those delicacies elusive. Nonetheless, a group from the Chevy Chase-based Mycological Association of Washington sporting wicker baskets, hats and walking sticks took to the shores of Lake Bernard Frank in Derwood last weekend, determined to uncover the fickle fungi.

Areas near bodies of water, such as streams or lakes are often the best spots to search, they said.

"I was hooked 20 years ago, the first time I did it," said Takoma Park resident Sara Friedman, who first started hunting mushrooms in New York and attended Saturday's hunt. "It's more like an obsession than a hobby."

Trekking through the woods Saturday, foray leader Mitch Fournet lead the group to spots where he's uncovered chanterelles in the past. There were none to be found, but other fungi, like the bolete — mushroomsUS President Barack Obama speaks during the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) 18th Annual Gala Dinner in Washington on May 8, 2012. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Just how unpopular is President Barack Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that a man in prison in Texas is getting 4 out of 10 votes in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary.

The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. With 83 percent of precincts reporting, Obama was receiving 60 percent of the vote to Judd's 40 percent.

For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Obama is enough to get Judd votes.

"I voted against Obama," said Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old


electrician from Cross Lanes who called himself a conservative Democrat. "I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again."

When asked which presidential candidate he voted for, Brown said, "That guy out of Texas."

Judd was able to get on the state ballot by paying a $2,500 fee and filing a form known as a notarized certification of announcement, said Jake Glance, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office.

Attracting at least 15 percent of the vote would normally qualify a candidate for a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. But state Democratic Party Executive Director Derek Scarbro said no one has filed to be a delegate for Judd. The state party also believes that Judd has failed tofile paperwork required of presidential candidates, but officials continue to research the matter, Scarbro said.

Voters in other conservative states showed their displeasure with Obama in Democratic primaries last March.

In Oklahoma, anti-abortion protestor Randall Terry got 18 percent of the primary vote. A lawyer from Tennessee, John Wolfe, pulled nearly 18,000 votes in the Louisiana primary. In Alabama, 18 percent of Democratic voters chose "uncommitted" in the primary rather than vote for Obama.

Obama's energy policies and the Environmental Protection Agency's handling of mining-related permits have incurred the wrath of West Virginia's coal industry. With the state the nation's second-biggest producer of this fossil fuel, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Sen. Joe Manchin _both Democrats have championed the industry – have declined to say whether they will support Obama in


November.

Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Obama handily in the state's 2008 primary, and he lost the state to Republican John McCain in the general election. Polls show some of his worst approval ratings in West Virginia.

Brown, the Cross Lanes electrician, went to the polls Tuesday with his 22-year-old daughter, Emily. She planned to vote for Judd too until she found out where Judd has been living.

"I'm not voting for somebody who's in prison," she said.

She was certain about one thing: "I just want to vote against Barack Obama."FireEye's investigation as well as its own ongoing metadata analyses and behavioral tracking. The company has done other Iran-linked takedowns in recent months. The network removed Tuesday was not as large as some of those, according to the company: about 21,000 users followed one or more of the Facebook pages; 1,900 joined one or more of the groups; and about 2,600 people followed at least one of the three Instagram accounts.

FireEye's findings were broader in scope, focusing on a network of English-language social media accounts, particularly Twitter accounts, which were created between April 2018 and March 2019. FireEye observed that many of the accounts it was tracking were eventually removed. A Twitter spokesperson said that the company took down 2,800 accounts at the beginning of May that were


is a perception that the poor Europeans are overtaxed serfs. But a closer look reveals that this is a myth that prevents Americans from understanding the vast shortcomings of our own system.

A few years ago, an American acquaintance of mine who lives in Sweden told me that, quite by chance, he and his Swedish wife were in New York City and ended up sharing a limousine to the theater district with a southern senator and his wife. This senator, a conservative, anti-tax Democrat, asked my acquaintance about Sweden and swaggeringly commented about "all those taxes the Swedes pay."

To which this American replied, "The problem with Americans and their taxes is that we get nothing for them." He then told the senator about the comprehensive services and benefits thatBy Andrew Howard |
Feb. 12, 2019

WASHINGTON - Former astronaut Mark Kelly said he will seek the Democratic nomination for Senate in 2020, jumpstarting what experts were already predicting would be one of the "most competitive" races of the year in the bist to unseat Republican Sen. Martha McSally.

By Claire Caulfield |
Jan. 3, 2019

PHOENIX – The operators of a treatment plant near a Superfund site in Tucson have made some changes after the discovery of perfluorinated chemicals in groundwater. Authorities blame the contamination on manufacturing activities and unlined landfills near the airport decades ago.


Our Crew

These are the Speakers

Walter Bayly

Walter Bayly was named Chief Executive Officer of BCP, and Chief Operating Officer of Credicorp effective April 2008. Before being CEO he was the Chief Financial Officer of the organization. Previously, Mr. Bayly held various other management positions within BCP, which included managing the Wholesale Banking Group, Investment Banking as well as Systems and Reengineering. Mr. Bayly joined BCP in 1993, after three years at Casa Bolsa México where he was Partner and Managing Director in Corporate Finance. Prior to that, for ten years he was with Citibank in Lima, New York, México, and Caracas, where he worked primarily in the corporate finance and loan syndications. Mr. Bayly received a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Universidad del Pacífico in Lima, Peru, anda Master’s degree in Management from Arthur D. Little Management Education Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mr. Bayly is currently Chairman of The Board of Prima AFP (Private Pension Management Co), Member of the Board of Directors of The Institute of International Finance, Cia de Seguros Pacífico Peruano Suiza, Inversiones Centenario, and the Fondo de Seguro de Depósitos (Deposit Insurance Fund), and Member of the Board of Advisors of Universidad del Pacífico and the Peruvian chapter of Universidad Tecnológica de Monterrey.


Jitendra Nath Das

Jitendra Nath Das was an Indian politician belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was elected to the Lok Sabha, lower house of the Parliament of India from Jalpaiguri in 1991 and 1996.

References

External links
  Official biographical sketch in Parliament of India website

Category:1938 births
Category:Communist Party of India (Marxist) politicians from West Bengal
Category:People from Jalpaiguri district
Category:10th Lok Sabha members
Category:11th Lok Sabha members
Category:Lok Sabha members from West Bengal
Category:Living peopleTraditionally, there are two danger zones for Russian foreign policy.

The first is when Russia is too weak and the West dismisses its national interest as irrelevant. This lasted for the first two decades in the life of the Russian Federation. It began with the Kosovo war, Nato's eastern expansion, the US decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 and its decision to topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

Successive US presidents - Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama - mouthed interest in Russia but dismissed it as a poor nation struggling to come to terms with loss of empire. "We hear what you say, but we are going to do what we want anyway," went the collective mantra from the White House.

Western exceptionalism ended with the Russian


series of imposed colour revolutions that destroyed entire regions (by which he meant the Arab Spring); gaining advantageous trade positions in the Middle East; cultivating China as an ally; changing the balance of power with Europe in its own favour.

Even less hawkish Russian foreign policy hands like Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, tweeted recently: "Neither Turkey nor Russia is itching for a fight with the other in/over Syria. Official rhetoric in Moscow is about conflict prevention. Yet the Russian military probably agree that Turkish forces had to be given a powerful signal that they had gone too far."

The "powerful signal" that Trenin referred to was an attack on a Turkish military convoy which killed at least 34 soldiers and wounded many more in Idlib.

Thestrike on the convoy, which the Russia military commanders blamed on Turkey, both for its continued artillery strikes and for not telling them in advance where Turkish troops were going, was a clear misreading of both the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mentality and his precarious political situation at home.

The blossoming relationship

To deal with the latter first. From the start Erdogan’s love affair with Vladimir Putin, which began when Moscow sent him the billets doux he was not getting from Washington after the abortive coup in July 2016, had strict limits.

From the start Erdogan’s love affair with Vladimir Putin had strict limits

Erdogan would walk the walk with Moscow - opening Turkstream, a pipeline carrying natural gas from Russia to southern Europe bypassing Ukraine; buying Russian S-400 air defence


missiles at the cost of losing US stealth fighters - just as long as those moves provided Turkey leverage with Washington or allowed him to do more in Syria than was possible when he was still toeing the western line.

In Syria, Turkey’s blossoming relationship with Russia involved uncomfortable trade-offs - in which each side abandoned an ally. For Russia it was the Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and for Ankara it was the Syrians of East Aleppo.

But the fruit of that relationship was always going to be date stamped for one very simple demographic reason. With each victory scored by the Syrian regime, the number of Syrian refugees in Idlib swelled. Four million of them are currently trapped in an area the size of Somersetand 900,000 of them have fled to the Turkish border. This is the largest single displacement of refugees in the whole of the war. Its passed largely unnoticed in Europe, until now.

Erdogan cornered

With 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees in Turkey, a resurgent Kemalist opposition that has seized control of the two major cities Istanbul and Ankara in the last elections and openly expresses hostility to the refugees, coupled with the splitting of his own conservative Islamist party base, Erdogan was cornered.

What Assad was doing to the refugees was rapidly becoming an existential political threat to Erdogan as president

He could not let both Bashar al-Assad and Putin drive another mass wave of Syrians towards his borders. Erdogan had to act. What Assad was doing to the refugees was rapidly


two airports including Nairab west of Aleppo, and an impressive number of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and guns.

Demonstrators hold placards during a protest against killing of Turkish soldiers in Syria's Idlib region, near the Russian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on 29 February (Reuters)

The combat effectiveness of Turkish forces in Idlib, particularly the performance of its drones, amply justified the analysis of Mossad’s director Yossi Cohen, whom I reported this time last year, as attending a secret meeting in Riyadh. Cohen told the meeting that while Iran could be contained militarily, Turkey had far greater capability: "Iranian power is fragile. The real threat comes from Turkey," he said, according to witnesses.

