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Energies 2018, 11(10), 2828; doi:10.3390/en11102828
Parallel Control Method Based on the Consensus Algorithm for the Non-Isolated AC/DC Charging Module
School of Internet of Things Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China
School of Automation, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 9 September 2018 / Accepted: 16 October 2018 / Published: 19 October 2018
A high-power charging station for electric vehicles usually adopts a parallel structure of multiple power modules. However, due to the parameter differences among power modules, a parallel system always has circulating current issues. This paper takes a non-isolated AC/DC charging module as the research object and proposes a current sharing control strategy for multiple power modules based on the consensus algorithm. By constructing a sparse communication network with the CAN (Controller Area Network) protocol and exchanging current information, accurate current sharing among power modules is realized. Firstly, the zero-sequence circulating current issue is analyzed through a parallel model of the three-phase rectifier, with an improved circulating current restraint strategy proposed based on the zero-sequence voltage compensation. Then, the principle of the consensus algorithm is explained, which is applied to the current sharing control of multiple power modules. Finally, the proposal is tested by the designed simulation and experimental cases. From the obtained results, it can be seen that the proposed control strategy can effectively realize accurate current sharing among multiple power modules and well restrain the zero-sequence circulating current at the input side.
Keywords:three phase rectifier; parallel connection; zero sequence current; current sharing; consistency algorithm
Nowadays, with the fast development of electric vehicles, the charging station industry has received widespread attention. According to the form of the output voltage, electric vehicle charging stations can be divided into two types: The AC charging station and DC charging station. AC charging stations transmit AC power directly to the electric vehicle. Due to the single-phase input structure, the charging power of an AC charging station is limited. However, a DC charging station, which has a three-phase input structure, can realize higher power transmission. Commonly, the first stage of a DC charging station is a three-phase rectifier, and the second stage is a DC chopper for output voltage control. The rectifier circuit, which develops from uncontrolled rectification to phase-controlled rectification, and then to PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) rectification, is the core of a charging station. Among these circuits, the three-phase voltage type PWM rectifier has low current harmonics, a high power factor and adjustable output voltage, which can realize the green conversion of electric energy. Therefore, voltage-type PWM rectifiers are widely used in active power filters (APF), reactive power compensators, direct current transmissions, superconducting energy storage, and electric vehicle DC charging stations.
The parallel work of three-phase AC/DC charging modules has been increasingly used for high-power charging station. However, if the AC and DC sides of a rectifier have no electric isolation, a zero-sequence path will be established among the parallel charging modules [1,2,3]. Once the parameters of the parallel charging modules mismatch, a zero-sequence loop will be generated, which will increase power loss, lead to the distortion of the AC current waveform, and reduce system performance. At present, the methods for solving the zero-sequence current issue can be broadly separated into two categories: One is the hardware suppression method, and the other is the software suppression method. In References [4,5], an isolation transformer is added to the AC input side of each rectifier to block the zero-sequence path. Another hardware method is to use passive components, such as a common mode inductor and current balancer among parallel rectifier modules . However, the above hardware suppression methods will undoubtedly bring about an increase in system cost. On the other hand, as the zero-sequence modulation signal is the main cause of the zero-sequence circulating current, the issue can be solved from the perspective of software. In References [7,8], a zero-vector distribution method was used for the SVPWM (Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation) control strategy. However, an extra zero-sequence loop was required in each converter. When more than two converters work in parallel, it is not easy to implement this method. In References [9,10], the multi-carrier method is proposed to reduce common-mode voltage, which has a limited ability in suppressing the zero-sequence loop. A fractional proportional integral (PI) controller was used to control the circulating current of two PWM rectifiers . In References [12,13,14], a discrete nonlinear and variable structure controller was developed based on SVPWM. Although communication is not required, the method is complicated to implement.
Output current sharing errors among charging modules is another key issue in the parallel system. To realize output current sharing in the parallel system, the droop control method is commonly used, which is simple and practical. However, the control accuracy of current and voltage cannot be obtained [15,16]. In Reference , a voltage conversion rate is proposed to improve the droop control. Although the situation is improved compared with the traditional droop control, the voltage and current precision cannot be achieved at the same time. In References [18,19], the master–slave control manner is adopted. If the main module breaks, the whole system will immediately crash. Reference  proposes a master–slave control method, based on maximum current automatic current sharing, which solves the redundancy problem caused by the crash of the main module. However, low frequency oscillation will appear in the current.
In view of the insufficiency of the circulation current suppression methods mentioned above, in this paper, an improved SVPWM control strategy with superimposed zero-sequence voltage components is proposed. Only the zero-sequence circulation current is sampled and suppressed, while the complex zero vector allocation is not required. In addition, for the issue of non-uniform current in the system, a current sharing strategy, based on the consistency algorithm, is proposed, by constructing a sparse communication network with the CAN protocol and exchanging current information, accurate output current sharing among power modules is realized.
This paper is organized as follows. The mathematical model for the parallel system of multiple rectifiers is deduced in Section 2, and the causes of the circulating current are analyzed in detail. In Section 3, an improved SVPWM control strategy for compensating the zero-sequence voltage is proposed. In Section 4, a sparse communication matrix among modules is established, with a current sharing strategy based on the consistency algorithm proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is finally verified through results from MATLAB simulations and a 10 kW experimental platform.
2. Parallel Connection of Non-Isolated AC/DC Charging Modules
In this section, the topology of a non-isolated AC/DC charging module is given, and the mathematical model for the analysis of the zero-sequence circulation is deduced in detail.
2.1. Multi-Module Parallel Topology
Figure 1 shows the parallel topology of two isolated AC/DC charging modules. The first stage is a three-phase voltage type rectifier, and the second stage is a buck chopper. The AC side is powered by a three-phase 380 V line, and the DC voltage is output through the filter inductor and the three-phase rectifier bridge. The filter capacitors at DC side are C1, C2, in which voltages are adjusted by the buck circuits.
2.2. Mathematical Model Analysis of Zero-Sequence Circulation
The AC side and DC side in the non-isolated AC/DC charging module are connected directly. According to Kirchhoff’s current law (KCL) and Kirchhoff’s voltage law (KVL), the mathematical model of the parallel system in Figure 1 can be written as follows.where , , are the three-phase grid voltages; , , (n = 1, 2) are the three-phase grid side currents of the two parallel rectifiers; is neutral point voltage; (n = 1, 2) are the duty cycles of the three-phase bridge arm in one switching cycle; are the AC filter inductors; and is the value of the output voltage.
Other definitions are as follows: is the zero-sequence current of rectifier 1; is the zero-sequence current of rectifier 2; and , , . According to d-q coordinate transformation, the above equations can be expressed as:
According to the definition of zero-sequence loop and zero-sequence duty cycle, the above equations can be simplified to:where .
Therefore, it can be seen that, when two rectifiers are connected in parallel, a zero-sequence circulation path will be generated, resulting in zero-sequence circulation current. If the circulation current is not suppressed well, the system will have a great bad impact such as AC side current waveform distortion. The magnitude of the circulating current is determined by the difference between the zero-sequence duty ratios ( and ) of the two rectifiers.
3. Improved SVPWM Suppression of Zero Sequence Circulation
SVPWM is usually used in the control of the three-phase voltage type rectifier. When SVPWM is used, the zero vector of the three-phase rectifier will change, resulting in a zero-sequence current. The SVPWM control strategy improved by zero vector allocation is the most common method to suppress zero sequence circulation. However, when there are more than two parallel modules, the calculation of zero vector allocation is very complex. Therefore, an improved SVPWM method based on zero-sequence voltage compensation is adopted in this paper, which only needs to calculate its own zero sequence current.
The equivalent circuit diagram of the zero-sequence loop is described as follows.
As seen in Figure 2, the path of the zero-sequence current flow only contains small damping such as the inductance, the parasitic resistance and the line impedance. Therefore, only a small difference between the zero-sequence voltages can lead to large zero-sequence current. According to KVL and KCL, the following equations can be obtained:where and are the inductances of rectifier 1 and 2; and are the sum values of the parasitic resistance and line resistance of rectifier 1 and 2; and , are the neutral point voltages of the two rectifiers. As can be seen from the above equations, if the zero-sequence voltage difference between the two parallel rectifiers can be adjusted to a value infinitely close to 0, the zero-sequence current between the two parallel rectifiers will be greatly reduced.
According to the principle of SVPWM, the phase modulated wave of each phase in the seven-segment is a saddle-shaped wave. Because it is doped with third harmonic and three times multiple harmonics, and the value of each phase comparator can be expressed by the following equations:where is the time of each carrier cycle for the maximum voltage vector of SVPWM; and , are the durations of the two adjacent vectors, which occur successively in each cycle. The zero-sequence voltage of the compensation is defined as . Thus, the comparison values of the phase-modulated voltage after zero-sequence voltage compensation are as follows:
The corresponding control block diagram can be expressed as Figure 3:
As shown in Figure 3, the zero-sequence loop suppression needs to sample the zero-sequence current () first, where . By setting the reference value of the zero-sequence current to 0, the zero-sequence loop can finally be suppressed to a small value close to 0 through the PI regulator. The small value is called , the product of by is calculated to obtain the zero-sequence voltage component of the required compensation. A new three-phase modulation amount is obtained by adding the three-phase modulated waves , , and , respectively, to the zero-sequence voltage compensation component, which is then compared with the triangular wave to generate the final control signals , , .
For the rectifier parallel model analyzed above, since the zero-sequence loop path is provided by the parallel rectifiers, when one of the zero-sequence loops is suppressed, the other path of the zero-sequence loop will be blocked. Therefore, when there are N rectifiers working in parallel, it is only necessary to use the zero-sequence loop suppression method for any of the N-1 rectifiers.
4. Consistency-Based Current Sharing Control
The first-stage rectifier of the charger converts the three-phase alternating current of the grid side into the direct current, and the output voltage is regulated by the second-stage Buck circuit to meet the charging demand of the battery. The differences among the output characteristics of the Buck circuits may cause inconsistent output currents among the modules. As a result, the service life of each module becomes unbalanced, so the redundancy of the parallel system is greatly reduced. The control mode of the second-stage Buck circuit adopts a double closed loop control strategy, which is composed of a voltage outer loop and a current inner loop .
If there are N charging modules in the parallel system, each charging module can be regarded as a communication point that provides current information. The information topology among parallel charging modules can be regarded as a non-connected graph, composed of N current communication points. Set as the current value of the information node , and as the number of the present iteration. In the parallel system, the current value of each communication point is adjusted according to the current output of its adjacent charging modules, and its value is iterated following the current communication with the adjacent charging modules. As the number of the iteration times increases, the output current sharing errors among the parallel rectifiers will become smaller and smaller, eventually reaching uniform convergence or within a small error range. The uniform stacking formula can be expressed as:where and are the current values of node , in the kth iteration; represents the iteration coefficient; and is the total number of information nodes.
The whole system can be written in the following matrix form:where is the weight matrix of the communication network.
In the Equation (18), is an N-order unit matrix; is a value which determines the convergence speed; and is the L-value eigenvalue of matrix . Assume that is the initial current value of each communication point, and A indicates a column vector where all the elements are 1. Eventually, the current of all nodes converge to:
5. Simulation and Experiment
In this paper, a parallel system which is composed of three charging modules is built in a MATLAB simulation to verify the validity of the proposed control strategy. The simulation parameters of the charging module are as Table 1.
The simulation analysis and experimental verification of the proposed control strategy are explained in Section 5.1 and Section 5.2.
5.1. Zero-Sequence Circulation Suppression Simulation Results
Since the line impedances of the three parallel charging modules are inconsistent, not only will the inconsistent output current occur among the modules connected in parallel, but the zero-sequence circulation will also appear. To solve the above issues, the circulation issue must be first solved, and then the current sharing issue. As shown in Figure 5, the zero-sequence circulation will cause a distortion in the current waveform at the AC side. The magnitude of the zero-sequence loop is shown in Figure 6. The max value is up to 5 A, while the current on the AC side is only 15 A.
According to the method introduced in Section 3, N charging modules in parallel need only use loop suppression for any N-1 modules. Therefore, only module 1 and module 2 need to suppress the circulation. With the method of compensating zero-sequence voltage component, the zero-sequence circulation current is effectively suppressed. The current waveform distortion at the AC side is significantly reduced, and the harmonics are small as shown in Figure 7 and Figure 8. Meanwhile, at the DC side, the output currents become smoother.
5.2. Current Sharing Simulation Results
For the current sharing errors shown in Figure 9, this paper proposes a current sharing control method based on the consistency algorithm. The main circuit of the charging module is divided into a three-phase voltage rectifier and a DC chopper. The DC/DC circuit adopts voltage and current double closed loop control. Each charging module samples the output DC current, then the consistency algorithm is used, in which the current values of local module and neighbor modules are iterated. The output error value is then superimposed on the outer voltage loop. As shown in Figure 10, the output current of DC2 is transmitted to DC1 through CAN communication for iteration, and the output currents of DC3 and DC1 are transferred to DC2 and DC3 for iteration, respectively. Through the interaction of the current information on the reference voltage terminal, the output voltages are adjusted in real-time to achieve accurate current sharing.
As shown in Figure 11, the output current of each module before 0.4 s has a significant difference, and the output currents are 11.7 A, 9.8 A and 8.5 A, respectively. The calculation equation of the uneven flow rate is:
The uneven flow rate calculated from Equation (21) is 32%. The consistency algorithm starts at 0.4 s. Then, the output currents gradually become uniform, and they are almost the same at 2 s. It can be seen that the proposed method has an obvious current sharing effect and uniform current accuracy. The dynamic response is fast: when the load suddenly increases at 3 s, and a 40 Ω resistor is connected in parallel, the current sharing accuracy of the system is still satisfactory. The proposed method can, not only achieve a very high current sharing performance in a steady state, but also maintain a high current sharing accuracy in a transient state.
Figure 12 shows the DC output voltages of the three charging modules. The output voltage is 600 V due to the control of the voltage loop before the current sharing measure is taken. Starting the consistency algorithm at 0.4 s, the output voltages of the three modules are 600.2 V, 600 V, 599.8 V. After 3 s, the load suddenly increases, so the output voltages adjust to 600.25 V, 599.75 V, 600 V soon after. Therefore, the method can obtain extremely high voltage accuracy while achieving extremely high current sharing accuracy.
In order to further verify the practicability and effectiveness of the proposed control strategy, the corresponding experimental verification is carried out. The software flow chart of the consistent current sharing algorithm is shown in Figure 13. Charging module 1 is connected in series with 0.1 Ω line impedance, and the series resistance of modules 2 and 3 are 0.15 Ω and 0.2 Ω, respectively. The load impedance is 20 Ω, and the output DC voltage is 400 V. Figure 14 shows the zero-sequence loop generated by the parallel system when the output current is not equal. According to the graph analysis, the AC side currents of the parallel charging modules without the loop suppression method produce different degrees of distortion. After the suppression of the voltage component, the current waveform on the AC side is significantly improved, and the zero-sequence loop is effectively suppressed, the waveform is shown in Figure 15.
However, due to the different line impedances of the various charging modules, it can be seen from Figure 16 that the output currents are 4.2 A, 6.9 A and 8.9 A. The consistency algorithm starts at 7 s, and CAN communication is used to exchange current information among adjacent rectifiers, in which the communication cycle is 10 ms. The currents of the three modules tend to be consistent after 1.25 s to achieve the current sharing effect. The uniformity of the consistency algorithm not only achieves high-precision current sharing in steady state, but also achieves a good current sharing effect in transient mode. The current waveforms are shown in Figure 17.
This paper proposes a SVPWM control strategy based on the compensation of zero sequence voltage and a current sharing strategy based on the consensus algorithm for non-isolated AC/DC charging modules. The main contributions of the paper are as follows:
- Only the zero-sequence circulation current is sampled for feedback control to inhibit circulation, which does not require complex calculation and no communication is required among modules, thus reducing the communication burden.
- Compared with the droop control method, the proposed current sharing control strategy can ensure the voltage accuracy while maintaining the current sharing accuracy.
- Compared with the master–slave control, the proposed current sharing control strategy has no master module or slave module, which greatly increases redundancy.
Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed loop and current sharing control strategies are verified through simulation and experiment results. The proposed method is superior to traditional control strategies and provides an effective solution for the parallel operation of non-isolated AC/DC charging modules.
Additionally, power supply systems, particularly for high power levels, are made of several converters in parallel. Predictive diagnostic can effectively reduce the adverse effects of system failure. But today’s predictive diagnostics usually follow a centralized way instead of a distributed networking way, which is less scalable. This problem can be improved by constructing a sparse communication network with the CAN (Controller Area Network) protocol, which can be the focus of future research.
Software and writing—original draft preparation, T.W.; Writing—review and editing, Y.Z.; Writing—review and editing, L.X.; Investigation, G.Z.; Investigation, X.Q.
This research was funded by NSFC, grant number 51807079.
Thank you for the technical support of Zhuhui Bai engineer.
Conflicts of Interest
We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled, “Parallel Control Method Based on the Consensus Algorithm for the Non-Isolated AC/DC Charging Module”.
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Figure 1. Non-isolated AC/DC charging module parallel topology.
Figure 2. The equivalent path of the zero-sequence loop.
Figure 3. Zero-sequence loop suppression block diagram.
Figure 4. Block diagram of consistency-based current sharing control.
Figure 5. Zero-sequence loop suppression measures grid-side current.
Figure 6. Zero-sequence circulation current.
Figure 7. Shows the grid side current after taking the loop suppression measure.
Figure 8. Zero-sequence current after taking loop suppression.
Figure 9. DC side output current after the loop suppression measure.
Figure 10. Parallel system communication topology.
Figure 11. DC side output current after current sharing.
Figure 12. DC side voltage after current sharing.
Figure 13. Consistency algorithm CAN communication flow chart.
Figure 14. No zero sequence loop suppression.
Figure 15. Zero sequence loop suppression.
Figure 16. Consistent algorithm current sharing.
Figure 17. Load spike.
Table 1. Simulation system parameters.
|Grid line voltage||380|
|Pre-stage rectifier inductor||4 mH|
|Pre-stage rectifier capacitor||3000 uF|
|Output DC voltage||800 V|
|Post-buck circuit inductance||6 mH|
|Post-buck circuit capacitor||2 mF|
|The output voltage||600 V|
|Load impedance||20 Ω|
|Module 1 line impedance||0.1 Ω|
|Module 2 line impedance||0.14 Ω|
|Module 3 line impedance||0.12 Ω|
|Zero axis Kp||0.04|
|Zero axis Ki||0.2|
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).


