News In Briefs Quotes

The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on. I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.

and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,

the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,

The glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by two stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment. If we don’t do something about this, our future achievements too might leave us as dissatisfied as ever. On

As a matter of fact, your happiness depends far more on the number of instances of positive feelings, what psychologists call "positive effect", then on their intensity when they hit. In other words, good news is good news first. How good matters rather little. So to have a pleasant life you should spread those small effects across time as evenly as possible. Plenty of mildly good news is preferable to one single lump of great news. The same is property in reverse applies to our unhappiness. It is better to lump all your pain into a brief period, rather than have it spread out over a long time.

the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.

All the complex wires of life were stripped out and he could see the structure of life. Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.

In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.

Here is an all-too-brief summary of Buffett’s approach: He looks for what he calls “franchise” companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable businesses, robust financial health, and near-monopolies in their markets, like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett likes to snap up a stock when a scandal, big loss, or other bad news passes over it like a storm cloud—as when he bought Coca-Cola soon after its disastrous rollout of “New Coke” and the market crash of 1987. He also wants to see managers who set and meet realistic goals; build their businesses from within rather than through acquisition; allocate capital wisely; and do not pay themselves hundred-million-dollar jackpots of stock options. Buffett insists on steady and sustainable growth in earnings, so the company will be worth more in the future than it is today.

When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate

In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen. ... Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ.

No one has expressed what is needed better than Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the London-based al-Arabiya news channel. One of the best-known and most respected Arab journalists working today, he wrote the following, in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (September 6, 2004), after a series of violent incidents involving Muslim extremist groups from Chechnya to Saudi Arabia to Iraq: "Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture... The mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life. Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry... We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women. We cannot redeem our extremist youth, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

Well, I'm going to try. Better to practice on somebody else's kid first." "Before what?" he asked, cautiously. "I was just joking." Suddenly, I felt very defensive. "You're sure your pill is working, right?" "Yes! Don't worry, If I ever wanted to have a baby it doesn't have to be with you," I said, sensing rejection and fighting back. "Well, who in the hell would it be with?" he asked, sounding irate. "I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball." "I've got news for you, Lilith. If you're going to be bearing anyone's children, they'll be mine," he said heatedly. Suddenly, the baby started crying. "Now look what you did," I chastised. "You made him cry." "I didn't make him cry. A shitty diaper made him cry. Now you want to take this on, I'll take it on with you. Bring him over here," Adam demanded, storming off with the diaper bag.

We become satisfied when reality matched our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment.

In brief, I am in a splendid moment of my destiny. This is good news for women in general: Life gets easier once we get through menopause and are done with raising kids, but only if we minimize our expectations, give up resentment, and relax in the knowledge that no one, except those closest to us, gives a damn about who we are or what we do. Stop pretending, faking it, lamenting, and flagellating ourselves about silly stuff. We have to love ourselves a lot and love others without calculating

the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,

How about some commotion, a stir caused by the spreading news of my imminent demise? If the world would just wince momentarily at my passing. No need for flags at half-mast, but just a flinch, a brief pause before everyone returns to the busy business of life.

Since the election, he’s figured out how to avoid such questions completely; White House press briefings and formal news conferences have been replaced with “chopper talk” during which he can pretend he can’t hear any unwelcome questions over the noise of the helicopter blades.

During the Second World War, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour – the magical sound of freedom. Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast ding-dongs.

We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment.

On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.

A flourishing life requires a capacity to recognize the times when the news no longer has anything original or important to teach us; periods when we should refuse imaginative connection with strangers, when we must leave the business of governing, triumphing, failing, creating or killing to others, in the knowledge that we have our own objectives to honour in the brief time still allotted to us.

The glass ceiling of happiness is held in place by two stout pillars, one psychological, the other biological. On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon.

The good news is that for hundreds of years humankind has enjoyed a growing economy without falling prey to ecological meltdown. Many other species have perished in the process, and humans too have faced a number of economic crises and ecological disasters, but so far we have always managed to pull through. Yet future success is not guaranteed by any law of nature. Who knows if science will always be able to simultaneously save the economy from freezing and the ecology from boiling.

In Panama, I knew Noriega himself was the object of controversy. The "arms deal" was the final stage of Operation Carrier Pigeon where the planes were to wait in Saudi Arabia until all bank transactions were cleared and the load was ready for disbursement. Saudi Arabian King Fahd would then fund the Contras via Noriega for Reagan after all evidences had been properly covered up -- just as he had done in Afghanistan. After the shipment, there would be no further deals through Noriega involving Fahd, because Noriega could no longer be trusted. Besides, Fahd had increased diplomatic relations with Mexico for covert operations, and Iran-Contra was just beginning to heat up. Noriega did not seem to be upset by the news of losing Saudi Arabian business, although he was somber and took some time to respond. His translator was working over some complex computer equipment after I delivered the message. I left Noriega's yacht with John and a brief message for Dick Cheney at the Pentagon.

Uncle Avi were there. He would understand. But it was clear that his father did not see the seriousness of the threat, even after Ruth’s death. Dr. Weisz grieved over his daughter, to be sure, but he absolutely refused to believe it represented the policy of the Third Reich. Jacob found himself deeply troubled by the news but even more so by the realization that his father still seemed so unwilling to face up to the dangers Hitler posed to the Jewish people—not just in Germany but throughout Europe. He still seemed to think this was a brief anomaly, not the beginning of a far greater evil.

That’s when the news started to get fun. Kellyanne Conway, stoned, is a good time. It’s up there with Eddie Murphy’s Raw. Same for Sarah Suckabee Sanders. One day, Sarah Suckabee Sanders came out for her press briefing with emerald-green eye shadow shrouding one eye, and zero eye shadow on the other eye. I’d find myself laughing when Chris Matthews would interrupt his guests while spitting all over them, and I started to see the news for what it was: a twenty-four-hour spin cycle filled with conjecture and speculation about whatever idiotic or racist comment Trump had tweeted that day. I realized that I had allowed this

In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals. We were living on a street in London called Ruvigny Gardens, and one morning either our mother or our father suggested that after breakfast the family have a talk, and they told us that they would be leaving us and going to Singapore for a year. Not too long, they said, but it would not be a brief trip either. We would of course be well cared for in their absence. I remember our father was sitting on one of those uncomfortable iron garden chairs as he broke the news, while our mother, in a summer dress just behind his shoulder, watched how we responded. After a while she took my sister Rachel's hand and held it against her waist, as if she could give it warmth.

The much-criticised rubber regime of Leopold II had only a brief heyday and disappeared from the tables of Congolese resources shortly after 1900 in favour of palm oil and palm nuts. The production tables also show that the population increased from 1890 onwards and was not exterminated. In 1888, And revenue from the 'red' rubber largely went to the Free State for public expenditure, including road construction and the army. These budgets, too, are never cited by the narrators, ever. Ditto for the rubber tables, which show that far more rubber arrived in Antwerp from French Congo and Angola than from the Free State in the early period. Rubber from Congo Free State accounted for barely 10 per cent of world production. The big supplier was the Amazon with 70%.

These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.

Near Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the first "GI coffeehouse" was set up, a place where soldiers could get coffee and doughnuts, find antiwar literature, and talk freely with others. It was called the UFO, and lasted for several years before it was declared a "public nuisance" and closed by court action. But other GI coffeehouses sprang up in half a dozen other places across the country. An antiwar "bookstore" was opened near Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and another one at the Newport, Rhode Island, naval base. Underground newspapers sprang up at military bases across the country; by 1970 more than fifty were circulating. Among them: About Face in Los Angeles; Fed Up! in Tacoma, Washington; Short Times at Fort Jackson; Vietnam GI in Chicago; Grafiti in Heidelberg, Germany; Bragg Briefs in North Carolina; Last Harass at Fort Gordon, Georgia; Helping Hand at Mountain Home Air Base, Idaho. These newspapers printed antiwar articles, gave news about the harassment of GIs and practical advice on the legal rights of servicemen, told how to resist military domination.

***CALL FOR SUBMISSION*** Not asking for any money, I'm asking you to do what you do best. I am putting together a charity anthology where all the proceeds go to Women's Aid-Women's Aid is the key national charity working to end domestic violence against women and children. This is a cause dear to my and my family's heart. So this is a CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS to any writer who wants to have a tale included in this book. I am not looking to do a book full of stories about domestic violence. I know the proceeds are going to Women's Aid, what I'm looking for is a broad spectrum of stories from different genre's. As it is for charity, this is a none paying gig. All proceeds will go to Women's Aid. I'm looking for tales of any genre up to 6000 words, and 2000 words minimum. Only stipulation, must include a strong female character at some point, even if she only makes a brief appearance. So if there are any of you fellow writers out there who want to get involved with this project want to be included message me for more details. Submissions open until 25th July While you will not be paid for the story, you will be helping a most worthy cause, and will get more coverage for your name, free advertising is always good. Title to be confirmed at a later date. Send your submission to a_scorah@live.co.uk. Attach it as a word file, and neatly formatted 12 point roman text, line spacing exactly 12 point,

Kershaw had long ago realized, apparently, that dealing with Brits was tricky. You had to listen to what a Brit was saying - which was invariably that he thought XYZ was a terrific idea and he hoped it went very well for you - while at the same time paying heed to the greasy, nauseous suspicion you had that, although every word and phrase indicated approval, somehow the sum of the whole was that you'd have to be a mental pygmy to come up with this plan and a complete fucking idiot to pursue it. After six years working with the Brits in various theatres he'd come to the conclusion that they didn't do it on purpose. The thing was, Brits actually thought that subtext was plain text. To a Brit, the modern English language was vested with hundreds of years of unbroken history and cultural nuance, so that every single word had a host of implications depending on who said it to whom, when, and how. British soldiers, for example, gave entire reports to their commanders by the way they said 'good morning, sir' and then had to spend half an hour telling them the detail, which was why the Brits always looked bored in briefings. They could sense the trajectory of the conversation, knew the bad news was coming now and the good news now and that there was a question on the end which needed thinking about. With a bit of work they could deduce the question, too, but they always waited politely for it to be asked so that no one felt rushed.

