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Agnetha Fältskog – When You Really Loved Someone
Agnetha Fältskog – When You Really Loved Someone
One of pop’s most enigmatic voices has emerged with her first album in nine years. Agnetha Faltskog’s new album sees her duet with Gary Barlow and collaborate with Britney Spears’ Swedish songwriting team. Just don’t call her “mysterious”.
Forty-five years ago, before Abba were even a twinkle in Eurovision’s eye, Agnetha Faltskog made her very first TV appearance.
Aged just 17, she performed Jag Var Sa Kar (I Was So In Love), a syrupy self-penned waltz, on Swedish TV show Studio 8.
The melancholy lyrics, inspired by her idol Connie Francis, were a stark contrast to the exuberant blonde singer, who “took the radio in my arms and danced around” when she first heard her single on the air.
Little did she know, misery would become her musical forte, especially when she teamed up with Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frida to form Abba.
The songs on which Faltskog took lead vocals – Hasta Manana, The Name Of The Game, Chiquitita – were the band’s biggest tear-jerkers.
On The Winner Takes It All, recorded as her marriage to Bjorn Ulvaeus fell apart, the emotion is almost too much to bear.
Faltskog is by turns defiant and broken. “I was in your arms, thinking I belonged there,” she cries, as her husband merely shakes her hand and turns away.
Oddly, the singer calls it “her biggest favourite” from the band’s back catalogue. “It’s a shame we never got to play it live,” she adds.
Since the band went their separate ways in 1982, the girl with golden hair has been the band’s most elusive member. She largely shuns the limelight, living quietly on the secluded island of Ekero, west of Stockholm.
Perhaps because of those world-weary lyrics, she was portrayed as a frail recluse – the Greta Garbo of pop.
The revelation in 2000 that she had entered a relationship with an obsessed Dutch fan, 16 years her junior, who turned dangerous when she broke off the affair, only added to the perception that she was lonely and unhappy.
Nervous return
Today, she cannot talk about the relationship for legal reasons, but Faltskog says the media have the wrong impression of her private life.
“I have been described as a very mysterious human being and that hurts a little bit, because it’s not like that at all,” she says.
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Abba’s Agnetha Comes Out Of Retirement
Abba’s Agnetha Comes Out Of Retirement
By Mark Savage
Arts and entertainment reporter, BBC News
One of pop’s most enigmatic voices has emerged with her first album in nine years. Agnetha Faltskog’s new album sees her duet with Gary Barlow and collaborate with Britney Spears’ Swedish songwriting team. Just don’t call her “mysterious”.
Forty-five years ago, before Abba were even a twinkle in Eurovision’s eye, Agnetha Faltskog made her very first TV appearance.
Aged just 17, she performed Jag Var Sa Kar (I Was So In Love), a syrupy self-penned waltz, on Swedish TV show Studio 8.
The melancholy lyrics, inspired by her idol Connie Francis, were a stark contrast to the exuberant blonde singer, who “took the radio in my arms and danced around” when she first heard her single on the air.
Little did she know, misery would become her musical forte, especially when she teamed up with Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frida to form Abba.
The songs on which Faltskog took lead vocals – Hasta Manana, The Name Of The Game, Chiquitita – were the band’s biggest tear-jerkers.
On The Winner Takes It All, recorded as her marriage to Bjorn Ulvaeus fell apart, the emotion is almost too much to bear.
Faltskog is by turns defiant and broken. “I was in your arms, thinking I belonged there,” she cries, as her husband merely shakes her hand and turns away.
Oddly, the singer calls it “her biggest favourite” from the band’s back catalogue. “It’s a shame we never got to play it live,” she adds.
Since the band went their separate ways in 1982, the girl with golden hair has been the band’s most elusive member. She largely shuns the limelight, living quietly on the secluded island of Ekero, west of Stockholm.
Perhaps because of those world-weary lyrics, she was portrayed as a frail recluse – the Greta Garbo of pop.
The revelation in 2000 that she had entered a relationship with an obsessed Dutch fan, 16 years her junior, who turned dangerous when she broke off the affair, only added to the perception that she was lonely and unhappy.
Nervous return
Today, she cannot talk about the relationship for legal reasons, but Faltskog says the media have the wrong impression of her private life.
“I have been described as a very mysterious human being and that hurts a little bit, because it’s not like that at all,” she says.
