provided on the topside of the respective boom element of the boom structure, whereby the angular disposition of both guy supports is normally identical. Of course, the angular disposition of both guy supports may also differ depending on the direction of the forces acting on the boom structure. The foot ends of both guy supports may be connected to the topside of the boom structure at a common area, or may be offset to one another. It is also conceivable to connect the foot end of at least one of the guy supports with the boom structure in the transition zone between topside and respective sidewall. As an alternative, there is also the option to arrange the foot end of at least one of the guy supports uponA spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacts to the end of the cease-fire in Gaza, dismissing the notion that the rockets from Gaza that broke the truce could have been launched by anyone other than Hamas.

"Hamas controls the Gaza strip with an iron fist," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. "Hmamas' own leadership said it wasn't going to extend the cease-fire, that sends a green light to all sorts of other people."
Palestinians authorities in the West Bank are saying Israel has committed war crimes during this military operation, and should be brought before the International Criminal Court, an allegation Regev calls "ludicrous."

"Israel does not target civilians, Israel does not commit war crimes. In any combat situation, acidents can happen, citizens can get caught up in the


cross fire, but that's very different from a war crime," said Regev.

Programming Note: Tune in to CNN Friday at 4 p.m. ET for more of Jake Tapper's interview with President Obama.

Once, Barack Obama spoke of what he wanted for his presidency in terms of healing a nation divided. "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal," he said.

Today, Obama is talking about executive orders and executive actions - with a pen or phone - if a divided Congress won't or can't act on an agenda he laid out this week in his State of the Union address.

But in an exclusive interview airing Friday on CNN, the President insists he has not recalibrated his ambitions.

"In no way areout there, peddling marijuana, then the levels of abuse that may take place are going to be higher," he said.

'Win back confidence'

Obama did not suggest that he was disappointed with National Intelligence Director James Clapper for not being honest in his testimony before Congress last year about the mass surveillance programs that were revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Clapper later justified his untrue answer by saying it was the "least untruthful" one he could give. "Least untruthful" was not exactly a term Obama used on the campaign trail.

So did he have concerns about what Clapper said?

"I think that Jim Clapper himself would acknowledge, and has acknowledged, that he should have been more careful about how he responded," Obama said.

"His concern was that he had a classified program


that he couldn't talk about, and he was in an open hearing in which he was asked, he was prompted to disclose a program, and so he felt he was caught between a rock and a hard place."

The President acknowledged that the leaks, including details about the wide-ranging use of the surveillance programs, damaged the confidence of Americans as well as other nations.

"It's going to take some time" to win back that confidence, he said. "It's going to take some work, partly because the technology has just moved so quickly that discussions that needed to be had didn't happen fast enough."

Russia understands 'the stakes here'

Neither the President, his wife nor his daughters will be attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Asked what he would tell close friends whoBut as we've seen here in the United States, at the Boston Marathon, there were some risks if you have lone wolves or small cells of folks who are trying to do some damage," he said.

That said, the President encouraged Americans traveling to the Olympics to register with the U.S. State Department and read the material posted on its web site about "prudent measures" people should take.

'In harms way'

During his State of the Union address, the President brought many to tears with a tribute to Army Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg, a veteran who was on his 10th deployment when he was injured by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

Remsburg, who is now disabled, was sitting with first lady Michelle Obama when he was given a prolonged standing ovation.

Obama


had met Remsburg before he deployed, before he was wounded.

As commander-in-chief, Obama said he meets what he describes as "amazing" service members who make up the country's all-volunteer military.

"But it also means only 1% of the American people are in harms way, and their families are the ones bearing that burden," Obama said. "Which means that when we make decisions about war, it is that much more important for lawmakers and the president to understand that there are consequences to this."

Sarah Palin said she is trying to follow Pope Francis, but is wary of what she called the media's interpretation of his message.

"He's had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me," Palin said in an interview withis a person of faith and describes herself as “born again." She attends a non-denominational church in Alaska.

"When I was a young girl, I remember looking around the beauty of Alaska ... and knowing even as a kid, wow, there is something greater than self," said Palin.

"I put my life in God's hands at that moment," said Palin, who added she was 12 at the time. "I remember calling out to God and saying, 'I believe you.'"

Michael Bloomberg is the most well-known mayor in the nation – for another 55 days. But Bloomberg has already expanded his reach beyond New York City, with his coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns and his political advocacy group Independence USA PAC.

Bloomberg dared to poke the bee hive, wading into the National Rifle


Association's home state to back Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race. McAuliffe eked out a win over Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli Tuesday night.

"If I 20 years ago said to you a Democrat, who was F-rated by the NRA, and unabashedly in favor of commonsense gun checks, background checks – if I told you he could win governor, you would have laughed me out of the room," Bloomberg said in an interview with CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."

"The voters of the home state of the NRA stood up yesterday and said, 'Enough,'" said Bloomberg,

Bloomberg met with Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio for about an hour Wednesday morning. De Blasio won by a landslide last night, beating out Republican nominee Joe Lhota by about 40Controversial changes to the Fisheries Act under the former Conservative government should be immediately repealed, and in the longer term, the legislation should undergo major revisions, the federal Liberals have been told.

Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo is urged to make the amendments in a letter released Thursday that is signed by nearly 50 law foundations, First Nations, conservation groups and environmental scientists.

Linda Nowlan, staff counsel for West Coast Environmental Law, said under the leadership of Stephen Harper, the former government in 2012 "gutted" the Fisheries Act, a bill that had long been considered Canada's most powerful piece of environmental legislation.

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Among other things, the Conservatives removed a section of the act that prohibited the harmful alteration, disruption and destruction of habitat. That so-called HADD clause needs to


as well as a dozen leading environmental scientists, says habitat destruction is the most common cause of species decline.

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"Canada is home to a vast amount of fish habitat. We have more than one million lakes with freshwater covering 9 per cent of the country's surface and the longest coastline in the world," the letter states. "We endorse the need for modern safeguards throughout the Fisheries Act in line with internationally accepted principles of fisheries and ocean management."

A brief attached to the letter outlines the key legislative changes that are needed. It calls for the restoration of habitat protection provisions "and prohibitions against the killing of fish as a first, urgent, short-term priority." As a second step, the groups ask Ottawa to conduct public consultations onmodernizing the Fisheries Act.

When Mr. Tootoo was appointed Fisheries Minister, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave him a mandate letter that required him to review the act and to consult about changes with indigenous people, provincial governments, industry and conservation groups.

The minister couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday, but in an e-mail, he said he is working on a review of the legislation.

"I take very seriously my mandate from the Prime Minister to restore lost protections of the Fisheries Act that were enacted by the previous government and look forward to consulting with scientists, environmentalists and indigenous peoples in finding the best path forward to safeguard our oceans and waterways," Mr. Tootoo stated. "We share the same goals and I appreciate very much the advice provided by these organizations,


brothers and sisters of the victims. It is not easy to imagine the extent of despair of those children who waited for the return of their mothers and fathers to play in the evening on that fateful day. How those parents mu

On national and international forums such claims are made by the government that minorities enjoy religious freedom and equal basic democratic rights duly protected under constitution of Islamic republic of Pakistan but situation is entirely opposite to such announcements. The Bahawalpur Church carn

On Oct. 8 and again on Oct. 12, Pakistani border guards at a dusty checkpoint in the Khyber Pass waved on convoys headed into Afghanistan. Western intelligence officials said that under the trucks' tarpaulins were rifles, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers for Taliban fighters. Pakis

InFIND US ON

Location & Access

Discover the village of Pyrgos in Santorini

The village of Pyrgos in Santorini

Pyrgos village is one of the most beautiful villages of Santorini. Pyrgos Restaurant welcomes you to this alluring village as it is located in the very entrance of the village. The village of Pyrgos is located in the middle and in one of the highest points of the island offering a breathtaking view to the island of Santorini.

The village was one of the Kastelia (castle cities) of Santorini and its former capital. A walk through the narrow alleys of the medieval village of Pyrgos travels you to another era of the history of the island. Visit the Theotokaki church and other churches and enjoy the view across the island, when if you reach


up to the monastery of Prophet Elias, the view is breathtaking.

Pyrgos Restaurant is the perfect stop for lunch or dinner. After swimming at the beaches of Perissa and Kamari, after a walk at the streets of Fira or at the village of Pyrgos, after shopping at the SantoWines Winery or shortly before leaving for the airport or the port make a stop to enjoy the unique tastes of Pyrgos Restaurant.

Distances

Port: 5 km

Fira: 8 km

Oia: 17 km

Airport: 6 km

Santo Wines Winery (Association of Cooperatives Santorini): 300 m

Perissa beach: 5 km

Kamari beach: 7 km

How to get here

Coming from Fira or Perissa by bus, stop at Pyrgos village, at the bus stop that is located outside the restaurant.

Coming by taxi, ask the driver for Pyrgos Restaurant at Pyrgos village.

Coming by car,in 1951
Category:Newspapers published in Shanghai
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PARIS (AP) - French President Emmanuel Macron brought several little-known figures into his government Wednesday as part of a reshuffle after corruption scandals started tarnishing his young Cabinet.

Macron had planned to rearrange the government after his centrist party won a majority in parliamentary elections Sunday. He was forced to make more changes than expected because four ministers facing investigations announced this week they would step down.

Macron’s office announced Wednesday that Florence Parly, a former executive and budget official, would become the new defense minister after the previous defense chief, Sylvie Goulard, the highest ranking woman in the five-week-old government, stepped down.

Parly was a junior minister in charge of the budget in a Socialist government from 2000 to 2002. Since then, she has worked at airline company Air Franceand national railway company SNCF.

Macron also named Nicole Belloubet, a legal expert and member of France’s Constitutional Court, as justice minister after her predecessor, Francois Bayrou, was forced to quit earlier in the day. Bayrou, who was leading Macron’s crusade to purify politics, was forced to quit over corruption allegations.

