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The cash boost will be used to invest in Indigenous educators and practices. (Creative Commons)
Province invests $2.7 million in Indigenous teacher education training
Money to go towards teacher spots and Indigenous teaching practices
Nick Murray
Jun. 18, 2019 12:30 p.m.
The B.C. government will invest $2.7 million in Indigenous teacher education training, to try boost Indigenous teacher numbers and practices.
The commitment was made in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for governments to fund higher education institutions to train teachers how to better integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms.
ALSO READ: Court approves First Nations Health Authority’s strong medicine
The cash injection was announced by Melanie Mark, Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Training, at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology (NVIT).
Currently, the government say Indigenous teachers are under-represented in B.C.’s education system, with only four to six per cent of teaching graduates identifying as Indigenous.
“Investing in Indigenous educators has been a call to action for generations,” said Mark. “It empowers Indigenous students to see themselves in their teachers, and Indigenous teachers to continue to act as role models across the education ecosystem. All communities benefit when we embrace our diversity.”
The funding includes $1.4 million toward teacher education seats for Indigenous students. Additionally, NVIT will receive $730,000 for two master of education cohorts, in partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC).
An additional $600,000 to integrate Indigenous knowledge and culture into the B.C. teacher education curriculum will provide $50,000 to eight institutions for the B.C. Public Teacher Education Programs and $200,000 for the Association of B.C. Deans of Education to support co-ordination and collaboration across the institutions.
ALSO READ: Troubling tales: Peninsula author writes Sixties Scoop memoir
Ken Tourand, president and CEO of NVIT said, “NVIT’s five founding First Nations bands had a vision to improve the quality of life of Indigenous peoples through Indigenous education. Its very inception is reconciliation in action. This new funding provides an opportunity to advance this vision to include training future B.C.’s K-12 teachers. NVIT’s learning environment and curriculum are embedded with Indigenous knowledge and ways of being. Ideally, future generations will benefit from classrooms and curriculum infused with the principles of respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility first identified in 2001 by Verna Kirkness and Ray Barnhardt [authors of an Indigenous education study].”
The 2019 budget is committed to investing in a new K-12 curriculum that makes sure all children in B.C. are taught about Indigenous culture and history.
ALSO READ: $40M to upgrade B.C. First Nations’ addiction and mental health treatment centres
The province says in 2017-18, the Ministry of Education provided $260,000 to NVIT and UBC to develop and expand Indigenous teacher education programs, and invested $65,000 to create 15 new Indigenous teacher education seats at Vancouver Island University’s Cowichan campus.
To learn more about Aboriginal Education in B.C. visit www2.gov.bc.ca and for information on teacher education programs in B.C. go to bcteacherregulation.ca.
nick.murray@peninsulanewsreview.com
Who should bear the financial risk of flooding? Here are three options
Canadian soldier killed in Bulgaria during training exercise
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Indigo Valley, the feature film, is an ethereal drama focused on three intensely troubled characters, set in the isolated wilderness.
Jaclyn Bethany
Rewards Campaign FAQ Updates 12 Comments 1 Community
Project We Love Los Angeles, CA Drama
Barney White and Jaclyn Bethany in short version of Indigo Valley
Indigo Valley is a drama set in a desolate and isolated landscape. The story explores the complicated relationship between two estranged sisters, Louise and Isabella.
Indigo Valley is the first feature film from filmmaker Jaclyn Bethany. The short film, shot in Iceland in summer 2017 was made as a proof of concept for the feature. The short is currently enjoying a festival run, after well attended screenings at the American Film Market and the European Film Market.
The story of Indigo Valley was developed and pitched at The Cannes Pitch This! Sponsored by Shorts TV, Edinburgh Talent Lab BFI/Pitch First Feature, FEST: New Directors/New Films in Porto, Portugal and Nashville Film Festival. Jaclyn was recently selected to develop the project with Kate Bosworth and Michael Polish at the inaugural Montana Institute of the Arts.
Jaclyn Bethany as Isabella in Iceland, shooting Indigo Valley short Film. Click to watch the teaser for the short.
The Vision:
As an artist, I am greatly inspired by dramatists such as Chekhov, Strindberg and Tennessee Williams. In many ways, Indigo Valley can be described as A Streetcar Named Desire for the millennial generation.
Indigo Valley, like Gone Girl and Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, examines the dark and inner psyche of the human mind. More specifically - Indigo Valley explores a woman at the center of a deep, psychological conflict.
Our three characters have a desperate need to survive and thrive - both realistically and metaphorically, with or without each other. With this in mind, Indigo Valley is extremely relevant, as a story showing human nature, jealousy and lust - all human emotions that most have experienced.
Visually, we are inspired by films such as Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, Ingmar Bergman's The Passion of Anna, Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror and television series such as Jane Campion's Top of The Lake and The Kettering Incident.
On set of the short film, Indigo Valley
We have been extremely fortunate in the team that we have been able to bring together to create this film. With a few of the original team from the short film and some new additions, we are excited to introduce some of the key actors and Heads of Departments who will make this vision come to life. Our director, producer and cinematographer are all female - a rarity in this industry.
A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Jaclyn Bethany is an actress and filmmaker, a "rising star" of the film world. With her company BKE Productions she has produced, directed and written numerous short films that have played festivals worldwide. As an actor she has appeared in the feature films I Saw The Light, Worry Dolls, Miles and several festival favorite short films.
Jaclyn Bethany directing the short film, Indigo Valley
Ms. Bethany holds a B.A. in Acting from Fordham University, an M.A. in Screenwriting from The London Film School and and M.F.A. in Directing from the prestigious American Film Institute. Her AFI thesis film, The Delta Girl stars Isabelle Fuhrman, Caitlin Carver and Ashley Bell. It will premiere at a prestigious Oscar qualifying festival later this summer.
She is also the co-editor of online female arts driven publication Constellation, where she curates an ongoing female filmmaker portfolio.
An American-British hybrid, Courtney Harmstone has been working professionally in film since she graduated with a BFA in Film Production from The Florida State College of Motion Picture Arts. Following this, Courtney has worked in a variety of positions in the film industry, from social media marketing and distribution to editing award winning documentaries and commercials.
Since graduating from The London Film School and University of Exeter, Courtney has worked in the U.K. in the film industry, from feature films to short projects - her favorite being, Indigo Valley short film.
Currently, Courtney works at a media company, Alpha Grid, a Financial Times-Owned company as an Associate Producer/Director, where she works with high-profile clients making branded content and attended the World Economic Forum.
Mikhail is a Los Angeles-based producer, born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. His 10 years of professional experience includes work for several international TV-channels and productioncompanies. Mikhail’s work on narrative features, documentary films and news broadcasts have been awarded both domestically and internationally. He received his BA from the Russian State University of Cinematography, aka VGIK, (Russia) and MFA in producing from the AFI Conservatory (USA).
Irene Gomez Emilsson filming the final shot of the short film, Indigo Valley
Irene is a London based filmmaker born and raised in Mexico with an Icelandic background. After a BA in film studies in Paris (2006- 2009) she enrolled in the London Film School in 2011, at the LFS she specialized in cinematography and directing. She has lensed over fifteen short films including six pieces by Jaclyn Bethany. She is passionate about cinematography as a way of portraying thoughts and emotions.
Rosie Day is an award-winning young actress. Dubbed a ‘Screen International Star of Tomorrow’ by Screen Daily and a BAFTA Rising Star 2017 by InStyle, she’s starred in Golden Globe nominated Outlander as Mary Hawkins, co- starred alongside Sarah Jessica Parker in the rom-com All Roads Lead to Rome, and Stefanie Myer’s (Writer of Twilight) new movie Down a Dark Hall alongside Uma Thurman, for Lionsgate. Rosie was one of the leads in Butterfly Kisses which won this year’s Crystal Bear, at the Berlin Film Festival. She has recently returned from shooting one of the leads in Sky One’s new comedy/drama Living The Dream alongside Phillip Glenister and Lesley Sharp. She is working alongside James Mcavoy, Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine, in the 2018 Watership Down remake, for Netflix and the BBC. And Neil Gaiman's Good Omens also for the BBC.
Brandon Sklenar previously starred in the Japanese/American co-production Temple for Netflix. In addition to Tribeca darling Mapplethorpe, Brandon can soon be seen in Magic Lantern, revered international filmmaker Amir Naderi’s next directorial effort. This Fall, Brandon will premiere in Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic Backseat with Academy Award winners Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Sam Rockwell. Up next is a lead role in London Calling, a noir crime thriller that weaves the British gangster genre with the American western.
We are raising $55,000 to cover the production costs of making Indigo Valley. Making a feature film is expensive and every donation makes a difference, and When you donate to Indigo Valley, you are helping our dream become a reality. After raising some of the funds on our own, we have turned to crowdfunding to complete the fundraising process.
The $55,000 will help support the cost of equipment, departmental budgets, feeding the (very hungry) crew and also helping to cover the additional costs of production. To help offset costs we have been lucky to secure SIGMA lenses as a sponsor and hope to welcome more sponsorship.
Money will also be allocated for post-production, which will be completed in Los Angeles and London. See a more detailed chart below.
When you donate to Indigo Valley, you are not only investing in a feature film - you are putting money and support a feature film by three female filmmakers. It is an important cultural moment for women in film.
We have tailored a series of perks that we can offer for your generous donation, all of which are personalized for the film that range, from 10 dollars to 10,000!
One perk we can guarantee - when you donate to our film, we will be forever grateful! Your investment is not only in the production of Indigo Valley, but also in our future as filmmakers, and the knowledge that we have your support will inspire us to make the film the best it can be.
A few words from the Director, Jaclyn Bethany:
When I started working on this project, it started like all creative endeavors: with an idea. I began to shape the story and the characters- newlywed couple Louise and John, and Louise’s sister and the protagonist of the story - the displaced, and destructive Isabella.
When John and Isabella meet, their unexpected similarities become intertwined and intoxicating leading to a volatile emotional and physical relationship that ultimately, puts everything at risk. When things begin to go wrong on the most remote section of the journey, the characters are stripped - they begin acting and not thinking - it makes us, as humans, question who we really are.
When I wrote the first draft, it felt like the most raw, vulnerable and true thing I had ever written. When I shot the narrative promo, I had the same feeling, but also a remarkable feeling of joy and accomplishment. A great deal of that comes down to the extraordinarily talented and dedicated people that are working alongside me on this project.
From this point forward, I knew that we could make Indigo Valley into something really beautiful and moving, attracting a diverse audience worldwide. —Jaclyn Bethany
A few words from Producer, Courtney Harmstone:
When Jaclyn first pitched Indigo Valley to me, I instantly felt a connection to her vision, the story, and the characters. During our discussions about the film, Jaclyn mentioned a couple of my favourite films and stories: Force Majeure and A Streetcar Named Desire - both deeply troubling plots but absolutely stunning portraits of raw humanity. With these tone pieces in mind, and Jaclyn’s storytelling, I was drawn into the world of Indigo Valley and knew I wanted to produce this film.
The combination of the dark and intense themes and the dramatic tension makes Indigo Valley not only an exciting read but also an extremely in-depth view of the psychological darker side of the human soul.
Jaclyn and I decided to create a short film as a prelude to the feature. By end of June of 2017, Jaclyn and I raised $14,000 USD through Kickstarter in nine days (out of twenty- five). The short not only proved that this story has an audience, but also that it can inspire young talent to work together towards a vision.
I am extremely excited about the future of this dark and intensely interesting piece of work and am thrilled that I am able to work with a team of young and talented filmmakers who are so dedicated to their crafts.
Here are some images from the short film, as well as images from Jaclyn's body of work.
Jaclyn Bethany and Barney White
C.C. Kellogg and Barney White
Jaclyn Bethany in Indigo Valley
Ashley Bell, Isabelle Fuhrman and Caitlin Carver in The Delta Girl
Atli Oskar Fjalarsson in The Delta Girl
Ashley Bell, Isabella Fuhrman and Aidan Redmond in The Delta Girl
Greta Bellamacina and Harry-Lister Smith in The Last Birthday
Fern Bain Smith and Branko Tomovic in The Last Birthday
Fern Bain Smith, Jazzy De Lisser, Anna Popplewell and Greta Bellamacina in The Last Birthday
Ellie Goffe, Aisha Fabienne Ross, Louisa Harland, Sorcha Groundsell, Jenny Boyd and Allegra Marland in Sunday Tide
Jaclyn in Jaclyn and Irene's first collaboration, Between Departures
If you are a seasoned Kickstarter supporter, you'll know that films take a while to be completed! Here is our timeline!
We plan to shoot Indigo Valley the second week of August 2018. Post-Production will begin in January 2019 and we are aiming to submit for festivals in the fall, for the circuit in 2020!
If you would like to learn more about the project, please feel free to reach out to either Courtney or Jaclyn.
Contact: indigovalleyfilm@gmail.com
If you are keen to get involved, but don't want to donate via the kickstarter, please contact either Courtney or Jaclyn on the email below:
What if we don't meet our goal?
The money never leaves your account until we reach our projected goal: $55,000. However, we know with your support this won't be the case and we will make our goal!
What do I get in return?
You get to help us make the film! But you will also get a reward. Check them out!
When do I get to see the film?
We will be able to share it with you as soon as it is complete, our projected premiere date is the fall of 2019 or early 2020. We will keep you updated every step of the way!
The project is an ultra-low budget feature, with a crew of up-and-coming filmmakers, which is why we have come to use Kickstarter to procure financing, from people who believe in our vision.
Some of the major challenges associated with making a feature film, however, are things such as getting equipment, feeding the crew and making sure that we are all extremely safe on set. The budget we are raising on Kickstarter will cover the bare minimum needed to help with production. We are hoping that from this feature film, that we will be able to create a dramatic and powerful feature film, proving to that we, as young filmmakers, can make it happen. This cannot happen unless we raise the $55,000 on Kickstarter. Without this money, we will not be able to make the film the best it can be.
This is a very special story we are all committed to working on without pay, and our sole commitment is to the art of making this film and bringing this unique story to life. We are all working on it because we believe in it, and hope you will to. Making a first feature is a dream for any filmmaker, and we are confident that with your help, we can make it happen.
SOCIAL MEDIA SHOUT OUT!
Thank you so much for your donation! We can't do this without you, and every dollar makes a difference!
For this reward, you can expect a VERY enthusiastic social media shout out as a thank you!
WATCH THE FILM!
With this donation, and now a part of our family, we are thrilled to offer you the chance to watch finished version of the feature film!
This reward includes: a social media shout out, a "Thanks" credit in the finished film, a list of key locations of the feature in Los Angeles and a downloadable final link of the feature film!
THE CEREBRAL SOUNDTRACK!
As any movie-goer, movie-lover knows, the soundtrack is essential for the film. We have been lucky enough to work with some pretty incredible musicians, composers and sound mixers during our time on Indigo Valley, and we would be honoured to share their beautiful work with you.
This reward includes the official soundtrack, with bonus track from Maesa Pullman, our exceptional composer.
The landscape and the character's relationships with the universe of the film is a key component of Indigo Valley. Because the setting means so much to the film, we will be creating a backer-only behind-the-scenes photo montage with images from our short film and also the feature.
This reward includes all the above and an electronic look-book, with a selection of cast photos, set pics and a downloadable official poster!
BEHIND-THE-SCENES!
Film sets, even on films that are centred on a dramatic premise, have fun and exciting moments that take place behind-the-scenes.
Along with all the above, this perk is designed to give you exclusive access to the experience behind the camera, with the crew, on set, through digital package of behind the scenes footage, photos and the final shooting script!
Part of the directorial process is making notes on set; scribbles on the script, key emotions she wants to capture and essential elements fro the day.
This reward is a backer-exclusive, which not only includes all the above rewards, but also a "very special thanks" credit in the feature film, AND exclusive, handwritten notes from Director, Jaclyn Bethany, and signed by the key cast!
PRIVATE DINNER WITH THE H.O.D.S!
When all is said and done, everyone deserves a delicious meal, and this reward is focused on just that. If you support our film, we want to show you that we are extremely thankful over a quiet and candlelit dinner.
This perk includes all the rewards above, AND a private dinner with Producer, Courtney Harmstone, Director, Jaclyn Bethany and key cast members (please note: this depends on the date/availability of the cast).
ASSOCIATE of INDIGO VALLEY!
With your generous donation, we would like to officially welcome to the production team, with an "ASSOCIATE PRODUCER" credit. This credit will play in the final credits of the feature film, alongside the members of the crew.
This reward includes all the rewards above, and an "Associate Producer" credit on the film!
PRIVATE TOUR AND DINNER - LA
The locations of Indigo Valley have all been chosen to act as characters in the film. The isolated and desolate open landscapes inspire the actions of the characters, and is brought to life on camera.
This reward includes all the above, AND a private tour of the essential and most beautiful locations used in the film, lead by Jaclyn Bethany, ending with a private dinner at one of the set restaurant locations.
PRIVATE DINNER AND TOUR - LONDON
If you are unable to make it to Los Angeles, do not fear - we would love to take you out for dinner, to show our gratitude, in the incredible city of London. Courtney, our U.K. based Producer, will show you exciting London hot-spots, with a tour around the areas where Jaclyn, Courtney and Irene first decided to make Indigo Valley into a feature project.
This reward includes all the above, AND a private tour of London, lead by Courtney Harmstone (and Irene Gomez-Emilsson, if available)!
A TRIP TO SET - JOIN THE I.V. CREW!
Ever wanted to experience a film set, in person? Come and join us for a day of shooting, from Dawn to Dusk. We'll be sure to have a coffee and a bagel ready for you upon arrival, and we'll give you through an in-depth experience of what it means to be a part of an independent feature film crew!
This reward includes all the rewards above, and a trip to set during filming!
Pledge US$ 10,000 About US$ 10,000
PREMIERE, DINNER & A STAY AT THE INN!
We are so fortunate to have you supporting us, as young filmmakers on Indigo Valley.
With this reward, we can offer you all the rewards above, a private dinner at a top Los Angeles restaurant with the key cast and crew, and a one-night stay at the inn featured in Indigo Valley!
Also, with the reward, you will be invited to the festival of your choice where the film is premiering, and a VIP invitation to all premieres of the film in LA, NYC and London!
Jun 20, 2018 - Jul 20, 2018 (30 days)
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After Harvey: Roofing fraud bill would regulate contractors to avoid scams
by: Wes Rapaport
Posted: Feb 22, 2019 / 01:43 AM CST / Updated: Feb 22, 2019 / 01:55 AM CST
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Damaging severe weather can cause more than short-term trouble. Homeowners in the path of Hurricane Harvey can attest to that and so can anyone who has roughed it through storms bringing golf ball-sized hail in north or west Texas.
A new bill filed this week aims to change the way contractors are regulated in the state.
“We feel like the Texas consumer has no place to turn in the event of these catastrophic losses such as Hurricane Harvey or the hailstorms that occur,” Brad Jones, president of the Roofing Contractors Association of Texas (RCAT), said at a Thursday press conference.
In an effort to protect consumers, State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, said he filed House Bill 2101, which would require roofers to register with the state. State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo filed a companion bill in the upper chamber.
“What we’re looking for is a registration,” Capriglione said, explaining that roofers come out “almost literally from out of the woodwork to come to try and sell services and sell businesses.”
The bill would also create a state website for consumers to verify the credentials of roofing contractors.
“You can go and see if that roofer has come to your house is in fact registered to be able to do business in the state of Texas, you have a phone number to go and call them in case there’s a problem and you can go and get a list if they’ve ever had sanctions or penalties,” Capriglione added.
RCAT started a voluntary licensing program that would be the base for the mandatory statewide implementation if the bill passes.
“We are the only coastal state in the United States that does not at least have a registration process,” said Melanie Knox, president of the Central Texas chapter of the statewide roofer group. “We have a lot of honest contractors in Texas but you can’t tell the difference between them until you do a lot of research unfortunately.”
Roadblocks for the legislation could include lawmakers who believe in a free-market economy and lessening government regulations, like some of the members of the Texas Freedom Caucus. The group’s mission includes restraining government and revitalizing personal and economic freedoms in the State of Texas. We reached out to five of the 11 members, but none of them were available for comment for this report.
The bill also calls for a $250 price tag to register for the first two-year term, and $100 to renew.
Jones indicated this kind of legislation has had trouble gaining support in the past, and lawmakers did not have an “appetite” for it before. Knox hopes this bill would diffuse distrust in the roofing industry that she said is caused by contractors that show up after a disaster, tell homeowners they will do the work, then make off with thousands of dollars and not lift a hammer.
“It would make it so much easier if the homeowner could log online, check the registration number, verify it with who is actually standing in front of them, and their homework would be done basically,” said Knox.
Roofing experts say there is no requirement for roofers to have liability insurance. Capriglione did not include that in his proposed legislation but holds out hope that could be an addition at some point, though maybe not this session.
“There’s nothing more important that it be safe and sound from the roof down to the floor,” Capriglione said.
The Federal Emergency Managemeny Agency (FEMA) released a list of tips on Thursday to protect Texans from contractor fraud. Tips include never paying in advance, get the agreement in writing and research the contractor.
More tips can be found in this FEMA advisory.
More Texas Politics Stories
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas could receive more than $50 million annually to pay for initiatives that support at-risk fish and wildlife populations under a bill introduced in Congress.
Known as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA), House Resolution 3742 would provide $1.3 billion every year to states and $97.5 million to tribes. The Texas Alliance for America’s Fish and Wildlife says the funding wouldn’t require new taxes. It would be supported by existing federal revenues from oil and gas production.
Former Texas judge leaves Republican party over Trump’s ‘ideology of racism’
by Russell Falcon / Jul 16, 2019
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge announced on Tuesday via Facebook that she could no longer stand by President Donald Trump and the Republican party as a whole, saying that "his ideology is racism."
Elsa Alcala's announcement followed a series of tweets by Trump on Sunday, which called out four Congresswomen of color, which asked "Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
As HIV prevention stalls in America, Central Texas looks to lead
by Wes Rapaport / Jul 16, 2019
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The country may be looking to Texas in the nationwide effort to eliminate new HIV infections.
The director of the country's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Robert Redfield, M.D., will meet with Austin-area health leaders to discuss ending the spread of HIV. Redfield will also tour an AIDS Services of Austin facility.
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Book Review: “Beauty and the Beast” Novelization
by Alex Reif | Mar 9, 2017 5:00 PM Pacific Time
Tags: Beauty and the Beast
Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast is shaping up to be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year. Fans who can’t wait to know all of the plot details, or those who can’t wait to relive the adventure, will find a great companion in this novelization from Disney Press. And since Belle’s favorite hobby is getting lost in a good book, you’ll feel a special kinship with this heroine as you turn through the pages.
As a faithful retelling of the animated classic, anyone who grew up with Disney’s 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast will already be familiar with the main story beats. However, there have been some tweaks and adjustments to the screenplay and those are all included here. For those unfamiliar with how movie novelizations are created, they are typically based on the shooting script, and therefore sometimes contain deleted scenes or changed plot lines. Having not seen the film, I can only speak to what is changed in the book.
Readers looking for a glimpse into what’s new with this version will instantly discover a richer, more detailed prologue. We experience just how arrogant the prince truly was leading up to the Enchantress’ curse and more background as to why his servants remain so loyal to him. Gaston becomes a far greater villain here, with a larger capacity for cruelty than his animated counterpart, and LeFou becomes more than just a sidekick. Elements of the original fairytale have been restored, such as Belle’s request that Maurice return from his trip with the gift of a single red rose. But perhaps the biggest change comes in the form of a new enchanted object, a magic book in the Beast’s library that can transport Belle to memories of far away and long forgotten places, allowing her to relive a forgotten truth about her mother.
Writer Elizabeth Rudnick is by now a master at adapting screenplays into novels, which she has now done for Disney more than a handful of times for Maleficent, Cinderella, Frozen and Pete’s Dragon. Her adaptation allows you to get inside Belle’s head, hear her inner thoughts, and experience her adventure first hand. It’s easy to see why she has become Disney Press’ go-to writer for movie adaptations.
There are many Beauty and the Beast movie tie-in books to choose from, but this novelization is my top choice for readers looking to relive the magic of the film. This one is aimed at readers ages 8 and up, but there are several other choices including a picture book for kids, a twist on the tale for teens, a collection of poems and quotes for adults, and an art of coloring book.
Alex Reif
Alex has been blogging about Disney films since 2009 after a lifetime of fandom. He joined the Laughing Place team in 2014 and covers films across all of Disney’s brands, including Star Wars, Marvel, and Fox, in addition to books, music, toys, consumer products, and food. You can hear his voice as a member of the Laughing Place Podcast and his face can be seen on Laughing Place’s YouTube channel where he unboxes stuff.
Book Review: Beauty and the Beast Picture Book
Book Review – Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book
Book Review – “Beauty and the Beast:…
Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast
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Published 06 Aug 16
1 MinuteReading time
Choudhury Signs New Deal Ahead Of Burton Loan
Highly-rated Leicester City youngster Hamza Choudhury has committed his future to the Club by signing a new four-year deal at King Power Stadium.
- Hamza Choudhury has signed a long-term deal with Leicester City Football Club
- The young midfielder has joined Championship side Burton Albion on a season-long loan deal
- Choudhury played 13 times for the Brewers during their promotion campaign in League 1 last term
- The 18-year-old has been a key member of Leicester City’s Under-18s and Development Squads over recent seasons
The tough-tackling central midfielder will now join Championship side Burton Albion on a season-long loan deal, and could face Nottingham Forest in the Brewers’ campaign curtain raiser at the City Ground on Saturday afternoon.
The 18-year-old also spent time on loan with Burton last term, impressing during 13 appearances en route to a second placed finish and automatic promotion to the second tier of English football.
A graduate of Leicester City’s Academy, Choudhury was part of the Under-18 side that reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup in 2014/15 and went on to play a major role for the Club’s Development Squad last term.
Choudhury now heads to Pirelli Stadium looking to help further enhance his reputation under the guidance of Burton Albion boss Nigel Clough.
He was also part of the group which travelled with first team manager Claudio Ranieri to Austria for a pre-season training camp last month.
How To Track Your Fox Membership Delivery
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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (Paperback)
By Margot Lee Shetterly
(US History)
The #1 New York Times bestseller
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.
Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.
Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.
Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.
Margot Lee Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Virginia, where she knew many of the women in her book Hidden Figures. She is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant for her research on women in computing. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“Meticulous… the depth and detail that are the book’s strength make it an effective, fact-based rudder with which would-be scientists and their allies can stabilize their flights of fancy. This hardworking, earnest book is the perfect foil for the glamour still to come.”
— Seattle Times
“Much as Tom Wolfe did in “The Right Stuff”, Shetterly moves gracefully between the women’s lives and the broader sweep of history . . . Shetterly, who grew up in Hampton, blends impressive research with an enormous amount of heart in telling these stories
— Boston Globe
“Restoring the truth about individuals who were at once black, women and astounding mathematicians, in a world that was constructed to stymie them at every step, is no easy task. Shetterly does it with the depth and detail of a skilled historian and the narrative aplomb of a masterful storyteller.”
— Bookreporter.com
History / United States / 20th Century
Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies
Science / Space Science
Hardcover (October 24th, 2017): $35.00
Hardcover (September 6th, 2016): $27.99
Compact Disc (Spanish) (February 28th, 2017): $49.99
Paperback, Large Print (September 27th, 2016): $27.99
MP3 CD (September 6th, 2016): $39.99
Compact Disc (September 6th, 2016): $59.99
MP3 CD (Spanish) (February 28th, 2017): $29.99
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P&C the April 2017 issue
An Acquired Taste for Global
While globalization seems uncertain today, strategic acquisitions continue to permeate international markets.
How do commercial insurance brokers conquer the world outside their home borders? They choose carefully.
Some build global alliances. Others go the M&A route. And still others look to expand into new markets. No matter how you do it, all paths must be approached with caution.
Building out global alliances of like-minded peers that complement existing operations and help growth is one border-crossing method. The nature of such alliances varies, as does the scope of commitment. Over the past few years, some variations have emerged, such as Renomia’s company-centered networks, in which its members operate independently but support each other in cross-border risk placements. Or Brokerslink’s network of independent brokers, whose members are vested partners and equal shareholders.
For more aggressive “individualists” with the means to scale and vast global ambitions, there are mergers and acquisitions. Recent data from global insurance investment management company Conning show the global deal volume in 2015 was nearly $20 billion. This comprised mostly bolt-on transactions that helped brokers develop broader product offerings. Transformational, large-ticket mergers, such as Willis Tower Watson’s, or BB&T’s acquisition of U.K.-based Swett and Crawford, are still infrequent.
But as more brokers confront complex international business decisions requiring a strategic approach to M&A, both types of deals are expected to increase. Insurance intermediation has always been about clients, so when clients look increasingly beyond familiar markets, brokers need to improve their global competencies to retain their accounts.
It isn’t a simple process, and many brokers continue to approach cross-border deals with extreme caution and due diligence. They make sure operations are compatible and complementary, compliance costs are reasonable and options for legal recourse are clear. Translating values and business models to a new, foreign market is an even tougher challenge, as is understanding how your current acquisitions align with your company’s and clients’ long-term strategy.
