WoW ! Israel strikes house of Hamas Gaza leader, digs in for long fight

Israel’s military pounded targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country should prepare for a long conflict in the Palestinian enclave, squashing any hopes of a swift end to 22 days of fighting.

Gaza residents reported heavy Israeli bombing in Gaza City. Israeli aircraft fired a missile at the house of Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh and flattened it before dawn, causing damage but no casualties, Gaza’s interior ministry said.

At least 30 people were killed in Israeli assaults from air land and sea, residents said, in the most widespread night of attacks so far in the coastal enclave. The Israeli military said five soldiers were killed in a battle with militants who crossed into Israel via a tunnel near the community of Nahal Oz, close to the Gaza border. Israeli Army Radio said the Hamas gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the soldiers who were in a watchtower and then tried to drag one of the soldiers’ bodies into the tunnel back to Gaza, but failed when troops fired at them, killing one militant. Hamas said nine of its fighters carried out the attack.

“They attacked a fortified military watch tower of Nahal Oz where there were a great number of occupation soldiers,” the group’s armed wing, said in a statement. The incident on Monday raised to 10 the number of military fatalities for the day.

Hamas said that its broadcast outlets, Al Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio, were also targeted. The television station continued to broadcast, but the radio station went silent. Residents said that 20 houses were destroyed during the night and two mosques were hit. Israel launched its offensive on July 8 with the aim of halting rocket attacks by Hamas and its allies. It later ordered a land invasion to find and destroy the warren of Hamas tunnels that criss-crosses the border area.

Israel says some of those tunnels reach into Israel and are meant for perpetrating surprise attacks on residents of nearby towns, while other underground passages in Gaza serve as Hamas bunkers and weapon caches. In a televised address on Monday night, a grim-faced Netanyahu said any solution to the crisis would require the demilitarisation of the Palestinian territory, controlled by Hamas Islamists and their militant allies.

“We will not finish the operation without neutralising the tunnels, which have the sole purpose of destroying our citizens, killing our children,” Netanyahu said. As night fell, army flares illuminated the sky and the sound of intense shelling was heard. The military warned thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes around Gaza City usually the prelude to major army strikes.

“We need to be prepared for a lengthy campaign. We will continue to act with force and discretion until our mission is accomplished,”

Netanyahu said. A number of rockets fired from Gaza were launched toward southern and central Israel, including the Tel Aviv area. At least one rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome system. No casualties or damage were reported.

“His threats do not frighten either Hamas or the Palestinian people, and the (Israeli) occupation will pay the price for its massacres against children and civilians,”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE
The explosion of violence, after two days of relative calm appeared to wreck international hopes of turning a brief lull into a longer-term ceasefire.

Foreign pressure has been building on Netanyahu to muzzle his forces. Both U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.N. Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire to allow relief to reach Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians, followed by negotiations on a more durable cessation of hostilities. But the sides are far apart. Israel wants Gaza’s armed groups stripped of weapons. Hamas and its allies want the Israeli-Egyptian blockade lifted.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the region last week to try to stem the bloodshed, his contacts with Hamas – which Washington formally shuns – facilitated by Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel wants Egypt, which also borders the Gaza Strip and views Hamas as a security threat, to take the lead in curbing the Palestinian Islamists. It worries about Doha and Ankara championing Hamas demands.

Tension between Netanyahu’s government and Washington has flared over U.S. mediation efforts, adding another chapter to the prickly relations between the Israeli leader and Obama. In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored what he said was a lack of resolve among all parties.

“It’s a matter of their political will. They have to show their humanity as leaders, both Israeli and Palestinian,”

he told reporters. More than 1,100 Gazans, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict. On the Israeli side, 53 soldiers have been killed in the fighting, as well as three civilians .

The main U.N. agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said more than 167,000 displaced Palestinians had taken shelter in its schools and buildings, following calls by Israel for civilians to evacuate whole neighbourhoods ahead of military operations.

Source : Reuters

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Wow ! Arie Luyendyk Jr., Farmer Chris Soules Being Considered for ABC’s Next Bachelor: Details

Team Arie or Team Chris?! While many fans are rooting for ABC to crown Bachelorette season 10 contestant Chris Soules as the next Bachelor, Us Weekly has learned that former Bachelorette contestant Arie Luyendyk Jr. is in the running, too.

PHOTOS: Bachelor Us Weekly covers
“Arie is being considered and filmed for
promos,” a source tells Us of the 32-year-old hottie, who was runner-up on Emily
Maynard’s season. Another insider adds:

“He already had his packages shot and they even got him a trainer so he could buff up and be camera ready with his shirt off.”

