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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Employers, insurers push to make virtual visits regular care (AP) Make telemedicine your first choice for most doctor visits. That’s the message some U.S. employers and insurers are sending with a new wave of care options. Amazon and several insurers have started or expanded virtual-first care plans to get people to use telemedicine routinely, even for planned visits like annual checkups. They’re trying to make it easier for patients to connect with regular help by using remote care that grew explosively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advocates say this can keep patients healthy and out of expensive hospitals, which makes insurers and employers that pay most of the bill happy. But some doctors worry that it might create an over-reliance on virtual visits. “There is a lot lost when there is no personal touch, at least once in a while,” said Dr. Andrew Carroll, an Arizona-based family doctor and board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Landlords and renters both struggling (Washington Post) In the covid economy of 2021, the federal government has created an ongoing grace period for renters until at least July, banning all evictions in an effort to hold back a historic housing crisis that is already underway. More than 8 million rental properties across the country are behind on payments by an average of $5,600, according to census data. Nearly half of those rental properties are owned not by banks or big corporations but instead by what the government classifies as “small landlords”—people who manage their own rentals and depend on them for basic income, and who are now trapped between tenants who can’t pay and their own mounting bills for insurance, mortgages and property tax. According to government estimates, a third of small landlords are at risk of bankruptcy or foreclosure as the pandemic continues into its second year.

Pandemic baby bust unprecedented in Bay Area, California history (San Francisco Chronicle) U.S. residents are having fewer babies this year. And California’s birth rates in January and February—around the time when early pandemic babies would be due—declined by 15% compared to the same period last year, the steepest year-over-year decline for those months since at least 1960, according to a Chronicle analysis. We used data from California’s Health and Human Services department, which collects monthly birth totals per county. We found that the state’s births declined from nearly 70,000 in the first two months of 2020 to fewer than 59,000 in the same period in 2021.

Zoom Court Is Changing How Justice Is Served (The Atlantic) Last spring, as COVID‑19 infections surged for the first time, many American courts curtailed their operations. As case backlogs swelled, courts moved online, at a speed that has amazed—and sometimes alarmed—judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. In the past year, U.S. courts have conducted millions of hearings, depositions, arraignments, settlement conferences, and even trials—nearly entirely in civil cases or for minor criminal offenses—over Zoom and other meeting platforms. As of late February, Texas, the state that’s moved online most aggressively, had held 1.1 million remote proceedings.

Mexico City metro overpass collapses onto road; 20 dead (AP) An elevated section of the Mexico City metro collapsed and sent a subway car plunging toward a busy boulevard late Monday, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 70, city officials said. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said 49 of the injured were hospitalized, and that seven were in serious condition and undergoing surgery. The overpass was about 5 meters (16 feet) above the road in the southside borough of Tlahuac, but the train ran above a concrete median strip, which apparently lessened the casualties among motorists on the roadway below. “A support beam gave way,” Sheinbaum said, adding that the beam collapsed just as the train passed over it.

El Salvador’s judiciary (Foreign Policy) Lawmakers in El Salvador voted to remove five influential Supreme Court judges and the attorney general over the weekend in a move U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has noted with “grave concern.” The motions to remove the officials passed with a supermajority in El Salvador’s legislature, now ruled by President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas party following a sweeping victory in February’s elections. Addressing the international community on Twitter Bukele dismissed rebukes over the move. “With all due respect: We are cleaning house … and this doesn’t concern you,” Bukele said.

‘Hospitals are full’ as Argentina COVID-19 cases hit 3 million (Reuters) Argentina coronavirus cases hit 3 million on Sunday since the pandemic began, as medical workers said hospitals were full to capacity despite toughened government measures to bring down the spread of infections. The government of President Alberto Fernandez this week unveiled a new round of tougher restrictions as a second wave of infections has battered the country, filling up intensive care units and setting new daily records for cases and deaths. Marcela Cid, owner of a business on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, said that Argentines were increasingly “locked into a situation” that while necessary, was of little help to anyone trying to move beyond the pandemic.

EU proposes reopening external borders (AP) In an announcement sure to be welcomed by travelers worldwide, EU officials on Monday proposed easing restrictions on visiting the 27-nation bloc as vaccination campaigns across the continent gather speed. Travel to the European Union is currently extremely limited except for a handful of countries with low infection rates. But with the summer tourist season looming, the bloc’s European Commission hopes the new recommendations will dramatically expand that list. The Commission hopes the move will soon allow travelers reunite with their friends and relatives living in Europe and support the bloc’s economy this summer. Under the Commission’s proposal, entry would be granted to all those fully vaccinated with EU-authorized shots. Coronavirus vaccines authorized by the European Medicines Agency, the bloc’s drug regulator, include Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

Indian leader’s party takes electoral hit amid virus surge (AP) India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi suffered a resounding defeat in a key state election on Sunday, indicating his Hindu nationalist party’s political strength may be slipping as the country struggles to contain an unprecedented surge in coronavirus cases. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was unable to dislodge West Bengal state’s firebrand chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, after a hard-fought campaign. His party also failed to win in two southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. But the BJP secured a second term in the northeastern state of Assam and an alliance with regional parties led it to victory in the union territory of Puducherry. Even before the current virus surge, Modi’s party faced stiff challenges in these local legislative elections. Following the disappointing results, Modi stands weakened but faces no threats to staying on as prime minister until his term ends in 2024.

Formal Withdrawal from Afghanistan Begins (AP) US and NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan formally began the withdrawal phase over the weekend, a process that is expected to last through the summer and officially end Sept. 11. Roughly 3,000 US troops and 7,000 coalition troops remain in the country, along with a reported 18,000 Pentagon-employed contractors. The exit has been framed as nonconditional—meaning ongoing attacks by the Taliban against the Afghan government won’t delay the withdrawal. Many have questioned the ability of the Afghan National Army to provide security against the Taliban absent international forces. Despite assurances by Afghan officials, Taliban forces have established themselves across most of the country. Afghan forces control an estimated one-third of the country’s districts, with the Taliban controlling about 10%, and nearly half—areas that include a total of roughly 14 million people—currently contested.

Chinese man crosses Taiwan Strait by rubber dinghy, seeking ‘freedom and equality’ (Washington Post) A Chinese man appeared to sail undetected through the highly militarized Taiwan Strait in a rubber dinghy, fleeing his native China for Taiwan in search of “freedom,” according to Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration. The man, identified only by his surname, Zhou, left Shishi county in Quanzhou, a port city in Fujian province, at 10 a.m. on Friday, arriving more than 10 hours later at Taichung port on Taiwan’s western coast, Taiwan’s Coast Guard said on Monday. Officials said they were still investigating Zhou’s journey over the 100-mile stretch of sea between China and Taiwan, which is patrolled by hundreds of Chinese and Taiwanese coast guard ships and naval vessels. Coast Guard officials, relaying Zhou’s account of his journey, told reporters he had traveled in a rubber raft measuring 8.8 feet by 5 feet that he bought on the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao and fitted with an outboard motor. The incident has prompted concerns about the security of the contentious waterway at a time when military observers worry that long-standing tensions between the governments of China, Taiwan and the United States, which is committed to defending Taiwan, could boil over into military conflict.

Australia warns its citizens of jail and $50,000 fine if they return from India (Washington Post) Even in the pandemic era of closed borders, Australia’s latest travel restriction stands out: Anyone, including Australian citizens, who arrives in the country after visiting India in the previous 14 days can face up to five years in jail, a $50,000 fine or both. On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the move. Australia had seen a sevenfold increase in the percentage of people traveling from India who tested positive for the coronavirus, the prime minister told Sydney’s 2GB radio station. The decision to threaten even Australian citizens with jail time if they return home from India during its record-breaking coronavirus surge is a significant escalation of border restrictions for Australia, an island nation that had already mandated strict controls at its borders throughout the pandemic.

DR Congo declares state of siege over eastern bloodshed (Reuters) Militants killed at least 19 people, including 10 soldiers, in raids on two villages in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday, hours after President Felix Tshisekedi declared a state of siege in two provinces. A surge in attacks by armed militias and inter-communal violence in the east have killed more than 300 people since the start of the year as government troops and U.N. peacekeepers struggle to stabilize the situation. The most recent attacks took place early on Saturday when militants raided two villages in North Kivu’s regional hub of Beni, local authorities said. Tshisekedi had declared a state of siege in North Kivu and Ituri provinces on Friday.

#headlines #news

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roman-catholic-mass-readings · 4 years ago

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18th July >> Mass Readings (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Saturday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Saturday memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Saturday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Liturgical Colour: Green)

First Reading

Micah 2:1-5

The plotters of evil will not escape

Woe to those who plot evil,

who lie in bed planning mischief!

No sooner is it dawn than they do it

– their hands have the strength for it.

Seizing the fields that they covet,

they take over houses as well,

owner and house they confiscate together,

taking both man and inheritance.

So the Lord says this:

Now it is I who plot

such mischief against this breed

as your necks will not escape;

nor will you be able to walk proudly,

so evil will the time be.

On that day they will make a satire on you,

sing a dirge and say,

‘We are stripped of everything;

my people’s portion is measured out and shared,

no one will give it back to them,

our fields are awarded to our despoiler.’

Therefore you will have no one

to measure out a share

in the community of the Lord.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 9B(10):1-4,7-8,14

R/ Lord, do not forget the poor.

Lord, why do you stand afar off

and hide yourself in times of distress?

The poor man is devoured by the pride of the wicked:

he is caught in the schemes that others have made.

R/ Lord, do not forget the poor.

For the wicked man boasts of his heart’s desires;

the covetous blasphemes and spurns the Lord.

In his pride the wicked says: ‘He will not punish.

There is no God.’ Such are his thoughts.

R/ Lord, do not forget the poor.

His mouth is full of cursing, guile, oppression,

mischief and deceit under his tongue.

He lies in wait among the reeds;

the innocent he murders in secret.

R/ Lord, do not forget the poor.

His eyes are on the watch for the helpless man.

But you have seen the trouble and sorrow,

you note it, you take it in hand.

The helpless trusts himself to you;

for you are the helper of the orphan.

R/ Lord, do not forget the poor.

Gospel Acclamation

Psalm 118:27

Alleluia, alleluia!

Make me grasp the way of your precepts,

and I will muse on your wonders.

Alleluia!

Or:

2 Corinthians 5:19

Alleluia, alleluia!

God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself,

and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 12:14-21

He cured them all but warned them not to make him known

The Pharisees went out and began to plot against Jesus, discussing how to destroy him.

Jesus knew this and withdrew from the district. Many followed him and he cured them all, but warned them not to make him known. This was to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah:

Here is my servant whom I have chosen,

my beloved, the favourite of my soul.

I will endow him with my spirit,

and he will proclaim the true faith to the nations.

He will not brawl or shout,

nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

He will not break the crushed reed,

nor put out the smouldering wick

till he has led the truth to victory:

in his name the nations will put their hope.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

——————————-

Saturday memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Liturgical Colour: White)

(Readings for the memorial)

(There is a choice today between the readings for the ferial day (Saturday) and those for the memorial. The ferial readings are recommended unless pastoral reasons suggest otherwise)

First Reading

Genesis 3:9-15,20

The mother of all those who live

After Adam had eaten of the tree the Lord God called to him. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ he asked ‘Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?’ The man replied, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it.’ Then the Lord God asked the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman replied, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate.’

Then the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this,

‘Be accursed beyond all cattle,

all wild beasts.

You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust

every day of your life.

I will make you enemies of each other:

you and the woman,

your offspring and her offspring.

It will crush your head

and you will strike its heel.’

The man named his wife ‘Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who live.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm

1 Samuel 2:1,4-8

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

My heart exults in the Lord.

I find my strength in my God;

my mouth laughs at my enemies

as I rejoice in your saving help.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

The bows of the mighty are broken,

but the weak are clothed with strength.

Those with plenty must labour for bread,

but the hungry need work no more.

The childless wife has children now

but the fruitful wife bears no more.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

It is the Lord who gives life and death,

he brings men to the grave and back;

it is the Lord who gives poverty and riches.

He brings men low and raises them on high.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

He lifts up the lowly from the dust,

from the dungheap he raises the poor

to set him in the company of princes

to give him a glorious throne.

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,

on them he has set the world.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

Gospel Acclamation

cf. Luke 1:28

Alleluia, alleluia!

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!

Blessed art thou among women.

Alleluia!

Or:

cf. Luke 1:45

Alleluia, alleluia!

Blessed is the Virgin Mary, who believed

that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.

Alleluia!

Or:

cf. Luke 2:19

Alleluia, alleluia!

Blessed is the Virgin Mary,

who treasured the word of God

and pondered it in her heart.

Alleluia!

Or:

Luke 11:28

Alleluia, alleluia!

Happy are those

who hear the word of God

and keep it.

Alleluia!

Or:

Alleluia, alleluia!

Blessed are you, holy Virgin Mary,

and most worthy of all praise,

for the sun of justice, Christ our God,

was born of you.

Alleluia!

Or:

Alleluia, alleluia!

Happy is the Virgin Mary,

who, without dying,

won the palm of martyrdom

beneath the cross of the Lord.

Alleluia!

Either:

Gospel

Matthew 1:1-16,18-23

The ancestry and conception of Jesus Christ

A genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham:

Abraham was the father of Isaac,

Isaac the father of Jacob,

Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, Tamar being their mother,

Perez was the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram was the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

Salmon was the father of Boaz, Rahab being his mother,

Boaz was the father of Obed, Ruth being his mother,

Obed was the father of Jesse;

and Jesse was the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

Solomon was the father of Rehoboam,

Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa,

Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat,

Jehoshaphat the father of Joram,

Joram the father of Azariah,

Azariah was the father of Jotham,

Jotham the father of Ahaz,

Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,

Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh,

Manasseh the father of Amon,

Amon the father of Josiah;

and Josiah was the father of Jechoniah and his brothers.

Then the deportation to Babylon took place.

After the deportation to Babylon:

Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel,

Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,

Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud,

Abiud the father of Eliakim,

Eliakim the father of Azor,

Azor was the father of Zadok,

Zadok the father of Achim,

Achim the father of Eliud,

Eliud was the father of Eleazar,

Eleazar the father of Matthan,

Matthan the father of Jacob;

and Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary;

of her was born Jesus who is called Christ.

This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph; being a man of honour and wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.’ Now all this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son

and they will call him Emmanuel,

a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Matthew 1:18-23

How Jesus Christ came to be born

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son

and they will call him Emmanuel,

a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

The flight into Egypt and the return to Nazareth

After the wise men had left, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother with you, and escape into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him.’ So Joseph got up and, taking the child and his mother with him, left that night for Egypt, where he stayed until Herod was dead. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the prophet:

I called my son out of Egypt.

After Herod’s death, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother with you and go back to the land of Israel, for those who wanted to kill the child are dead.’ So Joseph got up and, taking the child and his mother with him, went back to the land of Israel. But when he learnt that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod as ruler of Judaea he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he left for the region of Galilee. There he settled in a town called Nazareth. In this way the words spoken through the prophets were to be fulfilled:

‘He will be called a Nazarene.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Matthew 12:46-50

My mother and my brothers are anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven

Jesus was speaking to the crowds when his mother and his brothers appeared; they were standing outside and were anxious to have a word with him. But to the man who told him this Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand towards his disciples he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 1:26-38

‘I am the handmaid of the Lord’

The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.’ ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 1:39-47

Blessed is she who believed the promise

Mary set out and went as quickly as she could to a town in the hill country of Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. Now as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, ‘Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’

And Mary said:

‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord

and my spirit exults in God my saviour.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 2:1-14

'In the town of David a saviour has been born to you’

Caesar Augustus issued a decree for a census of the whole world to be taken. This census – the first – took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to be registered. So Joseph set out from the town of Nazareth in Galilee and travelled up to Judaea, to the town of David called Bethlehem, since he was of David’s House and line, in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn.

In the countryside close by there were shepherds who lived in the fields and took it in turns to watch their flocks during the night. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone round them. They were terrified, but the angel said, ‘Do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly with the angel there was a great throng of the heavenly host, praising God and singing:

‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and peace to men who enjoy his favour.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 2:15-19

The shepherds hurried to Bethlehem and found the baby lying in the manger

Now when the angels had gone from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they hurried away and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw the child they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say. As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 2:27-35

'A sword will pierce your soul too’

Prompted by the Spirit Simeon came to the Temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the Law required, he took him into his arms and blessed God; and he said:

‘Now, Master, you can let your servant go in peace,

just as you promised;

because my eyes have seen the salvation

which you have prepared for all the nations to see,

a light to enlighten the pagans

and the glory of your people Israel.’

As the child’s father and mother stood there wondering at the things that were being said about him, Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, ‘You see this child: he is destined for the fall and for the rising of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is rejected – and a sword will pierce your own soul too – so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 2:41-52

Mary stored up all these things in her heart

Every year the parents of Jesus used to go to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up for the feast as usual. When they were on their way home after the feast, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing it. They assumed he was with the caravan, and it was only after a day’s journey that they went to look for him among their relations and acquaintances. When they failed to find him they went back to Jerusalem looking for him everywhere.