“The fundamental question is how you create something truly global,” says Arik Rashkes, managing director for the Financial Institution Group at Houlihan Lokey, the leading investment bank for global M&A. “The notion is to get something that is very efficient and works on the same platform. But you can also find yourself running a hundred different companies, and that’s what people are hesitant about.”
Private Equity a Key Player
As with domestic M&A, private equity is driving a lot of brokerage M&A activity, both in North America and globally. “The insurance brokerage space has been extremely attractive for private equity,” Rashkes says.
“They have been very deep on insurance brokers for over the last five years, and you can see it all across the board.” What private equity firms naturally love here is a steady cash flow, “something you can predict is a huge thing after they got burned with unstable businesses.”
The notion is to get something that is very efficient and works on the same platform. But you can also find yourself running a hundred different companies, and that’s what people are hesitant about.
Arik Rashkes, managing director for the Financial Institution Group, Houlihan Lokey
Of course, there are obvious advantages to these arrangements for brokers, as they get access to a big capital machine with clear benchmarks for growth and favorable conditions for a leveraged buyout. All this has been good for companies’ price-earnings ratio. But as the interest rate is rising and brokerage price-earnings in North America plateau, the leveraged buyout loses its appeal. The prospect of higher rates this year may push North American buyers to invest more in smaller retailers domestically and globally, and there is no shortage of quality options. As the dollar remains strong against other currencies, solid overseas companies may look like a steal.
Brexit and Trump Shake Up Stable Markets
Another factor that affects global M&A is the increased geopolitical uncertainty. “Cross-border transactions will hurt in the next couple of years due to much commotion and change,” Rashkes says.” Persistent crises in the Middle East and economic troubles in major emerging markets have been a constant backdrop, steering investors toward more stable markets in the United States and Europe. Yet these fairly reliable markets were made much less certain last year by Brexit and the unclear prospects of the European Union framework moving forward, as well as anticipated changes in America’s international and domestic agenda.
President Trump’s dramatic arrival to the White House signaled a new era for both the finance industry and foreign affairs. As we have observed, the current president takes his election promises literally and very seriously. And while we have yet to find out which sectoral and international priorities will top the administration’s agenda this year, it is clear the traditional trade policy, based on a free flow of goods, capital and labor, is being fundamentally dismantled—to the dismay of U.S. commerce and investment partners in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. If the tide of globalization begins to ebb, so will any residual confidence in global mechanisms protecting foreign investment.
The industry is also closely following how the Brexit process evolves, as it affects Lloyd’s role as a global insurance hub and the U.K.’s access to European markets through the simplified passporting procedure.
Passporting has been a very handy instrument for foreign and U.K. investors to anchor a regional office in the heart of global finance in London, while being recognized by EU states’ licensing authorities as a local entity. As the debate about Brexit’s effect on passporting and the extent of a future U.K.-EU partnership unfolds, companies are confronted with new costs and staggering realities of investing in the EU and Britain.
For Britain-based companies and Lloyd’s, it is essential to preserve the most favorable access to the EU market, which depends on the results of withdrawal negotiations. Under the worst-case scenario, companies’ acquisitions in the U.K. will not enjoy the same benefits as before, which will understandably decrease London’s appeal. In anticipation of that, some global carriers with operations in the City have rushed to exit.
Lloyd’s is not sitting idly either, and is currently working on a contingency plan to absorb associated exit shocks, such as restricted financial market access and more limited access to a potential pool of talent. Lloyd’s accounts for 20% of the City’s GDP and more than £60 billion in written premiums, so there is much riding on the company’s ability to remain in the global insurance marketplace.
Ironically, some industry experts see a silver lining even in the worst-case scenario of Britain’s divorce. They contend London’s independence in financial regulation is worth the cost. Brexit will free regulators and the local industry as a whole from implementing burdensome, Brussels-imposed common market directives, which hurt British sovereignty, not to mention national pride. Euro-skeptics in Britain remember the times outside of the EU when London was a thriving offshore center on steroids for dollar-denominated transactions and a hub for alternative investment and emerging market finance. Nobody dictated when or how authorities would regulate the industry, as is the case with Solvency II and other rules. In return for conceding policy-making power, Brits are troubled by mandatory transfers to support Europe’s poorer regions, which already send labor migrants to the U.K. If done right, they argue, Brexit presents a valuable opportunity to go back to London’s past financial glory and make it more globally competitive and more attractive for potential foreign investment by opening to more capital and less regulation.
It is not by chance that Aon chose to re-domicile in London and that foreign capital continues to flow in to the City with investments in both broking houses and major insurance carriers.
John Eltham, head of North American Broker Business, Miller Insurance Services
John Eltham, the head of North American Broker Business at Miller Insurance Services, in London, says the Brexit referendum has made a major impact on the rate of exchange movements relative to the British pound. “As we earn much of our income in foreign currency but pay ourselves in sterling, this has had a positive effect on profit margins,” says Eltham, who is also the chair of the Council’s International Working Group. “It has simultaneously made the relative cost of acquisition in USD terms lower and therefore more attractive. It is not by chance that Aon chose to re-domicile in London and that foreign capital continues to flow in to the City with investments in both broking houses and major insurance carriers.
“The London insurance market has built a unique infrastructure and concentration of knowledge. This is supported by the entrepreneurial spirit that has seen London establish itself as the leading global financial center, fueled in part by the cosmopolitan nature of its inhabitants. This spirit will not alter post-Brexit.”
Better Buyers than Sellers
While the regulatory uncertainty in London and the U.S. is new, local regulations and compliance rules in other countries such as China have and continue to pose challenges for foreign investors. “Foreign-owned brokers have to go through a set of costly requirements in China, including restrictions on the form of establishment and capitalization levels which are attainable only for the top 10 to 15 global players,” says Alex Yip, Lockton’s CEO for Greater China.
We have also seen insurance companies reducing their exposure in the Chinese market or exiting it altogether. One reason is a growing uncertainty over how national regulators respond to general market volatilities and capital outflows, which underlie the fundamental state of China’s evolving financial system and the government’s goal to keep tight controls over the renminbi. Restrictions on transfers abroad, implemented last year, were disruptive to companies’ operations, affecting their ability to repay loans to overseas investors or pay dividends to foreign stakeholders. Provincial authorities add another layer of bureaucratic riddles, so the cost of compliance adds up, as foreign investors burn money on higher capitalization, local staff training and new technology.
On the other hand, China and Japan have been on a global shopping spree. Although an Asian investor has yet to acquire a sizeable Western brokerage, the conditions are ripe for local capital to move offshore. Last year the Chinese completed the most international M&A by volume after the U.S., acquiring 777 companies at a combined value of $225 billion. And several insurance companies were targets for Chinese and Japanese investors. Asia has become an increasingly expensive market, as assets have increased in price partly due to foreign investment. Economic growth has slowed or stagnated in some cases, and both countries have amassed a large stash of dollars they can’t spend domestically because of the lower return on investment.
In China’s case, the government is specifically pushing state-owned companies to invest abroad to gain knowledge and a foothold in key markets through the “Go Global” or “One Belt, One Road” initiatives. Both initiatives encourage corporations to diversify investments and seek strategic partners among foreign companies to strengthen their global competitive advantage.
… And the Pursuit of Technology
Access to technology is an ever-important part of a brokerage’s strategic planning. For some, acquisitions can help gain advanced technologies that transform distribution channels, improve the client interface or provide better telemetrics and predictive analytics capabilities.
According to CB Insights, which tracks insurtech activity, the United States claims the largest share of investment in insurance technology startups at 59% of global deals in the sector. At the same time, smaller markets in Europe, and especially the Nordic region, have moved faster toward e-commerce and operational digitization and showed significant progress in automation and machine learning.
Foreign-owned brokers have to go through a set of costly requirements in China, including restrictions on the form of establishment and capitalization levels which are attainable only for the top 10 to 15 global players.
Alex Yip, CEO for Greater China, Lockton
As companies’ profits suffer due to claims unpredictability and low interest rates, cutting operational cost through technology is top of mind for senior management. McKinsey estimates that over the next decade the insurance sector in Europe will shed around 250,000 jobs due to modernization, and most of those losses will happen in repeatable and support functions related to reporting and analysis. As a result, most of the client interface—from risk insurance purchase to claims processing—would happen exclusively online.
Asia is on the other end of the spectrum. Its growing population and challenges associated with traditional insurance distribution make it an interesting target for overseas insurance technology investors. Difficulties in raising capital and an insufficient number of skilled entrepreneurs in the sector, coupled with the inherent cultural aversion to startup failures, result in a weaker early-stage startup ecosystem in most Asian economies. The lack of quality filters present in the United States and Europe will be unlikely to produce highly competitive Asian versions of Zenefits and Lemonade, conceding the market to foreigners with advanced business acumens, deeper insurance expertise and available cash for a more aggressive expansion.
In 2015, U.S. and local private equity firms invested $1 billion in Chinese online-based Zhong An Insurance, the largest transaction in p-c insurtech that year. The transaction gave U.S. investors a shot at capitalizing on the fast-growing insurance segment and a stake in the first licensed online insurer that “aims to extend its disruptive approach to the traditional insurance industry.” Accenture estimates that China’s online insurance premiums will grow to more than $60 billion by 2018, increasing the segment’s local market share to 12%. Even though China, India and Japan account collectively for 11% of insurtech deals, Forbes forecast that in coming years we will see more experienced investors from the United States and Europe in this market.
It might feel at times as if the investment world we know is folding. Overall political uncertainty, the lingering economic slump, low interest rates and the lack of confidence in globalization put major cross-border investments on hold. Experts predict that in coming years we will still see activities on the fringe, with smaller deals likely to dominate. Eventually, we are heading toward a busy long-term scenario for global M&A, but only after Europe is in a better place politically, the United States is clearer about its healthcare reform and international affairs, and leaders of emerging markets get their management and operational house in order.
Gololobov is The Council’s international director. Vladimir.gololobov@ciab.com
See More: Brokerage M&A Economy International Private Equity
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Should Zurich fail to prove any of the points in this article, NotPetya could be, in the court’s eyes, an act of criminality, or even of terrorism.
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Naib Canselor Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
Naib Canselor Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Naib means Vice. So therefore the vice chancellor of the University Malaysia Sarawak is shown below.
Professor Datuk Dr Mohamad Kadim Suaidi
The 6th Vice Chancellor of UNIMAS
Professor Datuk Dr Mohamad Kadim Suaidi was born on 24th of October 1960 in Kampung Bako, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Professor Datuk Dr Mohamad Kadim had his early education at St Joseph’s School, Kuching. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Physics and Electronics in 1983, and a Master of Science degree in Microwave Solid State Physics, in 1984 from Portsmouth University, UK. He then obtained his Doctor of Philosophy – Optoelectronics “High Speed Optical Diagnostics of Laser Interactions” from the University of Technology Loughborough, UK in 1991. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers of the USA.
He began his career as a lecturer at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 1984 before joining Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in 1994. He served almost 10 years in UNIMAS, and was given responsibility as a Program Coordinator for Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering. He was then appointed as Deputy Dean in 1998 before becoming the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering in 1999, a post he held for over five years. When he joined UTeM in 2003, Professor Datuk Dr Mohamad Kadim Suaidi was given responsibility as the Dean of University Industry Centre. Four years later he was appointed as Dean of Research and Innovation Management Center. He was appointed as a Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) of UTeM in January 2010, and two years later as Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic & International). On the 16th of April 2013, he was appointed as the sixth Vice Chancellor of UNIMAS, by the Minister of Higher Education, Malaysia. Through his dedication and significant contribution in the academic field and university’s administration, he was accorded the prestigous Pingat Perkhidmatan Bakti (PBB) in 1999 and Darjah Indera Mahkota Pahang (DIMP) in 2010.
Professor Datuk Dr Mohamad Kadim has made it as his personal commitment to see higher Education in the state of Sarawak to be at par with the standard and quality expected elsewhere in higher education institutions in Malaysia. Sarawak, being the largest state in Malaysia, and having 10 percent of the country’s population, has only one full fledged public University, that is UNIMAS, which he presently leads. The university’s visibility at the regional and international stages is one of his main agenda. He is very focused in bringing UNIMAS’ ranking and rating to a higher level, to exceed expectations set for a public comprehensive university in Malaysia. UNIMAS, being strategically located in Sarawak, and Borneo, the third largest island in the world which has one of the world’s most diverse cultures, languages, history and of course flora and fauna, enables the university to leverage on its rich heritage and treasures to excel.
UNIMAS has already established its reputation nationally in the areas of Infectious Tropical Diseases, Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation as well as Social Informatics and Rural ICT. The focus of the university now is to enhance its strength regionally and internationally through strategic collaborations with international partners and collaborators.
To compete globally, Asian higher education providers should make their marks through their own unique strengths which are not found elsewhere in the world. Asian universities, such as UNIMAS, has great potential to offer significant, rare and distinctive contributions to the global intellectual mission for knowledge generation, dissemination and application.
Category: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak Tags: Naib Canselor Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
← Universiti Malaysia Sabah Teaching Hospital Universiti Malaysia Sabah Hospital →
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Funds List
Funds to benefit projects for the community, culture and the arts, education and literacy, health and wellness and youth. Scholarship funds are listed below:
Beatrice M. Bowen Memorial Book Fund
Dr. Beatrice Bowen dedicated much of her life to encouraging children to discover the joy of reading – she was passionate about children’s literature and the benefits of reading. In 1999 her family established this fund for nonprofit organizations in Leelanau Township for the purchase of children’s books.
Early Childhood Fund/Best for Kids
The Early Childhood Fund supports quality early childhood education programs in Leelanau Township. It was established in 2006 when the Leelanau Memorial Health Center closed the local health facility including its early childhood program. The Best for Kids committee now raises money and awareness of the importance of quality early childhood education.
Future by Design Fund
Money from this fund supports efforts to create a sustainable coastal community in Northport.
General Endowment Fund
The General Endowment Fund was the first fund created when the Leelanau Township Community Foundation was established in 1945. Grants using the interest from this endowment fund help local nonprofit organizations that sustain youth and elders, assist with education, health care, recreation, and the arts.
Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum Endowment Fund
The Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum established this endowment fund to further their mission to restore and preserve the Grand Traverse Light Station. The annual interest earnings from the fund help support the lighthouse.
Koenig Northport Community Arts Center Performing Arts Endowment
Dick and Sherry Koenig and Barbara Bartley created this fund to help support the Northport Community Arts Center in carrying out its role and mission including expansion of their programs.
Leelanau Township Library Advised Fund
Contributions to this advised fund are available for use by the Library at any time to support its role and mission.
Leelanau Township Library Grace Cochran Special Use Fund
Ruth Updegraff bequeathed $10,000 from her estate for the purchase of books and other reference material on the subject of wildlife, plants, and gardening native to this area of Michigan. Ms. Updegraff named this fund in memory of her dear friend, Grace Cochran. Both women were summer residents of Northport and longstanding Friends of the Library.
Leelanau Township Library Endowment Fund
Leelanau Township established this endowment fund to support the ongoing role and mission of the library.
Northport Community Arts Center Operations Fund
The Northport Community Arts Center is a premier facility for the performing arts located within the Northport Public School. This endowment fund was established in 2001 to help finance the school's operating expenses of the Northport Community Arts Center. Each year interest earnings are granted to Northport Public School. www.northportcac.org
Northport Masonic Lodge 265 F&AM
Established by members of the Northport lodge this fund provides support for local nonprofit organizations, especially those dedicated to the preservation of literary and artistic materials, the presentation of the arts and the preservation of local history.
Northport Public School Booster Club Fund
The Northport Public School Booster Club established this endowment fund in 1998 to enhance important educational opportunities for students at Northport Public School. The Booster Club recommends special activities to be supported by the fund’s interest earnings.
Omena Club 21 Fund
Established by members of Omena Club 21 for the construction of an ADA compliant restroom and the installation and hook-up of holding tanks at the Omena Fire Station, and the restoration and enhancement of memorial park adjacent to the fire station.
Pearl Kellogg Memorial Fund
Members of the Northport Point Cottage Owners Association established this fund in memory of Pearl Kellogg and in recognition of her 30 years of service as their bookkeeper.
Saving Birds Thru Habitat Fund
Established to help stem the decline of migrating birds.
Woolsey Memorial Airport Endowment Fund
The Northport Pilot’s Association, Inc. established this designated endowment fund in 2006 to provide financial support for the operation, improvement, and maintenance of the Woolsey Memorial Airport.
Youth Endowment Fund
Through a matching grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, this endowment fund was created to offer young people the opportunity to learn about philanthropy. The Youth Advisory Council meets regularly to review grant applications and determine which programs they would like to support in their community.
Each year the Leelanau Township Community Foundation has the following scholarships available for students.
Anson and Ruth Solem Science Scholarship Fund
Established in 2007 in memory of Anson Solem, a Suttons Bay native and 1937 graduate of Suttons Bay High School where he was class valedictorian. He attended the University of Michigan where he received his bachelors degree. He received a masters degree in engineering, science and applied physics from Harvard University and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Maryland. Solem worked in Washington D.C. as a civilian for the Navy for 33 years. He focused on explosive research and anti-submarine warfare. Solem received the Superior Civilian Service medal from the Navy. While living in Washington D.C., he met and married his wife, Ruth. Because of his deep commitment to his work as a scientist, this scholarship was established in his memory to benefit any Leelanau County high school graduate pursuing higher education in science. Endowed.
Alice Busby Memorial Scholarship Fund
The Alice Busby Memorial Scholarship Fund was established in 1999 to honor a beloved member of the Leelanau Township community who died from breast cancer. An employee of the Northport Public School, where she was the business manager, she endeared herself to the faculty, staff and families of students who created this scholarship in her memory. The scholarship is to assist a graduating senior of Northport Public School who has demonstrated a commitment to community service and aspires to a career in elementary education or business. Non-endowed.
Basil Antenucci Leelanau Children’s Center Scholarship Fund
Established in memory of Basil Antenucci, a former foundation chair, this fund provides money for scholarships for children who reside in Leelanau Township and attend the Leelanau Children’s Center, Northport early childhood development program. Non-endowed.
Faye Dinsmore Memorial Scholarship Fund for Culinary Arts
The family and friends of Northport native Faye Dinsmore established this fund in 2002 to support students who aspire to a career in the culinary arts. Qualified candidates are graduating seniors from any high school in Leelanau County who demonstrate financial need and a sincere interest in studying the culinary arts. Non-endowed.
Dr. James Kolberg Scholarship Fund
Mary and Lawrence Frank established this endowed fund to honor the retirement of Dr. James Kolberg and recognize his 30 year service to Leelanau Township. The interest earnings from this fund provide scholarships to graduating seniors of Northport Public School who have chosen to study in the field of medicine. Endowed.
Edwin Suddard and Ruth Suddard Kellogg Scholarship Fund
Ruth Suddard Kellogg of Northport bequeathed 10 percent of her estate to the foundation for the purpose of establishing an endowment fund for scholarships. The investment earnings from this fund provide a scholarship for a graduating senior at Northport Public School who wants to attend either college or a vocational school. Qualified students must have a minimum GPA of 2.7 and demonstrate financial need. Endowed.
Florence F. Evett Scholarship Fund
Florence F. Evett was dedicated to the students at Northport Public School where she worked 24 years as a bookkeeper. Mrs. Evett gave $24,000 from her estate to the foundation to establish a scholarship fund for students who wanted to attend college but lacked the financial means to do so. Each year, a scholarship is awarded to a graduating senior of Northport Public School who has a minimum 2.7 GPA, demonstrates financial need and receives the majority vote of the high school faculty to be the recipient of this award. Non-endowed.
Florence L. Hanes Scholarship Fund
Florence Hanes had a generous spirit towards her community. In 1971 she bequeathed her entire estate to the Leelanau Township Community Foundation to establish an endowment fund for scholarships. She left instructions that “I’d like any money you realize to be used for scholarships for trade schools – that could be anything from car mechanic, practical nurse, registered nurse, business school – just so the object was the training needed to earn a living. And it doesn’t need to be limited to just young people. Here I am, age 54, with the need to earn a living and no training of any kind to help me earn a good living.” Qualified candidates are individuals of any age, who have earned a high school diploma and who demonstrate financial need for assistance with vocational training. Endowed.
George W. Anderson and Carolyn T. Anderson Community Endowment Scholarship Fund
George and Lyn Anderson established a community endowment fund upon George’s retirement as board chairperson of the Leelanau Township Community Foundation in 2004. The fund’s primary purpose is to provide assistance to the families of infants with special needs who require services that the family can’t afford. Its secondary purpose is to provide tuition scholarships to high school graduates who will either attend Alma College, the University of Michigan, or Northwestern Michigan College. Scholarship eligibility requirements are academic excellence (minimum GPA. of 2.7), community involvement, and demonstration of strong citizenship. Both young people and adults who reside in Leelanau Township may apply. Endowed.
Kreig Leabo Memorial Scholarship Fund
This fund was established in memory of Kreig Leabo who died in 1989 at the young age of 41. Kreig was a 1966 graduate of Northport Public School and is best remembered for his dedication to helping others. Currently, a scholarship is given each year to a graduating senior of Northport Public School whose actions and activities demonstrate a strong community spirit. Endowed.
Native American Scholarship Fund
This fund was established for the purpose of providing scholarships to Native American graduates of Northport Public School who seek educational opportunities beyond high school. Non-endowed.
The Northport Promise began in 2007 to help grow the population of the Northport Public School. It’s modeled after the successful Kalamazoo Promise announced in 2005. Northport Promise scholarships are available to any graduating senior of Northport High School who has attended the school for four years prior to graduation and who plans to attend a public community college, four-year college or university or vocational school in Michigan. Non-endowed.
Susan Hirschfield Memorial Scholarship Fund for Visual Art
The family and friends of Sue Hirschfield established this fund in 2003 to honor her talent in the visual arts. Qualified candidates are students of Northport Public School who seek advanced training in the visual arts. Non-endowed.
Winfield H. & Dr. Grace Song Line Scholarship Fund
Grace Song Line was born in Korea and came to the United States as a student. She obtained a degree in medicine and married Winfield H. Line, a Michigan businessman. In 1970, they established an endowment fund to honor students who display a genuine interest in community, church, home and school, and who actively participate in organizations and projects that have as their goal the betterment of human beings everywhere. Recipients of this endowed scholarship must be graduating seniors of Northport Public School who have maintained a satisfactory academic record and possess characteristics of good citizenship, such as the following:
They recognize that people hold different beliefs and opinions and respect their right to those beliefs;
They support their family, religion, community and nation; they try actively to improve weaknesses in these institutions and do not withdraw from them;
They are faithful to the customs and laws of society;
They stand up for what they believe is right and take action against what they know to be wrong;
They are willing to take the responsibility for leadership as well as the recognition;
They are willing to do committee work or the least rewarding tasks to assure the successful completion of a project;
They demonstrate high standards of honesty and reliability;
They demonstrate a concern for others;
They do not restrict their good work to just one institution such as school.
Youth Scholarship Fund
This fund was established through a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to offer scholarships for extracurricular activities in music, athletics and government. The amount of the scholarship is determined each year by the Youth Advisory Council. Non-endowed.
Please join our efforts -- give today. Your contribution is tax deductible! You can contribute online by visiting our Contribute page or make your check payable to LTCF and mail to PO Box 818, Northport, MI 49670. Indicate the fund to which you wish to contribute from the fund list. If you’d like to donate stock, please call our office at 231.396.9000.
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CHAPTER 1DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATION ANDPROCEDURES BEFORE THE DIVISION[Prior to 9/24/86, Labor, Bureau of[530]][Prior to 12/2/98, see 347—Ch 1]DIVISION IADMINISTRATION8751.1(91) Definitions. The definitions of terms in Iowa Code section 17A.2 shall apply to these terms as they are used throughout this chapter. In addition, as used in this chapter:
"Commissioner" means the labor commissioner of the division of labor services or designee.
"Division" means the division of labor services of the department of workforce development.
8751.2(91) Scope and application. This chapter describes the organization of the division, the laws it enforces, and the methods by which and location where the public may obtain information or make submissions or requests.8751.3(91) Department of workforce development, division of labor services. The division is the office of the commissioner and consists of the commissioner and those employees who discharge the duties and responsibilities imposed upon the commissioner by the laws of this state. The commissioner has control, supervision and authority to enforce the following chapters and sections of the Iowa Code: section 30.7, Iowa Emergency Response Commission, Duties to be Allocated to Department of Workforce Development; section 85.68, Workers’ Compensation Division, Actions—Collection of Payments—Subrogation; chapter 88, Occupational Safety and Health; chapter 88A, Safety Inspection of Amusement Rides; chapter 88B, Removal and Encapsulation of Asbestos; chapter 89, Boilers and Unfired Steam Pressure Vessels; chapter 89A, State Elevator Code; chapter 89B, Hazardous Chemicals Risks—Right to Know; chapter 90A, Boxing and Wrestling; chapter 91, Division of Labor Services; chapter 91A, Wage Payment Collection; chapter 91C, Registration of Construction Contractors; chapter 91D, Minimum Wage; chapter 91E, Non-English Speaking Employees; chapter 92, Child Labor; chapter 94, State Free Employment Service and Employment Agencies; and chapter 95, License for Employment Agencies. The division consists of four bureaus: Occupational Safety and Health Enforcement Bureau (enforces occupational safety and health rules in workplaces through inspections based on accidents, complaints, and programmed inspections); Occupational Safety and Health Consultation and Education Bureau (conducts occupational safety and health inspections at the request of an employer and conducts educational programming); Inspections and Reporting Bureau (conducts amusement ride, elevator and boiler inspection and maintains statistical information on the worker’s illnesses and injuries and the division’s inspection activities); and Employee Protection Bureau (responsible for child labor, wage payment and collection, minimum wage, employment agency licensing, workplace standards, asbestos removal and encapsulation contractor permits and licensing of professions engaged in removal and encapsulation, community and emergency response right to know, EPCRA, out-of-state construction contractor bonding, construction contractor registration, non-English speaking employee’s rights, and death assessment collection). The licensing and supervision of professional boxing and wrestling are the responsibility of the commissioner. Information may be obtained and submissions or requests may be made by contacting the Department of Workforce Development, Division of Labor Services, 1000 East Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. The telephone number is (515)281-3606. All correspondence and payment of fees and costs relating to the division shall be submitted directly to the division.8751.4 Reserved.8751.5 Reserved.8751.6 Reserved.8751.7 Reserved.8751.8 Reserved.8751.9 Reserved.8751.10 Reserved.DIVISION IIOPEN RECORDS AND FAIR INFORMATION PRACTICES8751.11(22, 91) General provisions. 1.11(1) Statement of policy. These rules are intended to implement Iowa Code chapter 22. Division staff shall cooperate with members of the public and other agencies in implementing the provisions of these rules. 1.11(2) Scope of rules. Rules 875—1.11(22,91) to 875—1.23(22,91) do not: a. Require the division to index or retrieve records which contain information about an individual by that person’s name or other personal identifier. b. Make available to the general public a record which would otherwise not be available to the general public under Iowa Code chapter 22. c. Govern a record in the possession of the division which is governed by the rules of another agency. d. Apply to grantees, including local governments or subdivisions thereof, administering state-funded programs, unless otherwise provided by law or agreement. e. Make available records compiled by the division in reasonable anticipation of court litigation or formal administrative proceedings. The availability of these records to the general public or to any subject individual or party to the litigation or proceeding shall be governed by applicable legal and constitutional principles, statutes, rules of discovery, evidentiary privileges, and applicable rules of the division. f. Apply to records which are not yet in existence. g. Require the division to create, compile, or procure a record solely for the purpose of making it available. h. Limit distribution of materials created or obtained by the division for the purpose of public distribution such as publications and lending materials. 1.11(3) Warranty. No warranty of the accuracy or completeness of any record is made. 1.11(4) Definitions.
"Agency" means any executive branch federal, state, or local governmental unit including, but not limited to, boards, commissions, departments and offices. Private employment agencies are not included.
"Confidential record" means a record which is not available as a matter of right for examination and copying by members of the public under applicable provisions of law. Confidential records include records or information contained in records that the division is prohibited by law from making available for examination by members of the public. Also included are records or information contained in records that are specified as confidential by Iowa Code section 22.7 or other provision of law, but that may be disclosed upon order of a court, by the lawful custodian, or by another person duly authorized to release the record. Inclusion in a record of information declared confidential by an applicable provision of law does not necessarily make that entire record a confidential record.
"Custodian" means the division or a person lawfully delegated authority to act for the division in implementing Iowa Code chapter 22.
"Division" means the division of labor services.
"Open record" means a record other than a confidential record.
"Personally identifiable information" means information about or pertaining to an individual in a record which identifies the individual and which is contained in a record system.
"Record" means the whole or a part of a division “public record” as defined in Iowa Code section 22.1.
