text:
Hassan Rouhani (Iran)
Home » Hassan Rouhani (Iran)
Iran protests: EU urges end to violence
by Deutsche Welle | posted in: Middle East, News	|
The EU has urged Iran to show "maximum restraint" in handling protests that have rocked the country in recent days. Iranian officials, meanwhile, have arrested protest leaders and imposed a near-total internet blackout. A spokeswoman for the EU on Thursday … Read More
Ali Khamenei, Amnesty International, EU-Iran relations, European Union (EU), Germany, Germany-Iran relations, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Iran Protests, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Middle East, Mike Pompeo
Iran says it will fuel centrifuges
by Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell | posted in: Middle East, News	|
In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency, President Hassan Rouhani, center, attends a ceremony to inaugurate Azadi Innovation Factory in Pardis technology park in west of Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019. … Read More
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Donald Trump, Fuel centrifuges (Iran), Hassan Rouhani (Iran), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran nuclear deal, Middle East, United States (US), Vladimir Putin
Putin Is Trolling the United States in the Persian Gulf
by Dimitar Bechev | posted in: News, Russia	|
In the wake of the drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, the Russian president has positioned himself as a peacemaker. But continued conflict is his friend. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attend a joint press conference in … Read More
Bashar al-Assad, Drone attack (Saudi Arabia), Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Mohammed bin Salman (Saudi Arabia), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia, Russia-Iran relations, Russia-Middle East relations, Russia-Saudi Arabia relations, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Vladimir Putin
In Major Threat To Dollar's Reserve Status, Russia Offers To Join European SWIFT-Bypass
by Tyler Durden | posted in: News, Russia	|
Three weeks after a meeting between the countries who signed the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was ditched by US, French, British and German officials said the trade mechanism which was proposed last … Read More
Dmitry Peskov, Federica Mogherini (EU), Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Iran nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Mohammad Javad Zarif, Russia, Russia-Iran relations, SWIFT, United States (US), US-Russia relations, Vladimir Putin
Iran to 'resist' Trump decision on Israel's hold over Golan
by AP via The Washington Times | posted in: Middle East, News	|
Visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump hold up the signed proclamation recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights as Netanyahu leaves the White House in Washington, Monday, March 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) TEHRAN, Iran … Read More
Donald Trump, Golan Heights, Hamas, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Israel, Javad Zarif (Iran), Lebanese Hezbollah group, Middle East, United States (US), US acceptance of Israel's control of Golan Heights, US-Israel relations
Israeli Strikes on Sovereign Syria Must Be Stopped – Moscow
by Sputnik News | posted in: Israel, News	|
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said on 21 January that it had hit alleged Iranian military facilities in Syria, including weapons depots in the area of Damascus International Airport, an intelligence centre, and a training camp, in response to a … Read More
Benjamin Netanyahu, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Israel, Israel Defence Forces (IDF), Israel military strikes on Syria, Israel-Russia relations, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia, Syria, Vladimir Putin
Idlib and Beyond – The Vultures are circling in Syria
by Thomas Donnelly | posted in: Middle East, News	|
Wreckage from an airstrike by pro-Assad forces near Idlib Province, September 8, 2018 AMER ALHAMWE / AFP / Getty Over the past several weeks, the war in Syria has crept back into the headlines, even competing with the drama and … Read More
"Iraq Derangement Syndrome", Bashar al-Assad, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Hezbollah, Idlib, Iran, Iranzamin (Greater Iran), ISIS, Middle East, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Syria, U.N. "de-escalation zone", Use of chemical weapons in Syria, War in Syria
Iran's Khamenei: 'No war, no negotiations with the US'
by i24News - AFP | posted in: Middle East, News	|
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the shrine of Imam Ridha in Mashhad, Iran. Khamenei.ir Khamenei said economic woes were result of internal mismanagement by the govt. and not just US pressure. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Monday … Read More
2015 nuclear deal (Iran), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Donald Trump, Hassan Rouhani, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Iran nuclear deal, Middle East, United States (US), US sanctions on Iran, US-Iran relations
AP Explains: Iran reopens uranium plant in its latest gamble
by Amir Vahdat and Jon Gambrell - AP | posted in: Middle East, News	|
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran says it has restarted production at a "major" uranium facility involved in its nuclear program, though it still pledges to follow the terms of the country's landmark atomic deal now under threat after President Donald Trump … Read More
Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Centrifuges, Donald Trump, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), Iran, Iran nuclear deal, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Middle East, Mike Pompeo, United States, Uranium plant (Iran)
Netanyahu claims Iran hid nuclear weapons program
by Fox News | posted in: Israel, News	|
Aki Khamenei (Iran), Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump decision on Iran Nuclear deal, Fordow Uranium Enrichment Facility, Hassan Rouhani (Iran), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran, Iran nuclear deal, Iran nuclear program, Israel, Javad Zarif (Iran), Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (Iran-Project Amad), Multiple Point Initiation (MPI), News Video, Nuclear test (Iran), Nuclear weapons (Iran), Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND)-(Iran), Project Amad (Iran-1999-2003), Yellowcake production (Iran)


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AZD7442 PROVENT Phase III Prophylaxis Trial Met Primary Endpoint in Preventing COVID-19
77% reduced risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19
First long-acting antibody combination to prevent COVID-19
20 August 2021 -- Positive high-level results from the PROVENT Phase III pre-exposure prophylaxis trial showed AstraZeneca's AZD7442 achieved a statistically significant reduction in the incidence of symptomatic COVID-19, the trial's primary endpoint.
AZD7442, a combination of two long-acting antibodies (LAAB), reduced the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 by 77% (95% confidence interval (CI): 46, 90), compared to placebo. The trial accrued 25 cases of symptomatic COVID-19 at the primary analysis.
There were no cases of severe COVID-19 or COVID-19-related deaths in those treated with AZD7442. In the placebo arm, there were three cases of severe COVID-19, which included two deaths.
AZD7442 is the first antibody combination (non-vaccine) modified to potentially provide long-lasting protection that has demonstrated prevention of COVID-19 in a clinical trial.
The trial included 5,197 participants in a 2:1 randomisation AZD7442 to placebo. The primary analysis was based on 5,172 participants who did not have SARS-CoV-2 infection at baseline.
More than 75% of participants had co-morbidities, which include conditions that have been reported to cause a reduced immune response to vaccination.
The LAAB was well tolerated and preliminary analyses show adverse events were balanced between the placebo and AZD7442 groups.
Myron J. Levin, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, US, and principal investigator on the trial, said: "The PROVENT data show that one dose of AZD7442, delivered in a convenient intramuscular form, can quickly and effectively prevent symptomatic COVID-19. With these exciting results, AZD7442 could be an important tool in our arsenal to help people who may need more than a vaccine to return to their normal lives."
Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, said: "We need additional approaches for individuals who are not adequately protected by COVID-19 vaccines. We are very encouraged by these efficacy and safety data in high-risk people, showing our long-acting antibody combination has the potential to protect from symptomatic and severe disease, alongside vaccines. We look forward to sharing further data from the AZD7442 Phase III clinical trial programme later this year."
AZD7442 was optimised using AstraZeneca's proprietary YTE half-life extension technology, which could afford up to 12 months of protection from COVID-19, and is delivered by intramuscular injection.
Preliminary 'in vitro' findings from investigators at Oxford University and Columbia University demonstrate that AZD7442 neutralises recent emergent SARS-CoV-2 viral variants, including the Delta variant.1-6
AstraZeneca will prepare regulatory submission of the prophylaxis (PROVENT and STORM CHASER) data to health authorities for potential emergency use authorisation or conditional approval of AZD7442. Full results from PROVENT will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal and presented at a forthcoming medical meeting.
PROVENT
PROVENT is a Phase III, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-centre trial assessing the safety and efficacy of a single 300mg dose of AZD7442 compared to placebo for the prevention of COVID-19. The trial was conducted in 87 sites in the US, UK, Spain, France and Belgium. 5,197 participants were randomised in a 2:1 ratio to receive a single intramuscular (IM) dose of either 300mg of AZD7442 (n = 3460) or saline placebo (n = 1,737), administered in two separate, sequential IM injections.
The primary efficacy endpoint was the first case of any SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR positive symptomatic illness occurring post dose prior to day 183. Subjects will continue to be followed for 15 months.
Participants were adults 18 years-old and over who would benefit from prevention with the LAAB, defined as having increased risk for inadequate response to active immunisation (predicted poor responders to vaccines or intolerant of vaccine) or having increased risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection, including those whose locations or circumstances put them at appreciable risk of exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Participants at the time of screening were unvaccinated and had a negative point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 serology test.
Approximately 43% of participants were 60 years and over. In addition, more than 75% had baseline co-morbidities and other characteristics that are associated with an increased risk for severe COVID-19 should they become infected, including those with immunosuppressive disease or taking immunosuppressive medications, diabetes, severe obesity or cardiac disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney and chronic liver disease. Approximately 73% were White/Caucasian, 17% Black/African American, and 3% Asian. Approximately 15% of participants were Hispanic.
