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Yoga class starts shortly, the pristine massage centre is open for business and cheesecake is served on a platter of pastries and fruit.
And then the muffled cry of a baby emerges down the hallway.
The setting may resemble a five-star hotel, but this is a "sitting centre" on Shanghai's outskirts where mothers pay up to 70,000 yuan (US$11,000) a month to stay with their newborns.
Chinese culture dictates that mothers confine themselves after giving birth, also known as a "sitting month". Such confinement was once widely practised in many areas of the world and continues to be popular in other parts of Asia.
But as incomes rise in China, the sitting month no longer means being cooped up at home without bathing or visitors.
"We prefer to find a professional facility to take care of our baby. We have no experience in taking care of the baby or ourselves after birth," said Yu Xueting, 34, a first-time mother, her weeks-old son "Kangkang" lying contentedly beside her.
Both appear well looked-after at the private Lake Malaren International Postpartum Care Center in a modern building embellished with turrets and intended to mimic old northern European architecture.
Mother and son are accompanied at all times by a nanny who sleeps in the same room. Numerous specialists, nurses and cooks are on hand.
A photography studio captures those precious early days of life, while a "Mother's Classroom" runs lectures for new mums to learn how to care for their baby — and themselves.
Dads can stay too, but usually just visit.
Yu, who works for IT firm Hewlett-Packard, said the lengthy stay "liberates our family".
"If we do it at home (take care of the baby), then the whole family can't sleep well. I can take maternity leave, but my husband needs to go to work."
Long tradition
"Sitting month", or "Zuoyuezi", stretches back to about 200 BC and the Han Dynasty, said Elizabeth Hui-Choi, a lecturer at Hong Kong University's School of Nursing.
Empresses would be well looked-after following childbirth, including a special diet and lifestyle to restore their "broken" body and prevent future illness, said Hui-Choi.
"They believed that treating the mother well would also bring good things to the baby, and it is still believed to be that way."
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) "also plays a very important part" in how most Chinese women still think after childbirth, dictating they should eat more of certain foods, such as ginger, and cut out others such as fruit, she said.
Some stop showering, washing their hair, or even brushing their teeth for the month, and won't venture outside — TCM says these can upset the body's balance.
Yu did not wash her hair for a week, but doctors told her that was unnecessary and the centre recommends a more scientific approach that blends TCM and Western medicine.
Hui-Choi, a registered midwife trained in Western medicine, said some of the old rituals are unhygienic and that studies suggest strict observance of tradition can make women feel isolated, risking post-partum depression.
Rapid growth
According to the Legal Daily, a state newspaper, the number of sitting centres in China has "exploded" from dozens in 2000 to more than 4,000 in 2017.
One reason is that Chinese today are now giving birth later in life — meaning grandparents are older and may not be able to help as much.
And Chinese are increasingly able to afford places like the Shanghai centre, where staff fuss over every baby sniffle.
Demand has also ramped up since China began phasing out its one-child policy in 2015. Families can be too stretched with their first child to cope with a second, especially if there is no extended family to help out.
Sitting centres or self-proclaimed experts in "Zuoyuezi" are found almost anywhere that ethnic Chinese are found, including in North America, making it a big business with global reach.
However in Britain, doctors recently warned about the dangers of Chinese mothers locking themselves away after childbirth, fearing post-natal depression may go unnoticed or mums may avoid seeing a doctor for physical problems.
Six meals a day
Xu Jingfang, baby son Kirk gurgling away beside her, said her British husband was initially sceptical.
"At first he thought it was a weird idea. He said, 'You're having a baby, not heart surgery,'" said the 30-year-old Xu, one of about 80 other mums at the Shanghai establishment.
Xu scouted similar centres including one in a high-end hotel, saying "all our friends and relatives" now opt for such care.
"It's much easier. Here, you've got 24-hour care for the baby and someone to cook for you six meals a day," added Xu, a phalanx of carers on hand to whisk away Kirk at the first hint of a whimper.
Xu said that while her parents and grandparents did not wash for weeks after birth, they accept that times have changed.
So will it be a shock to finally go home?
"I've hired a nanny at home. I guess life will be more interesting than here — sometimes I do get a bit bored — but also tougher."


text:
Export 3 results:Author Title [ Type] Year
Filters: Author is Queralt, Josep [Clear All Filters]
Journal Article
Analgesic and antiallodynic effects of antidepressants after infiltration into the rat.. Pharmacology. 86:216–23.. 2010.
In vitro characterization and in vivo analgesic and anti-allodynic activity of PLGA-bupivacaine nanoparticles. Journal of Nanoparticle Research. 13:2213–2223.. 2010.

subset: commoncrawl


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The Open Source Convention of 2008 has closed its doors. It might not have been right to count our gains and losses during the conference, but it is time and timely, to do so.
The first of all lessons was the increasing number of attendance from Africa. The word increasing may look absurd, because it does not mean from 20 to 50 or even from 10 to 25, but at least it means from 3 to 8.
The second was the quality of participation. Mark Shuttleworth gave a key note and was in two other panels. Derek Keat, though hitting his first OSCON runs, was instrumental in the education panel. He also made the great leap in actually showcasing AVOIR – an initiative from Africa. Nnenna Nwakanma stepped in for Africa during the all-important Open Source/Open World Panel organized by the Open Source Initiative. At the Expo Center, Chisimba was available for the hundreds of OSCONers to get a first hand experience of innovation made-in-Africa.
The third was the overwhelming percentage of the Republic of South Africa in Africa's participation. Yes, ceci explique cela. The analysis of the why's and wherefores may be a good thing for you to blog about. There are other other lessons. Let us not crowd it.
One thing, though, comes out clear, hearing FOSS African voices at international levels CANNOT be the sole duty of the Republic of South Africa. We all need to move beyond this. The second is that the OSI – Open Source Initiative was the contributor to the entire participation of the one female person from Africa. Partly because the OSI believe in this global engagement of all open source actors, actresses (please forgive me) and advocates in the global OS discourse, and partly because of her own personal engagement and proven leadership in the FOSS arena. On the African continent, the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa – FOSSFA, has this mandate too. To make African FOSS voices, actions and initiatives to be seen, heard, known, used and promoted. Open Source not-for-profit organisations like OSI and FOSSFA will be healthier if enough support is given them to continue their engagement at all levels. This is critical to the success of Open Source itself, as a movement of global community engagement.


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Twitter has a problem: While the social network is trying to woo brands and advertising money to its platform, companies' Twitter accounts keep getting hacked.
Burger King (BKW) and Jeep were the latest Twitter hacking victims. The burger chain's Twitter account was taken over by hackers on Monday, and the attackers used the account to tweet that the company had been purchased by rival McDonald's (MCD). The very next day, Jeep's Twitter account was compromised as well.
And they're far from the first brands to suffer from compromised accounts.
Fox News' Twitter account was broken into in July 2011, and the account -- followed by more than 2 million people -- said President Obama had been assassinated. That same month, PayPal's United Kingdom Twitter feed was hacked, and the profile photo was changed to a pile of excrement. NBC News' account was also compromised two months later, falsely tweeting that a plane had crashed into the Ground Zero area of Manhattan.
Twitter's own systems were hacked earlier this month, with attackers gaining access to usernames as well as encrypted and randomized passwords for about 250,000 users.
The damage from hacking can be serious, albeit temporary. Compromised accounts are typically recoverable within a few hours.
So far, no major brands have abandoned Twitter because of hacking issues. It would be hard for brands to ignore Twitter, because it's a space full of potential customers, according to Mike Santoro, president of Walker Sands, a PR and social media firm.
"For now, Twitter represents more reward than risk," Santoro said.
Related story: Hackers take aim at key U.S. infrastructure
But brands are likely to cut down on the slack they give Twitter.
Twitter unveiled a tool on Wednesday that lets companies use third-party ad platforms to launch marketing campaigns. Once they're paying big money for Twitter's services, companies will likely be less forgiving.
"It's one thing when Twitter is free for brands," said brand strategist Adam Hanft. "It's another when there's an advertising contract in place, and hacking can disrupt the service a brand has paid for. There's an implicit agreement that Twitter will serve its customers and keep them protected."
So far, Twitter has put the onus on brands to ensure they're being smart about choosing and sharing passwords.
Following the Jeep account hack on Tuesday, Twitter tweeted a link to a "friendly reminder about password security."
Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser repeated that sentiment in a statement to CNNMoney: "We urge users to use good password hygiene on Twitter but also on other sites as well. Too often users don't use strong passwords that are unique to each site."
In many hacking cases, account owners used easy-to-guess passwords, or they made poor security decisions like accessing their accounts over public Wi-Fi or a shared computer. Since multiple people often have access to corporate accounts, one person's lost phone or compromised computer can give hackers access to a corporate account.
Making use of best practices isn't something Twitter can control, so hacking isn't always the social network's fault. But there is more that the company can do to prevent it. Some security experts have called on the company to beef up password protections on its end.
Per Thorsheim, an independent security consultant, said Twitter can employ a few simple changes to protect its customers. First, the company could limit the number of login attempts from a single IP address, and ensure only one user is logged into an account at any given time.
Thorsheim also echoed other critics by suggesting that Twitter create what's call "two-factor authentication." In addition to a password, a user attempting to login would need another piece of data: a string of numbers sent via text message, for example. Thorsheim thinks Twitter should make that mandatory for all big accounts.
There are indications that Twitter is getting more serious about its hacking problem. After its network was hacked a few weeks ago, Twitter began posting job listings for security personnel, including engineers to work on two-factor authentication -- a basic security tool already used by Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and Dropbox.
"There is no doubt in my mind they will have to do it," said Thorsheim. "In fact I'm a bit surprised they don't have it already."