End of the affair?

The result was the end of the affair between Erdogan and Putin. Their phone call thisweekend was a shouting match. Erdogan told Putin to get out of the way of his forces, and Putin told Erdogan to get out of Idlib. This was the first time that either man had used this sort of language privately to each other, language they usually reserved towards western heads of state.

The Idlib debacle is a reality check for Turkish-Russian relations Read More »

Very soon the Turkish media lost its awe for Russian officials and the Russian influence over senior Turkish officials expired too. For much of the last few years Russia gained a reputation of keeping its promises. All that has gone.

A new realism has set in in Ankara about Russia’s willingness to keep to the promises it made to Turkey in Sochi and this means


with Russia, but in the region too. Turkey’s enhanced role in Syria would also affect the balance of power in the Sunni Arab world facing Iranian over-expansion in Arab lands.

Which is why Israel identified Turkey, a former military ally to whom it sold drones, as a bigger military threat than Iran, now that Turkey makes its own drones, and why social media in Saudi Arabia and the UAE gloated over the number of Turkish casualties in Idlib.

Erdogan is playing for high stakes. Putin, too, must be calculating the costs of his "success" in Syria, which are growing year on year, in a land in which reconstruction is decades away.

Russian military force in Syria only worked when there was no real opposing military force that could shoot its jetsstatistics.

Data presented herein were obtained at the WIYN Observatory from telescope time allocated to NN-EXPLORE through the scientific partnership of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. This work was supported by a NASA WIYN PI Data Award, administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.

These results made use of the Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory. Lowell is a private, non-profit institution dedicated to astrophysical research and public appreciation of astronomy and operates the DCT in partnership with Boston University, the University of Maryland, the University of Toledo, Northern Arizona University and Yale University. The upgrade of the DeVeny optical spectrograph has been funded by a generous grant from John and Ginger Giovale.

Guoshoujing Telescope (the Large Sky Area Multi-Object


Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope LAMOST) is a National Major Scientific Project built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Funding for the project has been provided by the National Development and Reform Commission. LAMOST is operated and managed by the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

This research has made use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission [*Gaia*]{} (<https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia>), processed by the [*Gaia*]{} Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, <https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium>). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the [*Gaia*]{} Multilateral Agreement.

This work made use of the[gaia-kepler.fun](gaia-kepler.fun) crossmatch database created by Megan Bedell.

The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen’s University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation Grant No. AST-1238877, the University of


18 June – Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo

22 June – Second abdication of Napoleon

29 June – Departure from Malmaison to reach Rochefort

1st July – The Navy increases its surveillance of the French ports in Western France

July – The Navy increases its surveillance of the French ports in Western France

3 July – Arrival at Rochefort

8 July – Louis XVIII enters Paris ; in the evening, Napoleon leaves France from Fouras

9 July – Napoleon settles in the island of Aix

A British fleet, under the command of Captain Maitland, is blockading the access to the ocean

10 July – Savary and Las Cases start negotiations with Maitland who tells them: « Why not request an asylum in England ? »

12 July – The Bourbon flag is hoisted in La Rochelle

14 July –Napoleon makes his decision to seek asylum in England

15 July – Napoleon boards H.M.S. Bellerophon, Captain Maitland

Gourgaud is sent to England, carrying the famous letter from Napoleon to the Prince Regent :

« I come as Themistocles, to sit at the heart of the British people. I place myself under the protection of its laws, etc. »

Napoleon makes a farewell to France

20 July – The British Govt decides that Napoleon will be detained in the island of St. Helena

24 July – H.M.S. Bellerophon anchors at Torbay

Napoleon on board the Bellerophon at Torbay (painting from Eastlake)

24 July - Hudson Lowe is chosen to become the future custodian, or "goaler", of Napoleon in St. Helena

Wellington will later say about him : « He was a stupid man... »

24 July – Start


of the "White Terror" in France

26 July – Maitland's fleet leaves Torbay and sails to Plymouth

H.M.S. Bellerophon at Plymouth

The crowd comes to see Napoleon at Plymouth

30 July – Lord Bathurst, the Secretary for War and the Colonies, set the 26 regulations for the custody of Napoleon

31 July – A representative of Lord Bathurst instructs Napoleon of the British Govt's decision to deport him to the island of St. Helena for custody

4 August – Departure from Plymouth 4 August – Departure from Plymouth

6 August – Maitland's fleet meets with sir Georges Cockburn's at Start Point ; the latter has been ordered to transport Napoleon and his suite to St. Helena on board H.M.S. Northumberland

Dr. O’Meara is chosen by Napoleon as his personal physician, since the French doctor, Maingault, refusesto follow him to St. Helena

7 August – Farewell of Napoleon to his suite, while those who will follow him embark on board H.M.S. Northumberland

27 August – Cockburn's fleet passes Teneriffe ; thick fog

1st September – The fleet is off the archipelago of Cape Verde ; strong winds

September – The fleet is off the archipelago of Cape Verde ; strong winds

15 October – Arrival to St. Helena

17 October – Napoleon goes ashore

18 October – Napoleon moves in The Briars

« He is greatly displeased with this island; he says there is nothing good in it but air . »

Napoleon & Betsy Balcombe at The Briars

5 November – The "Emperor Napolon" officially complains to Cockburn of the restrictions against him

5 November – The "Emperor Napolon" officially complains to Cockburn of


the restrictions against him Cockburn answers : « I have no acquaintance of any Emperor being actually upon this island . »

20 November – Ball offered by Cockburn

2 December – Ball offered by Colonel Wilks

Napoleon with the slave Tobie at the Briars

10 December – Napoleon moves to Longwood

29 December – Captain Piontkowski arrives at St Helena; he was one of the Polish officers who followed Napoleon since his departure from Paris

Click here to continue

the High Performance Academy and Experts Academy. He’s also the author of several best-selling books including High Performance Habits and The Motivation Manifesto.

In 2014, he launched a podcast called The Charged Life but later changed the name to The Brendon Show. His episodes focus on what he’s learning and doing in his own life as well as tips on motivation, personal development, and more.

Tiny Leaps, Big Changes with Gregg Clunis

Gregg Clunis is an entrepreneur and coach living in New York City. He became interested in personal development when he was a teenager and began reading books on the topic. In 2015, he launched his podcast Tiny Leaps, Big Changes where he talks about wellness, motivation, and personal growth strategies. Many of his episodes are short, ranging from just


This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

A 19-year-old Long Beach man was sentenced Monday to eight years in state prison for the hate crime assault of a black student outside a Long Beach high school, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

Bryan Blancas and his friends confronted the 16-year-old victim, knocked him to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked him in the head, face and torso after school on May 15 in front of Poly Academy of Achievers and Leaders, authorities said.

The boy was left with cuts, bruises and a torn eardrum, his mother, Rasheena McCord, told KTLA. Shesaid her son is a special needs student.

Blancas pleaded no contest to one felony count of assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, and admitted to allegations that the assault was a hate crime and was committed to benefit a criminal street gang, according to the news release.

Video of the attack shows the boy outnumbered, struggling on the ground as a group of at least five people kick and strike him.

Long Beach police arrested Blancas almost a week later.

Three other teens, ages 16 and 17, were also taken into custody after the incident. All three juveniles were being held at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. They were not identified because of their age.

33.77005 -118.193739


with each other and with tourists.

“He’s the old man right here,” Rodrigues, then 87, said on one occasion while cocking his head toward fellow survivor Herb Weatherwax. “How old are you, dad?”

Weatherwax was 90 at the time. The always-smiling Weatherwax died in late 2016 at the age of 99.

Survivors Everett Hyland, who was on the USS Pennsylvania, and Navy corpsman Sterling Cale, who helped remove casualties from the waters of Pearl Harbor after the attacks on Dec. 7, 1941, were part of the group.

Born in Kapaa, Kauai, on Feb. 7, 1920, Rodrigues, the son of a Portuguese father and part-Hawaiian mother, joined the Navy Reserve and was on active duty at Bishop’s Point on the morning of Dec. 7.

He was on watch when he saw the destroyer USSincluding turning around illegal immigrant boats, direct action on climate change, a plebiscite on same-sex marriage and stripping terrorists with dual nationality of their Australian citizenship.

Notoriously, the Rudd–Gillard government wasted many billions of dollars building grossly over-priced school halls and installing (and then removing) roof batts that caused houses to burn down. It stopped the live cattle trade with Indonesia in panic at a television program. It announced four years of surpluses while delivering the biggest deficits in our history. By contrast, the worst failure of the Abbott government was our inability to get our political opponents to support unpopular reforms in the Senate.

All prime ministers have to make hard calls, as so many decisions are contentious, even within parties, and have to be resolved by someone taking


policy. More importantly, we couldn’t credibly damn Labor on the carbon tax (for having one policy before an election but a different one afterwards) if we did exactly the same with same-sex marriage.

Going into the 2013 election, our position was that same-sex marriage would be a matter for the Coalition party room if a private member’s bill were to come up in the next parliament. By the time one did, in mid-2015, the National Party remained overwhelmingly opposed while a significant minority in the Liberal Party had become strongly in favour.

As prime minister, John Howard had shrewdly pointed out that the Liberal Party was the representative, in this country, of both the small-l liberal and the conservative political traditions. In my judgment, the principal political party of theIllustrated men

Books

by Jim Provenzano

Dale Lazarov, the Chicago-based writer of several popular
gay erotic comic books, will discuss his sexy new book, Nightlife, at Books Inc. on February 11 at 7:30pm.