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Third Man Dies After Drinking Home Brew
Third Man Dies After Drinking Home Brew
Left to right: Joel Lynam and Bryan Wilmot died earlier this week, Joshua Lynam remains in hospital and Vincent Summers has also died. Photo: Warwick Daily News
A third man has died after drinking a botched batch of home-brewed grappa.
Vincent Summers, 21, died in Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital on Tuesday evening.
He was hospitalised after consuming the home-made batch of the Italian spirit on Saturday night with friends Joel Lynam, Joshua Lynam and Bryan Wilmot in the southern Queensland town of Ballandean.
Joel Lynam, 21, died at the Ballandean property on Sunday from suspected methanol poisoning.
Mr Wilmot, 30, was rushed to Toowoomba Hospital in a critical condition, but died late on Monday after his life support was turned off.
The sole survivor Joshua Lynam, 26, remains in a serious condition at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
There have been conflicting reports about whether the men were drinking home-brewed grappa or wine. It is not yet clear whether the alcohol was solely responsible for the deaths.
A police spokesman said investigators were taking a broad view as they probed the tragedy.
It’s understood police will investigate the amount of alcohol the men consumed and whether they had taken any other substances.
A quantity of home-made alcohol is being analysed and a report is being prepared for the coroner, according to police.
Sources said the home-made grappa might have been laced with antifreeze, which typically contains the highly toxic, but sweet-tasting chemical ethylene glycol.
However, a neighbour has told media the father of the Lynam boys was brewing alcohol to make biodiesel on the family’s property.
Local winemaker Angelo Puglisi said the boys likely consumed the alcohol by mistake.
‘‘This ’grappa’ that everyone is talking about was being produced to make diesel and somehow these young fellas got hold of it,’’ he told AAP.
‘‘They just made a mistake and whole thing’s been blown out of proportion, the whole nation knows about it.’’
He said the Lynam family needed compassion, not speculation.
‘‘We should feel sorry for them, they are a family.
‘‘The father has already had tragedy in his life, his wife died only a few months ago. We’ve got to worry about them.’’
News Source…..www.brisbanetimes.com.au
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WordPress turns 10
WordPress turns 10
The open-source blogging platform and content management system (CMS), WordPress is ten years old now. A success story in its own right, WordPress has gone from being a simple blogging platform to an extremely helpful tool for building websites and enabling communication across the web, in the past decade.
Fathered by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, WordPress started off as a blogging platform b2/cafelog. The service now powers 18 percent of the Internet, thanks to its CMS capabilities. Using WordPress anyone can modify designs and themes on their site as well as add third-party plug-ins.
he service being open source is one of its greatest advantages. One need not seek permission before going about implementing newly developed features. There is no wonder then, that WordPress is the most commonly used CMS.
Mullenweg wrote a little love letter to the platform he created, commemorating ten years of its existence. “You were cute before you became beautiful. Wearing black and white, afraid of color, trying to be so unassuming…You showed the world you were growing up, and how much you cared about design and typography and other platonic ideals. You knew that open source didn’t have to be homely. I stretched myself too thin trying to get you there, and I did a stupid thing to pay for it. I hurt you, but instead of casting me away you held me closer, supported me, gave me another chance,” an emotional Mullenweg wrote.
The platform is now more than just a simple blogging tool or CMS. The service based on PHP and MySQL powers about 60 million websites around the world. It also runs several shopping websites as well as nearly 17 percent of the world’s top one million websites.
Here’s to the world’s most popular blogging system. We hope to see you be a part of blogging’s changing face in the next decade or so.
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Gap Fees Cost Health Fund Members $637m Last Year
Gap Fees Cost Health Fund Members $637m Last Year
Secret information shows the chance of incurring them is twice as high as the government claims.
We can reveal that in Australia’s third largest health fund, HCF, patients who need ear, nose and throat, orthopedic and oral surgery are more likely to face a gap.
And the chances of incurring a gap fee are highest in the ACT, Western Australia and the Northern Territory but health fund members in NSW have an above average chance of being slugged with a charge.
South Australians are least likely to pay gap fees with Victoria and Tasmania having a lower than average proportion of gaps.
News Ltd revealed last year some cancer patients had gap fees of over $30,000 not covered by Medicare or their Health fund and were raiding their superannuation to pay their health bills.
