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terça-feira, 12 de outubro de 2010
440,000 residents evacuated as floods ravage S. China island province, more rains to come
HAIKOU, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- More than 440,000 people had been evacuated by Sunday as floods wreaked havoc in China's southernmost island province of Hainan, authorities said Monday. The floods have disrupted the lives of 2.7 million people in 16 cities and counties on the island, and the affected area accounted for 90 percent of Hainan's total territory, Luo Baoming, governor of the province, said during a video conference on flood relief mobilization. The floods have also destroyed more than 3,000 houses, and damaged more than 1,400 roads and 43 reservoirs in the province. Also, over 166,700 hectares of crops have been damaged, and among these, 74,000 hectares have been destroyed, according to the provincial civil affairs department. Nearly 100 schools were toppled, and five cities and counties were forced to suspend school for two or three days, Luo said. According to the local meteorological bureau, another round of rains is forecast to pound the island Wednesday, which will pose more difficulties for relief work, Luo added.
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#listening "4 Minutes", de Glee Cast
Ouvindo a música "4 Minutes", de Glee Cast, #nowplaying na @RadioUOL http://uol.fm/bvcTt
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Brazil caught up in a green tsunami
y GWYNNE DYER, QMI Agency
http://www.torontosun.com/
This is now the great mystery of Brazilian politics: What will Marina do? Marina is Marina Silva, leader of Brazil’s Green Party, and the speaker, Altino Machado, is a journalist and one of her oldest friends. But Marina has already done something remarkable: She persuaded one-fifth of Brazil’s voters to support the Green Party.
Twenty percent is the second-highest share of the vote ever won by any Green Party anywhere, and Brazil, with more than 200 million people, is the country that really counts in South America.
What happened there was, said the Rio newspaper O Dia, a green tsunami.
The votes that went to Marina deprived Workers Party candidate Dilma Roussef of victory in the first round of voting on Oct. 4.
To win in the first round, a candidate must get 50% of the vote; Dilma ended up with 46.9%. So now Marina must decide whether to support Dilma in the second round on Oct. 31, or back the relatively conservative runner-up in the first round, Jose Serra.
However, her decision matters less than it seems: Dilma only needs a few million extra votes to cross the 50% barrier, and Marina cannot really compel all the Greens to vote for Serra.
The headline story is still the rapid economic growth Brazil has enjoyed under outgoing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and, just as importantly, the way the new wealth has been shared out.
Fifty million Brazilians have been rescued from poverty (an income of less than $82 per month) by Lulas subsidies for the very poor, and another 25 million Brazilians have actually ascended into the middle class. So Lula leaves office after eight years with a stratospheric approval rating of 80%.
He could choose a complete nobody as his successor and get him or her elected. Dilma Roussef is more than that a former guerrilla during the military dictatorship of 1964-85, a skilled administrator, and Lula’s former chief of staff but nobody has ever said she had too much charisma.
No matter. She’ll win the second round anyway. What’s really interesting here is the emergence, two decades after the restoration of democracy, of what you might call Brazil’s political personality.
All three big political parties, the Workers Party, Serras Social Democrats, and the Greens, are on the left economically, and they all promise to continue Lula’s brand of pragmatic socialism. Together, they got 98% of the vote in the elections on Oct. 4.
The rapid rise of the Greens is partly driven by Brazilians growing awareness that they are the custodians of the world’s largest tropical forest, the Amazon.
That may explain why 85% of Brazilians think that climate change is a major problem, while only 37% of Americans do.
Brazil is the only one of the BRICs, the big countries with high economic growth rates, to have both a powerful industrial sector and self-sufficiency in energy.
By the time it hosts the Olympic Games in 2016, it will probably have the fifth-largest economy in the world.
It is still one of the world’s most unequal countries, with a gulf between rich and poor that makes even the United States look egalitarian.
But it is moving in a different direction now, without the doctrinaire excesses that usually mar such efforts.
Brazil is becoming not just an important place, but a very interesting place.
— Gwynne Dyer’s new book, Climate Wars, was published in Canada by Random House.
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Trending on Twitter: Brazil elections, Nobel prize and #cantwait
What The Trend, a Twitter aggregator that positions itself as “the front page of the real time web”, released its findings of the biggest Twitter trends for this recent week which featured the Brazilian elections, Nobel Prizes and some rather odd-ball memes.
