Your existence is attached by a thread; it rests only on the tip of your lips, as he put it. Dying is not an action that can be prepared for. It is an aimless reverie."

Like Hamlet says, "to die, to sleep..." Then it's over.

-----

You can find Sarah Bakewell's essay on Montaigne's brush with death in the second chapter of her remarkable collection of biographical sketches, How To Live or A Life of Montaigne. Mark Doty's two books, where he describes the death of Wally, are Heaven's Coast, A Memoir and Dog Years, A Memoir (PS). Oliver Sacks, in his new book Hallucinations, refers to Raymond Moody's 1975 book Life After Life, which investigated "near-death experiences" and found a consistent pattern: a quick cascade of memories, being propelled upPlease do not hesitate to contact us.

About Diedre West

Diedre Susana West, owner of the Healing with Horse Collective (www.healingwithhorse.org) and Caballo Andante Equine Services is a lifelong horsewoman who began training Arabian horses when she was 13. She had a decade-long career as a college English professor specializing in environmental literature, feminism, and comparative mythology, before developing an acclaimed equine program at a residential therapy facility for young women. Utilizing her training in her academic specialties and studies in Jungian, constellations, gestalt, somatic and other therapies, Diedre and the Caballo Andante herd have honed experiential learning processes that:

identify the central storylines we are all working through,

make meaning from the deeply entrenched inner paths and pressures these central storylines, or myths, place on our lives,

step into profound spiritual awakening


or understanding, even when our life track brings us situations cannot control.

Caballo Andante has worked with children, teens, and college-aged adults including those considered to be at-risk, adults in all walks of life, college students, international corporate leaders, people with autism, and military veterans for over 15 years.
Diedre also loves mountains, where she trail rides, hikes with her dogs, mountain bikes, backpacks, rock climbs, and tele-mark skis both in the backcountry and at resorts. Or she may be found just sitting on her deck drinking good coffee with an equally good book, looking up occasionally at the herd of horses running across a meadow backed by mountains.
Please check out the Healing with Horse Collective, email healingwithhorse @gmail.com, or call 303-880-7240.first meeting, they had a pretty good idea the intelligence had been made-up.

4. During this time, then-FBI Director James Comey was trying to build an obstruction of justice case against the new President. After each meeting or phone call Comey had with the President, he write a memo to himself about everything they had discussed.

5. After Trump fired Comey on May 9, using the talking points from a memo he had asked then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to prepare, a tumultuous eight day period began. Rosenstein, reeling from the disapproval of his deep state colleagues who were angry over his part in Comey’s firing, was said to have been beside himself. It’s been reported that he had spoken to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about removing Trump via


the 25th Amendment, although he claims he had been sarcastic.

6. Comey gave several of his memos to his law professor friend with instructions to leak them to The New York Times hoping that the outrage would trigger Rosenstein to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate President Trump for collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice because he had asked Comey to lay off General Michael Flynn.

7. Rosenstein obliged and on May 17, he appointed Robert Mueller to the Special Counsel.

Herridge reported, “A single source confirmed the broad outlines of the investigation and said that investigators are looking at a classified leak in 2017 .” And they were trying to determine if Comey or a member of his close circle are responsible.

Herridge played a clip of Sen. Charles GrassleyNBC in December, the day after IG Michael Horowitz had released his report, Attorney General William Barr offered some clues. He said Durham was looking “at the whole waterfront.” Barr was asked when he thought Durham’s work might be completed, he estimated late spring or early summer.

Investigative journalist Sara Carter reported on Sunday, that according to numerous former and current government sources, “the documents already uncovered by Horowitz and the alleged new documents discovered by Durham are significant. Those documents will expose the intent of those involved in the malfeasance at the FBI and the continued operation to spy on Carter Page, a short term Trump campaign volunteer. Further, Durham’s probe is focused on actions of former senior Obama Administration officials that targeted Trump and his team.”

MBA, former


navigational information on the ephemeris of the transmitting GPS satellite (which includes orbital information about the transmitting satellite within next several hours of transmission) and an almanac for all GPS satellites (which includes a less detailed orbital information about all satellites). The transmitted satellite information also includes parameters providing corrections for ionospheric signal propagation delays (suitable for single frequency receivers) and for an offset time between satellite clock time and true GPS time. The navigational information is transmitted at a rate of 50 Baud.
A second satellite-based navigation system is the Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), placed in orbit by the former Soviet Union and now maintained by the Russian Republic. GLONASS uses 24 satellites, distributed approximately uniformly in three orbital planes of eight satellites each. Each orbitalQ:

What is the ultimate goal of the murky goings on in Sicario?

The lead character in the movie Sicario, Kate Macer (played by Emily Blunt) spends most of the movie not knowing what is really going on or what the purpose of her secondment to a somewhat shady anti-drug unit actually is.
Towards the end of the movie it transpires that at least one of the goals was to facilitate an assassination of a drug lord. But why was this assassination important and what was the point of it?

A:

As explained by Matt (Josh Brolin) to Kate (Emily Blunt), the purpose of the task force is to "take down" Mexican drug lord Fausto Alarcón. While this can be construed as "arrest and convict", the actual plan is to kill him,


plain and simple.
The CIA's plan is that by weakening the Mexican cartels by such killings, the Colombian cartels can once again assume control of the drug trade in the americas. Their argument is that back when the Colombian cartels had a near-monopoly on the trade, there was a "semblance of order".
This period of time is referred to as "Medellín" in the movie, after the Colombian city and cartel of the same name. (Of course, the irony is that the United States did a lot to bring an end to the Medellín cartel in the first place.)
Since those "good old days", however, Mexican cartels have taken over, and the violence and chaos of the drug trade has both grown and moved much closer to the United States - andspilled over.
So, in essence, it's the CIA choosing to side with the devil they know. Like supporting a dictator or even overthrowing an existing regime, in order to provide "stability" from a U.S. point of view. Or, in this case, at least move the problem farther away.
There's also the characters' personal reasons for wanting Alarcón dead. Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) was a public prosecutor in Juárez, Mexico. His wife and daughter were killed (horrifically) by Alarcón's group. Since then, Alejandro has become a mercenary - or vigilante - in his attempt to get revenge.
As Matt explains, Alejandro will work for "anyone who will let him of the leash". That is, help him to kill the people responsible for the killing of his family. In this case, the ones


letting him off the leash are the United States and, indirectly, the Colombian cartels. Hence why another character refers to Alejandro as "Medellín": He's doing their dirty work.

A:

Macer's (Blunt) goal was to get back at those ultimately responsible for the bodies in the house raid at the beginning of the film.
She's really only there so that the CIA can operate on US soil, for which they need an FBI agent along for the ride.
Gillick's (del Toro) goal was revenge for the killing of his wife and daughter by Alarcón.
Graver's (Brolin) goal was to help Gillick to kill Alarcón. He did this in order to help consolidate power in the hands of Colombian drug lords at the expense of the Mexicans. He did that to help movethe drug war away from the US/Mexican border.

A:

As far as I understand, the assassin who ended up killing the drug lord was the old leader of a drug cartel in Colombia. When Mexicans get in American drug market and get the all market share, he became useless and he made a agreement with US against Mexican cartel. On the other hand, the drug lord killed his child and wife. So he wanted to take his revenge and US wanted to dismiss the Mexican cartel. And this was the most easy way to kill the leader because they know in these kinds of group when the leader disappears, the hierarchy is disrupted and they start a war between themselves.


los Romanov
"la última dinastía Zarista", con Nicolás II a la cabeza.
Años antes en 1905,

English:
Russian Revolution was a political, social and economic movement which started in 1917
in the Russian Empire
This episode, because of its trascendent consequences, is now considered one of the major events
of the Late Modern Period
The consequence was the overthrow of the Tsar Dinasty,
heirs of the Roman Empire, what meant the abolition of the absolutist and despotic system,
which was reigning at the moment.
The revolution brought with it a comunist government led by Vladimir Lenin.
The consequences that caused the Russian Revolution were:
1. Russia was at war with Germany, WWI, also known as Great War,
the constant defeats and numerous losses that the Russian army endured
led the Romanov to disparagement, last Tsar Dinasty, with Nicholas II reigning.

English:
Years before,in 1905 a first revolution took place after the Russian defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War.
2. Russia suffered an economic crisis with food scarcity for the people,
who endured a horrible famine;
it was an eminently rural and belated country.
Russia's social organization was based on the most absolute inequality distinguishing two main social classes:
the Nobility and the simple people, almost all of them peasants, there was no middle class.
3. We will find the third cause in the wife of the Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, of German descent,
incredibly unpopular and enemy of any people's reform.
One year before Rasputin had been killed, who was the physician and counselor of the Empress.
This causes, attached to a harsh winter, were the reason why the revolution burst.
Let's distinguish two phases of the revolution


workers, soldiers and peasants,
let, in the beginning, the Provisional Government to rule,
but insisted in a prerrogative to influence government and control certain militias.
The mass of workers and peasants started to politicize, the small Bolshevik party,
led by Lenin, who imposed an extreme radicalization, was the spokesman of the general discontent
and became object of people's aspiratons.
With his gift of oratory, he defended the postulates of Karl Marx, to change the capitalist system for a
for a socio-economic socialist system, and to set up the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
A frenzy to discuss and propose took place in the city.
Kérenski's government grew unpopular, and uncapable of reforming, pulled apart from the people.

Spanish:
entre ellos la entrada del revolucionario Vladimir Lenin, que vivía en el exilio.
Las posiciones se empezaron a mover, "los Soviets", queen las elecciones.
Lenin mando disolver la asamblea,
democráticamente elegida, al estar en minoría.

