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Power went out in my New Orleans apartment on Saturday, August 28—the day before Category 4 Hurricane Ida crashed into Port Fourchon on Louisiana's southern coast, 100 miles away. By Sunday night, more than a million Louisiana households and businesses were without electricity, and the entire city of New Orleans was plunged into darkness. Another 104,000 lacked power in Mississippi. On Monday, residents awoke to "feels like" temperatures that rose into the triple digits without air conditioning, fans, ice, or for many, water.
Tens of thousands of electricity workers from 40 states, with the support of the federal government, fanned out across Mississippi and Louisiana. By September 6, Mississippi's power had been restored, though the same was true for less than half of those who had lost power in Louisiana, including just 64 percent of New Orleans. The hardest hit areas in Louisiana's lower southeast could remain dark for weeks yet.
Last Friday, with many homes and entire communities destroyed and still underwater, the area's largest utility company, Entergy, expressed sympathy for the plight of those still without electricity and reminded customers to avoid "incurring late fees or experiencing service disruption" by paying bills on time and online.
Entergy has come under fire for a host of deficiencies critics contend were avoidable and contributed to the historic loss of power—second only to that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Community-based organizations across the Gulf Coast are working to shift the power grid from one based almost exclusively on highly centralized fossil fuels and nuclear power to more localized and equitably distributed renewable energy. Doing that, they contend, will improve service, since smaller systems closer to the end user require less infrastructure to transmit power. The efforts will also contribute to mitigating—rather than adding fuel to—the climate crisis.
Ida carved a path of death and destruction from New Orleans to New York, and advocates say with climate change expected to deliver ever more powerful storms, there is no longer time to waste.
Does this have to happen again?
"No power," Ida Aronson, a member of the United Houma Nation, texted from Thibodaux in Lafourche Parish on September 6. Having depleted their savings to purchase a diesel generator, Aronson had use of a portable air conditioner, so "we can sleep tonight. Heat has been an issue, thankful it hasn't rained much past a couple bands, with so many peoples' roofs off. Houma has a lot more damage, we didn't want to use the gas to go check my families' places further down the Bayou, but they did let me know they were safe. Communication has been tough, scary not knowing if my other family and friends are OK."
Byron Encalade reported a total loss of power in Pointe à la Hache, a predominately Black fishing community in Plaquemines Parish on one of Louisiana's rapidly disappearing fingers—areas of coastal land so badly eroded that they are quickly disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico, the result of both natural and human factors, including the dredging of canals for the oil and gas industry. Most residents were getting by with small generators from their boats that provided minimal power. Encalade could use his freezer, but not his air conditioner. "I'm sweating it out right now talking to you," the 68-year-old said.
Critics contend that Entergy has not only failed to adequately adapt its energy model to the climate crisis, including the worsening of storms, it has also fought aggressively against readily available solutions, such as solar power.
"Any utility that's continuing to double down and invest in fossil [fuel] infrastructure is, we think, a real problem, a real shame," said Logan Atkinson Burke, executive director of the New Orleans-based Alliance for Affordable Energy.
With partners, including Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, the Alliance says the reasons to make the switch to renewables are many, foremost among them is the possibility of averting the worst of the climate crisis, something Hurricane Ida demonstrated. Combined with other vital improvements, it's also the best way to ensure that energy is provided more reliably and equitably, it says.
Entergy spokesman Neal Kirby told National Geographic, "Entergy has long believed climate change poses a significant risk to our region, our business, our society, and our planet." Kirby cited an Entergy plan for at least 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 using, among other means, carbon capture and sequestration, and reducing coal in favor of increased natural gas and nuclear energy.
The company's current portfolio shows solar projects and purchases totaling 550 megawatts, versus 2,200 megawatts of coal and 17,000 megawatts of natural gas.
Burke is skeptical of the company's long-term transition commitment, saying that she's yet to see concrete plans from Entergy to achieve these goals.
What happened during Ida?
We don't fully know why the provision of electricity has failed so profoundly in the wake of Hurricane Ida; it may be that completely fortifying a power grid against a Category 4 hurricane or worse is not yet possible. What is clear is that the larger the source of energy and the further away it is from its consumers, the more infrastructure is required to move it.
Entergy describes the transmission system as "the backbone of the electric grid" that "helps Entergy move energy from the power plant to the lines serving customers' neighborhoods." Without the transmission system, the electricity generated at a power plant has nowhere to go.
That infrastructure is inherently vulnerable to storms, particularly when needed upkeep isn't performed. Entergy has been criticized, fined, and investigated for failing to make the necessary investments in its overall operations to adequately meet even the daily energy needs of its customers.
"The problem with the current system is that virtually all of the generation is at the big end of this giant, somewhat brittle," system, said Karl Rábago, a former member of the Texas Public Utility Commission and former deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy. "If the big wire coming out of the ceiling fails, none of the little lights come on."
Entergy reported that Hurricane Ida rapidly knocked out of service hundreds of substations and transmission lines in Louisiana and Mississippi, including all eight lines that deliver power into southeast Louisiana. In an emailed response to questions, Entergy wrote that these eight lines "tie this integrated transmission system in the Greater New Orleans area to the larger national grid" and cited wind as the suspected primary cause.
Entergy noted the lines can withstand winds of 145 miles an hour. While winds were measured as high as 172 at Port Fourchon during Ida, most gusts were well below 145 miles an hour as the storm moved inland, reaching average recorded speeds of between 90 and 120 miles per hour in and around New Orleans.
Why the lines here fell nonetheless may be answered in a 2018 investigation of Entergy New Orleans by Quanta Technology. The report, the result of a directive by the New Orleans City Council, found that between 2017 and 2018, the number of interruptions in customer service due to transmission and substation outages nearly doubled, from 42,000 to over 81,000, and that Entergy New Orleans experienced significantly higher customer interruptions "due to transmission and substation outages than in the previous two years." It specifically cited the need for Entergy to invest more in upgrading aging infrastructure and inspections.
Rábago, who runs the consulting firm Rábago Energy LLC, warned that those transmission outages should have required a "priority response" from both Entergy and its regulator.
Entergy has said that the company invested $4.2 billion in its transmission lines from 2014 to 2019. A $100 million "reliability project" in Jefferson and Plaquemines Parishes included a new transmission line and upgrades to several existing lines.[1] Much of Jefferson and all of Plaquemines Parish not only lack power today, but are not expected to see it restored before the end of September.
In February, Entergy said in a securities filing that hurricanes last year damaged several transmission lines, including an unspecified one in southeastern Louisiana. "The company said that the line had not been repaired because it could cost a lot to do so," the New York Times reported.
In response to questions, Entergy identified the line as one that services Barataria in Jefferson Parish, which has remained without power since Ida struck. Entergy did not address the issue of cost, rather saying, "It was significantly damaged by Hurricane Zeta and required extensive repairs that would take well over one year to complete."
Meanwhile, Entergy brought in $10.1 billion in revenue in 2020 and its profits climbed 12 percent, to $1.4 billion.
Frequent outages, unequal impacts
An Alliance for Affordable Energy analysis compared New Orleans to the nation and Louisiana as a whole and found that the city not only has "excessively high durations and frequencies of power outages," but that they are also unequal.
Gentilly, New Orleans East, and the Lower Ninth Ward, neighborhoods which are majority people of color and low income, experience the greatest proportion of outages, demonstrating "a clear form of environmental racism," the analysis said. New Orleans also has the second highest percentage of household income spent on energy bills in the country.
One reason why these bills are so high is that Entergy adds fees to recoup from customers the costs it incurs because of disasters, including hurricanes. While an increasingly common practice among energy companies, the frequency of such events here means rate payers regularly feel the pinch to their wallets.
In 2017, Entergy sought to build a new natural gas power plant in a predominately Black and Vietnamese neighborhood in New Orleans East. It faced such intense public opposition that the company paid actors reading from prepared scripts to attend public hearings and voice their "support" for the plant. The company was fined after the ruse was uncovered by local media, but the plant went through. It was supposed to provide backup energy were the city to be cut off from the national grid. In the wake of Ida, it failed.
Power to the people
Instead of new natural gas plants, Logan Burke and Marriele Mango of the Clean Energy Group describe "a multitude of resilient and renewable power opportunities that can be incorporated to improve grid reliability and better prepare and support communities in the event of an outage." The Alliance also joined a long list of local organizations contributing to a 2020 report detailing a host of alternatives.
Burke's first priority is "solar plus storage"—solar panels combined with backup batteries. The batteries are expensive, so government support, especially for low-income and communities of color, would help more people acquire them. The panels would be installed on peoples' homes, businesses, and community hubs, particularly those used as shelter, cooling, and charging stations in times of emergency. She also wants to see microgrids, small backup electrical distribution and generation systems that can operate independently from the larger grid if an outage occurs, such as a felled transmission line.
Despite strong local support, efforts to advance net metering, which allows users to store excess electricity on the grid, making it available when the sun doesn't shine, were defeated in New Orleans in 2019 by opponents, including Entergy. Making homes and buildings more energy efficient would reduce energy consumption, lower electricity bills, and provide well-paying jobs. The region also has vast offshore wind potential.
A New Orleans native, actor Wendell Pierce—well known for roles in The Wire and Jack Ryan—heads the Pontchartrain Park Community Development Corporation. The neighborhood where he grew up is on the National Register of Historic Districts as the first African American neighborhood created in post-WWII segregated New Orleans. "We have to do everything possible to mitigate the climate crisis, and that means moving our neighborhood into the 21st century with renewable energy," he said. To that end, the neighborhood association is developing a community solar project that will service all 1,000 homes in the district.
Jonathan Green, executive director of Mississippi-based Steps Coalition, also advocates community solar and is already building "the first community solar farm on the Gulf Coast." Communally owned and operated, the farm will be capable of powering 500 nearby low-income homes while providing training in solar jobs for the local Black community. Expanding community solar to more areas has been difficult, he says, as "utilities here have been very resistant to solar."
Green argued that federal support is needed to leapfrog recalcitrant local and state governments and make the shift away from fossil fuels at the pace and scale needed. The infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. Senate, and the Budget Reconciliation bill in the House, both include funding for many of these items, but more is needed, Burke said. Locally, Burke is part of both a Gulf South for a Green New Deal effort and supports the national Green New Deal, which includes not only much larger financial commitments to a just transition, but also a greater focus on environmental justice more broadly.
"If the power isn't where people are, it isn't able to support them," Burke says.
Annie Flanagan is a documentary photographer focusing on issues surrounding gender, sexuality, and trauma in the United States.


