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The Slow Readers Club have shared a new live video for their latest single, ‘You Opened Up My Heart’, filmed at their sold out Manchester Albert Hall show last year. The track is taken from their third album, Build A Tower, out May 4th via Modern Sky.
Encapsulating the captivating energy of the band’s live performance, the video sees the band perform the track to a packed out crowd of over 2,000 enthralled fans. It follows the release of the official video; a pulsating collage of glitchy visuals and atmospheric ambience.
‘You Opened Up My Heart’ is the latest single from the upcoming album, following the tracks ‘Lunatic’ and ‘Through The Shadows’, both of which feature on the new album.
The band will be touring the UK in support of Build A Tower, starting this week in Cardiff and continuing throughout May. Leeds, Northwich, Manchester and Stoke have sold out, with Manchester selling out in less than 24 hours. Full dates can be found below.
SINGAPORE - Food handlers and cleaners who service pre-schools will attend a briefing later this month on good hygiene practices, after a spate of food poisoning hit 13 PAP Community Foundation kindergartens and the Plan Student Care Centre.
In a joint statement on Tuesday (April 16), the Ministry of Health (MOH) and two agencies said a multi-pronged approach involving caterers, pre-school staff, parents and children was needed to reduce the incidence of gastroenteritis in pre-schools.
For pre-schools that provide catered food, the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) will work with the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to give guidelines on the proper handling, storage and consumption of food when it is delivered.
In the food poisoning incidents in March and April, more than 250 staff and children were affected, including 31 children who had to be hospitalised.
The newly-set up SFA, established under the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources on April 1, said in the statement that food operators who fail to comply with its food hygiene and safety regulations will face enforcement actions such as suspensions or having their licences cancelled.
Similarly, ECDA said it would also take action against pre-schools which fail to meet its requirements for proper food safety and personal hygiene.
ECDA said it has been working with MOH and SFA - which came previously under the Agri-food and Veterinary Authority - since the end of last year to step up health and hygiene checks during routine visits to pre-schools.
In February, ECDA disseminated food hygiene guidelines to pre-schools and briefed operators and principals on measures to ensure food was safe to eat and to properly disinfect soiled premises and materials.
A joint advisory by ECDA, the SFA and the MOH was also issued to pre-schools in March to emphasise the importance of good food hygiene practices and infection control measures.
ECDA also reminded parents not to send their sick children to school as infectious diseases can be spread from person to person or through contaminated surfaces.
The SFA said food establishments found committing serious food safety or hygiene offences will be prosecuted in court. First offenders can be fined up to $10,000 and repeat offenders can be fined up to $20,000 and jailed for up to three months.
The agency will also press for deterrent sentences if necessary, it said.
A major multi-county electricity interconnector proposed by EirGrid has received approval from An Bord Pleanála, as the North-South project nears a full go-ahead.
With plans to build almost 300 pylons in counties Meath, Cavan and Monaghan, EirGrid’s North-South 400 kV interconnector has finally received approval in the Republic of Ireland.
The proposal had been criticised by residents across the 140km route the pylons would take, with a group representing affected landowners fighting the plans, due to the impact it will have across various counties.
In An Bord Pleanála’s final report, though, those complaints didn’t sway the decision.
“Whilst it is recognised that the proposed development will result in a limited number of localised impacts, having regard to the identified strategic need for the development, the routing and detailed design of the alignment to avoid environmental constraints, it is considered that subject to compliance with the mitig...
EirGrid is delighted with the decision, calling the project “undoubtedly the most important infrastructure scheme on the island today”.
“We believe the North-South Interconnector will also provide local benefit for the people of the north-east by strengthening the electricity network in the region; a catalyst for inward investment and job creation,” said Fintan Slye, Eirgrid’s chief executive.
An Bord Pleanála noted that approval of this project is one way to help both affected countries meet their legally binding greenhouse gas emission targets, thanks to an expanded realm of renewables.
The project has not received ultimate approval just yet, with a separate Project of Common Interest approval needed to help speed up dealings between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
In the north, a public enquiry in February will also decide on the project, with final permission expected late next year.
This Is What James Comey Will Say Tomorrow in His Opening Statement. Read It for Yourself.
It makes for great reading.
