Your worst still friendly friend
In the study, published Monday (Jan. 13) in the journal PNAS, researchers looked at more than 100 mummified human remains from the Chancay culture, which inhabited Peru from about A.D. 900 to 1533. “Only 3 of these individuals were found to have high-detailed tattoos made up of fine lines only 0.1 - 0.2 mm [0.004 to 0.008 inch] thick, which could only be seen with our new technique,” study co-author Michael Pittman, a paleobiologist at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, told Live Science in an email.
The technique involves laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF), which produces images based on the fluorescence of a sample, thus revealing details that can be missed by simple ultraviolet (UV) light examination. LSF works by making the tattooed skin fluoresce bright white, which causes the carbon-based black tattoo ink to stand out clearly. This almost completely eliminates the issue of tattoos bleeding and fading over time, which can obscure the design, according to the study.
The three highly detailed tattoos the team revealed on the mummified remains were “predominantly geometric patterns featuring triangles, which are also found on other Chancay artistic media like pottery and textiles,” Pittman said, while other Chancay tattoos included vine-like and animal designs.
Interesting
A Liberian rights activist tells RFI it was “painful” to see Johnson commemorated as a hero.
“It’s painful – the jubilation I’m seeing, the celebration I’m seeing, of a murderer, a war criminal,” human rights activist Maxson Kpakio told RFI.
Kpakio, founder of the Liberia Justice Forum, has been active in calling for a special war and economic crimes court for Liberia “so that those that bear the huge responsibility for the war can be punished”.
In May, Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai signed an order to create a war crimes court. But it’s clear to Kpakio that there is ongoing impunity for Liberia’s former military leaders.
“Seeing [Johnson] not being punished but being celebrated and remembered as a hero is painful to all those that lost family members, killed through his initiative or by himself.”
Kpakio regretted they could no longer ask Johnson: “Why did you do this to Liberia?”.
In an interview with RFI in 2009 he denied he had taken part in massacres during the civil wars.
But two years later, while running for president, the father of 12 justified his role in the war.
“I have done nothing criminal… I fought to defend my country, my people who were led to the slaughterhouse, as if they were chickens and goats, by the Doe regime,” Johnson told AFP news agency.
Extractivism is one of Africa’s greatest misfortunes
“This is part of the damage of sanctions, that you are forced to receive (purchases) through multiple dealers instead of buying from a factory directly,” Zarif said. “If the Zionist regime can infiltrate one of the dealers, then it can do anything and install anything.”
He added: “For instance, our friends at the Atomic Energy Organization (of Iran) had purchased a platform for centrifuges in which (the Israelis) had installed explosive material.”
Zarif did not elaborate, and the interviewer did not press him on the issue.
However, it marked the first clear acknowledgment of the degree Mossad had infiltrated Iran’s program.
Iran’s nuclear program previously attacked
In July 2020, a mysterious explosion tore apart Natanz’s advanced centrifuge assembly, which Iran blamed on Israel. In April 2021, another blast tore apart one of its underground enrichment halls.
A few months later, Israel’s outgoing Mossad chief Yossi Cohen gave an interview to Israeli television in which he all but acknowledged his spies executed the two attacks. The show said a saboteur “made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges are placed” that included “an enormous amount of explosives.”
At this time I wonder how many products and other services that have passed through their hands are full of explosives and are circulating around the world. This subject should be taken seriously by the international community
Messages then started piling into Darim’s studio and the game developer claiming she was a feminist and demanding she be fired. Within hours, the company pulled the promotional video.
There is evidence the authorities are also capitulating to the anti-feminists’ demands. When Darim reported her abuse to the police, they refused to take her case.
Following outrage from feminist organisations, the police backtracked and are now investigating. In a statement, Seocho district police told the BBC their initial decision to close the case had been “insufficient” and they were “making all efforts to identify the suspects”.
According to Prof Kim, the feminism academic, men are using now feminist threats in the office as a way to harass and control their female colleagues - it is their way of saying ‘we are watching you; you should behave yourself’.
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Spoiler, Blinken won’t talk about the other genocide
Interesting, this could favor alternative means of transport.
