from Malawi.

CM was a PI of the Maimwana study and interpreted the VA questionnaires from Malawi.

DSM was a PI of the Makwampur study, interpreted the VA questionnaires from Malawi, and contributed to the final draft of this manuscript.

SPM was PI of the maternal and neonatal mortality survey in Zimbabwe and contributed to the interpretation of the study results.

PB devised the InterVA method to interpret VA and contributed to the interpretation of the results and revisions of the manuscript.

SL contributed to the setup of Maimwana study in Malawi, to the formulation of the VA questionnaires used in Malawi, and to the final draft of this manuscript.

AC ideated the Maimwana and Makwampur studies and contributed to the interpretation of the results and revisions of the manuscript.

All authors read and approvedto the final draft of this manuscript.

Acknowledgements
================

Maimwana trial funding in Malawi was provided by Saving Newborn Lives/Save the Children, with additional funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), The Wellcome Trust and UNICEF Malawi. We thank the Maimwana office and field staff who made this project happen: Tambosi Phiri, Mikey Rosato, Delia Chikuse, Levie Kamtambe, Queen Sara Soho, Joseph Jaffu, Jeremia Mvula and the Mchinji community without which the study would have not been possible, the Mchinji District Health Management Team and district Executive Committee, and traditional leaders working in the district that supported the project. Prof. Marie-Louise Newell also helped set the study up and advised on its development.

Makwanpur trial funding was provided by the UK Department for International Development, with additional support from the


Division of Child and Adolescent Health, WHO, UNICEF, and the UN Fund for Population Activities. We thank the MIRA team in Makwanpur and Kathmandu, project managers Bhim Shrestha and Kirti Tumbahhamphe, Drs. S Manandhar and A Ojha, who read and interpreted the verbal-autopsy questionnaires, the communities in Makwanpur district who allowed the study to take place, and the Makwanpur District Development Committee and its members.

Data from Zimbabwe were available thanks to the support and funding provided by the UK Department for International Development (DfID), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), and the United Nations Children\'s Fund (UNICEF). We are particularly grateful to Gwendoline Kandawasvika for assistance in data handling.
Fable Anniversary lead designer Ted Timmins is no longer with Lionhead Studios after a decade of working for the developer, he confirmed in a series of tweets.

"I've decided to leave Lionhead. This was a really tough decision, as I've had such an amazing time here," Timmins wrote. "Lionhead has been such an integral part of my life, more than 1/3rd of it infact! Which is why it's a good time for change."

Timmins began his career at the studio working on the original Fable, working as a tester before eventually climbing through the ranks to a lead designer position. He has yet to announce his future plans.

Fable Anniversary received a 5 out of 10 review when it launched earlier this year. "If you could wade through the sometimes crippling


The Mating of Michael

Everyone admires Michael Lamont for being a nurse, but his part-time work as a gay sex surrogate not only raises eyebrows, it's cost him relationships. Michael is small, beautiful, and dedicated to working with people who need him. But what he really wants is a love of his own. He spends most of his time reading science fiction, especially books written by his favorite author and long-time crush, the mysteriously reclusive J.C. Guise.

In the Middle of Somewhere

Daniel Mulligan is tough, snarky, and tattooed, hiding his self-consciousness behind sarcasm. Daniel has never fit in - not at home in Philadelphia with his auto mechanic father and brothers, and not at school where his Ivy League classmates looked down on him. Now, Daniel's relieved to have ajob at a small college in Holiday, Northern Michigan, but he's a city boy through and through, and it's clear that this small town is one more place he won't fit in.

Knight of Ocean Avenue

How can you be 25 and not know you're gay? Billy Ballew runs from that question. A high school dropout, barely able to read until he taught himself, Billy's life is driven by his need to help support his parents as a construction worker, put his sisters through college, coach his Little League team, and not think about being a three-time loser in the engagement department. Then, in preparation for his sister's big wedding, Billy meets Shaz - alias Chase Phillips - a rising-star celebrity stylist who defines the word gay.

Wolfsong

Ox was 23 when


murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his blood red eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces. It's been three years since that fateful day and the boy is back. Except now he's a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

Out of Nowhere: Middle of Somewhere, Book 2

The only thing in Colin Mulligan's life that makes sense is taking cars apart and putting them back together. In the auto shop where he works with his father and brothers, he tries to get through the day without having a panic attack or flying into a rage. Drinking helps. So does running and lifting weights until hecan hardly stand. But none of it can change the fact that he's gay, a secret he has kept from everyone.

Crossroads

After divorcing the woman he'd been with since he was 17, Nick Fuller is starting over. He owns the restaurant of his dreams, and he's determined to meet new people, find new passions, and experience life to its fullest. Easier said than done - that is until he meets his new neighbor, Bryce Tanner. Neither man has ever wanted another guy, but there's a connection between Nick and Bryce from the start - a spark they can't deny.

Here for You

Cole Gannon arrives in the seaside town of Ocean Vista to work as a bartender and finally find a place to belong. Determined to make a home for himself,


Cole lives happily with his four colorful roommates, whom he considers brothers. The only problem is Cole's attraction to Ian Stark - a guy all wrong for him. He wishes he didn't keep running into the sexy lawyer.

Owning Corey

When introverted doctor Ben Hardy's high-maintenance girlfriend wants to introduce a little more kink into their love life, he doesn't expect it to come in the form of the hunky new EMT who just moved to Blackwood. Ben's not gay, but damn! He can definitely see why all the women turn to mush when he's around: tall, blue eyes, body of an underwear model. The prospect of being naked in the same room with him is horrifying. So why the hell is he considering it?

The Law of Attraction

Alec Rowland isa high-flying lawyer in a London firm, whose career is his life. He doesn't have time for relationships, and his sexuality is a closely guarded secret. After picking up a cute guy on a Friday night, Alec's world is rocked to its foundations when his one night stand shows up in the office on Monday morning - as the new temp on his team.

The Queen & the Homo Jock King: At First Sight

Do you believe in love at first sight? Sanford Stewart sure doesn't. In fact, he pretty much believes in the exact opposite, thanks to the Homo Jock King. It seems Darren Mayne lives for nothing more than to create chaos in Sandy's perfectly ordered life, just for the hell of it. Sandy despises him, and nothing


will ever change his mind. Or so he tells himself.

Home Again

Noah Forman wakes up in a hospital and can't remember how he got there. He holds it together, taking comfort in the fact that the man he has loved since childhood is on the way. But when his one and only finally arrives, Noah is horrified to discover that he doesn't remember anything from the past three years. Clark Lehman built a life around the person who insisted from their first meeting that they were meant to be together.

Not a Game: A Contemporary Gay Romance Novel

A new job, a new city, and hopefully a new life. When chubby gamer Oliver Barnaby receives a job offer from the best boutique game developer in the country, he leaves his familyand his less than spectacular existence in Oklahoma without a second's hesitation. Determined to change more than his career and his geography, Oliver implements a plan to finally land a boyfriend. Step one is improving his skills in the bedroom.

The Heart of Texas: Texas Series, Book 1

Riley Hayes, the playboy of the Hayes family, is a young man who seems to have it all: money, a career he loves, and his pick of beautiful women. His father, CEO of HayesOil, passes control of the corporation to his two sons; but a stipulation is attached to Riley's portion. Concerned about Riley's lack of maturity, his father requires that Riley 'marry and stay married for one year to someone he loves'. Angered by the requirement, Riley seeks a means of


bypassing his father's stipulation.

Perfect Imperfections

Reg Moore has fun talking and drinking with "The" Jeremy Jameson and can't say no when the supposedly straight rock star makes him a once-in-a-lifetime offer: keep him company on his tour by playing the part of his boyfriend.

The Truth as He Knows It: Perspectives, Book 1

Officer Noel Carlson isn't out to anyone in small-town Stratton, Pennsylvania, so a relationship is out of the question. That doesn't stop him from wanting one, though. When a night-shift call brings him face-to-thonged-butt with a hired stripper whose girl-party gig went terribly wrong, Noel takes pity on the guy and lets him go. But he can't get the encounter out of his mind.

Silver & Black

Brian Silver is CEO of the world's largest coffeehouse chain in the world,Silver Coffee. Growing up in a wealthy family, Silver had it all: money, fame, and any man he wanted, but that was never enough. Silver wants more. Greyson Black is a coffeehouse barista in one of the Silver Coffee chains in downtown Manhattan. Greyson is finishing school and determined to find the best path for his life.

Boys

Twenty-five-year-old Jag Huntington loves straight men. He can't help it. Something about their macho allure intrigues him. But Jag has never even managed to have a straight man as a friend. His best friend, Tyson Hopper, and Tyson's boyfriend, Howard Steinman, invite Jag out for a night with the gay boys and Howard's sister, Virginia. When Virginia brings her straight boyfriend, Carson Phelps, Jag's attraction to the 30-year-old stud is instant.

Between Sinners


and Saints

Levi Binder is a Miami bartender who cares about only two things: sex and surfing. Ostracized by his Mormon family for his homosexuality, Levi is determined to live his life his own way, but everything changes when he meets massage therapist Jaime Marshall.

The Backup Boyfriend: Boyfriend Chronicles Series, Book 1

Professionally, Dr. Alec Johnson has almost reached his goals. As this year's recipient of a humanitarian award with his ex, Dr. Tyler Hall, Alec's work with the homeless is about to be recognized. Unfortunately, his personal life sucks because now he has to attend several events alongside Tyler - with his ex's new boyfriend in tow. In an attempt to lift his mood and break out of his rut, Alec purchases a motorcycle he has no idea howto start.

One True Thing

Dustin Davis spent years wishing for a prince, but kissing frog after slimy frog. When he sees Archer Kyriakides for the first time, Dusty thinks his luck has finally changed. Archer could be it. The one. But their hot and cold romance leaves Dusty confused: Why does it feel right one moment and wrong the next? It doesn't make sense - until the day Dusty meets Archer's identical twin, Asher, and realizes he's been seeing them both.

