The National Commission for Women (NCW) has invited applications for recruitment to the posts of Under Secretary, Senior Research Officer, Pay and Accounts Officer, Section Officer and Assistant. Last date for application is June 10, 2014.
About NCWThe National Commission for Women (NCW) is a statutory body established for women in 1992 by Government of India to represent the rights of women in India and to provide a voice for their issues and concerns.
Eligibility: Age of the candidate should not be above 56 years. Candidate should have a graduation or post graduation degree in any stream and have knowledge of administrative matters.
Eligibility: Age of the candidate should not be above 56 years. Candidate should have a Masters Degree in Sociology or Master in Social Work or Women's studies with 5 years of experience.
Eligibility: Age of the candidate should not be above 56 years. Candidate should have a Degree and background of Commerce.
Eligibility: Age of the candidate should not be above 56 years. Candidate should have completed graduation or equivalent and have 2 years of experience in administrative matters.
Eligibility: Age of the candidate should not be above 56 years. Candidate should have completed graduation and have 5 years of experience in administrative matters.
Eligible candidates will be selected for the posts on the basis of performance in an interview.
Interested candidates can apply by submitting a duly filled application form with attested copies of relevant certificates/documents, attested copies of ACRs for the last five years and Vigilance Clearance Certificate to: the Under Secretary, National Commission for Women (NCW), 4 Deen Dayal Upadhayay Marg, New Delhi - 110 002.


In celebration of Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts' 15th anniversary, the group is offering an exclusive selection of packages that showcase the best of its two brands, Banyan Tree and Angsana.
The 15th anniversary specials, "Best of Banyan Tree" and "Best of Angsana" packages are available from 18 May 2009 at banyantree.com and angsana.com respectively, for stays from 18 May to 30 September.
A limited period 50% savings await guests who book between 1-15 June for stays from 1 June to 30 September 2009.
The "Best of Banyan Tree" and "Best of Angsana" packages showcase the most popular villa categories at different Banyan Tree and Angsana properties.
These include the Spa Pool Villa at Banyan Tree Phuket, Premier Suite at Banyan Tree Bangkok, Deluxe Pool Villa at Banyan Tree Lijiang and Courtyard Pool Villa at the newly launched Banyan Tree Mayakoba; at Angsana, the most popular accommodation categories include the Deluxe Beachfront Pool Villa at Angsana Velavaru, One-Bedroom Suite at Angsana Bintan and the Garden Wing Rooms at Maison Souvannaphoum.
In addition to a two-night stay in the most popular accommodation category, guests who book the 15th anniversary special will be assured of a holistic immersion into the Banyan Tree and Angsana experience, complete with savouring a dinner for two at the hotel's signature resaurant and a rejuvenating 90-minute spa session during the stay.
For instance, guests who book the "Best of Banyan Tree" at Banyan Tree Phuket will enjoy a delectable dining experience at the signature Saffron restaurant, renowned for its creative and contemporary selection of Thai cuisine. Included in the package is a treatment at Banyan Tree Spa Phuket, where its exotic blend of massages and body treatments are inspired by traditional Asian health and beauty remedies. Guests can choose from a range of 90-min massage sessions including favourites like Lomi Lomi, Swedish, Thai Classic and Balinese.


Can Microsoft persuade gamers to go wireless?
Microsoft's Andre Reuter has told TechRadar that he believes that the next Sidewinder gaming mouse will be good enough to convince gamers that they don't need a wired mouse.
Gamers have traditionally been reticent to use wireless mice because of a latency lag.
Because high-end competitive gaming is all about reaction times, the smallest delay can cause a huge difference, and this has meant that wireless technology has never been the first choice for gamers.
However, Microsoft hardware's Reuter insists that the Sidewinder X8 mouse – which will be hitting shelves in February next year and will feature Microsoft's proprietary BlueTrack technology – will change even professional gamers' attitudes.
"We did intensive research because we were aware of gamers' attitudes towards wired mice and the latency problem with wireless," Reuter told TechRadar at Microsoft's showcase in London.
"We feel that with BlueTrack coupled with our wireless technology, and we did the tests into this, there is NO latency difference between wired and wireless.
"We really dotted Is and crossed the Ts to makes sure that technically it was equal to wired mice.
"It was the key research point of the mouse because of the way that gamers feel about wireless mice."
Reuter is aware that persuading gamers to trial an expensive wireless high-end mouse may be tricky - but he is confident that the quality of the Sidewinder X8 will shine through.
"Now we will work with experts by giving them a mouse to test and compare with a wired equivalent. We've also been working with some of the clans to get word out among that group that 'hey there is no difference'.
"We know there are a lot of people whose perception is that wired is better, so, yes, we have some activities planned to break this down."


