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The Quiet American
March 1, 2007 by Todd Bensman
Ever since fellow agents accused Gamal Abdel Hafiz of refusing to wear a wire to record other Muslims, one of the nation's best counter-terrorism agents lived a nightmare in the glare of the national media. Trouble was; the claims were never true, a small fact that was left out – until now.
Gamal Abdel-Hafiz was once one of the most valuable counter-terrorism assets the FBI had.
He turned up the names of half the Al Qaida conspirators who planned the USS Cole bombing in 2001. He was the agent who, with a single skillfully executed interrogation in Bahrain, broke open the Lackawanna Six case in 2002, which President Bush touted as the biggest success to that
point in the War on Terror. He'd worked closely with the New York-based I 49 squad to help bust one of the Africa embassy bombers. He also happened to be the first ever Muslim Arab immigrant FBI agent, on a first-name basis with an ever appreciative Director Louis Freeh.
But by 2003, he'd been fired and disgraced, all but branded a traitor repeatedly in the national media. Two Chicago FBI agents had gone public questioning the loyalty of their Egypt-born and educated Muslim colleague, on program such as ABC's Primetime and The O'Reilly Factor, and in the pages of Newsweek, Time and The Wall Street Journal. Everywhere. The alarming story they framed surely merited press scrutiny coming as it had from two active field agents: A Muslim FBI agent – Abdel-Hafiz – had on two occasions refused direct orders, on religious grounds, to wear a hidden body recorder to interview targets of terrorism investigations during the late 1990s. One of these investigations involved possible money laundering to Osama bin Ladin's Al Qaeda. "A Muslim does not record another Muslim," he'd supposedly been caught saying in a moment of indiscretion.
Then, the story line went, rather than investigate Abdel-Hafiz as a double agent, politically correct FBI bureaucrats promoted him to a sensitive frontline post in Saudi Arabia, where he was presumed to be doing national security damage in the critical time after 9-11. That unchallenged theme buzzed through the Internet and mainstream media well into 2003. Abdel-Hafiz was a traitor. He was a mole. Abdel-Hafiz should be strung up.
Throughout the humiliating public drubbings, Abdel-Hafiz had followed orders to keep his mouth shut, which only conspired to support the appearance of guilt. But in October of that year, he let a reporter into his suburban Dallas home to finally speak at length about the media charges of treasonous acts.
"Unfortunately, because I respected my agency, and I respected my obligation to my agency to not respond, it was taken for granted that I was guilty of these accusations," he said. "A lot of people in the media and on the Internet took it and flew with it, and they spoke out of ignorance."
He turned his eyes to the wall of a home office. "The proudest day of my life," he said with a noticeably foreign accent, looking at the photo of himself shaking the hand of then Director Freeh. It was 1996. Graduation day at Quantico. "It really was a very emotional moment for me, knowing I was the very first Muslim FBI agent in the history of the FBI. It was really something that I will never forget."
Occasionally, social inhibitions collapsed in a flaring anger that help explain his actions in the years since.
"I did not only lose my job. I lost my dignity, my reputation," he barked at one point, slapping a palm hard on a desk. "I lost self respect, for myself and my family, because of the accusations."
It was all "a fabricated lie!"
There was scant press notice when Abdel-Hafiz was reinstated to the FBI a few months later. Today, the reputed traitor is back in counter-terrorism, quietly working out of the Dallas field office. He can't talk publicly anymore, as an agent. But he's been waging a war in addition to the one on global terrorism ever since – in the Texas court system.
He aims to reclaim a reputation he says has remains sullied in the collective public mind, with defamation lawsuits against his former colleagues and some big-name TV personalities: O'Reilly and ABC correspondent Brian Ross among others.
The FBI agent has been kicking up a lot of dust, dragging people like O'Reilly, Ross and their producers into deposition rooms outside of public view, tearing apart their reporting, challenging their reputations.
From the depositions and subpoenaed reporters' notes, as well as interviews with a broad spectrum of current and former FBI officials, a maddeningly story emerges. It is that, as Abdel-Hafiz said, the press reports about him were mostly dead wrong. About his supposed refusal to secretly record Muslim targets. About all of it.
The national press corps failed by brushing off or failing to explore information the FBI repeatedly offered about the Abdel-Hafiz affair at the height of coverage. The FBI handled the story as well as it could, given that any definitive refutation of what was being reported would have required divulging classified material. But the FBI had in fact cooperated to a surprising degree; its message just wasn't embraced.
As producer notes and depositions show, the bureau held lengthy background briefings and released statements brimming with compelling leads that begged exploration but were instead inexplicably scoffed away. Key among these FBI-provided rebuttals was the drowned out assertion that wearing a wire to record certain subjects would have compromised a unique operation Abdel-Hafiz was conducting in Dallas in the years leading up to 9-11. Americans were left to wonder if the FBI was compromised in the nation's moment of peril when no one bothered to ask what that mission was or how ordering Abdel-Hafiz to wear a wire might compromise it.
Another FBI rebuttal contrasted starkly to the repeated media assertions that Abdel-Hafiz had refused direct orders; it was his commanders, not he, who had cast the decision not wear a wire, again because of the risk to the Dallas operation no one wanted to know about.
And lastly, the bureau's citation as further grounds for not wearing a wire was that Abdel-Hafiz had endured threats to his family's life, both in the U.S. and in Egypt. Though roundly ignored, it turns out that these lethal threats, considering the Islamists who were issuing them, had a high degree of merit. But the details never made air.
Had reporters bothered to follow up on any of the FBI's offerings, the resulting facts would most certainly have stood in the way of a good story. Instead, says retired Danny Defenbaugh, who headed the Dallas FBI field office and was Abdel-Hafiz's boss at the time, "It was a shark frenzy. They [media outlets] decided to just go ahead and trash him."
Nothing in Gamal Abdel-Hafiz's background suggests he ever harbored any sympathy toward radical Islam.
He was the youngest of seven children, six brothers and a sister, raised in Cairo's small but relatively privileged middle class. His father held a partnership in a textile factory that supported regular expansions of the family's five-story home. He was a deeply religious man who'd memorized the Koran.
But Abdel-Hafiz's father, who had served in the military under British colonial rule, had picked up a thing or two in his own youth that would turn him against the anti-west, pan-Arab ideology that would take hold of Egypt under President Gamal Nasser. Abdel-Hafiz's father believed in the value of secular education because, as he often preached, it was the only way to avoid the poverty many Egyptians suffered.
His brothers and sisters received public education, but Abdel-Hafiz attended a premier Christian school run by the Coptic Church, the church of Egypt. Later, he attended a private high school run by the Greek Orthodox Church. Growing up in this diverse environment insulated Abdel-Hafiz from the radical Islam preached in some mosques, and his father saw no place for political ideology in the family's religion. "Half my friends throughout my education were Christians," Abdel-Hafiz said in 2003. "It eliminated the barrier between Islam and Christianity."
After graduation, Abdel-Hafiz drifted. His father pushed him to become an English interpreter. So Abdel-Hafiz enrolled in the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University, not because it was an Islamic school but because it was the only institution in the country that offered a degree in "simultaneous interpretation." The university, which offered secular programs in medicine and engineering, was not known as an incubator for lethal radical movements, although it has matriculated the founding leaders of some violent underground organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Black Hand.
Abdel-Hafiz settled into more benevolent territory on campus – the languages department.
The popular young man was soon elected to the university's apolitical student union. Friends say he had a charismatic, almost bubbly personality that drew people closer, invited their confidence. He had a stern side as a moderately observant Muslim. He never drank or gambled or chased women, and he tried to go to the Mosque on Fridays. Still, he often let loose his high-pitched giggle, and he never forgot a name.
It was as a student leader that he heard about Mohammad Elmougy, another young man studying English and one who, coincidentally, years later, would move to Dallas and rekindle the friendship. At university, Elmougy one day argued with an autocratic faculty member. The teacher retaliated by essentially deleting Elmougy's grades for the year. Abdel-Hafiz came to Elmougy's defense, at considerable risk to his own academic future. The intervention was unsuccessful. But Elmougy never forgot it. "He has a strong sense of right and wrong," Elmougy says. "That's always been the kind of man he is."
With his father's financial help, Abdel-Hafiz and a group of friends traveled to New York in 1980 to take more translation classes. In 1984, following graduation and a compulsory stint in the Egyptian army, he immigrated to a Dallas suburb. He got involved in a local mosque. Before long, the same appealing personality traits that had made him a popular student leader in college were working for him again. He was embraced in mosque social circles and settled into Dallas for the long haul. Elmougy, now a hotelier, immigrated some years later to the Dallas area and was pleased to find that his old college advocate was once again well-regarded.
"He was involved and well-respected," Elmougy says. "There were a lot of times that feuding people would go to him to work out their problems. I used to joke with him that he knew everybody, and that it would always take an hour to leave the mosque because of everyone always wanting to chit chat with Gamal."
He landed a job with Southland Corporation as a management trainee for 7-Eleven. He took over unprofitable stores in some of Fort Worth's toughest neighborhoods and turned them around. His new wife, Bertie Ann Martin, a West Texas native, worked as a cashier alongside him.
Neil Dahl, Abdel-Hafiz's boss at Southland, says his charm with customers, work ethic and the sandwiches he and Bertie prepared each day never failed to turn troubled stores in top performers.
"People would stand in lines just for those sandwiches of theirs," Dahl says. "He was always such a happy type guy. You never saw Gamal frowning."
Abdel-Hafiz's ability to handle thieves and root out dishonest employees, while also endearing himself to the community, soon put him at the top of Southland's salary range. But he longed for a less stressful, more cerebral line of work. He quit Southland in March 1990, the same month he received his U.S. citizenship, and began a yearlong contract position as a translator in Saudi Arabia for an American company that provided fitness training to Saudi air defense personnel. He was in Saudi Arabia during the build-up to the Gulf War. After the start of the U.S. air campaign, the newly minted American felt compelled to contact the American consulate to offer his services free of charge to the American troops. But the war ended before his application could be processed.
The Saudi contract ended in April 1991, and Abdel-Hafiz returned to Fort Worth to work for awhile again at Southland while sending applications out to government agencies in the market for Arabic translators. Few were – until the first terror attack by radical Islamists on U.S. soil in 1993.
Terrorists had almost taken down the World Trade Center in New York. The FBI, suddenly desperate for Arabic language translators, hired Abdel-Hafiz and assigned him almost exclusively to the investigation and prosecution of a fellow Egyptian known as the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, for the bombing.
Abdel-Hafiz and his wife packed their bags for New York.
For nearly a year, Abdel-Hafiz put in 70- to 80-hour weeks interpreting the surveillance gathered during the FBI's most intensive terrorism investigation to date. Outside of the bureau, his work was unknown until the day he took the stand as a prosecution witness in January 1995. The next day, informants reported a credible threat against Abdel-Hafiz that would haunt him for years and partly account for his later reluctance to wear a wire in certain circumstances.
Andy McCarthy, the lead prosecutor in the government's trial, called him to the office and laid it out. An FBI informant inside the Flatbush Avenue Mosque had overhead discussions among close associates of the sheik. The men were upset that a Muslim and fellow Egyptian would take the stand against the Sheik, who happened also to be an alum of Al-Azhar University. They also believed Abdel-Hafiz was no translator but rather a secret intelligence officer for the pro-American Egyptian government. They planned to assassinate Abdel-Hafiz and possibly target his family back in Egypt.
McCarthy offered to let Abdel-Hafiz withdraw from the case so he wouldn't have to testify. McCarthy said he'd provide Abdel-Hafiz a two-man protective detail and the costs of relocating him to a city of his choice. Abdel-Hafiz refused.
