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Rabu, 22 Juni 2022

Afghan earthquake: At least 1,000 people killed and 1,500 injured - BBC

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A powerful earthquake has killed at least 1,000 people and injured 1,500 in eastern Afghanistan, an official of the ruling Taliban told the BBC.

The Taliban appealed for international help for the rescue effort as pictures showed landslides and ruined mud-built homes in the province of Paktika.

The quake struck shortly after 01:30 (21:00 GMT Tuesday) as people slept.

Hundreds of houses were destroyed by the magnitude 6.1 event, which occurred at a depth of 51km (32 miles).

It is the deadliest earthquake to strike Afghanistan in two decades and a major challenge for the Taliban, the Islamist movement which regained power last year after the Western-backed government collapsed.

The earthquake struck about 44km from the city of Khost and tremors were felt as far away as Pakistan and India. Witnesses reported feeling the quake in both Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, and Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

Taliban officials asked the UN to "support them in terms of assessing the needs and responding to those affected", Sam Mort from Unicef's Kabul unit told the BBC.

The UK's special representative to Afghanistan, Nigel Casey, said the UK was in touch with the UN and was "ready to contribute to the international response".

Earthquakes tend to cause significant damage in Afghanistan, where dwellings in many rural areas are unstable or poorly built.

Speaking to Reuters news agency, locals described horrific scenes of death and destruction in the aftermath of the late-night earthquake.

"The kids and I screamed," said Fatima. "One of our rooms was destroyed. Our neighbours screamed and we saw everyone's rooms."

"It destroyed the houses of our neighbours," Faisal said. "When we arrived there were many dead and wounded. They sent us to the hospital. I also saw many dead bodies."

"Every street you go, you hear people mourning the deaths of their beloved ones," a journalist in Paktika province told the BBC.

Local farmer Alem Wafa cried as he told the BBC that official rescue teams had yet to reach the remote village of Gyan - one of the worst hit.

"There are no official aid workers, but people from neighbouring cities and villages came here to rescue people," he said. "I arrived this morning, and I - myself - found 40 dead bodies."

Most of the dead, he said, were "very young children". The local hospital just did not have the capacity to deal with such a disaster, the farmer added.

In remote areas, helicopters have been ferrying victims to hospitals.

Even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan's emergency services were stretched to deal with natural disasters - with few aircraft and helicopters available to rescuers.

Speaking to the BBC, a doctor in Paktika said medical workers were among the victims.

"We didn't have enough people and facilities before the earthquake, and now the earthquake has ruined the little we had," they said. "I don't know how many of our colleagues are still alive."

Communication following the quake is difficult because of damage to mobile phone towers and the death toll could rise further still, another local journalist in the area told the BBC.

"Many people are not aware of the well-being of their relatives because their phones are not working," he said. "My brother and his family died, and I just learned it after many hours. Many villages have been destroyed."

Most of the casualties so far have been in the Gayan and Barmal districts in Paktika, a local doctor told the BBC. Local media site Etilaat-e Roz reported a whole village in Gayan had been destroyed.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage in Pakistan, according to BBC Urdu.

Decades of conflict have made it difficult for the impoverished country to improve its protections against earthquakes and other natural disasters - despite efforts by aid agencies to reinforce some buildings over the years.

Afghanistan is prone to quakes, as it's located in a tectonically active region, over a number of fault lines including the Chaman fault, the Hari Rud fault, the Central Badakhshan fault and the Darvaz fault.

Over the past decade more than 7,000 people have been killed in earthquakes in the country, the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports. There are an average of 560 deaths a year from earthquakes.

Most recently, back-to-back earthquakes in the country's west in January killed more than 20 people and destroyed hundreds of houses.

An injured victim of the earthquake receives treatment at a hospital in Paktia, Afghanistan, 22 June 2022.

