text:
March 15, 2011 11:45PM EDT
Uzbekistan: Government Shuts Down Human Rights Watch Office
EU, US Should Impose Policy Consequences for the Crackdown on Civil Society
A man mourning at the funeral for his brother, who was killed during the Andijan events.
© 2005 Yola Monakhov
June 10, 2011 Update:
On June 9, 2011, the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan granted the Ministry of Justice's petition to liquidate Human Rights Watch's Tashkent office registration. The hearing was brought forward from a later date without notice and the court deliberated for only a few minutes before granting the petition. There is no appeal. The legal ruling follows years of Uzbek government obstruction of Human Rights Watch's access to the country, including through denial of visas and accreditation to Human Rights Watch staff, most recently researcher Steve Swerdlow in December 2010. This obstruction amounted to the effective expulsion of Human Rights Watch from Uzbekistan, which we announced in March.
The Uzbek government continues its interference with independent civil society and its harassment of activists. Uzbekistan's international partners should make clear such interference and harassment are unacceptable, and impose concrete policy consequences for the government's continued failure to uphold the rights to association, assembly, and expression, and for its atrocious human rights record in general.
(London) - The Uzbek government has forced Human Rights Watch to close its Uzbekistan office, Human Rights Watch said today. For years the government has obstructed the organization's work by denying visas and work accreditation to staff, and has now moved to liquidate its office registration, forcing Human Rights Watch to end its presence in Tashkent after 15 years.
"With the expulsion of Human Rights Watch, the Uzbek government sends a clear message that it isn't willing to tolerate critical scrutiny of its human rights record," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "But let me be clear, too: we aren't going to be silenced by this. We are as committed as ever to report on abuses in Uzbekistan."
On March 10, 2011, Human Rights Watch received information from the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan that the Justice Ministry had moved to liquidate the organization's office in Tashkent, with a first hearing apparently set for March 15. Human Rights Watch has been registered in Uzbekistan since 1996. Uzbek authorities have provided no information about the alleged grounds for the liquidation proceeding.
The Uzbek government had previously denied work accreditation to Human Rights Watch's Uzbekistan researcher, Steve Swerdlow, a decision conveyed in a letter handed to him by the Justice Ministry on Christmas Eve 2010. The letter states that the Ministry denied accreditation to Swerdlow because of Human Rights Watch's "established practice" of "ignoring Uzbekistan's national legislation" and because Swerdlow "lacks experience cooperating with Uzbekistan" and "working in the region as a whole." The letter does not specify what laws Human Rights Watch allegedly violated.
"Uzbek government claims that we ignore Uzbek legislation and 'lack experience in the region' have been used repeatedly to deny accreditation to our staff," Roth said. "These claims are implausible and a transparently deceitful pretext to prevent us from maintaining a presence in the country."
Since 2004, the Uzbek government has interfered with the work of Human Rights Watch by denying or severely delaying visas and/or accreditation to every Human Rights Watch representative in Tashkent, and even threatened criminal charges against one staff member. The government has made it impossible for the organization to maintain a regular presence in the country since July 2008, when authorities denied accreditation to its former representative and then barred him from the country on the grounds that he "did not understand Uzbek culture or traditions." Swerdlow was allowed access to the country for only two months in 2010 before being denied work accreditation.
In the last two-and- a-half years, Uzbek authorities have further obstructed Human Rights Watch's attempts to work in Uzbekistan. In July 2009, they deported a Human Rights Watch research consultant upon her arrival in Tashkent. In December 2009, a Human Rights Watch researcher was the subject of a violent attack in the town of Karshi, which appeared to have been orchestrated by the authorities. Following the attack, police detained her and then expelled her from the city. Police in Karshi and Margilan also detained human rights defenders to prevent them from meeting with her.
Human Rights Watch's expulsion comes during a deepening human rights crisis in Uzbekistan. Well over a dozen human rights and political activists and independent journalists are in prison, torture and ill-treatment in the criminal justice system are systematic, and serious violations go unpunished. Over the last seven years, the Uzbek government has expelled nearly every international nongovernmental organization from the country. It also has consistently denied access to independent human rights monitors, such as United Nations special rapporteurs, no fewer than eight of whom have longstanding requests for invitation pending.
"The Uzbek government's persistent refusal to allow independent rights groups to carry out our work exacerbates the already dire human rights situation in the country, allowing severe abuses to go unreported, and further isolating the country's courageous and beleaguered human rights community," Roth said.
Human Rights Watch's expulsion from Tashkent also comes at a time of renewed engagement between Uzbekistan and the European Union. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso recently hosted the Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, a move that was widely criticized by human rights activists and the media. While the EU has repeatedly stated that enhanced relations are contingent on progress on human rights, it has not followed through with any known policy consequences in response to Uzbekistan's consistent failure to make concrete, demonstrable progress with respect to the EU's human rights criteria.
The United States, too, has in recent years pursued an active policy of re-engagement with Tashkent. It maintains a congressionally mandated visa ban against Uzbek officials linked to serious human rights abuses, but its relationship with Uzbekistan is dominated by the Defense Department, which uses routes through Uzbekistan as part of the Northern Distribution Network to supply forces in Afghanistan. With the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's strong remarks during her December visit to Tashkent underscoring Uzbekistan's need to "translate words into practice" to improve its human rights record, the United States has made few public statements on rampant human rights violations in Uzbekistan.
Human Rights Watch called on the United States, and the EU and its member states to publicly condemn the Uzbek government's expulsion of Human Rights Watch and overall to pursue a more robust human rights policy with Tashkent.
"Uzbekistan has now unambiguously joined a short list of repressive governments that prevent Human Rights Watch from carrying out our work on the ground," Roth said. "Tashkent has apparently calculated that brutalizing the population and stonewalling international reporting are cost-free. The EU and the US need to prove this cynical calculus wrong and make sure human rights abuses will be noticed and carry clear consequences."
Human Rights Watch urged the Uzbek government to end the crackdown on civil society immediately and allow independent domestic and international human rights groups to operate without government interference. It should register groups that remain unregistered, have been liquidated or otherwise forced to stop working in Uzbekistan, and issue visas and accreditation for staff of international nongovernmental organizations.
Human Rights Watch remains committed to investigating human rights abuses in Uzbekistan and communicating its concerns to the Uzbek government.
The Human Rights Situation in Uzbekistan
The Uzbek government's human rights record is abysmal. Torture and ill-treatment are systematic throughout the criminal justice system. At least 13 human rights activists are in prison on fabricated charges, many of them in poor health. Other activists face threats, harassment, and live in fear of prosecution. The government severely restricts freedom of expression, and independent journalists are subject to crippling criminal defamation cases, which carry the prospect of jail time and huge fines. Many independent lawyers, especially those who took on politically sensitive cases, have been punitively disbarred. Independent Muslims and members of Christian communities are targets of repeated government repression.
Despite a speech by Karimov to both houses of Parliament at the end of 2010, citing the need to strengthen civil society and the media environment, in practice Uzbekistan's citizens are denied even the most basic civil and political rights, such as the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
Uzbek authorities have also ignored all calls for an independent investigation into the 2005 Andijan massacre, when authorities shot and killed hundreds of protesters, most of them unarmed. The government continues to persecute and harass witnesses to the massacre and families of Andijan refugees.
Torture and Ill-Treatment
Torture in Uzbekistan is widespread and systematic in all stages of the criminal justice system, and impunity for torture is the norm. Police and security agents use torture and ill-treatment to coerce detainees to implicate themselves or others, and confessions obtained under torture are often the sole basis for convictions. Judges routinely fail to investigate torture allegations that defendants make when they appear before the court. Methods commonly used include beatings with truncheons, electric shock, hanging by wrists and ankles, rape and sexual humiliation, asphyxiation with plastic bags and gas masks, and threats of physical harm to relatives.
One prominent defense lawyer in Tashkent who has represented hundreds of criminal defendants told Human Rights Watch in October 2010:
"Based on the clients I visit in pre-trial detention facilities, I believe torture and ill-treatment have increased over the past several years. The fact is, there is simply no one left to witness what is happening and communicate it to the world."
The desperation about torture among the clients I see now is near complete. I often meet clients who have clearly been ill-treated, with suspicious marks on their bodies in police custody. But when I see them in the interrogation room, they are so afraid of retribution and further torture by officers, and so convinced that the courts will not step in to end the practice, they ask me not even to raise the issue. They know that a lawyer may complain about torture to the court. But in the end it is he as a suspect who has to remain in the jail alone with the police officers, not the lawyer or the judge.
UN human rights bodies have found that torture is "systematic" and "routine" in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek government has failed to meaningfully carry out recommendations to combat torture made by these bodies, including most comprehensively by the UN special rapporteur on torture following his 2002 visit to the country. The Uzbek government routinely likes to tout measures such as recent habeas corpus amendments as evidence of progress on the issue of torture, but such measures have failed to protect detainees from torture or to end impunity for the practice.
In a key example, Human Rights Watch research revealed that the habeas corpus (judicial review of detention), amendments, introduced in January 2008, do not protect the rights of defendants or prevent torture and ill-treatment in pre-trial detention. Uzbek courts order the detention of suspects based on instructions from prosecutors and investigators and approve requests for arrest warrants in virtually every case. The operative legal standard does not allow courts to question the legality of a person's detention. Courts do not use habeas corpus hearings to examine allegations of torture or ill-treatment in custody; nor does a pre-trial detainee have the right to request periodically that a court review his or her detention within a reasonable time. Pre-trial detainees are routinely denied access to counsel at critical stages of the investigation, including interrogation and the habeas corpus hearing itself, which is a closed proceeding. One lawyer told Human Rights Watch:
"I have never seen a single judge who did not approve a request for an individual's detention in the two years since the habeas reforms were adopted. The habeas corpus reforms stipulate that a criminal suspect must be presented to the court to approve his or her detention within 72 hours.... The problem, however, is that in so many cases people are first detained on administrative charges under which they can be held for 15 days, and during those 15 days the authorities can ill-treat and torture them very easily. Once the authorities have extracted the necessary confessions, they can then bring criminal charges, which trigger the habeas corpus hearing."
In January 2009, just one year after habeas reform was introduced, the power to license attorneys was transferred from independent bar associations to the Justice Ministry. The move seriously compromised the independence of the criminal defense bar and resulted in the disbarment of numerous independent attorneys, several of whom represented human rights defenders who are currently imprisoned. Ruhiddin Komilov, a well known lawyer who was disbarred in 2009, told Human Rights Watch:
"In the past, I used to take on politically sensitive cases, such as human rights activists and those accused by the government of being extremists. I did this to fulfill my duty as a lawyer to provide a defense to any person who truly needed it. If someone comes to you and asks for your legal help, how can you turn them away? But the government does not want there to be lawyers who will stand up and speak out about the violation of human rights of their clients; they only want to see lawyers who will close their eyes to systematic violations of their clients' due process rights."
Torture of "Gulom G."
Nodira N. [not her real name], the mother of a teenage boy who was tortured in pre-trial detention in November 2010, told Human Rights Watch that police had tortured her son to coerce him to sign a confession:
"On November 25, 2010 I saw my son at the police station. I was bringing him food and clothing and was allowed to have 10 minutes with him at about 6 or 7 p.m. I saw a long bruise across his neck left by the gas mask. He told me that several officers had forced him to confess to having committed theft. They put cellophane over his head and then put a gas mask on him. He couldn't breathe and eventually signed the confession. "They beat me and accused me of theft and I had to confess to it," he told me."
Torture of "Bakhtiyor B."
Human Rights Watch interviewed Ziyoda Z. [not her real name], who recently visited her husband Bakhtiyor B., who is serving a 17-year prison sentence for alleged membership in "an illegal religious or extremist organization" and for "attempting to overthrow the constitutional order," among other charges. Ziyoda Z. described her June 2010 visit to her husband:
"When I went to visit him, I started to cry as they brought him out. He was emaciated and I could see that fingernails were missing from two of his fingers and two of his feet. I asked him why his nails were gone. There were guards monitoring our prison visit so at first he just stayed silent. But he looked at me making clear that they had been purposely ripped out. I noticed there were bruises all over his legs, knees, and shoulders. He couldn't sit straight - as if his shoulder had been dislocated.
He found a way to tell me later that sometimes other prisoners are assigned to work with him at the brick factory by prison authorities. These are common criminals, not religious prisoners. He says ...that when he becomes too tired ...he is beaten with shovels [by other prisoners at the instigation of the authorities], then revived with water after he passes out, and beaten again. He told me, "'I will probably not live through this.'"
Torture of "Utkur U."
Human Rights Watch interviewed Rayhon R. [not her real name], wife of Utkur U., currently serving a 16-year prison sentence on similar charges. Utkur U. earlier reported to his wife that prison guards would sometimes hit or kick him in his kidneys or other parts of the body. More recently, however, he told her that the abuse comes at the hands of fellow prisoners, orchestrated by prison authorities. After seeing her husband in July 2010, Rayhon R. told Human Rights Watch:
"Utkur is the only prisoner among his group convicted of "anti-constitutional activity," and [he] is constantly harassed by the eight other prisoners in his cell. He told me how other prisoners made him get into the "thirteenth position." The prisoners were given handcuffs, probably by the guards, and handcuffed him in the shape of a cross on the bars of the prison cell. Using the handcuffs he was forced to stand up in the form of a cross for days. He was not let down even to go to the bathroom and was repeatedly beaten by other prisoners. He told me, "'In order to get myself out of the thirteenth position, I started banging my head against the metal bars until I began to bleed. The other prisoners put a hat on my head to prevent me from doing this. It was only when I agreed not to read namaz [ritual chanting of Islamic prayers] that they set me free.'"
Crackdown on Civil Society and Human Rights Defenders
The Uzbek government has long obstructed the work of domestic and international organizations in the country, refusing to register local independent groups and subjecting activists to harassment and persecution. There is only one active registered independent domestic human rights organization, and those operating without registration are even more vulnerable to government harassment.
Beginning in 2004, the government expelled or forced the closure of numerous international organizations and media outlets, including the Open Society Institute, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Internews, Freedom House, Counterpart International, the American Bar Association, and many others. None of the organizations that were forced to end their operations have resumed their activities in Uzbekistan.
In the wake of the May 2005 Andijan massacre, Uzbek authorities unleashed a fierce crackdown on domestic civil society groups, imprisoning dozens of human rights defenders, independent journalists, and political activists for speaking out about the Andijan events and calling for accountability for the killings.
Local civil society activism remains severely restricted, and authorities regularly detain and threaten to prosecute human rights defenders, independent journalists, and other activists for their peaceful activism. The authorities do not tolerate dissent of any kind, and frequently place activists under surveillance and subject them to arbitrary detention and de facto house arrest. The authorities also have denied some human rights activists exit visas to prevent them from traveling abroad. Some defenders have felt compelled to stop their work or flee the country, fearing persecution.
The 13 human rights activists known to be in prison for no reason other than legitimate human rights work are: Solijon Abdurakhmanov, Azam Formonov, Nosim Isakov, Gaibullo Jalilov, Alisher Karamatov, Jamshid Karimov, Norboi Kholjigitov, Rasul Khudainasarov, Ganihon Mamatkhanov, Habibulla Okpulatov, Yuldash Rasulov, Dilmurod Saidov, and Akzam Turgunov. Other political and civic activists, including the dissident poet Yusuf Jumaev, are likewise serving sentences on politically motivated charges.
Human Rights Watch has received reports from relatives of many imprisoned human rights defenders that they are in poor health, including suffering severe weight loss and losing their teeth due to poor nourishment. Human Rights Watch has credible information that at least seven rights defenders have been ill-treated or subjected to torture in custody.
Authorities routinely target rights defenders already serving long prison sentences with additional punitive measures, such as accusing them of violating prison regulations to make them ineligible for the government's annual amnesty. At least two of them have been forced to serve additional prison time. In September 2009 Habibullo Okpulatov, who was serving a four-year sentence (reduced from six years under amnesty) and was due to be released from prison, was sentenced to an additional three years and eight days for alleged violations of prison regulations. Gaibullo Jalilov, who is serving a nine-year sentence, was re-sentenced to 11 years, one month, and five days, on new criminal charges in a flawed proceeding in August 2010, eight months after his initial conviction on bogus charges.
In a recent example of a rights activist convicted on politically motivated criminal charges, the Hamzin District Criminal Court on January 24 convicted Tatyana Dovlatova on fabricated criminal charges of hooliganism (article 277, part 2 of the Uzbek Criminal Code). Authorities did not inform Dovlatova when her final hearing was taking place, denying her the right to make a closing statement in her own defense and convicting her in absentia. She was immediately given an amnesty but her criminal conviction stands.
There are also recent examples of Uzbek authorities' intolerance of public dissent. On November 27, two weeks after President Karimov gave a speech referring to the existence of a competitive, multi-party system in Uzbekistan, a group of activists formed a new social-democratic political party called The People's Interests. Several days after the group's members met to discuss their policies, police summoned them, questioned them for several hours, and fingerprinted them.
On the morning of December 6, three activists, Abdullo Tojiboi-Ugli, Dmitrii Tikhonov, and Viktoriya Bozhenova, gathered at Mustaqillik (Independence) Square in Tashkent to express human rights concerns. A fourth activist, Vladimir Husainov was present to monitor the protest. Tikhonov described to Human Rights Watch how he and the others were forced to end their protest and that, though they left peacefully, they were arbitrarily detained:
"We went out with our demands. We were able to stand there about 10 minutes, that's it, 10, maybe 15 minutes. [Then] they told us to leave, so we rolled up our posters and left. They detained us after that. The people [who detained us] were in civilian clothes and none showed us their documents... They put us in a car and took us to the Yunusabad district police station."
The four were held there until 5:30 or 6 p.m. and then transferred to the Yususabad District Court, where they were tried under article 201-1 of the Uzbek administrative code ("violation of the order of holding meetings, rallies, marches or demonstrations"). The court found the activists had violated article 201-1 and fined them between 60 and 70 times the monthly minimum wage (a total fine of approximately US$1,780-$2,080) each. Tikhonov told Human Rights Watch that their right to a fair hearing was violated. He said: "They didn't allow us lawyers, or allow us to review the case materials, or provide us with an interpreter [from Uzbek to Russian]."
Restrictions on Freedom of Expression
Uzbek authorities restrict both freedom of information and the freedom of expression. Websites containing information on sensitive issues or that are critical of the government are routinely blocked within Uzbekistan. The few independent journalists who continue to work in the country do so at great risk and are forced to self-censor due to harassment and threats of imprisonment. Human Rights Watch's expulsion from Uzbekistan should be seen as one of the government's latest attempts to silence critical and independent voices.
Over the last six months, Uzbek authorities persisted in using spurious criminal defamation charges to silence perceived government critics. On October 15, the Voice of America correspondent, Abdumalik Boboev, was convicted of defamation, insult, and preparation or dissemination of materials that threaten public security, and fined approximately US$11,000. In the same month, another journalist, Vladimir Berezovskii, was convicted of similar charges for articles published on the Vesti.uz website.
Boboev told Human Rights Watch: "My only aspiration is to work freely as a journalist, to accurately portray the realities of our society, and not face persecution as a result. At the very least, I'd like to have confidence in the fact that one won't be killed or punished simply for telling the truth."
Persecution of "Independent" Muslims
The Uzbek authorities' unrelenting, multi-year campaign of arbitrary detention, arrest, torture and incarceration in grossly inhumane conditions, against Muslims who practice their faith outside state controls or belong to unregistered religious organizations, continues unabated. Since the late 1990s, Human Rights Watch has documented the incarceration of thousands of independent Muslims for nonviolent offenses and the peaceful expression of their religious beliefs.
In November and December 2010, Human Rights Watch interviewed lawyers who represented people in Uzbekistan who had been detained and arrested on charges based on articles 159 ("attempt to overthrow the constitutional order") and 244 ("membership in an illegal religious or extremist organization") of the Uzbek Criminal Code, which are among the charges routinely used to sentence independent Muslims. In 2010 alone, at least 200 people were arrested or convicted on such charges.
One attorney who represented five defendants convicted in March 2010 on such charges told Human Rights Watch:
"A large group of men was detained for allegedly forming an unsanctioned religious organization. One was accused of being a "terrorist" for allegedly attending a Ramadan dinner. Directly following their arrest, I was contacted by some of their families and hired to represent some of the men. The authorities would not give me access to my clients until three days after their arrest! The first day I went to the police department to see my clients I waited for five hours and presented my order [attorney-client retainer agreement] but the guards still would not let me in. I simply kept coming back and refused to leave the building until they let me in and I finally got inside after three days - after the habeas corpus hearing approving their detention for a five-month period had occurred.
I undressed one of my clients and realized he had been beaten in places where wounds were less likely to show up. He was shaking and told me that officers had hit him with rubber sticks (dubinki) on the top of his head and hit his legs with plastic water bottles. I later heard that all the men in the group had been treated this way."
Police also routinely fail to notify families of religious detainees of their relatives' whereabouts. Refusing to acknowledge the detention of an individual or reveal the whereabouts of a person who has been deprived of liberty constitutes an enforced disappearance under international law, a serious human rights violation subject to criminal prosecution.
Umida U. [not her real name] told Human Rights Watch that she spent five days searching for her sons after they were detained in Karshi in October 2010:
"I looked for them myself.... First I visited the hospital and also the morgue .... We looked everywhere. Then we went to the police... "They're not here. Your sons aren't here," they said. I went to the SNB [National Security Service]. They said my sons weren't there. Then after five days, was there [at the SNB] crying and started to argue with them, and then they told me that my sons were at the city police station."
In a disturbing trend prisoners charged with "religious extremism" also seem to be targeted by prison authorities, who try to keep them incarcerated beyond their original sentences. The authorities frequently initiate new criminal proceedings for alleged violations of prison regulations, such as failure to shave their beards or disobeying orders of prison staff. Prisoners subjected to such proceedings are not afforded adequate due process rights and can easily end up with their prison sentences extended by three years or more.
Lack of Accountability for the Andijan Massacre
Since May 13, 2005, when government forces killed hundreds of mostly peaceful protestors who had gathered in Bobur square in Andijan to voice discontent about growing poverty and government repression, Human Rights Watch has persistently called for accountability and justice for the victims. To date, however, no one has been held accountable for the victims' deaths, nor have the circumstances surrounding the massacre been clarified.
For close to six years, the Uzbek government has adamantly rejected numerous and repeated calls for an independent international inquiry into the Andijan events.
Furthermore, the authorities persist in persecuting anyone they suspect of having witnessed the atrocities. Local authorities intimidate and harass families of Andijan survivors who have sought refuge abroad. Police subject them to constant surveillance, call them for questioning, and have threatened them with criminal charges or home confiscation. School officials also publicly humiliate refugees' children.
Local authorities pressure those who fled the massacre and ensuing crackdown to return to Uzbekistan, giving relatives assurances that no harm will come to them. Yet, when Diloram Abdukodirova, a refugee who decided to return to Uzbekistan, did so in January 2010, she was promptly detained. On April 30, Abdukodirova was sentenced to 10 years and two months in prison for illegal border crossing and anti-constitutional activity. Abdukodirova appeared at one court hearing with bruises on her face, indicating possible ill-treatment in custody.
Europe/Central Asia
European Union Foreign Policy
UZB - office closure presser FULL.pdf
February 12, 2011 Commentary
What will the Uzbeks say about us in their Tahrir Square?
January 26, 2011 Commentary
Destructive Engagement
Crimean Tatars Face Unfounded Terrorism Charges
Raids, Arbitrary Arrests, Torture of Activists


