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CURRENT EVENT | JUNE 1, 2017
Big Papi Tells His Baseball Story
After two decades in the major leagues, Red Sox legend David Ortiz has retired, and now he is releasing a memoir about his life and career. Throughout his career, David Ortiz, or "Big Papi", hit 541 home runs and won three World Series championships with the Boston Red Sox. Listen to learn more about David Ortiz's journey from his childhood in the Dominican Republic to major league baseball in the United States.
PB&J in NBA Locker Rooms
Not only is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a classic American comfort food, it is also a wildly popular snack in the National Basketball Association. The tradition of PB&J sandwiches in the NBA is believed to have started when Celtics star Kevin Garnett asked for one before a game. Garnett played well and asked that PB&J's be provided before every game. Although it is not the most nutritious snack, PB&J makes players feel relaxed and happy when they are stressed out on the road. Listen to learn more about the PB&J fad in the NBA and the unique preferences of various teams and players.
Candidates Try To Appeal To Male Voters With Sports
The gender gap in voting preferences in the 2012 election was the largest in history. Men voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidates, women voted Democratic. Men also vote less frequently than women. This has pushed politicians to focus on how they can effectively reach men, particularly young men. Today's public radio story looks at ad placement and self-presentation as candidates try to reach more men.
Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier
On April 15, 1947, African American baseball player Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was an interesting choice by the Dodgers to break the race barrier in baseball because he was an older player and not seen as the best player in the Negro league. Listen to learn how Robinson's strong character, as much as his talent, helped to successfully integrate baseball.
The Economics of the NBA
Is LeBron James underpaid? Listen to this story to hear why economists think he is. Then return here to analyse the numbers with these questions.


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Must See Iran TV II
By STEVEN STALINSKY | June 14, 2006
https://www.nysun.com/foreign/must-see-iran-tv-ii/34445/
Senator Santorum, a Republican of Pennsylvania, and Senator Bayh, a Democrat of Indiana, will host a MEMRI-sponsored event tomorrow at the U.S. Capitol about Iranian government-controlled television.
Building on last summer's "Must See Iran TV," MEMRI again has put together a critical set of translated clips from Iranian television programming that emphasize themes associated with Iran's nuclear aspirations, its acquisition of offensive weapons, anti-Americanism, and statements by leading Iranian government officials, including President Ahmadinejad.
The event will feature clips from the Iranian TV channels IRINN, Jaam-E-Jam 1-2-3-4, Al-Alam, Sahar, IRIB, and Iran 1-2-3-4, among others.
In addition, the briefing will highlight how the Iranian government has used its TV channels as a platform to disclose the latest developments of its military, therefore providing the West with critical strategic information. Such footage includes the new Nahang submarine, first shown on March 8 on IRINN; new uranium enrichment facilities, shown on April 11 on Channel 1, the debut of the Mesbah satellite, shown on July 20, 2005, on Channel 2, and Iranian divers planting mines, shown on April 2 on IRINN.
Channel 4 first showed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard testing its new, mass-produced flying boat, capable of "launching different types of weapons," on April 4, while Channel 2 first unveiled the Ghadir, the new Iranian submarine, on May 10.
Iran's state-controlled TV also broadcasts interviews with government and military officials that contain useful information. For example, in an interview on IRINN on April 12, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, General Ali Fadaui, announced the testing of the world's fastest underwater missile, which can "be used against fleets as well as large submarines."
A former Iranian defense minister, Admiral Ali Al-Shamkhani, appeared on Channel 2 on July 23, 2005, and gave out information about his country's space program: "The Defense Ministry has entered the fourth dimension of defense. Previously, we operated in air, land, and sea. ... Significant steps have been made in the fields of reception stations, control, launching, launch pads, and satellite tracking. ... This is a launching pad for the Defense Ministry in order to meet the needs of the armed forces in space."
Admiral Shamkhani also appeared on Channel 2 on March 21, talking about the successful test of the Shabab 3 missile, which, he said, can be "produced like candy." And the head of the Iranian Nuclear Energy Organization, Gholam-Reza Aghazedeh, appeared on IRINN on April 13, disclosing details never before made public about Iran's nuclear project, including the creation of new nuclear facilities, centrifuges, and heavy-water manufacturing.
By monitoring Iranian TV, vital information not only about weapon components, but also about the Iranian government's nuclear negotiating strategy can be understood. When the Iranian intelligence minister, Ali Yunesi, spoke to Channel 2 on July 16, 2005, he let it slip that his government uses double agents to provide faulty information to America to "keep them busy and fool them."
Similarly, a member of the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security and the chief negotiator on nuclear affairs, Hosein Musavian, appeared on Channel 2 on August 4, 2005, and admitted that Iran used negotiations with Europe to buy time to allow for the completion of multiple components of its nuclear program.
While Iran has always insisted its desire for nuclear technology is not for military purposes, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki appeared on Channel 2 on June 7 and let out this Freudian slip: "We emphasize the peaceful nature of our nuclear weapons ... I mean ... of our nuclear power plant, and nuclear energy and activities. We have no need for nuclear weapons, as we've often said."
By listening to and watching Iran state-controlled TV, the Iranian government's true military ambitions can be understood. On April 17, the chief of the Iranian army's joint staff, General Abdorrahim Musavi, spoke on Channel 2 and discussed the possibility of a "battle with the enemy ... with America."
General Musavi spoke of Iran's "military planning," which included preparing for certain "scenarios," stressing that "we want to put America in its place" and that "America's military power is greatly overestimated."
Ignoring such statements could prove to be dangerous.
Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


HOT 97.1 SVG » 10 Years on Top » Taylor Swift Debuts Music Video For Latest Song At VMA's!
Taylor Swift Debuts Music Video For Latest Song At VMA's!
Taylor Swift's newest music video has arrived and it opens with the pop star emerging from a grave.
Swift's music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" premiered during the MTV Video Music Awards. The video begins with shots of a cemetery and a decomposed Swift crawling out of a grave before shifting to several more glamorous looks.
The video ends with Swift appearing as several characters from the music video, and her life. The various Swifts snipe at one another in an airplane hangar in front of a plane with the word "reputation" — the title of her next album — painted on the sign.
Swift dropped her new single on Friday and quickly set a Spotify streaming record and a YouTube record for its lyric music video.
Usher's Herpes Accuser Sues Insurance Companies For Releasing Health Records!
Bobby Shmurda Denied Bail Again.


