text:
Four complete, articulated, extant sauropod skeletons — yes, really!
Well, not really really.
Appendicular skeleton of savannah monitor lizard Varanus exanthematicus, "Charlie", in dorsal view.
What we have here is of course the bones of all four feet of a lizard (plus the limb bones): "sauropod" means "lizard foot", so lizard-foot skeletons are sauropod skeletons — right?
(Note that the hind limbs are arranged in a weird posture here, with the knees bent forward. Also that the left pes is missing one digit — possibly IV — which was presumably lost some time ago and healed.)
These are the bones of "Charlie", a mature savannah monitor lizard Varanus exanthematicus, estimated as fourteen or fifteen years old at the time of death. I have his whole skeleton — cranial, axial and limb-girdles — in various states of preparation, and no doubt they will all appear here sooner or later. I was fortunate enough to encounter Charlie in the reptile house of a local kids' activity centre with the boys, and he was not in a good way. Luckily, his keepers happened to come in as I was looking at him, we got talking, and I popped the question as tactfully as I could — would it be OK to take his body away when the sad day comes?
The sad day came, and I found a message on my answering machine. For one reason and another, it was a couple of days before I was able to drive out and pick up his mortal remains, but it was a proud day when I brought him home:
Savannah monitor lizard Varanus exanthematicus, "Charlie", recently expired, in left dorsolateral view. Scale bar for, uh, scale.
Charlie was a good-sized beast: 111 cm in length from snout to tail, and massing 3.4 kg. I tell you, it was quite a challenge getting him into that pot that you see top right.
Savannah monitor lizard Varanus exanthematicus, "Charlie", recently expired, in right anterodorsolateral view. Juvenile Homo sapiens "Jonno Taylor" for scale.
To prepare Charlie for the pan, I had to remove his tail — much, much harder than I'd been prepared for, as it was so difficult to locate the sacrocaudal intervertebral joint — and gut him. Unfortunately, by the time I opened him up, internal decomposition had set in, and he was not in a pleasant state:
Savannah monitor lizard Varanus exanthematicus, "Charlie", recently expired, in the unpopular right posteroventrolateral view.
(I have much more disgusting photos than this one, but it wouldn't be tasteful to show them.) Anyway, I abandoned my initial plan of dissecting the organs out, and basically just removed and discarded them. I've actually had shamefully little experience with dead animals, so I don't know how much the horrible state of Charlie's guts is due to his final illness and how much to post-mortem decomposition.
Once I'd managed — just — to get him into the pot, Charlie was lightly simmered for a couple of hours (to Fiona's delight), then dismembered, and the individual parts reboiled before I started picking the bones out of the various parts. There's more to say, but that will have to wait for another time.
Filed in DIY, monitor lizards, off topic, stinkin' every thing that's not a sauropod, T2M&D, taphonomy
Mystery vert revisited – SV-POW!bucks now on the line
Was this just a half-lame attempt to fulfill our titular mandate whilst plugging my new astronomy blog? Of course it was (and I just did it again!). Doesn't mean you lot are off the hook for figuring out what it is. So here's another image with more views. You have a week. Don't let me down.
Oh, and to sweeten the pot, 351 SV-POW!bucks to the person who first figures it out.
UPDATE: Too late, suckers! In a stunning move, Phil Mannion won the contest basically right out of the gate. The vertebra is indeed a cervical of Paluxysaurus (image below from Rose, 2007). Good job, Phil!
Well, now you're hosed–the contest is over and you're not due for another post for nearly a week. What to do, what to do? Assuming that you're all caught up on your Tet Zoo reading, you might want to check out Save Your Breath For Running Ponies. It's not just a paleo blog, but it has a lot of paleo in it, including lots of smack talk to whatever critter has been in the news lately. For example, see the recent post, "It's not all mindless sex with beautiful women, placoderm". This makes SYBFRP sort of the FU, Penguin of paleo.
OR you could discuss the question I posed in the comments: why does "this anterior cervical of Paluxysaurus look so much like Euhelopus, DGM Serie B, etc. The posterior cervicals look like Sauroposeidon, not exactly the same, but lots of similarities. The juxtaposition blew my mind ten years ago, and it still does. Your thoughts are welcome." They still are.
Filed in mystery vertebra, ulterior motives
Tutorial 7: the sauropod family tree
We really should have covered this ages ago … Here we are, blithering on about brachiosaurids and diplodocoids and all, and we've never really spelled out what these terms mean. Sorry!
The family tree of a group of animals (or plants, or fungi, or what have you) is called its phylogeny. The science of figuring out a phylogeny is called systematics. And once you've got a phylogeny, the business of naming the parts of it (and of course choosing which parts to name) is taxonomy.
For a long time, sauropod systematics was completely up in the air, so that McIntosh's (1990) review article on sauropods in The Dinosauria (first edition) said, rather despairingly, that "although recent discoveries are beginning to clarify the problems of sauropod phylogeny, were are still very far from being able to construct a cladogram" (p. 399). Happily, this changed rapidly thereafter, with the first published numerical phylogenetic analysis appearing in Russell and Zheng's (1993) description of the new Mamenchisaurus species M. sinocanadorum. More importantly, in the same year Paul Upchurch submitted his (1993, duh) dissertation on sauropods, and this contained a much larger analysis which was subsequently published as Upchurch (1995). This paper raised the bar significantly, with an analysis of 27 taxa using 174 characters. Three years later, Upchurch (1998) published a major revision of his own work; in the same year, the other major school of sauropod phylogeny launched with a JVP memoir (Wilson and Sereno 1998), which featured only 10 taxa and 109 characters, but discussed and illustrated them in more detail. Wilson (2002) followed this up with a much larger analysis of 27 taxa and 234 characters, and Upchurch et al. (2004), in the second editi0n of The Dinosauria, saw his 27×234 and raised him to 41×309. The good news is that, by this time, the two schools' phylogenies, having started out rather different, were converging on a consensus topology with only two significant disagreements, which we'll come to in a minute.
Since then, Jerry Harris (2006) created a union matrix from the character scores in the Wilson (2002) and Upchurch et al. (2004) matrices, and also threw in a few additional characters from other less ambitious phylogenetic analyses. This analysis came up with a tree that was very similar to Wilson's, and subsequent work by Wilson and Upchurch (2009) indicates that Upchurch is now also substantially in agreement with this arrangement.
Consensus phylogeny of sauropod, from Harris (2006)
I plucked this from Jerry's paper, and coloured it in to show two of the more important groups. Evolution begins at bottom left, so let's quickly tour the group.
First of all, note the outgroups. Sauropods' nearest relatives are the other saurischian dinosaurs, theropods and prosauropods. (They're shown the wrong way round here, because in an unrooted tree it makes no difference. Ignore that.)
The most basal sauropods include things like Vulcanodon and, it turns out mostly from the work of Adam Yates (e.g. Yates 2007), a whole bunch of things that, if you looked at them you'd probably guess were prosauropods.
Sauropods as we know them really begin at the boundary of the group Eusauropoda ("true sauropods"), which is roughly speaking everything more derived than Vulcanodon. (I won't discuss the naming of nodes and branches in detail in this post, as it would quickly get too long. Maybe in a later tutorial.) This group I have coloured pink in the diagram above.
Basal eusauropods include quite a few genera, and the order in which they branched off the "main line" leading to the neosauropods is not clear — as the unresolved polytomy above shows. Cetiosaurus (which for some reason is not shown in this figure) is generally considered quite derived; some of the Chinese sauropods (Mamenchisaurus, Omeisaurus, etc.) may form a group of their own, but that's not clear.
Most of the best-known sauropods fall within the great group Neosauropoda ("new sauropods"), which is coloured purple above. A few genera float around the root of this group, including Haplocanthosaurus and Jobaria, both of which are sometimes considered neosauropods, and sometimes non-neosauropod sauropods (or what I informally call "eosauropods", or "dawn sauropods").
Otherwise the great split within Neosauropoda is between the diplodocoids (on the left) and the macronarians (on the right) — the groups including Diplodocus on one hand, and Saltasaurus on the other.
The most basal diplodocoids are the rebbachisaurids over on the left.
Most other diplodocoids fall into the group Flagellicaudata ("whip-tails"), which is itself composed of dicraeosaurids and diplocodids. (It's not clear where in that dichotomy, or maybe just outside it, Suuwassea falls.)
Over in the other half of the Neosauropods, the first macronarians to diverge are the camarasaurids (which currently means, uh, Camarasaurus).
Most of the other macronarians fall into Titanosauriformes, the group uniting brachiosaurids (yay!) with titanosaurs and their buddies. Everything closer to titanosaurs falls within Somphospondyli, and that includes Euhelopus — as it turns out. (Upchurch had found Euhelopus to fall outside Neosauropoda).
Once you get past Euhelopus, you're into Titanosauria (though there are various definitions which place the entry point differently).
And once inside Titanosauria … well, all bets are off at this stage. There is a rough consensus that things like Malawisaurus and Andesaurus are pretty basal and Saltasaurus is, sort of by definition, derived. But apart from that, different studies have come up with wildly different phylogenies, with that of Curry Rogers (2005) being particularly left-field.
Without a doubt, Titanosauria is where the action is right now. As alluded to in the comments of Matt's Isisaurus post, it's a big, big group, encompassing many genera and huge morphological range. It's also a long-lived group, spanning the whole of the Cretaceous; and it's where most new genera are being named, as Argentina seems to be packed full of 'em.
Well, that's all for now. Sorry it's been wordier than usual — probably not much fun to read, but hopefully useful to refer back to in future.
Here's the famous 8th cervical vertebra of the "Brachiosaurus" brancai lectotype HMN SII, this time in a left-lateral close-up of its left prezygpapophyseal ramus, showing the many pneumatic excavations. Enjoy!
"Brachiosaurus" brancai lectotype HMN SII, 8th cervical vertebra, left prezygapophyseal ramus in left lateral view.
Curry Rogers (2005)
Harris (2006)
McIntosh (1990)
Russell and Zheng (1993)
Upchurch (1993)
Upchurch et al. (2004)
Wilson and Sereno (1998)
Wilson and Upchurch (2009)
Yates (2007)
Curry Rogers, Kristina. 2005. The Evolutionary History of the Titanosauria. pp. 50-103 in: K. Curry Rogers and J. A. Wilson (eds.), The Sauropods: Evolution and Paleobiology. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Harris, Jerald D. 2006. The significance of Suuwassea emiliae (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) for flagellicaudatan intrarelationships and evolution. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 4: 185-198.
McIntosh, John S. 1990. Sauropoda. pp. 345-401 in: D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson and H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria, 1st edition. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Russell, Dale A., and Zheng, Zhong. 1993. A large mamenchisaurid from the Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, China. Canadian Journal of Earth Science 30(10/11): 2082-2095.
Upchurch, Paul. 1993. The Anatomy, Phylogeny and Systematics of the Sauropod Dinosaurs. University of Cambridge, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. 489 pp.
Upchurch, Paul. 1995. The evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 349: 365-390.
Upchurch, Paul. 1998. The phylogenetic relationships of sauropod dinosaurs. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 124: 43-103.
Upchurch, Paul, Paul M. Barrett and Peter Dodson. 2004. Sauropoda. pp. 259-322 in D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson and H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria, 2nd edition. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 861 pp.
Wilson, Jeffrey A. 2002. Sauropod dinosaur phylogeny: critique and cladistic analysis. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 136: 217-276.
Wilson, J. A. and Paul C. Sereno. 1998. Early evolution and Higher-level phylogeny of sauropod dinosaurs. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Memoir 5: 1-68.
Wilson, Jeffrey A. and Paul Upchurch. 2009. Redescription and reassessment of the phylogenetic affinities of Euhelopus zdanskyi (Dinosauria – Sauropoda) from the Early Cretaceous of China. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 7: 199-239. doi:10.1017/S1477201908002691
Yates, Adam M. 2007. The first complete skull of the Triassic dinosaur Melanorosaurus Haughton (Sauropodomorpha: Anchisauria). pp. 9-55 in: Paul M. Barrett and David J. Batten (eds.), Special Papers in Palaeontology 77: Evolution and Palaeobiology of Early Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs. The Palaeontological Association, U.K.
Filed in brachiosaurids, Brachiosaurus, cervical, Tutorial
Off-topic: Shameless cross-promotion
Mare Imbrium from my driveway, Feb. 3, 2009
I've been interested in astronomy my whole life, but I only got serious about it in the past two years. In the internet age, "getting serious" about something usually means "starting a blog", so I did. My aim is to show people that enjoying the night sky doesn't have to be time-consuming or expensive. Stop by if you're interested.
Here's your token sauropod vert. What do you reckon it might be?
Filed in mystery vertebra, off topic
How shortweird was Isisaurus?
Back in 1999 or 2000 Jaime Headden sent me his skeletal reconstruction of what was then known as Titanosaurus colberti (Jain and Bandyopadhyay 1997), but which has recently been renamed Isisaurus colberti by Upchurch and Wilson (2004). Jaime's skeletal reconstruction and life restoration are here. Somebody threw a skin over the recon to produce this life restoration.
As you can see, the sauropod as reconstructed by Jaime is weird as heck.
I tried my own, and it came out quite a bit differently, but also weird as heck. I have to give a lot of the credit to Jaime; my recon is basically his, traced, with some of the elements scaled differently.
DO NOT assume that this is accurate. IIRC, Jaime scaled the elements in his recon using the scale bars in the figures from Jain and Bandyopadhyay (1997), and I scaled mine using the measurements given in the text. As you can see if you compare to the two recons, those sources of data do not agree (hmm…where have we seen this problem before?). Also, the whole skeleton of Isisaurus is not known so a lot of what you see here is guesswork. Finally, I drew this on a spare afternoon almost a decade ago, and I haven't ever done a single thing with it that would give me any real-world feedback to tell me just how screwed up it is. Looking at it now, the limb bones look awfully long for those girdles, the anterior caudals don't look very much like the anterior caudals of anything, and…yeah. I could barely muster the courage to post it. But I am posting it, partly because it is an artifact of my own intellectual ontogeny, partly to spark discussion, and partly to highlight the following problem:
We've got two weird and conflicting reconstructions, based on two conflicting sets of measurements from the same paper!
So what now? I've always intended to update this. I would make a start by scanning all of the elements from Jain and Bandyopadhyay (1997) and saving them as separate layers in Photoshop or GIMP. Then each element can be rescaled at will. And I'd build a background grid to hopefully help keep the scaling honest, like I did with my Brachiosaurus and Sauroposeidon skeletal recons. And I'd probably try plugging the Isisaurus elements into Mark Hallett's Rapetosaurus skeletal reconstruction; back when Jaime and I were working on our drawings no one had ever found a reasonably complete titanosaur so we were both working a bit in the dark.
All that would possibly make for better versions of these drawings, but the fundamental difference is in the measurements, and those aren't going to change until someone measures the skeleton again to check whether the scale bars or the published measurements are accurate. My guess is that the published measurements are accurate, or at least a lot more accurate than the scale bars. Scale bars are notoriously difficult to get right, but it is hard to creatively misuse a tape measure. Still, for now, we just don't know.
We know that Isisaurus must have been pretty darn weird because its cervicals are so short. I tend to spend most of my time thinking about critters like Sauroposeidon and Erketu and Mamenchisaurus youngi, in which the cervical centra can be six times as long as tall or even longer. Isisaurus went the opposite direction–its cervical centra are only about twice as long as tall, right down the column. The only other sauropods with such short cervicals are dicraeosaurids such as Brachytrachelopan. Given the other examples of homoplasy between diplodocoids and titanosaurs, I wonder if Isisaurus and Brachytrachelopan were ecological analogues, and I wonder what they were up to.
Jain, S.L., and Bandyopadhyay, S. 1997. New titanosaurid (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of central India. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 17:114–136.
Wilson, J.A., and Upchurch, P.2003. A revision of Titanosaurus Lydekker (Dinosauria– Sauropoda), the first dinosaur genus with a 'Gondwanan' distribution. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 1: 125–160.
Filed in skeletal reconstructions, titanosaur
How tallweird was Sauroposeidon?
In an email, Vladimir Socha drew my attention to the fact that Tom Holtz's dinosaur encyclopaedia estimates the maximum height of Sauroposeidon as 20 meters plus, and asked whether that was really possible. Here's what Tom actually wrote: "Sauroposeidon was one of the largest of all dinosaurs. At perhaps 98 to 107 feet (30 to 32.5 meters) long and weighing 70 to 80 tons […] Sauroposeidon would have been the tallest of all dinosaurs. […] If it could crane its neck up, it might have been able to hold its head 66 to 69 feet (20 to 21 meters) high or more" (Holtz and Rey 2007:207). Vladimir was understandably skeptical. But can it be true?
Wedel and Cifelli (2005: fig. 15) shows Matt's best skeletal reconstruction of Sauroposeidon, with Boring Old Brachiosaurus and a human for scale:
Sauroposeidon with Boring Old Brachiosaurus and human for scale and 20 m height indicated. Lightly modified from Wedel and Cifelli (2005: fig. 15)
Amazingly, those dummies didn't include an actual scalebar; but apparently the human figure is 1.8 m tall, so by measuring pixels and cross-scaling, I determined that in this image, Sauroposeidon is a mere 13.43 m tall. I took the liberty of adding in a marker for the 20 m height proposed by Holtz, and as things stand you'd have to say that it doesn't look probable.
But let's see what we can do. We'll begin with the classic brachiosaur skeleton of Paul (1988), which shows the well represented species Brachioaurus brancai:
Brachiosaurus brancai skeletal reconstruction in left lateral view. From Paul (1988:fig. 1)
(Some other time, we should take a moment to discuss the differences between this and the Wedel brachiosaur reconstruction; but it will not be this day.)
This reconstruction is in a nice erect-necked posture which, in light of our own recent paper, is probably not too extreme. Since all the neural arches and processes are missing from the only known posterior cervicals of this species, we don't know how much flexibility they allowed, and so in light of how the rest of the animal is built (high shoulders and all) it seems reasonable to allow a lot of extension at the base of the neck. So let's assume that the pose offered by Paul is correct. By measuring my scan of that figure, and I see that the 2.13 m humerus is 306 pixels long. The entire reconstruction, from tip of cranial crest down to forefoot, is 1999 pixels tall, which is 1999/306 = 6.53 times as long as the humerus, which scales to 6.53*2.13 = 13.91 m — a little taller than Sauroposeidon (not Brachiosaurus) in Matt's reconstruction, which seems about right if we imgine Matt's Brachiosaurus raising its neck into a Paul-compliant posture.
Now Paul's reconstruction is based on the Berlin mounted skeleton HMN S II. Cervical 8 is very well preserved in that animal, and has a centrum length of 98 cm (Janensch 1950a:44). By contrast, the centrum of C8 of Sauroposeidon OMNH 53062 (the only known specimen) is 125 cm long (Wedel et al. 2000a: 110). So if Sauroposeidon is merely an elongated Brachiosaurus brancai, then it's 125/98 = 1.28 times as long and tall, which would be 17.74 m.
But wait: it seems that Sauroposeidon is to Brachiosaurus brancai as Barosaurus is to Diplodocus — similar overall but more elongate. And it turns out that Barosaurus has at least 16, maybe 17 cervicals (McIntosh 2005:45) compared with Diplodocus's 15. So maybe Sauroposeidon also added cervicals from the brachiosaur base-state — in fact, that would hardly be surprising given that Brachiosaurus brancai has so few cervicals for a long-neck: 13, compared with 15 in most diplodocids, 16 or 17 in Barosaurus, and 19 in Mamenchisaurus. If you reconstruct Sauroposeidon with two more C8-like cervicals in the middle of the neck, that adds 2*125 = 250 cm, which would give us a total height of 17.74+2.5 = 20.24 m.
So I don't think Tom Holtz's estimate is completely unrealistic, even for the one Sauroposeidon specimen we have now — and remember that the chances of that individual being the biggest that species got are vanishingly small.
On the other hand, maybe Sauropodseidon's neck was the only part of it that was elongated in comparison to Brachiosaurus brancai — maybe its forelimbs were no longer than those of its cousin, so that only the neck elongation contributed to greater height. And maybe it had no additional cervicals, so its neck was "only" 1.28 times as long as that of Brachiosaurus brancai — 1.28*8.5 = 10.88 m, which is 2.38 m longer; so the total height would be 13.91+2.38 = 16.29 m (assuming the additional neck length was vertical). And maybe the neck couldn't get very close to vertical, so that the true height was lower still.
All of this just goes to show the perils of reconstructing an animal based only on a sequence of four cervicals. (Reconstructing on the basis of a single partial mid-to-posterior dorsal, on the other hand, is a much more exact science.)
Finally: Matt's reconstruction of Sauroposeidon is really rather conservative, and looks very much like a scaled-up vanilla brachiosaur. Just to see how it looks, I've made a reconstruction of the putative (and very possible) elongated, attenuated version of Sauroposeidon, showing the legs and cervicals 28% longer than in B. brancai, and with two additional cervicals. I made this by subjecting Greg Paul's 1988 brachiosaur to all sorts of horrible and half-arsed distortions, so apologies to Greg. But remember, folks: this is just as likely correct as Matt's version!
A different view of Sauroposeidon, based on elongation of the cervicals and legs of Brachiosaurus brancai and the insertion of two additional cervicals. Heavily and carelessly modified from Paul (1988: fig. 1)
Holtz, Thomas R., Jr., and Luis Rey. 2007. Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages. Random House, New York. 428 pages.
Janensch, Werner. 1950. Die Wirbelsaule von Brachiosaurus brancai. Palaeontographica (Suppl. 7) 3: 27-93.
McIntosh, John S. 2005. The Genus Barosaurus Marsh (Sauropoda, Diplodocidae). pp. 38-77 in Virginia Tidwell and Ken Carpenter (eds.), Thunder Lizards: the Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana. 495 pages.
Paul, Gregory S. 1988. The brachiosaur giants of the Morrison and Tendaguru with a description of a new subgenus, Giraffatitan, and a comparison of the world's largest dinosaurs. Hunteria 2 (3): 1-14.
Wedel, Mathew J., and Richard L. Cifelli. 2005. Sauroposeidon: Oklahoma's Native Giant. Oklahoma Geology Notes 65 (2): 40-57.
Wedel, Mathew J., Richard L. Cifelli and R. Kent Sanders. 2000a. Sauroposeidon proteles, a new sauropod from the Early Cretaceous of Oklahoma. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 20(1): 109-114.
Wedel, Mathew J., Richard L. Cifelli and R. Kent Sanders. 2000b. Osteology, paleobiology, and relationships of the sauropod dinosaur Sauroposeidon. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 45(4): 343-388.
Filed in brachiosaurids, Brachiosaurus, goofy, math, necks, Sauroposeidon, size, skeletal reconstructions
Little, big: the reveal
Here's the answer to last week's riddle. The big vertebra was obviously cervical 8 of Sauroposeidon, which you've seen here more than once. The small vertebra is also a mid-cervical, also from the Early Cretaceous, but from Croatia rather than Oklahoma. The very long centrum, unbifurcated neural spine, and extensive pneumatic sculpturing mark it as a brachiosaurid. It was first described by Dalla Vecchia (1998), and lavishly illustrated with numerous photos by Dalla Vecchia (1999). It was also included by Dalla Vecchia (2005:figs. 18.5 and 18.6) in the Thunder-Lizards volume from Indiana University Press, which is where I figured someone might recognize it from.
Here are two of those figures from Dalla Vecchia (1999)–note the thumb and fingers in the left-hand photo. The vertebra is about a foot long (~30 cm), which means it is TINY for a brachiosaurid mid-cervical. Note also that there is no sign of a neurocentral suture, so the critter was probably at least half grown and might have been full grown.
It is worth bearing mind that this super-tiny, pathetically titchy, adorable widdle bwachiosauw ve'tebwa is only a bit smaller than your average giraffe cervical.
Speaking of giraffes, from left to right we have:
Sauroposeidon, scaled like HM SII x 1.15;
a 20-foot-tall world record giraffe;
WNV-1, scaled like 0.22 x Sauroposeidon;
a 6'2″ human, such as yours truly.
Note that I could look over the shoulder of WNV-1, but it could not look over the giraffe's shoulder, nor could the giraffe look over Sauroposeidon's shoulder. The giraffe could not walk under Sauroposeidon's stomach, but WNV-1 could walk under the giraffe's. If the mass of Sauroposeidon was 40 tons, that of WNV-1 may have been around 450 kg, or a little under half a ton.
I wonder which evolved first in brachiosaurids, stupendous size or stupendous necks?
Dalla Vecchia, F.M. 1998. Remains of Sauropoda (Reptilia, Saurischia) in the Lower Cretaceous (Upper Hauterivian/Lower Barremian) limestones of SW Istria (Croatia). Geologia Croatica 51(2):105-134.
Dalla Vecchia, F.M. 1999. Atlas of the sauropod bones from the Upper Hauterivian – Lower Barremian of Bale/Valle (SW Istria, Croatia). Natura Nacosta 18:6-41.
Dalla Vecchia, F.M. 2005. Between Gondwana and Laurasia: Cretaceous sauropods in an intraoceanic carbonate platform; pp. 395-429 in Tidwell, V., and Carpenter, K. (eds.), Thunder-Lizards: The Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Filed in brachiosaurids, cervical, other long-necks, Sauroposeidon, size, skeletal reconstructions


