Blackfire

Michelle Collins says she is terrified to enter her kitchen every morning because of the grey squirrels which have been living in her house for the last three years. Evading the efforts of pest controllers, they have chewed up her doors and skirting boards and have eaten her dogs' food. The 39-year-old gym owner said they go into her kitchen at night, leaving her at the end of her tether. Michelle, from Kilwinning in Ayrshire, said: "I never imagined squirrels could do this to my home, it's unbelievable what they can do. "I've tried everything but nothing is working. I feel terrorised by them. "I'm terrified to go into my kitchen every morning." ." Michelle told BBC Scotland she became aware of the problem when she started hearing a noise in the walls, then noticed piles of sawdust at doors and skirting boards. "I live near woodland and they jump off the trees, on to my car port and then on to my house," she said. "There is a hole where they have dug under my porch and are coming up the inside of my walls." Red squirrels: Vaccine call to save animal from killer pox She keeps her dogs' food in the conservatory, which is off the kitchen - and the squirrels had chewed through the door to get to the food. "I now put the food away when I go to bed, but in the morning I've found the towel I've used to stop up the gap is pulled out and chewed too." She said a pest controller had given up after trying everything to catch the squirrels. Pest controllers are not allowed to trap and kill grey squirrels living in guttering or roofs - but once they enter lofts or other rooms in a house they can be exterminated. Pest controller Scott McIntyre, who covers Edinburgh, the Lothians and Fife, said he had seen the "nightmare damage" that could be done by squirrels. "The worst was a woman in Fife who had every electrical cable chewed, so she had to have her whole house rewired. The damage they caused cost £30,000. "Another woman in Edinburgh had her cables chewed through in her converted attic, and I've seen them chew through from attics into bedrooms. "What they can do to a house can be devastating." His technique is to scare squirrels out of houses before blocking up the holes. But he said that on one occasion he was attacked by three male squirrels which he had cornered in an attic. "They jumped on me and tried to claw and bite me, but usually squirrels run away when I go into attics." BBC Scotland has spoken to a number of people who have experienced squirrel problems in their homes. Jacqueline Hewitt, 49, from Gracemount in Edinburgh, said a pest controller had been to her house, but she could still hear scratching in her roof. "He put down nine trays of poison and they were all eaten when he checked two weeks later. "He told us squirrels can be vicious so to be very careful. We haven't dared to look in the attic. "We don't know where the hole is so we can't get it blocked up. "My daughter has been having nightmares that they are in her bed and she thinks they are going to come through the walls. The scratching sound is terrible." Alayne Costello, from south Edinburgh, said there had been an issue with squirrels in her house since she moved in a year ago. She said: "They chewed right through the lead flashing around my skylight and during the storms before Christmas it meant I was flooded. "All the insulation was soaked, the wall in my hall was damaged as well as my bathroom. It has been a nightmare." Nan Dickson, 75, and her husband Gerry, 85, have lived in Edinburgh's Mortonhall area for 43 years. Nan said: "We have had squirrels for the first time and the noise of them jumping above our heads is horrible. We have been worried about the damage and they gnawed through the eves. "When my husband went into the attic one of the squirrels stuck its head out of the hole and we were very stressed. "We have been shocked at what they have done." The British Pest Control Association said there were thousands of call-outs every year because of squirrels. "This is in part due to the damage they cause to your home and the noises squirrels make at night - which can be very distressing. "As their numbers have increased in the UK, so has the damage they cause," it said. It said there were no poisons which could be used by the public. However, the association did recommend attempting to seal all entry points to a property. Josh Galera, 20, the owner of Precise Roofing in Edinburgh, said he recently helped a customer who had seven squirrels living in her house. He had discovered that the verge at the edge of the roof was not screwed in. "It was flapping open and squirrels were getting in. We screwed the dry verge into the fascia so their access point into the roof was closed." [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65092730]

