The proportion of global kidnappings from Latin America has halved since 2005, but Mexico still leads the pack, according to a new report from Control Risks. Asia and the Pacific had the most recorded kidnaps-for-ransom in 2013, up to 35% of global cases from 31% in 2012. Risks remain in Africa, especially in Nigeria where "the overwhelming majority of incidents taking place in the oil-producing Niger delta." "A large number of cases continued to be reported in the Middle East, fuelled by the unstable security environment created by the Syrian civil war," according to the report. "Kidnapping-for-ransom has become a common problem in Syria and Lebanon, with Lebanon ranking sixth in Control Risks’ global top ten in 2013."
Here are the top 20 countries for kidnap-for-ransom in absolute terms for 2013 (as of September 30):
1. Mexico
2. India
3. Nigeria
4. Pakistan
5. Venezuela
6. Lebanon
7. Philippines
8. Afghanistan
9. Colombia
10. Iraq
11. Syria
12. Guatemala
13. Yemen
14. Libya
15. Egypt
16. Brazil
16. Kenya (tied)
18. Nepal
19. Malaysia
19. South Africa (tied)
Four-hundred-thousand-year-old human remains found deep in the Pit of Bones — a cave 43 feet under the ground in northern Spain — could hold the secrets of our origin. For now, however, the first analysis of ancient human genetic material has created more questions than answers.
"Right now, we've basically generated a big question mark," study researcher Matthias Meyer, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, told The New York Times.
The Pit of Bones was discovered in the 1970s and scientists have been studying it and the bones it contains ever since. So far they've found the bones of 28 ancient humans, tentatively classified as Homo heidelbergensis, dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
Reason to invest with Amazon stocks is a a top stock to invest
Here's what Amazon's dominance looks like according to the new Synergy
UPDATE: Ed Barbini, an IBM spokesperson, disputes Synergy's conclusions. Barbini notes that "IBM's 3Q report, just last month, showed that IBM's revenue from cloud products and services reached more than $1 billion last quarter" up 70% in its first three quarters over last year, which would put it in a similar range as Amazon. He also pointed out that IBM has "1,400 cloud patents and 37,000 cloud experts worldwide."
When it comes to raking in the money on cloud computing Amazon still "dwarfs all competition," writes John Dinsdale, an analyst at market researcher Synergy in a new report.
The total cloud computing market hit $2.5 billion in revenue in Q3, up 46% the same quarter of 2012, Synergy found.
Not only did Amazon grab most of that, it grew its own cloud revenues by 55% and increased its overall market share.
The worldupside down!!! Atheists create new Churches. What is next? Including Confirmation in their "atheist" theories?
Atheists do not believe in God but yet they want to join Churches - Imitate all rituals that religious people follow -
What is very strange is that Atheist keep criticizing or trying to reject God but then follow the same rituals non-atheists perform. From confirmation to Baptism and now Church. And notice Church is on Sunday not any other day !!
Read the Below article from AP.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — It looked like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Several hundred people, including families with small children, packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational talk and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God.
Nearly three dozen gatherings dubbed "atheist mega-churches" by supporters and detractors have sprung up around the U.S. and Australia — with more to come — after finding success in Great Britain earlier this year. The movement fueled by social media and spearheaded by two prominent British comedians is no joke.
On Sunday, the inaugural Sunday Assembly in Los Angeles attracted several hundred people bound by their belief in non-belief. Similar gatherings in San Diego, Nashville, New York and other U.S. cities have drawn hundreds of atheists seeking the camaraderie of a congregation without religion or ritual.
Classé dans : Culture,Dossiers,Sujets qui fâchent — 28 mai 2008 @ 13 01 46
Introduction
Nous allons commencer cette étude par l’observation d’un petit animal, l’abeille, dont vos connaissez sans doute à peu près l’étonnante organisation de sa ruche… Mais connaissez-vous toutes les surprenantes particularités de toute abeille… ? (La Genèse au risque de la science, pp. 46-47)
Avouez qu’il y a de quoi être émerveillé par ce petit insecte qui pèse moins d’un gramme qui est équipé de dispositifs parfaitement adaptés à des besoins très divers !
