#Features of Public Provident Fund

[truedatafinancialpvtltd]

Public Provident Fund (PPF) | Eligibility, Features, and Benefits

PPF stands for Public Provident Fund and is a popular long-term savings scheme backed by the Government of India. This scheme is available for all the citizens of the country and provides them with retirement benefits by offering regular interest payments along with tax benefits. This makes PPF a favoured investment option for citizens across the country. The money invested in a PPF account is also eligible for tax deduction under section 80C of the Income Tax Act up to Rs. 1,50,000. A PPF account comes with a lock-in period of 15 years, however, investors are allowed to make partial withdrawals too after a certain time period. The corpus received after the maturity of the PPF account is also tax-free in the hands of the investors.

Read Full Blog Post: What is PPF (Public Provident Fund)?

[kaidanworkshop]

Workshop Update: Kaidan Revoiced - Community Expansion 1.0 Launch!

After two years of development, the Kaidan Workshop Staff is proud to present Kaidan Revoiced - Community Expansion (KRCE)!

First and foremost, none of this would be possible without livtempleton graciously giving us permission for our project! Throughout the years, the assets she's allowed the Skyrim modding community to build upon has kept Kaidan alive in thousands of modlists, providing the opportunity for even more players to enjoy her original creations; we're very honored to be added to the list of modders whose creations are inspired by her work. When we started the Workshop, we had no idea if anyone would even notice our project; a new voice actor, a new iteration of an already established character, and no product to show for it in advance. The only thing we could offer the general public at the time was the promise of transparency and community cooperation throughout the process. So we created a budget for revoicing Kaidan, a plan for community involvement, and hit the ground running. We added new staff, taught ourselves new skills as the scope of the project evolved, and leaned on the advice, ideas, and encouragement from our community. Alongside the (mostly) monthly updates on our Tumblr and taking suggestions from our 'I Had An Idea!' Discord channel, our methods for ensuring transparency during development evolved; our Community Team began hosting public meetings via our Discord to discuss our current workflow, answer questions, and conduct live script readings of our original scripts, to ensure that our Writing Team was matching the original tone set by livtempleton. We also streamed our beta footage on Twitch, trying our best to stress test the new framework built by our Creation Kit Team while also taking more suggestions from our audience for future content. Finally, we were incredibly pleased to be able to host an Open Beta for KRCE this past October & November for our Discord community, as a special thank you for their support. We were able to get some excellent feedback on some of our new follower features, as well as hunt down any missed audio or errors our internal testing missed. All in all, it took many, many people to bring this mod to life, and our Staff is incredibly humbled and grateful for the support of everyone involved. While this 1.0 version will be available indefinitely for those who prefer it, the Workshop Staff is very excited to begin creating more original content moving forward into 2025! One of our original scripts for the Daedric quest "Pieces of the Past" is in the 1.0, so you can check it out to get a sense of the tone our writers are going for! You can read about what content is present in our mod, as well as find the answers to commonly asked questions in the KRCE Mod FAQ. Keep up with the project via our updates on Tumblr, or join our Discord server!

The Kaidan Workshop is a community-led, non-profit project that aims to build upon the original LivTempleton Kaidan 2 mod. Our project is strictly non-profit; all funds raised are to commission Mr. Warren for his services. You can read more about what the Kaidan Workshop is here.

[yukipri]

Head's up to any creator on Patreon who has their account marked as Adult:

Just got an email from Patreon that you have to agree to new consent requirements within the next WEEK, by June 26, 2024 or you won't be able to access funds!!

That is a VERY short notice, so I hope everyone who sees it does what they need! Like it or not, a lot of us depend on Patreon for income!

*Note, this is under the assumption that you already provided your own age verification information.

The above text are the pop ups that you get when you follow the link from your email.

EDIT: Just got this followup pop up:

Text version of screenshots under cut:

Screenshot 1:

New Requirements for 18+ creators:

Patreon is required by Visa and Mastercard to make sure creators confirm the age and identity for anyone depicted in an Adult/18+ creation, and to collect, store, and share their consent and identity documentation.

New consent requirements have been implemented by Visa recently. To remain on Patreon, you need to review and agree to these requirements. If you do not agree within the next 7 days, you will not be able to withdraw or transfer funds until you complete this process.

Screenshot 2:

Updated Requirements for 18+ creators:

Please review our updated age verification and consent requirements:

I have verified and will continue to verify that any person depicted in my work is over the age of 18.

I consent to and have and will continue to obtain written consent from any person depicted in any of my content to their likeness being uploaded to, published on, distributed by, and downloaded from Patreon, including by the general public.

If requested, I will provide proof of age and consent documentation to Patreon. I understand I can use this form for this person (linked).

If Patreon removes any of my content due to lack of consent, I may appeal the removal. You may submit your appeal via our Help Center (linked).

Screenshot 3:

Important: Review and agree to Patreon's updated 18+ consent requirements by June 26, 2024. New consent requirements have been implemented by Visa. To avoid losing the ability to withdraw or transfer funds, please review and agree to the updated consent requirements.

Screenshot 4:

Thanks for agreeing to these requirements. You can continue using Patreon to pay out or withdraw funds. Please note that Mastercard and Visa's participant consent requirements apply only to Adult/18+ creators whose content is visual in nature (e.g. photography and videos) and feature real people.

[plumlace]

Baby Drama 2.0 - Early Access

Embrace the complexity of family life in The Sims 4 with Baby Drama 2.0! Explore the intricacies of parenting, the ups and downs of relationships, and the joy of watching your children grow. Please note that this mod is currently in Early Access, so your feedback and suggestions are invaluable in shaping its future development

Key Features:

Custody Arrangements: Engage in intense arguments with your Sims' ex-partner about custody arrangements for your children. Fight for your rights and make decisions that will shape your family's future.

Education Discussions: Discuss the best educational options for your children. Will they attend public school, private school, or be homeschooled? Make important choices that affect their future prospects.

Co-Parenting Talks: Navigate the challenges of co-parenting by having open and honest conversations with your ex. Coordinate your efforts and ensure your children receive the support they need from both parents.

Financial Stress: Experience the financial strains of raising a child. Deal with expenses related to education, healthcare, and extracurricular activities. Balancing the budget has never been this challenging.

Visitation Schedules: Negotiate visitation schedules and plan quality time with your children. Manage your Sims' time effectively to maintain a healthy relationship with their kids.

Apply for Child Support: Apply for weekly child support payments to ease the financial burden. Receive 350 Simoleons every Monday, directly deposited into your household funds. Use this money to provide a better life for your children.

And much more!

