Recag/C4_20 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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While this might seem outrageous and expensive, it shows the panic that the opposition is in regarding the likely outcome in favor of Hizbullah. These allegations were made all the more legitimate based on this reporters observations and conversations with arriving passengers from Brazil, which, interestingly, has a larger Lebanese population that Lebanon itself.
On the inbound flight arriving to Beirut, a large contingent of twenty or more Brazilians was on the same flight. However, during a casual conversation, they revealed few things about their trip other than two key facts: They were staying only until just Monday morning… and had brought with them almost no luggage. This made little sense at the time; until the testimony of many in Beirut certified their true reason for an 11,000-mile, two-day vacation.
Of further concern was how these paid for voters would be monitored in performing their deeds in the confines of a secret voting booth. With the Lebanese being known for corruption, all spoken with assumed there would be secret monitoring to be sure the opposition got what it paid for.
These facts put together and many Lebanese are concerned about some sort of Maidan Square event taking place tomorrow. So is the army.
Beirut has a strong military presence at all times, but in recent days, here in Beirut, that presence has more than doubled. This morning, this reporter witnessed a convoy of troop transport vehicles head into the city carrying over 150 uniformed soldiers. Every soldier is armed and everyone you encounter is cautious, unsmiling… and locked and loaded.
Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
It’s Oscar season! For those who prefer film to football, this is a time of year that rivals the Super Bowl in importance. The big day is Sunday Feb. 24. The Academy Awards will be broadcast on ABC beginning at 5 p.m., on the West Coast.
Of course, several Oscar-nominated films have already shown locally (“Black Panther,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “A Star is Born,” “Vice,” etc.), but Ridgecrest Cinemas is offering local theater-goers the chance to see some of the other major nominated films on the large screen.
According to theater manager Kelly Walden, the films were selected because they are all heavily nominated movies that are still in theaters and have not hit DVD yet.
“We think [they] are a good representation of all the nominated movies,” Walden said. Prices will be normal prices, and the movies will only be offered for one week – so see them while you can.
This film was nominated for three 2019 Academy Awards: Best Actress (Melissa McCarthy); Best Supporting Actor (Richard E. Grant) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty). The film is based on a memoir by a writer named Lee Israel and tells the true story of her attempts to save her career as a writer by forging letters from deceased playwrights and authors. The title of the film is taken from a letter she forged, pretending to be Dorothy Parker.
It was also nominated for a slew of other awards including Golden Globes USA and SAG for McCarthy and Grant.
This one also received a bunch of Oscar nods this year, including nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen); Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali); Best Original Screenplay (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie and Peter Farrelly) and Best Film Editing (Patrick J. Don Vito).
This too is a biographical film. It tells the story of a road trip tour of the south in 1962, with classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Ali) and Tony Vallelonga (Mortensen), his bouncer and bodyguard. Shirley is African-American and Vallelonga is Italian. One of the screenplay writers, Nick Vallelonga, is Tony Vallelonga’s son. He based the story on interviews with his father and Shirley and letters his father wrote to his mother.
This film, too, received a string of other award nominations and won the Golden Glob for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
“The Favourite” tied with “Roma” (available on Netflix) for the most Oscar nominations – with each receiving a whopping 10 nominations. “The Favourite” was nominated for Best Picture; Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos); Best Actress (Olivia Colman); Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone); Best Supporting Actress (Rachel Weisz); Best Original Screenplay (Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara); Best Production Design (Fiona Crombie for production design and Alice Felton for set decoration); Best Cinematography (Robbie Ryan); Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) and Best Film Editing (Yorgos Mavropsaridis).
