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Kentucky faith-based agency under fire for religious coercion

Saturday, May 5, 2007

A lawsuit filed by a former employee of Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children (now Sunrise Children’s Services) and four other tax-payers, has shed light on the possibility of religious coercion by the organization. The lawsuit challenges the faith-based agency’s eligibility for state funds.

Specifically, interviews of children conducted by the state of Kentucky have revealed complaints from some of the children. Mainly, children who said they were Catholic, Pentecostal, Jehovah’s Witnesses or atheist voiced complaints in the interviews.

“They tried to more [or] less force me to become a Christian,” said one child in an exit interview. “I just felt I was being pressured into giving up my religion.”

Another child reported s/he was “not allowed to choose when or when not to attend a religious service,” per the interview, and was told “‘to do’ some type of Bible study during that time or get consequences.”

Both the Commonwealth of Kentucky and Sunrise say there is a strict policy against proselytizing in the program and that it does not prevent children from practising their individual faiths.

They also stress that these complaints number merely a “handful” among the approximately 1,500 children that are served by the faith-based agency.

“If a child says, ‘I don’t want to go to the Baptist church,’ then the child does not go,” Jonathan Goldberg, the state’s attorney, said. Some children might have mistankenly believed they were forced to go, he added.

The plaintiffs are seeking to have the interviews unsealed, at least in the cases where the child is now 18 years of age or older. The state and Sunrise argue they need to be kept confidential.

The lawsuit originated with Alicia Pedreira, who was fired in 2000. She alleges her firing was direct result of Sunrise (then Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children) finding out she is a lesbian.

Sunrise Children’s Services provides residential programs and foster care homes for children that have suffered abuse or neglect. Since 2001, Kentucky has paid Sunrise US$61 million to provide the services for children who would otherwise be in direct state custody.

In 2001, the state did find cause for action against one of Sunrise’s homes to fix “a coercive religious environment” where staff members confirmed that church attendance was required.

With accusations of undue pressure by a Christian agency funded by the state, the Sunrise case bears some similitude to the lawsuit against Iowa for paying Chuck Colson’s evangelical agency to run part of its prison.

Last June, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt strongly reprimanded and ruled against Iowa’s use of a Christian social service agency to administer its prison. Judge Pratt stated: “For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions… There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates.”

The Iowa ruling is pending appeal.

Critics point to both of these cases as failures of George W. Bush’s faith-based services initiative. The program is often seen as conflicting with the tradition of separation of church and state in the United States.

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San Francisco Condos For Sale Why It’s A Better Option

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You do have some options when it comes to buying real estate for sale but San Francisco condos for sale may be one of the best options on the table. There are quite a few reasons why San Francisco condos for sale is a better option than other options. Evaluating your choices is the best way to find the best real estate options that will best meet your needs.

The Benefits

People flock to buy condos in SF because it is the option that fits their lifestyle. Here are some benefits that you can experience when you purchase an SF condo:

* No maintenance worries- all you must worry about is inside your apartment, gardens, lounge areas and other communal spaces are taken care of for you. This fact of course will free up your time so that you can enjoy the things that you love to do.

* Prime location-if you love the city and want to live in the heart of the city than condo living is ideal for you. You can have easy access to all the things that make SF a great place to live when you live in the right condo in the right location.

* New, new and new- buying a new condo is even a better deal! When you buy new you are the first to live in it, it is up to the minute styled and will be a worry-free residence for years to come. New condos offer the best value.

Condo living is for people that do not want to be a slave to their property. Living in a condo gives you the possibility of living a carefree lifestyle while still owning property. Why pay for a lease when a condo builds value and can be a great way to get a return on your investment down the road.

Consider Your Options

Before you make a buying, decision consider your options carefully. With a little consideration, most people realize that if you are going to live in SF you might as well live in the heart of the city and take advantage of all the great possibilities. The Austin is a good example of why people buy condos instead of houses. You get all the amenities you need for your lifestyle; the condos are designed for how you live today and the location is completely exceptional!

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GitHub blocks public access to youtube-dl after RIAA issues DMCA notice

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GitHub blocks public access to youtube-dl after RIAA issues DMCA notice
July 27th, 2021 | Uncategorized |
This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Monday, October 26, 2020

On Friday, code hosting and sharing website GitHub blocked the public access to youtube-dl, a software which can download videos from the internet via the command-line. The blockade came after GitHub received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After stripping the metadata from the notice, GitHub published the take-down notice on their site.

