Celebrate Poetry Day

World Poetry Day is on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to "give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements."

It was generally celebrated in October, sometimes on the 5th, but in the latter part of the 20th Century the world community celebrated it on 15 October, the birthday of Virgil, the Roman epic poet and poet laureate under Augustus. The tradition to keep an October date for national or international poetry day celebrations still holds in many countries. Alternately, a different October or even November date is celebrated.

Doubling as International Year of Biodiversity and of the Rapprochement of Cultures, 2010 celebrates two essential facets of diversity: the heritage which is key to human life on Earth.Through poetry and science, humanity has been able to capture a full range of the world’s diversity.   From their distinctive perspectives, poetry and science embody humanity’s noblest quest: that which UNESCO’s Constitution identifies as “the unrestricted pursuit of truth”.   It is in this spirit that World Poetry Day (21 March) is observed at UNESCO through an afternoon devoted to the poetic vision of nature. PROGRAMME: 2:30 - Hommage to Rabindanath Tagore, Pablo Neruda, Aimé Césaire. Readings by Christian Deudon, Catherine Jarrette, Sharmilla Roy 3:15 - The Poetic Perspective and Scientifique Knowledge. Poetry Readings by José Muchnik and Christian Deudon (photos Alejandra Borcel) 3:30 - Great Voices. Basho, Yves Bonnefoy, Seamus Heany, Garcia Lorca, Tchicaya U Tam'si, Marina Tsvetaieva. Poetry Readings by Nicole Barrière, Jean François Blavin, Catherine Jarrette, Leanne O'Sullivan 4:00 - Haïti Trembles. Poetry Readings by Jean Metellus, Jean Herold Paul, Jean-Yves Bertogal , Ferdy Ajax 4:30 - Nature in Poetry. Invited Poets : Nicole Barrière, Jean François Blavin, Daouda Ndiaye, Yadollah Royai, Leanne O'Sullivan            

David Mikael Taclino
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Cook Put Body Hair in Police Sandwich

Police said a cook put a body hair in the bagel sandwich of a police officer who had given him tickets in the past.

The cook was arrested Feb. 21 in the kitchen of Good Foods to Go in Evesham. The police officer ticketed the cook in March 2009 when he failed to pull over for a traffic violation.

The cook spent four hours in jail before his wife bailed him out, and was fired from his job.

The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill reports police asked them not to report the incident for fear of copycat crimes. The paper published the story anyway.

David Mikael Taclino
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45 Years Overdue Book Returned in UK

 It's common to return a library book late — but not by half a century.

Staff at a British library say they were surprised and puzzled when they received a book that was 45 years overdue through their mailbox.

Alison Lawrie, the principal assistant at Dinnington Library, near northern England's Sheffield, says the Penguin first edition copy of "Quartermass and the Pit" by Nigel Kneale was due back on Oct. 15, 1965.

She says the borrower remains a mystery because the library records don't go back that far, and the sender didn't attach a letter or note with the book.

Lawrie said Friday the sender need not worry about a hefty fine.

She says: "If the person who returned the book wants to come forward, we'd love to know the story behind it."
David Mikael Taclino
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Brillante's Lola Grandslam Triumph

“Lola” won three awards in the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival held in Spain Saturday (Madrid time).
It won the Lady Harmiguada de Oro or Grand Prize, Best Cinematography for Odyssey Flores and Best Actress for lead stars Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio.
In 2006, Auraeus Solito’s “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” won the top prize in the Gran Canaria fest.
In 2008, Mendoza won the Signis Award in the Gran Canaria fest for “Foster Child.”
“Lola” earlier won the top prizes in the Dubai and Miami film fests.
“Lola” is also competing in the Fribourg fest in Switzerland and the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong this weekend.

