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“The impact will be significant to the central government’s target,” Ngurah Wijaya, chairman of the Bali Tourism Board, said by phone. “When Mount Raung erupted we lost 30 percent from Australian market. I hope this won’t be worse than Mount Raung." |
Known for its beaches, surf, culture and nightlife, Bali accounts for about 40 percent of foreign tourist arrivals to Indonesia. Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari was stranded on the island when his flight was canceled as the airport closed, Kompas reported, citing the airport authority’s Gona. |
Dividend stocks can make for some of the best investments. Not only are they a great source of recurring income, but the best dividend-paying companies also often have wonderful growth prospects. That means not only do you get paid, but also the growing value of your investment can pay off with immense wealth over the ... |
However, dividend stocks can also be hazardous to your wealth. It can be easy to fall for a yield trap while passing up a smaller payout that's far more secure and likely to grow, leaving you with a smaller nest egg when that high dividend gets cut and investors sell out in their race for the exits. |
To help investors make the most of your hard-earned capital, both in reducing your risk and maximizing gains, here is most important -- yet relatively simple -- thing anyone can do to set their dividend portfolio up for success: Measure a company's ability to keep paying you. |
When it comes to investing in a stock based on its dividend, it's hard to undersell the value of these three words: margin of safety. So what exactly does that mean? Depending on the company and what it does, it's measuring how well cash flows support the dividend, and how strong its balance sheet is to furth... |
While taking the time to make sure the dividend stocks you buy hold up well to scrutiny on these characteristics won't guarantee perfect results, they should go a long way toward improving your returns, by improving the probabilities that your dividend stock choices will be winners, not losers. |
Can cash flows support the payout? |
One common metric to measure this is the payout ratio. |
As the first chart shows, both Realty Income (NYSE: O) and Caretrust REIT (NASDAQ: CTRE) payout more than 100% of their GAAP earnings in dividends. Yet on a cash flow basis, the math looks much better, at 81% and 63% respectively, a respectable amount for a REIT to spend on its dividend. |
For other industries, the cash payout ratio is generally best used, along with the earnings payout ratio. Furthermore, most companies should also pay out a much smaller portion of cash and earnings than REITs, because Caretrust and Realty Income's tenants are responsible for upkeep, while other companies must stea... |
How strong is the balance sheet? |
There are other things to measure that demonstrate how secure a company's dividend is, including its balance sheet (that is, the assets it holds including cash, inventory, and so on, versus liabilities such as debt and payments to vendors) within the context of its industry. |
Caretrust carries a very small cash balance and has a fairly large debt load in terms of its size. This balance sheet and leverage is relatively typical for a REIT, however, because REITs are built to pay dividends from their cash flows, which are a product of very long-term, very predictable agreements with the tenant... |
Before you add a dividend stock to your portfolio just because the yield looks good, take some time to understand its cash flows, and the strength of its balance sheet, and how both relate to the security of its payout based on the industry it operates in. |
Trying to determine the margin of safety of a company's dividend may not sound like much fun, but it will make a big difference in your returns. One of the best ways to maximize your dividend stock returns is to know which stocks to avoid and which are worth owning based on their ability to keep paying you. |
David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and CareTrust REIT wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. |
Jason Hall owns shares of CareTrust REIT and Nucor. The Motley Fool owns shares of CareTrust REIT. The Motley Fool recommends Nucor. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. |
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has increased the number of targets on its books by more than 50pc in the past two years. |
The total has jumped from 600 to 973 this year, with briefings given by CAB officers to joint policing committees around the country credited for a major portion of the increase. |
A breakdown of the targets shows that 48pc of them are based in Dublin, with the west of the city accounting for 177, a further 110 in the south, 80 in the north, 46 in north central division, 37 in south central and only a dozen in the east. |
Outside of the capital, Limerick city and county tops the list with 72 targets, followed by 40 each in Meath and Wexford, while Kildare has 38, Louth 33, Tipperary 29, Cavan-Monaghan 25, Kerry and Offaly 22 each, Kilkenny-Carlow 20, Cork city 18 and Galway division 17. |
