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What an awesome project! It is so cool that you are now a published author 🙂 It is inspiring that both cultures seek out the positive in the disaster and look for the opportunities of regrowth.
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The link between female deities and volcanoes is fascinating (gives a quick peek into preconceived notions about women in each culture). Is their a corresponding link to male deities and different geological formations?
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Workers comp reform, pension reform, term limits, redistricting and cuts need to be exhausted before you ask taxpayers for more. Show us you can be public servants instead of public parasites.
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We’d suggest lawmakers work with the man voters put in the governor’s mansion to bring “fiscal sanity” back to Illinois. They should do so before they find themselves off the air.
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Passenger satisfaction with rail services has fallen to a 10-year low.
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The latest Transport Focus survey of more than 25,000 passengers found that overall satisfaction was 79%.
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This is the lowest level since 2008.
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The National Rail Passenger Survey was conducted between September 1 and November 16 last year.
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Transport Focus blamed worsening punctuality, the timetable chaos of last summer and continued disruption due to strikes for causing passengers to be frustrated with the railways.
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Comparing the percentage of journeys that passengers rated as satisfactory with the same measure in autumn 2017, Heathrow Express and Chiltern Railways were the only two out of 25 train companies to have significantly improved.
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Over the same period, seven operators recorded a significant decline in satisfaction. They were Great Northern, Northern, TransPennine Express, Greater Anglia, Thameslink, ScotRail and London North Eastern Railway.
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The highest rating was achieved by Heathrow Express at 96 per cent, while the lowest was recorded by Great Northern at 68 per cent.
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Transport Focus chief executive Anthony Smith said: "Government and the industry must continue to focus on performance.
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"In the longer term the Government's Rail Review must bring about fundamental change.
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"Passenger irritation at poor performance erodes their most basic trust in the industry."
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He added: "A better value for money and more reliable railway must arrive soon for passengers."
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Jacqueline Starr, managing director of customer experience at industry body the Rail Delivery Group, said: "Punctuality is the bedrock of satisfaction for our customers and at the moment in too many places, we are not getting it right.
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"Working together, we are investing billions of pounds in a long-term plan to rebuild key parts of the network to improve punctuality while putting thousands of new and refurbished carriages on track to make journeys more comfortable.
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"In parallel we are pushing for more fundamental reform to fix the railway for the future, including developing proposals for regulatory change to make the fares system easier, and engaging fully with the Government's independent review of how the whole railway is bolted together."
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The World Meteorological Organization says the brutal heat waves that killed thousands of people in Europe in 2003 and that choked Russia earlier this year will appear like an average summer in the future as the Earth continues to warm.
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The director of the WMO's World Climate Research Center, says the trend of the last few decades indicate that extreme heat will become more frequent and intense in the future.
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Ghassam Asrar told reporters at the 193-nation U.N. climate conference Tuesday the pattern of Atlantic storms also is changing. The number of mild Category 1 storms is declining, but the frequency of powerful Category 4 and 5 hurricanes is increasing.
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He cautions that more studies are needed to draw global conclusions.
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CANCUN, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican President Felipe Calderon says he can understand why U.S. voters in an economic crisis turned to the opposition party, but he hopes the Republicans will eventually accept the need to protect the planet's climate for "new generations."
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"I hope they can realize sooner or later how important it is for the future," Calderon said Monday.
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At the same time, in an implicit criticism of China, the Mexican leader also spoke of poorer nations taking a "radical" position against any legally binding commitments to rein in their emissions of carbon dioxide and other industrial, transport and agricultural gases blamed for global warming, something he said Mexico is willing to do.
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Calderon met with The Associated Press after Monday's opening of the annual negotiating conference of parties to the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty.
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Mexican warships patrolled off the beaches as Calderon's government, in a bloody struggle with drug cartels, threw a thick security cordon around the sprawling hotel zone in this Caribbean resort for the two weeks of talks.
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The diplomatic effort to impose stronger controls on global warming gases has been stymied in recent years by friction between the two biggest emitters, China and the United States.
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The U.S. has long refused to join the rest of the industrialized world in the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 climate treaty adjunct that mandated modest emissions reductions by richer nations. The Americans complained it would hurt their economy and it exempted such emerging economies as China and India.
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The Chinese, for their part, have resisted pressure from the U.S. and others in recent years to take on binding commitments not to reduce, but to limit the growth in their emissions, saying they were still too poor to risk slowing down their economy.