China has simulated precision strikes against key targets on Taiwan and its surrounding waters during a second day of military drills. The drills - which Beijing has called a "stern warning" to the self-governing island - are a response to Taiwan's president visiting the US last week. As the Chinese military simulated an encirclement of the island, the US urged China to show restraint. Taiwan said about 70 Chinese aircraft flew around the island on Sunday. Eleven Chinese ships were also spotted. On Saturday, Taiwan said that 45 warplanes either crossed the Taiwan Strait median line - the unofficial dividing line between Taiwanese and Chinese territory - or flew into the south-western part of Taiwan's air defence identification zone. The operation, dubbed "Joint Sword" by Beijing, will continue until Monday. Taiwanese officials have been enraged by the operation. On Saturday defence officials in Taipei accused Beijing of using President Tsai's US visit as an "excuse to conduct military exercises, which has seriously undermined peace, stability and security in the region". On day one of the drills, one of China's ships fired a round as it sailed near Pingtan island, China's closest point to Taiwan. Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council, which runs the Coast Guard, issued video footage showing one of its ships shadowing a Chinese warship, though did not provide a location. In the footage a sailor can be heard telling the Chinese ship through a radio: "You are seriously harming regional peace, stability and security. Please immediately turn around and leave. If you continue to proceed we will take expulsion measures." Other footage showed a Taiwanese warship, the Di Hua, accompanying the Coast Guard ship in what the Coast Guard officer calls a "standoff" with the Chinese vessel. While the Chinese exercises ended by sundown on Saturday evening, defence officials in Taipei said fighter jet sorties started again early on Sunday morning. US state department officials have urged China not to exploit President Tsai's US visit, and have called for "restraint and no change to the status quo". A state department spokesperson said the US was "monitoring Beijing's actions closely" and insisted the US had "sufficient resources and capabilities in the region to ensure peace and stability and to meet our national security commitments". The US severed diplomatic ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing in 1979, but it is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. US President Joe Biden has said on several occasion that the US would intervene if China attacked the island, but US messaging has been murky. At Wednesday's meeting in California, Ms Tsai thanked US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for America's "unwavering support", saying it helped "reassure the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone". Mr McCarthy had originally planned to go to Taiwan himself, but opted instead to hold the meeting in California to avoid inflaming tensions with China. Chinese state media said the military drills, which are due to run until Monday, would "simultaneously organise patrols and advances around Taiwan island, shaping an all-round encirclement and deterrence posture". It added that "long-range rocket artillery, naval destroyers, missile boats, air force fighters, bombers, jammers and refuellers" had all been deployed by China's military. But in Taiwan's capital Taipei, residents seemed unperturbed by China's latest manoeuvres. "I think many Taiwanese have gotten used to it by now, the feeling is like, here we go again!" Jim Tsai said on Saturday. Meanwhile, Michael Chuang said: "They [China] seems to like doing it, circling Taiwan like it's theirs. I am used to it now. "If they invade we can't escape anyway. We'll see what the future holds and go from there." Taiwan's status has been ambiguous since 1949, when the Chinese Civil War turned in favour of the Chinese Communist Party and the country's old ruling government retreated to the island. Taiwan has since considered itself a sovereign state, with its own constitution and leaders. China sees it as a breakaway province that will eventually be brought under Beijing's control - by force if necessary. China's President Xi Jinping has said "reunification" with Taiwan "must be fulfilled". [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-65223970]