We talked on the phone recently, and Lazarov explained his
collaborative work with several acclaimed comic artists, including Bastien Jonsson, whose sexy illustrations comprise the visuals of Nightlife.

Lazarov's appearance will include a question and answer
session and book signing. He won't be reading from his comic books, since they
don't contain dialogue. "I suppose if I were to read, I would have to mime the
comics," he mused.

"Theatre culture has taken over book culture," he said of some other more performative authors. "A book is now more of a memento of a performance."

Lazarov is best known as the writer/editor of Sticky
(in collaboration with illustrator


Steve MacIsaac)
and Manly (in collaboration with
Amy Colburn), both published by Bruno Gmuender Verlag. He's also the
writer/editor of Fancy, a gay
erotic web comic drawn by Delic Van Loond and published weekly at
AdultWebcomics.com. Other projects include work with Foxy Andy on Chums, Theo Bain on Greek Love, and Mioki on Power Pop Boys.

Nightlife was
Lazarov's first book where he put out a call for artists, he said, adding that
he enjoys collaborating with different artists for each project. "It takes
about two years for an artist to draw a book," he said. "I realized that if I
wanted to do more work, I needed more collaborators."

Lazarov posted a call for artists on a few comic blogs and
Baskin answered. "I went to his website and responded very strongly to his
work. It was different than peopleI'd worked with before," said Lazarov. "He
was the first person to approach me that had a more mainstream superhero style.
A gay comics readership would appreciate a style, which does have an impact on
how people relate to the work. I sent him a pre-existing script, he responded
well to it, so I wrote two more scripts for the book."

Lazarov cites what he calls "a combination of carnality and
sweetness" in Nightlife, and an air of "friendly romanticism" which includes
the graphic erotic visuals.

"The sex is shameless," Lazarov said. "You get to see
everything without getting extreme sexual behavior. More important was the
tone, the feeling. The first story in Nightlife provides a fantasy of a gay community, but it's one that I have."

So, ho

w does a writer collaborate with an illustrator?

"A full comic script


a branch of Citibank in Niagara Falls, New York to James McGovern who signed each of the checks in the upper right hand corner. These are the checks described in the indictment.

The legislative history of paragraph four shows that it was intended to cover only those instruments commonly known as travelers' checks. U.S. Congressional and Administrative News, pp. 3654-55, 3656-57 (1968).

A number of cases have been cited to us which were decided prior to the 1968 amendment and are mostly of limited value because they were brought under paragraph three of Section 2314 which includes in the offense the words "falsely made, forged, altered, or counterfeited securities". A distinction is now drawn between the forgery requirement at paragraph four and the falsely made requirement of paragraph three atbeen engaged in activities designed to secure the necessary rights, equipment and facilities required to commence charter services in late 2017. These include: hiring Amtrak to provide charter services on the LA to Las Vegas route, purchasing or leasing appropriate locomotive and passenger cars designed to move passengers over the route in comfort; and securing leases on terminal facilities and passenger depots in Los Angeles and in Las Vegas.

The company is based in Las Vegas with offices in Orange County, California and downtown Los Angeles.


It was a full-ride scholarship to the University of North Carolina, and the Richards family couldn’t believe what they were considering.

Were they really going to walk away from it? Were they going to say thanks, but no thanks to UNC, and the goal their family had made so many sacrifices to achieve?

Chris Richards of Hoover, who is currently playing for the U.S. U-20 Men’s National Team in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, chose soccer over basketball while in high school, and that was hard enough on his dad. Last year, Ken Richards and his family found themselves considering something almost completely foreign to the traditional role of American preparatory sports.

Most kids in the U.S. play sports growing up to learn the importance of physical activity, and, if they’rewith the world’s best national teams. The message is clear: not only is college now an unnecessary step in player development for the USMNT, it is considered a detriment by U.S. Soccer.

For many years, the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world in men’s soccer for one main reason. It wasn’t because the “best athletes” were playing other sports. That has always been the uninformed answer. The U.S. has a population base large enough and wealthy enough to dominate in international soccer. The problem was a cultural one.

In the upside-down world of American soccer, most middle-class families view the sport as a means to an end, a college scholarship. Those goals no longer fit into the plans of U.S. Soccer, which has abandoned the part-time


collegiate developmental model in favor of full-time European-style academy systems.

Will this put the U.S. on a path to developing an elite national team? This U-20 World Cup is one of the first big tests.

The two starting center-backs for the 2017 USMNT that embarrassingly lost to Trinidad and Tobago, Matt Besler and Omar Gonzalez, were both college soccer stars. Besler played at Notre Dame and Gonzalez played at Maryland. There is little chance that the two starting central defenders for the USMNT in the next World Cup qualifying cycle will have any college experience.

College soccer is a speed bump in the road to player development, and U.S. Soccer has made a commitment to phasing out the collegiate game. How will that affect the future of men’s college soccer? Thelong-term health remains unclear. In the short term, the NCAA is losing the best talent this country has to offer.

Richards is one of two players on the U.S. U-20 National Team originally from the Birmingham area. Midfielder Brandon Servania played youth soccer for Birmingham United Soccer Club and Vestavia Hills Soccer Club before moving to Dallas and entering FC Dallas’ academy system. Servania played one season at Wake Forest and then turned pro. U-20 teammate Mark McKenzie also played just one season for Wake Forest.

Forgoing college soccer was an agonizing decision for the Richards family, but that’s where Ken’s life experience played a valuable role.

A former college basketball player for Birmingham-Southern, Ken wanted his son to play basketball, and, according to his wife, Ken had no interest in


been the biggest one.

When Chris committed to playing soccer full time, the Richards family was approached by an independent youth soccer academy in Houston, the Houston Texans, about joining its system. From there, Chris’ budding career as a soccer player took off. He then joined FC Dallas’ system, where Brandon Servania had already found a foothold. Servania now plays in MLS for FC Dallas.

Perhaps soon soccer players from Alabama won’t have to leave home to develop into pros. The next step for either Birmingham or Huntsville, the two cities in Alabama where soccer is most prominent, is to develop players like Richards and Servania here in the state. Birmingham’s new USL club, Legion FC, has partnered with local youth clubs around the city to centralize a spring league.The Legion FC D-League seems like a good first step towards a permanent academy system in Birmingham.

With two players from the area on the U.S. U-20 National Team, including one playing for Bayern Munich, it appears the city is ready.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.


just two years into a free trade pact, after Canberra accused Beijing of interfering in its domestic affairs.

Turnbull referenced “disturbing reports of Chinese meddling” when he announced plans in late 2017 to introduce legislation to limit foreign influence, including a ban on offshore political donations.

China denied the allegations, and lodged a formal diplomatic protest.

The meeting of Australian wine companies comes just a day after senior government officials accused China of applying undue political pressure on Qantas Airways Ltd to change its website to refer to Taiwan as a Chinese territory.

Self-ruled and democratic Taiwan is claimed by Beijing as a Chinese territory, and is China’s most sensitive diplomatic issue and a potential military flashpoint.

A contemporary woodcut of the defenestration in 1618.

The Defenestrations of Prague refers to either of two incidents with great repercussions in the history of Bohemia. Defenestration, literally, means "an act of throwing someone or something out of the window" (From Latin and German).

The first defenestration occurred in 1419, and spurred the Hussite Wars, which lasted almost twenty years. The second defenestration followed in 1618, although the term "Defenestration of Prague" is more commonly used to refer to this second incident. The chronologically second defenestration occurred in 1483, but its effects on the country's development were negligible, and so is its place in history. For this reason, it is termed "further" defenestration. The Second Defenestration (1618) helped trigger a prolonged conflict within Bohemia and served as a pretext for


the Thirty Years' War.

Although they were 200 years apart, at the heart of both was the battle over the spiritual sovereignty of the Czech Lands, which illustrates the longstanding conflict between the Catholic Church and Protestants in Czechoslovakia. The event of 1419 was an effort to continue in the reforms of the Catholic Church charted by the silenced religious reformer and philosopher, Jan Hus; in 1618, it was a battle to preserve the previously granted freedom of religion.

First Defenestration of Prague

The First Defenestration of Prague involved the killing of seven members of the city council by a crowd of radical Czech Hussites on July 30, 1419. Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the Church of Virgin Mary of the Snows (Kostel u Panny Marie Sněžné), led his congregationon a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice). The councilors had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners, and an anti-Hussite threw a rock at one of the protesters. The enraged crowd stormed the New Town Hall and threw the councilors out of the windows onto the spears of the armed congregation below.

The procession was a result of the growing discontent at the inequality between the peasants and the Roman Catholic Church, the Church's prelates, and the nobility. The rising feelings of nationalism and increased influence of "radical" preachers such as Jan Želivský further exacerbated the tarnished image of the Church. These preachers urged their congregations to action, including taking up arms.

The First Defenestration was thus the turning point between talk and


action leading to the prolonged Hussite Wars. The wars broke out shortly afterward and lasted until 1436.

Historical background

Bohemia at the turn of the fourteenth and into the fifteenth century was mired in a deep social crisis caused by the corrupt practices of the Catholic Church. Religious reformer, philosopher, and Prague University Rector, Jan Hus (1370–1415), had been executed following his refusal to recant his criticisms of the Church. The only way out of this situation was seen in the return to the original mission of the Church—spreading of the idea of God’s Word and life in harmony with Biblical Commandments.

Among Hus’s predecessors were "folk" priests:

Konrad Waldhauser, invited by King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV—preached in German; with minimal effect on common folks

Jan Milíč of Kroměříž—BethlehemChapel, from which Jan Hus later spread his reform ideas, was built for the purposes of his ministry. He established an “institute for fallen maidens.”