David Mikael Taclino
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Biazon Protest of Banning in Villar's Mall

The orange camp apparently sees red in the color yellow.
Sen. Rodolfo Biazon found out Saturday that the color yellow of his presidential candidate, Liberal Party standard-bearer Sen. Benigno "Noynoy’’ Aquino was not welcome in a mall owned by Nacionalista Party standard-bearer Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. in his hometown of Muntinlupa City.
An irked Biazon said that personnel of Metropolis, a mall owned by Villar, had not only taken down a yellow streamer of Aquino which his camp had put up there but also kicked out altogether his party from the premises.
But more galling for Biazon was that mall personnel also took down yellow ribbons and flowers adorning the space of his next-door neighbor there and then replaced them with decorations in the color orange—Villar’s campaign color.
"They came... like the Gestapo,’’ said Biazon, a former armed forces chief of staff, in reference to the term feared secret service of Adolf Hitler, the German behind the Second World War.
In a phone interview, Biazon said his staff had rented space on the fourth floor of the mall and since last week had already held three voter education and training sessions for his poll watchers.
But on Saturday, the training program did not push through after mall personnel "kicked us out’’ from the premises, according to the senator.
He said the decision of mall personnel to cancel their rental of the space came after they took down the yellow streamer bearing the immages of Aquino and his running mate Sen. Mar Roxas, which his staff had put up.
"We paid for the place. They have no business to do that,’’ said Biazon, adding that he planned to "take action’’ but would first consult his son, senatorial candidate Rep. Ruffy Biazon.
But, apparently, Biazon’s space was not only the object of the mall’s attention.
The senator said that earlier on Saturday, he was a guest speaker at the graduation rites for children of five Muntinlupa day care centers that was held just next door to the space occupied by his office in the same mall.
Before he arrived to deliver a speech, Biazon said day care center officials were aghast when mall personnel came in and suddenly took down all yellow ribbons and flowers adorning the stage.
"And to think there were other decorations there in green and blue,’’ he said.
Mall personnel later replaced the decorations with those in orange color, according to Biazon.
He said he pitied the teachers who were just trying to make the place special for the kids.
"They’re acting as if the owner is the President of the republic,’’ scoffed Biazon, saying that even if Villar was president, his men "have no right to do that.’’
The Inquirer was still trying to get a comment from the Villar camp Saturday evening.


David Mikael Taclino
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Boyscout Coverup on Sex Abuse

