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A village in Punjab suffers as the government dithers
November 22, 2017 May 28, 2018 admin
The AIDS Centre at DHQ Chiniot | Photo by Saad Sarfraz Sheikh
Javed Iqbal travelled to Faisalabad International Airport 15 years ago to catch a one-way flight to Dubai. Two years later, in 2004, he was sent back to Pakistan after medical tests revealed that he was infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a precursor to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Then 27, he had no idea how and where he had contracted the disease.
Iqbal then attempted to move to Saudi Arabia for work, but his job application was rejected after he underwent a medical test. Embarrassed and dejected, he resumed his life in his native village, Chak No 127, Bhattiwala in central Punjab's Chiniot district, without telling anyone about his illness. He also did not seek any treatment. He was scared of being named – and shamed – for suffering from a disease generally perceived to be the result of indulging in sex practices that religion and society abhor and prohibit.
Some time later, Iqbal married a local girl despite his deteriorating condition. He died in February this year, leaving behind his widow who, according to a local health worker, is also infected with HIV.
Bhattiwala lies midway along a 37-kilometre road that connects Chiniot with Faisalabad. Like any other village in this part of the country, it has mud-plastered houses and herds of buffaloes meandering lazily amid its green fields. Most of its inhabitants are small farmers who, like Iqbal, require supplementing their meagre farm income with additional work. The village is a picture of official neglect. It has only one government primary school (set up in 1956-57), its drainage and sewerage systems are primitive and it does not have a single government-run healthcare facility.
It is by no means equipped to tackle the HIV/AIDS scare that, in recent years, seems to have hit a large number of people living in the village, including men, women and children as young as five years of age, says Mazhar Qayyum, who runs a private school near Bhattiwala. He switches between English and Urdu as he explains how the entire village blames Iqbal for the spread of the disease. Whether that blame is entirely justified or not is of no consequence to villagers like Ahmed Yar who have lost almost their entire families reportedly to HIV/AIDS.
Wearing a worn-out shirt and a piece of unstitched cloth wrapped around his legs, Yar is the personification of poverty and resignation. A farmer in his 30s, he has lost nine members of his family (his father, mother, six siblings and his sister-in-law – all in the previous 12 months). They were being treated by a local quack doctor before their condition deteriorated and they were taken to Faisalabad's Allied Hospital, the largest public sector medical institution in the area. The doctors there found that they were suffering from neurological complications. Other than that, Yar has no test reports or other documents to prove or disprove whether their deaths were linked to an HIV infection. "There is no point in finding out the reason for their deaths. It will not bring the dead back," he says.
What he is more concerned about is the fact that his teenaged sister has a terrible cough that never seems to go away, and two of his paternal cousins have been found to be infected by HIV through tests recently conducted by the government.
Another local family has lost all its 12 members in the last two years reportedly to HIV/AIDS. Their house is empty and its boundary wall has all but collapsed.
In another part of the village lives Kaneez Bibi, a housewife in her 30s, who has three young HIV-infected patients in her home. Her four-year-old son and her two teenaged step-children – a 16-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl – were found to be infected with HIV when a government team took their blood samples for testing a few months ago. None of the three children go to school. The eldest works in the fields despite his failing health.
On a recent October day, Kaneez Bibi's very agitated little son is suffering from a bloated stomach. His hands are soiled and his skin is ruptured and blistered. His sister walks around the house chewing her red dupatta. She looks much younger than her age. Both the children appear bewildered and scared. The children receive free government-provided antiretroviral drugs that slow HIV/AIDS, but there has been little improvement in their condition. This could be because their parents are not observing the recommended precautions. The tablets they consume daily are kept in the open even when they are required to be stored away from sunlight at a temperature below 30 degrees Celsius. The patients also need to undergo weekly examinations by a doctor to monitor and address any side effects that the drugs may cause.
The medicine has supporting literature that states these recommendations very clearly but it is written in French and English — gibberish for the children's illiterate parents. The doctors at the Services Hospital in Lahore who prescribed the medicine never said anything about any dangers or precautions, says Kaneez Bibi.
Bhattiwala residents are often unable to read instructions on their medicine bottles | Photo by Saad Sarfraz Sheikh
Jaffer Ali, an agriculturist in Bhattiwala who practices medicine in his spare time, has been the village's main source of diagnosis and treatment of all major and minor ailments. An untrained and unregistered medical practitioner, he has only a smattering of information about medicine, but every household in the village deems him their saviour. He does not operate a clinic but visits his patients at their homes to administer some known painkillers, steroids and antibiotics for almost all problems or diseases. At least three other quacks similarly operate in the village, with as little expertise. Whether or not they know how HIV/AIDS is spread is subject to speculation, but they are certainly ill-trained to treat its sufferers.
The quack doctors' favourite mode of treatment is administering injections — using one needle to give many injections and to many people. The villagers, too, believe injections work more quickly than tablets and syrups. Little do they know that each injection needs to be given with a new needle to avoid transferring one patient's infections to another. And that could be a major reason why HIV/AIDS has spread so widely in Bhattiwala.
Zafar Sadhu, a local farmer, alleges that the quacks operating in the village have known the dangers of giving injections with used needles all along. But they would never admit that HIV/AIDS is transferred from infected people to uninfected ones through reused injection needles. "They would rather blame it on illicit sex than on their own wrong medical practices," he says.
Such blame games became public early this year when stories of HIV/AIDS causing multiple deaths in Bhattiwala became too frequent for the local residents to ignore. Some of them wrote letters to Chiniot's district administration, requesting the authorities to carry out an investigation. They also complained about the activities of illegal healthcare providers and sought the appointment of a qualified doctor for the village, says Sadhu.
A government medical team finally visited Bhattiwala in July this year. Headed by Dr Mushtaq Bashir Akif, then working as Chiniot's district health officer, it took blood samples of 350 local residents randomly selected out of a total population of approximately 4,500 people, and tested them on the spot with portable kits. The tests found the hepatitis C virus in almost 250 of the samples. Even more worryingly, 45 samples were found to be HIV-infected.
The medical team took additional blood samples of those suspected to be infected with HIV and sent them to a government laboratory in Lahore for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing since on-the-spot tests are sometimes inaccurate, say health officials in Chiniot. PCR testing is deemed 100 per cent reliable because it is performed in a controlled laboratory environment with sophisticated equipment. The district administration claims it has not yet received the results of the tests from Lahore.
The electronic media soon got wind of these developments. Many television channels subsequently produced news pieces about those suffering from HIV/AIDS in the village. As news spread, Dr Adnan Zafar Khan, then the director of the Punjab AIDS Control Programme, travelled from his office in Lahore to Chiniot to find out more about the situation first-hand. In August, he appeared on News Wise, a news show on Dawn News TV and acknowledged that PCR results had verified the prevalence of HIV infection in Bhattiwala. However, he denied that there had been any deaths in the village due to the infection.
Soon afterwards, he was transferred out of his post as part of what the government called a routine bureaucratic reshuffle. Sources in the Punjab health department allege that he was punished for revealing the test results.
Dr Mushtaq Bashir Akif denies the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Bhattiwala altogether. "Calling the sick people in the village as HIV positive is incorrect," he says during an interview in his office at Chiniot's District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ). Posted as medical superintendent of the hospital this October, and dressed cheerfully on a recent Saturday in a polo shirt with white and blue horizontal stripes, he suggests that the ailment afflicting the village could be something else. "Nine out of every 10 people living in Bhattiwala are suffering from hepatitis C, just like they are in almost every village in the area," he says, almost chuckling.
His supervisor and chief executive officer of the district health department, Dr Akhtar Husain, rubbishes reports of large-scale deaths in Bhattiwala and claims to have taken multiple precautionary measures. He closed down many barber shops in the area since they could be a major distribution point for HIV/AIDS infection through blades reused for shaving multiple people. He also sealed clinics run by quack doctors in the village in order to save people from used injection needles.
District authorities have additionally registered a first information report (FIR) against three quack doctors for practising medicine illegally in Bhattiwala. Jaffer Ali's name is not among them. He has been at large since the government crackdown against quacks.
Ahmed Yar's home | Saad Sarfraz Sheikh
Husain claims to have taken another important step as well: an AIDS centre has been set up at the DHQ hospitals where "a psychologist, a woman medical officer and a laboratory technician" are especially posted to take care of those suffering from HIV/AIDS. "[It] is functional and we are already doing tests here," he says. Later the same day, situated next to the gynaecology ward, the centre is found locked.
Local residents are not satisfied with the government's moves. For one, they want the results of the PCR tests revealed. "If HIV/AIDS is not prevalent in the village then why has the government been holding back test results for the last four months," questions Shahid Yaqoob, general secretary of Chiniot Press Club. "Give the patients their reports and tell them that they do not have AIDS," he asks of the officials.
When informed about persistent public demands for making the results of the PCR tests public, Husain discloses that the government is not doing so because HIV is a socially sensitive disease.
In Yaqoob's opinion, there is another reason why the authorities are concealing the results. District administration officials want to ensure that "they are not held responsible" for letting a healthcare crisis develop right under their noses, he says, but insists that people will remain sceptical as long as the government is in denial. "Hiding the problem will not help the villagers." Openness, on the other hand, will assist the authorities in preventing further spread of the disease, he believes.
Mazhar Qayyum, who runs the school near Bhattiwala, holds similar views. He wants the district administration to acknowledge the prevalence of the disease and send its representatives to public and social gatherings such as weddings and funerals to create awareness. People in general and medical practitioners and barbers in particular need to be educated on how HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C is spread and how their refusal to use a new needle or blade per person is a major reason for the prevalence of these deadly medical problems, he says.
He mentions the elderly people in his village, mostly uneducated, who often ask, "What is this disease? We have never heard about it before." Convincing them to acknowledge the presence of HIV/AIDS among them, as well as making them understand the urgent need for its treatment, is a task that the government's routine moves will never accomplish, he says.
Nazir Masih was working in the United Arab Emirates in 1990 when he discovered that he was infected with HIV. He came back to Pakistan, publicly declared himself an HIV-infected person and sought treatment for his illness with antiretroviral medicine. In 1999, he collaborated with four other HIV-infected people and together they set up the New Light AIDS Control Society (NLACS), headquartered in Lahore.
Masih visited Bhattiwala recently and claims to have met many HIV-infected patients there. That only less than 10 per cent of the village's population was ever tested makes it highly likely that there are many more in the village suffering from HIV/AIDS than publicly known, he says. He also claims to know many other villages in Punjab where the prevalence of the virus is as high as it is in Bhattiwala, if not higher.
Masih quotes reports by the National AIDS Control Programme, a federal government entity, stating that Pakistan has around 133,000 people infected with HIV. Of these, only 20,660 are registered with various healthcare facilities. An overwhelming majority of these registered patients consists of adult males.
The reason why most patients do not register themselves for treatment is the social and moral stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. This stigma is so strong that healthcare providers often hesitate to treat those who suffer from the disease, says Masih. He knows of patients who were harassed and beaten up at hospitals in Faisalabad and Lahore after people found about the nature of their illness.
The impacts of the stigma are too obvious in Bhattiwala to miss.
Everyone knows everyone in the village and the identities of the HIV/AIDS patients are no secret, often exposing them to social ridicule and exclusion. Some of them complain that local shopkeepers refuse to sell them anything.
Zafar Sadhu recalls how he once went to a quack doctor in a nearby village to seek medical treatment but was made to feel ashamed for his association with Bhattiwala. "The people of your village are being punished for indulging in illicit relationships," the quack told him. Such public shaming has forced Javed Iqbal's family to maintain a low social profile and keep its interaction with others in the village to the minimum.
Sadhu also remembers his meeting with an HIV-infected woman in the village. She was desperately weeping and insisting that she had never slept with anyone except her husband. "It was very difficult to explain to her that she had committed a crime and that sex out of marriage was not the only reason why someone would contract HIV/AIDS," he says.
Moreover, a local labourer in his late 20s reports being treated as an "untouchable" after he was diagnosed with HIV in July this year. "I still work as much as any other labourer but people shun me when they find out about my illness," he says.
Most of the HIV/AIDS patients also come from the poorest of the poor families. The labourer, for instance, cannot afford to take time off work to get himself medically examined. He is seeking no treatment.
This article was published in the Herald's November 2017 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.
https://herald.dawn.com/news/print/1153912
The author is a writer and photojournalist with a master's degree in journalism from the University of Sheffield in England.
Categories: Health, photojournalism, PublishedTags: photojournalism, saad sarfraz sheikh