Island Doctor: Island Medics, Book 1

Dr. Jeff Martin has spent five years as a rural general practitioner on the Isle of Wight, hiding the fact he's gay. He travels in secret to see his partner, Tris, but when he discovers Tris has been cheating on him, he ends their


relationship. Then Jeff meets island native Cameron Gillard. Cameron is down to earth and lively and treats Jeff like he's the most important person in his life. Jeff blooms under Cameron's attention, and he decides to come out to his colleagues and friends.

Safe in His Arms

In the late-night quiet of the caravan park shower room, Lon Taylor washes away the filth of the Western Australian mines. He's not looking for anyone, but when Casey offers, Lon doesn't turn him down. Welcoming the young man in his big, hairy arms, Lon provides a safety to Casey that he has never known, and Casey wants to stay forever. Still reeling from the breakup of his family years ago, Lon's not sure he's ready for the responsibility of the comfort andsecurity Casey craves.

Then the Stars Fall

The death of his wife four years earlier left Travis Bennett a shell of the man he used to be. With his dog by his side, Travis raises his three children, manages his business, and works as a ranch hand. But every day, every minute, is an aching emptiness.

Publisher's Summary

You can't choose who you fall in love with. Despite assuming from a young age that he was gay, Scott Murphy couldn't imagine life without Shelly. He threw away the label he'd stuck on his sexuality and had 11 amazing years with her, but now, he feels even more lost trying to figure out how to move on after Shelly's death. After nearly a year of watching Scott fade away, Shelly's father forces him


was based was unrealistic. It just never 'felt' right to me.

This feeling was backed up by several other events in the book. His running away when they went for coffee, I mean, how old is he? 11? The coincidence that Chris happened to be the one who almost ran into him causing his ankle to break. The nurses' assumptions, quite unprofessionally, that he was gay because it was a man he came to hospital with. Chris's relationship with his father...what was that all about? Chris is a 35 year old professional not a 15 year old school boy!

For me, the book was just full of flawed logic and unrealistic circumstances that must have prevented me from feeling empathy for the characters. Because, to be honest, I didn't feelof 1984, Clayton was approached apparently to investigate for the Terre Haute Police Department the "alleged use and sale of controlled substances on the Terre Haute Fire Department." (R. 257) He was sworn in as a fireman on May 31, 1984, but was not sworn in as a police *646 officer until July 3, 1984. Clayton's first assignment for the police department was to investigate the usage and sale of controlled substances on the Terre Haute Fire Department. Clayton's investigation resulted in at least ten arrests, including Bridwell's.
Bridwell's first trial began on November 5, 1985 but a mistrial was declared when Bridwell informed the jury that he had passed a polygraph test as to his whereabouts on one of the days he allegedly sold marijuana to Clayton. At


the second trial, Clayton testified that Bridwell had sold him marijuana on three occasions. Clayton was the only witness who testified against Bridwell regarding the transactions.[1]
On cross-examination, Bridwell asked Clayton if there were any misrepresentations, omissions or falsifications in his application for police employment. Clayton admitted that there were but stated that he believed his answers were true, complete and correct at the time he submitted the application. When Bridwell attempted to submit the application into evidence, the trial court sustained the state's objection. During Bridwell's offer to prove, Clayton admitted that he had omitted the following charges from his application: trespassing, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, possession of paraphernalia, possession of marijuana and public intoxication. Of the omitted charges, Clayton was convicted of contributing toBeethoven: "Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!" from Fidelio

Lada Valesova, piano

Dvořák: "Vidino divna přesladká" from Rusalka

Lada Valesova, piano

About

David Butt Philip

Tenor

British tenor David Butt Philip is an alumnus of the Jette Parker Young Artists Program, Royal Opera House. In 2014, shortly after leaving the program he made a hugely acclaimed English National Opera debut as Rodolfo La bohème. Recent debuts such as Erik Der fliegende Hollander, the title role of Brett Dean’s Hamlet, Laca Jenufa and Grigoriy Boris Godunov have attracted serious attention and have established him as one of the most exciting young helden tenors Britain has to offer today.

Read more

In the 2018/19 season Butt Philip makes his company and role debut in the title role Der Zwerg, a new production by Tobias Kratzer at Deutsche Oper Berlin. He also


returns to Madrid to sing Froh Das Rheingold in the new Ring Cycle production of Teatro Real. British audiences can see him perform at Royal Opera House as Grigoriy Boris Godunov; English National Opera in Daniel Kramer’s new production of Britten’s War Requiem; and at Opera Holland Park in his debut as Count Vaudemont in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. His busy concert season includes Beethoven Symphony No. 9 on New Years’ Eve with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin and Vladimir Jurowski, Dream of Gerontius at Gloucester Cathedral, Tippet’s A Child of our Time in Lisbon, Beethoven Missa Solemnis with Rundfunkchor Berlin and Kammerakademie Potsdam, Verdi Requiem with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall and Faust La damnation de Faust with the Hallé Orchestra.

Last season, Butt Philip madeLa damnation de Faust in a concert performance with the Orchestra of Opera North.

Recent engagements include debuts as Erik Die Fliegende Hollander at Opéra de Lille, Laertes in the premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet at Glyndebourne, Laca Jenufa with Opera North, Rodolfo La bohème with Glyndebourne on Tour and English Touring Opera, Luigi Il Tabarro at Opera North and Don José Carmen at Nevill Holt Opera. During his time as a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House he appeared in productions of Nabucco, Die Zauberflöte, Gloriana, Turandot, Parsifal, La Traviata, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Dialogues des Carmélites and Ariadne auf Naxos.

On the concert platform he has performed Froh Das Rheingold with the Hallé Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Festival, Beethoven 9


with both the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo and the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with the Tonnkünstler Orchestra at Musikverein Vienna, Handel’s Messiah with the Mozart Festival Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall and Prokofiev’s Seven, they are seven with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms, Mahler Das Klagende Lied with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle at the Barbican, Haydn Nelson Mass with the Hallé under Sir Mark Elder, Britten Folk Songs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and recitals at the Wigmore Hall with Simon Lane and the Solstice Quartet.

Butt Philip was born and brought up in Wells in Somerset and was a chorister at Peterborough Cathedral. He is a graduateof Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, and the National Opera Studio and also a Samling Artist, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and winner of the prestigious John Christie Award in 2011.

Guardian, October 2017

David Butt Philip, a former Royal Opera Young Artist making his debut at ENO – a company whose English-language policy is crying out for singers like him to vindicate it. It’s an impressively complete performance: his Rodolfo is likable and unassuming on stage, but when he sings he unleashes a warm, easy-sounding tenor voice with plenty of heft and ping at the top. His first aria hymns Mimi’s little frozen hands in impeccable Italianate style.

Guardian

…a cast dominated by David Butt Philip’s sensationally well sung Don José… the scale


People v Cruz (2014 NY Slip Op 07953)

People v Cruz

2014 NY Slip Op 07953

Decided on November 18, 2014

Appellate Division, First Department

Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.

This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.

Decided on November 18, 2014

Friedman, J.P., Acosta, Saxe, Manzanet-Daniels, Gische, JJ.

13519 6002/11

[*1] The People of the State of New York, Respondent,
vJose Cruz, Defendant-Appellant.

Scott A. Rosenberg, The Legal Aid Society, New York (Eve Kessler of counsel), for appellant.

Appeal from judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Bonnie G. Wittner, J. at plea; Carol Berkman, J. at sentencing), rendered August 14, 2012, convicting defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the fourth degree, and sentencing him to aPresident Donald Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin over the phone Tuesday morning, after the Russian leader's overwhelming re-election victory.

"I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on the victory, his electoral victory," Trump said later Tuesday. He added that the two leaders "will probably get together in the not-too-distant future" to discuss the international arms race.

Trump congratulated Putin even after aides, in briefing materials prepared ahead of the call, reportedly warned him: "DO NOT CONGRATULATE." Trump was also supposed to condemn the recent Russia-linked nerve agent poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in the U.K., but he did not, according to The Washington Post, which cited officials familiar with the call.

The phone call prompted a harsh response from some of Trump's biggest critics.

"An American


president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement condemning the call. "And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election."

The election win keeps Putin in office as Russia's president for another six years. His closest rival in the election, which was held Sunday, scored nearly 12 percent of the vote, while his most vocal opponent, Alexei Navalny, was barred from running in the race.

Putin's overwhelming victory and the circumstances leading to it have prompted criticism from Russia watchers. The White House, however, skirted the issue Tuesday.

"We're focused on our elections. We don't get to dictate how other$14 million

Joey Fatone is an American singer and actor. He first rose to fame as a member of the boy band NSYNC. After disbanding in 2002, he pursued a career in acting. Initially appearing in the films Longshot and On The Line in the early 2000s, his first notable role was as Angelo in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. He next starred as Johnny Cappella in the film The Cooler. He later played Ricky in three episodes of Shorty McShorts’ Shorts. He appeared as a contestant on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and came in second place. As of 2017, he’s the host of the show Impractical Jokers: After Party. He also reprised his role as Angelo in the sequel My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.


TV Lux

Last updated on October 30, 2012

TV Lux started its live signal on 4 May 2008. The broadcasts are focusing on deep spiritual values and human values. The channel is aimed as an alternative to regular television build on the objective of spreading peace and encouragement. The schedule consists of educative and informational programs, some of them promoting and supporting the Catholic Church. For more details on the channel, TV Lux online broadcast or specific details such as tv shows, schedules or vod please check the official website. The TV online programming includes shows and programmes like Anjel Pana, Celou Vetou, Chvaly, Dokumenty, Baterka, Filmix, Hrdinovia Viery. TV Lux online stream is aired live from Bratislava.Sunday, October 4, 2009

Laika (from the Russian: literally meaning "Barker" or "Howler") was a Soviet space dog (c. 1954 – November 3, 1957) who became the first animal to orbit the Earth and the first orbital death. Little was known about the impact of space flight on living things at the time Laika's mission was launched. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by non-human animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. The United States used chimpanzees; the Soviet program elected to use dogs. Laika, a stray, originally named Kudryavka (Russian: кудрявкаLittle Curly-Haired One), underwent training with two other dogs, and was eventually chosen as the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2


that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957. Sputnik 2 was not designed to be retrievable, and Laika had always been intended to die.

