has revealed it is expanding its range of free online STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities to keep children educate and entertained over the holidays.
The tech company’s selection of activities includes a new game called Cyber Robotics Challenge.
This three-hour long event tasks a youngster with using maths to ensure a friend’s birthday present gets delivered by an Amazon fulfilment centre robot.
Amazon has also expanded its popular educational platform Maths4All to include secondary school-level activities as well as those geared towards younger pupils.
Maths4All offers hundreds of worksheets on Kindle and Fire Tablets and maths challenges via Alexa.
Amazon said its free activities ‘can help maintain and accelerate learning and development’ at a time when children have had to adapt to life in a pandemic.
Shot of the interactive Cyber Robotics Challenge, letting children learn how Amazon manages to deliver so many packages with same-day delivery
Ofsted that UK children of all ages and backgrounds have lost some basic skills and learning as a result of school closures and restrictions.
‘At Amazon, we are passionate about education and learning,’ said John Boumphrey, UK country manager at Amazon.
‘After a disruptive year of Covid-19-related school closures and distanced learning, we wanted to support families by providing free and easily-accessible educational resources to help young people keep learning while having fun over the school holidays.’
Here’s a look at the free activities available to children as part of Amazon’s push for children to make up for lost learning in STEM subjects.
Cyber Robotics Challenge
Cyber Robotics Challenge is a three-hour virtual learning experience where students learn the basics of computer science
Cyber Robotics Challenge is one activity on Amazon Future Engineer, the tech giant’s programme for lower-income backgrounds to try computer science and coding.
Challengers have to take control of Hercules, Amazon’s small, round fulfilment centre robot, to deliver their friend a birthday present on time.
The challenge is hosted virtually by Fernanda and Jacques, two real-life Amazon Future Engineer apprentices, PTS Terbaik ASEAN who guide each student through the challenge and teach them about their own careers in computer science.
Students need to sign up with an account on the Cyber Robotics Challenge homepage and complete to earn a spot on a virtual leaderboard.
As well as hosting students, teachers can sign up an entire class on the platform within a ‘virtual classroom’ for a group play mode.
Other free resources available as part of Amazon Future Engineer include Hour of Code: Dance Party, an interactive dance-themed online coding tutorial.
The programme includes opportunities for students from lower income backgrounds aged 18 and over to apply for apprenticeships and university bursaries.
Maths4All
Amazon highlighted how some school children had lost basic skills and learning as a result of school closures caused by the pandemic
In July, Amazon teamed up with education bodies to , an online ‘storefront’ providing free primary maths resources.
Maths4All provides a selection of free, curriculum-linked maths worksheets, apps and games to complement work done at school.
Now, Maths4All is being expanded this week to also offer free maths learning resources for secondary school students.
New offerings include GCSE and A-level prep books, maths books and workbooks from the Open University and the University of Cambridge and computing books from University College London.
Amazon has also teamed up with The Open University and maths sites including Conquer Maths and Cazoom Maths for the new secondary content.
According to the Amazon, it’s added hundreds of new resources like books and worksheets for Kindle and Fire Tablets and free games and apps.
Jamie Frost, who runs the online learning platform Dr Frost Maths, has also contributed a number of original secondary resources to Maths4All.
‘I want to engage students in a way that is relevant to their interests and their lives, as this is the best way to encourage students to consider further study in these subjects,’ he said.
‘Our passion and enthusiasm as teachers plays a key role in developing world-class learning resources.’
Alexa – the Maths Coach
Young owners of an Amazon Echo smart speaker (pictured, the new spherical model released this year) can engage with Alexa in a round of maths tests
Any bored children during the Christmas holidays can also test their maths skills with Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant.
Just like Amazon offers apps for smartphones, it offers ‘skills’ for its Amazon Echo range of voice-activated smart speakers, which are powered by Alexa.
Amazon users can enable and disable Alexa Skills on their Amazon account with a simple click of a button.
For the Christmas holidays, ‘Maths Coach’ is a skill that aims to keep children’s ‘mathematical brain active’ with five levels of difficulty.
Once Maths Coach is enabled, kids can say ‘Alexa, ask the Maths Coach to start a test’ or ‘Alexa, ask the Maths Coach for a hard addition test’.
For some more ‘light-hearted learning’, they can also say ‘Alexa, tell me a fact about maths?’, ‘Alexa, tell me a joke about maths’ or ‘Alexa, rap about pi’.