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The election of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives in the Nov. 2 elections has made it all but impossible for at least two years that any U.S. legislation would pass to cap carbon emissions, essential for drawing other nations into a new, more stringent pact to succeed Kyoto, which expires in 2012.
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Asked about the impact of the U.S. November election on global climate efforts, Calderon said it was difficult to comment on a neighbor's internal affairs, but "the economic crisis in the United States was a setback to the quality of life for millions and millions of Americans, and it is a very important factor in the opinion of the people. I can understand that."
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But, in an echo of President Barack Obama, Calderon, a former Mexican energy secretary, said political leaders must explain better to their people that a climate-friendly transformation from polluting fossil fuels to renewable energy would actually boost their economies.
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"We need to persuade people that we are going to help them to recover the economy, to recover their jobs and at the same time we need to take action in favor of new generations, and probably they can find their new jobs in this new green economy," he said.
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Asked whether he believed bigger developing nations, such as Mexico, would ever join with industrial nations in a new binding treaty on climate, Calderon said Mexico "has the will" to do it -- on condition it's done on the basis of "common but differentiated responsibilities," climate treaty language taken to signify that poorer countries would not be required to actually roll back emissions, but only to institute other controls.
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But he cited "other countries, especially big emitters, that express the radical position that they will not accept by any means any kind of binding commitments."
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Is China among them? "It could be China, and other countries," he replied.
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But he quickly added that "in my experience, the Chinese government is starting to take action in terms of these issues, particularly in terms of the energy efficiency program, very aggressive."
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Calderon, Mexico's president for the past four years, was animated and engaged in a 40-minute interview on the climate crisis. He's expected to take a personal hand next week in trying to resolve disputes over secondary treaty issues debated here, while the world waits for an end to the gridlock on a new global accord to ward off the worst of climate change.
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He lamented that the "big players" are stalling progress for everybody else, and said others "need to start already on what is possible."
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As an example, he cited his government's soon-to-be-announced plan to replace traditional incandescent light bulbs with new energy-saving bulbs.
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Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report from Cancun.
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1. Claudia Lavista, the co-founder and director of the Delfos Danza Contemporanea, a Mexican Dance Theater Group, is at the University of Chicago this afternoon to discuss her work and "the post-human body." Head down to Hyde Park to figure out exactly what that means. It's at Goodspeed Hall on the 4th floor from 1:30 to 3 pm.
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2. Nina Metz has a lovely interview with Rondi Reed, who you may have seen in Wicked, or Mike & Molly, or in her Tony-award winning performance in August: Osage County. She's in Chicago for the time being (she does consider this her home) for The Outgoing Tide at Northlight Theatre in Skokie.
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3. Check out A Lesson Before Dying at the Lincoln Square Theatre tonight and twice tomorrow. It grapples with deep subject matter, and Gaper's Block contributor J.H. Palmer says he "left the theater feeling both a little heavier and a little lighter than when I'd entered."
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4. The Dinner Detective, "America’s LARGEST murder mystery comedy dinner show," is in Chicago. You'll get dinner and be able to practice your Sherlock Holmes skills (or Watson, if you're the sidekick kind). Plus, you get a prize if you win! It runs every weekend until July 30, so if you haven't seen it yet, book your tickets. However, if you just like sitting back and not doing anything, this may not be the performance for you.
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5. NorthSide Dance Theater in Rogers Park has 1..2..3..4 by the GI Alliance Studio tonight and tomorrow only at 8 pm. No sign as to whether the title is a reference to Sesame Street or Feist, but there will be 11 pieces total, and a reception to follow both performances.
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On Trump tweeting about Nordstrom but not Quebec City attack: "I literally opened the briefing [a few days ago] with that...You're equating me addressing the nation here and a tweet? This is silly."
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Gorsuch's "demoralizing" comments: Spicer said that Gorsuch was not commenting on any specific comment or tweet by Trump, but rather attacks on the judiciary as a whole. "He literally went out of his way to say, 'I'm not commenting on a specific instance.'"
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On Trump toning down his criticism of the judiciary: "When President Obama did it, there was no concern from this briefing room. When [Trump] does it, it's a ton of outrage."
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Kellyanne pushing Ivanka's brand: "Kellyanne has been counseled on the subject...and that's it."
