China Eases One-Child Policy

And ends system of re-education through labor in historic change

By Denver Nick

China’s top legislature moved Saturday to ease its long-standing one-child policy and end the practice of re-education through labor, or laojiao.

Under the new law passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, families will be allowed to have a second child if both parents are only children, CNN reports, quoting Xinhua state news agency. The one-child policy was introduced in the 1970s to curb population growth and is estimated to have prevented some 400 million births.

The closure of China’s controversial labor camps will go into effect Saturday and people still serving sentences in such camps will be set free, Xinhua reports. The camps date from the 1950s and have long been criticized by human-rights advocates for their role in silencing dissidents and persecuting intellectuals and spiritual groups.

Read more: China Eases One-Child Policy, Abolishes Re-education Labor Camps | TIME.com http://world.time.com/2013/12/28/china-eases-one-child-policy/#ixzz2p1O1LVC1

Antique sex toys

Obama urges nation to demand a ‘common sense’ balance on gun control, gun rights

Video: President Barack Obama spoke at a Navy Yard memorial service in Washington, D.C.

By Brigid Schulte and Paul Duggan, Published: September 23

President Obama, addressing yet another memorial gathering after a deadly mass shooting, said Sunday evening that he senses “a creeping resignation” in the United States that homicidal lunacy like the Washington Navy Yard massacre “is somehow the new normal.” But he said “it ought to be a shock to us all” and should spur Americans to demand “a common sense” balance between gun rights and gun control.
“We cannot accept this,” Obama said of the Sept. 16 attack that killed a dozen people at the Navy Yard. “As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here today there’s nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down where they work.”

Obama was addressing about 4,000 people, including loved ones of the slain, who gathered outdoors at the Marine Corps Barracks at Eighth and I streets SE, a few blocks from the Navy Yard. The president did not vow to throw the weight of his presidency behind an effort to enact gun-control legislation, as he did in December at a memorial service after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Instead, he urged the nation to demand such measures.
“By now . . . it should be clear that the change we need will not come from Washington, even when tragedy strikes Washington,” he said at Sunday’s service on the barracks parade grounds. “Change will come the only way it ever has come, and that’s from the American people.”
The Navy Yard gunman, 34-year-old Aaron Alexis, a former Navy reservist with a recent history of mental problems, opened fire in Building 197, first with a shotgun, then with a pistol, killing nine men and three women. All the victims worked in the building, which houses the Naval Sea Systems Command.
“Part of what wears on . . . is the sense that this has happened before,” the president said. “What wears on us, what troubles us so deeply, as we gather here today is this senseless violence that took place in the Navy Yard echoes other recent tragedies.”
And he intoned the names of the places he has visited as president in the wake of mass homicides: Fort Hood, Tex.; Tucson; Aurora, Colo., and Newtown. “Once more our hearts are broken,” he said. “Once more we ask why.”
Joined on stage by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and other dignitaries, Obama shared personal details about each of the Navy Yard victims, saying: “These are not statistics. They are the lives that have been taken from us. This is how a single act of violence can ripple.
“A husband lost his wife. Wives have lost their husbands. Sons and daughters have lost their moms and their dads. Little children have lost their grandparents. Hundreds in our communities have lost a neighbor. And thousands here have lost a friend.”
Echoing Obama, Gray told the gathering that “our country is drowning in a sea of guns. . . . Senseless violence like this is an all-too-everyday fact of life here in the District and in our nation’s other big cities. It is a fact of life that we must stop accepting.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obama-promises-push-for-common-sense-gun-laws/2013/09/22/789f8ba6-23ad-11e3-ad0d-b7c8d2a594b9_story.html

Through Hot Mommas Project, one woman sets out to boost the confidence of all women

Bill O'Leary/Washington Post - Kathy Korman-Frey, front, makes a face for a snapshot as she watches the Hot Mommas Project awards with, from left, Sonia Ledwith, Suki Howard, Rachel Eberhard, Francisca Alonso, Korman-Frey, Ify Ofulue and Christianna Pyo.

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By Brigid Schulte, Published: November 3

