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sales@gunsinc.com
NFA/Class 3
How To Sell A Gun In Virginia
How To Sell A Gun
November 22, 2020 November 26, 2020 Jeffery Rowe#HowToSellAGun, #LegallySellAGun, #SafelySellAGun, #SellAnUnwantedGun, #SellYourGunInVA, #SellYourGunsInVirginia
From a report done in May 2019, Virginia ranks fourth in the United States for the number of registered weapons. If you are looking to sell your gun, research can be confusing and privately selling your gun can be a hassle. The easiest, safest and most hassle-free way to sell your gun in Virginia is Cash My Guns. We buy your guns online with a straight-forward three step process that anybody can do from the comfort of their home.
Virginia Firearms Transaction Program
Virginia's approach to firearms records checks does not infringe on an individual's ability to purchase or possess a firearm, while those individuals who are prohibited by State or Federal law are denied legal access to firearms.
The Virginia Department of State Police developed and administers the Virginia Firearms Transaction Program© (VFTP). This program became operational on November 1, 1989, and provides for a timely, point-of-sale, approval or disapproval decision regarding the sale or transfer of all firearms (except antiques) based upon the results of a criminal history record information (CHRI) check concerning the prospective purchaser pursuant to §18.2-308.2:2 of the Code of Virginia.
This program was the first of its type in the nation. Virginia was able to implement this program because the Central Criminal Records Exchange (CCRE) maintained by the Virginia State Police is one of the most complete records repositories in the nation and provides the database for the VFTP. Virginia's program was expanded to include the requirements of the federal National Instant Background System (NICS) on November 30, 1998.
VCheck
Virginia Residents – Identification and Residency Requirements
Dual Residency – Identification and Residency Requirements
Nonresidents – Identification and Residency Requirements
Non-Citizens of the United States
Private Sale Transactions
The VFTP authorizes properly licensed and registered firearms dealers to request criminal history record information (CHRI) checks on prospective purchasers via easy Internet access (VCheck) to the State Police firearms transaction system. Criminal history information is never released to firearms dealers or their customers. VCheck is available between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., seven days a week, and including holidays, except December 25. An 800-telephone line is utilized as an alternate method should the dealer lose Internet connection or experience problems with his or her computer.
Firearms dealers must complete form SP-69 to register with the VFTP. This form can be viewed, downloaded and/or printed by visiting the Virginia State Police Forms page.
Virginia Code §18.2-308.2:3 requires a criminal history background check be performed for employees of a gun dealer to transfer firearms, whether full-time, part-time, permanent, temporary, paid or unpaid. Any person who sells firearms at a licensed dealership must submit to a national and state criminal history records check by the Department of State Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Firearm sellers must complete form SP-69A and submit a completed fingerprint card to the Firearms Transaction Center. SP-69A forms and fingerprint cards may be obtained by calling the Firearms Transaction Center (FTC) Help Desk.
Firearms Transaction Center Help Desk
Telephone: (804) 674-2292 or (804) 674-2788
Email: firearms@vsp.virginia.gov
In lieu of submitting fingerprints, any dealer holding a valid federal firearms license (FFL) issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) may submit a sworn and notarized affidavit to the Department of State Police on form SP-69B stating that the dealer has been subjected to a record check prior to the issuance and that the FFL was issued by the ATF. The affidavit may also contain the names of any employees that have been subjected to a record check and approved by the ATF. An SP-69B form may be obtained by calling the FTC Help Desk. This exemption shall apply regardless of whether the FFL was issued in the name of the dealer or in the name of the business.
The purchaser's name and certain personal descriptive data are immediately entered into a computer system at the dealer location or while the dealer remains on the telephone with the FTC. The design of this program eliminates traditional waiting periods by electronically accessing criminal records and "wanted" databases at the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the Virginia Criminal Records Exchange (CCRE) and provides an instantaneous approval or delay determination to the firearms dealer concerning the firearms sale or transfer. Please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for more information on firearms purchase applications placed in a status of delay.
National and state databases are accessed simultaneously at the time of transaction. Four are maintained by the Virginia Department of State Police, accessible by the Virginia Criminal Information Network (VCIN): Virginia's wanted and missing persons files and protective orders, Virginia's criminal history record files, and Virginia's database of adjudications of legal incompetence and incapacity, involuntary commitments to mental institutions for inpatient or outpatient treatment.
The fifth database accessed during this check is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) which searches the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) consisting of the Wanted Persons File, Protection Order File, Interstate Identification Index (III), Deported Felons File, US Secret Service Protective File, Foreign Fugitive File, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms' Violent Felon File, and NICS indexes: Illegal/Unlawful Aliens File, Mental Defectives/Commitments File, Dishonorable Discharges, Citizenship Renunciants, Controlled Substance Abuse File and Denied Persons File.
If an identification is not made in one or more of these files, the computer responds "APPROVED" and a unique computer-generated approval number is provided to the firearms dealer for the transaction. The firearm may be transferred upon the dealer's receipt of the approval number. If a possible identification is made, the computer responds "DELAYED" and review of the information/record is to determine probable identification and lawful eligibility of the prospective firearms purchaser. The requestor is notified immediately upon a final determination of eligibility.
A prospective firearms purchaser must provide written consent permitting the State Police to determine if the purchaser is eligible to purchase or possess a firearm. It is unlawful for any person to willfully and intentionally make a false statement on the required consent form. Firearms dealers are required by law to collect a fee of $2.00 from Virginia residents for every transaction which requires a criminal history record information (CHRI) check and a fee of $5.00 from non-Virginia residents. These fees are sent to the State Police for transmittal to the General Funds of the Commonwealth to assist in the cost of conducting the record checks.
Prospective purchasers of firearms must present a valid photo-ID form issued by a governmental agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia that denotes the individual's name, sex, and date of birth. Where the primary form is a photo-ID issued by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), 30 days must have passed since the original date of issue or duplicate driver's license unless a copy of his/her DMV driver's record is presented showing that the original date of issue was more than 30 days prior to the attempted purchase.
To establish personal identification and dual resident eligibility, a dealer shall require any prospective purchaser to present one photo-identification form issued by a governmental agency of the prospective purchaser's state of legal residence and other documentation of dual residence within the Commonwealth.
The other documentation of dual residence in the Commonwealth may include:
Evidence of currently paid personal property tax or real estate tax.
A current lease
A current utility or telephone bill.
A current voter registration card.
A current bank check.
A current passport (must include address)
A current automobile registration.
A current hunting license.
Other current identification allowed as evidence of residency by 27 C.F.R. § 178.124 and ATF Ruling 2001-5
Other documentation of residence determined to be acceptable by the Department of Criminal Justice Services and that corroborates that the prospective purchaser currently resides in Virginia.
Rifles and shotguns may be purchased from licensed firearms dealers by persons who are residents of other states upon the presentation of one photo-identification form issued by a governmental agency of the purchaser's state of residence and one other form of identification determined to be acceptable by the Department of Criminal Justice Services (6VAC20-130-10).
The following secondary forms of ID are acceptable:
A current lease.
A current passport (must include an address).
A current hunting or fishing license.
Other identification allowed as evidence of residency by Part 178.124 of Title 27 of the Code of Federal Regulations and ATF Ruling 2001-5.
Active military personnel permanently stationed in Virginia, including the Pentagon, are treated as Virginia residents for the purchase of a handgun. Identification and residency are established by a military photo-identification card issued by the United States Department of Defense and proof that Virginia is the permanent duty station via current military assignment orders or the purchaser's Leave and Earnings Statement.
If permanently assigned to a mobile unit in Virginia, and the homeport is listed as Virginia; the transaction may be processed as a Virginia resident the same as any other permanent military assignment to Virginia supported by military assignment orders. The individual is treated as a non-Virginia resident if the homeport is listed as any place other than Virginia.
Individuals with permanent resident alien status are subject to the same identification and residency requirements as citizens.
The Federal Gun Control Act prohibits any individual "who has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa" to ship, transport, receive, or possess a firearm. This prohibition applies to "any alien in the United States in a nonimmigrant status." There are exceptions to the nonimmigrant alien provision. A nonimmigrant alien is not prohibited from purchasing, receiving, or possessing a firearm if the alien: (1) is in possession of a hunting license or permit lawfully issued in the United States; (2) is an official representative of a foreign government who is accredited to the United States Government or their Government's mission to an international organization having its headquarters in the United States; or (3) has received a waiver from the prohibition form the Attorney General of the United States.
There is a process for nonimmigrant aliens to petition the Justice Department to waive the prohibition. Individuals should contact the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms if you have questions about the prohibition, its exceptions, or the waiver process.
No person shall sell a firearm unless he has obtained verification from a licensed dealer in firearms that information on the prospective purchaser has been submitted for a criminal history record information check as set out in § 18.2-308.2:2 and that a determination has been received from the Department of State Police that the prospective purchaser is not prohibited under state or federal law from possessing a firearm or such sale is specifically exempted by state or federal law. The dealer may charge and retain an additional fee not to exceed $15.00 for obtaining a criminal history record information check on behalf of a seller.
The State Police shall provide background checks for private transactions at Firearms Shows in Virginia for the sale or transfer of handguns or longs at the event. For a background check in a private transaction, both the buyer and seller must be a Virginia resident. The prospective purchaser must provide written consent permitting the State Police to perform the records check by completion of a Virginia Firearms Transaction Consent Form. It is unlawful for any person to willfully and intentionally make a false statement on the consent form. A fee of $2.00 will be collected in advance by the State Police for transmittal to the General Funds of the Commonwealth to assist in the cost of conducting the check.
The average time for a background check is less than five minutes for approved transactions. If a possible identification is made, a review of the information or record is immediately performed to determine probable identification and lawful eligibility of the prospective firearms purchaser. If the transaction cannot be approved within minutes, an estimation of the processing time will be provided to the prospective purchaser.
No person who sells or transfers a firearm at a firearms show after receiving a determination from the Department of State Police that the purchaser or transferee is not prohibited by state or federal law from possessing a firearm shall be liable for selling or transferring a firearm to such person.
Save the Hassle, Sell your Gun to CashForGuns.com
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You can easily and legally sell your Handgun, Long gun to CashForGuns.com and be 100% compliant with Virginia gun laws.
We hold a Federal Firearms License and a retail shop specializing in helping people with buying, selling and transferring of firearms. We take care of the hard part and make the process safe, quick and hassle-free. The reality is you can sell your gun without leaving the house.
Just tell us about the firearm or firearms you'd like to sell and we'll make you an offer. Once we agree upon a price; you will be provided with a shipping label to ship your guns to us. When we receive your gun(s) you paid.
Cash For Guns will give you some amazing benefits!
Free gun appraisal
Fair price for your gun
Easy shipment tracking throughout the whole process
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Begin our safe, discrete and legal process here.
Jeffery Rowe
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Fury at flats plan for historic Highgate pub to stars Liz Hurley and Tom Hardy
Imogen Blake
Published: 1:59 AM June 9, 2015 Updated: 7:14 PM December 7, 2020
A 130-year-old pub whose regulars have included actors Liz Hurley and Tom Hardy could be carved up to make room for flats.
The Winchester in Highgate closed last year when its owners retired after 32 years of running the much-loved pub. It had provided inspiration for the fictional Winchester pub in hit zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead.
Its new owner has now lodged plans with Haringey Council to turn the spacious back rooms into two new homes, which have already drawn ire from the community.
The proposal follows a pledge made by owner Matan Amitai last year that the pub will remain on the ground floor.
Matthew Curtis, of Claremont Road, Highgate, wrote in a formal objection to the plans: "It cannot be acceptable to further reduce the floor space of the pub... a public amenity, to hand additional profits to the developer.
"In addition, the historically important interior of the pub would be fatally compromised by these new proposals."
In its heyday, the Archway Road pub welcomed swathes of high-profile celebrities through its doors, including Dark Knight Rises actor Mr Hardy, model Ms Hurley, Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden, Doc Martin star Martin Clunes and Shaun of the Dead actor Simon Pegg.