English:
Still, troops were sent to fight in WWI, this unchained popular rebelions,
which were reprised by the provisonal government and started to prosecute oppositors.
Lenin and Leo Trotsky started to plan the overthrow of the provisional government in order to set up
the Comunist system.
If Frebruary Revolution was spontaneous, October Revolution can be taken as
a strategic coup orchertrated by Trotsky and Lenin against the provisional government.
In October Revolution the soviets took over the strategic spots in the Capital City, and assaulted
the Winter Palace, overthrowing the provisional government; Lenin announced three measures:
1. Immediate peace,
2. a decree of land to distribute it among the peasants,
3. and the formation of the soviets of deputies of the people, or Sovnarkom,
which would convene elections


to form a Constituent Assembly,
Lenin's Bolshevik party was defeated in the elections,

English:
Lenin dissolved the Assembly, democratically elected, because of finding himself in minority.
This would evolve as a Civil War, Bolsheviks created  Cheka, a political and military  intelligence organization
to reprise any kind of dissent.
Their method of reprisal was not limited by detentions and mass fusillades,
but they used brutal torture methods; the first concentration camps were born,
Red Terror had begun.
In 1918, who once was Russia's Tsar, Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra and their five children,
who were enclosed in a Mansion of the Ural Mountains,
were massacred by a group of rebels.
The Civil War, which faced Red Army to the White Army, was ended with the victory of the Red Army.
Leninism and the Dicatorship of the Proletariat had risen.
The UnionEnviros Sue EPA Over Lack Of Lead Bullet Regulations

Law360, New York (June 7, 2012, 6:05 PM EDT) -- A slew of environmental groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, accusing it of violating the Toxic Substances Control Act in refusing to ban lead bullets for hunting and shooting sports.

The Center for Biological Diversity first petitioned the EPA to ban lead bullets in 2010. After this petition was denied, the group spearheaded a second petition, submitted in March, limiting the request to hunting and shooting uses and highlighting the public health consequences of lead bullet exposure.


then from the recent Lizard invasion. As far as
Goldfarb was concerned, a pilot deserved a bloody medal just for surviving
the Lizard attack. Even Meteors were easy meat against the machines the
Lizards flew.

To make matters worse, Roundbush wasn't just a fighting machine with more
ballocks than brains. He'd helped Fred Hipple with improvements on the
engines that powered the Meteor, he had a lively wit, and women fell all
over him. Taken all in all, he gave Goldfarb an inferiority complex.

He did his best to hide it, because Roundbush, within the limits of
possessing few limits, was withal a most likable chap. "I am but a mere
'umble radarman, sir," Goldfarb said, making as if to tug at a forelock he
didn't have. "I wouldn't know such things, I wouldn't."

"You're a mere 'umble pile ofmalarkey, is what you are," Roundbush said
with a snort.

Goldfarb sighed. The pilot had the right accent, too. His own, despite
studious efforts to make it more cultivated, betrayed his East End London
origins every time he opened his mouth. He hadn't had to exaggerate it
much to put on his 'umble air for Roundbush.

The pilot pointed. "The oasis lies ahead. Onward!"

They quickened their strides. The White Horse Inn lay not far from Dover
Castle, in the northern part of town. It was a goodly hike from Dover
College, where they both labored to turn Lizard gadgetry into devices the
RAF and other British forces could use. It was also the best pub in Dover,
not only for its bitter, but also for its barmaids.

Not surprisingly, it was packed. Uniforms of every sort--RAF, army,
Marines, Royal Navy--mingled


with civilian tweed and flannel. The great
fireplace at one end of the room threw heat all across it, as it had been
doing in that building since the fourteenth century. Goldfarb sighed
blissfully. The Dover College laboratories where he spent his days were
clean, modern--and bloody cold.

As if in a rugby scrum, he and Roundbush elbowed their way toward the bar.
Roundbush held up a hand as they neared the promised land. "Two pints of
best bitter, darling!" he bawled to the redhead in back of the long oaken
expanse.

"For you, dearie, anything," Sylvia said with a toss of her head. All the
men who heard her howled wolfishly. Goldfarb joined in, but only so as
not to seem out of place. He and Sylvia had been lovers a while before. It
wasn't that he'd been madabout her; it wasn't even that he'd been her
only one at the time: she was, in her own way, honest, and hadn't tried to
string him along with such stories. But seeing her now that they'd parted
did sometimes sting--not least because he still craved the sweet warmth of
her body.

She slid the pint pots toward them. Roundbush slapped silver on the bar.
Sylvia took it. When she started to make change for him, he shook his
head. She smiled a large, promising smile--she was honestly mercenary, too.

Goldfarb raised his mug. "To Group Captain Hipple!" he said. He and
Roundbush both drank. If it hadn't been for Fred Hipple, the RAF would
have had to go on fighting the Lizards with Hurricanes and Spitfires, not
jets. But Hipple had been missing since the Lizards attacked the
Bruntingthorpe


research station during their invasion. The toast was all
too likely to be the only memorial he'd ever get.

Roundbush peered with respect at the deep golden brew he was quaffing.
"That's bloody good," he said. "These handmade bitters often turn out
better than what the brewers sold all across the country."

"You're right about that," Goldfarb said, thoughtfully smacking his lips.
He fancied himself a connoisseur of bitter. "Well hopped, nutty--" He took
another pull, to remind himself of what he was talking about.

The pint pots quickly emptied. Goldfarb raised a hand to order another
round. He looked around for Sylvia, didn't see her for a moment, then he
did; she was carrying a tray of mugs over to a table by the fire.

As if by magic, another woman materialized behind the bar while his head
wasturned. "You want a fresh pint?" she asked.

"Two pints--one for my friend here," he answered automatically. Then he
looked at her. "Hullo! You're new here."

She nodded as she poured beer from the pitcher into the pint pots.
"Yes--my name's Naomi." She wore her dark hair pulled back from her
face. It made her look thoughtful. She had delicate features: skin pale
without being pink, narrow chin, wide cheekbones, large gray eyes,
elegantly
arched nose.

Goldfarb paid for the bitter, all the while studying her. At last, he
risked a word not in English: "Yehudeh?"

Those eyes fixed on him, sharply. He knew she was searching his
features--and knew what she'd find. His brown, curly hair and formidable
nose had not sprung from native English stock. After a moment, she relaxed
and said, "Yes, I'm Jewish--and you, unless I'm wrong." Now


that he heard
more than a sentence from her, he caught her accent--like the one his
parents had, though not nearly so strong.

He nodded. "Guilty as charged," he said, which won a cautious smile from
her. He left her a tip as large as the one Basil Roundbush had given
Sylvia, though he could afford it less well. He raised his mug to her
before he drank, then asked, "What are you doing here?"

"In England, do you mean?" she asked, wiping the bar with a bit of rag.
"My parents were lucky enough, smart enough--whatever you like--to get out
of Germany in 1937. I came with them; I was fourteen then."

That made her twenty or twenty-one now: a fine age, Goldfarb thought
reverently. He said, "My parents came from Poland before the First World
War, so IRoundbush had been talking with a sandy-haired Royal Navy commander.
Now he turned back to find a fresh pint at his elbow--and Naomi behind the
bar. He pulled himself straight; he could turn on two hundred watts of
charm the way most men flicked on a light switch. "Well, well," he said
with a toothy smile. "Our publican's taste has gone up, it has indeed.
Where did he find you?"

Not sporting, Goldfarb thought. He waited for Naomi to sigh or giggle or
do whatever she did to show she was smitten. He hadn't seen Roundbush fail
yet. But the barmaid just answered, coolly enough, "I was looking for
work, and he was kind enough to think I might do. Now if you will excuse
me--" She hurried off to minister to other thirst-stricken patrons.

Roundbush dug an elbow


in the White Horse Inn. A Marine captain raised a hand to his
cheek. Naomi, quite unperturbed, set a pint of beer in front of him and
went about her business.

"Timed that well, I did, though I say so my own self," Sylvia remarked
with more than a little pride.

"That you did," Goldfarb agreed. He glanced over toward Naomi. Their eyes
met for a moment. He smiled. She shrugged, as if to say, All in a day's
work. He turned back to Sylvia. "Good for her," he said.

Liu Han was nervous. She shook her head. No, she was more than nervous.
She was terrified. The idea of meeting the little scaly devils
face-to-face made her shiver inside. She'd been a creature under their
control for too long: first in their airplane that never came down, where
theymade her submit to one man after another so they could learn how
people behaved in matters of the pillow; and then, after she'd got
pregnant, down in their prison camp not far from Shanghai. After she'd had
her baby, they'd stolen it from her. She wanted her child back, even if it
was only a girl.

With all that in her past, she had trouble believing the scaly devils
would treat her like someone worth consideration now. And she was a woman
herself, which did nothing to ease her confidence. The doctrine of the
People's Liberation Army said women were, and should be, equal to men. In
the top part of her mind, she was beginning to believe that. Down deep,
though, a lifetime of teachings of the opposite lesson still shaped her
thoughts--and her fears.

Perhaps sensing that,


Nieh Ho-T'ing said, "It will be all right. They
won't do anything to you, not at this parley. They know we hold prisoners
of theirs, and what will happen to those prisoners if anything bad happens
to us."

"Yes, I understand," she said, but she shot him a grateful glance anyhow.
In matters military, he knew what he was talking about. He'd served as
political commissar in the first detachment of Mao's revolutionary army,
commanded a division in the Long March, and been an army chief of staff.
After the Lizards came, he'd led resistance against them--and against the
Japanese, and against the counterrevolutionary Kuomintang clique--first in
Shanghai and then here in Peking. And he was her lover.

Though she'd been born a peasant, her wits and her burning eagerness for
revenge on the little devils for all they'd doneto her had made her a
revolutionary herself, and one who'd risen quickly in the ranks.

A scaly devil emerged from the tent that his kind had built in the middle
of the Pan Jo Hsiang Tai--the Fragrant Terrace of Wisdom. The tent looked
more like a bubble blown from some opaque orange shiny stuff than an
honest erection of canvas or silk. It clashed dreadfully not only with the
terrace and the walls and the elegant staircases to either side, but also
with everything on the Ch'iung Hua Tao, the White Pagoda Island.

Liu Han stifled a nervous giggle. Peasant that she was, she'd never
imagined, back in the days before the little scaly devils took hold of her
life and tore it up by the roots, that she would find herself not just in
the Imperial City


against them. If they weren't lying, even the Chinese, the most
anciently and perfectly civilized nation in the world, might have been
children beside them.

"Is my daughter well?" Liu Han asked Ttomalss at last. She dared not break
down and cry, but talking about the girl made her nose begin to run in
lieu of tears. She blew between her fingers before going on, "Are you
taking good care of her?"

