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Due to a seasonal influx of kittens in the County’s three animal shelters, the County Department of Animal Services will waive all adoption fees, beginning today, June 1 through September 4, for cats 6 months and older. Only two cats per person can be adopted.
“Our three County shelters are really packed right now and we don’t want to compromise the health of the cats and kittens by holding more animals then we can properly care for,” said Dawn Danielson, Director of the Department of Animal Services.
“We are looking for new pet parents who know that they want to add a new four-legged family member, but they just haven’t taken the time to visit our shelters. By waiving the adoption fee for cats, we’re hoping that will encourage loving families to make the commitment to adopt a pet.”
For kittens under 6 months of age, the Department has a “Better with a Buddy” program where a person can adopt one kitten for the full price of $58 and adopt a second kitten at half price.
Danielson said the adult cats just can’t compete with fuzzy, bouncy kittens and Animal Services wants to offer incentives to adopt these animals before the shelters get filled to capacity.
All animals will be neutered or spayed, microchipped and vaccinated prior to going home with their new family.
For more information on adoptions at any of the three County animal shelters, or to view photos of adoptable animals, visit http://www.sddac.com/adoptions.asp.
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Last September, I told you about the passing of Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug. As the father of the “Green Revolution” in agriculture, Borlaug was credited with saving hundreds of millions, perhaps even a billion, lives. His work with food crops, and the work of those inspired by him, is why “food today is cheap and widely available, and why famines have become relatively rare events.”
Given Borlaug’s contribution to human well-being, it’s ironic that it was one of his students who discovered the greatest threat to Borlaug’s legacy.
That threat, discovered by William Magiore in Uganda ten years ago, goes by the innocuous-sounding name of UG99. That’s the only innocuous thing about it. UG99 is a fungus that causes stem rust, which has been called the “polio of agriculture.”
For thousands of years stem rust, which attacks wheat, would periodically wreak havoc on humanity. It would leave famine and chaos in its wake. It was such a threat that the Romans worshipped a god named “Robigus,” whose power was the ability to prevent stem rust.
Stem Rust was finally brought under control by what Borlaug called a “mind-warpingly tedious” process of trial and error: He and others bred wheat that was resistant to the blight and, thus, mitigated the threat posed by this ancient scourge.
Mitigated, not eliminated. Since its discovery, UG99, to which 90 percent of our wheat crop has no resistance, has spread eastward: it has been detected in Iran and now threatens to spread into South Asia’s breadbasket. From there it could move into China. This would put up to a billion people under what is euphemistically called “food stress.”
At the very least, food prices would soar and the poor, who already live on a knife’s edge, would face malnutrition and even famine.
As bad as that is, it’s not the nightmare scenario: that real nightmare would be if UG99 headed west as well as east. Surpluses in the U.S. and Canada are the world’s food insurance. As one expert put it, “If this stuff gets into the Western Hemisphere . . . God help us.”
That’s why food scientists are scrambling to stay ahead of fungus and prevent a catastrophe. Christians ought to support and pray for their efforts. It’s hard to imagine a greater priority than preventing a global food crisis. We in the West might be able to absorb higher food prices-our neighbors and brethren in the global south can’t. Global instability would soon follow.
This crisis should also serve as lesson about human hubris. We like to think that we have mastered nature and somehow emancipated ourselves from the limits imposed by our physical environment. We speak of “making the world smaller” because we invented the airplane and built the internet. Like Nebuchadnezzar, we see our world as proof of our power and majesty.
Then, along comes a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland, or a spore the size of a red blood cell, and they remind us of how vulnerable we really are. Or they would if we were capable of humility before God. Since we’re not, we may have to learn the hard way. God help us, indeed.