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text:
In a tourist's nightmare, the sun's rays are chased from the beach by a shadow that slowly blankets the sand.
Would-be sunbathers go home disappointed.
In the interest of preventing the shade from spoiling Fort Lauderdale's tourist trade, the city has a "shadow ordinance" to prevent buildings from casting too much shadow on the beach.
But the law's requirements have an unintended effect on building design. Architects say it's virtually impossible to avoid creating buildings that look the same. Even worse, they say, the angled buildings are more costly to construct than a traditional high-rise -- which may be the reason a host of buildings have been approved, struggled for financing, but have not yet been built.
It seems that in a battle between flexible architecture and tan skin, the bronze bodies won out.
"My personal opinion on that, since I'm fair-skinned and get sunburnt, is I wish they had shading on the beach" Chris Wren, the city's comprehensive planning director, said. He laughed. "But maybe I'm in the minority."
Then he got serious: "The tourist industry is an important industry to the city of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County. And tourists are not going to go to a shady beach."
Here's how the law works: A building has to be set one foot back from the oceanside property line for every foot of building height. Most architects deal with the law by designing buildings where the beachfront side is at a 45-degree angle.
Fort Lauderdale isn't the only city with a shadow law. Others have them for a variety of reasons. In Boston, a law protects the Boston Public Garden from shade. In Boulder, Colo., and Eugene, Ore., the aim is to protect solar panels or other solar structures, such as greenhouses.
Most of the buildings along State Road A1A predate the shadow law. The law was instituted in 1997 and made stricter last year. But drawings of nine projects approved recently give a glimpse of the future.
Some may find beauty in the design; others, monotony.
"We all see that's happening," said Vice Mayor Gloria Katz. "Our ordinances are creating pyramids, I guess you could call it. The Incas would have liked it."
The shadow law is so restrictive, it has spawned an architectural design to meet it, so some of the building renderings look almost exactly the same. And in all nine hotel/condo high-rises approved recently on Fort Lauderdale beach, the shadow law's effect is evident.
Some buildings don't start slanting until midlevel or near the top of the tower, because they're set farther back from State Road A1A. The severity of the slant is a function of how close the building is to the property line.
Architects say only a short building placed far back on a large lot could escape bending to the shadow law. But land prices being what they are, developers say they can't afford to build small buildings, and assembling large lots is difficult as well.
Katz said she wishes someone had complained. Now, it's too late, at least for this wave of development.
"It's really not award-winning stuff," Katz said. "If you go to Chicago or Singapore or Shanghai, there are fabulous buildings. And a good architect could do something fabulous here, if they had the right codes to go by. It's our job to allow flexibility without destroying the look and feel of what we think Fort Lauderdale should be."
Whether they find the terraced design pleasing to the eye, the Fort Lauderdale development community says it is painful to the wallet.
"It makes it almost impossible from a cost standpoint to build it," said attorney Ron Mastriana, who represented the Poinsettia by the Sea hotel project. "I think that's why it didn't get built."
Rather than allowing columns and walls that go from the ground to the top, the terraced design requires more expensive building support, designers say. Another problem for these buildings is leaking from one level to another during rainfall. That, too, can require expensive drainage remedies. Particularly challenging and expensive, architects say, is fire escape location. The terracing eliminates the possibility for a vertical fire escape running up the building.
"Whenever you start putting a lot of steps in the building, it gets very difficult in terms of circulation and the fire stairs and everything," said local architect Jeff Falkanger, who designed Fortune House on the beach. "Stairs and columns and everything like to go up and down."
"You have no efficiencies, no repetition in the design. It's hugely expensive," said Stiles Corp. President Doug Eagon. "I can promise you there's no hotel developer that's trying to do that. I would say that's why you're seeing a lot of projects announced and approved on the beach, and you're seeing very little construction."
Don Zimmer designed the heavily terraced Ocean Dunes condominium-hotel project, now called Club Regent.
"For some reason, when they rewrote the beach code and invented the famous [Unified Land Development Regulations], they started putting more and more what I call prescriptive design measures where they, non-architects, are telling us, architects, how to design good buildings."
Jorge De Leon at Adache & Associates designed the Gold Coast hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach. He said he used the terrace design for effect in Ecuador. But here, he used a more expensive-to-build curve, because he didn't want to repeat the look of the other beachfront projects.
"The problem with the 45-degree angle," he said, "is it looks like you're avoiding something ... I'm not saying it doesn't look good, but you're reaching the same conclusion as the last architect."
Brittany Wallman can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org or 954-356-4541.