Laika died a few hours after launch, presumably from stress and overheating, probably due to a malfunction in the thermal control system. The true cause and time of her death was not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she lived for several days. However, the experiment proved that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure weightlessness. It paved the way for human spaceflight and provided scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments. On April 11, 2008, Russian officials unveiled a monument to Laika. A small monument infor the horrible fact that in the first six months of this year, one Black person every 36 hours was executed. This wanton disregard for Black life resulted in the killing of 13 year-old children, fathers taking care of their kids, women driving the wrong cars, as well as people with mental health and drug problems.

This report documents how people of African descent remain “without sanctuary” throughout the United States. Nowhere is a Black woman or man safe from racial profiling, invasive policing, constant surveillance, and overriding suspicion. All Black people – regardless of education, class, occupation, behavior or dress – are subject to the whims of the police whose institutionalized racist policies and procedures require them to arbitrarily stop, frisk, arrest, brutalize and even execute Black people.

Invasive


in the first six months of this year, one Black person every 36 hours was executed. This wanton disregard for Black life resulted in the killing of 13 year-old children, fathers taking care of their kids, women driving the wrong cars, as well as people with mental health and drug problems.

This report documents how people of African descent remain “without sanctuary” throughout the United States. Nowhere is a Black woman or man safe from racial profiling, invasive policing, constant surveillance, and overriding suspicion. All Black people – regardless of education, class, occupation, behavior or dress – are subject to the whims of the police whose institutionalized racist policies and procedures require them to arbitrarily stop, frisk, arrest, brutalize and even execute Black people.

Invasive policing is only one aspectORIGINAL REPORT

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) --U.S. Rep. George Holding is weighing in on the controversy surrounding a rapper's anti-Semitic message last month at an event held at UNC-Chapel Hill.On Monday, April 15, Holding, who represents North Carolina's 2nd Congressional District, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos requesting an investigation into the Duke-UNC conference on Gaza amid reports of severe anti-Israeli bias and anti-Semitic rhetoric.In part, Holding wrote:See Holding's full letter to DeVos here."I cannot be anti-Semitic alone."That's the declaration captured on video of a performer at last month's Conflict Over Gaza conference, an event held at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and co-sponsored by several UNC entities and departments, including the Chancellor's Global Education Fund."Let's try it together," rapper Tamer Nafar tells the audience before


a hate fest against Israel," Horowitz tells ABC11. "When I went there, that is what I found, but what I did not expect was for it to evolve into open anti-Semitism.""You expect these attitudes from Neo-Nazis and white nationalists, but you don't expect these attitudes in the halls of academia and the halls of Congress ," he said.The conference, titled Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities, was officially sponsored by the UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies. The event's website lists more than 30 co-sponsors ranging from UNC School of Law to the Rotary Club of Raleigh.The three-day event's description explains that the conference "will shed much-needed light on the current realities in the Gaza Strip, givingsent the following statement:ABC11 again reached out to UNC Global, sending them the raw, unedited version of the performance. The organization referred ABC11 back to the original statement, with emphasis on the final paragraph.Late Thursday evening, Duke sent a response to ABC11.On Friday, UNC Interim Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz issued the following statement:Several members of the Triangle's Jewish Community sent letters to both UNC and Duke leaders critical of the conference and its roster of speakers.In a letter posted online , Hillel North Carolina writes:Beth El Synagogue in Durham, meanwhile, wrote to administrators ahead of the event that "Beth El members have been troubled by the recent uptick in antisemitic acts which have occurred at Duke, UNC, and around the Durham-Chapel Hill area. In addition to this, while


criticism of Israel is, of course, legitimate and important in a democratic society, portraying Israel only as an oppressor and Palestinians only as victims functions to demonize Israel, and neither leads to constructive dialogue nor advances rigorous academic thought."Unrelated to the conference, Guskiewicz on Wednesday alerted students and faculty that "university Libraries officials found several anti-Semitic posters on bookshelves and tables in Davis Library.""I am extremely disappointed and appalled that anyone would write these abhorrent messages and direct them toward members of our Jewish community," Guzkiewicz added. "This behavior conflicts with the University's long-standing commitment to fostering an environment where all students, faculty and staff can be free from harassment."Hillel North Carolina also wrote a letter to students that added more details to the posters: "The fliers includeNational Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London: Routledge, 2012). He is the co-editor of The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation — HERE.]

TURKEY’S NEW LEFT

In the Turkish general election of June 2015, the left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) won 13 per cent of the vote and eighty seats in the country’s parliament—a spectacular result for a political organization that had been formed less than three years earlier, and the first time in Turkey’s history that a radical-left party had achieved such success. Since that promising debut, the HDP has faced a whirlwind of repression orchestrated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Thousands of HDP members have been arrested, including its most prominent leaders;


a parliamentary route to socialism and contested the 1965 general election, winning just under 3 per cent of the national vote and drawing support from the Kurdish-majority areas, which supplied three of its fifteen MPs. [2] For a time, the TİP managed to raise the demands of workers and peasants within the Turkish political system, but its poor performance in the 1969 election resulted in a bitter factional struggle. [3] Soon after the military coup of March 1971, the party was closed down and its leaders imprisoned. In the years that followed, repression of the main opposition forces—especially left-wing and Kurdish activists—intensified, with thousands detained and tortured.

New left groups proliferated during the 1970s, but the movement was highly fragmented, drawing on every competing strand of Marxist ideology, andhundreds were executed or died under torture; many others fled the country for exile in Europe.

When Turkey’s generals returned the country to civilian rule in 1983, its socialist movement had been crippled. A new constitution imposed a 10 per cent threshold for parliament that was meant to exclude dissenters from the political system. Under these conditions, the Turkish left could barely make an imprint on the post-dictatorship landscape. During the late 80s and early 90s, the main vehicle for progressive voters was the centre-left Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP), which won nearly 25 per cent of the vote in 1987 and 20 per cent four years later. But the SHP was unable to develop a viable left-wing programme that could challenge the grip of Turkey’s dominant conservative parties.


force in the new century, many erstwhile left intellectuals rallied to its banner, hoping that the Islamists could succeed where they had failed in liberalizing the political system and cutting the army down to size. This abdication offered striking evidence of a historic eclipse.

Kurdish awakening

However, the Kurdish national movement would pose a much more formidable challenge to Turkey’s ruling establishment, compensating for the weakness of the country’s left. Turkey has the largest Kurdish community in the Middle East, some fifteen million people (about a fifth of the overall population); fifteen provinces in the south-east are at least two-thirds Kurdish. Often enlisted by Turkey’s rulers for violent struggle against the Armenians—including the genocide of WWI—the Kurds then found themselves denied any official recognition under the Kemalist regime, which dubbedthem ‘mountain Turks’ and repressed their language and cultural identity. The majority lived in rural districts, where more than half of the arable land was owned by less than a tenth of the wealthiest families. Two-fifths of the Kurdish population were landless peasants who survived as sharecroppers, or by working for the tribal chief; the remainder had small plots of four to five hectares. Tribes had become the dominant form of social organization among Kurds after the abolition of the Kurdish emirates by the Ottomans in the nineteenth century; subsequent political and economic developments altered this function, but did not efface it. The endemic poverty and backwardness of the south-eastern regions combined with the weight of national oppression to generate a vast reservoir of discontent.

The 1970s saw a


growing radicalization of the Kurds, with the founding of several clandestine parties based on socialist ideology. The relentless persecution of all forms of Kurdish political expression persuaded many activists that it was time to take up arms against the state. The PKK was set up in 1978, with Abdullah Öcalan as its leader. Born in the rural south-east, Öcalan was strongly influenced by the Turkish Marxist left during his time as a student at Ankara University in the early 1970s but, like many Kurds, believed that the existing groups did not show enough respect for Kurdish identity. What set the PKK apart from the other Kurdish organizations was its ability to survive the repression unleashed by the 1980 coup. The party had shifted many of its cadres toSyria and to Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley before the military seized power, and began preparations for a full-scale insurgency. In August 1984, its armed units carried out the first attacks on military posts near the border with Iraq.

Öcalan’s movement went on to fight a guerrilla war that lasted until 1999, long after the urban guerrillas of the 70s Turkish left had been contained and defeated by the state. Öcalan was accused by critics of stifling dissent and imposing himself as the PKK’s unquestioned leader, but enjoyed great respect within the movement and in Kurdish society as a whole. The PKK developed into a popular national-liberation movement, with a guerrilla force of 15,000 fighters at the height of its power in the early 1990s. The movement had several million supporters


Kurdish population, appealing to tribal landowners whose position was threatened by the PKK’s anti-feudal rhetoric. The violence of the state triggered mass flight from the countryside to the cities of western Turkey, which now contain almost as many Kurds as the south-eastern regions. Over 40,000 people were killed in the conflict, including PKK militants, Turkish soldiers, pro-state paramilitaries and (above all) Kurdish civilians. After abortive peace negotiations in the early 90s, the Turkish army began to get the better of its adversary, helped by huge quantities of US military aid. But the real breakthrough for Ankara came with the capture of Öcalan in 1999. The PKK chief had been residing in Damascus, but was expelled by the Syrian regime after Turkey applied heavy pressure on Assad. Öcalan soughtrefuge in several European countries before travelling to Kenya, where he was captured by Turkish commandos with the assistance of the CIA. [5] To Ankara’s delight, the decapitation of the movement seemed to have finished off its insurgency. At Öcalan’s direction, the PKK called a unilateral ceasefire soon afterwards, and its guerrillas withdrew across the border to the mountains of northern Iraq. A Turkish military court sentenced the PKK leader to death—later commuted to life imprisonment after capital punishment was abolished in 2002. Öcalan was held in a special, heavily guarded prison on the island of İmralı, where for a decade he was the sole inmate.