Beginning this fall, the University of California, Los Angeles, will require applications for regular rank faculty positions to include an "EDI statement" that describes the candidates "past, present, and future contributions to equity, diversity, and inclusion." This policy change resembles similar protocols being instituted at other universities, including five other UC schools. While this shift has been quietly accepted by the UCLA community, it has served as a flashpoint in the national argument against efforts toward equity in higher education. Those who feel that colleges have becomes sanctuaries for the hypersensitive—where honest conversations on race, gender, sexuality and identity have run rampant—strongly oppose UCLA's initiative towards diversity.
Heather Mac Donald, a conservative commentator, has been the most vocal opponent of the initiative. In an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, she decried UCLA's "diversity obsession" and warned that it would dilute the academic and intellectual purpose of the institution. Mac Donald presents the exploration and understanding of one's identity as being an irrelevant component to the role of college. Her arguments are based in a narrow, regressive vision of the purpose of universities and willfully ignorant of the racism and hate speech on UCLA's campus. In both the past and the present, higher education in society exists as a gatekeeper to both knowledge and power. They limit access both directly and indirectly through admissions and relationships within circles defined by wealth, social capital and race. In the case of faculty diversity, the ability of a mentor to engage with and understand the experiences of their students is crucial in opening previously locked doors of opportunity. A student's success in a given discipline is directly impacted by their ability to access that field, and that accessibility is directly related to identity, whether Mac Donald believes it or not. It is in part through this mechanism that black students made up only 5.2 percent of all doctorate recipients and only 1 percent of computer science doctorates nationwide in 2016. These statistics, which Mac Donald misinterpreted as being representative of a demographic trend, are actually an indication that enormous pitfalls and barriers still exist in higher education to keep certain students out of these types of programs.
However, the one positive quality of Mac Donald's otherwise misinformed column was her criticism of the bureaucratic processes of diversity initiatives. One needs only to look to the vice chancellor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UCLA to begin to see the failings so common in neoliberal universities. The vice chancellor has a total pay of about $400,000, more than four times that of many faculty positions, particularly the lower income adjunct faculty positions that are disproportionately occupied by black professors. These types of institutional failings and short term plans are not at all dissimilar from the endless task forces and committees created to put out fires across Duke—which are staffed and led by administrators who have yet to acknowledge or reckon with their own complicity in lighting the matches. These administrative bodies and roles, at their heart, seek to artificially boost a university's image rather than work to improve it in meaningful ways. Asking applicants to fill out this EDI statement has the same effect as any other minute policy changes instituted for the purpose of progressive posturing: doing just enough assuage the concerns of wealthy donors and prospective students who want a school that exists on the bleeding edge of neoliberalism, while avoiding the larger issues.
The true solutions to the problems of representation and inclusion exist in a place beyond the ultimately fruitless, unbridled idealism embodied by UCLA's new policy, but also beyond the cynicism associated with calls to abandon a dream of racial diversity and equity in higher education. This initiative from UCLA should not be immediately discounted, but it must be accompanied with absolute clarity that these small changes do not absolve universities from the need for conversations about the underlying motivation behind their pushes for diversity. An exclusive system that is forced to accommodate others looks much different than one that actively seeks out their voices and changes the system to be better. To transition from the former to the latter, UCLA, Duke and every other university must understand the consequences of their continued complacency. Identity and equity serve not as a distraction from education, but as a critical component of its mission. However, the question of intent versus impact still remains: what does it mean for a university like UCLA or Duke to create policies that give off an air of equality without the intention of pursuing it? UCLA's diversity statement provides a needed point for introspection on how each piece of academia's machinery contributes to expanding opportunity, but without the proper implementation and intention, none of these policy changes will get to the roots of the issues that exist both on UCLA's campus and ours.


Zayn Malik has gone on a bit of an expletive rant on social media, which then began with him telling people to go and 'f*** themselves.' Lovely.
He told his followers: "How about you all go f*** yourselves with your irrelevant bulls***.
It's unclear at the moment who Zayn was aiming at with his rant, but it's safe to say that he's pretty miffed off with someone right now.
It's the first time that the singer has spoken out since the end of March, where he also issued an apology to fans for 'venting' after saying he was actually pretty happy at the moment.


Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel.
Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave another interview and was asked about Israel's occupation of Arab lands. His response was, "It's our land". The reporter (CNN) was stunned – read below "It's our land…" It's important information since we don't get fair and accurate reporting from the media and facts tend to get lost in the jumble of daily events.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.


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Q: Complex regular expression also picks additional characters I need a hand with my regular expression.
I have provided an example of a text block I am currently working on. I am trying to work out a regular expression which could extract all those strange codes. The problem is the expression also picks digits as a part of the date/time, which I would like to avoid. I saved results here on regular expression online website. The expression I have been working with so far is following:
(?<![.,:;-])(f[0-9]*[/][0-9]+|[0-9]+f|[a-z]*[0-9]{2,}(j[a-z]?)?)(?![.,:;-])

I hoped lookarounds would work to prevent from selecting the digits in date/time. I also tried to add "new line" characters there but it does not solve the problem. How can I sort it out?
Thanks
This is the example of text block:
    2017-01-01 19:30:00.000
    something something
    2017-01-01 19:30:00.000
    xxx aaa bbb 1234f
    12345f bbb aaaaa xxx aaaa 2345f xxx
    f1/234 aaa bbb
    f/1234 xxx yyy
    aaa bbb ccc ddd f6/789
    a11j's aaaaa
    b12j's aaaaa
    c13j aaaaa
    d14j aaaaa
    e15 aaaaa
    1234j
    1234ja
    2345jb
    123456jc
    ab1234 something something cd234
    2016-05-30 19:30:00.000

A: If I understand correctly (and by looking at your example) your codes contain both letters and digits. Then this should do it for you:
(?=[\w/]*\d)(?=[\w/]*[a-z])[\w/]+

It uses two positive look-aheads. The first make sure the sequence matched contains a digit \d - (change to [0-9] if your flavor (which should be tagged) doesn't support it (I'm guessing python since that's slected at regex101)). The second makes sure it contains a letter.
After that it simply matches the sequence.
Note that all sequence matching also allows the / character, since that appears to be an allowed character in the codes.
Your regex101 updated.
Edit
Or simpler - just make letters in the third alternation of your regex mandatory by changing * to a +, thus keeping your logic for codes.
(?<![.,:;-])(f\d*/\d+|\d+f|[a-z]+\d{2,}(j[a-z]?)?)(?![.,:;-])
                                ^ here

Here at regex101.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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CemNet.com » Cement News » Argos sees net income grow to US$22m in 1H19
Argos sees net income grow to US$22m in 1H19
Argos has announced that the company's net income grew by 33.5 per cent to US$22m in 1H19. Argos revenues also expanded by 10.6 per cent to US$1.419m, while EBITDA registered an increase of four per cent to total US$262.4m.
Cement shipments were just under 8Mt, 1.2 per cent higher than in 1H18 and concrete dispatched were 5Mm3, down 2.5 per cent in 1H18 due to heavy rainfall in some parts of the USA. The company also sold its stake in OMYA Andina and Cartón de Colombia in 2Q19 to raise US$27m.
"In the first half of 2019 we continued to strengthen our operation and our presence in the United States with the execution of the BEST 2.0 efficiency plant, which added to the best price dynamics that we began to see in Colombia, allowed us to compensate the pressure we experienced in energy costs. The significant progress of our divestment in non-strategic assets allows us to continue focussing on improving the competitiveness of the company and innovating in products, services and solutions to support the growth of our customers," said Juan Esteban Calle, Argos CEO.
In the USA Argos earned revenues of US$781m, 3.5 per cent up on 1H18 and EBITDA amounted to US$108m. Cement dispatched rose by 6.9 per cent to more than 3Mt and concrete dispatches slipped by 3.8 per cent.
Colombian revenues reached US$352m, up 3.3 per cent on 1H18, although EBITDA fell by four per cent to US$72m because of higher energy costs. Cement dispatches totalled 2.4Mt, down 2.5 per cent on 1H18. Concrete dispatches remained stable at 1.4Mm3.
The Caribbean and Central American division saw revenues of US$286m, down 4.5 per cent on 1H18 and EBITDA reached US$79m, down 19.8 per cent. Cement dispatches amounted to 2.5Mt and concrete shipments of 194,000m3 were recorded, down 1.5 and three per cent, respectively when compared to 1H18.
"Our priority is to gain financial flexibility and reduce, by June 2020, the net debt to EBITDA ratio to a level of 3.2 times," added Mr Calle.
Tagged Under: Colombia USA business results 1H19 Cementos Argos


Always dig seeing this pop back up ... thanks for the kind words folks!
Didn't get it at first, then turned captions on...still laughing!
Just watched this for the first time. It's a pretty accurate description of what happens. I'm still laughing! Well done!