Afghanistan: The basics

The Taliban run the country: The hardline Islamists took over Afghanistan last year, almost 20 years after being ousted by a US-led military coalition
There's a food crisis: More than a third of people can't meet basic needs and the economy is struggling, as foreign aid and cash dried up when the Taliban took power
Women's rights are restricted: They have been ordered to cover their faces in public and teenage girls have not been allowed to go to school

'Kamikaze' drone strike hits oil refinery in southern Russia - Financial Times

A fire broke out at an oil refinery in southern Russia’s Rostov region after a drone attack, state media said on Wednesday, in what military experts suggest could be part of apparent Ukraine-backed strikes behind enemy lines.

The fire was sparked by a drone that flew into a heat transfer unit, state newswire Tass reported, citing two unnamed sources.

Russia did not directly accuse Ukraine of the attack, though one of the Tass sources said two drones were spotted near the plant. Vasily Golubev, the regional governor, wrote on Telegram that workers had found fragments of two drones at the refinery.

Video of the crash posted by Baza, a channel on the Telegram messaging app, showed a drone flying high over the Novoshakhtinsk refinery before crashing into it and prompting an explosion. The fire ranged over a 50 square metre area before firefighters put it out, emergency services said. No casualties were reported.

While the precise type of the drone remains unclear, Ukraine Weapons Tracker, a respected open-source intelligence group, said it appeared to be based on a Ukrainian-made reconnaissance drone modified to carry explosives. The explosion took place about 150km behind the front lines close to the border with Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials declined to comment on the attack.

Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out a series of strikes on its territory in recent weeks, targeting fuel depots, military installations and infrastructure vital for supporting Russian supply lines. Ukraine has not admitted it carried out any of the attacks but has used them to mock Russia on social media.

A post by Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade read: “For some reason, the Novoshakhtinsk Oil Refinery is on fire in Russia,” later adding that hitting such a target with a “kamikaze drone” 150km deep into the enemy-controlled territory is “not bad!”

“It is hot in the Rostov region,” Ukraine’s armed forces wrote in one Telegram channel post, adding: “It is best to smoke in designated places and to not throw cigarette butts on oil depots.”

Ukrainian forces have recently launched several dramatic counter strikes, including the sinking of a Russian vessel that was reinforcing Snake Island in the Black Sea and, according to Russian officials, some Russian-operated gas rigs off the coast of Crimea.

On land, Ukrainian forces have also made some creeping military gains towards the Russian-held city of Kherson.

The attacks have come as more potent western weapons systems start to arrive in Ukraine, and may be part of a Ukrainian strategy to punch back at Russian forces which continue to make steady gains in the Donbas, where most of the fighting is at present concentrated.

Some of Ukraine’s western backers are reluctant to provide Kyiv with more sophisticated military equipment it could use to attack targets on Russian territory for fear Moscow could use the strikes as justification to escalate the conflict.

Video: Volodymyr Zelenskyy: ‘No one is humiliating Ukraine. They are killing us’

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2022-06-22 10:29:08Z
1471571026

Selasa, 21 Juni 2022

Russian journalist auctions Nobel Peace Prize medal and raises £84m - for Ukrainian refugees - Sky News

A Russian journalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize has sold his medal for more than $100m.

Dmitry Muratov, editor of a newspaper that is fiercely critical of the Kremlin, has donated the money to Ukrainian refugee children.

Mr Muratov, who was jointly awarded the prize last year with fellow journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines, put his medal up for auction on Monday, World Refugee Day.

It sold for a record $103.5m (£84m).

Previously, the most paid for a Nobel Prize medal was $4.76 million (£3.83m) when James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his in 2014.

The full purchase price of the medal will benefit UNICEF's humanitarian response for Ukraine's displaced children,
Heritage Auctions, which conducted the auction, said in a statement.

Mr Muratov, who was given the award in October 2021, helped to found Novaya Gazeta and was its editor-in-chief when it shut down in March as the Kremlin clamped down on journalists and public dissent after the invasion of Ukraine.