PHOTOS: Bachelor stars’ scandalous pasts However, a third source maintains that farmer Chris, a fan favorite who was sent home by Andi Dorfman prior to the fantasy suite night, is still very much a front-runner.

(Especially among fans! During the live
Bachelorette finale, fans in the studio
audience started chanting Chris’ name when Michelle Money asked host Chris Harrison about the next Bachelor)

“Chris is still on the short list to be the next Bachelor and no decisions have been made,” the insider says. “They wont be announcing the new person for several weeks … but Chris is definitely still in the running.”

Source : US Weekly

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WoW ! Liberia closes its borders to stop Ebola

The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history
continues to plague West Africa as leaders scramble to stop the virus from spreading. Over the weekend, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf closed most of the country’s borders. The few points of entry that are still open will have Ebola testing centers and will implement preventive measures, she said. The president also placed restrictions on public gatherings and ordered hotels, restaurants and other entertainment venues to play a five-minute video on Ebola safety.

“No doubt the Ebola virus is a national health problem,”

Sirleaf said. “It attacks our way of life, with serious economic and social consequences.

As such we are compelled to bring the totality of our national resolve to fight this scourge.” As of July 20, the World Health Organization had confirmed 224 cases of Ebola in Liberia, including 127 deaths. Overall, Ebola has killed at least 660 people in West Africa. There were 45 new cases reported in the region between July 18 and July 20.

Ebola: Fast Facts Health officials are worried about the virus spreading to other countries in the region. This is the first such outbreak to hit West Africa. On Friday, a Liberian man with Ebola died in Lagos, Nigeria, Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said. Patrick Sawyer arrived at Lagos’ airport on July 20 and was isolated at a local hospital after exhibiting common Ebola symptoms. He told officials he had no direct contact with anyone who had the virus.

Lagos State Health Commissioner Dr. Jide Idris said authorities are working to identify people who may have come in contact with the man on his flights. The process has been delayed, he said, because the airline has not provided the passenger lists for all three of the flights Sawyer took. Sawyer flew first to Ghana before he went to Togo and then switched planes to fly to Nigeria, according to the health commissioner.

“In collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Aviation, I’ve also put into motion mechanisms to track down all contacts at high risk,”

Idris said. The state department has identified 59 people so far who came into contact with the man. Twenty have been tested for Ebola.

On Monday, Arik Air, one of Nigeria’s biggest airlines, suspended operations into the country’s capital, Monrovia, and another city called Freetown, according to AllAfrica.com. It is unlikely the virus would spread on a plane unless a passenger were to come into contact with a sick person’s bodily fluids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, American health care workers helping to fight this deadly disease abroad have put themselves at risk.

Dr. Kent Brantly, a 33-year-old Indianapolis resident, had been treating Ebola patients in Monrovia when he started to feel sick. Brantly works with Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian international relief agency founded by evangelists Franklin Graham and Robert Pierce. He has been the medical director for the Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia and has been working to help Ebola patients since October. Deadliest ever outbreak: what you need to know

“When the Ebola outbreak hit, he took on responsibilities with our Ebola direct clinical treatment response, but he was serving in a missionary hospital in Liberia
prior to his work with Ebola patients,” said Melissa Strickland, a spokeswoman for the organization. After testing positive for Ebola, he went into treatment at a Samaritan’s Purse isolation center at ELWA Hospital in Paynesville City, Monrovia.

His condition is rapidly deteriorating and Samaritan’s Purse has been working to evacuate him for better care, but Liberia is not allowing the evacuation, according to Samaritan’s Purse vice president of international relief, Ken Isaacs. The reason for the delay is unclear. The CDC said the doctor’s family had been with him, but left for the United States before he became symptomatic; as such it is highly unlikely that they caught the virus from him. Out of an abundance of caution they are on a 21-day fever watch, the CDC said. Another American working with Samaritan’s Purse has also been infected.

Nancy Writebol from Charlotte, North Carolina, works with Serving in Mission, or SIM. She and her husband used to work with orphans and other children who struggle with poverty-related issues but expanded their efforts to take on the complex medical problems in Monrovia. She had teamed up with the staff from Samaritan’s Purse to help fight the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia when she got sick. She, too, is undergoing treatment.

A spokesperson for Samaritan’s Purse said there have been riots outside the clinic. Another doctor who has played a key role in fighting the outbreak in Sierra Leone, Dr. Sheik Humarr Kahn, is sick. He is being treated by the French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres –also known as Doctors Without Borders — in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, according to a representative of that agency.

