Week News Abstract For SFP Series in 10GTEK：Sport

Historically rugby was more popular in the city than football, largely due to the fact that it was the main sport at Lichfield Grammar School. However, both sports have remained at amateur level. Lichfield Rugby Union Football Club was founded in 1874. As of the 2010–11 season they play in the Midlands 1 West League, which is the 6th level of the English Rugby Union system. The team plays at Cooke Fields, located south east of the city on Tamworth Road, behind the Horse and Jockey public house.

AFC Lichfield is a community youth football club. The club currently have teams playing in the Lichfield & District Recreational League at under 7s, under 12s and under 15s levels. The club play their home matches at Beacon Park and off the A51 Bypass. AFC Lichfield also boast a football academy offering FA coaching to boys and girls aged 4-8 years.

Lichfield City Football Club (formerly known as Beacon Park F.C. until June 2006) played in the Burton & District League until 2008. Following a successful season in which goals from Adam Eccles and Simon Deeley saw the side win the Memorial cup, the club gained entrance to the Midland Football Combination. Lichfield gained promotion from the third division in their first full season and narrowly missed out on back-to-back promotions in the 2009–2010 season. In the 2011–12 season Lichfield will play in the first division after promotion in 2011. The 1st team play at Brownsfield Park next to the new Lichfield City FC Social Club (formerly known as Enots). LCFC are a FA Charter Community club with teams from under 7s to Adults.

Lichfield Diamonds LFC is at the forefront of girls' football in Staffordshire, being the first all-female club to achieve Charter Standard Status. The team plays at the Collins Hill Sports Ground.

Lichfield Cricket Club currently play in the Third Division of the Birmingham and District Premier League. They also play at the Collins Hill Sports Ground.

Lichfield is served by four golf courses, including the local authority 18-hole course at Beacon Park. The others are Darnford Moors Golf Club, a new facility in the south of the city which provides a 9-hole pay and play facility, a driving range and coaching academy; Lichfield Country Club, based in Elmhurst, which boasts an 18-hole par 72 championship course and the Midlands' first American specification 9 hole par 3 course; and Whittington Heath Golf Club, an 18-hole par 70 course south-east of the city, laid out on heathland and woodland.

Lichfield Archers were formed over 40 years ago and shoot at Christian Fields, where they have 20-yard indoor and 100-yard outdoor ranges.

Week News Abstract For SFP Series in 10GTEK :Australia and Fiji

Any tropical cyclone that forms to the east of 90°E in the Southern Hemisphere is monitored by either the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and/or the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center in Nadi, Fiji.[4] Both warning centres use the Australian tropical cyclone intensity scale, which measures tropical cyclones using a six category system.[4] It is based on estimated maximum wind gusts, which are a further 30-40% stronger than the 10-minute average sustained winds. This is different from the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which uses 1-minute maximum sustained winds.[1]
When a tropical cyclone that has wind speeds below 35 knots (65 km/h, 40 mph) forms east of 160°E it is labelled as either a tropical disturbance or a tropical depression by RSMC Nadi.[4] If it forms to the west of 160°E it is labelled as a tropical low by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.[4] However if it forms to the north of 10°S and between 90°E to 125°E the low is labelled as a tropical depression by the Tropical Cyclone Warning Center in Jakarta, Indonesia.[19]
If a tropical depression should reach 35 knots (65 km/h, 40 mph), it will be named by the TCWC or RSMC and be classified as a tropical cyclone.[20] Should the cyclone intensify further reaching maximum sustained winds of 65 knots (145 km/h, 75 mph) then the cyclone will be designated as a category three severe tropical cyclone.[20] A severe tropical cyclone will be classified as a category five severe tropical cyclone should the cyclone's maximum sustained wind speed be greater than 110 knots (200 km/h, 130 mph) and gusts be above 150 knots (280 km/h, 175 mph).[20]

Week News Abstract For SFP Series in 10GTEK:Middle Ages and Renaissance

During Childeric's siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève (later canonised as the city's Patron Saint) pleaded with the Frankish King for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response. Later, Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so.[2]

In the later Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat but eliminate their enemies. In Christian Europe, the extermination of the heretics or "non-believers" was considered desirable. Examples include the 13th century Albigensian Crusade and the Northern Crusades.[3] When asked by a Crusader how to distinguish between the Catholics and Cathars once they'd taken the city of Béziers, the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalric famously replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own".[4]

Likewise the inhabitants of conquered cities were frequently massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed; their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the social status of the captive. Many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.[5] In feudal Japan there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, who were for the most part summarily executed.[6]
Aztec sacrifices, Codex Mendoza.