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In evaluating plans, we looked at the four major U.S. carriers — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — and what they offer. We also evaluated five discount carriers: Boost Mobile, Cricket, MetroPCS, Straight Talk and Virgin, and to help you stretch your dollar even further, we looked at plans from several smaller discount carriers. In addition to price, we considered network coverage and performance, including results from our own 4G network testing in half-a-dozen cities. In some cases, total savings on one carrier's plan outweighed the performance edge another carrier might enjoy; other times, network performance was a deciding factor in our choice.
I didn't like the deals Verizon offered for service while visiting Europe, so I put this Mobal sim in a cheap unlocked phone and got exactly what I needed - something to use to call ahead to hotels, send quick texts home, simple stuff. Most calls are a dollar a minute, which might be a problem for a heavy user, but for a tourist like me it doesn't add up to much. And it's so easy. They just bill your credit card for a call. Good sound quality, too. All for the price of a movie ticket. I recommend highly.
T-Mobile has changed the name of its MetroPCS to Metro by T-Mobile, to eliminate the idea that you're making a trade-off when you opt for a prepaid cellphone plan. One of the ways it's fighting that preconception is by doubling the amount of data you get with its $40 a month plan to 10GB. That edges out AT&T's 8GB plan, which costs the same amount after you deduct $10 by enrolling in autopay. Metro's plan also includes taxes and fees in that $40 rate.
There are many phone deals available across both phone brands and carriers, making it easy to upgrade your current device or even to switch carriers if needed. Looking for the best iPhone deals to replace your older Apple model? You've come to the right place. Prefer a Samsung Galaxy phone or maybe a Google Pixel? We often have those and other smartphones on sale too.
Ashley Turner is director of Gadget Valuer – one of America's biggest gadget trade-in comparison sites. Launching in 2009, the founding team wanted to create a completely independent recycling comparison website after running an actual phone recycling site. Such experience in the recycling market means Turner is constantly in touch with the latest trade-in trends and consumer habits.
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Why we love it: If you rely frequently on your phone to provide a WiFi signal to your other devices, Boost Mobile's Unlimited HD plan is worth a close look. In addition to allowing you to skip a credit check and worries about extra taxes and fees (they're baked into Boost's prices), the plan gives you a whopping 20GB of full-strength hotspot data a month. This is a dream if you do frequent tethering.
If you can't wait until your deal is up with your current carrier, the major carriers are all willing to pick up some of the cost to get you to switch. Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all offer up to $650 for each phone you switch over to pay off your phone purchases and early termination fees; AT&T offers a $100 bill credit for switching over plus $200 for trading in an eligible smartphone. Note that this money will come in the form of prepaid gift cards and that every carrier requires you to trade in your existing phone.
Prepay accounts in the United States offer anonymity to criminals wishing to obtain telecommunications services. The phones cannot be easily traced to a specific individual. Without call patterns that can be correlated to placed or received calls, there are very few effective ways for law enforcement to monitor or intercept communications between unregistered phones. This becomes even more difficult if encrypted services are also utilized.
If you need quality voice and text coverage but use little or no data, and you're willing to stick to a small, if growing, subset of Android phones, Republic Wireless is the best bet. At just $15 a month, it's the cheapest way to get unlimited voice and texts, and adding 1 GB of data (with hotspot support) on the Sprint and T-Mobile networks tacks on another $5.
It's important to know that unlimited never means truly unlimited. But it does mean that the amount of data you receive is so high, it's unlikely you'll run out. Most providers cap their "unlimited" data between 22 GB and 80 GB. The allotment is a far cry above standard 3 GB to 10 GB plans. We compared the price for these plans, too, which can run as low as $30 and as high as $75. Cell phone plans also become significantly cheaper per line as you add to the plan. So no shame the to new grad for staying on their parents' family plan — everyone is getting a better deal. Our favorite providers offered a reasonable price for generous data allotments.
If you don't want to go through the hassle of unlocking your phone and installing a local SIM, you can simply buy or rent a cell phone that will work abroad. Cellular Abroad sells and rents unlocked GSM phones and SIM cards that will work in dozens of countries around the world. The company also rents the National Geographic Talk Abroad Travel Phone, whichworks in more than 200 different countries. It's the ideal solution for travelers visiting more than one country during the same trip. Most U.S.–based mobile carriers like AT&T and Verizon also have rental programs. Give them a call to find out what options are available to you.
If Verizon doesn't cover your most frequented locations—or if you simply want a slightly cheaper option to postpaid service but don't want to sacrifice customer support—Consumer Cellular is a great alternative. This reseller of AT&T and T-Mobile consistently tops customer surveys such as Consumer Reports's latest, PCMag's annual survey and J.D. Power's most recent "wireless purchase experience" study. The service is marketed to seniors, but the things that make it good for seniors make it good for most people as well. Most important, it offers US-based phone support that caters to the non-tech-savvy and maintains an in-store presence in major retailers such as Target. We also like that it allows you to specify an AT&T or T-Mobile SIM, whereas many other prepaid carriers, such as TracFone, will determine that for you unless you buy a SIM card in person.
Sprint: Sprint currently has some big discounts on Android and Apple devices, letting you get $450 back when you buy an iPhone X, iPhone 8, or iPhone 8 Plus if you add two new lines or one new line with a one-line upgrade — no trade-ins required. Sprint is also offering the best iPhone XS deal of all the carriers right now, letting you score an iPhone XS totally free or an XS Max for just $75 ($4.17 per month) with the trade-in of an eligible last-gen flagship. Android deals let you score the Samsung Galaxy S9 for $270, the Galaxy S9 Plus for $324, or the Galaxy Note 9 for $360 when you purchase one on an 18-month rent-to-own Sprint Flex lease.
The phone you'll receive will be a local phone, good for making calls in the country in which you are traveling. However, if you are spending more than a week or two in one destination overseas, you may save money by purchasing a local phone and subscribing to a local phone plan, as rates for renting a phone can quickly surpass the cost of a cheap cell phone in a few weeks. Also, domestic calling rates for rental phones may be higher than rates offered by local cell phone service providers.
AT&T's $80 Unlimited & More Premium plan gets you 15 GB hotspot use and HD video for $5 less than Verizon's Beyond Unlimited rate, but its network trails T-Mobile's in OpenSignal's and PCMag's studies. And we don't think anyone should get its $70-per-month, no-hotspot-allowed Unlimited & More option. Like Verizon, it requires automatic payments for you to get its advertised prices but won't let you make those on a credit card, and it disqualifies all of its discounts except its military/veterans deal from that plan.
RootMetrics strives to be as comprehensive as possible in its methodology, which includes testing reliability and speed during file uploads and downloads, while downloading email, and while downloading files similar to typical web pages. Testers also measure how reliably each network places and maintains calls and how reliably and quickly subscribers can send and receive text messages.
To make the decision easier, we've gone through each carriers' plans to figure out which one is the best for your particular needs. Even after introducing a lower-cost, stripped-down plan, T-Mobile's T-Mobile One unlimited data offering is the best family plan; it offers better value than AT&T and Verizon (though bargain hunters may be tempted by Sprint's discounted family plan and AT&T includes a new streaming TV service with its unlimited plans). T-Mobile's $70 plan is also the best unlimited data plan for individuals, though you can now get a bare-bones unlimited data plan from the carrier for $10 less.
Sure, vacation should be the time to power down, disconnect, and focus on the people in front of you. But that doesn't mean giving up the option of getting directions from Google Maps or documenting your exotic meal on Instagram. Using your phone abroad used to be complicated, expensive, or both, but it's getting easier and easier. Here are a few options for bringing your smartphone abroad.
Shopping links are provided by eBay Commerce Network and Amazon, which makes it easy to find the right product from a variety of online retailers. Clicking any of the links will take you to the retailer's website to shop for this product. Please note that Consumer Reports collects fees from both eBay Commerce Network and Amazon for referring users. We use 100% of these fees to fund our testing programs.
With two sets of rate plans, Verizon's higher costs make it less of a budget-friendly option though they do offer "go unlimited" as the lower tier that caps streaming video at 480p and cuts back mobile hotspot speeds. Their "beyond unlimited" plan adds 720p streaming video on phones and 1080p on tablets alongside 15GB of mobile hotspot use every month.
Sarah Schlichter is IndependentTraveler's Senior Editor. She hails from Maryland and now resides in Pennsylvania, where she sings in a local community choir and enjoys experimenting with different international recipes (which has twice resulted in accidental kitchen fires — no humans or animals were harmed). The smell of Sarah's delicious Moroccan couscous ignites a wave of envy in the office when she brings in leftovers for lunch. Sarah, IndependentTraveler's resident travel expert, has visited more than 25 U.S. states plus dozens of countries including Belize, Guatemala, Morocco, Canada, Dominica, the U.K., Norway, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand … just to name a few.
Look for more tie-in deals from the carriers that throw in one video service or another, along the lines of T-Mobile's free Netflix subscription with two-line plans, Sprint's Hulu deal, AT&T's WatchTV bundle, and Verizon's $20 discount on a bundle of unlimited wireless and a triple-play of Fios Internet, phone, and TV service. (These media tie-ins are essentially another way carriers try to keep you around without the handcuffs of two-year contracts. Watch for new-lease or early-upgrade deals, but treat them with a fair amount of skepticism; buying your phone independent of service gives you far more leverage.)
Due to constantly shifting promotions and terms, family-plan pricing is difficult to sort through. Our Verizon single-line pick isn't competitive here because all of the lines on a Verizon subscription share the same data bucket. Verizon's largest capped-data option is 8 GB, so if that won't cover your family's usage, you have to upgrade to more expensive unlimited data plans: $130 for two lines of not-so-versatile Go Unlimited and its limits on mobile-hotspot and streaming-video use ($160 for Beyond Unlimited), or $160 for four lines of Go Unlimited ($200 for four lines of Beyond Unlimited).
Anyone who travels wants to be able to take decent photos on the move and the 16MP rear camera on the OnePlus 3T is a solid performer. It's not the best out there, but if you're taking photos mainly in daylight, you'll have no complaints. The colors are accurate, details sharp and because of the 6GB of RAM, it's easy to take multiple shots with no delays after the button press.
Okay first of all let me get this out of the way. Do not worry about the chinese government spying on you lol Huawei is there to make money by selling phones, period. If you ask me I believe Samsung and apple had something to do with that spying rumor because they want to keep the competition down in America and Chinese phones pose a threat. After all why buy a phone for 1000 dollars when you can get one almost just as good for less than 300. So with that being said, this phone is amazing. Super fast fingerprint scanner, camera quality is amazing, if you handed this phone to someone who didn't know huawei, they would think you paid three times the amount that you actually did. I asked Huawei about a update to Android 8.0 and they said it is confirmed and should be released in April ... full review
Most major U.S. phone companies give you the option of choosing a plan that allows you to make calls, send texts and access data while traveling abroad. These plans may be offered on a daily basis or as a temporary service that you can set up for a single month when you know you'll be leaving the country. Each company offers different plans for various prices that work for a number of phone models and in designated countries. Per-minute calling rates vary for different countries.
To get started, you can use our smartphone finder to search for devices by price, model, manufacturer, features, color, and more. You can then use our plan comparison engine to compare wireless plans by data, minutes, text messages, carrier, and network type. If you'd like to compare prices on other services, navigate to the main menu and choose the service you'd like to start saving money on.
The carrier's new Above Unlimited offers that Canada/Mexico benefit, too, and augments it with another goodie aimed at travelers: you get five daily TravelPasses each month to use in more than 130 countries. That lets you use up to 512MB of LTE data per day. Just be aware that you'll have to do a lot of traveling to justify the higher rate for Above Unlimited, as it costs $95 a month for a single line versus $75 and $85 for Go Unlimited and Beyond Unlimited, respectively.
Verizon's 5GB plan includes carryover data, which is good for 30 days. And you can nix overage charges by turning on Safety Mode, which drops you to 2G speeds when you hit your monthly high-speed limit. You can save $5 per month if you opt for paperless billing and automatic payments, but you can only use a checking account or debit card. This is a single-line plan, so you can't add additional lines to make it a family plan.
It's common for carriers to offer subscriptions to entertainment services as promotions. Sprint goes above and beyond the competition by partnering with four services: You can get free subscriptions to Hulu, TIDAL music, Amazon Prime, and Lookout mobile security. This adds to the value of Sprint's plans, especially for customers already paying for some of these services.
Sprint Unlimited Military Plan: Includes unlimited domestic calling, texting, 500MB LTE MHS, VPN & P2P & data. MHS reduced to 3G speeds after 500MB/mo. Third-party content/downloads are add'l. charge. Plan not avail. for tablets or MBB devices. Select Int'l svcs are included for phone lines. See sprint.com/globalroaming. Subsidized devices incur an add'l. $25/mo. charge.
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Burkina Faso kicks off 'Solar Cluster' plan
The West African nation is launching a capacity-building program to create an 'ecosystem' of PV and energy-efficiency businesses. The Green Climate Fund is providing access to international finance.
July 8, 2020 Brian Publicover
The government hopes to scale up its nascent solar industry.
Image: Helge Fahrnberger/Wikimedia Commons
The national renewables body of Burkina Faso has launched a 'Solar Cluster' initiative to establish a domestic PV industry and promote energy efficiency.
The program introduced by ANEREE – the Agence Nationale des Energies Renouvelables et de l'Efficacite Energetique – is backed by the UN's Green Climate Fund, which will help the renewables body access international finance.
Funds will be provided in part via the West African Development Bank, in the form of loans with favorable conditions for companies in the landlocked nation. The Solar Cluster program will adopt a mixed approach to financing, though, to offer long-term financial backing for PV projects, ANEREE said.
The capacity building program will provide "networking opportunities" for the country's nascent solar industry, said minister of energy Bachir Ismaël Ouedraogo on Friday. The initiative is also intended to provide training opportunities.
Fossil fuel-dependent Burkina Faso wants universal access to electricity by 2025, from a current electrification rate of around 20%, according to the International Finance Corporation private sector arm of the World Bank. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates the country had installed just 62 MW of solar generation capacity by the end of 2018. However, Burkina Faso is poised to benefit from more than XOF1 trillion ($1.72 billion) in West African solar investment by 2025, Ouedraogo said at the Solar Cluster launch.
In March, the Fond des Energies Renouvelables pour la Résilience du Burkina Faso offered technical and financial assistance to companies supplying small PV systems and innovative cooking stoves in the country. The resource, managed by the United Nations Capital Development Fund and financed by the government of Luxembourg, will provide $50,000-200,000 to companies which submit successful applications.
Brian Publicover
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Queensland's Bree Arthur finished 2nd, one shot behind local favourite, Mireia Prat at LET Access Series' Ocho Golf Ladies Open in Panton, Spain.
23-year old local favourite Prat, secured her first win on the LET Access Series on Friday, narrowly clipping Australian Bree Arthur with a birdie on the 18th.
Bree Arthur, who heads off to play in the LET's Turkish Airlines Ladies Open next week had 4 birdies and 2 bogeys in her card for a 2 under (68) in her final round. Arthur started the day 2 shots behind Prat and despite a shaky start with 2 bogeys on the 2nd and 7th, she rallied back to close in on Prat in the back nine.
Another Queenslander, Tamara Johns showed good form with a 2 under (68) in her final round today to move to tied 9th. New Zelander, Emily Perry had a disappointing final round of 8 over (78) and is placed 34th.
LET Access Series Tour is a women's golf tour in Europe whereby the top five players on the 2013 LETAS Order of Merit will earn membership of the Ladies European Tour for the 2014 season, while players in sixth to 20th positions, not otherwise exempt, will progress to the final stage of LET Tour School, thereby skipping the first qualifying event.


