text:
A. Zombie Reviews . . . Dead Set
Post written by RC Murphy at September 11, 2016 12:17 am
Categories: Reviews, Zombies
Tags: A Zombie, Dead Set, reality television, review, the ZSC, zombie, zombie apocalypse, zombie survival, zombie survival crew, zombiepocalypse, zombies
Episodes 1 & 2
By A. Zombie
I'll tell you right now, two episodes into Dead Set and I still have nothing emotionally invested in the show's contestants. That's not to say I haven't found someone to root for during the end days—Kelly steals every scene she's in, vastly improving what could have been five episodes of uninspiring reality stars wandering around until they were eaten.
I'd totally cheer if they were all eaten. I might even wave pompoms.
The show opens with a typical afternoon leading up to another eviction from the BB house, as dictated by fan votes. The household prepares, some touching up their nails, others banging out their nerves behind closed doors. In the production office, Kelly delivers an endless stream of coffee to the crew. The producer, Patrick, demonstrates what a skuzzball he really is while cutting together highlight reels for the event and barking orders at his frazzled staff. Nothing is amiss until we catch snippets from news reports—strange deaths, attacks on police, etc. The reports grow in severity, leading Patrick to worry his precious eviction episode will be preempted in favor of a news bulletin. God forbid.
Eventually, the chaos reaches the remote location for the BB house and production office. The first zombie to arrive is a company driver—injured and brought to the studio by a production assistant who was sent with him to fetch a guest for the show. From there, the infection spreads through the gathered BB fans. By the time the evicted housemate, Pippa, makes it to the interview room, most of the crowd has turned. It takes mere minutes for the undead to overrun the offices.
The housemates hear the screams and think Pippa is a smash hit with the crowd. They crack open a few bottles, a few drinks to celebrate surviving to see another eviction night.
Little do they know, they're probably the only ones celebrating in the UK.
The real story isn't the housemates or their skeezy producer. Kelly provides the heartbeat, and common sense, for the show. While her love life is a feature in the beginning, it's a non-issue by the time the second episode rolls out. There are a few amazing solo scenes with Kelly doing whatever it takes to survive. It's not until she takes refuge in the BB house with the remaining cast that we realize she's the entire braintrust. Where they are keen to believe for as long as possible that the weird things going on are staged, she's ready to beat anyone to death who so much as looks undead. She's also the only one with a plan to get medical supplies when a housemate is bitten.
The zombies themselves are minimally made-up, background creatures relying on pale faces, a few wounds, and blood to convey the undead message. We see a few hero zombies with better makeup, mostly in the second episode. There's great detail in the close-up gore shots, though they're so shaky, it's like a toddler was thrown into the fight scenes with a Go Pro strapped to their head. These are also some seriously fast undead. It raises the stakes drastically when the living cannot outrun the dead. Something missing from other shows relying on compelling characters to drive the plot. Who needs to relate to the characters? Just give us zombie action.
While I'm enjoying Kelly's story, and it's the only reason I'll watch the three remaining episodes, this would be much more entertaining with a better-written cast behind her. Patrick is a toad, utterly disgusting and should've died in the initial murders. The housemates barely have a brain cell between them. It makes their scenes difficult to endure to get to the actual story. Hopefully with Kelly breaking the barrier between the BB production team and the housemates, it'll make their scenes bearable.


Reading Recovery is designed for children aged five or six, who are finding literacy difficult after their first year of school. These children are often not unable to read simple books or write their own name before the programme. They receive a short series of intensive lessons with a specially trained teacher in their own school.
Children in Reading Recovery have individual lessons for 30 minutes every day. The lesson series lasts for up to 20 weeks but is shorter for many children. The programme is different for every child, starting from what the child knows and what he/she needs to learn next. The focus of each lesson is to develop the child's reading skills and to write a message, which the child composes with support. Each day the lesson begins with the child reading one or two familiar books so that they begin with a sense of achievement and then moves on to activities which are tailored to the individual child's next steps. Every book that the child is given to read is carefully chosen to match their reading level.
The lesson series finishes when the child is as able to read and write without help, at the appropriate level for their age. Most children who complete Reading Recovery have gone from text Level 0 to Level 17. These children have learned four-to-five times faster than their classmates to catch up and after the intervention their progress continues in line with their peers. Children who reach this level at the end of their programme are expected to achieve a National Curriculum Level 2 at the end of Key Stage 1.
Around one in five children do not make this level of progress and are referred back to the school for long-term support or referral to outside agencies such as the Educational Psychology Service. However they have usually made considerable improvements in their reading and writing, gaining one year of reading age in six months and progressing from a Level 0 to a Level 9 text.
Reading Recovery teachers work closely with parents and invite them to watch a lesson during their child's programme. A new book is sent home following each lesson and other activities are sent home regularly.


Card Exchanges, Swaps & Challenges Host and sign up for exchanges here.
Thank you for the lovely flowers, Critter. Made my heart happy, card and ATC. Great use of lace!
Thank you Yankee and Critter for my 'book' atcs and very lovely cards too.
Lovely ATCs from LadyKestrel! I enjoy the art yoga/dancers! Thanks so much.
Today is last call for February! It is still open til I check RSC on Friday afternoon. So join us for some spring art fun.
All my January ATCs went out, but your buttons & bows came back Thursday, Elayne, because the envelope needed 15 cents more postage. It was less than an ounce but probably too plump because of the padding I used. I re-packed it and added more postage, so it should get to you in a couple of days.
Sometimes I think I really have my life together, and then I realize my underwear is inside out.
No worries, I'm looking forward to it.
Location: In the house, all the time.
Lady Kestrel and Yankee, Hi!
Sweet yellow flowers arrived from Yankee. It's a rainy, chilly Sunday and the pretty yellow art made me smile! Thank you.
LadyK My beautiful card and ATC arrived today safely, appreciate you mailing it out a second time. thank you.
Thank you Elayne, for my beaded flowers. They arrived unharmed. Pretty and shiny.
Cozy yellow ATC arrived from Elayne. I love it....it brightened a dreary day. Thank you so much!
All times are GMT -7. The time now is 04:26 PM.


text:
News4Jax.com Staff
Published: January 18, 2017, 5:48 pm
Tags: News, Jacksonville, Florida, Politics
Rutherford remains in hospital after collapse at Capitol
Chief of staff: NE Florida congressman had allergic reaction
WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. John Rutherford remains hospitalized a week after an allergic reaction caused an "acute digestive flare up" that forced him to be carried from the U.S. Capitol on a stretcher, his chief of staff said.
The 64-year-old freshman congressman and former Jacksonville sheriff, elected to the 4th Congressional District last fall, collapsed just after 6 p.m. last Wednesday while members of the House of Representatives were voting.
Rutherford's chief of staff, Kelly Simpson, quickly dispelled rumors of a heart attack and explained in a statement Wednesday that doctors are still working to eliminate all the inflammation caused by an allergic reaction.
The statement also said:
Congressman Rutherford is much improved and thanks everyone for their continued well wishes and prayers of support. ... Doctors are expected to release him some time over the next several days. John, Pat, and the entire Rutherford family ask their Northeast Florida extended family to continue to lift them all up in prayer as God continues to take John to a speedy recovery."
According to multiple reports, Rutherford needed medical attention and paramedics were seen working on him in the Republican cloakroom.
Current Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said Rutherford gave everyone quite a scare.
"I can tell you, having worked with him for many, many years, my advice to him would be to take a few minutes and eat a meal every now and then and quit trying to work so hard every single day," Williams said. "We were obviously all praying for him last night. And it worked out well. He's in good health and good shape, looking forward to him getting back and getting back to work."
Many took to social media to express well wishes for Rutherford.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with Congressman John Rutherford and his family. We are praying for a quick recovery," tweeted the Duval County GOP.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry also tweeted, "Prayers for my friend John Rutherford."
The 64-year-old Republican worked in law enforcement for 41 years and served as sheriff in Jacksonville, Florida, before defeating Democrat David Bruderly in November to win the District 4 seat of retiring Republican Rep. Ander Crenshaw.
Copyright 2017 by WJXT News4Jax. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This article explains the process of grieving a divorce or separation and how to take care of yourself.
This article describes how to think through the decision to divorce.
This article contains resources to assist couples who are in the process of divorcing.
This video gives healthy coping tips to help individuals survive divorce.
This video offers tips for getting through a break-up.


text:
Russia planning to disrupt elections in Ukraine – OSINT group
One of the options on the table is claiming that election officials are "not allowing people to vote after they present their IDP IDs." The focus will be on regions bordering with the occupied territories, the central part of Ukraine, and the City of Kyiv.
Russian special services are planning to employ agents recruited by the so-called "Ministry of Civil Defense of the Luhansk People's Republic ("LPR")" from among the residents of the occupied territories to provoke tensions at polling stations during the presidential elections in Ukraine, that's according to ex-operative of Ukraine's military intelligence Yuriy Smishchuk and ex-officer of the Spec-Ops Forces Vyacheslav Protopopov.
"According to the information available, Russian supervisors and a 'quasi-special service' of the 'LPR' terrorists are training a group of provocateurs from among Ukrainian nationals living in a temporarily uncontrolled territory, recruited by the 'LPR's Ministry of Civil Defense.' They will be instructed to stage provocative situations at polling stations, which will be covered in the media and give the impression of alleged falsification, non-transparency of elections, their illegality, and alleged violations of the rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs)," Smishchuk told Guildhall, according to the Information Resistance OSINT group.
Such provocations are expected in most of Ukraine's regions, the statement adds.
One of their options that's on the table is claiming that election officials are "not allowing people to vote after they present their IDP IDs." The focus will be on regions bordering with the occupied territories, the central part of Ukraine, and the City of Kyiv, according to the report.
"Future provocateurs are now being trained by Russian experts in the field of electoral law and representatives of election commissions who 'consult' them on the possibility of identifying violations during elections, their 'correct' interpretation and 'presentation' to the press. The recorded facts of 'violations' are planned to be covered online in the Russian and Western media, as well as on the territory of the 'LPR' and 'DPR' terrorist groups," said Protopopov.
Tags: #Russia#meddling#elections#hybridwar#propaganda#IDPs#provocations#interference#disinformation