text:
Rewards for Fugitives
Hostilities Must Cease In Sudan
Tasmin, a mother of six, stands with her children outside her house in Yida camp, South Sudan, Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012. Yida refugee camp is home to thousands of people who have fled recent fighting in Sudan's Southern Kordofan state and around the border
Not only has implementation of the memoranda of understanding on access not been implemented, but fighting has flared.
Two months have passed since Sudanese rebels and the government in Khartoum agreed to allow humanitarian groups full access to areas in combat-torn South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, raising hopes that a political settlement to the fighting might follow.
Those hopes have been dashed, however, since not only has implementation of the memoranda of understanding on access not been implemented, but fighting has flared in areas until recently untouched by the hostilities.
Reports out of South Kordofan in recent days say at least two people were killed and perhaps as many as 22 wounded in an exchange of artillery fire when rebels shelled an army garrison outside the town of Kadugli, South Kordofan state's administrative center. Though military facilities were the rebel's target, some shells landed in the town center causing the casualties. An earlier attack hit a United Nations compound.
The fighting near Kadugli comes amid a continued campaign of aerial bombings by the Sudanese Armed Forces that has caused hundreds of thousands of people to abandon their homes and flee, resulting in at least 200,000 refugees in neighboring countries. The humanitarian situation through the state remains dire. Innocent civilians – women, children and families- remain caught in the cross-fire.
Fighting between Sudanese forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement–North erupted in South Kordofan and nearby Blue Nile last summer. U.N officials say that as many as 900,000 people have been displaced or severely impacted.
The United States is deeply concerned by the increase in fighting in the Two Areas, including the Kadugli shelling and continued reports of aerial bombardments by Sudanese Armed Forces. We condemn all attacks on civilian areas, whether by rebel groups or by government troops.
As civilian casualties continue to mount, the continued violence underscores the urgent need to cease all hostilities. We again call on both sides to return to direct talks to settle their differences. There is no military solution to the problems in the border region. We also call on both sides to enable the immediate and safe delivery of humanitarian aid to all conflict-affected people.
Sudan, South Sudan Make Progress - But More Needed
The 21st Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Reflecting the Views of the U.S. Government as Broadcast on The Voice of America
A New President, A New Era
ບົດບັນນາທິການ: ພວກຕັດສິນ ລົງໂທດ ຄະນະບໍລິຫານ 6 ຄົນ ຂອງບໍລິສັດຊິດໂກ ຕ້ອງເປັນຜູ້ຮັບຜິດຊອບ
Troubling Report on Forced Labor in Fishing
U.S. and Pakistan Innovative Health Initiatives
Vietnam Stifling Free Expression
Iran Threatens to Expel IAEA Inspectors
Sudan No Longer State Sponsor of Terrorism
U.S. and Pakistan's Innovative Health Initiatives