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February 1945. Vito Scaletta returns from the war to his home city of Empire Bay. Almost immediately he finds himself drawn into a world of criminals and the mafia, as his best friend uses shady connections to get him released from the service early. As time passes Vito finds himself reaping the rewards from a life of crime...as well as the dangers.
Mafia II is the sequel to the 2002 game Mafia. Mafia is one of my favourite games of all time, with superb writing, tremendous characterisation and some fun shooting mechanics making up for occasionally questionable gameplay (such as that infamously hardcore racing mission). Mafia II is not a direct follow-up, set as it is in a different city with different characters. There are a couple of references to the events of the original Mafia, though these are obtuse enough that only hardcore fans are likely to spot them. Instead, the game's narrative is completely self-contained.
In terms of gameplay, the Mafia series resembles the Grand Theft Auto franchise with driving sections and on-foot combat, with the important difference that the Mafia games are not open-world titles. Instead you proceed directly from one mission directly to the next. This means that the cities do not need to be as exhaustively detailed and brimming with stuff to do as in the GTA titles, since they are merely backdrops to the action (though they are still well-realised). This gives the Mafia games a much greater focus and puts both their stories and characters under much more pressure, as they need to be good for the games to succeed. The GTA games, which a lot of people play purely to cause havoc in the cities without ever looking at the main storylines, don't quite have the same pressure.
This requirement paid off handsomely in the original Mafia. The story of Tommy Angelo's rise from taxi driver to criminal fixer, becoming a made man and gaining a family and respectability before realising how brutal and violent his world had become, was extremely compelling. It featured musings on the corrosive effects of violence on the psyche and on the morality of killing. It was a stronger story than anything to appear in a GTA title (and, interestingly, GTA4 seemed to take more than a few ideas from it).
The personalised number plates are pretty cool.
Unfortunately, it does not pay off in Mafia II. Illusion Softworks - now 2K Czech - were obviously keen not to repeat themselves in this game, so Vito Scaletta's story is rather different to Tommy's. It unfolds over a much shorter span of time (limited to two periods of several months in 1945 and 1951) and is less of the traditional rags-to-riches tale. Vito is a small-time hood who pretty much stays a small-time hood (albeit one who eventually gets a rather nice house) throughout. He doesn't have a relationship or get married, and in fact seems to be rather more sexist than Tommy (the lack of any healthy female relationships in his life and his obsession with collecting Playboy magazines indicates such). He's also a lot dumber, frequently agreeing to shady deals that have, "THIS IS GOING TO GO BADLY WRONG," written all over them.
This in itself is a problem, with Vito's misadventures being less compelling than either Tommy's in the earlier game, or the protagonists of most of the GTA games. A bigger problem is the lack of decent other characters. Aside from Vito's best buddy Joe, none of the other characters in the game gets much of a personality, or motivation. Even keeping track of which criminal is working for which gang is hard work. There is little to no emotional investment in Vito, his story, or in the other characters, which does interfere with caring about the game.
Fortunately, the gameplay is still pretty good. It's similar to Mafia's and the gunplay is even better, helped by that rarest of beasts, a cover system which actually works and adds to the combat experience. There's one oddity in that Mafia limited you to one of each class of weapon whilst Mafia II allows you to carry every weapon at once, making it a rare example of a game that actually gives the player more choice rather than taking it away through limited arsenals. This is a welcome move. Driving is also similar, with the game still being rather less forgiving about things like running red lights, speeding or hit-and-runs than the GTA series. The cops are harder to shake this time around, but you also have more options for losing them, including running into clothes shops to change clothes or offering bribes. The missions are also quite long, with mid-mission checkpoints and a number of plot twists that, whilst usually predictable, keep things ticking over. The graphics are very impressive (especially the lighting; Mafia II may have the best sunrises and sunsets of any game to date, and the way car headlights diffuse in the fog is extremely atmospheric) and the soundtrack is first-rate, with some great (if occasionally anachronistic) tracks from the birth of the rock 'n' roll era.
Ultimately, Mafia II is a far less compelling game than its forebear due to the weaker writing, story and characters. This is annoying as the gameplay is often better, but you have much less reason to care about what's going on. The game is also stingier, with combat sections often being extremely brief and easy. Mafia II has most of the same ingredients as its excellent forebear, but this time around they do not combine into as compelling a game.
Mafia II (***) is available now in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).
Labels: mafia, mafia 2
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This next step is one that you are sure to enjoy! "Give yourself a treat every day and take the time to really enjoy it". You may have had a bad day or don't feel that you deserve it, but do it anyway. You'll find that your mood has started to turn.
• Relax in a hot bath. Add aromatherapy salts or essential oils, light some candles and let yourself soak away the tensions from the day.
• Fill a vase (or two) with flowers. Studies have shown that flowers provide an emotional lift. So grab bouquet on the way home or harvest some flowers from your garden or yard. The color and fragrance will brighten your home and your mood.
• Give yourself a massage. There are many wonderful benefits to this, among them a reduction in stress, a release of endorphins and a boost to your immune system. You can use your hands and practice reflexology or use a mechanical massage unit.
• Cook your favorite dish. Take the time to savor the color and scent of each ingredient. Eat the meal slowly and take the time to really enjoy each bite. Make the event extra special by using your fine china, lighting some candles and sipping a glass of fine wine.
• Visit your local library or bookstore and pick up a book that you've been meaning to read. Take a break from the news and enjoy immersing yourself in a good story or learning about something new.
Taking the time to be good to yourself will help to boost your confidence and promote happiness. Even a few minutes of self pampering can put a fresh spin on your day. Treat yourself well and know that you deserve it.