Public access December 5th

DOWNLOAD | Patreon

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 More than 70 civilians were killed over the previous 24-hours resulting from the Israeli occupation's surprise offensive into central Gaza after weeks of fighting in Gaza's north and south forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the central Gaza Strip. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION'S GENOCIDE IN GAZA DAY 243: NY TIMES ARTICLE SAYS ZIONIST REGIME LAUNCHED A DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN IN US, OCCUPATION ARMY CREATES NEW UNIT TO KEEP PALESTINIANS IN OUTDOOR PRISON OF GAZA, OCCUPATION ARMY RAISES CONSCRIPTION CAPS, NEW ISRAELI GROUND OFFENSIVE TARGETS CENTRAL GAZA, MASS SLAUGHTER OF CIVILIANS CONTINUES

On 243rd day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 36 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 115 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

"Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation."

That's according to an investigation conducted by the New York Times revealing a covert disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli occupation to target US lawmakers and the American public.

According to the Times, the disinformation campaign was "commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel."

The Times article stated that the Israeli occupation "allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out."

The campaign started back in October and "remains active on the [social media] platform X."

At its zenith, the campaign used "hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments," with the majority of the accounts focused on "US lawmakers, particularly ones who are black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel's military."

"ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles," the Times stated, later adding that "the secretive campaign signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to sway American opinion on the war in Gaza."

In other news for Wednesday, the Israeli occupation army has created a new unit, the "Lotar Cover," with the purpose of protecting Zionist settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokesperson said the "Awtf" unit will operate within the 143rd Division, with the express purpose of providing a rapid response to any potential threats to settlements coming out of the Gaza Strip.

The occupation army says the unit will consist of “reserve fighters who graduate from elite units who live in or around the [Gaza] cover settlements and who will be on alert to operate in the region. The soldiers will undergo a special training and qualification process, at the end of which, they will be qualified to deal with the challenges of the region.”

In the meantime, the Israeli occupation has made the decision to raise the number of reservists the occupation army is authorized to call-up for service.

According to reporting in the Hebrew media, the Israeli occupation army will now be authorized to call-up for service 350'000 citizens, up from 300'000, which the Israeli army claims has "nothing to do with tensions in northern Israel."

The occupation authorities claimed the reason for the shift "relates to the operation in southern Gaza's Rafah taking more personnel than initially planned."

Previously, as a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing genocide campaign in Gaza, the Israeli occupation army called-up a total of 287'000 reservists.

However, many have already been released from duty for the time being. The draft marked the largest call-up of reservists in the occupation's nearly 80-year history.

Elsewhere in international news reports, the Slovenian Parliament has officially approved the government's decision to recognize the State of Palestine as an independent and sovereign state, on Wednesday.

Previously, on Thursday of last week, the Slovenian Prime Minister, Robert Golub, announced that his government would recognize the State of Palestine under its 1967 borders in accordance with international law and UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

The Slovenian Prime Minister said the decision “sends a message of peace,” stressing that “the time has come for the entire world to unite its efforts towards a two-state solution that will bring peace to the Middle East.”

By recognizing the State of Palestine, Slovenia joins the ranks of several other countries to recently announce their recognition of Palestine as a state, including Spain, Ireland and Norway, all of whom announced their recognition last month, bringing the total number of countries to recognize Palestine to 148, out of a total of 193 member-states belonging to the United Nations.

In other news, after several weeks of Israeli assaults on the north and south of Gaza, pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the central areas, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) announced a new campaign of terror targeting the residents of the central Gaza Strip.

The latest ground offensive is to be conducted by the 98th Division, and is expected to focus on neighborhoods east of the Bureij Refugee Camp, as well as the east of Deir al-Balah, where one of the last large, functional hospitals standing in Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, remains in operation.

The 98th Division is the same military group that just recently withdrew from Jabalia in Gaza's north, committing horrific crimes against the Palestinian residents there, and also previously terrorized the citizens of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza.

The Zionist army says the operation was launched following intelligence that Resistance operatives and infrastructure, both above and below ground, were located in the area.

The operation has already seen occupation soldiers advancing into the east of the Bureij Camp, in addition to the east of Deir al-Balah on Tuesday, while simultaneously, a "large wave of airstrikes" were conducted targeting so-called "weapons depots, underground infrastructure, buildings used by terror groups, and other sites," according to the occupation military.

The Israeli occupation claims several Hamas operatives were killed in the operations, while an airstrike supposedly targeting a "Hamas compound," in the Bureij Camp, [a seeming impossibility when Hamas keeps its military infrastructure deep in underground tunnel networks] which was "based out of a United Nations School."

[This is typically how the occupation army admits to bombing civilian infrastructure such as schools, water facilities and displacement shelters.]

The Zionist military stated that several Hamas operatives were "gathered at UNRWA's Abu Alhilu School when the strike was carried out," further claiming that the strike was “carefully planned and carried out using precise munitions, while avoiding harm to uninvolved [civilians] as much as possible.”

Meanwhile, local Palestinian media reported that 72 Palestinian citizens were killed during Israeli operations in central Gaza over the previous 24-hours, while scores of others were wounded in the same period.

Witnesses said the Israeli occupation forces' ground operations targeted areas of the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi Camps, in addition to neighborhoods east of Deir al-Balah, while occupation bombing and artillery shelling targeted the Nuseirat Camp.

As ground operations targeted central Gaza, intense waves of bombing and shelling also targeted various other sectors of Gaza as well, including in the north and south of the enclave.

In one example, Zionist warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Hussein family in the vicinity of the Abu Rasas roundabout in the Bureij Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing one civilian and wounding a number of others.

Similarly, occupation fighter jets bombed a residential house belonging to the Kirdi family on Block-5 of the Bureij Camp. After the strike, the body of one civilian and several wounded were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Additionally, another occupation airstrike targeted a house belonging to the Al-Dawli family near the entrance to the Bureij Camp, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinians and wounding several others.

Another 5 civilians were wounded following an Israeli airstrike in the vicinity of a UNRWA clinic in the area and the Services Club nearby.

Zionist occupation forces also dropped several violent firebelts between the Bureij and the Al-Maghazi Camps, one of which targeted a residential building in the Al-Bataniyya neighborhood of the Al-Maghazi Camp, killing four Palestinian civilians.

In particular, the strikes killed Majd Darwish, his wife and his two children, and also wounded a number of others.

In another criminal atrocity, occupation aircraft bombed a civilian residence belonging to the Qatawi family in the Al-Maghazi Camp, in central Gaza, killing two civilians and wounding several others.

At the same time, another massacre occured when Zionist warplanes bombed a residential apartment in the Aslan Building, in the vicinity of the Qattoush roundabout in the Al-Maghazi Camp, resulting in the martyredom of 8 civilians and wounding a number of others.

