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Everything posted by 7aMoDi

  1. Look who's back ❤️ 

  2. #Rejected Improve your activity and make another request after 7 days Have a good luck ❤️ T/C.
  3. Actually you're good guy but you need more to do activity until we can accept you here in the staff So CONTRA for now and improve your activity Good luck mate.
  4. Audi is testing a prototype for a high-riding off-road vehicle that looks to be based on the Q6 e-tron Sportback. The vehicle rides on Toyo Open Country M/T tires and has a vastly wider track than the normal Q6 e-tron Sportback. The bumpers have been restyled with large lights and a pair of tow hooks up front. In January, Audi conquered the grueling Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia with its RS Q e-tron race car, piloted by rally legend Carlos Sainz. Now Audi appears to be preparing a limited-edition celebration of its Dakar triumph, with our spy photographers catching Audi testing an off-road-oriented SUV. The all-terrain vehicle appears to be based on the recently revealed Audi Q6 e-tron Sportback, and if it reaches production we expect it to be offered in extremely limited numbers. The Q6 e-tron Sportback 4x4 Dakar—as we'll call it until Audi reveals an official name—has a comically tall ride height and a wide track. Audi has fashioned bulbous wheel arches that extend outward from the body and create a purposeful stance. The front bumper appears to have been redesigned with huge lights and a rectangular cutout that houses a pair of tow hooks. The restyled front and rear bumpers, along with the ample ground clearance, seem to give the SUV excellent approach and departure angles. The Q6 e-tron Dakar tribute rides on chunky Toyo Open Country M/T tires and is fitted with a sleek roof rack. The roof-mounted storage piece looks to be identical to the unit found atop the Audi Q8 e-tron edition Dakar, a special-edition model launched in January on the eve of the Dakar Rally. Audi has recently shown an increased interest in off-roaders. Along with its entry into the Dakar Rally, Audi showed the Activesphere concept in 2023, a lifted coupe-style SUV that could transform into a pickup truck thanks to a split tailgate and a sliding rear glass panel. While the off-road Q6 e-tron Sportback doesn't appear to have the concept's fancy transforming rear end, the stance echos the all-terrain look of the Activesphere. Very little is known about the Q6 e-tron Sportback 4x4 Dakar, but Audi may unveil the vehicle during the buildup to the 2025 Dakar Rally, which kicks off on January 3. The standard Q6 e-tron comes with a dual-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain producing 456 horsepower, and Audi will also offer an SQ6 e-tron that can churn out up to 510 horsepower with its boost feature activated. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62279905/audi-q6-e-tron-sportback-dakar-spied/
  5. Bernardo Silva is tackled by William Saliba during last season’s draw at the Etihad in March. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian Dance while the world burns. You have to hand it to English football. It is above all endlessly adaptable. Everything is content. Never stop selling. Even if the thing you’re selling may just turn out to be the ground beneath your own feet. The days leading up to any big soaraway Super Sunday showdown tend to bring an avalanche of messages from gambling companies describing their latest match-day lures. With Arsenal due at the Etihad on Sunday afternoon the gambling emails have once again flowed like wine, albeit with a topical twist this time. As of Wednesday (also known as Tribunal Day Three) you can access a range of bets tailored breathlessly to City’s financial charges, as though this is all actually just another football match, including HOT MARKETS on deductions, fines and even relegation (a miserly 6-1: these people really do know their wishful-thinking demographic). There is at least a bracing degree of honesty in all this. For the broadcasters it is a trickier subject. How to deal with this thing, in the week when it finally became a thing, one that undermines so many other things, not least your own relentlessly upbeat entertainment product? Come Sunday afternoon the chat around the lighted plinth will be about bottling or not bottling, about whether Arsenal were too pleased with the robotically cautious 0-0 in this fixture last season. It will be about how the league’s best defence deals with Erling Haaland, who has scored 8.5% of all Premier League goals this season, and who also has 82% of City’s tally, which may just, as the Inter game in midweek suggested, be a possible weak spot. This is clearly a good thing for everyone concerned, not least the unsuspecting teatime TV audience. The profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) procedure is opaque, tedious and unresolved. Nobody comes to sport for this. Can’t we all just enjoy the frowning men in puffy gilets analysing the second‑phase mid-block counterpress? The difference now is that as of Monday morning this thing is finally in the building, walking the halls, rattling the door handles, whispering through the keyholes. A