Choosing the Right Brake Pad

If someone ask you what’s the most important safety part on your car, don't think too long about it! The answer is the brake pad. Without effective braking ability, a car cannot be driven safely, and you may need brake repair. Among the many maintenance needs of your car is brake pad replacement. There are no brake pads that last forever, even though some newer types can last quite a while. Even the most advanced materials today are under the influence of wear and tear. When it becomes clear that your car brakes need repair, your quick response can help you save time and money. The longer you continue to use worn brake pads, the more likely they are to cause damage to the brake rotors.

The first sign that your brake pads are worn and you need brake repair is a high-pitched squeal when you stop the car. This disturbing noise comes from the soft-metal wear indicator when it rubs against the rotor. The purpose of the wear indicator is to alert you that the pads are worn. You may also notice that your car pulls to one side, your brakes grab or vibrate, or your brake pedal feels softer when you press on it. These are all signals that it’s time for new brake pads.

If you take your car for brake repair, you probably only need to replace the pads. Brake pads are plates that have a friction material bound to the surface on the side that faces the brake disc. Deciding which kind of brake pad to buy requires your consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of each. There are four types of brake pads to choose from, and they are semi-metallic, non-asbestos organic, low-metallic NAO, and ceramic. While semi-metallic pads are very solid and have great heat transfer, they also can wear down rotors quickly. They can be noisy, and may not perform that well in cool temperatures. Non-asbestos organic pads are softer and quieter, but they produce more brake dust and wear out faster. Low-metallic NAO brake pads contain small amounts of copper or steel, which creates better transfer of heat and better braking performance. The metal also produces more brake dust and more noise.

Lots of people believe that ceramic pads are the best. They consist of ceramic fibers, nonferrous filler materials, and bonding agents. They also contain small amounts of metal. Ceramic brake pads are more expensive than other types, but they are cleaner and quieter. They provide better braking performance and do not wear down the brake rotors. Though there are only four types of pads, there is a wide variety of brand names and performance categories to make your decision more difficult.

Most manufacturers produce standard, upgraded brake pads. For regular driving conditions, standard pads should be enough. The upgraded pads are ideal if you carry heavy loads or many people often, or drive regularly through mountainous region. If you use upgraded pads for normal driving they will probably just be noisier and create more brake dust. Whichever type you choose, be sure to buy pads with a certified label that the pads have been tested to ensure they are as effective as the original equipment on your car.

PM backs spy chief's attack on Guardian

• PM's spokesman said MI5's Andrew Parker made an 'excellent speech'
• The spy chief blasted The Guardian's publication of secret material
• Security officials say the expose could lead to UK lives being lost

David Cameron yesterday joined the attacks on the Guardian for publishing secret files that have put national security at risk. The Prime Minister threw his full weight behind MI5 director-general Andrew Parker who has warned the leaks are a ‘gift’ to terrorists. MPs and security experts weighed in too, claiming the newspaper had exposed the UK’s intelligence secrets to Islamist fanatics and foreign spies. They said Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger had been naive to think it was harmless to publish the documents stolen by fugitive US agent Edward Snowden. Security sources pointed to remarks from the UK’s deputy national security adviser suggesting damage has already been done to Britain. Oliver Robbins, who reports directly to Mr Cameron, warned that revealing the techniques GCHQ uses to spy on terrorists may cause ‘widespread loss of life’.

Prime Minister David Cameron supports the comments made by the Director-General of MI5, who criticised The Guardian's expose on spycraft

A No 10 spokesman – when asked whether Mr Cameron agreed with Mr Parker’s comments – said: ‘The Prime Minister thinks it was an excellent speech and we are, as you would expect, always keeping under review the measures that are needed to contribute to keeping our country safe. I would happily point you to all parts of the director general’s speech.’

In another development, there were last night accusations of editorial bias at the BBC, which initially ignored the scathing criticisms of the Guardian. The corporation later offered Mr Rusbridger an interview on Radio Four’s World at One to defend his paper. He denied putting lives at risk and – defying security officials – said he would continue publishing top secret information, which the paper has been splashing across its front pages since June. Mr Rusbridger, who critics claimed was given an easy interview, said: ‘We are working slowly and responsibly but as we discover further stories that we think merit the debate, the debate that everyone says is necessary, then we will go on publishing.’