Three days later, they found him in the Temple, sitting among the doctors, listening to them, and asking them questions; and all those who heard him were astounded at his intelligence and his replies. They were overcome when they saw him, and his mother said to him, ‘My child, why have, you done this to us? See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you.’

‘Why were you looking for me?’ he replied. ‘Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs?’ But they did not understand what he meant.

He then went down with them and came to Nazareth and lived under their authority.

His mother stored up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and men.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

Luke 11:27-28

'Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!’

As Jesus was speaking, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said, ‘Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!’ But he replied, ‘Still happier those who hear the word of God and keep it!’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

John 2:1-11

'My hour has not come yet’ - 'Do whatever he tells you’

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited. When they ran out of wine, since the wine provided for the wedding was all finished, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ Jesus said ‘Woman, why turn to me? My hour has not come yet.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ There were six stone water jars standing there, meant for the ablutions that are customary among the Jews: each could hold twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water’, and they filled them to the brim. ‘Draw some out now’ he told them ‘and take it to the steward.’ They did this; the steward tasted the water, and it had turned into wine. Having no idea where it came from – only the servants who had drawn the water knew – the steward called the bridegroom and said, ‘People generally serve the best wine first, and keep the cheaper sort till the guests have had plenty to drink; but you have kept the best wine till now.’

This was the first of the signs given by Jesus: it was given at Cana in Galilee. He let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in him.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Or:

Gospel

John 19:25-27

'Woman, this is your son’

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. Seeing his mother and the disciple he loved standing near her, Jesus said to his mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then to the disciple he said, ‘This is your mother.’ And from that moment the disciple made a place for her in his home.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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thesportssoundoff · 5 years ago

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DWTCS Week Six Primer

Fabio Cherant vs Aleksa Camur Light Heavyweights

Fabio Cherant 4-0 record From Boston Training with Tri Force MMA and Sityodtong Boston

Fun Facts: -Fabio Cherant, who has fought every single fight at CES-MMA, has 0 fights with anybody with an above .500 record. -Cherant turned pro in February of 2018, he's not even two years into his career. -For those who find it interesting what fighters are doing with their full time gigs while chasing MMA part time, Fabio Cherant was working for an Amazon warehouse before he got the DWCS offer.

Check Him Out:

Cherant's pro fights are unavailable

Aleksa Camur 4-0 record From Ohio Training with Strong Style Fight Team

Fun Facts:

-Camur is a primary training partner of Stipe Miocic. -Aleksa will be coming off nearly a year long layoff (last fight in August of 2018). -Not only has Aleksa Camur finished all of his pro victories, he's never had a fight leave the first round. NOT only that, he never had a fight get beyond the three minute mark of the first round.

Check Him Out:

vs (2-0) Allan Bose- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbq96XDPomU

Michael Martinek vs Rodrigo Nascimento Heavyweights

Michal Martinez 7-0 record From Czech Republic Training with Reinders Team

Fun Facts: -Michal Martinez is currently the Oktagon MMA HW champ, he won the belt in his last fight prior to the Contenders Series. -Michal Martinek is looking to become the first European born fighter to win a DWTCS contract. -Michal Martinek was in the Czech Republic's junior hockey system, playing over 100 games in the U20 league.

Check Him Out: vs 4-2 Daniel Dittrich in a title fight- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUSJ8bHQyyo vs 2-1 Daniel Dittrich- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca2x8rn0Zig

Rodrigo Nascimento 6-0 record From Brazil Training With Gracie Barra-Castelo

Fun Facts: -Rodrigo Nascimento was expected to fight on the DWCS Brazilian season but he was one of about ten fighters who had VISA problems which prevented him from appearing. He was originally supposed to fight Diego Henrique who ultimately wound up getting beaten by eventual signeee Antonio Arroyo. -This year the DWCS has seen a lot of fighters under 30 who started MMA way earlier than you'd expect, Nascimento is yet another one of those fighters. At just 26 years old, he's been a pro since 2012 with just 6 fights under his belt. He has not fought since the end of 2017. -Nascimento is a frequent BJJ tournament participant including multiple trips to the UAE for grappling competitions.

Check Him Out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E8RPDzmOX0

Daniel Rodriguez vs Rico Farrington Welterweights

Daniel Rodriguez 8-1 record From California Training With 10th Planet BJJ and Tapout LA

Fun Facts: -Daniel Rodriguez's last five fights are all very solid regional MMA stuff. It starts with a split decision loss to then 9-3 Victor Reyna, fresh off his own DWCS appearance, followed by stoppage wins over regional vet/Strikeforce pro Justin Baseman (at 18-16-1), 7-2 Combate veteran Daniel Velazco, 8-4 Ozzie Alvarez and 17-11 Combate veteran Ivan Castillo. -He did have a pinch hit spot with Bellator which he won by KO. -Rodriguez has been fighting across across a vareity of different weight classes; two fights back to back at a catchweight (165 lbs), one fight at welterweight and then plenty of fights at lightweight.

Check Him Out: vs 17-11 Ivan Castillo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5OhI9a9Au8 vs 7-2 Alex Velasko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHxtcddSJFM

Rico Farrington 7-2 record From the Bahamas, now residing in Florida Training With MMA Masters (Same gym as Kamaru Usman and Luke Rockhold)

Fun Facts: -Rico Farrington had a minor league baseball career before a rotator cuff injury retired him from the sport and sent him into MMA. -Rico Farrington has fought two fighters of note if you're a UFC follower; he has a loss to former UFC fighter Michael Graves and a win over DWCS Season One fighter Michael Cora. -Farrington started his MMA career 1-2 before winning six straight fights, mostly in Titan FC.

Check Him Out: vs 0-5 (!) Ty Evans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC7FVJLltk4 vs 7-3 Fernando Ribiero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWU3vp66tqs

Mariya Agapova vs Tracy Cortez Flyweight

Mariya Agapova 6-0 record From Kazakhstan Training With Akhmat Fight Club

Fun Facts: -Mariya Agapova is looking to become the first ever Kazakh woman to be signed by the UFC. -Agapova's last fight was a knock out over 8-2 Chinese prospect Na Liang for a regional championship. -While Agapova hasn't popped up in many organizations you've heard of, she did pick up a win in Brave FC which is a solid regional organization

Check Her Out: vs 8-2 Na Liang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYfVjaY2Hnk vs 1-0 Yulia Litvenciva: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynTzAyxHjHo

Tracy Cortez 5-1 record From Arizona Training With Fight Ready

Fun Facts: -Tracy Cortez has been around some well known organizations in the United States. As an amateur she competed in TUFF (the org with closest ties to the UFC), Invicta and Combate. -She was supposed to fight Karina Rodriguez in a potential #1 contender fight at flyweight for Invicta but Rodriguez was rebooked and Cortez wound up getting the DWCS offer. -As is often the case with regional WMMA, Cortez has already fought a fair bit of solid competition; namely Erin Blanchfield (3-1 at the time), Monica Medina (who has losses to Gillian Robertson, Cortez and Invicta/Bellator vet Victoria Leonardo) and then undefeated Invicta vet Cheri Muraski.

Check Her Out: vs 1-0 Karen Cedillo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJTqrgrNHDo

Aalon Cruz vs Steve Nguyen Feathweights

Aalon Cruz 7-2 record From Florida Training With Team Darkside/DEFWAR

Fun Facts: -Cruz was scheduled to make a debut for Titan FC before he got hurt and had to pull out of the fight in 2017. Since then he's been fighting primarily in smaller regional organizations. -Cruz put himself on the map with a win over Steve Garcia Jr who was coming off a six fight stint in Bellator. -hey @theanticool It turns out Aalon Cruz got his MMA start through Tiger Schulman’s.

Check Him Out: vs 3-0 Da'mon Blackshear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPGB_5KkJ9k vs 8-2 Solon Staley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNOwko7KufE

Steve Nguyen 5-0 record From Kansas Training With JMTK

Fun Facts: -Steve Nguyen, if he gets a contract, would be the only Vietnamese fighter in the UFC and the second behind TUF 11 veteran Nam Phan. -Steve Nguyen's last pro fight was a five round title fight in April of 2019. He won by stoppage in the 4th round but you do wonder if April to July is too quick a turnaround. -Steve Nguyen apparently has a 3-1 kickboxing record as well for whatever that's worth.

Check Him Out: Vs 3-2 Garrett Meuler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hizap7vih0 Vs 2-2 Edgar Urias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPirfVG0aWk

#MMA #UFC #DWCS #Tracy Cortez #Maria Agaropova #Fabio Cherant #Michal Martinek

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Xbox Game Pass: New Games for July and August 2021 Revealed

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s subscription service for Xbox One owners. It’s designed to be like a “Netflix for games,” where you pay a simple monthly rate and get access to loads of games for download. It’s not to be confused with the Xbox Live Gold membership, which gives users a selection of free games each month.

There has been a huge surge in popularity and profile for Xbox Game Pass since its launch, mainly due to the diverse list of games and first-party exlusives on the service. In fact, Microsoft drops new releases from its own internal studios onto the service on day one! Sea of Thieves was the first example of this, followed by State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3. Since then, the service has seen the day one launch of several other high-profile Xbox exclusives, including Gears 5, The Outer Worlds, and Halo: Reach on the Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

Membership to Xbox Game Pass will set you back $9.99 per month. You can now also get an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription for $1 for the first month and $14.99 every month after that. The subscription includes an Xbox Live Gold membership as well as all of the games offered on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Plus, with cloud support, you can play a selection of Xbox Game Pass titles on your Android phone. And now you even get access to titles on EA Play, the third-party publisher’s own on-demand service.

New games are added each month to Xbox Game Pass. Here are the latest games coming to the service (with descriptions courtesy of the Xbox team):

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Xbox Game Pass: Games for June 2021

The Wild at Heart (Cloud) – June 1

Explore a beautiful, handcrafted world full of charming puzzles, and deep secrets in The Wild at Heart, a whimsical story centered around two children that escape to a fantastical land filled with magical creatures to befriend and an oddball order of guardians who’ve lost their way. Welcome to the Deep Woods.

For Honor (Cloud and Console) – June 3

War marches across the land of Heathmoor as heroes from rival factions clash in unending visceral battles. Use your finely honed skill to emerge victorious in a variety of thrilling single and brutal multiplayer modes. Grasp destiny in your hands and fight… for honor.

Backbone (PC) – June 8

Raccoon detective Howard Lotor is not a hero. He can barely make rent. And yet he has stumbled across something so massive that it will shake the very fabric of society. Stunning visuals, an evocative soundtrack, and a daring narrative bring a dystopian Vancouver, BC inhabited by animals to life in this highly anticipated, post-noir adventure. Get to it, detective.

Darkest Dungeon (Cloud, Console, and PC) – June 10

Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes through twisted forests, forgotten warrens, ruined crypts, and beyond. Not only do unimaginable foes await, but stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Cloud, Console, and PC) – June 13

Now you can play all eight games in the mainline Yakuza saga from Yakuza 0 to the latest installment, Yakuza: Like a Dragon! Become Ichiban Kasuga, a low-ranking yakuza grunt left on the brink of death by the man he trusted most. Take up your legendary bat and get ready to crack some underworld skulls in dynamic RPG combat set against the backdrop of modern-day Japan in Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

Arx Fatalis (PC) – June 13

This critically acclaimed first-person RPG from Arkane Studios takes the player on an amazing journey into the fantasy world of Arx. As your quest unfolds you will explore ancient temples, bustling cities and abandoned mines; unearth legendary artifacts and face terrifying foes.

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (PC, Cloud, and Console) – June 13

From the award-winning developers at Arkane Studios comes Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, the third adventure in the critically acclaimed Dishonored series. Explore the dark underbelly of society to pull off the ultimate assassination.

Doom (Cloud and Console) – June 13

Relentless demons, impossibly destructive guns, and fast, fluid movement provide the foundation for intense, first-person combat in Doom, 2016’s Action Game of the Year and lead-up to the critically acclaimed Doom Eternal. Become the Doom Slayer and experience visceral intuitive push-forward combat as you obliterate Hell’s armies.

Fallout (PC) – June 13

The first entry in the beloved Fallout franchise. Explore the devastated ruins of a golden age civilization. Talk, sneak or fight your way past mutants, gangsters, and robotic adversaries. Make the right decisions or you could end up as another fallen hero in the wastelands…

Fallout 2 (PC) – June 13

It’s been 80 long years since your ancestors trod across the wastelands. As you search for the Garden of Eden Creation Kit to save your primitive village, your path is strewn with crippling radiation, megalomaniac mutants, and a relentless stream of lies, deceit and treachery.

Fallout 3 (PC, Cloud, and Console) – June 13

An expansive world, unique combat, shockingly realistic visuals, tons of player choice, and an incredible cast of dynamic characters. Every minute is a fight for survival against the terrors of the outside world.

Fallout: New Vegas (Newly added for PC, Cloud, and Console) – June 13

Welcome to New Vegas. It’s the kind of town where you dig your own grave prior to being shot in the head… and that’s before things really get ugly. It’s a town of dreamers and desperados being torn apart by warring factions vying for complete control of this desert oasis.

Fallout: Tactics (PC) – June 13

In these dark times, the Brotherhood – your Brotherhood – is all that stands between the rekindled flame of civilization and the wasteland. Your squad mates will be dearer to you than your kin and for those that survive there will be honor, respect, and the spoils of war.

Rage (Cloud and Console) – June 13

In the not-too-distant future an asteroid impact left Earth ravaged. You emerge into a vast wasteland to discover humanity working to rebuild itself in a treacherous world. Survive and explore an expansive environment teeming with bandit gangs, mutant hordes and an oppressive government’s soldiers with exotic guns and gadgets.

The Evil Within 2 (PC, Cloud, and Console) – June 13

Experience visceral survival horror as you descend into terrifying domains in search of your missing daughter. Use weapons, traps, and stealth to survive an onslaught of horrifying creatures determined to rip you apart. Return to the nightmare to win back your life and the ones you love.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PC, Cloud, and Console) – June 13

You are BJ Blazkowicz, humanity’s last hope for liberty, on a mission to recruit the boldest resistance leaders left. Fight in iconic American locations, equip an arsenal of awesome guns, and unleash new abilities as you kill every Nazi in sight and spark the second American Revolution.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance (PC, Cloud, and Console) – June 13

Gather your party, choose your adventurer, and get ready to set out on an epic brawl through Icewind Dale on June 22 with Xbox Game Pass. Forget character sheets and math for the night, Dark Alliance is a third-person action brawler that drops you and your friends into the unforgiving frozen hellscape of Icewind Dale to take on iconic Dungeons & Dragons monsters and collect epic loot. You can venture on your own, but with the addition of cross play on PC and Xbox featuring up to 4-player co-op, why would you?

Xbox Game Pass: Games for July 2021

Atomicrops (Cloud, Console, and PC) ID@Xbox – July 22

Atomicrops is an action-packed, roguelite, bullet-hell game where you must defend and cultivate the last farm in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Tend to mutated crops (be careful, some have teeth), marry townsfolk (ooh la la), collect cats (because who wouldn’t?!), and kill every mutant creature that tries to invade! This ain’t no ordinary farming simulator.

Raji: An Ancient Epic (Cloud, Console, and PC) ID@Xbox – July 22

Take on the role of Raji, a young girl blessed by the gods to defend the human realm from an onslaught of demonic beings that seek to destroy her world. Brother and sister, Raji and Golu, separated by the attacking demonic hordes, now find themselves in the middle of a great war. Raji has taken it upon herself to find her brother and put an end to this reckless conflict.

Last Stop (Cloud, Console, and PC) ID@Xbox – July 22

Developed by Variable State, creators of the award-winning Virginia, and available with Xbox Game Pass on day one, Last Stop is a single-player, third-person adventure set in present-day London, where you play as three separate characters whose worlds collide in the midst of a supernatural crisis.

Blinx: The Time Sweeper (Cloud and Console) – July 26

Coming to Xbox Game Pass to celebrate 20 Years of Xbox, Blinx: The Time Sweeper is a fast-paced action game featuring a cool, clever character in wild, warped worlds. The ability to control the flow of time provides a classic 4-dimensional gaming experience.

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge (Cloud and Console) – July 26

Celebrating 20 Years of Xbox, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge combines thrilling aerial combat with the swashbuckling style of a Hollywood action-adventure movie. Set in an alternate 1930s world of gunship diplomacy and sinister intrigue, pilot powerful aircraft against nefarious air pirates and behemoth war zeppelins.

Microsoft Flight Simulator (Xbox Series X|S) – July 27

From Xbox Game Studios, available with Xbox Game Pass on day one of its release for Xbox Series X|S! From light planes to wide-body jets, fly highly-detailed and accurate aircraft in the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox Series X|S. Test your piloting skills against the challenges of real-time atmospheric simulation and live weather in a dynamic and living world. The sky is calling!