I was twenty-one when I gave birth to my first child; she was beautiful. There was nothing that could have ever prepared me for the depths of love that filled my heart as I held her for the first time.
I knew right away that she was worth my every effort. My relationship with her made me feel as though I had been designed to be a mom, I felt completely made to be "mom." Every moment with her felt like my soul had found it's calling.
I was filled with excitement everytime her cries woke me from my sleep. I knew I was getting out of bed to show my daughter that I would be with her through thick and thin. I was showing her that even though I can't always make her troubles go away, she never has to fight them alone. I knew someday her troubles would be bigger and that this moment and every moment like it acted as a stitch in the fabric of our relationship, and every stitch made us stronger.
Shylee will be five years old this July. There have been many sleepless nights since we sowed that first stitch. With each stage of our relationship, the "Mommy's here," mentality has served as a lamppost as we've made our way through more difficult challenges. The phrase "Mommy's here" was the most humbling statement I had ever made as a new mother. I was admitting to my daughter that I did not have it all figured out, I did not have a solution for her troubles, and that the most I could offer her in this difficult moment was merely my presence.
I have eleven brothers and sisters, I am number seven in that lineup so my mother was a pro by the time I came along. I have so much respect for her; she is so loving and wise. I honestly believed that she was perfect and I wanted to grow up to be just like her! I thought being a mom meant you had some kind of power or insight that others didn't and that you always knew just what to do or how to fix anything! When my mother said "Mommy's here." I knew things would get better because MY MOM WAS THERE… Her presence made everything better!
Uttering the words "Mommy's here" not only humbled me it shattered the unrealistic ideas I had about being a mom. It's not being perfect, it's being present, it's not having the power to fix anything; it's having the bravery to face anything. Being a mom doesn't mean you have all the answers, and that's ok because this isn't a test, it's an opportunity to love wholeheartedly.
My youngest daughter Ember loves to be held, she wants me to carry her everywhere we go. Lately I have been working with her, teaching her that walking for herself is a good thing. I tell her "I will hold your hand and we will walk together." She hates it, she gets upset every time I don't pick her up and carry her. One time she wanted me to carry her from the car into the house and I told her no, but that I would walk with her. She grabbed my hand and said "But mom, if I walk I'll fall." She said it like it was a perfectly good reason to never walk. At first I thought that was she was being rediculus. Before I could respond I realized that she thought not trying was acceptable because I had been leading that example.
I hold back from the things the scare me. I sacrifice my desires because I'm afraid I will fail. I run away from games in fear that I'll look silly. I avoid all things that I just might "fall down" while doing because I'm afraid I'll end up on the floor.
I got down on my knees and I told Ember that it's ok to fall, it's ok if you get hurt while trying because I will be here right beside you, you wont walk or fall alone.
She stared to walk and a few steps later she fell, she was so frustrated and said, "See mom, I told you I would fall!" I reminded her that it was ok and encouraged her to try again. She got back up and walked the rest of the way to the house without a trip.
Later I thought about this beautiful moment with my daughter and how meaningful it was to me. I thought about how much she trusted me, and how inspired I was by her bravery to get back up and walk again.
My kids learn by watching me, so I have to be sure that my walk teaches them that it's ok to fall. This meant I needed the grace that we as parents give to our children when we are actually teaching them to walk.
I didn't see their falls or the amount of steps they took before they fell. I saw their efforts. I saw their beauty and I lived in the truth that they are enough. I cannot think of a time when I have failed or fallen and thought, "Good job Kami, you did it!" I have always focused on the fact that I was sitting on the ground with cuts or bruises on my pride. When I give grace, my daughters learn to give grace, but it's only when I receive grace that my daughters will learn to receive grace. I have to change the message,"Stupid, stupid, Kami, why did you even try!" That I tell myself when I mess up. I have to start telling myself, "Good job Kami, you did it, you gave it all you've got!" I must stop clinging to my doubts and start walking, and when I fall, I must fall into the grace and love that I want my children to live in. Our mistakes are not a place for shame. They are a place for grace, love, learning and believing that we are one step closer to something amazing!
I know it hurts to fall, but I'd rather walk with bruises then stay in one place crippled by fear.
I stopped walking, and looked around. She was right; the flowers were dancing! I had never seen that before. In my mind the flowers were always being shoved around whenever the wind was blowing. I couldn't believe that I was going to "teach" her that the wind was blowing and that the flowers were not dancing.
As a parent I can get so caught up in my role, always trying to teach my kids how things work, right from wrong, and the "facts of life." That I forget how much my kids can teach me!
I am so grateful that my daughter made me stop, and invited me to see the world through her eyes. She has such a beautiful way of seeing things. I am trying to change the way I parent from "what I have to teach," to "what we can learn together." To think that I might have gone the rest of my life watching the flowers be shoved around by the wind, instead of seeing the wind as something that gave the flowers the ability to dance saddens my heart.
As an adult it's so easy to see the negative side of things when we are facing hardship. We can become so overwhelmed by our "to do lists," seeing it as all the things we HAVE to get done, and be burdened down by the end of the day when there is still so much "to do" left on our list. We climb into bed exhausted, feeling behind, wishing there was more time in the day.
I am certain if there were more time in the day, I would just make my list longer, and still climb into bed feeling like a failure because I didn't get it all done. If we can change our mindset from "to do," to what we "get to do," maybe then we wont climb into bed feeling bad about what we didn't "get to do," and feel happy about what we did "get to do." Maybe the list would stop pushing us around, and just maybe it could be the very thing giving us the ability to dance.
There have been many times that my girls have said "Mommy come play with us!" And I've told them I can't because I have to do the dishes. I am constantly making them wait 'til I'm done with some chore. I do these chores because I want to take care of my family, but I have made the mistake of letting the chores come first, my priorities are out of whack at times!
When I do this, my actions say that the dirty plates, cups, bowls, and silverware are more important than you right now. I need to be okay with a sink filled with dirty dishes, and say "Yes, what I'm doing right now is necessary, but you are more important, and the dishes can wait!" Then when I wake up the next morning to a stack of dishes I can feel proud, I can feel happy because the dirty dishes exist because my family was fed, and they remain because I spent quality time with my daughters. In doing this I've changed a chore undone into a meaningful accomplishment.
It is important to remain balanced in this though. We cannot ignore all our responsibilities. Things do have to get done. I am only suggesting that we examine what is most important and why. Are we beating ourselves up when our house is a mess? Or are we going to bed feeling like failures when we don't accomplish all of our goals for a day? How can we rest when we feel overwhelmed and behind?
I want my list to reflect how I feel about my priorities, and my roles as mom, wife, and Kami. I don't want my list to control how I feel. My list does not get to decide who I am, what my value is, or my dedication to my family. I make my list, and if something doesn't get checked off it, it's not because "I'm a failure," it's because something else mattered more.
I like the thought of dancing through our days because, one really has to let go and be free in order to dance. We can't worry about what others are thinking of us while we're dancing. We can't plan our every step, we have to listen to the music and just let our bodies move. Dancing is fun, it's freeing. You can dance the dance however you like!
Our lists do not make us; we make them. What we get done or don't get done, does not make us doers or don'ters, it makes us dancers. The next time your day feels like a rush of winds shoving you around may you dance like the flowers in the field.


