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In February of 2013, Thomas was named as President and CEO of the Kaminak Gold Corporation.
For more information about ending the blood diamond trade, please visit Amnesty International.
FORT MYERS, Fla. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide assistance to victims of Hurricane Irma during two disaster assistance service days.
Attendees can visit from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday at the Alliance for the Arts on 10091 McGregor Blvd., and Tuesday at Jesus the Worker Catholic Church on 811 Nuna Ave.
Officials will use this time to help individuals in disaster affected areas, according to FEMA. Mobile centers will also provide application assistance.
A FEMA disaster recovery center will also be set up from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday at the Marco Island Police Department on 51 Bald Eagle Drive, police said.
Participants in Fort Myers need to register providing a social security number, contact information, financial information, bank account numbers, and their insurance policy. Those interested can register online or through the FEMA hotline by calling 1-800-621-3362 from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Sara Hooser’s dress styles aren’t wed to tradition \| The Kansas City Star What inspires your designs?
I look at high-fashion runway designs, textures, bouquets, fabrics, architectural designs and shapes. I’m also inspired by the shape of the girl I’m designing for and what will flatter her.
So brides can come to you for custom looks?
Yes. Brides and bridesmaids can tell me their ideas, and I’ll sketch them out. Once, I made seven one-of-a-kind bridesmaids dresses, and it ended up looking more cohesive than I imagined. They had one-shoulder dresses, spaghetti-strap styles, tapering and pleats, but it worked because the dresses fit their bodies so we...
Do you create gowns for a lot of friends?
Yes. Last year, I made one of my best friend’s wedding dress and all four of her bridesmaids’ dresses. I also made a dress for one of my friends from college. Hers was pink with ivory lace. Having so many friends’ weddings has given me opportunities to work on different designs.
How does it feel watching your creations float down the aisle?
It’s touching and a little emotional, especially for my best friend’s wedding. You spend so much time making them perfect.
I’m sure it takes longer than we realize.
It does. There’s about a 12-week turn-around time for each dress. Pattern-making and draping take a long time, but for me, all the details at the end take the longest. I’m a perfectionist.
How did you get interested in fashion?
My mom. She sewed a lot of my prom and homecoming dresses, and we would work on different dresses together. She fueled my passion for design.
Why did you name your label Ila Bean?
Ila is actually the name of my great-grandmother, and Bean is a nickname my sister gave me. I think it’s quirky and fits my dresses’ personalities.
How do you name the gowns, such as Sadie, Penelope and Molly?
All my dresses are named after girls in Beatles songs, the lesser-known ones. I’ll probably mix it up in the future. I have three sisters, and they wanted me to name the dresses after them, so maybe I’ll do that for the next collection.
That’s a question a lot of brides ask me (laughs). I have a boyfriend.
How do you approach designing or talking to brides about wedding gowns if you’ve never spent a whole day in one?
I think it helps that I haven’t been married. I don’t have my wedding dress in mind to compare theirs to. I’m open-minded and supportive of whatever the bride wants.
Does the boyfriend find your proximity to the wedding industry intimidating?
Do you watch “Say Yes to the Dress” or any bridezilla shows?
Shows like that kind of stress me out. I watch them sometimes, but there’s so much added drama, and that never happens here. But movies like “The Wedding Planner” or “My Best Friend’s Wedding” never get old to me.
What’s your forecast for gown trends this fall?
You’ll still see so much texture, like ruffles, flowers and tiers. Also, expect some interesting, nontraditional lace patterns that were big before the royal wedding but have been amplified by it. For color, pink will be really popular, and I’m seeing light café or latte colors in gowns, sashes and cummerbunds.
Where can brides buy your designs?
Meet Sara and Altar Bridal consultants at the Heidi Elnora trunk show. Elnora, a former “Project Runway” contestant, will preview her upcoming collection, and the store will offer discounts.
The proportion of corporate directors who say their companies are monitoring social media for “adverse publicity” (a gentle euphemism) has increased from 32% in 2012 to 41% today, according to the latest Corporate Directors Survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
However, as these figures indicate more than half of corporate directors still believe their companies aren’t doing a good enough job of keeping an eye out for adverse publicity: 55% of the PwC survey respondents said their companies either aren’t monitoring social media efficiently, or aren’t doing it at all. That’s d...
PwC found a similar story in regards to social media strategies for applications like marketing, research, and internal communications. Thus 40% of respondents said their companies are leveraging social media for strategic goals, while 54% said their companies’ efforts to leverage social media are insufficient or nonex...
Corporate America also appears to be stalled on the adoption of big data for strategic goals. In 2014 49% of respondents said their companies are using big data, versus 46% who said their companies’ big data efforts are insufficient or nonexistent. Again, both figures are unchanged from two years ago.
Companies are at least becoming more aware of the need to train employees in the use of social media -- perhaps because they’re more aware of the threat of adverse publicity. The proportion who say their companies are providing social media training increased from 31% in 2012 to 42% in 2014. Meanwhile the proportion wh...
