HC reserves order on plea challenging validity of Article 370
New Delhi, Mar 16 (PTI) The Delhi High Court today reserved its judgement on a plea challenging the constitutional validity of Article 370 of the Constitution that gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir.”File your written submissions. We will consider it and will pass an order,” a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath said.During the brief hearing, the counsel appearing for state of Jammu and Kashmir told the bench that a similar issue was raised before the Supreme Court but it had refused to intervene in it.The counsel claimed that the PIL was “nothing but a politically motivated petition”.Countering the submissions, the lawyer appearing for petitioner Kumari Vijayalakshmi Jha argued that the issue raised by him before the high court was different from the matter which was put before the apex court.”In none of these cases (referred to by the counsel for Jammu and Kashmir) such issues were raised,” the lawyer said.The bench, after hearing the arguments, asked both the parties to file their written submissions within a week.In the plea, the petitioner has contended that Article 370 was a temporary provision that had lapsed with dissolution of the states Constituent Assembly in 1957.It said the question before the court for its consideration was whether the temporary provision lapsed automatically with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir on January 26, 1957.The petition has said that “continuance of temporary provision of Article 370, even after dissolution of Constituent Assembly of J&K, continuance of J&K Constitution which has never got the assent/approval of President of India/Parliament/Government of India, regarding the matter like citizenship, which is in exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament, amounts fraud on the basic structure of our Constitution, … (as it is) against the sovereignty, integrity, unity of the nation, sovereignty of Parliament etc.”.advertisementThe Centre had earlier opposed the plea saying the issue has already been considered by the Supreme Court. Earlier in July 2014, the Supreme Court had dismissed a plea challenging special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and asked the petitioner to move the high court. PTI ABA HMP PPS AG RT
Lewis Hamilton answered his critics, says Mercedes boss Toto Wolff
Lewis Hamilton answered his critics with a dominant British Grand Prix victory, his fourth in a row at Silverstone and fifth there in total, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said on Sunday.The triple world champion, his name booed by some and condemned by others after snubbing a Formula One promotional event in London and taking a holiday instead, led every lap from pole position to chequered flag.The Briton also set the fastest lap and stepped out of his car only one point behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel at the halfway stage in the season.”I think that sometimes he just needs the right impulse to extract maximum performance,” Wolff told reporters after his team’s one-two victory with Valtteri Bottas coming in second.”I think maybe that is an answer to the critics.”I still don’t understand why the British hero is being beaten up before the grand prix. It probably made him even more determined to show his fans how he can drive. And he can drive,” added the Austrian.Hamilton, who ended a run of two races off the podium thanks to problems beyond his control, told reporters separately that there had been no reason to question his preparations.”I have more poles than most,” said the Briton, who is now one off Michael Schumacher’s all-time record of 68 after Saturday’s pole.”I am obviously building up the wins that I have. My performance is second to none. If you don’t know now that my preparation is mostly on point, then I guess you never will,” added the winner of 57 grands prix.No other British driver has won as many races as Hamilton, second only to seven times champion Schumacher in the record books, and only the late Jim Clark and Frenchman Alain Prost can match his five British Grand Prix wins.”I will be training hard next week in different locations, as I always do,” Hamilton said when asked if he had another holiday planned before Hungary.”I will be working and focusing all week and then I will be in the UK for at least two days, when I will be at the factory and then I will go to the race.”
Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure has made Real Madrid weaker: Lionel Messi
Barcelona star Lionel Messi feels Real Madrid have become a weaker side since the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo.Messi and Ronaldo battled against each other in La Liga for nine years with their respective sides but the Portuguese forward left for Serie A in July.Real Madrid and Barcelona have won their opening three matches and are joint top of the table on nine points.”Real Madrid are one of the best teams in the world with a great squad (but) it’s evident that the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo makes them less good and makes Juventus (one of the) clear favourites to win the Champions League,” Messi told Catalunya Radio in a show broadcast on Monday.Ronaldo, Modric and Salah on FIFA player of the year shortlist, Messi left out”It surprised me. I didn’t imagine him leaving Madrid or joining Juventus. There were a lot of teams that wanted him. It surprised me but he went to a very good team.”In early August Messi gave a speech in which he said Barca wanted to win the Champions League this year after the disappointment of being knocked out by AS Roma in the quarter-finals last season.The No. 10 reaffirmed his desire to win the trophy Barcelona last lifted in 2015.”It’s time. We have had three years in a row being knocked out of the Champions League and are hurt further still from last season’s result in Rome,” added Messi.”We have a spectacular squad and we can fight for it. We lost chances to win it in the (Pep) Guardiola era against Inter (Milan) and Chelsea. We were better than them and we could not get to the final because of small details.”advertisementBarcelona face Inter, Tottenham Hotspur and PSV Eindhoven in the group stage of this season’s competition.(With Reuters inputs)
The brutal world of sheep fighting: the illegal sport beloved by Algeria’s ‘lost generation’
Reuse this content The brutal world of sheep fighting: the illegal sport beloved by Algeria’s ‘lost generation’ – podcast Photograph: Youcef Krache/ Collective220 Since then, security forces have kept a stifling grip on Algeria. Both the war for independence and the violence of the 1990s helped build a powerful, revolutionary, proudly Arab-African nation-state obsessed with self-rule and suspicious of outside intentions – but also afraid of what comes from within. Beneath the outward signs of a meaningful democracy – a free press, political pluralism, resilient institutions – shadowy assemblages of business elites, ruling party figures and generals call the shots. The streets are filled with secret police and spies from the KGB-inspired intelligence agency. A curfew mentality still reigns, and there’s nothing to do after 6pm. The system and its citizens are at peace, but remain deeply wary of one another. There was no Arab spring in Algeria in 2011, partly because the memories of extreme violence in the black decade are still fresh, and secret police intercept most protests before they’ve even begun.These days, although the Algerian capital pulses at a low intensity, beguiled by a weary calm, currents of violence still wash through it. The authorities have managed to co-opt or eliminate all major pockets of dissent, yet scarcely a week goes by without protests – localised, spontaneous micro-riots usually sparked by government policies to redistribute oil profits that favour some at the cost of others. Another common trigger for unrest is the publication of housing grant lists, since the government routinely gives out free apartments to relatives of local officials rather than low-income families who have been waiting for years. These protests purge, at least briefly, the shame of being dependent on a repressive state, enabling people to reclaim some form of agency.Sheep fights have become a rare arena where men can escape the constant supervision of the state. While the fights are technically illegal, authorities allow followers of the sport to stream to unauthorised locations each week. Leagues in Algiers and the eastern port city of Annaba hold matches on hilltops, football pitches and school courtyards. These range from the amateurish neighbourhood fights, which draw a few hundred local men, to the grand African championship tournaments (held a few times a year in either Algeria or Tunisia – the only two entrants), which attract thousands from all over