domain: design


text:
14 hours, 1 minute ago
THE mother of a man knifed to death in Boscombe is hoping to work with one of Bourne-mouth’s MPs in the wake of this month’s attacks.
15 hours, 1 minute ago
CELEBRITY Liz Hurley went from the red carpet to a muddy field as she took delivery of a pair of pigs through Poole attraction Farmer Palmer’s.
16 hours, 1 minute ago
CARE home inspectors issued five warning notices to a Poole nursing home after finding a catalogue of serious failings.
1 day, 5 hours ago
A POLICEMAN has been charged with making threats to kill and disclosing police information.
1 day, 10 hours ago
POLICE are searching the Southbourne area of Bournemouth tonight for " a person they would like to speak to".
1 day, 16 hours ago
MORE than £90,000 was spent by Bournemouth and Poole councils on tackling unauthorised traveller camps this summer.
1 day, 21 hours ago
FERNDOWN police station will be sold and enquiry desks closed as part of ongoing efforts to slash £9.5 million from the force’s budget in the next two years.
2 days, 3 hours ago
A MAN died after plunging 30ft at the Winter Gardens car park today.
2 days, 6 hours ago
Paramedics are attending to a male who has fallen 30ft at the Winter Gardens car park. The air ambulance has landed in the Exeter Road car park and the road has been cordoned off. Police are also at the scene. Follow latest updates.
2 days, 7 hours ago
CHILDREN could be left unable to get to school and residents to work if Borough of Poole forges ahead with up to £150,000 bus subsidy cuts.
2 days, 9 hours ago
POLICE are hunting a man who tried to entice a nine-year-old boy into his car.
3 days, 6 hours ago
A POPULAR school head has left his post just two weeks into the new academic year.
3 days, 8 hours ago
A SEARCH is taking place after concerns were raised for an angler who may be missing at Mudeford.
3 days, 16 hours ago
DORSET County Council chiefs have admitted they DID know about a fire which led to last week’s school meals fiasco.
4 days, 16 hours ago
The family of Daniel Robbie have spoken of their heartache as they were told of his death on the same day his five-month-old son was due to have a life-saving heart operation.