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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What rules determine the apostrophe placement in "ham 'n eggs" and similar expressions?
In expressions such as "ham 'n eggs", the conjunction 'n appears to replace and, yet there is only one apostrophe to indicate the missing a and none for the missing d (i.e., no "ham 'n' eggs").
Is there a punctuation rule that governs this or is it just an idiosyncratic case?
punctuation conjunctions apostrophe
KennyPeanutsKennyPeanuts
The primary purpose of the apostrophe is to indicate that something is missing from the 'word' (in "won't", for example, "uld" and "o" from "would not"). So it's effectively "standard practice" to only have a single apostrophe in "ham 'n eggs". – FumbleFingers Jan 24 '12 at 21:08
@Fumble: I was under the impression that won't is a contraction of will not. Wouldn't is the contraction for would not. – Robusto Jan 24 '12 at 21:18
@Robusto: Ooops! Wrong example! I was going to use "ain't", but deconstructing it got too awkward. I thought the general principle was we only use one apostrophe though, however much is discarded, but maybe that's wrong too - people mostly write 'tisn't, I think. – FumbleFingers Jan 24 '12 at 21:21
@Fumble: It happens. :) – Robusto Jan 24 '12 at 21:28
@Robusto: Well, Daniel seems to have shown that this particular one is atypical anyway - plus I've just remembered that in the UK it's always Toys 'R' Us when they're not using the reversed letter "R". – FumbleFingers Jan 24 '12 at 22:17
From a cursory glance, it appears to be a rule up to free variation. Consider:
From a naive search with the Google N-Gram viewer, it appears that n' has a slight edge.
But if you zoom in to look at variations of and eggs, as well as ham and eggs, the picture gets murkier. Keep in mind that, since this is very informal usage, that it probably wasn't used frequently in the print media that the Google Ngram viewer searches through.
Examples from popular culture:
"Hot n Cold"
Variations of Ham and Eggs, culled from search engines:
Ham N' Egg restaurant
Ham N' Eggs restaurant
Jackie's Ham 'n Eggs restaurant
"Ham 'n' Eggs" rap song
Ham 'n Eggs and Ham 'n Eggers referenced by the San Diego Herald, referring to the California pension initiative in 1938-1939
Conclusion: People tend to do one of 4 things to denote an unemphasized and:
'n'
n'
n or N
As there is no broad consensus, and because people don't think about edge cases like these, I believe you could justifiably use any of them.
Blue MagisterBlue Magister
I notice that GN'R is the standout, but then, rock bands are not known for their close attention to orthography: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut – choster Jan 24 '12 at 22:10
Hmm, I don't recall ever seeing n' as an abbreviation for "and". I just did a Yahoo search and the only example I could turn up was the band. I wonder if Google Ngram may be giving misleading results, like counting "n"'s that occur at the end of a quote or something. (Not sure what the rules are for Google Ngram.) – Jay Jan 24 '12 at 22:25
@Jay: I agree, the Ngrams can be tricky. I'll add some more data. – Blue Magister Jan 24 '12 at 22:42
Guns N' Roses -> Guns Neuroses (or perhaps more accurately, Axl's Neuroses). – Paul Richter Jan 25 '12 at 0:43
If there'd've been a rule against multiple apostrophe I'd've known about it. Or somebody'd've.
MetaEd♦MetaEd
Ham 'n eggs does not appear to be the more common usage, so I think it unlikely that there is a grammatical reason for it.
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text:
PlayStation/YouTube
Why Is it So Appealing to Play as a Terrorist in Video Games?
By Phil Hartup
The scene in the trailer for the upcoming game Homefront: The Revolution paints a somewhat familiar scenario in modern warfare: the attack by armed civilians on a military checkpoint. From Ulster to Afghanistan this is a situation that soldiers have faced countless times. When it happens we very often call the perpetrators terrorists, and such attacks are considered cowardly and criminal. So why would somebody want to play a character who carries out such attacks in a game?
It is tempting to say that video game fans simply love explosions and violence in games just for the sake of it, but in practice this is seldom enough. You can't just give a player a character and expect them to enjoy using that character to slaughter non-player characters. To get a player into a position where they are not only comfortable with violence but actually enjoying it takes some doing.
The first thing to do is dehumanize the victims so that nobody feels bad about their being destroyed, and there are plenty of ways to do that. We can see the most overt in the Homefront trailer above: you hide their faces. The aesthetic of Homefront is very similar with regards to the soldiers as seen in Half Life 2 and also Wolfenstein: The New Order. Make the enemy look like machines, computerize up their voices a little bit, and suddenly stabbing them, blowing them up, or feeding them to giant alien insects is no problem. Other elements can make enemies appear less human too, such as their behavior. Enemies that don't express fear or pain or other emotions likely to create sympathy are more comfortable victims. Lastly the art style can make a big difference. Hotline Miami, for example, was a game that featured some incredibly violent scenes, but the art style gave proceedings a marked sense of unreality.
The next thing is to make sure that the people who are going to be killed are of a suitably expendable nationality or ideology. Nazis are a good shout, as evidenced by Wolfenstein or The Saboteur, but Russians will do in a pinch, especially in a Cold War setting. Another of the current favorites is North Koreans, appearing as villains in both Homefront games and also Crysis. Very few games will actually risk putting the player into a situation of killing NATO soldiers as part of a single-player campaign (one notable exception being Spec Ops: The Line).
Spec Ops: The Line demonstrated the difference that the nationality of fictional victims of violence can make, because shooting at American soldiers in the game, hearing their voices as they get gunned down or blown up, was unsettling. It was unsettling because it is just not the done thing to shoot American soldiers. It's jarring. Spec Ops: The Line was invoking Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. It aims to unsettle players, and it works. For games that don't want you to worry, for games that don't want you to be uncomfortable, the victims can just be from some other country.
While most games will typically say that one set of characters are perfectly fair game based on their nationality or being a bit robotic, or just being Nazis, another justification that is often used is geographic. In The Saboteur you are killing German soldiers in France, in Homefront you are killing North Koreans in the USA. Players are invited to accept that the presence of a foreign soldier as an occupying element in another country legitimizes his being targeted. In this instance the act of killing soldiers in cold blood becomes instead an act of liberation.
In some ways it could be argued that the way games try to legitimize acts of great violence by players are similar to the propaganda sometimes used to motivate soldiers in wartime. Paint the enemy as less than human and stress how different they are to us and our allies. Make them the other. Rationalize any violence by saying that it is their choice to be where they are and by not going home they are really bringing this upon themselves. This kind of thinking is not limited to any one culture or even one period in history, and even in a digital world, tribalism can be used as a shield against sympathy.
All this work to make acts of violence more palatable isn't necessarily going to make them fun of course—empathy is powerful, and even collections of pixels on a computer screen can provoke it. You don't want empathy towards the people you're blowing up in a video game. So instead to really glory in their annihilation we need more than just being told that they are bad pixels who have it coming. We need to be told that it is fine to enjoy the moment when "it" happens. This is where tone comes into play.
Getting the tone of the game right is vital when you're encouraging players to commit acts of wanton destruction. Game series like Just Cause or Mercenaries essentially cast you as a terrorist. You are dropped into countries, often fictional, though not always, and you are tasked with blowing up infrastructure, killing soldiers, assassinating people, stealing things and toppling the regime. But those series managed to make it work because they kept the tone light. Instead of coming at the audience with pomposity and a firm belief in their own ineffable seriousness, they are both very silly. The full titles for the Mercenaries games spell it out: Playground of Destruction andWorld In Flames. In these games you can play acts of violence for laughs and it works. In Just Cause 2 your character has a grappling hook which you can use to attach enemy soldiers to things, all kinds of things. It allows for moments of broad physical comedy in the middle of a ferocious gun battle.
Games with a more serious tone don't often make playing the part of the mass-murdering guerrilla particularly enjoyable. For example, when you make the life of one person mean something in such a game you can break the game's internal logic by killing other people. You start to wonder who else's life might have value in the world. For example, Watch_Dogs has your character wrapped up in a revenge quest over his dead niece, but in pursuing that revenge he causes absolute havoc across the city. Is it terrorism? Of course it is, he's chucking explosives around and shooting people. Chicago is like Baghdad with Wi-Fi when he's around. All that violence makes the initial loss at the start of the story seem insignificant and makes the hero appear self-indulgent and hypocritical.
Ultimately what we can say is that much of the design of games is deliberately manipulative. We are manipulated into thinking that the bad guys are bad, we are manipulated into enjoying fighting against them. We are manipulated into thinking it is perfectly fine to shoot them in the back or blow them up with hidden bombs. Manipulation of this sort isn't inherently wrong; enjoyment of any creative work will usually demand a certain willingness to go along with what the creator is trying to get you to feel. But if it is done too overtly or if it is misjudged then it can be abrasive and objectionable. The best-designed games will control you without your even knowing that it is your buttons being pushed just as much as the game pad's.
This piece first appeared on newstatesman.com.
Video Games, Culture, Violence, Terrorism