"I'm not going to let someone force me to change my whole life against my will," Abdel-Hafiz said. "Threats like this are part of my job."
Still, he feared greatly for his family in Egypt. He called his older brother in Cairo that night and warned him that the Sheik's organization might try to harm the family. Abdel-Hafiz asked his brother to move to a safe place his college file, which contained family information and a home address.
He went on to testify against the Blind Sheik 18 times over the next 10 months. A jury convicted the Sheik of masterminding the attack and sentenced him to life in prison in October 1995.
The World Trade Center bomber highlighted the FBI's need for Muslim Arab agents. It had none. And this was by design, even if veteran agents publicly deny so. The FBI considered Muslims to be unreliable, more likely to become moles, and favored Arab Christians as interpreters instead. But that thinking had to change, says Oliver "Buck" Revell, who headed the FBI's counter-terrorism division for 11 years during the 1980s and 1990s.
"We've used Italian-American agents, who spoke fluent Sicilian, to penetrate the mob," Revell says. "We've used Russian-speaking agents to penetrate the Russian mob. That's the same thing you have to do with any ethnically separated population. And collecting information from within the Arab-American community suddenly became very important after '93."
FBI recruiters sought out Abdel-Hafiz, who was already in the fold and had proven himself capable and cool under fire on a nationally watched case. He graduated from the academy in 1996, the same year he and Bertie divorced, citing irreconcilable differences. A video of the graduation ceremony shows Abdel-Hafiz smiling broadly, striding straight-backed across the stage and, to the applause of his fellow graduates, receiving his badge and certificate from FBI Director Freeh.
When they asked where he wanted to be based, Abdel-Hafiz didn't hesitate. He was heading to the admiring community of Arab Muslims he'd left behind in Dallas, this time toting a sidearm and shiny new badge.
Dallas at the time seethed with radical Islamists. It had served as the communications hub for the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. One Dallas grocery clerk, Eyad Ismoil, was convicted of driving the explosives-bearing truck into the basement. His associates were still here. So was Wadih el Hage, a top Osama bin Ladin lieutenant later convicted of U.S. embassy bombings in Africa. Also in Dallas, allegedly, were leaders of the terrorist group Hamas. American and Israeli intelligence investigated Islamic charities in Richardson believed to comprise the U.S. headquarters for Hamas. (One of the charities, the Holy Land Foundation, is set to go to trial this July.) Hezbollah sympathizers were operating, too, running clandestine fundraising in North and East Texas in the late 1990s.
To deal with the activity, the Dallas field office built the largest joint counter-terrorism task force in the country. When Abdel-Hafiz joined it, a deep distrust of the force had spread through the Muslim community and reliable informants were nonexistent. The situation was hampering intelligence. In Abdel-Hafiz, FBI strategists found a unique commodity to be exploited. He was observant, already well regarded in the Islamic communities of North Texas, and with a lengthy rolodex.
"He was honest before he worked for the FBI, and everybody knew about his honesty," says Jamal Qaddurra, a longtime activist at Abdel-Hafiz's old mosque in Arlington. "And even after he came back as an FBI agent, I can promise you that everybody, including members of every mosque, approached him, talked to him, and invited him to their homes. The comfort zone was there."
Knowing this, the FBI gave Abdel a role it had given no other agent, past or present. It would be this assignment that others in some distant field offices chose would seem not to comprehend when it was cited as a reason for Abdel-Hafiz not to wiretap other Muslims.
His mission was to circulate in his community, openly advertising himself as a member of the FBI. He would give assurances that their common religious bond made him trustworthy to take information in confidence.
It wasn't long before field offices across the country were calling on Abdel-Hafiz to use his network of connections to confirm associations or make identifications for their own investigations. Word also spread among other cities' Muslim populations: There was a Dallas agent could be trusted. "They would talk to him," says Charlie Storey, a retired Dallas cop who for years worked on task force counter-terrorism cases with the FBI. "I can remember a lot of things that he did that no one else would have been able to accomplish."
Soon, information began flowing to the FBI because of Abdel-Hafiz. "He'd make the introductions, and our agents just ran on it on their own," says retired FBI agent Tino Perez, Abdel-Hafiz's former supervisor on the international terrorism task force. "He helped a lot with stuff like that."
The role "was a no-brainer," Defenbaugh, who headed the Dallas office from 1998 to 2002, says.
Still, Abdel-Hafiz's mission didn't sit well with everyone, especially the Palestinians. People involved with the Holy Land Foundation, for instance, asked that Abdel-Hafiz be banned from one mosque. Mohammad Suleman has been the Richardson Mosque's president for 35 years. He recalls some of the Palestinians complaining, "Do you know an FBI agent is coming to the mosque? Do you know he's spying on the mosque, profiling us, reporting our names and taking pictures?"
Some did more than just complain to the leadership of their mosques. A second threat to Abdel Hafiz's life surfaced during this period. An FBI informant reported that a reputed Hamas activist in Chicago asked people in Dallas to take photos of Abdel-Hafiz and gather information on his new wife, Amal, whom Abdel-Hafiz met on a trip to Cairo in 1998; and Abdel- Hafiz's relatives in Egypt. The plan was to be ready to move against Allah's traitor to. For the second time, Abdel-Hafiz became keenly aware of his family's vulnerability, both in the U.S. and back in Egypt.
But for all of its value, Abdel-Hafiz's Dallas assignment had split his loyalties between two adversarial worlds and put them on a collision course. He was working where he prayed, and that work sometimes required him to employ deceptive, secretive methods inside the same community that trusted him not to. His FBI overseers in Dallas had determined that Abdel Hafiz would avoid, whenever possible, the use of duplicitous measures long before any controversy broke out.
The reasons for this may have made perfect sense to insiders working with Abdel-Hafiz but would be widely misunderstood when the story of his reluctance to wear a wire broke after 9-11. He and his bosses understood that Arab culture would not brook well any perception of betrayal of the religious trust bond upon which he had been calling to keep the information flowing.
The big fear was that Muslims would simply stop talking to him if it were ever found out, say through a public court proceeding later, that Abdel Hafiz might be secretly monitoring supposedly private conversations. And so, if it seemed likely that certain secret surveillance methods might become public at some point, Abdel-Hafiz would avoid it. If there was virtually no chance of such methods becoming known, Abdel-Hafiz would jump in with both feet.
This was a critical nuance that would soon nearly destroy Abdel-Hafiz.
In May 1999, Abdel-Hafiz flew to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., to complete some training and received a call from an old friend, Abbas Ibrahim. They'd known each other since they were students and roommates in New York during Abdel-Hafiz's first visit to the United States in 1980. Ibrahim lived in Washington and worked as an accountant for BMI, an Islamic banking firm. The two got together whenever Abdel-Hafiz was in town. But this call was for business.
"Gamal, I think I'm in big trouble," Ibrahim said. "We need to talk in private. Instead of a restaurant, do you mind coming out to the house?" Over a home-cooked meal, Ibrahim said the FBI had just subpoenaed his boss, Soliman Biheiri. It wanted Biheiri to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. Ibrahim figured he was next, and he told Abdel-Hafiz what he knew. He handed over a piece of paper. On it were instructions from a company accountant to wire large sums of money to an individual connected to an Islamic charity suspected of funding Al Qaida's bombings the year before of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Abdel-Hafiz recognized the investigation as a piece of an international case called "Vulgar Betrayal." The Chicago office was handling it. Chicago believed a wealthy Saudi businessman named Yassin Qadi had been secretly controlling U.S. companies, including BMI, and laundering money for Osama bin Ladin's terrorism operations and Hamas.
When Abdel-Hafiz returned to Dallas, he paged Chicago Special Agent Wright. Wright and his partner, Special Agent Vincent, had been working the Qadi investigation for a long time and were thrilled when Abdel-Hafiz phoned. Even better, Biheiri himself had finally gotten a message through to Abdel-Hafiz indicating he would meet. Plans were made between Chicago and Dallas to exploit it.
In a conference call between Chicago and Dallas, attended by six agents and supervisors, and years later recalled by many of those present, Abdel-Hafiz was asked to meet Biheiri wearing a hidden body recorder. Thinking of both the death threats to his family in Egypt and his Dallas assignment, Abdel-Hafiz expressed reluctance and suggested openly recording the meeting or just filing a standard report. Chicago insisted on the secret recording. The stunned agents on the other end of the line, who knew nothing of the nature of the Dallas work or the death threats, didn't understand. Flustered, Abdel-Hafiz tried to explain. But all they seemed to hear during the back- and-forth was Abdel-Hafiz saying, "A Muslim does not record another Muslim."
Abdel-Hafiz has a very different recollection of the conversation, which seems far more plausible but which got virtually no air time. He'd been trying to explain to Chicago how his Muslim constituency might view any news that he'd secretly recorded someone. It was that he believed some Muslims in his area of operations would view his action as a religious betrayal – and possibly attack his family – "because they would see it as a Muslim does not record another Muslim."
The call ended when Abdel-Hafiz and Chicago agreed to put any decision to wear a wire where the issue belonged anyway: with that wearer's senior managers. Danny Defenbaugh, the Dallas Special Agent in Charge, immediately understood Abdel-Hafiz's reservations, noting that his agent gotten a second death threat and that there was a clear risk to the Dallas mission. He argued forcefully to Chicago that Abdel-Hafiz must not be required to wear the wire and risk the Dallas assignment when other standard methods would work just as well.
The acting head of the Chicago office, Bill Eubanks, agreed there wasn't a rich enough investigative payoff compared to the risk that later disclosure might wreck Abdel-Hafiz's productive Dallas work, Defenbaugh testified. In his deposition last year, Defenbaugh went one further.
"If it became known, that lack of trust wouldn't just go to Gamal; it would go to the FBI itself also." He explained that he had developed important personal ties with mosque leaders throughout Texas. "I've probably been to all but one of the mosques within the (Dallas area) here, and many times those conversations were between an imam and just myself, so you can imagine the devastation that would occur would this come out."
The Chicago agents, Wright and Vincent assumed a cover up was in play to protect a minority agent who couldn't be trusted. Through 1999 and into 2000, they pressed formal complaints against Abdel-Hafiz, accusing him of dereliction of duty and possible disloyalty. They demanded an internal
investigation. The complaints ultimately went nowhere, perhaps because elsewhere in the bureau, decision-makers knew that Abdel-Hafiz had indeed secretly recorded Muslims – and had happily participated in other clandestine activities with an enthusiastic competency that proved exactly where his fealty lay.
Vincent, who is now retired, spread the word among other agents that a dangerous mole was loose in the bureau, and he moved to cut off Abdel-Hafiz from his investigative files. One Dallas agent, Jay Melton, testified in a deposition that Vincent had called shortly after the dispute and offered that
"as an Arab, SA Abdel-Hafiz's first loyalty was to other Arabs" and "essentially" accused him "of being a traitor to his country, the United States of America and the FBI. I could not believe what I was hearing."
One of the most disparaging remarks reported to have come out of Chicago about Abdel-Hafiz was that he was a "camel jockey," Defenbaugh testified. He demanded that his subordinate file a religious discrimination complaint, and Abdel-Hafiz did, although it would not succeed. In the complaint, though, Abdel-Hafiz describes a blizzard of personal pain that compelled him to seek out an FBI counselor, who advised him to seek out an imam.
Abdel-Hafiz, though, demurred, believing even that might wreck his Dallas work. "The majority of the Muslim imams in the area are involved in one way or another with many of our targets," he wrote. "And the few who we know…are the ones we depend on to improve the FBI's image within the community. I could not destroy the FBI's image with them."
The controversy went into hibernation until shortly after 9-11.
