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How to create a Facebook group

How to create a Facebook group

Are you interested in cultivating an online community about one of your hobbies? Do you just need a way to organize a family event or book club? If so, you may want to consider creating a Facebook group. Facebook groups can provide a central, online location for gathering and communicating with your friends and family or for meeting new people to discuss your shared interests or plan an event together. It can be a great way to cultivate a sense of community online.

Plus, creating a Facebook group is incredibly easy.

What is the difference between a page and a group on Facebook?

The main difference between a Facebook page and a group comes down to privacy and visibility.

A Facebook page is essentially designed to maximize visibility, and you can’t really make them private. That’s because they’re more for businesses and public figures. Pages are for use cases in which a person, brand, or company wants to be seen and wants to attract as many customers and fans as possible. Usually, anyone can like or follow a page to keep up with the goings on of the brand or person that page represents.

Facebook groups are different. Groups actually offer the option to be made private and/or given limited visibility because not all groups want to attract lots of attention from everyone on Facebook. Some groups are for small, specific interests and some groups may want to limit membership to select people. Groups are more about cultivating community rather than promoting a brand, and sometimes setting privacy limits can help keep those communities safe.

How do I start a Facebook group: on desktop web

Starting a Facebook group is actually a fairly easy process. Here’s how to do it on a PC via the desktop website version of Facebook.

Step 1: Open up your desktop web browser, go to Facebook.com, and log in to your account if you’re not already logged in.

Step 2: Select the Menu icon in the top right. This icon looks like a series of nine dots arranged in a square.

The Menu icon on the Facebook desktop website.

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Step 3: From the menu that appears, under the Create header, choose Group.

The drop down menu for Facebook for desktop web's main Menu.

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Step 4: on the Create group screen, add your group’s name, choose a privacy level, and invite your friends (if you’d like).

For privacy levels, you can choose between Public and Private. Public means anyone on Facebook can view the posts in your group and see who is in your group. Private means that only members of that group can view the posts in it and see who the other members are.

If you choose Privateyou’ll then have to select the level of visibility of the group: Visible or hidden. Visible means anyone on Facebook can find this group, and Hidden means only group members can find it.

The Create group screen on Facebook for desktop web.

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Step 5: Then choose the Create button at the bottom of the Create group screen. That’s it! You’ve now created a Facebook group!

A newly created Facebook group on Facebook for desktop web.

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How do I start a Facebook group: on the mobile app

Alternatively, if you’d rather use the Facebook mobile app to create a Facebook group, you can do that too. It’s pretty similar to the desktop web method. These instructions should work for both Android and iOS devices. Here are the basics of creating a Facebook group via the mobile app:

Open the Facebook mobile app on your device and then select the Menu icon (three lines) > groups > plus sign icon > Create group.

Then, on the Create group screen, you’ll add a group name, choose your privacy level, and choose your visibility level if needed. Select the Create group button at the bottom of the screen. At this point, your group will have been created, and you’ll be prompted to invite people to join and start setting up your group page.

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US

Alex Jones’ phone includes messages with Roger Stone

Alex Jones' phone includes messages with Roger Stone

Lisa Backus

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AUSTIN, TEXAS — The attorney for a Sandy Hook family says the US House Jan. 6 committee has requested a copy of Alex Jones’ cellphone records that the Infowars owner’s lawyer mistakenly gave to the attorney.

Attorney Mark Bankston told a Texas judge during a hearing on Thursday morning that the records include “intimate messages with Roger Stone,” an ally of former President Donald Trump who was subpoenaed by the House committee alongside Jones last year.

The judge, meanwhile, refused to call for a mistrial in the Sandy Hook defamation awards trial after Jones’ attorney filed a protective order Thursday morning seeking to bar the parents that his client defamed from using the emails and text messages.

More coverage

Sandy Hook families v. Alex Jones


Attorney Andino Reynal, representing Jones, called for a mistrial while seeking the order, after it was revealed during Wednesday’s testimony that he had inadvertently sent attorneys for Sandy Hook parents Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin volumes of information including texts and emails from his client to others , including Donald Trump ally Roger Stone.

Reynal contended that he had asked Bankston, representing Lewis and Heslin, to disregard the link to the information. Bankston said he didn’t have to since Reynal never formally requested that privileged or confidential information be removed.

The texts and emails showed Jones had been communicating with others about Sandy Hook in recent years, Bankston said. Jones had said on the stand this week that he searched his phone for him and did not have any communications on Sandy Hook.

The hearing was held as the jury is deliberating how much in compensation Heslin and Lewis should receive for being defamed by Jones who repeatedly called the death of their son a “hoax” committed by “crisis actors.”