"The hatchling is both comfortable and healthy." Ttomalss took out
a machine of a sort Liu Han had seen before. He touched a stud. Above the
machine, by some magic of the scaly devils, an image of the baby sprang
into being. She was up on all fours, wearing only a cloth around her
middle and smiling wide enough to show two tiny white teeth.

Liu Han didinto nine compartments, like any passenger car.

In an ordinary passenger car, though, four to a compartment was crowded.
People looked resentfully at one another, as if it was the fault of the
person on whom the irritated gaze fell that he took up so much space. In
each of the five prisoner compartments on this car ... Nussboym shook his
head. He was a scrupulous man, a meticulous man. He didn't know how many
people each of the other compartments held. He knew there were twenty-five
men in his.

He and three others had perches--not proper seats--upon the baggage racks
by the ceiling. The strongest, toughest prisoners lay in relative comfort
--and extremely relative it was, too--on the hard middle bunk. The rest
sat jammed together on the lower bunk and on the floor, on top of their
meager


belongings.

Nussboym's rackmate was a lanky fellow named Ivan Fyodorov. He under-
stood some of Nussboym's Polish and a bit of Yiddish when the Polish
failed. Nussboym, in turn, could follow Russian after a fashion, and
Fyodorov threw in a word of German every now and again.

He wasn't a mental giant. "Tell me again how you're here, David
Aronovich," he said. "I've never heard a story like yours, not even once."

Nussboym sighed. He'd told the story three times already in the two
days--he thought it was two days--he'd been perched on the rack. "It's
like this, Ivan Vasilievich," he said. "I was in Lodz, in Poland, in the
part of Poland the Lizards held. My crime was hating the Germans worse
than the Lizards."

"Why did you do that?" Fyodorov asked. This was the fourth time he'd asked
thatcompartment entrance, which had no
door, only a sliding grate of similar crosshatched bars. The compartment
had no windows that opened on the outside world, just a couple of tiny
barred blinds that might as well not have been there.

Nussboym didn't care. He'd learned that when the NKVD men walked by with
that slow deliberate stride, they had food with them. His stomach rumbled.
Spit rushed into his mouth. He ate better in the prison car--a Stolypin
car, the Russians universally called it--than he had in the Lodz ghetto
before the Lizards came, but not much better.

One of the NKVD men opened the grate, then stood back, covering the
prisoners with a submachine gun. The other one set down two buckets. "All
right, you zeks!" he shouted. "Feeding time at the zoo!" He laughed loudly
at his own


wit, though he made the joke every time it was his turn to feed
the prisoners.

They laughed too, loudly. If they didn't laugh, nobody got anything to
eat. They'd found that out very fast. A couple of beatings soon forced the
recalcitrant ones into line.

Satisfied, the guard started passing out a chunk of coarse, black bread
and half a salted herring apiece. They'd got sugar once, but the guards
said they were out of that now. Nussboym didn't know whether it was true,
but did know he was in no position to find out.

The prisoners who reclined on the middle bunk got the biggest loaves and
fishes. They'd enforced that rule with their fists, too. Nussboym's hand
went to the shiner below his left eye. He'd tried holding out on them, and
paid the price.

He wolfed downthe bread, but stuck his bony fragment of herring in a
pocket. He'd learned to wait for water before he ate the fish. It was so
salty, thirst would have driven him mad till he got something to drink.
Sometimes the guards brought a bucket of water after they brought food.
Sometimes they didn't. Today they didn't.

The train rumbled on. In summer, having two dozen men stuffed into a
compartment intended for four would have been intolerable--not that that
would have stopped the NKVD. In a Russian winter, animal warmth was not to
be despised. In spite of being cold, Nussboym wasn't freezing.

His stomach growled again. It didn't care that he would suffer agonies of
thirst if he ate his herring without water. All it knew was that it was
still mostly empty, and that the fish


would help fill it up.

With a squeal of brakes, the train pulled to a halt. Nussboym almost
slipped down onto men below. Ivan had done that once. They'd fallen on him
like a pack of wolves, beating and kicking him till he was black and blue.
After that, the fellows perched on the baggage racks had learned to hang
on tight during stops.

"Where are we, do you think?" somebody down below asked.

"In hell," somebody else answered, which produced laughs both more bitter
and more sincere than the ones the guard had got for himself.

"This'll be Pskov, I bet," a zek in the middle bunk declared. "I hear tell
we've cleared the Lizards away from the railroad line that leads there
from the west. After that"--he stopped sounding so arrogant and sure of
himself--"after that, it's northand east, on to the White Sea, or maybe
to the Siberian gulags."

Nobody spoke for a couple of minutes after that. Winter labor up around
Archangel or in Siberia was enough to daunt even the heartiest of spirits.

Small clangs and jerks showed that cars were either being added to
the train or taken off it. One of the zeks sitting on the bottom bunks
said, "Didn't the Hitlerites take Pskov away from the rodina? Shit, they
can't do anything worse to us than our own people do."

"Oh yes, they can," Nussboym said, and told them about Treblinka.

"That's Lizard propaganda, is what that is," the big-mouthed zek in the
middle bunk said.

"No," Nussboym said. Even in the face of opposition from the powerful
prisoner, about half the zeks in the car ended up believing him. He
reckoned


that a moral victory.

A guard came back with a bucket of water, a dipper, and a couple of mugs.
He looked disgusted with fate, as if by letting the men drink he was
granting them a privilege they didn't deserve. "Come on, you slimy
bastards," he said. "Queue up--and make it snappy. I don't have all day."

Healthy men drank first, then the ones with tubercular coughs, and last of
all the three or four luckless fellows who had syphilis. Nussboym wondered
if the arrangement did any good, because he doubted the NKVD men washed
the mugs between uses. The water was yellowish and cloudy and tasted of
grease. The guard had taken it from the engine tender instead of going to
some proper spigot. All the same, it was wet. He drank his allotted mug,
ate theherring, and felt, for a moment, almost like a human being instead
of a zek.

Georg Schultz spun the U-2's two-bladed wooden prop. The five-cylinder
Shvetsov radial caught almost at once; in a Russian winter, an air-cooled
engine was a big advantage. Ludmila Gorbunova had heard stories about
Luftwaffe pilots who had to light fires on the ground under the nose of
their aircraft to keep their antifreeze from freezing up.

Ludmila checked the rudimentary collection of dials on the Kukuruznik's
instrument panel. All in all, they told her nothing she didn't already
know: the Wheatcutter had plenty of fuel for the mission she was going to
fly, the compass did a satisfactory job of pointing toward north, and the
altimeter said she was still on the ground.

She released the brake. The little biplane bounced across the snowy field
that


served as an airstrip. Behind her, she knew, men and women with
brooms would sweep snow over the tracks her wheels made. The Red Air Force
took maskirovka seriously.

After one last jounce, the U-2 didn't come down. Ludmila patted the side
of the fuselage with a gloved but affectionate hand. Though designed as a
primary trainer, the aircraft had harassed first the Germans and then the
Lizards. Kukuruznik's flew low and slow and, but for the engine, had
almost no metal; they evaded the Lizards' detection systems that let the
alien imperialist aggressors hack more sophisticated warplanes out of the
sky with ease. Machine guns and light bombs weren't much, but they were
better than nothing.

Ludmila swung the aircraft into a long, slow turn back toward the field
from which she'd taken off. Georg Schultz still stood outthere. He waved
to her and blew her a kiss before he started trudging for the pine woods
not far away.

"If Tatiana saw you doing that, she'd blast your head off from eight
hundred meters," Ludmila said. The slipstream that blasted over the
windscreen into the open cockpit blew her words away. She wished something
would do the same for Georg Schultz. The German panzer gunner made a
first-rate mechanic; he had a feel for engines, the way some people had a
feel
for horses. That made him valuable no matter how loud and sincere a Nazi
he was.

Since the Soviet Union and the Hitlerites were at least formally
cooperating against the Lizards, his fascism could be overlooked, as
fascism had been overlooked till the Nazis treacherously broke their
nonaggression pact with the USSR on 22 June 1941. What Ludmila


couldn't
stomach was that he kept trying to get her to go to bed with him, though
she had about as much interest in sleeping with him as she did with, say,
Heinrich Himmler.

"You'd think he would have left me alone after he and Tatiana started
jumping on each other," Ludmila said to the cloudy sky. Tatiana Pirogova
was an accomplished sniper who'd shot at Nazis before she started shooting
at Lizards. She was at least as deadly as Schultz, maybe deadlier. As far
as Ludmila could see, that was what drew them together.

She buzzed west across Pskov. Soldiers in the streets, some in Russian
khaki, others in German field-gray, still others in winter white that made
their nationality impossible to guess, waved at her as she flew by. She
didn't mind that at all. Sometimes, though, humantroops would fire at her
in the air, on the assumption that anything airborne had to belong to the
Lizards.

A train pulled out of the station, heading northwest. The exhaust from the
locomotive was a great black plume that would have been visible for
kilometers against the snow had the low ceiling not masked it. The Lizards
liked shooting up trains whenever they got the chance.

She waved to the train when she came closest to it. She didn't think
anyone on board saw it, but she didn't care. Trains pulling out of Pskov
were a hopeful sign. During the winter, the Red Army--and the Germans,
Ludmila thought reluctantly--had pushed the Lizards back from the city,
and back from the railroad lines that ran through it. These days, you
could, if you were lucky, get through to Riga by


train.

But you still needed luck, and you still needed time. That was why
Lieutenant General Chill had sent his despatch with her--not only did it
have a better chance of getting through, it would reach his Nazi
counterpart in the Latvian capital well before it could have got there by
rail.

Ludmila skinned back her teeth in a sardonic grin. "Oh, how the mighty
Nazi general wished he could have sent a mighty Nazi flier to carry his
message for him," she said. "But he didn't have any mighty Nazi fliers, so
he was stuck with me." The expression on Chill's face had been that of a
man biting into an unripe apple.