"Record system" means any group of records under the control of the division from which a record may be retrieved by a personal identifier such as the name of an individual, number, symbol, or other unique retriever assigned to an individual.
8751.12(22, 91) Request for access to records. 1.12(1) Location of record. A request for access to a record should be directed to the labor commissioner or the particular division office where the record is kept. If the location of the record is not known by the requester, the request shall be directed to Division of Labor Services, 1000 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. If a request for access to a record is misdirected, division personnel will promptly forward the request to the appropriate person within the division. 1.12(2) Office hours. Open records shall be made available during all customary office hours, which are 8 a.m.to 4:30 p.m.daily, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays. 1.12(3) Request for access. A request for access to open records shall identify the particular record sought by name or description in order to facilitate the location of the record. Written requests shall include the name, address, and telephone number of the person requesting the information. A person shall not be required to give a reason for requesting an open record. 1.12(4) Response to request. The response to a request for a single, open record shall generally be immediate. If the size or nature of the request requires time for compliance, the custodian shall comply with the request as soon as feasible. Examples of situations where a request may be delayed include, but are not limited to, the following: a. Searching for, collecting, and copying a voluminous amount of separate and distinct records included in a single request, especially if both confidential and open records are included. b. Retrieving a record from archival storage. c. Any of the purposes authorized by Iowa Code subsections 22.8(4) and 22.10(4). d. Specialized reproduction of records such as but not limited to videotapes and audiotapes.The custodian may deny access to the record by a member of the public only on the grounds that a denial is warranted under Iowa Code subsections 22.8(4) and 22.10(4), or that the record is a confidential record, or that disclosure is prohibited by a court order. Access by a member of the public to a confidential record is limited by law and may generally be provided only in accordance with the provisions of rule 875—1.13(22,91) and other applicable provisions of law. 1.12(5) Security of record. No requester may, without permission from the custodian, search or remove any record, nor may a requester reorganize or damage division records. Examination and copying of division records shall be supervised by the custodian. 1.12(6) Copying. A reasonable number of copies of an open record may be made in the division’s office. If appropriate equipment is not available in the division office where an open record is kept, the custodian shall permit its examination in that office and shall arrange for copies to be made. The division shall not copy materials where to do so may constitute a violation of law. 1.12(7) Fees. a. When charged. The division may charge fees in connection with the examination or copying of records. To the extent permitted by applicable provisions of law, the payment of fees may be waived when the imposition of fees is inequitable or when a waiver is in the public interest. b. Copying and postage costs. Price schedules for published materials and for photocopies of records supplied by the division shall be available in division offices. Copies of records may be made for members of the public on division photocopy machines or from electronic storage systems at the posted cost. Actual costs of shipping may also be charged to the requester. c. Supervisory fee. An hourly fee may be charged for actual division expenses in searching for and supervising the examination and copying of requested records if time required is in excess of 15 minutes. The fee shall be based upon the pay scale of the employee involved and other actual costs incurred. The custodian shall make available in division offices the hourly fees to be charged. d. Payment. (1) The custodian may require a requester to make an advance payment to cover all or part of the estimated fee. (2) When a requester has previously failed to pay a fee chargeable under this subrule, the custodian may require payment in full of any amount previously due and advance payment of the full amount of an estimated fee chargeable under this subrule before the custodian processes a new request from that requester.8751.13(22, 91) Access to confidential records. Under Iowa Code section 22.7 or other applicable provisions of law, the custodian may disclose certain confidential records to one or more members of the public. Other provisions of law authorize or require the custodian to release specified confidential records under certain circumstances or to particular persons. In requesting the custodian to permit the examination and copying of the confidential record, the following procedures apply and are in addition to those specified for requests for access to records in rule 875—1.12(22,91). 1.13(1) Proof of identity. A person requesting access to a confidential record may be required to provide proof of identity or authority to secure access to the record. 1.13(2) Requests. The custodian may require a request to examine or copy a confidential record to be made in writing. A person requesting access to such a record may be required to sign a certified statement or affidavit enumerating the specific reasons justifying access to the confidential record and to provide any proof necessary to establish relevant facts. 1.13(3) Notice to subject of record and opportunity to obtain injunction. After the custodian receives a request for access to a confidential record, and before the custodian releases the record, the custodian may make reasonable efforts to notify promptly any person who is a subject of that record, is identified in that record, and whose address or telephone number is contained in that record. To the extent the delay is practicable and in the public interest, the custodian may give the subject a reasonable opportunity to seek an injunction under Iowa Code section 22.8 and indicate to the subject of the record the specific period of time during which disclosure will be delayed for that purpose. 1.13(4) Request denied. When the custodian denies a request for access to a confidential record, the custodian shall promptly notify the requester. If the requester indicates to the custodian that a written notification of the denial is desired, the custodian shall provide notification, signed by the custodian, including: a. The name and title or position of the custodian responsible for the denial; and b. A brief statement of the reasons for the denial. 1.13(5) Request granted. When the custodian grants a request for access to a confidential record to a particular person, the custodian shall notify that person and indicate any lawful restrictions imposed by the custodian on that person’s examination and copying of the record.8751.14(22, 91) Requests for treatment of a record as a confidential record and withholding from examination. The custodian may treat a record as a confidential record and withhold the record from examination and copying only to the extent that the custodian is authorized by Iowa Code section 22.7, another applicable provision of law, or a court order. 1.14(1) Persons who may request. Any person who would be aggrieved or adversely affected by disclosure of a record and who asserts the custodian is authorized to treat the record as confidential by Iowa Code section 22.7, another applicable provision of law, or a court order, may request the record be treated as a confidential record and be withheld from public inspection. 1.14(2) Request. A request that a record be treated as a confidential record and be withheld from public inspection shall be in writing and filed with the custodian. The request shall set forth the legal and factual basis justifying confidential treatment for the record, and the name, address, and telephone number of the person authorized to respond to any inquiry or action of the custodian concerning the request. A person requesting treatment of a record as a confidential record may also be required to sign a certified statement or affidavit enumerating the specific reasons justifying the treatment of that record as a confidential record and to provide any proof necessary to establish relevant facts. Requests for treatment of a record as a confidential record for a limited time period shall also specify the time period for which confidential treatment is requested.A person filing such a request shall, if possible, accompany the request with a copy of the record in question from which those portions for which such confidential record treatment has been requested have been deleted. If the original record is being submitted to the division by the person requesting such confidential treatment at the time the request is filed, the person shall indicate conspicuously on the original record that all or portions of it are confidential. 1.14(3) Failure to request. The custodian may treat a record as confidential even if no request has been received. However, if a person who has submitted business information to the division does not request that it be withheld from public inspection under Iowa Code section 22.7, the custodian of records containing that information may proceed as if that person has no objection to disclosure. 1.14(4) Timing of decision. A decision by the custodian with respect to the disclosure of a record to members of the public may be made when a request for its treatment as a confidential record is filed or when the custodian receives a request for access to the record by a member of the public. 1.14(5) Request granted. If a request for such confidential record treatment is granted, a copy of the record from which the matter in question has been redacted or deleted will be made available for public inspection in lieu of the original record. If the custodian subsequently receives a request for access to the original record, the custodian may make reasonable and timely efforts to notify any person who has filed a request for its treatment as a confidential record of the request. 1.14(6) Request denied. If a request that a record be treated as a confidential record and be withheld from public inspection is denied, the custodian shall notify the requester in writing of that determination and the reasons. On application by the requester, the custodian may engage in a good-faith, reasonable delay in allowing examination of the record so that the requester may seek injunctive relief under the provisions of Iowa Code section 22.8, or other applicable provision of law. The custodian shall notify the requester in writing of the time period allowed to seek injunctive relief or the reasons for the determination that no reasonable grounds exist to justify the treatment of that record as a confidential record. The custodian may extend the period of good-faith, reasonable delay in allowing examination of the record so that the requester may seek injunctive relief only if no request for examination of that record has been received, if a court directs the custodian to treat it as a confidential record, to the extent permitted by another applicable provision of law, or with the consent of the person requesting access. However, such a record shall not be withheld from public inspection for any period of time if the custodian determines that the requester had no reasonable grounds to justify the treatment of that record as a confidential record.8751.15(22, 91) Procedure by which additions, dissents, or objections may be entered into certain records. Except as otherwise provided by law, a person may have a written statement of additions, dissents, or objections entered into a record containing personally identifiable information pertaining to that person. However, this does not authorize a person who is a subject of a record to alter the original copy or to expand the official record of any division proceeding. Written statements of additions, dissents, or objections shall be sent to the custodian or to the Labor Commissioner, 1000 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. Written statements of additions, dissents, or objections must be dated and signed and shall include the current address and telephone number of the requester or the requester’s representative.8751.16(22, 91) Consent to disclosure by the subject of a confidential record. A person who is the subject of a confidential record may have a copy of the portion of that record concerning the subject disclosed to a third party to the extent permitted by law. A request for such a disclosure must be in writing and must identify the particular record or records that may be disclosed, and the particular person or class of persons to whom the record may be disclosed and, where applicable, the time period during which the record may be disclosed. The person who is the subject of the record and, where applicable, the person to whom the record is to be disclosed, may be required to provide proof of identity. Additional requirements may be necessary for special classes of records. Appearance of counsel before the division on behalf of a person who is the subject of a confidential record is deemed to constitute consent for the division to disclose records about that person to the person’s attorney.A letter from a subject of a confidential record to a public official which seeks the official’s intervention on behalf of the subject in a matter that involves the division may to the extent permitted by law be treated as an authorization to release relevant information about the subject to the official.8751.17(22, 91) Disclosure without the consent of the subject. Disclosure of a confidential record may occur without the consent of the subject to the extent allowed by law. Following are instances where the division may disclose records without consent of the subject and usually without notice: 1.17(1) For a routine use as described in rule 875—1.19(22,91) or in the notice for a particular record system. 1.17(2) To another agency for a civil, administrative, or criminal law enforcement activity. 1.17(3) To a requester who has provided the division with advance written assurance that the record will be used solely as a statistical research or reporting record; provided, that the record is transferred in a form that does not identify the subject. 1.17(4) To a requester pursuant to a showing of compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of any individual if a notice of the disclosure is transmitted to the last-known address of the subject. 1.17(5) To the legislative services agency under Iowa Code section 2A.3. 1.17(6) In response to a court order or subpoena. 1.17(7) Disclosures in the course of division employee disciplinary proceedings. 1.17(8) To the citizens’ aide under Iowa Code section 2C.9(3).8751.18(22, 91, 77GA, ch1105) Availability of records. 1.18(1) General. Any division record or portion of a record is an open record unless it is a confidential record as listed at 1.18(2). Any division record may be confidential, either in whole or in part, depending on its contents, except the following: a. State performance activity measures; directives adopted by IOSH; and citations issued and received pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88. b. Operating permits and certificates of insurance relating to amusement devices or rides, concession booths, or related electrical equipment covered by Iowa Code chapter 88A. c. List of permitted asbestos removal and encapsulation companies and asbestos ten-day notifications pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88B. d. Certificates of inspection concerning objects covered by Iowa Code chapter 89. e. List of owners of facilities regulated under Iowa Code chapter 89A and related permits and certificates of insurance. f. List of registered professional boxers and bonds filed by fight promoters pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 90A. g. Lists of formerly registered construction contractors; bonds and certificates of insurance filed by construction contractors pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 91C; and citations issued pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 91C. h. Iowa child labor Form III collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 92. i. List of private employment agencies licensed pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 95. j. Lists of publications and educational materials available to the public; unaltered copies of documents published by the division; administrative rules; interstate agreements and interagency agreements to which the division is a party; purchase requests; records concerning the transfer of files to archives; and speech records. 1.18(2) Confidential records. With the exception of “f,” each of the following may contain personally identifiable information. Each of the following is confidential or partially confidential. a. Records or portions of records which are exempt from disclosure pursuant to Iowa Code section 22.7. b. Records or portions of records which are protected by Iowa Code section 88.1, 88.6, 88.12, 88.14, or 88.16. c. Records or portions of records containing social security numbers which are protected by 42 U.S.C. Section 405(c)(2)(C)(viii). d. Records or portions of records containing tax information which are protected by 26 U.S.C. Section 7213(a)(2) or Iowa Code section 422.20 or 422.72. e. Records or portions of records which are protected pursuant to Iowa Code section 515A.13. f. Pursuant to Iowa Code sections 17A.2 and 17A.3, those portions of division staff manuals, instructions, or other statements issued which set forth criteria or guidelines to be used by division staff in auditing, in making inspections, in settling commercial disputes or negotiating commercial arrangements, or in the selection or handling of cases, such as operational tactics or allowable tolerances or criteria for the defense, prosecution or settlement of cases when disclosure of these statements would: (1) Enable law violators to avoid detection; (2) Facilitate disregard of requirements imposed by law; or (3) Give a clearly improper advantage to persons who are in an adverse position to the division. g. Identifying details and trade secrets in final orders, decisions and opinions to the extent permitted by Iowa Code subsection 17A.3(1). h. Records or portions of records containing attorney work product or attorney-client communications, or which are otherwise privileged pursuant to Iowa Code sections 22.7(4), 622.10, and 622.11, Iowa R.C.P. 122(c), Fed.R. Civ.P. 26(b)(3), rules of evidence, case law, and the Code of Professional Responsibility. i. Minutes of closed meetings of a government body pursuant to Iowa Code section 21.5(4). j. Information protected by 42 U.S.C. 11044(a) or by Iowa Code sections 89B.12 and 89B.13. k. Records of the bureau of labor statistics which were created or obtained pursuant to federal grants if release of the records would cause the denial of federal funds. l. Information protected by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1105. m. Any other information made confidential by law.8751.19(22, 91) Routine uses. To the extent allowed by law, the following uses are considered routine uses of all division records: 1.19(1) Disclosure to government officers, employees, and agents who have a need for the record in the performance of their duties. The custodian of the record may upon request of any government officer, employee, or agent, or on the custodian’s own initiative, determine what constitutes legitimate need to use a confidential record. 1.19(2) Any disclosure specifically authorized by the statute under which the record was collected or maintained.8751.20(22, 91) Release to a subject. 1.20(1) The subject of a confidential record may file a written request to review a confidential record about that person as provided in rule 875—1.12(22,91). However, the division need not release the following records to the subject: a. The identity of a person providing information to the division need not be disclosed directly or indirectly to the subject of the information when the information is authorized to be held confidential pursuant to Iowa Code section 22.7(18) or other provision of law. b. A record need not be disclosed to the subject when it is the work product of an attorney or is otherwise privileged. c. A peace officer’s investigative report may be withheld from the subject pursuant to Iowa Code section 22.7(5). d. As otherwise authorized by law. 1.20(2) Where a record has multiple subjects with interest in the confidentiality of the record, the division may take reasonable steps to protect confidential information relating to another subject.8751.21(22, 91) Notice to suppliers of information. Required notice to suppliers of information is provided by this rule and may be provided by any other appropriate means such as letters, brochures, formal agreements, contracts, forms, handbooks, manuals, or statements. This division may share information with persons outside the division for any routine use as described at rule 875—1.19(22,91) and for releases under Iowa Code chapter 22. Information obtained by the division will be used to enforce and implement those provisions of law delegated to the labor commissioner.All information the division deems necessary and requests to administer Iowa Code chapters 30 and 88 through 95 is required. Failure to provide requested information may result in any combination of the following:
Inability to provide desired assistance or services.
The division’s seeking or issuing a subpoena or warrant.
The division’s proceeding as though the information does not exist or exists but is detrimental to the person from whom the information was requested.
Appropriate actions or sanctions pursuant to relevant law.
Referrals.
8751.22(22, 91) Data processing systems comparison. The first reports of injury data systems shared between the labor services division and the workers’ compensation division of the workforce development department permit the comparison of personally identifiable information in one record system with personally identifiable information in another record system. Pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 252J, personally identifiable information about asbestos licensees, asbestos permittees, amusement ride permittees, boxers, special inspectors, registered construction contractors, and private employment agency licensees found in data processing systems may be matched, collated, or compared with personally identifiable information in data processing systems maintained by the child support recovery unit of the department of human services. All data processing systems that have common data elements can potentially match, collate, and compare personally identifiable information.8751.23(22, 91) Personally identifiable information. This rule describes the nature and extent of personally identifiable information collected, maintained, and retrieved from division record systems by personal identifier. Except as noted below, record systems are partially open and partially confidential. Except as noted below, information is stored on paper and electronically. 1.23(1) Personally identifiable information concerning some facility owners who file tier II reports is collected pursuant to Iowa Code section 30.12. The information concerns hazardous materials at the facility. 1.23(2) Personally identifiable information concerning employers who requested services from the consultation and education bureau is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88. The information concerns services provided by the bureau. The record system is confidential. 1.23(3) Personally identifiable information concerning employees who filed discrimination complaints and employers against whom discrimination complaints were filed is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88. The information relates to the relevant division inspection. 1.23(4) Personally identifiable information concerning employers whose workplaces have been inspected by the IOSH enforcement bureau is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88. The information relates to the enforcement inspection. 1.23(5) Personally identifiable information concerning work-related fatalities is collected pursuant to Iowa Code section 88.18. The information includes biographical data about the deceased and information concerning the IOSH fatality inspection. 1.23(6) Personally identifiable information concerning owners or operators of amusement devices or rides, concession booths, or related electrical equipment covered by Iowa Code chapter 88A is collected pursuant to that chapter. The information pertains to the division’s inspections. 1.23(7) Personally identifiable information concerning asbestos licensees and permittees is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88B. Biographical information concerning the asbestos licensees and permittees and information concerning the licenses and permits is included.Personally identifiable information concerning asbestos licensees and permittees against whom disciplinary action has been taken or attempted is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 88B. The disciplinary action files are stored on paper and contain information concerning division investigations, reprimands, suspensions, revocations, denials, and related litigation. 1.23(8) Personally identifiable information concerning boiler special inspectors against whom disciplinary action has been taken or attempted is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 89. The record system is stored on paper and contains information concerning division investigations, reprimands, suspensions, revocations, denials, and related litigation. 1.23(9) Personally identifiable information concerning special inspectors is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapters 89 and 89A. The record systems are stored on paper and contain biographical information on special inspectors, information on their commissions, and, when applicable, certificates of insurance. 1.23(10) Personally identifiable information concerning owners and operators of facilities and objects covered by Iowa Code chapters 89 and 89A is collected pursuant to those chapters. The information concerns division regulation of covered objects and facilities. 1.23(11) Personally identifiable information concerning individuals who are certified to perform safety tests or are recognized elevator companies is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 89A. The information is maintained on paper and includes biographical data and information on the certification or recognition. 1.23(12) Personally identifiable information concerning registered boxers is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 90A. The information includes biographical data and information pertaining to the registration. 1.23(13) Personally identifiable information concerning division employees and former employees is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 91. The information is stored on paper and includes biographical data, medical records, qualifications, and tax information. The record system is confidential. 1.23(14) Personally identifiable information concerning wage claimants, wage discrimination complainants and individual employers against whom wage claims or wage discrimination complaints have been filed is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 91A. The information includes biographical data and information on the division’s investigations. 1.23(15) Personally identifiable information concerning owners, partners, and officers of construction contractor applicants is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 91C. The information includes biographical data and information about the registration.Personally identifiable information concerning individual out-of-state contractors who have filed bonds is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 91C. The information is stored on paper and relates to the bonds. The record system is open.Personally identifiable information concerning individuals who have been cited under Iowa Code chapter 91C is collected pursuant to that chapter. The information includes biographical data and information concerning the citations and relevant litigation. 1.23(16) Personally identifiable information concerning private employment agency licensees is collected pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 95. The information includes biographical data and information about the private employment agency license.8751.24 Reserved.8751.25 Reserved.8751.26 Reserved.8751.27 Reserved.8751.28 Reserved.8751.29 Reserved.8751.30 Reserved.division iiirule-making procedures8751.31(17A) Applicability. Except to the extent otherwise expressly provided by statute, all rules adopted by the division are subject to the provisions of Iowa Code chapter 17A, the Iowa administrative procedure Act, and the provisions of this chapter.8751.32(17A) Advice on possible rules before notice of proposed rule adoption. In addition to seeking information by other methods, the division may, before publication of a Notice of Intended Action under Iowa Code section 17A.4(1)“a,” solicit comments from the public on a subject matter of possible rule making by the division by causing notice to be published in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin of the subject matter and indicating where, when, and how persons may comment.8751.33(17A) Public rule-making docket. 1.33(1) Docket maintained. The division will maintain a current public rule-making docket. 1.33(2) Anticipated rule making. The rule-making docket shall list each anticipated rule-making proceeding. A rule-making proceeding is deemed “anticipated” from the time a draft of proposed rules is distributed for internal discussion within the division. For each anticipated rule-making proceeding, the docket shall contain a listing of the precise subject matter which may be submitted for consideration by the commissioner for subsequent proposal under the provisions of Iowa Code section 17A.4(1)“a,” the name and address of division personnel with whom persons may communicate with respect to the matter, and an indication of the present status within the division of that possible rule. The division may also include in the docket other subjects upon which public comment is desired. Drafts of proposed federal regulations are provided to the division for review and comment. These drafts are provided on condition that the draft remain confidential. The division does not consider these drafts to be state documents triggering a rule’s being “anticipated.” Employees of the division serve on various national consensus organizations developing recommended new guidelines. The division does not consider these as “anticipated” rules. 1.33(3) Pending rule-making proceedings. The rule-making docket shall list each pending rule-making proceeding. A rule-making proceeding is pending from the time it is commenced, by publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin of a Notice of Intended Action pursuant to Iowa Code section 17A.4(1)“a,” to the time it is terminated, by publication of a Notice of Termination in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin or by the rule’s becoming effective. For each rule-making proceeding, the docket shall indicate: a. The subject matter of the proposed rule; b. A citation to all published notices relating to the proceeding; c. Where written submissions on the proposed rule may be inspected; d. The time during which written submissions may be made; e. The names of persons who have made written requests for an opportunity to make oral presentations on the proposed rule, where those requests may be inspected, and where and when oral presentations may be made; f. Whether a written request for the issuance of a regulatory analysis, or a concise statement of reasons, has been filed, whether such an analysis or statement or a fiscal impact statement has been issued, and where any such written request, analysis, or statement may be inspected; g. The current status of the proposed rule and any division determinations with respect thereto; h. Any known timetable for the division’s decisions or other action in the proceeding; i. The date of the rule’s adoption; j. The date of the rule’s filing, indexing, and publication; k. The date on which the rule will become effective; and l. Where the rule-making record may be inspected.8751.34(17A) Notice of proposed rule making. 1.34(1) Contents. At least 35 days before the adoption of a rule, the division will cause a Notice of Intended Action to be published in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin. The Notice of Intended Action shall include: a. A brief explanation of the purpose of the proposed rule; b. The specific legal authority for the proposed rule; c. Except to the extent impracticable, the text of the proposed rule; d. Where, when, and how persons may present their views on the proposed rule; and e. Where, when, and how persons may demand an oral proceeding on the proposed rule if the notice does not already provide for one.Where inclusion of the complete text of a proposed rule in the Notice of Intended Action is impracticable, the division will include in the notice a statement fully describing the specific subject matter of the omitted portion of the text of the proposed rule, the specific issues to be addressed by that omitted text of the proposed rule, and the range of possible choices being considered by the division for the resolution of each of those issues. 1.34(2) Incorporation by reference. A proposed rule may incorporate other materials by reference only if it complies with all of the requirements applicable to the incorporation by reference of other materials in an adopted rule that are contained in subrule 1.42(2) of this chapter. 1.34(3) Copies of notices. Persons desiring to receive copies of future Notices of Intended Action by subscription shall file a written request indicating the name and address to which the notices are to be sent. The request shall be filed with the division’s rules coordinator. Additionally, the request shall state the chapter(s) or subjects for which the requester seeks copies. Within seven days after submission of a Notice of Intended Action to the administrative rules coordinator for publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin, the division will mail or electronically transmit a copy of that notice to subscribers who have filed a written request for either mailing or electronic transmittal with the division for Notices of Intended Action. The written request shall be accompanied by payment of the subscription price. The cost of electronic transmission is $50 per fiscal year. The cost of providing copies of the notices is $0.50 per page payable within 30 days of mailing the notice. The cost of providing Notices of Intended Action by facsimile is $1 per page. Failure to pay the cost for a copy will result in the cancellation of the subscription.8751.35(17A) Public participation. 1.35(1) Written comments. For at least 20 days after publication of the Notice of Intended Action, persons may submit argument, data, and views, in writing, on the proposed rule. Such written submissions shall identify the proposed rule to which they relate and shall be submitted to the person and address designated in the Notice of Intended Action. 1.35(2) Oral proceedings. The division will schedule an oral proceeding on a proposed rule. The division’s scheduled oral proceeding on a proposed rule will be held if, within 20 days after the published Notice of Intended Action, a written request for an opportunity to make oral presentations is submitted to the division’s rules coordinator by the administrative rules review committee, a governmental subdivision, an agency, an association having not less than 25 members, or at least 25 persons. That request must also contain the following additional information: a. A request by one or more individual persons must be signed by each of them and include the address and telephone number of each of them. b. A request by an association must be signed by an officer or designee of the association and must contain a statement that the association has at least 25 members and the address and telephone number of the person signing that request. c. A request by an agency or governmental subdivision must be signed by an official having authority to act on behalf of the entity and must contain the address and telephone number of the person signing that request. 1.35(3) Conduct of oral proceedings. a. Applicability. This subrule applies only to those oral rule-making proceedings in which an opportunity to make oral presentations is authorized or required by Iowa Code section 17A.4(1)“b” as amended by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 8, or this chapter. b. Scheduling and notice. An oral proceeding on a proposed rule may be held in one or more locations and will not be held earlier than 20 days after notice of its location and time is published in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin. That notice shall also identify the proposed rule by ARC number and citation to the Iowa Administrative Bulletin. c. Presiding officer. A member of the division will preside at the oral proceeding on a proposed rule. d. Conduct of proceeding. At an oral proceeding on a proposed rule, persons may make oral statements and make documentary and physical submissions, which may include data, views, comments or arguments concerning the proposed rule. Persons wishing to make oral presentations at such a proceeding are encouraged to notify the division at least three business days prior to the proceeding and indicate the general subject of their presentations. At the proceeding, those who participate shall indicate their names and addresses, identify any persons or organizations they may represent, and provide any other information relating to their participation deemed appropriate by the presiding officer. Oral proceedings shall be open to the public and will be recorded by stenographic or electronic means. (1) At the beginning of the oral proceeding, the presiding officer will give a brief synopsis of the proposed rule, a statement of the statutory authority for the proposed rule, and the reasons for the division’s decision to propose the rule. The presiding officer may place time limitations on individual oral presentations when necessary to ensure the orderly and expeditious conduct of the oral proceeding. To encourage joint oral presentations and to avoid repetition, additional time may be provided for persons whose presentations represent the views of other individuals as well as their own views. (2) Persons making oral presentations are encouraged to avoid restating matters which have already been submitted in writing. (3) To facilitate the exchange of information the presiding officer may, where time permits, open the floor to questions or general discussion. (4) The presiding officer will have the authority to take any reasonable action necessary for the orderly conduct of the meeting. (5) Physical and documentary submissions presented by participants in the oral proceeding shall be submitted to the presiding officer. The submissions become the property of the division. (6) The oral proceeding may be continued by the presiding officer to a later time without notice other than by announcement at the hearing. (7) Participants in an oral proceeding will not be required to take an oath or to submit to cross-examination. However, the presiding officer in an oral proceeding may question participants and permit the questioning of participants by other participants about any matter relating to that rule-making proceeding, including any prior written submissions made by those participants in that proceeding; but no participant shall be required to answer any question. (8) The presiding officer in an oral proceeding may permit rebuttal statements and request the filing of written statements subsequent to the adjournment of the oral presentations. 