Interestingly PwC discovered some pretty significant differences between male and female corporate directors when it came to their perceptions of their companies’ risk mitigation strategies for IT. For example 22% of male directors strongly agreed that risk mitigation strategies are supported by sufficient understandin...
Sears, Roebuck & Co., the largest U.S. department store chain, said Wednesday that it has put its $30-billion credit card portfolio up for sale so it can focus on its retail business. The news sent its shares up 13%.
Sears, based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., said it was exploring alternatives, including seeking buyers for the credit card portfolio, and expects to complete the review in the second half of the year.
Getting rid of the credit unit would put the spotlight back on its department stores, for better or worse. Sears has posted 18 straight months of declining sales at stores open at least a year -- a key measure known as same-store sales.
The credit card business, which has about 25 million active accounts and represents slightly less than two-thirds of Sears' overall profit, has led to problems for the company because of rising delinquencies.
Chief Executive Alan Lacy said the company believes finding the "right strategic partner" for the credit card business would boost Sears' stock price.
Sears shares rose $2.69 to $24.14, and were the most active issue and the second-biggest net gainer on the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares have been among the weakest in the retail sector, partly because of credit card concerns.
Lacy said he had looked at selling the credit card unit three other times in the eight years he has been with Sears, but now was the right time because the value of the business is high and the retail operations are "viable, profitable and healthy."
The credit card accounts include both the Sears' store card and the Sears Gold MasterCard. Sears started issuing the branded MasterCard a few years ago after its stores began accepting other cards such as Visa and MasterCard and use of its proprietary credit card fell.
The higher credit limits offered on the Gold MasterCard alarmed many analysts who worried that customers bogged down with home refinancing or car loans would have trouble paying bills in a soft economy.
Wall Street's concerns intensified in October when Sears fired the head of its credit card division shortly before the retailer was forced to put aside an additional $222 million to cover bad accounts in the portfolio.
Sears has been trying to turn around slumping retail sales, improving store signage and adding conveniences such as shopping carts. It also is rolling out merchandise from newly acquired Lands' End in hundreds of its stores in hopes of boosting clothing sales.
The retailer faces fierce competition from department stores and some discounters, which have been luring customers with a wider selection of trendy clothing.
Union Bank of Switzerland said today that it lost 350 million Swiss francs ($240 million) on equity derivatives last year, nearly twice what it had forecast. Still, it said, there was no need to revise the terms of its merger with the Swiss Bank Corporation.
Union Bank, denying a press report that its derivatives business lost as much as 615 million francs, repeated an earlier forecast that net income was ''about 3.2 billion francs'' in 1997.
Shareholders of Union Bank and Swiss Bank are to meet separately next week to vote on the proposal to merge. They are expected to approve the merger, which would create the world's second-biggest bank behind Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., and the world's No. 1 money manager, with 1.32 trillion francs under management.
Union Bank said profit at its combined equities and equity derivatives business fell by about 25 percent, to ''close to 1 billion francs'' in 1997. It said derivatives losses were 150 million francs in the second half of 1997, after the business lost 200 million francs in the first half.
Union Bank previously said it expected 1997 losses on derivatives to be limited to the 200 million francs it lost in the year's first half.
Its statement came after Swiss Bank said it had no need to revise its 1997 profit forecast because of problem loans in Asia.
Both banks this week denied a report that the merger terms were being renegotiated.
About 4 million people who live in the Indian border state of Assam have been excluded from a draft list of citizens, as Bengali-speaking Muslims fear they will be sent to detention centres or deported.
The state government has put stringent security in place while the chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, has told Indian media that those finding themselves stateless overnight should not worry. Sonowal said they would be given a chance to prove their claim of citizenship, that none of the 4 million would be sent to a de...
Hundreds of thousands of people fled to India during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in the early 1970s. Most of them settled in Assam, which has a near-165-mile (270km) border with Bangladesh.
The list aims to identify every resident who can demonstrate roots in the state before March 1971. The mammoth three-year-long exercise to prove the identities of 33 million people across the hills, valleys and plains of this verdant state began two years ago. It has been overseen by the supreme court.
There have been longstanding social and communal tensions in the state, with locals campaigning against illegal immigrants. Critics see the citizenship test as a measure – supported by Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist-led government – aimed at driving out minority Muslims.
In 1983, scores of people were killed by machete-armed mobs intent on hounding out Muslim immigrants.
Some residents say the demography of the state has been altered by illegal Muslim migrants and resent this. Many Muslim residents angrily reject the charge of being illegal, saying that not only they, but their grandparents, were born in Assam and they know of no other place.
Every resident’s papers and antecedents have been checked. The first draft of the list was published on 1 January, listing 19m names. Since then, more claims have been verified and more names added to the register.
However, the final register will only be complete once the 4 million people have appealed against their exclusion from the list and had a chance to prove their claims to citizenship.
The Guardian reported in February that Assam was building a new detention centre to process the “foreigners” who will be evicted in the coming years.