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ZARZAR MODELS is one of the top modeling agencies for women in the United States representing models for advertising campaigns, fashion editorials, high fashion runway, film, and television commercials in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, New York, London, Paris, Milan, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo. The agency recruits and represents models throughout the world through its global fashion and modeling network.
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How To Become A Victoria's Secret Model And How To Become A Victoria's Secret Angel
Please note that this is only a summary article for beginning models. Please feel free to visit the...
Casting Lingerie Models For The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2010
Victoria's Secret was started in San Francisco, California, in 1977 by Stanford Graduate School of Business alumnus Roy Raymond, who felt embarrassed trying to purchase lingerie for his wife in a department store environment. He opened the first store at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, and quickly followed it with a mail order catalog and three other stores.
The stores were meant to create a comfortable environment for men, with wood paneled walls, Victorian details and helpful sales staff. Instead of racks of bras and panties in every size, there were single styles, paired together and mounted on the wall in frames. Men could browse for styles for women and sales staff would help estimate the appropriate size, pulling from inventory in the back rooms. In 1982, after five years of operations, Roy Raymond sold the company to The Limited. Raymond's next business venture ended in bankruptcy. Raymond committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in 1993.
The Limited kept the personalized image of Victoria's Secret intact. Victoria's Secret was rapidly expanded into the U.S. malls throughout the 1980s. The company was able to offer a widened range of products, such as shoes, evening wear, and perfumes, with its mail catalog issued eight times annually.
By the early 1990s, Victoria's Secret had become the largest American lingerie retailer, topping one billion United States Dollars.
Beginning in 1995, Victoria's Secret began holding the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which is broadcasted primetime on American television. The show is a lavish event with elaborate costumed lingerie, varying music, and set design according to the different themes running within the show. The show attracts hundreds of celebrities and entertainers, with special performers and/or acts every year.
ZARZAR MODELS is one of the top female modeling agencies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Beverly Hills representing women in print editorials, high fashion runway, film, television commercials, and promotions. The agency has as partners fashion modeling agencies in major fashion cities such as San Francisco, Miami, New York, London, Paris, Milan, and Sao Paulo Brazil and recruits and represents models throughout the world through its global fashion and modeling network.


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List of Winners & Performers at the 2015 CMT Music Awards
Carrie Underwood Wins 3 at the 2015 CMT Music Awards!
If you missed the 2015 CMT Awards on June 10th don't panic, below is a list of the Winners, Performers and also a list of the Nominees. The Winners & Performers List lets you visit the winning or performing artist's song on YouTube as well as provides a link to iTunes making it easy for you to create your own 2015 CMT Awards Country Music Playlist!
Featured Video: Carrie Underwood of course! Winning for Video of the Year at the 2015 CMT Music Awards
2015 CMT Music Awards - Winners & Performers ListA list featuring the Winners and Performers at the 2015 Country Music Awards, June 10th 2015
|Country Artist
|Get Song/Album
|Carrie Underwood
Miranda Lambert
|Somethin' Bad
|Official Video
|Collaborative Video
of the Year
|Carrie Underwood
|Something in the Water
|Official Video
|Female Video
of the Year &
Video of the Year
|Carrie Underwood
|Little Toy Gun
|Official Video
|Kenny Chesney
|American Kids
|Official Video
|Jake Owen
|Real Life
|Lyric Video
|Eric Church
|Like a Wrecking Ball
|Lyric Video
|A Thousand Horses
|Official Video
|Florida Georgia Line
|Official Video
|Duo of the Year
|Florida Georgia Line
|Anything Goes
|Official Video
|Luke Bryan
|Play it Again
|Official Video
|Male Video
of the Year
|Luke Bryan
|Kick the Dust Up
|Official Audio
|Going Out Like That
|Official Video
|Lady Antebellum
|Official Video
|Group of the Year
|Lady Antebellum
|Long Stretch of Love
|Tour Version Video
|Beautiful Now
|Official Audio Video
|Sam Hunt
|House Party
|Official Video
|Sam Hunt
|Leave the Night On
|Official Video
|Breakthrough Video
of the Year
|Jason Aldean &
Bob Seger
|Turn the Page
|Bob Seger Only
|CMT Performance
of the Year
|Jason Aldean
|Tonight Looks
Good on You
|Official Video
|Keith Urban
|John Cougar,
John Deer
John 3:16
|Official Video
|Zac Brown Band
|Official Lyric Video
|God Made Girls
|Official Video
|Darius Rucker
|Homegrown Honey
|Official Video
|Chris Janson
|Buy Me A Boat
|Lyric Video
|Maddie & Tae
|Girl in a Country Song
|Official Video
|Kelsea Ballerini
|Love Me Like
You Mean It
|Official Video
|Frankie Ballard
|Sunshine & Whiskey
|Official Video
Here are the Nominees for the 2015 CMT Music Awards
Video of the Year
- Carrie Underwood, "Something in the Water" – Winner
- Darius Rucker, "Homegrown Honey"
- Dierks Bentley, "Drunk on a Plane"
- Florida Georgia Line, "Dirt"
- Jason Aldean, "Burnin' It Down"
- Kenny Chesney, "American Kids"
- Lady Antebellum, "Bartender"
- Lee Brice, "I Don't Dance"
- Luke Bryan, "Play It Again"
- Maddie & Tae, "Girl in a Country Song"
- Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood, "Somethin' Bad"
- Sam Hunt, "Leave the Night On"
Male Video of the Year
- Dierks Bentley, "Drunk on a Plane"
- Eric Church, "Talladega"
- Jason Aldean, "Burnin' It Down"
- Keith Urban, "Somewhere in My Car"
- Kenny Chesney, "American Kids"
- Luke Bryan, "Play It Again" – Winner
Female Video of the Year
- Carrie Underwood, "Little Toy Guns"
- Carrie Underwood, "Something in the Water" – Winner
- Lee Ann Womack, "The Way I'm Livin'"
- Miranda Lambert, "Little Red Wagon"
- RaeLynn, "God Made Girls"
- Reba, "Going Out Like That"
Group Video of the Year
- A Thousand Horses, "Smoke"
- Eli Young Band, "Dust"
- Lady Antebellum, "Bartender" – Winner
- Little Big Town, "Day Drinking"
- The Band Perry, "Chainsaw"
- Zac Brown Band, "All Alright"
Breakthrough Video of the Year
- Chase Rice, "Gonna Wanna Tonight"
- Frankie Ballard, "Sunshine & Whiskey"
- Kelsea Ballerini, "Love Me Like You Mean It"
- Maddie & Tae, "Girl in a Country Song"
- RaeLynn, "God Made Girls"
- Sam Hunt, "Leave the Night On" – Winner
- Duo Video of the Year
- Big & Rich, "Look at You"
- Brothers Osborne, "Rum"
- Florida Georgia Line, "Dirt"
- Florida Georgia Line, "Sun Daze"
- Maddie & Tae, "Girl in a Country Song"
- The Swon Brothers, "Later On"
Collaborative Video of the Year
- Blake Shelton featuring Ashley Monroe, "Lonely Tonight"
- Brantley Gilbert featuring Justin Moore and Thomas Rhett, "Small Town Throwdown"
- Jennifer Nettles featuring Brandy Clark, "His Hands"
- Kenny Chesney with Grace Potter, "Wild Child"
- Miranda Lambert with Carrie Underwood, "Somethin' Bad'" – Winner
- Tim McGraw featuring Faith Hill, "Meanwhile Back at Mama's"
CMT Performance of the Year
- Bob Seger and Jason Aldean, "Turn the Page" – Winner
- Brett Eldredge, "Beat of the Music"
- John Legend and Lee Ann Womack, "You & I (Nobody in the World)"
- Katy Perry and Kacey Musgraves, "Roar"
- Keith Urban, "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World"
- Kenny Chesney, "American Kids"
- Lady Antebellum and Aloe Blacc, "Wake Me Up"
- Lady Antebellum and Chris Stapleton, "Drink a Beer"
Winners & Performers at the 2015 CMT Music Awards
Tags: Country Song Groupings, Country Song Lists, Music Award Shows


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After such a long time here we have the final official announcement of One Punch Man Season 2 Release Date. Today they made it official through a press release that One Punch Man Season 2 will release on April 2019.
Announcement: The most powerful hero returns! One-Punch Man Season 2 comes April 2019. pic.twitter.com/ZwrCljO7vU
— VIZ (@VIZMedia) August 12, 2018
We also saw the official trailer & after seeing the trailer it has become clear that the season two is more focused on Garou & Saitama. The trailer clearly shows that the whole series in on being powerful. We might see the most.
Also, Check:
The One Punch Man Season 2 will have a total of 12 Episodes. The good sign here is that it has now finally got confirmed. We all were waiting to know when it will release, but being released on 2019 August seems quite long. By that time we could help you to know more about Season 2.
We believe that we might get our hands on some raw footage and also a brief about what the whole series is all about. Getting Goru in Anime is what exciting. We might see the evolution of the new era of being strong.
We also would like to know your thought on the One Punch Man Season 2.


