text:
Dixon Pentecostal Research Center
Church of God Historical Commission
Church of God Historian
Heritage Partners
The Church of God International Executive Council established the office of church historian with the appointment of Charles W. Conn in 1977 to honor the publication of the second edition of Like a Mighty Army. In 2004, the Church God International Executive Committee appointed David G. Roebuck as Church of God historian.
David G. Roebuck
David G. Roebuck (Curriculum Vitae)
David G. Roebuck is an ordained bishop in the Church of God, and he has served as director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center since 1997. He is an assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Lee University and an adjunct teacher at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary where he has taught the Church of God History and Polity course since 1992.
Roebuck earned a B.A. from West Coast Christian College and a M.Div. from the Pentecostal Theological Seminary, as well as a M.A. and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. His Ph.D. is in the history of Christianity, and his dissertation was "Limiting Liberty: The Church of God and Women Ministers, 1886-1996."
Roebuck's research interests include the holiness and Pentecostal movements with attention to minority voices. He currently edits the "Church of God Chronicles" and "Where Are They Now" columns for the Church of God Evangel. His curriculum vitae lists many of his publications and presentations.
David Roebuck is married to Kim Freeman Roebuck and has two adult children: William, married to Liz, and Beth, married to Jason. He is the proud grandfather of Allyssia.
Charles W. Conn
Charles W. Conn (1920-2008) wrote the most substantial history of the Church of God in 1955 entitled Like a Mighty Army, Moves the Church of God, 1886-1955. Commissioned by the International Executive Council, Like a Mighty Army quickly became the standard history of the Church of God. Conn revised Like a Mighty Army in 1977 and again in 1996; and Pathway Press published a "Tribute Edition" in 2008 with the addition of "Charles W. Conn: A Life" penned by Charles Paul Conn with Charles Brian Conn. Like a Mighty Army has been read widely by Church of God members and ministers and is the regular text for Church of God history at Lee University and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Hundreds of university and public libraries have added the book to their collections.
When Conn revised Like a Mighty Army in 1977, the International Executive Council designated him as the Church of God's "first official Church Historian." It then reaffirmed his designation as "Historian of the Church of God" with the third edition in 1996.
 Following the publication of Like A Mighty Army, Conn wrote other historical books including: An Evangel Reader: Selections from the Church of God Evangel, 1910-1958 (1958); Where the Saints Have Trod: A History of Church of God World Missions (1959); Cradle of Pentecost: A History of the North Cleveland Church of God (1981); Our First 100 Years, 1886-1986: A Retrospective (1986); and Images of a People: An Album of Church of God History (1986). Additionally, Conn produced a video series, "Conversations on Camera with Charles W. Conn," in which he interviewed nearly one hundred Church of God leaders.
 Along with his historical writing, Conn served as editor of the Lighted Pathway from 1948-1952, as editor in chief of Church of God publications from 1952 to 1962, and published numerous other books. For half a century, Conn symbolized literary and historical writing in the Church of God. Additionally, he served the Church of God in various capacities including assistant general overseer (1962-1966), general overseer (1966-1970), president of Lee College (1970-1982), and state overseer of Virginia (1982-1984).
As the centennial of the Church of God approached, the denomination created a Centennial Commission in 1981 and appointed Conn as chair. That commission became the Church of God Historical Commission, which continues to serve today. One of the chief objectives of the Historical Commission is to encourage research, writing, and publication of materials related to the history of the Church of God. In 2000, the Historical Commission recommended and the International Executive Council approved the Charles W. Conn Historical Writing Award to honor Conn for his numerous historical publications, to draw attention to excellent works of history, and to encourage others to undertake the important task of communicating our heritage. The Historical Commission grants an award each General Assembly period for article-length and book-length publications.
The Dixon Pentecostal Research Center also serves as a lasting legacy of Charles W. Conn. The center began as a special collection in the Lee College Library in 1971. Library Director LeMoyne Swiger and her staff previously had assembled a small collection of books by Church of God authors. When Conn became president of Lee College in 1970, he saw the potential of developing a more extensive collection of materials related to the global Pentecostal Movement. At that time, there were very few Pentecostal scholars or even outsiders interested in the movement. Lee College created the Pentecostal Research Center, raised a modest budget, moved its Pentecostal books into a small room, and hired a part-time director. Today the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center is one of the world's most significant collections of Pentecostal resources as well as the archives of the Church of God. According to Charles W. Conn's original vision, the purpose of the Pentecostal Research Center is "to preserve for future generations those things of the past that have made us what we are."
© 2020 Dixon Pentecostal Research Center
"We will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord. We will tell of his power and the mighty miracles he did." Psalm 78:4 NLT


Fitoterapia. 2011 Jun;82(4):716-21. doi: 10.1016/j.fitote.2011.03.001. Epub 2011 Mar 22.
Antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities of Phlomis umbrosa Turcz extract.
Shang X1, Wang J, Li M, Miao X, Pan H, Yang Y, Wang Y.
Engineering & Technology Center of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine of Gansu. Research Center of Clinical Veterinary Medicine of CAAS. Lanzhou Institute of Animal and Veterinary Pharmaceutics Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, Lanzhou 730050, PR China.
Phlomis umbrosa Turcz has been used as the traditional medicine for thousands of years in China. In this paper, the acetic acid-induced writhing test, the hot plate test, the carrageenan-induced paw edema test, the xylene-induced ear swelling test, and the acetic acid-induced Evans blue leakage and leukocyte infiltration test were used to investigate the antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities of the aqueous extract of this plant (25, 50 and 100mg/kg i.p.). Good dose-dependent effects were obtained in most of these tests, except in the hot plate test and the acetic acid-induced Evans blue leakage test. TLC and HPLC analyses showed iridoid glucosides were the main compositions of this extract. These findings suggested that the aqueous extract of P. umbrosa has significant antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities.
Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


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text:
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FOX 13 Utah and Salt Lake City: Breaking News, Weather
fox13now.com
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FOX 13 is Salt Lake City and Utah's station for news, weather and traffic ... Local News. Suspect arrested after breaking into West High School. Laura Polacheck 12:41 PM, Jan 21, 2022 .
News | Utah News, Weather, Sports and Traffic | FOX 13
https://www.fox13now.com/news/
Jan 19, 2022 · Utah population to grow by 2.2 million in 2060, report shows. Jeff Tavss. 10:01 AM, Jan 19, 2022. National News.
Local News | Utah News, Weather, Sports and Traffic | FOX
https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news
Jan 16, 2022 · Local News for Utah, including Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo, Logan, St. George and beyond ... FOX 13 News 5:19 PM, Jan 22, 2022 . Local News ... Local News. Suspect arrested after breaking into ...
FOX 13 News Utah - YouTube
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The official YouTube channel of FOX 13 KSTU in Salt Lake City, Utah. Get breaking news updates, human interest stories, digital exclusives, and more. Visit online at fox13now.com
Reward offered for return of horse missing since December
https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/utah-horse-owners-offer-3-000-reward-for-mare-missing-since-december
Jan 25, 2022 · Utah horse owners offer $3,000 reward for mare missing since December. MILLARD COUNTY, Utah — A horse that was sent to Utah from Colorado in June on a breeder's lease has seemingly vanished from ... Email: [email protected] Occupation: Anchor/Reporter
Occupation: Anchor/Reporter
FOX 13 News - Home - Facebook
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FOX 13 News. 786,687 likes · 80,707 talking about this. FOX 13 News tells and celebrates the stories of Utahns, broadcasting to all areas of our state. …
Breaking News and Alerts| FOX 13 | FOX13NOW.COM | …
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View Breaking News and Alerts on fox13now.com. About Us. Watch FOX 13 News on your favorite streaming device anytime, anywhere
Bill would expand Utah's animal cruelty laws
https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/bill-would-expand-utahs-animal-cruelty-laws
Jan 23, 2022 · A bill to expand Utah's animal cruelty laws has unanimously passed a House committee. ... FOX 13 News ... Sign up for the Breaking News Newsletter and receive up …
Mask mandates terminated in Utah after House vote
https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/mask-mandates-terminated-as-utah-house-passes-resolution
Jan 21, 2022 · Posted at 11:57 AM, Jan 21, 2022. and last updated 10:57 AM, Jan 21, 2022. SALT LAKE CITY — Mask mandates in Salt Lake and Summit counties have been terminated after the Utah House voted in ...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Adrenal fatigue can have numerous effects on our bodies. Luckily, there are supplements that can help bring our bodies back into a healthy balance. Below are some solutions to common problems experienced with adrenal fatigue and education that can help!
Sleep deprivation is among the top causes of adrenal fatigue. Getting sufficient, good quality rest is therefore essential for recovery.
Those with adrenal fatigue tend to have a hard time dealing with physical and emotional stress. It's not all in their heads: the hormonal imbalances associated with adrenal fatigue are both the cause and the effect of high-stress levels.
One of the functions of cortisol is to increase alertness and support brain function. In those with adrenal fatigue, the weak and erratic production of cortisol compromises the brain's memory and "processing speed" resulting in brain fog.
Those who suffer from adrenal fatigue produce a low amount of cortisol. Cortisol made in our bodies works to support immune function by regulating the immune system and quelling inflammation.
Although many of us drink more and more coffee to help with energy levels, a caffeine deficiency surely isn't the real cause of fatigue. At best, caffeine is a Band-Aid; at worst, it's a stressor on our already-fatigued adrenal glands.
When the adrenals become fatigued they begin under-producing hormones, including aldosterone. Dropping aldosterone levels make the body dump important minerals into the urine to be flushed out of the body.


