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18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement
Depictions displayed on this page are exempt from the provision of 18 U.S.C. section 2257 and 28 C.F.R. 75 because said visual depictions do not consist of depictions of conduct as specifically listed in 18 U.S.C section 2256 (2) (A) through (D), but are merely depictions of non-sexually explicit nudity, or are depictions of simulated sexual conduct, or are otherwise exempt because the visual depictions were created prior to July 3, 1995


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Critics across the political spectrum agree that the massive spending deal President Trump signed Friday marks a huge shift in the fiscal environment in Washington.
Heather Long and Jeffrey Stein of The Washington Post frame the situation this way: "The deal represents a sharp break from the era of austerity and government restraint, which began roughly six years ago when Republicans forced President Barack Obama to accept rigid budget caps that limited federal spending for a decade."
Some will celebrate the shift while others will decry it, but it's pretty clear that we are entering a new era as far as spending and the deficit goes.
Writing at Forbes Friday, budget expert Stan Collender says the "new normal" will be defined by:
- Higher interest rates resulting from increased government borrowing
- Rapidly increasing borrowing costs for the government
- Permanent trillion-dollar deficits that will be very hard to eliminate.
One result of these conditions is that it will be nearly impossible to achieve a balanced budget, to the point that it will cease to be even considered. And the political groups pushing for fiscal restraint, Collender says, could well find themselves sidelined.

subset: commoncrawl


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Follower and readers,
It's been a tumultuous few months since I blogged last.
As one week turned into one month, I soon found myself having not blogged in nigh on six months – a strange and puzzling situation for someone who has blogged almost consistently with six years.
I considered stopping; however, I am not sure what is about blogging and those who indulge in it, but it is nearly impossible to cease completely once you begin: once a blogger, always a blogger?
After a lot of thinking and experimentation, I have finally established a new blog over on Wordpress. I am not sure what the purpose of this blog is yet, and needless to mention, it is still in the very early stages of development, but hopefully, it will allow for a greater sense of freedom. A lot of the content will probably be very similar to here – fashion mood boards, film inspiration, art, opinion pieces – but I suppose, most importantly, it won't solely be about fashion (although there'll be a nice dash definitely). If that sounds like something you'd be interested in reading, please join me at Fragments (kathrynoregan.wordpress.com).
Finally, thank you to everyone who has read She's in Vogue over the years. It has been more fun than I ever could have imagined.
- Kat.


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Hack A10 devices
Hack A10 Devices
This page describe how to hack a A10 powered tablet and let a custom kernel to run on the tablet. The work was done on an Ainol Novo 7 Advanced tablet. But should be working on all A10 based tablet. Since A10 can boot from USB, never worry about bricking your device, but you may lose your data!!! Backup important data first!!!
Unbricking the device
The A10 can update the firmware from USB, so it can not be bricked. In case you bricked your devices, here is the instruction for flashing the firmware from USB. Note that this is only can be done in Windows (also through VirtualBox). You need a tool from Allwinner called LiveSuite, download livesuite.exe. It's a self extracting program, make a new folder, put it inside and open the exe. It will extract the program to the folder. You also need your firmware, which is an image file. You can download the Ainol Novo 7 Advanced stock firmware here aino_2.0.4.img. Execute LiveSuite.exe and click SelectImg button to select the aino_2.0.4.img downloaded. Connect your devices to PC with a USB cable. Then do the following:
Here are the instructions to let the device go to firmware upgrading mode (It should be applied for all A10 devices):
- 1. Power off the device
- 2. Press and hold any physical key except the power key on the device (ie press and hold Vol+ key, still holding in 3 and 4)
- 3. Press and hold power key for about 2s (power on the device, when powering on, if a key is pressed, the devices will not boot until key released or 4)
- 4. Release power key and press power key 3 times (I usually just keep pressing the power key)
If your PC prompts finding new hardware, install the driver in the LiveSuite program UsbDriver folder.
Then LiveSuite will ask if you want to format or not, choose yes. Then it will ask you to confirm, choose yes. It will start to load the image and flashing the NAND. Don't press NetSync, it will try to update LiveSuite but will never finish.
First sight
The stock firmware in my Novo7 is Android 2.3.4. With Android adb I can log into the device and take a look inside.
$ adb shell # mkdir /sdcard/nanda # mount -t vfat /dev/block/nanda /sdcard/nanda # ls /sdcard/nanda boot.axf boot.ini drv_de.drv font24.sft font32.sft linux os_show script.bin script0.bin sprite sprite.axf magic.bin
In folder linux
# ls /sdcard/nanda/linux bImage linux.ini params paramsr recovery.ini
Content of linux/linux.ini
# cat /sdcard/nanda/linux/linux.ini [segment] img_name = c:\linux\bImage img_size = 0x2000000 img_base = 0x40008000 [segment] img_name = c:\linux\params img_size = 0x100 img_base = 0x40000100 [script_info] script_base = 0x43000000 script_size = 0x10000 [logo_info] logo_name = c:\linux\android.bmp logo_address = 0x48000000 logo_show = 1
As you can see linux/bImage is our kernel, and linux/linux.ini is a config file that the bootloader reads and loads the kernel to 0x40008000 address. And the file linux/params is the kernel cmdline.
# cat /sdcard/nanda/linux/params console=ttyS0,115200 root=/dev/nandb rw init=/init fbmem=32M@0x5a000000 loglevel=8;
And recovery.ini and paramsr are for Android recovery boot and cmdline.
Get a console
Allwinner uses a config file for hardware configuration. The config file is like a Windows ini file. You can download the config file for Novo7 Advanced sys_config1.fex which contains something like this.
[uart_para] uart_debug_port = 0 uart_debug_tx =port:PB22<2> uart_debug_rx =port:PB23<2>
The A10 UART Rx and Tx pins can be reconfigured by software: As you can see PB22 and PB23 are for UART Rx and Tx. In our example PF2 and PF4 are for SD card Clock (sdc_clk) and Data 3 (sdc_d3). We change the configuration and disable the SD card, thus the usual SD card Clock pin and Data 3 pin are UART Rx and Tx. So with a SD card adapter (breakout/sniffer) and a TTL serial to USB cable you can get a console from the SD card slot.
Change the following places in the sys_config1.fex
[uart_para] uart_debug_port = 0 uart_debug_tx =port:PB22<2> uart_debug_rx =port:PB23<2>
[uart_para0] uart_used = 1 uart_port = 0 uart_type = 2 uart_tx =port:PB22<2> uart_rx =port:PB23<2>
[mmc0_para] sdc_used = 1 sdc_detmode = 1 bus_width = 4
[uart_para] uart_debug_port = 0 uart_debug_tx = port:PF2<4> uart_debug_rx = port:PF4<4>
[uart_para0] uart_used = 1 uart_port = 0 uart_type = 2 uart_tx = port:PF2<4> uart_rx = port:PF4<4>
(disable sdcard0)
[mmc0_para] sdc_used = 0 sdc_detmode = 1 bus_width = 4
To get the param working you need a PC tool, download the Linux version script. This tool parses the ini file and writes the data to a bin file. Execute the downloaded program on your desktop:
$./script sys_config1.fex argc = 2 input name sys_config1.fex Script 1 source file Path=/tmp/sys_config1.fex Script 1 bin file Path=/tmp/sys_config1.bin parser 1 file ok
Or you could compile these tools: https://github.com/amery/sunxi-tools
$git clone git://github.com/amery/sunxi-tools.git $cd sunxi-tools $make $./fex2bin sys_config1.fex sys_config1.bin
You will get a file called sys_config1.bin. Now push it to the device
$adb push sys_config1.bin /sdcard/nanda 3819 KB/s (40648 bytes in 0.010s) $adb shell #cd /sdcard/nanda #ls boot.axf boot.ini drv_de.drv font24.sft font32.sft linux os_show script.bin script0.bin sprite sprite.axf magic.bin sys_config1.bin
Replace the original script.bin and script0.bin. script0.bin is just a backup of script.bin
# mv script.bin script.bin.bak # mv script0.bin script0.bin.bak # mv sys_config1.bin script.bin
Get u-boot running
Compile u-boot
git clone http://git.hands.com/u-boot.git cd u-boot git checkout lichee-dev (Branch lichee-dev set up to track remote branch lichee-dev from origin. Switched to a new branch 'lichee-dev') make sun4i CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-
You get u-boot.bin in the directory. Push it to the device.
adb push u-boot.bin /sdcard/nanda/linux 5446 KB/s (244928 bytes in 0.043s) adb pull /sdcard/nanda/linux/linux.ini 4 KB/s (327 bytes in 0.079s) adb shell # cd /sdcard/nanda/linux # mv linux.ini linux.ini.bak
Edit linux.ini, change
[segment] img_name = c:\linux\bImage img_size = 0x2000000 img_base = 0x40008000
[segment] img_name = c:\linux\u-boot.bin img_size = 0x80000 img_base = 0x4A000000
push it back to the device
adb push linux.ini /sdcard/nanda/linux 7 KB/s (329 bytes in 0.040s)


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Global Moderator
Neither one of these questions belongs in this section, but what the hell!!
Thank you guys in advance for your help....
- Does anybody know of a good website where one can order personalized ODI shirts for Pakistan? I wanted one that said Wasim Akram's name and number.
- For the PS2 version of Cricket 2004, is there one available that's playable on US version of PS2?
Thank you guys in advance for your help....