Politics, sport, music and TV all featured strongly, along with a broad selection of off-beat memes that picked up a viral following across the Twittersphere:
1. BRAZIL ELECTION: The Brazilian general election was held Oct 3rd, 2010. Marina Silva, the Green Party candidate running for presidency had her own hashtag (#marina43) and was the most popular by tweets. Dilma Rousseff took over 46 percent of the votes, Social Democrat Jose Serra got 32 percent and Marina Silva scored 19 percent. Since no one candidate garnered above 50% of the vote, there will be a run-off election at the end of the month.
2. #liesyoushouldntfallfor: A meme where people listed all the lies you shouldn’t buy.
3. #CANTWAIT: People are tweeting about things they can’t wait for.
4. GLEE (TV SHOW): The character Finn, on the TV show “Glee”, saw a Jesus impression burnt into his grilled cheese on the October 5th 2010 episode, thus the episode name “Grilled Cheesus.”
5. #wheniwasakid: People are talking about what they did when they was a kid.
6. NFL: The most discussed news from the world of Major League Football was Randy Moss being traded from the New England Patriots to the Minnesota Vikings.
7. NOBEL PRIZE: The 2010 Nobel Prizes were announced this week. The Nobel Prize is awarded each year to people who have done outstanding research, invented groundbreaking techniques or equipment, or made outstanding contributions to society in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economics. People most discussed Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer, who won in the field of Literature, and British physiologist Robert Edwards who won the Nobel Prize for medicine for his work on the development of human in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
8. #TwoThingsThatDontMix: People are tweeting about two things that they don’t think go together.
9. DUTCH POLITICS: The Dutch Christian Democrats (CDA) formed a coalition with the Dutch Liberals (VVD) with formal support of the Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) in an effort to form a minority government.
10. Fan of a Fan Remix: The leaked remix (featuring Drake, T.I., Fabulous, Kanye West, Andre 3000 and Rick Ross) of Chris Brown’s hit song “Deuces,” off from the “Fan of a Fan” mixtape, generated a lot of excitement.
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What Cats Do When Looking Inside the Toilet
Secretly drinking whisky
Underwater swimming
Catching dinner
Doing magic. Cats can do that too!
Working for KGB
Plumbing
Voting in cat elections
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#listening "Fool's Overture", de Supertramp
"Fool's Overture", de Supertramp, #nowplaying na @RadioUOL http://uol.fm/bnc0r
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Banana Cellfoam™
Welcome to the new Cellfoam.com more pics and info coming soon.
Turn your cell phone into a banana phone!
Banana phone covers fit bar and flip style cell phones approximately 1 3/4” x 5 inches or smaller. Wide phones like the iphone or blackberry do not fit well.
Bananas are $10 each plus shipping and handling.
California orders will include 9.5% sales tax.
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#listening "The Logical Song", de Supertramp
Ouvindo a música "The Logical Song", de Supertramp, #nowplaying na @RadioUOL http://uol.fm/btcRp
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#dilma #dilmanao : Madrasta dos Pobres
“Os aeroportos estão saturados porque mais gente viaja de avião. Antes só os ricos podiam viajar”.
Dilma Rousseff, no debate da Band, explicando que o governo Lula não construiu novos aeroportos nem ampliou os existentes porque pobre gosta de fila.
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#listening "Goodbye Stranger", de Supertramp
Ouvindo a música "Goodbye Stranger", de Supertramp, #nowplaying na @RadioUOL http://uol.fm/bscwt
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Vertically Moving Floor by Hydrfloors
Do not loose the area devoted to your swimming pool. With a brilliant use of design and technology, Hydrofloors vertically movable floors can be raised to different levels or completely, to turn the surface of the pool into a usable floor. More social events can now take place onto your swimming pool!
Smart and stylish, it is one you had always wished. The system is near invisible, rapidly adaptable and safe.
[Hydrofloors]
Via [Picocool]
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Crazy Airplane Hotel Room Conversion in Costa Rica
Photograph by Vincent Costello
Located on a coastal rainforest bluff overlooking the Pacific, Hotel Costa Verde near Quepos, Costa Rica, features one of the most unique hotel rooms I’ve ever encountered. A two bedroom, fully retrofitted, vintage 1965 Boeing 727 fuselage, available on your next vacation! Check out the incredible pics and information below on this one-of-a-kind lodging.