Fury: The spy chief: MI5 director-general Andrew Parker has blasted the Guardian's publication of Britain's espionage capabilities

Security officials and MPs dismissed the suggestion that the newspaper was capable of knowing what would and would not assist Britain’s enemies. They pointed to a devastating legal submission drawn up by Mr Robbins in August. He said: ‘It is impossible for a journalist alone to form a proper judgment about what disclosure of protectively marked intelligence does or does not damage national security. ‘The fragmentary nature of intelligence means that even a seemingly innocuous piece of information can provide important clues to individuals involved in extremism or terrorism. ‘There is therefore a real risk that that publication or disclosure could cause unintended damage to that national security.

Guardian newspaper editor Alan Rusbridger was described as 'naive'

‘It is worth reiterating the point that real damage has in fact already been done to UK national security by the media revelations (both in the UK and internationally).’ He said the leaking of the kind of top secret information held by the Guardian was likely to ‘lead directly to widespread loss of life’ and ‘to cause exceptionally grave damage to the effectiveness of security of the UK’. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of Westminster’s intelligence and security committee, also backed Mr Parker’s speech, which contained a warning that several thousand fanatics living in Britain see the public as a legitimate target. The former foreign secretary dismissed the idea that Snowden or journalists at the Guardian could judge which information it was safe to publish. ‘When we know that Snowden has over 50,000 classified documents relevant to UK interests the idea that he or others would be able identify which are damaging to national security is naive,’ he said. ‘Even knowing the technology that is available to GCHQ or MI5 or MI6 is valuable. Some of these terrorists are very, very smart. It’s not like the old days when communication could only be by letter or telephone call. ‘Unless they [the security services] are at the cutting edge of modern technology they will be behind the terrorists who are smart on encryption and trying to conceal what they are doing.’ Charlie Edwards, of the respected Royal United Services Institute, claimed the Guardian had been ‘wrong’ to ‘deliberately expose’ the UK’s intelligence secrets. He said: ‘The leaks we have seen from Snowden in the Guardian will provide information to terrorists, but also aggressive foreign intelligence agencies operating in the UK.’ The independent MP Patrick Mercer, a former Downing Street security adviser, said intelligence data should not be published if it compromised public security.

GCHQ Headquarters. Thousands of classified documents about the NSA and GCHQ were published by The Guardian

Former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Some of the information was so sensitive that British agents had to be moved for their own safety

In August, police detained David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours at Heathrow airport. Mr Miranda had been carrying intelligence files leaked by Snowden

‘If in any way our security is compromised by revealing too much, that’s a mistake,’ he added. ‘Just imagine if we had revealed the whole Enigma secret during the Second World War.That might have been in the public’s interest – but we’d have lost the war.’ Mr Robbins’ remarks were made in a submission to judges in the case of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was stopped at Heathrow in possession of at least 58,000 classified stolen documents. He had been ferrying them from a Snowden associate in Germany to Brazil, where he shares a home with Greenwald, the author of many of the controversial articles. Mr Robbins said the material was ‘highly likely to describe techniques crucial in life-saving counter-terrorist operations, and other activities vital to UK national security’. Snowden is currently holed up in Russia, with temporary political asylum.

The spy chief said there is a 'growing proportion of groups and individuals taking it upon themselves to commit acts of terrorism'. Pictured is the 7/7 London bombings, which killed 52 civilians

MI5 Headquarters in London. The leak was described as the greatest damage to Western security apparatus in history

The executioner: Caught on CCTV, the horrific moment Al Shabaab gunman took deadly aim at hostages in Nairobi mall massacre

• Terrorists caught by CCTV aiming at cowering hostages at Nairobi mall
• Masked man seen pointing gun inside bank at Westgate shopping centre
• Other images show women and children sitting among dead bodies
• Militants killed 67 people and injured 200 - with 71 still missing

This is the horrifying moment one of the terrorists in the Kenyan shopping centre attack levelled his gun at cowering hostages, ready to execute them. The attacker, wearing a camouflage jacket and facemask, points a handgun at customers in a bank as they lie under a counter with their hands around their heads. The CCTV pictures were taken inside the Diamond Trust Bank on the ground floor of the Westgate shopping mall in the early stages of the hostage crisis.

