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United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 was adopted on 2 September 2004. The Council supported free and fair presidential elections in Lebanon and called upon Lebanon to establish its sovereignty over all of its land and called upon “foreign forces” to withdraw from Lebanon and to cease intervening in the inter... |
Nine countries voted in favor: Angola, Benin, Chile, France, Germany, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Six countries abstained: Algeria, Brazil, China, Pakistan, the Philippines and Russia. |
The resolution was sponsored by France and the United State. |
Well, there’s the challenge, Folks … out in the open … It IS ASSad’s War. |
I am sure his pea-brain thinks all Lebanese should have been helping him become the Despot he desired to be, and was, until ‘the folks’ asked for more say in what was in their porridge. |
Now he’s King of the Rubble … but still screwing around. |
Not that having a gang or two of Pea-Brained ‘Caliphatism’ types rambling around is helping anything … except the despot of course … with their Tribal Religiousism whacking at anyone who isn’t kissing their asses for the ‘POWER’ they all want to have over the rest of the dying humans. |
And it took SOME idiots a long time to figure out an invitation to his Palace Lunches wasn’t worth it. |
RIGHT NASTY?? Were the sweetmeats THAT good? |
At least Jumby was allowed to drink the wine, back before he sort of figured it out and got uninvited. |
What goes round comes round. Bashar el-hmar. |
It’s time to help the Syrian Christians forget Hariri the Saudi. |
CARACAS (AFP) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a sweeping crackdown on Saturday under a new emergency decree, ordering authorities to seize factories “paralysed by the bourgeoisie,” and to arrest their owners. |
He also ordered military exercises to “prepare for any scenario,” a day after declaring a state of emergency to fight what he called “foreign aggression” that he blamed for an economic crisis that has pushed the country to the brink of collapse. |
The embattled South American president is struggling to contain a paralysing recession that has led to food shortages, soaring prices, riots, looting and vigilante justice. |
An elected socialist, Maduro accused the United States on Friday of destabilising the country at the behest of the “fascist Venezuelan right,” prompting him to declare a state of emergency. |
Addressing his supporters in Caracas Saturday, Maduro detailed the extent of the new decree. |
“We must take all measures to recover productive capacity, which is being paralysed by the bourgeoisie,” he said. |
The move comes after the largest food and beverage company in Venezuela, the Polar Group, halted production of beer, saying government mismanagement meant it was no longer able to import barley for production. |
Polar’s four breweries supply 80 per cent of the domestic beer consumed in Venezuela. |
The company’s owner, billionaire businessman Lorenzo Mendoza, is a vocal opponent of Maduro, and the President has accused him of being part of an “economic war” on his government along with US business interests. |
Turning to the alleged foreign threat, Maduro said he had ordered military exercises in one week’s time “to prepare ourselves for any scenario.” The moves come as Venezuela’s opposition pushes for a referendum on removing the deeply unpopular president from power. |
Opposition leaders have launched the process by collecting 1.8 million signatures in favor of a recall vote, but say authorities are now stalling. |
As the worldwide protests against the Scientology criminal organization continue, the cult is really starting to hurt. This means we're doing it right and we've got to keep it up. The next protest will be this Saturday, 16 August, at 11 am (local time) in every city. |
Every month since February, thousands of "Anonymous" people in dozens of cities around the world have gathered in peaceful protest at the Scientology cult's local offices and recruitment centers. In addition, many thousands more have participated in the effort by doing research and gathering evidence that in many cases... |
We are keeping up the pressure on the Scientology cult/criminal organization. It would be a great time for you to join us. Please do. |
Scientology is much more than just a weird and wacky Hollywood fad, in which celebrities make fools of themselves and provide material for gossip magazines. Beyond its status as a "religion" in the USA, which it obtained through a secret deal with the Internal Revenue Service, and which give it extraordinary benefits n... |
London "Bridge" is Falling Down. |
Some of us call it Frisco. |
The International Olympic Committee is launching its own video channel for the games in cooperation with YouTube, to territories in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the IOC said Monday. |
Clips of various competitions and other Olympic content will be available via the YouTube site. The channel will be available starting August 6 in a total of 77 countries and territories where exclusive broadcast or online rights to the Beijing games have not been sold. |