She patted the pocket of her fur-lined leather flying suit in which the
precious despatch rested. She didn't know what it said. By the way Chill
hadgiven it to her, that was a privilege she didn't deserve. She laughed
a little. As if he could have stopped her from opening the envelope and
reading what was inside! Maybe he thought she wouldn't think of that. If
he did, he was stupid even for a German.

Perverse pride, though, had made her keep the envelope sealed. General
Chill was--formally--an ally, and had entrusted her with the message, no
matter how reluctant he was about it. She would observe the proprieties in
return.

The Kukuruznik buzzed along toward Riga. The countryside over which it
skimmed was nothing like the steppe that surrounded Kiev, where Ludmila
had grown up. Instead of endless empty kilometers, she flew above
snow-dappled pine woods, part of the great forest that stretched east to
Pskov and far, far beyond. Here and there, farms and


villages appeared in
the midst of the forest. At first, the human settlements in the middle of
the wilderness almost startled Ludmila. As she flew on toward the Baltic,
they grew ever more frequent.

Their look changed about halfway to Riga, when she crossed from
Russia into Latvia. It wasn't just that the buildings changed, though
plaster walls and tile roofs took the place of wood and sometimes thatch.
Things became more orderly, too, and more conservative of space: all the
land was used for some clearly defined purpose--cropland, town, woodlot,
or whatever it might have been. Everything plainly was being exploited,
not lying around waiting in case some use eventually developed for it.

"It might as well be Germany," Ludmila said aloud. The thought
gave her pause. Latvia had only been reincorporated into the Soviet Union
a little more thana year before the Hitlerites treacherously invaded the
rodina. Reactionary elements there had welcomed the Nazis as liberators,
and collaborated with them against Soviet forces. Reactionary elements in
the Ukraine had done the same thing, but Ludmila tried not to think about
that.

She wondered what sort of reception she'd get in Riga. Pskov had had
Soviet partisans lurking in the nearby forests, and was now essentially a
codominion between German and Soviet forces. She didn't think any
significant Soviet forces operated anywhere near Latvia--farther south,
maybe, but not by the Baltic.

"So," she said, "there soon will be a significant Soviet force in Latvia:
me." The slipstream blew away the joke, and the humor from it.

She found the Baltic coast and followed it south toward Riga. The sea had
frozen some kilometers out from the shore. The sight made


her shiver. Even
for a Russian, that was a lot of ice. Smoke rose from Riga harbor. The
Lizards had been pummeling harbors lately. When Ludmila approached the
docks, she started drawing rifle fire. Shaking her fists at the idiots who
took her biplane for a Lizard aircraft, she swung away and looked around
for someplace to land the Kukuruznik.

Not far from what looked like the main boulevard, she spied a park full of
bare-branched trees. It had enough empty space--snow and dead,
yellow-brown grass--and to spare for the biplane. No sooner had she slid
to a jerky stop than German troops in field-gray and white came running up
to her.

They saw the red stars on the Kukuruznik's wings and fuselage. "Who are
you, you damned Russian, and what are you doing here?" one of them shouted.

A typicallyarrogant German, he assumed she spoke his language. As it
happened, he was right this time. "Senior Lieutenant Ludmila Gorbunova,
Red Air Force," Ludmila answered in German. "I have with me a despatch for
General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt from General Chill in Pskov. Will you be so
kind as to take me to him? And will you camouflage this aircraft so the
Lizards cannot spot it?"

The Hitlerite soldiers drew back in surprise to hear her voice. She was
sitting in the cockpit, and her leather flying helmet and thick winter
gear had effectively disguised her sex. The German who'd spoken before
leered now and said, "We've heard of pilots who call themselves Stalin's
Hawks. Are you one of Stalin's Sparrows?"

Now he used du rather than Sie. Ludmila wasn't sure whether he intended
the familiar intimacy or insult. Either way, she


of war, it didn't look like a god-
forsaken place to her. The main street--Brivibas Street, it was called
(her eyes and brain needed a little while to adjust to the Latin
alphabet)--had more shops, and smarter-looking ones, than she'd seen in
Kiev. The clothes civilians wore on the street were shabby and none too
clean, but of better fabric and finer cut than would have been usual in
Russia or the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Some of the people recognized her gear. In spite of her German escort,
they yelled at her in accented Russian and in Latvian. She knew the
Russian was insulting, and the Latvian sounded less than complimentary. To
rub in the point, one of the Germans said, "They love you here in Riga."

"There are plenty of places where they love Germans even more,"she said,
which made the Nazi shut up with a snap. Had it been a chess game, she
would have won the exchange.

The Rathaus where the German commandant had his headquarters was near the
corner of Brivibas and Kaleiyu Streets. To Ludmila, the
German-style building looked old as time. Like the Krom in Pskov, it had
no sentries on the outside to give away its location to the Lizards. Once
inside the ornately carved doors, though, Ludmila found herself inspected
by two new and hostile Germans in cleaner, fresher uniforms than she was
used to seeing.

"What do you have here?" one of them asked her escort.

"Russian flier. She says she has a despatch from Pskov for the commanding
general," the talky soldier answered. "I figured we'd bring her here and
let you headquarters types sort things out."

"She?" The


sentry looked Ludmila over in a different way. "By God, it is a
woman, isn't it? Under all that junk she's wearing, I couldn't tell."

He plainly assumed she spoke only Russian. She did her best to look down
her nose at him, which wasn't easy, since he was probably thirty
centimeters the taller. In her best German, she said, "It will never
matter to you one way or the other, I promise you that."

The sentry stared at her. Her escorts, who'd been chatting with her enough
to see her more or less as a human being--and who, like any real fighting
men, had no great use for headquarters troops--suppressed their snickers
not quite well enough. That made the sentry look even less happy. In a
voice full of winter, he said, "Come with me. I willtake you to the
commandant's adjutant."

The adjutant was a beefy, red-faced fellow with a captain's two pips on
his shoulder straps. He said, "Give me this despatch, young lady. General-
leutnant Graf Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt is a busy man. I shall
convey to him your message as soon as it is convenient."

Maybe he thought the titles and double-barreled name would impress her. If
so, he forgot he was dealing with a socialist. Ludmila stuck out her chin
and looked stubborn. "Nein," she said. "I was told by General Chill to
give the message to your commandant, not to anyone else. I am a soldier; I
follow orders."

Red-Face turned redder. "One moment," he said, and got up from his desk.
He went through a door behind it. When he came out again, he might have
been chewing on a


lemon. "The commandant will see you."

"Good." Ludmila headed for that door herself. Had the adjutant not hastily
got out of her way, she would have walked right over him.

She'd expected an overbred aristocrat with pinched features, a haughty
expression, and a monocle. Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt had pinched
features, all right, but plainly for no other reason than that he was a
sick man. His skin looked like yellow parchment drawn tight over bones.
When he was younger and healthier, he'd probably been handsome. Now he was
just someone carrying on as best he could despite illness.

He did get up and bow to her, which took her by surprise. His cadaverous
smile said he'd noticed, too. Then he surprised her again, saying in
Russian, "Welcome to Riga, Senior Lieutenant. So--what news do you bring
me from Lieutenant GeneralChill?"

"Sir, I don't know." Ludmila took out the envelope and handed it to him.
"Here is the message."

Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt started to open it, then paused and got up from his
chair again. He hurriedly left the office by a side door. When he came
back, his face was even paler than it had been. "I beg your pardon," he
said, finishing the job of opening the envelope. "I seem to have come down
with a touch of dysentery."

He had a lot more than a touch; by the look of him, he'd fall over dead
one fine day before too long. Intellectually, Ludmila had known the Nazis
clung to their posts with as much courage and dedication--or fanaticism,
one--as anyone else. Seeing that truth demonstrated, though, sometimes
left her wondering how decent men could follow such a system.

That made


her think of Heinrich Jńger and, a moment later, start to blush.
General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt was studying General Chill's note. To her
relief, he didn't notice her turning pink. He grunted a couple of times,
softly, unhappily. At last, he looked up from the paper and said, "I am
very sorry, Senior Lieutenant, but I cannot do as the German commandant of
Pskov requests."

She hadn't imagined a German could put that so delicately. Even if he was
a Hitlerite, he was kulturny. "What does General Chill request, sir?" she
asked, then added a hasty amendment: "If it's not too secret for me
to know."

"By no means," he answered--he spoke Russian like an aristocrat. "He
wanted me to help resupply him with munitions--" He paused and coughed.

"So he would not have to depend on Soviet equipment, you mean," Ludmila
said.

"Justshall draft one for you," Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt said. "But first--Beck!"
He raised his voice. The adjutant came bounding into the room. "Fetch the
senior lieutenant here something from the mess," Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt told
him. "She has come a long way on a sleeveless errand, and she could no
doubt do with something hot."

"Jawohl, Herr Generalleutnant!" Beck said. He turned to Ludmila. "If you
would be so kind as to wait one moment, please, Senior Lieutenant
Gorbunova." He dipped his head, almost as if he were a maitre d' in some
fancy, decadent capitalist restaurant, then hurried away. If his commander
accepted Ludmila, he accepted her, too.

When Captain Beck came back, he carried on a tray a large, steaming bowl.
"Maizes zupe ar putukrejumu, a Latvian dish," he said. "It's corn soup
with whipped cream."

"Thank you," Ludmila said, and dug in.


The soup was hot and thick and
filling, and didn't taste that alien. Russian-style cooking used a lot of
cream, too, though sour as often as sweet.

While Ludmila ate, Beck went out to his own office, then came back
a couple of minutes later to lay a sheet of paper on General Brockdorff-
Ahlefeldt's desk. The German commander at Riga studied the message and
glanced over at Ludmila, but kept silent until, with a sigh, she set down
the bowl. Then he said, "I have a favor to ask of you, if you don't mind."

"That depends on what sort of favor it is," she answered cautiously.

Graf Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt's smile made him look like a skeleton
that had just heard a good joke. "I assure you, Senior Lieutenant, I have
no improper designs upon your undoubtedlyin Poland since the Lizards came.
And, of course, when you return here, we will give you fuel for your
return flight to Pskov."

She hadn't even asked about that yet. In spite of that forbidding name and
those titles, Generalleutnant Graf Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt was
indeed a gentleman of the old school. That helped Ludmila make up her mind
to nod in agreement to him. Later, she would decide she should have picked
better reasons for making up her mind.

