[DAWN] KARACHI: A woman believed to be dead 'came back to life' on Monday when Edhi mortuary staff were bathing her body prior to burial.
Edhi Foundation front man Anwar Qazi said the organization receives around 20-25 bodies a day for burial. This particular woman, he said, is from Dumba Goth near the Super Highway.
Her body was brought to the foundation for the performance of final rites and burial after she was believed dead.
However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... when staff began performing 'ghusl' on the woman, she suddenly came to life.
The front man said the woman's age was approximately 55 years old. A slip had been written up for record-keeping purposes when her body had been received by mortuary officials.
The officials had not been able to ascertain why she had been believed dead.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2015 00:00 ||
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[CBS] President Obama issued a statement Sunday saying he was "heartbroken" after a White House staffer, Jake Brewer, was killed in a bicycle accident.
"Armed with a brilliant mind, a big heart, and an insatiable desire to give back, Jake devoted his life to empowering people and making government work better for them. He worked to give citizens a louder voice in our society. He engaged our striving immigrants. He pushed for more transparency in our democracy. And he sought to expand opportunity for all," the president said. "I've often said that today's younger generation is smarter, more determined, and more capable of making a difference than I was as a young man. Jake was proof of that."
Brewer, 34, was a senior policy adviser in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. The Washington Post reported Saturday that he was killed in Howard County, Maryland, during a bicycle ride that raised money to fight cancer. Brewer apparently lost control of his bicycle at a sharp curve along the race course, crossed the double yellow line and had a collision with an oncoming vehicle.
His wife, Mary Katharine Ham, is a conservative commentator and journalist. She shared news of her husband's death in a post on Instagram Sunday.
"We lost our Jake yesterday, and I lost part of my heart and the father of my sweet babies. I don't have to tell most of you how wonderful he was. It was self-evident. His life was his testimony, and it was powerful and tender and fierce, with an ever-present twinkle in the eye. I will miss him forever, even more than I can know right now," she wrote.
[Dhaka Tribune] Facebook is going to adopt a policy of removing a post for carrying 10 dislikes, According to Mark Zuckerberg.
A really stupid idea. Lots of people will "dislike" political posts or discussion of crimes. So they go bye-bye after ten posts? I guess this was developed by Professor Pangloss so we could live in the Best of All Possible Worlds.
It all depends, of course, how the dislikes are counted. If Fred and I, and eight of our bestest Burg pals, down-thumb some whacko post on Facebook penned by the ISIS, the Democrats or some other evil-doer, will our dislikes be counted? Or will they be 'lost'? Perhaps they'll be weighted. Fred and I each get a vote of 0.00001, while some social justice wanker ("SJW", as the initials go) who knows a customer support rep at Facebook gets a '10' right on the spot. I think I know how this plays out, but I'm even more of a cynic than Fred, in case you hadn't yet guessed that...
Facebook has recently released this new information on its planned integration of a dislike button into user posts that will likely to be active in removal of the facebook post.
The number being bandied around by Zuckerberg and Facebook developers at the moment is ten dislikes, and receiving ten dislikes on your post will result in Facebook’s algorithms removing the post as being potentially disruptive and upsetting to fellow users, USA today reports.
“Facebook is about connections and bringing people together,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said regarding the upcoming changes.
“Occasionally our users are subjected to things that they find upsetting, are objectionable, and violate the community standards. It (dislike option) allows us to remove objectionable material, but requires us to maintain a large workforce to process post reports at great expense. It is also both cumbersome and slow. Many inappropriate and hurtful posts can remain up for extended periods of time before a moderator is able to examine the material of the post and remove it if necessary.”He said.
“At the same time that we have this inefficient system of reporting we also have had user requests to integrate a dislike button into user posts for several years”, Zuckerberg continued.
“We realised that by combining the two functions, reporting and the existence of a dislike button, that not only could we streamline the removal of objectionable material from Facebook but we could also achieve massive cost savings as the amount of employees needed to monitor and process reports was entirely eliminated. It’s a win for our shareholders as we increase profitability and it’s a win for users who will be able to police the potentially psychologically harmful material they are exposed to in real-time.”
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
With this particular implementation, Facebook will become next to unusable. The only reason I'm on there is because of my relatively newfound duty of CIO of my high school class (reunion stuff). Other than that, it's just a timewaster / useless.
#2
but I'm even more of a cynic than Fred, in case you hadn't yet guessed that...
Piker! Proclamations and boasting will never gain you an invitation. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Cynics of which I am a Regional Deputy Grand Master, is highly selective. Please be patient and wait to be contacted like the rest.
