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Owners Derrick Evans (Mr Motivator) and Sandra Evans were the first to introduce zip-lining and paintball to Jamaica after they established the park in 2003, but now, they are ready to give it all away. Through their Golden Ticket raffle promotion, you can purchase a ticket valued at US$30 to earn the chance of winning the entire property, which is valued at US$2.4 million.
"I can understand them wanting to move on now; their daughter is ill in the UK, and they are getting up in age and just want to enjoy what they have and not have this holding them to one place," Sutherland told the WEEKEND STAR. "My thing is, I hope someone gets it who will keep the staff."
H'Evans Scent sits in the heart of the Free Hill community in St Ann. Once you arrive at Old Fort Bay, turn left and continue beyond Hotel RIU. After passing the roundabout, turn left on to Bamboo Road, where you will drive for about 15 minutes before arriving at a colourful property with the sign 'H'Evans Scent'.
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) -Traffic is now moving on I-10 West after an accident Tuesday morning.
Traffic was diverted to Morrison Road most of the morning after a trailer overturned near Chef Highway.
All lanes were closed on I-10 West, but they have since been re-opened. Traffic is still a problem as DOTD works to tow the overturned trailer from the shoulder.
Watch FOX 8 Morning Edition for the latest traffic updates.
The Texas Tech women's basketball team snapped an eight-game winning streak by downing Big 12 Conference foe Oklahoma State to the tune of 90-78 last Saturday.
Now, the challenge becomes to string together a few victories — starting with a 6 p.m. Wednesday contest against West Virginia at United Supermarkets Arena. The contest is scheduled to be broadcast on FOX Sports Southwest.
"If weren't in the games that would be one thing, but we were in a lot of those games for about 35 minutes," Stollings said. "So, it's getting past that last five-minute hurdle. I was just really excited and happy for them to feel that they were able to see what it feels like. ... It allows us to keep the door open on some postseason opportunity as well."
The Lady Raiders (11-12, 2-10) will continue their trek to the postseason with a matchup against the Mountaineers (16-6, 7-4), who bring a similar look to Oklahoma State.
West Virginia is not a deep squad, but touts a pair of talents playmakers in Tynice Martin (17.3 points, 5.8 rebounds) and Naomi Davenport (14 points, 7.7 rebounds). Katrina Pardee (13 points, 4.9 rebounds) is expected to miss the game with a foot injury.
"West Virginia is indicative of a team that doesn't have to have a lot of depth to win," Stollings said. "They only dress eight players, they don't go deep into their bench. But they have very skilled players.They're very tough defensively. And you look at Tynice and Naomi as being their true threats right now. ... They have different weapons on any given night."
Stollings is hoping her squad continues its success on the offensive end, especially Erin DeGrate who will be coming off a season-high 21-point performance against the Cowgirls. The 6-foot-6 junior center appears to be finding her rhythm in the second half of the conference schedule.
Chrislyn Carr (18.4 points, 4.2 rebounds), Brittany Brewer (16.3 points, 9.3 rebounds) and Sydney Goodson (10.6 points, 5.7 rebounds) are also starting to see consistency in their production on offense and defense.
In many ways, the Lady Raiders are hoping it results in their second straight win.
"I think there's a lot more hope," Goodson said when asked how the team has changed with the win. "Of course we're fighting and we're showing up to practice, and we know we can win. But the fact that we have won, there's a difference. You can see that in our body language and how we're practicing. ... Now, we know we can do it."
In Richard Sterban�s 2012 autobiography, �From Elvis to Elvira: My Life on Stage,� the bass singer from the legendary country group, the Oak Ridge Boys, talks about how he performed with Elvis Presley for a year-and-a-half before leaving the King of Rock �n� Roll to sing with the Oak Ridge Boys.
Sterban, best known for his bass voice on such hits as �Elvira,� actually began his singing career as a male soprano at the age of 6 in Sunday School in his native Camden, N.J.
Greensboro, Sterban said, is a familiar stop on the Oak Ridge Boys� tours and he�s happy to be returning there for a show March 28 at War Memorial Auditorium in Greensboro.
Sterban, like the other members of the band � Duane Allen, Joe Bonsall and William Lee Golden � enjoys spending time with his families when he�s not on the road. Sterban and his second wife, Donna, have two grown daughters and he has three older sons from his first marriage, and five grandchildren. In April, he will become a great-grandfather.
The live album, �Boys Night Out,� was recorded on Cleopatra Records, which Sterban described as �the largest independent label in the world.� It will be released April 15 on CD and vinyl, something the band is excited about since a lot of its fans first heard the band on records 40 years ago.
The Oak Ridge Boys began as a gospel music group and gospel, as well as its classic hits and some patriotic tunes, will be heard March 28.