It was Mr Muratov's idea to auction off his prize. He had already said he would donate the accompanying £407,000 cash award to charity.

The idea of the donation, he said, "is to give the children refugees a chance for a future".

Melted down, the 175 grams of 23-carat gold contained in Mr Muratov's medal would be worth about £8,000.

He said he hoped the sale would "become a beginning of a flash mob, as an example to follow so people auction their valuable possessions to help Ukrainians".

He added that it was important international sanctions levied against Russia do not prevent humanitarian aid, such as medicine for rare diseases and bone marrow transplants, from reaching those in need.

Mr Muratov and Ms Ressa, who each received their own medals, were honoured for their battles to preserve free speech in their countries, despite coming under attack by harassment, their governments and even death threats.

Mr Muratov has been highly critical of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war launched in February that has caused nearly five million Ukrainians to flee to other countries for safety, creating the biggest humanitarian crisis in Europe since the Second World War.

Independent journalists in Russia have come under scrutiny by the Kremlin, if not outright targets of the government.

Since Putin came into power more than two decades ago, nearly two dozen journalists have been killed, including at least four who had worked for Mr Muratov's newspaper.

In April, Mr Muratov said he was attacked with red paint while aboard a Russian train.

Since its inception in 1901, there have been nearly 1,000 recipients of the Nobel Prizes honouring achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and the advancement of peace.

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2022-06-21 02:27:22Z
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Electoral breakthrough puts far-right leader Marine Le Pen 'back in the game' - Financial Times

For over a decade Marine Le Pen’s success in pushing her far-right party into France’s political mainstream has revolved around one key yardstick — the presidential election race which she has entered and lost three times while increasing her score with every campaign.

Now her Rassemblement National (National Rally) movement has made a breakthrough in the National Assembly. It has increased its number of seats tenfold to 89 after legislative elections, far eclipsing the far-right movement’s previous best return with 35 seats in 1986 and placing the party and Le Pen at the heart of day-to-day politics in France.

While still 200 seats from a majority needed to control the 577-strong assembly, the strong result confounded expectations even within Le Pen’s own party, which has tended to fare poorly in the two-round legislative ballot system, and gives it a bigger voice to influence the agenda on issues such as immigration or security.

After Le Pen came closer than ever to the presidency in a run-off against centrist Emmanuel Macron in April, the result also marks the most meaningful culmination yet of her drive to rid the anti-immigration, Eurosceptic party founded by her father of its racist image.

“This puts Le Pen back in the game,” said Pascal Perrineau, a professor at Science Po university. “She will be very present in debates and will be the leader of the opposition.”

On its own, the RN will not be able to push through policies. Its challenge for the next five years will be to show it is a constructive party in parliament rather than a fringe protest movement, Perrineau added.

But the RN’s showing made it the main standalone runner-up to Macron’s Ensemble (Together) bloc, although the Nupes alliance of leftwing and green parties spearheaded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon has more parliamentarians, with 131 seats. Macron, meanwhile, fell short of a majority.

With only eight seats after 2017’s elections, Le Pen had said the party would be happy with a few dozen this time around. Attention shifted to Mélenchon’s more aggressive campaign, which took aim at unpopular Macron policies like his plan to raise the retirement age.

Yet years of cultivating support outside of its traditional bastions in the industrial north and around Marseille and a high abstention rate boosted the RN. It also validated Le Pen’s decade-long makeover of the party to focus not only on immigration and crime but also on economic issues, making it the home for many disenfranchised voters.

‘We are on the verge of becoming a governing party’ said new RN MP Edwige Diaz © Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images

“This is no accident,” said Edwige Diaz, a 34-year-old who won a seat for the RN in the Gironde department near Bordeaux, which is dotted with picturesque vineyards but plagued by poverty. “We slowly consolidated our local presence.”

