Morne Ahlers

After its appearance in China, the kite migrated to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), India, Arabia, and North Africa, then farther south into the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, and the islands of Oceania as far east as Easter Island. Since kites made of leaves have been flown in Malaya and the South Seas from time immemorial, the kite could also have been invented independently in that region.

During the 18th century tailless bowed kites were still unknown in Europe. Flying flat arch- or pear-shaped kites with tails had become a popular pastime, mostly among children. The first recorded scientific application of a kite took place in 1749 when Alexander Wilson of Scotland used a kite train (two or more kites flown from a common line) as a meteorologic device for measuring temperature variations at different altitudes.

http://www.pictureprettykites.com

For example, if a person purchases a computer from a local brick-and-mortar retail store, the store will charge the state's sales tax. However, if that person purchases a computer over the internet or from an out-of-state mail-order seller, sales tax may not apply to the sale, but the person could owe a use tax on the purchase. Some states may also charge a use tax on the in-state transfer of used goods such as automobiles, boats and other consumer goods.

Review of company purchases to determine which assets may qualify for exemptions. Finding overlooked exemptions often results in significant savings.

http://www.salesandusetax.com/

In recent years, many economists have recognized that the lack of effective real estate laws can be a significant barrier to investment in many developing countries. In most societies, rich or poor, a significant fraction of the total wealth is in the form of land and buildings.

The price of housing is also an important factor. The price elasticity of the demand for housing services in North America is estimated as negative 0.7 by Polinsky and Ellwood (1979), and as negative 0.9 by Maisel, Burnham, and Austin (1971).

San Diego Short Sales

MONTREAL – The Montreal Canadiens are busy again, signing center Mike Cammaleri and defensemen Jaroslav Spacek and Hal Gill on the first day of free-agent shopping in the NHL.
One day after acquiring star center Scott Gomez from the New York Rangers in a six-player trade, the Canadiens signed Cammaleri to a five-year, $30-million contract, Spacek to a three-year deal worth $11.5-million, and Gill — fresh off a Stanley Cup title with the Pittsburgh Penguins — for two years and $4.5 million.
The moves put a new face on the Canadiens, who had 10 unrestricted free agents of their own on the market. The signings, including the five years remaining to pay Gomez at a $7.35-million cap hit per year, are collectively worth $82.75 million.

WASHINGTON – Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.
It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. In 31 states, more than one in four adults are obese, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
And obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year, and no state experienced a significant decline.
"The obesity epidemic clearly goes beyond being an individual problem," said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust, a nonprofit public health group.
It's a national crisis that "calls for a national strategy to combat obesity," added Robert Wood Johnson vice president Dr. James Marks. "The crest of the wave of obesity is still to crash."
While the nation has long been bracing for a surge in Medicare as the boomers start turning 65, the new report makes clear that fat, not just age, will fuel much of those bills. In every state, the rate of obesity is higher among 55- to 64-year-olds — the oldest boomers — than among today's 65-and-beyond.
The report provides one of the first in-depth looks at obese boomers, and its implications are sobering. This first wave of aging boomers will mean a jump of obese Medicare patients that ranges from 5.2 percent in New York to a high of 16.3 percent in Alabama, the report concluded. In Alabama, nearly 39 percent of the oldest boomers are obese.
Health economists once made the harsh financial calculation that the obese would save money by dying sooner. But more recent research instead suggests that better treatments are keeping them alive nearly as long — but they're much sicker for longer, requiring such costly interventions as knee replacements and diabetes care and dialysis. Medicare spends anywhere from $1,400 to $6,000 more annually on health care for an obese senior than for the non-obese, Levi said.
"There isn't a magic bullet. We don't have a pill for it," said Levi. "It's not going to be solved in the doctor's office but in the community, where we change norms."
His group is pushing for health reform legislation to include community-level programs that help people make healthier choices — like building sidewalks so people can walk their neighborhoods instead of drive, and providing healthier school lunches to help fight the childhood obesity that turns into adult obesity. The pending House and Senate bills address obesity in different ways; one provision would particularly target baby boomers.
Many states have begun programs to try to tackle obesity, and there are hints of improvements, Marks said.
"We're still getting fatter, but maybe a little more slowly than before," he said: Last year's report found obesity rates rising in 37 states compared with 23 this time around.
He's encouraged that 19 states have implemented nutritional standards for school meals that are stricter than the federal government's; in 2004, just four states did. Some are requiring nutritional information for restaurant food, he added.
States "recognize the solutions will lie outside traditional medical care," Marks said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long said that nearly a third of Americans are obese. The Trust report uses somewhat more conservative CDC surveys for a closer state-by-state look. Among the findings:
_Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row.
_Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent.
_In 1991, no state had more than a 20 percent obesity rate. Today, the only state that doesn't is Colorado, at 18.9 percent.

_The South is the fattest region. The Northeast and West are slightly slimmer than the rest of the country.

_Mississippi also had the highest rate of overweight and obese children, at 44.4 percent in total. It's followed by Arkansas, 37.5 percent; and Georgia, 37.3 percent.

_Following Alabama, Michigan ranks No. 2 with fat boomers; 36 percent of its 55- to 64-year-olds are obese. Colorado has the lowest rate, 21.8 percent.

___

On the Net:

Trust for America's Health: http://healthyamericans.org/

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: http://www.rwjf.org/

In the 15th century, both men and women wore purses. They were often finely embroidered or ornamented with gold. It was also customary for men to give their new brides purses embroidered with an illustration of a love story. Later in the century, women, now wearing finer dresses, preferred to wear their pouches under their skirts.

In the 1940s, with WWII, women's purses were made out of wood or plastic since metal was being saved for supplies. In the 1950s, popular handbag designers included Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes. Today these three brands are still popular, along with Gucci, Christian Dior, Fendi, Prada, and Kate Spade, among many others.

http://www.sovaleather.com/handbag.HTM

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
The publication of a book that novelist J.D. Salinger said ripped off his classic "The Catcher in the Rye" was halted by a U.S. federal judge on Wednesday.