AZD7442 is a combination of two LAABs - tixagevimab (AZD8895) and cilgavimab (AZD1061) - derived from B-cells donated by convalescent patients after SARS-CoV-2 virus. Discovered by Vanderbilt University Medical Center and licensed to AstraZeneca in June 2020, the human monoclonal antibodies bind to distinct sites on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein7 and were optimised by AstraZeneca with half-life extension and reduced Fc receptor and complement C1q binding. The half-life extension more than triples the durability of its action compared to conventional antibodies and could afford up to 12 months of protection from COVID-19 following a single administration.8-11 The reduced Fc receptor binding aims to minimise the risk of antibody-dependent enhancement of disease - a phenomenon in which virus-specific antibodies promote, rather than inhibit, infection and/or disease.12
AZD7442 is being studied in a comprehensive clinical trial programme for both prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in over 9,000 participants. Ongoing trials include TACKLE COVID-1913, a Phase III treatment trial in an outpatient setting and collaborator treatment trials in outpatient and hospitalised settings. AZD7442 is being assessed in both IM and intravenous administration routes.
AZD7442 is being developed with support from the US Government, including federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in partnership with the Department of Defense; Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense, under Contract No. W911QY-21-9-0001.
AstraZeneca is working with governments around the world to make AZD7442 accessible to high-risk populations as another valuable option in the fight to end COVID-19, should it prove to be effective and well tolerated.
Data published in Nature in July 2020 showed that in preclinical experiments, the LAABs were able to block the binding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to host cells and protect against infection in cell and animal models of disease.14
Under the terms of the licensing agreement with Vanderbilt, AstraZeneca will pay single-digit royalties on future net sales.
AstraZeneca (LSE/STO/Nasdaq: AZN) is a global, science-led biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the discovery, development, and commercialisation of prescription medicines in Oncology, Rare Diseases, and BioPharmaceuticals, including Cardiovascular, Renal & Metabolism, and Respiratory & Immunology. Based in Cambridge, UK, AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its innovative medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. Please visit astrazeneca.com and follow the Company on Twitter @AstraZeneca.
1.Liu C, et al. Reduced neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617 by vaccine and convalescent serum. Cell. 2021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.06.020
2.Zhou D, et al. Evidence of escape of SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.351 from natural and vaccine induced sera. Cell. 2021; doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.037.
3.Dejnirattisai W, et al. Antibody evasion by the Brazilian P.1 strain of SARS-CoV-2. bioRxiv. 2021; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.12.435194.
4.Wang P, Nair MS, Liu L. et al. Antibody resistance of SARS-CoV-2 variants B.1.351 and B.1.1.7. Nature 2021 Mar 8. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03398-2. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33684923.
5.Chen RE, et al. Resistance of SARS-CoV-2 variants to neutralization by monoclonal and serum-derived polyclonal antibodies. Nat Med 2021; 27, 717–726. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01294-w.
6.Wang P, et al. Increased resistance of SARS-CoV-2 variant P.1 to antibody neutralization. Cell Host Microbe. 2021; 29 (5): 747–751.e4.
7.Dong J, et al. Genetic and structural basis for recognition of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein by a two-antibody cocktail. bioRxiv. 2021; doi: 10.1101/2021.01.27.428529.
8.Robbie GJ, et al. A novel investigational Fc-modified humanized monoclonal antibody, motavizumab-YTE, has an extended half-life in healthy adults. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2013; 57 (12): 6147-53.
9.Griffin MP, et al. Safety, Tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of MEDI8897, the respiratory syncytial virus prefusion F-targeting monoclonal antibody with an extended half-life, in healthy adults. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2017; 61(3): e01714-16.
10.Yu XQ, et al. Safety, Tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of MEDI4893, an investigational, extended-half-life, anti-staphylococcus aureus alpha-toxin human monoclonal antibody, in healthy adults. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2016; 61 (1): e01020-16.
11.Domachowske JB, et al. Safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of MEDI8897, an extended half-life single-dose respiratory syncytial virus prefusion F-targeting monoclonal antibody administered as a single dose to healthy preterm infants. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2018; 37(9): 886-892.
12.van Erp EA, et al. Fc-mediated antibody effector functions during respiratory syncytial virus infection and disease. Front Immunol. 2019; 10: 548.
13.Clinicaltrials.gov. Phase III study of AZD7442 for treatment of COVID-19 in outpatient adults (TACKLE). Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show//NCT04723394. [Last accessed: 30 June 2021].
14.Zost SJ, et al. Potently neutralizing and protective human antibodies against SARS-CoV 2. Nature. 2020; 584: 443–449.
Posted: August 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Libra News
The Libra Association appointment of fomer HSBC's CEO James Emmett as the managing director of Libra network
By Tsunami 09/17/20 10:47 AM
The Libra Association has announced the appointment of James Emmett as the Managing Director of Libra Networks LLC, the operating company subsidiary of the Libra Association, with effect from 1 October 2020, according to the company blog on September 17.
James Emmett
James Emmett previously held the Chief Executive role of HSBC Bank plc and Europe, where he was responsible for HSBC's UK Wholesale Bank and operations across Continental Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Bermuda.
Mr. Emmett is a highly experienced financial services leader with a wealth of global experience in business, strategy, technology, and operations, gained through his 25 years with HSBC, one of the world's leading international financial services institutions, Libra Association said on the blog.
Stuart Levey, CEO of the Libra Association, said:
"James is a first-class financial services executive with deep substantive expertise and operational experience. I am excited that he is joining us and confident that his leadership will help make Libra's vision a reality."
James Emmett said:
"As someone who is passionate about the opportunities for financial services and technology to make a real difference, I am delighted to be joining Libra Networks with a mission to enhance financial innovation and inclusion and to deliver the operationalization of the network."
As AZCoin News reported, the Libra Association appointment of Steve Bunnell as Chief Legal Officer, Sterling Daines as Chief Compliance Officer, and Stuart Levey as Chief Executive Officer, as well as the addition of new members.
Libra is a permissioned blockchain digital currency proposed by the American social media company Facebook, Inc. The currency and network do not yet exist, and only rudimentary experimental code has been released. The launch is planned to be in 2020.
Libra Association's Member Checkout.Com Acquires Australian Startup Pin Payments
The Libra Association Has Named Obama's Former Under Secretary For Terrorism As Its First CEO
Crypto traders in Africa are less likely to be scammed than traders in other regions in the past year
After Coinbase Pro and Binance listing support announcement for Uniswap's just-released governance token UNI to rally 300% in price
Facebook's crypto wallet Novi is inching forward…
London-based Finance app "Diem" is…
"A wolf in sheep's clothing", German Finance Minister…
Libra Association is changing its name to the Diem…
The Facebook stablecoin project Libra might get off the…
Libra Association has hired Saumya Bhavsar as General…


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Why Do They Hate Mary Magdalene?
Put simply -- Mary Magdalene was the High Priestess of Baal. She was converted from evil to good.
Her conversion broke the power of the Satanic religion that we are now confronting once again.
Her act anointing Joshua before his crucifixion conferred the Office of the High Priest of Baal on him, and made him Accursed.
And that is the guise and role in which he suffered, literally as the guilty one responsible for all the evil in the world, the one responsible for the gross sins of Baphomet.
Yet, he was innocent.
A miracle was required, something so contrary, so anti-intuitive, so above-and-beyond our reckoning, that our Lord took on the Highest Office of the Satanists, and let all their guilt be heaped on him.
And she's the one who anointed him into that office.
No wonder she was weeping.
To those present who knew what was happening, there were plenty of reasons to hate Mary Magdalene.
If she and her followers hadn't committed such horrible atrocities, there would be no need for such terrible atonement.
And who was she, that he should suffer for her? He owed her and her followers less than nothing at all.
The Other Side hated her, too --- for completely different reasons; their entire religion was nullified by her conversion. They lost the bloodline of the High Priestess and have never been able to re-establish it again.
Thousands of years later, this dimension of the Passion of Christ has been papered over. The hatred of Mary Magdalene endures, but the reasons for it are not well-known outside the High Church.
So now, in the midst of the final denouement, you understand how poignant and painful it is, his love for Mary Magdalene.
Paul Stramer April 19, 2021 at 8:40 AM
Once again the Catholic Church of over 20 centuries has a different view.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09761a.htm
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09721b.htm
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701121.htm
Debra April 19, 2021 at 10:56 AM
Wow, that's nothing I've ever heard before in the many accounts I've taken time to read as I've strived to understand who she was and their relationship.
bubbapatric April 19, 2021 at 1:14 PM
The biggest identity thief of all time is the notorious Canaanite clan makeover shapeshifters calling themselves phonecians. In fact Shem Noah favorite son archaeologists confirm built the pyramids killed the leader of Baal priest nimrod.
Definitely on evil Canaanite bad side started calling Shem pig ,Dwarf.
And erased his legend when it was customary to call sons of Shem Semites .
Fast forward we are mid identified as slaves to a foreign corporation.
Foscolos00 April 19, 2021 at 7:32 PM
What books are being referenced for the above statement?
The book of Jasher(Yasher) reflects a completely different account;
Esau killed Nimrod And Then Sold The Birthright | We Are Israel
https://weareisrael.org/2014/08/19/esau-killed-nimrod/
a follower April 20, 2021 at 5:05 AM
From several of these articles posted here daily, many, many articles , a constant never ending stream of articles, revolving around much, much, the same.
Anna - "The idol of Ashtoreth is here, the image of the Great Abomination which brings Desolation is standing where it should not stand, in New York Harbor."
