EARLIER today, Kate Middleton and Prince William stepped out with the rest of the Royal Family to attend their annual Christmas church service in Sandringham.

Along with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, the "Fab Four" were all smiles as they greeted well-wishers outside of the Norfolk church.

However, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and little Prince Louis were all noticeably missing from the action today.

As much as we were looking forward to a Princess Charlotte Royal wave or a cheeky Prince George moment, it now appears that the Cambridge children may not attend the annual Sandringham service for a few more years.

Judging by Prince William and Prince Harry's upbringing, Royal children don't seem to attend Christmas Day service with the family until they're older.

After all, Prince Harry didn't attend his first Sandringham church services until he was seven years old.

In other words, we may have to wait a few more years until Prince George, 5, and Princess Charlotte, 3, treat us to Christmas Day appearance.

However, the two Royal tots did attend a less-public Christmas service with Kate Middleton's family in Berkshire back in 2016.

And this year, the entire Cambridge family attended the Queen's Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace.

Last month, Kate Middleton told fans in Leicester how Prince George and Prince Charlotte were eagerly awaiting Christmas.

The mum-of-three said: "They're getting excited for Christmas time because they've started all their Christmas songs and Christmas trees going up. It was really sweet."

A PRIMARY school has opened on Christmas Day to serve hot meals to families who cannot afford it.

The Christ C of E First School in Somerset has opened its doors to provide free meals to more than 100 people struggling this year.

It has been in high demand and is part of the Big Christmas Get Together, which has been hosted by the Frome Town Football Club for the past eight years.

The event provides free food, transport, gifts and entertainment to underprivileged families and people struggling with loneliness.

Frome Town FC said they had “outstripped supply” after the demand was too much to hold everyone so Christ Church headteacher Rupert Kaye offered the school as an extra venue.

The primary school is joining the effort to combat “the modern-day curses of food and energy poverty” as well as loneliness.

Mr Kaye told The Metro some families in the area cannot afford to heat or light their homes during the day, including winter months.

He said: “That means that some children will actually spend some days in the dark, huddled under a duvet. We also know that some children will not eat a hot home-cooked meal for the whole of the two-week Christmas break.”

The costs of the event are funded by donations and it is run by volunteers.

Frome Town FC are at full capacity with 110 guests and the school is booked for at least 30 guests to attend.

All the guests will receive a three-course Christmas lunch.

Mr Kaye added: “In addition, several school staff have already volunteered to come in on Christmas Day to set up, help out and tidy away afterwards.”

Christ Church School is in one of the most deprived areas of Somerset where the number of kids receiving free school meals has increased from 40 per cent to 51 per cent in 18 months, Mr Kaye said.

He said food and fuel have gone up in price as well as working parents’ incomes not increasing with inflation have contributed to the situation.

Mr Kaye expects the Christmas lunch to be more popular next year after word of mouth spreads through the town.

A GOOSE was found passed out after it overdosed on anti-anxiety pills that were dumped in a park.

Other birds were also seen stumbling and struggling to stay upright, with one collapsing onto its back in Huntington Beach, LA.

A local walking through Carr Park noticed the hilarious antics, with some geese struggling to keep their eyes open.

Walking along, he then noticed hundreds of pills strewn in the grass.

Wetlands & Wildlife Care Center were called to the scene, and confirmed the birds had taken a range of medications including anti-depressants, anti-anxiety and for treating insomnia.

The organisation later wrote on Facebook: "Our center is currently treating a Canada Goose and a Ring-billed Gull that are exhibiting symptoms, such as loss of muscle control, that coincide with illness most likely caused by ingesting these medications."

Both birds are said to be doing well, but are still undergoing treatment to flush the medications through their system.

It is not known how long the pills had been lying in the park.

But the organisation fears birds and other pets may have ingested them.

HUNDREDS of fliers have been arrested for being drunk on a plane or in an airport in the past two years, stats show.

At least 273 were held in 2017 and 2018, include one accused of fighting on board.

Another brandished a knife at customer services staff at Aberdeen Airport after he was refused travel.

One passenger hit a bar manager at Glasgow Airport because he would not serve him more booze, the police figures reveal.

