Vlaardingen is a city in South Holland in the Netherlands. It is located on the north bank of the Nieuwe Maas river at the confluence with the Oude Maas; the municipality administers an area of 26.69 km2, of which 23.64 km2 is land, with 72,404 residents in 2019. The city is divided into a southern part by the A20 motorway. On the east the city is separated from Schiedam by the A4 motorway. Other places nearby are Maassluis to the west and Delft to the north and Rotterdam to the east and Spijkenisse in the south-west, on the other side of the Nieuwe Maas; the A20 connects Rotterdam to Hoek van Holland. The Beneluxtunnel connects the A20 to the A15; the centre of the town is on the west side of the old harbour, a stream from the peat lands north and east of the town, running to the Meuse estuary. The area around Vlaardingen was settled by about 2900 to 2600 BC. In 1990, a skeleton dated at about 1300 BC was dug up in the periphery of Vlaardingen. Although in the Roman Age a stronghold or maybe a vicus Flenio must have been found in nowadays Vlaardingen, between 250 CE and 700 CE the region seems to have been uninhabited, like much of the west of the Netherlands.

In 726 or 727 the area is again mentioned as In Pagio Marsum, where a little church was established, around which Vlaardingen formed. The church is mentioned on a list of churches Willibrord, the Apostle to the Frisians, inhered to the Abbey of Echternach. In 1018 Vlaardingen was a stronghold of Dirk III, who levied an illegal toll on ships on the Meuse river. An army sent by German Emperor Henry II in order to stop this practice was defeated by Dirk III in the Battle of Vlaardingen. In 1047, his successor Dirk IV repelled another such attack; the first of these battles was commemorated in 2018 by a historical reenactment The flood disaster of December 21, 1163, ended the growth of Vlaardingen. The Counts of Holland moved away and its development stagnated, it is known that in 1273 Vlaardingen was granted city rights by Count of Holland. Older city rights are not provable. In 1574, during the Eighty Years War of Dutch independence, a group of Watergeuzen burnt down Vlaardingen as commanded by William of Orange to prevent the Spanish from capturing the town.

Vlaardingen became a shipbuilding area and a significant harbour for the herring fishing industry. The fishing boats ceased to use Vlaardingen in the years after World War II. In 1855 the former municipality of Zouteveen was merged into the municipality Vlaardingerambacht which in turn was merged with Vlaardingen during the occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War by the Germans in 1941; because of the industrialization in and close to Vlaardingen, the city suffered from heavy air pollution and, pathogenic smog during the 1970s. One day, a high school had to be closed because of the smog. Many environmental groups arose in and around Vlaardingen as it was seen as one of the most polluted cities of the country. Vlaardingen consists of 8 districts/neighbourhoods: Vlaardingen Centrum Westwijk Vettenoordse polder Vlaardingen Oost Ambacht/Babberspolder Holy Zuid Holy Noord Broekpolder Mayor: Annemiek Jetten Seats in the city council after the municipal elections in 2010: Labour Party, 6 seats Vlaardingen Ahead 2000/Livable Vlaardingen, 6 seats Groenlinks, 4 seats People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, 4 seats Christian Democratic Appeal, 3 seats Socialist Party, 3 seats Democrats 66, 2 seats Christian Union/Political Reformed Party, 2 seats City Interests Vlaardingen, 2 seats Proud of the Netherlands, 2 seats General Elderly Alliance, 1 seat A Unilever research centre is located in Vlaardingen.

