwide, and since then, about a dozen states have succeeded at passing more comprehensive legislation, according to a review of policing-related bills tracked by the National Conference of State Legislatures. In states such as New York, Maryland and Washington, where statehouses are controlled by Democrats, lawmakers have moved to redefine use of force policies, impose body-worn camera rules, require officers to intervene when they see another officer using excessive force, and increase independent oversight over police agencies. A bill in Colorado signed into law last June made that state the \"ground zero\" for police reform, Howard Henderson, founding director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University, told the Mountain West News Bureau. That bill, known in Colorado as Senate Bill 217, imposed wide-ranging new rules on law enforcement agencies and prosecutors handling police use of force cases. It also permanently revokes professional certification for officers who have been found in court to have used inappropriate force, preventing them from being re-hired elsewhere. Perhaps most notably, the bill stripped Colorado officers of the protection known as \"qualified immunity,\" a series of legal precedents that has long kept police officers from being held personally liable from many claims of wrongdoing while on-duty. Now, Colorado officers are no longer able to evoke qualified immunity as a defense, and they can be sued for up to $25,000. \"There's no other state legislature in this country that has been able to do what Colorado has done to date. It just hasn't happened,\" said Henderson. But reforms have been more reserved in politically mixed states. In Minnesota, outcry over Floyd's death prompted the governor to call for a special session of the state's divided legislature last summer. Lawmakers passed a compromise bill that banned chokeholds and modified deadly force rules but left activists calling for more. A new bill, which passed the Minnesota House last week, would go further. It would allow mental health crisis teams to answer some 911 calls rather than police, and it would ban traffic stops over broken tail lights, air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors, or out-of-date vehicle registration — the reasons cited for traffic stops that ended with the deaths of Philando Castile in 2016 and Daunte Wright earlier this month. But the le" ]

[ "When traveling to the USA, the general rule is to have a passport that is valid for at least six months after the planned time of return." ]

[ "The good news is that American citizens do not need a passport to fly domestically. You will always need a passport to fly internationally though. Read on for more info about the types of ID you can use while traveling domestically, upcoming changes to ID that will affect all US travelers, and how to get a passport.", "Until 1 January 2021, you can continue to travel to Europe with your UK passport until it expires. ... Any extra months on your passport over 10 years may not count towards the 6 months needed. You'll need to renew your passport before travelling if you do not have enough time left on your passport.", "Anyone travelling to New Zealand (including New Zealand and Australian citizens) must have a valid passport/travel document when entering New Zealand. There are also rules regarding how long your passport must be valid for in order to be acceptable.", "How long does it take? It can take up to 12 weeks for a passport to be produced or longer where the application is irregular. We do not issue emergency passports for children. Please ensure that you apply for a new passport for your child at least 12 weeks before your intended date of travel.", "Applying for a new passport Do not book travel unless your passport meets the entry requirements of the country you're travelling to. Make sure you apply in plenty of time. If you need to, you can apply to get a passport urgently. Added guidance about validity of burgundy passports.", "If your passport's expired, you must renew it before you can travel. You can renew your passport at any time. Time left on your old passport will not be added to your new one.", "Irish citizens need a visa to enter Egypt, which is usually available on arrival for tourists travelling on ordinary passports. If travelling to Egypt for work or business reasons it is recommended that you obtain a visa in advance. ... You can also check with them how long your passport must be valid for.", "Irish citizens need a visa to enter Lebanon, which is usually available on arrival to tourists travelling on ordinary passports. ... You can also check with them how long your passport must be valid for.", "If you are flying solely within the UK, including Northern Ireland, you do not need a passport but we advise that you carry photographic identification with you when travelling, such as your passport or driving licence. ... All other travellers require a valid passport to travel between the two countries.", "Irish nationals need a visa to travel to Ghana. You can't get a visa at the border, so you will need to organise it before you travel. Contact your nearest Ghanaian embassy or consulate for more information on entry requirements, including how long your passport must be valid for.", "Do Infants Need a Passport to Travel? The short answer is yes. ... If you are planning to travel to most places outside of your home country