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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to list a bumblebee found only in Northern California and Southern Oregon as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Franklin's bumblebee hasn't been seen since 2006. We hear more from Rich Hatfield, a senior conservation biologist and bumblebee program lead with The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
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Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I'm Dave Miller. A rare bumblebee that only lives in parts of Southern Oregon and Northern California is going to be listed as an endangered species next week. It's called the Franklin's Bumblebee, and it will be the first bee in the Western US to get that level of Federal protection, But there's a catch. No one has seen a Franklin's Bumblebee for 15 years. Rich Hatfield joins us to talk about this bee and the plight of pollinators, more broadly. He is a Senior Conservation Biologist and the Bumblebee Program Lead with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, which is based in Portland. Rich Hatfield. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Rich Hatfield: Thanks so much, glad to be here.
Miller: It's great to have you on. What is a Franklin's bumblebee?
Hatfield: Well, bumblebees, more broadly, are sort of large black and yellow creatures that inhabit our gardens and farm fields and wild areas. And we have around 50 species of them here in the United States. Franklin's Bumblebee inhabits a very narrow range roughly from Roseburg over to Crater Lake down through Mount Shasta, that sort of narrow 'Carrot Corridor' that's around 70 miles by 190 miles. So it once lived basically just in that Siskiyou area and it has a very distinct horseshoe shaped yellow pattern on its thorax and a little bit of white on its abdomen. But it's a very relatively rare species, probably has the most narrow range of any bumblebee potentially in the world.
Miller: Do we know why that is, why it's native habitat is so narrow?
Hatfield: We don't. We have no concrete answer for that. The only sort of guess that we can throw at it, other people might be able to throw better guesses than me, but our best guess is that the Siskiyous are just a really unique ecosystem with some of the highest biodiversity that we find In North America. So there's things happening there that we don't have that we don't fully understand and appreciate. And there certainly must be something that was keeping that species within that small narrow range because it shares that range with 20-30 other species that have much larger ranges. For one reason or another.
Miller: Is it possible, for example, that it has some kind of favorite flowers that primarily exist in that area?
Hatfield: It could be. This is a little bit of a caveat and that there's only probably, less than 500 observations of this species ever in the known sort of human history, but one of the things we understand best is its association with flowers. So when we did observe it, it was seen visiting one species of flower or another, it likes California Poppies, it likes Horsemint and some of these other flowers. So it's probably not a flower. If it was something it would more likely be a nesting requirement or an overwintering requirement. And those are areas, honestly, of bumblebee ecology that we know very little about for most species. So that could be a limiting factor for sure.
Miller: What are the reasons to the extent that we know them for the population decline of this bee, in particular?
Hatfield: It's not something we were able to study. This decline happened really rapidly in the late 1990s. The leading hypothesis for the decline of this particular species is that it contracted a pathogen and it's a fungal pathogen. It's believed that that pathogen was distributed and amplified by commercial bumblebees in North America. So just to expand on that a little bit, you know, as human beings, we've learned to like tomatoes and we like to eat them year round. So because of that, we grow a lot of tomatoes in greenhouses. And bumblebees are very good pollinators of tomatoes. And so humans essentially created a novel solution to a novel problem and learned how to take a wild animal and essentially put it in boxes so that they could be shipped to greenhouses for those pollination services. Honeybees, for instance, aren't very good pollinators of tomato plants, but bumblebees are, because they can do something called buzz pollination. So it's believed, in that process of forcing animals to reproduce in labs and then shipping those boxes all over the country, that potentially a pathogen was spread to
the species and caused a really rapid population crash. But it's also important to note that while this disease was probably a major factor, if this species was not also dealing with things like habitat loss and pesticide use, perhaps it could have sustained a disease outbreak. But when you throw it sort of on top of all the other factors that bumblebees and other pollinators are facing, it became essentially the straw that broke the camel's back.
Miller: This just never ending onslaught of human activities. The anthropocenes, just all these things added together and it seems like it's hard to disentangle them. I want to go back to one thing you mentioned, 'buzz pollination,' which I guess as you're saying, European Honeybees don't do that. What is it?
Hatfield: It's a pretty neat thing to see and observe. There are some species of flowers that have their pollen essentially fused inside their anthers. The anther is the male part of a flower that releases the pollen. That's what bees are often targeting when they visit a flower and for most species of plants out there, the pollen's just readily available, and a bee can go sort of use the cones on their legs and put it on their bodies and put it on their legs and then fly to the next flower, but there are some flowers that have their pollen sort of locked inside. And the only way to get that pollen out is to shake it. And it requires a fairly specific frequency. And you can hear this if you're say, in your garden, in your backyard and you go back there and you're watching bumblebees visit your tomato flowers, you can sort of hear the sound that their wings make as they fly in between flowers, which is often a low buzzing sound. Then they'll get to the flower and they'll latch their mouth parts onto the flower itself and then vibrate their wings in a very sort of high frequency, it's more like a [Hatfield vocalizes a high pitch] 'bzzt, bzzt, bzzt,' sound. That's when they're actually doing that buzz pollination and they're shaking that flower so that the pollen comes shooting out of it. You can actually see videos of this. Actually, an electronic or an electric toothbrush is about the right frequency. If you go do this on your tomato plants, you can actually see the pollen coming out of the anther, it's kind of like a salt shaker...
Miller: Huh. They turn on their little dremel bit and then they shake the pollen out.
Hatfield: [Laughing] Yeah, exactly.
Miller: What does…
Hatfield: Bumblebees are really good at this, and most other species of bees aren't very good at it.
Miller: What does it tell you that this particular bumblebee has not been seen since 2006?
Hatfield: Well, it's concerning, primarily, it certainly indicates that the species has become a lot more rare than it used to be. But I think an important caveat there is that the area that I described from Roseburg to Crater Lake, down through Mount Shasta, while there is a fairly large transportation corridor in I-5, and a few towns, it's largely a pretty remote and wild area full of wilderness areas that aren't frequently visited by people and even less frequently visited by people that are carrying insect nets and looking for bumblebees.
Miller: Would we even know what to identify if they happened to be looking for bees, right?
Hatfield: That's right. Most people just think of 'bumblebee' as one species. The idea that there are 50 species in North America would be news to a lot of people, I think. So while it's concerning, this listing decision to add it to the [Endangered] Species Act will raise awareness. That will allow me, for instance, to do educational workshops for people that might be interested in helping and to teach them how to identify the species or what to look for. And then we can send them out into these remote areas with cameras and nets and hopefully find this species so that we can begin the process of recovery.
Miller: Will this Federal listing as endangered, the highest level of protections under the Endangered Species Act, will that lead to changes in the way this land, this habitat, is managed?
Hatfield: Potentially. Right now, since we don't have any known locations and the Fish and Wildlife Service declined to designate Critical Habitat, it's really unclear where that might happen. But if we were to detect this species, they find a population somewhere in the Siskiyous. Then that region would become some sort of high potential zone. It would be the sort of model that the Fish and Wildlife Service used for a bumblebee Species that's been listed in the Eastern United States called the Rusty Patched Bumblebee. And within that zone, we would have to do surveys to determine that any project with a Federal nexus that was either funded by the Federal Government, or it was happening on Federal Land to make sure that project wasn't going to impact the habitat or the species itself.
Miller: Let's turn to broader issues involving pollinators of all kinds. How are they doing overall?
Hatfield: Well, it's a hard question to answer. I think when most people think about our understanding of biology, they think about how well we understand mammals and birds, which are very well studied. There's lots of people working on them. They're large, they're conspicuous, they're easy to follow. Here in North America, we have 3,600 species of bees, at least, likely more than that. And most of them are not well studied. in terms of understanding their population, how well their populations are doing. bumblebees are probably the best studied of them. And the research that we've done suggests that around a quarter of them are facing some degree of extinction risk. So, that's not great news, that suggests that these animals, that are helping to provide food for us, as pollinators -- one out of three bites of food that we eat comes from plants that are pollinated by bees, but they're also feeding wildlife, grizzly bears and song birds and small mammals eat berries and roots and nuts and we wouldn't have those things without pollinators. So, you know, when you hear that a quarter of these animals that are doing this important work are in decline, that's pretty concerning.
Miller: What are the various ways that bees are being affected by climate change right now?
Hatfield: It's again, another one of these 'straw that breaks the camel's back' situations. We've talked about the effects of pesticides we're using through large portions of our landscape.
We're using highly toxic insecticides that are certainly affecting the bumblebees and other pollinators. We were turning habitat from meadows and prairies into farm fields. So that's habitat that used to bloom for 20 weeks, now blooms for two weeks. So we've done all these other things and now we're adding climate change. We're adding extreme weather events. Here in Oregon, we had temperatures of 115° earlier this summer, which is well beyond the thermal tolerance for something like a bumblebee. There's no way they could keep their nest cool enough in that situation. All of these things are just having tremendous effects, they're also just mostly cold weather adapted species. So as the climate warms or changes that's going to affect them. One of the major effects that we're seeing is this phenological shift. So by phenology, I mean, sort of as plants emerge, then the bees will also emerge and that's happening a lot earlier than it used to. Plants are blooming before they ever have before. We still have yet to see whether bumblebees and other pollinators were able, will be able to match that in terms of how early they emerge. Can they match the timing?
Miller: Can they sync up and wake up at the right time, in a sense?
Hatfield: Exactly. And then if it's starting earlier, will it last long enough to allow bumblebees to finish their fairly long lifecycle? They need 12-20 weeks of bloom time in order to reproduce. So it's a fairly long life cycle. And the other thing that's happening as these plants are blooming earlier, we get these early springs, but then sometimes we're getting these really dramatic ice storms that happen after bees are out and after flowers are blooming and then those flowering resources disappear and who knows what happens to the bees when winter returns for a week. So it's really creating a lot of problems for bees.
Miller: Rich Hatfield, thanks very much for joining us today.
Hatfield: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Miller: Rich Hatfield is a Senior Conservation Biologist and the Bumblebee Program Lead with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, which is based in Portland. He joined us to talk about the Franklin's Bumblebee, which is going to be officially listed as an endangered species next week. Coming up tomorrow we're going to revisit our conversation with the Poet and Essayist Ross Gay, his most recent work, The Book of Delights is true to its name. It's a celebration and exploration of joy even in a world full of sorrow. It was chosen for this year's Multnomah County Library Community Reading Project, 'Everybody Reads.' Our production staff includes Julie Sabatier, Elizabeth Castillo, Rolando Hernandez and Senior Producer, Allison Frost. Nalin Silva Engineers the show. Our Technical Director, Steven Kray and our Executive Producer is Sage Van Wing. If you don't want to miss any of our shows you can listen on the NPR One App on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our nightly rebroadcast is at eight p.m. Thanks very much for tuning in to Think Out Loud on OPB and KLCC. I'm Dave Miller, we'll be back tomorrow. Think Out Loud is supported by Steve and Jan Oliver, the Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust and Ray and Marilyn Johnson.