text:
Explorer Scouts wear core uniform of a coloured shirt and a group or unit specific scarf.
Uniform can either be bought from Scout Shops Ltd or a local supplier. You can ask the leader for more information on what and where to buy.
We don't want anyone to miss out through financial hardship. If concerns about finances may prevent your child taking part in Scouting or some activities, speak to your local leader, as some assistance may be available in confidence.
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Primarily aimed to meet the requirements of children from 4-12, this package has proved popular with adults too! The beautiful illustrations will improve your whole family's language skills with words and phrases such as "the gorilla is in the car", "the duck is under the desk" and "the frog is on the lily pad". With its 3 main options; learn, games and record, Vocabulary Builder is intuitive enough for children to use and enjoy on their own. Help is available throughout from the friendly tiger who speaks over 49 different languages! Features on the disc include: - The chance to record cartoons and play them back in your own "cinema". - Nine games of varying difficulty, with points awarded for correct answers. - More than 100 words, including colours, numbers, actions and simple sentences. This product is fun and innovative, and will keep the younger learner's attention for hours. "Undoubtedlly more effective than traditional formats."
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text:
Keeping your kids busy during the summer months is always a bit difficult. However, bored children will no longer be a problem if you get a water slide inflatable!
A water slide inflatable is the perfect toy for summer. These are 6 feet or more tall slides that you inflate with air and position at the side of your swimming pool. Kids and adults slide down them into the pool with a splash.
All kids are like a bundle of energy looking to explode into action. It seems that kids first order of business ever day is to bounce, jump, slide, and generally be energetic – but only doing fun activities. So it is no wonder they get all hot and sweaty… and a little stinky too.
But with a water slide inflatable, they are in and out of the pool all day and do not get hot and sweaty. So, they get all the benefits of exercise, but without that sweaty stink.
In addition, any kid having a birthday party in summer who has a water slide inflatable, instantly becomes the kid to know, and very popular.
So when you are planning your child's next birthday party (or any party), you should consider making it a poolside event and include a water slide inflatable in your requirements. You can be sure that the party guests will be magnetically drawn to the water slide. If you organize the party right, the guests will be praising and copying you all summer.
Your choice as to what water slide inflatable to get is vast. They range from the simple pool water slide to large complicated structures, and every kind of variation imaginable in between.
All water slide inflatables are supplied with an air pump, which remains connected to the slide and pumping all the while the water slide is in use. This is so the water slide stays taut and firm while in use, which is needed when you have a bunch of kids climbing all over the structure.
You connect a garden hose to the water slide, and the water flows out of numerous holes along the length of the slide. This creates the gushing of water down the chute just like in a water park.
At the end of the day the water slide is easily deflated and can be tidily packed away and stored.
You sure enough will find a water slide inflatable that is just right for your situation due to the variety of sizes and shapes available. They range from the simple water slide, right up to full-blown water park type structures. The only limitation is the size of your backyard.
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text:
New study finds wealth gap doubled over past decade
Andrea Germanos
The wealth gap roughly doubled over the past decade–a sign of a trend of growing inequality this likely to continue, a new study (pdf) finds.
Using data from 2003 to 2013, the University of Michigan researchers found that those at the bottom were disproportionately hit by losses in the Great Recession, though net worth by all but the top five percent was lower in 2013 than it was in 2003.
While the wealthiest 5 percent held 13 times more wealth than the median household in 2003, a decade later, that disparity surged to 24 times more wealth in the hands of the top bracket, the researchers found.
"The American economy has experienced rising income and wealth inequality for several decades, and there is little evidence that these trends are likely to reverse in the near term," stated Fabian Pfeffer, assistant research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research, and lead author of the study.
"It is possible that the very slow recovery from the Great Recession will continue to generate increased wealth inequality in the coming years as those hardest hit may still be drawing down the few assets they have left to cover current consumption and the housing market continues to grow at a modest pace," Pfeffer stated.


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LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins made official Monday what he's been telling folks all along: He's headed to the NBA after his only season with the Jayhawks.
A 6-foot-8 forward who was voted second-team All-America earlier in the day, Wiggins is expected to go in the top three picks in the June draft. Some believe he could go first overall.
Wiggins was the top-rated recruit when he arrived at Kansas, and his brief career was a bit of a roller coaster. He struggled early in the season, caught fire midway through, and then flamed out when it mattered most in an NCAA tournament loss to Stanford.
Wiggins only scored four points on 1-for-6 shooting in the third-round defeat. Afterward, he said that he let his team down with his poor performance.


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About Adscape
Adscape International, LLC is a minority-owned and operated internet consulting firm founded in 1999. We focus on providing guidance and digital solutions for clients of all sizes, specific in web design, video editing and training.


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Attention streaming movie marathoners: There are major changes coming your way. This month Netflix announced they'll be increasing their plan pricing. The trend of rising prices for streaming content is a growing one. Cell phone providers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are all planning to eliminate unlimited data plans in favor of tiered pricing. With experts predicting most cell phone users won't be hit by the changes for a few years, Netflix is taking most of the heat.
Here are the basics of the Netflix changes. Instead of having DVD rentals and streaming movies priced together, each portion will be priced as a separate plan. For most users, this will increase the monthly bill by $6-10. Price changes will take effect September 1.
Customer Backlash
Understandably, cash-strapped consumers are not thrilled about price increases. The official blog post announcing Netflix's changes has generated more than 12,000 comments. Most appear to be current subscribers pledging to cancel their subscription.
More Than the Price
On the surface, $6 doesn't seem like an outrageous amount, but customers are hurt about more than the money. Many who've been with Netflix from the start feel their loyalty has been betrayed. Disgruntled loyalists would like prices to stay as they are for current subscribers with increased rates only for new subscribers.
Not Enough Bang for the Buck
Another customer gripe is that the product doesn't justify the higher price. Subscribers have complained the streaming movie selection is lacking. They contend new material is not added often enough and many times the streaming video quality is poor.
Switching to the Competition
The price increases by Netflix are encouraging many users to give the competition a try. Redbox is one of the most popular alternatives, with $1 rentals and locations in just about every neighborhood. Amazon Instant Video is another popular choice. Streaming new releases are typically $3.99 to rent for a 48 hour period.
Price Increase Reasoning
Even though Netflix subscribers are in an uproar, the company isn't entirely to blame. When Netflix started their streaming service, studios who own the movies didn't realize the potential for profits. With the surge in streaming media popularity, studios want to charge a premium for their content. One expert has predicted Netflix's content licensing costs will increase from $180 million in 2010 to $1.98 billion in 2012.
If you don't want to pay these increased costs, here are a few alternatives to help you keep your cash:
DVD Exchange With Friends
Do you have a shelf full of DVDs you just can't bring yourself to watch again? Get a few friends or co-workers in on a movie exchange. Trade movies one for one and trade back when you're all done watching.
Rent From the Library
With the demise of local video rental stores, finding releases from a few years back is growing increasingly difficult. Renting movies from the library can help you track down many titles not available from Redbox. Even better, the rentals are free!
Discount Gift Cards
Going to see a movie in the theatre isn't exactly a steal, but there are some ways around high prices. Popular cinemas like AMC and Regal both have more than 100 discounted gift cards available at sites such as GiftCardGranny.com or Cardpool.com.
Matinee Movies
If you work a 9-5, matinee movies may be out of your reach, but they make for another way to beat high prices. Tickets cost much less and you don't have to deal with the massive crowds you find in the evening.
Neighborhood Movie Night
Consider going in with a group of neighbors and investing in a backyard movie set-up. Hopefully, someone already has a projector they're willing to share. All you need then is a screen. Inflatable, outdoor projection screens can easily be found online for less than $200. This tip might not save a ton of money, but it can help a whole group of people stop paying their money to Netflix.
Free Screenings
Plenty of filmmakers just want their movie to get seen. College campuses are great resources for finding free screenings. Many towns also offer free showings of classic films at parks throughout the summer. A local paper is a good way to find out if there are any offerings in your area.
Get Outside
The natural world was here before streaming Netflix and it will certainly be here long after. Take the money you'd spend on movies and invest it in a national parks pass. The cost is only $80 for one year and it gets you and anyone in the car with you into more than 2,000 sites across the country.
Dial Into Daily Movie Deals
Deal of the day sites like Groupon and LivingSocial occasionally offer discounted movie theater tickets for as little as $2 per person. That's a pretty cheap movie night outing and well worth the price. Just make sure to skip the popcorn and candy - your wallet and waist will thank you.
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If you are looking for authentic, wonderful Italian food, then look no further than Antonio's Ristoranté in The Cove Shopping Center.
Owners Alex Poulous and Paul Ferorelli have created a little piece of Italy right here in Deerfield Beach.
As soon as my husband and I walked through the door, we were greeted with the tantalizing scents of tomato, basil, garlic and fresh bread. White tablecloths and soft colors invite you to sit and relax. Fried calamari,mussels and Calamari Antonio, Scungilli salad, mozzarella sticks and homemade soups are available to start your meal.
We chose to skip the appetizers and head straight for the entree. Before we ordered, we were served a big basket of fresh garlic rolls. The rolls can be ordered with or without garlic, but when in Rome … The rolls were soft, warm, tender and covered with fresh garlic and olive oil.
For his entrée, my husband tried the Chicken Dijon. This chicken dish is sautéed with mushrooms and artichoke hearts and served in a white wine and Dijon mustard sauce with cream. There are many other chicken dishes to choose from, including Chicken Marsala, Francese, Parmagiana and Cacciatore, to mention a few. His meal included either soup or salad and a side of pasta with red sauce.
He chose to start with the Pasta Fagioli soup that was thick with beans, pasta and a hearty broth. I began my meal with the garden salad. Creamy Garlic, an Italian vinaigrette and Creamy Romano dressings are available. I tried the Creamy Romano, and it was delicious.
Since Antonio's is wellknown for its fresh fish, I decided to try one of the daily specials and ordered the Snapper Francese. The fish was tender, moist and lightly breaded and cooked in a fresh lemon, broth and cream sauce. To go with my snapper, I chose the broccoli sautéed with toasted fresh garlic and olive oil and could not have been happier. The garlic was crisp and complemented the vegetable perfectly. My partner selected the pasta with red sauce as his side. The homemade sauce was thick and rich and full of spices and tomatoes. It was a wonderful delicate sauce for his pasta.
Shrimp Scampi, Fra Diavolo and Armando (shrimp sautéed with scallions, sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, artichoke hearts in a rose sauce) and Linguini with white or red clam sauce are just a few of the seafood dishes available. Of course, the traditional Lasagna, Ravioli and Ziti are always popular selections.
Antonio's menu offers veal choices such as Veal Milanese, Marsala, Francese and Parmagiana.
Pasta dishes include pasta with garlic and oil, meatballs or sausage, or marinara sauce, Fettuccine Alfredo, Penne alla Vodka, Angel Hair Carbonara and more.
For a more casual dinner, you may order a Calzone or Stromboli or try one of their homemade or specialty pizzas.
There are daily specials that should not be missed. The night we dined at Antonio's, we could choose from Snapper, Tilapia and Salmon. All fish may be ordered Francese or broiled.
Paul Ferorelli feels the secret to their wonderful cuisine is the consistency. If you have a sweet tooth, be sure to try their cheesecake or any of their traditional Italian desserts such as Cannoli, Tiramisu and Spumoni ice cream.
Be sure to give this restaurant a try the first chance you get. You will not be disappointed. Antonio's has been part of the Deerfield Beach community for over 40 years. They also have FREE delivery.
Antonio's is located at 1636 SE 3 Ct. in The Cove Shopping Center. For reservations, call 954-427-4871 or 954-427-9002.
For more information, including menu, visit www.antoniosdeerfieldbeach.com.