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8th Annual Team Hope Walk & 5K Fun Run For Huntington's Disease on April 14th
Submitted by jcsmith on Monday, April 2nd, 10:22 am
This year's Team Hope Walk & 5K Fun Run will be held on Saturday, April 14th beginning at 1:00PM at The Jacksonville Landing.
There will be raffles, live entertainment and Kid Zone, hosted by Mike and Tera Barz from Fox 30 Action News. Come join us for a 1-mile walk & 5K fun run down the scenic St. Johns North River Walk .
Council Passes Bill to Monitor Big Spending, Considers Library Cuts
Submitted by Jessika Lewis, Assignment Editor
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- There was a swath of red in council chambers Tuesday night, worn in protest to the proposed deep cuts to library funding.
The city's Finance Committee recommended reducing the library's $39 million dollar by about $3.5 million.
Library staffers, volunteers and patrons said the resulting cuts in services would reduce the quality of life in Jacksonville and remove a vital resource for job seekers.
"Our libraries are the place where anybody who does not have a computer at home, the libraries are the only place where there's free access to computers," said a member of the Friends of Murray Hill Library.
A final vote on the matter is expected later this month.
Affair In The Square
Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday, June 21st, 9:12 am
If you live in San Marco and are looking for seomthing to do that's light on the ppockets and in good taste, come out to the Affair In The Square!!
It's the ULTIMATE Happy Hour that lasts for 3 hours!! Affair in the Square happens every third Thursday of the month during the spring and summer in San Marco's shopping district. The square is located at 1790 San Marco boulevard and runs from 6:00 pm through 9:00 pm.There will be live music performers, vendors, wine tastings, local artists, face painting for the kids and more. The nice weather couldn't be more complimentary to spending an evening out with the family, enjoying the live music entertainment and sampling some great food and wine offerings. Don't miss out, becuase it's sure to be a great expericen for everyone!! See you there!!
High Tides at Huguenot Memorial Park May Impact Weekend Access
Submitted by Rachel Leitao, First Coast News Staff
Friday, June 10th, 2011, 10:40am
Huguenot Memorial Park visitors are advised to call the park office at (905) 251-3335 or visit www.jaxparks.com before visiting the park over the weekend to determine current tidal conditions expected during peak hours.
Old Fire Station No. 5 Added to List of Endangered Historic Sites
Submitted by Cathleen Murphy
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011, 10:17am
The Florida Trust for Historic Preservation announced their 2011 11 Most Endangered Historic Sites list at the Annual Statewide Preservation Conference, in Central Florida, on May 19, 2011. The sites are not ranked in any particular order.
Fire Station # 5, Jacksonville
Fire Station #5 is the oldest and most recognized historic building on Riverside Avenue in downtown Jacksonville's Brooklyn neighborhood. It was designed by Robert Lee Sevil in 1910. The land on which the building stands was sold by the city to Fidelity National Financial, Inc. in 2009. The building is currently vacant, unmaintained, and has been the target of repeated vandalism. Some city officials are in support of the preservation of the building but are concerned over costs for relocation and rehabilitation. The site is added to the 2011 list due to the potential for demolition caused by redevelopment pressure.
Are You Being Targeted? Where you are Most Likely to get Ticketed
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011, 8:01am
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- "I just came outside, and I saw a parking ticket," said Keenan Williams, a Jacksonville resident.
Hundreds of parking citations are written daily in Jacksonville by 10 full-time parking enforcement specialists patrolling the city.
"There's no one area that is worse than others. There are some that are more frequent, but none that are worse," said Robert Carle, city parking enforcement director, whose crew is tasked with ticketing downtown, Riverside, and San Marco metered parking equally. "They're looking to turn over parking, and achieve compliance."
But numbers from 2010 show that's not really true. There are areas where vehicles are ticketed more frequently than others - and none of them are downtown. The top four most ticketed spots in Jacksonville are all hospitals.
Spotlight on Students and Their Interest on Homeless Pets
Submitted by cparker on Tuesday, May 10th, 8:18 am
Students at Fletcher Middle Participate in the Opening of the Beaches Parade
Four students from Fletcher Middle School participated in the Opening of the Beaches Parade with Friends of Jacksonville Animals (FOJA). The girls were asked to participate by the FOJA beach committee.
In addition to walking the dogs and hyping the crowd during the parade, the girls designed posters, flyers and decorations for the float. The theme was "Rock Star" and they gave the dogs names such as "Mick Wagger" and "Elvis Pawsley." The girls continued volunteering at FOJA's adoption event after the parade. Four of the dogs found potential homes thanks to students' efforts.
This project began in December during a service-learning lesson in the classroom. During a unit on research and communication, the students studied and discussed pet overpopulation.
Kristy Lee
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St. Vincent's Celebrates Topping Out of new Clay County Hospital (8 photos)
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Regular Exercise Such as Walking will keep You and Your Pet Out of the Pound! (2 photos)
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Razorbacks reportedly land transfer from linebacker Jake Yurachek, son of Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek
Arkansas appears poised to land some depth at linebacker this spring and the incoming player comes with a familiar name.
The program's depth at the position was tested this spring as Chad Morris and John Chavis continue to restock the roster with players that fit what they want on the defensive side of the ball but now are poised to add to the linebacker room heading into the summer as Clay Henry of Hawgs Illustrated is reporting that Colorado walk-on linebacker Jake Yurachek is transferring to Fayetteville. Yurachek is the son of Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek.
Jake Yurachek was a freshman last season at Colorado and managed to see the field for the Buffaloes, despite being a first-year walk-on player. Considering he did not appear in five games, Yurachek will be able to count last season as a redshirt season and will have four years to play in Fayetteville. Due to recent NCAA rule changes, because Yurachek is a walk-on, he will be immediately eligible to play next season for the Razorbacks if he works his way up the Arkansas depth chart.
Yurachek was rated as a two-star recruit coming out of Friendswood High School in Texas and had scholarship offers to Air Force, Army, Navy and Abilene Christian before deciding to walk-on at Colorado. He signed to play for Mike MacIntyre, who was dismissed in Boulder and now serves as the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss.
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David B. Riley's Rants & Raves: Am I crazy?
I probably am crazy, but, I'm specifically referring to my penchant for novellas. I published The Venerable Travels of Ling Fung in a double book that also had a novella from Laura Givens. The book had an overriding title of Legends of the Dragon Cowboys. That story was set in the same world much of my other weird westerns are in, 1880s California. Ling Fung manages to get rid of perennial villain Ah Puch, something Miles O'Malley never was able to do.
Which brings us to my about to debut Fallen Angel, another novella. Again set in 1880s California featuring the recurring angel Mabel. This is her story, although Miles O'Malley and his horse, Paul, do participate. Before we get to the 1880s, the story actually starts out during the Civil War where Mabel is working as a photographer. It wasn't all that unusual for women to take up photography. There was plenty of imagery as men blew each other's brains out in record numbers. Women weren't as likely to be viewed as spies as a male photographer and were by and large left alone to ply their craft.
My point is, even though novellas have fallen from favor, and few are published, they actually can offer a lot of story for their more diminutive size compared to a novel. As an author, I find this size allows more depth than a short story but doesn't bog down with extemporaneous detail the way novels often can. So, if you see an interesting novella, give it a try whether it's mine or someone else's. Some very good novellas are White Fang by Jack London and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. You might have heard of these.
Oh, I have another novella. It's not a weird western, but a horror tale. And it's actually being considered by a major New York publisher. Stay tuned.