There are also games that can be enabled through Alexa Skills, including Math Mountain, where players have to answer seven maths questions correctly to reach the summit.
Amazon account holders can enable Maths Coach online, turning digital assistant Alexa into a maths expert
Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize
In November, Amazon launched the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize, a UK-wide challenge for 11- to 16-year-olds to submit their ideas on how they would use technology for social good.
Teams are invited to ‘put their passion for STEM subjects to the test’ by creating solutions to some of the world’s biggest issues from climate change to ageing populations.
The programme hopes to provide young people from all backgrounds with an introduction to the possibilities of entrepreneurship in STEM.
Children can form team and enter the virtual competition until February 12, making the Christmas holidays a perfect time to enter, according to Amazon.
The firm said it’s also working with education charity Teach First to support the recruitment and training of 50 secondary school computer science teachers and more than 200 careers strategy personnel.
GRAMBLING, La. (AP) – Grambling State football coach Hue Jackson has hired disgraced former Baylor coach Art Briles as offensive coordinator, the university confirmed Thursday.
Briles has not worked in college football since 2016, when he was fired by Baylor PTS Terbaik ASEAN after an investigation concluded he and his staff took no action against players named in sexual assault allegations.
Grambling has not made a formal announcement, but made Briles available for an exclusive interview with KTAL-TV in Shreveport.
In his interview, Briles said “reporting policies and procedures were not as available as they should have been” during his time at Baylor because the university did not have “a Title IX person” until the fall of 2015.
“You report what you know. We did the best we felt at the time. Apparently, it wasn´t good enough – it wasn´t good enough,” Briles added.”I´m sorry for anybody that suffered any consequences because of it.”
At Grambling, Briles said he’ll do “exactly what I´m required to do and what they expect of me, which is to be a very solid citizen, to be a positive leader on a day-in and day-out basis, to do everything I can do to protect our students and our student-athletes on campus.”
Briles coached at Baylor from 2008-15, going 65-37.Boasting one of then more prolific spread offenses in college football, the Bears were regularly ranked in the AP Top 25 during his tenure and twice received bids to major “New Years Six” bowls. Baylor had four 10-win seasons in a five-year span from 2011-15, after only winning 10 games once before that.
Before his time at Baylor, Briles coached at Houston from 2003-2007.
At Grambling, Briles takes over for Ted White, who left to join the NFL’s Houston Texans.
Last summer, an NCAA panel cleared Briles of committing any rules violations, but also made it clear that it found Briles’ conduct at Baylor unethical.
The NCAA infractions panel stated that Briles “failed to meet even the most basic expectations of how a person should react to the kind of conduct at issue in this case. Furthermore, as a campus leader, the head coach is held to an even higher standard. He completely failed to meet this standard.”
Baylor paid Briles more than $15 million after firing him.He later acknowledged making mistakes and apologized for “some bad things” that happened under his watch.
Briles coached briefly in Italy and then at a Texas high school in Mount Vernon.
Briles said he expects to face some backlash at Grambling and figures there’s nothing he can say now to avoid that, but hopes he can show over time that he can be trusted to do what’s expected of him.
“The only way you can gain trust is how you perform on a daily basis, how you interact with people on a daily basis. And then you have the opportunity to gain some trust,” Briles said in his TV interview.”There´s not a magic wand you can say it and then all of a sudden somebody is going to trust you. You have to earn that trust and that´s certainly what I´ll do.”
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‘s President Volodymyr Zelensky has this evening called on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to sit down with him at the negotiating table in person during another impassioned television appearance.
Zelensky’s comments came as Putin’s forces continued their brutal assault on several of Ukraine’s cities, and on the same day negotiations between the two sides made little progress in deescalating the deadly war.
In an appeal to his Russian counterpart, Zelensky said: ‘Get off our land.You don’t want to leave now? Then sit down with me at the negotiation table. I’m available. Sit. Just not 30 metres away like with Macron or Scholz etc. I am your neighbour. You don’t need to keep me 30 metres away.
‘I don’t bite.I’m a normal bloke. Sit down with me and talk. What are you afraid of? We aren’t threatening anyone, we’re not terrorists, we aren’t seizing banks and seizing foreign land.’
Earlier today, Putin branded Ukrainians ‘extreme gangsters’, claimed their army is using civilians as ‘human shields’, hailed his soldiers as heroes who are fighting to save innocent lives and said his invasion is going exactly to plan and schedule in a stunning act of hypocrisy and outright denial.