Other leading government members remained the same, including the foreign, finance and interior ministers. The new Cabinet has 29 members, including 14 women, up from the 22 appointed after Macron’s election last month.

Center-right Prime Minister Edouard Philippe remains at the head of the government.

Macron pledged during his presidential campaign to renew the French political landscape by naming a mix of politicians from the left and the right, as well as members of civil society without government experience on their


resumes.

Some newcomers will play the role of deputy ministers in big ministries, including Foreign Affairs, Interior and Environment, the presidential Elysee Palace said. Macron appointed as junior ministers two close friends who campaigned alongside him, Benjamin Griveaux and Julien Denormandie.

Bayrou announced his resignation following allegations of misuse of European Parliament funds by the centrist party he founded, the Modem. Bayrou’s departure meant Modem has lost all three Cabinet posts it had in Macron’s government, following the departures of Goulard and Marielle de Sarnez, the minister for European affairs.

Even more embarrassing for Macron is that his justice minister was in the process of promoting a law to clean up politics, a key policy promise of the recently elected president.

Bayrou claimed during a news conference that he “was the targetdeveloped. For example, the earliest negative pressure ventilators developed at the turn of the 20th century relied on negative pressure via the “Iron Lung.”
In such a system, a patient is placed into a large steel chamber that forms a sealed, air-tight compartment around the patient's entire body with just their head outside the iron long as pumps periodically decrease and increase the air pressure within the chamber to cause the lungs to fill with or expel air to mimic the physiological action of breathing. Modern equivalents such as the Hayek Chest Cuirass (provided by Hayek Medical of London, England, UK) employ the same principle using a chest cuirass that covers the chest and abdomen.
While these negative pressure ventilators provide certain benefits, they also pose problems of their own.


We Get Up In Our Feelings With 'Steven Universe: The Movie' : Pop Culture Happy Hour The animated show Steven Universe has told the story of a human-alien hybrid boy and the race of alien women called Gems who've helped raise him on Earth. The show has told lighthearted stories of life in the fictional Beach City — and headed to space for a more epic saga about a group of intergalactic leaders, a past rebellion, and a plot to destroy the world. Creator Rebecca Sugar has said that there will be more episodes, but for now, Steven Universe: The Movie has just premiered on the Cartoon Network.The newspaper boys of the capital have entered its folklore, remembered as the lovable, shoeless, cheeky gurriers of a time past.

In reality, the newsboys of Dublin were once a sizeable precarious working class presence in the capital who, on various occasions in Dublin’s past, found themselves the focus of charitable and political organisations, who saw them as a potentially dangerous underclass in some cases, or as youths in need of guidance.

From the paintings of Jack B.Yeats to the writings of James Joyce and Sean O’Casey, the newsboy of the early twentieth century often featured in depictions of life in the capital at the time. Yet while the streets of Dublin were their workplace, they enjoyed little job security in life, which could bring them into direct confrontation with


newspaper owners.

In August 1911, newsboys in the capital went on strike in opposition to the terms on which the Evening Herald was provided to them by the management of that paper. It was reported in the media that a crowd of boys gathered outside the offices of the paper on Middle Abbey Street, and “as several vans were about to drive off with papers for the city newsagents shops, the boys surrounded them, threw stones and other missiles at the drivers, and then swarmed up the sides and pulled down the papers, which were ripped to shreds.”

During the dispute there were reports of bundles of the Herald being thrown into the Liffey by youngsters in protest, and of the newsboys even organising their own rally at Beresford Place,in the style of trade union rallies common at the location. The Irish Times reported that following a meeting of several hundred youths there, the boys marched towards the offices of the Evening Herald, and that at the head of this procession was “an imposing squad of youngsters decked out in the manner of Red Indians as they appear in lurid pictures illustrating tales of the Wild West.”

The newsboys enjoyed a good working relationship with the trade union movement at this point, and as Padraig Yeates has noted in his study of the 1913 Lockout, Jim Larkin had mobilised them. By organising these newsboys, Larkin had established a distribution network for the publications of the labour movement in the city, crucially important during the events of 1913. Yeates


great showdown between Jim Larkin and William Martin Murphy that it would be a son of Murphy’s, William Lombard Murphy, who would be among those attempting to reach out to the boys through charitable means. The Belvedere Newsboys’ Club was to serve as a charitable organisation, which by 1928 was operating out of a location on Pearse Street. It had been founded a decade prior by former students of Belvedere College with the aim of helping young newsboys in the area. At the opening of their Pearse Street premises, Murphy remarked that:

“Everyone who knows the Dublin newsboy knows what good qualities are to be found in him. He might not possess the greater civic virtues such as thrift and order and regularity, but he had immense loyalty toThe league has started roll out the official announcements of its Stadium Series games. The first: the Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Chicago Blackhawks at Soldier Field on March 1, 2014.

Four more outdoor games have yet to be announced, which will bring the 2014 total to six, counting the Jan. 1 Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium between the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs. It will be the third recent outdoor game for the Penguins and second for the Blackhawks. The 2009 Winter Classic was at Chicago's Wrigley Field.

"Returning hockey to where it originated, in the cold elements of an outdoor rink, by playing at Soldier Field in Chicago will no doubt be a game the players will have circled on next season's schedule," NHLPA representative Mathieu Schneider said


Business Resumes, Events and Classes Continue as Scheduled in Aftermath of Small Shredder Fire at Haas

April 27, 2011

The Haas School of Business continues to make progress in assessing the damage and cleaning up after the paper shredder fire that occurred in the mailroom of the Student Services Building and triggered the fire alarm at 6:05 a.m. Wednesday morning (4/27/11).

No one was hurt or injured as a result of the fire, and the two adjacent buildings–Earl F. Cheit Hall and the Gerson and Barbara Bakar Faculty Building–were not affected. Classes and events proceed as scheduled.

The Fire Marshal has determined that only one sprinkler activated, which saved the building from a bigger fire and structural damage.

At this time, American Technologies Inc. is on site removing water, replacing ceiling tiles, ventilatingmajor anthology of Twentieth century poetry from that nation
 Les Murray, editor, The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse (editor), Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1986 and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, 1999

Canada
 Margaret Avison, Selected Poems Canada
 Earle Birney, Last Makings: Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
 Don Domanski, Wolf-Ladder (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
 Jeffery Donaldson, Once out of Nature, McClelland & Stewart.
 Louis Dudek, Europe. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1991.
 Louis Dudek, Small Perfect Things. Montreal: DC Books.
 Robert Finch, Miracle at the Jetty. Port Rowan, ON: Leeboard Press.
 Dorothy Livesay, The Woman I Am. Montreal: Guernica.
 Laura Lush, Hometown, Montreal: Vehicle Press.
 Anne Marriott, Aqua, Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn.
 Don McKay, Night Field (Canada)
 Roy Miki, In Saving Face: Poems Selected, 1976-1988, Canada
 P. K.


Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Katy Perry said that if she were to rewrite her breakout Number One hit "I Kissed a Girl" today, she would change some lyrics to get rid of "a couple of stereotypes."

In a new interview with Glamour published on Tuesday, Perry revisited some of her singles as part of a video in which she watches fan covers of her songs and compliments their interpretations of her work. After praising an acoustic rendition of "I Kissed a Girl" by Ramona Rox – "nice vocal texture" – Perry spoke about the song's origins.

"That was in 2008 when it came out," she remembers. "I think we've really changed, conversationally, in the past 10 years. We've come a long way. Bisexuality wasn't as talked about back then, or anywould cover Elvis in a new way and go deep into the vault,"Zimny tells Rolling Stone of The Searcher soundtrack. "Thanks to the help of Sony Legacy and the efforts of Ernst Jorgensen, I was able to pore over thousands of recordings and Elvis Presley outtakes. I also wanted the film's soundtrack to pay tribute to the many artists who influenced Elvis, and to incorporate their music to create a sonic landscape that I hoped would give the viewer the experiences Elvis had absorbing the many genres he was exposed to and influenced by – from gospel, to R&B, to country."

He added that McCready's score "brought additional sonic textures and emotional overtones that helped to capture this artist's journey."

The Searcher will premiere on HBO April 14th. The two-part,


three-hour documentary will chronicle Presley's life from childhood to his final Jungle Room recording sessions in 1976. The film was made with the cooperation of the Presley estate, and Zimny was reportedly allowed unprecedented access to the Graceland archives.

The Searcher soundtrack will be available digitally and on CD and double vinyl LP, while the deluxe edition will packaged as a three-CD set. Allversionsare available to pre-order now.

Along with the original soundtrack and parts of McCready's score, the deluxe edition of The Searcher soundtrack will include a plethora of bonus material including additional rarities, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' rendition of "Wooden Heart" and classic R&B, country and gospel songs that inspired Elvis. The set will also come with a 40-page hardcover book packed with rare photographs, liner notesfrom Warren Zanes and a note from The Searcher director Thom Zimny.

"From day one I had a soundtrack in mind; one that would cover Elvis in a new way and go deep into the vault,"Zimny tells Rolling Stone of The Searcher soundtrack. "Thanks to the help of Sony Legacy and the efforts of Ernst Jorgensen, I was able to pore over thousands of recordings and Elvis Presley outtakes. I also wanted the film's soundtrack to pay tribute to the many artists who influenced Elvis, and to incorporate their music to create a sonic landscape that I hoped would give the viewer the experiences Elvis had absorbing the many genres he was exposed to and influenced by – from gospel, to R&B, to country."

He added that McCready's score "brought


additional sonic textures and emotional overtones that helped to capture this artist's journey."

The Searcher will premiere on HBO April 14th. The two-part, three-hour documentary will chronicle Presley's life from childhood to his final Jungle Room recording sessions in 1976. The film was made with the cooperation of the Presley estate, and Zimny was reportedly allowed unprecedented access to the Graceland archives.