The judge ruled in favor of Salinger after the reclusive writer last month sued to block publication of "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" by Swedish author Fredrik Colting, written under the pen name John David California.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts said the main character in Colting's novel -- Mr. C. -- was "an infringement" on Salinger's main character, Holden Caulfield.

Beyond Colting, the other defendants were Swedish publisher Nicotext and Windupbird Publishing.

Lawyers for Salinger, who has lived for decades out of the public eye, argued the new book was a sequel to Salinger's popular 1951 coming-of-age tale about the experiences of a cynical teenager who wanders New York for several days.

Salinger, who has health problems, was not present at a hearing last month. Since publishing two novellas in 1963, the reclusive author has published little, although a former lover said he wrote every day and had completed two novels.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Editing by Michelle Nichols and John O'Callaghan)

ANNANDALE, Va. – President Barack Obama wanted to put a human face on his plans to overhaul health care, and a Virginia woman did just that Wednesday.
Fighting back tears, Debby Smith, 53, told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job. The president hugged her — she's a volunteer for his political operation — and called her "exhibit A" in an unsustainable system that is too expensive and complex for millions of Americans.
"We are going to try to find ways to help you immediately," he told Smith as hundreds looked on at a community college forum — and countless others watched on television. But the nation's long-term needs require a greater emphasis on preventive care and "cost-effective care," he said.
Smith, of Appalachia, Va., is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama's political operation within the Democratic National Committee. She obtained her ticket through the White House.
The health care changes that Obama called for Wednesday would reshape the nation's medical landscape. He says he wants to cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, to persuade doctors to stress quality over quantity of care, to squeeze billions of dollars from spending.
But details on exactly how to do those things were generally lacking in his hour-long town hall forum before a supportive audience in a Washington suburb. The lingering questions underscore the tough negotiations awaiting Congress, the administration and dozens of special interest groups in the coming months. Lawmakers will return to debating the issue when they return from a one-week recess on Monday.
Some of Obama's questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul.
Obama made no new proposals at the sometimes emotional event. But he vigorously defended his plans while fielding seven questions from the live audience at the forum and on the Internet.
The president would bar insurance companies from turning down applicants because of their "pre-existing conditions." He would establish health care exchanges that would spread the costs of treating patients such as Smith over a large number of people.
Obama called for shifting huge sums of money from current health care spending to new goals. About two-thirds of the overall new costs "will come from reallocating money that is already being spent in the health care system but isn't being spent wisely," he said.
He restated his pledge to cut $177 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage insurance plans. And he noted that doctors, hospitals, corporations and others have pledged to decrease the annual rate of spending growth by 1.5 percent, or $2 trillion over 10 years.
Such savings are not guaranteed, however, and many Republican lawmakers say Obama's plans will prove too costly.
"The biggest thing we can do to hold down costs is to change the incentives of a health care system that automatically equates expensive care with better care," the president said. He said the formula system drives up costs "but doesn't make you better."
Obama did not make specific recommendations for changing the incentive formulas.
One questioner said limits on awards from medical malpractice lawsuits would bring down health care costs.
Obama replied, "I don't like the idea of an artificial cap" on such awards for a patient's injuries. He also said there was little evidence that various states' efforts to limit such awards have uniformly brought down costs.
Obama said, however, that he is working with the American Medical Association to explore ways to reduce liability for doctors and hospitals "when they've done nothing wrong." He offered no specifics for a problem that has vexed the medical and legal industries for decades.
The president repeatedly said the current health care system is not acceptable and must be overhauled this year. He urged the audience, which included people following on Facebook and YouTube, to reject critics who say his plans are too costly or a step toward socialized medicine.

Obama said a government-run "single-payer" health care system works well in some countries. But it is not appropriate in the United States, he said, because so many people get insurance through their employers working with private companies.

Still, he again called for a government-run "public option" to compete with private insurers, a plan that many Republicans oppose.

Legally, a loan is a contractual promise between two parties where one party, the creditor, agrees to provide a sum of money to a debtor, who promises to return the money to the creditor either in one lump sum or in parts over a fixed period in time. This agreement may include providing additional payments of rental charges on the funds advanced to the debtor for the time the funds are in the hands of the debtor (interest).

A loan is a type of debt. This article focuses exclusively on monetary loans, although, in practice, any material object might be lent. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower. The borrower initially does receive an amount of money from the lender, which he has to pay back, usually but not always in regular installments, to the lender. This service is generally provided at a cost, referred to as interest on the debt. A loan is of the annuity type if the amount paid periodically (for paying off and interest together) is fixed. A borrower may be subject to certain restrictions known as loan covenants under the terms of the loan. Acting as a provider of loans is one of the principal tasks for financial institutions. For other institutions, issuing of debt contracts such as bonds is a typical source of funding.

Cash Advance

Federal Debt Relief System Complaints

Borrowing and repayment arrangements linked to inflation-indexed units of account are possible and are used in some countries. For example, the US government issues two types of inflation-indexed bonds, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and I-bonds. These are one of the safest forms of investment available, since the only major source of risk — that of inflation — is eliminated. A number of other governments issue similar bonds, and some did so for many years before the US government.

In countries with consistently high inflation, ordinary borrowings at banks may also be inflation indexed.

Other useful things to include in your earthquake kit include enough money or traveler's checks to be able to meet any monetary needs that you might have in case the banks are closed due to the earthquake. You should also have a safe with copies of any important documents that you don't want to be lost or damaged in an earthquake, as well as clean clothes for both warm and cold weather so that you and your family won't be forced to wear the same clothes for several days in a row.

Make sure that you check the expiration dates on any food or medicine that you keep in your earthquake kit, and change out any stored water that you have every few months. This will prevent you or your family members from getting sick due to expired food or stale water.