The BBC announcer’s voice changed. “The news,” he said, “has just been received that Japanese aircraft have raided Pearl Harbor, the American naval base in Hawaii. The announcement of the attack was made in a brief statement by President Roosevelt. Naval and military targets on the principal Hawaiian island of Oahu have also been attacked. No further details are yet available.” At first, there was confusion. “I was thoroughly startled,” Harriman said, “and I repeated the words, ‘The Japanese have raided Pearl Harbor.’ ” “No, no,” countered Churchill aide Tommy Thompson. “He said Pearl River.” U.S. ambassador John Winant, also present, glanced toward Churchill. “We looked at one another incredulously,” Winant wrote. Churchill, his depression suddenly lifted, slammed the top of the radio down and leapt to his feet. His on-duty private secretary, John Martin, entered the room, announcing that the Admiralty was on the phone. As Churchill headed for the door, he said, “We shall declare war on Japan.” Winant followed, perturbed. “Good God,” he said, “you can’t declare war on a radio announcement.” (Later Winant wrote, “There is nothing half-hearted or unpositive about Churchill—certainly not when he is on the move.”) Churchill stopped. His voice quiet, he said, “What shall I do?” Winant set off to call Roosevelt to learn more. “And I shall talk with him too,” Churchill said. Once Roosevelt was on the line, Winant told him that he had a friend with him who also wanted to speak. “You will know who it is, as soon as you hear his voice.

Colette"s "My Mother's House" and "Sido" After seeing the movie "Colette" I felt so sad that it didn't even touch the living spirit of her that exists in her writing. 'What are you doing with that bucket, mother? Couldn't you wait until Josephine (the househelp) arrives?' "And out I hurried. But the fire was already blazing, fed with dry wood. The milk was boiling on the blue-tiled charcoal stove. Nearby, a bar of chocolate was melting in a little water for my breakfast, and, seated squarely in her cane armchair, my mother was grinding the fragrant coffee which she roasted herself. The morning hours were always kind to her. She wore their rosy colours in her cheeks. Flushed with a brief return to health, she would gaze at the rising sun, while the church bell rang for early Mass, and rejoice at having tasted, while we still slept, so many forbidden fruits. "The forbidden fruits were the over-heavy bucket drawn up from the well, the firewood split with a billhook on an oaken block, the spade, the mattock, and above all the double steps propped against the gable-windows of the attic, the flowery spikes of the too-tall lilacs, the dizzy cat that had to be rescued from the ridge of the roof. All the accomplices of her old existence as a plump and sturdy little woman, all the minor rustic divinities who once obeyed her and made her so proud of doing without servants, now assumed the appearance and position of adversaries. But they reckoned without that love of combat which my mother was to keep till the end of her life. At seventy-one dawn still found her undaunted, if not always undamaged. Burnt by fire, cut with the pruning knife, soaked by melting snow or spilt water, she had always managed to enjoy her best moments of independence before the earliest risers had opened their shutters. She was able to tell us of the cats' awakening, of what was going on in the nests, of news gleaned, together with the morning's milk and the warm loaf, from the milkmaid and the baker's girl, the record in fact of the birth of a new day.

She looks to the sky watching the rain as it falls through space and there is nothing to see in the ruined yard but the world insisting on itself, the cement’s sedate crumbling giving way to the rising sap beneath, and when the yard is past there will remain the world’s insistence, the world insisting it is not a dream and yet to the looker there is no escaping the dream and the price of life that is suffering, and she sees her children delivered into a world of devotion and love and sees them damned to a world of terror, wishing for such a world to end, wishing for the world its destruction, and she looks at her infant son, this child who remains an innocent and she sees how she has fallen afoul of herself and grows aghast, seeing that out of terror comes pity and out of pity comes love and out of love the world can be redeemed again, and she can see that the world does not end, that it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire, the sun gone down into the earth at noon and the world cast in darkness, the fury of some god incarnate in the mouth of the prophet raging at the wickedness that will be cast out of sight, and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore, Ben’s laughter behind her and she turns and sees Molly tickling him on her lap and she watches her son and sees in his eyes a radiant intensity that speaks of the world before the fall, and she is on her knees crying, taking hold of Molly’s hand.

Longstreet reached Catoosa Station the following afternoon, September 19, but found no guide waiting to take him to Bragg or give him news of the battle he could hear raging beyond the western screen of woods. When the horses came up on a later train, he had three of them saddled and set out with two members of his staff to find the headquarters of the Army of Tennessee. He was helped in this, so far as the general direction was concerned, by the rearward drift of the wounded, although none of these unfortunates seemed to know exactly where he could find their commander. Night fell and the three officers continued their ride by moonlight until they were halted by a challenge out of the darkness just ahead: “Who comes there?” “Friends,” they replied, promptly but with circumspection, and in the course of the parley that followed they asked the sentry to identify his unit. When he did so by giving the numbers of his brigade and division—Confederate outfits were invariably known by the names of their commanders—they knew they had blundered into the Union lines. “Let us ride down a little way to find a better crossing,” Old Peter said, disguising his southern accent, and the still-mounted trio withdrew, unfired on, to continue their search for Bragg. It was barely an hour before midnight when they found him—or, rather, found his camp; for he was asleep in his ambulance by then. He turned out for a brief conference, in the course of which he outlined, rather sketchily, what had happened up to now in his contest with Rosecrans, now approaching a climax here at Chickamauga, and passed on the orders already issued to the five corps commanders for a dawn attack next morning. Longstreet, though he had never seen the field by daylight, was informed that he would have charge of the left wing, which contained six of the army’s eleven divisions, including his own two fragmentary ones that had arrived today and yesterday from Virginia. For whatever it might be worth, Bragg also gave him what he later described as “a map showing prominent topographical features of the ground from the Chickamauga River to Mission Ridge, and beyond to the Lookout Mountain range.” Otherwise he was on his own, so far as information was concerned.

Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion. The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that swept Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are particularly notorious. All those involved accepted Christ’s divinity and His gospel of compassion and love. However, they disagreed about the nature of this love. Protestants believed that the divine love is so great that God was incarnated in flesh and allowed Himself to be tortured and crucified, thereby redeeming the original sin and opening the gates of heaven to all those who professed faith in Him. Catholics maintained that faith, while essential, was not enough. To enter heaven, believers had to participate in church rituals and do good deeds. Protestants refused to accept this, arguing that this quid pro quo belittles God’s greatness and love. Whoever thinks that entry to heaven depends upon his or her own good deeds magnifies his own importance, and implies that Christ’s suffering on the cross and God’s love for humankind are not enough. These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence. God

Energy is the basis of creating electricity that we can utilize, so how can we harness the power of an earthquake? Obviously, today, if that much energy were being drawn from the Earth through the Great Pyramid, tourists would not be parading through it every day. In order for the system to work, the pyramid would need to be mechanically coupled with the Earth and vibrating in sympathy with it. To do this, the system would need to be "primed"—we would need to initiate oscillation of the pyramid before we could tap into the Earth's oscillations. After the initial priming pulse, though, the pyramid would be coupled with the Earth and could draw off its energy. In effect, the Great Pyramid would feed into the Earth a little energy and receive an enormous amount out of it in return. How do we cause a mass of stone that weighs 5,273,834 tons to oscillate? It would seem an impossible task. Yet there was a man in recent history who claimed he could do just that! Nikola Tesla, a physicist and inventor with more than six hundred patents to his credit—one of them being the AC generator—created a device he called an "earthquake machine." By applying vibration at the resonant frequency of a building, he claimed he could shake the building apart. In fact, it is reported that he had to turn his machine off before the building he was testing it in came down around him. [...] The New York World-Telegram reported Tesla's comments from a news briefing at the hotel New Yorker on July 11, 1935: 'I was experimenting with vibrations. I had one of my machines going and I wanted to see if I could get it in tune with the vibration of the building. I put it up notch after notch. There was a peculiar cracking sound. I asked my assistants where did the sound come from. They did not know. I put the machine up a few more notches. There was a louder cracking sound. I knew I was approaching the vibration of the steel building. I pushed the machine a little higher. Suddenly, all the heavy machinery in the place was flying around. I grabbed a hammer and broke the machine. The building would have been about our ears in another few minutes. Outside in the street there was pandemonium. The police and ambulances arrived. I told my assistants to say nothing. We told the police it must have been an earthquake. That's all they ever knew about it.