The ages of those detained around the UK ranged from 17 to 61, with offenders facing up to two years in jail.

The true numbers will almost certainly be even higher as the Met, which covers Heathrow, and Sussex Police, responsible for Gatwick, did not provide any figures.

The statistics from the Press Association come as the Government considers scrapping 24-hour drinking in airports.

A spokesman for trade association Airlines UK said: “The problem of disruptive behaviour has got progressively worse.”

A Government spokesman said it is working “to identify further ways to tackle the problem of drunk and disorderly passengers”.

Google Translation:

The competition is over. The winners will be announced one of the coming days.

Google Translate:
Merry Christmas

*****
Free until cancellation
 

Google Translate:
Next fun hour: 2018-12-27 16:45 - In this category: Film / ENG / 720p

Google Translate:
Tonight we are waiting for you to play quiz!
Hi! We are waiting for you with lightning today! 

Google Translate:
Attention!!! December 27th at 17:00 100 question GIGA quiz !!

Orpheus is under maintenance

We should be back up within a few hours.

irc.orpheus.network
port +7000 for SSL (6667 for non-SSL)
#help

Sincerely,
Orpheus.network Staff

When Ali Kerdi, who has impaired speech and hearing, was a teenager, he would look on curiously as his mother kneaded and baked their homemade bread. 

Years later, he would do the same as he worked as a cleaner at a centre in southern Lebanon where people with special needs were being taught how to make German bread. 

Now, at 35, Kerdi is in charge, running the bakery with two other special needs employees. 

“First, they wanted to teach me sewing, then carpentry, then I was running errands. But I would watch them as I worked. If I touched the dough, they would tell me to go away,” said Kerdi, who never gave up on his dream of learning to bake. 

On a rainy day in December, Kerdi and his team were busy making Stollen, rye bread with fruits and nuts that is a Christmas staple in Germany. 

The bakery, on the ground floor of the Mosan centre for special needs students, began operating in 2003 after a German charity - Bread Against Misery - donated second-hand baking equipment from Germany. 

Three German bakers came for three months to teach the staff how to operate the equipment and the principles of making bread the German way. 

Kerdi now trains a group of students on how to make a variety of German breads that were previously alien to their area of southern Lebanon. 

“The main aim of the project was to train them how to make bread, it was not to open a business,” said Ali Charafeddine, director of the Mosan centre, which currently has 175 special needs students. 

But the bakery has become popular among locals and expatriates - even including some U.N. peacekeepers - and its bread and biscuit products are neatly stacked outside for sale. 

The bakery provides a taste of home for Maria, a foreigner who has been living in Lebanon for seven years. 

“This bread is baked in my country, it tastes like from my home. It’s very nice,” she said, adding that she will not be going home to Belarus for Christmas this year. 

Kerdi says his journey towards running the bakery has been a special source of pride because his income supports his family. 

“People were surprised that I was baking. It was the first time they saw this kind of bread. Now they know me as the one who learned here and then became the boss,” he said as he showed a student how to fold a pretzel.

Former Nissan Motor Co Representative Director Greg Kelly was set to be released after more than a month in detention after a Tokyo court late on Tuesday rejected prosecutors’ request to hold the American executive. 

The Tokyo District Court ruled that Kelly be freed, while Carlos Ghosn, the automaker’s ousted chairman, remains in custody. Kelly paid 70 million yen ($640,000) bail in cash, the court said. 

Kelly was detained along with his former boss on suspicion of understating Ghosn’s income in financial statements for several years. Neither Kelly nor Ghosn have been able to defend themselves in public, so Kelly’s release could give him the first opportunity to do so.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on Tuesday that he will most probably meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss U.S. withdrawal from Syria. 

He did not disclose the timing of the meeting. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will travel to Russia in the coming days to discuss the same issue, broadcaster CNN Turk quoted him as saying on Tuesday. 

On Monday, Erdogan’s spokesman said Turkey would increase coordination with Russia in Syria following the U.S. decision to withdraw.

It was a solemn Christmas for the congregation in Indonesia’s Carita, a seaside town left reeling from the tsunami that has killed over 400 people and devastated the western coast of Java, as many churchgoers have fled the area for fear of further disasters.

