text:
After the meeting, The Associated Press reported, Mr. Sarkozy pledged to intensify French airstrikes that started in March.
The announcements came as the international community searched for a means to break a bloody battlefield deadlock that has killed hundreds in the contested cities of Misurata and Ajdabiya and left the rebels in tenuous control of a few major coastal cities in their campaign against Col.
They also coincided with word out of
The decision to send military advisers seemed to push the three countries closer toward the limits of the
The French government spokesman, François Baroin, told reporters on Wednesday that the number of military liaison officers would be in single digits and that their mission would be to help "organize the protection of the civilian population." The British deployment could involve up to 20 advisers.
Mr. La Russa said he believed that the rebels had more weapons than the ones they had taken from Colonel Qaddafi's stockpiles. "They're rich in enthusiasm, they want to fight for liberty, but naturally they are poor in experience and arms," Mr. La Russa said of the rebels. "I don't think they only have arms from the Qaddafi army. Some help arrived," he added without elaborating further.
The moves to send military personnel have been likened by some critics to
Facing restive electorates and with their forces already deployed in
But, in Britain at least, some lawmakers have noted that their government's involvement has already progressed from the supply of body armor and communications equipment to the rebels, announced a week ago, to sending advisers, prompting questions about what further embroilment might entail.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, which is now part of a governing coalition with the Conservatives, said Tuesday that the advisers "must not be seen as a first installment of further military deployment." He added, "Vietnam began with an American president sending military advisers."
Members of Parliament have also called for a fresh debate. "This is clear evidence of mission creep," said John Baron, a Conservative member. "Now we are beginning to put military personnel on the ground, something that wasn't even discussed when we debated this issue."
On Wednesday, nonetheless, the satirical and investigative French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reported that, along with Britain and the
The Libyan government criticized the British decision to send advisers, saying the move would prolong conflict. Instead, Libya's foreign minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, used a
"We think any military presence is a step backwards," Mr. Obeidi said, "and we are sure that if this bombing stopped and there is a real cease-fire we could have a dialogue among all Libyans about what they want — democracy, political reform, constitution, election. This could not be done with what is going on now."
Mr. Obeidi said that following a cease-fire, the Libyan government was open to establishing an interim government and a six-month transition to United Nations-supervised elections, BBC radio reported, adding: "The foreign minister said the election could cover any issue raised by all Libyans, anything could go on the table, including, he implied, the future of Qaddafi as leader."
Libyan opposition leaders have dismissed as trickery any offer that does not begin with Colonel Qaddafi's resignation and the banishment of him and his family from the country.
President Sarkozy met Mr. Abdel-Jalil, formerly Colonel Qaddafi's justice minister, to try to find a means to break the deadlock and to debate "the process of democratic transition," according to a statement from the French president's office.
The prime minister,
"But at the same time, we will need to find a political solution, that is, conditions for a dialogue so that the Libyan crisis can be resolved," he said in Kiev,
Libyan state television reported on Wednesday that NATO warplanes had struck telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure. But it did not say where or when the reported attacks took place.
Allied bombing sorties and Tomahawk missiles have failed to tip the balance decisively in favor of a rebel group with disjointed leadership, limited weapons and many inexperienced fighters. And civilian casualties have continued to mount. On Tuesday, the United Nations said that at least 20 children had been killed in the siege of Misurata.Continue reading the main story