North Africa.The Algerian government’s toleration of sheep fighting is a tacit acknowledgement that outlets for male aggression are needed. “Letting these guys have their fun reduces violence in other contexts,” said Youcef Krache, a photographer from Algiers who has spent years documenting sheep fights. “Authorities prefer they get swept up in spectacles rather than politics.”For Fatma Oussedik, an Algerian sociologist and professor at the University of Algiers, authorities’ permissiveness towards sheep fights signals a quiet crisis besetting both masculinity and politics. “Algerian authorities have tried several methods to manage Algerian men, most recently corrupting them with oil rent. With oil prices down, there is less money and they’re more likely to have to use repressive force. Young men who have been humiliated will have to rebuild their battered masculinity. Violence is the only form of expression they have left.”In nearly five years of living in Algiers, I had never been to El Harrach, and only knew the neighbourhood by its outlaw reputation. I had come here to meet a whisky importer who owned more than a dozen prize-fighting sheep. The man, who Krache had told me about, was famed for his colourful way of challenging other sheep trainers to a fight: “My sheep will pluck the feathers off yours like a chicken!” he would announce to rivals on Facebook. Krache told me how to find him: “Take the metro to the end of the line, El Harrach, go to the stables and ask for Banyar.”As I left the metro, I felt the warm and familiar bustle of holiday shopping, but set in a barren post-industrial landscape. Amid potholed roads and crumbling colonial buildings, shoppers at makeshift outdoor markets were preparing for Eid. Tables set up in the streets displayed rows of gleaming knives, and sharpener carts plied their trade amid shuttered factories and ageing apartment buildings. I crossed a bridge over a dried-up riverbed through which trickled streams of chemical runoff. Beneath an overpass, piles of hay began to appear here and there amid the city detritus. He drove me a short distance to an empty lot, nudged me out, and then drove off. I entered a makeshift arena, a sandy area situated between a closed factory and a high school. Men were trickling in. They looked skittish and excited, conscious they were doing something illicit.After a few minutes, the fighters made their grand entrances. Tyson, bleating and arrogant, was led by a man with a barrel chest. A pack of scooters zipped through the gates. Pogba, a fat, jet-black ram, panted along in their wake. Across the pitch, a sheep with a black head swayed and sprayed piss like a drunk. Messi provoked the most commotion, pompous and twitchy with blood-red hooves and a brilliant orange mane.Around 200 spectators were gathered, milling around. I struck up a conversation with a man named Farid. He boasted about his sheep, Prisoner. “He’s worth 50m dinar” – $2,500 – “but I could never sell him. He’s like my child,” Farid said shyly, showing me pictures of Prisoner on his smartphone. Unlike most of the kbabshis I met, who were single, he also had a wife and children.On some invisible cue, the crowd pulled forward, forming a ring in the dirt. The sheep named Lawyer entered, flashing on one flank a henna-painted Louis Vuitton logo and a 16 (the postal code for Algiers), and on the other, the crude outline of a medieval flail. Blanco, opposing him, was unadorned. The trainers massaged the animals’ flanks and horns and pulled their tails, seemingly as much to soothe their own nerves as to rouse their beasts.Among the crowd, there was a popular favourite. “Lawyer, you’re a king!” they shouted. “This year, you’ll win it all!”As the fight began, they fell silent. Lawyer and Blanco circled one another, locked eyes and shuffled backwards. Then they ran straight ahead and crashed into each other with full force. The crowd, enchanted, rushed forward. (Since the crowd forms the ring in which the sheep fight, they can shrink, expand or dissolve the field of battle at any time.) The referee tried to restore order among the crowd and on the pitch. The sheep edged backwards and their trainers huddled around them briefly.Lawyer and Blanco knocked heads a few more times, half-heartedly. Each thwack rang out like a hammer striking a wall. But Blanco had begun to look bored and Lawyer was searching for a gap in the crowd through which he might wander off. It’s hard to call a match – a fight shouldn’t go above 30 hits, but there’s no clear ending, and sometimes the sheep establish which is the dominant one before the humans are ready to accept it. Farid explained that Blanco had effectively won with the first hit. Blanco’s nonchalance and Lawyer’s gentle approach towards removing himself from the scene seemed to confirm this. But Lawyer’s trainer was not ready to concede defeat.Although there was a referee, casually dressed in denim shorts and a T-shirt, the crowd made the calls itself. Blanco’s supporters finally rushed forward, crying “Well done! Let’s go!” They rubbed his horns and kissed him on both cheeks, tore their shirts off, and danced him out through the gates and into the streets of El Harrach.Lawyer’s trainer led him away, forlorn. I asked Farid what was going to happen to the sheep. “Ah yes. He’ll get eaten for Eid, inshallah,” he replied.Next up was the big one: Messi v Pogba. Messi was spry and petite; Pogba looked burly but slow. The match started unpromisingly: Pogba sniffed delicately at Messi’s butt. Messi then rushed Pogba, who ran terrified out of the ring. Messi’s supporters began hollering. But Pogba’s trainers, both with scarred faces and prison tattoos, were not defeated. Grabbing a horn each, they hauled him back into the ring as he dug his hooves into the ground. Now the sheep locked eyes and began their backwards shuffle, but this time Pogba backed up so far that he found himself among the crowd, and did his best to blend in. Hauled in once more, Pogba stared Messi down. The crowd hissed attentively. The sheep observed one another, Messi taut and focused, Pogba chewing nervously. Then Messi trotted off amiably. The crowd broke into a polite round of applause.“They’ve stopped the match,” Farid explained. “It’s a draw. They refuse to fight one another.”Pogba, panting so hard that his whole body shook, turned on his trainer and butted him. Without warning, Messi broke back into the ring and the two rams rushed one another once more. Another hit came, then another. “Messi! Messi! Messi!” the men chanted. The fight was called in his favour, and the crowd rushed to embrace the sheep and lift his trainer on to their shoulders.How idealist fathers produce nihilist sons may be the stuff of Russian literature, but it’s just as true of the divide between Algeria’s ageing, visionary elites and its disaffected, disempowered youths. Since the revolution that won independence from France after 130 years of colonial rule, each decade has witnessed the arrival of a new revolutionary ideology that brought hope but ultimately failed. Waves of pan-Africanism, third-worldism and socialism in the 1960s and 70s gave way to Arabisation, political Islam and economic liberalisation in the 80s and 90s. Though meant to unite a population whose only clear shared past was a history of racial violence, these organising concepts seemed increasingly to divide – Arab v Berber, Islamist v secular, poor v rich.The dashed ideals of each successive revolution helps explain why Algeria today is so gloomy, and shuttered against new ideas. Frustrated energy seems to be channelled into rijla (machismo). Men who work part-time, if at all, splay across the benches and borders of public squares on hot afternoons, leering at any woman who walks by. Cafes, bars, streets and mosques are all male spaces. Those in power are known as “les moustaches”; any accomplishment elicits a congratulatory “les hommes!” (“men!”). Algeria’s most emblematic and beloved film is Merzak Allouache’s Omar Gatlato (1977), the story of a young bureaucrat who is alienated and obsessed with his own masculinity. The title refers to the expression gatlato el rijla – machismo killed him. Both Boudjedra and Daoud wish to diagnose and rehabilitate an Algerian national identity, but they are more or less at war over how to carve out an intellectual space within which to do so. For many Algerians, Daoud has made a fatal trade-off – writing for foreign readers has won him success abroad and contempt at home. In February 2016, Daoud wrote an article for the New York Times and Le Monde, blaming the alleged assaults on hundreds of western women by migrants in Cologne on New Year’s Eve on a viral “sexual misery” of Algeria in particular, and the Arab world more broadly. Playing up the repressiveness in Algeria – couples couldn’t stroll in gardens, he claimed (falsely) – Daoud went on to state that: “People