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What's the madness all about?
With over 20 years of experience in the construction industry, Mad Jack's has the knowledge and expertise to evaluate your parking lot requirements. We pride ourselves on creating partnerships with our clients, through fair and honest assessments of each customer's needs.
Mad Jack's offers full-service asphalt and concrete solutions that meet your budgetary demands and parking lot necessities. We look out for what is best for our clients as this is what the foundation of our business is built on. We are MAD about our partnerships!

subset: commoncrawl


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Qatar Airways partner IAG has come out in support of the airline and two other Gulf carriers in an ongoing dispute over alleged subsidies with US mainline carriers.
In comments filed with the US government, the airline group says it "disputes" the allegations by Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines that Qatar, Etihad Airways and Emirates Air Line received more than $42 billion in subsidies from the Qatari and United Arab Emirates governments.
"IAG believes the evidence and therefore the conclusions to be unreliable and wholly inappropriate as a means of informing government policy decisions," says IAG. "To shield US airlines from their competitors would be to grant them the biggest subsidy of all."
IAG's support of the Gulf carriers is not surprising. Qatar Airways holds an almost 10% stake in the company, and both are partners in Oneworld. Last month, IAG carriers British Airways and Iberia withdrew from the Association of European Airlines (AEA), citing different opinions on policy issues.
AEA member Lufthansa has backed the US mainline carriers in calling for government action to examine the alleged subsidies benefiting the Gulf carriers.
The US government has said it plans to begin a review into the US mainline carriers' complaint by end-May, and is inviting public comments on the issue.
In its remarks, IAG says it "does not seek to defend specific carriers" but says it is in full support of longstanding US open-skies policy. "The global competitiveness of the US economy has been significantly enhanced by the aviation policies the DOT has pursued over the last 30 years. Turning the clock back now would be folly."
IAG has said it plans to deepen its partnership with Qatar Airways, a move which might involve joint procurement of aircraft and maintenance services. The two parties also plan to expand their codeshare.
"IAG believes that our industry functions best when competition is allowed to flourish," it says. "It is a matter of grave concern to see protectionism raising its ugly head at the first sign of effective competition from the Gulf countries."
The US mainline carriers have won the support of their unions, as well as some members of the US Congress. In a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry today, 19 bipartisan members of the US House of Representatives judiciary committee called for the US government to begin talks with Qatar and the UAE on the alleged subsidies to the Gulf carriers.
The letter follows a similar note signed by more than 260 Congress members earlier this month.
Source: Cirium Dashboard


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Sly Fox is Opening a New Taproom in Malvern. After much anticipation, the wait is finally over. On Jan. 20, Sly Fox Brewing will open its 5,000-square-foot taproom in The Grove in Malvern. The built-from-the-ground-up spot from the Giannopoulos family will "offer guests a unique indoor-outdoor dining room destination where they can enjoy awesome beers and delicious food paired with open space for games, live music and other events," says Sarah Jagiela, Sly Fox's events and marketing manager.
Expect upwards of 20 taps of Sly Fox beer, some local wine options, plus a small locally-focused spirits and cocktails program featuring Pottstown's Manatawny Still Works and Philadelphia's Stateside.
Related: Everything You Need to Know About the Philadelphia Suburbs' Craft Breweries
In celebration of the opening, several new beers will debut over the coming of weeks, including Nihilist Russian Imperial Stout on draft and in cans, a barrel-aged version of the Nihilist RIS aged in Manatawny Still Works whiskey barrels, and Black Lager, a collaborative brew with Stoudts Brewing of nearby Adamstown.
The kitchen—led by Sean Waclawsky of Pottstown Tasting Room and Steve Yoder of the Phoenixville Brewhouse & Eatery—will turn out hand-tossed brick-oven baked pizzas as well as wings, sandwiches and salads.
Expect a modern industrial vibe complete with walls of roll-up windows that will let in the breeze in the warmer months.
20 Liberty Blvd., Malvern, (484) 328-3567.


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What is irrigation? Class 9
What is irrigation?
Irrigation is the application of water to the soil for the purpose of supplying moisture essential for plant growth especially during stress periods. It is necessary for the survival and proper devlopment of the crop plants and provide sufficient moisture for the germination of seeds as they do not germinate in dry soils. Similarly, roots of crop plants fail to develop and elongate in dry soil. Also, irrigatton is essental for the absorption or nutrient elements by the crop plants from the soil.
The irrigation requirements of crop plants responseble on the following two factors
(1) irrigation depending on the nature of the crop plants (i.e, crop-based irrigation);
(2) irrigation depending on the nature of soil of the crop fields (i.e., soil-based irrigation)
Crop based irrigation: –
Water requirements of different crops are different during the various stages of their growth and maturation (ripening). Some crop plants require more water, while others need less water. For example, paddy crop (rice crop) is transplanted in standing water (wet-lands) and requires continuous water supply, whereas, other crops such as wheat, gram and cotton require less water.
Soil based irrigation: –
The crops grown in a sandy soil need irrigation nmore frequently, whereas the frequency of irrigation is comparatively less tor crops grown in a clayey soil. This is because sandy soil is highiy porous having high permeability. Water quickly percolates down the soil and the crop plants are not able to absorb adequate amounts of water. In contrast to sandy soil, clayey soil is much less permeable, so it can retain water for a much longer time.
Irrigation systems
Dought and poor rainfall pose a serious threat to rainfed farming areas. These areas need supply of water from external soùrces. Under such conditions, irrigation system is adopted to supply. water from diffenent water resources Some common irrigation systems are discussed below
1) Wells: –
These are wells are constructed wherever exploitable groundwater is present. there are two types of wells
(A) Dug wells : These are open wells where water gets collected from water bearing strata. They are owned privately by the farmers. They do not have long life and soon become dry whenever water table goes down.
(B) Tube wells: Shallow tube wells meant for irrigation are privately owned and water is lifted by bullock operated devices or by electrically operated or diesel operated pumps. They get water from porous soil strata. Deep bore tube wells take water from the deeper strata and have longer life period of many years.
(2) Tanks-:
Tanks are small storage reservoirs, which catch and store the runoff of smaller catchment areas. Small dams are built below the higher elevations of the catchment areas. Outflow of water in tanks is regulated so that all areas get adequate water for irrigation.
(3) Canal system:
Canals take water for irrigation from rivers, dams, lakes or reservoirs to agricultural land. Canals form an extensive irrigation system. Main canal divides into distributaries,these distributaries ultimately supply water to the individual field or group of fields.
(4) River lift system:
In areas where canal flow is insufficient or irregular due to inadequate water release, this system is very useful, Water is lifted directly from the rivers for supplementary irrigation in areas close to rivers.
Irrigation methods
Artificial applications of water to the land are through the following methods:
Sprinkler (or overhead irrigation):-
In this system, water is piped to one or more central location within the field and is distributed by overhead high-pressure sprinklers or overhead pipes,
Drip irrigation (or trickle irrigation) :-
In this type of irrigation method, water is delivered at on near the root zone of plants, drop by drop. This is most water efficient method as evaporation and run off are minimised
Surface irrigation:-
Historically, this has been the most common method of irrigating agriculture land. Water moves over and across the land by simple gravity flow in order to wet it and to infiltrate the soil.