Earthquake Preparedness Kit

Also included in the general category of cosmetics are skin care products. These include creams and lotions to moisturize the face and body, sunscreens to protect the skin from damaging UV radiation, and treatment products to repair or hide skin imperfections (acne, wrinkles, dark circles under eyes, etc.). Cosmetics can also be described by the form of the product, as well as the area for application. Cosmetics can be liquid or cream emulsions; powders, both pressed and loose; dispersions; and anhydrous creams or sticks.

An account executive is responsible for visiting all counter sales and doors. They explain new products and "gifts with purchase" (free items given out upon purchase of a certain cosmetics item that costs more than a set amount).

Mineral Make Up

The use of CCTV later on became very common in banks and stores to discourage theft, by recording evidence of criminal activity. Their use further popularised the concept. The first place to use CCTV in the United Kingdom was King's Lynn, Norfolk.

To many, the development of CCTV in public areas, linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity, presents a serious breach of civil liberties. Critics fear the possibility that one would not be able to meet anonymously in a public place or drive and walk anonymously around a city. Demonstrations or assemblies in public places could be affected as the state would be able to collate lists of those leading them, taking part, or even just talking with protesters in the street.

Here

WASHINGTON – A former CIA station chief charged with raping an unconscious Algerian woman last year surrendered to federal agents on Tuesday.
Andrew Warren, 41, was fired from the CIA earlier this year, according to agency spokesman George Little.
A grand jury issued a one-count indictment against Warren on June 18 that was unsealed on Tuesday. If convicted he faces up to life in prison, according the Justice Department.
Two Algerian women came forward separately in 2008 to say they had been sexually assaulted by Warren while at his home in Algiers, according to papers filed in federal court in January by a State Department investigator.
One of the Algerian women claimed that she was drinking at a party at Warren's home when something made her ill and she passed out, according to the State Department investigation. She awoke believing she had had intercourse, but with no memory of having done so.
The indictment says the alleged victim was not conscious at the time of the Feb. 18, 2008, assault.
Warren had been assigned to Algiers since 2007. He was removed in October.
The CIA station chief is the most senior intelligence officer in the country, overseeing operations and advising the ambassador.
The CIA would not confirm Warren's title. However, congressional and intelligence officials say he was the station chief. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information.

Paragraph 10 of FAS 113 makes clear that the 9a and 9b tests are based on comparing the present value of all costs to the PV of all income streams. FAS gives no guidance on the choice of a discount rate on which to base such a calculation, other than to say that all outcomes tested should use the same rate.

In determining premiums and premium rate structures, insurers consider quantifiable factors, including location, credit scores, gender, occupation, marital status, and education level. However, the use of such factors is often considered to be unfair or unlawfully discriminatory, and the reaction against this practice has in some instances led to political disputes about the ways in which insurers determine premiums and regulatory intervention to limit the factors used.

Car Insurance Quote

Fragrances

The intensity and longevity of a perfume is based on the concentration, intensity and longevity of the aromatic compounds (natural essential oils / perfume oils) used: As the percentage of aromatic compounds increases, so does the intensity and longevity of the scent created. Different perfumeries or perfume houses assign different amounts of oils to each of their perfumes. Therefore, although the oil concentration of a perfume in Eau de Parfum (EdP) dilution will necessarily be higher than the same perfume in Eau de Toilette (EdT) from within the same range, the actual amounts can vary between perfume houses. An EdT from one house may be stronger than an EdP from another.

* Bark: Commonly used barks includes cinnamon and cascarilla. The fragrant oil in sassafras root bark is also used either directly or purified for its main constituent, safrole, which is used in the synthesis of other fragrant compounds such as helional.
* Flowers and blossoms: Undoubtedly the largest source of aromatics. Includes the flowers of several species of rose and jasmine, as well as osmanthus, mimosa, tuberose, narcissus, as well as the blossoms of citrus and ylang-ylang trees. Although not traditionally thought of as a flower, the unopened flower buds of the clove are also commonly used. Orchid flowers are not commercially used to produce essential oils or absolutes, except in the case of vanilla, an orchid, which must be pollinated first and made into seed pods before use in perfumery.
* Fruits: Fresh fruits such as apples, strawberries, cherries unfortunately do not yield the expected odors when extracted; if such fragrance notes are found in a perfume, they are synthetic. Notable exceptions include litsea cubeba, vanilla, and juniper berry. The most commonly used fruits yield their aromatics from the rind; they include citrus such as oranges, lemons, and limes. Although grapefruit rind is still used for aromatics, more and more commercially used grapefruit aromatics are artificially synthesized since the natural aromatic contains sulfur and its degradation product is quite unpleasant in smell.
* Leaves and twigs: Commonly used for perfumery are lavender leaf, patchouli, sage, violets, rosemary, and citrus leaves. Sometimes leaves are valued for the "green" smell they bring to perfumes, examples of this include hay and tomato leaf.
* Resins: Valued since antiquity, resins have been widely used in incense and perfumery. Highly fragrant and antiseptic resins and resin-containing perfumes have been used by many cultures as medicines for a large variety of ailments. Commonly used resins in perfumery include labdanum, frankincense/olibanum, myrrh, Peru balsam, gum benzoin. Pine and fir resins are a particularly valued source of terpenes used in the organic synthesis of many other synthetic or naturally occurring aromatic compounds. Some of what is called amber and copal in perfumery today is the resinous secretion of fossil conifers.
* Roots, rhizomes and bulbs: Commonly used terrestrial portions in perfumery include iris rhizomes, vetiver roots, various rhizomes of the ginger family.
* Seeds: Commonly used seeds include tonka bean, coriander, caraway, cocoa, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, and anise.
* Woods: Highly important in providing the base notes to a perfume, wood oils and distillates are indispensable in perfumery. Commonly used woods include sandalwood, rosewood, agarwood, birch, cedar, juniper, and pine. These are used in the form of macerations or dry-distilled (rectified) forms.