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Biden and Harris: Quit Counting Your Chickens; they aren't hatching!
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 06: Staffers organize state's ballots during the counting of the electoral votes from the 2016 presidential election during a joint session of Congress, on January 6, 2017 in Washington, DC. It was confirmed that President-elect Donald Trump won the election with 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 227. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The number of members of Congress who will commit to challenging the results of the Nov. 3 election during the upcoming joint session is expected to grow.
"There's three of us that have publicly said that we will refuse to certify Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, and I definitely have a very strong feeling that there will be more of us," Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told The Epoch Times.
"The number will grow, you'll see the number will grow, because I'm talking to a lot of people. Seventy-five million Americans voted for President Trump, and right now 70 percent of that number feel that that the election was stolen, and that fraud has taken place, and we know that we have big problems here in Georgia. So I think this is definitely something the American people will be supporting us in our efforts."
Greene, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), and Rep-Elect Barry Moore (R-Ala.) have publicly committed to challenging the election results during the upcoming joint session of Congress.
READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE…
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Kindergarten only has one chapter left in their program. We just finished the circus theme and clothes. We are now about to start talking about school.
1st grades know how to say "Quelle heure est il?" and answer to this question. We are about to start learning the body parts.
2nd grades are almost done with the adventures of Alex and Zoe for the year. They know everything about French lucky charms, giving directions to go places.
3rd grade has been traveling around the world with Alex and Zoe. We went to Guinee, French Polynesia, Africa, and so many other francophile countries. They know how to talk about past events. They love the song "Baobab".