God was obviously helping the Pilgrims in many ways, but one of the most surprising forms of assistance was a man - an Indian who spoke perfect English. In the spring of 1621, after barely surviving their first long and severe winter, God sent the weary settlers an Indian named Squanto who could speak their own language. Squanto offered to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in this strange new land. God had perfectly prepared this Indian to be a helper for the settlers.
As a young man, Squanto, a native of that area, had been captured and taken to England. While there as a slave, he had mastered the English language. He had been freed shortly before the Pilgrims' voyage and had returned to America to find virtually all of his tribe wiped out by the plague. Despite his former treatment at the hands of Europeans, Squanto was willing to help the Pilgrims learn to survive in the New World, teaching them where and how to fish and stalk game and which berries were safe to eat. While these skills were important, probably the most important thing Squanto taught the Pilgrims was "how to plant the Indians' winter staple, corn, which Europeans had known nothing about."
treasure they had brought with them from England- the Gospel, Cotton Mather reports that Squanto died within a year or two after first coming to the aid of the Pilgrims, "but before his death, desired them to pray for him, That he might go to the Englishman's God in Heaven."
Now I see that the Englishman's God is a good God; for he hath heard you, and sent you rain, and that without such tempest and thunder as we used to have with our rain which after our Powawing for it, Breaks down the corn; whereas your corn stands whole and good still; surely, your God is a good God.
That miraculous corn harvest provided the basis for the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving, a tradition Americans continue to celebrate. Today, however, our public schools sometimes teach that Thanksgiving signifies the thanks the Pilgrims offered to their Indian neighbors who had helped them; but history demonstrates that, on that first Thanksgiving Day, the thanks of both Pilgrims and Indians went to God for His great goodness toward them.