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Pre-Fall 2013 Collection / Alexander McQueen (Sarah Burton, Director)
Vogue by Sarah Mower: The Church of England has been tearing itself asunder recently over whether to allow women to become bishops (it's no-go so far), but if it should come to pass in time for pre-fall deliveries, fashion-conscious female clerics ought to flock to Alexander McQueen. Only joking. Yet there's a flicker of a […]Alexander MCQueenCate BlanchettCatherine MiddletonEnglandGwyneth PaltrowLady GagaPrince William
AW12 Backstage / Alexander McQueen
Sarah Burton is soaring to new creative heights at the house of Alexander McQueen. It's apt that her fourth womenswear catwalk collection for the brand, A/W12, deals with ascension too, fixated to an almost fetishistic extent with the idea of lightness. There was the feeling that these painstakingly laboured 34 couture looks were hovering. Or […]Alexander MCQueenSarah BurtonSean Frank
High Fashion in 8-bit
Pixel art meets high fashion in this really interesting set by Fashionary. Inspired by the retro 8-bit graphic, we mixed the pixel with the Fashionary templates to create various pieces we love the most.8-bitAlexander MCQueenCelineFashionGivenchyGucciHussein Chalayan
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
I like to think of myself as a plastic surgeon with a knife. I oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil. I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting so that when I'm dead and gone, people will know that the 21st century was […]Alexander MCQueenFashionFeaturedRight and Wrong


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In view of the current novel coronavirus outbreak, Kong Mou Sum Library will close from 30 March - 7 April 2020 (School Holiday on 8-15 April 2020) and reopen on 16 April 2020. Please check the latest updates of opening hours on library website before visiting the Library. Library users are encouraged to access our online resources to support the research needs, teaching goals and learning activities. For enquiries and assistance, please contact the Library at firstname.lastname@example.com or 2972 7332 during opening hours.
1. Library Support for Online Teaching and LearningA. Access to e-resources off campusThe Library provides a rich collection of e-resources, including databases / eBook / e-Journals covering multi-disciplinary subjects. Staff and students can access the library's subscribed e-resources or Discovery Search remotely.
B. How to login remote accessTo access the quality resources remotely, please login with: campus email name and password (for Staff) or Student ID and campus email password (for Student) on the authentication page.[...]
1) Library Opening HoursKong Mou Sum Library will open at 1:00-5:00 p.m. on Monday to Friday from March 16-29, 2020. Please check our Library Notice regularly for the latest updates.
2) Return and Renewal of Library MaterialsLibrary has allowed the grace period of returning library materials. Fines for library items that could not be returned or renewed online during 31 January to 29 March 2020 will not be accrued. Users are recommended to renew the items online through 'My Library Record'. Details please refer to the QUICK GUIDE.
3) Electronic Resources[...]
|Sorry, this entry is only available in 繁體中文(Trad Chi) and 简体中文(Simp Chi).


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During her tenure, Carolyn led the school through a remarkable period of redefinition, which began with focusing on and streamlining Gateway's mission. Carolyn's relationship with Gateway began in 1998 when her son Benjamin Salzman '04 first walked through its doors. Since that moment, she has remained devoted to ensuring that the school continued to grow and thrive.
In 1999, Carolyn was elected to the Board of Trustees and served as Chair from 2001–2005. In this role, she oversaw the expansion of enrollment, relocation to a permanent facility, and the stabilization of school finances, including the appeal of the funded tuition rate and the establishment of a Development Office. To restructure the school, she initiated a reorganization that included reordering the overall administrative structure and redefining roles, formal program evaluation, redesign of budgeting and accounting systems, implementation of reporting and control procedures, and revision of teacher compensation and benefits. Her Board committees have included Co-Chair, The Campaign for Gateway 1999–2002, Head of Program Committee responsible for quality and cost of a new Middle School program, and Head of Audit Committee.
In 2013, she was appointed Head of School. In the ensuing seven years, the school grew to nearly 200 boys and girls ages 5 to 14. In June 2014, the Board of Trustees adopted a strategic plan that she successfully led to secure Gateway's position as one of the premier independent schools serving students with special needs. Under this plan, the school successfully:
- Expanded the enrollment while narrowing its student profile to include only students with language-based learning disabilities and/or attention deficits;
- Improved Gateway's finances to ensure school sustainability by matching tuition to expenses and phasing out public funding;
- Implemented premier professional development opportunities for faculty and staff to ensure effective and high-quality instruction;
- Developed and documented a curriculum for kindergarten through 8th grade that integrated skill sequences in language, literacy, and each subject domain with subject content to guide teaching and learning;
- With the revamping of Gateway's math program, launched a professional lecture series, Mathland;
- Secured sufficient monies during the school's 50th Anniversary to cover projected operating deficits during the initial renovation phase;
- Completed a renovation project that included a welcoming street-level Lobby, a Dining Hall to accommodate a new lunch program, a state-of-the-art Auditorium, reconfigured Middle School space, and additional classrooms;
- And initiated a skills-based Summer Program, Lion P.R.I.D.E.
In March of 2020, when the global COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City, Carolyn seamlessly transitioned the school to a distance learning program. The online learning platform impressed parents, faculty, and students with an exemplary system that remained consistent with the school's pedagogy and mission.
Over the years, Carolyn Salzman has demonstrated her gratitude to Gateway and her passion for the school's mission and its unique and successful approach to teaching children with language-based learning disabilities and attention deficits. She has been a key visionary in The Gateway School's legacy, and her inspiring leadership has had an indelible impact.