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Ethereum and Cardano Co-Founder: Crypto Has Extended Its Reach Beyond Finance
Cryptocurrency Nov 04, 2022 05:05AM ET
By Alessandro Albano and Francesco Casarella
Investing.com - "Over the next 10 years, the crypto market will continue to experience alternating bull/bear market cycles, but investor adoption of digital currencies will continue to increase." So said Charles Hoskinson, founder or co-founder of blockchain platforms Cardano and Ethereum, in an interview he gave to Investing.com this week during the Web Summit 2022 in Lisbon.
By 2025 there will be more than 1 billion people who have dealt with crypto in their lifetime, a number that Hoskinson says could increase to "2 billion by 2030."
And yet, from its peak in November 2021 to the present, the market capitalization of non-fiat currencies has shrunk dramatically, from more than $3 billion to the current $1 billion.
But with the arrival of NFTs, the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender by El Salvador, and the increased use of blockchain by corporations, crypto has taken more than financial value, a feature not seen in the past decade.
"In the last bull market of 2021, we realized that crypto is no longer just a speculative financial instrument, but also has reach outside the financial world," the founder of the two blockchains explains.
The decentralization of finance and the digital banking revolution will also contribute, "enormously in the adoption of digital currencies," as will the use by cyber security companies and the digitization of bureaucratic processes, according to Hoskinson.
The Climate Costs to Crypto
More complex, however, is the discourse related to ESG issues and the energy waste used to mine cryptocurrencies. After the Ethereum Merge, considered one of the most significant upgrades ever introduced to the crypto ecosystem, the Ethereum blockchain reduced network energy consumption by 99.9 percent in migrating from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
For Hoskinson, however, cryptos cannot solve climate change, a task instead to do "with cooperation between nation-states," but can play an important role in helping emerging economies accelerate their development.
"Blockchain can help emerging and undeveloped economies accelerate their domestic development processes, which instead are now bound by international constraints and subject to the so-called world order."
Cardano's founder claims that El Salvador offers an example of how, through the creation of new protocols, states can create new forms of digital partnerships that go beyond traditional systems and rely instead on new digital infrastructure.
In more financial terms, however, Hoskinson sees cryptocurrencies as another asset class to round out a balanced portfolio, although recent volatility has blown away the previously established inverse relationship between cryptocurrency and stock performance.
"Crypto is the first meta asset, but the question for investors is how they want the assets in their portfolio to be represented. All assets have intrinsic value but are asymmetrically liquid."
"But," the founder of the world's top two blockchains asks in conclusion, "what if all financial instruments, even those not traded, had their own form of liquid representation in international financial markets equivalent to their real value?"


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Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh emerge as poorest states in India: Niti Aayog
As per the Niti Aayog's Multidimensional Poverty Index, 51.91 percent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 percent in Jharkhand and 37.79 percent in Uttar Pradesh
Representational image. PTI
New Delhi: Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog's Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
As per the index, 51.91 percent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 percent in Jharkhand, 37.79 percent in Uttar Pradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 percent) has been placed fourth in the index, Meghalaya (32.67 percent) is at the fifth spot.
Kerala (0.71 percent), Goa (3.76 percent), Sikkim (3.82 percent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 percent) and Punjab (5.59 percent) have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of the index.
According to the report, India's national MPI measure uses the globally accepted and robust methodology developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Importantly, as a measure of multidimensional poverty, it captures multiple and simultaneous deprivation faced by households, it added.
The report said, India's MPI has three equally weighted dimensions, health, education and standard of living - which are represented by 12 indicators namely nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, antenatal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets and bank accounts.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework, adopted by 193 countries in 2015, has redefined development policies, government priorities, and metrics for measuring development progress across the world.
The SDG framework, with 17 global goals and 169 targets, is significantly wider in scope and scale relative to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), its predecessor.
Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar in his foreword said, "The development of the National Multidimensional Poverty Index of India is an important contribution towards instituting a public policy tool which monitors multidimensional poverty, informs evidence-based and focused interventions, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind."
Kumar further said this baseline report of India's first ever national MPI measure is based on the reference period of 2015-16 of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
The national MPI measure has been constructed by utilising 12 key components which cover areas such as health and nutrition, education and standard of living, he said.
Multidimensional Poverty Index
Positive changes in UP just 'trailer', real film after polls, says Nitin Gadkari
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JGGLCCE 2021: Online application for 956 posts begins today at jssc.nic.in; check direct link here
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Jharkhand: Man beaten to death, set on fire for felling trees, weeks after state passed anti-lynching bill
Following a series of mob lynching cases in Jharkhand, the state passed the Prevention of Mob Violence and Mob Lynching Bill, 2021 on 21 December to put an end to the vigilante justice system
"Took the decision on impulse": BJP after Bihar MLA Rashmi Varma resigns
Rashmi Varma had made her debut in 2014 when she retained Narkatiaganj for the party in a by-election
COVID-19 is back in Patna with big numbers, but why aren't residents too worried this time?
The Bihar capital had 1,407 new victims of the dreaded virus out of 2,379 cases reported in the entire state on 5 January
Bihar Police books Brahamdev Mandal for taking 11 doses of COVID-19 vaccine
It has been alleged in the complaint that Mandal misled health workers on different dates and places, on the basis of different identity cards, and got 11 vaccine doses, breaking the rules of vaccination
Vaxxed to the Max: 84-year-old man from Bihar at 12 shots and counting, says 'every jab made him feel better'
Brahmadeo Mandal said he has used his Aadhaar and voter ID cards on different occasions to get himself registered and does not possess any system-generated vaccination certificate for any of the jabs
Jharkhand: 16 killed, 26 injured in head-on collision between bus and truck carrying cylinders
The accident happened around 8.30 am on Govindpur-Sahibganj state highway at Paderkola village in Amrapara police station area, the police said


La Educación: Un derecho, no un privilegio / Conversatorio.
Elizabeth Torras and Nueva York Flamenco City at Terraza 7 on Saturday, April 13th, 2019 at 9:30 pm.
Elisabet Torras Aguilera was born and raised in Barcelona where she earned her B.A. in Spanish Dance and Flamenco from the Conservatory of Dance and Theatre. She continued her studies in Madrid. Her training was always focused on Flamenco, Classical Spanish dance, Escuela Bolera, Spanish Folklore, Emma Maleras Castanets Method, Ballet, and Contemporary Dance. Elisabet has toured Europe and Asia with Zarzuela, Flamenco, and Classical Spanish Dance companies.
Since 2013 Elisabet has been performing in New York City and the Tristate Area with NY-based Flamenco companies Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, American Bolero Dance Company, A Palo Seco and Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca.


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Sheriff Rages Against Sanctuary Laws, Cop Killer's Accomplices Cannot Be Reported To ICE
Published December 29, 2018 at 5:09am
The California sanctuary state laws are still protecting the accomplices of a cop killer.
Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson told reporters that Cpl. Ronil Singh could still be alive now if it were not for the state's laws prohibiting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"This is a criminal illegal alien with prior criminal activity that should have been reported to ICE," the sheriff said.
"Law enforcement was prohibited because of sanctuary laws, and that led to the encounter with Officer Singh," he said.
"I'm suggesting that the outcome could have been different if law enforcement wasn't restricted, prohibited or had their hands tied because of political interference," he told reporters, The San Diego Union Tribune reported.
The sheriff said that Singh pulled over illegal immigrant Gustavo Perez Arriaga, 32, for driving intoxicated when the confrontation occurred.
"It was a gunfight," he said.
"Cpl. Singh absolutely tried to defend himself and stop this credible threat," Christianson said.
Should sanctuary laws be repealed?
"Why are we providing sanctuary for criminals, gang members," he said.
"It's a conversation we need to have," the sheriff said.
Some of Arriaga's illegal alien family members were arrested as accomplices in the case.
Bernabe Madrigal Castaneda, 59, Erasmo Villegas, 36, and Maria Luisa Moreno, 57, were arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting, authorities said. The three were in the home where Arriaga was arrested.
Authorities have probable cause to believe Arriaga was under the influence of alcohol when Singh stopped him early Wednesday in Newman, Christianson said. The motive in the shooting is not clear.
Arriaga's previous brushes with the law and his subsequent release by law enforcement prompted angry comments from the sheriff about Senate Bill 54, the state's so-called sanctuary law, which provides expanded protection for immigrants who have entered the country illegally. The law, which took effect in January, prohibits state and local police agencies from notifying federal officials in many cases when immigrants potentially subject to deportation are about to be released from custody.
And yet the accomplices cannot be reported to ICE.
"They're primarily family members and associates, all of whom were actively engaged in aiding and abetting this criminal fugitive," the sheriff told Fox host, and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz. "They did their best to throw us off the trail, but we're smarter than that, and they went to jail."
"Are they here illegally as well," Chaffetz asked the sheriff.
"Yes," the sheriff said.
"Can ICE even be told that these others are now in custody?" Chaffetz asked.
"No, based on their charges and their criminal histories … at this point I can't honor the detainers," he said.


