CAT 2024: The computer-based Common Admission Test 2024 will be held on November 24.

A mysterious necklace laden with some 500 diamonds and with possible links to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette, sold for $4.8 million at an auction in Geneva Wednesday.

Brussels, Belgium    — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Ukraine and its NATO allies on Wednesday that Washington remains committed to putting Ukraine “in the strongest possible position” in the final months of President Joe Biden’s administration, before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. At the same time, Blinken expressed alarm about Russia possibly bolstering North Korea’s missile and nuclear capacities, as North Korean troops fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.   “President Biden has committed to making sure that every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door between now and January 20th,” Blinken told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday. “We’re making sure that Ukraine has the air defenses it needs, that has the artillery it needs, that it has the armored vehicles it needs,” he added. Blinken told VOA he expects U.S. allies' support for Ukraine to increase and emphasized that it’s critical for Washington’s partners to “continue to more than pick up their share of the burden.”    Speaking alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Blinken reiterated that Washington will “continue to shore up everything” to enable Ukraine to defend itself effectively against Russian aggression. Rutte and other European leaders voiced serious concerns over North Korea’s active support for Russia in its war on Ukraine. “These North Korean soldiers present an extra threat to Ukraine and will increase the potential for Putin to do harm,” Rutte told reporters. The U.S. State Department says that more than 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to eastern Russia, and most of them have moved to the far western Kursk oblast, part of which Ukraine controls. On Wednesday, Blinken described the military collaboration between Pyongyang and Moscow as “a two-way street.” “There is deep concern about what Russia is or may be doing to strengthen North Korea’s capacities — its missile capacity, its nuclear capacity,” as well as the battlefield experience North Korean forces are gaining, he told reporters. In Brussels, Blinken held talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, European Union High Representative Josep Borrell and British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, among others. The possibility of Ukraine using Western-supplied long-range missiles on Russian soil was among the topics discussed during Sybiha’s meeting with Blinken. “We need to speed up all critical decisions,” the Ukrainian foreign minister said before the meeting. “Ukraine has always cherished strong bipartisan support.  We maintain contact with both [Democratic and Republican] parties and work both with the [U.S.] president-elect and his team and also with the outgoing administration,” he added. In Washington, officials say Biden was expected to ask Trump during their talks at the White House on Wednesday not to walk away from Ukraine. Trump’s political allies have indicated that the incoming administration will prioritize achieving peace in Ukraine over enabling the country to reclaim Crimea and other territories occupied by Russia. Blinken has concluded talks with European counterparts in Brussels. He will next travel to Lima, Peru, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC meetings, followed by stops in Manaus and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for a summit of the 20 largest economies, the G20. He will join Biden in Peru and Brazil. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for "real and extended pauses" in the Gaza war to allow aid delivery to residents. During a visit to Brussels, Belgium, Blinken told reporters the United States wants to see "real and extended pauses in large areas of Gaza, pauses in any fighting, any combat, so that the assistance can effectively get to people who need it."  He said Israel has taken steps to address the humanitarian problem, and it has also "accomplished the goals that it set for itself," he said. "This should be a time to end the war." Earlier, six people were killed in an Israeli airstrike in an area south of Beirut Wednesday, and the Israeli army issued another warning for people in parts of the southern suburbs to leave. Lebanon's health ministry said an additional 15 people were wounded in the airstrike, which followed heavy pounding by Israel on Tuesday.  