Kahn had been overseeing treatment of Ebola patients in isolation units at Kenema Government Hospital, which is about 185 miles (298 kilometers) east of the capital, Freetown. Sierra Leone’s minister of health and sanitation called the doctor a national hero for the sacrifices he has made in trying to stop the outbreak. Doctors and medical staff are particularly vulnerable to the virus because it spreads through exposure to bodily fluids from the infected. It can also spread through contact with an object contaminated by an infected person’s bodily fluids.

The disease is not contagious until symptoms appear. Symptoms of Ebola include fever, fatigue and headaches. They can appear two to 21 days after infection, meaning many who are sick don’t know it. The early symptoms then can progress to vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function, and sometimes internal and external bleeding. Leaders in the international health community characterize the Ebola epidemic as the

“deadliest ever.”

While the World Health Organization has
mobilized to fight the epidemic, it can be a difficult one to stop. It is so highly infectious that it typically kills 90% of those who catch it. The death rate in this particular outbreak had dropped to roughly 60% since it has been treated early in many cases. There is, however, no Ebola vaccination.

Is it time to test experimental vaccines?
With the announcement that Liberia is closing its borders, the country also instituted a new travel policy to inspect and test all outgoing and incoming passengers. The hope is that such measures will stop the spread of the virus. There has never been a confirmed case of Ebola spreading to a developed country, said Kamiliny Kalahne, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders.

“This is because people generally transmit the infection when they are very sick, have a high fever and a lot of symptoms — and in these situations, they don’t travel.

“And even if they do get sick once they travel to a developed country, they will be in a good hospital with good infection control, so they are very unlikely to infect others,” she said.

“This is not the great plague,” CNN’s Dr.

Sanjay Gupta said after his trip to the region in the spring. “But it is a pretty formidable killer.” “The grim reality is it often kills so quickly, people don’t have time to spread it.”

The CDC held a media briefing Monday to emphasize the fact that there is “no significant risk in the U.S.” for an Ebola outbreak. CDC officials said with the spread of Ebola to U.S. health care workers, there is a real need for “vigilance” to make sure workers are careful, get tested if there is any suspicion of illness, and that all sick travelers should remain isolated when returning from areas affected directly by the epidemic. Stephan Monroe, CDC’s deputy director of the National Center for Emerging & Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said the CDC is working with American health care providers to educate them about Ebola.

The agency sent a notice Monday to remind doctors to take important steps to avoid the spread of the illness, including asking their patients about their travel history, particularly if they have traveled to West Africa in the last three weeks.

Source : CNN

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WoW ! Chris Brown fuels Rihanna reunion rumours

Chris Brown is either trying to make Karrueche jealous or he still has a thing for Rihanna. Last week, Rihanna’s bff Melissa Forde posted a throwback photo of Chris Brown and Rihanna at a park sparking rumors of a possible reunion…and now Chris Brown has added more fuel to the fire So here’s what happened. After Chris Brown posted a picture of himself in bed on his instagram page yesterday, a fan photoshopped Rihanna into the pic and posted it on instagram (pic above).

A few minutes later, Chris Brown ‘liked’ the photo knowing full well that people will notice, sparking more rumours of their inevitable re-union…we are
waiting!

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WoW ! Bokoharam Kidnaps Cameroon’s Vice Prime Minister’s Wife

Reports has it that the wife of Cameroon’s vice prime minister has been kidnapped by the dreaded Islamic sect BOKOHARAM. This group have operating with impunity of late in the Northern part of Nigeria and have also taken some tolls on Cameroon. I hope this will help make the both countries work together to bring an end to this menace.

Boko Haram militants attacked Kolofata, a town in Cameroon’s Far North Region near Nigeria, on Sunday and seized several people including the wife of Cameroon’s Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali, a military commander in the region said.

France24 Live on TV.

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WoW ! Cristiano Ronaldo Teaming Up With Lil Wayne..Rapper Starting Sports Manage

Cristiano Ronaldo is about to become a YOUNG MONEY CASH MONEY BILLIONAIRE … because sources tell TMZ Sports Lil Wayne is starting his own
sports management company and Ronaldo will be client #1.
Our sources tell us … Weezy has been wanting to get into the sports management game for a while and
has had his sights set on the Team Portugal stud …

Not just because he’s a huge sports star, but because they’re friends. We’re told Weezy’s company will be working with
PolarisSports — which is affiliated with the CAA agency and GestiFute — through which Ronaldo’s agent Jorge Mendes operates.