Instead of holding festivities and exchanging presents, Pastor Rusman Anita Sitorus led a tearful vigil at a mass in her small church. 

“We were planning on holding a Christmas celebration every year, but this year is different due to the tsunami,” Sitorus said, as churchgoers lit candles and cried while praying. 

The occurrence of the disaster during the Christmas season evoked memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami triggered by an earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed 226,000 people in 14 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia. 

Thick ash clouds continued to spew from nearby Anak Krakatau, a volcanic island where a crater collapse on Saturday sent waves smashing into coastal areas on both sides of the Sunda Strait between the islands of Sumatra and Java. 

At least 429 people were killed and more than 1,400 injured, and 154 people remain missing. 

Thousands of residents have had to move to higher ground, and officials have extended their high-tide warning to Wednesday. 

Sitorus said the congregation was much smaller than usual. But residents like Nikson Sihombing, now staying in a temporary evacuation centre, attended. 

“We usually celebrate with joy and festivities, but with the tsunami, we can only pray humbly and not celebrate much for this year’s Christmas,” he said. 

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and is also home to sizeable Christian, Hindu and Buddhist minorities.

Iran’s security forces have arrested 17 people on charges of profiteering from fraudulent currency dealings, the state news agency IRNA reported on Tuesday, as Tehran tries to reverse a slide in the rial following the reimposition of U.S. sanctions. 

Iran intervened in the currency market and threatened speculators as it engineered a dramatic recovery of the rial in recent weeks to ease pressure on its economy. 

The suspects had obtained hard currency at subsidised rates from the government to import goods but had instead sold the money on the banned unofficial market, IRNA quoted the Intelligence Ministry as saying. 

The rial climbed to about 105,000 against the U.S. dollar in mid-December, from about 117,000 a week earlier, and 152,500 at the end of October. The currency had hit record lows around 190,000 in late September. 

Agents also exposed 87 fake companies before they could send 300 million euros ($341 million) they had received from the government abroad, the agency added. 

Iran on Saturday executed a businessman sentenced to death by a fast-track court set up to fight economic crimes, following an outcry against profiteering and corruption that has seen dozens of people jailed. 

($1 = 0.8799 euros)

Around two dozen masked youths attacked a group of Bangladeshi reporters with hockey sticks and batons, injuring about 10 of them, when they were resting at a hotel after covering an election rally, the journalists said on Tuesday. 

The incident, which occurred late on Monday in the town of Nawabgonj about 40 km (25 miles) from the capital Dhaka, is the latest in a series of violent attacks that have marred campaigning for a national election on Dec. 30. 

The youths, whose identity remains unclear, also smashed hotel windows and vandalised more than a dozen vehicles belonging to media outlets or privately owned, the journalists said. 

“Some of us had to take shelter inside the toilet out of fear,” Abdullah Tuhin, a journalist with a local TV channel, said. “The attackers threatened our colleagues and asked us to leave the place immediately or face serious consequences.” 

Dhaka Reporters Unity, a union body, said many of its members had been “seriously injured” in the assault. 

Dhaka district’s top police official, Shah Mizan, said a police team sent to the hotel after the incident had not been able to immediately determine who the attackers were. No arrests have so far been made in the case. 

Opposition parties have complained of violent attacks against their workers by ruling party activists and the arrests of candidates on what they say are trumped-up charges during the election campaign. 

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, which is seeking a third straight term in power, has denied accusations of trying to intimidate opposition candidates and journalists. 

One opposition lawmaker, Salma Islam, whose husband owns a leading newspaper and a TV channel, said she would file a police complaint soon over the hotel attack. 

“It’s unfortunate and unwanted. They also tore off my banners. We will lodge a written complaint,” said Islam, who is contesting the election as an independent after quitting her Jatiya Party, which is part of the ruling coalition. 

While Hasina’s administration has won plaudits globally for welcoming hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar, critics accuse her of cracking down on free speech and adopting an increasingly authoritarian style. 