1.35(4) Additional information. In addition to receiving written comments and oral presentations on a proposed rule according to the provisions of this rule, the division may obtain information concerning a proposed rule through any other lawful means deemed appropriate under the circumstances. 1.35(5) Accessibility. The division will schedule oral proceedings in rooms accessible to and functional for persons with physical disabilities. Persons who have special requirements should contact the division’s rules coordinator at (515)281-3445 in advance to arrange access or other needed services.8751.36(17A) Regulatory analysis. 1.36(1) Definition of small business. A “small business” is defined in 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(7). 1.36(2) Mailing list. Small businesses or organizations of small businesses may be registered on the division’s small business impact list by making a written application addressed to the division’s rules coordinator. The application for registration shall state: a. The name of the small business or organization of small businesses; b. Its address; c. The name of a person authorized to transact business for the applicant; d. A description of the applicant’s business or organization. An organization representing 25 or more persons who qualify as a small business shall indicate that fact. e. Whether the registrant desires copies of Notices of Intended Action at cost, or desires advance notice of the subject of all or some specific category of proposed rule making affecting small business.The division may at any time request additional information from the applicant to determine whether the applicant is qualified as a small business or as an organization of 25 or more small businesses. The division may periodically send a letter to each registered small business or organization of small businesses asking whether that business or organization wishes to remain on the registration list. The name of a small business or organization of small businesses will be removed from the list if a negative response is received, or if no response is received within 30 days after the letter is sent. 1.36(3) Time of mailing. Within seven days after submission of a Notice of Intended Action to the administrative rules coordinator for publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin, the division will mail to all registered small businesses or organizations of small businesses, in accordance with the request, either a copy of the Notice of Intended Action or notice of the subject of that proposed rule making. In the case of a rule that may have an impact on small business adopted in reliance upon Iowa Code section 17A.4(2), the division will mail notice of the adopted rule to registered businesses or organizations prior to the time the adopted rule is published in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin. 1.36(4) Qualified requesters for regulatory analysis—economic impact. The division will issue a regulatory analysis of a proposed rule that conforms to the requirements of 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(2a), after a proper request from: a. The administrative rules coordinator; b. The administrative rules review committee. 1.36(5) Qualified requesters for regulatory analysis—business impact. The division will issue a regulatory analysis of a proposed rule that conforms to the requirements of 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(2b), after a proper request from: a. The administrative rules review committee; b. The administrative rules coordinator; c. At least 25 or more persons who sign the request provided that each represents a different small business; d. An organization representing at least 25 small businesses. That organization shall list the name, address and telephone number of not less than 25 small businesses it represents. 1.36(6) Time period for analysis. Upon receipt of a timely request for a regulatory analysis the division will adhere to the time lines described in 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(4). 1.36(7) Contents of request. A request for a regulatory analysis is made when it is mailed or delivered to the division. The request shall be in writing and satisfy the requirements of 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(1). 1.36(8) Contents of concise summary. The contents of the concise summary shall conform to the requirements of 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(4,5). 1.36(9) Publication of a concise summary. The division will make available, to the maximum extent feasible, copies of the published summary in conformance with 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(5). 1.36(10) Regulatory analysis contents—rules review committee or rules coordinator. When a regulatory analysis is issued in response to a written request from the administrative rules review committee, or the administrative rules coordinator, the regulatory analysis will conform to the requirements of 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(2a), unless a written request expressly waives one or more of the items listed in the section. 1.36(11) Regulatory analysis contents—substantial impact on small business. When a regulatory analysis is issued in response to a written request from the administrative rules review committee, the administrative rules coordinator, at least 25 persons signing that request who each qualify as a small business or by an organization representing at least 25 small businesses, the regulatory analysis shall conform to the requirements of 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 10(2b).8751.37(17A, 25B) Fiscal impact statement. 1.37(1) A proposed rule that mandates additional combined expenditures exceeding $100,000 by all affected political subdivisions or agencies and entities which contract with political subdivisions to provide services will be accompanied by a fiscal impact statement outlining the costs associated with the rule. The fiscal impact statement will satisfy the requirements of Iowa Code section 25B.6. 1.37(2) If the division determines at the time it adopts a rule that the fiscal impact statement upon which the rule is based contains errors, the division will, at the same time, issue a corrected fiscal impact statement and publish the corrected fiscal impact statement in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin.8751.38(17A) Time and manner of rule adoption. 1.38(1) Time of adoption. The division will not adopt a rule until the period for making written submissions and oral presentations has expired. Within 180 days after the later of the publication of the Notice of Intended Action, or the end of oral proceedings thereon, the division will adopt a rule pursuant to the rule-making proceeding or terminate the proceeding by publication of a notice to that effect in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin. 1.38(2) Consideration of public comment. Before the adoption of a rule, the division will consider fully all of the written submissions and oral submissions received in that rule-making proceeding or any memorandum summarizing such oral submissions, and any regulatory analysis or fiscal impact statement issued in that rule-making proceeding. 1.38(3) Reliance on agency expertise. Except as otherwise provided by law, the division may use its own experience, technical competence, specialized knowledge, and judgment in the adoption of a rule.8751.39(17A) Variance between adopted rule and published notice of proposed rule adoption. 1.39(1) The division will not adopt a rule that differs from the rule proposed in the Notice of Intended Action on which the rule is based unless: a. The differences are within the scope of the subject matter announced in the Notice of Intended Action and are in character with the issues raised in that notice; b. The differences are a logical outgrowth of the contents of that Notice of Intended Action and the comments submitted in response thereto; and c. The Notice of Intended Action provided fair warning that the outcome of that rule-making proceeding could be the rule in question. 1.39(2) In determining whether the Notice of Intended Action provided fair warning that the outcome of that rule-making proceeding could be the rule in question, the division shall consider the following factors: a. The extent to which persons who will be affected by the rule should have understood that the rule-making proceeding on which it is based could affect their interests; b. The extent to which the subject matter of the rule or the issues determined by the rule are different from the subject matter or issues contained in the Notice of Intended Action; and c. The extent to which the effects of the rule differ from the effects of the proposed rule contained in the Notice of Intended Action. 1.39(3) The division will commence a rule-making proceeding within 60 days of its receipt of a petition for rule making seeking the amendment or repeal of a rule that differs from the proposed rule contained in the Notice of Intended Action upon which the rule is based, unless the division finds that the differences between the adopted rule and the proposed rule are so insubstantial as to make such a rule-making proceeding wholly unnecessary. A copy of any such finding and the petition to which it responds shall be sent to petitioner, the administrative rules coordinator, and the administrative rules review committee, within three days of its issuance. 1.39(4) Concurrent rule-making proceedings. Nothing in this rule disturbs the discretion of the division to initiate, concurrently, several different rule-making proceedings on the same subject with several different published Notices of Intended Action.8751.40(17A) Exemptions from public rule-making procedures. 1.40(1) Omission of notice and comment. To the extent the division for good cause finds that public notice and participation are unnecessary, impracticable, or contrary to the public interest in the process of adopting a particular rule, the division may adopt that rule without publishing advance Notice of Intended Action in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin and without providing for written or oral public submissions prior to its adoption. The division will incorporate the required finding and a brief statement of its supporting reasons in each rule adopted in reliance upon this subrule. 1.40(2) Categories exempt. The following narrowly tailored categories of rules are exempted from the usual public notice and participation requirements because those requirements are unnecessary, impracticable, or contrary to the public interest with respect to each and every member of the defined class: a. Rules implementing legislation which will become effective before the normal procedures could be followed. b. National consensus standards and federal occupational safety and health regulations are adopted by reference. These documents are published and available to the public in advance of publication of a Notice of Intended Action by the division. The commissioner is required to adopt federal occupational safety and health regulations pursuant to Iowa Code subsection 88.5(1). At times, these rules, when adopted, are effective upon publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin. 1.40(3) Public proceedings on rules adopted without public proceedings. The division may, at any time, commence a standard rule-making proceeding for the adoption of a rule that is identical or similar to a rule it adopts in reliance upon subrule 1.40(1). Upon written petition by a governmental subdivision, the administrative rules review committee, an agency, the administrative rules coordinator, an association having not less than 25 members, or at least 25 persons, the division will commence a standard rule-making proceeding for any rule specified in the petition that was adopted in reliance upon subrule 1.40(1). Such a petition must be filed within one year of the publication of the specified rule in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin as an adopted rule. The rule-making proceeding on that rule must be commenced within 60 days of the receipt of such a petition. After a standard rule-making proceeding commenced pursuant to this subrule, the division may either readopt the rule it adopted without benefit of all usual procedures on the basis of subrule 1.40(1), or may take any other lawful action, including the amendment or repeal of the rule in question, with whatever further proceedings are appropriate.8751.41(17A) Concise statement of reasons. 1.41(1) General. When requested by a person, either prior to the adoption of a rule or within 30 days after its publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin as an adopted rule, the division will issue a concise statement of reasons for the rule. Requests for such a statement must be in writing and be delivered to the Division of Labor Services, Division Rules Coordinator, 1000 East Grand, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. The request should indicate whether the statement is sought for all or only a specified part of the rule. Requests will be considered made on the date received. 1.41(2) Contents. The concise statement of reasons will contain: a. The reasons for adopting the rule; b. An indication of any change between the text of the proposed rule contained in the published Notice of Intended Action and the text of the rule as finally adopted, with the reasons for any such change; c. The principal reasons urged in the rule-making proceeding for and against the rule, and the division’s reasons for overruling the arguments made against the rule. 1.41(3) Time of issuance. After a proper request, the division will issue a concise statement of reasons by the later of the time the rule is adopted or 35 days after receipt of the request.8751.42(17A, 89) Contents, style, and form of rule. 1.42(1) Contents. Each rule adopted by the division will contain the text of the rule and, in addition: a. The date the division adopted the rule; b. A brief explanation of the principal reasons for the rule-making action if such reasons are required by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 8, or the division in its discretion decides to include the reasons; c. A reference to all rules repealed, amended, or suspended by the rule; d. A reference to the specific statutory or other authority authorizing adoption of the rule; e. Any findings required by any provision of law as a prerequisite to adoption or effectiveness of the rule; f. A brief explanation of the principal reasons for the failure to provide for waivers to the rule if no waiver provision is included and a brief explanation of any waiver or special exceptions provided in the rule if such reasons are required by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 8, or the division in its discretion decides to include such reasons; and g. The effective date of the rule. 1.42(2) Incorporation by reference. The division may incorporate, by reference in a proposed or adopted rule, and without causing publication of the incorporated matter in full, all or any part of a code, standard, rule, or other matter if the division finds that the incorporation of its text in the division proposed or adopted rule would be unduly cumbersome, expensive, or otherwise inexpedient. The reference in the division’s proposed or adopted rule shall fully and precisely identify the incorporated matter by location, title, citation, date, and edition, if any; shall briefly indicate the precise subject and the general contents of the incorporated matter; and shall state that the proposed or adopted rule does not include any later amendments or editions of the incorporated matter. The division may incorporate such matter by reference in a proposed or adopted rule only when the division makes copies of it readily available to the public. The rule shall state how and where copies of the incorporated matter may be obtained at cost from the division, and how and where copies may be obtained from an agency of the United States, this state, another state, or the organization, association, or persons, originally issuing that matter. The division will retain a copy of any materials incorporated by reference in a rule of the division for two years after the rule ceases to be in effect.When the division adopts a publication by reference, it will provide a copy of the publication to the administrative rules coordinator for deposit in the state law library and may make the standards available electronically, except: a. Copies of materials are not required to be submitted if the division follows Iowa Code section 89.5(4). b. Copies of the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register which the state law library possesses. 1.42(3) References to materials not published in full. When the administrative code editor decides to omit the full text of a proposed or adopted rule because publication of the full text would be unduly cumbersome, expensive, or otherwise inexpedient, the division will prepare and submit to the administrative code editor for inclusion in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin and Iowa Administrative Code a summary statement describing the specific subject matter of the omitted material. This summary statement shall include the title and a brief description sufficient to inform the public of the specific nature and subject matter of the proposed or adopted rules, and of significant issues involved in these rules. The summary statement shall also describe how a copy of the full text of the proposed or adopted rule, including any unpublished matter and any matter incorporated by reference, may be obtained. The division will provide a copy of that full text at actual cost or review in the offices of the division. Upon request, the division will copy or obtain a copy of the document if requested, provided that the division will not photocopy materials protected by copyright. The division may make the standards available electronically.At the request of the administrative code editor, the division will provide a proposed statement explaining why publication of the full text would be unduly cumbersome, expensive, or otherwise inexpedient. 1.42(4) Style and form. In preparing its rules, the division will follow the uniform numbering system, form, and style prescribed by the administrative rules coordinator.8751.43(17A) Agency rule-making record. 1.43(1) Requirement. The division will maintain an official rule-making record for each rule it proposes by publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin of a Notice of Intended Action, or adopts. The rule-making record and materials incorporated by reference will be available for public inspection. 1.43(2) Contents. The division’s rule-making record will contain: a. Copies of all publications in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin with respect to the rule or the proceeding upon which the rule is based and any file-stamped copies of the division’s submissions to the administrative rules coordinator concerning that rule or the proceeding upon which it is based; b. Copies of any portions of the division’s public rule-making docket containing entries relating to the rule or the proceeding upon which the rule is based; c. All written petitions, requests, and submissions received by the division, and all other written materials of a factual nature as distinguished from opinion that are relevant to the merits of the rule and that were created or compiled by the division and considered by the labor commissioner, in connection with the formulation, proposal, or adoption of the rule or the proceeding upon which the rule is based, except to the extent the division is authorized by law to keep them confidential; provided, however, that when any such materials are deleted because they are authorized by law to be kept confidential, the division will identify in the record the particular materials deleted and state the reasons for that deletion; d. Any official transcript of oral presentations made in the proceeding upon which the rule is based or, if not transcribed, the stenographic record or electronic recording of those presentations, and any memorandum prepared by a presiding officer summarizing the contents of those presentations; e. A copy of any regulatory analysis or fiscal impact statement prepared for the proceeding upon which the rule is based; f. A copy of the rule and any concise statement of reasons prepared for that rule; g. All petitions for amendments of, or repeal or suspension of, the rule; h. A copy of any objection to the issuance of that rule without public notice and participation that was filed pursuant to Iowa Code section 17A.4(2) by the administrative rules review committee, the governor, or the attorney general; i. A copy of any objection to the rule filed by the administrative rules review committee, the governor, or the attorney general pursuant to Iowa Code section 17A.4(4), and any agency response to that objection; and j. A copy of any executive order concerning the rule. 1.43(3) Effect of record. Except as otherwise required by a provision of law, the division rule-making record required by this rule may not constitute the exclusive basis for division action on that rule. 1.43(4) Significant written criticisms. Written criticisms of a rule may be submitted to the division and directed to the Division of Labor Services, Division Rules Coordinator, 1000 East Grand, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. A criticism of a specific rule must be more than a mere lack of understanding of a rule or a dislike regarding the rule. To constitute a criticism of a rule, the criticism must be in writing, state it is a criticism of a specific rule, state the rule number, and provide reasons for criticism of the rule. All written rule criticisms received will be kept in a separate record for a period of five years. 1.43(5) Maintenance of record. The division will maintain the rule-making record for a period of not less than five years from the later of the date the rule to which it pertains became effective, the date of the Notice of Intended Action, or the date of any written criticism as described in 1.43(2)“g,” “h,” “i,” or “j.”8751.44(17A) Filing of rules. The division will file each rule it adopts in the office of the administrative rules coordinator. The filing must be executed as soon after adoption of the rule as is practicable. At the time of filing, each rule must have attached to it any fiscal note impact statement and any concise statement of reasons that was issued with respect to that rule. If a fiscal note impact statement or statement of reasons for that rule was not issued until a time subsequent to the filing of that rule, the note or statement must be attached to the filed rule within five working days after the note or statement is issued. In filing a rule, the division will use the standard form prescribed by the administrative rules coordinator.8751.45(17A) Effectiveness of rules prior to publication. 1.45(1) Grounds. The division may make a rule effective after its filing at any stated time prior to 35 days after its indexing and publication in the Iowa Administrative Bulletin if it finds that a statute so provides, the rule confers a benefit or removes a restriction on some segment of the public, or that the effective date of the rule is necessary to avoid imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare. The division will incorporate the required finding and a brief statement of its supporting reasons in each rule adopted in reliance upon this subrule. 1.45(2) Special notice. When the division makes a rule effective prior to its indexing and publication in reliance upon the provisions of Iowa Code section 17A.5(2)“b”(3), the division will employ all reasonable efforts to make its contents known to the persons who may be affected by that rule prior to the rule’s indexing and publication. The term “all reasonable efforts” requires the division to employ the most effective and prompt means of notice rationally calculated to inform potentially affected parties of the effectiveness of the rule that is justified and practical under the circumstances considering the various alternatives available for this purpose, the comparative costs to the division of utilizing each of those alternatives, and the harm suffered by affected persons from any lack of notice concerning the contents of the rule prior to its indexing and publication. The means that may be used for providing notice of rules prior to their indexing and publication include, but are not limited to, any one or more of the following means: radio, newspaper, television, signs, mail, telephone, or personal notice or electronic means.A rule made effective prior to its indexing and publication in reliance upon the provisions of Iowa Code section 17A.5(2)“b”(3) shall include in that rule a statement describing the reasonable efforts that will be used to comply with the requirements of subrule 1.45(2).8751.46(17A) General statements of policy. 1.46(1) Compilation, indexing, public inspection. The division will maintain an official, current, and dated compilation that is indexed by subject, containing all of its general statements of policy within the scope of Iowa Code section 17A.2(10)“a,” “c,” “f,” “g,” “h,” “k.” Each addition to, change in, or deletion from the official compilation must also be dated, indexed, and a record thereof kept. Except for those portions containing rules governed by Iowa Code section 17A.2(7)“f,” or otherwise authorized by law to be kept confidential, the compilation must be made available for public inspection and copying. 1.46(2) Enforcement of requirements. A general statement of policy subject to the requirements of this subrule shall not be relied on by the division to the detriment of any person who does not have actual, timely knowledge of the contents of the statement until the requirements of subrule 1.46(1) are satisfied. This provision is inapplicable to the extent necessary to avoid imminent peril to the public health, safety, or welfare.8751.47(17A) Review by agency of rules. 1.47(1) Any interested person, association, agency, or political subdivision may submit a written request to the administrative rules coordinator requesting the division to conduct a formal review of a specified rule. Upon approval of that request by the administrative rules coordinator, the division will conduct a formal review of a specified rule to determine whether a new rule should be adopted instead or the rule should be amended or repealed. The division may refuse to conduct a review if it has conducted such a review of the specified rule within five years prior to the filing of the written request. 1.47(2) In conducting the formal review, the division will prepare within a reasonable time a written report summarizing its findings, its supporting reasons, and any proposed course of action. The report must include a concise statement of the division’s findings regarding the rule’s effectiveness in achieving its objectives, including a summary of any available supporting data. The report shall also concisely describe significant written criticisms of the rule received during the previous five years, including a summary of any petitions for waiver of the rule received by the division or granted by the division. The report shall describe alternative solutions to resolve the criticisms of the rule, the reasons any were rejected, and any changes made in the rule in response to the criticisms as well as the reasons for the changes. A copy of the division’s report shall be sent to the administrative rules review committee and the administrative rules coordinator. The report must also be available for public inspection.8751.48 Reserved.8751.49 Reserved.division ivdeclaratory orders8751.50(17A) Petition for declaratory order. Any person may file a petition with the division for a declaratory order as to the applicability to specified circumstances of a statute, rule, or order within the primary jurisdiction of the division. A petition is deemed filed when it is received by the division. The division shall provide the petitioner with a file-stamped copy of the petition if the petitioner provides the division an extra copy for this purpose. The petition must be typewritten or legibly handwritten in ink and must substantially conform to the following form.DIVISION OF LABOR SERVICESPetition by (Name of Petitioner)for a Declaratory Order on(Cite provisions of law involved).}PETITION FORDECLARATORY ORDERThe petition must provide the following information:
A clear and concise statement of all relevant facts on which the order is requested.
A citation and the relevant language of the specific statutes, rules, policies, decisions, or orders, whose applicability is questioned, and any other relevant law.
The questions petitioner wants answered, stated clearly and concisely.
The answers to the questions desired by the petitioner and a summary of the reasons urged by the petitioner in support of those answers.
The reasons for requesting the declaratory order and disclosure of the petitioner’s interest in the outcome.
A statement indicating whether the petitioner is currently a party to another proceeding involving the questions at issue and whether, to the petitioner’s knowledge, those questions have been decided by, are pending determination by, or are under investigation by, any governmental entity.
The names and addresses of other persons, or a description of any class of persons, known by petitioner to be affected by, or interested in, the questions presented in the petition.
Any request by petitioner for a meeting provided for by rule 1.53(17A).
The petition must be dated and signed by the petitioner or the petitioner’s representative. It must also include the name, mailing address, and telephone number of the petitioner and petitioner’s representative, and a statement indicating the person to whom communications concerning the petition should be directed.8751.51(17A) Notice of petition. Within 15 days after receipt of a petition for a declaratory order, the division shall give notice of the petition to all persons not served by the petitioner pursuant to rule 1.55(17A) to whom notice is required by any provision of law. The division may also give notice to any other persons.8751.52(17A) Intervention. 1.52(1) Persons who qualify under any applicable provision of law as an intervenor and who file a petition for intervention within 20 days of the filing of a petition for declaratory order shall be allowed to intervene in a proceeding for a declaratory order. 1.52(2) Any person who files a petition for intervention at any time prior to the issuance of an order may be allowed to intervene in a proceeding for a declaratory order at the discretion of the division. 1.52(3) A petition for intervention shall be filed at the Division of Labor Services, 1000 East Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. The petition is deemed filed when it is received by that office. The division will provide the petitioner with a file-stamped copy of the petition for intervention if the petitioner provides an extra copy for this purpose. A petition for intervention must be typewritten or legibly handwritten in ink and must substantially conform to the following form:DIVISION OF LABOR SERVICESPetition by (Name of Original Petitioner)for a Declaratory Order on(Cite provisions of law cited in original petition).}PETITION FORINTERVENTIONThe petition for intervention must provide the following information:
Facts supporting the intervenor’s standing and qualifications for intervention.
The answers urged by the intervenor to the question or questions presented and a summary of the reasons urged in support of those answers.
Reasons for requesting intervention and disclosure of the intervenor’s interest in the outcome.
A statement indicating whether the intervenor is currently a party to any proceeding involving the questions at issue and whether, to the intervenor’s knowledge, those questions have been decided by, are pending determination by, or are under investigation by, any governmental entity.
The names and addresses of any additional persons, or a description of any additional class of persons, known by the intervenor to be affected by, or interested in, the questions presented.
Whether the intervenor consents to be bound by the determination of the matters presented in the declaratory order proceeding.
The petition must be dated and signed by the intervenor or the intervenor’s representative. It must also include the name, mailing address, and telephone number of the intervenor and intervenor’s representative, and a statement indicating the person to whom communications should be directed.8751.53(17A) Briefs. The petitioner or any intervenor may file a brief in support of the position urged. The division may request a brief from the petitioner, any intervenor, or any other person concerning the questions raised.8751.54(17A) Inquiries. Inquiries concerning the status of a declaratory order proceeding may be made to the Declaratory Orders Coordinator, Division of Labor Services, 1000 East Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319.8751.55(17A) Service and filing of petitions and other papers. 1.55(1) When service required. Except where otherwise provided by law, every petition for declaratory order, petition for intervention, brief, or other paper filed in a proceeding for a declaratory order shall be served upon each of the parties of record to the proceeding, and on all other persons identified in the petition for declaratory order or petition for intervention as affected by or interested in the questions presented, simultaneously with their filing. The party filing a document is responsible for service on all parties and other affected or interested persons. 1.55(2) Filing—when required. All petitions for declaratory orders, petitions for intervention, briefs, or other papers in a proceeding for a declaratory order shall be filed with the Declaratory Orders Coordinator, Division of Labor Services, 1000 East Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. All petitions, briefs, or other papers that are required to be served upon a party shall be filed simultaneously with the division. 1.55(3) Method of service, time of filing, and proof of mailing. Method of service, time of filing, and proof of mailing shall be as provided by rule 875—1.75(17A).8751.56(17A) Consideration. Upon request by petitioner, the division shall schedule a brief and informal meeting between the original petitioner, all intervenors, or a member of the staff of the division, to discuss the questions raised. The division may solicit comments from any person on the questions raised. Also, comments on the questions raised may be submitted to the division by any person.8751.57(17A) Action on petition. 1.57(1) Within the time allowed by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 13(5), after receipt of a petition for a declaratory order, the labor commissioner or designee shall take action on the petition as required by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 13(5). 1.57(2) The date of issuance of an order or of a refusal to issue an order is as defined in rule 875—1.66(17A).8751.58(17A) Refusal to issue order. 1.58(1) The division shall not issue a declaratory order where prohibited by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 13(1), and may refuse to issue a declaratory order on some or all questions raised for the following reasons:
The petition does not substantially comply with the required form.
The petition does not contain facts sufficient to demonstrate that the petitioner will be aggrieved or adversely affected by the failure of the division to issue an order.
The division does not have jurisdiction over the questions presented in the petition.
The questions presented by the petition are also presented in a current rule making, contested case, or other division or judicial proceeding, that may definitively resolve them.
The questions presented by the petition would more properly be resolved in a different type of proceeding or by another body with jurisdiction over the matter.
The facts or questions presented in the petition are unclear, overbroad, insufficient, or otherwise inappropriate as a basis upon which to issue an order.
There is no need to issue an order because the questions raised in the petition have been settled due to a change in circumstances.
The petition is not based upon facts calculated to aid in the planning of future conduct but is, instead, based solely upon prior conduct in an effort to establish the effect of that conduct or to challenge a division decision already made.
The petition requests a declaratory order that would necessarily determine the legal rights, duties, or responsibilities of other persons who have not joined in the petition, intervened separately, or filed a similar petition and whose position on the questions presented may fairly be presumed to be adverse to that of petitioner.
The petitioner requests the division to determine whether a statute is unconstitutional on its face.
1.58(2) A refusal to issue a declaratory order must indicate the specific grounds for the refusal and constitutes final agency action on the petition. 1.58(3) Refusal to issue a declaratory order pursuant to this provision does not preclude the filing of a new petition that seeks to eliminate the grounds for the refusal to issue a ruling.8751.59(17A) Contents of declaratory order—effective date. In addition to the order itself, a declaratory order must contain the date of its issuance, the name of petitioner and all intervenors, the specific statutes, rules, policies, decisions, or orders involved, the particular facts upon which it is based, and the reasons for its conclusion.A declaratory order is effective on the date of issuance.8751.60(17A) Copies of orders. A copy of all orders issued in response to a petition for a declaratory order shall be mailed promptly to the original petitioner and all intervenors.8751.61(17A) Effect of a declaratory order. A declaratory order has the same status and binding effect as a final order issued in a contested case proceeding. It is binding on the division, the petitioner, and any intervenors (who consent to be bound) and is applicable only in circumstances where the relevant facts and the law involved are indistinguishable from those on which the order was based. As to all other persons, a declaratory order serves only as precedent and is not binding on the division. The issuance of a declaratory order constitutes final agency action on the petition.8751.62 Reserved.8751.63 Reserved.8751.64 Reserved.division vcontested cases8751.65(17A) Scope and applicability. This division applies to contested case proceedings conducted by the division of labor services. Rules of the employment appeal board are applicable for some contested cases regarding boiler safety, elevator safety, and occupational safety and health inspections and contractor registration investigations.8751.66(17A) Definitions. Except where otherwise specifically defined by law:
"Contested case" means a proceeding defined by Iowa Code section 17A.2(5) and includes a no factual dispute contested case under 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 14.
"Issuance" means the date of mailing of a decision or order or date of delivery if service is by other means unless another date is specified in the order.
"Party" means each person or agency named or admitted as a party or properly seeking and entitled as of right to be admitted as a party.
"Presiding officer" means the labor commissioner or designee.
"Proposed decision" means the presiding officer’s recommended findings of fact, conclusions of law, decision, and order in a contested case in which the division of labor services did not preside.
