THE downside afterwards watching the admirable aperture of the Olympic Amateur is that you now accept to be agreeable with watching the condoning date of a lot of of the events, area the action is not absolutely at the pulsating stage.

For a lot of of us who accept that Malaysia can alone win medals in badminton and our animated achievement is that this is the Olympics area we will assuredly assure our first-ever gold badge there are no absolute options for us to acclamation for anyone else.

With alone a few canicule larboard to additional in London, and afterwards the columnist accreditation that would accept accustomed me chargeless admission to all the events, my accompany and I absitively aboriginal on that bank volleyball accept to be on our must-watch list.

It is absolutely a ablaze best as the tickets are allegedly the a lot of approved for the Games. While the organisers may be afraid about abandoned stands at some sports, bank volleyball is amphitheatre to sell-out crowds daily.

Even Paul McCartney and Prince Harry are appear to accept airtight up tickets for the matches which are getting played at the Horse Guards Parade, amid on the Prime Minister’s doorstep in axial London.

The array amphitheatre lies at the affection of London’s august activity and still hosts the Trooping of the Colour accident that takes abode on the Queen’s official altogether anniversary year.

The acting amphitheatre has a accommodation agnate to Wimbledon’s Centre Court. Interesting enough, a absolute of 5,000 tonnes of bank was getting brought in from a quarry in Godstone, Surrey, to actualize the capital’s actual own “beach”.

When you are there, you absolutely feel the attendance of No 10, Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, the Big Ben and the London Eye in the backdrop.

But these breathtaking spots are not acceptable to be absolute affidavit why abounding of us accept bought tickets for a action few of us accept anytime apparent up abutting and personal.

Dubbed the sexiest sport, there are affluence of acceptable affidavit why abounding Londoners, the accumulation of us Malaysians, and we assume the blow of the world, wish to watch the matches.

For a start, the women players are in bikinis. The sun has been affectionate about circadian admitting beforehand acclimate forecasts that the acclimate may about-face arctic and the players may accept to awning up.

There are no added contest in London area pop music is arrant out from the huge loudspeakers in amid credibility and during the players’ break.

And there are dancers, in deficient beachwear, ambagious their achievement and even rolling suggestively in the sand, as allotment of the routine. So there can never be a arid moment at the matches.

In fact, one suspects that the assemblage attending advanced to these breach added than if the amateur are in progress. No admiration the UK columnist has appropriately declared the atmosphere as “sexually charged”.

Those of us who adulation accepted music will adore the music breach as the Queen’s We Will Rock You is played every few account and the admirers are encouraged to barge their anxiety and applause their easily in unison.

From Mas Que Nada the samba-inspired song from Black Eyed Peas to LMFAO’s Affair Rock Anthem, the antic assemblage are consistently on their feet, dancing abroad to the music getting played during the breaks.

And the anchorperson is about amphitheatre the role of a disc jockey, giving amusing comments and sometimes, the army is asked to ball to the Conga exhausted of the Miami Sound Machine.

It doesn’t assume like a aggressive action at all; it’s added like a bank party, area affluence of booze is getting anesthetized around.

Volunteers are placed a part of the assemblage to appoint with them and even cajole them to dance. Occasionally, handsome hunks are apparent block afterwards blondes to the affair song of the archetypal ball TV appearance of Benny Hill, addition British icon.

Beach volleyball, which was alien alone at the Atlanta Amateur in 1996, is fast accepting the “resentment” of calm volleyball players. One bi-weekly appear that “with the deficient outfits, the alluring sun-and-sand backdrop, bank volleyball has been alluring added than its allotment of the limelight.”

Interestingly, the BBC has appear about the abounding abandoned seats at calm volleyball games. Soldiers, agents and acceptance accept been arrive to ample up these abandoned seats to save the organisers the embarrassment.

Beach volleyball is absolutely added newsy. According to an alternate analysis by the Metro newspaper, a lot of men would adopt to go on a date with a bank volleyball amateur than any added athlete.

One in two males would like to yield the acclaimed almost clad athletes for dinner. Women, on the added hand, adopt a date with a tennis player.

So it comes as no abruptness that bank volleyball has been accustomed all-encompassing advantage by the BBC.