Tickets are $35 to $55 through Ticketmaster. Visit oakridgeboys.com for more details on the band.
PARIS (Reuters) - Burberry hopes it can gain better control over its brand and eventually a bigger slice of profits by running its own perfume business, a big gamble that could change the structure of the luxury goods industry if others follow suit.
Like most luxury firms, the British brand licenses its perfume business, in this case to Interparfums, which also sells scents for an array of other names, from shoemaker Jimmy Choo to penmaker Montblanc.
Burberry announced on Thursday that it was taking the business in house, becoming the first big luxury brand in at least a decade to do so. Many analysts reckon it will be a difficult task.
“Fashion and beauty are different industries,” says Thomas Chauvet, luxury analyst at Citi, who sees the move as potentially costly and a management distraction at a time when the luxury industry is entering a potential global slowdown.
Burberry said it saw big potential in the perfume and cosmetics sector, and was inspired by market leaders Dior and Chanel, long among the few to run their own perfume businesses.
If it succeeds, it could be copied by rivals such as Prada, whose scents are made by Spain’s Puig, and Gucci, whose fragrances come from Procter & Gamble.
That could potentially change the structure of the industry, reducing the influence of specialist fragrance companies like Interparfums, Coty and L’Oreal, which pay royalties to brands while logging the sales of branded scents on their own books.
Firms will be eager to see if Burberry can handle the business itself. There are already signs that it may have underestimated the challenge: it has extended its contract with Interparfums to March 31 from its initial end date of December 31.
The 156-year-old British company, known for raincoats lined with a distinctive camel, red and black check pattern, said on Thursday it would give more financial details on the impact of the perfume move when it publishes interim results on November 7. It issued an unrelated profit warning last month.
Citi estimates the perfumes move could dilute earnings by about 3-5 percent in 2013 and 2014, but says that if Burberry is able to achieve best-in-class operating margins of 20 percent in fragrances then it would largely offset the start-up costs.
Burberry thinks it can beat Interparfums and speed up growth of a perfume business that currently generates about 210 million euros a year in sales for Interparfums, an amount equivalent to about 9 percent of Burberry’s revenues.
It could also expand beyond perfumes into cosmetics, an area in which it has only a small presence but says it has big ambitions. The overall global fragrance and cosmetics industry is huge - $95 billion in sales in 2012, set to reach $106 billion in 2016, according to Euromonitor.
Control over its perfumes can also be leveraged to help the brand sell other products. In ads for its Body perfume during its biggest-ever fragrance launch last year, for example, Burberry dressed model Rosie Huntington-Whitely in a trenchcoat.
Burberry is following an industry-wide trend of buying back licenses to gain more control over brands. Last year it completed the purchase of its menswear licence and took steps to reduce the number of licence agreements it has in Japan.
Dior bought back many of its licences in the 1990s, including its perfume business, acquired in the late 1990s thanks to Bernard Arnault when he started building up LVMH, now the world’s No.1 luxury group.
But fashion brands have generally been reluctant to buy back licences for products like perfumes, cosmetics or eyewear, which require specialised expertise and distribution networks.
Yves Saint Laurent used to have more than 160 licences around the world and spent much the past decade buying them back. Now it has two: one with Safilo for eyewear, and another with L’Oreal for perfumes and cosmetics.
Even now, it has no plans to go into the perfume business. Parent firm PPR said it was happy with with L’Oreal.
Buying back a licence can sometimes go wrong, even in the same industry. Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana bought back the licence for their D&G clothing line from Italy’s Ittierre but had to shut it down a few years later in 2011, lacking the scale and manufacturing base to keep profit margins healthy.
Burberry already does the marketing and design for its fragrances and cosmetics, and says it will not be turning itself into a full-blown perfume company overnight.
Finance Director Stacey Cartwright said it was not going to create a laboratory and would rely in part on Interparfums’ current suppliers for logistics, production and distribution.
Interparfums already uses outside suppliers for things like glass bottles and flower extracts, and relies on a network of distributors such as department stores and duty-free shops.
But Burberry will still have to create a new division, hiring scientists, artistic directors and lawyers to deal with red tape which has increased in the perfume industry.
In practice, it is likely that Burberry will operate like Salvatore Ferragamo, which manages its perfume business directly but outsources many operations to Milan-based manufacturer ICR Industrie Cosmetiche Riunite.
Ann Dummett, a prominent campaigner against racism and a leading expert on British nationality law has died, aged 81.
Mrs Dummett, of Park Town, Oxford, died on February 7.
She was born in London to character actor Arthur Chesney and his wife Kitty, and was a child prodigy who could read at the age of two.
She went to school in Pimlico, and Hertfordshire after fleeing the Blitz, and went on to win a scholarship to read history at Somerville College, Oxford.