The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years.
The "perversion files," a nickname the Boy Scouts are said to have used for the documents, have rarely been seen by the public, but that could all change in the coming weeks in an Oregon courtroom.
The lawyer for a man who was molested in the 1980s by a Scout leader has obtained about 1,000 Boy Scouts sex files and is expected to release some of them at a trial that began Wednesday. The lawyer says the files show how the Boy Scouts have covered up abuse for decades.
The trial is significant because the files could offer a rare window into how the Boy Scouts have responded to sex abuse by Scout leaders. The only other time the documents are believed to have been presented at a trial was in the 1980s in Virginia.
At the start of the Oregon trial, attorney Kelly Clark recited the Boy Scout oath and the promise to obey Scout law to be "trustworthy." Then he presented six boxes of documents that he said will show "how the Boy Scouts of America broke that oath."
He held up file folder after file folder he said contained reports of abuse from around the country, telling the jury the efforts to keep them secret may have actually set back efforts to prevent child abuse nationally.
"The Boy Scouts of America ignored clear warning signs that Boy Scouts were being abused," Clark said.
Charles Smith, attorney for the national Boy Scouts, said in his own opening statement the files were kept under wraps because they "were replete with confidential information."
Smith told the jury the files helped national scouting leaders weed out sex offenders, especially repeat offenders who may have changed names or moved in order to join another local scouting organization.
"They were trying to do the right thing by trying to track these folks," Smith said.
Clark is seeking $14 million in damages on behalf of a 37-year-old man who was sexually molested in the early 1980s in Portland by an assistant Scoutmaster, Timur Dykes.
Clark said the victim suffered mental health problems, bad grades in school, drug use, anxiety, difficulty maintaining relationships and lost several jobs over the years because of the abuse.
Dykes was convicted three times between 1983 and 1994 of sexually abusing boys, most of them Scouts.
Although there have been dozens of lawsuits against the organization over sex abuse allegations, judges for the most part have either denied requests for the files or the lawsuits have been settled before they went to trial.
The Boy Scouts had fought to keep the files being used in the Portland trial confidential. But they lost a pretrial legal battle when the Oregon Supreme Court rejected their argument that opening the files could damage the lives and reputations of people not a party to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because the Mormons acted as a charter organization, or sponsor, for the local Boy Scouts troop that included the victim. But the church has settled its portion of the case.
The Portland trial comes as the Boy Scouts are marking their 100th anniversary.
"They spent a century building the Boy Scout brand," said Patrick Boyle, author of a book about sex abuse in the Boy Scouts. "It's one of the most respected organizations in the world."
The trial "can only erode what they have been doing for 100 years," he said.
The Portland case centers on whether the Boy Scouts of America did enough to protect boys from Dykes.
The Mormon bishop who also served as head of the Scout troop, Gordon McEwen, confronted Dykes after receiving a report of abuse by the mother of one boy in the troop in January 1983.
In a video deposition played for the jury, the bishop said Dykes admitted abusing 17 boys.
But McEwen said he contacted the parents of all 17 boys and the boys themselves, and none would confirm any abuse.
Dykes was arrested in 1983 and pleaded guilty to attempted sexual abuse, received probation and was ordered to stay away from children.
Clark told the jury Dykes continued with his scouting activities until he was arrested in July 1984 during a routine traffic stop while he was driving a van full of Scouts on a camping trip.
A spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America at its headquarters in Irving, Texas, said in a statement the organization cannot comment on details of the case. But it has worked hard on awareness and prevention efforts, including background checks.
"Unfortunately, child abuse is a societal problem and there is no fail-safe method for screening out abusers," Deron Smith said.

David Mikael Taclino
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Killings Highlights Indonesian Child Abuse

 When a seemingly kind street vendor confessed to the sexual abuse and murders of 14 boys, it was a story that was both shocking--and familiar.
Indonesians drew parallels to another Jakarta man, Robot Gedek, who died of a heart attack in 2007 while on death row for raping and killing 12 boys in the mid-1990s.
In both cases, most of the victims were homeless. The serial killings highlight what activists say is a widespread and largely ignored problem: the rampant sex abuse of poor children in this Southeast Asian nation.
The vendor pushed a cart through the bustling streets of Jakarta, the capital, selling snacks, drinks and cigarettes. He went by one name, Baikuni, and street kids called him "Babe" (pronounced bar-bay), an affectionate term for "Dad."
The 48-year-old man was known for having a soft heart for street kids, many of whom he took home and gave temporary shelter, apparently without molesting them.
Others he strangled, sometimes before and sometimes after sodomizing them, he told police.
Baikuni was arrested in his rented house in January, days after the severed head and several body parts of 9-year-old Ardiansyah were found in a black plastic bag in a nearby river.
In police custody, he confessed to murdering 14 boys, aged 6 to 12, from 1995 to Jan. 8 of this year.
"In the beginning, he just lured them to his home, sodomized them, then dumped the bodies," police investigator Lt. Col. Nico Afinta said.
Later, starting in 2007, he decapitated and mutilated his victims after strangling them with rope.
His last victim was a neighbor. Ardiansyah's mother knew her son had been spending time at Baikuni's house in recent months and immediately suspected him.
"Why was Babe caught? Because he violated his own procedure of luring victims who were strangers from outside his neighborhood," a psychologist who questioned Baikuni in prison, Sarlito Wirawan Sarwono, told reporters.
In an unexplained twist, Baikuni also may have been a witness in the case against Gedek, though police and Baikuni's lawyers deny that.
Gedek's former lawyer, Febri Irmansyah, told reporters that he believes Baikuni testified under another name in 1997, telling a court that he saw Gedek carry a young victim into bushes in central Jakarta in 1995.
Police say Baikuni wasn't a witness.
Baikuni did know Gedek, a homeless man who eked out a living by selling plastic bottles for recycling. But one of Baikuni's lawyers, Haposan Nainggolan, said his client knew Gedek only as two men who worked the same streets would.
Seto Mulyaqdi, chairman of the independent National Commission on Child Protection, said that reports of sexual abuse and missing children suggest there are more victims of Baikuni and other killers, both in Jakarta and the cities of Makassar and Medan.
"I think there are more people like Babe. This is the tip of an iceberg," he said.
Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian adviser to New York-based Human Rights Watch, said he believes most street kids have been sexually abused, based on his interviews with children.
"When you are seven or eight, you are already being abused. It's a big problem in a place as crowded as Java," he said, referring to Indonesia's main island, where most of the nation's 235 million people live.
Frans Hendra Winarta, a prominent Jakarta trial lawyer who is chairman of the Indonesian Advocates Association, said the current police priority is tackling corruption, not child abuse or murder.
Police lack the money and resources to tackle all the nation's crime, he said, adding that victims who are wealthy enough to pay for a police investigation, including "bonuses" for investigators, could get their crimes investigated.
"Whether you're rich or poor, you have to pay the police, otherwise they won't notice you," Winarta said. "That's the problem with this country."