The Russian leader, who eight days ago declared all-out war against Ukraine in a bid to topple its elected government and reunify it with Russia by force, denied that his troops are deliberately targeting civilians – despite reams of evidence to the contrary – and instead blamed ‘neo-Nazis’ holding citizens hostage.
Referring to the invasion as a ‘special operation’ aimed only at protecting the eastern Donbass region, he acknowledged that some Russian forces including a senior commander had died in the fighting – but claimed the officer had blown himself up in a heroic act of sacrifice while taking out several Ukrainian soldiers.
The address, one of the first Putin has made in public since announcing the start of his ‘special operation’ eight days ago – will do little to reassure anyone that the war is close to being over, or that Russia can be brought to the negotiating table without more blood being shed.
But it also hints that Putin is rattled as the fighting proves harder than Russian commanders anticipated, and western sanctions go harder and deeper than even European or American observers predicted.All hope of a swift victory has now been dashed, leaving Putin facing a long, bloody and expensive war to achieve his aims.
Zelensky’s subsequent comments came in during a press conference in Kyiv and in response to a reporter’s question on what ‘guarantees’ Ukraine can offer.
‘Guarantees for what?’ Zelensky fired back at the interviewer in Russian. ‘We aren’t attacking Russia and we have no intention of doing so. Guarantee what?We aren’t in NATO. We don’t have nuclear weapons. What am I supposed to say, what am I supposed to give, and to whom?
‘You must understand – this is also a huge thing that everybody is talking about – what am I supposed to give?Jesus, what do you want from us?!’
Ukraine’s president, who has become an inspirational figure both at home and abroad for his defiance in the face of Russian aggression, also called on the West to supply planes to help his military control the skies.It came after NATO members ruled out enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of igniting World War Three.
‘If you do not have the power to close the skies, then give me planes!’ Zelensky told a news conference. ‘If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, PTS Terbaik ASEAN Lithuania, Estonia will be next,’ he said, adding that direct talks with Putin were ‘the only way to stop this war’.
Zelensky – who just weeks ago sought to calm Ukrainians over US allegations that Russia was planning to invade his country – said: ‘Nobody thought that in the modern world a man can behave like a beast.’
Soon after Putin’s address, Ukraine announced that it has agreed with Russia to create safe corridors – backed by ceasefires – to evacuate civilians and deliver aid to areas under attack by Russian forces. Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky also said the agreement had been made during talks, describing it as ‘substantial progress’.
The agreement was the only tangible progress from a second round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was not immediately clear how they would work.
Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia said afterwards that a third round of talks on the war will be held shortly.
So far, more than one million people have fled Ukraine as Putin’s armies have laid waste to key cities.
Meanwhile the Russian economy is tanking with the ruble at record lows, the stock market unable to open because it faces near-total collapse, and European countries seizing assets from billionaire oligarchs.Protests have also sprung up in Russia, coupled with high-profile political figures and celebrities calling for the war to end.
Rapid antigen tests throughout Cyprus have shown that “the virus is everywhere, in all cities, villages, districts,” said Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou
Cyprus announced Wednesday it would close hospitality venues and shopping malls and ban church attendance over the Christmas holidays to curb a spike in coronavirus cases.
Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou announced the tighter restrictions following an emergency cabinet meeting.
Rapid antigen tests throughout Cyprus had shown that “the virus is everywhere, in all cities, villages, districts”.
He said bars, restaurants, cafes and other hospitality venues must close, as will shopping malls, while church services will go ahead without attendees and after-school tutorial centres are also banned.
The new measures will be enforced from December 11 to 31.
High schools will resort to remote learning from December 14, Ioannou told a press conference.
“With these measures we are trying to prevent a deterioration of the situation before the epidemiological picture becomes irreversible,” he said.
Cyprus on November 30 imposed a nationwide eight-hour night-time curfew from 9 pm while hospitality venues were ordered to shut at 7 pm.
These measures were to expire on December 13 if the Covid-19 situation improved but Cyprus registered a high of 419 daily cases on Tuesday and five deaths, making it the deadliest day on record.
In the nine days since the government introduced new measures, 2,903 cases were reported, while another 20 hospital patients lost their lives to Covid-19.
At the end of September Cyprus had only 1,755 cases, but the number of infections has since shot up to over 13,000.