with an infant or any child under the age of 16, however, you will need to plan to obtain a passport for everyone you are traveling with before you go—including your child.", "No matter how old your child is, they need a passport to travel. In Canada, all children, even newborns, need their own passport with a maximum validity of five years. However, if you are traveling to the U.S. by car, you can either use a passport or a birth certificate.", "Passports do not expire when a person reaches age 18. Therefore, your sister does not need to obtain a new passport in order to travel out of the country this summer.", "It all depends on what countries passport you are travelling on. That will dictate what you will need to do to visit Australia. You will need to either do an electronic ETA (visa waiver) or apply for a visa before travelling. ... How different is an Aus PR from an American green card?", "The validity of an existing visa does not expire if you acquire a new passport (if old passport has expired or is damaged), as long as your personal particulars and nationality have not changed. You, as the visa holder can travel carrying your old passport with a valid Indian visa along with your new passport.", "Do I need to enter my passport details when I book? (API) No, but do bring your passport when you travel as it'll be checked by UK and French authorities before you board....", "1. Re: do infants need passports to fly domestically? No one needs a passport to fly domestically. A passport allows you to travel to another country.", "Hawaii Passport Requirements Since Hawaii is a state within the United States, citizens do not need a valid passport to travel to Hawaii from the mainland. ... If yours doesn't, you may need to carry a passport instead.", "How much money will you need for your trip to New York City? You should plan to spend around $239 per day on your vacation in New York City, which is the average daily price based on the expenses of other visitors. Past travelers have spent, on average, $38 on meals for one day and $40 on local transportation.", "Can you travel on an expired passport? Quite often the answer is no, but there are exceptions. If you are on a foreign passport travelling to your home country, an airline can, at their discretion carry you back home; Even if you need to transit, as long as you are “airside” and not entering another country.", "Do you need a Passport to go on a Ferry? British or Irish citizens travelling on our Irish Sea routes do not need a passport to travel to Britain or Ireland but are advised to take a form of identity. ... Other passport holders should check with the relevant embassy regarding passport and visa requirements.", "Visa Requirements While all international travelers will need a valid passport, U.S. citizens do not need to apply for a tourist visa as long is it is less than six months. If you hold a passport from another nation, however, check to see if Mexico requires you to get a visa.", "Do U.S citizens visiting Canada need a passport book or will a passport card be sufficient? Yes you may use passport cards for all land travel. Passport cards are applied for and issued in your home country.", "As long as you have an acceptable form of government ID, you will not require a passport to travel to Hawaii. Non-U.S. citizens do require a passport, and all the same documentation and visas needed to enter the United States of America at any other port.", "You can book using whatever name you like, as long as the name on the ticket matches the name on the passport you are using when you travel. ESTA's are tied to your passport so you should not apply until you have your new passport.", "So, Do I Need a Passport to Go to the Bahamas? In summary: Yes, you do need a valid passport at the time of travel with two blank pages for entry stamps to enter the Bahamas. And though a passport may not be required for those traveling by boat, one will be necessary in case of an emergency flight.", "If you are flying solely within the UK, including Northern Ireland, you do not need a passport but we advise that you carry photographic identification with you when travelling, such as your passport or driving licence. ... Children under the age of 16 years do not require identification to travel within the UK.", "How Much Do I Pay to Change Name on a Passport? You need to get a new passport if you change your name, which can cost you £72.50. This passport will also be valid for 10 years, with 9 months of unexpired time from the old passport added on, according to the UK government.", "Regardless of how they plan to get to Canada, U.S. citizens don't need a passport to enter. ... If they are flying back, the only acceptable document is a passport. But if they are traveling by land or sea, a passport card would do, as would an enhanced driver's license or a NEXUS card or other trusted-traveler card.", "You shouldn't travel with a passport that will expire during your trip or shortly after your planned return. To avoid problems while travelling, you should get a new passport before leaving if your passport could expire around or during your travels.", "No you don't need a passport to travel domestic. ... No passport required for Malaysian travelling to Langkawi.", "All Canadian children under the age of 16 need their own passport to travel. ... You can't renew your child's passport. You must get all the documents ready and apply for a new one." ]