In interviews conducted with 32 local journalists and editors in recent weeks, the vast majority said a recent strengthening of defamation laws had spread a climate of fear in Bangladesh’s media. 

The government denies freedom of speech is under attack in the country of 165 million people.

Former Nissan Motor Co Representative Director Greg Kelly was released late on Tuesday after more than a month in detention over financial-misconduct charges, as a Tokyo court rejected prosecutors’ request to hold the American executive. 

Kelly left the Tokyo Detention Centre with his lawyer, Yoichi Kitamura, around 10:45 p.m. (1345 GMT) in a taxi, a witness said. There was no answer at the lawyer’s office in a request for comment on Kelly’s release. 

The Tokyo District Court ruled earlier in the evening that Kelly be freed, while Carlos Ghosn, the automaker’s ousted chairman, remains in custody. Kelly paid 70 million yen ($640,000) bail in cash, the court said.

Google Translation:

Recruitment Dear Users

Uploaders are welcome.
Uploader Rank Terms:
• Minimum 5 Mbps upload speed
• Skype availability
• 10 correctly uploaded torrents
Apply For more information on benefits, search for R** in Pm

The three most active 'copyright owners' have asked Google to remove more than a billion allegedly infringing links from its search engine results. While more than 160,000 rightsholders have asked Google to remove content, 0.0001% are responsible for the majority of the flagged links.

Day in and day out copyright holders are flooding Google with DMCA takedown notices, pointing out links to pirated content.

While the volume has started to decrease over the past year or two, the numbers are still dazzling.

In 2018, copyright holders have reported around 700 million allegedly infringing links to the search engine. Most of these are processed swiftly, making the URLs unfindable in search results.

Since Google started counting in 2011, more than 160,000 copyright owners have used Google’s takedown tool. Together, they submitted more than 3.8 billion URLs. However, on closer inspection, it becomes clear that a small number of rightsholders are responsible for a lot of the action.

The UK music industry group BPI tops the list of most prolific ‘copyright owners’. It reported 425 million URLs over the years, which is more than 10% of all the reported pages.

The music groups APDIF Mexico and APDIF Brazil are listed in second and third place, with 252 million and 247 million reported links respectively. This means that the top three copyright owners are good for more than a billion reported links.

It’s clear that the high number of reported URLs is mostly driven by a small group of rightsholders.

To illustrate that, we found that the top 0.0001% of the most active copyright owners, which are 16 organizations, have reported more than 50% of all URLs.

It’s important to note that many of the reported links are not even in Google’s search results. Google processes non-indexed links and puts them on a blacklist, so they won’t be added in the future.

According to Google, the three reporting organizations (not copyright owners) that submitted the most URLs in 2017, all had non-index rates of more than 98%. As such, the billions of reported URLs don’t necessarily say something about the number of infringing links in Google’s index.

“While we will continue to act on these notices, they suggest that the volume of URLs we block is not a good proxy for the number of allegedly infringing links we serve,” Google previously noted.

It will be interesting to see how the takedown request volume evolves over time. Will the downward trend continue, or could the number of reported URLs start to grow again?

Customers of Swedish ISP Bahnhof can consider themselves part of a unique movement. Unlike many other operators in the same space, Bahnhof is both a staunch supporter of the open Internet and a fierce opponent of what the company perceives to be over-reaching copyright holders. Jon Karlung, the company's CEO, informs TorrentFreak that the fight will continue.

Back in 1991, when the World Wide Web (WWW) first became publicly available, few people knew what an impact it would have on the planet. Today, more than 27 years later, a world without the Internet is a prospect that even fewer people are prepared to consider.

There can be little doubt that the Internet is becoming greater by the day. Billions now rely on the network to fulfill what have become our most basic needs, with the free-flow of information enabling some of our greatest achievements in discovery, research, and education.

In 1994, when the Internet became publicly available in Sweden, it’s unlikely that even the people behind fledgling ISP Bahnhof could have envisioned what the web has become today. However, as one of Sweden’s first service providers, the company has since weathered many storms, particularly as the freedom of the Internet clashed with those who favor more restrictions, especially in respect of copyright enforcement.