Yet another occupation airstrike targeted and destroyed a four-story residential building belonging to the Al-Barr family near Salah al-Din, west of the Maghazi Camp.

The horrors went on when Israeli fighter jets bombed a residential house belonging to the Al-Louh family overnight, east of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least 5 civilians and wounding several others, while yet another airstrike targeted the Al-Masdar family home in the vicinity of the Al-Masdar Mosque, wounding several people.

Two more civilians were killed, and a number of others wounded, after Zionist artillery detatchments shelled a house in the Abu Al-Ajen area, southeast of Deir al-Balah.

According to local reports, the Israeli occupation army also arrested a number of Palestinians, including women, after the occupation forces surrounded a house belonging to the Abu Luz family, east of the Abu Al-Ajen neighborhood, southeast of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, with the kidnapped persons taken to an unknown location.

Local civil defense and paramedic personnel also reported recovering the bodies of dozens of martyrs and wounded from neighborhoods east of the central Gaza Strip following a night of intense and violent bombardment of the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi Camps, as well as the town of Al-Masdar and Deir al-Balah, with the many wounded transfered to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Further airstrikes targeted neighborhoods east of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, while occupation vehicles opened fire east of the town of Al-Qarara, coinciding with intense artillery shelling of the area.

Additionally, the European Gaza Hospital reported the arrival of two dead bodies of Palestinians following Israeli drone strikes east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, north of Gaza, occupation warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Dalloul family in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, resulting in the wounding of at least 7 citizens, while occupation bombing also targeted the Tal al-Hawa and Sheikh Ajlin neighborhoods, coinciding with intense machine gun fire, in addition to occupation drones which opened fire near 20th Street, east of the Nuseirat Camp, in central Gaza.

In Rafah, south of Gaza, Zionist artillery forces fired several shells into residential areas east of Al-Qarara, northeast of Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza.

Zionist air forces also bombed a gathering of civilians in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, resulting in the murder of four Palestinians.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 36'586 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 10'000 women and over 15'000 children, while another 83'074 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 4th, 2024.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

[notwiselybuttoowell]

As crowds gather outside to gawp up at the freshly carved tracery and gleaming leadwork, however, they might not be aware that the most radical part of the entire project is actually right beneath their feet. The biggest impact on Paris will not be found in the rebuilt forêt of oak hidden away in the attic, or the ornamental rooftop cresting, but in how the fire has provided a catalyst to rethink the surrounding area as a model for climate-friendly public space on an increasingly scorching planet.

“The project of the cathedral was to rebuild it identically,” says Patrick Bloche, first deputy mayor of Paris, as he stands outside Notre Dame’s freshly scrubbed facade, puffing on his pipe. ���On the other hand, outside the building, we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to completely reimagine what the surroundings could be.”

In the days following the fire, there was much enthusiasm among a certain cast of architects about what form a new-look Notre Dame might take. Norman Foster imagined crowning the charred nave with a vaulted glass roof and a spire topped with an observation deck – “a work of art about light,” he declared, which would “capture the confident spirit of the time”. Others proposed glitzy roofs made of Baccarat crystal, or a memorial spire in the shape of a gigantic golden flame. Thankfully, such hubris was ditched for a faithful reconstruction, but the fragmented and congested surroundings offered scope for a bolder approach.

“The area around Notre Dame has changed so much throughout history,” says Bas Smets, the Belgian landscape architect who won an open competition to redesign the area around the cathedral in 2022. “It’s like a privileged witness of a city looking for its form. The question now is what kind of spaces we need for the city of tomorrow.”

On Friday 29 November, Smets was first in line to explain his vision to Macron, on the president’s first visit to inspect the reborn Notre Dame, before its official inauguration tomorrow. They stood on the first completed piece of the “petit parvis”, the forecourt in front of the cathedral, which Smets plans to expand to mirror the full length and width of the building, with grooved limestone flags reflecting the chequerboard marble floor inside.

His plan – to be completed by 2027 at a cost of €50m, funded by the city – will create a much more open setting for the cathedral, encouraging visitors to explore more of the Île de la Cité at a slower pace, beyond just queueing up for a peek inside Notre Dame before hot-footing it to the Eiffel Tower. The new spaces will prioritise people over vehicles, seeing roads closed and pedestrianised, and reconnect the cathedral to the Seine for the first time in generations, with a new 400 metre-long riverside promenade. Plenty of shade will be provided by 160 new drought-tolerant trees, which will also help to shield queueing visitors from winter winds, while the hottest days will be relieved by an ingenious air-cooling water feature – with a splash of fun.

“We were inspired by seeing how they clean the streets of Paris,” says Smets, whose team includes the French urban planning agency GRAU and heritage specialists Neufville-Gayet. The city is unusual in having a dual water network, one for drinking water and another for untreated non-potable water, for irrigation, cleaning and firefighting – a 19th-century legacy of Baron Haussmann’s urban improvements. On hot summer days, the street-cleaning vans often leave this water running to cool down the roads and pavements. Learning from the locals, Smets has designed an 80 metre-long stretch of the plaza to be flooded with a thin 5mm-deep sheet of water on the hottest days, forming a reflecting pool that also provides evaporative cooling, lowering the air temperature by several degrees. Like the fountains of Kings Cross in London, it promises to be a popular place for a cooling splash – with enough space before the cathedral entrance, church wardens will be relieved to hear, for damp feet to dry off.

Given the expected 15 million visitors a year, one of the designers’ chief tasks was to improve crowd control, which Smets has partly addressed with a new entrance – dramatically punching new openings in the quay retaining wall facing the Seine. Enabling people to arrive by boat, this entrance will connect to a new visitor centre housed in a former 1960s underground car park, and provide a theatrical route up to the plaza, giving a worm’s-eye view of Notre Dame’s famous western facade for the first time.

Not all Parisians have welcomed these bold changes. An angry petition launched in April 2023, titled “Save Notre Dame gardens!”, gained more than 55,000 signatures, with concerns focused on the removal of fences around areas of lawn, as well as the removal of benches and flowerbeds, “completely distorting the spirit of the place”. Others opined that the scheme was “too British” in its plan to surround the cathedral with open gardens. Smets insists that some of the criticism was down to a misinterpretation of the plans – the historic benches, for example, will all remain – but the design has been altered to retain more of the fencing, only removing a section to open up the riverside path. “It became a political thing,” he says. “In the competition, we were asked to take out the fences, so we did. But keeping the fence, for me, is totally fine. We’re actually returning the situation to how it was in 1848, with a fence around the gardens, but not blocking access to the Seine.”