The word "money" is believed to originate from a temple of Hera, located on Capitoline, one of Rome's seven hills. In the ancient world Hera was often associated with money. The temple of Juno Moneta at Rome was the place where the mint of Ancient Rome was located. The name "Juno" may derive from the Etruscan goddess Uni (which means "the one", "unique", "unit", "union", "united") and "Moneta" either from the Latin word "monere" (remind, warn, or instruct) or the Greek word "moneres" (alone, unique).

The term "price system" is sometimes used to refer to methods using commodity valuation or money accounting systems.

Fast Cash

WARSAW, Poland – For the second time in two years, Polish officials began building a new museum of Jewish history in Warsaw on Tuesday that they hope will become a major cultural landmark.
An earlier groundbreaking ceremony for the planned Museum of the History of Polish Jews took place in 2007 in the presence of the Polish president, but bureaucratic obstacles then held up construction.
On Tuesday, museum officials and politicians gathered again at the museum site in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto. With a hammer, Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and others symbolically removed old bricks from the remains of a previous building on the site.
Poland's Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski said the museum would be "a very important address on the cultural map of Europe and the world."
Museum officials say construction will cost around 150 million zlotys ($47 million) and should be completed in 2012.
The museum will feature exhibits on the Holocaust, but its primary goal will be to remember the Jewish life that flourished in Poland before the Holocaust.
Jews lived in Poland for a millennium, receiving refuge when they were expelled from other European lands. But they also faced varying degrees of discrimination. When Hitler's forces overran Poland during World War II, they imprisoned Jews in ghettos and death camps, nearly exterminating what had been a community of about 3.5 million.
"The museum will show the fullness of (Jewish) life, although, as we all know, it will be situated in a place marked by death," Gronkiewicz-Waltz said.
During the ceremony, Jewish cantors from the U.S. sang in remembrance of those killed in the Holocaust.

The two main frameworks for developing graphical applications are those of GNOME and KDE. These projects are based on the GTK+ and Qt widget toolkits, respectively, which can also be used independently of the larger framework. Both support a wide variety of languages. There are a number of Integrated development environments available including Anjuta, Code::Blocks, Eclipse, KDevelop, Lazarus, MonoDevelop, NetBeans, and Omnis Studio while the long-established editors Vim and Emacs remain popular.

Although there is a lack of Linux ports for some Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows programs in domains such as desktop publishing and professional audio, applications roughly equivalent to those available for Mac and Windows are available for Linux.

Linux Support

The decision to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq's cities on Tuesday was made by Iraqis, not Americans. That's why the Iraqi government is holding a massive celebration to mark the redeployment as National Sovereignty Day. At the insistence of the Iraqis, the Status of Forces Agreement concluded late last year between the Iraqi government and the Bush Administration required that U.S. troops be out of Iraq's urban areas by June 30, 2009, and withdrawn from the country altogether by the end of 2011. Now, Iraqi citizens and the American forces hovering in the Iraq's countryside are holding their breath for the first stage of testing Iraq's ability to protect itself. It didn't get off to an auspicious start with the news that four U.S. soldiers were killed in combat on the eve of the withdrawal.
Residents of Baghdad will no longer see U.S. troops rumbling along their capital's broad boulevards in their heavy armored vehicles, a persistent and painful reminder of Iraq's dependency on foreigners for its security. "The number of Americans that they're seeing in the cities will be drastically reduced," top Pentagon official Joseph McMillan said Monday. "The procedure for [U.S. troops] re-entering the cities is essentially a call by the Iraqi government." Most U.S. forces have, in fact, been out of Iraq's urban areas for weeks, corralled into large rural bases. But they had continued until recently to patrol the two largest cities plagued by continuing violence, Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul. And in a signal of the challenge that will face Iraqi forces when their American partners are redeployed, more than 250 people have been killed in terror attacks over the past 10 days. (See a TIME photographer's pictures from the war.)
"There will be challenges," said General David Petraeus, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and champion of 2007's troop "surge" that helped tamp down violence in Iraq. "There are many difficult political issues, social issues, governmental development issues," Petraeus said Monday in Cairo. "We feel confident in the Iraqi security forces continuing the process of taking over the security tasks in their own country." He noted that the current level of 10 to 15 attacks per day is less than 10% of the 160 daily that were occurring in June 2007. (See pictures of life returning to the streets of Iraq.)
The Iraqis didn't even wait for the withdrawal to take effect before beginning their celebrations on Monday, with patriotic songs blaring from police and military outposts as Iraqi operated military vehicles cruised city streets. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has hailed the U.S. pullout from urban areas as a "great victory" that frees the nation from foreign occupiers, adopting the tones of a nationalist strongman in order to better position himself for elections later this year. Maliki went on to say in a nationally televised address Tuesday that "those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are committing a big mistake." But Army General Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq, prefers to see Iraq's reaction to the move as jubilation over the country's improving security. "They're talking about this as a celebration of Iraqis, and Iraqi security forces, being able to take over responsibility inside of their cities," he told Fox News on Sunday.
Odierno insisted that the time has come for Iraq to assume more responsibility. "From a military and security standpoint, it's time for us to move out of the cities," he told CNN on Sunday. But he acknowledged that some unspecified number of U.S. troops - probably numbering well into the thousands - will remain within city limits. "We'll still be there providing training, advising, enablers for the Iraqi security forces," he added. "We'll still be conducting significant operations outside of the cities and the belts around the major cities."
Despite the unnerving uptick in bomb attacks in recent weeks, it's too early to know if those are leading indicators of a resumption of the civil war, or a nihilistic lashing out by the losing side. Some in the Pentagon and Iraq believe the aim of the bombing campaign is to show ordinary Iraqis that al-Maliki and the Iraqi security forces are unable to protect them - few of the recent attacks have targeted U.S. troops. There is also deep concern that the Iraqi security forces, which remain dominated by Shi'ites, could inflame sectarian tensions. The Maliki government has angered many Sunni former insurgents who had joined the anti-al Qaeda "Awakening" movement by withholding payments and arresting many of their commanders. Significant potential remains for renewed outbreaks of sectarian fighting. Still, the pullout from urban areas is a critical step toward the eventual withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops by August 31, 2010, and all 131,000 U.S. troops from the country by the end of 2011. Iraq began as George Bush's war, but today, for better or worse, ownership has passed not to Barack Obama, but to Nouri al-Maliki.
See TIME's Pictures of the Week.
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:Will Obama Have to Adjust His Timetable on Iraq? Most Iraqis Welcome Obama's Pullout Plan Has the US Ceded Southern Iraq? How Fast Should Iraq Re-Arm? Deal on US Withdrawal from Iraq Poses a Challenge for the Pentagon

While there is evidence of such incidents, they are quite rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant; at the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free x-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy, while there have been occasional reports of children putting needles in their own (and other children's) candy in a mere bid for attention.

