US & World

Top: King George VI addresses the nation by radio on 4 Sept 1939, the day after Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.
Center: King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in rubble after Buckingham Palace bombed, 13 Sept 1940

Top: King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill
Inset: The King's brother, Prince George, Duke of Kent, killed on in 1942 (aged 39) on active service
Bottom: King and Queen with their daughter Princess Elizabeth visit the royal artillery during wwii

Left: Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip on their wedding day, 20 Nov 1947; Right: Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and Love and lasting 65-year marriage

By showing personal courage, King George VI and his wife (Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother) set extraordinary examples, became a symbol of national resistance. The royal family never left London, were sharing the same dangers and deprivations as the rest of the country, and leading his people through the hardships of World War Two (1939-1945).

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Sept 1939 - war declared on Nazi Germany, King George VI and his wife determined to stay in London, despite German air raids.
07 Sept 1940 - the first German air raid on London killed about one thousand civilians.
13 Sept 1940 - the King and Queen narrowly avoided death when two German bombs exploded in a courtyard at Buckingham Palace while they were there. In defiance, the Queen famously declared: "I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel we can look the East End in the face".  read more »

Ski touring group climbs adjacent to the Bec des Rosses mountain above the Swiss Alps resort of Verbier.

"Death from overworking" claims hit record high in Japan - legal claims relating to "karoshi" rose to a record high of 1,456 last financial year.

a baby crocodile decided to climb onto the head of a hapless frog

Billions: Sir Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, said that he felt ‘sadness’ after Virgin America was bought by Alaska Airlines under a $2.6 billion deal.

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Editor’s note:
Lion does as lions do on their own wild land in nature. Sylvester the Lion, one of the 3500 remaining male lions, has lion’s spirit, courage and intelligence, amazingly escaped twice, recaptured. His fate is now in human hands.

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1 April 2016
Sylvester the lion has once again been recaptured  read more »

• Sylvester escaped a 90,000-hectares wildlife park in S Africa
• Rangers: he'd have to be killed because he was threat to humans
• But British charity has outlined plans to give him a new home

Update 15 May 2016 Unlucky woman's GPS led her straight into a lake
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Technology doesn't always love you back.
A woman in Tobermory, Ontario drove down a boat ramp and into Lake Huron last Thursday thanks to faulty directions from her GPS.
The GPS has not yet apologized for its actions.
Luckily, she was able to roll down the window, retrieve her purse and clamber out of the car before it started to sink.
She is reportedly doing just fine, with no injuries other than a few technological trust issues.

26 March 2016
BBC: The company said Google Maps directed them to the wrong address; they were supposed to tear down a home just one block away. Diaz says she has now received a personal apology but hopes the company will change its procedures to ensure addresses are more thoroughly checked before any demolition starts. And she warns against relying on GPS for directions. "I do not like to rely on GPS," she says. "I've had GPS take me to the wrong places also. So I look at the map."

Diaz says the demolition crew, who were still at the site of her home when she arrived, did offer a kind of explanation. One employee told her they had been due to tear down a house at 7601 Cousteau Drive, one street away, but their GPS mapping system had taken them to her home at 7601 Calypso Drive instead - The building, which included two homes, was pummelled in December's tornado but was due to be repaired  read more »

Resplendently attired cherry juice vendors demonstrate pouring techniques.

Istanbul's Blue Mosque overlook the Sea of Marmara.

Ferries cross the Bosporus, the water body between European and Asian sides of Istanbul.

A police officer secures the area after an explosion near the Ottoman-era Sultanahmet Mosque, known as the Blue Mosque.

People light candles in Brussels on Tuesday.

floral carpet on the Grand Place in Brussels, Belgium

Congress Column at Christmas and Statue Of Leopold

Brussels

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Longfellow once said,
"in character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity."
And Emerson stated,
"nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great."

So, hard to disagree that the 140-character limit is Twitter’s signature, and Twitter’s legacy.

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Twitter’s 140 characters - It’s staying. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and CEO of Twitter, speaks during an interview with CNBC following the IPO for Square Inc., on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange November 19, 2015.

Twitter Inc's 140-character tweets are here to stay, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said on Friday, ending speculation that the microblogging site might abandon one of its trademark features for a 10,000-character limit.

"It's staying. It's a good constraint for us and it allows for of-the-moment brevity," Dorsey said on NBC's Today Show.

In January, technology news website Re/code reported that Twitter was building a new feature that would allow tweets as long as 10,000 characters.

Twitter has declined to comment on the feature directly. But Dorsey tweeted the day of the report that the company had seen more screenshots of text posted as a way to get around the 140-character limit.  read more »