Former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday that President Donald Trump demanded loyalty and repeatedly pressured him to shut down the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The remarks confirm much of what has been previously reported on the memos Comey wrote to document conversations he had with the president, including Trump’s repeated demand that Comey pledge loyalty to him.
Step into your local bookstore and you can find the names of Asian-Canadian writers shelved beside their literary peers.
Writers such as Bharati Mukherjee (now American), Terry Woo, Wayson Choy, Larissa Lai, Madeleine Thien, Rohinton Mistry, and Anita Rau Badami can be found alongside the likes of Joseph Boyden, Alice Munro, and Margaret Atwood. More than 20 years ago, Asian-Canadian literature wasn’t as prominent as it is today. In real...
“We called those ‘hang-ups’,” remarks Jim Wong-Chu, in an interview with the Straight. He sits in his office, Ricepaper magazine’s East Broadway headquarters, which is cramped with boxes and books, the walls a weathered green. Wong-Chu, now 67 and greying, is many things: a poet, author of the acclaimed 1986 poetry col...
He remarks that what exists today wouldn’t have been possible without other prominent writers of his time, such as Paul Yee and SKY Lee (both cofounders of the ACWW), and their desire to build something from the ground up. “When you go to a library 20 years ago, there’s no such thing in the card catalogue as Asian-Cana...
In this Straight short-doc, Jim Wong-Chu tackles the ongoing struggle with one's identity as an Asian-Canadian.
Wong-Chu was born in Hong Kong in 1949, and came to Canada in 1953. He was brought along by his aunt in hopes of reuniting with her husband in Canada, whom she had not seen for 23 years. However, he arrived as a “paper son”, someone who came to North America from China with documents claiming false blood ties or illega...
Because he’d been too young to remember at the time, Wong-Chu didn’t know about his true heritage. When he was roughly seven years old, his aunt, whom he still thought was his mother, brought it up.
The realization of living what he calls a borrowed life still haunts him. He says it took him years to reconcile himself with the fact that he had a separate family—separate identity. Coupled with his experience of racism, Wong-Chu felt a strong sense of displacement.
“In my late teens and early 20s, I was very confused. You’re constantly haunted by this idea that you’re not legal. It destroyed me totally as an individual,” he says, stone-faced. “That’s identity for you—when you talk about identity to the infinite extreme, it feels like you’re a fake.
“It feels like you’re not a part of everything around you, that your participation is not welcome and not well-received. That’s what you’re looking at.
In his 20s, Wong-Chu was one of many Asian-Canadians who the rise of the Asian-Canadian movement of the 1970s, when the idea of consciousness prevalent among social activists. Many of his peers shared the sense of displacement that he had—of what it meant to be Canadian, and how it affected their own cultural identity.
“With identity, it comes down to this: where is your home, where is your family? Where are your roots? Sometimes, in order to do that, you have to validate it,” he observes.
With the emphasis on the notion of consciousness, communities had started to develop; one of them was the ACWW, established in the late '70s, inspired by his time as a student in UBC’s creative-writing department, where he was unsatisfied with his experience.
“In workshops, I was writing what was important to me, but when I was workshopping it with other people, most people didn’t understand it,” he says. “They just couldn’t understand what your problem was because they couldn’t relate to it.
“That’s why we started the ACWW, for us to create a community where you can read and understand where you come from. That’s how you build community, but you had to find it and you had to build it yourself.
Mortally wounded and horrified, John Scully tried one last time to help his wife as she frantically tried to call police from an office phone during a gunman's rampage.
"He tried to give me directions, then he said, 'I'm dying,' and we said our goodbys," a tearful Michelle Scully told the San Francisco Examiner in an interview published Sunday.
Less than a year after their wedding in Honolulu, the young couple watched Thursday as Gian Luigi Ferri began his assault at the Pettit & Martin law firm, where John Scully worked.
Michelle Scully had planned to study at the firm until John's shift ended. She had settled in with some reference books in an empty 33rd-floor office when her 28-year-old husband burst in and yelled: "You've got to get out, they've heard shots!"
"I thought it was a false alarm or something," Michelle said. "But we headed around the corner and saw the gunman."
Terrified, they found another empty office and hoped to hide behind a file cabinet. But Ferri found them first.
"He came in and he shot us," Michelle said.
Michelle, wounded in her right arm and chest, knew that John's injuries were much worse. Two days after his death, Michelle knew how she had escaped a similar fate: John deliberately had shielded her from bullets.