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International Socialist Review Issue 13, August-September 2000
Eight Years of Clinton-Gore: The Price of Lesser-Evilism
By LANCE SELFA
NOTHING BETTER exemplified the spirit of the Clinton-Gore years than the May 24, 2000, Democratic fundraiser held in Washington, D.C.'s MCI Center. Pulling in a record $26.5 million in one evening, the Democrats paid tribute to their fundraiser—in—chief, outgoing President Bill Clinton. But unlike the blue-blooded Republicans, who dined on gourmet goat cheese at their recent fundraiser, the Democrats ate barbecue served on paper plates. In keeping with this fake populism, organizers encouraged all who attended to wear blue jeans.1
The MCI Center spectacle typified the administration it honored. Like the Clinton-Gore administration, it hid its pro-corporate agenda behind a fog of populist rhetoric. Like the administration, it beat the Republicans at their own game.
The Democratic Party moneybags who gathered in the MCI Center could thank the Clinton-Gore regime for producing "prosperity and progress" for them, the richest Americans. Yet this was an administration that arrived in Washington dedicated–in the words of its election manifesto, Putting People First–to helping ordinary people "who worked hard, and played by the rules."
Putting profits first
Clinton won the 1992 election calling for change from Reagan-Bush's "12 years of trickle-down economics." Instead, in his first couple of years as president, he pushed harder for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 1994 crime bill than he did for anything that helped win him the election. The health care system overhaul that was supposed to be his signature achievement collapsed in 1994. Public disappointment ran so high that the 1994 election delivered the Congress–a Democratic bastion for 60 years–into the hands of the Gingrich Republicans.
Within a year, Clinton figured out a modus operandi to deal with the Republican Congress and to recapture public support in the polls. Clinton adopted most of the GOP program, including its retrograde "welfare reform." At the same time, he staged high-profile battles with the Republican Neanderthals to show that they were "going too far." This strategy revived Clinton's presidency.
But after regaining the initiative, Clinton immediately embraced "bipartisanship," signing off on a 1997 budget agreement that slashed billions from important programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Yet even this accommodation with the right-wing Congress won him few friends, as the same Congress spent most of the next year trying to drive him from office. The vigor with which Clinton and his surrogates fought off the Republican scandalmongers contrasted sharply with their failure to mount campaigns for health care reform or civil rights.
Clintonism may appear as nothing more than a series of poll-driven maneuvers intended to keep Clinton one step ahead of his political foes. But from the start, the Clinton-Gore administration pursued a well thought-out and deeply conservative political project. This "New Democrat" agenda emerged in the 1980s as the program of a faction of conservative Democrats determined to break the Democratic Party's identification with organized labor, civil rights and other traditionally liberal causes. Embodied in the corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), this faction succeeded in capturing the party machinery in 1992. It placed two of its chief leaders–Clinton and Gore–at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Four core ideas embodied Clintonism, according to journalist Ronald Brownstein: "opportunity and responsibility," "economic globalism," "fiscal discipline," and "government as catalyst."2 "Opportunity and responsibility" describes the Clinton-Gore "idea that government should both help those willing to help themselves and enforce common standards of behavior." Clinton put it more crudely in describing his plans to force welfare recipients to work for their benefits: "We will do with you. We will not do for you."3
"Economic globalism" means the single-minded pursuit of free trade and free market policies around the world. "Fiscal discipline" describes Clinton economic policies that generated record federal budget surpluses and the lowest level of government spending since the Eisenhower administration.4 Finally, "government as catalyst" describes a series of small-scale initiatives–from establishing a right to non paid family medical leave to tax credits for college tuition–that are Clinton-Gore hallmarks. All of these share similar characteristics. They sounded like good reforms of a deeply flawed system, and sometimes they even addressed critical social needs. But they were usually so minimal as to come nowhere near filling the social need they were supposed to meet. What's more, they tended to stress private-sector initiatives, as when the administration marketed tax breaks for business as its anti poverty program during its 1999 "poverty tour" of depressed areas.
Conservative David Frum, writing in Weekly Standard, captured the essence of Clintonism:
Since 1994, Clinton has offered the Democratic Party a devilish bargain: Accept and defend policies you hate (welfare reform, the Defense of Marriage Act), condone and excuse crimes (perjury, campaign finance abuses) and I'll deliver you the executive branch of government....He has assuaged the Left by continually proposing bold new programs–the expansion of Medicare to 55 year olds, a national day-care program, the reversal of welfare reform, the hooking up of the Internet to every classroom, and now the socialization of the means of production via Social Security. And he has placated the Right by dropping every one of these programs as soon as he proposed it. Clinton makes speeches, Rubin and Greenspan make policy, the Left gets words, the Right gets deeds.5
Clintonomics: boom for whom?
"It's the economy stupid." By now, nearly everyone has heard this slogan of Clinton's 1992 campaign advisers. It held the key to Clinton's victory over Bush as the country remained mired in a recession in the early 1990s. Clinton took office promising to focus on the economy "like a laser beam." In keeping with his populist campaign themes, he pledged a "stimulus package" to create jobs and a "middle-class tax cut" to put money in ordinary people's pockets. While these two pledges proved popular in the campaign, Clinton jettisoned both of them within months of taking office. The stimulus package fell to a Republican filibuster in the Congress. But Clinton withdrew the tax-cut proposal of his own accord.
That's because his central economic policy–the 1993 budget plan–enshrined "deficit reduction" as the administration's chief aim. The bill, passed without a single Republican vote in Congress, raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans, expanded the earned income tax credit for the working poor, and increased a variety of regressive excise taxes. Abandoning his proposals for "investments" in education and job training, Clinton's "deficit reduction plan" won support on Wall Street. "Clinton's willingness to raise taxes to close the deficit proved reassuring to a different kind of traditionally Republican constituency–the bond traders, who, initially at least, brought long term interest rates down," wrote E. J. Dionne. "The bond sellers made Clinton's willingness to support some sort of levy on the middle class a test of his 'seriousness' about deficit reduction."6
The other major piece of economic legislation passed in 1993–ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in October–added another fundamental plank to the Clinton-Gore economic program. Clinton and Gore went all-out to win NAFTA, shunting aside protests from labor and environmentalists. If the 1993 budget plan enshrined "deficit reduction" as a domestic economic strategy, NAFTA established "free trade" as the holy writ of the Clinton-Gore foreign economic strategy. Subsequent free trade initiatives, such as the 1994 ratification of the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the 2000 approval of "permanent normal trade relations" with China, showed that no modern administration has been as aggressive in pushing deals for American business around the globe.
The administration's pro-business policies went farther than simply "deficit reduction." Clinton and his treasury secretaries Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers allowed conservative Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan a free hand to jack up short-term interest rates at any hint of inflation, real or imagined. The Clinton Justice Department's current antitrust action against Microsoft Corp. aside, the administration has actively encouraged deregulation and monopolization in the military, telecommunications, and finance industries.
And despite a lot of pro-environment rhetoric from the administration, big business has had little to fear in the area of environmental regulation. "We just don't have unlimited resources to enforce all these measures and that can create a backlash [from corporations]," said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner. "So we need to be realistic." For the Clinton-Gore administration, "being realistic" meant sacrificing environmental protection at the first hint of any corporate objection. After fierce industry lobbying, the administration preserved sweetheart deals allowing the mining industry to pillage federal lands and the timber industry to clear-cut old-growth forests. In 1995 it opened some federal land holdings to oil drilling–a decision that enriched Occidental Petroleum and the vice president, an Occidental stockholder. Browner even allowed sugar growers and land developers–including a few Clinton-Gore campaign contributors–to dump polluted water into the Florida Everglades. The Clinton-Gore administration signed the 1997 Kyoto Agreement, a worldwide treaty aimed to limit global warming. But it has not even tried to win treaty ratification in the U.S. Senate.7
By the time the GOP took over Congress in 1995, Clinton had already adopted "Republican-lite" economic policies. Only Clinton's embrace of the goal of a balanced federal budget by 2002 went further. As it turned out, his "deficit reduction" policies produced the first federal budget surplus in a generation in 1998. Clinton and Gore have recently set their sights on eliminating the federal debt for the first time since 1835. Their conversion to the balanced-budget religion has virtually ruled out any major government initiative to expand access to education, health care, or Social Security. In the early 1990s, with the economy pulling out of recession, Clinton argued for "shared sacrifice" and budget austerity to "get our economic house in order."
Today, with the budget running surpluses, Clinton and Gore continue to tout the need for austerity. Gore recently ruled out stimulative deficit spending in the face of a future recession. Instead, Gore said, a recession "should be viewed as an opportunity to [downsize government further] before any other options are considered." For echoing Depression-era President Herbert Hoover, Gore "should wash his mouth out with soap," said Nobel Prize—winning economist Robert Solow.8
From Wall Street's point of view, Clinton's eight years in office have to be viewed as a smashing success. When he took office, the New York Stock Exchange's Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 3,300. At the time of writing, it stands at more than 10,000. Inflation dropped to imperceptible levels and, in May 2000, unemployment hit a 30-year low of 3.9 percent. Between 1992 and 1997, corporate profits grew by an average of 15 percent annually.9 The U.S. had clearly zoomed ahead as the world's leading economy.
Yet all that glittered in the "miracle economy" wasn't gold. Of the 22.5 million jobs created since the American boom began, about half of them pay less than $7 an hour. And the number of part-time workers desiring full-time work, combined with the number of low-wage ($7/hour or less) workers, is three times the number of workers without jobs.10 Low unemployment has boosted wages, but only back to 1989 levels in real terms.
To achieve even that standard of living, Americans work six weeks longer per year than they did in the 1970s. Even with the tax increases in Clinton's 1993 budget plan, the wealthy pay a substantially lower percentage of their income in taxes than they did in 1977.11 Meanwhile, 38 million Americans remain poor by the government's own statistics, which underestimate the true level of poverty, according to many experts.
This growing gap between rich and poor was no accident. It followed directly from the Clinton-Gore economic program. Whenever Clinton faced a choice between economic policies favoring Wall Street or those that might help Main Street, "in almost every instance, [Clinton] took the route favored by Wall Street, business executives and conventional economists, not the ones that ordinary people might have favored and that almost certainly would have been easier to defend politically."12
Undoing the New Deal
Of all the Clinton-Gore administration's actions over the course of its eight years, none will have a more far-reaching–and destructive–impact than Clinton's signing of the 1996 welfare repeal bill. Peter Edelman, a Health and Human Services official who resigned in protest, called the bill "the worst thing Bill Clinton has done." The welfare repeal bill represented one 1992 election promise Clinton didn't break. Pledging to "end welfare as we know it" during the campaign, Clinton opened to door to the reactionary legislation he signed in 1996. Welfare repeal ended the 61-year-old guarantee of some income for the poorest Americans. It eliminated federal standards for welfare benefits. It imposed a five-year lifetime limit and a two-year continuous limit on benefits. It barred immigrants from receiving welfare and cut $24 billion from the federal food-stamp program. It marked the first time that a piece of the 1935 Social Security Act was repealed.
Clinton's own Health and Human Services Department estimated that the bill would throw at least 1.1 million children into poverty. Other experts produced estimates three times higher. Despite these terrible consequences, Clinton received very little organized opposition to welfare repeal. Edelman conceded that
so many of those who would have shouted their opposition from the rooftops if a Republican president had done this were boxed in by their desire to see the president re-elected and in some cases by their own votes for the bill.13
Clinton didn't sign the bill because a Republican Congress forced him to. With no chance of losing to Sen. Robert Dole in the 1996 elections, he didn't even have the excuse of political expediency. He signed it because he supported it. "Welfare reform" had always topped the New Democrat agenda.