But this was not the end of the ‘Kurdish problem’ for Turkey’s rulers, as the armed insurgency had helped catalyse a broader political


awakening. This pro-Kurdish democratic movement was far more successful on the electoral stage than the Turkish socialist parties, despite facing intense state repression, and carved out a space as the main political actor articulating the demands of the Kurdish population. The first expression of the movement was the People’s Labour Party (HEP), set up in 1990 by MPs who had been expelled from the SHP for attending a conference on the Kurdish question in Paris. [6] The new party had two overlapping objectives: democratization of state and society in Turkey, and a peaceful, inclusive solution to the Kurdish conflict. It sought to win support from beyond the Kurdish community, claiming to be a party that represented the whole of Turkish society. [7] While electoral backing for the HEPand its successor groups would come overwhelmingly from Kurds, many long-standing Turkish socialist militants joined the party: by aligning with the pro-Kurdish movement, they had access to a popular base well in excess of anything the Turkish left could manage through its own efforts. Their presence helped rebut charges that the HEP and its successors were purely Kurdish organizations, although this would not be enough to shield the parties from a succession of legal clampdowns.

In the 1991 election, HEP candidates stood for parliament on the SHP’s list and won 22 seats—an unprecedented number of pro-Kurdish MPs. By the following year, however, the state security court had moved to strip the party’s representatives of their parliamentary immunity; in July 1993, it was banned altogether. The Democracy Party (DEP) was


per cent threshold, but both parties performed well in local elections, and managed to build up an organization covering many of Turkey’s cities. The HADEP won almost 5 per cent of the vote in the 1999 parliamentary poll, and took 37 towns and cities in the south-east, including the municipal councils of Ağrı, Batman, Diyarbakır, Hakkâri, Siirt and Van. Five years later, the DEHAP won control of 54 councils.

One of the key difficulties for this movement was the dominant perception in Turkey that it was simply a vehicle for the Kurds and the political expression of the PKK. It found itself in an uneasy position, having to balance the articulation of Kurdish political demands with the constraints of operating within the established constitutional framework, which made the expressionsome even stigmatized the secular, left-wing and feminist ideology of the national movement as a form of ‘Kurdish-Kemalism’. Since the 1950s, Turkey’s political parties had often selected influential Kurdish tribal leaders as their candidates; sheikhs and other religious figures were also integrated into centre-right circles and became important political actors among the Kurds. This tactic was taken up assiduously by the AKP in the course of its rise to hegemony. Tribal loyalties had been weakened by the experience of the PKK insurgency and the radicalization of the Kurdish population, and traditional leaders now looked to the state for assistance in maintaining their social position through clientelism. Islamist actors such as the Sufi religious orders, the Turkish Hizbullah and the Gülen movement organized themselves through a network of civil-society


it easier to set up NGOs, facilitating the spread of democratic values and providing more opportunities for Kurds to represent their own interests. The evolution of the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK also nurtured a certain political opening. Although the ceasefire ended in 2004, subsequent violence never returned to the levels of the early 90s. When the DEHAP faced yet another legal case to shut down its activity, a new organization, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), was created in 2005. In the 2007 election, which saw the AKP increase its support to almost 47 per cent, the DTP also elected 21 MPs who had stood as independents to sidestep the 10 per cent threshold. Two years later, the DTP consolidated its position as the dominantparty for the Kurdish regions in municipal elections.

The extent of liberalization for the Kurds during the first phase of AKP rule should not be exaggerated. One government initiative allowed a Kurdish-language TV network to be set up with state funding, but the network was forbidden to describe itself as ‘Kurdish’, and terms associated with the separatist movement (‘revolution’, ‘rebellion’ etc.) were also banned. The AKP leadership was never willing to consider granting the sort of cultural rights and autonomy enjoyed by such national minorities as the Catalans or the Welsh. AKP-sympathizing liberals such as Ahmet Altan, who served as the editor of Taraf newspaper between 2007 and 2012, frequently wrote columns attacking the pro-Kurdish parties for not condemning the PKK. From this perspective, widely disseminated in the Turkish


media, advocacy of a political solution to the conflict amounted to support for violence. Legal harassment carried on as before: the DTP was closed down by the constitutional court at the end of 2009.

The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) then took up the banner of Kurdish representation, negotiating an alliance with seventeen other parties and NGOs for the 2011 election. The slate of independent candidates included figures like the film director and columnist Sırrı Süreyya Önder for Istanbul and the left-wing journalist Ertuğrul Kürkçü for Mersin; 35 MPs were elected to parliament as independents. But this achievement coincided with Erdoğan’s greatest triumph to date: a third consecutive victory for the AKP, this time with almost 50 per cent of the popular vote. It was also the high pointfor the AKP’s electoral overture to the Kurdish population. Emboldened by its success, the AKP took an increasingly authoritarian turn after 2011, working with Fethullah Gülen’s religious movement to purge the army and judiciary of its Kemalist rivals, and lashing out at critics and dissenters in all directions. Opposition to the AKP’s social conservatism and free-market economic policies erupted in the Gezi uprising of 2013. The protests in Istanbul were contained through harsh repression, but Erdoğan’s party had lost its image as a force for democratic reform, and would henceforth rely on strong-arm tactics and Turkish nationalism to maintain its grip on power.

Birth of the HDP

As opposition mounted to AKP rule, the pro-Kurdish movement launched a new political initiative to broaden its base: the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK),


set up at the end of 2011 as a representative body for groups standing in opposition to the dominant bloc in Turkey. The original suggestion for the HDK had come from the imprisoned Abdullah Öcalan, which meant that the umbrella group could count on support from the PKK and its followers. Öcalan’s political outlook had changed significantly during his years in prison. Previously reliant on textbooks of Soviet Marxism that had been translated into Turkish for his ideological formation, the PKK chief read widely in contemporary radical thought, from Foucault to Wallerstein, and was particularly taken by the writings of Murray Bookchin, whose idiosyncratic variety of anarchism became a reference-point for the new vision of ‘democratic autonomy’ for the Kurdish people articulated by Öcalan. [11]

Other groups that helpedestablish the HDK included the Labour Party, the Socialist Party of the Oppressed, the Green Left Party, and various organizations that represented women, the LGBTcommunity and the Alevi and Armenian minorities. Its stated goal was to unite individual struggles for democracy and equality as part of a wider counter-hegemonic force. In 2012, the HDK launched the Peoples’ Democratic Party as its national political vehicle; in the Kurdish-majority provinces, the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) carried the electoral banner of the congress. In terms of membership and senior personnel, the HDP proved to be more diverse than its predecessors, attracting (in addition to the groups mentioned above) figures from the Turkish left-wing and feminist movements. In the main cities of western Turkey, such as Istanbul and Izmir, the HDP won


entering parliament, he was heavily involved in the Diyarbakır branch of the Human Rights Association, an important campaigning group. Demirtaş was first elected to parliament as an independent candidate in 2007, then rose rapidly to become co-chair of the BDPthree years later. He established himself as the new party’s public face during its campaign, proving to be a strong media performer whose calm and confident approach won much praise. Erdoğan was the predictable winner, supported by more than half of voters and seeing off his main challenger Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who had been endorsed by the Kemalist CHP and the far-right MHP. But Demirtaş won a little under 10 per cent of the vote and topped the poll in eleven south-eastern provinces. This breakthrough set the HDP up forthe following year’s parliamentary election.

Breakthrough

In the run-up to the 2015 poll, the HDP drew on the experience and resources of the pro-Kurdish movement as well as the other left-wing and Alevi organizations. In western Turkey, the HDPselected Alevi community leaders such as Turgut Öker, Ali Kenanoğlu and Müslüm Doğan in Izmir. Well-known socialist activists like Ertuğrul Kürkçü and Sırrı Süreyya Önder stood as candidates for İzmir and Ankara respectively. The feminist activist Filiz Kerestecioğlu, Armenian rights campaigner Garo Paylan and Islamic feminist writer Hüda Kaya joined the HDP list in Istanbul. In the Kurdish-majority areas, the party chose figures that would appeal to religious and tribal Kurds, such as Altan Tan in Diyarbakır and Mehmet Mir Dengir Fırat in Mersin, who had previously been active in Islamist-leaning parties.


The HDP also selected candidates that could reach out to specific minorities, such as the Arabs in Şanlıurfa and Mardin provinces.