Its previous owners Pat and Val Collins often said it was more of a community centre than a pub.
The Winchester was due to re-open shortly after Mr Amitai bought it in February last year, but works to turn the former upstairs hotel rooms into flats have delayed it. It will be run by new pub company London Pubs, which has a lease for 30 years.
Cllr Bob Hare, who represents Highgate on Haringey Council, voiced concern that the pub's floor space is set to be halved.
He said: "It's the only pub in that part of Archway Road. We want to see the pub continue and that's a widely held wish. If it's turned into a little box at the front, that's not in the spirit of the pub in the past. Housing may make a lot of money but we need a community as well."
Mr Amitai, who owns property consultancy firm GFO Capital, said that works to convert the upper floor into flats are nearly complete, and the pub will re-open after it has been refurbished.
He added: "GFO Capital Ltd would like to confirm that the pub is considered an essential element of its plans and looks forward to the pub trading successfully once again in the near future."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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You are here: Home / Music / MUSIC SUPERSTAR TIM MCGRAW RETURNS TO MGM GRAND GARDEN ARENA SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10
MUSIC SUPERSTAR TIM MCGRAW RETURNS TO MGM GRAND GARDEN ARENA SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10
June 21, 2016 Comment Off 19 Views
MUSIC SUPERSTAR TIM MCGRAW RETURNS TO
MGM GRAND GARDEN ARENA SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10
Tickets on Sale Friday, June 24 at 10 a.m. PST
LAS VEGAS (June 21, 2016) – Three-time GRAMMY Award-winning musician Tim McGraw will return to the MGM Grand Garden Arena Saturday, Dec. 10 to perform a variety of his greatest hits. The concert is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. with doors set to open at 8 p.m.
Tickets priced at $79.50, $99.50 and $130, not including applicable service charges, go on sale Friday, June 24 at 10 a.m. PST and can be purchased online at AXS.com or any MGM Resorts International box office or Concierge desk. Tickets can also be purchased through the AXS Call Center at 888.929.7849 or the MGM Resorts Call Center at 866.740.7711.
An exclusive pre-sale for Tim McGraw Fan Club members begins Wednesday, June 22 at 10 a.m. PST and ends Thursday, June 23 at 10 p.m. PST. Additionally, M life Rewards loyalty members will receive access to the pre-sale. To join the program or for more information, visit mlife.com.
Tim McGraw has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and dominated the charts with 36 No. 1 singles. He's won three GRAMMY Awards, 16 Academy of Country Music Awards, 14 Country Music Association Awards, 10 American Music Awards, three People's Choice Awards and numerous other honors. His iconic career achievements include being named the BDS Radio's Most Played Artist of the Decade for all music genres and having the Most Played Song of the Decade for all music genres with "Something Like That."
McGraw is the most played country artist since his debut in 1992, with two singles spending more than 10 weeks at No. 1 ("Live Like You Were Dying" and "Over and Over"). His current multi-week No. 1 single "Humble and Kind," off of his DAMN COUNTRY MUSIC album, is his 59th release to hit Top 10. His critically acclaimed acting skills were highlighted in the award-winning movies "Friday Night Lights" and "The Blind Side." McGraw will be appearing in the movie, "The Shack," this fall.
Connect with Tim at TimMcGraw.com, Facebook.com/TimMcGraw, on Instagram at @TheTimMcGraw, on Twitter at @TheTimMcGraw, and on YouTube at youtube.com/TimMcGraw.
ABOUT GRAND GARDEN ARENA:
The Grand Garden Arena is home to concerts, championship boxing and premier sporting and special events. The Arena offers comfortable seating for as many as 14,000 with excellent sightlines and state-of-the-art acoustics, lighting and sound.
The Grand Garden Arena is known for hosting legendary events such as world championship boxing featuring the legends of the sport – Floyd Mayweather, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Oscar de la Hoya, Manny Pacquiao and many more. The venue also has been home to many premier UFC fights. Music lovers have experienced some of the industry's biggest stars at the Grand Garden Arena including performances by The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, George Strait, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, U2, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Alicia Keys, Jimmy Buffett and the Barbra Streisand Millennium Concert. The Grand Garden Arena also hosts a variety of special events and sporting events annually including major awards shows, college basketball, pre-season NHL and NBA games, among others. The Grand Garden Arena is operated by a joint venture, the interest of which is owned 50% by a subsidiary of MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) and 50% by a subsidiary of AEG that also owns and operates T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
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Country: German
from Zuffenhausen to Hollywood Boulevard…
The Porsche 356 Speedster it's all of German cars and a little bit more than that… Of course seriousness, performance and build quality are here, but with a touch of "Chic" that belongs only to the "fifties" and with James Dean's perfume still on the Nardi Steering-wheel…
Because the Porsche 356 Speedster has seduced all the stars of its time! Devised by Max Hoffman, the sole Porsche importer for the United States, this convertible version of the 356 has encountered a huge success thanks to its very low and raked windshield which gives it an exceptional shape…
Moreover, for all your ceremonies and events, the Porsche 356 Speedster's curves are "naturally photogenic", it will give all you pictures an incomparable glamour; very spacious it will as well welcome all the wedding dresses, even the most "extreme"!!!
the little sister of the 300 SL "Gullwing"…
The 190 SL is first of all the little sister of the mythic 300 SL "Gullwing doors". It borrows its magic curveous shapes, looking at the the 190 SL one can't help thinking that she is a "sculpture in motion"! But it is also a wonderful roadster, comfortable, reliable, silent and spacious …
… Because the 190 SL is not only taking the beautiful lines of the 300 SL. Under its body we also find back the double wishbone front suspensions and the rear swing axle from the "Gullwing", it was the state of the art at that time and still today the Mercedes 190 SL stands out for its astonishing precision and road handling… It's the ideal car for the French Riviera, comfortable on the sea side, safe on the mountain roads…
It's cruising at light throttle that you will appreciate it the most, for a dinner in Monaco or a tour on the "cliff roads", in an absolute "chic"… Because what really makes the 190 SL and the 300 SL so close it's above all an extraordinary "glamour", they are quite simply two of the most gorgeous cars in the world…
The "Giant killer"!
The Porsche 550 RS Spyder it's the Myth in its natural state!!! All the ingredients are here, the legendary victories (Mille Miglia, Carrera Panamerica, Le Mans…) the dramas with James Dean's accident, and a radical design, lightweight space frame chassis and mid-engine…
Because the Porsche Spyder 550 RS Spyder is first of all a race car designed to challenge the Ferraris and the Mercedes, from these mercyless fights it will get its nickname, "the giant killer". Indeed confronted to the engine size escalation from the main factory teams, the very young Porsche squad has chosen the lightness and rigidity of a space frame chassis with a 1500 cc "flat-four" to lower the center of gravity, very quickly the Porsche are collecting victories with even the mythical "Targa Florio" and a Le Mans class win…
Still today the result is amazing, the 550 Spyder balance is quite simply incredible, lively, agile, precise, the car is almost impossible to catch out. Despite the powerful "2110" engine traction is perfect, brakes are definitely oversized, it's a thrilling car to drive but with also a very high level of security.
It's the ideal "mount" for a sporty car motoring week-end in the countryside, that you will be able to end beautifully with a diner in Monaco, its beauty will catch all the looks…
Mercedes "Pagoda", the "SL Klass" at its maximum!!!
The "Pagoda" is the "SL spirit" at its maximum! Paul Bracq's magic drawing and the 6 in line are obvious, but the most important is the unique compromise between luxury, discrecy and sportivity characterizing high-end Mercedes convertibles, the "SL Klass", for more than 50 years…
… The 250 SL is made out of the will of its engineers, who develop tirelessly new technologies in order to design the "perfect" car, the most silent, the most reliable, the safest. Our 1967 Mercedes 250 SL has already multi-port injection and power steeering; its ultra-sophisticated running gears are laid on a multitude of bushes to get this inimitable "Mercedes feeling" whose key words are softness, silence and control.
But the Pagoda is also an extraordinary drawing from the French designer Paul Bracq, who has imagined (in order to give more head space to the two passengers without spoiling the line) this roof, slightly curved in its center, who will make this car become lengendary…
It's the ideal car to discover the French and Italian Rivieras, you will arrive in fine shape at each stop, and on your way everybody will admire the balance of its lines, the perfect good taste of its interior, its leathers' quality and the refinement of its equipements…
Porsche 911 Targa 2,4l "S"
The Queen of cool!
Our Porsche 911S is a Targa, but apart from that it is identical to the one Steve McQueen drove in "Le Mans" and this is no coincidence!!! The "King of Cool" was an enthusiast, and just as him we have fallen for the unique blend of the sportsmanship, the efficiency and the masculine elegance of the 911…
The Porsche 911 is truly the archetype of "the sports car". It is very comfortable and very practical yet certain details do not deceive; it was fundamentally designed for speed!!! In the 70's, nothing else interested the Zuffenhausen engineers… nevertheless, a far cry from its reputation of being a car for "racing drivers", the 911 is quite "easy to handle". As a matter of fact, it is an agile mount, with an extremely sharp and precise front end. In fact, when sitting behind the wheel, one can be quite surprised by its extreme efficacy and it can be difficult to believe that one is driving a 43-year-old "classic"!!!
Notably, the engine doesn't have a scratch. Its 2.4L, 6 cylinder "aircooled" boxer is a dream. Its racing grade dry sump lubrication allows it to climb in the RPM's with thunderous speed and it is exceptionally reliable. The look of the dashboard has become legendary. The Targa soft top is simple and practical and the controls come naturally to hand … in point of fact the 911 is flawless!!!
Porsche 356 "black"
356 Speedster, from Zuffenhausen to Hollywood Boulevard…
Our 356 Speedster is very much sought-after… So we have decided to add a second one to our "ideal collection"!!! Of course we wanted it radically different from our first grey "silver arrow". This second Speedster is black with a red interior and a "Banjo" steering-wheel…
… Because the Porsche 356 Speedster has seduced all the stars of its time ! Devised by Max Hoffman, the sole Porsche importer for the United States, this convertible version of the 356 has encountered a huge success thanks to its very low and raked windshield which gives it an exceptional shape….
Moreover, for all your ceremonies and events, the Porsche 356 Speedster's curves are "naturally photogenic", it will give all you pictures an incomparable glamour; fast and reliable she is the "mother" of all modern Porsches and of course it is above all forever "James Dean's car"!!!
Porsche 718 RSK Spyder
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UFC on Fuel TV 8 Prelims: Is Bryan Caraway a Diamond in the Rough?
Kyle Symes
The prelims of a UFC event are usually the proving grounds for young, up-and-coming fighters. It's a low pressure environment that can help ease a fighter into becoming comfortable with competing under the spotlight. The arena is filled with only the hardcore fans during the early portions of preliminary bouts which can help a fighter hear his corner and not be overwhelmed by the roar of the crowd.
The low pressure environment is something that 22-fight veteran Bryan Caraway can relate to. Caraway's struggles with anxiety are well documented after his time on The Ultimate Fighter. It appeared as if Caraway would defeat himself before even stepping foot in the cage. His anxiety got the best of him most notably when the prospect of facing the dangerous Brazilian Diego Brandao came up during the show.
Now the anxiety issues seem to be a thing of the past for the 28-year-old Caraway as he's steamrolled through his first two bouts in the UFC. The Team Alpha Male fighter tapped out fellow castmate Dustin Neace in the second round to earn a victory in his UFC debut. Perhaps even more impressive than the victory was the fact Caraway was hospitalized with pneumonia only a week prior to the bout. Caraway followed that up with a "Fight of the Night" performance in his bantamweight debut against Mitch Gagnon. Caraway eventually secured the victory by submission in the final round at UFC 149.
Now Caraway faces a true test of wills against Takeya Mizugaki on the UFC on Fuel TV 8 prelims. Mizugaki is a veteran of the sport and perhaps one of the most durable fighters in the bantamweight division. He won't go away quietly and will provide a good barometer of just how far along Caraway has progressed as a fighter. If Caraway can move past Mizugaki, he may be in line to face some upper-level guys and within striking range of an UFC title shot.
There are a number of qualities about Caraway that make him a potential force in the bantamweight division. One of those is the team he works with is one of the best in the country, Team Alpha Male. Working with guys like Chad Mendes and Urijah Faber is only going to make your MMA game better. Say what you will about their records in title bouts, the gym still produces quality fighters.
Another thing to like about Caraway is his ability to finish his opponents. Owner of 17 victories, amazingly only one of those has gone to the final bell. That includes 14 wins via submission. When facing a tough opponent, it's important to take them out when you can, as early as you can, and it appears as if Caraway has no problems pulling the trigger to look for a finish.
A factor that may increase his chance at rising up the rankings is the lack of depth in the bantamweight division. Renan Barao and Dominick Cruz sit atop the division, but after that the field is wide open. Faber has losses to both Cruz and Barao, and so too does Scott Jorgensen. That really only leaves Eddie Wineland and Raphael Assuncao as the guys next in line, either of which could find themselves facing Caraway in the future.
It's still too early in Caraway's UFC tenure to know if he can truly challenge for gold, but if he adds a victory against Mizugaki, especially a submission victory, the future appears to be bright for the fighter.
Photo: Bryan Caraway (L) has his hand raised in victory (Esther Lin/MMA Fighting)
Bryan CarawayUFCUFC on Fuel TV 8
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Kyle is a recent graduate of Aurora University, where he obtained a Bachelor's in Communications. Kyle resides in Illinois, just outside of Chicago. He played baseball and football in both high school and college, but is now focusing on an amateur MMA career.
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Conor McGregor has Finally Realised That UFC Moved on Without Him


