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Microsoft explained that the company was already an initiator of the VENUS-C consortium, which aims at deploying cloud computing services for European researchers. |
Azure will also benefit the projects being carried out INRIA and University of Nottingham Horizon Institute, which are conducting digital economic research. |
Chris Petrikin, longtime chief communications officer for 20th Century Fox, is joining Paramount Pictures as executive vice president of global communications and corporate branding. |
He will report to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim Gianopulos in the newly created post. He will work closely with Gianopulos and Paramount’s film and television leadership to develop the studio’s corporate brand and global communications strategies. Petrikin begins his new role on Monday. |
Katie Martin Kelley, the studio’s executive VP of domestic publicity, will continue to oversee all aspects of film publicity. |
Petrikin departed Fox at the end of last year after nearly a decade in the post and announced that he was forming a strategic communications and crisis management consultancy. |
In his new executive role, Petrikin will be re-teaming with former Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman Gianopulos, who left the studio last year and was named chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures in late March, succeeding Brad Grey. Grey, who had left in February after running the studio for 12 years, died of cancer in... |
Petrikin joined Fox in 2007 from the William Morris Agency to oversee corporate communications, media relations, trade advertising, awards campaigns, special events, and charitable activities. He joined William Morris in 2002 after working as a reporter and editor for several publications, including Variety, Daily Vari... |
LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Michigan’s tax on health insurance would continue into 2020 under legislation approved Wednesday by the Legislature, the latest in a long-running series of moves to guarantee that the state still qualifies for federal Medicaid funding. |
The final votes in the Republican-led Senate and House came despite objections from the politically influential state Chamber of Commerce, which has called the bill a “giant tax hike.” GOP Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to sign the measure, which he advocated last year partly as a way to lessen pressures in the state’s g... |
The state’s 0.75 percent health insurance claims assessment, which is expected to rise to 1 percent in 2017 once another tax is disallowed by the federal government, is due to expire at the end of that year. It generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually and, if the revenue dries up, could lead to budget cuts if... |
A 1 percent broad-based tax on health claims took effect in 2012 after more narrowly tailored taxes on Medicaid managed care services came under federal scrutiny. Yearly revenue initially was capped at $400 million, and the tax was due to last just two years. |
But revenue fell far short of projections from the state Treasury Department and legislative economists, putting Michigan’s federal matching dollars at risk. |
In 2013 and 2014, legislators extended the tax four more years, lowered it to 0.75 percent and reinstated a 6 percent use tax on Medicaid health plans. Yet due to guidance from federal officials, the Snyder administration has made it clear that it will no longer collect the use tax starting in 2017, according to the no... |
“We’re going to find a better solution, and I believe we can do that,” Meekhof said. |
As initially passed by the House in December, the bill would have continued the health claims tax into 2025. But the Senate set sunset for July 2020 and approved the legislation 21-17, with 20 Republicans and one Democrat in favor. Ten Democrats and seven Republicans opposed it. |
The House quickly OK’d the bill, 77-25. |
Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said the votes were a follow-up to the majority GOP’s “failed” road-funding deal in the fall, when Republicans voted to shift increasingly more general funds toward the transportation budget and to raise fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees. At the time, Democrats oppose... |
Minor scratches on a Formica or laminate countertop can detract from its overall appearance and give dirt and stains a place to hide. If you've scratched your counter with an S.O.S. cleaning pad or steel wool, fill in the scratches with countertop polish, car wax or special Formica repair paste to disguise them. Filled... |
Clean the scratched area on the Formica well. Use a non-abrasive cleaner and a soft cloth to avoid scratching the surface further. Remove any debris or dirt that may be within the scratch to allow the filler to bond more completely. Dry the Formica thoroughly. |
Rub a small amount of countertop polish or car wax into the lighter, more shallow scratches on the countertop. Work the polish or wax into the Formica with a soft cloth using a circular motion. Continue buffing the scratched area with the cloth until the polish or wax has filled and hidden the scratches. |
Fill any larger or deeper scratches with laminate or Formica filler in a color that matches the color of your countertop. |
Place a small amount of the filler on a plate or dish and work it back and forth with a putty knife until the filler begins to thicken and becomes more solid than liquid. |
Soak a clean cloth in the solvent that comes with the filler and rub the solvent into the scratch on the Formica. Immediately scoop up some of the filler onto the end of the putty knife and apply it to the scratch. Press the filler into the scratch with the putty knife, scraping the knife gently across the surface of t... |
