text stringlengths 13 81.7k |
|---|
A stunning book by a master of the avant-garde. |
HILDA HILST was born in 1930 in Jaú, Brazil. She was a prolific author whose works span many different genres, including poetry, drama, fiction, and newspaper columns. Born the heiress to a coffee fortune, she abandoned São Paulo and a law career in the 1950s to devote herself to literature, moved to the countryside, a... |
ADAM MORRIS is a PhD candidate in Latin American literature at Stanford University. An excerpt from his translation of With My Dog-Eyes won the 2012 Susan Sontag Foundation Prize for Literary Translation. |
To what extent has MainOne overcome challenges affecting connectivity in West African countries? |
MainOne is West Africa’s internet backbone and continues to drive the internet revolution across the region. We currently have coverage in 10 West African countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroun, Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal among others. We have invested over $300 million in broadband infrastructure in West Africa via ... |
MainOne has led unparalleled reduction in the price of broadband and connectivity services in general; provided unlimited access to international connectivity capacity with a cable system that has the capability to deliver 10tbps connectivity capacity and significantly improved the quality of service and consumer exper... |
This has led to significant improvement in broadband penetration rates, with countries where we have achieved landing today, ranking very high on the list of the continents’ most connected countries and of course having the highest broadband density rates in West Africa. |
Can you comparatively tell us about the reception of MainOne across countries; government and regulation and enterprise with Nigeria in view? |
From a policy and regulatory standpoint, we encounter less red-tape outside Nigeria and things worked better in Ghana and the Francophone region. It is easier to make rational arguments for permits to allow the development of infrastructure and get ready support in Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire, for example, than in Nigeria.... |
Why did MainOne choose Orange as a partner in its drive to boost internet connectivity in Francophone West Africa? |
I believe our partnership with Orange adds value to both parties, given the opportunities for improved connectivity across the continent, especially the Francophone region. Orange is a major multinational telecommunications company operating in Francophone West Africa, as Orange Telecoms and Sonatel in Cote D’Ivoire an... |
While Orange has stakes in the three submarine cables serving Cote D’Ivoire: SAT3, WACS and ACE, the telecoms sector in the Francophone countries is undergoing a transition from a purely voice market to a data-driven one, enabling the digital economy. This growth is increasing the region’s bandwidth requirements as mor... |
The Francophone market needed an open-access submarine cable to help redefine not only connectivity services, but also to open up areas such as cloud computing, software and the development of lasting IT clusters. As West Africa’s premier connectivity and value added services provider, MainOne built and operates Africa... |
We have sought to become the infrastructure backbone of the West African market and planned subsequent landings in Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Morocco and the Canary Islands, among others. Thus we had the opportunity to extend our subsea cable to these new Cable Landing Stations across the region and Orange needed addition... |
With this collaboration, MainOne and Orange can improve connectivity quality and reduce costs, enable access to new technology services and deepen internet density in Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal. We believe this development will significantly drive innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation, improve global competitive... |
When will the cable landing stations in Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire come online? |
They will be ready for service during the second half of 2019. |
Why Francophone? What does MainOne hope to achieve in these West African francophone countries over the next five years? |
MainOne is focused on the entire West African market and we have raised the infrastructure level over the last eight years in Anglophone West Africa, including Nigeria and Ghana with our submarine cable, investments in terrestrial networks and partnerships and new data centres to sustain the rise of data consumption wh... |
Focus on Francophone, now with Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal offers us the opportunity to have a direct presence in all the major economic hubs in the West. These two countries – Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire – are focus markets for MainOne, not only as the largest UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) markets, but ... |
Given this socio-economic relevance, these markets are important to our customers and highly attractive to MainOne, given our interest in growing the digital economy and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship for the overall growth of West Africa. Over the next few years, we plan to drive more international bandwid... |
What is next after Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal? |
We would like to see more regional traffic within the continent and will definitely continue to invest in extending our services to other countries, building data centres and raising the region’s digital profile by deepening technology penetration and availability of connectivity services. We will continue to focus on ... |