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See what the keeper staff has been talking about!!!
Hear about new exhibits, births, events, and more!
In spring many of us birders may flock as locally as Walden's Pond right here in Van Saun Park to view orioles, warblers, kingfishers and more. Right now we are getting excited for this falls hawk migration about to begin in a month. But what can you do during the dog days of summer when it is hot, humid and the birding begins to slow down. What about a walk through the zoo's North American Aviary which houses 7 species of birds and a few dozen fresh water turtles too!
This has been a very exciting summer for the zoo keeping staff. Every spring before our birds are relocated outside from their winter housing we supply our charges with various twigs, hay and greens to encourage natural behavior. This year a few species really got motivated and began building nests early. Where else could you observe such natural behavior so close up. Its fun to watch them pick out the perfect length & width twig and then bring it up to their nest. Then they poke & prod as they position each twig just right. It can take up to a week to complete this job but once it is done some of the birds even gather leaves to line & soften the nest preparing for young.
Next comes the courtship behavior. Wings go a fluttering and bills look like they are taking part in a sword fight. All this work has paid off. Next time you walk through the aviary look for the 4 beautifully constructed nests that are all visible from the boardwalk. In fact, 2 of them already have chicks in them! We have 3 good size juvenile Black-crowned night herons starting to fledge and 2 pink spoonbills that are still sitting in the nest with mom & dad being fed. If you look closely you may see some activity by our wood duck or whistling duck boxes too.
So stop by the Aviary for some summertime birding and see how many of the 20 individuals you can find that live there, 4 nests and don't forget about the dozens of turtles.


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Q: Locking in SQL Server I have 2 batch programs, 1 is a program that sends email and another one sends fax. They both access a table named QUEUE.
In the email sender program, this is what happens in relation to QUEUE. For each record in QUEUE that satisfies criteria:

*

*Locks record 1 in QUEUE table:
select 1 from QUEUE with (UPDLOCK) where id = 1

*Process sending out of email

*Delete record 1 in QUEUE table:
delete from QUEUE where id = 1

*commit transaction (transaction is not auto-commit)

In the fax sender program, similar steps also happen, except that in step 2, we send out fax (of course).
The problem is that sometimes the delete from QUEUE throws out an exception that it is locked. Thereby, re-sending of the emails/fax happens. I am sure that the group of records processed by these programs don't intersect.
It seems that delete tries to get an Update (U) lock on other records in the table although only one record is to be deleted. So exception happens when other transactions have locks on other records in that same table.
With that, I need to know if there's an option to make "delete" operation not acquire locks on records other than for the record it will delete. Because it seems that the problem is with the "delete" operation taking locks on other records in the table.
By the way, here are some information about the database (I'm not sure if they will help):

*

*Read Committed Snapshot is turned on

*Snapshot Isolation State is on

A: Have you tried using the WITH ROWLOCK or WITH NOLOCK hint on the delete statement?
Have you read this article?  it suggests you use (UPDLOCK, READPAST) to prevent the issue your encountering

A: Sometimes a lock escalades from locking a single row into locking a section of a table or locking an entire table. That is most likely why you are getting locks on records that you are not actually using in the transaction.
Instead of using a transaction to lock the records, you could use a status field to flag the records that are processed.
Example:
Lock some records, then get the record that was successfully locked:
update queue set status = 'email_processing' where status is null and id = 1
select email, message from queue where status = 'email_processing'

When you are not explicitly using a transaction each query runs in it's own transaction, so the update query can safely change the status as it's verifying the current status in the same query.
When done sending, delete the records:
delete from queue where status = 'email_processing'

The fax sender would of course use a different status (like 'fax_processing') so that the flagged records are isolated.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


You can find many pet friendly hotels in Italy; they accept all kind of pets, big and small…some of them even accept "unusual pets" like rabbits and ferrets. Some pet friendly hotels allow your pets the access to the dining hall. If you tell the reception that you travel with your pets straightaway, they will allot you a room with a balcony or with a garden, to grant your pet more freedom. You can find pet friendly hotels Italy in art cities, at the seaside, in the mountains and in the countryside. It's very suggestive to walk your dog with the Colosseum in the background or around the Venice "calli".
You can count on many hotels for dogs and cats in Italy, but not just on them; you can find many farms and bed & breakfasts in Italy accepting pets. It happens not just to fight the phenomenon of stray cats and dogs, but because in Italy there are 44 millions of pets: cats, dogs, fish, birds, and so on. A pet is a family member and many people are happy to bring him/her along on holiday; many hotels owners had to keep this factor into account, to attract more clients. Everywhere in Italy, even in the Southern regions, you can find hotels for dogs and cats, together with bed & breakfast and farms. The latter are very popular among cats owners, while dog owners prefer holidays at the seaside.


