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In the past, ministers have sought to justify deals such as this on the grounds that corporate profits are good for the exchequer. But they would struggle to apply this argument to the privatisation of Qinetiq. Carlyle bought its stake through a series of "special purpose vehicles" based in Guernsey, which means that i... |
As for Lord Drayson, I was staggered by his appointment not because I believe that he has had too little experience of this branch of government, but because I believe he has had too much. Before he took office, Paul Drayson knew quite a lot about defence procurement: he had pulled off a substantial deal with the MoD. |
Until 2003, when he sold it for £542m, Paul Drayson was chief executive of a pharmaceutical company founded by his father-in-law, called Powderject. He remains a generous donor to the Labour party. After 9/11, the British government decided to stock up on smallpox vaccine. On November 30 2001, the MoD decided that the ... |
In May 2004, Tony Blair made Paul Drayson a life peer. This also attracted controversy: six weeks after he received his peerage, he gave the Labour party £500,000. In May 2005, he joined the government. Since then he has been responsible for ensuring that the MoD receives good value from its contracts with private comp... |
So here we have a privatisation - the first full-scale privatisation Tony Blair's government has carried out - that has allowed a US investment company to walk off with hundreds of millions of pounds of free money, much of which will be tax exempt. It has been assisted by 25 years of guaranteed income from the governme... |
March 2 (UPI) -- A food delivery worker in Britain was filmed by a witness sliding down a snowy road on his stomach in a bid to get some chicken to its destination. |
Witness Esme Taylor tweeted a video showing the Deliveroo worker sliding down a steep incline in Lincoln, England, while making a delivery. |
Taylor said the delivery service worker had declared, "Gotta get that Nando's delivered," before the stunt, which took place on a street appropriately named Steep Hill. |
A Deliveroo spokesman lauded the worker's ingenuity. |
"With snow days popping up across the country, it's great to see Deliveroo's riders making the most of the weather -- snowboarding, sledding or even skiing!" the spokesman told the London Evening Standard. "However the safety of our riders is of paramount importance, and we urge them to stay safe during this extreme we... |
It’s definitely not the norm but, if nothing else, it shows that two of the arms of the investment dealer’s wholesale operations are working in the manner that they are supposed to. |
We are referring to last Friday’s downgrade of Dundee International REIT by Sam Damiani, the real estate analyst at TD Securities, to a hold from a buy. Damiani also cut his target to $11 from $11.50. |
On Monday, Dundee International REIT announced a $71.6 million bought deal on which TD Securities was the lead manager and book runner. In that offering, 6.8 million units were sold at $10.55 per unit – with the underwriters having the option to sell another 1.2 million units: that over-allotment option expires up to 3... |
There’s no great surprise that TD is leading the equity offering. The firm took Dundee International REIT public last year (in a $310.5-million offering) and also led a $92.9-million offering last April. TD is also the lead banker for Dundee REIT. |
According to Bloomberg, five analysts cover Dundee International REIT. Four have recommendations, with Pammi Bir from Scotia Capital being restricted. Of the four, three rate the issue as a hold and one (Brendon Abrams from M Partners Inc.) rating it a buy. The one-year target ranges from $10.40 (GMP) to $11.25 (Canacc... |
A few days after Tropical Storm Isabel flooded their Millers Island home with more than 3 feet of water, Dale and Georgia Poling watched a dozen workers jump out of a truck and scramble into the house, ready to stop mold that was spreading across the walls. |
Their house had been devastated, but because they had flood insurance, they believed everything would be all right. Then the workers drew horizontal plumb lines and began sawing straight across the drywall, about 4 feet off the floor. The crew removed the bottom of the walls - leaving the top half nailed to the studs. |
"It's ridiculous," Georgia Poling said. "You know that stuff is like a sponge. That mold's going all the way up into your ceiling." |
What the Polings soon found out was that such piecemeal repairs - replacing only the portion of the wall that touched water - are standard procedure under the National Flood Insurance Program. |
And as they pursued an insurance claim, they ran into many other surprises, including the discovery that while their home was overinsured, its contents were not covered at all. |
Amid the political finger-pointing that has surrounded the insurance industry's response to the September storm, the Polings, like hundreds of other Isabel victims, have found themselves on a voyage of frustration and despair. They see absurdity in the government and insurance bureaucracies, but there's no laughing abo... |
Some details of their experience are unique - such as the 37-day stretch when their government-supplied trailer lacked water. But according to state and Baltimore County officials, their struggles over flood insurance are all too common. |