Abdel-Hafiz's fortunes continued to improve. In December 2000, he was promoted to deputy legal attaché in Ryadh. Almost immediately, Freeh handpicked him for an assignment in the investigation of the USS Cole bombing, which had occurred a couple of months earlier. Yemen intelligence had a man in custody, Jamal al-Badawi. Over the course of five days, Abdel-Hafiz and another agent extracted a confession and the names of seven key conspirators, which quickly unraveled the whole plot. Back in Riyadh on September 11, 2001, Abdel-Hafiz found himself at the epicenter of the new War on Terror. Nineteen of the 20 of the hijackers were Saudi. In early 2002, an urgent call came for him. A 21-year-old U.S. citizen from Lackawanna, New York, by the name of Mukhtar al-Bakri, had been captured by Bahraini authorities. Abdel-Hafiz was ordered to repeat his performance in the USS Cole case.
The Buffalo, New York, field office had received an uncorroborated tip that six unnamed Americans in the area had formed a terror cell after receiving training at a bin Ladin camp in Afghanistan. The bureau was desperate for a break, according to Pete Ahearn, the former head of the Buffalo office. "We didn't have anything at the time. We needed someone to cooperate." Playing the kindly rescuer, Abdel-Hafiz secured from the prisoner a full signed confession, which included the names of five more plotters and rolled up the case now known as the Lackawanna Six. Before long, President Bush was boasting of the case during his State of the Union address. The FBI desperately needed the win because the bureau was under serious attack.
Agents in Arizona, Minnesota, and elsewhere were coming forward with stories of bureaucratic ineptitude that had allowed the attacks. When special agents Wright and Vincent came forward with their story, Abdel Hafiz's career took a fast tumble.
ABC News' Primetime aired an interview with Wright and Vincent in November 2002. The piece implied "Vulgar Betrayal" might have foiled 9-11 were it not for the disloyal Dallas agent serving in Saudi Arabia who had once defiantly uttered, "A Muslim does not record another Muslim" when he was ordered to wear a hidden body recorder to interview a Muslim subject.
"It was right out of his mouth. Five of us–no–six of us heard it!" Wright told Primetime. "I was floored! I went back upstairs and I called FBI headquarters to tell them what happened. And the supervisor said, 'Well you have to understand where he's coming from, Bob.' I said, 'No, no, no. I understand where I'm coming from. We both took the same damned oath to defend this country against enemies both foreign and domestic, and he just said 'No'? No. Hell no."
During a deposition last year, ABC Correspondent Brian Ross seemed to experience a memory lapse when presented with the interview notes and internal ABC memos of his producers that clearly show that FBI officials told the network point blank in conference calls that Abdel-Hafiz's bosses decided he shouldn't wear a wire, and their reasons for it. Abdel-Hafiz's lawyer, Jeffrey Kaitcher asked the questions.
Kaitcher:. Did – was it specifically noted, as this memo seems to indicate that the decision not to record the conversation was made by executive management at Dallas? Do you recall them telling you that?
Ross: I don't. You know, this was a conversation that – the ground rules were that it was on background. And whatever we would use formally would come to us in a statement. So it was the statement that would essentially be the FBI's crystallization of their position.
Kaitcher: Well, the statement is exhibit 42.
Ross: That's right.
Kaitcher: Which also says that 'Ultimately the decision was made by management of the Dallas office' Right?
Ross: It says that.
The depositions also show that Ross and the ABC News producers who did the reporting lacked even the most basic understanding of FBI protocol and practice, key to being able to judge the veracity of allegations coming from Wright and Vincent. For instance, when he was asked who had the authority to order Abdel-Hafiz to wear a wire, Ross incorrectly answered: "The U.S. Attorney…along with the entire team of agents and other federal prosecutors." Ross's incorrect assumption was significant because it led him to believe – and therefore gave the whistleblowers a platform to allege without challenge – that Abdel-Hafiz had refused a direct order from his supervisors to wear a wire.
Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly typified the treatment. He dedicated three segments of The O'Reilly Factor to Abdel-Hafiz in early 2003. At one point, he had Vincent and his lawyer on as guests. O'Reilly let them speak without challenge, framing the segment in a way that suggested he'd made up his mind; the FBI harbored a mole.
"Listen," O'Reilly said. "We know the truth. The truth is I believe your two agents here. The guy wouldn't tape other Muslims. That's the truth, and he wasn't disciplined. But he should have been disciplined, and he wasn't. And now Mueller is trying to keep us from finding out what the big picture is, but we're going to find it. Believe me, we will find it."
In another segment, disingenuously it turned out, O'Reilly boiled down the controversy to a simple question, partly because neither Abdel-Hafiz nor an FBI spokesperson would appear on his show. "Did Agent Hafiz refuse to secretly tape other Muslims involved in terrorism investigations? Yes or no? If the government will not answer that simple question, we are all in big trouble."
But O'Reilly had the government's answer all along – in the pre-show summary packets prepared by producers who interviewed FBI officials. O'Reilly acknowledged in a deposition that these summary packets were given to him prior to the shows. Notes taken by O'Reilly Factor producers show that FBI officials provided ample formal explanations: that Abdel Hafiz's bosses made the decision, in line with longstanding FBI rules, for entirely logical reasons of safety and to protect Abdel Hafiz's ongoing Dallas mission.
One of O'Reilly's producers, Kristen Lazure even made a notation about her on-record interviews with three different FBI officials.
"They're being very helpful," she wrote at the top of one of her documents. "What does that mean?" Abdel-Hafiz's attorney asked Lazure during a deposition. "It means they were cooperating."
When questioned about why he continually told viewers the FBI was not cooperating, O'Reilly offered a curious explanation. The FBI's position either had to be provided live on-air or "in writing on FBI stationary, otherwise "it's he-said, she-said."
Just when the hubbub was peaking, Abdel-Hafiz's ex-wife came forward and accused him of filing a false insurance claim a decade earlier on a home burglary. The claim had led to a lawsuit filed by Abdel-Hafiz. The FBI, no doubt feeling the heat from all the treason talk, suspended Abdel-Hafiz in February 2003 on grounds that he hadn't informed the bureau of the lawsuit on his agent application. He was recalled from Saudi Arabia back to Dallas and fired a few months later.
After Abdel-Hafiz's firing, O'Reilly called him at home, asking him again to come on the show. The famous television commentator seemed to acknowledge how badly things had gone for the embattled agent and readily conceded his own role. Abdel-Hafiz turned the recorder on.
"This is unfair," O'Reilly began his pitch. "You have been tainted, somebody who has devoted a good part of his life to helping this country. I don't want you to have this kind of burden to walk around in public with. I want you to have your reputation saved. It was extended to me that we weren't fair with you the first time around…I was limited in what I can say because there was no one around to put forth your point of view at that point."
Abdel-Hafiz replied: "I am really hurt because I admired you for years before you even went on Fox. And I was shocked because of what you did to me. You destroyed me and my family."
Rather than appear on O'Reilly's show, Abdel-Hafiz decided to sue him. In January, 2004, Abdel-Hafiz filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News, Prime Time, Brian Ross, as well as Vincent, Wright and others. He was preparing a separate lawsuit against O'Reilly and Fox when a surprise arrived in the mail: a single-page letter from the FBI. He was reinstated to the FBI.
Pete Ahearn, the FBI executive in Buffalo who had supervised Abdel- Hafiz's work on the Lackawanna Six case, served on appeals panel that voted 3-0 to reinstate him. He says the FBI's internal investigation had been hastily carried out, couldn't corroborate Bertie's insurance fraud claim, and failed to cover even one of the exonerating leads Abdel-Hafiz has provided investigators.
"It was like, Jesus Christ. I said, 'look this isn't enough to fire someone," Ahearn says. "This doesn't meet the standard for dismissal. There were things in there that just didn't make any sense."
But life was not the same. The FBI stuck Abdel-Hafiz in the mortgage fraud section as the lawsuits gained traction.
None of the lawsuit targets were prepared to hear a striking revelation that emerged with it was his turn to be deposed last February.
Charles Babcock, the lawyer defending the media companies, was questioning Abdel-Hafiz about one of the two instances for which he had expressed a preference not to wear a wire. That particular incident had occurred back in 1998, during the Tampa field office's investigation of university professor Sami Al-Arian, who was suspected of providing financial and logistical support to Hamas.
Almost every news report parroted the allegation that Abdel-Hafiz had refused direct orders to covertly record Al-Arian after the professor contacted the agent supposedly for advice about part of the investigation. FBI secrecy rules had forbidden the bureau from commenting during the media storm.
But when Babcock asked whether Abdel-Hafiz had ever attempted to secretly record Al-Arian, he offered a shocking answer.
"Yes Sir," Abdel-Hafiz replied.
There it was, contrary to all that had been reported.
The FBI's lawyer quickly moved to stop Abdel-Hafiz from elaborating, on grounds the topic remained classified. But the truth was out. Tellingly, Babcock went further. He offered to let Abdel-Hafiz withdraw his answer completely.
"I think, John, the witness was a little quick on the trigger. It would be acceptable to me if he wishes to withdraw his answer …" Babcock offered, helpfully.
When no one immediately took him up on the offer, Babcock repeated it. "What I'm offering," he reiterated, hopefully. "is to allow him to withdraw the answer if you want him to, or strike that, if he wants to. It's up to you guys." Babcock seemed relieved when Abdel-Hafiz offered that it was alright with him and the Al Arian matter was concluded.
It turns out, though, that Abdel-Hafiz covertly recorded other Muslims on at least two more occasions, and he facilitated the secret surveillance of Muslims on at least one other occasion. Abdel-Hafiz wore a wire in 1999 to a Denny's restaurant near Dallas to talk to a Syrian associate of African embassy bomber Wadih El Hage, according to two knowledgeable government sources. The target's name was Ghassan Dahduli, and the purpose of the meeting was for Abdel-Hafiz to recruit Dahduli as an informant. It was a meeting that stood virtually no chance of ever becoming public, and so Abdel-Hafiz happily wore the wire, which allowed two tailing agents to listen in on the conversation.
El Hage was the focus of attention of another instance when Abdel-Hafiz worked covertly against fellow Muslims. It was 1998, shortly after the Africa embassy bombings. The New York-based bin Ladin task force, "I-49," had zeroed in on an Arlington, Texas mosque El Hage was attending. Jack Cloonan, a former agent of I-49, says, "We never required [Gamal] to wear a wire. We did ask him to get some information for us about locations of certain things in the mosque. That information was critical to get electronic coverage of certain areas of the mosque. We never had any problems [with Gamal]. I think all this other stuff had no basis."
Lastly, in 2002, during Abdel-Hafiz's Lackawanna Six investigation, the pivotal interview, the one that led to a full confession of all the cell members, was secretly videotaped and audio-taped by Abdel-Hafiz. This happened just two months before ABC aired its story.
Today, Abdel-Hafiz is once more working counter-terrorism. He oversees a group of intelligence analysts, examining streams of classified information. He decides what should be pursued as criminal cases and who should be investigated. It's a position that requires the trust and confidence of his supervisors.
But other field offices don't call as much as they once did. Nor is Abdel-Hafiz summoned by top brass when help is needed abroad.
He keeps a low profile in the Arab community. Some Muslims were happy he got his comeuppance for working against them. Others were wary of associating with Abdel-Hafiz, a possible traitor, lest that association bring undue FBI attention to them. Lately, Abdel-Hafiz has been seen, making connections here and there for the FBI. But nothing like before.
His lawsuit continues to churn through the Tarrant County, Texas courts. Defamation and libel suits are always a long shot.
The FBI is watching the case nervously. There are some who know Abdel-Hafiz who believe nothing–not even winning the suit–will allow him to regain what he feels he lost. And perhaps much more time will have to pass before he will again be fully accepted by either the FBI or the Islamic community.
"I hope, for himself, he finds peace," says one agent who asked not to be
identified. "But really, he's a man without a country."
Filed Under: Terrorism Coverage
Feds uncover Palestinian family's plot to kill officer and agent
Texas Muslims host Ayatollah Khomeini tribute attended by "mainstream" Muslim leaders
British Islamic extremism propaganda sites linked to Texas brothers going through terror trial
Texas Internet hosting companies profit from outlawed terrorist groups
Feds cite rare justification: local Syrian man should be deported for ties to Muslim Brotherhood
The Hero Texas Cop Who Killed Two ISIS Terrorists Mid-Attack
Wives of Holy Land Foundation terrorists to be deported
Hamas' Rock Star