Initially started in July 2008 by Ricardo Garcia, youtube-dl is a script written in Python which can download videos from multiple websites including YouTube, LiveLeak and Vimeo. youtube-dl is a FLOSS software and is under public domain. Currently, the repository on GitHub is locked for viewers other than maintainers of the project.

RIAA’s DMCA notice alleged the script’s purpose of existence was to “circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube” and “reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use”.

youtube-dl has multiple unit tests in its source code, which test whether the software works in different circumstances or not. Some of the tests include checking if the script can download Creative Commons licensed videos, videos which did not have square pixels, videos with no age restriction, “offensive to some audiences” per YouTube community and age-restricted videos. One of the tests included the URL of some copyrighted songs. Citing this test, RIAA’s take-down notice claimed “comments in the youtube-dl source code make clear that the source code was designed and is marketed for the purpose of circumventing YouTube’s technological measures”.

RIAA’s notice published by GitHub alleged violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 Circumvention of copyright protection systems which says “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title”. RIAA listed a number of forks of youtube-dl and requested GitHub via the notice they all be made inaccessible.

The notice did not list any incident of anyone using youtube-dl to download or share copyrighted material, nor mention any damages that actually occurred. Unremarked by the notice, YouTube allows videos to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. When a copyright holder chooses to release their work, be it a photograph, a video, or audio, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, they allow everyone to freely own, share or modify the work as long as the reusers properly attribute the author of the work. YouTube also hosts many audio and video recordings in the public domain which can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.

youtube-dl is used by thousands of people around the world. Multiple Creative Commons-licensed and public domain videos on Wikimedia Commons are uploaded via a tool called video2commons, which relies on youtube-dl to download media. youtube-dl also lets users download videos from LiveLeak — a video-sharing platform for citizen journalism. Videos downloaded using youtube-dl are also used for the purpose of fair use, or for evidence.

youtube-dl comes with a small JavaScript interpreter where it acts as a web-browser would behave while receiving video data from the server. The script has “extractors” for various websites to handle videos from different sources. Whenever something is displayed on the user’s screen, the device has a copy of that content. Web browsers “download” data while surfing the web, though most of it is not persistent on the device. It is possible to download copyrighted photos by using a web-browser. The way the world wide web works, there are no technological prevention measures to prevent recording and sharing of content such as RIAA talks about in the notice. Photos and texts can be downloaded by taking screenshots, videos by screen recording tools, and audio by recording on a tape if not an audio recording software.

Multiple users expressed their disappointment on Twitter and Internet Relay Chat. One of the users said “this is yet another example of why we should use git as it was intended, as a distributed network, rather than rely on one single proprietary server”. Git is decentralised version-tracking software which is used by a large number of software companies and projects. It is possible to host one’s own git server for software development. While Microsoft’s GitHub is a centralised git server, development of software using git does not require a GitHub account.

Soon after the public access to the repository was locked, multiple users started sharing the source code via self-hosted git servers, Tor sites and via the Torrent protocol leading to a Streisand effect. Streisand effect is when a measure to censor information causes further spread of that information. The binary files of the software are still available on its website for users to download. Some people came up with esoteric ways to share the source code, by converting the compressed code into photographs and providing shell commands to convert to the source code.

GitHub’s DMCA repository, where the takedown notice was published for public viewing, was subject to contant vandalism from multiple GitHub users. One user submitted a pull request, merging the source code of youtube-dl along with the DMCA repository. This enabled users to view youtube-dl’s source code from within the DMCA repository, provided they know the commit id.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said on Twitter “Youtube-dl is a legitimate tool with a world of a lawful uses. Demanding its removal from Github is a disappointing and counterproductive move by the RIAA.” Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, has been highly critical of DRM (digital rights management, the subject of the DMCA) for many years now.

Wikinews reached out to Sergey M?, one of the maintainers of youtube-dl script, however Sergey said he “won’t give any comments at this time”. Later, he shared an update on the IRC channel. Sergey said, “they require complete removal of so called YouTube’s rolling cipher implementation […] GitHub requires in order to reinstate the repo […] under this conditions I could reinstate it in Saturday/Sunday already but this is an unsatisfactory outcome”. He also said, “I can’t guarantee whether [or] not we will bend over them considering the situation with @phihag [Philipp Hagemeister] but we’ll see soon what we can do in order to keep the max we have and mitigate potential legal issues at the same time”.

EFF is yet to respond to Wikinews queries. Wikinews also reached out to Philipp Hagemeister, a former maintainer and contributor of the youtube-dl project to discuss this takedown.

When did you get to know about the takedown notice and what were your initial reactions?