text:
January 15, 2016 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:26 am Finance Tagged with: bear market, China, debt, decency, EU, oil, refugees, Saudi, shares
DPC Foundry, Detroit Shipbuilding Co., Wyandotte, Michigan 1915
• WTI, Brent Oil Sink Under $30 (FT)
• China Stocks Enter Bear Market as State-Fueled Rally Evaporates (BBG)
• Asia Shares Hit 3-1/2-Year Lows As Oil Resumes Fall (Reuters)
• A Towering Chinese Debt Mountain Looms Over Markets (BBG)
• China's Capital Flight (BBG)
• China Wants a Reserve Currency and Control, But Can't Have Both (BBG)
• Layoffs and Unrest Loom in China as Growth Slows (BBG)
• The Simple Truth About China's Market (BBG)
• China Credit Growth Surged In December Amid Fresh Stimulus (BBG)
• Glimmers Of Hope For Oil As Russia Poised To Slash Output – But.. (AEP)
• The 'Real' Price Of Oil Is Below $17 (ZH)
• Saudi Life With $30 Oil (BBG)
• Saudi Arabia Plans New Sovereign Wealth Fund (Reuters)
• Iron Ore Risks Tumbling Into $20s on Demand Fall: Citi (BBG)
• How Australian Households Became The Most Indebted In The World (Guardian)
• Greece: A European Tragedy (Mody)
• Dutch Populist Wilders Says EU Finished, Netherlands Must Leave (BBG)
• Europe Doesn't Need Stronger Borders (Legrain)
• Switzerland Joins Denmark In Seizing Assets From Refugees (Guardian)
• Nine Bodies Of Refugees, Migrants Found Off Turkish Coast (Reuters)
• Three Children Drown Off The Coast Of Greece's Agathonisi Island (Kath.)
Yay! Imagine yourself on a sleigh going down a steep slope.
At pixel time: WTI is at $29.67 per barrel, down 4.9% to a new 12-year low. Brent, meanwhile, is down 3.31% to $29.87. This is doing oily currencies no favours, on which more shortly. It's unhelpful even to less oily currencies too; Barclays for example trimmed its inflation outlook for the UK based in part on the slide in oil. It also shoved out its expectation for the first UK rate rise to the fourth quarter of this year, from the second. Sterling trades at $1.4344 right now, a new five-and-a-half year low.
Last hour or so.
Chinese stocks fell into a bear market for the second time in seven months, wiping out gains from an unprecedented state rescue campaign as investors lose confidence in government efforts to manage the country's markets and economy. The Shanghai Composite Index sank 3.5% to 2,900.97 at the close, falling 21% from its December high and sinking below its nadir during a $5 trillion rout in August. Friday's decline was attributed to persistent investor concerns over volatility in the yuan and a report that some banks in Shanghai have halted accepting shares of smaller listed companies as collateral for loans. "The market entered a disaster mode at the start of the year and it's still in that pattern now," said Wu Kan at JK Life Insurance in Shanghai.
"The market has completely no confidence and the basic reason is that stocks are expensive, particularly those small caps," he said, adding that he plans to swap large-cap shares for small caps. The selloff is a setback for Chinese authorities, who have been intervening to support both stocks and the yuan after the worst start to a year for mainland markets in at least two decades. As policy makers in Beijing fight to prevent a vicious cycle of capital outflows and a weakening currency, the resulting financial-market volatility has undermined confidence in their ability to manage the deepest economic slowdown since 1990. [..] "The bottom has fallen out of the market in the last two weeks," said Francis Lun at Geo Securities in Hong Kong "Investors have lost confidence after two weeks of meddling by government officials."
Contagion.
Asian stocks surrendered earlier gains to hit 3-1/2-year lows on Friday as renewed pressure on oil prices and disappointing Chinese data kept investors on edge. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan declined 0.3% to the lowest level since June 2012, and was on track for a loss of 2.7% for the week. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.7%, but was set for a weekly loss of 1.9%. Oil prices rebounded on Thursday, with international benchmark Brent futures rising 2.4% to $31.03 a barrel, recovering from its 12-year low of $29.73 hit earlier in the day. But that rally, largely driven by short-covering after a 20% fall since the start of year, proved to be shortlived. The collapse in oil prices has spooked financial markets as investors worried about the health of the global economy, with a slowdown in China and volatility in its markets making for a nervous start to the year.
"Market sentiment was cautious to begin with, as overnight gains in US equities were complicated by losses by European indices," said Bernard Aw, market strategist at IG in Singapore. "Furthermore, oil prices were under pressure once again, constraining any relief rally in energy and material stocks." Brent crude opened weaker on Friday and lost 0.6% to $30.69. U.S. crude fared even worse, slumping 1.8% to $30.63 as the prospect of additional Iranian supply looms over the market. It had posted the first significant gains for 2016 in the previous session. Stocks in China also returned to negative territory after a brief rebound in late trading on Thursday. The bounce – which saw the Shanghai Composite index reverse an earlier fall to a 4 1/2 month low to end 2% higher – raised suspicions among dealers that a "National Team" of investors, who participated in a rescue when markets plunged in August, had been behind the move again.
It only gets worse.
Lost in all the Chinese stock and currency market gyrations, policy missteps and mixed data is this economic reality: The government is constrained by a credit bubble that has ballooned to $28 trillion in an economy growing at its slowest pace in 25 years. Policy zig-zags have left investors divided over how wedded President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang are to financial sector reform and shifting their $10 trillion-plus economy from one powered by investment and exports to one more focused on consumption and services. China has appeared to backtrack on pledges to make its management of the yuan more market driven and there's uncertainty over the government's willingness to remove stock price supports imposed during a $5 trillion sell-off last summer.
Amid the confusion, the benchmark CSI 300 Index, down 14% in 2016, has revisited the lows of last year's rout and pressure on the currency continues. Against that backdrop, Chinese officialdom faces the high-wire act of trying to keep the economy growing rapidly enough to repay past obligations, without resorting to a fresh pick-up in debt to fund more stimulus. It was China's reliance on credit-fueled growth in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis that resulted in one of the biggest debt expansions in recent history, and today's hangover. "China is nowhere close to reining in its debt problems," said Charlene Chu, the former Fitch analyst known for her warnings over China's debt risks and now a partner of Autonomous Research Asia Ltd. "It is one of the key factors weighing on GDP growth and one of the reasons why foreign investors are so concerned about China's trajectory."
Xi finds out he can't stop this.
Xi seems to realize that he paid a high price for the honor of having the Chinese yuan included, starting this October, in the International Monetary Fund's basket of reserve currencies along with the dollar, the euro, the yen, and the British pound. To be included in the basket, China had to demonstrate that the yuan was "freely usable." That forced it to lower some investment barriers—enabling the capital flight now bedeviling the leadership. The Institute of International Finance estimated in October that net capital flows out of China would reach $478 billion in 2015. New estimates due this month could show even larger outflows, the IIF says. It's worth taking a close look at what "capital flight" really means for China. Capital flows out of the country aren't necessarily bad; they're simply the mirror image of its trade surplus.
Whenever China chooses to use a dollar, euro, pound, or ringgit earned from exports to buy a foreign asset, it's sending capital abroad. Many foreign acquisitions strengthen the country, economically and politically. The problem now is that more money wants to get out of the country than wants to get in. Here's the math: Last year, the IIF estimates, China had a little more than $250 billion coming in from the surplus on its current account, the broadest measure of trade. It got an additional $70 billion or so in net capital from nonresidents, including Chinese companies' overseas affiliates. But those inflows were swamped by a record $550 billion in net outflows by individuals and companies inside China. Who stashed all that money abroad? The Bank for International Settlements attempted to answer that question in its Quarterly Review in September using the example of a hypothetical Chinese multinational.
During the boom years, BIS economist Robert McCauley wrote, such a company made money by borrowing at near-zero rates in the U.S. and Europe, converting the money to yuan, and investing in China at higher yields. Now, he wrote, it was reversing course: borrowing more in yuan and holding more money in foreign currencies. That's the dynamic the government is trying to overcome with its yuan-buying. The IIF projected in October that the government would need to sell off more than $220 billion of its reserves last year to meet the demand for foreign currency. The actual number was probably closer to half a trillion. The nation's stockpile of foreign exchange reserves has dwindled to about $3.3 trillion. The cushion is shrinking. "Considering China's foreign debt, trade, and exchange rate management, it needs around $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to be comfortable," says Hao Hong at Bocom International.
What Xi is running up against is what international economists call the trilemma, or the impossible trinity. It says that a country can't have all three of the following things at once: a flexible monetary policy, free flows of capital, and a fixed exchange rate. They fight one another. As soon as China started allowing free (or at least freer) flows of capital, it was inevitable that it would have to give up on one of the other two objectives. If it wanted to keep the yuan from falling, it would have to raise interest rates higher than is good for the domestic economy, essentially giving up on setting an appropriate monetary policy. Or, if it wanted to set interest rates as it pleased, it would have to allow the yuan to sink.
Do they really not get this?
This week's unprecedented surge in the cost of borrowing yuan in Hong Kong is putting a spotlight on one of China's biggest policy dilemmas: whether to create a real international reserve currency, or to keep control of its value. The cost of maintaining control came to the fore on Tuesday as interbank lending rates in the city jumped five-fold to a record 66.82%, a side effect of central bank intervention to combat the yuan's slump to a five-year low. Such efforts to influence market pricing are untenable if China wants to develop active offshore markets for financing and trade in the currency, according to Rabobank Group and Royal Bank of Canada. "These measures are sustainable if China has no desire to internationalize the currency, but it wants to be a reserve currency," said Michael Every at Rabobank in Hong Kong.
"It will have to accept that other holders of the offshore yuan can have a say in its value." For Every, the most likely outcome is that China will give in to market forces and let the yuan weaken by another 13% this year, a view that puts him at the bearish end of strategist forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. Pressure to free up the exchange rate has increased after the IMF said the yuan will join its basket of reserve currencies in October and policy makers pledged to decrease capital controls by 2020 – a key step toward yuan internationalization. The PBOC's actions in recent days suggest they're not ready to loosen their grip. While the central bank has said its daily reference rate for the yuan is largely determined by market pricing, analysts say the fixing has differed from what the monetary authority's methodology suggested it would be.
The PBOC has repeatedly bought the yuan in Hong Kong this week, soaking up supply of the currency, and China's foreign-exchange regulator was said to verbally instruct some banks operating in the mainland to limit yuan outflows and reduce offshore liquidity. Those measures have succeeded, at least temporarily, in propping up the currency and converging the yuan's onshore and offshore rates. But the intervention has also dented investor confidence.
Not pretty.
While most of the world has fixated on the plunging Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and Beijing's missteps managing the currency, China's labor market has become increasingly fragile. As wage arrears and layoffs grow, unrest in factories and on construction sites is spreading. Worker protests and demonstrations doubled last year, to 2,774, with December's total of more than 400 such incidents, setting a monthly record. The protests come as China's slower growth crimps profits and concerns about poor policymaking sap investor confidence.
"The increase in strikes and protests began last August around the time of the yuan devaluation and subsequent stock market crash and continued to build during the final quarter of the year, as the economy has showed little sign of improvement," says Geoffrey Crothall at Hong Kong-based workers' advocacy organization China Labour Bulletin. That's worrisome for China's Communist Party, which came to power in 1949 claiming to represent the working masses. In a sign of its nervousness, Beijing on Jan. 8 formally arrested four labor organizers in Guangdong, amid a broad crackdown on rights activists. "The situation is not so good these days," Zhang Zhiru, a Shenzhen-based labor campaigner, said in a text message. "It is not convenient to accept interviews from the foreign media."
The government's official unemployment rate for urban workers is fiction: It's remained largely unchanged at around 4% even when China's economy has dipped significantly in the past, as during the global financial crisis. Still, most outside observers estimate the real figure may be a couple of%age points higher (the Conference Board's China Center for Economics and Business puts it at about 6%). Wage growth has been outpacing gross domestic product growth in recent years, and 10.7 million urban jobs were created in the first nine months of last year, surpassing the official full-year target of 10 million, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.
"Announcing last call to a bar full of drinkers tends not to encourage moderation, either.."
"This is insane," said Chen Gang, chief investment officer for Shanghai Heqi Tongyi Asset Management, on Jan. 7, the day stock trading in China lasted only 29 wild minutes before market circuit breakers shut it down. Unlike some would-be sellers that day, he says he unloaded all his firm's equity holdings by the time the exit door closed. The circuit breakers, put in place just a few days before, called for an all-day trading halt if shares dropped 7%. Those rules have taken much of the blame for China's latest market chaos. The China Securities Regulatory Commission said they had a "magnet effect"—as shares fell, people may have rushed to get sell orders in while they still could, pulling prices down to the trigger point even faster. (Announcing last call to a bar full of drinkers tends not to encourage moderation, either.) The focus on poorly designed trading curbs may, however, distract from a less exotic source of risk: speculation.