8751.67(17A) Time requirements. 1.67(1) Time shall be computed as provided in Iowa Code subsection 4.1(34). 1.67(2) For good cause, the presiding officer may extend or shorten the time to take any action, except as precluded by statute. Except for good cause stated in the record, before extending or shortening the time to take any action, the presiding officer shall afford all parties an opportunity to be heard or to file written arguments.8751.68(17A) Requests for contested case proceeding. Any person claiming an entitlement to a contested case proceeding shall file a written request for such a proceeding within the time specified by the particular rules or statutes governing the subject matter or, in the absence of such law, the time specfied in the division’s action in question.The request for a contested case proceeding should state the name and address of the requester, identify the specific division action which is disputed, and include a short and plain statement of the issues of material fact in dispute. If the requester is represented by a lawyer, identify the provisions of law or precedent requiring or authorizing the holding of a contested case proceeding in the particular circumstances involved.8751.69(17A) Notice of hearing. 1.69(1) Delivery. Delivery of the notice of hearing constitutes the commencement of the contested case proceeding. Delivery may be executed by: a. Personal service as provided in the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure; b. Certified mail, return receipt requested; c. First-class mail; d. Publication, as provided in the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure; or e. If requested, by facsimile, or electronic transmission. 1.69(2) Contents. The notice of hearing shall contain the following information: a. A statement of the time, place, and nature of the hearing; b. A statement of the legal authority and jurisdiction under which the hearing is to be held; c. A reference to the particular sections of the statutes and rules involved; d. A short and plain statement of the matters asserted. If the division or other party is unable to state the matters in detail at the time the notice is served, the initial notice may be limited to a statement of the issues involved. Thereafter, upon application, a more definite and detailed statement shall be furnished; e. Identification of all parties including the name, address and telephone number of the person who will act as attorney for the commissioner or division and of parties’ counsel where known; f. Reference to the procedural rules governing conduct of the contested case proceeding; g. Reference to the procedural rules governing informal settlement. The parties are encouraged to meet informally to resolve issues that might culminate in a resolution of issues in the contested case; h. Identification of the presiding officer, if known. If not known, a description of who will serve as presiding officer; i. A statement that a party, at its own expense, may be represented by counsel in the contested case; and j. Notification of the time period in which a party may request, pursuant to 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 15(1), and rule 1.70(17A), that the presiding officer be an administrative law judge.8751.70(17A) Presiding officer. 1.70(1) Any party who wishes to request that the presiding officer assigned to render a proposed decision be an administrative law judge employed by the department of inspections and appeals must file a written request within 20 days, or such other time period as the order may prescribe, after service of a notice of hearing which identifies or describes the presiding officer as the labor commissioner. 1.70(2) The division may deny the request only upon a finding that one or more of the following apply: a. Neither the division nor the commissioner under whose authority the contested case is to take place is a named party to the proceeding or a real party in interest to that proceeding. b. There is a compelling need to expedite issuance of a final decision in order to protect the public health, safety, or welfare. c. The case involves significant policy issues of first impression that are inextricably intertwined with the factual issues presented. d. The demeanor of the witnesses is likely to be dispositive in resolving the disputed factual issues. e. Funds are unavailable to pay the costs of an administrative law judge and an interagency appeal. f. The request was not timely filed. g. The request is not consistent with a specified statute. 1.70(3) The division will issue a written ruling specifying the grounds for its decision within 20 days after a request for an administrative law judge is filed. 1.70(4) Except as provided otherwise by another provision of law, all rulings by an administrative law judge acting as presiding officer are subject to appeal to the commissioner. A party must seek any available intra-agency appeal in order to exhaust adequate administrative remedies. 1.70(5) Unless otherwise provided by law, the commissioner, when reviewing a proposed decision upon intra-agency appeal, shall have the powers of and shall comply with the provisions of this division which apply to presiding officers.8751.71(17A) Waiver of procedures. Unless otherwise precluded by law, the parties in a contested case proceeding may waive any provision of this division. However, the division in its discretion may refuse to give effect to such a waiver when it deems the waiver to be inconsistent with the public interest.8751.72(17A) Disqualification. 1.72(1) A presiding officer or other person shall withdraw from participation in the making of any proposed or final decision in a contested case if that person: a. Has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or a representative of a party; b. Has personally investigated, prosecuted or advocated, in connection with that case, the specific controversy underlying that case, or another pending factually related contested case, or a pending factually related controversy that may culminate in a contested case involving the same parties; c. Is subject to the authority, direction or discretion of any person who has personally investigated, prosecuted or advocated in connection with that contested case, the specific controversy underlying that contested case, or a pending factually related contested case or controversy involving the same parties; d. Has acted as counsel to any person who is a private party to that proceeding within the past two years; e. Has a personal financial interest in the outcome of the case or any other significant personal interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the case; f. Has a spouse or relative within the third degree of relationship that (1) is a party to the case, or an officer, director or trustee of a party; (2) is a lawyer in the case; (3) is known to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the case; or (4) is likely to be a material witness in the case; or g. Has any other legally sufficient cause to withdraw from participation in the decision making in that case. 1.72(2) The term “personally investigated” means taking affirmative steps to interview witnesses directly or to obtain documents or other information directly. The term “personally investigated” does not include general direction and supervision of assigned investigators, unsolicited receipt of information which is relayed to assigned investigators, review of another person’s investigative work product in the course of determining whether there is probable cause to initiate a proceeding, or exposure to factual information while performing other division functions, including fact gathering for purposes other than investigation of the matter which culminates in a contested case. Factual information relevant to the merits of a contested case received by a person who later serves as presiding officer in that case shall be disclosed if required by 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 19(3), and subrules 1.72(3) and 1.86(9). 1.72(3) In a situation where a presiding officer or other person knows of information which might reasonably be deemed to be a basis for disqualification and decides voluntary withdrawal is unnecessary, that person shall submit the relevant information for the record by affidavit and shall provide for the record a statement of the reasons for the determination that withdrawal is unnecessary. 1.72(4) If a party asserts disqualification on any appropriate ground, including those listed in subrule 1.72(1), the party shall file a motion supported by an affidavit pursuant to 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 19(7). The motion must be filed as soon as practicable after the reason alleged in the motion becomes known to the party. If, during the course of the hearing, a party first becomes aware of evidence of bias or other grounds for disqualification, the party may move for disqualification but must establish the grounds by the introduction of evidence into the record.If the presiding officer determines that disqualification is appropriate, the presiding officer or other person shall withdraw. If the presiding officer determines that withdrawal is not required, the presiding officer shall enter an order to that effect. A party asserting disqualification may seek an interlocutory appeal under rule 1.88(17A) and seek a stay under rule 1.93(17A).8751.73(17A) Consolidation—severance. 1.73(1) Consolidation. The presiding officer may consolidate any or all matters at issue in two or more contested case proceedings where (a) the matters at issue involve common parties or common questions of fact or law; (b) consolidation would expedite and simplify consideration of the issues involved; and (c) consolidation would not adversely affect the rights of any of the parties to those proceedings. 1.73(2) Severance. The presiding officer may, for good cause shown, order any contested case proceedings or portions thereof severed.8751.74(17A) Answer. 1.74(1) Answer. a. Any answer required in a contested case proceeding shall be filed within 20 days of delivery of the notice of hearing or subsequent order of the presiding officer, unless otherwise ordered. b. An answer shall state in separately numbered paragraphs the following: (1) The persons or entities on whose behalf the petition is filed; (2) The particular provisions of statutes and rules involved; (3) The relief demanded and the facts and law relied upon for such relief; and (4) The name, address and telephone number of the party and the party’s attorney, if any. c. A party may move to dismiss or apply for a more definite and detailed statement when appropriate.An answer shall show on whose behalf it is filed and specifically admit, deny, or otherwise answer all material allegations of the notice of hearing. It shall state any facts deemed to show an affirmative defense and contain as many additional defenses as the pleader may claim.Any allegation in the notice of hearing not denied in the answer is considered admitted. The presiding officer may refuse to consider any defense not raised in the answer which could have been raised on the basis of facts known when the answer was filed if any party would be prejudiced. 1.74(2) Amendment. Any notice of hearing, answer, or other charging document may be amended before a responsive pleading has been filed. Amendments to pleadings after a responsive pleading has been filed and to an answer may be allowed with the consent of the other parties or in the discretion of the presiding officer who may impose terms or grant a continuance.8751.75(17A) Pleadings, service and filing. 1.75(1) Pleadings may be required by rule, by the notice of hearing, or by order of the presiding officer. 1.75(2) When service is required. Except where otherwise provided by law, every pleading, motion, document, or other paper filed in a contested case proceeding and every paper relating to discovery in a proceeding shall be served upon each of the parties of record to the proceeding, including the person designated as attorney for the division, simultaneously with their filing. Except for the original notice of hearing and an application for rehearing as provided in Iowa Code section 17A.16(2), the party filing a document is responsible for service on all parties. 1.75(3) How service is made. Service upon a party represented by an attorney shall be made upon the attorney unless otherwise ordered. Service is made by delivery or by mailing a copy to the person’s last-known address. Service by mail is complete upon mailing, except where otherwise specifically provided by statute, rule, or order. 1.75(4) When filing is required. After the notice of hearing, all pleadings, motions, documents or other papers in a contested case proceeding shall be filed with the division at 1000 East Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. All pleadings, motions, documents or other papers that are required to be served upon a party shall be filed simultaneously with the division. 1.75(5) When filing is made. Except where otherwise provided by law, a document is deemed filed at the time it is delivered to the division, delivered to an established courier service for immediate delivery to the division, or mailed by first-class mail or state interoffice mail to the division, so long as there is proof of mailing. 1.75(6) Proof of mailing. Proof of mailing includes either: a legible United States Postal Service postmark on the envelope, a certificate of service, a notarized affidavit, or a certification in substantially the following form:I certify under penalty of perjury and pursuant to the laws of Iowa that, on (date of mailing), I mailed copies of (describe document) addressed to the Division of Labor Services, 1000 East Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319, and to the names and addresses of the parties listed below by depositing the same in (state: a United States post office mailbox with correct postage properly affixed, state interoffice mail, courier).(Date)(Signature)8751.76(17A) Discovery. 1.76(1) Discovery procedures applicable in civil actions are applicable in contested cases. Unless lengthened or shortened by an order of the presiding officer, time periods for compliance with discovery shall be as provided in the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure. 1.76(2) Any motion relating to discovery shall allege that the moving party has previously made a good-faith attempt to resolve the discovery issues involved with the opposing party. Motions in regard to discovery shall be ruled upon by the presiding officer. Opposing parties shall be afforded the opportunity to respond within ten days of the filing of the motion unless the time is shortened as provided in subrule 1.76(1). The presiding officer may rule on the basis of the written motion and any response, or may order argument on the motion. 1.76(3) Evidence obtained in discovery may be used in the contested case proceeding if that evidence would otherwise be admissible in that proceeding.8751.77(17A) Subpoenas. 1.77(1) Issuance. a. A division subpoena shall be issued to a party upon written request. The request shall include the name, address, and telephone number of the requesting party. In the absence of good cause for permitting later action, a request for a subpoena must be received at least three days before the scheduled hearing. b. Except to the extent otherwise provided by law, parties are responsible for service of their own subpoenas and payment of witness fees and mileage expenses. 1.77(2) Motion to quash or modify. The presiding officer may quash or modify a subpoena for any lawful reason upon motion in accordance with the Iowa Rules of Civil Procedure. A motion to quash or modify a subpoena shall be set for argument promptly.8751.78(17A) Motions. 1.78(1) No technical form for motions is required. However, prehearing motions must be in writing, state the grounds for relief, and state the relief sought, unless otherwise permitted by the presiding officer. 1.78(2) Any party may file a written response to a motion within ten days after the motion is served, unless the time period is extended or shortened by the presiding officer. The presiding officer may consider a failure to respond within the required time period in ruling on a motion. 1.78(3) The presiding officer may schedule oral argument on any motion. 1.78(4) Motions pertaining to the hearing, except motions for summary judgment, must be filed and served at least ten days prior to the date of hearing unless there is good cause for permitting later action or the time for such action is lengthened or shortened by an order of the presiding officer. 1.78(5) Motions for summary judgment. Motions for summary judgment shall comply with the requirements of Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 237 and shall be subject to disposition according to the requirements of that rule to the extent such requirements are not inconsistent with the provisions of this rule or any other provision of law governing the procedure in contested cases.Motions for summary judgment must be filed and served at least 45 days prior to the scheduled hearing date, or other time period determined by the presiding officer. Any party resisting the motion shall file and serve a resistance within 15 days, unless otherwise ordered by the presiding officer, from the date a copy of the motion was served. The time fixed for hearing or nonoral submission shall be not less than 20 days after the filing of the motion, unless a shorter time is ordered by the presiding officer. A summary judgment order rendered on all issues in a contested case is subject to rehearing pursuant to rule 1.92(17A) and appeal pursuant to rule 1.91(17A).8751.79(17A) Prehearing conference. For good cause the presiding officer may permit variances from this rule. 1.79(1) Any party may request a prehearing conference. A written request for prehearing conference or an order for prehearing conference on the presiding officer’s own motion shall be filed not less than seven days prior to the hearing date. A prehearing conference shall be scheduled not less than three business days prior to the hearing date.Written notice of the prehearing conference shall be given by the presiding officer to all parties. 1.79(2) Each party shall bring to the prehearing conference: a. A final list of the witnesses who the party anticipates will testify at the hearing. Witnesses not listed may be excluded from testifying unless there was good cause for the failure to include their names; and b. A final list of exhibits which the party anticipates will be introduced at the hearing. Exhibits other than rebuttal exhibits that are not listed may be excluded from admission into evidence unless there was good cause for the failure to include them.Witness or exhibit lists may be amended subsequent to the prehearing conference within the time limits established by the presiding officer at the prehearing conference. Any such amendments must be served on all parties. 1.79(3) In addition to the requirements of subrule 1.79(2), the parties at a prehearing conference may: a. Enter into stipulations of law or fact; b. Enter into stipulations on the admissibility of exhibits; c. Identify matters which the parties intend to request be officially noticed; d. Enter into stipulations for waiver of any provision of law; and e. Consider any additional matters which will expedite the hearing. 1.79(4) Prehearing conferences shall be conducted by telephone unless otherwise ordered. Parties shall exchange and receive witness and exhibit lists in advance of a telephone prehearing conference.8751.80(17A) Continuances. Unless otherwise provided, applications for continuances shall be made to the presiding officer. 1.80(1) A written application for a continuance shall: a. Be made at the earliest possible time and no less than seven days before the hearing except in case of unanticipated emergencies; b. State the specific reasons for the request; and c. Be signed by the requesting party or the party’s representative.An oral application for a continuance may be made if the presiding officer waives the requirement for a written motion. However, a party making an oral application for a continuance must confirm that request by written application within five days after the oral request unless that requirement is waived by the presiding officer. No application for continuance shall be made or granted without notice to all parties except in an emergency where notice is not feasible. The division may waive notice of such requests for a particular case or an entire class of cases. 1.80(2) In determining whether to grant a continuance, the presiding officer may consider: a. Prior continuances; b. The interests of all parties; c. The likelihood of informal settlement; d. The existence of an emergency; e. Any objection; f. Any applicable time requirements; g. The existence of a conflict in the schedules of counsel, parties, or witnesses; h. The timeliness of the request; and i. Other relevant factors.The presiding officer may require documentation of any grounds for continuance.8751.81(17A) Withdrawals. A party requesting a contested case proceeding may withdraw that request prior to the hearing. Unless otherwise provided, a withdrawal shall be with prejudice.8751.82(17A) Intervention. 1.82(1) Motion. A motion for leave to intervene in a contested case proceeding shall state the grounds for the proposed intervention, the position and interest of the proposed intervenor, and the possible impact of intervention on the proceeding. A proposed answer or petition in intervention shall be attached to the motion. Any party may file a response within 14 days of service of the motion to intervene unless the time period is extended or shortened by the presiding officer. 1.82(2) When filed. Motion for leave to intervene shall be filed as early in the proceeding as possible to avoid adverse impact on existing parties or the conduct of the proceeding. Unless otherwise ordered, a motion for leave to intervene shall be filed before the prehearing conference, if any, or at least 20 days before the date scheduled for hearing. Any later motion must contain a statement of good cause for the failure to file in a timely manner. 1.82(3) Grounds for intervention. The movant shall demonstrate that (a) intervention would not unduly prolong the proceedings or otherwise prejudice the rights of existing parties; (b) the movant is likely to be aggrieved or adversely affected by a final order in the proceeding; and (c) the interests of the movant are not adequately represented by existing parties. 1.82(4) Effect of intervention. If appropriate, the presiding officer may order consolidation of the petitions and briefs of different parties whose interests are aligned with each other and limit the number of representatives allowed to participate actively in the proceedings. A person granted leave to intervene is a party to the proceeding. The order granting intervention may restrict the issues that may be raised by the intervenor or otherwise condition the intervenor’s participation in the proceeding. 1.82(5) Nonresponsive intervenor. If a negotiated settlement is reached between all parties except the intervenor, the settlement shall be set down in writing and shall contain the various points of settlement and stipulations.Input from intervenors may assist in the settlement of a contested case. The division will assume an intervenor does not object to a settlement if the intervenor does not respond to the division by signing the settlement or presenting written comments on the settlement within 14 days from the date the settlement is sent for signature. If the parties, other than the intervenor, wish to file the settlement over the objection of the intervenor, the parties shall attach the intervenor’s written objection and a statement as to why the intervenor’s objection was not acceptable to the other parties and should not block the entering of a final order.8751.83(17A) Hearing procedures. 1.83(1) The presiding officer presides at the hearing, and may rule on motions, require briefs, issue a proposed decision, and issue such orders and rulings as will ensure the orderly conduct of the proceedings. 1.83(2) All objections shall be timely made and stated on the record. 1.83(3) Parties have the right to participate or to be represented in all hearings or prehearing conferences related to their case. Partnerships, corporations, or associations may be represented by any member, officer, director, or duly authorized agent. Any party may be represented by an attorney or another person authorized by law. 1.83(4) Subject to terms and conditions prescribed by the presiding officer, parties have the right to introduce evidence on issues of material fact, cross-examine witnesses present at the hearing as necessary for a full and true disclosure of the facts, present evidence in rebuttal, and submit briefs and engage in oral argument. 1.83(5) The presiding officer shall maintain the decorum of the hearing and may refuse to admit or may expel anyone whose conduct is disorderly. 1.83(6) Witnesses may be sequestered during the hearing. 1.83(7) The presiding officer shall conduct the hearing in the following manner: a. The presiding officer shall give an opening statement briefly describing the nature of the proceedings; b. The parties shall be given an opportunity to present opening statements; c. Parties shall present their cases in the sequence determined by the presiding officer; d. Each witness shall be sworn or affirmed by the presiding officer or the court reporter, and be subject to examination and cross-examination. The presiding officer may limit questioning in a manner consistent with law; e. When all parties and witnesses have been heard, parties may be given the opportunity to present final arguments. 1.83(8) Telephone or video conferencing proceedings. The presiding officer may resolve preliminary procedural motions by telephone or video conference in which all parties have an opportunity to participate. Other telephone or video proceedings may be held with the consent of all parties. The presiding officer will determine the location of the parties and witnesses for telephone hearings. The convenience of the witnesses or parties, as well as the nature of the case, will be considered when location is chosen.8751.84(17A) Evidence. 1.84(1) The presiding officer shall rule on admissibility of evidence and may, where appropriate, take official notice of facts in accordance with all applicable requirements of law. 1.84(2) Stipulation of facts is encouraged. The presiding officer may make a decision based on stipulated facts. 1.84(3) Evidence in the proceeding shall be confined to the issues as to which the parties received notice prior to the hearing unless the parties waive their right to such notice or the presiding officer determines that good cause justifies expansion of the issues. If the presiding officer decides to admit evidence on issues outside the scope of the notice over the objection of a party who did not have actual notice of those issues, that party, upon timely request, shall receive a continuance sufficient to amend pleadings and to prepare on the additional issue. 1.84(4) The party seeking admission of an exhibit must provide opposing parties with an opportunity to examine the exhibit prior to the ruling on its admissibility. Copies of documents should normally be provided to opposing parties.All exhibits admitted into evidence shall be appropriately marked and be made part of the record. 1.84(5) Any party may object to specific evidence or may request limits on the scope of any examination or cross-examination. Such an objection shall be accompanied by a brief statement of the grounds upon which it is based. The objection, the ruling on the objection, and the reasons for the ruling shall be noted in the record. The presiding officer may rule on the objection at the time it is made or may reserve a ruling until the written decision. 1.84(6) Whenever evidence is ruled inadmissible, the party offering that evidence may submit an offer of proof on the record. The party making the offer of proof for excluded oral testimony shall briefly summarize the testimony or, with permission of the presiding officer, present the testimony. If the excluded evidence consists of a document or exhibit, it shall be marked as part of an offer of proof and inserted in the record.8751.85(17A) Default. 1.85(1) If a party fails to appear or participate in a contested case proceeding after proper service of notice, the presiding officer may, if no adjournment is granted, enter a default decision or proceed with the hearing and render a decision in the absence of the party. 1.85(2) Where appropriate and not contrary to law, any party may move for default against a party who has requested the contested case proceeding and has failed to file a required pleading or has failed to appear after proper service. 1.85(3) Default decisions or decisions rendered on the merits after a party has failed to appear or participate in a contested case proceeding become final agency action unless (a) within 15 days after the date of notification or mailing of the decision, a motion to vacate is filed and served on all parties or (b) an appeal of a decision on the merits is timely initiated within the time provided by rule 1.91(17A). A motion to vacate must state all facts relied upon by the moving party which establish that good cause existed for that party’s failure to appear or participate at the contested case proceeding. Each fact so stated must be substantiated by at least one sworn affidavit of a person with personal knowledge of each such fact. The affidavit(s) must be attached to the motion. 1.85(4) The time for further appeal of a decision for which a timely motion to vacate has been filed is stayed pending a decision on the motion to vacate. 1.85(5) Properly substantiated and timely filed motions to vacate shall be granted only for good cause shown. The burden of proof as to good cause is on the moving party. Adverse parties shall have ten days to respond to a motion to vacate. Adverse parties shall be allowed to conduct discovery as to the issue of good cause and to present evidence on the issue prior to a decision on the motion, if a request to do so is included in that party’s response. 1.85(6) “Good cause” for purposes of this rule shall have the same meaning as “good cause” for setting aside a default judgment under Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 236. 1.85(7) A decision denying a motion to vacate is subject to further appeal within the time limit allowed for further appeal of a decision on the merits in the contested case proceeding. A decision granting a motion to vacate is subject to interlocutory appeal by the adverse party pursuant to rule 1.88(17A). 1.85(8) If a motion to vacate is granted and no timely interlocutory appeal has been taken, the presiding officer shall issue another notice of hearing and the contested case shall proceed accordingly. 1.85(9) A default decision may award any relief consistent with the request for relief made in the petition and embraced in its issues. If the defaulting party has appeared, the default decision cannot exceed the relief demanded. 1.85(10) A default decision may provide either that the default decision is to be stayed pending a timely motion to vacate or that the default decision is to take effect immediately, subject to a request for stay under rule 1.93(17A).8751.86(17A) Ex parte communication. 1.86(1) Prohibited communications. Unless required for the disposition of ex parte matters specifically authorized by statute, following issuance of the notice of hearing, there shall be no communication, directly or indirectly, between the presiding officer and any party or representative of any party or any other person with a direct or indirect interest in the case in connection with any issue of fact or law in the case except upon notice and opportunity for all parties to participate. This does not prohibit persons jointly assigned such tasks from communicating with each other. Nothing in this provision is intended to preclude the presiding officer from communicating with members of the division or seeking the advice or help of persons other than those with a personal interest in, or those engaged in personally investigating as defined in subrule 1.72(2), prosecuting, or advocating in, either the case under consideration or a pending factually related case involving the same parties as long as those persons do not directly or indirectly communicate to the presiding officer any ex parte communications they have received of a type that the presiding officer would be prohibited from receiving or that furnish, augment, diminish, or modify the evidence in the record. 1.86(2) Prohibitions on ex parte communications commence with the issuance of the notice of hearing in a contested case and continue for as long as the case is pending. 1.86(3) Written, oral or other forms of communication are “ex parte” if made without notice and opportunity for all parties to participate. 1.86(4) To avoid prohibited ex parte communications, notice must be given in a manner reasonably calculated to give all parties a fair opportunity to participate. Notice of written communications shall be provided in compliance with rule 1.75(17A) and may be supplemented by telephone, facsimile, electronic mail or other means of notification. Where permitted, oral communications may be initiated through conference telephone calls including all parties or their representatives. 1.86(5) Persons who jointly act as presiding officer in a pending contested case may communicate with each other without notice or opportunity for parties to participate. 1.86(6) The commissioner and other persons may be present in deliberations or otherwise advise the presiding officer without notice or opportunity for parties to participate as long as they are not disqualified from participating in the making of a proposed or final decision under any provision of law and they comply with subrule 1.86(1). 1.86(7) Communications with the presiding officer involving uncontested scheduling or procedural matters do not require notice or opportunity for parties to participate. Parties should notify other parties prior to initiating such contact with the presiding officer when feasible and shall notify other parties when seeking to continue hearings or other deadlines pursuant to rule 1.80(17A). 1.86(8) Disclosure of prohibited communications. A presiding officer who receives a prohibited ex parte communication during the pendency of a contested case must initially determine if the effect of the communication is so prejudicial that the presiding officer should be disqualified. If the presiding officer determines that disqualification is warranted, a copy of any prohibited written communication, all written responses to the communication, a written summary stating the substance of any prohibited oral or other communication not available in written form for disclosure, all responses made, and the identity of each person from whom the presiding officer received a prohibited ex parte communication shall be submitted for inclusion in the record under seal by protective order or disclosed. If the presiding officer determines that disqualification is not warranted, such documents shall be submitted for inclusion in the record and served on all parties. Any party desiring to rebut the prohibited communication must be allowed the opportunity to do so upon written request filed within ten days after notice of the communication. 1.86(9) Promptly after being assigned to serve as presiding officer at any stage in a contested case proceeding, a presiding officer shall disclose to all parties material factual information received through ex parte communication prior to such assignment unless the factual information has already been or shortly will be disclosed pursuant to Iowa Code section 17A.13(2) or through discovery. Factual information contained in an investigative report or similar document need not be separately disclosed by the presiding officer as long as such documents have been or will shortly be provided to the parties. 1.86(10) The presiding officer may render a proposed or final decision imposing appropriate sanctions for violations of this rule including default, a decision against the offending party, censure, or suspension or revocation of the privilege to practice before the division. Violation of ex parte communication prohibitions by division personnel shall be reported to the commissioner for possible sanctions including censure, suspension, dismissal, or other disciplinary action.8751.87(17A) Recording costs. Upon request, the division shall provide a copy of the whole or any portion of the record at cost. The cost of preparing a copy of the record or of transcribing the hearing record shall be paid by the requesting party.Parties who request that a hearing be recorded by certified shorthand reporters rather than by electronic means shall bear the cost of that recordation, unless otherwise provided by law.8751.88(17A) Interlocutory appeals. Upon written request of a party or on its own motion, the commissioner may review an interlocutory order. In determining whether to do so, the commissioner shall weigh the extent to which the granting of the interlocutory appeal would expedite final resolution of the case and the extent to which review of that interlocutory order at the time it reviews the proposed decision of the presiding officer would provide an adequate remedy. Any request for interlocutory review must be filed within 14 days of issuance of the challenged order, but no later than the time for compliance with the order or the date of hearing, whichever is first.8751.89(17A) Final decision—nonlicense decision. 1.89(1) When the commissioner presides over the reception of evidence at the hearing, the commissioner’s decision is a final decision. 1.89(2) When the commissioner does not preside at the reception of evidence, the presiding officer shall make a proposed decision. The proposed decision becomes the final decision of the division without further proceedings unless there is an appeal to, or review on motion of, the commissioner within the time provided in rule 1.91(17A). 1.89(3) A settlement agreement, when signed by parties and the commissioner or presiding officer, is binding on all parties.8751.90(17A) Final decision—license decision. In addition to the requirements of rule 1.89(17A), options are available for a final decision in a case involving a license, permit, registration, commission, or similar authorization. The decision may include the following:
Exoneration.
Revocation of license.
Suspension of license until further order or for a specific period.
Nonrenewal of license.
Prohibited permanently from engaging in specified procedures or practices until further order or for a specific period.
Probation.
Require additional education or training.
Require reexamination.
Order a physical examination.
Impose civil penalty.
Issue citation.
Such other sanctions allowed by law as may be appropriate.