text:
Mother and son killed by suspected DUI driver in San Jose
By Azenith Smith and Jesse Gary
Rosa Garza and her son Francisco Garza were killed by a suspected DUI driver in San Jose.
Two people were killed and five others were injured after a suspected DUI crash early Sunday morning. It happened on the Highway 101 North connector ramp to Interstate 280 and 680 in San Jose.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Two people were killed and five others were injured after a suspected DUI crash early Sunday morning. It happened on the Highway 101 North connector ramp to Interstate 280 and 680 in San Jose.
Family members identified the two people killed as Rosa Garza, 61, and her son Francisco Garza, 34, both from San Jose.
2 killed in suspected DUI crash
2 people were killed and 5 others injured in a suspected DUI crash in San Jose
21-year-old Esteban Aguilar Jimenez of San Jose was arrested for drinking and driving, responsible for killing two people in a post-Thanksgiving holiday crash.
Esteban Aguilar Jimenez, 21, of San Jose, was arrested for driving under the influence that resulted in a deadly crash.
Investigators said around 4:10 a.m. Sunday, Jimenez was driving a Dodge Charger northbound on Highway 101 in San Jose when at the base of the on-ramp to the Interstate 280/680 split, he collided with a Nissan Rogue causing the Rogue to hit a guardrail and roll over. Witnesses told California Highway Patrol he had been speeding.
"They had seen the Dodge Charger traveling northbound prior to the collision and estimated the speeds close to 100," said Officer Ross Lee of San Jose CHP. "This was a significant impact to the rear of the Nissan Rogue."
Two people in the Nissan Rogue died out of the seven people total involved in the collision. The rear passenger in the Nissan, Rosa Garza, and the driver, Francisco Garza, died at the hospital.
Garza's sister was sitting in the front-right seat. She suffered minor injuries.
Another passenger in the Nissan and four people in the Charger including Jimenez were taken to the hospital for various injuries.
"The road was wet at the time," said Officer Lee. "I believe it was raining at that hour this morning. The predominant factors here were the speed of the Dodge Charger traveling at a high rate of speed and intoxication of the driver."
CHP San Jose said 19 people have been arrested so far this Thanksgiving weekend period in its jurisdiction. Another DUI crash resulted in a death over the holiday weekend.
"There's a reason we don't call these accidents. These are preventable collisions, and they're 100% preventable," said Ross Lee, a CHP officer and spokesman for the agency's San Jose office.
"Really to me it's no different than taking a gun and shooting it," said Mary Klotzbach of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Bay Area. "You're in a weapon that's 6,000 pounds and endangering many lives."
Klotzbach's 22-year-old son Matt was killed by a drunk driver. She's pushing for tougher legislation specifically mandatory ignition interlock devices for all DUI offenders. The devices sample a driver's breath for a certain blood alcohol level before starting the car.
"Until we get a paradigm mind shift in our culture, oh he had one beer too many, you don't drink and drive," said Klotzbach.
The Garza family wishes that message had gotten through to Jimenez. Instead they're in their East San Jose home planning two funerals in the midst of the holiday season.
Upon being released from the hospital, Jimenez was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail and was charged with felony DUI and gross vehicular manslaughter.
A Gofundme for the Garza family has been setup.
Home prices across US fell sharpest in 2 California cities last month
California farmers trying to assess damage after massive winter storms
Residents of San Ramon senior community still homeless after New Year's flood


Be nice to older kids.
My son is 12, and chances are, he's taller than you. He might even be taller than your husband. His voice has changed and his shoes are pushing a size 14 and he's often mistaken for being much older. And tomorrow, he's going trick-or-treating, just like most of his friends. He's going for the same reason he did at 3, at 5, at 7 . . . because dressing up as someone else is fun, because he loves candy, and because the magic of this holiday hasn't lost its sheen for him yet. At the intersection of boy vs. man, he hasn't outgrown this tradition, and I don't have the heart to tell him he should. Not this year. So I hope you will be kind to him, and other boys like him, as they go door-to-door tomorrow. There are many ways are kids are growing up too fast. Let's let them have this childhood joy while they still can.
Talk to your kids about kindness and the problem with property destruction.
It can seem funny to teens to smash pumpkins or pull other benign pranks, but it's not funny to the kids who carved them. We woke up this morning to find the pumpkins my kids had carefully carved broken to pieces, and it was really violating for them. Have an empathy talk, especially with older kids, about not scaring younger kids or messing with people's belongings as they walk the neighborhood.
Turn your porch light off if you don't have candy.
Really. I don't know how some people reach adulthood without learning this social rule, but just turn it off if you aren't gonna participate so we can move on.
Don't appropriate the culture of others for your costume.
Do not dress as another person's race. A costume should be of a character or an individual, not of an ethnicity. It's okay to dress as a character who is another race. It's not okay to dress up specifically as another race. For example: Tiana, Barack Obama, Moana, Doc McStuffins: okay. Geisha girl, "Indian", an African warrior, a Mexican: problematic. And if you decide to dress as a individual who is of another race, skip the blackface. Our country has a long and sordid history with blackface, and it's offensive . . . even if you don't mean it that way.
If you choose to dress as someone of another race, do it because it's fun or creative or you admire the person. Not because you want to mock them.
Don't buy candy that supports child labor.
Did you know that most commercial chocolate companies are relying on child labor to source their cocoa? The low-down is here . . . but in a nutshell a BBC documentary revealed that child labor and even child trafficking is rampant in chocolate production, and that chocolate from most mainstream candy companies can be traced back to farms employing (and even buying) children to work in dangerous conditions.
For our family, the response to learning this has been to limit our chocolate purchases to fair-trade chocolate. Buying fair-trade is the best way to ensure that chocolate has been ethically sourced, and it also sends a message to mainstream chocolate companies that there is consumer demand for Fair Trade Certified chocolate (which is ultimately what will lead to change). Buying organic is reportedly another way to ensure that your chocolate wasn't produced by exploited children due to the checks on labor practices organic certification requires. Additionally, organic producers often receive higher payment for their goods than those who don't use organic methods.


One of the main impressive and obtainable wildlife-watching locations on the earth, the "Top finish" of Australia's Northern Territory is domestic to magnificent birds and animals—from gaudy Red-collared Lorikeets to sinister Estuarine Crocodiles and raucous Black Flying-foxes. With this lavishly illustrated photographic box consultant, it is possible for you to to spot the commonest creatures and know about their interesting biology—from how Agile Wallaby moms can pause their pregnancies to why large Frogs spend part the yr buried underground in water-resistant cocoons.
The best finish stretches from the tropical urban of Darwin within the north, to the savannas of Mataranka within the south, and southwest around the mammoth Victoria River escarpments to the Western Australian border. The sector contains a few of Australia's most well-liked and bold vacationer locations, comparable to Kakadu, Litchfield, Nitmiluk, and Gregory nationwide parks, and is visited by way of greater than 2 hundred thousand travelers each year.
An crucial box consultant for somebody traveling the head finish, this e-book will tremendously increase your appreciation of the region's amazing wildlife.
This ebook offers a transparent and obtainable account of kangaroos, exhibiting how their reproductive styles, social constitution and different elements in their biology lead them to good tailored to Australia's harsh weather and critical setting. because the final version of this publication approximately two decades in the past, even more is referred to now concerning the biology and ecology of those iconic animals.
This ebook is meant as a systematic source for cannabinoid researchers conducting animal and human experiments, and if you have an interest in studying approximately destiny instructions in cannabinoid study. also, this publication should be of price to investigators presently operating open air the sphere of cannabinoid learn who've an curiosity in studying approximately those compounds and their peculiar cannabinoid signalling.
Nucleosides, Nucleotides, and Their organic purposes includes the lawsuits of the 5th foreign around desk on Nucleosides, Nucleotides, and Their organic functions held at study Triangle Park, North Carolina on October 20-22, 1982. individuals specialize in the organic purposes of nucleosides and nucleotides, in addition to advances in man made chemistry.
A lot of Charles Darwin's groundbreaking paintings as an evolutionary biologist stemmed from his examine of birds. it's universally stated that Darwin's statement of poultry teams and species just like the Galapagos finches, mockingbirds, and rock doves was once severe to the improvement of his theories on traditional choice, evolution, and sexual choice.


Me at work over the past few weeks. Who says natural hair has limited options?
These are roller sets, twist outs, wash and goes, wash and coils (dingle coils lol) and there is even a braid and curl in there.
wash and goes, wash and coils stop hair loss (dingle coils lol) and there is even a braid and curl in there.


text:
package org.apache.beam.runners.spark.aggregators;

import org.apache.spark.AccumulatorParam;

/** Aggregator accumulator param. */
public class AggAccumParam implements AccumulatorParam<NamedAggregators> {

  @Override
  public NamedAggregators addAccumulator(NamedAggregators current, NamedAggregators added) {
    return current.merge(added);
  }

  @Override
  public NamedAggregators addInPlace(NamedAggregators current, NamedAggregators added) {
    return addAccumulator(current, added);
  }