The median stock on mainland exchanges still trades at about 57 times earnings—at least twice as expensive as any other major market. (Leading China stock indexes don't look nearly so pricey but are weighted to financial companies, which tend to carry lower valuations.) In spite of currency instability and concerns about slowing economic growth, investors are treating the typical Chinese company as if its potential is somewhere between that of Google and Facebook. A boom in initial public offerings made parts of the stock market look more like a lottery. Shares of Beijing Baofeng Technology, a developer of online video players, soared 4,200% in 55 trading days after going public on the Shenzhen stock exchange in March. (The stock then dropped 31% before suspending trading in October.)
With the market crowded with novice retail investors, other companies simply renamed themselves to look like tech stocks, recalling the 1960s "tronics" and 1990s dot-com booms in the U.S. "There are stocks that are basically junk, but they're trading at outrageous valuations because there's a lot of market manipulation," says Jian Shi Cortesi at GAM in Zurich. "The way down is always very volatile." China's stock market didn't used to be so exciting. Under President Xi Jinping's administration, articles in state-run media encouraged people to invest, fostering a belief that the government would make sure everyone profited. The benchmark CSI 300 index climbed 150% in the 12 months before the market slide that began in June, and it's still up 53% from the start of that run.
The nation has more than 90 million individual investors, compared with 87.8 million members of the Communist Party. Now retail investors are having doubts. Hua Jie, a 56-year-old retiree in Sichuan province, says she hasn't been this downbeat on the nation's stock market since she began investing more than a decade ago. "I no longer want to play this game," says Hua, a former saleswoman at a consumer electronics store in Chengdu. "I've lost faith in the regulators." Many institutional investors, too, have been quick to bail as markets turn south. Hedge funds often have agreements with investors requiring liquidation if their holdings drop below a certain value. That may have helped accelerate the early January rout.
Deleverage my behind.
China's broadest measure of new credit surged the most since June as companies increase borrowing on the corporate bond market, underscoring a shift away from reliance on state-backed banks for funding. Aggregate financing rose to 1.82 trillion yuan ($276 billion) in December, according to a report from the People's Bank of China on Friday, compared with the median forecast of 1.15 trillion yuan in a Bloomberg survey. The data shows companies are turning to alternative sources for credit given banks' reluctance to lend. It also adds to signs the economy is stabilizing, not slumping as its falling currency and plunging stock market seem to suggest. "The real economy is relatively strong," said Wang Tao at UBS in Hong Kong. "The credit supply offers strong support and that's related to the central government's call for financial institutions to bolster the economy."
The rising bond issuance is due to lower barriers for companies to enter the market and falling interest rates, Wang said. "This helps cut the financing costs for companies," Wang said. The PBOC's monetary easing has been driving down borrowing costs and spurring bond sales. Chinese corporations sold 8.1 trillion yuan of notes last year, the highest in history and a jump of 34% from 2014. Yield spread between five-year top rated corporate bonds and government securities plunged 69 basis points last year, according to ChinaBond, the biggest annual drop in its data going back to 2007. Chinese property developers, which had been frequent overseas borrowers, are switching to local bonds to avoid rising debt costs as the yuan weakens. The builders sold the equivalent of $72 billion of domestic debentures in 2015 compared with just $11 billion of dollar notes, the first time local sales have overtaken foreign ones, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Has the word pipedream ever been more fitting?
The first signs of a thaw are emerging for the battered oil market after Russia signalled a sharp fall in exports this year, a move that may offset the long-feared surge of supply from Iran. The oil-pipeline monopoly Transneft said Russian companies are likely to cut crude shipments by 6.4pc over the course of 2016, based on applications submitted so far by Lukoil, Rosneft, Gazprom and other producers. This amounts to a drop of 460,000 barrels a day (b/d), enough to eliminate a third of the excess supply flooding the world and potentially mark the bottom of the market. Russia is the world's biggest producer of oil, and has been exporting 7.3m b/d over recent months. Transneft told journalists in Moscow that tax changes account for some of the fall but economic sanctions are also beginning to inflict serious damage.
External credit is frozen and drillers cannot easily import equipment and supplies. New projects have been frozen and output from the Soviet-era fields in western Siberia is depleting at an average rate of 8pc to 11pc each year. Russia's deputy finance minister, Maxim Oreshkin, told news agency TASS that the oil price crash could lead to "hard and fast closures in coming months". What is unclear is whether the production cuts are purely driven by markets or whether it is in part a political move to pave the way for a deal with Saudi Arabia. Opec stated in December that it is too small to act alone and will not cut production unless non-OPEC states join the effort to stabilize the market, a plea clearly directed at Russia. Kremlin officials insist publicly that they cannot tell listed Russian companies what to do, and claim that Siberian weather makes it harder to switch supply on and off. Oil veterans say there are ways to cut quietly if president Vladimir Putin gives the order.
Helima Croft, from RBC Capital Markets, said the expected cuts could be the first steps towards an accord. "As the economic reality of lower oil prices begins to bite, perhaps Putin will push for a course correction and reach a deal with the Saudis. It would certainly upend the current conventional wisdom that Opec is down for the count," she said. Russia has a strong incentive to strike a deal. Anton Siluanov, the finance minister, said the Kremlin is drawing up drastic plans to slash spending by 10pc, warning that the country's reserve fund may run dry by the end of the year. "We have decided not to touch defence spending for now," he said. The budget deficit is running near 5pc of GDP at current oil prices, yet the country lacks an internal bond market and cannot borrow abroad.
Nice theory.
"You see a big destruction in the income of the oil and commodity producers," exclaims an analyst but, as Bloomberg notes, while oil prices flashing across traders' terminals are at the lowest in a decade, in real terms the collapse is considerably deeper. Adjusted for inflation, WTI is its lowest since 2002 and worse still Saudi Light Crude is trading at below $17 (in 1998 dollar terms) – the lowest since the 1980s… Slumping prices are a critical signal that the boom in lending in China is "unwinding," according to Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
In fact, while sub-$30 per barrel oil sounds very scary, Saudi prices would be less than $17 a barrel when converted into dollar levels for 1998, the year oil sank to its lowest since the 1980s. Slowing investment and construction in China, the world's biggest energy user, is "sending an enormous deflationary impetus through to the world, and that is a significant part of what's happening in this oil-price collapse," Turner, former chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, said.
Unrest looms large.
Times are getting tougher in the Hathut household, so father Mohammad is looking for extra work and the three kids are being told to switch off the lights to cut his electricity bill. This is Saudi Arabia in 2016. It may be a familiar story to austerity-hit Europeans and Americans, but in a nation synonymous with conspicuous consumption, the belt-tightening has been unsettling. Unprecedented cuts to fuel and energy subsidies are forcing the kind of rigor never seen during the era of petrodollar-fueled wealth that quadrupled per-capita income since the late 1980s. "A lot of things will change," said Hathut, 30, who plans to supplement his income as a business-administration teacher at a Riyadh university with private training sessions. "But many youths are still in a state of shock. They haven't processed the news and what to do."
With oil having plunged to about $30 a barrel, signs of the tectonic shift taking place in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom are everywhere: from the royal palace where the nation's founding family is contemplating the sale of its monopoly oil producer to the homes and businesses adjusting to the new economy.Those aged 15 to 34, who make up more than 40% of the 21 million Saudis, are at the forefront of the upheaval. No longer can they take for granted free health care, gasoline at 20 cents a liter and routine pay increases. Even the power of the religious police, which upholds the strict brand of Islam that defines Saudi Arabia, may no longer go unchecked by the government. The Consultative Council, an advisory body, last month urged the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to compile a list of banned behaviors to prevent abuse by officers.
They can arrest unmarried couples found together in a car or people caught with flowers on Valentine's Day. More women are entering the workplace and were able to run in local elections for the first time last month, though they're still banned from driving. It's "night and day" from 20 years ago when investment banker Khlood Aldukheil, 42, would get into the elevator to go up to her office only to be told no women worked in the building. People used to hang up on her because they thought they were calling the wrong department, she said. Young, social media-savvy Saudis now expect to have more of a say in running and modernizing the country, changing Saudi Arabia as we know it, said Ghanem Nuseibeh, at Cornerstone Global Associates. "Saudi youth won't be content with what the previous generations were content with," said Nuseibeh. "Whatever the state is going to take away from them because of dwindling financial resources they would expect to receive it by some other means."
That should solve everything..
Saudi Arabia plans to create a new sovereign fund to manage part of its oil wealth and diversify its investments, and has asked investment banks and consultancies to submit proposals for the project, according to people familiar with the matter. Plunging oil prices have strained Saudi Arabia's finances. The kingdom's state budget deficit is at a record high and net foreign assets dived more than $100 billion in 15 months. The new fund could change the way tens of billions of dollars are invested and affect some of the world's leading asset managers, particularly in the United States, where the bulk of Saudi Arabia's foreign assets are managed. "Keeping the foreign reserves at a good level is necessary to maintain a solid financial position and support the riyal," said one of the sources.
Another source said the Saudi government sent out a "request for proposal" to banks and consultants late last year, seeking ideas on how to structure a new fund. The sources asked not to be identified because the plans are confidential. They said the Saudi government did not tell them the size of the planned new fund. One source said the fund would focus on investing in businesses outside the energy industry, such industrials, chemicals, maritime and transportation. The sources stressed that no final decisions had been made, and a range of options were being studied. The sources said managers of the planned fund may be able to invest directly in companies rather than channelling investments through foreign asset managers. This could maximize returns. The second source said he understood the new fund would ideally be up and running within 12 to 24 months, with an office in New York.
Commodities prices will restart their epic decline.
After oil sank into the $20s this week, will iron ore follow suit? "There's a strong possibility that iron ore falls below $30 in 2016," Citigroup's Ivan Szpakowski said on Thursday after the bank cut price forecasts through to 2018 in a report. In the first half, "the biggest pressure is actually from the demand side. It's actually going to come from weak steel demand in China," said Szpakowski. The raw material is seen at $36 this year, 12% lower than previously forecast, and $35 in 2017 and 2018, down from $39 and $40, analysts including Szpakowski wrote in the Jan. 14 report. The base-case forecast over a three-year horizon was cut to $35 from $40, while the bear-case was put at $28.
Iron ore has been routed as the world's largest miners including Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton in Australia and Brazil's Vale expanded low-cost output while demand growth stalled in China. Lower costs including freight and energy and weakening currencies in producer nations are enabling suppliers to reduce their break-even rates and withstand lower prices. Costs had fallen more than expected, the bank said. "Given the market's need for further curtailments, we see the evolution of costs as one of the two most important factors for the iron ore market, alongside Chinese policy decisions affecting steel demand," the bank said in the report. "We see challenges for iron ore ahead." Ore with 62% content delivered to Qingdao rose 1.8% to $40.22 a dry ton on Thursday after slumping 4.1% to $39.51 a day earlier.
The steel-making commodity bottomed at $38.30 on Dec. 11, a record in daily prices dating back to May 2009. Steel output in China will probably shrink 2.6% this year as local consumption weakens and mills encounter stiffer opposition to exports, Szpakowski estimated. Supply fell 2.2% to 738.38 million tons in the first 11 months of last year, according to official data. China, which makes about half the world's steel, is set to report full-year output on Jan. 19. "Under our bear case, we believe medium-term prices would need to fall to around $28 a ton, primarily due to assumptions of weaker oil and export-country currencies," Citigroup said in the report, with the bull case for iron ore at $45.
By drinking Kool-Aid.
The results are in: Australian households have more debt compared to the size of the country's economy than any other in the world. Research by the Federal Reserve has shown the consolidated household debt to GDP ratio increased the most for Australia between 1960 and 2010 out of a select group of OECD nations. Australia's household sector has accumulated massive unconsolidated debt compared with other countries. As of the third quarter of 2015, it now has the world's most indebted household sector relative to GDP, according to LF Economics' analysis of national statistics. Denmark long held this unholy accomplishment, but has been slowly deleveraging over the last several years as its housing bubble peaked and burst during the GFC.