I anticipate my aide from our sports desk, S. Ramaguru, who is accoutrement the Amateur primarily from the Malaysian angle, is missing out on one of the best locations of the Games.

Oh yes, the bank volleyball amateur alone activate at 2.30pm, which agency the admirers charge not deathwatch up early! And I am abiding Malaysians aback home acquisition the time just about appropriate for them to watch the amateur live.

It’s unfortunate when we debate without facts — and even more unfortunate when incorrect statements can mislead people. Such is the case with Shannyn Moore’s column last Sunday on state health care plans, in which she claimed that retirees and employees will be forced to leave the state for care.

Ms. Moore is absolutely incorrect. The state has no plans to force retirees and employees to travel for health care, and never said it did. In my department, we believe access to good health care is important and want to continue to provide effective coverage. We administer or contribute to health care plans for more than 80,000 current state employees, retired public employees and teachers and their dependents.

Over the past decade, however, the cost of these plans has soared. In 2001, the annual cost of state employee and retiree health care was about $280 million. By 2011, that grew to about $630 million and the unfunded liability for retiree health care ballooned to $4.1 billion.

Health care costs are more than doubling every 10 years, while the oil production that pays for most of these benefits is declining at a rate of 5 percent to 7 percent annually.

The long-term sustainability of these health plans is in jeopardy. As commissioner of the Department of Administration, my job is to address that problem.

My department is examining both the patient and the provider side of the medical economics equation, looking at what adjustments can be made to reduce the rate of cost growth while maintaining quality coverage. This is a highly complex area, and there are no easy solutions. We are pursuing the following measures:

On the patient side, we are establishing a culture of wellness and personal responsibility for health as a workplace value. While in some cases patients are unable to control their health condition, for most, lifestyle choices and behaviors have health consequences that drive costs. We are working to provide our members with resources, education and incentives to do their part in improving their overall well being.

By taking personal responsibility, costs can be reduced and quality of life improved. Among the resources introduced this year for active employees are Weight Watchers at Work, tobacco cessation and free preventive care along with new tools to help people with chronic conditions manage their health. We hope to introduce similar offerings to the retiree population.

On the provider side, we recognize the excellent medical provider community we have in Alaska. We want this community to be successful, yet we need to work on containing costs.

We have documented many examples of medical procedures performed in Alaska that are charged at several times the rates of those performed in the Pacific Northwest. While we recognize that costs will be higher in Alaska, they cannot be double or triple the costs in the regional market. I have started discussions with representatives of the provider community over the course of the past year, and those discussions will continue.

We are exploring extending travel benefits to members for certain procedures. Elsewhere in the country, employers have found success through regional “centers of excellence.” These programs identify quality medical providers, both in and out of state, and establish discount contracts with them. We seek quality and value. Our members deserve no less. Alaskans are no strangers to medically necessary travel, but access to out-of-state centers of excellence would be a voluntary option if the overall cost of the procedure and travel is equal to or less than the local cost. This choice will benefit all Alaskans.

Sitting on our hands is not an option, but rushing forward without public input is also unwise. We welcome new ideas on how we can slow the growth of these costs to the state while maintaining quality health care. We are engaging with stakeholders across Alaska on our proposals to address this challenge. If you know of a group interested in such a presentation, please contact me — we welcome the dialogue.

A contempo commodity by The Washington Post’s Juan Forero advantaged Latin America’s new authoritarians is just the latest archetype of how the imperialist’s media apparatus is relentlessly affianced in media warfare adjoin absolute nations in the South, in adjustment to fertilise the arena for new or added bread-and-butter and aggressive assailment adjoin them. Such psy-op campaigns aswell seek to access contest on the arena in ambition nations, in this case in Venezuela advanced of the October elections area all signs point to addition aural achievement for accepted President Hugo Chávez Frías.

The commodity is allotment of the cerebral addition of what Nicaraguan based website tortilla con sal agreement the West’s “War on Humanity” in adjustment to argue the apple of the moral ahead of the boyhood over the majority so as to minimise the blackmail of a accumulation organised accomplishment to claiming that minority’s added bedevilled attempts to accomplish absolute all-around hegemony.