For a moment we just sit there silently, our heads tipped back as we stare at the sky. A minute passes, maybe two. And then Ryder’s hand grazes mine before settling on the ground, our pinkies touching. I suck in a breath, my entire body going rigid. I’m wondering if he realizes it, if he even knows he’s touching me, when just like that, he draws away. Ryder clears his throat. “So…I hear you’re going out with Patrick on Friday.” “And?” I ask. That brief connection that we’d shared is suddenly gone--poof, just like that. “And what?” he answers with a shrug. “Oh, I’m sure you’ve got an opinion on this--one you’re just dying to share.” Because Ryder has an opinion on everything. “Well, it’s just that Patrick…” He shakes his head. “Never mind. Forget I brought it up.” “No, go on. It’s just that Patrick what?” “Seriously, Jemma. It’s none of my business.” “C’mon, Ryder, get it out of your system. What? Patrick is looking to get a piece? Is using me? Is planning on standing me up?” I can’t help myself; the words just tumble out. “I was going to say that I think he really likes you,” he says, his voice flat. I bite back my retort, forcing myself to take a deep, calming breath instead. That was not what I had expected him to say--not at all--and it takes me completely by surprise. Patrick really likes me? I’m not sure how I feel about that--not sure I want it to be true. “What do you mean, he really likes me?” I ask stupidly. “Just what I said. It’s pretty simple stuff, Jemma. He likes you. I think he always has.” “And you know this how?” He levels a stare at me. “Trust me on this, okay? He’s got problems, sure, but he’s a decent guy. Don’t break his heart.” I scramble to my feet. “I agreed to go out with him--once. And I’m probably going to cancel, anyway, because after today’s news, I’m really not in the mood. But the last thing I need is dating advice from you.” “How come every conversation we have ends like this--with you going off on me? You didn’t use to be like this. What happened?” He’s right, and I hate myself for it--hate the way he makes me feel inside, as if I’m not good enough. I mean, let’s face it--I know I’m nothing special. I’m not beauty-pageant perfect like Morgan, or fashion-model gorgeous like Lucy. Unlike Ryder and Nan, I don’t have state-championship trophies lining my walls. My singing voice is only so-so, I can’t draw or play a musical instrument, and if the school plays are any indicator, I can’t act for shit, either.

British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria • Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London • They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities • He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan • Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka. He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists. Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh. The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newspapers. He is believed to have arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS, according Monirul Islam - joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police - who was speaking at a press briefing today. Zakaria has openly shared Islamist extremist materials on his Facebook and other social media links. An example of Zakaria Saqib Mahmood sharing Islamist materials on his Facebook profile He targeted Muslims from Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Mr Islam added, before saying: 'He also went to Australia but we are yet to know the reason behind his trips'. Zakaria saqib Mahmood trip to Australia in order to recruit for militant extremist groups 'From his passport we came to know that he went to Pakistan where we believe he met a Jihadist named Rauf Salman, in addition to Australia during September last year to meet some of his links he recruited in London, mainly from his weekly charity food stand in East London, ' the DMP spokesperson went on to say. Police believes Zakaria Mahmood has met Jihadist member Rauf Salman in Pakistan Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was identified by the local police in Pakistan in the last September. The number of extremists he has met in this trip remains unknown yet. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood uses charity food stand as a cover to radicalise local people in Newham, London. Investigators: Dhaka Metropolitan Police believe Zakaria Saqib Mhamood arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS The news comes just days after a 40-year-old East London bogus college owner called Sinclair Adamson - who also had links to the northern city of Sylhet - was arrested in Dhaka on suspicion of recruiting would-be fighters for ISIS. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, who has studied at CASS Business School, was arrested in Dhaka on Thursday after being reported for recruiting militants. Just one day before Zakaria Mahmood's arrest, local police detained Asif Adnan, 26, and Fazle ElahiTanzil, 24, who were allegedly travelling to join ISIS militants in Syria, assisted by an unnamed Briton. It is understood the suspected would-be jihadists were planning to travel to a Turkish airport popular with tourists, before travelling by road to the Syrian border and then slipping across into the warzone.

PROLOGUE Some years ago in the Planet Orfheus ... It was dark when Lucius reached the rendezvous which had been chosen to be the new hideout. The latter had been used for several months and they were concerned that they were being followed and were close to being discovered. "I thought you were not coming. I've been waiting for you for almost an hour. I was getting anxious," Sofia said, relieved. "Sorry, love. It is becoming increasingly difficult. I almost didn't make it today. The troops were ambushed in the last invasion. Igor and many warriors returned seriously injured," Lucius replied. He looked worried. Why this sudden encounter? They had agreed that the next would be the following week. Lucius gave her a big hug, pulled her close to him, and remained silent for a few moments. His longing and desire consumed him. She meant the world to him. Without Sofia, his life would never make sense. He would never forget those eyes, serene and sincere, with a blue so bright and clear that were able to see the soul of the tormented warrior that was he. With her golden hair, Sofia looked like an angel. "Is there a problem? You're so quiet and deep in thought," she asked, puzzled. He answered, "I'm thinking about us. How long are we keeping it secret?" He walked away from her, sighing. "We can't keep lying and pretending that all is well. You have no idea how much I have to endure when you are away from me, or when I see you with him." "Love, not now. We have already discussed this subject several times. You know that our only alternative would be to flee and pray they will never find us," she replied. Sofia knew very well that the laws of the kingdom could not be disregarded. Love, respect, and loyalty were key factors that were part of the hierarchy of Orfheus. Although she had always been in love with Lucius who had never shown any interest in her, Sofia was bound to his brother Alex as a result of a pact. Over the centuries, Lucius began to change and express loving feelings for her. She never ceased to love him and both succumbed to the temptation and passion of it. Inevitably, a love affair developed between the two. Interrupting her thoughts, Lucius grabbed her by the hand and led her into the hut. This hut was located inside a vast and beautiful forest. He pulled her by the waist, gave her a passionate kiss, stroked her hair, and said softly, "Love, I missed you so much." "I also felt homesick but the real reason I came here today is to tell you something very important. I need you to listen carefully and keep calm," she said as she ran her hands through her hair which contrasted with her pale skin. Sofia did not want to scare him. However, she imagined that he would be upset and angry with the news. Unfortunately, the revelation was inevitable and sooner or later, everything would come out. "I'm pregnant," she said unceremoniously. For a brief moment, Lucius said nothing. He just stared at her without any reaction. He seemed to be in a silent battle with his own thoughts. "But how?" he babbled, not believing what he had just heard. It was surely a bombshell revelation. That would be the end for them. Sofia said, "Stay calm, love. I know this changes everything. What we were planning for months is no longer possible." She sat on a makeshift stool and continued with tears in her eyes. "With the baby coming, I cannot simply go through the portal. The baby and I would die during the crossing." Lucius replied, "Could we ask for help from Aunt Wilda? She is very powerful. Probably she would be able to break through the magic of the portals." Sofia had already thought of that. She was well aware that it was the only choice left. Aunt Wilda had always been like a mother to her. The sorceress adopted her when she was a girl, soon after her family had died in combat.

Home! he'd cried out like a child that would give anything not to be seeing what it was seeing, but precisely in this one brief moment in which he hid his face in his hands, as it were, even the dutiful German official had known that home would never again be called Bavaria, the Baltic coast or Berlin, home had been transformed into a time that now lay behind him, Germany had been irrevocably transformed into something disembodied, a lost spirit that neither knew nor was forced to imagine all these horrific things. H-o-m-e. Which thou must leave ere long. After he had swum his way through a brief bout of despair, the German official had applied to retain his post. those others, though, the ones who had fled their homeland before they themselves could be transformed into monsters, were thrust into homelessness by the news that reached them from back home, not just for the years of their emigration but also, as seems clear to her now, for all eternity, regardless of whether or not they returned.

In 1777, the U.S. Congress ordered a second naval ship built, the Ranger. The Ranger was the most famous of all the ships built on Langdon's Island. She was an 18-gun sloop and was the first American ship to be coppered. Her biography mirrors that of the Raleigh: designed by William Hackett, built by James Hackett on Rising Castle/Langdon's Island, and captured by the British, off Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. John Paul Jones commanded the vessel, and she captured a number of British ships during her brief career. She also carried news of British general John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga to Europe and received the first salute ever given to an American ship, off Quiberon Bay in France.12

With the usual snarls and sneers he read the dismal unreal news briefs from the outside world, terse by-the-way accounts of coups and famines, scandals and indictments, riots and revolutions. In everything he read he saw confirmation of what he knew: that the truth was everywhere suppressed, fakery in gross but temporary triumph. In Africa as in Russia, in politics as in culture, the appalling pattern held: Lying mediocrity prospered while deep honesty could only fume and seethe and starve, and so it would continue until there was a Liberator clear-eyed enough to show the world its vileness, and strong and cruel enough to root the vileness out.

able to substantiate them or cross the publication threshold. Now, because of Comey’s conversation at Trump Tower, news organizations had reason to reconsider. Salacious memos circulating in Washington were one thing; the director of the FBI briefing the incoming president on those allegations was news and word leaked swiftly. Comey had in effect triggered the launch.