text:
Хіконе (, хіконе сі) — місто в Японії, у східній частині префектури Сіґа. Засноване 11 лютого 1937 року на основі містечка Хіконе шляхом об'єднання таких населених пунктів:

 містечка Хіконе повіту Інукамі (犬上郡彦根町),
 села Мацубара (松原村),
 села Аоба (青波村),
 села Фукуман (福満村),
 села Тімото (千本村).
 села Кіта-Аоянаґі (北青柳村).

Впродовж наступних років місто розрослось за рахунок поглинання сусідніх сіл.

Район сучасного Хіноне здавна був багатонаселеним. У середньовіччі він неодноразово ставав місцем боїв між різними самурайськими родами. Розквіт району Хіконе припадав на кінець 16 століття, коли керування ним було доручене талановитому адміністраторові Ісіді Міцунарі, васалу об'єднувача Японії Тойотомі Хідейосі. Після битви при Секіґахара 1600 року землі Ісіди були передані родині Іі, яка збудувала замок Хіконе і поклала початок містечку Хіконе. Воно стало політико-економічним і соціо-культурним центром Хіконе-хан.

У місті збереглися середньовічні вулички та квартали. Його символ, замок Хіконе, внесений до національних скарбів Японії.

Міста-побратими
  Такамацу, Японія (1966)
  Міто, Японія (1968)
  Сано, Японія (1969)
  Енн-Арбор, США (1969)
  Сяньтань, КНР (1991)

Примітки

Джерела та література

Посилання

  Офіційна сторінка міста Хіконе

Міста префектури Сіґа

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Linfärjan Carolina Nord, färja 240, är en av Trafikverket Färjerederiets färjor. Carolina Nord byggdes på Hjälmare Kanal & Slussverk AB i Arboga
och levererades 1959 för att sättas in leden Källviken – Lunnevik. Hon byggdes om 2003, varefter hon sattes in på Röduppleden mellan Västra Rödupp och Östra Rödupp över Kalix älv.

Källor
M/S Färja 62/240 på www.faktaomfartyg
''Carolina Nord' på Trafikverkets färjerederis webbplats

Svenska statliga färjor
Fartyg sjösatta 1959
Fartyg byggda i Sverige


The north coast, particularly the region and around Grafton and Coffs Harbour bracing themselves for flooding and strong winds early this weekend with falls of up to 300mm. As the low nears the coastline, strong winds will cause concerns for beach erosion.
The low is expected to progress down the coastline and affect the Hunter, Sydney and Illawarra region. Consequently, a severe weather warning has been issued for the north eastern part of the NSW coastline including heavy rain and strong winds.
Heavy rain here in Schofields in squallls and brief downpours 12:36am and the rain moves in to the Sydney region.
We just had a strong squally downpour here. Should probably change the name of this discussion to include Sydney and the Hunter regions.
Kempsey affected by major flooding including the CBD areas being given evacuation orders. Grafton has been under two major floods in a month!


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text:
Wyclef: Leading The Revolution
Just as his Toussaint
L'ouverture lead the Haitian Revolution, Wyclef Jean has returned to
his Hip-Hop roots with his latest EP From The Hut, From The Projects,
To The Mansion to spark a musical revolution. Despite never really
having left the public eye, the pioneering musician felt it was necessary
to return to rhyming under an alias to reflect his current revolutionary
mindframe. Introducing Toussaint St. Jean, but this does not mark an
exit for Wyclef Jean, but rather a new chapter in his already fascinating
"Revolution is in my bloodline,"
he says, before explaining how Toussaint was one of the key figures
in the Revolution for Haiti. "So with the tone of the message that
I would be giving when I rapped, the name automatically came to me,"
he elaborates. "The EP goes back to the essence. It was important
to go back to the basics and the fundamentals, because sometimes you
get so big that people forget where you come from," he adds. "I
wanted people to understand that I have not forgotten Hip-Hop. I've
not forgotten lyrics; that is very important in what I do."
From The Hut, To The Projects,
To The Mansion not only documents Wyclef's personal success story,
but also reflects his musical journey and progression. The project stands
out for a number of reasons, but perhaps most notably for the intriguing
choice of featured artists, including 80's pop singer Cindi Lauper,
Lil Kim and Eve. Explaining his unconventional choice of vocalist for
Slumdog Millionaire, he jokes "I wanted that Cindi Lauper swag,
so why not just get Cindi Lauper?" He also points out that many
female vocalists today have been heavily influenced by the singer.
Perhaps most striking of all,
however, is Eve's performance on Suicide Love, which is reminiscent
of her earlier, more agressive rhyming style. "Everyone is like
'yo Eve sounds so sharp on that record and she hasn't been out in
a minute, why does she sound so sharp?' But I think, what happened is
you always have to remember that as a producer I'm always going to
try to focus and bring the best out of an artist," Wyclef explains.
"The cool thing with Eve was, when she was doing the vocals she
was with Salaam Remi and Salaam is one of my mentors (he did the Fugees)."
He then adds, "She was able to pull out the passion naturally because
she's still one of the best, period."
Suicide Love provides
a long-awaited answer to Wyclef and Eve's critics, who insist that both
artists may have traded in their grittiness and relevancy for mainstream
success. As he honestly admits in The Streets Pronounce Me Dead,
"Last time, [they] felt me was when I rhymed with Big Pun."
Frankly his concern is greater than just Hip-Hop these days with his
music catering to people from all corners of the globe, although as
he proves with the EP he is still a "warrior," he just chooses
a variety of outlets to vocalize his struggle now.
"At the end of the day,
as long as you have overcame something (and be clear, it's not about
if you're from the ghetto or from the suburbs or from the hut), if
you feel that you have accomplished that thing when people counted you
out and you rose to the occasion, you are a warrior," he stresses.
After all, it is much more lucrative to produce and pen hits for some
of the biggest names in the music world and by doing so, Wyclef has
ensured that his music and messages will reach a more diverse, global
audience. He explains that while his EP represented Hip-Hip, his forthcoming
album "is going to represent the world."
Due in Spring 2010, his eponymous
album Wyclef Jean marks the precursor to a true musical revolution.
He jokes that following his return to Hip-Hop, with the album he "is
bringing that stadium music." Although most artists tend to go
the self-entitled route for debuts, Wyclef felt that despite his extensive
career, the project marks the first true introduction to himself. "This
is the first album in my whole entire career where the first seven songs
are only going to be Wyclef. [It's] an insight into just me, because
it's time for you all to know who I am," he explains.
"The album is Wyclef Jean
the complete artist," he declares proudly. "When you come
to the show, it's the man playing seven instruments; the man sings,
the man rhymes, the man dances and the girls throw their things on stage,"
he jokes. "The guys go crazy, they pick up chairs and want to throw
them in the air and that's all going to be on one album!" He
then explains that the album attempts to recreate the atmosphere at
his concerts. "The first seven records you're going to hear are
very personal, like when you come to my show the first thing I do is
I get my guitar and talk to you for like 30 minutes.We talk. We converse.
Then after that I pick up the microphone and then the party starts."
"When you put on that
Wyclef album, it's going to be a sing-along album from beginning to
end. I'm going to make sure that you sing every song and the album
is all stories. Every song is a story." Hoping his album will inspire
others to tap into their own creativity, he explains, "I'm going
to close [the album] with me going crazy on guitar on a joint called
Guitar Hero. So, all of my little aspiring guitar players, make
sure you get your guitar and learn that song."
Wyclef Jean promises
to transgress musical boundaries like never before. The lead single from
the project will be Hold On, an optimistic collaboration with
Dancehall singer Mavado. "I wanted to set the tone of the album
in a sense of letting people know where my mind set is at," he
clarifies. "With everything going on in the world, it's good
to have like a feel-good record and let people know it's all going
to be ok." He passionately describes the offering as "the
pinnacle of the start," before elaborating, "this album has
to be right because this represents a new millennium and this is the
sound that I want to go with for the future."
Hopefully From The Hut,
To The Projects, To The Mansion and Wyclef Jean will also
succeed in opening doors for his other main passion, Haiti. Since founding
his charity Yéle Haiti in 2005, Wyclef has worked tirelessly to improve
the bleak outlook for his homeland. Sadly many fellow expats do not
share his vision; he explains, "Haitian people in America have
got to get it straight and go back and start helping their country,
because if everyone is starting to go back and help your country, you
can't sit back and let them do the work."
"If Bill Clinton is going
back to your country, everyone is going back to your country; you should
be in your country right now doing some work," he adds in an accusative
tone. "It's like I said on the mixtape, "From the hut, to
the projects, to the mansion." No excuses; let's get it!"
As Wyclef recognizes, it is not going to take a quick fix to mend years
of poverty and corruption in Haiti, but rather long-term initiatives.
His main goal is to raise funds
to build the Yéle Center, which will be a "ten year process."
Wyclef explains that theYéle Center "will be a facility that consists
of a sports center, Wyclef Jean School of the Arts, a cultural center
focusing on the environment and an internet café." "That's
the key; we build sustainable opportunity," he says optimistically."When
people approach Haiti they try to save a nation and in order to save
a nation, you have to start by saving very few. So with Yéle Haiti
it's not about saving the nation, it's about saving a few kids and
these kids will save the nation."
In order to make the Yéle
Center become a reality, Wyclef appeals to all his "warriors that
are online" to join him in a massive social networking project
that will take place in about six months from now. "We're going
to use Twitter, we're going to use Facebook, we're going to put
all of our energies together and everyone's going to donate $1, that's
it," he explains. "$1 can make a difference in a child's
life." Effectively using his internet presence to drive a massive
fundraising effort, he invites "everybody online to get with [him]
on that, to see if we can start raising money to put toward the Yéle
Center."
With Twitter being used by
rappers for a number of interesting and obscure purposes, it is refreshing
to see a Hip-Hop artist putting it to a positive and productive use.
As Wyclef explains proudly, "We're putting out the message of
revolution, not the revolution of the arms but the revolution of the
mind. Bring people together." The veteran entertainer reveals that
he shares a gift with his late father, the ability to captivate his
listeners. "If you're going to listen to me, I can get you to
do almost anything," he says light-heartedly before adding on a
more serious note, "so it's good that you use the influence to
have people do positive things."
Having said that, he is quick
to point out that music in essence is still a form of entertainment
and feels that people should be less judgmental toward the more commercial
artists. "I don't knock any of it," he says. "As much
as we want to think Soulja Boy is stupid because the kids are singing
Get Your Swag On, it's the same way they thought we were stupid
when we were dancing to the Humpty Hump." "Maybe we're
getting old," he jokes. "Y'all go ahead and get old, I'm
staying young. I'm getting my swag on!" After all, "Hip-Hop
is always about revolution and you're going to get change in it."
He explains that the genre is merely "a reflection of the community"
and its various aspects.
As Wyclef acknowledges, in
order to progress and retain relevancy in the industry today you have
to adapt, experiment and reinvent your own style. "I think longevity
has to do with the passion, how passionate are you for what you do,"
he says reflectively. "There are very few people that are passionate
about what they do and you can hear those people because every time
they do a record, they act like it's their first record, every time
they go onstage, they act like it's their first show." He adds,
"you can see that passion through the years." In fact, if
there is one common factor throughout Wyclef"s work it is that
genuine passion for music and From The Hut, To The Projects, To The
Mansion is no exception. With Toussaint St. Jean at the forefront,
a revolution of sorts may well be imminent.
From The Hut, To The
Projects, To The Mansion is available for download now. For more information about Wyclef and his forthcoming projects visit wyclef.com or follow him on Twitter (@wyclef). If you wish to support Yéle Haiti
or get involved, then please visit yele.org.
Just Mercy Is A Classic, Jamie Foxx's Performance Is Oscar-Worthy
RolfweinsteinGreat work. He's a real talented dude.
Rockie Fresh On His "Destination" & Working With Chris Brown
Shirley Ju
Oswin Benjamin: Destiny Is Calling Him As One Of The Greats
EditorChuckCreekmur
Smoke DZA Talks Recording 'Prestige Worldwide' with Curren$y
CalenRaps Is Saving Lives One Song At A Time
Mike Russ Wants To Be The Next Jay Z
Last Reply Jan 9 · by
KINGMufasaman if yall dont get this bullshit up outta here LMFAO
Freeway Rick Ross' Artist Nakuu Knows How To Make It With Persistence & Teamwork
Editorillseed
The Marathon Continued At Bino Rideaux's Show At The OC Observatory
James24About its customer satisfaction and due to this reason the Paul will take simple feedback throughout the and will £1,000…
EXCLUSIVE: Coach K Reflects On QC's Breakout Hits By Migos, Lil Yachty, Lil Baby & City Girls
EditorYohance Kyles (@HUEYmixwitRILE…
Did French Montana Get Caught Faking Streams?
illseed
DeepREALHeck drake does this all the time. 🤑🤔🤣


