Datasets:
Recag
/
C4_7

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
Community
1
text
stringlengths
12
61.1k
The organization brought groups that boosted the tourism industry during Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War.
“In addition to achieving our goals of connecting the Jewish youth to Israel and to their communities, strengthening their Jewish identity and creating a network of support for the country through our alumni, the project has had a major impact on our economy and the tourism sector,” said Gidi Mark, the CEO of Taglit-Birthright Israel.
More than 17,000 young Jews from 32 countries will be visiting the country during Taglit-Birthright Israel’s winter 2012 season.
Taglit-Birthright Israel receives a major portion of its funding from the Israeli government.
This story "Birthright Trips Pump $500 Million Into Israel" was written by JTA.
10 a.m. & 8 p.m., UMD Sports; 1 p.m., Talking Points; 2 p.m., DHS Sports; 4 p.m., Select Board Mtg., 12/20; 7 p.m., Interesting People of Dartmouth.
10 a.m., Wanderers: History of Dartmouth Schools; 11 a.m., Wanderers: History of August Fourball at CCNB; 12 p.m., Interesting People of Dartmouth; 1 & 3 p.m., DHS Sports; 6 p.m., Talking Points; 7 p.m., Live, Select Board Mtg.
10 a.m., Charter Committee Review 10/6; 12 p.m., Charter Committee Review 10/27; 1:30 p.m., Charter Committee Review 11/17; 3 p.m., Charter Committee Review 12/15; 5 p.m., COA Cooking Show; 6 p.m., Crime Watch; 6:30 p.m., DHS Sports; 8 p.m., UMD Sports.
10 a.m., 12, 2, 4 & 9 p.m., DHS Sports; 6 p.m., Interesting People of Dartmouth; 7 p.m., School Committee Mtg.
10 a.m., Charter Committee Review, 10/6; 12 p.m., Charter Committee Review, 10/27; 1:30 p.m., Charter Committee Review, 11/17; 3 p.m., Charter Committee Review, 12/15; 5 p.m., Banking 101; 5:30 p.m., Wanderers: History of August Fourball at CCNB; 6:30 p.m., VARTA — The Indic Voice; 7 p.m., Select Board Mtg., 1/3.
10 a.m. & 8 p.m., Zoning Board of Appeals Mtg.; 2 & 4 p.m., DHS Sports; 6 p.m., School Committee Mtg.
10 a.m., DHS Sports; 1 p.m., UMD Sports; 3 p.m., Wanderers: History of Dartmouth Schools; 4 p.m., Select Board Mtg., 1/3; 7 p.m., Adult Spelling Bee; 9 p.m., Cooking with Colby.
PRAGUE, March 3 (Reuters) - The departure of coal miner New World Resources’ majority owners has not changed the Czech government’s stance of denying aid to the struggling firm and only helping workers who lose jobs, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Thursday.
Loss-making NWR is the owner of the Czech Republic’s only hard coal mines and has been in talks with stakeholders and the government to avoid a collapse due to depressed coal prices.
NWR said last week 50.5 percent shareholder CERCL, whose owners have had fractious relations with the government, would transfer its shares to the company for free to be cancelled, leaving a trio of bondholders - who already held a big stake under a previous restructuring - with 60 percent.
The bondholders said on Monday they were willing to put more money into the company if the state would provide support too.
“From my point of view, the situation does not change,” Sobotka said in an interview with Reuters.
When asked about negotiations with NWR under its new owners, Sobotka said there were ministers in his cabinet designated for these talks and the task had not changed.
NWR has said it hopes to complete talks on its restructuring, which would involve closing some mines but saving the rest, in the second quarter.
NILES Â? The Berrien County Sheriff's Department is investigating a possible armed robbery at the Berrien Teachers Credit Union branch on 11th Street in Niles Township shortly before 10 a.m. today. Investigators were not available immediately to provide details.
Niles dispatch took a call around 9:44 a.m. Police radio traffic indicated that four men, one of whom was possibly armed, left the credit union in a vehicle believed to be a gray Chevrolet.
The anticipation's been brewing over the first D.C. outpost of Buffalo Exchange, but finally, finally, we've got an a opening date in sight now -- and it's soon!
Located off Logan Circle at 1318 14th St. NW, the consignment store will open its doors Saturday, June 16.
Housed in a beautiful historic building, the store adds an extra splash of style to the heavily trafficked neighborhood, with two-level ceilings, rustic floors and vintage displays.