Diaz added: “Under [Marine’s father] Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Front National was a party of protest. Then under Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National evolved into a serious opposition party. Now we are on the verge of becoming a governing party.”

In past elections, a “republican front”, where voters rally behind candidates likely to beat the far-right, had prevented such breakthroughs. That premise held firm in the April presidential run-off, with leftwing voters ultimately backing Macron.

But it collapsed in Sunday’s legislative vote, with voters fuelled by anti-Macron sentiment unwilling in some cases to back his candidates against RN rivals, or preferring to abstain, according to polling data and analysts. Macron voters also failed to back Nupes candidates in constituencies where they faced a run-off against RN.

“There is no longer any form of republican front at a local level,” said Mathieu Gallard, research director at pollster Ipsos. “You’ve got three camps which are not banding together to form a blockade.”

At an election night party for Mélenchon’s bloc, some hit out at Macron for not calling on his voters to help defeat Le Pen.

“He owes us his 2017 election, he owes us his 2022 re-election and when we were in a position to floor the RN, they refused to [call to vote for us] and even worse: they floored us,” green politician Julien Bayou said.

The results also show Le Pen’s success in blurring traditional political lines. A third of voters who had backed the red-green Nupes alliance in the first round of voting opted for Macron’s Ensemble in the run-off, polling by Harris Interactive showed, but nearly a quarter of them chose to back RN candidates.

The unexpected haul of seats also alleviates the financial problems that have long plagued the movement because of French banks’ refusal to lend to her or the party. In 2014, they were forced to turn to a Russian bank for financing, and Le Pen’s most recent presidential campaign was backed by a personal loan from a Hungarian bank close to Viktor Orbán.

French parties receive money based on the number of votes won in the first round of the legislative elections, as well as €37,000 for each deputy elected. The RN can expect to get about €10mn a year for the five-year term — an unprecedented sum that party officials said would allow it to not only pay back its debts, but also hire more staff and professionalise its parliamentary presence.

Le Pen, who won in her northern Pas-de-Calais constituency, is already pushing for as much influence as possible, challenging Mélenchon’s leftwing alliance to hold the chair of the National Assembly’s crucial finance committee, a position reserved to the opposition chief.

In a speech, she hailed the result despite a “particularly unfair” electoral system, and vowed to promote the party’s concerns on immigration and security in the assembly.

“The new faces you will discover, who are brimming with enthusiasm and life, are the avant-garde of the new political elite that will take responsibility for this country when the Macron adventure comes to an end,” she said.

Additional reporting by Akila Quinio

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2022-06-21 04:00:27Z
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Senin, 20 Juni 2022

'Ungovernable' French parliament to stymie Emmanuel Macron's reform drive - Financial Times

“Ungovernable!” read Le Parisien’s front page on the state of France the morning after the country held its second and final round of legislative elections.

The popular daily newspaper captured the mood after President Emmanuel Macron lost his majority in the National Assembly and found himself facing leftwing and far-right parliamentary blocs determined to scupper his economic reforms, including an overhaul of the pension system.

“It’s the worst-case scenario for Macron,” said Vincent Martigny, politics professor at the University of Nice. “French political culture is not in favour of hung parliaments . . . We are not used to compromise.”

This is the first time since 1988 that elections have failed to generate an absolute majority in the assembly. Macron will be forced to strike deals with political rivals — most likely the conservative Les Républicains (LR) — if he wants to push through laws such as the one he would need to enact his unpopular plan to increase the official retirement age from 62 to 65.

But analysts doubted Macron that would be able to make much progress with the current parliament. He could replace his Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in a nod to his party’s poor results, and will be tempted to dissolve the assembly and call new elections in a year or two, as the constitution allows.

Whatever his choices, the leader is unlikely to rekindle the liberal reformist enthusiasm that marked the start of his first term after his ascent to power in 2017.

