“Three key CAG reports were tabled in Parliament on Friday indicting the government of causing a combined loss of crores of rupees to the national exchequer.
The much-awaited CAG report on coal block allotment said private firms are likely to gain Rs 1.86 lakh crore from coal blocks that were allocated to them on nomination basis instead of competitive bidding.”
“The set of over 120 photos show three couples in various acts of congress in a hotel room. But the money shot, so to speak, is of five of the members posing for an awkward group picture, complete with double-fisted breast grope. Look at them. It’s like they’re a big happy, pervy family. (You can see more, very NSFW images from the collection here.)
China Blocks Photos of Sex Scandal
The photos initially surfaced last week with the mocking title “comrades in charge,” as two of the men were thought to be Wang Minsheing, head of the Communist Party in Lujiang county, in the eastern province of Anhui, and his second-in-command. (NotP90X fans, apparently.) Delighted/outraged Chinese netizens shared elaborate NSFWphotoananalyses and various amusing memes like this Nike spoof and the one to the left that plays on claims the images were photoshopped.
The buzz grew to the point that the State Council Information Office, China’s head web censor, was forced to issue an official directive that “all websites must stop following and hyping the so-called ‘Lujiang Indecent Photos Incident.’” Currently the phrases “naked photos” and “vulgar photos” are banned from Weibo, which means Chinese netizens will sadly be missing out on Katie Perry‘s epic accidental mooning.
But don’t take the swift and total crackdown on these photos as an admission of guilt! The Communist party has vigorously denied that these are their guys, even though they do share quite a resemblence, judging from pictures. At first they claimed the images were photoshopped, an old Anthony Weiner classic. But then they backtracked and said the pics were real but the Party officials had been misidentified, according to Offbeat China. Wang himself spoke up to clear his name, saying he was being “slandered,” possibly as payback over a corruption case he was investigating. The official line that emerged is that the photos were taken back in 2007 and feature random swingers. This digital forensics is an interesting role-reversal for the Communist Party, which is usually the one being exposed for Photoshopping.
Clearly the photos aren’t total fakes, as the third male participant, a poor guy named Wang Yu, has confessed. Wang does have a Communist party connection: He’s the Deputy Secretary of the Communist Youth League of Hefei University in Anhui. He was tracked down by the famous Chinese internet hordes known as “human flesh search engines,” who band together to identify internet villains, according to theGlobal Times. Now he’s been fired along with his wife, a middle school teacher who was also in the photos.
“Yesterday morning, the indecent photos continue to spread, friends began to “human flesh search. By noon yesterday, friends pointed out that the photo of a man suspected of a Youth League deputy secretary in Anhui Wang (a pseudonym), Wang Li series, working together with. Those working in Wang and indecent photographs of a man does have a similar place. Reporter login to the official website of the Academy Youth League, Wang regiment, deputy secretary for the College. But when call the office phone, no answer.’
The winners of the 24th annual National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest have just been announced, with a group of ten photos coming out on top, plus one Viewer’s Choice winner. These eleven images were chosen from more than 12,000 entries submitted by 6,615 photographers from 152 countries. National Geographic was kind enough to allow me to share the winning photographs with you here, from four categories: Travel Portraits, Outdoor Scenes, Sense of Place, and Spontaneous Moments. Also, be sure to see the earlier entry featuring 40 images from the submissions to this year’s contest..
Mark Peters, an avid fisherman from Martinez, California, recently posted a spectacular underwater video of a school of dolphins on Vimeo, and within a week, it went totally viral. After garnering more than 600K views in three days on Vimeo alone, “The Blue” has been featured on Good Morning America, CBS news, The Today Show and various other media outlets. The 4-minute film, shot on a goPro Hero2 and encased in a special housing, shows surprisingly crisp footage of dolphins trailing a boat while Mr. Peters and his colleagues fished for albacore. Mr. Peters says the dolphins followed them for about 15 minutes.
Viewers either were completely amazed by the quality of the footage or questioned its authenticity, arguing that CGI made the dolphins come alive.
“Tell me a movie that looks as real as my footage that used CGI. I don’t even think Avatar looks as real as my footage,” he told Creativity. “I mean they spent millions of dollars. At first I was flattered but now I’m just tired of the comments.”
Mr. Peters says that many things contributed to the videos’ quality. The GoPro Hero 2 camera he used is known for its HD resolution. But instead of using a curved lens, Mr. Peters replaced it with a flat lens that he says works better for underwater filming.
The curved lens is “a very wide angle lens. There’s something about when you put it in water, that curvature distorts the image a bit. Makes it kind of blurry.” Additionally, they were fishing up to 20 miles off the coast of Santa Cruz, in clearer water, and used a clear housing for the camera; this all aided in the videos clarity.
“I made the housing clear that most of its invisible. I think the dolphins were intrigued by it. They were looking into it. When they’re there, their eye is looking inside the camera,” he said.
His intended audience was an online fishing forum. With up to 10,000 people in the forum, he was expecting to only reach 800-1000 views. Although he didn’t intend to have any commercial gain from the video, Mr. Peters says he’s looking into stock photo and image companies like Footage Search and iStock Photo to help license the footage.
And, if you’re not willing to take Mr. Peters’ word for it, we asked two visual effects experts, Framestore‘s William Bartlett and The Mill’s Angus Kneale, to weigh in on the video’s authenticity.
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