Sunday afternoon meeting with the team City beat to the league title by the finest of margins four months ago, while also being accused of overreaching the finest of margins, provides its own unavoidable note of irony. Above all it is a reminder that this remains a hugely perilous point in the history of a league formed out of legal squabbles, chicanery and greed a third of a century ago. Zoom out a little and City’s charges are arguably the greatest existential threat to the Premier League since its inception. At which point it is probably a good moment to take a look at where we are with this thing. Perhaps the most notable aspect right now is the sense of two entirely opposing views on how it may play out. Pep Guardiola has been manager of Manchester City since the summer of 2016. Photograph: Martin Rickett/AP City have understandably drawn down the shutters on this topic. But the club is by all accounts hugely confident of being vindicated. There is talk of “irrefutable” evidence proving City’s innocence, a phrase used so often you wonder whether someone in the comms team doesn’t know what “irrefutable” actually means, which is unarguable, open-and-shut, beyond question, and not simply slick, aggressive and produced by an £8,000-an-hour king’s counsel. One suggestion is City are supremely confident in their own resources, the bewigged legal super-group at their disposal and a track record in making these things go away. Another theory is the club have been advised certain key notes of evidence in the public domain – and disputed by City – will turn out to be inadmissible. This would certainly explain that confidence. Because the leaked evidence, taken at face value, is undeniably compelling. The charges themselves fall into five basic categories. Inflated sponsorship income offered by organisations linked to the club’s state ownership. Issues, including image rights, that relate to player and manager remuneration. Failure to meet Uefa’s financial fair play regulations. Breaches of PSR. And what are essentially allegations of bad faith, a failure to supply accurate information on time or to help progress the investigation. The evidence out there – which City dispute – is most compelling on the key front of sponsor income. Der Spiegel’s 2018 investigation, supported by leaked documents from the Portuguese hacker Rui Pinto – and again disputed by City – suggested club officials solicited top-ups from state-owned entities in Abu Dhabi to avoid openly breaking the rules. Uefa’s financial rules have always been the enemy of ambition for City’s owners. “We will need to fight this,” Ferran Soriano, City’s chief executive, allegedly writes of FFP in one leaked memo, “and do it in a way that is not visible.” There is alleged talk of “creative solutions” to get around the rules and the launch of “Project Longbow”, a nod, apparently, to Agincourt and Uefa’s Gallic bogeyman, Michel Platini. The alleged narrative behind all this detail is that City’s sponsors were not in fact real commercial parties but compliant bodies covertly routing money from the ownership. An internal email sent by the club executive Simon Pearce in April 2010 – which City dispute the validity of – talks of making up a shortfall in income via “alternative sources provided by His Highness”. One document section carries the heading: “Supplement to Abu Dhabi partnership deals.” Asked about changing the date of payment for some Abu Dhabi‑centred sponsorship deals, Pearce replies: “Of course, we can do what we want.” City dispute the truth and relevance of all this. There will, of course, be those who say this is all beside the point, that the rules should not exist in the first place, that they run contrary to the idea of a free market. This is an argument that works only if you have little understanding of what a market actually is. State subsidies, inflated value, Neymar being sold for €220m to the state of Qatar, a politically motivated ownership pumping in excess funds to serve its propaganda purposes. None of these things suggest a functioning free market. This is the opposite of that: state intervention, a market distortion, the command economy. The real point is that while this may seem obscure, historical and procedural – accounting irregularities: spare me – it is utterly key to what happens on the pitch, and central to everything City have built. This is a success that can be plotted almost exactly against the flow of money out. Over the period the main charges relate to, 2009-18, City’s net spend on transfers – according to Transfermarkt – was about £900m, almost £400m more than Manchester United in second place, and five times as much as Liverpool and Arsenal. From 2016-18 they massively outspent every other team, the key period in building the current Pep supremacy, laying the foundations for five league titles in the past six seasons, for the team that will face Arsenal on Sunday. Nothing wrong with that, of course. This is all energy, all ambition. But the rules are also there for a reason, and even the tiniest of margins either way, a few spare millions, can make a massive difference to success on the pitch. By the time City’s seminal, dynasty-building title arrived