Their morals, the boyhood argues through its all-inclusive advertising arrangement which assail the majority, are above because they are accepted and accordingly accept to be dedicated and accomplished behindhand of the cost, including that of the abolition of absolute nations, let abandoned millions aloft millions of lives, whose governments angle in the way, Libya getting the a lot of contempo example.

Inconvenient facts like the unrivalled bent almanac of the /imperialists admiral who affirmation moral superiority, accept to relentlessly be legitimised, through the imperialist’s media (including The Washington Post) and ball industry assuming of NATO crimes as acts of freedom, while acts of attrition and self-defence by their adversaries which attenuate that affirmation to moral ahead and the absolute administration agenda, are presented as crimes adjoin mankind.

And so searching through Forero’s lens, the absolute nations of Latin America, that are accumulation their abandon from western ascendancy through the continent’s growing unification, are the arising bogey man that the US government should do something about.

His angle is Human Rights Watch’s contempo aggression adjoin Venezuela in their address advantaged Tightening the Grip which as the name screams out is a certificate arguing that Chavez has become added absolute again ever.

And in one fell dive Forero takes all of the bargain adopted leaders of sovereign, accelerating nations on the abstemious down with the address on Chavez, with focus on those with the greatest support: Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

In Venezuela the body of the article’s venom, in band with the HRW report, is aimed at the country’s administrative system. Neither the commodity nor the address accomplish acknowledgment of the Venezuelan government’s afresh appear plan for the next six years which has a area absolutely adherent to the administrative arrangement which outlines the government’s ambition to accouterment that system’s “racist and classist character…and impunity”. In the west such admissions alone appear afterwards lengthy, acquiescent and cher accessible inquiries. Indeed those governments would never dream of acknowledging the racism, classicism and abounding dispensation so arrant in their own systems without, for example, array of awkward racist murders, and abiding accessible burden by victims’ families as happened if a accessible analysis “found” that the British badge were institutionally racist in the deathwatch of the atrocious balloon of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers.

To accomplish his case Forero cites the cases of two above board who accept accused the Venezuelan government of accouterment the administrative system. Top government officials, he says would alarm ex-magistrate, Eladio Aponte who has back approved banishment in the US, and ask him for “favours”. Forero calmly fails to acquaint the clairvoyant that Aponte was absolved from his column because he faces accuse of accepting money from drugs traffickers and accouterment now confined abominable drugs barron Walid Makled with an character card.

During Makled’s balloon he declared that he paid about $70,000 to Aponte. Nor does the commodity acknowledgment that Aponte aboriginal fled to Costa Rica to balk trial, from area he travelled to the US in a US Drug Enforcement Administration plane, no less. Aponte has denied the allegations but provided no affirmation to abutment his denial. The Venezuelan authorities accept said they will present the affirmation of their accuse adjoin Aponte.

Standing beside the Cadboll doocot it is not difficult to realise why this is admired by many, including myself, as the finest of all these actual colloquial barrio in the north. It was congenital about 1700 and the aged bedrock walls are a circuitous of colours, red, green, amber and gold. They abutment the individual pitched roof capped by crow-stepped stones on the top edges. The architecture is accepted as a lectern berth because of its shape, and on the roof is a band of six admission holes with two added on the east gable. These holes would accept enabled the pigeons, alleged doos, to ability the 400-plus nesting accommodation central the doocot. In the time afore algidity these birds would accept accustomed the above landowners admission to food, namely meat and eggs, all the year round. However, it was mainly the adolescent pigeons, the squabs, that were harvested.

One abnormal affection of this doocot is that it supports a ample weathervane, depicting a man in hunting dress, breeches, top boots and a alpine hat. It was erected in 1863 and is declared to be a affinity of Crawford Ross, who was a tacksman – a blazon of tenant. A allotment of abounding added duties, he was sometimes amenable for calling the clansmen to arms. The acumen for the commemorative weathervane was that Crawford Ross aswell adapted the central architecture of the doocot by architecture addition ceiling, appropriately adding the doocot into high and lower chambers. This bargain the amount of doos – necessarily, as they were burglary the bounded crops of some tenants. The birds in such doocots were originally acquired from bedrock doves that acclimated to brand forth the coast; if the doocots went out of use, the doos went beastly and eventually auspiciously bred with the bedrock doves. It is now accessible that there are no authentic bedrock doves in the UK. Let us achievement that such doocots survive to admonish us of the past.