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In the spring and fall, cattle drives near Mancos on Highway 160 can halt traffic.
"People will get out of their cars to take pictures of the mountains," said Mancos Liquor storeowner Ryan McKie.
Sitting behind a cash register, McKie watches the highway traffic jams through a large plate glass window. He said travelers now have another item to photograph: a mural of a rancher and his cattle drive that adorns the western and southern exterior walls of his business.
"When people drive by, it will help bring attention to the store, and the town," McKie said.
Commissioned by the Mancos Chamber of Commerce, the mural is part of a larger heritage project to beautify the arts community east of Cortez.
"It's the most visual wall in town," said McKie, "and the mural captures today's events, just like in the old west."
Muralist Stylle Read of Fort Worth, Texas, painted the 9-by-30-foot western-theme motif in eight days.
"Some people drive with blinders, and never see anything but the road," Read said, sitting atop a milk crate on his lunch break last Friday. "Others will stop, take pictures, and before you know it they've spent the whole day in town. That economic return felt locally, that's what makes me feel good."
With an old cinder block building constructed in the 1960s as his canvas, Read said prepping for the mural included water blasting the exterior wall and applying a good layer of water protectant primer. A heavier coat of block primer was also added before Read applied four or five half-gallon pails of different color acrylic-based paints for the mural. For last minute touchups and highlights, he used conventional artist tube paint before finally spraying a clear coat layer of Frog Juice, a protectant against ultraviolet radiation, to seal the mural.
"Murals make a statement, and a lot of them are directly related to the particular community," Read said. "This one is indicative of times here."
A western muralist for 38 years, Read said the weather, particularly the sun, is the greatest challenge of outdoor murals.
"The U.V. rays eat up everything; wood, cars, skin and paint," he said. "You have to redo these things every 10 to 15 years. This stuff doesn't last forever like a bronze statue."
His artist father, Sleepy Read, 92, still paints landscapes of rural Texas. Read said he owes his father for instilling his good work ethic.
"Get out, get going, and get it done," Read explained. "Don't screw around. That's what I learned from my dad."
While in college at the University of North Texas at Denton, Read discovered his talent and love of mural painting.
His artistic influences include Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, arguably the two greatest artists of the American West: "Remington and Russell have always been my heroes," he said.
A history buff, Read's previous works have captured Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus and Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. He even painted a 25-foot portrait of Confederate General Patrick Cleburne in his hometown of Cleburne, Texas. Known as a great leader, the Irishman never stepped onto Texas soil, but the Ft. Worth suburb is named in honor of the rebel general, Read said.
"I guess it's the largest painting of a Confederate general ever," Read said, chuckling.
From California to Tennessee and all over his home state of Texas, Read's works have appeared on Hollywood set designs, album covers and even the side of Hank Williams Jr.'s tour bus. His largest mural is an 83-foot-long Texas street scene for the Fort Worth Stockyard.
Following the 950-mile journey from Ft. Worth to Mancos, Read wasn't surprised to discover that so many artists called the Mancos Valley home.
"It's a neat little town," he said. "I could live here, but I'm from Texas."
"I'm just glad to get back up to this country, and leave a little of my artwork here."


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Rox recalling Pomeranz for opener with Marlins
DENVER -- Not that it's been a secret, but manager Walt Weiss made it official Sunday that left-hander Drew Pomeranz (0-3, 8.76 ERA in three starts) will start Monday night in the opener of four games with the Marlins.
Pomeranz will be officially recalled from Double-A Tulsa for the start.
In the three starts for the Rockies this year, Pomeranz has repeatedly fallen behind hitters -- something he'll have to correct to stay in the Majors. The Rockies obtained righty Armando Galarraga in a trade with the Reds last Monday, and Galarraga made his Triple-A Colorado Springs debut on Sunday. The Rockies also have former Mets righty Collin McHugh at Colorado Springs.
After a rough start in Los Angeles before the break, the Rockies sent Pomeranz to Double-A for a start. The numbers were rough -- seven earned runs and 10 hits in 5 1/3 innings against Northwest Arkansas. It was during that game that he added a slider to his pitch mix to make him more competitive against right-handed hitters, who have blistered him at a .436 clip in his Major League outings.
"He'll throw some sliders, but I don't know if it'll be a big factor -- it's a pitch that's just been introduced to him," Weiss said. "I don't think he'll rely on it heavily. Hopefully, in time, that will become a nice weapon for him.
"It comes down to command, like it does pretty much with everybody. If you don't get strike one and you're in bad counts, it's really tough to pitch in this league. It's hard to say why his command hasn't been as good as it could be, but that's the key for him."
To make room for Pomeranz on the active roster, the Rockies will option infielder Josh Rutledge to Triple-A Colorado Springs. Rutledge was the Opening Day second baseman, but he struggled and was sent down in May. He returned in June when shortstop Troy Tulowitzki suffered a broken rib but didn't produce offensively, and is hitting .211 with six home runs and 16 RBIs in 67 Major League games.
DJ LeMahieu (hitting .268 with one home run and 12 RBIs) has seen most of the action at second base recently.


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Would you like to be able to display the latest 5,10 or 15 entries from Sports Blogs on your own blog or website?
Well now you can with only one line of javascript you can! Simply fill out the information below and we will generate the javascript for you
based on your preferences.
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I'm an archaeologist living and working in Japan. I'm a researcher of Meiji University Archaeological Investigation Unit. This unit is organized for preventive excavation within university campus.
In Japan, all archaeological sites are conserved under the national law. Local governments develop a registration map of archaeological sites and check all land development. In order to keep to the law, all developer and constructor – not only commercial sector but also public/administrative sector- must make an effort to conserve archaeological sites within their development/ construction area. If they cannot change their plans, they must do excavation. More than 95% of excavations carried out in Japan are this type – preventive excavation…documentation before destruction of sites for those 40yrs.
As you know Japan has large population- about 120 million- in small land. Most parts of our landscape are hilly or mountainous, so our living spaces are definitely limited and overlaid on ancestor's lived space. This is the cause of so many excavations – more than 8,000 in average/year and the peak was about 12,000 in 1996…- have done every year.
In 2004, our project was started. It was for the construction of new buildings of the university affiliated junior-high and high school. At first we did survey and sounding in total 40,000 sq-meters area, then begun excavation in 18,000 sq-meters area. The excavation continued for 2 years and 5 months – more than 800 days. We unveiled Modern Age (including Imperial Japanese Army and occupation Allied Force sites during WWII ), Jomon Age (mostly Middle Jomon, 6-4.5ka) and the Upper Palaeolithic Age (32-16ka). Now I'm constructing web-site for our excavation (https://sites.google.com/site/japarchresources/ :it's not completed) .
Our excavation was finished in Dec,2007. However it means finishing just the first step only in the field… we have more than 500 containers filled with artefacts such as: 5,000 potsherd and 40,000 pebbles of Jomon, 25,000 lithics and 90,000 pebbles of the Upper Palaeolithic, more than 200GB of digital images and measurement datum by total station system… and so on.
Since 2008, we're engaging with the post-excavation procedure and it will continue until 2015. We have published the 1st volume of our excavation report this May and will publish other 5 volumes over 5 years.
This is our background. And here I show our habitual day in post-excavation laboratory of our investigation unit. Now we're tackling with Jomon and the Upper Palaeolithic materials.
The first section is for Upper Palaeolithic pebble refitting work. We uncovered more than 300 stone heaps composed with 90,000 pebbles. Most of pebbles are burnt and fragments. These stone heaps are assumed for cooking, as in the Pacific ethnography.
This work has started in 2010 and will continue for the next 2 years. There are many pebbles in containers waiting for their turn…
These workers are from the commercial company engaging in preventive archaeology.
The second section is for Upper Palaeolithic stone tools (lithic technology) refitting. This work has started in 2007 and will finished this year.
Basically we start from distinguishing chipped stone tools and debitages into petrological classification and making sub-divisions acording to their colour, texture, micro-structure and other characteristics. This is very empiric but very efficient method. Up to now we have documented more than 6,000 cases of refitting in 25,000 specimens of lithic material. In some cases, we can reconstruct original shape of nodule and decode total sequence of knapping technology. Of course, to determine source of raw material, we apply archaeo-scientific analysis.
The third section is computer application for managing the database, drawing maps and artefacts, geo-spatial analysing and editing publications. We use Microsoft(R) Access(2007)(R) for database managing; Inteli CAD(6.0J) for arranging and original drawings measurement survey datum, 3-dimensional distribution maps of artefacts; Adobe(R) Illustrator(CS5)(R) for drawing artefacts and finising maps and other figures for publication; Arc GIS<sup>(R)</sup>10 for geo-spatial analysing; Adobe(R) InDesign(CS4)(R) for editing publications. Some part of these computer works are put out to commercial companies, those which have specific technique and systems.
Post-excavation laboratory working continues…however I hope to go back to the field…yep I should!!!!