The Hartford Yard Goats are a Double-A minor league baseball team in Hartford, Connecticut in the Eastern League. The team was founded in 2016, when the New Britain Rock Cats, a Colorado Rockies affiliate, relocated to Hartford, Connecticut. The Yard Goats are scheduled to move to Dunkin' Donuts Park when construction is completed. Jonathan Cole, the stadium architect, said construction could resume in September 2016.
The franchise's timeline can be traced back to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where they were a Boston Red Sox Double-A affiliate from 1965 to 1969. The franchise then moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1970, where they spent three years. The Pawtucket Red Sox became a Triple-A team in 1973, and the Red Sox moved their Double-A franchise to Bristol, Connecticut. Known as the Bristol Red Sox, the team played at Muzzy Field for ten seasons from 1973 to 1982. Starting with the 1983 season, the team was moved ten miles east to New Britain, Connecticut. Then known as the New Britain Red Sox, the team played its home games at Beehive Field, which stands next to New Britain Stadium.
The nickname "Yard Goats" was selected as part of a "Name the Team" contest which drew over 6,000 submissions. "Yard goats" is rail-yard slang for the switch engines or terminal tractors that shuttle train cars between different locomotives, but the logo features a goat chomping on a baseball bat and the team makes heavy use of animal imagery and symbolism.
The team has two mascots, a green goat named Chompers and a blue goat named Chew Chew. The names were selected as part of a "Name the Mascot" contest. Chew Chew's name is designed to reflect both the railroad meaning of the nickname (as in choo choo train) and the goat logo, which is chewing on a baseball bat.
On April 21, 2016, Hartford Police reported that an individual had tackled Chompers outside the Connecticut Science Center after an event there. The man inside the costume, who was not named, was uninjured. Police are unsure whether it was an intentional assault or a prank that went too far.
↑ Polansky, Rob; Campbell, Matt; Naples, Kaitlyn (June 10, 2015). "Yard Goats name their new ballpark in Hartford 'Dunkin' Donuts Park'". WFSB-TV.
↑ "Courant Community". www.courant.com. Hartford Courant. Retrieved 23 July 2016.
↑ "Dunkin Donuts Park Architect Back On The Job". www.courant.com. Hartford Courant. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
↑ Doyle, Paul (March 18, 2015). "What's a Yard Goat? It's a baseball team coming to Hartford". Hartford Courant.
↑ Polansky, Rob; Dixon, Mark (October 30, 2015). "'Chew Chew' and 'Chompers' unveiled as Yard Goats mascots". WFSB-TV.
↑ "Hartford Police Investigating Incident Involving Yard Goats Mascot". NBC Connecticut. April 21, 2016.