The latest debt-financed boom in Sydney and Melbourne has resulted in Australia now overtaking Denmark, a comparison of official figures from Australia and Denmark has shown. Australia has around $2 trillion in unconsolidated household debt relative to $1.6 trillion in GDP. Australia's ratio is 123.08%, while Denmark's fell slightly to 122.99% in the third quarter of 2015, a marginal difference of 9 basis points. Although Denmark holds the record in terms of peak debt of 140.14% in the last quarter of 2009, as Australia continues to leverage and Denmark deleverages the current gap between the two will widen. Apart from Switzerland (which alongside Denmark has a negative interest rate), no other country is close in terms of having such extreme household sector debts.
The UK ratio is 85.9% while in the US it is 79.1%. Due to Switzerland's opaque financial accounts, it is impossible to calculate a figure for this quarter. Its ratio for the second quarter of 2015 is 121.3%, and household debt is rising very slowly, so it would take an extraordinary increase over the quarter to potentially beat Australia. [..] Australian property investors and homeowners are burdened with massive mortgages, especially new and marginal entrants. Unlike winning a gold medal at the Olympics, having the world's most indebted household sector is not an achievement the nation should be proud of. This is where Australia's real debt and deficit problem lies, not in the public sector.
"Miracles do happen, but are not customarily invoked for economic projections.." (Hold on, mainstream economics is all about miracles. Like the perennial growth miracle.)
• A 3-Year Austerity Freeze Will Allow Resumption Of Growth in Greece (Mody)
From 2009 to 2015, the Greek government s primary deficit (deficit not counting interest payments) declined from 10% of GDP to nearly zero. Greece ran a 10% of GDP current account deficit with the rest of the world; now the balance shows a surplus. Compare the numbers with Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, or compare them with the historical record of reducing deficits: Greece has delivered as much, or more.But the austerity was much harsher for Greece. Public spending was pushed down by about 25%, an order of magnitude more than in the other countries. This caused GDP and tax revenues to collapse. The perverse consequence was a soaring public debt ratio, which rose from 145% of GDP in 2009 to 200% of GDP. Simply put, Greece was pushed to run much harder and fell further behind.
Greece's creditors now want more austerity. Because, once again, growth projections are absurdly optimistic, the debt burden could escalate uncontrollably, leading to calls for more austerity in a never-ending cycle.Twice in the last year when they voted Syriza to power in December 2014 and in July 2015 when they rejected the creditors deal the Greek people pleaded that this calamity be stopped. But with the threat of blowing Greece up, the creditors powered on. From 1981, when it joined the European Union, the Greek economy grew by expanding the Greek state. Europe was supposed to anchor democracy and foster prosperity. Instead, corruption and entitlement became entrenched. With the incentives so deeply embedded, each change in government only reshuffled the individuals enjoying state patronage. Both Europe and Greece failed.
The creditors now wish to convey that they are pushing to redeem themselves and Greece. But real change to create a new growth model for Greece and unravel the corrupt networks will take years. In the meanwhile, asking Greece for further fiscal consolidation of 3.5% of GDP over the next three years is stunning economic illiteracy, more so because one of the creditors the IMF has intellectually discredited this policy. By itself, such austerity could cause GDP to contract by 7%. Plus, prices will decline, making household and business debt harder to repay, further undermining growth and public finances. The creditors projections show a miraculous resumption of growth. Miracles do happen, but are not customarily invoked for economic projections.The creditors obsession with Greek pensions as too high even if true is somewhat beside the point.
Pensions are important in sustaining the livelihoods of vulnerable families. And it is not just a warm and fuzzy regard for social equity and justice that is at stake. The scale of reduction proposed, along with all the other austerity measures, will have immediate macroeconomic consequences. As consumption declines, so will growth and prices. Greece s debt-deflation cycle will continue. Higher private and public debt burdens will further undermine the banking system. Make no mistake, deeper economic distress cannot cure long-term economic pathologies, just as heavy-lifting is not recommended to revive a patient from cardiac arrest. The long-term damage will be far-reaching. For a start, the most talented are leaving in droves. Greece's weak growth prospects will only become worse.
[..] Greece has a nearly balanced primary budget. A three-year freeze on austerity will allow resumption of growth. An agenda to lower and rationalize pensions then would make more sense. But Greece also needs deep debt relief. The coy promises of driblets of relief are intended as a clever tactic for dragging Greek authorities down the road of needed reform. But if such reform undermines growth, the needed debt relief will increase with time. Greece will become a permanent ward of the creditors. The Greeks will suffer more pain and the creditors will see less of their money.
Much as it pains me to say it, but he's right on the EU.
The European Union is teetering, and Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders wants to tip it over the edge. Wilders, 52, whose party leads opinion polls with calls to close Dutch borders to refugees, pledged to immediately pull the Netherlands out of the 28-nation EU should he become prime minister in elections due in March next year. The EU is unraveling and that's to be encouraged, he said, urging the U.K. to quit the bloc in its forthcoming referendum. "We are not sovereign any more; we are not even allowed to form our own immigration policy or even close our borders and I would do that," Wilders said Thursday in an interview in the Dutch parliament building in The Hague. "I would wish the Dutch to be more like Switzerland. In the heart of Europe, but not in the EU."
A household name in the Netherlands since 2004, when he split from the mainstream Liberal party to form his own on an anti-Islam platform, the bouffant-haired blond has enjoyed a swell of support as voters have grown increasingly alarmed at the arrival in Europe of more than a million refugees from Syria and elsewhere. The latest poll showed him winning the most parliamentary seats – as many as Prime Minister Mark Rutte's Liberals won in 2012 – if elections were held now. After years of turbulence surrounding Greek membership of the euro, the focus of uncertainty in the EU has shifted to Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron is set to call a referendum as early as June on whether the U.K. should stay in or leave.
Wilders said he "hopes" Britons will opt to quit, with a knock-on effect on the Netherlands. In the event of a so-called Brexit, "you will see that it will be easier for other countries to make the same decision," Wilders said. "The beginning of the end of the European Union has already started. And it can be an enormous incentive for other countries if the United Kingdom would leave."
I covered the topic of legality of EU border controls a while back (and better, I would argue), see for instance: Greece Is A Nation Under Occupation. This is exactly why people like Wilders and Le Pen are right on Europe: no country's leader has the legal right to squander its sovereignty.
Before World War I, people could travel around the world without a passport, as Austrian writer Stefan Zweig famously did. Since then, passports, border checks, and bureaucratic and physical barriers to freedom of movement have become the norm. That's what made the Schengen Area so special: From 1995 onward, 26 European countries (22 of the 28 EU countries, plus four others) abolished their border controls and adopted a common travel-visa policy. People and goods were able to travel unimpeded from Lisbon to Lithuania, Budapest to Brittany. As well as providing practical advantages, it was a powerful symbol of how Europe was coming together. But the refugee crisis and the Paris terrorist attacks on Nov. 13, 2015, have strained Schengen to the breaking point.
Germany (to limit refugee inflows) and France (to keep out potential terrorists) are now demanding the creation of a powerful EU border guard to police the Schengen Area's external border. The European Commission has duly proposed the establishment of a beefed-up "European Border and Coast Guard" with a bigger budget and staff than its feeble current incarnation, Frontex. Controversially, the new force would have the power to intervene to plug leaky borders – even against the wishes of the government of the country concerned. But such a huge surrender of national sovereignty to an EU agency of dubious competence and limited accountability is undesirable, unnecessary, and potentially illegal. The EU ought to be able to handle the arrival of the roughly million refugees and other desperate migrants who entered without permission last year.
They account for only 0.2% of the EU population of 508 million – and are outnumbered by the 1.25 million Syrian refugees in tiny Lebanon (population 4.5 million). They are also far fewer than the 2 million or so other migrants who arrive in EU countries each year through standard channels. But regrettably, the predominantly poor and Muslim newcomers tend to be seen as a burden and a threat. And in the absence of a generous, orderly, and fair system for welcoming refugees and processing asylum claims, most governments try to pass the unwanted newcomers on to others through a variety of means, from waving them on their way (Greece and Italy) to keeping them out with razor-wire fences (Hungary). Now that the two countries that had maintained an open door, Germany and Sweden, are closing it, the EU is trying to stop refugees from reaching Europe altogether.
[..] EU officials already control Greece's budget. Do they really think it's a good idea to march into Greece and take control of its borders too? Indeed, Steve Peers, a professor of EU law at the University of Essex who edits the EU Law Analysis blog, argues that the EU border guard's proposed powers would contravene the EU treaties: "[W]hile the EU can establish rules on border controls and regulate how Member States' authorities implement them, it cannot itself replace Member States' powers of coercion or control, or require Member States to carry out a particular operation."
A few refugees and Europe loses all decency. Deplorable.
Refugees arriving in Switzerland have to turn over to the state any assets worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs (£690) to help pay for their upkeep, broadcaster SRF reported on Thursday, revealing a practice that has drawn sharp rebukes for Denmark. SRF's 10 vor 10 news programme showed a receipt a refugee from Syria said he received from authorities when he had to turn over more than half of the cash his family had left after paying traffickers to help them get to the neutral Alpine country. It also showed an information sheet for refugees that stated: "If you have property worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs when you arrive at a reception centre you are required to give up these financial assets in return for a receipt."
Stefan Frey, from refugee aid group Schweizerische Fluechtlingshilfe, was quoted as saying: "This is undignified … This has to change." SRF cited the state migration authority SEM as justifying the measure, noting the law called for asylum seekers and refugees to contribute where possible to the cost of processing their applications and providing social assistance. An SEM spokeswoman told SRF: "If someone leaves voluntarily within seven months this person can get the money back and take it with them. Otherwise the money covers costs they generate." In addition, refugees who win the right to stay and work in Switzerland have to surrender 10% of their pay for up to 10 years until they repay 15,000 Swiss francs in costs, according to the report.
Denmark is amending a proposal to confiscate refugees' possessions to pay for their stay. It plans to raise the amount they will be allowed to keep after coming under fire from the United Nations refugee agency. Several organisations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, have censured the Nordic country for the proposal, as well as for others that would delay family reunification and make acquiring refugee and residence status more difficult.
But of course, nothing condemns the EU like the drowning children.
The bodies of nine migrants, some of whom may have drowned up to 10 days earlier while trying to reach Europe by sea, were found on Turkey's coast in recent days, as neither cold winter waters nor government efforts seemed to stem the flow of migrants. The bodies of five men and one woman were found washed up on the shores of Seferihisar near Izmir on Tuesday, district governor Resul Celik told Reuters, adding doctors believe they drowned 5 to 10 days ago. The coast guard said separately in a statement that it had found the bodies of a girl and two women near Ayvalik further north after a boat partially capsized. It rescued 13 people, but a search continued for two men and a boy.
In a deal struck at the end of November, Turkey promised to help stem the flow of migrants to Europe in return for cash, visas and renewed talks on joining the European Union. But European officials have repeatedly said Turkey's efforts to curb migrant arrivals were falling short. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday 18,872 migrants had arrived in Europe by sea in the first 11 days of the year, almost all of them to Greece. 47 people died trying to make this route. Turkish officials have said dozens of suspected ring-leaders of human trafficking networks have been arrested and the Turkish government has said it is trying to reduce illegal immigration by giving Syrians, who represent the biggest portion of arrivals to Europe, work permits.
Tsipras needs to man up and lead Greece out of the EU. The difference in moral values is an insult.
Three children drowned off the coast of the southeast Aegean island of Agathonisi early on Friday, as the boat they were traveling in from Turkey to Greece capsized. A rescue boat belonging to a nongovernmental organization managed to save the other 20 passengers who were on board a boat. The rescue team was alerted by a military base on the small island, after the boat was seen capsizing and sinking by an officer. The rescued passengers, whose nationality was not immediately known, were to be transferred to the nearby island of Samos so they could receive medical attention.
This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 6 years ago by Raúl Ilargi Meijer.
January 15, 2016 at 10:26 am #26185
DPC Foundry, Detroit Shipbuilding Co., Wyandotte, Michigan 1915 • WTI, Brent Oil Sink Under $30 (FT) • China Stocks Enter Bear Market as State-Fueled
(Re-)Covering Oil and War Debt Rattle January 16 2016


