1.Everyone shall possess the right to freely express and publicise his thoughts in words, images or by any other means, as well as the right to inform others, inform himself and be informed without hindrance or discrimination
2.Exercise of the said rights shall not be hindered or limited by any type or form of censorship
Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, Article 37.º
Gerry McCann Celebrity Criminal - a very photshopped screenshot, but it's really what comes up if you search for the former arguidos' name in Daylife: A new way to explore the world - No doubt on that!
O Plano Nacional de Barragens deu origem a vários movimentos de protesto, quer na sociedade civil, quer nos partidos da oposição. A barragem de Foz Tua, concessionada à EDP, vai ser construída a 1,1 quilómetros da foz do rio Tua e vai ter como consequência mais visível a submersão da centenária Linha Ferroviária do Tua, que actualmente liga as estações do Tua e Mirandela. A construção da Linha Ferroviária do Tua foi iniciada a 16 de Outubro de 1884 [ver aqui a História da Linha do Tua].
Trás-os Montes está a ficar desertificado, a população envelhecida, as maternidades e as escolas são fechadas; os jovens partem para o litoral, para os grandes centros urbanos ou continuam a emigração para a Suíça, França em busca de uma qualidade de vida inverosímil de alcançar. Nas aldeias não se vêem crianças, homens envelhecidos ficam sentados à espera da morte; costumes, memórias e tradições orais vão ser indubitavelmente perdidas para sempre. Encerrar a Linha do Tua, mesmo que parcialmente, é extremamente negativo para o desenvolvimento económico e cultural do nosso país.
Trás-os-Montes (Beyond the mountains), used to be one of the poorest regions of Portugal. Emigration over the past decades has been vast.
But, Trás-os-Montes is blessed with a good number of narrow gauge (100 cm) railways that, very unfortunately, are being closed down bit by bit. One of the most spectactular tracks is the 'Linha do Tua' from Mirandela to Tua at the margins of the River Douro. 54 kilometers railroad along the river (Tua, indeed). A masterpiece of engineering that started in as early as 1884. Inaugurated by king D.Luís I in September 1887. Try to imagine the impact of this new way of transport in a completely isolated area where most of the transport was only possible on foot, horse and donkey. In 1902 works started on a new extension from Mirandela to Bragança and were completed in 1906. This line was closed down in 1992.
The last ten years the Mirandela-Tua line has been operational on and off. While hardly any accidents did happen during the first hundred years of it's existence, the replacement of the rolling stock by lighter weight 'Metro' trains lead to several serious accidents and fatalities. Lack of maintenance became too costly, the line was regularly vandalised (even rails got stolen!) and resulted in less regular service, more delays and less passengers. Nowadays, the 'Metro' is only operational on four kilometers to a northern suburb of Mirandela and 13 to the village of Cachão, south of Mirandela. The Portugal Railways (CP - Caminhos de Ferro de Portugal) has made available a taxi service that runs between Mirandela and Tua along the previous train itinerary: three times daily.
So, apart from our 17 km trips by 'Metro', there is no other option than to travel the line on foot. The first day from Cachão to Brunheda (20 km) and the second from Brunheda to the end of the line, in Tua (21 km). An early start of the day proved to be essential because temperatures rose till 34ºC while a regular jump into the river was hugely helpful.
There is strong campaigning in an attempt to save the line but the plan to build a dam in the Tua is well underway and when completed, will submerse some 25 km of this extraordinary railroad. With a bit of luck some parts can be kept operational but the spectacular valley of the Tua will disappear for ever...
Nine-year-old's disappearance gripped the country, but details gradually emerged of a 'truly despicable' kidnapping plot
by Rachel Williams
Local residents put up a poster of Shannon Matthews in Leeds West Yorkshire police's investigation into Shannon Matthews's disappearance would end up costing more than £3.2m. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
For more than three weeks, the image of a grinning Shannon Matthews had been plastered across newspapers and TV screens, together with the strained face of her tearful mother Karen.
Detectives had abandoned murder investigations to join the team searching for the nine-year-old who did not come home from a school swimming trip. It would be West Yorkshire police's biggest such operation since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, and end up costing more than £3.2m. Sniffer dogs were brought in from around the country and hundreds of local people helped scour the area for any trace of the little girl.
But as time passed, hope of finding Shannon alive began to fade, and when she was found hidden under a bed in a flat a mile and a half down the road, there was delight and amazement – not least from Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan, the experienced murder specialist heading the inquiry.
Yet there was another twist to come. As Michael Donovan was dragged from his property in Batley Carr, he yelled to officers: "Get Karen down here! We'd got a plan. We're sharing the money – £50,000."
What emerged in court as Matthews and Donovan were tried for kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice was what the judge would go on to describe as a "truly despicable" plot.
Matthews, a mother of seven, planned to stage her daughter's disappearance and keep her captive with Donovan, her then partner's uncle, in a bid to claim thousands of pounds in reward money when Shannon was eventually "found".
Police said it was possible they had been influenced by the international coverage of Madeleine McCann's disappearance 10 months earlier, and there were even claims – discounted by detectives – that the plot could have been inspired by a storyline in the TV drama Shameless, where a young boy had been abducted by his sister to try to extract a £500,000 ransom.
After she was recovered, Shannon was discovered to have traces of temazepam and the travel sickness medication melcozine in her system, part of an apparent attempt to keep her subdued and drowsy. In the loft of Donovan's flat, officers found an elasticated strap, thought to have been used to keep Shannon safely tethered when he went out. "Kidnap rules" were designed to stop her making noise that might reveal her presence to neighbours.