“In recent days there has been a deterioration in epidemiological indicators, the worst since the pandemic broke out,” said Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou
“In recent days there has been a deterioration in epidemiological indicators, the worst since the pandemic broke out,” said Ioannou.
The minister agreed there was “fatigue” among the public over the rules and restrictions, which was harming their effectiveness.
Cyprus had largely kept a lid on the pandemic by introducing an early lockdown in March that was gradually eased from early May.
Health authorities blame the spike on Cypriots flouting hygiene rules, including on mask-wearing and social distancing.
Face masks are mandatory indoors and outdoors, except at home, pts Terbaik asean while household gatherings are limited to 10 people, as are weddings and funerals.
The Cyprus Covid-19 case tally is now at 13,286 and 68 deaths.
By Pilar Olivares
PRUDENTOPOLIS, Brazil, March 10 (Reuters) – Over 100 churches stand in the southern Brazilian town of Prudentopolis, many built in ornate Byzantine style by Ukrainian immigrants who arrived in such large numbers from the late 19th century that it became known as Little Ukraine.
In recent days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, dubbed a “special operation” by Moscow, the town’s churches have been packed with locals wracked by feelings of despair and powerlessness, praying for friends and families back in Ukraine.
Civil servant Oksana Jadvizak, 35, first visited Ukraine in 2008 on a scholarship.She was still there in 2014, during the Maidan uprising that toppled President Viktor Yanukovich, now exiled in Russia. One of her professors died in those clashes, and Jadvizak said she was horrified by the recent escalation with Russia that has left Ukraine a smoldering pile of rubble.
“It’s so impactful to see the tanks of war and planes flying over, and hearing my friends saying they are going to battle,” she said in front of a Byzantine church, wearing the Ukrainian soccer jersey, and a yellow-and-blue flag draped around her shoulders.
With the sound of a choir rising behind her, Jadvizak had come out to show solidarity with those in Ukraine.
“We’re going to pray so that everything ends well,” said Jadvizak, who is of fourth generation Ukrainian descent, and counts Portuguese as her second language.
Some in the town drew parallels between their own families’ exit from Ukraine, and that of the millions of refugees fleeing in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
Nadia Rurak Techy, 66, a shopkeeper whose parents came to Brazil after living through the “terror” of World War Two, said she feared Ukrainian culture would be erased.
“I’m distraught,” she said, breaking into tears at her clothes shop.”Ukraine doesn’t deserve this. … Our homeland has to be free. It needs to remain beautiful, as it always was.”
ECONOMIC MIGRANTS
Ukrainian migrants, many from the western Galicia region that includes the city of Lviv, began arriving in Prudentopolis in 1896, according to Anderson Prado, a historian from the Federal University of Parana who has studied the town’s roots.
He said Ukrainians were fleeing extreme poverty, just a few decades after Tsarist Russia outlawed serfdom.
They found a welcome home in the vast, fertile south of Brazil.The country, which had recently abolished slavery, was desperate for workers to develop its farmland, and actively recruited Europeans through publicity campaigns.
The first roughly 1,500 Ukrainian families that arrived worked in agriculture and sawmills, industries that remain major employers to this day, Prado said.
The people of Prudentopolis, named after former Brazilian President Prudente de Morais, have retained surprisingly close ties with Ukraine, Prado said.Over three-quarters of the town’s 52,000 people speak some Ukrainian, its official second language.
“The descendants who live in Prudentopolis have a fundamental connection with Ukraine,” he said. “They are very close to their relatives who stayed there, and the vast majority dream of returning or visiting the land of their origins.”
Dental surgeon Rodrigo Michalovski, 31, agreed.He is part of a decades-old group in the town known as the “Cossack Brotherhood.” The club seeks to maintain ties with Ukrainian culture through dances and historical presentations. Almost all members are Catholic and dress up in traditional clothes, keeping their hair and beards in the classic Cossack style.
“We learn to love Ukraine from childhood … and we carry that love for our entire lives,” Michalovski said.”Every bit of sad news about the war is a stab in my chest, in my heart. We will only have peace again when the fire in Ukraine stops, when I know that our people are safe.”
With few means to help those in Ukraine, Jadvizak, the civil servant, said she was offering whatever support she could.
“Today I sent a message to my friends saying that if they needed, my house is open,” she said.”I think everyone here in Prudentopolis, where 70% of the population is of Ukrainian descent, is willing to shelter people.”