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Panasonic has a new system for in-flight entertainment. It's called the eX3 and it's the follow up to Panasonic's previous in-flight system. According to Panasonic, it has HD and even 3D displays, as well as video conferencing for first and business class passengers. It also looks like a PSP.
"Economy passengers will enjoy unprecedented space and comfort that is like nothing they've experienced before," says Panasonic. Which is a polite way of saying that it won't be nearly as good as what first and business get, but way better than the crap they have now. But neither are nearly as good as this.
The eX3 system does claim to offer "high-end" video games. The handheld device used in eX3 sure looks a lot like the PSP. The system runs on Android, so it can probably play a lot more than the Tetris games you see on current in-flight entertainment.


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ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at firstname.lastname@example.com.
- Chakrabarti, Chaitali
- Tepedelenlioglu, Cihan
- Edla, Shwetha Reddy
- 1 Arizona State University
- 1 Kovvali, Narayan
- 1 Papandreou-Suppappola, Antonia
- Classification
- Adaptive parameter estimation
- Patient-specific
- Bayesian methods
- 1 Electrical engineering
- 1 Electrocardiogram signals
- 1 Modeling
- Reverse Fountain Cytoplasmic Streaming in Rhizopus Oryzae
- Diné Research Practices and Protocols: An Intersectional Paradigm Incorporating Indigenous Feminism, Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies and Diné Knowledge Systems
- Developing an Augmented Reality Solution for Mapping Underground Infrastructure
- Characterization of 2D Human Ankle Stiffness during Postural Balance and Walking for Robot-aided Ankle Rehabilitation
- Using Molecular, Cellular and Bioengineering Approaches Towards Understanding Muscle Stem Cell Biology
Adaptive processing and classification of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are important in eliminating the strenuous process of manually annotating ECG recordings for clinical use. Such algorithms require robust models whose parameters can adequately describe the ECG signals. Although different dynamic statistical models describing ECG signals currently exist, they depend considerably on a priori information and user-specified model parameters. Also, ECG beat morphologies, which vary greatly across patients and disease states, cannot be uniquely characterized by a single model. In this work, sequential Bayesian based methods are used to appropriately model and adaptively select the corresponding model parameters of ECG signals. An …
- Contributors
- Edla, Shwetha Reddy, Papandreou-Suppappola, Antonia, Chakrabarti, Chaitali, et al.
- Created Date
- 2012


text:
Daycare centers and kindergartens Maldives5 objects
Maldives, Laamu, Fonadhoo
Maldives, Laamu, Fonadhoo
Maldives, Laamu, Fonadhoo
Maldives, Gaafu Alif, Villingili
Maldives, Shaviyani, Funadhoo
As a parent, you want to choose a good kindergarten for your little one. Parents have to personally review dozens of institutions and rely on their own assessments of the professionalism of caregivers, the quality of meals provided, and other important criteria when selecting an institution to send their children to. We have simplified this task by creating a catalog with a comprehensive list of all the children's preschool institutions together with complete and objective information about each preschool.
Our extensive database makes it easy to find a kindergarten in in Maldives by searching across the following criteria: address (proximity to home), qualifications and experience of the employees, educational and developmental programs (including remedial education), additional classes, the availability of a full-time psychologist, speech therapist, quality meals, cost per child to attend the institution, and many other criteria.
Take advantage of our service and you will be able to easily find a kindergarten that meets all of your criteria!


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BizTalk Pipeline Dreams, Part I
I think I've been suffering from "configuration envy." Looking at products such as WCF and the easy way you can build much of a service with a simple XML file, one begins to wish some of the older Microsoft products worked the same way. Take, for example, the BizTalk 2006 Pipeline Component.
Instead of baking the capabilities of a Pipeline into an assembly, wouldn't it be nice to configure a pipeline using an XML configuration file? Wouldn't it be great to augment a pipeline with a couple of managed classes? Wouldn't it be heaven to allow a BizTalk administrator to add or remove functionality?
I'm going to show you a XML configurable Pipeline Component prototype called the Pipeline Channel Stack I built to solve the problems above. Pipeline Channel Stack is built using ideas garnered from WCF. First, I'm going to give you an overview of the Pipeline Channel Stack. Then, I'll explain how the idea germinated and grew to use WCF ideas rather than WCF classes. I'll conclude with a deep dive into class implementation details.
Pipeline Channel Stack Overview
The Pipeline Channel Stack components are depicted in the following figure.
Figure 1. The Pipeline Channel Stack Components
The core pieces of the Pipeline are stored in the Flex_CustomPipelineCore.dll assembly. Flex_CustomPipelineComponent.dll is a Custom Pipeline Component. If Custom Pipeline Component development is new to you, you may find "Build BizTalk 2004 Custom Pipeline Components to Process Non-XML Data" helpful. Flex_CustomPipelineComponent_BizTalk is a BizTalk Pipeline.
For the sake of simplicity, going forward I'll refer to the stack of classes as the Stack.
When the Pipeline is activated, activation trickles down to the Flex_CustomPipelineCore.dll, which builds a stack of classes to execute the functionality of the pipeline. PipelineBinding and PipelineBindingElements create the Stack and a message class is built from internal BizTalk data structures by the bottom-most class in the Stack and passed through to the topmost layers in the Stack. The class arrangements are depicted in the next figure.
Click here for a larger image.
Figure 2. Class arrangements within the Pipeline
The Pipeline Channel Stack gives a developer the following capabilities:
- Creating "one-off" pipeline solutions will not require a completely new Custom Pipeline Component. Implementing a couple of classes and adding the new functionality to the stack are the only requirements. You'll see how to do this later in the article.
- Creating a completely new Custom Pipeline also is not required. Simply create two new classes for the Stack and you'll effectively have a new Pipeline.
The Binding and BindingElement classes are dedicated to assembling the Stack. If you've used WCF, the arrangement will look familiar to you. In fact, I would like to share how WCF influenced the design, before diving into code.
From WCF Seeds an Idea Blooms
Building a Pipeline Component using WCF was my first notion. In fact, I built the first working prototype with WCF. The WCF prototype compiled with a lot of unimplemented code warnings, but it did work. The warnings were my first clue that something was wrong. My second clue was: I was working around WCF rather than working with WCF.
I realized that it wasn't WCF that I needed; rather, I needed to follow some of the WCF implementation and architectural patterns. If you're familiar with WCF, you'll recognize many of the class names and class functional philosophy.
I'm going to take you a little deeper starting where Pipeline Activation begins, in the Custom Pipeline Component code.
Page 1 of 3
This article was originally published on June 29, 2007


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L:A Bruket Organic Facials
I'm really excited to announce that I have just launched an exclusive organic facial treatment at Down To Earth in North London. Using only L:A Bruket products, plus a few raw, natural organic ingredients, I have created what I believe to be a simple yet luxurious facial that balances the skin, replenishes moisture levels and will revitalise the face to leave you with naturally glowing skin.
Originating from Sweden, L:A Bruket specialises in organic, botanical skincare that contains high-quality, natural ingredients. The Down To Earth facial is suitable for all skin types, including sensitive skin. The facial begins with a gentle double cleanse using organic coconut oil and a chamomile and bergamot L:A Bruket cleanser to remove any impurities from the skin and soften the face before being refreshed with a stimulating natural facial water and toner. Once the face is cleansed the skin will be gently exfoliated using the L:A Bruket Petitgrain facial scrub to remove impurities and smooth the surface of the skin. This is followed with a relaxing neck and facial massage using one of the L:A Bruket facial oils selected to suit your skin type. The face contains many pressure points which relate to every part of the body and this facial massage is designed to stimulate many of these points in order to rejuvenate not just the skin but also the muscles and lymphatic system of the body. To complete your facial treatment the signature L:A Bruket facial cream will be applied to heal and protect the skin before, using Indian Head Massage techniques, one final massage is given to the scalp to truly send you into the depths of relaxation and renewal.
Should you choose a 'luxury facial' you will also receive a luxurious homemade and organic turmeric face treatment after your exfoliation and before your facial massage. This will be customised to suit your individual skin type and while your treatment gets to work you will enjoy a stress relieving arm and hand massage.
Whether you're a lover of natural products or are simply looking to relax and have your skin looked after, this is an opportunity to get some well-deserved pampering.
Prices are £75 for the organic facial, and £100 for the organic luxury facial. To book in simply contact Down To Earth and they will find a suitable time for you to come in and see me for a treatment.


