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Photographer Gets A Little Too Close To Lion, Escapes With This Stunning Picture

Photographer Gets A Little Too Close To Lion, Escapes With This Stunning Picture


This is what it looks like to stare danger in the face.

Pakistani photographer Atif Saeed captured this incredible image of a lion at a wildlife park outside of Lahore by slowly creeping out of his car's open door. The 38-year-old told NDTV he sat on the ground, "a stone's throw" from the animal, and snapped a couple of photos, but was forced to retreat "within seconds" when the lion noticed him and leapt in his direction.

lion
"The Ghost and the Darkness."

"It was a pretty close encounter," Saeed conceded to ABC News. "I was laughing afterwards at the time, but I don't think I'd ever be able to do something like that again."

Saeed retreated to his car, where we hope he locked the doors.

Saeed took the photo in 2012, though it went viral earlier this month. Saeed shared the photo on Facebook in 2013, titling it "Angry king;" In January of this year, he shared it on 500px, calling it "The Ghost and the Darkness."

Buckingham Palace Guard Slips On His Arse, Gives New Meaning To Royal Pain

Buckingham Palace Guard Slips On His Arse, Gives New Meaning To Royal Pain


It was like a Monty Python moment -- only it was real.

A Buckingham Palace guard slipped and fell during the famous Changing of the Guard last Thursday, giving hundreds of tourists a way more eventful photo op.

We're amused. The Ministry of Defence? Maybe not so much. The Telegraph reported that the department would not comment on "a young man falling over while doing his job."

So there.


fall


H/T Pixable



Clinton Foundation Will Limit Donations From Foreign Governments

Clinton Foundation Will Limit Donations From Foreign Governments


NEW YORK, April 15 (Reuters) - The Clinton Foundation will limit donations from foreign governments to six countries that already support it, in the wake of Hillary Clinton's decision to become a U.S. presidential candidate, the nonprofit charitable group said in a statement.

The countries are Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom, which fund the foundation's work around the world on climate change and economic development, the statement said, citing a board decision.

The foundation said it would disclose its donors more frequently, publishing the names of new contributors four times a year. Clinton stepped down from the foundation's board on Sunday when she announced she would seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen: Editing by Peter Cooney)

UN Yemen Envoy Resigns As War Escalates

UN Yemen Envoy Resigns As War Escalates




UNITED NATIONS, April 15 (Reuters) - U.N. special adviser to Yemen Jamal Benomar is planning on stepping down from his job and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon is considering appointing a Mauritanian diplomat to the post as the civil war escalates, a U.N. diplomatic source said on Wednesday.
Benomar, a veteran Moroccan diplomat, had recently irked Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations for his handling of so far unsuccessful peace talks between Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Western and Gulf Arab-backed Yemeni government, Western U.N. diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
The Gulf countries, which have been involved in Saudi-led air strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen for three weeks, felt that Benomar was being too accommodating towards the Shi'ite Houthis, the Western diplomats said.
Benomar did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
It was not clear when Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed would take over the post. The U.N. diplomatic source said the appointment had not been confirmed yet and could be still be changed.
A Western diplomat said Ould Cheikh Ahmed was "in the mix" as a candidate, adding that a final decision had not been made. Several diplomats said it had been known for months Benomar wanted to leave the Yemen post.
In January last year Ould Cheikh Ahmed was appointed deputy U.N. special envoy for Libya and then in December was charged with heading the United Nations Ebola response mission, UNMEER.
Ould Cheikh Ahmed has almost three decades of development and aid experience with the United Nations. More recently, he was U.N. resident humanitarian and development coordinator in Syria between 2008 and 2012, and in Yemen from 2012 to 2014.
UNMEER did not have an immediate response to a request for comment from Ould Cheikh Ahmed on the possibility that he may take up the Yemen post.
Western diplomats have repeatedly voiced support for Benomar's peace efforts in Yemen, though they privately acknowledged that Gulf Arab irritation with Benomar has been growing in recent weeks.
Saudi Arabia launched air attacks in Yemen last month as Houthi rebels, who had taken control of the capital Sanaa in September, closed in on the port city of Aden and forced Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Riyadh.
The Houthis and pro-Saleh army units have been fighting alongside each other on several fronts against militia forces loyal to Hadi. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Elephant Score a Beautiful Goal





#GOAL #Soccer #AnimalSoccer #Football #Elephant

Rihanna - American Oxygen (Lyric)

[Furious 7 OST] Wiz Khalifa & Iggy Azalea - Go Hard or Go Home (Lyrics)