The economic expansion has forestalled the full impact of welfare repeal. And the five-year term limits will kick in when Clinton is tending to his presidential library in 2002. But already millions of poor people have felt the cuts at the state level. Almost half a million children who would have been lifted from poverty before welfare repeal passed remain in poverty, according to one study.14 The welfare caseload has dropped from 5 million families in 1994 to around 2.5 million today. Federal and state governments spend $10.6 billion less than they did in 1994. But most states have pocketed federal welfare block-grant money rather than making it available to poor people.15 Meanwhile, demands for food assistance and emergency shelter showed their largest annual increases since the early 1990s in cities across the country, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.16
Few would have predicted that "welfare repeal" would stand as the Clinton-Gore administration's most far-reaching change to social policy. Clinton arrived in office promising to pass national health care reform. But in seeking a "New Democrat" solution that preserved the central role of the biggest insurance companies in managing the health care system, he handcuffed himself from the start. As soon as small insurance companies mounted an attack on his 1994 proposal, Republicans and many congressional Democrats lined up in opposition. With every attack on health care reform, Clinton retreated. In the end, health care reform wasn't so much defeated as it was compromised away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left. The bill never even came to a vote in Congress. Since, Clinton has advocated smaller-scale reforms like a toothless "Patients' Bill of Rights," and Medicare coverage for prescription drugs.
Clinton often takes credit for defending Medicare and Social Security against Republican efforts to slash and burn both. But when the administration completed the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement (BBA) with the congressional Republican leadership, it endorsed the GOP's long-term goal of gutting spending on "entitlements" like Medicare and Medicaid. Between 2000 and 2005, the BBA will impose more than twice the $112 billion in Medicare cuts the Congressional Budget Office predicted. These austerity measures accounted for the first-ever annual decline in Medicare spending in 1999. Millions have already felt the cuts in higher fees and fewer services. Between 1997 and 1998, the number of sick and elderly receiving Medicare-financed home health-care services fell an astounding 45 percent, with 600,000 fewer people receiving care.17 The BBA's draconian spending "caps" on the rest of "discretionary" programs from home heating assistance to legal services could force unprecedented cuts of 15 to 20 percent over the next eight years.18 Under the BBA, Clinton-Gore literally abandoned millions of poor, sick, elderly, and disabled Americans.
What's more, the Clinton-Gore agreement with the GOP laid the groundwork for moving Medicare from a system that guarantees benefits to one that will provide vouchers so patients can buy insurance–if they can afford it. In other words, this free market solution will reintroduce all of the worst aspects of for-profit health care that Medicare was created to combat. At the same time, while denouncing Republican attempts to privatize Social Security, Clinton and Gore's proposal to invest some Social Security money in the stock market already starts down that road. Unless these free market plans to wreck Medicare and Social Security are stopped, tens of millions of Americans face a cruel future.19
Kicking labor in the teeth
In 1992, Clinton won labor support with promises to ban scabs in strikes and to fight for a minimum wage increase. Instead, he spent most of his political capital on legislation that organized labor opposed. Clinton twisted arms and passed the pork barrel to whip up support for NAFTA's passage in 1993. At the time, he even denounced labor for using "real roughshod, muscle-bound tactics" to oppose the free trade deal. But when congressional Democrats introduced the anti-scab bill in 1994, Clinton barely lifted a finger as the bill fell to a Republican Senate filibuster. The AFL-CIO's political impotence–and the 1994 "Republican revolution"–provoked a fight inside the federation. In 1995, the federation ousted the encrusted Kirkland leadership in favor of John Sweeney's "New Voices" slate.
The Gingrich GOP and the 1995 changing of the guard at the top of the AFL-CIO brought closer coordination between the White House and organized labor. When the Democrats controlled Congress during Clinton's first term, Clinton did not mention the minimum wage once in any public statement. But with the GOP in charge of Congress, the minimum wage became a potent issue against the Gingrichites. The administration managed to push a minimum wage increase through the right-wing Congress, shoring up its labor support for the 1996 and 1998 elections.
Despite owing Democratic congressional gains in 1996 and 1998 to AFL-CIO get-out-the-vote drives, the Clinton administration had no qualms about tossing labor aside when it could score points with big business. In February 1997, Clinton used the 1926 Railway Labor Act to outlaw an American Airlines pilots' strike. "[E]veryone understands that [American Airlines CEO] Bob Crandall's latest coup is getting Bill Clinton to side with management over labor," the Clinton-hating Wall Street Journal editorialized.20 Under its "Reinventing OSHA" initiative–which stresses "partnership" with business and "voluntary" compliance with regulations–the administration turned its back on workplace safety. During the Clinton-Gore administration, the number of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace inspections is at its lowest, and the percentage of serious charges against corporations OSHA dismissed is at its highest since Congress created the agency in 1973.
Labor displayed a kind of schizophrenia about the administration. It wanted the White House to take it seriously as a "partner," but it knew the White House wouldn't return the favor. Still, the AFL-CIO was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to prove its loyalty to the New Democrats. In the lead-up to the 1999 WTO summit in Seattle, Sweeney joined with a dozen major corporate CEOs to endorse the Clinton trade policy. But no amount of loyalty to Clinton-Gore brought labor much consideration. Sweeney's signature had hardly dried on the pro-WTO declaration when the White House announced its intention to flout labor and environmental standards in a trade deal with China. Labor exacted some measure of revenge in the streets of Seattle.
Likewise, Sweeney engineered an early federation endorsement of Gore in 1999, helping Gore to push aside a challenge from New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley. Labor ignored the fact that Gore, as the official in charge of the administration's "reinventing government" program slashed the federal workforce by 17 percent (377,000 workers).21 Only a few months later, the AFL-CIO and Gore found themselves again on opposite sides of the vote for permanent normal trading status with China. To date, the federation remains firmly in Gore's camp.
Feeding the prison industrial complex
While Clinton and Gore presided over a retreat of government responsibility to meet human needs, the administration continuously expanded the government's policing of every aspect of life. Two-thirds of congressional Democrats supported Clinton-Gore's 1994 Omnibus Crime Control Act. This $33 billion monstrosity expanded the use of the federal death penalty to 60 crimes, appropriated $10 billion for a vast expansion of prison building, and offered money to localities to hire 100,000 police. In 1996, Clinton's Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act greatly curtailed death row prisoners' habeas corpus appeals and established arbitrary time limits on death row appeals. On Clinton's watch, the U.S. prison population nearly doubled and the number of executions jumped to its highest level in four decades.
With Clinton's full support, a spate of bills supposedly directed at fighting terrorism took away ordinary people's civil rights. Under the 1996 "antiterrorism" legislation, Americans can be prosecuted for raising money for organizations the government considers "terrorist." Hundreds of legal immigrants who have lived in this country for years have been arrested and deported because immigration officials found that they were convicted of petty crimes years ago. As in Third World dictatorships, suspects can be arrested, charged, and convicted on the grounds of secret testimony that the defendant's lawyer can't challenge.
The Clinton-Gore agenda reeked of an authoritarian moralism that meted out punishment to ordinary people who didn't conform to the administration's approved standards of "personal responsibility." Clinton's Housing and Urban Development Department in 1995 announced a "one-strike-and-you're-out" policy of expelling whole families from public housing on the mere suspicion that one family member was using drugs. The 1996 welfare reform law requires women to disclose the identity of their children's fathers under penalty of losing benefits. This dovetailed nicely with the Clinton-Gore crusade against "deadbeat" dads. Clinton filled his 1996 reelection campaign with proposals the Christian Right could endorse: V-chips in televisions, teenage sexual abstinence, and school uniforms. Twice, Clinton signed bills censoring content on the Internet and cable television. Both times, the Supreme Court overturned them. All of this from a man who told his impeachment inquisitors to keep their noses out of his personal life.
Civil rights: Lots of "dialogue," little action
It hardly needs to be said that the Clinton-Gore administration's law-and-order policies–and their crusades for "personal responsibility"–fell the heaviest on African Americans, Latinos, and other racial minorities. This was no accident, because abandoning any notion of government action to correct racial injustice has been central to New Democrat politics from the start. In fact, the conservative Democrats who launched the DLC saw it largely as a vehicle to counter Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. At best, the Clinton-Gore administration has promoted a "race-neutral" approach to social policy that simply tried to avoid issues of racial discrimination. At worst, it pandered to racism by scapegoating Black welfare recipients or Latino immigrants. On several occasions, it took actions it knew to be discriminatory.
Clinton signaled his retreat on civil rights early when he abandoned Lani Guinier, his original choice to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in the face of a hysterical right-wing campaign branding Guinier a "quota queen." When conservatives and the Supreme Court attacked affirmative action programs, Clinton-Gore again retreated. While claiming a posture of wanting to "mend" rather than "end" affirmative action, Clinton ordered the end of dozens of federal affirmative action "set-aside" programs. "I've done more to eliminate programs–affirmative action programs–I didn't think were fair," Clinton boasted in one of the 1996 presidential debates, "and to tighten others up than my predecessors have since affirmative action's been around."22 Clinton operatives actually sabotaged the 1996 campaign against an anti-affirmative action California ballot initiative. If Clinton's Democrats took a strong stand against the initiative, they argued, it would only energize conservative voters, whose turnout could jeopardize Clinton's reelection support in California.23
While refusing to take any risks to oppose racism, the Clinton-Gore administration acted consciously to perpetuate racism in other cases. The administration pressed the Congressional Black Caucus to drop from the 1994 crime bill a "Racial Justice Act" that required assurances that the death penalty wouldn't be administered in a racially discriminatory way. And the administration refused to change federal drug sentencing laws on crack cocaine that overwhelmingly discriminate against Black offenders. In light of this sorry record, it was hard to take seriously Clinton's 1997 "Presidential Initiative on Race." Clinton established a commission of respected individuals who could have used their positions to call for a national commitment to fight racism. When the commission finally issued its report in 1998, it included few specific proposals. The administration hoped for such an outcome, as one commission member, former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean–a Republican–pointed out: "Race is very divisive. As the year wore on, people became–not the board, but the people in the Administration–became concerned. We were not encouraged to be bold. My recommendation was much bolder than anything contained in this report."24
Clinton and Gore's record on issues of civil rights for other oppressed groups offers no cause for celebration either. To win support from women's organizations, Clinton had pledged to appoint a significant number of women to top-ranking positions in his cabinet. When women's groups pressed Clinton to appoint more women than he initially announced in 1993, Clinton attacked them as "bean counters" who were "playing quota games." On the election trail, Clinton had pledged to pass a "Freedom of Choice Act" to guarantee the right to abortion. But after his election, he barely mentioned it again. Clinton twice vetoed congressional bans on so-called partial-birth abortions. Yet he allowed congressionally imposed restrictions on abortion for federal employees, District of Columbia residents, and Medicaid recipients to pass.25 In 1998, he proposed a $22 billion expansion of child-care benefits. When the GOP Congress voted it down, he stopped talking about child-care benefits. Finally, all of the attacks on working people Clinton sponsored–from welfare "reform" to Medicare cuts–disproportionately affect women.
It's likewise with Clinton and Gore's positions on gay and lesbian rights. Clinton didn't answer to the Christian Right, and he appointed a few openly gay advisers. But on most of the main issues on which the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force lobbied, the Clinton administration was on the other side. Clinton's 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" surrender to Pentagon bigots led to a 70 percent increase in discharges of gay service members over the Bush administration's final year. In 1996, Clinton signed the GOP-inspired Defense of Marriage Act, barring states from approving same-sex marriage. He then touted his support for the bill in ads on Christian radio stations during his 1996 reelection campaign. Despite this, the HRC made Clinton the honored guest at its annual 1997 dinner.26
Cold War lite
In 1993, the Clinton administration inherited a favorable position for the U.S. as a world power. Two years after the disappearance of its chief military rival, the Soviet Union, the U.S. stood alone as the world's superpower. As the only military power with a global reach, it spent more on intelligence services than most countries spent on their entire military apparatuses. The U.S. and its allies accounted for 80 percent of world military spending.27