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- New Bern
- 252-633-4780
- Map it
From swaths of decadent or eye-catching material to finish up a fashion forward project, to unique classes and events that will get anyone in a creative state of mind, the centrally located New Bern Fabric Center certainly has a lot to offer that goes above and well beyond fabric basics. Established in 1974 and serving visitors and locals alike ever since, this beloved fabric and craft shop has everything under the sun to create something unique, gorgeous, and absolutely memorable.
New Bern Fabric Center is managed and staffed by a team of experienced salespeople, teachers, and service technicians who can help customers find fabrics that meet their style, perform repairs on sewing machines and other equipment, and who can share knowledge on unique skills like sewing, embroidery, and other varieties of fabric art. In addition to an array of goodies that range from fabrics and threads to sewing tools, New Bern Fabric Center also offers a regular series of budget-friendly classes for crafty types who want to learn something new. From social sewing clubs to embroidery techniques, every visit is an opportunity to explore and uncover an artistic side at the expansive and always enticing and engaging New Bern Fabric Center.
Is this your business? Update your listing by messaging us


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Apple's iOS 12.3.2 update, a minor update to iOS 12, is now available for the iPhone and the iPad.
The update comes following iOS 12.3, the last major update to Apple's mobile operating system, released roughly a month ago. Apple says that iOS 12.3.2 solves a problem that caused the iPhone 8 Plus' camera app to capture images in Portrait Mode without a depth effect.
iOS 13, the next full version of Apple's mobile OS, is set to release this September. There will be a public beta at some point this summer. Apple is also spinning off its iPad operating system from iOS as iPadOS.
In order to prompt the update, navigate to 'Settings,' then 'General' and finally, 'Software Update.'


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Shopping with your girlfriends to find the perfect dress and shoes, getting pedicures and manicures, getting your hair is swept into a stylish updo… It's all part of the high school prom experience!
But what's a girl to do when she has the perfect dress, neatly lacquered nails, and coiffed hair but no date?! That's the situation Ivana Bozic found herself in as the date of her high school prom neared, and her mom was not going to let that happen. All dressed up with nowhere to go? Not on her watch.
So Mom came up with a plan.
"I told my mom I didn't have a prom date so she ordered my dog a tux on Amazon,"Ivana Brozic posted on Twitter in early May. The tweet quickly went viral.
If these two weren't voted King and Queen, I call for a redo.
This isn't the first time Ivana's little four-legged buddy came to the rescue. He not only stood in as her prom date — no doubt the most adorable date in her school's entire history — but when she gets too stressed out, all she has to do is look at her phone.
"When I'm away for mock trial tournaments my mom sends me updates of my dog to calm me down & that's what matters.â€
What a good dog.
Share to spread smiles!
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The surge in advanced attackers has created a need for SecOps to understand, quickly respond to and hunt the most sophisticated threats inside your organization.
Join this 3 hour hands-on investigation and threat hunting virtual workshop to boost your skills and learn how to use Cortex XDR to stop sophisticated attacks by:
Walk away with a clear plan to continually improve the effectiveness and accuracy of investigations and threat hunting at your organization.
This session is ideal for security analysts of all experience levels, including security operations/SOC staff, incident responders and threat hunters.
Prerequisite: Participants must bring a laptop with the latest version of Google Chrome.


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Disco fever may have initially taken hold in 1977, but it was an altogether more refined, multi-national and exuberant style come 1979. Forty years on, we've pulled together ten tracks with disco-funk flavour from throughout West Africa, the Caribbean and South America, to tell an hour-long story of disco-funk either side of the Atlantic, during that vital musical year.
Our playlist features funky joints with lashings of hand percussion from Bunny Mack, Harari and Louie Ramirez, and serves as the ideal party primer for Discolypso. The club night returns to Band on the Wall's bar on Friday and is free entry, but you can find out details here. Where else will you find a global funk soundtrack complete with live percussion, for free?


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4901 Old Brook Road, Richmond VA 23227 (804) 646-3677
Hours of operation: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday – Friday
10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturdays
Pine Camp arts and community center located in Northside is a diverse, culturally rich, and intriguing facility serving the Richmond community. The Art Program is designed for all ages with an interest for creating, observing or learning about the arts; there are programs available to meet your needs.
Download program guide HERE
Download the Parks and Recreation Digest today!
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Facebook: Richmond VA Parks and Recreation
Twitter: @RVA_PRCF
Instagram: rvaparksandrec
City Dance Theatre: http://friendsofcitydance.org/


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Cannabis group asks HHS secretary for CBD meeting
December 14, 2021
A cannabis nonprofit group has requested a meeting with the top official of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and his staff to discuss regulation of hemp-based CBD.
In a Dec. 12 letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, representatives of the Council for Federal Cannabis Regulation (CFCR) said it is crucial "to overcome a choke point" identified by FDA, which is limiting the agency from regulating cannabinoids low in THC.
That choke point is a provision of law that FDA interprets as barring the sale of CBD in dietary supplements or food. The cannabis-derived compound was first the subject of substantial clinical investigations made public, according to the agency, or in plainer terms, FDA has found CBD was studied as a drug before its use in food and dietary supplements.
FDA's reading of the law "as preventing regulation of products containing CBD has needlessly hamstrung the agency while untested, unregulated, sometimes dangerous CBD products continue to proliferate throughout the country," according to CFCR's letter. "This not only creates needless risks to public health, it also impedes sound scientific discovery in a rapidly growing and promising domestic industry."
The regulatory bottleneck has permitted such psychoactive substances as hemp-based delta-8 THC and delta-9 THC to be introduced into drinks, food and tinctures without any "restrictions, all the while claiming to have been legalized by the Farm Bill of 2018," CFCR wrote to Becerra.
In a webpage published in September, FDA noted that from December 2020 through July 2021, it received adverse events from consumers and law enforcement describing 22 patients who used delta-8 THC products. Delta-8 has "intoxicating" and "psychoactive" effects that resemble effects from delta-9 THC, and some manufacturers may use potentially unsafe household chemicals to produce delta-8 THC through a process of chemical synthesis, according to FDA.
CDC in September issued a health advisory on delta-8 THC, warning about the growing availability of cannabis products containing delta-8 THC and the potential for adverse events due to inadequate labeling of products containing THC and CBD.
"The agencies are rightly concerned that contamination may occur during the manufacturing of delta-8 THC products, and that misleading marketing and labeling may lead to consumer harm," CFCR stated in its letter to Becerra.
The cannabis nonprofit also suggested "FDA's recent objections to two new dietary ingredient notifications [NDINs] for full spectrum hemp … CBD products" has created "confusion in the marketplace for retailers, manufacturers, farmers, and most importantly, consumers."
In its responses to the ingredient notifications filed by Charlotte's Web and Irwin Naturals, FDA raised safety concerns about the sufficiency of the evidence provided to the agency, such as evidence related to reproductive toxicity. Charlotte's Web and Irwin Naturals sent the NDINs to FDA to establish the safety of CBD-containing hemp extracts marketed as dietary supplements.
CFCR advised Becerra it has made arrangements for one of its international partner organizations to share with FDA confidential toxicology testing conducted for regulators in Europe.
CFCR's letter was signed by three of its representatives, including Sarah Chase, who was named in August as the group's first executive director.
HHS did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment concerning the letter, which also was sent to FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock.
CBD bills, citizen petitions
U.S. lawmakers in recent years have introduced several bills to legalize CBD in supplements and/or food, including the CBD Product Safety and Standardization Act of 2021. The bills have not advanced to hearings or otherwise gotten close to passage in Congress.
Despite provisions in the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act (FDCA) described by CFCR as the "exclusionary clauses," FDA—through authority vested in Becerra—could issue regulations for CBD-containing food and supplements. However, the agency has yet to commence a notice-and-comment rulemaking proceeding.
That's not due to indifference by food and dietary supplement interests.
For instance, some trade organizations representing the dietary supplement industry have filed citizen petitions with FDA, requesting the agency issue CBD regulations. The Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) filed a citizen petition in 2019, followed by a similar petition in 2020 from the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN).
CHPA was advised in June 2020 that FDA needed "additional time to issue its final response because of the complexity of issues raised in your petition."
"FDA will issue a final response to your citizen petition after completing the analyses of all of the legal and policy issues related to this petition," the agency wrote to the trade group.
FDA also advised CRN in November 2020 that it needed more time to review its citizen petition for the same reasons it cited in the letter to CHPA.
"The continued lack of regulatory clarity along with insufficient oversight around hemp and hemp-derived CBD has led to bad actors entering the marketplace, exposing consumers to potentially unsafe products that contain illegal synthetic ingredients like delta-8 THC and lack consistency in product quality," David Spangler, CHPA's senior vice president of legal, government affairs and policy, said via email.
Added Spangler: "We continue to advocate for legislation consistent with CHPA's 2019 citizen petition calling on FDA to utilize its existing authority and establish a lawful regulatory pathway for responsible manufacturers to bring dietary supplements containing CBD to market."
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"2018 Idol Star Athletics Championships" Announces Final Lineup For 3 Sports Categories
MBC has confirmed its final lineup for three of its categories for the "2018 Idol Star Athletics Championships."
On January 3, MBC had already confirmed that the event would be taking place, and that filming for scheduled for January 15 at the Goyang Indoor Gymnasium. Now, the production staff has finalized the lineup for each of the sports categories, increasing fans' curiosity for what's to come.
First, the rhythmic gymnastics category will be joined by Cosmic Girls's Cheng Xiao, gugudan's Sally, CLC's Seungyeon, LABOUM's Haein, APRIL's Rachel, and DreamCatcher's JiU. It will be interesting to see whether Cheng Xiao will be able to win her second gold medal, or if a new queen of rhythmic gymnastics will emerge.
For aerobics, which gained a lot of attention when it was first showcased in the "2017 Idol Star Athletics Championships," will feature last year's gold medal team ASTRO, as well as UP10TION, The Boyz, IMFACT, Golden Child, and ONF. Each group is set to prepare a routine that highlights their group's talents and unique color, and it remains to be seen whether ASTRO will be able to keep their crown.
Popular idols are set to show what they're made of in the archery category, the representative sport of the "Idol Star Athletics Championships" that idols most want to participate in. For the women's competition, girl groups TWICE, Red Velvet, GFRIEND, Lovelyz, gugudan, DIA, and Oh My Girl are set to battle it out while for the men's competition, there will be BTOB, VIXX, SEVENTEEN, MONSTA X, NCT 127, UP10TION, and NU'EST W.
Members of EXO and Wanna One are said to gearing up to participate in the bowling category of the competition, but the final lineup for bowling has not yet been released.
The "2018 Idol Star Athletics Championship" has promised to complete filming for this year's event with no accidents and have vowed to increase their medical staff to ensure the idols' safety. Fans can start applying to attend the filming of "2018 Idol Star Athletics Championship" on January 8 through the iMBC homepage.
Source (1)