Every city or town that refused surrender and resisted the Mongols was subject to destruction. In Termez, on the Oxus: "all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, and divided in accordance with their usual custom, then they were all slain".[7] The Aztecs were constantly at war with neighbouring tribes and groups. The goal of this constant warfare was to collect live prisoners for sacrifice.[8]

For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed about 80,400 people over the course of four days.[9] According to Ross Hassing, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.[10] In the ancient Maya civilization of Mesoamerica more than a thousand years ago, prisoners of war were paraded before the king and his royal court and subjected to ritual humiliation and torture.[11]

In pre-Islamic Arabia, upon capture, those captives not executed were made to beg for their subsistence. During the early reforms under Islam, Muhammad changed this custom and made it the responsibility of the Islamic government to provide food and clothing, on a reasonable basis, to captives, regardless of their religion. If the prisoners were in the custody of a person, then the responsibility was on the individual.[12] He established the rule that prisoners of war must be guarded and not ill-treated, and that after the fighting was over, the prisoners were expected to be either released or ransomed.

The freeing of prisoners in particular was highly recommended as a charitable act. Mecca was the first city to have the benevolent code applied. It is misunderstood that the leader of the Muslim force capturing non-Muslim prisoners could choose whether to kill prisoners, to ransom them, to enslave them, or to cut off their hands and feet on alternate sides because this law is applied not to the of wars but instead to people (either Muslims or non-Muslims) who do mischief in the land, gangsters, killers of the people for robbery or raping of women or children. However, Christians who were captured in the Crusades, combatants and noncombatants alike, were sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom.[13]

Week News Abstract For SFP Series in 10GTEK:Geological and topographic history

The River Thames can first be identified as a discrete drainage line as early as 58 million years ago, in the Thanetian stage of the late Palaeocene epoch.[18] Until around 500,000 years ago, the Thames flowed on its existing course through what is now Oxfordshire, before turning to the north east through Hertfordshire and East Anglia and reaching the North Sea near Ipswich. At this time the river system headwaters lay in the English West Midlands and may, at times, have received drainage from the North Wales Berwyn Mountains. Streams and rivers like the River Brent, Colne Brook and Bollo Brook either flowed into the then river Thames or went out to sea on the course of the present-day river Thames.

The arrival of an ice sheet in the Quaternary Ice Age, about 450,000 years ago, dammed the river in Hertfordshire, causing large ice lakes which eventually burst their banks and caused the river to be diverted onto its present course through London. Progressively, the channel was pushed south to form the St Albans depression by the repeated advances of the ice sheet. This created a new river course through Berkshire and on into London, after which the river rejoined its original course in southern Essex, near the present River Blackwater estuary. Here it entered a substantial freshwater lake in the southern North Sea basin. The overspill of this lake caused the formation of the Dover Straits or Pas-de-Calais gap between Britain and France. Subsequent development led to the continuation of the course which the river follows at the present day.[19]

Most of the bedrock of the Vale of Aylesbury is largely made up of clay and chalk that was formed at the end of the ice age and at one time was under the Proto-Thames. Also at this time the vast underground reserves of water that make the water table higher than average in the Vale of Aylesbury were created.

The last advance from that Scandinavian ice flow to have reached this far south covered much of NW Middlesex and finally forced the Proto-Thames to take roughly its present course. At the height of the last ice age around 10,000 BCE, Britain was connected to mainland Europe by a large expanse of land known as Doggerland in the southern North Sea basin. At this time, the Thames' course did not continue to Doggerland, but flowed southwards from the eastern Essex coast where it met the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt[19] flowing from what are now the Netherlands and Belgium. These rivers formed a single river—the Channel River (Fleuve Manche)—that passed through the Dover Strait and drained into the Atlantic Ocean in the western English Channel.

The ice sheet which stopped around present day Finchley, deposited Boulder clay to form Dollis Hill and Hanger Hill. Its torrent of meltwater gushed through the Finchley Gap and south towards the new course of the Thames, and proceeded to carve out the Brent Valley in the process.[20] Upon the valley sides there can be seen other terraces of brickearth; laid over and sometimes interlayered with the clays. These deposits were brought in by the winds during the periglacial periods, suggesting that wide flat marshes were then part of the landscape, which the new river Brent proceeded to cut down. The steepness of the valley sides is witness to the very much lower mean sea levels caused by the glaciation locking up so much water upon the land masses, thus causing the river water to flow rapidly seaward and so erode its bed quickly downwards.

The original land surface was around 110 to 130 metres (350 to 400 ft) above the current sea level. The surface had sandy deposits from an ancient sea, laid over sedimentary clay (this is the Blue London Clay). All the erosion down from this higher land surface and sorting action by these changes of water flow and direction formed what is known as the Thames River Gravel Terraces. Since Roman times and perhaps earlier, however, the isostatic rebound from the weight of previous ice sheets, and its interplay with the eustatic change in sea level, has resulted in the old valley of river Brent, together with that of the Thames, silting up again. Thus along much of the Brent's present-day course one can make out the water meadows of rich alluvium, which is augmented by frequent floods.