There are still some ship repair business in Eastern Vlaardingen beside the Nieuwe Maas River. The Vulcaanhaven was for many years the largest owned artificial harbour in the world; the last major herring factory, Warmelo & Van Der Drift, left Vlaardingen in the middle of 2012 to relocate to Katwijk aan Zee. There are still some ferry terminals. Historical buildings in the town include the Grote Kerk, the Waag next to the church and the old town hall, all on the Markt, the former marketplace, the Visbank at the harbour and the Oude Lijnbaan; the Grote Kerk was established between 1156 and 1164 and has been expanded and rebuilt. To the north of the old harbour is the old Aeolus) windmill, which operates and sells ground cereals; the harbour is a open-air museum with old ships. At the harbour is the Museum Vlaardingen, a museum dedicated to commercial sea fishing and lore. A war memorial to the crew of a Wellington bomber from No. 142 Squadron RAF killed when it was shot down over Vlaardingen in March 1942 has been erected in Wijkpark Holy-Noord in June 2012.

On Emaus Cemetery in Vlaardinger Ambacht six members of the resistance group "Geuzen" are buried. They were executed in March 1941. Nine adjacent headstones are symbolic for nine other members of the "Geuzen" who were also

Compaq Presario V6000 is a series of widescreen 15.4" laptop computers, manufactured by Hewlett Packard. It includes the V6000z series based on AMD processors such as the mobile Sempron and the dual core Turion X2, V6000t based on Intel processors. There have been repeated reliability issues with the AMD based v6000z laptops; the fan algorithm in the BIOS was misconfigured causing overheating and damage to the wireless cards and the motherboard. In late 2007 HP extended the limited warranty to cover these defects; however that date is limited to 2 years from the purchase of the product. If the computer shows no faults until after that 2-year period Hewlett Packard will not repair it, despite the fault being of their own cause. In Australia this resulted in action by the Queensland Office of Fair Trading against Hewlett Packard for misrepresenting customers' rights, resulting in an agreed AU$3 million settlement; the computer is available with the following processors: AMD Sempron 1 Core, 1 Logical Processor (Compaq Presario V6000 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-53 AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-50 AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-52 AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-56 AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-58 Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 Intel Pentium dual-core T2130 Max screen resolution: 1280x800 Memory expandable to 3 GB of memory Built in wireless LAN receiver Some were equipped with 802.1g Bluetooth.

Which was powered by HP software. Microsoft Windows XP Home Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Microsoft Windows XP Professional Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade to Windows 7 ultimate is possible; the Left hinge would crack and the screen would end up breaking Overheating of the processor would cause damage to the Motherboard and/or the wireless card and Bluetooth, HP is giving a free repair for these faults. It is recommended that you update the BIOS before potential defects occur Faulty BIOS could ruin the system and cause it to fail and not switch onThese problems were reported on many HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop computers as well

Les Houmets are to the east of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Their name derives from a diminutive of hou, a Norman/Guernésiais word meaning islets, they are tidal islands. Among the islets are Houmet Benest/Houmet Benêt, Houmet Paradis and Houmet Hommetol. Although Victor Hugo suggests that they were eroded by quarrying, Victor Coysh disagrees saying: "While much work of this nature was in progress in the parishes of the Vale and St. Sampson in the last century, quarrying was not responsible for any marked alteration in the coast off which Les Houmets lie. In fact, they have been islets for a long time, as ancient maps reveal. Did the author visit them, I wonder." Victor Hugo who wrote about many of the Channel Islands in his books, described Les Houmets, in his work The Toilers of the Sea. Gilliat, the main character lives on Houmet Paradis: "This house was called the Bû de la Rue, it was situated on the point of a tongue of land, or rather of rock, that made a little separate harbour in the creek of Houmet Paradis.

The water was deep here. This house was all alone on the point off the land, with just enough land for a small garden; the high tides sometimes inundated the garden. Between the port of St. Sampson and the creek of Houmet Paradis rises a steep hill, surmounted by the block of towers covered with ivy, known as Vale Castle, or the Château de l’Archange, she was an Englishwoman. She had a name which the Guernsey pronunciation and the country folks’ bad spelling had converted into'Gilliatt.'...the house of the Bû de la Rue was haunted at this period. For more than thirty years no one had inhabited it, it was falling into ruins. The garden, so invaded by the sea, could produce nothing. Besides noises and lights seen there at night-time, the house had this mysterious peculiarity: any one who should leave there in the evening, upon the mantelpiece, a ball of worsted, a few needles, a plate filled with soup, would assuredly find in the morning the soup consumed, the plate empty, a pair of mittens ready knitted.