Internationale Tourismus-Börse, or ITB press conference in Berlin.
To me, all this looks like a poor attempt at convincing the general public on the success and grandeur of the So Sri Lanka campaign. Don't get me wrong. I think its a great idea that someone actually thought about promoting Sri Lankan tourism through a branded approach. The issue however, is the actual execution of the idea.
Sure, we can create amazing content about Sri Lanka that can captivate any audience. But all those beautiful videos and promotions will only take things so far. There's still a lot more that we, as a country need to fix. If not, So Sri Lanka will only be as significant as a facepalm emoji.
Technically, this isn't something specific to Sri Lanka. Harassment is a global problem that governments from around the globe are trying to tackle. Sri Lanka, sadly has to deal with all sorts of harassment.
It's unfortunate that a foreigner can't even walk in public without being groped by some pervert. Take Karen Hsin's incident in Mirissa. All it took was for her to go look for coffee with a friend and she gets harassed in broad daylight. It's disturbing to even think Karen's story is just one among quite a few.
It's not just the tourists. Even Sri Lankans go through this trauma on a daily basis, particularly in public transport. So are the local authorities doing anything about this? Well, for one thing, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority and the Tourist Police Division has reportedly launched a new project to introduce 22 new Tourist Police Units across popular destinations in the island. The 1st of these is to be opened in the centre of Mirissa Tourism Area on the 22nd of March. Of course this doesn't guarantee things would get better. If Karen's incident any indication even the local police can be unreliable at times, particularly for foreigners. but at least its a step in the right direction.
Then there's the matter of public transportation. One of the ways the authorities believe that will solve the problem, is segregating the men from the women. This is already underway in the trains, and it looks like the same will be followed for the public buses as well. At first glance, this looks like a good first step. But I would argue quite the opposite. This may actually cause more problems than actually solve any of them. I've already argued on this point.
This might not be a popular topic as much as it should be. But its a prevalent issue nonetheless. The best example here is the case of Wilpattu. We all know what's happening there.
The clearing of the Wilpattu National Park to pave way for a housing project has come under the spotlight in the recent past. To this day authorities seem to do nothing about it. Meanwhile the Centre for Environmental Justice has filed a petition against the issue. The Court of Appeal is to deliver judgement on the matter on the 6th of August, 2019.
But this only goes to highlight the bigger issue, deforestation. Illegal felling of trees is yet to be regulated properly. As a result, the environment is paying the price. This will only come back to haunt us. After all, Sri Lanka is a beautiful island with such an amazing and diverse natural habitat. Our naturally rich biodiversity is one of our key selling points for promoting tourism.
Now, the government has made it compulsory for all chainsaws in Sri Lanka to be registered. Whether this will put a stop to deforestation, only time will tell. So Sri Lanka.
If you're a regular hiker then you already know the severity of this one. Seeing all the trash in so many travel destinations, it's like we just don't seem to care about the environment enough.
Adam's Peak. It's a sacred location, blessed with beautiful views and a journey that any hiker would find enjoyable. But even so, Adam's Peak is constantly being polluted by its visitors. Although the forces and activist groups often attempt to clean up the route, the trash keeps piling up.
Back when I did the hike to Alagalla there was so much trash in the forest that I actually managed to find my way back because of it.
Funnily enough, I've never seen a tourist ever trash or even much as throw a toffee wrapper on the streets. Maybe it's our upbringing or the lack of strict policies around trash management. Either way, we Sri Lankans can learn a thing or two from the tourists. So Sri Lanka.
4. Can we stop with the discrimination?
This is just plain wrong. There is no justification as to why someone should pay ridiculously high fares compared to local tickets, just because you're from a different country. That logic doesn't make sense to me at all. During one of my visits to Sigiriya I remember my colleague having to pay LKR 5000 because he was Maldivian. How much did I pay? Less than 10% of that.
The story is pretty much the same when it comes to a lot of government maintained places like these. This is daylight robbery in my books.
This is an annoying one. Our public transportation system is just appalling. Take our trains for instance. Some of them are so old that commuters can see through the floorboard, literally. The buses are no better either. Anybody taking the bus on a daily basis would know how uncomfortable the ride usually is. I can only imagine a foreigner's experience taking a far more unpleasant perspective.
Now we do have some luxuries like the Podi Menike and the likes. But for the most part, our transportation still lives in the 80's. To be fair though, the recent budget proposal did highlight the need for a better transportation system. But these are only mere words until action is taken.
Then comes regulation. The lack of proper regulation when it comes to transport services has resulted in the tourists getting exploited left, right and center. The main culprits here are tuk tuks. It's all got to do with this ridiculous notion that having white skin means you're loaded with cash. As primitive as that sounds, it's an actual opinion certain people have about foreigners, even today.
Of course, with the advent of taxi hailing services like PickMe and Uber, this issue is seeing a gradual decline to some extent. To their credit, the government has also tried to take certain steps towards resolving this matter. One, is making it compulsory by law to have a taxi meter. Second, is the introduction of a tourist friendly tuk service. What lacks is the proper execution. Tuks are hardly ever checked for taxi meters and the tourist-friendly tuk tuks don't really seem to be that popular with tourists either. So Sri Lanka.
It's amazing that the world views our little island as the best country in the world to visit in 2019. They are absolutely right. Sri Lanka is an experience like no other. As I've said in the beginning, it's also great that the SLTDA is looking to brand this appeal for Sri Lanka.
But perhaps let's fix our problems at least while we're trying to convince everyone what So Sri Lanka is all about. The larger responsibility obviously falls on the government and the relevant authorities. But we as Sri Lankans, are also partly responsible here. After all, if Sri Lanka is to keep the top spot as the tourist destination, it should all be a joint effort.
Just look at what organizations like Thuru are trying to do. These guys are trying to plant 2 million trees with their current count nearing 7,000. Maybe you and I can't afford to be that ambitious. But surely taking an active approach to conserving our island's beauty can't be that difficult?


Played a total of 167 times by 44 registered members. Finished by 107 users who rated the difficulty as easy.
Hi Every 1 -- I finished this 1 with 98 moves.
3 , 4 , 5 straight up. 6 went over before the flip. Either black King and J first.
Very easy game. I played the cards as they became available using the same strategy as Kelly for diamonds. When I try to increase speed the game continuously refreshes.
Ran diamonds to 5 up right away. Towards the end I brought cards over instead of running them up. I know that's not very specific but I don't know any other way to explain it.
I didn't do anything special. I played on my phone. The score is always better.
My second of fame. I always enjoy my seconds of fame!
New game is MUCH easier.


text:
Built in the 1920's, the Village Hall started life as the Towncroft Working Men's Club which stood in its own grounds and had its own bowling green and football club (made by volunteers during the 1920's general strike).
The club was quite the main centre of activities for once inside there was a room used for table tennis which you passed though to get to the main concert hall. Here there was a stage, changing rooms and toilets where you could watch a whole range of club acts synonymous with working men's clubs. There was a kitchen complete with fireside range and a large billiard and snooker room that hosted three full size snooker tables. There was then a games room for cards and dominoes as well as a dart board.
Under the main staircase that led to the committee room and secretary's office, there was a reading room. There was even living accommodation on site with a three bedroomed house, complete with internal bathroom which would have been a luxury item at the time.
Downstairs was the beer cellar and boiler room and a through-passage that led to the .22 rifle range that sits under the concert room (this is still running to this day). Also under the main hall were two changing rooms for the football pitch, two bathrooms and toilets.
During the 2nd World War, the concert room was commandeered by the army and used for signing up 18-40 year old men and women for conscription to the forces. The room wasn't released and used by the club again until the end of the war in 1945.
After the war the club once again became the hub of the community. It was well used by the choirs of the village who often gave concerts on the stage, one of those being the North Gawber Male Voice Choir that practised here weekly (and still does to this day). Singing was very important to the Mapplewell Community with the Mapplewell & Staincross Sing. This was featured on its 100th anniversary by ITV in 1986 and Brian Blessed.
The Towncroft building was used for many professional events, including professional boxing and professional snooker. Even Barnsley FC hired the football grounds for a couple of seasons. However, it was for its community activities that it was fondly remembered. From 'crib to coffin' the club satisfied the demands of a growing village and proved to be an excellent host for everything from christenings to wedding receptions from pet shows to evening dances. For many it was a sad day that the Towncroft Working Mens Club closed only to later become the Town hall that it is today.
The Village Hall was purchased from funds raised by public subscription in the 1960's. It went on to be managed by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council for twenty years.
The Village Hall as it was in 1952
In 1995 the Council decided that the Hall was no longer financially viable and unless a local Management Committee took over the day to day running, it would be closed. The regular users of the Hall at that time formed the first Committee and they went on to register the Hall as a Charity. In these early years the hall was run and managed by the United Village Partnership.
This new Committee devised a Business Development Plan which looked at improving the hall over a number of different phases. Each of these phases were to be funded separately so as to allow the progress of improvements to be introduced in priority order. The objective was that the hall should be self-sustainable and so devised a strategy to avoid grant dependence.
Early in the new millennium, plans to rehouse the Darton library at the Village Hall were voiced and following a major investment to provide a purpose built extension to house these services, it was officially opened by the BBC weatherman, Paul Hudson on the 15th September 2002. This encouraged more users to the hall and opened up new opportunities such as the Computer suite, DIAL and Citizens advice.
After various different guises, the Mapplewell and Staincross Village Hall Ltd charity (111212) was registered to become a private limited company in 2005. It has seven formal trustees or directors and is supported by a number of registered charity members (new members are encouraged to get involved).
A key part of the ongoing business development strategy is to continue to bring a range of services to one convenient, attractive and central location working with other agencies to the benefit of the local Community. As you would expect from such a community building – the Hall is fully accessible to all with a lift to the first floor, ramps to the building as well as disabled toilet facilities.
It has taken a long time but the Mapplewell and Staincross Village Hall has, once again, become a successful meeting place for the Community and the surrounding area that it serves. Different to when it was run as a working men's club, it is still able to provide a very diverse range of activities combining aspects of both the old and the new. It now provides education courses, leisure activities, information surgeries and an abundance of 'well being' classes for young, old and infirm alike. It presents a warm, safe environment in pleasant surroundings and a staff that truly care.
But as well as the Community activities on offer, It is also the home of a number of other small businesses. These rent office and work space directly from the charity on a month by month basis. These include the Mapplewell and Staincross Library, Leapahead Day Nursery, The Village Hall Cafe and a whole host of other smaller and diverse businesses that indirectly invest into the Community – for the benefit of the Community.
Regular supporters of the Village Library
The Management Committee continue to regularly meet to ensure the development of the site so as to maximise both Community benefit and income. More importantly, there is a dedicated management team in place that not only oversee the 'day to day' running of the hall but who actively look for new opportunities and new interests that continue to attract people through the doors and benefit Mapplewell and Staincross as a whole.
Over 100,000 visitors a year
But the backbone of the Hall is the combination of users and volunteers alike. The venue receives over 100,000 visitors every year – and is growing. For this reason, unlike many Village Halls, Mapplewell and Staincross Village Hall continues to thrive – fulfilling its objective of becoming the hub of the community. A place of the people for the people adapting to changes when its needed the most.