text:
Pirates Vs. Astros Final Score: Pittsburgh Flexes Its Muscles In 8-1 Win
By Chris Fuhrmeister@ccfuhr Sep 23, 2012, 5:38pm CDT
Share All sharing options for: Pirates Vs. Astros Final Score: Pittsburgh Flexes Its Muscles In 8-1 Win
The Pittsburgh Pirates pounded out 18 hits in an 8-1 win over the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park on Sunday. Conversely, the Astros managed just four hits.
Houston's offense was led by Scott Moore, who went 3 for 4 with a solo home run. Pinch-hitter Brandon Laird was responsible for the Astros' only other hit. Jordan Lyles took the loss and dropped to 4-12 on the season. Lyles allowed three runs on six hits in four innings. He struck out four.
Josh Harrison led the Pirates with a 4 for 6 day. Jose Tabata went 1 for 3 with two RBIs. Pittsburgh's offense was well balanced, as 10 hitters had at least one hit. Six Pirates had at least two hits.
A.J. Burnett improved to 16-8 with the win. Burnett allowed just one run on four hits in eight innings and struck out a season-high 11.
For all your Astros news, visit The Crawfish Boxes and SB Nation Houston. For the Pirates, check out Bucs Dugout and SB Nation Pittsburgh. Visit SB Nation's MLB hub for other scores and news updates.
Astros Vs. Pirates: Houston Wins 4-1
Pirates Vs. Astros: Houston Seeks Rare Sweep Sunday


Fifty ways to make potato salad. Can you believe it? I was amazed when I found a small recipe booklet for potato salads included in a regular sized copy of Food Network Magazine, probably about two years ago. Up until then I knew of perhaps three ways to make it. I always made it same way with a mayonnaise dressing, chopped celery, hard-cooked egg and little onion, but I never really loved potato salad. It was just something we always had in the summer with cook-out meals and I would eat a little, but it wasn't a big deal with me.
Let me tell you, the little booklet changed all that. Out of a list of 50 recipes I've made at least 10; but there is one that stands out with both me and Mr. D. and I find myself going back to it and have even made it to bring to a picnic where everyone loved it. It is made using red skin potatoes and the dressing has the same ingredients that would be used to make Ranch Salad Dressing, so the flavor is familiar. We like this potato salad because it is moist and creamy, and stays that way even if it's left over. With other potato salads I've made the potatoes tend to absorb the dressing and the salad gets really thick. But not this. Perhaps because of the red-skin potatoes which are more waxy and dense. Anyhow, I'm including it here today in case you're ready for a change and are looking for a replacement for the way you always make potato salad.
1. In a large pot of salted water, cook potatoes until fork tender. Drain, cool, and cut into cubes or chunks.
2. In a large mixing bowl, place the potatoes, celery, and scallions.
Mix potatoes together with other ingredients.
3. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise and remaining ingredients. Pour over the potato mixture and toss to coat evenly. Chill at least an hour to allow flavors to meld, and serve cold.
Mix all together and allow to chill for about an hour before eating.
4. Leftovers will remain moist and become even more flavorful.
Perfect with franks and baked beans.