This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Staff writers Jordan Nathaniel Fenster and John Moritz contributed to this story.

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Technology

Google’s video chat merger begins: Now there are two “Google Meet” apps

Google's video chat merger begins: Now there are two “Google Meet” apps

Someday, Google's messaging lineup will look like this (assuming Google can stop launching competing products).
Enlarge / Someday, Google’s messaging lineup will look like this (assuming Google can stop launching competing products).

Rum Amadeo

Google is officially kicking off the merger of its two video chat apps, Google Meet and Google Duo. Google announced the merger in June, with the plan to keep the Google Meet brand name while merging the best of both code bases into the Google Duo app. According to Google’s PR email (no links, sorry), people will begin seeing Duo’s app and website branding swap over to Google Meet this week. Google’s various rebrandings are all on a rollout, so they’ll arrive at different times for different people, but Google says the complete rebrand should finish for everyone by September.

So Google Duo is being rebranded to Google Meet, and the existing Google Meet app is sticking around for a bit. That means there are now two apps called “Google Meet.” Google has a help article detailing this extremely confusing situation, calling the two Meet apps “Google Meet (original): The updated Meet app” and “Google Meet: The updated Duo app.” The “Google Meet (original)” app will someday be put out to pasture; it’s just sticking around while Google rebuilds the meeting functionality on top of Google Duo. Did everyone follow that?

The Meet and Duo video services were both built as reactions to Google’s far more stable communication competition. Google Meet was technically created in 2017 as a group business video chat application called “Google Hangouts Meet,” but it really became a major project after Zoom’s growth exploded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Google Meet was still locked behind a paywall during the initial months of the work-from-home era, and while it eventually became as easy to use as Zoom, it was after Zoom became a household name.

Google's two "Meet" apps. The left one is Duo. The right one is Meet.

Google’s two “Meet” apps. The left one is Duo. The right one is Meet.

Rum Amadeo

Google Duo came out in 2016 alongside the “companion app” Google Allo as a reaction to the growth of WhatsApp. Google and Facebook got into a $22 billion bidding war for WhatsApp two years earlier. Google lost and spent the next two years making a WhatsApp clone called Google Allo. Rather than integrate video chat into the app, Google split video functionality into a separate app called Google Duo. WhatsApp didn’t have video chat at the time, so you could use Google Duo video chat with Facebook’s WhatsApp or Google’s Allo, if you wanted.

Allo and Duo were originally focused on India, which led Duo to build a one-to-one video chat system that used little bandwidth and worked well on unstable connections. That efficient video chat system will be the basis for the new combined app, with Google building Meet’s meeting link functionality into Duo and rebranding it. The install base is probably also a factor here. As a default Android app, Google Duo has more than 5 billion downloads on the Play Store, while Meet only has 100 million. Google’s path makes for a smoother transition for those 5 billion installs, while the 100 million will have to switch manually. Google says that it will hide the old, original Google Meet app from app store searches in September. Eventually, it will need to implement a pop-up message for existing users of the old Google Meet app that tells them to upgrade.

This move is happening because Google “unified” its messaging teams in 2020, with a single person, Google Workspace VP and GM Javier Soltero, taking the reins of “all of Google’s collective communication products.” That should mean Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Messages, Google Duo, and Google Voice, and Google even threw in the Android phone app for good measure. It was announced last month that Soltero is leaving Google, though, so that’s only two years on the messaging unification job. Nobody knows who, if anyone, is taking over as the new “head of messaging.” Single’s plan is still happening, though—besides this Meet and Duo merger, Hangouts will finally shut down in a few months. This new, more cohesive lineup will leave one Google video app and three Google chat apps.

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Entertainment

Dev Patel Broke Up A Knife Fight In Australia

Dev Patel Broke Up A Knife Fight In Australia

“Dev acted on his natural instinct.”

Dev Patel wasn’t just a bystander when he witnessed a dangerous incident going down in Australia.

Earlier this week, the actor was outside of a gas station in Adelaide, Australia when he saw a man and a woman fighting nearby.

When their conflict moved inside of the convenience store, things escalated and the woman pulled out a knife, stabbing the man in the chest.

According to 7News, Dev and other witnesses quickly moved in to attempt to stop the altercation from going any further.

“Dev acted on his natural instinct to try and de-escalate the situation and break up the fight. The group was thankfully successful in doing so,” Dev’s rep said in a statement.

Dev then “remained on site” following the attack “to ensure that the police and eventually the ambulance arrived.”