Most drivers will be charged $9 once per day to enter the congestion zone at peak hours, and $2.25 at other times. Small trucks and non-commuter buses will pay $14.40 to enter Manhattan at peak times, while larger trucks and tourist buses will pay a $21.60 fee.
The charge has been met with plenty of opposition, including from taxi drivers’ associations. But its most high-profile opposition has come from Trump, a native New Yorker who has vowed to kill the scheme when he returns to office this month. Local Republicans have already asked him to intervene.
A bunch of disgusting bastards.
The company said the accusations “seriously damaged the dignity of Chinese people”
As if this company represents the Chinese people, a joke -_-…
CNN uses the single “y” spelling for “Zelensky,” while Fox and MSNBC go with a double “y” for “Zelenskyy.” The New York Times and The Washington Post are both single “y” organizations. The Associated Press is a double “y” outlet. Reuters goes in a completely different direction, spelling his last name “Zelenskiy.”
The issue is primarily one of transliteration – from the Cyrillic alphabet used in Ukraine to the Latin alphabet we use in America. There simply isn’t a clear and definitive way to render the Ukrainian President’s last name through our alphabet, which leads to the variety of spellings you see.
Zelensky himself has it spelled “Zelenskyy” on his passport. In May 2019 his administration said he preferred that spelling when his name was transliterated from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.
In June of that year, Peter Dickinson, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted that in the early days of Zelensky’s time in office, his own administration had his name spelled differently on different official releases.
There is also some debate as to whether using the double “y” is an act of defiance against the Russians by Zelensky.
To understand that, consider how the capital of Ukraine is spelled. “Kyiv” is the transliteration in English of the Ukrainian spelling of the nation’s capital. “Kiev” is based on the Russian spelling of the city’s name.
“Kyiv means that you transliterate into English from the original Ukrainian name of the Ukrainian capital. By doing so you recognize the fact that it is Ukrainian. By not doing so you question the fact that it is a Ukrainian city,” Dr. Yuri Shevchuk, a member of the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University, told The Forward earlier this month.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/17/politics/how-to-spell-volodymyr-zelenskyy/index.html
Also known as: Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Volodymyr Zelenskyy
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Volodymyr-Zelensky
Name romanization does this for lots of names like Mao Zedong and Mao Tse-tung, Sukarno and Soekarno.
Personally I never pay attention to the score.
To clarify the “pro-China” stigma (Note that BeiJing-friendly is gentler)
The Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, despite being the main opposition party in Taiwan and receiving around 38 percent of the popular vote in the 2020 presidential election, is widely regarded as “pro-China.” In an era in which authoritarian regimes are getting more aggressive, the China-friendly label has caused damage to the KMT’s reputation both at home and abroad. KMT leaders are well aware of this issue. Yet, no matter who is the party’s chairperson or presidential candidate, they have failed to get rid of this pro-China stigma. This dynamic has confused observers of East Asian politics, and it requires explanation for a better understanding of cross-strait relations. As with every other political party in the world, a wide spectrum of national identities exist within KMT, and all of them receive different levels of support from party members.
Generally, there are three categories.
The first group, led by chairperson Eric Chu, argues that engaging with the United States while maintaining a good relationship with China will make Taiwan safe. The difference between this KMT faction and President Tsai Ing-wen’s cross-strait policy is that Chu and believe sticking to the “1992 Consensus” is the “key” to communicating with Beijing – regardless of the fact that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared that the 1992 Consensus means “both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one China and will work together toward national reunification.” This stance on the cross-strait relationship is not acceptable to the bulk of voters from both the KMT and Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). KMT and other pan-Blue voters are of the opinion that Chu’s China policy is too similar to the DPP’s, while pro-Green supporters regard Chu and others as “giving up Taiwan’s sovereignty.” Thus, these leaders have received little support in almost every poll.