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One day, Baba (in January 1959) commented to his lovers, "It is not your love for me that matters; it is my love for you that counts. One who does not seek my blessing and desires nothing from me but to be able to obey me and serve me is my true lover."
He also dictated this poem:
"For me is all that seems to be.
If I were not, where would all be?
It is me, not all that seems to be;
With me this all would cease to be.
Let me in you and all not be,
Then only would we be to be."
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 16, p. 5522.


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The Eternal City beckons for Celtic as the hoops travel to Rome to face Lazio in the Europa League.
After securing a 2-1 win at Celtic Park a fortnight ago, Celtic could all but qualify for the knock out stages by beating Lazio and at the same time knock the Serie A side out.
It's a tall order, Celtic have never won in Italy on 12 occasions, Three draws being the best we have left with. Lazio showed they were a decent team at Celtic Park and will want to reverse the result in Glasgow.
In the pre match press conference Celtic boss Neil Lennon echoed the difficulties facing Celtic.
"Realistically it is going to be very difficult to win here. Records are there to be broken." Lennon said. "We are going to have to play very well and take our chances if and when they should arise.
"We know we probably won't dominate possession the way we would do normally in home games, and we are going to have to show a huge amount of concentration and quality.
"In the context of the group it is such an important game, and there is so much quality on show. It is my first time in Rome taking a team, so it's a game we are very excited about and very motivated for."
Lazio travelled to the San Siro on Sunday and beat AC Milan 2-1 and have actually won the three games they have played since losing to Celtic. They beat Fiorentina away 2-1 and won 4-0 at home against Torino.
"Lazio's form of late has been really good." Lennon continued. "They had another great victory in the San Siro on Sunday, so we are under no illusions how big the job is, to come here and try to get a result.
"But the players are also on great form, they have played very well domestically and obviously top the group. We know that can change very quickly, but we are here to try to get a positive result and there is good belief amongst us to do that."
Boli Bolingoli and Tom Rogic are set to miss out due to injury so Greg Taylor or Johnny Hayes will step in at left back, while Ryan Christie will take over from Rogic.
There was also some good news with Calum McGregor signing a five year contract which should boost the club ahead of the tie in Rome.
Mick Kane hails from Glasgow. He has been hooked on Celtic since he went to his first game when he was 7. Celtic beat Hamilton 8-3 at Celtic Park on the 3rd of January 1987. His favourite player at the time, Brian McClair scored four goals.
He started going regular as a 16 year old when Celtic played at Hampden for the season, being a Southsider it meant a short train journey to get to Hampden. From then he has had a season ticket travelled around Europe for games as Celtic became the dominant force in Scottish football again. A nice change from growing up during Rangers run to 9 in a row.
Copyright 2018 Celtic Fanzine | Developed by Blueberry Design


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Aylward, Alfred (1843–89), Fenian, was born in New Ross, Co. Wexford, son of a school inspector based in Enniscorthy. A police report later stated that his father died in Westport, Co. Mayo, in 1847. During the course of his life, Aylward used numerous aliases and told many exotic stories about his career as a soldier and a rebel. He claimed to have been a newspaper reporter in the American west, to have been a Russian spy on the north-west frontier of India, and to have traded in slaves in West Africa. Most of these claims were not substantiated and his writings and utterances must be treated with caution.
What is certain is that he attended the Jesuit college at Tullabeg (1855–8). He then served with Garibaldi during the 1860 campaign in Sicily, where he was wounded in the leg. This wound resulted in a period in Guy's Hospital in London, where he picked up some rudimentary medical knowledge, and during the American civil war (1861–5) he served as a surgeon in the union army. Returning to Dublin in 1865 he worked in the valuation office but was arrested after a drunken affray in Prussia St. in December. Police found incriminating papers on his person and in his lodgings and, suspected of being a Fenian, he was incarcerated in Kilmainham jail. He was soon released, however, and may well have promised to act as a police informer to secure his freedom. He secured a job in the office of the crown solicitor, George Bolton, where he excited the suspicions of the DMP detective John Mallon (qv) by wearing 'Fenian get-up'. Aylward was arrested and found to have incriminating papers.
Released once again, in May 1867 he was found lying injured near Portobello Barracks in Rathmines. Brought to Mercer's Hospital, he claimed that he had been attacked by seven Fenian associates who suspected him of being an informer. Although he claimed to have been hit by three bullets he was found to have only superficial wounds and was arrested under the habeas corpus suspension act and sent to Kilmainham. He later claimed that this incident occurred due to his warning Lord Naas (qv), then chief secretary, of an assassination plot against him. Released in August 1867, he went to South Africa, arriving there in 1868. According to his own account, before his arrival in South Africa he was involved in the attempt to rescue Thomas J. Kelly (qv) and Timothy Deasy (qv) in Manchester in September 1867, and also in the explosion at Clerkenwell prison in London (December 1867).
His career in South Africa was to be equally colourful. He initially worked for a newspaper in the Cape and then (1870) moved to the Bultfontein diamond field, where he worked as a digger. In September 1871 he was one of the founders of the Free Roman Catholic Hospital of St Mary's, serving as the hospital's surgeon. After a fracas in which he shot and wounded a man, he was arrested and sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour, which he served in the Barkly jail. He moved to Kimberley in Griqualand West on his release, working in the diamond field, and was soon chairman of the diggers' committee. By 1875 the diggers were protesting against the activities of large companies and also the liberal policy of the lieutenant governor, Sir Richard Southey, towards the native population. Aylward was by now editor of a local paper, the Diamond Field, and played a leading role in these agitations. In April 1875 the 'rebellion of the black flag' broke out, and after its suppression he was tried as one of the ringleaders but was acquitted. Southey was recalled and ultimately the diggers won: the native population could no longer own claims in the diamond field but only work as unskilled labour.
In 1876 he fought in the Sekukini war as second-in-command, and then commander, of the Lydenburg Volunteer Corps. After the annexation of the Transvaal (1877) he founded a hospital at Lydenburg and then travelled to England to supervise the publication of his book, The Transvaal of today (London, 1878), which received good reviews as a well researched account of the Transvaal and its people. On his return to South Africa he offered his services to the government, then engaged in the Zulu war, and when these were refused took up an appointment as editor of the Natal Witness. On the outbreak of the first Boer war (1880) he offered his services to the Transvaal government and, attached as surgeon to the force of Gen. Joubert, came to be known as 'Joubert's Fenian' and took part in the battle of Majuba Hill (February 1881). Aylward reportedly advised the Boers to shoot the British officers and the battle resulted in a humiliating defeat for the British. One of the British casualties was Dublin-born Gen. George Colley, who had known Aylward before the war. Aylward later took part in the siege of Lydenburg and at the end of the war left South Africa, travelling on the same ship as Lord Chelmsford.
He contributed a number of articles to Frazer's Magazine, and an anonymous article hostile to the Fenians, published in Blackwood's Magazine, has been attributed to him. In 1882 he went to America, where he gave a series of lectures on Ireland and South Africa. Arthur Griffith (qv) later stated that, while in America, Aylward was brought before a Fenian tribunal, charged with being an informer, and acquitted. After the Phoenix Park murders (May 1882) an anonymous letter appeared in the Freeman's Journal which indicated that the writer had some knowledge of the assassination plot. Mallon later identified the handwriting of the original letter as being that of Aylward.
In 1884 he joined Louis Riel in Canada and took part in his rebellion. His later years remain a mystery. Some reports claimed that he served with the Mahdi's forces in the Sudan, while others stated that he died in Sweden. Another report claimed that he had died in a train crash in America. In August 1889 an obituary notice appeared in the Irish Times stating that he had died in a wagon crash at Littletown, New Hampshire, and that before his death he had been working in a copper mine in New Hampshire. While this report is now generally accepted as being true, it is worth noting that Aylward had previously placed a false notice of his death in a South African newspaper while on the run from the authorities.
He married (1883) Carrie Van Hoeson of Brooklyn, but they were divorced a few years later. It is not known if there were any children. A friend of Charles Lever (qv), he claimed that the character of Joe Atley in Lord Kilgobbin (1872) was based on him. He was also a friend of J. A. Froude (qv).
As a curious epilogue to his eventful life, his adventures were recounted by Arthur Griffith in the United Irishman in 1899 as part of the Irish pro-Boer campaign. He was promoted as a political icon, and at a public rally in Dublin a crowd of over 20,000 cheered his memory.