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Egyptian Court Orders Release Of Former President Hosni Mubarak : The Two-Way Former President Hosni Mubarak could be freed from custody as soon as Thursday. The court ordered him to be freed as he appeals his conviction — and life sentence — for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the 2011 demonstrations that led to the toppling of his government.
Release Mubarak, Egyptian Court Orders
August 21, 20139:48 AM ET
Mark Memmott
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sits in the dock during a June 8 court hearing in Cairo. Amr Abdallah Dalsh /Reuters/Landov hide caption
Amr Abdallah Dalsh /Reuters/Landov
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sits in the dock during a June 8 court hearing in Cairo.
An Egyptian court has ordered that former President Hosni Mubarak be released from custody while he awaits a retrial on charges related to the killing of protesters during the 2011 protests that led to the toppling of his government, NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Cairo.
Peter adds that even though that case and others related to corruption charges are still active, Mubarak's release would "likely spark anxiety that the military-backed government now in charge is returning Egypt to the authoritarian state it was in before the Arab Spring."
Prosecutors, Peter also reports, have said they won't appeal the court's order. According to Reuters, the judge said prosecutors couldn't challenge the ruling even if they wished: "The decision to release Mubarak issued today ... is final and the prosecution cannot appeal against it," Judge Ahmed el-Bahrawi said.
The BBC adds that reports from Cairo suggest Mubarak may be released as soon as Thursday.
Mubarak, 85, was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison for not stopping the killing of protesters in 2011. But the court has now said he should not be kept in custody while appealing that verdict.


Planning a wedding and choosing the ideal wedding flowers can be a stressful endeavor. Among dress, choosing the music, and dealing with who to ask where to seat them, it can be overwhelming to even think about picking the flowers. Good news is, this procedure doesn't should be stressful. With a few simple tips, you'll be convenient to limit the options and book a florist in no time.
to embellish up a space though, a wedding space can be border on blah. It's quite normal for couples to possess a panic or anxiety attack over the way they will incorporate flowers without going broke.


Protecting IP in the Global Supply Chain: Do you know how?
CREATe Vice President of Advocacy and Stakeholder Engagement, Leslie Benton, will be speaking about "Global Supply Chain & Safeguarding Intellectual Property" at the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute training for Foreign Service Officers who have intellectual property (IP) as part of their portfolios. She will be joined by Department of State IP enforcement officials, IP attorneys, other government IP specialists, and private IP professionals to discuss the importance of protecting IP not only in individual firms, but throughout the global supply chain.
CREATe Leading Practices for IP protection takes the approach of assessing, evaluating, and improving the IP protection systems you have in place. Our offering provides practical, cost-effective online programs and training to help you bolster your IP safeguards.


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Related Post "30 Luxury Printable Map Of New orleans"