High-performance doesn't have to mean hard-to-ski. Designed for advanced women skiers, the INTENSE 12 merges award-winning technology with our innovative, women-specific construction for the most comfortable and fluid carving sensations on snow. Active Air Light Core and Powerdrive technologies work in harmony to unlock the skis' natural flex effectively planting the ski to the snow for silky-smooth stability, dynamic energy, and unparalleled edge grip.


Avon UK is rebranding some of their existing cosmetic ranges to the new name of 'mark'. The new 'mark' brand is targetted at customers who are more focused on the cosmetics scene, for which make-up is their must have accessory and they use it to show their personality and make their mark!
I've teamed up Lavender Sky, a pretty pastel lilac with Purplicious, a bold belter of a shade. Purplicious is a lot darker in natural light, my camera flash has lightened the shade. I've applied two coats and no top coat to show you how glossy they are.


Irvine Valley's women's beach volleyball team split matches in its opening day of the season on Friday at home.
The Lasers defeated Santa Barbara City, 5-0, and then lost a tough match to Long Beach City, 3-2.
Long Beach City also won its other two matches, taking down Santa Barbara, 3-2, and Fullerton, 5-0. Santa Barbara City topped Fullerton, 4-1, in the other match of the day.
Irvine Valley's teams of sophomore Taira Ka'awaloa and freshman Megan Ramseyer, playing at the No. 1 pairs position, and sophomore Olivia Aguilar and freshman Renata Bath, competing at No. 2, each won both of their matches on the day.
Irvine Valley started with the 5-0 win over Santa Barbara City.
The Lasers won four of the five pairs matches in straight sets.
Aguilar and Bath won, 21-18, 21-9.
IVC's third team of sophomore Hannah Salaya and freshman Emilie Austin came out on top, 21-18, 21-18.
The No. 4 team of freshmen Gabi Lau and Alma Entesari won, 21-17, 21-17, and the No. 5 team of freshmen Jade Parham and Alison Kent earned a 21-18, 21-18 victory.
IVC's top team of Ka'awaloa and Ramseyer rallied to win, 18-21, 21-17, 15-5.
Irvine Valley had its hands full with Long Beach City in its second match of the day.
Three of the matches went to three sets.
Ka'awaloa and Ramseyer won, 21-18, 18-21, 17-15, at the top spot.
And Aguilar and Bath won in straight sets, 21-19, 21-11.
But Long Beach City captured the matches at the third through fifth spots to take the overall victory.
IVC's No. 5 team of sophomore Diamond Brogan and freshman Alyssa Vortouni played well and took the first game, but fell in three sets, 12-21, 21-18, 15-10.
Irvine Valley plays again on Tuesday, hosting NCAA Division 1 programs Long Beach State and Arizona. IVC will play Long Beach State at 2 p.m. and Arizona at 3 p.m.


text:
\section{Introduction}
To date, several hundred extrasolar planets have been discovered around nearby stars. However, transiting extrasolar planets are relatively rare among all known planet discoveries (70 transiting planets out of 431 known planetary systems)\footnote{http://exoplanet.eu}. Planetary transits are unique in that they allow for the direct measurement of the radius of the transiting planet relative to the host star. When combined with radial velocity data and determinations of the stellar properties of the host star, it is possible to determine many bulk properties of the planet. Models of the bulk properties of these planets can be formulated and then compared to observation (for example, Baraffe et al. 2008; Fortney et al. 2007; Burrows et al 2007).

The transit method can also be used to detect additional planets in systems with one transiting object. Deviations from a linear ephemeris by a known transiting extrasolar planet is an indicator of an additional perturbing object in the system. Haghighipour et al. (2008) investigated the effect of an Earth mass companion in various orbital resonances with a hypothetical hot Jupiter in a 3 day orbit around a solar type star. They found that an Earth mass body in a resonant orbit with a hot Jupiter can induce transit timing variations (TTVs) on the order of several minutes in 1:2 interior resonant orbits. Furthermore, Haghighipour et al. (2008) found that these TTVs would be sinusoidal in time as the line of nodes of the planets' orbits precesses.

Besides TTVs, another indicator of potential perturbing bodies in a planetary system is the maintaining of a nonzero orbital eccentricity over long periods of time despite the tendency of tidal forces from the star attempting to circularize the orbit. While most transiting planets are in nearly circular orbits, there are a small number of planets that do maintain eccentric orbits despite being older than the circularization time scale for the system. The most notable of these systems are the transiting Neptunes GJ 436b (Butler et al. 2004)  and HAT-P-11b (Bakos et al. 2010). GJ 436b has a significantly nonzero eccentricity of $0.15 \pm 0.012$ (Deming et al. 2007), despite being older than its circularization time scale (Maness et al. 2007), which has led to speculation about possible additional (possibly resonant) planets in the system gravitationally ``pumping" the eccentricity. Gravitational interaction with a third body would also lead to transit timing variations as the line of nodes precesses, but searches for this effect have found no evidence for transit timing variations in this system (Pont et al. 2009; Ballard et al. 2010). A search in the similar HAT-P-11 exo-Neptune system has yielded no positive indication for large transit timing variations (Dittmann et al. 2009a).

HAT-P-9b is a recently discovered $0.78 \pm 0.09 M_{Jup}$, $1.40 \pm 0.06 R_{Jup}$ hot Jupiter in an assumed zero eccentricity, $3.92289 \pm 0.00004$ day orbit about a 12.3 V magnitude F star (Shporer et al. 2008). Due to the relatively large size of the host star ($1.32 \pm 0.07 R_{\sun}$), the transit depth is relatively small, at $\approx 11$ mmag (Shporer et al. 2008). Under the $T_{eq}$ and Safronov number classification investigated by Hansen \& Barman (2007), HAT-P-9b is a Class II planet. Follow up observations were obtained by Shporer et al. (2008) on the 1.2 meter FLWO telescope with the KeplerCam detector with a z filter. The orbital period was determined by the central transit times of four follow up light curves taken over 15 orbital periods at this telescope (Shporer et al. 2008). However, Shporer et al. (2008) note that when they compare the ephemeris of their follow-up light curves with that of their original discovery curve with the HATNet telescopes, there is a minor discrepancy of $1.5 \sigma$ in the transit time, and that further observations should be able to more thoroughly study this possible discrepancy. It was this discrepancy in the period that was the primary motivator for this study.

\section{Observations \& Reductions}

We observed the transit of HAT-P-9b on 14 February, 2010 UT using the University of Arizona's 61 inch (1.55 meter) Kuiper telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona with the Mont4k CCD, binned 3x3 to 0.43$^{\prime\prime}$/pixel. Our observations were taken with an Arizona-I filter. This filter, when convolved with the response curve of the Mont4k CCD, yields a transmission range very similar to the Cousins-I band.