The Polings, like many of their waterfront neighbors in eastern Baltimore County, spend hours a day on the phone pleading their case. And after so much time, they're burned out. |
"I can't tell you one day since Sept. 19th that I've had an easy day," Georgia Poling said. "Not one." |
Dale and Georgia Poling, both 40, moved to Millers Island nine years ago, and when a 1923 shore shack overlooking Back River went up for sale five years ago, they bought it. They put on an addition and a second story, and moved in with their boys, Dale Jr. and Brian. |
Dale Sr. wasn't home the night of the storm. He's an inspector for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and was on duty that night. But Georgia, who owns Heritage Food Market in Dundalk, tried to stick it out with the boys. |
About 2 a.m., when water started coming up through the floor, they called 911 and waded out, lanterns held over their heads, to a neighbor's house on higher ground. |
They called their insurance agent the next day. "They were very sympathetic to our cause at that time," Dale Poling said. |
Flood insurance is a federal program, but the policies are mostly written and serviced by private companies. The Polings bought their policy from Fred Meyer and Sons, an independent agent in Edgemere, though the policy itself was issued by a Pennsylvania company, the Harleysville Group. |
An adjuster came to the house several days after the storm. The Polings had assumed that their flood insurance covered the contents of their home. It didn't. If they had known, they would have bought the additional coverage. But, they said, no one ever mentioned it them. |
A representative of Fred Meyer and Sons, Marty Spatafore, said the agency owners declined to comment. |
Though disappointed that their contents weren't covered, the Polings were otherwise optimistic. The adjuster's first comment to them, they said, was that they were overinsured, with $190,000 in coverage for a $140,000 house. They figured they would have no problem getting enough to start rebuilding. |
"When he leaves, you feel good, but when in five days you get a piece of paper saying they're going to give you $45,000 to fix your house, then the fighting begins," Dale Poling said. |
Mark Stevens, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the federal flood insurance program, said such policies replace only what is touched by the flood waters, drywall included. In a flooded kitchen, a policy would pay to remove and replace the base cabinets but not the top cabinets. |
"Good luck finding ones that match," Georgia Poling said. |
The insurance won't pay to replace upper drywall or ceilings that might be contaminated with mold, but will pay for Clorox to be sprayed on them. |
Throughout much of it all, the Poling family - two adults, two teen-age boys, two cats and a black Labrador named Bear - squeezed into a trailer that FEMA towed into their yard. |
The trailer is more of a portable camper than a mobile home, with a bed in front behind sliding doors, a fold-out couch and another tiny bed in the back. |
One morning in December, the pipes in the house burst, sending water into its crawl space. The trailer had been hooked up to the house's plumbing, so it lost water service, too. The Polings called FEMA, whose officials agreed to move the trailer to the front yard and hook it up directly to the water and sewer lines. |
It took them 37 days to do it, the Polings said. Meanwhile, they asked FEMA for vouchers for a new place to live, but the agency sent a letter refusing, saying they had been given a trailer. They got a seven- day hotel voucher from the Red Cross, but the rest of the time they were on their own, bouncing between relativ... |
However, FEMA officials subsequently apologized to the Polings and offered to reimburse them for their hotel stays and help with other expenses. |
Last month, Dale Poling said, things began to improve. The Polings filled out a questionnaire for a study being conducted by former Maryland Insurance Commissioner Steven B. Larsen, and he started making phone calls on their behalf. |
Larsen's study, which was commissioned by Baltimore County, led to a political squabble between County Executive James T. Smith Jr. and Maryland Insurance Commissioner Alfred W. Redmer Jr. over whether the commissioner could have helped the victims more. |
When a House of Delegates committee held a hearing on Isabel insurance problems, the Polings went to Annapolis to testify. A Maryland Insurance Administration staffer called the next day, and a worker there started helping them. |
And they met a FEMA contractor who worked with their adjuster to increase their settlement by $10,000, to about $80,000. |
Still, not everything was squared away. |
Their policy had been written as if their home were built on a slab foundation, not a crawl space, meaning they had been paying too little for their coverage. They said their insurance agent had never inspected their home. Stevens, of FEMA, said the government doesn't require agents to do so. |
But when discrepancies like that occur, policy holders have to make up for the difference between the rates they paid and those they should have paid before a claim can be settled, said Don Beaton, the chief underwriter for the National Flood Insurance Program. |
When the Polings heard they owed another $1,638, they were shocked. The money was deducted from their settlement. |