For example, back in 2005 – when the war against file-sharing had really taken hold in Sweden – Bahnhof was effectively shut down as part of an anti-piracy raid. As a result, the company had harsh words for those involved, accusing the infamous Antipiratbyrån anti-piracy group of indirectly planting copyright-infringing content on servers connected to the company.

“How can Antipiratbyrån, which in the form of a lobby organization that works to curb the file-sharing culture, actively pay a person to upload tens of thousands of copyrighted files to a server that is then seized by the authorities?” CEO Jon Karlung asked at the time.

“It’s like distributing matches and petrol to a famous pyromaniac, then reporting him for a fiery fire when he’s heating a house.”

From this event, a pattern began to emerge. Bahnhof became an opponent of file-sharing crackdowns and a supporter of privacy, in 2009 famously refusing to store the IP addresses of customers so they could be pursued by the authorities.

A year later, Bahnhof became the proud host of Wikileaks, a controversial move given the organization’s efforts to expose secrets connected to the war raging in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. But it would be the company’s efforts to protect the privacy of its own subscribers that would grab most of the headlines.

In 2014, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice declared Europe’s Data Retention Directive a violation of Internet users’ privacy and therefore invalid.

The Directive had required ISPs to store data on the activities of their subscribers, including who they communicate with and at what times, plus other identifying information such as IP addresses. Bahnhof announced that it would stop capturing data with immediate effect.

Soon after, however, Swedish telecoms regulator PTS ordered Bahnhof to start storing communications data again under local data retention laws, warning the ISP that non-compliance would result in hefty fines. Bahnhof responded by offering its customers a free, no-logging VPN.

Ever since, Bahnhof has made headlines with its efforts to protect the privacy of its subscribers. The company also became an outspoken enemy of copyright trolls (1,2), labeling those who engage in the practice as greedy extortionists.

With the fight set to continue, Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung says the company’s stance has its roots in being one of the longest-standing ISPs and a desire to keep the Internet open.

“I assume that our long-time fight comes from that we, once upon the time, were one of the first ISP’s existing. That era somehow represented a positive and genuine delight over what the big internet could be,” he tells TorrentFreak.

“I still remember those days. It’s not that everything was better before (I don’t think it was) but unfortunately many dark forces have taken over – or we are close to them doing so.”

It’s clear from Karlung’s comments that he sees his company as playing a role in defending the organic nature of the Internet against what he sees as a movement to sterilize the experience, often at the expense of privacy.

“One could reflect on this: What would happen if the Internet turned out to become a big cable-TV landscape controlled by Big Media, or if various and more and more commercial interests could ‘log in’ to your privacy?

“Or, if everything develops into a big totalitarian Truman Show where global cloud companies and states join forces in a nightmarish hunt against freedom of speech with Sauron like surveillance while investing in controlling the most profitable thoughts through social media, even if these thoughts enhance hate?”

As these and similar thoughts resonate with millions of freedom-loving individuals worldwide, Karlung clearly understands that he is in business too. The stance he’s taken means his company is not only seen as somewhat unique in the marketplace, it also earns plenty of merit points with current and future customers.

“As strange as it may sound, there is also a business idea in defending customers and their privacy. In the old days this could be described as the job of the mailman,” he concludes.

Somewhat ironically, Bahnhof itself is now the subject of a net-neutrality investigation in Sweden. After a court ordered the ISP to block websites related to Sci-Hub following a complaint from Elsevier, Bahnhof retaliated by partially blocking the academic publisher’s website.

Like many of Bahnhof’s moves in recent years, the aim is to defend the free Internet with the side-effect of provoking debate. Karlung says he’s looking forward to the discussions and has sent thanks to Sweden’s telecoms regulator for the opportunity.

Source: Torrentfreak.com

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Our gift to you is some freeleech and performing rain dances and other weather modification rituals to give you the best environment for your holiday activities.

Extremebits Staff

Google Translation:

Freeleech session until 21/01/2019, the downloads are not taken into account, only the upload!

- The entire SpaceTorrent team wishes you a very happy holiday season and a merry Christmas! -

Sitewide Freeleech is on.
Ends in 1w 6d 18h 3m 12s