David Mikael Taclino
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Another Colombian Journalist Killed

 The killing of a veteran radio reporter by a motorcycle gunman in a northwestern state capital reignited concerns yesterday about the safety of journalists in Colombia.
Clodomiro Castilla, a reporter and announcer at La Voz de Monteria radio, was gunned down on his front porch Friday night, said Jaime Cuervo, a judicial investigator in Cordoba state.
Castilla, a 50-year-old father of four, had reported on far-right drug-funded militias known as paramilitaries and their friendly ties to the area's business elite. Cordoba has long been a paramilitary stronghold.
Police had no immediate suspects in the killing and offered a $26,000 reward for leads. Castilla's employer said he had received threats and was assigned bodyguards for two years until last year.
Journalists once were frequent targets in Colombia, where the cocaine trade exacerbates a half-century civil conflict in which the paramilitaries arose to counter kidnapping and extortion by leftist rebels.
 Killings have recently declined, though many journalists say that has coincided with significant self-censorship.
Castilla was the second journalist killed since the start of 2009 — with none killed the previous year, according to the Colombian Foundation for the Freedom of Press.
President Alvaro Uribe, who owns a ranch just outside Monteria, expressed concern in a nationally televised speech.
"We have made every effort to stop the threat of assassinations against journalists," he said. "Just when we thought we had overcome the tragic situation, more killings of journalists appear."
Castilla was known for his reports on the activities of Salvatore Mancuso, a local paramilitary boss extradited in 2008 to the United States on drug-trafficking charges, and on Mancuso's ties to powerful business interests in the region, said Rafael Gomez, owner and director of La Voz de Monteria.
Gomez's radio station is a rarity in Monteria: a media outlet unafraid to report in depth on such links.
"We are in the worst location in Colombia," Gomez said. "Nobody dares to say anything. We are the only ones."

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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ABC 5's New Beginning

 Having spent the best times of our life with the pre-martial law ABC-Channel 5 owned by the Roces media moguls in the ‘70s, we had always hoped that the padlocked studios in Pasong Tamo would one day re-open. EDSA 1 came and went, the Marcoses were driven into exile, all other television networks had reopened, but Channel 5 remained silent and inactive. When it finally reopened, it was no longer the Roceses running it; it was no longer in Pasong Tamo but in a Makati office and Novaliches studios.
It took sometime for the new station to reposition itself through various p

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artnerships that failed until it landed on the general blueprint of Manny V. Pangilinan’s vision of a media and entertainment empire. Once the sale was consummated, it seemed like that was all that the industry was waiting for for the station to soar.