However, official government data from the Private Health Insurance Administration Council indicates only 11. 6 per cent of medical services paid for by health funds have a gap.
PHIAC reported that the average gap fee was $176 in March this year.
But previously secret data provided by health fund HCF shows almost one in four health fund members will face a gap fee when they use a hospital, twice as many as the government claims.
The reason HCF data shows more people face a gap is that when PHIAC counts gap fees it counts individual services such a pathology tests or a surgeon’s fee.
HCF gives a more realistic picture because it tallies up the total gap fees associated with a total hospital episode which includes multiple services.
The true extent of gap payments across the health insurance industry is likely to be even larger because HCF has the lowest proportion of medical services with a gap in the industry.
“Medical gaps are an area of often unexpected costs and are of great concern to our members,” HCF Managing Director Shaun Larkin said.
“Privately insured patients need to ask their doctor if they provide no-gap services and, if not, why they are charging a higher cost,” Mr Larkin said.
Consumer Health Forum chief Carol Bennett said there was a “very strong experience of people having to meet out of pocket costs” when they used their health insurance.
Australia had the fifth highest out of pocket costs for health in the world, she said.
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Russia’s Putin – Wife Announce Divorce
Russia’s Putin – Wife Announce Divorce
Vladimir Putin pulled off one of his most audacious pieces of stagecraft, attending a ballet with his rarely seen wife and then announcing their marriage is over. But how will it play to his audience of 143 million Russians?
The end of the marriage of the Russian president and Lyudmila Putina less than two months shy of their 30th anniversary came on state television after a Thursday evening that started out like a model of domestic contentment — a devoted husband taking his wife to the ballet.
But after the performance of “Esmeralda” at the Great Kremlin Palace, the two came into a luxurious room to speak to a reporter.
“Excellent. Great music, excellent production,” Putin said and Lyudmila echoed his praise.
After about a minute, the reporter asked about rumours that the two didn’t live together. Putin smiled slightly, like a boy caught misbehaving, and turned his head toward Lyudmila. “This is so,” he said.
It wasn’t immediately clear if that meant just separate domiciles. After a few more comments, the reporter gently prodded: “I am afraid to say this word ‘divorce’.”
“Yes, this is a civilized divorced,” Lyudmila said.
The peculiar format for the announcement appeared aimed at underlining that this wasn’t just a powerful man dumping his faithful helpmate. That’s a potentially important strategic move for Putin, who has based his public image on rectitude and support of traditional values.
Tabloid reports in 2008 claimed that Putin already had divorced Lyudmila and planned to marry a gymnast less than half his age.
The Interfax news agency cited presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying the divorce has not been formalized and that the televised comments were only an announcement of the decision to divorce.
Looks like the Putins are not “Putin on the Ritz” anymore!
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Cesar Millan Dog Whisperer
Cesar Millan Dog Whisperer
I am Cesar Millan, star of “Leader of the Pack,” and I have two missions. One is to confront the global issue of canine abandonment by giving “unadoptable” dogs a second chance at life. The other is to teach you how to be a pack leader, and achieve balance and harmony with your dogs.
It is my hope that “Leader of the Pack” will prevent the deaths of so many innocent dogs. My goal with this show is to awaken the world to how many dogs are killed unnecessarily every year, how we kill them, and how the world really treats what we call man’s best friend. By recognizing what is really happening around the world, we can save the lives of millions of dogs by respecting their love.
Each episode is a journey showing the difficult situation of rescued dogs and demonstrating that it’s not about the breed, age, or history of the dog — it´s about the human who handles the dog.
I began this journey in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, and grew up working with animals on my grandfather’s farm. Because of my natural way with dogs, they would follow me everywhere. Other kids would bully me and call me el perrero—”the dirty dog boy.” But I tried to not let the negativity get to me, and for my 13th birthday my wish was to become the best dog trainer in the world.
It’s no secret that I jumped the border into the US when I was 21. Here I spoke no English and knew no one. I was homeless living on the streets for 2 months and eventually got a job as a dog groomer and dog walker. So here’s a Mexican guy walking 30 or 40 dogs off leash. I didn’t even know walking dogs off leash was illegal.
I developed a following and got a reputation for being able to work with the most aggressive dogs. In 1994, I met Jada Pinkett, then a sitcom actress (now Jada Pinkett Smith, after her marriage to Will Smith). She became one of my clients and biggest supporters. When I told her I wanted to be on TV, she told me I needed to learn English first and she even paid for my English tutor for the year.