The time was ripe for a "peace dividend," a major cut in military spending that would free up resources for spending on health care, education, and other social needs that had taken a backseat during the Cold War. Instead, Clinton took the opposite course. Clinton's plan for the post—Cold War military adopted most of the outgoing Bush administration's assumptions. It preserved a Cold War—sized military after the Cold War. The U.S. now spends about 85 percent of what it did at the height of the Cold War to maintain a military with the power to intervene anywhere in the world. In 1998, Clinton announced a six-year boost to the military budget of $112 billion, including a go-ahead to the Pentagon's biggest boondoggle, a "national missile defense" system. Ironically, the $112 billion figure corresponded almost exactly to a 1996 General Accounting Office estimate of the cost to make decrepit U.S. school buildings livable for the nation's school children.
When Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's advisers recently attacked the Clinton-Gore administration for presiding over a decline in military "readiness," former Reagan administration Pentagon official Lawrence Korb rose to their defense. Korb noted that military budgets under Clinton and Gore actually spent more than President Bush had planned had he won the 1992 election. The budget for training, readiness, and maintenance is actually 40 percent higher per person in uniform than it was under Bush, Korb pointed out.28 Six of Clinton's eight budgets called for increases in military spending.
Clinton-Gore dispatched troops around the world far more than any other modern administration. Before launching the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, Clinton sent U.S. forces into combat situations 46 times. This compares to only 26 times for Presidents Ford (4), Carter (1), Reagan (14) and Bush (7) combined.29 Clinton, the one-time anti—Vietnam War protester, continued Bush's 1992 invasion of Somalia, invaded Haiti in 1994, bombed Serbia in 1995 and 1999, Sudan and Afghanistan in 1997, and Iraq almost continuously throughout his administration. To force North Korea into negotiations, Clinton threatened in 1994 a war that could have provoked a nuclear conflict. In 1995, the U.S. aided its Croatian ally in the ethnic cleansing of more than 170,000 Serbs. And it has remained the main enforcer of genocidal sanctions on Iraq, which have killed more than 1 million Iraqis since 1990. In June 2000, the Congress passed the administration's request for $1.3 billion in aid to the Colombian military.
The administration's support for sanctions in Iraq and for the death squads in Colombia belied all of its talk about establishing a foreign policy based on human rights. But this had been clear from the start. After denouncing the Bush administration for ordering the forcible repatriation of Haitians fleeing persecution from their country, Clinton did an about face. Bush's policy became Clinton's policy. Blasting Bush for "coddling dictators" in China, Clinton in 1994 removed any human rights considerations from U.S.-China trade. Clinton supported the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia to the bitter end in 1998. And his administration in 1997 lifted the ban on weapons sales to Latin American governments, including present and future military regimes. Given this record, it should come as no surprise that Clinton's "humanitarian" war against Yugoslavia in 1999 produced a catastrophe for ordinary Serbs and Kosovar Albanians alike. "If there is a Clinton Doctrine–an innovation by the present administration in the conduct of foreign policy–it is this: punishing the innocent in order to express indignation at the guilty," wrote one establishment critic of the NATO war.30
The dead end of lesser evilism
As the Clinton-Gore administration headed into its final year, journalist William Greider wrote:
[Clinton's] accomplishments, when the sentimental gestures are set aside, are indistinguishable from George Bush's. Like Bush, Clinton increased the top income tax rate a bit, raised the minimum wage modestly and expanded tax credits for the working poor. He reduced military spending somewhat but, like Bush, failed to restructure the military for post—cold war realities. He got tough on crime, especially drug offenders, and built many more prisons. He championed educational reform. He completed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was mainly negotiated by the Bush Administration. On these and other matters, one can fairly say that Clinton completed Bush's agenda. It is not obvious that a Democratic successor in the White House would be much different.31
Greider's criticisms may make liberals blanch, but he's right. The Clinton-Gore administration pushed through conservative policies–like ending welfare and running a balanced budget–that Republicans could never have won. By all rights, he gave liberals as many reasons to oppose him as they had to oppose Bush. Yet, in every election year, Democrats and their liberal defenders urged a vote for Clinton and the Democrats. The Republicans, they said, would do much worse. Clinton may not be so great, they said, but he was the "lesser of two evils."
Had Reagan or Bush tried many of the policies that Clinton passed, liberal organizations would have mobilized millions to protest–as they did in the late 1980s when a right-wing Supreme Court threatened to repeal Roe v. Wade. But with their "friend" Clinton in the White House, they stood by
waiting and hoping and beseeching, working on the inside, faxing and phoning and producing yet another study or poll. Meanwhile, they preach[ed] the gospel of the lesser of two evils, that ever-downward spiral that has brought us to this pass and that will doubtless end with liberals in hell organizing votes for Satan because Beelzebub would be even worse–think of the Supreme Court!32
As Clinton's Democrats moved even closer to the Republicans, the liberals clinging to Clinton's coattails swung to the right with them. The range of mainstream political opinion narrowed. The Democratic Party that had been identified with Medicare and Social Security became identified with "free trade" and "tough-on-crime" measures. With the Gingrichites waiting in the wings, the Democrats assumed their core constituents would support them no matter what. So Clinton and Gore didn't worry as they produced one betrayal of workers after another. Such was the logic of "lesser evilism."
But in the Clinton-Gore administration's final days, a growing number of activists realized that we don't have to swallow whatever a Democratic White House dishes out. Labor and student organizing against Clinton-Gore's globalization agenda and the swelling movement against the death penalty mark two important pressures on Democrats coming from the left. Rumblings of labor and environmentalist support for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader challenged the notion that these constituencies "have nowhere else to go" but the Democrats.
The Democrats will no doubt play the "lesser evil" card in the 2000 presidential election. Many of those who today express disgust with the Gore-Bush choice may hold their noses and vote for Gore–if only from fear that a President George W. Bush will pack the Supreme Court with hard-right justices. If Gore manages to win the 2000 election, activists have no reason to breathe easy. As eight years of Clinton-Gore attacks have shown, the lesser evil is still an evil.
1 Mike Allen, "MCI Center's menu: Ribs and a record Democratic fundraiser," Washington Post, May 24, 2000: p. A6; Ken Foskett, "Democrats raise record amount," Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 25, 2000: p. A3.
2 Ronald Brownstein, "Clintonism," U.S. News and World Report, January 26, 1998.
3 Clinton quoted in Philip A. Klinkner, "Bill Clinton and the New Liberalism," in Adolph Reed Jr., ed., Without Justice for All (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), p. 15.
4 See James Hormey and Robert Greenstein, "Is the Clinton Budget a 'Big Government' Proposal?", Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, March 14, 2000, available at www.cbpp.org.
5 Quoted in Christopher Hitchens, No One Left to Lie To (New York: Verso, 1999), p. 23.
6 E. J. Dionne, They Only Look Dead (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 113.
7 For an exposé of the Clinton-Gore first-term environmental record, see Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein, Washington Babylon (New York: Verso, 1996), pp. 187—247. Browner's quote is from p. 235.
8 Bob Davis, "Head scratchers: To campaigners 2000, only thing missing in this boom is why," Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2000.
9 Joel Geier, "Can the U.S. escape the global crisis?" International Socialist Review 6, (Spring 1999): p. 40.
10 John E. Schwartz, "The hidden side of the Clinton economy," Atlantic Monthly, October, 1998.
11 Isaac Shapiro and Robert Greenstein, "The Widening Income Gulf," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, September 5, 1999.
12 See David E. Rosenbaum and Steve Lohr, "With a Stable Economy, Clinton Hopes for Credit," New York Times, August 6, 1996.
13 Peter Edelman, "The worst thing Bill Clinton has done," Atlantic Monthly, March 1997.
14 Liz Schott, Robert Greenstein and Wendell Primus, "The Determinants of Welfare Caseload Decline: A Brief Rejoinder," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, June 22, 1999.
15 Ed Lazare, "Welfare Balances After Three Years of TANF Block Grants," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, January 12, 2000.
16 Richard Wolf, "Hunger on the rise in cities," USA Today, December 16, 1999.
17 On the cuts in Medicare, see Robert Pear, "Health providers and elderly clash on Medicare funds," New York Times; May 15, 2000. On the decline of home health care, see the New York Times editorial on "The plunge in home health care," April 25, 2000.
18 See Sam Elkin and Robert Greenstein, "Much of the Projected Non Social Security Surplus is a Mirage," July 12, 1999, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, July 12, 1999.
19 For a critique of drift in Medicare policy, see Judith Feder and Marilyn Moon, "Can Medicare Survive Its Saviors?" The American Prospect 44 (May/June, 1999). For a clear critique of plans to privatize Social Security, see Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
20 Quoted in Lee Sustar, "A new labor movement?" International Socialist Review 1, Summer 1997, p. 21.
21 The administration brags about this on the "Reinventing Government" Website. See National Partnership for Reinventing Government, "[email protected]: Creating a Culture of Change and Reconnecting Americans to their Government, available at www.npr.gov/library/announce/040700.html.
22 Philip A. Klinkner, "Bill Clinton and the New Liberalism," in Adolph Reed, ed., Without Justice for All, pp. 25.
23 See Marc Cooper, "Letter from California: What cost victory?" The Nation, November 4 1996: pp. 11—15.
24 Quoted in Klinkner, pp. 26—27.
25 Elizabeth Schulte, "The new assault on a woman's right to choose," International Socialist Review 12, June-July, 2000: p. 46. Clinton said he would sign the "partial-birth" abortion ban if its wording were changed.
26 See Lance Selfa, "Gay politics in the U.S.: Which way forward?" International Socialist Review 6, Spring 1999: pp. 15—20.
27 Lawrence Korb, "Sized Up," Foreign Affairs 79 (2), March/April 2000: p. 150.
28 Korb, p. 149.
29 Robert L. Borosage, "Money Talks: The Implications of U.S. Budget Priorities," in Martha Honey and Tom Barry, eds., Global Focus (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 12. These figures count the number of times presidents are required, under the 1973 War Powers Act, to notify Congress when they send troops abroad to face "imminent hostilities."
30 Michael Mandelbaum, "A Perfect Failure: NATO's War Against Yugoslavia," Foreign Affairs 78 (5), (September/October 1999): pp. 6—7.
31 William Greider, "Clinton's Lost Presidency," The Nation, February 14 2000: pp. 11—18.
32 Katha Pollitt, "The Strange Death of Liberal America," The Nation, August 26/September 2 1996: p. 9.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage.
Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, has claimed credit for the dual suicide attack on Sunday in the capital of Uganda that took the lives of 74 people who were watching the World Cup championship match.
Ugandan officials immediately suspected Shabaab as being the culprit in the twin deadly blasts that targeted a rugby club and a restaurant in Kampala. Police said that the head of a Somali suicide bomber was found in the aftermath of one of the attacks. A police spokesman indicated that both attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.
The attacks are the first carried out by Shabaab outside the borders of Somalia since the group was formed in 2006. Shabaab and its predecessor, the Islamic Courts, have carried out 21 suicide attacks inside Somalia since the summer of 2006.
Shabaab had telegraphed the attack in Uganda in statements made by top leaders over the past week. On July 5, Sheikh Muktar Abdelrahman Abu Zubeyr, Shabaab's spiritual leader, released an audiotape that was broadcast on Somali radio stations in which he vowed to attack in Uganda and Burundi for sending troops to Mogadishu to back the beleaguered transitional government.
Other Shabaab leaders have also called for attacks against Uganda and Burundi. On July 8, Sheikh Muktar Abu Mansour Robow, a top military leader, urged allied terror groups to attack the diplomatic missions of Uganda and Burundi.
"We urge our brothers from Chechnya, Pakistan, Afghanistan and from anywhere around the world to attack the diplomatic missions of Uganda and Burundi," Robow said at a public rally in Mogadishu.
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, al Qaeda's leader in East Africa and a senior Shabaab leader, may be involved in the attack. Fazul has experience with carrying out attacks outside Somalia and is known to move with ease through the region. He is the last remaining East African-based al Qaeda operative to have been involved in the deadly 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Shabaab merged with al Qaeda in November 2008 after requesting to join the international terror group in September 2008. Top al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and Abu Yayha al Libi have praised Shabaab in propaganda tapes and encouraged the group to carry out attacks against the Somali government, neighboring countries, and the West. In late 2009, Osama bin Laden appointed Fazul Mohammed to serve as al Qaeda's operations chief in East Africa; the announcement was made at a ceremony in Mogadishu that was attended by Ahmad Godane Zubayr, Shabaab's spiritual leader.
Shabaab and the sometimes allied, sometimes rival Islamist group Hizbul Islam have been relentless in attacking African Union peacekeepers and Somali government forces stationed in the capital of Mogadishu. The government and AMISOM control only a few enclaves in the city.
Outside of Mogadishu, the central government wields little control. Shabaab and Hizbul Islam currently control almost all of the southern and many of the central provinces.
Hey, "congratulations" on your successful slaughter of dozens of innocent people. I'm sure God will reward you accordingly.
i still believe that somalia will soon be a new haven for islamic terrorists. a victory over government troops is within their grasp. when yemen fails they have to swim over the strait and set up shop in this god forsaken place. the us will eventually have to engage here. it will be the next order of business for the us military.