By 1968, despite, or maybe because of, their huge popularity and success, the Beatles found themselves spiritually exhausted. "We'd been the Beatles, which was marvelous," Paul McCartney later recalled in The Beatles Anthology. "We'd tried for it not to go to our heads and we were doing quite well – we weren't getting too spaced out or big-headed – but I think generally there was a feeling of:'Yeah, well, it's great to be famous, it's great to be rich – but what it's all for?'"

The group tried to find the answer through the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement. Their association with the guru resulted in a visit to the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh, India, in February 1968, which became a major media event. Not only did the Beatles go to India for a spiritual reawakening through meditation, but the trip proved to be one of their most creative periods – they wrote reportedly 48 songs, with most of them ending up on the White Album,released later that year. The band's planned three-month stay at the ashram was cut short, however, following sexual misconduct allegations against the Maharishi. "We made a


mistake there," Lennon later said, as quoted in The Beatles Anthology. "We believe in meditation, but not the Maharishi and his scene. ... We thought he was something other than he was."

Despite it ending on a sour note, the Beatles' visit made a tremendous impact and not just on the White Album. "The relationship between the Beatles and the Maharishi brought about an enormous interest in the West in Indian clothing, meditation, yoga and the playing of the sitar," wrote Paul Oliver in his book Hinduism and the 1960s. "Although the Beatles had apparently left Rishikesh with varying degrees of negative feelings towards the Maharishi, in later life they tended to feel more benign towards him, and to say publicly what a positive effect he had on theirlives."

February 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of that historic India trip, which is being commemorated with an upcoming exhibit at the Beatles Story museum in the Fab Four's hometown of Liverpool; and due out February 13th is The Beatles in India, a new book by photographer Paul Saltzman, who was at the ashram with the Beatles. In honor of that milestone, here are 16 things you might not know about the trip – from what life was like at the ashram to the stories behind some of the songs they wrote in India, and what led to the band's to split from the Maharishi.

1. It began with a newspaper ad for meditation classesIn February 1967, George Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd, who was searching for spirituality in her life,


came across an advertisement in a newspaper for Transcendental Meditation classes. Immediately she signed up to be a part of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. Boyd later told her husband about what she did and he became interested as well. In August of that same year, the Harrisons, along with the other members of the Beatles, attended a lecture that the Maharishi was giving in London. "Maharishi was every bit as impressive as I thought he would be, and we were spellbound," Boyd recalled in her 2007 memoir Wonderful Tonight. That same group, accompanied by Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, later attended a 10-day conference of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement being held in Bangor, Wales. During their time at the conference, the Beatles announced they were giving up drugs."It was an experience we went through," McCartney said, as quoted in Philip Norman's Beatles book Shout! "Now it's over and we don't need it any more." Their stay at the conference, however, was cut short upon news of Beatles manager Brian Epstein's unexpected death. It was then that Maharishi invited the Beatles to stay at his ashram in Rishikesh, where he held a course for people who want to become Transcendental Meditation instructors.

2. Donovan, Mia Farrow and Mike Love were just three of the Beatles' fellow noteworthy guests at the ashram.The members of the Beatles and their significant others arrived in India in February 1968 – first George Harrison and John Lennon, and then later Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. In addition to the Beatles, singer Donovan,


actress Mia Farrow and the Beach Boys' Mike Love, there were other Westerners staying at the ashram during this period. Among the notable ones were Paul Horn, an American jazz flautist whom The New York Times later described as a founding father of New Age music; Prudence and John Farrow, siblings of Mia Farrow; Nancy Cooke de Herrera, an American socialite who was an early Western proponent of Transcendental Meditation; Tim Simcox, an American actor who appeared in many TV series such as Bonanza and Gunsmoke (Cynthia Lennon recalled in her 2005 book John that John Lennon accused her of having an affair with Simcox); model Jenny Boyd, the sister of Pattie Boyd and the future wife of drummer Mick Fleetwood; Lewis Lapham, the only journalist allowed atthe retreat while on assignment for The Saturday Evening Post; Mal Evans, the Beatles' longtime roadie and personal assistant going back to the group's early days at the Cavern Club; Alexis "Magic Alex" Mardas, a Greek inventor and an employee of Apple Corps; and photographer Saltzman. "The weeks the Beatles spent at the ashram," Saltzman later wrote, "were a uniquely calm and creative oasis for them: meditation, vegetarian food and the gentle beauty of the foothills of the Himalayas. There were no fans, no press, no rushing around with busy schedules, and in this freedom, in this single capsule of time, they created more great music than in any similar period in their illustrious careers. "

3. Life at the ashram was like summer camp.Funded by a $100,000 donation


from American heiress Doris Duke, the Maharishi's ashram was built in 1963, covering 14 acres of forest. The property, said Saltzman, consisted of six long bungalows each containing five or six double rooms, along with flower beds of red hibiscus blossoms, and several vegetable gardens. In addition to the Maharishi's own bungalow, there was a post office, a lecture theater and a swimming pool. Nancy Cooke de Herrera supervised the preparation of the Beatles' quarters prior to their arrival. "The Beatles never realized what had been done when they walked into their rooms," she later said. "They had mattresses on their beds. We had curtains put up, we had mirrors. We even had toilet fixtures that worked." Cynthia Lennon recalled her room at the ashram with John aseven an occasional tiger roamed the grounds. The night sounds were a shrill chorus of wildlife – peacocks, crows, and parrots. The wails and cackles may have unnerved some, but I felt at peace."

At the end of the day, the musicians would play music together, according to Donovan. "Songwriting came easy," he wrote in The Autobiography of Donovan. "Paul Mac never had a guitar out of his hand. He let us all get a few songs in though, and you can hear the results on the records that followed, the Beatles' White Album, and my own The Hurdy Gurdy Man."

4. The Maharishi had some unique quirks.The Maharishi turned out to be more business- and media-savvy than his followers might have initially guessed. According to The Love You Make,


a book by former Beatles associate Peter Brown, prior to the Beatles' India trip, the Maharishi was negotiating with lawyers for ABC about a TV special that would include an appearance by the band. Despite Brown warning the Maharishi that this arrangement was not possible, the Maharishi continued to tell ABC's attorneys that he could still make the deal happen. Finally, Brown, accompanied by Harrison and McCartney, visisted the Maharishi in Sweden and told him to not use the Beatles for his own business purposes – to which the Maharishi nodded and giggled. "He's not a modern man," Harrison said, as quoted in Brown's book, on the plane ride back. "He just doesn't understand these things."

In his book With the Beatles, Lewis Lapham recounted the time when theMaharishi organized a group photo of his students, including the Beatles. "He cast himself as the director on a movie set," Lapham wrote of the Maharishi. In preparation for the photo shoot, the Maharishi oversaw the construction of a tier of bleachers as well as the seating arrangements. He reportedly told the photographer, "Before you snap, you must shout 1, 2, 3 ... any snap and you must shout." The Maharishi then told his pupils, "Now come on everybody, cosmic smiles ... and all into the lens."

Lapham also wrote that the Maharishi apparently loved helicopters and recalled the guru gazing at a chopper "like a child looking at an enormous complicated toy." McCartney remembered the Maharishi using a one to take him to New Delhi one day. There


meditation and the Maharishi made an impact in his life. "The meditation buzz is incredible," he told Paul Saltzman. "I get higher than I ever did with drugs. It's simple ... and it's my way of connecting with God." And Harrison was very serious about the band's purpose at the ashram. "He was quite strict," McCartney later said of Harrison in The Beatles Anthology. "I remember talking about the next album and he would say, 'We're not here to talk to about music – we're here to meditate.' Oh yeah, all right Georgie Boy. Calm down. Sense of humor needed here, you know. In fact, I loved it there."

6. ... while Ringo had a tougher time.Ringo Starr later recalled his India experience as fun and exciting, but atthe time he had difficulties adjusting to the food and the surroundings. Because he was allergic, he brought cans of Heinz baked beans with him for the trip. The Beatles drummer also remembered food preparers at the ashram offering him eggs, which were not allowed. "Then I saw them burying the shells," Starr said in The Beatles Anthology. "That was the first of several incidents that made me think that it was not what I thought it would be." Other issues for him and his wife Maureen included being pestered by insects: "You'd have to fight off the scorpions and tarantulas in a bath," he said. "Then you'd get out of the bath, get dry and get out of the room because all the insects came back in."


Also homesick for their children, the Starrs decided to leave after 10 days, later followed by McCartney and his girlfriend Jane Asher a few weeks later. "Paul simply wasn't getting it," Peter Brown wrote in The Love You Make. "The mock seriousness of the Maharishi and the tediousness of the meditation were too much like school for him."

7. The Fab Four dug their Indian attire.In his reporting from the ashram, Lewis Lapham wrote: "Like the other Beatles, Harrison delighted in the costumes – embroidered overblouses, fanciful brass pendants, cotton pajama trousers broadly striped in bright colors, robes for all occasions. They looked like gypsies, their angular faces framed in long dark hair."

"If you go to India you can't wear Western clothes," Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. "That'sdiscuss The Lord of the Rings as the next Beatles movie project. Due to the enormous length of the book series, O'Dell assigned a volume from the trilogy to each of the Beatles to read: The Fellowship of the Ring to Lennon, The Two Towers to McCartney and The Return of the King to Harrison. In his book The Beatles in India, Paul Saltzman wrote that the short list of possible directors included Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni and David Lean. In a 2014 interview with Deadline, Jackson confirmed the story of the Beatles' initial involvement in the project based on a conversation he had with McCartney: "John Lennon was going to play Gollum. Paul was going to play Frodo. George Harrison was going to play Gandalf, and Ringo


toward me," she wrote. "He would get up early and leave our room. He spoke to me very little, and after a week or two he announced that he wanted to move into a separate room to give himself more space. From then on, he virtually ignored me, both in private and in public." She later learned that every morning, her husband would visit the post office to check if Ono had sent him a letter. In 1970. John Lennon revealed to Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner that he was also going to bring Ono on the trip,"but I lost me nerve because I was going to take me wife and Yoko and I didn't know how to work it [laugh]. So, I didn't do it. I didn't quitedo it."