The father of two British-Israeli sisters killed in a shooting in the occupied West Bank embraced their bodies while mourners sang songs of grief at their funeral on Sunday. Maia and Rina Dee, 20 and 15, were killed on Friday when suspected Palestinian gunmen opened fire on them in their car in the Jordan Valley. Their mother, Leah, is in a critical condition following surgery. The attack came amid soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions and violence. The low rhythmic songs swelled and swayed with the crowd, who were packed beneath the white rafters in the prayer hall at a cemetery in the settlement of Kfar Etzion. Many at the funeral were teenagers - some from the school Rina went to. At the front, by a low podium, the family gathered, talking together and holding each other for long moments in silence. The bodies were brought out, one covered in black cloth, one in blue - a Star of David embroidered on each, in gold and silver. They were embraced by their father, Rabbi Leo Dee, originally from Radlett in the UK. He then sat back, his face contorted in pain, his hands reaching out to touch his remaining three children. Rabbi Dee also spoke, questioning how he would explain to the girls' mother what had happened to their "two precious gifts" when she wakes up. He told those assembled that "today the Jewish people have proven we are one". "A simple, quiet family is devastated," he said. "The whole country hurts." Israel's national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was among the mourners. The family live in Efrat, having moved from London nine years ago. The car carrying the two sisters and their mother crashed after coming under fire. They were then fired on again at close range, Israeli media reported. Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported that 22 bullet casings were found, apparently from a Kalashnikov assault rifle. The victims were travelling in one of three cars on their way to Tiberias in the Galilee for a family holiday. Israeli military personnel blocked roads in the area and said they had "started a pursuit of the terrorists" responsible. Speaking to the BBC on Saturday evening, Rabbi Dee described his daughters as beautiful, smart and po[CENSORED]r. He said he had not been able to sleep since their deaths. "Every time, I had nightmares and woke up," he said, "but the reality was worse than the nightmare, so I went back to sleep. Recurring nightmares... that's how it went." He said Maia, who was volunteering for national service in a high school, was "wonderful, beautiful, had a lot of friends... she was very keen to do a second year of volunteering". Rina, he said, was "beautiful, fun, very smart, top grades in every subject, very po[CENSORED]r with friends, sporty... very responsible, she would take responsibility for many things". "When it came to sweeping out the youth club floor, if other people didn't turn up, she would be there by herself for three hours on a Friday morning, to make sure it was done," he said. Rabbi Dee heard news of the attack without realising his own family were involved, he said. He called his wife and daughters, but they did not answer. He then saw a picture online of the car that was attacked. "And we could just see one of our suitcases in the back seat," he said. "There was a massive panic and screaming." He then drove to the scene. He was not allowed access but was handed his daughter's ID card, which confirmed the worst. Rabbi Dee has said he and his three remaining children "will get through this" Rabbi Mordechai Ginsbury, from the Hendon United Synagogue in north London, said he spoke briefly with his close friend Rabbi Dee before the funerals. "Naturally, as are we all, [he was] devastated, shocked at how just in a few moments with an act of absolute evil and madness - insanity - things can change around," he told the BBC. "The loss of two gorgeous daughters, and his wife now lying critically ill in a hospital in Jerusalem. "But through the sadness there's still that determination that he has to find any positives one can find, to try and be strong for his remaining children." Rabbi Ginsbury added that Rabbi Dee felt "supported and embraced by a blanket of warmth and love" from within Israel and from people across world who had contacted him. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described the incident as a terror attack, sent his condolences to the family in a tweet naming the sisters on Saturday. The UK's chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, said that "no words can describe the depth of our shock and sadness at the heart-breaking news". After the two sisters were shot, Israel Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai called on all Israelis with firearms licences to start carrying their weapons. Also on Friday, an Italian tourist was killed and seven other people were wounded, including three Britons, in a suspected car-ramming attack in Tel Aviv. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65224751]

Happy birthday @AymenGhost.! Wishing you a fantastic day filled with lots of laughter, joy, and fun. May this special day bring you happiness and may all your dreams come true , I am grateful for the time we spent playing games and working together in the community. Enjoy your special day and cheers to another year of wonderful experiences.

my vote for V1. The design is visually appealing, well-structured, and has a unique touch that sets it apart from the other designs..

@Andy アンディ Has been added to our Team. Welcome back @#Wittels- has been removed from our team, Reason : Inactivity lack of interest

Voted.

Some Microsoft Outlook users will soon be able to utilize the platform not just to read their messages, but also to capture and upload video. The email client has announced it is working on a new feature that will allow users of the Outlook Mobile app to capture a video from their smartphone, before "seamlessly" uploading it to their email. The launch will see Microsoft looking to remove a time-consuming and frustrating step when users attempt to attach or include video footage in an Outlook email by hopefully making the process a lot smoother The company says that the function will utilize Microsoft's enterprise-focused cloud storage system OneDrive for Business, with its larger capacity and increased capabilities allowing for all kinds of video to be uploaded. Uploading the video will leverage OneDrive for Business, allowing users to benefit from increased storage space and large limits for video size and length," the entry(opens in new tab) in the official Microsoft 365 roadmap reads. The service will only be available to Android users to begin with, but if it proves a success, we expect it to expand to iOS users as well. The update is currently listed as "in development", but Microsoft says a preview should be available this month, with a full rollout set to follow soon after. The launch is the latest boost to Microsoft Outlook in recent months as the company looks to stay relevant and useful for its users. Recently, it introduced reactions to Outlook, allowing users to “thumbs up, laugh, heart, celebrate, or shed a tear in reaction to emails”, giving them the chance to add a little more personality to their messages. The company's video conferencing service Microsoft Teams is also working on a feature that will bring Teams chat into Outlook, allowing participants to send a quick message, or review a chat, without having to open up Microsoft Teams separately, meaning users won't need to switch between the applications. [https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-outlook-is-finally-solving-one-of-its-biggest-email-headaches]

