The 2022 Winter Olympics will get underway next month and Bermuda — which despite our sub-tropical climate and small size has produced Winter Olympians before — will not have a representative this year. Bermuda Olympic Association [BOA] President Peter Dunne told Bernews, “Bermuda will not have any athletes or representatives at the 2022 Beijing Games, unfortunately. […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] From retired professional figure skater to reality television star to soon-to-become four-times Olympian, the resurrection of Vanessa James’s competitive career reads like a far-fetched Hollywood movie script. James was settled into retirement for almost two years when a chance meeting on the set of the wildly popular CBS reality TV show, […]

Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad & Tobago will be the Caribbean nations represented in the upcoming Winter Olympics in China, with Haiti making their Winter Games debut. The Panam Sports website said, “In total, nearly 3,000 athletes from 86 countries will participate in 15 sports during 17 days of competition. Panam Sports will be […]

Figure skater Vanessa James — whose father is Bermudian — and her partner Eric Radford are now competing in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Ms James, who along with her former partner Yannick Bonheur were the first Black couple to compete in figure skating at the Olympic level, is making her fourth Olympic appearance, […]

Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone celebrated their 6th marriage anniversary

Ameesha addressed Nirvaan as "darling" in the caption

Sonakshi and Zaheer actively share pictures from their vacation diaries

Ananya Panday will be seen in the second season of Call Me Bae, produced by Karan Johar

Priyanka wrote, "This is my magical team of Citadel S2"

Kareena Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Suhana Khan are the brand ambassadors of an online beauty platform

Visuals showed the Taj Mahal, the UNESCO World Heritage site disappearing behind the smog, making it barely visible to tourists.

Visuals showed the Taj Mahal, the UNESCO World Heritage site disappearing behind the smog, making it barely visible to tourists.

1. Ananya Panday's ‘bikini bod’ wows Suhana Khan; check out pics from Dubai holiday  Hindustan Times
2. Ananya Panday’s Dubai photos: Top Instagram posts  Telegraph India

Royal Enfield's upcoming 350cc Bobber motorcycle has been spied testing once again. The motorcycle, which will bear the name of the Royal Enfield Goan Classic 350 will be launched at Motoverse 2024 later this month. The test mule of the Royal

Supreme Court of India on Wednesday questioned the Ajit Pawar-led faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for using founder Sharad Pawar's name and image in their online content and election ads. It comes amid the heated campaigning for the Maharashtra

A Complete handy Reference - Study Guide/Tutorial. It covers 132 Christian Subjects and Topics from Adoption - Yahweh in an easy to read and understand format. An extensive resource, unparalleled in convenience and ease of use yet advanced in topic research.

Pacific Holidays is offering a pre and post 2018 Winter Olympic Games package, for individuals to enjoy eight days in Pyeongchang from $3,799 per person.

The old 66 Drive-In became the 11th Street in 1964 when a new screen was added. Found in high altitude aerial photographs, courtesy of the Tulsa City-County Library.

One of the things I most respect about Tami is the way she keeps her promises - both to others, and to herself. If you've been following our blog for awhile you may remember her New Year's Resolution to walk 500 miles. She had me put together a little spreadsheet on her laptop where she could enter her mileage each day. Next to each entry it showed mileage accumulated to-date, along with a comparison to the minimum mileage needed to complete 500 miles by year end. Every now and again she tried to turn the milestones into shoe-buying excuses -- "Hey Sweetie, I just crossed 300 miles - don't you think that deserves a new pair of shoes?"

Well, it was my honor to walk the last 40 or so miles with her during our vacation in Montana's Glacier National Park these last two weeks. I don't know exactly where or when we crossed that 500th mile, but I do know that the mountains there in Glacier are a whole lot taller than the ones back home. I also decided I prefer climbing over descending - Tami practically runs down the mountains, leaving me stumbling along behind in a contrail of dust (see video below). She's a hiking machine. Me, I'm more of a pack mule - I get to carry the water, lunches, cameras, maps, and sunscreen. Which works out fine, since I'm always stopping to take pictures anyway! Enjoy...

Well a couple weeks ago we finally got around to launching release #68. Ours is the Wednesday 4:10pm class, an awesome timeslot for everyone who just wants to knock off work a bit early and take a midweek break for an hour. It's our favorite class to teach.
I'm a full-time software developer who's always running five minutes late, so finding the time to pick up choreography can be a challenge sometimes. It's definitely not unusual for me to resort to "cramming" just before class - Tami, on the other hand, is never late and learns her music days ahead of time. Good thing for me that opposites attract!
Our class tells us they enjoy the banter that goes on between Tami and I during the workout. Well there's nothing scripted or made up for that - it's just a continuation of what goes on between us pretty much most of the time. It just so happens for an hour that day everyone gets to overhear it. I'm behaving badly in this pic to the right, with Tami on the verge of thumping my head lest I forget who really wears the pants in our family.
Somehow, in spite of ourselves, we usually manage to run a pretty tight class. Form - not weight - is our hot topic, and we've found that most everybody really wants to execute the routines properly. Last week we ran another of our Form Friday classes - the cool thing this last time around was that we were mostly helping people make "fine tuning" adjustments (all the typical "big stuff" seemed to be in pretty good shape!) Which brings me to the closing thought for this post - maybe it's time to resurrect our Wicked Wednesday mix for this afternoon's class...