text:
Families flock to Mardi Gras
Hundreds of people braved the rain and joined in the fun at Coventry's Mardi Gras festival.
Coventry Live
It is the second year the event has been held and organisers were delighted that revellers were undeterred by the weather and flocked to the Canal Basin yesterday.
Street performers dressed in eye-catching outfits and mingled with the crowds.
There was a host of entertainment to keep families occupied, from live music to face-painting to a mini funfair.
The festival was organised by the city council and Coventry Canal Society.
Senior canal manager Andy Little said: "The idea is to get people into the Canal Basin to make them realise they can have a day out down here and enjoy themselves.
"There have been some brilliant activities and the entertainment has been marvellous, there has been something for the young, the old, the slightly mad, it's great."
Music was provided by Bob Oliver's Hot Seven and the Panama Steel Band, and other performers included Spirit Salsa Dancers, comedy dance duo Carmen Meander and Her Maracus Player, street artists the Rococo Girls, and Phoenix Young Watch Cheerleaders.
Workshops were put on by Coventry Arts Exchange and there were stalls by local organisations.
Tony Collins, of Coventry Canal Society, who was compere for the day, said: "We're very happy with how it's gone - the weather has been pretty rotten, but there has still been a good turnout. The cheerleaders had a good crowd when they did their act in the pouring rain."
Coventry Canal

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
The Party of the Vlachs of Macedonia (PVM; , ; , ), sometimes simply referred to as the Party of the Vlachs or the Vlach Party (; ), is one of the two political parties in North Macedonia representative of the Aromanian minority of the country, the other being the Democratic Union of the Vlachs of Macedonia (DSVM).