Overnight attacks in Lebanon were "intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah weapons storage facilities and command centers in the Dahieh area, a key Hezbollah terrorist stronghold in Beirut," Israel Defense Forces stated in a post on the Telegram messaging app Wednesday. The Israeli military said before the strikes, "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk to civilians, including issuing advance warnings to the population in the area." IDF also stated Wednesday that several Hezbollah field commanders have been killed in recent strikes in Lebanon. "At the beginning of the month of October, the IAF struck and eliminated Hezbollah's Commander of the Khiam area, Muhammad Musa Salah, in the area of Khiam," IDF posted. "Salah directed many terror attacks against the State of Israel, and was responsible for the launches of more than 2,500 projectiles toward the areas of the Golan Heights, the Upper Galilee, the Galilee Panhandle, and toward IDF troops operating in southern Lebanon." On Sunday, the commander of an anti-tank missile array in Hajir was killed, and field commanders of the Ghajar and Tebnit areas were also killed "during additional precise strikes," IDF stated. Russia's request in Syria Russia asked Israel to avoid launching airstrikes near one of its bases in Syria, Agence France-Presse reported.  In October, Israel reportedly hit the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, who is supported by Russia and backs Hezbollah. Latakia, is close to the town of Hmeimim, which hosts a Russian air base. "Israel actually carried out an airstrike in the immediate vicinity of Hmeimim," Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy in the Near East, told the RIA Novosti press agency. "Our military has of course notified Israeli authorities that such acts that put Russian military lives in danger over there are unacceptable," he added. US response to aid in Gaza The United States said Tuesday that Israel has made limited progress on increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip as Washington requested, so the Biden administration will not limit arms transfers to Israel. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters that "we at this time have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law." The administration told its ally on October 13 that it had one month to increase aid to Gaza, where the situation after 13 months of war between Israel and Hamas militants has unleashed a catastrophic humanitarian situation, or face a reduction in military aid. The deadline was Tuesday. "We are not giving Israel a pass," Patel said, adding that "we want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve, and we think some of these steps will allow the conditions for that to continue to progress." At the United Nations, U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council that Israel has taken some important steps, including restoring aid deliveries to the north, but that it must ensure its actions are "fully implemented and its improvements sustained over time." "And we continue to reiterate, there must be no forcible displacement nor policy of starvation in Gaza, which would have grave implications under U.S. and international law," she said. A senior U.N. human rights official said at the same meeting that the entry and distribution of aid into Gaza has fallen to "some of the lowest levels in a year" and criticized Israel's conduct of military operations in the north. Israel denies it is limiting aid to Gaza, blaming the U.N. and aid agencies for slow distribution and Hamas for stealing it. The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, although about one-third of them are believed to be dead. Israel's counteroffensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities. The Israeli military says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas militants. The war spread to Lebanon in mid-September, after months of rocket fire from Hezbollah into Israel and drone and airstrikes by Israel's military in south Lebanon escalated. More than 3,200 Lebanese have been killed, most of them in the past six weeks. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States.