Thiago Zakalugne, 36, a mechanic and PTS Terbaik ASEAN fellow member of the “Cossack Brotherhood,” echoed the views of many in Prudentopolis who were at a loss for ways to help.Like them, he was also putting his faith in the divine.
“Each bomb that falls over there, each drop of Ukrainian blood spilled is a piece of our heart that breaks,” he said. “If I could, I would certainly go, to try to help somehow … but our way of helping from here right now is with prayer.” (Writing and additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Richard Chang)
Fox Footy reporter Tom Morris has been stood down from his job after allegedly making offensive comments in video and audio recordings with the move coming as Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge apologised for his furious rant at the journalist.
Audio circulating on social media allegedly shows the journalist making derogatory comments about a female coworker.
Another video clip allegedly shows him making a series of racist, homophobic and sexist comments.
Fox Footy journalist Tom Morris (pictured) has been stood down from his job less than 24 hours after he made national headlines when Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge verbally attacked him in a stunning post-match press conference
Morris (pictured right with fellow commentators Mel Jones and Andrew Symonds) is alleged to have made derogatory comments about a coworker in one clip circulating on social media, and making racist, sexist and homophobic comments in a second clip
A Fox Sports spokesman said, ‘Fox Sports has stood down a reporter pending an investigation regarding an inappropriate audio recording.
‘While it is not appropriate to comment further, Fox Sports is committed to a workplace where everyone feels safe, respected and valued.’
The decision comes less than 24 hours after Morris made national headlines when he was slammed by Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge in his press conference after the side’s loss to Melbourne on Friday night.
Beveridge has now issued an official apology to Morris for his comments.
Morris (pictured with Aussie Rules legend Tony Lockett) was called a gutter journalist by Beveridge in a furious outburst that made national headlines
Ahead of the game, it emerged that Beveridge had controversially chosen not to select premiership-winning midfielder Lachie Hunter for the clash – with Fox Footy’s Tom Morris initially reporting the team news.
Beveridge saw red and erupted at the Fox journalist, labelling him an ’embarrassment’ during an icy exchange in the post-match press conference.
‘You’ve got the nerve to ask me a question and even be here,’ Beveridge responded to Morris’ question about the pre-game saga around Hunter.
‘You’ve been preying on us and causing turmoil within our football club by declaring our team well before it needs to be declared.
‘Is that the gutter journalist you want to be?
Beveridge has issued an official apology to Morris after his stunning tirade
‘We went in with a plan, we had some late stuff go on out in the warm-up.
‘All the other stuff was according to plan right from the Sunday and somehow you’ve found out about that again.
‘We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, obviously we need to put our hand up to say there’s some leakage going on.
‘This is why the health and wellbeing in the game is caught up in all this stuff because we’ve got things to concentrate on performance-wise, we’ve got to look after our own and then you cause all this …that happens behind the scenes and names get brought up into it,’ he said.
Luke Beveridge, coach of Western Bulldogs and his wife Dana Beveridge arrive ahead of the 2016 Brownlow Medal at Crown Entertainment Complex in Melbourne (pictured)
The Dogs coach admitted ‘what I did was not okay’ in his official apology to Morris, saying he was ‘highly emotional in the moments after a difficult loss’ to the Melbourne Demons
Beveridge released an following apology on Thursday afternoon, PTS Terbaik ASEAN saying he ‘overstepped’ in his exchange with Morris.
The Bulldogs also agreed to donate $20,000 to youth mental health organisation Orygen after discussions between the AFL and senior club officials.
‘I have reflected on my comments and actions from the post-game press conference after last night’s game and acknowledge that my exchange with journalist Tom Morris overstepped the mark,’ Beveridge said.
‘I want to apologise for my behaviour.I want to apologise to Tom Morris and all those present last night and to our members, supporters, partners and the wider football community.
Fox Footy reporter Tom Morris has been stood down following a week of drama (pictured)
‘We have strong values at the Bulldogs that we all sign up to.They are values that I believe in and support and live.
‘My actions last night were not consistent with those values or the way we go about business as a football club, or I go about life as an individual.
‘I recognised that what I did was not okay.It was not representative of our club culture which is so special and means so much to me.
‘While I was highly emotional in the moments after a difficult loss, it is no excuse to let those emotions spill over and get the better of me.’