We all know it's coming. But Nvidia's RTX 4070 graphics card hasn't actually been announced let alone released. And yet it appears in a new official slide from Nvidia detailing latency performance in Counter-Strike 2(opens in new tab) courtesy of its Reflex anti-lag technology. The no-longer-rumoured RTX 4070 is shown against the RTX 3060(opens in new tab) and elderly GTX 1060(opens in new tab). While frame rates are what you'd really want to see for an overall picture of performance, latency is in part derived from frame rate. So, this does constitute the first official, if infinitesimally narrow, snapshot of the RTX 4070's performance. You can add that to the avalanche of 'leaked' information(opens in new tab), which at this point is giving a pretty clear indication of what to expect from the 4070. In pure raster performance terms, the rumours suggest the RTX 4070 will slot in at about the same level as the last-gen RTX 3080. But it will supposedly retail at $599, $100 less than the RTX 3080's MSRP, albeit the 3080 typically sold for multiples of that during much of its lifespan thanks to the GPU craze during the pandemic. We're also expecting the RTX 4070 to be fitted out with 12GB of VRAM, an extra 2GB over that basic 3080. If so, that could be a handy upgrade given the hideous propensity of some recent titles, including The Last of Us, to hoover up ludicrous amounts of video memory(opens in new tab). That game can hit 11GB of VRAM at 1080 Ultra settings. Ouch. Anyway, why Nvidia chose to highlight an unannounced GPU in the Counter-Strike 2 Reflex performance slide is anyone's guess. Arguably the equally unannounced RTX 4060 would have been a better fit given the other two GPUs were both '60 series boards. But maybe that was a step too far into Nvidia's future plans. The consensus is currently that the RTX 4070 will be launched later this month, with the RTX 4060 and its 4060 Ti sibling arriving in may. Whatever, the fact that Nvidia is happy to stick the RTX 4070 in an official slide does rather imply the GPU is set to launch very, very soon. Here's hoping it's at least as good as the rumours suggest. Image https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-rtx-4070-is-unofficially-official-but-still-hasnt-been-announced/