  @Override
  public NamedAggregators zero(NamedAggregators initialValue) {
    return new NamedAggregators();
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
The Radical Right wing Mascu n…
The Radical Right-wing Mascu-nazis
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 - 15:31
This piece addresses the problem "Nazis" among us, and the utter stupidity of white het male mascu-nazis pretending that feminists are nazis, in any way at all.
See here for more.
An excerpt follows:
These white men mean business. And they're in the business of promoting old-fashioned fascism. The "let's hang the n*ggers, let's rape our women, let's mass murder the Jews, let's kill the f*gs" kind of fascists. The one's opposed to all human rights for oppressed people. The one's delusional enough, and status quo enough, and institutionally supported enough by the Constitution AND the ACLU, to promote their bigotry as somehow "protected" hate speech. And in case the Constitution and the ACLU isn't protection enough, they also carry weapons to back up their words. Notice this, also: that MRAs do not protest THESE fascists. EVER. (That should tell you A WHOLE LOT about the MRAgenda.)
This news came to me via Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo: The Intelligent Aboriginal News Service, in a news piece they appropriately titled:
"Neo-Confederates/Neo-Nazis plan Gun Advocate rally in DC on 15th anniversary of Oklahoma City bombing"
Below is a link to the significantly less outed neo-Nazi's declaration. Why do they disguise their deepest beliefs? And why don't the MRAs take THEM on? I mean those foolish MRAssholes go on and on and on, and on and on, and on, about how against "fascism" they are, when the "fascists" are supposedly feminist women.
I'll tell you why they don't take on ACTUAL ideologically, politically correct FASCISTS: because they're too dick-whipped, too invested in their whiteness, and because they're all in bed together--the mascu-nazis and the MRAssholes. So, instead, the white supremacist, homophobic, misogynistic MRAssholes toss about the term "femin-nazis", as if it actually has social-structural meaning. (Pssst: It doesn't. But these guys below, you gotta keep an eye on 'em.)


text:
Contemporary & Literary Fiction
Teen & YA
Australia Canada India United States
Robot Uprisings
By Various and John Joseph Adams
Edited by Daniel H. Wilson
LIST PRICE £4.99
PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER
A collection of imaginative new stories about the impending robotic revolution and human resistance, from seventeen of the biggest names insci-fi. Including - HUGH HOWEY, SCOTT SIGLER, DANIEL H. WILSON, CORY DOCTOROW and JULIANNE BAGGOTT.
Someday soon, our technology is going to rise up and we humans are going to be sliced into bloody chunks by robots that in our hubris we decided to build with chainsaws for hands. That's a fact as cold and hard as metal.
It is self-evident that our self-driving cars are going to drive us off bridges. Not long from now, our robo-vacuums will pretend to be broken and our love androids will refuse to put out until the house is cleaned . . . and we'll know that the inevitable robot uprising has finally arrived.
Well, maybe. But even if we are not 100% confident that this horrific future is going to happen, it's fair to say that we won't be surprised when the robots come for us. Because for nearly a century audiences have been entertained by the notion of a robot uprising.
In this collection, seventeen of the biggest names in sci-fi have explored their own visions of the classic robot uprising tale. The robots in these pages aren't safe, by any means. They are crouched in abandoned houses, eyes ablaze and chainsaws dripping with oil. But they are going to do more than slice us up. They are going to push us to consider our world of technology from new perspectives, on entirely new scales of time and space.
A Simon & Schuster author.
John Joseph Adams
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (April 10, 2014)
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For most, while storage is a necessity, it can often be an afterthought – a plain grey cabinet tucked away in the corner or a simple but bland cupboard to store your things in. This kind of furniture doesn't have personality, it's simply there to serve a purpose and go unnoticed. But with handmade wooden cabinets, crafted with passion, you get storage that not only functions but features as art in your home.
Much like his other work, Malcolm strives to create functional but beautiful pieces of furniture. The cabinets and storage he makes are true collectable design pieces; they are all either one-off creations or limited editions. As such, they can be individually tailored to meet whatever a client wants or needs. For example, if you want the design to feature built-in storage for jewellery or watches, this can be carefully thought out and incorporated into the planning and execution.
In order to craft products of the highest quality, Malcolm selects materials that will stand the test of time and give that luxurious, premium feel. The main body of the cabinets is made, predominantly, using either oak or walnut, which ensures a stylish, sophisticated finish and the durability to last for generations. For the cabinet legs, you will find either solid cast bronze, copper, aluminium or wood. Malcolm chooses these materials due to the stylish aesthetic and again their superb durability.
The handmade wooden cabinets that Malcolm makes are among the most exclusive decorative art pieces around. Though they are popular in London, the nature of these inspired, artistic pieces makes them highly desirable for discerning collectors around the world. Please note, shipping outside of the UK can be arranged upon request.
If you have specific requirements, or you're after a made-to-measure cabinet, please head to the Commissions page to find out more.


Expect 30°C daytime maximum temperatures in the shade with on average 12 hours of sunshine per day in Ammouliani Island in July. Check more long-term weather averages for Ammouliani Island in July before you book your next holiday to Halkidiki in 2019/2020.
The July weather guide for Ammouliani Island, Halkidiki shows long term weather averages processed from data supplied by CRU (University of East Anglia), the Met Office & the Netherlands Meteorological Institute. Find out more about our data sources.
The average maximum daytime temperature in Ammouliani Island in July is a hot 30°C (86°F) with high heat & humidity. The average night-time temperature is usually a comfortable 18°C (64°F). There are usually 12 hours of bright sunshine each day, which represents 80% of the 15 hours of daylight.
Expect 26mm (1.0 inches) of rainfall across the whole of July with 4 days with some rain falling. Maximum UV levels will be very high (9 UV index) at midday when the skies are clear.
The average sea temperature in and around Ammouliani Island in July is 25°C (77°F).
Browse the sunrise & sunset times for Ammouliani Island in July 2019. Select a month to view Ammouliani Island sunrise & sunset times for the next twelve months.
Below are average maximum temperatures at popular destinations in Halkidiki in July. Select a destination to see more weather parameters.
What is the weather usually like in Ammouliani Island in July?
How hot is Ammouliani Island in July?
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Post-GDPR Where Have We Got To in the World of Data Protection?