Our sources tell us Wayne’s company will handle Ronaldo’s sports management affairs in the United States — everything from branding to marketing and endorsement deals. Even modeling.
Seems Ronaldo is pumped about the situation — he just posted a photo with the Prime Minister of Japan along with other Japanese politicians … and they
were all throwing up the YMCMB sign.
Congratulations to them !!

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WoW ! Why Abdulmutallab Failed To Blow Up Our Plane – US

The United States has said that the Nigerian terrorist, Umar Abdulmutallab, failed to successfully carry out a bomb attack in 2009 because the explosives he was wired with became ‘degraded’ after he wore the same pair of underpants for two weeks.

Abdulmutallab had, at the age of 23, confessed to and convicted of attempting to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while aboard a Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Michigan, US on December 25, 2009. However, United States officials explained that the bomb failed to detonate aboard the flight, which was carrying nearly 300 people, but caused a brief fire that caused burns to his groin.

He was sentenced to life without parole in February 2012 after he pleaded guilty to all charges on the second day of his trial the previous October. The U.S. Head of the Transportation Security Administration, John Pistole, said during the week that the bomb failed to detonate because of how long Abdulmutallab had been wearing his underwear. Pistole said, “The bomber had had the device with him for over two weeks.”

When he was then asked whether the bomb had become ‘damp’ Pistole replied that the explosive had become damp due to the length of days Abdulmutallab carried the device in his underwear. During his trial, Abdulmutallab said the bomb in his underwear was a ‘blessed weapon’ to avenge poorly treated Muslims around the world.

However, after the bomb failed to detonate, passengers pounced on Abdulmutallab and forced him to the front of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 where he was held until the plane landed minutes later.

Source: The Punch

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WoW ! Bad weather seen as probable cause of Air Algerie crash

Poor weather was the most likely cause of the crash of an Air Algerie flight in the West African country of Mali that killed all 118 people on board, French officials said on Friday.

Investigators at the scene of the crash in northern Mali concluded the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft broke apart when it smashed into the ground early on Thursday morning, the officials said, suggesting this meant it was unlikely to have been the victim of an attack.

“French soldiers who are on the ground have started
the first investigations,

” French President Francois Hollande told reporters. “Sadly, there are no survivors.”

The death toll, initially announced as 116, was revised up to 118 after a final passenger manifest was issued. An earlier count of 51 French nationals among the dead was also raised to 54 by the French Foreign Ministry to include those with dual nationality.

French, Malian and Dutch soldiers from a U.N. peacekeeping force (MINUSMA) secured the crash site, which lies about 80 km (50 miles) south of the northern Malian town of Gossi, near the Burkina Faso border. Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore visited the remote site on Friday to express his condolences. Photos on his official Facebook page showed him walking solemnly past scraps of clothing and gnarled sheets of metal.

France sent troops to Mali last year to halt an al Qaeda-backed insurgency and has about 1,600 soldiers based in Mali, mostly in the northern city of Gao. French officials said there were no signs of insurgent activity in the area of the crash. Malian authorities said they were opening an international inquiry into flight AH5017, which crashed less than an hour after it left the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou en route for Algiers.

Aviation authorities lost contact with the flight at around 0155 GMT on Thursday, shortly after the pilot requested to change course due to a storm. Hollande said one of the black box flight recorders had been recovered and would be analyzed.

“The plane’s debris is concentrated in a small area but it is too early to draw conclusions,” he said. “There are theories, especially the weather, but I’m not excluding any theory.”

SCATTERED DEBRIS
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the crash site covered an area of about 300 meters by 300 meters and was an arduous six-hour drive from Gossi, making it difficult for forensic teams to reach it.

International police agency Interpol said it was deploying a team to help identify the victims, who came from 15 different countries. Remains recovered at the site would first be taken to Gao before being repatriated “as quickly as possible”, Fabius said.

According to regional air safety body ASECNA, the area was “the scene of storm systems potentially dangerous for a plane”. It also said that it had forecast the bad weather and that the information was available to all aircraft in the affected area.

Another plane crash is likely to add to nerves over flying a week after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine, and after a TransAsia Airways plane crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday. Television footage issued by Burkinabe officials showed hundreds of small pieces of debris scattered across flat scrubland among pools of muddy water, suggesting a heavy storm.

“We’re not even sure that we can piece together the bodies they have been so badly destroyed,” Burkina Faso Prime Minister Luc Adolphe Tiao told a news conference in Ouagadougou.