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Mindless Behavior is more mindful with music, love
R&B boy band Mindless Behavior said they've grown up on their sophomore album. They also said their approach to girls has evolved, too.
"At first I used to just talk a lot on the phone and I used to say, `We gonna do this' (and) `We gonna do that one day.' And now it's like I'm actually like making it happen," said Prodigy, 16. "I used to be really nervous to go up to a girl if I thought she was pretty. But now it's like, `Hey, if you don't like me then oh well.' At least I went for it."
The teen quartet released "All Around the World" in March and it debuted at No. 6 and 1 on Billboard's Top 200 and R&B/Hip-Hop albums charts. It's the follow-up to their 2011 debut, "(hash)1 Girl."
"Basically our whole style has changed," said 16-year-old Roc Royal. "Our records have changed. Just the whole process of Mindless Behavior is changing to a more mature side."
"It shows that, like, we're young men," added Ray Ray, 17. "We're here to work. We're here to do business."
The Los Angeles-based band - which includes 17-year-old Princeton - was formed in 2008 by record executive Vincent Herbert, who also discovered Lady Gaga. They've hit the road with Janet Jackson, Justin Bieber and the Backstreet Boys, and their 26-city "All Around the World Tour" kicks off Wednesday in Stockton, Calif. It wraps Aug. 18 in Houston.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the foursome opened up about love, One Direction and the media circus surrounding Justin Bieber.
AP: How has dating changed for you?
Princeton: Before I used to fall for women really easily, or girls, when I was in school. And after meeting the fans and we got really comfortable with our fans, seeing a girl that you really like wasn't really nerve-racking. You just go for it.
Ray Ray: I noticed that if I'm at home and I wanted to see the girl, I don't usually talk on the phone or text. I'm like on Facetime all the time.
Princeton: Skype is like a miracle.
AP: Are you ready for love?
Prodigy: Yeah.
Princeton: No.
Ray Ray: Absolutely.
Roc Royal: We said it in our song, so like I think I am. But you know, I'm just waiting on the right moment, the right girl to fall in love with.
AP: Do you see other boy bands like One Direction and The Wanted as competition?
Princeton: We don't really see it as a competition because the one thing that sets us apart from other boy bands is that we are urban and we have our own movement and we do dance a lot.
Roc Royal: It is competition, but it's a friendly competition because who doesn't want to actually be friends with people in the industry? Everybody should be friends.
AP: Do you worry that being part of a teen group has caused you to miss out on a normal childhood?
Roc Royal: Not at all. You know basic kid stuff - that's too easy. I'd rather travel around the world and see new things.
Ray Ray: I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I just wish I could have done one year in high school. ...I've been talking to my friend, she's a really good friend of mine and she goes to a high school and I told her I'm gonna go to her high school for like a couple of days just to feel the experience. I think that would be dope.
Princeton: I already lived my childhood. Five years is good enough for me and this is the life that I want.
AP: You toured with Justin Bieber. Do you think he's being unfairly portrayed in the media?
Prodigy: Any time an artist ... gets really big and is at the top a lot of people just want to bring them down, which I think is just real stupid and they just need to stop.
Ray Ray: I've been places like with him and then seen the whole story get flipped around into something that never happened. But you know, he keeps his temper and I've learned that from him. He's really good at it.
AP: How do you handle critics and naysayers?
Roc Royal: When people talk I just work harder.
Princeton: I was bullied in school. I had two worlds: I had the school world, my normal life, and I had the dance world. And there were dancers that I would audition with and they would say, "You're too short," "You're too chubby," "You'll never make it" (and) "You don't have this." Then I went to school and I heard the same thing. But ... I always stayed true to myself and now I'm sitting here.
Ray Ray: Us being like an African American group, we got a lot of people saying, "You're not going to make it to a second album." And it feels good to know that we did make it to a second album and we proved a lot of people wrong and we're gonna have a third album and a fourth album.
Follow Nicole Evatt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NicoleEvatt