Clean Bandit (feat. Jess Glynne) - Rather Be (Lyrics)

The Boat, The White Hat, The Survivors: Key Moments In Boston Marathon Trial

The Boat, The White Hat, The Survivors: Key Moments In Boston Marathon Trial


BOSTON (AP) — The defendant's startling admission on Day One that he did it. Tearful testimony from survivors who lost limbs. The boat. The white hat. As the prosecution rests, here's a look at some of the most compelling moments in the government's case against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:

OPENING STATEMENTS

Tsarnaev's lawyer, Judy Clarke, startled a packed courtroom when she bluntly admitted during opening statements, "It was him." In a strategy designed to save him from the death penalty, Clarke told the jury that Tsarnaev had fallen under the malevolent influence of his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan, who she said had become radicalized and drew his brother into his plan to bomb the marathon.

But prosecutor William Weinreb said the two brothers were equal partners in a plan to "tear people apart and create a bloody spectacle" to retaliate against the U.S. for its wars in Muslim lands. The Tsarnaevs — ethnic Chechens — moved to the U.S. from Russia more than a decade before the bombings.

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THE SURVIVORS

People who lost limbs in the explosions delivered heart-wrenching testimony about the moments after the explosions. Rebekah Gregory said she looked down at her leg: "My bones were literally laying next to me on the sidewalk and blood was everywhere. ... At that point, I thought that was the day I would die."

rebekah gregory
Boston Marathon bombing victim, Rebekah Gregory, right, arrived at Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston, where the second day in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev got underway on March 5, 2015. (Photo by Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Bill Richard, the father of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the second explosion, described making the agonizing decision to leave his mortally wounded son with his wife so he could get help for his 6-year-old daughter, whose leg had been blown off. "I saw a little boy who had his body severely damaged by an explosion, and I just knew from what I saw that there was no chance," Richard said.

Jeff Bauman, who lost both legs in the attack, recalled locking eyes with Tamerlan Tsarnaev just before the first bomb exploded. "He was alone. He wasn't watching the race," Bauman said. Bauman, who gave the FBI a description of Tamerlan from his hospital bed, became a symbol of the attack when he was captured in an Associated Press photograph as he was wheeled away from the bombing scene, ashen-faced and holding onto his ravaged legs.

___

THE BOAT
tsarnaev boat
Investigators work, on Saturday, April 20, 2013, near the location in Watertown, Mass., where police captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a backyard boat after a wild car chase and gun battle earlier in the day left his older brother dead. (AP Photo/Katie Zezima)

Jurors were taken to South Boston to see the boat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hiding in four days after the bombings. On the inside walls of the boat, Tsarnaev wrote and carved a note denouncing the U.S. for its actions in Muslim lands. "Stop killing our innocent people and we will stop," he wrote. Jurors also saw more than 100 bullet holes on the sides of the boat, which was fired at by police before Tsarnaev was captured.

___

THE WHITE HAT
tsarnaev white hat
This Monday, April 15, 2013 photo provided by Bob Leonard shows bombing suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, center right in black hat, and his brother, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, center left in white hat, approximately 10-20 minutes before the blasts that struck the Boston Marathon. (AP Photo/Bob Leonard)

An FBI agent showed jurors the white cap Tsarnaev wore during the attack. In video and still photos released by the FBI three days after the bombings, Tsarnaev was seen wearing a white cap backward. The FBI referred to him as "White Hat" until they learned his identity.



___

THE KILLING OF THE POLICE OFFICER

Jurors heard the frantic radio call made by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who found fellow Officer Sean Collier mortally wounded in his cruiser. "Officer down! Officer down! ... Get on it!" the officer yelled. A medical examiner testified that Collier, 26, was shot three times in the head, including one shot between the eyes. Tsarnaev's lawyer said it was Tamerlan who shot Collier. An MIT graduate student who was riding his bike by the scene around the time of the shooting identified Dzhokhar as the man he saw leaning into Collier's cruiser.

sean collier
A Ruger pistol, that was shown during the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev federal death penalty trial, is displayed at a conference room at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Tuesday, March 17, 2015. Authorities say the P-95 Ruger was the gun used to kill MIT police officer Sean Collier. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)


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CARJACK VICTIM

Dun Meng testified about a harrowing ride he had with the Tsarnaev brothers the night of April 18, 2013, hours after the FBI publicly released photos of the two men as suspects in the bombings. Meng said he pulled his car to the side of the road to respond to a text message when suddenly a man jumped in, pointed a gun at him and told him to drive. Meng said the man — Tamerlan Tsarnaev — told him he had committed the Boston Marathon bombings. Meng testified that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev later joined them in the car, took his bank card and withdrew $800 from an ATM in Watertown. Meng said he jumped from the car when the brothers stopped to get gas and ran across the street to another gas station. Jurors saw surveillance video of a terrified Meng begging the clerk to call police.