8751.91(17A) Appeals and review. 1.91(1) Appeal by party. Any adversely affected party may appeal a proposed decision to the commissioner within 30 days after issuance of the proposed decision. 1.91(2) Review. The commissioner may initiate review of a proposed decision on the commissioner’s own motion at any time within 30 days following the issuance of such a decision. 1.91(3) Notice of appeal. An appeal of a proposed decision is initiated by filing a timely notice of appeal with the division. The notice of appeal must be signed by the appealing party or a representative of that party and contain a certificate of service. The notice shall specify: a. The parties initiating the appeal; b. The proposed decision or order appealed from; c. The specific findings or conclusions to which exception is taken and any other exceptions to the decision or order; d. The relief sought; and e. The grounds for relief. 1.91(4) Requests to present additional evidence. A party may request the taking of additional evidence only by establishing that the evidence is material, that good cause existed for the failure to present the evidence at the hearing, and that the party has not waived the right to present the evidence. A written request to present additional evidence must be filed with the notice of appeal or, by a nonappealing party, within 14 days of service of the notice of appeal. The commissioner may remand a case to the presiding officer for further hearing or may itself preside at the taking of additional evidence. 1.91(5) Scheduling. The division shall issue a schedule for consideration of the appeal. 1.91(6) Briefs and arguments. Unless otherwise ordered, within 20 days of the notice of appeal or order for review, each appealing party may file exceptions and briefs. Within 20 days thereafter, any party may file a responsive brief. Briefs shall cite any applicable legal authority and specify relevant portions of the record in that proceeding. Written requests to present oral argument shall be filed with the briefs. The commissioner may resolve the appeal on the briefs or provide an opportunity for oral argument. The commissioner may shorten or extend the briefing period as appropriate.8751.92(17A) Applications for rehearing. 1.92(1) By whom filed. Any party to a contested case proceeding may file an application for rehearing from a final order. 1.92(2) Content of application. The application for rehearing shall state on whose behalf it is filed, the specific grounds for rehearing, and the relief sought. In addition, the application shall state whether the applicant desires reconsideration of all or part of the division’s decision on the existing record and whether, on the basis of the grounds enumerated in subrule 1.91(4), the applicant requests an opportunity to submit additional evidence. 1.92(3) Time of filing. The application shall be filed with the division within 20 days after issuance of the final decision. 1.92(4) Notice to other parties. A copy of the application shall be timely mailed by the applicant to all parties of record not joining therein. If the application does not contain a certificate of service, the division shall serve copies on all parties. 1.92(5) Disposition. Any application for a rehearing shall be deemed denied unless the division grants the application within 20 days after its filing.8751.93(17A) Stays of agency actions. 1.93(1) When available. a. Any party to a contested case proceeding may petition the division for a stay of an order issued in that proceeding or for other temporary remedies, pending review by the division. The petition shall be filed with the notice of appeal and shall state the reasons justifying a stay or other temporary remedy. The commissioner may rule on the stay or authorize the presiding officer to do so. b. Any party to a contested case proceeding may petition the division for a stay or other temporary remedies pending judicial review of all or part of that proceeding. The petition shall state the reasons justifying a stay or other temporary remedy. 1.93(2) When granted. In determining whether to grant a stay, the presiding officer or the commissioner shall consider the factors listed in 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 23(5c). 1.93(3) Vacation. A stay may be vacated by the issuing authority upon application of the division or any other party.8751.94(17A) No factual dispute contested cases. If the parties agree that no dispute of material fact exists as to a matter that would be a contested case if such a dispute of fact existed, the parties may present all relevant admissible evidence either by stipulation or otherwise as agreed by the parties, without necessity for the production of evidence at an evidentiary hearing. If such agreement is reached, a jointly submitted schedule detailing the method and timetable for submission of the record, briefs and oral argument should be submitted to the presiding officer for approval as soon as practicable. If the parties cannot agree, any party may file and serve a motion for summary judgment pursuant to the rules governing such motions.8751.95(17A) Emergency adjudicative proceedings. 1.95(1) Necessary emergency action. To the extent necessary to prevent or avoid immediate danger to the public health, safety, or welfare, and consistent with the Constitution and other provisions of law, the division may issue a written order in compliance with 1998 Iowa Acts, chapter 1202, section 21, to suspend a license in whole or in part, order the cessation of any continuing activity, order affirmative action, or take other action within the jurisdiction of the division by emergency adjudicative order. Before issuing an emergency adjudicative order the division shall consider factors including, but not limited to, the following: a. Whether there has been a sufficient factual investigation to ensure that the division is proceeding on the basis of reliable information; b. Whether the specific circumstances which pose immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare have been identified and determined to be continuing; c. Whether the person required to comply with the emergency adjudicative order may continue to engage in other activities without posing immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare; d. Whether imposition of monitoring requirements or other interim safeguards would be sufficient to protect the public health, safety or welfare; and e. Whether the specific action contemplated by the division is necessary to avoid the immediate danger. 1.95(2) Issuance of order. a. An emergency adjudicative order shall contain findings of fact, conclusions of law, and policy reasons to justify the determination of an immediate danger in the division’s decision to take immediate action. b. The written emergency adjudicative order shall be immediately delivered to persons who are required to comply with the order by utilizing one or more of the following procedures: (1) Personal delivery; (2) Certified mail, return receipt requested, to the last address on file with the division; (3) Certified mail to the last address on file with the division; (4) First-class mail to the last address on file with the division; or (5) Fax may be used as the sole method of delivery if the person required to comply with the order has filed a written request that division orders be sent by fax and has provided a fax number for that purpose. c. To the degree practicable, the division shall select the procedure for providing written notice that best ensures prompt, reliable delivery. 1.95(3) Oral notice. Unless the written emergency adjudicative order is provided by personal delivery on the same day that the order issues, the division shall make reasonable immediate efforts to contact by telephone the persons who are required to comply with the order. 1.95(4) Completion of proceedings. After the issuance of an emergency adjudicative order, the division shall proceed as quickly as feasible to complete any proceedings that would be required if the matter did not involve an immediate danger.Issuance of a written emergency adjudicative order shall include notification of the date on which division proceedings are scheduled for completion. After issuance of an emergency adjudicative order, continuance of further division proceedings to a later date will be granted only in compelling circumstances upon application in writing.8751.96 Reserved.8751.97 Reserved.8751.98 Reserved.DIVISION VIINTEREST, FEES AND CHARGES8751.99(17A, 91) Interest. The commissioner may assess and collect interest on fees, penalties, and other amounts due the division. Interest shall accrue from the first of the month following the date when payment was due. If it becomes necessary to initiate legal actions to recover the money, the commissioner may recover court costs and attorney fees in addition to the interest. The interest rate shall be 10 percent per annum.8751.100 Reserved.DIVISION VIIWAIVERS AND VARIANCES FROM ADMINISTRATIVE RULES8751.101(17A, 91) Scope. 1.101(1) These rules provide general procedures for waivers and variances from division rules. Specific waiver or variance procedures must be followed when applicable. No waiver or variance may be granted from a requirement or duty imposed by statute or when granting a waiver or variance would cause a denial of federal funds or be inconsistent with federal statute or regulation. Any waiver or variance must be consistent with statute. These waiver and variance procedures do not apply to rules that merely define the meaning of a statute or other provision of law unless the division possesses delegated authority to bind the courts with its rules. 1.101(2) Waivers or variances of rules may be granted either in response to a petition for waiver or variance filed within a contested case proceeding, or in response to a petition filed in the absence of a contested case proceeding.8751.102(17A, 91) Petitions. If the petition for waiver or variance relates to a pending contested case, the petition shall be filed in the contested case proceeding. Other petitions must be submitted in writing to Labor Commissioner, 1000 E. Grand Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50319. In either case, the petition shall include the following information where applicable: 1.102(1) The name, address, case file number or state identification number, and telephone number of the person requesting the waiver or variance and the person’s representative, if any. 1.102(2) A description and citation of the specific rule to which the petition applies. 1.102(3) The specific waiver or variance requested, including the precise scope and time period for the waiver or variance. 1.102(4) The relevant facts the petitioner believes justify a waiver or variance. 1.102(5) A description of any prior contacts between the division and the petitioner relating to the subject matter of the proposed waiver or variance, including but not limited to a list or description of division licenses, registrations, or permits held by the petitioner, and any notices of violation, citations, contested case hearings, or investigative reports relating to the subject matter of the proposed waiver or variance within the last five years. 1.102(6) The name, address, and telephone number of any public agency or political subdivision which also regulates the activity in question or which might be affected by the grant of a waiver or variance. 1.102(7) Any information known to the petitioner regarding the division’s treatment of similar cases. 1.102(8) The name, address, and telephone number of all persons inside or outside state government who would be adversely affected by the grant of the petition or who possess knowledge of relevant facts. 1.102(9) A signed release of information authorizing persons with knowledge regarding the request to furnish the division with information pertaining to the waiver or variance. 1.102(10) A signed statement from the petitioner attesting to the accuracy of the facts provided in the petition.8751.103(17A, 91) Notice and acknowledgment. The division will acknowledge petitions upon receipt. The division shall ensure that notice of the pendency of the petition and a concise summary of its contents have been provided to all persons to whom notice is required by any provision of law within 30 days of receipt of the petition. The division may require the petitioner to serve the notice and a concise summary on all persons to whom notice is required by any provision of law, and provide a written statement to the division attesting that notice has been provided. Notice and a concise summary may also be provided to others.8751.104(17A, 91) Review. Each petition for a waiver or variance shall be evaluated by the agency based on the unique, individual circumstances set out in the petition. Discretion to grant or deny a waiver or variance petition rests with the labor commissioner or the labor commissioner’s designee. The burden of persuasion shall be upon the petitioner. The division may request additional information relating to the requested waiver or variance from the petitioner and may conduct any necessary and appropriate investigation. 1.104(1) A waiver or variance may be granted if the division finds all of the following based on clear and convincing evidence: a. Application of the rule would pose an undue hardship on the person for whom the waiver or variance is requested; b. The provisions of a rule subject to a petition for a waiver or variance are not specifically mandated by statute or another provision of law; c. Waiver or variance of the rule in the specific circumstances would not prejudice the substantial legal rights of any person or cause a denial of federal funds; and d. Substantially equal protection of public health, safety, and welfare will be afforded by a means other than that prescribed in the particular rule for which the waiver or variance is requested. 1.104(2) Petitioners requesting permanent waivers or variances must also show that a temporary waiver or variance would be impracticable.8751.105(17A, 91) Ruling. 1.105(1) The division shall grant or deny all requests as soon as practicable, but no later than 120 days from receipt without consent of the petitioner. However, waiver or variance petitions filed in contested cases shall be granted or denied no later than the date of the decision in the contested case proceeding. Failure to grant or deny a petition within the required time period shall be deemed a denial. 1.105(2) If a waiver or variance is granted, it shall be drafted to provide the narrowest exception possible to the provisions of the rule. The ruling shall be in writing and shall include the reasons for granting or denying the petition and, if approved, the time period during which the waiver or variance is effective. The division may place any condition on a waiver or variance that the division finds desirable to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. 1.105(3) Within seven days of issuance of the ruling, a copy shall be mailed to the petitioner or the petitioner’s representative, and to any other person(s) entitled to such notice by any provision of law or rule.8751.106(17A, 91) Public availability. Subject to the provisions of Iowa Code section 17A.3(1)“e,” orders granting and denying waivers or variances shall be indexed by rule and available for public inspection.8751.107(17A, 91) Cancellation. The division may cancel a waiver or variance upon appropriate notice and hearing if the facts alleged in the petition or supplemental information provided were not true, material facts were withheld or have changed, the alternative means of compliance provided in the waiver or variance have failed to achieve the objectives of the statute, the requester has failed to comply with conditions set forth in the waiver or variance approval, or the rule or enabling Act has been amended.8751.108(17A, 91) Violations. Violation of conditions in the waiver or variance approval is the equivalent of violation of the particular rule for which the waiver or variance is granted and is subject to the same remedies or penalties.8751.109(17A, 91) Appeals. Appeal from a decision granting or denying a waiver or variance shall be in accordance with the procedures provided in Iowa Code chapter 17A. An appeal shall be taken within 30 days of the ruling. However, any appeal from a decision on a petition for waiver or variance in a contested case proceeding shall be in accordance with the procedures for appeal of the contested case decision.These rules are intended to implement Iowa Code chapters 17A, 22 and 91, 2000 Iowa Acts, House File 2206, and Executive Order Number Eleven.
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Young voters hold the power in election 2015, but will they use it?: Linda Nazareth for iPolitics
Older voters have traditionally wielded the most influence at the ballot box. But in election 2015, asks Linda Nazareth in iPolitics, will young voters step forward to seize the balance of power?
By Linda Nazareth, Sept. 12, 2015
Young people often complain about being left out of the democratic process. The demographics, however, tell us they could have plenty of influence on this federal election — if they choose to assert it.
If 2011 voter participation patterns are followed, voters on Oct. 19 will be disproportionately over the age of 55, with a large number of them older than 65. If, however, any party manages to mobilize the youth vote, we could see a significant shift in who chooses our leaders.
So are young voters going to let their parents and grandparents choose a government for them again?
We see it every election: not enough people vote, and those who do tend to be older. According to Elections Canada, the youngest voters in the 2011 federal election were the ones least likely to actually get out to the polls. Those aged 18 to 24 had a voter participation rate of 38.8 per cent and those aged 25 to 34 had a rate of 45.1 per cent.
At the other end of the spectrum, the voter participation rate for those aged 55 to 64 was 71.5 per cent, while for those aged 65 to 74 it was an incredible 75.1 per cent. No wonder politicians campaign hard in “older” neighbourhoods.
As elusive as the youth vote has been in recent years, this time around the candidates would be well-advised to go after it hard. Members of the ‘millennial’ generation — those born since 1980 — are becoming an increasingly important population bloc and a potentially important voting bloc as well.
According to a just-released study by Samara Canada, while millennials may not be voters, they are plenty political. Not only were they more likely as a group to engage in online political activities than the broader population, they were as likely as seniors to have volunteered in an election or to have signed a petition. If someone could get them to turn out this time, it could have a substantial impact on the outcome in specific ridings — perhaps on the entire election.
To get an idea of just how powerful the youth vote could be, I did a few projections. I wanted to know what the distribution of voters would probably look like if 2011 voting patterns were followed — and what it might look like if younger voters participated more like older ones.
To look at the number of potential voters by age, I used population growth figures from Statistics Canada showing the way that each age group has changed since 2011. I then applied the voter participation rates to each of those groups.
Result? If 2011 patterns are followed, we will have a rather old subset of the population choosing our next government. In fact, if the voter participation rates are the same as they were in 2011, 45 per cent of the votes cast will come from those aged 55 and above, and about 24 per cent — almost one vote in four — will come from those over 65. Just over 20 per cent of votes will come from those under 35, even though they now comprise 28 per cent of the population compared to the 20 per cent aged over 65.
But what if those aged under 35 voted in the same numbers as those aged 55 to 64? As you can see from the graph below, that would make a dramatic difference to outcome of the election. It would, in fact, give younger voters a decisive advantage over older ones in choosing the government. In this scenario, 30 per cent of voters would be under 35 — and only 21 per cent would be over 65.
Sadly, it does not look particularly likely that young voters will reverse the old trends. In a 2011 post-election survey conducted by Statistics Canada of those 18 to 34 who did not vote, around 30 per cent said it was because they “were not interested in voting”.
For them to vote, someone would have to get them interested — make them believe there’s something for them in participating in the process.
Could disturbingly high youth unemployment rates and buzz about a Canadian recession be enough to get young Canadians to vote? Possibly not. Voting among all groups does tend to go higher when the economy is weak, which is something we saw in 2011. Fresh on the heels of the global crisis and a Canadian recession (and an increase in the unemployment rate), Canadians voted in greater numbers in 2011 than they did in 2008 in all age groups … except for those under 35.
As unhappy as younger Canadians were about the economy, they clearly did not feel that any political party offered much hope to change things around. Still, the Samara study suggests that things might have been different if politicians had reached out to them a bit more. According to their research, voters under 30 were far less likely to have had direct contact with a political party or politician, whether by mail, online or in person.
So the youth vote is there for the taking, but it’s likely to be as elusive in 2015 as it was four years ago. The politician who can convince younger voters he or she can do something for them might turn that advantage into victory. Younger voters could win too — by taking ownership of their share of political power. But it’ll only happen if they want it to happen.
Linda Nazareth is an economist, author and broadcaster, and a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Columns, In the Media, Latest News, Political Tradition, Recent News
elections, iPolitics, Linda Nazareth, voting
Linda Nazareth in the Globe: If money talks older workers are more productive - but for how long? Writing in the Globe and Mail's Economy Lab blog, MLI senior fellow Linda Nazareth examines...
MLI's Linda Nazareth in The Globe and Mail: Why part-time work may be the new normal November 1, 2012 - In today's Globe and Mail, MLI Senior Fellow writes about the...
MLI Senior Fellow Linda Nazareth in The Globe and Mail: Can baby boomers afford to live apart from their significant others? March 8, 2013 - In her Economy Lab blog for The Globe and Mail, MLI...
Nazareth in the Globe: Education spending going up, but is it in the right places? Writing on the Globe and Mail's Economy Lab blog, MLI senior fellow Linda Nazareth notes...
Election 2015: John Pepall available to comment on electoral reform The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is highlighting its authors’ work on some of the major public policy...
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Elliot's round-up, Elliot
Elliot's Roundup: The hate preacher, the gay wedding and the baker
image credit: flickr Jamie Anderson
For those convinced that every Muslim is a terrorist, just try reading the news. My search came up with a few different stories. A radio station suspended for broadcasting al Qaeda recruiter's speeches, possibly the first Muslim gay wedding in the UK, and Nadia's thoughts about appearing on the Bake Off.
Twenty five hours of speeches by "the Bin Laden of the internet" were played on a Muslim radio station based in Sheffield during Ramadan. After a complaint received about Anwar Al-Awlaki the watchdog Ofcom made the judgement that the lectures:
“amounted to a direct call to action to members of the Muslim community to prepare for and carry out violent action against non-Muslim people”.
— http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/iman-fc-muslim-radio-station-sheffield-al-qaeda-anwar-al-awlaki-charlie-hebdo-hate-speech-jihadi-a7830256.html
Jahed Choudhury and Sean Rogan have been recently got married in Walsall. Their wedding has been reported as the first gay Muslim wedding in the UK.(although another gay couple- one of whom is Muslim married in Birmingham in October last year.) Jaheed has married after being bullied at school ,barred from attending the Mosque and attempting suicide because of his sexuality.
Now married and very much in love, the couple, who recently returned from their honeymoon in Spain, said they hope to show the world “that you can be gay and Muslim”.
— http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/uk-first-gay-muslim-marriage-jahed-choudhury-and-sean-rogan_uk_59648e64e4b03f144e2d4e67
They have recieved a lot of online abuse since getting married. Many comments have been made online such as:
“Just putting asian costumes doesn’t make it a Muslim marriage, there is no concept of gay marriage in Islam.
Another said: “They are not Muslims, we don’t have gays and lesbians.”
— http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/muslim-gay-wedding-couple-uk-first-online-abuse-jahed-choudhury-sean-rogan-walsall-west-midlands-a7836936.html
Nadia Hussain, winner of The Great British Bake Off 2015, has also been in the news this week. The article mentions the negativity and aggression she felt before appearing on The Great British Bake Off. Although apprehensive of being the "token Muslim" on the programme.
“We are so much more accepting than that: I never realised Britain had such open arms”... and realised “what a lovely country I live in”.
— http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/07/11/nadiya-hussain-felt-like-token-muslim-bake/
Is every Muslim a terrorist? Is every Muslim opposed of gay marriage? Has every Muslim baked cakes for the Queen? Perhaps its time to let go of some of our stereotypes and get to know some of the individuals around us who happen to be Muslims.
Please get in touch and tell us how it went.
Tagged: The Great British Bake Off, gay wedding, Muslim, hate preacher, Nadia, Iman FM, Sheffield
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Analysis: Why we all need to reflect when we talk about Gaza
Posted on 16 May, 2018 23 October, 2018 by lfiIsrael
This post, by LFI Director Jennifer Gerber, first appeared on Progress
Simple narratives that seek to cast all the blame of the Gaza conflict on one side are as naive as they are unhelpful to the cause of peace, writes Labour Friends of Israel’s Jennifer Gerber
On Tuesday Labour Friends of Israel issued a tweet about the violence on the Gaza border which blamed Hamas for the tragic death of 60 Palestinians.
Trying to sum up a complex, developing situation in 288 characters is not easy or wise. We got it wrong and I regret that.
Our chair, Joan Ryan, yesterday published a more detailed outline of our views, calling for an end to the spiral of violence and urgent measures, including restraint by Israeli forces, to prevent the loss of further human life. On behalf of LFI, she condemned unequivocally the death of any innocent peaceful protestors. Crucially, it is very important that an independent inquiry is established to identify and expose the facts surrounding what happened.
As on all topics, social media encourages us to view issues in black and white terms, stripping them of nuance, context or history. This inevitably feeds into the wider political debate.
That, perhaps, explains why the shadow foreign secretary was able to repeatedly make statements about Monday’s events which did not once mention Hamas and its explicitly stated intention of destroying Israel.
But discussing Gaza without referencing Hamas is like trying to explain the Troubles while ignoring the IRA.
It is because of Hamas’ terrorism that both Israel and Egypt impose tight restrictions on goods leaving and entering Gaza in an attempt to stop it acquiring new weaponry.
It is because of Hamas’ rocket attacks and terror tunnels that it and Israel have fought three bloody conflicts in the last decade.
And it is because of Hamas’ hijacking of the ‘March of Return’ protests that violence has repeatedly broken out on the border over the past seven weeks.
These protests were originally organised by a coalition of Palestinian grassroots groups who wished to peacefully protest against the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. They explicitly rejected confrontation, suggesting: ‘We want to send a message that we want to live in peace — with the Israelis. We’re against stone throwing or even burning tires.’
But Hamas had other ideas. ‘The March of Return will continue … until we remove this transient border,’ Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza, declared, vowing that the people of Gaza will ‘eat the livers of those besieging’ them.
In that spirit, Hamas operatives have used the cover of the peaceful protests to attempt to breach the border fence. They have hurled firebombs and explosives and opened fire on Israeli soldiers guarding it and attempted to plant improvised explosive devices alongside it. They have launched kites containing burning fuel towards agricultural land in the kibbutzim which lay just beyond it. And over the weekend, they posted pictures and maps on social media showing the shortest routes from the border fence to nearby Israeli communities should any demonstrators make it through. Nine Israeli border communities lie between 0.4 kilometres and three kilometres from the fence.
Hamas has frequently acknowledged that that many of those killed in the border clashes are members of its military wing, releasing pictures of them in combat gear.
As the response of many British Jews has shown, you do not need to support Israel’s actions to understand its fears. Failing to even acknowledge them does little to advance the debate about where we go from here.
That debate needs a plurality of views and perspectives. It needs an understanding that people can have honest disagreements without questioning their motives and intentions. And it needs to offer solutions rather than soundbites.
LFI’s Pledge for Gaza, which we launched earlier this year, attempts to offer some. As the Oslo accords outlined, Gaza should be demilitarised, which means Hamas’ effort to rearm and restock its terror arsenal must be stopped. The civil and political rights of the people of Gaza must be restored and, as the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly attempted, Hamas’ brutal rule brought to an end. The international community must honour the unfulfilled reconstruction pledges made at the 2014 Cairo conference. And the Israeli government must assist with the economic regeneration of Gaza by, for instance, adopting the plans offered by the Israeli Labor party for a seaport which which will ease the flow of goods in and out of the Strip.
Many in people in Britain feel an understandable frustration at the stalled peace process and the plight of the Palestinian people. So do I. That is why LFI has attempted, through its campaign backing the establishment of an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, to assist grassroots activists in Israel and the West Bank who wish to build bonds between people and communities on both sides of the Green Line. As in Ireland, such civil society foundations may yet prove an indispensable part of the path towards reconciliation, coexistence and the lasting peace which millions of Israelis and Palestinians long for.
As LFI has said previously, while it is right to mourn the loss of innocent civilian lives and ask questions of the Israeli Defence Force’s use of live fire, we also need to understand the complex nature of the situation on the Gaza border. Simple narratives that seek to cast all the blame on one side are as naive as they are unhelpful to the cause of peace. We recognise that in one poorly worded tweet, which did not live up to the standards we set ourselves, we failed in this regard. We would urge others, not least the Labour frontbench, to similarly reflect on the statements that they have made.
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← Analysis: Time to end Gaza’s cycle of violence – Joan Ryan MP
Analysis: A pledge and a plan for Gaza →
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Why Can’t You Email Your Doctor?
Dr. Ryan Neuhofel joins us this week to talk about his practice, NeuCare, which is a very different way to approach primary care medicine.
College: Too Costly, Too Little Learning, Too Much Underemployment
Dr. Ryan Neuhofel joins us this week to talk about his practice, NeuCare, which is a very different way to approach primary care medicine in the United States.
What is direct primary care? How should health insurance work, and how is it broken in our health care system today? How do primary care doctors currently get paid? Why is managed health care so expensive? Is direct primary care part of what a free market in medicine might look like?
You can find more information about Dr. Neuhofel’s practice at neucare.net.
Our episode on “The Statrix” is what originally prompted Dr. Neuhofel to send us an email.
Trevor Burrus: Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I’m Trevor Burrus.
Aaron Ross Powell: And I’m Aaron Powell.
Trevor Burrus: Joining us today is Dr. Ryan Neuhofel, a physician in Lawrence, Kansas. A few weeks ago, a few episodes ago, on an episode we did about the Statrix, I discussed Dr. Neu, as he goes, as his patients call him, Dr. Neu’s practice, which is called – sometimes called “concierge medicine” and sometimes called “direct primary care medicine”.
I brought it up as a really good example of something that defeats the Statrix and then Dr. Neuhofel actually contacted me, which is how this episode got started. So welcome to Free Thoughts by the way, Dr. Neu.
Ryan Neuhofel: Thank you for having me.
Trevor Burrus: And I guess we should start there. In the episode, I directed our listeners to NeuCare.net, which is the website of your practice. But if they go there, they really see that it’s very different. It has prices and a bunch of things that you never see in American medicine. So what is the model of this direct primary care you’re running and how does it generally work?
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah, well – yeah, thanks for having me. So direct primary care has been around for quite a while and simply put, it’s a direct relationship financially with a primary care physician. So the way that most practices are structured is kind of like joining a gym or subscribing to Netflix. People pay us a monthly fee, a membership fee as what most people call it.
For that monthly fee, we provide full transparency than most primary care services and we’re able to do things a lot better for people and save them money in many circumstances. But it’s really – it’s kind of stripping away all of the red tape and the middle men that normal healthcare has in America.
Aaron Ross Powell: What’s then the benefit for you? Because obviously this isn’t the model of most physicians. So why aren’t more of them doing this sort of thing?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, that’s a big complicated question of why more people aren’t doing it. I mean to me, the benefits are self-evident. But the doctors who are doing this, the big difference is when you’re running a medical practice, it is a business at some level.
So the red tape, the paperwork, the administrative load, the business of medicine, is very, very complex and so when you’re running a small business, the simpler your business model is, the more you can focus on your mission, the service that you provide.
Unfortunately, in American healthcare, the system has gotten so complicated that it distracts you from what you’re really trying to do, which is care for people and provide them that service, your professional service. So that’s really the big benefit is you can kind of start with a blank slate and structure things to your patient’s needs and I don’t have to worry as much about the paperwork side of things. There are many studies on this and the awareness of the administrative bloat is very well-known and very well-studied in medicine. But people don’t quite know how they’re supposed to escape that. So everyone regardless of their politics says yes, there’s too much paperwork. There are too many hoops to jump through. But what can we possibly do about that?
So we’ve kind of created this monster and people just don’t know how to get away from it. Direct primary care is an attempt to do that.
Trevor Burrus: What do you have to do in order to set up this – you have to reject certain things that the government offers in order to set this up. So what do you have to do?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, if you think about the normal healthcare system, people actually – it’s very difficult to actually talk about healthcare to most lay people because they immediately start associating everything with health insurance and they don’t even often make a distinction between the two and you can hear this even in people who are fairly well-versed in healthcare and health policy. They use the terms interchangeably.
So the entire structure of our healthcare system is based upon a third party fee for service payment, meaning that some third party has collected the money, either an insurance company or the government, and then they dole that out in the way that they see best fit a fee for every service that I provide.
So that transaction between the doctor and whoever is paying, which is 90 percent of the time not the patient paying or 90 percent of that tab is not paid by the patient, that dictates everything. You know, the way that you get paid, it requires certain documentation. It requires certain things that the doctor does in order to get paid and oftentimes that doesn’t – it doesn’t really align with the service you’re even trying to provide. So it really limits you in what you can do. But most people, they think about their healthcare and health insurance as this one kind of messy thing. But they don’t make a distinction between me and then a health insurance company at some level.
Trevor Burrus: So you don’t take Medicare or Medicaid.
Ryan Neuhofel: I don’t take any insurance at all and really that system, that fee for service system is implemented in private healthcare, in government healthcare. So it’s not unique just to Medicare and Medicaid. I would say dealing with BlueCross or ETNA or take the pick of your private insurance company is very similar. I mean there are some distinctions but this is not unique to just government payers. This is true of all third party payers and really it’s not even health insurance at this point. At that point is a prepaid managed care system. We call that an HMO or a PPO and so really it’s not insurance as we would think of in any other industry. If you have house insurance, you don’t use your house insurance to clean your carpets or fix a broken window or repaint your front door. You use it in case that your house burns down to the ground and car insurance, you can make a lot of other analogies.
But we really don’t have insurance at all. We have a prepaid, managed care system and healthcare at least for the past 40 to 50 years in America.
Aaron Ross Powell: In the episode of Free Thoughts where Trevor first introduced your practice, the argument that he was making more broadly was that we get these laws and these regulations and in this case, the system that created our modern health insurance or managed care regime, and then it becomes really difficult to kind of think outside of that box.
We think of that as the way the world is and so I find myself – as you’re describing this kind of – still thinking within that box in that, so they – if I’m patient, your service provides primary care. But if I get into serious trouble, I’m going to have to go to a hospital or a specialist or something that’s going to be really expensive and something that I’m going to want insurance for. So I’m going to want insurance even if I’m using …
Ryan Neuhofel: Absolutely.
Aaron Ross Powell: So then why would I then go to you if I already have this insurance that would also be covering the kinds of things that you provide?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, the system that covers A to Z already exists. It’s called an HMO or PPO and it’s what has led to what we have now. So no – and that’s one of the big misnomers that direct primary care – I’m not anti-insurance. I am for using insurance in a smart way. To make an analogy – I know that cars and people are different. I think my job is special and what I do is unique.
But if you tried to use your car insurance to do everything related to your car, if you used it for tire rotations, oil changes, you would have to get a prior approval before you left town and they would tell you which gas station you go to.