During his first month in office, Trump excluded some prominent reporters from a press briefing. Almost immediately, the government of Cambodia threatened to kick a contingent of American journalists out of its country. Spokesmen in Phnom Penh said they perceived a “clear message” from Trump that “news broadcast by those media outlets does not reflect the truth,” adding that “Freedom of expression . . . must respect the state’s power.” Cambodia’s was the first of many governments—others include those of Hungary, Libya, Poland, Russia, Somalia, and Thailand—to insist that negative stories about them are false for no reason except that the press cannot be trusted. According to the People’s Daily, the house organ of the Chinese Communist Party: “If the president of the United States claims that his nation’s media outlets are a stain on America, then negative stories about China should be taken with a grain of salt, since it is likely that the bias and political agenda are distorting the real picture.” The ability of a free and independent press to hold political leaders accountable is what makes open government possible—it is the heartbeat of democracy. Trump is intent on stilling, or slowing down, that heartbeat. This is a gift to dictators, and coming from a chief executive of the United States, cause for shame.

we do not know the physics of climate system responses to warming well enough to blame most of the warming on human activities. Human causation is simply assumed. The models are designed with the assumption that the climate system was in natural balance before the Industrial Revolution, despite historical evidence to the contrary. They only produce human-caused climate change because that is the way they are designed. This is in spite of abundant evidence of past warm episodes, such as 1,000- to 2,000-year-old tree stumps being uncovered by receding glaciers; temperature proxy evidence for the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods covering that same time frame; and Arctic sea ice proxy evidence for a natural decrease in sea ice starting well before humans could be blamed. Natural warming since the Little Ice Age of a few hundred years ago is simply ignored in the design of climate models, since we do not know what caused it. Simply put, the computerized climate models support human causation of climate change because that’s what they assume from the outset. They are an example of circular reasoning. There is little to no evidence of long-term increases in heat waves, droughts, or floods. Wildfire activity has, if anything, decreased, even though poor land management practices are now making some areas more vulnerable to wildfires even without climate change. Contrary to popular perception and new reports, there is little to no evidence of increased storminess resulting from climate change. This includes tornadoes and hurricanes. Long-term increases in monetary storm damages have indeed occurred, but are due to increasing development, not worsening weather. Sea level has been rising naturally since at least the mid-1800s, well before humans could be blamed. Land subsidence in some areas (e.g. Norfolk, Miami, Galveston-Houston, New Orleans) would result in increasing flooding problems even without any sea-level rise, let alone human-induced sea-level rise causing thermal expansion of the oceans. Some evidence for recent acceleration of sea-level rise might support human causation, but the magnitude of the human component since 1950 has been only 1 inch every 30 years. Ocean acidification is now looking like a non-problem, as the evidence builds that sea life prefers somewhat more CO2, just as vegetation on land does. Given that CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, yet had been at dangerously low levels for thousands of years, the scientific community needs to stop accepting the premise that more CO2 in the atmosphere is necessarily a bad thing. Global greening has been observed by satellites over the last few decades, which is during the period of most rapid rises in atmospheric CO2. The benefits of increasing CO2 to agriculture have been calculated to be in the trillions of dollars. Crop yields continue to break records around the world, due to a combination of human ingenuity and the direct effects of CO2 on plant growth and water use efficiency. Much of this evidence is not known by our citizens, who are largely misinformed by a news media that favors alarmist stories. The scientific community is, in general, biased toward alarmism in order to maintain careers and support desired governmental energy policies. Only when the public becomes informed based upon evidence from both sides of the debate can we expect to make rational policy decisions. I hope my brief treatment of these subjects provides a step in that direction. THE END

where am I going? This society? The whole human race?” These are questions which many of us today are asking urgently, deeply troubled about what we see happening in our world Our concerns may be quite personal ones, centered around our own particular life situation. They may be general ones, related to the state of things as a whole or both. For this is a strange and difficult time, a time when all the old values and traditions seem to have been cut out from under us without anything clear and definitive having been substituted for them. From every direction and every possible source, we’re being bombarded by the newfangled ideas, values and behaviors of the New Age in which we live. The New Age is an age with many interesting features. One of these is confusion. Great numbers of us no longer seem to have a clear sense of right and wrong, good and bad. Under the impact of too much personal freedom and the flood of new ideas and values, we’re falling apart, frightened, uncertain, lost. After all, how is it possible to have certainty about anything when even the most basic, time-honored values are being called into question? In comparison to earlier times, everything around us today seems upside-down and backwards. A great deal of what was previously considered right is now looked upon as outmoded, irrelevant or just plain dumb. At the same time, much of what used to be considered wrong is now accepted as right, normal and okay. Members of the older generation, like myself, still maintain our vision of what things were like in an earlier, simpler, less perplexing period. But when our generation goes, apart from people of strong religious faith, who will be left that still retains a clear vision of a saner, more stable society? That vision will have gone with the winds of change. This turn-about in basic human values and morals has led to a steady unraveling of civilized standards and behavior, not only in the country but worldwide. Brutality, lust and all manner of other evils flourish around the globe; violence, vice and exploitation seem to have become the new order of the day. And fear hangs over the whole world. Those of us who are even slightly sensitive to the currents and energies around us realize that something is wrong-deeply, awfully wrong. And we carry the collective burden of humanity’s pain and turmoil deep within our hearts. Day by day the fear and uneasiness increases. Often we sense that we’re at the edge of a terrible and dangerous abyss, surrounded by intense darkness. As the end of this millennium approaches, predictions of a worldwide Armageddon-like catastrophe haunt our minds. And how can it be otherwise when we sense deep within ourselves that things have gone so wrong that such a crisis is due? For each day, new and deeper holes appear in the social and moral fabric of mankind, and it seem obvious that when the holes become more than the fabric itself, it’s past repair.” source: Suzanne Haneef, Islam: The Path of God, pages 11-12 (PDF Version) Written by an American Muslim, this work presents a brief yet comprehensive survey of the basic teachings on the significance of Islam's central concept, faith in and submission to God. It introduces the reader to how Muslims feel about various aspects of life, how they worship, and how Muslims living in the West practice their religion. Perhaps you have been hearing a lot about Islam and Muslims in the news and are interested in knowing, justifiably, just what this religion is all about. This is the classic English-language book for introducing Islam to non-Muslims in the West. It is a well-balanced book that does an excellent job of covering the basics of belief, practice, and culture, without overwhelming the reader in minutia. This is generally the first book that I recommend to people who are interested in learning about Islam. read her other book: What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims

At the same time as suggesting the language game we clearly do not have a change in the name of God as our only way to think in New Testament terms of an earth at peace. There is Jesus! It is very hard to attribute violence to the originator of the gospel, of the good news of God’s forgiveness and love, of divine healing and welcome. Despite the fact that people refer to his action in the temple in the last days of his life as an exceptional yet conclusive ‘proof’ of Jesus’ use of violence no serious bible scholar would look on these actions divorced from his whole ministry. And because of that we have to see them as a conscious and deliberate prophetic sign-action, taking control of the temple for a brief period to show how it stood in contrast to the direct relationship with God which he proclaimed, and to make the point with a definitive emphasis. The whip he plaits in John is used to drive the animals, probably with the sound of the crack alone. No one is attacked. No one gets hurt. And very soon the situation reverts to the status quo: the authorities take back control of the temple and decide on Jesus’ suffering and death in order to control him. Overall the event is to be seen as Jesus placing himself purposely and calculatedly in the cross-hairs for the sake of the truth, much rather than doing harm to anyone else. The consequences of his actions were indeed ‘the cross’, and supremely in the situation of crucifixion Jesus does not invoke retaliation on his enemies, or threaten those who reject redemption; rather he prays for their forgiveness. No, Jesus’ whole life-story makes him unmistakably a figure of transcendent nonviolence. The problem lies elsewhere, with the way the cross is interpreted within the framework of a violent God. It is unfathomably ironic that the icon of human non-retaliation, Jesus’ cross, gets turned in the tradition into a supreme piece of vengeance—God’s ‘just’ punishment of Jesus in our place. My book, Cross Purposes, is about the way this tradition got formed and it represents just one of a constant stream of writing, gathering force at the end of the last century and continuing into this, questioning how this could be the meaning of the central symbol of Christianity.2 I think the vigor of that question can only continue to grow, while the nonviolence of Jesus’ response must at the same time stand out in greater and greater relief, in its own right and for its own sake. And for that same reason the argument at hand, of ‘No-name’ for a nonviolent God, can only be strengthened when we highlight the nonviolence of Jesus against the traditional violent concept of ‘God’. Now

He clearly had a dilemma. His self-appointed task was to brief junior new arrivals such as myself about aspects of life at court. Under this heading he included the history of the British monarchy (a bizarre account of his own making), its relevance to modern Britain (akin to his own), and how an insect such as I should hold his knife and fork (an exaggeration, but only just). This performance may have been for our benefit but it was undoubtedly also for his own, since it gave us newcomers a wonderful opportunity to marvel at his mastery of arcane and irrelevant information. However, he plainly suffered doubts as to whether we were suitable receptacles for such priceless wisdom. I fear I did little to set his mind at rest, either then or in our subsequent uneasy encounters. “Above all,” he said, leaning forward for emphasis and fixing me with a watery glare, “we don’t want any nonsenses! Nonsenses always lead to nausea!” He sat back feeling that no further explanation was required. There was a pause, presumably to allow me to dwell on my capacity for nonsenses. It seemed infinite to both of us. “Thank you,” I said, already aware that hollow pleasantries would be a necessity of life in this place. Then, seeing an opportunity, I added, “I really should be getting back . . .” He took this news quite well, despite the fact that he had barely warmed to his theme. He left me feeling that I was but a passing aberration on the seamless splendor of royal existence.

Ailes dispatched his personal lawyer, Peter Johnson, Jr., to the Breitbart Embassy in Washington, D.C., to deliver a personal message to Bannon to end the war on Kelly. Bannon loathed Johnson, whom he referred to privately as “that nebbishy, goofball lawyer on Fox & Friends”—Johnson had leveraged his proximity to Ailes to become a Fox News pundit. When he arrived at the Embassy, Johnson got straight to the point: if Bannon didn’t stop immediately, he would never again appear on Fox News. “You’ve got a very strong relationship with Roger,” Johnson warned. “You’ve gotta stop these attacks on Megyn. She’s the star. And if you don’t stop, there are going to be consequences.” Bannon was incensed at the threat. “She’s pure evil,” he told Johnson. “And she will turn on him one day. We’re going full-bore. We’re not going to stop. I’m gonna unchain the dogs.” The conversation was brief and unpleasant, and it ended with a cinematic flourish.