The Polings received confirmation from Harleysville, which declined to comment for this article, that a check had been sent on Jan. 29 to an independent adjuster that the family had worked with. They have been told they'll get the check soon. |
On Friday, contractors delivered materials to start raising the house on a new foundation, 10 feet above the ground. |
Even with the prospect of work starting on the house, the Polings said they don't feel as if they're close to resolution. The path has been too long and hard, they said. |
"I think I'm just going to collapse when my house is finished," Georgia Poling said. "I'm just going to collapse." |
SAN FRANCISCO — Lately I’ve been feeling very self-conscious when talking on the phone in public, and it’s not because I’m worried about strangers listening in on my private conversations. |
Rather, it’s because the cell phone I’m using — the just-released Dell Streak — is actually a touch-screen tablet device that makes some of the clunkiest handsets from the late ’90s look diminutive by comparison. |
The Streak ($300 with a two-year AT&T contract) is a complicated gadget. For a tablet computer, it is fairly small and thin — a fraction the size of Apple Inc.’s popular iPad. Its face is dominated by a touch screen that is 5 inches diagonally, compared with the iPad’s 9.7-inch display. Yet Dell insists it is also a ph... |
The Streak’s enormity is inescapable. It’s a little less than 6 inches long and 3 inches across, so it looked mammoth in my petite hands. I felt like a little kid holding her father’s smart phone. |
It was clear from the start that carrying around the black gadget would be a chore. It fit into the back pockets of my jeans, but protruded noticeably. I was afraid it would fall out or be filched by some tablet-phone-hungry thief. As a result, I had to carry it in a bag or hold it in my hand if I wanted to tote it aro... |
Still, I figured the Streak’s size would be great for at least one thing: watching videos. As expected, videos streamed well from such sites as YouTube and Funny or Die, probably helped by the device’s 1 GHz processor. Images looked sharp and bright on the screen. They didn’t look quite as stellar as they do on Apple’s... |
There is plenty of storage space on the Streak for the videos you want to watch (and for photos and songs, too), as it includes a 16-gigabyte microSD memory card. And the device’s battery seemed to have no problem getting through a day filled with video and music streaming, Web surfing and chatting. |
The screen was also a swell surface for checking out Google Maps and other websites. I liked having extra real estate to look up directions and see pages that contained both photos and text. But using it to instant message my friends was more difficult than on other touch-screen keyboards I’ve used; despite the Streak’... |
Using the Streak to make phone calls was a new experience. I felt weird holding it up to my ear, imagining quizzical looks as I walked down the street. The Streak didn’t sound bad, but it didn’t sound great, either. Calls sounded kind of fuzzy on my end, and in one frustrating exchange the screen kept changing orientat... |
Beyond the Streak’s basic awkwardness, its biggest flaw is that it relies on old software. Despite the inclusion of a swift processor, the Streak is saddled with an older version of the Android operating software — version 1.6 — which means it is missing some of latest features and can’t run some applications that call... |
Dell Inc. says the Streak will get what is currently the latest Android software, version 2.2, later this year and will get Flash 10.1, too. I’m stymied by decision to not even start out the Streak with version 2.1, which is available on a number of current smart phones. |
A 17-year-old boy has been charged with three robberies in Ipswich. |
The teenager has been charged with allegedly stealing a speaker, a cigarette lighter and a belt, as well as assaulting three people and intimidating witnesses, across two separate incidents. |
The first alleged incident, on September 25, took place in St Stephen’s Church Lane, Ipswich. |
It is reported that a mobile speaker and a cigarette lighter were stolen from two juveniles who were also assaulted. |
Next month, on October 25, another robbery took place in the same location. |
This time a 16-year-old boy was threatened before being punched in the face and having his belt taken. |
Police arrested a 17-year-old boy in connection with the incidents and subsequently charged him with three counts of robbery in addition to two counts of witness intimidation. |
The teenager appeared before Ipswich Youth Court on Thursday, November 8. |
He has been bailed to appear before the same court on Thursday, November 15. |
Like a defensive back reading the eyes of a quarterback, Taunton’s Kevin Johnson held his position and began drifting into the passing lane. When the Carver-Sacred Heart defenseman sent the pass his way, Johnson jumped in front of the puck and took it for a full-speed one-on-one breakaway against Carver goalie Matt Don... |
Johnson finished the play with a well-timed flick of the wrist to give the Tigers a shorthanded goal and an early lead, and Taunton continued its early-season success with a 3-2 win over the Crusaders Saturday afternoon at Aleixo Ice Arena. |
The Tigers (3-0) got more from Johnson and Taunton’s first line, as Johnson assisted on a first-period goal by Peter Ciampi that gave Taunton a 2-0 lead. |
A little over a minute after Johnson negated Carver’s power play, he managed to flick the puck to Ciampi in front of the crease for Taunton’s second goal of the game. |