UG99 and Hubris
Chuck Colson
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MURRIETA: Restrictions applied to church shelters
By NELSY RODRIGUEZ – nrodriguez@californian.com | Posted: February 3, 2010 6:00 pm | | Print
Homeless families may soon find shelter from the storm at a local church, thanks to an emergency ordinance approved late Tuesday night by the Murrieta City Council.Single people without homes will have to search for their own form of shelter, however, because the ordinance only allows the churches to house families with children.
After a four-hour discussion on the topic, the Murrieta City Council unanimously agreed to allow churches that meet several regulations to serve as temporary emergency shelters for families.
Council members approved the emergency shelter ordinance just before midnight Tuesday. Wednesday morning, homeless shelter supporters were calling on as many local churches as they could reach to ask for commitments to help a Murrieta church, which has been housing a small group of homeless people for two weeks, meet the new standards.
“We’re where the rubber meets the road,” said Anne Unmacht, president of Project Together Our Unity Conquers Homelessness, a nonprofit organization that helped open the emergency shelter at Grace of Temecula Church in response to January storms that drenched the region. “We’ve been doing this on an unofficial basis, but now we’re going to a whole different level.”
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 BEIJING (Reuters) – China has issued new Internet regulations, including what appears to be an effort to create a “whitelist” of approved websites that could potentially place much of the Internet off-limits to Chinese readers.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered domain management institutions and internet service providers to tighten control over domain name registration, in a three-phase plan laid out on its website (www.miit.gov.cn) late on Sunday.
“Domain names that have not registered will not be resolved or transferred,” MIIT said, in an action plan to “further deepen” an ongoing anti-pornography campaign that has resulted in significant tightening of Chinese Internet controls.
Only allowing Chinese viewers to access sites registered on a whitelist would give Chinese authorities much greater control, but would also block millions of completely innocuous sites.
The rules did not specify whether the new measure applies to overseas websites, but local media reported the risk that foreign sites that have not registered could also be blocked.
“If some legal foreign websites could not be accessed because they haven’t registered with MIIT, it would be a pity for the Internet which is meant to connect the whole world,” the Beijing News said on Tuesday.
Chinese Internet controls currently follow a blacklist strategy, whereby censors block sensitive sites as soon as they discover them. Earlier this summer, MIIT tried to require that all new Chinese computers be shipped with the Green Dam filter software, but partially backed off after an international outcry.
TWITTERERS’ REVENGE
The anti-pornography drive since this summer has also netted many sites with politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content, in what many see as an effort by the Chinese government to reassert control over new media and its potential for citizens sharing information and organizing.
“One interpretation is that all foreign websites would need to register in order not to be blocked in China,” said Rebecca MacKinnon of the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong.
“These are the folks who brought us Green Dam so anything is possible. They are people with a track record of emitting unreasonable schemes.”
The registration requirements could constitute a barrier to trade, if Chinese citizens are prevented from accessing legitimate overseas businesses, added MacKinnon.
China banned a number of popular websites and Internet services in 2009, including Google’s Youtube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, as well as Chinese content sharing sites, including sites popular for music and film downloads.
Angry Chinese Twitter users flooded a Twitter look-alike service (t.people.com.cn) launched by the official People’s Daily on Tuesday, causing it to be immediately shut down.
Many virtual private network, or VPN, services used to get around Web restrictions have also become harder to use from China, while 20 million people living in the frontier region of Xinjiang have been cut off from the Internet and international telephone services since deadly ethnic riots in July.
“What usually happens when suddenly compiled rules appear without warning is that they are rarely enforced. My gut reaction is that this is yet another of those cases,” said Beijing-based technology commentator Kaiser Kuo.
(Editing by Sugita Katyal.)
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Representing a new effort to reach the next generation, an innovative Christian web resource, Ransom, is now up and running to introduce young people to Jesus Christ.
A project of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), Ransom features compelling music videos and interviews with Christian artists, athletes and other personalities, all designed to connect with youth and young adults and present the life-changing message of the Gospel.
“Young people are facing tremendous pressures from the world, and many are searching for the answers to life’s toughest questions,” said Ken Barun, senior vice president of communications, BGEA.