Lethal League Blaze (Cloud, Console, and PC) ID@Xbox – July 29

An intense, high speed ball game with unique characters, outta sight sounds, and none of that weak stuff. In Shine City, the anti-gravity ball game has long been illegal. The group who kept playing was dubbed the Lethal League. Even now, with their sport pushed underground, players and crews compete for challenge and respect.

Omno (Cloud, Console, and PC) ID@Xbox – July 29

Available with Xbox Game Pass on day one! A single-player journey of discovery through an ancient world of wonders, created by solo developer Jonas Manke. Full of puzzles, secrets, and obstacles to overcome, where the power of a lost civilization will carry you through forests, deserts, and tundra – even to the clouds.

Project Wingman (PC) ID@Xbox – July 29

In an immersive flight experience, you’ll dogfight, strike, and fly your way to conquering the skies. Strap yourself into the cockpit of over 20 unique aircraft and become a true ace in Project Wingman.

The Ascent (Cloud, Console, and PC) ID@Xbox – July 29

Available with Xbox Game Pass on day one, The Ascent is a solo and co-op action-shooter RPG set in a cyberpunk world. The mega corporation that owns you and everyone, The Ascent Group, has just collapsed. Can you survive without it?

Xbox Game Pass: Games for August 2021

Twelve Minutes (PC, Cloud, and Console) – August 19

In Twelve Minutes, you play as a man coming home for what should be a romantic evening with your wife. The night twists into a nightmare when a brutish policeman breaks into your home, accuses your wife of murder, and beats you to death… only for you to wake up, suddenly returned to the moment you opened the front door. Your wife is blissfully unaware of what is about to happen, but you… you remember everything.

Psychonauts 2 (PC, Cloud, and Console) – August 25

Psychonauts 2 is an exciting journey through the mind filled with the signature Double Fine humor and heart, and a touch of next-level platforming. You play as Razputin Aquato, a trained acrobat and powerful young psychic, who has realized his lifelong dream of joining the international psychic espionage organization known as the Psychonauts. But these psychic super spies are in trouble. Raz must use his powers to bring the murderous psychic villain, Maligula, back from the dead! Check out the video above and get psyched!

Hades (PC, Cloud, and Console) – TBA

As the immortal Prince of the Underworld, you’ll wield the powers and mythic weapons of Olympus to break free from the clutches of the god of the dead himself, while growing stronger and unraveling more of the story with each unique escape attempt.

Xbox Game Pass: Games for September 2021

Aragami 2 (PC, Cloud, and Console) – September 17

Aragami 2 is a third person stealth game where you play as an assassin with the power to control the shadows. Join the shadow clan and fight the invader armies to protect your people. You are one of the last elite warriors of your kin, the Aragami. Victims of a supernatural affliction which corrodes the body and devours the mind, the Aragami control Shadow Essence – a mystical power which grants the ability to control the shadows. With this power the Aragami carry out their tasks and quests – assignments made all along the valley to ensure the subsistence of the village and to free the Aragami enslaved by the invader armies.

Sable (PC, Cloud, and Console) – September 23

Embark on a unique and unforgettable journey and guide Sable through her Gliding; a rite of passage that will take her across vast deserts and mesmerizing landscapes, capped by the remains of spaceships and ancient wonders.

The post Xbox Game Pass: New Games for July and August 2021 Revealed appeared first on Den of Geek.

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chiseler · 4 years ago

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What You Need to Know about the ICC Investigation of War Crimes in Occupied Palestine

Fatou Bensouda

Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has, once and for all, settled the doubts on the Court’s jurisdiction to investigate war crimes committed in occupied Palestine.

On April 30, Bensouda released a 60-page document diligently laying down the legal bases for that decision, concluding that “the Prosecution has carefully considered the observations of the participants, and remains of the view that the Court has jurisdiction over the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Bensouda’s legal explanation was itself a preemptive decision, dating back to December 2019, as the ICC Prosecutor must have anticipated an Israeli-orchestrated pushback against the investigation of war crimes committed in the Occupied Territories.

After years of haggling, the ICC had resolved in December 2019 that, “there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine, pursuant to article 53(1) of the Statute.”

Article 53(1) merely describes the procedural steps that often lead, or do not lead, to an investigation by the Court.

That Article is satisfied when the amount of evidence provided to the Court is so convincing that it leaves the ICC with no other option but to move forward with an investigation.

Indeed, Bensouda had already declared late last year that she was,

“satisfied that (i) war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip... (ii) potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible; and (iii) there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”

Naturally, Israel and its main Western ally, the United States, fumed. Israel has never been held accountable by the international community for war crimes and other human rights violations in Palestine. The ICC's decision, especially if the investigation moves forward, would be an historic precedent.

But, what are Israel and the US to do when neither are state parties in the ICC, thus having no actual influence on the internal proceedings of the court? A solution had to be devised.

In an historic irony, Germany, which had to answer to numerous war crimes committed by the Nazi regime during World War II, stepped in to serve as the main defender of Israel at the ICC and to shield accused Israeli war criminals from legal and moral accountability.

On February 14, Germany filed a petition with the ICC requesting an “amicus curiae”, meaning “friend of the court”, status. By achieving that special status, Germany was able to submit objections, arguing against the ICC’s earlier decision on behalf of Israel.

Germany, among others, then argued that the ICC had no legal authority to discuss Israeli war crimes in the occupied territories. These efforts, however, eventually amounted to nil.

The ball is now in the court of the ICC pre-trial chamber.

The pre-trial chamber consists of judges that authorize the opening of investigations. Customarily once the Prosecutor decides to consider an investigation, she has to inform the Pre-Trial Chamber of her decision.

According to the Rome Statute, Article 56(b), “... the Pre-Trial Chamber may, upon request of the Prosecutor, take such measures as may be necessary to ensure the efficiency and integrity of the proceedings and, in particular, to protect the rights of the defence.”

The fact that the Palestinian case has been advanced to such a point can and should be considered a victory for the Palestinian victims of the Israeli occupation. However, if the ICC investigation moves forward according to the original mandate requested by Bensouda, there will remain major legal and moral lapses that frustrate those who are advocating justice on behalf of Palestine.

For example, the legal representatives of the ‘Palestinian Victims Residents of the Gaza Strip’ expressed their concern on behalf of the victims regarding “the ostensibly narrow scope of the investigation into the crimes suffered by the Palestinian victims of this situation.”

The ‘narrow scope of the investigation’ has thus far excluded such serious crimes as crimes against humanity. According to the Gaza legal team, the killing of hundreds and wounding of thousands of unarmed protesters participating in the ‘Great March of Return’ is a crime against humanity that must also be investigated.

The ICC’s jurisdiction, of course, goes beyond Bensouda’s decision to investigate ‘war crimes’ only.

Article 5 of the Rome Statute - the founding document of the ICC - extends the Court’s jurisdiction to investigate the following “serious crimes”:

(a) The crime of genocide

(b) Crimes against humanity

(d) The crime of aggression

It should come as no surprise that Israel is qualified to be investigated on all four points and that the nature of Israeli crimes against Palestinians often tends to, constitute a mixture of two or more of these points simultaneously.

Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights (2008-2014), Prof. Richard Falk, wrote in 2009, soon after a deadly Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip, that,

“Israel initiated the Gaza campaign without adequate legal foundation or just cause, and was responsible for causing the overwhelming proportion of devastation and the entirety of civilian suffering. Israeli reliance on a military approach to defeat or punish Gaza was intrinsically ‘criminal’, and as such demonstrative of both violations of the law of war and the commission of crimes against humanity.”

Falk extended his legal argument beyond war crimes and crimes against humanity into a third category. “There is another element that strengthens the allegation of aggression. The population of Gaza had been subjected to a punitive blockade for 18 months when Israel launched its attacks.”

What about the crime of apartheid? Does it fit anywhere within the ICC’s previous definitions and jurisdiction?

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of November 1973 defines apartheid as,

“a crime against humanity and that inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination, as defined in article II of the Convention, are crimes violating the principles of international law, in particular the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and constituting a serious threat to international peace and security.”

The Convention came into force in July 1976, when twenty countries ratified it. Mostly western powers, including the United States and Israel, opposed it.

Particularly important about the definition of apartheid, as stated by the Convention, is that the crime of apartheid was liberated from the limited South African context and made applicable to racially discriminatory policies in any state.

In June 1977, Addition Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions designated apartheid as, “a grave breach of the Protocol and a war crime.”

It follows that there are legal bases to argue that the crime of apartheid can be considered both a crime against humanity and a war crime.

Former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights (2000-2006), Prof. John Dugard, said this soon after Palestine joined the ICC in 2015,

“For seven years, I visited the Palestinian territory twice a year. I also conducted a fact-finding mission after the Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008, 2009. So, I am familiar with the situation, and I am familiar with the apartheid situation. I was a human rights lawyer in apartheid South Africa. And I, like virtually every South African who visits the occupied territory, has a terrible sense of déjà vu. We’ve seen it all before, except that it is infinitely worse. And what has happened in the West Bank is that the creation of a settlement enterprise has resulted in a situation that closely resembles that of apartheid, in which the settlers are the equivalent of white South Africans. They enjoy superior rights over Palestinians, and they do oppress Palestinians. So, one does have a system of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory. And I might mention that apartheid is also a crime within the competence of the International Criminal Court.”

Considering the number of UN resolutions that Israel has violated throughout the years - the perpetual occupation of Palestine, the siege on Gaza, and the elaborate system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians through a large conglomerate of racist laws (culminating in the so-called Nation-State Law of July 2018) - finding Israel guilty of war crimes, among others “serious crimes”, should be a straightforward matter.

But the ICC is not entirely a legal platform. It is also a political institution that is subject to the interests and whims of its members. Germany’s intervention, on behalf of Israel, to dissuade the ICC from investigating Tel Aviv’s war crimes is a case in point.

Time will tell how far the ICC is willing to go with its unprecedented and historic attempt aimed at, finally, investigating the numerous crimes that have been committed in Palestine unhindered, with no recourse and no accountability.

For the Palestinian people, the long-denied justice cannot arrive soon enough.

by Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

- Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature, and specializes in audio-visual and journalism translation.

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Matt Wolff is not golf’s new disruptor. He’s the product of progress.

A 20-year-old golf cyborg with a wacky swing won a real, full-field PGA Tour event three weeks after turning pro. It’s an exception. But it might become a trend.

There is a default way to start an article like this when we want to frame up just how young x-person is when contrasted with their y-relative success. We can do that here. Matt Wolff is 20. He wasn’t around for Tiger’s first major win, and was a newborn for his second. He wasn’t here to witness Jordan’s Bulls. He likely has no memory of Baz Luhrmann’s spoken word hit Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen appearing on the back of Now! That’s What I Call Music 2. He’s young. You’re probably old. And so it goes.

Matt Wolff is 20 years old. He won the 3M Open Sunday night — a real, actual full PGA Tour event — which is a thing 20 year olds are not supposed to do. They are not supposed to do it ever. They are certainly not supposed to do it a month removed from playing sophomore season college golf, just three starts into their pro career. They’re definitely not supposed to do it with some wonky-ass, homegrown swing molded and crafted by some counterculture golf coach.

Old Golf wouldn’t allow that player to exist, let alone march up to the 72nd green at TPC Twin Cities, stare down a top-10 player, and drop some magical putt that leaves you screaming in your living room on an otherwise regular July Sunday afternoon.

AMAZING! @Matthew_Wolff5 makes EAGLE to win! It's the 20-year-old's first PGA TOUR victory.#LiveUnderPar pic.twitter.com/LYMXFIduPI

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 7, 2019

But that’s exactly what happened, because Old Golf is maybe dead. Welcome to the Matt Wolff Era, and maybe what the future of golf looks like.

Yes, Wolff is this good. But his win maybe says more about where the game is headed.

There’s no question Matt Wolff’s almost instant-win is extremely rare in the modern era of the sport. Over the last 80 years, only Jordan Spieth has won a PGA Tour event at a younger age, but Spieth’s win came several months into his first season on Tour. Wolff turned pro three weeks ago. He’s easy to root for, fun, insanely skilled, and far from a one-trick, weird-swinging pony. He’s a ca

The California native and now former Oklahoma State star has big aspirations beyond 3M Opens, though. He and swing coach George Gankas want to brand themselves as ‘disruptors’ ushering in a new era of the sport. It’s a cringeworthy phrase generally reserved for your local techbro with an Uber, But For [X] idea. But there’s at least some level of truth to that here! Wolff is a generational talent, and Gankas’ position on how to get the most out of him by leaning into his unorthodox move will probably spark some merch and book sales. Both are likable. Good for them, that’s totally fine.

As much as Wolff seems like something new, something that the sport’s never seen before — he’s not really at all. Matt Wolff is just what modern golf looks like now. Courses are longer, balls go farther, players are more athletic, coaching is better, philosophies more progressive, training more intense. It’s been 20 years in the making, starting with the trail paved by Tiger, then to Rory, to DJ, to Brooks. Golf is a sport now in perhaps a way it wasn’t decades ago. That type of evolution produces something in the end that resembles Matt Wolff — a ball-mashing, freakishly athletic creature that can pop out of college with a bizzaro swing and win instantly.

View this post on Instagram

@matthew_wolff5

A post shared by George Gankas (@georgegankasgolf) on Jul 2, 2019 at 8:05am PDT

In every other sport, you could at least perceive that the evolution of the sport will prolong careers. Better training, better diet, better injury care, better technology. LeBron James is going to play basketball until he is approximately 47 years old at this rate. Adam Vinatieri will at some point rise from the grave to go 26 of 28 on field goals in the year 2096.

Drawing this broad extrapolation from one 20-year-old winning is partially reckless, but let’s throw it out there: we’re entering an era of golf when collegiate players are skilled and developed enough where it’s reasonable to expect instant success on the PGA Tour. Length, youth, and athleticism are valued in the sport more than ever before. Continue on our slow slog to 8,000 yard major championship golf courses, and it stands to reason that more long-hitting almost-teens will win more often. The counter? Golf primes will shrink. 25 is maybe the new 30, 35 is the new 45, so on, so forth. If we’re talking in NBA terms, Zach Johnson’s about to be hit with the stretch provision.

This is where the natural turn to the traditional ROLL BACK THE BALL arguments might come in, but that assumes that younger, longer, more athletic players and shorter careers is in someway inherently bad. There’s certainly downside, but exposing younger, more athletic, more fun, often more interesting young stars to the top of the sport sooner is good. Not bad.

So, enjoy Matt Wolff. Enjoy George Gankas. Enjoy the weird swings, the Gankas “sickkk bro” videos, and the 7-iron that can go 220+ when it chooses. It’s fun, and it made an otherwise sleepy, mailed-in-by-the-PGA Tour event worth watching.

Welcome to New Golf. Get used to it.

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dfroza · 5 years ago

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the True nature of the Scriptures

are a pure revelation of God’s grace and it is the path that leads the heart to rebirth and that promises a new body along with inheriting both Heaven and earth as a place called “Home”

from Today’s reading in the Letter of Philippians:

Paul and Timothy, both of us committed servants of Christ Jesus, write this letter to all the followers of Jesus in Philippi, pastors and ministers included. We greet you with the grace and peace that comes from God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.

[A Love That Will Grow]

Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.

It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you. My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality. You have, after all, stuck with me all the way from the time I was thrown in jail, put on trial, and came out of it in one piece. All along you have experienced with me the most generous help from God. He knows how much I love and miss you these days. Sometimes I think I feel as strongly about you as Christ does!

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

[They Can’t Imprison the Message]

I want to report to you, friends, that my imprisonment here has had the opposite of its intended effect. Instead of being squelched, the Message has actually prospered. All the soldiers here, and everyone else, too, found out that I’m in jail because of this Messiah. That piqued their curiosity, and now they’ve learned all about him. Not only that, but most of the followers of Jesus here have become far more sure of themselves in the faith than ever, speaking out fearlessly about God, about the Messiah.

It’s true that some here preach Christ because with me out of the way, they think they’ll step right into the spotlight. But the others do it with the best heart in the world. One group is motivated by pure love, knowing that I am here defending the Message, wanting to help. The others, now that I’m out of the picture, are merely greedy, hoping to get something out of it for themselves. Their motives are bad. They see me as their competition, and so the worse it goes for me, the better—they think—for them.

So how am I to respond? I’ve decided that I really don’t care about their motives, whether mixed, bad, or indifferent. Every time one of them opens his mouth, Christ is proclaimed, so I just cheer them on!

And I’m going to keep that celebration going because I know how it’s going to turn out. Through your faithful prayers and the generous response of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, everything he wants to do in and through me will be done. I can hardly wait to continue on my course. I don’t expect to be embarrassed in the least. On the contrary, everything happening to me in this jail only serves to make Christ more accurately known, regardless of whether I live or die. They didn’t shut me up; they gave me a pulpit! Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger; dead, I’m his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can’t lose.

