The complete list of nominees:

Pop/Rock:

— Male artist: Akon, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake.

— Female artist: Beyonce, Fergie, Avril Lavigne.

— Band, duo or group: Linkin Park, Maroon 5, Nickleback.

— Album: “Daughtry” (Daughtry), “Minutes To Midnight” (Linkin Park), “FutureSex/LoveSounds” (Justin Timberlake).

Country:

— Male artist: Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley.

— Female artist: Martina McBride, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood.

— Band, duo or group: Big & Rich, Brooks & Dunn, Rascal Flatts.

— Album: “Let It Go” (Tim McGraw), “Me And My Gang” (Rascal Flatts), “Some Hearts” (Carrie Underwood).

Soul/Rhythm & Blues:

— Male artist: Akon, Ne-Yo, T-Pain.

— Female artist: Beyonce, Fantasia, Rihanna.

— Album: “B’Day” (Beyonce), “Double Up” (R. Kelly), “FutureSex/Love Sounds” (Justin Timberlake).

Rap/Hip Hop:

— Male artist: Fabolous, T.I., Young Jeezy.

— Band, duo or group: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Pretty Ricky, Shop Boyz.

— Album: “Strength & Loyalty” (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony), “T.I. vs. T.I.P.” (T.I.), “The Inspiration” (Young Jeezy).

Adult Contemporary:

— Artist: Daughtry, Norah Jones, John Mayer.

Alternative:

— Artist: Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, White Stripes.

Latin:

— Artist: Daddy Yankee, Juan Luis Guerra y 440, Jennifer Lopez.

Contemporary Inspirational:

— Artist: Casting Crowns, Jeremy Camp, TobyMac.

Soundtracks:

— Album: “Dreamgirls,” “Hairspray,” “High School Musical 2.”

Breakthrough:

— New artist: Daughtry, Plain White T’s, Robin Thicke.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Mister D: This show always slashes my hopes for a smarter, more informed, and discriminating public. The majority of what one has the choice to vote on…well, it’s a lot like the Presidential Elections…and now I completely understand why we ended up with King George for 8 years! If this show is any indication of what the masses deem as “favorites,” then we are SO fucked…except for a few noms

This year’s show airs Tuesday, January 8 at 9pm EST on CBS…Your Host: Queen Latifah Tune in to see your favorites take the stage. Be a part of People’s Choice history. Vote today! The big night will be here before you know it. And for the last 34 years, People’s Choice has been the awards show that lets you determine the winners.

Here’s the complete list of nominees:

MOVIES

Favorite Movie: The Bourne Ultimatum, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Transformers
Male Movie Star: Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis
Female Movie Star: Halle Berry, Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon
Leading Man: Jamie Foxx, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Joaquin Phoenix
Leading Lady: Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Queen Latifah
Male Action Star: Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Bruce Willis
Female Action Star: Jessica Alba, Jodie Foster, Keira Knightley
Onscreen Match-Up: Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 3, George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Ocean’s Thirteen, Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3
Movie Drama: Disturbia, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Premonition
Movie Comedy: Knocked Up, The Simpsons Movie, Mighty Hogs
Independent Movie: Becoming Jane, A Mighty Heart, Sicko
Family Movie: Evan Almighty, Ratatouille, Shrek the Third
Action Movie: 300, The Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers
Favorite Threequel: The Bourne Ultimatum, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3