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Mike Wallace averaged 21.0 yds per catch
in 2010.
Mike Wallace (2.09)
Mike Wallace posted nice increases over his rookie numbers from
2009 and showed in his first year as a starter that he can be
more than a long-ball threat. He may not post gaudy WR numbers,
but I think he has a higher floor than most after the top-tier
guys are off the board. I'm not excited about doubling up at RB
to start this draft, which is fine because the available options
don't excite me either. I am keen on a couple of the available
QBs, but I'll wait and see who falls to me next round.
Drew Brees (3.04)
There are still three exceptional QBs available, so I'm glad I
waited last round. But none of these guys should make it back
around in the fourth, so I'll tag Brees as my preferred choice.
He's logged a lot of pass attempts on his arm and shoulder, but
I love the combination of how Brees spreads the ball around�not
relying on just one or two players�and the aggressive play-calling
by his coach.
Steve Johnson (4.09)
Last season Johnson had a stretch of five straight games where
he found the end zone (Weeks 3 through 8) but then scored in only
two other games in the second half of the season (plus his big
drop versus PIT in OT). On the plus side, he gets a lot of targets,
and I have faith in Chan Gailey�s ability to make the offense
churn out fantasy points. I'm hopeful for more consistency and
perhaps even an uptick from Johnson, who was learning on the job
last year with only 12 catches and 112 yards on his NFL resum�
heading into 2010.
Felix Jones (5.04)
I'm tempted to go TE with this pick since Jermichael Finley made
it back to me, but I feel the TE position is deeper this year
than in the past. It�s one thing to pull the trigger on
a reliable Antonio Gates (or Vernon Davis, who was just selected)
with an early pick, and it�s another thing to use it on
an injury risk like Finley. Meanwhile, we are closing in on a
large group of running backs I don't want very much to do with,
so I�ll grab Felix, who racks up yards and catches�though
he needs to find the end zone more. With Marion Barber most likely
out of the picture, and with rookies in a tough spot to keep up,
Jones should get a good opportunity to improve his fantasy output.
Mike Williams, SEA (6.09)
I definitely had my doubts, as did many, that former-Lion, former-Titan,
and former-Raider Mike Williams could take two years away from
football and not only revive his career but make a solid impact.
He did just that thanks to college coach Pete Carroll giving him
a chance and Williams showing an incredibly renewed work ethic.
Reports indicate that Williams is continuing to work hard this
offseason. He'll never be a burner, but he is a big body who will
command plenty of targets and be difficult to defend near the
goal line. Even with a questionable QB situation, I like his chances
to outperform this draft spot.
A.J. Green (7.04)
I did say earlier that rookies are in a tough spot to get up to
speed this year because of the missed coaching time, but I'll
make an exception in adding talented WR A.J. Green. I thought
about him last round, but as my third receiver, I was leery. As
my fourth receiver, he�s worth a shot here. Running a report
of the top rookie WR performances since 2000 over at Pro Football
Reference gave me some comfort that he can be a valuable contributor,
although Green's QB is worse than average among that group.
James Starks (8.09)
I've felt for a couple of years that Ryan Grant is a somewhat
average RB who simply found himself in a great situation and made
the most of his opportunity. If the Packers could find a decent
enough replacement�as Brandon Jackson never was�they
would replace Grant. This looks like the year to really put my
theory to the test. Starks did next to nothing last season, spending
most of his time on the PUP, until he carried the load through
the playoffs with excellent results. This could be a shared role,
or the better back could win the starting job and a large majority
of the carries. Starks is as good a bet as Grant to do that.
Jimmy Graham (9.04)
With most every team having filled out their starters at QB, RB,
and WR, plus a backup or two, it is time to grab my starting TE
before heading into the long turn. I could afford to wait at TE
the prior round because two of the three teams between that pick
and this one already owned Antonio Gates and Vernon Davis. The
Huddle didn't address TE, which left my top choice, Jimmy Graham,
available for me. This may seem early for Graham (just the sixth
TE off the board among a deeper pool of talent at the position
than we've had in years), but why not go for a player who was
barely used in the first half of his rookie season yet finished
with 31 receptions for 356 yards and 5 TDs, including 4 TDs in
the final three games? Why not go for a player who has one of
the league's best quarterbacks throwing to him? Why not go for
a player the Saints felt so good about that they released Jeremy
Shockey? There is some risk here due to lack of a proven track
record, but I'll swing for the fences in hopes that Graham breaks
out and lives up to (and possibly goes beyond) the expectation
of this draft spot.
Jordy Nelson (10.09)
The probability that the Packers don't re-sign James "Stone
Hands" Jones are pretty decent. Say, 50-50. The chances Donald
Driver, now age 36, drops off like he did last year, or worse,
are pretty good. The odds are against rookie Randall Cobb making
an immediate impact as a receiver in the complex West Coast system.
Admittedly, Jermichael Finley is back, but add it all up and Jordy
Nelson has a nice opportunity for a breakout season. I'm trying
not to be too influenced by Nelson's impressive playoff games,
but I�m hoping they gave a glimpse of what he is capable
of on a more consistent basis.
Mark Sanchez (11.04)
Someone is going to get a steal on a QB in this round or later,
but picking the one or maybe two who are going to far exceed our
expectations is not something I want to gamble on at this point.
I'll take Mr. Job Security, who had over 500 pass attempts last
year and even had some pretty decent multi-TD games as the Jets
opened up the playbook a little more for him. Will his passing
options be reduced? Perhaps. But I'm comfortable that a 3,500-18
effort is his floor as he enters his third year. Not very exciting,
maybe, but considerably less risky, too.
Bernard Scott (12.09)
There isn't much left at RB, but I need a fourth, and my options
aren't going to get any better the longer I wait. I'll add Scott,
who has been decent in limited carries through his two years in
the league. More importantly, the depth chart he�s a part
of is shallow. Cedric Benson is a free agent but is expected to
be re-signed. The Bengals could give Scott even more opportunity
than in the past if they roll with a rookie quarterback.
Tony Moeaki (13.04)
I thought about Aaron Hernandez with my last pick, but when I
saw him, Jermaine Gresham, and Tony Moeaki all available at the
time, I decided to wait... and hoped it wouldn't be Gresham coming
back since I don't need any more Bengals. I was impressed with
how Moeaki made a decent impact as a rookie last season. The Chiefs
still don't have exceptional receiving alternatives beyond Dwayne
Bowe, so it isn't inconceivable
that Moeaki earns an uptick in his targets and output.
Arrelious Benn (14.09)
I�m playing a hunch on Benn. He got his feet wet last year
in the shadow of rookie phenom Mike Williams, and my hunch is
that he is ready to make an impact this season while opposing
defenses pay a lot more attention to Williams. The big knock on
Benn is that he suffered an ACL tear in Week 16 last year. News
of his recovery is very positive, but some of that is coming from
his agent, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Like I
said, it�s a hunch, and I don't think you would want to
take Benn any earlier than this until we see him back on the field
doing normal drills.
Philadelphia Eagles (15.04)
Mike Sims-Walker (16.09)
Mason Crosby (17.04)
Arizona Cardinals (18.09)
Kansas City Chiefs (19.04)
Connor Barth (20.09)
To close out the draft I could have certainly used another RB,
but they would have all been shots in the dark at that point.
I rolled the dice and stuck with the four I drafted. I couldn't
resist adding more of a name player in Sims-Walker this late.
Sure, he had a disappointing season overall last year, and he
is a free agent and not at all expected to be back with the Jaguars.
However, looking at his game log I saw good to great performances
when they fed him just five or more targets. Between some missed
games, three single-target games, and a two-target game to open
the season, he wasn�t able to produce consistently. It will be
interesting to see what NFL team he lands on, but we may be looking
at a halfway decent, undervalued WR who costs next to nothing
to acquire right now.
I should add a caveat about those three defenses I chose. I didn't
mention this at the top, but this is a Draft Masters (best ball)
format league. With the long timeline between mocking in May and
starting the uncertain season, it might as well be called the
Battle of Attrition Challenge. But if you find yourself in any
best ball leagues, taking a third defense can be a good way to
maximize your points at the position because defenses are so random
in their scoring from week to week.
I played the bulk of the draft with more of a straight-up re-draft
mindset—not giving much weight to the best ball aspect—to
provide a better mock draft for you, the reader. But I tacked
on the third defense so I could still try to win this thing. In
a normal re-draft, I wouldn't draft three defenses. I probably
wouldn't draft two kickers, either.
Okay, that about wraps it up. Get out there and do a mock draft.
It's great practice for your real draft, and it sure beats
reading about the business side of sports day in and day out.
Copyright © 1998-2023 FFToday.com. All rights reserved.
Partner of USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties.


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Antifur releases "Searching for Sanctuary 00" by LeonLS
LeonLS returns for his second album on Antifur with Searching for Sanctuary 00. This artist has had quite a romp through the vaporwave spheres, having begun as a classic-style artist with vaporhop tendencies and moving through dreampunk and now hardvapour. Searching for Sanctuary 00 is a hardvapour/ghost tech hybrid work with some downtempo electronica elements. Choice cuts are the nearly ten-minute "Saint Restoration" with its house beats and slushy production aesthetic, and "Mantra" with its ricocheting backbeat. Recommended for fans of Halo Acid, especially Days of Night, and other releases on the Tekres label. Searching for Sanctuary 00 is available for $4.21 USD as a digital download.
Check it out below:


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New physical phenomena caused by magnetoelectric and antiferroelectric interactions in magnets
Mikheev Institute of Metal Physics, Ural Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, S Kovalevskoi str. 18, Ekaterinburg, 620108, Russian Federation
The review examines the dynamics of a special class
of magnetic substances (magnetically ordered crystals) in which
the magnetic atoms do not coincide with the symmetry center
(provided that such a center exists in the crystal). Research into
the magnetoelectric and antiferroelectric interactions in such
magnets has led to a new section in the spin dynamics of both the
electrical and nuclear subsystems. The review is based primarily
on the latest works


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OpenCL: Rendering Performance
LuxMark vs. RatGPU
Meet two different rendering engines that take different approaches. First, there's the popular LuxRender, on which LuxMark is based. This one finally attracted Nvidia's attention after showing up time and again as a weak spot for the company's GeForce and Quadro cards. RatGPU, on the other hand, didn't need that special attention; Nvidia's offerings did well in it right out of the gate.
LuxRender demonstrates that Nvidia's cards do support OpenCL fairly well, if there's no CUDA option. AMD once enjoyed a significant performance advantage in this test, though the magnitude of its wins is shrinking. The following charts represent LuxMark at three difficulty settings:
The FirePro cards land in order of their shader performance for simple single-precision tasks. This changes as the workloads get more complex, allowing the FirePro W8100 to draw even with Nvidia's Quadro K6000.
Conversely, AMD's graphics cards don't do as well in ratGPU. This benchmark isn't one that gets much attention. Consequently, the two large graphics card vendors don't appear to optimize for it.
Regardless, the rendering approach seems to favor Nvidia's cards. We once again choose three different difficulty levels.


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Coming up on Sunday, Feb. 12, the vendors of the Essex Street Market will be participating in the second annual Winter DayLife Festival at The Lowline Lab.
A prototype of the underground park has been set up in a vacant building of the Essex Street Market since the fall of 2015. It will be closing in the next few weeks as developers of Essex Crossing prepare the building for demolition. So this will be one of your last chances to see the Lowline Lab in its current form.
Merchants taking part in the festival include Osaka Grub, Arancini Bros., Saxelby Cheesemongers, Ni Japanese Deli, Pain D'Avignon, Porto Rico Coffee, Rainbo's Fish, Puebla Mexican, and Formaggio Essex. More vendors will be announced in the near future.
Winter DayLife will take place from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. If you're interested in attending, please RSVP.
Here's another market-related event coming up next Wednesday, Feb. 1. Three women trailblazers from the food world will be taking part in a panel discussion. It's part of the market's evening "Talk & Taste" series. The discussion will be moderated by Caroline Shin of the web series Cooking With Granny. Panelists include DeDe Lahman, co-Owner of Clinton Street Baking Company; Claudia Wu, co-founder and creative director of Cherry Bombe magazine; and Shalini Singh, founder and instructor at Shalini's Kitchen. The evening starts at 6:30 p.m. with bites from Clinton Street Baking Company and Saxelby Cheesemongers. You can register here.