Wright Surveillance is proud to announce it's achievement of BBBEE Level 1 status. This was awarded on the 10 April 2012, and verified by Grant Thornton Verification Services, a SANAS accredited verification agency.
Director Garth Wright says that BBBEE is not only about compliance, but also about "being committed to the broader community in which we operate."
Garth goes on to state that it is a double win for Wright Surveillance clients; not only do they receive top quality empowered service, but as Wright Surveillance is a Value Added Supplier our clients are now also able to claim 168% of the value spend with us as BEE procurement.
Garth attributes the leap from Level 3 to Level 1 Value Added Supplier status to substantial improvements in the company's Skills & Enterprise Development programs, which lie at the heart of Wright Surveillance's ongoing initiatives.


TCU assistant coach Scott Cross is heading to Troy University to become the head men's basketball coach, Jeremy McClain, senior vice chancellor for athletics, announced Tuesday.
All assistant coaches will be given the day off tomorrow, which Cross said he will use to fly out to Alabama for his introductory presser Thursday. However, he made clear that he will make his way back to Fort Worth to be with the Horned Frogs through the conclusion of the season.
"This program gave me a chance to get back on my feet, and I came to TCU to help win championships, so I'll be with the team through their run in New York if we defeat Creighton tonight," he said.
Cross is in his first season on Jamie Dixon's staff at TCU after being fired from his alma mater as UT-Arlington's all-time winningest coach.
He went 225-161 in 12 seasons at in Arlington, leading the program to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 2008.
Despite his new job requiring the uprooting of his family, something he appreciated not having to do when making the transition from UTA to TCU, he said it still allows him to be closer to his family.
Cross will replace Phil Cunningham at Troy.
Troy is coming off consecutive losing seasons, although Cunningham led the program to the 2017 NCAA Tournament.
Even though Cross is leaving TCU, he said he'll take some of Jamie Dixon's defining qualities with him to Troy.
With Cross not returning next season, Dixon has two assistant coaching vacancies on his staff this offseason. Corey Barker was fired by the university after being linked to the FBI college basketball corruption case.
Dixon lauded his assistant for earning another shot as head coach since he looks to hire assistants who are goal-driven.
"Excited for Scott Cross to get excited to coach at Troy, and it shows that TCU gets a lot of respect to have two TCU guys get Division I jobs," Dixon said.
The Horned Frogs advanced to New York City for the NIT seminfinals at Madison Square Garden with the 71-58 victory over Creighton. They face the winner of Wednesday's match-up between Texas and Colorado on April 2nd.