Anna continualy injects this tidbit, and i do see problems with the idols and also the Freemasons, but does this "abomination align with scripture the way Anna portrays it?
Is it for instance standing in a Holy place?
Is New York or New York Harbor a Holy place?
How about America?
Was it ever, as a whole?
Anna is pretty loose with 'her' interpretations and or accusations as they relate to scripture.
LarryR April 20, 2021 at 6:29 AM
Everyone has their own interpretations and this is hers. I'm just interested in her source for my own interpretation.
Foscolos00 April 20, 2021 at 6:41 AM
@ a follower; Hope this helps:
Statue of Liberty Facts | Gnostic Warrior By Moe Bedard
https://gnosticwarrior.com/statue-of-liberty.html
Shells of the Dead".Qliphoth!!! IT is OVER !!! Unlocked for EVER!! Glory to God!!!! - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fis0cQqBP68
ETTishbite April 20, 2021 at 7:32 AM
Cease , my son, to hear the instruction that causeth thee to err from the words of knowledge. Proverbs 19:27
Bellerian1 April 20, 2021 at 9:33 AM
hahahaha... Evil does like its Bait n Switch huh. Clowns. She wasn't converted, she did that to avoid the consequences and to dump them on the target... With that kind of HELP, ones better off not playing along.
"Put simply -- Mary Magdalene was the High Priestess of Baal. She was converted from evil to good.
And that is the guise and role in which he suffered, literally as the guilty one responsible for all the evil in the world, the one responsible for the gross sins of Baphomet. "
At least she admits her "lord" is satan/baal... :P
"A miracle was required, something so contrary, so anti-intuitive, so above-and-beyond our reckoning, that our Lord took on the Highest Office of the Satanists, and let all their guilt be heaped on him. "
QFA.... if ones "god" would do this, that ain't a God, thats a shiteating Turd Burglar.
Jordan April 20, 2021 at 5:56 PM
WHOA, this is astounding to me! I have never heard any of this, but it sure makes sense!!
SESRES dot com
Shades of 1913
Paper Mills and Clarification
No Arguments Needed --- Try This Yourself


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Humanism and Its Discontents
by Joyce Carol Oates, 2007 Humanist of the Year • 22 October 2007
Joyce Carol Oates was presented with the 2007 Humanist of the Year award at the 66th Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association in Portland, Oregon, on June 8, 2007. The following article was adapted from her acceptance speech and the Q&A that followed.
Humanism–like "the humanities" and indeed all of the arts–has sometimes seemed, amid the turbulence of history, a frail vessel bearing us onward along a treacherous stream.
We must imagine our distant ancestors discovering death–baffled and terrified by death–and needing to ascribe to this natural phenomenon a supernatural explanation. As T.S. Eliot observed, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." Especially, humankind can't bear the crushing evidence of a reality that limits human delusions of immortality and omniscience. A primitive fear of the unknown and of death–a disbelief that "this can't be all there is"–has prevailed, tempting us to believe in a deity that will guarantee not only our immortality but our worth and will likewise unite us with loved ones in the afterlife, as in the country and western classic "May the Circle Be Unbroken" (In the sky, Lord, in the sky).
And yet there still seems to be a powerful need in many (most?) people to believe in literal evil, good, God, heaven, and hell. Terms we might interpret as metaphorical have acquired an eerie Platonic realism.
Recently in San Francisco, when interviewed on Michael Kresnick's popular radio call-in show, Book Forum, I inadvertently aroused the anger of a number of individuals who called in to protest my passing remark that I didn't believe in evil–that I thought of evil as a theological term, not adequate to explain, nor even to suggest, psychological, social, and political complexities.
When we label someone as "evil," we are implicitly identifying ourselves as "good." The issue on the show was Islamic suicide bombers, who are surely motivated by political passions and so to call them merely evil is to fail to understand the phenomenon of terrorism. Though I said repeatedly that I wasn't defending terrorism but rather was questioning the terms in which it was being discussed, it seemed to make no difference; my critics remained angry and unplacated.
As a novelist I tend to be sympathetic with persons who are religious, though I can't share in their convictions. It has always been something of a mystery to me that intelligent, educated men and women–as well as the uneducated–can "have faith" in an invisible and nonexistent God.
Why, instead, is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind? Why don't humans place their faith in reason and in the strategies of skepticism and doubt, and refuse to concede to "traditional" customs, religious convictions, and superstitions?
One hundred years ago a gathering of secular freethinkers may have consisted of a majority of individuals who believed in the "perfectibility" of humankind. Following Charles Darwin's revolutionary work, scientists and educators like the distinguished T. H. Huxley believed in both biological and social/moral evolution. The optimism of the turn of the twentieth century is expressed in H.G. Wells' youthful Utopian work, though there is a check to that work in Wells' brilliantly conceived and executed "scientific romances" (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The War of the Worlds). By 1920 a more cautious note is sounded in Wells' monumental The Outline of History: "Human history becomes a race between education and catastrophe." By 1945, in The Mind at the End of Its Tether, the former Utopianist was predicting the destruction of human civilization, in a tone comparable to that of Sigmund Freud's late, melancholy essays in The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents. In fifty years, in the wake of not one but two devastating world wars, the Holocaust, and the revelation of the Nazis' genocidal agenda against Jews, the "perfectibility of mankind" would seem to have been turned inside-out.
And yet humankind, and humanism, prevails. And in succeeding generations I would like to predict that humanism–a secular, ethical analogue to traditional religions that lifts its gaze no higher than reason–will be the preeminent belief of humankind.
Question from the audience: I was first introduced to you by your 1969 novel, Them, and was blown away by the skill and the emotion and understanding that came across. Do you have a favorite among your works?
Joyce Carol Oates: That's a difficult question to answer. It is an interesting question because we tend to invest so much of our emotion and spirit into the work that we are involved in at the present time. Given the deep immersion into successive projects, it always seems what was done most recently looms the largest. So my latest novel, which is called The Gravedigger's Daughter, is very close to my heart. It's a fictitious account based upon my own grandmother's life. My grandmother had been the child of German Jews who came to this country in the 1890s, but they didn't settle in a large city or in the Jewish neighborhood. They went to a rural area in upstate New York, north of Buffalo along a snow belt, a kind of horrific place to settle for anybody. They changed their names and sort of decided they wouldn't be Jewish anymore and just erased their background.
And so as a girl, I had a wonderful grandmother, and she was the quintessential woman who lives for other people–very warm, very loving, and very generous. It never occurred to me when I was a girl that my grandmother had no background, no personal history. She never talked about very traumatic things in her childhood. This concept that people would come from another country having suffered so much and decide that they couldn't deal with it any longer and therefore expunge their memories is what the novel is about. What is the price that we pay for that kind of expunging of memory, where you are living in the present and in the future in America where we tend to invent and reinvent ourselves? This is the great question in the book. I guess I feel very close to that.
Q: I noticed that nobody uses the "A-word"– atheist–for you. Perhaps it is a step beyond nontheist or humanist. Do you identify as an atheist?
Oates: That's a good question. I have met Christopher Hitchens once or twice, and he has a book that I'm sure you've either read or are aware of titled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. He is very adversarial, very eloquent, and very funny in his interviews. And, of course, he is very much a self-declared atheist.
I'm not averse to acknowledging it, but as a novelist and a writer, I really don't want to confront and be antagonistic toward people. As soon as you declare that you are an atheist, it's like somebody declaring that he is the son of God; it arouses a lot antagonism. I'm wondering whether it might be better to avoid arousing this antagonism in order to find–not compromise–some common ground.
My good friend, Peter Singer, will declare that he is an atheist and there is a certain bluntness about him. He's also an animal rights person who will stand up and say very matter-of-factly, "I don't especially like animals." So it's a matter of personal style. Singer has also said there was a time when saying you were gay was confrontational. I think it depends upon the context and on what you want from your audience. My friend Norman Mailer has always felt that when you stand up before an audience, you have to arouse them, maybe to indignation or annoyance. And so he says things that accomplish just that. I'm simply not very confrontational.
Basically, I have characters who present different points of view. Some of them are extremely atheistic and irreverent, and mock religion, which seems very easy to do given the sort of cartoon or caricature aspect of people who have blind faith. Hitchens points out this comic aspect very well, and he is very funny about it. But if you do that, you demonize people and turn them into ridiculous objects. Again, I'm not sure that's a really good idea, because though you can say religion poisons everything, the fact is that religion seems to be hardwired in our species.
As I suggested in my earlier statements, people are baffled and terrified by the idea of death. They don't want to be extinct and they don't want to think that their possible extinction renders their entire lives without worth. Therefore, they project their wishes to some metaphysical zone and create a deity who assures them (and people like them) they'll live forever. As for the rest of us, we're going to hell so we don't really matter. But the deity seems a pure invention to us. I mean, for most of us it seems touching and poignant and childlike as an adventure. But to others it is an archetype lodged deeply into the unconscious. I think we all have this archetype in the unconscious, and to root it out and discuss it in a rational way is very healthy and very good. But I'm not sure it's a good idea to wave a red flag and annoy other people because we do have to live with them, even the very antagonistic and messianic fundamentalist Christians in our country.
Q: I have a question with regard to your description of H.G. Wells's evolution, from his early writings to his later work. I'm wondering if that reflects your notion that as one ages and moves on to more mature levels, one becomes more cynical about possibilities.