Rub the solvent soaked cloth across the surface of the Formica to remove any excess filler. Allow the filler to dry for one hour, then inspect the scratch. If the filler has shrunk as it dried, repeat the procedure until the counter is repaired. |
A coat of car wax can improve the overall look of a worn laminate counter top. |
Asaff, Sarabeth. "How to Repair Minor SOS Scratches in Formica Counter Tops." Home Guides | SF Gate, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/repair-minor-sos-scratches-formica-counter-tops-74914.html. Accessed 19 April 2019. |
The Best Years of Our Lives is not a war movie. It’s a veterans movie. The protagonists are three men who find themselves on the same plane returning home from their service in World War II to Boone City, somewhere in the United States. In the opening minutes, they are excited at the prospect of going home—and yet thes... |
There’s Al (Frederic March), a married man who returns to find that he doesn’t really know his family any more—his two kids have changed so much in his absence. Fred (Dana Andrews), who flew in bombers and now sees that his quick marriage to a bombshell isn’t much of a marriage. And Homer (Harold Russell), who lost bot... |
After years of rah-rah movies released during the war, this 1946 film—written by Robert Sherwood and directed magnificently by William Wyler (Ben-Hur, Roman Holiday)—stands out for its quiet, persistent effort to explore the pain, confusion, and panic that can mark a person’s returning home from war. It aims to be real... |
The film was a huge box-office success and won eight Oscars—including two for veteran Harold Russell. |
Other movies have explored the difficulties of veterans returning home. Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, even Forrest Gump. But for Wyler, and producer Samuel Goldwyn, rolling out this film just months after the Allied victory stands out as an act of courage. It became a box-office success and won eight Oscars—... |
The film, in the end, lifts you up. But not before telling you an unforgettable story about three men whose struggles likely resonate with veterans of any war, in any place. |
For the past several years, one of the first columns I write to kick off the New Year consists of my overall impression and predictions for the upcoming year’s local housing market. In January 2018, the area was busy in a post-Hurricane Irma frenzy with a new tax reform package, which had just passed the United States ... |
For those in the housing market, 2018 will be a tough year with labor issues, higher costs and volatile material pricing. If you are selling a home, unless the overall economy stalls, expect multiple offers on homes selling for less than $225,000. If you are one of the poor souls that do not qualify for a home loan due... |
I expect the national housing market to be down three percent or less, and the Lake County housing market will probably follow suit. |
After this forecast, I feel like a fortune teller. The local and national housing markets were all about higher labor and material costs, tariffs and shortages in skilled labor. Home prices inflated, interest rates increased a solid point and buyers were left in the cold trying to find affordable housing. According to ... |
What should builders, buyers and sellers in the housing market expect in 2019? |
There will be a shortage of qualified buyers and affordable homes in the first half, which will be eased as home sellers begin to cut asking prices. Although material prices will trend lower, they will remain volatile as mills and manufacturers try to manipulate the supply equation to hold pricing. Plus, as the tariff ... |
Housing starts nationally and locally will probably drop into the low single digits with a slowdown becoming more prevalent in the second half of the year. After the retail bloodbath following this year’s Christmas shopping season, coupled with the general slowdown of the economy, expect the labor issue to resolve itse... |
For builders, this is not the year to be speculative. What you build should be sold because a stronger turndown could leave many builders in the financial cold if they have spec homes sitting in inventory. Builders should closely monitor pricing and begin looking for deals on land as property owners begin to see this h... |
It behooves both home sellers and buyers to move quickly in 2019. Higher interest rates and a general tightening of credit could force home buyers to the sidelines. For home sellers, as the months tick off in 2019, expect to find fewer buyers and even less offers. By the fourth quarter of 2019, there could be a full pr... |
Most experts agree the housing market and economy are in the final months of this economic cycle. Tariffs, interest rates and trade policies could make the next recession a little worse than expected. However, for housing the markets are not in the bad shape likened to 2008. Fewer homeowners are over-leveraged, and ban... |
Whether you are buying or selling in the housing market, now is not the time to be sitting on the fence. The mistake people make is trying to hit the market on the absolute low or high, which never happens. If you see a good deal, make it happen and don’t look back. Little doubt, the housing market in 2019 will be tota... |
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a joint press conference on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland. |
Putin reiterated his denial for the public. |
The US President also hailed Putin’s offer for Russian law enforcement officials to interrogate the Russian agents indicted by the special counsel Robert Mueller as “incredible,” an offer that would effectively give Russia oversight and influence of part of a US investigation into Russian state activities. Putin had al... |