The IOC said that the service would be geo-blocked, so that only viewers accessing YouTube from the authorized areas will be able to use it. |
The move comes in part to minimize pirated rebroadcasts of the events, and also to offer fans in some areas that may not have coverage the opportunity to see more content, the IOC said. It did not specify in which languages the content would be available. |
NEW ORLEANS – A Texas lawyer and six co-defendants are now facing a reduced indictment of 73 charges, instead of 95, at federal trial on accusations that they faked more than 40,000 damage claims after the BP oil spill in 2010. |
Online court records show that prosecutors dropped 22 counts of identity document fraud before jury selection began Monday in Gulfport, Mississippi, in the case involving litigation arising from the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico. |
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. had said earlier that the charges that were dropped appeared to be the same alleged offenses as the indictment's 22 counts of aggravated identity theft. |
Prosecutors said attorney Mikal Watts of San Antonio, Texas, two non-attorney members of his law firm and four contract field workers invented victims or used real people's names without permission to land Watts a spot on the lucrative BP litigation steering committee and inflate legal fees he might collect. |
The judge has said trial is expected to take six to 10 weeks. He planned a short first day in court for the 70 to 80 prospective jurors. They were being asked to fill out a questionnaire and then take the rest of the day off while government and defense lawyers reviewed the questionnaires in hopes of whittling down the... |
Prosecutors wanted to begin questioning prospective jurors Monday, but Guirola said he thought they'd need more time. The questioning called voir dire is set to begin Tuesday, the judge said. |
Watts, an attorney who has earned millions suing corporations over client injuries, has pleaded innocent along with the others. |
The co-defendants are his brother David Watts as well as Wynter Lee, both of whom worked in his law firm; and BP claim field representatives Hector Eloy Guerra of Weslaco, Texas; Gregory Warren of Lafayette, Louisiana; and Thi Houng Le and her sister-in-law, Thi Hoang Nguyen, both of Grand Bay, Alabama. |
The indictment alleges that the contractors were paid more than $10 million to get names and other information about clients for the BP litigation. They allegedly used many names and Social Security numbers without authorization and Lee allegedly filled out a form listing a dog as a deckhand, according to the indictmen... |
Watts' inflated numbers prompted BP PLC to agree to pay $2.3 billion to shrimpers, fishermen and others who lost money in the seafood business because of the oil spill, and "fraudulently increased the settlement amount and inflated the amount of compensation" due to legitimate plaintiffs, the 56-page indictment al... |
It also says Watts used the numbers to win a seat on the committee of lawyers that negotiated that settlement in 2012, making him eligible for "money over and above any money he might make on attorney fees." Watts resigned from the steering committee during the federal investigation. |
BP made similar allegations in a lawsuit filed in 2013 against Watts and his San Antonio law firm. It's on hold until the criminal case is over. |
Why would prestigious VCs Founders Fund and Lowercase Capital invest $4.5 million in what looks like a Tinder clone? Because Hinge is building a romance graph of what structured data clues suggest two people will want to date. While Hinge’s app might not be as carefree as swiping through Tinder’s seemingly endless queu... |
This “matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match” model is gaining traction, with Hinge’s iOS and Android userbase up 300% this year in the nine cities it operates in: DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and L.A. |
It’s still way smaller than Tinder, which is doing 850 million swipes and 10 million matches a day. But Tinder is in a public relations fiasco after suspending co-founder and CMO Justin Mateen for sexual harassment yesterday. With the online dating market poised to encompass much of the Earth, Hinge has a huge opportun... |
What’s special about the dating app is that it’s not just pairing friends-of-friends (and friends-of-friends-of friends) with the same job or who went to the same college. Its data set which I’ve dubbed the romance graph looks for less obvious connections, like that Ivy League college alums like to intermingle, or that... |
Beyond data pulled from Facebook, Hinge users can add some extra tags about their religion, ethnicity, favorite date spots, and personality. You don’t have to fill out awkward eHarmony style essays, but Hinge can use these fields to both send you compatible matches, but also track what you’re into. You don’t have to co... |