Oates: No, I think it was basically the time that Wells was living, not the fact that he got older. He lived through World War I and World War II, and then the evidence of the Holocaust was revealed. That is what I was indicating, that the end of the nineteenth century seemed to be a time when intelligent people could be very optimistic and actually believe in the perfectibility of humankind. Now it sounds like a bad joke. But, again, I didn't mean that as people got older they got more cynical. It was just the period of time.
Well, thank you very much. And don't get cynical.
Tags: humanism
Joyce Carol Oates is an acclaimed novelist, essayist, poet, dramatist, and reviewer. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and was the 2007 Humanist of the Year.


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Arts & CultureFlag Football
End-of-the-Year Awards for the Georgia Bulldogs
We'll miss you, Richard LeCounte. Credit: Kevin Snyder / UGA Athletics
by	Cy Brown	January 6, 2021
Thanks to a late Jack Podlesny 53-yard field goal—and an even later safety by Azeez Ojulari, for good measure—the Bulldogs beat Cincinnati 24–21 to claim the Peach Bowl. Thus ends the 2020 season with a final record of 8–2.
While I think we'd all be happy to have the year 2020 wiped from our collective consciousness, we should take a moment before we move on to the promise of the 2021 season to dole out some season-ending awards to some deserving Dawgs.
Dude Who Should've Played Sooner: JT Daniels. Our offense turned a corner after Daniels got the nod in the Mississippi State game. His ability to find the open receiver and remain cool and collected in late-down situations was in stark contrast to Stetson Bennett IV up to that point. He also provided us with the opportunity to hit the deep ball for the first time in Kirby Smart's tenure. Daniels finished the season with 1,231 yards passing, 10 touchdowns and just two picks. Extrapolate that to 12 games, and you're looking at one helluva full season. I'm excited to see what Todd Monken can cook up for him with an entire offseason as The Guy.
Dude Who Should've Been More Involved: Darnell Washington. Big No. 0 at tight end is a matchup nightmare. He finished the season with seven receptions for 166 yards, with five of those receptions coming in the final two games. We'll have a lot of talented receivers to cover on next year's team. Washington could be a problem for defenses if he gets lost in the mix.
Dudes I'm Happy Are Just Freshmen: Jalen Carter and Jermaine Burton. For my money, lineman Carter was the standout freshman on defense, while wideout Burton was the standout freshman on offense. Given another offseason of strength and conditioning work—as well as spring practice for the first time in their careers—and they could develop into some of the top players in the country at their positions.
Dude I Hate To See Leave (DGD Award): Richard LeCounte. There are a bunch of dudes from this team I hate to see go: Monty Rice, Azeez Ojulari, Eric Stokes and Ben Cleveland, to name a few. But LeCounte especially, because of the way he went out. The safety was Smart's first-ever commitment at Georgia and was the backbone of what became the winningest senior class in school history. He was a fixture in the secondary for four years until a motorcycle accident after the Kentucky game sidelined him for the rest of his senior season. By all accounts, he worked his ass off to get back to full health and play again, which he did on the final play of the Peach Bowl.
George Pickens Antic of the Year: Squirting a Tennessee Player. Pickens is childish, in the best possible sense of the word. I love the highlight-reel catches he makes, of which there are many, and I love the chaos he brings to the game. Which brings me to the time he squirted Tennessee QB Jarrett Guarantano with a water bottle following a scramble to the sideline. We've only got one more season of Pickens fun before he bolts for the NFL, so enjoy it.
Stadium That Shouldn't Have Had Fans In It: Sanford. I've made my thoughts clear on this a few times, but in case you didn't catch it, we definitely shouldn't have had fans at Sanford Stadium DURING A PANDEMIC. But as fate would have it, only three home games ended up taking place last season, which was probably for the best. Let's all hope we get this pandemic under control and next season we can (safely) pack Sanford with 92,000 hooting Dawgs fans.
Win of the Season: It's a Tie! All wins are good wins, in retrospect. (OK, that Kentucky game really sucked, but you get my point.) We went through a nine-game SEC schedule and emerged with seven wins, plus a bowl win over an undefeated team. Yes, I'd love to have another crack at Alabama and Florida with Daniels at quarterback, but life isn't fair and just sucks sometimes. This is the life of a Georgia fan.
But those wins are history, as is the 2020 season. So let's look forward to the ones we have coming next fall: whipping Clemson's ass to start with, then 13 more, and then another one.
BulldogsfootballUGA
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College Visit Planning: How to Ace The College Tour
By Julie Schuler
College is a home away from home for teens—academically, socially, and for those who live on campus, physically. So, when it comes to the selection process, an on-site tour can be one of the most important factors in deciding where to go. You can get a lot of information about a school online, but an in-person visit is the best way to get a feel for a school's culture or vibe.
Need more college tour preparation?
College Visit Checklist: 6 Ways to Make College Visits Successful
"It's never too early to start thinking about visiting colleges," says Brittany Scott, coordinator of campus visits at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Scott advises scheduling tours junior year, with follow-up visits to top choices senior year, if financially feasible. "The goal is to get a good feel for the university, ask questions, and find the right fit."
How Should You Prepare?
Whether or not your teen will be a first-generation college attendee, there's a lot to learn. "Parents may be 20 years removed from their college experience, and a lot has changed," says Kate Schwab, senior director of advising programs at College Now, a college access organization.
Part of the learning curve involves understanding what to expect from the college application process. Schwab recommends attending the orientation session provided by your high school guidance office before taking a college tour to get an understanding of the differences between private and public schools, types of degrees offered, need-based and merit-based aid, and more.
How Many Schools Should You Visit?
Parent Cathy Nicholson has been through the college visit process twice: her son is a sophomore at Oklahoma State University and her daughter is a senior in high school. Her experience with each child was different. "My daughter wanted to visit 10 schools; my son would have been fine with one," she says. "You have to adapt your expectations as a parent to the personality of your child."
Nicholson encouraged her son to look at two additional schools, including one in his home state. Schwab suggests three visits as a starting point. Try to see schools of different sizes, and maybe one that is urban and one that is rural. Students may not know what they prefer until they see it in person.
What Questions Should You Ask?
Scott recommends having a set of questions that you ask at every school. Be sure to ask about the basics: residential life, dining services, and campus culture—but don't stop there. Some of the questions she recommends asking your tour guide include:
What do you like most about your school?
What organizations are popular on campus?
What is the experience like for first-year students?
What are some of the work/study opportunities?
What job placement services are available after graduation?
What safety measures are on campus?
Can students have a car on campus?
How Do You Arrange a College Visit?
Nicholson encouraged both of her children to do the legwork when scheduling college tours. "College is a big responsibility, and it's important to let the student do as much as possible."
Most colleges offer online registration for visits on their website. For example, at BGSU, students can pull up a campus visit calendar to schedule tours with specific academic departments, like Business or Education.
Scott suggests finalizing the following logistics before the actual visit:
Read through the agenda so you know what to expect
Print out the agenda or have it on your phone
Know where to park and whether you will need a parking pass
Arrive about 20 minutes prior to your first session
10 Must-Do College Visit Tips to Get The Most Out of Your Campus Tour
"I also highly recommend that families explore the city or community off campus," she says. "Drive or walk into town. Make sure it's someplace that you feel comfortable. Often, when we ask people why they chose BGSU, the answers have a common theme: They felt like they belonged. That's the feeling you want with the school you choose."


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News Item, 17/06/2011 , Guetersloh: Reinhard Mohn Prize Awarded to Brazilian Citizen Participation Project
Chancellor Angela Merkel gives presentation speech
Dr. Thomas Wittek
"With its citizen participation program, the city of Recife shows how wide-ranging collaboration and partnership can be used to reduce the distance between policymakers and the public," said Dr. Gunter Thielen, CEO and chairman of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. "The program complements the city's representative democracy by allowing citizens to play a direct role in decision-making processes, together with city administrators. It's a very good example of how the public can get involved in government, an idea often advocated by Reinhard Mohn."
Since 2001, its citizens have been extensively involved in shaping Recife's development. More than 100,000 adults and young people participate every year in forums and on the Internet, making suggestions for urban development projects and monitoring them as they are implemented. They also set priorities in a number of policymaking areas. The participatory processes therefore allow the city to be present "on the ground" and to share responsibility with the public. To do so, it has built a comprehensive network of paid workers and volunteers, which ensures people are involved throughout the year in making and implementing decisions.
Located on Brazil's northeastern coast, Recife is the capital of the state of Pernambuco. Expansive beaches with ornate buildings stand opposite the city's slums, which are home to more than 50 percent of the population - a contrast often found in Brazil. The cornerstone for deliberative governance was laid in Brazil in the 1990s when 20 years of military dictatorship came to an end and democracy was introduced, thereby providing Recife with a chance to reorient itself politically. For the public, however, the change was seen as a chance to improve quality of life, something that was difficult to achieve with the limited public funds at the city's disposal. As a result, in 1993 Recife began trying to get the public more involved in decision-making processes - and thereby increase awareness of the problems the city was facing while further developing its democratic processes. The first comprehensive, long-term approach to citizen participation only appeared in 2001, however, when the Orcamento Participativo (Participatory Budget) was introduced.