The resale chain, which has 40 locations nationwide, is much more than your typical thrift store. Inventory ranges from high-end designers to one-of-a-kind items -- it's almost impossible to not find treasures amongst the plethora of shoes, shirts, skirts, pants and jeans.
Buffalo Exchange buys most of its wares from local customers, carefully curating its collection so that each location reflects the style of local residents.
Items typically range around $15; designer jeans are more (we know, you're shocked. Five cents from each purchase is donated to a charity of the customer's choice.
The new location will be open Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.–7 p.m., and Sunday noon–6 p.m.
Whether or not you play tennis, you’re likely to enjoy the doubles and grand slam of Trinidadian food favorites this weekend at PB Catch and its laidback Summer Shack lounge pop-up.
That’s because the seafood restaurant and raw bar is throwing a Caribbean-themed dinner celebration Saturday (June 27) with light steel-drum music and, among other things, a special menu with a trio of appetizers that wink and nod to really great Trinidadian street food.
PB Catch’s Chef Aaron Black.
Saturday’s `Caribbean Feast’ at PB Catch, home to chef de cuisine Aaron Black, also is set to feature specialty cocktails inspired by the rich-and-famous Caribbean playground of St. Bart’s because the spirit of a little bling never sandbagged summer tans and flip-flops.
The Caribbean-themed event is the first in a series of special monthly food-and-entertainment happenings through November at PB Catch, which has planned such upcoming events ranging from a New England clambake to a Louisiana seafood boil.
Saturday’s special menu—offered in addition to the regular menus of PB Catch and its casual-vibe Summer Shack pop-up—features such starters as Saheena tostadas (callaloo and split pea-battered braised oxtail with tamarind and mango slaw), Doubles (crispy flatbread sandwiching curried chickpeas and cucumber chutney), and a version of Pholourie (split-pea fritters with honey-and-sweet-pepper compote).
Caribbean-inspired entrée specials are slated to include fried whole snapper with soffritto, yellow rice, mango slaw and tamarind vinegar, and charcoal-grilled jerk grouper with callaloo, tostones and black-bean curry.
For more information, call 655-5558 or visit www.pbcatch.com.
LAKE ST. LOUIS, Mo., Sept. 22, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bandura, LLC, maker of the fast, automated, U.S. Defense-tested PoliWall Security Platform, today introduces ProACT™ server which aggregates multiple sources of threat intelligence to give you the most accurate picture of the threat landscape and takes auto-action to prevent data breaches in real-time. ProACT is software that allows customers to aggregate real-time threat information from both their own network, combined with external threat intelligence feeds. ProACT dynamically assesses the aggregated risk and adjusts access control policies according to user-defined risk-tolerance levels, stopping inbound attacks and outbound data leakage.
"ProACT takes a revolutionary approach to handling the labor-intensive task of using actionable threat intelligence to protect your network. ProACT aggregates threat intelligence from many sources and calculates a risk-score for each identified IP, and then delivers the aggregated risk scores to the Poliwall, where it takes action to stop the threats, " says Bandura CTO and Co-Founder, Dave Maestas. "The ever increasing number of network threats results in network security professionals ignoring constant alarms, and spending precious time sorting through massive amounts of log data to identify the real threats, making it nearly impossible to make firewall changes fast enough to prevent data breaches. ProACT gathers threat intelligence from the firewalls, IDS, and security event managers (SIEMs), and aggregates this with external threat intelligence streams, risk-scores the aggregated threat, and then PoliWall takes action to stop the threat."
• Poliwall with ProACT's live threat feed blocks threats as they emerge, and re-allows them when the threat is gone, preventing the blocking of legitimate IP addresses.
Doug McClanahan, Director of Business Development, Concanon, a PoliWall VAR and lead Splunk integrator says, "We are impressed with PoliWall's ability to send security data to the Splunk SIEM for visualization and analysis. ProACT now completes the circle by taking Splunk SIEM threat information data and aggregates it with other threat intelligence feeds for automatic risk-based blocking on the PoliWall platform, which closes the gap between identification of network threats, and action on the threat ."
PoliWall with ProACT advanced filtering provides the highest level of automated security without slowing down the network. When PoliWall receives the risk-scored threat information from ProACT, it automatically blocks the threat both inbound and outbound according to your acceptable level of risk—set with PoliWall's patent-pending user-defined acceptable risk level interfaces. With a mission-focus to secure our critical infrastructures, Bandura has an opt-in feature for ProACT, which allows real-time threat information sharing with other ProACT users. ProACT communicates with all PoliWalls network-wide and takes action to stop these security threats in near real-time.