in the west are discovering, with anxiety and fear that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.”Daoud’s column, even to his admirers, uncomfortably echoed the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment that had led much of the media to exaggerate the scale of the attacks in Cologne. French and North African intellectuals condemned his argument as an example of the urge to re-educate the “savage refugee”. Boudjedra dismisses arguments such as Daoud’s as “trafficked history” – the product of an inferiority complex in a people still struggling to emerge from the psychological bonds of colonisation.Boudjedra, meanwhile, is relatively unknown abroad and highly regarded at home. Yet he is also harassed by the very society he seeks to reflect and develop. His latest rage-filled tract, History Traffickers, published by Editions Frantz Fanon in 2017, was derided in the Algerian press for a number of historical and factual inaccuracies. More seriously, last summer, masked men kidnapped him and his wife and forced him to say the Muslim profession of faith on television. The incident, it turned out, was a shockingly cruel prank: the kidnappers were a candid camera crew from the state-run Ennahar television TV station. This stunt occurred shortly after Boudjedra had described himself as an atheist on another TV station, and the timing suggests that what was presented as a “joke” was retaliation for having made this admission. (The incident provoked a furious reaction: one journalist wrote on Facebook that it was “an insult to all of the intellectuals in this country, to all the men and women in media, to Algeria, its revolution and its history” – and the director of the channel later apologised for the episode.)I suggested to Oussedik, the sociologist, that Algerians seemed to be a revolutionary people living in a time when no revolution seems possible. “Yes,” she said, “We are smothered. When there is a head that stands out, they either cut it off or push him out. So there are not even any intellectuals to express this. No one to embody a revolt.”A few weeks after Eid, the retired sheep trainer Sofiane and I drove to Annaba, the sheep fighting capital of Algeria, for the national championship. (As with the earlier match in El Harrach, Sofiane, maintaining his abstinence from sheep combat, planned to wander off just before the fighting began.) Each year, a few weeks after Eid, men throng from all over Algeria for the prestigious event, which crowns the winner of a year-long championship with a trophy made of golden cups. A town of 200,000 on the Mediterranean coast near the border with Tunisia, Annaba is a key departure point for migrants – nearly all of them young men – who set out to cross the Mediterranean in inflatable dinghies.I felt relieved when Sofiane picked me up in a roomy French sedan rather than the Chevrolet he used to transport sheep. We left the congested streets of Algiers and headed east on the East-West highway, a new, super-smooth speedway funded by the government and built by the Chinese. Dubbed the world’s most expensive road, its budget was originally slated to be $7bn but it ended up costing $13bn once kickbacks and inflated contracts were factored in. The highway stretches 688 miles across the length of Algeria, without a single crossing for pedestrians.“Algeria is beautiful, but Algerians are lazy,” Sofiane mused as we breezed through rolling hills and olive groves, verdant against a brilliant blue sky. At the side of the road, men sold apples and dates. “Algerians don’t want to work. The French were the ones who built Algeria,” he said. I was surprised to hear him say this. His father and uncle were moudjahids – revolutionaries – who fought the French for the country’s independence. Of his 12 brothers and sisters, Sofiane alone remained in Algeria to look after his ageing parents. Having renounced his life as a kbabshi, his profound empathy for animals now found expression in his collection of caged birds.“I used to be a pitiless fighter,” Sofiane told me. In the black decade, he was a teenager in one of Algiers’ roughest neighbourhoods. Several of his friends were killed, and he saw terrible violence – civilians murdered, babies with their throats slit. During the breakdown of law and order, he became – in his telling – a streetfighter who set out to right wrongs and defend the defenceless. Later, Sofiane showed me his scars. One stretched across the back of his head like a huge fish hook. There was a stab wound in his stomach and a small, hard knot on the flesh of his leg, where he had been shot.In 2003, Sofiane went to jail after he stabbed a man he had seen beating his own mother. When he was released, he repudiated violence, because he realised the disenfranchised were fighting each other. “Each of us was doing injustice to one another,” he told me. “All of us were poor. I felt bad.” Soon after leaving prison, he discovered sheep fighting and became a disciple.I grew very quiet in the car, thinking about how the war for independence – a fight for freedom and equality that inspired countless liberation movements and set the bar impossibly high for future generations – had given way to the nihilistic self-destruction of the 1990s. Instead of building the country and developing its potential, the men of Sofiane’s generation, born free but growing up in the shadows of war, had spent their formative years knifing one another.But Sofiane lightened and began to croon, mixing raï folk music with a hymn to fighting sheep: “Bring me to Miami, I want to see Guantánamo, Hannah champion!” he sang sweetly. He could careen from the tragic to the comic, the carnal to the ascetic – later, at dinner, while wolfing down four steaks, he told me he fasted every Monday and Thursday. Last August in Algiers, one week before the holiday of Eid al-Adha, men in tracksuits and trainers were guarding their sheep in anticipation of the fights to come. Kbabshis, as these men are known, scour villages looking for lambs that are fast, belligerent and shock-resistant. They then spend years raising them to be champion fighters. Coaches are tough but also surprisingly tender. They treat their sheep like mistresses, stopping by the garages where they install them, bringing food, caressing and massaging them before they head out together for long walks on the beach.Professional trainers toughen their sheep by chaining their horns to a wall: as they pull and twist to break away, the resistance thickens their sinewy necks. Unlike with cockfighting, there is no gambling on sheep fights, but speculation on the sheep market can make it a lucrative trade. Each fight lifts the value of its victor and sentences the loser to slaughter. A champion ram might fetch as much as $10,000 – although most sheep trainers on a winning streak prefer to chase glory than cash. The sheep are given names that inspire fear, like Rambo, Jaws or Lawyer. In the third round of one recent match, Hitler delivered a brutal defeat to Saddam. features As I turned a corner, a regal-looking ram swung into sight. He was standing by a concrete wall near the overpass and had a bright red mane and a thick, muscular neck. His head was level with my ribs. He chewed thoughtfully under the watchful gaze of his trainer, oblivious as another man lowered his baby boy to swat at the beast’s broad back.I approached and said, “Huwa chab. Ma ismu?” (“He’s beautiful. What’s his name?”)The trainer scowled and replied: “Ebola.”“Where is the guy named Banyar who has 13 champions?” I asked.“He sold all his sheep and bought a Mercedes. He’s never coming back,” the trainer replied.I wandered on until I found a space that looked like it had, until quite recently, been an electronics or dried goods shop. It was now brimming with sheep. Two men watching over them greeted me with curiosity. Sofiane was over 6ft tall, built like a water tower, with a wide belly and spindly legs. Hafid, with his bulging, veiny neck and sweet eyes set in a flat-nosed, unbreakable face, bore an uncanny resemblance to a fighting sheep. Neither appeared to notice when two young men across the street started pounding one another.When I introduced myself as a writer researching sheep fighting, Sofiane looked faintly disturbed, and suggested it wasn’t an appropriate sport for women. “Do research on peacocks instead,” he sniffed.Nevertheless, they led me around the corner, lifted the clattering shutters of a garage door, and took me inside. Two burly four-year-old rams rattled their chains and tried to butt at us.The sheep belonged to Hafid. Sofiane had retired from sheep fighting five years ago. It was against Islam, he said, to be cruel to animals; sheep were for slaughter, not sport. Although he had quitit was clear he couldn’t quite leave it behind. He still lived on the margins of the sport, pouring his broad-bellied frame into the same Lacoste