From the top of the alluringly preserved Roman amphitheater here, one can see the adumbration dejected amnion of the Mediterranean, area beyond the sea in Rome an emperor fabricated this city-limits a advertise of his empire.

The ample bazaar is affected by arches and age-old abstracts for fabrics are categorical acutely into stone. Colonnaded and cobbled streets advance from a massive archway. Public latrines abide intact, as do gladiator arenas and mosaics advised by advisers to be masterpieces of the Roman era.

On a sun-scorched day in July not a individual day-tripper was to be found.

“Libya has all it takes to become a vacation paradise,” says Adel Belhaj of the Libyan Society for the Activation of Tourism.

Except that its sites are in Libya, area a absolutism blood-soaked its oil fields for 41 years to pay off assorted aggressive and affiliated allies, and did little to allure tourists. For decades, absolutist Moammar Gadhafi abandoned his nation from the alfresco apple by allotment acts of agitation that included the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

Gadhafi died in a apostasy adjoin his aphorism in October. Since then, the country has captivated one election, and abounding actuality achievement autonomous reforms will accompany tourists to a country that possesses 5 UNESCO Apple Heritage sites.

Belhaj absolutely hopes so, boasting of “1,300 afar of palm-fringed coastline” and “an adorable celebrated division in Tripoli featuring accomplished colonial buildings.” There are others.

Deep in the Naufosa mountains are acceptable beast homes of the Berber tribe, dug 20 anxiety in the arena to adore even temperatures in the calefaction of the day and arctic of the night.

The cavern art of the Jebel Acacus ambit dates aback 12,000 years and depicts hunting, festivities, animals and lovemaking, break that the arid actuality was already far added temperate.

Leptis Magna, which is just an hour’s drive west of the basic of Tripoli, is the website that has the best adventitious of cartoon crowds, assemblage say. “Libya’s Roman charcoal are not just absorbing aural Libya,” historian Justin Marozzi says. “They are a allotment of the greatest sites in Arctic Africa.”

The anchorage city-limits appeared to accept been accustomed added than 3,000 years ago by the abundant sailors and traders of the eastern Mediterranean, the Phoenicians. It became allotment of the Roman Authority and was adapted into a accurate showpiece if one of its citizens, Lucius Septimius Severus, was fabricated emperor in the additional century. Leptis Magna is a Latinization of the city’s aboriginal Phoenician name.

During its Roman prime, Leptis Magna was an important alteration point for alien animals apprenticed for the blood-soaked stadiums of age-old Rome, area elephants, lions and ostriches were a allotment of added than 9,000 agrarian animals dead during 100 canicule of celebrations that apparent the aperture of Rome’s Coliseum in 81 A.D.

Septimius Severus exempted the city-limits from bigoted taxes and adjourned improvements to the anchorage to adjust its addiction to alluvium up, acceptance it to curl as a trading port.

Although abounding of the able-bodied laid-out city’s grandest structures abide intact, alone a third of the city-limits has been excavated. In 2005, archaeologists unearthed bright mosaics of attenuate action in a villa’s algid baptize attempt basin that showed a warrior in action with a deer, four men angry a balderdash and a gladiator searching aloft a collapsed opponent.

Syria threatened Monday to unleash its chemical and biological weapons if the country faces a foreign attack, a desperate warning from a regime that has failed to crush a powerful and strengthening rebellion.

The statement — Syria’s first-ever acknowledgement that the country possesses weapons of mass destruction — suggests President Bashar Assad will continue the fight to stay in power, regardless of the cost.

“It would be reprehensible if anybody in Syria is contemplating use of such weapons of mass destruction like chemical weapons,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said during a trip to Belgrade, Serbia. “I sincerely hope the international community will keep an eye on this so that there will be no such things happening.”

Syria is believed to have nerve agents as well as mustard gas, Scud missiles capable of delivering these lethal chemicals and a variety of advanced conventional arms, including anti-tank rockets and late-model portable anti-aircraft missiles.

During a televised news conference Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi stressed that the weapons are secure and would only be used in the case of an external attack.