Assembly members on both sides of the aisle rallied in the Capitol on Wednesday morning to highlight their support for increased human services funding in the final budget deal due at the end of the month. |
The members touted the chamber’s one-house budget, which reinstated a 2.9 percent cost of living adjustment for workers in the human services sector that was left out of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget and added a 2 percent raise for direct care workers employed in the mental health and developmental disabilities f... |
“They earned every cent of this raise, and probably a hell of a lot more,” said Assemblyman Aileen Gunther, chair of the Assembly’s Mental Hygiene Committee. |
She said the governor’s proposal to leave out the COLA would exacerbate the staffing shortage in New York. “People have passion for the work, but they have to be able to survive in the world that we live in,” Gunther said. |
The Assembly’s proposals would cost an additional $198.5 million, according to a press release. |
The governor’s budget memo says deferring the COLA is necessary because of the $142 million in savings that would be realized. An increase was also put off in last year’s budget. |
Gunther said there are “other things that aren’t as important” in the state’s $174 billion spending plan, and identified economic development incentives as an area where they could “shave” off some spending to afford raises for workers. “I could get a list if I went through the budget,” she added. |
There is some speculation that Cuomo’s delay of the COLA was a negotiating ploy that would make state lawmakers “buy back” the program at the expense of other priorities. “It’s kind of like a silly game,” Gunther said. |
The proposal from Senate Democrats would also start implementation of the COLA in 2020. “The Senate is also committed to continuing the agreed-upon 3.25% raises for direct care workers,” reads the chamber’s budget resolution. |
In the days after the Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on Oct. 8, 2010, his country cut off trade talks with Norway, home of the Nobel committee, and placed his wife under house arrest. In apparent protest of the award, a group of Chinese business and cultural leaders establish... |
Mr. Liu, who died July 13 at age 61, received the Nobel for what the award committee called his “long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights.” It was that very struggle, from his hunger strike at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to his insistent calls to end one-party rule, that also made him a marked man in Ch... |
He was in the midst of an 11-year prison sentence when he won the prize. It promoted a man whom much of the world regarded as a distinguished activist and whose own leaders considered a dangerous subversive. |
At the Nobel ceremony in Oslo, Mr. Liu was represented by an empty chair. Not since the 1935 prize, when German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was being held at a concentration camp by the Nazis, had a laureate or a family member been unable to accept the honor in person. Ossietzky died at a Nazi hospital in 1938. |
Mr. Liu spent much of the past three decades in forced confinement — at home, at labor camps or in prison. And his final months, after being diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May and granted medical parole, drew international calls for his release. |
His death, at a hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang, was confirmed by a statement from the Chinese government, and it made Mr. Liu the latest in a string of Chinese dissidents whose incarceration ended in serious illness or fatality. A photograph posted July 5 on Twitter by the dissident writer Ye Du showed a... |
A pair of American and German doctors who were granted permission to treat Mr. Liu said Sunday that he was strong enough to seek medical treatment abroad. Chinese officials resisted that claim and rebuffed requests from Germany and the State Department to allow him to leave the country. |
The hospital treating Mr. Liu said that he was suffering from respiratory and renal failure, as well as septic shock, and that his family had decided against inserting a breathing tube necessary to keep him alive. |
Through it all, Mr. Liu’s plight remained largely invisible at home, where his writings were censored and he was labeled a mere criminal. |
A bespectacled chain-smoker with a stutter, Mr. Liu established himself as a literary and political bomb thrower in the mid-1980s, when Chinese society experienced a “cultural fever” under reform-minded Communist Party officials. |
Mr. Liu was a visiting scholar at Columbia University when, in April 1989, thousands of students began demonstrating in Tiananmen Square to demand democratic reforms. The assembly marked a turning point for Mr. Liu, who arrived at Tiananmen in May and began protesting alongside the movement’s young leaders. |
When the chants began to die down and soldiers started trying to clear the square, Mr. Liu and three friends — including Hou Dejian, a popular rock singer from Taiwan — erected a tent beside the 10-story Monument to the People’s Heroes and began a 72-hour hunger strike. |
Two nights later, military units launched a full-scale assault on the square, firing their rifles and driving armored vehicles into crowds that lined the surrounding streets. Mr. Liu and his fellow hunger-strikers, fearing a bloodbath in the square, acted as negotiators between military forces and the remaining demonst... |