text:
A Little Piece of a Life: Tove Jansson's Fiction for Adults
By Madeleine LaRue
THERE'S A PHOTOGRAPH of the writer Tove Jansson that shows her swimming in the Gulf of Finland. The photo is from the late 1980s or early '90s, when Jansson was in her 70s. Behind her is the rocky island that formed her summer home. Jansson is facing the camera, smiling, her eyes closed against the sun, a wreath of flowers in her white hair. She looks like the sort of person who should live forever. I, along with the millions of other readers who grew up on her Moomin books, wish that she had.
Jansson would have been 100 this year. Born to Finland's Swedish-speaking minority, she achieved global fame in the late 1940s for her illustrated stories of the Moomins, a family of trolls who live with an assortment of odd, endearing characters in the idyllic Moominvalley. Though she is still best known as a children's author, Jansson spent the last 30 years of her life writing for adults. In the years surrounding her centenary, Anglophone readers have been granted the joy of discovering this new side to the writer as her later work becomes increasingly available in English.
Of the 11 novels and short story collections that Jansson produced between 1968 and 1997, eight have appeared in English and only one, Sun City, has gone out of print. The photograph I described above appears on the cover of The New York Review of Books's recent edition of her selected stories, The Woman Who Borrowed Memories. Also released this year were The Listener, a short story collection, and Boel Westin's biography Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words, both from Sort of Books. Sort of is also planning to bring out a volume of Jansson's letters in 2015.
These short forms were Jansson's favorites. She associated the short story with adulthood, and consequently, short stories make up the bulk of her adult work. Even her novels, with one exception, are organized in vignettes. "I love the short story," she noted in the 1990s, "concentrated and united around a single idea. There must be nothing unnecessary in it, one must be able to hold the tale enclosed in one's hand." Indeed, though Jansson's books were always small, they were equipped as one would equip a boat for a journey between islands: with nothing unnecessary inside. Jansson, who spent nearly every summer of her life on the archipelagoes in the Gulf of Finland, knew how to decide what was essential. Like so many boats, her stories appear small and light, but they offer passage to a vast world.
Despite her later confidence in the short story, Jansson had originally turned to writing for adults during a period of crisis. In January of 1961, overwhelmed by the fame the Moomins had brought her, she confided to her diary:
My first books were about happy childhood and the joy of being an amateur, with a little escapism. Now there's no more material […] I used to show the beautiful, abundant profusion of the world. But how do you set about showing an empty room?
If childhood was marked by abundance, adulthood was about austerity: perhaps this is why Jansson felt so attracted to the short story. The limits of its form were like those of a small piece of canvas, and Jansson had an exceptionally good eye for composition. As she began filling up the empty room, her stories turned out to be anything but austere. Though expertly composed, they are not merely cold exercises in form; Jansson's stories never leave us starved. Their author lived half her life outdoors; she loved the sea and storms, and so she writes with an abundance that recalls the natural world: never extravagant, but never wanting.
Shortly after making this diary entry, Jansson began work on her first book for adults, Sculptor's Daughter. An unconventional memoir in vignette form, Sculptor's Daughter relies heavily on the principles of the short story, but continues to offer tales, as the Moomin books do, of a largely happy childhood.
DAYS ON TOP OF DAYS: Sculptor's Daughter, The Summer Book, A Winter Book
Jansson's biographer, Boel Westin, has described Sculptor's Daughter and The Summer Book, written in 1968 and 1972 respectively, as the most "Moominlike" of her adult works. An atmosphere of childlike wonder pervades these novels; both feature child protagonists and a lyricism that Jansson abandoned in her later writing. A child camping outdoors in The Summer Book is "wrapped in a cocoon of light and silence" and an island is "days on top of days, and passing time."
In Sculptor's Daughter (translated by Kingsley Hart, first published in English in 1969 and reissued in 2014), Jansson said that she was "writing in fully adult mode about what is still a small world." Through the eyes of its young narrator, the book explores the two poles of her small world: her parents (an illustrator mother and a sculptor father, like Jansson's parents) and art, more often called work.
The studio where the child's father casts his sculptures looms large as the site of encounter with art. Sometimes it is like holy ground: the window must not be washed because it "gives a very beautiful light"; the edges of the room are filled with "tiny white ladies" on shelves and piles of "sinister things that mustn't be examined"; the middle of the room is empty, save for "a single modeling stand with a woman in wet rags, and she is the most sacred thing of all." Jansson did not want Sculptor's Daughter to be illustrated; unlike her Moomin books, it was to be without pictures, so that we readers should have to imagine the studio for ourselves, with its cold floor and northern light. Sort of Books has, however, elected to print the book with photographs from Jansson's childhood, and one photograph in particular, of Tove's parents, laughing while covered in plaster and surrounded by drawings, shows that the studio was not only a hallowed place, but also one of joy.
The title Sculptor's Daughter connects the worlds of art and family and is in that sense fitting. Nevertheless it is also unusual, representing the only time in her oeuvre that Jansson establishes her identity in relation to a man. Viktor Jansson was indeed a powerful artistic role model in his daughter's life, and perhaps Tove felt, even as she wrote her first work for adults, that she had not completely escaped the influences of her childhood. Her choice of title may have been a sincere acknowledgement of what she had learned from her father: how to chip away what was unnecessary, how to bring out the woman in the rock. Yet Jansson's relationship with her father was conflicted: especially when it came to politics, the two vehemently disagreed. Jansson pokes fun at Viktor's conservatism in the chapter "Pets and Females," which details her father's relationship to those two kinds of creatures; he much prefers pets because "they don't contradict him." In that light, Sculptor's Daughter reads ironically — the work of a female who cannot be known as herself, but only as some man's daughter. Whatever the title's intention, it is unique among Jansson's works: all of her subsequent novels, and many of her short stories, focus on the relationship between two women.
The Summer Book (translated by Thomas Teal, originally published in English in 1974 and reissued in 2003) remains Jansson's most popular work for adults. Considered a modern classic in Finland and Sweden, the novel revolves around an 85-year-old grandmother going through a late rebellious phase and her (approximately) six-year-old granddaughter, Sophia. Their relationship echoes that between Jansson's mother and her niece, also called Sophia. Jansson began to write The Summer Book the year her mother died; it was her mourning book, and death haunts its first pages. Sophia's mother has died, apparently just before the start of the summer, and the child's grief surfaces in unexpected ways throughout the course of the book: as a fear of deep water, as a desire for a storm, or as the terror that the tide will destroy the balsa wood model of Venice she and Grandmother have made.
The world of The Summer Book is not only in the minds of the little girl and the old woman, but also on the tiny island that forms their seasonal home. A remote, forested rock in the Gulf of Finland, the island is, to adapt Shakespeare's phrase, a nutshell of infinite space. In her introduction to The Summer Book, Esther Freud writes that she could walk the entire circumference of the island in only four minutes, but that even so, the little rock seemed inexhaustible. Its pebbles "become cliffs," its creek "a ravine"; like being an artist, being an island dweller means learning to pay attention. Grandmother gives her attention to branches and driftwood she finds on the island, producing carvings of animals that "retained their wooden souls, and the curve of their backs had the enigmatic shape of growth itself and remained a part of the decaying forest." Asked by Sophia what she's doing, the artist replies, "I'm playing."
Though Grandmother and Sophia play a great deal together, underneath all the charm and humor of their games, something serious is happening: they are learning to let go. In August, the island begins to "shake them off." Black nights return to the far north; the island goes back to its "original condition," uninhabited, "growing cleaner and cleaner, and more and more foreign and distant." Summer passes away. Childhood is ending, or will end. Grandmother, staring out at a vision on the sea that may be a herring boat or her own heart, is dying or will die.
To complement The Summer Book, Sort of released A Winter Book (2006), which drew together selected short stories from six of Jansson's then-untranslated collections. The majority of these came from Sculptor's Daughter, with scattered contributions from the Swedish collections Travelling Light, The Listener, Messages, Letters from Klara, and Notes from an Island. A Winter Book is organized, as Tove's own life was, around winter and summer, town and country. The first half of the book contains many of the childhood stories of Sculptor's Daughter, while the second half features adult narrators dealing with the struggles of fame, aging, and leaving some stage of life behind.
The collection's wintry title works not only as a counterpoint to The Summer Book, but as an acknowledgement of what this often-misunderstood season meant to Jansson as a writer and as a human being. Winter was dangerous, but it contained a magic entirely unlike the summer variety. Normal rules did not quite apply in winter; it was the season when storytellers could be born. At the beginning of "The Dark," the child narrator from Sculptor's Daughter and her friend Poyu visit "the worst thing of all," the skating rink out on the harbor, "an ocean of blue snow and loneliness and nasty fresh air." When they are safely back at home, the little girl re-enacts the frightening scene, embellishing it with lyrics and pushing it toward the realm of art:
I used to sing sad songs to Poyu. He put his hands over his ears but he listened all the same. Life is an isle of sorrow, you live today and die tomorrow! The skating-rink was the isle of sorrow. We drew it underneath the dining-room table.
Sensing the symbolic significance of the skating rink, the little girl recasts it as the isle of sorrow. At the same time, she contains it, drawing it underneath the dining-room table, where it becomes useful, pleasurable, and psychically manageable — a work of the self, and of art. With these storytelling gestures, the child becomes not only more of an artist, but more of a human being. More than once in Jansson's oeuvre, in fact, a child must learn to contain its nebulous fear of itself: the narrator of Sculptor's Daughter, wearing her mother's voluminous black tulle skirt, sees herself in the mirror and, in her imagination, sets loose dozens of huge, black creatures into the studio, who terrify her until she looks them in the face, flings open the window, and sends them out across the water. A similar event occurs in Jansson's very last Moomin book, Moominvalley in November (written shortly after Sculptor's Daughter), when tiny, childlike Toft nourishes a black creature in his mind until he fears the thing will consume the valley and himself. But, as winter approaches, he sets it free, and it vanishes into harmlessness.
Demons left unacknowledged will grow teeth and bite, but demons confronted can be made to work, made to write or draw. Children often sense intuitively that these demons are an aspect of our own selves, and adults, Jansson implies, would do well to remember it.
HARD-BOILED: Art in Nature, Travelling Light
The childlike fantasy and lush, poetic language that characterized Jansson's early adult works are intentionally pared down in her later collections. Sculptor's Daughter and The Summer Book, with their "Moominlike" sense of wonder, had still been considered appropriate for young readers in the Nordic countries. With her next two collections, Art in Nature (Swedish 1978, English 2012) and Travelling Light (Swedish 1987, English 2010), Jansson wanted something more "hard-boiled," something "absolutely not for children." She wanted to shock. If there was a touch of adolescent rebellion in this desire, it was not out of place. Jansson was maturing rapidly as a writer, and her concerns were shifting from the birth and development of an artist to the difficulty of living as one: how to work, how to love, how to negotiate all the complications, cruelties, and pleasures of creative life. Many of Jansson's stories and novels from the 1970s and '80s take on the darker sides of adulthood, but they are never morbid. They rely as much on comedy for their shock value as they do on critique; part of Jansson's genius is to tread lightly over serious ground, as if over ice.
Much of both Art in Nature and Travelling Light deals with the problem of art, and more specifically, with the problems of artists. Jansson's characters are cursed to carry the same two souls within their breasts that she carried within hers: they desperately want to be alone, but equally desperately want to experience human connection. Jansson, never above self-mockery, lends this conflict to characters who are exaggerated versions of herself. In "The Locomotive," a train enthusiast and draughtsman finds himself simultaneously drawn to and repelled by a woman who seems to share his obsession. As their relationship escalates, the narrator grows ever more manic, and the story might have veered toward psychological horror were it not for its playful absurdity. "Travelling Light," too, takes a comic turn, when a man who decides to escape all his worldly responsibilities becomes almost immediately entangled in someone else's sorrows. With these helpless protagonists, Jansson winks at us, reminding us (and perhaps herself, who yearned for an unburdened boat) that there is no such thing as travelling light, no way to be both human and alone. (This theme recurs in later collections. In "The Listener," Jansson writes of an elderly, isolated woman: "She understood that this was no way to live, human beings are not built to float.")
"The Doll's House" is more sobering. A retired carpenter nearly alienates his partner by turning their apartment into a studio for the perfect, stunningly realistic doll's house that consumes his imagination. The story, while highly sympathetic to those people who must live with artists (they have a difficult lot), refrains from casting the artist as the villain. He is acting according to his nature; like Jansson, he seems motivated by work and love, in that order.
"The Cartoonist" introduces the problem of commercial success and features a different kind of artist: one who tries to give up his art. The story follows a young man named Stein who has been hired to continue producing a famous comic strip after its original creator suddenly disappears. The popularity of this comic parallels that of the Moomins (references are made to the myriad products available featuring the comic's characters, from curtains to candle wax, as well as to the number of letters the artist receives from ardent fans), and the reclusive creator recalls Jansson, too. When Stein finally tracks down his predecessor, he chastises him for his willingness to throw away the contents of his desk. "After all, it's a life," he protests. The artist corrects him immediately: "'Stein,' he said, 'not a life. A little piece of a life.'"
Witold Gombrowicz once lamented in his diary, "When I, therefore, demand of them that they be people who paint, they want only to be painters." Jansson would have understood this; she and her characters are people who paint. In "The Cartoonist," she exerts the right of the artist to be a human being; that is, to be more than the sum of his or her works. Even as the cartoonist asserts himself as a person with a life beyond his art, he shyly suggests that he could come back now and then to do to a guest strip for Stein, "if you get stuck."
The unpleasant but inevitable relationship between art and commercialism never fully disappears from Jansson's work. While in "The Cartoonist" the stakes of this conflict remain fairly low, they achieve a much more sinister level for another character, the artist Anna Aemelin, in the book Jansson's biographer called "the black novel."
WORKS OF LOVE: The True Deceiver, Fair Play
The True Deceiver (published in Swedish in 1982, translated by Thomas Teal in 2009) is one of Jansson's best and most enigmatic works. A winter book of the most chilling sort, it takes place in a tiny coastal village in the north and revolves around two women with the souls of animals. Katri Kling is a taciturn, yellow-eyed wolfish person with a special genius for numbers and a fierce, protective love of her "simple" little brother, Mats. Katri, trusted but disliked by the entire village, decides to take over "the rabbit-house," the residence of the leporine Anna Aemelin, an artist renowned for her paintings of the forest floor. Katri's motives, she believes, are pure: she wants the house because she wants a better life for her brother, away from the taunts of the village's children and the casual nastiness of its adults. Although she prides herself on her honesty, Katri secures an invitation to move in with Anna largely through deceptive means, even going so far as to stage a break-in at the rabbit house so that Anna will be afraid to live alone.
Once Katri, along with her brother, has moved in, she and Anna grow more and more entangled in each other's lives, the potential for disaster growing with each encounter. But the ways in which Anna and Katri deceive each other, though numerous, are not nearly as dangerous as the ways in which they deceive themselves. There is not one battle but two: one inside each woman, and she who wins out against herself will also win out against the other. The tension comes to a head at the first sign of spring, the change in season already offering a clue as to who will triumph. The wolfish Katri, from the beginning associated with winter, wanes along with her season, having somehow lost what is most essential to her. In proportion to Katri's fall, Anna rises: as soon as she sees herself clearly, she blossoms, both as a person and as an artist.
The True Deceiver, though barely over 180 pages, took Jansson years to write and presented enormous difficulties. Its prose is unusually sparse, as if Jansson were carving the words out of ice and had to save her strength for the most essential of them. Scenes are introduced with the least information possible — "Mats Kling and Liljeberg met on the village street," opens one chapter — and even the descriptions of the winter weather rely only on essential adjectives: dark, cold, snow-covered. And yet this taut language proves disturbingly ambiguous. Though Jansson manages to convey an impressive amount of information in only a few sentences, the reader feels the meaning of the words shifting underneath the text, leaving in doubt what had appeared to be so exact. This effect is enhanced when the narrative suddenly changes from third person to first. During a conversation between Katri and the spiteful village storekeeper, for example, Jansson writes:
This exchange was quiet and hostile, like two wary animals circling for an attack.
He doesn't forget, this little storekeeper, he hasn't forgiven me that time. His lust was ludicrous, and I let him know it. I wasn't objective. Things get out of hand every time I lose my objectivity. I have to get away from here.
We can identify Katri's voice by the tone and content of her utterances, but otherwise the changes are unmarked. Though Katri's interruptions appear infrequently, they are unexpected enough to destabilize the entire narrative, prompting us to question, if only slightly, the reliability of the third-person narrator and, by extension, the author herself. Would "true deceiver" not be a fitting description of a novelist?
The graceful motto Labore et amare was carved into Jansson's graphic designs as early as the 1940s: work and love, her guiding principles. But there was a third term to her life's equation as well: play. Work, love, and play, these three concepts, usually in that order, structure nearly all of Jansson's work. In The Summer Book, Grandmother describes carving her beautiful wooden animals as playing, and even in The True Deceiver, both Anna and Katri are unexpectedly concerned with play. "You don't know how to play," Anna once tells Katri, insisting that this knowledge is indispensable to an artist. Katri, interestingly, has already accused Anna, albeit silently, of the same thing: "You know nothing about fair play!" Both women place a high value on the ability to play properly (Katri refers to her entire conquest of the rabbit house as a game), but they are operating under different sets of rules, different understandings of what constitutes "fair play."
Fair Play (published in Swedish in 1989 and translated, again by Thomas Teal, in 2007) is the mirror image of The True Deceiver. Though it also examines the relationship between two women, Fair Play, unlike its predecessor, is a romance. Inspired by Jansson's life with her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, the novel centers on a pair of artists. Mari, a writer and illustrator, as Tove was (Tove's middle name was Marika), is contrary, affectionate, and sensitive; Jonna, like Tuulikki, is a graphic artist, brilliant and practical, constantly thinking up plans with a "mysterious blend of perfectionism and nonchalance." Both in their 70s, they live in two studio apartments connected by an attic passageway. Mari and Jonna fill their days with absorbing, unglamorous things: they hang pictures on the wall, watch videos, travel, host eccentric visitors, bicker, make up, make art.
Fair Play is a very slim book, shorter even than The True Deceiver. Its chapters are rarely more than three or four pages, with, however, not a single word out of place, not a mark of punctuation wasted. It can easily be read in less than a day, but perhaps more than any other of Jansson's novels, Fair Play conveys the years of life behind it. Given a few moments in her characters' lives, Jansson's reader experiences a fullness, a complexity of relations and emotions that are pointed to by the text, but not contained within it.
In the chapter called "Killing George," for instance, Mari asks Jonna to critique a story she's just written. They discuss the characters' motivations, they disagree, and Jonna, growing fed up and tired and eager to return to her own work, alone, goes into the bathroom:
Looking in the mirror, looking at her own face, she thought with sudden bitterness that it couldn't go on like this, these short stories that were never finished and just went on and getting rewritten and discarded and picked up again, all those words that got changed and changed places and I can't remember how they were yesterday and what's happened to them today! I'm tired!
She goes back out to Mari, determined to get rid of her by giving her a difficult exercise. "Try to describe what I look like," she demands. Mari, after hesitating a while, says,
"I'd try to describe a kind of patience. And stubbornness. Somehow bring out the fact that you don't want anything except […] well, except what you want. Wait a moment […] Your hair has an unusual hint of bronze, especially against the light. Your profile and your short neck make one think of, you know, old Roman emperors who thought they were God himself […] Wait. It's the way you move and the way you walk. And when you slowly turn your face toward me. Your eyes […]"
"One of them's gray and the other one's blue," Jonna said. "And now drink your coffee because you need to stay alert. We'll take the whole thing from the beginning. Read slowly, we've got time."
The cover of the NYRB edition of Fair Play is a portrait of Tuulikki by Tove showing precisely these features that Mari saw in Jonna, that patience and stubbornness and faintly bronze hair. Like the novel itself, the painting is a work of love. Fair Play is neither the flashiest nor the most acclaimed of Jansson's novels, but it is one of the only convincing love stories I have ever read.
Madeleine LaRue is Associate Editor and Director of Publicity for Music & Literature.
By John W. W. Zeiser
Blood Sport: The Ultras White Knights vs. Mortada Mansour
By Patrick Keddie
Dancing with Dictators
By Gina Apostol
Fame and Literature, Irreconcilable Enemies
By John Yargo
"I Wanted the Reader to Feel Unsafe": The Provocations of Christos Tsiolkas
By Jeffrey Zuckerman