John Wycliffe—English reformer; denied the Divine origin of papacy, sought abolition of indulgences, which he considered as a devil’s tool, and demanded the Church’s divestment of secular power and assets.

Jeroným Pražský (Jerome of Prague)—friend and ardent follower of Hus, persecuted for heresy and burned at the stake in Constance, Germany, one year after Hus.

Jakoubek of Stříbro

Hus initially did not seek secession from the Catholic Church, only its reform. He maintained that Jesus Christ, not the pope, is the head of the Church; he referred to the pope's lifestyle as immoral. He believed that the Church should be deprived of its political power and property.


One should abide by God’s Law, as laid out in the Bible, as the ultimate philosophy of life. Conversely, if one's superiors and the priests live in sin, people do not have to obey them. He insisted on university education made available in the Czech language. Hus' ideas were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heresy, for which he was burned at the stake.

On the arrival of the news of his death at the Council of Constance in 1415, disturbances broke out which were directed at first against the clergy, especially against the monks. Even the archbishop was forced to save himself, with difficulty, from the rage of the populace. In the country conditions were not much better. Everywhere the treatment of Hus was felt as adisgrace inflicted upon the whole country, and his death was looked upon as a criminal act. [1]

Since his teachings did not bring about the reformation of the Church but a culmination of societal problems, armed conflict became inevitable. The series of battles that followed came to be called the Hussite Wars. Ideologically, the Hussite revolution was a reaction to the medieval social crisis in Europe and, at the same time, to the issues that were peculiar to Czechs. Within European reform movements, it represented the second stage of reforms, following the period of John Wycliffe.

Hus’s advocates—Hussites—fought for the abolition of the secular power of the Church and confiscation of its property. They partook of Holy Communion in both ways, the taking of both bread and wine (until that


of the country

or the ideological center, who were after the privileges for the city only, not the rest of the country The Radicals, which consisted of many fractions held together by an aspiration to institute the Divine Law as soon as possible through the reformation of human relationships; Želivský is the most notoriously known member of this group

Jan Želivský

Želivský was a former monk who came to Prague around 1418. There, he maintained contact with the disciples of Jakoubek of Stříbro, whose criticisms of lavishly decorated priestly vestments and a call for simple church services in Czech language, among others, were the closest to his own. What he lacked in theological education he made up for by his intelligence, creativity, and proclivity to radical vision. In February 1419, hestarted preaching in Czech language at the Church of Virgin Mary of the Snows, drawing together Prague’s poor through his sermons on a new, just, society, for which, Želivský urged, they should fight. He quoted from the Old Testament heavily during his fiery sermons.

The objects of his criticisms were those who continuously sought to take advantage of things, con artists, and slobs. However, he did acknowledge the virtues of the ruling classes when they followed God’s commandments. He hated merchants and craftsmen who harmed their neighbors, which inevitably made him a thorn in the eyes of the wealthy of Prague’s New Town (Nové Město) district and even more so of the wealthier Old Town (Staré Město) district, which was teeming with prosperous merchants. Želivský reinforced the nationalist sentiments


by perceiving the Czech nation as the chosen one. Thus, it was only a matter of time when tension would give way to explosion—the First Defenestration of Prague. When the Catholics eventually gained the upper hand, his activities were curbed and he was decapitated in 1422.

Second Defenestration of Prague

The Second Defenestration of Prague was an event central to the initiation of the Thirty Years' War in 1618. In 1617, Roman Catholic officials ordered the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on land which the Catholic clergy claimed belonged to them. Protestants, who claimed that it did not belong to the Catholic Church but to the King, and thus it was available for their use, interpreted this as a violation of the right of freedom of religious expressionthat would soon be followed by the annulment of the Protestant rights.

Major figures of the Czech estates led by Jindřich Matyáš Thurn and Václav Budovec met on May 23, 1618, to draw up a plan for a forceful removal of the hated governors Vilém Slavata of Chlum and Košumberk and Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice. Both governors were members of the Czech nobility but very often they did not hesitate to spice up the Hapsburg repressions against the non-Catholic Czech nobility. Another meeting followed, this time at the Prague Castle, with the presence of more noblemen, from which the enraged crowd made its way into the Bohemian Chancellery. There they tried the two imperial governors for violating the Right of Freedom of Religion, found them guilty, and after 3


p.m. threw them out of the 16-meter high windows of the Chancellery. Not even their scribe, Filip Fabricius, was spared.

The governors landed on a large pile of manure and all survived unharmed; three sandstone obelisks in the Royal Gardens mark the place of their landing. Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title "von Hohenfall." Professor Jaromír Tesař attributes their survival more to the fact that they landed on the steep slope of the trench, off which they rolled down the hill. After Fabricius fled the scene, he departed for Vienna to inform the Emperor on the event. Roman Catholic Imperial officials claimed that the governors survived thanks to the mercy of the benevolent Churmusian angels, assisting the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphleteersasserted that their survival had more to do with the horse excrement in which they landed than the benevolent acts of the angels of the Christo Churmusian order.

Historical background

The Hapsburg Dynasty had a hard time getting Czechs to subdue; protests against the centralization of their rule and return of Catholicism were plentiful. Emperor Ferdinand I laid the foundation for the gradual domination of the Czech Lands, but his son Maximilian II continued in his footsteps, more in the Hungarian and German parts of the Hapsburg Empire than in the Czech Lands. He even tolerated the Czech Protestants. Then came Rudolf II, who started off as a stern administrator of Hapsburg interests but later was coerced into granting religious freedom to the Czechs in exchange for their aid against


his belligerent brother Matthias, who later succeeded him.[2]

When the fiercely Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II, Duke of Styria, was handpicked by the aging Emperor Matthias as King of Bohemia in 1617, the Czech aristocracy revolted. Upon his takeover, Ferdinand II introduced repressions of non-Catholics and rewarded those who denied their non-Catholic faith. The Catholic noblemen, who supported the Hapsburgs, benefited the most—they were financially rewarded generously. The Czech estates realized that he would not honor their religious freedom as granted in the Letter of Majesty (Right of Freedom of Religion) issued by Emperor Rudolf II in 1609.

Aftermath

Once Ferdinand II was appointed as Emperor, he had at his disposal the Catholic armies of the Holy Roman Empire. The Czech estates, on the other hand, were no longer able to matchsuch an opponent, especially since they maintained the uprising on the level of privileged classes. After the Battle of the White Mountain (Bitva na Bílé hoře) in 1620, when the Protestant estates were defeated, he decided that it was time to crush the Czechs as a warning to other European countries that might entertain similar thoughts on the isolated, multi-religious state that the Czechs had created.

Five days after the humiliating defeat, over 200 Czech noblemen signed a letter of pardon addressed to the Emperor; however, they were turned down and condemned to death by hanging or beheading. A total of 33 leaders of the anti-Hapsburg uprising were sentenced to execution; each of the accused, except those who were ill or could not be located, voluntarily came to answer


236 questions related to the defenestration and their role in the uprising. After a short trial, 27 noblemen were executed on June 21, 1621. Among them were Václav Budovec and Hungarian knight Jan Jesenius, Doctor of Medicine, philosopher, professor at University of Wittenberg in Germany, and the incumbent rector of Prague University. He was punished the most severely—the executioner was ordered to cut out his tongue before he beheaded him.

Ferdinand II ordered the dead bodies of several of the major leaders of the uprising quartered and then hanged on gallows at four of Prague’s major squares. Even that must have seemed too lenient to him, as he ordered heads of the twelve greatest culprits publicly displayed in metal cages on the Old Town Bridge Tower (Staroměstská mostecká věž)of Charles Bridge. The families of the murdered noblemen saw their property confiscated and redistributed to the Emperor’s adherents. Foreign noblemen and generals began streaming into the country. The German language was put on par with Czech. The Hapsburgs were established as heirs of the Czech throne, with Catholicism the only allowed religion. Thousands of people who refused to convert were forced to leave the country. This was the completion of the transformation of the Czech estate into one of absolutist monarchy.

Further defenestrations

More events of defenestration have occurred in Prague during its history, but they are not usually called "Defenestrations of Prague."

The chronologically second defenestration occurred on September 24, 1483, under the reign of Vladislaus of the Jagellon Dynasty, although this was a marginal event. The Hussites, feeling


jeopardized by Catholics, who dominated the Old Town Hall, overthrew the municipal governments of the Old, New, and Lesser Towns. The Old Town councilor was thrown out of the window. Then they stormed the recently restored monasteries, killed some of the monks, and leveled those symbols of Catholic Church. The Jewish Town also fell prey to them. The king himself kept distance from Prague for one year following.

The term "Third Defenestration of Prague" is sometimes used to denote various events reminiscent of the two defenestrations. It has been used to describe the death of diplomat and the longest serving Minister of Foreign Affairs of pre-Communist Czechoslovakia Jan Masaryk, son of the first president and founder of Czechoslovakia Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. Jan was found dead beneath his window inthe courtyard of the building of the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on March 10, 1948. Since this was two weeks after the Communist Party took over in the country, the version that he committed suicide seems highly unlikely. He is presumed murdered by the Communists defenestrating him.[3]

Notes

References

Howe, Susan. Defenestration of Prague. New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1983. ISBN 0936538066

New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1983. ISBN 0936538066 Schwarz, Henry Frederick and John Insley Coddington. The Imperial Privy Council in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1943.

Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1943. Spinka, Matthew. John Hus, a Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. ISBN 0313210500

Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. ISBN 0313210500 Wilkinson, Philip, Jacqueline Dineen, and Robert R. Ingpen. Statesmen Who Changed the World. New York: Chelsea House, 1994.


MORRISON, CO—The music world was shaken by tragedy Sunday night when members of the popular rock band Phish collapsed on stage after being overcome by the stench of concert-goers during a show at the Red Rocks Amphitheater 20 miles outside Denver.

Phish bassist Mike Gordon, moments before he and his bandmates succumbed to fans' fumes.

The collapse occurred approximately 40 minutes into the song "You Enjoy Myself," when the four band members—Mike Gordon, Trey Anastasio, Johnathan Fishman and Page McConnell— became overwhelmed by a combination of body odor, marijuana and the patchouli oil many Phish fans use in lieu of bathing. The foursome was rushed to the emergency room of Denver Lutheran Hospital, where they were partially revived by emergency oxygen treatment. As of press time, the musicians are stilllisted in critical condition.

Though authorities are still debating the cause of the tragedy, preliminary reports indicate that a mechanical malfunction in the band's $45 million on-stage ventilation system is to blame. The system, which employs five computer-controlled, industrial-sized wind machines to blow fumes away from the stage area, has been used by the million-selling group since 1992 to combat the "danger layer" of toxic odors which surround the band's rabid fan base at all times.

Despite the ventilation breakdown, many observers feel that the real blame for the injuries lies with Phish itself, as for years the band has recklessly encouraged its fans' non-hygenic lifestyle.

"They've been burning the candle at both ends for way too long. This was bound to happen," said the EPA's Helen Duenoff, who as chair


serious harm in the incident, going backstage unnoticed during one of the band's trademark hour-long jams to rest and consume drugs.

Anastasio was visibly moved as he spoke to the public. "I want to thank all our fans for massing here at the hospital in such incredible numbers, but believe me, we really need you to leave now," a gas-masked Anastasio said. "We appreciate the candlelight vigil and the chanting and all that, but the doctors all agree: We cannot hope to revive the rest of the guys unless we can somehow isolate them from the deadly column of vapors rising from the crowd."

Anastasio then attempted to rouse the assembled fans in a sing-along. "The skin is the part under the arm that makes contact with the soap," heSunday, 18 September 2016

Kennington, London: for buyers seeking a good all-rounder — FT.com
... Oval and Kennington remain relatively untouched by the building boom on their doorstep. In fact, development has been conspicuous by its absence: just two schemes, comprising 354 homes, are under construction, according to data from the Estates Gazette.Traditionally, the area has been popular with first-time buyers and the LGBT community, says Ian Boardman of local agent Daniel Cobb. The first are attracted by the relative value for money given the area’s central location. The average price of a home sold in the three wards that span Oval and Kennington is £659,000, according to Land Registry data collected by Savills. A few hundred metres over Vauxhall Bridge in Pimlico the average is £1.09m. ...

... A three-bedroom


invoked the US Constitution as something that needs to be considered in a discussion on gun control. Unable to tolerate Biden’s pause for the founding document, Senator Harris (D-CA) and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke were in favor of acting now and asking Congress later.

But while the former VP took his fair share of incoming, several Democratic contenders saved their Gatlin guns for the National Rifle Association. The NRA was referred to as a “terrorist” organization of which the president and most Republicans live in fear. Indeed, the debate stage was hot with emotion, frequent applause, and many proposals and plans to remove firearms from the homes and hands of citizens.

Only the Privileged Few

Despite the inter-party squabbling, the Democratic field of contenders offered a cafeteria of rules and regulationsarrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Trying his final case at 85, celebrated criminal defense lawyer Sandy Stern defends a Nobel-winning doctor and longtime friend whose cancer wonder drug saved Stern's life but subsequently led to the deaths of others.

Federal prosecutors are charging the eminent doctor, Kiril Pafko, with murder, fraud, and insider trading. An Argentine émigré like Stern, Pafko is no angel. His counselor is certain he sold stock in the company that produced the drug, g-Livia, before users' deaths were reported. The 78-year-old Nobelist is a serial adulterer whose former and current lovers have strong ties to the case. Working for one final time alongside his daughter and proficient legal partner, Marta, who has announced she will close the firm and


retire along with her father following the case, Stern must deal not only with "senior moments" before Chief Judge Sonya "Sonny" Klonsky, but also his physical frailty. While taking a deep dive into the ups and downs of a complicated big-time trial, Turow (Testimony, 2017, etc.) crafts a love letter to his profession through his elegiac appreciation of Stern, who has appeared in all his Kindle County novels. The grandly mannered attorney (his favorite response is "Just so") has dedicated himself to the law at great personal cost. But had he not spent so much of his life inside courtrooms, "He never would have known himself." With its bland prosecutors, frequent focus on technical details like "double-blind clinical trials," and lack of real surprises, the novel likely willmore

When I last wrote about Freunde von Freunden (FvF) – the international interview magazine that illuminates people of diverse creative and cultural backgrounds in their homes and within their daily working environments – the subject was their latest mixtape. That one was number 60… created by Australia’s underground radio presenter Ennio Styles. Each FvF mixtape offers an amazing contemporary soundtrack for life, and that is especially true for the latest release. It is number #101, and it features the artist known as Kyson.

Their piece begins, “Jian Kellet Liew’s music is like the soundtrack to a dream. Working under the alias Kyson, his ethereal productions mix delicate beats with swelling synths and reverberating vocals.” Read more

Notes from On & Up, my personal blog: “Throughout time, the areas all along


on several occasions, with her supervisor and, once, with hospital administrator, Andrew Talley, to discuss hospital leave policy.  It was her testimony that she refused to sign the form because she had been told that her leave would be limited to six weeks and that she could not be assured of a position in her department immediately upon return to work.

12
On April 4, 1978, after Underwood went to the hospital on March 31, to have her baby, Andrew Talley sent her a letter, restating the leave and termination policy.  Again he informed her that, unless she returned a completed leave form by April 11, 1978, her leave would be deemed unauthorized.  Ignoring the advice Underwood failed to complete the form.  Thereafter, in accordance withsmartphone menu rubriken

In enemy heartland

Progress is slow in the battle for control of Mosul, with IS jihadists using booby traps and suicide commandos against the liberators. Karim El-Gawhary spoke to Kurdish fighters and refugees in some of the villages recaptured by the peshmerga

Bartella, the first town recaptured close to Mosul, a town where most of the residents are Christians, is a ghost town – for good reason. The inhabitants fled two years ago when IS jihadists took over the place. None of them are able to return at the moment because of all the IS booby traps.

Our guides from the elite Iraqi army anti-terror unit, who stormed and captured the town the previous day, continuously remind us to stick to the paths already cleared and secured by the


army. On no account should anyone enter any of the houses, they warn.

Estate agent Islamic State

Some buildings have the words "Property of Islamic State" stencilled on them in paint. In the Caliphate too, there is evidently bureaucratic order. The inside of the local Internet cafe is totally demolished – just like most of the shops in the village. The words "Seized by Islamic State" are written on the door. Many shops in Bartella have been cleared out. Inside the tailor's shop, there's still a wedding dress hanging on a rail, it now looks more beige than white. The bride obviously didn't have enough time to collect it.

Despite the fighting, most of the houses in Bartella have remained intact. The obvious signs of battle are on the edges oftown. Several buildings, among them a warehouse and a shopping arcade, look as though they have been bombed from the air by the anti-IS coalition.

The capture by ground troops apparently happened very swiftly, reports the Iraqi soldier Rassul Ali, who climbs out of his armoured military jeep and points to some writing on the wall of a house: "The Mosul Battalion was here" it reads. Ali then writes the date that he entered the town alongside it: "21/10/2016". It appears as though all conquerors of this place initially feel compelled to leave their mark on houses.

It appears as though all conquerors of this place initially feel compelled to leave their mark on houses: Iraqi soldier Rassul Ali points to some writing on the wall of a house: "The


Mosul Battalion was here" it reads. Ali then writes the date that he entered the town alongside it: "21/10/2016"

Apart from some devious traps, there was hardly any resistance, says the soldier, describing his arrival in the town. "We were confronted with many cars that were loaded up with explosives. We had to make 21 vehicles safe in total. We also found many booby traps. Some IS people were holed up here. We killed them all," he says.

The altar looks like a battlefield

The church, which has been ransacked, symbolises IS rule over the majority Christian town. From outside the building is still standing and it was clearly used by IS fighters, as some walls also bear the usual black-and-white IS signature. The altar looks like a battle field. Theelectronic church organ has been totally smashed up, with broken shards lying around the pulpit. Anything that wasn't nailed down has been taken away. As though in defiance, the church bells ring on the first day following the liberation from the IS terror militia.

About an hour by car from Bartella is "Umm al-Nour" – the "Mother of Light" – a church in the Kurdish provincial capital Erbil. It is here that the refugee community from Bartella celebrates Sunday service. Majida Thoma is one of those praising the liberation of her town in the church of God. "I could hardly believe my good fortune, when I heard the news of the liberation of our town, which is something I always believed would happen," she says, after the service. "I


even saw our house on television and it hasn't been damaged," she says. "It's the green one, right at the top of the street," she reports enthusiastically.

Father Saady Jakoub, the priest of the congregation exiled from Bartella, is visibly happy, even though the church interior has been completely destroyed. In response to enquiries about the many former members of his congregation who fled to Europe and who have started new lives there, the priest answers that he is optimistic that many of them will return. "After all, our roots lie in our town, our ancestors are buried there," he says.