So that wouldn’t make any sense. Everyone would reject that idea. Now if you have an accident and you wreck your car and you have to pay $10,000 to fix it or replace it, insurance then kind of makes sense. That tradeoff of payment for that makes sense, but much in the same way of healthcare. What I do as a primary care physician can accomplish what most people need on most years. I would say 80 to 90 percent of people 80 to 90 percent of the years of their life. They don’t need anything more than what a good high practicing primary care physician can provide them.
There are always going to be circumstances where things get very, very expensive and those unexpected expensive things, of course you need a financial tool in place to cover those. But why we are trying to cover or pay for primary care services and the very rare chance of getting run over by a bus in the same mechanism, the same manner really doesn’t make sense.
So yes, it’s all healthcare. But the way that neurosurgery or cancer treatment works is so radically different than what I do as a family physician. I don’t think there needs to be an overarching way that we do all of that in the same way.
Aaron Ross Powell: So one of the things that our – my colleagues at the Cato Institute doing healthcare have pushed for, for a long time, is health-saving accounts. Among the things that you opt out with your models – so you opt out of insurance. But can you take – could I pay for your services with my HSA?
Ryan Neuhofel: Right now, that’s actually a pretty hotly debated topic in the direct primary care world. So, the way that the IRS used this and then structured HSAs has made it very complicated and the short answer is no. But I won’t bore people with all the IRS statements on this. So I think the system that we all envision is that people have great access to primary care because everyone regardless of their politics wants to figure out how do we provide people better primary care. If we can do that, we can keep people away from the expensive care most of the time.
So returning more control of the money back to people through an HSA is a good idea. But unfortunately the way the HSAs were structured was still kind of insurance-centered. In fact, I have an HSA and because I changed my insurance policy, I don’t – I can’t contribute to it anymore. So HSAs are kind of a step in the right direction, but there’s still a lot of – they were still formulated on the idea that insurance is going to be managing all your care at all levels from A to Z.
Trevor Burrus: I’m looking at NeuCare.net right now and every time I look at this, my mind still gets blown. You have – OK, so membership, if you’re looking at this as individuals you pay – if you’re 18 and under, you pay $35 a month; adults, 19 to 69, pay $50 a month; and you get communications, phone text and emails with a doctor or nurse, which is mind-blowing right now. I’m already pretty surprised. Clinic visits when required, yearly wellness and prevention planning, some routine labs and tests, medical equipment lease such as crutches, yearly flu shot and an access to discounted wholesale pricing on other services.
This is insane. You go back to this – you have high-tech after hours. You do house calls, which is like 1920s kind of Our Town Thornton Wilder stuff I think. Same day, here – you can see them on the same day. You can have extended visits and you have upfront prices. Now, why doesn’t this stuff exist for people who aren’t doing correct primary care? Why is this so sci-fi and why can’t you do it?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, you can kind of get into the chicken or the egg argument. But I think the way that we have structured payment and the fee for service, third party, very complicated system, it’s not that doctors don’t care. It’s not that doctors don’t want to serve their patients. Almost every physician I’ve ever met is very caring and very committed to providing great care. But the payment, the business of medicine, does not lead to those types of things.
So what’s really interesting – I’m not trying to diminish how cool I am. But a lot of our patients don’t even quite understand this. They think maybe that I’m able to do the text message and email and see them just because I’m really nice. And I am pretty nice and sometimes cool but that’s not why I can do what I do. Doctors get paid for office visit in the normal system. So if that’s the only way a doctor can get paid, basically the only way they can change the revenue equation is to bring more people in per day. That’s the only way they get paid. They can do more stuff to people. But they don’t get paid to sit around and talk on the phone or email or text message with patients. I do. I structured my business so that I can meet people where they are when they need to be seen.
But even further, I have such a lean business model that if you look at the average practice, in order to run a practice, per physician or per provider, you’re looking at a minimum of four to eight staff just for kind of the administrative side of medicine. So the majority of overhead costs for a small medical practice or a hospital either is actually not clinical stuff. It’s people who are coders and builders and people who are waiting on hold.
It’s all this kind of very messy business stuff and most people are not – who are employed in healthcare are not clinical. They’re not actually talking to patients, taking care of them. Patients don’t see all this stuff. This is stuff that happens in an office or a backroom somewhere. Because I can work directly for my patients and not have to hassle with that stuff, my entire clinic is run with me and a nurse. I have no one else.
So my overhead is very, very low. It’s very high-tech and very lean and I do it because I structured the payments so I can do those services. It’s not because I’m nice or cool. In the normal system, it makes total sense. I mean we are getting exactly what we pay for.
Trevor Burrus: So your patients then – I mean there are people – we talked before and you didn’t like the term “concierge medicine”. But your patients – you’re in Lawrence, Kansas, which is a nice college town. They’re pretty rich I assume and this probably – well, it doesn’t work if they’re poorer patients.
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah. Another huge misconception – thanks for the setup.
Trevor Burrus: Oh, really, I’m shocked. Keep going.
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah. So yeah, I think that’s the big misperception that the majority of people who are struggling to afford healthcare are not – they’re not all poor. So the patients that we serve in fact are probably a lower socioeconomic demographic than what even the average practice is. Fifty percent of my patients are uninsured. Majority of them have high deductible. So they’re paying boatloads of money, inflated mind you costs out of pocket for what they need.
So we’re really trying to serve both of those. We’re not just trying to say like, well, the country club, if you pay me $1000, I will take better care of you. I don’t have any qualms with that. I don’t begrudge anyone for doing that. But what we’re trying to solve is a much bigger problem. We want to provide better quality care and we also want to make it more affordable and more transparent.
So almost every direct primary care physician I know is serving that demographic. We’re serving regular, middle class people. Now not everyone knows about us. Not everyone understands what we do. But we’re not serving and the reason I’m reluctant – and I never use the term “concierge” – is because a lot of concierge – probably a majority of people who call themselves concierge, they are charging a membership fee, a retainer fee. But that’s on top of the normal, messy insurance billing system. So there’s a huge company called MDVIP. They consider themselves concierge. I mean it’s VIP. It’s in their name.
They basically are charging people about $1600 a year on top of the normal insurance coding and billing systems. When people go in, they’re still paying their office visits. They’re not doing the ancillary discounts and services that we are. So I think we’ve been very kind of typecast because concierge medicine has been around for a long time. It will always exist. There’s always going to be people catering to the country club.
But I think direct primary care is trying to solve a much bigger problem than just people who are wanting special treatment.
Aaron Ross Powell: How scalable is this model? So it works for primary care. But could it be used to replace our current system for things like specialists or hospitals or the bigger, more scary stuff?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, I mean primary care is unique. There’s no doubt about that. The ongoing relationship that people have with their primary doctor – you know, I might be overly romantic about this. But I think it is a unique relationship. So the way that other services should be structured, I don’t think that you can take all the same principles that we have applied as primary care doctors, who have this kind of longitudinal ongoing relationship with people. I’m going to apply that to something like – someone needing an orthopedic surgery.
However, there are specialists who are catering to more transparent pricing models. I think the Cato Institute has highlighted the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, Dr. Keith Smith. So he has shown that you can absolutely strip away some of the fat in medicine and boil down the payment system, make it simpler. Of course those things – there’s always going to be a time and place. If you get admitted to the hospital, if you have surgery, those things are kind of inherently expensive.
But I do think that what we’re seeing in the market is because direct primary care is growing so much, that there are services that are starting to cater to us. An example of that would be – there’s a company called RubiconMD, which is basically an e-consultant platform. Think of it kind of like a doctor’s – primary care doctors and specialists having like a secure place like Facebook where we can chat about our patients.
So I can use a platform like this. Share a case of one of my patients with this consultant service and I get responses within hours typically of the specialist. So I can share a picture of a rash or lab values or an X-ray and instead of sending people through the normal – you know, you got to pay your co-pay and wait two weeks to see the specialist. I can get responses within the same day.
That’s also mind-blowing when I describe that to people, that I can meet online with a specialist. That won’t work for everything. They can’t do surgery over the internet. But the intellectual side of that specialty care could be handled most of the time with a remote, efficient – and I don’t charge my patients for that service at all. So they basically get free online consultants, unlimited as much as they need.
So that’s how much like a radical shift in thinking can occur if you kind of strip away the managed care aspect of these things.
Trevor Burrus: My head is spinning. I thought I even understand a little bit to get out of the Statrix mindset about how much you can do.
Ryan Neuhofel: We all live there.
Trevor Burrus: Yeah. You have a grade term you use. We talked before battered patient syndrome. Can you describe what that means when people come to you and experience your care?
Ryan Neuhofel: What I have experienced doing this for almost five years is that it’s really hard for people to even imagine something different. So I have – I’ve had many experiences where I spelled out what we do to a patient. They have their own medical history and they’ve kind of thought we were cool. They heard friends say we were cool. But they want to know on paper. How can you save me money? I want to see it.
So we spell that out for them. It’s $50 a month. If you average three or four visits a year, you get these labs done. We have these discounts on these meds. We’ve demonstrated to them in black and white you can save money with us.
Trevor Burrus: And then they say, “At what point are you trying to sell me timeshares in Mexico or Amway products?”
Ryan Neuhofel: Absolutely. And they think there’s some type of catch that either I’m giving – I’m importing drugs illegally from Guatemala or that I’m somehow like a huckster. It’s really hard for them to even get over that, that it’s possible to do what I do for the price that I do it, because they have seen – I’ve had patients – a good example, patients who have had an MRI previously and need another one. They paid $2000 at the hospital and they said, “You know, doc. I think I need an MRI in the other knee. But I really don’t want to pay for it.”
So well, the good news is I know a place that’s not too far away from here. It’s – they give you an upfront cash price for MRI, 450 bucks. So we can get it done. You don’t have to pay $2000 and they’re like, “Whoa! I don’t know. I want a good MRI.” Like somehow, it was like some type of generic like, terrible – no, it’s actually a big radiology center. It’s owned by radiologists. It’s probably a better machine than the hospitals.
But they just – they’re confused about how that’s possible. How can one place charge $2500 and you’re telling me, if I just paid cash, I could spend $400 and it’s just as good? They think there’s some kind of trick. So I think that kind of – over decades of having this managed care and lack of transparency, that people – it’s hard for them to fathom that we could do what we do and they think there’s some kind of trick to it.
Aaron Ross Powell: Why are the prices – so the insurance companies are at least to some extent competing with each other and they tell you how much your premiums are going to be. We would all like to be paying less. So if an MRI can cost 450 bucks, why is the insurance company charging 2500? Why isn’t someone else, some other insurance company saying, “Hey, we’re going to provide the same managed care. But the amounts we’re going to pay to the radiologist and elsewhere is going to be so much lower, that you’re going to pay a much lower premium”?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, I think the equation starts – the formulation of this starts at the provider level, because the insurance is just a payment – managed care is a payment mechanism. It’s not where kind of the cost of everything starts.
So if you look at where everything starts, if we take lab work, office visits, MRIs, whatever you’re discussing, if the person providing that has to have all of this overhead expense. So labs are a great example. So we subcontract or client-bill labs and when we contract out the rate for our labs, we’re paying them a simple invoice, monthly invoice. There’s no coding. There’s no alphabet soup for them to justify getting paid by an insurance company.
For everyone who deals with insurance, that’s very, very complicated and that comes at a cost. It’s usually a direct cost in employing someone to do that. But if you can have a simple cash transaction, it changes everything.
When we client-bill our lab work or X-rays, we’re getting them at less than half or sometimes 80 percent less, even what Medicare would pay. People consider Medicare a low payer. But that’s because the people that are providing that service, the lab company or the place that takes my X-rays, they’re like I just – you just – it’s a simple cash payment. Well, yeah, we can do that for 25 bucks then.
But if we have to deal with all the hassles and hoops of billing insurance – because if you went and used your MRI – your insurance to pay for that MRI, well, the hospital and I – I’m still dealing with that paperwork and all of that administrative aspects of things. But if they just got an upfront simple transaction, it lowers the cost all around.
So, even other providers are recognizing – but even that is not that simple because I have specialists and other companies who are like uncomfortable accepting cash for payment and that’s kind of where the Statrix comes in. Some people can’t even realize that, oh, this would actually be much easier for me and I would still make as much money.
Trevor Burrus: They don’t want to see the cash on the front end. They just want them to hide on the back end. That makes them feel good about it.
Ryan Neuhofel: That may be part of it. Yeah, there’s definitely some kind of –
Trevor Burrus: There’s already cash being transacted in the insurance system.
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, yeah.
Trevor Burrus: You want to go in and walk out with just your co-pay or whatever and you feel good about yourself.
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, it’s funny because a lot of the critics of direct primary care, they will kind of in a disparaging way – they will say, “We’re cash-based and we only work for cash.” My immediate response is, “Is BlueCross paying you in potatoes?” I mean they’re paying you in cash. I don’t see altruism in a third party paying me versus – you know, a big company paying me versus my patient directly.
But yeah, I mean – so there’s a lot of kind of like subtle things, saying something is cash-based when – I know that there are other physicians in my community who charge $400, $500 for ingrown toenail removal. My patients get – get $10 because of the procedure equipment that I use.
So yes, I’m cash-based. It was $10 for them to get their ingrown toenail removed and it’s $450 in another place in town. So yeah, I mean I guess we’re both cash-based.
Trevor Burrus: So this sounds like someone could be thinking that you’re in the profit mode of game here and that there’s something unseemly about this. That’s sort of essentially the – one of the big critiques of any sort of market-based medicine. It’s like medicine for profit is inherently immoral.
Now of course you have your two-person operation and you have a family and you want to take home something at the end of the day.
Ryan Neuhofel: Yes, I do.
Trevor Burrus: This has something to do with how you negotiate prices for example. You negotiate prices on these MRIs and you’re testing and you use your patient pool to negotiate this. But you also have a personal incentive to make it as cheap for them and also so you don’t have to pay as much either. So you can actually welcome it. That seems to be ultimately a good thing for the patients.
Ryan Neuhofel: I mean I think it’s a win-win all around.
Trevor Burrus: Of course, yes.
Ryan Neuhofel: So yes, this is my business. This is my livelihood. I absolutely could not do this if I didn’t make an income. I even have patients kind of think that I’m some type of saint, which I’m happy that they want to label me as that. But no, I mean this is my livelihood and so my expectation was to make at least an average income for a family physician. If I somehow make more than that down the line, that’s awesome. But yeah, I mean this is not – I’m not doing this out of the purely altruistic thing.
I mean I – if I want to do that, I would go volunteer and I do do that. But yeah, this is my livelihood. I’m trying to be an advocate for my patients by providing them the transparency in services. But yes, at the end of the day, I have to make money or I can’t do this.
Trevor Burrus: You talked about – a lot of discussion is discussed on the – turning people away, turning chronic conditions, and that’s a big part of – every time we reform healthcare as we did with Obamacare, it turned diabetics or people like this way. How does your model deal with chronic conditions? Are you faced with the situation of turning people away and – I was going to say and letting them die on the streets, because that’s what – again, that’s the classic routine.
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, I think I care for them much better. So the funny thing is, is because of the flexibility of what we do, I’m able to meet people’s needs of all levels. I have patients who are extremely sick on hospice. I have patients who are extremely complicated with chronic diseases. I think they need this type of care more than anything else, more than anyone else.
If someone is healthy and they never see the doctor, then I guess no medical are is really that helpful for them. But yeah, I think the need of those types of patients, this is more important to them than anyone else. So whenever we have people enroll with us, our pricing is based upon age to a small degree. I mean all adults 19 to 69 pay the same and seniors pay a little more and kids pay a little bit less. But we don’t have any type of screening process in terms of their medical conditions.
In fact, most of our patients to have chronic diseases because they see a much better value, because I’m providing them lab work and they tend to require more visits. So they’re getting a much better bang for their buck than a person who never goes to the doctor. So yeah, I think that I don’t have to worry about that at my level, because primary care is – everyone needs primary care, whether they’re a horribly-controlled diabetic or they’re a healthy 22-year-old. They need different things at different times. But I don’t necessarily have to factor that in. I have to factor in can I have enough patients who are paying a fee to make my revenue high enough that I can take home a decent pay.
But I have no requirement or no litmus test or anything like that about people’s preexisting medical conditions. Now that’s different when you start talking about insurance and they have a risk adjustment. But the riskiest thing is I have to see people a little bit more. But I’m not on the hook for – you know, if they end up with a heart attack or dialysis, because I’m not insurance. So that doesn’t even enter our equation at all.
Trevor Burrus: So now, you told me a story about a patient who came in to see you, who was at a – I think it was the Direct Primary Care Summit who discussed – who seems like one of these patients that the American healthcare system – or has been consistently reformed to try and save. But still, they’re constantly there. They slip through the cracks. They slip through the safety net. They have many different preexisting conditions. Can you tell that story to our listeners?
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah. So last year at the Direct Primary Care Summit, which is a big group meeting for the doctors who are practicing this model or planning on it, I had – one of my patients actually got up on stage and tell his story. I think that people’s stories are so much more powerful about the bad aspects of our system than anything I could ever say. I could talk here for hours and I’m a doctor and I’m in it for myself and all of that. But whenever you sit down and you listen to people’s stories about how the system has failed them, it really changes your thinking about it. So despite everyone’s best intentions – and I think most people who are in healthcare, even – probably most of the people in the policy world, they think what they’re doing is helping people.
But as a doctor in the trenches, I see so many people, whether they have insurance or not, who fall through the cracks, who get bad care, who avoid care. So I took one of my patients who had had a really bad stroke, was hospitalized for a week, had really never gotten much medical care prior to that, because the – hardworking guy, didn’t – he had insurance a little bit here and there, but he had never really probably taken care of himself like he should. He ended up having a stroke and got discharged from the hospital with a boatload of medications and sure, he had a social worker in the hospital and he ran through the hospital system like I’m sure most people think should be done.
But they sent them out into the wild with no actual plan to take care of these problems. So they ended up referring him to kind of a safety net clinic which is supposed to take care of poor, uninsured people and I know this clinic. They’re very well-meaning, very well-intentioned. And because of some paperwork, snafu, this guy, because he’s self-employed, it made it look like he made a little more than he really did.
So they referred him to me. He was very upset about his whole experience. He wanted to get back to work and really was determined to do that. But he felt very turned off and felt like they were kind of just trying to push him onto disability or something like that, according to him.
But they sent him home with a bunch of prescriptions that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars when he went to the pharmacy. He said, “I have no way to pay for any of that stuff. So I’m glad they gave me these, but they didn’t really give me a plan. I have no way to afford this.”
So through a relationship that took over a year, we worked very hard to kind of get control of his diabetes and his high blood pressure and all of these problems. We were able to lower the cost for him tremendously because we were aware of it.
So he’s back working full time and he’s the type of guy that I think a lot of times gets kind of written off, that we call them a train wreck and they have a terrible thing happen. They’re very difficult from a medical standpoint to kind of get on the right track. I think in the normal system, I’ve seen so many people like him fail because there wasn’t someone there to be his advocate.
Again, it’s not that we don’t have resources. They gave him lots of paperwork and tried to direct him in the right place. But there really was no one there. So what I’ve kind of developed in my community is in some respects, I’ve become often a safety net for the safety net clinics. If someone doesn’t have the right paperwork, if they’re not a citizen, if they don’t live in the right county, it they make a little bit too much, they’re kind of like, well, you either have insurance or you’re qualified for this or you’re SOL. So I think that’s a huge need that we’re serving here for a lot of people.
Trevor Burrus: It seems that relationship too. The ability to – a relationship with your patient without the administrative load infecting everything about what you’re doing. In terms of the kind of attention and care and discussion that you have in the doctor-patient relationship, it seems that the system we have now, the system created by and run by government is parasitic on creating good relationships between doctors and patients and maybe that’s one of the appeals that doctors see in the direct primary care model.
Ryan Neuhofel: Oh, 100 percent. The least valued thing in our current healthcare system is time. You don’t get paid to spend time with people. In the normal insurance-based world, if I did a knee injection for someone with arthritis, I injected a steroid in their knee, Medicare, private insurance company would probably reimburse me $100 to $200. As an orthopedic surgeon, $300 or $400 for some odd reason.
But if I spent 30 minutes talking to someone about their diabetes, which would never happen, because we don’t have the luxury of doing that, I probably would get paid about $70 or $60 and the injection takes me by the way about one minute.
So you’re really setting up a system where you’re incentivized to do things to people. We’re really good in America at doing procedures and testing and all that stuff. But we’re really not good at doing stuff for people and sometimes that’s time. It’s not easy to kind of wrap your hands around that from a scientific standpoint. But the average physician visit in America for an established patient is less than 10 minutes. If someone comes in with a sore throat, yeah, I can handle that in 10 minutes.
But a lot of patients are very complicated and even if they come in for a sore throat, they have all these other chronic conditions and they have all these social factors. So for a physician to sit down with someone for eight or ten minutes, you cannot accomplish very much. I don’t care how smart you are and I think patients sense that, that they walk away dissatisfied and doctors do the same.
I always tell people that I would rather be an average doctor with adequate time than the smartest doctor in the world with not enough time, because you just can’t – there’s no substitute for that. Unfortunately the way that the payment model is structured, I could have never done what I did with Blaine, my patient. I spent 30 to 45 minutes. I think probably an hour on the first visit and I did that every few weeks until we got his stuff under control. That’s impossible on the normal system. You can never do that. I mean you would never stay in business, I should say. You can do it. You would go out of business very quickly.
But yeah, I mean it really does just change that equation and puts the value back on time and I think that’s something that’s sorely missing.
Trevor Burrus: How much do you think that the – that administrative gloat that separates the doctors from the patients is contributing to this sort of well-publicized exodus from the doctors, from the business, to either A, not go in in the first place or B, get out of it or get out of family care and get into specialization. But this is often discussed and it seems like there must be a contributing factor.
Ryan Neuhofel: Oh, yeah, no doubt about it. I think there are multiple factors at play here for the burnout issue and even if you look at – sadly, if you look at suicide rates among physicians, they have skyrocketed over the past decade or two.
I think that’s a huge part of it. You know, becoming a doctor is really, really hard. You make a ton of sacrifices to get to where you become – you know, able to care for people and then people are kind of smacked in the face with reality of feeling like they’re a clerk and I think that’s demoralizing. I talk to physicians all the time who are extremely burned out. Even a lot of my classmates and people I went to residency with, they’ve changed jobs two or three times. I’ve only been out of residency for five, six years now.
So yeah, I think that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction, people taking non-clinical jobs. But yeah, I think the big reason that most people go in to medicine is because they truly want to help people. There’s a personal aspect of that.
Of course there’s an accomplishment and achievement and all of that. But I think it’s that personal connection that really kind of allows you to withstand all of the pressures and stressors of medicine. Without that, you’re just a really stressed-out clerk and physicians don’t want to be that at all. So yeah, I think it’s a huge part of it.
Aaron Ross Powell: One of the common themes that we talk about quite a lot on Free Thoughts is the way that entrenched interests can interfere – can use politics to interfere with new and innovative models. So is that something that the direct primary care experiences? What’s the political environment for this now and into the future? Are there people working against it because it would hurt their models? What do politicians think of it?
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah, yeah. Well, to this stage or at least until very recently, I would say direct primary care has been the most bipartisan healthcare topic around. I mean the awareness of it is relatively small, but growing quickly. So most of the states who have packed – passed direct primary care legislation which is – it’s kind of a formality. It doesn’t actually directly benefit us or grow us, but basically protects us from some types of regulations.
It has been very bipartisan. So in most states where this has kind of become a discussion at the legislature, for that state, it hasn’t been partisan at all. There have been a few things recently in the State of Virginia. Terry McAuliffe voted down a direct primary care bill. Apparently, there’s a lot of internal politics in Virginia that I don’t understand. But it’s more of a political move than anything else.
But the good thing is at this stage, at the federal level and most states, direct primary care has kind of been an acceptable idea. In fact direct primary care to many people’s shock is included in the Affordable Care Act. So even at the time – there was a handful of us I believe around – when that bill was written. But it is included in the Affordable Care Act as kind of an option. Now there are a lot of kind of messy things around that and what it means and HSS really hasn’t done much with it. But yeah, this is not like some type of political movement.
I’m really trying to be careful about trying to frame this and I think other direct primary care doctors are – we don’t want this to be a political issue because as soon as it gets framed like that, that this is a republican idea or a democrat idea, I think that people reflexively are going to say they’re against it, without thinking through it critically. So I think that’s pretty careful going forward that – I certainly have my own personal ideology. I have lots of friends who are direct primary care physicians and they’re politically all over the map. I mean both ends of the spectrum.
So I think this could be a solution that could be politically feasible but I think it’s a precarious think in America in any topic because people have to declare a team and whether it’s good or bad on their side, but yeah.
Trevor Burrus: It’s growing pretty quickly too, correct?
Ryan Neuhofel: Oh, yeah, yeah. So when I started my practice in 2011, as I would define direct primary care, I mean I would say there’s less than 100 but probably even dozens of physicians in this model who are doing bread and butter, strict direct primary care and now there’s definitely – you know, approaching a thousand. The communities surrounding this are just exploding. I can’t even keep up with the new practices that are opening.
So in some regions of the country and some cities, it’s absolutely exploding. In others, it’s a little harder for various reasons to get clinic started. So there are definitely some challenges in certain states. Certain states have restrictions against dispensing of medicines from a medical practice.
So every community, every state is a little bit unique. But it’s all around the country, East or West Coast, large towns, small towns. It’s really serving a need in a lot of areas and that’s the beauty of it is it’s flexible. I don’t have to think about like whatever Washington DC or Topeka, Kansas thinks about how I should serve my patients best. I can look at my patient population. You know, my philosophy and my community and tailor my business to serve those needs. I’m not looking to them to fix the problem.
Trevor Burrus: If it gets too big though – I don’t know what too big is in this thing. But it seems that with the increasing sort of Obamacare dysfunction, the doctors being driven out of the profession due to various things, but a lot of it having to do with the administrative bloat and what happens because of that. So we have a lot of doctors who might go into direct primary care. If it gets too big, does it actually start to challenge the viability of insurance models or Medicare and Medicaid in a way that maybe the insurers will try to fight against it?
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, we haven’t seen that very much. In Virginia, that was part of the equation. Apparently the insurance lobby there was against this bill and it’s kind of a minor technicality issue honestly in Virginia. So there are some insurance companies who have kind of spoken negatively about this model. But at the same time, there are some direct primary care companies. There’s one based out of Boston called Iora Health, who has actually partnered with insurance companies.
There’s several different – you know, larger direct primary care groups who have grown large enough, where they’ve started approaching third parties like that, managed care companies, even like Medicare Advantage Plans, and try to figure out how they could work their model and stay true to that model, yet work with these kind of third party payers, insurance companies and governments. In fact, in the State of Washington, Qliance – I’m actually partnered with a Medicaid managed care company.
From my perspective, my personal business perspective, I’m a little bit skeptical of doing that at this stage, just because I think there will be too many strings attached. But there are certainly ways that people are trying to figure out how this all fits together. I think we need to do that at some level. We need to figure out how direct primary care kind of fits into this giant, messy puzzle. But at the same time, I think that part of the problem has been in American medicine and the reason that primary care has kind of fallen out of grace and the reason that it’s not as good as it should, is because we’re – as physicians, I should focus on what I do and do it the best that I can.
So I’m not stupid enough to think that I can figure out how to best organize brain surgery and payment of brain surgery. That I think family physicians – you know, we need to be aware of these larger issues and how it will work in the system. But at the same time, it’s so much larger and complicated that if – I think if we as primary care physicians focused on our own patients and our own practices first, and then have everyone else kind of adapt to us, I think that’s a much better way to think about it. But again, we’re tiny and the rest of the system is huge.
So yeah, I think that’s going forward. That’s what everyone’s questioning is. OK. You guys have demonstrated you can do this cool thing. You can make it affordable. How do we pay for it? How do we make sure that everyone has access to that care? How does that work with insurance? I certainly have my ideas. I think insurance could be used in a much smarter way. I think it would be less expensive and I think the total amount that we spend would be less.
If you look in American healthcare, I mean we spend I think over $10,000 per person. If you add up all of the money spent on healthcare in America, from employers, governments and out of own people’s pockets, I think it’s over $10,000 per person last year in total healthcare expenditures.
So the problem is not that there’s not enough money to go around. I mean I charge $50 a month. That’s $600 a year. Clearly there’s enough money per person to go around. The problem is in allocating that money and who controls that money, because the pot is definitely large enough. We just spend it in really stupid ways.
Trevor Burrus: Well, you mentioned – due to the agility of some of these local – it seems like the direct primary care model has a lot of versatility to it as you said, based on being able to react to your community. In one of your blog posts about this, you wrote that the adaptability of direct practice doctors and clinics based on community needs, something is – that’s missing in the micromanaged status quo. Some of the DPC practices were helping large employers or unions in urban areas tackle escalating health costs while others, based on rural towns, were working with a large number of uninsured patients. The creativity of DPC physicians is truly awesome.
That seems to be something that’s lacking in the healthcare system in general but that the DPC model helps bring back in, the innovation that we need.