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Feedback on Academic Essay Writing through pre-Emptive Hints: Moving Towards "Advice for Action"
Denise Whitelock, Alison Twiner, John T. E. Richardson, The Open University, United Kingdom, Debora Field, Stephen Pulman, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
This paper adopts an "advice for action" approach to feedback in educational practice: addressing how provision of "hints" to participants before they write academic essays can support their understanding and performance in essay-writing tasks. We explored differences in performance by type of hint, and whether there was a transfer of better performance in subsequent essays. Fifty participants were recruited, consisting of eight men and 42 women aged 18-80. Participants were assigned in rotation to four groups, and asked to write two essays. Groups 1 and 3 received hints before Essay 1, whilst Groups 2 and 4 received hints before Essay 2. Groups 1 and 2 received essential hints; Groups 3 and 4 received helpful hints. Essays were marked against set criteria. The results showed that an "advice for action" approach to essay-writing, in the form of hints, can significantly improve writers' marks. Specifically higher marks were gained for the introduction, conclusion and use of evidence: critical components of "good" academic essays. As the hints given were content-free, this approach has the potential to instantly benefit tutors and students across subject domains and institutions and is informing the development of a technical system that can offer formative feedback as students draft essays.
Keywords: assessment, essay writing, feedback, hints
Feedback is a common feature of educational practice (e.g. Black & Wiliam, 1998), and one that has been widely researched but not necessarily implemented or understood to its full potential in practice. This has led to a large amount of research attempting to define what feedback is, when it should be used, and how it could be made more beneficial for students and tutors. Beaumont, O'Doherty and Shannon (2011) for instance identify the "fundamental aim of feedback practice, which is to progressively and explicitly develop students' self-evaluative skills through engagement in the process" (p.683). From this we can see that feedback should have the intention not just of reporting back on finished work, but also of offering advice to self-motivated learners on where they can improve in future work.
This paper reports a study on the computerised provision of "hints" to participants on how to write academic essays, before they begin their essays. We will address this with a view to how this pre-emptive feedback, or "feed-forward" (e.g. Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Price, Handley & Millar, 2011), can have a significant positive impact on participants' work. This study was used to inform and reinforce feedback features being developed for a technical system that could provide an appropriate level of formative feedback on draft academic essays. The topic of the present paper is a response to our overall research question: how does the provision of hints affect the essay being written and essay writing in the future?
As Evans (2013) explained, "Even when "good" feedback has been given, the gap between receiving and acting on feedback can be wide given the complexity of how students make sense of, use, and give feedback (Taras, 2003)" (p.94). Therefore feedback needs to be viewed by tutors and students as an ongoing activity within the cycle of course learning, which feeds into further learning, rather than as an add-on or end point of summative assessment: the aim is that feedback should be seen as "advice for action" (Whitelock, 2010). This is the concept that other researchers have referred to as "feed-forward" (Evans, 2013; Hattie & Timperley, 2007).
Hattie and Timperley (2007) elaborated on this re-framing of feedback as feedforward:
To be effective, feedback needs to be clear, purposeful, meaningful, and compatible with students' prior knowledge and to provide logical connections. It also needs to prompt active information processing on the part of learners, have low task complexity, relate to specific and clear goals, and provide little threat to the person at the self level. (p.104)
Thus feedback must be presented in a way that participants can understand, and that they can interpret in terms of where improvements can be made in the future. Hattie and Timperley argued that feedback must be a follow-up to information given to learners, so that they are aware of task requirements before their work is judged against them:
It is important to note, however, that under particular circumstances, instruction is more effective than feedback. Feedback can only build on something; it is of little use when there is no initial learning or surface information. Feedback is what happens second, is one of the most powerful influences on learning, too rarely occurs, and needs to be more fully researched by qualitatively and quantitatively investigating how feedback works in the classroom and learning process. (p.104)
Therefore, feedback is a central part of the teaching and learning process, but one that must follow task instruction and be followed by space for reflection and scope to implement suggestions. In this regard, Narciss (2013) identified the functions of feedback as cognitive, metacognitive and motivational. Nelson and Schunn (2009) also claimed that feedback involved motivation, reinforcement and information. These collective functions of feedback may be particularly important for students who are returning to study after a period of time in employment, who may find it more difficult to understand and access Higher Education study discourses (Scott et al., 2011).
In terms of the purpose of feedback, Chickering and Gamson (1987) outlined seven principles of good practice for undergraduate education, of which the third was "encourages active learning". Likewise, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) stated that students should be urged to be proactive rather than reactive with regard to feedback, using it as a springboard for improvement rather than a stop point. Therefore, feedback or tutor input must do more than just identify misconceptions in students' work. It must motivate learners to engage with the topic and the task, so that their work comes from and demonstrates understanding rather than just doing enough to get a mark. Pursuing this point, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick concluded that too much focus on final marks could be demotivating for students and encourage effort to be placed just on passing and looking good rather than understanding the subject.
In a similar vein, Graesser and McNamara (2010) concluded that metacognition – awareness of one's own knowledge, abilities and learning strategies to approach a task (drawing on Quintana, Zhang & Krajcik's, 2005 definition) – was important for learning. This means that in practice students need to be supported to reflect on their current understanding of a topic, and how they can best fulfil task requirements. Through this they can direct their learning and task activity more optimally, and feel for themselves whether they are on the right lines.
Following a sociocultural perspective, learning can be considered as a cultural process, using cultural tools. In this sense, metacognition includes an interpretation of cognition which is "distributed and mediated by the world in which we live through voices, books, papers, computers, rules and other cultural artefacts" (Baggetun & Wasson, 2006, p.453). With this in mind, as well as considering the task and type of feedback it is important to address the medium in which tasks are presented to students.
For some years now, many courses and universities have made increasing use of technology to support assignment delivery and submission, as well as the medium for offering feedback. Learning has become radically more open and self-regulated, as well as hugely evolved with the innovative uses of new technology. As Steffens (2006) highlighted, "In parallel to the rising interest in self-regulation and self-regulated learning, the rapid development of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has made it possible to develop highly sophisticated Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments (TELEs)" (p.353).
Computer-provided feedback and assessment has some way to go to catch up with these innovations, particularly where courses cater for large numbers of students. The ability to offer automated guidance and feedback at the point of student need to large numbers could help to revolutionise the experience and performance of teaching and learning in higher education. This is particularly pertinent as many universities, including the institution where the study reported in this paper took place, are increasingly catering for distance and round-the-clock learners, many of whom are out of the practice of academic writing.
Chi et al. (2001) also assert that "suggestive feedback" is helpful to learners, by highlighting an area that may be in need of work and so encouraging students to reflect on their work without directly giving the answer. The need to avoid simply giving the right answer, and the potential for plagiarism, is particularly important within computer-based learning environments. This view is reinforced by Banyard, Underwood and Twiner (2006), who state that "enhanced technologies provided enhanced opportunities for plagiarism" (p.484). Therefore in many instances use of technology makes plagiarism easier: more users have access to information that is portable (easy to "copy and paste" without attribution to a source), but if they do not understand what they find or are not motivated to cite or process it, this may not necessarily help them to use it appropriately. Thus students need guidance and support on how to make appropriate use of the sources of information they find – the cultural tools around them.
Within the study to be reported here, the hints given to participants prior to their essay-writing refer to general guidance on how to structure an academic essay. The hints provided were content-free, and so broadly appropriate to all academic writing in any subject without extra strain and time demands for tutors. This has the advantage that they can be shared with large numbers easily, but the disadvantage that they are not tailored to learners' current subject understanding and individual learning needs.
In other research, hints have been used but have been given as responsive prompts, when students have requested help for a certain task or problem (e.g. Aleven et al., 2010), rather than as broad supportive information before starting tasks. In the study by Aleven and colleagues, the researchers focused on "help-seeking behaviour", in considering when students requested the hints in order to gradually arrive at the answer, compared with those who were using hints to understand the question and how best to respond.
Work with secondary-school-aged pupils by Narciss (2013, 2014) reported a randomised control trial on the automated provision of hints within short Maths tasks. In her research, hints were offered to pupils after errors had been made in a task, but prior to a further attempt at the same task. The hints were therefore pre-emptive, to support future performance and learning, but were also a direct response to an error. In doing this work Narciss recognised that there is little research, theoretical or empirical, on "automatic feedback adaptation", which is similar to our interpretation of the existing literature. Given the nature of the tasks tested within Narciss' studies, being in the Maths domain and specifically working with fractions, students' responses were relatively easy to identify as correct or incorrect. As Narciss acknowledged, this is not the case in less-structured tasks such as essay writing, the context we address in our work, so the nature of feedback needed is significantly different.
In the study to be reported here, we uniquely offered broad macro-level guidance to participants on how to write a "good essay" before they wrote their essay, rather than focusing on the aspects that might identify their work as a "bad essay". Participants each wrote two essays. For one essay they were given hints before writing. Half of the participants received "essential" hints before writing one of the essays (and no hints before writing the other). The other half received "nonessential" or "helpful" hints before writing one essay (again receiving no hints before writing the other essay). Participants' performance was marked against set criteria. This enabled us to explore whether there was an effect of giving hints for the immediate essay, and also whether there was a lasting effect of this provision.
To explore this context, we investigated the following research questions:
- Is there a difference between participants' performance due to giving or not giving hints?
- Is there a difference between participants' performance due to the type of hint given?
- Is there transfer evident in participants' performance due to the point at which hints are given?
Fifty participants were recruited from a subject panel maintained by colleagues in the Department of Psychology consisting of people who were interested in participating in online psychology experiments. Some of them were current or former students of the University, but others were just members of the public with an interest in participating in psychological research. The 50 participants consisted of eight men and 42 women, who were aged between 18 and 80 with a mean age of 43.1 years.
The participants were assigned in rotation to one of four groups. Each participant was asked to write two essays, and in each case they were allowed two weeks for the task. The first task was: "Write an essay on human perception of risk". The second task was: "Write an essay on memory problems in old age". Participants who produced both essays were rewarded with an honorarium of £40 in Amazon vouchers.
