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Stonehurst is situted away from the big players in the valley and sits graciously a few minutes out of the charming historic cracker that is known as Wollombi Village. You could easily spend an afternoon here tasting their award-winners in the delightful sandstone cellar door, enjoy a wander through the vineyards or even go for a bushwalk in the surrounding mountains that seem to cradle the property.
The Heslop family were a lovely bunch.
I was lucky to be able to enjoy some time with a couple of the clan, Laura Heslop and her mother Phillipa, who were both absolutely delightful and happy to give me a little insight into the family history and the future plans as I am sure they would you too.
I was fortunate to nab a seat at the annual Wollombi Winemakers Winter Dinner. It was party of flavour and savour for the taste buds with a five-dish degustation and matching wines to boot. A mix of locals and visitors filled the room and it was just a super night filled with fine food, lots of laughter and a spot of wine knowledge to take in as well.
Hope I get invited back next year. You should come too!
Okay so we have all heard the buzzwords ‘paddock-to-plate’ right? It’s thrown around at an alarming rate really. Well, I had the pleasure of visiting a venue that can not only spruik that theme, but who take that decree to a much higher level. In fact Margan Wines were organic well before it became marketing buzzword.
Delicious dining at Margan Wines, who have long championed sustainable produce.
That it does, and when you visit them, you will experience that philosophy without having it preached to you. The top quality wines and cuisine that has been sourced from the gardens and vineyards that lay within 100 metres from your table speak for themselves.
A sun sets on another beautiful weekend away at the Hunter Valley.
Head Chef Thomas Boyd, who was once an apprentice here before earning his stripes in London and returning, took great pride in giving me a tour of the garden and then utilising those ingredients to construct a most delicious dining experience indeed.
After a long and splendid lunch, I just had to head back to my accommodation at Chateau Elan for a little nanna nap. Seriously if I was to manage to fit dinner at Baume Restaurant in, I really had no choice.
Chateau Elan is situated in amongst the Vintage Estate in the Hunter and has four luxury-styled accommodation offerings to choose from. I had the good fortune of having a Villa Studio to relax in.
Overlooking the golf course with mountain views in the distance, it was the perfect outlook to slow down in between what was a hectic schedule I had foolishly set myself. Although I didn’t really allow enough time to explore all that this 5-star property had to offer, what I did experience was definitely of a standard that was fitting of its reputation. A Greg Norman-designed golf course, spa and beauty salon, fashionable restaurants and bars is just a little of what awaits more exploration.
Baume's delicious tasting pizza is perfect with a glass of burgundy.
To finish off my Hunter sojourn off I managed to drag my expanding belly out of its recuperation period and get myself to my dinner date at Baume Restaurant. Pronounced bow-may, Baume holds court in the old Penfolds winery and was just the style of dining that was my calling that night.
A nice and open-style setting created the perfect locale for a casual family dining atmosphere. Lots of small tasting plates were on offer, prepared from mainly locally-sourced produce. House-made flatbreads and pizza cooked perfectly in a traditional wood-fired oven, and plenty of larger share type dishes and pastas that make it perfect for that family night out.
Irresistible pasta served hot and fresh at Baume.
I was tempted into a scrumptious bite sized olive, Spanish onion and basil pizza to start and I thought I should stop there to save the embarrassment of having to loosen my belt! Still I am a glutton for punishment and allowed my waiter to talk me into trying the rigatoni bolognese with pork and veal mince, tomato sugo, fresh herbs topped with parmesan! I couldn’t resist.
As wonderful as it was, the dish remained more than half full and I defiantly refused to look at the desert menu. Fortunately I had a breakfast of cold pasta the next morning to get me carb-loaded for the trip home!
If you are keen to check out next year’s Hunter Valley Food and Wine Festival, then visit www.visitnsw.com and click on The Hunter tab.
After a strong outing against the Phillies that included retiring Bryce Harper twice, Masahiro Tanaka looks ready for the Yankees' season opener.
TAMPA, Fla. — Above all, Masahiro Tanaka felt that Wednesday’s start gave him an indication that things are moving in the right direction.
Nearly two weeks away from his scheduled opening day start at Yankee Stadium against the Orioles, Tanaka faced a representative lineup of Phillies at Steinbrenner Field.
The results: He gave up two earned runs in 3.2 innings, yielding six hits but no walks.
Tanaka struck out six Phillies, gave up a homer to J.T. Realmuto and escaped a bases-loaded, none-out situation in the second inning of an eventual 5-5 tie.