The Olympics in 2012 will see remediation of one of the largest contaminated sites in the south east.

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Love and sex are so different, although they are sometimes connected with each other. What we always need is to differentiate between them and care about whom we love more then ourselves.

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26 Great Ideas for Blog Posts!
Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

1. Make it visual.
Include a photo or other graphic in a blog post to break up the text, attract your reader's interest, or help illustrate a point. Better yet, talk about the image you have included to further incorporate it into the post.

26 Great Ideas for Blog Posts!

26 Great Ideas for Blog Posts!

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

26 Great Ideas for Blog Posts!

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writers block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

26 Great Ideas for Blog Posts!

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writers block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

Blogs have increased in popularity because they provide a steady stream of new and unique content. The only issue presented by this quality of blogs is that it may become difficult for those who run blogs to think of interesting and novel posts. If you have jumped on the blogging bandwagon but suffer writer's block, do not panic: we have created a list of 26 ideas for blog posts.

1. Make it visual.
Include a photo or other graphic in a blog post to break up the text, attract your reader's interest, or help illustrate a point. Better yet, talk about the image you have included to further incorporate it into the post.

Great Ideas for Blog Post Topics

Fr. John Parker, Chair of the Dept of Evangelization of the Orthodox Church in America, comments on an Op Ed piece in the New York Times about Russia and the Olympics. An edited version of Fr. John's comments can be found in the The Post and Courier.

As the Hong Kong Open begins, BBC Sport looks at squash's latest bid to participate in the Olympics with 2020 the target

It's a well-known rule in journalism that if the headline asks a question, the answer is invariably "no". So to see the question above on this blog will probably not surprise you.

What might surprise you is to learn it was also the headline of a prominently-featured article on the BBC website yesterday. Of course, as is the current fad, when they say "prostitutes" they mean "trafficking", and vice-versa.

It's been long known that there is no connection between major international sporting events such as the Olympics, the World Cup, and sex trafficking. But don't take my word for it. Take the word of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who hosted a meeting on this very topic earlier this year. Take the word of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, who produced a must-read report (pdf) on the actual effects of sports events on human trafficking. Go check out Laura Agustin's excellent summary too.

The facts:

• 2010 World Cup, South Africa: the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development did not find a single case of trafficking over the Olympics time period.

• 2010 Olympics, Canada: no evidence of trafficking and sex workers reported a fall in business.

• 2006 World Cup, Germany: 33 cases were referred to the police for further investigation, out of which 5 cases were confirmed to be trafficking (4 women and 1 man). No other cases were found, despite the fact that the police conducted 71 brothel raids (these raids did not identify the 5 confirmed trafficking cases, but did lead to 10 deportations).

• 2004 Olympics, Greece: When trafficking statistics were compared for all of 2004 with all of 2003, there was an increase of 181 trafficking cases (which is a 90% increase). According to both the police and the International Organization for Migration, none of these cases were linked to the Olympics.

• Super Bowls in the USA in 2008-2011: Although law enforcement increased, they made no additional arrests for sex work-related offences during this time.

You might be wondering, and it is a good question, why there isn't sex trafficking during these events. The answer is simple. Criminals may be criminals, but organised crime does not exist for the purpose of being evil. It exists to make loads of tax-free dosh. Does it make financial sense for sex trafficking to occur at these events? With London rents skyrocketing around the venues, with the Home Office plans to tighten border security, with the police already well misinformed about the magnitude of the trafficking problem, you'd have to be mad to pursue this as a business plan.

There was perhaps a time, back in the 90s, when sex trafficking in some parts of Eastern Europe might have netted you some cash if you already had the distribution network, but it's not the case now. Add to that a large native population willing and legally able to exchange money for sex and you'd be laughed out of Dragon's Den for even suggesting it as a goer. I've met a lot of dodgy characters in my day - drug dealers and worse besides - and to a person they were not in it to lose money. In many cases the black marketeers I know were actually better businesspeople than anyone in legit trading.

In spite of all this, we are still treated - almost daily now in the run-up to London 2012 - with the same old guff such as stories that sex trafficking 'almost doubled' during the Athens Olympics.

In this particular case, 'almost doubled' means that the number of reported incidents was 181, a 90% increase over the previous year. So yes, they did 'almost double'.

However if you too are underwhelmed by that number, it's with good reason. Applying all the usual disclaimers - any instance of forced sex trafficking is abhorrent and should be prosecuted vigorously, this is an argument about best use of police time, tax money and other resources - what does the reported change from just-shy-of-100 people to 181 actually represent?