The Israeli military has carried out air strikes on targets belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The military said the attacks were a response to a barrage of 34 rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday, which it blamed on Hamas. Militants in Gaza fired dozens more rockets after the strikes began. Tensions are high following two nights of Israeli police raids at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem earlier this week. The raids triggered violent confrontations with Palestinians inside the mosque, which is Islam's third holiest site, and caused anger across the region. Hamas did not say that it fired the rockets from Lebanon, which was the biggest such barrage in 17 years. But its leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was visiting Beirut at the time, said Palestinians would not "sit with their arms crossed" in the face of Israeli aggression. Hours after the Israeli strikes, two Israeli sisters were killed and their mother was seriously injured in a shooting attack near a settlement in the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials said. Overnight, there were two or three explosions around the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp, 5km (3 miles) south of the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre. Lebanese media also reported strikes on the outskirts of the village of al-Qulaila, another 4km further south. Photographs appeared to show that a small bridge was destroyed. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted that its warplanes struck "terrorist infrastructures belonging to Hamas" in Lebanon. "The IDF will not allow the Hamas terrorist organization to operate from within Lebanon and hold the state of Lebanon responsible for every directed fire emanating from its territory," it warned. Hamas said it strongly condemned "the blatant Zionist aggression against Lebanon in the vicinity of Tyre at dawn today [Friday In Gaza, more than 10 Hamas targets were hit, including a shaft for an underground site to construct weapons, three other weapons workshops and an underground "terrorist tunnel", the IDF said. During the strikes, at least 44 rockets were fired from Gaza towards southern Israel, Israeli media reported. Most were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defence system or fell in open areas, but at least one house in the city of Sderot was hit. There were no immediate reports of any casualties from either the strikes or the overnight rocket fire. man was injured by shrapnel in northern Israel on Thursday afternoon as a result of the rocket fire from Lebanon, which the Lebanese army said originated from the outskirts of al-Qulaila and two other border villages near Tyre - Maaliya and Zibqine.The Israeli military said 25 of the 34 rockets were intercepted, but that five hit Israeli territory.In the north-western border town of Shlomi, the rockets left craters in the road, and damaged vehicles and a bank. A car was also damaged in the village of Fassuta.The attack came hours after the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which controls much of southern Lebanon, said it would support "all measures" taken by Palestinian groups against Israel.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Thursday night that Israel's response would "exact a significant price from our enemies".An Israeli military spokesman told reporters following the overnight strikes in Lebanon and Gaza that the operation was over for the moment."Nobody wants an escalation right now," Lt Col Richard Hecht said. "Quiet will be answered with quiet, at this stage I think, at least in the coming hours." The memory of Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah is fresh in minds on both sides of the border. Back then, a cross-border operation by Hezbollah infiltrators to capture Israeli soldiers spiralled into a month-long ground war inside Lebanon between the militant group and Israeli forces. Analysts say both sides were left bruised by that conflict, and neither is seen as wanting another war now. For Israel, there is the added risk of pulling in Hezbollah's Iranian backers. Israel's response this time is seen as wanting to avoid re-igniting that conflict - targeting sites linked to Hamas, rather than punishing Hezbollah for hosting them in southern Lebanon. But the path to conflict is often paved with mistake and miscalculation; if rocket fire killed civilians inside Israel, the response would almost certainly be different. Meanwhile, the tit-for-tat exchanges with Palestinian militants in Gaza continue. The next couple of weeks are especially risky, as the Jewish Passover holiday and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan overlap, adding sensitivity to any incidents around the holy sites in Jerusalem. [ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65210045]