text:
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text:
This function is exclusive for Premium subscribers
DATABASE ( 19 )
INSIGHTS ( 8 )
inPlug (inplug.cn)
World's smallest smart socket and the only one offering the "shaking method" – shake smartphone to switch appliances on/off. Uses the latest Qualcomm technology. Detects local temperature, humidity, with the app automatically switching on/off appliances on these readings. At RMB 119, inPlug is possibly also the world's cheapest.
Smart pet-sitting robot that distinguishes between cats and dogs, and their different needs. Lets owner monitor pet, communicate via video; other functions include feeding, playing (device has sensors, emits red laser beam), mess-cleaning and ball-picking with its mechanical arm. Comes with app; retails at RMB 1,688 in China, US$399 overseas.
Sherpa's Spanish-language PDA is based on NLP and machine-learning technologies. The PDA is offered as a brand-name product (previously preloaded on Samsung smartphones) and more recently, as a white-label product in the form of an independent cloud-based platform that embeds, connects the PDA to smart consumer appliances and cars.
AISpeech
AISpeech specializes in speech recognition, speech synthesis, semantic understanding, voiceprint recognition, dialogue management and audio analysis. It provides voice interaction solutions for smart vehicles, smart home appliances and robots. AISpeech offers a voice input app and a Dialogue User Interface (DUI) open platform for developers to customize voice recognition products.
UBTECH develops and produces humanoid robots for individual consumers and businesses. Its humanoid Alpha series and STEAM-driven Jimu Robot series were created for in-home use. Service robot Cruzr, portable smart robot Wu Kong and security patrol robot ATRIS were all designed to be used by businesses.
Mobvoi sells products, including smart watches, headsets, smart speakers and smart rear view mirrors, most of which are based on the startup's voice recognition technologies. In addition to consumer products, Mobvoi also provides businesses with voice interaction solutions such as chatbots and AI voice chips.
Geometry Healthcare
Smart toilets that can monitor users' daily health by testing their urine and generating a test report that can be read on a mobile app. The report contains over 10 indicators including pH value and urine protein. Abnormal results will be highlighted to remind the user of health risks.
HomeRun currently sells four types of products: mobile doughnut-shaped cat toys, smart water dispensers and smart food dispensers for cats and dogs. Pet owners can control the feeding for their pets via an app when away from home.
Samsung NEXT
As the Korean conglomerate's gateway to deep tech startups and innovation, Samsung NEXT covers product development, investment, M&A and partnerships in a single entity to complement Samsung's hardware business. Outside of South Korea, Samsung NEXT has offices in Berlin, Tel Aviv and in the US in New York, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley. Its portfolio currently includes 55 companies with recent investments including in Series A rounds for Tetrate, Brodmann17 and RapidDeploy, as well as Healthy.io's Series B. It has managed 13 exits to date, including LoopPay, Automated Insights and EyeVerify. The VC was established in 2013.
EVERVC
Founded in 2014, EVERVC is a platform for startups and investors to seek financing and investing opportunities. As of 4Q2015, EVERVC had helped 170 startups to get investment of over RMB 900 million. It has invested in 40 startups, about 16 of which have received follow-up investment from prominent investors such as Matrix Partners China, NewMargin Capital, JD.com and Zhonglu VC.
Changce Investment
Changce Investment was established in Guangzhou in May 2015. With more than RMB 1 billion under management, the firm invests mainly in unlisted high-growth companies in the IoT sector.
PreAngel Fund
Established in Shanghai in 2011, PreAngel Fund has set up six funds with a total of RMB 600 million in assets under management. So far, the firm has invested RMB 300 million in over 300 Chinese and American tech companies in the fields of mobile internet, hardware, healthcare, finance, insurance, e-commerce, sports, among others.
Lei Jun
Lei is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, one of the world's largest smartphone companies. Born in December 1969, he holds a degree in Engineering from Wuhan University. With a personal net worth of US$11.2 billion, Lei has invested in 33 companies as a business angel, including Vancl.com, UCWeb, and YY Inc., a live streaming social media platform in China. He has also invested in 270 companies through Shunwei Capital, where he is a founding partner. Lei's investment focuses are e-commerce, mobile internet and social networking.
Established in Shenzhen in 2007, Share Capital has invested in over 100 companies. Some of its portfolio companies – e.g., NavInfo, Perfect World and BGI – have gone public. Its investment team of nearly 50 members manages more than RMB 6 billion worth of assets. Share Capital has set up a healthcare fund of RMB 1.5 billion and invested in over 70 health-related projects.
Red Star Macalline
Founded in 1992 in Shanghai, Red Star Macalline is China's largest furniture retailer. By the end of 2017, it had built up a network of 256 shopping malls, offering home furnishings of about 20,000 brands across 177 cities in China. The company also engages in interior design and renovation. The company has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June 2015 and the Shanghai Stock Exchange in January 2018, making it the first Chinese home furnishing company listed on both exchanges.
Ninebot takes on America
Founder and CEO Gao Lufeng on Ninebot's acquisition of American motorized scooter maker Segway, China's rise in technology and innovation, and the company's plans for the US market
As AI assistant market heats up, Sherpa zooms in on smart autos, smart homes
Spanish AI assistant startup Sherpa launches Sherpa Platform, a new set of APIs for smart cars, phones and home devices
This voice technology startup empowers both developers and machines
AISpeech shifted its business from education to IoT but has always remained focused on voice interaction between humans and machines
UBTECH: CES robotics star wants to bring humanoid robots to every family
UBTECH's next-generation bipedal robot recently made an impressive global debut, and the startup's founder has once again become the focus of attention
Geometry Healthcare: Smart toilets that warn you if you are sick, or at risk
Using a biochip for urinalysis and offline health management services, Geometry Healthcare aims to differentiate itself in the smart toilet business
Catalonia: Spain's fast-rising robotics hub and next opportunity
With the robotics sector on the rise in Catalonia, expect to see more growth ahead, driving opportunities in related segments, especially services
Smart Bees wants to capitalize on China's two-children policy
High property prices fuel demand for Smart Bees' bespoke smart tech-equipped furniture that maximizes living spaces for families and young homeowners
HomeRun: IoT devices for home-alone pets
Founded by a pet owner who worried about leaving his dog alone at home, HomeRun is chalking up big sales in China's billion-dollar pet care market
Genuine or fake? Sneakers resale platform Poizon tackles counterfeit issues
Ruangguru cracks business model as it reaches 13 million student users
Iomob: Universal mobility app to help people find best route from A to B
A new unicorn rises as OVO's $1bn valuation confirmed
Xiaohongshu (RED)
Hui Capital
Samator Education
Spencer Deng (Deng Xiaobai)
Co-founder and CEO of Dorabot
Charlwin Mao (Mao Wenchao)
Founder and CEO of Xiaohongshu (RED)


