Miscellaneous News

let's face it:
Sister Danielle said the two men filmed their attack. “They didn’t see me leave,” she told the French channel BFMTV. “They were busy with their knives. They were filming themselves preaching in Arabic in front of the altar. It was a horror. Jacques was an extraordinary priest. He was a great man, Father Jacques.”
Men who murdered priest in Normandy church were Isis followers, says Hollande
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Catholic church is against using violence towards followers of other religions and is openly against discrimination etc. There are surely more Christians around the world who get killed and discriminated around the world (mainly in Africa) because of their believs than any other religion's followers right now so I would call the way you write about those matters as pretty bad... It's a serious problem.

To be fair many branches of Christianity and the Catholic church have active missionaries prowling the world trying to convert non-believers, which can be reasonably considered provocative especially since these efforts are often international, exploit local problems, and systemically supported by religious organizations.
 

Franklin

Captain
Very interesting how negative news coverage in the run up to a Olympic game is bad for the organizers but good for the broadcasters or in this particular case NBC.

NBC exec: 'Negative stories good for ad sales'

Negative stories in the run-up to an Olympics are nothing new. We saw them in Beijing in relation to human rights abuses in China, and in Sochi, regarding the city’s readiness to host the Games.

However, with the Rio Games, we seem to have reached a new level of negativity with Zika, protests, security concerns, and questions over not just the readiness of venues and athlete accommodations, but of the city’s very infrastructure. You’re probably thinking, this kind of negative press can’t be good for anybody.

Apparently, that’s not entirely true. Someone is in fact benefiting from the negative reports that have impacted ticket sales and led to many of the world’s top athletes dropping out of the Games altogether. Who you ask?

A television network.

That’s right, NBC. The old “Proud Peacock.” According to network executives, all these negative stories about Zika, social unrest and sewage-infested waters have raised awareness about the Games, and this has in turn helped to boost the network’s ad sales.

“The stories on the issues have really helped us, we believe,” said Seth Winters, head of advertising for NBC Sports, speaking on a conference call to reporters.

Advertisers for the Rio Olympics include many of the usual suspects with automotive, beverage, telecommunication, insurance and entertainment companies all buying ad time during the Games. Being an election year, Winters also indicated that at least one political campaign had bought airtime, although he declined to specify which one.

NBC has already sold $1.2 billion in national advertising, a figure that encompasses broadcast, cable and digital advertising. Considering the network paid $1.2 billion for the broadcast rights to the Rio Olympics, it has already broken even on that regard.

The network is also going further with its coverage of this year’s Games with 2,084 hours of coverage planned across 11 networks, and 260.5 hours slated for NBC alone. More coverage equals more advertising, which means more money for the network, Zika mosquitoes be damned.

About 75 percent of the advertising revenue NBC generates will come from ads aired during prime time on NBC, with Winters stating the network is already sold out of “premium inventory.”

“We’ve surpassed what we thought was at one point an unobtainable threshold,” said Winters.

Having hit its internal targets for ad sales well in advance, NBC is holding on to additional ad inventory until the games are underway.

So while ticket sales are floundering and people in Brazil are scratching their heads and wondering what’s in it for them, it’s a boom-time for the network. In fact, NBC expects the Rio Olympics to be the most profitable in history.

NBC’s broadcast will also benefit from the time difference in Rio, which is only one hour ahead of the East Coast. This means that most events will be televised live during prime time, further ratcheting up the network’s take from advertising dollars.

The great 19th-century showman and circus owner P.T. Barnum used to say “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

It looks like in the case of the Rio Olympics, Mr. Barnum was right.

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Equation

Lieutenant General
Prayers to all the victims at a recent earth quake incidents in central Italy.:(

Italy rescuers toil through night seeking quake survivors as death toll hits 159

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August 24, 2016


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The quake struck just after 3:30 a.m. and was felt across a broad section of central Italy, including the capital Rome where people in homes in the historic center felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks. First images of damage showed debris in the street and some collapsed buildings in towns and villages that dot much of the Umbrian countryside.
By Steve Scherer

ACCUMOLI, Italy (Reuters) - Rescue teams were working through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble that remained of central Italian towns flattened by an earthquake that hit in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least 159 people.