10. There was a real-life Bungalow Bill.An incident involving the killing of a tiger during the Beatles' stay in India inspired Lennon to write the "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," which later appeared on the White Album. According to The Complete Beatles Songs by Steve Turner, American college graduate Richard A. Cooke III visited his mother Nancy Cooke de Herrera at the ashram; the two traveled by elephant on a tiger hunt in Naintal. When a tiger came upon them, Richard shot and killed it. Feeling guilty about what he had done, Richard and with his mother spoke with the Maharishi about the incident, with John and Paul sitting in on the conversation. "Maharishi looked pretty aghast that his followers could actually go out and do


something like this," Richard later remembered. Added Nancy: "Then John asked, 'Don't you call that slightly-life destructive?' I said, 'Well John, it was either the tiger or us. The tiger was jumping right where we were.'" Some lines from the song reference Richard and Nancy, such as "He went out tiger hunting with his his elephant and gun/In case of accidents he always took his mom," and "If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him." Richard – who admitted the the lyric describing Bungalow Bill as "the all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son" was a close assessment of himself – later became a photographer for National Geographic.

11. Donovan's guitar playing influenced the Beatles' songwriting in India.Scottish singer Donovan was already a star by the timehe arrived at Rishikesh. More than just a friend of the Beatles, Donovan was also a musical influence on them while they were at the ashram. In his 2005 autobiography, Donovan recalled showing Lennon his fingerpicking style on the guitar. "My new pupil went to it with a will," he wrote, "and he learned the arcane knowledge in two days. ... In this way John began to write in a whole new way, composing 'Dear Prudence' and 'Julia' in no time flat." Donovan also claimed that Harrison's White Album songwriting grew out of what the two were playing together in India. "He said he really had a Chet Atkins picking style," Donovan recalled in 2016. "But what George was fascinated with was these descending chord patterns that I


was playing and out of it came the most heartrending song I've ever heard him write, but also that anybody had written: 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps.'" (While in India, Donovan wrote his own song, "Hurdy Gurdy Man," which included a verse provided by Harrison.)

12. Prudence Farrow, subject of "Dear Prudence," wasn't that impressed by the Beatles' presence.The younger sister of actress Mia Farrow, Prudence Farrow was the inspiration behind the Beatles' “Dear Prudence.” The often-told story is that Prudence spent long amounts of time alone in her room meditating, which had Lennon and Harrison concerned about her well-being. ("She was trying to find God quicker than anyone else," Lennon once said. "That was the competition in Maharishi's camp: who was going to get cosmic first.") Prudence didn'tget caught up in the hype surrounding the Beatles' presence at the ashram and was more focused on the meditation course. "I had been around famous people, but it had not been so interesting," she told Rolling Stone in 2015. "The Beatles being there – I can honestly say – did not mean anything to me. But those two people that I met, John and George, I really liked them, and they were very much up my alley." Now a Transcendental Meditation teacher, Prudence considers "Dear Prudence" to be a song that epitomized what the Sixties represented. "I feel that it does capture that essence of the course," she said, "that slightly exotic part of being in India where we went through that silence and meditation."

13. Mike Love


put the "Russia" into "Back in the U.S.S.R."The Maharishi had taught Beach Boys singer Mike Love meditation in Paris after his band played a benefit show there for UNICEF – an experience that had an transformative effect on him. According to his memoir Good Vibrations, Love was invited to Rishikesh and upon arrival discovered that Paul McCartney was staying in the room next door. As Love recalled, McCartney was playing his acoustic guitar at the breakfast table one morning. The song he was working on, which happened to be influenced by the Beach Boys, would become "Back in the U.S.S.R." "I thought he was on to something," Love wrote. He told the Beatle: "'You know what you ought to do. In the bridge part, talk about the girlsaround Russia. The Moscow chicks, the Ukraine girls, and all that' ... If it worked for 'California Girls,' why not for the USSR?" In a 1984 Playboy interview, McCartney explained the story behind the song: "I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. And 'Back in the USA'' was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there. I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I'm still conscious of. 'Cuz they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not. The kids do. And that to me is very important for the future of the race."

14. Some


tracks written in India didn't make it onto Beatles albums.While a majority of the songs written during the Beatles's stay in India were recorded for the White Album and Abbey Road, several other compositions from the period later ended up on the members' solo albums. One of the notable ones was Lennon's "Child of Nature," which was later reworked as "Jealous Guy" for 1971's Imagine; McCartney's "Junk" and "Teddy Boy" were recorded for his 1970 solo debut McCartney. A couple Harrison songs from India appeared on his on solo records, including "Not Guilty," which the Beatles first recorded in August 1968 but which Harrison revisited for his self-titled 1979 solo album; and "Circles," which ended up on 1982's Gone Troppo. Harrison also wrote "Sour Milk Sea," which wasrecorded by Jackie Lomax for the Beatles' Apple Records. "It's based on Vishvasara Tantra, from Tantric art," Harrison once said of the track. "'What is here is elsewhere, what is not here is nowhere.' It's a picture, and the picture is called Sour Milk Sea – Kalladadi Samudra in Sanskrit. I used 'Sour Milk Sea' as the idea of – if you're in the shit, don't go around moaning about it: Do something about it." The Beatles also recorded another composition from India, the experimental "What's the New Mary Jane?," which later appeared on Anthology 3. Another song, "Spiritual Regeneration," was recorded in India and has remained unreleased.

"The pressure of being the Beatles had driven a wedge between them individually and that had all percolated in the months


leading up to their visit to Rishikesh," Bob Spitz, a Beatles biographer, told The New York Times. "Once they got there, and they unburdened themselves from all of that, they reconnected with their songwriting and their creativity. It just flowed forth."

15. The accusations about the Maharishi remain a mystery.Fifty years after the Beatles' visit to India, there has never been an official and definitive account of the allegations surrounding the Maharishi that prompted Harrison and Lennon to leave the ashram. Reportedly, the Maharishi was accused of sexual misconduct toward a female follower – and that the propagator of those allegations was Alex "Magic Alex" Mardas. (In a statement to The New York Times, Mardas, who died in 2017, remembered looking through the window of the Maharishi's villa onemisconduct accusations. Over time, some of the participants have doubted that the Maharishi did something inappropriate, and Harrison and McCartney had extended apologies to the yogi sometime in the 1990s; Harrison later said in The Beatles Anthology that the rumor was basically jealousy about the Maharishi: "This whole piece of bullshit was invented. ... There were a lot of flakes there; the whole place was full of flaky people. Some of them were us." Harrison's first wife Pattie Boyd later wrote in her memoir that the alleged incident may have provided an excuse for Lennon to leave the ashram to be with Yoko Ono. Another doubter of the rumors was Mike Love, who wrote in Good Vibrations: "Maharishi eagerly wanted the Beatles and the Beach Boys to help


him spread the word about his movement. He was also surrounded by females devotees his entire life. Yet the only time he was ever accused of misconduct was when the Beatles were right there with him? Please." Since the schism, the Maharishi continued to promote the Transcendental Meditation movement; he also declined to talk about the Beatles late in life, according to The New York Times. He died in 2008 in his nineties.

In addition to future renovations, there are also plans to develop a Beatles museum at the ashram, depending if the land could be taken from the forest department, said Meenakshi Sundaram, a tourist official, who added: "If that happens, we can attract more foreign tourists to Rishikesh."

The rock world has never seen a rash of retirementslike this. In the past few weeks, some of rock & roll's most legendary performers have declared they're giving up the endless highway. Elton John announced his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, the final curtain for the ultimate showman. Paul Simon set a date for his last gig in London's Hyde Park. Neil Diamond, already well into his 50th-anniversary tour, immediately cancelled the rest of his shows on doctors' orders, after getting diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson revealed, "We have no plans to tour or record any more. We're basically done. After 41 years, we felt it was enough."

The concept of "enough" is always exotic in rock & roll – but it's definitely a shock for so many legends to say goodnight at the same


But this time it's different. "I'm not Cher, even though I like wearing her clothes," Elton John said at his press conference. "This is the end." He's not kidding. "My priorities in my life are now my children, my husband and my family. I want to be home."

It's also the end of the line for Joan Baez, nearly 60 years after her 1959 debut. "Number one: It's too hard to sing," she told Rolling Stone's Jonathan Bernstein in January. "Nobody can really imagine the effort it takes to keep up with these vocal cords. ... I can't do shit in the upper range anymore." Lynyrd Skynyrd just announced their "Last of the Street Survivors" tour – 40 years after the band got wiped out in a plane crash.(Guitarist Garry Rossington is the only crash survivor left in Skynyrd. Fly high, free bird.) At 87, Sonny Rollins' pulmonary fibrosis has forced him to put down his mighty horn. Ozzy Osbourne, who quit with "No More Tours" in the 1990s, then surprised absolutely nobody by coming back for his Retirement Sucks Tour, will spend the next few years on his latest final trek – with the tongue-in-cheek title, "No More Tours 2."

Why now? Of course, the music world has lost too many legends in the past couple of years. But two deaths really seem to loom over this moment. Prince and Tom Petty were younger than most of the new retirees, but both died from the same painkiller – Fentanyl – after years of touring harder than


their aging bones could handle. For years we all saw Prince work magic onstage nobody else could do; it wasn't until his tragic death that the world learned how he'd punished his body. Petty spent last summer on tour before finding out his hip was broken; the day he got the news, just a week after his final gig, he succumbed to an accidental overdose of Fentanyl, oxycodone, generic Xanax and other medications. Their deaths are a wake-up call for both musicians and fans. None of us want to see our heroes go out that way.