As long as I’m alive in this body, there is good work for me to do. If I had to choose right now, I hardly know which I’d choose. Hard choice! The desire to break camp here and be with Christ is powerful. Some days I can think of nothing better. But most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here. So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues. You can start looking forward to a great reunion when I come visit you again. We’ll be praising Christ, enjoying each other.

Meanwhile, live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ. Let nothing in your conduct hang on whether I come or not. Your conduct must be the same whether I show up to see things for myself or hear of it from a distance. Stand united, singular in vision, contending for people’s trust in the Message, the good news, not flinching or dodging in the slightest before the opposition. Your courage and unity will show them what they’re up against: defeat for them, victory for you—and both because of God. There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting. You’re involved in the same kind of struggle you saw me go through, on which you are now getting an updated report in this letter.

The Letter of Philippians, Chapter 1 (The Message)

to be concluded by the writing of a prayer for day 16 of Summer:

[Psalm 16]

A prayer of David.

Protect me, God, for the only safety I know is found in the moments I seek You.

I told You, Eternal One, “You are my Lord,

for the only good I know in this world is found in You alone.”

The beauty of faith-filled people encompasses me.

They are true, and my heart is thrilled beyond measure.

All the while the despair of many,

who abandoned Your goodness for the empty promises of false gods, increases day by day.

I refuse to pour out blood offerings,

to utter their names from my lips.

You, Eternal One, are my sustenance and my life-giving cup.

In that cup, You hold my future and my eternal riches.

My home is surrounded in beauty;

You have gifted me with abundance and a rich legacy.

I will bless the Eternal, whose wise teaching orchestrates my days

and centers my mind at night.

He is ever present with me;

at all times He goes before me.

I will not live in fear or abandon my calling

because He stands at my right hand.

This is a good life—my heart is glad, my soul is full of joy,

and my body is at rest.

Who could want for more?

You will not abandon me to experience death and the grave

or leave me to rot alone.

Instead, You direct me on the path that leads to a beautiful life.

As I walk with You, the pleasures are never-ending,

and I know true joy and contentment.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 16 (The Voice)

my reading in the Bible for the 6th of july, day 16 of Summer and day 187 of the year:

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newstfionline · 5 years ago

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Headlines

Trump Plans to Suspend Immigration to U.S. (NYT) President Trump said on Monday evening that he intended to close the United States to people trying to immigrate into the country to live and work, a drastic move that he said would protect American workers from foreign competition once the nation’s economy began to recover from the shutdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak. “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, “I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” The president’s late-night announcement on Monday signals his most wide-ranging attempt yet to seal off the country from the rest of the world. A formal order temporarily barring the provision of new green cards and work visas could come as early as the next few days, according to several people familiar with the plan.

“I just can’t do this.” Harried parents forgo home school (AP) Frustration is mounting as more families across the U.S. enter their second or even third week of distance learning—and some overwhelmed parents say it will be their last. Amid the barrage of learning apps, video meet-ups and e-mailed assignments that pass as pandemic home school, some frustrated and exhausted parents are choosing to disconnect entirely for the rest of the academic year. Others are cramming all their children’s school work into the weekend or taking days off work to help their kids with a week’s worth of assignments in one day. That stress is only compounded for families with multiple children in different grades, or when parents work long hours outside the home. In some cases, older siblings must watch younger ones during the day, leaving no time for school work.

A century later, victory gardens connect Americans again (AP) During World War I, posters proclaiming “Food will win the war” encouraged Americans to grow victory gardens. A century later, home gardeners are returning to that idea in the fight against a global pandemic. Backyard gardeners are coming together, mostly virtually, to learn and share stories on how to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers as the novel coronavirus raises fears about disruptions in food supplies and the cost of food in a down economy. “World War I, to me, is a pretty stark parallel,” said Rose Hayden-Smith, a historian and author of “Sowing the Seeds of Victory: American Gardening Programs of World War I.” “Not only was there a war, but there was an influenza pandemic.” Now, gardeners new and old are getting online and on social media to post pictures of freshly tilled backyards, raised garden beds, seeds germinating under grow lights or flocks of chickens. Some of these gardeners are newly unemployed, or working parents stuck at home with bored kids. Others are gardening enthusiasts who never had the time before to delve deep into the hobby. Urban community gardeners are ramping up production to feed families who have lost income and kids who no longer get meals at school.

Mexico’s president praises inmate amnesty as ‘humanitarian act’ (Reuters) A prisoner amnesty law in Mexico aimed at releasing non-violent inmates as a coronavirus containment measure won praise from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday, coming as health authorities expect the virus to spread faster in the days ahead. The Mexican Congress passed the amnesty late on Monday. It will allow for the release of low-level offenders, including those convicted of robbery and small-scale drug possession, as well women jailed on abortion charges. It will also apply to indigenous convicts who did not receive an adequate defense due to language barriers and those who were coerced to work with criminal gangs.

British tabloids: ‘Distorted, false, or invasive beyond reason’ (CJR) Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have written to the British tabloids promising never to work with them again. The couple, who moved abroad and ended official royal duties last month, sent the letter to four of the main British tabloids—The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Mirror—on Sunday evening. The former royals said they were implementing a new media-relations policy toward the outlets after the publication of what they believed were distorted and invasive stories. “It is gravely concerning that an influential slice of the media, over many years, has sought to insulate themselves from taking accountability for what they say or print—even when they know it to be distorted, false, or invasive beyond reason,” the couple said.

Normal influenza cases all but vanish in Europe (Reuters) Influenza, which each year kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, all but vanished in Europe last month as coronavirus lockdowns slowed transmission, according to EU data and scientists. The northern hemisphere’s winter flu outbreak normally runs from October until mid-May and in some seasons has claimed lives on the scale of COVID-19, despite the existence of a vaccine. Influenza killed 152,000 people in Europe in the 2017-18 winter. So far, COVID-19 has taken nearly 100,000 lives across the continent, albeit in a shorter period of time.

Virus forces cancellation of iconic events like Oktoberfest (AP) Spain canceled the Running of the Bulls in July, the U.S. scrapped the national spelling bee in June and Germany even called off Oktoberfest, making it clear Tuesday that the effort to beat back the coronavirus and return to normal could be a long and dispiriting process.

India’s migrant workers start heading home (Reuters) In one of the biggest mass movements of people in the country since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, after the shutdown, the cities themselves began to empty. Dayaram Kushwaha and his family were among the first to move. As the days went on, and the situation became more desperate, hundreds of thousands of migrants emerged from factories and workplaces in search of a way home. Indian officials say the shutdown is necessary to beat coronavirus in the densely populated country of 1.3 billion people, with a health infrastructure that can ill afford a widespread outbreak. But for Dayaram and many of India’s estimated 140 million migrant laborers, the epidemic is much more than a threat to their health—it endangers their very economic survival.

Assertive China (Reuters) As the coronavirus crisis eases in China and rages elsewhere around the world, it is becoming increasingly assertive in the region. In a significant strike against democracy activists in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, police in the city arrested 15 people on Saturday, just days after a senior Beijing official called for the local government to introduce national security legislation “as soon as possible.” China has also been flying regular fighter patrols near Chinese-claimed Taiwan and has sent a survey ship flanked by coast guard and other vessels into the South China Sea.

Netanyahu’s Power Is Extended as Rival Accepts Israel Unity Government (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former challenger, Benny Gantz, agreed Monday night to establish a unity government, a deal that finally breaks a yearlong political impasse and keeps Mr. Netanyahu in office as he faces trial on corruption charges. After three inconclusive elections in the past year, the creation of the new government forestalls what had appeared to be an inevitable fourth election and offers a deeply divided Israel a chance for national healing as it battles the coronavirus pandemic. For Mr. Netanyahu, the agreement buys him time to try to resolve two contentious issues central to his legacy: to sidestep his prosecution or at least prevent it from driving him from power, and to extend Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian territory.

#headlines #news

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roman-catholic-mass-readings · 5 years ago

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20th July >> Mass Readings (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Saturday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Apollinaris, Bishop, Martyr

Saturday memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Saturday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Liturgical Colour: Green)

First Reading

Exodus 12:37-42

The sons of Israel leave Egypt hurriedly by night

The sons of Israel left Rameses for Succoth, about six hundred thousand on the march – all men – not counting their families. People of various sorts joined them in great numbers; there were flocks, too, and herds in immense droves. They baked cakes with the dough which they had brought from Egypt, unleavened because the dough was not leavened; they had been driven out of Egypt, with no time for dallying, and had not provided themselves with food for the journey. The time that the sons of Israel had spent in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. And on the very day the four hundred and thirty years ended, all the array of the Lord left the land of Egypt. The night, when the Lord kept vigil to bring them out of the land of Egypt, must be kept as a vigil in honour of the Lord for all their generations.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 135(136):1,10-15,23-24

O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.

R/ His love is everlasting!

He remembered us in our distress.

R/ His love is everlasting!

And he snatched us away from our foes.

R/ His love is everlasting!

The first-born of the Egyptians he smote.

R/ His love is everlasting!

He brought Israel out from their midst.

R/ His love is everlasting!

Arm outstretched, with power in his hand.

R/ His love is everlasting!

He divided the Red Sea in two.

R/ His love is everlasting!

He made Israel pass through the midst.

R/ His love is everlasting!

He flung Pharaoh and his force in the sea.

R/ His love is everlasting!

Gospel Acclamation

Psalm 118:27

Alleluia, alleluia!

Make me grasp the way of your precepts,

and I will muse on your wonders.

Alleluia!

Or:

2 Corinthians 5:19

Alleluia, alleluia!

God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself,

and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 12:14-21

He cured them all but warned them not to make him known

The Pharisees went out and began to plot against Jesus, discussing how to destroy him.

Jesus knew this and withdrew from the district. Many followed him and he cured them all, but warned them not to make him known. This was to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah:

Here is my servant whom I have chosen,

my beloved, the favourite of my soul.

I will endow him with my spirit,

and he will proclaim the true faith to the nations.

He will not brawl or shout,

nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

He will not break the crushed reed,

nor put out the smouldering wick

till he has led the truth to victory:

in his name the nations will put their hope.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

———————————

Saint Apollinaris, Bishop, Martyr

(Liturgical Colour: Red)

(Readings for the memorial

There is a choice today between the readings for the ferial day (Saturday) and those for the memorial. The ferial readings are recommended unless pastoral reasons suggest otherwise)

First Reading

Ezekiel 34:11-16

I will look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view

The Lord God says this: I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view. As a shepherd keeps all his flock in view when he stands up in the middle of his scattered sheep, so shall I keep my sheep in view. I shall rescue them from wherever they have been scattered during the mist and darkness. I shall bring them out of the countries where they are; I shall gather them together from foreign countries and bring them back to their own land. I shall pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in every inhabited place in the land. I shall feed them in good pasturage; the high mountains of Israel will be their grazing ground. There they will rest in good grazing ground; they will browse in rich pastures on the mountains of Israel. I myself will pasture my sheep, I myself will show them where to rest – it is the Lord who speaks. I shall look for the lost one, bring back the stray, bandage the wounded and make the weak strong. I shall watch over the fat and healthy. I shall be a true shepherd to them.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 22(23)

R/ The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.

The Lord is my shepherd;

there is nothing I shall want.

Fresh and green are the pastures

where he gives me repose.

Near restful waters he leads me,

to revive my drooping spirit.

R/ The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.

He guides me along the right path;

he is true to his name.

If I should walk in the valley of darkness

no evil would I fear.

You are there with your crook and your staff;

with these you give me comfort.

R/ The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.

You have prepared a banquet for me

in the sight of my foes.

My head you have anointed with oil;

my cup is overflowing.

R/ The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.

Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me

all the days of my life.

In the Lord’s own house shall I dwell

for ever and ever.

R/ The Lord is my shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.

Gospel Acclamation

Matthew 5:10

Alleluia, alleluia!

Happy those who are persecuted

in the cause of right,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Alleluia!

Or:

John 17:19

Alleluia, alleluia!

For their sake I consecrate myself,

so that they too may be consecrated in the truth.

Alleluia!

Or:

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Alleluia, alleluia!

Blessed be God, a gentle Father

and the God of all consolation,

who comforts us in all our sorrows.

Alleluia!

Or:

James 1:12

Alleluia, alleluia!

Happy the man who stands firm,

for he has proved himself,

and will win the crown of life.

Alleluia!

Or:

1 Peter 4:14

Alleluia, alleluia!

It is a blessing for you

when they insult you for bearing the name of Christ,

for the Spirit of God rests on you.

Alleluia!

Or:

cf.Te Deum

Alleluia, alleluia!

We praise you, O God,

we acknowledge you to be the Lord;

the noble army of martyrs praise you, O Lord.

Alleluia!

Gospel

John 10:11-16

The good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep

Jesus said:

‘I am the good shepherd:

the good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep.

The hired man, since he is not the shepherd

and the sheep do not belong to him,

abandons the sheep and runs away

as soon as he sees a wolf coming,

and then the wolf attacks and scatters the sheep;

this is because he is only a hired man

and has no concern for the sheep.

‘I am the good shepherd;

I know my own

and my own know me,

just as the Father knows me

and I know the Father;

and I lay down my life for my sheep.

And there are other sheep I have

that are not of this fold,

and these I have to lead as well.

They too will listen to my voice,

and there will be only one flock,

and one shepherd.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

——————————

Saturday memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Liturgical Colour: White)

First Reading

Genesis 3:9-15,20

‘The offspring of the woman will crush your head’

Then the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this,

‘Be accursed beyond all cattle,

all wild beasts.

You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust

every day of your life.

I will make you enemies of each other:

you and the woman,

your offspring and her offspring.

It will crush your head

and you will strike its heel.’

The man named his wife ‘Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who live.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm

1 Samuel 2:1,4-8

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

My heart exults in the Lord.

I find my strength in my God;

my mouth laughs at my enemies

as I rejoice in your saving help.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

The bows of the mighty are broken,

but the weak are clothed with strength.

Those with plenty must labour for bread,

but the hungry need work no more.

The childless wife has children now

but the fruitful wife bears no more.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

It is the Lord who gives life and death,

he brings men to the grave and back;

it is the Lord who gives poverty and riches.

He brings men low and raises them on high.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

He lifts up the lowly from the dust,

from the dungheap he raises the poor

to set him in the company of princes

to give him a glorious throne.

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,

on them he has set the world.

R/ My heart exults in the Lord my Saviour.

Gospel Acclamation

cf. Luke 1:28

Alleluia, alleluia!

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!

Blessed art thou among women.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 1:1-16,18-23

The ancestry and conception of Jesus Christ

A genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham:

Abraham was the father of Isaac,

Isaac the father of Jacob,

Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, Tamar being their mother,

Perez was the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram was the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

Salmon was the father of Boaz, Rahab being his mother,

Boaz was the father of Obed, Ruth being his mother,

Obed was the father of Jesse;

and Jesse was the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,

Solomon was the father of Rehoboam,

Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa,

Asa was the father of Jehoshaphat,

Jehoshaphat the father of Joram,

Joram the father of Azariah,

Azariah was the father of Jotham,

Jotham the father of Ahaz,

Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,

Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh,

Manasseh the father of Amon,

Amon the father of Josiah;

and Josiah was the father of Jechoniah and his brothers.

Then the deportation to Babylon took place.

After the deportation to Babylon:

Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel,

Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,

Zerubbabel was the father of Abiud,

Abiud the father of Eliakim,

Eliakim the father of Azor,

Azor was the father of Zadok,

Zadok the father of Achim,

Achim the father of Eliud,

Eliud was the father of Eleazar,

Eleazar the father of Matthan,

Matthan the father of Jacob;

and Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary;

of her was born Jesus who is called Christ.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son

and they will call him Emmanuel,

a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.