Terror at the mall: A gunman takes aim at the hostages as they lie face down inside a bank at the Westgate shopping centre during the terrorist attack

Another picture shows three fighters brandishing rifles at the entrance to the shopping centre, one of them apparently wearing a traditional Islamic robe and pointing at a figure cowering in the corner. In other images, women and children are shown on the roof of the building among the blood-stained bodies of the dead and injured. The group is thought to include families who were attending a cookery demonstration by a TV chef Ruhila Adatia-Sood, who was six months pregnant and died in the attack. They were eventually rescued by the Red Cross, who arrived with stretchers as the terrorists moved inside the building. For many it was their choice of hiding place that made the difference between death or survival. Some security camera footage shows gunmen raking toilet cubicles with gunfire, apparently after learning that people were hiding inside.

Horror on the roof: Women and children, thought to be part of the group attending a cooking demonstration, sit among bodies of the dead and injured

Sinister shadows: A CCTV image shows three armed terrorists entering a bank in the Nairobi shopping centre

Other attackers took the time to divide Muslims from non-Muslims after demanding that some recite the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith. A man trapped inside the shopping centre told The Mail on Sunday he had a clear view of a woman brandishing a sniper rifle. Achebe Odida, 42, a glass engraver, described how he hid under the counter of a mobile phone shop as the shooting began and raised his head to look out of the window. ‘I saw a woman wearing a black headscarf and a black shawl over a pink top and black trousers,’ he said. ‘While shoppers were running and screaming through the mall, she moved slowly and calmly to take up position behind a pillar. She looked like a Somali woman, tall and slender with dark skin.’ He saw her brandishing the rifle as if to take aim, but did not see her shooting anyone. The Kenyans have yet to announce how many terrorists were involved in the atrocity. They say five were killed in the shopping centre and it is unclear whether the eight people they currently have under arrest were detained at the scene or elsewhere.

Mourning: People light candles during a memorial service in front of the shopping centre

Prayer: A father lights candles with his son during the 24-hour vigil

In memory: Kenya Defense Forces soldiers pay tribute to victims of the terrorist attack

The siege developed into a hostage drama with Al Shabaab claiming civilians were being held but if there were hostages, it is unclear what became of them. In one section of the shopping centre, three floors collapsed, making the search for them difficult and dangerous. The collapse was caused by Kenyan soldiers firing rocket-propelled grenades into the building, according to a senior official, raising questions about the effectiveness of the rescue operation. Soldiers and police were said to have been arguing over who was in charge. Some of the heroes of the operation were private security guards and relatives called by those hiding inside. Presidential spokesman Manoah Esipisu did not comment on the cause of the collapse but said structural engineers were examining the building. The Kenyan authorities have insisted that all the dead are accounted for, although the Red Cross says it has reports of 71 missing, as well as the official tally of 67. The Foreign Office said another Briton was among the dead, putting the total back up to six, after one man was discovered to have been Kenyan.

The White Widow's Lair: The South African safehouse in suburbia where world's most wanted woman 'lived for months in hiding' ahead of Kenyan mall massacre

• Modest home of Samantha Lewthwaite - world's most wanted woman
• Tidy house in Johannesburg suburb 'one of a number' rented under alias
• She is wanted by authorities over alleged involvement in a 2011 bomb plot
• Speculation has grown over her involvement in Kenyan mall massacre

With green bins dutifully placed out on the street, flowering garden peeking from behind a white gate, and a carefully tended entrance, it looks for all the world like any other suburban family home. But this is believed to be the South African lair where Samantha Lewthwaite - who Interpol last night named the world's most wanted woman - is believed to have spent months in hiding. The images have emerged amid growing speculation that she masterminded the bloody Nairobi mall massacre which has left at least 72 dead. The tidy home in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Bromhof, is said to be one of a number that Lewthwaite rented under an alias, allowing her to run up debts of around £5,500.