Police later reported that the stabbing was not random and the man and woman knew each other. The man was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Despite the situation being dangerous, Dev’s rep says there were “no heroes” in the incident.

“This specific incident highlights a larger systemic issue of marginalized members of society not being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve,” their statement said.

They added that Dev hopes that the media attention he is bringing to the story “can be a catalyst for lawmakers to be compassionate in determining long-term solutions to help not only the individuals who were involved but the community at large.”

The woman involved in the stabbing has since been charged with an aggravated assault causing harm and the man is expected to recover.

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US

Taliban claim they weren’t aware al Qaeda chief was living in Kabul

Images show Kabul house where al Qaeda chief is believed to have been killed by US strike

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has no information about Ayman al-Zawahiri’s arrival and stay in Kabul,” the Taliban said in a statement Thursday.

“The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has instructed the investigative and intelligence agencies to conduct a comprehensive and serious investigation into the various aspects of the incident,” the Taliban added.

US President Joe Biden announced Monday that Zawahiri had been killed early Sunday by a US drone strike at a house in Kabul he had been residing in.

A senior US administration official said senior Taliban figures from the Haqqani network were aware of the al Qaeda chief’s presence in the area and even took steps to conceal his presence after the strike, restricting access to the safe house and rapidly relocating members of his family, including his daughter and her children.

Biden's al Qaeda strike reveals an inconvenient truth about America's war on terror

The house in which al-Zawahiri was hiding is in the Sherpur area of ​​the Green Zone, where most of the officials from the previous Afghan government used to live.

The Sherpur neighborhood was once the site of an old military base, but during the years of civil conflict and the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s it was left almost unused.

In 2003, the Afghan defense ministry abandoned it and the government divided it into more than 50 plots, giving them to powerful people including government ministers and other high-ranking officials, plus warlords and drug lords. Their houses soon gained the nickname “poppy palaces.”

After the fall of the Ashraf Ghani government in August 2021, the majority of the owners of Sherpur houses fled the country and their houses were confiscated by the Taliban.

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Technology

Buzzing Around LA In The Powerful, Fun Electric 2022 Polestar 2

Buzzing Around LA In The Powerful, Fun Electric 2022 Polestar 2

Never heard of the Polestar? You’re not alone. Three different times during my test in Los Angeles – all of them while waiting for this zippy electric dynamo to fast-charge – passerby asked “What IS that?”

You can hardly blame them. Not only is the Polestar badge a baby when it comes to the current market, my black tester was indistinguishable from its neighboring vehicles in the lot where I picked it up around midnight. I had to click my key fob to see which set of headlights blinked to find it.

So, assuming you might not recognize the badge either, here’s a walkthrough of this fine ride with the funny name.

First, it’s a 4-door sedan with fastbackish characteristics. But it weighs a whoppin’ 4,397 pounds, which is what some SUVs weigh. It feels, however, light as a feather to drive.

The Polestar 2 starts at $49,900 and, with all options and delivery charge, it tops out at $58,400. You’ll get front-wheel drive with the single motor version with a range of about 270 miles, depending on your foot, of course. Go for the dual-motor – my tester – and your range dips, but you’ll also get all-wheel drive and a hell of a lot more punch.

As with most electrics, you take off like a silent shot, making it most enjoyable both around town and on the highway, rocketing you from a dead stop to 60 MPH in a scant 4 seconds. The dual motor trim also brings you an optional Performance package delivering forged 20-inch wheels with performance tires, adjustable dampers and upgraded Brembo brakes.

The handling is nice and sharp as well, and those brakes – sometimes a weak point of electrics – are mighty, and quick. What’s more, there are also three levels of regenerative braking – and one of them can stop the car without the driver even touching the brakes. This made buzzing around Mulholland drive a gas, er, a pleasure, sorry.

Select the Plus package and you’ll up the swank factor as well as receiving a mechanical heat pump that’ll increase your range by, it’s said, 10%. An over-the-air update will increase the dual-motor Polestar 2’s horsepower and pound-feet of torque from 408 to 476 and 487 to 502, respectively.

You roll on a “Compact Modular Architecture,” aka CMA, same as sister company Volvo’s XC40. Your battery is a 75.0-kWh lithium-ion battery pack situated under the floor, and it’s capable of fast-charging up to 150 kilowatts. Polestar says you can recharge a dead battery to 80 percent in 40 minutes, good news indeed. It took me about 90 minutes to go from 17% to 85%, not horrible. Finding a pump near where I was staying was another magilla entirely, one I will devote a future article to. But we know this about electric cars. Unless you have a charger at your residence to plug into every night, you are at the mercy of whatever is out there near you when you need the juice.