The house, demon included, was offered for sale for a few pounds sterling. The stranger woman became the purchaser, evidently tempted by the devil, or by the advantageous bargain."She did more than purchase the house. The Bû de la Rue has found a fit tenant, said the country people; the haunting ceased. There was no longer any light seen there save that of the tallow candle of the newcomer.'Witch’s candle is as good as devil’s torch.' The proverb satisfied the gossips of the neighbourhood..."Today it would be useless to look for the cove of Houmet Paradis, for Gilliat's house and for the creek where he sheltered the boat. The Bû de la Rue no longer exists; the little peninsula where this house stood has fallen under the pick-axe of the destroyers of the sea-cliffs and has been loaded, cart-load, by cart-load, on the vessels belonging to the dealers in rocks and granite... All this ridge of rock has been long ago taken to London."The novel was written in the 1860s and set in the 1820s when the islands were still inhabited.

Houmet Benest/Benêt is about two hundred yards from the shore, preceded by a small rock called "Hommet" from the same root. It is triangular, 80 × 50 yards. There is an 18th-century gun battery here; the German occupation added their own, the British another after the Germans left. The steamer Clarrie sank off Houmet Benêt in 1921, in the Great Roussel. Heathery Brae in 1952 tried to salvage it, but ended up being wrecked itself, there are the wrecks of Vixen and Romp went ashore here, it is covered in grass and brambles. Houmet Paradis, the fictional Gilliat's home, was known as Houmet de l'Eperquerie, as it was used for fish gutting, drying on stands known as perques, it was owned by the Collas family, whose estate at Paradis, gave the islet its new name. In the 1920s, it was used for quarrying, it was used for grazing cattle, has a lot of grass. In 1951 it was sold to James Watson of Newcastle upon Tyne for the sum of £500 who placed the island under the stewardship of the National Trust of Guernsey.

It remained within the family until 2004 when it was sold at auction by James Watson's grandson to a local consortium with the intention of maintaining the island as a nature reserve. Hommetol, more called Omptolle by the Ordnance Survey etc. is used for gathering ormer. It is covered in thrift. Coysh, Victor Channel Islets Hugo, Victor The Toilers of the Sea Houmet Paradis site, Guernsey National Trust

The legal status of the Universal Life Church encompasses a collection of court decisions and state executive branch pronouncements determining what rights the Universal Life Church and comparable organizations have as religious organizations. With respect to the validity of ordinations for the purposes of those ordained performing ceremonies with civic consequences such as marriages, individual U. S. states and other countries have made varying determinations hinging their decisions on whether ordination was obtained in person or by some remote means, such as by mail, by phone, or over the internet. As of 2019, all but a handful of states allow those ordained by the ULC to perform marriages; the tax-exempt status of the organization, of ministries formed by people whom it has ordained, has been raised as a legal issue. The Internal Revenue Service assumed a negative stance towards the ULC, at times has sought to eliminate the organization's tax-exempt status under a number of theories, with varying results.

In the 1964 case of Universal Life Church Inc. vs. United States of America, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that the Court would not "praise or condemn a religion, however excellent or fanatical or preposterous it may seem," as "to do so... would impinge on the guarantees of the First Amendment..." All subsequent cases have ruled in favor of Universal Life Church as a legal and valid church establishment. The United States military chaplain's handbook lists ULC as a recognized church; the Internal Revenue Service sued in the 1970s, arguing the ULC was not considered a religious group. The IRS denied the Church's application for tax exempt status in 1969 and again in 1970 on the ground that the Church had engaged in activities outside the religious activities contemplated by the Internal Revenue Code provisions for § 501 charitable organizations. After paying the taxes and interest due for fiscal year ending April 30, 1969, the Church brought a suit for refund and prevailed in the case of Universal Life Church v.