With an eye on Paris’s wider urban greening efforts, which have been a chief hallmark of socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo’s tenure, the project will also act as a laboratory for future landscaping work elsewhere in the city. While the main plaza will see an existing avenue of horse chestnut trees extended along the street, encouraging people to take a full circuit around the cathedral, a former car parking area to the east will become an experimental arboretum of different species.

“We imagine it as a living climatic laboratory,” says Smets, “to see how well different trees perform over time.” After the city’s plane trees suffered from beetle infestations, and others have been stricken by drought, the pressure is on to determine which varieties will thrive in the rapidly changing climate. “This is such an important, symbolic site,” he adds. “But it is also an opportunity to reimagine public space as a way to create a better outdoor microclimate – looking to the past to inform the city of the future.”

[eretzyisrael]

By Susan Edelman and Deirdre Bardolf

Activists and foreign actors have infiltrated the city’s public schools with anti-Israel materials, fostering bias and hatred of Jews, according to a new report by a nonprofit think tank.

Teacher groups like NYC Educators for Palestine have collaborated with extremist organizations, some allegedly tied to hostile foreign governments and terrorist groups, to bring “radical, anti-American ideologies” into schools, said the Network Contagion Research Institute, or NCRI, and the advocacy group New York City Public School Alliance, which co-wrote the report.

“The report exposes how the Department of Education’s vetted resources enable radical sympathizers to shape young minds with biased information,” said Tova Plaut, a DOE pre-K coordinator and co-founder with teacher Karen Feldman of NYCPS Alliance, a group of Jewish educators who contributed to the project.

8An “Arab World” classroom map at Brooklyn’s PS 261 that excluded Israel was provided by the Qatar Foundation, an arm of the country’s ruling family, which has donated $1 million to NYC schools.

8The report found a network of “radical” curriculum developers, activist educator groups and foreign influences that have contributed to the infiltration of anti-Israel materials within the NYC public school system.NCRI

Set for release this week, the report cites DOE documents, school events and staff social media posts as evidence of its findings.

It calls on the DOE to immediately conduct a curriculum review; enforce the chancellor’s anti-discrimination policies; adopt a definition of antisemitism and mandate training on it; and increase oversight of foreign funding.

“If these ideas are left unchecked, they will be internalized by a new generation of students, who will then  graduate, attend university, vote, enter the workforce, and raise families of their own, further embedding antisemitic beliefs into wider American society,” the NCRI and NYC Public Schools Alliance said.

Among the findings:

The DOE’s recommended resources for teachers include the Zinn Education Project, which provide lessons, workshops and articles highly critical of Israel and the US.

The DOE staff resource list links to the Zinn website, which features a section on “Teaching About Palestine-Israel and the Unfolding Genocide in Gaza” that claims, “Israel has turned Gaza into a ‘graveyard for children.”

Beacon High School in Midtown used Zinn lessons and articles, along with videos from Arab news network Al Jazeera, for a 10th-grade social studies class on the Israel-Palestine conflict, emails reviewed by The Post show.

The content “demonized Jews” while referring to Hamas as “a political party and militant group,” not as terrorists, parents said.

Other resources available for NYC teachers to use at “their discretion” include those from the Teach Palestine project, which gives materials that emphasize “Palestinian victimhood” and frame Zionism as a “colonialist” movement.

Teach Palestine is financially supported by the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), a California-based nonprofit with reported ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

In May, the PTA of Ella Baker School, a public elementary on the Upper West Side, hosted a “Teach Palestine” webinar, sponsored by Rethinking Schools, the report said.

Materials covered topics such as “anti-Zionism is not automatically antisemitism,” and “Israel’s attacks on children, schools, and historical memory in Palestine.”

These potentially violate Chancellor’s Regulation A-830, according to the report. 

The report cites two groups, NYC Educators For Palestine, an arm of the UFT caucus MORE, and Teaching While Muslim, which hosted a virtual “curriculum share” for 80 teachers in February.

[vague-humanoid]

To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.

“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”

“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,” reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.

Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tan—the current Y Combinator CEO who’s attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Francisco—participated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting “die slow motherfuckers” at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in “moderate” politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”

@karpad @quasi-normalcy @ubernegro

[hussyknee]

Guys, Z-library is back up, but it desperately needs our help.

Z-Library is one of the largest online libraries in the world. We aim to make literature accessible to everyone. Today, Z-Library contains over 12,140,413 books and 84,837,000 articles Z-Library has many servers all over the world. Our stored data now totals more than 220 TB! Every month, millions of people use Z-Library for their purposes — and that means we are on the right track. But it will be difficult to achieve our goals without your help.

As you may know, almost all public domains of the library were blocked in November 2022 by order of the US Secret Service. The inner infrastructure of the project suffered some substantial damage too. Today, we are still under unprecedented pressure. At the moment, Z-Library is going through the hardest times in all the 14 years of its existence. The library might work with interruptions, and we ask you to be patient. Be sure – we are doing everything possible to provide free access to knowledge for millions of people across the globe, and we expect you to help us with that and to support us.

But despite all the difficulties, the library continues to function and develop. We have recently introduced several important features: the new recommendations section, comments to booklists, the new web-site menu, personal domains and Telegram Bot, and more.

Your active support gives strength to our Team and inspires to work. Each donated dollar is not only money for us, but it is also the confidence that you really need our project!

On 15 March 2023, as in March and September of each year, we launched additional fundraising to project maintenance and development. We will be extremely thankful for every dollar that will be donated. Furthermore, UNLIMITED downloads (for 1 month) are available for ALL contributors who will donate during the fundraising period. The fundraising will run until 1 April 2023

Millions of people use Z-Library every month for their purposes — this shows us that we are on the correct track. But it will be difficult to achieve our goals without your help.

Please consider making a donation.

I know there's a lot of discourse around book piracy right now, but you know who absolutely cannot afford to buy your books in dollars, afford the shipping fees, or don't have access/ travelling distance to the kind of fully stocked libraries you have in the West? The Global South. Our factories make your Kindles, your phones, your textbooks, and then we can't afford to buy them from your corps that sell them at around 300% grate price, and half the books are not even available for our region. Our universities don't get your funding or recognition, and when we do sell our personal possessions to get the money and work our asses off to get admittance to Western universities, y'all use us as grunts, exploit us and pass our work off as your own. Worse still, you buy out our local publishing houses and shut them down.

You cannot imagine the extent of global apartheid and colonial economic order that capitalism runs on. Amazon cheats you out of royalties? We can't even afford to buy your books. A dollar can buy someone a full dinner here. These sites – Z-lib, Internet Archive, Libgen, Open Library, Sci-Hub, PDF Drive, LibriVox – they are essential to granting the global majority our human right to knowledge, education and access. Z-Lib is by far the best one of them all.