text:
SenSys2022
November 6-9, 2022, Boston, United States
About Calls Organization Program Shadow Keynote Registration & Travel Grants Venue, Travel & Visa Posters & Demos Workshops & Tutorials Journal Presentations PhD Forum N2Women Test of Time Award Awards Sponsors
A wireless sensor network for structural monitoring (2004)
Ning Xu (University of Southern California, USA), Sumit Rangwala (USC, USA), Krishna Chintalapudi (University of Southern California, USA), Deepak Ganesan (UCLA, USA), Alan Broad (Crossbow, USA), Ramesh Govindan (University of Southern California, USA), Deborah Estrin (UCLA, USA)
Motivation: For its impact on early sensor networks and its broader impact in the area of structural health monitoring in the civil engineering domain.
Protothreads: simplifying event-driven programming of memory-constrained embedded systems (2006)
Adam Dunkels, Oliver Schmidt, Thiemo Voigt (Swedish Institute of Computer Science), Muneeb Ali (TU Delft)
Motivation: For providing, through ContikiOS, a long-standing foundation to countless academic and industrial low-power networked embedded systems.
Collection tree protocol (2009)
Omprakash Gnawali (USC), Rodrigo Fonseca (Yahoo/Brown), Kyle Jamieson (University College London), David Moss (Rincon Research), Philip Levis (Stanford)
Motivation: For its impact on low-power networked embedded systems, including enabling real-world deployments, inspiring standards, and serving as the state-of-the-art baseline for many years.
Reliable Clinical Monitoring using Wireless Sensor Networks: Experience in a Step-down Hospital Unit (2010)
Octav Chipara (Washington Univesity in St. Louis), Chenyang Lu (Washington Univesity in St. Louis), Thomas C. Bailey (Washington University School of Medicine), Gruia-Catalin Roman (Washington University in St. Louis)
Motivation: For expanding sensing network systems into the medical setting and showing their challenges and promises in this domain.
Design and Evaluation of a Versatile and Efficient Receiver-Initiated Link Layer for Low-Power Wireless (2010)
Prabal Dutta (University of Michigan), Stephen Dawson-Haggerty (University of California, Berkeley), Yin Chen (Johns Hopkins University), Chieh-Jan (Mike) Liang (Johns Hopkins University), Andreas Terzis (Johns Hopkins University)
Motivation: For pioneering the use of synchronous transmissions in low-power protocols by exploiting their benefits at the MAC layer and pushing the limits of radio operation.
IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor Outdoor Detection (2012)
Pengfei Zhou (Nanyang Technological University), Yuanqing Zheng (Nanyang Technological University), Zhenjiang Li (Nanyang Technological University), Mo Li (Nanyang Technological University), Guobin Shen (Microsoft Research Asia)
Motivation: For contributions to intelligent mobile location services with enduring commercial adoption and successful widespread technology transfer.
Low-Power Wireless Bus (2012)
Federico Ferrari (ETH Zurich), Marco Zimmerling (ETH Zurich), Luca Mottola (Politecnico di Milano and Swedish Institute of Computer Science), Lothar Thiele (ETH Zurich)
Motivation: For rethinking the networking architecture of low-power wireless systems and offering a simpler and more efficient flooding-based alternative to mainstream network stacks.
Call for Nominations: ACM SenSys 2022 - Test of Time Award
Deadline: September 15th, 2022
The ACM SenSys Test of Time Award (ToTA) Committee calls for nominations and self-nominations of the 2022 version of the award. The ToTA was established by the SenSys Steering Committee in 2014 to recognize papers that are at least 10 years old and have had long lasting impact on networked embedded sensing system science and engineering.
Since the ToTA award selection did not take place in the last two years, in 2022, three separate awards will be given for papers that were published in SenSys 2010, 2011, and 2012. Papers published before SenSys 2010 and that have not already received a SenSys ToTA, are also eligible for consideration. The award committee and awardees over the years can be found on the Test of Time Award page: http://sensys.acm.org/tot/.
The award will be determined based on academic, industry, and/or societal impacts of the paper(s), and nominations should highlight them:
Academic Impact, such as papers that discovered or derived significantly new scientific and human knowledge, that opened or closed research problems or areas, that motivated substantial follow on research, that generated growing interest over time, or that influenced the education of young researchers and practitioners.
Industrial Impact, such as papers that changed how practical systems are architected or implemented, influenced industrial standards, transferred to novel engineering practice, or contributed to the success and adoption of real products.
Societal Impact, such as papers that described novel applications or prototypes that delivered significant social value, changed how people interact with each other or with their surroundings, or contributed to the sustainability of humans and environments.
Please send nominations via the form at https://forms.gle/5hwoo3UFmePwQgY38 by including: (1) paper title, (2) author list, (3) year published, and (4) a short paragraph justifying the nomination.
The nomination deadline is September 15th, 2022. The three Test of Time Awards will be announced at SenSys 2022 in Boston, USA.
Test of Time Award (ToTA) Committee:
Gian Pietro Picco, University of Trento, Italy (Chair)
Tarek Abdelzaher, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA
Pei Zhang, University of Michigan, USA
© SenSys 2022: The 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems


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Q: Designing a N-tier Java EE web application having views, webservice and scheduler with spring I have a start up web application using Spring and Hibernate which currently has 3 layers. View, Service and DAO. It also the domain objects are segregated separately.

To this I want to add webservice and scheduler . Now which layers  should I add these classes? Or shall I create new packages for these? What are the best practices on n-tier web applications?
Please share your thoughts and experiences.

A: To web and scheduler packages?
There's no "right" answer to this question, and without any idea regarding your package layout beyond what's shown, it's difficult to be more specific.
As long as it makes sense in context, and it's consistent, it really doesn't matter a whole lot anyway. And you may find that your existing structure changes after you identify and refactor functionality across the original and new functionality.

A: A few thoughts:

*

*A package is not a tier.  A tier (or layer) is a logical abstraction for a collection of related functionality, a package is a physical grouping tool for compilation units.  It may be the case that all the classes used to implement a logical tier reside in the same source package, but there is no requirement that this is the case.

*It seems like webservice would fit nicely in the service package, or maybe a subpackge within service called web.

*For the scheduler, it may also belong somewhere in the service package (particularly if other components are meant to interface with the scheduler via a service API).  If not, then the next most appropriate thing would be to give it its own package called scheduler.
As for best practices, just do what 1) works and 2) makes sense.  "n-tier web applications" is a topic so broad that there aren't really any specific answers that apply in all possible cases.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
from mat_unittest_resources import PluginContextTestCase, CmdlinePluginContextTestCase, \
     CmdlinePluginContextTestCaseWithTeardown
import MAT, os, shutil

class TokenizerTestCase(PluginContextTestCase):

    def runTest(self):

        # Let's make sure the tokenizer works.
        # Invent a doc path.
        docPath = os.path.join(self.testContext["TMPDIR"], "tokenizer_test.txt")
        s = u'I like peas.'
        # Now, try to tokenize it. The setup is a bit
        # elaborate.

        impl = self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", ["tokenize", "zone"])

        import MAT.ToolChain, MAT.Document

        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(impl, "Demo")
        r = e.RunDataPairs([(docPath, MAT.DocumentIO.getDocumentIO("raw").readFromUnicodeString(s, taskSeed = impl))], ["zone", "tokenize"])
        if len(r) != 1:
            self.fail("Expected a single file pair back from tokenizer")
        if len(r[0]) != 2:
            self.fail("Bad file pair back from tokenizer")
        d = r[0][1]
        if not isinstance(d, MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc):
            self.fail("Tokenizer result is not a document object")
        toks = d.atypeDict[d.anameDict['lex']]
        if len(toks) != 4:
            self.fail("Wrong number of tokens")
        toks = [d.signal[t.start:t.end] for t in toks]
        if toks != ["I", "like", "peas", "."]:
            self.fail("Wrong tokenization")

        # And let's make sure that if you try to run the tokenizer AGAIN
        # and the tokenization step isn't recorded, it still does the
        # right thing.

        d.metadata["phasesDone"] = []

        r = e.RunDataPairs([(docPath, d)], ["zone", "tokenize"])

        if len(r) != 1:
            self.fail("Expected a single file pair back from tokenizer")
        if len(r[0]) != 2:
            self.fail("Bad file pair back from tokenizer")
        d = r[0][1]
        if not isinstance(d, MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc):
            self.fail("Tokenizer result is not a document object")
        toks = d.atypeDict[d.anameDict['lex']]
        if len(toks) != 4:
            self.fail("Wrong number of tokens")
        toks = [d.signal[t.start:t.end] for t in toks]
        if toks != ["I", "like", "peas", "."]:
            self.fail("Wrong tokenization")

# And also, I need to check to see whether the right things happen when
# tokenization from the old OCaml tokenizer to the new Java tokenizer
# does the right thing when the previous token overlapped with multiple
# annotations.