This is a period story set in the early 18th century. As the title would indicate, it is about the relationship between two cousins competing to be the favorite of Queen Anne.
Veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra breathed his last at Lilavati Hospital on Sunday, a hospital spokesperson said. He was 80.
Chopra, who was suffering from dengue, died of multiple organ failure.
He is survived by wife Pamela and two sons Aditya and Uday. While Aditya is also a filmmaker, Uday is an actor.
“He died of multi-organ failure. He was in the ICU,” said a hospital official.
Chopra was admitted to the hospital Oct 13.
Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt called Chopra’s death a huge loss to Bollywood.
“My brother Mukesh Bhatt called me at 6.30 pm and was crying. He gave me the news that Yashji is no more. He was very close to him. It is a sad demise and a huge loss,” said Mahesh.
Chopra is known for having given blockbuster films like Silsila, Chandni, Lamhe and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.
The veteran filmmaker was busy shooting for his last directorial venture Jab Tak Hai Jaan.
The film is slated for a Diwali release Nov 13 and will see Shah Rukh Khan romancing Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif.
He will be cremated today at Chandanwadi crematorium.
Just as I was getting over the grief of my daughter, my brother Yash Chopra Bhaisaab has left me. Sad year.
Today I understand the phrase 'The end of an era'.
Yashji!!!! How could you go? On your 80th birthday we wished for you to make 80 more films.. It’s heartbreaking.
I’m in shock and numb, can’t believe the news, the man who immortalised love, Mr. Yash Chopra is no more. May his soul rest in peace.
Yash Chopra — Human relations will never be the same on indian screen.. The way he portrayed, nobody did, nobody could.. Suppose nobody ever will.
We lost the iconic, inspiring n always smiling Yash Chopra today. Saddened and shocked by this news. He will be missed forever.
"We're building every shift, every game throughout the series," Connor said. "We're getting close to our game and it's pretty dangerous."
"It was just a matter of time," Hayes said. "It's a start."
"Tonight was not really our team, obviously," Perron said "We weren't happy with our effort. We didn't play a good game. But we've got to give them credit."
Hellebuyck made a big stop on Pat Maroon just seconds before Tanev's goal.
"The biggest thing is we didn't play our game tonight," Tarasenko said. "It was not our best game out there. It's on us, and we'll handle it tomorrow."
NOTES: Blues D Robert Bortuzzo suffered a cut on his hand that required seven stitches in the third period of Game 2, but played on Sunday. ... Winnipeg is 1-10 in playoff games decided by one goal, including a 1-4 mark last season. ... The Blues failed on their first seven power-play attempts in the series prior to Perron's first-period goal. ... The Jets were the last team in the playoffs to record a third-period goal.
Rumor Mill: Kim Kardashian Engaged?
Sources close to Kim Kardashian are claiming to OK! that the 27-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star is now engaged to her boyfriend, 22-year-old Heisman trophy-winning football player Reggie Bush.
The pair were together in Miami on Dec. 31, where Kim hosted Mansion’s Tanqueray and Ciroc New Year’s Bash in South Beach alongside Reggie. While Kim wasn’t sporting the huge — reportedly 10 karat — rock she’d been photographed wearing over the weekend, she did admit to OK! that things are getting serious. However, she added, "One thing I did learn from ‘07 was to try to keep it as private as possible so I’m trying to hold that close to my heart but I’m here with everybody that I love."
Despite that New Year’s resolution to not blab about her love life, Kim, who was joined at the party with her sisters Kloe and Kourtney, told OK! her holiday with Reggie, who has been unable to play with his New Orleans Saints since being injured in early December, has been "the best!"
And should Kim and Reggie make that stroll down the aisle, he should know he’s got some good home-cooking waiting for him. "I’m the best cook!" Kim tells OK!. "People don’t know that, but I cook all the time. My best dish is surprisingly my soul food meals. My fried chicken and my macaroni and cheese and my sweet potato souffle."
However, it looks like all these rumors of an impending wedding might be just that — rumors. A rep for Kim tells OK! that any stories about her client being engaged are "not true."
It's Time To Play Guess The Chassis!
Hot damn, everyone, it’s that special time again! It the time we display an image of a car’s chassis for you here—via computer—and you use your eyes to send an image of the chassis to your brain—via optic nerve—and then you use your brain to try and figure out what car the chassis is from! Are you ready? Good.