Her husband Prof Michael Dummett had a reputation as one of Britain’s most original philosophers. In 1964, the couple became concerned about racism and, with Evan Luard, Oxford’s former Labour MP, founded the Oxford Committee for Racial Integration, forerunner to Oxfordshire Council for Community Relations.
Ann Dummett married Prof Dummet in 1951 and the couple had seven children, two of whom died at an early age.
After 14 years looking after her children, Mrs Dummett became Oxford’s first full-time community relations officer. She recorded her experiences in the groundbreaking book A Portrait of English Racism, published in 1973 in which she wrote of her hopes for a racially mixed, equal society.
She went on to head the Runnymede Trust, the independent race equality think tank, from 1984 to 1987.
Prof Dummett died aged 86 in December, four days before the couple were due to celebrate their Diamond Wedding anniversary.
Lifelong friend Jill Kaye said: “We all knew she was special.
Mrs Dummett’s funeral was held yesterday at St Aloysius Church in Woodstock Road, North Oxford.
The couple leave five children, Chris, Andy, Suzie, Tessa, and Paul.
Jim Murphy wants more religion in British politics. If we don't clamp down on faith schools now, he might get his wish.
Religion is on all the Labour lips today. First children's secretary Ed Balls got a roasting for allowing faith schools an exemption from equality requirements in the curriculum. Then Jim Murphy, Scottish secretary, set up a speech tonight calling for religion to have a greater role in politics and for Labour to appeal to religious voters.
Despite all this, it's still too early to worry about a distinct shift towards religion in the British political culture. Labour just made a calculation. It realised it would upset religious groups more with the double-blow of the equality bill and the children, schools and families bill than it would upset equality activists by passing the amendment today.
For a long time, Labour was ruled by two men whose political senses were sharp enough to realise the folly of allowing religion into the political realm: Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. That thought process still pertains, but the threat from the religious lobby is becoming increasingly substantial. It may remain marginal now, but it grows in strength every day, because of faith schools.
The Labour government is the first under which the number of faith schools has increased. Under the Tories, their number actually fell, but once Blair was installed in Downing Street the government launched an all-out defence of their status. As education secretary, David Blunkett said he wanted to 'bottle their magic'. Ruth Kelly, a member of Opus Dei, was similarly supportive. Ed Balls walked into his department critical of faith schools but emerged enchanted. It's actually very difficult to discover how many faith schools there are. But take a look at academies. A third of them are religious, and in almost every single case they replaced normal community schools. Faith schools are on the rise.
That they should be treated so uncritically by government is a damning indictment of its long-term calculations. These institutions are an initiation ritual for the ghettoisation of mankind. And if we want a solution, we need to take a look at France.
France is not usually the first port of call when looking for a harmonious society. In the middle of its society there stands the secular state, a respectable notion that has become oppressive and tyrannical in France. It is a weapon wielded by the dominant majority against racial and religious minorities. Beyond any ethical concerns, this has done remarkably little for French society.
The banlieues - ghettos or suburbs depending on your inclination - rose up in rebellion a few years ago, but that was just a fiery demonstration of the deep resentment in French society. Walking around Paris, Londoners find it disarmingly white, except that France, in actual fact, has a greater Muslim community than Britain. Outside the centre, in the banlieues, a bountiful multicultural mix thrives, but without material wealth, or the opportunity to gain it, and without representation, either in the media or politics. The secular state has become the aggressor. It denies people their identity and banishes them in their own country. It is, at heart, a fascistic notion, which demands the individual gives himself up to the country. It is government interference, of the sort civil libertarians like myself rail against every day.
Britain's laissez faire approach to immigrations and multiculturalism may have seen French intelligence agents brand us 'Londonistan'. It may see areas branded Muslim, or Turkish, or Polish. It may see the emergence of cultural artefacts we find distasteful, like the burkha. But it reflects British freedom, and the ability this country gives you to live your own life, free from the interference or judgement of the state. It is also, despite the rabid anti-immigrant sensibilities of the tabloid press, a far more successful model than that practised in France, and a far more ethical model for governing a multicultural society.
Except for one thing: education. In education, we must respect and adopt the French example.
The British legal system knows how to treat children: as humans incapable of giving consent. So why doesn't the government? Allowing parents to force their children into faith schools is just really child abuse, as Richard Dawkins ably pointed out last year. It forbids them the freedom and space to develop their own thinking and decide if they wish to sign up to the varied mumbo jumbo religions espouse. Schools are where we create humans capable of deciding what they do with their freedom, not a factory for churning out new versions of ourselves, together with our prejudices and intellectual fallacies.