The Crusaders (0-3) couldn’t capitalize on four first-period power plays, and didn’t score until midway through the second period when Craig Rumble clicked in a shot off assists from CJ Bradford and Adam Bruneau. |
A big reason why Carver couldn’t score, and a factor in Taunton’s hot start as well, was Tigers goalie Steve Slivinski. |
Slivinski tallied 22 saves in the contest, including a handful of tricky shots and a breakaway attempt by Carver’s Cal Ciarcia. |
Donovan was no slouch for Carver-Sacred Heart, as he finished with 33 saves, as Taunton constantly peppered him with shots. |
The Tigers regained a two-goal advantage in the third period when defenseman Jeff Pitts scored his first goal of the season on a Taunton power play. |
Bradford brought the Crusaders within one with 2:36 remaining in the contest, but Taunton held on and weathered a 6-on-5 attack in the final minute after Donovan was pulled to preserve the perfect season heading into the New Year’s Day showdown with city rival Coyle-Cassidy. |
The shrimplike creature video-taped by NASA scientists. |
WASHINGTON — In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists found a shrimplike creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath an Antarctic ice sheet. |
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, they had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist. That’s why a NASA team was surprised when it lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of the ice sheet in Antarctica, and a 3-inch shrimp-like creature went swimming by an... |
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,’’ said NASA scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will present the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting tomorrow. |
The video is likely to inspire scientists to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has them wondering whether life exists in other hostile places on earth and in places like Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter. |
Microbiologist Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey called the finding intriguing, noting somewhat similar results in retreating ice shelves, but nothing directly under the ice. |
He said it’s possible the creatures swam in from far away and don’t live there. |
The month of April has arrived, and with it the promise of another year of racing atop Quarry Hill. Barre's Thunder Road is less than four weeks away from its 60th season of competition, making it an important anniversary for race teams and fans at the 'Nation's Site of Excitement'. |
The historic track will open its season with the 21st Community Bank N.A. 150 on Sunday, April 28 at 1:30pm. The event, which will once again feature the American-Canadian Tour (Late Models), is the first of many big shows to help celebrate Thunder Road's 60th season in style. |
The 2019 season will feature many of the track's favorite long-standing events. The Vermont Milk Bowl presented by Northfield Savings Bank, Mekkelsen RV Memorial Day Classic, VP Fuels Vermont Governor's Cup, and Vermont Country Campers Mid-Season Championships all return in 2019. The Lenny's Shoe & Apparel Flying Tiger... |
Several new additions have also been made to the schedule. The biggest is a date for the new Bullring Bash Quarter Mile Challenge. Both the Bullring Bash Modifieds and Midstate Site Development Legends join the ACT Late Model Tour for the Coca-Cola Labor Day Classic, turning the weekend into a two-day event. The Milk B... |
Thunder Road has also brought back a previous tradition by adding an event between the Labor Day Classic and the Milk Bowl. 'Championship Night' on Saturday, September 14 will double as the track's official 60th-anniversary party with added-distance events and a post-race pit party. |
In addition to putting on big events, Thunder Road is also bringing in big names in 2019. Two of the most respected drivers in national stock car racing will come to Barre for the first time this year. Current Xfinity Series star and three-time Chili Bowl Nationals winner Christopher Bell of Oklahoma is making the trip... |
The excitement for the 60th season is showing up in driver support. Registration numbers for all Thunder Road divisions are expected to maintain or surpass their 2018 levels. Nearly all Maplewood/Irving Oil Late Model regulars are returning, including reigning 'King of the Road' Scott Dragon of Milton, two-time defendi... |
Defending Flying Tiger Champion Joel Hodgdon of Craftsbury Common and veteran Trevor Lyman of Hinesburg have moved up to the Late Models with the latter planning a full-time schedule. Reports are that Graniteville's John Donahue is returning to weekly Late Model competition after a two-year hiatus. |
The Flying Tigers continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Veterans such as Grand Isle's Joe Steffen and Craftsbury Common's Mike Martin are joined by rising stars like Waitsfield's Kyle Streeter and E. Calais's Tyler Austin. Every driver from 2018's impressive rookie class, including Rookie of the Year Brandon Lanphear o... |
In the Street Stocks, there will once again be a mix of popular veterans and talented newcomers. Top contenders such as Barre's Jeffrey Martin, Derby's Tim Hunt, and Williamstown's Tommy 'Thunder' Smith will be back, as will sophomores like Barre's Tyler Pepin and Pittsfield's Juan 'Paco' Marshall. The void from driver... |
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