text:
Domus Durnovaria
An audioguide to the Roman Town House in Dorchester
This Roman town house, whose considerable remains are preserved in the grounds of County Hall, Dochester, has been re-presented to the public in a visitor-friendly way.
Paul Hyland was commissioned by the County Council to write an audioguide which can be accessed on site. It is dramatised and uses the voices of imagined past inhabitants to present its story through sucessive phases of occupation and decay.


text:
Striarca erythraea is een tweekleppigensoort uit de familie van de Noetiidae. De wetenschappelijke naam van de soort is voor het eerst geldig gepubliceerd in 1869 door Issel.

Noetiidae

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Hello TLCB Readers! My name is… Nicolas, aka nico71 on the internet, I am a French mechanical engineer, currently working as a project manager in mechanical design office for a company that manufactures industrial x-ray radioscopy and CT-scanners. I am also a prolific Lego Technic designer who creates machines, devices and vehicles like those you see here at TLCB.
I drive a Honda Legend 3.2 V6 from 1994 and a Honda Civic 1.4 from 1998. I also have a motorcycle which is a old Honda Transalp 600 from 1994, a very good motorcycle for traveling. As you can see, I am a huge fan of Honda (which also affects my Lego hobby!) My dream car is a old Honda NSX, which I have driven once and it was amazing. It's powerful and comfortable with unique look, and the passenger would obviously be my girlfriend for traveling and holidays.
Hard to say because when building studless Technic I do not use many different types of parts as in other fields, however I guess the most useful bricks is a connector to attach different parts together. But no, I would say the axle, because motion always starts with axle in my machines, and I like motion, so yes, an axle!
My first set (according my parents) was the 8837 Pneumatic Excavator which combined stud-full design and pneumatics, which were really good! I had some other LEGO after that like the 8880 Supercar and the Technic Space Shuttle my story really restarted in 2007 when I bought the 8420 Street Bike, and in doing so discovered the new way Technic was designed with studless pieces. I then bought the 8436 truck which I have modified many times!
I do not buy many LEGO sets per year though; I have a small collection because I don't want to have too many parts for my available space (and it takes more time to find them!). I also don't need 80% of a set's parts like beams and pins for my own creations. I have only what I need, and sometimes make an occasional Bricklink order to complete a model. This is a huge advantage in studless design, as you don't need to have a huge collection to make something good. However, now my collection is nearly 10 years old, so I do need to renew the broken and faded parts!
In 2007 I searched for some inspiration about Lego on the internet. Only Brickshelf existed back then, and I discovered many builders there like Zoli, Sariel and so on. Some months after, the French forum techlug opened, and I started to post regularly and I was a moderator on this forum from 2007 to 2014. In parallel I created my own Youtube channel in 2008 and uploaded some videos, and in 2010 I created my blog in order to centralise all my work.
Today I focus on my Youtube channel, creating instructions, and my blog. I am not very active on forums, but I do read them and follow many builders. When Nathan, the owner of Rebrickable, contacted me for advice in 2011 to create the website I was really excited about his idea because it allowed people to add MOCs to their collections via instructions made available online (funny, the first MOC indexed on Rebrickable was my Jeep). I started to make more instructions and focus on the building experience, and in 2017 Mochub followed to enable fans to buy the whole package of a MOC, including parts and instructions.
I have a big list of ideas, and when I have time I look into it and start something. I try to work on only one idea but it is hard – sometimes I need to move on to a different subject if I get stuck. As I have a small collection I can't keep all the creations I build because I need parts for the next one, so my models live only for duration of shooting photographs and video! Sometimes I can make a creation really fast without a problem, with all things gathered in a perfect way, and sometimes I need to retry things many times. I have some pet peeves in my to do list..
I find my design pretty unique because all builders have their own particular way to build , so when you see a creation, you can recognise who did it.
For my creations, I mainly focus on functional conception for a machine. For vehicle I always try to envisage the completed car, because you can make a nice front bumper and hood, but the edge connection between them can be a hard thing to do. This what I call the homogeneity or cohesion of the design, in order that all big parts of a car fit perfectly with each other, for instance to avoid a model having a nice front, but a bulky rear and poor side profile. All the different parts of a car need to form a coherent whole. This is a hard thing to do in Lego (and the original designer of a real car has to do the same!).
A big thank you to Nico for joining us here at TLCB and becoming our sixteenth Master MOCer. You can find more about Nico's builds at his excellent wesbite, and all of his builds are available on Brickshelf too. You can check out everyone that's made it into TLCB's Master MOCers Hall of Fame by clicking here, and we'll see you soon for No. 17!