Groups 1 and 3 were provided with hints for Essay 1 but not for Essay 2. Groups 2 and 4 were provided with hints for Essay 2 but not for Essay 1. Groups 1 and 2 were provided with essential hints. Groups 3 and 4 were provided with helpful hints (see Table 1). Appendix A shows the essential and helpful hints. Otherwise, the participants were provided with no feedback on their essays.
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Essay 1
Essential hints
No hints
Helpful hints
No hints
Essay 2
No hints
Essential hints
No hints
Helpful hints
Two of the authors who were academic staff with considerable experience in teaching and assessment marked the submitted essays using an agreed marking scheme and without reference to the groups to which participants had been assigned. The marking scheme is shown in Appendix B. If the difference between the total marks awarded was 20 percentage points or less, essays were assigned the average of the two markers' marks. Discrepancies of more than 20 percentage points were resolved by discussion between the markers.
Data analysis
A mixed-design analysis of variance was carried out on the final marks that were awarded to participants who submitted two essays. This employed the within-subjects variables of hints (hints versus no hints) and marking criteria (1–10) and the between-subjects variables of hint type (essential versus helpful) and hint order (hints on Essay 1 versus hints on Essay 2). Post hoc tests were carried out to identify the marking criteria on which any significant changes in marks had arisen as a result of providing hints.
Values of partial h² (eta squared) were calculated as measures of effect size. These represent the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that is explained by each independent variable or interaction when the effects of other independent variables and interactions have been partialled out (see Richardson, 2011). Cohen (1988, pp.285–287) suggested that values of partial h² of 0.0099, 0.0588 and 0.1379 would constitute small, medium and large effects, respectively.
All 50 participants submitted Essay 1, although only 45 participants submitted Essay 2. The correlation coefficients between the marks initially awarded by the two markers were .81 for Essay 1 and .77 for Essay 2. In six cases, the discrepancy between the two markers was more than 20 percentage points, and these discrepancies were resolved by discussion between the markers. The mean final mark for Essay 1 was 56.9 (SD = 15.1), and the mean final mark for Essay 2 was 54.5 (SD = 15.9). Table 2 shows the mean marks awarded for essays with and without essential and helpful hints.
No hints
Essential hints
Nonessential hints
The main effect of hints was statistically significant using a directional test (equivalent to a one-tailed Student's t test), F(1, 41) = 3.23, p = .04, partial h² = .07. Table 2 shows that on average essays written with hints received 4 percentage points more than essays written without hints. This constituted a "medium" effect based on Cohen's (1988) benchmarks.
There was no significant effect of hint type, F(1, 41) = .08, p = .78, partial h² = .00, and no significant interaction between the effects of hints and hint type, F(1, 41) = 1.09, p = .30, partial h² = .03. Thus, there was no difference between the benefit of essential hints and that of helpful hints. In fact, Table 2 shows that if anything the benefit of helpful hints tended to be greater than the benefit of essential hints.
There was no significant effect of hint order, F(1, 41) = 1.24, p = .27, partial h² = .03, and no significant interaction between the effects of hints and hint order, F(1, 41) = 1.68, p = .20, partial h² = .04. In other words, there was no difference between the benefit of hints provided for Essay 1 and the benefit of hints provided for Essay 2. This in turn implies that there was no transfer of the effect of hints provided for Essay 1 on the writing of Essay 2.
There was no significant interaction between the effects of hint type and hint order, F(1, 41) = 0.94, p = .34, partial h² = .02, and no significant three-way interaction between the effects of hints, hint type and hint order, F(1, 41) = .09, p = .76, partial h² = .00.
The main effect of criteria was statistically significant, F(9, 369) = 20.86, p < .001, partial h² = .34, which is unsurprising since different numbers of marks were awarded against the ten criteria. However, there was a significant interaction between the effect of hints and the effect of criteria, F(9, 369) = 2.25, p = .02, partial h² = .05. Thus, the benefit of hints varied across the ten criteria. This too constituted a "medium" effect based on Cohen's (1988) benchmarks.
Post hoc tests were carried out to identify where the increase in marks as a result of providing hints had arisen. Directional tests showed that there was a significant increase in marks on Criterion 1 (introduction) from 5.43 to 6.77 out of 10, F(1, 41) = 4.59, p = .02, partial h² = .10, a significant increase in marks on Criterion 2 (conclusion) from 6.10 to 7.43 out of 10, F(1, 41) = 12.50, p < .001, partial h² = .23, and a significant increase in marks on Criterion 4 (evidence) from 8.00 to 9.03 out of 20, F(1, 41) = 3.22, p = .04, partial h² = .07. These constituted medium or large effects on Cohen's (1988) benchmarks. Otherwise, there were no significant differences between the marks awarded to essays written with and without hints.
Discussion and conclusions
In reviewing our findings and their implications we return to our overall research question: how does the provision of hints affect the essay being written and essay writing in the future? In this context hints are contained within the broader category of "feedback", which has been widely researched and reviewed. We particularly draw on research regarding feedback that has a proactive and forward-looking agenda, viewing feedback as "advice for action" (Whitelock, 2010). From this we build on the view that feedback works best when given before submission of a piece of work, as "feed-forward" (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Price, Handley & Millar, 2011).
Such feedback can be provided either before starting a task or during task activity, so that it can be utilised straight away (e.g. Butler & Winne, 1995; Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006).The aim here is that the advice can be incorporated by participants within subsequent actions, to bridge the gap between expectations or goals, and performance. Such a conception corresponds well with notions of self-regulated learning and metacognition, requiring participants to set their own goals for learning, and to monitor their progress toward these goals (Quintana, Zhang & Krajcik, 2005).
As mentioned, one way that such pre-emptive feedback can be given is through the provision of hints. Hints can identify where goals need to be set, where participants may need to direct extra learning and research, and enable participants to focus their monitoring in reducing this gap between goals and performance, through learning and understanding. Effective use of technology is one vital resource available to participants in reducing this gap.
In responding to suggestions from previous research that feedback can have both positive and negative effects, it was important in the current study to experimentally observe and analyse the effects of provision of hints for academic essay writing. Thus, we needed to rigorously assess whether hints had the potential to support participants in setting goals for their task, and offering guidance on how to work toward these goals, and in doing so gain higher marks (drawing on Hattie & Timperley, 2007).
A crucial difference between the current study and previous research on provision of hints includes that we gave hints prior to essay writing, whereby the hints were framed as positive aims rather than reports of error. In this approach there was no perception of participants having got it wrong before receiving input. This is in contrast to Aleven et al.'s (2010) work, where hints were provided as requested by students, with the aim of supporting reflection, but often as short responses to mistakes, omissions or misunderstandings which potentially allowed students to progressively guess their way toward an answer. Within our study hints were also content-free, making them relevant and potentially transferable to all contexts of academic writing. This design is advantageous for participants studying a range of subjects and modules, and also for tutors and courses to resource a variety of subject and assignment areas.
Furthermore, our study incorporated an experimental trial of the effects of providing hints prior to essay writing and in terms of transfer to subsequent essay writing. The effects of such provision have been queried and conjectured by many researchers, but have not been investigated and reported as statistically significant in this way before. This was a crucial addition within our research design. This enabled us to reach the confident conclusion that there was a positive, significant effect on performance of giving hints for the immediate essay being written, evidencing that a "feed-forward", "advice for action" approach to feedback can indeed positively influence performance.
We also report that higher performance was noted regardless of the order of hint provision, meaning that there was no evidence of transfer of improved performance on the second essay for those who received hints on the first essay. Further research is therefore needed to investigate how transfer of this higher performance to subsequent academic writing activities can be supported, to facilitate a greater longevity of "advice for action".
When considering where the higher marks were gained for essays written with hints, we did find a significant difference accorded to the individual marking criteria. Specifically higher marks were recorded for the criteria concerning the introduction, conclusion and use of evidence. This is of vital importance in terms of the quality of academic writing, as good essays require a strong beginning, a middle that is coherent and an end that brings the whole essay together, and the statistics reported here reflect that these elements significantly improved with provision of hints.
Crucially these results have fed into the development of a technical system to support the drafting of academic essays, as part of the same research project. As we found that providing pre-emptive hints supports the achievement of better marks overall, and specifically on the introduction, conclusion sections and use of evidence, a system interface has been designed and trialled with different textual and visual representations that offer guidance to users to reflect on how connected and progressive the concepts raised in these sections are. The system is still designed to be used on draft essays (and so before users' work is submitted and graded), so that suggestions from system representations can be implemented in the current work. The system, as with the hints provided in the study reported here, is also designed to be content-free, and so usable within any subject domain that requires the writing of academic essays. Analysis of system usage is the subject of another paper, but its design has been largely informed by the key empirical finding from this paper: that providing "advice for action" on how to write a good academic essay can significantly improve participants' performance on the current task. This finding has broad implications for feedback practice and research, which has the potential to benefit tutors and students across subjects and institutions.
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Appendix A
Six essential essay writing hints
- Read the question carefully and underline keywords in the question to focus on the main areas that you need to address for the essay.
- Make a plan for your essay. For example, create a list of salient points that will address the key points from hint number 1.
- Remember, an essay is telling a story. A good story has a beginning, middle and an end. These are also known as introduction, discussion points and conclusion. Ensure this structure is explicit in your answer.
- The introduction should set out a basis for your discussion/argument.
- The discussion section picks up on the introduction, elaborates upon it and provides evidence for the points mentioned within it.
- The conclusion should summarise the discussion points and ends with a decisive stance towards the essay topic that you've been asked to write about.
Six helpful essay writing hints
- When you have written your first draft, pick out 10 words or phrases that you think are the most important ones in your essay. Do you think they convey the ideas you want to express in this essay?
- Topic sentences are those that give an outline of the contents of a paragraph. Do you have topic sentences to cue the reader into the major points you are trying to make in this essay?
- Read your draft and identify any supporting sentences. Their function is to cue the reader into details of one of the arguments in a paragraph.
- Ensure that your conclusion is a summary of the main argument of the essay. The conclusion may often have an opinion or a recommendation too.
- Check your word count. If you have too many words, see if any of the paragraphs in your essay discuss things that aren't directly relevant to your assignment question. If so, delete them.
- Are any of the paragraphs in your essay longer than 7 sentences? If yes, consider carefully whether all the sentences are necessary for you to clearly make your point.
Appendix B
Marking criteria
Maximum marks
1. Introduction
Introductory paragraph sets out argument.
2. Conclusion
Concluding paragraph rounds off discussion.
3. Argument
Argument is clear and well followed through.
4. Evidence
Evidence for argument in main body of text.
5. Paragraphs
All paragraphs seven sentences long or less.
6. Within word count
Word count between 500 and 1000 words.
7. References
Two or three references
8. Definition
Provides a clear and explicit definition of risk or memory.
9. Written presentation
Extensive vocabulary, accurate grammar and spelling.
10. Practical implications
Understanding of practical issues, innovative proposals.
Maximum total marks
This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant numbers EP/J005959/1 & EP/J005231/1).