You will first need to sign up to Z-Lib and access it through the private domain link they send you. It's a simple process, and every little bit counts. You're a leftist that believes in equal access for all? Then literally, put your money where your mouth is.

[self-loving-vampire]

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.” The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over. “Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.” In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. ... Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”). “Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,” said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. “No Blues should be welcomed there.” While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: “In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.… There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.” Balaji goes on—and on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. “Ethnically cleanse,” he said at one point, summing up his idea for a city purged of Blues (this, he says, will prevent Blues from ethnically cleansing the Grays first). The idea, he said, is to do to San Francisco what Musk did to Twitter. “Elon, in sort of classic Gray fashion ... captures Twitter and then, at one stroke, wipes out millions of Blues’ status by wiping out the Blue Checks,” he said. “Another stroke … [he] renames Twitter as X, showing that he has true control, and it’s his vehicle, and that the old regime isn’t going to be restored.”

To be expected from libertarians that they're more tolerant of conservatives, cops, and fascists than progressives.

[absolxguardian]

The new book Rise And Fall of the Galactic Empire, which is an in-universe history book, provides some lore that I think provides very interesting background context to that Tay'lor Spiff post. (I know there's a Republic era pop-star that was a Taylor Swift easter egg in the last issue of the Jango Fett comic series, but the fact she's a Twi'lek makes me feel like she can't be a full Taylor Swift expy- because she wouldn't be a part of the dominant racial group.)

Set alongside the SAGroup was the Coalition for Progress, which in many ways fulfilled similar roles and responsibilities relating to the adult population of the galaxy. Initially one of the smallest groups within COMPNOR, Progress—as the name was often shortened to—was sometimes greeted with a degree of trepidation by Imperial citizens and planetary governors. Much of this stemmed from the actions of the group within Progress designated to deal with art and culture. Progress created a very narrow definition regarding acceptable art, music, or performances that could be held or showcased in public. The result was a funding collapse in artistic pursuits and the blacklisting of some extremely high-profile artists, performers, and musicians who fell afoul of the new regulations. This included some of the leading gonk-rock groups of Bormea sector, who regularly had their venues closed or raided, and the overtly anti-Imperial band Red Shift Limit. Furthermore a musician from Naboo named Palo Jemabie was imprisoned at a labor camp by the Empire for a musical performance described—without detail—by his criminal record as “deviant.” This situation was particularly complicated as various planetary governors had previously been patrons and supporters of those who were now banned and could no longer enjoy their work.

[...]

The SAGRecreation group in particular was highly adept at identifying potential role models within various spheres of sport and culture who might appeal to younger citizens. Grav-ball already had an existing widespread appeal in the galaxy, but the Empire took the extra step of incorporating it into various military academies and recruiting some of its most famous stars as examples of what both physical prowess and loyalty to the Empire could mean. Broadcasts of grav-ball tournaments on the holonet were often accompanied by recruitment messages that featured popular players, and Grand Moff Tarkin was sometimes seen in the crowd for games that took place on Coruscant, though it remains unclear whether he actually had any interest in the sport.

This is clearly inspired by how sports and the arts were treated within real life fascist regimes- grav ball is space American football, there's an entire middle grade book about that. Given the position the kind of country pop Taylor Swift makes in our current cultural hegemony- the Empire isn't considering it "degenerate music". So Spiffies (specifically young people from wealthy Core families who'd be the only ones able to get away with posting stuff like that on the Holonet) insistence that Tay'lor is actual a force sensitive rebel sympathizer is even more ridiculous, when her boyfriend is actually part of Imperial propaganda. However at the same time I feel like there does have to be some poor ISB agent who has to check all of Spiff's lyrics to make sure there aren't actually secret messages like some of her fans claim.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Wednesday

SpaceTime 20241002 Series 27 Episode 119

The Australian crater that could offer fresh insight into Earth’s history

A probable crater stretching more than 600 kilometres, across the heart of the Australian outback could reshape sciences understanding of planet Earth’s geological history.

Perseverance rover spots unusual striped rock on Mars

NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover has discovered an unusual black and white stripped rock unlike anything ever seen on Mars before.

New Glenn second stage completes a successful hot fire test

Blue Origin's new heavy lift rocket the New Glenn has successfully completed a hot fire test of its second stage booster.

The Science Report

Have scientists finally discovered the cradle of life

A new study has compared what people say in public to what they really think in private.

Scientists have isolated the personality traits associated with self control skills.

Alex on Tech Orion augmented reality glasses.

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kiera Butler at Mother Jones:

Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally as a convicted felon at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by the arch-conservative student group Turning Point USA. This wasn’t Trump’s first appearance at Dream City Church; he also held a rally there with Turning Point USA in 2020. For events like this, it’s an ideal venue: A weekly attendance of around 21,000 believers makes this one of the largest churches not just in Arizona but in the nation.

Dream City, which didn’t respond to my questions for this story, is a mecca for special guests who blur the line between religion and politics. Its annual conference has featured notables like musician and pastor Sean Feucht, who participated in a White House prayer session for President Trump in 2019 and is currently leading a tour of prayer rallies at state capitol buildings across the country. The lineup for this year’s event also included David Barton, whose organization, WallBuilders, teaches K-12 students about the supposed Christian origins of America; Jürgen Mathesius, a pastor at San Diego’s far-right Awaken Church, which has become a stop on Mike Flynn’s ReAwaken America tour; and Jentezen Franklin, a televangelist who also spoke at the 2022 Pray Vote Stand Summit, which mobilizes conservative Christian voters to engage in political activism.

In addition to its thrumming weekly worship sessions and its blockbuster events, the church has another project: Dream City Christian Academy. The K-12 private school, which serves nearly 800 students, is part of Turning Point USA’s Turning Point Academy program, a network of 41 schools that describes itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God and preserve the founding principles of the United States through influencing and inspiring the formation of the next generation.” Dream City Christian Academy promises to “Protect our campus from the infiltration of unethical agendas by rejecting all ‘woke’ and untruthful ideologies being pushed on students.” This politically charged approach to education likely isn’t for everyone—and because it’s a private school, it doesn’t have to be. Except for one thing: Dream City Christian Academy is one of a growing number of religious schools that are supported by public funds.