tracksuits and Adidas trainers as the other handlers, calling and messaging at all hours to track the ram market, and hosting kbabshis who sometimes drove 500 miles to see a match. He drew the line, though, at watching fights and raising fighters.When a ram turns three, he is ready to fight, and his trainer shaves him and decorates him with henna. Designs range from the minimalist – a touch of red here and there – to the baroque. I once saw a sheep with a great white shark stencilled on his flank. Another was led out wearing what looked like a freshly skinned cheetah. The ram will toughen with age and experience, peaking around age seven. Lentils and long walks, Sofiane told me, were the keys to success. The ram reaches champion status when he has defeated a dozen foes. Then, the sport’s most passionate fans will tell you, the mere mention of his name instils fear across all 48 provinces of Algeria. Heated neighbourhood and regional rivalries play out on the pitch, with a particularly fierce enmity between sheep from the capital, Algiers, a latecomer to the sport, and the more established and deadly rams of Annaba, birthplace of champions and reigning capital of sheep combat.Sofiane and Hafid started excitedly listing champions’ names: “Vagabond!” “Macro!” “Sirocco!” Sofiane caught himself and grew quiet. In the cosy garage, the mood darkened. “I wish this fighting would stop,” Sofiane muttered, looking at the floor. “I wish they would make a committee to protect these animals.”“Oh yes,” Hafid echoed respectfully. “It should end. It’s been 40 years. We’re tired of it. They should just shut the whole thing down.”A few weeks later, I returned to El Harrach to see a fight. Local men in long robes and Adidas were blinking in the late afternoon sun, drowsy after the Friday ritual of prayer-couscous-nap, emerging to buy baguettes and cluster at the cafes whose plastic chairs spilled out on to the street. Palm trees stood as tall as the ornate French colonial buildings that were moulting bits and pieces of decor like flesh-dripping zombies.As I waited for Sofiane, a small van screeched by; in the back was a group of skinny young men surrounding a sheep as if they were his secret service detail. Sofiane pulled up and beckoned me into his own van, which gave off a heroic stench of sheep hormones. The scent was shrill, acrid and penetrating, and seemed to linger on my skin for hours afterwards. Photograph: Youcef Krache/ Collective220 Twitter Photograph: Youcef Krache/Collective 220 Share on Pinterest Share via Email Twitter Share on LinkedIn Africa Twitter Facebook … we have a small favour to ask. More people, like you, are reading and supporting the Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism than ever before. And unlike many news organisations, we made the choice to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.The Guardian will engage with the most critical issues of our time – from the escalating climate catastrophe to widespread inequality to the influence of big tech on our lives. At a time when factual information is a necessity, we believe that each of us, around the world, deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.Our editorial independence means we set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Guardian journalism is free from commercial and political bias and not influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This means we can give a voice to those less heard, explore where others turn away, and rigorously challenge those in power.We hope you will consider supporting us today. We need your support to keep delivering quality journalism that’s open and independent. Every reader contribution, however big or small, is so valuable. Support The Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. Listen Topics Thirty years ago, the Algerian people embarked on their own Arab spring. In 1988, faced with authoritarianism and a crumbling economy, they boldly gathered in the streets to demand freedoms, much as Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians and Tunisians did in 2011. After Islamists won the first round of the country’s first multi-party elections in 1991, the military cancelled the results and took power. This set the stage for a fight for the territory and soul of the country, which pitted Islamist militants against security forces and lasted for 10 years. By the end of the “black decade”, the Algerian people, whose protests had opened the floodgates, were weary and just wanted peace. They had been subdued by the bloodlust of militants and the brutality of a military regime willing to do terrifying things to regain control.In the early 2000s, Algerians came out of their thwarted revolution in a fog, generally preferring to move on and forget, rather than dig up the recent past. Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president in 1999 on a peacebuilding platform, and used an amnesty law to close the 10-year chapter of civil violence. Large numbers of militants took advantage of the amnesty and repented with no repercussions. Critics warned it would amount to amnesia.As luck would have it for Bouteflika, oil prices began to rise around the same time, climbing from an annual average of under $30 per barrel in 2003 to over $100 in 2008. Oil and gas account for 96% of Algerian exports. The state, flush with cash and repressed guilt over the traumas its citizens experienced in the 90s, handed out petrodollars to assuage lingering anxieties with free housing and interest-free loans. Violence receded from city streets, and the children who survived the years of terror grew into reserved adults with a social safety net, who believed that their families’ food, healthcare and educational needs would be met regardless of skill or employment. So, in 2011, as jubilation at the fall of old regimes raced across a stunned Arab world, Algerians looked on with wariness. Things will only get worse, they insisted, painting a prescient tableau of dashed hopes, foreign meddling and an orgy of blood.Yet by 2014, when Bouteflika ran for a fourth presidential term, the cautious optimism of the previous decade had been replaced by fatalism and despair. Oil prices collapsed that year and the crash suddenly revealed the Algerian economy’s vulnerabilities: an overdependence on hydrocarbons and an inability to produce anything domestically. Bouteflika was determined to remain in power, despite a serious stroke that had left him unable to address the nation or make state visits. Playing on domestic fears of civil war like those tearing apart Syria and Libya, he campaigned on a ticket of security and stability. Political opposition was frail and disorganised. Bouteflika was re-elected with 82% of the vote.Today, the promises of postwar Algeria lie unfulfilled. Daily life has become an endless sequence of demeaning interactions with a bloated and oppressive bureaucracy. An outdated, socialist-inspired system rewards loyalty and promotes mediocrity while obstructing innovation and individual talent. (A popular saying here to describe the dangers of initiative and success goes “Any heads sticking out? Cut them off.”) “I pity our society because it lives in fear and in failure,” the novelist Rachid Boudjedra recently wrote.The immense challenges faced by Algerians who wish even to discuss how to bring about change are visible, in miniature, in the literary world. Boudjedra – an original thinker, avowed atheist and provocateur, and one of the rare writers who stayed and survived the black decade – has recently been sparring with another famous Algerian author, Kamel Daoud. Daoud has been a darling of the Western media since the publication of his 2013 novel, The Meursault Investigation. A retelling of Albert Camus’ The Stranger from an Arab perspective, the novel won France’s Prix Goncourt, the country’s highest literary prize. Pinterest Pinterest Share on Facebook Combat taa lkbech, which means sheep combat in the Algerian Arabic dialect, is a bit like football. It releases the pent-up energies of otherwise unoccupied men and allows them to safely act out potentially divisive strains of nationalism, regionalism and neighbourhood pride. But sheep fighting lacks the artistry, skill and precision that make football so enthralling: a sheep confronts an identical opponent and bludgeons him into submission using only his face. Matches are a festival of brute force and domination. When the sheep lose interest in a match, or prefer palling around with each other to smashing heads, the trainers take over, whispering and urging their beasts back into combat until they lock eyes once more and attack.The men who train sheep for combat belong to a lost generation of Algerians, now in their 20s and 30s, moulded by an era of fear, fighting, corruption and curfews. There are few jobs and no productive roles for them to play in society. They lack relevant skills and education. Most are unmarried. They are not poor by most standards, but they depend on state subsidies that allow them to buy fuel, food and housing for next to nothing. They feel disposable, purposeless, humiliated. Most feel the future lies elsewhere. For many, that means Europe.These young men have grown up in the shadows of two cataclysmic wars. Between 1954 and 1962, more than a million Algerian Muslims died during the war for independence from France. After almost 30 years of repressive one-party rule ended in 1991, Algeria descended into violence once again. For the next decade, a bloody conflict raged between security forces and Islamist insurgents, leaving some 200,000 Algerians dead. That period is commonly referred to as the “black decade”. Pinterest