Excellent co-operation with the Iraqi army

A change of location to another place on the front, this time 18 kilometres north of Mosul, near to the village of Nawara –airstrikes. There are currently more than 4,800 US soldiers in Iraq. More than one hundred of them are advising the Iraqi armed forces and the Kurdish pershmerga on the Mosul offensive

American air support is also key in the battle against IS, he says. The pershmerga spokesman also praises the excellent co-operation with the Iraqi army, which is operating further to the east and south. "Never before in Iraqi history have Kurds and Arabs been so well co-ordinated as they are now against IS," he says. It is as though he is hoping for the birth of a new Iraq – despite all the merchants of doom who repeatedly warn that following the capture of Mosul, the differences between Kurds and Arabs, as well as those between Sunnis and


an IS fighter holed up in a tunnel blew himself up in front of a group of pershmergas. Six of them were killed, including five members of the same family. Danger lurks everywhere. You can sense it at every turn.

A few kilometres along the road to the north, the situation is more peaceful. Here we find the Nargazliya reception and registration camp. It is open for those civilians, most of them Sunnis, who held out in the villages and are now able to escape the clutches of IS. Today, the first 80 refugees have arrived from the nearby village of Dayraga.

Their new lives begin with a medical examination. Tired and exhausted, the women and children sit in one of the large tents waiting patiently for the process toharsh life, in some tent camp set up in recent weeks by the Kurdish government and the UN Refugee Agency. Just how long the Mosul offensive will go on and when they can return to their villages, no one can say for sure at present. After a life in the hell of the IS Caliphate, they are now embarking on a new life in distressing uncertainty.

"Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents"

A book of texts on modern art in the Arab world is causing a furore. It has been put together by the New York Museum of Modern Art. Now it has been launched – and discussed – in ...More

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Cities that draw their water from the Great Lakes have aligned to oppose a decision that allows Waukesha, Wisconsin to divert water from Lake Michigan to its community.

In June, the Compact Council - the group which oversees details of how neighbouring American states manage use of the Great Lakes - allowed Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee, to draw water from Lake Michigan, even though the city has access to the Mississippi River watershed.

Waukesha made the application when the level of radium in its aquifers exceeded American federal regulations.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, an international group representing Thunder Bay, Niagara Falls, Montreal and Toronto among others, requested a hearing to challenge the decision made by the council.

Mayor Denis Coderre of Montreal, who chairs the Cities Initiative,North Korea risks ‘the destruction of its people’: Pentagon chief

In this image obtained from the US Department of Defense, a US Air Force B-1B Lancer assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, prepares to take off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, for a 10-hour mission, flying in the vicinity of Kyushu, Japan, the East China Sea, and the Korean peninsula, August 7, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says in case of a military conflict between the United States and North Korea the latter risks "the destruction of its people.”

"The DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down its pursuit of nuclear weapons," Mattis said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The DPRK should cease any consideration of actions that


would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people,” he warned.

The Pentagon chief's comments came a day after President Donald Trump threatened to hit the country “with fire and fury.”

In response to Trump’s apocalyptic warning, North Korea said it was "carefully examining" a plan to strike the American Pacific territory of Guam with missiles.

The North Korean military said it could carry out a pre-emptive strike if there were signs of an American provocation.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis (Photo by AFP)

Mattis said that the United States and “our allies have the demonstrated capabilities and unquestionable commitment to defend ourselves from an attack.”

He went on to say that the US and its allies have "the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities onZIMBABWE TOUR OF SOUTH AFRICA 2018

Zimbabwe hang on to the possibility of one-odd upset

by Cricbuzz Staff • Last updated on

This was supposed to be Zimbabwe's best chance to upset their much-dominant neighbours, but two games down and they have already conceded the series. © Getty

Imran Tahir or no Imran Tahir - there seems to be little improvement in Zimbabwe's showing against South Africa. Pluck five players out of the team the hosts fielded in the second T20I, and they would be left with virtually their second string side. Having got their near full-strength squad to feature in the series, this was supposed to be Zimbabwe's best chance to upset their much-dominant neighbours, but two games down and they have already conceded the series.

The experiment that South Africa were


conducting by providing opportunities to their fringe players can be pushed to the fifth gear in the dead rubber clash on Sunday in Benoni. And given how Zimbabwe's tour has panned out so far, they can do that safely betting their result won't be affected in the inconsequential encounter.

The inability to form partnerships in batting has been Zimbabwe's biggest undoing in the T20Is. Neither have the younger players put up any noteworthy contributions, nor have the senior batsmen - Hamilton Masakadza, Brendan Taylor and Sean Williams - managed to single-handedly dominate. The bowling, barring in the first two games of the ODI series where the conditions favoured them, has lacked the bite as well.

All through the tour, Zimbabwe, at best, have managed to threaten to bring the contestsexpected to be cold with the possibility of scattered thunderstorms and cloud cover.

Team News:

South Africa: With the series sealed, South Africa might look to rest some of their senior players, especially Faf du Plessis who has hinted at that.

Zimbabwe: Wellington Masakadza and Neville Madziva could get a look in in the third T20I.

What they said:

"There's been a lot of guys coming in and sometimes it creates a bit of a headache and it's a good one to have. Other guys getting opportunities are doing well... The plan is that everyone gets two games and that means the skipper is going miss out unfortunately in the next game." - Faf du Plessis.

"Guys are getting starts, but it's about building on those starts. We've continued to lose wickets at the


June 16, 2010

Nunyuns News

Ever since Nunyuns opened on the corner of North and North Champlain streets the day before Thanksgiving in 2008, a question has loomed: "When the hell are they gonna take down the Scrumptious sign?" The ladylike little bakery closed half a decade ago, so why did the giant yellow teapot still preside over Nunyuns' earthier delights?

According to owner Paul Bonelli, the Burlington Department of Planning and Zoning was nervous about allowing him to remove the now historically significant, handpainted wood sign. "They declined the initial application," he says. A second plea was accepted with the stipulation that the new Nunyuns sign would be smaller, and therefore not project as far over the sidewalk.

This fall, Bonelli made a deal with local sculptor and Nunyuns regular, KirkWilliams. He would trade breakfasts and lunches for a metal placard. On Monday, Williams' handcrafted piece made its debut.

With the promise of Skeggs (potato skins stuffed with eggs and topped with all the fixings) and sandwiches, Bonelli persuaded the workers repairing fire damage across the street to help remove the old sign, replacing it with Williams' giant, old-timey toaster in its place.

Bonelli is currently in search of "a nice home" for the Scrumptious sign. The Vermont Historical Society has rejected it, and he's currently playing phone tag with Shelburne Farms. Bonelli is determined to place the sign, but admits that it might be a hard sell. "It's not something you can just throw at somebody," he says. "It's not an antique
armoire."

For now, the Nunyuns owner can be satisfied


we are only are aware of each other via social media. I asked him to send me the high-resolution version of the photo, and asked if he had any others taken in the batch. He then sent the following:

Above: Anthony spotted me in his photograph of Varanasi's temples. Click to enlarge

Above: Zoomed in at 100%, Raju and I appear in several of Anthony's exposures in a row. Click to enlarge

After zooming in to the photo I found that without question it was me. Looking at Anthony's image EXIF data, I saw the image was taken on October 18th, 2007. I am 24 years old now, so I was 17 in the photo. I also noticed in one of the photographs, it appears I am taking a photo ofstudents, but also appears to have increased the Program's visibility and recruitment success. Substantial institutional support from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and from Caltech has permitted an increase in the size of the MSTP, with 97 students currently enrolled in the program. The MSTP derives great benefit from recent dramatic improvements in physical facilities at both UCLA and Caltech, from the financial health of the universities, and from the recruitment of a large number of outstanding new faculty members to UCLA and Caltech.


sides are all intending to keep the oil price at a high level for a long time. As for the uncertainty, the best exponent is Iraq: the US-led war against Iraq was interpreted by the economists as the "beneficial" to the world economy, because of uncertainty chased away, it is an indisputable fact that the world economy will revive thereof.

The field of oil features uncertainty. Under heated contention, the structure of the oil market in the next five to ten years cannot be prophesied. Who will become the major oil supplier in the global market, the Middle East, Caspian Sea, Africa, or Russia? No one knows. Whatever the answer is, it surely has much bearing on the oil sources of the United States, Japan, India, China, and theoil battle among them.

Fallacy No. 3: Diversity of oil import means de-Middle East strategy

The "free-from-Middle East strategy" is sheer cheating. Although Washington has formulated ever since the 1970s plans of less dependence on Arab oil and seeking energy sources from outside the Middle East, it does not bring any results and change the situation of the world's oil supply either. In the entire Middle East, what the United States coverts most is Iraq's oil because it takes US$ 2, the lowest exploration cost in the world for each barrel of oil, due to layer extremely close to the ground there.

Let's see some statistics in the report entitled "Energy Resource Development of the Middle East" delivered by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Washington early this year. In


1978, the proven crude oil reserves in the world reached 648.3 billion barrels, among which 405.7 billion, or 63 percent, were in the Middle East and North Africa. In 1988, the global reserves reached 917.8 billion, and 608.1 of which, or 66 percent, were from those regions. In 1998, 716.2 billion barrels accounting for 68 percent of the total 1,052.9 billion barrels were there. By the end of 2002, while the world reserves decreased to 1, 047.7 billion barrels, that in the Middle East and North Africa even reached to 7 28.3 billion barrel, accounting for 70 percent of the whole. The conclusion drawn in the report was that the Middle East situation would affect the world's energy balance between supply and demand.

Various data indicate that in thenext twenty years, unless substantial changes in the demand of world's energy resources, the Middle East will still dominate the international oil market.