In 2022, Arizona became the first state in which all students are allowed to use state vouchers to cover a portion of tuition at any private school, secular or religious. Through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, each participating family receives about 90 percent of the money the state would have spent on the child’s public school education—around $7,000 per student per year—for private school tuition. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Dream City Christian Academy annual tuition ranges from $10,450 in elementary school to $13,999 in high school—so families of the school’s nearly 800 students can use state funds to pay for between half and two-thirds of their tuition bill. Dream City Christian Academy received almost $1 million in tuition voucher money last year, the Arizona Republic recently reported.

Since Arizona passed its universal voucher law, 10 more states have followed suit. According to an analysis by Education Week, 29 states currently have programs that provide such assistance to a variety of different students many of whom attend local public schools that perform poorly. It also targets those with a disability that requires specialized education and those whose families earn significantly less than the federal poverty level. More programs are in the works: Lawmakers in both Louisiana and South Carolina recently advanced bills that would create programs like Arizona’s that are open to all students. When state funds are available for private school choice programs, a recent Washington Post analysis found that religious schools receive upwards of 90 percent of that money.

[...] A prerequisite for students and their families to attend some of the schools that currently receive voucher money is that they accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. In March, the education blog Notes from the Chalkboard highlighted one such school. Students attending North Carolina’s Daniel Christian Academy, are trained to “enter the Seven Mountains of Influence,” a main tenet of a Christian Nationalist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. Its adherents believe that the faithful are called to seek Christian control of the “seven mountains” of society: family, education, media, government, business, arts & entertainment, and religion. Many New Apostolic Reformation followers believe that waging “spiritual warfare” is justified in achieving these goals, though Daniel Christian Academy specifies that its endorsement of the Seven Mountains Mandate “in no way includes violence or manipulation at any level.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Laser worries that the proliferation of private school voucher programs will open the door to even more permissive rules around the use of public education dollars to teach religion. She points to a suite of bills that would allow public schools to employ chaplains, and even more remarkably, to an Oklahoma Catholic school called St. Isidore of Seville, which is set to become the nation’s first Christian public charter school this fall. The overarching goal of these initiatives, she says, is to “bestow a power and privilege on Christians in our country, at the expense of all the other religions in America.” Meanwhile, public education is robbed  “of the funding that it’s entitled to.”

Mother Jones reports on the disturbing trend of Christian Nationalists opening taxpayer-funded private schools with the intention to indoctrinate students with right-wing politics and a Christian Nationalist worldview.

[mariacallous]

Almost one in five Americans over age 65 are unable to manage basic activities of daily life—bathing, dressing, eating, toileting—without assistance. Among those over age 85, the proportion is closer to half. Friends and family members can and do help out, but even so, about half of people reaching the age of 65-years of age will use paid long-term services and supports (LTSS) at some point. Most Americans do not have enough income or savings to cover these costs. The private long-term care insurance industry has never worked well despite many creative efforts to fix it and to encourage enrollment. The Federal Medicare program covers only short spells of home care after a hospitalization and does not provide coverage for long-term support. That leaves Medicaid. Medicaid offers a critical long-term care safety net for people who get their healthcare primarily through Medicaid—but it isn’t a good solution for most Medicare beneficiaries as it doesn’t align with the system that manages their care and pays their providers. Moreover, eligibility for Medicaid is restricted to those with very low incomes and few assets, so few older adults qualify. It is well past time to add a universal home care program to Medicare itself.

Prior efforts to move in this direction have been stymied. Some proponents have called for a universal, open-ended benefit. Critics have argued that any universal home care benefit would be a budget buster. These tensions are ubiquitous in social program design. An additional tension in designing a program that serves people towards the end of their lives is that public funds should be focused on expanding access to necessary care rather than protecting the ability of people to leave large bequests to their children. Designing a fiscally responsible, universal benefit that does all that is a challenging task—but we believe it is not an impossible one. In this post, we describe some design options for a Medicare home care benefit that could be dialed up or down depending on the priority assigned to program generosity or fiscal feasibility. 

Several features make designing a universal home care benefit challenging.

The need for home care is based on measures of functioning, not lab tests. A program must have simple and reliable ways to measure who needs care and how much care they need.

Most people report a preference for care in their own homes over that in nursing homes or other institutional settings. This is because, unlike medical care, which is often unpleasant and painful, home care typically provides support, comfort, and a degree of safety for beneficiaries. One consequence of these preferences is that a home care benefit would be susceptible to overspending. The program will need to have measures in place to avoid overuse.

Income alone is a poor indicator of how much Medicare beneficiaries can afford to pay for home care. For example, beneficiaries who are renters may depend on their incomes to afford housing; other beneficiaries may have very large, non-liquid assets but limited incomes, leaving them ineligible for Medicaid programs while unable to pay for care. Program design will have to address the importance of assets in this population.

Much LTSS is provided through informal care. Beneficiaries often prefer care provided by family members, but paying for informal care raises the potential for overspending, fraud, and exploitation of older adults.

State Medicaid programs currently cover the cost of home care for 4.2 million people, according to KFF, though eligibility and costs vary considerably across the country. Medicaid would continue to provide home and community-based services for people who are not Medicare beneficiaries. Some of this spending could be redeployed by states to improve the quality of nursing home care and for home and community-based services for people who are not eligible for Medicaid. The federal share of Medicaid savings could be used to defray the costs of a new Medicare home care program.

None of these challenges can be ignored—but none of them are damning either. As with any program, policymakers will need to make tradeoffs across these challenges to design a program that provides the maximum benefits consistent with their budget appetite. The good news is that the current landscape of home care financial protections is so limited that even a modest program that made conservative choices across these parameters, with costs we estimate at around $40 billion annually, would make many people who currently lack services much better off. Turning the dials more generously would, of course, cost more—and it would extend more benefits to more frail and vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries. 

What might such a very-conservatively designed universal program look like? Eligibility for the program would be restricted to people who independent clinical reviewers determined were unable to perform two activities of daily living (e.g., bathing, toileting, or eating). That’s the standard that many State Medicaid programs already use, and it could be assessed annually during the initial implementation period to further develop and monitor the uniformity of functional assessments over time. Second, the program would include cost-sharing that varied according to people’s means. Medicare beneficiaries with high income and assets would receive modest assistance from the program to defray a portion of the costs of home care; those with fewer assets and less income would pay much less. Third, beneficiary contributions to the costs of their care would depend on both their current income and their accumulated assets, but through cost-sharing rather than a strict cutoff. For example, at the cost listed above, we could allow all qualifying Medicare beneficiaries to fully retain income up to 150% of the poverty line ($22,600 in 2024) and assets up to $30,000; beyond that limit, individuals would still qualify but would pay cost-sharing out of their resources to defray taxpayer costs. Fourth, only care provided by formal caregivers associated with home care agencies would be covered. Hours of support would be based on need, but provider agencies would be subject to a population-based hours of service budget. The combination of resource-based copayments with population-level budgeting will ensure that the costs of this program will not explode. Finally, Federal Medicaid savings from shifting home care benefits from Medicaid to Medicare would be used to defray the costs of the program.