text:
Nanakdass Dr Kuldip Singh encounters christians…and explains Guru Nanak Ji
May 10, 2017 May 10, 2017 by SikhiVichar Forum
ENCOUNTERS OF NANAKSDAS WITH CHRISTIANS
A NOTE FOR THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE INTELLIGENT SIKH BOYS AND GIRLS BETWEEN THE AGES OF 8 AND 12 YEARS
(1) November 1958 – Birmingham, UK. The first Gurdwara built by Sikhs at Smethwick a suburb of Birmingham was in a big Church which the Sikhs had purchased alongwith its 5-6 acre land for a sum of only £10,000, when the exchange value of pound was Rs. 13.40/- only. The attendance at Churches had gone down tremendously and on account of this the padre could not be paid as well as the annual repairs of the Churches could not be carried out. The Christians were averse to pull down the Churches and felt happy if somebody could utilize the Church as such.
(2) June 1969 – Glasgow. I stayed for a month at the Doctors residency of Gartnavel Mental Hospital before I could find my own house. I found that there were 20 medical students of both sexes who were looking after the patients during the night for which they were provided with free boarding and lodging. I learnt from them that none of them was prepared to take any money from their parents for their studies after the age of 18 years. They were all earning and paying for their medical studies. They were very devoted hard working men and women who were not going to Church at all. On discussing with them I learnt that all of them did believe in earning their daily bread by honest means. I explained to them that even though they were against practicing any religion and did not read Bible, this was the essence of Christianity which they were practicing.
(3) June 1970 – Kalmar, Sweden. My wife was working as a Consultant Anesthetist at this place and was staying in a flat owned by a retired 75-year-old doctor. I spent a week with her. One day the doctor discussed with me that he and another 75-year-old man were the only two persons who were paying for the repair of the beautiful church across the road by the side of the sea and he is extremely worried as to what is going to happen to this church. The Govt. was not prepared to take over and look after the church. He explained to me that I would be able to judge the society by the behaviour of his three children. His first born son who was 45-year-old was living with a woman and had two children. He refused to undergo any type of marriage ceremony. His 35-year-old daughter refuses to get married and wants to live with a person of her choice later. His youngest child, a 30-year-old daughter agreed to undergo an engagement ceremony to oblige her parents for which he had arranged a big party inviting 500 persons. After the ceremony she started living with the person without undergoing any type of marriage ceremony. In Swedon, the police at that time would register any man and woman living together as husband and wife and saw to it that the father paid for the upkeep of his children up to the age of 18 years. Any man deserting his wife would be hauled up and made to pay 25% of his income to the mother of his children up to the age of 18 years. This was making the family stay together under the same roof even if they were leading a promiscuous life. During my stay abroad for 5½ years mostly in UK (1958-61 and 1969-71) I found that by and large the vast majority of people were honest hardworking and believed in a work culture. The professors and teachers were always available to the students during lunch breaks and even after the working hours.
(4) March 1974 – Christian Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana. I went on deputation from PGI, Chandigarh to this institute from September 1973 to September 1976, as Professor of Radiotherapy. Professor Nambudipad, the Director of CMC called in a Cancer expert, Dr Utne from USA for three months to work in my department. Dr Utne informed me when he was leaving CMC that he had been charged to discuss and try his best to convert Dr Singh to Christianity. Within a few days Dr Utne remarked that he cannot teach me any Radiotherapy or management of Cancer because his personal knowledge of both was far inferior and on the other hand he would learn about the subject from my department. He said that he is also a preacher of Christianity in USA and he would like to discuss Christianity with me. I was mighty pleased and conveyed to Dr Utne that I was myself trying my level best to read the Bible and understand Christianity. Every morning as the head of my department I was supposed to call in every member of my staff to my office and start the day after reading a page from the Bible. I asked Dr Utne to explain to me the essence and greatness of Christ and Christianity because nearly half the world population was Christian. He informed me that Christ had martyred himself for the sake of humanity. Christ would not only pardon our sins but would also intercede on behalf of all Christians and recommend their pardon to God that he had laid down his life for Him. Dr Utne informed me that we can always depend on the grace and benevolence of Christ on account of the suffering of the Christ for our sake. I explained to Dr Utne, that this is very different as compared to the philosophy of Guru Nanak, the founder of our religion. I said that I am prepared to agree with him that Christ was the son of God. Guru Nanak on the other hand regarded himself as the dust underneath the feet of the servants of God as stated by him in his Bani as recorded in the Guru Granth Sahib whom the Sikhs revere as their living Guru. Guru Nanak acted as a Guru or Teacher to guide the humanity and show them the path of righteousness. He did not claim that he was an agent of God but taught how to lead a religious life and how to control our five basic urges of lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego. I brought to his notice regarding the genesis and the structure of the universe as described by Guru Nanak. According to Guru Nanak, there was total darkness for aeons of years when the Primal Lord created the universe by His Will in a moment. Our scripture (Guru Granth Sahib) describes 9 continents, innumerable galaxies containing uncountable solar systems and that the infinite extent of the universe cannot be comprehended.
It is repeatedly stated by our Gurus beginning with Guru Nanak that there are 4 modes of reproduction: from eggs, from placenta, self reproduction (like that in bacteria, viruses and moulds.) and reproduction by seeds etc in the plant world.
Guru Nanak had traveled to the prominent places of pilgrimage all over India and beyond. He had traveled from Assam in the east to Mecca and Baghdad in the west, from Himalayas in the north to Sri Lanka in the south discussing with religious leaders and singing Gurbani that is the revealed words of the Lord accompanied by his low caste Muslim childhood friend Mardana playing on the Rabab (a stringed instrument like Sitar). He traveled for about 28 years commencing in 1499. He was preaching a religion of humanity to all. He exhorted Muslims to be good Muslims and there are several Shabads (or poems) addressed specifically to the Muslims. He recorded that the Muslims reciting the Namaz five times a day should have five basic virtues. He was preaching Brahmans the quality of a true Brahman. He met the Sidhs in the snow up the Mount Kailash and reprimanded them that if the religious teachers would shun the society and are praying for their personal salvation then who would guide the public about the path of truthful living. He was preaching all over that instead of worshiping their personal gods, the Hindus should worship the one Creator of the Universe and stop quarreling amongst themselves.
Guru Nanak wrote, "that in the present dark age (Kalyug), the kings have become butchers and true religion has flown away. In the moonless night of falsehood, the moon of truth is not visible." "The Qazi who administers justice, takes bribes and delivers judgments. Brahmin literally 'slays' life and takes ablution. The 'blind' Yogi does not know the path. All three are leading the masses towards ruination." In the morning community singing in every Gurdwara, Guru Nanak highlights the demoralization and corruption of the Indian society.
Dr Utne ask me to summarize the core ideology of Sikhism. I put before him two compositions or Shabads of fifth Nanak which epitomize the Sikh theology in a nutshell.
"Koee boley Raam Raam Koee Khudaye"….. Some address Him as Raam and some as Khuda. Some pray to the True Master and others to Allah. You are the cause and effect of everything, bless us with Your mercy. Some bathe at holy places, others perform Hajj. Says Nanak: He who realized Lord's will, realized His mystery.
"Na Hum Hindu Na Musalmaan" ….. We do not keep fasts, nor do we observe the month of Ramzaan. We serve only the One, who protects us in the end. The One Lord, the Lord of the World, is our Allah. He administers justice equally both to the Hindus and Muslims. We are neither Hindus or Muslims. Our body and breath of life belong to the One called Allah or Raam.