“Ransom allows us to meet them where they are, speak their language and let them know there’s a God who loves them. It’s the same message Billy Graham has always preached – this time in Web 2.0.”
The site Ransom.tv is loaded with videos of artists relaying everything from their personal testimony of faith in Jesus Christ to their thoughts on what Christmas means to them. In honour of the Christmas season, included on the site is a brand-new video of “Little Drummer Boy”, by the rock band The Almost.
More than a site, Ransom is an online experience, BGEA says, featuring videos, culturally relevant articles, testimonials and a simple, compelling presentation of the Gospel to which users can respond using social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.
New videos and other pieces will be added regularly to keep the content fresh and encourage visitors to return. Ransom also has a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel.
The ministry derives its name from Jesus’ words in Mark 10:45: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Ransom is in part a continuation of the popular 2009 Rock the River Tour, a youth-focused concert series that travelled up the Mississippi River last summer with soul-stirring music from bands like Flyleaf and challenging messages from Franklin Graham. The site is a place for these youth and young adults and others to visit and grow in their spiritual walk.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) proclaims the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout the world through large-scale festivals led by evangelists Franklin Graham and Will Graham; Dare to Be a Daniel, a youth evangelism training project; My Hope World Evangelism Through Television; the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team of crisis-trained chaplains; and many others through print, television, telephone, radio and the Internet.
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By Peter Wooding
Special to ASSIST News Service
MURRIETA, CALIFORNIA (ANS) – For Jeff Thompson, founder of Eastern European Outreach in Murrieta, California, the past year of 2009 represented both contraction due to the recession and expansion as God opened new doors.
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| Jeff Thompson with Suren, director of Full Life in Stepanavan, Armenia |
Eastern European Outreach ministers to thousands of at-risk children and families throughout Ukraine, Armenia and Kosovo. But the recession Jeff says, caused them to have to cut back.
“During the year of 2009 the recession posed some very challenging decisions for us.” Jeff Thompson said. “We always pray and ask the Lord to guide and direct us, but those prayers are usually regarding effectiveness and expansion, not ministry and personnel cutbacks.
“Our finances have been down as supporters were forced to cut back in their giving. The first few months made it clear that some programs must be cut. That was particularly challenging because we didn’t want children to suffer as a result of the reduction in finances, but sometimes you have to make hard choices.
“Historically we (EEO) have always had the extra finances to support children while they were waiting for a sponsor. This year that was curtailed.”
Despite the financial challenge Jeff says they stepped out in faith to start a new ministry in the UK:
“It was interesting; simultaneously to this recession we had the opportunity to expand things by starting a new ministry in England called Mercy Project International,” Jeff said.
“Mercy Project did not require a large investment to get started and God has provided both people and funding. So we are excited to see what He is going to do with it.” Jeff explained.
“We see it as an expansion of what God would like to do through us, bringing God’s justice to the downtrodden, the poor and the needy. I’ve been encouraged to see the response of British churches and the interest of people.”
Another highlight in starting the work in the UK was a partnership with a U.K. Christian media organization United Christian Broadcasters, who’ll be broadcasting the charity’s first radio series Mercy Project Minute on digital radio across the country in 2010.
“UCB has welcomed us and embraced our shared vision for helping the poor. So yes it’s been challenging but we’ve seen God’s blessing as well,” he said.
Jeff went on to share how Northgate Church in Chester has become a “significant supporter” of Mercy Project.
“After speaking at their morning services, people lined up at our table to sponsor children,” he said. “The response was spectacular. I understand they are sending Christmas cards and one day hope to actually visit their children.
“With Mercy Project U.K., and EEO in the U.S., sponsors can literally stay with their children through college helping them to get an education and really change the world they live in.”
Highlights Included College Students Living In An Orphanage
Jeff shared that in 2009 a group of students from Vanguard University in Southern California lived in a Ukrainian orphanage as part of their mission experience.
