Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees, and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue.

By Jessica DiNapoli NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees, and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue. The lawsuit is the…

Jude Law on signing up for 'Alfie', 'bad move' Jude Law regretted making that one “bad move” that pulled him down from a “strong position” in Hollywood.In an interview with GQ Magazine UK, Law revealed that taking on the lead role in 2004’s Alfie was a “bad...

1. Anupamaa producer Rajan Shahi's ex-wife breaks silence in Rupali Ganguly-Esha Verma case  Bollywood Life
2. Exclusive: Rupali Ganguly's Lawyer Sana Raees Khan Reveals Why The Actress Is Seeking Rs 50 Crore In Defamation Compensation  NDTV Movies
3. Amid defamation case and Rs 50 crore compensation sent by Rupali Ganguly; Esha Verma posts a note on star  The Times of India
4. Anupamaa producer Rajan Shahi supports actor Rupali Ganguly amid family dispute  India Today
5. Actor Rupali Ganguly files ₹50 crore defamation suit against stepdaughter Esha Verma  The Hindu

Mr. Patra claimed that the Congress wanted to give 4% reservation to the Muslim organisations and contractors in public tenders

Following a crushing 10-wicket defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad, LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka expressed his displeasure and engaged in a heated discussion with the captain on the field.

Anupamaa producer Rajan Shahi has supported Rupali Ganguly after the actress slapped her stepdaughter Esha Verma with a legal notice, seeking Rs 50 crore in damages.

Fr. Barnabas welcomes his seminary professor and friend the Rev. Dr. Philip Zymaris to talk about a little understood topic - silence. What is its importance and how do we achieve it?

1. Mam breaks silence: Bronco’s emotional response to police charge  Courier Mail
2. Brisbane Broncos star Ezra Mam charged over head-on collision, allegedly failing second drug test  ABC News
3. Ezra Mam issued court notice after allegedly failing secondary drug test  Fox Sports
4. Broncos’ Ezra Mam charged over drug test result after Uber crash  Brisbane Times
5. Broncos star charged after car crash  news.com.au

1. Sunita Williams breaks silence on weight loss rumours, says THIS has 'definitely changed' her body | Mint  Mint
2. "My Body Has Changed, But....": Sunita Williams On Health Aboard Space Station  NDTV
3. After Sunita Williams, NASA now worried about her stranded mission partner's losing body mass  Hindustan Times
4. Stranded Sunita Williams dismisses severe weight loss rumours, says she feels ‘healthier than ever’  The Times of India
5. Exclusive | NASA races to stabilize astronaut Sunita Williams' weight  New York Post

Originally appeared in Sundays Quarterly 3 by Burn All Books in October 2019

How is it possible to find silence in the middle of the city? Why does it matter? On the lessons learned from St. Isidora and the daily task of floor washing.

Fr. Seraphim apologizes for his time away and gives an update on the monastery. He also talks about his struggles with faith and what we must remember in those hard times.

St. Gregory of Nyssa explains to us that the life of the body is one of flux and change. We have sleep to relax tension. But what should this look like, and how can we attain it in a healthy manner? This podcasts looks at the importance of silence and proper sleep as ways to manage our stress and care for our health.

Rita discusses ways that we can create structure in our lives for silence and prayer.

Chaplain Sarah interviews Chaplain Elizabeth Hawkins, Pediatric Palliative Care Chaplain, on the power of loving silence and the respect of the mystery of God.

Today, we conclude our Lenten programming with a discussion on prayer and silence.

After nearly three decades in Orthodoxy, Fr Joseph says he’s attended only one real-deal silent retreat. It happened in his own parish. The retreat flyer stated: This is a silent retreat: no screens, no phones, no gadgets . . . a detox from worldly noise and distractions. (Pretty scary, huh?)

In this episode, Fr. Anthony expresses how much he looks forward to having his old friend hunger back around, laments the lack of discernment on social media, and gives the short and long answer to the question of whether it is ever okay for a priest to seek a new assignment.

I feel a little crazy sometimes, like an idiot—not a godly, holy idiot, just a plain, old-fashioned idiot: the kind that boasts of humility and speaks about the virtue of silence.

The guys watched Martin Scorcese’s newest film, Silence, and it left them feeling…conflicted. Join Steve and Christian as they discuss immanent expressions of faith, the gruesome (and hopeful) reality of martyrdom, the pain of the dark night of the soul, and the depth of the Lenten struggle. They close with their Top 5 Conflicted Characters of All Time.

We encounter the silence of heaven and the difficult warnings of the first four trumpets in Rev. 8, with the help of passages from Exodus, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zechariah. In the presence of mystery, we wait for God to fulfill His promises, knowing that His will is for all to turn to Him.

Fr. Ted encourages us to recognize just how many things that come out of our mouths simply do not benefit anyone.

Kevin Allen interviews Kyriakos C. Markides, author of The Mountain of Silence and Gifts of the Desert, talks about his life, his books, and his spiritual journey. This interview--you're going to want to listen to over and over...!