domain: news


03:22 Midterm meditations. (Getting close.)
08:23 Friends and the housing market. (Trump had a clue.)
16:05 Twitter’s new boss. (I hope he’s up to it.)
26:01 ”Face assassination” in Peking. (And Long Island.)
34:32 Celebrity culture. (Matthew Perry offers insights.)
36:00 U.K. gets new P.M. (Is it a globalist coup?)
38:04 Ode to Suella. (She will tell us.)
38:51 Signoff. (Fall music.)
To begin with this week I have an erratum. In the October 14th podcast, the one before last, I covered Tucker Carlson's hour-long interview with Kanye West. I said, inter alia:
I knew the name Kanye West because it shows up in New York Post headlines, attached to stories that I skip right over. I knew he was some kind of celebrity, and I think I knew that he was showbiz, not sports. That was the sum total of my Kanye West knowledge last Friday evening. I don't have to engage with celebrity culture, and you can't make me.
An alert listener emailed in to remind me that I had in fact engaged with Kanye West four years ago. In the podcast on October 12th 2018 I gave over a whole long segment to discussing West's visit to President Trump at the White House that week.
I began that segment just as I began the later one, by saying that, quote: "Until this morning I had only the very faintest idea who Kanye West is." End quote. I went on to tell listeners I'd looked up West on Wikipedia and discovered that he got part of his education in China, and had learned the language.
Interesting stuff about Kanye West … stuff that, after the lapse of four years, I had utterly forgotten.
Sorry about that. Fortunately my excuse is right there in the 2018 segment. Wikipedia tells us that having learnt Chinese in his pre-teen years, West has since forgotten most of it. On his behalf I wielded the Chinese saying 貴人多忘事—"an eminent person has so much to deal with, a lot gets forgotten."
Indeed it does, indeed it does.
02—Midterm meditations. Eleven days to the midterms, and there is still no certainty about what the effect on our national politics will be. That there will be a "red wave" of some magnitude is pretty generally agreed. Probably the House of Representatives will get a Republican majority, but what about the Senate?
MarketWatch tells us that all through August and September the Democrats were favored to keep control of the Senate, but that opinion has turned. As of this week betting markets are giving the GOP a two-in-three chance of taking back the upper house.
Those of us in the cynical community naturally want to know which GOP is being talked about here. Is it the GOP of Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, and Susan Collins? Or is it the GOP of Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Josh Hawley?
Shall we be vindicated in our suspicion that neither of our two big political parties, neither Democrats nor Republicans, will reverse the anti-family, anti-white, pro-war, open-borders status quo?
To be sure, only one of the parties will defend that status quo vigorously and do all it can to advance those causes. The other will just shrug impotently, turn back to counting its donor checks from big military contractors, then dive behind the sofa in panic when someone calls out "racist" or "transphobic."
And how fair will the elections be, anyway? The ruling class has, as I described last week, fully recuperated from the trauma of 2016. They already had their strength back by the 2020 election, and they used it to pull off something really quite amazing: the victory of a joke politician whom no-one had ever taken seriously even before he became geriatric and incoherent, campaigning via amateurish blurry video clips from his basement.
They worked all the levers to make that happen. With COVID as an excuse, the notion that able-bodied citizens not serving in the military abroad could cast a vote only by showing up at a polling station on election day and giving proof of identification, was thrown out of the window. Mail-in votes and drop-boxes took over.
They carried out a full-court press on their willing allies in the media and Big Tech companies to silence negative information about their candidate—most famously, the revelations in his son's laptop computer about shady dealings with foreign governments. The federal government's own police agencies were enlisted to help.
Today the anti-family, anti-white, pro-war, open-borders Uniparty is stronger than ever. Will they do all they can to fix key results on November 8th—a drop box here, a phone call to Google HQ there? Of course they will.
How much difference will it make? We may never find out. If we do, it will be twenty years on, when official records are unsealed and memoirs published.
All that said, let's do what we can while we still can. Senators, congressmen, governors, judges: Try to figure which candidates in your locality are most likely to oppose and annoy the Uniparty, and tick those boxes.
For one thing I am a keen daily reader of The New York Post, which has a good complement of celebrity gossip that, no matter how quickly soever I turn the page, occasionally—very occasionally—snags my attention.
For another, I am married to a lady who is fully feminine in all aspects, including the aspect of finding celebrities interesting. Way back in 2009, in one of my Diary entries, I recorded her urging me to sit and watch a late-night TV sitcom with her. Quote from that diary:
I groaned inwardly, sure it would be some girly Friends-type show, with clever women outwitting slow, dull men, estrogen dripping out of the screen onto the carpet.
As it turned out, the sitcom Mrs Derbyshire wanted me to watch with her was Two and a Half Men—the old, good one with Charlie Sheen, not the lame later version. I enjoyed it, in fact got addicted to it; but that's by the by.
It was that remark about Friends that came to mind on Thursday this week as I was perusing my, yes, New York Post.
I really did dislike Friends. It was way too girly for my taste. Then, here in Thursday's Post, was a two-page spread about the actor Matthew Perry, one of the principals in the show. Matthew Perry has just published a memoir.
I hastened to turned the page, truly I did. I had noticed the story, though; and today, Friday, reading Ed West's latest Substack post, it bobbed back up into my consciousness.
Why? Well, Ed West—no relation to Kanye, so far as I know—Ed West's topic today is house prices. The title on his post is actually "House prices and the slow death of city life." Subtitle: "A lack of affordable housing plays an outsized role in almost every social ill." Sample quote:
Rather strangely to me, my children's favorite sitcom is Friends. Quaintly dated now, part of its allure is the dream of 20-somethings with average jobs being able to live together fairly centrally in a big city. It was a fantasy even in the 1990s, but today is beyond even plausible dreaming. ["House prices and the slow death of city life" by Ed West; Substack, October 28th 2022.]
I have passed similarly despairing remarks about today's housing market myself, lamenting the fact that my two late-millennial kids are stuck in rented accommodation, with little hope of getting on the homeowner ladder for years to come.
Just to repeat Ed West's subtitle: "A lack of affordable housing plays an outsized role in almost every social ill." Yes it does. It ought to be a major political issue, yet candidates rarely mention it. One more quote from Ed:
Most high-income countries now have a problem with large numbers of disaffected younger people turning to more extreme politics: in the English-speaking world these tend to be on the left, while in much of continental Europe they are on the right, but the common thread is the unaffordability of housing.
There are things that can be done, but they are mostly regulatory things—Ed West points the finger at land use regulations—and the topic of government regulation is notoriously boring to voters.
To everybody, in fact. A friend of mine, now retired but formerly a college teacher of Political Science, tells me that regulation was the hardest topic to teach, the only one of his courses where students regularly fell asleep in class and groaned aloud in chorus when given reading assignments.
Of recent major politicians, only Donald Trump took regulation seriously when in office. Quote from a Brookings Institution report, quote:
On average the Trump administration imposed annual net regulatory costs of $10 billion, compared to $111 billion for the Obama administration and $43 billion for the George W. Bush administration. ["Examining some of Trump's deregulation efforts" by Philip A. Wallach and Kelly Kennedy; Brookings, March 8th 2022.]
It can't be a coincidence that Trump had spent most of his working life buying, selling, and constructing buildings. All right, those buildings mostly weren't houses, but they were enough like houses to give Trump an intimate acquaintance with the world of regulation. And all right, Trump's war on regulation doesn't seem to have helped the housing market any; but perhaps in a second term he would have opened a new front in that war.
It may be too late for the midterms, but as we move on to gearing up for the big one in 2024, could we please hear candidates' proposals to get us back to a housing market that young people wanting to start families can actually afford?
It sounds like good news to me. Musk has the very endearing character trait—rare in the business world and extremely rare in the upper management of social-media platforms—of not taking himself too seriously.
On Wednesday, for example, he tweeted out a video clip of himself coming into the lobby of a grand office building carrying a porcelain sink fixture. Above the clip was the legend, quote:
Entering Twitter HQ—let that sink in!
The contrast with Twitter's co-founder and earlier CEO Jack Dorsey could hardly be more striking. If Jack Dorsey ever tweeted a joke, I missed it. If there are any pictures of Jack Dorsey smiling, I haven't seen them.
When Dorsey stepped down a year ago he handed off the CEO title to Parag Agrawal, an immigrant from India. The New York Times tells us that Agrawal was seen by some observers in the tech world as a, quote, "spiritual successor" to Dorsey. I'm not quite sure how we should take that, but the issue is anyway moot: Agrawal was let go this week with, according to The Times of India, a $60 million handshake.
The hope is of course that under Musk's ownership Twitter will be more tolerant of heterodoxy—of ideas, intelligently expressed and supported by facts, that lie outside the narrow boundaries dictated by the academic, media, and political guardians of public speech.
I said "the hope is"; but of course to those guardians it's not a hope but a fear. Here was the BBC website reporting just this morning on the Musk takeover, quote:
There are fears that more lenient free speech policies would mean people banned for hate speech or disinformation may be invited back to the platform. As well as Mr Trump, that could include political extremists, QAnon loyalists and Covid-19 deniers. ["Elon Musk takes control of Twitter in $44bn deal" by James Clayton & Peter Hoskins; BBC News, October 28th 2022.]
Note the obligatory cant terms there: "hate speech," "disinformation." Yes, the Beeb has fears, not hopes. Likewise, I am sure, every other mouthpiece for globalist orthodoxy.
To be perfectly fair to them, there are nontrivial issues here. Speaking of heterodoxy a minute ago, I said, quote, "ideas, intelligently expressed and supported by facts, that lie outside the narrow boundaries dictated by the academic, media, and political guardians of public speech," end quote. I'd like to see ideas like that discussed openly on social media.
The problem is, a lot of ideas are not like that: not intelligently expressed and/or not supported by facts. There are a great many shrieking lunatics out there—far more than there used to be, is my very strong impression. As the recent troubles around Kanye West remind us, not all ideas are intelligently expressed.
Nor, in the social sphere, are facts much known or respected. I'm sure you've seen reports on polls carried out asking people how many unarmed blacks are killed by police each year. Here's one from February last year. Quote:
The survey says among the very liberal, more than 50 percent believe American law enforcement killed 1,000 or more unarmed black men in 2019. Nearly 8 percent of the very liberal respondents believe officers killed more than 10,000 unarmed black men in 2019. ["Half of Survey's Very Liberal Respondents Believe 1,000 or More Unarmed Black Men Killed by Police in 2019" by David Griffith; Police magazine, February 25th 2021.]
That's very liberal respondents. The survey goes on to break down the responses for just-liberal, moderate, conservative, and very conservative respondents. Even among those identifying as "very conservative," four percent of respondents thought the number was more than ten thousand.
The actual number is either 12 or 27, depending on whether you use the Washington Post database or the one from the anti-cop "Mapping Police Violence" website.
So yes, there is an ocean of stupidity and ignorance out there. It's liable to throw up frequent tsunamis of nonsense on any completely uncontrolled social media platform. There are lines to be drawn, with thought and care and impartial good judgment to be used in drawing them.
Elon Musk seems to be aware of this. That BBC report I mentioned earlier includes the following, quote:
Earlier this week, Mr Musk said that he doesn't want the platform to become an echo chamber for hate and division. [Inner quote from Musk.] "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hell-scape, where anything can be said with no consequences!" [End inner quote] he tweeted.
End quote. And I'll just note that the word "hate" there, used to mean "heterodox thoughts," is the Beeb's usage, not Musk's.
To those of us who remember the early days of the internet—the era of listservs, before the word "blog" was coined, or the phrase "social media"—this is all nostalgia-inducing. The early internet was free and wide open.
That was then, though, and this is now.
Sure, colleges were headed over the cliff 25 years ago. They weren't there yet, though; not to the point where a respectable university would give a low-IQ poseur like Ibram X. Kendi his very own research center.
Executive summary: We were more civilized then than we are now.
So keeping a more open Twitter on an even keel will need vigilance and good judgment. I hope Elon Musk is up to it. I believe he will be. Heck; a guy who lived his first seventeen years in South Africa may even be a race realist …
05—Face assassination in Peking (and Long Island). On the China beat: What was that business with Hu Jintao being hustled out from the closing ceremony of Twenty Big—the ChiComs' Twentieth Party Congress?
Hu Jintao was China's Supreme Leader before Xi Jinping: Party General Secretary, President, Commander-in-Chief. The easy way to remember that is that Supreme-Leader-wise, between Xi and Hu, Hu was on first. [Boo, hiss.] Sorry, sorry. He was accordingly seated right next to Xi in the front row of the auditorium.
Then, just as the two thousand-odd delegates had got through a key vote, two of the other front-row delegates part-coaxed, part-lifted Hu out of his seat and escorted him from the chamber. It looked as though Hu really didn't want to go.
Was the whole weird incident deliberately staged by Xi to tell viewers that his predecessor's comparatively liberal policies are now a dead letter? Did some health monitor Hu was wearing send out a signal that he might be about to have a heart attack? (The guy is 79.) Did his wife, who is 82, have some kind of health event and call for him? Theories have been flying around all week—during which time Hu has made no public appearances.
I'll take Door Number One there. Yes, the whole thing was staged by Xi. "A face assassination," The Epoch Times English-language edition called it, referring to the extreme Chinese sensitivity to "losing face."
I liked the expression "face assassination" so much I asked Mrs D if it's a translation from some Chinese idiom. No, she said, she never heard anything like that. So I guess it was just some subeditor at The Epoch Times being creative. Give that man a raise!
Of all those theories swirling around, the most off-the-wall one is that Hu was removed because, unlike all the other over-60 delegates, he hadn't dyed his hair black.
That theory is rather easily disproved. Scanning the hall, there seem to be other guys showing natural hair color. One such, in fact, 66-year-old Cai Qi, has such a neat close-cut silver hairstyle that somebody on Twitter said he looked as though Xi Jinping had a baby by Mike Pence.
I doubt Comrade Cai gives a flying wonton what we think about his hair. He just got elevated to the seven-member Standing Committee of the ChiCom Politburo, the tippy-top of the greasy pole in China's politics.
One of that supreme seven is of course Xi Jinping. Of the other six, the median age is 65½. None of the six is young enough or experienced enough to take over from Xi. Nice job there, guy.
Also in China news: The ChiComs have canceled Mrs Derbyshire!
My wife graduated from college in China in 1983. She married me and came to join me in New York three years later. She kept in touch with her college classmates somehow, though—mainly by snail mail—all through the eighties and nineties.
With the rise of the internet around the turn of the century, she was able to email them. Then, when Chinese social media came up in the early 2010s, she joined the most popular platform, WeChat. She set up a WeChat group for herself and her friends in China, and they gossiped away happily for ten years.
Then, a few days ago, she couldn't access the group. The ChiComs have wiped it out.
From WeChat conversations relayed back to me by my spouse over the years I don't believe that she and her classmates were plotting to overthrow the Chinese government. I don't think they talked Chinese politics at all.
My guess is that this is just a further enlargement of ChiCom xenophobia. They don't want their citizens having anything to do with foreigners at all. It's also probably just technical advance: their Artificial Intelligence algorithms constantly being refined to capture more and more of internet traffic that the authorities don't approve of.
Merrick Garland's FBI is looking on with keen interest.
In the same general zone, the ChiComs are trying to kill the YouYube channel China Uncensored.
If you don't know the channel, it is absolutely the best place to go for a quick fifteen-minute check on China-related issues. China Uncensored is an offshoot of The Epoch Times, which is itself an offshoot of the Falun Gong movement.
They are of course hostile to the ChiComs; but they present their commentary with wit and style. I don't agree with all their opinions, but they're well-informed, not vituperative, and when their factual knowledge overlaps with mine, they are correct.
The ChiComs naturally want to destroy China Uncensored. They launch regular bot-swarms at YouTube, complaining that the channel's vidcasts are age-inappropriate, which is ridiculous. The bot-swarms, however, cause YouTube's algorithms to blank out the channel's short and occasional ad spots, killing revenue.
You'd think this would be something YouTube could deal with, but they don't seem in a hurry to do so. The October 22nd edition of China Uncensored explains in more detail and tells you how you can help. Please check it out.
I'm going to confess that I have now, after all, read some of the actual text in that Thursday New York Post story about Matthew Perry's memoir.
Perry has been a very naughty boy. Most of the naughtiness he inflicted on his own body: alcohol and opioids in wild abundance.
Other people's bodies figure in the story too, though. Julia Roberts, really? Valerie Bertinelli … Gwyneth Paltrow … Hoo-ee. But Jennifer Aniston gave him the elbow—wisely, in my opinion. Cameron Diaz punched him in the face—"accidentally," he tells us. Yeah, right, Matt.
Enough. On my personal scale of engagement with celebrity culture, that's about five years' worth right there.
So … was this all a globalist coup? The ascent of Rishi Sunak is suggestive. He was once a Goldman Sachs employee. That is what in the financial markets is called "a leading indicator."
We may soon find out. Last week I mentioned the resignation of Home Secretary Suella Braverman, another Brit of Indian origins. The Home Secretary is like our Attorney General, ultimately responsible for matters relating to immigration. Mrs Braverman is an outspoken immigration skeptic, and that did not sit well with last week's Prime Minister, Liz Truss.
Well, rather to my surprise, the new boss, Rishi Sunak, has re-installed Mrs Braverman. Now she is Home Secretary again. She was only six days off the job.
Will Mrs Braverman continue to voice her demands for immigration restriction when serving under Rishi Sunak? Or will her cabinet colleagues tell her to button her lip if she knows what's good for her? There is a quick'n'easy test of whether or not this has been a globalist coup. Let's see.
Item: Concerning last week's resignation of the aforementioned Mrs Braverman, I commented on it at Twitter … in verse. For those of you who don't follow my Twitter account, here is the poem. Ahem:
A Tory gal, name of Suella,
Was Asian—the brown sort, not yella.
She went too far right,
Gave her colleagues a fright,
So they replaced her with a white fella.
[Applause.] Thank you, thank you.
Out here in the bosky Long Island suburbs there are great piles of dead leaves everywhere. As fast as you can bag them up, new piles appear. Yes, it's Fall. I have signout music for that.
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
[Music clip: Yves Montand, "Les Feuilles Mortes."]