With green bins dutifully placed out on the street, flowering garden peeking from behind a white gate, and a carefully tended entrance, it looks for all the world like any other suburban family home

But this is believed to be the South African lair from which Samantha Lewthwaite - who Interpol last night named the world's most wanted woman - is believed to have masterminded the bloody Nairobi mall massacre

The tidy home in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Bromhof, is said to be one of a number that Lewthwaite rented under an alias, allowing her to run up debts of $8,600

Residents, who claim she lived in this house in the quiet neighbourhood for three months, may have known her as Natalie Faye Webb. In fact she was the wanted widow of London bomber Germaine Lindsay, who blew up a Piccadilly Line tube in 2005, killing 26 people. The mother-of-four is being hunted by Kenyan authorities over alleged involvement in a plot to bomb holiday resorts there. They say that Lewthwaite had gained a South African passport using the assumed identity of Webb and the document was cancelled in 2011. But there has been increasing speculation about her possible involvement in last week's attack on a Nairobi mall after a Kenyan minister said a British woman was in the group. British police have also cited Lewthwaite as a possible suspect. Two neighbours in Bromhof told AFP they recognised Lewthwaite's picture. Herbie Ullbricht, 69, who lived two houses away from her address cited in credit reports, said the woman lived there in '2010 or 2011' with her three children, and she was always dressed from head to toe in a hijab. Her children stayed inside and never played with the other children in the street. 'Three to four months she stayed. After that I never saw her again. She kept to herself. No one knew her,' he told AFP. The area has undergone a concerted rejuvenation programme in recent times, with families escaping the noise of the city, to set up a quieter home in its outskirts. In the nearby vibrant town of Randburg, young people buy properties in upmarket areas, with restaurants and shopping centres on almost every corner. In her home town of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, she was described as a bubbly teenager, and schoolfriends said she had an ordinary upbringing. Local councillor Raj Khan said: 'She was an average British, young ordinary girl. She didn't have very good confidence.'

The mother-of-three is being hunted by Kenyan authorities over alleged involvement in a plot to bomb holiday resorts there. But there has been increasing speculation about her possible involvement in last week's attack on a Nairobi mall

South African television station ENCA said credit records showed Lewthwaite racked up debts of nearly 30,000 rand ($3,000) to two leading South African banks during her time in the country and owed nearly $1,000 to two clothing stores. Radio reports said she worked as an IT specialist for a halal pie shop in Lenasia, a south Johannesburg suburb known for its Muslim population. The current death toll from the bloody four day siege at the Westgate Shopping mall is 72 and is likely to climb with uncounted bodies remaining in the wreckage. Another 175 people were injured, including more than 60 who remain in hospital. At least 18 foreigners were among those killed. The Interpol notice made no mention of Westgate, however, saying that Lewthwaite is wanted on charges of possessing explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony in December 2011. It is not clear why the notice has been issued now. African authorities have linked her to other attacks as well - again, without presenting evidence of her involvement. She is believed to have been questioned by police once but was not taken into custody. Earlier this week British anti-terror officers yesterday told a court how a colourful selection of sexy underwear was found at one of the ‘White Widow’s’ Kenyan safe houses. Both Lewthwaite and Grant, 29, from Newham, east London, have been charged with planning to cause the loss of lives and possessing bomb-making chemicals.

Evidence: Samantha Lewthwaite (left) and Jermaine Grant (right), both 29, from Newham, east London, have been charged with planning to cause the loss of lives and possessing bomb-making chemicals

Giving evidence at the trial of Samantha Lewthwaite’s accomplice, Jermaine Grant, in Mombasa, Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detective Robert Garrick said police retrieved a collection of pink, black and red lingerie along with the Muslim convert’s birth certificate. The villa, in the Nyali district of the Indian Ocean resort, was one of five being rented by Lewthwaite, 29, before police foiled her and Grant’s plot to blow up British tourists in December 2011.

These include electrical switches, acetone, hydrogen peroxide and ammonium nitrate - the same chemical used by Lewthwaite’s husband Jermaine Lindsay when he blew up a Piccadilly Line tube in 2005, killing 26 people. A team of anti-terror officers, who have been working with the Kenyan police, flew to Mombasa to give evidence at Grant’s trial. Yesterday, soldiers told of the horrific torture meted out by terrorists in the Nairobi mall massacre yesterday with claims hostages were dismembered, had their eyes gouged out and were left hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed with pliers before being blinded and hanged. Children were found dead in the food court fridges with knives still embedded in their bodies, it was claimed.

Soldiers have told of the horrific torture meted out by terrorists in the Nairobi mall massacre yesterday as the first pictures of inside the centre have emerged

Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed with pliers before being blinded and hanged during the four day siege

Pictured is the aftermath at Westgate Shopping Mall where the roof of the car park collapsed crushing three floors

Most of the defeated terrorists, meanwhile, were reportedly discovered ‘burnt to ashes’, set alight by the last extremist standing to try to protect their identities. The horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn across the floor. A third of the mall was destroyed in the battle between terrorists and Kenyan troops. Lying in the rubble are feared to be the bodies of as many as 71 civilians who have been declared missing by the Kenyan Red Cross. With detectives, including the FBI and the Metropolitan Police, still unable to reach the wrecked part of the mall for fear of setting off explosives, it could take up to a week to determine exactly who is still inside.

Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside

Bomb disposal experts with sniffer dogs were yesterday painstakingly combing the part of the building still standing for explosives before clearing forensic officers, police and troops to search for bodies

The collapse happened on Monday when government troops launched a massive assault on the mall where up to 150 people are thought to have been killed

The Nazi women who were every bit as evil as the men: From the mother who shot Jewish children in cold blood to the nurses who gave lethal injections in death camps

• Chilling new book has unearthered thousands of complicit German women
• At least half a million witnessed and contributed to Hitler's terror
• Have been dubbed the ‘primary witnesses of the Holocaust’
• Secretaries typed the orders to kill and filed the details of massacres
• Only a small number of women were called to account for their crimes

Blonde German housewife Erna Petri was returning home after a shopping trip in town when something caught her eye: six small, nearly naked boys huddled in terror by the side of the country road.
Married to a senior SS officer, the 23-year-old knew instantly who they were.
They must be the Jews she’d heard about — the ones who’d escaped from a train taking them to an extermination camp.
But she was a mother herself, with two children of her own. So she humanely took the starving, whimpering youngsters home, calmed them down and gave them food to eat.
Then she led the six of them — the youngest aged six, the oldest 12 — into the woods, lined them up on the edge of a pit and shot them methodically one by one with a pistol in the back of the neck.
This schizophrenic combination of warm-hearted mother one minute and cold-blooded killer the next is an enigma and one that — now revealed in a new book based on years of trawling through remote archives — puts a crueller than ever spin on the Third Reich.
Because Erna was by no means an aberration. In a book she tellingly calls ‘Hitler’s Furies’, Holocaust historian Professor Wendy Lower has unearthed the complicity of tens of thousands of German women — many more than previously imagined — in the sort of mass, monstrous, murderous activities that we would like to think the so-called gentler sex were incapable of.
The Holocaust has generally been seen as a crime perpetrated by men. The vast majority of those accused at Nuremberg and other war crimes trials were men.
The few women ever called to account were notorious concentration camp guards — the likes of Irma Grese and Ilse Koch — whose evil was so extreme they could be explained away as freaks and beasts, not really ‘women’ at all.
Ultra-macho Nazi Germany was a man’s world. The vast majority of women had, on Hitler’s orders, confined their activities to Kinder, Küche, Kirche — children, kitchen and church. Thus, when it came to responsibility for the Holocaust and other evils of the Third Reich, they were off the hook.
But that, argues Lower, is simplistic nonsense. Women were drawn into the morally bankrupt conspiracy that was Hitler’s Germany as thoroughly as men were — at a lower level, in most cases, when it came to direct action but guilty just the same.
Ironically, it was the professional carers who were the first to be caught in this evil web. From the moment the Nazis came to power and imposed policies of Aryan racial purity, countless nurses, their aprons filled with morphine vials and needles, routinely slaughtered the physically disabled and mentally defective.

Pauline Kneissler worked at Grafeneck Castle, a euthanasia ‘hospital’ in southern Germany, and toured mental institutions selecting 70 ‘patients’ a day. At the castle they were gassed, which she decided was not that bad because ‘death by gas doesn’t hurt’.

Complicit: Johanner Altvater (left) and Lisolotte Meirer (right) killed Jews for sport during the Third Reich