text:
Q: Add second custom cell in CollectionView - Swift I'm facing out a problem... I'm trying to add a new custom cell for show native ads in my CollectionView and basically I'm saying that every
indexPath.row == 2 || indexPath.row == 5

there should appear the cell related to the ads. The problem now is, the adsCell is correctly appearing but it took place of the other content.
So if before I was having a collectionView with all the cell with a label with written from 1 to 10, now I have something like: 1, ADSCell, 3,4, ADSCell, and so on.
So basically it's skipping the number 2 that now is replaced by the adsCell and also the number 5.
How can I keep the content but place between them the adsCell?
  func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, numberOfItemsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
        if section == 0 {
            return itemsViewModel.itemsModel.featuredItems.value.count
        }else {
            return itemsViewModel.itemsModel.dailyItems.value.count
        }

    }

    func numberOfSections(in collectionView: UICollectionView) -> Int {
        return 2
    }

func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, cellForItemAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionViewCell {

        let cell = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "itemCell", for: indexPath) as! DailyItemCollectionViewCell

        let cellAds = collectionView.dequeueReusableCell(withReuseIdentifier: "adsCell", for: indexPath)

        if indexPath.section == 0{

            if indexPath.row == 2 || indexPath.row == 5 {
                return cellAds
            }else {
                print("INDEX", indexPath)
                let featuredItems = itemsViewModel.itemsModel.featuredItems.value[indexPath.row]
                cell.configure(with: featuredItems)
            }
        }else {
            let dailyItems = itemsViewModel.itemsModel.dailyItems.value[indexPath.row]
            cell.configure(with: dailyItems)
        }

        return cell
    }

A: Its not good practice to have index dependent if-statement in cellForItemAt function, it's better for you to make dataSource more generalize so it can contain ad items, for example, you can set type for each dataSource items to indicate that its ad or not, then you should put ad item to index 2 and 5 of dataSource, then in cellForItemAt for each item, you check that type, if its ad return ADSCell if its not return the cell you want.

A: When indexPath.row equals 2 or 5 you are using the ADSCell, but you then don't account for this when getting the next item from the array.
Try adding an offset counter for every time ADSCell is used then adjust the regular cell assignments by the offset.
let featuredItems = itemsViewModel.itemsModel.featuredItems.value[indexPath.row-offset]

You'll also need to account for your collection view having more items than the data source array.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Authentic and classic three dimensional phase shifting—from rapid rotary speaker to impressive jet plane effects! This BEHRINGER product has been designed to compete head to head with leading products on the market. There are dedicated Rate control and separate Tone switch for fine-tuning of effects speed and tone. A status LED for effect is included, plus there is a true hard-wire bypass for ultimate signal integrity. No matter what phasing effect sound you're after, VP1 is bound to make getting there easier! The VP1 runs on a 9 V battery or a DC power supply (not included).


text:
Karnataka reports 12 fresh COVID-19 cases on Monday; total number of cases rises to 163 in the state
Bangalore Mirror Bureau / Updated: Apr 7, 2020, 06:00 IST
The total number of Covid-19 cases in Karnataka reached 163 with 12 new cases being reported on Monday. While two new cases were reported in Bengaluru, Mysuru saw an addition of seven new cases. Meanwhile, the Bagalkot case where a 75-year old man had died recently due to Covid-19 took a new turn. Initially, it was suspected that the man could have caught the infection from his son who had come from Bengaluru. However, with the son testing negative, the district administration are now looking at other angles.
On Monday, the deceased patient's brother and wife also tested positive. Deputy CM Govind Karjol said that in all likelihood, the deceased could have got it from his brother, who had travelled to Kalaburgi (where the first Covid-19 death was reported).
In the state, 136 Covid-19 patients, including a pregnant woman, are isolated at designated hospitals and are stable, except three -- cases 43, 101 and 102 -- who continue to be critical. The other cases include a 32-year-old man from Bengaluru, a primary contact of cases 43 and 44. He is Karnataka's 152nd coronavirus positive case. A 62-year-old woman from Kerala, with travel history to Germany and a contact of cases 106 and 133, has emerged as the 153rd case. A 20-year-old man from Mysuru, the brother of 104th case, is the 154th case. Patients 155 to 158 all have a travel history to Delhi. A 32-year-old woman from the Mysuru pharmaceutical company is the 159th case, another new case originating from the same point. The state's 160th case is a 35-year-old man from the same place with travel history to Dubai.
(With inputs from agencies)


"One of my favourite quotes of all times goes something like this: 'Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful'.
you won't give up or give in.
A smile represents hope. No one has a perfect life (despite how it looks on Instagram!). But everyone has something to smile about! Find yours & capture it everyday."


At VCU, I usually teach two graduate seminars each year, the methods course for the Department of Art History and a core course for Media, Art, and Text program.
A critical overview of art history as a discipline from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. Students gain an understanding of the discipline's initial formation and of the changing theoretical bases for its practice. Classes are primarily discussion of weekly readings. Further work consists of small writing assignments and major independent research project, resulting in an annotated bibliography. The goal is to provide a foundation for future study and to prepare students to be informed practitioners in their own fields and across the discipline.