It's no secret that the road takes a toll – as Robbie Robertson said in The Last Waltz, over 40 years ago, "It's a goddamn impossible way of life." But the touring businessbodies on tour. Others are breaking their wands for good. Simon remains open to "the occasional performance in a (hopefully) acoustically pristine hall." Complaining about the sound guy at your comeback gigs when you haven't even finished retiring – now that's peak Simon.

In The Wild Bunch, grizzled outlaw William Holden wants to make one last score and then back off. Ernest Borgnine asks, "Back off to what?" That's the question that has kept driving rockers on the road, even to the point where it breaks them. Almost every veteran in The Last Waltz got back out there eventually, some of them dying there; now that Diamond has retired, nobody knows who'll end up the last one waltzing. (My money's on the stubborn Irish bastard in the sequinned pants.)


Bowl. The singer is also set to perform at the 2018 Grammys.

Actress Alexandria Wailes will accompany Pink in American Sign Language for the anthem and "America The Beautiful" on behalf of the National Association of the Deaf.

The NFL previously announced that Justin Timberlake would return to the Super Bowl as the headliner of the halftime show.

Rod Stewart is set to spend another summer on the road as the two-time Rock Hall singer announced a 22-date North American tour.

Like Stewart's 2017 trek, Cyndi Lauper will once again serve as special guest on the tour, which begins June 25th at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl.

A month later, the tour picks up again on July 24th in Hollywood, Florida and weaves its away across the nation's arenas and amphitheaters before concluding September1st at Seattle's White River Amphitheater.

Tickets for the tour go on sale to the general public on January 12th.

The trek kicks off with a two-night stand at MGM National Harbor in Washington D.C., January 12th and 13th. The tour includes stops in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Atlantic City, New York City and wraps with three nights at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, July 27th, 28th and 29th.

Tickets for the Piece of Me tour start to go on sale January 26th. Complete information is available on Spears' website.

Following her North American run, Spears will spend the rest of the summer touring Europe and the U.K. The trek marks the final performances of Piece of Me, which Spears debuted at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas in December 2013. Over its four-year


run, the show became one of the most successful on the Las Vegas Strip, with Spears delivering over 250 performances, selling nearly 1 million tickets and grossing $140 million. Piece of Me wrapped its Las Vegas stand last December.

At an emotional New York press conference Wednesday, Elton John announced that he will retire from the road after a lengthy farewell tour.

"I'm not going to be touring anymore," he told moderator Anderson Cooper at New York's Gotham Hall. "I'm not going to be touring and traveling the world. My priorities have changed. I have young children." Before he finishes, however, he will spend three years on the road saying goodbye to his fans with a 300-date tour he's dubbed Farewell Yellow Brick Road. "That doesn't mean I won't stillphotography collection. I'm really looking forward to this tour and I'm really looking forward to the 300th date."

The move comes nine months after he contracted a "rare and potentially deadly" bacterial infection in South America that forced him to cancel a series of shows. John spent two days in intensive care and nearly two weeks in the hospital. "I am so fortunate to have the most incredible and loyal fans and apologize for disappointing them," he said afterwards in a statement. "I am extremely grateful to the medical team for their excellence in looking after me so well."

The Hall of Fame musician resumed his tour in early June, with his husband/manager David Furnish indicating that John had no plans to stop. "Without question, Elton must never stop performing,"


back performing two years later and continued to tour at a punishing rate. Over the past 20 years, he's played upwards of 133 shows a year that he balances between his residency at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and arenas and stadiums around the world.

Three years ago, John began discussing finally slowing down to spend more time with his young family. "I've had lots of time off with my children, and it's all got to change now that [my son] Zachary is starting school," he told Rolling Stone. "I've got to be off when half-term comes. And I am planning on cutting down my shows to be with my children, because that's what I really love."

Lady Gaga took to the Grammys stage this year to perform her Joannetitle track along with nominated song "Million Reasons" with producer Mark Ronson. The singer's 2016 album Joanne is up for Best Pop Vocal Album and the single "Million Reasons" is nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at this year's ceremony.

"This is for my father's late sister," Gaga said as she began the intimate performance. She appeared onstage behind a white piano flanked with gigantic angel wings. Ronson played the guitar upon a stool as they launched into the recently released piano version of "Joanne." She soon launched into a rousing rendition of her hit ballad "Million Reasons," which she belted with poise and passion. Towards the end, she left the piano to stand near Ronson.

This is Gaga's fourth straight year performing at the Grammys. In 2015, Gaga and


Tony Bennett delivered their cover of "Cheek to Cheek." The following year she did a tech-savvy tribute to David Bowie, who had passed away a month earlier. She joined Metallica last year for a fiery take on the metal legends' single "Moth Into Flame."

Currently, Gaga is on the final leg of her Joanne World Tour. The world trek is set to wrap on February 23 in Berlin. She'll continue exploring her acting career with the lead role in her first feature film, Bradley Cooper's remake of the classic film A Star Is Born. In December, she'll launch a residency in Las Vegas at MGM's Park Theater.

Three months before a Roy Orbisonhologram takes the stage for a series of "concerts," the production company behind the spectacle released a previewof the performance. In the clip, the Orbison hologram, backed by an orchestra, plays the legendary singer's 1964 hit "Oh, Pretty Woman."

In Dreams: Roy Orbison in Concert, which has already booked April dates in the United Kingdom, features the estate-approved Orbison hologram backed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The production is expected to head to United States venues in the fall.

Alex Orbison, Roy's son and President of Roy Orbison Music, previously said of the hologram: "My father had a special transcendent vocal ability that made him something of an anomaly in the world of pop and rock, but that’s what endeared him to his fans. For our family it was an amazing emotional experience to see this for the first time and we know audiences worldwide will have


the same reaction."

The Orbison hologram is the creation of BASE Entertainment, the live entertainment company that specializes in Las Vegas productions, and their BASE Hologram venture. The company "fuses advanced holographic Digital and laser technology with live theatrical stagecraft to create worldwide concert tours and transformative entertainment experiences," with Orbison and opera singer Maria Callas the pioneers into this rapidly growing – but somewhat stalled – form of entertainment.

"This is the first worldwide hologram tour ever of an iconic superstar of this variety," Bob Ringe, BASE Hologram Distribution CEO, said in a statement. "As a result, you need a name like Roy Orbison or Maria Callas to be successful. They were both not only gifted vocalists, but they were industry game-changers, just as these tours will be."

Neil Younghas kept a pretty low profile over the past year, but it turns out that at least for some of that time he was working on a western movie, Paradox, that will premiere at South By Southwest in March. The film was directed by Daryl Hannah. Young stars alongside Willie Nelson, Micah Nelson, Lucas Nelson and members of his backing band, Promise of the Real.

"Time is fluid in this far-fetched, whimsical western tale of music and love," reads a brief plot description released by the filmmakers. "Somewhere in the future past, The Man In the Black Hat hides out between heists at an old stagecoach stop with Jail Time, the Particle Kid, and an odd band of outlaws. Mining the detritus of past civilizations, they wait… for the


Silver Eagle, for the womenfolk, and for the full moon's magic to give rise to the music and make the spirits fly."

The Neil Young fan website Thrasher's Wheat points out work on the film stretches back at least September of 2016 when Neil Young and Promise of the Real performed in Telluride, Colorado in vintage western costumes. The film will be Daryl Hannah's first feature-length film as a director, though she did direct Young's Somewhere In Canada webcast in Omemee, Ontario late last year and the 1993 short The Last Supper. Young has a long history of filmmaking stretching back to 1972's Journey Through The Past, though he rarely acts in movies that he hasn't directed himself.

Paradox is not the only project on the horizon for Young in2018. He's overseeing a slew of archival releases that include his legendary Tonight's The Night stand at L.A.'s Roxy in 1973 and a compilation of live cuts taped on Crazy Horse's 2012/13 Alchemy tour. He's also pledged to return to the road in the latter half of 2018, but it is unclear if he will perform solo, with Promise of the Real or with another backing group.

The Sophie Muller-directed clip finds Minogue channeling Dolly Parton at her most glammed out, singing the country-tinged dance tune in a lowly motel room. Each time "Dancing" hits its euphoric chorus, the video cuts to a wild club scene where Minogue and a cadre of dancers – many donning Day of the Dead costumes – stomp out a dazzling routine rooted in


Francesca Lima (born June 12, 1981) is a Brazilian model best known as a Victoria's Secret Angel since 2000 and a spokesmodel for Maybelline cosmetics from 2003 to 2009. At age 15, Lima finished first place in Ford's "Supermodel of Brazil" competition and took second place the following year in the Ford "Supermodel of the World" competition before signing with Elite Model Management in New York City.

Billboard Hot 100

top songs 100, billboard top 100, top 100 songs, the billboard top 100, download billboard top 100 40claimed the footage was staged.

In all likelihood, the Assad regime will deny the credibility of the Fox News article, just as it denies any article or report that sheds light on the atrocities being committed every day. For example, the regime denied the report that the its Sednaya Prison houses a crematorium to hide the evidence of slain prisoners’ bodies – despite the U.S. State Department confirming it as fact.

To this day, the Assad regime continues to deny any involvement in the April 4 sarin chemical attack in Idlib that claimed the lives of nearly 100 civilian men, women and children.

Denying true stories about its atrocities is nothing new for the Assad regime. It claims the suffering of its own people is just propaganda, as it did with


Omran Daqneesh, the 3-year-old boy who became the face of that suffering. Photos emerged in September 2016 of the boy, his face bloodied and dusty with a dazed reaction from the barrel bomb that had just hit his home.