For a quick look at how the app works, check out the video demo and interview with founder Justin McLeod below from when Hinge launched in SF in January. |
Essentially, Hinge looks a lot like Tinder. You get full-screen profiles you can swipe left or right. But you have a friend in common with everyone you’re shown. Rather than just their first name, mutual friends, and interests, you also get a last initial, employer, education history, and a few more details. And instea... |
Hinge has recently increased the number matches it sends, possibly thanks to its growth, but also perhaps to make each decision seem less daunting. When you only got around a dozen people to vet each day, it was natural to agonize over each swipe. That made Hinge more of a chore you returned to begrudgingly than a game... |
McLeod tells me Hinge also wants to dip its toes in the murky waters of non-romantic encounters. “Swiping and matching is just the beginning. Our vision is to become a social discovery network, where you’ll go to find and interact with people you’d like to meet, but haven’t yet” he tells me. It’s already sending users ... |
Hinge is free for now but you could imagine it monetizing the way many dating apps do with subscriptions to premium features like being promoted to potential mates, getting more matches per day, or the option to message people you otherwise couldn’t. |
Alternatively, it could build out its romance graph and license the data to other dating companies. People around the world are sick of the bar pickup scene, and referrals from friends can only go so far. They need a way to connect with nearby singles. Tinder has proven out a lighter weight dating app model, but there’... |
The micro-Tinders for specific niches are coming. I mean, I just saw an ad for JSwipe, a Tinder clone ripoff of Jewish dating site JDate. |
The annual Supercomputing show is this week in Denver and as usual it's time for the semi-annual listing of the world's fastest computers. The top of the list is unchanged from the June list but what's interesting is a plan from the folks who keep the Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers to develop new be... |
As on the previous list, the fastest computer is the Tianhe-2, at the National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou, China, which is based at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, China. It shows sustained performance of more than 33.8 petaflops (trillion floating point operations per second) and pea... |
The only new addition to the top 10 is the Piz Daint system at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, based on a Cray C30 system using Intel Xeon E5-2670s as well as Nvidia K20x accelerators. |
It's interesting to note that 53 of the top 500 are using accelerators or co-processors, including 38 using Nvidia's Tesla chips, two using ATI, and 13 using Intel's Xeon Phi. Intel provides the processors for 82.4 percent of the top 500 systems, and 94 percent of the systems use processors with six or more cores. Of t... |
One new wrinkle: The organizers of the top 500 list released a new benchmark called the High Performance Conjugate Gradient (HPCG), which is designed to supplement Linpack in such rankings at some future point. In a paper describing HPCG, the authors Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee and Michael Heroux of Sa... |
Even the authors of the new benchmark note it will take a long time for it to gain traction, and that it is just entering beta. But I always think benchmarks that more closely match how real people use the systems are better, so this seems like a step in the right direction. This could dramatically change how we think ... |
Of course, another important metric these days is how much power you need to get a certain level of performance. For that, there's the Green 500 list, which ranks supercomputers on performance per watt. The June list was topped by the Eurora system at Italy's Cineca, based on a Eurotech Aurora system with 8-core Xeon E... |
Harewood House: hosting a food festival over bank holiday weekend. |
Preparations are well under way for the Great British Food Festival taking place in the grounds of Harewood House, near Leeds, over this Bank Holiday Weekend. |
More than 75 different traders will be in attendance, among them artisan food producers and street food vendors will be busy making, preserving, baking and packing, jams, cakes, cheese, sausages and lots of tasty treats. |
Along with wonderful food and drink producers there will be a great line-up of local bands, fantastic chef demos, foodie talks, man vs food competitions and a bake stage. |
The Chef Demo stage hosts a headline name for each day, with ex-Great British Bake Off Stars Howard Middleton, Luis Troyano, Sandy Docherty and local chef Steph Moon all doing demos over the weekend. |
The Bake Off Stars will be overseeing the popular Great British Cake Off, where amateur bakers compete head to head in three categories - and best of all if you enter a cake you get free entry to the festival! |
There is entertainment for all the family over the weekend, including kid’s cookery lessons, free circus skills, and children’s rides. |