Meanwhile, midwives were betraying a whole generation of German women by reporting defects in unborns and newborns and recommending abortions and euthanasia, as well as sterilisation of mothers.
From the outset, Lower concludes, ‘women made cruel life-and-death decisions, eroding moral sensibilities’. A line had been crossed. It was no big step when the racial purification process turned to the Final Solution of exterminating millions of Jews.
That Jews were the enemy and their annihilation the answer was taken for granted by millions of women who would later deny knowing what was going on under their noses.
Lower, though, dubs them ‘primary witnesses of the Holocaust’.
The worst outrages took place in the ‘Wild East’, Hitler’s newly acquired (by military conquest) territories in Poland, Ukraine and other parts of overrun Russia. At least half a million young women joined in this colonisation process, and became accomplices to genocide on an unprecedented scale.
A mass of secretaries, for example, typed the orders to kill and filed the details of massacres. This placed them at the very centre of the Nazi murder machinery, but they, like so many others, chose to shut their eyes and benefit from their proximity to power.
But, picnicking in the country on their days off, how did they miss the mounds that hid mass graves, the gagging smell of rotting corpses? Whose clothes and possessions — plundered from ghettos or confiscated at camps and killing fields — did they think they were cataloguing for redistribution back home?
Trainloads of booty went back to Germany in what Lower calls ‘the biggest campaign of organised robbery in history’. And German women, she charges, were among its prime agents and beneficiaries.
Even more caught up in the criminal madness were administrators such as Liselotte Meier, who worked so closely with her strutting boss, an SS officer, that they were almost indistinguishable. She joined him on shooting parties in the snow, hunting and killing Jews for sport.

Guilty: Irma Grese, nicknamed 'The Beautiful Beast' pictured with two guards before she was hanged in 1945 at the age of 22

In the early phases of the Holocaust, massacres were generally by shooting. In her area of Belarus, she coordinated the arrangements with the executioners and even decided who lived and who died.
She spared the life of the Jewish woman who did her hair, while another secretary removed from a woman from the death line who hadn’t yet finished the sweater she was knitting for her.
Secretaries had another important role, too. After each operation, it was usual for the SS killers, many of them drunk on schnapps, to seek solace in the women’s quarters, whether for sexual release or a shoulder to cry on after the exertions of mass execution.  In support of the men, women even manned refreshment tables during executions so the killers could take a break.
But much worse than these active accomplices were the women who killed — often the wives of SS officers. Erna Petri — callous dispatcher of those six Jewish boys — was one such Frau. She had followed her husband to Poland and lived in a mansion overseeing a vast estate for the Race and Resettlement Office of the SS, with ‘sub-human’ Slavs as slaves.

The book reveals thousands of women were complicit in the mass murder of Jews and have been dubbed the 'primary witnesses' of The Holocaust

Another SS wife, Lisel Willhaus, wife of a camp commandant, used to sit on the balcony of their house and take pot shots at Jewish prisoners with her rifle.
Also in Poland was Vera Wohlauf, whose husband Julius commanded a police battalion ordered in 1942 to round up 11,000 Jewish inhabitants of a small town for transportation to Treblinka for liquidation.
She sat by her husband in the front seat of the lorry that led a convoy of killers to the town, and stood in the market square brandishing a whip as nearly a thousand who resisted the round-up or collapsed in the summer heat were beaten to death or shot.
She was pregnant at the time, a further incongruity.
In the Ukraine, 22-year-old secretary Johanna Altvater played an even more prominent role in a massacre while working for regional commissar Wilhelm Westerheide.
During the liquidation of a Jewish ghetto, Fräulein Hanna, as she was known, was seen in her riding breeches prodding men, women and children into a truck ‘like a cattle herder’.

The Holocaust has often been depicted as a crime perpetrated by men, but women also submitted themselves to the bankrupt morals championed by Adolf Hitler

She marched into a building being used as a makeshift hospital and through the children’s ward, eyeing each bed-ridden child. Then she stopped, picked one up, took it to the balcony and threw the child to the pavement three floors below. She did the same with other children. Some died, and even those who survived were seriously injured.
Her speciality — or, as one survivor put it, her ‘nasty habit’ — was killing children. One observer noted that Altvater often lured children with sweets. When they came to her and opened their mouths, she shot them in the mouth with the small pistol that she kept at her side.

The new book involves information from archives which revealed some women were as guilty as the men