It was founded in 2001 in Skopje by Mite Kostov Papuli, who was also a member of several many other Aromanian organizations of North Macedonia. Papuli died in 2020, at age 61, as a result of COVID-19.

In March 2020, the PVM joined a coalition with VMRO-DPMNE and many other North Macedonian political parties.

In 2021, a representative of PVM, the DSVM and some other Aromanian organizations of North Macedonia met with the President of North Macedonia Stevo Pendarovski on the occasion of the Aromanian National Day celebrated every 23 May and demanded a constituency with guaranteed seats on the Parliament of North Macedonia for representatives of the national Aromanian minority. The situation of the minority in the country and the progress made so far in their minority rights were also discussed.

See also
 Alliance for Equality and European Justice, the only Aromanian political party outside North Macedonia
 Democratic Union of the Vlachs of Macedonia, the other Aromanian political party in North Macedonia

References

2001 establishments in the Republic of Macedonia
Political parties established in 2001
Political parties of minorities in North Macedonia
Aromanian political parties
Aromanians in North Macedonia

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
The [Synacor Challenge][Synacor] is a programming challenge where contestents are tasked to implement a virtual machine for a custom architecture specified in the [`arch-spec`](/arch-spec) file. A binary [`bin/challenge.bin`](/bin/challenge.bin) has been provided and contains a number of passcodes for input on the challenge website to track your progress. This repository contains a Rust library that implements the CPU, and some extra executables that implement the VM and solve various challenges that appear during execution.

[Synacor]: https://challenge.synacor.com

**NB**: This repository contains all the details you need to be able to find all the codes for the challenge without having to implement your own solutions. Please don't ruin the fun for everyone else by cheating!

## Executables

### Debugger

The debugger can be built using cargo, but it is recommended to run the debugger as a standalone executable due to a [bug in cargo][cargo-bug]. Build the debugger using cargo:
```
$ cargo build --release --bin debugger
```
and run using
```
$ target/release/debugger <binary> [replay] [injections]
```
where `binary` is the binary to execute, `replay` is a text file to feed into the CPU as a `stdin` input, and `injections` is a JSON array of code injections which takes the form:
```JSON
[
    {
        "addr": address,
        "payload": [...]
    },
    ...
]
```
where `address` is the memory address to start the injection at, and the `payload` field lists the 16-bit words to inject into the binary. This is used during execution of the challenge binary to modify some instructions to reach the final stages of the challenge.

The debugger starts at a prompt that provides various commands, the synopsis of which can be found using the `help` command:
```
(SVM: 0x0000) > help
The following commands are available. Short forms are listed in brackets after the long form. Options, if any are listed after the short forms
        help (h, ?)               - Print this message
        step (s) [n]              - Step through n instructions (default = 1)
        registers (r)             - Print the registers
        run (c)                   - Run execution until a breakpoint is hit or the CPU halts.
        breakpoint (bp)           - Set, unset, or list breakpoints.
        memory (m) [lines] [addr] - Print 20 lines of 8 16-bit entries from RAM, starting at addr. Default lines = 10, default addr = pc
        restart                   - Restart the program.
        list (l) [n] [addr]       - Disassemble the next n instructions, starting at addr. (default n = 10, addr = pc)
        dump [file]               - Dump the full contents of RAM to the specified file.
        set [n] [value]           - Set register n to the given (decimal) value.
        stack (ps)                - Print the contents of the stack.
        jump [addr]               - Set the programme counter to the given address (in hexadecimal).
```
Use `Ctrl+C` to interrupt the CPU during execution to drop back to the debug prompt.

[cargo-bug]: https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/2343

### Virtual machine

The virtual machine can be built and run using cargo:
```
$ cargo run --release --bin synvm -- <binary> [replay] [injections]
```
where `binary`, `replay`, and `injections` are as specified above in the [Debugger](#debugger). To exit the virutal machine use `Ctrl+C`.

### Disassembler

The disassembler can also be built and run using cargo:
```
$ cargo run --release --bin disassembler -- <binary> <output>
```
which will disassemble `binary` and write the results to `output`.

## Other binaries

There are some other binaries provided that relate to solving challenges that appear during execution of the challenge binary.

### Brute forcer

To get past the 6th code, one needs to force the CPU to modify a register to a specific value during execution. The value of this register is then checked using a routine that will not finish executing in any reasonable amount of time. The checking routine is a modification of the [Ackermann function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function) and is done modulo 2^^15. The `brute_forcer` binary computes the correct value of this register using an optimization of the algorithm, and can be run using cargo:
```
$ cargo run --release --bin brute_forcer
```
the output of which can be seen [here](/the_eigth_register.txt).

### Vault grid solver

To get the final code, you need to navigate through a grid with special rules for movement and unlocking the final door. A Haskell binary `synacor-grid` is provided in [`grid-src/Main.hs`](/grid-src/Main.hs) and can be built and run using `stack`:
```
$ stack build
$ stack exec synacor-grid
```
the output of which can be seen [here](/grid_solution.txt).

## License

The code in this repository is licensed under the [MIT license](/LICENSE) except the challenge binary, and architecture specification which are provided by Synacor.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Syrian refugees in Lebanon, like the local Lebanese communities that host them, rely on their social networks of family, friends, employers, and trusted figures in the community for solution when their rights are violated. Such informal mechanisms exist both within the refugee and Lebanese communities, though they differ across locations.
While both communities prefer informal mechanisms, Syrian refugees are particularly reluctant to resort to the police and judiciary when their rights are violated. This is due to their precarious legal status in the absence of valid residency permits and irregularities in their documents, low trust in the security and judiciary systems in Lebanon, and fear of retaliation.
This report draws upon case studies from rural and urban areas across Lebanon to identify pathways through which vulnerable individuals and families seek protection and justice. It aims to inform donors, UN agencies, and practitioners about the advantages and limitations of community mediation and support as a pathway to informal justice; and to highlight the ways in which peacebuilding approaches can contribute to protection outcomes.
The findings are based on case studies from the northern Akkar region and the capital Beirut collected in 2016, as well as case studies from a pilot project that supported community mediators in Akkar and the Bekaa in 2018.


MIAMI — By Thursday, Dwyane Wade may not be employed as a basketball player anymore.
After playing his final home regular season game Tuesday when the Miami Heat hosted the Philadelphia 76ers, it'll be a game Wednesday at Brooklyn to end this season. Barring two wins and a lot of help in the final two days of the season, the career of Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr. will be finished.
The Heat still have a faint pulse in the playoff race. Of the 64 possible remaining scenarios involving Brooklyn, Orlando, Detroit, Charlotte and Miami — the five teams still vying for various spots on the bracket, with the Nets and Magic being assured of making the playoffs — over the next two days, only three will send Wade into the postseason.
That is why Tuesday was generally viewed as the farewell, even though no one would officially describe it as such. Wade was acutely aware the 576th time he played at AmericanAirlines Arena, all but one of those coming in a Heat uniform, may well have been the last.
The game wasn't to tip off until 7:50 p.m. Tuesday. Tributes started in the morning.
A pregame series of events was scheduled inside the arena. Wade was to address the crowd. Celebrities were expected. Wade's children were all in attendance. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, where the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre left 17 dead, performed the national anthem. The tragedy touched Wade deeply. Oliver, one of the victims, was buried in a Wade jersey.
There were Wade "L3GACY" shirts given to fans, some of whom spent thousands for their seats. There were Wade commemorative lanyards, Wade apparel. Some arena workers asked if they could be excused from wearing the usual game-night garb and don Wade jerseys instead. Fans flew in from as far as Australia and China. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver sent his regards in a video.
The M-V-P chants would come. The ovations would be long. There would be tears. And the Heat would try to make a playoff miracle happen.
And this farewell tour — the "One Last Dance" — is a leaguewide victory lap for someone NBA players rave about.