One hotel that collapsed in the small town of Amatrice probably had about 70 guests, and only seven bodies had so far been recovered, said the mayor of the town that was one of the worst hit by the quake.

The strong 6.2 magnitude quake razed homes and buckled roads in a cluster of mountain communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome. It was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicenter.

"Tonight will be our first nightmare night," said Alessandro Gabrielli, one of hundreds preparing to sleep in tents erected by rescue workers in fields and parking lots, each one housing 12 people whose homes had been destroyed.

"Last night, I woke up with a sound that sounded like a bomb," he added.

Rescuers working with emergency lighting in the darkness saved a 10-year-old girl, pulling her out of the rubble alive, where she had lain for some 17 hours in the hamlet of Pescara del Tronto.

Many other children were not so lucky. In the nearby village of Accumoli, a family of four, including two boys aged 8 months and 9 years, were buried when their house imploded.

As rescue workers carried away the body of the infant, carefully covered by a small blanket, the children's grandmother blamed God: "He took them all at once," she wailed.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said the Cabinet would meet on Thursday to decide measures to help the affected communities.

"Today is a day for tears, tomorrow we can talk of reconstruction," he told reporters late on Wednesday as he announced 120 bodies had been found and 368 people had been taken to hospital.

TOLL COULD CLIMB

The death toll rose to 159 a few hours later. With people still unaccounted for, the civil protection department warned it could climb higher.

Aerial photographs showed whole areas of Amatrice, last year voted one of Italy's most beautiful historic towns, flattened by the quake. Inhabitants of the four worst-hit small towns rise by as much as tenfold in the summer, and many of those killed or missing were visitors.

Amatrice's mayor, Sergio Pirozzi, said its best-known accommodation, Hotel Roma, which probably had around 70 guests at the time of the quake, had collapsed and only seven bodies had been found under the rubble.

The civil protection agency said it was trying to determine how many people were staying in the hotel.

Most of the damage was in the Lazio and Marche regions, with Lazio bearing the brunt of the damage and the biggest toll. Neighboring Umbria was also affected. All three regions are dotted with centuries-old buildings susceptible to earthquakes.

Italy's earthquake institute, INGV, said the epicenter was near Accumoli and Amatrice, which lie between the larger towns of Ascoli Piceno to the northeast and Rieti to the southwest.

It was relatively shallow at 4 km (2.5 miles) below the earth's surface. INGV reported 150 aftershocks in the 12 hours following the initial quake, the strongest measuring 5.5.

Italy sits on two fault lines, making it one of the most seismically active countries in Europe.

The last major earthquake to hit the country struck the central city of L'Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

The most deadly temblor since the start of the 20th century came in 1908, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami killed an estimated 80,000 people in the southern regions of Reggio Calabria and Sicily.
 

SouthernSky

Junior Member
Truck bomb attack on Police headquarters in south east Turkey.

A truck bomb explosion has rocked a police headquarters in the town of Cizre in Turkey, killing at least 11 people and injuring scores, officials say, in the latest in a spate of attacks in the country's turbulent south-east.

The bomb attack caused immense damage to the headquarters of the special anti-riot police force in Cizre, with television pictures showing an immense plume of black smoke heading into the sky.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A dozen ambulances and two helicopters reportedly rushed to the scene.

Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci, speaking on broadcaster NTV, said 11 police officers were killed and 78 were wounded.

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Cizre is located in Sirnak, a province that borders both Syria and Iraq and has a largely Kurdish population.

Officials blamed the attack on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — which has been involved in almost daily clashes in the region since last July and vowed to retaliate.

"We will give those vile [attackers] the answer they deserve," Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told a news conference in Istanbul.

"No terrorist organisation can hold Turkey captive."

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the rebels took up arms in 1984.

On Thursday Interior Minister Efkan Ala accused the group of attacking a convoy carrying the main opposition party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

The Government
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this month in the south-east.

The group has claimed responsibility for at least one attack, on a police station.

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