I think he’s read my mind, because after a brief pause, he asks, “You have a nice time at the party?” There’s only one answer to this. “Lovely,” I say, and I actually toss my head as if I were a heroine in an old film, being coquettish with an admirer. “I danced and danced,” I add airily. “With lots of people. I didn’t see you at all.” “I see you,” he says, “with Sebastiano. You dance a lot with him.” I answer lightly, “Oh yes! He’s very nice. I really liked him.” Luca’s feet shift on the gravel. “He has lots of friends,” he says rather snappily. “Lots of girls.” “Like you,” I snap back. “Elisa says you have lots of girl friends too. Foreign girls.” Luca sighs heavily, and reaches up to run a hand through his hair. “Elisa--” he starts, and then halts, as if he’s choosing his words very carefully. He sighs again. “Elisa,” he finally continues, “can sometimes be not very nice. Even to her mother, she is not very nice. It is maybe better not to listen to what she tells you.” “This just in,” I mutter. “Breaking news revelation.” “Come?” Luca stares down at me, fine streaks of black hair now tumbling over his forehead. “Non capisco.” “Elisa,” I say in Italian as careful as his English, “è una stronza.” He bursts out laughing. “Brava,” he says. “Complimenti.” And he’s very clever, because he uses the laughter to carry him toward me somehow, on a quick step forward, and the next thing I know he’s taken my hands and is holding them in his. I don’t know what to do. I look at our clasped hands. It feels as if he’s cleared the ground, swept away Sebastiano and Elisa; has tried to tell me that he saw me dancing with Sebastiano and was too jealous to come over, and that he doesn’t like Elisa that way. Of course, he might just be telling me what I want to hear. “Violetta--” he starts, and I look up at him, which is a huge mistake. Because he promptly kisses me, and I’m not ready.

The Ultimate Guide To SEO In The 21st Century Search engine optimization is a complex and ever changing method of getting your business the exposure that you need to make sales and to build a solid reputation on line. To many people, the algorithms involved in SEO are cryptic, but the basic principle behind them is impossible to ignore if you are doing any kind of business on the internet. This article will help you solve the SEO puzzle and guide you through it, with some very practical advice! To increase your website or blog traffic, post it in one place (e.g. to your blog or site), then work your social networking sites to build visibility and backlinks to where your content is posted. Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other news feeds are great tools to use that will significantly raise the profile of your pages. An important part of starting a new business in today's highly technological world is creating a professional website, and ensuring that potential customers can easily find it is increased with the aid of effective search optimization techniques. Using relevant keywords in your URL makes it easier for people to search for your business and to remember the URL. A title tag for each page on your site informs both search engines and customers of the subject of the page while a meta description tag allows you to include a brief description of the page that may show up on web search results. A site map helps customers navigate your website, but you should also create a separate XML Sitemap file to help search engines find your pages. While these are just a few of the basic recommendations to get you started, there are many more techniques you can employ to drive customers to your website instead of driving them away with irrelevant search results. One sure way to increase traffic to your website, is to check the traffic statistics for the most popular search engine keywords that are currently bringing visitors to your site. Use those search words as subjects for your next few posts, as they represent trending topics with proven interest to your visitors. Ask for help, or better yet, search for it. There are hundreds of websites available that offer innovative expertise on optimizing your search engine hits. Take advantage of them! Research the best and most current methods to keep your site running smoothly and to learn how not to get caught up in tricks that don't really work. For the most optimal search engine optimization, stay away from Flash websites. While Google has improved its ability to read text within Flash files, it is still an imperfect science. For instance, any text that is part of an image file in your Flash website will not be read by Google or indexed. For the best SEO results, stick with HTML or HTML5. You have probably read a few ideas in this article that you would have never thought of, in your approach to search engine optimization. That is the nature of the business, full of tips and tricks that you either learn the hard way or from others who have been there and are willing to share! Hopefully, this article has shown you how to succeed, while making fewer of those mistakes and in turn, quickened your path to achievement in search engine optimization!

Avalanche As if they weren’t suffering enough, on the morning of 29 October an avalanche suddenly cascaded down the steep rocky slopes above them and engulfed the fuselage as the survivors slept. They remained entombed in the tiny space for three days until they managed to poke a hole in the roof of the fuselage with a metal pole. By the time they got out, eight more people had died under the snow. Three more were to die in the following weeks. Hiking out After they had heard the radio news about the search being called off, many passengers knew that they would have to get themselves out of the mountains if they were to survive. The avalanche expressed that fact even more plainly. During the flight they had heard the co-pilot announce that they had passed Curicó. That meant that the Chilean countryside ought to be just a few kilometres away to the west. Probably just over the high peak they were on. Several survivors made brief scouting missions, but their weakened state and the altitude combined to make it gruelling work. There was no way that all of them would be able to walk over and out of the mountains.

The newsmen were making brief notes of his answers. Their faces now had the look of automatons acting out the routine of pretending that they were hearing news in the empty utterances of another automaton.

...the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news....

It may have been only for a moment, it probably was; but I do know the silence was not broken till the aged minister, who stood at the head of the coffin, began his discourse. We stood with uncovered heads during the service, and when the old minister addressed us he spoke as though he might have been holding family worship and we had been his children. He invoked Heaven to comfort and sustain the mother when the news of her son's death reached her, as she would need more than human aid in that hour; he prayed that her faith might not falter and that she might again meet and be with her loved ones forever in the great beyond. He then took up the subject of life,—spoke of its brevity, its many hopes that are never realized, and the disappointments from which no prudence or foresight can shield us. He dwelt at some length on the strange mingling of sunshine and shadow that seemed to belong to every life; on the mystery everywhere, and nowhere more impressively than in ourselves. With his long bony finger he pointed to the cold, mute form that lay in the coffin before us, and said, "But this, my friends, is the mystery of all mysteries." The fact that life terminated in death, he said, only emphasized its reality; that the death of our companion was not an accident, though it was sudden and unexpected; that the difficulties of life are such that it would be worse than folly in us to try to meet them in our own strength. Death, he said, might change, but it did not destroy; that the soul still lived and would live forever; that death was simply the gateway out of time into eternity; and if we were to realize the high aim of our being, we could do so by casting our burdens on Him who was able and willing to carry them for us. He spoke feelingly of the Great Teacher, the lowly Nazarene, who also suffered and died, and he concluded with an eloquent description of the blessed life, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body. After the discourse was ended and a brief and earnest prayer was covered, the two young girls sang the hymn, "Shall we meet beyond the river?" The services being at an end, the coffin was lowered into the grave.

It is so easy to demonize free-market and the freedom to outsource and offshore because it is so much easier to see people being laid off in big bunches, which makes headlines, than to see them being hired in fives and tens by small and medium-sized companies, which rarely makes news.

Jim Cramer’s Mad Money is one of the most popular shows on CNBC, a cable TV network that specializes in business and financial news. Cramer, who mostly offers investment advice, is known for his sense of showmanship. But few viewers were prepared for his outburst on August 3, 2007, when he began screaming about what he saw as inadequate action from the Federal Reserve: “Bernanke is being an academic! It is no time to be an academic. . . . He has no idea how bad it is out there. He has no idea! He has no idea! . . . and Bill Poole? Has no idea what it’s like out there! . . . They’re nuts! They know nothing! . . . The Fed is asleep! Bill Poole is a shame! He’s shameful!!” Who are Bernanke and Bill Poole? In the previous chapter we described the role of the Federal Reserve System, the U.S. central bank. At the time of Cramer’s tirade, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor of economics, was the chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors, and William Poole, also a former economics professor, was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Both men, because of their positions, are members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which meets eight times a year to set monetary policy. In August 2007, Cramerwas crying outforthe Fed to change monetary policy in order to address what he perceived to be a growing financial crisis. Why was Cramer screaming at the Federal Reserve rather than, say, the U.S. Treasury—or, for that matter, the president? The answer is that the Fed’s control of monetary policy makes it the first line of response to macroeconomic difficulties—very much including the financial crisis that had Cramer so upset. Indeed, within a few weeks the Fed swung into action with a dramatic reversal of its previous policies. In Section 4, we developed the aggregate demand and supply model and introduced the use of fiscal policy to stabilize the economy. In Section 5, we introduced money, banking, and the Federal Reserve System, and began to look at how monetary policy is used to stabilize the economy. In this section, we use the models introduced in Sections 4 and 5 to further develop our understanding of stabilization policies (both fiscal and monetary), including their long-run effects on the economy. In addition, we introduce the Phillips curve—a short-run trade-off between unexpected inflation and unemployment—and investigate the role of expectations in the economy. We end the section with a brief summary of the history of macroeconomic thought and how the modern consensus view of stabilization policy has developed.