In order to award the 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize, which focused on the topic "Vitalizing democracy through participation", the Bertelsmann Stiftung carried out a global search to identify government organizations that have been successful in including the public in political decision-making processes. A total of 123 institutions and communities applied. Of the seven finalists, Recife's Participatory Budget program received the most votes during the online voting.
About the Bertelsmann Stiftung:
The Bertelsmann Stiftung is dedicated to serving the common good. It executes projects in its four core areas of education, business and social affairs, health, and international relations, and strives to promote peaceful coexistence among the world's diverse cultures. Through the example of its civic engagement, it wants to encourage others to support their own communities as well. Founded in 1977 as a registered charity, the Bertelsmann Stiftung is majority shareholder of Bertelsmann AG. Structured as a private operating foundation, it is politically non-partisan and works independently of Bertelsmann AG. The Bertelsmann Stiftung currently employs 316 people and has a budget of approximately €60 million.
Speech Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011 Jörg Dräger (326 KB)
Speech Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011 Liz Mohn (203 KB)
Speech Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011 Gunter Thielen (214 KB)
Reinhard Mohn Preis 2011: Rede Gunter Thielen (90 KB)
Reinhard Mohn Preis 2011: Rede Liz Mohn (66 KB)
Reinhard Mohn Preis 2011: Rede Jörg Dräger (82 KB)
www.facebook.com/ buergerbeteiligung


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English Language and Linguistics (Hons), B.A.
University of the West of England (UWE Bristol)
Deadline passed Unknown (University site)
Unknown (University site)
13000 GBP/year
University rank #601 (WUR) Bristol, United Kingdom
English Language and Linguistics (Hons) at University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) combines an excellent learning environment with outstanding teaching and research.
You'll be taught by leading academics and published researchers at Frenchay Campus, with plenty of opportunities to immerse yourself in Bristol's vibrant culture. Explore the core areas of language and linguistics and develop specialist knowledge in areas such as discourse analysis, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, onomastics, rhetoric and creative writing.Work with academic staff on projects involving local communities, including Sounds Bristolian and Place Names research.
Apply your knowledge practically in a wide range of fields, including forensic linguistics, speech and language therapy, learning and teaching a second language, and analysing spoken discourse.
Careers / Further study
An English language and linguistics degree is highly regarded by employers and our graduates are in great demand.
You could go on to advise on and write government papers, company reports or doctors' communications with patients after this English Language and Linguistics (Hons) at University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) .
Other careers are available in the media, publishing, teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), forensic science, public relations, communications, human resources, education, speech and language therapy and journalism.
Always verify the dates on the programme website. programme website.
Applicants can make a 'late' UCAS application up until 30 June, and at UWE Bristol, we continue to accept applications to a course until it's full.
Duration description
Three years full-time; four years sandwich;
More information Go to the programme website
Courses included:
Constructing Language(s)
Meaning: Style and Discourse
Applying Linguistics: Forensic Analysis
English: Past, Present and Future
Studying Speech Communities
Analysing Culture: Language and the Visual
Language, Research and the Workplace
Pathway Courses
Some international students may need additional education in order to qualify for a degree. In conjunction with its partner organisation, Kaplan International Pathways, the University of West England, Bristol offers a number of entry route options for students, including undergraduate and postgraduate pathway courses.
A pathway course offers complete preparation for university-level study, and is taken at the UWE Bristol's International College. Upon successful completion of their course at the required level, students planning to progress are guaranteed a place on their chosen degree.
Tariff points: 120
GCSE: For all applicants, Grade C/4 or above in English Language, or equivalent. Please note the University does not accept Level 2 Key Skills, Functional Skills or Certificates in Adult Numeracy and Literacy as suitable alternatives to GCSEs.
A-level subjects: No specific subjects required. Points from A-Level General Studies and AS-Level subjects (not taken onto full A-Level) can be included towards overall tariff. You must have a minimum of two A-Levels.
Relevant subjects: English Language, English Literature, Modern Language/s, Psychology, Sociology
Based on the original amount of 13000 GBP per year and a duration of 36 months.
Living costs for Bristol
750 - 1260 GBP/month
The funding that you are eligible for depends on your fee status, the type of programme you are studying and when you start your UWE Bristol studies.
Please note: To be considered for a scholarship, you must hold an offer to study at the University and fulfil certain eligibility. The scholarship availability, amount and eligibility will depend on the country and/or region that you come from.
For the best chance of being considered for a scholarship, we recommend that you apply early for the course that you are interested in studying.
Visit the programme website for more information
(Hons) English Language
English Language Studies (Hons)
UCLan Cyprus
Larnaca, Cyprus
University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), United Kingdom
Find more information on the university website
View 328 other Bachelors in Linguistics in United Kingdom


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Murder she wrote - and plenty of it: Denise Mina on her career
Peter Guttridge
Denise Mina's Garnethill and Paddy Meehan novels are dark but compelling. She tells us what inspires her
Sat 28 Jul 2007 19.10 EDT First published on Sat 28 Jul 2007 19.10 EDT
'Crime is a very hard genre to feminise'... Denise Mina Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
'In the forensic science course I took at university they used photographs of dead bodies. For ballistics they showed us a guy lying on the floor, and his head had burst. With a shotgun, the air in the pellet expands so that if you shoot into the head the skull blows up. It was just mush but there was an eyeball lying there. What made it human, what made it moving, was the detail. And I really wanted to describe these scenes.'
Crime writer Denise Mina is talking about the starting point for her first novel, the award-winning Garnethill (1999), which she wrote when she was supposed to be working on her PhD at Strathclyde University. Mina and her present setting seem a million miles from such gruesome images. This friendly, funny mother-of-two is perched on the edge of a chair in the airy study of her spacious townhouse in the West End of Glasgow. One of her children is rampaging along the wide corridor outside the study door; her partner is baking bread in the kitchen. So far so normal. But those who know Mina's brilliant but gruelling Garnethill trilogy and the first two in her Paddy Meehan series know that her work is steeped in darkness.
The main character in her trilogy, Maureen O'Donnell, suffers and we suffer with her. The Field of Blood (2005), the first in the Paddy Meehan series, has a harrowing account of the murder of a child by older children. Mina's books have looked dispassionately at alcoholism, incest, mental illness and many forms of abuse.
Her new novel, The Last Breath, the third in the Meehan series, is set in 1990, when one of those child murderers is to be released from jail. Meehan, by now a successful columnist living in a posh flat, is offered big money to do an interview with him. She isn't inclined to do so, partly because her attention is elsewhere - a former lover has been murdered, possibly by the IRA. She has inherited his house and, more importantly, the notes for the last feature he was working on. The plotting is clever, the characterisations deep, and Glasgow is well captured. The novel is another brilliant exploration of the themes of family, friendship and justice.
Mina laughs ruefully at mention of her themes. 'Every time I write a book I despair because I say to myself, "You've written the same fucking book again!" Crime is a very hard genre to feminise. If you have a female protagonist she is going to be looking after her mum when she gets older; she is going to be worried about her brother and sister; she will be making a living while bringing up kids.'
For her, justice is a more complex issue related to the requirements of the crime genre: 'Crime fiction now is big enough not to need tidy resolutions. But an open-ended resolution has to be made to work in another way. The concept of justice goes with achieving a pleasing solution for the reader, one which doesn't just have the bad guy shot but which answers those questions about what is just. There's a deep-rooted belief in a just world - and that makes for good mental health - but all the evidence is that the world isn't just, so people have to shift reality all the time to get a sense of justice. And I think that's what crime fiction explores in a really deep way.'
Mina came to crime fiction after a contradictory childhood. Born in Scotland in 1966 to an engineer in the oil industry, she lived all across Europe until she was 16, going to boarding school in Perthshire and other schools in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Through friends of her parents in the diplomatic service she frequently attended children's parties at ambassadors' houses. At the same time she had a big, extended working-class family back in Glasgow. 'My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.' She was 'famously naughty' and rebellious at her various convent schools and left at 16. 'I smoked a lot and I was fat and quite sulky - that's a bad mix.'
Eventually she went to university to study law - 'that's a real working-class thing - if you go to university you have to do a vocational course' - but decided she didn't want to practise. 'I was 19 and really intense and I got quite disillusioned.' Then she came up with the idea for Garnethill. 'I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.'
She always intended it as a trilogy, partly because it was too big a family story to fit into one novel and partly because she liked the triptych form in art history. The completed trilogy - the other novels are Exile (2001) and Resolution (2002) -has received justifiable acclaim, but she's not tempted to return to her central character. 'That would be a betrayal, a reunion tour. And, to be honest, they were really dark books and I got really depressed writing them - I was fucking glad they were finished. I dearly miss Maureen and her brothers but I could never be that intense again. I like to think of Maureen having a nice, quiet time in the Highlands, going off for coffee and making bread.'
After a standalone thriller, Sanctum (2003), she pitched the idea of her current series, which will run to five novels. She 'really got into' the Paddy Meehan series but took on a number of other projects too, while pregnant with her second child. 'I wrote a play last year [Ida Tamson] and I've been commissioned to write another for the National Theatre of Scotland. And I started writing comics.'
Indeed, she was the first woman writer to do 12 instalments of comic-book series Hellblazer. 'I said I'd eat my own guts to write for Hellblazer. They said they hoped it wouldn't come to that. The series is about everything I'm interested in: theology, detective fiction, the gothic. The guy who draws it lives in Argentina so I was climbing over walls when I was heavily pregnant to film the sites I was using.'