text:
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Victoria Day weather: A mix of sun and cloud
Expect a mix of sun and cloud and a high of 21 C by the afternoon.
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It’s shaping up to be a beautiful Victoria Day with a mix of sun and cloud and temperatures reaching 21 C by the afternoon.
According to Environment Canada, early birds will enjoy a sunny morning before clouds begin to move in by the afternoon with a 30 per cent chance of showers.
Temperatures near Lake Ontario will feel cooler, around 15 C.
TTC service will be operating on its Sunday schedule, while GO Transit will be operating on its Saturday schedule.
As a reminder, all LCBO and Beer Stores are closed Monday, along with government offices and banks.
There is no postal service on Monday and Libraries will also be closed for the day.
Toronto will host its annual fireworks show at Ashbridges Bay Park at 10 p.m.
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After the celebrations, search sighs and groans, more questions are raised than answered
Firecrackers bursted and sweets were distributed after the Supreme Court lifted the ban on iron ore mining in Goa. And yet the stunning decision has raised far more questions than it’s answered.
When will mining, long the state’s largest revenue earner, actually resume? Will new players be allowed into the industry? Or will the same old mining oligarchy continue to run the show? Will the corruption and environmental degradation be controlled this time around? Is the court’s “cap” on total iron ore output the right one?
In lifting the ban, the Supreme Court also declared that all mining leases, barring around a dozen, actually expired in 2007. That means that the vast majority of mines operating between 2007 and the 2012 ban have now been essentially declared illegal. It also means the handful of Goan families who have controlled mining since Portuguese times – the Dempos, Chowgules, Salgaocars, and Timblos among them – have no guarantees they’ll be able to secure the new concessions.
If mining is to restart, leases will have to be allotted afresh. And the traditional mining families aren’t the only ones who will be in the race for fresh leases.
How and when the government begins the process for issuing those leases remains to be seen, with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar saying he will come up with a “transparent” policy by June.
Parrikar has hinted that he’s not keen on an auction process, since the Supreme Court gave no such specific instruction. But a group of dedicated Goans is watching his every move. Chief among them is renowned environementalist Claude Alvares, who has warned he wouldn’t hesitate to re-approach the Supreme Court, “should the procedures for grant or renewal of leases not be fair or transparent, or in consonance with constitutional requirements.”
Will Goa’s traditional mining families have any advantage in the granting of leases? Perhaps, but the Supreme Court decision looks sure to bring in bigger and more powerful mining players operating in other parts of the country, or even foreign players.
Among the most important aspects of the Supreme Court decision was its annual cap of 20 MMT (million metric tons) of total iron ore production. The argument goes that since a blanket mining ban is no good because it’s bad for the economy, and since a mining free-for-all is no good because of what it does to the environment, surely a happy medium must be in order. Thus was born the idea of placing a cap on total production.
Environmentalists are divided over the cap.
“On what basis has the figure of 20 MMT been arrived at? A dosage has been prescribed without the patient being examined,” Ramesh Gauns, an award winning teacher and staunch anti-mining campaigner, told Goa Streets. He said no mining should be allowed until a comprehensive study on the cumulative effects of mining have been carried out.
But Gauns’ bigger worry is one that he shares with much of civil society and greens across Goa: “Can the state government be trusted to act in the best interest of the state or in the interest of the mining companies?”
And not without reason. Since coming to power, the chief minister has often spoken the language of the mining companies, saying there was no illegal, only irregular mining in the state, questioning the authority of the Supreme Court, terming the intentions of the petitioner, Alvares’s Goa Foundation “malicious” and even saying that illegal mining had cost the government just 5,000 crore (a figure activists consider ridiculously low).
The Justice Shah Commission of Inquiry investigating illegal mining in Goa spoke of illegal mining reaching Rs. 35,000 crore between 2007 and 2012 – and Claude Alvares puts the figure at closer to Rs 65,000 crore, all of which he believes needs to be recovered.
“I do not trust Parrikar to do the right thing,” Alvares told local reporters.
Gauns was no more optimistic.
“The entire machinery is being used to see how loopholes will be found in the laws, in the judgement. It wasn’t as if there weren’t any laws in place when the mining scam first started. The administration will now work out ways to bypass this judgement too,” he said.
Another environmentalist, Rajendra Kerkar however, is happy with the judgement, saying it will “restore the faith of the people in the constitutional principles guaranteed to every individual and the relief offered by the courts.”
The declaration that mining was illegal from 2007 does open the door for proceedings to recover tens of thousands of crores – a prospect that, if achieved, could be a windfall for the state treasury.
In the meanwhile, the State of Goa is already getting the sales proceeds from the disposal of inventories of 15 million tonnes, which are in the midst of an e-auction. This will be worth Rs 4500 crore.
If the mining was illegal, another big question is will anyone be prosecuted for it? The list of those who might have to answer for the illegalities include industry barons and powerful politicians.
BJP legislators representing mining belt areas, Subhash Phaldessai from Sanguem and Pramod Sawant, from Sanquelim, had little to say when questioned on whether anyone would be prosecuted, saying they’re not sure and that it’s “for the police to act.”
Officials at the Directorate of Mines and Geology said the nine mining leases which did not expire in 2007 would be the easiest to restart. Further there are another 20-odd leases which have paid a renewal fee to the government and they, too, will likely be able to restart ahead of the others. In all, it’s expected that around 60 of the previous 90 leases will at some point come into effect.
Sesa Sterlite, the state’s largest mining company, is optimistic.
“The Company is working towards securing the necessary permissions for commencement of operations at the earliest,” a statement from the company read.
Mining companies have remained unusually tightlipped over the judgement, with the Goa Mineral Ore Association issuing a terse statement welcoming the Supreme Court ruling.
In this entire process, perhaps the hardest hit have been the truckers who now find that at least half their trucks are redundant. Interestingly, deep pocketed mining companies have very little liability towards truck and machinery operators, who have had to bear their own investments.
In the midst of it all, falling demand by China and an increase in production by the state’s two top competitors, Brazil and Australia, has put pressure on international prices. Renewed supply from Goa would add to an expected surplus pushing down prices.
Global iron ore prices are currently at $117 a tonne and have fallen more than 13 percent this year.
How long will it take for mining to actually restart? “Your guess is as good as mine,” Alvares says. Don’t expect anything before the monsoons.