The second group in the KMT has a more pro-mainland stance, asserting that the KMT should keep its distance from the United States in order to not frustrate the Chinese Communist Party. They believe that diplomacy, rather than deterrence, is the way to keep the Taiwan Strait safe. To achieve that goal, proponents like former President Ma Ying-jeou insist the Taiwanese government should explicitly state that it agrees with the 1992 Consensus as the foundation for further communications and cooperation. This community within the KMT has more popularity than all the others, as it claims to offer another way to achieve peace, while proclaiming that it can perform better than the DPP in terms of economic welfare since they are capable of establishing better economic ties with China.
The last group within the KMT mainly consists of veterans and their descendants and is the least popular subgroup within the party. After having retreated from the mainland in 1949, this group of KMT members are die-hard supporters of reunification with China, as they still regard China as their home.
Given the “median voter theorem,” we might expect the KMT’s China policy will ultimately shift toward somewhere between the first and the second group. Yet the situation has not unfolded as the theory supposed, due to the structures and mechanisms within the KMT.
After retreating from China, the KMT veteran community established branches of the Huang Fu-hsing, a highly united group that loyally backed the political leaders who came over with them from China. Huang Fu-hsing members still firmly believe that ultimate reunification is the best option. Although their stance on cross-strait affairs is extreme compared to Taiwan’s general public, Huang Fu-hsing branches represent roughly 25 percent of the party member vote, and reportedly have a meticulous mechanism to allocate all their votes to serve various political aims. As a result, the organization became a comparatively strong power within the KMT. No one seeking to win the KMT’s chair position could ignore the voice of Huang Fu-hsing simply due to the fact that no single candidate could take the risk of losing 25 percent of the vote in the primary. If that occurred, a candidate would need more to secure more than two-thirds of the vote in the rest of the supporters to barely win the primary. Tus the Huang Fu-hsing must be courted – and the result is that the KMT’s most extreme voices on cross-strait relations have disproportionate clout within the party. Given this dynamic, the KMT’s leader will always to some extent support the most pro-China opinions.
Unfortunately, this rhetoric will not change because these KMT candidates all need support from the most extreme side within the party. As the opposition party, the KMT will still receive support from those who suffer from the economic hardships caused by COVID-19, but the party has provoked serious concerns both domestically and internationally about whether it will provide a China policy that can satisfy the Taiwanese people and the democratic world.
https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/why-taiwans-main-opposition-party-cant-shake-its-pro-china-stance/
Before being Chinese or Taiwanese, this island belongs to its indigenous groups who have inhabited it for a long time before all these waves of Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Han colonization. Unfortunately these groups and their languages are marginalized today
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=asj
An anecdote about the president Park Chung-hee
The 209th Detachment, 2325th Group was founded on 1 April 1968 by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), the main intelligence agency of South Korea, on the orders of President Park Chung Hee.
was the only tier one special forces unit of the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) that specialized in black operation, direct action, irregular warfare, long-range penetration, and special operations that are extremely high-risk and dangerous. It was formed to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1968, in retaliation for the North’s botched Blue House raid.
The unit consisted of 31 civilian recruits, mostly petty criminals and unemployed youths, and underwent three years of harsh training on the island of Silmido. The assassination mission was cancelled in 1971 and the unit mutinied, resulting in a firefight in Seoul in which most of the members of the unit were killed. The four survivors were sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed.
Members of Unit 684 endured three years of exceptionally harsh training, during which seven members died.
In addition
According to the Britain-based Observatory, “regime forces launched a counterattack” in Hama province on Wednesday with air support on the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels and allied factions. Government forces pushed HTS away from the provincial capital by about 10 kilometres (six miles), the Observatory said, reporting fierce battles as rebels failed in their bid to capture an area near the city.
Very interesting ! Thanks
What a shame, I am disgusted by so much cowardice and hypocrisy
For those who want to learn more about the Nutri-Score
https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IARC_Evidence_Summary_Brief_2.pdf
Publication bias and Nutri-Score: A complete literature review of the substantiation of the effectiveness of the front-of-pack logo Nutri-Score
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213434424000069
Report: Why the European Commission must choose the Nutri-Score nutrition label
The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.
https://apnews.com/article/lithuania-dhl-cargo-plane-crash-ff6382bb359c64ca2a345d50e523c396