text:
The Verbatim
Arts and entertainment, word for word.
The Top 10 Film Actresses Under the Age of 30
The future is now for these young actresses. They've been stealing the screen in some of the best films from the past decade, all before hitting the age of 30. Sure, they've made appearances in award-worthy films across the board (which blossoming star hasn't worked with Greta Gerwig?), but these 10 actresses take bold roles as well – from the blackest of black comedies to the goriest of horror flicks. Here are the female stars you need to be paying attention to, because they're going to dominate the film conversation for years to come.
10. Elle Fanning
Films: The Neon Demon, 20th Century Women, The Beguiled, Super 8
Elle Fanning is transitioning well from a child star to a reputable young actress, and it's come on the back of a few solid roles in recent years. She's effortlessly maintained her stature in dramas The Beguiled and 20th Century Women, as well as artsy horror flick The Neon Demon – a film I hated but can salvage for Elle's feminine punch as the lead alone. The 23 year old has stayed busy over the past half-decade, staying relevant in the film medium with several roles a year. Her sister Dakota is still arguably the bigger name, but I prefer Elle as an actress.
9. Hailee Steinfeld
Films: The Edge of Seventeen, True Grit, Begin Again, Bumblebee
How exactly do you follow up an Oscar nod at age 14? Hailee Steinfeld has figured that out, judging from her filmography since 2010's True Grit (as well as a burgeoning music career with the single "Starving"). The Edge of Seventeen is her most career-defining role behind Mattie Ross, but the brown-haired 20-something knows how to reach a big audience. She hopped aboard several Pitch Perfect films, a Transformers sequel, and – most recently – the Marvel train with the Hawkeye TV series. Hailee's in the limelight, and it's going to stay that way.
Films: Spider-Man films, Dune, Malcolm & Marie, The Greatest Showman
She's well known as M.J. in the new Spider-Man movies, but Zendaya is much more than another Marvel love interest. The California actress – full name Zendaya Coleman – is an artist of the highest order, recently flexing her muscle in the sci-fi thriller Dune and brooding romance Malcolm & Marie (as well as the conversation-dominating HBO show Euphoria). She began her career on the Disney Channel and has traveled far and wide since. Arguably the most well-known young black actress in Hollywood, Zendaya has earned her mononymous title.
7. Chloe Grace Moretz
Films: The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Carrie, Kick-Ass, Suspiria
Back in the early 2010s, it looked like Chloe Grace Moretz was going to be a Natalie Portman-level dignitary – emerging on the scene in her teens but maintaining a steady consistency beyond that. While the heyday of her career remains the years in which she starred in (500) Days of Summer and Kick-Ass, Chloe still stands as one of my favorite 20-something stars. Her performances in the remake of Carrie and The Miseducation of Cameron Post in 2018 assure she's settling into her career as a young adult quite nicely – and she just turned 25.
6. Olivia Cooke
Films: Sound of Metal, Thoroughbreds, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Ouija
Two words: bleached eyebrows. Olivia Cooke says a lot that her light brows can't in Sound of Metal, and it was the first time I realized this British actress could be a star. But her strong acting gigs don't end there, as she's tried her hand in a multitude of genres – including the black comedy of Thoroughbreds, the teen drama of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and the horror of Ouija. Whether Olivia has blonde brows or a shaved head, she maintains strength and elegance in her screentime, and she's gone a long way in her acting career before hitting the age of 30.
5. Thomasin McKenzie
Films: Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho, The Power of the Dog, Old
In just two movies, Thomasin McKenzie went from next-to-unknown to New Zealand's next big thing. Her roles in 2019's Jojo Rabbit and 2021's Last Night in Soho broke her out big time – and deservedly so. Thomasin's petite stature and soft voice bring out plenty of emotion, a perfect foil to the dark, decrepit environments of the thrillers she's starred in. Ultimately, it was Scarlett Johansson who was nominated for Jojo Rabbit, but the 21 year old Thomasin has plenty of time to catch up.
4. Kathryn Newton
Films: Freaky, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Pokemon Detective Pikachu
I believe in Kathryn Newton supremacy. Seriously, how has she been in everything these past five years and I've just now noticed? After playing memorable support roles in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Lady Bird, Big Little Lies, and Supernatural, the brow-tabulous blonde is onto bigger and better things. Recently, Freaky and The Map of Tiny Perfect Things broke her out as a bona fide lead star. She's got the Kubrick stare down, proving she can play a serial killer with the same power as she can a teenage girl. Kathryn slays – literally.
3. Anya Taylor-Joy
Films: The Witch, Last Night in Soho, Thoroughbreds, Split
Anya Taylor-Joy is the new Emma Stone: gorgeous eyes, a deep voice, and hair that looks good in any color. But there's much more to everybody's favorite TV chess player than her cupid's bow. Beyond The Queen's Gambit, she's a sensational film actress who's unafraid to get her hands dirty. With stellar performances in The Witch, Thoroughbreds, Split, and Last Night in Soho, Anya dominates the genres of thriller and horror. The 25 year old has already made quite the name for herself in film and television, and she has quite a bright future in front of her.
2. Saoirse Ronan
Films: Little Women, Lady Bird, Brooklyn, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Saoirse Ronan has been an acting prodigy from a young age, inserting herself in the Academy Award acting race multiple times by the time she was 21 (2007's Atonement and 2015's Brooklyn). Since then, she's only continued her awards run, with two Best Actress nominations in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird and Little Women. Perhaps it's the fact that she's been working with some of the premier filmmakers in the industry – from Gerwig to Wes Anderson to Joe Wright. But the Irish actress is an unquestionable heavyweight when it comes to dramatic roles.
1. Florence Pugh
Films: Midsommar, Little Women, Black Widow, Fighting with My Family
Imagine being a scream queen, a Marvel action hero, and an Academy Award nominee – all before your 30th birthday. That's Florence Pugh for you, and she shows no signs of slowing down. The Oxford native is a megastar in the making, if she isn't already. She has the versatility to dive into a horror, action, or drama role – you name the genre, and she can carry the movie. After stealing the screen in Midsommar, Black Widow, and Little Women, the possibilities are endless. She's even become a social media cooking star. Is there anything Flo can't do?
Runners Up:
Featured Image Credit: Florence Pugh (Edward Berthelot/Getty Images), Kathryn Newton (Brian Douglas/Universal), Elle Fanning (Amazon Studios/Broad Green Pictures)
Tim Dodderidge
I've long loved writing about music, dating back to my days covering Warped Tour during summer breaks. Following a decade at Mind Equals Blown and a handful of contributions to Substream Magazine, I'm back on my own time, doing my own thing here at The Verbatim. View all posts by Tim Dodderidge
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An expansive across the Continental Divide extends to Longs Peak (14,255') in Rocky Mountain National Park from the summit of James Peak (13,294'). The James Peak Wilderness Area was designated in 2002. In this view, much of the annual water supply for Colorado's Front Range is held by the high peaks, waiting for release in spring. . Photo © copyright by Dave Showalter.


This Sweet Wishes Christmas Jars clip art set includes 16 cheerful graphics: 8 glass jars filled with an assortment of Christmas goodies such as gingerbread man, candy canes, and cookies, 4 tags with a holiday greeting and 4 colorful backgrounds of candies or cookies.
The Sweet Wishes Christmas Jars graphics set consists of images shown in PNG format (with transparent backgrounds) and JPG format at 300 dpi. This clip art set can be used for both personal and commercial use.


Eternal wheel [Disc 1] : the best of Ozric Tentacles.
[United Kingdom] : Snapper Music, 2004.
Add tags for "Eternal wheel [Disc 1] : the best of Ozric Tentacles.". Be the first.
<http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62544936> # Eternal wheel [Disc 1] : the best of Ozric Tentacles.
schema:creator <http://viaf.org/viaf/147372592> ; # Ozric Tentacles.
schema:about <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62544936> ; # Eternal wheel [Disc 1] : the best of Ozric Tentacles.


text:
Climate change is impacting so much around us: heat, flooding, health, wildlife, housing, and more. WUSF, in collaboration with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, is bringing you stories on how climate change is affecting you.
In Florida, A New Governor Speaks The Words 'Climate Change'
WUSF Public Media - WUSF 89.7 | By Amy Green
Published April 28, 2019 at 1:16 PM EDT
Amy Green
WMFE
In Satellite Beach, homes perch atop a sand dune, left exposed after a series of storms and hurricanes washed away a sea wall.
A ban in Florida on the words "climate change" appears to be ending.
The DeSantis administration is showing new leadership where state government has been absent in the past.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has wasted no time since taking office in January establishing the environment as a priority.
The Republican governor elected with President Donald Trump's endorsement has announced plans for a chief resiliency officer. He also says he'll establish an Office of Resiliency and Coastal Protection.
And he named the state's first chief science officer earlier this month in West Palm Beach, saying, "This idea of – quote – 'climate change' has become politicized. My environmental policy is just to try to do things that benefit Floridians."
Did you notice the choice of words there? "Climate change."
It's a big change from former Gov. Rick Scott, who was elected to the Senate in November.
Not only would Scott say he was "not a scientist" when asked about climate change, but his reported ban on the words from state agencies became a national punchline among late night comedians like Jon Stewart, former host of The Daily Show.
Rather than "sea level rise," employees reportedly were told to say, "nuisance flooding."
"I would say we're seeing a policy on climate change in Florida finally," says Thomas Ruppert of the research organization Florida Sea Grant.
He expects the change will mean new resources and support for local governments. Municipalities like Miami Beach are installing pumps and raising roads, but he says small- and mid-sized communities are most in need.
"Because they don't have the financial resources to delay what may become inevitable in some areas, which is relocation away from the coastline due to sea level rise."
That includes communities like Satellite Beach, situated not far from Kennedy Space Center, on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River Lagoon. City Manager Courtney Barker says there are already plans to move the fire station and other public buildings to higher ground.
"We are a highly eroding area, and that is designed by the DEP and the state of Florida. And I think you'll see over time the same areas being affected over and over again."
She says the city also would consider buying out vulnerable homeowners but doesn't have the money.
"These properties are worth millions of dollars, and I think once they are impacted like that you're still looking at hundreds of millions of dollars. And our yearly budget is $12 million, and so we're just not in a financial position to be able to do that, and so that's why you need a state fund for those types of issues."
Whatever help the DeSantis administration can deliver, she says it's refreshing just hearing the governor utter the words "climate change."
"When you're going from an administration that just didn't want to speak about it to a new administration that's actually appointing someone to address the problem, I think that's a massive indication that he's going to do good things in that realm."
DeSantis' sweeping environmental plan is aimed primarily at toxic algae. Most environmental groups are cheering the action, but for some it doesn't go far enough. Frank Jackalone of the Sierra Club points out DeSantis' plan does nothing on emissions.
"He needs to take action now, and what kind of action? Clean energy. He needs to get on the bandwagon for movement toward 100 percent clean energy that will stop pouring all of these millions of tons of carbon into our atmosphere that make our climate worse."
But for most Floridians, hearing the words "climate change" from the state's top leadership represents progress.
Local / StateRon DeSantis
Climate Change Was The Engine That Powered Hurricane Maria's Devastating Rains
Faith Leaders Gather To Discuss Climate Change At A South Florida Conference
Florida Lawmaker Says Climate Change Deserves More Attention