dun meng
Dun Meng is seen here on a gas station's surveillance camera moments after escaping from Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had carjacked his Mercedes SUV and stolen money from his bank account at an ATM in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 18, 2013.
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Healthy Living - Making/Taking the Time to Meditate

Healthy Living - Making/Taking the Time to Meditate




2015-03-27-1427500003-5245670-sMEDITATIONsmall.jpgYou've heard about all the benefits associated with mindfulness meditation. You want to be involved, establish a practice, and experience those benefits yourself: lowered stress and anxiety; improved emotional regulation; increases in the areas of attention span, focus, and executive functioning. These sound great, but when can you fit it in?

Never.

You don't "fit" mindfulness into your schedule. Rather, you make the time and take the time. You do this because you are just that important to yourself, and to those around you, that you make sure this is a daily practice.

Still can't figure out when it would work for you? Try a few of these suggestions.

Will mornings work for you? Sure, you say, except for the kids and carpooling. Or you just have to watch the morning news and complete the crossword puzzle. And, besides, you're always feeling like you're rushing because you're running late to get wherever you're supposed to be going. How could you meditate in the morning?


  • Wake up before the kids do. Find a spot where you can be alone (a closet? a corner of an extra bedroom or home office? how about a corner of the dining room?), set a timer, and give yourself the amount of time that's right for you.


  • Don't think of waking up earlier as a punishment, because it's not! You don't have to wake up earlier; you get to wake up earlier to experience the quiet start of a new day. You're blessed that you now have a moment to feel the calm energy of your home around you. Did you ever imagine that you would have this gift of time to appreciate the miracles in the world, like hearing birds sing or seeing dew resting softly on the grass?


  • How fortunate are you that you can take a moment to set your intention for the day to come? Maybe you'll want to focus on how you can show people extra appreciation today, or surprise others with an unexpected treat. Maybe you'll decide that today will be a good opportunity to show extra kindness to yourself. You're going to avoid the negative self-talk, and remove yourself from as many pessimistic influences as you possibly can. Sure, you might have to give up a television show, time reading that new novel, or even put aside that new recording you've been wanting to play for yourself. But this is better. This is going to positively impact your entire day, and then your entire life!


Does the night seem to be a better time for you to meditate?

  • What can you remove from your regular routine in order to have an opportunity to focus on your breath? That time just before going to bed?


  • Is this when you'll find the occasion to clear your mind? Have you thought about, just as you are finishing your mindfulness, taking an extra few minutes to reflect on the positive events that took place within the last 24 hours? Maybe you'll write down the events that really stood out in a positive way, remembering exactly what happened, who said what, how each person responded and how it felt. And, not only how it felt to you then, but how it feels to you now!


And maybe, just maybe, you'll have found a few opportunities during the course of your busy day to notice the smells around you that you'd normally let pass by, the colors on the flowers you didn't even notice yesterday, or the texture of the steering wheel in your car. And that tinkling of the tags on that dog that passes by so often. Do those tags always make that sound? You'd never noticed before! And how lunch tasted today? Superb!

Yes, during the day maybe you'll have stopped, every so often, just to take three deep breaths and focus on the beauty of the world around you. You'll do this because you've realized, finally, that you really are that important. To yourself. And to those around you.

Yes, you will make sure this is a daily practice. May you find peace and goodness, always.

Dr. Wolbe can be contacted via her website, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Healthy Living - How to Change the Habits of 107,000 People

Healthy Living - How to Change the Habits of 107,000 People


It was 1995, and Pieter Ernst was battling a serious problem.

Ernst was a physician with an interest in community-wide behavior change, and he was currently in Mozambique. For nearly 20 years, a brutal civil war had ravaged the population and landscape of the country.

The war had ended three years earlier, but the entire health care system of the country had been crippled. Thousands of mothers and children were dying from preventable diseases.

The biggest problem was the scale of the issue. Dr. Ernst needed to reach a population of 107,000 citizens with a staff of just 19 people.

Ernst realized that it was impossible for his team to do it alone. Furthermore, he knew that if they were going to reduce the incidence of preventable disease for good, then significant behavior change would need to occur within the community. His team couldn't stay in Mozambique forever. These changes had to happen in the homes and minds of the community.