The human rights activist Harsh Mander, a member of the National Human Rights Commission in New Delhi, visited a detention centre in January. He said he was devastated to see families separated and people kept in “jails” indefinitely, some of them over many years.
“There was a mounting sense of fear of the future among those I met. My own trepidation is that if thousands of people deemed to be ‘stateless’ can be kept like this, what’s going to happen when its millions? Will we see concentration camps?” asked Mander.
On Wednesday, the federal home minister, Rajnath Singh, said he had ordered the Assam government not to take any action against those whose names do not appear on the register. In parliament on Monday, Singh told MPs there would be no deportations based on the register and said there was no need to create “unnecessary ...
For its part, the Assam government has been publicising what steps the 4 million not on the list need to take to rectify the situation. But the fundamental issue for many is that they simply do not have documents dating back decades.
“Many are poor illiterate families who do not have relevant papers to prove how long they have lived in the state. Saying they will be a given a chance to prove their citizenship is easy but doing so isn’t so easy for them,” said social activist Prashant Bora from Guwahati, the capital of Assam.
Meanwhile, the neighbouring states of Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland have strengthened their security with Assam out of fear that panic-stricken residents not on the list may cross over to them.
Microsoft also claims that the hackers weren’t able to steal any personal information or account passwords.
Microsoft recently revealed a hacker had access to Outlook.com accounts for about three months. While Microsoft has already started notifying from Outlook.com users, the full extent of the exposure is unknown.
According to a report by the Verge, the software giant discovered that one of its support agent’s credentials had been compromised, allowing unauthorised access to some Outlook.com accounts from January 1st to March 28, 2019. The hacker or hackers had access to account email addresses, subject lines and folder names of...
Microsoft also claims that the hackers weren’t able to steal any personal information or account passwords. But has advised users affected to air on the side of caution and reset their passwords. In the email to its users, the software giant mentioned its emphasis on privacy and security. Microsoft also went on to stat...
The recent security breach comes weeks after a former security researcher pleaded guilty to hacking into Nintendo and Microsoft servers. Microsoft is also advising its users to be alerted to phishing scams and emails that ask for any sort of payment.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
The Beatitudes, Pope Benedict XVI writes in his book Jesus of Nazareth, are the fruit of Jesus’ gaze upon the disciples. They describe their actual condition: poor, hungry, weeping, hated, and persecuted. Yet this situation in which Jesus sees his disciples becomes a promise when he looks upon them in the light of the ...
Being eschatological, however, does not mean that the joy they proclaim applies exclusively to some infinitely remote future or the next world. When a person begins to live from God’s perspective, something of the eschaton is already present.
The secret of the Beatitudes lies in its being a veiled interior biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure. Benedict refers to the gospel portrait of Jesus: “He who has no place to lay his head (cf Mt 8:20) is truly poor; he who can say, ‘Come to me… for I am meek and lowly of heart’ (cf Mt 11:28-29) is trul...
Today, the Solemnity of All Saints, we celebrate the men and women of all time who were portraits of Jesus in their own lifetime. Living the spirit of the Beatitudes, they realized the promises of the Beatitudes. The saints are the “cloud of witnesses” who spur us to follow their example of faithfulness and loving serv...
An Orange County businessman testified Friday that five people received sheriff's reserve badges in exchange for contributing $5,000 each to the campaign of former Sheriff Michael S. Carona.
The testimony came in the sixth week of a federal corruption case that centers on accusations that the former sheriff sold off the powers of his office for thousands of dollars in cash and gifts and conspired to hide political donations that exceeded county contribution limits.
On Friday, government witness Gabriel Nassar said he made a $100 bet with Carona and former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo during Carona's first term that he could raise $25,000 by selling sheriff's reserve badges for $5,000.
After being informed of the $1,000 local contribution limit by Carona and Jaramillo, Nassar said, he told all five people that each of them had to come up with separate checks totaling $5,000.
"It was a simple bet," he said.
Nassar said Carona and Jaramillo came to his Lake Forest business afterward to thank him. He said he asked them to pay up the bet, and that one of them -- he said he didn't recall who -- pulled a $100 bill out of his pocket. He said Carona and Jaramillo signed it: "We will never doubt you again."
The jury was shown two pictures taken that day, one with all three men holding up the $100 bill.
The corruption case alleges that Carona misused the powers of the sheriff's office to enrich himself and others even before he won election in 1998. Carona's wife and his longtime mistress, Debra Hoffman, are also charged. Hoffman was separated from the case midway through the trial, and she and Carona's wife will be t...
Among the allegations against Carona is that he knew contributions were being laundered into his campaign to circumvent the local $1,000 cap on donations for each election cycle.
He is also accused of creating a special category of professional reserves as a shell to raise money for his political war chest, issuing badges and gun permits to wealthy professionals who were recruited into the ranks.
Newport Beach millionaire Don Haidl, who was appointed by Carona to serve as the assistant sheriff of the reserve program, has previously testified that badges could be bought for a $1,000 contribution. The goal, Haidl said, was to have 1,000 people in the program and raise $1 million for Carona.

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