The program we’ve outlined tightly focuses benefits on the most vulnerable people who currently have little eligibility for care, and few means to pay for services. But many others could also benefit from a new home care program. People who have impaired functioning that does not meet the two activities of daily living standard may also need assistance. Lower cost-sharing for middle-class people would leave them more resources to make the most of their lives. The tradeoff is simple: at a higher cost to the federal budget, more people would get more protection. We can’t define where the lines should be drawn—that’s Congress’s job—but our analysis suggests that there are programmatically tractable, fiscally feasible ways to add a home care benefit to the Medicare program.

[scotianostra]

25th October 1268 saw the death of Sir John I de Balliol.

John de Balliol was born circa 1208 to Hugh de Balliol, Lord of Balliol and of Barnard Castle and Gainford and Cecily de Fontaines, daughter of Alâeaume de Fontaines, chevalier, seigneur of Fontaines and Longprâe-les-Corps-Saints. It is believed that he was educated at Durham School in the city of Durham.

In 1223, Lord John married Dervorguilla of Galloway, the daughter of Alan, Lord of Galloway and Margaret of Huntingdon. By the mid-thirteenth century, he and his wife had become very wealthy, principally as a result of inheritances from Dervorguilla's family. This wealth allowed Balliol to play a prominent public role, and, on Henry III of England’s instruction, he served as joint protector of the young king of Scots, Alexander III.

Although linked to the English Royal Court, Balliol was also a great-great-grandson of King David I, it was through this line that his son also called John, became King.

Following a dispute with the Bishop of Durham, John I de Balliol agreed to provide funds for scholars studying at Oxford. Support for a house of students began in around 1263; further endowments after his death, supervised by Dervorguilla, resulted in the establishment of Balliol College.

Sir John's own finances were less substantial than those of his wife, however, and long after his death it fell to Devorguilla to confirm the foundation, with the blessing of the same Bishop as well as the University hierarchy. She established a permanent endowment for the College in 1282, as well as its first formal Statutes.

The college still retains the name Balliol College, where the history students' society is called the Devorguilla society and an annual seminar series featuring women in academia is called the Dervorguilla Seminar Series.

When Sir John died in 1269, his widow, Dervorguilla, had his heart embalmed and kept in a casket of ivory bound with silver. The casket travelled with her for the rest of her life. In memory of her husband Devorguilla founded a Cistercian Abbey 7 miles south of Dumfries in South West Scotland, in April 1273.

The New Abbey, is also known as Abbey of Dulce Cor, but is better known today as Sweetheart Abbey, Dulce Cor being Latin for Sweetheart. Husband and wife are both buried at the Abbey.

The portrait of Balliol is a depiction from the 18th century

[beardedmrbean]

Hundreds of Tibetans protesting against a Chinese dam were rounded up in a harsh crackdown earlier this year, with some beaten and seriously injured, the BBC has learnt from sources and verified footage.

Such protests are extremely rare in Tibet, which China has tightly controlled since it annexed the region in the 1950s. That they still happened highlights China's controversial push to build dams in what has long been a sensitive area.

Claims of the arrests and beatings began trickling out shortly after the events in February. In the following days authorities further tightened restrictions, making it difficult for anyone to verify the story, especially journalists who cannot freely travel to Tibet.

But the BBC has spent months tracking down Tibetan sources whose family and friends were detained and beaten. BBC Verify has also examined satellite imagery and verified leaked videos which show mass protests and monks begging the authorities for mercy.

The sources live outside of China and are not associated with activist groups. But they did not wish to be named for safety reasons.

In response to our queries, the Chinese embassy in the UK did not confirm nor deny the protests or the ensuing crackdown.

But it said: "China is a country governed by the rule of law, and strictly safeguards citizens' rights to lawfully express their concerns and provide opinions or suggestions."

The protests, followed by the crackdown, took place in a territory home to Tibetans in Sichuan province. For years, Chinese authorities have been planning to build the massive Gangtuo dam and hydropower plant, also known as Kamtok in Tibetan, in the valley straddling the Dege (Derge) and Jiangda (Jomda) counties.

Once built, the dam's reservoir would submerge an area that is culturally and religiously significant to Tibetans, and home to several villages and ancient monasteries containing sacred relics.

One of them, the 700-year-old Wangdui (Wontoe) Monastery, has particular historical value as its walls feature rare Buddhist murals.

The Gangtuo dam would also displace thousands of Tibetans. The BBC has seen what appears to be a public tender document for the relocation of 4,287 residents to make way for the dam.

The BBC contacted an official listed on the tender document as well as Huadian, the state-owned enterprise reportedly building the dam. Neither have responded.

Plans to build the dam were first approved in 2012, according to a United Nations special rapporteurs letter to the Chinese government. The letter, which is from July 2024, raised concerns about the dam's "irreversible impact" on thousands of people and the environment.

From the start, residents were not "consulted in a meaningful way" about the dam, according to the letter. For instance, they were given information that was inadequate and not in the Tibetan language.

They were also promised by the government that the project would only go ahead if 80% of them agreed to it, but "there is no evidence this consent was ever given," the letter goes on to say, adding that residents tried to raise concerns about the dam several times.

Chinese authorities, however, denied this in their response to the UN. "The relocation of the villages in question was carried out only after full consultation of the opinions of the local residents," the Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations office said in a letter from September 2024.

It added: "Local government and project developers funded the construction of new homes and provided subsidies for grazing, herding and farming. As for any cultural relics, they were relocated in their entirety."

But the BBC understands from two Tibetan sources that, in February, officials had told them they would be evicted imminently, while giving them little information about resettlement options and compensation.

This triggered such deep anxiety that villagers and Buddhist monks decided to stage protests, despite knowing the risks of a crackdown.

'They didn't know what was going to happen to them'

The largest one saw hundreds gathering outside a government building in Dege. In a video clip obtained and verified by the BBC, protesters can be heard calling on authorities to stop the evictions and let them stay.

Separately, a group of residents approached visiting officials and pleaded with them to cancel plans to build the dam. The BBC has obtained footage which appears to show this incident, and verified it took place in the village of Xiba.

The clip shows red-robed monks and villagers kneeling on a dusty road and showing a thumbs-up, a traditional Tibetan way of begging for mercy.

In the past the Chinese government has been quick to stamp out resistance to authority, especially in Tibetan territory where it is sensitive to anything that could potentially feed separatist sentiment.