Pinterest Twitter Pinterest Share on Twitter Photograph: Youcef Krache/ Collective220 Since you’re here… Animals Pinterest Pinterest Share on WhatsApp Twitter Photograph: Youcef Krache/ Collective220 Photograph: Youcef Krache/ Collective220 Facebook Twitter Support The Guardian Facebook Middle East and North Africa Facebook Facebook Facebook Twitter The long read Facebook Arriving in Annaba the next morning, we paid a visit to the reigning champion sheep in what used to be the Jewish quarter. Half a dozen men in athletic attire were leaning against the wall, olive-skinned and overfed, tense with their efforts to look hard. The sheep’s owner, Ala, was a short, thickset man with green eyes. A cigarette dangled from the side of his mouth as he hauled open the garage door to reveal his magnificent prizefighter, La Dope. Like its owner, the sheep was thickset and close shaven. His hooves, knees and head were painted red with henna. Ala led the sheep out on a leash. La Dope began greedily lapping at an espresso someone offered him. Another man offered him a cigarette. He gobbled it down. On special occasions, his owner said, La Dope liked beer.Ala was so stressed that he hadn’t slept for three nights – his other sheep, El Hadj (Pilgrim), was in a championship match that afternoon. A few hours later, Sofiane and I met Ala and El Hadj at the outdoor pitch, a sandy lot with two football goals near an abandoned factory. We had to park half a mile away because the whole street was lined with double- and triple-parked cars. Ala looked queasy. El Hadj, on the other hand, perfectly relaxed, sucked reflectively on his underbite.The lot was unkempt and illicit, like the arena in El Harrach, but there were far more spectators. Men were massed as far as the eye could see, perched atop walls, sitting on cars and trucks, balanced on the goalposts. Some had brought their pet caged birds with them. (Algerian men sometimes like to keep caged birds, and carry the cages out for walks on a sunny spring day, or set the cage on a car outside so the bird can breathe new air and hear new sounds.) A few brought a daughter or niece. As we stood around waiting, word suddenly spread that the organisers had cancelled the match. There had been some problem with the organisation. The league had booked too many matches, and afraid of an outbreak of chaos, had cancelled the whole thing.We were beginning to disperse when a commotion broke out at the far edge of the crowd. It wasn’t clear what had started it. All the tension and anticipation, all the fear and adrenaline that the men had been holding in snapped like an overstretched band. The whole herd of men began to run all at once. Sofiane grabbed me and we sprinted to the car.On the way back to Algiers, Sofiane was quiet, and angry that the match – which he, having forsworn sheep fighting, wouldn’t have watched anyway – had been cancelled. He was upset that the organisation that ran the league wasn’t what it used to be. Eventually, he began talking again, telling me about how the greatest joy he ever experienced was when his sheep Black Jet won a regional championship in 2007.Sofiane couldn’t explain precisely why he had renounced sheep fighting. “I wasted my life,” he said of his days raising champions. “I’m full of regrets.” His reasons were vaguely religious, but as I understood it, he had reverted to principle, in a very Algerian – which is to say idealistic – way. He could no longer ignore that his fun was a form of idolatry, a stand-in battle where a real one was needed. He takes pleasure now from the caged birds he collects. He loves their song. They sing and are trapped, just like him.Some names have been changed• Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here. Share on Messenger Photograph: Youcef Krache/Collective 220
Norwegian Sky in Maiden Visit to Havana Cuba
zoom Norwegian Cruise Line had its first ship, the Norwegian Sky, call in Havana, Cuba on May 2.The call was the first of Norwegian Sky’s 53 planned four-day voyages weekly from Miami to Cuba, with 52 including an overnight stay in the capital of Havana.Earlier this year, the cruise line company said that it would extend its offering of weekly roundtrip cruises from Miami to Cuba through 2018, with 33 new voyages.These new cruises are scheduled to begin on March 26, 2018 and are in addition to the previously announced 30 calls that Norwegian will offer through December 2017.The company said that the extension was prompted by “incredible demand” from the guests for the destination.The Cuban government granted its approval to Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings to begin cruises to Cuba in December last year.
Paving Contract Awarded For Lighthouse Route Aspotogan Peninsula
Drivers on the Lighthouse Route in Lunenburg County will soon notice an improved drive around the Aspotogan Peninsula. The Department of Transportation and Public Works has awarded a $718,085 road-paving contract to Dexter Construction Co. Ltd. It is for paving on Route 329 from Mill Cove Park for about 4.7 kilometres to The Lodge. “The Aspotogan Peninsula is a very popular spot in the summer thanks to several beaches and the Swiss Air Memorial,” said Ron Russell, Minister of Transportation and Public Works. “I’m pleased this project will soon be getting underway.” The Department of Transportation and Public Works’ highways division manages more than 23,000 kilometres of roads in Nova Scotia. It maintains 4,100 bridges and operates seven provincialferries. Staff provide services from offices in Bridgewater, Bedford, Truro and Sydney.
Concussion research
More than 160 000 people experience a concussion every year. Half are sports related and they can come with some serious and lasting consequences. Right now there’s no way to treat a concussion other than a lot of rest, but researchers at Western University are hoping to change that.A concussion is a mild brain injury and because it’s mild people may tough it out, walk it off and ignore it, but some side effects can last for years.Researchers at Western are hoping to educate people about concussions and find better ways to identify and treat them.“I suffered a hit into my head through my helmet a slight loss of consciousness.”Ticat defensive lineman Brian Bulcke knows what it feels like to suffer a concussion. He wants people to understand it’s a serious injury.“You blow out your ACL for the third time and people understand that you can’t play anymore. You take that 3rd hit to the head and everyone is questioning it.”And can sometimes come with serious consequences, like depression or memory loss that can last for years“Just because we don’t have a crutch or just because we aren’t getting off the surgical table or in a wheelchair or something like that you don’t see that aspect there is a lot of recovery that happens from a concussion.”Hundreds of people were at Western University Wednesday for a concussion workshop, including former hockey star Eric Lindros whose career ended after a series of blows to the head.“Concussions can happen to anyone not just athletes.”They’re hoping to teach people how to recognize one and what to do about it.There are a few tests athletes can take on the sidelines to see if they may have suffered a concussion. It’s as simple as standing on one foot as concussions affect your balance, or tracking eye movement and the ability to focus.But researchers are looking for something more definitive, like a blood test“There’s a lot of effort here and other places in Canada and around the world trying to find blood bio markers something that would indicate that something is wrong and out of balance.” says Dr. Dekaban.And find a better way to treat it.“Can we devise strategies to actually make things better over and above rest is there something we can actively do.” says Dr. Arthur Brown.To help them do that the NHL players association is helping to fund concussion research at the University.The NHL players association announced today it’s contributing $500 000 but is also challenging Canadians to raise $2.5 million to support this research.
