Lesotho, officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is an enclaved country within the border of South Africa.It is by far the largest of the world’s three independent states completely surrounded by the territory of another country; with Vatican City and San Marino being the other two. Additionally, it is the only such state outside the Italian peninsula, and the only one that is not a microstate. Lesotho is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) and has a population of around 2 million. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. The official language is Sesotho.
DespiteDespite being an Oscar winner, the costar of an iconic J.Lo video, and also Batman, Ben Affleck is arguably most famous for his frequent displays of facial anguish. Not since Michael Jordan—who produced The Last Dance so people would stop posting memes of him crying (my story and I’m sticking to it)—has a celebrity with a thriving career become so thoroughly identified with their own emotional distress. Affleck’s various real-life winces, grimaces, and thousand-yard stares have become as familiar to us as his on-screen exploits thanks to paparazzi photographers; his on-screen performances have been eclipsed by the moments in which his real human feelings are impossible to disguise. He is equally recognizable for acting and doing the literal opposite of acting.
Since his messy and public divorce from Jennifer Garner, Affleck has been something of a tabloid Prometheus, seeming to exist in a state of constant psychic torment as penance for his sins. Naomi Fry wrote about his well-chronicled sadness for TheNew Yorker nearly three years ago, and the phenomenon has not abated. Last year, he was photographed smoking a cigarette while “wearing” a protective face covering across his nose, like the Lone Ranger taking a 15-minute cowboy-union-mandated break. You can almost hear him calling out to anyone present: “I’ll be back in a second. I’m going outside to rip a butt real quick.” With actual sincere apologies to Pete Davidson’s bleary, heartbroken eyes and Jon Hamm’s linen-pants-clad penis, Ben Affleck is the reigning king of male discomfort captured without the subject’s consent.
The Sehlabathebe National Park is located in the Maloti Mountains in Qacha’s Nek District, Lesotho, and is part of the larger Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site.Home to both striking biological diversity as well as important cultural heritage, the park was first established on May 8, 1969. The landscape is dominated by a grassland of various types. The larger ecosystem as a whole performs invaluable functions including providing freshwater to Lesotho, South Africa, and Namibia.
In the aftermath of the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, I have watched as Republicans and some Democrats expressed their shock and horror at what happened: Unthinkable, unprecedented, appalling, and unbelievable, they’ve said. Of course, I understand that jolt of fear and surprise; it is human, and correct, to feel destabilized by the reality of chilling, violent revolt, and democratic upheaval. But none of this was unpredictable. Part of what I have marveled at most, over the past week, is how explicit, loud, and public a strain of the American right has been in broadcasting its violent political agenda — even before the election of Donald Trump.
What happened last week should not have been a shock to any of us. It has been years that hard right-wingers — including but most definitely not limited to the man who is still president of the United States — have been openly threatening violence grounded in racist and misogynistic resentments. For years, they’ve made it clear that they see their only path to victory as being through bloodshed. What’s interesting is how those threats have been heard, and by whom they have been taken seriously before now.
Before the 2016 election, Trump friend and Republican operative Roger Stone went on Milo Yiannopoulos’s podcast and predicted that there would be voter fraud leading to a Hillary Clinton victory. “This election will be illegitimate,” Stone said. “The winner will be illegitimate. We will have a constitutional crisis. We will have widespread civil disobedience … It will be a bloodbath.”
Cotopaxi National Park is a protected area in Ecuador situated in the Cotopaxi Province, Napo Province, and Pichincha Province, roughly 50 km (31 mi) south of Quito.The Cotopaxi volcano (meaning “smooth neck of the moon” in Quechua) that lends its name to the park is located within its boundaries, together with two others: the dormant Rumiñawi volcano to its north-west and the historical Sincholagua volcano (last major eruption: 1877) to the southeast. Cotopaxi is among the highest active volcanoes in the world; its last significant eruption took place in 1904.
“Are your goals too high? When you explained your job to me…” the psychologist trailed off. I knew where this was going. I was here after six visits to the GP in two years, all for unexplained exhaustion. Burnout, I guessed. Whatever that means.
It felt like my brain had been tossed into a washing machine, and all of the delicate bits that made it sparkle had dissolved. Everything took three times longer than it should have. Somehow, over the past few years, my already-frayed cognitive controls had just … evaporated. “I can’t keep it up anymore,” I said wearily. “It” being life. I wasn’t suicidal; I was chronically overwhelmed.
The psychologist tightened her lips. “You know many women in your industry put pressure on themselves to be perfect.”
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‘Neurodivergent women often slip through the cracks of ADHD diagnosis because they can appear smart or gifted.’ Photograph: Malte Mueller/Getty Images
After riots at the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters, the Republican Party is facing defections from two camps of voters it can’t afford to lose: those saying Trump and his allies went too far in contesting the election of Democrat Joe Biden – and those saying they didn’t go far enough, according to new polling and interviews with two dozen voters.
Paul Foster – a 65-year-old house painter in Ellsworth, Maine – is furious at party leaders for refusing to back the president’s claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. “The party is going to be totally broken” if it abandons Trump, Foster says, predicting Trump loyalists will spin off into a new third party.
Marc Cupelo – a retired business consultant in Syracuse, New York – couldn’t feel more differently. A lifelong Republican, he regretted voting for Trump as he watched the president’s backers storm the Capitol last Wednesday, inspired by Trump’s fiery rhetoric and false election-fraud claims. Now he wants the party to banish Trump and carve out a less-divisive future, free of the “twisted values” held by some of his supporters.
Dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were in Washington for pro-Trump events Jan. 6, a day that ended in a chaotic crime rampage when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, according to people familiar with evidence gathered in the FBI’s investigation.
The majority of the watch-listed individuals in Washington that day are suspected white supremacists whose past conduct so alarmed investigators that their names had been previously entered into the national Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, a massive set of names flagged as potential security risks, these people said. The watch list is larger and separate from the “no-fly” list the government maintains to prevent terrorism suspects from boarding airplanes, and those listed are not automatically barred from any public or commercial spaces, current and former officials said.
The presence of so many watch-listed individuals in one place — without more robust security measures to protect the public — is another example of the intelligence failures preceding last week’s fatal assault that sent lawmakers running for their lives, some current and former law enforcement officials argued. The revelation follows a Washington Post report earlier this week detailing the FBI’s failure to act aggressively on an internal intelligence report of Internet discussions about plans to attack Congress, smash windows, break down doors and “get violent . . . go there ready for war.”
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
An image from Lesotho
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