The HDP’s support rose throughout Turkey to reach an unprecedented 13 per cent, but the increase was highest in the traditional south-eastern heartlands, and in the big cities of western Turkey with substantial Kurdish populations. Slightly more than half of the party’s six million votes came from the Kurdish-majority provinces. The pro-Kurdish parties had performed well in these regions for more than a decade, but the HDP considerably increased its vote share, coming first in Diyarbakır, Van, Mardin, Batman, Şırnak, Ağrı, Muş, Ardahan, Hakkâri, Siirt, Bitlis, Kars, Iğdır and Tunceli (Figure 1, overleaf). It was the second-placed party in three other south-eastern provinces, Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman and Bingöl: regionswhere tribal and religious loyalties remain strong, enabling the AKP to come out ahead of its rival. There was a surge in support for the HDP in Istanbul, a city that is one-fifth Kurdish, where it gained over a million votes and became the third-largest party. In previous elections, the pro-Kurdish independents had only stood in constituencies where they had a realistic chance of winning, but this time the HDP ran candidates all over Turkey; it also organized a successful overseas campaign in European countries, coming first among British-based voters. Overall, the election was a major setback for the AKP, which lost 9 per cent of its 2011 vote and no longer had an absolute majority in parliament. With the CHP also losing ground, only the HDP and


the CHP, the traditional recipient of their support, although the HDP made greater inroads among younger Alevis. [19] One-third of HDP votes came from the 18–28 age group, and more than half of first-time voters backed the party. The Kurdish portion of this age cohort is higher than average, and many younger Turks are less prejudiced against Kurds, having come of age at a time when violent clashes between the PKK and the state were at a relatively low level. The more youthful profile of the HDP leadership may also have contributed to this strong performance among new voters. The party’s electorate was poorer than the national average in Turkey. The increase in support for the HDP in the south-east and the cities of western Turkey largely camefrom Kurds who had previously voted for the AKP: nearly one in ten HDP voters had supported the AKP in the previous election, and almost three-quarters of those who switched to the HDP were Kurds. The rise was especially notable in areas that had received a large number of forcibly displaced Kurdish migrants during the 1990s, such as Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin, Adana and Gaziantep. In Istanbul, the party performed strongly in the working-class districts of Bağcılar, Esenler and Sultangazi, which contain large Kurdish populations, but also received a comparable vote in some affluent districts such as Beşiktaş, Kadiköy and Beyoğlu, suggesting that a significant number of Turks had voted for the HDP in those areas.

A number of factors lay behind the AKP’s loss of Kurdish support (Figure 2,


blueprint for democratic autonomy under extremely adverse conditions, and found itself on the front lines of the war against ISIS. Matters came to a head during the siege of Kobani, just miles from the Turkish border, in autumn 2014. Erdoğan and other AKP spokesmen presented the battle as a clash between two terrorist organizations, and refused to allow aid to be sent to the Kurdish fighters in Kobani. This provoked widespread protests in Turkey itself that were violently repressed by security forces, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. In the end, Turkey’s US ally decided to support the YPG with air strikes, believing it to be the only local force capable of taking on ISIS. This infuriated the AKP, which insisted that there was no distinction betweenthe Rojava administration and the ‘terrorist’ PKK. But the YPG won the siege of Kobani and went on to expand the territory under its control.

Events in Syria thus helped undermine the dialogue between Turkish government representatives and the PKK that had been underway while a ceasefire was in force from 2013 to 2015. In this period, there were regular meetings involving government officials, an HDP delegation and, from his island prison, Abdullah Öcalan himself, along with other PKK members, which resulted in a ten-point roadmap for future negotiations that was made public in February 2015. But the trust needed to make the talks work was lacking after Kobani, and things only got worse during the June 2015 election campaign. The AKP made the HDP its main target and


earlier by HDP and Turkish government representatives, did not exist. [20] The AKP still opposed Kurdish demands for autonomy and the constitutional recognition of their identity in Turkey, and Erdoğan was now infuriated by the result of the election, which had dented the AKP’s prospects of consolidating its hegemony, already challenged on a number of fronts since the Gezi protests began. The Turkish president set out to build a new alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP, based on repression of the Kurdish movement. The AKP also sought to empower Kurdish Islamist forces such as the Hüda-Par, and groups affiliated with Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), a strong ally of Erdoğan and the AKP. [21]

This chauvinist turn was supercharged by the resumption of war between Turkish security forces andthe PKK after the ceasefire collapsed in the summer of 2015. Erdoğan’s government deployed violence on a massive scale to repress any form of Kurdish dissent. The PKK’s external leadership, based in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, had been sceptical of Öcalan’s negotiations with the AKP and responded to the government offensive with force. [22] In many ways the renewed conflict marks a return to the violence of the early 90s, with one notable difference: city-dwelling Kurds have been as badly affected as those living in the countryside. In the first half of 2016, the Turkish army targeted the PKK’s urban strongholds, reducing much of Diyarbakır’s old city to rubble and inflicting similar destruction on Şırnak, Cizre and Nusaybin. According to the UNHCR, Turkish forces have killed


a result, which further complicates Turkey’s plan to contain Kurdish advances. However, the PYD has thus far been unable to secure political recognition from Washington, and is surrounded by hostile actors. [25] In August 2016, Turkish forces invaded northern Syria, ostensibly to clear ISIS out from positions along the border, but also determined to prevent the Kurdish forces from making further territorial gains. Air strikes targeting YPG units in Syria and around Iraq’s Mount Sinjar showed that Turkey was likely to carry out more cross-border operations against groups that it saw as PKK affiliates.

Against the backdrop of renewed conflict and hyper-chauvinist mobilization, with the funerals of Turkish soldiers and policemen broadcast on national television, a second general election was held in November 2015 to break the political deadlock.The AKP set out to consolidate its Turkish-nationalist power base, gaining ground at the expense of the MHP to secure a parliamentary majority once again. The AKP’s vote increased by almost 9 per cent, falling just short of 50 per cent overall. The HDP lost support but still managed to clear the 10 per cent threshold by a narrow margin. The party was vilified by government spokesmen and media outlets who presented it as a threat to Turkish democracy, and its offices were repeatedly attacked by nationalist mobs. Three weeks before the poll, two suicide bombers killed 109 people in Ankara at a peace rally called by the HDP and its allies. Police attacked the survivors with tear gas. ISIS was blamed for the attack, but HDP leaders


newspaper Özgür Gündem, forced HDP-supporting TV stations off the air, and accused 11,000 Kurdish and left-wing teachers who belong to the Education and Science Workers’ Union (Eğitim-Sen) of being PKKsupporters, threatening them with the sack.

This authoritarian turn accelerated dramatically after the failed coup attempt of 15 July 2016. The AKP has taken advantage of the opportunity to launch further attacks on its opponents, declaring a state of emergency for an initial period of three months, which has since been extended several times. With support from the MHP, Erdoğan’s party forced through its constitutional amendment for an all-powerful executive presidency and put it to a referendum in April 2017. In a climate of widespread violence and intimidation, with abundant evidence of vote-rigging, the reform was passed by a narrowLecturer at the Open University in the UK about the Turkish invasion of Afrin, an enclave in North Western Syria, on January 20th.

March 22nd, 2018 | English
Interviewed by Shahram Aghamir
Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (VOMENA)


British Prime Minister Theresa May has called for a law to make "upskirting" a criminal offence in England and Wales.

It comes after one of her own MPs, Sir Christopher Chope, blocked attempts to outlaw it on Friday.

He shouted "object" in the British parliament as the private member's bill was being discussed and this was enough to derail it.

Upskirting is the act of secretly photographing underneath someone's skirt without permission, often with a mobile phone.

Sir Christopher's intervention prompted cries of "shame" from other MPs and May later took to Twitter to make her views clear.

"Upskirting is an invasion of privacy which leaves victims feeling degraded and distressed," she wrote.

"I am disappointed the bill didn't make progress in the Commons today, and I want to see these measures pass throughParliament - with government support - soon."

Government backing

The government had previously backed the legislative proposal, which was expected to sail through parliament.

Justice minister Lucy Frazer said beforehand: "By making upskirting a specific offence, we are sending a clear message that this behaviour will not be tolerated and that perpetrators will be properly punished."

However, it only takes one MP to shout "objection" in Parliament to halt a bill's progress.

Gina Martin, who launched a campaign demanding change, said she was "obviously extremely upset and disappointed that Chope decided to object on this vitally important bill".

The 26-year-old experienced upskirting at a British music festival and lobbied to "close the gap in the law" using the hashtag #stopskirtingtheissue.

Martin said she remained positive, though, and that she and her lawyer had organised a


(CNN) Ethiopia has banned the adoption of Ethiopian children by foreign families, according to the country's state-run News Agency ENA, citing concerns over abuse.

Ethiopian officials previously suspended adoptions back in November, but allowed pending cases to continue through the process, according to the US Department of State.

Children adopted by foreign families in the past have been exposed to "various crimes and social crisis in the country they grew up in," ENA said.

In 2013, a US couple was convicted in the death of their 13-year-old daughter, whom they adopted from Ethiopia. Hana Williams died in 2011 from "hypothermia brought on by malnutrition and being forced to remain outside on a cold rainy night," according to court documents.

Hana's mother was convicted of homicide by abuse in the first degree, whilean automobile operated by Christy Shaffer. It is undisputed that (1) Ms. Shaffer's vehicle was insured by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company ("Nationwide"), and (2) Ms. Webb settled her claim against Ms. Shaffer, receiving $50,000, the liability limits of Nationwide's automobile liability policy. At the time of the accident, the Malibu driven by the plaintiff was insured under State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company ("State Farm") policy 37 6646-D03-48A ("Policy 37"), which was issued to the plaintiff's grandfather, Mr. Kilgore, on October 3, 2005. Policy 37 did not contain underinsured motorist coverage.[1]
*499 Following the accident between Ms. Webb and Ms. Shaffer, the plaintiff filed a complaint against Ms. Shaffer on or about September 25, 2008, in the Circuit Court of Cabell County, West Virginia. On December 29, 2008, the


dated October 3, 2005. On the form, the lines labeled "Agent" and "Policy/Binder Number" appear blank and the information contained in the box at the top of the form (the "Date," "Applicant/Named Insured," "VIN #," and "Vehicle Description") is illegible.
 A copy of the form used by State Farm to make the required offer of uninsured motorist coverage to Robert Kilgore, on October 3, 2005, which was also provided to the plaintiff as part of a certified copy of Policy 37, on September 25, 2007. This form is also signed and dated. The "Agent" is listed as "J. Conley" and the "Policy/Binder Number" is identified as "48-1509-E62." The information contained in the box at the top of the form (the "Date," "Applicant/Named Insured," "VIN #," and "Vehicle Description")is illegible.
 A second copy of the form used by State Farm to make the required offer of underinsured motorist coverage to Robert Kilgore, on October 3, 2005. On this form, the "Agent" is identified as "J. Conley" and the "Policy/Binder Number" as "48-1509-E62." The information contained in the box at the top of the form (the "Date," "Applicant/Named Insured," "VIN #," and "Vehicle Description") is legible and indicates that the form was the offer made to Robert Kilgore, on October 3, 2005, with respect to the 2000 Malibu.
 A second copy of the form used by State Farm to make the offer of uninsured motorist coverage to Robert Kilgore, on October 3, 2005. On this form, the "Agent" and the "Policy/Binder Number" are identified and the information


August 2017: post-Enduro World Series "Crankzilla" and in the middle of the worst fire season on record in British Columbia. We hit the road just as residents of Williams Lake and surrounding communities were allowed to return to their homes after a lengthy period of evacuation. Our destinations: Smithers and Burns Lake for new terrain, forecasted precipitation and simpler days on bikes.