An unusually harsh winter that buried Yellowstone National Park under a heavy blanket of snow and ice this year pushed a large portion of the park’s bison herd down to lower elevations and out of the park in search of milder climes and food. Many were stopped from migrating even farther. For four months, state and federal officials have sanctioned a hunt of the shaggy, humped animals that delight millions of tourists and are a centerpiece of Native American culture and history. Officials said they had no choice but to approve the lengthy culling of the roughly 6,000-member herd as the animals instinctually cross the park boundary onto other public land primarily to the north in Montana’s Paradise Valley, but also west of the park. It is part of a strategy to prevent them from getting near livestock, because some 60 percent of the bison herd carries a disease, brucellosis, that could infect cattle and cause cows to abort their calves. But in the last several weeks, the scope of the hunt, conducted mainly by members of eight Indigenous tribes, along with other park control measures, has generated more criticism than previous hunts. As the culling winds down, the record-breaking number of bison removed from Yellowstone’s herd has climbed to more than 1,530 — including hundreds of pregnant females that would have soon been giving birth. Hundreds more were sent out of the park — some to slaughterhouses and about 285 to a quarantine site where they will be held to determine if they are disease-free. The healthy ones will be sent to homes on Native American lands elsewhere. Yet another estimated 800 have been captured and held to protect them from the hunt. Government officials and conservation groups have wrestled with ways to manage the annual migration for decades. “It’s probably the single-most challenging wildlife issue in Yellowstone,” Cam Sholly, the park superintendent, said in an interview. “The bison is the only species we constrain to a boundary.” It’s a complex management scenario. Once the bison cross an invisible national park boundary and wander into Montana to the north and west on national forest land, they become the responsibility of the state. Under historic treaties bestowing the rights to take buffalo, members of the Nez Perce, Blackfeet, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, Northern Arapaho, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the Crow and Shoshone-Bannock Tribes traveled to the region and harvested nearly 1,100 bison. “It’s a very cultural and spiritual endeavor and brings our families together,” said Jeremy Red Star Wolf, of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. “And it gives us an opportunity to talk about who we are and where we come from.” About 90 were shipped to slaughter facilities, and 75 were killed by other hunters. “We don’t want to see this many bison taken out of the po[CENSORED]tion in normal years,” Mr. Sholly said. “But we have had three years of very light migration out of the park. This is one of the first major migrations out of the park for a considerable amount of time.” Recent studies indicate that the po[CENSORED]tion should not be reduced to fewer than 3,500, Mr. Sholly said, to ensure genetic diversity. With a new calf crop this spring, the po[CENSORED]tion should be about 5,000, he estimated. Some have questioned whether killing so many animals disrupts the herds’ social structure. Mr. Sholly conceded the point, but said hunting was less invasive. “When shipping to slaughter occurred in the past, a lot of times you are taking an entire family,” he said. “The hunting is more sporadic and takes out individuals, not necessarily a whole family unit.” The park is home to the wildest bison po[CENSORED]tion in the contiguous United States, where there are virtually no fences, and where it is subject to myriad forces of nature, from weather to grizzlies and wolves. An adult bull bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, and cows weigh up to 1,000 pounds. Females and calves gather in herds, while bulls are usually solitary. Yellowstone officials have also been able to diminish the practice of sending bison to slaughterhouses by expanding the hunting and increasing the numbers now given to tribes to enlarge their herds or create new ones. Still, some critics of the hunt note that there has never been an outbreak of brucellosis infection among Montana’s roughly two million cattle that could be traced to Yellowstone bison. Bradley De Groot, the brucellosis program veterinarian for the state’s livestock department, credited constant monitoring and interventions. The wildlife in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem are the only known U.S. reservoir of the disease, according to the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. If cattle were to become infected with the highly contagious Brucella abortus bacterium, it would result in a lockdown of the animals. (The disease localizes in reproductive organs and is passed primarily through fetal tissue after birth.) “For livestock operations that are quarantined, the only place they can sell sexually intact animals is straight to slaughter,” Mr. De Groot said. “That puts a dramatic impact on their ability to continue to generate revenue.” Deer, moose and other species can also harbor brucellosis, but are less of a primary source of contagion. The hunt by Indigenous tribes is, in part, an effort to restore their ruptured relationship with the bison. At least 30 million once grazed across the West, and for thousands of years they were a vital source of food; their hides were used for shelter and clothing; and their vast roaming was a symbol of freedom. They were slaughtered in massive numbers in the late 19th century to force tribes onto reservations and for profit. Some experts say climate changes and disease brought by cattle contributed to the bison’s decline. The forced extinction reduced the once seemingly limitless herds to a handful, including some two dozen here at Yellowstone. Today’s herds are descended from the remnant po[CENSORED]tion. Beginning late last year, hundreds of Indigenous hunters from the Northwest United States have flocked to the boundaries of Yellowstone, especially to a small area called Beattie Gulch, adjacent to the park’s northern border. Some hunters have traveled with their families to harvest buffalo. Kola Shippentower-Thompson, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon, hunted with her husband, Tommy Thompson, who is the Umatilla tribal game warden, and her cousin, Dion Denny. Ms. Shippentower-Thompson said she had shot 13 bison since December, including a big bull last month, her first. After it fell to the snow, she and her husband gutted it, and she took a ceremonial bite of the old bull’s heart [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/science/bison-hunt-yellowstone-native-americans.html]