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Pune Mayor: Go Green, Get Tax Rebate
Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal has said that builders should play a more pro-active role in developing facilities for recycling of water, rainwater harvesting, sewage treatment as this will help reduce the load on Pune Municipal Corporation.
"In return, the PMC offers a 10% reduction in property tax that will make a project more attractive to buyers," he said, while inaugurating the property exhibition series of CREDAI, Pune, VITS Hotel, Balewadi.
The mayor said, "The young generation of builders is doing a lot of good work for the city. Pune needs more and more young people in the process of development of the city," he said.
The mayor asked CREDAI members to explore ways in which tourism can be increased in the city and assist the PMC to develop projects such as cleaning up the river, development of a world class exhibition centre, museums and malls.
The CREDAI, Pune, exhibition is from August 6 to 8. Projects on display cater to 1BHK to 5BHK flats, bungalow plots, pent houses, farmhouse plots covering all areas in PMC and PCMC.
Read the rest of this article here.


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(Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
According to Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, inside linebacker Devin Bush has recovered so nicely from his ACL injury that he is expected to be cleared fully and practice right away at training camp.
Bush suffered a season-ending ACL tear in Week 6 last year against the Browns and has rehabbed all offseason at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, along with offensive tackle Zach Banner, who also suffered a season-ending ACL injury in 2020.
Steelers.com released episode 10 of "The Standard" last week and it covered the ramp-up to training camp. Footage and soundbites from OTAs and minicamp were in the episode, and Mike Tomlin had some interesting comments in regards to wanting to see inside linebacker Bush matched up with running back Najee Harris in training camp.
"I'm going to reserve 22 for Devin Bush," Tomlin said to no one in particular.
Tomlin then was captured talking to Bush and Harris.
"I like matchups. I want to see this a lot," Tomlin said to both Bush and Harris. "We're going to do it all. You're gonna have to cover him, he's gonna have to pick you up in blitz. We're gonna do it all. We're gonna find everybody's soft underbelly. We're gonna sharpen iron on iron."
A matchup between Harris and Bush during training camp should definitely be interesting, both in backs-on-backers and 7-on-7.
Steelers training camp will open on July 22 at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, and their first padded practice will be on July 28 at Heinz Field, which is also the first practice open to the public. All of the team's open practices will begin at 1:30 p.m. except the final two on Aug. 17 and 18, which will start at 12:15 p.m. and 12 p.m., respectively.


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This term is thrown around a lot in gambling circles, and we have mentioned it a number of times on our site itself. You may be wondering what it means, and we do get a lot of queries from people on this subject. An "edge" in this context has a similar meaning to some usages of "edge" in ordinary English language. To get an edge on someone, means to gain an advantage over them, and it means the same in the gambling context. The "house" is the casino or gambling institution that you are playing with (and essentially, playing against – either you win or they do). A house edge therefore, is the advantage maintained by the casino over the gambler. Why does the casino have an advantage? You ask. Does it always have an advantage? Surely this is not fair!
Well, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Gambling is big business. And casinos need to make money. Casinos, like all big businesses are not very interested in gambling for their money – they want to be absolutely certain of making it. Therefore, in order that casinos may be profitable in the long-term, the casino, or the house, nearly always has a greater chance of winning, no matter which game – this is true for every single game offered by the casino – than the gambler. If casinos had a negative house edge, they would make a loss in the long term, and would eventually go bankrupt, meaning there would be no casinos. Well then, how does the gambler ever win, we hear you cry! Well, not every single game has the same house edge. It is a very good idea for players or gamblers to carefully examine the house edge for all games offered by a casino (and this is true of online casinos and the old fashioned real life kind) and see which of these games has the lowest house edge. In other words, the players should play the games which offer the players expected average winnings that are as close as possible to the winnings expected by the casino for that game. The house edge is determined mathematically, and is a very important part of the mathematics of gambling and something that everyone serious about making any kind of money in gambling should know and understand.
The house edge is also known as the House Vigorish. It is very uncommon for players to become skilled enough to "beat the house" over a long period of time. Obviously, players often beat the house in the short term. Just as important to the existence and survival of casinos as the house edge, is the fact that sometimes, even often, players do beat the house. Just think about it – would you go and give your money to a casino that was never going to pay out, where you would never win? Obviously you would not. So, yes, in the short term, players often win. However, this does not matter to the casino for two reasons. Well, really it is one reason expressed in two different ways: averages. The fact remains that the house edge ensures that on average, the casino will win. This means that if you are playing the pokies and you win big, you can be sure that on average, out of everyone playing at the casino with you, on all the different games, on average, the casino is winning. At the end of every night, with some very small exceptions, the casino takes in a lot more money than it pays out. This average also works out over time. While you might win big once or twice – maybe even your first time playing you win big – the more time you spend playing, the closer your average winnings will come to the overall average, otherwise known as "expected value", and the closer the actual house edge percentage will move towards the pre-determined house edge. This all translates as, while you might win big once or twice, or even more than that, the more you play, the more you lose – on average, overall. As we said before, it is very uncommon of a player becoming skilled enough to beat the house edge over a long period of time.
If this is all a little bit unclear, then let us give you an example.
The House Edge is always given as a percentage of a player's original bet in any given game and is the opposite of the player's Expected Value (Check out our page The Mathematics of Gambling: What is Expected Value for a description). So take for example, a Roulette game. A player's expected value when betting on red is -5.26%, That means that he or she can expect to lose $5.26 of every dollar (or other unit of currency) he or she plays. This means that the House Edge is 5.26%.
Naturally, this is the theoretical average figure, and the chances of attaining that figure of loss/win in the short term is very unlikely. This figure represents the win/loss ratio that a player can expect to reach after playing over a long period of time with the same bet.
Now, the above example is just that – an example. It is true for roulette (and not necessarily for all roulette games). Every game has a different house edge and the variance is very large. Some house edges are very small – around 1%, while some are very high – up to 25% for casino games like Keno. The house edge varies on pokies games too, but generally hovers at around 10%.
Calculating the house edge can get very complicated and difficult, and requires the understanding and application of various gambling mathematical principles, such as the theory of probability, the combin function, and the notion of expected value.
Flipping the house edge.
Is it ever possible to flip the house edge? That is, turn the tables on the casino and play so that you, the gambler, has a slight advantage over the house. Well, in general, no – casinos and gambling are established with an in-built and unavoidable house edge for the reasons we discuss above. There are however, a few small exceptions to this rule. Some people suggest a system of gambling with games like roulette, where you simply double your bet every time you lose, and when eventually you win, you will win back all your lost money, and then some extra on the side. This is valid in theory, however, it requires both an unlimited (or very large) bankroll and it requires a casino with no betting limit. Casinos implement betting limits for this very reason, so it is unlikely that you will win unusual amounts unusually regularly with that system. The only two remaining options are to play and become very skilled at either poker or blackjack. There are a lot of tutorials out there for both of these. Poker is a complex and sophisticated game and getting very good can take a very long period of time. If you are interested in excelling at poker, we suggest you read a lot of tutorials and then start practising online. You will need to log thousands of hours before you can compete at a professional level and hope to mak emoney. Blackjack on the other hand, offers a little more possibility for those of us interested in making a bit of money – gaining a very slight advantage over the house – without spending years of our lives preparing and practising. It is still difficult, but you can check out two of our pages for starting out tips: What is Card Counting? And Tips for winning at blackjack.