With live music throughout the day from a play list packed full of top local bands, your festival ticket also includes entry to lower house and fantastic kids play area and bird garden including penguin feeding. |
So it’s a great value day out for the whole family. |
Bring a blanket and sit out for the day enjoying great food and drink, live music and beautiful surroundings. |
See www.greatbritishfoodfestival.com for discounted advanced tickets. |
Four-time Pro Bowl guard Zack Martin is not participating in the Dallas Cowboys' organized team activities, coach Jason Garrett said on Wednesday. |
Garrett said Martin's contract situation was the reason for his decision. Martin did show up at the team's training complex and went through a regular workout on his own Tuesday. |
Martin, 27, is set to play this season on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract. He will earn a base salary of $9.3 million. |
"Obviously, there's a contract situation going on there -- the business of the NFL," Garrett said Wednesday. "We'll see how that gets resolved here. But that's really the reason he hasn't practiced up to this point." |
Martin has not missed a game since the Cowboys selected him with the 16th overall pick of the 2014 NFL Draft out of Notre Dame. |
The 6-foot-4, 315-pound Martin is expected to attend the Cowboys' mandatory three-day minicamp on June 12-14. |
Martin said last week that his focus is squarely on the upcoming season, per 247Sports. |
"I think it's been better after we've gotten into the facility with all the guys," Martin said. "I really don't think about it now, because I'm with those guys working out and kind of back to normal. We'll see. Hopefully it gets done. We'll see where it goes." |
DURHAM — Eight Durham residents will be honored Thursday for their volunteer service to the Durham library. |
The seventh annual Durham Library Honors is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Durham Branch of the Butte County Library. |
Books have been purchased by the Durham Friends of the Library in honor of David Barr, Ruth Brinson, Bill Dempsey, the late Carol Franklin, Mike Hislop, Janet Parker, Jim Patterson, and Bill Philips. |
In honor of Franklin — “How to Paint Watercolor Landscapes” by Hazel Harrison. |
A perpetual plaque, noting the past six years of honorees — 50 total — will be re-unveiled to hang in the James Drylie Reading Room of the library. |
The Friends group meets in the library every third Thursday evening at 5:30 p.m. and welcomes anyone who would like to make a nomination for the 2008 presentations. Or, if you prefer, you may mail your nominee”s name to P.O. Box 505. |
You cannot wax nostalgic for something that never died, and the 2011 Ford Mustang is as immortal as cars get. For forty-six years, its fundamental ingredients — rear-wheeldrive, a solid rear axle, and a compact, sporting body — have remained the same. The Mustang's critics love this, making much of the fact that other ... |
In prepping the 'Stang for the challenges of modern roads, Dearborn's engineers amped up performance without diluting the car's soul. The base V-6 packs a creamy yowl and tire-liquefying torque; the optional V-8 spits out a throaty whomp and enough grunt to wrinkle cured concrete. The standard six-speed manual feels un... |
As with most Detroit iron, the numbers satisfy. The 2011 Mustang GT ($29,645) boasts an all-new 5.0-liter V-8, a 32-valve monster that produces 412 hp and 26 mpg. Ten years ago, some supercars had similar power but swilled almost twice as much gas. The base Mustang's 3.7-liter V-6 ($22,145) is a thoroughly modern, alum... |
The Mustang is a glorious anachronism, a bareknuckle wonder in a button-down world. It wears its heart on its sleeve, abhors empty nostalgia, and refuses to deal in excuses. |
Is the BMW 535i the Car of the Year ? |
Kevin Mirallas believes Romelu Lukaku could prove the missing link in Roberto Martinez’s bid to lead Everton back into Europe. |
Everton boss Martinez more than made up for the loss of Marouane Fellaini to Manchester United by landing a hat-trick of deadline-day signings in £13million buy James McCarthy and on-loan duo Lukaku and Gareth Barry. |
While McCarthy’s energy and distribution and Barry’s vast experience will bolster Everton’s midfield, it’s Lukaku’s firepower that could prove decisive in their quest for honours, according to Mirallas. |
After opting for Everton ahead of West Brom on Monday night, Lukaku described how a glowing recommendation from Belgium team-mate Mirallas had helped him make up his mind. |
Speaking ahead of Belgium’s World Cup qualifier with Scotland on Friday night, Mirallas made it clear he believes his sales pitch could reap its rewards at Goodison Park this season. |
‘I was with Romelu in his room at the team hotel on Monday night, and I only left when I was sure he was joining us,’ said Belgium’s Everton winger. ‘I was surprised to learn we were in for him, because there had been no inkling, but once I got word, I really went to work. |
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