in May 2012, leaked internal calculations – which City dispute – suggest that £127.5m had been pumped in as “supplements” to their Abu Dhabi partnership deals. Which would certainly go a long way towards buying Sergio Agüero, Mario Balotelli and Yaya Touré, architects of that defining moment. More recently, Guardiola’s team have won the league on the final day or by a point three times while, it is alleged and denied, enjoying the benefits of breaking rules their immediate opponents obeyed. European leagues have been depleted, talent and expertise lured away. Signing Kevin De Bruyne involved digging out an extra £25m, forcing Wolfsburg to sell, stretching the margins in your direction. This is exactly what Newcastle, for example, are not being allowed to do right now. If rules have been broken it not only depletes the spectacle, it undermines the basic notion of what sport is. On this basis it isn’t hard to see the argument for stripping City of titles if they are found guilty. Otherwise, why do the rules even exist? The fact remains City have yet to suffer significant punishment on any front. In the more recent Uefa case, key elements of evidence were found to be time-barred. Deals have been made with no less a figure of unquestioned rectitude than Gianni Infantino, Uefa’s general secretary at the time. The problem facing City, and indeed the Premier League, is that their current accusers are not Uefa but a collective of other clubs with their own competing desires for success, glory and profit. With that in mind it is still hard to see any outcome that genuinely benefits the Premier League. Three things can happen from this point. First, City are found guilty and punished to a significant degree. This would represent a potential disaster for the Premier League, which would find its entire recent history discredited, its broadcast rights undermined and integrity open to question. It would also leave a champion club, the richest in the world, in a state of open, vengeful warfare with their own co-members. Hello? Is that the Super League? Yeah. Are we still on? The second outcome is City are found to be innocent. No matter how legitimate or how transparent, this would also be disastrous for the Premier League, hobbled with ruinous legal fees, sucked into internal unhappiness, menaced by conspiracy theories on all sides. How does the league survive either of these verdicts intact? There are already splits and schisms. For the first time there are suggestions out there of other ways to organise elite club football. How strong does that union really feel, in a league where the generational champions are at war with their own governing body? Manchester City's Yaya Touré (right) and Mario Balotelli celebrate Touré’s goal against Stoke in the 2011 FA Cup final. They joined City in 2010. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters The third, and by far most likely, outcome is a qualified compromise, acceptance of some things, dismissal of others, and punishment that allows everyone involved to live with the outcome. The panel is, of course, entirely independent and concerned only with the truth. On the other hand, football, for all its self-importance, remains a very small player. Manchester City are an arm of an influential nation state with whom the UK did £25bn of trade in the previous financial year. What would be the most normal outcome here? Justice in a vacuum? Another defeat for commerce and money in the face of pure sporting principles? Which world, exactly, are we living in? In the current one the fudge looks a very decent bet. So, back to the game then. With hindsight Arsenal probably did miss a chance to seize the initiative at the Etihad last season, were perhaps a little fearful when they might have seen it as their main chance. It still seems likely Mikel Arteta will look for something similar this weekend. Keep it tight. Mummify Haaland in between those two highly impressive centre-halves. Look to counterpunch a set-piece goal along the way. This is likely to be the template on Tribunal Day Seven in Manchester, with the low-scoring draw, the exhaustingly complex 1-0 still the most likely outcomes. At the very least, they might just have a little backstory now. And a sense also of a world that may just be in danger of eating itself. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/sep/20/win-or-lose-manchester-city-case-poses-perilous-threat-to-the-premier-league