Interestingness is the instigator, the hardy carrier pigeon that can carry your message most anywhere. Interestingness makes a message get heard above the noise. Money can't buy interestingness, yet vivid comparisons can create them. To make your self-label stick it must be more interesting than others' labels for you. The good news and the bad is that reputations can be ruined or lifted by how most anyone labels something or someone - as long the label is as vividly indelible as India ink. More than money, title or even good looks, your capacity to craft the most vivid characterization will make it bob, like a cork, to the top of the water of alternative messages. A janitor can become more famous and credible than a CEO. Use the "Compared to What?" cue to stick your label in other's minds, whether they intended to remember or not. Make your comparison: • Spark a specific mental picture • Evoke a positive emotion • Be unexpected • Be Brief

If your feeding on the Word of God is only happening when the pastor preaches, then you will suffer from malnourishment. When people become so focused on teaching lessons rather than teaching students, churches can become places where lessons are delivered, but no real change comes about. When members are taught how to budget and manage their money wisely they are more capable of supporting the church’s ministries. When individuals take on leadership roles, they need to be accountable, not only to God, but also to others at the church. The success or failure of your ministry depends on this. So many people would have a better opinion of Christians if they felt that the believers did not have a “holier than thou” attitude. Attract unbelievers; be honest and open. If you have experienced tough problems, and you know that God made a way for you, don’t keep this good news to yourself. Share your testimony; it just might change someone’s life. People like to know that others care about them. You may never know how much a kind word, a discussion, a visit, a brief note, a birthday card or some much needed friendship can influence someone who is not used to thoughtful gestures. It is hard to motivate people to act if they do not see the person leading them setting the proper example. Whenever only one person is responsible for making all of the major decisions for an organization, problems can arise; this is true of churches as well.

But when control is the goal, it can negatively affect other parts of your culture. I’ve known many managers who hate to be surprised in meetings, for example, by which I mean they make it clear that they want to be briefed about any unexpected news in advance and in private. In many workplaces, it is a sign of disrespect if someone surprises a manager with new information in front of other people. But what does this mean in practice? It means that there are pre-meetings before meetings, and the meetings begin to take on a pro forma tone. It means wasted time. It means that the employees who work with these people walk on eggshells. It means that fear runs rampant.

What’s going on?  What news?” I said glancing between the two. Sam gave Clay a sharp look. “You didn’t tell her?” “He’s not talking to me, yet,” I said, wondering what bad news Sam had to share. Sam shook his head at Clay.  “You’ve dug your own hole then, son.”  He focused on me.  “A group of Forlorn have asked Elder Joshua to approach you for an unofficial kind of Introduction.  Joshua approved, but he made it clear they were to keep it brief and then leave, unless any of them had a further request of him.” The meaning of Sam’s words sunk in deep like a vicious bite.  It also explained his less than warm greeting.  He stood in my living room as an Elder on pack business, not as family or a friend.  I struggled to contain my anger. “I thought I was done with that.  We had a deal.”  I crossed my arms and coldly regarded Sam.  “I know I said I was done.” The carefully, composed expression on Sam’s face faltered a bit.  “Honey, there are rules we must follow to keep peace in the pack.  Clay had six months to convince you of his suit.  That time has passed.  That means unMated can once again approach you, with permission.” My mouth popped open.  Six months.  Permission from an Elder.  That’s why they’d stationed Joshua here.  A backup plan because they knew I didn’t want to Claim Clay.  They failed to understand I didn’t want to Claim anyone.  I’d never been free.  I clenched my fists.  My temper boiled. “That’s complete crap,” I gritted out.  “First of all, I didn’t reject anyone.  Second, no one ever told me about this stupid rule.”  My voice rose to a yell, and I took a deep breath and closed my eyes briefly to restrain myself.  When I reopened them, I felt more in control and able to speak calmly.  “You know what?  I don’t care what the pack rules are.  I gave you my word and my time.  Now, I expect you to keep yours.  I worked hard to get here, Sam.  I won’t let anyone take this away from me.”  My hands shook.  That Sam had cared for me in the past and given me a place to call home for two years, kept my tongue marginally civil. “By not completing the Claim, you’ve become eligible again.  Charlene was granted a special consideration because, at that time, we weren’t even sure a Claiming would be possible between a human and a werewolf.  Now that we know it is, you fall under the same rules,” Sam explained calmly, his face again carefully devoid of emotion. “No, I don’t.”  I knew I could stand there and argue all day with Sam, and he wouldn’t budge.  It would always be whatever’s best for the pack with him.  “Is this why Clay was beat up?” Clay made a noise—like a snort of disagreement—behind me. “Feel free to jump in at any time,” I said, turning to arch an eyebrow at him.  He remained mute, but his eyes softened when he looked at me. Sam spoke up from behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at him. “Gabby, it’s the reason he’s been fighting.  He’s not relinquishing his tie to you.  Every time an unMated shows up here, he will challenge that man for his right for an Introduction.  Did Clay get beat up?  Only as a byproduct of handing out beatings.” Clay steadily met my gaze the entire time.  It broke my heart a little to know he was fighting so hard to keep me, and all I’d given him in those six months was a kiss.  Not even spontaneously given, but relinquished as part of a bribe.  I hadn’t rejected him.  I just didn’t want to be forced into a choice.  If I chose to be with Clay, I wanted it to be on our terms. “Why

I’ve known many managers who hate to be surprised in meetings, for example, by which I mean they make it clear that they want to be briefed about any unexpected news in advance and in private. In many workplaces, it is a sign of disrespect if someone surprises a manager with new information in front of other people. But what does this mean in practice? It means that there are pre-meetings before meetings, and the meetings begin to take on a pro forma tone. It means wasted time.

During a security briefing at the White House, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld breaks some tragic news: “Mr President, three Brazilian soldiers were killed yesterday while supporting U.S. troops.” “My God!” shrieks President George W. Bush, and he buries his head in his hands. He remains stunned and silent for a full minute. Eventually, he looks up, takes a deep breath, and asks Rumsfeld: “How many is a brazillion?

Our situation is much like that of a little girl who was taken by her mother to visit a chiropractor friend of mine. Her mother said, “I think something is wrong with my daughter. She is a very quiet little girl and always well behaved, but never once have I heard her laugh. In fact, she rarely even smiles.” My friend examined her and discovered a spinal misalignment that, she judged, would give the girl a terrific headache all the time. Fortunately, it was one of those misalignments that a chiropractor can correct easily and permanently. She made the adjustment—and the girl broke into a big laugh, the first her mother had ever heard. The omnipresent pain in her head, which she had come to accept as normal, was miraculously gone. Many of you might doubt that we live in a “sea of pain.” I feel pretty good right now myself. But I also carry a memory of a far more profound state of well-being, connectedness, and intensity of awareness that felt, at the time, like my birthright. Which state is normal? Could it be that we are bravely making the best of things? How much of our dysfunctional, consumptive behavior is simply a futile attempt to run away from a pain that is in fact everywhere? Running from one purchase to another, one addictive fix to the next, a new car, a new cause, a new spiritual idea, a new self-help book, a bigger number in the bank account, the next news story, we gain each time a brief respite from feeling pain. The wound at its source never vanishes though. In the absence of distraction—those moments of what we call “boredom”—we can feel its discomfort. Of course, any behavior that alleviates pain without healing its source can become addictive. We should therefore hesitate to cast judgment on anyone exhibiting addictive behavior (a category that probably includes nearly all of us). What we see as greed or weakness might merely be fumbling attempts to meet a need, when the true object of that need is unavailable. In that case the usual prescriptions for more discipline, self-control, or responsibility are counterproductive.

During World War Two, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour – the magical sound of freedom. Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast ding-dongs. This information offered invaluable help to the Luftwaffe. When the British Secret Service discovered this, they replaced the live broadcast with a set recording of the famous clock.

Martin will recall this night as the first time--and one of the only times--he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief, and guilt...The walk home was magical. No one was glum. For this Christmas night they were lifted from the damning particularities of their own lives and invited to be a small piece of eternity. Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted--and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion.

When an intangible feeling of risk fills the air, you can catch other people’s emotions as easily as you can catch a cold. Merely reading a brief newspaper story about crime or depression is enough to prompt people into more than doubling their estimates of the likelihood of unrelated risks like divorce, stroke, or exposure to toxic chemicals. Just as when you have a hangover the slightest sound can seem deafening, an upsetting bit of news can make you hypersensitive to anything else that reminds you of risk. As is so often the case with the reflexive brain, you may not realize that your decisions are driven by your feelings. Roughly 50% of people can recognize when they have been disturbed by a bit of negative news, but only 3% admit that being upset may influence how they react to other risks.

T20 World Cup Betting: A Quick Guide The T20 World Cup is one of the most exciting events in the cricketing calendar, bringing together top teams from around the world for a fast-paced, action-packed tournament. For many fans, placing a bet can add even more excitement to the games. Here’s a brief guide to get you started with T20 World Cup betting. What is T20 World Cup Betting? T20 World Cup betting involves wagering on various outcomes related to the tournament. This can range from predicting the overall winner of the World Cup to specific match outcomes or player performances. Types of Bets Match Bets: Wager on the outcome of individual matches. Outright Bets: Bet on which team will win the entire tournament. Prop Bets: Bet on specific events, like the top run-scorer in a match. How to Bet Choose a Platform: Select a reputable betting site like Bet365 or Betway. Create an Account: Sign up and verify your details. Deposit Funds: Add money to your account using a secure payment method. Place Bets: Choose your bets based on your research and predictions. Tips for Successful Betting Research: Study team form, player statistics, and match conditions. Set a Budget: Only bet what you can afford to lose. Stay Informed: Keep up with the latest news and updates. Responsible Betting Betting should always be fun and done responsibly. Set limits for yourself and seek help if betting becomes a problem. Betting on the T20 World Cup can enhance your enjoyment of the game, but always remember to bet wisely and responsibly.