She sees the Paddy Meehan series as a biography. 'Although in this new one it's not so much about her personality, it's about the events around her. She's more stable and static - that's daring for me. But I wanted to do the series as a biography of a character because I was interested in whether anyone ever changes and why?'
She laughs suddenly.
'I've met my best friend from 20 years ago through Friends Reunited and she said: "You haven't changed at all." I thought: "God - all this work I've done, all the crap I've gone through, all the personality traits I've tried to shed and I'm still the same!"'


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Home » Boston » Downtown
North End news site to cease publishing
By adamg on Thu, 09/24/2020 - 9:47am
Matt Conti reports he will be winding down his work on NorthEndWaterfront.com and he and his staff will stop posting new items altogether in January.
The site and its e-mail newsletter have been the main source of news for the North End - and the burgeoning waterfront area - since 2009, providing not just articles, but videos of community meetings and hearings, feature photos highlighting the unique events and scenes in the neighborhoods and a place for residents to discuss the news.
Simply put, the site has over-stretched our technical and part-time limits as an ad-hoc operation. Year after year, I wondered how long I could sustain this community news experiment. We scrambled to publish multiple articles daily without any full-time staff on a platform never intended to "scale," nor to be a decade-plus business project. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I decided we had to continue at least through year-end. From here, the site would need an untenable investment in people and technology. I have follow-on ideas, however, I do not plan to replace NorthEndWaterfront.com at this time.
Suffolk students in North End apartments...
By Friartuck on Thu, 09/24/2020 - 10:29am.
give sigh of relief.
In realted news...
By Gary C on Thu, 09/24/2020 - 10:48am.
Time to make your annual uHub contribution.
By tblade on Thu, 09/24/2020 - 11:24am.
With all the things we have to subscribe to in the digital age, it's refreshing to have a platform that never asks us for a subscription, never holds a quarterly pledge/membership drive, and doesn't market "premium" features behind a pay wall.
I contributed to UHub earlier this year (to my detriment, it was my first time).
We all subscribe to so many things we may feel stretched thin. And this isn't the most amazing economy. But, if you can, I encourage you to contribute to what has essentially become our favorite small-town newspaper.
By Allstonian on Thu, 09/24/2020 - 11:25am.
Better yet, consider setting up a small monthly donation.
He ran a great blog
By anony-mouse on Thu, 09/24/2020 - 2:15pm.
I mean, it was no U-Hub, but it was a really good website.
#DonateToUHub
First The Jewish Advocate,
First The Jewish Advocate, now this.
In other Downtown news
Police say teen who set cruiser on fire in the May 31 rampaging was arrested while trying to flee the country
Car flies off I-93 at the Zakim, lands on Leverett ramp, driver survives
New year but same old stuff: Red Line just not up to snuff
BPD clerk charged with overtime abuse, forging supervisor signatures
Citizen request of the day: Leave the Boston Common Christmas lights on
Two sought in connection with stabbing at Downtown Crossing T stop


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Indie Pogo Review – Smashing Jumps with Indies
Time to smash some indie heads!
Written by Jakejames Lugo on July 25, 2019 at 1:51 pm
Indie Pogo is the kind of game you get when you take the basic premise of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. and apply it to an ensemble of indie game mascots, then make them all jump around wildly. It's fun, fast, furious, and absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds. And yet that's part of the charm for a game that borrows so heavily from the big Nintendo mash up, but still makes it feel like a fresh idea. You might not know who every fighter that shows up is or where they're from, but you'll definitely come to remember them and maybe curious enough to learn more after playing a few matches of Indie Pogo.
It's not just about running around and beating up your opponents, Indie Pogo instead makes you jump around as if you were on a pogo stick. Surprisingly, this works very well and forces you to play around the arcs of your jumps and plan where you land, either on a platform or on someone's head. Punching and kicking can still happen, with characters having their own unique attacks, but it feels much different than in Smash Bros for all the right reasons. Every character also gets a powerful Super attack that charges up as you land attacks midair in succession, leading to some wild attacks with varying results. Some Supers look really cool taking up the whole screen, while others might not be as flashy but are super effective in sneaky ways.
Matches of Indie Pogo can be done in one-on-one bouts, teams, or with up to 4 fighters in a free-for-all. But unlike in Super Smash Bros. where you need to knock your opponent's off stage to score KOs, Indie Pogo allows you to either deplete a fighter's health bar or send them off the level to score knockouts. This allows fights to have more options to in achieving victory and keeps things from getting too dull.
The learning curve for getting good in Indie Pogo isn't steep, but it's no walk in the park either. You can casually pick up and play with anybody, but you'll need to be clever in order to use your attacks and abilities to get the most out of their effects. And luckily, the game has a great tutorial and Challenges that can show the ropes on how things are done. It doesn't take much to learn the basics, but there is still a definitive gap in skill levels between those who really look into the tech and strategies one can do.
The roster and stages are very interesting, especially if you've played any of the indie games that are featured. Many will recognize the likes of Shovel Knight, Lilac from Freedom Planet, and many others from the more popular indie games, but there's a lot of love for others not as widely known. The best part of this? You can find out more about each by hitting an option within the menus that takes you directly to a game's Steam page.
It's a neat way of allowing players to discover more about an indie game character they see or use in Indie Pogo, and even give them the option to purchase their original games. This is something other mash-up fighters can really learn from, especially those with obscure character inclusions. This also can be said for the stages you fight on, which are all pulled directly from different indie titles, not just the fighters themselves.
Speaking of which, there's a lot more indie love in here than you might think. You can unlock trophies and dossiers on characters from various games, even if they aren't added to the roster of playable fighters. And again, each one allows you to see and go purchase the game right on steam directly from the game itself. Most of this gets highlighted in the game's Shop. It's here you can unlock new fighters, stages, bonus outfits, sound clips, and even taunts to use during a match. This comes from using coins you gain after completing battles or any other game modes, so even if something looks a bit expensive to unlock you'll always have a number of options to get what you need to do so.
Outside of local play, which can be done with up to four CPUs or players, there's a single player Arcade Mode, Challenges, and Online Multiplayer to keep you busy. Arcade puts you into eight battles with a boss fight at the end, where you can earn coins and trophies for completing it. Again, this follows a very similar formula to Super Smash Bros. but the game attempts to mix things up with different kinds of fights as you go on. Challenges are scenarios where you must complete a task under specific criteria, which may or may not require you to use a given character. These can get tough and make you think about how you play, but are also rewarding if you manage to get through them.
And finally Online Play is exactly what it is. You can make rooms to play against others online and place on the leaderboards. It's not hard to get into a match, but there are the occasional hiccups when you can't find many people playing online. When you do manage to get other together for a rumble, everything works out very good. Some experiences may vary depending on how well your internet connection is, but you can still expect to find some good matches when going online.
Indie Pogo can be very fun and addicting. You don't have to be familiar at all with these indie characters, but sitting down for one match with any of them will show you how wacky and interesting they can be. The effort of collaboration to make all of this come together so well is a joy to see, especially with how well the game gives spotlight to every indie title that's included. The overall concept may be similar to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. in many ways, but that doesn't take away from the clever application of it to the indie gaming side of things. You can't go wrong diving into a few matches of Indie Pogo for some quick rounds, or taking time to really learn this simple, yet challenging game.
This review is based on a digital review code for Indie Pogo for Steam, provided by Lowe Bros Studios.
Review Scores Explained
Multiple indie games featured
Variety of stages and fighters
Great tutorial and challenges
Many unlockables and bonuses
Some difficulty spikes and learning curve
Online match experience will vary
Luigi's Mansion 3 Review – Spooky Hotel Hijinks
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Killer Queen Black Review – Queen's Guard on Switch
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Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King Review – Revisiting Classic Tales
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Freedom Planet Review – Heroes with More than Attitude
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From the Publisher of
The Adventures Continue
TAC, Jr. #45
The holidays are fast approaching, and this issue of TAC, Jr. is the final
scheduled one for the year. Of course, if anything special comes along, I'll
be sure to let you know.
1) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOEL
I'm sure all of you join me in wishing Noel Neill a very happy birthday as
she turns 80 this November 24.
2) SUPERMAN'S GHOST
From reader Jim Amash on October 22:
A week ago I went to see Don McLean in concert, and he sang "Superman's
Ghost." He introduced the song by talking about how he couldn't believe the
news about Reeves' death, saying, "Superman's not supposed to die. It can't
be true! These things aren't supposed to happen." He said the news about
Reeves always bothered him and that the song has to do not only with Reeves'
fate, but also about America and himself.
3) GEORGE REEVES ARTICLE IN NOVEMBER BIOGRAPHY MAGAZINE
Several readers informed me that there is an article about George Reeves on
page 32 in "Biography" magazine. There seems to be no new information in the
article, but, as TAC reader Steve Beckley says, "It's good to know that
after all this time, even people other than we die-hard fans find George's
story interesting!"