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quantcm-blog · 8 years ago

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REALLY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. RULES. repost , don’t reblog ! tag 10 ! good luck ! TAGGED. @sanctamater (m um why) TAGGING. G ET REKKKKTTTTTTT @unusuallygifted, @motherdcarest, @traumeriin, @mokutcki, @paternall, @mctamorphosis, @agnvs and everyone oh god

BASICS. FULL NAME : Rosalind Victoria Lutece NICKNAME : Rose, Rosa, Mme. Lutece AGE : 16 - 36 BIRTHDAY : September 2nd, 1873 ETHNIC GROUP : Caucasian NATIONALITY : Dual citizenship - French & American LANGUAGE / S : English (first language), French (native proficiency), German (above average proficiency), Latin (above average proficiency) SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Bisexual. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Demiromantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Single CLASS : Upper-class HOME TOWN / AREA : Marseilles, France (birthplace) CURRENT HOME : Lutece Laboratories, Downtown Emporia, Columbia, U.S.A. (formerly) PROFESSION : Quantum physicist, Chief Scientist of Columbia (formerly)

PHYSICAL. HAIR : Red. As a young girl, the shades of her hair were a lot lighter. EYES : Blue. NOSE : Rather sharp FACE : Gaunt, with cheekbones LIPS : Set in a perpetual frown. Her smiles, when shown, are never wide. COMPLEXION : Minute freckles decorate her face. BLEMISHES : None. SCARS : None. TATTOOS : None. HEIGHT : ?? WEIGHT : ?? BUILD : Skinny, from her trials in the United Kingdom. Her face can be considered rather gaunt, and she can be said as neither tall nor short. FEATURES : Sharp, unforgiving glares at mistakes. Disapproval at every turn. ALLERGIES : Pollen. USUAL HAIR STYLE : Usually done in an elaborate bun, a neater, more practical variation of the bouffant and the pompadour. When in the comforts of her own home at night, she actively frees her hair from any style that it was previously in. USUAL FACE LOOK : Severe expressions decorate her face. She is generous with her frowns. Often, most people wouldn’t want to speak with her unless it is important. USUAL CLOTHING : Collared shirts, neckties, vests and coats. She is practical at work. On other times, she would wear what is conventional for women at her time, but due to the floating city being rather closed off from the rest of the world, she is stuck with the same style for a few years.

PSYCHOLOGY. FEAR / S : The deaths of her loved ones, such as her parents and Robert. ASPIRATION / S : To be well-respected and well-known in her field of science. Right after her death, she had no more aspirations to chase after. POSITIVE TRAITS : Hardworking, determined, kind, supportive NEGATIVE TRAITS : Frigid, pessimistic, apathetic, tactless, vengeful, selfish MBTI : INTP ZODIAC : Virgo TEMPERAMENT : Melancholic. SOUL TYPE / S : Thinker. ANIMALS : An owl, wise and quiet. VICE HABIT / S : Displaying her displeasure in things. At times, she’s an open book, and at times, she closes herself off. Keeping late hours into the night, abandoning regard for her health. Looking at the downside of things, considers the end instead of the means to it. FAITH : The Roman Catholic church. She keeps her devotion to the Lord a secret, she bears her sins like a personal cross. She says nothing of it. She doesn’t expect His forgiveness, nor asks for it. GHOSTS ? : They certainly do exist, in her opinion. They scared her for four years. AFTERLIFE ? : There was once a time where she thought that she would end up there after death. The afterlife is unattainable to her now, as she could not even die. REINCARNATION ? : No. ALIENS ? : No. POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : None whatsoever. Politics in government never interested her. ECONOMIC PREFERENCE : Rather wealthy, but always seems to want more wealth. SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION : As a young girl, she was respected as the daughter of a wealthy French professor and his equally wealthy American wife, and upon getting older, she serves as a figurehead for the sciences in the floating city of Columbia. Her words hold sway over the many, many scientists under her, and when needed, her opinion is very much valued among the Prophet’s circle of friends and ministers. She herself, however, takes little interest in politics. EDUCATION LEVEL : University level. An alumni of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. Privately tutored as a young child in the pianoforte, both practical and theory.

FAMILY. FATHER : Professor Harold Lutece ( father, deceased ) MOTHER : Margaret Winchester ( mother, deceased ) SIBLINGS : Robert Lutece ( ‘twin brother’, alternate self ) EXTENDED FAMILY : Surprisingly enough, she got along with both sides of the family. The Lutece side resides in France, and they always thought well of Harold’s daughter since the day she was born. When Rosalind speaks to them, she speaks nothing but French. On her mother’s side, however, the Winchesters didn’t care much for her; a girl with a head like that ought not to be encouraged. NAME MEANING / S :

ROSALIND - Latin, meaning ‘pretty rose.’ Her mother named her after the heroine of ‘As You Like It,’ and her first name was used in many variations by her father, notably the name ‘Rosalinde’.

VICTORIA - Latin, meaning ‘victory‘ or ‘conquer’. The female variation of the name Victor. Named after Queen Victoria, who was the queen of England at the time.

LUTECE - French, a variation of the alternative name of Paris, ‘Lutetia’.

HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : Mostly of Marie Curie, who was eight years older than her.

FAVOURITES. BOOK : Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. It was the first book that her father had bought for her upon discovering her genius in the field. MOVIE : She’s not one for movies. 5 SONGS A SONG : Tristes apprêts (Castor et Pollux). DEITY : The God who bestowed the Pope all heavenly authorities on Earth. HOLIDAY : Christmas and Labor Day. MONTH : July. It brings about the busiest times of the year. SEASON : Autumn. PLACE : France. It is more of a home to her than any place else. WEATHER : Cloudy, heralding the possibility of rain. SOUND : Complaints of intellectuals. A voice raising above the rest, pointing out errors. A busy laboratory, with various questions being asked and answered. The grand piano, sounding out pieces of yesteryear and beyond. An old record of Beethoven on the phonograph. Her own cries after New Year, lamenting the passing of a great man who was, and still is, her father. SCENT / S : She doesn’t care much for scents. At most, some light perfume here and there, but the scent of smoke follows her about. The Bunsen burners never rest. TASTE / S : Stale bread from her college years. Water, to remind her that everyone is equal. Chamomile tea, in an attempt to sleep -- coffee, to wake up. For more of her guilty pleasures, confectioneries at tea time would be the best option. FEEL / S : The air of a school-madam, a powerful authority figure, a woman who would not be struck down after years of hard work. An inherited grace from her parents. The stale feeling of emptiness after a Hobson’s choice. The feel of blood on her hands. ANIMAL / S : Answered! NUMBER : One. COLOUR : Blue, for the innocence of her youth. Red, for her older times, and for the blood she had spilled, whether it was her own, or others.

EXTRA. TALENTS : A genius, a prodigy, in the eyes of science. A most gifted musical child, whether it is for the piano or her voice. She refuses to sing easily, however, but she soaks up information from books like a sponge. Keen in telling when something is amiss. She can wield her authority and deliver her opinions as if they are the law -- with her brain, she climbs up the ranks. BAD AT : Being sensitive to the feelings of others, or her own. It has gotten her into trouble many a time, and it had led her to an early grave. TURN ONS : None noted. TURN OFFS : Excessive displays of any trait in a person. She prefers moderation. HOBBIES : Playing the piano, reading, eating, sleeping, horseback riding, inventing, cleaning. TROPES : A Real Man is A Killer, The Atoner, Be as Unhelpful as Possible, Big Good, The Chessmaster, Dead All Along, Deadpan Snarker, The Fatalist, Good is Not Nice, Mad Scientist, Teen Genius AESTHETIC TAGS : Old laboratories. A crooked English house. A large mansion. Chalkboards, with equations written all over it. A grave, which the person digs herself. GPOY QUOTES : ‘What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.‘ (Jacques Cousteau), ‘

FC INFO. MAIN FC / S : Rebecca Hall ALT FC / S : Alina Kovalenko (teenage modern verses & potterverses) OLDER FC / S : N/A. YOUNGER FC / S : Mia Wasikowska VOICE CLAIM / S : Jennifer Hale GENDERBENT FC / S : N/A.

MUN QUESTIONS. Q1 : if you could write your character your way in their own movie , what would it be called , what style would it be filmed in , and what would it be about ? A1 : As much as I love the game, I would very much like to have a movie or a game about Rosalind before Columbia was created. It would most certainly show exactly what were the struggles that she had to go through as a female scientist, and I believe that it would be a great inspiration to others out there. Q2 : what would their soundtrack / score sound like ? A2 : Full of arias. Full of piano and orchestral music. Bring in the arias. Q3 : why did you start writing this character ? A3 : I took her up as a challenge, but then I got stuck. Horribly stuck. Q4 : what first attracted you to this character ? A4: The big machine, actually. It could be possible in many years time. Q5 : describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 : look Rosalind. we have a lot of things to talk about. notably, how I had to painstakingly try and figure out what were the facts that you have hidden from the world about HOW THE DAMN CITY FLOATS. there’s also the fact that i somewhat dislike her icy nature, which is very ill-placed in certain situations (such as the fated argument with Lady Comstock). Q6 : what do you have in common with your muse ? A6 : we’re both in physics hell Q7 : how does your muse feel about you ? A7 : most probably, I’m a major disappointment to her. like ‘don’t even waste my time, mr. lawrence’ Q8 : what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ? A8 : Lady A. Comstock, Theodore Sallis, Claude Frollo, Sofia Lamb. Q9 : what gives you inspiration to write your muse ? A9 : Admittedly, my every day life. I have to face physics hell every day and I can’t help but just wonder why did I even pick this major.... Q10 : how long did this take you to complete ? A10 : Half an hour. (minus putting it off)

#ʏᴇᴛ ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ | ʜᴄ

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itsfinancethings · 4 years ago

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New world news from Time: How Small Acts of Defiance Turned Into a Massive Movement Against Europe’s Last Dictator

Sviatlana Haluza broke down on June 9.

As an employee of Belarus’s state-controlled media outlet SB.by, she’d grown used to rewriting boilerplate propaganda mined from other state-controlled media outlets. But now her boss instructed her to recycle an item about the imprisoned opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanousky. Haluza had a crisis of conscience. She secretly supported Tsikhanousky’s candidacy for president. “I realized I didn’t believe the stuff I was being told to publish and I didn’t want to say he was a criminal and a villain,” she said. “I cried for twenty minutes.”

Then the 23 year-old rang up her mother and a few of her friends. All gave the same advice: Don’t rewrite the attack at all. Just copy and paste it verbatim from the source material, an item lifted from the Belarusian Telegraphic Agency, and remove your surname from the byline. Haluza took the advice. “I wanted to make myself irrelevant to the propaganda,” she said.

A month after that small act of defiance, countless numbers of Haluza’s compatriots have similarly made themselves irrelevant to the propaganda. Fed up with 26 years of one-man authoritarian rule, as many as 100,000 Belarusians took to the streets of the capital Minsk over the weekend calling for a free and fair election following the decidedly unfree and unfair one held August 9. Alexander Lukashenko, the incumbent president, claimed a landslide victory with 80.23% of the vote, against 9.9% for his main rival Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a schoolteacher who wound up on the ballot after her husband, Tsikhanousky, was disqualified following his controversial arrest in May for what the government alleged was organizing a “grave breach of public order.” (The arrest was captured on video. Amnesty International has labeled Tsikhanousky a “prisoner of conscience.”)

Everyone knew Lukashenko would steal the election; few thought he’d be stupid enough to steal it by that much. Snap plebiscites captured on film after the vote was declared showing overwhelming support for Tsikhanouskaya.

In the days since, protesters and ordinary citizens have been rounded up, tossed into overcrowded cells in a notorious detention on Okrestina Street on the outskirts of Minsk. Some have been stripped naked and beaten or electrocuted, their nocturnal screams recorded from beyond the prison walls and uploaded to the Internet, reinvigorating what had been gradually dwindling rallies.

Europe’s last dictator, the consensus runs, is mounting his last stand for survival. And he’s losing, particularly to a demographic he holds in low regard: women. Along with Tsikhanouskaya, the other two leaders of the opposition are Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo, both of whom stood in for men who were forced to flee the country or thrown in prison in advance of the vote. If Lukashenko thought they’d make milquetoast replacements, he was wrong.

Belarusian women have unmistakably formed the vanguard of the civil resistance thus far, turning up all over the country in white dresses and forming “solidarity chains” —human phalanxes—against the helmeted thugs of the OMON riot police. As Belarusian Nobel laureate Sviatlana Alexievich put it, “According to Lukashenko, only those who have served in the military are fit to occupy the presidency. I would like to tell him that we already entered the era of women.”

Linas Linkevičius, the foreign minister of neighboring Lithuania, has taken to referring to Lukashenko as the “former president of Belarus” on Twitter. Even the former president’s traditional base of industrial workers seems to be inching closer to that past-tense appraisal. A national strike has since been declared. On Monday, factory hands brazenly heckled the former president at the Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant, transforming Lukashenko’s comfort zone into a pillory. “Go away!” the workers shouted, as he lamely told them to put away their cell phones. There would be no more elections, he swore, until someone killed him.

It was a Freudian slip that democracy has always been more a performance art than a political reality in a post-Soviet state, which for decades has seemed the land that 1989 forgot. The secret police here is still called the KGB. Seventy percent of the economy is still owned and operated by the central government. And, up until a week ago, the aging mustachioed helmsman still kept the masses fed on a steady diet of socialist realist platitudes.

In March, Lukashenko dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as “frenzy and psychosis,” nothing that a masculine troika of palliatives—vodka, sauna and tractor driving—couldn’t cure. (He later said he contracted the virus but “power[ed] through” it without exhibiting symptoms.) There was no lockdown in Belarus, a country of 9.5 million, of whom about 70,000 have been diagnosed and 613 have died, according to the World Health Organization.

And at a time when every other world leader was appearing before the cameras in a mask, Lukashenko was turning up in a sports jersey to slap around a hockey puck at a packed stadium in Minsk. “It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” he said then.

“I kneel down in front of you for the first time in my life,” he says now, acknowledging the precariousness of his reign, albeit without actually kneeling.

Like any wobbly strongman, Lukashenko blames a host of invisible and contradictory enemies for his misfortunes. First, there were Russian mercenaries, 33 of whom were captured in Minsk before the election and accused of being sent there by the Belarusian opposition to turn an already stalwart ally of Moscow into a satrapy of it.

Then there were the Poles, the Dutch, and a cabal of captured “Russian revolutionaries,” forced to promise on video that they wouldn’t foment revolutions anymore and who evidently stole across the border with handbooks on firearms and popular Israeli histories of assassinations.

Then there was Alexey Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, who, in spite of legal persecution at home, still has the cunning and wherewithal to whip up political instability next-door. (Navalny was just poisoned with an unknown chemical substance; he is now in intensive care where doctors are “currently engaged in the process of saving his life,” according to the deputy head of the hospital he was admitted to in Omsk.)

Finally, of course, there was NATO, which Lukashenko said was mobilizing at the Belarusian border ready to deploy its “black, yellow-mouthed, and blonde” soldiers to destroy the nation.

Perhaps in response to that latter conspiracy theory, Lukashenko has begged for military assistance from the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin has responded with lukewarm vows of support for “collective security,” falling short of a commitment to dispatch Russian troops or irregulars into Belarus in what would amount to a bold replay of Moscow’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Which doesn’t necessarily amount to a refusal to do just that. Which doesn’t necessarily amount to a refusal to do just that. (Russian personnel, Minsk has confirmed, have been flown into Belarus to keep state media running while native employees are on strike.)

Signs of Lukashenko’s decline and fall were always there, if you knew where to look for them. In some cases, these could be with the very enforcers of the ancien regime.

TIME spoke with three Belarusian women via Zoom this week. All were in Kyiv, Ukraine, having fled their country just before the rigged election.

Katsiaryna Kupryianava, 30, had been collecting signatures for Tsikhanouskaya in the Minsk oblast. Authorities decided to intimidate her by targeting her younger brother, Ilya Bandarenka, 18. He hadn’t been able to sit for his university entrance exam because he was sick with an ordinary fever. Bandarenka had gone to his local hospital and obtained a waiver to have his exam deferred for another day. Belarusian police turned this into a provocation against the state. Bandarenka, they alleged, had counterfeited his sick note, despite the fact that the hospital had vouched for its authenticity.

Kupryianava was then subpoenaed as part of a criminal investigation she said had no substantive basis. “There were no specific charges against me,” she said. “The police had initiated a criminal case against my brother alleging he had provided fake medical documents, even though they weren’t fake, and even though even if they had been this would have had nothing to do with me.” She and Bаndarenkа went to their local police station. One of the officers there admitted they were summoned only because Kupriyanova was collecting signatures for the opposition. It was a hint that the net was closing in on an enemy of the people.

On the eve of a meeting Kupriyanova had organized with Tsikhanouskaya’s proxies, her apartment was raided. She and her brother were home and escorted back to the police station, the rest of their frantic family in tow. They were eventually released. But now they knew what they had to do. Kupriyanova and Bondarenko fled Belarus for Ukraine July 27.

Bazhena Zholudz, 20, had canvassed for the opposition in Rechytsa, an old city in southeast Belarus, which had seen a flurry of leaflets disseminated saying that Lukashenko commanded the support of only 3% of the electorate whereas Tsikhanouskaya had 97%. Zholudz didn’t distribute them, she claims, but the police decided to blame her anyway. On July 16, she received a notice accusing her of defacing public buildings. She was summoned to the police station to be interrogated.

She went ten times over the course of the next few weeks, leading up the election. Often Zholudz wasn’t even asked about any violation of the law but was warned that a much worse fate awaited her if she continued her activism.

Once a policeman called her and asked if she’d be coming to the station herself or if he had to pick her up at a protest. It was a joke, but also a discrete signal that he wanted her to know his assignment was purely political, not administrative. “I told him I’d come myself,” Zhloudz said. “But when I got to the station he wasn’t there. They told me he’d left.”