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Just over a year ago, the small Texas Panhandle town of Tulia made national headlines when police rounded up more than 10 percent of the city's African-Americans and jailed them on drug charges. All of the arrests and charges were based on the uncorroborated word of one officer: Deputy Tom Coleman of the Swisher County sheriff's office. Coleman was a lawman with a checkered past. He had been charged with theft in Cochran County before signing on with Swisher County, where he was working as an undercover narcotics officer. He was also known as a "gypsy cop," a sort of hired gun who bounced from one law enforcement agency to the next--usually one of the dozens of federally funded regional anti-drug task forces that have sprung up around the state since they began forming in the late 1980s.
At the time of the Tulia busts, Coleman, through his employment with the sheriff's office, was once again working for a regional anti-drug outfit, the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task Force. First chronicled in the Texas Observer, the arrests soon were reported by newspapers and television and radio stations across the state as well as by the likes of The New York Times and The Washington Post. But the events that occurred last summer in Tulia did not happen in a vacuum. Nor was the targeting of minorities and the poor a tactic employed by only the Panhandle task force.
Instead, Tulia was just the most visible example of these problems as they relate to regional drug task forces in Texas, which last year received $31 million in federal money through a U.S. Department of Justice grant program known as the Edward Byrne Memorial Fund. By far the largest funder of these narcotics-fighting groups, the Byrne Fund has distributed billions of dollars to drug task forces across the nation.
Some of those Texas task forces--especially the ones in rural areas--are now being accused of employing their own Tulia-like tactics in dealing with the drug problems in their communities. In places such as Brady, Hearne, Caldwell, Brownwood, Chambers County and elsewhere, critics say task force members have relied on unreliable informants to make cases against small-time, street-level drug users and dealers who are nowhere close to the epicenter of the narcotics problem in Texas. Task force officials defend the program by pointing out that all illegal drugs are illegal. But civil rights activists charge that the task force system is the latest example of an enormously expensive misplaced priority in the so-called war on drugs, a war they say focuses on the poor and people of color rather than the real players in the narcotics trade.
"The fundamental problem is that you have these task forces out there operating with little or no supervision and absolutely no state or federal accountability," says Texas American Civil Liberties Union President Will Harrell. "No one is accepting responsibility, and the task forces have one motive and one motive only: to produce numbers lest they lose their funding for the next year. But no one questions how they go about their business."
It was during the presidency of Ronald Reagan that the United States declared war on drugs. In a February 1988 speech in Mexico, Reagan went so far as to proclaim that the crusade was "an untold American success story" and that illegal drug use had "already gone out of style in the United States." He could not have been more wrong, as the billions of dollars that have been spent on drugs and fighting them since prove.
Each June, the beginning of the Byrne Fund's fiscal year, the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance distributes the millions in federal dollars to state agencies across the country. It is the states that send money down the line to the various task forces within their boundaries. This past June, Texas received a fresh fix of $31,636,000 earmarked for state task forces. Just like every year, the grant was sent from the federal government to the Texas Narcotics Control Program, a branch of the criminal justice division of the governor's office, which has its own current two-year budget of $176 million. One of the main tasks of the TNCP is to distribute Byrne Fund money among the state's task forces. Only multijurisdictional task forces--the ones that include peace officers from law enforcement agencies in multiple jurisdictions--are eligible for the grant money.
Federal guidelines allow for 100 percent funding of a task force, but they also encourage in-kind funding by the participating agencies. In 1994 there was a push in the Justice Department to abolish the Byrne grants program because the task forces were inefficient, redundant and bad about sharing information. According to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, then the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Justice Programs, the Byrne grant program "was never intended to be a continual grant to the states." Townsend, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and now lieutenant governor of Maryland, adds that the funds would continue to be available for use by the states, but that the "dollars will be focused on programs that work."
The plan to eliminate the program generated loud criticism from rural lawmakers and law enforcement agencies, and today more Byrne Fund money than ever is being pumped into anti-drug task forces in Texas and throughout the country, and that trend shows no sign of abating, even though, beginning with the revelations in Tulia, the last year has not been a good one for the Texas Narcotics Control Program.
Hearne, Texas, is a long way from Hollywood, California. Situated on State Highway 6 about 120 miles northwest of Houston, Hearne, with a population of just over 5,000, is the largest city in Robertson County. It is an area that is less than vibrant economically. Those who own the gently rolling hills try to eke out a living working the land. Most of the rest commute to Waco or the Bryan-College Station area for work.
Despite the sleepy nature of the city, Hearne residents say that last November their town could have been mistaken for an action-adventure movie set when members of the South Central Narcotics Task Force began rounding up alleged drug dealers and users in the community. As police vehicles sped through the streets, task force members even called in a chopper for aerial surveillance.
In all, 28 people were arrested. Most were black, and many were residents of Columbus Village, a federally subsidized low-income housing project located in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in east Hearne, just down the street from an elementary school. Both the school and the housing project are, by law, drug-free zones. That means that penalties for drug-related crimes committed in those areas are automatically enhanced.
At first, the arrests were not that alarming to Hearne residents, who had watched passively as the busts occurred every year since the late 1980s, when task forces and the Byrne Fund first came into being. But then the numbers started piling up: From October 1998 to December 2000, according to records obtained by the Houston Press, the Dallas Observer's sister paper, the eight-member South Central task force filed 574 charges, although some defendants were charged more than once. The task force's records are poorly kept, but of the suspects who had a race attached to their names, 257 out of 364 were African-Americans. Only 34 of the cases involved more than 4 grams of cocaine or crack. The task force made three major seizures during this period: 4.16 pounds of cocaine, 90 grams of methamphetamine and 312 pounds of marijuana. South Central's budget for this period was $972,238; if you divide that figure by the number of charges filed, it comes out to $1,694 per charge. At the same time, the task force members were paid an average of nearly $36,000 annually.
"Every year they just round up a bunch of black men and women," says Charles Workman, who is a member of the Hearne City Council as well as president of the area chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"If you've got gold teeth, you're fit to profile," says hospital administrator Helen Boone.
While the annual raids were familiar to Workman and Boone, last November's police action caught the attention of both parents, since each had a son arrested during the roundup and charged with delivery of a controlled substance.
"I guess in the past it's been pretty easy for them to get away with this, because blacks are easy prey," says Workman, a slow-talking man who chooses his words carefully. "Automatically, if you arrest a black kid, everybody says he's guilty, and nobody asks any questions. Blacks don't have any money to get lawyers, so it's easy to get them and send them off to prison. No problem. And they've been doing it for about 15 years."
So Workman decided to do something about it. He decided to fight. Rather, he hired someone to fight for him: Brad Wyatt, a Bryan-based attorney who looks like the redheaded, freckle-faced good ol' boy next door. As Wyatt investigated, he began to see similarities in many of the 28 arrests from that November bust. Most of those arrested were black, most were poor, and most lived at the Columbus Village housing project. Additionally, Wyatt says that although the crimes were alleged to have taken place seven months earlier in April, some of the defendants had solid alibis, including his client Corvian Workman.
"It just so happened that my client, at the time of this alleged drug deal, was at his grandmother's house with about 40 family members in attendance for a birthday party," Wyatt says. "Corvie was actually cooking chicken-fried steak at the party."
Perhaps most significant was the fact that the younger Workman and many of the others arrested had been fingered on the word of an undercover informant, 27-year-old Derrick Megress, who was already on probation for burglary and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. He is also an admitted former drug dealer. To avoid jail time, Megress testified, he signed an agreement with the Robertson County District Attorney's Office--headed by District Attorney John Paschall, who was also in charge of the task force--to produce 20 drug arrests. In addition to his freedom, Megress also earned $100 for each person he helped bust.
During Workman's trial, under questioning by Wyatt, Megress admitted that he had violated the terms of his agreement with the district attorney's office by using drugs while working as an informant. Wyatt also was able to show that, in violation of task force protocol, Megress had not been in plain view of a task force member during the alleged drug buys. Additionally, Wyatt pointed out that Megress' wife lived at the housing project. He theorized that Megress, once out of sight of task force officers, was able to slip into his wife's home, retrieve drugs he had already stashed there and then bring them back to the officers with the story that he had purchased them from a Columbus Village resident. Wyatt knew it would not be easy to sell his theory to a small-town jury.
"You have these people from whatever walk of life they are from," says Wyatt. "They walk into a courtroom, and they see a young black man sitting at the defense table. And their first thought is, 'I wonder what this guy did.' And when they hear the word 'cocaine,' they start making assumptions. The presumption of innocence is supposed to be there, but in order to get somebody to recognize that presumption of innocence, and maintain it, you got to change the way they think. And it's real tough to do. They have no point of reference. All they know is drugs and black male."
In March, a Robertson County jury, composed of 11 whites and one black, deadlocked 11-to-1 for the acquittal of Corvian Workman. A few weeks after the trial, with the credibility of his informant in shambles, the district attorney of Robertson County dismissed the charges against Workman and 16 other people who had been arrested during the November roundup. Thinking about the 11 defendants who pleaded guilty before he raised questions about the legitimacy of the arrests sends "a chill up my spine," Wyatt says.
Both the ACLU and the NAACP have asked the Justice Department to investigate.
District Attorney Paschall "does have to bear some responsibility," Wyatt says. "He took taxpayer funds, and he expended them on this confidential informant, which was a waste of taxpayers' money. In the end, he did the right thing" by dropping the charges. "But his motives may have been the scrutiny and the fact that he couldn't get a conviction. He had to cover his ass."
But Paschall, who has been replaced as head of the task force, has not been the only official in Robertson County with an exposed derriere. Following the arrests in November, Hearne City Councilman Workman introduced an idea that he believed would deal with the city's drug dealers and users in a more evenhanded way. Workman's plan, which initially was approved by the council, called for the city to spend $370,000 to hire North Carolina-based private security company ShadowGuard to enforce drug laws in Hearne for four months--and to put an end to racial profiling while enforcing those laws.
"From your words to God's ears," says ShadowGuard President Rick Castillo. "Because that's basically what we found. Hearne, Texas, is 50 years behind the times in terms of anything relating to affirmative action."
Castillo found that in a city where African-Americans make up almost 50 percent of the population, there was not one person of color on its police force. In addition to bringing in its own officers, who would have been licensed by the state of Texas, ShadowGuard would have trained the Hearne Police Department in the area of narcotics law enforcement. The company also planned a computer system upgrade and the legally questionable installation of a closed-circuit television system throughout the city to spot possible drug deals going down, regardless of who was making them.
"You have these kids that make a few dollars" selling drugs, says Workman, who is also a Baptist minister. "Which I don't agree with. Meanwhile, the guys who are making thousands and thousands of dollars go free. ShadowGuard wasn't going to leave anybody out. And that scared a lot of people."
Indeed, following the approval of the ShadowGuard contract, threatening telephone calls were made to the home of a black city council member, 69-year-old Thelma Drennan, one of three African-Americans on the five-member Hearne governing body. A week after its original approval, the council took a second vote and canceled the deal. Drennan was one of two black members to change her vote; Workman was the lone holdout. While Drennan says her reversal was based on the price of the plan, she also says she doesn't believe the threats directed toward her ever will be thoroughly investigated.
"I don't know that they will ever look into it," says Drennan, a woman with a fragile frame who admits she was frightened by the calls. "Somehow I get the feeling that they don't care if something were to happen to me. It would just be one more black person gone."
Hearne isn't the only small town in Texas where the actions of anti-drug task forces have been called into question. While those questions don't always have racial overtones, they usually have economic ones--task forces preying upon the poverty-stricken and the young. This January a grand jury in Brownwood, about 125 miles west of Fort Worth, issued 75 indictments involving 40 defendants. The indictments were the result of undercover work, code name Operation Loser, last summer by the West-Central Texas Narcotics Task Force based in Abilene.
The West-Central task force covers a wider area than the South Central task force. Its budget is also larger. According to figures obtained under the Texas open records law, West-Central had a combined budget for fiscal years 1999 and 2000 of just over $1 million. In that same period, the task force filed 433 charges, at a cost of more than $2,300 per case. Some of the busts were significant; last year the task force seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana. But that doesn't tell the complete story. Some of the arrests during 1999 and 2000 were not even drug-related. The arrest record includes suspects busted for Department of Public Safety warrants, carrying large amounts of money, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, car theft, reckless driving, failure to render aid, no driver's license or insurance and public intoxication. On two occasions, one agent listed the offense as "pending."
The January arrests followed the same pattern of those made by other task forces around the state: The targets were mainly the poor and/or people of color, none of the cases involved much more than a thimbleful of drugs, and the indictments and arrests came down about six months after the alleged drug deals had occurred, a tactic that criminal defense attorney Kirby Roberts believes is used to make it harder for defendants to say exactly where they were and what they were doing at the time.
Roberts, who is based in Junction, hears the same story--and sees many of the same task force tactics--all over his part of Texas. In fact, Roberts has stayed more than busy lately defending targets of not only the Southwest Texas squad but also the West-Central Texas Narcotics Task Force. Over the past six months, Roberts, a big-boned man who resembles Salman Rushdie, has spent a considerable amount of time driving the two-lane blacktops among the prickly pear cactus on the western edge of the Texas Hill Country on a legal circuit that includes Brownwood, Brady, Menard, Junction and other towns. Roberts himself gets a bit prickly when he thinks about what he believes are the misguided goals and unethical--if not sometimes illegal--conduct of the members of the various task forces he encounters.
Particularly disturbing to Roberts was the case filed against Terri Rene Harrell, a twice-divorced mother of three getting by mainly on $300 a month in child support that she receives from her two ex-husbands. Her economic standing was only marginally improved recently by her marriage to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice guard.
In January, Harrell was charged with delivering a gram of methamphetamine to Scotty Chew while he was working as an undercover officer with the West-Central task force. Chew testified that for four or five months, as part of his cover, he often hung out at Lakeside Tattoo on the outskirts of Brownwood, where he spent his time shooting the breeze and helping motorists and cyclists repair their machines. According to his testimony, during most of his encounters the conversation eventually got around to the subject of drugs and if anyone knew where he could get some.
It was under such circumstances that he hooked up with Harrell and her friend Jennifer Nell Spencer in July 2000. The undercover officer testified that when he approached Harrell about obtaining some speed, she informed him that her friend Spencer, who would be coming by the tattoo parlor soon, might have some contacts. When Spencer arrived, she made a call and set up a rendezvous with her connection along the side of a local highway. But when the amount delivered to the meeting place wasn't enough to satisfy Chew, the two women and the officer--along with another man named "Jerry" in the undercover officer's car--went back into Brownwood. When the two-vehicle caravan stopped in front of a house, the men in the lead car went inside along with Harrell and Spencer. A few minutes later, the women returned with the dope. Chew says it was Harrell who handed him the plastic packet.
Roberts, however, suggests that it was actually Spencer who gave the drugs to Chew and that the officer was embellishing his story to add Harrell to his arrest list. What's more important, Chew admitted on the witness stand that he did little to find out who the men in the other car were or who owned or lived in the house from where the drugs were fetched.
"No follow-up was ever made to identify who was in that house or who the house belonged to," says Roberts. "So there's no question in my mind that [Chew] was just after as many [easy] arrests as possible, and not in actually trying to get anybody of any importance. If he'd wanted to do that, he'd have gone up the food chain a step. It was right there in front of him."
Chew, 30, has served as a peace officer in Texas since 1993. Although he works directly for the West-Central task force, he is commissioned as a law enforcement officer through the Coleman County sheriff's office. He also has worked for the Erath County sheriff's office as well as the Rural Area Narcotics Task Force and others. In other words, he is a gypsy officer--the kind who task force critics say bounce from one law enforcement agency to the next.
During his cross-examination of Chew, Roberts attempted to show that Chew was indeed a dirty cop. While on the stand, Chew denied that he had ever sold drugs himself or that he had ever exchanged drugs for sex. Chew's claims were contradicted when Roberts called Wilda Renee Crelia, who was also facing drug charges, to the witness stand.
Roberts: "Let me just ask you, did Scotty Chew ever supply you with any drugs or controlled substances?"
Crelia: "Yes."
Roberts: "And did he require you to do anything in return for supplying that?"
Crelia: "Yes."
Roberts: "And what was that?"
Crelia: "Oral sex."