The dual-motor version achieves around 89 MPGe, and in theory you’ll get 249 miles on a full charge.

Inside:

The more I drove the Polestar 2, the more I liked its interior, which is unlike any other manufacturer’s. The lines are clean. The shift is a funny little loop-thing that you don’t even have to look at to find. The flavor is ultra-mod but muted, not obvious. You’ve got vegan fabric on the seats, although leather’s available should you want it.

Storage-wise, it’s measly in the rear cargo hold at 14 cubic feet, but open the “frunk” at the snout for extra space – one cubic foot.

technology

I absolutely loved the Polestar 2’s 12.3 inch iPad-ish instrument cluster with its huge fonts and oh-so-obvious self-explanatory icons. Are you listening, Lexus? It took no time at all to sync my phone and the sound from the Harman/Kardon system was nice and crispy and loud.

And by the way, Polestar 2 was the first car in the world to feature an infotainment system powered by Google’s Android Automotive OS, with Google built-in. With Google Assistant, Google Maps and the Google Play Store integrated, you’re getting the top in voice-recognition and nav systems. I found the display directly ahead of my steering wheel rather homely, however.

A plus, though – the air quality system included in the Polestar 2 Plus pack detects pollutants and pollen and adjusts the passenger compartment filter to help keep them out. The car also makes “blinky” sounds to alert pedestrians to one’s presence.

Safety:

Safety features include standard blind spot monitoring, standard automated emergency braking with pedestrian detection and standard adaptive cruise control.

Warranty and Maintenance Coverage

A Limited warranty covers four years or 50,000 miles, electrical components are covered for eight years or 100,000 miles and, surprisingly, no complimentary scheduled maintenance is offered.

Again, this test got better and better as time went on and by the end I loved the body of the Polestar 2, and its drive. Check your options, of course, but if you want something truly unique-looking that delivers everything anyone ever liked about electric vehicles, this is a fine choice indeed.

From the company: “From 2022, Polestar plans to launch one new electric vehicle per year, starting with Polestar 3 – the company’s first electric performance SUV which is expected to debut in October 2022. Polestar 4 is expected to follow in 2023, a smaller electric performance SUV coupe.”

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Entertainment

Hope Got The Attention She Ordered

Hope Got The Attention She Ordered

B&B spoilers recap for Wednesday, August 3, 2022, features Hope Logan Spencer proving she refuses to be second best to anyone, at anytime, ever! Unfortunately, her actions have consequences.

B&B Spoilers Recap Highlights

Deacon Sharpe (Sean Kanan) had the gall to show up at the Forrester office and act like everything was normal. It’s not like he’s lying and covering for Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) or anything. Nope. He’s just a good dude spending time with his daughter. Nothing to see here.

Well, nothing until Hope (Annika Noelle) saw a pic of Steffy Forrester Finnegan (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) and her happy family posted by Taylor Hayes (Krista Allen). Why let Steffy hog the spotlight? Hope posted a pic of her own happy family de ella – herself, Deacon, and Brooke Logan Forrester (Katherine Kelly Lang) captioned Mom & Dad, together. How nice.

READ THIS: Find out what’s happening next on The Bold and the Beautiful.

B&B Recap: Revenge Kiss

It wasn’t so nice when Taylor saw the post and shared it with Ridge. He was none too thrilled to see his wife chilling out with that guy. Did he not forbid her from being around Deacon? yeah. Yeah, I sure did. But, now look, he goes out of town for a day, and his wife is cozying up with her ex de ella. How lovely.

Taylor tried to soothe Ridge for a second, but when it was apparent he was hurt and heated, she took him for a walk. Nothing like a stroll through a beautiful city to blow off some steam. Taylor was greatly rewarded with a kiss.

The Bold and the Beautiful Recap: Destiny 2.0

Meanwhile, Steffy and Dr. John ‘Finn’ Finnegan (Tanner Novlan) spent time with the kids before taking off to be alone. They reconnected, rejoiced, and Steffy put his wedding ring back on his finger. The couple pledged their love again while Steffy marveled at the miracle she received….together forever.

The Bold and the Beautiful (B&B) airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Los Angeles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on B&B spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.

amber sinclair

Amber Sinclair is the Assistant Editor of Soap Hub.
Amber has been writing about Soap Operas for eight years.
Prior to that, Amber worked at Vici Properties in the real estate industry.
Based in Ontario, Amber spent her childhood watching daytime TV with all the women in her family. Ella’s captivating storylines and sagas helped shape her own creativity.