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The Putin call: Spicer refused to comment on reports regarding Trump not knowing about the New START nuclear treaty. He said it was a private call.
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Operation Noah (ON) the churches environmental charity, is launching an 'Oil Fast' as part of its “Exodus from carbon”, despite the ongoing commitment from several churches to seek to profit from the oil industry.
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ON is calling on church communities to embark on their own journey - away from dependence on carbon towards the promised land of a Zero Carbon Britain by 2030. The Oil Fast on Sunday 3 October is being billed as the first step on that journey.
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The Church of England and Methodist Church however, have some of their largest shareholdings in oil companies, worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
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In its last annual report the Church of England's shareholding in BP was valued at £90.7 million, slightly higher than Royal Dutch Shell at £82.1 million. The Churches have repeatedly resisted calls to end their attempts to make money from fossil fuels.
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The Church of England recently apologised for its own historical involvement in the slave trade.
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Churches across the UK are invited to participate. Churches around the country will hold their own 'Oil Fast' services. This is being billed as a day for action and reflection, for individual lifestyle changes and spiritual inspiration, rooted in the Christian belief that prayer and fasting can bring healing to even the most desperate of situations.
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ON is calling on Christians to stop for a day and take stock of our joint and personal complicity in the ongoing drive to exploit ever more challenging and inaccessible oil reserves.
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Powerful mobile devices have swarmed into workplaces, and they’re not going away. Pesky employees ignore rules and use their own smartphones for work while CEOs are commanding IT managers to make bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies the norm.
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The mobile device field is wide open. Although Android is the dominant smartphone operating system overall, companies appear to be choosing iOS devices over Android as of late, according to a recent Good Technology report. The iPad still has a lot of sway with executives, but we could see a shift toward Windows 8 tablets since they can run some legacy apps that enterprises rely on. Microsoft also just announced that businesses could buy its high-profile Surface tablets in volume if they want.
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At VentureBeat’s upcoming Mobile Summit on April 1, one of the six main themes will be “What’s next for enterprise?” So we took this opportunity to spotlight a few startups that are already thinking about and tackling this theme.
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Whether the concern is making BYOD actually work, beefing up security, or taking business intelligence mobile, these six startups are reshaping the landscape of mobile enterprise.
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Rather than install software on devices, Armor5 has come up with a different solution for BYOD. Its software connects to a company network through an existing virtual private network (VPN), virtualizes data and cloud applications, and generates a URL for employees to access content safely from their smartphones or tablets. This way, your employees always have secure access to your company’s stuff — without the risk of storing that stuff on their devices.
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Santa Clara, Calif.-based Armor5 emerged from stealth mode in February. It has collected $2 million in funding thus far from Trinity Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, and the Citrix Startup Accelerator.
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Domo offers up a business intelligence dashboard that can be viewed from any device (so its creators claim), particularly mobile devices. The company says its software is easy-to-use and cloud-based, so you can see real-time data coming in and make important decisions off that data. Domo has been a little shy about unveiling its full offering to date, but it already has more than 100 enterprise customers and is coming out of private beta this year.
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Domo is located just outside of Salt Lake City in American Fork, Utah. It recently raised a whopping $60 million in funding from GGV Capital, Greylock Partners, Bezos Expeditions, Founders Fund, and others, bringing its investment total to $113 million.
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Enterproid’s Divide platform takes a rather literal approach to BYOD in that it “divides” your personal and business life through software. Essentially, you can install Divide on iPhones or Android phones and know that your work and personal things are completely separate. Maybe most importantly for employers, the info inside Divide is secure and can be deleted at a moment’s notice by the company if something fishy is going on.
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On the iPhone, there is a single “container” that looks like an app; your email and business apps live inside that container. On Android, Divide offers different “profiles” you can switch between, and you can have two entirely separate sets of home screens and apps.
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New York City-based Enterproid launched at Demo Spring 2011 and has raised $13 million in funding from investors including Comcast Ventures, Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Genacast Ventures, and NYC Seed. The company has more than 75 employees.
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San Francisco-based Mocana has raised $32 million in capital from investors including Trident Capital, Intel Capital, Symantec, Shasta Ventures, and Southern Cross Venture Partners.