Despite Crelia's testimony, Harrell was convicted on the delivery charge, but the judge who heard the case sentenced her to probation despite a prior drug conviction. Roberts believes that decision was significant.
"She walked out of the courtroom a free woman," Roberts says, "because I don't believe the judge liked what he heard."
Chew could not be reached for comment, but Billy Schatt, commander of the West-Central task force, says Crelia's charges against the officer are unfounded and calls her testimony a typical legal ploy to shift attention away from the defendant. He also defends Chew's and the task force's focus on street-level users and dealers. The task force's priorities, he says, are set by the police chiefs and sheriffs in his 15-county region. What may be a small-time dealer in a big city, he adds, could be a major player in a place like Brownwood. Besides, he asks, "What do they want us to do? Trace it all the way back to Colombia?"
The case of 30-year-old Iletha Spencer, who is also represented by Roberts, in many ways parallels that of Harrell.
Spencer is an unemployed single mother of four children, who range in age from 2 to 8 years. Until recently, she and her brood lived in a federally subsidized house in Brady. In March, as part of 32 indictments handed down from a McCulloch County grand jury, she was forced to move out of the dwelling after she was arrested for selling less than a gram of cocaine to an undercover member of the Southwest Texas Narcotics Task Force based in Junction.
Officer Larry Stamps arrived on the scene last summer when the task force set him up in a unit at a federal Housing and Urban Development apartment complex in Brady. The move was designed to ensure that any drug buys that Stamps made there would automatically carry a stiffer penalty. As part of his cover, Stamps was known at the housing project as Delbert, not Larry.
Spencer was introduced to Stamps by her girlfriend Gracie, who was dating Stamps' undercover partner. Spencer says Stamps came off as the original party animal. Every time she saw him he was drinking; he would show up at all hours of the day and night, looking for drugs and flashing cash at people not accustomed to having much money. Both Spencer and Gracie were impressed with the two new big spenders.
"I saw the money," Spencer says. "I counted $300 or $400. He was always buying beer and stuff like that. They're dealing with people that live in low-income houses, and here this guy is forking out the money. Well, yeah, you're going to think he's cool. But I guess he knew what he was doing. He did us all like that."
Eighteen-year-old Trista Hoard agrees. Hoard's 17-year-old brother, Justin, also was named in the indictments that came down this spring, about nine months after Stamps arrived. It troubles Hoard that a drug task force officer such as Stamps would spend so much time hanging around teen-agers from the poor side of town like her and her brother.
"We all partied and barbecued at this guy's house," says the pregnant Hoard, adding that the gatherings remained fairly innocent and juvenile. "We had water fights. We would just sit out there all the time. Then he just starts throwing money at us. I mean, giving us money practically. And [the police] know that if we're living in government apartments, you don't have that much money. You throw $700 at a kid, what are they going to do? Turn around and say no? I mean, come on."
Of the 32 Brady residents indicted, none was accused of having or selling more than a small amount of marijuana, meth or coke. Twenty-year-old Neal Solomon was among those charged with delivery of a controlled substance--1 gram, to be exact. He is the son of 40-year-old white-bearded, gimme cap-wearing James Solomon, who ekes out a living at SureFed Mills. At the time the Press interviewed Solomon in March, Neal had not yet turned himself in to authorities. Solomon acknowledges that his son has a prior conviction for possessing just over a gram of cocaine. Still, after taking a look at the Brady arrest list, he has a hard time believing that the task force is making the best use of its taxpayer-provided resources.
"There's nothing I can do to get my boy out of this," Solomon says. "But in the long run, when they quit going after the little guys who are just trying to make a buck or two, they ought to try going after people who are making thousands."
It's a sentiment echoed again and again, and loudly by Peggy Parker, the outspoken mother of Iletha Spencer. Parker notes that the alleged drug deals were supposed to have taken place in September 2000, or seven months before her daughter and the 31 other defendants were indicted.
"If they want to get it off the streets," asks Parker, "why don't they go after the ones who are selling it out of their homes? [Stamps] knew some of them, because he was carried to their houses. For seven months he's been doing this, and he doesn't know who the drug dealers are?"
While Stamps and the task force may not know the names of drug dealers higher up the food chain, the residents of Brady are definitely aware of the suspects snared in the busts last spring. All the names were printed on the front page of the two weekly Brady newspapers for two weeks running. Many business owners clipped the box and posted it in their stores and shops. Spencer says everyone on the list is immediately turned away when applying for a job, whether they were convicted or not.
Spencer has yet to come to trial, and she declines to say whether she helped Stamps acquire any drugs. But that didn't stop her from venting.
"We're not drug dealers," Spencer insists. "He didn't bust drug dealers. He busted people who went and did a favor for him and got him drugs. We weren't selling the stuff out of our houses. People knew where to get it, and they picked it up and gave it to him. But they didn't mess with the drug dealers."
The Southwest Texas Narcotics Task Force, established just last year, is messing with the Press, however. It has appealed to the Texas attorney general's office regarding the paper's Texas open records request for information on its arrests and seizures. Stamps, meanwhile, has moved on to the Dogwood Trails Narcotics Task Force in Palestine, where attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.
A question lingers: Why do these drug task forces remain in business despite their well-documented problems, their poor arrest records and their emphasis on low-level dealers and users? The answer is simple: because there's money available.
Established in 1988 to honor a fallen New York City police officer, the Edward Byrne Memorial Fund, in just the past five years, has distributed approximately $2.5 billion in grants to drug task forces nationally, with $160 million of it going to Texas, where it is divvied up between the almost 50 tasks forces operating in the state. Those task forces are as addicted to the federal cash injections as the junkies are to their dope. According to critics, they're more concerned with making as many busts as possible to keep their arrest numbers up and their funding high than they are on concentrating on time-consuming investigations that might net large-scale dealers.
The Texas Narcotics Control Program, the division of the governor's office that distributes Byrne Fund money to state task forces, has come under heat itself. In June, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Robert J. "Duke" Bodisch, the head of the program, was reassigned when an audit revealed that he borrowed three cars from one of the task forces. The report also showed that for five years the TNCP had used Byrne funds to buy awards, gifts, alcoholic beverages and entertainment--spending that appeared to fall outside the guidelines governing the use of the Byrne money. Bodisch declined to be interviewed.
This is not the first instance of alleged abuses of task force money. In June 1998 then-Governor George W. Bush's office stopped funding for the Permian Basin Drug Task Force amid allegations of falsified meal tickets, doctored quarterly reports on confiscations and other irregularities. The task force was abolished that summer.
"Some of them are run well. Some are not run well. It's very political," says former task force officer Barbara Markham. "And it's definitely not money well spent."
With her skinny frame, sleepy eyes and cigarette voice, 41-year-old Markham comes off like a doper. It's a good look to have if you happen to be an undercover narcotics officer, as she used to be.
Markham got her start in law enforcement in 1983. At the time, she was 23 years old, living in Frisco, going to college and working for Arco Oil & Gas--and making more money than she ever would as a police officer. But Markham found herself scrambling to find work when the oil boom ended, so she got herself certified as a peace officer and then hired on as a reserve officer in Frisco, at that time a quiet burg of about 3,000 people. At first it seemed like there was nothing to it.
"Back then we were dealing with things like cattle in the roadway," says Markham.
Markham's cushy new job didn't last long. Shortly after she was hired, Markham's chief approached her about doing some undercover work. Thinking the assignment would be for only a couple of hours or so, Markham agreed, unaware that what the chief had in mind would turn her life upside down forever.
"What they wanted was to put an undercover officer in a high school," says Markham. "They had searched high and low throughout the county looking for somebody who was young enough." Or someone who looked young enough. Although she was 23, Markham could easily pass for a 17-year-old.
After a crash course in narcotics law enforcement and armed with fake transcripts from Wichita Falls High School, Markham slipped unnoticed into Wylie, in Collin County. She enrolled in summer school and began hanging out with the kids, throwing Frisbees and riding skateboards. Little by little they took her in.
"My goal was not to bust the kids, but to bust who was selling to them," Markham says. "That's the way I ran my operation." When Markham was pulled out of the school six weeks later, 20 suspects were arrested on charges of delivery of a controlled substance. All but two were adults.
After Wylie, Markham was assigned to Princeton High School, east of McKinney. There, things did not go so well, as news of her arrival preceded her among the students. For the next few years Markham continued to infiltrate student bodies in North Texas in search of drug dealing. By the time she reached 30, she'd had enough.
"I was almost old enough to be their mom," Markham says.
From high school, Markham went to working the bar scene in small towns around Dallas before settling into a patrol job with The Colony Police Department in 1988. When The Colony decided to join an anti-drug task force that was forming in the area, Markham was selected as the department's representative, and she was happy to be working drug cases again. But after she'd spent a few months with the task force, department officials decided Markham had been working narcotics for too long. They reassigned her to patrol in 1997. In retrospect, Markham admits that she should have done exactly what she was told. Instead, she signed on with the now-defunct Northeast Area Drug Interdiction Task Force based in Rockwall, something she calls "the worst mistake I ever made in my law enforcement career."
From the beginning, Markham says, she was troubled by the focus of the Rockwall task force. "The thing I started noticing was that they were only going after blacks," Markham says. She also got crossways with her new boss.
"He wanted me to take a load of [marijuana] to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and drop it off there," says Markham. "When I told him I couldn't do that" because it was against the law, "I got fired."
Rockwall task force commander Mike Box III declines to address Markham's allegations. He does acknowledge, however, that the task force's emphasis on low-level dealers and users is merely a response to the concerns of the community. Residents, he says, routinely call sheriff's departments in the four-county area complaining of the drug traffic in their neighborhoods.
After Rockwall, Markham's next stop was the Narcotics Trafficking Task Force of Chambers and Liberty counties in 1995. Once again, Markham found what she describes as racial profiling.
"Basically, it came down to that white America was no longer touched," Markham says. "If you were white, you didn't have to worry much about task forces, because they were going after crack. But it doesn't take any skill to make a crack bust. All you have to do is drive up and roll down your window. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. But the drug problems in these various counties do not just involve black people, and it's not just crack. But that's about all they're turning out now. It's just ridiculous."
According to Markham, the problems in Chambers and Liberty counties run deeper than racial profiling. In 1997, after two years on the job, Markham discovered that the task force members and their confidential informants were setting up people for arrests. She became aware of the practice when she and an informant went to a house in Anahuac in Chambers County to buy some pot. Markham says that while she and the informant were able to obtain the dope from the woman who lived in the house, the woman refused to take their money. Nevertheless, the informant later put in his report that the woman had in fact taken the money. Markham questioned the informant about the discrepancy, but she says the informant told her that it was the task force's standard procedure to falsify statements--that he had done at least 150 cases the same way.
When she took the problem to her superior, Markham says, she was told not to worry, that it would be the informant, not her, testifying in court. Soon afterward, she was handed a list of 22 reprimands and was fired. Markham filed a lawsuit against the task force and eventually settled out of court. She received a mere $8,000, but she refused to cash the check when she realized that one condition of the settlement was for her to remain silent.
Mike Little, district attorney for Chambers and Liberty counties and the task force project director, did not return phone calls seeking an interview.
"I think there needs to be a Justice Department investigation," Markham says. "I think the office of the governor should be more involved in these task forces and look into the corruption, because they are full of corruption, but they operate like the CIA. Nobody ever knows what they're doing, which is a good thing investigation-wise. But accountability-wise and responsibility-wise, nobody's doing anything. Because if anything happens, everybody's afraid they're going to lose their federal funding. So they just let you resign, no matter what you've done. You get a clean bill of health, and you move on to the next task force."
If central casting ever needs a stereotypical Texas lawman, they could turn to Sheriff Gerald Yezak. In his white straw cowboy hat, elephant-skin boots, striped western shirt and creased Wrangler blue jeans secured with a belt anchored by a buckle the size of his fist, the long, tall and prematurely gray Yezak cuts an impressive figure as he enforces the law in Robertson County, the 870 square miles where he has spent most of his 45 years. Rolling along in his maroon Dodge Ram 2500, Yezak seems to know everyone in the county, greeting his constituents by name as he makes his way along the quiet, lazy streets of Calvert, Bremond and Franklin, the county seat.
When asked if there is much violent crime in Robertson County, Yezak smiles and says, "Well, that depends on your definition of much." He goes on to explain that there were only three homicides in the county last year; none so far in 2001. In other words, there's not much violent crime in Robertson County. Yet, when it comes to drugs, Yezak maintains they're a growing problem.
His biggest concern, he says, is the resurgence of methamphetamine laboratories. Meth labs produce a distinctive and foul chemical odor, one that's hard to hide in the close confines of urban areas. The sparsely populated rolling hills of Robertson and other rural counties, the sheriff says, provide meth dealers with the privacy they need to cook their product. The proliferation of meth labs, Yezak says, has also produced a black market for one of the key ingredients in making the drug: anhydrous ammonia. The substance is in abundance in the county because farmers use it to fertilize their fields. Normally anhydrous ammonia goes for about $400 a ton; on the black market, it brings $300 a gallon.
In addition to his job as sheriff, which he has held for the past five years, Yezak is also project director of the South Central Texas Narcotics Task Force. He was appointed to replace Robertson County District Attorney John Paschall early this year, right about the time questions emerged about the drug arrests in Hearne last November. Yezak had no part in those raids, and he refuses to fault his predecessor's penchant for targeting street-corner dealers and small-time users. He points out that the possession and sale of illegal drugs is against the law, period, regardless of the amount. That said, however, Yezak also indicates that the priorities of the South Central task force will be different under his watch. He wants his team to spend more time looking at the big picture. Specifically, he plans to target the meth labs that have moved into his territory.
As for the millions of dollars that pour into the Texas drug task forces each year, Yezak acknowledges that it's a lot of money but believes it is money well spent. His task force commander, Joe Davis, agrees, insisting that rural Texas counties like Robertson just don't have the tax base to adequately fund a war on drugs.
One of Yezak's first moves after taking over was to hire Davis, a small dark-haired man with 16 years of law enforcement experience, away from the Brazos Valley Task Force in nearby Bryan. Brazos Valley has a reputation as a well-run operation, and Davis has a reputation as a stand-up officer, even among criminal defense attorneys.
"I can tell you this," says Bryan attorney Brad Wyatt, who defended Corvian Workman in the Hearne drug raids last November, "based on my experience with this guy in the past, things are going to change in Robertson County--for the better."
As to why he brought Davis in as the new commander, Yezak is again diplomatic and deftly avoids saying that it was because he was unhappy with the way the unit was being run. "The old commander worked for the D.A.," says Yezak, between spitting sunflower seed shells into a cup. "He didn't work for me. If I'm going to have somebody running [the task force], and I'm the project director, I'm going to have somebody who works for me. Somebody who answers to me."
Davis isn't one to criticize, either. But he believes his predecessor's problems--indeed, the problems of the task force--stemmed from poor supervision of confidential informants. Davis says he plans to avoid those problems by strictly limiting how and when his officers use informants.
Of course, starting this month, Davis, Yezak and all the other Texas task forces really don't have any choice but to change their ways.
On September 1, a new state law went into effect limiting the use of confidential informants in court. Drug convictions no longer may be based on uncorroborated testimony from a single informant. The new law is one of several battles won during the last session of the Texas Legislature by a coalition of groups including the ACLU and the NAACP. The Legislature also made it easier to obtain background information on law enforcement officers. The measure was the result of the revelations about undercover officer Tom Coleman, whose theft charge (later dropped) was discovered after his busts in Tulia as part of the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task Force.
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Meanwhile, Coleman continues his gypsy ways. He left the Panhandle task force and found new employment with the Southeast Dallas County/Ellis County Task Force in Waxahachie. This past April, however, Coleman was fired. The Amarillo Globe-News quoted Ellis County District Attorney Joe Grubb as saying Coleman's termination did not involve any of his work as an undercover officer. "It involved his relationship with an individual in the community."
In addition to calling for a Justice Department investigation of Coleman's actions and last summer's arrests in Tulia, the ACLU also is pushing for federal reviews of the task force actions in Brownwood and Brady. What's more, agents from the FBI have interviewed former undercover task force officer Barbara Markham about her allegations of at least 150 trumped-up drug charges filed against people arrested by the Narcotics Trafficking Task Force of Chambers and Liberty counties. Markham currently works for the small Oak Forest Police Department on Lake Lewisville near Denton. After seven years of going under cover for task forces, she'll never work for another one--even if she wanted to.
"I'm completely blackballed," Markham says, "but I wouldn't work for a task force again."
Houston Press editorial assistant Kirsten Bubier helped compile statistics for this story.
Keep the Dallas Observer Free... Since we started the Dallas Observer, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Dallas, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Dallas with no paywalls.