CAB officers expect that by the end of 2018, this will have been their busiest ever year in the courts with headline figures for assets seized and tax and social welfare debts collected more than matching the big returns achieved in 2017. |
The bureau is continuing to increase its drive against the main players in the travelling gangs responsible for the huge surge in burglaries and other rural crimes in the past few years. At present, 78 of those on the target list are suspected of amassing unexplained wealth from involvement in burglaries. |
The head of CAB, Det Chief Supt Pat Clavin, told the Irish Independent: "The bureau supports Operation Thor, the Garda anti-burglary initiative, and this is the first goal in its business plan. |
"We got a massive response from the public after we travelled the country, addressing the joint policing committees and briefing them on the work we do. The figures show that more than half of our targets are located outside Dublin and by spreading our message in every region, we have received a great reaction from peo... |
Det Chief Supt Clavin said people needed to know that if they had information that could be useful, all they had to do was get in touch with CAB or local profilers and "we take it from there. They don't have to go to court to give evidence". |
During 2018, CAB carried out 34 search operations, ranging from one site, which is rare, to 39 individual searches in a single operation. That operation was aimed at a Dublin gangster and involved raids in Dublin, Meath, Cavan, Monaghan and Limerick, fully stretching the resources of the multi-agency bureau. |
CAB received 177 cases from local profilers, compared with 101 in 2017 and 66 in 2016. |
The bureau has now trained a total of 378 profilers around the country, of which 350 are gardaí, an increase of 100 from last year. |
Robin Schiller and Jonathan Bell Gardai are investigating the theft of four ATMs in Meath, Antrim and Armagh overnight in what is the 18th such incident so far this year. |
The US mid-term elections may have come and gone but they leave many people with memories of historic firsts, including the country's first gay governor. |
The recent midterm elections in the US were filled with many historic firsts, including Muslim women being elected into congress for the very first time. |
Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib won the race for the Democrats in the state of Michigan. |
Joining Tlaib as the only other Muslim woman in Congress is Somali-American Ilham Omar. In this historic development in Minnesota's fifth congressional district, Omar takes over from Keith Ellison, who at the time of his appointment, was the first Muslim congressman. |
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Detroit who is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, ran unopposed in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District to become one of the first Muslim women in Congress. |
In a country where sexual orientation remains the subject of heated debates, Jared Polis has made it into history's archives by becoming America's first openly gay governor. |
Polis replaces John Hickenlooper as the governor of Colorado. |
People will be closely watching his term in office in a state where a court recently ruled in favour of a bakery that refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. |
Amid cheers and celebratory scenes reminiscent of Barack Obama's victory night back in 2008, Ayanna Pressley addressed supporters after becoming Massachusetts' first woman of colour elected to the House of Representatives. |
"I didn't come here to deliver a victory speech tonight, only one of vision. And when we realise equity, justice and equality, these rights for everyone, then and only then, will I deliver a victory speech," Pressley told supporters. |
Newly elected Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley gave an impassioned speech on Tuesday after winning her seat in the House of Representatives. |
More women stood for office in the 2018 US midterms than in any other elections previously, reports ABC News. |
A record number of 275 female candidates put themselves forward for public service. With 211 women up for election, the Democrats had three times more females than their Republican counterparts, who gave their voters 64 women to choose from. |
Emma Forte pitched a five-inning no-hitter while striking out 10 and added a double to lead host AMSA (3-1, 3-0 WCAC) over St. Mary's (2-3, 1-3). AMSA's Elysha Sathyaraj had two hits and two RBIs. |
Updated: Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 9:38 a.m. |
Originally Published: June 7, 2008 9:01 p.m. |
Losing weight can be a struggle, but keeping it off can feel like a losing battle. Now a clinical study shows that monthly personal counseling - usually just 10-15 minutes by phone - can help people who have lost weight keep much of it off for more than two years. A web-based program also showed modest success in helpi... |
Excess weight is a significant public health problem. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. This excess weight is the nation's second-leading cause of preventable death. Extra pounds can lead to increased blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes - all risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Weight ... |