Al-Nassr defender, Aymeric Laporte has commented on reported interest from Real Madrid for his signature. The former Manchester City star has recently been linked with a move to Real Madrid next year. Speaking on the development, Laporte said he can’t ignore the Spanish LaLiga champions. According to him, it is nice to be linked with […]

Transfer: You can’t ignore them – Laporte on Real Madrid links

Makovsky called Trump's Defense Secretary selection of Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army combat veteran, a "curious appointment."

"Israel has to meet these [humanitarian] responsibilities, and we will be tracking this every single day," Blinken said.

[Business Day Africa] Africa's biggest pay-television company Multichoice Group has reported a 99 percent dip in half-year profits on the back of subscriber decline and foreign exchange volatility in the operating environment.

Adele decided to take a big break after 'Las Vegas Residency'American singer, Adele, while conversing with the audience during one of her Las Vegas shows, revealed a few insights about her drinking habit. Hello singer admitted that she can drink 25 bottles of wine in a single night and remain...

This week’s episode tidies up a lot of the season’s conflicts: Sean and his dad, Gaby and her sister, Alice and her guy-who-killed-my-mom.

In a rare occurrence of locally acquired typhoid fever in Canada, health officials in Ottawa recently traced an outbreak back to a chronic Salmonella Typhi carrier working as a food handler. The outbreak involved seven confirmed cases from Oct. 2018 to May 2022 and was linked to the asymptomatic carrier... Continue Reading

Google is conducting a “test” that will omit results from EU-based news publishers. The company says the time-limited trial will only affect a small portion of users in nine EU countries and will help “assess how results from EU news publishers impact the search experience for our users and traffic to publishers.” But given the fragile state of the news media — and the company’s history of threatening to pull its services in the face of news-related regulations — it’s tempting to view it as the equivalent of a mob boss conducting a “little test” to see how the corner laundromat fares without its protection.

Google describes the experiment (via The Verge) as a “small, time-limited test” to omit EU results from search, Google News and the personalized Discover feed. It will only affect one percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Those users will still see results from other websites, including non-EU news publications.

The company says news results will reappear as usual once the test concludes. (It didn’t list a specific timeframe.) Google stresses that the experiment won’t impact the publisher payments it makes under the European Copyright Directive (EUCD), under which the company has inked deals with over 4,000 EU publishers.

Google does have a history of using the potential withdrawal of its visibility as a negotiating stick in similar situations. In some cases, the tactic has helped it draw concessions.

Last year, Google pulled its news links from Canada in response to Bill C-18 (the Online News Act), which required tech companies to negotiate compensation with online publishers for linked content. After months of negotiations, Google said Canada had addressed its concerns and given it a path to an exemption. Canada said it granted one to Google last month, with the company agreeing to pay $100 million annually to news organizations.

In April of this year, Google briefly removed links to California news outlets in response to the proposed California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay news publishers in exchange for continuing to link to their websites. Although the bill’s fate is still up in the air, Google struck a deal with state lawmakers this summer, committing tens of millions of dollars to a fund supporting local news.

In 2021, the company threatened to remove its entire search engine from Australia in response to a then-proposed law requiring tech companies to share royalties with news publishers. The nation’s then-Prime Minister stood firm. “Let me be clear. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia,” Scott Morrison said. After the bill was passed and enacted, Google struck deals with Australian media companies to license content.

Google says it hopes the data analysis tools it provides publishers will help them use the EU test to “understand traffic patterns.”

Welcome back to Links! Apologies for no Links last week. Like many, I was not doing too well Wednesday morning and promptly texted Sarah, “Oh shit. I forgot to schedule a Links post.” But I am back! Perhaps not too much better than I was a week ago, but baby steps. The unpacking has kept me distracted and I am eager for the Thanksgiving break to full cozy up in front of our fireplace with … Continue reading Links: Ghostwriters, Free eBooks, & More →

"Class, what do you think?" is just a clever way to buy time.

The pandemic had the hospitality industry rethinking its operating models for safety, security and survival. This crisis event promoted innovation and new concepts and applications in all businesses, including hospitality and tourism.

Skift Research came with its much anticipated Hotel Distribution Outlook 2024. In this report, based on the wishes of both branded and independent hoteliers surveyed, Skift Research predicts that by 2030, direct digital channels will have overtaken the OTAs as the dominant distribution channel for hoteliers: $409 billion of hotel gross bookings are expected to come from direct digital channels, compared to just $333 billion from OTAs.

Speaking about the box-office clash, Bhushan Kumar said, "I am extremely happy for the love our film 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3' is receiving from the audience. It's been only a few days since the film hit the theatres and it has already done great business...Ya, I do feel the clash between (Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Singham Again)"

If you haven’t, you should immediately read Jeremy’s post titled A responsive mind. Not because he says some incredibly kind things about yours truly, but, well, of bits like this:

That’s the thing about responsive web design: you can’t just think of it as a sprinkle of pixie dust that can be applied to any site. It requires the right mindset. It requires that sites be built on solid foundations of best practice. If those foundations are in place—a flexible layout, flexible images, optimised performance—then responsive web design can work its magic.

There are so many wonderful, quotable points that I’m doing Jeremy a disservice by even excerpting that one. If you’d like to understand why a responsive approach would be right for your project (or, perhaps as importantly, why it might not), I urge you to read the whole thing.