Mr. Liu’s actions — at one point he grabbed a rifle from a demonstrator and smashed it on the ground, preventing what he saw as an excuse for the military to “gun everybody down” — were widely credited with saving thousands of lives. Still, at least several hundred civilians were killed in the attacks, details of which... |
He was imprisoned for 21 months, branded a “black hand” and an “evil mastermind,” and forbidden from publishing in China — a dictate that he subverted through pseudonyms and by penning articles for overseas publications. |
Mr. Liu published more than 1,000 essays, by his count, and called for reform, not revolution. Yet he remained under state surveillance and in 1996 was sentenced to three years of forced labor for drafting a declaration that called for reconciliation with Taiwan, freedom for Tibet and the impeachment of President Jiang... |
Instead of leaving the country, Mr. Liu chose to remain in China, a decision that “was the path of destruction for his life” but that enabled him to remain an effective critic of the state, Schell said. His work culminated in Charter 08, a sweeping, pro-democracy manifesto that landed him in prison for the last time. |
Published online in 2008, the document was modeled in part on Charter 77, an anti-Communist tract that Czech dissidents such as Vaclav Havel, a friend of Mr. Liu’s, had drafted decades earlier. Mr. Liu was among the leading drafters and first signers of Charter 08, which called for “the democratization of Chinese polit... |
Mr. Liu was captured by police shortly before the document’s release and confined to a windowless room north of Beijing. His final public statement was in court, days before he was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power” on Christmas Day 2009. |
“I firmly believe that China’s political progress will never stop, and I’m full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom,” he said in the statement. Titled “I Have No Enemies,” it was later read at his Nobel ceremony. |
Mr. Liu was born in the northeastern city of Changchun on Dec. 28, 1955, and came of age during the worst years of the Cultural Revolution. In Mao Zedong’s bid to reassert his authority and revive revolutionary zeal, intellectuals and alleged dissidents were “reeducated” through forced labor, and millions of urban chil... |
With his father, a professor of Chinese literature, Mr. Liu worked for a time in Inner Mongolia. He returned to Changchun and graduated from Jilin University in 1982, part of the first cohort to return to college after Mao’s death in 1976. He received a master’s degree in Chinese literature at Beijing Normal University... |
Mr. Liu was married at a labor camp in 1996, although the marriage was not officially recognized for another two years. In 2012, Liu Xia told the Associated Press that she was allowed to visit Mr. Liu in prison once a month but was otherwise permitted to leave her apartment only to buy groceries and see her parents. |
A previous marriage, to Tao Li, ended in divorce during Mr. Liu’s first prison sentence. In addition to his wife, survivors include a son from his first marriage, Liu Tao. |
The latter featured poems that Mr. Liu wrote each year in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square attacks. The writing, he said, was a means of bearing witness to a tragedy that had been excised from the country’s official histories. |
remains a crowd of Mothers who’ve lost their children. |
Health Reform Rocker: We’re Number 37! |
It should no longer be any surprise to anyone that our most exceptional nation spends more on health care per capita (by a huge margin) than other countries. And that the quality of US health care, in spite of—or rather, because of—all our sweet gadgetry, ranks embarassingly low. Didn’t see this the first time out, but... |
Steve Ballmer announced plans to step down as CEO at Microsoft in August 2013. |
He had joined the company in 1980 as the company's 30th employee, making $50,000. By the end of his 34-year stint, he was worth more than $21 billion, making him the 32nd-richest person in the world. |
By December 2013, Ballmer was starting to unplug from his gig as CEO. He didn't want to set any new plans in motion before a new CEO replaced him. |
As a result, for the first time, Ballmer found himself with a lot of spare time, and he wasn't sure how to fill it. So he turned to CBS's hit show "The Good Wife" and binge-watched episodes, according to Bloomberg Businessweek's Ashlee Vance. |
Ballmer's family estimates the retired billionaire watched 100 episodes, mostly from bed on his Microsoft Surface, in a two-week span. |
"My kids teased me about it mercilessly," Ballmer tells Vance. "They said, 'Dad, how's the wife?'" |
Ballmer says he's out of his funk now. He is the proud new owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, a team he purchased for $2 billion. And of his TV binge he says, he wasn't depressed. |
"It was more like, 'Wow, this is weird. I have nothing to worry about right this minute.' " |
Cruise Consultants - OTE of 40/70k - homeworking - Are you looking for an exciting career opportunity? A new position has arisen for a Cruise Consultant with a proven background and record of success to join an award winning travel company. You'll be part of a fast paced and dynamic sales environment where your sales a... |
-Self motivated, highly ambitious, goal orientated and able to work as part of a team. |
- In return for your commitment you will be rewarded with a competitive base salary of £16.3k with uncapped commission. |