MUSIC

Male Singer: John Mayer, Tim McGraw, Justin Timberlake
Female Singer: Beyoncé, Fergie, Gwen Stefani
Group: Daughtry, Maroon 5, Rascal Flatts
Pop Song: “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” Fergie; “Irreplaceable,” Beyoncé; “What Goes Around…Comes Around,” Justin Timberlake
Hip-Hop Song: “Give It to Me,” Timbaland w/ Justin TImberlake and Nelly Furtado; “Party Like a Rock Star,” Shop Boyz; “Stronger,” Kanye West
R&B Song: “Beautiful Liar,” Beyoncé w/ Shakira; “Because of You,” Ne-Yo; “Shut Up and Drive,” Rihanna
Rock Song: “Hey There Delilah,” Plain White T’s; “Home,” Daughtry; “Makes Me Wonder,” Maroon 5
Country Song: “I Need You,” Tim McGraw w/ Faith Hill; “Never Wanted Nothing More,” Kenny Chesney; “Stand,” Rascal Flatts
Soundtrack Song: “Read My Mind,” The Killers, Friday Night Lights; “What I’ve Done,” Linkin Park, Transformers; “You Can’t Stop the Beat,” Hairspray cast
Reunion Tour: Genesis, The Police, Van Halen

TELEVISION

Male TV Star: Patrick Dempsey, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland
Female TV Star: Sally Field, Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Love Hewitt
Scene-Stealing Star: Richard Belzer, Law & Order: SVU; Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother; Chandra Wilson, Grey’s Anatomy
Talk Show Host: Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey
TV Drama: CSI, House, Law & Order: SVU
TV Comedy: The King of Queens, My Name Is Earl, Two and a Half Men
Animated Comedy: Family Guy, King of the Hill, The Simpsons
Sci-Fi Show: Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Who, Stargate Atlantis
New TV Drama: Big Shots, Bionic Woman, Cane, Dirty Sexy Money, Gossip Girl, Journeyman, K-Ville, Life, Life Is Wild, Moonlight, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, Women’s Murder Club
New TV Comedy: Aliens in America, Back to You, The Big Bang Theory, Carpoolers, Cavemen, Chuck, Reaper, Samantha Who?
Game Show: Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, Deal or No Deal, Jeopardy!Competition/Reality Show: American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

MISCELLANEOUS

Funny Female Star: Ellen DeGeneres, Wanda Sykes, Whoopi Goldberg
Funny Male Star: Will Ferrell, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler

You can vote for your favorites here…please approach with some intelligence: Click Here

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April 2007
All Mixed Up!
by: Mister D

Pot. Quaaludes. Cocaine. Heroin. It was 1971, and the heyday of drugs, sex, and rock and roll. I’m in an abandoned farm house next to the apartment complex where I live. The room was dark and musky with kids my own age and above doing drugs and waxing philosophically. I was always the quiet one, I never participated and just observed. This one time I opened my mouth unfortunately. The topic was favorite bands. Led Zeppelin, Cream, Hendrix were all mentioned. I thought this was fun, so I chimed in with “The Archies.” They told me it was a cartoon among other words. I yelled out that real people played for them and they were big on the Top 40! I was thrown out and never invited back.

It’s 1973. My mom drops me off at the dermatologist for my acne treatments. I’m to call when the session ends. After the humiliating procedure, the doctor gives me an unmarked bottle of tetracycline, an antibiotic for skin. I left the office forgetting to call. I just figured I’d go down to the record store and then use a payphone. Later I realized I didn’t have a quarter, but a dollar bill, I went to the parking lot to ask the attendant for change. We made the exchange. While doing so, my bottle of pills fell out. I reached down, then put them in my pocket and headed for a payphone. Suddenly a strange man rolled down the window of his car, held out a badge saying he was an undercover cop. He asked why i was exchanging money. I told him to get a quarter to call my mom. He said, “Sure. Give me the bottle of pills in your pocket.” I complied. He told me it was not a good sign that the bottle was unmarked and they looked like “speed.” I told him it was tetracycline. He asked, “What’s that?” I told him. He asked me to step forward to see what my skin looked like. He said. Your skin looks fine to me.” I said, That’s because it works!” I was scared to death. He didn’t believe me and took me down to the station and put me in a cell with real life thugs. Remember I was the quiet, shy, “Carrie” type without the powers, so I just cried.

in the end, this quiet, little 16 year old was verified by his acne doctor. Unfortunately, the police department had to face my mean, six foot four father.