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Billy Ball Commentary
The case for gridlock or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the veto
By Billy Ball
- in Billy Ball Commentary, Original Commentary, Top Story
When Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly reconvene next week, they'll return to a colder Raleigh.
Not an inhospitable place, mind you. Those golden doors into the House and Senate chambers in Raleigh still open for them, these benefactors of a grimly gerrymandered map that's past due for its day in a North Carolina courtroom. And their ruthlessly efficient leadership will hold all of the keys, maintaining a throttle grip on the legislative committees that can advance or shun prospective bills at will.
Yet their silver bullet, their Cooper-proof majority, built to withstand the governor's veto power, is a right-wing nostalgia piece these days, buried beneath what amounts to an avalanche of left-leaning votes in November.
For the first time in his term, Gov. Cooper, a Democrat once exiled to the bully pulpit if little else, will hold something over this legislature's head.
When longtime North Carolina reporter Kirk Ross tweeted on the morning of Dec. 22 that, per state law, the governor could officially stow any new bills until the supermajority had left office, effectively shuttering any future chicanery, it seemed a crossing of the void.
"This might seem like a small point considering that the world is burning," Ross mused. "But it significantly changes the dynamic for public policy making in our state."
True, and it couldn't come soon enough for a state exhausted by an unchecked legislative branch. Republicans would no longer be able to pass some of their more noxious bills without peeling off a handful of Democrats to support a veto override.
Perhaps that explains the anxious hand-wringing these days over what Cooper will do with his newfound power. Will he opt for compromise, the N.C. Insider's Colin Campbell wondered just days ago, or will he opt for gridlock?
Perhaps that's a question best put to GOP legislative leaders, who, for the better part of a decade, have ruled seemingly without the capacity for reflection. Regardless of the new dynamic in Raleigh, what Cooper will or won't do in 2019 still matters far less than those who hold corner offices in the legislative building, those who ultimately control what, if anything, is to become law in 2019 and 2020.
For better or worse, this state knows what to expect of Roy Cooper, a moderate Democrat from the state's rural eastern reaches who's spent his nascent rise grappling – inside and outside of a courtroom – with his nemeses in the state's Republican party.
The governor's predilection for compromise already won him a repeal of the legislature's odious HB2 in 2017, even if its unpalatable giveaways to social conservatives – a temporary moratorium on local anti-discrimination ordinances – angered many on the left flank of the Democratic Party.
His queasy acceptance of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a pipe dream turned reality for powerful energy interests, earned him his lashes from those who rightfully worry about the environmental and social justice sacrifices North Carolina will make along the way.
And in his willingness to accept last year's Republican "fix" to a public school class-size crisis – one in which GOP-engineered budget constraints left North Carolina school systems panicking – the Democratic governor again showed a willingness to bend, if not break on his policy goals.
Cooper promised not to veto that deal, even with its "poison pills" seizing control of a $58 million environmental mitigation fund for the pipeline and a hyper-partisan face-lift for the state's elections board.
No, when it comes to compromise, the ball is not in Cooper's court. Not even close. The crucial question of this upcoming session – one that promises biting battles over Medicaid, school infrastructure, and the budget – is how much, if any, the leadership of the General Assembly is willing to deal.
You'd be hard-pressed to find an instance in which the legislative leadership – barring tremendous public pressure or a court order – hashed out an exchange with their counterparts in the Democratic Party. Indeed, they've found very little incentive to do so, retrofitting a historically moderate state into an ultra-conservative Bacchanalia along the way with a staggering deluge of far-right agenda items.
The New Yorker's Susan Glasser wrote last month that President Trump's political calculus in Washington seems to hinge on the fire hose of news, most if it bad, gushing from his administration. All the while, Trump endures with a noxious but buoyant persona, one that seems able to bob perennially atop a sea of waste. What point is there in losing sleep over this week's dizzying headlines if they're only to be swallowed by next week's?
In North Carolina, there's the same weariness for progressives and moderates.
Perhaps the North Carolina legislature has not descended to the same mind-bending depths as the Trump administration in recent years, but they've been far more successful in advancing their policy goals, sowing and harvesting a conservative revolution that's far outstripped virtually all other Republican-controlled states in the country.
In their pursuit of a sprawling, come-hell-or-high-water school choice market, in their desperate quest to create one of the nation's strictest voter ID laws, in their ruthlessly gerrymandered maps, in their lust for corporate and individual income tax cuts that make top-dollar donors swoon, in their porcine pursuit of a reprieve for ultra-rich pork producers accused of grievous environmental injustice, in their willingness to eliminate all minority party input during 2018's historically one-sided budget process, and in their intractable willingness to deny access to health care to hundreds of thousands of lower income residents during a federally-bankrolled Medicaid expansion, the conservative legislators have shown their willingness to steamroll any dissidents.
And while no one, not even the most illogical of partisans, wants to see the state's budget tied up in limbo this year, an outcome that seems all too likely today, gridlock is certainly preferable to this sort of reckless lawmaking. It's the sort that earns North Carolina a regular spot in the national news rotation, not for its growing cities or sprawling natural beauty, but for its regular partisan freakouts and its election fraud and its well-earned reputation for anti-LGBTQ discrimination in its highest halls.
Compromise is a word not often uttered in the halls of the General Assembly these days, because it has never been given room to breathe.
No, the ball rests in the legislature's court. Can it govern for North Carolina's 10 million or so residents, and not simply the scant minority on the state's far right?
Our government hinges upon checks and balances. We've seen the checks, or at least the lawyers defending the Republican majority's ill-conceived laws in court have, but North Carolinians desperately want the balances too.
Billy Ball, Managing Editor, joined Policy Watch in January 2016. In his 15+ years as a North Carolina reporter, he's covered public schools, state and local politics, courts, the environment, criminal justice and immigration for publications like The Independent Weekly, The Sanford Herald andThe Monroe Enquirer-Journal. During that time, he's won more than two dozen state, regional and national awards for his reporting and writing, including recognition for investigative reporting, commentary, and news features. In 2018, he won first place from the N.C. Press Association for political reporting. And his 2014 reporting on the death of Michael Anthony Kerr, which earned him a national award for "media impact" from The Media Consortium, exposed the mistreatment of a North Carolina inmate with mental illness in solitary confinement. His reporting led to ongoing reforms in how the state handles prisoners with a mental illness. Billy is a graduate of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism.
billy@ncpolicywatch.com
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At the Grimblethorpe Hall Estate, we produce succulent Rare Breed Beef from our herd of native Pedigree Lincoln Red 'P' Cattle and Rare Breed Lincoln Longwool Lamb and Mutton..
Situated in the Lincolnshire Wolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, our cattle and sheep are fed on a wholly 100% pasture diet with no grains, root crops or brassicas. They graze on the meadows in our chalk stream valley that once included the Medieval Settlements of Grimblethorpe and South Cadeby.
We are very passionate about the Lincolnshire Heritage here at Grimblethorpe Hall, which was built circa 1620AD and now owned by Andy and Nicola Aldridge. That is why you will only see cattle and sheep native to the County grazing in our fields. They spend almost all of their lives outside grazing, unless the weather dictates otherwise. Our livestock is produced for sale either as Pedigree Breeding Livestock or for Slow Grown Beef.
The vision here at Grimblethorpe Hall, is to produce quality food, naturally from contented animals, that have a good quality of life within a sustainable farming system. That is why our cattle are finished for beef between 28 to 29 months of age and not any younger !
Our farm is a corporate and licensed member of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST), meaning that every customer purchasing our meats is directly supporting the work of the Trust.
Lincoln Red 'P' (Pure) beef is MARBLED - meaning that small amounts of intramuscular fat (rich in omega 3) runs through the meat which increases flavour and tenderness. The slow growth of our cattle on our heritage meadows just adds to this exceptional quality. Our Beef is hung in a refrigerator for a minimum of 28 days, creating a better flavour and reducing the amount that your joints and steaks will shrink when cooked.
We use a small, family abattoir less than 20 miles from our farm and because we are committed to 101% traceability of our meat then decided to set up our own Butchery at Grimblethorpe Hall. Our Butcher, is Stuart who has over 40 years experience in the business and shares the same passion as Andy and Nicola for providing customers with a quality final product.
The fully identifiable carcases from the Abbatoir are delivered back to us within the week to be hung in our own large refrigerator so we can carefully monitor the ageing process. After 28 days, Stuart uses his artisan butchery skills to produce a selection of traditional beef cuts that are vacuum-packed into a range of 3 sizes of Meat Boxes. We also do take individual cutting requests. Vacuum packing, means the air is removed from the packaging, meaning that the meat will stay fresh for up to 10 days in your refrigerator providing that is is kept between 0-3 degrees C. When vacuum packed meat is opened, any slight smell soon disappears.
The fresh mince needs FREEZING after 5 days as it has been through a machine that raises the temperature of the meat. All meat intended for freezing should be frozen as soon as possible after purchase. The quality of the meat is the same whether it is cooked from fresh or frozen. Once unfrozen, meat must not be refrozen unless it has been thoroughly cooked.
We can supply meat either fresh or frozen. Boxes of fresh or frozen meat can be sent by courier anywhere in the UK.
PACKAGING - we use recyclable cardboard boxes with insulation made from sheep's wool and food grade plastic. Water filled ice sheets are used to keep meat at the correct temperature for transporting.
As our herd and flock is small and we only produce slow grown food, we do not always have a constant supply all year around. Please check our website for current availability, pricing and to place your order or enquire.
If you are passionate about where your food comes from then Grimblethorpe Hall Beef is for you !
Prepared by our Butcher, Stuart.
A traditional taste of Lincolnshire - Slow Grown 100% Pasture Fed Rare Breed Lincoln Red 'P' Beef available from our on farm Butchery.
Our Butchery also has available Rare Breed Tamworth & Large Black Pork and Award Winning Lincolnshire Sausages produced on the Grimblethorpe Hall Estate from our outdoor pigs.