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Three schools host opening action of 2014 ITA Summer Circuit, presented by the USTA
SKILLMAN, NJ (July 2) - The University of Mary Washington, University of Missouri-Kansas City and University of New Mexico hosted opening action this past weekend for the 2014 ITA Summer Circuit, presented by the USTA.
Each event's action is recapped below:
Mary Washington
In the men's singles event at Mary Washington, top-seeded Carsten Fisher moved into the final without dropping a set. The future Dayton Flyer faced off against Allegheny's Patrick Cole, fighting back from a set down to win 3-6, 6-2, 10-5.
In women's singles, both semifinals went the distance. No. 1 seed Ryann Foster then ended unseeded Sydney Rider's surprise run to the finals with a decisive 6-1, 6-1 victory. Foster will join the Texas Longhorns in the fall.
In men's doubles action, the Allegheny duo of Cole and Tyler Triolo needed tiebreakers in the Round of 16 and the semifinals to advance to the final, where they triumphed 8-4. In the semifinals, Cole and Triolo bested host Mary Washington's duo of Evan Charles and Andrew Curtis.
In women's doubles, the third-seeded pair of Laura Dean and Victoria Olivarez bested the field, winning four straight matches. Olivarez is coming off a successful spring season at Tennessee, where she won 19 singles matches, while Dean will attend Kennesaw State in the fall.
Missouri-Kansas City
The seeds held well in men's singles, as six of eight made the quarterfinals and three seeds advanced to the semifinals. It was fifth-seeded Johnny Goodwin who cruised into the finals, surrendering just 11 games before edging Dylan Steffens, 3-6, 6-1, 10-7. Steffens earned his revenge in doubles, pairing with Court Clark for a 9-7 win over Goodwin and Jack Evans in a highly contested men's doubles final.
In the women's singles final, it was a battle of the top two seeds, with No. 1 seed Alecia Kauss coming through with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Tess Herder. The Indiana senior did not drop a set en route to the title. Kauss joined forces with Texas Tech commit Katelyn Jackson in women's doubles, and the duo were never threatened in four matches, winning 8-2 in the final.
New Mexico
Soon to be New Mexico senior Mitch McDaniels raced to the men's singles title in the opening week of the circuit, besting teammate Sean Baklini 6-4, 3-6, 10-6 in the final. The two then paired to win the men's doubles crown.
In women's singles, late addition Carmen Corley took the place of the top seed, who withdrew from the tournament and filled her shoes admirably, winning three matches en route to the title. In doubles, she teamed up with singles finalist Natasha Smith to capture the championship.
ITA Summer Circuit "Shot of the Week"
Remember to submit your pictures for the "Shot of the Week" contest, with the first winner to be selected on July 9. Please tweet or e-mail your photos by Tuesday, July 8 at noon. Next week's winner will be awarded with an ITA drawstring bag.
Upcoming Tournament Schedule:
June 30-July 6: Pittsburgh
July 5-7: Laguna Niguel, San Jose State, Wichita State, Abilene Christian
July 5-8: Purdue, Minnesota
July 6-8: Virginia Tech, Florida State
For complete coverage of the 2014 ITA Summer Circuit, presented by the USTA, including access to draws, live scores and more, please visit the official ITA event page. Follow the ITA on Twitter, @ITAtennis, or like the ITA Facebook page for updates and news. Use the hashtag #ITASummerCircuit for all tweets in regards to the event, or search the term "ITASummerCircuit" to find others who are tweeting about the circuit.
About the ITA Summer Circuit
Since its inception in 1993, nearly 30,000 men and women have competed in the ITA Summer Circuit, presented by the USTA. Providing college and junior athletes (along with alumni) the opportunity to compete in organized events year round, the Circuit remains open to anyone as long as he/she is a current ITA member. There are nine regional circuits that span across the United States, which include 36 different tournaments.


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U.S. CEO Blasts France: 'Keep The So-Called Workers'
Here at Fox Business, we have, on occasion, held American workers feet to the fire. There were the FedEx workers throwing Christmas presents in the bushes instead of delivering them. Then, there were the autoworkers drinking beer on their lunch break.
But, American workers just don't stack up to French workers in the goofing-off and mailing it in department.
The CEO of American Tire found this out the hard way. Titan International CEO Maurice Taylor had attempted to turn around a French tire factory, but it didn't go so well. Here's what he wrote France's Minister of Transforming Productivity (yes, they have one of those) after spending time at a factory in Amiens.
"I have visited the factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three, and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!"
The CEO went on to warn that France will lose all its domestic tire producers if the government continues to meddle in labor negotiations.
"The Chinese are shipping tires into France - really all over Europe - and yet you do nothing. In five years, Michelin won't be able to produce tire in France. France will lose its industrial business because government is more government."
As for buying the factory? Taylor says no way!
"You can keep the so-called workers," he writes.
It's no surprise that France is in a big recession. When François Hollande was running for office, he predicted the economy would grow 1.7%. By the time he hit office, he had shaved the number to 1.2%, and by the time the budget was drawn up, the government was forecasting growth of .8%.
Turns out, all of that was way too optimistic.
It all reminds me of a story I read recently about a store owner who just didn't get it. He sold a popular breakfast treat that he couldn't keep in stock because it would sell out in minutes disappointing customers who arrived later in the day. So, instead of ordering more, or making it himself, he stopped selling the treat.
Just like France, he didn't get it!


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|Polar twilight
From Wikipedia: Polar twilight occurs in areas that are located at the inner border of the polar circles, where the sun will be on or below the horizon all day on the winter solstice, although there may still be enough light for normal outdoor activities during civil twilight because of scattering of light by the upper atmosphere and refraction. It happens when there is no true daylight and only civil twilight occurs at the solar culmination. Street-lamps may remain on and one looking out a window from a brightly lit room may see their reflection even at noon, as the level of outdoor illuminance will remain below that of many illuminated indoor spaces. However, it is possible to conduct outdoor activities without any artificial light during the time of civil twilight. Sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder will probably resort to therapy with artificial light, as the psychological benefits of daylight require relatively high levels of ambient light (up to 10,000 lux) which are not present in any stage of twilight, thus, the midday twilights experienced anywhere inside the polar circles are still "polar night" in that sense.


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top of page
Ultrasound-Guided Sclerotherapy
Ultrasound-guided sclerotherapy is a technique used for the treatment of abnormal veins that are not visible on the surface of the skin. The procedure, as the name implies, relies on ultrasound to visualize the target vein and guide the injection of sclerosant foam into the vein.
The following sequence of photographs illustrates the procedure. The patient usually feels no more than the needle prick and sometimes some mild burning. The medications that we use for this procedure are polidocanol and sodium tetradecyl sulfate.
Clovis E. Manley, MD
Evansville Regional Vein Center
Schedule A Consultation
Make an appointment today by calling
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If there's one thing that truly unites the world, it's fashion. And this genext fashion photographer is more than fluent when it comes to communicating in this silent language.
Varun Chauhan comes from the new league of fashion photographers who have created a niche for themselves when it comes to framing fashion. His pictures are as not just about freezing the right moment, they are about capturing the soul and the attitude in fashion.
A self taught Maverick and a miser in words, Chauhan, with a very graceful subtleness shifts away from spotlight, everytime you compliment him on a perfect frame.
A huge fan of highly acclaimed fashion photographers Eugenio Recuenco and David Lachapelle, Chauhan makes sure to elevate his benchmark with every assignment.
Having shot some of the most incredible pictures in some of the most difficult land and weather conditions, Varun believes its all about capturing the right moment that makes the picture worth a Billboard.
"I have been very fortunate to shoot in some of the most beautiful locations but at same time those locations have been extremely challenging. I remember I was shooting for a men's underwear brand Body X last year in Thailand and for this campaign, I was looking for a series of images in which models were half submerged in water with an infinite background of blue sea & sky.
Initially, I thought we could create a setup like that in a big studio because I was aware of the fact how challenging it could be on location. But I didn't want to compromise on the originality of the campaign and so, I decided to shoot it on location itself with my fingers crossed.
But nothing had prepared us for the blasting cold winds and the fact that I had to stand in water all the while! I was risking my all equipment & gears at the same time.
Interestingly, I realised it was all worth it when we saw the final pictures! The shots were outstanding and I think the entire credit goes to my models and my production team for being such a sport," says Varun Chauhan.
In fact, for every shoot Chauhan makes sure to sit with his team and the client to first start with an idea that everyone finds interesting, "Brainstorming on the ideas for shoot is in fact as interesting as the shoot itself. It's like you pave a path in your mind before you start the journey. Once the cards are clear on the desk, then starts the real excitement of achieving the results that we have visualised."
"I like to start my shoot from an idea that looks very interesting to me and my clients. We work towards putting together teams for styling, talent casting, makeup and hairstyling and the backgrounds and sets. Sometimes it takes weeks and months before we start to shoot the campaign. It indeed is a joyful journey and a learning experience with every shoot."
For Varun Chauhan every assignment is like an experiment between the photographer and the subject to create the image he looks forward to.
"When I click, my focus is on final images, as I truly believe there is no limit to perfection or improvisation but there's also a benchmark. Since there's limited time at a particular set up, I also have to comfort myself with just a little of someone's expression or moment.
The most important thing in a picture for me is to have a lot of content in every frame rather than just having a pretty model wearing a pretty dress. Production is at the core of everything in an assignment. And hence, when it comes to creating or designing the set, we create everything from scratch to finish to get that particular theme."
Varun clearly states that there's no such thing as a perfect picture, for him, it's achieving the desired result that makes it to final print.
"I don't believe in this theory of a perfect face or a perfect pose. Frankly, over the years there's been a paradigm shift in how people have started accepting unconventional faces in the fashion and glamour industry. Look at how Chantelle Brown, is leading the game today!"
"And it's also not the perfect camera either! I have used weirdest of the camera settings, broken the conventional rules of photography," exuberates Chauhan.
Well, the boy is indeed going places with his unconventional style and amazing vision!
Currently, Varun Chauhan is shooting in Canada and can be contacted at:firstname.lastname@example.com