HAT-P-9 is a F dwarf located at $480 \pm 60$ pc with a V magnitude of 12.3 (Shporer et al. 2008). We utilized exposure times between 16 and 25 seconds, depending on cloud conditions, in order obtain a good balance between image signal to noise and cadence. Read out times on the Mont4k CCD are approximately 10 seconds. Seeing ranged from 1$^{\prime\prime}$.0 to 1$^{\prime\prime}$.3 for all observation nights, which is typical for this site. The conditions during the 14 February observation were photometric, with no moon adding to the sky background. On 18 February, conditions were partially cloudy, and we were only able to obtain a partial transit lightcurve. The light curve consisted of a portion of the middle of transit, and all of egress. Conditions on 05 April were photometric. For each observation, we utilized the same reference stars, placed in the same pixels on the Mont4k CCD, and used the same filter in order to minimize any possible systematic effects. Due to excellent autoguiding, there was less than 5 pixels (2.15\arcsec) of image wander over the course of each data set. The onboard clock is synched to GPS every few seconds in order to ensure accurate absolute time keeping.

Each of the data images were bias-subtracted, flat-fielded, and bad pixel-cleaned in the usual manner. Aperture photometry was performed using an IDL pipeline utilizing the ``find" and ``aper" tasks available in the IDL Astronomy User's Library.\footnote{The IDL Astronomy User's Library is available at http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/} A 4$\arcsec$.3 aperture radius (corresponding to 10.0 pixels) was adopted because it produced the lowest scatter in the resultant lightcurves. Several combinations of reference stars were considered, but four were selected for the final reduction of our 14 February and our 05 April data because of the low RMS ($\sim 1.9-2.2$ mmag) scatter. These reference stars were all distributed a few arc minutes east of the target, but scattered both slightly North and slightly South of HAT-P-9. Two additional stars were used for our 18 February data because they reduced our residual RMS. We were unable to find sufficiently bright reference stars to the west of HAT-P-9 without increasing our RMS scatter. We show the time series light curve for each reference star (normalized to the average flux of the other reference stars) for each night in Figure \ref{RefStars}.

We applied no sigma clipping rejection to the reference stars or HAT-P-9b; all datapoints were used in the analysis. The final light curve for HAT-P-9 was normalized by division of the weighted average of the reference stars. A slight (0.3\% maximum each night) parabolic correction was fit to the out of transit points and then used to normalize the entire light curve in order to correct for nonlinearities in the out of transit points due to differential color extinction between the bluer target and the redder reference stars. This correction was done only for our complete transit data sets, and not for the night of February 18, as we this correction requires out of transit data both before and after the transit to be effective. These corrections were small due to the low airmass of the observations, however slight errors in this correction may lead to a systematic error when determining the planet to star radius ratio. The unbinned residual time series in Figure \ref{transit} have a photometric RMS between 1.9 and 2.5 mmag, which is typical for the Mont4k on the 61-inch (Kuiper) telescope for our high S/N transit photometry pipeline (Dittmann et al. 2009a and b, Scuderi et al. (2010)). The higher 2.5 mmag RMS occured on the partially cloudy night of February 18.

\section{Analysis}
We fit the transit light curve for February 13 and April 05 with the method prescribed by Mandel and Agol (2002), fitting for the central time of transit and planet to star radius ratio. We fit only for the central transit time of our partial February 17 data by taking our best fit February 13 model, and minimizing $\chi^2$ with respect to the central transit time. The fit and residuals from each fit are shown in Figure \ref{transit}. We note that we have not been able to fit the egress of our February 18 data, and in fact, the partial cloud cover has partially distorted the shape of egress. The shape has further been distorted because we were unable to correct for differential color extinction We have tried to account for this systematic effect with larger error bars in that night's central transit time. Linear and quadratic limb darkening coefficients in the I band were taken from Claret (2000) as 0.1874 and 0.3611 respectively. In order to estimate the errors for our fits, we generated and fit 1000 fake data sets by taking our measured data points and adding white noise with a standard deviation equal to the instrumental standard deviation of our data points for that night. The results of our fit, and those of Shporer et al. (2008), are shown in Table \ref{results}. In order to estimate the effect of our parabolic differential extinction correction on the estimate of transit depth ($R_p/R_*$)$^2$, we estimated the systematic error as  $30 \%$ the maximum parabolic correction, and folded that into our error from the Monte Carlo simulations.

We find a central transit time for HAT-P-9b of $2455241.69832 \pm 0.00032$ HJD for the 14 February 2010 transit. Projecting outward 210 orbits with the ephemeris of Shporer et al. (2008), we find an expected time of $2455241.71460$ HJD. This means that our transit time is $23.44 \pm 0.46$ minutes earlier than expected from this ephemeris. Furthermore, we find central transit times of HJD $2455245.6312 \pm 0.0010$ and HJD $2455292.69006 \pm 0.00036$ for our February 18 and April 05 transit data sets, which are $23.74 \pm 1.44$ min and $23.89 \pm 0.58$ min early, respectively. All three of our transits are entirely inconsistent with the ephemeris of Shporer et al. (2008).

\section{Discussion}
The observations of Shporer et al. (2008) include 4 transits over 15 orbits between 13 November 2007 and 11 January 2008. The proximity in time between these observations naturally limit the ability to obtain a precise ephemeris for our observations 210 orbits into the future. Taking addtional observations many orbits later can drastically improve the fit and allow for better prediction of future transits. Indeed, in order to eliminate our large, $ \approx -24$ minute deviation from the expected transit time, we must only shift the period of Shporer et al. (2008) $6.5$ seconds ($2\sigma$) downwards to P = $3.922814 \pm 0.000002$ days. Therefore, we predict for future transits:

\begin{equation}
T_c = 2454417.9077 + 3.922814 * E \textrm{    HJD}
\end{equation}

Where E represents the integer epoch counting from Shporer et al. (2008)'s measurement. We note that we have improved the measurement of the period of this system by one order of magnitude. Furthermore, with this orbital period, it now becomes experimentally viable to probe the HAT-P-9 system for future transit timing variations (TTVs). We have constructed an observed minus calculated plot (see Figure \ref{OC}), to investigate any possible nonlinearities in the currently observed transit times. To date, we find no evidence for any nonlinearities in the transit times of HAT-P-9b greater than $\sim 1$ min, suggesting that if other bodies were to exist in this system, they would not be in close orbital resonances with HAT-P-9b. However, we note that if it turns out that this ephemeris cannot predict future transits in 2010 and beyond, then that will be substantial evidence for nonlinear TTVs, and a possible indicator of additional bodies in the system.

While we have obtained two different measurements for the planet to star radius ratio for HAT-P-9b, due to the blue nature of the star and the redness of the reference stars, we found it necessary to apply a parabolic correction to correct for differential color extinction as the airmass of the observations changed. This introduced a possible systematic shift in the transit depth depending on the accuracy of this correction. We have estimated this systematic error as approximately 30\% of the maximum parabolic correction. When this is taken into account, our observed $R_p/R_*$ ratios are within a few $\sigma$ of the value from Shporer et al. (2008), and we find no significant difference between these values.

\section{Conclusions}
Here we have investigated three follow-up transits of HAT-P-9b in order to obtain a more accurate ephemeris. We have found that our transits occurred $\sim 24$ minutes earlier than expected from the ephemeris of Shporer et al. (2008). However, due to the time between our observations and those of Shporer et al. (2008), we find that only a $2\sigma$ decrease in the period is sufficient to explain all currently available observations. We have found a new period of $3.922814 \pm 0.000002$ days. Future observations will be able to determine whether our new period is sufficient to describe the system, and any future deviations from this ephemeris may indicate the presence of additional bodies in the system.

\acknowledgments

JD and LMC are supported by a NSF Career award and the NASA Origins program.

{\it Facilities:} \facility{Kuiper 1.55m}. \\
\\ {\bf References}\\\
\bibliography
BBakos, G. \'A., Torres, G. P\'al, A., et al., 2010, ApJ, 710, 1724 \\
Ballard, S. Christiansen, J.L, Charbonneau, D., et al. 2010, AAS, 425 \\
Baraffe, I., Chabrier, G., and Barman, T. 2008, A\&A, 482, 315 \\
Burrows, A., Hubeny, I., Budaj, J., \& Hubbard, W. B. 2007, ApJ, 661, 502 \\
Butler, R.P., Vogt, S.S., Marcy, G.W., et al. 2004, ApJ, 617, 580 \\
Claret, A., 2000, A\&A, 363, 1081 \\
Deming, D. Harrington, J., Laughlin, G., et al., 2007, ApJ, 667, L199 \\
Dittmann, J.A., Close, L.M., Green, E.M., Scuderi, L.J., Males, J.R. 2009a, ApJ, 699, L48.\\
Dittmann, J. A., Close, L.M., Green, E.M., Fenwick, M. 2009b, ApJ, 701, 756 \\
Fortney, J.J., Marley, M.S., and Barnes, J.W., 2007, ApJ, 659, 1661 \\
Hansen, B. M. S. and Barman, T. 2007. ApJ, 671, 861 \\
Haghighipour, N., Steffen, J., \& Agol, e. 2008, ApJ, 686, 621 \\
Mandel, K., \& Agol, E. 2002, ApJ, 580, L171\\
Maness, H.L, Marcy, G.W., Ford, E.B., et al., 2007, Pub. Ast. Soc. Pac., 119, 90 \\
Pont, F., Gilliland, R.L, Knutson, H., et al. 2009, MNRAS, 393, L6 \\
Scuderi, L.J., Dittmann, J.A., Close, L.M, et al. 2009, ApJ, in press (arXiv:0907.1686) \\
Shporer, A., Bakos, G., Bouchy, F., Pont, F. et al. 2008, ApJ, 690, 1393. \\
\clearpage

\begin{table}
\begin{center}
\caption{Parameters of the HAT-P-9 system}\label{results}

\begin{tabular}{crrr}
\tableline\tableline
  Parameter [units] & Value & Reference \\
  \tableline
 $R_p / R_*$ & $0.1083 \pm 0.0005$ & Shporer et al. (2008) \\
 $R_p / R_*$ & $0.1031 \pm 0.0013$ & This Work$^a$ \\
 $R_p / R_*$ & $0.1109 \pm 0.0014$ & This Work$^b$ \\
 $T_c$ (HJD-2,400,000) & $54417.9077 \pm 0.0003$ & Shporer et al. (2008) \\
 $T_c$ (HJD-2,400,000) & $55241.69832 \pm 0.00032$ & This work \\
 $T_c$ (HJD-2,400,000) & $55245.621 \pm 0.0010$ & This work \\
 $T_c$ (HJD-2,400,000) & $55292.69558 \pm 0.00036$ & This work \\
 P (days) & $3.92289 \pm 0.00004$ & Shporer et al. (2008) \\
 P (days) & $3.922814 \pm 0.000002$ & This work \\
\tableline
\label{results}
\end{tabular}