The United States of America, with Judge James Franklin Battin's ruling for the ULC. The district court found that the contested activities were not a substantial enough part of the Church's activities to justify denying the exemption. A 1983 ruling of the Australian High Court that a religion need not have a belief in God to be recognized was characterized as opening the door for the Universal Life Church, among others, to operate in that Australia; the following year, in the United States, the IRS again revoked the Church's tax exempt status. The Church brought a declaratory judgment action in the United States Court of Federal Claims with respect to its tax-exempt status for the years covered; the Court of Federal Claims upheld the revocation on the ground that the Church had not been operated for tax-exempt purposes as required by I. R. C. § 501. In 1997, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the revocation of § 501 status by the IRS against a procedural challenge regarding the timing of this revocation.

The various lawsuits were settled in 2000 with the church paying $1.5 million in back taxes. In 2001, religious scholar James R. Lewis wrote that the IRS had "always suspected the ULC of being nothing but a tax dodge", noting that the IRS once ruled "that ULC congregations could not receive tax-exempt status because they had no formal beliefs", a determination, overturned by a federal court ruling that "First Amendment forbade any branch of the government to tell any church whether it must have beliefs or not"; the IRS has ruled in some years, but not in others, that the church and various splinter groups formed from it were tax exempt, depending on issues such as the filing of annual statements. Most individual U. S. states recognize the church as a legal entity by extending recognition to its ministers. Not all states recognize the ULC as a nonprofit organization; the ULC assists its ministers who experience problems with being recognized in their home state or country. A large number of people seeking ULC ordination do so in order to be able to officiate at weddings or perform other spiritual rites.

Sources have reported a 29% increase in the number of friends or family members acting as wedding officiant since 2009, resulting in over 40% of couples in the US in 2016 choosing this option. It has been noted that "ecause the ULC is by far the largest provider of ordinations, online or otherwise, its ministers have been the subject of all or all of the litigation about online ordination and marriage". Ministers ordained by the Universal Life Church are recognized as wedding celebrants, except in "a handful of states that don't recognize as valid marriages performed by ministers ordained online". In states that do not, the solemnization of a marriage by a minister of the Universal Life Church may result in the validity of the marriage being questioned. In countries where ULC ministers have no authority to solemnize lawful marriage, ministers must meet other requirements which might include registering as a notary public, justice of the peace or marriage commissioner; the ULCM notes that "hile several ministers of the Universal Life Church have registered and acted as wedding celebrants in Australia, the Universal Life Church's legal standing there is not as firm as it is in the United States and elsewhere", further noting that they "are seeking stronger recogn

Mill Hill Substation Pastures is a fifteen-hectare Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation in Mill Hill in the London Borough of Barnet. The reserve consists of pastures grazed by horses around Mill Hill Electricity Substation; these contain patches of unimproved herb-rich pasture on damp clay soil. Locally uncommon plants include devil's bit scabious, pepper-saxifrage and red bartsia; the dividing hedges appear to be old, Burtonhole Brook, a tributary of Folly Brook, flows through the site, adding to its diversity of habitat. The hedgerows and woodland provide a refuge for birds; the reserve is on private land. Nature reserves in Barnet

Dance Star is a 2010 British dance musical film set in Essex, UK. It was directed by Steven M. Smith; the cast includes Megan Little Vivien Creegor and Jon-Paul Gates. A teenager named Josie has never auditioned for anybody at a professional level, but when her father leaves the family home she decides to enter a local talent competition which reveals her innate ability to dance. Kristina Ballard as Judge Master Vivien Creegor as Helen Jon-Paul Gates as Mr. Draper Jasmine Harris as Sara Rebecca Hedges as Morgan Megan Little as Josie Laura Macallister as Sophia Bruce Payne as Harry John Scott as Judge #2 Chantelle Severin as Trish Steven M. Smith as Colin Tabitha Smythe as Keeta Damion Spencer as Street Dancer #1 Official website Dance Star on IMDb