Aerial smoke show (and not the good kind).

First stop, Smithers' local gem. We heard about the riding here while skiing this place last winter. The other way to town.

Backdoor's subalpine singletrack.

Sarah's first taste of wet dirt and necessary Gore-tex in August.

Oldschool, meet Newschool. Now gunning for her second-career Canadian Olympic Team spot (this time in skicross), Britt Phelan is pretty new to mountain biking but not newto good times.

Looking down on The Bulkley Valley from Hudson Bay Mountain.

We shuttled to the trailhead of the Cronin Trail along Babine Lake Road. Our bikes were worked before we even started. (Dis)organized Chaos: road strip status.

It seemed stupid to take shoes off for a river crossing after Britt held a clinic on how to ride through it.

The "mellow" fire road approach to the climb for Cronin Pass was complicated by soaking wet overgrowth. Adventures aren't worth sharing unless they enter the type-2 category for at least a little while.

Old mining cabin.

This was a Saturday in prime bike season, out there all by ourselves and not sad about it for a minute.

Once out of the slide alder climbing and river crossings, Cronin Pass, in the Babine Provincial Park,


most of the information on the subject are sourced from the United States. According to Wilkins-Laflamme, they wanted to see both the similarities and the differences. The big difference, they found out, is that the religious affiliation decline began much earlier in Canada. The numbers say it all. Only four percent of Canadians claimed to have no religious affiliation in 1971. This number went up to 12 percent in 1991 and 17 percent in 2001. In the United States, the number of nones began to increase only later in 1972. It was five percent in that year and jumped to eight percent in 1990. In 2000, 14 percent of the U.S. population identified themselves as nones.

The two researchers surmised that since the notion of being unaffiliated saw quickerWar and Finland immediately united to combat the onslaught of its extensive borders. This period of war caught Finland poorly equipped and the Air Force, barely 20 years old, particularly so.

With only some support from its western neighbours the country had to procure any possible aircraft available, resulting in an eclectic mix of multi-national types not seen anywhere else. Many of these aircraft arrived too late to see combat in the Winter War, which ended in March 1940. These included Blenheims, Gladiators, Hurricanes and Lysanders from Britain, Fiat G.50s from Italy and Brewster Buffaloes from the USA. France also donated Morane-Saulnier M.S.406s and South Africa ex-RAF Gloster Gauntlets; these aircraft saw action during the Continuation War from ’41-’44. During this war the western countries were allied with the


Soviet Union and no more aircraft were supplied to Finland. In fact, Britain and the USA supplied aircraft to the Soviet Union and these aircraft were used against Finland. Germany, now at war with the Soviet Union, supplied aircraft to Finland; these included war booty Tupolev SB, Ilyushin DB-3, Polikarpov I-153, Pe-2, Morane M.S.406, Curtiss Hawk and original German Do 17Z, Bf 109 G and Ju 88.

The early 1930s saw the Royal Air Force looking for a replacement for its then main fighter, the Bristol Bulldog (it too was operated by the Finns), for such was the pace of aircraft development it had only been in service itself for a couple of years. One of the contenders came from the Gloster stable, its SS.19 prototype becoming the Gauntletin 1940 via the UK and then shipped to Gothenberg, re-assembled at Malmslatt and were given the local name “Kotletti”, bizarrely meaning “Cutlet”. 24 were airworthy and, already more than obsolete, the aircraft were put into service as advanced trainers with units 17, 25, 30, 34 and 35.

Around the same period (and due to the new Allied supply of equipment against the Communist Soviet Union), the Gauntlet’s RAF replacement, the Gladiator, was also entering service as one of many fighter types with the Finns with some success, and Hurricanes too were also Scandinavia bound. They must be made of tough stuff in Finland as the prospect of learning to fly in an open cockpit, un-heated biplane in the country’s perpetual winter dark and arctic temperatures is a little


daunting to say the least. To assist in the harsh conditions, many were equipped with skis and some retained armament – the standard 2x 0.303 Brownings put to use during gunnery training. The last flight of a Gauntlet in Finnish service took place on 18 February 1945.

As is so often the case, retired warriors around the globe such as the Gauntlet are put out to grass; scrapped, stored, preserved, cannibalised, sold, but frequently lost to the world. Fortuitously the almost complete remains of two Gauntlets managed to survive on a farm and in the mid-1970s were recovered by personnel of the Air Force Technical Guild (Lentotekniikan Kilta) at Halli Air Base with the intention of restoring a single complete example of the world’s last remaining Gauntlet.

The airframe inquestion was built for the RAF in 1936 as K5271, and was initially used for trials at Boscombe Down before its roundabout trip to Finland where it was locally numbered GT-400. Finland has a very simple serial system for its military aeroplanes – two letters indicate the aircraft type (GT=GaunTlet, MG=MiG, HN=HorNet, VN=ViNka etc) and then either one or two numbers for trainers/transport types and three for combat types. The aircraft also received period Finnish camouflage of sky blue undersides and green and black-green upper sides with yellow high visibility bands.

A word here also about the Finnish swastika; the national marking for the Ilmavoimat from its creation in 1918 to the end of the war. The second aircraft for the fledgling Air Force was a Thulin donated by


the Swedish Count Eric von Rosen whose personal emblem was one he saw in Sweden and adopted for himself. The swastika was an ancient Nordic symbol for sun and good luck and it was applied to the aircraft with a white background and thus adopted by the Air Force on 18 March 1918. Obviously the swastika was used by a certain other regime in 1920 and due to the resemblance to the Nazi version, and the 1944 Allied Control Commission decree prohibiting the existence of pro-Hitler/facism symbology, the Air Force changed to a simple roundel of national colours. No fin flash has ever been worn.

Following a minor landing accident in July 1943, GT-400 was repaired and saw service with a bomber unit as a base hack and liaisonmachine; it flew until February 1945 and was retired with only 133 hours’ flying time. It took until 1950 for the aircraft to be finally struck off charge and offered for sale, ending up in the aforementioned farm. The rebuild began in earnest in 1976 and such was the enthusiasm, the decision was taken not only to restore a Gauntlet but return it to the air! One major problem to be overcome was a fundamental one – no original Bristol Mercury powerplant could be sourced and it took a fairly revolutionary idea to remedy this. The Alvis Leonides, first bench tested in 1936, taken aloft in a converted Bristol Bulldog and fitted to several ‘40s and ‘50s rugged types such as the Percival Provost and Pembroke/Prince appears a


most unlikely candidate to replace the almost dainty Mercury.

Surprisingly however, the Mercury developed 645hp whilst the Leonides only 550hp, and the latter engine drove a three-bladed metal rather than a more in keeping two-blade wooden propeller. A Leonides 503 was taken from a retired Finnish Air Force Pembroke and after much alteration was found to make a usable fit when offered up to the front of the Gauntlet. Apart from the three-blade prop (which had been retrofitted to Finnish Gauntlets in any case), the dimensions of the Alvis engine dictate the retention of the slightly longer, slimmer cowling, air intake scoop and single exhaust stack compared to two on the Mercury. Thus after seven years and 13,000 man hours, GT-400 was re-born almost as it was originally built,albeit with the slightly more modern engine, and was ready for flight in 1982. The next question was, who would fly this precious, unique machine?

Lt Col (Retired) Jyrki Laukkanen is a pilot’s pilot in the true sense. He took up gliding at an early age but due to a slight eye defect he was denied initial selection to become a military pilot and studied to be an aeronautical engineer. Over time the defect righted itself and he progressed through the Finnish pilot training system at Kauhava and became a MiG-21F fighter pilot at Rissala. Given his engineering background Jyrki was offered the chance to become a test pilot, which he accepted with relish and thus sealed his Air Force career path until he retired at the age of


60 (mandatory retirement age) in 2002.

He was based at the Finnish Air Force Test Centre “Koelentue” at Halli and amassed some 9,960 hours on 150 types. He cites himself as the only Finnish pilot to have flown every single MiG-21 to enter Finnish service, having attended ground school in the Cold War-era Soviet Union on the later MiG-21bis version. He also oversaw the evaluation and procurement of the Learjet (having actually preferred the Falcon 20 but budgets denied their purchase) in the USA and the development of such types as the Vinka, Redigo and Hawk. Although a dyed in the wool MiG man he rates the Hawk as the finest aeroplane he has flown – Hawker Siddeley certainly got it just right it would seem, to have theapproval of such an esteemed aviator.

His tales of intercepting NATO intruders (RC-135V for instance) and then handing over to Swedish and Soviet fighters followed by having to make an emergency landing due to low fuel, his display flying time and his various excursions worldwide in many different types make for compelling listening. He could have stayed on in the military and risen through the ranks to senior level but this would have been at the cost of him having to fly a desk, something he refused to do!