Stir together the flour, masa harina, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the oil and water and mix well.
Turn out onto a floured surface and knead lightly to form a smooth, supple dough. (If you need more water, add it a teaspoon at a time to avoid making the dough sticky.) Wrap the dough in plastic and chill it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes while you make the filling.
Put the potato in a small saucepan with lightly salted water, bring to a boil, and cook until tender, 5-7 minutes; drain.
Meanwhile, in a heavy skillet over medium heat, cook the chorizo, stirring and breaking it up, for about 5 minutes. Add the onion and cook for another 5 minutes, until the onion is tender and translucent.
Stir in the potato, olives, raisins, and oregano. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is heated through, 3-4 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 375°F and lightly grease a large baking sheet.
Divide the dough into 10 balls. On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball out into a circle about 4 inches across. Place a couple of tablespoons of the filling just off-center on 1 circle, and fold the dough over to make a half-circle. Crimp the edges with a fork to seal, and transfer the empanada to a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling.
Brush each empanada lightly with the egg. Use the tip of a paring knife to slash a few holes in the top of each empanada. Bake until they are golden brown, about 25 minutes. Alternatively, you can fry them. Heat an inch or so of vegetable oil to 350°F in a large skillet. Fry in batches of 3, carefully flipping them over once, until they're golden brown and crispy, about 5 minutes. Transfer them to paper towels to drain, and let the oil return to 350°F before frying the next batch.
Preheat the broiler. Put the tomatoes on a baking sheet and broil, until the tomatoes are nice and charred, 10-12 minutes. Take the tomatoes out, and let them cool.
Transfer the tomatoes to a big bowl (don't forget the tomato juice that has leaked out and reduced on the baking sheet), slip off the skins, and cut out the tough cores, then roughly chop them.
While the tomatoes are broiling, heat a dry skillet over medium heat and toast the chiles (in batches, if necessary), flipping them over occasionally, until they just begin to smoke, about 5 minutes. Set them aside in a bowl.
Put the olive oil, onion, and garlic in a saucepan, set it over medium heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, about 7 minutes. Add the toasted chiles, tomatoes, and 2 cups of water, bring to a simmer, and cook for another 12 minutes, so the flavors come together. Let it cool a bit.
Carefully transfer the mixture to a blender. Add the cilantro, salt, and pepper, and puree until the mixture is very smooth.
Pour the mixture through a medium-mesh sieve into a bowl. Serve with the empanadas at room temperature or slightly chilled — or store the salsa in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for up to a week, or in the freezer for a month.


text:
DJ Platform Video
SPICE GIRLS Re-release "Spice World" and "Greatest Hits" on vinyl
February 2, 2020 February 22, 2020 rgarcia	SPICE GIRLS Re-release "Spice World" and "Greatest Hits" on vinyl
The era defining, history making, best-selling female group of all time today announce the re-release of Spiceworld and The Greatest Hits on vinyl – the ultimate Mother's Day gifts. The vinyl will be available from Friday, March 13, 2020 via UMe/Virgin EMI.
Re-issued on 180g black vinyl, this release of Spiceworld retains all original artwork from 1997. Peaking at #3 on Billboard's album chart, it contains the U.S. Top 20 hits "Spice Up Your Life" (#4 in U.S. Dance Chart) and "Stop" (#3 in Hot Dance Chart). Spiceworld amassed more than 13 million sales worldwide cementing the Spice Girls as a cultural phenomenon.
And if one wasn't enough… released earlier this year as a picture disc to commemorate their unforgettable sold-out UK tour last summer, Spice Girls – Greatest Hits is back again! This time on 180g black vinyl with their U.S. Top 20 smash hit singles, including "2 Become 1", "Spice Up Your Life", "Goodbye", and their breakthrough debut #1 single "Wannabe". It also includes the original artwork, this time as a single sleeve LP, with a printed inner sleeve to house the 180g vinyl LP.
HERE'S THE STORY FROM A-Z… In 1996, the iconic debut single "Wannabe" was born, only to go on to reach the top of the charts in 37 countries. Their debut album Spice sold more than 31 million copies across the globe, earning its place as the best-selling album of all time by a female group. Throughout history, they've sold 85 million records worldwide, had nine UK number 1 singles, and released three studio albums and 13 singles. Not to mention the host of awards won, including a BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.
Spice Girls brought back girl-power in full force during the summer of 2019. They came together for their reunion tour and conquered stadiums across the UK and Ireland, playing together for the first time since the London 2012 Olympics, smashing records and becoming Ticketmaster UK's busiest ever sal
Spiceworld
Saturday Divas
Never Give Up On The Goodtimes
Move Over
Denying
Viva Forever
The Lady Is A Vamp
Say You'll Be There
2 Become 1
Mama – Radio Version
Spice Up Your Life – Stent Radio Mix
Too Much – Edit
Viva Forever – Radio Edit
Let Love Lead The Way – Radio Edit
Holler – Radio Edit
Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)
Goodbye – Single Edit
← PRIMARY WAVE X ISLAND RECORDS ONE LOVE HOTEL GRAMMY WEEK RECAP!
The FADER Premieres Darkovibes x Mr Eazi's "Come My Way" →


Projects, notions, and access to your fabric stash, are all available on your iPod touch, iPhone or a new iPad.
If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you're already familiar with apps, useful or fun programs you can purchase inexpensively through iTunes.
Some of my favorite apps are StitchMinder by Quilt2Go, which I use to track knitting patterns; Units by The Mac Box, which converts all kinds of measurements (length, temperature, volume, currency, etc.) and Dictionary!, which is a lot handier than lugging around an actual dictionary.
FabricStash allows you to create a record – with up to two photos per fabric – of the material you have on hand. You categorize your stash by features you select or enter yourself, such as color, fabric type, yardage, etc., or other characteristics. It's designed to be customizable.
It also tracks notions, so you see at a glance what buttons, thread, ribbons, etc. you have.
You can group fabrics and notions into a "project." If you are, for example, shopping for materials to make a quilt, you can see at a glance the fabrics you have already and in which colors.
Working on a garment, say a lined jacket? Look and see that you have the lining, but need tailor's canvas, buttons, and thread perhaps.
I'm anticipating a lot of uses for FabricStash. No more lists! Now more digging through my purse for the fabric samples I forgot to bring with me. And hopefully no more duplicate purchases, when I realize I did already buy the buttons, thread, or zipper I needed to finish a design. There is also a wish list section, where you can note what you need when new designs occur to you, and a FabricStashXL version for the iPad.
I enjoy gadgets and like to get the most out of my iPod, but for years I kept track of fabrics with swatches on 3 by 5 cards in recipe filing boxes. How do you track your stash – electronically or otherwise? Please share! I think – and I believe a lot of Threads readers will agree with me on this – that a good fabric-tracking system is a basis for getting more time to sew!
FabricStash allows you to group fabrics by characteristics of your choice, including color.
You can include up to two photos with each fabric entry in FabricStash.
I'm almost a luddite when it comes to this kind of technology--I've seen too any tweens and teens doing nothing but tapping the surface of tiny electronic gizmos that I can hardly even see. However, this application goes a long way toward making sense of the iPod, iTouch, or even the iPad.
So here's a question from a complete tyro: do all these iWhatevers have built-in cameras, so you can instantly shoot and load photos of your fabric? Or do you have to use a separate camera and upload the digital photos from there?
My current system of stash-tracking involves many plastic storage bins, baggies of swatches, a certain amount of elbow-grease, and my memory. There must be a better way, and this iPod app might be it!
I've been sewing nearly 30 years my stash would take me months to catalogue and photo!!!!!!!!!!!
I have to rely on memory to find a remembered treasure. Which room? which cupboard? which box? Mostly I just go out and get more stuff because I can't find the fabrics in my stash.
Have made some feeble efforts to sell bits on e.bay. Sometimes instantly thinking of something I could of made from that precious item, now gone forever.
I did try to find some apps like these before for my iphone but failed. I got iConvert and iDictionary already. Love high technology. The fabricstash is amazing. There are so many pieces of fabrics I bought long time ago that I could not remember what types, how much I had, sale prices... but right now I have my fabrics sorted by colors and seasons. My stash now is full of 4 2-door storages :)... Well, now I know what I have, whenever I stop by Fabric stores I can take a look at my stash and could find the best piece to match to each other.
This is Great idea and Bravo to high-techno!!!
I can't find an app like this for my android phone :( but I did use my phone last week to take a picture of the bolt end of some fabric I bought. Now at least I have the fiber content, care instructions, and fabric name in case I ever want more. Now I'm more motivated to somehow electronically organize future additions to my stash.
I just got an app from this same developer, I think, called Pattern Pal. I can enter every pattern in my stash (which is in competition with my fabric stash for most space occupied in my sewing room) - fabric yardage needed, notions, etc. It might be dangerously enabling when I'm at the fabric store looking at beautiful fabric and wondering "what could I make with this?"
The iPhone does, not sure about the other devices. Although I suspect that it will take a while to actually catalog my stash, I think this app will help me out -- luckily I got rid of quite a bit of my costume fabric stash recently by donating it to a youth theatre company. But I still have a LOT! I have 4 unique types of stash to "maintain": my fashion fabrics, costume fabrics -- mostly lycras and sparkly stuff for skating costumes, quilting fabric and home dec fabrics. So many fabrics, so little time!
OK I am only partially techno savy. I would love a program like this since my accounting software does not have a place for me to track my stash. I don't suppose this " I " program would work on a regular computer or laptop?
Until now I have been cataloging my fabrics using 1) post-its with a snippet of the fabric on it with content, and the project I wish to make stuck to the back of my sewing room door and 2) via photos taken and put into a Word.doc document ... that word doc didn't get very far as I am with others - having so much fabric it would take months.
I do have the iphone and this app seems very useful BUT I hate that the image(s) must be in a separate folder uploaded by connecting to itunes OR in the general 'photos' app. The iphone does have a built in camera (someone asked) I can see it would be beneficial to have the (2nd) image of the end of the bolt with all the info readily available.
How do you input the data? Do you have to use the iPhone/iPod or is there a desktop component? I have a serious stash that I've been putting into a database I created, and I can't see getting that info into my iPod Touch using a little virtual keyboard.
SkyMom asked if the iPod Touch or the iPad have a camera. Currently, of the three devices (iPhone, Touch, and iPad), only the iPhone has a camera (there is speculation on the Internet that Steve Jobs has a unique iPad with a camera... but he's the head of Apple!). If you have an iPod Touch (as I do) or an iPad, you will have to take photos with a digital camera, save them in iTunes and in FabricStash, draw your stash images from the Photos app.
FabricStash allows you to have two photos for each fabric - Loscoz had an excellent suggestion, to take a photo of the end of the fabric bolt - nabbing the fiber content, width, etc., with a snapshot.
Lou19 said it would take her months to catalogue and photograph her stash. I hear you! I always think of organization as, well, a path of least resistance activity. It's wonderful to be organized as long as it doesn't cause more effort than looking for something! I'll tell you, I have gradually been cataloging my older fabric. FabricStash has been most useful as a tool when shopping - because it's all right there - so mine contains mostly recent purchases so far.
NancyinA2 asked if it were possible to input the data about your fabric on your desktop or laptop to avoid using the tiny iPod "keypad" (if you can call it that). No, unfortunately, not that I am aware of. I know others have mentioned Word documents with imbedded photos as a desktop solution for tracking a fabric stash. I am going to do some research and see if I can find a good desktop utility to track fabric. Please let me know if you have any to recommend!
After reading this story, I purchased this app and I was surprised how good the pictures of my fabric came out. It was easy. I pushed the + button in the Fabric Stash program and could choose the camera on my i-phone. I was pleased that the fabric picture looked like my fabric. Very fast and easy to use. There is room for 2 pictures for each fabric.
We have a binder that we have taped/stapled little swatches into the pages, three or four to a page, with yardage and fiber content/type. It's pretty good, you just have to keep up with it. Which . .sometimes easier said than done.
Yes, all new model iPhones have built-in cameras.
Question to everyone else: What features would you want to see added? I'm a long time home sewing enthusiast currently back at school for computer science and will be taking an mobile device development class in the fall.
From my own print/design industry experience, I can see wanting to create something that could also handle die and pigment lot info so as to be able to cross-reference colour matches from different suppliers, a yardage converter/calculator and possible a fabric type reference database.
Also, in response to Smcfarland and NancyinA2, regarding the ability to enter the data into Fabricstash via a desktop. You can. Here is how.
Use a data base or spreadsheet program. Format the entries to match those on the app. Sounds hard but it is easy. Next enter what ever you wish to fill the information. Email this to yourself. Copy and paste the email in Fabricstash (in the corresponding catagory). Done. I have done it. It works. It is far easier though to use the typepad on the phone. Good luck.
I was just starting to take pics of my fabric & realized that I wanted more than just the pic on my iPod.
Does anyone know if this app works on the iPod - no camera!
This is for Julia, Juliasew, there may be a bit of confusion here as the iPod Touch is the iPod refered to in the article about the app. The app can not work on other iPods. It must be a iPhone or iPod Touch. The upas has no camera yet, so it must have pictures emailed or synced to it from iTunes or other picture programs. I hope this helps.
Delighted to find this article. Six months later, I am searching for apps for iPhone and iPad that work for sewing, needlework, and embellishment.
Good news is that Judith Montano has several embellishment apps out with drawings and videos of stitches. There's a free download that gives you a feel for how the paid apps work.
So if you are storing any info on your iPad or iPhone, be sure there is a way to back it up somewhere other than your iTunes. Some products do this when you register them. The latest rev of Fabric Stash has this option but Pattern Pal does not yet.