I am into Melaleuca. I bought 3 bags of shakes to try. My concern is this; Is this product sage for the heart as it contains panax? It sounds like this had worked very well for you! Have you had any weightloss? Keep up the good fight!
When I first started drinking them I was definitely losing weight. I lost about 12 lbs in the first 2 months. Since then my eating habits have slipped and I've started gaining them back. I have to start again. I believe the shakes can aid weight loss but they're not miracle workers. I have to find my mojo again. I'm still drinking them every day and they're still lowering my sugar levels when they're high. So they're still working for me even though I haven't been eating as well as I should.


text:
Home » Midnight's Children: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (Paperback)
Midnight's Children: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (Paperback)
By Salman Rushdie
9 on hand, as of Jan 30 5:03pm
(FICTION)
Hardcover (October 17th, 1995): $30.00
Paperback (February 18th, 2003): $13.95
CD-Audio (November 2nd, 2017): $36.95
Chautauqua is reading Midnight's Children together throughout autumn 2022. Visit www.chq.org/reading-rushdie-together for more information.
The iconic masterpiece of India that introduced the world to "a glittering novelist—one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling" (The New Yorker)
WINNER OF THE BEST OF THE BOOKERS • SOON TO BE A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time • The fortieth anniversary edition, featuring a new introduction by the author
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India's 1,000 other "midnight's children," all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Forty years after its publication, Midnight's Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.
"Extraordinary . . . one of the most important [novels] to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation."
"The literary map of India is about to be redrawn. . . . Midnight's Children sounds like a continent finding its voice."
"In Salman Rushdie, India has produced a glittering novelist– one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling."
"A marvelous epic . . . Rushdie's prose snaps into playback and flash-forward . . . stopping on images, vistas, and characters of unforgettable presence. Their range is as rich as India herself."
"Burgeons with life, with exuberance and fantasy . . . Rushdie is a writer of courage, impressive strength, and sheer stylistic brilliance."
–The Washington Post Book World
"Pure story–an ebullient, wildly clowning, satirical, descriptively witty charge of energy."
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Series: Modern Library 100 Best Novels
Fiction / Sagas
Fiction / Magical Realism
CHQ Fund Donation
Did you know that current CLSC membership includes book discounts on our website?
Begin or renew your CLSC Membership today
Browse 2022 Program Authors by Week:
Writers' Festival:
Writing Resilience
What Should be America's Role in the World?
Week Three:
The Future of Human Rights
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The Future of History
Week Five:
The Vote and Democracy
Week Six:
Week Seven:
More than Shelter
Week Eight:
New Profiles in Courage
Week Nine:
A Vibrant Tapestry


text:
Two Buddhas, Part-4: "The Big Picture"
The Great God Pan, Intelligent Designer? Part-2: But, how can Evolving Ecosystems be Conscious?
Two Buddhas, Part-5: Your mind is not other than a fallen leaf, or a footprint
By admin in Two Buddhas
A short selection from Essay Six in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. (So let's step beyond our inner nerd now, and follow our Buddhas.)
"What is the Way?" Ordinary mind is the Way. "Should I turn toward it or not?" If you turn toward it you turn away from it. "How can I know the way if I don't turn toward it?" The way is not about knowing or not knowing. When you know something you are deluded, and when you don't know, you are just empty-headed. When you reach the way beyond doubt, it is vast and empty as space. You can't say it's right or wrong. —Ordinary Mind Is the Way koan [1]
So how can we possibly under-stand this ordinary experience of unfathomable Mind that oversees our cleverly shifting interests? Can that which conceives everything also be a thing? The question posed by Leibniz and Heidegger, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" can also take the form, "Why do I have experiences at all?" David Chalmers calls this "the hard problem of consciousness" because, unlike easy problems that address our capacity to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, or focus attention—all of which can be formulated in comparative terms—the immediate Truth of consciousness does not yield to measurement and research. [2] With what do we compare it? How can such questioning reveal a truth that lies outside its own play of truths? If the audience becomes part of the play, who's watching its preoccupied faces? Nobody?
. . . There are of course theories on offer to make sense of "the hard problem" in terms of something else: If a being recognizes itself in a mirror is this consciousness? Do the "neural mechanisms" underlying consciousness consist of a functional cluster in the thalamocortical system, within which reentrant neuronal interactions yield a succession of differentiated yet unitary metastable states? [3] But it's from very personal stories, like Jill Taylor's "Stroke of Insight", [4] stories which have been told by mystics and the mentally 'afflicted' throughout time, that we keep bumping into the oldest idea of all: Consciousness, Dogen's "Primordial Awareness", [5] is like a pool of water that returns to its unconditioned clarity—empty of every thing—only when, in perfect stillness, the judging and self-ish agitation subsides.
Perhaps what we really mean when we say the problem of consciousness is hard is that, what we are calling Mind, stands outside of everything we can possibly know, just as a mirror doesn't enter into its reflected universe. Brain scientists must demarcate the objects of their research, because you can't under-stand the unfathomable. But it turns out the hard problems are lived, not solved. We might like to imagine we are about to touch the mirror itself, but we're only reaching out with more of our (admittedly wonderful) reflections. And in the end we're forced to enter the poetical mood, so that metaphor can track The Way of our elusive (and illusive) quarry beyond the confines of academic departments.
Indirect language allows even sensible researchers, like Christoff Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allan Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, to directly contemplate "the ultimate goal of identifying the footprints of consciousness in highly excitable matter." [6] The deep lineage of this metaphor is itself worth contemplating. In the early centuries of Buddhism it was considered profane to represent Buddha (awakening) with any overt image. Other than a footprint.
1. Tarrant, John. 2004. Bring me the Rhinoceros, And Other Zen Koans to Bring You Joy. New York: Harmony Books. p. 57. Zhaozhou questions his teacher Nanquan.
2. Guzeldere, Jun./Jul. 2002, p.15. "The argument that current scientific or philosophical theories can't explain consciousness in their physicalistic framework was brought back again by David Chalmers in The Conscious Mind (1996). Chalmers introduced a distinction between the 'easy' and the 'hard' problems of consciousness, putting a twist of Freud's 'unknown' and Levine's 'explanatory gap'. He argued that no level of sophistication in understanding the physical aspects of the brain or behaviour, or cognitive processes such as learning and reasoning (which he called the 'easy problems'), can bring us any closer to understanding the qualitative aspects of the conscious mind (the 'hard problem')."
3. Edelman, 2000, pp, 143-152: The Dynamic Core Hypothesis.
4. Taylor, Jill Bolte. 2009 Plume Books edition. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain scientist's Personal Journey. London: Penguin Books, 2006.
5. Dogen, 1986, p. 1. We must be careful here. Dogen begins, "Primordial Awareness is in essence perfect and pervades everywhere. How could it be dependent upon what anyone does to practice or realize it?" Then he says, "The vast expanse of Reality can never be darkened by the dust of presumptions. Who then could believe that it needs to be cleaned of such dust to be what it is?" The title of this short work, Fukanzazengi: How Everyone Can Sit, should alert us that he is not talking about 'things' here, there is no physical 'mirror of awareness', but he is just exhorting us to, as he says further along, "Be Before Thinking". In Soto Zen meditation we are not trying to 'get somewhere', we are just 'being here'. This 'kind of reflection' begins where presumption ends, but the 'pool' of what we can experience, though now calm, is just as deep as always; thus Primordial Awareness is sometimes translated simply as "The Way".
6. Koch, Christoff. Nov./Dec., 2014. A Brain Structure Looking for a Function, Scientific American Mind, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 24-27. Quote taken from p. 27.