#4
This is nothing new. The 'Wikipedia Trolls' have been deleting 'offending' information for years.
It's how the left works.
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/22/2015 8:46 Comments ||
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#5
Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.
So do .380 ACP bullets (see Archduke Ferdinand), which is where things go when the 'wrong' person gets personally ridiculed and retaliates.
#6
Facebook has officially declared suicide. Is there something else on the horizon to fill the void?
Rupert Murdock has owned MySpace for some time, has he managed to get that mess back into shape, I mean seriously remove the customizations that only tweens enjoyed and you have almost duplicated Facebook right there. Just rename/rebrand it and go.
#8
I see this as an assuming thing to do on the rig. I wonder if the SJW's are ready for the full scale attack on their own stuff that is about to happen.
#10
I suspect they are responding to the many statements of "I want to dislike this," about something the writer then goes on to discuss. If such comments will make people's posts disappear from their own pages, a lot of people will be very unhappy with the whole thing, and it will devolve to pictures of grandchildren and birthday wishes. One already can not see posts in discussions from people whose opinions one dislikes, or to whom it is simple impossible to be civil. Some of the friends of one's friends clearly must be left over from their joint childhood, or perhaps are relatives of their otherwise delightful spouses.
#12
Shouldn't they have at least a likes vs. dislikes counter? If my picture of my ultra cute 18 month old granddaughter gets 1000 likes, and then ten curmudgeons dislike the post, does it disappear?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
09/22/2015 12:03 Comments ||
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#13
Or a troll can make ten different accounts, and never have to leave the basement.
#14
I like the idea of a dislike button, I loath the idea that it can be used to censor others. Personally I like Silentbrick's take. SJW are going to use this, might as well hit them first so they are the ones clambering for Facebook to remove the horrible feature.
#15
"It all depends, of course, how the dislikes are counted. If Fred and I, and eight of our bestest Burg pals, down-thumb some whacko post on Facebook penned by the ISIS, the Democrats or some other evil-doer, will our dislikes be counted? Or will they be 'lost'? Perhaps they'll be weighted. Fred and I each get a vote of 0.00001, while some social justice wanker ("SJW", as the initials go) who knows a customer support rep at Facebook gets a '10' right on the spot. I think I know how this plays out, but I'm even more of a cynic than Fred, in case you hadn't yet guessed that..."
That should be easy enough to test. We can probably get enough volunteers on the burg to do so if so desired. Could even pick a bland post specifically to test things.
[LATIMES] Protesters burned tires and set up roadblocks as they rejected a deal that would give amnesty to those who had ousted a transitional government just weeks before an election.
Opposition to last week's coup was conveyed in one extraordinary scene, posted on Facebook, in which hundreds of young men on motorcycles with their horns blaring ushered one of several army convoys heading to the capital, Ouagadougou. The military threatened to confront the more powerful presidential security regiment that carried out the uprising.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2015 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] Less than three months after the brutal death of 13-year-old Rajon from inhuman torture in the hands of adults, another teenage boy experienced similar barbarity in Sylhet.
The incident happened in the district's Jaintiapur upazila last week. Fortunately, the 15-year-old was rescued before the torture became too much for him to handle, locals said.
Police said the teenager was the victim of a feud between his father Abul Hossain and one of his abusers Abdul Hannan, both of whom are fishermen and residents of the upazila's Ghaterchhati Jatrapur village.
Good luck finding that on a map...
The feud was over a boat owned by Hossain which Hannan frequently borrowed for fishing. Agitated over the dispute, Hannan and his accomplices kidnapped the boy on September 13 around 8pm.
The culprits then took the teenager to a house, where Hannan and his accomplices -- his wife Hanifa Begum and her brothers Abdul Ali, Helal Uddin and Azir Uddin, who are from the same village -- tied him up and tortured him all night. They sealed his lips shut with safety pins so that he could not make any noise, and then took turns in beating him. They also burned him in several places on his body, police said.
However, we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by... locals got wind of what was happening and alerted the victim's family, who rushed to the house and rescued the boy on September 14 morning.
Battered and bruised, the boy was first taken to Jaintiapur Upazila Health Complex, but the doctors there referred him to MAG Osmani Medical College and Hospital in Sylhet.
After the safety pins, death by lockjaw is a real possibility. Mr. Hannan sounds like he'd be a "Bernie" voter.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2015 00:00 ||
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School is out, so the kids are free to brave kidnappers, rapists and other riffraff on their way to reunite with their gangs. It must look like the Okie migration during the Dust Bowl years down there... only considerably less civilized.