((Philipp Hagemeister)) I saw the takedown notice along with anyone else, on reddit. Since I am no longer involved with the youtube-dl project (except for occasional contributions, my maintainership ended in 2016), I don’t know any details.

((RS)) Does YouTube implement DRM for videos not under Creative Commons license, and if so, how does youtube-dl bypass it? Could you please elaborate the procedure?

((Philipp Hagemeister)) YouTube implements DRM for YouTube Movies. youtube-dl does not support those.

YouTube has multiple non-DRM video delivery protocols. I’m not up to date about specifics; my last dabbling in this was in 2015.

One of these protocols is described here. YouTube uses JavaScript to compute parts of the URLs. youtube-dl executes this JavaScript, just like a web browser.

((WN)) Could you also explain in brief how youtube-dl functions, and how the maintainers had intended it to be used?

((Philipp Hagemeister)) youtube-dl downloads and plays videos and music, just like any other web browser, from over 1000 different services. Its uses are varied: It enables video playback on many devices (e.g. Raspberry Pi) where the video services don’t work properly, it makes high-quality video playable for people with a bad or no Internet connection, it enables disabled users to use tools to play videos, and it is used for archival and research.

((WN)) What do you think of the DMCA notice?

((Philipp Hagemeister)) I think it is not warranted because youtube-dl is entirely legal. As the DMCA notice has no effect for me personally, I’m not really the right person to address it.

((WN)) Why were the copyrighted tests in the source code? Could they be replaced?

((Philipp Hagemeister)) I’m not sure why, but my guess is that users requested support for these videos and thus they were added as test cases. They can be removed trivially, without losing any function of youtube-dl.

((WN)) Are you aware Electronic Frontier Foundation said it was a “disappointing and counterproductive move”? What do you think should be the next steps?

((Philipp Hagemeister)) Yes, and I concur. I’m no longer involved in the project. If I were, I would probably just remove the test cases, block these music videos (RIAA is not worth the trouble for me, that can be done by other projects), and get the project back online.I understand people who think differently.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=GitHub_blocks_public_access_to_youtube-dl_after_RIAA_issues_DMCA_notice&oldid=4598392”

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Wikinews interviews Democratic candidate for the Texas 6th congressional district special election Daryl Eddings, Sr’s campaign manager

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Wikinews interviews Democratic candidate for the Texas 6th congressional district special election Daryl Eddings, Sr’s campaign manager
July 27th, 2021 | Uncategorized |

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail on March 23 to multiple candidates running in the Texas’ 6th congressional district special election of May 1 to fill a vacancy left upon the death of Republican congressman Ron Wright. Of them, the office of Democrat Daryl Eddings, Sr. agreed to answer some questions by phone March 30 about their campaigns and policies. The following is the interview with Ms Chatham on behalf of Mr Eddings, Sr.

Eddings is a federal law enforcement officer and senior non-commissioned officer in the US military. His experience as operations officer of an aviation unit in the California National Guard includes working in Los Angeles to control riots sparked by the O. J. Simpson murder case and the police handling of Rodney King, working with drug interdiction teams in Panama and Central America and fighting in the Middle East. He is the founder of Operation Battle Buddy, which has under his leadership kept in touch with over 20 thousand veterans and their families. He was born in California, but moved to Midlothian, Texas. He endeavours to bring “good government, not no government”. Campaign manager Faith Chatham spoke to Wikinews on matters ranging from healthcare to housing.

An Inside Elections poll published on March 18 shows Republican candidate Susan Wright, the widow of Ron Wright, is ahead by 21% followed by Democrat Jana Sanchez with 17% and Republican Jake Ellzey with 8% with a 4.6% margin of error among 450 likely voters. The district is considered “lean Republican” by Inside Elections and voted 51% in favour of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. This is down from 54% for Trump in 2016’s presidential election, the same poll stated.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews_interviews_Democratic_candidate_for_the_Texas_6th_congressional_district_special_election_Daryl_Eddings,_Sr%27s_campaign_manager&oldid=4619102”

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2008 COMPUTEX Taipei: Three awards, One target">
2008 COMPUTEX Taipei: Three awards, One target

July 26th, 2021 | Uncategorized |

Monday, June 23, 2008

2008 COMPUTEX Taipei, the largest trade fair since its inception in 1982, featured several seminars and forums, expansions on show spaces to TWTC Nangang, great transformations for theme pavilions, and WiMAX Taipei Expo, mainly promoted by Taipei Computer Association (TCA). Besides of ICT industry, “design” progressively became the critical factor for the future of the other industries. To promote innovative “Made In Taiwan” products, pavilions from “Best Choice of COMPUTEX”, “Taiwan Excellence Awards”, and newly-set “Design and Innovation (d & i) Award of COMPUTEX”, demonstrated the power of Taiwan’s designs in 2008 COMPUTEX Taipei.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=2008_COMPUTEX_Taipei:_Three_awards,_One_target&oldid=1108560”

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Football Betting Strategies

July 26th, 2021 | Betting |

Match result betting strategy

This is one of the most popular football strategies widely used by the bettors. Also the freshers prefer this strategy. And experienced bettors in fact, admit that it is a reliable strategy.