Just a year later, this little boy is being used by the media manipulators in the Assad regime, who claim that he was a prop for Western propaganda against the regime. The same regime that bombed his home and killed his brother is now saying that he is the victim of the Western world.

The attacks on innocent civilians continue across Syria. Just this week, Russian jets attacked a “de-escalation zone” in Idlib and claimed the lives of nearly 40 people in the nearby marketplace and villages. There were no ISISfighters in Idlib, just another criminal bombing by murderous allies of the Assad regime.

While there is so much going on in the world today, we cannot forget the people of Syria. We need to continue bringing to light the ongoing atrocities of Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.

Far too many people – world leaders, scholars, reporters, Syrian citizens – have become resigned to the situation in Syria. They believe Assad has won the war and now his Iranian patrons will become even more emboldened to wreak havoc across the region.

Nuclear deal or not, we know the true intentions of the Iranians and have seen their involvement in the atrocities under Assad. We know that the Iranians want to build a land bridge from Tehran to the Mediterranean


MSNBC is reportedly considering moving Chuck Todd to a morning time slot and bringing former longtime Fox News host Shepard Smith on board for a prime-time slot.

According to a report from the Daily Beast, several sources at NBC claimed the company is looking to acquire Smith, who left Fox News in October. The sources noted that the network would like to move Chuck Todd’s MTP Daily to a morning time slot and fill the 5 p.m. EST hour with an anchor who can drive higher ratings before the 2020 election is in full swing.

The report claimed Smith met with MSNBC President Phil Griffin to discuss potential roles within the network after his noncompete agreement with Fox News expires, though no final decisions have been made. An NBC sourceMental health service delivery following health system reform in Colombia.
In 1993, Colombia underwent an ambitious and comprehensive process of health system reform based on managed competition and structured pluralism, but did not include coverage for mental health services. In this study, we sought to evaluate the impact of the reform on access to mental health services and whether there were changes in the pattern of mental health service delivery during the period after the reform. Changes in national economic indicators and in measures of mental health and non-mental health service delivery for the years 1987 and 1997 were compared. Data were obtained from the National Administrative Department of Statistics of Colombia (DANE), the Department of National Planning and Ministry of the Treasury of Colombia, and from national official


Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who told donors Monday that he will run for president and who will hold a formal announcement rally later Monday afternoon, will enter the 2016 race as the candidate with perhaps the widest range of potential outcomes. There is a plausible path for Rubio to be elected president in 2016, but also one in which he loses the GOP primary without carrying a single state.

Since Rubio came to the Senate in 2011, Republicans and the press have been touting him as a future presidential candidate. Republican elites say the Florida senator is the best public speaker in the field.

He would make history if he were elected, becoming the first Latino president. His youth (Rubio is 43) offers an obvious contrast with both Jeb Bush(62) and Hillary Clinton (67). He is well-liked by the party’s moderates, establishment and donors, unlike Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, his two Senate colleagues who also have officially announced their candidacies.

On the other hand, Rubio has not finished his first term in the Senate and has no executive experience in either business or in government. And he must get past Bush, who is a well-known figure in the Republican Party and the early front-runner in the nomination process.

So at least in general terms, Rubio has a lot of political similarities to Barack Obama in 2007. And Bush is not dissimilar to Clinton in 2007: a front-runner who is vulnerable both because of issue positions (Iraq for Clinton, immigration for Bush) and because some


in the party are weary of picking the dynastic candidate.

Rubio has the same kind of opportunity Obama did to beat the front-runner by running as a youthful, optimistic candidate of the future.

The Republican Party, though, has strongly opposed Obama’s tenure and argued that his lack of executive experience before entering office was a huge flaw that has plagued his tenure. Republicans don't want to tap the conservative equivalent of Barack Obama as their nominee.

So right now, Rubio's lack of experience and his youth are huge barriers that are limiting him from getting the kind of early support that Obama enjoyed in his 2008 campaign.

The former Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, endorsed Obama in February 2007, backing that solidified the belief that Obama was a viable Democratic presidential candidate.

Ithe is not currently their first choice.

Rubio is to the right of Bush on some issues, such as opposing the Common Core education standards that the former Florida governor has supported. Rubio's years in the Senate have given him the ability to speak more fluently on domestic and foreign policy than Walker, who in the early stages of race has struggled to answer basic questions on many issues. Moderate Republicans are deeply skeptical of Cruz, viewing him as too conservative to win the general election.

Because of his broad acceptability, it's easy to imagine Rubio becoming either the anti-Bush candidate, appealing to conservatives wary of the ex-Florida governor, or as the more moderate alternative to Cruz or another candidate more closely aligned with the Tea Party.

Bush is currently the


favorite of moderate Republicans, and Walker the leading alternative to Bush among conservatives. So Rubio probably needs either Bush or Walker to falter to win.

But that is entirely possible. Bush last won an election in 2002, and many Republicans view him as a flawed candidate for the general election because of his last name and his brother's controversial tenure. Walker is untested in national politics.

Many Republican elites currently say the party should choose a governor who has executive experience, but they could still opt to back Rubio over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both of whom have reputations for being prickly and have also taken liberal stances at times. (Both Christie and Kasich expanded Medicaid in their state as part of implementing Obamacare.)

Rubiois likely to benefit from the campaign process in Iowa and New Hampshire, which requires meeting with small groups of voters in tiny towns. The Florida senator is affable and personable, like Obama. He has delighted conservatives with his strong opposition to Obama's moves to normalize relations with Cuba and reach a nuclear weapons agreement with Iran.

In 2008, Obama won Iowa, and everything changed for him. His victory showed Democrats that he could beat Clinton, and that caused both voters and key elites like Ted Kennedy to get behind him. Romney for example has tense relations with Bush. If Rubio won Iowa, it's easy to see Romney then endorsing the Florida senator, which might cause other key Republicans to do so as well.

If Rubio won the primary, the


Prior to joining the site in 2014, Bacon was political editor for theGrio.com, as well as a contributor to MSNBC. While at The Grio, Bacon led the site's coverage of the 2012 election and Obama’s second term, with a special focus on the Affordable Care Act and its impact.

A Louisville native and graduate of Yale, Bacon is a longtime Washington political reporter. He covered the 2004 presidential campaign and Congress for TIME magazine, then moved on to a similar role at the Washington Post, where he served as a national political correspondent and White House reporter.National Convention that was about to nominate Ronald Reagan to his second term as president.

Expressed entirely in cowardly euphemisms and dog-whistles, Criswell’s message was that Dallas was a White Jesus town, a city that had never taken the boot off the neck of the Black man, had never allowed riots and uprisings like those that had shredded the rusting decadent metropolises of the northeast. The path to salvation for the rest of the nation, he said, was for everybody to be more like Dallas, which meant implicitly that some weak-sister cities might need to hike up their trousers and put the boot back on the neck.

I was appalled. And I don’t mean the riots back up where I had come from six years earlier had not been terrible.


To the weary sailors of yesteryear, it represents the final stretch -- and perhaps the most hazardous portion -- of a long voyage. To modern-day aficionados, it is a glimmering monument to the history of a maritime community. But whatever meaning gets attached to it, a lighthouse is something far simpler: a tower and a beacon.

In an era before GPS and other navigational apparatuses, lighthouses served two primary purposes. The first was illuminating waterways made treacherous by shoals, reefs, rocks and other hazards as ships left the open ocean and pulled into port. Most lighthouses also include fog signals such as horns, bells or cannons, which sound to warn ships of hazards during periods of low visibility.

The second purpose is to serve as a reference to mariners. Ancivilians.

The new increased contamination in Syria, Yemen and in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan over the last year, will without doubt lead to a continuing raise in number of casualties in the coming years.

Although the Dubrovnik Action Plan has committed signatory States to improving assistance for the victims of cluster munitions by 2020, the availability and quality of rehabilitation has been hampered by the recent declines in international funding.

This has, in turn, restricted the deliver of the immediate type of assistance that cluster munitions victims require to sustain life due to the sever nature of the injury usually suffered by the victim.

On the side of hope it was estimated that clearance activities would have decontaminated approximately eighty-eight square kilometers of land resulting in the destruction of over


degree.

Is Kyle Lowry the answer at the PG position??

Another mediocre performance tonight by Lowry. He's been average since the Calderon trade and really he's been average the whole year except for the first 5 games of the season. No playmaking skills, overrated defensively, likes to play hero ball, makes a lot of poor/dumb decisions on offense and on defense.

Colangelo took a big gamble trading a potential lottery pick for an unproven PG and looks like it's going to bite him in the ass.

If you look at Lowry's career, he's been a career backup. He was a backup in Memphis. Lost his starting job to Dragic in Houston. Lost his starting job to Jose earlier in the season. Now that he's getting the chance to prove that he's aFRANCE GEAR

NIGERIA GEAR

France strolled through their group at a canter. They hurdled Honduras, steamrollered the Swiss and equalled Ecuador in a 0-0 draw that probably would have been a drubbing had it not been for some outstanding goalkeeping from Alexander Dominguez.

Nigeria's concern here will be that Didier Deschamps' men have found an attacking groove. In Karim Benzema, the French possess an in-form striker who is able to find the net and bring team-mates into play. When the French tick, with the Real Madrid striker as their heartbeat, they do it in style.

But Nigeria have an attacking prowess of their own. They scored twice against Argentina in their final group game and probably would have won had it not been for the brilliance of Lionel Messi. In Ahmed Musa


the sickening injury which forced him from the field immediately. It is understood the 21-year-old will have surgery on his arm and be sidelined for his team's do or die match against France." - Vanguard.

Key battle: Bacary Sagna vs Ahmed Musa

When Musa scored twice against Argentina, the CSKA man became the first Nigerian to grab a brace in a World Cup finals fixture. He also scored the country's fastest ever goal when he netted after four minutes. Musa will be without strike partner Babatunde Michel, but he operates mainly on the left and will give Sagna his fair share of problems, should he hit the same levels of form as Wednesday's performance.