Zhloudz returned to her apartment. The officer turned up and said that while he knew she was at the station, he’d been there, registering in his log book that he’d intended to detain her at home. “You understand what’s happening,” he told Zhloudz. “We’re spying on you even when we know you’re complying with the summons.”

What convinced Zholudz to leave the country was her employer’s connivance with the authorities.

She’d worked as a registrar at the Children’s Medical Facility and one day her supervisor received a call instructing her to keep Zholudz in the building to prevent her from attending one of her scheduled interrogations. It was clear now the authorities wanted to snare her on technical grounds, keeping her from complying with the sham investigation.

“I resigned. I told my supervisor, ‘You cannot keep me here against my will,’ I wasn’t going to be arrested for failing to turn up to the police station.”

She went to the station where her interrogator (there was a different one each time) told her that a “provocation” was being prepared against her. She decided to emigrate.

Zholudz and her boyfriend drove from Belarus to the Ukrainian border on August 6, three days before the election. They crossed the border on foot, having been met by a well-connected Ukrainian friend on the other side.

The exodus of Belarusians to Ukraine owes no doubt not just to the country’s proximity but also to common political experience. Six years ago, demonstrations swept Kyiv’s Maidan Square because Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych broke his campaign promise to bring the nation closer to integration with the European Union; and he broke it at the behest and financial encouragement of Moscow. Ukrainians then were arrested and beaten up, too; they were also shot by snipers along the main boulevard in their capital city. While Belarusians may not be as galvanized by geopolitical concerns—their movement is mainly about transparency at home—the repression they’ve faced certainly feels the same. As does the shared sense of democratic solidarity.

In Sviatlana Haluza’s case, Kyiv was also the city where she felt she could slough off her false identity and step into her true one.

Even before she removed her surname from that hatchet job on Siarhei Tsikhanousky, she’d taken to keeping two sets of books. There was her official dayjob at SB.by (the SB stands for Soviet Belarus), which she had only taken owing to a national law which mandates that all recipients of a free university degree compensate the state with a minimum of two years of civil service. Given her degree in journalism from Belarus State University, she wanted to report the news. She wasn’t doing that, but nor could she simply resign before her contract was up without being made to pay a penalty she couldn’t afford.

Then there was Haluza’s side gig as a pseudonymous correspondent for Salidarnast, an opposition website. In her unofficial and plausibly deniable capacity as “Sviatlana Dobrovolskaya” she wrote the opposite of what rewrote for SB.by. There were fact-based stories about medical workers fighting the pandemic Lukashenko minimized; others about volunteers who were saving stray cats and dogs.

Haluza wasn’t alone. Her colleagues at SB.by, she said, also moonlighted for other anti-Lukashenko portals—fellow dissidents in disguise—and were reprimanded, as she was, for liking opposition posts on Facebook.

Haluza’s contract ended July 31. She wasted no time leaving SB.by and also Belarus, fearing that in the wake of the then-upcoming election, Lukashenko would declare martial law and the streets would turn violent, as they indeed did.

She went to Ukraine and worked as an exit poller for the Belarusian diaspora in Kyiv. On August 9, Election Day, Haluza gave a speech at the monument of her fellow countryman and fellow journalist, Pavel Sheremet, who was murdered with a car bomb as he left his apartment while commuting to work at Ukrainska Pravda, an online newspaper.

Sheremet, a Belarusian-born Russian citizen, had once been a political prisoner in Minsk, in 1997, during Lukashenko’s first term in office. Haluza wanted to pay her respects but also honor him in another way, by atoning for her role as a conscripted writer in uniform.

“I apologized to Tsikhanousky at the monument,” she said. “I don’t know if he heard my apology. But I needed to hear it.”

With reporting by Palina Brodik

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hermanwatts · 4 years ago

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Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 04 July, 2020

This week’s new releases showcase mercenary giant robots, the return of a Weird Tale, genetic engineering run amok, and a warning from the Penultimate Men.

The Buried World (The Grave Kingdom #2) – Jeff Wheeler

The orphaned Bingmei didn’t choose to be a hero. She has no wish to cross the Death Wall to save the world. But she has awakened Echion, emperor of the Grave Kingdom and Dragon of Night, and it is her destiny to defy him. From his imperial city of ancient sorcery and immortal darkness, Echion conspires to fulfill his own destiny: vanquish Bingmei, revive his queen, and rule together for another eon unchallenged.

Traversing a labyrinth of caves and mountains, Bingmei and her band of allies prepare their defense against a fateful war they cannot win. But when they are overcome by Echion’s terrible power, Bingmei is left vulnerable to a ruthless assassin…one with orders to capture, not kill.

Before he destroys her, Echion craves something more than Bingmei’s soul. Only she has the power to resurrect Echion’s ancient queen, Xisi, whose evil is matched only by his own. Once reunited, their dark shadow will fall like a shroud over the realms. To be a savior, Bingmei must first survive what she has unleashed, and to survive she must begin to understand the seeds of power she’s never learned to control.

Eternal Enemy (Memories of Earth #9) – James David Victor

In a world of genetic engineering, fantastic aliens, and faster than light travel, conspiracies and the quest for unlimited power can still tear the galaxy apart.

Anders Corsigon has spent his life bringing galactic criminals to justice. When a bizarre murder turns into a string of assassinations, he must find a killer who is protected by the highest levels of the empire. In a world where advanced genetic engineering can literally rewrite humanity, he must uncover a truth that could destroy the galaxy.

The final battle to decide the fate of the galaxy has finally arrived. Anders and Dalia must rally the remnants of humanity and save Jake from the destiny he was created to fulfil to have any hope of saving the galaxy. Can they find a way to defeat the Eternal Empress and a power greater than anything they have ever seen, or will ancient Earth truly be wiped from existence this time?

Forget Nothing (A Galaxy’s Edge novel) – Jason Anspach and Michelle C. Meyers

She Chose the Hardest Way

The daughter of a Legion war hero, fighting was in Andien Broxin’s blood. But the battles Republic marines face on strange and alien worlds are a far cry from the vaunted, brutal, no-holds-barred conflicts fought at the edge of the galaxy by the elite legionnaires.

Until a devastating war erupts right in the Republic’s stellar backyard.

Newly stationed on a mid-core planet being harassed by terrorist revolutionaries, Andien and her fellow “hullbusters” find themselves right in the middle of a desperate fight for survival. All their training, standards, discipline – all the hard paths – have led to this. If she and her fellow marines are to come out of this alive, Andien will have to find out who she truly is…and what she can become.

Full Metal Panic! Volume 7 – Shouji Gatou

Sagara Sousuke isn’t your typical high school student. He reads military enthusiast magazines; he responds to questions with “affirmative;” he brings grenades to school in his bag. Though everyone at school takes him for a hopeless military geek, Chidori Kaname thinks there might be something more to him. When their plane is hijacked in the middle of a field trip, Kaname’s instincts will prove correct: Sousuke is an elite, mech-piloting mercenary… and he’s here to protect her!

The Pacific Chrysalis was Mithril’s first true victory over Amalgam, but their success has only led to escalation. Between growing suspicion at school and cryptic warnings from Tessa’s brother that everything is about to change, Sousuke begins to realize that his peaceful life in Tokyo might not last much longer. Before he can even prepare, though, Sousuke finds himself running a gauntlet beyond anything he could have imagined. He’ll have to fight not just for his own life, but for the life of everyone he knows!

Incursion (The Supernova Cycle #1) – Elizabeth McLaughlin and Kevin McLaughlin

A nearby supernova…and an impending first contact…will change humanity forever.

In the near future, a supernova erupts unexpectedly in a nearby star. There was no warning, no evidence that the star could ignite in such a way. Humanity stands on the brink of extinction as Earth is bombarded with particles from the stellar explosion, wreaking havoc.

An alien ship has arrived near Earth’s moon only hours before light from the supernova. Have they come to help, or are they mortal enemies who plan to take advantage of the supernova’s EMP to stage an invasion?

Doctor Alexandra King never knew that the paper she once wrote about theoretical xeno-psychology would lead the US government to consider her their foremost expert on the subject. Ace pilot David Jackson has been assigned a mission which might save humanity – or doom it – and he won’t know which until after he’s done the job.

A Million Years in the Future – Thomas P. Kelley

For countless millennia, Earth has been ravaged by the Black Raiders from the distant planet Capara. The last surviving Earthman, Prince Jan, is captured by the Raiders and taken to their home planet. The immortal and lascivious ruler of Capara, Queen Tara, decrees that Jan will fight for his life as a gladiator in the Great Games.

Jan’s only desire is to avenge his decimated planet, and a path to this goal lies on the forbidden Moon of Madness. It is said that a god lies dormant in the Black Tower, guarded by Vampire-Women. This god knows Queen Tara’s secret weakness, which, if exploited, will bring about the complete annihilation of Capara!

Will Jan overcome the Vampire-Women and learn the secret to destroy Capara? Will he perish in the Great Games? Or will he succumb to Queen Tara’s wiles? Anything can happen… a million years in the future!

A Million Years in the Future is a fantastic science fiction adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was originally serialized in Weird Tales in 1940, and has never been published in book form before.

Wrath of the Forgotten (Descendants of the Fall #2) – Aaron Hodges

A war is brewing between the kingdoms of humanity…

Bound and broken, Lukys stumbles through the darkness. Whispers come from all around, the voices of the Tangata, inhuman enemies of mankind. He should already be dead. But the Tangata have a secret, one that might finally end ten long years of war. If only he could escape and bring word to his people. But what chance does a failed soldier have against the terrifying powers of the Tangata?

Meanwhile, the Queen’s Archivist flees the wrath of her former master. A foreign king offers asylum, but the man is an enemy of her people. And his aid will cost far more than just her loyalty—he seeks the magic of the Gods. With the hounds drawing close, Erika must commit the ultimate betrayal to keep her freedom. Is she willing to pay the price?

The Penultimate Men: Tales from Our Savage Future – Neal Durando, Schuyler Hernstrom, Jeffro Johnson, and Jon Mollison

Introduced by Misha Burnett. Some say they are other than human; they are the penultimate men.

The age from which they spring has nearly drawn to a close. Yet some noble work remains to be done before the end. They come on, knowing that anything left undone, any chance let slide cannot be paid forward. Their game bags are heavy with a wealth meant to nourish the reader through the leanest of times. Four tales of a once-and-future apocalypse. Two meditations to challenge you to play harder in an already hard world.

Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 04 July, 2020 published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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I want to personally thank all the journalists for their incredibly important reporting over the last year, especially the last 5 months in trying to get the truth out to the American people during this difficult time for our nation.

‘A PERMANENT ASTERISK’: ACQUITTAL AT HAND, DEMOCRATS SOW DOUBT ABOUT TRUMP TRIAL

By Mike DeBonis | Published January 31 at 7:34 PM EST | Washington Post |Posted February 1, 2020 |

Were it up to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), historians would mention President Trump’s all-but-certain impeachment acquittal much the same way baseball fans mention Barry Bonds’s career home-run record — an achievement destined to be obscured by an eternal cloud.

While Trump, unlike Bonds, does not stand accused of benefiting from performance-enhancing drugs, Democrats started this week to make an aggressive case that the Republican-led Senate’s decision Friday to end Trump’s trial without summoning witnesses or documents should cast grave doubt on its outcome.

The charge has been led by the most senior Democratic officials as it grew increasingly clear this week that Republican senators would vote to reject additional evidence and pave the way for a largely partisan verdict.

Hours before the Senate voted Friday, Schumer declared any acquittal at such a trial to be “meaningless.”

“If there are no witnesses, no documents in this trial, there will be a permanent asterisk next to the acquittal of President Trump written in permanent ink,” he said, harking to the punctuation mark that once accompanied contested records in sports almanacs.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared flatly that Trump “will not be acquitted” regardless of the vote.

“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial,” she said. “And you don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation.”

Prior to Trump’s trial, the Senate has held 15 impeachment trials, including two for a president. All had witnesses.

The Democratic rhetoric was, on one hand, an early attempt to salvage what promises to be a crushing political loss. After warning for months about the dangers of a partisan impeachment, Pelosi led the House down that path after allegations of grave misdeeds emerged from the Trump administration — only to find the GOP ever-willing to stand by Trump in the face of damaging revelations.

On the other hand, Schumer, Pelosi and other Democrats are launching an appeal that they hope will have staying power. In the short term, that means impressing on voters that they ought to treat Trump’s certain claims of vindication with deep skepticism. In the longer term, they are banking that history will remember unkindly those who stood with Trump.

“This is only the third time we’ve had a vote on convicting and removing a president,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “I think it’s going to be remembered as something incredibly serious, and certainly we want to point out to colleagues that they should be thinking about that now.”

Some Republican senators have suggested they are indeed thinking about their place in history. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) launched his political career in the shadow of fellow Tennessee Republican Howard Baker Jr., who as a member of the Senate Watergate Committee helped expose President Richard M. Nixon’s wrongdoing and later persuaded him to resign rather than face impeachment.

Alexander told reporters Friday he believed he had followed Baker’s example, concluding that Trump’s “inappropriate conduct” was not worthy of removal from office nine months before an election.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) reached for institutional concerns Friday in announcing her decision not to pursue additional evidence, decrying the “partisan nature” of the impeachment and attempts to “drag the Supreme Court into the fray,” citing attacks on Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

For most Republicans, any attempts to cast aspersions on the trial in the GOP Senate were met with attacks on the impeachment process in the Democratic House, which raced over the course of three months to assemble a case against Trump despite the White House blocking witnesses and withholding documents. In the end, no Republicans voted for the two articles of impeachment; Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), a former Republican, joined with Democrats.

“There is a massive asterisk on the impeachment itself, the way that the entire House process was run,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.). “And if Senator Schumer’s effort to rewrite history . . . will look back on what happened over on the House side — the fact is [the Senate] inherited a fatally flawed case, a fatally flawed process from the House.”

For Trump, the focus has been less on the history books and more on his reelection prospects, as he has used virtually every lever of persuasion at his disposal — from his Twitter account to a massive campaign account — to drive the message that the impeachment has been an unfair partisan witch hunt that misconstrued a “perfect phone call” with the Ukrainian president in July.

The argument was echoed in the Senate chamber during the trial by Trump’s defense team, which argued repeatedly that Trump did “absolutely nothing wrong,” and it is expected to persist well after the acquittal — with claims of vindication likely to stretch through the November elections and beyond.

While the outcome of the witness vote was in doubt until Alexander announced a no vote Thursday night, the likelihood of an acquittal was never seriously challenged. A conviction would require at least 20 Republicans to join with all 47 members of the Democratic caucus, and no more than a small handful of GOP lawmakers ever swayed publicly about the allegations that Trump used military aid and a White House meeting as leverage to force investigations of his domestic political rivals.

Trump’s maximalist defense, however, was undermined this week with such senators as Alexander and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) arguing that Trump’s behavior was in fact wrong, though not impeachable.

Republicans have anticipated, and Democrats have braced for, a Trump victory tour of sorts — one that, depending on how quickly the Senate can move to a verdict, could begin with Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

The “permanent asterisk” rhetoric this week has paved the road for the Democratic pushback for months, if not decades to come, by throwing doubt on the verdict.

“We know better,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said of any claims of vindication. “He’s going to talk about the end of the ‘witch hunt’ and so forth, but I think the fact that the Republicans are so afraid of a trial and so afraid of the truth speaks for itself.”

Said Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), “You cannot have a true acquittal if you’ve not had a fair trial.”

“No witnesses means no exoneration,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) tweeted Friday.

Democrats say their incessant public campaign for “witness and documents” — one that began with Pelosi’s surprise decision to hold out on naming managers and formally sending the articles to the Senate — will ultimately pay political dividends as Americans turn away from the impeachment saga and toward the presidential race.

“The way in which Republicans have conducted this will allow Democrats for the next 10 months to draw issue with Trump’s acquittal which we wouldn’t have been able to do if we had come to an agreement on rules and we had had witnesses and we had had deliberations,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “We now have legitimate reason to contest the fairness of the trial and the acquittal of the president, and I think that’s impactful.”

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Paul Kane and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

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"In 2017, Giuliani sought to persuade Trump and other top administration officials to adopt positions advocated by Turkey, the same year he was working as a lawyer for a politically connected gold trader from that country facing criminal charges. In September, he urged Justice Department officials not to pursue a case against a wealthy Venezuelan energy executive who had hired him as a private attorney."

Giuliani discussed interests of a former Ukrainian client during summer meeting with top Zelensky aide

By Rosalind S. Helderman, Paul Sonne, David L. Stern and Josh Dawsey | Published January 31 at 1:59 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Feb 1, 2020 |

Rudolph W. Giuliani was huddled with a top Ukrainian official at a luxury Madrid hotel last August, on a mission to push for investigations sought by President Trump. But first, Giuliani made a personal ask on behalf of a former client in Ukraine.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, for whom Giuliani has said he did consulting work, was on the verge of being fired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from a separate post as the appointed head of the city administration, a move that would greatly reduce his power. Giuliani urged a Zelensky adviser at the Madrid conclave to retain Klitschko , according to Lev Parnas, a former Giuliani associate.