Kathy Gensel – Business Rep.
New Track and Turf update — good first meeting, soil testing, possible Internships?!?!
KPBSD Student Handbook Review — any concerns/thoughts????
Site Council and Parent Meeting with Dr. Atwater – Parent Update???
Any additional Feedback on Feb. Parent Teacher Conference format?!?!?!
Any final Nutrition Policy feedback?!?!?!?!
Possible letter(s) of Support from Site Council to City, Borough and School District Turf funding?!?!?!?


We made 3 honey bee hats for babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I loomed the hats, and Vanessa, graciously, made the antennae & pom-poms. I'll probably make more bees a little later, since I have more black & yellow yarns. However, right now, I am a little frantic because I didn't realize we would have an early Easter this year. I was expecting it in April and just found out it was 3/31! I would like to whip out some bunnies and chicks for Easter.
For these bee hats, I followed my usual pattern of a garter stitch brim (3 rows of e-wrap & purl alternating) and e-wrapped the rest of the hat with the color changes.


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New York Giants, Jets: MetLife Stadium to have neutral end zones this weekend
Alex Jordan
Here's how the MetLife Stadium crew is preparing for the fastest Jets-Giants changeover yet | @sportswatch https://t.co/uNscMsPmtI pic.twitter.com/4SwZhlR2ys
— Newsday Sports (@NewsdaySports) December 14, 2016
MetLife Stadium will have neutral end zones for the New York Jets and New York Giants games this weekend.
If you go to the New York Giants or the New York Jets game this weekend or watch on TV, you'll notice something different. MetLife Stadium will have neutral end zones for the first time.
CLICK HERE FOR ESNY's GIANTS TEAM CENTER
The reason for the neutral end zones is a quick changeover from a Jets game to a Giants game. The Jets play on Saturday night and the Giants play in the afternoon on Sunday. After the Jets game, the stadium will go through its usual changeover except for the end zones, which includes team signage inside and outside the stadium and exterior lighting. The neutral end zones will have nine vertical slash marks and have no team names or logos, according to the Associated Press.
"We are always prepared to host two consecutive football games, whether college or NFL,"Ron VanDeVeen, president and CEO of MetLife Stadium said. "However, due to the timing of Saturday's 8:25 p.m. New York Jets game followed by Sunday's 1 p.m. New York Giants game, coupled with the current weather forecast, the decision was made to use neutral end zones for this weekend's contests. This decision will allow for appropriate maintenance of the playing surface throughout the weekend."
Since 2013, the stadium has had to be converted from Jets to Giants or vice versa from one day to the next eight times. This is the shortest time frame in which the stadium has had to be converted from one team to another. This weekend is only the second time this season that both the Jets and Giants play at home.
The Giants and Jets are the only NFL teams that share a stadium.
NEXT: Mac's first two drafts have been underwhelming
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I graduated from Marist College with a Bachelors in Sports Communications in 2011. I am a huge sports fan. I also write articles for TheCelebrityCafe.com.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"Aging In Place" organizations are non-profit groups designed to help seniors stay in their own homes as they grow older by making available the social support, health care, transportation and home maintenance services they require to live happy, productive lives in the community.
SSIP-Taconic serves the Clinton/Milan area. They can be reached at 845-266-4270.


Graph plotters. Gradients. Quadratic functions. Graphs. Simultaneous equations. Graph sketching. Maximise/minimise/optimise. Creating and manipulating expressions and formulae. Solving equations graphically. Transformation of functions.