So whats happening in CORK in the runup to Christmas
Lifelike, aren’t they? [Image: Brown Thomas, via Twitter]Where can I park?Cork City Council’s offering a free parking promotion at the moment. Bizarrely though, it comes to an end today.Details, for what it’s worth, can be found at the council’s website. This driver is definitely going on the naughty list [Image: Robbo-Man] And it really wouldn’t be Christmas in Cork without…The S.H.A.R.E CollectionHype and bluster from retailers aside, Corkonians know it really must be time to start taking that Christmas shopping list seriously when the SHARE collectors arrive on the streets.While the charity works all-year round, its most active period is at Christmas, when around 1,800 secondary school students hit the city centre with their familiar yellow outfits and collection boxes.The organisation was founded in 1970 by Brother Jerome Kelly and the students of Presentation College, but these days schools from all over Cork are involved.The fundraising drive begins on 14 December, with the crib at Daunt’s Square providing the focal point for the effort. [Image: Cork City Council]Food MarketsNow that you’ve spent almost a full half-hour entertaining the kids, it may be time to head along to Grand Parade for some figgy pudding and eggnog (or whatever you’re having yourself).The Glow Christmas Food Markets also open on the 29th, offering a range of festive treats from local producers.Organisers have included “crepes, gourmet sausages, locally produced spiced beef, breads and fresh organic herbs” on what’s presumably not an exhaustive list of what’s on offer.Mmm. Organic herbs… [Image: Suzies Farm] The lightsThe main lights on Patrick Street were officially switched on last Sunday in a ceremony presided over by chat-show host and journalist Brendan O’Connor.Impressively-sized trees are also being placed at Bishop Lucey Park, near the monument on Grand Parade, at Triskel Christchurch, outside Murrays and at City Hall.According to the council, there’ll also be ‘festive firs’ at Boreenmanna Road, Blackrock Castle, Churchfield, Knocknaheeny, Farranree Church and elsewhere (let’s just say there’s be a lot of trees around, shall we?).And on the subject of festive displays, it wouldn’t be Christmas in Cork without the window display at Brown Thomas:
[Image: ShareCork.org]Related: So what’s happening in DUBLIN in the run up to Christmas?Poll: When should the Christmas decorations go up? THE TREES ARE going up, the lights are going on, and for those who’d rather not begin thinking about Christmas for at least another fortnight or so, all the fuss is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.Our advice? Better to give in and just enjoy it. After all, there’s only 31 days left until the 25th (and we’re just eight days from 1 December, the unofficial ‘embargo’ date at the country’s radio stations for the playing of ‘Fairytale of New York’).So if you’re in Cork, or planning a shopping trip over the next few weeks, here’s TheJournal.ie‘s lowdown on all you need to know…Away with the FaerysAn ‘enchanted faery village’ will be the centrepiece of Cork City Council’s ‘Glow’ Christmas festival this year. ‘Tír na Nollag’ runs Fridays through Sundays at Bishop Lucey Park from next weekend, and entry is free of charge.According to the promotional blurb, visitors “will be greeted by magical faery inhabitants as they wander around a faery woodland where the Spirit of Christmas lives”. Not the place to end up if you’re any kind of cynic, then.Original traditional music has been created for the display, and organisers say there’ll also be a place for kids to post their letter to Santa “sprinkled with magical faery dust to ensure their wishes come true”.Each journey through the village takes around 20 minutes.
Mancini set to play young stars in US friendly
Roberto Mancini wants to give the Italian young guns the chance to stake a claim in the Nazionale as he seeks to go with a different approach against the USAThe barren draw with Portugal at San Siro last was the final Nations League group game, but they have a friendly against the USA on Tuesday in Genk.“We are a little unlucky in some situations, but the team is proving that it can compete at any level in the future and we can only get stronger from here,” the Italian boss told Rai programme as cited by Football Italia.“It was pleasing to see the response from the fans, as being able to recreate the joy for this Nazionale is the best and most important thing we can achieve.
Serie A Betting: Match-day 3 Stuart Heath – September 14, 2019 Considering there is a number of perfect starts so early in the Serie A season, as well as a few surprisingly not-so perfect ones….“We are managing that because the lads are playing some really good football. Of course, there’s a long way to go and we are working, trying to renovate the Nazionale with young players and a different tactical approach.”Italy are expected to start Sandro Tonali on Tuesday, and most likely with Roma teen Nicolò Zaniolo, Atalanta defender Gianluca Mancini and Juventus striker Moise Kean.“We need to get to know them better, to see them in action,” continued Mancini.“Hopefully, many young players will get a chance to feature, as that’ll mean we’ve got a bright future ahead of us. I think there are many talented players out there, they just need to gain some experience.”
Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast set to offload more than 26000 pounds of
Categories: Local San Diego News FacebookTwitter Updated: 11:24 AM July 26, 2019 00:00 00:00 spaceplay / pause qunload | stop ffullscreenshift + ←→slower / faster ↑↓volume mmute ←→seek . seek to previous 12… 6 seek to 10%, 20% … 60% XColor SettingsAaAaAaAaTextBackgroundOpacity SettingsTextOpaqueSemi-TransparentBackgroundSemi-TransparentOpaqueTransparentFont SettingsSize||TypeSerif MonospaceSerifSans Serif MonospaceSans SerifCasualCursiveSmallCapsResetSave SettingsSAN DIEGO (KUSI) – More than 13 tons of cocaine seized in international water of the eastern Pacific Ocean from late June to mid-July will be offloaded in San Diego Friday by the Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast.The drugs, worth an estimated $350 million, were seized from six suspected smuggling vessels and two floating cocaine bales found off the coasts of Mexico, Central and South America by the Coast Guard cutters Robert Ward and Steadfast, according to a statement from the U.S. Coast Guard.“During at-sea interdictions in international waters, a suspect vessel is initially detected and monitored by allied, military or law enforcement personnel coordinated by Joint Interagency Task Force-South based in Key West, Florida,” according to the statement.In fiscal year 2019, the Coast Guard seized more than 230,000 pounds of cocaine from over 100 suspected smuggling vessels and detained more than 400 suspected smugglers in the drug transit zones of the eastern Pacific Ocean, according to the statement.The Steadfast is homeported in Astoria, Oregon, and the Robert Ward, which was commissioned in March, is homeported in San Pedro. KUSI Newsroom KUSI Newsroom, The U.S. Coast Guard’s press release announcing the offload is below:SAN DIEGO, Calif. — The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast (WMEC-632) is scheduled to offload more than 26,000 pounds of seized cocaine in San Diego Friday.The cocaine, worth an estimated $350 million, was seized in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The contraband represents six suspected drug smuggling vessel interdictions and the recovery of floating cocaine bales by the crews of two Coast Guard cutters off the coasts of Mexico, Central and South America between late June and mid-July.Six of the interdictions were carried out by the Steadfast’s crew, one of the Coast Guard’s oldest cutters commissioned in 1968. One interdiction was by the crew of one of the service’s newest ships, the Coast Guard Cutter Robert Ward (WPC-1130) commissioned in March, and is not only the cutter’s first drug bust, but the first drug bust by a Coast Guard Sentinel-class fast response cutter in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.The offload from the Steadfast follows the July 11 offload of more than 39,000 pounds of seized cocaine from the Coast Guard Cutter Munro (WMSL-775) in San Diego representing 14 interdictions in the same region. So far in fiscal year 2019, the Coast Guard has made more than 100 interdictions, seized more than 230,000 pounds of cocaine and detained more than 400 suspected smugglers in the drug transit zones of the Eastern Pacific Ocean.The fight against drug cartels in the Eastern Pacific Ocean requires unity of effort in all phases from detection, monitoring and interdictions, to criminal prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys in districts across the nation.The Coast Guard increased U.S. and allied presence in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Basin, which are known drug transit zones off of Central and South America, as part of its Western Hemisphere Strategy.During at-sea interdictions, a suspect vessel is initially detected and monitored by allied, military or law enforcement personnel coordinated by Joint Interagency Task Force-South based in Key West, Florida. The law enforcement phase of counter-smuggling operations in the Eastern Pacific is conducted under the authority of the 11th Coast Guard District, headquartered in Alameda.The Steadfast is a 210-foot Reliance-class medium-endurance cutter homeported in Astoria, Oregon.The Robert Ward is a 154-foot Sentinel-class fast response cutter homeported in San Pedro.The Robert Ward is one of four recently commissioned fast response cutters (FRCs) assigned to the 11th Coast Guard District to bolster Coast Guard safety and security operations in the Pacific Southwest region.-USCG- Coast Guard Cutter ‘Steadfast’ set to offload more than 26,000 pounds of seized cocaine in San Diego Posted: July 26, 2019