Kevin Allen continues his fascinating interview with Kyriakos C. Markides, author of The Mountain of Silence, Gifts of the Desert, and many more. Is it possible that Part Two could be better than Part One? You be the judge!

The silence of God at Nativity invites the caring community to action and change.

The church is called today to care for life, to offer an open space where the soul of man can pray and sing, and have an encounter with Christ, who listens to us from the cross.

Everyone has encountered long periods of suffering and grief. How do we engage these times in a manner that is beneficial to our spiritual life? How do we develop patient endurance? Listen as Fr. Tom brings this encouraging message of hope in Christ.

Dr. Albert Rossi reflects on the need to communicate with one another and to pray, from the heart, in deep silence.

Dr. Albert Rossi shares with us the impact that seeking silence has had on his life and relationships.

Archimandrite Meletios Webber, Abbot of the Monastery of St. John of San Francisco, participates in the Anne and Theodore Phillips Paschal Lecture Series at St. Andrew Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago. The title of his talk is "Finding Silence in a Noisy World: The Role of the Monastery in modern day Orthodoxy in America."

"Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden last night that was so racist it got the New York Times to dust off the actual word 'racist' and use it in a headline." / Welcome to Hell World

A look at the billionaires and businesses getting in line for Trump, who's vowed to punish dissenters. / The Washington Post [+]

Why a longtime LA Times editorial writer resigned after the spiked Harris endorsement: A non-endorsement on Harris's home turf is an un-endorsement. / The Hollywood Reporter

Bird flu tracking among humans couldn't be timed worse, with researchers trying to discern whether someone's "flu-like symptoms" are a cold, Covid, influenza, or actually bird flu. / STAT

The 18th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, a stalwart of editorial citation, has a hell of a job, landing amid an era of digital misinformation and disinformation. / Los Angeles Review of Books

A video of someone destroying ballots marked for Trump in Bucks County, Pa., is a fake planted by Russia, according to US officials. / NPR

See also: Maricopa County officials are contacting around 20 voters whose mail-in ballots were damaged after someone set a mailbox on fire (but not for political reasons). / The Gazette

In a review of BBQ joints in a small Texas town, a restaurant loses a recommendation over its owner's use of racist language. / Texas Monthly

A USGS model of more than 1,200 groundwater samples shows millions of people in California, Florida, and Massachusetts may be drinking forever chemicals. / Gizmodo

See also: Tesla's engineering headquarters in Palo Alto released some kind of lime-green liquid—purportedly a nonhazardous coolant—into a storm drain. / SFGATE

The US Copyright Office ends a longstanding frustration for fast-food restaurants, granting them the right to repair the soft-serve machines at their locations. / Ars Technica

Related: From 2021, hacking McDonald's always-broken soft-serve machines so restaurants could repair them. / WIRED

When Google Street View data is incorrect, either by accident or intention, hardware store interiors can appear in the middle of the Atlantic. / Futurism

Thirteen years later, a scandal-laden development of Disney-style palaces in Turkey remains unfinished and deteriorating. / The Guardian

Before buying a domain name, check to see if it's haunted—in other words, whether something terrible happened there in the past. / Bryan Braun

View Post →

Host Kevin Allen talks with Faith McDonnell and Ralph H. Sidway about the rising tide of Christian intolerance and genocide—the intentional killing of people for their Christian faith—and why global Christophobia is rarely covered by Western media or addressed by the United Nations. Faith McDonnell is the Director of Religious Liberty Programs at the Institute for Religion and Democracy and the author of the book Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children. Her blog is titled "Juicy Ecumenism." Ralph H. Sidway is the author of Facing Islam and the blog of the same name.

A single protester has a sign wrestled off her during the silence at Forbury Gardens in Reading.

Witnesses report overhearing the driver say: "I'm more concerned about the living than the dead."

From pre-race confusion to post-race joy, from 17th on the grid to a stunning win, here's how Max Verstappen's Brazilian Grand Prix unfolded on his radio.

There is no excuse for non-disclosure agreements about public spending

Since the start of the #MeToo movement, many accused abusers have filed defamation charges against their accusers in retaliation, advocates say. Law professor Victoria Burke wants to change that.

The construction industry is often associated with strength, resilience and tough work. However, there has been an alarming rise in mental health challenges. MCAA is taking that to heart with the first-ever public release of its suicide prevention video.

'Powerful digital resource' for healing, education, reform, and involvement

Cutting audio can be a rather tedious task. It requires a decent amount of time and is quite repetitive. Often silence segments, like speech breaks or breathing pauses, make cutting audio necessary in the first place.

Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

We introduce our new automatic silence cutting feature! It will make your life easier by saving you the time you would normally require to cut silence segments in your recordings.

Why do you need to cut silence segments?

Silence segments occur in your audio recordings naturally. They can be due to short speech breaks or breathing pauses. It's also possible, that at the beginning of a recording equipment needs to be re-adjusted, which also may result in a few seconds of silence.

Usually, listeners do not want to hear silence segments. The reason is easy: silence is redundant filler content. Hence, silence segments need to be cut to achieve a high-quality listening experience. Locating the segments and cutting them manually is tedious though and takes a decent amount of time for longer recordings.