The US intelligence community — in a report compiled by the CIA, NSA, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — concluded with “high confidence” that Russia interfered during the 2016 presidential campaign, aiming to help elect Trump and hurt Clinton. |
Every current US intelligence chief who has testified on the matter has also backed the intelligence community’s assessment and the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee also affirmed the assessment in a report earlier this month. |
Trump’s comments drew swift condemnation, with Democrats and Republicans pushing back on Trump’s comments. |
Instead he said he holds both the United States and Russia responsible for the breakdown in the relationship between the two countries and railed against the special counsel’s Russia investigation. |
Former Liverpool striker Michael Owen believes his old club have the credentials to not only secure a Champions League return but to win the Barclays Premier League title this season. |
The free-scoring Reds are currently second in the table and would take over from Arsenal, for two days at least, with victory over Cardiff at Anfield on Saturday. |
And with preliminary talks about a new contract for 17-goal striker Luis Suarez mooted on Wednesday, Owen can envisage manager Brendan Rodgers lifting a trophy come the end of the season. |
"Liverpool are fully deserving of being labelled title contenders," he wrote in a blog on Sportlobster. "The Reds are firmly back in the big time. |
"The noises I am hearing are that (Brendan) Rodgers has money to spend this coming window and should he unearth another couple of gems, I certainly wouldn't back against them lifting some silverware come May." |
Managing director Ian Ayre flew to Barcelona to speak to Uruguay international Suarez's agents about the possibility of a new deal, Press Association Sport understands. |
It seems unlikely the 26-year-old will agree to extend his stay beyond the 2016 end of his current deal until he knows whether the club have qualified for the Champions League. |
Even then that may not necessarily be enough to keep him but, having previously pledged his support until the end of the season, the league's leading scorer seemed fully focused in restoring Liverpool's place among Europe's elite. |
That is a far cry from the summer when he was very outspoken with his frustrations about not being allowed to leave for a Champions League club, especially after Arsenal lodged a bid of £40,000,001 in the mistaken belief it would trigger a release clause. |
But while everything seems relatively stable with Suarez at the moment, former Reds midfielder Dietmar Hamann believes the club need a long-term personal commitment in addition to any new contract. |
"What must not happen is we have a situation next summer as we had last summer," said the German, a Champions League winner with Liverpool in 2005. |
"He could sign a new contract now, take the £200,000 a week, the team finishes outside the top four and you have the same shenanigans. |
"I want him to stay but there needs to be clarity. He has got to understand what it means to commit. |
"If there is a clause that he can go for £60million, £80million and someone pays it, that is obviously fair enough, but you can't have a situation again like you had last summer." |
Suarez has scored 17 goals in 11 matches this season since returning from a 10-game suspension, carried over from the previous campaign, for biting Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic. |
Tonight, Zynga launched four new games on its Zynga.com web platform and also revealed it’s secured nine new publishing partners, bringing the total count of third-party developers it’s working with to 24. |
The new publishing partners are Antic Entertainment, Big Bite Games, CrayonPixel, Eruptive Games, JamRT, Method Solutions, Playnery, RocketPlay and TikGames. Although most of these partnerships are newly-revealed, we already knew about Eruptive Games and RocketPlay, thanks to earlier announcements over the past week. |
The four new games launching on Zynga.com are a mix of what we saw at June’s Zynga Unleashed event, as well as titles that were only recently announced. Sava Trasnmedia’s puzzle platformer Rubber Tacos was briefly shown at Zynga Unleashed and allows players to create/share their own levels in addition to the regular ga... |
Additionally, Richard Garriott’s Portalarium revealed to us that Zynga will publish Ultimate Collector on Zynga.com sometime this Fall. Garriott’s gone on record in the past about how he believes social and mobile games represent the “third grand era” of games, and he recently gave us an in-depth demo of the game on Fa... |
Every developer we’ve talked to about publishing with Zynga has said they went with the company for three primary reasons: the number of users Zynga has access to, how Zynga makes user acquisition costs much more affordable and that Zynga gave them “great” offers. |
Since Zynga.com launched in March, the platform’s been used to prove to investors how Zynga isn’t totally reliant on Facebook. Up until this point, the site’s been used to house several of the company’s more popular games on an independent platform and hasn’t seen quite the takeoff in users that Zynga was undoubtedly h... |
U.S. Policy Shift on Zimbabwe Would Isolate U.K. |
Opposition to ICC Attack on Sudan Emerges in U.K. |
The explicit position of the Bush regime had been that the U.S. could never recognize a unity government in Zimbabwe in which Robert Mugabe was a participant. Wood, on this occasion, did not call for the ouster of Mugabe as a condition, which was widely seen in Africa as a policy shift. Wood said, "The key is always im... |