Army sergeant kills 16 in Afghan villages
BALANDI, Afghanistan — Moving from house to house, a U.S. Army sergeant opened fire Sunday on Afghan villagers as they slept, killing 16 people — mostly women and children — in an attack that reignited fury at the U.S. presence following a wave of deadly protests over Americans burning Qurans.The attack threatened the deepest breach yet in U.S.-Afghan relations, raising questions both in Washington and Kabul about why American troops are still fighting in Afghanistan after 10 years of conflict and the killing of Osama bin Laden.The slayings, one of the worst atrocities committed by U.S. forces during the Afghan war, came amid deepening public outrage spurred by last month’s Quran burnings and an earlier video purportedly showing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban militants.The Quran burnings sparked weeks of violent protests and attacks that left some 30 Afghans dead, despite an apology from President Barack Obama. Six U.S. service members were also killed by their fellow Afghan soldiers, although the tensions had just started to calm down.According to U.S. and Afghan officials, Sunday’s attack began around 3 a.m. in two villages in Panjwai district, a rural region outside Kandahar that is the cradle of the Taliban. Coalition forces have fought for control of it for years. The villages are about 500 yards from a U.S. base in a region that was the focus of Obama’s military surge strategy in the south starting in 2009.
Success Proofing Your Site
Among our customers (some of the largest media sites in the world) we have witnessed traffic on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 requests per hour—the equivalent traffic of a Web site with monthly page views in the 35-72 million range. Most sites with 50 million page views per month have trouble dealing with double the average requests, while sites with capacity in the 1-10 million pages per month range tend to become hopelessly overwhelmed within seconds of receiving this kind of traffic.Publisher OptionsSo what is a Web publisher to do? Short of blocking traffic from major sources (a big no-no), there are really two options. First, publishers can build the capacity themselves. This means having around 60 million page views per month of excess capacity available at any given time, which is untenable for any publisher not already publishing hundreds of millions of pages per month.For the rest of us, a class of solutions has emerged that can help. I think of it as “capacity on demand” and it’s done through service providers than can essentially “rent” you excess capacity when you need it. Akamai is a good example of a business that offers such a service—you pay a higher rate for traffic over your “baseline,” but virtually infinite capacity is available should your site be favored by the likes of Google News.Over the long term, I expect all publishers to buy bandwidth and serving capabilities the same way we all buy electricity—we simply pay for as much as we need at any given time, and are able to meet big surges when necessary, while at the same time not overpaying for capacity that we don’t need. Not only does it make the most economic sense, but it also helps “success-proof” your site when that next big story gets picked up by the giants.Dealing With A Traffic SurgeBut what happens when your site receives a sudden surge? Clickability hosts three sites for Smithsonian Media: Smithsonian magazine at www.smithsonian.com, Air & Space magazine at www.airspacemag.com and the Smithsonian’s visitor information site, www.gosmithsonian.com. When the controversy over Australian cassowaries hit the Yahoo! homepage in October, the big news at Smithsonian magazine was that having their article and photographs on the colorful birds featured in such a prominent way didn’t bring their site to the ground. Smithsonian.com got through the traffic spike with no ruffled feathers. “We had more page views in eight hours than we had in the entire month of August—our best day of traffic ever,” says Kelly Durkin, senior Web producer at Smithsonian Media. “We didn’t receive a heads up but the site performed just fine.”John Girard is the founder and CEO of Clickability, a global leader in on demand Web Content Management (WCM). Clickability is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York and London. John can be reached via email at john@clickability.com. It’s every Web publisher’s dream – that controversial little story posted last night has been picked up by Google News, and traffic to your site has skyrocketed. But before the editor finishes congratulating his intrepid team, the bad news starts to trickle in: Google is sending so much traffic to the site that performance degrades rapidly, and within minutes the site is down completely.It’s the digital form of “friendly-fire”: a handful of very large sites, like Google News, have the power to send enormous volumes of traffic to Web publishers that are ill-equipped to handle the surge. The mechanics of this disruption are identical to those used maliciously in what are known as “denial-of-service” attacks, where criminals harness the collective power of tens of thousands of computers around the world that have been infected with spyware or a virus, and then simply direct all of those computers to request pages from the same target Web site. Unable to distinguish legitimate requests from illegitimate ones, the target site cannot keep up with all of the requests, and eventually becomes unresponsive.The last few years have seen the rise of a handful of sites that have the power to send extraordinary amounts of traffic to unsuspecting sites within seconds—Google News, Yahoo, Digg and the Drudge Report, to name a few.
Are Kim Kardashian and Kanye West headed for an ugly divorce
Kim KardashianInstagramIt looks like things are not going too well between Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. As per a recent alleged report, the couple is reportedly living separate lives ahead of the birth of their fourth child and could be heading for an alleged divorce.Kim Kardashian and Kanye West attended the church on March 24 but as per an alleged report by RadarOnline, the couple put on a brave face. As per an unverified source, Kim and Kanye’s marriage in on “the brink of collapse.””Kim and Kanye are barely speaking,” the alleged insider contended. “Their fourth baby is coming very soon but they seem much more distant with each other lately and don’t spend that much time together at all.”Meanwhile, there have been speculations that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s work commitments have also created some sort of friction between the two. The alleged source of the outlet noted that Kim is busy with filming, her fashion line, and with her kids. On the other hand, Kanye has his own work commitments.”Dealing with Kanye and all of his issues has left her really stressed and worried about the state of her marriage,” the source claimed. “Kanye always finds these projects to focus on, and then Kim is pushed into the background. She has said that they can be in very different places in their lives.” Kim Kardashian’s risky dressGetty imagesIn addition to this, in the new trailer for Keeping Up with the Kardashians season 16, Kim Kardashian herself revealed that moving to Chicago would be her breaking point. From the last couple of months, it was speculated that Kanye wishes to move to Illinois, Chicago but his wife seems to be against this idea.As per People’s source, “Kim was never going to move to Chicago and hoped that Kanye would change his mind quickly like he usually does when he gets spontaneous ideas.”Whatever the reports say, fans of Kanye and Kim expressed their wish that these two love each other, and are not heading for any divorce.