“Learning God’s heart for orphans and widows means understanding them, spending time with them,” Jeff said. “How can we understand in a two hour visit? I call that ‘drive-by’ missions and I don’t agree with it
“The students from Vanguard actually lived in the orphanage, ate their food, observed their life, and spent a week with them getting to know them. It was very emotional for them all when they had to say good-bye. Yet, these students are now interested in giving their lives to serve at-risk children. God desires to break our hearts so He can use us to touch those who live around us. Indeed, serving Jesus can get messy. It is supposed to.”
Jeff Thompson went on to say, “In Armenia this year many young people came to know the Lord.” Jeff shared. “They have a Christian heritage in Armenia, but many people do not know what it means to be ‘born again’ or experience a personal relationship with Christ. So you must clearly explain what it means to give your life to Christ. The young people simply embraced that message. It was really fun.”
Jeff shared that he is grateful for the trust and support of donors in the U.S. and the U.K.
“Our ministry is like a tool,” he said. “We wouldn’t exist without concerned
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| A family in Armenia where the grandmother, mother, and daughters taught Jeff to make cheese |
Christians who desire to make a difference in this world. You can sponsor a child almost anywhere in the world, but with EEO and Mercy Project, you don’t just send your money in, you can be as personally involved as you want to be. We encourage sponsors to write and go visit their children. This is unique in child sponsorship.
“We are thankful for every single person that decides to sponsor a child or go on a trip. We are building up treasures in heaven and seeing needy children’s lives changed by the love of Christ.
“Despite a nagging recession and cutbacks, our Lord promises a bright future. Our Scripture verse for 2010 is Jeremiah 29:13 which says:
I know the plans I have for you says the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.
“May the widows and orphans experience His kindness and love through our ministry in 2010,” he concluded.
For more information please visit: www.eeo.org
Peter Wooding is a TV, radio and print journalist and media consultant having spent 10 years as news editor with UCB Radio in the UK. He has traveled extensively reporting from countries including Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, Dubai, South Korea, Zambia, Gambia, Mozambique, Croatia, Israel and India. He reports regularly for CBN News, KCBI radio, ASSIST News and Sorted Magazine. Peter and wife Sharon live in North Wales, UK with their three children.
Passionate to see God’s Justice and Mercy impact lives, Peter is director of a new UK ministry Mercy Project International (www.mercyproject.org.uk) to help at-risk young people in Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, Kosovo, the Middle East and beyond. Contact Peter for consultation at woodingpeter@hotmail.com or tel. +44 1244 549167/+44 7500 903067. |
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Assist News
Pastor Chuck Smith, 82, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California, and the father of the “Jesus People” phenomenon in Southern California, is continuing to recover in a local hospital after suffering two “mini-strokes” at his home in the early hours of Sunday morning (December 27, 2009).
A message posted on the church’s website) says, “Dear praying friends, Pastor Chuck has now moved into the rehabilitation stage of his recovery. He is doing very well and appreciates your prayers. Doctors are still advocating lots of rest as he moves into this stage. The family thanks you for the outpouring of love, concern, and respect for their privacy during this time.
“The best way for anyone to communicate with Pastor Chuck during this time of recovery is to send an email to pastorchuck@calvarychapel.com.”
Brian Brodersen, who serves as associate pastor to Chuck Smith at the church, told the Sunday morning congregation that “Pastor Chuck is doing very well” and added that he is “hoping to return home sometime later this week.”
About Chuck Smith
It was back in 1965 when Pastor Chuck Smith began his ministry at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. Only twenty-five people attended at the time. What began as a small chapel has now grown into a church that seats over 2,000 and is filled almost nightly.
From the beginning, Pastor Chuck welcomed all, young and old, without judgment, placing his emphasis on the teaching of the Word of God. His simple, yet sound, biblical approach draws 25,000 people weekly to the church and also millions of radio listeners who hear his sermons.