Facts and figures

All of France’s goals during this World Cup have come from inside the box.

Les BluesBeijing: China on Saturday launched its first communication satellite to provide broadband internet services worldwide in an apparent bid to rival Google and other international firms.

The satellite was launched from a Long March 11 carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in north-western China and is the first in the Hongyun project planned by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC).

The Hongyun project, started in September 2016, aims to build a space-based communications network to provide broadband internet connectivity to users around the world, especially those in the underserved regions.

The spacecraft is tasked with verifying basic designs of Hongyun satellite and demonstrating low-orbit broadband communications technologies, state-run China Daily reported.

The satellite is expected to work beyond its design life of one year.

"Weighing 247 kilograms, the satellite works


You are here

Exercise it Out

Exercise is one of the most important things to incorporate into a lifestyle. After experiencing all-nighters in the GDC, eating snacks and sitting hunchbacked in front of a computer (creds to 439 and Graphics), I realized that my physical health was important to sustain in order to succeed in other areas in my life.

In fact, health was something I tried to take account of every semester I was in college. As someone who is horrible at doing things consistently without structure (especially with limited time), I signed up for college Physical Education classes (PED) in order to incorporate exercise into my life.

The first few semesters of college, I occupied myself with Social dance, both Beginner, and Intermediate. I found Social dance to be one'Walking Dead' Wins Game of the Year at Spike VGAs

LOS ANGELES - "The Walking Dead: The Game" took a bite out of the Spike Video Game Awards.

Telltale Games' interactive episodic series based on the zombie comic book franchise was selected as game of the year at Friday's extravaganza, which honors outstanding achievements in the video game industry over the past year.

"Look, `Walking Dead' fans, this is obviously for you," beamed "Walking Dead" creator Robert Kirkman. "Thank you so much. You guys watch the TV show. You read the comics. You play the video games. You make all this possible."

"The Walking Dead" also won the best downloadable and adapted game prizes, as well as best performance by a human female for Melissa Hutchison as young survivor Clementine and studio


of the year for Telltale Games.

"The Avengers" star and shooter fan Samuel L. Jackson served as host of the much-censored 10th annual ceremony at Sony Pictures Studios, marking his fourth time hosting the show.

"You know me," warned Jackson at the start of the ceremony. "Whoever's in charge of the bleep button, keep your finger ready `cause this is gonna be one heck of a show, (expletive)."

Gearbox Software's cartoony shoot-'em-up sequel "Borderlands 2" swept the VGAs with the most awards, picking up trophies for best shooter, multiplayer, performance by a human male for Dameon Clarke as villain Handsome Jack and character of the year for chatty robot Claptrap.

Other titles winning multiple trophies included 343 Industries' sci-fi shooter "Halo 4" as best Xbox 360 game and graphics; Queasy Games' musicalplatformer "Sound Shapes" as best handheld game and song for "Cities" by Beck; and thatgamecompany's artsy downloadable adventure "Journey" as best independent, PlayStation 3 game and original score.

"We made `Journey' for you, to show that games can be something different - independent, experimental, moving, emotional, modern, inclusive, different," said "Journey" executive producer Robin Hunicke. "That's why we made it."

Arkane Studios' stealthy first-person game "Dishonored" was picked as best action-adventure game. BioWare's sci-fi saga "Mass Effect 3" won as best role-playing game. Valve Software's "Half-Life 2" was chosen as the best game of the decade.

The two-hour ceremony, which featured performances from Linkin Park and Tenacious D, put more emphasis on hyping upcoming games than handing out trophies though.

The show featured new footage from such upcoming titles as "The Last


Us," "South Park: The Stick of Truth," "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2" and "BioShock Infinite." It also served to unveil never-before-seen games like "Dark Souls II" and "The Phantom Pain," which is apparently connected to the "Metal Gear Solid" franchise.

For the first time, the VGAs were streamed on Xbox Live, the online service for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. During the ceremony, online viewers could vote on show components like what songs and clips would be played during the VGAs.

The winners of most of the show's categories were chosen by an advisory council, while viewer votes selected character of the year and most anticipated game, which went to "Grand Theft Auto V."of asylum seekers

"The rules on Canada's immigration system continue to be enforced," he said.

More than 7,500 people have streamed across the Canada-U.S. border since June, and Mr. Trudeau was in Montreal for a meeting of a new federal-provincial task force that is trying to address the situation. The Prime Minister said his government has added staff to speed up their processing, but he offered no targets or timelines.

He also said Ottawa would look at accelerating the pace of granting the claimants temporary work permits so they would not be dependent on government support.

But federal opposition parties say Ottawa was slow to respond to the wave of migrants, some of whom have been housed temporarily in tent villages at the Quebec border with New York State.

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Quebec


Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil revealed on Wednesday that a third of the migrants are under the age of 18.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel called the situation a crisis.

"Here we are at the 11th hour, heading into winter, with tent cities at our border when the Prime Minister is finally coming out," Ms. Rempel said to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday. "He needs to have a plan and he needs to explain it to Canadians. … This is his problem."

The Conservatives and the NDP have also taken Mr. Trudeau to task for a tweet he issued in January shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a plan to ban immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. The tweet welcomed people fleeing war and persecution, using the hashtag #WelcometoCanada, and went viral.

Ms.Rempel said it gave potential asylum claimants "false hope."

"I absolutely think that that set the tone. Man, was that ever irresponsible," she said.

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About 85 per cent of those who are crossing into Canada are Haitians who had been living in the United States, some of whom began to head to Canada because the Trump administration is considering ending a program that gave Haitians temporary protected status after their homeland's 2010 earthquake.

Ottawa says that only 50 per cent of asylum applications from Haiti were successful last year.

The asylum seekers are crossing at unmanned border points because if they used regular ports of entry, Canada would send them back to the United States because of an agreement between the two countries.

The Safe Third Country Agreement says refugees


must make asylum claims in the first safe country they reach, meaning that those who arrive first in the United States cannot then make a claim in Canada. Many of those crossing into Canada in recent weeks have been in the United States for years.

The NDP wants Canada to suspend the agreement.

"It contradicts the reality of the anti-immigration policies put in place by the Trump administration as well as the lived experience of many in the immigrant community living in the US," NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan wrote in a letter to Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen. "Additionally, the events of last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, which elevated the racist, anti-immigrant and white supremacist movements to a level not seen in North America for over a generation, undeniably increasesinsecurity for all people of colour."

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Mr. Trudeau said he has no intention of changing the deal.

"The United Nations has made a determination that even with the shift in immigration policies of the United States, they still fully qualify for holding up their end of the bargain on the Safe Third Country," he said.

With a report from Michelle Zilio in Ottawa


Southern California -- this just in

Search intensifies for hiker missing in Sierra Nevada

More than three dozen searchers scoured the Inyo National Forest in the Sierra Nevada for a Pacific Palisades man who never returned from a three-day backpacking trip.

Larry Conn, 53, was expected to return from his trek Oct. 22. Two days later, on Wednesday morning, a search began, with helicopters, including a National Guard Blackhawk, looking for signs of Conn.

Using thermal infrared technology and eyes from above, searchers have found numerous animal tracks in a blanket of snow, but no human tracks, said
Dana Dierkes, a spokeswoman for the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.

She said Conn planned to travel over Taboose Pass toward the John Muir Trail on Oct. 19, a hike that Dierkes described as “strenuous,”to find Conn, along with three dogs and two helicopters on Saturday. They focused on the areas of Pinchot Pass, Taboose Pass and Split Mountain.

Conn’s vehicle was parked at the Taboose Creek trailhead, and investigators found two notes near a ranger station, but they were not penned by the missing hiker, Dierkes said.

Conn was not the only hiker being sought. In another part of the Sierra Nevada, a search was underway near Shaver Lake for Matthew Hansen, 52, of Visalia, who hasn’t returned from a backpacking trip.

Fresno County sheriff’s Lt. Bob Miller told the Associated Press that the search for Hansen was taking place in a mountainous area blanketed by about a foot of snow.
Hansen is described as an avid backpacker who went into the wilderness prepared with


Enlarge By Tamir Kalifa, AP The positions are transforming every-day citizens into crime-scene investigators, evidence gatherers and photographers. Police agencies across the country are recruiting thousands of civilians for a growing number of duties previously performed by uniformed cops, in an unusual concession to local budget cuts. The positions — some paid and others volunteer — are transforming every-day citizens into crime-scene investigators, evidence gatherers and photographers in what some analysts suggest is a striking new trend in American policing. "It's all being driven by the economy and we should expect to see more of it," says University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris, who analyzes law enforcement practices. "As budgets are squeezed, an increasing number of duties are going to be moved off officers' plates." The chiefKlára Issová

Klára Issová (born 26 April 1979), sometimes known as Klára Issa, is a Czech film, stage and television actress. In 1997, she won the Czech Lion Award for Best Supporting Actress in Nejasná zpráva o konci světa.  She is the cousin of actress Martha Issová.

Early life
Born in Prague in 1979, she is the daughter of a Czech mother and Syrian director Michel Issa. In 1985, at the age of six, she started taking drama lessons. In 1993, she studied at the Prague Conservatory, graduating in 1997. She continued to act in the school theatre for another two years while studying pedagogy.

Career
Issova has appeared in many films, TV serials and plays. Her notable film appearances are in Indian Summer (1995), The Mists of Avalon (2001), Frank Herbert's


"Considering the great dangers that are likely to occur, more ambitious measures have to be taken in the short term to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to protect the life and family life of citizens in the Netherlands," the court said in a statement reported by The Associated Press.

The original case was brought by the environmental group Urgenda, representing 900 Dutch citizens. The Netherlands' liberal government, lead by Mark Rutte, plans to reduce emissions 17 percent by 2020, The Guardian reported, but now two courts have agreed with Urgenda that that is not enough.