subset: commoncrawl


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Ukraine calls for ceasefire in Donbass region
Wed 23 Aug 2017
On 22 August Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has proposed a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, which will commence on 23 August. The proposal was made through a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron. They all voiced their support for a lasting ceasefire in order to allow children in eastern Ukraine to attend school, both the Kremlin and Poroshenko's press service said.
Poroshenko's presidential office stated that the truce "will lead to sustainable improvement of the security situation to benefit schoolchildren and the entire civilian population of Donbass." The Ukrainian president announced his call for the ceasefire at the opening of a renovated musical theater in Syevyerodonetsk in the Luhansk region. He said he wanted to demonstrate Kyiv's desire for peace. Several ceasefire deals have been enforced, without much success, since Russia-backed separatists seized parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014. The previous ceasefire deal collapsed within days of its signing.
Recent developments
The International Committee of the Red Cross said more than 2,700 civilians have been killed in the Donbass conflict since the beginning of hostilities. Casualties are even higher when one includes military dead and also those that go unreported on the separatist side. A UN estimate puts the number at more than 10,000 since the beginning of the conflict, in a country of 45 million people.
Both Poroshenko and Putin have rejected any talk of changing the Minsk-2 agreement, as this would undermine their credibility. Neither of them is interested in taking formal responsibility for Donbass. Mr Poroshenko's legitimacy depends on the fight against Russia, and he wants to prevent Donbass from voting in the presidential elections in 2019.
The agreement that sparked the conflict
The conflict in Ukraine today stems from the Ukrainian President's rejection of a single economic deal with the European Union regarding an Association Agreement. The EU sought more Eastern European economies to enter into their trade agreements, while Ukrainians yearned for further involvement with Western Europe's more modern and productive economies.
During the negotiation stages in late 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suddenly voiced doubts about signing the EU's proposed agreement. For Ukrainians, the fact that their President tended to circumvent the topic was a clear signal that he was giving in to pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin. A few days later, President Yanukovych indeed rejected the proposal, accepting a new deal from Russia in the form of €12.7 billion in aid and other economic benefits.
Eventually the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement was signed on 27 June 2014 by the new President, Petro Poroshenko. The agreement will be fully implemented as of 1 September 2017. The entry into force of the agreement will enhance cooperation in areas such as foreign and security policy, justice, freedom and security (including migration), taxation, and public finance management.
*Photo: City centre of Kramatorsk, the government controlled provisional seat of Donetsk Oblast.
Sources: Radio Free Europe, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Huffington Post, The Economist, UNIAN


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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A guard who reported a security breach inside the nation's second-largest chemical weapons depot may have mistaken wildlife for human intruders, authorities said Thursday.
The commander of the Pine Bluff Arsenal said officials combed the area but found no footprints or other evidence of human intruders.
"There's no doubt in my mind that the officer saw something, but it wasn't human," Col. Brian S. Lindamood said. "At this time I have no idea what it could be."
Lindamood said the officer was patrolling inside a 500-acre secure section of the arsenal where chemical weapons, including nerve agents, are stored.
"He reported that he saw three individuals on foot inside the (secure area) and when he approached in his vehicle they ran into the woods," he said.
Lindamood said the guard was between 70 and 165 feet away at the time and the area was brightly lit. The guard won't face any disciplinary measures.
"In fact, he was commended for the promptness of his report, for the detail contained in his report, and for his diligence in following up until his backup arrived," Lindamood said.
The 13,000-acre Army complex, located a half-hour south of Little Rock, began destroying its chemical weapons stockpile in March to comply with international treaties.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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In this week's Grocery Great segment, guest writer ForXx explores cookies from China.
One of the stores I frequent for fresh fish and poultry is the market in the Chinese Cultural Center on 44th Street in Phoenix. It's so fresh, none of the meat in the frozen section has a chance to actually harden. Over the weekend, I hand-picked some tilapia swimming around fresh water, had them scaled and be-headed. (I know–fun, right?) While I was there, I also picked up some of my favorite cookies, which is the topic of this week's Grocery Great.
Last year, we visited manufacturing factories in China. The snack of choice was consistent from factory to factory. Each host would offer us these amazing cookies with sweet tea in a red can. When I returned to the States, I was pleasantly surprised to find these items at my favorite Chinese market. It brought the memories rushing back.
The cookies are available in three flavors: sesame, cashew and peanut, which is my personal favorite. They are about the size of a quarter in diameter; crumble on the tongue; and simply melt in your mouth with a smooth, buttery finish. The calorie count isn't that bad either making them a guiltless pleasure.
Whatever flavor you choose, sesame, cashew or peanut (depending on the flavor) is delicately baked atop the center of each cookie. Because they are so moist and delicious, you don't even need milk. They're a satisfying little treat comparable to our butter or sugar cookies. Only available at the Chinese market. Enjoy!


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"Art has healed my wounds from the past and made me blossom in to a new person" says Kalki.
"I am very passionate about art. During my childhood I escaped from the difficulties and inner turmoils and use to go to forests and parks to escape and hide from people. The pen, paper and paint brush were my solace. They are my soulmates" says Kalki.
Her debut art exhibition named 'Piece by piece' opened first in Trivandrum then in Coimbatore. All of her artworks were sold out. 40% of the funds raised through sale of the artworks were donated by her to the young and needy transgender persons for pursuing their education. Check the crowdfunding campaign here
Her artworks have been bought by art collectors in USA, Canada and Europe.
In 2008, she found the Sahodari Foundation and initiated the Transhearts project, through which she teaches and motivates transgender people to pursue art and creativity for livelihood. More than a hundred transgender people have participated in her art training sessions and around 40 of their artworks have been sold.
Watch The Better India video on Kalki and Transhearts:
Kalki promotes the community's artworks along with hers. During her visit to Toronto in Canada, she exhibited Trans/hearts artworks along with her own creations.


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While you're considering such weighty issues as whether you work for a bad company, whether men really work harder than women, or whether you agree with the 66% of managers who told Accenture they want to take a hike from their current jobs, take a moment to consider this:
15 million Internet users have become fans of the Star Wars Kid, a Canadian teenager who filmed himself doing a lightsaber routine on his high school sound stage…then had the misfortune of having his friends upload the video to Kazaa and file-share it with the rest of the world. Mortifying? Perhaps. Hilarious? Most definitely.
Now there are dozens of "Clone" videos on the site, in which geeks from around the world have added special effects to turn the SWK into everything from a Matrix star to the latest incarnation of the Terminator. (My favorite: the "Original Re-Mix." I cannot stop laughing!)
Watch them all at: http://www.jedimaster.net/. And go ahead. Join the SWK Fan Club. Make a donation to his PayPal fund…after all, while I'm worrying whether I don't work as hard as my male peers, while you wonder whether you should quit your job, while we all wonder whether our companies are up to no good, the SWK is making us all laugh and say, "Thank God it's Friday!"