4) SARAH KENT -- FRANCES MORRIS
From TAC reader, Ken Dooley, November 5:
Just read an interesting interview in "Western Clippings" with Frances
Morris, the actress who played Sarah Kent in "Superman on Earth." Amazingly
she is still alive at age 95. She mentions that of all her work in
Hollywood, the "Superman" appearance is the one most often spoken about by
fans. Oddly enough, she also played a nurse in the film "So Proudly We
Hail." Another funny fact is that while she played George's mother in that
episode, she was only nine years older than he at the time. If you're
interested in westerns and are unfamiliar with "Western Clippings" magazine,
please contact Boyd Magers at vidwest@abq.com.
5) TV LAND SUPERMAN MARATHON DATE CHANGED
TAC, Jr. reader Janet Harbison reported to me that the date for the
"Superman" marathon on TV Land has been changed to December 9 - 10.
6) AND SPEAKING OF TV LAND
TV Land was quick to change its biography of Robert Shayne when daughter
Stephanie sent information regarding Bob's alleged communist connections,
but the web master there was less than cooperative when I pointed out a few
other mistakes.
a) The Jack Larson bio lists a credit for "The Dick Van Dyke Show." I
explained to TV Land that Jack Larson of "Superman" never appeared on that
series. As many of you know, a "Jack Larson" does appear in "Big Max
Calvada," episode #79 (first aired November 20, 1963), but that is not the
Jack Larson we know. I spoke with Jack about his several years ago. "I first
learned about the other Jack Larson when I applied to the Screen Actors'
Guild regarding some benefits and discovered I was credited with some jobs
I'd never done." Investigating further, Jack discovered that for a short
time, although it's against their rules, two Jack Larsons were members of
SAG. It was the other Jack Larson who appeared on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
When I pointed this out to TV Land, their response was:
<<As for your information regarding Jack Larson, if you take a moment to
look up Jack Larson's bio in the imdb (usually considered the most reliable
source of credit listings for actors) you will find some of the information
which appears in our bio of the man there as well.>>
To date, the biography of Jack Larson has not been changed, and TV Land
continues to misinform its readers.
7) AND YET MORE FROM TV LAND
Several TAC readers noticed that a photo of Phyllis Coates accompanies the
TV Land bios of both Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill. Thinking TV Land would
want to know about the error they made I sent them a short note. The
response from TV Land:
<<As for your concern regard the photos of Noel Neill and Phyllis Coates,
they come directly from the distributor with each actress named on the
print. We will not be amending them.>>
The next day I asked them to take a second look... and received a second
<<Unfortunately, with the case of the photos, we do not believe you to be
correct and the change will not be made.>>
And so Phyllis Coates' photo continues to appear atop Noel Neill's biography
on the TV Land web site.
8) VARIETY AD UPDATE
As reported on the web site, the cost for the 2001 "Variety" ad will be
$3000 if we choose to run it in the Los Angeles edition only and $4000 for
national distribution. I hope we can go national this time. As of today, our
total stands at $600. As in the past, any additional monies will be donated
to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation in George's name. Every contributor will
have his/her name listed on both the web site and the ad itself. Please
don't forget about this project. I'll remind you often and keep you informed
of our progress on the main page of my web site and on the anniversary ad page.
9) METROPOLIS AND MAYBERRY
I promised to have Randy Garrett's article finished before this, but I've
been putting in some extra hours at work and was unable to give it my full
attention. Rather than have you wait even longer, I've decided to post what
I have and promise to complete it in the coming weeks. You can see the first
installment by clicking on the link shown on the main page.
10) THE END -- PUBLISHED IN LITITZ, USA
All contents (c) 2000 by Jim Nolt.
PS -- Wishing all of you a most joyous holiday season. See you in January.


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Ex-Mossad chief signals Israel attacked Iran nuclear assets
FILE - In this July 3, 2016, file photo, Yossi Cohen, then the director of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, attends the funeral in Jerusalem of a rabbi killed by Palestinian gunmen. Cohen, the outgoing chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence service, offered the closest acknowledgment yet his country was behind a series of recent attacks targeting Iran's nuclear program and a military scientist in a television interview aired Thursday, June 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
June 10, 2021, 11:22 PM ·4 min read
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The outgoing chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence service has offered the closest acknowledgment yet his country was behind recent attacks targeting Iran's nuclear program and a military scientist.
The comments by Yossi Cohen, speaking to Israel's Channel 12 investigative program "Uvda" in a segment aired Thursday night, offered an extraordinary debriefing by the head of the typically secretive agency in what appears to be the final days of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rule.
It also gave a clear warning to other scientists in Iran's nuclear program that they too could become targets for assassination even as diplomats in Vienna try to negotiate terms to try to salvage its atomic accord with world powers.
"If the scientist is willing to change career and will not hurt us anymore, than yes, sometimes we offer them" a way out, Cohen said.
Among the major attacks to target Iran, none have struck deeper than two explosions over the last year at its Natanz nuclear facility. There, centrifuges enrich uranium from an underground hall designed to protect them from airstrikes.
In July 2020, a mysterious explosion tore apart Natanz's advanced centrifuge assembly, which Iran later blamed on Israel. Then in April of this year, another blast tore apart one of its underground enrichment halls.
Discussing Natanz, the interviewer asked Cohen where he'd take them if they could travel there. Cohen said "to the cellar" where "the centrifuges used to spin."
"It doesn't look like it used to look," he added.
Cohen did not directly claim the attacks, but his specificity offered the closest acknowledgement yet of an Israeli hand in the attacks. The interviewer, journalist Ilana Dayan, also seemingly offered a detailed description in a voiceover of how Israel snuck the explosives into Natanz's underground halls.
"The man who was responsible for these explosions, it becomes clear, made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed," Dayan said. "As they install this foundation within the Natanz facility, they have no idea that it already includes an enormous amount of explosives."
They also discussed the November killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist who began Tehran's military nuclear program decades ago. U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency believe Iran abandoned that organized effort at seeking a nuclear weapon in 2003. Iran long has maintained its program is peaceful.
While Cohen on camera doesn't claim the killing, Dayan in the segment described Cohen as having "personally signed off on the entire campaign." Dayan also described how a remotely operated machine gun fixed to a pickup truck killed Fakhrizadeh and later self-destructed.
Cohen described an Israeli effort to dissuade Iranian scientists from taking part in the program, which had seen some abandon their work after being warned, even indirectly, by Israel. Asked by the interviewer if the scientists understood the implications if they didn't stop, Cohen said: "They see their friends."
They also talked about Israel's operation seizing archival documents from Iran's military nuclear program. Dayan said 20 agents, none Israelis, seized material from 32 safes, then scanned and transmitted a large portion of the documents. Cohen confirmed that the Mossad received most of the material before it was physically taken out of Iran.
Cohen defended Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to go public with the results of the operation, going against a long-standing practice of secrecy involving Mossad activities.
"It was important to us that the world will see this, but this thing should also resonate with the Iranian leadership, to tell them, 'Dear friends: One, you have been infiltrated. Two, we see you.. Three, the era of ... lies is over,'" Cohen said.
Media in Israel operate under a decades-old policy that requires journalists to clear stories involving security matters through military censors. That Cohen's remarks apparently cleared the censors suggests Israel wanted to issue a new warning to Iran amid the Vienna nuclear negotiations.
Iran has repeatedly complained about Israel's attacks, with Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Kazem Gharibabadi warning as recently as Thursday that the incidents "not only will be responded to decisively, but also certainly leave no option for Iran but to reconsider its transparency measures and cooperation policy."
Shahrokh Nazemi, a spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations, told The Associated Press early Saturday that Cohen's comments reflected a long-running pattern of "criminal" sabotage against Tehran that includes the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Natanz over a decade ago.
"This lawlessness has reached a point when the former official of this regime is shamelessly and blatantly threatening our nuclear scientists with death," Nazemi said. "This madness must not be tolerated."
Cohen, who was replaced by former operative David Barnea, acknowledged in the interview he might one day seek the prime minister's office himself.
Associated Press writer Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.


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Saving the Ends of the Earth
By Bryan Walsh @bryanrwalshApril 16, 2012
Courtesy of Wildlife Conservation Society
I could barely make out Steve Sanderson over the winds howling into the satellite phone. Sanderson, the head of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), was calling from Tierra del Fuego in Chile, an island off the very southernmost tip of South America. Other than Antarctica, you can't get further away from civilization and still be on land than Tierra del Fuego, yet the island has come under the same kind of development pressure that other wild places are experiencing. That's what has brought Sanderson and WCS to Tierra del Fuego, where this month the group announced a partnership with the government of Chile to cooperate in management of protected areas on Tierra del Fuego—including the island's first trekking trail, which could become a mecca for ecotourists. "We're hoping we can make it a major ecotourism destination," says Sanderson. "It's a truly beautiful, beautiful area."
(MORE: Indonesia Punishes Wildlife Traffickers)
WCS already had a strong conservation program in Chile and Tierra del Fuego, where it manages Karukinka, a nearly 300,000-hectare protected area on the island. Karukinka was actually donated to WCS in 2004 by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, and it's a special area, containing the world's southernmost old-growth forest, as well as wildlife like the Andean condors, elephant seals, dolphins and the endangered culpeo fox. It's also important for global warming—Sanderson points out that the peatlands on the island contain some 300 million metric tons of sequestered organic carbon, and need to be protected to keep that gas from escaping into the atmosphere. "It's more than a feel good story," says Sanderson. "It's meaningful for the whole planet."
Most of us will never get to visit a place as remote and as beautiful as Tierra del Fuego—though get down there if you can. But we all benefit when the very special places of the planet are placed under protection.