Even through all the decades of rampant drug use, I never partaked, most likely because of that incident. Of course, none of my “friends” ever got caught. But I’ll be damned if I still don’t listen to “The Archies!” And for good measure, I fell in love with “The Partridge Family” too!

Your Instructor writes: What an interesting essay, Don! It was poignant yet still managed to include some humor — a difficult balance. Don’t worry about the word count, it’s just a guide. You did well on this; way to go!

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NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND?
By Inez Post

The American education system is filled with flaws starting from the teachers all the way to the students and everything in between. The Economic state that we are living in today plays a large role on the failures of our education. It is common for people to overlook the big picture and how the trickle down effect stimulates or deflates certain organizations that play a large role in our economic resources. Teachers and students are living in poverty. Violence is becoming as common in the classroom as it is in Baghdad. Our leaders tried to get ambitious and make improvements by instating the No Child Left Behind Act but this bill when looking at the larger picture presents more problems for the schools than it does alleviating them.

Teachers being a part of those lower income families are forced to seek additional income and losing focus on what is important, the students. Today’s society has taken away the incentive factor of higher work ethics. Teachers falling in this group of disgruntle employees who haven’t seen pay increases and taking on larger roles and responsibilities and instructing larger populations of children are distracted from their jobs by the stress of figuring out how they will make ends meet. The standards of hired teachers have lowered. It is not necessary for the teacher to have required degrees in order to instruct. The qualified teachers of the past are walking away and being replaced with less qualified individuals who took the job because they couldn’t find anything else. The American people are living lives of servitude with no sense of improvement in sight. Productivity is high however wages are stagnated or lower and do not meet the needs to live in our current cost of living. The students parents are feeling the same pressures, they have mouths to feed, cost of living is getting higher and in order to cover normal daily expenses they are working longer hours, or two jobs which is cutting into the time they use to have for family activities. Children are spending more time alone, in front of TV’s, or video games with no supervision or guidance, which is causing an increase in violent acts on school grounds. Youth needs guidance and discipline in order to flourish and create a healthy environment. When a child is taught to respect, he or she is taught the value of honor, performance, selflessness and compassion. In the absence of an authority figure the child is taught about loneliness, greed, and all these roads lead to hate and destruction. This sort of distraction is tragically cutting into time that should be spent learning. Students are being carted off to hospitals and questioned by the authorities instead of learning about social studies and science and are being educated on the cruelties of our world instead of learning self respect and work ethics in order to achieve the American dream.

The current administration boasts about its effort when reinstating the No child left behind act back in January of 2002. But let’s examine the functions of this bill and how on a broader scale this bill is actually milking our schools instead of feeding them. It has been said that there is a large increase of spending toward schools through this bill but instead of helping it is putting a considerable strain on local districts. For example there is a provision that states if there is a student that is attending a poorly performing school they have the right to go to a school with higher performance results. However when the school of a higher performance takes in ten more students without the ability to follow the higher standards they are left behind because the school that just took on the new students does not have the funding for extra curricular schooling to bring the new students up to speed. The lower performance schools funding doesn’t follow the students to the new school, and so the higher performance schools are feeling the financial pressures of accommodating the extra students. Therefore resulting in lower test scores of a once higher performance school and ultimately puts them in a lower category. This forces the school to lower its teaching standards and that hurts the students that were already on a higher level. State education budgets are in dire straights as declining tax revenues have forced many governors and legislatures to make deep cuts. Another failed aspect of this act is the focus on a narrow curriculum. The emphasis on just math and reading alone can have a profoundly undemocratic effect upon a generation of students in poorly performing schools. The schools are stripping away the broader education that stimulates a child to learn the essentials. A higher performing school may continue to enjoy subjects like, art, social studies and science while disadvantaged students are condemned to a second class effort putting “Reading First” at the expense of a complete education. Despite decades of evidence poor school performance is shaped by social disadvantages still little or nothing has been done to provide these students access to institutions that can really make a difference. Anyone truly committed to education reform knows that it has to start from the environment of which that child lives which brings us back to the economic state.