American democracy is backsliding in the twenty-first century. The root cause is the combination of three factors. First, political tribalism that enflames age-old cognitive biases. Second, brand-new social-media platforms that transform how people publish, consume, and process information. And third, long-entrenched structural deficiencies, like the two-party duopoly, that distort the US political system. The combination of these three components is a flywheel spinning faster and faster every day. Social media exacerbates tribalism by feeding users confirmatory and incendiary political news. The two-party political system compounds the resulting irrationality by pitting two juggernauts against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry that stifles and deforms the marketplace of ideas. The polarized political debate, in turn, turbocharges over-stimulated tribal biases with partisan falsehoods (e.g., Trump colluded with Russia to hack the DNC’s email servers), gross caricatures (e.g., Hillary Clinton is a crooked felon), and abhorrent stupidities (e.g., Barack Obama was born in Kenya). And so the flywheel spins. This throbbing frenzy erodes respect for the Constitutional principles and essential traditions of American democracy examined in Part One—a respect that is necessary for them to function. Indeed, these principles and traditions aren’t laws of physics; they are rules for structuring society that require good faith, compromise, and broad consent to work. And they will eventually disintegrate if the American people continue to ignore them while fixating instead on short-term political battles.

and she sees how she has fallen afoul of herself and grows aghast, seeing that out of terror comes pity and out of pity comes love and out of love the world can be redeemed again, and she can see that the world does not end, that it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire, the sun gone down into the earth at noon and the world cast in darkness, the fury of some god incarnate in the mouth of the prophet raging at the wickedness that will be cast out of sight, and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,

The more profits he has, the more assistants he can employ. It follows that an increase in the profits of private entrepreneurs is the basis for the increase in collective wealth and prosperity. This may not strike you as very original, because we all live in a capitalist world that takes Smith’s argument for granted. We hear variations on this theme every day in the news. Yet Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism.

Steve Bannon, for example, is an alt-right hero to the pro-Trump white working class. Bannon rose from Breitbart News editor to running Trump’s victorious 2016 presidential campaign. From there he became Trump’s White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor. His politics derive from his father’s experience losing his life savings during the 2008 financial crisis. According to Bannon, the elites (inside and outside American government) who built the global capitalist system emerged from the wreckage unscathed—often even richer—while working-class heroes like his father were decimated. Bannon doesn’t hide his intent: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” These sentiments, more than anything else, explain the Trump phenomenon. For what better vessel is there in the entire world for accomplishing this goal—for bringing everything crashing down—than Donald J. Trump? That’s why Trump’s behavior in office was okay. That’s why his lies about the election are just fine. That’s why the January 6 riot didn’t matter. Not because Trump’s base thinks those things are good for America … but because they know those things are bad for America. Trump has come. And he will go. But what does it say about the underlying state of the American polity that a politician whose central platform is lying about elections is the unrivaled champion of one of the two major political parties? Something broad and deep is afoot. Something pernicious. Something likely to last.

Don’t laugh though.” “What do you mean?” said Emma. Biff didn’t say anything. He reached into his inventory and pulled out his bed and tossed it on the floor. I’m sorry, but I had to laugh. Emma laughed too. The bed had a blanket with a chicken face on it. His pillow case had the picture of a bunny rabbit on it. “Stop laughing! My mom got me the blanket and the pillowcase when I was little. Hurrr, I just never got around to replacing them.” I was still laughing and said, “No worries, Bro. Looks comfortable.” Emma, who had stopped laughing, yawned. It was contagious. Biff and I both yawned. “Okay, guys, I’m going to sleep. Good night,” said Emma. Biff and I both wished her good night and we each got into our beds and went to sleep. * * * I suppose it will come as no surprise to you that I was visited in my dreams that evening. One of the visitors I had almost expected. But the other…. The visitor I was more or less expecting to show up was, of course, the Rainbow Creeper. It appeared without any attempt to conceal itself in a mysterious form or behind a cloud of dream smoke. You know, the typical weird dream-type stuff. It spoke with the strange lilting voice that had been created when Claire had been joined to it. “Jimmy. I understand that you have rescued Emma from the witch.” “Yes, RC, I did. If Claire still has any independent memory, I hope she’s relieved.” There was a pause for a moment and then the Creeper said, “Yes, she is.” There was another brief pause and then the Rainbow Creeper changed the subject. “Have you had any luck locating Entity 303’s piece in Baby Zeke’s dimension?” I shook my head. “No, but this dimension’s Ender King, Herobrine, and Notch are working on ways to find it. We are going to establish a search party tomorrow using volunteers. It may take a while, but we will leave no stone unturned.” “Excellent,” said the Rainbow Creeper. “I’m sure Entity 303 will not be able to escape your reconnaissance.” “How are things going in my native dimension?” “They are still searching as well. No news.” The Rainbow Creeper was beginning to fade from my dream when I remembered. “Creeper? Wait a minute. Something else happened.” The Creeper’s form solidified again and it looked at me, its expressionless

For a brief spell, he would try to avoid all war news and think only of science and history and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. It would not be easy.

News stories are very brief summaries of someone else’s summary.

Thrown into this mix was the Epoch Times, which also published in Chinese and English. It was founded and largely funded by the Falun Gong, a religious branch group that was devoted to the overthrow of the Communist Party of China and the elevation of the group’s leader, a kind of cross between Jesus, the Dalai Lama and Charles Manson. In New York, Falun Gong was best known for organizing and leading yoga classes in Central Park, and handing out free copies of the Epoch Times near the Port Authority bus terminal. In China, its members were hunted down by PLA squads, swept off the streets and sent, without trial, to re-education camps that had once been the exclusive preserve of Catholic priests. Because of its extreme right-wing (in American terms) slant, the Epoch Times had drawn the attention and interest of American conservatives, including the Trump Administration, which treated it with a courtesy well out of keeping with its influence. Liu read and believed the Epoch Times. Its news fit her beliefs, and that after all, was what a free news media was all about. She had seen a brief item about Qi Qi Dieh on its website months ago, and largely forgotten about it. Now, with the real item sitting in front of her, drinking her tea, Liu began hallucinating about fame and fortune. And, of course, getting the truth out there, too. It took three calls to the newspaper’s

Global Hindi News in Brief to Satisfy Your Knowledge

At home that night, Audrey watches the eleven o’clock news in her pyjamas, sipping a chamomile tea. There’s nothing new about the Merton case. She sits in bed, seething at the television set, thinking unhappily about her lost inheritance, which she had so hoped to be able to enjoy. She’d imagined a house of her own in Brecken Hill, fine clothes, and trips to Europe and the Bahamas. There’s brief footage of them searching Dan’s house earlier that day, but she has no idea if they found anything incriminating. They’re not saying. She remembers how frightened she was when Dan came toward her car window, the rage in his fist as it hit her car

The statesman hates the writer because the writer sows the seeds of dissent. What the statesman dreams of is to be able to prevent people from thinking; and thus he always accuses the artists and writers of upsetting his orderly state.5

and she can see that the world does not end, that it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire, the sun gone down into the earth at noon and the world cast in darkness, the fury of some god incarnate in the mouth of the prophet raging at the wickedness that will be cast out of sight, and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,

Mayhem. That’s what you’d be thinking hard about. And no one would blame you. Statistics, however, show that great cravings of almost any nature, including a wish to assassinate, can be overcome just by brief interludes of postponement—the very thing no one ever believes will work, but does. That IS news.

Yossi Sarid, a leader of the left, wrote that I would soon discover that Israel is not America and that I would be a brief and passing phenomenon. Sarid made common cause with my opponents from Likud, explaining that I was “shallow,” a “sound-bite man,” “all show—no substance,” “soon to evaporate.”1 They relied on the overwhelming concentration of left-leaning journalists in Israel’s press, still largely unchanged today after thirty years, to drive this message home to the public. In Israel’s first decades, the country’s press was fairly balanced. Although the ruling Labor Party controlled the monopolistic state radio (it is said that Prime Minister Ben Gurion actually dictated news headlines), the three major dailies represented a broad spectrum of news and opinion from right to left. This began to change with the introduction of the single-channel state television in 1966. Television gradually overtook the newspapers as the main source of information and entertainment for the public. State TV was largely a closed shop dominated by the left. It was a main breeding ground for media personnel who would percolate into the two state-regulated commercial channels that were later launched. Legislation made it exceptionally difficult to introduce any additional broadcasters and effectively impossible to launch competing news channels. While it is common that the mainstream media is dominated by the left in most Western democracies, these countries also have alternative media, such as cable news and talk radio, that reach large segments of the population. Israel has none of that. Most Israelis get their news from just two left-leaning nightly news channels. This monopolistic stranglehold on information and opinion has only recently begun to loosen with the spread of social media that enables other voices to be heard. Though there have always been a sprinkling of right-leaning journalists, most of the newscasters, editors and program producers hail from the left. Especially since the historic election of 1977, when Likud elevated Begin to prime minister, the dominant media oligarchy has sought to maintain their power through legislative barriers to entry into television and radio. They see it as their mission to pull public opinion to the left.

Kohtake wrote all kinds of things in her letters. She wrote about herself, of course. She wrote about what went on at the nursing college, of good books she had read, and dreams of the future. She wrote of events which ranged from the mundane to the major news of the day, explaining in detail her feelings and reactions. Sometimes the letters were as long as ten pages. Fusagi’s replies, on the other hand, were always short. There were even times when he would send one-line replies like, “Thanks for the interesting letter,” or, “I know just what you mean.” At first, Kohtake thought he must be busy with work and didn’t have the time to reply, but in letter after letter Fusagi continued to give these brief replies. She took this to mean that he wasn’t very interested in her. Kohtake wrote in her letter that if he wasn’t interested then he shouldn’t bother replying, that with this letter she would stop writing if she didn’t get a reply.