Oh, and he retired Bryce Harper both times he faced the new Phillies superstar right fielder.
“I felt I was able to control the ball better than the previous outing,’’ Tanaka said through an interpreter, after tossing 66 pitches (47 strikes).
Harper grounded out to first baseman Greg Bird and struck out on a 2-and-2 splitter against Tanaka.
“Not just him, (but) I think the whole lineup I would say is close to their opening day lineup,’’ Tanaka said of what he got out of the outing against the 26-year-old superstar and the Phils.
Manager Aaron Boone felt it was “an overall positive step’’ for Tanaka, though he would have liked to get him deeper in the game.
Tanaka struck out Aaron Altherr and Sean Rodriguez and got Scott Kingery to line out to right to end the bases-loaded, none-out threat.
“There’s always going to be a time when you’re going to be in those challenging situations,’’ Tanaka said, glad to “be able to sort of heighten up the concentration level and get outs’’ in that spot.
Now, leading up to opening day, “(I’m just) trying to get more consistency on all of my pitches,’’ Tanaka said of his splitter, slider and new knuckle curve.
Is the Fed walking down a path where the end of the rate hike cycle is near?
The FOMC meeting today will be one of the more interesting ones in my view. Maybe not in terms of immediate repercussions but it will certainly entail a lot of consideration as the Fed moves forward with their tightening cycle in the months to come.
Now, what are we expecting from this meeting?
First, a rate hike is a virtual certainty. That is already well baked in to the market consensus and what the market has priced in right now.
The next key item on the agenda for markets would be to watch out for the debate on three or four rate hikes in 2018. This is where the dot plots come in.
With growth forecasts expected to hold steady and with the possibility of an inflation overshoot, questions will be asked how will the Fed cope with that - especially with the latter. If the inflation trend continues to move towards the upside, it'll be hard for the Fed to move 'gradually' and this complicates the outlook for the tightening cycle by a bit more.
Put that together with the fact that the labour market continues to tighten further as the unemployment rate trickling lower to 3.8% in the May reading, it's screaming for tighter policy.
Then, there's the other side of the argument too. How is Powell and the Fed going to be addressing concerns seen in the global economy - particularly that of emerging markets? With the trade rhetoric not fading any time soon as well, how much of this is going to be a factor to the Fed if things turn sour in the months to come?
With the Fed also shrinking its balance sheet - causing more pain to emerging markets - surely it is something they can't ignore for all too long. The US cannot carry the weight of the world on its shoulders and tighten policy alone, and the Fed knows that.
I reckon Powell will still take a more relaxed approach to this and dismiss these concerns. But the lack of acknowledgement is proving to bring up more questions by the market than it is helping ease nerves.
And lastly, there will surely be a question posed to Powell on the flattening yield curve. The Fed has been rather dismissive of this in recent times, arguing that it is "special factors" that is causing such a flattening. But the doves on the committee surely won't rest easy knowing that the trend is persisting and an inverted yield curve has been an accurate precursor of a recession in the past.
With Powell having to make fight arguments of maybe needing to move too fast, or having to maintain a gradual approach, it is no wonder that he is largely considering making every meeting live.
That will indeed offer the Fed more flexibility and it is something I've been hammering home for many a time. If Powell and the Fed does indeed decide to make every meeting a live one, expect some serious repricing - especially if the Fed conveys a more hawkish tone today.
Virginians from coastal communities on the Eastern Shore to Virginia Beach are joining lawmakers from the Commonwealth in standing up to the Trump Administration and its plans to open our coast to offshore drilling.
As the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) holds a public meeting in Richmond, Virginia today to hear from the public about this dangerous plan to include Virginia among its 47 potential lease sales — the largest number ever proposed — people from across the state are speaking up about the risk to our environment, military operation, fishing industry and businesses.
“The Virginia Beach City Council has been very clear with our objection to offshore drilling and seismic testing. Our economy, environment, and way of life would clearly be irreparably harmed in the event of a catastrophe. But we don’t have to imagine a spill to understand the immediate impacts to our military’s ability to continue to operate in these much used areas and what that could mean to our economy and the nation’s ability to maintain mission readiness,” said Virginia Beach City Councilmember John Uhrin.
In Virginia’s Coastal Region in 2015, tourism generated $4.7 billion in revenue and $345 million in state and local taxes. Additionally over 45,000 jobs and nearly $1 billion in salaries rely on tourism along the coast. Beyond the economic losses that offshore drilling could cause is the disruption to military operations.
