There are those who believe that Satan is presently bound in the pit. The Bible does say that he will be there some day.

And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished: after this he must be loosed for a little time (Revelation 20:1-3).

Some Bible students think this binding of Satan happened some time in the past.

Imprisoned In Hell?

A common belief is to think that Satan and his angels are presently imprisoned in hell. However the Bible does not teach this at all.

Has Access To God

Satan presently has access to God.

Now it came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, that Satan also came among them (Job 1:6).

This access does not seem to be anything abnormal.

Lives In The Heavenly Realm

The abode of Satan is in the heavenly realm.

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).

Active Upon The Earth

Scripture says that Satan is also active upon the earth.

The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it" (Job 1:7).

We are warned that he now roams the earth.

Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8).

From all of the above, we find that Satan is not presently restricted to one place.

Cast Out Of God’s Presence At His Fall?

The fact that Satan will eventually be thrown down to the earth brings up a question. The casting of Satan out of heaven, that is recorded in the Book of Revelation, can mean one of two things: either Satan will be thrown out of God’s presence only at this particular point in history – which is still future – or that he had previously been thrown out of God’s presence, but still had access to the stellar heavens. Some feel that he was cast out of God’ presence the moment he sinned and now only has temporary access to the Lord. Others feel that he was not banished from God’s presence when he sinned but rather will be only at this point that the Book of Revelation records (Revelation 12).

Summary

Satan presently dwells in the heavenly realm. The Bible teaches that he does have access to the LORD. Whether he has already been thrown out of heaven or whether this judgment is still future is an area in which Bible students disagree.

A fifth of China’s homes are abandoned. Take a look inside China’s ‘ghost cities.’

Kangbashi in 2011.
China has an astounding housing vacancy problem.
There are cities all over the country that are almost entirely unoccupied.
About 50 million apartments are abandoned across the country.

When you picture a ghost town, images of an abandoned town in the wild west probably come to mind.

In China, however, there are a surprising number of "ghost cities," or modern developments that have failed to attract residents.

The Kangbashi District in Inner Mongolia, China, for example, is a city that has been in development for the past 14 years. The district is filled with residential skyscrapers, a modern museum and library, and schools — but it is dramatically underpopulated. Developers originally intended for a million residents, though they have since lowered the goal to 300,000.
In the Yunnan Province, the Chenggong district of Kunming was filled with largely unoccupied residential skyscrapers until recently.

Chenggong in 2015.
The city’s development from farmland to urban center began in 2003.

Chenggong in 2015.

However, by 2012, the city’s population had not grown to match the new infrastructure.

Chenggong in 2015.
That year, over 100,000 newly built apartments sat vacant in Chenggong.

Chenggong in 2016.

Chenggong, , is located just outside Kunming, which is the capital of the Yunnan Province.

The district was built to deal with the growing population of Kunming, which was home to 6.5 million people in 2012.

Chenggong in 2016.

High rise apartments and railroads were built, but the city failed to populate in its early years.

Chenggong in 2016.
Not all ghost cities look the same, however. Tianducheng is a development in the Zhejiang Province that was built in 2007 as a replica of Paris, France.

Tianducheng in 2007.
The copycat city is complete with a model Eiffel Tower.

Tianducheng in 2007.
Although the city was designed to house at least 10,000 people, it was largely unoccupied by 2013.

Tianducheng in 2007.
The unique city’s population has grown tremendously since 2014, however, now boasting 30,000 residents.

Tianducheng in 2013. Aly Song/ Reuters
Of course, it’s not impossible for a city to bounce back from abandonment.

Chenggong in 2016.
While it wasn’t long ago that Chenggong was just a sea of half-finished skyscrapers …

Chenggong in 2013.
… some say the city has experienced a revitalization in recent years.

According to Cathay Pacific magazine, several new university campuses have been built in the area to attract more residents, and the area could become more attractive as Kunming’s downtown becomes more overcrowded.

The latest data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) reports that the country has a 22.4% urban housing vacancy rate.

That means that there are approximately 50 million vacant apartments across China.