ProACT can run on any machine in a customer's network as well as in a public or private cloud, and has an open SDK for tailored device integration.
Bandura ™ is a cyber security software company, maker of the patented PoliWall security platform, the Firewall's Firewall™. The PoliWall platform, using ProACT software, aggregates and risk-scores multiple sources of threat intelligence, feeds into the PoliWall platform and then takes auto-action in real time on over 100 million threats ahead of the firewall—real-time blocking bi-directionally. Bandura, with parent company is the industry leader and innovator of automated and simplified security technologies which significantly reduces cyber risk, saves time and resources. Bandura was established to commercialize security technology developed in part with the U.S. Department of Defense and Bandura's parent company, TechGuard Security LLC. Visit us at www.bandurasystems.com and follow us ! @bandurasystems.com.
At Concanon, our mission is simple: We provide extraordinary expertise, on demand. We are technologists with a deep understanding of today's business drivers. We bridge gaps. We put out fires. And we help you apply leading-edge technology to your business problems. Concanon's aim is to help your organization become more efficient and more competitive. Quickly and cost effectively. Concanon is proud to be a Splunk professional services and reseller partner; and a value-added reseller and integrator partner for Bandura's security products. For more information, please visit www.concanon.com.
Should You Buy McDonald's 2.0?
The first in a two-part series on McDonald's anticipated return to sustained growth.
Over the last two years, McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD) has unleashed a stream of turnaround-related activities. The world's largest burger chain has simplified its menu while introducing all-day breakfast, closed underperforming stores, infused social consciousness into its brand, trimmed costs, streamlined its decision-making structure, and revised its reportable divisions.
Next up is an anticipated return to bona-fide growth, at least according to the "long-term global growth plan" McDonald's presented during its annual investor day earlier this month.
The plan consists of three major operational initiatives which themselves rest on three "strategic pillars." Taking a cue from the company's breakfast menu tweak last year, known as All Day Breakfast 2.0, we can think of this plan as a blueprint for a post-turnaround McDonald's 2.0.
In this two-part article series, we'll look at both the stated plan and the financial model behind it, to see if McDonald's is primed for both sales and profit resurgence.
McDonald's 2.0: Interior of McDonald's Sydney, Australia airport location. Image source: McDonald's Corporation.
You can find the crux of McDonald's rejuvenation formula buried in the middle of its March 1 investor day press release, in a quote from CEO Steve Easterbrook (emphasis added): "To deliver sustained growth, we have to attract more customers, more often."
While this may seem obvious, it's particularly relevant to the way McDonald's wants to rebuild its revenue. Improving recurrence of visits among existing and new customers is a much more effective revenue lever than simply tacking on new guest counts, or worse, ramping up core customer frequency without attracting new patrons.
The decline of guest traffic continues to be McDonald's greatest single obstacle in getting back to consistent growth. During the investor conference, the company revealed that it had lost 500 million customer visits in the U.S. since 2012.
Yet its traffic trends are already improving -- or at least they appear to have bottomed out. According to Statista.com, during spring 2016, the number of people who reported visiting a McDonald's within the past 30 days equaled 106.5 million.
While this benchmark is well off the post-Great Recession peak of nearly 114 million customers achieved during the spring of 2013, it represents a positive bounce from autumn 2015's low index of 103 million customer visits, and marks the second-best performance since autumn 2014, which saw nearly 108 million customer visits reported over a thirty-day period.
Accelerating deployment of Experience of the Future restaurants in the U.S.
Of these three initiatives, delivery will likely remain in test mode for some time, although management points out that in Asia, delivery services have already become mainstream. McDonald's reports that it now completes $1 billion of delivery sales annually in markets including South Korea, China, and Singapore.
In the near future, "enhancing digital capabilities" will exert a more direct impact on traffic, and in 2017, this phrase translates to the introduction of mobile order and pay.
The company hopes to shorten drive-thru lines by allowing customers to pre-order on mobile devices, although they'll still have to check in at restaurants before orders are fulfilled. But patrons will be able to opt for curbside delivery, thus improving throughput in the drive-thru line.
The roll-out of mobile order and pay, slated for later this year, is an event shareholders should watch closely. It's an operationally complex change in procedure which will almost certainly entail some initial error and modifications.