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Minion Masters Basic Deck Building Guide and Tips
Posted by: BlueStacks Content Team
Download Minion Masters on PC
Building decks is one of the most entertaining aspects, at least for us, when it comes to collectible card games, and Minion Masters is no exception. And now that this fantastic strategy card game has finally been released on mobile and more people can download and install it on their phones, we can safely say that the community will grow in tandem. This is great for the longevity of the title, though it also means that there will inevitably be an influx of newcomers that, especially if they're new to CCGs, won't know what they're doing.
It can be quite frustrating jumping into a new card game without actually knowing what to do, and more than a few of you will probably quit before too long because of it. This is why we've decided to prepare this guide, in hopes of teaching you the basics ins and outs about building decks in Minion Masters, including the general considerations, as well as a few tips and tricks. By creating effective and balanced decks, you'll have a much better chance of actually winning matches, especially once you start going up against other players who have a generalized idea of what they're doing.
Experiment With Multiple Decks on BlueStacks
Before we hop into the deck building basics, however, we wanted to make a quick addendum here to mention that, by playing Minion Masters on PC with BlueStacks, you'll not only get to enjoy this game on your large PC monitor and with mouse and keyboard support, like with the Steam version, but you'll also get access to a variety of tools to enhance your experience.
One of these tools is the Instance Manager, a BlueStacks feature that lets you create multiple instances of the Android app player, in order to play multiple mobile games at the same time while keeping all of them on one screen, or to access the same game on many different accounts simultaneously. In practice, what this means for a game like Minion Masters is that you can easily manage multiple accounts, and therefore have more freedom to experiment with different decks and builds. Particularly since obtaining new cards can be a hassle due to the RNG system, you'll have a higher chance of diversifying your strategies by playing on different accounts. And after you find a good setup or build on one of your accounts, you can choose to abandon the others, or keep playing all of them in order to add some variety to your gameplay.
Of course, all of this is rendered moot by the time you've progressed significantly into the game and actually manage to unlock a large variety of cards on one of your accounts, but it still gives you the means to experiment with different decks early on. To this end, feel free to check out our BlueStacks setup guide for Minion Masters to learn how to install the mobile version of this game on PC, in just a few simple steps. Afterward, we recommend also reading our BlueStacks usage guide for Minion Masters to discover how to configure and use our tools for this game.
Deck Building Basics
Getting the cards you want is one thing, but actually putting them together into good and balanced decks is a completely different matter. In fact, some decks don't even need to be balanced, as there are strategies that can lean towards a certain aspect over others, with the huge caveat that they can be utterly countered and rendered useless by a proficient adversary. Nevertheless, we always want to keep a good balance as a general rule, since this will allow us to effectively stand a chance against most players.
There are a few basic considerations to keep in mind when building a deck, and this applies to ANY deck, not just the generalized ones:
Average Mana Cost
First and foremost, you have your average mana cost to consider. This parameter is shown on your Master's portrait in the deck menu, and consists simply of the average mana cost of all the cards within the said deck. This will give you an idea of how much mana is needed for summoning cards in combat; with lower average mana costs allowing players to summon more often, and higher costs preventing frequent summoning, but usually consisting of stronger units and spells.
Regardless, as a general rule of thumb, you always want to keep your average mana cost at about 3,5. This will ensure that you can summon fodder units fairly frequently, but still have a few aces up your sleeve when it comes to bringing out the big guns.
Unit Targeting
One basic aspect that is usually disregarded by newcomers are the targets that your units can attack.
Averaging your mana costs to acceptable levels is one thing, but you must also ensure that the units you add to your deck are able to counter the many different types of enemies, including flying units, swarm cards, and bigger characters. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of a match when your opponent suddenly summons a flying unit, only to find that you don't have a single card that can attack aerial enemies.
In the same vein, you must also have units that can counter swarms, such as those who can deal damage in an area, as well as units that can deal tons of damage with every single hit, which is great for countering big enemies.
Card Type Distribution
Though this is the aspect that might vary the most depending on your strategy and build, a good idea when it comes to choosing the unit/spell ratio is to have 8 units and 2 spells in your deck. Spells can be great, but they don't win matches—it's your units who will be pushing the enemy towers, capturing bridges, and doing all the heavy lifting, while your spells are more for support and for giving your main army an extra boost.
There are a few other aspects that you might need to consider later on, such as building around your selected Master, having specialized cards in your deck that you can use in specific situations to counter certain opponents, or having a certain strategy or win condition. However, these are more advanced aspects and aren't as vital at the beginning than these basic elements. You have to crawl before you can walk, and then keep practicing until you can eventually run.
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It happens. We all get gas. Sometimes we ingest a little extra air with the food we eat. Sometimes it's a chemical combination of the kinds of food we as they are processed by our digestive system. As humans, unless you're old and just don't care anymore are you listening Grandma, we can usually cap the output.
What about when your dog has gas? That's when some of the most noxious paint peeling fumes ever unleashed on Earth are expelled into the atmosphere. Obviously, an animal that drinks toilet water couldn't care less about public decorum.
Just like humans have Beano and other gas reducing medications and supplements there are products you can give your dog to help ease that natural gas production down to OPEC levels.
Dog gas usually comes from a change in diet. If that's happened you can go back to the regular chow your pup normally eats. If there hasn't been a change in diet and your pooch just has an upset stomach you might want to try herbal supplements like Carminative.
There are also other suggestions you might consider. However, we recommend that you consult your veterinarian before you give your dog anything outside of his normal diet. Flatulence in dogs can be very normal. It can also be a sign of a more serious issue. We know you love your pup even if he or she poots. If you're lucky the fumigation will end in less than 24 hours on its own. Until then turn on the fan and have him sleep downwind. In other words, treat the dog the same way you treat your husband.


Brother Craig welcomes investigative journalist, Daniel Greenfield, who weighs in on the Left's support of sanctuary law with his recent FrontPage Mag article, "HOW TWO GUSTAVOS USED CALIFORNIA'S SANCTUARY STATE LAW TO SPREAD TERROR ACROSS 200 MILES". In the article Greenfield asserts that the recent murders of Cpl. Ronil Singh and Rocky Paul Jones and Rolando Soto did not have to happen. Greenfield candidly argues that these men were killed because of California's sanctuary state law.
Daniel Greenfield is a blogger and a columnist. He was born in Israel and lives in New York City.
Daniel is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. As an investigative journalist and writer, Daniel focuses on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. His biweekly column appears at Front Page Magazine and his blog articles regularly appear at Freedom Outpost, The Jewish Press, Times of Israel, Act for America and Right Side News, as well as daily at the Canada Free Press and a number of other outlets. He also has a column titled "Western Front" at Israel National News and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Sun, the Jewish Press and at FOX Nation.


On the 4/27/15 episode of The Gregg and Joe Show, the co-hosts welcome IFBB pro Jose Raymond to the airwaves and the popular bodybuilder from Boston will be discussing his much-deserved win in the 212 division at the Arnold Classic and his plans leading up to challenging Flex Lewis at the Olympia.
Next Story → WATCH: Dave Palumbo, Joe Pietaro and Gregg Valentino equals MAYHEM on ASKDAVE!!!


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Q: Why do I have to rebuild the indexes on a table after inserting >150,000 records? I have a daily process which imports about 150,000 records into two tables, and later joins them to compare against other data.
I have created indexes on the tables which makes the comparison process very fast.  Unfortunately, after the import process, the fragmentation on my indexes jumps way up, usually well over 50%.  I then have to rebuild the indexes before I can run my comparison query.
This doesn't make sense to me.  Shouldn't the index update itself appropriately when data is inserted?  Are there any properties on the index that would affect this behavior?
edit:
Some additional information--I have two tables.  During the import process, one table gets about 150,000 rows added to it via a insert/select statement.  The other table gets 150,000 rows from SQLBulkCopy at the application level.

A: But the index is updating itself properly.
Unless you are adding data exactly in the order of the index the index will fragment.
A few thing to consider:

*

*Can you insert the data in the order of the index?
This will reduce fragmentation.

*Consider dropping the index, inserting the data, and then rebuilding the index.
If you are getting 50% fragmentation then this will most likely be faster.
A fragmented index will slow down inserts.

*If you have to leave the index hot then consider a fill factor of 50%.
This will slow down the rate of fragmentation with inserts significantly.


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'Dora', the lion cub up for public viewing at Ridiyagama Safari Park
The female lion cub named 'Dora' born at the Ridiyagama Safari Park has made her public debut yesterday (January 18). MORE..
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The daily count of COVID-19 cases recorded in Sri Lanka moved to 672 today (January 18), the Health Ministry said. MORE..
| January 18, 2022 9:59 pm
The first meeting of the Members of Parliament of the ruling faction for the year 2022 was held under the patronage of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa today (January 18). MORE..
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Air Chief Marshal Pathman Hariprasadha Mendis, fondly known as 'Paddy' Mendis, has passed away at the age of 88, Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) announced today. MORE..
Sri Lanka condemns terrorist attacks in UAE
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President Rajapaksa arrives in Parliament
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Seven new COVID-related deaths in Sri Lanka
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TULF leader V. Anandasangaree tests positive for Covid-19
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Suspect arrested with locally made revolver and bullets
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Today's So Shoe Me is the Mega Bootie by Haus of Price, $335, available at Solestruck. Maybe it's the lingering high from all the glitz, glamour and color from New York Fashion Week but I've found myself falling in love with all things that have a luxe rainbow connection. These booties are painstakingly handmade by James Price and don't be fooled, this DIY job is not for amateurs. Placing each gem delicately onto this aptly named "Mega Bootie" makes for a dramatic fantasy piece perfect for a chic Pretty, Pretty Princess moment. Get intoxicated by the gems and pair these statement booties with simple clean separates like dark skinny jeans and a sheer boyfriend button-down to look like a chic and stylish woman instead of a caricature.
So Shoe Me a pair of jewelicious booties that will smack a neutral outfit into a technicolor dreamland.
Having a Muppets Moment, Enjoy!


On arrival at the Srinagar airport (on your own), you will be received by Our Company representative / driver. Once you board your vehicle, you will proceed to the deluxe houseboat. Later in the evening proceed for Shikara ride in Dal lake. Dinner & overnight on board the houseboat.


