In the iTunes store, recently, I haven't been able to locate the Movie of the Week ($0.99). The U.S. iTunes store still lists them. Are they gone from Canadian iTunes, or have I just had too much eggnog?
via ehMac.ca http://ift.tt/1x6P0mn
Being fat is a disability, EU judges have ruled, meaning that companies in Europe must offer obese staff bigger chairs, special parking spaces and a lighter work load. Thursdays judgment by the European Court of Justice means that fatness can constitute a disability under EU equality at work legislation a ruling that is legally binding for all British employers. |
LAST week Indian student Areeb Majeed was just one of several recruits who found out the hard way what life fighting for IS is really like. Majeed travelled to Iraq to join the Islamic State group in May only to return home disillusioned after jihadists made him clean toilets and do other menial jobs. |
Not only did fighters complain about the winter conditions but one remarked how he was missing the simpler things in life, like his iPod working. Im sick and tired. My iPod doesnt work anymore, one recruit wrote. I have to return. |
The question is meant to be open-ended, serious and funny both, but seeing as we already have political forums I would rather that this forum not be about that. But clearly if some people feel the need they can do as they wish, just to prove they can. The Moulin Rouge Showgirl: Can Can Burlesque!
Yee Hah!!! |
The United States and Cuba exchanged prisoners Wednesday as part of a deal to expand trade, increase travel, and normalize relations between the U.S. and its six-decade communist foe, government officials said Wednesday. "We will end an outdated approach that has failed to advance our interests," Obama said in making a formal announcement at the White House. "These 50 years have shown isolation has not worked." The biggest shift in the American-Cuban relationship since formal ties were severed in 1961 the year the president was born includes new rules for banking and financial dealings as well as a general easing of the U.S. embargo against Cuba and the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana, said Obama and other officials. The biggest shift in the American-Cuban relationship since formal ties were severed in 1961 the year the president was born includes new rules for banking and financial dealings as well as a general easing of the U.S. embargo against Cuba and the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana, said Obama and other officials. Obama said the decades-long embargo has had little effect on Cuba's regime, and that encouraging more engagement will help promote reform in the long run. He linked the move to the decision in the 1990s to normalize relations with Vietnam, with which the U.S. had fought a war. As Obama spoke, Cuban President Raul Castro -- brother of communist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro -- made a similar announcement in Havana. Echoing Obama, Castro said he welcomed new ties to the United States, though differences between the two countries remain. Obama and Raul Castro spoke by phone Tuesday about the agreement, officials said, the first direct contact between American and Cuban leaders since Fidel Castro led the communist revolution in 1959. (Fidel Castro, old and ailing, did not participate in the talks.) Among others who helped broker the deal, officials said: Pope Francis, who sent a letter on the subject to Obama and Raul Castro. Officials said that Obama and the pope discussed Cuba during the president's visit to the Vatican in March. The agreement includes Cuba's release of Alan Gross, an American citizen arrested in 2009 on espionage charges for trying to provide Internet service to Cuban residents. The U.S., meanwhile, agreed to release three Cubans accused of spying and imprisoned in the United States, officials said. U.S. officials said they also obtained the release of an un-named "intelligence asset" who had been imprisoned in Cuba for two decades. "This morning, Alan Gross has departed Cuba on a US government plane bound for the United States," an administration official said in a statement. "Mr. Gross was released on humanitarian grounds by the Cuban government at the request of the United States." Officials spoke on condition of anonymity, pending the formal announcement by Obama. Three members of Congress -- Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont; Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. -- traveled to Cuba to secure Gross' release and accompany him on the trip home, according to a statement from Van Hollen's office. The party landed at an air base near Washington at around 11:30 a.m. ET. |
Skywatchers have been trying to gauge the sun-Earth distance for thousands of years. In the third century BC, Aristarchus of Samos, notable as the first to argue for a heliocentric solar system, estimated the sun to be 20 times farther away than the moon. It wasn't his best work, as the real factor is more like 400. By the late 20th century, astronomers had a much better grip on this fundamental cosmic metric what came to be called the astronomical unit. In fact, thanks to radar beams pinging off various solar-system bodies and to tracking of interplanetary spacecraft, the sun-Earth distance has been pegged with remarkable accuracy. The current value stands at 149,597,870.696 kilometres. Having such a precise yardstick allowed Russian dynamicists Gregoriy A. Krasinsky and Victor A. Brumberg to calculate, in 2004, that the sun and Earth are gradually moving apart. It's not much just 15 cm per year but since that's 100 times greater than the measurement error, something must really be pushing Earth outward. But what? One idea is that the Sun is losing enough mass, via fusion and the solar wind, to gradually be losing its gravitational grip (see Astronomical unit may need to be redefined). Other possible explanations include a change in the gravitational constant G, the effects of cosmic expansion, and even the influence of dark matter. None have proved satisfactory. |