The ACLU And Some Houstonians Criticize City Ordinance About Encampments
To embed this piece of audio in your site, please use this code: 00:00 /01:03 Al OrtizThe ordinance bans living in tents placed in public areas like this underpass located at the intersection of Hamilton and Commerce, almost next to Minute Maid Park, in downtown Houston. Al OrtizThe ordinance bans living in tents placed in public areas like this underpass located at the intersection of Hamilton and Commerce, almost next to Minute Maid Park, in downtown Houston.Some Houstonians and a civil rights group are criticizing the ordinance on homeless encampments that the Houston City Council passed just last week.The ordinance outlaws living in a tent, using cooking devices such as grills and storing personal property in a public place, specifically storing property that would not feet inside a three feet high, three feet wide and three feet deep container.The rule says that people who violate it will be guilty of a misdemeanor.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas contends that criminalizes homeless people.“As that individual accumulates criminal history, criminal history can be a barrier to temporary housing, it can be a barrier to permanent housing and it can be a barrier to employment,” notes Kali Cohn, a staff attorney with the organization.However, Mayor Sylvester Turner disagrees.“You can still remain on the street, you can still be on the under…, on the underpass, you just can’t have the tent or the cooking equipment or anything that can’t fit in a three by three by three. That’s not criminalizing anyone,” Turner stated at the press conference held after this week’s meeting of the City Council.The ACLU considers the best way to proceed is not enforcing the encampment ordinance, but rather focusing on the Mayor’s plan to help the homeless, which Turner announced on March 2nd.A crucial component of the plan is placing 500 chronically homeless individuals in permanent housing.Besides the criticism from the ACLU, several Houston residents attended the public meeting the City Council held this Tuesday to speak against the ordinance. X Listen Share
Blizzard Allstars mod puts Warcraft Starcraft Diablo into Civilization V
Instead of releasing completely new universes, Blizzard has been hitting it big so far by releasing mashups of its venerable properties. Hearthstone was Blizzard’s first attempt, which mashes Warcraft into a digital collectible card game that — in case you haven’t been on the internet in a while — has made it into the daily rotation of many gamers.The follow-up to Hearthstone is just over the horizon, Heroes of the Storm, which is Blizzard’s attempt at the now-popular MOBA genre that mashes up Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and potentially other in-house universe. If you can’t wait for Heroes of the Storm to release to get a strategic Blizzard mashup, then Steam user Epic has created something that should hold you over: Blizzard Allstars.Blizzard Allstars is a mod for Civilization V that places seven factions from Blizzard universes — Terran, Zerg, Protoss, Human, Elf, Orc, and Undead — into the world of political intrigue and turn-based strategy. The mod features 16 playable races from those seven factions, more than 2oo 3D models (of units, buildings, resources, and improvements), and a system where heroes have their own talents and abilities and can equip different artifacts. Furthermore, the game’s barbarian hordes have been replaced by monster hordes, giving it an even more Blizzard feel.Allstars also removes every course of victory other than a domination, but the other actions that would normally secure a victory in a normal game of Civ — such as winning the space race — will help make the domination victory easier to achieve.Blizzard Allstars seems to be yet another complex, interesting mod for Civ V, a game that released back in 2010. Recently, another Steam Workshop user created a mod that places Arstotzka, the glorious nation from Papers, Please into Civ V.If you want to get in on the turn-based Blizzard action, you can download and install the mod from Steam Workshop.
Shirtless Mario Brings Sexy Nipples to Smash Bros Thanks to a Modder
‘Astral Chain’ and Other Dumb Nintendo SongsHands-On: ‘Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020’ Seems Fine Stay on target Mario has been popular for years. He became even more famous last week thanks to new footage from Super Mario Odyssey. In the video, the world’s most well-known plumber was shirtless. The gaming community dropped everything to gaze upon the Italian hero’s glorious nipples. Mario Odyssey is still a couple of months away, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get our sexy shirtless Mario fix right now.As reported by Kotaku, a modder named SmashingRenders created a shirtless Mario for Super Smash Bros. Wii U. This skin appears in the game’s UI and in matches. There is even a shirtless metal Mario variant. The results are, well, amazing.And Mario can now be shirtless in Sm4sh… https://t.co/lpqK9xkeuh pic.twitter.com/CwXGbPYHAN— Trying & Failing (@SmashingRenders) September 15, 2017AdChoices广告Shirtless Mario not only looks good in the above screenshots, but he looks great in motion too. The video below shows shirtless Mario in the actual game. Some mod skins can look awkward, but this one looks fantastic. If you didn’t know better, you could easily believe this was an official Mario skin. SmashingRenders did a bang up job with this mod.Super Mario Odyssey will no doubt conquer game sales this Fall. This is pure speculation on my part, but I predict some of that success will come from shirtless Mario. All kidding aside, Mario in a swimsuit is further proof of how much fun Mario Odyssey will be. Everything about this title looks like a blast, and I personally can’t wait to play it. Will we also be treated to beach suit versions of other characters? Luigi, take that shirt off and let’s see what you got!If you want to check out the Smash Bros. mod for yourself, follow this link. Super Mario Odyssey lands exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on October 27. You can pre-order it now from Amazon.Let us know what you like about Geek by taking our survey.
South Bengal to face heat wave as monsoon continues to elude state
Kolkata: South Bengal will continue to burn under the scorching sun for the next couple of days before monsoon finally sets in. Meanwhile, thundershower is predicted in North Bengal in the next 48 hours, said the Regional Meteorological Centre in Alipore.Rains have already entered the North Bengal districts, which will further intensify in the next few days, the weather office said. The MeT office also predicted that mercury may slide up, resulting in discomfort for people in the South Bengal districts, at least for the next two days. The Western districts will continue to experience a hot spell as well. The districts like Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore will witness high temperature, with the humidity shooting up as well. A heat wave will continue to sweep through the region. Also Read – Rs 13,000 crore investment to provide 2 lakh jobs: MamataHowever, there will be relief for the people in North Bengal districts, as the weather office has forecast thundershower and gusty winds in various parts, while the South Bengal districts are expected to face very hot and humid conditions. “There will be extremely hot and humid conditions in various South Bengal districts. Temperature will continue to remain above 40 degree Celsius in Purulia, Bankura, West Midnapore and Jhargram. In other South Bengal districts, the highest temperature may remain between 36 and 39 degree Celsius in the next few days,” said a weather official. The weather office is yet to announce the date of arrival of monsoon in South Bengal. There will be intense heat spell in all the South Bengal districts, including the city. The discomfort level will be high during the day but during the night, the temperature will go down slightly in South Bengal. There is no prediction of rain in the city and its adjoining districts in the next 48 hours.