"The special report of the IPCC emphasizes that we need to reduce emissions with much greater urgency. The Dutch government knows that as a low-lying country, we are on the frontline of climate change.a different decision was "doubtful" "given the fact that Justice (Anthony) Kennedy and the rest of the court, less than three months ago, determined the case should proceed forward to trial."

Back in the Netherlands, the Dutch government issued a statement Tuesday saying it would review the ruling for grounds for a further appeal, but also said that it would comply with the court's order and that a 25 percent emissions reduction by 2020 was "within reach," The Associated Press reported.

Minnesma recommended the government shut down coal-fired plants and reduce maximum speeds on some highways.

Sixteen-year-old climate action leader Greta Thunberg stood alongside European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker Thursday in Brussels as he indicated—after weeks of climate strikes around the world inspired by the Swedish teenager—that the European Union has


Category Archives:
National Tours

Broadway’s Tony Award winning best musical is strutting its stuff on the road! Kinky Boots, which features music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper and a book by Harvey Fierstein, is a musical based on the 2005 film of the same title which was inspired by a true life story! It tells the story of a struggling British shoe factory which is

Carrying the banner all across the nation! Ready, set, HIGH KICK! Disney’s fast and furious Newsies are about to take the nation by storm! Following a very successful run on Broadway, the new Disney musical is set to kick off (HA) on its first national tour in just over a month! Crowds nationwide are awaiting this highly anticipated production that

Close Every Door? No! Open them andsend in the brand new national tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat! The iconic musical tells the biblical story of Joseph, his eleven brothers and sisters and his coat of many colors. The brand new national tour stars American Idol finalists Diana DeGarmo as the Narrator and Ace

It’s A Hard Knock Life! While aiming for their show to shine as bright as the top of the Chrysler Building, it seems the original production team of Annie the Musical has done some reworking of the show before it prepares to set out on its national tour within the next year. However, many were surprised as an announcement came

Popular indeed! Wicked, which features music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book


by Winnie Holzman, tells the story of the witches of OZ long before Dorothy ever dropped in. One born with emerald-green skin and misunderstood while the other is gorgeous and wildly popular. Through their remarkable journey, we discover the origins of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good

Stop! In the Name of Love citizens of Detroit, I Can’t Help Myself as I tell you Whats Going On with the iconic Detroit musical Motown the Musical! Let the dancin’ in the streets commence in Detroit has the sound of the iconic city heads home from Broadway! Motown the Musical debuted last year on Broadway and brought the iconic sound of Berry Gordy and Detroit

It’s All Happening! Again! Long before Bring It On: The Musical came tostory in New York City before shuttering on Broadway. The production, nominated for 3 Tony Awards, tells the story of two lovers and the power of their relationship and love. A national tour of the production is

The tale of Peter Pan and the story of Neverland is a timeless tale just about everyone knows. However, there is a new tale of the Neverland you never knew making its way to the stage across the United States. Peter and the Starcatcher won over audiences Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop before moving to Broadway and winning

Spring 2017 Season Poll

2017 Tony Awards Poll

Major Topics

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About Luner on Theatre

Luner on Theatre was a blog created for the sole purpose of being a forum for theatre discussion on the Internet and


Image copyright AP Image caption David Cameron left office sooner than expected in July

A Tory official whose London home David Cameron stayed in after he left Downing Street this summer has been appointed CBE in the New Year Honours list.

Associate treasurer Dominic Johnson is one of several party figures to be honoured for political service.

A spokesman for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Tories were "making a mockery of our honours system".

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat grandee Baroness Williams becomes a Companion of Honour.

Businessman David Ord, who gave £25,000 to the Conservatives the day after Theresa May became leader, also gets a knighthood for political service and service to the South West.

The co-owner of Bristol Port Company, who had been south-west regional treasurer of the Conservative Party in the 1990s,was a regular financial backer of the party under David Cameron, donating both nationally and in support of local MPs.

In total he has given more than £1m in cash donations to the party, according to the Electoral Commission.

Stop gap

Mr Johnson is CEO of investment firm Somerset Capital, which he founded with another Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

He provided temporary accommodation for Mr Cameron and his family after the prime minister's resignation in the wake of the EU referendum this summer.

Mr Cameron had been expecting to leave office in October, but brought his departure forward to July after the Conservative leadership contest ended earlier than expected.

The PM was unable to move back into his previous London home, which he swapped in 2010 for Downing Street, as it had been rented


out.

According to Mr Cameron's entry in the Commons register of members' interests, the former prime minister - who stood down as an MP in September - occupied the property provided by Mr Johnson between 18 July and 31 October at a rentable value of £2,650 a week, a benefit in kind equivalent to £37,100.

Image copyright PA Image caption Baroness Williams served in the Commons and Lords for a total of more than 30 years

Honours on the basis of political service, which since 2012 have been considered by a committee led by the former Tory MP Sir Michael Spicer, have proved controversial.

Mr Cameron was criticised for including many of his close aides and associates in his resignation honours list in July - prompting calls from opposition parties for hissuccessor Theresa May to intervene and for more transparency in the process.

Other Conservatives to receive honours this time around include director of campaigning Darren Mott (OBE), deputy head of fundraising Louise Goodall (MBE) and Alexandra Broadrick (MBE), former chief of staff to Conservative Party chairman Lord Feldman.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn told the Guardian: "Every crony appointment is an insult to the incredible people from right across Britain who are rewarded for the great contributions they make to our national life."

'Gang of four'

Elsewhere in the world of politics, there are New Year honours for Conservative MP Julian Brazier and Labour MP David Crausby, both of whom have been recommended for knighthoods.

Former Lib Dem pensions minister Steve Webb also gets a knighthood, while Northumbria Police Commissioner Vera Baird, an


ex-Labour MP, becomes a dame for services to women and equality.

Baroness Williams is to be recognised for her distinguished parliamentary career stretching back more than 50 years.

She was first elected to the House of Commons as a Labour MP in 1964 and served in government under Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, latterly as education secretary.

After losing her seat in the 1979 election, she became one of the so-called "Gang of Four" senior Labour figures who left the party in protest at its direction and formed the breakaway SDP. In 1981, she returned to Parliament after winning a by-election in Crosby, serving as its MP for two years.

The 86-year old is among six prominent individuals to join the Order of the Companions of Honour, a group limited to 65individuals judged to have made a "major contribution" to British life.

Existing members include Sir John Major, David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Sir David Attenborough.

Among other public servants to be recognised in the New Year Honours are Mark Lowcock, the most senior mandarin at the Department for International Development, and David Beamish - the most senior official in the House of Lords - who both receive knighthoods.


To Be Equal

“There is no more powerful force than a people steeped in their history. And there is no higher cause than honoring our struggle and ancestors by remembering.” Lonnie Bunch, founding director, National Museum of African American History and Culture

Ever since the 2009 election of Barack Obama as America’s first Black President and the 100th anniversary of the National Urban League in 2010, the perennial debate about the need for Black History Month has intensified. Some have questioned the need for a special month to recognize the many unknown and unsung achievements of African Americans. With Obama as President, the logic goes, we have now achieved Dr. King’s dream of a non-racial America where everyone is judged by the content of their character, not the color oftheir skin. I wish it were so.

Last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and the repeal of the Poll Tax. But unfortunately, the suppression of voting rights and other instances of racial discrimination remain. All one needs to do is look at the glaring disparities between Blacks and whites in income, employment, incarceration rates, educational achievement and health status to see that race still matters in America. Income inequality and equal opportunity are still part of the unfinished business of American democracy.

In 1926, after centuries of Blacks being excluded, not only from the mainstream of American life, but also from the textbooks in our


schools, the African American historian, Carter G. Woodson, did a service to all Americans when he created Negro History Week, which was expanded to Black History Month in 1976. Woodson’s vision was one of unity and inclusion. He said, “What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race, hate and religious prejudice.” That is a goal that America is still struggling to achieve.

In fact, legislatures in a number of states, including New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have passed laws mandating or encouraging teachers to broaden their history courses to include more ethnic, racial and gender diversity. That is why we still recognize March as Women’s History Month, May as Jewish American HistoryMonth, September 15 to October 15 as Hispanic Heritage Month and February as Black History Month. These celebrations serve a dual purpose: first to build self-esteem among historically oppressed people, and second to remind all Americans that in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, our diversity is our greatest strength.

Black history is American history. While the story and achievements of African Americans are especially celebrated this month, the contributions we have made and the struggles we still face deserve recognition every day of the year. Next year, for the first time, Black History will enter the mainstream when the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opens on the National Mall in Washington. The Museum describes itself as “a place of meaning, of memory, of reflection,


should be noted that the third o-ring 128 only performs its sealing function when the valve is in the "off" position.
Referring to FIGS. 1-7, the operation of the prior art on/off valves 100, 100A is as follows. When the actuator 122, 122A is located in an "on" (open valve) position, the flow aperture 125 in the plug stem 124 is arranged in communication with both the inlet 110 and the outlet 112 in order to permit the gas to flow from the inlet 110 to the outlet 112. When the actuator 122, 122A is rotated 90.degree. from the open position into a closed position, the third o-ring 128 slides into place around the entry port 113 of the outlet 112, and the flow aperture 125 is positioned transverseas an habitual criminal without conforming to the procedure mentioned, would be a clear violation of defendant's guaranties of due process under the Federal and State Constitutions. The refusal of the defendant at the hearing on the information to either admit or deny his prior convictions was equivalent to a plea of not guilty and clearly imposed upon the State the duty to proceed to have the issue tried and determined before the court and a jury. Defendant's testimony as to his prior convictions at *34 his trial was admitted solely for the purpose of affecting his credibility and the court so instructed the jury. At the presentation of the information, there was no formal offer of proofs of any kind as to defendant's prior convictions and his