Words to tattoo on your knuckles:

Over the past couple of years, my blog hasn’t felt my own, to a degree. It’s felt like I’ve been writ­ing for an audi­ence, post­ing stuff for oth­ers rather than myself. That’s arse-backwards. A blog should be about per­sonal expres­sion. The moment you start think­ing, and writ­ing, to please oth­ers then it’s a bind; it feels less like a per­sonal exer­cise and more of a job.

A beautiful, thoughtful redesign from Mark Boulton (and a responsive one at that). Go go, read read.

Front-end developer Steffan Williams of Gridinator fame digs into some of the rendering inconsistencies across various browsers when dealing with percentage-based widths. Now, I don’t think this is a real problem for flexible, grid-based layouts or properly responsive designs. Some of these rounding issues won’t necessarily manifest themselves in your work, or at least not quite as noticeably.

I was, however, emphatically raising my fist in the air when I read this:

While I’m well aware that things don’t have to look the same in every browser, it just seems to strike me as odd that CSS3 features keep getting touted on the front of browser homepages, and yet something as fundamental as a percentage would be rendered incorrectly (or, rather, not as well as would be expected).

Emphasis mine. Much of the behavior Steffan notes was outlined by John Resig in 2008, nearly three years ago. There are some incredible inconsistencies at play here, and designers really shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of working around them.

In short, some broad consensus between the different rendering engines needs to be reached—and if it comes at the expense of pushing the Next Hot Bleeding-Edge Experimental Sexy CSS3 Feature™ to market, I’m all for it.

Since striking out on my own, much of my time’s been dedicated to, well, the book. But I’ve also been fortunate enough to collaborate a bit with Filament Group on one of their projects: namely, a large-scale engagement that requires a responsive approach.

Needless to say, I am having the time of my life.

We’re also learning a lot, too. A lot of discussions about approach and execution have come up, largely because processes for a lot of this stuff don’t exist yet. That will, with a bit of hard work and community discussion, change over time. Still, there has been a lot of brilliant stuff created so far.

Here’s just one example:

The goal of this technique is to deliver optimized, contextual image sizes for responsive layouts that utilize dramatically different image sizes at different resolutions. Ideally, this approach will allow developers to start with mobile-optimized images in their HTML and specify a larger size to be used for users with larger screen resolutions — without requesting both image sizes, and without UA sniffing.

Check out the script, download it, and kick the tires a bit—feedback and tweaks are most welcome.

I realize that there are always going to be philosophical differences around responsive web design. But for me, the solutions-driven discussions are always going to be infinitely more interesting to me than the alternative.

I won’t lie to you: I might’ve pounded the table emphatically a few times while reading Mark Boulton’s latest entry:

We can now design effective adaptive layouts that respond to their environment. If these layouts are based on a system that defines its ratios from the content, then there is connectedness on two levels: connectedness to the device, and connectedness to the content.

Mark’s thinking about flexible, content-driven grids has me damned excited about his upcoming talk at AEA Boston, and you know I’ll be flinging fistfuls of lucre at my laptop screen whenever his new book’s available to preorder.

The web really feels fun again.

I’m doing a disservice to this lovely interview with Shaun Inman—one of my favorite designers and people—by quoting it, but, well:

How do you stay focused?

I’m not sure that I do. I’m kind of all over the place, with my attention split between web apps, iOS games and apps, and Safari extensions…. If I feel my focus waning, I let it wane. Curiosity or that unpleasant feeling of leaving something unfinished usually draws me back to a problem or task before too long.

“5 Minutes on The Verge: Shaun Inman”

This. Oh, so very this.

At least five to six cases of the infection being reported every day at the Government Medical College Hospital in recent weeks

The court gave authorities time till November 22 for demonstrating concrete action on removal of encroachments

A strong customer experience strategy bridges the gap between leadership and employees and aligns everyone around the goal of delighting customers.