With a sincere concern for the lost, Pastor Chuck made room in his heart and his home for a generation of hippies and surfers; generating a movement of the Holy Spirit that spread from the West Coast to the East Coast, bringing thousands of young people to Jesus Christ.
Included among this generation of new believers were Greg Laurie, Mike MacIntosh, Raul Ries, and Skip Heitzig, as well an estimated 1,500 leaders who have gone on to establish their ministries around the world. This also has included the myriad of other members of the church body who call Pastor Chuck their “Pastor.”
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 - He went to the cross for us all
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – President Barack Obama, abortion, the Supreme Court and health care dominated pro-life news in 2009. As LifeNews.com looks back on the year — the first with a new pro-abortion president — we find the pro-life movement essentially on the defensive.
Thanks to a pro-abortion president and Congress, pro-life advocates spent most of their time attempting to hold back the opening of the floodgates ushering in an expansion of abortion and taxpayer financing of it.
With the health care debate continuing into the new year, those efforts will be forced to continue — although the potential for pro-life gains in the 2010 elections provides significant hope for the future.
1. Health Care: The health care debate has become the central focus of the pro-life movement during the latter half of 2009 and for good reason. If the abortion language in the final bill is anything like what is currently in the Senate version of the legislation, the result would be the greatest expansion of taxpayer funding of abortions since the 1970s when the Hyde Amendment was adopted. The Senate bill not only would allow the forcing of taxpayers to pay for abortions but would let the Obama administration force insurance plans to pay for them as well.
The end result? With Hyde getting credit for stopping more than 100,000 abortions annually, the health care bill could result in a 10% or greater increase in abortions — all financed with government money. This doesn’t even touch on the rationing, promotion of assisted suicide, and lack of conscience protection for medical professionals found in the bill.
2. Barack Obama promoting abortion: The influence of the president of the United States on abortion policy can never be underestimated, despite some who still think the president doesn’t have any impact.
LifeNews.com has the most comprehensive chronicle of Obama’s pro-abortion actions, but the most consequential ones include his overturning of the Mexico City Policy and allowing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International that not only do abortions by lobby pro-life nations to overturn or water down their laws. Full story at LifeNews.com
Planned Parenthood Found 2009 Difficult With Abortion Centers Closing Rapidly
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the United States, doing 305,310 abortions in its own facilities or just under one-third of all American abortions. But the billion-dollar abortion giant faced a tough year in 2009 as it saw abortion centers close at a higher rate than normal.
Jim Sedlak, the director of STOPP International, a watchdog group, told LifeNews.com today that he’s seen Planned Parenthood centers close over the year but never as fast as in 2009.
“STOPP has been fighting for 25 years to close down Planned Parenthood abortion facilities. During that time, we have seen the number of Planned Parenthood non-express clinics fall from a high of 938 in 1995 to 797 today,” he explained. “More significantly, 2009 saw the rate of Planned Parenthood closings go from one a month to over two a month,” he said.
“Although the organization reported record income ($1.04 billion) and a record number of babies killed in its own facilities, there have been a number of signs that Planned Parenthood is beginning to feel the relentless pressure from those of us who will not stand by and watch it take our money and kill our children,” he said. Full story at LifeNews.com
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God grows Christians by feeding them his Word. One way he does this is by providing the church with teachers and preachers. This means that if we are going to grow we need to be sitting at the feet of reliable carriers of God’s truth. This, however, begs the question: how can we identify a reliable carrier of God’s truth? The Bible makes it clear that there are many unreliable carriers of so-called truth. Satan masquerades as an angel of light seeking to deceive. So we need a lot of biblical discernment here. Just because a teacher or preacher comes in Jesus’ name with a Bible under his arm doesn’t automatically mean he is reliable.