  6. ‘A special time’: Emma Melay and her partner Darren McFadden on the Great Blasket. Photograph: Przemyslaw Dral/The Guardian My partner Darren and I had been teaching in Celbridge, in County Kildare, for three years before we took a career break. We enjoyed travelling by campervan around Ireland and working in a guesthouse on the Aran Islands. We’d seen an advertisement for a six-month posting for caretakers on Blascaod Mór – the Great Blasket – and decided we’d give it a go. The Great Blasket is the largest of the six Blasket islands off the west coast of County Kerry, and famous in Ireland because islander and storyteller Peig Sayers’s 1936 autobiography, Peig, was taught in schools. The job would involve helping run the island’s three holiday cottages and small cafe, owned by a couple, Alice and Billy, who live in the town of Dingle on the mainland. We didn’t expect to hear anything after sending in our form, knowing that tens of thousands apply, but a week later we had a Zoom interview. That was basically Billy telling us we’d be mad to do it, going to an island with no electricity or hot water. But we’re used to simple living, and the more Billy described it the more we wanted this once-in-a-lifetime experience. About two weeks later, we were offered the job. We were shocked, then elated. On 1 April this year we arrived on the uninhabited windswept island, 2km from the mainland. It’s about 5.2km by 1km of unspoilt, hilly land. Guests rent the traditional cottages between April and the end of September, after which the seas are too rough to get here. The last islanders left in 1953 because of a lack of access to emergency services. After just a few days here, we understood what it must have been like for them: Storm Kathleen arrived and marooned us alone for 12 days, as no boats were able to dock. We weren’t too worried, though, and it was a special time. Most days were dry, and hundreds of undisturbed seals lay on the sandy beach. There’s a colony of 2,000 seals with sharks, whales and dolphins nearby. Seabirds screeched eerily at night and rested on the back hill during the day. Sheep wandered along our cliff walks. Rabbits and hares passed by. Our cottage is cosy, with a stove and photos of previous islanders dotted around. There’s a small wind turbine with enough power to charge a phone, but no fridge or freezer. After the storm, we settled into a rhythm of seeing visitors, helping with the cottages and meeting Alice and Billy on their boat at the pier to collect fresh groceries. We have breakfast looking over the kitchen half-door, watching the seals move with the tide. Most evenings we watch spectacular sunsets. In May, we saw the northern lights. They were magical – there’s no light pollution here. It was 1am when we saw the sky light up purple, with shades of bright pink and green. Every day in June, as a challenge, we swam in the very cold Atlantic Ocean. In August, shepherds came from the mainland to shear the island’s 300 or so sheep. Some evenings, we invite the cottage guests to join us round a fire pit. Indoors, when it’s dark, we use tealights, head torches, firelight and candles, with the stove for heat. We’re reading books by islanders, including Peig. We speak a decent amount of Irish, and sometimes speak it with locals and international visitors wanting to practise theirs, even if it’s just asking for cupán tae in the caifé. Darren and I have been together for two years now. This time here has been brilliant for our relationship – we’ve grown closer and rely on each other a lot. Friends visit us, so mostly we miss our families, though my parents came over for my birthday. Receiving visitors, chatting to guests, and engaging in activities such as hiking, swimming, reading and photography keeps us busy. We haven’t really felt isolated during our time here. The time is flying by, and we leave on 1 October. We’ll be sad to go, but look forward to having another adventure before returning to teaching. We’ll try to make it back here every year for the rest of our lives. Applications to replace us will now be capped at 300. Our advice to anyone thinking of applying? Go for it. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/sep/20/experience-were-the-caretakers-of-an-uninhabited-irish-island
  7. Rayne Beau was missing for 60 days before being reunited with his family. Photograph: Courtesy of Susanne Anguiano For two months, a California couple was heartbroken, worrying about the whereabouts of their beloved cat after losing him in Yellowstone national park, a wilderness larger than some US states. But as summer came to a close, so did their tragic story. Benny and Susanne Anguiano reunited with their lost feline Rayne Beau last month after an animal welfare group called to let them know their cat had been found in Roseville, California, about 800 miles (1,287km) from Yellowstone. In June, the couple went camping in the national park, where their cat was startled by something in the wilderness. Rayne Beau ran into the trees, and they didn’t see him again for 60 days. During the trip, they searched every day, laying out treats and toys in hopes he’d return, but without success. “We had to leave without him,” Susanne Anguiano told KSBW. “That was the hardest day because I felt like I was abandoning him.” In early August, Rayne Beau’s microchip came in handy. The couple received a message from Pet Watch, a pet-tracking service, indicating that their cat had been found in Roseville at the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A woman had discovered Rayne Beau alone in the street and brought him to the shelter. “He was really depleted,” said Susanne. “He probably didn’t have much energy left to go any farther.” Susanne first shared their rollercoaster story on Facebook, explaining that she hadn’t told it earlier because “it was too traumatic.” Exactly how Rayne Beau travelled the 800 miles from Yellowstone to Roseville remains a mystery, but the couple said they hope sharing their story might prompt someone to come forward with any details. In their KSBW interview, the couple also urged other pet owners to install trackers to avoid losing their pets for good. An estimated 10m dogs and cats are lost or stolen in the US every year, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Only one in 50 cats in shelters return to their owners, but with a microchip, nearly two out of five are reunited with their families. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/20/yellowstone-lost-cat-rayne-beau-found