But if the launch shaves even a few seconds off McDonald's current drive-thru service average of 208 seconds, executives will consider it a success, and core customers may turn up more frequently if a perception of more convenient, speedier service solidifies.
Data source: McDonald's investor day 8K filing.
If you follow McDonald's closely, you're probably familiar with the ideas expressed in the organization's "retain" and "regain" strategies. But the push to convert casual customers to committed ones is surprising. I've argued often that core menu innovation is the bridge the company needs to cross in order to grow at an appreciable rate in the future.
Here however, McDonald's is signaling that core menu innovation, at least in the United States, is still going to proceed at a careful place. Instead, it's going to rely on new McCafe products as the differentiator to connect with the "casual" customer.
If this sounds like a plan to peel away some of Starbucks Corporation's (NASDAQ:SBUX) aficionados, you're not far off the mark. Think croissants, not burgers. McCafe bakery concepts in Toronto and Paris, which resemble coffee shops more than fast-food eateries, hint at the current experimentation which seeks to "exploit untapped demand." McDonald's is using these global locations to test pairings of upgraded coffee and pastries, as well as bistro-style sandwiches; turf that at current scale Starbucks controls exclusively.
It's important to note, however, that McDonald's doesn't need to go head-to-head with Starbucks: The successful introduction of free-standing, coffee-centric cafes in the U.S. could provide the company a small but significant revenue stream in the coming years.
Should you buy the plan McDonald's is offering?
Ultimately, McDonald's 2.0 is a company striving to keep up with digital and operational industry trends while tentatively exploring menu extension aimed outside the fast-food burger realm. McDonald's can't change its identity overnight -- to do so would risk alienating its fundamental, value-driven core customer. But the organization is embarking on thoughtful incremental change. The new global growth plan is a fairly realistic combination of pragmatism and ambition, which should give longer-term shareholders a rationale for continuing to hold shares.
Of course, any overarching strategy should be assessed alongside a company's financial performance. In the second half of this two-part series, we'll assess the state of McDonald's current financial model.
How do you contain an evolving avian flu?
No one can yet say whether 2006 will be the year of the flu pandemic, whether a particularly virulent strain will mutate sufficiently to easily infect and kill tens of thousands of people, possibly millions.
But there is cause for concern. Recent outbreaks of a strain of avian flu called H5N1 in Asia suggest the virus may have already made the biological leap from bird host to human victim. In China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey, at least 149 human cases of H5N1 infection have been reported, with 80 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
Bird versions of H5N1 have spread beyond Asia, perhaps transported by wild migratory birds, to portions of eastern Europe, Russia, Kuwait and Canada. More human cases seem inevitable. President Bush has launched a $7.1 billion plan to prepare for a global flu epidemic. "Our country has been given fair warning," he said last November.
But how do you prepare for a disease whose infectious agent is not only unseen, but also ever-changing? The influenza virus is a notorious shape-shifter. It mutates constantly, randomly. Vaccines that work against identified strains one year do not the next.
Looming or not, the prospect of a flu pandemic has sharpened everyone's focus. In labs around the country, researchers flush with new funding and interest are racing to improve existing vaccines and create new, more effective drugs. Whether they will succeed in time remains to be seen.
No organism is hardier than a virus, in part because it's not really alive. Unlike bacteria and other cell-based life forms, viruses consist only of incomplete bundles of RNA or DNA. To replicate, they require the reproductive machinery of a host cell.
In humans and other flu-susceptible mammals - such as horses, pigs, birds, whales, dogs and seals - the immune system combats viral infections by creating specific antibodies after just a single exposure.
That means viruses must constantly change to survive. And because they reproduce so quickly, without careful, precise duplication of their genomes, mistakes happen. A gene sequence is transcribed, a protein added, dropped or reassigned. In other words: random mutations.
In addition, viruses freely swap genes upon contact with each other, a process called reassortment, which can generate new strains as well.
In 1918, a strikingly virulent and infectious strain appeared, dubbed the "Spanish flu" because some of the earliest human cases were reported in Madrid. In less than two years, roughly one-third of the world's population, primarily in Europe and North America, had caught the Spanish flu. Between 20 million to 50 million people died worldwide, with some estimates as high as 100 million.
In the United States, roughly 675,000 Americans - 0.6 percent of the country's population at the time - died from flu-related causes in 1918 alone, a percentage that equates to 2 million Americans today.