This beginning of a shift on Zimbabwe policy leaves the U.K. in the isolated position of continuing to advocate policies designed to paralyze Zimbabwe. British Foreign Ministry official Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, who attended the African Union summit Feb. 1-3, got an earful from the African delegates, who called for the ... |
He admitted what he actually thought when he got back to London. Speaking to the parliament, he said he was skeptical that the unity government would succeed. He also complained that the sanctions against Zimbabwe were misrepresented, and were only meant to force the government to share power. "I think we need this lev... |
Feb. 2 (EIRNS)The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is spreading throughout the rural areas, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Jan. 30. WHO characterized the outbreak as the deadliest in Africa in 15 years. Cases are reported in all ten of the country's provinces. The capital city of Harare, particularly the Budi... |
David Heymann, the assistant-director general of the WHO, in an interview in the French daily Le Monde, today said that unfortunately the "worst" scenario is becoming reality and is reminiscent of ravages of medieval epidemics, "when nothing was known about the pathogen's mechanisms of contamination or routes of transm... |
"This situation brings us de facto back to the impotence observed during the cholera epidemics of the Middle Ages, even though people exposed today are globally better informed.... In general, the daily difficulties for the health care providers are simple: how to distribute to affected populations, oral re-hydration k... |
The WHO called on donor countries to help pay the salaries of thousands of Zimbabwean medical workers, to provide oral rehydration salts and chlorine tablets, and to raise awareness about cholera prevention and treatment. The appeal was made as UN aid officials tried to rally international support for Zimbabwe, where t... |
In a Jan. 24 interview with Newsweek, Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Gideon Gono pointed to the international sanctions against Zimbabwe as the root of its economic problems. Gono added that the IMF's request for the U.S. to print more money was "an implicit endorsement" of his own methods, which led to hyperinflation. "I... |
Feb. 4 (EIRNS)Sir Geoffrey Nice, Queens Counsel, and Rodney Dixon made an application on Jan. 11 to the International Criminal Court (which wants to violate Sudanese sovereignty, to arrest Sudan President Omar al-Bashir), on behalf of a Sudan Labor federation and a Sudanese NGO, not to issue the arrest warrants at thi... |
The reasons given by Sir Geoffrey for not doing so are: 1) Such a move would have grave implications for the peace process in Sudan, and "that deference must be given to considerations of national interest and security," since the agreement that ended the civil war between North and South would break down, and therefor... |
Sir Geoffrey and Dixon cite several highly regarded experts on Sudan, all of whom oppose the ICC threat to destabilize Sudan. |
EIR sources from the region have indicated that since the inauguration of the President Obama, they don't expect any U.S. military attack against Sudan (policed no-fly zones, for example), even if the ICC issues an arrest warrant for Bashir, which British press sources claim may happen in February. |
If the ICC issues its arrest warrant, it could be deferred for a year, while efforts to resolve the crisis are made. If the United States were to block its deferral in the UN Security Council, British circles will be in a position to say they made efforts to stop the warrant, but that the U.K. government succumbed to t... |
The Conservatives have become the first British party to launch a policy agenda on the internet today with a live webchat with David Cameron which can be accessed through politics.co.uk. |
The webchat, which occured at 13:30 GMT, can be found below. |
Users could ask questions on the environment to Mr Cameron by emailing craig.elder@conservatives.com or contibute to the live chat during the webcast. |
The Tories are keen to capitalise over the controversy surrounding the new Heathrow runway, with party insiders feeling they are on the 'right' side of the issue. |
The plans are intended to reduce UK reliance on gas and oil and funnel £1 billion into improving power distribution on the National Grid. |
The party are focusing on decarbonising the economy, with hopes for the highly skills jobs it would create. |
The National Grid proposals contain the most detail. The party are calling for new technology to update energy distribution, with 'smart' appliances in the home monitoring appliances on a second by second basis. |
There will also be a renewed focus on bio-energy, where power is made through biological waste. |
In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Cameron stressed the role of the new technology in opening up new policies. |
"It is the thing that brings our plans all together, that makes it all possible and will deliver a genuinely low-carbon world," he said. |
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg poured scorn on the webchat. |
"This announcement is like David Cameron riding his bike, but what is important is what is in the car behind him," he said. |
"In there we find a Conservative party that despite all its rhetoric will dodge a vote on Heathrow's third runway; that supports future nuclear power plants; and that's so anti-Europe it fails to understand that the only way to fight climate change is to work together internationally." |
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