John Dewey’s, “My Pedagogic Creed”, states it best when he writes that the educational process has two sides psychological and sociological and neither can be ignored without catastrophic results. Schools are social institutions put in place to help mold the minds of the students and needs to be stripped down to simplify their existing social lives. The school is a reflection of their home life and needs to provide a stable environment in which they can learn and there fore build their psychological abilities through absorption of emulation of there home lives. The No Child left behind act is a perfect example of what is putting our nation’s educational system at risk. These institutions have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling. And the high standards that need to be in place in order to attain them. Schools need to teach on an intellectual, moral, and spiritual level in order to keep the society in sync and strong.

The goal would be to get our nation back in a strong prosperous economy so more time can be focused on educating the children who are our future. Education reform is vital and will not truly take place until the actual cause of our decline is addressed. Living in a society with growing deficits and lowered wages puts a lot of pressure on the people and things are going unnoticed because the schools are not financially equipped to educate and prepare its students for living in the real world. We need to practice in reality the idea of not leaving any child behind. Look at the bigger picture and make sure when laws are passed they work in reality and not just look good on a piece of paper. Through social awareness we can help get kids off the streets and in a classroom which is where they belong. In order to answer the question, what is wrong with the American educational system? We need to thoroughly examine the cause and effects and make a life-long commitment to learning. As a society we need to make sure there is awareness of the broader picture at all times. This is achieved by making educated decision so that we can vote into office someone who will govern something as important as education as a top priority. Through educating ourselves and the children we are building a foundation for a stronger America in the future.

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Written By Inez Post

It is a life long goal for every individual to be happy. Something so simple that seems so easily ascertained is typically the one thing that most people commonly fail at. What makes us happy is a question that has no specific answer. Each individual will set different goals that they feel will accomplish the happiness they justly deserve. Most of the goals being material possessions for example, the house on the hill, the hummer in the garage and money in bank, often after these things are within our grasp there is still an emptiness that has not been fulfilled. We live in a society where success is typically gauged with a monetary value attached. But who sets these rules in society and why can’t those rules be changed?

Most believe that money makes the world go around and you cannot live without it. This is a true statement and to an extent material possessions allow us to live in different luxurious levels. How many luxuries does one individual need in order to keep themselves happy, point is the more you have the more you want and the harder you have to work to obtain it. This can lead to obsessive behavior then to stress and potential illness that can easily rob you of that happiness you have work so hard for.

Can happiness manifest itself through a simple willingness to reach out to others even in the briefest of encounters? Researchers have come up with some interesting experiments that almost always proved that happy people possessed a quality of openness to reach out to those in need. Let’s look at the homeless person on the street begging for spare change, in every instance an individual that had a good day would stop and assist or throw some spare change their way, however in the case where someone had a bad day they walked around with a sense that the world owed them something and instead of realizing they were still much better off than the homeless person, they refused to give them anything. Walking away justifying their actions by speaking under their breath about how lazy that homeless person is even though they have know idea what situation got them there. It is human nature to be judgmental of others while we exclude ourselves from those judgments. No one is perfect and we all fail numerous times, recognizing our downfalls and working on ourselves as individuals to improve our generous nature is a gift we can give to the world.

All this sounds a little simplistic but the truth is to actually put it into practice is a lot easier said than done. We are all guilty of being self involved many times people say, “well no matter how bad you have it, there is always someone who has it worse.” After that being said we have all reached a point in time when you thought maybe I am the one who has it worse that everyone else is comparing their problems too. This is where we need to re-evaluate our lives and ask ourselves where our true source of happiness is coming from?