Prostitution is legal and regulated in Greece, however, not everyone works legally and not everyone registers, because hello, do you want your name on the Greek government's hooker list? Probably not. Anyway, estimates put the number at about 1,000 legal prostitutes and 20,000 illegal ones. Given that these numbers are the ones put about by the US State Department which does not have a great track record on accuracy, it's a little suspect. But let's say for the sake of saying that represents some kind of starting ballpark figure and probably even an overestimate. The 21,000 total gives us about 1 in every 250 women in Greece working as a prostitute - actually a realistic enough proportion for Europe.

In the year before the Athens Olympics, the reports of sex trafficking at 95 represented 0.45% of all prostitution in Greece. And after the Olympics? 0.86%. Less than 1% of prostitutes in Greece were trafficked both before and after the Olympics.

There is no particular evidence, statistical or otherwise, to suggest that the fluctuation in this rather small number was due to the Olympics per se. In fact it is certainly within the bounds of what we call the 'law of small numbers' which dictates that they can and do fluctuate in a way that represents a high percentage of the values themselves, but given the rarity of the events involved, this is expected and not necessarily significant.

Here's an example. Let's say in the year 2008, there was 1 death in all of Scotland from a vending machine falling on someone. Then let's say a year later, in 2009, there were 2 such deaths. While it would be technically true to say that the number of vending machine accidental deaths 'doubled', is this a fair representation of the data? Is this a significant trend that is likely to continue? (Which would mean that by 2032, there would be 8.38 million such deaths in Scotland, or approximately... er, 150% of the population). No, obviously not. The change from 1 to 2 in a given year seems clearly attributable to chance. You'd be silly to conclude the change from one small number to another "means" very much without a lot of additional evidence.

If you've read my paper on the effects of lap dancing on sexual violence in London, you'll already be aware of how over time these small numbers fluctuate wildly. For context, the UNHCR gives the number of trafficked persons for Greece as 137 in 2005, 83 in 2006, 100 in 2007, 162 in 2008, 125 in 2009, 92 in 2010.

Now if these things had no knock-on effect, and if police resources and tax money were infinite, then sure, why not go after human trafficking even if it's only a very tiny proportion of all sex work in Greece - or in the more immediate case, London? But alas, it is not a matter of infinite police time and tax money. And it is definitely not a matter of no knock-on effects.

According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, "Police crackdowns and brothel closures tend to displace sex workers from flats and saunas to less safe work venues, including the street, and make them wary of all authorities so they are less likely to access services or to report episodes of violence or crime to the police."

Given that the anti-sex lobby are so dead keen to keep claiming that all sex workers are inevitably the victims of violent and sex crimes, that seems like it's going to affect a hell of a lot more than a couple hundred people, no? Why does a small number of people matter to them more than a potentially far larger pool of people? Is it because that's where the grant money and column inches are at?

Not only is this increased danger the outcome in previous incidents of trafficking panic, it's happening right now in London. The Moratorium 2012 campaign, organised by x:talk, confirms:

Stop the Arrests Campaign is aware of ‘clean up efforts’ already underway in London, particularly east London, in the run-up to the Olympics ... Last December in Barking and Dagenham a violent gang carried out a series of robberies on brothels at knife point. Sex workers were deterred from pursuing the attacks after police threatened them with prosecution. Thus many more were attacked and one woman was raped.

Got that? Send the police after non-existent sex trafficking, and they end up cracking down on non-trafficked sex workers. When that happens, people in sex work are put in more danger. No one is made safer by doing this. No one is saved. Moratorium 2012 is calling on an end to the pointless and dangerous harassment. Please, sign the petition.

Casey Wasserman, LA28 President and Chair, discloses amount Cruise charged for his 15-minute performance

Jiang Yuyan breaks the Paralympic world record in the women's 100m backstroke

More than 4,400 athletes from 168 Paralympic delegations partied despite persistent rain

The suspension, announced by Hockey Australia, mandates Craig serve at least half of the ban

The curtain will come down on the Paris' feel-good summer with a grand parade of French athletes on the Champs Elysees on Saturday as the country throws one last party to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In his first visit back to Utah since awarding Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee president sought to ease worries that the city could lose its second Olympics if organizers don't fulfill an agreement to play peacemaker between anti-doping authorities.

Nico Hischier and the New Jersey Devils open the season in Prague against the Buffalo Sabres, two more games will take place in Finland this fall and the 4 Nations Face-off is a four-team February appetizer to the main event as the league and players embrace hockey's international roots.

French authorities said Friday they have charged seven individuals in connection with a cyberbullying campaign targeting Thomas Jolly, the artistic director behind the Paris Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies.

USA Track and Field is bringing the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field program in-house beginning Jan. 1 as part of a partnership that will unite all of its athletes under one roof.

Paris's Notre Dame cathedral, whose historic bells were silenced following 2019's devastating fire, will soon echo again with fresh chimes.