As the guests filed into Kathy Korman Frey’s Palisades home in the District on Saturday afternoon for the first Hot Mommas Project “Super Bowl of Mentors” global watch party, she handed each a blue notecard and asked them to rate — on a scale of 1 to 10 — how confident they were feeling.
They had come to hear stories about women around the world who, much like themselves, are striving to meet career goals and live full lives outside work. Frey, a George Washington University business professor and Harvard MBA, had gathered the case studies as part of the Hot Mommas Project.
Similar parties in at least 20 other countries — the biggest and most elegant held in Kuwait — watching as Frey announced the project’s 2012-13 winners in a webcast.
Frey calls them “holistic leaders” at work and home. In other words, “Hot Mommas.” And she hopes learning about the winners will inspire other women.
“Our view is, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” Frey said. “Seeing real role models sends women and girls the signal, ‘Oh, I could do this,’ rather than getting discouraged by the usual wall of 6-foot-2 men in blue suits.”
Reams of research studies and surveys in recent years have shown how, as early as elementary school, girls are less confident than boys in their skills and abilities. That gap only grows as girls and boys become adults.
And, Frey argues, that confidence gap is a big reason why statistics show that women tend to earn less money at every level, lag in promotions in every field, and, while female-owned businesses are among the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, they tend to be smaller and attract far less venture capital than male-owned firms.
So Frey has turned her academic research and the Hot Mommas Project into a mission aimed at reversing what she calls that “self-efficacy” gap through the power of storytelling.
She shares stories like that of Eman Al-Awadhi, one of this year’s global case-study winners. Al-Awadhi dreamed of going out on reporting assignments for the Kuwait News Agency. Instead, she was told she belonged, as did all women, behind a desk, in the office, as an editor. “One day, you’ll get married and have children,” her boss told her, even though she was and is single. “This is better for you.”
Instead, Al-Awadhi reported in her free time and routinely worked double shifts to show she could do it. In a few years, that same boss called her and asked her to race out to cover a story about the NATO secretary-general.
“I wanted to share my story to tell other women that we need to find out what we’re good at, what we really want to do, and then fight to do that,” she said. “Even when it’s difficult.”
Other winners — from the United States, Nigeria, India, Croatia, Lithuania, Egypt and other countries — told of their battles to overcome alcoholism, their juggle of work and home demands.
Francisca Alonso, this year’s winner in the science, engineering, math and technology category, shared her story of starting her architecture and construction company in 2001, when her four children were all younger than 5.http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/through-hot-mommas-project-one-woman-sets-out-to-boost-the-confidence-of-all-women/2013/11/02/6bd7ee6a-43fe-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

Prosthetics (Fake) breast is used to fill this movie about the late Playmate Anna Nicole Smith

 

http://uploaded.net/file/22zmq8rn/Lifetime_Anna_Nicole_2013.avi
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Waar (2013) - Pakistani Movie Releasing On 6th Sep - Theatrical Trailer

Waar (2013) - Pakistani Movie Releasing On 6th Sep - Theatrical Trailer

8:13 AM Muhammad Ali

The most anticipated Pakistani movie ever 'WAAR' will be released on 6th September worldwide. The theatrical trailer of the movie is out now. Watch it and support Pakistani productions.

Waar is an English-language Pakistani action film directed by Bilal Lashari. It is written and produced by Hassan Waqas Rana. The film cast include film-star Shaan Shahid, Meesha Shafi, Ali Azmat, Shamoon Abbasi and Ayesha Khan and others.

 http://www.pakistaniyan.com/2013/08/waar-2013-pakistani-movie-releasing-on.html

Seen these on the MRT lately?

News

HANDHOLDS GALORE: One of the MRT trains that has three rows of handrails for commuters to hold on to.

 

PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN/THE STRAITS TIMES

MY_20131010_ALBAR10_P2_3874086.jpg

 

UNIQUE: The new octagonal handrails installed on trains serving the North East Line.

PHOTO: ONG WEE JIN/MY PAPER

Published on Oct 10, 2013

Seen these on the MRT lately?

ADRIAN LIM

TRAIN passengers travelling on the North East Line (NEL) in recent weeks would have noticed something new during their commute.

Nearly all NEL train carriages now have octagonal overhead handrails installed, providing passengers with more handholds.

Frequent NEL commuters whom My Paper spoke to yesterday said they noticed the new handrails on the trains in the past month or so.

A check with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) revealed that 23 of the 25 NEL trains have been equipped with the additional handrails.

The last two trains will be fitted with the handrails in the next two weeks.

This is part of the LTA's move, which was announced in February, to facilitate boarding and spread passengers more uniformly in train carriages.

To be completed by the middle of next year, the initiative involves adding handrails, and removing grab poles at the centre of the train-door area, to enable passengers to get in and out of a train more easily.

Modifications are being made on trains of the North South East West Lines (NSEWL) and Circle Line (CCL) to add two rows of overhead handrails between the seats, in addition to the existing handrails in the centre.

The changes have been made on 33 of the 40 CCL trains so far, with work on the NSEWL trains starting this month.

The NEL trains are getting the octagonal handrails to avoid blocking covers located in the ceiling of the carriages - where train equipment is located - which are accessed regularly during maintenance, explained an LTA spokesman.

Many commuters welcomed the unique design and functionality of the octagonal handrails.

Mr Sugan Ranasamy, 21, a full-time national serviceman, believed they are more accessible and will be better "for the elderly" than the three-horizontal-handrail design for trains on the other lines, because of the octagonal handrails' layout.

"The other train lines should adopt this shape as well," he added.

Retiree K. L. Leow, 67, said that the octagonal shape helps "spread the crowd (out) a bit more".

The centre overhead handrails in the carriage of a NEL train can have 30 handholds attached. But the three octagonal bars that can be found in a carriage add another 24 handholds.

However, some people had reservations about the octagonal handrails. For example, a 1.83m-tall commuter remarked on citizen-journalism website Stomp that he had hit his head against such a handrail.

My Paper understands that the handrails are 1.84m above the carriage floor.

Said 15-year-old student Kam Jia Juo: "People who are using the new handrails may obstruct passengers who are getting up from their seats."