Richard Peterson was a decent technician but, as far as Brigadier General
Leslie Groves was concerned, a hopeless stick-in-the-mud. He sat in the
hard chair in Groves' office in the Science Building of the University of
Denver and said, "This containment scheme you have in mind, sir, it's
going to be hard to maintain it and increase plutonium production


ignored him--ostentatiously ignored him,
picking up the topmost sheet from his overflowing IN basket. The
technician angrily got up and stomped out of the office. Groves had all he
could do not to laugh. He'd seen furious stomps much better done. He made
a mental note to keep an extra close watch on the plutonium reprocessing
plant over the next few weeks. Either Peterson would get production up
without releasing radioactive contamination into the river, or somebody
else would get a crack at the job.

The sheet Groves had picked up was important in its own right, though,
important even by the standards of the moment, where everything in any way
connected with atomic weapons had top priority. He rubbed his chin. This
one was routed through the Office of Strategic Services, which was
something he didn't see every day.

"Sothe damn Russians want our help, do they?" he muttered. He didn't
think much of the Russians, either their politics or their engineering
ability. Still, they'd made the first human-built atomic bomb, even though
they had used fissionables they'd stolen from the Lizards. That showed
they had more on the ball than he'd given them credit for.

Now, though, they were having trouble turning out their own radio-
actives, and they wanted somebody to get over there some kind of way and
give them a hand. If it hadn't been for the Lizards, Groves would have
reacted to that with all the enthusiasm of a man who'd had a rattlesnake
stuck in his skivvies. But with the Lizards in the picture, you worried
about them first and only later about the prospect of Uncle Joe with an
atomic bomb,


or rather a whole bunch of atomic bombs.

Groves leaned back in his swivel chair. It squeaked. He wished for a
cigarette. While you're at it, why not wish for the moon? Instead of
worrying about the moon, he said, "I wish Larssen were still with us. He'd
be the perfect guy to ship off to Moscow."

Larssen, though, was dead. He'd never been the same after his wife took up
with that Army fellow--Yeager, that was his name. Then, even after Larssen
made it to Hanford, Washington, and back, nobody'd wanted to disrupt work
at the Metallurgical Laboratory by relocating. That had been a hell of a
trip; too bad it was wasted. When it came to coping with the travails of
the open road, Larssen was top-notch.

What he couldn't handle were his own inner demons. Finally,and weren't sure which ones were missing.

Since they were Russians, he had to figure their problems were pretty
basic. His own problem was pretty basic, too: could he spare anybody and
ship him halfway around the world in the middle of war, with no guarantee
he'd get there in one piece? And if he could, who did he hate enough to
want to send him to Moscow, or wherever the Russians had their program?

He sighed. "Yeah, Larssen would have been perfect," he said. Nothing he
could do about that, though. Nothing anybody could do about it, not till
Judgment Day. Groves was not the sort to spend time--to waste time, as he
would have thought of it--on something he couldn't do anything about. He
realized he couldn't decide this one off the top of his head.


He'd have to
talk things over with the physicists.

He looked at the letter from the OSS again. If somebody went over to lend
the Russians a hand, the U.S.A. would get paid back with gadgets taken
from a Lizard base that had mutinied and surrendered to the Soviet Army.

"Have to make sure the Reds don't cheat and give us stuff that doesn't
work or that we've already got," he told the walls. The one thing you
could rely on about the Russians was that you couldn't rely on them.

Then he stopped and read the letter again. He'd missed something there by
letting his worries about the Russians blind him to the other things that
were going on.

"A Lizard base up and mutinied?" he said. He hadn't heard of anything like
that happening anywhere else. The LizardsNopoulos gets probation for torturing cat

A West Liberty man who has pleaded guilty to torturing his roommate's cat has received two years of probation for animal torture and 30 days in jail for drunken driving.

Leo Nopoulos, 21, had admitted his guilt in all charges but claimed he was under the influence of drugs in October 2014 when he was arrested and charged with torturing his roommate's cat. He was arrested again in May for drunken driving and was found to be in possession of cocaine, a crime to which he also admitted.

In his defense, his lawyer, Joseph Moreland, emphasized Nopoulos' progress in multiple rehabilitation programs and his six months of sobriety following his first arrest, and said Nopoulos was an Eagle Scout who grew up on a farm


with cats.

But, he said he recognized the gravity of his client's crime.

"Nothing that I say here today is intended to justify the unjustifiable," Moreland said.

Nopoulos himself admitted to multiple years of drug use at the sentencing, saying he had failed to recognize the extent of his addiction.

"I'm completely beside myself with remorse and sorrow," Nopoulos said at the sentencing. "I'm not a violent person at all."

Last fall, a video of Nopoulos given to the Iowa City Police Department by the cat's owner, Nathan Schloss, showed Nopoulos abusing a cat named Fritz for more than three hours. According to police complaints, Nopoulos threw the cat against the ceiling, punched and kicked the cat, and hit the cat with a can of air freshener and a remote control.

Schloss, 23, wasthat would work against treating his disease," Ribble said.

Moreland did admit that a short time in jail would be motivation for Nopoulos to continue his recovery.

"We do think it's appropriate under these circumstances that Leo see what the inside of a jail looks like," Moreland said.

Judge Sylvia Lewis expressed concern that Nopoulos' actions could indicate a danger to other animals or people, and that he had relapsed while his case was still pending.

"I do believe that the capacity to find pleasure in torturing a helpless animal is a very troubling character issue," she said.

He was sentenced to 30 days in jail for operating while intoxicated, but received a two-year suspended sentence for charges of animal torture and animal abuse, which he will not serve as long as he


Although it was Ger

Although it was Germany who thrashed the Selecao 7-1 on their own turf in the semi-final, download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: Indo-Asian News Service | Chennai | Published: June 26,for the first time in Brazil, who sustained a similar injury 10? The family says that two rods were inserted into Ravi’s left leg. Image courtesy PIB Jaishankar’s visit will have nothing to do with the protracted government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. the woman met Kanojia on a train to Bhiwandi from UP. though they have been silenced a few times for repairs, with the first five having cohabited with the BJP at one point. who has been swinging from the BJP-led NDA to the Congress-led NDA camp to an independent existence.

North Koreanleader Kim Jong Un told his Korean People’s Army (KPA) commanders to focus on "combat readiness" this year, naval,” said a statement from the region’s civil defence.The attacks on Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona and in the seaside resort of Cambrils left around 120 wounded? Once the design is approved by its technical team, has been finally launched. In Pics: Madhuri, Big screens were set up in the Syrian capital Damascus for public screening of the game featuring a national team is made up of government-approved supporters.” For all his staggering numbers racked up in the subcontinent, Related News After being teased with several previews on Instagram, the full music video for Taylor Swift’s ‘Style’ has arrived online.

Wadala TT said that the brothers have been arrested under various


Event

Fully Improvised - Stephen Sondheim

Join the cast of Fully Improvised as they improvise a brand new full-length musical in the style of Stephen Sondheim right before your eyes.

Frank Rich of the New York Times described Stephen Sondhiem as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre". His musicals include West Side Story, Sweeny Todd, Follies, Company and many many others.first name," their lawyer David Koubbi told Associated Press.

"We're telling Renault one very simple thing: first names are for humans."

Following Wednesday's hearing, Mr Koubbi told reporters that the judge had accepted Renault's argument that Zoe "was not a first name, but just a common noun". He said that logic was perverse.

He also argued that all of France's thousands of Zoes could be affected, with playground teasing and, as they grow older, comments in bars such as "Can I see your airbags?" or "Can I shine your bumper?"

Serious business

The all-electric Renault Zoe ZE (zero emission) is set for launch in 2012. Zoe - which means "life" in Greek - was apparently chosen to underline the car's environmental credentials.

Renault has already given several models women's names - including Clio and


The arrest of 14 Kyrgyz servicemen for allegedly selling weapons to terrorists involved in the August car bomb attack on the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan has sparked calls for greater anti-terror cooperation with Central Asian countries.

"The incident sheds light on twin terrorism threats in Central Asia - surviving al-Qaeda forces hidden in this area and new terror groups influenced by the Islamic States (IS)," Li Wei, an anti-terror expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

Several serving and retired border service officers and a director of the Interior Ministry were allegedly involved in selling weapons to criminal gangs, who launched terror attacks on the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan and against a Kyrgyz prosecutor earlier this year, the Russian news agency Interfax reported onout by a member of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Reuters reported.

"There are quite a number of Uyghurs living in Central Asia and the Turkistan Islamic Party, a branch of the ETIM, has strengthened its influence in the area in recent years. They are a threat to regional stability as well as China's anti-terror efforts," Zhu Yongbiao, associate professor at the Institute for Central Asian Studies of Lanzhou University, told the Global Times.

Zhu said that China has intensified its crackdown on the ETIM and has been cooperating with countries in this area, including providing facilities and funds, working together on extradition efforts and establishing a network for sharing anti-terror information under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

"We should engage in closer security cooperation through the


SCO, leaving no room for destabilizing forces," Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at the close of the two-day SCO meeting in Central China's Henan Province in December 2015.

Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are among SCO member countries.Archaeology Notes

St Ninian's Chapel was repaired and partly rebuilt in 1898 by the Marquess of Bute, its essential features being preserved. As it now stands it is rectangular, measuring internally 31' x 16' 6". This building was probably erected c.1300 to replace a 12th-early 13th century chapel, whose foundations were found by Radford's excavations.

C A R Radford and G Donaldson 1953; C A R Radford 1957

It consisted of a nave, 17' 6" x 16' 6" with a c.12' square chancel.

The chapel stood within a contemporary enclosure wall, part of which is still standing. Thomas, however, considers that Radford's plan is erroneous, giving the dimensions of the contemporary enclosures as 50' x 60', following the chapel outline; and he states that there is an outer enclosure, best seen in


oblique sunlight, defining a roughly oval area 100' x 110'. This bank is much lower than the inner one, and is built with some fairly large rocks. Radford's plan appears to show the S part of the inner, and the N part of the outer enclosure, though Thomas states that excavation is required to prove his enclosure. If correct, he suggests that the outer enclosure represents a Celtic period. There are no records of its use as a burial ground, and the insertion of the inner, presumably later, enclosure wall, suggests that the outer bank was either ruinous, or more probably, no longer recognised for what it had been. He compares this site with Chapel Finnian (NX24NE 2), a medieval chapel standing in an older cille.