This edition’s chassis is a good one. It’s a “pressed iron sheet” chassis with a lot of box sections for strength, and even has an integrated spare wheel well. It looks pretty serious.
So, guess away! Stick your guesses in the comments! If you want the answer you can click here, but only if you promise not to cheat.
OIL worker Barry Sim, of Aberdeenshire, his Malaysian wife Izzy and their baby son, had to change their flight because of a seat shortage on the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17.
A SCOTS dad spoke of his shock last night after he missed the doomed Ukraine airliner horror because he couldn’t get seats on the plane for his wife and baby son.
Six Britons were among the 295 victims of the missile attack – blamed on pro-Russian rebels – that destroyed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over the war zone in eastern Ukraine.
And oil worker Barry Sim, of Ellon, Aberdeenshire, was almost among them.
He had changed his flight to go from Schiphol in Amsterdam to Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on the Boeing 777.
But he couldn’t get places for his Malaysian wife Izzy and their baby son, so he had to change again and fly with KLM.
Asked how he felt when he found out he would have been killed, Barry said: “You get this sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
The two sides in Ukraine’s civil conflict blamed each other for the destruction of the airliner, blown out of the sky by a ground-to-air missile as it flew towards the Russian border at an altitude of more than six miles.
But there were claims last night that the bungling rebels shot it down by mistake as they targeted a Ukrainian military jet.
After the airliner crashed into a field near the separatist stronghold of Grabovo, rebel commander Igor Strelkov boasted that his forces had juts shot down an Antonov-26 air force plane.
He tweeted: “We just hit down An-26. We warned you… do not fly in our sky.
The message and video were deleted after the appalling truth of the attack became clear.
Two Ukrainian military aircraft have been shot down in the region in recent days.
The rebels denied destroying the airliner, saying they did not have the weapons to hit a jet flying so high. But they have boasted previously of capturing Buk missile launchers, which are capable of downing a passenger aircraft, from the Ukrainian army.
An aide to the Ukrainian interior minister said a Buk had shot down the jet. He claimed the rebels targeted a military plane nearby and hit the Boeing by mistake.
Journalists saw a Buk launcher in a rebel area before the attack.
Wreckage, corpses and body parts were scattered over nine miles when the airliner came down. None of the 280 passengers and 15 crew survived.
A local farmer said: “I was in the field on my tractor when I heard the sound of a plane and then a bang and shots.
A reporter covering the fighting in the area described seeing the remains of victims.
Ukrainian officials accused separatist fighters from the self-styled Donestsk People’s Republic of stopping rescuers from reaching the crash site.
It’s believed 154 victims of the tragedy were Dutch. There were also 27 Australians, 23 Americans, 23 Malaysians and four French citizens on the jet. The nationalities of 90 victims had still to be established last night.
The plane was in open air space, but was only 1000ft above a restricted zone imposed by the Ukrainian government.
Experts questioned why it was so close to the conflict zone and wondered if the pilots had strayed off course.
The Ukrainians were quick to deny involvement in the attack. President Petro Poroshenko called it “an act of terrorism” and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said it was a catastrophe.
Yesterday’s attack came just four months after the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which vanished over the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his “deepest sympathy” to the families of the victims.
With only a few weeks left in his term as one of America's big-city school superintendents, Milwaukee's Howard L. Fuller is watching a dream slip from his grasp.
Just this month, he was hailed by Business Week as an innovative reformer. By June, he'll be unemployed, finishing his meteoric rise and fall in the high-stakes, high-risk job of educating America's children. He lasted longer than many urban school superintendents: four years.
"By the time you get to the point you understand what needs to be done and understand how it might be done, your time's up," Mr. Fuller says, summing up the shared anxieties of the nation's urban school superintendents.
About 50 current and former school chiefs are at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Baltimore this weekend for a forum of the Large City Schools Superintendents.