text: A new wave of cyberattacks reportedly aimed at industrial control systems comes at a time when private companies and government are still struggling to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, experts say.The New York Times reported on Sunday that the attacks were aimed mostly at U.S. energy companies. Rather than looking for intellectual property or sensitive information, the hackers were using probes to look for ways to seize control of processing plants.While government officials did not know if the attacks were state-sponsored, the origin appeared to be somewhere in the Middle East.The fact that senior government officials who spoke to The Times were unable to pinpoint the source of the attacks indicates a lapse in the work of the intelligence community, said Stewart Baker, a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson and a former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."The most disappointing aspect of the story so far is the inability of the intelligence community to attribute the probes," Baker said. "That's embarrassing.""The intelligence community has faced cyberintrusions for 20 years, yet it has been unable or unwilling to provide much useful attribution information," he said.The intelligence community is not the only part of government that has struggled in helping the nation defend against cyberattacks. Congress remains at odds over the privacy implications of legislation that would require companies to share data with government agencies.President Barack Obama issued this year an executive order requiring government agencies to share cyberattack information, but the reverse will require action by Congress.\u00a0Government regulation by itself is not a panacea. Joe Weiss, an industrial security consultant and managing partner of Applied Control Solutions, said electric utilities often refuse to be a test bed for cybersecurity technologies because of the "onerous audit requirements." The mandates are contained within the Critical Infrastructure Protection rules established by the North American Electric Reliability Corp.Weiss has been able to find only one electric utility willing to be a test bed. That company is too small to fall under NERC CIP. "I shouldn't be in a position to say 'only,'" Weiss said. "There should be a few or one of (many), but not only."[Also see: Labor Department hackers more sophisticated than most]Attackers bent on sabotage is not new. Many experts believe the pace of cybersabotage efforts increased after the U.S. and Israel damaged Iranian nuclear facilities several years ago with the Stuxnet worm.Iran is believed to have retaliated last year with the attack on Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company and one of the world's largest producers. The intruders wiped data from office computers, but failed to reach production systems, which were the main target.Private companies running much of the nation's critical infrastructure from oil production and the electric grid to manufacturing facilities and water treatment plants know of the potential damage from cyberattacks. However, the reason warnings keep coming from government officials is because not enough is being done in the way of defense."There's nothing necessarily new," Weiss said. "The issue more than anything is people still aren't doing an adequate job of protecting themselves."The Aramco attack failed because the company had one network for its administrative offices and a separate one for its production facilities. While this is considered a best practice, the deployment and maintenance costs are much too high for most companies. Therefore, the alternative is tight access controls."Not just firewalls, but controlling the systems that can make these changes and doing that from one point," said Ron Gula, chief executive of Tenable Network Security who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA).For some companies, a cultural change may be necessary to shore up defenses. Rather than have facility workers and security professionals working separately, the two should collaborate on locking down industrial systems."These are cultural challenges where IT and engineering have historically always been separated," said Rick Holland, an analyst with Forrester Research. "This must change, and although many organizations are aware of this, the pace of change is glacial."\u00a0


text:
Expert's Rating
- Highly mobile and barely weighs one pound
- 10,000 hours of LED light
- Very low brightness
- Touch-sensitive control buttons are very small and makes navigating the on-screen menus difficult
- Bare bones feature set
Our Verdict
Dell's tiny M109S is a palm-size LED projector with a low brightness rating of only 50 lumens, which makes it best suited for very small groups in dark or dimly lit conference rooms. The M109S weighs just 12.8 ounces and even with its cables, AC adapter, and carry case, the M109S has a traveling weight of under 2 pounds, making it a snap to take on the road.
The downside is that Dell had to sacrifice some features in order to achieve the M109S's ultralight design. It has a low native resolution of 858-by-600 pixels, which means you have to turn down the resolution on your Mac and you won't get the best image sharpness and clarity when making presentations. The projector has a small, fixed lens (no optical zoom) with a limited range of focus. It provides only two input options, VGA (you'll need a DVI-to-VGA or Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter) and composite video, but no audio or USB port, and it lacks a remote control and a built-in speaker. It also has no adjustable feet or tripod mount to help in positioning.
On the other hand, the M109S consumes less power, runs cooler, and is quieter than a traditional lamp-based projector, and the 10,000-hour lifetime for its LED light source is much longer than the 3000-hour lifetime for many conventional projector lamps.
In image-quality tests the M109S earned a Fair rating for its overall performance. Its lack of brightness and its low contrast made discerning the content in some screens (such as white type over a dark background or the different shades of color in shadowy areas) difficult, and its rendering of small type wasn't sharp. The M109S's motion tests were also lackluster: some colors, such as yellow, looked washed out in an animated PowerPoint presentation, and we saw a lack of details in dark areas when viewing scenes from DVD movies, such as a tunnel car chase in Quantum of Solace and a nighttime speedway race in Speed Racer.
The method of accessing the M109S's on-screen display (to make image adjustments) was also disappointing. The lack of a remote means that the only way to adjust the image is to poke at the touch-sensitive control buttons on top of the projector. Unfortunately, the buttons are so small that pressing the wrong one is too easy, which makes navigating the on-screen display a hit-and-miss affair. The menu options are fairly extensive and include five preset picture modes ("PC," "Movie," and such) for optimizing the image, but the tiny buttons make them hard to navigate. It's also daunting to use this projector's focus ring to obtain the sharpest image from its fixed-focal-length lens; since the thumbwheel moves very little in either direction, finding the best setting is hard.
Macworld's buying advice
All in all, it's difficult to recommend Dell's M109S for mobile presentations when for just a few dollars more you can have a slightly larger LED projector that's twice as bright, provides better image quality, and has more features (including a remote and a built-in speaker). However, Dell frequently offers this product at a reduced price when you purchase it online, and that could make the M109S a much better deal for economy-minded mobile users who do small-group meetings or one-on-one presentations.
[Richard Jantz is a freelance contributor.]


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EA has shut down Mythic Entertainment, the longtime video game studio most recently responsible for Warhammer Online and the Dungeon Keeper reboot for mobile platforms.
When reached by Kotaku, EA sent over the following statement:
We are closing the EA Mythic location in Fairfax, Virginia, as we concentrate mobile development in our other studio locations. We are working with all impacted employees to provide assistance in finding new opportunities, either within EA or with other companies via an upcoming job fair.
Founded in 1995, Mythic also developed Dark Age of Camelot and a number of other online games including the popular MUD Dragon's Gate. Their most recent release, a microtransaction-heavy remake of the classic strategy game Dungeon Keeper, was received poorly by many gamers.
The author of this post can be reached at email@example.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.