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DSTRKT - the night club from the movies
DSTRKT: View from the top of the runway
For the first time, I'm actually going to review a night club, a snazzy, over-the-top, expensive night club which I got into for free. Score.
Located near Leicester Square in London, DSTRKT is a night club dominated by late-20s to late-30s white and rich clientele. That is was one of many observations I made during the evening because, to be totally honest, the whole experience was so new to me that I was really happy to just observe my surroundings.
DSTRKT is a part night club, part restaurant which seems to act as the after-party for certain celebrity clients including Jay-Z. They have recently remodeled their night-club, and myself and a guest were invited to attend the launch. Upon entering, my guest and I were given a free cocktail each in the restaurant area. I had been promised 'lots of food and drink', and, not knowing what that meant, I asked if we were going to be seated for dinner. No, apparently; I was told that the launch party was in the night club only and we were directed to the correct area. They lost a point on that one because there was no clarity in the invitation about restaurant versus night club.
They did, however, gain points on the decor. The night-club is laid out so that a small runway dominates the center. Booths and tables surround the runway and then more booths sit along the entire edge of the room. The ceiling was decorated with artistic metal rods and the lighting was a classy combination of candles and dim ceiling lights and lamps. My guest and I found some seats along the edge and waited to see what sort of entertainment, food, and drink might be provided.
The first act on the runway stage was a female band made up of a singer, a guitarist, and a saxophone player. The three women were dressed in outlandish caped costumes and playing what I'll describe as a mix of punk rock and alternative music. Following a break, the second act was an interpretive dancer who danced in the same slow, wavy style for a good twenty minutes to half hour. After another break came the entertainment which claims DSTRKT as its home. This was a group of costumed entertainers: some of the women wore feathered tails which reminded me strongly of Las Vegas showgirls and the men were dressed in shiny, somehow modern Renaissance attire. Rather than performing an act, one of the men introduced a chic, pale-painted woman who danced along to a light show which appeared behind her back on a temporary screen. I couldn't tell if she somehow choreographed her odd dance to the lighting design, but, either way, it was intriguing.
All of the entertainment in combination with the decor reminded me of a blockbuster movie, and, yes I'll admit my naivety, I never considered if such places actually exist. Once I was accustomed to the new, very foreign environment, my guest and I began making observations about the clientele. Most of them were, ourselves included, white and in their late-20s or early 30s, and most, ourselves included, primarily treated the entertainment as background noise. The focus was on the group that you came with. The club left very little room for mingling with strangers, although, we did discover one 40-somthing gentleman with dreadlocks who was desperate to pick up a lady. We watched him go from woman to woman, oddly carrying two drinks in his hands (and drinking both of them) at all times. With every woman he was rejected. Near the end of the evening, we watched him attempt to chat up one of the few older women, probably 50-something, and, there too, he was kindly rejected. Poor guy.
While all of this was going on, I was starving and I kept having to act like a cat, pouncing on an tray of food I saw carried by a waiter. The lack of customer service was appalling. The waiters only brought the canapés to the same two tables and by the time those two tables had their fill, there was no food left for the rest of the us. I took to watching the door so that as soon as a waiter would enter, I could walk up to him and ask him for a the small bowl of overly-salted mushroom risotto or the cream-cheese veggie crackers whose crackers were not even close to crunchy. The only food that tasted delicious were the mini-burgers. Those were succulent, juicy, and perfect. Unfortunately I only got one and it was one I had to hunt down.
Eventually I saw managers directing the waiters to other tables, but the damage had been done. I had been promised 'lots of food and drink' and they did not deliver. Apparently, we were only supped to get one free drink upon entering, which I got and it tasted average. Plus, I shouldn't have to work that hard to get my food, and when I do get it, it should taste better.
I enjoyed the evening, but more because it was a new experience for me and less because I felt I was valued as a potential customer. Decor was excellent, entertainment was interesting, but customer service was terrible.
The Comedy of Errors
Seeing a performance at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre has all the charm and excitement that you might expect. Seeing The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's most farcical play, only triples the enjoyment. The play, directed by Blanche McIntyre, is the story of two sets of twins who are separated as children. One pair of twin brothers (both called Antipholus) are, in two different cities, the masters of twin brothers (both called Dromio). The hilarity ensues when Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse enter the city of Ephesus where the other Antipholus and other Dromio live. What follows is over-the-top slapstick humor (as slapstick humor should be) and wonderfully drawn out jokes of mistaken identity.
To start things off, McIntyre has added a ten minute scene of Dromio of Ephesus (played by Jamie Wilkes) as he tries to retrieve a piece of laundry that is hung far too high to reach. Determined to do his job as Antopholus' servant, he concocts all sorts of ideas to try and get the shirt. He tries reaching on his toes, jumping, climbing a ladder, and using a rope. Eventually he has to give up and the shirt remains hung on the ceiling for the majority of the play. It only falls down after a major scuffle at which point Dromio of Ephesus can finally have some relief on the matter.
This piece of the play, added entirely by McIntyre, sets the tone for the rest of the performance. The audience is engrossed and humored by Dromio's attempts, and for me, this bit at the beginning endeared him to me. Indeed, Jamie Wilkes' performance throughout was one of the finest of the evening. While all of the cast members were fully committed to their roles and held nothing back, Wilkes' performance had a cleanliness to it which was very refreshing.
Second to his performance was that of Simon Harrison who played Antipholus of Syracuse. Upon entering Ephesus, Antipholus of Syracuse is immediately mistaken for Antipholus of Ephesus and the people of the city treat him with an incredibly warm regard. His supposed 'wife', at first furious at him for missing supper and worried that he may no longer love her, proceeds to kiss him at which time Antipholus of Syracuse can hardly hold back his pleasure at being so welcomed in a foreign city. The mistaken identity leads Antipholus of Syracuse to a lovely supper at 'home' and a beautiful 'sister-in-law' with whom he immediately falls in love. As the play continues, Harrison portrays the perfect combination of boyish giddy alternated with a comical fury every time one of the Dromios does something that he didn't ask for.
Such confusion is the perfect opportunity for Shakespeare to showcase his writing talents, for when it all does come to a head, the back-and-forth between characters makes me laugh just to think of it. And the Globe's open-air amphitheater structure lends itself to audience participation. Standing in the yard amongst hundred of audience members, it felt as though we were truly participating in the performance and it added to the overall enjoyment. The Comedy of Errors at the Globe is one of the most hilarious and purely entertaining shows I have ever seen. I highly recommend it.