If there is one thing I know about then it's gaming events. Not just because I have been to so many but also because I have been a big part of managing and organising some of the UK's largest and most historic retro gaming expos including Revival, Jagfest UK and RetroVision. While I have now retired from running events due to my poor health, I still try to make an effort to support the ones that are still around.
Nowadays there are so many gaming events on the calendar it's getting pretty hard to keep track! But one of the event companies that have been around since the beginning are Replay Events. They have put on the biggest and best events on a yearly basis taking in cities such as Blackpool, London, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow and, of course, Manchester. Now you may remember that last year the show in Manchester was replaced with a second one in Blackpool, but this year it's back with a bang on the weekend of the 4th and 5th of May.
I thought it would be nice to give something back to the people behind some of my favourite events and give you ten reasons why you should be attending Play Manchester in less than 4 week's time! If these reasons don't persuade you then nothing will. So head over to their official website, buy yourself some tickets and I'll see you there!
Literally the first area I head for as soon as I visit any Play event is the arcade. I grew up in and around arcades and there is still nothing that quite matches the magic and nostalgia that these machines hold for me.
While it's sad that the days of those smoky neon lit arcades are well and truly over you can somewhat relive this experience at Play Manchester. And you can also do it without needing a pocket full of 10p pieces too as all the machines are set to freeplay!
Pinball tables got pretty much hand in hand with arcade games so it's no surprise to see that these will feature heavily at the event too. Play always have the largest selection of both arcade and pinball machines that you will see at any UK event.
Of course, all the pinball tables, like the arcade machines, will also be set to freeplay for everyone to enjoy. There are also high score contents on some of the machines too for those who fancy themselves as a real pinball wizard!


If you are after somewhere a little different to hold your wedding then why not try here at the Chill Factorat Trafford. Not only do you have a wonderful backdrop of snow for photographs, but you can book activities on the slope as well. The room is modern stylish room, with smooth light coloured walls which are excellent for venue lighting. As in this case, the bride wanted a pink room which you can tell from the party pictures the 'pink' surrounding them, and of course the classic - Bubbles.