Halloween was seen as being the time when the division between the world of the living and the otherworld was blurred. Many of the traditional customs derive from ancient divination practices and ways of trying to predict the future. By the 18th century, most of the customs were methods for young people to search for their future husbands or wives. As Samhainn was originally a harvest festival, many of these strange practices are connected with food or the harvest and fertility. One old custom associated with the Western Isles was to put two large nuts in the hearth of a peat fire. These were supposed to represent yourself and your intended spouse.

Adult Halloween Costumes

WIMBLEDON, England – The women's quarterfinals at Wimbledon are set for today. Due up first on Centre Court are top-ranked Dinara Safina against 19-year-old German Sabine Lisicki, followed by No. 2 Serena Williams vs. 19-year-old Victoria Azarenka of Belarus.
On Court 1, five-time champion Venus Williams is matched against 20-year-old Agnieska Radwanska of Poland, with No. 4 Elena Dementieva against Francesca Schiavone.
The first match played entirely under Wimbledon's new retractable roof produced a five-set marathon yesterday that finished later than any previous Centre Court encounter in history.
They might as well have called it Wimbledon's first "night session."
What's more, it ended with a British winner celebrating in front of a raucous home crowd.
Andy Murray and Stanislas Wawrinka battled for nearly four hours Monday under the translucent roof and stadium floodlights before the third-seeded Scot closed out a 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 victory with a forehand winner at 10:39 p.m.
Murray sank to his knees and bowed his head on the grass. He then stood up and smacked a ball that hit the roof above.
"It was pretty special," said Murray, who is bidding to become the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
Previously, no Centre Court match had lasted later than 9:35 p.m.
And at a tournament that began in 1877, not a single point had been played indoors until earlier Monday, when a light sprinkle interrupted Dinara Safina's 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over champion Amelie Mauresmo — the first rain break of the tournament after a dry first week.
After the fifth game of the second set, the roof was closed, and Safina and Mauresmo finished up — even though by the time they resumed, the rain had stopped.
Organizers decided to keep the roof closed for the Murray-Wawrinka match in case of more rain. In the end, the rain stayed away but the roof allowed the match to reach its completion while it was dark outside.
Murray was surprised by the decision and found the playing conditions hard to get used to.
"We were warming up outside," he said. "It was dry. Was expecting to play without the roof, and then obviously it came. I had never played a grass court match indoors before and it made a difference."
"It's very, very heavy and very humid," he said. "Sweating so much. From the start I noticed it very early. ... When I finished, it was like I'd been in a bath."
The closed conditions helped magnify the partisan support from Murray's fans in the arena.
"At the end, that was probably the noisiest crowd I played in front of," he said.
Murray, who will face Juan Carlos Ferrero in the quarters, could now enjoy an advantage over other players who haven't experienced the indoor conditions yet.

"Now I know how I'll have to change my game if I do play under the roof, and I'll know the way that the court plays," he said. "In my opinion, there's quite a big difference."

The pressure on Murray will continue to build as Britain's long-suffering fans wait for him to end the country's 73-year-old men's title drought.

"I believe I can win Wimbledon," he said. "That's not changed since the first match. But I'm going to have to play great tennis to do it. I had to play some great tennis tonight to come back, because Stan was playing some unbelievable tennis at the start."

The momentum swung back and forth, with Wawrinka seeming to grab the edge when he served an ace to close out the fourth set and send the match to a fifth-set decider.

Murray then ran out to a 3-0 lead, but Wawrinka responded by winning three straight games.

The match turned for good when Murray broke for 5-3 with a clean forehand winner down the line. He served out the match in the next game.

"I tried everything but it was not enough," Wawrinka said. "It was very special, a nice atmosphere. It was very nice to play with the roof closed."

The women's quarterfinals were set for Tuesday. Due up first on Centre Court was top-ranked Dinara Safina against 19-year-old German Sabine Lisicki, followed by No. 2 Serena Williams vs. 19-year-old Victoria Azarenka of Belarus.

On Court 1, five-time champion Venus Williams was matched against 20-year-old Agnieska Radwanska of Poland, with No. 4 Elena Dementieva against Francesca Schiavone.

The men's quarterfinals are set for Wednesday. The other matchups are five-champion Roger Federer against 6-foot-10 Croat Ivo Karlovic; 2002 champion Lleyton Hewitt vs. two-time finalist Andy Roddick; and No. 3 Novak Djokovic vs. Tommy Haas.

Djokovic and Murray are relative youngsters at 22 compared to the other quarterfinalists: Roddick (26), Federer (27), Hewitt (28), Ferrero (29), Karlovic (30) and Haas (31).

Roddick and Hewitt have met 11 times, including at the French Open, U.S. Open and Australian Open, but never at Wimbledon. Hewitt holds the overall edge of 6-5, but Roddick has won the past four, including a 7-6, 7-6 win in the third round at the Queen's Club grass-court Wimbledon warmup.

"I have loads of respect for Lleyton, what he's been able to accomplish," Roddick said. "Everyone knows he's certainly capable of playing very, very, very well on this surface. It will be a tough one."