It is that time of year again - everything is blooming and pollen is filling the air. While I enjoy the warmer temperatures and the flowers blooming I don't enjoy the allergy symptoms that come with it. I have suffered from allergic rhinitis for years. I remember sneezing and blowing my nose a lot - especially in the morning. My grandfather, who lived through the depression and was a World War 2 vet, would frequently give me hard time about using a lot of tissues when my nose would run. I did not receive treatment for my allergies until l was older - in middle school. Now there are very good treatments for nasal allergies - and most are available over the counter. There are several classes of medication over the counter which I will explain.
1) Antihistamines. These are the most frequently used medications for allergy treatment. Within the category of antihistamines there are 2 classes - the older sedating antihistamines (such as diphenhydramine known as Benadryl) and the newer less sedating antihistamines (like cetirizine which is known as Zyrtec). Antihistamines are taken by mouth and delivered systemically. You will get relief within an hour of taking them. The good news is that they will help with runny nose, itchy eyes, or rash. The bad news is that you also get systemic side effects - namely drowsiness. The drowsiness is definitely worse with the older antihistamines. My personal experience is that the older antihistamines are more effective taking care of my allergy symptoms. My nose is less runny while I nap! I routinely use zyrtec to help with allergy symptoms and go to work. I would have a hard time doing that on a full dose of benadryl. Antihistamines are very inexpensive. A months worth at Wal-Mart will only cost $4 if you get the generic brand - which is what personally buy.
2) Nasal steroids. These are medicines such as flonase and rhinocort. You spray the medicine right into the nose. These are topical steroids that help with inflammation in the nose and sinuses. The mention of steroid scares a lot of people away but it shouldn't. Nasal steroids are dosed in micrograms - which is one millionth of a gram. Systemic steroids - are dosed in milligrams - or one one thousandth of a gram. It is this extremely low dosing that prevents systemic side effects so they can be used chronically. Nasal steroids are used to prevent nasal allergy symptoms. A dose taken today will help in a day or two so they are not very helpful for immediate symptoms. Nasal steroids are a good adjunctive treatment for people with persistent nasal symptoms and are also reported to help with eye symptoms. They are more expensive - about $20 a month over the counter.
3) Nasal saline. Most people would not think of nasal saline as an allergy treatment. I recommend nasal saline to whoever has nasal congestion. The job of our nose is to prevent particles in the air from going deeper into our respiratory tract. The nose is effective in filtering particles 10 micrograms and larger. Pollen is about this size. Nasal saline simply washes the pollen out of your nose and sinuses. Nasal saline is inexpensive - you can get it for $2 a bottle. I recommend using nasal saline before using nasal steroids.
4) Topical opthalmic antihistamines. This is simply an antihistamine that is put directly into the eye. Despite being on several anti-allergy medications, when I work in the yard in early spring I feel like I want to scratch my eyes out. I have callouses on my eyes because I used to rub them so hard as a child when they itched. Thankfully I was introduced to opthalmic antihistamines several years ago. They provide immediate and complete relief to my itchy eyes. I am a big fan of topical anithistamines because the concentration of antihistamine in the targeted area is much higher than when you take a systemic antihistamine. Since the medicine is topical there is less systemic side effects. You can get a bottle of ketotifen opthalmic over the counter for around $10.
So if there are good treatments for seasonal allergies over the counter why go to a doctor? If symptoms persist despite over the counter treatment there are additional meds and interventions we can use to provide relief. Montelukast (singulair) is a great medicine for both allergies and asthma and still requires a prescription. I think nasal anti-histamines such as azelastine still require a presciption as well. Those are really the only 2 meds I prescribe for allergies. If your symptoms still persist you need to see an allergist.
So in summary - if allergies are causing you symptoms I would start with an non-sedating antihistamine. If you still have nasal symptoms add nasal saline and then a nasal steroid. If you still have eye symptoms use an antihistamine eye drop. After that you can talk to your primary care about montelukast or azelastine and if all that fails - look for an allergist. Enjoy your spring!


Am I late to party with this whole trend? Is everyone late to the party with the Leopard or Cheetah prints?
I think yes, to both.
I just wanted to start out and say, I feel like Cheetah and Leopard prints have been around forever, but now, for some reason, people are feeling the need to jump on the whole bandwagon. I mean, I'm not mad about bandwagons, it's just that I don't do a lot of jumping, but I sure as hell did when I saw these cuties. I was shocked that I loved them so much, and the velvet made them feel a little more luxe. I think it's due to the fact that the print isn't that busy so it doesn't make it look cheap, which I feel can sometimes happen with a busy print.
Also, paired with some acid-wash skinnies and a linen button down, the whole look is again kinda retro and kinda put-together. I love the unexpected twist of a fun print paired with a semi-structured blouse. Also, I'm not a big fan of prints, but I found when it comes to shoes I have an almost "anything goes" mentality. I mean they are, in theory, the last thing people see, so might as well make it the point to your exclamation!
Pairing prints can be fun as long as they're larger and quietly blended in. That way when you look in a mirror or at your outfit as a whole, you don't feel as if your clothes are wearing you, because that's never fun.


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Cameroon says its territory is a fruitful vine for more than 300,000 refugees
Cameroon since 2013 became a fruitful vine for more than 300,000 refugees from Nigeria and the Central Africa Republic. Apart from being sheltered, they have been clothe, fed, educated and their health and marital status catered for. Just recently in the East Region, the marriages of 46 refugees from the Central Africa republic were legalized thanks to negotiations from the Cameroonian Council authorities and the UNHCR of the East Region.
It is the second time within the period of five months that such a ceremony is being organized for refugees in the East Region. Talking about their health status, over 14 thousand children were immunized against polio and measles; the role back Malaria program characterized by the distribution of treated mosquito bed nets, immunization campaign against HIV AIDS and others have been effectively carried out in all the refugee camps of the East, Adamawa and the Far North Region.
In education, over 20,000 pupils refugee received scholarship and school needs such as Recreation Kits, ECD Kits, School in a box kits and other learning materials such as slates, chalks, pens, textbooks, pencils, etc. The refugees from Nigeria came into Cameroonian soil in 2013 following the Boko Haram threats from Northern Nigeria meanwhile those from the Central Africa Republic fled from sectarian crisis.
From 2013-2014, a total number of both Nigerian and CAR refugees were over 400,000. But in 2015 after thousands of Nigerian refugees voluntarily went back to their country, the number of refugees was reduced to over 300,000. But despite the reduction, officials decry that funds are still insufficient to keep them. The 71st General Assembly of the United Nations, will definitely supply Cameroon with the necessary strategies to handle refugee crisis given that one of their point of discussion is handling Humanitarian crisis around the world.
‹ Littoral Region: 170 road accidents in six months › SAMUEL ETO'O will not play for Antalyaspor until further notice!!!