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Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Nov, Dec
We will meet in San Gerado de Rivas at the Hotel Albergue Pelicano approximately at 5PM.
1 night in the Rodolfo’s Hut,1 night in the tent, 1 night in the Refugio Base Crestones, 1 night in Albergue Pelicano.
Included accommodation: 1 night in the Rodolfo’s Hut,1 night in the tent, 1 night in the Refugio Base Crestones.
IFMGA / UIAGM Mountain guide
I was born in Admont, a small town in Styria in Austria, in the center of the Austrian mountains. After my school, I studied motor vehicle mechanic. Beside my hobbies (skiing, nordic ski, running and soccer) mountain climbing was a very important part of my free time activities.
There are experiences in our life we will never forget. When I was 10 years old, my dad took me one day to a local mountain tour. We were climbing over a local and very famous waterfall. I was so impressed about this experience that my interest for mountain climbing was awake forever. After that, I started to take climbing courses with various alpine associations.
Later, I used to climb repeatedly very famous mountains like the “Rosskupenkante”, the north wall of “Perternschartenkopf”, the north wall of “Dachl” and the north wall of “Rosskupen”. My first foreign experience was in Croatia in “Velebit” and in Italy, in the Dolomites, where I did several tours there. Now, since 22 years, I work as a professional mountain and ski guide all over the world.
I guided successfully more than 30 expeditions and more than 50 trekking tours. I give climbing and ice courses to students; children adventure weeks, firm events, canyoning and rafting tours, and much more. Here are some of the peaks I climbed these last years: Alpamayo, Toclaraju, Huascaran, Cotopaxi, Cimborazo, Iztaccihuatl, Pico de Orizaba, Aconcagua, Denali, Pic Lenin, Gasabrum II, etc.
My philosophy: Go outdoor and explore the beautiful magic of the nature, to experience and to enjoy unique moments! It can be in the Alps or on top of the highest mountains of the world or in the nature paradise of Costa Rica (where I live now for the last 13 years). Come with me and let’s carry out together a great adventure!
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Stay up-to-date on the best adventures!

domain: hobby


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My daughter is playing the Nintendo DSi game "My Baby 3 & Friends" and she is frustrated that she doesn't have points to 'buy' accessories in the game. Apparently you are supposed to be able to take pictures in the game and "send them to grandma" for points, but the "send a picture" options in the game are always grayed-out. What is the secret to get points in this game?
I imagine that in order to send a picture to grandma you first need to take one. While I couldn't find the specific procedure for My Baby 3 & Friends, I did stumble across this QA list for another game in the same series, My Baby Boy, where it says:
Q: How do I get to take a picture with the camera so I can send pictures and get stars for it?
A: You either press the L or the R button and a screen will come up. Click L or R again then the photo you've taken will show up on the top screen. On the bottom screen it will say Give to Grandma or Give to Shop. Send it to the shop for stars but send it to Grandma for Presents.
Since its a game from the same series and the mechanics seem amazingly similar, I suspect this would also work for the game in question.