It was no different this time. Authorities swiftly launched their crackdown, arresting hundreds of people at protests while also raiding homes across the valley, according to one of our sources.

One unverified but widely shared clip appears to show Chinese policemen shoving a group of monks on a road, in what is thought to be an arrest operation.

Many were detained for weeks and some were beaten badly, according to our Tibetan sources whose family and friends were targeted in the crackdown.

One source shared fresh details of the interrogations. He told the BBC that a childhood friend was detained and interrogated over several days.

"He was asked questions and treated nicely at first. They asked him 'who asked you to participate, who is behind this'.

"Then, when he couldn't give them [the] answers they wanted, he was beaten by six or seven different security personnel over several days."

His friend sustained only minor injuries, and was freed within a few days. But others were not so lucky.

Another source told the BBC that more than 20 of his relatives and friends were detained for participating in the protests, including an elderly person who was more than 70 years old.

"Some of them sustained injuries all over their body, including in their ribs and kidneys, from being kicked and beaten… some of them were sick because of their injuries," he said.

Similar claims of physical abuse and beatings during the arrests have surfaced in overseas Tibetan media reports.

The UN letter also notes reports of detentions and use of force on hundreds of protesters, stating they were "severely beaten by the Chinese police, resulting in injuries that required hospitalisation".

After the crackdown, Tibetans in the area encountered even tighter restrictions, the BBC understands. Communication with the outside world was further limited and there was increased surveillance. Those who are still contactable have been unwilling to talk as they fear another crackdown, according to sources.

The first source said while some released protesters were eventually allowed to travel elsewhere in Tibetan territory, others have been slapped with orders restricting their movement.

This has caused problems for those who need to go to hospital for medical treatment and nomadic tribespeople who need to roam across pastures with their herds, he said.

The second source said he last heard from his relatives and friends at the end of February: "When I got through, they said not to call any more as they would get arrested. They were very scared, they would hang up on me.

"We used to talk over WeChat, but now that is not possible. I'm totally blocked from contacting all of them," he said.

"The last person I spoke to was a younger female cousin. She said, 'It's very dangerous, a lot of us have been arrested, there's a lot of trouble, they have hit a lot of us'… They didn't know what was going to happen to them next."

The BBC has been unable to find any mention of the protests and crackdown in Chinese state media. But shortly after the protests, a Chinese Communist Party official visited the area to "explain the necessity" of building the dam and called for "stability maintenance measures", according to one report.

A few months later, a tender was awarded for the construction of a Dege "public security post", according to documents posted online.

The letter from Chinese authorities to the UN suggests villagers have already been relocated and relics moved, but it is unclear how far the project has progressed.

The BBC has been monitoring the valley via satellite imagery for months. For now, there is no sign of the dam's construction nor demolition of the villages and monasteries.

The Chinese embassy told us authorities were still conducting geological surveys and specialised studies to build the dam. They added the local government is "actively and thoroughly understanding the demands and aspirations" of residents.

Development or exploitation?

China is no stranger to controversy when it comes to dams.

When the government constructed the world's biggest dam in the 90s - the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River - it saw protests and criticism over its handling of relocation and compensation for thousands of villagers.

In more recent years, as China has accelerated its pivot from coal to clean energy sources, such moves have become especially sensitive in Tibetan territories.

Beijing has been eyeing the steep valleys and mighty rivers here, in the rural west, to build mega-dams and hydropower stations that can sustain China's electricity-hungry eastern metropolises. President Xi Jinping has personally pushed for this, a policy called "xidiandongsong", or "sending western electricity eastwards".

Like Gangtuo, many of these dams are on the Jinsha (Dri Chu) river, which runs through Tibetan territories. It forms the upper reaches of the Yangtze river and is part of what China calls the world's largest clean energy corridor.

Gangtuo is in fact the latest in a series of 13 dams planned for this valley, five of which are already in operation or under construction.

The Chinese government and state media have presented these dams as a win-win solution that cuts pollution and generates clean energy, while uplifting rural Tibetans.

In its statement to the BBC, the Chinese embassy said clean energy projects focus on "promoting high-quality economic development" and "enhancing the sense of gain and happiness among people of all ethnic groups".

But the Chinese government has long been accused of violating Tibetans' rights. Activists say the dams are the latest example of Beijing's exploitation of Tibetans and their land.

"What we are seeing is the accelerated destruction of Tibetan religious, cultural and linguistic heritage," said Tenzin Choekyi, a researcher with rights group Tibet Watch. "This is the 'high-quality development' and 'ecological civilisation' that the Chinese government is implementing in Tibet."

One key issue is China's relocation policy that evicts Tibetans from their homes to make way for development - it is what drove the protests by villagers and monks living near the Gangtuo dam. More than 930,000 rural Tibetans are estimated to have been relocated since 2000, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Beijing has always maintained that these relocations happen only with the consent of Tibetans, and that they are given housing, compensation and new job opportunities. State media often portrays it as an improvement in their living conditions.

But rights groups paint a different picture, with reports detailing evidence of coercion, complaints of inadequate compensation, cramped living conditions, and lack of jobs. They also point out that relocation severs the deep, centuries-old connection that rural Tibetans share with their land.

"These people will essentially lose everything they own, their livelihoods and community heritage," said Maya Wang, interim China director at HRW.

There are also environmental concerns over the flooding of Tibetan valleys renowned for their biodiversity, and the possible dangers of building dams in a region rife with earthquake fault lines.

Some Chinese academics have found the pressure from accumulated water in dam reservoirs could potentially increase the risk of quakes, including in the Jinsha river. This could cause catastrophic flooding and destruction, as seen in 2018, when rain-induced landslides occurred at a village situated between two dam construction sites on Jinsha.

The Chinese embassy told us that the implementation of any clean energy project "will go through scientific planning and rigorous demonstration, and will be subject to relevant supervision".

In recent years, China has passed laws safeguarding the environment surrounding the Yangtze River and the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. President Xi has personally stressed the need to protect the Yangtze's upper reaches.

About 424 million yuan (£45.5m, $60m) has been spent on environmental conservation along Jinsha, according to state media. Reports have also highlighted efforts to quake-proof dam projects.

Multiple Tibetan rights groups, however, argue that any large-scale development in Tibetan territory, including dams such as Gangtuo, should be halted.

They have staged protests overseas and called for an international moratorium, arguing that companies participating in such projects would be "allowing the Chinese government to profit from the occupation and oppression of Tibetans".

"I really hope that this [dam-building] stops," one of our sources said. "Our ancestors were here, our temples are here. We have been here for generations. It is very painful to move. What kind of life would we have if we leave?"