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City Hotel Derry
Read Reviews (42)
Of all the Derry hotels, the City Hotel Derry enjoys one of the most idyllic locations; perched on the banks of the River Foyle within 5 minutes walking distance of the historic Derry Walls. Please note that you will need pay the Euro amount to the Hotel in Sterling at check out.
Check In From - 3:00 pm : Check Out Up To - 12:00 pm
Cancellation Description : Once you cancel your booking up to 48 hours prior to arrival you will not incur a cancellation fee from the hotel. Cancellations that are made within 48 hours prior to arrival and no shows at the hotel will be charged the 1st night of the stay to your card. Please note that your booking deposit is non refundable.
Travel Description : Situated on Queens Quay adjacent to the beautiful River Foyle
Area Description : Local attractions include the Derry City walls, River Foyle, Tower Museum and the Guildhall to name just a few. There is something to cater for all interests at the City Hotel Derry. If you prefer to venture further out, then within 45 minutes travel by car you can visit the breathtaking sites of the Giants Causeway
Hotel Restaurant
- Vegetarian options
- Breakfast served
Hotel Leisure Club
- Swimwear to buy
- Baby changing area
- Indoor swimming pool
- Jacuzzi
- Viewing area
- Steam room
- Towels available
- Children's pool
- Gymnasium
- Fully equipped gym
Hotel Meeting Rooms
- Projector / screen available
- Stationery
- Refreshments available
- Natural daylight
- Complimentary Wifi access
Hotel Guest Services
- Wifi access at a charge
- Dry cleaning
- Secure car parking at a charge
- Internet access
- 24 hour room service
- Non smoking hotel
- Concierge
- Laundry facility
- Breakfast served to your room
- Limited free parking
Hotel Bar
- Fully licenced Bar
- Bar food menu
- Weekend Entertainment
Things To Do In The Area
- Cycling
- Amusment arcades
- Historical trails
- Golfing
- Visit local heritage sites
- Shopping
- Live music venues
- Concert venues
- Paint ball
- Cinema
- Night clubs
- Guided tours
- Walking trails
- Museums
- Bowling
- Children play centres
- Pet farms
- Boat trips
- Local sightseeing
- Horse riding
- Theatre
Hotel Business Centre
- Meeting rooms
- Fax
- Photocopying service


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LOCKPORT — Free workshops are offered throughout Niagara County regarding ongoing health conditions, such as arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, pain and high blood pressure.
These workshops and another for those at risk of developing diabetes are offered through the county Health Department Nursing Division and Office for the Aging. To register for any workshop, call Penny Tracey, Nursing Division, at 278-1900.
A six-week chronic disease self-management program workshop is Jan. 10 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Dale Association, 33 Ontario St., Lockport; and Feb. 16 from 9 to 11:30 a.m. at the Elks Lodge, 6791 N. Canal Road, Lockport.
Organizers said a 16-week Diabetes Prevention Program has been proven to prevent or delay Type 2 diabetes. The first workshops are from 2 to 3 p.m Jan. 5 at the North Tonawanda Public Library, 505 Meadow Drive; 6 to 7 p.m. Jan. 10 at the American Legion, 8643 Buffalo Ave., Niagara Falls; and 9 to 10 a.m. March 13 at Eastern Niagara Hospital, 521 East Ave., Lockport.
A six-week Diabetes Self-Management Program is set to begin from 1 to 3 p.m. Jan. 5 at the Trott Access Center, 1001 11th St., Niagara Falls; 9 to 11:30 a.m. Jan. 10 at Eastern Niagara Hospital, 521 East Ave., Lockport; and 9 to 11:30 a.m. May 4 at Elks Lodge, 6791 N. Canal Road, Lockport.
For more information, visit www.niagaracounty.com/health/Services/Nursing-Division.


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Is Your Landlord a Peeping Tom →September 10, 2012
Check out this fun tip recommended on a major investor website:
One of the best tips I ever got was from a seasoned landlord that had a huge portfolio of single family homes. He told me that one of his favorite strategies was to make the tenant wait a couple days for a phone call to say whether their application was approved. If he had decided to approve their rental application, there was one last test they had to pass. He would show up unannounced at their home for a surprise visit. At this visit he would have some piece of paperwork he had "forgotten" to give them. Getting a look at how they were living in their current home, would be the deciding factor as to whether or not he would ultimately rent to them.
That's a pretty vile practice.


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F001. Do I need to have an account in Conference Website?
In order to submit your extended abstract or to register to the Conference you need to have your own account in the Conference Website.
F002. How to create my user account in Conference Website?
1) In order to create your user account select the option "Create an account" on the login menu of this Website or follow this link.
2) You will be asked to specify an account name, a password and an email address.
3) After your account has been created you will receive an email, in the email address you specified, asking you to confirm your request. Follow the indicated link to activate your account and login to the platform.
F003. How to submit an extended abstract to the Conference?
Note: All extended abstracts will be double blind peer reviewed. Please delete any references to authors in uploaded files.
In order to submit an extended abstract to ARTEM OCC 2017 you should follow these steps:
1) Login with your user account (If you don't have one see how to do it in FAQ F002).
2) Under "My Space" area, located in the left area menu of this website, select "My submissions" and click on "Submit an abstract" button.
3) Follow the 4 steps process: Metadata, Author (s), Files (please clean all authors' information before uploading the files), and Overview.
4) After completing this process you will receive a confirmation of your submission. Please keep this reference to any question related to your submission.


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claudia's surf city
fair warning: on block island or manhattan or in missouri, we can be a little salty
with feeling—and attitude
Rosio at her place of work
The moto
She leaves her house in the campo before light in the winter—when the temps are in the 30s and 40s—and rides her battered moto to my mother's house in the town of San Miguel de Allende. There she massages, medicates, cooks, cleans, shops, washes, feeds the dog, pays bills, encourages and generally keeps spirits bright with a lot of love.
I say she's superwoman.
She says she's "macha."
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Cliphair Hair Extensions - Colour Ring
Time is running out!
ClipHair Hair Extensions - Colour Ring
This extensive colour ring has the biggest selection of colours we stock. It covers all the Universal European weave Clip In Extensions Micro Ring and Pre-bonded extensions. You can loan a colour ring from us to help match your own hair. This colour ring can be used to match up all hair brands just tell us the brand you prefer and we will use this ring to match the colour for you.
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Please note that due to health and hygiene reasons we cannot accept any used, worn or modified product. Please check the colour and length before removing extensions from their packaging. If the extensions have been removed from their gold hygiene bands, we reserve the right to refuse exchange / refund.


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So a few thoughts that Jayden has shared with me this week are:
John and Jayden were playing with the football in the living room (yes in the house). Jayden threw the ball behind the chair. I reached back and got it out for him, I tossed it his way, but over his head. Jayden immediately picked up the ball and threw it back behind the chair as he tells me, "No, I don't like that mama. Do it again and hand it to me nicely!" Someone is listening to things I say!
While driving into work Jayden just says, (he does lots of his thinking while in the car)
J: I wish I could talk to bee's.
Me: You want to talk to bee's?
J: yes
Me: what would you say to a bee?
J: I don't know, just talk.
While at home giving Bubba (the dog) treats he says,
J: I wish I was a dog
Me: you wish you were a dog? why?
J: then I can eat bones too
Me: bones are yucky why do you want to eat them?
J: no they are not. When I was a dog I did eat them all the time and they were good.
Ummm what my child was a dog?!?!