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Archive: Transport
Grounded: Dire outlook for Brexit transport negotiations
Recent transport meeting warns of the "dire situation" we are in
Opinion Former Articles
A sustainable public transport system
Go-Ahead Group's approach to a sustainable public transport network, which is vital to the economic development of the UK.
Transport honoured in Queen's list
A host of transportation professionals to have been recognised this week
Grayling urged to deliver on transport
Pressure is mounting on the government to make swift and decisive decisions over areas of major transport policy
CIHT Transport Manifesto Launched
CIHT has today launched it 'Future for Highways & Transportation' manifesto that outlines the Institution's proposals and views on key issues affecting the industry today.
Fixing the north's transport system should be a national priority
If the north of England succeeds economically, so does the rest of the UK - but it needs vision from the government, not obfuscation
Boris buses risk causing fatal accidents
Serious braking issues alleged with Boris' flagship 'Routemaster' style buses
Comment: Labour must reject this tunnel-vision on roads
Christian Wolmar: The future of cities doesn't lie with the car
Boris Johnson's road-building plans will cause gridlock on local roads
Mayor's transport deputy admits some roads could see traffic double
Comment: Why won't taxpayer-backed Network Rail buy British?
We're in the indefensible situation where Network Rail, funded by the taxpayer, will buy technology designed and manufactured overseas
A declaration of war? Tories threaten to raise bar for union strikes
Conservative party is considering plans to introduce a threshold which could prevent many strike ballots from resulting in legal industrial action
'Deeply unfair': Londoners dominate transport spending
Shocking disparities in regional transport spending will see Londoners benefiting 500 times more than those in the north-east, according to a report out tomorrow.
London transport chaos after huge helicopter crash
A helicopter crash in Vauxhall has led to the closure of Vauxhall bridge, paralysing Embankment and suspending all the trains into Waterloo.
A tax on work? Unhappy new year for rail commuters
Commuters heading back to work this morning have been hit by an average 4.2% hike in rail fares, marking a tenth consecutive year of increases for passengers.
Voters want richest to face hefty speeding fines
Two-thirds of voters think the coalition's drive to make the rich pay more should be extended to fines for speeding offences.
Abandon ship! Every man for himself as coastguard cuts sink morale
Coastguard station closures and "mixed messages" from ministers have been blamed by MPs for rapidly increasing vacancies in Britain's coastguard.
Christmas card protest against rail fares
Trade unions are protesting at train stations across the country today against increases in rail fares and planned cuts.
Taxpayer foots bill for DfT's west coast mainline incompetence
The west coast mainline fiasco has cost the taxpayer a "significant" amount of cash, the government's public spending watchdog has found.
HS1 boss questions case for HS2
High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) has come under fire from the chairman of Britain's first high-speed rail network, in a further setback for officials at the Department for Transport.
Comment: HS2 – This bright shiny train does not do what it says on the box
The government fell for Labour's trap when it went ahead with high speed rail. This expensive new toy isn't worth the money.
Saved by the trains: Miliband blushes spared by huge coalition U-turn
Ed Miliband was spared an increasingly critical appraisal of his conference speech today, after a major coalition U-turn distracted the press from events in Manchester.
Government green policy subsidising the wealthy
The government is spending millions on helping the wealthy buy electric 'plug-in' cars as a second motor.
Comment: Dithering Britain will leave the runway debate grounded
Look at us - we're at it again. Just a few weeks ago the Olympics opening ceremony summed up Britain's history by portraying our green and pleasant land being paved over with industrialised concrete. Now the tensions it embodied have arrived in parliament.
6.2% rail fare hike possible in 2013
Next year's railway fares could be increased by a further six per cent in England, following today's higher than expected inflation figures.
Comment: We must protect children from smoking in cars
Children's right to health is more important than the civil liberties of smokers.
'Do nothing' ministers criticised as road deaths rise
Ministers need to show some leadership on road safety to halt the increase in deaths on the roads, MPs have urged.
Coalition splurges on rail spending spree
Over £9 billion of spending on improving Britain's rail network has been unveiled by the coalition.
Boris under pressure to scrap Barclays bike sponsorship
Boris Johnson came under pressure to scrap Barclays' prominent sponsorship of London's 'Boris bikes' today, amid a spectacular row over its business practices.
U-turn possible over Heathrow third runway
Further airport expansion in the south-east of England, including the third runway at Heathrow airport, is reportedly once again under discussion in government.