Then after a profile of me ran in the Los Angeles Times, I was approached by several production companies to develop a TV show. I started working on a pilot for Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. It first aired in 2004 on National Geographic and would become National Geographic’s #1 show. The show is now on Nat Geo WILD and broadcast in more than 80 countries!
I got married in 1994 and had two sons, Andre in 1995 and Calvin in 2001. But in June 2010, I received news of my divorce while in London and it made my whole world come down. I felt defeated, a big sense of guilt and failure. I had my boys with me, but I wasn’t feeling good. I was at the lowest level I had ever been emotionally and psychologically. It was also my first summer without Daddy, who had passed on the previous February after being with me for nearly sixteen years. In fact, Daddy had helped Andre learn how to walk, and had helped me rehabilitate many a dog and train many a dog lover. He also helped me pick out his protégé, Junior, who joined the pack as a puppy in 2008 and has grown into another calm and mellow pit bull ambassador. He has been especially helpful in dealing with aggressive dogs. Although Junior has been attacked, he has never retaliated. He just calmly stands his ground, which defuses the situation.
Read More…..www.cesarsway.com
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Ceser and Daddy Picture Source….www.examiner.com
Weirdest New Obama Taxes
Weirdest New Obama Taxes Proposed Include Flavored Vodka, Golf Courses
President Barack Obama has plenty of taxes in his budget proposal, with his plan to achieve $1.8 trillion in revenue featuring some truly weird ideas.
Not necessarily good, or bad. Just weird in the sense that you’d never expect or hear about them, unlike the public sequestration or fiscal cliff debates.
President Obama wants to establish a “Buffett Rule” of a 30 percent minimum tax rate for people making over $1 million in a year. That he’s made clear.
Far less clear? Some of the other means of increasing revenue included in his 246-page budget. Here’s a look at the five weirdest Obama taxes …
- Flavored Vodka. Distilled spirits currently get a tax break if they include flavors. No idea why, but under Obama’s new budget, they won’t anymore.
- Golf Courses. Buying land for the purpose of conserving or preserving “recreational amenities,” golf among them, is currently a tax deduction. No longer.
- Cigarettes. Current taxed at just under $1.01 per pack federally, Obama (who himself smokes at times) suggests raising that to $1.95 per pack.
- Corporate Jets. Also known as the Dead Horse Tax, because Obama has been beating this one hard for years. Just kidding … mostly.
- Businesses Can’t Deduct Punitive Damages. You can no longer claim a loss on money you have to pay if someone sues you and you lose.
This all assumes Obama’s budget passes, which in the GOP-controlled House is far from certain. But it gives you an idea of some of his fiscal ideas.
How will Obama’s second term go?
Very well, we’re on the right track!
Better than the last four years at least
Terrible, we’re doomed!
See more at: thehollywoodgossip.com
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Margaret Thatcher’s Funeral In London
Margaret Thatcher’s Funeral In London
LONDON — The United Kingdom was steeling itself to say a final formal farewell to the Iron Lady, the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who presided over the nation during a period of huge economic and social change from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher’s funeral is being held in London today.
A massive security operation is underway by Scotland Yard on the streets of London as Thatcher’s coffin will soon be carried in a horse-drawn gun carriage from the Royal Air Force chapel of St Clement Danes on the Strand to St Paul’s Cathedral, a journey of just over a mile through the heart of the capital.
The route will be lined by hundreds of military personnel from the three armed forces. After departing St Clement Danes, the procession will travel along Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill. Her coffin will be draped in the Union Flag. It is scheduled to take 19 minutes.
At Thatcher’s request, military units with a connection to the 1982 Falklands War will be heavily represented.
After Thatcher’s coffin reaches St Paul’s, it will be carried up the steps of the cathedral to be met by over 2,000 dignitaries, friends, ex-colleagues and family members. The service at St Paul’s is due to start at 11 a.m. local time.
The Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, will be among those attending the funeral.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and former secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger are also expected to be present at the service. George Shultz and James Baker will represent President Obama’s official delegation.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair will attend, as will F.W. de Klerk, the former president of South Africa.
Some 4,000 police will be deployed in central London amid heightened security concerns in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings this week, and ahead of the London Marathon on Sunday when over 36,000 runners will take to the city’s streets.