This is not an exemption from the traditional resistance to government interference. This is to personal freedom what Keynesianism is to capitalism. It is interference designed to expand freedom. Without intellectual autonomy how can we create adults who can manipulate, comprehend or value their freedom? Or to be more specific: when Balls takes the need to respect diversity away from the curriculum of faith schools, he takes away the freedom of vulnerable, young children to explore their desires without being crippled by the stigma and idiocy which faith will impose on them.
Unless we take a far tougher approach to faith schools, the next generation could emerge more religious, more divided, more irrational than voters are now. Children below the age of 18 should live like the French. Adults over 18 should live like the British. Before the age of consent, the secular state rules.
Housing concerns: Delhi Development Authority houses in Janakpuri, New Delhi. The agency acquires land for the development of New Delhi and builds low-income houses.
New Delhi: The urban development ministry is looking at expanding the scope of a proposed real estate regulator for New Delhi to include the regulation of government- linked agencies such as the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), besides private realty developers and agents, in a bid to make all urban bodies more accountable.
“We are looking at a proposal where the authority will check unfair practices by not just developers, but also other bodies such as DDA and MCD," an official in the urban development ministry said. “This is a proposal made by the Delhi government, which felt regulation should not be restricted just to developers and should include all the players."
The Union government is hoping that Delhi’s Real Estate Management Bill will be adopted as a model by other states, which want to better regulate real estate projects and transactions.
While DDA, the de-facto landlord, acquires land for the development of New Delhi and builds low-income houses, MCD provides civic services to the city such as garbage collection and road maintenance and clamping down on illegal buildings.
“DDA is right now not accountable to anyone," Arvind Parekh, chief financial officer, Omaxe Ltd, said. “They take a lot of time to give approvals and they are responsible for many delays in projects. A regulator for DDA as well will add to the efficiency of the whole system."
The draft for the proposal was kicked off earlier in the year, amid an overheating property market and three years of frenzied buying when real estate values tripled. The sudden escalation in prices created several millionaires among smaller property developers, and spawned a new class of selling agents and building contractors who turned to property development for quick gains. That, in turn, created irregular practices, which included decamping with buyer’s money, delayed projects and poor quality of developments. That prompted the ministry to set up a real estate regulator for New Delhi to check fraudulent practices.
Under the Bill, the ministry has proposed setting up a regulator to check developers and agents. The proposed Bill will also provide for punitive action against the developers and cancellation of licence of builders if they are found to be flouting the norms set by the Bill.
However, the ministry isn’t yet sure whether it will take similar stringent punitive action against government bodies and said the matter is under discussion.
“We are rethinking the role of the real estate regulator," the ministry official said. “We are not sure if we should have punitive action against the bodies as some of them, such as MCD, already have their own mechanism to address consumer complaints," the official said.
The proposed regulator would be a quasi-judicial body and consist of former bureaucrats. However, the ministry is also concerned that when the urban local bodies are brought under the purview of the regulator, it will increase the burden of the regulator. “Cases will pile up before the regulator if local bodies are included," the official added.
Developers offered up a few key concessions in their bid to gain city approval for a megamall in the Citi Field parking lot, and it worked.
The City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved the controversial first phase of the larger $3 billion redevelopment of Willets Point.
The team behind the project — Sterling Equities and the Related Companies — scored the victory after a morning of feverish closed-door negotiations.
As approved, the massive development will include more affordable housing than originally proposed, a large investment in the nearby Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and relocation assistance for the small businesses that will be displaced.
"We've been working really hard to be able to deliver for Willets Point," said Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, who led the negotiations with the developers.
The developers agreed to give $15.5 million to the newly created Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Alliance, and an additional $2.6 million toward a rooftop farm for the 1.4-million-square-foot mall.
Meanwhile, construction of much-desired affordable housing was bolstered and accelerated.
The housing component — a sticking point for critics — was contingent upon the construction of new access ramps to the Van Wyck Expressway, toward which the city committed $66 million for design and construction costs on Wednesday.
Without the city's commitment, the housing may have been delayed until 2025 — if built at all. To further sweeten the pot, the developers on Wednesday committed to build an additional 300 units of affordable housing at two separate sites in Corona and Flushing.
Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) said that "a lot of sparks" flew. "It's incredibly challenging," she added. "I had to ask for the most I can get for my community."
Mayor Bloomberg hailed the approval, which will create 7,100 permanent jobs and 12,000 construction jobs.
Far removed from the jubilation at City Hall, the deal drew a mixed response.
Faith in New York, a community-based religious group, applauded Ferreras' negotiating tactics, but remained underwhelmed by the benefits.
"We remain skeptical that a 1.4-million-square-foot mall on public parkland is the kind of economic development our community needs," said Father George Anastasiou.
Even staunch park advocates were split over Wednesday's decision.
Holly Leicht, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, said the investment in the Queens greenspace will have a "game-changing impact."

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