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Art Workshop under 'Rivers of the World' Project
Thursday 09 June 2016 to Tuesday 14 June 2016
'Rivers of the World' is the British Council's flagship Arts and Education project delivered in partnership with the Thames Festival Trust. It provides opportunities and resources for teachers and pupils to learn, through a cross-curricular approach, about their local river environment and to compare this to other rivers in cities around the world. By exploring and reflecting on local and global issues, students in Bangladesh gain an international outlook and build the skills they need for life and work in an increasingly interconnected global society.
As part of the 'Rivers of the World' project, six Bangladeshi schools partnered with the UK schools and worked on rivers in the UK. The British Council organised a six-day long art workshop with these schools from 9 to 14 June 2016 which was led by one prominent UK artist Mr Richard Crooks.
Total 100 students participated in this workshop and they worked on River Thames, River Frome, River Wye and River Rother and finally produced six high-quality digital artworks. During the workshop days, the students got the opportunity to discuss the source and the growth of the rivers, their geographic advantages, the richness of the wildlife, flora and fauna, local architecture, the cultural life of the surrounding cities, etc. Also, they had the chance to know about the creative works of some world famous artists like William Morris, Henri Matisse.
"The art workshop was very innovative for our school. It was an opportunity for my students to exercise their creativity. Before this project, we never really wondered about how to motivate our students to explore their imagination and creative thinking," said Khodeza Begum, Teacher of Alhaj Anowara Begum High School, Chittagong, Bangladesh at the workshop.
Each school has been given a certificate of participation and the previous year's catalogue which also includes artworks done by them last year. Through the art workshop, students could explore the excitement of learning outside the classroom, in collaboration with the UK school partnerships.
Last year, they produced six artworks based on one Bangladeshi river, River Karnaphuli and the artworks were displayed as part of the Totally Thames Festival at Southbank, London. Also, this year's artwork is going to be displayed in the Totally Thames Festival in September 2016 in Southbank, London.


The main producer is Ms.Toshiko-Hamasaki 86years old. After her husband began to challenge the reduced-pesticides-cultivation since 1970 and passed away in 1991, Toshiko-san takes over his soul and grows them. These are such Beni-Hassaks. They are not too sweet and not too sour, and their cells which have much water as if they would burst. The fruit has seeds. As for size, there are L (diameter approx.9cm), 2L (diameter approx.10cm) and 3L (diameter approx.12cm), but please leave it to the producer (sender). There are from 12 to 18 Beni-Hassaks in a 5kg box. She will deliver you by RT service.
The main producer is Ms.Toshiko-Hamasaki 86years old. After her husband began to challenge the reduced-pesticides-cultivation since 1970 and passed away in 1991, Toshiko-san takes over his soul and grows them. These are such Beni-Hassaks. They are not too sweet and not too sour, and their cells which have much water as if they would burst. The fruit has seeds. As for size, there are L (diameter approx.9cm), 2L (diameter approx.10cm) and 3L (diameter approx.12cm), but please leave it to the producer (sender). There are from 25 to 35 Beni-Hassaks in a 10kg box. She will deliver you by RT service.


WASHINGTON – The United States government has decided to stop any monies it can afford a United Nations agency that helps millions of Palestinian refugees complete a decade-long policy of support, according to a former senior US aid organization  Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and top Middle East adviser, urged Jared Kushner to force Palestinian politicians to drop the demands of many of these refugees to return to their homes, "They call their homeland," he said former civil servant R. David Harden, who worked at the United States Agency for International Development until April.
Every year by the end of September, the State Department transfers money to the United Nations Relief Agency, known as Unrwa, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. Earlier this year, the State Department has released $ 60 million of $ 350 million for the agency, but Mr. Kushner and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, have decided not to give the remaining $ 290 million, said Mr. Harden, who was informed Plans and monitoring of projects in the Palestinian territories for more than a decade.
The decision was made at a meeting between officers this month, Harden said. Mr Pompeo argued against a drastic cut in funding, but Mr Kushner took a strong stance and won, he added.
"What we're seeing right now is a capricious movement that carries a very high risk of unsettling the region," Harden said, noting that the relief organization supports about five million refugees in the Middle East.
Mr. Kushner is working on a proposal for a peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is looking for a way to get Palestinian leaders to drop demands for the right of most or all of the five million refugees to return to the country under Israeli control.
said When asked about the decision on Thursday evening, a State Department official declined to comment.
The United States is the largest donor to the United Nations agency, providing about 25 percent of its annual funding. The rest comes, among others, from European and Middle Eastern countries.
The Trump administration announced last week that $ 200 million was diverted to Palestinian aid in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This money has been allocated by the International Development Agency Congress and is part of an aid package granted annually to the Palestinians. Approximately $ 35 million would continue to flow in this channel, Harden said.
Elizabeth Campbell, spokeswoman for the UN aid organization, said the government has not yet informed the Trump government (19659002) "We continue to be grateful for the funding that the United States has provided so far," she said. Campbell noted that, among other things, the Agency provided food aid to half of the population in Gaza, ensuring that all children had access to education there.
"Unrwa is a public good that provides critical services such as vaccinations and antenatal care, which is otherwise unavailable to refugees," she said.
At a security conference in Washington on Tuesday, Nikki R. Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, was asked for reports that the government intended to provide funding for the charity. The decision was first published on Tuesday by Foreign Policy.
"First of all, you see the fact that there are an endless number of refugees who continue to receive help," said Ms. Haley, who was a critic at the agency. "But more importantly, the Palestinians continue to beat America."
Haley said she has made it her business to show Mr Trump the list of countries to which the United States donates, and then to mention that not all of these countries support the United States at the United Nations voted. She said that the lack of support from Palestinian leaders has been particularly annoying lately.
Last week, John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, visited Israel and was equally critical of the United Nations Relief Organization, calling it "a failed mechanism."
. Harden said the Israeli government has traditionally opposed action to cut US funds against the agency, and Israeli leaders may still call American officials to persuade them to change their minds.
Gardiner Harris contributed reports from Washington and Rick Gladstone from New York.


4702.1 Miles (7567.2 Kilometers / 4083.3 Nautical Miles).
Approximate flight duration time (for a non-stop flight) from Tucuman, Argentina to Columbus, Ohio is 9 hrs, 45 mins. This is the In-The-Air flight time. You should add the taxi time before take-off and taxi time after landing for the total flight duration time. You should also consider airport wait times and possible delays due to bad weather, etc.
You can find out what time you arrive at your destination (Columbus) by checking the time difference between Tucuman and Columbus.


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bonomi valves
red white valve
milwaukee valves
jflow
asco valves
flo tite
gc valves
ValveMan Early Beginnings
We're often asked, "How did you get into the valve business?" The truth is...it's in our blood. It all started on an oil tanker traveling around the world. Fred Welsford, then the youngest captain in the United States Merchant Marines, always loved going into the boiler room while on the ship. After World War II ended and he retired from the Merchant Marines, he needed a job; soon after he found himself selling industrial valves. The ValveMan valve store started in 1965, in the basement of Fred and Ethel Welsford's modest home in Philadelphia, PA. They were first generation business owners who quickly gained a reputation for supplying top quality valves all over the world while offering unparalleled customer service.
Moving On Up...
Over the years, the business continued to grow. And, in 1983 Fred and Ethel Welsford moved their business out of the basement of their Philadelphia home to its current location at 310 Commerce Drive in Exton, PA. However, they did not come alone. They were joined by their son, Gil Welsford Sr, who would now be accompanying them on their journey through the valve industry. Learning the business from a young age, Gil Welsford Sr quickly became known throughout the valve industry as simply "The Valve Man," because of his remarkable knowledge, expertise, and passion for valves. Gil Sr. began expanding the sales and the company's already impressive product line, developing relationships with such manufacturers as: JFlow, TRIAC, AT-Controls...and--later--Apollo valves,Spears valves, Red White Valve, DMIC valves, and Bonomi valves. From 1983 to 2010, the business steadily grew, and Gil Sr eventually became the sole owner of the family company. Like his father before, Gil Sr. would soon begin grooming his own son to follow in his footsteps to become the next ValveMan. The Welsford's have not grown along either. The family business has grown from the sole employees being Fred and Ethel to now employing 16 full time staff. ValveMan could not have grown without the family culture that is fostered every single day at ValveMan. Each and every employee that joins the team does not just join a company, they join a family.
Generation Number Three - Enter Gilbert Welsford Jr.
Jump forward to 2010. Gilbert Welsford Jr, who began learning the family business as a young boy sitting on his father's office floor, playing with his toy 3-piece ball valve. Gil Jr. is on the same path as his father to become the next generation of valve experts in the family, while Gil Sr. continues to take pride in the company's forward thinking culture and product expansion. As always, incredible service is the bedrock of how the company operates. It was also around 2010 that ValveMan decided to take their business online, offering some of the best engineered valves in the world that can be purchased in just a few quick clicks.
ValveMan Today
The year 2017 is shaping up to be one of the best years in ValveMan history. We have decided to refocus our efforts and get more refined on our product line. Our ambition...to be the best valve store in the United States of America. It's really that simple. It what we love; it's what we do best.


This Spare Blade Head for the Mars 26 Blade Coat King is ideal for use when any original blades have grown dull. This spare blade is a professional accessory designed to strip, finish and de-matt canine hair. Features 26 stainless steel curved blades, round edged for safety. This replacement blade head easily attaches to your original Coat King via a simple nut and screw system.