Two British-Israeli sisters have been killed and their mother has been injured in a shooting in the occupied West Bank. They were in a car that crashed after being shot at near the Hamra Junction, in the north of the Jordan Valley. The mayor of the settlement of Efrat said the sisters, who were in their 20s, and their 48-year-old mother lived there and were immigrants from the UK. The UK Foreign Office said it was "saddened" by the news. "We are saddened to hear about the deaths of two British-Israeli citizens and the serious injuries sustained by a third individual," a statement said. The Israeli military said its forces were blocking roads in the area and had "started a pursuit of the terrorists". The shooting took place hours after Israeli warplanes carried out air strikes in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The military said they were in retaliation for the biggest rocket attack on Israel launched from Lebanon for 17 years, which it blamed on the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The rocket barrage followed two nights of Israeli police raids at the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem that caused anger across the region. Israel strikes Lebanon and Gaza after rocket fire Later on Friday, Israel said one person had died and several others had been injured in a separate shooting incident in Tel Aviv. The Israel military said the earlier incident in the Jordan Valley was initially reported as a collision between an Israeli car and a Palestinian car. But when troops arrived they found several bullet holes in the Israeli vehicle and determined that it was an attack. Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported that 22 bullet casings were found, apparently from a Kalashnikov assault rifle. A volunteer medic with the United Hatzalah ambulance service said he rushed to the scene and found the three victims in a critical condition. Together with other first responders, I performed CPR on the injured in an attempt to save their lives," Oded Shabbat said. "One injured person was transported by helicopter to the hospital for further care." The Efrat Local Council said in a Facebook post that the three women were a mother and her two daughters who lived in the West Bank settlement, which is south of Jerusalem. It added that it was not yet permitted to identify them. The mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi, said the family were immigrants from the UK, originally from London, and that they were travelling to Tiberius, located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, for a holiday when the attack happened. Israeli media also cited Mr Revivi as saying that the sisters' father had been driving ahead of them in another car when theirs was attacked. He reportedly turned around and arrived at the scene to find his wife and daughters being treated by paramedics. The head of the Israeli military's Central Command, which oversees the West Bank, called it an "extremely severe terrorist attack" and promised that its troops knew how to find those responsible. "We are reinforcing forces in all sectors. We were unable to prevent this attack, but we will do everything we can to prevent the following attacks," Maj-Gen Yehuda Fuchs added. Israel Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai meanwhile called on all Israelis with firearms licences to start carrying their weapons. "This is a murderous attack that reminds us how relevant the threat of terrorism in its various forms is," he said. Hamas did not claim it was behind the shooting but praised it as "a natural response to [Israel's] ongoing crimes against the al-Aqsa mosque and its barbaric aggression against Lebanon and the steadfast Gaza". There has been an intensification of violence between Israel and the Palestinians since the start of this year. More than 90 Palestinians - militants and civilians - have been killed by Israeli forces. If those behind Friday's shooting are confirmed to be Palestinian, then 17 Israelis and a Ukrainian - all civilians, except for an Israeli paramilitary police officer - have been killed in Palestinian attacks [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65211160]

V2 text, effects, style, brushes,

@►PhøêŋĬx◄has been added to our Team. Welcome to the team mate 🦅👍

V2. Effect,Text,Colors

: Name of the game: CODE VIEN Price: 8.99 $ Link Store: Click here Offer ends up after X hours: Offer ends 10 April Requirements: MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 10 (64-bit) Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 Memory: 6 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7850 DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 35 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible soundcard or onboard chipset Additional Notes: Estimated performance: 1080p/60fps with graphics settings at "Low". Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. - 64-bit processor and operating system are required. RECOMMENDED: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 10 (64-bit) Processor: Intel Core i5-7400 or AMD Ryzen 3 2200G Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 380X DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 35 GB available space Sound Card: DirectX compatible soundcard or onboard chipset Additional Notes: Estimated performance: 1080p/60fps with graphics settings at "High". Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. - 64-bit processor and operating system are required. - Windows 10 (Version 1809 or later) and a 4GB VRAM GPU (graphics board or video card) are required for DirectX 12 API.

Per Ars Technica(opens in new tab), the limit, set at five million files, started cropping up for some Google Drive users in February 2023, despite Google offering no warning that the cap was being introduced, and offering a notification that wasn't all that clear at explaining what the problem was: "The limit for the number of items, whether trashed or not, created by this account has been exceeded." Said notification has evolved since then, and now reportedly reads: "Error 403: This account has exceeded the creation limit of 5 million items. To create more items, move items to the trash and delete them forever new policy (which remains undocumented across all pricing pages) means Google Drive customers are being prevented from accessing the full extent of the storage they’ve paid for. However, it’s worth noting that 5 million files, in real terms, is a pretty big allowance. For Google Drive’s 2TB offering - the highest personal plan available - the average file size across an account would have to be 400 kilobytes (KB). There are certainly instances where that may be the case - the storage of large amounts of record data, for example. But in the vast majority of cases, users shouldn’t run up against the limit. Business users are even less likely to face issues with the limit. A spokesperson for Google told Ars Technica that the limit applied to "how many items one user can create in any Drive," rather than a blanket cap. Details were thin on the ground, but they also noted that the new limit is "a safeguard to prevent misuse of our system in a way that might impact the stability and safety of the system." [ Https://www.techradar.com/news/google-drive-has-suddenly-decided-to-introduce-a-file-cap-but-you-might-never-hit-it ]