Élisabeth Borne, prime minister, speaks to media — Élisabeth Borne, prime minister, is facing pressure after disappointing election results © Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

“Macron will not be able to pursue the economic policy goals he promised during the campaign, because he has to make too many compromises,” said Armin Steinbach, professor of law and economics at HEC Paris. “His reform agenda will be far less ambitious than envisaged.”

Even the pension reform will probably be watered down, said Steinbach, while the easiest policies to push through will be those involving more spending rather than less — such as investing in renewable energy or subsidising consumers hit by inflation — because they are more likely to be approved by opposition parties.

For the tougher reforms, Macron could try to find an arrangement with LR, which has secured 61 seats, to command a working majority in the assembly. The president’s Ensemble alliance, which won 245 seats, and LR are both pro-business and agree on policies such as cutting the production taxes that irk French industry.

“I don’t think we can say that nothing will happen,” said Xavier Jaravel, economics professor at London School of Economics. “There will be measures to counter the [inflation] crisis, for instance. But the concern is whether we can change things for the long run.”

Some see a silver lining for France’s democracy — plagued by high abstention by voters — if not for its economy. The election of hundreds of new MPs from parties that previously complained of underrepresentation may show hitherto disillusioned voters that they can have a voice even in a voting system without proportional representation.

“Contrary to what lots of people say, this is a demonstration that the two-round majoritarian [winner takes all] system doesn’t necessarily produce results that fail to reflect public opinion,” said Anne Levade, an expert in constitutional law at the Sorbonne university. “Will the opposition parties systematically oppose everything and make it impossible to govern the country, or will they take positions that allow the country to be governed? Their credibility is at stake.”

In the 2017 legislative elections, the far-right Rassemblement National won eight of the 577 seats in the National Assembly despite Marine Le Pen securing 34 per cent of votes in the presidential runoff that year. This time, it won 89.

As for the left, its support in previous elections has been split between different parties, leaving it with few MPs. This time, the far-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon forged a left-green alliance that has become the largest opposition group.

Rachel Keke, a France Unbowed candidate, campaigns in Paris — Rachel Keke, centre, a hotel chambermaid and member of the France Unbowed party, campaigns in Paris last week. The left-green alliance has become the largest opposition group © Thibault Camus/AP

The new intake of MPs from the right and left comes from a more diverse background, analysts said. While Macron’s cohort of new MPs in 2017 included many women and was mostly highly educated and middle class, the new contingent includes workers such as Rachel Keke, a hotel chambermaid.

The member of Melenchon’s France Unbowed party led a long trade union strike over working conditions at an Ibis hotel on the outskirts of Paris. One of her colleagues is 21-year-old student Louis Boyard, one of the two youngest MPs in French history.

“I think the French have been asking for a big renewal of their democracy,” said Martigny. “It will be a brand new parliament. What is new is the amazing social renewal . . . Macron called his [campaign] book Revolution but what we saw was actually very conservative.”

Macron, who has managed to recover from political setbacks, now risks falling victim to the curse of the struggling second-term president that afflicted Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, Martigny added: “It’s the beginning of his term and it looks like the end already. It’s very hard to see how he will rebound.”

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2022-06-20 18:29:56Z
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Israeli government collapses sparking fresh elections and raising possibility of Benjamin Netanyahu returning to power - Sky News

The Israeli government has collapsed, sparking fresh elections and a possible return to power for Benjamin Netanyahu.

After weeks of speculation, the current Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced the government would submit a bill to dissolve the Knesset next week, thereby ending Israel's 36th government, assuming it passes.

Mr Bennett's coalition partner, the current foreign minister Yair Lapid, will assume the role of acting prime minister for a minimum of 90 days.

Factoring in religious holidays, elections are likely to be held sometime in October, the fifth in three years.

The current coalition, barely a year old, had been teetering for weeks after it lost its Knesset majority following defections.

It took power in June 2021, bringing an end to Mr Netanyahu's 12 years in power.