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In a competitive global economy, decision-makers don't have the luxury of throwing resources at an IT infrastructure that is incapable of responding dynamically to business needs.
Many organisations have significant investment in legacy infrastructure and this, combined with the rapid proliferation of applications, is creating an IT conundrum – how to free up time for digital innovation while managing complex traditional architectures.
HPE SimpliVity is meeting this challenge head-on by offering a hyperconverged solution that enables organisations to streamline IT operations at a fraction of the cost of traditional and public cloud systems. By combining IT infrastructure and advanced data services into a single, integrated all-flash solution, organisations can rethink their IT strategy.
End of the 80:20 rule
Neil Simonsen, regional sales manager at HPE SimpliVity, says IT departments can no longer afford to be a slave to the 80:20 rule where 80% of time is dedicated to keeping operations running, leaving only 20% to focus on innovation.
"The world has changed dramatically in the last 10 years with smartphones and always-on connectivity. Companies that can embrace this change make huge strides. If you look at how Uber changed the taxi industry without a footprint and not owning one car, you realise we are in unchartered territory," he says.
HPE SimpliVity enables a digital strategy with its hyperconverged platform that helps IT directors simplify the demands of their hybrid environment with a software-defined architecture.
"If you can make digital innovation work for you, it is possible to transform your industry or the way you work with customers. HPE SimpliVity introduces simplicity to an organisation in multiple ways – it is the most efficient platform to run a modern datacentre in terms of footprint and rackspace; power and cooling; data storage; integrated backup; performance and management. Customers love it," says Simonsen.
Reducing complexity
Prior to adopting HPE SimpliVity, customers have found provisioning a virtual machine (VM) is a complex process demanding changes to underlying storage, backup policies, replication and disaster recovery.
"With a traditional architecture, it was time consuming, touching multiple interfaces and management portals. For a large organisation with separate compute, storage and backup teams it could take 48 hours to provision a VM. With HPE SimpliVity compute, storage and backup are in a single appliance and provisioning a VM can be achieved through a single interface in minutes," says Simonsen.
He gives the example of how one manufacturer with a VM corruption would have lost a full day of production, but with HPE SimpliVity was able to restore the VM in under a minute avoiding any costly downtime.
With common APIs and a software-defined architecture enabling automation, IT teams are free to focus on innovations such as application deployment, and can skill upwards to positively impact the organisation's bottom line.
Removing strain
SimpliVity backup operations have no overheads, generating no I/O data transfer, thereby removing strain on the underlying storage system and eliminating the necessity for a change window as operations and performance are not impacted.
"Data protection is in 'onion layers' with multiple points of protection from the hard drive level up to protecting between multiple sites with very efficient replication," says Simonsen.
If your organisation wants to reduce the complexity and cost of its legacy infrastructure; improve performance, agility and scalability; while increasing efficiency around data services to gain time for IT evolution, then HPE SimpliVity is the right solution.
IT departments can offer a more efficient service to the business thereby reducing cost of ownership. Hardware and processes are consolidated into a simplified solution reducing the cost of the datacentre footprint and allowing the business to recover data in minutes rather than hours.
To find out how HPE SimpliVity can help your organisation exploit its hybrid IT infrastructure by evolving to a software-defined landscape that can meet the demands of the digital economy, visit HPE SimpliVity


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ECORA: An Integrated Ecosystems Management Approach to Conserve Biodiversity and Minimise Habitat Fragmentation in Three Selected Model Areas in the Russian Arctic
ECORA is a Global Environment Facility (GEF) project initiated by the Arctic Council Working Group on the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), UNEP/GRID-Arendal, and the Russian Federation that uses an integrated ecosystem management approach to conserve biodiversity and minimize habitat fragmentation in the Russian Arctic. The main phase of the project was initiated in 2004 and is scheduled for completion in 2009. The following report presents an overview of the project and a summary of major results to date. A full project report will be prepared upon completion of the project.


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OCEAN CITY- While it may lack the glamour and high payouts of the White Marlin Open, the Ocean City Marlin Club's 49th Annual Labor Day White Marlin Tournament, which got underway this morning, does not lack the history or prestige.
Called the "granddaddy" of the resort area fishing tournaments, the Marlin Club's annual Labor Day tournament is the oldest among the tournaments held in and around Ocean City each year. Participating boats must choose to fish two of the three scheduled fishing days- Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Lines can hit the water after 8 a.m. and must be pulled by 3 p.m., with daily weigh-ins scheduled each day at the Ocean City Fishing Center from roughly 5-7:30 p.m.
Cash prizes will be awarded for first-, second-, and third-place in the billfish release points division, as well as the top three spots in the heaviest fish divisions. An awards banquet will be held following the close of the scales on Sunday evening.


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You are in command of the Rapid Attack and Response unit commanded by Sergeant Tucker. Face off against the insidious Mullen in an epic 10 level campaign! There are a total of 16 levels to be played, where you can master the rules of tactical turn-based strategy combat. If you beat a level, you should not need to beat it again. Choosing "Save and Quit" from the options menu in the middle of the mission will create a restore point. If you click on "Resume Save Point" on the title screen, the game will be restored to that save point. If you play a game on a different level or map, your resume point will be lost. Mouse issues orders. Click an open tile in range to move there, or click an enemy unit in range to move next to it and attack. Arrow keys scroll and control key selects next available unit. Have a blast playing Battalion: Nemesis!
Surfnetkids » Games » Shooting Games » Battalion: Nemesis