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San Diego startup Roambi is also trying to solve the business intelligence problem on mobile with its popular iPad and iPhone apps. The company takes data from all kinds of sources and visualizes it in flashy ways so execs can make better real-time decisions. It also offers a product called Flow that makes it easy to design, publish, and share colorful reports on the iPad. It has raised more than $50 million from investors including Sequoia Capital.
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Roambi’s CEO recently wrote a guest post us for us about how companies can unleash the power of “little data” with mobile devices.
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“SNL” head writers Michael Che and Colin Jost brought their late-night sketch comedy chops Monday to the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards, spending their opening stint as hosts of the award show dunking on Roseanne Barr and making jokes about #MeToo.
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Che and Jost are best known as the co-hosts of Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live,” a job they’ve held for the past four seasons. They spend most of that segment each week rapid-firing jokes in headlines and story summaries. More than a few of the jokes have been pretty overtly political over the last two seasons, with the two hosts blasting Donald Trump, first as a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, and then as president.
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The hosts have drawn mixed reactions since the announcement that they’d be leading the Emmys. In the era of the #MeToo movement that has seen many powerful men in Hollywood accused of sexual harassment and other infractions, the pair have been accused of regressive jokes and an inability to take criticism. Che recently was criticized for seeming to defend Louis C.K., who admitted masturbating in front of women comedians, and Jost has been accused of making a transphobic joke two years ago during a Weekend update segment.
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The Emmys actually started with another pair of “SNL” actors — Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon — who kicked things off a song about the Emmys this year are the most diverse ever. “We solved it,” McKinnon and Thompson sang, referring to Hollywood’s problem with diversity, in a number that featured Sterling K. Brown, Kristen Bell, Titus Burgess, Ricky Martin, Andy Samberg, RuPaul and John Legend.
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Here’s a smattering of the very best gags from Che and Jost’s turn as Emmy hosts.
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“It is an honor to be here, sharing this night with the many, many talented and creative people in Hollywood who haven’t been caught yet,” Che joked, referring to the many people in Hollywood who have been accused of sexual impropriety.
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“This year the audience is allowed to drink in their seats, because the one thing Hollywood needs right now is people losing their inhibitions at a work function,” Jost said, continuing the riff on #MeToo.
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“If you’re a network executive, that’s the scariest thing you could possibly hear, other than ‘Sir, Ronan Farrow is on Line 1,'” said Jost, after talking about how Netflix, a contender at the Emmys, was adding more original programming to its streaming service.
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“The Obamas now even have their own production deal at Netflix. And my dream is the only thing they produce is their own version of ‘The Apprentice,’ and it gets way higher ratings,” Jost said.
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The EGOT -- an acronym for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony -- is among the greatest and most elusive honors in entertainment. These stars are (or were) close to achieving it.
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The Big Sing 2017 in Alnwick Market Place.
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Get ready to sing your hearts out with a festive event that is back in town for the fourth year running.
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The Alnwick Big Christmas Sing will take place in Alnwick Market Place once again this year.
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It will be held on Tuesday, December 18, and is set to spread some festive cheer around the town.
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Year-on-year the Big Sing has grown into a much-loved fixture of the Christmas events calendar in Alnwick.
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And this year is set to be even better with the addition of the Big Christmas Joke competition.
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The Gazette has teamed up with the organisers of the Big Sing to launch the competition to find the area’s best Christmas joke.
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The jokes will be judged by a panel made up of Big Sing organisers and the Gazette with the top three being performed at the Big Sing – with prizes for all.
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Jokes must be family friendly and related to Christmas.
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Mighty Oaks will be serving free hot chocolates and will be taking donations, which will be given to the Alnwick Community Centre.
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Before the jokes are judged, the Alnwick Playhouse team will be drawing the winners of their fund-raising Christmas raffle –tickets for which are £1 and are available to purchase from Elemental on Fenkle Street, Lilburns Bar/Restaurant and The Beehive on Narrowgate, or you can call the Playhouse on 01665 510785.
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The Big Sing will begin at 7pm, with hot chocolates being served from 6.30pm to warm up the vocal chords.
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James added: “I’d like to thank all our sponsors and supporters from over the years who have ensured the event can keep running free of charge.
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The flavors were exciting and the aromas enchanting, unlike anything they had ever tasted before.
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Chef Vikas Seth took to the bustling streets of mexico and decoded the dishes with lessons from local experts.
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Few dishes in the world boast of an ancestry like the tamale.
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