Convicted on all counts at Leeds crown court in December 2008 after a three-week trial, Matthews and Donovan were each jailed for eight years.
Matthews told five versions of what happened to Shannon, ranging from being a distraught mother whose daughter had gone missing, to blaming the crime on her former partner Craig Meehan and other members of his family. Donovan, who had convictions for arson, shoplifting and criminal damage, claimed he was terrified of Matthews and was told that he would be killed if he did not comply with her plan.
Matthews and Donovan were branded respectively a "consummate liar" and a "pathetic inadequate" by QCs in court. But it was the contrast between Matthews's distraught media appearances begging for the return of her "beautiful princess" and her actions behind closed doors that particularly struck observers at the trial.
Even the day after she reported Shannon missing, the court heard, she was observed dancing to the mobile phone ringtone of the police family liaison officer who came to see her, and laughing and joking with Meehan.
And when the good news was broken to her that her daughter had been found safe and well, her reaction was to tell the officer in question: "I like the ringtone on your mobile", before going out shopping.
Much has been made of Karen Matthews's social background, at first when commentators complained that Shannon's disappearance was getting less coverage than Madeleine McCann's had because the girl from the council estate in Dewsbury was not middle class. When Matthews's involvement in her daughter's kidnapping was revealed, others were quick to portray her as symptomatic of a malaise in society, focusing on her seven children from five fathers and dependence on state support.
A Tory councillor, John Ward, was forced to resign from Medway council, in Kent, after he used Matthews as an example of "breakdown Britain" while advocating compulsory sterilisation for parents on benefits.
As for Shannon, she was interviewed for seven hours over five days but she was not called as a witness at the trial. The court was told the ordeal had left the girl "disturbed and traumatised" and suffering from nightmares. And when she was asked, after her rescue, whether she wanted to see her mother, her reply was clear: "No."
Louise Bourgeois in 1990, behind her marble sculpture Eye to Eye (1970)
Photo by Raimon Ramis
Artist Louise Bourgeois, whose sculptures exploring women's deepest feelings on birth, sexuality and death were highly influential on younger artists, died Monday, her studio's managing director said. She was 98.
Bourgeois had continued creating artwork - her latest pieces were finished just last week - before suffering a heart attack Saturday night, said the studio director, Wendy Williams. The artist died at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, where she lived.
Working in a wide variety of materials, she tackled themes relating to male and female bodies and emotions of anger, betrayal, even murder. Her work reflected influences of surrealism, primitivism and the early modernist sculptors such as Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brancusi.
"I really want to worry people, to bother people," she told The Washington Post in 1984. "They say they are bothered by the double genitalia in my new work. Well, I have been bothered by it my whole life. I once said to my children, `It's only physiological, you know, the sex drive.' That was a lie. It's much more than that."
Bourgeois' work was almost unknown to the wider art world until she was 70, when New York's Museum of Modern Art presented a solo show of her career in 1982.
"This is not a show that is easy to digest," New York Times critic Grace Glueck wrote. "The reward is an intense encounter with an artist who explores her psyche at considerable risk."
In his book "American Visions," Time art critic Robert Hughes called her "the mother of American feminist identity art. ... Bourgeois's influence on young artists has been enormous."
He noted the key difference in her use of sexual imagery: She explores "femaleness from within, as distinct from the familiar male conventions of looking at it from the outside, from the eyeline of another gender. ... Surrealist fascination with the female body becomes, so to speak, turned inside out."
Among the honors coming to her were a National Medal of Arts, awarded by President Clinton in 1997. In October, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
In 2001, thousands of tourists saw her work "Spiders" when it was exhibited on the plaza at Rockefeller Center for 2 1/2 months as part of a Public Art Fund program to promote outdoor exhibits in New York.
Louise Bourgeois in 2009
It featured a 30-foot-high spider, "Maman," carrying a basket of eggs, flanked by two smaller spiders.
In many interviews, she cited a childhood trauma as the source of much of the emotion in her work: her father's affair with a woman hired as an English tutor for young Louise.
"You see, I always hated that woman," she told The Washington Post. "... My work is often about murder."
In "Dangerous Passage," from 1997, Bourgeois drew upon memories of her childhood, strewing a cage with symbolic objects: an antique child's swing on one side; broken bones on the other.
Her room-size 1991 sculpture "Twosome" combined a flashing red light, two steel cylinders and a motor that propels the smaller cylinder in an out of the larger one. The materials suggested a machine, but the movement evokes sexuality, or birth.
In 2007, she depicted the effects of aging on her own body in a series of 11 large panels called "Extreme Tension."
In an e-mail exchange in early 2008, The Associated Press asked Bourgeois what advice she would give young artists just starting out.
"Tell your own story, and you will be interesting," she responded. "Don't get the green disease of envy. Don't be fooled by success and money. Don't let anything come between you and your work."
Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911; her parents ran a business restoring antique tapestries. In her early years, she studied at the Academie des Beaux-Arts and other schools and studios.
She moved to New York in 1938 after marrying the American art historian Robert Goldwater and became an American citizen in 1955. A professor of art history at New York University, Goldwater was also director of the Museum of Primitive Art, established in 1957, and wrote a key book on the topic, "Primitivism in Modern Art".
While Bourgeois work shows the influence of primitive artists, she was quick to note that her work was not primitive.
Louise Bourgeois at the Académie de la Grande-Chaumiére, Paris,
"My husband said 15 years ago that primitive art is no longer being made," she told The Washington Post in 1984. "The primitive condition has vanished. These are recent works. Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional."
Her husband died in 1973. She is survived by two sons, Alain and Jean Louis, as well as two grandchildren and a great-grandchild. A third son, Michel, predeceased her, Williams said.
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