Due to his involvement with the Gauntlet restoration project, his test pilot and engineering status and his relentless enthusiasm, he was asked to be the pilot to return the Gauntlet to the sky, and this he did on 10 May 1982,


the Air Force. Over his career he has taken an incredible 55,000 slides, the majority of which are air-to-airs, compiling an extensive pictorial history of the service from the late 1960s to early 2000s. The fruits of his labour have been born into numerous books covering all facets of Air Force life, packed with some stunning images of a relatively rarely seen air arm.

The Gauntlet, having spent some time at Halli, now resides at Kymi airfield, operated by the flying museum of Karhula Flying Club or “Karhulan Ilmailukerhon Lentomuseo”. Kymi is located some seven miles north of the coastal town and port of Kotka, in the south-eastern corner of the country only some 25 miles or so from the Russian border. For this reason and given its strategicsea faring position, Kotka became a prime target during the Continuation war and so its defence was considered important enough to warrant its own defensive fighter airfield. Kymi was carved out of the seemingly impenetrable conifer and mixed forests that cover some 60% of the country during 1942-3.

The single 1,500 metre gravel runway was used by Fighter Squadron (Havittajalentolaivue) 34’s one flight of some 10-15 Bf 109G-2 and Bf 109G-6 fighters. The squadron, only operating for a little over two years, claimed 345 kills for 30 losses. After no further military use the runway (shortened to 850 metres and paved in the 1970s) and facilities were turned over to civilian use by the Karhula Flying Club, mainly for gliders. The club started a museum in 1992 with several


a member, advocate, or follower of the John Birch Society and its principles. any tree or shrub of the genus Betula, comprising species with a smooth, laminated outer bark and close-grained wood. Compare birch family. the wood itself. a birch rod, or a bundle of birch twigs, used especially for whipping. birchen. to beat or punish with or as if with a birch: The young ruffians were birched soundly by their teacher. Contemporary Examples

Return of the Fright Wing John Avlon February 15, 2010

Historical Examples

Warren Commission (9 of 26): Hearings Vol. IX (of 15) The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy The Loom of Youth Alec Waugh

noun a member or supporter of the John Birch Societynoun any betulaceous tree or shrub of the genus Betula, having thinthe trays to be systematically separated, for example into dirty and clean sectors, while remaining readily accessible. In addition, the suspended trays make it possiblexe2x80x94by leaving out trays at the corresponding location between struts of the support framexe2x80x94to fill the entire space through to the base plate with items of equipment or utensils which have a corresponding vertical dimension. In another embodiment, a container can be placed on the base plate in front of the support frame, to accommodate a tank for wash liquor at that location without any danger of other areas being soiled by dripping water.
In yet another embodiment, a stretching frame with clips for holding at least one refuse sack is provided below a tray suspended from the higher steps of the step-like support frame


consisting of a horizontal strut and a vertical strut which is directed downwards at a right angle at the front end of the horizontal strut. In addition, another two vertical struts are provided per step and form the supporting connection between the rear end of the horizontal struts of each step and the base frame below the base plate. Push-in/screw connections are provided at the ends of all struts so that the step elements and the additional vertical struts can readily be put together and assembled according to the requirements of the particular application. The additional vertical struts are only mounted as a supporting connection on the base plate between the rear end of the uppermost step and the front end of the lower step. It is onlycastor wheels, with at least one front wheel being lower than the two rear wheels, this has the advantage that the center of gravity of the cleaning trolley lies safely between the wheels and the base frame and base plate are inclined forwards. This embodiment affords the advantage so far as the xe2x80x9cinterengagingxe2x80x9d of the cleaning trolleys is concerned that the base plate of the rear trolley is located below the base plate of the front trolley, and the recess needs to be as wide as the front vertical struts of the support frame project sideways from one another. The choice of castors affords the additional advantage of providing the cleaning trolley with very good maneuverability. The provision of guide handles on both sides of the suspended container


liver function, tumor characteristics, treatment modalities, etc. To fully collect detailed clinical, tumor characteristics as well as treatment information and long-term outcomes of Korean HCC patients, the Korean Liver Cancer Study Group (KLCSG) built a randomly selected, population based HCC cohort based on KCCR registry (KLCSG random cohort).

The KLCSG random cohort was built as follows: Between 2003 and 2005, a total of 31,521 new cases of HCC were registered at the KCCR from about 500 hospitals nationwide. First, 25--30 hospitals were randomly selected after being stratified by region and number of cases registered, then 16.5% of HCC cases from each year were randomly selected, this gave a total of 5,262 HCC cases. Three trained abstractors visited 32 hospitals throughout the country between May 2009 and May 2010, andSirus, XM Get Retailer Crazy!

The two companies developing satellite-delivered digital audio broadcasting services, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, have signed more marketing agreements with several consumer electronic retail chains. The latest to agree to sign up customers and sell receivers for Sirius are Circuit City and Best Buy, as well as regional retailers Good Guys, Sound Advice, Al & Ed's Autosound and CarToys and Tweeter. The consumer electronic catalog retailer Crutchfield has also agreed to sell Sirius receivers. XM has reached a similar pact with Tweeter and a "preliminary" agreement with Circuit City. It inked a deal with Best Buy last week. Sirius plans to begin its service in the 4th quarter of this year, with XM following in the first quarter of 2001. Leslie Stimson


CINCINNATI -- Dr. Henry Heimlich, the famed and controversial inventor of a maneuver credited with saving countless choking victims, died early Saturday. He was 96.

A statement from his family said Heimlich died at Christ Hospital after complications from a massive heart attack suffered Monday in his home at Deupree House in Hyde Park.

The Cincinnati surgeon rose to prominence in the 1970s for his "Heimlich maneuver," a technique of using abdominal thrusts to clear a person's airway. He developed it while working at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital and estimated it had saved thousands of people over the past 40 years.

It also propelled him to worldwide recognition, earning him several awards and making "Heimlich" a household word.

"My father was a great man who saved many lives," son Phil Heimlich said. "Hewill be missed not only by his family but by all of humanity."

Even before developing his maneuver, Heimlich had built his life’s work around saving the lives of others. In 1962, years before the maneuver that bears his name, he conceived of the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, credited with saving scores of lives on the battlefields of the Vietnam War and emergency rooms across the country.

Heimlich is credited with the procedure that allowed Virginia Dixon to take her first swallow in 29 years.

Nearly a decade earlier, in 1955, he gained notoriety with an operation that replaces a patient's severely damaged esophagus or one that has been removed. The procedure crafts part of the stomach into a new organ.

But Heimlich's career also was dogged by criticism, including questions whether


he deserved all the credit for his anti-choking technique. The late Dr. Edward Patrick, an associate of Heimlich’s who died in 2009, claimed for years that he was co-inventor of the maneuver.

In fact, he issued a new release in 2003 after a reporter approached him and asked whether he -- not Heimlich -- had invented it.

"I have always viewed that Dr. Heimlich and I worked together to develop what has become known as the Heimlich Maneuver just as the Wright brothers worked together to develop the first flying machine," Patrick wrote in the release.

Heimlich controversially insisted lifeguards should use his maneuver on drowning victims before trying to blow air into their lungs -- a position he said he took because he heard from so many people that itsaved lives.

But the American Heart Association studied the use of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning in the 1990s and dismissed the idea.

He also argued malariotherapy -- the practice of injecting patients with a curable form of malaria -- should be researched as a possible treatment for AIDS and other diseases.

A World Health Organization report called Heimlich-backed experiments in the late 1990s that infected AIDS patients in China with malaria one of the "atrocities" committed by doctors in recent memory.

Heimlich said an incident at Cincinnati's Deupree House in 2016 was the first time he used his namesake maneuver, but his story didn't match his earlier accounts.

"Dad was firm in his convictions and passionate for his causes," the statement announcing his death said. "He didn’t play politics well. Instead, he


was single-minded in his quest to find better ways to save lives. Dad dreamed that anything was possible in the field of medicine, even when critics said otherwise."

Earlier this year, just a few days before National Heimlich Maneuver Day, he said he'd finally used it for the first time; however, that contradicted his statements to the BBC in 2003 that he'd performed it three years earlier, in 2000.

Biography of Dr. Heimlich

Henry Heimlich was born Feb. 3, 1920 in Wilmington, Delaware. His father, Philip Heimlich, was a beloved and celebrated social worker who helped prisoners and young delinquents turn around their lives. His mother, Mary, helped raise her five younger brothers and sisters after her own mother died when she was a teenager.

He graduated from high school in NewYork and was drum major for Cornell University’s Big Red Marching Band as an undergraduate. He graduated from what is now known as Weill Cornell Medical College in 1943 with a degree in medicine. He later completed a residency in thoracic -- or chest -- surgery.

Dr. Henry and Jane Heimlich (photo provided)

He married Jane Murray, daughter of famous ballroom dancing entrepreneurs Arthur and Kathryn Murray, after a four-month courtship. Jane Heimlich died in 2012.

In addition to their son Phil, the Heimlichs are survived by three other children: Peter, Janet and Elisabeth. Peter Heimlich has been an outspoken critic of his father, dedicating a website to uncovering what he calls "the Heimlich medical frauds."

Phil Heimlich said a private family service and burial is planned soon. The family hopes to


to that she often exaggerates with her illnesses, because she is conveniently hypochondriacal. At the start of season 3, she passed away after eating a tamale containing a filling that she was very allergic to.
 Camila Rivas as Victoria (season 2–present), Aldolfo and La Nena's daughter. She is a 10-year-old girl who, when speaking, imitates the lengthiness of the words that her father makes at the end of a sentence. Her expressions are very colloquial.
 Tadeo Bonavides as Justo "Justito" López (season 2–present), Plutarco and Gaby's son. He is a fairly intelligent 10-year-old boy who expresses himself with strange synonyms that are hard to understand, which causes confusion and sometimes irritation with the family. He never calls his parents by father or mother, he usually calls them: "Plutarco"While it may be true that "in space, no one can hear you scream," the same cannot be said for those who attended North Bergen High School's stage production of the sci-fi, horror classic "Alien" last week.