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text:
How will flying change in 2022
by John Walton | CNN
As with almost any other year, a look into the future for aviation will almost certainly focus on exciting things like new airplanes, airlines, and airports.
But it would be impossible to discuss any developments in the industry for 2022 without making reference to the Covid-19 variants, restrictions and challenges for airlines.
Here we break down some of the most notable changes to come for airlines, travelers, airports and the rest of aviation over the next 12 months, as well as the many problems the ongoing global pandemic is causing…
more covid challenges
How COVID-19 progresses, especially any new form of the virus, is the major question for aviation.
At the time of writing, the Omicron variant is still being investigated to determine how it compares to earlier variants such as the Delta and Alpha.
But its emergence has already had a huge impact on travel, with flying restrictions, not to mention the number of passengers testing positive on arrival, passengers absconding from quarantine, and so on. Flight cancellations due to a shortage of pilots have also been an issue during the busy holiday period.
A major challenge facing both airlines and passengers in 2022 is to manage vaccination certification.
RELATED: World's safest airline for 2022 revealed
This is especially true when it comes to defining what "vaccination" means, especially around a booster or third dose.
For example, will travelers receiving single-dose vaccines continue to be counted as full immunizations in the coming months? And what about people who have had a two-dose vaccine, but have not been administered with a booster jab?
Will the rules be different for tourists who have recovered from the coronavirus and received a standard vaccination, as is customary in countries such as Germany, or for children in countries where some young people are given just one dose of the mRNA vaccine? Is? And how will Omicron affect vaccination status?
There is some push for a digital QR-based standard (possibly the EU's Digital COVID Certificate), but it requires a lot of work and negotiation.
new airline launch
Starting a new airline during a pandemic is a wild card to say the least, but Norse Atlantic Airways is rising to the challenge by launching long-haul low-cost flights between Europe and North America.
Of course, its founder probably wouldn't say "Oh, like Norwegians used to?"
But since they are the same team that the Norwegians run and are planning to use the same Boeing 787 Dreamliner that the airline used, it's not far off.
In the US, another low-cost venture, Northern Pacific Airways aims to make Anchorage's Ted Stevens Airport a hub in 2022 connecting the United States and Asia through its fleet of Boeing 757-200 narrow body passenger jets. to begin with.
In India, ultra-low-cost startup Akasa Air is looking to join the fray by the summer, while the defunct Jet Airways is ready for new life in early 2022.
And the new airlines to be launched in 2021 will be in expansion mode during the coming months.
After starting flights to destinations in the US West and Northwest from its base in Burbank, California in April 2021, Avello Airlines has been expanding, most recently in New Haven, Connecticut, to six Florida destinations in the winter. with flights.
Breeze Airways, meanwhile, continues to grow its network in the East, Midwest, and South of the United States, with an extensive point-to-point network spanning from San Antonio and Oklahoma City to Providence, and from Tampa to Akron across the country. is a wide area. / Canton and Tulsa.
Breeze is due to put into service its all-new Airbus A220 airplanes, some of the most comfortable, quiet and spacious jets in the sky, during the second quarter of 2022.
Keep track of new services from familiar airlines.
For example, United Airlines is boosting its transatlantic network in the summer of 2022, adding new flights to Bergen in Norway, the Spanish Mediterranean island of Mallorca and the Canary Islands of Tenerife, Ponta Delgada in the Azores and Amman in Jordan.
The airline is also expanding its London services – with additional flights to and from Boston, Newark, Denver and San Francisco – as well as adding additional services to and from its hubs for Munich, Milan, Berlin, Dublin and Rome.
If international travel remains complicated this year, airlines will want to keep their planes flying.
This means they are likely to put them on routes they think will make the most money – in this case, domestic routes (such as the US, India or China, or within Europe's Schengen area).
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It's worth looking for rental deals, but make sure they're refundable.
modified airport
After a flurry of international airport openings in recent years, 2022 is set to be relatively calm on this front.
However, some of the much-anticipated new terminals will be launched in New York.
First up: Terminal C of LaGuardia Airport, home of Delta Air Lines, which is due to open in the spring. This new terminal will surely be a major improvement for the passenger experience.
The new Terminal A (formerly called Terminal One, a bit confusingly) will launch later in the year, across the Hudson River from Manhattan in Newark.
On the other side of the Pacific, Bangkok's main Suvarnabhumi airport is set to open its new satellite Terminal 1 in October, following several scheduling delays linked to the tourism slowdown during the pandemic.
Additionally, Chennai International Airport is set to open its new terminal, which will replace the now-defunct Terminals 2 and 3, this year, while a three-level terminal expansion at Australia's Gold Coast Airport is also to be completed.
To the south in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives' Velana International Airport is adding a new seaplane terminal and a new runway to accommodate larger aircraft.
And it's not just the big airports that are opening brand new terminals.
The new facilities are set to open in Pune, Andaman/Port Blair and Leh in India, Provo in the US state of Utah, Colombia in Missouri and Tacloban in the Philippines.
delivery of aircraft
The aviation industry oscillates between two modes: "sell new airplanes" and "build those airplanes." Now we're on the latter, with more latest planes coming out of factories.
These include the Airbus A320neo family, the A350 and A330neo, and the Boeing 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliners.
Airbus is moving ahead with deliveries (460 as of the end of October, the last set of data released by the company) despite the pandemic, and the airliner maker aims to build out even more of its popular A320neo family – especially for the long haul. Up to the time the A321neos can carry a maximum of 244 passengers in an all-economy layout.
Boeing, of course, has had a large Max backlog following its safety grounding, while deliveries of the Dreamliner have been halted for more than a year due to production quality problems.
But they will eventually resume, and airlines are likely to put the plane into service directly.
Such is the case with Singapore Airlines, which is putting its stocked and refurbished 737 MAX 8 planes straight into the skies with a new cabin.
The same is happening with all-737 airline flydubai, which is a partner airline of Emirates.
Don't expect to see Boeing's massively spread 777X in 2022, though. While it was scheduled for next year at one point, the first deliveries are no longer expected until 2023 or 2024.
But travelers are likely to see more aircraft like the Airbus A321LR (for long range) in 2022. An increasing amount of these aircraft are being produced, which means more flights directly to a central destination rather than connecting via a hub.
In 2023, keep an eye out for the A321XLR—you guessed it, extra long range.
Updated seats and cabin
While this particular "build" mode is less fun for fans of the aircraft at airshows, it is good news for passengers.
New aircraft with updated seats, new entertainment systems, in-seat power and faster Wi-Fi are currently in full "build" mode and are increasingly arriving at airlines.
For business class flying in particular, this would mean more mini suites with privacy doors and all the bells and whistles they could wish for.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of aircraft are being fitted with the premium economy section. Emirates is the latest airline to add middle-cabin, announcing an upcoming 18-month program to install premium economy seats on 105 Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 airplanes.
The economy cabins will also get some tech upgrades in the form of fast-charging USB-C sockets, inflight entertainment system that integrates with the phone app, allowing passengers to use Bluetooth headphones.
Other notable updates include space-saving seats that move those knee-crunching support structures out of the way of the legs so that passengers feel like they have a little more space on board, even when the seats are evenly spaced.
Oddly, with significantly older airplanes being retired during the pandemic, passengers are actually more likely to fly in 2022 on a newer plane with better entertainment and more modern opposition.
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text:
Daniel Zimny-Schmitt
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
15013 Denver West Parkway
Golden, CO 80401-3393
Urban Electrification: Knowledge Pathway Toward an Integrated Research and Development Agenda
Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation Research Paper No. 10
Number of pages: 20 Posted: 22 Aug 2019 Last Revised: 10 Jun 2020
Patricia Romero Lankao, Alana Wilson, Joshua Sperling, Clark Miller, Daniel Zimny-Schmitt, Luis Bettencourt, Eric Wood, Stanley Young, Matteo Muratori, Doug Arent, Mark O'Malley, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Marilyn A. Brown, Frank Southworth, Morgan Bazilian, Chris Gearhart, Anni Beukes and Daniel Zünd
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), University of Colorado Boulder, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Arizona State University (ASU), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), University of Chicago - Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Science Policy Research Unit, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Colorado School of Mines, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), University of Chicago - Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and University of Chicago