D’ailleurs, ce que vous venez de découvrir chez une simple abeille, vous pourriez le découvrir avec une diversité infinie de trouvailles chez d’innombrables animaux, qui ont des particularités uniques en leur genre et qui leur permettent de faire face à des situations et des besoins spécifiques ; le cas de la chauve-souris et de son sonar (utilisant la réflexion des ultrasons) ou celui du chameau et de ses sabots tout-terrain méritent le retour… Et je ne parle pas d’où vient la coordination qui existe entre tous les animaux et végétaux d’un même site (chaîne alimentaire…) ; tout cela est parfaitement agencé. La question qui vient à l’esprit est : comment toutes ces adaptations admirables ont-elles été inventées et mises en places ? Ou plutôt par qui ?
Pendant des dizaines de siècles, la plupart des hommes ont répondu : c’est un Etre transcendant (d’un ordre supérieur) à notre monde visible, qu’on appelle Dieu, qui les a créés tels quels. On ne peut pas observer, par exemple, la petite épine sur l’une des pattes antérieures de l’abeille, épine dont elle se sert pour extraire le pollen du sac disposé sur une autre patte, sans se dire : un être intelligent a bien dû penser tout cela !
Et pourtant, depuis plusieurs décennies, une réponse très différente est proposée : en résumant, tous les êtres vivants actuels seraient apparus progressivement au long de centaines de millions d’années, depuis un premier organisme très simple, unicellulaire, selon un processus de transformation des uns à partir des autres, en passant par des organismes de plus en plus complexes, jusqu’à l’homo sapiens sapiens (ou homme de Cro-Magnon, semblable à l’homme actuel) descendant d’un primate supérieur. Aujourd’hui, les scientifiques ont érigé l’hypothèse de l’évolutionnisme – appelé aussi transformisme – en dogme énoncé dans les manuels scolaires, les livres, les magazines, les reportages télévisés, les conférences, les expositions, et même les livres de la plupart des théologiens et ecclésiastiques, qui pensent concilier foi et évolution matérialiste (puisque l’homme viendrait de la matière).
When I was at university, I was convinced that I wanted to be an investment banker and work on Wall Street. A year later, it took all of about three hours in the cubicle miasma known as State Street for that dream to evaporate. In hindsight, I didn’t want to be a banker as much as I wanted to feel powerful and important. Fortunately, I found other ways to meet those needs.
There was also a period of time when I was convinced that my ex-girlfriend left me because I wasn’t good enough for her and so I had to prove myself to every woman I ever met. But after a lot of over-compensation around other women, I eventually realized that I was fine and much better off without her.
Then there was the idea that every bad emotion I ever experienced was a result of some underlying trauma and that by “working through it,” I was precipitating some sort of transformation in myself. Boy, was that one delusional. (Spoiler alert: Sometimes you feel bad just because you feel bad.)
What I’m getting at is that we’re often poor arbiters of our own emotions and desires. We lie to ourselves. And we do it for one obvious reason: to feel better.
We may not know exactly what we’re lying to ourselves about, but it’s safe to assume that some chunk of what we consider “truth” today is likely nothing more than a defense against some deeper meaning which is painful to accept.
By lying to ourselves we mortgage our long-term needs in order to fulfill our short-term desires. Therefore, one could say personal growth is merely the process of learning to lie to oneself less.
When it comes to uncovering our own BS, many of us rely on similar patterns to protect ourselves. Here are some common patterns I’ve come across in myself and people I’ve worked with:
1. “If I could just X, then my life would be amazing.”
Take your pick of what X is: get married, get laid, get a raise, buy a new car, a new house, a new pet rabbit, floss every Sunday, whatever. Obviously, you’re smart enough that I don’t have to tell you that no one single goal will ever solve your happiness problems permanently. After all, that’s the tricky part about the brain: the “If only I had X, then…” mechanism never goes away.
We’re evolutionarily wired to exist in a state of mild dissatisfaction. It makes biological sense. Primates who are never quite satisfied with what they already have and want a little bit more were the ones who survived and pro-created more often.
It’s an excellent evolutionary strategy, but a poor happiness strategy. If we’re always looking for what’s next it becomes quite difficult to appreciate what is now. Sure, we can alter this wiring a bit through conditioning, learned behaviors and changed mindsets, but it’s an immovable piece of the human condition, something we must always lean against.
So what does that mean? Learn to enjoy it. Learn to enjoy the challenge. Learn to enjoy change and pursuit of one’s higher goals. Relish the chase, so to speak. A big misconception in the self help world is that being satisfied with the present moment and working towards one’s future are somehow contradictory. They’re not. If life is a hamster wheel, then the goal isn’t to actually get anywhere, it’s to find a way to enjoy running.