After the fourth Middle East war broke out in October 1973, the oil producers, mainly the OPEC countries, took a series of measures including resuming the right in oil pricing, raising price, cutting output, embargo and nationalization, which not only guaranteed their due income, but also for the first time dealt a heavy blow to the Western developed countries with oil as weapons, and ignited the economic crisis in the capitalist world during 1973 and 1974. Since then, the oil setup changed as the developed countries such as the United States, Japan and those in Europe paid more and more attention to controlling the oil sources.

Practice


of the developed countries is a combination of politics and economy: oil capital streaming in the path cleared by political and economic touches. Expanding oil demand worldwide makes the pricing in the international oil market an important means to control the oil strategies. Although the price is generally settled in the international crude oil futures market according to the supply and demand, the powerful financial markets in the United States and European countries, particularly the superior US currency, determined that dollar is the pricing unit in the international crude oil futures market.

Meanwhile, the United States retarded in exploiting domestic resources and imported hugely as the world's first oil buyer. This situation laid a foundation for it to control the scale of oil need and set price. Japan hasjeopardize the world's economy, which, with no adjustment, will turn to turmoil.

Sooner or later, a new round of energy crisis will change the international oil structure. Oil in pipelines is likely to change the whole world.

Fallacy No. 6: China a pusher behind

Well at ease in their "catching-up" strategies, developing countries will surely go panic and suffer payment losses. Take China for example, this round of price hike proved again that China has been zigzagging in its external energy path, an exponent of which is the extremely uncertain oil market now.

Five years ago, the international oil price skyrocketed when China bought in a large amount; three years ago, it dropped as China cut its import. One year ago, the Iraq war led to price premium, and later, the reasonable


on oil for resurgence

Russia benefits from global oil contention: the daily oil output in July jumped from 6 million to 9.3 million barrels, a record since the post-Soviet Union period. Russian President Putin is now reshaping the nation's oil industry, consolidating the government's control over it, which can be on a par with the top producer Saudi Arabia. Russia also intends to recreate its image as a weighty power on the international stage.

However, Russia needs to take care not to be wrong footed by the huge profit in its development. Obsession will lead to unworthy deformation.

Fallacy No. 8: US-led war was not for oil

The US-led war on Iraq was laughably interpreted as defending the Western freedom and democracy. However, it was for the oil there. Just like Dr.Kissinger once said, oil is too important to be left to the Arabians.

It is a long-term national policy of the United States to control the Middle East for the sake of the global dominance. The White House once discussed the feasibility of sending forces "to protect the oil countries in the Middle East" upon the oil crisis in 1974 and 1975. As "Iran Revolution" broke out in 1979, President Carter uttered in the State of the Union Address in January 1980, that any country intending to control the oil in the Middle East will be regarded as infringing upon the interest of the United States, who will take all measures, including force, to protect it. In 1990, Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, said, the root why Iraq was


not allowed to swallow Kuwait, was that the 20 percent of the world's proven oil reserves were not hoped to be left to Saddam, who is hostile to the United States.

The US policy is based on an important assumption: the one who controls the oil in the Middle East grips the economic throat of the United States.

Fallacy No. 9: oil price is purely an economic matter

The question is essential that powers want to control oil, and control is of politics.

In terms of economy, the United States controls the oil thus enhancing the "oil dollar" position. Presently, US dollar has kept dropping, which will potentially make the oil producers consider pricing with Euro. Actually OPEC members have now shown such an inclination, which is probably a bad news toSearch

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Oak Park offers a variety of services that can be accessed online from a computer, tablet or smart phone. Some of the services are managed directly by the Village, while others are third-party vendors authorized by the Village to conduct transactions.

The Village of Oak Park provides a wide range of services, from public safety programs like fire and police protection to support for housing, historic preservation and neighborhood relations. Don't see what you are looking for? Use the search feature at the top of the page.

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Oak Park boasts excellent schools, world class


top of the page.

Oak Park operates under the village manager form of government. An elected legislative body of a president/mayor and six trustees hires a professional manager to oversee the day to day administration of government programs and services.

Oak Park boasts excellent schools, world class architecture, shopping, dining and an extensive public transportation network. But Oak Park is more than a place – it also is a way of life. Use the links in this menu to learn more about our community and the many services available to residents and visitors alike.

Development projects energize Oak Park

Nov. 11, 2016 - Officials broke ground Thursday for another development project in downtown Oak Park that is bringing new energy to the heart of the community.

The groundbreaking ceremony was for the five-storyDistrict House development at the corner of Lake Street and Euclid Avenue that will replace the former Tasty Dog restaurant, which closed last year. Once completed in the spring of 2018, District House will add 28 condominiums and 4,500 square feet of new retail space to the neighborhood.

District House is one of four major construction projects either nearing completion, well underway or soon to begin within blocks of Lake Street, adding new residential units, retail space and public parking to the mix of Oak Park's central business districts.

Even as contractors are putting the finishing touches on Vantage Oak Park at Lake Street and Forest Avenue, residents already are moving into the property's 270 rental apartments, and Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant and Edward-Elmhurst Health have signed leases to


occupy the building's 25,000 square feet of retail space next year.

Rising 21 stories, Vantage now is the tallest building in Oak Park and also includes 300 dedicated public spaces within an integrated 588-car parking garage.

Meanwhile, work is progressing steadily at a development site on the south side of Lake Street just east of Harlem Avenue. Currently called Elevate Oak Park, the project rises five stories on Lake Street, then steps back into a 20-story structure on North Boulevard.

In addition to 270 apartments and 26,000 square feet of retail space, the project includes a new block of Maple Street on the site's western edge and a 424-space parking garage.

Construction also is expected to begin on a 12-story mixed-use development at Harlem Avenue and South Boulevard early next year.

When thepressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“It sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishments and isolation,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said after the vote.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the vote.

Wu Haitao, China’s deputy U.N. ambassador, said tensions on the Korean peninsula risk “spiralling out of control” and he repeated Beijing’s call for talks.

“Only by meeting each other halfway and through dialogue and consultations can a peaceful settlement be found,” he said.

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan, and says its weapons programs are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South,


a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

On Friday, a spokesperson for North Korea’s foreign ministry called U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently released national security strategy the latest American policy seeking to “stifle our country and turn the entire Korean peninsula” into an outpost of American hegemony.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley votes among other members of the United Nations Security Council to impose new sanctions on North Korea, in New York, U.S., December 22, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky

He said Trump was seeking “total subordination of the whole world”.

INCREASING PRESSURE

Speaking before the Security Council vote, analysts said the new sanctions could have a major effect on the North’s economy.

“If they were enforced, the cap on oil would be devastating for North Korea’s haulage industry, for North Koreans whouse generators at home or for productive activities, and for (state-owned enterprises) that do the same,” said Peter Ward, a columnist for NK News, a website that tracks North Korea.

The forced repatriation of foreign workers would also cut off vital sources of foreign currency and investment not only for the government but also for North Korea’s emerging market economy, he said.

China, which supplies most of North Korea’s oil, has backed successive rounds of U.N. sanctions but had resisted past U.S. calls to cut off supplies to its neighbor.

The move to curb Chinese fuel exports to North Korea may have limited impact after China National Petroleum Corp CNPET.UL suspended diesel and gasoline sales to its northern neighbor in June over concerns it would not get paid.

Business has slowed steadily


since then, with zero shipments of diesel, gasoline and other fuel from China in October. November data will be released on Monday.

Russia quietly boosted economic support for North Korea earlier this year, and last week Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Moscow was not ready to sign up to sanctions that would strangle the country economically.

In a bid to further choke North Korea’s external sources of funding, the resolution also seeks to ban North Korean exports of food products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone, including magnesite and magnesia, wood and vessels.

It also bans exports to North Korea of industrial equipment, machinery, transportation vehicles, and industrial metals as well as subjecting 15 North Koreans and the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces to a global asset freezea violent confrontation.

While the vast majority of gun owners are responsible, a CHL is not a guarantee of lawful behavior. According to the Violence Policy Center, in 2007 alone, 743 people were shot to death by someone legally permitted to carry a concealed gun. In addition, twenty-nine mass shootings were committed by CHL holders and seventeen law enforcement officers were killed by CHL holders.

So much for the theory that all CHL holders are “the best of the best.”

Even trained, armed police officers or security did not stop the Columbine shooting, the Navy Yard shooting or either of the Fort Hood shootings. At the Umpqua Community College shooting, an armed CHL holder knew from his military training that intervention could have injured more people, and he might have been


88 people lost their lives in traffic crashes on Denver streets since January 2018. A new campaign hopes to encourage change to keep them safe.

DENVER, Colorado — New signage popping up around Denver is encouraging people to remember that streets aren't just for cars.

Jill Locantore, the executive director of WalkDenver, told 9NEWS that since January 2018, 88 people have lost their lives to traffic crashes on Denver streets. 30 of those were pedestrians and and six were bicyclists.

Last weekend, volunteers with WalkDenver installed signs around the city at the location of fatal crashes, Locantore said. Each sign bears the name of the victim killed at that location.

"It’s really heartbreaking. Every single name is a person whose life was cut short from a preventable tragedy," Locantore said.

The signs areBALTIMORE (January 14, 2016) -- The New York Red Bulls took home four awards at the MLS year-end awards ceremony on Thursday evening in Baltimore. Red Bulls General Manager Marc de Grandpre was named Doug Hamilton Executive of the Year.

The Red Bulls also won the Ticketing Sales Innovation Award, presented by the National Sales Center (Red Membership Campaign) and the Social Media Activation of the Year Award (#NYisRED). The New York Red Bulls and Red Bull Arena also earned the Security Staff of the Year Award.