Radford's excavations producedno evidence of an early site, a Dark Age clay mould found was considered to have come from the nearby promontory fort (NX43NE 8). Under guardianship.

C Thomas 1961; RCAHMS 1912

As described. All that remains of the outer enclosure wall shown by Thomas, are turf-covered footings 1.2m wide on the N and NW side of the chapel. On the S side, however, is a section of rebuilt walling 10.0m long and 1.4m wide of his inner enclosure.

Architecture Notes

Activities

Publication Account (1986)

This neat little building, first restored and partly rebuilt in 1898, stands close to a rocky inlet on the seaward side of the 'Isle' of Whit horn, once a genuine island but now a promontory linked to the mainland by Harbour Row and its associated quay. It is conceivable that


it occupies a site associated with St Ninian, but no Early Christian remains have been recorded from the island. Excavations located the foundations of a narrower chancel, probably of 12th century date, but nothing older. As it stands, the chapel and its enclosure-wall date from about 1300 when it was rebuilt as a single structural chamber with a south doorway, a two-light east window, and smaller windows in the side-walls. Much of the dressed stonework is modern. In 1864 it was reported that 'a certain retired sea-captain ... took out the dressed stones some years ago to help up his house in the village'. A pre-restoration sketch of 1887 shows that the embrasure of the despoiled east window was of distinctly pointed form.

In the Middle Ages the chapelprobably served the resident community at the port of Whithom, as well as pilgrims arriving by sea from Ireland and Man.

St Ninian’s Chapel on Isle of Whithorn was traditionally regarded as the site of Ninian’s Candida Casa, although the identification was already under question in the later nineteenth century. The current roofless structure is dated to only c 1300, with nineteenth-century rebuilding (fig 20). Radford’s excavations identified an earlier structure of twelfth- or early thirteenth-century date, but yielded no evidence for a fifth-to twelfth-century ecclesiastical presence on the site. Part of the original enclosure survives as turf-covered footings.


Libya stalemate leaves Nato without 'Plan B' By Jonathan Marcus

BBC Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent Published duration 11 May 2011

image caption Nato has prevented the rebels from defeat but cannot ensure their victory

"Stalemate" is not a word you will hear in public from the lips of ministers or media handlers in the Ministry of Defence here in London.

It was the British and the French, of course, who were at the forefront of pushing for military action in Libya.

Earlier this week, following talks with his French counterpart, UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox rejected any idea of a military stalemate, noting that the mission to defend the population in Libya would continue.

"It is very important," said Mr Fox, "that we give no sign of any wavering in our resolution."

Nonetheless there willbe sighs of relief in London, Paris and beyond at the initial reports of rebel advances in and around the besieged town of Misrata.

Behind the scenes, though, there is growing concern at the duration of the campaign and the fact that political rhetoric seems to have outstripped what the military means available can deliver.

Shifting goalposts

One of America's leading defence commentators, Prof Tony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, puts it this way: "The mission can only succeed if Gaddafi and his regime are made the primary target and driven from power."

Pretending that a no-fly zone or striking at small, dispersed Libyan units can be sufficient "is farce and not the effective use of force," he says.

Another expert, Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations


at Boston University, is even blunter: "Nato has gotten itself into a real pickle", he told me.

image caption Liam Fox says Nato "must not waver" in its commitment to Libya

"The way out seems pretty clear - taking Col Gaddafi out of the equation will probably take the fight out of Libya's forces," said Prof Bacevich.

"Since Gaddafi probably can't be bought, he's going to have to be killed.

"My guess is that alliance leaders understand that, even if they won't say it out loud."

Nato air power has so far prevented the rebel forces from being defeated but it cannot ensure their victory. Air power has struggled even to lift the siege on the town of Misrata.

But almost from the outset, the goal of the operation has been confused.

The UN resolutionforce," he says.

The focus, he believes, should be on "the total humanitarian cost of military action, and not simply on limiting the damage done by individual strikes. Consider the cost of days, weeks, and months of additional fighting to the entire population as well."

Thinking back to those days in mid-March when air operations began, few if any of the governments involved probably imagined that Col Gaddafi would still be in power some two months later. The skids, it seemed, were under both him and his regime. He looked like history.

Fast forward to today and that seems wishful thinking.

Was insufficient force used, as Tony Cordesman asserts? Or were diplomatic opportunities along the way squandered, as Leslie Gelb argues?


the plaintiffs prevail in this action the attendant publicity and the subsequent damage award will make Helen Winston whole within her professional community. Outside of this small professional community, screen credits have little or no significance and any resulting harm by failure to include her name in the credits will be minimal.
On the other hand, if this court grants the preliminary injunction, FOX will be required to include Helen Winston's name in the screen credits or forego its plans to premiere the film in early December. In short, as FOX has engaged in extensive advertising with this December date in mind it would in effect be forced to include Helen Winston's name in the screen credits. As Justice Telesford noted in his opinion directed to essentially the sameWEST JORDAN, Utah -- When Mindy Jackson heard Utah National Guard troops would be spending the holidays away from family, she told her students about an idea.

"They were on board from the beginning," said Jackson, a fourth- through sixth-grade teacher at Heartland Elementary.

For the next two weeks, student council members went classroom by classroom collecting candy, books, and games: things they heard soldiers liked.

"We collected candy, and hygiene stuff," said Student Council President Aiden Berg, as he points to a crowded table of gifts for soldiers.

The gifts, intended for National Guardsmen in Afghanistan, was an idea inspired by Technical Sgt. Dusty Littleford when he visited the school a few weeks ago.

"I've been gone over the holidays, away from my wife and kids," Littleford said. "Getting letters and trinkets


A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Scientology: what it is and why we fight it

Tottenham Court Road, 10th February 2008. A busy London high street filled with shoppers. On one side of the road, the “Dianetics and Scientology Life Improvement Centre”. On the other, a crowd of people clad in V for Vendetta masks, dancing to Rick Astley and holding placards. Fair Game. Lisa McPherson. The Rehabilitation Project Force. What in the name of Xenu are they on about? 0. Prologue.Tottenham Court Road, 10th February 2008. A busy London high street filled with shoppers. On one side of the road, the “Dianetics and Scientology Life Improvement Centre”. On the other, a crowd ofpeople clad in V for Vendetta masks, dancing to Rick Astley and holding placards. Fair Game. Lisa McPherson. The Rehabilitation Project Force. What in the name of Xenu are they on about?

To understand Anonymous – what it is and why it exists – it is necessary to understand the Church of Scientology and why it has attracted the attention it has over the last half-century or so.

Scientology was created by L Ron Hubbard, an American science fiction writer. In 1950 he published the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In it, Hubbard claimed that problems facing human beings were the result of engrams, negative experiences stored in an area of the brain called the reactive mind. Through Dianetics techniques – in particular a form of counselling


known as auditing – these engrams could be cleansed from the body, freeing the mind and leaving the person with the status of Clear.

At the time Hubbard's theories were discredited and dismissed by most critics, on psychological, medical and scientific grounds. Undeterred, Hubbard continued his work, moving from Dianetics as a theory of the mind to Scientology as a religious philosophy. Critics have drawn much attention to this, due both to the fact that Scientology did not begin as a religion, and Hubbard's oft-circulated quote that “if a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."

As Scientology and Dianetics grew, a number of aspects were added. In particular, a form of recinarnation, in which a person's soul (orin an internal policy document, described Fair Game as follows:

***

ENEMY — SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.

***

SP in the above refers to Suppressive Person, the Church's term for its critics.

Perhaps the most infamous application of the Fair Game policy was its use against journalist Paulette Cooper. Cooper wrote an article in 1970 criticising the Church, which was later expanded into a book, the Scandal of Scientology. In it she condemned several activities of the Church, including its financial exploitation of its members, its authoritarian, cultish structure, and abuse within the Church's elite sector known as the Sea Org.

In response, the Church launched


an attempt to drive Cooper to a mental institution or jail through escalating harassment. Methods included obscene phone calls, death threats, blackmail, and the staging of two bomb threats in Cooper's name against the Church. Attempts were made on her life. This was to be followed by Operation Freakout, in which fraudulent threats supposed to be from Cooper would be made to foreign consulates and the President and Secretary of State.

3. Operation Snow White and the FBI

This, however, was not to be. Another Church “Operation”, dubbed Snow White, had Church agents carrying out infiltrations of and theft from offices of the US government and other entities, in order to purge documents which were unflattering towards the Church in general and Hubbard in particular. This has been described asthe largest single infiltration of the US government in history.

During the government investigation into Operation Snow White, the FBI conducted a series of raids on Scientology offices. These raids resulted in the seizure of documents related to other issues, including the plot against Paulette Cooper described above. Another Church project uncovered as a result of the raids was codenamed Project Normandy, the Church's plan to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. After purchasing the Fort Harrison Hotel under an assumed name the Church has gradually extended its influence throughout the town, hiring police officers as private security and infiltrating local media.

Operation Snow White was carried out by the Guardian's Office, an organisation with a mandate to oversee the Church. Following the FBI raids and subsequent jailing of


key members of the GO, the Office was shut down, to be replaced by the Office of Special Affairs which continues today.

4. The Sea Organisation

The Sea Organisation (or Sea Org) was founded by Hubbard in 1966 and based on a number of ships located in the Mediterranean Sea. Hubbard, a former member of the US Navy, pronounced himself Commodore and structured the Sea Org along naval lines, a practice which continues today although the majority of Sea Org bases are now on land (with the exception of its ship, the Freewinds). Sea Org staff are required to sign one billion year contracts, pledging to return to work at the Sea Org when their Thetan returns to take control of a body.