SIGNAL = """{"signal":"I went to Schleswig-Holstein with my mother.\u000a","metadata":{"phasesDone":["zone","tokenize","tag"]},"asets":[{"type":"lex","attrs":[],"annots":[[0,1],[2,6],[7,9],[10,19],[19,20],[20,28],[29,33],[34,36],[37,43],[43,44]]},{"type":"zone","attrs":["region_type"],"annots":[[0,45,"body"]]},{"type":"LOCATION","attrs":[],"annots":[[7,19]]},{"type":"ORGANIZATION","attrs":[],"annots":[[20,33]]}]}"""

class RetokenizationTestCase(CmdlinePluginContextTestCaseWithTeardown):

    def runTest(self):
        p = os.path.join(self.testContext["TMPDIR"], "retok_test")
        os.makedirs(p)
        fp = open(os.path.join(p, "retok_test.json"), "w")
        fp.write(SIGNAL)
        fp.close()
        self.runCmdblock(cmd = ["%(MAT_PKG_HOME)s/bin/MATRetokenize",
                                "files",
                                "--task",
                                'Named Entity',
                                "--input_files",
                                "%(TMPDIR)s/retok_test/retok_test.json",
                                "--output_dir",
                                "%(TMPDIR)s/retok_test/out"])
        doc = MAT.DocumentIO.getDocumentIO("mat-json").readFromSource(os.path.join(self.testContext["TMPDIR"], "retok_test", "out", "retok_test.json"))
        # There should still be one location, but it'll be bigger.
        locs = doc.getAnnotations(["LOCATION"])
        self.assertEqual(len(locs), 1)
        self.assertEqual(locs[0].start, 7)
        self.assertEqual(locs[0].end, 28)
        orgs = doc.getAnnotations(["ORGANIZATION"])
        # There should still be one organization, but it'll be smaller.
        self.assertEqual(len(orgs), 1)
        self.assertEqual(orgs[0].start, 29)
        self.assertEqual(orgs[0].end, 33)

    def tearDown(self):
        CmdlinePluginContextTestCase.tearDown(self)
        shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(self.testContext["TMPDIR"], "retok_test"))

# And now, let's see if the tokenizer respects the zones.

class TokenizerZoneTestCase(PluginContextTestCase):

    def testTokenizationRespectsZoning(self):

        docPath = os.path.join(self.sampleDir, "resources", "data", "json", "voa1.txt.json")

        # Now, let's tag that same document.
        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", []), "Demo")
        _jsonIO = MAT.DocumentIO.getDocumentIO('mat-json')
        doc = _jsonIO.readFromSource(docPath)
        outPairs = e.RunDataPairs([("<doc>", doc)], undoThrough = "tokenize")
        outDoc = outPairs[0][1]
        # Make all the zone annotations of zero length.
        for z in outDoc.getAnnotations(self.task.getAnnotationTypesByCategory("zone")):
            z.end = z.start
        outPairs = e.RunDataPairs(outPairs, steps = ["tokenize"])
        for z in outDoc.getAnnotations(self.task.getAnnotationTypesByCategory("zone")):
            self.failUnless(z.end == z.start)
        self.failUnless(len(outDoc.getAnnotations(self.task.getAnnotationTypesByCategory("token"))) == 0)

# Check tokenization of commas. Ben points out that he can't
# afford to customize the tokenizer - this may have been his last hurrah.

class CommaTokenizationTestCase(PluginContextTestCase):

    def testCommaTokenization(self):

        doc = MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc(signal = u"His number is 800-555-6432, and I found 54,326 others.")
        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", []), "Demo")

        outPairs = e.RunDataPairs([("<doc>", doc)], steps = ["zone", "tokenize"])
        outDoc = outPairs[0][1]
        toks = outDoc.getAnnotations(self.task.getAnnotationTypesByCategory("token"))
        # There had better be a token from 26 - 27 (first comma), and from 40 - 46 (second comma).
        self.failUnless([outDoc.signal[a.start:a.end] for a in toks] == [u'His', u'number', u'is', u'800-555-6432', u',', u'and', u'I', u'found', u'54,326', u'others', u'.'])

# Here, we run the tokenizer on XML in the new Java Carafe tokenizer.
# If --handle_tags is present, it'll tokenize as XML.

class XMLTokenizationTestCase(PluginContextTestCase):

    def testNormalTokenization(self):

        doc = MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc(signal = u"<doc id = 'id1'>This signal has some XML. & it has < 2 entities.</doc>")
        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", []), "Demo")

        outPairs = e.RunDataPairs([("<doc>", doc)], steps = ["zone", "tokenize"])
        outDoc = outPairs[0][1]
        toks = outDoc.getAnnotations(self.task.getAnnotationTypesByCategory("token"))
        # I expect the tokenizer to be broken, but it's not clear exactly how.
        # At the moment, <doc is a single token, and the <doc> is < / doc>.
        strtoks = [outDoc.signal[a.start:a.end] for a in toks]
        print strtoks
        self.failUnless(strtoks[0] == '<doc')
        self.failUnless(strtoks[-1] == "doc>")

    def testXMLTokenization(self):
        doc = MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc(signal = u"<doc id = 'id1'>This signal has some XML. & it has one entity.</doc>")
        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", []), "Demo")

        outPairs = e.RunDataPairs([("<doc>", doc)], steps = ["zone", "tokenize"], handle_tags = True)
        outDoc = outPairs[0][1]
        toks = outDoc.getAnnotations(self.task.getAnnotationTypesByCategory("token"))
        self.failUnless([outDoc.signal[a.start:a.end] for a in toks] == [u"<doc id = 'id1'>", u'This', u'signal', u'has', u'some', u'XML', u'.', u'&', u'it', u'has', u'one', u'entity', u'.', u'</doc>'])

    def testBrokenXMLTokenization(self):
        doc = MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc(signal = u"<doc id = 'id1'>This signal has some XML. & it has < 2 entities.</doc>")
        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", []), "Demo")

        try:
            e.RunDataPairs([("<doc>", doc)], steps = ["zone", "tokenize"], handle_tags = True)
            self.fail("Tokenization should have failed")
        except MAT.Error.MATError, e:
            self.failUnless(str(e).find("TokenMgrError") > -1)

class TokenizerUnicodeTestCase(PluginContextTestCase):

    def testCopyrightSymbol(self):
        # At one point, the tokenizer was barfing on copyright symbols, because
        # of a bug in the Carafe serializer.
        doc = MAT.Document.AnnotatedDoc(signal = u"Copyright \xa9 The Corporation. All Rights Reserved.")
        e = MAT.ToolChain.MATEngine(self.task.getTaskImplementation("Demo", []), "Demo")
        e.RunDataPairs([("<doc>", doc)], steps = ["zone", "tokenize"])

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


What is the difference between "Make shift available" and "Offer shift"?
Make shift Available allows other employees assigned to the same location and position to see that the shift is available for pickup. Employees can apply for the shift and then a manager approves or denies the exchange.
Offer shift allows an employee to offer the shift to a specific employee who works the same location/position. This also works in a trade situation. Both employees offer their shifts to each other to complete a swap.
However, in both situations, if no one applies for the shift or accepts the shift (or an application for it is denied by your manager), the employee who was originally assigned to the shift is still responsible for working it.


text:
Why the Golden State Warriors are resurging to…
Home NEWS	Update on Douglas College's smoking ban
Update on Douglas College's smoking ban
by The Other Press September 10, 2018
Photo by Lauren Kelly
A week in and already receiving mixed reviews
By Katie Czenczek, News Editor
Douglas College's hard-line ban on all things vapour, smoke, and cannabis has had its fair share of both critics and supporters.
On September 1 Douglas enacted its strict no-smoking policy. Ultimately, this removed the smoking pit near the Douglas College Students' Union on both floors. Signs have been posted all around outdoor spaces at Douglas, though they only specifically showed a no-smoking sign despite vapes and cannabis also being prohibited.
Security guards spent the majority of their time outside near the spots around campus that many smokers congregate to. Whether or not they were sent there specifically to enforce the new rule is yet to be determined, as Douglas security could not comment at this time.
According to Douglas College's website, approximately 75 percent of students supported banning smoking, vapes, and pot from the premises. For those who do smoke, 23 percent of smoking Douglas College students are said to want to quit, also as reported by Douglas College's website. While there is no mention as to why cannabis was also banned from school grounds, it seems significant that the ban started merely a month before cannabis will be legalized nationwide.
Roxy Grimbeck, a first-year sports science student at Douglas College, said in an interview with the Other Press that she supported the ban.
"I know that many people are sensitive to smells, and vaping and cigarettes have very overpowering smells," she said.
Grimbeck also said that she didn't want to be bombarded with smoke and vapour the second she stepped outside the building.
"When I walk outside, I want to be breathing in fresh air—not vape or smoke when I need to take a break from my classes," she said. "Smoking is terrible for you and students shouldn't have to get second-hand smoke from leaving the campus."
Students who do use vapes and cigarettes, however, have only seemed to move over a couple of metres from the original spots allocated for smoking because Douglas College cannot enforce the ban outside of school grounds.
Bobby Singh, a fourth-year BPEC student at Douglas College, said in an interview with the Other Press that he doesn't think it's fair to lump together cigarettes and vapes.
"I understand that students don't want to have vapour in their face, and that's fair, but for people who are trying to quit smoking it's difficult to be forced into the same area where all of the smokers go," he said.
Singh also said that while vapes can be quite intrusive, there are other e-cigarettes that can be less so.
"The thing is, vapes and stuff can be intrusive, but a Juul isn't nearly as bad," he said.
Only time will tell how long the ban will persist, but as of right now, Douglas College continues to be a smoke-free zone.
KATIE CZENCZEKNEWS
Aquilini Investment Group purchases multimillion-dollar esports slot
It's just as dangerous as the first


Paladin Data and Braiker Media, its marketing consultant, needed to repurpose a unique software solution it had developed for the government sector which had the potential to support the philanthropic and nonprofit sector as a program management tool. They wanted to better understand these sectors, what their needs were and how well their new tool aligned with them.
Internaut Consulting was retained to explain the dynamics of the sector and how it related to the software product Paladin Data had built. This included the specific dynamics and segmentation of the markets as well as the potential client base and how to interact with it. Research on the current level of nonprofit and philanthropic technical capacity was also provided.