Screams echoed through the school auditorium along with cheering and applause at the unusual and ambitious adaptation of the 1979 film that has caught the attention of tens of thousands of people across the globe.

UPDATE:'Alien' at North Bergen gets an extended run after a shoestring produced a viral sensation

Students, teachers and staff have drawn praise from theater fans, science fiction fans and industry professionals like renowned special effects designer Adam Savage, co-host of the TV show "MythBusters."

But while only hundreds may have seen "Alien: The Play" at its two showings last week,


thousands have watched videos of the production that have gone viral this weekend on social media.

As of Monday morning, a trailer made for the North Bergen play had 122,000 views.

It's not everyday that the drama club produces a play about a space freighter crew trying to survive a deadly encounter with a sharp-toothed extraterrestrial.

The cast included Ibrahim Jaludi, David De Diego, Pedro Sarmiento, Britney Gonzalez, Jason Lopez, Dakota Rios and Gabriella Delacruz.

Delacruz played Ellen Ripley – a character considered groundbreaking as one of the first adventure stories with a female lead character. The role helped propel Sigourney Weaver to stardom.

What caught most people's attention is the professional-looking set design that many say perfectly captures the eerie, dystopian look of the film. Much of it was made with recycledmaterials on a low budget.

The play was adapted and directed by English teacher Perfecto Cuervo. Among those credited with the design is artist Steven Defendini, a North Bergen High School teacher who instructs drawing and digital media.

"I think I can speak for the cast and crew when I say we are excited and beyond humbled," Defendini said on Twitter. "This is a nice validation of eight months of work for all these students."

Story continues below the gallery

Videos posted around the Internet shows the cast and crew pulling off some of the film's most iconic scenes like one where John Hurt's character encounters the alien, which attaches itself to his face. Another shows the climax where Ripley is able to expel the Alien into deep space.

Those clips drew the


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CETA should have a GMO warning label on it in Europe

Genetically modified (GM) food is more strictly regulated in the European Union than it is in Canada or the United States. The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the United States-European Union Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will increase the risk of GM food entering Europe.

Europe

In Europe, it is subject to evaluation by the European Food Safety Authority. Their findings are either adopted by the European Commission or passed to the Council ofAgriculture Ministers, which has three months to reach a majority for or against the proposed GM product. From there, EU member states can temporarily prohibit the sale of a GMO if they have reason to consider it a risk to human health or the environment. The European Commission must then investigate the case and either reverse the original approval or ask the country to end its ban.

In 2010, Monsanto's insect resistant MON 810 corn was grown in the Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia, but Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary and Luxembourg have all banned the use and sale of GM corn. That same year, a GM potato called Amflora was approved for cultivation -- for industrial applications -- in the EU by the European Commission


modified. That same year, 93 per cent of soybeans and 88 per cent of corn grown in the U.S. were genetically modified.

Free trade deals

A primary difference between the European Union and North America with respect to GM food is that the EU employs the precautionary principle and a thorough risk assessment process, whereas regulators in North America assume that GMOs are "substantially equivalent" to their non-GMO counterparts. The precautionary principle and "long delays in reviews" of GM products could be argued in trade terms as unacceptable non-tariff barriers to exports that could be challenged and undermined.

Our European allies have warned that the Sanitary and Phytosanitary committee referenced in the TTIP, as well as the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, will judge whether food safety measures are "least trade restrictive"and "equivalent." They have also pointed out that Canada and the EU have agreed to the "shared objective" of minimizing the disruption to trade from their different GM rules.

Food Secure Canada adds that, according to the pro-GM group CropLife Canada, CETA establishes a biotechnology working group in order to shorten the timelines for the approval of GM crops for cultivation in the EU, strengthen "science-based" regulation and revise the "low-level presence" policy for non-GMO imported commodities.

The Council of Canadians has long opposed GMOs and is committed to working with our European allies to stop the ratification of CETA and the completion of TTIP.

Photo: A protest against GMOs in the European Parliament. Credit: Euractiv

More people are reading rabble.ca than ever and unlike many news organizations, we have never put


Nicole

Born in 1966 in Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, Ms. M. Nicole has been living for three years in Dèkoungbé in the community of Abomey-Calavi. She is a widow and the mother of five children, who are all in school and in her care. Nicole lives alone with her children and is the sole provider for the family. She sells tubers (locally called Agonté) and coconuts in her home. This is a business that allows her to make sure that family expenses are covered. She also sells corn and peanuts, and this allows her to diversify her revenue sources. She gets her supplies at Dantokpa, the international market of Benin, and also at Cococodji in the community of Abomey-Calavi. She has been in this business for thirtymost important issues facing our country - a place where you can hear directly from me, and share your own thoughts and stories."

While we're sure the president will talk about important topics like health care and the economy, he also notes his page will feature "some just-for-fun stuff, too."

The first POTUS post

In addition to serving as an introduction to his page, President Obama's first post includes a description and video of him walking through his backyard - a.k.a. the literal national park behind the White House.

He casually strolls across the lawn, talking about a fox and a hawk named Lincoln he's seen there. He segues into a message about preserving this park, all national parks and the planet by acting on climate change.

Obama discusses US leadership to combat


things: preserve (or even expand) the power of the executive branch in immigration law and policy and win over an important and growing constituency group for generations to come.

It's the second point that brings us to another Justice Department action -- that of dropping a slam-dunk case against the New Black Panther Party (another valuable constituent group for the Democrats) for intimidating voters on Election Day 2008 in Philadelphia. We don't know how much clearer the evidence can be than having the Panthers caught on video wearing paramilitary garb, wielding billy clubs and shouting racial threats at potential white voters in front of a polling place. Indeed, Bartle Bull was an eyewitness. He's also a former civil rights attorney and publisher of the ultra-liberal Village Voice. He calledto her featherweight legal background by deflecting most of the questions she received, and everyone, including the American public, walked away from the hearings just as clueless about her as when the whole charade began. Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee didn't help matters, because they refused to follow up on some important lines of questioning. They also didn't demonstrate any coordinated plan of attack for exposing Kagan as a doctrinaire leftist with no respect for constitutional Rule of Law.

Still, the clues about the real Elena Kagan are evident in her prior record, scant though it may be. She advised Bill Clinton to veto the partial-birth abortion ban, a bill that later became law and was upheld by the Supreme Court. In doing so, she even went


as far as to manipulate the medical language of a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to help protect the barbaric practice. Kagan also suggested that the Court should overturn the Solomon Amendment, which provides for the removal of federal funds for schools that deny recruiting opportunities to the military. The Amendment has since been upheld unanimously by the High Court. These two instances are indicative of just how out of step Kagan is with the jurisprudential requirements of the position to which she has aspired since her college days.

More troubling, though, is Kagan's embrace of trans-nationalism, the trend among lawyers and judges who believe that the U.S. Constitution and legal system should incorporate international and foreign laws and legal rulings. On Constitution Day 2007,when most of the nation's educational institutions were embracing an educational program on the U.S. Constitution, Kagan hired noted trans-nationalist Noah Feldman to speak to the Harvard faculty. Feldman has been a constant and vocal critic of the American legal system because it has not fully embraced international law to guide its jurisprudence. Because Democrats control 58 Senate seats, Kagan is likely to win confirmation with a couple of turncoat Republicans, but the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the American public will pay heavily later.

Robert Byrd, Democrat of the Klan, (1917-2010)

Sen. Robert Byrd, a one time Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan chapter he started in West Virginia, died last week at the age of 92. First elected to the Senate in 1958, he


was in the middle of his ninth term and was the longest-serving senator in U.S. history. He has been hailed widely as the Senate's "respected" historian and a master of parliamentary procedure. Pork was his specialty, and numerous public works and buildings in West Virginia bear his name at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Bill Clinton argued in his eulogy that the ends justify the means: Byrd "once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan," merely because "he was trying to get elected." That's a backhanded compliment if ever there was one. While many editorialists want to consider Byrd's Klan days as "fleeting," his racist views lived on for many years. He was the only senator to vote against Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas for theSupreme Court, and he personally filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 14 straight hours in an attempt to keep it from passing.

If the real Robert Byrd were as colorblind as the media wants us to believe he was, his memory might just deserve more reflection. To this point, one need only compare the media's largely laudatory coverage of Byrd's career to its highly critical remembrance of long-serving South Carolina Republican and former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, who died in 2003 at age 100.

New & Notable Legislation

Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) has introduced a bill to create a national Internet sales tax. Delahunt, who is a longtime fan of such a measure, claims that states aren't being compensated fairly by online purchases made by their residents from out-of-state vendors. In


European-style Value-Added Tax among other alternatives.

From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a flag mural was painted on a concrete slab visible from I-680 east of Oakland. In a typical move from a clueless bureaucracy, however, the flag was painted over just days before Independence Day. It seems that someone at the California Department of Transportation (better known as Caltrans) wanted more bland uniformity along state highways. According to a Caltrans spokesman, the repainting was part of a "graffiti-reduction" project, and officials only recently discovered that the concrete slab where the mural was painted lay on state-owned land.

Even in California the outcry was swift and severe, forcing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to apologize for the desecration of the mural -- a move he calledwho was president when the war started, not to mention who started it. He continued, "This [war] is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." If Mr. Steele truly believes this, he needs to step down from his RNC post and join the DNC. At a minimum, he needs to have that filter checked.

NASA: Not About Space Anymore

Space, the final frontier. To boldly go where ... no stuck-in-the-seventh-century Muslim with low self-esteem has gone before? No, it doesn't quite have the majesty of the original words, and it's probably not very inspirational for the NASA work force. But since Obama has cancelled the Constellation Program to return Americans permanently to the moon, NASA employees have to spend their budget or be out