text:
Shakedown 1968
Joe Posnanski Dec 3, 2014
So, I was messing around with something else entirely … and I came across this weird baseball anomaly. You probably know that Bill James has broken down the Baseball Hall of Fame by birth year. It's a smart way of doing it, I think; it gives you a real perspective of just how good a player has to be to even be considered for the Hall of Fame. I'm focused today only on hitters, and over the last 75 years, only 29 hitters have been elected to the Hall of Fame, one more if you count Joe Torre who was elected as a manager.
Beyond those 29, I have come up with 60 more hitters who have been "talked about" as Hall of Fame candidates. I tried to make this "talked about" category" pretty liberal — I don't think that there really has been any extensive Hall of Fame talk about Willie Davis or Jimmy Wynn or Roy White or Bobby Bonds or Willie Randolph or most of these others. But they were superb players who could have a case made. Here they are, players born between 1939 and 1975 … see if you can find the weird year:
1939 In the Hall: Carl Yastrzemski, Lou Brock. Talked about: None
1940 In the Hall: Ron Santo, Joe Torre, Willie Stargell. Talked about: Willie Davis.
1941 In the Hall: None Special category: Pete Rose Talked about: Bill Freehan
1942 In the Hall: Tony Perez Talked about: Dick Allen, Jimmy Wynn
1943 In the Hall: Joe Morgan Talked about: Roy White
1944 In the Hall: None Talked about: Graig Nettles.
1945 In the Hall: Rod Carew Talked about: Reggie Smith
1946 In the Hall: Reggie Jackson Talked about: Bobby Bonds, Al Oliver.
1947 In the Hall: Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk. Talked about: Thurman Munson, Darrell Evans.
1948 In the Hall: None Talked about: Ron Cey, Dave Concepcion, Steve Garvey.
1949 In the Hall: Mike Schmidt Talked about: Bobby Grich, Ted Simmons.
1950 In the Hall: None. Talked about: None. Best of the rest: Brian Downing, Doug DeCinces.
1951 In the Hall: Dave Winfield Talked about: Dwight Evans, Buddy Bell, Dave Parker.
1952 In the Hall: None Talked about: Fred Lynn.
1953 In the Hall: George Brett, Jim Rice. Talked about: Keith Hernandez.
1954 In the Hall: Ozzie Smith, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson. Talked about: Willie Randolph
1955 In the Hall: Robin Yount. Talked about: None. Best of the rest: Chet Lemon, Jack Clark.
1956 In the Hall: Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray. Talked about: Dale Murphy.
1957 In the Hall: None. Talked about: Lou Whitaker Best of the rest: Brett Butler, Kirk Gibson.
1958 In the Hall: Rickey Henderson, Wade Boggs. Talked about: Alan Trammell.
1959 In the Hall: Ryne Sandberg Talked about: Tim Raines. Best of the rest: Jesse Barfield.
1960 In the Hall: Cal Ripken, Kirby Puckett, Tony Gwynn. Talked about: None.
1961 In the Hall: None. Talked about: Don Mattingly.
1962 In the Hall: None Strong cases: None. Best of the rest: Devon White, Darryl Strawberry.
1963 In the Hall: None. Special category: Mark McGwire. Talked about: Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff. Best of the rest: Lenny Dykstra.
1964 In the Hall: Barry Larkin Special category: Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro. Talked about: Will Clark.
1965 In the Hall: None Talked about: Craig Biggio
1966 In the Hall: None. Talked about: Larry Walker
1967 In the Hall: None Talked about: Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel.
1968 In the Hall: Frank Thomas, Robbie Alomar Talked about: Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, Gary Sheffield, Jeff Kent, Bernie Williams. Best of the rest: John Olerud.
1969 In the Hall: None Going in: Ken Griffey.
1970 In the Hall: None Will be talked about: Jim Thome, Jim Edmonds
1971 In the Hall: None Going in: Ivan Rodriguez. Best of the rest: Jason Giambi, Brian Giles.
1972 In the Hall: None Going in: Chipper Jones. Special category: Manny Ramirez. Best of the rest: Carlos Delgado.
1973 In the Hall: None Going in: Ichiro, Todd Helton. Best of the rest: Nomar Garciaparra, Johnny Damon.
1974 In the Hall: None Going in: Derek Jeter. Will be talked about: Bobby Abreu, Miguel Tejada.
1975 In the Hall: None. Special category: Alex Rodriguez, Will be talked about: Scott Rolen, Vlad Guerrero, David Ortiz. Best of the rest: Torii Hunter.
OK, did you see it? What about that crazy year: 1968? Based on the way the BBWAA has voted, there was not a single Hall of Fame hitter born in 1961 (Mattingly cannot get any traction), 1962, 1963 (maybe Edgar Martinez gets some love over time), 1966 or 1967.
But in 1968, there are EIGHT viable Hall of Fame candidates (nine if you consider Olerud, whose career does demand consideration).
And then, before you say, "Well, that's just the steroids," go on to the next year, 1969, only Ken Griffey will get elected. In 1970, there were two Hall of Fame candidates born, and I'm not sure either Thome or Edmonds will get the support I think they deserve. Go to the next year, 1971, only Pudge Rodriguez will get elected from that group.
Wo what the heck happened in 1968? How do you explain so many amazing players being born in one year? How do you deal with it?
Look: In February, Roberto Alomar was born in Puerto Rico — son of a developing Major League baseball player, little brother to a future Major Leaguer. A month later, Jeff Kent was born in a suburb of Los Angeles. Two of the greatest offensive second basemen born within a month of each other.
Most baseball fans know about May 27, 1968 — that was the day that Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas were born. The fact that they grew up to become two of the best right-handed first basemen in the game's history is just one of those wonderful baseball bits of serendipity.
John Olerud was born in Seattle in August — he went on to become a dominant hitter and pitcher at Washington State University, recovered from a brain aneurysm, and went on to a career that was a heck of a lot better than Steve Garvey's — though Garvey keeps popping back up in Hall of Fame discussions.
A month later, near Philadelphia, a used car and real estate magnate named Vince Piazza had a son he called Mike. Vince loved baseball so much that, in time, he would have Ted Williams give his boy batting tips and he would ask his friend Tommy Lasorda to do him a personal favor and draft the boy.
A week or so after that, in Puerto Rico again, Bernie Williams was born, and he would grow up playing baseball and music with equal brilliance.
Sammy Sosa was born two months later in San Pedro de Macoris, that famous baseball town in the Dominican Republic. He grew up poor and hungry and in love with the game. Finally, one week after that, Gary Sheffield was born in Tampa — almost four years to the day after his uncle, Dwight Gooden.
That's nine amazing hitters born within 10 months of each other. It's crazy.
I do wonder if this is crazy boom of super players has a subtle impact on voters' mentality. Here's what I mean: Part of what makes the Baseball Hall of Fame the most discussed in all of sports is that it is perceived to have the highest standard. The BBWAA hardly votes in anybody. Yes, there are a hundred or more players are in the Hall of Fame that most people have never heard of, but they don't come up much. The Hall of Fame, to most people, is Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron and Ted Williams.
Point is, a historic rush of talent like what happened in 1968 doesn't compute easily. It just doesn't FEEL right. Imagine you work in a charity office, and on average you get one or two calls a day for donations — some days you get none, some days you get three. Then, one day, you get NINE calls with donations, You would think: Something must be causing this.
It just doesn't seem possible for that many terrific hitters to have been born in one year. So, we look for reasons why it can't be true. PEDs are the obvious reason — Sammy Sosa's 609 home runs are written off as steroid creations. Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza are put in ballot purgatory until the voters can make sense of what is being whispered in the wind. Gary Sheffield admitted using steroids, and I suspect his case will be summarily dismissed. Meanwhile Jeff Kent and Bernie Williams and John Olerud do not seem to have any PED whispers around them, but their numbers — which in other years would have put them very much in the center of Hall of Fame conversations — seem to fall a bit short when compared with the bulked up hitters of their time.
In other words, I suspect four of the nine will get elected to the Hall by the BBWAA, though Bagwell's support did take a dip last year. Four Hall of Famers in one birth year is still a lot, but I don't think it quite captures just how remarkable a year that was.


The beauty of this book is that it isn't simply a history of music, music as entertainment, or its prominence in human cultures, but describes the actual power of music, hence its title. As Tame notes in the "Overture," (the intro), music's influence plays on us constantly as it alters our heartbeat, relaxes or tenses us, affects heartbeat and blood pressure, and fills us with a range of emotions. He contrasts historical societies in which people were very conscious of music's power as compared to today's materialistic notion that music is not essential, something on the periphery, something in the United States at least to be cut from many school's curriculum as unnecessary.
Tame begins with fact that ancients believed there was sacred power within sound and music. A main thrust of Pythagoras's research was to discover the nature of music and he discovered that tones could be reduced and explained through numbers and mathematical ratios – the same as those of the mathematical universe and many of the forms therein. Pythagoras' concept of music was deeper than the material and the academic, as it reached to and from the cosmos and combined the spiritual with the material. Tame presents the notion that music is a force that creates order out of chaos, helping to achieve a greater universal order. His favorite axiom seems to be "As in music, so in life – ," raising the belief that civilization is shaped and societies are molded by music and in turn the character of a civilization shapes the music. In addition, as shown on the left, throughout history humans have related the structure of music and its ratios to the natural world. In this case, the Fibonacci sequence which creates this spiral shape matches the ratios of the notes on the scale perfectly.
Tame uses ancient China as his primary example of how music played a role in civilization building. The Emperor Shun, Shu King, would travel each year throughout the provinces to check on the health and status of each territory. He would not audit books, observe the population, or interview authorities as the most important means to assess the health of his empire. Instead, the Emperor tested the exact pitches of their notes of music, the five notes of the ancient Chinese tonal scale. Eight types of instruments were brought and local songs played so that he could verify that they were all in line with the 5 tones. To the ancient Chinese, music was the basis of not only civilization, but of everything. The nature of the music reflected the nature of the people and Emperor Shun would use it to determine their health.
The reason that music was so vital to Chinese society and philosophy stems from their belief that music held the same powers that governed the entire universe: it was a form of the Primal Sound, called OM. The OM is not audible but a divine Vibration. From here, according to Chinese beliefs, the Primal Sound is broken down into twelve tones with each representing the twelve zodiacs. In fact, Tame states that astrology itself arose from the influences of the twelve tones and the Cosmic Tone. He goes further to write that the ancient civilized world incorporated the number twelve, which derived its significance from OM/music, further into their daily lives and hence twelve months of the year and the twenty four hours of the day. In true Chinese form, on a side note, these twelves tones were divided into two: six Yang tones and six Ying. Together they created and sustained the entire universe.
Tones and music were considered a reflection of the celestial order. The harmony and perfection are maintained by the Cosmic Tone and in parallel the harmony and perfection of human lives and society on earth should be maintained by music. This belief, as referenced by Tame, is rooted in the Chinese text The Spring and Autumn by Lu Bu Ve representing a time between 722 and 479 BC. Ve writes that music arose through proportion and ratio manifested by "the Great One" who initiated a cosmos of cycles between light and dark, heaven and earth, ending and beginning. All is in coordination: the planets, the seasons. When all is in coordination on earth, peaceful and perfect, then music can be perfected. Therefore, a province's "perfect" music proves their health.
Perfection is the most important word in ancient Chinese music. Nothing was left to the whim and creativity of the musical performer, as in jazz for example. The musician was viewed as a medium to allow the perfection of the celestial universe shine on earth through music. According to them, life on earth and music must follow the same logical patterns. Random notes by individuals would create turmoil and uncontrolled chaos. This is why Emperor Shun paid so much attention to the music of his provinces. If one area's music was wild, out of control, unique, or did not follow traditional rules of structure well then most certainly there must be a serious societal problem!
As stated, the tones were aligned with the months of the year, the first six being Yang tones and the second being Ying tones, each having its own key. The musician was responsible for playing according to the musical scale of each month. Staying in harmony ensured health and success and this was not only beholden on the musicians to maintain, but also on rulers.
month. They changed the root note. This is precisely how Western music moves through the modes and it is based on this musical inventiveness of the Chinese. These are the modes that aspiring musicians learn and practice today, the Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian. They are achieved by simply moving the base note and beginning the scale there. The Chinese only used seven notes of their twelve, which are the seven major notes of today's scale: Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti. Interestingly they rarely used the semitones Fa and Si which corresponds to today's pentatonic scale.
This ancient concept of the embedded nature of music, powered by the Celestial tone, was considered a part of the human character as well. Each of the five notes were related to the five important Chinese virtues of benevolence, propriety, faith, righteousness, and knowledge. Human qualities are aligned with tones and specific types of music have an actual objective effect on humans, a power of music. Tame wraps up his discussion of China by tracing the events that led to civil war and transition to communism in China. In the late 20th century Communist leaders required the populace, including children, to observe a daily routine of "death chants" which called for destruction of capitalism and the western world. Tame writes that the ancients would have seen these death-chants as a means of utilizing the power of the Cosmic Tone and music to create an objective change in the human world. He infers that the disappearance of the ancient Chinese belief in perfection and harmony is reflected in its demise from classical opera of the early 20th century to "death chants." A similar belief occurred in the 1980s as well, that heavy music "made" teenagers "devil worshippers" and that the music was proof of a sinful society. Tame leaves us with a question at the end of his section on the origins of the Power of Music: we may scoff at the Chinese belief that music is an actual cosmic power because of our scientific and "enlightened" minds today. We know better, that sound is only a vibration, and we are so much wiser today – or, Tame asks, are we?
The beginning section of Tame's book covered in this post raises some questions. Does music have an ethereal power, or at least a power over human beings, something greater than simply a physical vibration? Today most would say that it is certainly a reflection of society, but can it also influence society? Totalitarian regimes would think so. When did the change occur from valuing traditional "perfection" among the ancients to valuing individualism and improvisation that are explicit in jazz and other forms? Can it be traced to the individualism of the 19th and 20th centuries? Can music only be divine if it mimics the harmony of the universe, or divine if it is uniquely human?
Another month or so has passed since we last did a write-up of our latest collections of royalty-free music and stock music, so here's another little update from us. Among other new albums, we have a beautiful new album of royalty-free String Quartet performances of Mozart music.
These blogs don't feature all the new music we've released in the past month, they only feature the CD-collections. Many of the tracks we release actually never get included on a CD-collection. We release a large number of new tracks every week. Occasionally we take some tracks and put them together on a CD-collection as well.
https://www.shockwave-sound.com/royalty-free-music-collection/771/classical-chamber-strings-vol-3 – A stunning collection of elegant, graceful String Quartet pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed live in studio by the Allegro String Quartet. A 100% live music project – no samples, no computers.
https://www.shockwave-sound.com/royalty-free-music-collection/767/classical-piano-favorites-vol-7-chopin: 20 beautiful solo piano tracks by Frederic Chopin, with an emphasis on some of his most lyrical and graceful pieces. Performed live in studio by concert pianist Želimir Panić.
https://www.shockwave-sound.com/royalty-free-music-collection/768/acoustic-trails-vol-7 – Natural, organic, free-flowing and earthy music tracks with a sense of easy and carefree days. Acoustic instruments and transparent productions.
https://www.shockwave-sound.com/stock-music-collection/769/ambient-pop-vol-4 – Touching and heartening, light and easy productions with a real feel for hope, personal stories and the human condition. Great music for use with real people, real lives, real stories.
https://www.shockwave-sound.com/royalty-free-music-collection/770/feelgood-trax-vol-22 – Fun, happy and feel-good music tracks that will bring an uplifting, hopeful and joyful feel to your productions, videos, presentations.
https://www.shockwave-sound.com/stock-music-collection/772/timeless-elegance-vol-1 – These tracks are built on contemporary/modern instruments but in a combination with classical music influences and instrumentation such as piano and string sections. The music brings a sense of effortless grace, class and style to many types of productions and presentations.
We hope you'll find some of our new music to be of interest for your media projects.
Please remember to "Like" our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/swsound/. And if you have any questions, issues, suggestions etc., please get in touch with us through the Contact page on our site. We are here and always happy to hear from you. All the best from all of us at Shockwave-Sound.
Classical Piano Favorites Vol. 2 – and why it's so great!
Dear customers, visitors, passers-by and everyone who might stumble across our site today..
Today at Shockwave-Sound.com we released our new album Classical Piano Favorites, Vol. 2. I just wanted to take a moment to write a few words about this album because I feel that this is not "just another classical piano album". These days, with all the technology we have available and all of the amazing sounding samples and virtual instruments, it's pretty easy for anybody to obtain sheet music of classical piano masterpieces, enter them into the computer, and export this as a pretty decent sounding recording of the piece in question.
However, we feel that this isn't really the way to go, and especially so with calm and soothing classical piano works, because we feel that it's vital to have the pieces performed by a human with some insight, some experience, some touch and sensibility as to what this beautiful music really is about and what it means to us.
This is why, for both of our Classical Piano Favorites Vol. 1, and Vol. 2, we decided to seek out the services of Vadim Chaimovich, a renowned and accomplished concert pianist. Vadim is a prize winning musician, originally from Lithuania, who studied the piano from the age of 5 and is today a popular concert pianist, traveling the world and playing to audiences' great delight.
We were lucky enough to get Vadim on board with us, and for these projects he hired an amazing grand piano and had it tuned up especially for the recording sessions. He rehearsed for weeks and then recorded the album over a period of a few days, with top-of-the-line recording equipment in a pro studio.
Because, well, if you're going to do something, why not do it right?! We feel that these amazing compositions by Satie, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bach, Chopin and many others deserve this kind of treatment from a true connoisseur of classical music.
Listen to the beautiful, unique and touching performances of our "Classical Piano Favorites" albums and we think that you'll be amazed. Honestly, it's quite unheard of, that performances and recordings of this quality is made available for "anyone" to license for such low license fees. (Starting from around $30 for a track or $100 for the whole album).
Good quality, royalty free classical music, is hard to come by. That's just a fact.
Why? Because hiring an orchestra, with studio time and engineer, is extremely costly and time consuming. It's a process that requires meticulous planning and preparation and costs "a small fortune" to get it done.
In the "stock music scene" there have been various sources of so-called royalty free classical music, of dubious origin. On some "free for all, self-uploading" websites, you can find classical music recordings that almost certainly don't actually belong to the person who uploaded them, but rather sourced from some published CD, and belonging to another company.
If "some guy" is uploading fully orchestrated recordings of classical masterpieces, you need to ask yourself if that guy really spent the time, effort and money (possibly several hundreds of thousands of dollars) on getting that music recorded, so that he could sell it for $15 at a stock media site that allows a free-for-all self-uploading of content for sale. It goes without saying, that recording is not going to be safe, copyright wise.
Here at Shockwave-Sound.com we have also been exposed to these "unsafe" recordings, likely to be copyrighted to some company who doesn't know that their recordings are being uploaded to stock music sites.
Instead, we focus on getting a smaller volume of recordings done, but to have them done from scratch, exclusively for our company. At the time of writing, we have 74 such exclusive classical recordings that we ourselves have organized and got recorded for us on a work-for-hire basis. We are adding to that regularly, so by the time you read this, we may have many more. These recordings are not for sale through any other stock music / royalty-free music website.
Those were the 4 new releases we've put together this week. We already had the individual tracks in our catalog and have been acquiring them over a longer period of time, but it was only this week that we put them together into "CD-collections".
We hope you enjoy the music, safe in the knowledge that they can be licensed for use in media and in public, without fear of copyright infringement.


Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time has become an international publishing phenomenon. Translated into thirty languages, it has sold over ten million copies worldwide and lives on as a science book that continues to captivate and inspire new readers each year. When it was first published in 1988 the ideas discussed in it were at the cutting edge of what was then known about the universe. In the intervening twenty years there have been extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and macro-cosmic world. Indeed, during that time cosmology and the theoretical sciences have entered a new golden age . Professor Hawking is one of the major scientists and thinkers to have contributed to this renaissance. This special edition, which marks the twentieth anniversary of the book's original ground-breaking publication is surely destined to become a coveted collectors' item. In near new condition.


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Home/Biology/DNA Structure Definition and Function
DNA Structure Definition and Function
How DNA acts as Hereditary Material?
DNA and RNA are two types of nucleic acid. The polymers of nucleotides are called nucleic acids. The unit of nucleic acid is a nucleotide. Nucleic acids are special compounds, produced in the nucleus of the cell. These are composed of Carbon, hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus.
Discovery of Nucleic Acids
F. Miescher isolated the nucleic acid from the nucleus of pus cells in 1870. As they were isolated from the nucleus and were acidic in nature, so they were named nucleic acid.
Types of nucleic acid
There are two types of nucleic acids:
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)
DNA is present in chromosomes, in the nucleus of cells. A small amount of DNA is also present in mitochondria and chloroplast.
RNA (ribonucleic acid)
RNA is present in the nucleolus, ribosome, and cytosol of the cytoplasm. A small amount of RNA is also present in other parts of the cell.
Structure of Nucleic Acid
Nucleic acids are complex substances. They are polymers of units called nucleotides. DNA is composed of deoxyribonucleotides and RNA is composed of ribonucleotides.
Nucleotides (nitrogen base + pentose sugar + phosphoric acid)
Each nucleotide is made up of three subunits pentose sugar, nitrogen base, and phosphoric acid.
Pentose Sugar
It is a five-carbon monosaccharide. The nucleotides of RNA contain ribose sugar. On the other hand, the nucleotides of DNA contain Deoxyribose sugar.
Nitrogen Base
Nitrogen bases are of two types.
Pyrimidines: These are composed of a single ring. These are Cytosine (C), Thymine (T), and Uracil (U).
Purines: These are composed of double rings. These are Adenine (A) and Guanine (G).
It has the ability to form an ester linkage with the OH group of Pentose Sugar. The nitrogen base is attached to carbon 1 of the pentose sugar in a typical nucleotide. The phosphoric acid is attached with carbon 3 of the pentose sugar. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is also an important nucleotide. The cells use ATP as energy currency.
Nucleoside (Nitrogen Base + Pentose Sugar)
The compound formed by the nitrogenous base and pentose sugar is called nucleoside. A nucleoside and phosphoric acid combine to form a nucleotide.
DNA is the hereditary material. It controls the properties and activities of a cell.
Components of DNA
DNA is made of four kinds of Nucleotides. These are:
d-adenosine monophosphate (d-AMP).
d-guanosine monophosphate (d-GMP).
d-cytidine monophosphate (d-CMP).
d-thymidine monophosphate (d-TMP).
The nucleotides are linked with one another by phosphodiester bonds and form a long chain. This chain is called Polynucleotide chain. This chain has a specific sequence. There may be different lengths of nucleotide chains.
Dinucleotide
Two nucleotides join to form dinucleotide. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a dinucleotide. It is an important coenzyme. It takes part in several oxidation-reduction reactions in the cell.
Trinucleotides
Three nucleotides join to form Trinucleotides.
Polynucleotides
Many nucleotides join to form polynucleotides.
The ratio of bases in DNA
Erwin Chargaff provided data about the ratio of different bases of DNA molecules. It shows that adenine and Thymine have equal ratios and guanine and cytosine have equal ratios.
Watson and Crick model of DNA
Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin determine the structure of DNA by X-ray diffraction technique. Finally, James D. Watson and Francis Crick proposed the model of DNA. It suggests:
The DNA is made up of two polynucleotide chains or strands.
These two strands coil around each other and form a double helix.
The coiling of the two strands is opposite (antiparallel to each other i.e., one strand is 3-5 the other is 5-3).
The two strands are attached to each other by weak hydrogen bonds. Two hydrogen bonds are formed between A and T and three hydrogen bonds are formed between G and C pairs.
Adenine (A) is always opposite to Thymine (T) and Guanine (G) is always opposite to Cytosine.
The two strands coil around each other. Each turn of the strands is about 34 Angstrom. This turn contains 10 base pairs.
Amount of DNA in different Species
The amount of DNA depends on the number of chromosomes in a species. Each species has a fixed number of chromosomes. So the amount of DNA is also fixed for a particular species. The germ cells (sperm and ova) contain one-half the amounts of the somatic cells (body cells).
Importance of DNA
All the information for the structure and the functioning of a cell are stored in DNA. For example, E.coli (bacteria) contains a single chromosome. This chromosome contains 5 million bases. These bases are arranged in a particular linear order. These bases contain information. This information is present in the form of units called "genes". A gene is a small part of DNA that controls a specific character. Gene is a unit of biological inheritance.
The E.coli genome (total number of genes) consists of 4, 639, 221 base pairs. This genome codes for 4288 proteins.
Haemophilus influenza (a bacteria that causes influenza is the first microbe that genome has been completely sequenced. This sequencing was published in 1995).
DNA as Hereditary Material:
DNA is found in genes and chromosomes. It is considered genetic material because it transfers the hereditary character into a new cell or a new generation. The property of DNA as hereditary material can be proved by two experiments:
Griffith Experiment:
Griffith proved DNA as genetic material by the transformation process in bacteria. In this process, the living bacteria can get genetic material (DNA) from dead bacteria and can be transformed (changed) from harmless to harmful virulent bacteria. It shows that DNA acts as genetic material.
Hershey and Chase Experiment:
Hershey and Chase presented another proof of DNA as genetic material. According to their experiment, it is proved that the genetic material (DNA) of one bacterial cell can be transferred into another bacterial cell by bacteriophage virus.
They explained that when bacteriophage virus attacks bacterial cells only its DNA enters the bacterial cell and its outer protein coat remains outside. The DNA of the virus takes the biochemical control of bacterial cells and starts to prepare its DNA. After that, the complete body of the virus is formed. It indicates that DNA acts as genetic material.
Function of DNA
The four nitrogen bases of DNA take part in the genetic code. These are arranged in a straight manner along the DNA strand. In plants and animals, numerous information can be encoded in the form of genetic code.
Economic Importance of Bacteria in different Field
20 Types of Amino Acids with Definition and Classification
Binomial Nomenclature or Binary Nomenclature in Biology
What is Adenosine Triphosphate ATP? | Importance & Role of Mitochondria
Digestive System of Man Parts and Functions
what is the difference between a food chain and a food web?
Photorespiration Importance with Functions of Rubisco