A multi-site team of scientists, led by Dr. Laura Svetkey of Duke University, decided to compare the success rates of three relatively low-cost approaches to maintaining weight loss. |
Their study, called the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial, was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). |
It's the largest and longest-lasting trial to date that's tested different strategies for weight-loss maintenance. |
As reported in the March 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study initially enrolled 1,685 overweight or obese adults who had high blood pressure, high cholesterol or both. |
After a six-month weight-loss program, 1,032 of the participants had lost an average of nearly 19 pounds. |
They were then randomly assigned to one of three approaches for maintaining their weight loss: monthly personal counseling on diet and physical activity; an interactive web-based program that provided similar information; or self-directed maintenance, where participants received little input from study staff. |
The personal counseling sessions included monthly five- to 15-minute telephone conversations with a health and weight-loss coach. Participants and counselors also had in-person meetings three times each year. The web-based program provided similar advice with no personal contact. |
After 2.5 years of trying to maintain their weight loss, the participants who had personal counseling had the most success. At the end of the study, they retained an average weight loss of 9.2 pounds. |
At the 18- and 24-month checkups, the web group had retained more weight loss than the self-directed group, but by the end of the study their numbers were statistically similar: an average of 7.3 pounds for the web group and 6.4 pounds for the self-directed one. |
Do I want to live my best life? How will I achieve it? |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. farmers are gearing up to plant what could be their third-largest soybean crop ever despite failing to sell a mountain of beans from their last harvest due to a U.S.-China trade war that remains unresolved. |
Soybeans were the single most valuable U.S. agricultural export crop and until the trade war, China bought $12 billion-worth a year from American farmers. |
But Chinese tariffs have almost halted the trade, taking the biggest buyer out of the market and leaving farmers with crops they cannot sell. The U.S. government estimates farmers will have 900 million bushels, or approximately $8 billion, of last year’s soybeans in storage silos around the country when they start harv... |
The U.S. government rolled out a $12 billion farm aid package last year to soften the impact of falling revenue on farmers, an important source of votes for U.S. President Donald Trump. |
“It is tough to rotate out of soybeans because what else are you going to plant?” said Darin Anderson, a 41-year-old farmer from Valley City, North Dakota. |
One alternative, sorghum, was also dragged into the trade war. Farmers also could increase their corn acreage but the corn-based ethanol industry is struggling. Additionally, farmers who plant corn on the same fields two years in a row need to buy extra fertilizer and fuel. |
Alternative niche crops such as hemp are expensive to start growing and have limited markets. |
“Farmers have made long-term investments whether it is equipment or storage,” said Josh Gackle, a 44-year-old farmer from Kulm, North Dakota. |
That means farmers will plant soybeans in the hope that the trade war ends, or that they will be compensated by another bailout or crop insurance schemes. |
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts farmers will sow 85 million acres of the oilseed this spring. That is down just 4.6 percent from last year and would be the third largest U.S. area planted with soybeans. |
The USDA expects soybean prices will fall in 2019 due to tariffs and rising supply. But soybean futures prices have performed relatively well, considering the disruption to markets from tariffs. The price is up 5.3 percent since China imposed a 25 percent tariff in July. That means many growers have made a slim profit ... |
Rincker is aiming for a 50-50 split between corn and soybeans on his farm after a similar division in 2018. Any further increase in corn would add to his expenses, he said. |
Growers are also confident their government-subsidized crop insurance plans will soften the blow if soy prices fall. |
Farmers pay for their individual insurance policies, which provides a minimum price they will receive when they book sales for their crops. The federal government funds around 60 percent of the insurance payouts. |
“It is nice to know it is there,” said Art Bunting, an Illinois farmer who typically opts for plans that cover 85 percent of expected revenue, the maximum amount offered under the plans. |
The 2019 crop insurance price for soybeans was set at $9.54 a bushel based on the futures market activity during February, a rate 62 cents lower than last year. The November soybean futures contract, which is used to determine the crop insurance price, had dropped 18 cents below that level by the middle of March. |