The meeting offers a chance to compare school-reform strategies, tap the expertise of researchers and commiserate with peers about the toll exacted by their jobs. Far from the scrutiny of their school boards, unions and PTAs, they lean on each other for advice and support.
Here's their view through the revolving door: Nationally, the average stay of a big-city superintendent is about 2 1/2 years -- just until elections, controversy, burnout or a better job comes along. By comparison, the average of tenure for superintendents nationwide is about 6 1/2 years, and has been increasing slowly, according to education groups.
If Baltimore Superintendent Walter G. Amprey serves out his contract, good through 1998 -- for seven years on the job -- he would tie the longest tenure of any school chief in the city in at least 35 years.
In Baltimore and several other cities, superintendents are staying much longer than they did in the 1960s. In many other urban areas, however, quick turnover has become the norm.
And the impact on schools is clear. Longer stays are not always better, but the high turnover hurts cities' abilities to retool school bureaucracies, launch education reforms and stay the course.
Meanwhile, there are signs that pressures contributing to the turnover are helping to reshape the modern superintendency. The profile of the typical candidate is changing.
The type of training available is changing, too. But whether this will improve superintendents' staying power remains to be seen.
"You can either do the job or keep the job . . . or both," says Robert Peterkin, a former Milwaukee school chief who is director of Harvard University's 5-year-old urban superintendents doctoral program. He attributes the wry saying to a colleague's view of the competing economic, social and political influences on education decisions.
Demographics help tell the story. Of the nation's 42 million public school students, big cities serve about 13.5 percent. But they include 22 percent of the poor and 36 percent of the limited-English speakers, according to a 1992-1993 study by the national Council of Large City Schools. More than 50 percent of big-city students are eligible for federally subsidized reduced-price and free lunches based on family need.
Add the cities' shrinking tax bases, high crime and competition with private schools for the children of the middle class. Add spending cuts. Add unions and racially divided communities.
It's a recipe for trouble. The problem, many superintendents and their mentors say, is that education decisions often protect adults' interests, not children's.
"Never once did I make a decision where the pressures put on me were to do the right thing for the children," said Paul Houston, a former superintendent and now president of the American Association of School Administrators. "You were making choices between who is going to get hurt the least; it's debilitating. There's a survivor's and scapegoat's mentality out there."
Reform means championing change, and change means trampling someone's turf, no matter how carefully consensus is sought.
Before taking the helm in Milwaukee, Mr. Fuller was an outspoken critic of the school system. Afterward, he proposed radical reforms. As he reflects on his waning tenure, his passion has not been tempered.
"We are looking at a hip-hop generation with a waltz mentality," he said from his office in Milwaukee. "You can't force this generation into an organizational form that was created in another era."
Announcing his resignation, he said he was leaving because he was "uncertain about the depth of board support." Four of five candidates supported by the teachers union had won seats on the nine-member school board in March.
He had clashed with the union over his ideas, including his support for reorganizing schools and his interest in hiring for-profit Education Alternatives Inc. to help run some city schools. Eventually, the district decided that union contracts and other factors would not make privatization feasible.
Alienating interest groups, misreading the winds of political change, promising improvement so drastic that it can't be delivered -- these are among the major pitfalls, said Franklin L. Smith, superintendent in the nation's capital.
The demise of many big-city superintendents often has less to do with their educational competence than with their ability to manage in such a high-pressure environment, he said.
"The tenure of big-city superintendents is so short that they tend to come in the first year attempting to make big changes because they know that by the second year, they are going to be evaluated -- and they may be gone," he said. "And that's a mistake." Sweeping the slate clean can backfire because valuable insider knowledge of the school system is lost. Programs that had been launched as reforms aren't followed up. Recordkeeping methods change. Kids become over looked.