[Ynet] Children "fleeing" Mexico and Central America and arriving at the southwestern U.S. border accelerated in August, according to government data released on Monday, with 4,632 apprehended last month.
According to U.S. Border Patrol figures, the arrivals of undocumented children 17 and younger trying to get into the United States spiked last month.
#2
Will the illegals stop coming when we run out of money and jobs for them? Or will SCOTUS order us to employ so many illegals because it's Constitutional (sarc)--in other words buying things/services we don't want? Obamacare has set the model for this.
The spokesman said the increase was unusual because the number of unaccompanied minors who cross the border usually falls in August due to extreme heat.
The trail of bodies must be horrendous. How is it that there is no reporting on this in the Mexican-and-points-south press? That parents would encourage their children to brave this unaccompanied makes no sense, unless almost all of them are at the high end of the "child" age range, actually functionally adults making their own way in the world.
#5
The spokesman said the increase was unusual because the number of unaccompanied minors who cross the border usually falls in August due to extreme heat.
#9
The barking and shrieking and terror
Has echoed down many an era,
And land-sharks still follow
(to find flesh to swallow!)
The smugglers' routes on la Frontera.
#10
Brits hungered for desolate places,
Importing their procreant races:
"We're full! Chicken tikka,
And no dogs to lick the
Mohammedan egg off our faces."
A few minor quibbles with the article.
Russia has deployed as many as 10,000 troops in eastern Ukraine for more than a year and has actively sought to hide the deaths of its soldiers, according to a new report that provides a comprehensive assessment of the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbor.
The report was published Thursday by the Interpreter, a daily online journal that translates Russian media and reports on Russian affairs, also detailed the Kremlin’s provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry and vehicles to separatists in Ukraine. Nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict since April 2014.
The conflict originated in March 2014 when unmarked Russian soldiers seized the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine, an invasion that followed Ukraine’s ousting of a pro-Moscow leader. Despite denials from Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time that the troops belonged to Russia, he later admitted that he deployed them.
Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin escalated support to separatists in eastern Ukraine that resided in areas with a majority of ethnic Russians. Reserve officers in the Russian military, who also had ties to the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU, commanded the rebels in attacks. By June 2014, the Ukrainian military said that Russia had massed more than 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s border and deployed about 7,000 to 10,000 Russian soldiers inside Ukraine. Retired GRU Colonel Igor Bezler and former police chief of Gorlovka and reserve FSB Colonel Igor Girkin were two of the officers with ties to Russia's security services. Girkin was called back to Russia, as was Bezler in the fall of 2014.
While Ukrainian forces achieved some victories early in the conflict, a profusion of Russian-supplied advanced weapons helped the separatists gain the upper hand by the summer of 2014. These included T-64 and T-72 battle tanks, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles known as MANPADS, and the Strela-10 armored vehicle with surface-to-air-missiles and machine guns. Watching dozens of hours of videos from the Russian side shot between June 2014 and June 2015, I did not see any AA vehicles or MANPADs.
Additionally, the separatists likely used the Russian-supplied Buk, a long-range anti-aircraft missile system, to shoot down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014, killing nearly 300 people. The rebels’ increased use of anti-aircraft weapons deterred the Ukrainian military from using its air power and further hampered its forces, the report said. Ditto with the Buk.
Satellite images and other evidence indicate that the separatists did not capture the weapons from Ukrainian forces, such as with the T-72 tank. The rebels did capture some T-72s and T-64s from the Ukrainians.
“Not only had the Ukrainian military never used this tank in the conflict, but multiple variants of the tank spotted in eastern Ukraine were never possessed by the Ukrainian military because they were modernized versions of a tank that Russia never exported,” the report said. The rebels used two variants of T-72s: the T-72B which is not an import model, and the T-72M which is. Of the T-72Bs, none of the tanks that I saw in the videos could be considered advanced. The latest iteration of the T-72B is the T-72B3, which is retrofitted with thermal sights. I have read Ukrainian reports of those tanks being deployed near Donetsk, but as a Russian combat formation. The T-64s were in widespread use by the Ukrainians. There was even a ceremony last winter in which Poroshenko released a number of T-64s for combat, in northern Lugansk, as I recall.
A string of defeats by Ukrainian forces, including at the southeastern border and at coastal towns near the strategic port of Mariupol, forced Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to negotiate a ceasefire in September 2014. According to the report, “evidence suggests that Russian military units were at the vanguard of every part of the battles that were occurring. Ten Russian military paratroopers were even captured on the battlefields in the area.” Those Russian paratroopers had stumbled into Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense even admitted as much. This was near Mariupol in the fall of 2014. As for Russian troops being in the vanguard, I have read what I consider to be credible reports that the Russian Army deployed a tank brigade and committed at least a tank company to Logvinovo operation, which sealed the Debaltsevo pocket shut.