Hu, D; Li, M; Chen, J; Luo, Q; Grasby, S E; Zhang, T; Yuan, S; Xu, Y; Finney, S C; Sun, L; Shen, Y. Global and Planetary Change vol. 196, 103374, 2020 p. 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2020.103374
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200593.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20200593.jpg" title="Global and Planetary Change vol. 196, 103374, 2020 p. 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2020.103374" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Elkins-Tanton, L T; Grasby, S E; Black, B A; Veselovskiy, R V; Ardakani, O H; Goodarzi, F. Geology vol. 48, no. 10, 2020 p. 986-991, https://doi.org/10.1130/G47365.1
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20190638.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20190638.jpg" title="Geology vol. 48, no. 10, 2020 p. 986-991, https://doi.org/10.1130/G47365.1" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Li, M; Grasby, S E; Wang, S-L; Zhang, X; Wasylenki, L E; Xu, Y; Sun, M; Beauchamp, B; Hu, D; Shen, Y. Nature Communications vol. 12, 2024, 2021 p. 1-7, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22066-7
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210011.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210011.jpg" title="Nature Communications vol. 12, 2024, 2021 p. 1-7, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22066-7" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Dafoe, L T; Dickie, K; Williams, G L. GAC-MAC-IAH-CNC-CSPG, Halifax 2022; 2022 p. 79
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210585.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210585.jpg" title="GAC-MAC-IAH-CNC-CSPG, Halifax 2022; 2022 p. 79" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Berman, R G; Cutts, J; Davis, W J; Camacho, A; Sanborn-Barrie, M; Smit, M A. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences vol. 60, no. 5, 2023 p. 1-33, https://doi.org/10.1139/cjes-2022-0147
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210354.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20210354.jpg" title="Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences vol. 60, no. 5, 2023 p. 1-33, https://doi.org/10.1139/cjes-2022-0147" height="150" border="1" /></a>

A new smart logistics centre in Helsinki is trialling zero emission deliveries using a combination of robots and electric vehicles.

Субстек ковидоборца по имени Jeremiah Hosea (Earthdriver):
https://jeremiahhosea.substack.com/

https://substack.com/home/post/p-147863903
The Grand Unveiling
https://jeremiahhosea.substack.com/p/the-final-countdown
The Final Countdown
https://jeremiahhosea.substack.com/p/radio-silence
Radio Silence
https://jeremiahhosea.substack.com/p/the-contradictions-between-left-and
The Contradictions Between Left and Right as Underscored by Covid
https://jeremiahhosea.substack.com/p/hats-off-to-the-ol-school-anti-vaxxers
Hats Off to the Ol' School Anti-Vaxxers
https://jeremiahhosea.substack.com/p/youre-obsessed-with-covid
You're Obsessed with Covid!

Отлично иллюстрирует известную тенденцию,
левые и правые поменялись местами, позиции,
которые в 1960-1990-х были монополией левых,
стали монополией правых, и наоборот.
Сам гражданин совершенно левый и по анамнезу,
и по фенотипу, и по большинству позиций, дичайше
ненавидит Трампа (в том числе и за то, что Трамп
проплатил разработку "вакцин"), но по
большинству тем сливается воедино с "правыми",
не потому, что он "правый", а потому, что
"левые" отбросили эти позиции, а "правые"
подхватили.

Привет

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1. Anneleen Van Bossuyt: “Een N-VA-kiezer is niet minder Gents dan wie links stemt” (Gent)  Het Nieuwsblad
2. De Clercq: “Je mag op straat komen. Maar wat daar gebeurd is, was on-Gents en reactionair”  Het Nieuwsblad
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4. Hafsa El-Bazioui (Groen) na tumultueuze weken in Gent: "Ik kan me niet excuseren voor mensen die spontaan op straat komen"  VRT.be
5. Anneleen Van Bossuyt: “Een N-VA-kiezer is niet minder Gents dan wie links stemt”  De Standaard