MORE: How U.S. Soldiers Are Fueling the Endangered Species Trade


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27. Lord Wellesley
Lord Wellesley (as Governor General) came to India in 1798 at a time when the British were locked in a life and death struggle with France all over the world.
He decided that the time was ripe for bringing as many Indian states as possible under British control. By 1797, the two strongest Indian powers, Mysore and the Marathas, had declined in power.
The Third Anglo-Mysore war had reduced Mysore to a mere shadow of its recent greatness and the Marathas were dissipating their strength in mutual intrigues and wars.
Political conditions in India were propitious for a policy of (British) expansion: aggression was easy as well as profitable.
Administrative Plans of Wellesley:
To achieve his political aims, Wellesley relied on three methods i.e.
1. The system of Subsidiary Alliances
2. Outright wars
3. Assumptions of the territories of previously subordinated rulers.
The doctrine of subsidiary alliance was introduced by Lord Wellesley.
Under the subsidiary alliance system, the ruler of the allying Indian State was compelled to accept the permanent stationing of a British force within his territory and to pay a subsidy for its maintenance.
Subsidiary Alliance:
In reality, by signing a Subsidiary Alliance, an India state virtually signed away –
Its independence
The right of self-defense
Maintaining the diplomatic relations
Employing foreign experts
Settling its disputes with its neighbors.
As a consequence of Subsidiary Alliance, lakhs of soldiers and officers were deprived of their hereditary livelihood, spreading misery and degradation in the country.
Many of the unemployed soldiers joined the roaming bands of Pindarees which were to ravage the whole of India during the first two decades of the 19th century.
The Subsidiary Alliance system was, on the other hand, extremely advantageous to the British. They could now maintain a large army at the cost of the Indian states.
Lord Wellesley signed his first Subsidiary Treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1798.
The Nizam was to dismiss his French-trained troops and to maintain a subsidiary force of six battalions at a cost of £ 241,710 per year. In return, the British guaranteed his state against Maratha encroachments.
In 1800, the subsidiary force was increased and, in lieu of cash payment, the Nizam ceded part of his territories to the Company.
The Nawab of Avadh was forced to sign a Subsidiary Treaty in 1801. In return for a larger subsidiary force, the Nawab was forced to surrender to the British nearly half of his kingdom consisting of Rohilkhand and the territory lying between the Rivers Ganga and the Yamuna.
Wellesley dealt with Mysore, Carnatic, Tanjore, and Surat even more sternly.
Tipu of Mysore would, of course, never agreed to a Subsidiary Treaty. On the contrary, he had never reconciled himself to the loss of half of his territory in 1791. He worked incessantly to strengthen his forces for the inevitable struggle with the British.
Tipu Sultan entered into negotiations for an alliance with Revolutionary France. He sent missions 'to Afghanistan, Arabia, and Turkey to forge an anti-British alliance.
Lord Wellesley was no less determined to bring Tipu to heel and to prevent any possibility of the French re-entering India.
Tipu still refused to beg for peace on humiliating terms. He proudly declared that it was "better to die like a soldier, than to live a miserable dependent on the infidels, in the list of their pensioned, rajas and Nawabs." Tipu met a hero's end on 4 May 1799 while defending his capital Seringapatam. His army remained loyal to him to the very end.
Nearly half of Tipu's dominions were divided between the British and their ally, the Nizam. The reduced kingdom of Mysore was restored to the descendants of the original rajas from whom Haidar Ali had seized power.
A special treaty of Subsidiary Alliance was imposed on the new Raja by which the Governor-General was authorized to take over the administration of the state in case of necessity.
An important result of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was the complete elimination of the French threat to British supremacy in India.
In 1801, Lord Wellesley forced a new treaty upon the puppet Nawab of Carnatic compelling him to cede his kingdom to the Company in return for a handsome pension.
The Madras Presidency as it existed till 1947 was created, by attaching the Carnatic to territories seized from Mysore and Malabar.
The territories of the rulers of Tanjore and Surat were taken over and their rulers pensioned off.
The Marathas were the only major Indian power left outside the sphere of British control. Wellesley now turned his attention towards them and began aggressive interference in their internal affairs.
Chiefs of Maratha Empire:
The Maratha Empire (during the Wellesley time) consisted of a confederacy of five big chiefs, namely –
The Peshwa at Poona
The Gaekwad at Baroda
The Sindhia at Gwalior
The Holkar at Indore
The Bhonsle at Nagpur
The Peshwa was the nominal head of the confederacy.
Unfortunately, the Marathas lost nearly all of their wise and experienced leaders towards the close of the 18th century.
Mahadji Sindhia, Tukoji Holker, Ahilya Bai Holker, Peshwa Madhav Rao II, and Nana Phadnavis, the people who had kept the Maratha confederacy together for the last 30 years, all were dead by the year 1800
indianhistorylordwellesletmodernindiahistory
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Community engagement and involvement (CEI)
CEI is an integral part of our work with our partners in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Community engagement and involvement
How do our CEI groups work?
Community Engagement and Involvement (CEI) refers to engaging patients and members of the public in research, so they can provide their input in the design, implementation and dissemination of research and services affecting them, improving the quality and relevance of research (INVOLVE).
CEI has been an integral part of our work with our partners in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Partners from LAMRN have worked with the UK team to identify participants for CEI groups in each country. The groups comprise bereaved parents from a variety of backgrounds who have experience of stillbirth and newborn death and have recently used maternity services. Across the network these parents share a willingness to use their own experiences to support research which aims to improve services for others in the future.
Our partners in each country have delivered training to CEI groups to help them understand the research process. Each group nominated leaders with a remit to link the research team with target communities. CEI groups meet regularly and interact with local and UK research teams. The groups and individuals have gained confidence through the process and have made important contributions to all stages of the research process. Members have enthusiastically embraced their important role in the development of stillbirth research, working together towards change that will positively impact on outcomes for women and families in the future.
How has CEI played a role in our research?
CEI has already delivered positive results in our partner countries. For instance, in Uganda, the group reviewed and improved qualitative research interview topic guides, so that interviews were conducted in a sensitive way and questions were asked in a way that they were easy to understand for women and their partners. The CEI group in Kenya have helped the research team interpret data, confirming the most important findings resonating with their own experiences of care.
In each country the CEI groups inform research and help to develop interventions for the next phase of the programme. Participants represent their groups at country stakeholder meetings.
How has CEI raised awareness of stillbirth in communities?
CEI groups have helped to raise awareness of stillbirth in local communities by speaking at community and church meetings. They have been influential in raising the issue with local leaders, with the Zambia group producing a play around stigma women face in communities. This has helped to reduce some of the stigma associated with discussing stillbirth. Our CEI groups are also represented on country stakeholder groups.


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Dragon Curse (The Unwanteds Quests #4) (Paperback)
By Lisa McMann
(- AGES 8 TO 12)
This is book number 4 in the The Unwanteds Quests series.
#1: Dragon Captives (The Unwanteds Quests #1) (Paperback): $8.99
#2: Dragon Bones (The Unwanteds Quests #2) (Paperback): $8.99
#3: Dragon Ghosts (The Unwanteds Quests #3) (Paperback): $8.99
#5: Dragon Fire (The Unwanteds Quests #5) (Paperback): $8.99
#6: Dragon Slayers (The Unwanteds Quests #6) (Hardcover): $18.99
#7: Dragon Fury (The Unwanteds Quests #7) (Hardcover): $18.99
Kobo eBook (September 2nd, 2019): $8.99
Hardcover (September 3rd, 2019): $18.99
Ten years after Alex and Aaron Stowe brought peace to Quill and Artimé, their younger twin sisters journey beyond Artimé in the fourth novel in the New York Times bestselling sequel series to The Unwanteds, which Kirkus Reviews called "The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter."
At last, after harrowing battles and devastating losses, the three Stowe siblings are reunited. Back in Artimé, however, their joy at finding one another is short lived. Fifer loses her leadership position and struggles to find her place and purpose, while Thisbe is relentless in her determination to return to the land of the dragons and help Rohan rescue the other black-eyed children. Aaron fails to ward off increasing opposition from a resentful Frieda Stubbs and the dissenters, leading to a shocking and dangerous turn.
Meanwhile the Revinir pursues Thisbe and Drock all the way to the seven islands, putting the people of Artimé in peril. To save them, Thisbe makes an unthinkable sacrifice that leaves Fifer, Aaron, and the others to face political eruption and destruction in the formerly peaceful magical world.
Lisa McMann lives in Arizona. She is married to fellow writer and musician, Matt McMann, and they have two adult children. Her son is an artist named Kilian McMann and her daughter is an actor, Kennedy McMann. Lisa is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen books for young adults and children. So far she has written in genres including paranormal, realistic, dystopian, and fantasy. Some of her most well-known books are The Unwanteds series for middle grade readers and the Wake trilogy for young adults. Check out Lisa's website at LisaMcMann.com, learn more about The Unwanteds Series at UnwantedsSeries.com, and be sure to say hi on Instagram or Twitter (@Lisa_McMann), or Facebook (Facebook.com/McMannFan).
Series: The Unwanteds Quests
Juvenile Fiction / Animals / Dragons, Unicorns & Mythical
Compact Disc (September 3rd, 2019): $43.99