\tablenotetext{a}{Best fit value from the February 14 observing night}
\tablenotetext{b}{Best fit value from the April 05 observing night}

\end{center}
\end{table}

\clearpage

\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f1.eps}
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f2.eps}
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f3.eps}

\caption{Plot of the reference stars used to normalize each transit as a function of time. RMS scatter of these stars is approximately $\sim 2.0$ mmag, for February 14 (top) and April 05 (bottom). RMS scatter for February 18 (middle) was higher, at $\sim 2.5$ mmag, and partially obscured by clouds in the middle of the data set. The flux of each reference star was normalized by the average fluxes of the other three reference stars. The same four reference stars were used for all three nights, although two additional stars were used on the night of February 18th, as our RMS noise was reduced when we included them. This was not the case for these additional stars for the other two nights.
}
\label{RefStars}
\end{figure}

\clearpage

\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f4.eps}
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f5.eps}
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f6.eps}
\caption{Light curves of transits of HAT-P-9b taken on 14 February 2010 (top), 18 February 2010 (middle), and 05 April 2010 UT (bottom) at the University of Arizona's 1.55 meter Kuiper telescope on Mt Bigelow with the Mont4k CCD and the I filter. Standard deviation of the residuals (shown below the transit light curve) is 1.9 mmag forthe 14 February data, 2.5 mmag for the 18 February data, and 2.2 mmag for the 05 April data.  The transit was fit with the method of Mandel and Agol (2002), varying the central time of transit and planet to star radius ratio. Our transit time is in significant disagreement with the ephemeris of Shporer et al. (2008), and is $23.44 \pm 0.46$ minutes earlier than expected on 14 February, $23.74 \pm 1.44$ minutes earlier on 18 February, and $23.89 \pm 0.58$ min early on 05 April.}
\label{transit}
\end{figure}

\clearpage

\begin{figure}[htp]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{f7.eps}
\caption{Observed minus calculated (OC) plot for all currently available transit data for the HAT-P-9 system using our $3.922814 \pm 0.000002$ day period. All currently available data is consistent with a linear period, and this lack of large TTVs doesn't suggest any additional gravitational perturbers in the HAT-P-9 system.}
\label{OC}
\end{figure}

\clearpage

\end{document}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Q: XStream Illegal reflective access Problem after upgraded to java 10
WARNING: An illegal reflective access operation has occurred WARNING:
  Illegal reflective access by com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.Fields
  (file:libraries/xstream-1.4.10.jar)
  to field java.util.TreeMap.comparator

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


This book was okay but it was sort of all on the surface. It took place over about 3 days and they were super in love. It was very light and so little happened that it seemed like the actual nuts and bolts of the story could have been told in maybe 30 pages. Just that the day they met took over half the book. Enjoyable but more fluff than normal even for HP.
Even though I felt that this novel is so similar to the ice prince, but it was much sweeter.
I like this better than the first one. They look real. An ordinary girl meets an ordinary boy, even tough you can't call Rio D'Aquila ordinary. Woman who looks ordinary compared to her perfect sister, make her insecure. And this is the first time a woman rejects him, even though she didn't know the he's Rio D'Aquila.
A very nice story.Rio D'Aquila is the name he earned, but Matteo Rossi was the name he was given. While one had struggled to become the other, his being Matteo was truly at the heart of Rio. Isabella Orsini might come from a large family, but as the youngest, she had always remained in the back ground, never truly finding herself. Meeting up with Matteo gave her the passion to seize life and go for her heart's dream, but finding out he had lied was almost too blinding to get past.
Wonderful whirlwind romance with a bit of twist. Love it!
3.5 starsIt was a good book, enjoyable read.
Sbnernya sih tinggal Matteo/Rio anter Izzi ke penginapan terdekat, beres deh tp ceritanya jd cepat selesai.Ga sengaja baca ulang versi terjemahan di iJak ternyata lebih bagus & enak dibacanya.
after reading the back cover,i had different expectations and it didn't meet them. otherwise it's a decent story.
Good ! Love my Brazil.


A bulked-up plan for redevelopment of the Douglas Road Metrorail station would pack five towers — including a previously undisclosed 40-story skyscraper — into the transit stop off South Dixie Highway.
The Link at Douglas blueprint, drawn up by developers who two years ago won a bid to build a mixed-use urban hub around the station's elevated train platform, represents a substantial increase in height and density over the group's original proposal, and a dramatic contrast to the low- and mid-rise development that surrounds it. The plan boosts the planned number of apartments at the hub from just under 1,000 to 1,500, a 50 percent jump, and adds a 22-story office building comprising 280,000 square feet of floor space.
The most salient new element of the expanded plan is a residential high-rise that, at about 450 feet in height, would be far taller and bulkier than anything for miles around. It would be twice as tall as new high-rise condos two miles away on the Coconut Grove waterfront, and tower over its surroundings at the border between the City of Miami and suburban Coral Gables, which caps buildings at under 20 stories. The closest comparable tower sits six miles away on Brickell Avenue in Miami's downtown.
Because of a peculiar zoning wrinkle, though, the public won't have a chance to weigh in on the new plan's potential impact on the traffic-plagued South Dixie corridor or on adjacent neighborhoods, which include a mix of commercial and mixed-use buildings, most of modest height and scale, as well as duplexes and single-family homes. Nor will city of Miami or Coral Gables elected officials.


Two weeks ago we went to Annapolis and walked the marina. Norman has always wanted a boat so occasionally we go just to see them …and he can daydream…I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the birds; they were totally dismissive of our presence.
24 Apr	This entry was written by Honoré and published on April 24, 2014 at 5:39 pm. It's filed under Honoré, Nature.	Bookmark the permalink.	Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.


text:
Home Artworks Arab Spring
Arab Spring Discover the best available selection of sculptures by the artist Genco Gülan. Buy from art galleries around the world with Kooness!
4848.267193392 EUR
Genco Gülan
19.69 x 20 in
e646bf46
Polyester and metal, glass objects.
1969 , Turkey
Genco Gulan was born in 1969 and was predominantly influenced by the 1980s. The 1980s were a tumultuous period culturally, and were marked by growing global capitalism, global mass media, significant discrepancies in wealth, alongside a distinctive sense of music and fashion, epitomised by electronic pop music and hip hop. Artists growing up during this time were heavily influenced by this cultural atmosphere.
The 1980s were a key decade politically, marked by the African Famine and the end of the Cold War, which was signified by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Neo Geo and The Pictures Generation became leading art movements during the decade, alongside Neo-Expressionism which became well-known in Germany, France and Italy (where it was known as Transavanguardia). Artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Jörg Immendorf, Enzo Cucchi, Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel were primary artists of the era, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, who established the street art and graffiti movements.
Sculpture 84 x 180 cm
Miss Reverse
Sculpture 130 x 100 cm
Sculpture 18.5 x 18.5 cm
Untitled Soldier Sculpture
Sculpture 10 x 21 cm
Be Contemporary
İzmir, Yenice Mah. Park Sokak No:8/2 Urla
BE Contemporary is an art gallery that promotes and supports the development of contemporary art in Turkey. Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family, community, and nationality. The gallery aims to open this dialogue to the international audience from the perspe...
21__
Uovo forato
Dolci Farfalle


Migraine sufferers are often all too familiar with the debilitating pain that accompanies a migraine attack. It is pain that prevents you from enjoying time with family and friends, interferes with work, and can be worsened by environmental factors like light, weather, and diet. But migraine factors can do more than cause pain—they may also be increasing your stroke risk, too.
Research presented at the American Stroke Association's 2016 International Stroke Conference found that individuals who experienced migraines with aura were more likely to suffer a clot-based stroke than those who did not experience migraines with aura.
Migraines with aura are identified as headaches that are accompanied by visual disturbances, like flashing or swirling lights, zigzag patterns, blind spots, or temporary loss of vision.
"With the knowledge that migraine with aura can increase stroke risk, it's increasingly important for patients to report changes in vision, speech, or weakness that accompany a migraine to their doctor, and for doctors to educate patients on this risk factor," says Michelle J. Smith, MD, vascular neurosurgeon at Bryn Mawr Hospital, part of Main Line Health Neurosurgery, a member of Jefferson Neuroscience Network.
Although stroke occurs most often in men, stroke-related deaths are more common in women. Migraines, too, tend to occur more often in women. For this reason, it's especially important for women to understand the link between migraine with aura and stroke risk.
"Women who experienced migraine with aura were more than two times more likely to suffer a stroke as a result of a blood clot in the heart or brain," says Dr. Smith.
That number was even greater for women who were taking or had taken an estrogen-based medication, like birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy.
If you suffer migraines with aura, how can you keep your stroke risk under control? Dr. Smith emphasizes the importance of a healthy lifestyle and taking charge of risk factors you can control.
If you are taking birth control or interested in hormone replacement therapy, talk to your doctor about whether or not these treatments are right for you. After a discussion of your stroke risk factors and health history, they can help determine whether these treatments are right for you, or if you should pursue other options.
Regardless of your stroke risk, it's also important to recognize the signs of a stroke.
"An easy way to identify a stroke is to remember to think F.A.S.T—Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, and Time to call 911. It's a reminder to act quickly, if you notice these symptoms in yourself or in another person because life-saving treatments for stroke are time dependent," says Dr. Smith.
The Main Line Health Stroke Program provides a comprehensive continuum of high-quality stroke care that includes community education, assessment and stroke-prevention efforts, early identification and acute-treatment strategies, rehabilitation, and secondary-stroke prevention efforts. Learn more about our stroke services on our website.