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Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is a man on a mission. He wants to stop the country’s skidding and falling off the edge of the cliff where BS Aquino’s straight path has taken it. Some say we are actually already in the abyss. High unemployment, poverty, runaway crime, official corruption, inefficient public transport system are only some of the myriad problems besetting the country under PNoy’s watch. Is it any wonder there are at least six presidential candidates who think they can do better than Aquino who’s on the way out?
So far, however, it has only been Senator Bongbong Marcos who has spelled out his vision for the country. The senator, in a speech before Asia’s CEOs and captains of industry, gave a roadmap of what his government would be like in case he decides to join the 2016 presidential race. There are strong indications he will because there is a clamor.
A Marcos run for president in 2016 does not only look possible. His prospects of winning are actually gaining traction given the unfolding events in the political situation and a field of presidential candidates that do not give voters much of a choice.
He is also driven to redeeming the Marcos name. Redemption is a consuming passion that propelled him into politics. In a way, the Marcos brand in Philippine politics has never lost its luster even after the family was driven into exile after the 1986 People Power revolution. Former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos is congresswoman representing the Second District of Ilocos Norte, daughter Imee Marcos is the province’s governor, while Bongbong Marcos won nationwide mandate for a seat in the Senate where he has shown his mettle as chairman of the committee on local government. This committee reviewed and revised the constitutionally flawed Bangsamoro Basic Law being pushed by the Aquino administration. The Ilocos Norte legislator submitted a substitute bill to the BBL which will be taken up for debate in Senate plenary.
Of the Marcos siblings, only Irene Marcos shunned politics. The matriarch, Imelda, is 86 years old and there are only two things she would like to see in her lifetime. First is to have her husband Ferdinand Marcos buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani. This is a matter of family honor which Ferdinand Edralin Marcos deserves as a former President and a war hero but denied by BSA III.
Imelda’s second wish is to see Bongbong not only become president of the Republic but redeem the family name by being the true leader this country desperately needs.
There are divergent views on how former President Marcos handled the internal security threat then facing the nation during those perilous times of his presidency. Detractors say the New People’s Army’s number grew during Marcos’ time when the reality on the ground was that he had the situation under control even as he was dealing simultaneously with a secessionist movement in the South. When seen in light of the present Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and Abu
Sayyaf rampage, it would seem FM handled the Muslim insurgency more firmly than his successors did. Marcos, the strongman, drove Moro National Liberation Front leader Nur Misuari into exile in Libya, refusing to yield an inch of the national territory to the Muslim rebels. Compare this to Aquino’s government negotiators who gave away too many concessions to the MILF in order to sign a peace treaty at all costs.
1972 Isabela arms landing
Speaking of internal threats, there is an interesting footnote to the MV Karagatan attempted weapons landing in Digoyo Point off the coast of Isabela in July 1972. It was an NPA operation to arm communist rebels for an all-out offensive against the government and not a Marcos-orchestrated plot to justify martial law as his detractors claim. But for stormy weather and gale-force winds that lashed northern Isabela and sank the ship, the rebels would have advanced to Manila. The clandestine cargo containing thousands of rifles was discovered when the crates spilled into the sea with some drifting ashore.
Aside from AFP renegade Victor Corpuz, a former member of the leftist group Kabataang Makabayan also revealed his role in the Karagatan incident. I have no reason to doubt the story of this former KM militant given his active participation in student street protests during the tumultuous seventies and his eventual exile to communist China where he stayed for six years.
I have decided to withhold his name for now and wait for the publication of a book which devotes a chapter on the Karagatan arms landing in Isabela as well as never-told or -known stories about the Marcoses.


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I’ve been listing to a >3 hour Disney Piano Medley on the YouTube channel of “kno Disney Piano Channel” these past days. Of course such a medley includes lovely and relaxing renditions of Aladdin’s music. In the first half an hour A Whole New World, Arabian Nights and One Jump Ahead can be heard plus Howard Ashman‘s beautiful Proud of Your Boy. The latter can be listened to in a separate video on kno’s YT channel.
Last Saturday, August 16th, I attended Disney in Concert in the concert hall of Amsterdam. Perhaps youâ€™ve never heard of it before soâ€™ll explain a bit whatâ€™s it about. Itâ€™s a concert band, in this case the Metropole Orchestra, with 4 singers playing and singing music from Disney animated movies while clips from the films where shown on a big screen.
The show had a duration for 2 hours and where a mix of instrumental music and singing in both English and Dutch. Most of the music was from the 1980s and 1990s classics like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and of course Aladdin. While Tangled and Frozen came along as well.
Being a Disney fanatic myself I naturally had a great time hearing especially the music preformed live by a big orchestra. I had a hard time not to sing along and sit still during the show. Iâ€™ve embedded a YouTube clip of the press event and a clip from last yearâ€™s edition.
I hope it returns next year.
Celinde Schoenmaker “Let It Go”
Last year Celinde Shoenmaker “Dat is Mijn Wens” & Freek Bartels “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”
There very talented young performers from the Artsylum Quarte, piano, violin and bass, preform a wonderful rendition of Arabian Nights, A Friend Like Me, Prince Ali and A Whole New World. The latter was really amazing to listen and enjoy the beautiful composition by Alan Menken. Shame about the background noises though. Also listen to their The Little Mermaid medley, Pocahontas and Mulan preforms at their Youtube account.
The guys behind the Tiara Talk Show talked with the lead voice actors of Aladdin, Scott Wienger, Linda Larkin andÂ JonathanÂ Freeman about how they ended up being the voice of popular Disney characters for almost 2 decades, how they got the part, Â why they love their work and working for Disney in general. There’s some inside talk Â about things like Â the Music behind the Magic 4 CD box thatÂ containsÂ demo recordings for songs that didn’t make into the final film, the inside joke of Scott Weinger dressing up as Aladdin in that Full House 2 part episode when the family went on holiday to Walt Disney World. And other stuff like the musical stage show in DisneyÂ CaliforniaÂ adventures.
Howard Ashaman’s sister,Â Sarah Ashman GillespieÂ s recently started a blog devoted to her brother the amazingÂ lyricist, composer, producer, writer and creativeÂ geniusÂ who past away far to early now almost 21 years ago to the day. With this blog she recalls her childhood and talks with the many people Howard worked with and became friends like some of the big names at the Disney animation studio inÂ California. One of them John Musker co-director/co-writer/co-producer Â of The Little Mermaid and AladdinÂ anwsers 10 questions about working with Howard Ashman. So far he is on the 3th question. The second one, counting down from 10 it’s actually the 8th, he’s been asked.

domain: artistic


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The Philadelphia Phillies and relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel have officially agreed to a one-year contract, President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski announced. The deal is worth a rumored $10 million. In a corresponding move, Francisco Morales was designated for assignment to make room for Kimbrel on the 40-man roster.
Kimbrel, 34, ranks seventh all-time on baseball’s save list with 394 saves. While Kimbrel’s role has not been defined, there’s an outside opportunity for him to join baseball’s 400-save club.
Kimbel spent last season with the Los Angeles Dodgers serving as their closer through August. He was removed from the role and left off of the Dodgers NLDS roster as he pitched inconsistently down the stretch. He had a 3.75 ERA with a 1.317 WHIP and 10.8 K/9 in 2022 compared to a 2.26 ERA, 1.217 WHIP, and 15.1 K/9 in 2021.


White paint over its rainbow crosswalk has left a black mark in the District of Coldstream.
The district’s rainbow crosswalk on Kalamalka Road, at the entrance to Kal Beach out of the popular recreation facility’s parking lot, was discovered painted over with white paint Sunday morning.
“It saddens me to see that there are still individuals in our midst that are so insecure and threatened by this gesture of inclusion that they feel the need to sneak out to vandalize and deface it,” said Coldstream Mayor Jim Garlick. “Coldstream staff will be contacting the Municipal Insurance Association of B.C. on Monday to put in a claim to repair the damage.
“I encourage any witnesses to this act contact the RCMP with any information they can to provide.”
Added Coun. Richard Enns: “It’s disappointing. I find this type of vandalism fosters discord in our community.”
The crosswalk was installed in July 2017 at an approximate cost of $5,000.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a quote from the Mayor of Coldstream that better reflects his and the District of Coldstream’s intolerance for such actions.


Triangle Bra - Dandelion. Lovingly sewn by hand. The bra is made of coarsely woven grey chantilly lace and forms the breast effectively. Made to measure.
The open cut with deep v-neck creates a nice décolleté. The bra is not visible underneath wide cut-out shirts and tops.
The back is for opening the bra and adjusting the straps.
I manufacture in single pieces, therefore individual productions are possible. For example, I can design this lace in a different appearance, or I can create the listed design carefully with a different patterned/coloured lace. I also like to incorporate other ideas. There are no limits to my imagination.
Fabric: 88% Polyamide, 12% Elastane
Model: Triangle bra
Without hangers, cups, metal back closure, adjustable straps
Image: Markus Mayer | Model: Solveigh Ludwig
Wash at 30°C
do not bleach
no tumble drying
Wash at 30 degrees Centigrade fine- or hand-wash and then air-dry.