No pandemic since has matched that epic deadliness. Pandemics in 1957 and 1968 killed millions worldwide, but their mortality rates - the percentage of infected who died - were lower. All subsequent flu outbreaks have been minuscule by comparison, a fact that worries Dr. Fang Fang, chief scientific and medical officer at NexBio, a San Diego-based company working on new antiviral therapies.
"It's been more than three decades since we've seen a significant flu outbreak. We're overdue," she said. "But more importantly, we are now seeing incidences of human infections by novel flu strains in unprecedented numbers. The high density of infection from these strains is troubling. It does not bode well."
Viruses thrive, in part, because their method of infection is stunningly simple. The surface of every flu virus is studded with a protein called hemagglutinin, which readily attaches to receptors on vulnerable host cells, such as those lining the lungs, mouth, nose and eyes. Hemagglutinin is a molecular Trojan horse, inducing the unwitting cell to draw the virus inside.
Once inside, the virus bursts its own membrane, spilling out genetic material that quickly moves into the nucleus of the cell to commandeer needed reproductive machinery. Components for new virus particles are churned out and assembled. These particles migrate to the host cell's outer membrane, where another viral protein called neuraminidase snips the connection. The virus is now free to invade other cells and spread the infection.
Traditional vaccines, which contain whole, killed virus, are designed to stimulate the body's production of antibodies and other immune-system responders.
Creating a flu vaccine is educated guesswork. Scientists anticipate which strains (up to three) are likely to predominate during the next flu season and design the vaccine accordingly. It's a six- to eight-month, costly process, involving millions of special, fertilized chicken eggs that are used to grow sufficient quantities of viral material for vaccine doses.
The resulting vaccine must be used that year, not only because it's fragile and requires refrigeration but because future viral strains are likely to have mutated enough to render any unused vaccine ineffective.
Numerous companies are striving to improve the current vaccine process, either by speeding production technologies, extending shelf life or changing the way the vaccine is delivered or works.
Vical Inc. of San Diego, for example, is developing a vaccine that contains only specific, conserved sequences of viral DNA, according to Alan Embring, executive director of investor relations. These segments of DNA, said Embring, don't change with passing viral generations, thus providing a steady, reliable target for the immune system.
A DNA-based vaccine, Embring said, would be safer because no whole virus is used, eliminating the chance of getting the flu from the vaccine. It can be more quickly designed and manufactured through cell culturing, rather than using chicken eggs. It requires no refrigeration. And most important, it would provide basic protection against a broad range of influenza viruses, perhaps including emerging strains like H5N1.
It is also nowhere near completion. Embring said Vical has received initial federal approval for animal testing, but not yet human application. Clinical trials of new human drugs and therapies typically take years, though there are truncated procedures for times of emergency, such as during a pandemic.
PowderMed, a biotech firm in Oxford, England, is also working on a DNA-based vaccine cultured from E. coli bacteria. Its vaccine would involve coating flu genes with gold, then injecting them into the body with high-pressure helium. Clinical trials are ongoing. Facilities for building the injection devices won't be finished until 2007.
A Philadelphia company call INB, meanwhile, is cultivating harmless bits of flu virus and other human pathogens in fast-growing spinach. The virus proteins are extracted, deactivated, chopped up and injected. INB says the spinach-virus has provoked immunity in test animals. Human trials using U.S. Navy personnel are being planned.
In his November speech, President Bush outlined increased spending on vaccine research and production and called upon states to stockpile the antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir. Better known by their trade names, Tamiflu and Relenza are neuraminidase inhibitors (NIs). They work at the end of the flu infection process, when the viral enzyme neuraminidase releases new viruses from the host cell.
Neuraminidase inhibitors block the activity of the enzyme. Viral particles are not released, limiting the spread of infection. Tamiflu has been used to treat and slow the spread of H5N1 in recent Asian outbreaks.
But popular proposals to deploy Tamiflu widely in future outbreaks worry some people, among them NexBio's Fang, who was recently in China assessing the situation. The more Tamiflu is used, the faster viruses develop resistance, she said.
Making a cheap, generic version widely available would likely encourage Asian farmers to give the drug to their farm animals, hoping to fend off further massive animal deaths that might spell the end to their livelihoods.
That's happened before. In the 1990s, an older flu drug called amantadine was broadly distributed. Asian farmers fed it to their chickens. Viral resistance soared. Amantadine is now deemed useless against H5N1.