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quote:Originally posted by rolyn: The British Summer weather appears to have cast it's vote. It is fuckin PISSING DOWN!!
quote:Originally posted by leo: It's got quite sunny here - good for Labour, I hope.
quote:Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan: It has however been D-Day weather!
quote:Originally posted by mr cheesy: I'm pretty bloody mad that there are reports of young people being turned away from polls in places like Keele. Disgusting.
quote:Originally posted by stonespring: quote:Originally posted by leo: It's got quite sunny here - good for Labour, I hope. I'm very confused. In the US bad weather means low turnout which is almost always good for Republicans. The poor, the young, the disabled, single parents, people on shift work, and racial/ethnic minorities all are more likely to vote for Democrats and less likely to vote at all in bad weather (although African-American women tend to vote in remarkably high numbers, at least during presidential elections, no matter what). Meanwhile, the elderly, well-to-do, and white are more likely to vote Republican and tend to vote come hell or high water. Why would things be different in the UK in this election?
quote:Originally posted by mr cheesy: Wow. Looks like a hung parliament
quote:Originally posted by Doublethink.: Main learning point, don't hire Lynton Crosby.
quote:Originally posted by Doc Tor: Except that NI is now majority republican/neutral and majority remain. The DUP are on the wrong side of history *and* demographics. They'll only crush SF in their dreams.
quote:Fuck 'em. May's just got into bed with a bunch of proddy terrorists, and we should be reminding everyone of that, daily. Twice daily.
quote:Originally posted by Alan Cresswell: We might appreciate a clear 12 months before the politicians start spending obscene amounts of cash driving around the country in slogan emblazoned buses rather than doing the job we elected them to do.
quote:Originally posted by Bishops Finger: Doc Tor, congratulations on the purchase of your bottle of Bushmills. Clearly, the Spirit was upon you, and you was a-prophesying... What others have said about the Definitely Unhinged Party.IJ
quote:Originally posted by rolyn:Thinking that once the dust settles on this latest apparent shambles the Tories, with their new coalition lapdog, will be able to govern until 2022?


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Awowens06 needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 164 designs submitted by 38 freelance designers.
We sell specific sounds to industry professionals and acoustic hobbyists such as DJs, Mixers, Producers and more. Our clients encompass both consumer and enterprise customers and are currently in the USA. These include audio from tv, movies, and records and whatever else our clients post.
We sell digital products not physical ones.
Our company is lean and minimal. We'd like a logo to reflect that essence.
Our name Vulni comes from a rough translation of the Russian for "Waves" - though I've been told it's pronounced more like Volni.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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Turkey's president says all suspected coup plotters and "terrorists" will have to wear an almond-brown uniform when they appear in court. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said jumpsuits would be worn by those accused of involvement in the July 2016 coup plot. Other "terrorists" would wear jackets and trousers. That term is used for followers of US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen and ... Read More »
Tag Archives: wear
Huawei Watch 2 Classic Review: Good watch but a missed opportunity for Wear 2.0
Barely three months into its official release, Android Wear 2.0 should still be enjoying its honeymoon period. But the truth is, it never really had one. Despite a high-profile launch and pent-up anticipation among Android enthusiasts, the roll-out has been less-than-stellar, with few manufacturers supporting it with new models, and most older watches unable to take advantage of the best ... Read More »
Report: Google to sell its own Android Wear watch in early 2017
Google is just getting started when it comes to selling its own hardware. Another rumor from the usually accurate Evan Blass points to a pair of Google-built watches that will come early next year. View image on Twitter Follow Evan Blass ✔@evleaks Google's two smartwatches will be released with Android Wear 2.0 in Q1 2017 [image courtesy of:http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/11/exclusive-these-could-be-googles-upcoming-android-wear-smartwatches/ …] 2:00 AM ... Read More »
IIT-Bombay students to wear khadi robes for convocation: Is government saffronising education?
IIT Bombay has chosen uttarias or khadi angavastrams, for its convocation ceremony of the passing out batch. The Indian Institute of Technology has placed an order for 3,500 convocation robes made of khadi cotton, inculcating the feeling of nationalism in the students. The students will drape the piece of cloth over their clothes to mark the occasion What is khadi? ... Read More »


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May 17th, Friday, Solo with Frank Centrone, Hartlins Inn, Sound Beach at 5PM
May 24, Friday, MilesRoad at Ralph's Marina Mount Sinai at 5PM!
May 25, Saturday,MilesRoad at Phil's Wading River at 9pm!
June 8, Saturday, MilesRoad at Tides Beach Rocky Point
June 14th, Friday, MilesRoad at Ralph's Marina Mount Sinai at 5PM!
June 23, Sunday, MilesRoad at On the Docks, Aquebogue at 4PM!
July 4th Thursday, MilesRoad at Ralph's Marina Mount Sinai at 5PM!
July 20, Saturday, On the Docks, Aquebogue at 7pm!
July 26, Friday, MilesRoad at Ralph's Marina Mount Sinai at 5PM!
July 28th, Sunday, Car Show Miller Place Fire department
August 9th, Friday MilesRoad at Ralph's Marina Mount Sinai at 5PM!
August 16th, Friday, Holbrook Fair @ 7PM!
August 23, Friday, Solo with Frank Centrone at Hartlins Inn, Sound Beach at 5pm!
August 25, Sunday, On the Docks, Aquebogue 4pm
August 30th, Friday MilesRoad at Ralph's Marina Mount Sinai at 5PM!
September 15, Sunday, On the Docks, Aquebogue 4 pm
October 12, Private Party
October 18, Hartlin Inn Sound Beach at 5PM
October 19, Broadway Rocky Point
Blues and Brews 12-7PM
November 16, Phil's Wading River with the MilesRoad Band at 9PM
November 23, Sound Bistro, Aguebogue with MilesRoad at 8:30PM!
November 27, Ruggero's with Frank Centrone as TWO MILES! 6-9PM
Songs we Love and Play!
The Break Up Song
I'm Your Captain
Bang a Gong
To Love Somebody
American Girl - Petty
Hard To Handle -Black Crows
Crazy Little Thing Called Love-Queen
Keep Your hands to Yourself
Bad case of Loving You
Alright Now Free
Gimme Some Loving
Feels Like Rain
Some Kind of Wonderful – GF
Can't Get Enough – Bad Co
Peace Love and Understanding
Honky Tonk Women Stones
Jealous Again – Black Crows
Brown Sugar Stones
Rebel Rebel
Suffragette City
Dirty Water
Long Cool Women
Green River
Wagon Wheel
I saw her Standing There
Back in the USSR
Drive My Car
Last Time - Stones
Maggie May – Rod Stewart
Angel of Harlem –U2
Wild Night
Pride and Joy- SRV
JJFLash - Stones
Rockin in the Free World
Come Together
Last Dance With Mary Jane- Petty
Little Wing Hendrix
Joe Spina and The MilesRoad Band has all the music you need from Full 6 piece band to single acoustic and anywhere in between. Let me support your venue! Acoustic or Rock Band? Contact me anytime via email; firstname.lastname@example.com
or my cell; 631-703-7515
Songs YOU know and Love!
Maggie Mae-Rod Stewart
Mr Jones-Counting Crows
One –U2
Amie-Pure Prairie League
Wild Horses – Stones
Going to California – Zep
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Wild Night – Van morrison
Back In The USSR-Beatles
Green River-CCR
All Summer Long – Kid Rock
Last Time - Stones
Paint it Black – Stones
New Orleans-Original
Take Your Time - Original
Blue Letter - Mac
For What It's Worth-Buffalo Springfield
Down By The river-Neil Young
Almost Cut My Hair -CSNY
Feels Like Rain
Rock in the USA-John Cougar
I'm Your Captain – GFR in D
Road House Blues - Doors
Peace, Love and Understanding
Wagon Wheel
Keep on Rockin in the Free world
Moondance-Van Morrison
Bad Moon Rising-CCR
Angel of Harlem-U2
Yer So Bad – Petty
Last Dance with Maryjane - Petty
Thank You
Brown Eyed Girl - Van
Saw Her Standing There-Beatles
Secret Agent Man – Rivers
All Over Now - Stones
Wonderwall - Oasis
Dock of the Bay
Ain't No Sunshine – Bill Withers
BreakDown – Tom Petty
Everybody's Talking- Harry Nielsen
Can't Find my way home-Blind Faith
Hey There Delilah-plain white tees
Red House-Hendrix
Feeling Alright - Traffic
Little Wing-Hendrix
You Can't Always Get what you want- Stones
It's important to stay true to your roots. See me perform live with my band MilesRoad in 2019!
listen to my soul...
official website
Joe Spina