In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).

These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).

During the past decade, observant readers have seen many news items about stunning breakthroughs in battery designs, but I cannot find any ever-accelerating growth in the performance of these portable energy storage devices in the past fifty years. In 1900 the best battery (lead-acid) had an energy density of 25 watt-hours per kilogram; in 2022 the best lithium-ion batteries deployed on a large commercial scale (not the best experimental devices) had an energy density twelve times higher—and this gain corresponds to exponential growth of just 2 percent a year. That is very much in line with the growth of performances of many other industrial techniques and devices—and an order of magnitude below Moore’s law expectations. Moreover, even batteries with ten times the 2022 (commercial) energy density (that is, approaching 3,000 Wh/kg) would store only about a quarter of the energy contained in a kilogram of kerosene, making it clear that jetliners energized by batteries are not on any practical horizon.

As might be expected with modern media reporting, every news report of some notable research advance has been commonly seen as moving us “closer” to the holy grail of nitrogen fixation in cereals—but “closer” remains elusive. “Substantial progress” reported in one year has no consequences five years later.

This brief account of controlled fusion efforts would not be complete without going back to 1989. Early in that year came (in a press conference and in a brief paper in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry) a radical departure from the decades of news concerning advances in the quest for controlled thermonuclear power. Two physicists at the University of Utah, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, claimed they had succeeded in fusing deuterium nuclei at room temperature in a test tube. Electrolysis of a lithium salt solution led so many deuterium atoms to absorb into a palladium electrode that some of their nuclei appeared to fuse, producing net energy (above that supplied for electrolysis), as well as neutron and gamma ray emissions, clear signs of a process previously attainable only under starlike conditions, and proof of what the press soon called cold fusion.

Since the election, he’s figured out how to avoid such questions completely; White House press briefings and formal news conferences have been replaced with “chopper talk” during which he can pretend he can’t hear any unwelcome questions over the noise of the helicopter blades. In 2020, his pandemic “press briefings” quickly devolved into mini–campaign rallies filled with self-congratulation, demagoguery, and ring kissing. In them he has denied the unconscionable failures that have already killed thousands, lied about the progress that’s being made, and scapegoated the very people who are risking their lives to save us despite being denied adequate protection and equipment by his administration. Even as hundreds of thousands of Americans are sick and dying, he spins it as a victory, as proof of his stunning leadership.

Ghazal !يا لطيف (Ya Lateef!) - 1942- A lot more malaise and a little more grief every day, aware that all seasons, the stormy, the sunlit, are brief every day. I don’t know the name of the hundredth drowned child, just the names of the oligarchs trampling the green, eating beef every day, while luminous creatures flick, stymied, above and around the plastic detritus that’s piling up over the reef every day. A tiny white cup of black coffee in afternoon shade, while an oud or a sax plays brings breath and relief every day. Another beginning, no useful conclusion in sight‚— another first draft that I tear out and add to the sheaf every day. One name, three-in-one, ninety-nine, or a matrix of tales that are one story only, well-springs of belief every day. But I wake before dawn to read news that arrived overnight on a minuscule screen , and exclaim يا لطيف every day.

The WHCA amicus brief addressed the far-reaching implications of the president’s argument—implications not just for reporters or news organizations but for American democracy.

network effectively produced the president’s intelligence briefing and staffed the federal bureaucracy. Never before has a president promoted a single TV channel, asked the hosts for advice behind closed doors, and demanded for them to be fired when they step out of line. This story has all the makings of a farcical drama: a dysfunctional White House, a delusional president, and a drama-filled network misinforming

It’s worth stating the obvious here: Trump’s entanglement with Fox has no historical precedent. Never before has a TV network effectively produced the president’s intelligence briefing and staffed the federal bureaucracy. Never before has a president promoted a single TV channel, asked the hosts for advice behind closed doors, and demanded for them to be fired when they step out of line. This story has all the makings of a farcical drama: a dysfunctional White House, a delusional president, and a drama-filled network misinforming him from morning through night.

Briar Patch women would face, lives were at risk, and the pursuit of justice would have to come first. She finished her drink and glanced at the clock. ‘God! Is that the time? I must get home. Thanks for the drink, and thanks for helping me, Spooks. I appreciate it. Now I have to go. Don’t forget to put your candle back in the window.’ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE With a showman’s flourish, Rory burst into the office and deposited a pile of folders and reports on Nikki’s desk. ‘Results, Nikki! Incontrovertible. Listen to this. Millicent Cartwright’s dental records match those of Ellen McDonald from Dunedin, South Island. Same woman. And your nice new detective, Ben, is it, has a fairly recent photograph of her, sent by the New Zealand police. Same face as the cadaver in my mortuary.’ Rory took the coffee Joseph handed him. ‘Now, how she died.’ He paused. ‘In exactly the same manner as Louise Lawson. There’s a head injury, not enough to kill her, but enough to knock her out, and she had almost identical lacerations on her arms, wrists, neck and thighs. There is no doubt that she died from a massive loss of blood.’ ‘And as Millicent Cartwright is connected to the Hammond case and Louise to the Prospero case, we have our connection!’ Nikki felt a surge of elation. It was a single killer. ‘Ah, now hold on, dear Detective Inspector, the good professor has yet to finish.’ Nikki looked at Rory. ‘Go on, and don’t make it bad news, please.’ ‘Far from it. Listen to this. I was having a brief discussion with one of my colleagues who conducted the PM on your suicide case, George Ackroyd. We were just admiring the excellent job he did on crushing the hyoid bone in his throat, when I noticed something.’ He took a slow sip of coffee. ‘It’s fortuitous that I have such a good eye for colour because there it was, Midnight Orchid! On his left cheek! Just the tiniest dab, but I got a match!’ Nikki stared at him. ‘So Louise’s last visitor also kissed George?’ ‘Well, that brand of lipstick is not exactly rare. But it would seem so.’ ‘Then did he actually kill himself? Or was it made to look that way?’ ‘It was suicide, without a doubt. Everything about the crime scene indicates that he was alone when he died, and my findings discount any outside interference. It’s what, or who, drove him to it that you need to prove.’ ‘Avril Hammond.

But let’s be clear: the madness of everyday life was its own issue. It didn’t have any relationship to whether or not Christianity was bullshit. Obviously, Christianity was total bullshit. It was the most insane bullshit! But it was impossible to make an argument against superstition and magical nonsense, and have it stick, when that argument was delivered from a society where every citizen was a magician. And yes, reader, that includes you. You too are a magician. Your life is dominated by one of the oldest and most perverse forms of magic, one with less interior cohesion than the Christian faith, and you invest its empty symbolism with a level of belief that far outpaces that of any Christian. Here are some strips of paper and bits of metal! Watch as I transform these strips of paper and bits of metal into: (a) sex (b) food (c) clothing (d) shelter (e) transportation that allows me to acquire strips of paper and bits of money (f) intoxicants that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (g) leisure items that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (h) pointless vacations to exotic locales where I will replicate the brutish behavior that I display in my point of origin as a brief respite from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (i) unfair social advantages that allow my rotten children to undertake their own moronic pursuits of strips of paper and bits of metal. Humiliate yourself for strips of paper. Murder for the strips of paper. Humiliate others for the strips of paper. Worship the people who’ve accumulated such vast quantities of strips of paper that their strips of paper no longer have any physical existence and are now represented by binary notation. Treat the vast accumulators like gods. Free blowies for the moldering corpse of Steve Jobs! Fawning profile pieces for Jay-Z! The Presidency for billionaire socialite and real-estate developer Donald J. Trump! Kill! Kill! Kill! Work! Work! Work! Die! Die! Die! Go on. Pretend this is not the most magical thing that has ever happened. Historical arguments against Christianity tended to be delivered in tones of pearl-clutching horror, usually by subpar British intellectuals pimping their accent in America, a country where sounding like an Oxbridge twat conferred an unearned credibility. Yes, the Crusades were horrible. Yes, the Inquisition was awful. Yes, they shouldn’t have burned witches in Salem. Yes, there is an unfathomable amount of sexually abused walking wounded. Yes, every Christian country has oriented itself around the rich and done nothing but abuse the fuck out of its poor. But it’s not like the secular conversion of the industrialized world has alleviated any of the horror. Read the news. Murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape...Despair. All secularism has done, really, is remove a yoke from the rich. They’d always been horrible, but at least when they still paid lip service to Christian virtues, they could be shamed into philanthropy. Now they use market forces to slide the whole thing into feudalism. New York University built a campus [in Abu Dhabi] with slave labor! In the Twenty-First Century AD! And has suffered no rebuke! Applications are at an all-time high! The historical arguments against Christianity are as facile as reviews on Goodreads.com, and come down to this: Why do you organize around bad people who tell you that a Skyman wants you to be good? To which the rejoinder is: yes, the clergy sucks, but who cares how normal people are delivered into goodness?

Instead of focusing primarily on one short passage or chapter from the Bible, I shall cite a handful of passages at length and offer some brief comments along the way so that you can hear Paul’s argument with slightly different emphases, emphases that insist that the Good News about Christ and his cross, what the Bible calls “the gospel,” calls out people, gathers them together, and transforms them. Any so-called Christianity that does not incorporate this reality into its vision is not worthy of the name it carries.

You might have a sense of déjà vu about those first two types of dark data. In a famous news briefing, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nicely characterized them in a punchy sound bite, saying “there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”6 Rumsfeld attracted considerable media ridicule for that convoluted statement, but the criticism was unfair. What he said made very good sense and was certainly true.