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Scroll down for your cheat sheet
When capturing landscapes, our goal is to faithfully capture the scene as it appears before us. Of course, long exposures and a handful of other scenarios show this rule to be somewhat flexible, but what we typically want in the majority of situations is for the resulting image to appear as accurately coloured, appropriately exposed and detailed as it appears to us in reality.
How to photograph landscapes
So how do you go about achieving this? And how do you make your images as impactful as possible? First, you need to decide on a composition. By choosing to include and exclude elements, you draw the viewer's attention only the strongest part of the scene. You won't want to include all of the sky you see, for example, as it will weaken the overall composition.
You need to get the balance right, and the rule-of-thirds principle is often a good way to achieve this. Here, you place key subjects along imaginary lines a third of the way in from one of the sides of the frame, or at the points where these lines intersect. This won't be appropriate for every scene, of course, but it's a good place to start if you're unsure.
Read more: How to hold your camera properly
You should also make sure your aperture and focusing distance provide your image with the most appropriate depth of field. Too wide an aperture, or too close a focusing distance, and you may find that you don't quite achieve this. Too small an aperture, however, and you may find that an effect called diffraction compromises sharpness. Something in the middlemost part of the range, such as f/8 or f/11, is a good starting point.
Shutter speed is also something to think about, and not just to get the right exposure. Although you will typically have more flexibility here than you would with moving subjects, you should think carefully about whether your shutter speed is either slow enough to smoothly blur anything that's moving, or fast enough to render it sharply. There's no right or wrong here as such, but it's something to think about with clouds or anything at ground level subject to movement by the wind.
Read more: White balance presets
Before you even head out the door, however, you should make sure you have all the tools you need for success. From a sturdy tripod on which to place your camera and a lens with the right focal length to get the kind of image you expect, through to smaller items such as filters and cable releases.
Make sure to bookmark us and check back for more great cheat sheets!
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Gone are the days when you had to carry a tremendously heavy makeup kit - one product for each function. Now is the era of all-in-one BB cream benefits. You must have heard the name, and also about CC and DD creams.
But what's the difference between BB cream and CC cream? How do BB cream and DD cream uses differ? Are there any best BB creams for oily skin? Moreover, what is BB cream - the foundation of all other creams?
What Is BB Cream?
BB cream is a popularly used cosmetic product that has all-in-one properties for providing the best-ever skin correcting benefits. It's one cream that acts as a primer, skin toner, sun protector, color corrector, moisturizer, a foundation expert and an anti-wrinkle formula. It comes in various skin shades, so one must choose the shade that would perfectly blend with their skin tone.
(Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)
BB Cream Benefits
#1. It's an all-in-one cream that saves on other multiple products.
#2. BB cream acts like a foundation, has the goodness of sunscreen and also corrects the skin tone. It has a more natural and full coverage look.
#3. Usually, BB creams are not oily and don't block your pores.
(Image Courtesy: Lovely Girls Tips)
#4. The product comes handy when lifestyle is pretty fast and hectic.
#5. It's a no-hassle product that also saves your expense on other cosmetics.
#6. Some BB creams also enrich your skin with essential vitamins and minerals.
#7. The cream works best to conceal your spots and hide your acne marks along with making you selfie-ready within no time.
Best BB Cream For Oily Skin
It's bound to be skeptical in choosing cosmetic products when you have a combination to oily skin. A product that leaves a matte effect might not be lighter to feel. Your skin could be exposed to acne or degeneration. Therefore, here are some of the best BB creams for oily skin.
#1. No heavy face with the Clinique acne solutions BB cream having SPF 40
#2. A luxurious moisturizer by Nars velvet matte with SPF 30
#3. A must-have buy Bobbi Brown BB cream with SPF 35
#4. One-and-done Boscia BB cream with SPF 27 PA++
#5. Pore filling Physicians Formula #Instaready BB Cream without sun protection formula
#6. A Shrek green L'Oréal Paris magic skin beautifier which blends to reduce the redness of skin
#7. Heavy in benefits Garnier skin renew with SPF 20
#8. 16 shade BareMinerals complexion rescue with SPF 30
#9. Dr. Jart Dis-A-Pore with SPF 25 enriched with the goodness of hibiscus, chamomile, and peppermint
#10. Get wrinkle free skin with 3Lab Perfect BB cream having SPF 40
How To Use BB Cream With Concealer?
This is a really simple process. If you don't have much time and want to sport a natural yet complete look, go for this. Prepare your skin by applying the choicest BB cream. Once done, apply concealer under your eyes with a sponge applicator or gently dab with the help of your ring finger. Lock the look with a lightweight loose powder and prevent creasing.
(Image Courtesy: Beauty MNL)
How To Apply BB Cream With A Brush?
This method works pretty well in case you have dry skin, and want to use a thick textured liquid BB cream. Get some liquid on your palm and apply five dots with a finger on your forehead, nose, chin, and cheeks.
Now evenly smooth out the dots using the preferred makeup brush and keep working slowly in outward strokes. Be gentle on your skin and don't forget to work it out around the areas of your eyes.
(Image Courtesy: Cream)
Difference Between BB Cream And CC Cream
BB creams come with skin care formula. It's an Asian import with a lighter-than- foundation-feel along with being a bit heavier than tinted moisturizers.
Whereas, CC creams are color correctors that are meant to lighten redness providing a fluffy finish and is kind of an improved BB cream. These have fewer skin benefits, are fast absorbing, and focus more on beautification.
(Image Courtesy: Vancouver)
BB Cream And DD Cream Uses
The Dynamic Do-All also called as the Daily Defense is a hybrid of BB and CC creams. However, these are very different when it comes to their application. It interestingly is a heavy duty foot and body cream. These are thick, perfectly lock the moisture and leave you with a celeb-like skin.
(Image Courtesy: Fashion WorldWide)
Liked what you just read? Let us know through the comment section below. We would really love to hear from you!
(Featured Image Courtesy: Anti Ageing Cream)