After a brief cessation in fighting, the ceasefire, known as the Minsk agreement, crumbled. Russia continued to provide heavy weaponry to their proxy forces, which contributed to separatist victories at the Donetsk Airport and Debaltsevo in rebel-controlled territory.
“In November Russia supplied them with new military hardware like the 1RL232 ‘Leopard’ and the 1RL239 ‘Lynx’ ground-scan radar systems, and by January the BPM-97 armored vehicle and GAZ Vodnik armored infantry vehicle, weapons only used by the Russian military, had appeared in the hands of forces as well,” the report said. I did not see the Vodnik in any videos, the introduction of which would have greatly complicated the logistical problems the rebels were experiencing throughout the war.
A second ceasefire agreement in February also failed to stanch the fighting. Russian forces are now prepared to invade at any time, depending on the circumstances of the war, the report said.
“The Russian military is digging in, building forward operating bases between Mariupol and Donetsk, and turning temporary staging areas on the Russian side of the border into permanent installations for invasion preparations.”
Putin has instituted several measures to prevent the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine from inciting a backlash at home, the report said. The troops are often young enlistees from disparate regions of Russia, and they are treated at clinics scattered across the country. Groups and news outlets that attempt to report the deaths of Russian soldiers are harassed or attacked by authorities and unknown assailants.
In May, Putin signed a measure that prohibits information about the deaths of Russian forces in peacetime, an attempt to further conceal details about Russia’s involvement in Ukraine.
The report estimates that about 600 Russian troops have died in Ukraine, while about 800 are missing.
Despite Poroshenko’s repeated requests for weapons from U.S. forces to help defeat the separatists, the Obama administration has refused to provide any substantial support. In a recent Washington Post interview, Poroshenko said Ukraine is in need of “defensive weapons.”
“We don’t talk about the lethal weapons,” he said. “Ukraine is an industrialized nation that can produce their own weapons. We’re talking about the defensive weapons, which help us just defensively.”
“And sorry for my pathos, but we here defend not just Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he continued. “We here defend freedom and democracy. And we are now fighting with the weapons of the 20th century against the weapons of the 21st century.”
PILOTS in one of the two Russian supersonic bombers intercepted near UK skies last week had started the countdown to arm a nuclear bomb, sources revealed last night.
The discovery was made after RAF specialists analyzed a four-second signal transmitted from one of the Tupolev Tu-160 bombers, known by Nato as "Blackjacks", in the days following Thursday's incursion. Analysts at RAF Boulmer, Britain's Control and Reporting Centre, confirmed that the Russian bombers had begun the sequence to arm nuclear weapons while carrying out the incursion.
It is not the first time they have done this and comparison with a similar signal transmitted by a TU-95 "Bear" bomber revealed Russian air crew had begun the countdown during an incursion last year, as well.
So no big deal, right? The Russians go nuclear all the time. They're Russians fergawdsake...
The Sunday Express revealed that the bomber involved in the February 2014 incident had been carrying a submarine-busting nuclear depth charge designed to attack Britain's Trident-carrying Vanguard submarines.
"All I can say is that we now know it related to the first stage of arming a nuclear device," said a senior RAF source last night. "There are several additional arming procedures which, thankfully, were not carried out."
Last week's air incursion, which was intercepted by Two RAF Typhoon jets, was the seventh this year by Russian forces.
RAF Boulmer, in Longhoughton. Northmberland, is the headquarters of the Air Surveillance and Control System force and the nerve centre of UK air security operations. Once a target is tracked the information is fed into the NATO network operated by the Combined Air Operations Centre at Uedem, Germany and the RAF's Air Defence Operations Centre at Air Command, High Wycombe.
However it was only when a female analyst decoded last week's transmission that it was realised Russia had carried out a similar exercise last year.
Aviation expert Justin Bronk, of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said the revelation confirmed a "worrying" development in Russian strategy.
"Putin does not allow his air force to fly with cruise missiles because he is so worried about defections, but dual purpose bombs such as nuclear depth charges are a different matter. And these are designed to be a direct threat to or nuclear deterrent.
"It is entirely probable that Russian crews have been practicing arming drills. The whole process can take several minutes, and it is important to be able to carry out quickly."
He added that the lack of Nimrod maritime surveillance patrol aircraft made the situation more worrying.
Britain's Nimrod fleet, which was scrapped as part of the SDR in 2010, used to perform so-called "delousing" exercises, whereby it would give advanced warning of Russian aircraft when Trident-carrying Vanguard submarines set off on patrol.