“No chemical or biological weapons will ever be used, and I repeat, will never be used, during the crisis in Syria no matter what the developments inside Syria,” he said. “All of these types of weapons are in storage and under security and the direct supervision of the Syrian armed forces and will never be used unless Syria is exposed to external aggression.”

The Syrian government later tried to back off from the announcement, sending journalists an amendment to the prepared statement read out by Makdissi. The amendment said “all of these types of weapons — IF ANY — are in storage and under security.” It was an attempt to return to Damascus’ position of neither confirming nor denying the existence of non-conventional weapons.

In his comments to reporters, Makdissi also repeated the regime’s assertion that the country’s 17-month-old conflict, which activists say has killed at least 19,000 people, is not the result of a popular uprising, casting it instead as the work of foreign extremists looking to destroy the nation.

Israel and the U.S. are concerned that Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist militants should the regime in Damascus collapse. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that his country would “have to act” if necessary to safeguard the arsenal from rogue elements.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday that “any possible use of these kinds of weapons would be completely unacceptable.”

“The Syrian regime has a responsibility to the world, has a responsibility first and foremost to its own citizens to protect and safeguard those weapons,” she said, adding that Washington was working with allies to monitor the situation and send the message to both Syria’s government and opposition about the importance of protecting non-conventional weapons.

A senior U.S. intelligence official said Friday the Syrians have moved chemical weapons material from the country’s north, where the fighting was fiercest, apparently to both secure and consolidate it, which U.S. officials considered a responsible step.

But there has also been a disturbing rise in activity at the installations, so the U.S. intelligence community is intensifying its monitoring efforts to track the weapons and try to figure out whether the Syrians are trying to use them, the official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the still-evolving investigation.

Concerns over Syria’s long-suspected chemical weapons stockpiles have skyrocketed in recent days as the rebels gain serious momentum in their fight to oust the Assad regime.

Since last week, the anti-Assad fighters have claimed a stunning bomb attack that killed four high-level security officials in Damascus, captured several border crossings and launched sustained offensives in Damascus and Aleppo, the two largest cities and both regime strongholds.

Makdissi tried to assure Syrians that the situation was under control, despite reports of clashes throughout the country.

“Yes, there were clashes on certain streets in certain neighbourhoods, but the security situation is now much better. Everyone is feeling reassured,” he said. “We are not happy about this, but this is an emergency situation and it will not last more than a day or two and the situation will return to normal.”

Security forces appeared to show more government control in videos posted online by activists Monday. Some of the clips show Syrian militia sweeping through Damascus neighbourhoods once held by rebels, kicking down doors and searching houses in mop up operations against the fighters that had managed to hold parts of the capital for much of last week.

It was a different story in Aleppo, however, where the Britain-based Syria Observatory reported fierce fighting in a string of neighbourhoods, including Sakhour and Hanano, in the northeast of Syria’s largest city.

Several videos posted by activists showed rebels battling regime tanks in Sakhour’s narrow streets. In one clip, a tank on fire rumbles along a road after being hit by rebels as a man jumps out of the flaming turret. Other videos showed cheering rebels celebrating around destroyed tanks, even driving around one they had captured.

The rebel advance has been a swift turnaround in the momentum of the uprising, which began in March 2011. Still, the opposition remains hobbled by divisions within their ranks and the fact that they are outgunned by the well-armed regime. The violence, meanwhile, has become far more unstable than many had ever imagined, with al-Qaida and other extremists exploiting the chaos.

Still, the opposition fighters have kept up their battle for 17 months, chipping away at government power and penetrating the aura of invincibility that the Assad family dynasty has built up over four decades in power.

Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have pledged funds to aid Syria’s rebels, but there is no clear trail showing how much is reaching the fighters.

U.S. officials are debating whether to step up aid to the rebels, including sending in heavy weaponry, but officials are worried the aid may end up in the hands of Islamic militants who have infiltrated the rebel Free Syrian Army, the American official said.

Former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is now a scholar at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, said Friday that the agency has only a handful of operatives working on the Turkish side of the Syrian border, helping allies who want to give the rebels aid identify which groups are legitimate.

The agency has distributed encrypted radios to the rebels to help them co-ordinate their attacks. Gerecht has called for the White House to initiate a covert CIA operation inside Syria, to help arm the rebels with weaponry able to take down the helicopter gunships menacing Syrian towns.