While this might seem outrageous and expensive, it shows the panic that the opposition is in regarding the likely outcome in favor of Hizbullah. These allegations were made all the more legitimate based on this reporters observations and conversations with arriving passengers from Brazil, which, interestingly, has a larger Lebanese population that Lebanon itself.

On the inbound flight arriving to Beirut, a large contingent of twenty or more Brazilians was on the same flight. However, during a casual conversation, they revealed few things about their trip other than two key facts: They were staying only until just Monday morning… and had brought with them almost no luggage. This made little sense at the time; until the testimony of many in Beirut certified their true reason for an 11,000-mile, two-day vacation.

Of further concern was how these paid for voters would be monitored in performing their deeds in the confines of a secret voting booth. With the Lebanese being known for corruption, all spoken with assumed there would be secret monitoring to be sure the opposition got what it paid for.

These facts put together and many Lebanese are concerned about some sort of Maidan Square event taking place tomorrow. So is the army.

Beirut has a strong military presence at all times, but in recent days, here in Beirut, that presence has more than doubled. This morning, this reporter witnessed a convoy of troop transport vehicles head into the city carrying over 150 uniformed soldiers. Every soldier is armed and everyone you encounter is cautious, unsmiling… and locked and loaded.

Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

It’s Oscar season! For those who prefer film to football, this is a time of year that rivals the Super Bowl in importance. The big day is Sunday Feb. 24. The Academy Awards will be broadcast on ABC beginning at 5 p.m., on the West Coast.

Of course, several Oscar-nominated films have already shown locally (“Black Panther,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “A Star is Born,” “Vice,” etc.), but Ridgecrest Cinemas is offering local theater-goers the chance to see some of the other major nominated films on the large screen.

According to theater manager Kelly Walden, the films were selected because they are all heavily nominated movies that are still in theaters and have not hit DVD yet.

“We think [they] are a good representation of all the nominated movies,” Walden said. Prices will be normal prices, and the movies will only be offered for one week – so see them while you can.

This film was nominated for three 2019 Academy Awards: Best Actress (Melissa McCarthy); Best Supporting Actor (Richard E. Grant) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty). The film is based on a memoir by a writer named Lee Israel and tells the true story of her attempts to save her career as a writer by forging letters from deceased playwrights and authors. The title of the film is taken from a letter she forged, pretending to be Dorothy Parker.

It was also nominated for a slew of other awards including Golden Globes USA and SAG for McCarthy and Grant.

This one also received a bunch of Oscar nods this year, including nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen); Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali); Best Original Screenplay (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie and Peter Farrelly) and Best Film Editing (Patrick J. Don Vito).

This too is a biographical film. It tells the story of a road trip tour of the south in 1962, with classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Ali) and Tony Vallelonga (Mortensen), his bouncer and bodyguard. Shirley is African-American and Vallelonga is Italian. One of the screenplay writers, Nick Vallelonga, is Tony Vallelonga’s son. He based the story on interviews with his father and Shirley and letters his father wrote to his mother.

This film, too, received a string of other award nominations and won the Golden Glob for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

“The Favourite” tied with “Roma” (available on Netflix) for the most Oscar nominations – with each receiving a whopping 10 nominations. “The Favourite” was nominated for Best Picture; Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos); Best Actress (Olivia Colman); Best Supporting Actress (Emma Stone); Best Supporting Actress (Rachel Weisz); Best Original Screenplay (Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara); Best Production Design (Fiona Crombie for production design and Alice Felton for set decoration); Best Cinematography (Robbie Ryan); Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) and Best Film Editing (Yorgos Mavropsaridis).

This is a period story set in the early 18th century. As the title would indicate, it is about the relationship between two cousins competing to be the favorite of Queen Anne.

Veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra breathed his last at Lilavati Hospital on Sunday, a hospital spokesperson said. He was 80.

Chopra, who was suffering from dengue, died of multiple organ failure.