“Rudy told him, ‘Make sure Klitschko stays,’ ” Parnas, who participated in the meeting, told The Washington Post in an interview.

The following month, Giuliani took that same message to Twitter. “Reducing the power of Mayor Klitschko of Kiev was a very bad sign,” Giuliani wrote, implicitly chastising Zelensky, adding that the mayor, a former boxing champion, “is very much admired and respected in the US.”

Zelensky backed off the threat, and nearly six months later, Klitschko still remains in his post.

The Zelensky adviser in Madrid, Andriy Yermak, confirmed in a statement that he and Giuliani discussed Klitschko, but denied that Trump’s personal attorney applied any pressure on Klitschko’s behalf. Yermak said Giuliani told him he was not trying to influence him.

The previously unreported account of Giuliani’s discussions with the Ukrainian government about Klitschko provides another example of how the former New York mayor has used his perch as a close adviser to Trump to promote his personal interests.

In 2017, Giuliani sought to persuade Trump and other top administration officials to adopt positions advocated by Turkey, the same year he was working as a lawyer for a politically connected gold trader from that country facing criminal charges. In September, he urged Justice Department officials not to pursue a case against a wealthy Venezuelan energy executive who had hired him as a private attorney.

Giuliani’s activities have spurred deep unease among senior administration officials, who have said they are unclear when he is working on behalf of his private clients and when he is working in the interests of the president.

Attorney General William P. Barr counseled Trump in several conversations in the fall that Giuliani had become a liability, The Post previously reported.

And, in a draft manuscript of his upcoming book, former national security adviser John Bolton claims that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo feared Giuliani might be working on behalf of a client when he sought the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the project.

Giuliani told The Post that he has been careful to define his role as a private lawyer for Trump, not as a representative of the U.S. government, and chalked up scrutiny of his work to resentment.

“People hate me” for representing Trump, Giuliani wrote in a text message. “The better you do the more bitter they become.”

He noted that the president “is not my only client or customer,” adding, “I still have opinions and work I need to do and it’s not expanded as a result of representing the President, it has of necessity declined so I can pay attention to my work for him.”

“What they are saying is true of any private lawyer for President,” he wrote, adding: “There is nothing to suggest that it has affected my work.”

Asked about the Madrid meeting, Giuliani called Parnas, his former associate and client, a “proven liar.” Parnas, who is facing federal campaign finance charges, began speaking publicly about his role in the Ukraine pressure campaign in recent weeks — drawing attacks from Trump allies, who say he seeking to reduce his criminal exposure.

Giuliani declined to say whether he sought to intervene on Klitschko’s behalf, describing the boxer turned mayor as “a good friend of mine over the years.”

The balance of power at the Madrid meeting was decidedly in Giuliani’s favor. At the time, Zelensky’s team was urgently seeking a White House meeting with Trump to send a critical signal to Russia, which has been fueling a proxy war in Ukraine’s east for more than five years. And days earlier, in a phone call with Zelensky, Trump had made it clear to the new Ukrainian president that he needed to deal with Giuliani to win White House support.

Zelensky has still not secured his White House meeting. “I would be ready to go tomorrow,” the Ukrainian leader said Friday during a joint appearance in Kyiv with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

'A GREAT FRIEND OF UKRAINE'

Giuliani has had business ties in Ukraine for at least a decade, work that brought him into contact with prominent Ukrainian figures and politicians, including Klitschko.

A three-time world heavyweight champion known as “Dr. Ironfist” because of his doctorate in sports science, Klitschko is one of the most famous Ukrainian athletes. When he entered politics, the boxing legend said he wanted to bring the living standards he saw in the West to his native Ukraine.

In a previous interview with The Post, Giuliani said he was hired in 2008 as a political consultant to Klitschko, who at the time was making what would be an failed bid to become Kyiv’s mayor.

During a successful run for mayor in 2014, Klitschko hired Giuliani’s consulting firm to advise him on combating corruption and crime in Ukraine’s capital, Giuliani told The Post.

Klitschko has offered contradictory accounts of their arrangement, saying in a statement this week that he never had a “business relationship” with Giuliani. The Kyiv mayor also described Giuliani “as a great friend of Ukraine and one of the most successful mayors in the world.”

Klitschko said that he first encountered Giuliani in 2006 during a visit the former New York mayor made to Ukraine. Since then, they have met many times in New York and Kyiv, Klitschko said.

“Considering our good personal relationship, sometimes I ask for his advice on municipal issues,” he said.

Klitschko, a leader of Ukraine’s pro-Western revolution, won reelection as Kyiv’s mayor in 2015 with more than 65 percent of the vote. Like his political ally, former president Petro Poroshenko, he entered office amid high expectations that he would crack down on the corruption and cronyism that have characterized Ukrainian politics.

While Kyiv has largely prospered, and many regard Klitschko as an improvement over his predecessors, his detractors say that a number of the problems that have plagued the capital persist: poor delivery of services, substandard infrastructure and questionable construction projects.

They also accuse him of relying on high-profile projects — like a $10 million glass-and-concrete bridge in the city’s center — instead of focusing on substantive reforms.

Klitschko’s political future was thrown into doubt in April when Zelensky — a comedian and political neophyte fresh off playing the president in a “Veep”-style Ukrainian television series — trounced Poroshenko in Ukraine’s elections.

In addition to functioning as Kyiv’s elected mayor, Klitschko simultaneously has been serving as head of the Kyiv City State Administration under a deal he brokered with Poroshenko. That influential position, akin to the city manager, is appointed by Ukraine’s president.

Ousting Klitschko from the post would help Zelensky’s team consolidate control over the Ukrainian capital, by far the country’s most important power center.

Zelensky informed Klitschko during a meeting in early July last year that he wanted to once again separate the positions and install his own appointee as head of the Kyiv administration, according to a video address Klitschko posted on Facebook after the meeting.

Klitschko would still retain the elected position of mayor, though his power would be greatly reduced.

In the Facebook post, Klitschko criticized the proposal as a rollback of Kyiv’s rightful power of self-government.

Leading the charge for Klitschko’s firing was Andriy Bohdan, the former lawyer for Ukrainian tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, whom Zelensky appointed as his equivalent to chief of staff.

On July 30, Bohdan stepped up the political broadside against the Kyiv mayor, telling Ukrainian news outlets in a briefing that Klitschko had lost control of the situation in the city over the past five years and was beholden to wealthy figures controlling the city council.

Klitschko said the comments made Bohdan look “strange and incompetent.”

Bohdan did not respond to requests for comment.

Last summer, amid speculation about whether he would be fired, Klitschko flew to the United States.

On July 31, the day after Bohdan’s comments, Klitschko met with Giuliani in New York, posting a photo on Facebook of himself and the former New York mayor seated in Giuliani’s office.

The meeting came just a week after Trump exhorted Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to coordinate with Giuliani on an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and his son, who served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma while his father was in office.

In an interview, Parnas said he did not attend Giuliani’s meeting with Klitschko in New York, but was briefed on it afterward by both Giuliani and a lawyer for Klitschko.

Parnas said he was told by both men that, during the meeting, Klitschko complained to Giuliani that the Zelensky administration was trying to oust him — and appealed for help.

“He basically cried to Rudy, saying they were going after him unfairly,” Parnas said.

Klitschko blamed Bohdan for his predicament, Parnas said, fueling Giuliani’s anger at Zelensky’s chief of staff and, by extension, at the Ukrainian president, who had not publicly committed to investigations that would benefit Trump.

In written comments to The Post, Klitschko denied requesting Giuliani’s help.

“I did not ask anyone for assistance. And our photo is a photo of a meeting of two public figures,” Klitschko said. He said they discussed how “Ukraine needs further support from our Western partners and friends after the shift in power, support for local government and its development.”

'TRUMP LOVES HIM '

Days later, Giuliani was due to hold a face-to-face meeting with Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky.

Giuliani’s primary goal for the Madrid summit was to press Yermak to get Zelensky to announce the investigations he sought on Trump’s behalf, he previously told The Post.

Kurt Volker, then serving as a special envoy to Ukraine, testified in the House impeachment inquiry that he had connected Yermak and Giuliani. Volker said he hoped the Zelensky aide could convince Giuliani that the new Ukrainian president was an anti-corruption reformer — and break a logjam that appeared to be preventing Trump from granting the new leader a White House visit.

The Ukrainians hoped that by satisfying Giuliani, they could finally develop close relations with the Trump administration, text messages released by House impeachment investigators show.

Giuliani was pleased with the selection of Yermak, a former entertainment attorney, as Zelensky’s representative for the meeting in Madrid, Parnas said, because he perceived Yermak as an equal, someone who played the same role for the Ukrainian president as he did for Trump: a lawyer and confidant.

Text messages show that Parnas updated Giuliani on Klitschko’s situation the day before the Madrid meeting with Yermak. Parnas told The Post he knew Giuliani wanted to be prepared to discuss his onetime client in Spain.

Giuliani wrote in a text back to Parnas before the trip, “I don’t want us in their politics.”

But Parnas said that when Giuliani met with Yermak, he was “all about” internal Ukrainian politics, defending Klitschko.

The meeting was held at a luxury hotel. Parnas said that he and Giuliani arrived first and secured a table in the impressive lobby. His business partner, Igor Fruman, had planned to join but skipped the meeting to assist a traveling companion of Giuliani’s whose luggage had been lost in transit to Spain, according to Parnas.

An attorney for Fruman declined to comment.

When Yermak arrived, the group exchanged pleasantries. “Each one was like, ‘It’s so nice to finally meet you,’ ” Parnas recalled. They discussed how pleased they were that their respective presidents had finally spoken the previous week, he said.

After that, Parnas said, Giuliani got down to business.

“Giuliani started going on about Klitschko and Bohdan,” he said. Giuliani told the Zelensky aide that Klitschko was a “great guy for Ukraine.”

“He said, ‘He can bring more interest to Ukraine, more business. He’s a boxer. Americans love boxers,’ ” Parnas recalled. “He said, ‘Trump loves him. I think Trump knows him — he’s fought at some of his places.’ ”

Klitschko told a Ukrainian news outlet in 2017 that when he and his brother Wladimir fought at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, they socialized with Trump.

Parnas told The Post he did not know whether Giuliani had ever discussed Klitschko’s predicament in Kyiv with Trump.

In Madrid, Giuliani told the aide to Zelensky that he should make sure Klitschko remained in his powerful job, according to Parnas.

Parnas said that Yermak appeared open to Giuliani’s request.

“Yermak basically said that he would do everything in his power, that he would personally meet with Klitschko and he would try to work it out,” Parnas said. “He promised Rudy.”

In a statement, Yermak said he knew going into the meeting that Giuliani and the Kyiv mayor were “well acquainted” and confirmed that Klitschko came up during the conversation.

“Giuliani inquired about my opinion of Vitali Klitschko as mayor,” Yermak said. “At the same time, he immediately made a disclaimer, so that I would not perceive this issue as an attempt to influence me.”

Yermak said he told Giuliani he had known Klitschko for years, and that the boxer was elected and supported by the people of Kyiv.

“On this, our conversation on the topic of Klitschko was over,” Yermak said. “Therefore, any allegation that at the meeting Mr. Giuliani tried to impose some kind of narrative on me or that some kind of agreement was reached . . . is not true.”

The Post reported this week that Yermak has been urging the Ukrainian president to take a pro-Trump line to bolster his standing with the United States, according to diplomats familiar with the discussions.

Parnas said that after discussing Klitschko, Giuliani then turned to the central issue that had brought them together: a proposed statement by the Ukrainians regarding investigations helpful to Trump.

“They had to include a statement about Burisma and Biden,” Parnas said Giuliani explained.

In early September, Zelensky’s cabinet passed a resolution to remove Klitschko from his administrative post. Zelensky has not signed the document, leaving Klitschko in place.

In his statement to The Post, Klitschko said he said he did not know why Zelensky backed off his threat to remove him.

“I cannot be responsible for the president,�� he said.

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Stern reported from Kyiv. Natalie Gryvnyak in Kyiv contributed to this report.

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New emails show how President Trump roiled NOAA during Hurricane Dorian

By Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow | Published February 01 at 6:30 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

A trove of documents released on Friday evening provide the clearest glimpse yet into how President Trump’s inaccurate statements, altered forecast map and tweets regarding Hurricane Dorian’s forecast path rattled top officials along with rank and file scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in September.

The documents, released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from The Washington Post and other media outlets, show that the No. 2 official at the agency, Ret. Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, claims that neither he nor acting administrator Neil Jacobs approved a controversial unsigned statement that a NOAA spokesperson issued on Sept. 6. That statement criticized the National Weather Service forecast office in Birmingham for a tweet that contradicted Trump’s inaccurate assertion from Sept. 1, in which the president claimed that Alabama “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” from the Category 5 storm.

The statement was widely interpreted within NOAA’s National Weather Service as contradicting an accurate forecast due to political pressure from the White House and the Department of Commerce.

“[P]lease accept Neil’s reply as a sincere acknowledgment of a press release we did not approve or support,” Gallaudet wrote in an email to Gary Shigenaka, a NOAA marine biologist, on Sept. 8 at 5:48 a.m. “You know from my multiple messages to you and your colleagues that we respect and stand behind your service and scientific integrity.”

Other emails show some of the process of approving the statement and its dissemination, which involves then deputy chief of staff and communications director Julie Roberts. However, it’s not clear from the emails who directed NOAA to issue it. Roberts has since departed the agency, as has then-NOAA chief of staff Stuart Levenbach.

Jacobs also wrote to Shigenaka, stating, “This whole thing is being blown way out of proportion and politicized. The so-called tweet said absolutely no chance of impacts and NHC guidance was calling for 5-30%. The forecast office did the right thing to calm the nerves of citizens. I love NOAA. I am so proud of everything you all do.”

“You have no idea how hard I’m fighting to keep politics out of science. We are an objective science agency, and we won’t and never will base any decisions on anything other than science,” Jacobs wrote.

The Post has reported that the demand for NOAA to issue the statement came from White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, at the request of the president, via officials at the Commerce Department. Some communications that would shed light on the origins of the statement are redacted in the FOIA release, due to an ongoing Commerce Department Inspector General investigation into the matter.

In another series of emails, Gallaudet expresses his concern for the NWS workforce, and seems to reference resigning over the matter.

In a message to John Murphy, the chief operating officer of the NWS, Gallaudet says: “Thank you John. I track all of NWS on social media, so I see the emotion, but honestly get it. I’m having a hard time not departing the pattern right now.”

Murphy, who served in the Air Force, replies: “Hang in there sir. Need you and judgement we make nearly everyday since we have pension. Is this battle to die for or better to stay and fight for what’s right," adding, “we can do more in pattern.”

The House Science Committee is also investigating the political pressure brought to bear on one of the world’s top oceans and atmospheric science agencies, and an internal NOAA inquiry is seeking to determine whether the agency’s scientific integrity policy — which explicitly prohibits political interference with scientific findings and the communication of those findings — was violated.

At stake is public trust in weather forecasts and warnings aimed at saving lives and protecting property. The emails show a concern among the agency’s leaders that its forecasters would hesitate to issue a storm warning or other forecast “product” due to fears that it would contradict or anger a political official, such as the president.

“Employees now fear for there jobs and are questioning whether they should post potentially life-saving info or check tweets first,” Murphy wrote to Jacobs in an email at 2 a.m. on Sept. 8. “This is not good and I will reassure employees to focus on mission as I have been doing. I really hope folks can find way to let this go and our employees do not hesitate for even one second.”

The emails also show the moments when the controversy that became known as “Sharpiegate” first came to NOAA’s attention. In response to an email inquiry from The Post on Sept. 4, shortly after Trump displayed the altered forecast map in the Oval Office, NOAA’s deputy chief of public affairs Scott Smullen wrote colleagues:

“How do you want to handle this one? Looks like someone at the WH [White House] drew with a marker on the image of our official forecast.”

In a separate email discussion, Cory Pieper, social media lead at the NWS, alerted the public affairs office that the forecast image was “doctored.” Susan Buchanan, the director of the office, replied: “Are you sure they were doctored?” Pieper responded: “Yes, that was doctored.”

The Washington Post would later report it was President Trump who altered the image with a black Sharpie.

With media inquiries pouring into the National Hurricane Center in Miami, public affairs officer Dennis Feltgen sent an urgent message to colleagues in Washington later that day. “HELP!!!”

NOAA’s Roberts expressed the hope the controversy would fade. “I pray this thing dies off by morning,” she wrote to colleagues.

But the release of the unsigned statement two days later only intensified the controversy, provoking a torrent of outrage from the public, Feltgen emailed again. “I am hopeful there was some consideration of the result ugly reaction to this press release. I am sick to my stomach.”

Louis Uccellini, director of the NWS, wrote “the mood out there is pretty ugly" in an email to NOAA leadership while referring to an “upwelling” in the weather community.