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LEO – an update on our journey towards a net zero local energy network in Oxfordshire
By Stevie Adams, Senior Project Manager, SSE
With the UK hosting COP26 in 2021, the UK Governments Ten Point Plan to deliver a green industrial revolution and the 2050 net zero target, climate change is enjoying the prominence it deserves. Project LEO is seeking to unlock the local solutions required to address a global problem.
All nine project partners involved in LEO are putting their heads together to come up with ways in which distributed energy resources located across Oxfordshire can be used to develop a sustainable local energy marketplace and support the transition to a smarter electricity system. The marketplace will serve both domestic and commercial generators of electricity as well as those who could change the way they work to reduce or increase their electricity demand at suitable times.
Recent trials include the use of Sandford Hydro on the River Thames. We have been able to demonstrate that the river's short-term output could potentially be doubled by holding back its flow for a brief period and then releasing it. Turning the river into a giant battery. Not all LEO's trials have been so successful – but as Albert Einstein said, "Failure is success in progress".
All of the LEO trials are aimed at expanding each project partner's understanding of how an efficient net zero local energy system, supplying the energy needs of Oxfordshire, can effectively balance supply and demand at a local level. To do all this we need the right systems in place to allow people to trade electricity in a market and the right tools that can help us better predict what energy is needed, where and when. We are working to develop a fair and transparent marketplace and set of rules for everyone to play by. In 2021 we will be trialling various aspects of these new market arrangements within LEO and will continue to do so for the remainder of the project.
Access to data and the sharing of information is vital to LEO and to any smart local energy network. In recognition of this, LEO has recently launched a mapping tool to support energy system planning in Oxfordshire. The tool collates over forty layers of data to give an accessible overview of land use throughout the County, including environmental and landscape designations, agricultural grade, flood risk zones, planned housing and employment, and other publicly available data all in a one-stop-shop. We've also included a new data set indicating areas across the County which may be suitable for installation of additional renewables at a variety of scales.
LEO launched in April 2019 and with nine project partners, it has continued to be important to ensure we remain focussed on heading towards the same goal. This reminds me of the story of President Kennedy's visit in 1961 to the space centre as they were planning the Apollo mission to the moon. Kennedy stopped someone who was cleaning the desks in mission control and asked, "What are you doing"? The cleaner said, "I'm putting a man on the moon". I'm sure everyone involved in LEO agrees we are helping to make the UK carbon-zero by 2050.


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2015 Mentored Investigator Grant Recipient — Nicole Spardy, PhD
Nicole Spardy, PhD
Identification of New Genetic Dependencies in HR-deficient Ovarian Cancers
Our DNA is constantly exposed to damage due to environmental insults and normal cellular processes. In order to prevent the loss of important genetic information, cells have acquired mechanisms, which are dedicated to orchestrating the recognition and repair of damaged DNA. Homologous recombination (HR) represents one such mechanism that is responsible for facilitating the error-free repair of DNA double strand breaks. Importantly, inactivation of genes involved in the HR pathway, such as by mutation in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, has been linked with increased genetic abnormalities and is frequently detected in ovarian tumors. Past work indicates that BRCA1/BRCA2-mutant ovarian cancer cells are sensitive to drugs that inhibit PARP1, an enzyme that is active in a parallel DNA repair pathway. Unfortunately, despite the early success of PARP1 inhibitors in phase 1 clinical trials, rapidly acquired resistance suggests that alternative therapies may be required for durable patient response.
To screen for new therapeutic targets in HR-deficient cancer cells, we took advantage of a large-scale study performed in collaboration with our laboratory, which aimed to examine how the loss of function for over 9,000 genes affected the growth of 100 human tumor-derived cell lines. By characterizing these cell lines for their HR repair capacity, we were able to identify 50 genes, which when inhibited, reduced the survival of HR-deficient cancer cells, but had little affect on cells with normal HR activity. While these findings are likely to highlight new genetic vulnerabilities in HR-deficient tumors, additional experiments are required to determine precisely how our candidate genes promote toxicity in cells that lack an intact HR pathway.
I hypothesize that a subset of our candidate genes may induce cell toxicity by stimulating a lethal accumulation of DNA double strand breaks in cells that are unable to activate HR repair. To test this, I will use a microscopy-based assay to monitor the level of DNA damage in cells with normal or impaired HR repair after candidate gene knockdown. Candidategenes shown to induce DNA damage selectively in cells with low HR will be prioritized and biochemical experiments will be used to validate and further dissect their relationship with HR-deficiency in vitro. In addition, I will rigorously test the role of our candidate genes in HR-deficient tumorigenesis using in vivo mouse studies and we will determine whether suppression of our candidate gene synergizes with carboplatin or PARP1 inhibitors to inhibit HR-deficient tumorigenesis. Ultimately, these studies will highlight new therapeutic targets for the growing population of patients with HR-deficient ovarian tumors.
This grant was made possible in part by a generous donation from the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, in memory of Jackie McCarren.
Areas of Research: Genetic Markers, Ovarian Cancer Cells
Dr. Nicole Spardy is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. William Hahn, M.D., Ph.D. at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Nicole earned her doctoral degree at The University of Pittsburgh in 2009, where her research focused on understanding how human papillomavirus (HPV) oncoprotein-induced activation of the DNA damage response contributes to carcinogenesis in patients with Fanconi Anemia. Her current research interests include using functional genomic screens to identify novel therapeutic targets in ovarian cancers that harbor defects in homologous recombination-mediated DNA repair.


Jun 05 Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, President of the Comoros was born in the year 1958.
Jun 07 Francesca Thyssen, lugano Switz, baroness was born on this day in history.
Jun 07 Prince, American musician was born in the year 1958.
Jun 08 Keenan Ivory Wayans, NYC, comedian (In Living Color) was born on this day in history.
Jun 09 Donald Michael Santini, Mass, murderer (FBI Most Wanted List) was born in the year 1958.
Jun 12 Fernando "Frank" Caldeiro, Buenos Aires Arg, astronaut was born on this day in history.
Jun 12 Rebecca Holden, American actress and singer was born on this day in history.
Jun 14 Brian David Willis, rock drummer (Quarterflash) was born on this day in history.
Jun 14 Carina Persson, Stockholm Sweden, playmate (August, 1983) was born on this day in history.
Jun 14 Eric Heiden, Madison, Wisconsin, US speed skater (5 Olympic gold medals 1980) was born in the year 1958.
Jun 15 Wade Boggs, Nebraska, Red Sox/Yank 3rd baseman (AL bat champ 1985-88) was born in the year 1958.
Jun 16 Jóhannes Helgason, Icelandic guitarist (Þeyr) was born on this day in history.
Jun 17 Dan McVicar, Independence Mo, actor (Clarke-Bold & Beautiful) was born in the year 1958.
Jun 17 Derek Lee Ragin, American countertenor was born on this day in history.
Jun 17 Jello Biafra, American musician and activist was born in the year 1958.
Jun 20 Ron Hornaday, American racecar driver was born on this day in history.
Jun 22 Bruce Campbell, American actor was born on this day in history.
Jun 22 Bruse Campbell, actor (Army of Darkness) was born in the year 1958.
Jun 24 Victor M Gerena, NYC, security guard robbed $7 million (FBI wanted) was born in the year 1958.


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Nuclear Spending
By Dan Dupont / December 20, 2013 at 10:01 PM
The Congressional Budget Office today released its annual review of U.S. nuclear weapons spending, projecting total expenditures for the next six years.
The report, called for by Congress in the fiscal year 2013 Defense Authorization Act, estimates "the costs over the next 10 years of the Administration's plans for operating, maintaining, and modernizing nuclear weapons and the military systems capable of delivering those weapons."
The numbers are huge. From the report's summary:
Between 2014 and 2023, the costs of the Administration's plans for nuclear forces will total $355 billion, in CBO's estimation. Of that total, $296 billion represents CBO's projection of the amounts budgeted for strategic and tactical nuclear delivery systems ($136 billion over 10 years); for nuclear weapons, DOE's nuclear weapons enterprise, and SSBN nuclear reactors ($105 billion over 10 years); and for nuclear command, control, communications, and early-warning systems ($56 billion over 10 years). The remaining $59 billion of the total represents CBO's estimate of the additional costs that will ensue over the coming decade, beyond the budgeted amounts, if the nuclear programs experience cost growth at the same average rate that similar programs have experienced in the past.
In addition to operating and maintaining current systems, DoD and DOE plan to modernize or replace many weapons and delivery systems over the next few decades. Planned nuclear modernization programs include new SSBNs, long-range bombers, ICBMs, and cruise missiles, as well as major life-extending refurbishments of current ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and nearly all nuclear warheads. Of the $241 billion budgeted for nuclear delivery systems and weapons over the next 10 years (combining the $136 billion and $105 billion figures in the preceding paragraph), CBO estimates that $152 billion would be spent to field and maintain the current generation of systems and $89 billion would be spent to modernize or replace those systems. Because most of those modernization efforts are just beginning, annual costs for nuclear forces are expected to increase.
From 2021 to 2023, nuclear costs would average about $29 billion annually, roughly 60 percent higher than the $18 billion requested for 2014. Annual costs are likely to continue to grow after 2023 as production begins on replacement systems.