After about two weeks Dr Utne requested me to provide him with a thick "karha" for his wrist. He started wearing the "karha" and this was noticed by everyone in CMC. When questioned Dr Utne conveyed to the authorities that he cannot understand two points. Firstly what made Miss Brown select Ludhiana in the heart of the Sikh area as the place of her missionary activity and secondly as to why the Sikhs have not converted all of them to Sikhi. Dr Utne conveyed to me that whatever discussion we had showed that Christianity was an old religion and that is why the younger generation in the space age was rejecting the unscientific ideas mentioned in the Bible. The modern child is surprised that why should Christ pardon the sins committed by individual and also they do not accept the story of genesis as given in the Bible. Dr Utne was convinced and conveyed to me that Dr Singh all Christians are potential Sikhs. The day, you Sikhs just convey to the school children all over the world as to what is given in Guru Granth Sahib, then at least all the Christians would become believers in the Guru Granth Sahib. The Sikhs have not to preach their religion. The Sikhs have only to provide the essence of Guru Granth Sahib in a small booklet of 30-40 pages and make it available to school children all over the world. Not only the children would become admirers of Guru Granth Sahib but strife would disappear from the world. Dr Utne conveyed to the authorities that he would not be able to convert Dr Singh to Christianity but he is confident that if he stays in CMC for three months, he would go back wearing a turban. Dr Utne was made to return to USA after a month.
(5) 1982 – Auchim Peters, a third year Medical Student from Hamburg visiting Surgery Department of PGI after corresponding and getting due sanction from the Director PGI, Auchim reached my residence on one Sunday morning carrying his baggage tied to his back. I learnt from him that he is a son of a rich banker but according to the custom of his age, he had refused all monetary help from his parents after he attained the age of 18 years. For the very expensive training from the Medical Degree he was earning his money by becoming an ambulance driver in the night and weekends. He was also performing duties in ICU ward of hospital whenever possible. He had saved the money for his trip to PGI. I was surprised to learn that he had walked from the Delhi Airport to the inter-state bus terminus at Kashmiri Gate Delhi a distance of about 20 kilometers to save money and wanted to stay for the night at my place and them he was confident that some post-graduate students of PGI would accommodate him in their hostels in turns. He also confirmed that he along with his generation was against going to the church. I explained to him that he was practising a true religion by leading his life in this manner. He was planning to spend three months in the following years either at Bangkok or Rangoon (Burma) and in the last year in USA.
(6) 1995 – Mauritius. I happened to talk to a Christian Architect who had become a Buddhist a month earlier during a ceremonial lunch. He explained to me that he came across a small booklet written by Dalai lama about Buddhism and found that this was a better religious life as compared to Christianity. He discussed with his wife and eight-year-old son and all of them became Buddhist and converted a room into a Buddhist Temple containing a Statue of Buddha. He was surprised when I explained to him briefly the essentials of Sikhi. He was amazed that being such a modern and scientific religion there is no small book on Sikhi in any library. He wanted me to urgently produce a book of not more than 100 pages containing the history and ideology of the Sikhs.
(7) October 2002 – Oswal Hospital Ludhiana. At a conference on Radiotherapy and cancer organized by the hospital Dr. Hoskins from Vancouver came as a participant. I inquired from Dr. Hoskins that he must have come across several Sikhs in his town and what does he know about the Sikhs. He remarked that "I have seen their noisy processions and that they are a law and order problem for their country." I had the small booklet on Guru Granth Sahib – Light House of Humanity and asked Dr. Hoskins to read a few lines from the book. When he read, "Men of charity gift away the riches they gather through sin……. Women love their men for their money……. The Kazi mutters Khuda-Khuda (God) and accepting bribes does injustice………..Greed like that of a dog, cheating and slander…….and self-praise are our actions". He read underneath Guru Nanak and asked me, Who was Guru Nanak? I informed him that Guru Nanak was the founder of Sikhism. He was extremely surprised and felt that how could Guru Nanak be the founder of the religion which was being portrayed by the Sikhs at Vancouver. He was very happy to get the small booklet containing extracts from Guru Granth Sahib.
The Sikhs are spending crores of rupees during 2004 to celebrate the various centenaries connected with various events from the Sikh History. The mega event was held at Amritsar which was visited by millions of Sikh and President and Prime Minister of India had been invited to participate in the function on 1-9-2004. Similar celebrations are being held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of installation of Guru Granth Sahib in various countries of the world. Prince Charles attended a big function held at the Royal Albert Hall at London. There is hardly any mention in the world media regarding the contents of Guru Granth Sahib. No one knows that Guru Nanak had been preaching to Muslims of Mecca to imbibe true Islam and practice the same. Very few in the world know that the foundation stone of the central Shrine of Sikhi, the Darbar Sahib Amritsar better known as Golden Temple had been laid by a Muslim Divine, Hazrat Mian Mir. The Tenth Nanak Guru Gobind Singh had helped militarily Bahadur Shah, the son of the killer of his father and four sons (Emperor Aurangzeb), to capture the throne of Delhi, which was his legal right. The sixth Nanak Guru Hargobind had given land in a town founded by him for construction of a mosque which is still in existence. The Sikhs have yet to propagate about the significance of the fives symbols of the Khalsa i.e. Kesh (Uncut Hair) indicating the kinship of the Khalsa with the Primal Lord; Kangha (Comb); Karha (iron or steel bracelet) to withhold the Khalsa from performing any evil deed; Kachhera (specially designed underwear to remind Khalsa against adultery) and Kirpan(small sword, the emblem of the sovereignty of the Khalsa).
Nanaksdas, Dr Kuldip Singh FRCS, CHANDIGARH PUNJAB.
NOTE: As recently as a month ago, India celebrated on a Grand scale – Grander than any scale ever seen before, the 350th Birthday of The Tenth Nanak – Guru Gobind Singh Ji, but sadly the same sentiments expressed by Dr Kuldip Singh ji expressed above about Previous Centenaries and celebrations prevailed….more attention and praise was heaped on how big the langgar was, how long the processions were, how well the accommodation arrangements were and how huge and well lighted decorated air conditioned…..the pandals and etc etc were and NOT MUCH was disseminated/discussed about the Philosophy, the wars, the works, the poetry, the Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Not much effort was made to connect Guur Gobind Singh Ji to the previous Nine Nanaks and How He accomplished the Finale of what began in 1469 in 1708 by placing the Guru Granth Sahib Ji on the Gurgadee THRONE of Nanak as the Final and ONLY Guru to guide the Khalsa For Eternity. Sadly we Sikhs are still stuck in the same rutt…We continue to be fascinated by the shining glass while we discard the diamonds and pearls.
The Sikhs are neither Hindus nor Muslims – Na Hum Hindu Na Missalmann
A Study of the Fifth Pauri in Asa Ki Var


text:
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) techniques have documented many success stories and been widely deployed in the wild~\cite{saon2017english,chiu2018state}. However, building a reasonable ASR system for practical application still requires tens of thousands of hours annotated data~\cite{chiu2018state}. It remains a challenging task to extend ASR system to around 7000 languages in the world as most languages are lack of training data. Self-supervised learning, where training targets are derived from the input itself, has recently shown promising results in speech recognition~\cite{oord2018representation, schneider2019wav2vec, chung2019unsupervised, liu2020mockingjay, ling2020deep, baevski2020wav2vec}. Recent work on self-supervised learning can be categorized into two main approaches: contrastive learning approaches that distinguish a true sample from negative ones in a latent space~\cite{oord2018representation, schneider2019wav2vec, baevski2020wav2vec}, and reconstruction-based approaches that directly predict future frames~\cite{chung2019unsupervised, ling2020deep} or reconstruct masked inputs~\cite{liu2020mockingjay, wang2020unsupervised}. Self-supervised learning provides an efficient way to learn from unlabeled data, and it allows the network to learn with fewer labeled data and generalize better. Its feasibility for monolingual speech recognition with limited amounts of labeled data has been shown in~\cite{baevski2020wav2vec}.

Self-supervised learning is further applied to multilingual setting in \cite{ conneau2020unsupervised}, namely cross-lingual speech representation learning~(XLSR). Multilingual pre-training simplifies the procedure of training individual seed models for each language by supporting multiple languages with a single model. Recent studies~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised, wang2021unispeech} also show that multilingual pre-training outperforms monolingual pre-training in low resource languages. From a multitask learning perspective, the common knowledge learned from each task shall help the other related tasks learn and generalize better~\cite{caruana1997multitask}. However, due to the vast diversity of pronunciation styles across different languages, the shared network often struggles in optimizing various languages simultaneously~\cite{lu2020bi, pratap2020massively, pham2021efficient}. While low resource languages benefit from joint training with similar languages, high resource languages often suffer from the negative transfer problem, resulting in inferior performance~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised}. Such performance degeneration becomes more significant as the model expands to more languages~\cite{pratap2020massively} or more training data~\cite{ li2021scaling}, which obstacles the application of pre-trained models on downstream multilingual tasks~\cite{li2020multilingual}.