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Meet our Nursery Manager
We are delighted to introduce our Nursery Manager from January 2021, Sarah Merry. Sarah has worked at Weston Green for four years in Early Years and we [...] Read more
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This function allows selection of an Area Code and Exchange, then displays the changes associated with that area code/exchange.
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With PC-based control technology, Beckhoff offers an open and flexible automation solution for Machine Tools. Besides Industrial PCs, I/Os and fieldbus components, as well as drive technology and the TwinCAT automation software, the range of products encompasses a uniform, scalable and modular control system.
Applications: The application reports illustrate application options for Beckhoff products and technologies in practice.
TwinCAT – the control plattform: TwinCAT integrates real-time control with PLC system, Motion Control and programming environment in a single package. Programming is based on the IEC 61131-3 standard.
TwinCAT CNC: Beckhoff offers two solutions for interpolating path movements in the TwinCAT NC I and TwinCAT CNC.
EtherCAT – ultra high-speed communication: Outstanding performance, flexible topology and simple configuration characterise EtherCAT, the real-time Ethernet technology from Beckhoff.
XFC | eXtreme Fast Control Technology: XFC, the fast control solution, is based on an optimised control and communication architecture that is capable of I/O response times < 100 μs.


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VI. Contracting Agency Responsibilities
As the contracting officer/Federal agency representative, what is my obligation when the wage determination(s) applicable to a construction project contains multiple wage schedules (for different counties and/or types of construction?
It is the responsibility of the contracting officer/Federal agency representative to advise contractors which schedule of prevailing wages shall be applied to the various construction items in the bid specifications. Because of the complexities in the application of multiple schedules, the contracting officer should consult with the Wage and Hour Division to resolve any questions.


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This is magical. There's no reason why this statue was abandoned at a garbage disposal company in Guigang, China. It just appeared. And there is something so wrong about seeing this thing tipped onto its face.
A thirty-foot, eight-ton statue of Marilyn Monroe, which took several artists two years to make was was left at a dump in China. There's no reason why the stainless steel work was disposed of after only six months on display — or why the business center it was in front of had it built in the first plac — but we're pulling for "it came alive at night."
Here's another photo for scale:
[NBC News]


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Helping Your Child Learn to Read – Guide for Ages 3–4
Around the ages of 3 and 4, parents can look forward to watching their child achieve their very first reading milestones.
It might include things like pointing out familiar words or letter sounds, retelling stories that have been read to them, or even making up silly rhymes.
This stage in your child's development is all about giving them the best possible start in their reading journey. These years are critical to reading development so it's important to make sure learning is made fun, rewarding and encouraging.
These years are full of imagination, exploration and play – things to keep in mind when introducing early reading skills to your child. Above all, focus on sharing the joy of reading together. You can help to inspire a long-term love of reading by making this time together a fun and rewarding experience for the two of you.
Here is a guide to helping your 3-4 year old take their first steps in learning to read:
Show your child that printed symbols convey meaning
At this age, many children reach a stage known as 'pre-emergent reading'. They might begin to point out signs and symbols and recognise their meaning. This is one of the earliest steps in learning to read, and eventually children will learn that printed symbols carry meaning. If your child already recognises some words, point them out everywhere you go, on signs and on labels. Take this opportunity to talk about letters and the sounds they make to help your child develop early phonics skills.
Build your child's language skills in fun and playful ways
At this age, it's important to have fun with language to keep your child enthusiastic and eager to learn. Sing nursery rhymes, re-read books over and over again in different voices, or try singing a book instead of reading it. Listen to audio books, especially about stories your child already knows. Ask them to retell the stories you've read together in their own words. Act out stories during imaginative play. Experiment and play with language on a regular basis. These activities introduce key language skills in a fun and motivating way for your child.
Develop your child's phonological awareness using rhymes
Phonological awareness is an essential component of learning to read. It's the understanding that each letter has a sound. At the ages of 3 to 4, it's a great time to start building this important early reading skill with fun and simple rhyming games. Don't worry about asking them to identify letters at this stage. Focus more on sounds. Include rhymes in your daily reading routine, and emphasise the sounds that rhyme, encouraging your child to repeat them after you.
Show your child how to hold a book properly
Some children begin to recognise how to hold a book the right way up and turn the page from left to right around the ages of 3 and 4. At this stage, they may also start pretending to read books. When reading aloud, encourage your child to be more involved in turning the pages and holding the book. Run your finger under the words as you read to help them see how the words move from left to right. Leave books in your child's room, even if they can't read yet. This will give them plenty of opportunity to explore books independently.
Choose the right books for ages 3-4
At this stage, children are likely to prefer (and expect) stories with happy endings and that feature a simple storyline. Children are also likely to enjoy stories that they can relate to (e.g. stories about siblings, pets, visiting grandparents) and that comfort them or make them laugh. If your child really enjoys a book and asks to read it over and over again, allow it. Many children love to read their favourite books more than once (or a hundred times!), and learn certain parts by heart. Explore different types of books, including non-fiction books, poetry, and comic books.
Develop comprehension skills by talking about books you've read
Reading for meaning is what learning to read is all about. At 3 to 4 years of age, children can start practising key comprehension skills by recalling familiar words and phrases in their favourite books, and retelling short and simple stories. Your child might even be able to predict what might happen next in a story. Talk about books on a daily basis to build your child's comprehension skills over time in a casual and relaxed manner.
Read aloud every single day, and make it an enjoyable experience
This is really the best thing you can do to help your 3 to 4 year old learn to read. Life can get very busy, but if you can, try to read to your child for at least 15 minutes each day. Find ways to make this time a fun and relaxed bonding experience. When your child learns to associate reading with positive memories, they will be more likely to want to read on their own.
Why not read one of our e-books together now, which also include read-to- me options for beginner readers? Or have a go at playing one of over 170 activities in the Reading Eggs virtual playroom, where children can develop their first reading skills with fun, interactive online activities.
Are you new to Reading Eggs? If you don't have a Reading Eggs account yet, register for a free trial here today.Tweet