Tofu is soybean curd. Tofu has a high protein content, is rich in iron, calcium and B vitamins. Tofu is available in various forms. Silken tofu is the softest and is best for mashing, blending for dips, dressings and sauces.
Firm tofu is a heavily pressed version with a dense texture like firm cheese. Firm tofu can be cubed, sliced and marinated. Tofu is a great low-calorie replacement for meat in stir-fries, stews and casseroles.
You can buy tofu smoked, marinated or braised. Tofu has no flavour of its own but absorbs the flavour of sauces in which it is cooked or marinated.
Raw (firm) 1/2 cup = 185 calories.
Raw (regular) 1/2 cup = 94 calories.
Hinoichi Chinese 40z/100g = 70 calories.


text:
The following musical events and releases are expected to happen in 2019 in Canada.

Events
 March – Juno Awards of 2019
 April – East Coast Music Awards
 May – Prism Prize
 June – Preliminary longlist for the 2019 Polaris Music Prize is announced
 July – SOCAN Songwriting Prize
 July – Shortlist for the Polaris Music Prize is announced
 September – Haviah Mighty wins the Polaris Music Prize for her album 13th Floor

Albums released

A
Absolutely Free, Geneva Freeport
Altameda, Time Hasn't Changed You
Anemone, Beat My Distance - February 15

B
Badge Époque Ensemble, Badge Époque Ensemble
Tim Baker, Forever Overhead - April 19
Bedouin Soundclash, MASS - October 4
Begonia, Fear
Beppie, Song Soup
Bleu Jeans Bleu, Perfecto
Dean Brody, Black Sheep - April 26
Chad Brownlee, Back in the Game - June 21
Broken Social Scene, Let's Try the After Vol. 1 - February 15
Broken Social Scene, Let's Try the After Vol. 2 - April 12
Jon Bryant, Cult Classic - May 17
Louise Burns, Portraits - November 8
Burnstick, Kîyânaw
Spencer Burton, The Mountain Man

C
Daniel Caesar, Case Study 01 - June 28
Alessia Cara, This Summer - September 6
Celeigh Cardinal, Stories from a Downtown Apartment
Lou-Adriane Cassidy, C'est la fin du monde à tous les jours
Tanika Charles, The Gumption - May 10
Clairmont the Second, Do You Drive? - January 31
City and Colour, A Pill for Loneliness - October 4
Bruce Cockburn, Crowing Ignites - September 20
Leonard Cohen, Thanks for the Dance - November 22
Charlotte Cornfield, The Shape of Your Name
Corridor, Junior
Les Cowboys Fringants, Les Antipodes
Amelia Curran, Live at Massey Hall
Isabelle Cyr, Brûle sur mes lèvres

D
Mac DeMarco, Here Comes the Cowboy - May 10
Devours, Iconoclast
Le Diable à Cinq, Debout!
Digawolf, Yellowstone
Céline Dion, Courage - November 15
Julie Doiron with Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom pt. 2 - November 8
Drake, Care Package - August 2
Durham County Poets, Hand Me Down Blues

E
Efajemue, Motions and Methods
André Ethier, Croak in the Weeds

F
Lara Fabian, Papillon
Stephen Fearing, The Unconquerable Past
FET.NAT, Le Mal
Dominique Fils-Aimé, Stay Tuned!
Flore Laurentienne, Volume 1
Florian Hoefner Trio, First Spring
Flying Hórses, Reverie
FouKi, ZayZay
The Franklin Electric, In Your Head EP - August 2

G
Hannah Georgas, Imprints
Leela Gilday, North Star Calling
The Glorious Sons, A War on Everything - September 13
The Golden Seals, Something Isn't Happening
Aaron Goodvin, V
Jenn Grant, Love, Inevitable - May 31
Great Lake Swimmers, The Waves, the Wake (Acoustic) - November 8

H
Half Moon Run, A Blemish in the Great Light – November 1
Haviah Mighty, 13th Floor
Joshua Haulli, Aqqut
Headstones, PeopleSkills – October 25
Hey Major, The Station
Hollerado, Retaliation Vacation
Hunter Brothers, State of Mind – January 25
Nate Husser, 23+
Andrew Hyatt, Abel

I
Iamtheliving, In This Thing Called Life
Ice Cream, Fed Up
iskwē, acākosīk - November 8, 2019

J
James Barker Band, Singles Only - May 24
Yves Jarvis, The Same but by Different Means
Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated - May 17
Lyndon John X, The Warning Track
Julian Taylor Band, Avalanche - March 29
Just John x Dom Dias, Don III (April); PROJECT (November)

K
Kanen, Kanen
Kaytranada, Bubba - December 13
Kid Koala, Music To Draw To: Io - January 25
Patrick Krief, Dovetale - June 7

L
Laurence-Anne, Première apparition
Avril Lavigne, Head Above Water - February 15
Lee Harvey Osmond, Mohawk
Jean Leloup, L'Étrange pays - May 24
Murray Lightburn, Hear Me Out - February 22
Lightning Dust, Spectre
Loud, Tout ça pour ça - May 24
The Lowest of the Low, Agitpop - May 31

M
Ryan MacGrath, That Woods
Maestro Fresh Wes, Champagne Campaign - March 8
Alexandria Maillot, Benevolence - November 22
Manila Grey, No Saints Loading
Mappe Of, The Isle of Ailynn - November 1
Marianas Trench, Phantoms - March 1
Memphis, Leave With Me - February 8
Millimetrik, Make It Last Forever
Monsune, Tradition
Mounties, Heavy Meta - April 26

N
nêhiyawak, nipiy
The New Pornographers, In the Morse Code of Brake Lights - September 27
Safia Nolin, xX3m0 $0ng$ 2 $!nG @L0nG 2Xx

O
OBUXUM, Re-Birth
Ocie Elliott, We Fall In
Okan, Sombras
Ouri, We Share Our Blood

P
Partner, Saturday the 14th
Orville Peck, Pony
Philémon Cimon, Pays
PUP, Morbid Stuff - April 5
Pvrx, 3.14 - July 26

R
Billy Raffoul, Running Wild
The Reklaws, Freshman Year - August 27
Amanda Rheaume, The Skin I'm In
Riit, Ataataga - October 25
John River, The Academy - January 25
Royal Canoe, Waver
Reuben and the Dark, un love - October 25
Rheostatics, Here Come the Wolves - September 6
Ruth B, Maybe I'll Find You Again - March 22
Justin Rutledge, Passages - May 31

S
Said the Whale, Cascadia
Saint Asonia, Flawed Design
Sarahmée, Irréversible
Jacques Kuba Séguin, Migrations
Joseph Shabason, Anne EP - May 10
Shay Lia, Dangerous
Silverstein, Redux: The First Ten Years - April 12
Siskiyou, Not Somewhere - May 17
Dallas Smith, The Fall - March 13
Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Trapline
SonReal, The Aaron LP - May 10
Rae Spoon, Mental Health
The Strumbellas, Rattlesnake - March 29
Sum 41, Order in Decline - July 19
Super Duty Tough Work, Studies in Grey

T
Tariq, Telegrams - March 29
Tegan and Sara, Hey, I'm Just Like You - September 27
Devin Townsend, Empath
Tobi, STILL - May 3
Tre Mission, Orphan Black - July 26

V
Vile Creature, Preservation Rituals (2015-2018)
Leif Vollebekk, New Ways - November 1

W
Ruby Waters, Almost Naked
Dawn Tyler Watson, Mad Love
Patrick Watson, Wave - October 18
We Are the City, RIP
Whitehorse, The Northern South, Vol. 2 - January 18
WHOOP-Szo, Warrior Down
JJ Wilde, Wilde Eyes, Steady Hands
Wintersleep, In the Land Of - March 29
Donovan Woods, The Other Way
Hawksley Workman, Median Age Wasteland - March 1

Deaths
January 16 - Jean Chatillon, composer
January 16 - Alfred Kunz, composer
February 9 - Phil Western, electronic/industrial musician
February 23 - Johnnie Lovesin, rock singer
February 28 - Ed Bickert, jazz guitarist
March 6 - Charlie Panigoniak, singer-songwriter
March 22 - Joe Hall, singer-songwriter
April 1 - Vladimir Orloff, cellist
April 20 - David Zafer, violinist
May 20 - Dave Bookman, musician (The Bookmen) and radio personality (CFNY-FM, CIND-FM)
June 16 - Adam Litovitz, rock musician and film composer
November 20 - John Mann, singer and guitarist (Spirit of the West)
December 5 - Leon Cole, organist, composer and classical music radio host
December 15 - Monique Leyrac, singer
December 24 - Kelly Fraser, singer

References

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Students design a smart bandage. A team of University students will be participating in the international iGEM competition, where students attempt to build the best biological 'machine' using synthetic biology. This year's team has designed a bandage that helps heal burn wounds and prevents infection.
Studying Multilingualism. The University of Groningen recently introduced a new international Master's degree programme: Multilingualism. The programme focuses on studying multilingualism in all its aspects.
Social impact of watching a dance performance. Does a performance influence the behaviour of individual viewers, the relationships between them, and the creation of a 'community'? A University research team (Social Psychology and Artificial Intelligence) studies this, together with choreographer collective Random Collision.
Last modified: 12 January 2018 1.36 p.m.