-Realistic earnings can be as much as £42k with top performers achieving £70k. |
Hours are 40 hours per week over 5 days within any 7 day period. |
-This role would suit an experienced Travel Consultant, Retail Travel Consultant, Travel Advisor or Cruise Consultant. Ideally with both sales and in depth cruise knowledge. |
Jurors found De'Marquise Elkins guilty in the murder of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago. |
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — An 18-year-old man was convicted of murder in the shooting of a baby who was riding in a stroller alongside his mom in a town in coastal Georgia. |
Jurors deliberated about two hours before finding De'Marquise Elkins guilty in the March 21 killing of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in Brunswick. The man's mother, Karimah Elkins, was on trial alongside him and was found guilty of tampering with evidence but acquitted of lying to police. |
De'Marquise Elkins' attorney asked for bond for his client while they appealed, which a judge denied. |
Prosecutors said Elkins killed Antonio in an attempted robbery. The baby's mother, Sherry West, also was shot. |
Another teen, 15-year-old Dominique Lang, is also charged with murder in the case and is set to be tried later. |
Sherry West testified during the two-week trial that she was walking home from the post office with 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in a stroller on the morning of March 21. She said a gunman demanding her purse shot her baby in the face after she told him she had no money. |
Prosecutors said 18-year-old De'Marquise Elkins and an accomplice, 15-year-old Dominique Lang, are the ones who stopped West. Prosecutors say the older teen pointed a small .22-caliber revolver at West and demanded money. When West refused several times to turn over the money, Elkins fired a warning shot and then shot ... |
The killing in the port city of Brunswick drew national attention, and the trial was moved to the Atlanta suburb of Marietta because of the extensive publicity locally. |
Prosecutors have said information from Elkins' mother and sister led investigators to a pond where they found the revolver. Karimah Elkins was standing trial alongside her son on charges of evidence tampering and lying to police. Elkins' sister also was charged with evidence tampering. |
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on April 15, 2019, on page 5. |
Erik Brunetti's fashion brand starts with an "F'' and rhymes with "duct". |
The Supreme Court Monday will hear Brunetti's challenge to a part of federal law that says officials should refuse to register trademarks that are "scandalous" or "immoral". |
Brunetti would seem to have a strong argument. Two years ago, the justices unanimously invalidated a related provision of federal law that told officials not to register disparaging trademarks. |
In court, the justices had no trouble saying the band's name, but Brunetti's brand may be different. |
Two New York University professors gave that argument substantial support in a brief they filed in the case. They showed that the office routinely refuses to register trademarks both by saying something is scandalous and, ironically, too confusingly similar to something that is already registered. |
The handheld maker says it has sold more than 1 million of its entry-level Zire devices, a sign that the mass market may finally be adopting digital organizers. |
Palm's Zire device seems to be a hit, as the struggling handheld maker looks to regain its footing. |
The Milpitas, Calif.-based company said Monday that sales of its entry-level Zire product have exceeded the 1 million unit mark and that it's the fastest-growing handheld in the company's history. |
The Zire is a $99 low-end device, which comes with 2MB of memory--typical for entry-level Palm handhelds--a black-and-white screen and a rechargeable battery. It runs version 4.1 of the Palm operating system. The Zire was introduced late last year, shortly after Palm split its product line into two brands: the Zire for... |
Palm has indicated that sales for the entry-level Zire have been brisk and that the device has quickly moved up the charts for the device market. But what may be more noteworthy is the timing and what the device means for a company that is looking to reverse its fortunes. |
Palm has been struggling of late, but it's counting on the Zire line to tap the potentially huge consumer market while using the Tungsten line and its midrange Zire 71 to appease its traditionally loyal enthusiast audience. |
"This is impressive, but even more so is that they did it more in the first quarter, (rather) than during the holidays last year," said Kevin Burden, an analyst with research firm IDC. |
The underlying meaning could be that the device is truly an impulse buy, but Burden said the fast and high sales rate of the Zire shouldn't be that surprising. |
"The low end is squarely in the hands of Palm and (the entry-level Zire is) at a low price point in a market that is unsaturated," said Burden, who projected that sales of the Zire should reach 2 million before the end of the year. "No one else is competing with Palm in the low end." |
dishapedia allows you to browse and share dishes in your area. Find the best restaurant for what you're craving, or find what restaurant will work for everyone's preference in a large group of people. Set your diet and by just adding dishes to your meal, our system recognizes your preferences and produces better recomm... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.