Onshore infrastructure and activities that accompany the offshore oil and gas industry, like oil refineries, storage facilities, pipelines, and traffic, pose environmental and health-related challenges for coastal communities, in addition routine spills and accidents would irreparably alter the character of those communities.
Today’s BOEM meeting is part of a 60-day public comment period on the recently released draft five-year program (2019-2024) for oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
In the first study of its kind, scientists show that bilingual children with autism spectrum disorders can switch mental gears more easily than those who can only speak one language.
Being bilingual may improve cognitive flexibility in children with autism.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a growing concern in the United States, affecting an estimated 1 in 68 children.
Despite the prevalence and years of research, there are still several unanswered questions about how and why ASD develops, and how best to manage it. Researchers are looking at these queries from all angles.
A new study gains fresh insight by approaching from an interesting direction; the researchers set out to understand whether or not being bilingual might provide improved cognitive flexibility in children with ASD.
There is growing evidence to suggest that being bilingual enhances executive functions, which are a set of cognitive processes including attentional control, inhibiting behavior, and working memory.
Executive functions also include cognitive flexibility, referred to as set-shifting. This is the topic of interest in the current study.
The improvement in executive function is believed to happen because using two languages means that a person has to switch between mental modes smoothly and quickly. Over time, with practice, this switching of linguistic systems may limber up overall cognitive performance.
New research suggests that older adults who have been bilingual for years use their brain resources more efficiently.
Although there have been a number of studies investigating improvements in executive function in people who are bilingual, not all have found a significant effect.
Also, some researchers assign any reported improvements in cognitive flexibility to other factors, such as socioeconomic group or better memory skills. There remains much discussion on the matter.
Children with ASD tend to find it harder to "switch gears" when changing tasks, as their cognitive flexibility is impaired. Some of the common features of ASD mirror this issue. For instance, they tend to have a narrower focus, a desire to keep things unchanged, and inflexible daily routines.
The authors of the current study wanted to discover whether being bilingual is of benefit to children with ASD, as far as cognitive flexibility is concerned.
The authors set out the question they want to answer: "Can being bilingual mitigate the set-shifting impairment observed in children with ASD?"
The team was headed up by senior author Prof. Aparna Nadig, from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The findings are published in the journal Child Development.
The study included 40 children, of whom 20 were typically developing children (10 monolinguals and 10 bilinguals) and 20 were diagnosed with ASD (10 monolinguals and 10 bilinguals). None of them had intellectual disabilities.
Each participant carried out a computer-based task that involved sorting objects. During the task, they were presented with a range of objects and were asked to sort them by color. Then, after a while, they were asked to switch to sorting by shape.
This switching can be challenging for children with ASD, and they tend to perform less well.
It was found that the bilingual children with ASD managed the cognitive switching more easily than monolingual children with ASD. However, as expected, working memory was equivalent between the groups.
"It is critical to have more sound evidence for families to use when making important educational and child-rearing decisions, since they are often advised that exposing a child with ASD to more than one language will just worsen their language difficulties."
First study author Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, Ph.D.
Gonzalez-Barrero continues, "But there are an increasing number of families with children with ASD for whom using two or more languages is a common and valued practice and, as we know, in bilingual societies such as ours in Montreal, speaking only one language can be a significant obstacle in adulthood for employment, educational, and community opportunities."
Although the findings are intriguing, the study has some shortfalls. For instance, it included just 40 children (only 10 of whom were bilingual children with ASD). For this reason, much larger trials are needed.
The research throws out a wealth of new questions. Hopefully, future studies will provide us with a fuller picture. The authors plan to follow the participants of the current study over the next 3 to 5 years to see how they develop.
Police are continuing to appeal for witnesses to come forward as part of an arson investigation.
One person was arrested on Wednesday evening after two fires in Mona Street in the early hours of the morning. They've now been released on bail while further enquiries are conducted.
Officers believe the most recent fires were set between 2.30am and 3.30am on Wednesday, and are keen to hear from anyone who may have seen something suspicious in the area between these times.
The CID team is also asking those who may have dash cam footage from the area to come forward.
Those who can help with the investigation are asked to contact Police Headquarters on 631212.
Newstead Supervisor Donald C. Holmes said there have been ongoing discussions between the three boards concerning sharing of computer resources and services.
The school district is seeking $30,000 under a state provision of funds to support shared services.
"This is an excellent effort by all three parties," said Akron Mayor Michael F. Charles.
The Newstead Town Board and Akron Village Board approved the agreement Monday night.
Chicago Ward Remap: A Lawsuit Waiting to Happen?