Let’s say there was a woman who was working for a start up company that found quick success. In eighteen months a larger conglomerate bought out the company for a huge sum. Having come in from the ground level she emerged from the buyout dripping with stock options. This allowed her to retired at an early age. She enjoyed traveling and bought a new house but after the excitement of the whole ordeal and the dust settled she realized she was no happier now than she was before. In another example there is a man who is a successful lawyer and diagnosed with cancer and given a limited time to live. He decides to sell his possessions and started exploring spirituality for the first time in his life. Reading a lot of books on the subject and speaking with other people, discovering so many things he never thought of before giving him the willingness to get up in the morning in order to see what the new day had in store. Both these examples illustrate the essential point that happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than by external events.

Theoretically it seems impossible to change the way we think and work towards more spiritual instead of financial goals. I’m purposing that if we strengthen ourselves spiritually the financial goals will fall into place. The idea is those already on a wealthy level have an obligation to help those without. That gives the wealthy a since of accomplishment which leads to happiness. This action gives the poor a better life, which helps provide for a more positive attitude that picks them up and encourages them to rise above the odds and become more successful themselves. Instead of working for ourselves we are thinking about our neighbors this is what we call I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine mentality. But we live in an imperfect world with a lot of selfishness and it can be easily said that one person cannot make a difference. However even if you touched only one other person’s life isn’t that making a difference? Of course it is, and you showed them that there is love in the world and hopefully that love will make them repay the favor to another person in need. When you see the look on that persons face it would be almost impossible not to feel some sort of happiness knowing you caused that change.

There is no monetary value you can put on the feeling one gets when they have given. I’m not asking the world to go out a sell all their personal belongings just trying to impose a new idea. A profound idea that could potentially make the world a better place. If you help one you could feel secure that your just rewards would always be respected in your time of need. By making a small sacrifice of time and money the rewards can lead to a happier and wealthier life for us all!

Resources:

The Art of Happiness, A handbook for living By His holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D. Riverhead books a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. © 1998

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“IRAQ” THE NEW FOUR-LETTER WORD
Written by Inez Post

“Iraq” has obviously become a four-letter word according to our news media. The word and subject is typically avoided at all cost. We are hammered with story after story about Anna Nicole Smith, who became famous by marrying a wealthy man that was sixty-three years older than her and just so happened to be a billionaire and this is a story our news media should be spending time and energy on? When the four-letter word is mentioned we are bombarded with who said what, who criticized who, who bashed Bush and how that undermines our efforts in a foreign country. We are told to keep our opinions to ourselves in order to respect our troops. Respect, how ironic, the media and current administration is accusing the people that want our troops to come home of disrespecting our soldiers. I watched Fox news for a full hour last night and there was not one mention of the Iraq war, “The War on Terror,” or Afghanistan. I just so happened to glance at the ticker that slides across the TV, which stated 21 people were killed in Baghdad, by a roadside bomb. How is that respect for our troops? Twenty-one of America’s best lost their lives and they were mentioned in a quick blurb that runs across the bottom of your screen.

Well let’s get back to this four-lettered word and look at its origins and maybe try to achieve a better understanding of the mess we find ourselves in today. This country is made up of five cultural areas consisting of the Kurdish, Sunni Islamic Arabs, Shi’a Islamic Arabs, Assyrians (Christians), and the Marsh Arabs. Iraq’s economy is driven by the oil sector and traditionally provides about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. Their economy fell into strife in the 1980’s after undergoing an 8-year battle with Iran. During which Saddam attacked Iranian soldiers with chemical weapons. The war ended in a stale mate. This is the period in which Saddam became notorious for his human rights violations. However, Iraq suffered considerable damage to oil export facilities, which lead to economic losses of approximately USD $100 billion dollars. A combination of low oil prices, reconstruction after the Iranian conflict and repayment of foreign debt left them in a serious financial crisis, which ultimately lead Saddam to the motivation of the invasion of Kuwait. This was a failed effort on Saddam’s part as the United States forced him out of the region. As a result of the Gulf War the United Nations under instruction of the United States put sanctions on Iraq in order to prevent them from creating nuclear weapons. Critiques say that due to the sanctions over 500,000 Iraqi children died from starvation and disease. Although it cannot be argued that Saddam was a brutal dictator this brings us to the realities of where we are today.