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Day Time Breastfeeding Meetings
First Friday of the Month at 10AM
Enrichment Meeting, third Friday of the Month at 10 AM
Bear Valley Church
10001 W. Jewell Ave
Lakewood, CO 80232
Our meetings are free of charge and open to all moms, expecting moms, grandmothers, children, friends, etc. Fathers are encourage to join meetings and other special events just for dads.
Feel free to call anytime if you have any questions about our meetings or if you need immediate support or email us at email@example.com
Martina, Sarah, Shandi, Flora, and Bekki
For phone help call 720-443-2823
For more information visit the LLL of Lakewood Website


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Dr. Kefah Habash is originally from London, Ontario in Canada. He graduated from the prestigious University of Waterloo in 1994 and headed south to Bloomington, Indiana for optometry school at IU.
Dr. Habash graduated with a Doctor of Optometry degree in 1998 from IU School of Optometry. His externships included Commonwealth Eye Surgery in Lexington, Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX and Ireland Army Hospital in Fort Knox, KY.


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Emergency telephone codes
Here you will find all the emergency numbers at a glance.
Please do not try to make an emergency call via email! In the case of emergency: 112
Fire brigade - EMERGENCY CALL 112
Voluntary Fire Brigade Buchen
Fire station • St.-Rochus-Str. 14 • 74722 Buchen
Phone: +49 6281 52750


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Salted Caramel is a pretty new ice-cream parlour in Thomson. It's kinda next to Meng's Kitchen. I've been there a couple of times and I really like their horlicks tim tam icecream! Their salted caramel is not bad too. I've also tried the kahlua which will please you if you're a coffee lover! Their earl grey is not bad too! In addition to their icecream, they also have cakes and what everyone loves, waffles and brownies. Their waffles are crispy and fragrant and when served warm with a scoop of icecream, you just can't stop digging into your waffle.
Haha. As for the brownies, I personally feel that their brownies are not bad.
However they are served with hersheys chocolate sauce and I hate Hershey's chocolate sauce.. But other than that, I think the brownies are pretty good!
They have a cute little corner where there's a toy kitchen with cooking utensils, a pretty good play area for kids and even for adults (like The Star and I who started playing with the toys HAHA)
The place is pretty packed almost all the time(or at least when I was there) and it can take quite awhile before you can get a table.
Do head on down to try their creations if you're in the area! Some icecream after Meng's barchormee. Sounds good doesn't it?
Love, The Sun
Sun's rating of Salted Caramel : 8/10


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I've always loved the Winter Break. So much time for the things that really matter. You know what I mean. Family, friends and games. I think it's fairly safe to assume that the majority of us are either enjoying blissful freedom for gaming time already, or we are just on the verge of it (I fall into this latter category).
Since so many of us will have more time than normal to play through some piled up stacks of game discs, I thought I'd take the time to find out what all you guys are playing through. It's been no secret that this Fall has blasted us in the mouth with a cannon full of titles, and I'd like to say that we all took it like men.
Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be doing my best to finish Fable II, Prince of Persia, Fallout 3 and Chrono Trigger on the DS. I know that I won't come anywhere close to doing all of that, but a man's got to dream, doesn't he?
What about you guys? What will you be playing over the holidays? List your games!


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5 Tips to Finally Reach Your Health Goals
by Julie Bitely
| 3 min read
Trying to reach a health goal without a plan is like trying to make your way to a faraway destination without a map. Fortunately, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan registered dietitian and health coach Grace Derocha says it's not as hard as you think to move toward a healthier, happier you. She outlined her top tips for setting goals – and achieving them – on the most recent episode of the A Healthier Michigan Podcast, hosted by Chuck Gaidica. Listen to the full episode here. [podcast_player] Ready to reach your goals? Check out Derocha's tips:
- Figure out your 'why'. If you know the reason behind why you want to lose weight or practice more self-care – maybe it's that you'll be healthier and more present for your family – you're more likely to stick to it, particularly if you keep that reason close to your heart. Write it down, pin it up where you can see it and make it your mantra to get you through any tough times.
- Set incremental goals. Many of us want to accomplish big, life-changing goals and that's great! However, sometimes it can be disheartening to not get there in a week, which is unrealistic. Making smaller goals on your way to those audacious goals is a much kinder way to treat yourself. Don't aim to lose 100 pounds in a month – aim to lose two pounds in a week, then keep at it every week for a year. If you've never ran a day in your life, sign up for a 5K before you take on a marathon. You'll be there before you know it.
- Stay consistent. Convince yourself you can do something for about a month, which might feel less intimidating than a long-term goal. Derocha said sticking with it that long will help you develop a new routine. "If you do something for almost a month, every day, you will see – it will become a habit," she said.
- Be a SMART-E. You've likely seen the acronym SMART when it comes to goal-setting – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific. Derocha adds an "e" and urges you to set goals that are also enjoyable and exciting to you personally. Setting yourself up to reach a goal you find dreadful – eating raw kale every day, for example – just won't work. Reach for practical goals, but work on your fun goals too as a way to stay balanced.
- Have a concrete plan. Derocha advises eliminating goal roadblocks by thinking through how you're going to accomplish what you're attempting. If you want to exercise more, think about the type of exercise you want to do. Put it on your calendar at the beginning of the week and treat it as a non-negotiable time for yourself. If you're planning to exercise outside, what's your indoor contingency plan? If you're going to work out after work, make sure your clothes are packed so you can get right to it before you go home and change your mind. Actively eliminating the reasons you'll fail means you're that much more likely to succeed.
Even if you don't reach your goals as fast as you'd like, Derocha encourages everyone to keep trying. Whether it's healthier eating, increased exercise or making time for self-care, making even small steps forward is preferable to standing still. "If you're trying to do it, you're going to be doing better than your former self that wasn't doing anything at all," she explained. Hear more goal-setting and smashing tips on the full podcast. Listen here. Like this post? Check these out:
- Secrets to Setting Reachable Goals
- 6 Health Goals You Can Accomplish in One Month
- Start an Accountability Group to Meet Your Health Goals
Photo credit: twinsterphoto