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Motown Program Featuring Prof. Darrell Miller
February 21, 2015 • 9:00 AM • See description
Alumni, families and friends, join us for and in-depth look at the music of Motown and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. In a series of events including lectures, panel discussions, and presentations, participants will explore the contributions of Motown. As part of the weekend's program, participants will attend a performance of Motown the Musical, directed by alumnus Charles Randolph Wright, at the Durham Performing Arts Center. View a full list of details and RSVP here: http://tinyurl.com/qjsjwes. Sponsored by DAA. Questions? Email firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Amidst this winter's worldwide violent protests over the 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper, the words of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi did little to ease the tensions. "Let Friday be an international day of anger for God and his prophet," he proclaimed several days before a massive, February 3rd protest in which hundreds of British Muslims descended upon the Danish Embassy in London. They bore placards that read, "Butcher those who mock Islam," "Behead those who insult Islam," and, more generally, "Kill those who insult Islam." One protestor was arrested a few days later for dressing as a suicide bomber.
The man who called for the protest is not some obscure Imam known only to radical Islamists. The Egyptian born and Qatar-based Qaradawi is the head of the International Association of Muslim Scholars and one of the Arab world's most well-known television preachers. The Daily Telegraph observes that, "he is considered one of the most influential men in modern Sunni Islam." Qaradawi is most known to Britons for his cozy relationship with the left wing Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who has praised him as a "leading progressive Muslim" and hosted him at a conference in 2004. Following the London bombings of last summer, Livingstone again invited the man he has called a "moderate" to London with the hope of easing inter-cultural tensions. This, in spite of the fact that Qaradawi has called homosexuality a "disease that needs a cure" and the website of which he is the chief scholar, www.islamonline.net, suggests that gays be executed via "burning or stoning to death." Following the Asian Tsunami of 2004, Livingstone defended Qaradawi after he said that "Tourism areas are areas where the forbidden acts are widespread as well as alcohol consumption, drug use and acts of abomination…Don't they deserve punishment from Allah?" by stating that the Sheikh was a victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Qaradawi has endorsed suicide bombings in Israel as "martyrdom operations," proclaimed that "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!" and is banned from entering the United States.
Despite the fawning he has received from Livingstone and the ambivalence that much of the British left has demonstrated towards his remarks, Qaradawi has had a vocal, liberal critic ever since he became a prominent figure in British debates over Muslim assimilation. He was right then and he is right now. But much of the left doesn't want to hear him.
Peter Tatchell can no longer meet with journalists in his home for fear of physical attack. Requesting an interview, I could have been one of his myriad political enemies out to entice him into a trap. It has happened before; a group feigning to be a black student television crew recently lured Tatchell into welcoming them into his office space only to assault him over his campaign against the Jamaican dance hall "murder music" which calls for gays to be maimed and killed. Had security guards not been in the building at the time, Tatchell says, he could have been seriously injured. There is something wrong with the state of liberal politics when many on the left are upbraiding the avowed socialist Peter Tatchell as a right-winger. But that is just the place where Tatchell, whom the reactionary populist Daily Mail once labeled a "homosexual terrorist," finds himself today.
Though born and raised in Australia, Tatchell is the most visible gay rights figure in Great Britain and part of a long tradition of English radicalism and social activism. For his entire public life he has been associated with the far-left reaches of the British political spectrum, a spectrum that stretches much farther left than it does in the United States. From forming the London chapter of the AIDS direct-action agitation group ACT-UP to standing up for the rights of those perennial targets of the British Conservative party, asylum seekers, Tatchell never deviates from a left-liberal perspective in his approach to politics. His noisy tactics, like commandeering the Archbishop's pulpit during the Easter Sunday service at the Canterbury Cathedral in 1998 to denounce the Church of England's hostility to gays, are a composite of Larry Kramer's self-righteousness and Abbie Hoffman's mischief-making.
Born in Melbourne in 1952, Tatchell founded an anti-Vietnam war group, Christians for Peace in 1970. He immigrated to the UK the following year in order to avoid being drafted to fight alongside American troops. In 1973 he organized a gay rights protest in East Germany but was assaulted by the Stasi and kicked him out of the Communist bloc country. He first came into national British consciousness after he stood as a Labor Party candidate in a 1983 parliamentary by-election for a seat in the southeast London constituency of Bermondsey. Tatchell lost by a large margin and the race has entered the annals of British politics as one of its most notorious because of its rank homophobia. Ironically, Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat who won the seat and just lost a campaign to be leader of the party, recently came out of a closet of sorts to pronounce himself bisexual. While most in Tatchell's situation might evince bitterness, Tatchell was astonishingly gracious. "That was 23 years ago – I don't hold a grudge," he told Britain's Independent. On his website, he even went so far as to write, "I don't support the Lib Dems, but if I was a member I would vote for Simon as leader."
Sticking so determinedly with his liberal principles, Tatchell has taken on a number of causes in recent years that are bete noires for many on the left and celebrated by the right. One of his most high-profile targets is Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has shut down independent newspapers, jailed political opponents and denounced gays as "worse than dogs and pigs." In 2001 the Belgium government feted the African dictator while Mugabe¹s goons beat Tatchell about the head after his second unsuccessful attempt at a citizens' arrest (the first was in 1999), leaving him with permanent damage in one eye. In March, the Zimbabwean government accused him of helping to fund a coup against Mugabe, to which Tatchell responded, "I can't raise enough money to staff an office for my own human rights work, let alone fund an insurrection." Tatchell has found little solace from the supposedly anti-totalitarian left, which, at best views Mugabe as a side effect of Western imperialism rather than an intrinsic evil that should be directly opposed. "Mugabe has killed more black Africans than even apartheid," Tatchell says, an observation that while likely true, hardly represents a consensus in left-wing circles.
Tatchell has also angered blacks due to his lonely campaign against Jamaican reggae dance hall music, a genre whose most popular singers call for the mauling and death of gays in their lyrics. He felt compelled to raise the issue because many gay Jamaicans approached him and were afraid to speak publicly due to the violent homophobia so prevalent in their home country. In late November, for example, the gay Jamaican AIDS activist Steve Harvey was shot to death just a year after the murder of Brian Williamson, a founder of Jamaica's gay rights movement. "We were deluged with denunciations from black and left activist groups who accused us of having a racist and imperialist agenda," Tatchell said of the black response to his campaign. A spokesman for the Black Music Council threatened, "Don't you even try to change us, because you can't change us. We will never, ever bow. We are ready and we are coming because what you are doing is racism to the extreme," and the New Nation, a black British newspaper, bestowed Tatchell with its "Pest of the Year" award in 2004. When Tatchell called upon the BBC to rescind its decision to broadcast the Music of Black Origin Awards due to its celebration of homophobic Jamaican reggae singers, black Guardian columnist Joseph Harker wrote, "Instead of seeing a sympathetic figure trying to engage with them, black people see only a white man acting like a modern-day missionary, trying to impose his views."
After Tatchell claimed that Malcolm X might have been gay, the British branch of the Nation of Islam branded him a "Godless sodomite." The Voice, a black British newspaper, wrote that "Unwittingly, Tatchell falls into a tradition of many white right-wing historians who have attempted to rewrite important chapters of black history that effectively disown people of the African Diaspora of their own heroes – re-presenting them in ways that have little meaning or attraction to the young." Tatchell received enough death threats due to his anti-homophobia campaign that the London police placed him under their protection. Meanwhile, Amnesty International, Tatchell says, halted their support of his campaign out of fear of angering the black community. "If the neo-Nazi BNP [British National Party] was advocating the murder of black lesbians and gay men the left would be rising up in mass demonstrations," he says. "When some Jamaican reggae stars advocate exactly the same thing, large sections of the left run a mile."
In the spring of 2005, Tatchell again came out in opposition to Amnesty for their failure to recognize the grievances of gay Palestinians. The silence is caused by what Tatchell believes is the human rights organization's fear of engendering a backlash likely to come about by faulting a movement that holds a firm place in the pantheon of left-wing conscience. He has battled with pro-Palestinian groups – whom he has frequently stood alongside protesting Israeli occupation – over their failure to acknowledge the Palestinian Authority's militant homophobia. In 2005, Tatchell presented Amnesty with a dossier on Palestinian oppression of gays culled from interviews with gay Palestinian exiles. He characterized Amnesty's response as, "We're too busy and we don't have time."
But it has been Tatchell's latest crusade against the Mayor of London's favorite imam that has divided the left in a way that is indicative of a much larger trend in European politics, that is, the problem of Muslim integration. Tatchell was amazed that Livingstone, whose political career he had endorsed from his first race for leader of the Greater London Council in 1980, would carry the water of a man the left ought to have condemned as a bigoted theocrat. "I was utterly astonished that this longtime left-winger and supporter of gay rights was prepared to roll out the red carpet for a fundamentalist cleric who believed in the execution of apostates, unchaste women and gay people," Tatchell says. "It went against everything he's ever stood for." Livingstone had always been a prominent and outspoken leader for gay rights, and supported Tatchell in his 1983 race when the leadership of the Labor Party (including Party leader Michael Foote) opposed his running out of a fear that he was too radical and too gay.
Livingstone, known affectionately and derisively (depending on your politics) as "Red Ken," has long been a thorn in the side of Prime Minister Tony Blair and has been a rallying figure for the party's left wing. He is also something of a thug. In March, he called the US Ambassador to Great Britain Robert Tuttle a "chiseling little crook" after Tuttle requested that US envoys not be forced to pay London's congestion out of respect for diplomatic tradition. Livingstone was temporarily suspended from his duties as Mayor in February, after a 2005 incident in which he compared a Jewish journalist to a Nazi. Approached by Oliver Finegold, a reporter for the Evening Standard, outside an event, Livingstone said, "What did you do? Were you a German war criminal?" Informed that Finegold was Jewish, Livingstone added that the reporter was acting like a "concentration camp guard."
Bob Pitt, a member of Livingstone's official research staff who has worked in Britain's Marxist political circles for decades, regularly derides Tatchell and other Muslim moderates on his blog, Islamophobia-watch.com. Late last year he wrote that, "Tatchell, along with many of his fellow self-styled defenders of Enlightenment values, takes refuge in mindless sectarian bigotry." Tatchell points out that Pitt, in the run-up to the NATO invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks, wrote that, "It is perfectly principled for socialists to defend the Taliban against imperialism." On March 25, Tatchell headlined a Freedom of Expression rally in London's famed Trafalgar Square to protest Muslim demands that the cartoons not be printed. Though some right-leaning British organizations like the Libertarian Alliance and the Thatcherite Freedom Association co-sponsored the rally alongside Outrage!, some of Tatchell's left-wing and Muslim critics ("preferring to remain pure and marginal," Tatchell said at the rally) alleged that he was colluding with the fascist British National Party, which he and the rally organizers emphatically deny.
In January, Tatchell was denied an invitation to attend a conference held by a bi-partisan Parliamentary caucus on equality whose stated purpose it is "To raise awareness of the need for measures to provide parity of protection from discrimination and promote equality and dignity for all." On January 31st, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Equalities held a seminar on "potential conflict between different kinds of rights" and one of the panelists was an adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain, a group which has called for a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day and whose leader supported the Fatwa on Salman Rushdie, and of which Tatchell has been a perennial target. The organizers claimed that the event was only open to Members of Parliament, but when Tatchell asked an MP who attended the event if such a rule was applied, he found otherwise. "Tatchell now suspects an orchestrated plot to prevent him attending the bash," the Independent reported.
A regular target of verbal and written attack, Tatchell has become used to physical abuse as well. He has been beaten up, threatened with murder, and his house has been vandalized countless times. Yet up until recently most of these assaults came from far right groups. Now, the threats that Tatchell receives come from those normally assumed to have left-wing sympathies: blacks and Muslims. Several years ago he placed bars on his apartment windows.
His lonely work is not only thankless; it also leaves him close to penniless. His is not the glamorous life of many high profile, media-savvy activists. He does not charge expensive lecture fees or have a massive fundraising operation like established, American gay rights organizations. He makes next to nothing (earning a few thousand pounds a year from donations and journalism) and lives in public housing. His is a one-man, thankless, human rights organization
"There are large sections of the left who have now twisted the virtues of multiculturalism into a new form of moral relativism whereby anti-humanitarian practices in non-Western cultures are ignored or even defended in the name of 'cultural sensitivity,'" he says. "It's an ethical and political acrobatics on a monumental scale." But he has found little support amongst his social democrat peers for his political courage. For much of December and January, the Outrage! Website was down, and Tatchell suspects that any number of his new found enemies on the left could be responsible for the hacking. "It was a highly sophisticated cyber attack," he confirmed. "The huge effort involved could only have been politically motivated, with the aim of putting us out of action for a long time. Our site was mined with hundreds of viruses and some curious bits of Arabic script, which may be a pointer to the culprits."
Though Tatchell was, and remains, an opponent of the Iraq war, he had a credible, anti-statist alternative to the Bush-Blair plan that would have warmed the hearts of neo-conservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Just a few days before Coalition troops commenced hostilities, Tatchell was arrested for jumping in front of Prime Minister Tony Blair's limousine in Piccadilly Circus with a sign that read, "Arm the Kurds! Topple Saddam." After his arrest, he said, "The Left's do-nothing, oppositionist stance borders on appeasement. It colludes with Saddam's oppression, and is a shameful betrayal of Iraqis struggling for democracy and human rights." He points out that he has been a vocal opponent of Saddam and the Ba'ath party for decades, joining protests outside the Iraqi embassy in the 1980s, long before the left, (or the right, for that matter), took any interest in Iraq. One would be hard-pressed to find another anti-Bush left-winger of Tatchell's prominence holding such nuanced views.
Though conservatives might like to claim him as a convert, Tatchell is hardly a member of their ranks, in either the philosophical or practical sense. He opposes the "assimilationist" approach of gay conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, because "my agenda is about liberation…I don't want queers to fit in with society as it is, I want them to take the lead alongside liberal progressive straights to fundamentally transform society for the benefit of everyone." He supports lowering the age of consent to 14 and the disestablishment of the Church of England. He is a political radical on nearly every issue and in 2004 defected from Labor due to its rightward drift under Tony Blair and joined the Green Party. "Go red and go green," he wrote in the run up to the 2005 parliamentary elections. This is no Log Cabin Republican.
Many of his former comrades have decried Tatchell as an opportunist and a right-wing dupe seeking support from a public rendered amenable to anti-Muslim arguments by fears of terrorism and cultural incompatibility. But Tatchell has not changed his values one whit in his over four decades of activism. It is not Peter Tatchell who has left the left. It is the left who has left him.