MVP is a known visionary, a self-made man starting out modestly with a salary of P1 thousand a month to becoming one of the country’s richest. He is the brains behind the phenomenal successes of First Pacific, PLDT, Smart; and the Meralco takeover with the Lopezes. Jojo Binay is said to have once revealed that MVP was the only one he thought could possibly threaten his hold on Makati during the 2007 elections. A friend tells us that should MVP choose to support a presidential candidate in the coming presidential race, that person would win hands down.
Our most significant introduction to Pangilinan, however, was early this year in the book Changing the Way we Manage Change of economic wizard Niceto Poblador where he writes in one of his chapters, “ The phenomenon of convergence is alive and well, and it is happening right in our own backyard!. . . . the convergence revolution in this country is being led not by upstart tech geeks in the mould of Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), or Steve Case (AOL), but by a stodgy, buttoned down type by the name of Manny V. Pangilinan, Chair of PLDT…” No wonder the takeover of TV5 by MVP sent jitters to the reigning networks and was overwhelmingly welcomed by the entertainment sector and general public for having widened the playing field.
The takeover of TV5 by a management genius couldn’t have come at a better time. There is widespread discontent among industry practitioners, perceptive audiences, and social scientists who see that the television industry, today’s most potent force of influence has redounded into a battle for No. 1. There is massive pirating of talents, copying of formats, less originality, less moral scruples.
Where is TV5 to position itself? Suddenly, we remember our days with the Roces Channel. Ours was a small station, yet we had the best — The Big News, Mari Velez, Bong Lapira, Balintataw, Seeing Stars with JQ, Ninoy’s Insight, Doroy Valencia’s Over a Cup of Coffee,Max Soliven’s Impact, Tisoy and Gorio & his Jeepney, the first successful election extrapolation in 1969. Station manager Ramy Diez was on a roll. And most importantly, we were happy. In today’s era of preeminence and the race for the peso, where is TV5 headed? Are we hoping against hope that the ghosts of the past Channel 5 will find their home in the new TV5?
So far, the takeover has been marked by extreme caution. Some new talents have been acquired but none of the largest names either on ABS or GMA, nothing that would create bad feelings, rock the boat. Paolo Bediones has joined news, so has Luchi Cruz Valdez as news head who had long left ABS. Joey de Leon had Wow Mali! on TV5 for the past decade; Ryan Agoncillo always had his foot in all three stations, as did Lucy Torres. The only significant piracy if it is to be called that is Ruffa Gutierrez’s signing up. However, all the talents (except those in the News) are taken in on a non-exclusive basis. And again, that is another factor that softens the blow. The method is exceeding non-threatening, the manner most humble and self-effacing. Which makes one wonder, what is MVP up to?
At a briefing for Talentadong Pinoy, TV5’s banner talent show, Perci Intalan, head of Creative, shared important changes when the show entered its seventh season starting March 13 after the high rating finals held at the Cuneta Astrodome. The show is going nationwide, will have performance shows Saturdays and Sundays, with more participating and a P50,000 pot each night.
“What is important,” observes Perci, “is that the show should remain happy, nothing heavy, no eliminating of contestants, always a variety of contestants, the concept of defending champions as in Tanghalan ng Kampeon. There will still be a new set of faces every episode; no act too small for Talentado.”
It has worked for the past two years, and the team is not about to change it now. There must be something very right in what they are doing as its success has spawned the expected clones in the other stations. On finals night the figures gave them the happy news. Audience share of TV5 was 47.8 percent, with 37.6 percent for ABS, and 16.1 percent for GMA.
Ryan who has had the inordinate position of having shows on all stations explains why he considers TV5 today his mother station having signed a three-year non-exclusive deal that covers hosting, acting on TV and the movies. ABS and GMA had equally generous offers, it seems, but asked that he quit Talentado. TV5 didn’t ask him to quit Eat, Bulaga!, and would allow his partnering with Judy Ann Santos in an ABS project if such was requested. “ What this has proven is as long as mabait ka sa katrabaho mo, as long as you meet the standard of excellence in whatever job given you, there is always work and space for everyone beyond the network wars,” muses Ryan.
On the issue of non-exclusive contracts, Perci continues, “By starting a lot of non-exclusive deals, we hope that we can bring across that there should really be a very high premium for one to become exclusive.”
The demands on the team on Talentado have more than doubled that Audie Gemora, resident juror has had to take a leave from his theater commitments. Without any doubt, he says, it has been a fantastic experience, the best job in the world. Even if the competition are intentionally saturating the market until the audience tires of it, he says he doesn’t think Talentado will suffer. We can afford to be experimental, innovative.
Rich Ilustre, director of Philippine Idol, Shall We Dance, and Talentado has likewise gone on a sabbatical from his events company. The pressure is immense, confesses Rich. “ We are only as good as the talents we discover, so we have to make sure about our weekly selection.”
What does TV5 have that will spell the difference, someone asks the team? We answer that one, “ Manny Pangilinan.”