On another occasion, she beckoned a toddler over, then grabbed him tightly by the legs and slammed his head against a wall as if she were banging the dust out of a mat.
She threw the lifeless child at the feet of his father, who later testified: ‘Such sadism from a woman I have never seen. I will never forget this.’
Close to the mass-shooting site where the ghetto inhabitants were herded to await their deaths, Westerheide and his deputies partied with some German women. Altvater was among the revellers, drinking and eating at a banqueting table amid the bloodshed.
Music playing in the background mixed with the sound of gunfire. From time to time, one of the Germans would get up, walk to the shooting site, kill a few people and then return to the party.
Violence to children was also the trademark of Gestapo wife and mother Josefine Block, who liked to carry a riding crop and lash out at prisoners waiting to be deported.
A little girl approached her, crying and begging for her life. ‘I will help you!’ Block declared, grabbed the girl by the hair, smashed her with her fists, then pushed her to the ground and stamped on her head until she was dead.
Desperate Jewish parents often approached Block to ask for help, assuming that, as a young woman and mother, she’d be sympathetic.
But she would use her pram to ram Jews whom she encountered on the streets and was said to have actually killed a small Jewish child with it. Such treatment is an affront to any sense of humanity, let alone womanhood — all the more so because most of these crimes went unpunished.
Erna Petri was the exception and spent more than 30 years in prison. But all the others mentioned here were either tried and acquitted or released after questioning.
Their defence was often to play the helpless woman card and blame the men. ‘I was just a secretary,’ pleaded Johanna Altvater. Meanwhile, the millions of other women who were complicit in these odious events got on with their lives after the war as best they could, as if the whole Hitler era had been a nightmare to be put aside and forgotten once everyone had woken up.
Yet the deep stain remains. Thirteen million women were actively engaged in the Nazi Party. Not all of these could have been innocent bystanders.

Family life: The main role of women in the Third Reich was to promote the philosophy of Kinder, Kuche, Kirche - children, kitchen and church

Lower says: ‘To assume that violence is not a feminine characteristic and that women are not capable of mass murder has obvious appeal: it allows for hope that at least half the human race will not devour the other, that it will protect children and so safeguard the future.
‘But minimising the violent behaviour of women creates a false shield.’
At least half a million women, she says, witnessed and contributed to the operations and terror of Hitler’s genocidal war. ‘The Nazi regime mobilised a generation of young women who were conditioned to accept violence, to incite it, and to commit it.
‘This fact has been suppressed and denied by the very women who were swept up in the regime and by those who perpetrated the violence with impunity.
‘But genocide is also women’s business. When given the “opportunity”, women too will engage in it, even its bloodiest aspects.’
For those tempted to think that things are different now, consider those shocking photographs earlier this month of a beheading in the Syrian bloodbath.
What was even more gut-wrenching than the gore was to see children looking on, unperturbed, drawn into a terrifying topsy-turvy morality, just as German mothers and children were 80 years ago.
Perhaps, too, the executioner wielding the sword went home to a wife who mopped his brow, in the same way as Hitler’s firing squads did. The lesson of the atrocities of the Holocaust is that they are not something of the past to be filed away and forgotten, but still very much with us.

A Pulley Wheel’s Applications

A pulley is a simple machine, usually made from sturdy materials, which can be used for different applications, the most ordinary of which include applying forces or transmitting energy, elevating objects or controlling belts, chain, and ropes. The pulley wheel is symbolically set up in a frame or brace that allows the wheel to rotate freely. It can actually reduce the amount of force when a rope, chain, or belt runs around the pulley. The outer side of the pulley can be grooved to help control the belts, ropes, chains or cables keeping them from sliding off the pulley during process.

The applications of a pulley wheel can change significantly, and the sizes of the wheel will often vary under the purpose for which it is being used. A pulley wheel can be used in an automotive engine division to help the timing belt, And the pulley may also be used to power other equipment such as power steering machines and air conditioners. These pulleys will be considerably small. By comparison, an exceptionally large pulley wheel may be used on a ski lift at a ski area. This large pulley wheel will help lead the cable to which the chairs are safe and it will help keep proper stress on the cable connection.

Storehouses and industrial devices frequently use pulley wheels as part of a system to help elevate or deliver heavy objects. A rope or cable can be arranged through one or more pulleys and one end of the cable can be affixed to the object that needs to be send. Place pulleys to the operation can diminish the amount of energy needed to lift the object, though this could also put some friction to the operation, hence making the motion more hard. The proper balance of pulleys must be used to effectively lift or move the objects. Various of these pulley systems are motorized to help move items quickly and to raise tremendous heavy objects.

Types of materials to make a pulley wheel may differ based on the operation for which the wheel will be applied. For light duty systems, a nylon or plastic pulley may be enough, however, for heavier duty applications, a harder more enduring material will be needed. Pulleys used in automotive engines like crankshaft pulley, timing belt pulleys and underdrive pulleys are commonly made of heat resistant metals that will not wear out speedily or easily during constant being exposed to high temperatures and regular use.