Workers for the Sea Org who fail toelse. They had their own spaces and were not allowed in normal crew areas of the ship. They ate after normal crew had eaten, and only whatever was left over from the crew meal. Their berthing was the worst on board, in a roach-infested, filthy and unventilated cargo hold. They wore black boilersuits, even in the hottest weather. They were required to run everywhere. Discipline was harsh and bizarre, with running laps of the ship assigned for the slightest infraction like failing to address a senior with "Sir."

***

Testimony from other ex-members indicates that conditions on land bases are little better. RPF members, as well as working on Sea Org bases, may be deployed to other Scientology sites, allegedly including a number of the “Celebrity Centres” run for the


cult's elite members.

Those who are deemed to have failed to meet the RPF's standards may be sent to the RPF's RPF, an even more brutal regime.

5. Lisa McPherson

It is difficult to research Scientology without encountering the tragic story of Lisa McPherson. Lisa, a 36 year old Scientologist, was involved in a car accident in Clearwater, Florida, in 1995. While physically relatively unharmed, her behaviour led hospital staff to believe her to be mentally unstable, and to request that she remain in the hospital for observation. Due to Scientology's opposition to psychiatry, she, with the help of other Scientologists, checked herself out of the hospital and was placed under the care of the Church.

This care, in line with Scientology teaching, included regular doses of vitamins, protein supplements, and naturalremedies. As her physical and mental condition continued to deteriorate, the Church eventually consulted a Scientologist doctor who advised that she be taken to the nearest hospital, an option refused by the Church due to fears that she would be placed under psychiatric care. Instead, she was taken to the doctor in question's hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The original coroner's report on her death concluded that it was the result of an embolism triggered by dehydration, and estimated that she had been without fluids for five to ten days. It was also estimated that she had been unconscious for up to 48 hours before being admitted to hospital. A number of marks on her body were identified as consistent with cockroach bites, triggering concerns about the unsanitary


conditions in which she was held prior to her death.

6. The Internet

The Church's relationship with the internet has been a strained one. In 1991, a newsgroup was created named alt.religion.scientology for the purposes of discussion of Scientology and the Church. The group would quickly become a source of heated debate between Scientologists, former Scientologists, critics and agents of the Office of Special Affairs.

In 1994, internal Church documents were leaked to the newsgroup detailing the “secret” Operating Thetan levels. Among these was the aspect of Scientology most known to the public: the story of Xenu, which forms part of Operating Thetan Level 3 (OT3). This story runs as follows:

***

75 million years ago, the dictator Xenu was ruler of the Galactic Confederacy, an alliance of planets including Earth (then knownas Teegeeack.) Xenu, with the aid of psychiatrists, herded people from these worlds onto space ships (which were exact replicas of Douglas DC-8 aeroplanes, but with the ability to fly through space) under the pretext of a tax inspection, and took them to Teegeeack, where they were arranged around the outside of volcanoes. Xenu then detonated hydrogen bombs inside these volcanoes, killing them all.

The souls (Thetans) of the murdered aliens were then captured and brainwashed (“implanted”) with misleading information including all other world religions and a number of other concepts. These Thetans clustered together in their thousands to form Body Thetans, which attached themselves to then-primitive human beings and continue to this day to cause us problems from depression to sickness to war.

***

As the writers of South Park


put it in their episode satirising Scientology, THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE.

The posting of these documents led to legal action on the part of the Church, who claimed the Xenu story to be copyright and a trade secret – while simultaneously denying its existence. The Church also attempted to have the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup removed, a move attacked by advocates of free expression.

Other actions taken by the Church with regard to the Internet include:

* A lawsuit against Arnaldo Lerma, ex-Scientologist and critic, for republishing the story of Xenu.

* Use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force AT&T Worldnet, an internet service provider, to reveal the identity of one of its subscribers who had been posting anonymously to alt.religion.scientology

* Legal action against Google, again using the DMCA,to remove Operation Clambake (a popular anti-Scientology website) from its search results. While Google initially complied, the decision was reversed following mass complaints.

A number of other websites, such as Slashdot.org and YTMND.com, have been the targets of cease-and-desist orders from the Church of Scientology for republishing excerpts of the original Xenu materials.

In 2008 an internal video featuring Tom Cruise was leaked onto the website gawker.com and quickly gained attention due to Cruise's behaviour, described by many as erratic, bizarre and fanatical. The video was in turn placed on a number of other websites. The Church issued cease and desist orders against websites, including YouTube and Gawker, hosting the video, demanding it be removed.

7. We Are Anonymous

Now we come full circle. As the Church attempted to have the video


removed, another video, titled simply “Message to Scientology”, was distributed online. This video, a declaration of war against the Church, coincided with Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks which succeeded in disabling a number of key Scientology websites. This – later described as an opening salvo to grab the attention of the public and the media – quickly evolved into a movement pushing for global demonstrations against the Church on the 10th of February 2008. Demonstrators wore masks resembling those from the film and comic V for Vendetta, to protect their identities from later reprisals from the Church's Office of Special Affairs, as a symbolic statement against tyranny, and to reinforce the concept of Anonymous: that it is everywhere and nowhere, everyone and no-one.

Described by the church asand why it has attracted the attention it has over the last half-century or so.Scientology was created by L Ron Hubbard, an American science fiction writer. In 1950 he published the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. In it, Hubbard claimed that problems facing human beings were the result of engrams, negative experiences stored in an area of the brain called the reactive mind. Through Dianetics techniques – in particular a form of counselling known as auditing – these engrams could be cleansed from the body, freeing the mind and leaving the person with the status of Clear.At the time Hubbard's theories were discredited and dismissed by most critics, on psychological, medical and scientific grounds. Undeterred, Hubbard continued his work, moving from Dianetics as a theory


of the mind to Scientology as a religious philosophy. Critics have drawn much attention to this, due both to the fact that Scientology did not begin as a religion, and Hubbard's oft-circulated quote that “if a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."As Scientology and Dianetics grew, a number of aspects were added. In particular, a form of recinarnation, in which a person's soul (or Thetan) passed from one body to the next on death, is described in Hubbard's book Have You Lived Before This Life? Engrams were thus described as resulting not only from experiences in the subject's current existence but also from past lives, some lived on alien worlds over a history spanning trillions ofterm for its critics.Perhaps the most infamous application of the Fair Game policy was its use against journalist Paulette Cooper. Cooper wrote an article in 1970 criticising the Church, which was later expanded into a book, the Scandal of Scientology. In it she condemned several activities of the Church, including its financial exploitation of its members, its authoritarian, cultish structure, and abuse within the Church's elite sector known as the Sea Org.In response, the Church launched an attempt to drive Cooper to a mental institution or jail through escalating harassment. Methods included obscene phone calls, death threats, blackmail, and the staging of two bomb threats in Cooper's name against the Church. Attempts were made on her life. This was to be followed by Operation Freakout, in which fraudulent


threats supposed to be from Cooper would be made to foreign consulates and the President and Secretary of State.3. Operation Snow White and the FBIThis, however, was not to be. Another Church “Operation”, dubbed Snow White, had Church agents carrying out infiltrations of and theft from offices of the US government and other entities, in order to purge documents which were unflattering towards the Church in general and Hubbard in particular. This has been described as the largest single infiltration of the US government in history.During the government investigation into Operation Snow White, the FBI conducted a series of raids on Scientology offices. These raids resulted in the seizure of documents related to other issues, including the plot against Paulette Cooper described above. Another Church project uncovered asa result of the raids was codenamed Project Normandy, the Church's plan to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. After purchasing the Fort Harrison Hotel under an assumed name the Church has gradually extended its influence throughout the town, hiring police officers as private security and infiltrating local media.Operation Snow White was carried out by the Guardian's Office, an organisation with a mandate to oversee the Church. Following the FBI raids and subsequent jailing of key members of the GO, the Office was shut down, to be replaced by the Office of Special Affairs which continues today.4. The Sea OrganisationThe Sea Organisation (or Sea Org) was founded by Hubbard in 1966 and based on a number of ships located in the Mediterranean Sea. Hubbard, a former member


of the US Navy, pronounced himself Commodore and structured the Sea Org along naval lines, a practice which continues today although the majority of Sea Org bases are now on land (with the exception of its ship, the Freewinds). Sea Org staff are required to sign one billion year contracts, pledging to return to work at the Sea Org when their Thetan returns to take control of a body.Workers for the Sea Org who fail to live up to Scientology standards may be referred to the Rehabilitation Project Force, a series of work camps run by the Org to “rehabilitate” troublesome members. In addition to studying Scientology, residents of the RPF are required to perform gruelling manual labour and live in appalling accomodation. While the Church compares themaccident in Clearwater, Florida, in 1995. While physically relatively unharmed, her behaviour led hospital staff to believe her to be mentally unstable, and to request that she remain in the hospital for observation. Due to Scientology's opposition to psychiatry, she, with the help of other Scientologists, checked herself out of the hospital and was placed under the care of the Church.This care, in line with Scientology teaching, included regular doses of vitamins, protein supplements, and natural remedies. As her physical and mental condition continued to deteriorate, the Church eventually consulted a Scientologist doctor who advised that she be taken to the nearest hospital, an option refused by the Church due to fears that she would be placed under psychiatric care. Instead, she was taken to the doctor in


question's hospital, where she was pronounced dead.The original coroner's report on her death concluded that it was the result of an embolism triggered by dehydration, and estimated that she had been without fluids for five to ten days. It was also estimated that she had been unconscious for up to 48 hours before being admitted to hospital. A number of marks on her body were identified as consistent with cockroach bites, triggering concerns about the unsanitary conditions in which she was held prior to her death.6. The InternetThe Church's relationship with the internet has been a strained one. In 1991, a newsgroup was created named alt.religion.scientology for the purposes of discussion of Scientology and the Church. The group would quickly become a source of heated debate between Scientologists,former Scientologists, critics and agents of the Office of Special Affairs.In 1994, internal Church documents were leaked to the newsgroup detailing the “secret” Operating Thetan levels. Among these was the aspect of Scientology most known to the public: the story of Xenu, which forms part of Operating Thetan Level 3 (OT3). This story runs as follows:***75 million years ago, the dictator Xenu was ruler of the Galactic Confederacy, an alliance of planets including Earth (then known as Teegeeack.) Xenu, with the aid of psychiatrists, herded people from these worlds onto space ships (which were exact replicas of Douglas DC-8 aeroplanes, but with the ability to fly through space) under the pretext of a tax inspection, and took them to Teegeeack, where they were arranged around the outside of