David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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China Suffer Sandstorm

 Tons of sand turned Beijing's sky orange as the strongest sandstorm this year hit northern China, a gritty reminder that the country's expanding deserts have led to a sharp increase in the storms.
The sky glowed yesterday and a thin dusting of sand covered Beijing, causing workers and tourists to muffle their faces in vast Tiananmen Square. The city's weather bureau gave air quality a rare hazardous ranking.
Air quality is "very bad for the health," China's national weather bureau warned. It said people should cover their mouths when outside and keep doors and windows closed.
China's expanding deserts now cover one-third of the country because of overgrazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and drought. The shifting sands have led to a sharp increase in sandstorms — the grit from which can travel as far as the western United States.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has estimated that the number of sandstorms has jumped six-fold in the past 50 years to two dozen a year.
The latest sandstorm also hit the regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei, affecting about 250 million people over an area of 312,000 square miles (810,000 square kilometers), the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
As the sandstorm moved southeast, South Korea's national weather agency issued a yellow dust advisory for Seoul and other parts of the country.
Chun Youngsin, a researcher at the Korea Meteorological Administration, said the yellow dust was expected to hit the Korean peninsula beginning yesterday afternoon and it would be "the worst yellow dust" this year.
Some flights at Beijing's international airport were delayed but eventually took off, said a woman answering phones at the airport hot line.
Skies cleared in the city by midday, but a warning of more dusty weather remained in place until early Sunday afternoon.
"I think this kind of natural disaster is caused by human activity, but I don't know the exact reason, and I don't know exactly what we can do to prevent this," said Beijing resident Shi Chunyan.
China has planted thousands of acres of vegetation in recent years to stop the spread of deserts in its north and west, but experts have said the work will take decades.
"The challenges ahead are still huge," China said in a report to the United Nations in 2006.
And the pressures of China's development aren't easing. "Arid and semiarid areas can only support one or two people per square kilometer. In China, population density in these areas is over 10 people per square kilometer," Jiang Gaoming, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany, wrote for the online environmental magazine China Dialogue in 2007.
The residents once were nomads, "but now they have settled, increasing the pressure on the environment and inevitably damaging it."
The worst recent sandstorm to hit Beijing was in 2006, when about 300,000 tons of sand were dumped on the capital.
"The situation improved tremendously after that. Thanks to the mild climate and conservation efforts, Beijing had only one sandstorm last year," Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Meteorological Station, told Xinhua on yesterday.
The closest desert area to Beijing is about 500 miles away, in the region of Inner Mongolia, Guo said.
China's dust storms were at their worst in the 1950s and '60s after campaigns to raise farm and factory output following the 1949 communist revolution stripped the soil of vegetation.
Because of those campaigns, archaeologists have found that sandstorms are reducing some packed-earth sections of the Great Wall in western China to "mounds of dirt" that may disappear in 20 years.

David Mikael Taclino
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