Karlovic has won 128 straight service games dating to the Queen's tournament and has served 137 aces at Wimbledon.

"I mean maybe it's not the most fun match to go through," Federer said. "But I like to beat this guy because he makes it hard on us. He's become an excellent player. Not only just his serve, he's got to have something more or otherwise he wouldn't be ranked where he is and he wouldn't be beating all those good players. He's not to be underestimated."

Ferrero, a former No. 1-ranked player in 2003, is the first wild card to reach the Wimbledon quarters since Goran Ivanisevic won the title in 2001.

"I would like to repeat what he did," Ferrero said.

BAGHDAD (AFP) –
Energy giant BP and China's CNPC International Ltd were unveiled Tuesday as the first foreign firms in decades to win contracts to invest and develop in Iraq's war-battered energy sector.

The companies succeeded in their bid for the giant Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq, which has known reserves of 17.7 billion barrels, the oil ministry announced.

The contract was the first to be awarded in open tendering for six major oil fields and two gas fields, nearly four decades after Saddam Hussein's party nationalised the Iraqi energy sector.

The deals will provide the government with much-needed revenue as it struggles to rebuild the country after three wars and more than a decade of debilitating economic sanctions.

"These contracts are needed for the reconstruction of Iraq," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said at the opening of the bidding session in Baghdad. "They are for the benefit of Iraqis and the companies."

The bidding process has attracted bids from 31 firms including US and European giants ExxonMobil and Shell but also a swathe of Asian companies from China, India, South Korea and Indonesia.

The oil deposits, holding known reserves of 43 billion barrels of crude, are in southern and northern Iraq while the gas concessions are west and northeast of Baghdad.

"Our principal objective is to increase our oil production from 2.4 million barrels per day to more than four million in the next five years," Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said in an interview with Iraqi public television.

Increasing production to that level will, according to him, pump an extra 1.7 trillion dollars into government coffers over the next 20 years.

Shahristani has said that only 30 billion dollars of that sum will go to the companies which have extracted the oil.

The rest "is a huge amount that would finance infrastructure projects across Iraq -- schools, roads, airports, housing, hospitals," he said, insisting that the country would retain control over its oil reserves.

For energy firms, the appeal is the opportunity to plant a foot in the country, their first chance to do so since the Baath party nationalised the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1972, seven years before Saddam took power.

"Thanks to sanctions and war, no company has wanted or been able to invest," Ruba Husari, an energy expert and the founder of the website iraqoilforum.com, explained.

"Today, the country is stable, in both its security and its institutions."

Not all energy companies are happy, though, with the terms of the contracts being offered by Baghdad.

The foreign firms awarded deals will have to partner with Iraqi government-owned firms, principally the South Oil Company (SOC), and share management of the fields despite fully financing their development.

They will be paid a fixed fee per barrel, not a share of the profits, and the fee will only be paid once a production threshold set by the government is reached.

"This raises the question of the profitability of the contract," said a source involved in the bidding, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The companies are the ones investing, but have a big problem with the fact that management will be shared," the source said.

BAGHDAD (AFP) –
Chinese oil firms CNOOC and Sinopec and the US energy giant ConocoPhillips on Tuesday rejected the terms laid down by the Iraqi government to work in two separate oil fields, an AFP correspondent said.

CNOOC and Sinopec were asked to pay 25.4 dollars per barrel extracted from the Maysan oil field but the companies bid only 2.3 dpb.

ConocoPhillips, meanwhile, offered four dollars per barrel to work in the Bai Hassan oil field but the government wanted 26.7 dpb.

All three companies subsequently withdrew their offers.

National central banks play an important role in the foreign exchange markets. They try to control the money supply, inflation, and/or interest rates and often have official or unofficial target rates for their currencies. They can use their often substantial foreign exchange reserves to stabilize the market.

In this view, countries may develop unsustainable financial bubbles or otherwise mishandle their national economies, and forex speculators allegedly made the inevitable collapse happen sooner. A relatively quick collapse might even be preferable to continued economic mishandling. Mahathir Mohamad and other critics of speculation are viewed as trying to deflect the blame from themselves for having caused the unsustainable economic conditions. Given that Malaysia recovered quickly after imposing currency controls directly against IMF advice, this view is open to doubt.

Forex Trading System

Drug detoxification varies depending on the location of treatment, but most detox centers provide treatment to avoid the symptoms of physical withdrawal to alcohol & other drugs. Most also incorporate counseling and therapy during detox to help with the consequences of withdrawal.

Under this theory if toxins are too rapidly released without being safely eliminated (such as burning fat that stores toxins) they can damage the body and cause malaise. Therapies include contrast showers, detoxification foot pads, the Master Cleanse diet, oil pulling, Gerson therapy, snake-stones, body cleansing, Scientology's Purification Rundown, water fasting, and metabolic therapy.

Detoxification

ATLANTA – Emergency workers have resumed searching the wreckage of a collapsed Atlanta parking garage to see if anyone was trapped inside.
There are no reports of injuries from Monday's collapse, but rescuers early Tuesday morning began digging back into the tangle of concrete and cars to be sure. They had to stop the search Monday night to shore up the building after it shifted.
Atlanta Fire Battalion Chief Steven Woodworth says rescuers are working their way down through the four pancaked floors with dogs, cameras and listening devices.
A hot line set up to take reports of missing people had not received any calls overnight.
The middle sections of about four floors in the six-story building collapsed around lunchtime in Atlanta's busy Midtown area. At least 35 cars were crushed.