The Latino community blasts Rahm Emanuel and the City Council for approving a ward remap that underrepresents minority constituents.
Published Feb. 1, 2012, at 2:40 p.m.
Chicago residents protest the ward remap on January 11.
When the ward remap was rushed to a vote in the City Council on January 19, it garnered 41 “yes” votes, the minimum required to avoid putting competing maps before voters in a referendum. Mayor Rahm Emanuel expressed relief; now, he said, the lawmakers could move on to deal with important issues, like crime.
Some remap watchers, especially in the Latino community, felt anything but relief. An analysis from the Latino Policy Forum, which states that the city is “nearly one-third Latino,” blasts the new map for underrepresenting Latinos by giving them only 10 “Latino effective majority wards (i.e. 60 percent voting age population), “a mere 20 percent of City Hall.” While no expensive referendum looms—there was one after the 1990 census—a potentially even more expensive lawsuit waits in the wings.
Former City Clerk Miguel del Valle, loser-by-a-mile to Rahm in the mayoral race (and now a self-described “retired elected official”) told me in a telephone conversation yesterday that Emanuel “muscled the map thorough” without giving aldermen, much less the public—there were no public hearing on this final iteration—any time to study it. A small group of aldermen led by Richard Mell made the final changes to the map in a private City Hall all-nighter. Tens of thousands of Chicagoans will find themselves in new wards with new aldermen, but they didn’t get a look at it. There was a manufactured sense of urgency in the air, says del Valle, even though the new map doesn’t take effect until the next municipal election in 2015.
Alfonso singles out Alderman Rey Colon, 35th, as one of the few “good guys” in this process—one of eight “no” votes and the only Latino to vote “no.” Colon told me yesterday: “I objected to being rushed. That’s how the parking meter deal happened.” He added, “I wanted time to absorb what people were saying at meetings. I didn’t like the sense we have to snap this picture now. I felt there was still an opportunity to come up with the best possible map, and this wasn’t it.” Colon said he fears the map will not withstand legal scrutiny because its “high deviations”—differences in ward populations, around nine percent—renders it “not equitable.” (Some aldermen will have as many as 4,000 more constituents to serve than others.) A referendum that probably would have put the map favored by the City Council’s Black Caucus and the Latino Caucus before voters would have been “appropriate,” he argues, and less costly than the lawsuit he sees coming.
For del Valle, the map turns the sacred concept of “one person, one vote” on its head. In an attempt to keep as many African American-majority wards as possible—the final map keeps 18 of the current 19—despite the stunning drop in the city’s black population, aldermen created wards on the South and West Sides that have some 4,000 fewer constituents than their counterparts on the North and Northwest Sides.
The Latino population increased by about 25,000 this census, but in the last census the Latino population soared by 200,000, and Latino aldermen did not push then for power commensurate with their population—a mistake, they pledged, not to repeat. The new map has 13 Hispanic-majority wards, a gain of three, but, as noted above, only 10 have the 60 percent voting age population. Also several have white aldermen—Richard Mell (33rd) and Edward Burke (14th) for example. Those aldermen, says del Valle, with some admiration for the high level of service they provide, have “patronage, power, influence, and money” to get stuff done for constituents and are not going anywhere anytime soon.
An email to the mayor’s press secretary seeking a response was not answered by post time.
Huh -- good point. That's very weird. I wonder what happened to it.
> does any good. Thanks!
David G. Kabiller is a founding principal and head of Client Strategies at AQR Capital Management. Prior to co-founding AQR, David worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co where he was a vice president in the Pension Services Group. He also spent time working in the Institutional Fixed Income Division and in the private client services department. While at Goldman, David was involved with the structuring and development of products and investment strategies unique to ESOP investors. He was the creator of Goldman’s Pension & Endowment Forum in which he co-authored research topics on derivatives, enhanced indexation, securities lending, insurance-linked securities and hedge funds. David is a member of the Board of Trustees at Northwestern University, and has been a periodic lecturer at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He is a member of the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board, as well as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Terra Foundation. He holds a BA in Economics and an MBA from Northwestern University and is CFA charterholder. While at Northwestern, David received an athletic scholarship for tennis and was voted to the all academic “Big Ten” team.
The investment objective of the Sub-Fund is to produce high, risk-adjusted returns while targeting a low long term average correlation to the traditional markets. The Sub-Fund achieves its objective by investing internationally in a broad range of instruments, including, but not limited to, equities, bonds, currencies, commodity indices, credit derivatives, convertible securities, futures, forwards, options, swaps and other derivative products.

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