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• Islamist gunmen shoot and kill man who sold alcohol.
• Muslim mother douses her two daughters in kerosene and burns them alive for dating and staying out too late.
• Islamist gunmen shoot and kill man who sold alcohol.
• Muslim mother douses her two daughters in kerosene and burns them alive for dating and staying out too late.
For the second time in a month, enormous crowds in Bangladesh took to the streets to demand the death penalty for blaspheming bloggers.
If I wrote this blog in Bangladesh, and you read it there, we'd be in protective custody at best; more likely, we would have been murdered already.
Heartwarming news from Indonesia.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono tackled the global perception that Islam and democracy could not work together. The President said Indonesia was a good example of how democracy, modernisation and Islam worked hand-in-hand.
Furthermore, the President said Muslims in Indonesia got along well with democracy and modernity. Thus, the Indonesian democratic model could offer valuable lessons to Arab Spring countries, which are now facing similar challenges.
Indonesia is the most populous majority-Muslim nation in the world. 88 percent of Indonesians follow Islam — that's more than 200 million Muslims.
Keep that in mind as we take a look at how Indonesia fared in the Pew Research poll that just came out.
According to Pew [report in full, pdf], 93% of Indonesian Muslims say they support religious freedom. Two thumbs up!
But in practice, the sentiment is as good as meaningless. The tolerance you would expect from a populace that claims to love religious liberty shrivels to almost nothing when you scratch the surface. Old-fashioned fundamentalism rules the day. Consider:
• 72% of Indonesian Muslims (144 million) want sharia law, and fully half of all respondents want to apply it to everyone, not just to Muslims.
• 45% favor corporal punishment, and 48% favor stoning of adulterers. Lovely. That's more than 90 million Muslims who want to transport all of us back to the Middle Ages.
• Almost one in five favor the death penalty for Muslims who leave the faith. How's that for religious freedom?
• 37% (74 million) say they'd rather have a strongman leader than democracy, with 61 telling Pew the opposite. A roughly 6-to-4 ratio of pro-democracy Muslims versus totalitarian-minded ones doesn't seem to indicate an abiding love of an egalitarian republic.
• 95% of Indonesian Muslims say you have to believe in god to be moral.
• 91% believe drinking alcohol is immoral; 95% say the same about homosexuality. (Don't be a drunk queer in Yudhoyono's progressive paradise, or prepare to do a lot of running and ducking.)
• 93% say wives should always obey husbands.
Like Turkey, Indonesia wants to sell itself as a beacon of Islamic modernity. But if these are the realities in an Islamic country that swears to have made a commitment to moderation and democracy, I'll leave you to conclude what that means for Muslim countries without such a pledge, and without such a lofty impression of itself.
[image via Asia News]
Over at the Huffington Post, Ali A. Rizvi has an eye-opener of a piece about militant Islam.
He starts off with a quote.
"The ambassador answered us that [their right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."
Guess who? Rizvi reveals that
The above passage is not a reference to a declaration by al Qaeda or some Iranian fatwa. They are the words of Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France, reporting to Secretary of State John Jay a conversation he'd had with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, Tripoli's envoy to London, in 1786 — more than two and a quarter centuries ago.
That is before al Qaeda and the Taliban, before the creation of Israel or the Arab-Israeli conflict, before Khomeini, before Saudi Arabia, before drones, before most Americans even knew what jihad or Islam was, and, most importantly, well before the United States had engaged in a single military incursion overseas or even had an established foreign policy.
At the time, thousands of American and European trade ships entering the Mediterranean had been targeted by pirates from the Muslim Barbary states (modern-day North Africa). More than a million Westerners had been kidnapped, imprisoned and enslaved. Tripoli was the nexus for these operations. Jefferson's attempts to negotiate resulted in deadlock, and he was told simply that the kidnapping and enslavement of the infidels would continue, tersely articulated by Adja in the exchange paraphrased above.
Adja's position wasn't a random one-off. This conflict continued for years, seminally resulting in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed into law by President John Adams in 1797. Article 11 of the document, a direct product of the United States' first-ever overseas conflict, contained these famous words, cementing America's fundamental commitment to secularism:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
Yes, the establishment of secularism in America back in the 18th century was largely related to a conflict with Islamist jihadism.
So where did Abdul Rahman Adja's bin Laden-esque words come from?
They couldn't have been a response to American imperialism (the start of the conflict precedes the presidency of George Washington), U.S. foreign policy, globalization, AIPAC or Islamophobia. Yet his words are virtually identical to those spouted ad nauseum by jihadists today who justify their bellicosity as a reaction to these U.S.-centric factors, which were nonexistent in Adja's time.
Now, Rizvi reaches his key point. If I could mind-beam it to every person in the West — especially to those who keep insisting that there is some elusive "root cause" to Islamic jihad that transcends religion — I'd be a happy man.
In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings and the foiled al Qaeda-backed plot in Toronto, the "anything but jihad" brigade is out in full force again. If the perpetrators of such attacks say they were influenced by politics, nationalism, money, video games or hip-hop, we take their answers at face value. But when they repeatedly and consistently cite their religious beliefs as their central motivation, we back off, stroke our chins and suspect that there has to be something deeper at play, a "root cause."
The taboo against criticizing religion is still so astonishingly pervasive that centuries of hard lessons haven't yet opened our eyes to what has been apparent all along: It is often religion itself, not the "distortion," "hijacking," "misrepresentation" or "politicization" of religion, that is the root cause.
Next, here's Rizvi making short shrift of the feeble accusation every critic of Islam must swat away over and over: that we're "islamophobes."
As an atheist Muslim (I'm not a believer, but I love Eid, the feasts of Ramadan and my Muslim family and friends), I could be jailed or executed in my country of birth, the country I grew up in and a host of other Muslim countries around the world for writing this very piece. Obviously, this is an unsettling, scary feeling for me. You may describe that fear as a very literal form of "Islamophobia." But is that the same thing as anti-Muslim bigotry? No.
Semantics matter here. As much as I have differences with the contents of Islam's canonical texts, I know that most Muslims are good, peaceful people who have barely read the Quran and seldom follow it except for the occasional cherry-picking and hearsay, much like the adherents of any other religion. Most of the 1 billion Muslims in the world (with the largest populations in Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) don't even understand Arabic.
My own incredulity over seething Muslim anger against Western makers of cartoons and satirical TV shows always leads me to this question: How puny is your faith that a few words of jest can injure it? How feather-light is your belief in Allah that a cartoonist drawing your prophet warrants you drawing your sword?
Rizvi, however, has a more substantial response:
It is important to understand why criticism, satire or mockery of any ideology isn't bigoted or racist. Criticizing capitalism does not make you an anti-capitalist "bigot." Criticizing religious ideology is no different. No one is born pre-circumcised or pre-baptized with a hijab or a yarmulke sewn to their heads.
It is clear now, as it always has been, that ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, educational status, financial status, citizenship status, marital status and family background have little to do with Islamist terrorism. Before the Russian Tsarnaevs from North Caucasus, we've had Richard Reid, the Hispanic Jose Padilla, the Nigerian underwear bomber, California's Adam Gadahn and others. The only common denominator among them is Islamic belief and religious fervor, which is not a race or ethnicity.
His conclusion:
The "root causes" of jihadist terrorism are the same today as they were when Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja said those historic words to Thomas Jefferson. We want to be honest about it so that we can actually do something about it.
For the fast-growing secularist/humanist movement, criticism of religion isn't a demonstration of bigotry but a struggle against it. To us, bigotry against bigotry isn't bigotry, and intolerance of intolerance isn't intolerance.
[top image via Naval History and Heritage; bottom image via undhimmi]
Good judgment and intelligence took a 10-year leave of absence:
Tracey Sharp was induced to live for more than a decade in a menage of seven 'wives' who shared a single 'husband'. Moreover, she was persuaded to believe the absurd fiction that Philip Sharp, once a Messianic Jewish rabbi, was a Biblical king who had been instructed by God to have multiple wives and a brood of children.
'I do question how I got involved,' says Tracey, 46, who has two daughters, Naomi, nine, and Mischa, three, by the self-styled king. She left his Sussex harem in November after their relationship disintegrated into a succession of blazing rows.
Why did all these women fall under a deluded man's spell? All it took was Philip Sharp invoking the will of god.
"He said he'd had a visitation from God and was about to be a king, and I think he genuinely felt God had decreed he should take many wives and that what he was doing was right. … I was in love with the man and he is very powerful and persuasive. He assured us everything was sanctioned by God and he quoted passages from the Bible to back this up. He could have told me the sky was luminous orange and I would have believed him."
The women were instructed to keep their heads covered — Sharp wanted to be the only one to see their hair — and were called to prayer at 6:30am every day. Says his estranged wife,
'The hardest thing was recognizing that he wasn't a king. He wasn't called by God. He was just a man with a giant ego.
No shit hon. They all are.
P.S. Think seven wives is impressive? At last count, this Islamic faith healer had 86.
[image via Daily Mail]
Tuesday saw the release of a major international Pew Research study into the opinions of Muslims on a variety of topics. The full report (PDF) is here, but let's just take a quick peek:
The study is a four-year effort by Pew, which conducted 38,000 face-to-face interviews in 80-plus languages for the survey. In total, 39 countries and territories were included, all of which had over 10 million Muslims living there. …
A majority of Muslims in Asia, Africa and the Middle East favored sharia law being adopted as the law of their countries, with the highest support recorded in Afghanistan at 99 percent. …The study says that 72 percent of Indonesian Muslims favor making Islamic law the official legal code in the country, compared to 86 percent in Malaysia and 77 percent in Thailand having the same opinion.
A strong majority surveyed said so-called honor killings could never be justified. The only exceptions came in Afghanistan and Iraq, where majorities condoned executions of women deemed to have shamed their families by engaging in premarital sex or adultery.
Finally, to Pew's credit, it didn't ignore the elephant in the room:
The survey found the global median for Muslims opposed to violence in the name of Islam was 72 percent.
Even though that group includes individuals like the 2009-era Tsarnaev brothers — then still moderate and not yet radicalized — let's take it at face value and rejoice that a solid majority of Muslims does not openly engage in (or openly support) murder for Allah. 72 percent! Terrific!
Except … well, what about the other 28 percent? There are 1.3 billion Muslims on this planet. If 28 percent of them support violent jihad, that's 364 million Muslims who condone the murder of apostates, blasphemers, gay people, cartoonists, loose women, and possibly everyone godless enough to attend the Boston marathon.
In the United States, the picture is only marginally better. Eight out of ten U.S. Muslims say it's not cool to strap a bomb to your chest and kill a bunch of kuffar. But two out of ten say that's dandy. There are 2.6 million Muslims living in the U.S. … x 19 percent … Yep, almost half a million of them give suicide bombers a big thumbs-up.