Photograph by Vincent Costello
HISTORY OF THE PLANE
- A refurbished, vintage 1965 Boeing 727 airframe, which originally shuttled globetrotters on South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines (Colombia)
- Salvaged the airframe, piece by piece, from its San Jose airport resting place. Each piece was carefully transported on five, big-rig trucks to the jungles of Manuel Antonio
- Plane is now nestled on the edge of the National Park perched on a 50-foot pedestal. At this height, you can enjoy scenic ocean and jungle views from the hard wood deck built atop the plane’s former right wing
Photograph by Vincent Costello
AIRPLANE HOTEL ROOM INTERIOR
- The plane’s interior is Costa Rican teak paneling from the cockpit to the tail
- Furnishings are hand-carved, teak furniture from Java, Indonesia
- The vintage 727 home features two air conditioned bedrooms one with two queen sized beds and the other with one queen sized bed, each with its own private bathroom
- Additional amenities include: flat screen TV, kitchenette, dining area foyer, an ocean view terrace, private entrance up a river rock, a spiral staircase, and 360 degree views of surrounding gardens
- Common treetop neighbours include: sloths, toucans and monkeys
Photograph by Vincent Costello
EXECUTIVE 727 SUITE RATES
Summer Season | $500 plus tax - Jan 02, 2010 - April 30, 2010
Green Season | $400 plus tax - May 01, 2010 - Nov 18, 2010
Summer Season | $500 plus tax - Nov 19, 2010 - Dec 22, 2010
Christmas Season | $700 plus tax - Dec 23, 2010 - Jan 01, 2011
Summer Season | $500 plus tax - Jan 02, 2011 - April 30, 2011
Green Season | $400 plus tax - May 01, 2011 - Nov 19, 2011
Photograph by Vincent Costello
Photograph by Vincent Costello
Photograph by Vincent Costello
HOTEL CASA VERDE
- Hotel Costa Verde is located three hundred yards from the beach and Manuel Antonio National Park
- It features two cliffside pools with sundecks and spacious rooms and balconies, all offering a bird’s-eye view of the Park’s coastline plus rainforest canopy vistas dotted with native birds and monkeys
- Costa Verde offers accommodations for a variety of options for vacation living, including air conditioned studio apartments with cable TV, and Costa Verde II, a special group of 15 studios designed exclusively for couples with an open-air design and no air conditioning, glass windows or TV
- In addition, they have bungalows available for vacationers interested in renting a private house. Each area has its own swimming pool and vistas
Photograph by Vincent Costello
Photograph by Vincent Costello
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Saiba por que o Tiririca daria um ótimo ´personal twitter´
SIMAO_07102010.mp3 (MP3 Audio File, 3.9MB)
07/10/2010 11:00
Saiba por que o Tiririca daria um ótimo ´personal twitter´
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#dilmanao Em Aparecida, #Dilma assiste a missa, mas não comunga
Em mais uma tentativa de se aproximar do voto religioso, Dilma Rousseff convocou dois de seus aliados que são ligados à Igreja Católica para assistir com ela a uma missa no Santuário de Aparecida, no interior de São Paulo, nesta segunda-feira.
Ao lado do deputado federal eleito Gabriel Chalita (PSB) e do chefe de gabinete da Presidência da República, Gilberto Carvalho, a candidata do PT à Presidência preferiu se antecipar às comemorações do dia da padroeira do Brasil, na terça-feira, para evitar um encontro com o candidato tucano José Serra, que já tem a presença confirmada na data festiva.
Durante a celebração, Dilma não conseguiu esconder a pouca intimidade com os rituais católicos: não conseguiu acompanhar os hinos e, em alguns momentos, Gilberto Carvalho parava para lhe explicar algo apontando o folheto da missa. No momento da comunhão – o mais importante para os católicos – a candidata permaneceu sentada em seu lugar.
A missa desta segunda-feira reuniu aproximadamente 14.000 pessoas no Santuário, que não se manifestaram – positiva nem negativamente – diante da presença de Dilma.
(Gabriel Castro, de Aparecida)
Carola militante
“Ninguém pode julgar a crença religiosa de ninguém”.
Dilma Rousseff, depois de participar nesta segunda-feira da missa no Santuário Nacional de Aparecida, jurando na entrevista coletiva que é reza desde o berço e só não entrou para a Congregação das Filhas de Maria porque já estava matriculada na VAR-Palmares.
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