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How Britain Enthusiastically Teamed Up with Bush's Horrific Torture and Rendition Agenda
Editor's Note: The following is Part II of an excerpt from Ian Cobain's new book, A Secret History of Torture (Counterpoint Press, 2012). Copyright 2012, Portobello Books. All Rights Reserved. Click here to read Part I.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Tony Blair took a train from Brighton to London, where he issued a statement that pledged unswerving support for the US. He described terrorism as "the new evil in our world," perpetrated by people with no regard for the sanctity of human life. There was now to be a battle between the free world and terrorism, he said. "We therefore here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world."
Quietly, Britain pledged logistics support for the rendition program, which resulted in the CIA's Gulfstream V and other jets becoming frequent visitors to British airports en route to the agency's secret prisons. Over the next four years, a 26-strong flight of rendition aircraft operated by the CIA used UK airports at least 210 times. Dozens of other private executive jets that the agency chartered were also regular visitors to the UK. Nineteen British airports and RAF bases were used, including Heathrow, Birmingham, Luton, Bournemouth and Belfast. The agency's favorite destination was Prestwick in Scotland, which it used more than 75 times. One CIA pilot described Prestwick as an ideal refueling stop. "It's an 'ask no questions' type of place, and you don't need to give them any advance notice you're coming."
The US authorities also asked the UK government for permission to build a large prison on Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean that operates as a US military base. A Royal Marines officer made some preliminary plans, before the project was dropped, for logistical rather than legal reasons. Diego Garcia continued to be used as a stopover for rendition flights, however, and senior United Nations officials believe that a number of prisoners were held and interrogated there between 2002 and 2003.
The UK would do more than offer mere logistics support to the rendition program, however. It would "perform," in Bush's words, by becoming an enthusiastic participant in the rendition and torture program. As in the summer of 1940, its first victims would be British. But as then and since, Britain would enshroud its use of torture in the greatest possible secrecy.
In October 2001, when the United States and its allies went to war in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime that had harbored al-Qaida, it was inevitable that a small number of those captured on the battlefield would be British.
For more than a decade, MI5 had been aware that British Muslims had been traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan to receive training at camps run by al-Qaida or associated groups. Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, operated some of the camps, and graduates were encouraged to take up arms against Indian forces in Kashmir. Before al-Qaida began targeting the West in the late 1990s, MI5 saw these trips as evidence of little more than exuberant adventurism among a small section of young British Muslim males: a form of jihadi tourism that posed no threat to the UK. All that changed after 9/11, when both MI5 and MI6 became anxious to extract as much information as possible from any British prisoners in order to assess the al-Qaida threat.
It was not long before prisoners were being taken during battles in the north and southeast of Afghanistan. Many more foreign fighters were captured while attempting to slip across the border into Pakistan. Hundreds were handed over to US forces by Afghan and Pakistani bounty hunters, who received large bundles of dollars for every non-Afghan they captured.
Among the handful of British nationals seized in Afghanistan were Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed. These men from the West Midlands, who became known as the Tipton Three, spent around a month in captivity in the north of the country before being flown to an interrogation center at Kandahar airport. By this time, the Red Cross was already complaining to US authorities about the systematic mistreatment prisoners suffered at Kandahar. On arrival all three were severely beaten. According to Iqbal:
An American came into the tent and shouted at me telling me I was al-Qaida. I said I was not involved in al-Qaida and did not support them. At this, he started to punch me violently and then, when he knocked me to the floor, started to kick me around my back and in my stomach. My face was swollen and cut as a result of this attack. The kicks to my back aggravated the injuries I had received from the soldier striking me with a rifle butt.
Another of the Britons who ended up in the Kandahar interrogation center was Jamal al-Harith. Born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester in 1966, al-Harith had converted to Islam in his 20s and had traveled widely in the Muslim world before arriving in Afghanistan. After 9/11 he had been imprisoned by the Taliban, who suspected him of being a British spy. At one point he and several other prisoners were forced to share their large cell with a horse that had offended a local Taliban leader in some ill-defined way. As bombs and missiles rained down on the city throughout October 2001, the unfortunate creature clattered around, terrifying its cellmates. A British journalist found al-Harith languishing in the prison in January 2002 and alerted British diplomats in Kabul, believing they would arrange his repatriation. Instead, they arranged for him to be detained by US forces, who took him straight to Kandahar.
A fifth Briton was Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, who managed to escape from Afghanistan to Pakistan before being detained early in 2002. After being interrogated for several days by both British and American intelligence officers in a grand house in Islamabad, he begged one MI5 officer to get word to his family. "I can't help you there," was the response. "I'm not a social worker." Begg was dispatched, hooded and shackled, to Kandahar, where he was beaten, stripped, shaved and photographed.
"I was past a state of shock. I couldn't believe all this was happening to me. The noise was deafening: barking dogs, relentless verbal abuse, plane engines, electricity generators, and screams of pain from the other prisoners."
Back in London, government ministers and their intelligence advisers could not decide what to do with the young British Muslims being interrogated at Kandahar and at a second interrogation center US forces had established at Bagram airbase north of Kabul. One idea was to have them brought back the UK and prosecuted, possibly for treason. MI5 asked the Crown Prosecution Service whether they could "interview" the prisoners first and were told they could, as this would not inhibit any subsequent prosecutions.
In Washington, meanwhile, members of Bush's war cabinet had decided that the expanded rendition program should result in the majority of prisoners being interrogated by the US military rather than overseas intelligence agencies. "The Department of Defense simply thought they could do it better than the Egyptians or whoever," says Mike Scheuer. They needed somewhere to carry out these interrogations and chose the Guantánamo Bay naval base on Cuba as the site for Camp X-Ray, a new maximum-security prison designed to hold hundreds of prisoners. The land had been leased in 1903 and was, in theory, on Cuban territory, thus putting the prison and its inmates outside the reach and protection of the US legal system. On Jan. 6, 2002, the first US combat engineers and contractors arrived at Guantánamo to begin construction. Three days later, senior lawyers at the US Justice Department drafted a memo that concluded the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaida fighters or members of the Taliban.
Twenty-four hours after the drafting of this memo, on January 10, British ministers had second thoughts about prosecuting British Muslims captured in Afghanistan. Government lawyers were warning that these men appeared not to have committed any offense under UK law and there was deep anxiety that the US government would be furious if they were brought back to the UK and subsequently released. Furthermore, police interviews in the UK would not be so effective as interrogations conducted overseas. So ministers decided, in the words of a secret Foreign Office memorandum, that their "preferred option" was the rendition of British nationals to Guantánamo.
Events moved rapidly. Later that day Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, issued a classified telegram to the British embassy in Washington and embassies across the Middle East. No objection should be raised to the transfer of the British nationals to Guantánamo, he ordered, as this was "the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objectives." He added, however, that their removal from Afghanistan should be delayed long enough to allow questioning by a "specialist team" of MI5 interrogators.
The first team of MI5 interrogators had arrived in Afghanistan the previous day, joining a number of MI6 officers who had entered the country at the end of 2001. The first interrogation was conducted at Bagram just as Straw was sending his telegram.
The makeshift prison at Bagram was located in a disused factory built during the Soviet occupation. There were discarded pieces of machinery scattered around the shop floor and notices in Russian hung on the walls. Concertina wire divided the building into pens. The interrogations took place in several offices on a first-floor landing.
By the time MI6 and MI5 officers first entered the prison there were 80-odd prisoners there, mostly Afghans and Arab fighters. A handful were British and it was immediately obvious they were being mistreated. Some of the prisoners were chained upright inside the pens, with hoods over their heads. Others were being beaten. One of the officers alerted his superiors that the first prisoner he questioned had been abused by the US military before the session began and the complaint was passed rapidly back to London.
The next day both MI6 and MI5 sent written guidance to all of their officers in Afghanistan. Covering two pages, these instructions had been prepared earlier in anticipation of such a complaint and were very carefully crafted.
This was the first sign that in the "war on terror" – the battle over "the ideas and values that would shape the 21st century," as Tony Blair put it – Britain and the US would stand shoulder to shoulder. Even when working the dark side. The guidance said:
You have commented on their treatment. It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this. That said, HMG's stated commitment to human rights makes it important that the Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it. In no case should they be coerced during or in conjunction with an SIS1 interview of them. If circumstances allow, you should consider drawing this to the attention of a suitably senior US official locally. It is important that you do not engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners.
So MI5 and MI6 officers should not be seen to condone torture and must certainly not torture any prisoners themselves. But, crucially, they could continue to question people whom they knew were being tortured.
The door that could have been shut upon the use of torture during British operations against Islamist terrorism had been left open just a crack. A crack was all that was needed. Over the years to come, all manner of horrors would slip quietly through.
If the interrogations at Kandahar were brutal, those at Bagram were pitiless. At least two Afghans died under interrogation after being chained from the ceiling of their cells for several days while being beaten about the legs. Post-mortem examinations showed that their injuries were so severe that, had they survived, their legs would have had to be amputated.
There are allegations that British intelligence officers witnessed the abuse at Bagram and even took part on occasion, despite the warning that they must not be seen to condone it. Shaker Aamer, a Saudi who lived in London before traveling to Afghanistan, has given a statement to one of his lawyers in which he says British intelligence officers were present while Americans beat him and smashed his head against a wall. Hassan Zamiri, an Algerian married to a Canadian, has made a similar statement alleging that British intelligence officers interrogated him while he was being beaten and, on one occasion, waterboarded, and that one, an Englishman who called himself Paul, took part in the beatings. Moazzam Begg says he spoke not only to British intelligence officers at Bagram, but to visiting British soldiers.
Judging by the accounts that some of the inmates gave when they were finally set free, there is reason to believe that those conducting the interrogations were not just seeking intelligence. They were, as Cyril Cunningham, the in-house psychologist as the UK's secretive Cold War organization A19, had put it, involved in the "selection, control and operation of secret agents and informers": the Bagram interrogators were hoping to turn some of the inmates – and doubtless, in some cases, they succeeded.
MI5 and MI6 officers conducted around 100 interrogations in Afghanistan over the next three years and the reports they subsequently sent to their superiors in London left no room for doubt about what was happening. After the interrogation in July 2002 of Omar Deghayes, a Libyan who had been living as a refugee in Britain, one of his questioners sent a detailed report back to MI5 headquarters. The report, which was disclosed during court proceedings brought by Deghayes eight years later, said: "The interview commenced at 1345 GMT and finished at 1600 GMT. Deghayes was brought to the interview room manacled and hooded. When the hood was removed, Deghayes looked pale and shaky. We asked if he was ill and he replied that he was suffering from malaria."
After offering Deghayes water and asking him whether he felt well enough to continue, the officers introduced themselves as Paul and Martin. They warned Deghayes that he was facing a long period of incarceration in US hands and that they would not consider helping him unless he told them everything they wanted to know. Deghayes was mumbling and incoherent at times. When he answered questions about links with jihadist organizations in Libya, the officers told him he was lying.
After another interrogation a week later, an MI5 officer reported back to London that Deghayes was thinner but alert. Deghayes said he was suffering internal bleeding:
He said the medical staff thought he was malingering and challenged us to explain how anyone could feign internal bleeding. Deghayes then launched into an extended complaint about why he was being held. No evidence had been presented yet he was still in custody. He was also being treated badly, with head-braces and lock-down positions being the order of the day. He was treated better by the Pakistanis; what kind of world was it where the Americans were more barbaric than the Pakistanis? We listened but did not comment.
MI5 decided that Deghayes should be sent to Guantánamo.
"If he sticks to his story and just gives a few more details, we propose disengaging and allowing events here to take their course," the officer wrote in his report to London. Deghayes was to spend more than five years at Guantánamo, where the abuse continued. At one point he was beaten so severely that he was blinded in one eye.
It is clear from the very small number of British government documents so far made public that ministers were informed about what was happening at the new US prisons within days of the decision being taken to consign British Muslims to Camp X-Ray.
On Jan. 14, 2002, four days after Straw sent his secret rendition telegram, a senior official attached to the Cabinet Office sent a six-page memo to David Manning, Blair's foreign policy adviser, naming three British citizens held in Afghanistan and noting that they were "possibly being tortured" at a jail in Kabul. By January 18, at the latest, Blair had been made aware. The Prime Minister wrote by hand in the margins of one Foreign Office memo: "The key is to find out how they are being treated. Though I was initially skeptical about claims of torture, we must make it clear to the US that any such action would be totally unacceptable." Blair added a curious instruction to his officials: not to endeavour to stop the torture, but to "quickly establish that it isn't happening."
Despite the Prime Minister being made aware of the possible use of torture, the UK remained a committed partner in the rendition program. All but two of the British citizens and residents who ended up in Guantánamo were sent there after Blair wrote his note. Documents later disclosed in court showed that after one British terrorism suspect, Martin Mubanga, was detained in Zambia, either Blair or someone close to him at Downing Street intervened to ensure that he could not escape rendition to Guantánamo. Mubanga denied any involvement in terrorism. Nevertheless, a reason for his rendition was set out in a note that Eliza Manningham-Buller of MI5 sent to John Gieve, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, which was also disclosed in court. "We are...faced with the prospect...of the return of a British citizen to the UK about whom we have serious concerns, whom it may be difficult to prosecute and whose release could trigger hostile US reaction," Manningham-Buller wrote.
Around the same time that British nationals were being packed off to Guantánamo, the euphemism "handling" was being coined at the highest levels of British government to describe the manner in which the prisoners were being treated. Straw's secret telegram said it was for "the US authorities to determine the detail of how these prisoners should be handled. They have told us they would be treated humanely." Three months later, a senior Home Office official was noting, with evident relief, that on the matter of "handling," there had been "no press coverage here during the last four weeks."
The British government still had the option of bringing the young British Muslims back to the UK for prosecution. At the end of February, according to the minutes of a meeting of British security officials, the US was telling the British government that it could have all of the British detainees if it wished. But the officials concluded that the UK "should not be in any hurry" to take them. The representative from the Foreign Office was said to have remained quiet on this point, as his department had "some obvious problems of public presentation."
Some senior Foreign Office officials had severe misgivings about the manner in which events were proceeding. In a meeting with John Gieve in mid-April, Sir Michael Jay, Gieve's opposite number at the Foreign Office, explained that his department wanted to press the Americans for legal access to the British at Guantánamo – "and wanted to be seen to be doing it." But, he explained, they had been overruled by Downing Street.
When the first batch of prisoners were flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, a few hours after Straw sent his secret telegram, they were wearing nappies, orange jumpsuits, handcuffs and shackles. They were also wearing blacked-out goggles, earmuffs and thick gloves, to ensure they experienced the sort of sensory deprivation that had been found to be so devastating during the three-way Canadian, American and British experiments of the 1950s. Such was the level of anger after the 9/11 attacks that the US authorities felt no shame about the way they were treating their prisoners: pictures showing the men being dragged across the ground were taken by US Navy photographers and distributed to the world's media.
The US government was less candid about the principal purpose of Guantánamo, however. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was a place of detention where people who posed a threat could be kept from harming others. He even suggested that they were there for their own good, declaring a few days after Camp X-Ray opened for business that its inmates would be subjected to "appropriate restraint" as there were concerns that some might attempt to kill themselves.
In truth, Guantánamo was always an interrogation center, a place to which men could be consigned in order to squeeze from them every drop of intelligence that might possibly be of use. But while some of the inmates were undoubtedly dangerous terrorists – "bad people," as Bush called them – others were anything but.
A number of US Department of Defense documents leaked several years later showed that men were sometimes rounded up and taken to Guantánamo because the information they possessed was considered useful, rather than because they were thought to be dangerous. Said Abassi Rochan, for example, a 29-year-old Afghan taxi driver, was taken to Guantánamo to exploit his local knowledge. His file stated that he was "transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention facility because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul...as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver."
The documents showed that Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese cameraman for the al-Jazeera news network who had been detained on the Pakistan border while making his way into Afghanistan, was sent to Guantánamo "to provide information on...the al-Jazeera news network's training program, telecommunications equipment, and news gathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including the network's acquisition of a video of UBL [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL."
The file of Jamal al-Harith, the man from Manchester who had been forced to share a Taliban prison cell with a horse, shows that he was sent to Guantánamo "because he was expected to have knowledge of Taliban treatment of prisoners and interrogation tactics." Eighteen months later, the camp authorities had satisfied themselves that he had no connection with the Taliban or al-Qaida, but decided against releasing him because his "timeline has not been fully established" and because British diplomats who had seen him in Kandahar had found him to be "cocky and evasive."
In all, nine British nationals were sent to Guantánamo, along with at least nine former British residents. All were incarcerated for years, and from the moment they arrived they suffered beatings, threats, sleep deprivation and other torments. All were interrogated by MI5 officers and some also by MI6.
Shafiq Rasul, one of the Tipton Three, says: "When we arrived at Camp X-Ray I was made to squat in the boiling heat outside for about six or seven hours altogether. I became desperate and eventually asked for some water. The soldiers realized I was English and a man from the Extreme Reaction Force came and started kicking me in the back and calling me a traitor."
Asif Iqbal says all his initial interrogations at Guantánamo were conducted by MI5 officers: "In my first interview with the MI5 official, I was told that I should say that I had gone to Afghanistan for jihad. He said that I did not need to say I'd been a fighter because there are lots of ways that one can do jihad."
When he and his friends denied this, they were told they would remain at Guantánamo for the rest of their lives.
Jamal al-Harith spent two years being kicked, punched, slapped, shackled in painful positions, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of sleep. He was refused adequate water supplies and fed on food with date markings 10 or 12 years old. On one occasion, he says, he was chained and severely beaten for refusing an injection. He estimates that he was interrogated around 80 times, usually by Americans but sometimes by British intelligence officers.
Al-Harith was finally released after more than two years. Nine months later he issued a statement in which he explained that he was still in pain as a result of the beatings he received before interrogation. "The irony is that when I was first told in Afghanistan that I would be in the custody of the Americans, I was relieved. I thought that I would then be properly dealt with and returned home without much delay."
MI5 and MI6 officers carried out around 100 interrogations at Guantánamo between early 2002 and the end of 2004.