Match result betting strategy means that you need to predict the outcome of this or that match – the winning of the first or second team or even the draw. Bookmakers mark such outcomes as 1, 2 and X. Always remember, that in some events, the outcome can include extra time and in other – only normal time. Variants of this kind of football strategy are one team not lose (1X or X2), one team win (there won’t be a draw) – 12. Usually, odds are not very high and such bets are included into express bets.

Correct score betting

This kind of football betting strategies is very hard to predict but it attracts bettors because of “tasty” odds. If you tell precisely the correct score of the match, you will multiply the sum of your bet in 5-6 times of even more. It is possible to make several bets on different variants of the score of one and the same match and due to huge winning you will recover all your betting expenses and save quite a nice profit.

Half-time/full-time strategy

This is one of the most interesting football betting strategies. The bettors should predict, how will the first half of the match and the whole match finish. Widely spread are the bets where eventually stronger team is playing with a weak one. The high odds are given for the first half draw and the favorite’s winning of the whole match. It is due to the fact that thanks to the perfect physical performance, good luck and drive many underdogs can hold the draw during the first half but because the football team is weak it loses after the break. Freshers can use time-match – rather profitable and interesting kind of football betting strategies.

Over/Under Betting

This is one more widely spread football betting strategy variant. There is nothing difficult about it. You just need to predict how many goals the teams will score. The common total for the whole match is 2.5.

Now it is possible to find special programs that monitor the movements of totals from the moment of its appearing in bookmakers line and up to the sport event start. Having analyzed these variables, you will be able to make a right decision much more easier and it will help you to stand to gain.

Sending off football betting strategy

The variant of the football betting strategies that presupposes the analysis of teams discipline during the last matches is the possible sending off of the football player. This variant is ignored by the vast majority of the bettors, but absolutely wrongly. If you don’t make a mistake and a football player is sent off, you will be able to win three times as much you have put a bet

For this strategy the real football battles are usually chosen – classic grands fights (Barcelona-Real, Manchester United-Chelsea and others), where passions run high from the first and up to the last minute and where the possibility of sending off is very high.

If you decide to use this strategy for real, don’t forget to pay attention to the figure of a chief referee who can influence greatly on the match. Pay attention on the mean number of the red cards he had given in his career and the particular season, is he considered to be a strict referee or not, etc.

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News briefs:May 26, 2010">
News briefs:May 26, 2010

July 25th, 2021 | Uncategorized |
Wikinews Audio Briefs Credits
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Listen To This Brief

Problems? See our media guide.

[edit]

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UK chancellor raises national insurance payments for self employed in new budget">
UK chancellor raises national insurance payments for self employed in new budget

July 25th, 2021 | Uncategorized |

Friday, March 10, 2017

UK chancellor Philip Hammond announced his 2017 budget on Wednesday, which included a £2 billion pledge to social care and a tax hike on the self-employed. It was accused of breaking Conservative Party manifesto promises.

It was announced there will be a 2% increase in national insurance contributions for the self-employed, with chancellor Philip Hammond citing worries that people were choosing to become self-employed in order to pay lower taxes and his perception of unfairness in the different rates paid by employees and self-employees. There were accusations this change in policy goes against the manifesto promises the Conservative Party ran on in 2015, which promised four times that there would be no increase in national insurance rates. Conservative MP Anna Soubry tweeted saying she believed these new measures would be unpopular as many would see them as unfair. The leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, claimed the new measures will not clamp down on people whose self-employment is just for tax benefits, instead causing problems for those legitimately self-employed, arguing that if they are to start paying similar tax rates to the employed then they should get rights such as statutory maternity pay. The think tank Resolution claimed, however, this increase is outweighed by other government policies and is, therefore, a good move.