In this work, we study language adaptive cross-lingual speech representation learning to alleviate the aforementioned interference problem. More importantly, we propose a novel language adaptive pre-training approach based on sparse sharing sub-networks~(S3Net). Sparse sharing architecture is initially proposed in~\cite{sun2020learning} to jointly learn sub-networks for multiple tasks and further applied in the field of neural machine translation~\cite{liang2021finding, lin2021learning, xie2021importance}. Inspired by that, we extract a sub-network for each language and all the sparsely shared sub-networks are jointly trained to learn language adaptive speech representations, with each language only updating its corresponding sub-network. The key idea of this work is that redundant parameters can be pruned out separately for each language with minor or no performance degradation, and these parameters discarded by one language can be further utilized by other languages to learn better representations. Besides, it automatically distributes both shared and language specific parameters at each layer, without requiring any additional language specific component~\cite{kannan2019large}. Given these designs, the learnt representations are expected to benefit more from positive transfer, while the negative transfer effects from dissimilar languages are mitigated.

There are several ways of extracting sub-networks, and in this paper we mainly focus on two ideas: one follows the procedure of lottery ticket hypothesis~(LTH)~\cite{frankle2018lottery} and the other is based on taylor expansion~(TE)~\cite{molchanov2019importance}. We compare our S3Net with baseline XLSR model and several other adaptation methods~\cite{kannan2019large, gong2021layer}. Experimental results on a downstream multilingual task show the effectiveness of our proposed method. Specifically, S3Net yields an average 9.8\% and 7.4\% relative error reduction for XLSR base and large models respectively. Notably, it significantly improves the performance of high resource languages, achieving an average 17.8\% and 16.7\% relative error reduction. Moreover, S3Net also consistently outperforms other adaptation methods and requires fewer parameters.

\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:related_work}
Language interference problem has been investigated in many prior work on multilingual ASR. From a capacity perspective, \cite{conneau2020unsupervised} finds that enlarging model size alleviates the interference problem, and \cite{li2021scaling} scales up their model to 10 billion parameters to accommodate multiple languages. Another line of this research tends to retain the language specific modeling ability. It is observed that simply adding a one-hot language identity~(LID) vector to condition the multilingual model can boost the performance~\cite{toshniwal2018multilingual}. To better capture the language specific knowledge, previous studies usually augment networks with additional manually designed components, such as language specific weight matrices~\cite{pham2021efficient}, light weight adapters~\cite{kannan2019large}, decoupled multilingual encoders~\cite{lu2020bi} or decoders~\cite{pratap2020massively}. However, the inserted module size, structure and injection position are all important factors to consider, which requires additional efforts to fuse those additional modules into the original network~\cite{gong2021layer}.

We follow the line of language adaptation in this study. While previous work are mainly focused on supervised setting, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to apply language adaptive training to unsupervised pre-training models.

\section{Language adaptive pre-training with sparse sharing sub-networks}
\label{sec:lap}
In this section, we describe the proposed language adaptive pre-training approach based on sparse sharing sub-networks, namely S3Net. The proposed S3Net mainly includes three parts as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:lap_procedure}: XLSR pre-training, extracting sparse sub-networks and language adaptive pre-training.

\subsection{Pre-training of XLSR model}
\label{sec:xlsr}
XLSR model~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised} extends wav2vec 2.0 framework~\cite{baevski2020wav2vec} that basically consists of three components: feature encoder, context network and quantization module.
The multi-layer convolutional feature encoder takes raw waveform as input and maps the input into latent speech representations ${\mathbf z} = {\mathbf z}_1, ..., {\mathbf z}_T$. Each ${\mathbf z}_t$ represents an approximately 25ms wide audio with the frame stride of 20ms. The transformer~\cite{vaswani2017attention} based context network utilizes the latent speech representations, and outputs contextual representations ${\mathbf c}={\mathbf c}_1, ..., {\mathbf c}_T$ that capture contextual information from full sequence. To provide the training targets, the latent representation ${\mathbf z}_t$ is discretized to ${\mathbf q}_t$ with a quantization module. The quantizer has $G=2$ codebooks with $V=320$ entries each, resulting in a set of over 100K codewords in total. Gumbel softmax enables the model to choose discrete codebook entries in a fully differentiable way~\cite{jang2016categorical}.

The model is trained by solving a contrast learning task. Following~\cite{baevski2020wav2vec}, we randomly sample from all time steps with probability $s=0.065$ as the starting indices, and then continuously mask the subsequent $M=10$ steps. The goal of the contrast task is to distinguish a true encoded sample ${\mathbf q}_t$ among distractors $\mathbf{Q}_t$ that are sampled uniformly from other masked steps of the same sequence:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:total_loss}
\begin{aligned}
  \mathcal{L} = -\log \frac{\exp (sim(\mathbf{c}_t, \mathbf{q}_t)/ \kappa)} {\sum_{\mathbf{\tilde{q} \in \mathbf{Q}_t}} \exp (sim(\mathbf{c}_t, \mathbf{\tilde{q}}) / \kappa)} + \lambda \mathcal{L}_d
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $sim(\cdot,\cdot)$ denotes cosine similarity, $\lambda$ is the weight factor and diversity loss $\mathcal{L}_{d}=\frac{1}{G V} \sum_{g=1}^{G} \sum_{v=1}^{V} \bar{p}_{g, v} \log \bar{p}_{g, v} $ is employed to increase the use of codebook representations by maximizing the entropy over the selection probability of entry $v$ in codebook $g$.

We form multilingual batches~\cite{conneau2019cross2} by sampling with a multinomial distribution $p_l \sim (\frac{n_l}{N})^{\alpha}$, where $n_l$ is the number of hours for language $l$, $N$ is the total number of hours and $\alpha$ is the sampling factor. We upsample the data from low resource languages with $\alpha = 0.5$ and for high resource languages we use natural sampling probability with $\alpha = 1.0$.

\begin{figure}[t]
  \centering
  \centerline{\includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{training_procedure.pdf}}
\caption{Training procedure of the proposed S3Net. Connections between two nodes can be shared by a set of languages (gray lines), or be occupied by one specific language (colored lines). There also exists empty connections in the final S3Net model.}
\label{fig:lap_procedure}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Extracting sparse sub-networks}
\label{sec:extract_mask}
Lottery ticket hypothesis~\cite{frankle2018lottery} suggests that, a randomly initialized dense network contains small sub-networks~(winning tickets) such that, when trained in isolation, can match the accuracy of full network. This motivates us to prune out redundant parameters for each language to make room for language specific modeling, and we hypothesize that these parameters discarded by one language can be further utilized by other languages to learn better representations. However, \cite{sun2020learning} shows that finding winning tickets from randomly initialized network is not stable, and a multitask warmup stage helps stabilize the process. Thus we extract sub-networks on top of a pre-trained XLSR model. Two different approaches of extracting sub-networks are explored in this work. The first one mainly follows the procedure of LTH~\cite{frankle2018lottery} and the second one is based on importance scores that are estimated with first order taylor expansion~\cite{molchanov2019importance}.

\textbf{Extracting sub-networks with LTH.}
For the first approach we adopt a simple one-shot magnitude pruning~(OMP) strategy instead of the iterative pruning strategy used in~\cite{frankle2018lottery}, as iterative pruning requires several rounds of training, pruning and resetting for each language, which is computationally expensive and time consuming. For each language $l$, we train XLSR model $\bm{\theta}$ with only the specific language data $\mathcal{D}^l$  for additional few steps to obtain $\hat{\bm{\theta}}^l$. Sub-network is extracted from $\hat{\bm{\theta}}^l$ and a proportion of $p$ parameters with lowest magnitude are considered as unimportant for this language, thus being pruned out. For the sake of convenience, we use a fix pruning rate $p$ for all languages in this work. The structure of sub-network for language $l$ is controlled by a binary mask matrix $\mathbf{m}^l$ which is initialized with $\mathbf{1}$. If a parameter $\hat{\theta}^l_i$ is pruned out, the corresponding item $m^l_i$ in the mask is updated to zero. The sub-network employed by language $l$ thus can be denoted as
$
\bm{\theta}^l = \mathbf{m}^l \odot \bm{\theta}
$,
where $\odot$ denotes the element-wise product operation.

\textbf{Extracting sub-networks with TE.}
Following~\cite{molchanov2019importance}, the importance of a parameter can be quantified by the error induced by removing it. A squared difference of prediction errors with and without the parameter $\theta_i$ is used to measure the importance score $\mathcal{I}^l_{i}$ of language $l$:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:initial_importance_score}
  \mathcal{I}^l_{i}=\left[\mathcal{L}(\mathcal{D}^l, \bm{\theta})-\mathcal{L}\left(\mathcal{D}^l, \bm{\theta} \mid \theta_{i}=0\right)\right]^{2}
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{D}^l$ denotes the training data of language $l$, and $\mathcal{L}(\mathcal{D}^l, \bm{\theta})$ is the averaged loss on $\mathcal{D}^l$ calculated by Equation~\ref{eq:total_loss}. However, directly calculating the importance score in Equation~\ref{eq:initial_importance_score} requires $|\bm{\theta}|$ times calculation of the loss function, which is infeasible. Fortunately,
we can approximate the score with first order taylor expansion~\cite{molchanov2019importance}:
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{I}^l_{i} \approx (g^l_i \theta_i)^2
\end{equation}
where $g^l_i = \frac{\partial \mathcal{L}(\mathcal{D}^l, \bm{\theta}) }{\partial \theta_i}$ is the gradient for $\theta_i$ that can be efficiently calculated with backward propagation. For each language, those parameters with top $p$ lowest importance scores are pruned out, which is similar to the LTH based approach.