Welsh language campaigners want village of Varteg to be renamed 'Farteg' - but villagers fear it will make them the butt of playground jokes

• Campaigners say the ancient name should be replaced because there is no 'V' in the Welsh language
• But villagers fear 'Farteg' will make them the butt of playground jokes
• They have dubbed the campaigners 'a lot of gasbags'

People living in the small Welsh village of Varteg are kicking up a stink about plans to rename it 'Farteg' - claiming it sounds like a 'schoolboy's playground insult'. Welsh language campaigners say the ancient name should be replaced because there is no 'V' in the ancient tongue of Wales. However, villagers fear they will be the butt of playground jokes if road signs are put up displaying the flatulent name. Sioned Jones, 42, who lives in the village near Pontypool, South Wales, said: 'Just imagine how embarrassing it will be to have the word "fart" in your village's name - never mind being followed by "egg".

Kicking up a stink: People living in the small Welsh village of Varteg are protesting against plans to rename it 'Farteg'

'I'd be humiliated every time I told someone my address. Everyone will be laughing at us and coming to get photographed next to the street signs. 'I just think it's ridiculous - these Welsh language campaigners are a lot of gasbags, they’re full of hot air.' Fellow villager Ray Leyshon, 62, said: 'Can you imagine the bus going past and some naughty schoolboy shouting: "You are going to Fart Egg". It is just a bad joke.' Many road signs in Wales display place names in both English and Welsh - and Torfaen council is now consulting on which form should be used in Varteg, which has a population of about 1,000 people. Proposal: Welsh language campaigners are calling for the Welsh translation 'Farteg' to be added to road names and street signs in the village near Pontypool, South Wales

Butt of jokes: Villagers fear they will be ridiculed if road signs are put up displaying the flatulent name

Campaigners are calling for the Welsh translation 'Farteg' to be added to road names and street signs in the village.

'Just imagine how embarrassing it will be to have the word "fart" in your village's name - never mind being followed by "egg"' Villager Sioned Jones

However, the idea has been slammed by Torfaen MP Paul Murphy, who described the new name as 'dubious', 'Why should people in Varteg be told how to spell their own place name?' he said. 'Varteg is not an English word so translating it is totally unnecessary. “It’s a name that reflects our rich history and culture in the Eastern Valley, with its Welsh language and English language influences.

Debate: A Torfaen council spokesman said changing the village's current name to 'Farteg' would be 'inappropriate'. But the village could still have its name changed to 'Y Farteg' 'I’m supportive of sensible steps to help the Welsh language, but this is not the way to achieve that - it will only fuel resentment.'

THE ANCIENT TONGUE OF WALES

The Welsh alphabet traditionally consists of these 28 letters: a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y The letter 'j' is now often included in the alphabet, between the letters 'i' and 'l'

A Torfaen council spokesman said changing the village's current name to 'Farteg' would be 'inappropriate'. However, village could still have its name changed to 'Y Farteg' - with locals now being consulted about this. The spokesman said: 'After discussion with the local councillor, 'Farteg' was considered inappropriate and was not adopted at the time. 'The Welsh language commissioner has proposed the alternative name “Y Farteg,” upon which the residents of the Varteg community will be able to express their views.'

THE HAMLET OF SHITTERTON: THE UK'S MOST UNFORTUNATE PLACE NAME

The hamlet of Shitterton in Dorset has been voted the UK's most unfortunate place name. The tiny collection of homes, which lies between Dorchester and Poole, is widely considered to be the most embarrassing place to live, according to a survey by www.findmypast.co.uk last year.

Unlucky: The hamlet of Shitterton holds the title of the UK's most unfortunate place name

It beat the nearby valley of Scratchy Bottom, near Durdle Door in Dorset, and Brokenwind in Aberdeenshire. Shitterton is a very literal English translation of the village name recorded in Norman French in the 11th century Domesday Book as Scatera or Scetra. It means a little town that is on the stream of a midden or sewer. The unfortunately-named hamlet also beat off competition from Crapstone in Devon, Ugley in Essex, Back Passage in London, Sandy Balls in the New Forest, Old Sodbury in Gloucestershire and North Piddle in rural Worcestershire. Contenders for the UK's most unfortunate street name included Slag Lane in Haydock, Merseyside, Pratts Bottom in Kent and Hooker Road in Norwich.