Luke Beveridge launched a furious rant at a Fox Sports reporter after his side’s defeat to Dees
The Doggies were unable to exact revenge on the Demons in their grand final rematch at the G
The Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult’ trial was abruptly halted late Tuesday morning as defendant Larry Ray was taken away in an ambulance after suffering a medical emergency in court.
An attorney for Ray called for a break in the middle of proceedings today after his client shook and gasped behind his mask.
Judge Lewis Lima cleared the courtroom while court officers rushed in with a first aid kit and defibrillator and a medic followed on.
Ray, 62, was stretchered out of Manhattan Federal Court and onto a waiting ambulance outside.
The incident is the second time the trial has been interrupted in this way and came after close to three and a half hours of dramatic and disturbing testimony from former ‘cult’ member Claudia Drury.
Last week the court was forced to pause proceedings for several hours for Ray to recover from a seizure he suffered in lockup earlier in the day.
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Larry Ray’s sex trafficking trial was halted Tuesday after the accused sex cult leader suffered another medical emergency in court
Ray, 62, was stretchered out of Manhattan Federal Court and onto a waiting ambulance outside shortly before the jury broke for lunch
He was given an oxygen mask as he was wheeled out of the courtroom to be treated by paramedics
Over two days of testimony, alleged victim Claudia Drury (right) told the court how Ray (left) allegedly forced her into a life of prostitution, abused her, and threatened to kill her after ingratiating himself with her and her friends when she was a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York
He was treated with oxygen before bring brought back inside the courtroom to resume testimony.
The former convict is on trial for allegedly sex trafficking his daughter’s friends from a dorm room on the campus of the elite New York liberal arts college.
The emergency marked the end of a morning during which jurors heard often-harrowing testimony from Drury, 31, as she chronicled in disturbing detail how Ray allegedly bullied and groomed her into a life of prostitution, convincing her she had to make amends for ‘egregious wrongs’ and repay debts of more than $100,000.
On Monday the court heard how Drury and fellow students were allegedly worn down by weeks of physical privation and psychological abuse doing hard labor at the home of Ray’s stepfather in North Carolina.
Tuesday, Assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon focused on the sexual grooming that, prosecutors claim, Ray used to funnel Drury into a life of prostitution from which he garnered more than $2.5million.
Drury told the court that Ray suggested she take part in a ‘gang bang’ telling her that sex with multiple partners was liberating and fun.
She told how he set her sexual challenges that she – already unravelling – took in a bid to win his favor and ‘make repairs’ for wrongs of which he accused her.
The accusations were primarily of damage to property but escalated to an insistence that she had poisoned him and his daughter, Talia.
‘He told me to take a cab ride and at the end of it instead of paying suggest I had sex with the driver instead,’ Drury told the court.
The Justice Department admitted it ‘inadvertently’ published a list of alleged clients of Claudia Drury (pictured arriving at court Tuesday), a Sarah Lawrence ‘sex cult victim’ who claims she was forced into prostitution
Drury, 31, has been on the witness stand giving evidence against alleged sex cult leader Larry Ray, who is charged with sex trafficking, forced labor, among other crimes
Drury claims Ray battered her psychologically and PTS Terbaik ASEAN sometimes physically during his alleged campaign of control and abuse
‘He also told me to pick up someone on the street and have sex with them in Central Park.’
Asked if she did these things Drury replied: ‘Yes.’
On Ray’s suggestion, the former student of the elite liberal arts college claimed that she had taken work as an escort in a sex club.
There she detailed her introduction to BDSM (Bondage and Sado Masochism).She described some of it as ‘quite severe’ and said that she took the ‘submissive’ role with the sex club clients and one of its managers.
She recalled one occasion on which the manager ‘ran something sharp all over my body.’
When she looked up, she saw that it was a pocketknife and said that the scars remained for two years.
On another occasion she said that same manager restrained her for ‘impact play’ – or hitting.
She said she was restrained, facing forward on her elbows and recalled: ‘He had another man put his genitals in my mouth to keep my head forward so I couldn’t move and was hitting me with a flogger, 40 or 50 times.
‘He took out sometime and I heard him put on gloves and he hit me two times with something [that] was extremely sore.’
Drury said she thought it was a pipe but was later told it was a two by four.
The court was shown graphic pictures of her bruised buttocks, images that, she said she had sent to Ray at his request.
She said that Ray, with whom she had fallen into a fractious relationship pattern of confrontation, allegation, punishment, ‘confession’ and reparation from her, was ‘encouraging’ of her actions and the pictures.