He is survived by wife Pamela and two sons Aditya and Uday. While Aditya is also a filmmaker, Uday is an actor.

“He died of multi-organ failure. He was in the ICU,” said a hospital official.

Chopra was admitted to the hospital Oct 13.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt called Chopra’s death a huge loss to Bollywood.

“My brother Mukesh Bhatt called me at 6.30 pm and was crying. He gave me the news that Yashji is no more. He was very close to him. It is a sad demise and a huge loss,” said Mahesh.

Chopra is known for having given blockbuster films like Silsila, Chandni, Lamhe and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.

The veteran filmmaker was busy shooting for his last directorial venture Jab Tak Hai Jaan.

The film is slated for a Diwali release Nov 13 and will see Shah Rukh Khan romancing Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif.

He will be cremated today at Chandanwadi crematorium.

Just as I was getting over the grief of my daughter, my brother Yash Chopra Bhaisaab has left me. Sad year.

Today I understand the phrase 'The end of an era'.

Yashji!!!! How could you go? On your 80th birthday we wished for you to make 80 more films.. It’s heartbreaking.

I’m in shock and numb, can’t believe the news, the man who immortalised love, Mr. Yash Chopra is no more. May his soul rest in peace.

Yash Chopra — Human relations will never be the same on indian screen.. The way he portrayed, nobody did, nobody could.. Suppose nobody ever will.

We lost the iconic, inspiring n always smiling Yash Chopra today. Saddened and shocked by this news. He will be missed forever.

"We're building every shift, every game throughout the series," Connor said. "We're getting close to our game and it's pretty dangerous."

"It was just a matter of time," Hayes said. "It's a start."

"Tonight was not really our team, obviously," Perron said "We weren't happy with our effort. We didn't play a good game. But we've got to give them credit."

Hellebuyck made a big stop on Pat Maroon just seconds before Tanev's goal.

"The biggest thing is we didn't play our game tonight," Tarasenko said. "It was not our best game out there. It's on us, and we'll handle it tomorrow."

NOTES: Blues D Robert Bortuzzo suffered a cut on his hand that required seven stitches in the third period of Game 2, but played on Sunday. ... Winnipeg is 1-10 in playoff games decided by one goal, including a 1-4 mark last season. ... The Blues failed on their first seven power-play attempts in the series prior to Perron's first-period goal. ... The Jets were the last team in the playoffs to record a third-period goal.

Rumor Mill: Kim Kardashian Engaged?

Sources close to Kim Kardashian are claiming to OK! that the 27-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star is now engaged to her boyfriend, 22-year-old Heisman trophy-winning football player Reggie Bush.

The pair were together in Miami on Dec. 31, where Kim hosted Mansion’s Tanqueray and Ciroc New Year’s Bash in South Beach alongside Reggie. While Kim wasn’t sporting the huge — reportedly 10 karat — rock she’d been photographed wearing over the weekend, she did admit to OK! that things are getting serious. However, she added, "One thing I did learn from ‘07 was to try to keep it as private as possible so I’m trying to hold that close to my heart but I’m here with everybody that I love."

Despite that New Year’s resolution to not blab about her love life, Kim, who was joined at the party with her sisters Kloe and Kourtney, told OK! her holiday with Reggie, who has been unable to play with his New Orleans Saints since being injured in early December, has been "the best!"

And should Kim and Reggie make that stroll down the aisle, he should know he’s got some good home-cooking waiting for him. "I’m the best cook!" Kim tells OK!. "People don’t know that, but I cook all the time. My best dish is surprisingly my soul food meals. My fried chicken and my macaroni and cheese and my sweet potato souffle."

However, it looks like all these rumors of an impending wedding might be just that — rumors. A rep for Kim tells OK! that any stories about her client being engaged are "not true."

It's Time To Play Guess The Chassis!