\subsection{Language adaptive pre-training with S3Net}
\label{sec:lap_with_s3net}
Once we obtain the masks $\mathbf{m}_1,...,\mathbf{m}_L$ for all languages, we continue to train the model $\bm{\theta}$ with all multilingual data to learn language adaptive speech representations. We form batches that only contain utterances from one language and those batches are randomly sampled with the same sampling strategy as XLSR pre-training. It is noted that each language only maintains a sub-network, and for each batch only the sub-network from the corresponding language will participate the forward computation and be updated. In contrast to other adaptation methods that typically require manually designed language specific components, S3Net automatically distributes both  shared and language specific parameters at each layer, and we expect that the model capacity is better allocated for each language.

\begin{table*}[t]
  \centering
\resizebox{2\columnwidth}{!}{
  \begin{tabular}{l|c|ccccccccc|c}
    \toprule
     {\textbf{Model}} & \textbf{Pre-trained data} & \textbf{es} & \textbf{fr} & \textbf{it} & \textbf{ky} & \textbf{nl} & \textbf{ru} & \textbf{sv} & \textbf{tt} & \textbf{zh} & \textbf{Avg} \\
    \midrule
    \multicolumn{2}{l|}{Number of unlabeled audio data} & 168h & 353h & 90h & 17h & 29h & 55h & 3h & 17h & 50h &  \\
    \midrule \midrule
    \multicolumn{11}{l}{{\it{Baselines from XLSR}}~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised}} \\
    \midrule
     {XLSR-Monolingual} & CV-Mono* & 6.8 & 10.4 & 10.9 & 29.6 & 37.4 & 11.6 & 63.6 & 21.4 & 31.4 & 24.8 \\
     {XLSR-10} & CV-Multi* &9.4 & 13.4 & 13.8 & 8.6 & 16.3 & 11.2 & 21.0 & 8.3 & 24.5 & 14.1 \\
     {XLSR-10 (Large)} & CV-Multi* & 7.7 & 12.2 & 11.6 & 7.0 & 13.8 & 9.3 & 20.8 & 7.3 & 22.3 & 12.4 \\
    \midrule
    \multicolumn{11}{l}{\it{Re-run baselines and our models}} \\
    \midrule
    XLSR-10 & \multirow{3}{*}{CV-Multi} & 10.8 & 12.8 & 15.1 & 8.5 & 15.4 & 11.8 & 22.1 & 8.1 & 24.2 & 14.3 \\
    S3Net-TE & & 9.9 & 12.0 & 14.4 & 7.8 & 14.7 & 11.3 & 22.1 & 7.7 & 23.9 & 13.8 \\
    S3Net-LTH &  & \textbf{8.7} & \textbf{10.8} & \textbf{12.4} & \textbf{7.5} & \textbf{14.1} & \textbf{10.1} & \textbf{22.0} & \textbf{7.2} & \textbf{22.9} &  \textbf{12.9} \\
    \midrule
    XLSR-10 (Large) & \multirow{3}{*}{CV-Multi}  & 9.0 & 10.6 & 12.7 & 6.8 & 12.8 & 10.1 & 19.9 & 6.6 & 21.5 & 12.2 \\
    S3Net-TE (Large) & & 8.4 & 10.5 & 12.4 & 6.7 & 12.5 & 10.1 & 19.6 & 6.3 & 21.6 & 12.0 \\
    S3Net-LTH (Large) & & \textbf{7.3} & \textbf{9.2} & \textbf{10.4} & \textbf{6.3} & \textbf{12.1} & \textbf{9.4} & \textbf{19.5} & \textbf{6.1} & \textbf{21.5} & \textbf{11.3} \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
}
  \caption{Evaluation results on CommonVoice dataset. The last column is the averaged PER on nine languages. Re-run baselines and our models are all pre-trained on ten languages, and evaluated on nine languages with shared vocabulary using CTC criterion. *: They use different version of the CommonVoice dataset, but the data size is the same as ours.}
  \label{tab:cv_all}
\end{table*}

\section{Experiments}
\label{sec:experiments}

\subsection{Experimental setup}
\label{subsec:exp_setup}

We use CommonVoice dataset~\footnote{\url{https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/datasets}. We use the December 2020 release version.}~\cite{ardila2019common} for pre-training. For a fair comparison with XLSR~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised}, we consider the following nine languages for evaluation~\footnote{There are initially ten languages for evaluation, but files of Turkish~(tr) in the test set are missing in CommonVoice December 2020 release, so we exclude this language.}: \textit{Spanish~(es), French~(fr), Italian~(it), Kyrgyz~(ky), Dutch~(nl), Russian~(ru), Swedish~(sv), Tatar~(tt) and Chinese~(zh).} We pre-train base and large models on 1350 hours unlabeled multilingual dataset~(CV-Multi) as in~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised}, which is composed of 782 hours data from above nine language plus additional 568 hours \textit{English~(en)} data. For fine-tuning, we use the evaluation splits from~\cite{riviere2020unsupervised}, which contains 1 hour labeled training data, 20 minutes validation data and 1 hour evaluation data for each language.

For our baseline models, we use the same model structure and training hyperparameters as XLSR~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised}. The models are all trained on 64 GPUs, and we train 250k steps for base model and 400k steps for large model. For fine-tuning, we adopt Connectionist Temporal Classification~(CTC)~\cite{graves2006connectionist} criterion and evaluate the multilingual performance of the pre-trained model. A randomly initialized output layer with shared vocabulary is added on top of the pre-training model. We use Adam optimizer and the learning rate is warmed up for 2k updates to 5e-5, keeps constant for 8k updates and then linearly decay for 10k updates. Phone error rate~(PER) is reported following previous work.

\subsection{Evaluation of proposed method}
\label{subsec:evaluation_s3net}

We denote S3Net using LTH for sub-network extraction as S3Net-LTH, and similarly S3Net-TE. For S3Net-LTH, we train the XLSR model with additional 50k steps separately for each language to extract the sub-networks. For S3Net-TE, we freeze the parameters and directly calculate importance scores with the gradients and weights. The prune rate is set to 0.4 for all base and large models, and by default the unstructured pruning is done layer by layer for each linear layer in context network. After obtaining the sub-network masks, we restart from the XLSR model and jointly train the sub-networks with all multilingual data for additional 50k steps. All hyper-parameters are tuned based on the performance of validation set.

The results of baseline XLSR models and the proposed S3Net are shown in Table~\ref{tab:cv_all}. Specifically, we reproduce similar results as~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised}, with an average PER of 14.3\% and 12.2\% for base and large models. However, the results on each individual language are different from~\cite{conneau2020unsupervised} due to the different versions of pre-training data. We can see that both S3Net-TE and S3Net-LTH consistently outperform baseline XLSR models on each language, and S3Net-LTH models perform the best, with an average 9.8\% and 7.4\% relative PER reduction respectively for base and large models. Since high resource languages suffer more from language interference problem, it can be seen from the table that the proposed method achieves more performance improvements on high resource languages~(es, fr, it), with 17.8\% and 16.7\% average relative PER reduction. We also observe that S3Net-TE models perform worse than S3Net-LTH models. This is because S3Net-TE employs a simpler sub-network extraction strategy, which may not yield satisfactory sub-networks. Besides, we also conduct monolingual fine-tuning experiments individually on each languages, and we find that it performs slightly better than multilingual fine-tuning, with  average PER of 12.8\% and 11.2\% for S3Net-LTH base and large models.