In addition to this, the chancellor announced a £2 billion pledge to social care over the next three years, saying he was aware of the stress the ageing population is having on the NHS and social care. Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb described the amount as “wholly inadequate”, saying much more is needed to pay for an increase in care demands due to the ageing population. The lowest threshold at which shareholders pay dividend taxes is to be lowered from £5,000 to £2,000 claiming that the taxes for dividends provided “an extremely generous tax break for investors with substantial share portfolios”. Other budget announcements include an additional £325 million for the NHS, £90 million transport spending for the North of England, £20 million to support campaigning against violence against girls and women and a slight increase in funding for the devolved governments.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=UK_chancellor_raises_national_insurance_payments_for_self_employed_in_new_budget&oldid=4627212”

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Category:January 10, 2008">
Category:January 10, 2008

July 24th, 2021 | Uncategorized |
? January 9, 2008
January 11, 2008 ?
January 10

Pages in category “January 10, 2008”

Media in category “January 10, 2008”

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The Particular Psychic Calendar Year Number Will Allow You To See In Advance The Theme

July 24th, 2021 | Cabling |

Submitted by: Wilson Comley

The particular psychic calendar year number will allow you to see in advance the theme for that yr. Is it a great year to get started on a fresh work, adjust your home, or start or conclude a partnership? The particular 12 months number is identified by adding the number of your month of one’s beginning, the time of day of one’s beginning, and the calendar 12 months. It is possible to use the present twelve months or any twelve months you’ll like to learn about. Use all four digits of your year 2012, not just 12. An illustration is Norma Jean’s birthday of June 1st. So with the 12 months ahead we really should add one(day) +6(month) +2+0+1+2=12. Then decrease with a single digit 1+two=several.

Norma Jean would have been expecting a twelve months vibrating with strength of a three.

Personal a long time repeat in nine-twelve months cycles. The start out of each new cycle is surely an possibility to start out fresh, with new likelihood to study about by yourself and also the planet. If you resist or refuse to discover you might generally find yourself in the identical situations, around and over until you do.

Some basic suggestions about what a particular year number could possibly provide available for you in any supplied twelve months are as follows:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzG0cWVS0C0[/youtube]

The A single 12 months: The start out of a brand new routine of nine decades. Time to take action methods toward doing your desires come real. You’ll find new alternatives this calendar year to overcome obstacles and limitations of all types. New work opportunities and new associations could possibly start up now. Alternately, current employment or relationships may possibly turn into a lot more included or dedicated, probably delivers of promotion or marriage.

The Two Year: A season for placing vitality and focus into what was commenced previous yr. If last year was hard, filled with conflict, resistance, or opposition, then be ready for a lot more. This is always to power you develop and find out co-operation and sharing. As soon as you obtain inner balance and harmony then it is possible to entice the best associate for you.

The 3 12 months: Creativity and self-expression are highlighted this calendar year. New friendships and enterprise contacts are opening as much as you this twelve months. This 12 months might provide hidden fears in to the light, should you’ve worked out your fears presently then assume to shine in communal conditions. You ought to have numerous parties to appear forward to.

The Four Twelve months: Fours are practical, standard concerns like basic safety, reliability, a stable basis, employment, and work, business issues of all varieties. Should you think stuck as part of your job, this could be a fantastic calendar year to change it. Studying to harmony perform and personalized lifestyle, in particular emotional, is often a problem this yr.

The 5 Calendar year: Transform, growth, flexibility, and satisfaction. Finding out through all sorts of travel and exploring. All points new are desired this season. A shift to a whole new house, or city, new close friends and pursuits could possibly be in retailer. Restlessness, impulsiveness, and also a need to break with all the previous and knowledge the new are also part from the electricity of the season.

The 6 Calendar year: Support, sacrifice, duty to people, as well as a striving for harmony. Those who’re solitary will drive companionship and marriage. This is actually a yr to resolve difficulties in present-day relationships, possibly deepening the connection or ending it.

The Seven Calendar year: Philosophy, introspection, and meditation will likely be resources of concentrate. Some may well find this yr lonely, but solitude incorporates a objective in finding to learn yourself. A seven calendar year could mean separation. It is normally greater to create certain any new bonds formed this yr will stand the take a look at of time prior to receiving far too required.

The Eight Yr: Electrical power, leadership, enhance, advancement, interpersonal status, and executive skill are all search phrases in the eight yr. The lesson would be to find out to use your electrical power properly. This is a great yr to entice a accomplice or strengthen a current romantic relationship.

The Nine Year: The finish of your routine, it brings points to an end, while displaying promise for new beginnings. Nine many years can involve a range of functions, opportunities, and activities. Commonly not a superb year to put together married, or commence a brand new business enterprise, the energy would favor endings as an alternative. It truly is an excellent time for letting go of negative habits, damaging feelings, aged psychological wounds, and even dangerous beliefs. Now could be a good time to prepare for your new cycle about to begin.

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