To compare, the same survey reported that the US had a housing vacancy rate of 2.5% in 2011.

But urbanization is ultimately causing the housing vacancy rate to drop.

The CHFS reported that each 10% rise in the country’s urbanization rate will result in a 2.6% drop in the housing vacancy rate.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a dramatic financial burden that comes with the high housing vacancy rate in China.

As of 2013, 4.2 trillion Yuan in bank mortgages were trapped in vacant housing.

The CHFS offers several reasons for China’s staggering housing vacancy rates.

Dandong in 2016. Zhang Peng/LightRocket/Getty Images
The survey identified that households in the top 10% of highest income are in possession of the the largest percentage of vacant houses compared to other income groups.

Shenzhen City in 2017. JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images
Source: CHFS.

In fact, the households in the top 10% are responsible for nearly 40% of the country’s vacant houses.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty Images
Source: CHFS.

Single men, or "bachelors of marital age," as the survey identifies them, are also in possession of more vacant houses than households without bachelors.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty
Source: CHFS.

Almost 30% of households with at least one bachelor were in possession of a vacant home, according to the survey.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty
That’s compared to 23.9% of households without a bachelor.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty
Chenggong is just one of China’s many satellite cities that were built quickly to serve the overflow from already developed neighboring cities.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty
In addition to sizable apartment complexes, developers have also incorporated everything from sports complexes to luxury office buildings in an attempt to attract residents.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty
This new office building, for example, is now home Yunnan Provincial Administration of Radio, Film, and Television.

Chenggong in 2013. VCG/Getty
This neighborhood in the city of Tianjin was built as a financial center.

Tianjin in 2016. Jason Lee/ Reuters
During an economic boom in 2012, buildings sprung up all over the city.

Tianjin in 2016. Jason Lee/ Reuters
However, the costly infrastructure ultimately led to a construction standstill, leaving unfinished buildings and bridges.

Tianjin in 2016. Jason Lee/ Reuters
There are now a cluster of abandoned skyscrapers on the outskirts of Tianjin.

Tianjin in 2016. Jason Lee/ Reuters
Across the river from the business district, new residential skyscrapers are continuing to be built.

Tianjin in 2012. Michael Martina/ Reuters
Kangbashi, located in the Inner Mongolia Province, is another one of China’s ghost districts.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
Kangbashi is located just outside the city of Ordos.

Google Maps
The city of Ordos has been working on the development of the Kangbashi district for the past 14 years.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
Source: The Wall Street Journal.

Today, the city, despite offering new apartments, schools, libraries, and museums, is mostly unoccupied.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
There’s an architecturally beautiful, yet underused museum in Kangbashi…

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
… as well as an impressive library…

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
… and national monument.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
With all that infrastructure, the city initially expected a population of around a million people.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
But earlier this year, the city reduced the population goal to 300,000.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
Source: The Wall Street Journal.

Back in 2011, this billboard advertised new modern additions to the area that has become Kangbashi.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
Today, the city is fully built up, though with very few residents to use its resources.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
Some of the most striking elements of ghost cities like Kangbashi are the looming vacant skyscrapers and lack of traffic.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
And while some of these ambitious satellite cities gain sizable populations and lose their ghost city reputation over time, the future of many of these unique developments is still unknown.

Kangbashi in 2011. David Gray/ Reuters
Visit INSIDER’s homepage for more.

SEE ALSO: These photos of eerily vacant shopping centers and parking lots show how the rapid decline of malls has changed the way Americans shop
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Facebook Raffle Rules Template: A Step-by-Step Guide
Facebook raffles are one of the best ways to generate traffic, engagement, Likes and new subscribers online. But the rules and regulations for running them can be tough to understand. And Facebook doesn’t make it any easier by making their own policy and platform changes all the time.

In this guide, I’ll shows you a complete overview for creating the official rules and regulations for your Facebook raffle:

Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines (and what they mean)
Best practices for Facebook Raffle rules
A fill-in-the-blank Facebook Raffle Rules template

Disclaimer: The following is just an overview of some of the rules and guidelines for Facebook giveaways. This is not legal advice. Please obtain legal guidance from an experienced attorney before publishing your Facebook giveaway rules and regulations.