  8. Television legend Oprah Winfrey and United States Vice President Kamala Harris shared the stage on Thursday in a event called “Unite for America” to drum up support for Harris’s presidential campaign. Harris is the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate for the November election. This is not the first time the television personality has voiced support for Harris during this election. She made a surprise speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last month. Since emerging as her party’s frontrunner for the presidential nomination, and especially since winning that nomination, Harris has secured the endorsements of hundreds of prominent Americans — from Hollywood stars and music icons to her party’s stalwarts and Republicans who say they cannot vote for their party’s nominee, ex-President Donald Trump. However, few public figures in the US enjoy an aura like Oprah’s. Here’s more about her history of election endorsements and how much those have influenced outcomes. What was Oprah’s ‘United for America’? A copper blazer-clad, bespectacled Oprah hosted the more-than-one-hour talk-show-style event. The event took place in Michigan, a key battleground state in this election. It was livestreamed on the Harris campaign YouTube channel and, as of Friday morning in the US, had already been viewed more than one million times. Harris walked onto the stage, meeting enthusiastic applause from a studio audience. The two women discussed topics, including reproductive health and Harris’s plans to reduce the cost of housing and to lower taxation. Big names in the entertainment industry — from Jennifer Lopez and Julia Roberts to Chris Rock and Meryl Streep — joined over video-link. These celebrities add to the star power around the Harris campaign built by celebrities including Taylor Swift and Charli XCX, when they endorsed the Democrat earlier. However, the most potent endorsement possibly comes from Oprah herself. Why is Oprah’s endorsement significant? A 2013 study conducted by economists Craig Garthwaite of Northwestern University and Timothy J Moore from the University of Maryland found that Oprah’s endorsement resulted in about one million additional votes for Democrat Barack Obama, who has also endorsed Harris, in 2008. The research found that in addition to votes, her support also helped Obama secure additional funding. In the election, Obama won with nearly 53 percent of the po[CENSORED]r vote. What is Oprah’s track record with endorsements? After her first major endorsement of Obama in 2008, Oprah has sporadically endorsed politicians in presidential or senate races. In 2016, Oprah expressed her support for Democrat Hilary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump in a media interview. While Trump trailed Clinton in the 2016 polls, Trump won the election. He won the Electoral College, but lost the overall po[CENSORED]r vote. In October 2020, Democrat Joe Biden received a boost from Oprah a month before the election, when she hosted a virtual get-out-the-vote event. In 2022, the talk show host endorsed Democrat John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race against his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz, who rose to prominence as a celebrity doctor by appearing on her talk show. Her endorsement took the form of a virtual event, conducted on Zoom. Fetterman won the race. But the TV diva’s endorsement is no golden ticket. During the same virtual event in which she endorsed Fetterman, she briefly expressed support for other Democratic candidates for Senate and governor races. These included: Cheri Beasley for North Carolina, Val Demings for Florida, Mandela Barnes for Wisconsin, Catherine Cortez Masto for Nevada, Beto O’Rourke for Texas and Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams for Georgia. Out of these, only Cortez Masto won — the rest were defeated. Has Oprah supported Trump? After Oprah endorsed Harris in her DNC surprise speech, she received backlash from Trump supporters and a letter she wrote to Trump in 2000 resurfaced. Addressing the Republican nominee, she had written back then, “Too bad we’re not running for office,” Axios reported. “What a TEAM!” In a 2023 CBS interview, Oprah clarified, “I might have thought it back then. I might have thought it 23 years ago. I’m not thinking it today.” In 2015, Trump had also joked about Oprah running as her vice president in an interview with ABC, only to clarify that he was joking. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/20/oprahs-kamala-harris-fundraiser-does-her-support-swing-elections
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