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The Combined Regional Emergency Services Training (CREST) center is the result of ideas from local Police, Fire and EMS agencies in collaboration with Oakland Community College. The concept of a training "city" providing realistic settings for real-life problems faced by emergency responders is an innovative outcome of Oakland Community College's more than 50 years' experience in training emergency services personnel.
Instructors take critical training subjects from the classroom onto the CREST site, a virtual live lab setting, where scenarios based on real world problems become invaluable learning tools. Basic and advanced emergency services personnel, as well as private industry and civilian organizations benefit from putting theory into practice in a secure setting.
The CREST site offers an experience where real-life scenarios are simulated by trainees who must not only think through options and decisions, but also actively apply their skills. Scenarios can be repeated in a controlled setting so trainees can work through them until their knowledge and skills are mastered. This internationally recognized approach of "scenario based training" means that the trainees will retain the lesson at a greater level than could be expected from classroom presentations alone.
Located in southeast Michigan, cornered by I-75 and M-59 on Oakland Community College's Auburn Hills Campus, this is a unique training facility with furnished houses, a bank, convenience store, motel and five story live fire training tower can suit your organization for whatever training need they may have.


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Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures Waitlist Policy
From the first day of registration until the last business day before the first day of classes, a member of the GLL staff will monitor enrollments and note any waitlisted courses that have spaces available. When available, a member of the GLL staff will issue an override for each open space in a waitlisted course in the order of the waitlist. The overrides issued will have an expiration date of 48 hours (including weekends). If the student does not accept the override within that time frame, it will expire. This will allow the staff member to offer the space to the next eligible student on the waitlist, who will then have 48 hours to enroll. If all students on a given waitlist have been given an opportunity to enroll, but do not do so, a member of the GLL staff will ask the Registrar's Office to drop them from said waitlist. This will allow the class to reopen for registration. Once classes begin, no overrides will be issued for closed courses without the consent of the instructor for the course. S/he has final authority on whether or not to issue overrides.
The Scandinavian program offers courses that take the pan-Scandinavian view in literature, history, society, and the arts plus those that focus in depth on Swedish language and literature. Work at the University of Uppsala during a junior year abroad program further enhances students' opportunity for graduate study, careers in teaching, international business, or global organizations.


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ConAm Management Corporation is part of The ConAm Group, a multi-family property investment and management firm established in 1975 that specializes in conventional and affordable housing.
We span across 12 states with 11 regional offices that employs a team of 1500 energetic associates and we're growing We recognize the value of our office staff; we are always looking for Business Managers If you possess a customer focused mindset, have the ability to oversee or be a part of the daily operations and management of a multi-family residential community and want to be a part of our company's growth, we want to hear from you WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR: We are looking for a Business Manager to work at a community in the Escondido, CA area.
WHY YOU ARE THE PERFECT FIT: You bring a minimum of 1-2 years of property management experience You have a good working knowledge and have the ability to perform professional level customer service You possess good communication skills both, verbal and written You have a passion for helping others You have a strong knowledge of MS word, excel, and outlook You ideally have experience in Yardi and/or MRI You possess a valid driver's license and proof of automobile liability insurance coverage WHY YOU WANT TO WORK HERE: ConAm Management Corporation is an experienced, full service real estate and property management firm which has been in the business for over 40 years.
The company has earned its reputation as an industry leader through commitment to excellence and high ethical standards.
ConAm serves clients nationwide through a network of regional offices located in key metropolitan areas.
Our benefits are designed with our associates in mind which include medical, dental, life, vision, Paid sick and vacation, identity theft protection, 401(k), Flexible Spending Accounts, Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and a generous bonus program.
Applicants being considered for employment must pass a background check and a drug test.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.
If this sounds like the right position for you, just click the "APPLY" button above.
You will be given an option to submit a resumeor complete an on-line application.