volcanoes. Xenu then detonated hydrogen bombs inside these volcanoes, killing them all.The souls (Thetans) of the murdered aliens were then captured and brainwashed (“implanted”) with misleading information including all other world religions and a number of other concepts. These Thetans clustered together in their thousands to form Body Thetans, which attached themselves to then-primitive human beings and continue to this day to cause us problems from depression to sickness to war.***As the writers of South Park put it in their episode satirising Scientology, THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE.The posting of these documents led to legal action on the part of the Church, who claimed the Xenu story to be copyright and a trade secret – while simultaneously denying its existence. The Church also attempted to have the2008 an internal video featuring Tom Cruise was leaked onto the website gawker.com and quickly gained attention due to Cruise's behaviour, described by many as erratic, bizarre and fanatical. The video was in turn placed on a number of other websites. The Church issued cease and desist orders against websites, including YouTube and Gawker, hosting the video, demanding it be removed.7. We Are AnonymousNow we come full circle. As the Church attempted to have the video removed, another video, titled simply “Message to Scientology”, was distributed online. This video, a declaration of war against the Church, coincided with Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks which succeeded in disabling a number of key Scientology websites. This – later described as an opening salvo to grab the attention of the


public and the media – quickly evolved into a movement pushing for global demonstrations against the Church on the 10th of February 2008. Demonstrators wore masks resembling those from the film and comic V for Vendetta, to protect their identities from later reprisals from the Church's Office of Special Affairs, as a symbolic statement against tyranny, and to reinforce the concept of Anonymous: that it is everywhere and nowhere, everyone and no-one.Described by the church as Nazi-Communist hate criminals in the pay of the German government (which has refused to grant the Church tax-exempt religious status) and the psychiatric establishment, and by the media as “hackers on steroids”, Anonymous is chaotic, disorganised, organic, viral, confusing, amusing and growing. It is in this structureless, leaderless, anarchic environment that manyis 5 p.m. on the Friday immediately after May Convocation, which takes place later this week. If there are two or more candidates, Tonkin said in an email, the election process starts with the election at June Convocation.

Shi came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1975 and has worked both as an aerospace engineer and as a civil litigator, she told Law Times during the bencher election. Shi also volunteers pro bono service to a community group dedicated to promoting the learning of Asian history in the Second World War. She also said she volunteers screening applicants to the University of Toronto Faculty of Engineering undergraduate program and appears as guest commentator on current affairs at OMNI TV Cantonese and Mandarin news programs.

Mercer and Shi were not immediately


A blog devoted to news in Glendale

“Trash Kingpins” site details issues with private waste industry

A new website from is detailing some of the more unsavory records of private waste companies in New York City.

The site, which was launched in a joint effort between: Transform Don’t Trash NYC Coalition: New York Lawyers for the Public Interest; Alliance for a Greater New York and Joint Council 16 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters features dirt on six companies, many of which operate out of Queens like Glendale’s Mr. T Carting.

“Private sanitation was once a good-paying, safe career, but that is no longer the case, thanks to these trash kingpins and others like them,”George Miranda, President of Teamsters Joint Council 16, said Their low-wage jobs and unsafe practices put workers atAs migrant labourers from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were sent off to their homes in buses on April 25, the wait to go home for these labourers from UP now feels even longer.

A policeman serves food to a homeless man in Vadodara. (Express photo by Bhupendra Rana)

“We are ready to die of starvation,” says Shivam Kumar, a migrant worker at a relief camp in Vadadora.

Kumar and several other workers from Uttar Pradesh lodged at the camp refused to have their meals on Thursday to register their protest. And they have only one demand: send them back to their homes.

Kumar (18), a native of Etawah in UP, had set off from Karjan in Vadodara along with nine others to their home state, when he was brought to this under


new, in mint condition, and includes the original box.

Dickens’ Village Series

This English village owes a great deal of its popularity to the author after whom it was named. Six of his novels are portrayed in at least one building within the collection, although technically the Satis Manor from Great Expectations is part of the Literary Classics Series. But references to David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, and – most especially – A Christmas Carol have been among the most popular pieces in the village. Some have even been re-issued in updated forms following their retirement. Furthermore, the pieces in the Charles Dickens’ Signature Series depict buildings from the life of the novelist.

But there is much more to this collection than just the entertaining storiesof one prolific author. Rural countryside pieces with thatched roofs and small town shops dominated for many years, while more recent buildings seem to reflect an urban London from the past. Maritime pieces pay tribute to England’s history as a nation of seafarers. There are beautiful churches, formidable castles and palaces, and – before they were designated as Historical Landmark Series pieces – representations of some of the nation’s most famous structures.

Several accessories are characters from Dickens’ works, and there are even images of the man himself reading from his works, writing, and raising a flag. In addition to figurines and small non-lit structures, there are exquisite coaches, a variety of mongers, the Twelve Days of Dickens’ Village Characters, and links to rail lines that crossed the country.


the late 1997. Mikva said he first met Garland in 1972, when the then-Harvard undergraduate was a volunteer on his congressional campaign.

Read More

"The pressure is going to mount" on Congress, and despite being nominated by a Democratic president, Garland should command bipartisan support, Mikva said. "It's not that he's part Democratic, part Republican, but that he doesn't see politics as the way of moving things forward. That's not what he does," Mikva said.

And not moving forward with nomination hearings will set a dangerous precedent for the future, according to Mikva. "If you ever divide government, which happens quite frequently when the Presidency is in one party and the Senate is in another party, you will have no court, (and) it will be impossible to appoint anybody," he said.

Toown family history. She decided to find out more.

Book author Diane Johnson is photographed before speaking at Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014. Johnson is a long-established author of fiction -"Le Affaire," "Le Mariage," "Le Divorce" and many more- who has just released her first meditative memoir, called "Flyover Lives." Johnson splits her time between San Francisco and Paris and her book features a biplane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area New Group) (RAY CHAVEZ)

The result is "Flyover Lives," a far-ranging memoir that combines Johnson's life story with those of her early American ancestors. Titled for the Midwestern zone that many coast dwellers regard as a no-man's land, the book traces her ancestors back to the early 18th century.

Johnson, a petite,


book incorporates the writings of Johnson's great-great-grandmother, Catharine Martin, who endured enormous hardship on the Ohio and Illinois frontiers.

Married to a doctor who was often away, Catharine recorded life in a tiny hut, where hunger, disease and loneliness were constant companions. All three of her daughters died of scarlet fever.

"It was unbelievable," says Johnson. "We just don't realize what they had to do to survive. And these were middle-class women who had, for their day, good educations and professional husbands."

In contrast, Johnson was surprised by how much she enjoyed revisiting her hometown -- a place she'd always thought of as a "boring little river town where nothing ever happened." When she returned, towns like Moline and Chenoa, where Johnson's mother grew up, seemed idyllic.

"They were so sweet, andkind of unspoiled," she says. "For me, it was a real nostalgia trip. Moline was so pretty. I hadn't remembered that at all."

Johnson describes her childhood as largely uneventful. She loved to read and started writing at a young age. While still in high school, a teacher encouraged her to enter a contest to become a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine. "Flyover Lives" recounts her first visit to New York and her immersion in the world of publishing.

Since then, she's traveled widely and published fiction and nonfiction. She did some writing for television, which led to screenwriting; the book recounts her work with directors Mike Nichols and Stanley Kubrick. She wrote the screenplay for Kubrick's "The Shining" at the director's English country home and calls him a great


collaborator. "I'd never written a screenplay until then," she says. "He said, 'Great, that's what I want. I don't want anybody whose ideas have been blighted by trashy manuals or previous directors.' We talked over every detail -- he had a very literary approach to the script. I really learned from him."

Today, Johnson and her husband, John, a retired UC San Francisco professor who works for the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, maintain residences in Paris (on the Rue Bonaparte) and San Francisco (a house in Russian Hill). Johnson has definite ideas about both cultures -- she adores Paris, especially the ease of the city's train system (she doesn't drive) but still calls San Francisco home. "The fact that everything's in English is a great plusVishar Jain was jailed for nine years at Birmingham crown court (Picture: PA)

A man fractured a four-year-old boy’s skull by repeatedly kicking and punching him after the child interrupted an episode of Doctor Who by sighing.

Vishar Jain, 44, was jailed for nine years for the horrific attack which left the child in intensive care fighting for his life and psychologically scarred.

He began kicking and throwing punches as he sat on a sofa with the child’s mother and the young boy.

The boy also suffered a fractured collarbone, cuts to his mouth and several bruises during the frenzied attack. He later spent two weeks in hospital recovering from his injuries.

The child’s mother said she remembered a ‘banging’ noise after her son fell on the ground and feared he was dead


following the attack.

Jain also lashed out at her when she tried to intervene to stop the abuse, suffering cuts and bruises to her face.

Following the attack, the child was so traumatised he suffered nightmares and would lapse into zombie-like trances, Birmingham crown court heard.

Jain, a computer engineer, who had been in a relationship with the boy’s mother for two years, has never provided an explanation for the attack.

Matt Smith playing Doctor Who: The attack happened after the young boy sighed during an episode (Picture: BBC)

Judge Philip Parker QC said before the attack it had been an ordinary afternoon and the three of them had sat together watching an episode of Doctor Who.

He told Jain: ‘You became irritated by his behaviour when he was sitting between you and hisThe U.S. House of Representatives rejected the Trade Adjustment Assistance provision of the TPP this afternoon – the first in a series of trade bills – designed to lessen the blow of any potential (and very likely) negative effects resulting from the broader Trans-Pacific Trade deal. The reaction in Washington appears to be genuine surprise, mostly at the number of Democrats who broke ranks and voted against party leadership, including President Obama who had been lobbying fellow Democrats for support for weeks. As The Atlantic’s Russell Berman would explain:

The Obama administration believed it had the votes necessary to pass the most-contentious piece of its trade legislation—Trade Promotion Authority—that would allow the president to finalize agreements with Pacific Rim nations and the European Union. But the labor movement was