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This is one of my favorite lunches. It reminds me of sushi without the price tag. Sea vegetables are some of the most amazing foods on the planet. Not only do sea vegetables purify and balance the ocean ecosystem, they are also one of the most nutrient dense AND bioavailable foods you can put in your pie-hole. Bioavailable means that seaweed is naturally easy for our bodies to digest, assimilate, and absorb the kick-ass nutrients that seaweed provides. Did I mention that seaweed is also a sustainable resource?
Just like seaweed purifies the ocean, it also detoxes your body. Nori is rich in iron, potassium, magnesium, vitamin A, C, B1, B2, niacin and iodine. Nori also has the highest protein content and is the most easily digested of the seaweeds.
In parts of Asia and Japan, sea vegetables have been linked to health and longevity in populations with a high consumption of the food.
If you're looking for ways to add this SUPER anti-oxidizing food to your diet, these nori wraps are a great starting point!
1 package of nori sheets
Any of the following veggies, sliced long and thin:
Sliced bell peppers
Baby spinach/chopped romaine
Sliced cucumber
Sliced mango
Sugar snap/snow peas
Thinly sliced red/green cabbage
Fresh cilantro, parsley, green onions
Sliced Avocado
Sliced Jicama
Sprouts - mung bean, alfalfa
Ramekin of warm water
Place one nori sheet in front of you, rough side facing up. About one quarter of the way up from the bottom, start layering your toppings, starting with your spinach or romaine first. Do not over-layer and toppings should take up no more than ¼ of the entire sheet, otherwise you won't be able to roll it.
Dip your index and middle fingers in the warm water and spread the remaining empty top half of the nori sheet with the warm water, dipping your fingers back in the water as they dry out. Take the bottom edge (the edge closest to you) and pull it up towards the top to begin rolling slowly, pushing the toppings back towards you as you roll.
Repeat until you run out of toppings!
I really love dipping these nori wraps in my Creamy Cilantro Jalapeno Dip.


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Día De Los Muertos
Once a year, our departed come back to celebrate with us. Day of the Dead starts on Sunday, October 31, and ends Wednesday, November 2. October 31 is specifically for children who left the world too early. Day of the dead is not a Mexican Halloween. A summary of this tradition: Mexicans have a tradition of setting an ofrenda dedicated to their ancestors with food and decorations that they liked. Decorations include marigolds, drinks, and cut-out paper.
These traditions are done to remember and respect our family members who have passed on. It is believed that with this holiday, the dead have a chance to visit their family. The living family members treat the deceased as honored guests in their celebrations and leave the deceased's favorite foods and other offerings at gravesites or on the ofrendas built in their homes. Ofrendas can be decorated with candles, bright marigolds called cempasuchil, and food stacks of tortillas and fruit. Marigolds are believed to be the pathways that guide the spirits to their ofrendas. The flower's vibrant colors and scent attract the departed souls, as they return to feast on their favorite foods. They are called "Flor de Muerto" (Spanish for Flower of Dead) and they symbolize the beauty and fragility of life. In Mexico, this celebration is celebrated to the max. They have parades, festivals, and parties. The adults and kids dress up as skeletons to symbolize the dead. This is a celebration of life, not death. This celebration is supposed to be happy, not mournful. Día de los Muertos is an opportunity to remember and celebrate the lives of departed loved ones.
If you'd like to learn more, some movies go in-depth about the culture. Not many movies have come out about Day of the Dead, however, some of them are "Book of Life" and "Coco." Ask some of your Hispanic/Latino friends to learn, and perhaps make your own ofrenda to honor your dear ones.
Hispanic/Latino culture is so beautiful and this is just a sliver of how we honor and remember our family. This celebration is very emotional and a way that reminds us that family never leaves. Our dead are never dead to us.


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Are you holding on too tight?
Not wanting to let go of the ways things "used to be" Today Kevin Breeding joins me to tell you to let it go.
Here's your daily nourishment:
- How to survive in this "backwards" world
- The tiny mindset shift that launches you from fear to courage
- Why letting go makes you more powerful
- Are you getting in the way of God's work?
- Who you should be watching in these crazy times
- Making this mistake will ensure you'll never have enough dough
- The cure to your anxiety
- The 93% rule for being happy
- Could this "detour" be a turn in the right direction?
- Something you'll never take for granted again
All this and more on The Daily Bread Project today.


text: Dmytro Karpenko has a master degree in Computer System and Networks. Since 2007 Dmytro has been working in data processing for the LHC-experiments: ALICE and ATLAS. Currently Karpenko occupies a senior engineer position at the University centre for information technology in Oslo, where he is involved in the operation of the Oslo part of the Nordic WLCG Tier-1 center. Karpenko is also hired by NeIC to perform supervision of the grid production in the whole Nordic cloud.