Relieved? Reassured? Me neither.
Now let's take a closer look at the report itself (pages 68-71), rather than the summary:
The survey finds widespread concern about religious extremism in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle EastNorth Africa region. In nearly every country surveyed in these regions, at least half of Muslims say they are very concerned or somewhat concerned about extremist groups.
So roughly half a billion Muslims have no such concerns. Got it.
In Indonesia, nearly eight-in-ten Muslims say they are worried about religious extremism (78%), including more than half (53%) who are worried about Islamic extremists.
That's adorable. That means that 25 percent of Indonesian Muslims are worried about non-Muslim extremists (of which there are very few in that country) to the exclusion of the violent agitators, murderers, and terrorists in their own midst. And in their way, they'd be right. They themselves will likely not be the targets of fellow Muslims. That fate will have to be borne by Indonesian Christians, Buddhists, or agnostics — or by tourists brave enough to visit a Bali nightclub.
My main takeaway from the Pew study is that the Muslim world seems to be radicalizing at breakneck speed.
Consider: After Gallup opinion-polled tens of thousands of Muslims across 35 nations in the mid-aughts and released its report in 2007, we were told that Muslims were almost totally non-violent. They only desire that the West show a little "respect" for their religion.
At the time, Dalia Mogahed, the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, could hardly stop talking about how widespread the Muslim aversion to Islamic violence was. She said she found that 93 percent of her fellow believers don't want to see a drop of blood spilled in the name of Mohammed. What she left out was that the seven percent who do amounted to 91 million Muslims.
No doubt there is a difference between Gallup's questions and methodology on the one hand, and Pew's on the other. But if their respective numbers are even in the ballpark, and in seven or eight years' time we've gone from roughly 90 million devout self-confessed supporters of Islamic violence to more than 350 million, we may well wonder if the message that Islam is "the religion of peace" is getting through to the followers — much less anyone else.
A huge thanks to Pew for gathering and publishing the data. There is much to be learned from the report, and I've already spent a couple of hours poring over the fascinating data. Over the next week or two, in dribs and drabs, I'll share more of the results.
[photo via Sultan Knish; graphic via pewforum.org]
A decision by extremists Islamist militants to ban food aid and international donors numb to a series of unfolding disasters made south-central Somalia the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.
The first in-depth scientific study of famine deaths in Somalia in 2011 [released today] … estimates 133,000 children under age 5 died, with child death rates approaching 20 percent in some communities.
The story is from Fox News and leaves out a few things.
Aid organizations in Somalia say the U.N. dragged its feet in declaring a famine in Somalia,
because it didn't want Islamic extremists, called al-Shabab, to confiscate the relief supplies. "It was a political decision and it did cost lives," says Burns [a senior relief worker in Somalia].
Which would suggest that there was blame to go around. The Guardian noted in a 2011 headline:
Somalia famine relief effort hit harder by food aid delays than by rebels
victims of the famine in areas controlled by al-Shabab were cut off from aid. "Throughout the famine, they never received a dollar in cash or in kind in terms of famine relief," Burns says.
I would seem that Mohammed's warriors do indeed have rather a lot of emaciated corpses on their minuscule conscience.
[image via niketalk]
There was more Buddhist-on-Muslim sectarian violence in Myanmar today. Two mosques were badly damaged and hundreds of Muslims' homes went up in flames.
Buddhist mobs hurling bricks overran a pair of mosques and set hundreds of homes ablaze in central Myanmar on Tuesday, injuring at least 10 people in the latest anti-Muslim violence to shake the Southeast Asian nation.
Terrified Muslim families who fled the assaults around Okkan, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Yangon, could be seen hiding in forests along roads and crouching in paddy fields afterward. Some, in a state of shock, wept as their houses burned in the night.
About five weeks ago, there were similar riots and attacks, some involving saffron-robed Buddhist monks who went to town with clubs and knives. Multiple mob murders were reported then, including the killings of children. The violence was so gleeful and vicious that the International Herald Tribune compared it to Kristallnacht.
Luckily, the government knows just what to do with the tiny Muslim minority (four percent of Myanmar's population).
On Monday, a government-appointed commission investigating the [earlier] violence issued proposals to ease tensions there — including doubling the number of security forces in the volatile region…
Good, because cops stood idly by before, outnumbered by the mob and not all that interested in stopping the mayhem…
…and introducing family planning programs to stem population growth among minority Muslims.
Read that again. To help Muslims who were burned and beaten out of their homes, the Myanmar government tells them to curb their breeding.
As it stands now, Buddhists may still multiply to their hearts' content.
[image by Soe Zeya Tun / REUTERS, via banoosh.com]
When it comes to Muslims and violence, it's not often that the New York Times goes beyond the standard narrative that radical Islamists are (a) poor, (b) poorly educated, and (c) understandably upset over a series of real or perceived injustices, from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to the publication of some Motoons.
But Times columnist Thomas Friedman, to his credit, is willing to hold the perpetrators of terrorism to account without making excuses, and with — get this — logic.
If you're unhappy about some perceived slight against you and your fellow believers, Friedman asks of extremist Muslims,
[W]hat in God's name does that have to do with planting a bomb at the Boston Marathon and blowing up innocent people? It is amazing to me how we've come to accept this non sequitur and how easily we've allowed radical Muslim groups and their apologists to get away with it.
A simple question: If you were upset with U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why didn't you go out and build a school in Afghanistan to strengthen that community or get an advanced degree to strengthen yourself or become a math teacher in the Muslim world to help its people be less vulnerable to foreign powers? Dzhokhar claims the Tsarnaev brothers were so upset by something America did in a third country that they just had to go to Boylston Street and blow up people who had nothing to do with it (some of whom could have been Muslims), and too often we just nod our heads rather than asking: What kind of sick madness is this?
Of course, rationality has never been religion's strong suit, and Islam is quite possibly the faith that's most impervious to logic. Friedman's question may have to be repeated a few million times before it begins to sink in. Check back in a few generations.
[image via New York Daily News]
The killingest of the buzzkill faiths strikes again:
Five Indonesian teenage girls have been accused of blasphemy and may face jail after making a video in which they mixed Islamic prayer with dancing to a Maroon 5 song. The girls were expelled from their high school in Tolitoli city, on Sulawesi island, and reported to police after the video of their dance to the US band's hit "One More Night" went viral online.
The school brought the video, which was posted online in March, to the attention of police who questioned the girls on suspicion of blasphemy. "The school and members of the community were offended by the video and felt it insulted Islam," Tolitoli police chief Rudi Mulyanto told AFP. "We are considering the case, and if we think it is serious, we will recommend they be officially charged in court."
Blasphemy in Indonesia carries a maximum sentence of five years, though minors usually face half the adult sentence and are locked up in juvenile detention facilities. The girls are in grade 12, where students are normally aged 17 or 18. Police did not give their ages but said they were being treated as minors. The school principal told a local news website that the school had consulted the country's top clerical body, the Indonesian Ulema Council, as well as the FPI on the matter.
The FPI notification makes this case especially worrisome. FPI stands for Front Pembela Islam, the Islamic Defenders Front. The paramilitary group is known for "rampant violence" in the ostensible defense of Islam. Its targets have included Playboy Indonesia, shops that sell alcohol, restaurants that remain open during Ramadan's daylight hours, and Christian churches.
FPI's demonstrations of faith range from incitement to property destruction to manslaughter.
[image via the Herald Sun]
A child-sex ring in the greater Manchester area whose members raped young teenage girls for two decades is no more, with most of its regular participants now behind bars.
Nine Asian men were yesterday jailed for a total of 77 years for raping and abusing up to 47 girls — some as young as 13 — after plying them with alcohol and luring them to takeaways. …The [court] heard that the men — who are all from Pakistan, apart from one who is from Afghanistan — groomed and 'shared' the young white girls because they [the girls] were vulnerable.
One of those convicted is Islamic preacher Abdul Rauf.
To protesters who thought that the charges betrayed racism against the U.K.'s Asian population, Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood of Greater Manchester Police said:
"It is not a racial issue. This is about adults preying on vulnerable young children. It just happens that in this particular area and time the demographics were that these were Asian men."
However, the gang's ringleader yesterday branded the judge a "racist bastard" after he and eight other men were jailed. The extraordinary outburst came after Judge Gerald Clinton accused the gang of targeting white girls because they were not part of their "community or religion."
With experts on paedophilia insisting street grooming by Muslim men was a real problem, the judge made it clear he believed religion was a factor. Police have played down the racial backgrounds of the men, saying the girls — mostly from broken or 'chaotic' homes — were targeted because they were vulnerable, not because they were white.
Note: Moral Compass launched in February of this year. Roughly 90 percent of our posts are tied to current news events, but we occasionally feature media reports from 2012 or earlier. The sex-ring story, above, is from May of last year.
But here's a report from just yesterday, similar in many ways:
Three men who abducted a vulnerable 13-year-old girl from the streets of London and forced her to become their sex slave have been jailed. The girl, who was described as being from a broken and troubled family, was subjected to sexual abuse over four days after being persuaded to travel with the men to Ipswich in Suffolk in July last year.
The men plied her with drugs and alcohol to keep her subdued.
Mohammed Sheikh, Hamza Ali and Suran Uddin were all convicted of trafficking and sex offences following a trial. Uddin was jailed for 15 years, Sheikh will serve eight years and Ali five years. All three were placed on the sex offenders register and Sheikh and Ali could face deportation to Somalia, their home country.
[Images via the Daily Mail]
A few years ago, British filmmaker Robb Leech began delving into the reasons why his white middle-class stepbrother Rich had converted to radical Islam.
Rich Dart, who'd started calling himself Salahuddin al-Britani, associated with fundamentalists such as the outspoken terrorism promoter Anjem Choudary, and advocated that Britain should place itself under Sharia law.
Over twelve months, Robb filmed his stepbrother's new life, and turned the footage into the hourlong 2011 BBC documentary My Brother the Islamist. It's available in its entirety on YouTube. I've embedded it below for your headscratching pleasure.
Just be aware that as of today, it needs both a new ending and a new title. 30-year-old Salahuddin al-Britani, formerly Richard Dart, was convicted on terrorism charges this afternoon, along with two accomplices. Dart had travelled to Pakistan to try to undergo terrorist training; also, with his co-conspirators, Imran Mahmood and Jahangir Alom, he plotted a bomb attack on Royal Wootton Bassett, a town that plays a central role in the repatriations of British soldiers killed in combat.
Dart/al-Britani pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years behind bars.
The film about him should now probably be renamed My Brother the Terrorist.
The Guardian's account of today's trial is here.