Hot damn, everyone, it’s that special time again! It the time we display an image of a car’s chassis for you here—via computer—and you use your eyes to send an image of the chassis to your brain—via optic nerve—and then you use your brain to try and figure out what car the chassis is from! Are you ready? Good.

This edition’s chassis is a good one. It’s a “pressed iron sheet” chassis with a lot of box sections for strength, and even has an integrated spare wheel well. It looks pretty serious.

So, guess away! Stick your guesses in the comments! If you want the answer you can click here, but only if you promise not to cheat.

OIL worker Barry Sim, of Aberdeenshire, his Malaysian wife Izzy and their baby son, had to change their flight because of a seat shortage on the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17.

A SCOTS dad spoke of his shock last night after he missed the doomed Ukraine airliner horror because he couldn’t get seats on the plane for his wife and baby son.

Six Britons were among the 295 victims of the missile attack – blamed on pro-Russian rebels – that destroyed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over the war zone in eastern Ukraine.

And oil worker Barry Sim, of Ellon, Aberdeenshire, was almost among them.

He had changed his flight to go from Schiphol in Amsterdam to Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on the Boeing 777.

But he couldn’t get places for his Malaysian wife Izzy and their baby son, so he had to change again and fly with KLM.

Asked how he felt when he found out he would have been killed, Barry said: “You get this sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.

The two sides in Ukraine’s civil conflict blamed each other for the destruction of the airliner, blown out of the sky by a ground-to-air missile as it flew towards the Russian border at an altitude of more than six miles.

But there were claims last night that the bungling rebels shot it down by mistake as they targeted a Ukrainian military jet.

After the airliner crashed into a field near the separatist stronghold of Grabovo, rebel commander Igor Strelkov boasted that his forces had juts shot down an Antonov-26 air force plane.

He tweeted: “We just hit down An-26. We warned you… do not fly in our sky.

The message and video were deleted after the appalling truth of the attack became clear.

Two Ukrainian military aircraft have been shot down in the region in recent days.

The rebels denied destroying the airliner, saying they did not have the weapons to hit a jet flying so high. But they have boasted previously of capturing Buk missile launchers, which are capable of downing a passenger aircraft, from the Ukrainian army.

An aide to the Ukrainian interior minister said a Buk had shot down the jet. He claimed the rebels targeted a military plane nearby and hit the Boeing by mistake.

Journalists saw a Buk launcher in a rebel area before the attack.

Wreckage, corpses and body parts were scattered over nine miles when the airliner came down. None of the 280 passengers and 15 crew survived.

A local farmer said: “I was in the field on my tractor when I heard the sound of a plane and then a bang and shots.

A reporter covering the fighting in the area described seeing the remains of victims.

Ukrainian officials accused separatist fighters from the self-styled Donestsk People’s Republic of stopping rescuers from reaching the crash site.

It’s believed 154 victims of the tragedy were Dutch. There were also 27 Australians, 23 Americans, 23 Malaysians and four French citizens on the jet. The nationalities of 90 victims had still to be established last night.

The plane was in open air space, but was only 1000ft above a restricted zone imposed by the Ukrainian government.

Experts questioned why it was so close to the conflict zone and wondered if the pilots had strayed off course.

The Ukrainians were quick to deny involvement in the attack. President Petro Poroshenko called it “an act of terrorism” and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said it was a catastrophe.

Yesterday’s attack came just four months after the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which vanished over the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his “deepest sympathy” to the families of the victims.

With only a few weeks left in his term as one of America's big-city school superintendents, Milwaukee's Howard L. Fuller is watching a dream slip from his grasp.

Just this month, he was hailed by Business Week as an innovative reformer. By June, he'll be unemployed, finishing his meteoric rise and fall in the high-stakes, high-risk job of educating America's children. He lasted longer than many urban school superintendents: four years.

"By the time you get to the point you understand what needs to be done and understand how it might be done, your time's up," Mr. Fuller says, summing up the shared anxieties of the nation's urban school superintendents.