On Saturday, with her arm bandaged and motionless after surgery, she recalled her husband.
"He was always just concerned about me at all times," she told the Examiner.
"I'm not sure the shock has hit yet," she added. "I haven't gone back to our apartment yet. I thought he would be there with me in ICU. He's not coming back. . . . I'm trying not to cry. He didn't like me to cry."
Neuroscientists and linguists have demonstrated that the language we speak and the words we use shape how we think. Terminology certainly matters in geopolitics as well, conditioning how we view entire regions of the world. Crucially, our geographic vocabulary evolves to suit the times. The Cold War, for example, was o...
At its most obtuse, Middle East connotes everything from Morocco to Afghanistan, spanning a melange of sub-regions stretching from North Africa to Central Asia. But North African countries from Egypt westwards have little relevance to Asia, even though they are mostly Arab-populated. It makes far more sense to refer to...
Since that time, East and South Asia’s rise has compelled West Asia to rediscover its Asian geography. The energy “supercycle” that kicked off in the 1990s rapidly tied the Gulf’s fortunes to Asians – especially China, Japan and South Korea, and now also energy-thirsty India – rather than to the West. The Gulf states’ ...
Fresh investments spanning the breadth of this new maritime Silk Road from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca – the world’s most significant energy passageways – are further evidence of the Asianisation pulling all corners of the region together. In early 2017, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman spent one month trav...
In the reverse direction, China has bought into the UAE’s oil fields by acquiring a stake in Adnoc’s onshore drilling operations, while both the Jiangsu Province Overseas Cooperation and Investment Company and Cosco have signed 35-year and 50-year leases, respectively, on facilities at Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Port. Across ...
Gulf economies cannot achieve their goal of economic diversification without support from East Asia. In 2015, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) purchased a 38 per cent stake in South Korea’s Posco Engineering and Construction, after which Saudi Aramco turned to Korea’s Hyundai to construct the Gulf’s largest ...
Sholto Byrnes: Liberal democracy stands for a fine set of values – so why is it failing so badly?
Asia’s SWFs and financial conglomerates are also working with high-growth Asian countries on crucial infrastructure projects. Mubadala Investment Company together with its partners in China has committed $1 billion towards opportunities there, while Dubai Ports World has a $3 billion fund that is targeting investments ...
For the past quarter of a century, the most fragile part of the Arab world has been the West’s purview, with Asians free riding on western military involvement and financial contributions. But now that most of the significant long-term energy contracts, infrastructure projects and diplomatic initiatives are tied to Asi...
Other Arab countries that have failed to build meaningful postcolonial identities are also seizing the chance to deepen strategic ties with the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies. Jordan is trying to stop relying on Arab and western aid by inviting in Asian investors to help build its economic base. Jordan a...
If you can’t stand the heat... Stay off of my grass?
The grasslands in the United States are looking a little THIN these days! Conservationists are sowing new seeds to fatten up our amber waves of grain. Unfortunately, the only things plumping up are the MICE that eat the seeds before they can grow!
Meet Dean Pearson of the U-S-D-A Rocky Mountain Research Station. He and his team are hoping to improve restoration. How? By spicing things up!
Some seeds naturally developed their own defense against predators! Salsa picante, anyone? The seeds in spicy peppers are coated with capsaicin, a chemical that makes your mouth burn.
The team found the perfect pepper to protect the seeds: The Ghost Pepper, one of the world’s hottest! How hot? On the Scoville Heat Unit scale, consider that Habaneros score around a hundred thousand. The Ghost Pepper? Over a million!
The grass seeds were coated with Ghost Pepper powder. Mice skipped the tongue-searing snack. And the team was able to save over eighty percent more seeds!
In short, Peter Piper picked a peck of perfect pepper pesticides! Say THAT three times fast!
FORT HOOD - If Nidal Hasan plans to welcome a death sentence as a pathway to martyrdom, the rules of military justice won't let him go down without a fight - whether he likes it or not.
The Army psychiatrist was sentenced Wednesday to die for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded more than 30. But before an execution date is set, Hasan faces years, if not decades, of appeals. And this time, he won't be allowed to represent himself.