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Tk_GetColor, Tk_GetColorByValue, Tk_NameOfColor, Tk_FreeColor - maintain database of colors
#include <tk.h>
XColor * Tk_GetColor(interp, tkwin, nameId)
XColor * Tk_GetColorByValue(tkwin, prefPtr)
char * Tk_NameOfColor(colorPtr)
GC Tk_GCForColor(colorPtr, drawable)
Interpreter to use for error reporting.
Token for window in which color will be used.
Textual description of desired color.
Indicates red, green, and blue intensities of desired color.
Pointer to X color information. Must have been allocated by previous call to Tk_GetColor or Tk_GetColorByValue, except when passed to Tk_NameOfColor.
Drawable in which the result graphics context will be used. Must have same screen and depth as the window for which the color was allocated.
The Tk_GetColor and Tk_GetColorByValue procedures locate pixel values that may be used to render particular colors in the window given by tkwin. In Tk_GetColor the desired color is specified with a Tk_Uid (nameId), which may have any of the following forms:
Any of the valid textual names for a color defined in the server's color database file, such as red or PeachPuff.
A numeric specification of the red, green, and blue intensities to use to display the color. Each R, G, or B represents a single hexadecimal digit. The four forms permit colors to be specified with 4-bit, 8-bit, 12-bit or 16-bit values. When fewer than 16 bits are provided for each color, they represent the most significant bits of the color. For example, #3a7 is the same as #3000a0007000.
In Tk_GetColorByValue, the desired color is indicated with the red, green, and blue fields of the structure pointed to by colorPtr.
If Tk_GetColor or Tk_GetColorByValue is successful in allocating the desired color, then it returns a pointer to an XColor structure; the structure indicates the exact intensities of the allocated color (which may differ slightly from those requested, depending on the limitations of the screen) and a pixel value that may be used to draw in the color. If the colormap for tkwin is full, Tk_GetColor and Tk_GetColorByValue will use the closest existing color in the colormap. If Tk_GetColor encounters an error while allocating the color (such as an unknown color name) then NULL is returned and an error message is stored in interp->result; Tk_GetColorByValue never returns an error.
Tk_GetColor and Tk_GetColorByValue maintain a database of all the colors currently in use. If the same nameId is requested multiple times from Tk_GetColor (e.g. by different windows), or if the same intensities are requested multiple times from Tk_GetColorByValue, then existing pixel values will be re-used. Re-using an existing pixel avoids any interaction with the X server, which makes the allocation much more efficient. For this reason, you should generally use Tk_GetColor or Tk_GetColorByValue instead of Xlib procedures like XAllocColor, XAllocNamedColor, or XParseColor.
Since different calls to Tk_GetColor or Tk_GetColorByValue may return the same shared pixel value, callers should never change the color of a pixel returned by the procedures. If you need to change a color value dynamically, you should use XAllocColorCells to allocate the pixel value for the color.
The procedure Tk_NameOfColor is roughly the inverse of Tk_GetColor. If its colorPtr argument was created by Tk_GetColor, then the return value is the nameId string that was passed to Tk_GetColor to create the color. If colorPtr was created by a call to Tk_GetColorByValue, or by any other mechanism, then the return value is a string that could be passed to Tk_GetColor to return the same color. Note: the string returned by Tk_NameOfColor is only guaranteed to persist until the next call to Tk_NameOfColor.
Tk_GCForColor returns a graphics context whose Foreground field is the pixel allocated for colorPtr and whose other fields all have default values. This provides an easy way to do basic drawing with a color. The graphics context is cached with the color and will exist only as long as colorPtr exists; it is freed when the last reference to colorPtr is freed by calling Tk_FreeColor.
When a pixel value returned by Tk_GetColor or Tk_GetColorByValue is no longer needed, Tk_FreeColor should be called to release the color. There should be exactly one call to Tk_FreeColor for each call to Tk_GetColor or Tk_GetColorByValue. When a pixel value is no longer in use anywhere (i.e. it has been freed as many times as it has been gotten) Tk_FreeColor will release it to the X server and delete it from the database.
color, intensity, pixel value
To install Tk, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm Tk
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Tk
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.


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I'm in Yap, Micronesia, home of some of the most remote reefs in the Western Pacific. As I prepare to scuba dive down to Vertigo Reef, I am not thinking about manta rays even though Yap is famous for a resident population of mantas which are graceful, plankton-eating members of the shark family. My attention is on their cousins, gray reef sharks, many of which are swimming around below.
As I descend, I see the pack out in the blue. There may be as many as 50 sharks in the blue void. Add to that some cruising blacktips and curious whitetips, and we have quite a shark stew. Who else will show up?
The island of Yap has lots to offer above and below the sea. A tiny, scenic and hilly isle, it is home to a people who still use giant stone discs as currency. Women still wear grass skirts, and men go about their villages in loincloths called thu'us. The reefs are also among the most remote, with families of manta rays and schools of sharks living in deep, canyon-like reef channels.
In the last decade, pioneers such as Bill Acker at Yap Divers (Web: www.mantaray.com) started to build a first class diving enterprise and open this special place to the world. Located in the western end of Micronesia, Yap is still considered remote by most standards. From Japan, one must fly to Guam and then catch one of the twice-weekly flights to this Micronesia outpost.
The lack of heavy development and a small population means little pressure has taken place on the coral reefs. Thus, Yap Island has developed and still has some of the healthiest corals in the Pacific.
While Yap is special for seeing mantas, some great new attractions include reef shark watching, a superb habitat for colorful, mating mandarin fish next to historic O'Keefe's Island and some superb dropoff and hard coral sites. These attract everything from big schools of blackbar barracuda to the occasional school of scalloped hammerhead sharks.
Yap is a great place to watch the higher end of the food chain. The waters and reef areas hold gray reef sharks, silky sharks, silvertips, whitetips, leopard sharks and blacktips. On rare occasions even whale sharks, oceanic whitetips and tiger sharks are seen in these waters.
Vertigo Reef is becoming a premiere place to observe gray reef sharks cruising the blue. This is a reef where an occasional shark feed takes place. So the sharks show up for the heck of it when they hear a dive boat approach the reef. Large grays and the occasional blacktip move eerily in the water column. As many as a dozen sharks can be seen appearing in the blue out of nowhere. They may stay with divers for part or the entire dive along this sheer wall.
The gray reefs also can be found down the reef at a new site called Yap Corner. Located at the far northern end of the Miil Channel mouth, grey reefs, eagle rays, mantas and schooling jacks all come in here. Blackbar and sharpnose barracuda also come in for a look when the current runs.
On incoming high tide, divers can drift down the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, as 100-foot walls loom on both sides. Into the channel, there's a cleaning station where sharks line up to be preened by small, fearless wrasse fish. At Manta Ridge, 60 juvenile gray reef sharks hang in shallow water, circling in a box canyon. The sharks are curious and come in close for divers to see.
Larger sharks also circle along the walls of this canyon near the Manta Ridge, and a morning sun brings clear sunlight basking rays down upon the menacing looking but curious sharks.
Closer to the town of Kolonia, the Crescent Reef has had some special shark sightings as well. Known for its resident school of barracuda and frequent cuttlefish sightings, lucky divers have had a school of scalloped hammerheads come in from the blue. These normally deep-water sharks sometimes come into the mouth of nearby Gabach Channel and can be seen in safe diving depths by the adventurous Yap scuba buff.
Add to this the schooling bumphead parrotfish at Yap Caverns, the scores of bigeyes and lionfish at Lionfish Wall and the breathtaking hard corals at the eastern island reefs, and a diver will find more and more to see and explore. Even the playful spinner dolphins off the southern tip and near Goofnuw's Mini Wall can take hours of a diver's time at sea.
A week can easily be spent exploring the island reefs, and there are some spots still unexplored. And if the reef possibilities start to run thin, one might even go looking for manta rays.
This is said in jest; of course, as the channels of Yap where the mantas are found are chock full of marine life and well worth a drift dive or two. But when you add mantas, eagle rays, sharks and turtles to the mix, it's fascinating.
Yap has two types of diving. The outer reefs feature some of the healthiest and most diverse hard corals of anywhere in the Pacific. The eastern shore has large coral gardens with big coral formations and interesting small invertebrate marine life. The western side of the island features sheer dropoffs, a cavern system and big pelagic life, such as schools of barracuda, bumphead parrotfish and grey reef sharks.
The second is the channel diving. The inner channels of Yap are famous as a home for a resident school of manta rays. For best visibility, these are best dived with the high, incoming tide. At low tide, visibility can decrease as nutrients wash into the channels from the nearby mangroves, but the mantas still can be seen most of the time at cleaning stations. Yet, the most dramatic is to see them come in from the clear blue and approach ever so close.
While the mantas don't live in these channels, they come in to get cleaned, to feed and to mate. Mating season, starting roughly in November and lasting until as late as April, is a superb time to watch manta interaction. Miil Channel is the most famous of the many channels around the island. The mantas form trains and do spectacular "aquabatics" as part of the mating ritual.
Divers with a true lust for adventure should continue to be amazed by Yap as it continues to unfold a seemingly endless supply of new sea secrets. A visit to the best sites and then a try at some of the new ones is a great way to see creatures big and small in the western Pacific on the magical isle of Yap.
Travel Info: Yap is the westernmost of the four states that comprise the Federated States of Micronesia. The many islands and atolls that make up Yap State stretch hundreds of miles across the open Pacific. Yap is 500 miles southwest of Guam, 300 miles northeast of the Republic of Palau, and 800 miles east of the Philippines.
Continental Airlines (Web: www.continental.com) serves Yap, with two flights a week from Guam (Tuesdays and Saturdays) and one flight a week from Palau (Sundays). The flight time from Guam is approximately one hour and five minutes, and the flight time from Palau is about 45 minutes.
Visitors need a valid passport and a return airline ticket to enter Yap and are allowed to stay of up to 30 days. Immigration rules vary by country, however, so please check with your hotel or tour operator prior to your journey.
Beyond the Blue
If you feel like a break from all the mantas and other marine life, Yap also offers some great kayaking in mangroves and around the vast inner lagoon. Explore the passages and go snorkeling at the inner coral reefs while gliding quietly over the sea.
Off-road biking is also good with many high trails and roads coursing the island. Finish your ride with a dip in the small, freshwater pit lake near the airport. And Yap has some nice hiking trails with interesting wildlife such as monitor lizards and the Yap monarch.
Manta Fest
The Fifth Annual Manta Fest Photo Festival takes place Aug. 27 – Sept. 11. If you are an aspiring underwater shutterbug, this is a great time to visit the island and rub elbows with some of the top underwater shooters in the world (including yours truly, Tim Rock), experience great diving and have lots of fun. This is an island-wide celebration involving hotels and dive shops. Web: www.mantafest.com.