This is why we developed and released our own automatic silence cutting feature.

How do we cut silence for you?

Our automatic silence cutting algorithm detects and cuts silence segments reliably. All you need to do is to enable the algorithm in your production - no further settings are required! This is the easiest possible way for you to cut silence in an audio file.

How to enable silence cutting for your production.

In our audio processing system, silence cutting is a multi-stage algorithm. We use our sophisticated voice activity detection algorithms to detect what is useful content and what is silence. Then we cut the silence parts and crossfade the remaining audio segments to make sure no audio artifacts are introduced. When cutting we ensure that intended speech breaks, e.g. between two sentences, remain untouched.

When we cut any audio, we make sure that chapter marks and speech recognition transcripts are adapted accordingly. Additionally, when exporting to other external services we make sure the cut tracks are exported and correctly labeled.

Audio Examples

Let's listen to two audio examples.

Example 1 (Singletrack production)

Here we have a singletrack production with three silence segments. The segments are located at the beginning of recording, between the first and the second "Hi" as well as at the end. Each silence segment is cut down to a length which still sounds natural, but does not annoy the listener.

The breathing onsets, which happen straight before voice kicks in again, are not cut. This makes sure that the character of the recording remains natural.

For this example, we also activated our new AutoEQ feature to remove pops in the audio.

Here is also a screenshot of how the result looks in our audio player. The gray areas show where our audio processing system cut the silence.

The result of example 01, as displayed by our Audio Inspector.

Thx to the Feel Free to Deviate podcast for providing this recording.

Example 2 (Multitrack production)

Let's also look at silence cutting in a multitrack production. This small excerpt of the TVEye podcast contains a music track and three speaker tracks. Before the intro music kicks in, there are a few seconds of silence.

The few seconds of silence at the beginning of the file are cut. After that, no further cuts are applied though to make sure the background music remains intact.

This is how the result of example 02 looks in our Audio Inspector.

Silence Cutting in our Audio Inspector

As you may have seen already in the examples, the cut segments are displayed as checked grey areas in the Audio Inspector. This is how they will be displayed by default.

Cut segments are displayed as checked gray areas by default.

During playback, the Audio Inspector will automatically skip these cut segments on the master track and play the silence segments if you activate the input track. This way, you can check each segment that was cut.

It's also possible to hide the cut segments. The following picture shows you how to do that.

You can also hide cut segments.

First, you must click onto the "?" icon in the bottom right corner to show the Audio Inspector options. Then you must toggle the "Silence Cut Region" switch. After that, the cut regions are not displayed anymore, and also won't be played back on the input track anymore.

If you click onto "Show Stats", you can activate the audio processing statistics. These statistics show you how much of your audio was cut, as well as the resulting track length after the cuts were applied.

The processing statistics tell you more about how much audio was cut.

Conclusion

With our automatic silence cutting feature, we went one step further towards the perfect audio assistant. Audio editing has been a tedious-but-necessary task for a long time, but with our automatic silence cutting feature, we just made it easier for you!

Feel free to send us your feedback - how do you like our new feature? Also, make sure to follow us, as we will release more automatic cutting algorithms for you in the future!

Sound surrounds us, from cacophony even to silence. But depending on how we hear, the world can be a different auditory experience for each of us. This hour, TED speakers explore the science of sound. Guests on the show include NPR All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, neuroscientist Jim Hudspeth, writer Rebecca Knill, and sound designer Dallas Taylor.

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Original broadcast date: October 16, 2020. Sound surrounds us, from cacophony even to silence. But depending on how we hear, the world can be a different auditory experience for each of us. This hour, TED speakers explore the science of sound. Guests on the show include NPR All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, neuroscientist Jim Hudspeth, writer Rebecca Knill, and sound designer Dallas Taylor.

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Original broadcast date: Friday, October 16, 2020. Sound surrounds us, from cacophony even to silence. But depending on how we hear, the world can be a different auditory experience for each of us. This hour, TED speakers explore the science of sound. Guests on the show include NPR All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, neuroscientist Jim Hudspeth, writer Rebecca Knill, and sound designer Dallas Taylor.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Original broadcast date: October 16, 2020. Sound surrounds us, from cacophony even to silence. But depending on how we hear, the world can be a different auditory experience for each of us. This hour, TED speakers explore the science of sound. Guests on the show include NPR All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, neuroscientist Jim Hudspeth, writer Rebecca Knill, and sound designer Dallas Taylor.

TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted

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New Annex B - Use of data signal detection and silence insertion in voiceband data, and new Annex C on use of V.21 preamble for echo canceller control in a V.152 gateway

Jessica Harris is at Birmingham Rep for a powerful Tara Theatre production.

Ruh marks the highly anticipated return of Macedonian jazz band Next to Silence, arriving at a pivotal moment of reflection and renewal. The album is deeply shaped by the loss of one of the band's founding members, trumpeter Aleksandar Nikolovski (Grobi), who tragically passed away from cancer in 2021... [ read more ]