"If he really wants the death penalty, the appeals process won't let it happen for a very long time," said Joseph Gutheinz, a Texas attorney licensed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. "The military is going to want to do everything at its own pace. They're not going to want to let the system k...
Hasan opened fire at a Fort Hood medical center packed with soldiers heading to or recently returned from overseas combat deployments. He also was set to soon go to Afghanistan to counsel soldiers there, and said he carried out the attack to protect Muslim insurgents on foreign soil.
During trial, Hasan acknowledged that evidence showed he was the gunman, and put up virtually no defense of his actions.
He's suggested in writings that he would "still be a martyr" if he received death. At trial, Lt. Col. Kris Poppe, a standby military attorney assigned to Hasan, told the judge that Hasan's "goal is to remove impediments or obstacles to the death penalty."
Now that Hasan's been sentenced to death, a written record of the trial will be produced and Fort Hood's commanding general will have the option of granting clemency. Assuming none is granted, the case record is then scrutinized by the appeals courts for the Army and armed forces.
If Hasan's case and death sentence are eventually affirmed, he could ask the U.S. Supreme Court for a review or file motions in federal civilian courts. The president, as the military commander in chief, also must sign off on a death sentence.
That process is anything but speedy. The military hasn't executed an active-duty U.S. soldier since 1961.
As the appeals proceed, Hasan is going to military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He was shot in the back during the rampage, paralyzing him from the waist down. He is confined to a wheelchair and requires specialized care - though the death row facility has a health clinic that apparently can meet his needs.
Military appeals courts have overturned 11 of the 16 death sentences of the last three decades - and that doesn't include former Senior Airman Andrew P. Witt, who is one of five men on military death row but whose sentence was ordered reopened recently on appeal.
There's no way to estimate how long the appeals process could take for Hasan or any other case. The longest current case is that of Ronald Gray, a former Army cook at Fort Bragg in North Carolina who was convicted in 1988 on 14 charges, including two premeditated murders.
Once his appeals begin, Hasan will be assigned military counsel. He could also choose to retain civilian lawyers.
John Galligan, a retired Army colonel who was Hasan's former lead civilian counsel, said he doesn't believe Hasan is seeking execution, as his appointed standby lawyers at trial have suggested. He has met with Hasan frequently during the trial and said several civilian attorneys - including anti-death penalty activists...
Galligan estimates the military has already spent more than $6 million on Hasan's trial. He said that will triple during appeals, which he believes will take longer than Hasan's remaining life expectancy.
"This will invariably be an appeal that will take decades," Galligan said, "and, Maj. Hasan, I don't know if he'll ever survive it." He added: "If anything's going to kill Hasan in the short term ... it will probably be natural causes due to his medical conditions."
Hasan may have a plausible appeal on the grounds that he was never competent to represent himself at trial. Gutheinz said that argument could be complicated somewhat if Hasan refuses help from any civilian attorneys and is reluctant to cooperate with assigned military counsel - but that may not make things go any faste...
"Obviously this appeal will have high visibility but I believe, if anything, it will be a slower process," Gutheinz said.
Keely Vanacker, whose father Michael Cahill was gunned down when he charged Hasan with a chair to try and stop the rampage, said she knows that the lengthy appeals process means Hasan is likely to die in prison.
"As long as I don't ever have to see him in the media again," said Vanacker, "that matters more to me than whether or not he's put to death."
Kathy Platoni, who still struggles with images of Capt. John Gaffaney bleeding to death at her feet, said she was surprised he was sentenced to death partly because the families had talked openly about their desire to deny Hasan the right to perceive himself as a martyr. Still, she wasn't opposed to the punishment.
"I don't know how long it takes for a death sentence to be carried out," Platoni said, "but the world will be a better place without him."
God our Father, you will all men and women to be saved and come to the knowlege of your Truth.
Send workers into your great harvest that the Gospel may be preached to ever creature and your people, gathered together by the Word of life and strengthened by the power of the Sacraments, may advance in the way of salvation and love.
I ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Global expansion of nuclear power may draw more scrutiny and skepticism as the world watches Japan struggle to prevent a meltdown at a reactor damaged by a record earthquake, a former U.S. atomic regulator said.
An explosion at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor, which had begun venting radioactive gas after its cooling system failed, injured four workers. The utility reported no damage to the building housing the reactor. It began flooding the reactor with sea water and boric acid to prevent a meltdown...

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