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Internet advertising continue the explosive growht
Figures shows that Internet advertising revenues continue to skyrocket, the tech wreck of six years ago just an insignificant correction. The 2007 first quarter revenues of US$4.9 billion represent a 26 percent increase over Q1 2006 at US$3.8 billion and a 2 percent increase over Q4 2006 at US$4.8 billion. "The continued growth of online ad revenues clearly illustrates marketers' increased comfort with the extraordinary vitality and accountability of this medium," commented IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. "It reaches consumers with an unprecedented level of efficiency and measurability that provides marketers with actionable data. And the ever-changing landscape of new platforms and technologies that enrich interactive advertising guarantees that this growth trend will continue."
"The recent results are particularly impressive when the size of the advertising revenue base is taken into account," said Peter Petrusky, director, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Given these results, we may expect continued strong revenue growth buoyed by an expanding broadband subscriber base, which could translate into more users spending more time online and offers a platform for rich media and video ads that dial-up connections can't render."
The continued growth of internet advertising, on top of the record growth of 2006 and despite advertising's traditional sluggish first quarter, demonstrates the growing significance of interactive advertising to the overall advertising and marketing industry.
About the IAB
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau represents over 300 interactive companies responsible for 86% of online advertising revenues in the
By ojvcentral and ojv.noMake money from your website with Google advertising program


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Why did Penguin recall a book on Hindus?
"Now here's this book. And there will be more. After half a century of studying and engaging with Hinduism, I'm not about to be silenced by a few (bad) eggs," academic Wendy Doniger wrote in her latest book On Hinduism, published last year.
Doniger, who teaches at the University of Chicago and has written nearly half a dozen books on Hinduism, including a translation of the Kama Sutra, was writing about how her 2009 book The Hindus: An Alternative History quickly became a lightning rod for Hindu anger.
Doniger wrote that bloggers had accused her of attacking Hinduism and sexualising Hindus, flooded Amazon with their "lurid opinions of the book" and sent her obscene and threatening emails. There was even a protest outside the US embassy in Delhi calling for the book, which was climbing the best-seller non-fiction list, to be banned. The book had also prompted a legal challenge from Hindu groups and attracted at least two separate criminal complaints.
But Tuesday's news of her publisher Penguin India deciding to recall and destroy all remaining copies of The Hindus is being seen as the unkindest cut of all.
The publisher appears to have come to an out-of-court agreement with a little-known Hindu campaign group called Shiksha Bachao Andolan (Save Education Movement), which had filed cases against the book.
The man behind the campaign is Shiksha Bachao Andolan leader Dinanath Batra, a former teacher and school principal. After retirement, he told a newspaper, he began to devote his time to a "mission to see distortions removed from books taught to schoolchildren".
Since then, he says, he has filed some 10 lawsuits involving "objectionable passages" from various textbooks. He filed another demanding an essay on Ramayana by the late poet and scholar AK Ramanujan be dropped from the history syllabus of Delhi University. That was followed by a legal notice to a newspaper for publishing a story on Hindu terrorism. Then he trained his guns on the Doniger book.
"The book is in a bad taste right from the beginning," Mr Batra told a BBC Hindi colleague on Wednesday. "If you see the front page [cover], the picture there is also objectionable since it portrays a deity in a vulgar pose. The book is slanderous and even facts have been distorted."
The Hindus is a magisterial 779-page work that attempts a narrative that is different to the one constituted by the famous texts in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India.
Doniger writes that it also tells an alternate history to "show how much the groups that conventional wisdom says were oppressed and silenced and played no part in the development of the [Hindu] tradition - women, untouchables [Dalits]- did actually contribute to Hinduism". Reviewers who liked the book described it as "history as entertainment" and "staggeringly comprehensive". They praised Doniger's "vast erudition, insight, graceful writing laced with gentle wit".
Mr Batra doesn't think so.
He finds it objectionable that Doniger writes in the book that independence hero Mahatma Gandhi had a "habit of sleeping beside girls young enough to be called jailbait in the United States"; and that 19th Century Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda "set himself against all forms of caste distinction and advised people to eat beef".
Mr Batra's pride is also hurt by Doniger's assertion that Maharashtrian queen Lakshmi Bai "claimed loyalty to the British" and sought their help when a local rival to the throne invaded her kingdom. And he also does not believe Doniger when she writes that "there is no Hindu canon", and that ideas about major issues such as vegetarianism, non-violence, even caste, are "subjects of a debate, not a dogma".
The fact that a top publisher has acceded to the demands of a fringe Hindu group has come as a shock to many. (Penguin has refused to comment so far.)
"This is deeply disappointing," historian Ramachandra Guha tweeted. "Penguin should have appealed in a higher court."
Journalist and commentator Swapan Dasgupta said he was "very uneasy" about Penguin's decision. "Ideas and academic studies, however contentious, can't be handled by censorship."
Doniger has, however, has been kinder to her publisher.
She said in a statement that she did not blame Penguin Books, which had made an effort to save the book by defending it in the courts for four years - both as a civil and criminal suit - unlike other publishers, which have quietly withdrawn books.
What's seen as a bigger worry is the erosion of India's liberal tradition.
Academic Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes that the country's reputation as a bastion of liberal values is "dimming by the day".
He makes the point that the courts have also failed liberal India "because of a law that signals that it is open to banning books", a point Doniger also makes in her statement. Mr Mehta despairs that liberal India has also been "silenced" by "professional offence mongers". He blames the educators for the "extraordinary failure of the project of liberal education".
Mr Mehta writes: "Wendy Donniger could not have damaged Hindus. But if liberal India dies, Hinduism will die as well. It's a frightening message for one of the world's largest religions."


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Honourable Mokoto Hloaele
Honourable Minister of Home Affairs
Honourable Mokoto Hloaele
Honourable Mokoto Hloaele is the Minister of Home Affairs. He resumed his duties into this position in February 2019 following the cabinet reshuffle. He is a member of the Senate.
Following the 2017 snap election, he was appointed to the position of the Minister of Energy and Meteorology following his appointment as a Senator in July 2017.
Honourable Hloaele attained MBA from Henley Management College of the United Kingdom (UK) from 1999-2001. Before obtaining his MBA, he studied and acquired Diploma in Management from the same institution from 1997 to 1999. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) Degree from the National University of Lesotho (NUL) from 1978 to 1982.
In 2012 and 2015 consecutively, Honourable Hloaele was elected as Member of Parliament representing the Democratic Congress (DC) political party in the constituency of Malibamatšo Constituency. Following his election in 2015, Honourable Hloaele was appointed as Minister of Development Planning. In November 2016, he resigned from his position as Minister of Planning to join the newly formed political party named Alliance of Democrats led.
Honourable Hloaele held various positions as a Public Servant as well as in the Private Sector before he was appointed the Minister of Development Planning in March, 2015. In 2007, he worked as the Managing Director and Board Member for Lesotho Electricity Company (LEC) (Pty) Ltd until 2012 when he resigned to join the politics.
He also worked for the Central Bank of Lesotho (CBL) as Head of Treasury Operations Division in 2005-2007, Head of Securities Market Division in 1999-2004 and Export Credit Guarantee Officer from 1988-1997.
Honourable Hloaele also served in the Government of Lesotho Treasury Department as Principal Treasury Accountant from 1986 to 1988, Treasury Accountant in 1986 and Senior Accountant from 1982 to 1984. He became a Planning Officer in the Department of Women's Affairs from 1984 to 1986.
Honourable Francis Mokoto Hloaele is married with four children. He is interested in watching professional tennis and soccer, which he previously participated actively as a player.