Ray tracing is fo' real peeps. For proof, look no further than the latest Steam Hardware Survey(opens in new tab), which places the a ray-tracing-capable GPU at the top of the tables for the first time. The GPU in question? None other than the Nvidia RTX 3060(opens in new tab), now the most po[CENSORED]r graphics card among surveyed Steam users. If that seems inevitable given Nvidia's first RTX GPUs launched over four and a half years ago and pretty soon all new graphics cards will have hardware ray tracing acceleration, there is a catch. This particular Steam Survey looks a little fishy. If you track the RTX 3060 over recent months, you'll see it gradually increasing market share over time in the survey. In November last year it was 3.41% of users, 3.88% the following month, it then actually dipped slightly to 3.67% in January, before hitting 4.36% in February and then...kaboom...10.67% of all Steam users in March. RTX 2060(opens in new tab) saw a pretty big jump up in March, too, having sat pretty level for the previous four months. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense given it's an old GPU that is essentially no longer on sale in most markets. AMD also saw a sudden drop in overall GPU market share in March to 10.8% from 14.9% in February having remained at around 15% plus or minus a decimal point for several months previously. In the broad scheme of things, that's a huge change in one month and doesn't look plausible. Dig further into the data and one particular stat jumps out. In March, the proportion of surveyed Steam users reporting Simplified Chinese as their OS language exploded from 27.08% to 52.7%. That, again, seems like a fairly bizarre and unlikely scenario. It's as if an army of Chinese gaming cafes have suddenly been given internet access. Anyway, we'll probably never know for sure what it going on here. Some might argue this reflects a sudden unleashing of ex-mining cards. But was the RTX 3060 really ever big in mining? One thing is for sure. We've seen fishy looking Steam surveys before. So, we'd advise waiting a few months for the numbers to settle down before assuming any of this is terribly accurate. [https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidias-rtx-3060-is-the-new-steam-survey-king-but-something-fishy-is-going-on/]

It felt like just another flight for South African pilot Rudolph Erasmus, until he noticed an extra passenger on his plane at 11,000ft in the air. However, it wasn't a human, but a cobra slithering under his seat. "To be truly honest, it's as if my brain did not register what was going on," he told the BBC. "It was a moment of [...] awe," he added, saying he initially thought the cold feeling on his back was his water bottle. "I felt this cool sensation, sort of, crawling up my shirt," he said, thinking he may not have closed the bottle properly and water might have been dripping down his shirt. "As I turned to the left and looked down I saw the cobra [...] receding its head backwards underneath the seat." He then made an emergency landing on his flight from Bloemfontein to Pretoria. The private plane, a Beechcraft Baron 58, was carrying four passengers, as well as the snake. A bite from a Cape cobra is lethal and can kill someone in just 30 minutes, so not wanting to cause panic, Mr Erasmus says he thought carefully before calmly telling those on board that there was an extra unwanted voyager. He was also "so scared the snake might have gone to the back and cause mass the end, he decided the tell them. "I did inform the passengers: 'Listen the snake is inside the aircraft, it's underneath my seat, so let's try and get down to the ground as soon as we can.'" So how did the passengers react? Mr Erasmus described a moment of absolute silence: "You could hear a needle drop and I think everyone froze for a moment or two." Pilots are trained for lots of scenarios, but certainly not for dealing with snakes in the cockpit he said, telling the BBC that panicking would have just made the situation worse. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Welkom. However, the presence of the snake, although shocking, was not a total surprise. Two people working at Worcester flying club where the plane first took off, said they had earlier spotted a reptile taking refuge under the aircraft. They tried to "grab" it, but without success. Mr Erasmus said he tried to find the snake before boarding the aircraft with his passengers, but "unfortunately it was not there, so we all then safely assumed that it must have crawled out overnight or earlier that morning, which was on Monday". The slithering passenger is still missing, as engineers who then stripped the plane are yet to find it. Mr Erasmus has been hailed a hero, with South African civil aviation commissioner, Poppy Khosa, praising his "great airmanship indeed which saved all lives on board," according to the News24 site. But the modest pilot says he doesn't feel like he's special for what he did: "I think that's a bit blown up if I can be direct," he said. "It's also my passengers that remained calm as well." [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65188013]