It had gradually been losing authority and a vote of no confidence, tabled by opposition parties, was expected this week, prompting Mr Bennett and Mr Lapid to jump before they were pushed.

Mr Lapid, as acting PM, will now welcome US President Joe Biden to Israel when he visits next month.

Mr Netanyahu, who has twice been Israeli prime minister, has recently been embroiled in a court case defending allegations of corruption but remains a powerful figure in Israel in politics.

Although Israel remains bitterly split politically, Mr Netanyahu is still popular amongst a significant section of the population, but he has struggled in the past elections to form decisive coalitions.

He has spent much of his year in opposition actively undermining the coalition government and encouraging opposition parties to vote against government bills, culminating in the defeat of a bill earlier in the month, restoring certain rights to Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Voting against the renewal of that legislation went against Mr Netanyahu's politics and was seen to be brazenly opportunist - it also alienated some of his support.

However, the Bibi-factor will almost certainly dominate the election campaign, and what he says and does will determine much of the course of the coming months as Israel prepares to go to the polls again.

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2022-06-20 18:08:07Z
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French elections: What now for opposition left and far-right? - BBC

French far right candidate Marine Le Pen of the RN, Rassemblement National party (National Rally in French), talks to the media

They were the big winners of France's elections, tearing apart President Emmanuel Macron's majority.

The broad left-wing alliance under Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen's far right were described as a pincer movement from the extremes by our Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield.

They are poles apart but have largely the same ambition of opposing the centrist Macron government.

For veteran far-left leader Mr Mélenchon the success of the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (Nupes) was in achieving the "total rout" of an "arrogant" president in less than a month.

Winning 131 seats was a substantial achievement and he took his own France Unbowed (LFI) party from 17 seats to 79. But opinion polls had suggested Nupes could win far more and even its leader felt the results were "rather disappointing".

He had adopted the slogan "Mélenchon, prime minister", and there is no chance of that happening now even if he swears he is not leaving politics. He is no longer an elected MP and it is too early to say whether his alliance of mainstream Socialists and Greens with the far-left LFI and Communists will survive in the long term.

He has called for Nupes to become a single political grouping in the Assembly, but that's been met with a chorus of derision from the Socialists, Greens and Communists. "There was never any question of one single group," said Socialist MP Pierre Jouvet.

The surprise of the elections was the success of Marine Le Pen's far right National Rally, which increased its presence in the Assembly tenfold. A look at the dark blue areas on the map shows how far they have spread from their strongholds in the deep south and Pas de Calais in the north.

Map shows the results of the French legislative elections

Their success in 89 seats came even though Ms Le Pen was barely visible on the campaign trail in the two weeks before the vote.

And it was unexpected because traditionally her party never does well in Assembly elections due to a so-called republican front - when mainstream voters' parties pull together to stop extreme forces winning.

What changed this time was that the far right won more than half of its 108 run-offs with the Macron alliance Ensemble. "Yesterday the republican front died at a local level," said Mathieu Gallard of pollsters Ipsos.

Supporters of both left and far right loathed "Macronism" so much that they stopped voting against each other, he said.

That gives Marine Le Pen an unprecedented chance to influence politics in the National Assembly and, unlike Jean-Luc Mélenchon, she has decided to lead the party's biggest ever group of MPs.

National Rally MP Laurent Jacobelli said the Assembly had changed its face and would no longer be filled with a team of pro-Macron "yes-men" ready to accept his every proposal. "We will be a determined, constructive opposition," he said.

Ungovernable? France takes stock after Macron blow

Both parties aim to resist the president's programme of reforms, although National Rally has said it may back measures to alleviate the cost of living crisis if their own proposals are adopted.

Where the two parties are united is in opposition to the president's bid to raise gradually the retirement age from 62 to 65. The far right wants to keep it as it is, and Nupes wants to bring the pension age down to 60.

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2022-06-20 14:37:32Z
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Rabu, 22 Juni 2022

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Afghanistan: The basics

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