Ernst came up with a plan.

Changing the Habits of 107,000 People

First, they found over 2,000 volunteers from the community. Then, each member of his 19-person staff was responsible for teaching groups of 10 to 15 volunteers from the surrounding community about the steps they could take to reduce the incidence of preventable diseases.

Then, each volunteer would visit 10 to 15 households and share what they had learned. The volunteers repeated households every two weeks and continued to spread the ideas.

But this was the part that made the plan brilliant: The support group for the volunteers was not the 19-person health care staff. It was the other 10 to 15 volunteers in their small group. Each group of volunteers talked among one another about what was working, what wasn't working, and how to get people on board with the changes in their community.

What happened?

Not only did they reach the massive population, they also got the changes to take hold. The number of underweight children was cut by half. The mortality rate of children under 5 dropped. Pneumonia treatment was six times better than before the project began.

In a followup survey taken 20 months after the project had officially ended, the volunteer groups were still operating with 94 percent of the original volunteers and the health metrics continued to improve. [1: Ernst calls his community volunteer group method "Care Groups" and the system has been replicated effectively for public health projects in Mozambique multiple times, Cambodia, and a variety of other countries.]

The changes had stuck. For good.

The public health victory of Ernst's team is impressive, but this isn't just a feel-good story. There is a deeper lesson here that we can all apply to our own lives.

Here's the deal.

The Identity of the Group

Most of our behaviors are driven by two things: our environment and our beliefs.

And environment is perhaps the most powerful of those two because in many cases your environment can shape your beliefs. This is especially true when you consider your environment to include the people who surround you.

I've written previously about identity-based habits -- the power that your beliefs have to create better habits that actually stick over the long-term.

But it's not just your identity that impacts your beliefs. It's also the identity of the groups that you surround yourself with.

Consider the community in Mozambique. In the beginning, the community had a certain identity. After the war, many basic public health approaches simply weren't part of daily life.

But as the volunteers began expanding their reach, working with each other, and sharing news of what techniques were working, the community began to develop a new identity. New behaviors began to be seen as normal behaviors. And when a new behavior becomes the norm for any particular group, the change sticks for good.

The lesson is simple: Doing something is much easier when it's the normal thing to do in your community.

What Is the Identity of Your Group?

Every group has an identity.


  • Google employees have a set of actions and beliefs that are part of their cultural identity.

  • CrossFitters have a set of actions and beliefs that are part of their identity.

  • Investment bankers have a set of actions and beliefs that are part of their identity.


The question is, do the groups you belong to have the identity you want?

There were only 2,300 volunteers in the Mozambique project, but 107,000 people began to take on new habits and behaviors when the identity of the group changed.

This happens to all of us. We take on the behaviors of the groups in which we live and the communities to which we belong.

  • Want to work out more? Become part of a group where working out is normal. Not a goal. Not an event. Just part of the lifestyle.

  • Want to do better work? Surround yourself with people who make each day a work of art rather than seeing work as a reason to clock in and clock out.

  • Want to live a life of service? Step into a group where service is part of the day-to-day routine.


Lasting behavior change happens when it's part of the cultural norm. As Jim Rohn says, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

This Croatian 'Sea Organ' Uses Wind And Waves To Create Enchanting Harmonies

This Croatian 'Sea Organ' Uses Wind And Waves To Create Enchanting Harmonies


If the sound of waves lapping gently onto the shore puts you in a trance, then it's time you listen to the Morske Orgulje -- or, the Sea Organ.

The crooning structure in the video above is a 230-foot long instrument on the coast of Zadar, Croatia, that plays mesmerizing harmonies using the movements of the sea.

The Sea Organ was conceived in 2005 by architect Nikola Bašić, after a new jetty was built to welcome cruise ships and their tourists to the charming port town.

On its surface, the organ looks like large marble steps leading into the Adriatic Sea. Below, however, lies a series of narrow channels that connect to 35 organ pipes. Each set of steps holds five organ pipes each and is tuned to a different musical chord.

As waves and wind push air through the channels, a song pours through the organ pipes and out onto the steps above. The sounds produced rely completely on the wave energy's random time and space distribution.

Visitors say the sound is "hauntingly memorable" and "rather rhythmical and even hypnotizing."

In 2006, the Sea Organ won the European Prize for Urban Public Space because it was a "perfect grandstand for watching the sunset over the sea and the outline of the [neighboring] island of Ugljan, while listening to the musical compositions played by the sea itself."

Below, listen to the organ wail its harmony on an especially rough day by the sea.