About 50 current and former school chiefs are at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Baltimore this weekend for a forum of the Large City Schools Superintendents.

The meeting offers a chance to compare school-reform strategies, tap the expertise of researchers and commiserate with peers about the toll exacted by their jobs. Far from the scrutiny of their school boards, unions and PTAs, they lean on each other for advice and support.

Here's their view through the revolving door: Nationally, the average stay of a big-city superintendent is about 2 1/2 years -- just until elections, controversy, burnout or a better job comes along. By comparison, the average of tenure for superintendents nationwide is about 6 1/2 years, and has been increasing slowly, according to education groups.

If Baltimore Superintendent Walter G. Amprey serves out his contract, good through 1998 -- for seven years on the job -- he would tie the longest tenure of any school chief in the city in at least 35 years.

In Baltimore and several other cities, superintendents are staying much longer than they did in the 1960s. In many other urban areas, however, quick turnover has become the norm.

And the impact on schools is clear. Longer stays are not always better, but the high turnover hurts cities' abilities to retool school bureaucracies, launch education reforms and stay the course.

Meanwhile, there are signs that pressures contributing to the turnover are helping to reshape the modern superintendency. The profile of the typical candidate is changing.

The type of training available is changing, too. But whether this will improve superintendents' staying power remains to be seen.

"You can either do the job or keep the job . . . or both," says Robert Peterkin, a former Milwaukee school chief who is director of Harvard University's 5-year-old urban superintendents doctoral program. He attributes the wry saying to a colleague's view of the competing economic, social and political influences on education decisions.

Demographics help tell the story. Of the nation's 42 million public school students, big cities serve about 13.5 percent. But they include 22 percent of the poor and 36 percent of the limited-English speakers, according to a 1992-1993 study by the national Council of Large City Schools. More than 50 percent of big-city students are eligible for federally subsidized reduced-price and free lunches based on family need.

Add the cities' shrinking tax bases, high crime and competition with private schools for the children of the middle class. Add spending cuts. Add unions and racially divided communities.

It's a recipe for trouble. The problem, many superintendents and their mentors say, is that education decisions often protect adults' interests, not children's.

"Never once did I make a decision where the pressures put on me were to do the right thing for the children," said Paul Houston, a former superintendent and now president of the American Association of School Administrators. "You were making choices between who is going to get hurt the least; it's debilitating. There's a survivor's and scapegoat's mentality out there."

Reform means championing change, and change means trampling someone's turf, no matter how carefully consensus is sought.

Before taking the helm in Milwaukee, Mr. Fuller was an outspoken critic of the school system. Afterward, he proposed radical reforms. As he reflects on his waning tenure, his passion has not been tempered.

"We are looking at a hip-hop generation with a waltz mentality," he said from his office in Milwaukee. "You can't force this generation into an organizational form that was created in another era."

Announcing his resignation, he said he was leaving because he was "uncertain about the depth of board support." Four of five candidates supported by the teachers union had won seats on the nine-member school board in March.

He had clashed with the union over his ideas, including his support for reorganizing schools and his interest in hiring for-profit Education Alternatives Inc. to help run some city schools. Eventually, the district decided that union contracts and other factors would not make privatization feasible.

Alienating interest groups, misreading the winds of political change, promising improvement so drastic that it can't be delivered -- these are among the major pitfalls, said Franklin L. Smith, superintendent in the nation's capital.

The demise of many big-city superintendents often has less to do with their educational competence than with their ability to manage in such a high-pressure environment, he said.

"The tenure of big-city superintendents is so short that they tend to come in the first year attempting to make big changes because they know that by the second year, they are going to be evaluated -- and they may be gone," he said. "And that's a mistake." Sweeping the slate clean can backfire because valuable insider knowledge of the school system is lost. Programs that had been launched as reforms aren't followed up. Recordkeeping methods change. Kids become over looked.