Walid Abu Obeida, a 13-year-old Palestinian farm boy from the West Bank village of Ya'abad, had never spoken to an Israeli until he rounded a corner at dusk carrying his shopping bags and found two Israeli soldiers waiting with their rifles aimed at him. "They accused me of throwing stones at them," recounts Walid, a skinny kid with dark eyes. "Then one of them smacked me in the face, and my nose started bleeding."
According to Walid, the two soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed him, dragged him to a jeep and drove away. All that his family would know about their missing son was that his shopping bags with meat and rice for that evening's dinner were found in the dusty road near an olive grove. Over the course of several days in April last year, the boy says he was moved from an army camp to a prison, where he was crammed into a cell with five other children, cursed at and humiliated by the guards and beaten by his interrogator until he confessed to stone-throwing. (See pictures of Israeli soldiers sweeping into Gaza.)
Walid says he saw his parents for only five seconds when he was brought before an Israeli military court and accused by the uniformed prosecutor not only of throwing stones but of "striking an Israeli officer." The military judge ignored the latter charge and chose to prosecute Walid only for allegedly heaving a stone at soldiers.
The boy got off lightly: he spent 28 days in prison and was fined 500 shekels (approximately $120). Under Israeli military law, which prevails in the Palestinian territories, the crime of throwing a stone at an Israeli solider or even at the monolithic 20-ft.-high "security barrier" enclosing much of the West Bank can carry a maximum 20-year-prison sentence. Since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoner Affairs, more than 6,500 children have been arrested, mostly for hurling rocks.
Walid's story is hardly unusual, judging from a report on the Israeli military-justice system in the West Bank compiled by the Palestine office of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, which works closely with the U.N. and European states. Human-rights groups in Israel and elsewhere have also condemned the punishment meted out to Palestinian children by Israeli military justice. Most onerous, says Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem, is that inside the territories, the Israeli military deems any Palestinian who is 16 years and older as an adult, while inside Israel, the U.S. and most other countries, adulthood is reached at age 18.
The report states that "the ill-treatment and torture" of Palestinian child prisoners "appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command." The group's director, Rifaat Kassis, says the number of child arrests rose sharply in the past six months, possibly because of a crackdown on Palestinian protests in the West Bank in the aftermath of Israel's military offensive in Gaza.
The Geneva organization's report alleges that under Israeli military justice, it is the norm for children to be interrogated by the Israeli police and army without either a lawyer or a family member present and that most of their convictions are due to confessions extracted during interrogation sessions or from "secret evidence," usually tip-offs from unnamed Palestinian informers. If so, the practice may violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which Israel ratified in 1991. In response to TIME's queries, a lawyer for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that under "security legislation" and Israel's interpretation of international law, no lawyer or relative need be present during a child's interrogation.
The children's rights defenders collected testimony from 33 minors, including a child identified merely as "Ezzat H.," who described a "soldier wearing black sunglasses [who] came into the room where I was held and pointed his rifle at me. The rifle barrel was a few centimeters from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said: 'Shivering? Tell me where the [father's hidden] pistol is before I shoot you.' " According to the report, Ezzat was 10 years old at the time. TIME asked the IDF to comment on the specific incidents mentioned in the report, but a spokesman said that would be impossible without knowing the names of the soldiers allegedly involved.
Often, children suffer lasting traumas from jail. Says Saleh Nazzal of the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs: "When soldiers burst into a house and drag away a child, he loses his feeling of being protected by his family. He comes back from prison alienated from his family, his friends. They don't like going back to school or even leaving the house. They start wetting their beds." Says Mona Zaghrout, a YMCA counselor who helps kids returning from prison: "They come out of prison thinking and acting like they are men. Their childhood is gone." And they often turn to another father figure - the armed militant groups fighting the Israeli occupation.
According to the Israeli human-rights group Breaking the Silence, a few Israeli soldiers are alarmed by their own troops' behavior. The group cites the testimony of two officers who complained before a military court that during an operation last March in Hares village, soldiers herded 150 male villagers, some as young as 14, into a schoolyard in the middle of the night, where they were kept bound, blindfolded and beaten over the course of more than 12 hours.
A U.N. Committee Against Torture, which met on May 15 in Geneva, expressed its "concern" over Israel's alleged abuses of Palestinian child prisoners. The IDF denies any ill treatment of children detainees and insists that all claims are thoroughly investigated and that the number of complaints has dropped. But Khalid Quzman, a defense lawyer at the Israeli military courts, says, "We don't complain anymore because it's a waste of time." More than 600 complaints of torture and ill treatment were filed between 2001 and 2008, he says, "and not a single criminal investigation was ever carried out."
Inculcating respect for an occupying force is, of course, a difficult task under any circumstances. In the case of the Palestinians, history and society have made hatred for Israel almost an instinct. Still, there was shock in June among Palestinians when members of a West Bank family were accused of hanging a boy for suspected collaboration with Israeli forces.
Israel's treatment of Palestinian children and teens as combatants perpetuates the cycle of hatred. After a spell in an Israeli jail, it's hard for a young Palestinian to stay uninvolved. Walid says he never cared much for anything aside from his school friends and family before his incarceration. Now he bears a radioactive hatred towards Israelis. "The soldiers' curses and insults, I'll carry them to my grave," he says. - With reporting by Jamil Hamad / Hebron and Yonit Farago / Jerusalem
See pictures of life under Hamas in Gaza.
See pictures of 60 years of Israel.
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:Does Israel Mistreat Palestinian Child Prisoners? Israel in a Showdown With West Bank Settlers ISRAEL At 40, the Dream Confronts Palestinian Fury and a Crisis of Identity Palestinian Moderates a Casualty of the Gaza War? A Gaza Quagmire for Israel?