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Quick Links to Other Popular Features
The Asda Foundation Nottingham 10K is proving popular as ever, with 2018 set to be our biggest and best yet. Demand is so high, that we've had to increase capacity for this year's event!
The flat and fast route starts and finishes at Nottingham Rugby club with the course taking runners on a journey through the scenic Lady Bay area, where you'll be cheered on by crowds of enthusiastic spectators.
Runners then travel on to the stunning Holme Pierrepont Country Park, home to the National Watersports Centre, where they will take a lap of the Regatta Lake, before heading for home – and a grand finish back at the Rugby Club!
In Advance : £20.00 (affiliated) £22.00 (unaffiliated)
On the Day : £ £26.00 (unaffiliated)
You can predict your finish time for this race based on a recent race you've run. Enter the details below - select a similar type of race (hilliness and terrain) for the best prediction.
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Chocolate chip zucchini muffins from Cooking Light magazine.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Use up that zucchini with this yummy treat: Chocolate chip zucchini muffins
Chocolate chip zucchini muffins from Cooking Light magazine.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Garden gone wild...or...attack of the killer melon plants
So I guess I was a bit naive, but I really didn't understand how invasive the plants were going to be, especially the cantaloupe...it has practically swallowed up my blueberry bush and I am having a hard time getting to my square compost bin.
The next three photos were taken on July 28, 09.
My husband can't even mow around them anymore because they have grown into the grass.It also doesn't help that I haven't pulled any weeds lately.
My very first melon...I'm not sure how much longer until I can pick it, but I am growing impatient. I don't have a lot of patience during the summer gardening season. I want to munch on it RIGHT NOW.
I have figured out the reason for the mammoth cantaloupe plant. Look closely at the photo below of my two compost bins. It was taken on April 20, 09, for a post I did for Earth day. I have since moved the round compost bin to the other side of the square bin so that I could expand the garden against the house to make room for some blueberry bushes. I planted the cantaloupe right on top of where the compost was originally. No wonder it is so huge, the roots are probably having a feast on the earth where compost used to be.
I have got quite a mess, but if the melons turn out to be delicious it will all be worth it.
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Monday, July 20, 2009
Financial To-Do List Update
Our number one priority was to get a will. We started working on it this week. We are using Suze Orman's Will & Trust kit that I purchased from her website. Once purchased, you log into your account and build your will and other important documents with her guidance. I have found it to be relatively easy to follow. Although, she highly stresses the importance of a revocable trust and I had never heard of this before. After I plugged in some of our data, the program recommended that we seek a lawyer based on the personal data that I entered. Now I need to read up on the revocable trusts to understand them fully. If we have to use a lawyer, so be it, but I want to check all of our options. I hear ka-ching, ka-ching in the background.
Some other things on our list were: reviewing our IRA asset allocation, updating our household to-do list, increase payments to my husband's student loan, start college funds for our girls and lastly increase our emergency fund. All of these things are important, but we have moved the emergency fund up in priority.
If you remember a few months ago, I wrote about the difficult time my husband's business was going through. He has worked extremely hard over the last few months to get it back on track and we are finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. But we had to dip into our emergency savings every month from March through June.
Thank goodness for emergency funds...can I hear an AMEN?!!
We now must rebuild the coffers. This has been the second time we have dipped into our emergency fund since 2006, so we realize the importance of having a fund. We try to live responsibly and frugally, but there isn't a lot of money at the end of the month to shift to our emergency fund. At least, at first glance. We need to review our budget categories and challenge ourselves to make some cuts. We have two budgets to review: our business and household.
I have some work to do, as usual, but this is the job that I have taken on in our family and business: money manager. I love my job and the challenges that are before me.
How are you doing on your financial to-do list? Are you making progress?
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Please note that this post is not an endorsement for Suze Orman's Will & Trust.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Grocery essentials: Do you have a "buy" price?
There is only one item that I diligently track the per unit price of and that is diapers. I still have one child in diapers and we have gone the disposable route. I did cloth diapers when both of my girls were infants. I was given a set of infant cloth diapers as a gift, but when they outgrew the cloth I switched to disposable.
To save myself time and money, I have found that buying Luvs diapers at BJ's (a warehouse club) has been the cheapest for me. I tried BJ's brand diapers and I did not like them. I liked the price, but did not like the diaper. They smelled terribly of plastic and they bunched up. So I stick with Luvs, because they are cheaper than Pampers or Huggies and BJ's usually offers a $5.00 coupon off of a box. That brings the price down to $24.99 a box and my baby wears size 4. With 180 diapers in a size 4 box that makes the price per unit of .139 per diaper. I use that price as my gauge and if I find them cheaper elsewhere I will buy, but BJ's is where I usually shop for diapers. That box will last me a little over a month.
I was thrilled when I read at Common Sense with Money about a Huggies diaper deal at Rite-Aid. I followed her instructions and I bought 5 packages of Huggies for a total of 150 diapers and a price of $57.45. I used 5/$1.50 Huggies coupons. I made 2 separate purchases and used a $5/$25 purchase coupon on each purchase. That brought my out-of-pocket expense to $39.95, but through Rite-Aid's Single Check Rebate program, I earned a $25 gift card for Rite-Aid and a FREE voucher for a package of Huggies diapers.
My final per-unit price will be .08 per diaper. I was thrilled.
Outside of diapers, I don't really track the per unit price of other grocery items. When shopping, I will look at the best price per unit on the items that I need on that particular trip, but I don't keep a price book. There are other items where I think a price book would be helpful, like coffee, toilet paper, chicken, turkey or cereal, to name just a few. These are constantly on my shopping list, so figuring out a "buy" price would help me know when I find a sale if it is a good time to stock up.
I have been working hard trying to reduce our grocery expense. Instead of a binder or book, I am going to write my "buy" price for our main grocery staples or essentials on a 3 X 5 card and keep it in my coupon file. I won't feel so overwhelmed and I think it will help me save some money by knowing when to stock up.
Do you track the price per unit when buying your groceries? Do you have a price book to manage your "buy" prices?
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Monday, July 6, 2009
My baking disaster turned into a sweet reward
So I tried a second batch...
I was mortified. I consider myself fairly competent home cook, but this was the worst batch of cookies that has ever been made in my kitchen. They really flattened out in the oven and when I tried to remove them from the pan they fell apart.
My daughter didn't really notice the disaster, all she wanted to do was eat one when they cooled down. So I poured us both big glasses of milk and we tried them. They tasted good, but I was planning on taking some of the cookies to a family picnic and they were by no means...presentable.
Frustrated and bummed, I called the 800 number on the back of the package. "What did I do wrong?", I asked the customer service person, Randy. I re-read the ingredients and I didn't miss anything. My oven was set at the correct temp of 375 degrees. He suggested that maybe I over-beat the batter or maybe the "softened" butter was too soft or maybe it was too humid in my kitchen. He offered to send me some baking tips and a coupon for a FREE bag of morsels so that I can try again.
I took the cookie crumbs to the picnic anyway and my family thought they tasted great. My brother even asked me to make them again.
I will definitely try the Oatmeal Scotchies again especially since Nestle sent me a FREE coupon. Although I probably would have baked them again anyway, but the coupon was a nice surprise.
Have you had a kitchen disaster lately?
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This post is linked to:
- Fearless Friday at Home Ec 101


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Losing weight and/or building muscle in our current day and age is difficult. Convenient, Calorie rich, highly processed temptations lurk around every corner. But fear not! Hooked On The Bean is here to help by introducing our new "Healthy Options Menu". Below are our first three entries in this soon to be essential part of your post workout ritual!
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When weight loss is your goal nothing beats a good cardio session at the gym. But after all that exertion, stepping out into a cold Alaskan winter day can make splurging on a warm espresso almost irresistible. Unfortunately most people do resist this urge for fear of counteracting all their hard work by drinking empty calories… but no longer. Our Protein Enhanced Chocolate Americano (also available in vanilla) is a scrumptious reduced calorie drink, with just enough protein to help your body prepare for your next trip to the gym, instead of undoing the last one!
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The Hooked On The Bean team!