In January of 2002 President Bush in his state of the Union address claimed that Iraq was apart of an axis of Evil that also included Iran and North Korea. This was the build up to the invasion that inevitably took place in March of 2003. Leading up to the war in Iraq we were told that Saddam had direct ties with Al Qaeda and was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. When that was proved to be false they then went under the pretense that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat to the United States. When the weapons were never found the reason for invasion conveniently became to liberate the people and spread democracy to the Middle East. Now that one is interesting. Spread democracy to a culture that had been living under religious rule for centuries. Did anyone consider the task at hand to be a bit more difficult than anticipated? Maybe we should take a closer look at the later excuse.

Where are we today after 4 years of occupation? Are we safer now then we were before the war? Should we go back to school a bit and learn about the politics of this region. Could our leaders have done more before we invaded Iraq? Doing a little bit of homework could have laid down a successful plan of invasion and exit strategy which ultimately could have lead to victory marking this administration as heroes instead of fools. Something as simple as reading a few articles or books on the cultural standings of this country may have saved us billions of dollars, thousands of lives and the embarrassment of the biggest blunder in the history of American foreign policy.

Iraq was under the Baath Party rule since 1968 to 2003. Saddam took control in 1979 and remained the leader until the second invasion of the United States. In October of 2005 the eligible Iraqis took a vote on a new constitution. The new constitution was passed by 78% in favor of its construction. However the percentage of the support varied greatly between the country’s territories. The new constitution had overwhelming backing amongst the Shi’a and Kurds, however the three remaining regions did not agree, and felt left out of the voting process. All three remaining major ethnic groups voted along ethnic values creating more of an ethnic census verses a competitive election and setting the stage for the division of the country along ethnic lines. This free election of which our president and his administration claims as one of the successes of the War in Iraq was the start of the civil war our soldiers are in the middle of today.

Now our government has put us in an even more vulnerable position as the axis of evil is growing, North Korea can see our weaknesses and has been pushing our buttons for months, seizing this opportunity to engage in the growth of nuclear weapons. They are like schoolyard bullies, sticking out their tongues in defiance, as if to say, “ah come on, what are you going to do about it?” In this case the administration decides diplomacy is the best way to protect our country from this “REAL” imminent threat. Then there is the other four-letter word called “Iran”. For years, as crazy as it may sound, Saddam helped us keep Iran in check. Being under the ethnic rule of a Sunni kept us safe from a Shi’a strong hold in the region. Shi’a’s of whom are strong supporters of Hezbollah and the plight of the Palestinian people. These are sworn enemies to the United States and have been actively and publicly voicing that hatred through the media. The government in place now in Iraq consists of Shi’as and has been reportedly negotiating with Iran.

Now things are going so badly in Iraq our president decided that the real reason why we went to Iraq was to fight the terrorist over there, instead of over here. The toxic words of that statement rings across the Muslim community and what do they hear? They hear our leaders saying our people are more valuable and their people are expendable. In other words that is why it is ok to create war and chaos in their land and not ours. What part of that statement would make you a proud citizen that backs your commander in chief with full loyalty instead of doubt and fear? So many times we heard our fearless leader say, “Bring it on” or “if your not with us your against us!” This careless taunting game the administration is playing with our lives, as well as lives all over the world, makes it easy to picture a repressed Muslim living in the slums, poor and hungry. They may hear these words thinking, well I’m not with you so that must mean I’m against you! Where is the nearest terrorist camp and where do I sign up?

So now we’re in the situation where we are breeding more terrorists and have created a full hardcore chaos in an already volatile region. This environment has left us in the position to either accept defeat and pull our troops out, or stay in hopes that they will get tired of killing us. They surmise by some miracle other countries may come in and assist us in the clean up of the mess our stubborn government has created. No doubt the death toll on every side of the map will continue to rise. I can think of numerous four-letter words to say in response to that, but I’ll keep those to myself.

References- all found in Wikipedia:

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