This is only a brief overview and template of a Facebook raffle rules documents. It is not legal advice. You need to have an experienced attorney sign-off on any Facebook raffle rules you create.

Let’s get started.

Best Practices for Facebook Raffle Rules & Regulations
Let’s start with a quick briefing on the best practices for running a legal Facebook raffle:

Where you can/cannot run a Facebook raffle:

You can run a raffle on your Page’s Timeline, in a Facebook Page Tab and on a Facebook App page. But, You aren’t allowed to run a raffle on your personal Profile Timeline.

What your Facebook Raffle Must Include:

Your official Facebook Raffle Rules (or a link to it)
Which people are eligible to enter your raffle (based on their age, location, etc.)
A disclaimer that your raffle isn’t sponsored by or associated with Facebook itself
Legal Facebook Raffle Entry Methods:

You can ask people to do each of these actions to enter your Facebook raffle:

Like a Post
Comment on a Post
Post on a Page
Message a Page
Submit personal information in an entry form
Submit a photo, video or text content
Vote in a competition
Illegal Facebook Raffle Entry Methods:

You can’t ask people to do any of these things to enter your Facebook raffle:

Share a Page
Tag themselves in a photo that they aren’t in
Post on their own Timeline
Share on a friend’s Timeline
Like-Gating:

Like-gating is a tactic in which you force a person to Like your Facebook Page before they can enter your raffle.

Facebook used to allow you to do this with a Facebook Contest App like Wishpond. But, unfortunately, they don’t anymore.

How to Contact Raffle Winners:

Facebook was once very strict about how you could contact winners of your Facebook raffles. They didn’t want you using methods like Facebook posts and messages, as they thought it would lead to spamming. But they’ve since lifted those restrictions.

Here are a few methods you can use to contact your Facebook raffle winners:

Email (recommended)
Facebook message
Tweet
Comment on a Post on your Page’s Timeline
Facebook message
Facebook Post on your Page’s Timeline.
Email is recommended as it’s the most reliable way we’ve found to reach someone.

Click here to check out more ways to announce raffle winners.

Facebook Page Guidelines for Promotions (explained)
Facebook has strict guidelines of their own for running any kind of promotion, raffle or contest on Facebook. As of now, Facebook doesn’t allow you to run a raffle on a personal profile/timeline, so you need to do it through your Facebook Page.

If you want to change a personal Profile to a Facebook Page you can do it really easily here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/migrate. It allows you to keep all of your friends (they will be converted to Likes) and keep your profile and cover photos, but it won’t transfer your posts to the new page.

Let’s look at Facebook’s Page Promotion Guidelines (Date of Last Revision: December 27, 2016) as quoted directly from their Facebook Page Terms:

What You Need to Know:

Here’s what Facebook is saying of these guidelines:

You and your raffle participants cannot sue Facebook or hold them liable if anything goes wrong with your raffle. They are not liable if something goes changes in the Facebook Platform that causes your raffle any disruption. It also means that a raffle entrant can’t hold Facebook accountable if a business run a fraudulent giveaway.
Your Facebook raffle rules must be accessible from the raffle entry page. Generally Facebook raffle rules are very extensive, so you will need to have a link on the raffle entry page that takes entrants to a separate page to read them.
In your Facebook raffle rules, your must specify who exactly is eligible to enter the raffle, based on their age (such as 21+) and location (such as U.S. and Canada)
You must follow all raffle/lottery laws of your country/state/province. Remember, just because you’re on the internet doesn’t mean you are outside of law enforcement’s jurisdiction
You must acknowledge on the raffle entry page that the raffle is not sponsored, endorsed or associated with Facebook. Most Facebook sweepstakes raffle apps, like Wishpond’s, include this by default on the raffle page, like this:

Raffle must be hosted in a Facebook Page Tab or Timeline. It can’t be hosted on a personal Profile
You can’t use the following actions as raffle entry methods:
Share on an entrant’s timeline
Share on a friend’s timeline
Tag yourself (or your friend) in a photo that you’re not in
Facebook won’t help with your raffle. Even if they make an update that disrupts your raffle they won’t help you.
There are also a few Facebook Page Guidelines (outside of the Promotions section) that pertain to Facebook raffles. Here’s an overview of the one’s you need to comply with:

Collection of Data:

What you need to know:

If you ask people to enter their contact details, such as email, phone, etc. or any images, videos or text, you need to make it clear on your raffle page that you are collecting it, and not Facebook. To comply with this rule, you need to use your own branding, company name and imagery on the raffle page and not say, in ay way, that Facebook is a part of it.

This isn’t something you need to worry about, unless you’re trying to trick people into thinking you’re Facebook.

If you ask people to submit any personal details, video, photos or text content, you must get their permission to reuse it in the future. This is applicable if, for example, you want to create a banner ad showing off pictures of people who entered your raffle.

The simplest method to ask people for their permission is to include an opt-in checkbox on your raffle’s entry form that allows them to choose to give you their permission.

Tagging:

What you need to know:

In a nutshell, this says that you can’t ask raffle entrants to tag themselves (or their friends) in a photo that they are not present in. This provision is in place to stop people from spamming their friends Newsfeeds with erroneous content.

Facebook Raffle Rules Template
We’ve created an easy fill-in-the-blank template to help you create your Facebook Raffle rules. Keep in mind that this is just a guide, and you need to use a lawyer to make sure your rules comply with all applicable laws.

This template is based off of a number of past Facebook raffles done by large companies and small ones – generally in North America. There may also be local regulations that this template does not discuss, but it’s a good place to begin.

Wrapping it Up
Hopefully this article has given you a good foundation for your raffle’s rules and regulations. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section below.

Related Reading:

The 2017 Guide to Instagram Contest Rules
Social Media Marketing Plan: An 11-Step Template
4 Amazing Facebook Giveaway Examples
Facebook Landing Pages: 38 Ideas, Tips and Examples
5 Facebook Landing Page Template Examples Critiqued
10 Terrific Instagram Tools for Business
5 Awesome Ideas for Giveaways on Facebook
5 Sure-Fire Facebook Contest Ideas
10 Amazing Examples of Branded Facebook Contests Done Right

Written by James Scherer

James Scherer is the content editor at Wishpond. When he’s not writing or designing for Wishpond he’s risking his life biking around the city. Reach out to him on Twitter @JDScherer.

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NEWS
Drug-filled Mice Airdropped Over Guam to Kill Snakes
Dead mice filled with a generic version of Tylenol are being airdropped to kill the invasive brown tree snake, U.S. officials say.
BY KER THAN
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

A brown tree snake in Queensland, Australia (file photo).

PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE GRALL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Dead mice packed with drugs were recently airdropped into Guam’s dense jungle canopy—part of a new effort to kill an invasive species of snake on the U.S. Pacific island territory.

In the U.S. government-funded project, tablets of concentrated acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, are placed in dead thumb-size mice, which are then used as bait for brown tree snakes.

In humans, acetaminophen helps soothe aches, pains, and fevers. But when ingested by brown tree snakes, the drug disrupts the oxygen-carrying ability of the snakes’ hemoglobin blood proteins.

"They go into a coma, and then death," said Peter Savarie, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services, which has been developing the technique since 1995 through grants from the U.S. Departments of Defense and Interior.

Only about 80 milligrams of acetaminophen—equal to a child’s dose of Tylenol—are needed to kill an adult brown tree snake. Once ingested via a dead mouse, it typically takes about 60 hours for the drug to kill a snake.

"There are very few snakes that will consume something that they haven’t killed themselves," added Dan Vice, assistant state director of USDA Wildlife Services in Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Islands.

But brown tree snakes will scavenge as well as hunt, he said, and that’s the "chink in the brown tree snake’s armor."