Categories
US

On the chopping block? Ron Johnson denies threatening social security | Republicans

A swing-state Republican senator denied threatening social security and Medicare, after Democrats accused him of putting them “on the chopping block”.

Ron Johnson, who entered Congress on the Tea Party wave of 2010, is up for re-election in Wisconsin. As they attempt to keep hold of the Senate, Democrats think they have a chance of winning the seat.

In an interview with The Regular Joe Show podcast, Johnson said social security and Medicare, crucial support programs for millions of older and disabled Americans and their dependents, should no longer be considered mandatory spending.

“If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” Johnson said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. It’s on automatic pilot… you just don’t do proper oversight. You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt.”

He added: “What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.”

Democrats pounced. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, referred to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when he said: “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. Maga Republicans want to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block.”

A Johnson spokesperson said Schumer was “lying”.

The spokesperson said Johnson’s “point was that without fiscal discipline and oversight typically found with discretionary spending, Congress has allowed the guaranteed benefits for programs like social security and Medicare to be threatened.

“This must be addressed by Congress taking its responsibilities seriously to ensure that seniors don’t need to question whether the programs they depend on remain solvent.”

Social security payments average just over $1,600 a month.

Last year, Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told the Guardian: “The nation is really facing a retirement income crisis, where too many people aren’t going to be able to retire and maintain savings to live on. It’s a very strong system, but its benefits are extremely low by virtually any way you measure them.”

Democrats see Republican threats to so-called “entitlements” – programs paid for by taxes and relied upon by vulnerable people – as a potent electoral issue. Polls show strong bipartisan support.

From Joe Biden to leaders in Congress, Democrats have seized on a plan published by Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee.

Scott proposed that all Americans should pay some income tax and that all federal laws should expire after five years if Congress does not renew them.

The senator insisted he was “not going to raise anybody’s taxes” – despite saying more people should pay tax. He also said Congress “needs to start being honest with the American public and tell them exactly what we’re going to do to make sure they continue to get their Medicare and their social security.”

But his own leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said: “We will not have, as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets social security and Medicare within five years.”

Wisconsin will hold its primaries on Tuesday. Johnson is being challenged by the current lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.

Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report told Wisconsin Public Radio Johnson was national Democrats’ “No 1 incumbent … that they are targeting”.

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Technology

Xbox Game Pass August 2022: Two Point Campus, Turbo Golf Racing, Ghost Recon Wildlands — Explosion Network

Xbox Game Pass August 2022: Two Point Campus, Turbo Golf Racing, Ghost Recon Wildlands — Explosion Network

Microsoft has announced the games coming to Xbox Game Pass for Console, Cloud and PC, as well as what games are leaving the service this month.

The big games I would keep my eyes on this month are Two Point Campus and Turbo Golf Racingboth of which launch on Xbox Game Pass on console, cloud and PC on their respective release dates.

Week of August 2:

  • Ghost Recon Wildlands, August 2 (Cloud, Console and PC)

  • Shenzhen I/O, August 4 (PC)

  • turbogolfracing, August 4 (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)

Week of August 8:

  • Two Point Campus, August 9 (Cloud, Console and PC)

  • Cooking Simulator, August 11 (Cloud, Console and PC)

  • Expeditions: Rome, August 11 (PC)

  • Offworld Trading Company, August 11 (PC)

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks for the month of August:

Fall Guys: Coconut Milk Costume – Available now

Relax, take a sip and get ready to grace the Blunderdome with your tropical presence in the all-new Coconut Milk Costume!

skate 3: Upgrade Bundle – August 11

Upgrade your Skate 3 experience, courtesy of EA Play, with the Upgrade Bundle that includes the Skate Create Upgrade Pack, Maloof Money Cup 2010 NYC Pack and Black Box Distribution Skate Park.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Noweyr Pack – August 16

Journey across Tamriel with elegance by adding an enchanting purple mount, matching pet, and two crates containing useful rewards to your collection. This Perk content requires ESO base game to use.

The following games are also leaving Xbox Game Pass on August 15:

  • Boyfriend Dungeon (Cloud, Console, and PC)

  • Curse of the Dead Gods (Cloud, Console, and PC)

  • Library of Ruin (Cloud, Console, and PC)

  • starmancer (Game Preview)(PC)

  • Train Sim World 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

As always, keep your eyes open for more announcements later this month.

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US

US Rep. Jackie Walorski’s car crossed center line, police now say

US Rep Jackie Walorski (R-2nd District) and three others were killed in a car crash on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022, on Indiana 19 in Elkhart County south of Wakarusa.