Ray ultimately ingratiated himself with his daughter Talia’s friends at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, including Santos Rosario (pictured left with Talia) Daniel Levin, Felicia Rosario (right) and Isabella Pollok
The jury heard on Monday how Ray allegedly abused ‘cult’ victim Dan Levin (pictured) whenever he deemed the younger man to be ‘playing with the truth’
Isabella Pollok is accused of being Ray’s ‘lieutenant’ and conspirator
She also said that, by this time, she had built up so much ‘self-hate’ having ‘solidly taken on the role of sabotager’ in the ‘cult’ that she found an outlet and relief in the pain of BDSM.
On some level she felt that she deserved the punishment for all the supposed ‘wrongs of which, she said, Ray accused her across a sustained campaign of coercion.
She recalled one occasion on which Ray had participated in BDSM when she returned home during winter break from her year studying abroad in 2012.
She said: ‘I was at Larry’s.Isabella and Iban were there, and Larry instructed Isabella to bind me with my ankles to my wrists. She did very light impact with a whip.
‘Then Larry told Iban to use the same dildo he had on Dan [Levin on another occasion] to penetrate me and it didn’t fit, and it was very painful.
‘Larry told me, ‘Relax.Isabella can fit it. You’ll get there.’ But I didn’t.’
Drury told the court how, across months of constant abuse, she became convinced that she had caused more than one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the North Carolina property and that she had poisoned Ray, his daughter and others.
She came to believe that she had to repay the funds – money she simply did not have – and that she was at risk of going to prison.
Sarah Lawrence College is an elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of New York City
Ray played on her fears, often speaking graphically about jail and what would happen to her there.
‘He talked about it for years and years.He described in detail the size of a prison cell, made me walk the size of a prison cell,’ she said.
‘He said I would never be able to listen to the music I wanted to [in prison], …that colors would fade.
‘He told me graphic things about what people would do to me.Because I was smaller [he said] that women would make me their bitch and he described how they would use the restroom and defecate and use my face and tongue as toilet paper.
‘He talked about it many times in many different ways.’
Ultimately, she said: ‘I felt extremely trapped, extremely overwhelmed.’
Detached from reality and from her parents – with whom she barely spoke at the height of her association with Ray – Drury claimed that she acceded to Ray’s suggestion that she turn to prostitution to pay him back.
Ray is accused of 17 counts including sex-trafficking, extortion, money laundering, violent crime in aid of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy
She had, she said, once thought she could simply graduate and get a job and pay him back but, ‘that wasn’t nearly fast enough for Larry.’
The first time she saw a client, she said, she charged $700.She recalled the experience as ‘weird and creepy’ but said she was glad to get the money.
She intended to give $200 to Ray and keep $500 for living expenses. But, she said, Ray took the lot. That’s when she came to understand that is how it would be from then on.
Under Ray’s insistence, she said, she left her escort agency and went freelance in a bid to earn more and avoid the agency taking a cut.
She said: ‘I thought that I would go to prison [if I displeased Ray] but I also thought it was the only way I had to repair something I had done that was egregiously morally wrong…something that’s essentially unforgivable.’
Drury worked as a prostitute from the beginning of 2015 to April 8, 2019.
At her most profitable she saw three or more clients a day charging $2,000 an hour, $2,400 for two hours with fees rising in increments from there.
She said she handed most of her money to Ray and Isabella Pollok – his co-accused and so-called ‘lieutenant.’
On two occasions Ray told Drury and Pollok to be sexual with each other and others she said while he watched.
On other occasions Ray would use the props that he told her to buy for clients.Her voice dipping so that the judge had to remind her to speak up, Drury listed the props, ‘Handcuffs, crops, floggers, leash, collar, ball-gag, dildos.’
The difference, she said, between clients using these and Ray was that when she told clients to stop, she knew that they would.
With Ray, she said, ‘I was scared.’
She said that she continued to believe she owed Ray money, ‘until the day I left essentially.’
Earlier on Tuesday, a list of Drury’s alleged clients was inadvertently published online.
The list, which was entered into evidence under seal, included lawyers, businessmen and socialites throughout the Tri-state area.
PICTURED: Larry Ray outside his stepfather’s home in Pinehurst, North Carolina
The court heard how Ray’s alleged campaign of control escalated during the summer of 2013, when Drury and several others travelled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to help with yardwork at Ray’s stepfather’s property (pictured)
DailyMail.com acquired a copy of the list of 121 names which was taken down nearly as fast as it was put up.