After lawmakers had devoured the last of the Kalua Pig at last Thursday night’s White House Luau, Nancy Pelosi summoned her team back to the Capitol — to ensure the climate change bill wasn’t the next thing roasted on the spit.
Pelosi and her top lieutenants would spend the next four hours whipping, cajoling, begging and browbeating undecided Democrats — and triple-checking their whip lists to decide who was a solid “yes” and who was prevaricating on the cap-and-trade legislation.
Yet no matter how many calls they made — or how many times they checked and rechecked their list — Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) kept coming up between 12 and 20 votes short of the 216 votes needed to win.
“We didn’t have the votes — and we had to have this vote,” said a leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This was the big one for us. [Pelosi] staked her prestige on this one. ... This was her flagship issue, and this was a flagship vote for us.”
The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 passed by only 219-212, after an epic day replete with Republican ambushes, petty betrayals, hastily rearranged flights and disappearing acts.
Yet for all the apparent chaos, the action was commanded by a House speaker maneuvering with the urgency of someone who knew her reputation was on the line.
Despite Republican promises to punish battleground state Democrats for supporting a “cap and tax” plan, Pelosi and her fractious caucus passed their most serious test to date.
And whatever the fallout, aides say that both Pelosi and President Barack Obama now know that their majority can hold together — barely — when placed under withering pressure — which may bode well for the equally arduous trials on health care reform.
At the end of it all, Pelosi, who floated in and out of the House cloakroom all day, impossible to miss in an arctic-white linen pantsuit, gambled big and pulled off one of the most important legislative victories of her career, a win she views as a personal vindication, according to those close to the San Francisco Democrat.
“There’s no question about it,” Clyburn said after the vote. “She went back to her whipping days of old. She is an incredibly good whip. I’m trying to learn from her every day.”
Despite the most coordinated push yet between Democrats on the Hill and the Obama White House, the outcome was not certain until the very end, according to two dozen aides and members of Congress interviewed by POLITICO.
“It was really never a solid [216],” one person said afterward.
Party leaders agreed to bring the bill to the floor during a meeting Monday night, even though some of the members present had reservations about forcing vulnerable Democrats to cast votes on a package that may not go anywhere in the Senate.
In the days leading up the vote, the number of Democratic “yes” votes was locked at 200, according to people familiar with the tally. Every time they’d pick up one vote, another would slip. Democratic leaders needed a cushion to help protect the most vulnerable among them, and they didn’t have it.
As the frustration grew, an aide joked in one meeting that White House staff should give fence-sitters the same colored leis so that the president and his Cabinet secretaries would know who to buttonhole. The desperation was such that others in the room paused for a split second to consider the joke before abandoning it as a logistical impossibility.
During the luau, Clyburn set up shop in the Oval Office with Obama to meet with wavering Democrats, like freshmen Reps. Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland and Eric Massa of New York. Members of Clyburn’s whip team patrolled the White House lawn, cornering colleagues and making the case for the bill.
As the week wore on, Pelosi was directing former Vice President Al Gore whom to call, but everyone decided late Wednesday night that the list of undecided members was small enough that he should stay in Nashville, Tenn., to make calls.
On the day of the vote, the bleary-eyed tag team of Pelosi and Clyburn camped out in the cloakroom, just off the House floor, for nearly three hours.

One of Pelosi’s first targets was Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), a key fence-sitter who wanted more money generated from the carbon trading to be directed to the research and development of green technology.

Pelosi talked to him again and again, but he wouldn’t budge. Her message to him was the same as it was to others: It wasn’t worth voting against the bill because of what wasn’t in it.

According to witnesses, Pelosi perched herself on the arm of Holt’s chair and went nose to nose with him for a half-hour warning him that his no vote could scuttle the entire climate change effort — and that liberals would have another chance to make their case once the bill came back from the Senate.

Around 2 o’clock, he became a “yes.” 

Next up was Austin, Texas, liberal Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who had seemed to be leaning toward the bill during a Thursday night visit with Obama in the Oval Office — but then infuriated the White House midday Friday by declaring the measure too weak on polluters to win his vote.

An exasperated White House staffer told POLITICO it was “stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president but of his constituents and the country.”

Then Pelosi began working Doggett as the two stood in the back of the chamber near the railing, making the same perfect-is-enemy-of-the-good argument she had used against Holt. Doggett ended up voting “yes.”During the vote, Washington Rep. Jay Inslee, one of the taller members of the House, guarded the doors on the floor leading out to the Speaker’s Lobby, warning members not to leave the floor in case anyone needed to switch his or her vote. But that didn’t stop some Democrats, like Colorado Rep. John Salazar, from voting no early and sneaking out to avoid getting pressured by party leaders.

Leadership aides say Texas Rep. Ciro Rodriguez promised Pelosi he’d vote yes, but voted no and sprinted from the chamber. California Rep. Xavier Becerra tried unsuccessfully to flag him on his cell phone — and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) bounded into the ornate Speaker’s Lobby off the floor shouting, “Rodriguez! Rodriguez!” as puzzled reporters looked on.

Pelosi forced members to postpone their trips abroad to stay in town for the vote, aides familiar with the situation said. At one point, she even promised to escort one member out to the airport in her motorcade to catch an early flight — as House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stalled the proceedings with an hourlong reading from the 300-page manager’s amendment.

California Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a master of floor procedure who left the House on Friday to take a top job at the State Department, may have made the biggest personal sacrifice by postponing a dinner the night before her wedding to preside over the debate — her last as a member of Congress.

When another Californian, Rep. Joe Baca, declared himself undeclared, Pelosi and her whip team surrounded him — and burst out into applause when he cast one of the decisive “yes” votes, according to an eyewitness.

Members who wanted to be spared of the Pelosi treatment — slinked in and out of the chamber hoping the speaker wouldn’t notice them.

Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) — another progressive who didn’t think the bill was strong enough — was an especially elusive target, according to leadership aides. Pelosi’s attempts to contact Filner early Friday weren’t successful, staffers say, but she began lobbying him furiously when he showed up for a series of procedural votes leading up to the fateful climate change measure.

After Baca and others had cast their “yeas,” the speaker walked up to Filner and calmly said, “It’s now your time to be on the record, Mr. Filner,” according to a witness.

He voted yes.

STUTTGART, Germany – Navy Adm. James Stavridis is taking over as head of the U.S. European Command in a changeover that also makes him NATO's top military commander.
Stavridis, who until now headed the U.S. Southern Command, is taking over from Army Gen. John Craddock at a ceremony in southern Germany Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen are scheduled to attend.