After taking its present-day course, much of the banks of the Thames Estuary and the Thames Valley in London was partly covered in marshland, as was the adjoining Lower Lea Valley. The streams and rivers like the River Lea, Tyburn Brook and Bollo Brook drained into the river, while some islands like Thorney Island formed over the ages. The northern tip of the ancient parish of Lambeth, for example, was a marshland known as Lambeth Marshe, but it was drained in the 18th century and is remembered in the Lower Marsh street name. Sometime after the opening of Waterloo railway station in 1848 the locality around the station and Lower Marsh became known as Waterloo. Lower Marsh is a street in the Waterloo neighbourhood of London. It is the location of Lower Marsh Market.[21]

The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, was the area of London east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames, although it is not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries; the river River Lea can be considered another boundary.[22] Most of the local riverside was also marshland. The land was drained and became farmland; it was built on after the Industrial Revolution. Use of the term "East End" in a pejorative sense began in the late 19th century,[23]

Canvey Island in southern Essex (area 18.45 km2; pop. 37,479[24]) is a civil parish and once marshy, but now fully reclaimed island in the Thames estuary in England. It is separated from the mainland of south Essex by a network of creeks. Lying below sea level it is prone to flooding at exceptional tides, but has nevertheless been inhabited since the Roman invasion of Britain.

Week News Abstract For SFP Series in 10GTEK：the history of Weighing scale

The balance scale is such a simple device that its usage likely far predates the evidence. What has allowed archaeologists to link artifacts to weighing scales are the stones for determining absolute weight. The balance scale itself was probably used to determine relative weight long before absolute weight.[1]

The oldest evidence for the existence of weighing scales dates to c. 2400-1800 B.C.E. in the Indus River valley (modern-day Pakistan). Uniform, polished stone cubes discovered in early settlements were probably used as weight-setting stones in balance scales. Although the cubes bear no markings, their weights are multiples of a common denominator. The cubes are made of many different kinds of stones with varying densities. Clearly their weight, not their size or other characteristics, was a factor in sculpting these cubes.[2] In Egypt, scales can be traced to around 1878 B.C.E., but their usage probably extends much earlier. Carved stones bearing marks denoting weight and the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for gold have been discovered, which suggests that Egyptian merchants had been using an established system of weight measurement to catalog gold shipments and/or gold mine yields. Although no actual scales from this era have survived, many sets of weighing stones as well as murals depicting the use of balance scales suggest widespread usage.[3]

Variations on the balance scale, including devices like the cheap and inaccurate bismar began to see common usage by c. 400 B.C.E. by many small merchants and their customers. A plethora of scale varieties each boasting advantages and improvements over one another appear throughout recorded history, with such great inventors as Leonardo Da Vinci lending a personal hand in their development.[4]

Even with all the advances in weighing scale design and development, all scales until the seventeenth century C.E. were variations on the balance scale. Although records dating to the 1600s refer to spring scales for measuring weight, the earliest design for such a device dates to 1770 and credits Richard Salter, an early scale-maker.[5] Spring scales came into common usage in 1840 when R. W. Winfield developed the candlestick scale for use in measuring letters and packages.[6] Postal workers could work more quickly with spring scales than balance scales because they could be read instantaneously and did not have to be carefully balanced with each measurement.

By the 1940s various electronic devices were being attached to these designs to make readings more accurate. These were not true digital scales as the actual measuring of weight still relied on springs and balances.[7][8] Load cells, small nodes that convert pressure to a digital signal, have their beginnings as early as the late-nineteenth century, but it was not until the late-twentieth century that they became accurate enough for widespread usage.[9]

Ethnic group

An ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy.[1][2][3] Another definition is "...a highly biologically self-perpetuating group sharing an interest in a homeland connected with a specific geographical area, a common language and traditions, including food preferences, and a common religious faith".[4] The concept of ethnicity differs from the closely related term race in that "race" refers to grouping based mostly upon criteria that in the past have been presumed to be biological, while "ethnicity" also encompasses additional cultural factors. However, OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference."[5]

Members of an ethnic group are usually conscious of belonging to that ethnic group; moreover ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness. Processes that result in the emergence of such identification are called ethnogenesis.

Week News Abstract For SFP Series in 10GTEK:Person

A person (plural: persons or people; from Latin: persona, meaning "mask") is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood, the precise definition of which is the subject of much controversy.

In ancient Rome, the word "persona" (Latin) or "prosopon" (πρ?σωπον: Greek) originally referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play, while the masks themselves helped the actor's voice resonate and made it easier for the audience to hear.[1] In Roman law, the word "persona" became used to refer to a role played in court, and it became established that it was the role rather than the actor that could have rights, powers, and duties, because different individuals could assume the same roles, the rights, powers, and duties followed the role rather than the actor, and each individual could act in more than one role, each a different "person" in law.

The concept of a "person" was further developed during the Trinitarian and Christological debates of the first through sixth centuries. Since then, a number of important changes to the word's meaning and use have taken place, and attempts have been made to redefine the word with varying degrees of adoption and influence. Many modern speakers of colloquial English conflate the meanings of role and actor, which can result in some confusion when they try to enter into legal discourse.