This is a personal account of the history of The Art Tour.
There have been many artists taking part over the years, each with their own stories to tell. We've watched emerging artists take their first forays into the art world and move on to greater success around the world. Fast friendships have formed and endured. The spirit of cooperation has proven the power of teamwork to accomplish more than any one person could alone.
In 1996, after having been accepted by the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition jury for 8 consecutive years, my application was rejected for the first time. My sense of frustration was tangible, realizing the value of being in that show and the lack of other viable such events for artists in Toronto. Conversations with highly talented artists who had also been rejected by TOAE led me and others to feel a need for something new and different.
The beginning of what would be the Art Tour came from my participation in The Self Expression and Leadership Program at Landmark Education. As part of that program I had to create a project that would bring together different types of 'communities' to create new possibilities.
I chose my local community of artists, and my home community of West Toronto, to create a networking evening for all those involved in the arts. The event took place at BillyBob's Bistro & Saloon on Bloor Street, on June 12, 1997. Representatives from VAO and CARFAC did information presentations and more than 50 local artists showed up and got acquainted and talked about all manner of things. There was a sign-up sheet for anyone who might want to take part in a studio tour in the BWV area.
For me, the idea of creating events like this out of nothing was quite a radical departure. It was the inspiration and encouragement that I got from the programs at Landmark that moved me to take such a bold step.
The idea to do a studio tour emerged from some conversations that I was having with fellow artist Sonia Day about creating a new event to showcase local artists in the Bloor West / Swansea / High Park communities. We thought of a number of options, including an outdoor show in one of the parkettes behind Bloor St, but this idea was not endorsed by the local business association, so we settled on the idea of a studio tour patterned after the successful Beach Studio Tour.
Sonia and I and fellow artist Shirley Hartt visited the Beach Studio Tour in May 1997 to study what they did and try to emulate it. We then formed our own studio tour and named it The Bloor West Village Art Tour, as it was thought the Bloor Street commercial strip would make a fitting focal point for the event.
Our mission was to create a quality artistic event to give local artists an opportunity to showcase and sell their work. It would also raise the profile of the arts in our community and put our community 'on the map' as a place to go to see fine art. We realized there would be a lot of work to set it up, and so not wanting to throw it together in a hurry, we gave ourselves until the following spring to begin out studio tour.
The first Bloor West Village Art Tour took place at the beginning of June 1998. We had 24 artists in 12 locations in BWV and Swansea. There was no jury. Each artist paid $20, and then when we ran out of money, we had to collect another $20 from each of the artists in order to defray our costs.
Despite a dodgy weekend weather-wise, the first Bloor West Village Art Tour was a success. However, the effort involved in producing the Art Tour took a toll on the organizers, particularly Sonia Day, who was the most experienced in this sort of thing and took on the lion's share of the work. Sonia told us in the first post-tour meeting that she would not be participating in future (although she did return to the Tour in later years), and gave us her account of what we should do in future if indeed we dared to do another Art Tour.
Well we did. Using Sonia's detailed notes, we created the second Bloor West Village Art Tour in 1999. This time we charged the artists more money up front, and introduced (on Sonia's advice) a jurying process for new applicants - of which there were quite a few.
The Art Tour wanted to ensure a consistent standard of quality for its artists, but wanted to avoid the uncertainty experienced by applicants to the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition who must be juried each year, and have no way to know if they will be accepted.
So The Art Tour introduced a jury, made of current members of the Tour, to evaluate new applicants each year. The criteria then, as now, is merit-based, with no quotas on style or medium, or where the artist lives. The only stipulation is that the artists need to have a place in The Art Tour's geographical area in which to show their work. This is either arranged by the artist, or by the Tour organizers. To date, no artist has been forced to withdraw from the Tour because they couldn't find a place to show.
Once accepted by the jury, new members become permanent, and do not have to be juried in future years, even if they miss a year or more and come back. This way, our members can confidently plan to be in the Tour each year if they wish.
After the 2001 Art Tour, I was approached by George A. Anthony, who suggested the Art Tour join forces with a group of artists based in the Junction area. This led to three Junction-area artists joining the Tour in 2002, with locations in the Junction participating in the Tour for the first time.
The Junction, a hotbed for artists, has been a part of the Tour ever since, so much so that it influenced the changing of the name of the Tour in 2014 to be more inclusive of the areas where artists on the Tour are located.
From 1998 to 2002, The Art Tour had always produced a black and white brochure due to the high cost of colour printing. In 2003, with the advent of new digital printing technologies, and a frenetic sponsorship campaign that nearly led to several nervous breakdowns, the Art Tour released its first full-colour brochure in booklet form.
In 2005, the Tour experimented with a change of dates from the usual first weekend of June to a mid-May weekend. The idea was to capture the 'cottage crowd' before they vanished from town for the summer. Turnout, as it turns out, was comparable with other years, and the Tour was again successful, with a minimum of confusion about the change of dates. On the down side, the weather was awful, and having been the coldest spring in decades, there was very little growing yet; so people were not keen on wandering around the neighbourhood. It was so bad that the famous Cherry Blossoms in High Park didn't bother coming out at all that year.
Interestingly, it would turn out to be the second hottest summer on record for Toronto.
In 2005 Kanchan Maharaj, a photographer with a technical bent, joined the Tour and helped set up our first web-site, using the url www.arttour.info.
In October 2005, The artists of the Art Tour organized a fall group show, in partnership with The Grenadier Retirement Residence. A total of 15 artists took part on a dark cold rainy weekend. The show was curated by noted art professional Flavio Belli, and drew over 500 visitors in two days. All the artists sold at least one work.
The event was met with a mixture of intrigue and bemusement by the residents. The success of the group show was largely due to the tireless efforts and enthusiasm of Paul Thompson.
In 2008, Susan Manchester joined the Tour for the first time, showing at her house on Windermere. From day-one Susan has been an enthusiastic member of the Tour. Susan's husband, Mike Glicksohn got so into the spirit of the Tour, that he personally hand-delivered several thousand brochures door-to-door throughout the neighbourhood.
The Tour acknowledged Mike's tireless efforts with a gift certificate for a new pair of shoes!
In 2012, David Tomlin created the first Facebook account for the Tour. In 2014, Vera Lityinsky extended our Facebook presence and has used it extensively to promote the artists.
It now has hundreds of followers.
New member Tosh Jeffrey also created an account for the 2014 Tour on Instagram.
After the 2013 Art Tour, it became a serious topic of conversation that the name 'The Bloor West Village Art Tour' no longer reflected the diverse geographical nature of our event.
A number of alternatives were considered, some of which included 'Junction' in the name to recognize the increased presence or the Tour in that area. In an effort to avoid a split in the membership, a compromise was arrived at.
So for 2014 the Tour was renamed simply The Art Tour. Fortunately, we already had arttour.info as our internet domain so we were instantly recognizable on the web.
By this time, the Art Tour was more popular and successful than ever. An influx of new members and new ideas led to talk of expanding our efforts beyond the single studio tour to encompass additional group show events and even the concept of an Artist Collective.
While some discussions were had on the idea of a Collective, concrete steps in this direction were still a few years away. But that didn't stop us from branching out in new directions. In October 2014, led by Sandra Franke, we held our first ever group show '30@3030' at the 3030 Bar on Dundas St in the Junction. The opening evening featured a live performance by the band Patty-Cake.
In 2015, we repeated this program with the studio tour and a group show again at 3030, this time featuring a performance by the band Ginger Grey. Unfortunately, a few days after the opening, a late night fire hit 3030 causing extensive damage and forcing them to close for several months. Due to quick action by the bar owners and the local fire department, the damage was less than it might have been, and the art was rescued from the blaze and the water that quenched it, with relatively little damage.
In February 2016, the Art Tour stepped across Yonge Street for its first ever event outside of our neighbourhood, with a group show at Todmorden Mills. The gallery space was excellent and turnout at the opening was good despite a bitter cold weekend. Several large works sold as well. The 2016 Art Tour was the largest ever with 40 artists exhibiting at a record 34 sites around the neighbourhood. We followed up with an October group show at the newly restored 3030, again featuring a performance by Ginger Grey.
After the 2016 Art Tour, there was a great deal of discussion about how to celebrate our 20th year in 2017. Many ideas were raised for group shows, outdoor shows and even a proposal to replace the studio tour with an outdoor format in a single location to coincide with the Junction Solstice Festival.
There was a strong outpouring of support among the artists to continue the popular studio tour format, but many were excited at the prospect of doing an outdoor tent show as part of the Junction Solstice Festival. So we decided to do both. Thanks to the planning efforts of Sandra Franke and others, the Solstice proposal became a real tangible thing with the Junction BIA, the local BMO Branch and Aboveground Art Supplies coming on board in a big way.
By late 2016 the concept of a Collective was becoming a reality, not just talk. A core group of leaders began to meet regularly to plan the transition from a single annual event to an ongoing arts organization presenting numerous events throughout the year and boasting a membership of over 50 artists and growing.
We enter 2017 with a new name, a new logo and a new website www.arttourcollective.com . Member artists may choose to participate in one or many events in 2017, including the first ever Solstice Art Market on June 24, a group show in February 2017 at Gallery 1313 in Parkdale, or a group show at Art Square Gallery across from the AGO, September 12-25, 2017, as well as the familiar Studio Tour on June 2-4, which for 2017 will feature 38 artists at 30 sites.
There are many issues for us to grapple with as we go forward, such as incorporation, contracts, insurance, membership and how we accept new members and exhibitors to our various events.