\subsection{Comparison of S3Net with other adaptation methods}
\label{subsec:comparison_with_others}
We further compare the proposed method with other adaptation methods such as gating network~\cite{gong2021layer} and adapter~\cite{kannan2019large}. For gating network, one-hot LID embedding is used to learn the language specific scaling and biasing vectors~\cite{gong2021layer}. We add gating network module directly after the output of feature encoder to modulate the latent representations. As for the adapter based language adaptation method, we add adapters before the input of each transformer layer. The structure of adapter module follows~\cite{kannan2019large}, and the projection dimension is set to 256 for base and large model. The gating network and adapter modules are inserted into the XLSR model and further trained with 50k steps as S3Net models. We show in Table~\ref{tab:comp_adapt} that all the adaptation methods improve the performance of baseline XLSR model, and our proposed S3Net-LTH outperforms all other adaptation methods while requiring fewer parameters.
\begin{table}[htbp]
\vspace{-0.1in}
\caption{Comparison of different adaptation methods. Multilingual evaluation results are averaged on high resource languages~(High), low resource languages~(Low) and all nine languages~(Avg).}
\label{tab:comp_adapt}
\centering
\resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{
\begin{tabular}{l|c|ccc}
\toprule
\multicolumn{1}{l|}{\multirow{2}{*}{Model}} &
\multicolumn{1}{c|}{\multirow{2}{*}{\#Params}} &
\multicolumn{3}{c}{CV-Eval} \\ \cline{3-5}
\multicolumn{1}{c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{} &
High            & Low             & Avg            \\ \midrule
XLSR-10  & 95M & 12.9 & 15.0 & 14.3     \\
+ Gating Network & 95M & 12.2 & 14.7 & 13.9      \\
+ Adapter & 143M & 11.5 & 14.1 & 13.2 \\
S3Net-LTH & 95M & \textbf{10.6} & \textbf{14.0} & \textbf{12.9} \\
\midrule
XLSR-10 (Large)  & 317M & 10.8 & 13.0 & 12.2     \\
+ Gating Network & 317M & 10.4 & 12.8 & 12.0      \\
+ Adapter & 444M & 10.4 & 12.9 & 12.1 \\
S3Net-LTH (Large) & 317M & \textbf{9.0} & \textbf{12.5} & \textbf{11.3} \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
}
\end{table}

\subsection{Ablation study of sparse sub-networks}
To analyze the influence of different sub-networks on the performance of S3Net, we perform extensive ablation studies in Table~\ref{tab:comp_sys}. In the standard setup, we individually extract sub-networks for each language~(\#Mask=10). To verify that the improvements of S3Net come from the language specific modeling, we jointly extract one sub-network for all languages (\#Mask=1). We also experiment with individually extracting sub-networks for high resource languages~(en, es, fr, it) but jointly extracting one sub-network for all low resource languages~(\#Mask=5). Besides, we find that layerwise pruning performs slightly better compared with global pruning. We also conduct randomly pruning experiments, which demonstrates the effectiveness of extracting sub-networks with proposed strategies.

\begin{table}[htbp]
\vspace{-0.1in}
\caption{Analysis of different sub-networks. Models are trained with base structure and prune rate is set to 0.4 throughout the experiments.}
\label{tab:comp_sys}
\centering
\resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{
    \begin{tabular}{l|ccc|ccc}
    \toprule
    \multicolumn{1}{l|}{\multirow{2}{*}{Model}} &
    \multicolumn{1}{c}{\multirow{2}{*}{\#Mask}} &
    \multicolumn{1}{c}{\multirow{2}{*}{Type}} &
    \multicolumn{1}{c|}{\multirow{2}{*}{Strategy}} &
    \multicolumn{3}{c}{CV-Eval} \\ \cline{5-7}
    \multicolumn{1}{c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{} &
    High            & Low             & Avg            \\ \midrule
    XLSR-10 & N/A & N/A & N/A & 12.9 & 15.0 & 14.3 \\ \midrule
    \multirow{6}{*}{S3Net} & 1  & Global & LTH & 13.0 & 15.3 & 14.5 \\
        & 5  & Global & LTH & 10.8 & 15.0 & 13.6 \\
        & 10 & Global & LTH & 10.8 & \textbf{14.0} & 13.0 \\
        & 10 & Global & Random & 14.2 & 16.9 & 16.0 \\
        & 10 & Layerwise & TE & 12.1 & 14.6 & 13.8 \\
        & 10 & Layerwise & LTH & \textbf{10.6} & \textbf{14.0} & \textbf{12.9} \\
    \bottomrule
    \end{tabular}
}
\end{table}

\subsection{Analysis of different prune rate}
\label{subsec:analysize_prune_rate}
We further investigate the influence of different prune rates. We gradually increase the prune rate $p$ from 0.0 to 0.8 for S3Net-LTH base model, and evaluate the multilingual performance on nine languages. Training XLSR model with additional 50k steps~($p=0.0$) slightly improved the PER from 14.3\% to 14.1\%. It is shown that the best choice of $p$ is 0.4 and the performance starts to degrade as the prune rate continues to increase. The figure also shows that we can prune out as many as 70\% parameters for each language, while the performance of S3Net-LTH still outperforms baseline XLSR model. Similar phenomenon is also observed in large models.

\begin{figure}[!ht]
\vspace{-0.1in}
\label{fig:prune_rate}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{prune_rate_curve.pdf}
\caption{Evaluation results of different prune rate for S3Net-LTH.}
\end{figure}

\section{Conclusion and Future Work}
\label{sec:future_work}

In this work, we study language adaptive cross-lingual speech representation learning. We investigate different approaches of extracting sub-networks and show that the proposed S3Net helps alleviating the language interference problem, especially for high resource languages. In the future, we plan to experiment with larger scale multilingual data and the application of multilingual pre-trained models on downstream tasks. We also plan to study structured sparsity and N:M sparsity for network acceleration.

\vfill\pagebreak

\bibliographystyle{IEEEbib}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
@implementation ZJButton

-(void)setHighlighted:(BOOL)highlighted{

}

@end


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text:
Minivan News – Archive
FIRST FOR INDEPENDENT NEWS IN THE MALDIVES
Archives Select Month July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 January 2009 December 2008 September 2008 April 2008 February 2008 January 2008 October 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 March 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 November 1999 0
Features & Comment
Maldives Decides 2013 – select a candidate
Candidate 1: Gasim Ibrahim
Candidate 2: Dr Mohamed Waheed
Candidate 3: Abdulla Yameen
Candidate 4: Mohamed Nasheed
Tag: MPs financial statements
MDP, PA in favour of disclosing financial statements
The ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and minority opposition People's Alliance (PA) have come out in favour of making MPs financial statements public.
Deputy Speaker Ahmed Nazim, PA parliamentary group leader, told local media yesterday that the party will send a letter to the parliament secretariat requesting that financial statements of its MPs should be made available to state institutions upon request.
The decision comes after the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) entered parliament on Thursday under a court order to seek MPs' financial statements. The commission has since told local media that it sought the statement of one MP, whom it did not reveal.
Meanwhile MDP parliamentary group leader, MP Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, said at a press conference yesterday that the party believed financial statements should be made available to anyone who sought it.
"Since we are representatives of the people, we believe that the public should know about MPs' incomes, standard of living, and what they do with their incomes," he said, adding that the party would "establish a proper system" to make the information available.
A decision would be made following discussions at the MDP's national council or parliamentary group, the MP for Hinnavaru said.
In April this year, parliament reached an impasse on public declaration of assets by MPs after voting against a proposal by the Ethics Committee to not make the information available unless ordered by a court of law.
When MPs voted against the proposal 34 to 24, Deputy Speaker Ahmed Nazim declared the matter "void."
"However, the Secretary General's request for counsel on this matter has not been decided one way or the other," he said at the time. "So the Secretary General will go ahead with it according to the rules of procedure."
The Secretary-General had asked the Ethics Committee to determine whether MPs' financial statements should be released to other state institutions upon request.
Secretary General Ahmed Mohamed confirmed to Minivan News that the requested financial statements and documents were provided to the ACC team before the court order expired at 3:00pm.
According to Article 76 of the constitution, "Every member shall annually submit to the Secretary General of the People's Majlis a statement of all property and monies owned by him, business interests and liabilities. Such declarations shall include the details of any other employment and obligations of such employment."
Posted on August 28, 2011 August 29, 2011 Author Ahmed NaishCategories PoliticsTags maldives news, MDP, MPs financial statements, PA4 Comments on MDP, PA in favour of disclosing financial statements
ACC obtains court order for MPs' financial statements
A team from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) entered parliament today with a court order to obtain financial statements of MPs.
A Majlis media official confirmed that the ACC team was working in parliament while the financial statements were available from the Ethics Committee.
ACC Chair Hassan Luthfy told Minivan News today that the commission obtained a court order from the Criminal Court last night and the team was sent in this morning.
"We hoped to get [the statements] legally but no solution was found through discussions with parliament," he said.
Luthfy explained that the ACC was investigating allegations of corruption and bribery involving MPs after receiving a number of complaints.
Luthfy stressed that as "these are only allegations" he could not divulge further details or identify which MPs were involved since "it could violate their privileges."
The ACC chair however revealed that the commission had received "about two to four complaints" regarding MPs.
Secretary General Ahmed Mohamed confirmed to Minivan News that the requested financial statements and documents were provided to the ACC team before the court order expired at 3:00pm today.
Posted on August 25, 2011 Author Ahmed NaishCategories PoliticsTags anti corruption commission, Criminal Court order, maldives news, MPs financial statements4 Comments on ACC obtains court order for MPs' financial statements


text:
Q: Python equivalent of ruby's `map.with_index`? I am trying to recreate some of my ruby code in python(can't wait till lambda supports ruby!!), and I'm running in to an issue on returning the indicies of filter results on an array(I think I am saying that correctly).  Here is some example code:
array = [200,100,150,500,25,650,175]
res = filter(lambda x: x < 200, array)
print res
[100, 150, 25, 175]

But what I really need it to return the index of each element that matches the filter and get:
[1,2,4,6]

Is there an easy way to do this in python? I was going to try numpy, but easyinstall went nuts when trying to install it.

A: Use enumerate which yields tuples containing indices with original values:
>>> enumerate(array)
<enumerate object at 0x7f4ad46d0190>
>>> list(enumerate(array))
[(0, 200), (1, 100), (2, 150), (3, 500), (4, 25), (5, 650), (6, 175)]

combining with list comprehension:
>>> array = [200,100,150,500,25,650,175]
>>> [i for i, x in enumerate(array) if x < 200]
[1, 2, 4, 6]

A: Yes
[i for i,x in enumerate(array) if x < 200]

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