Thankfully both the Bible and church history give us some direction here. So I want to provide you with a brief list of five questions (based on the five sola’s of the Reformation) that can help you discern the reliability of a particular teacher or preacher.
Question 1 (Sola Scriptura): Does the preacher ground everything he says in the Bible? Does he, in other words, begin with the authority and sufficiency of Scripture? A reliable carrier of God’s truth seeks to revel in, wrestle with, and expound from, the Bible. He starts with the Bible. All of his comments flow from what a particular passage in the Bible says. He doesn’t simply use the Bible to support what he wants to say. That is, he submits to what the Bible says, he does not seek to submit the Bible to what he says. He cares about both the Old Testament and the New Testament. He refuses to take verses out of context. He recognises the unity of the Bible. He acknowledges that both the Old Testament and the New Testament tell one story and point to one figure, namely that God saves sinners through the accomplished work of his son Jesus Christ.
Question 2 (Sola Gratia): Does the preacher freely emphasise that because of sin, a right relationship with God can only be established by God’s grace alone? Beware of any teaching that emphasises man’s ability over God’s ability; man’s freedom over God’s freedom; man’s power over God’s power; man’s initiative over God’s initiative. Beware of any teaching which subtly communicates that a right relationship with God depends ultimately on human response over divine sovereignty.
Question 3 (Sola Fide): Does the preacher stress that salvation is not achieved by what we can do, rather salvation is received by faith in what Christ has already done? It has been rightly stated that there really are only two religions: the religion of human accomplishment and the religion of divine accomplishment. Does the preacher emphasise the former or the latter? A reliable carrier of God’s truth always highlights the fact that God saves sinners; sinners don’t save themselves.
Question 4 (Sola Christus): Does the preacher underline that Christ is the exclusive mediator between God and man? Does the explainer both affirm and proclaim that Jesus is ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ and that nobody comes to the Father but by Christ? Does he talk about sin and the necessity of Christ? Preachers must learn how to unveil and unpack the truth of the gospel from every biblical text they preach in such a way that it results in the exposure of both the idols of our culture and the idols of our hearts. The faithful exposition of our true Saviour from every passage in the Bible painfully reveals all of the pseudo-saviours that we trust in culturally and personally. Every sermon ought to disclose the subtle ways in which we as individuals and we as a culture depend on lesser things than Jesus to provide the security, acceptance, protection, affection, meaning, and satisfaction that only Christ can supply. In this way, good preachers must constantly show just how relevant and necessary Jesus is; they must work hard to show that we are great sinners but Christ is a great Saviour.
Question 5 (Sola Deo Gloria): Does the preacher exalt God above all? A reliable explainer will always lead you to marvel at God. A true carrier of God’s truth will always lead you to encounter the glory of God. A God-centred teacher is just that: God-centred. He will preach and teach in such a way that you find yourself hungering and thirsting for God. You will listen to sermon after sermon and walk away with grand impressions of divine personality, not grand impressions of human personality.
This is just a start, but I hope it serves as a resource to help you determine the reliability of a particular teacher or preacher.
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Tullian Tchividjian serves as the Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
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Other North County hospitals incurred lesser penalties
By PAUL SISSON -
psisson@nctimes.com |
Saturday, July 25, 2009 10:09 PM PDT
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Tri-City Medical Center faces $129,500 in fines for failing to promptly
report four "adverse events" at the hospital, including a patient death, in 2008
and early 2009, according to state records.
Such reporting problems aren’t unusual —- almost all of North County’s
hospitals have been fined at least once in the past two years for failing to
report such incidents within five days of becoming aware of them, as state law
mandates.
However, Tri-City’s fines are significantly larger because its delays in
reporting were much longer. The fines grow by $100 a day.
In two instances, it took Tri-City more than 400 days to file a report with the
California Department of Public Health, the agency that collects the data. Among
other North County hospitals, the next-longest delay was at Scripps Encinitas,
which incurred a $6,600 fine for reporting an incident 66 days late.
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