Alidou Ouedraogo, whose daughter was among the 27 citizens of Burkina Faso killed in the crash, said: “They have to do everything to reassemble the bodies and bring them home so that we can mourn properly.” A local official in the town of Gossi told Reuters on

Thursday that local herders, who said they saw the plane crash, told him it was in flames before it hit the ground. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the plane was destroyed only on impact and said poor weather was the likeliest cause.

Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said the strong smell of aircraft fuel and the small radius of the crash site suggested the cause of the crash was linked to weather, a technical problem or an accumulation of both. “We exclude – and have done so from the start – any ground strike,” Cuvillier told France 2 television.

Burkina Faso authorities said the passenger list also included Burkinabes, Lebanese, Algerians, Canadians, Germans, Luxembourgers, a Cameroonian, a Belgian, an Egyptian, a Ukrainian, a Swiss, a Nigerian and a Malian. Plane owner Swiftair said the six crew were Spanish.

Source : Reuters

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WoW ! Indian rape suspects beaten by angry mob after 7yr old girl is found hanging from a tree

One man was killed and two others were badly hurt today by villagers in India who accused them of raping and hanging a seven-year-old girl.

The girl was discovered hanging from a tree near the village of Kaliabazar, West Bengal, this morning and angry villagers quickly rounded up a local ‘Tantrik’ holy man and his two friends. The trio were severely beaten. One later died in hospital and the two others are still being treated.

It was a grim reminder of the recent gang-rape case in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, where two sisters were raped and then hanged from a tree outside their village. After a string of high-profile cases, India has become notorious for savage sexual attacks on often young women and girls.

However, the number of rapes recorded in the country is still far lower than countries such as the U.S. and UK, according to figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. The victim in the most-recent case had gone missing last night, after apparently going out to the neighbourhood shop.

The Hindustan Times reports that people went around the village to gather a search party, which found her body handing from a tree. Word spread and rumours began circulating that she had been gang-raped, spurring villagers to round up Ratan Das, a local Tantrik, or Hindu witchdoctor, and two of his associates.

The mob beat up the men and also set fire to a house belonging to Das, who had been seen with the victim yesterday morning. Then they went to police. Sukesh Kumar Jain, East Midnapore Superintendent of Police, told the Hindustan Times: ‘The father of the girl lodged a complaint at the local police station against three persons.

‘One of the three accused has already died.’

There is as yet no evidence that the girl was raped before she was killed. Police said they are not ruling out a family feud as the motive behind the killing.

‘We are awaiting the autopsy report to confirm rape,’ said a police officer. ‘There was also some enmity between the families of the girl and the prime accused, Ratan Das.’

Source : UK Daily Mail

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WoW ! Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg now richer than Google owners

When Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page became billionaires many years ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was still struggling with the
social networking site. But now he’s richer than them, this is according to Bloomberg. Read the full report
from Bloomberg below…

The Facebook Inc. chairman added $1.6 billion to his fortune yesterday after the world’s largest social network closed at a record. The surge elevated the 30-year-old’s net worth to $33.3 billion, moving him past Brin, 40, and Page, 41, as well as Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, 50, on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Zuckerberg is No. 16 on the ranking. The Google founders are 17th and 18th. Bezos occupies the 20th spot.

“He’s just getting started,” David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect,” said in a telephone interview. “He’s going to become the richest person on the planet.”

The Menlo Park, California-based company posted second-quarter sales that soared 61 percent to $2.91 billion yesterday, exceeding analysts’ average estimate of $2.81 billion. The company’s revenue gain follows Google’s results last week, when the Web- search company posted sales that topped analysts’ estimates, largely based on the strength of online ads.

Facebook has jumped 183 percent in the past 12 months, the biggest rally in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company trades at 82-times reported earnings, compared to a multiple of 18.2 for the S&P 500. Google is up 7.5 percent for the year.

Mobile promotions accounted for 62 percent of ad sales, up from 59 percent in the prior period. Net income more than doubled to $791 million, with profit excluding some items at 42 cents a share, above the projection of 32 cents. In total, Facebook accounted for 5.8 percent of worldwide digital ad revenue in 2013, up from 4.1 percent in 2012, according to EMarketer Inc.

The company’s performance also propelled the fortunes of other Facebook shareholders, including Dustin Moskovitz, the 30-year-old who started the social network with Zuckerberg at Harvard University a decade ago, and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s 44- year-old chief operating officer who became one of the world’s youngest female billionaires in January. Sandberg owns about 9.9 million shares valued at $740 million and has collected more than $550 million in share sales.

“The company’s success is growing by the minute,” Kirkpatrick said. “There’s no sign it’s going to slow anytime soon.”

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