A scrap metal dealer's list of what they will and will not accept is longer than you might think. These criteria have to do with the size and form of the metal object and the "extra" materials commonly attached to metal brought to scrap yards, which should be dealt with elsewhere. The criteria differ from yard to yard depending on their storage and processing capacity.
Remove as much non-metal material as possible, and dispose of it properly yourself, e.g. chair seats , food can labels, attached wood or plastic, tires,mattresses. Hazardous materials need to be removed as well, such as mercury switches in vehicles. Ballast in light fixtures also need to be removed.
Realize that appliances have little final value, and you may have to pay a service charge to have them picked up. We require the freon or freon and compressor to be removed from fridges and freezers prior to bringing them in.
Open all sealed cylinders by removing the valve - for instance, from an old propane tank.
Oil & Fuel tanks must be clean and a hole cut in them.
Don't take your metal items to the landfill. They are not biodegradable!
So, why do all of this? First, you save your dealer the time it would take them to do this for you; when you add up the many tonnes they receive from different customers, that is a lot of time. Second, you can help make a safer work environment for the yard employees. Sealed cylinders are very dangerous when compacted. Third, you can help everybody's bottom line. If they have to pay to haul away a lot of garbage stripped from metal, they may pay less for metal.
Be kind to your scrap metal recyclers and educate yourself.
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Pentagon Finds a Dream State With "Like This"
Pentagon finds a dreamy, euphoric state in their new single, "Like This." It's the fourth mini-album by the Cube Entertainment group and perhaps their best single to date. The song was composed by member Hui with the help of Flow Blow and is a wonderfully composed dream pop piece. The MV brings a little to be desired since it doesn't portray any of the major themes of the song.
Dreams are often nonsensical, portraying some kind of an alternate reality that is pieced together by the unconscious mind and body. Pentagon brought out plenty of the usual tropes male groups are using in their MVs. This includes dance scenes through the chorus, some kind of fruit being used as a visual simulation, and even smoke bombs to add a colorful effect to the air.
The MV itself seems to lack meaning. Instead of telling some kind of story, it rather dives into capturing large scenes with members of the group only occupying small sections of the wide shots. Many of the shots seem somewhat non-sensical though. This is no more obvious than the members staring at a colored Converse shoe sitting inside of a filled fish tank. Despite that, there are some beautiful aspects of it.
The best part about the video is how masterfully the cinematography is composed. This is evident in the simple scenes of the group running across some kind of plain or tundra. As the group runs down a dirt road, the camera beautifully captures the group in a meaningful way, running through the harsh Earth that was thrown at them. In the background, the director shows off some of the best and richest color schemes the video can provide.
But despite the vivid colors and masterful shots, the MV seems rather pointless rather than a canvas for the song. It lacks creativity and true meaning. It seems more like the group just decided to add things to backdrops or an extra scene just to mean something. The burning shopping cart is just another oddity in the MV. For a song that takes itself so seriously, the video doesn't quite find the meaning the words try to convey.
Musically, the song is actually fantastic. It's a fantastic trip through a dream pop landscape with some rather fascinating lyrics.
I won't cry anymore
Scream it to the world, oh yeah
Even if I fall and my knees bleed
I'll keep running like this
I won't ever stop
For the only light I want
Oh yeah, even if there's a storm
Rather than singing about some kind of long-lost love, the group captures the feeling of hopelessness and depression along with the need to persevere through these feelings. For a K-pop group, it's surprisingly deep. Perhaps these are some of the feelings that Hui has felt in the past and he inserted them into the single. While there are infinite differences, the song itself draws from dream pop influences, and it's reminiscent of the American dream pop group Beach House with a Korean twist. They also use these expansive synth melodies along with rich harmonies to craft choruses that sound like they should be played during some kind of celestial show.
Overall, the MV and song are quite a treat. The song brings so many positives that it's easy to look over some of the weaker aspects of the song. The video itself is quite visually stimulating and easy to watch even if it's a little nonsensical. Combined, the MV and song might be the best piece of work the group has put forward yet.
(YouTube, KLyrics, Images via Cube Entertainment)
Tags: MV Review, Pentagon
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Subject: One Big Reason a Global Stock Market Crash in 2016 Is More Likely Than Ever
URL: http://mney.co/1KUdF6b
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One Big Reason a Global Stock Market Crash in 2016 Is More Likely Than Ever
By David Zeiler, Associate Editor, Money Morning • @DavidGZeiler • February 16, 2016
With each passing day, the irresponsible behavior of the world's central banks brings us closer to a full-blown global stock market crash in 2016.
We're already officially in a bear market. On Thursday, the MSCI All-Country World Index fell 1.3%, giving it a 20% decline since last May.
Issues such as slowing economic growth in China, $5 trillion of emerging market debt, and rock-bottom oil prices have made investors increasingly skittish.
But now the world's central banks have started to toss gasoline on the fire in the form of negative interest rates. The lower they go, the more likely they are to trigger a global stock market crash in 2016.
A negative-interest-rate policy (NIRP) is the latest Hail Mary pass from the central banks after extended periods of zero interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) have failed to restore economic growth.
A negative interest rate means that instead of receiving interest on deposited money, you have to pay the bank that's holding it. It's supposed to stimulate bank lending and encourage spending.
The trend started in Europe.
Negative Interest Rates Gain Momentum
The European Central Bank (ECB) ventured first into NIRP in June 2014, when it set its benchmark rate at -0.1%, then dropped it to -0.2% just three months later. In December 2015, the ECB cut its rate to -0.3%.
Other European central banks followed suit – Denmark, Switzerland, and Sweden.
On Jan. 29, the Bank of Japan hopped on the NIRP bandwagon, dropping its key rate to -0.1%.
Speculation is rising that the U.S. Federal Reserve could be the next central bank to "go negative."
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen was asked about the possibility of imposing negative interest rates if the U.S. economy falters.
"In light of the experience of European countries and others that have gone to negative rates, we're taking a look at them again because we would want to be prepared in the event that we needed to add accommodation," Yellen said.
But Yellen and her pals on the Federal Reserve board had better tread very carefully. NIRP has been a disaster in the places that have adopted it.
Going by what's happened in so far in Europe and Japan, the Fed going to negative interest rates would not only fail, it would make a global stock market crash almost inevitable…
How NIRP Has Failed
NIRP has made things worse everywhere it has been tried.
Take Sweden. Its Riksbank went negative at -0.1% exactly one year ago and has dropped its rate several times since. Just this week the Riksbank took the rate down to -0.5%.
NIRP has failed to nudge inflation anywhere near the Riksbank's 2% target; it remains close to zero. Except for housing, which is forming a dangerous bubble.
The ECB's NIRP has met with similar failure. Inflation in the Eurozone is just 0.4%, far below the 2% target. And economic growth slowed in each of the last two quarters of 2015 to just 0.3%.
As for the European stock markets, they're all down. Since April 2015, the German DAX is off 25%, the French CAC 40 is down 20.5%, and the Italian MIB has fallen 28.6% – all in bear market territory.
While investors typically cheer monetary easing by central banks, they seem to be wising up.
When the BOJ went negative at the end of January, the party only lasted two days for the Japanese stock market. Since Feb. 1, the Nikkei index has swooned by nearly 15%.
"The latest shift by several central banks to a negative-interest-rate policy seems to be weighing on stocks and may be working against their intentions of promoting economic growth," said Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist with Charles Schwab & Co.
But negative interest rates haven't just failed as a stimulus. They pose dangers to the entire financial system that easily could blow up into a global stock market crash.
How NIRP Could Trigger a Global Stock Market Crash in 2016
One great risk of NIRP as more central banks adopt it is that it will fuel the currency wars. So to keep their competitive advantage, central banks will have to keep setting rates deeper and deeper into negative territory.
But the more negative the central banks go, the tougher life will get for that nation's financial institutions.
Tighter regulations already have squeezed profits at banks in Europe and the United States. But negative interest rates threaten their most reliable income source: the difference between what a bank pays for deposits and what it makes from loans.
German banks get 75% of their income from this source, for example. Falling interest rates chopped revenue at German banks from $471 billion in 2007 to $230 billion in 2014.
And so far, European banks have shied away from charging customers on their savings deposits for fear of the backlash.
If NIRP becomes the norm, pressure on bank profits will grow. Banks will become weaker and act as an additional drag on the economy. Central banks will feel compelled to keep lowering rates.
The spiral will squeeze capital at the banks, crippling their ability to make loans. Any kind of liquidity crunch in 2016 would devastate an already weak global economy and lead directly to a global stock market crash.
That's why the world's stock markets keep recoiling as NIRP becomes more widespread and rates keep slipping lower.
Given that central banks, including the Fed, appear blind to the danger of negative interest rates and how they could end up causing a stock market crash in 2016, investors need to start taking precautions.
How to Prepare for a Stock Market Crash in 2016
"The world is headed down a path of exploding debt, fiat money, and negative interest rates for which there's simply no historical precedent," said Money Morning Resource Investing Specialist Peter Krauth. "In this scenario, your best line of defense is to own some gold and silver as both insurance and for the serious upside potential."
Krauth says investors ideally should buy physical gold and silver, but can also opt for an exchange-traded fund.
For gold, he likes the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (NYSE Arca: PHYS). It holds gold bullion that is fully allocated and stored at a secure third-party location in Canada. And for silver, Krauth favors the Sprott Physical Silver Trust ETF (NYSE Arca: PSLV). PSLV also holds its silver bullion fully allocated and stored, as is the gold held in PHYS.
The Bottom Line: Negative interest rates are the last resort for central banks desperate to boost their economies. But NIRP isn't working. And the risks negative rates pose to banks will cause a liquidity crunch that will lead to a stock market crash. As insurance, investors should buy some gold and silver.
Follow me on Twitter @DavidGZeiler or like Money Morning on Facebook.
Coco Bonds Weren't Such a Good Idea… Back in 2010, regulators came up with a new type of bond just for banks – "contingent convertible bonds," or coco bonds. Under ordinary conditions, these bonds pay a higher-than-average return. But when a bank gets into hot water, it can convert the coco bond to capital – bad news for the bondholder. Here's why you've been hearing a lot about coco bonds and what all this means for the markets…
Barron's: Negative Interest Rates Can Hurt Global Stocks
David Zeiler
Browse David's articles | View David's research services
Dave has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including 18 spent at The Baltimore Sun. He has worked as a writer, editor, and page designer at different times in his career. He's interviewed a number of well-known personalities - ranging from punk rock icon Joey Ramone to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Over the course of his journalistic career, Dave has covered many diverse subjects. Since arriving at Money Morning in 2011, he has focused primarily on technology. He's an expert on both Apple and cryptocurrencies. He started writing about Apple for The Sun in the mid-1990s, and had an Apple blog on The Sun's web site from 2007-2009. Dave's been writing about Bitcoin since 2011 - long before most people had even heard of it. He even mined it for a short time.
Dave has a BA in English and Mass Communications from Loyola University Maryland.
… Read full bio
Tags: Bear Market, global stock market crash 2016, market crash 2016, Negative interest rates, NIRP, stock market crash, stock market crash in 2016
PHYS 0.00 (0.08%) 12.58
PSLV 0.05 (0.76%) 6.63


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Fresh from the conclusion of the Clone Conspiracy, your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is leaping straight into a brand new story arc as Dan Slot and Stuart Immonen kick off "The Osborn Identity" in the massive 96-page Amazing Spider-Man #25, on sale next month from Marvel Comics.
With Norman Osborn back and deadlier than ever, backed by a massive multinational corporation, does Peter Parker have what it takes to bring the fight to his old foe?
The first chapter of the new story will comprise 40 pages of the oversized spectacular, with the remaining page count being filled with all manner of supplementary stories from a plethora of acclaimed artists.
Hannah Blumenreich makes her Marvel debut, Cale Atkinson brings us the latest instalment of the A-May-Zing Spider Aunt, Christos Gage and Todd Nanuck bring back the villainous Clash, Jacob Chabot and Ray Anthony Height provide another Marvel Tsum Tsum tale, James Asmus and Tana Ford transport the webslinger to Shanghai, and Dan Slott and Giuseppe Camoncoli collaborate on a top secret story that promises to have fans everywhere talking!
You can feast your eyes on some interior artwork below. Amazing Spider-Man goes on sale in print and digital on the 8th of March 2017.