In response to the statement, Craig McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, wrote to Weather Service and NOAA leaders, stating: “What’s next? Climate science is a hoax? Flabbergasted to leave our forecasters hanging in the political wind.”

In an email to NOAA leadership the next day, McLean wrote: “For an agency founded upon and recognized for determining scientific truths, trusted by the public, and responsible in law to put forward important science information, I find it unconscionable that an anonymous voice inside of NOAA would be found to castigate a dutiful, correct, and loyal NWS Forecaster who spoke the truth.”

McLean, a veteran NOAA official, would subsequently go public with his criticism and launch the scientific integrity investigation.

THE BACKSTORY

At the time of Trump’s tweet, the NWS’s forecast guidance showed only a very small risk (about 5 percent) of tropical-storm-force winds for a small portion of Alabama. However, Alabama was not in the storm forecast track or “cone of uncertainty” from the National Hurricane Center, which showed Hurricane Dorian skirting the East Coast far away from Alabama.

While the NWS’s Birmingham office set the record straight, stating Alabama “would NOT see any impacts” from the storm, and even though top NOAA officials knew its forecasters only acted in response to calls from concerned residents, the agency still admonished the Birmingham division for speaking “in absolute terms.”

Trump’s tweet that Alabama would be affected by the storm gained national attention when Trump presented the version of the forecast cone from Aug. 29, extended into Alabama — modified using a Sharpie. The crudely altered map appeared to represent an effort to retroactively justify the original Alabama tweet.

The results of the Commerce Department Inspector General’s investigation are expected in the near future. Meanwhile, in December, Trump nominated Jacobs to head NOAA after the previous nominee, Barry Myers, withdrew from contention, and the Dorian matter is sure to come up at any nomination hearing.

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Senate set to acquit Trump next week after bid for witnesses in impeachment trial is defeated

By Elise Viebeck, Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim | Published January 31 at 8:37 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

The Senate voted to bar new evidence in the impeachment trial Friday, paving the way for President Trump’s acquittal even as several top Republicans acknowledged that his actions toward Ukraine were not appropriate.

Eleven days into the trial, the highly anticipated vote, which was decided 51 to 49, revealed the partisan divisions in the chamber over whether to subpoena witnesses and documents, a step Democrats argued was crucial to weighing whether Trump abused his power in pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rivals. Among Republicans, only Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah) supported the resolution.

In declining to add to the case presented by House Democrats, the Senate delivered a victory for the White House that all but guaranteed that Trump will remain in office. With a final vote on the articles of impeachment set for Wednesday at 4 p.m., Democrats argued that Trump’s expected acquittal will be illegitimate, an acknowledgment of their looming defeat.

“If [a] judge or president believes that it is to his or her advantage that there shall be a trial with no witnesses, they will cite the case of Donald Trump,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the House impeachment managers. “They will make the argument that you can adjudicate the guilt or innocence of the party without hearing from a single witness, without reviewing a single document. . . . I would submit that will be a very dangerous and long-lasting precedent that we will all have to live with.”

Soon the questions surrounding Trump’s actions toward Ukraine will move from the Senate floor to the campaign trail, where voters instead of lawmakers will weigh the evidence in the heat of the 2020 presidential election.

House Democrats have promised to continue investigating Trump, and new, potentially damaging information could emerge as it has at times during the trial from an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and a forthcoming book by John Bolton, the former national security adviser.

But on Friday, Senate Republicans said they had finished weighing the matter — united in their decision to move on, even if members offered varying and at times conflicting reasons for their impending votes to acquit.

Trump is accused of withholding military aid and an Oval Office meeting to push Ukraine’s leaders into announcing probes of Democrats, including former vice president Joe Biden, now a presidential candidate, and his son Hunter. The House impeached Trump in December on two counts — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the result of the trial “one of the worst tragedies that the Senate has ever overcome.”

“Americans will know that this trial was not a real trial. It had no witnesses, no documents,” Schumer told reporters after the vote. “It is a tragedy on a very large scale.”

As the Senate concluded its business for the weekend, Trump accused Democrats of “scamming America.”

“The Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats keep chanting ‘fairness’, when they put on the most unfair Witch Hunt in the history of the U.S. Congress,” he tweeted.

The Senate approved a resolution setting up closing arguments Monday. Senators will have an opportunity to give speeches Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday about how they plan to vote.

Postponing the final stage of the trial until next week will allow senators to have a full weekend and was a relief for many who have complained about long hours and uncomfortable conditions in the Senate chamber.

But extending the timetable into next week also means the trial will collide with two other major events on the political calendar — the Iowa caucuses on Monday, in which four Democratic senators are competing, and Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called Trump on Friday evening to brief him on the updated timetable, and the president signed off on it, according to an official familiar with the conversation.

Trump left for Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, on Friday afternoon without taking questions from reporters.

The impeachment managers’ effort to persuade Republicans to support calling witnesses was confirmed as a failure earlier in the day when pivotal swing vote Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she would oppose the motion.

In a sharply worded statement, Murkowski decried the impeachment process that started last fall in the House, while declining to weigh in on Trump’s actions.

“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate,” Murkowski said. “I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.”

Murkowski could have provided the third vote for witnesses, which would have resulted in a 50-50 outcome. Democrats were pushing for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is presiding over the trial, to weigh in at that point and permit witnesses or other evidence rather than let the motion fail on the tied vote. But he said Friday that he would not intervene.

“I think it would be inappropriate for me, an unelected official from a different branch of government, to assert the power to change that result so that the motion would succeed,” he told senators.

While Murkowski said her decision was based on her distaste for the process, other Republicans acknowledged to varying degrees that the president was culpable — a shift in position for some that distanced them from the White House and served as an attempt to inoculate themselves if new incriminating details emerge.

Among the Republicans who argued Trump’s behavior was wrong or problematic but not impeachable were Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.).

“Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office,” Rubio wrote Friday in a Medium post.

“I believe that some of the president’s actions in this case . . . were wrong and inappropriate,” Portman said Friday in a statement. “But I do not believe that the president’s actions rise to the level of removing a duly-elected president from office.”

Alexander told The Washington Post on Friday, after announcing the previous night that he would not support calling witnesses, that “there’s a difference between inappropriate conduct, which that clearly is, and treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors. There’s a big gap between this conduct and impeachable conduct.”

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said he had hoped Alexander would have a “Howard Baker moment,” referring to the Tennessee Republican senator who played a key role in ending Richard M. Nixon’s presidency during Watergate and for whom Alexander was a protege.

“But it appears he will not,” Durbin said.

Republicans staked out their positions as new revelations from Bolton’s unpublished manuscript seemed to undercut key elements of Trump’s defense.

The New York Times reported Friday that Bolton writes in his forthcoming book that Trump told him in early May to call newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and ask him to meet with Giuliani, who was pushing for investigations into the Bidens and a widely contested theory that Ukraine worked with Democrats to undermine Trump during the 2016 election.

The directive to Bolton was reportedly given during a meeting that included Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has led Trump’s defense on the Senate floor. If true, it would represent the earliest reported example of Trump’s direct involvement in the pressure campaign against Ukraine.

Trump denied the report in a statement, saying the meeting “never happened.”

But Schiff seized on it in making his argument for witnesses.

“The facts will come out,” he said. “They will continue to come out. And the question before you today is whether they will come out in time for you to make a complete and informed judgment as to the guilt or innocence of the president.”

Also citing Bolton’s manuscript, the Times reported Sunday that in a conversation with Bolton in August, Trump directly tied his hold on $391 million of military aid to investigations into Democrats.

New revelations have also come from Lev Parnas, the ex-Giuliani associate now facing campaign finance charges, who submitted a letter to McConnell on Friday offering to testify about his participation in an effort to oust former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and gather damaging information about Joe and Hunter Biden.

The letter, written by Parnas’s lawyers, stated that the efforts involved a large group of top Republican officials and operatives, including Vice President Pence, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William P. Barr, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

Parnas had disclosed much of the information included in the letter in recent media interviews. His claims have been disputed by various Republican leaders, including Pence and Barr.

Trump’s former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who said earlier in the week that he believed Bolton, called the Senate trial “half a trial” if no witnesses are called.

“In my view, they kind of leave themselves open to a lot of criticism,” Kelly said in an interview with N.J. Advance Media. “It’s a job only half done. You open yourself up forever as a Senate that shirks its responsibilities.”

As Friday night drew to a close, it appeared Trump would deliver his State of the Union address before his expected acquittal, a small messaging coup for Democrats that was played down by the White House.

“The president is gratified that finally, at long last, after multiple delays, the Senate will set a schedule for his acquittal next week,” said White House director of legislative affairs Eric Ueland. “We do not believe the schedule interferes with his ability to deliver a strong and confident State of the Union message next week in the House of Representatives to the country.”

Meanwhile, the four senators running for president eagerly recast their schedules to take advantage of the free weekend.

“Are you going to Iowa?” a reporter shouted to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), one of the candidates, at the Capitol on Friday night.

“Eventually!” she said.

______

Colby Itkowitz, Paul Kane, Rosalind S. Helderman, John Wagner and Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report.

*********

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microsoftencarta95 · 6 years ago

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Festivals and Feasts

In secular society, communal celebrations involving carefully planned programs, outpourings of respect, rejoicing, or high revelry, established by custom or sponsored by various cultural groups or organizations. Such secular celebrations differ from religious festivals and feasts in that the focus is not on the significance of the rituals of holy days of a particular faith but on the public honoring of outstanding persons, the commemoration of important historical or cultural events, or the re-creation of cherished folkways. In some parts of the world, however, particularly in Latin America and southern Europe, traditional secular festivities follow attendance at religious services.

Origin

The origin of communal celebration is a matter of conjecture. Folklorists believe that the first festivals arose because of the anxieties of early peoples who did not understand the forces of nature and wished to placate them. General agreement exists that the most ancient festivals and feasts were associated with planting and harvest times or with honoring the dead. These have continued as secular festivals, with some religious overtones, into modern times.

The beginnings of many secular celebrations are linked to historic happenings. Noteworthy examples include the discoveries of Christopher Columbus and other early navigators and the creation of new, independent nations from former colonies. A particular event may spontaneously generate a national festival, celebrated only that one time, as in the case of the coast-to-coast jubilation over the January 20, 1981, release of the American hostages after 444 days of captivity in Iran. The nationwide manifestation of relief and joy was a festival of freedom.

Functions

Secular festivals and feasts have many uses and values beyond the public enjoyment of a celebration. In prehistoric societies, festivals provided an opportunity for the elders to pass on folk knowledge and the meaning of tribal lore to younger generations. Festivals celebrating the founding of a nation or the date of withdrawal of foreign invaders from its borders bind its citizens in a unity that transcends personal concerns. Modern festivals and feasts centering on the customs of national or ethnic groups enrich understanding of their heritage. Contemporary festivals related to regional developments, such as westward expansion on the North American continent, aid the local economy by attracting visitors to a pageant of historic authenticity that also fulfills an informal educational function.

Types of Festivals and Feasts

An infinite variety of harvest festivals exists in every hemisphere. Harvest and thanksgiving festivals are an inheritance from the ages when agriculture was the primary livelihood. Among the most attractive are the harvest-home festivals of England where parish churches are decorated with flowers, fruits, and vegetables in the fall, and harvest suppers climax a happy event. A popular type of harvest festival in the United States is that featuring a special crop, such as the National Cherry Festival in July in Michigan. Exhibitions of flowers are among the most beautiful of harvest festivals. Outstanding is the international Floralies held throughout the summer every five years since about 1837 in Ghent, Belgium. The festival traces its origins to the Roman Floralia, a spring rite honoring the goddess Flora. In 1980 the Floralies was held in North America for the first time, in Montréal, under the auspices of the International Association of Horticultural Producers.

Days of thanksgiving are celebrated in many lands and at various times of the year. Thanksgiving Day, as celebrated in the U.S., now a traditional family feast, is the nation's oldest celebration of gratitude, dating from 1621. The Virgin Islands observe a Thanksgiving Day (October 25) to rejoice in the end of the hurricane season.

The most important festivals of respect honor the dead. Such festivals have been observed for centuries, and many modern peoples continue age-old customs to honor national heroes and the deceased members of their own immediate family groups. In the Far East the festivals of the dead include family reunions and ceremonial meals at ancestral tombs. Mexicans observe November 2 as El día de Los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) with celebrations in cemeteries made colorful by offerings of flowers, earthen pots of food, toys, and gifts, along with the burning of candles and incense. In the U.S. the custom of honoring dead heroes on special days began in 1868 with the decorating of the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War. A quiet tone is characteristic of the approach to the general Memorial Day and the Confederate Memorial Day celebrated at different times in different southern states (see MEMORIAL DAY). Both community and family observances reflect a spirit of reverence and remembrance.

The timing of seasonal festivals is determined by the solar and the lunar calendars and by the cycle of the seasons. The Chinese New Year, set by the lunar calendar, and celebrated for an entire month in late January or February, is a time of gaiety, parades, and theatrical performances. Many other kinds of seasonal festivals are celebrated, ranging from the Quebec Winter Carnival, usually held in February, to Beach Day (December 8), marking the beginning of the beach season in Uruguay. Historic customs are often perpetuated in seasonal festivals. An example is Homstrom (celebrated February 3), an old Swiss festival exulting in the end of winter with the burning of straw people as symbols of the end of Old Man Winter. The most famous of seasonal festivities, set by the church calendar, but secular in tone, are the pre-Lenten carnivals of Europe and Latin America and the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana. National festivals are official observances of such events as the confederation of the provinces of Canada (see DOMINION DAY), the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the U.S. (see INDEPENDENCE DAY), the adoption of a constitution, as in Japan (May 3), or the origin of the world's oldest national flag, as in Denmark (June 15). Closely allied to this type of festival are victory celebrations. An example of an outstanding victory festival is the Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican commemoration of their defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. This festival is observed not only in Mexico but also in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities with large Mexican-American populations.

Another important type of festival is the commemorative day, celebrated since ancient Greek and Roman times, when rulers as well as gods were honored. Planned programs in the U.S. annually offer respect to presidents such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., on or about their birthdays. Ecuador and Venezuela honor the birth of the revolutionary statesman Simón Bolívar, the “George Washington of South America,” on July 24. Festivals honoring the Icelandic explorer Leif Ericson, who discovered Vinland, are held on October 9 in Iceland and Norway and in the United States in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Gandhi Jayanti is a festival held in India on the birthday (October 2) of Mohandas K. (“Mahatma”) Gandhi. An honor roll assembled from worldwide commemorative days would be impressive.

Cultural festivals are popular throughout the world. Kalevala Day (February 28) in Finland is the occasion for parades and ceremonials dedicated to the Finnish national epic the Kalevala and to its 19th-century editor-compiler, the scholar Elias Lönnrot. The most famous annual festival in Wales is the Royal National Eisteddfod (see EISTEDDFOD) held in August to honor the finest talent in Welsh literature and music. Austria holds the annual summer Salzburg Festival of music, and Hawaii has its spectacular Aloha Festival pageantry in October and November. In addition to these examples, film, art, dance, children's, and theatrical festivals crowd the calendars of many nations. The festivals of many ethnic and national groups are credited with the preservation of unique customs, folktales, costumes, and culinary skills. An interesting recent development is the merging of the arts, lore, and customs of various regions in Africa in the cultural festival known as Kwanzaa (Swahili kwanza, “beginnings”). Introduced from Africa into the U.S. in 1977, this festival is celebrated with feasts and songs in the home for seven days and nights from December 26 to January 1. The African colors, green for the future and black for struggle, are prominently displayed. Parents play the key role in this celebration, which stresses family unity and cultural self-determination, responsibility, purpose, creativity, and faith.

Communal feasts, as occasions for eating, drinking, and merrymaking, have a long recorded history, going back to early Greece. The most famous contemporary eating and drinking festivity is the Oktoberfest, which has been held in Germany annually since October 17, 1810, the wedding day of the future King Louis I of Bavaria. It is a fall festival celebrating the best in beer, food, and entertainment.

Changing Festivals

Halloween, associated historically with All Hallows' Eve, is now, in the U.S., primarily a “trick or treat” secular festival for children. Formerly, the fun centered on playing tricks on unwary neighbors. Changing attitudes in communities resulted in Halloween becoming an occasion for small children, usually garbed in costume, to go from house to house for treats. Older children still participate, but many forfeit treats to collect funds for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

As societies change, the characteristics of their traditional festivals and feasts may alter also; new ones often emerge as others decline in popularity. Most likely, however, some festivals will remain unaltered for generations. For participants they are a tonic. For observers they offer a nostalgic experience. Certainly communal celebration—in its various forms—is part of the life-style of all peoples and makes a contribution to the living history of modern civilization. Contributed by: Ruth W. Gregory "Festivals and Feasts," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.

#Calendars #Events #Holidays #Encarta 95 #Festivals #Feasts

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