In Las Caletas Beach Hideway you'll enjoy sun, fun and adventure. Accessible only by boat, this secluded nature reserve stands out against a steep backdrop of green forest canopy in an isolated cove on the southern shores of Banderas Bay.
At Las Caletas, eco-guides offer guided snorkeling, scuba diving and kayaking tours. On land, we offer simple relaxation in comfortable hammocks and therapeutic massage or facial treatments at our enchantingly rustic day spa.


How the headless CMS empowers content creators to publish quickly, everywhere, anytime. And why every company should adopt it now.
As a former CMS product manager and leader of an emerging technologies team, we continue to evaluate solutions for our clients across a number of technologies (PHP, .NET, React, Ionic and Angular) and vendors — Acquia, Kentico, Sitecore, WordPress, etc..
In doing this, we focus on many areas – product features, roadmap strategy, market presence, capabilities, mobile support, cloud deployment and integration with components such as marketing and commerce.
Lately, the demand from our clients has shifted far beyond the corporate website and the need for responsive experiences. Hybrid applications, virtual reality, interactive in-store displays and Internet of Things have created an interesting content delivery demand. In the last quarter alone, more than 50% of our development work at Consensus requires delivery to something other than a web browser.
Luckily, great strides are being made in next generation content managed solutions. Led by new, content-first demands – the rise of the "headless" CMS is taking shape. We are implementing "headless" solutions for a number of clients across across a number of technologies – Kentico, WordPress and Drupal. The solutions range from web-based sales applications to tablet solutions.
So what exactly is a "headless CMS" (important note: not "decoupled")? It is a content management solution that allows a company to manage content and access it via an API across any number of applications. Unlike traditional CMS solutions, a headless CMS provides a solution without the presentation layer (the "head") that would determine how the content should be displayed. Instead, the presentation can be completely agnostic – website, mobile app, digital assistant, virtual reality, smart watches, etc.— ideal for the multichannel world where content creators are expected to publish frequently and in many mediums..
We can easily iterate and UAT test with the client by pointing them to a browser for layout and application logic – not always having to deliver an .ipa file.
The separation of the API makes the content available through any channel and on any device.
We can use any technology or development framework – as you can imagine, the IT requirements of our clients can vary wildly from project to project.
We look forward to the future of headless apps the opportunities it delivers.
Contact us to talk more about our headless CMS development capabilities.


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Occupiers Dance Carefully With Police, Homeless in Long Beach, CA
Occupy protestors in Long Beach, California spend a late night in October with Uno and banter. Credit: Quinn Norton/Wired
LONG BEACH, Calif. — At 10 p.m. every night, the Long Beach occupation moves off the lawn of Lincoln Park, packs up their infrastructure (they aren't allowed to have tents), and moves onto the sidewalk to sleep for the night. At 6:00 a.m., the police return to the park in the center of the city, wake them up and herd the protesters back on to the lawn before the morning's foot traffic arrives along the downtown street.
There are often several people who stay up through the night, usually talking about the movement to protest an economy that's increasingly left the mainstream behind. One person who's there, up, every night, is Nate. He's a peacekeeper, and looks after the crowd, sleeping about four hours a day. He's a skater, easy-going, Irish and proud of it.
He's also a vet, and he's written "Occupy the World" on the bottom of his skateboard.
"Hello!" he said brightly, into my recorder. "I'm currently an unemployed and unhoused vet, 21 years old, and I'm occupying Long Beach here at Lincoln Park."
"Every night I will stay up and make sure that nobody takes any of the stuff from any of the occupiers that happen to be here, whether they're just occupying for the night or staying for the long haul," Nate said. "Make sure everyone gets their water, make sure everyone is taken care of, make sure there's nothing sketchy. Just the general safety of the area. I want to create a sense of peace here."
Nate, who declined to give his last name, explains how he de-escalates conflicts, mainly with the homeless; secures the area; talks to the occupiers and sometimes hands out blankets.
While he stands at less than five-and-a-half feet tall, he has a soldier's physique and a physical and psychological confidence that makes the place feel safe.
While being part of a movement might sound exciting, in practice, occupations are often boring.
Last Thursday, a night I spent in the encampment, eight occupiers, all in their early 20s, gathered around a folding table pulled from under the tarp protecting the occupation's belongings. They played Uno until dawn.
They talked and laughed, and look like nothing so much as a bunch of friends staying up too late in a dormitory common room.
The landscape of each occupation is defined by careful negotiations between that city's occupiers and the police — sometimes day-by-day, sometimes by the hour. The police represent many things: local customs, their own law enforcement culture, the laws of the municipality and the attitudes of the municipality's leaders at any given time. Most occupations are tense, and many are under constant threat of eviction, and the tension wears down the occupiers.
Jonah Quest, 17, chose to get arrested in OccupyLB's only act of civil disobedience thus far. Quest is a clean-cut kid with tired eyes, decked out in a red cable-knit sweater pulled over a smudged collared shirt with one white collar sticking out.
"It's been difficult," he said. "I've been juggling school and my mom, but I've been working it."
How did his parents feel about him being arrested? "They weren't too keen on it at first, but they're okay with it now," Quest said.
He goes on to talk about education reform, Kant and the categorical imperative, and Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. He doesn't speak about his specific needs and fears, but about morality of the system.
"A lot of people can't find jobs," Quest said. "A lot of people have found their jobs taken away by unemployed 40 year olds."
At night at Lincoln Park, I'm surrounded by the quiet chatter of a sidewalk crowd of about 50 people. The street is bathed in the warm municipal street lamp light; but the crowd is drowned in much harsher floodlights.
Three industrial flood lamps, two diesel-powered and one solar-powered, have been trained on Long Beach's occupation. The occupiers told me the police said it's for safety. But Tammara Phillips, 44, one of the occupation's police liaisons, says Deputy Chief Lune went further in a meeting with city staff, telling them the lights were there to make recording the occupiers easier.
The occupation has quickly become familiar with the creature the city becomes at night.
Part of local homeless population slept in Lincoln Park before the occupation showed up, and some of them have joined the movement. Others sleep next to the protest, and the problems of the chronically homeless sometimes spill over into the lives of the occupiers. The untreated mentally ill yell a lot, and even push people occasionally. One of the homeless men, who has joined the occupation, thinks of the occupiers as "playing homeless" and worries about police later retaliating against the homeless who joined the group, if and when the occupation leaves.
The night had its other characters as well; three slouching men with suspicious eyes who several occupiers believed to be drug dealers showed up, followed quickly by police no one seemed to have called. The men mixed in, but not well, with the occupiers. They darted like lithe predators, but the police boxed them up, pushing deeper in the closed park. The police had a bored and bland hostility to the new arrivals, as if they were familiar with them, or at least familiar with their type. The police cleared them out, and left again.
Most of the occupiers, even the ones without a home, don't face the same problems the chronically homeless do, but under local ordinance, they are treated very much like them. Many occupiers would tell me over the course of the evening that Long Beach has "made homelessness de facto illegal," in exactly those words.
"We've gotten a real eye-opener about how the homeless in our community are treated," Phillips said.
Even in Southern California, there's a struggle to keep warm at night. There's talk of winter here, and at every occupation I've visited. No one is sure how to keep this going through even the California winter, much less the Eastern winter everyone knows is headed for the heart of the occupation in New York City. Many occupiers fear the weather will cause the movement to fade as people head for inside warmth, but each of them talk of ways to stay.
The occupiers struggle to sleep. They struggle with morale. They struggle with the health and mental wellness of a growing homeless population that sees them as a resource, and while the homeless support the encampment, they weigh heavily on its resources as well.
But if OccupyLB survives, it will probably be on the back of Nate.
Nate talked about serving in Afghanistan twice, after getting on the plane to basic training on his 17th birthday. He's proud of being a soldier, and what he learned in the Army, but still he darkened when he talked about his service:
For me (the occupation is) about helping my brothers and sisters … The government lied to me when it told me that's what I'd be doing over there (in Afghanistan). Instead I was just killing people in their homes, and taking their land from them like was done here so many years ago, happening yet again.
I was only 17, I was very naive and I bought the recruiting speech, hook, line, and sinker. It's really not so cut and dry, and they use this grand illusion of patriotism and glory to lure young men into the service to do their duty, when really it's just a privatized militarized force going and colonizing other people's lands and killing the civilians there.
If the occupation survives the winter, it will be down to people like Nate, veterans and other survivors who have trained or otherwise acquired the skills to endure conditions which most can't or won't. Fortunately for the occupation, there are a lot of unemployed vets in America.
Images: Quinn Norton/Wired.com
This post is part of a special series from Quinn Norton, who is embedding with Occupy protestors and going beyond the headlines with Anonymous for Wired.com. For an introduction to the series, read Quinn's description of the project.
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