Snakes Pests Decimated "Naïve" Wildlife

The brown tree snake is an arboreal species native to Australia, Papua New Guinea, and several Pacific islands. The snake preys on birds, lizards, bats, and small mammals.

Inadvertently introduced to Guam (map) from the Solomon Islands after World War II, brown tree snakes are responsible for the extinction or severe reduction of several of the island’s native species.

The brown tree snake "is a nocturnal, arboreal predator. There’s just nothing like it here. It arrived here and found an island full of very naïve native wildlife," Vice said. (See "Snake Plague on Guam Impacts Trees.")

Over the years, scientists have developed several strategies to fight the reptile pest, including traps, snake-detecting dogs, and nighttime spotlight searches along airport and seaport fence lines.

Most of these strategies have focused on keeping the snake species from leaving Guam and sneaking onto ships headed for other islands, such as Hawaii, where scientists fear the predators could wreak similar havoc.

(See "Alien Giant Snakes Threaten to Invade Up to 1/3 of U.S.")

By contrast, this latest approach aims to take the fight into Guam’s jungles, where most of the invasive snakes reside.

A popular misconception about Guam, Vice said, is that the entire island is overrun by brown tree snakes. In reality, most of the snakes are concentrated in the island’s jungles, where it is difficult for humans to reach.

"You don’t walk out the front door and bump into a snake every morning," Vice said.

Radio-tagged Bait to Help Track Effectiveness

Before the laced mice are airdropped, they are attached to "flotation devices" that each consist of two pieces of cardboard joined by a 4-foot-long (1.2-meter-long) paper streamer.

The flotation device was designed to get the bait stuck in upper tree branches, where the brown tree snakes reside, instead of falling to the jungle floor, where the drug-laden mice might inadvertently get eaten by nontarget species, such as monitor lizards.

There are few other species on Guam that could be tempted by the mouse bait, USDA’s Savarie said, because the brown tree snakes have eaten most of them.

(Related: "World’s Biggest Snake Ate New Prehistoric Croc Species.")

On September 1 USDA researchers performed a small-scale airdrop of about 200 baited mice onto 20 acres (8 hectares) of jungle around the U.S. Naval Base in Guam. USDA personnel flying low over Guam’s jungles in helicopters dropped the baited devices one at a time, to ensure even coverage.

The drop was only the second in the project’s history, and was done to help refine the technique before a larger field test is conducted in late 2010 or early 2011.

A small subset of mice in the latest drop was equipped with radio transmitters, which the team will use to determine the baits’ efficiency.

"If we go out tomorrow and the radio signal from the bait has moved, it’s very likely that [it was eaten by] a snake," Savarie said.

Wildlife Services collects the bodies of only the snakes that eat the mice that have radiocollars.

"We would not find other snakes that would eat the bait," said Kathy Fagerstone, Technology Transfer Program Manager for USDA Wildlife Services.

"However, the amount of acetaminophen in each mouse is small and would not present environmental hazards."

(Also see: "USDA Fights Invasive Fire Ants With Flies.")

Tree Snakes Have a Chink in Their Armor

The baited mice could prove to be an effective tool against Guam’s brown tree snakes, especially medium- and large-size adults, said Haldre Rogers, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who researches the effects of bird loss on Guam’s native forests.

"The development of more tools like this is very important for restoring Guam’s forests in the long run," said Rogers, who was not involved in the USDA project.

But all the tools currently at scientists’ disposal, including the drug-filled mice, will at best simply control the island’s snake population, not eradicate it entirely, she said.

"It’s another arrow in our quiver," she said. "Unfortunately, we don’t have the silver bullet for brown tree snakes yet."

USDA’s Vice agreed: "There are a lot of things out there to control brown tree snakes. They all work, but they don’t work completely," he said. "The idea of this aerial delivery of oral toxicants is that we now have a control tool that we can apply across a larger landscape."

(Related: "Are Birds Best Hope for Pest-Ridden Coffee Crops?")

Longer term, USDA researchers hope to create a nonbiological substitute for dead mice in the bait, something that the snakes will eat but that won’t rot or attract flies, ants, and maggots in the jungle.

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