The Red Bulls, along with Orlando City SC, led all MLS clubs with four awards. The club, and club personnel, were also named finalists for four other awards, Corporate Partnerships Team of the Year, Marketing Executive of the Year (Joseph Stetson), Marisa Colaiano


Community Relations Department of the Year presented by MLS WORKS, and Digital Lead of the Year (Scott Sandalow).

As General Manager, de Grandpre oversees all aspects of the business operations for the Red Bulls and Red Bull Arena. He rejoined the Red Bulls in April 2014, and led the club to its most successful year in franchise history in his first full season back with the organization. de Grandpre played an instrumental role for the organization in it's transition from Giants Stadium to Red Bull Arena. He previously served as the team's Managing Director from 2006-2008.

de Grandpre also helped spearhead the entry of Red Bull into North America where he served as the Director of Marketing for the global brand. The graduate of Southern New Hampshire University also heldtop marketing positions with international brands KIND Snacks and IMAX.

de Grandpre, wife Kim and two children reside in New Jersey.

The New York Red Bulls 2016 Red Membership campaign earned the Ticketing Sales Innovation Award. In the summer of 2015 the Red Bulls announced that all current and future season ticket accounts would become Red Memberships. The initiative focuses on recognizing fans as members of the Red Bulls family and not just someone who owns a ticket to a match. The membership program also adds value to the season ticket plan, including a new ticket trade program, and an exclusive Red Member jacket, which will serve as the first team's pre-match jacket in 2016. The Red Bulls will continue to offer Red Members exclusive events and opportunities throughout the


season.

The New York Red Bulls also won Team Ticketing awards for both Full Season Tickets and Group Tickets.

The #NYisRED campaign helped drive awareness and build conversation leading up to the inaugural New York Derby against MLS expansion club New York City FC, giving the league's newest rivalry weight before the teams took the field. #NYisRED grew beyond the rivalry and became a season-long rallying point for Red Bulls fans that encompassed social media posts, digital content, helped drive ticket campaigns, and was carried with pride by all areas of the organization from the academy through the first team.

The security staff at Red Bull Arena was recognized for outstanding work throughout the MLS season, and during a number of other events the arena hosts throughout the season. Red BullPer Günther is a Danish composer, church musician, organist and choral conductor.

Per Günther moved to Esbjerg (Denmark) on April 1, 1962 and began as organist in Treenighedskirken (The Trinity Church). In 1964, he founded the choir Treenighedskirkens Drengekor. During his 25 year tenure as the choir's director the choir established itself firmly as a choir with high standards and a repertoire that went far beyond Danish psalmody and hymns. It was Günther who introduced the English Service of Nine Readings and Carols to Denmark for example. On March 31, 2002, he was hounered with Her Majesty Queen Margrethe's Order of Merit for his service.

Per Günther composed mostly for organ, including 24 Chorale Fantasias over Danish Hymn Melodies, and other collections of organ fantasias, organ chorales, Psalms, Magnificat, and


Reduction in Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Type Prevalence Among Young Women Screened for Cervical Cancer in an Integrated US Healthcare Delivery System in 2007 and 2012-2013.
In the United States, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is recommended for 11- or 12-year-olds, and for young adults not previously vaccinated. Early vaccine impact can be measured by reductions in vaccine-type (VT) HPV prevalence. Consecutive residual cervical specimens were retained from women aged 20-29 years at Kaiser Permanente Northwest in 2007, 2012, and 2013. HPV genotypes were determined using L1 consensus polymerase chain reaction with type-specific hybridization to detect 37 types, including VT HPV (HPV type 6, 11, 16, and 18). We compared HPV prevalence in 2007 and 2012-2013, and we evaluated predictors of VT HPV and any-HPV prevalence in 2012-2013. In 2012-2013, 31.9%was one of the first ‘frozen conflicts’ of the former Soviet Union as war broke out in the early 1990s, after the fall of the USSR, between a newly independent Moldova and pro-Russia forces in Transdniester. Several hundred people were killed. There are approximately 2,500 Russian troops inside the area, most of them considered ‘peacekeepers’. They also guard the aging, massive Soviet ammunition depot in Transdniester.

The new Moldova government, in a bid to move towards the European Union, has made it a priority to get Russian forces removed from its territory. Moldova has been locked in an existential conflict with Kremlin security services and hybrid warfare for the last decade due to its desire to be part of the Western landscape.

Video: Moldovans Demonstrate For Reunification With Romania

“The United


(CNN) It's the game that everyone's talking about, and the game that has divided opinions across the sporting world.

The US Women's National Team relentless 13-0 win against Thailand in their opening World Cup match has many questioning the sportsmanship of the reigning champions, with 10 goals coming in the second half.

A number of records have already been broken in France during the opening round of fixtures of the competition and more are likely to follow. We take a look at some key statistics surrounding a tournament that promises yet more twists in the coming weeks.

Unlucky 13 for Thailand

Seven different US players scored in the 13-0 win against Thailand, with Alex Morgan bagging five goals.

The USWNT's victory is the biggest win in the history of the Women's World Cup,surpassing Germany 's 11-0 result against Argentina in 2007. It's also the largest margin of victory in the history of the FIFA World Cup (men's and women's).

Morgan also became only the second player in Women's World Cup history to score five goals in a single game, 27 years and 199 days after fellow US international Michelle Akers managed this feat in November 1991.

On top of all that, Samantha Mewis' opening goal for the USWNT was the 800th goal scored in Women's World Cup matches, with the US team responsible for 116 of them, more than any other nation.

The oldest record breaker

Aged 41 years and 98 days, Formiga stepped onto the pitch in Grenoble on Sunday and without even kicking the ball the unassuming Brazilian wrote a new page


in Women's World Cup history.

Not only did the Brazilian midfielder become the oldest player to feature in the tournament, but she is also the first to appear at seven finals.

When Formiga made her World Cup debut against Japan on June 7, 1995, 150 of the players who will be in France for this year's tournament were yet to be born.

Not only has she broken the record for the most separate World Cup's appeared in by either a male or female player, but she also surpassed American Christie Rampone's record by becoming the competition's oldest ever player.

The Paris Saint-Germain midfielder is also third in the all-time appearance standings having appeared in 24 Women's World Cup matches.

Top scorer

Five-time world player of the year Marta has won almost everything there isto win in football.

But although this is the 33-year-old's fifth World Cup, she has found that World Cup title elusive, coming closest in 2007 when she finished as a runner-up.

The Brazilian has had a plenty of goalscoring success at the World Cup though, scoring her 16th World Cup goal in the opening week to become the first player to score in five editions of the tournament and, by the time her tournament was done, she'd made it to 17.

Next closest is Germany's Birgit Prinz and USA's Abby Wambach who both have 14 goals at World Cups.

Highest attendance

Whilst recent World Cups have attracted bigger TV audiences, the record attendance is still held by the 1999 World Cup finals.

Seen by many as a watershed moment for women's football, the 1999


World Cup tournament still holds records for the highest total attendance (1.194 million) and highest average attendance (37,319 per match).

Alongside the 90,185 people that saw the USA beat China in the final, 17.9 million viewers in the US tuned in for the final -- the largest TV audience for a soccer match in the country's history until a group stage match in the 2014 men's World Cup, which drew 18.2 million, and the 2015 final, which drew 25.4 million.

Caps

Canada forward Christine Sinclair made her international debut in 2000 aged just 16.

When the squads for this year's tournament were announced, Sinclair had racked up 282 caps for Canada -- the highest of any active international player.

To put this in perspective, that's more than the cumulative total of all 23Jamaica players. The USA squad has an unparalleled 1,893 caps and includes eight centurions.

Quickest treble

During the 2015 World Cup final, Carli Lloyd scored a 13-minute hat-trick, but that isn't the fastest hat-trick we've seen at a World Cup.

In Switzerland's 10-1 hammering of Ecuador in 2015, Fabienne Humm scored a five-minute hat-trick, scoring in the 47th, 49th and 52nd minute.

Humm's triple also eclipses the World Cup record in the men's format of the game, as Laszlo Kiss bagged a seven-minute hat-trick against El Salvador in 1982.

Keeping opponents at bay

A key part of any title-winning team is having a dominant goalkeeper -- just look at the difference Alisson has made at Liverpool after arriving from Roma last season.

For the USA women's team, Briana Scurry was its dominant goalkeeper between 1994


and 2009.

After making her World Cup debut in 1995, Scurry amassed 10 World Cup clean sheets, the most of any keeper.

During her time as the USA's starting goalkeeper, Scurry earned a record 173 caps and had 71 clean sheets, helping the USWNT win the World Cup in 1999 and achieve a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens.

Ever-present nations

There are just seven nations that have appeared in every Women's World Cup since it was officially founded 28 years ago in 1991.

Brazil, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden and the USA are the omnipresent countries at the World Cup and will all make their eighth appearance at this year's tournament in France.

Brazil, Sweden and Nigeria have yet to win the tournament, while Nigeria is the only oneof this septet of nations to have never reached the semifinals.

Coaches

In the 2015 Women's World Cup, eight of the 24 teams that competed were managed by female coaches.

Four years later and that number has risen to nine, with just three of them having had previous playing experience at Women's World Cups.

Germany manager Martina Voss-Tecklenburg played 13 times (and scored one goal) in three tournaments and Japan's Asako Takakura played in seven World Cup games.

Hosts France now have Corinne Diacre at the helm, who played in three games in 2003.

Stadiums

This year's World Cup will be played in nine stadiums across France, with the opening fixture between France and South Korea having taken place in the Parc des Princes in Paris.

Alongside the Parc des Princes, two other stadiums were used