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China fuels surge in foreign purchases of US housing
Foreign purchases of US real estate jumped by 35% last year, and the Chinese led the way, according to a survey released Tuesday.
Chinese buyers have become the largest source of foreign cash in the US residential real estate market, accounting for nearly one in four dollars spent by foreigners on American housing last year, the National Association of Realtors said in its annual survey of international property sales.
China accounted for $22 billion in international sales for the 12 month period ending March 2014, or 24% of all foreign sales, up from $12.8 billion, or 19%, during the year-earlier period.
Total international property sales rebounded last year to $92.2 billion, according to the NAR's estimates, up from $68.2 billion in 2013 and $82.5 billion in 2012. The total represented around 7% of the market for all US sales of previously owned homes during the same period.
In recent years, American real-estate markets have been viewed alternately as a safe haven and a bargain amid concerns over geopolitical instability or unsustainable asset values abroad.
US real-estate also continues to be popular thanks to the dollar's weakness against some currencies, though the currency advantage has dimmed somewhat for Canadian buyers that had been particularly aggressive property buyers in the US in 2011 and 2012. Some agents say that American higher education is also a top draw for some trophy-property buyers.
"Foreign buyers are being enticed to US real estate because of what they recognize as attractive prices, economic stability, and an incredible opportunity for investment in their future," said Steve Brown, the NAR's president, who is the co-owner of a real-estate brokerage in Dayton, Ohio.
European and Latin American buyers have helped push prices of South Florida condos to record highs in recent years, while foreign buyers of all stripes have sent prices of new Manhattan developments to astronomical levels. Asian buyers, particularly Chinese, have also been a major force in select property markets in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Overseas buyers tend to hunt for trophy properties. This helps explain why the median purchase price to international clients ($268,284 last year) is significantly higher than for all sales ($199,575). That's particularly true of Chinese buyers, where the average purchase price topped $590,000 and the median exceeded $523,000. Canadian and Mexican buyers, by contrast, appear to buy much more modest homes.
China was the largest source of transactions on a dollar basis, and it represents the fastest growing buyer segment. But Canada remained the largest share of clients. Canadians accounted for 19% of property buyers last year, down from 23% in the previous year. Chinese accounted for 16% of buyers, up from 12%. The NAR survey includes buyers from Taiwan and Hong Kong in that tally.
The NAR estimates that 35% of Chinese buyers selected homes in California. Around 40% of Canadians bought homes in Florida, while 23% of Canadians bought in Arizona.
Every year, the NAR surveys its members about international clients in order to estimate foreign property purchases in the US. It conducted this year's survey of 3,547 members for 30 days beginning in mid-April.
(译者 高晴 编辑 丹妮)
上一篇 : 互联网巨头将引领中国电影未来
下一篇 : 连破纪录,德国让巴西成"世界悲"
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Still Flirting With A Run, Palin Confronts Deadlines And 'Smears'
This week, Sarah Palin kept the guessing game about her White House intentions alive.
(Still thinking about it, she told her employer, Fox News, and, by the way, the media is not the boss of her timetable.)
She weighed in on the Republican presidential debate.
She took to task her old buddy and White House hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for his past support of a program to vaccinate girls against a sexually transmitted and potentially cancer-causing disease.
She denounced a risqué "tell-all" biography of her by author Joe McGinniss set for release next week, even as the salacious bits leaked out this week and excerpts were parceled out in Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" comic strip.
And to top it off, she faced the prospect of another unflattering new book by the estranged father of the Palins' first grandchild, Tripp, son of Bristol of "Dancing with the Stars" fame. Levi Johnston's offering, Deer In The Headlights, is also due out next week.
As Palin continues to hint that she might join the pack of GOP hopefuls, the media glare is intense, and not always shining where she might like.
White House, Or Bust?
Reince Preibus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview this week with ABC News that though he's "very satisfied" with the current GOP presidential field, it's not too late for someone to jump in.
But Preibus must know that the clock is ticking pretty loudly.
"There's no barrier from jumping in if that's what she wants to do," says primary expert Josh Putnam of Davidson College. "But with each day that passes, a little more of that door closes."
Putnam acknowledges that Palin's narrative has always been "unconventional politics," that the usual rules of the road don't apply to her. And though Palin hasn't missed any primary filing deadlines, he sees her prospects as already decidedly limited.
"This has turned into a fight between Romney and Perry," he says, and the way the primary system is set up, front-loaded with big contests, means that "it's grown less likely for folks to jump in midstream."
The Republican National Committee has no rules about how many primaries or caucuses candidates are obligated to compete in; they just have to win enough delegates to capture the nomination at the fall convention.
Though the primary calendar is still in flux, perhaps the best guide for Palin's drop-dead date to jump into the race was provided by columnist Jim Geraghty of the conservative National Review.
Since the winner of the South Carolina primary has always gone on to win the GOP nomination, Geraghty has written, Palin has to get in by Nov. 1, the filing deadline for the Palmetto State contest.
That means Palin has a good six weeks to continue to tease about her intentions.
Piling On Perry
Although she's not a candidate, Palin had been invited to participate in last Monday's GOP debate in Florida, sponsored by CNN and Tea Party activists.
She declined, but fueled — again — speculation about a possible run by criticizing Perry, with whom she forged a friendship while serving her abbreviated term as governor of Alaska.
Palin campaigned for Perry when Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged him in a 2010 gubernatorial primary, and once wrote this about Perry: "He does what is right regardless of whether it is popular. He walks the walk of a true conservative. He sticks to his guns — and you know how I feel about guns!"
But after Monday's debate, Palin called out Perry for what she characterized as the "crony capitalism" driving his executive order mandating HPV vaccinations for Texas schoolgirls. (The state legislature quickly overturned the order.)
Perry's former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck, the drug company that produced the vaccine, at the time of the governor's decision.
Her language echoed that used by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in criticizing Perry during the debate.
That put a fork in what was once considered a dream team in some conservative circles: a Perry-Palin ticket. Or was that supposed to be a Palin-Perry ticket?
The Books
The tabloids feasted on the salacious allegations about Palin's private life in the leaked excerpts of the McGinniss biography. A handful of newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, refused to run the "Doonesbury" strips that contained book excerpts read by the panel's characters. And Palin and her husband, Todd, lashed out at the tome as a collection of "disgusting lies, innuendo and smears."
Trudeau fired back, telling the Washington Post that the book was "meticulously reported" by McGinniss, who famously rented the house next door to the Palins while he worked on the book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin.
Reviews have not been so kind. Janet Maslin of the New York Times, in a piece titled " Sarah Palin Could See This Guy From Her House," dismissed McGinniss' effort as a collection of "caustic, unsubstantiated gossip" that's also "dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Crowds attend service for Sikh murders
OAK CREEK, Wis. — Hundreds of people streamed into a Wisconsin high school Friday to pay their final respects to six worshippers gunned down by a white supremacist at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee.
Somber, tearful mourners, most wearing scarves on their heads in the Sikh tradition, greeted victims' family members with hugs at the Oak Creek High School gymnasium. Flowers adorned the six open caskets and a large video screen flashed photos of those killed and injured.
AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps
Mourners attend the funeral and memorial service Friday for the six victims of the Sikh temple of Wisconsin mass shooting in Oak Creek, Wis.
Mourners took their seats as Sikh singers sang hymns in Punjabi, an Indian dialect. One of the singers paused to translate some lyrics into English.
"Dear God, you have given me this body and this soul. This body is doing whatever you want me to do. You take this soul, this is your soul," he said.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder applauded the Sikh community, saying they responded without violence despite witnessing the worst of humankind.
"You've inspired the best of who we are," Holder said.
Federal investigators may never know why 40-year-old Wade Michael Page chose to attack strangers in a holy place. What they do know is that the Army veteran opened fire with a 9 mm pistol at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, shortly before Sunday services were due to begin.
Page killed five men and one woman, and injured two other men. Authorities say he then ambushed the first police officer who responded, shooting him nine times and leaving him in critical condition. A second officer then shot Page in the stomach, and Page took his own life with a shot to the head.
Violence against Sikhs is becoming too frequent, Holder told the mourners Friday.
"That is wrong, it is unacceptable and it will not be tolerated," he said.
Several dozen police officers stood by in the gym, watching the service.
Gov. Scott Walker told mourners that the Sikh community has shown that the best way to respond to hatred is with love.
"Today we mourn with you, we pray with you, we support you," Walker said.
Pardeep Singh Kaleka, the son of the slain temple president Satwant Singh Kaleka, said his father was selfless, often telling him that "you make a living by what you make, but you make a life by what you give."
Kaleka, 65, was shot as he tried to fend off Page with a butter knife.
Mourners were expected to later return to the temple where priests would read the Sikh holy book from cover to cover in a traditional rite honoring the dead called "Akhand Path." That process takes 48 hours.
"We want to pay homage to the spirits who are still in there," said Harpreet Singh, a nephew of one of the victims.
The FBI roped off the temple for four days while agents conducted their investigation. They handed the keys back to Sikh leaders Thursday morning, allowing worshippers to replace blood-stained carpets and apply fresh paint to some walls. One bullet hole in a door jamb leading to the main prayer hall was left unrepaired as a memorial to the shooting victims.
Kuldeep Chahal, 35, a Sikh teacher, drove for 12 hours to attend the ceremony Friday and show support for the community. Chahal brought banners and cards that members of his temple in Toronto, Canada, had signed for families of the victims.
The officer who was injured, Oak Creek Police Lt. Brian Murphy, was upgraded Thursday to satisfactory condition.