text:
Human Development and Family Sciences
Chair's Welcome
Catalyst Newsletter
Colloquia Series
Major in Early Childhood Education
Major in Human Services
Major in Human Relations Administration
Minor in HDFS
Minor in Medical Social Services
Undergraduate Internship Opportunities
4+1 Programs
M.S. in Human Development and Family Sciences
M.A. in Early Childhood Development and Programming
Master's Program Partnerships
Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Sciences
Ph.D. in Education and Social Policy
PhD Directory
HDFS Grad Student Development and Discovery Series
Graduate Student Associations
Human Services Internships
Student Teaching Abroad
Centers & Services
Graduate Research Opportunities
Steele Symposium (CEHD)
Undergraduate Awards and Scholarships
The Department of Human Development and Family Sciences and the College of Education and Human Development offer many scholarship and award opportunities.
The application deadline is April 2, 2021
HDFS students may apply directly for following awards:
Lila C. Murphy Community and Family Services Scholarship
A monetary award ($200) to a Human Services major who has demonstrated outstanding service to the local community through voluntary involvement in programs benefiting children, youth, elderly, and/or their families.
Lila C. Murphy Award for Women's Equity and Leadership
A monetary ($200) award to a female student in Human Development and Family Sciences acknowledging student leadership activities and/or contributions to women's equity issues.
Catherine Bieber Scholarship for Academic Achievement and Leadership in Human Development and Family Studies
A monetary award to a student who has demonstrated academic achievement and provided leadership in human development and family studies. The award is made possible by the late Catherine Bieber, M.S., a former University of Delaware faculty member, Associate Dean and Acting Dean of the College of Human Services.
Barbara Halliday Settles Family Futures Student Support Fund in Family Sciences
This award is intended to provide financial support for undergraduate and graduate students in Family Sciences to attend conferences or conduct research, giving preference to students who are traveling internationally to do so. A personal statement demonstrating why internationalization matters to you and how it will help you in your professional career path along with projected costs and budget for the conference they would like to be attend can be uploaded in the application form. A faculty recommender will also be required.
Awards and Scholarship Application
HDFS faculty may nominate students for the following honors:
Alice P. Eyman Professional Development Award
A monetary award ($200) presented to a junior, senior or graduate student in Early Childhood Education. The award recipient demonstrates a strong commitment and passion for building effective partnerships with children and their families and exemplifies, through their work with children and families, the philosophy of the Laboratory Preschool. Exceptional qualities of professionalism including advocating for the needs of children and families, participating in professional growth experiences and ability to use reflection as learning tool will be considered. Criteria: Minimum index of 3.0. Student must have participated in a placement at The Laboratory Preschool at some time in his/her college career.
Jane I. Davidson Laboratory Preschool Award
A monetary award ($200) given to a junior, senior, or Master's student in Early Childhood Education to honor the memory of Jane I. Davidson for her extraordinary ability to teach young children and families. The student exemplifies the philosophy of the Laboratory Preschool and has demonstrated unusual desire and skill in teaching children with special needs and/or extraordinary ability to create and implement curriculum through play.
Amy Rextrew Award
A monetary award presented to a senior and a junior in fashion and apparel design; hotel, restaurant and institutional management; human development and family studies; leadership; or nutrition and dietetics who possess outstanding qualities of scholarship, leadership and character, plus an appreciation of the values that are basic to success in their chosen fields.
Vancamp/Remage Teacher Education Merit Award
This award is presented to an early childhood education major who demonstrates academic ability, exhibits an ability to overcome special problems, and demonstrates potential for future contributions in the field of education and the community.
The College of Education and Human Development may recognize students with the following honors and aid:
Delaware Association for the Education of Young Children (DAEYC) Student Leadership Award
A two year membership in a selected chapter of the Association for the Education of Young Children is awarded to the student who has shown leadership skills and contributed to the advancement of the goals of DAEYC.
Susan McLaughlin Scholarship
The Susan McLaughlin Scholarship is awarded annually to a student in CEHD who demonstrated outstanding character, motivation, discipline, and promise in the pursuit of their undergraduate degree. Past recipients continue to be eligible. Students with less than a 3.0 GPA are considered.
Wallace H. Maw Scholarship
Awarded ($1,000) to an undergraduate student majoring in either the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences or School of Education. Criteria: Based on Academic merit and financial need.
Irma Ayers Scholar Award
The Irma Ayers Scholar Award is an intercollege monetary award to a sophomore (28-59 credits) in the department with the highest cumulative index for the first three semesters of enrollment at the University with a minimum of 9 credit hours in the College.
Delaware Association of Family and Consumer Sciences Preprofessional/Graduate Award
The purpose of this award is to recognize and promote commitment and leadership in the preprofessional/graduate student section of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Delaware Association of School Administrators Award (DASA)
An award presented by the Delaware Association of School Administrators to a graduating senior in education who has demonstrated outstanding qualities of scholarship, leadership and character and gives promise of making a meaningful contribution to the teaching profession.
Community and Family Services Award
A monetary award to an undergraduate student who has demonstrated outstanding service to the local community through voluntary involvement in programs benefiting children, youth, the elderly, and/or their families. The student also should demonstrate a commitment toward pursuing a career in the human services through involvement in such campus activities as the Community and Family Services Club.
Phi Delta Kappa Award
An award presented by the Delaware Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa to an undergraduate teacher education student who shows evidence and promise of excellence in educational research.
University-Wide Awards
The University Diversity Initiative offers several awards for students whose activity mirrors their mission.
The University of Delaware Alumni Association offers scholarships for outstanding students.
AAUP Undergraduate Student Award
Each year, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) presents two undergraduate student awards to outstanding seniors who plan to attend graduate school in preparation for an academic career in university or college teaching or research. Each award is $2,000 and is to be used to defer expenses related to graduate school.
Criteria: be in senior year, demonstrate outstanding academic work, exhibit a high level of involvement in campus life, have a commitment to a career in teaching and research in higher education, and have applied to graduate school.
All students eligible for this award will be contacted by the AAUP office. Application are sought in January.
AAUW Award – Newark Branch
The Newark Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) invites students to apply for its annual $500 award to an outstanding senior woman.
Criteria: academic achievement (minimum GPA of 3.25), leadership in volunteer service on campus and the greater Newark area/home community.
Application deadlines are in March.
Department of Human Development & Family Sciences • 111 Alison Hall West • Newark, DE 19716 • Phone: 302-831-6500 • Fax: 302-831-8776 • hdfs-dept@udel.edu
©2018 University of Delaware


Repaint only for the Premier Aircraft Design Beechcraft model 99 (C99) in Wagair (Waglisla Airlines) livery. Requires BEECH99_4_X.ZIP. By Enrique Medal.
Screenshot of Wagair Beech 99 in flight.
**IMPORTANT : You must already have a working copy of the PAD C99 installed in (FS2004) FSX.
Open the downloaded zip file by double clicking on it.
The zip will open and show the files within.
Select entire contents of the zip by using keys Ctrl-A.
Extract the files to the aircraft (FS9) or airplanes (FSX) folder of your B99.
This will create a new folder named texture.WAGLISLA.
Open the aircraft.cfg file (double click) and copy the following lines into it underneath the [fltsim.0] entry.
[fltsim.X] > > > > change the x' to the next number in sequence.
panel=beech99_x > > > > for use in FSX change this line to "panel=beech99_x".
description=The Beechcraft Model 99 is a civilian aircraft produced by the Beech Aircraft Corporation (previously the Beechcraft Division of Raytheon and now a unit of Hawker Beechcraft). It is also known as the Beech 99 Airliner and the Commuter 99. The 99 is a twin-engined, un-pressurized, 17-seat\/15 passenger turboprop aircraft, derived from earlier Beechcraft King Air and Queen Air, using the wings of the Queen Air, and the engines and nacelles of the King Air, and sub-systems from both, and with a unique nose structure used only on the 99.
The archive beech99_txtrx_wagair.zip has 29 files and directories contained within it.


text:
Pachyneuron chambaense is een vliesvleugelig insect uit de familie Pteromalidae. De wetenschappelijke naam is voor het eerst geldig gepubliceerd in 1974 door Mani & Saraswat.

Pteromalidae


text:
Radu Vasile (* 10. Oktober 1942 in Hermannstadt; † 3. Juli 2013) war ein rumänischer Historiker, Hochschullehrer und Politiker der Partidul Național Țărănesc Creștin Democrat (PNȚCD), der von 1998 bis 1999 auch Ministerpräsident war.

Leben
Nach dem Schulbesuch studierte Vasile Geschichte an der Historischen Fakultät der Universität Bukarest und schloss dieses Studium 1967 mit Auszeichnung ab. Für einige Zeit war ihm der Zugang zur Hochschulausbildung wegen seines Vaters verwehrt worden, da dieser als Rechtsanwalt wegen der Kritik an der Regierung politischer Gefangener war. 1971 wurde er Wissenschaftlicher Assistent an der Fakultät für Wirtschaftsgeschichte an der Wirtschaftsakademie Bukarest und nach dem Erwerb eines Philosophiae Doctor im Fach Wirtschaftswissenschaften (Ph. D. Economics) im Jahr 1977 als Lecturer 1978 an die Fakultät für Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Wirtschaftsakademie berufen.

Ende 1989 wurde er mit Unterstützung der Studenten zum Prodekan der Fakultät für Handelsbetriebslehre der Wirtschaftsakademie gewählt und behielt dieses Amt bis 1992. Während dieser Zeit nahm er auch an Kursen im Fach Europäische Integration an der Aristoteles-Universität Thessaloniki und der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München teil.

Nach seinem Eintritt in die PNȚCD begann er auch eine politische Laufbahn; er wurde am 21. Oktober 1992 erstmals Mitglied des Senats und gehörte diesem bis 2004 an. Außerdem war er unter anderem von September bis November 1996, zwischen Februar und Juni 1998 sowie im Februar 2004 Vizepräsident des Senats.

1994 nahm er den Ruf auf eine Professur an der Wirtschaftsakademie an.

Am 17. April 1998 wurde er Ministerpräsident Rumäniens und bekleidete dieses Amt bis zum 13. Dezember 1999. In diese Zeit (Januar und Februar 1999) fielen Protestaktionen von Bergleuten, die  sogenannten  "Mineriaden". Seinem Kabinett gehörten 25 Minister an. Nach seinem Rücktritt wurde der bisherige Minister für Arbeit und sozialen Schutz Alexandru Athanasiu bis zum 16. Dezember Ministerpräsident einer Übergangsregierung, es folgte Mugur Isărescu (bis 2000).

Nachdem er im Dezember 1999 aus der PNȚCD ausgetreten war, gehörte er dem Senat zunächst als Parteiloser an, ehe er im Jahr 2000 Mitglied der Partidul Democrat (PD) wurde. Nach seinem Ausscheiden aus dem Senat nahm er seine Tätigkeit als Universitätsprofessor wieder auf und verfasste daneben Gedichte unter dem Pseudonym Radu Mischiu.

Weblinks
 Eintrag auf der Homepage des Parlaments
 Zur Person – 10 X Radu Vasile: Macho und Populist; Focus 16/1998 vom 11. April 1998

 Lebenslauf (romania-on-line.net)

Einzelnachweise

Senator (Rumänien)
Ministerpräsident (Rumänien)
PD-Mitglied (Rumänien)
Historiker
Hochschullehrer (Wirtschaftsakademie Bukarest)
Rumäne
Geboren 1942
Gestorben 2013
Mann