"There is no doubt that, by going through even the initial stages of the nuclear arming sequence, Russia is sending Britain clear signals. This is classic Cold War operation, and it is not a game."
Nato aircraft were "scrambled" more than 500 times over Europe in 2014, a fourfold increase over the previous year. Almost 90 per cent of those flights involved Russian incursions. The number of Russian incursions had already reached 300 by the end of last month, suggesting this year will see numbers akin to the height of the Cold War.
Most Russian aircraft fly without transponders so as not to give away their positions, making them a safety hazard to other air traffic.
"Scrambles are launched in response to Russian activity,' said Nato spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jay Janzen, recently. "The sole aim is to preserve the integrity of Nato European airspace and to safeguard Nato nations from air attacks."
#1
Ditto over + around GUAM-WESTPAC as warning to POTUS Obama + US ... ...???
You know, CHINA???
Outside of Guam-WESTPAC, at the rate China is going in the South + East China Seas, BOTH THE PHILIPPINES + NIPPON MAY SSSHHHH ...CCCCCC WANT VLAD TO SEND NUKE-ARMED "BEARS" OVER-N-AROUND THEIR COUNTRIES.
FYI as per the SCS ...
> POTUS Obama has repor ordered the US Seventh Fleet = PacFlt NOT approach widing 12 miles of China's improved islands in the SCS.
> POTUS Obama has turned PH Prsident Aquino's request for US$300.0Milyuhn in US MilAid, A MOVE WHCIH PERTS ARE SAYING EFFEC ENSURES THAT THE PHILIPPINES' CLAIMS OR INTERESTS IN THE SCS WILL BE ALL BUT UN-DEFENDABLE BY MANILA AGZ CHINA - read, CHINA KEEPS THEIR ISLANDS + EFFECTIVE OR DE FACTO CONTROL OF THE SCS VEE PHIL, VIETNAM + ASEAN, ETAL.
> CHINA HAS DEMANDED THAT THE US STAY AWAY FROM TESTING OR CHALLENGING CHINA ON THE SCS ISSUE, unless SSSHHHH ... CCCCC the US is willing to risk serious deterioration in US-China relations.
* CHINA DAILY FORUM > US INFLUENCE IN EAST ASIA INCREASINGLY CHALLENGED BY PLA: RAND, espec in WESTPAC where the US should prepare some sort of A2/AD = "ACTIVE DENIAL" ANTI-CHINA/PLA STRATEGY.
HHHHMMM, HMMMMMM, "ACTIVE DENIAL" = Oh, I dunno, YA MEAN LIKE USING ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES TO SINK PARTS OR ALL OF GUAM + OTHER KEY PACIFIC ISLANDS IN ORDER TO DENY THE ISLANDS' MILITARY UTILITY TO THE PLA AS A "DE FACTO", [Still?]"WEAK/DECLINING" US UNILATERALLY OR ASYMETRICALLY FALL BACK ACROSS THE PAFIIC TOWARDS HAWAII-EASTPAC + WEST COAST???
That kind of "Active Denial" strategic strategeery???
[ARABNEWS] The Bombay High Court on Monday refused to stay the beef ban temporarily. The court was hearing a petition by various groups to relax the ban on beef for three days during Eid Al-Adha, NDTV reported. What does the cow say Fred ?
A bench headed by Justice Abhay S Oak said it could not take a drastic decision of staying the provisions of the law that will temporarily lift the ban.
In March, the Maharashtra government had banned the slaughter of bulls and calves in the state, where cow slaughter was already illegal. It made possession, transportation and consumption of beef a punishable offense.
The ban became a political issue after farmers -- who were finding it hard to sell their old bullocks -- and beef traders started protest against it.
The issue was taken up by Republican Party of India -- an ally of the ruling BJP -- which contended that the government was doing an injustice to the minority community and the farmers.
But the state government confirmed that there would be no going back on the law, though it would take steps to rehabilitate people whose livelihood has been hit.
Last week, the Supreme Court refused to uphold a temporary ban on meat sale in Mumbai imposed by the state government on the occasion of a Jain festival.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2015 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dhaka Tribune] Facebook is going to adopt a policy of removing a post for carrying 10 dislikes, According to Mark Zuckerberg.
PILOTS in one of the two Russian supersonic bombers intercepted near UK skies last week had started the countdown to arm a nuclear bomb, sources revealed last night.
[ARABNEWS] The Bombay High Court on Monday refused to stay the beef ban temporarily. The court was hearing a petition by various groups to relax the ban on beef for three days during Eid Al-Adha, NDTV reported.