As well as the insurance, farmers were able to tap the government aid program to boost the profit on their 2018 crop. The bulk of the program’s budget was devoted to soybean claims. The USDA has said repeatedly the package was a one-off deal. |
The economic future of U.S. farmers is in the hands of U.S. and Chinese negotiators working to end the trade war, said Bob Utterback, president of consultancy Utterback Marketing. |
“It’s going to be bloody out here in farm country,” without a trade deal, he said. |
The USDA expects China’s annual soy imports to fall this year for the first time since 2004. China has booked just 11.0 million tonnes of U.S. soybean shipments since the marketing year started on Sept. 1, 2018, down from 28.2 million at the same point a year ago. The country’s total soy imports for the year are expect... |
A fast-spreading outbreak of African swine fever reported in 28 provinces and regions has led to mass culling and reduced China’s demand for hog feed. China has also tried to boost the amount of alternative feeds used in livestock rations to reduce its dependence on U.S. imports. |
But many farmers are convinced China will have to return to the U.S. market because even if it succeeds in reducing soymeal demand as Chinese demand for soybeans has more than tripled in the past 15 years. |
And Beijing has promised 10 million more tonnes of goodwill purchases as part of the trade negotiations, U.S. officials have said. |
“I think the demand will continue,” said Roger Hadley, a 66-year-old Indiana farmer who is aiming to divide his 1,000 acres evenly between soybeans and corn this spring. |
Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks during a campaign event at the InterContinental Hotel, Feb. 29, 2016, in Atlanta, Ga. |
Rubio is finally taking the fight to Trump. Is it too late? |
PURCELLVILLE, Virginia – What’s wrong with Donald Trump? Let the newly emboldened Marco Rubio explain it to you. |
Trump, Rubio said on Sunday, has a spray tan, lousy hair and “small hands” (wink wink). But more importantly, Trump is a “con artist” who preys on the gullible and “friends do not let friends vote for con artists.” As evidence, the Florida senator pointed to Trump University, the defunct non-accredited program whose al... |
“What he did to them is what he’s doing to voters now,” Rubio told an eager crowd of thousands at Patrick Henry College. |
Rubio has never looked better since last Thursday’s raucous Republican debate, where he finally confronted Trump after weeks avoiding a showdown. He sounds less canned, more confident and, at times, genuinely funny. His crowds are much bigger and far more fired up than the Iowa and New Hampshire audiences that were sti... |
That doesn’t mean Rubio is winning, though. The limited polling available on Virginia, an important target for Rubio where he made four stops in on Sunday, show Trump with a double-digit lead. Trump also looks strong in Super Tuesday states in general, from Massachusetts to Alabama, with only Sen. Ted Cruz’s native Tex... |
But Rubio is finally putting up a fight and his supporters couldn’t be happier. |
Ahead of the most significant day of the 2016 primary season, award-winning photographer Mark Peterson sought out voters in Virginia. |
At the first of his rallies on Sunday, he used the “con artist” theme to tie together a host of related attacks: Trump talks tough on illegal immigration, but he used undocumented Polish workers to build Trump Tower. Trump talks tough on wages, but he applied to hire hundreds of foreign workers at his hotel when Americ... |
Those riffs laid the groundwork for some improvised one-liners later when a protester waved a “MARCO RUBIO: EMPTY SUIT” sign. |
“My suit wasn’t made in China — it’s not a Trump suit!” Rubio said as audience members grabbed at the sign. |
“Ladies and gentleman, the valedictorian of Trump University!” he followed up as the person was removed. It was a pivot from portraying Trump U. “students” as sad victims to portraying them as dumb rubes, but the audience loved it. |
Then the senator turned to the big news of the morning: Trump’s refusal to disavow support from David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan in a live CNN interview, the latest in a long line of nods, winks, and high fives to extremism. |
“Never Trump!” one man called out. It was a reference to the #NeverTrump hashtag, which Republicans use to pledge never to support the front-runner under any circumstances. The movement gained its most high-profile member on Sunday night in freshman Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), a rising GOP star. |
The crowd of thousands booed at Trump’s name and exploded every time Rubio stuck the landing on his Trump lines. This is what they had all been hoping to see. They just wished it came sooner. |
Part of the problem is that by waiting so long to go after the front-runner, Rubio now has so many pent-up Trump attacks that it’s hard to give any one enough attention to break through. Super Tuesday is one day away and March 15, which includes crucial winner-take-all Ohio and Rubio’s must-win home state of Florida, i... |
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