A top executive at The Gap clothing firm and her husband was one of two married couples included.A former New York State Supreme Court judge is also named.
Another alleged client is a painter who has studios in Manhattan’s East Village and in Italy. A third is an architect, famous for designing college and university buildings.
An investment executive who was also in pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous little black book of contacts is also listed.
Other names include a hedge fund manager who has donated millions to charity and has his name on a museum building in New York, a Washington DC, lobbyist who has worked for a foreign resistance movement and an international diamond dealer.
Also included is an executive at the Metropolitan Transit Authority, an account executive at Amazon and a veteran travel writer.
The document is among the government exhibits admitted in the federal trial which began March 7.
The list is said to have been compiled and included in an email by Drury, 31, to prosecutors.
‘This is not an exhaustive list but it includes all my main clients/regulars and many others,’ she wrote.
But somehow the government posted the ‘sealed’ document online and then immediately scrambled to stop the information getting out.
‘Per order of the Court, government exhibit #3217 (GX 3217) was admitted under seal,’ a spokesman for the Department of Justice wrote in an email soon after the document was taken offline.
‘This file was inadvertently loaded to the U.S.v. Ray file share. Please do not reproduce, share, or use this exhibit in any way, if you have downloaded this file, please delete it.’
Claudia Drury testifies at trial for Larry Ray on Monday March 21, 2022
But the department’s plea is unlikely to be successful as the document has already been posted on Twitter.
Drury is one of at least five cult members who were students at the elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of Manhattan, when they met Ray.
Ray was introduced to the group in the fall of 2010 when he began living in his daughter Talia’s on-campus dorm, where he persuaded her friends to stay the next summer at his city apartment.
Prosecutors say Ray coerced the students to join his ‘family’ as he accumulated power, sex and money, forcing one woman into a sex work enterprise so lucrative that she turned over more than $1million to him in a single year.
Drury began her testimony Friday, telling jurors at Manhattan Federal Court how Ray’s campaign of charisma resulted in her being hospitalized in a psychiatric facility and ultimately led her into a life of prostitution.
Earlier in the trial jurors were also shown texts between Drury and Pollok and Pollok and Talia apparently discussing Drury’s prostitution, her clients, payment and transfers of cash into Pollok’s bank account.
In the texts read aloud, Drury listed meetings and sums of money she expected in payment.
One read: ‘I’m seeing Joe, the $3,500 guy at 3:30pm.I believe that will be another $8k though maybe less.’
Sums of money ranging from a few hundred to more than $17,000 in cash and bank accounts were discussed.
In a follow up text exchange between Pollok and Talia allegedly regarding the transfer of money earned by Drury through prostitution, Talia reassures Pollok: ‘We got the moollah.’
On Monday, the court was shown emails in which Drury praised Ray’s selflessness and the supposed psychological ‘help’ he was providing to her and college friends including Santos Rosario, Dan Levin, Felicia Rosario and Ray’s co-accused and alleged ‘lieutenant’ Isabella Pollok.
At the time, she referred to Ray as, ‘the hero of the story.’
But taking the stand for a second day on Monday, she continued her account of the alleged gas-lighting, physical and sexual abuse that she claims she suffered at Ray’s hands.
On one occasion, she recalled, Ray showed her a photograph of friend and fellow student Levin.
She went on to tell the court how the campaign of control escalated during the summer of 2013, when she and several others travelled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to help with yardwork at Ray’s stepfather’s property.
At this point, she said, Ray was controlling what students ate – forbidding carbohydrates – and forcing them to work sometimes until three or four in the morning to re-do mistakes that he found in their work.
‘Someone went out and got hamburgers and fries and milkshakes.[Ray] said, “This is your last meal, Felicia. You can have carbs; you can have whatever you want,”‘ she told the court.
Ray, who once served as the best man at a wedding of disgraced former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, has been incarcerated since his 2020 arrest.
He is a well-known New York scammer with a murky past.In addition to spending times behind bars for his role in a securities fraud scam, he has worked on Wall Street, owned nightclubs, been an FBI informant and inserted himself in into powerful networks by brokering meetings.
He had previously been sentenced to five years probation for his role in a securities fraud scam.
The allegations involving the latest case were laid out in a lengthy article by New York magazine’sin 2019, that included accounts from some of the purported cult members.