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah, yeah. It’s funny because whenever I talk to my colleagues who are in normal practices, they mostly just scratch their heads like – it’s hard. From the inside, it’s kind of hard to describe it. So whenever you go to a practice management meeting, which is where all the – you know, the doctors and the nurses and the clinic staff. They would get together and talk about it, about the clinic and the business and they’re almost …
Trevor Burrus: Like everyone who works at an HMO you’re saying or …
Ryan Neuhofel: Well, no. I’m thinking of a clinic.
Trevor Burrus: Oh, in a clinic. OK.
Ryan Neuhofel: A doctor’s practice. So whenever we have a practice management meeting or practice meeting, people get around and they talk about all of this kind of nuanced things about like scheduling and billing and maximizing reimbursements and making sure that we bill out more 99 – you know, level four visits and kind of all of these things that really aren’t medical care. They’re kind of the administrative thing. We never – at least from my experience when I was staying around the practice management meetings, very rarely was the discussion about how do we serve our patients better. How do we make our care better? How do we become more accessible to patients?
So those are the things. Like a normal business, if I was running an ice cream shop, I wouldn’t sit around for hours talking about exactly – you know, how to bill out my ice cream cone. I would be talking about how do we make our ice cream better. How do we make the patients – or the customer’s experience better?
So those are the things that I focus on but I think in the normal system, we’re not really trying to be creative in meeting those needs. We’re just trying to – well, there’s a checkbox that – Medicare gave us a checkbox. In order to get paid by BlueCross, we have to check off A through Z. That is the only focus is making sure that you get that paperwork done and put people through that system. They’re not thinking creatively about how do we follow-up better with a diabetic. How do we reach out to people and make sure they’re taking good care of themselves?
So we’re really – we don’t have to worry about that kind of – the billing payment system like they do. I think it really is distracting because I think a lot of doctors, they’re – they want better care for their patients. They would like to have the freedom to do that, but they’re basically just holding their breath, waiting for Washington DC or whatever state capital you’re in, to kind of fix these things. I’m not holding my breath for that to happen.
Aaron Ross Powell: Well, on that then, what are some of the ways that federal or state or local governments going forward might better enable direct primary care or make it more accessible to more people or just otherwise improve it?
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah, I mean – so there are some technical things that could be done. In fact, there’s something called the Primary Care Enhancement Act that has been introduced in congress, which I presume will take about 25 years to pass.
Trevor Burrus: If you’re lucky.
Ryan Neuhofel: If I’m lucky, yeah, with the right partners. So Primary Care Enhancement Act clarifies a few different things. It does clarify the HSA issue, which is kind of a big bug-a-boo. In this world, it’s hard to describe to patients all the intricacies of that.
So we would clarify that issue. The HSA funds can be paid for direct primary care membership fees and that is an eligible medical expense according to the IRS. So that would be one kind of easy technical thing that I – would help. But I think on a larger scale, what I would like to see personally – I don’t speak for all direct primary care physicians – is returning some of that money in some form back to the individuals and families to control themselves. You can’t do that with 100 percent of the money. I’m not suggesting we just take that $10,000 and give people a $10,000 check.
But if you could give some of that money back to the individuals, and that could be funded in different ways. That may be some of your own money, just keeping it yourself. That may be employers. That may be governments subsidizing people who need help.
If you can return some of that money back to the individuals and let them control it, with them and their doctors, you wouldn’t need to do more than 10 or 20 percent. So that would be more than enough money for individuals to control and pay for something like what I do. I would love to see that happen. I think it would at least kind of create a more kind of cash economy, even if it was subsidized for people who needed help. Then it will allow physicians to meet those people’s needs and without worrying about the – all the other messy stuff.
But yeah, politically, I think that would be very, very hard to do because it’s a big pot of money and everyone wants to wrap their arms around it.
Trevor Burrus: Now even within this world of crazy regulations and overarching federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid and the inauguration of Obamacare, which is not making anything better, even within this, you guys have managed to carve out this little space where – would it be accurate to say that this is a really good example of how a free market or a freer market at medicine can work and what it can do.
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t often describe what I do as some type of free market solution. But if you really look at what we do, I mean it’s me and my patients and there are no other third party influences. So I think when you really boil it all down, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Trevor Burrus: But it sounds like when you – you might need to rethink healthcare in this country if we’re going to fix it. We just might be thinking about it in the wrong way then.
Ryan Neuhofel: Yeah, absolutely. I think that – it’s funny. Whenever I hear politicians, conservative or libertarian politicians, say that they want – they espouse that they want a free market solution, they really don’t spell out what that would look like and I think that’s a huge challenge to do that. But I don’t think you can just tell Americans, well, we’re just going to – the free market is going to fix it. I think we need to point to tangible things and stuff that we’re doing and direct primary care is probably the biggest part of that.
Things could be different. We could have things organized differently and the notion about free market wouldn’t be as scary, because it – if I’m putting myself in the patient’s shoes, when I hear free market or you’re going to be paying cash, what they see is using cash in the normal system, right? So they see that the hospital billed them $8000 for the MRI and that their insurance company gave them a discount for $2000. So people kind of presume that everything else will be the same. They’re just going to be on the hook for it out of their own pocket.
I think you have to think much more radically than that. I think it changes the entire equation. For me to suggest someone pays for their own diabetes labs, you will be like, “Oh my god! That’s so expensive.” But actually I include those labs in my prices for $50 a month. They’re $6 to $8 a few times a year. But if I told someone, oh, the free market is going to fix that, what they envision is paying these absurdly inflated prices, which were not graded by the free market. Basically, they will just be on the hook for it.
So yeah, I think it’s absolutely true when you boil it down to its essence. But I think you have to give people concrete examples of what that would look like or otherwise, people will just believe that they’re being fed to the wolves.
Trevor Burrus: Now, a few weeks ago you emailed me about how Gary Johnson, the libertarian party candidate who is doing pretty well on the polls, about how he is not doing a very good job of communicating on healthcare and what could be done in healthcare. Maybe he could listen to this episode at some point and get through – all the way to the end and really ask this question. We say – if you had one thing – he should listen to all of them of course. But if you had one thing to say to Gary Johnson and how he should be talking about healthcare, what would you say to him?
Ryan Neuhofel: I think you have to bring it down to the personal level and being able to tell a story about what healthcare would look like for a person in a free market system. I think it’s something that will be required. Regardless of people’s politics, just telling them that this idea of a free market system is going to make things better is not enough for most people. They’re very afraid of healthcare and healthcare is something that is very important to people.
So I think politicians, regardless of their ideology, if they want to connect with people and convince people that there’s a better way, they have to spell that out in real life examples of what that would look like for them and instead of just kind of speaking in theory, because most people aren’t nerds and they’re not listening to this podcast and they’re not reading Frederick Hayek or other economists.
Trevor Burrus: Unfortunately, yeah. More people need to listen to this podcast of course. So we help break out the Statrix by pointing out your practice and then people can realize that things could be better.
Ryan Neuhofel: I think so and you gave a great example about Uber in your Statrix podcast and I was applauding you in that entire podcast of course, but I think the way you described the Uber thing is people can’t quite fathom what that would look like, what kind of – some people describe it as anarchy in transportation services. What that would really look like, if you describe that to someone who had never done Uber, they’re like, oh, that sounds scary and that would be really expensive and people would rip me off. People don’t like taxi companies usually. But if you describe to them Uber, they would probably reject the idea. But the very first time you ride in an Uber and experience the service and the quality and the cost, you’re like, “That’s amazing! How is that not mainstream? How has this not been here forever?”
Trevor Burrus: Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Free Thoughts, please take a moment to rate us on iTunes. Free Thoughts is produced by Mark McDaniel and Evan Banks. To learn more about libertarianism, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.
Dr. Ryan Neuhofel
Dr. W. Ryan Neuhofel, DO, MPH is a board-certified family physician in Lawrence, KS. Dr. Neuhofel founded one of the nation’s first Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices, NeuCare, in 2011. He is an active leader in the DPC movement, including serving as an expert for national media outlets and as President of the DPC Alliance
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Women in Research: The Scarcity...
Women in Research: The Scarcity of Permanent Positions Is the Biggest Problem, Says Anna Eibel
Interview with #LiNo17 young scientist Anna Eibel
This interview is part of a series of interviews of the “Women in Research” blog that features young female scientists participating in the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, to increase the visibility of women in research (more information for and about women in science by “Women in Research” on Facebook and Twitter). Enjoy the interview with Anna and get inspired.
Photo: Courtesy of Anna Eibel
Anna Eibel, 24, from Austria is a PhD Student at the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), Austria. She is working in the field of photopolymer science. Her research involves mechanistic studies of reaction pathways and characterisation of new photoinitiators for radical polymerisations.
What inspired you to pursue a career in science/chemistry?
As a child, I was interested in pretty much everything. There was no special moment from which on I knew that I was going to be a chemist or even a scientist. As a teenager, I was keen on mathematics, astronomy and physics. But I also liked arts and literature and learning languages. Then – just at the time of my final exams at school – I realised that chemistry might be a fascinating subject for me and I decided to give it a try. It turned out to be the right choice and I have very much enjoyed studying chemistry from the first semester on.
I cannot think of any specific (scientific) role models, but certainly I’m impressed by many people from different fields. For example, I am very much inspired by the passion, dedication and willpower successful athletes have. Generally, I am inspired by all the people who have passion and joy in what they do and who live entirely the life they want to.
How did you get to where you are in your career path?
I think I have been quite lucky during the entire time of my education. People around me (both my parents and my teachers at school) have always supported and motivated me. During the early semesters of my studies at university, I was inspired and motivated by really good teaching of some professors and I finally found a fascinating field to work on in my Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis. I have always enjoyed learning new things and conducting my own research and therefore, I decided to go for a PhD, having the full support of my supervisor.
What is the coolest project you have worked on and why?
I’m currently working on a series of exciting projects, all of which are related to the field of photochemistry and photopolymerization. What I enjoy most is the creative part of my work. I like to think about new experiments to do and to come up with new ideas or hypotheses about some reaction mechanisms which can be tested in the lab.
What’s a time you felt immense pride in yourself/your work?
Finishing my Bachelor and Master studies within the shortest possible time and with excellent grades certainly made me feel a bit proud. I also feel proud when people congratulate me for a good talk at a conference or when I get positive feedback from my students in the lab course. Moreover, I’m particularly proud of having found a good work-life balance, allowing me to spend enough time with all the things I love besides research.
What is a “day in the life” of Anna like?
Well, there is conducting experiments in the lab, evaluating results, writing papers, discussing or chatting with colleagues, checking emails, reading literature, thinking about further projects, planning travels to conferences, and so on. In general, I really enjoy not having a fixed schedule and I like the freedom of deciding myself what I want to focus on every day.
What are you seeking to accomplish in your career?
For me, having passion and joy in what I do is most important. I would like to have a good position which allows me to be creative and to collaborate with many interesting and skilled people in order to conduct valuable research and contribute to new developments.
What do you like to do when you’re not doing research?
I enjoy going for a walk in the forest, doing some workout, eating good (vegetarian) food and sharing time with my partner, family and friends. I also love traveling, especially to Scandinavia.
What advice do you have for other women interested in science/chemistry?
I believe it is most important not to be afraid of anything just because of being a woman. Talent and personality certainly matter much more than one’s biological gender. Also, it is important not to give up too early.
In your opinion, what will be the next great breakthrough in science/chemistry?
That’s a tough question, but I think in chemistry a breakthrough can potentially be expected soon in the field of batteries and energy storage.
What should be done to increase the number of female scientists and female professors?
The answer to this question is certainly not trivial. At our university, there is no female full professor in chemistry. However, there is obviously enough interest in the field of chemistry among young women, since around 50 percent (or even slightly more) of the Bachelor students are female. Among PhD students and especially postdoctoral researchers, there is a significant drop in that number. I think the biggest problem women face in science is the difficulty of getting a permanent position at university; and presumably many women just do not want to live with this insecurity and risk. In my opinion, it is essential to somehow address this problem in order to encourage more women to pursue an academic career. Moreover, I believe that quota policies can be (at least partly) useful to address the gender imbalance at university, but also in industry and politics.
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Lindenwood in the News
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Category General Academics Admissions Alumni & Donors Athletics Campus Events Division of Business & Entrepreneurship Division of Education & Counseling Division of Humanities Division of Sciences Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences Employee Spotlight Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise Information Technology J. Scheidegger Center for the Arts Lindenwood in the News School of Accelerated Degree Programs School of Arts, Media, and Communications Robert W. Plaster School of Business & Entrepreneurship School of Education School of Health Sciences School of Humanities School of Sciences Student Life
General, Robert W. Plaster School of Business & Entrepreneurship
Grant will Facilitate Distance Learning for St. Charles, Belleville
Lindenwood University has been named the recipient of a $114,000 joint grant from the William T. Kemper Foundation and Commerce Bancshares Foundation. The money will be used to equip a classroom in the School of Business and Entrepreneurship on the university’s St. Charles campus with distance learning technologies.
General, Academics
Professor Smith/Confluence Chosen for Missouri Humanities Award
Jann Weitzel, Lindenwood’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, was recently notified that Jeff Smith, Chair of the History department, was selected for a 2011 Missouri Humanities Award for Lindenwood’s regional studies journal The Confluence, which Smith edits.
Ehlmann, University Publish Bicentennial Edition of County History
Lindenwood University Press announces the release of a second, more comprehensive edition of St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann’s acclaimed book, Crossroads: A History of St. Charles County. At nearly twice the length of the first edition, published in 2004, the new edition is more comprehensive and corresponds with the 2012 bicentennial of St. Charles County.
Lindenwood Supports Retention of Access Missouri
Lindenwood University President James D. Evans is calling for support of a renewed state-wide campaign launched by the Independent Colleges and Universities of Missouri association to save Access Missouri funding. The state’s primary need-based college tuition assistance program was slashed by more than $50 million in 2010 and is in danger of being cut further by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon as he finalizes the budget for the coming fiscal year.
Fife and Drum 'Freezer Jam' Coming to Campus
Lindenwood University will host the Lewis and Clark Fife and Drum Corps Freezer Jam concert at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012, in the Hyland Arena. The event will feature more than 10 corps from the Midwest who will perform historical American military music and gather together for a mass band finale.
General, Alumni & Donors
Alumnus’ Company Receives Prestigious Baldridge Award
Lindenwood University alumnus Bruce Kintz, EdD, president and chief executive officer of Concordia Publishing House (CPH), recently announced that the company has been named a recipient of the 2011 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The St. Louis-based company is one of only four organizations in the country to receive the nation’s highest presidential honor for top performance through innovation, improvement, and visionary leadership.
Lindenwood to Host Free Christmas Walk December 4
Lindenwood University will host its annual free Christmas Walk from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 4. The event will feature activities for all ages on the St. Charles campus, located at 209 S. Kingshighway, St. Charles, Mo., 63301.
Lindenwood to Dedicate Newman Center-Catholic Student Center Nov. 18
Lindenwood University will host a dedication ceremony for its Newman Center-Catholic Student Center at 2 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 18. St. Louis Archdiocesan Auxiliary Bishop Edward Rice will preside over the event, which is scheduled to take place on the feast day of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne.
Veterans' Day Celebration November 11 at Harmon Hall
Lindenwood University will host a Veterans' Day ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 11 in the Dunseth Auditorium at Harmon Hall. The event will be free and open to the public.
Speaker Series to Continue with Political Satirist P.J. O’Rourke
Lindenwood University’s 2011-12 Speaker Series will continue with author, journalist, and satirist P.J. O’Rourke at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 4, at Lindenwood’s Bezemes Family Theatre. Admission is free and open to the public.
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Lindenwood University is proud of its diverse population of faculty, staff, and students from all corners of the world. We intentionally design our policies in such a manner that all stakeholders (whether students, employees, or visitors) will be treated respectfully, fairly, equitably, and with dignity and inclusiveness in the pursuit and achievement of the objectives of their relationship with the university.
Additionally, we strive to ensure the opportunities afforded by the university for learning, personal advancement, and employment are offered to all without discrimination and that we always provide a safe, supportive, and welcoming environment for all students, employees, and visitors. Upholding a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion means that people of different cultures, races, colors, genders, ages, religions, orientations, affiliations, sexual orientations, socio-economic backgrounds, disabilities, or countries of origin shall not be mistreated or discriminated against on the basis of their differences. Therefore, all Lindenwood policies, facilities, resources, activities, and privileges, irrespective of individual differences, are made available and accessible to everyone in our campus community.
At Lindenwood University, we will strive to
Offer collaborative and integrated academic, co-curricular and sporting programs that provide mutually beneficial experiences to our diverse body of students.
Pursue and promote mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation among our students, teaching and non-teaching staff, contractors, suppliers, and visitors to our community who represent the aforementioned differences.
Encourage and promote the empowerment and advancement of minority groups within our community through academic and social activities, offering activities of special interest to them, and affording them equal-opportunity integration within our community.
Respect the knowledge, skills, and experiences that every person in our community brings to the university.
Design and operate flexible and easily accessible services, facilities, and activities whose procedures appropriately recognize the needs of everyone in our community.
Make every effort to ensure that our current and future contractual agreements and obligations fully reflect and embrace our commitment to the philosophy and culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion as delineated in this statement.
Encourage all faculty and staff members to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our community.
Protect every member of our community against all forms of discrimination.
Policy of Non-Discrimination
Lindenwood University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy, religion, disability, veteran status, or other protected status under applicable federal or state law. This policy extends to its admissions, employment, activities, treatment, educational programs, and services.
Lindenwood University is committed to a policy of non-discrimination. Any kind of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, or retaliation is unacceptable. For the purpose of this policy, discrimination, harassment, intimidation, or retaliation may be defined as any attempt on the part of individuals, groups, or recognized campus organizations to deny an individual or group those rights, freedoms, or opportunities available to all members of the Lindenwood University community.
The following persons have been designated to handle inquiries regarding Lindenwood University’s non-discrimination policies: Kelly Moyich, Title IX coordinator (636) 255-2275 or Suite 209, LARC) and Dr. Suzy Jones, dean of students (618) 239-6223. Rick Cavalier (618) 239-6095 or rcavalier@lindenwood.edu) has been designated to handle inquiries regarding Lindenwood University’s disability services. Any person may also direct inquiries to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Lindenwood University is an Equal Opportunity Employer..
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DEI Resources Related to Higher Education Ameren’s Discussions Across Differences President's Advisory Council - DEI Hispanic Chamber of Commerce AAUP Eight Actions to Reduce Racism in College Classrooms Disability Rights, Education Activism, and Mentoring (DREAM) National Coalition for Women & Girls in Education Inclusive Learning and Teaching Handbook
Dr. Suzy Jones
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Xbox 1 Price: Does It Matter What It Costs When People Are This Angry?
By Abdul R. Siddiqui
Following a week of some less than flattering news, Microsoft is geared to hold its annual pre-E3 conference. Unfortunately, instead of announcing something awesome, the tech giant must use this time to address some finicky subjects.
Ideally, this time would have been spent introducing new software. Currently, the Xbox One launch lineup is looking fairly standard and nothing seems to be quite at the level of Halo: Combat Evolved. Instead, they all seem like the Xbox 360 launch lineup, which simply wasn’t as good.
The issues Microsoft will have to address, however, are all conceptions (some false) about their latest console, as illustrated here.
However, before we let a collection of still images designed to emulate video ruin our perception, let it be known that Microsoft has given some answers … which aren’t all that great.
On the always-online front, Microsoft has confirmed that the console will need to connect online once every 24 hours, which isn't necessarily better than "always on," but it does help them deflect some criticism.
With regards to used games, third party publishers will be allowed to decide if they want to make that option available or not. Technically, since most publishers wouldn't want to lose that revenue they might but they wouldn't want the criticism so they might not. Either way, by putting this decision in someone else’s hands, Microsoft is free of all blame. All of it.
With regards to giving games to friends, you can do so … but "you can only give them to people who have been on your friends list for at least 30 days and each game can only be given once." Ouch.
Also, up to ten family members can play games on your console, which is perhaps their way of encouraging smaller families.
As for Kinect, privacy concerns are alleviated because gamers can turn it on or off whenever they wish. Also, any "conversations" with the system will remain offline so no worries about private things being uploaded to the Cloud.
Ultimately, Microsoft seems quite decisive about these announcements but they might be forced to change something, and fast. After all, things were so bad that the company reportedly hired people to make positive remarks about their console on Reddit but, even if that isn't the case, reactions are currently bad.
Either way, this annual pre-E3 show has taken on some serious importance because of the negative publicity revolving around Microsoft’s latest console. Whether it will be enough damage control remains to be seen.
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Duel Reviews: Judge Dredd vs. Dredd 3D
by William Bibbiani Sep 19th, 2012
I’m not sure a faithful Judge Dredd movie could have found an audience in America pre-9/11. The character’s embrace of fascist law enforcement is based on a combination of totalitarian practicality and right-wing fearmongering, the kind of “truthy” justification for dismissing due process that our namby-pamby liberal society would have rejected as unrealistically cynical (or worse, dangerously subversive) until the past decade, when societal paranoia and overt xenophobia became, if not common, then at least a plausible exaggeration of our recent national state of mind. As proof, I present Exhibit A: 1995’s Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone and directed by Danny Cannon, and Exhibit B: Dredd 3D, starring Karl Urban and directed by Pete Travis.
Despite some superficial similarities in costume design and character, there could not be two more different adaptations of a comic book on record. I am, to be clear, including Batman & Robin and The Dark Knight in this comparison. At least Joel Schumacher’s movie accepted that there was a Batman. Judge Dredd spends its entire running time apologizing for its hero’s existence, as if the studio was simply ashamed to be bringing the comic book character to life in the first place. Travis’s Dredd accepts not just the hero but also his ideology, as problematic as it might be. You may disagree with a totalitarian justice system but, unironically, it’s not your place to judge. This is the world you are given in Dredd 3D, whether you like it or not.
Judge Dredd, on the other hand, exerts all of its energy repudiating the politics of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s comic book series. In Danny Cannon’s film we are introduced to the world of Mega-City One, where the whole of society lives because a nuclear apocalypse has rendered the rest of the planet uninhabitable. Keeping law and order in this densely populated super-structure (which does, to its credit, still have a successful chain of Jack in the Boxes) is so paramount that the police department calls its beat cops “judges,” because they’re given the authority to both arrest and sentence lawbreakers on the spot. The most feared judge of all is Judge Dredd, played by Sylvester Stallone, who completely embraces the word of the law and must, presumably to appease the politically correct audiences of the 1990s, learn a valuable lesson about due process and friendship before the movie is through.
For whatever reason, Rob Schneider is not only in Judge Dredd but is also frequently blamed for its suckiness (if you’ll forgive the technical jargon). Schneider plays a recent parolee who is sent immediately back to jail by Dredd for stumbling into a firefight and hiding in – and therefore vandalizing – public property. While yes, Rob Schneider spends the bulk of the film acting like Rob Schneider (generally considered a bad idea), the real issue is the function his character serves in the plot, namely shaming, and by extension later humanizing, Judge Dredd, who winds up framed for murder and sitting next to Schneider on a prison transport, helpless to stop Schneider from waxing rhapsodic about the failures of the justice system Dredd still claims to blindly support.
The law doesn’t make mistakes, Dredd claims, prompting Schneider to ask how Dredd could have been wrongly convicted if that were the case. Rather than stick up for himself, and justify his convictions with a reasonable philosophical response (surely Dredd would believe that it’s better for one innocent man to be imprisoned than hundreds to go free in a society that is, by necessity, micromanaged by the government), he’s forced to admit that Schneider is right. And no one should ever have to admit that Rob Schneider is right.
The main plot of 1995’s Judge Dredd focuses on a political conspiracy to wrest control of Mega-City One and replace the legion of faithful judges with a legion of faithful clones of Armand Assante, who is himself a clone of Judge Dredd, who is himself a clone. Why is Judge Dredd a clone? Because that’s the only reason why any person could divorce himself from his emotions and prioritize law and order over human compassion and friendship, apparently. Nobody could possibly believe that fascism was the right way to go, particularly in a comic book movie, and particularly if they’re the hero, so Judge Dredd runs rings around itself to make Dredd the object of pity rather than a hero with a complex philosophy. The film’s aggressively simplistic dialogue and outlandish production design (Stallone’s codpiece makes David Bowie’s Labyrinth get-up look conservative) only cements the film’s attempts to simplify the character and his world for audiences who, surely, could not have possibly accepted the story for what it is. Was Judge Dredd made for kids? Certainly, since Judge Dredd was a comic book movie in the post Tim Burton Batman era, but more importantly it was made for their parents, who could not be marketed a comic book movie that might be inappropriate for their youngsters.
Pete Travis’s Dredd 3D, on the other hand, expects you to accept Judge Dredd’s world so readily that they barely establish it, plunking you right in the middle of Mega-City One and in the middle of Dredd’s daily routine. Whereas Judge Dredd gives the hero a brief mission to establish his status quo, namely killing James Remar (the only possible way to make a hero in a giant gold codpiece seem like a badass), before telling a story that questions and upheaves the entire world of the character, Dredd 3D feels no need to encapsulate the entire society of the film within its running time. The effect is like reading a standalone issue of the comic book without catching up on anything that preceded it. You’re not missing anything, you’re just expected to accept everything Dredd 3D presents as the reality of the Mega-City One. As a result, you do accept it, unlike in the original film, which spends 96 minutes apologizing for being made in the first place.
The story of Dredd 3D finds Judge Dredd, played by Karl Urban, breaking in a new recruit, Judge Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby. She seems particularly fresh-faced because she never wears her judge’s helmet. It interferes with her psychic abilities, which are the only reason why she’s been given the opportunity to be Dredd’s partner in the first place after barely failing her exams. In contrast, Judge Dredd never takes his helmet off, a symbol of his commitment to protocol as well as his embodiment of the judicial system. Dredd is never humanized, although he is clearly human in biology. Stallone’s Dredd spends most of the film without his helmet, partially because they paid for Sylvester Stallone and thus needed to actually show Sylvester Stallone, but mostly because they needed to show that he’s really a good person who just needs friends and compassion to be happy.
Urban’s Dredd is never happy. A basic tenet of strong storytelling is that any character who is good at their job – be they good, bad or morally compromised – immediately earns the audience’s respect. In Dredd 3D, Judge Dredd qualifies. His reaction to the film’s primary storyline, in which he and Anderson are trapped in a 200-story skyscraper and forced to fight off its thousands of inhabitants, is stoicism. Just another day at the office, no matter how high the stakes have been raised. The building has been sealed off by Ma-Ma, played by Lena Headey as a scarred former prostitute who now runs a powerful drug ring from the top floors. Dredd and Anderson have arrested one of her lieutenants and must be killed before they can force him to testify against her.
Simple, efficient storytelling and, while coincidentally reminiscent to The Raid (a thrilling Indonesian action movie from earlier this year, with a similar, albeit non-sci-fi set up), also superior thanks to a more intriguing cast of characters and pace that occasionally lets up, allowing later action sequences to carry the same dramatic weight as the earlier ones. Judge Dredd’s action sequences, in contrast to Dredd 3D’s, are often random in their conception, forcing the hero to square off against cannibal Road Warrior knock-offs for no other pertinent reason than to fill time, and a handful of half-formed zombie clones.
Dredd’s female companions in each film are also distinctly different. Judge Hershey, played by Diane Lane, is allowed to be more than a love interest in Judge Dredd, because she ably defends Dredd in court and uncovers the government conspiracy, but is later relegated to the object of kissing and only permitted to fight the film’s only other female character, played by Joan Chen and introduced late in the film as an apparent afterthought, presumably just for this purpose. Olivia Thirlby, as the rookie, is given the film’s surrogate emotional response to callous justice, hesitating at the thought of dispensing death sentences. Which makes it all the more intriguing that she goes through with it anyway. By this point she, and the audience, has come to understand that the world of Dredd 3D is sufficiently violent and corrupt that authoritative and authoritarian action is a practical response. Because she accepts this, the audience does as well, and her character is bolstered as a complex individual as a result.
The matter-of-factness to Dredd 3D makes it truly compelling filmmaking, easy to engage with and rich enough to warrant close analysis. Judge Dredd was, let’s be honest, made for children, or at least adult audiences to be condescended to like children. It’s a product of a simpler era of comic book adaptations, in which complexity was traded for overt style, which the Blade Runner-esque Mega-City One admittedly had with surprising detail. I suspect that with a name change, disassociating 1995's Judge Dredd from the comic book property, the film could be accepted as modest camp entertainment, a less enthralling but capable Flash Gordon for the 1990s. As a Judge Dredd movie, however, it falls dramatically short.
Judge Dredd has been re-released on Blu-ray this week, with a decent transfer and almost no special features, tying in to this weekend’s theatrical release of Dredd 3D. Watching them together is an illuminating experience that brings into focus just how far comic book adaptations, and the culture to which they are marketed, has come in the last decade and a half. I can’t say that I entirely recommend Judge Dredd, but if ever there was a reason to watch it, a double feature with Pete Travis’s superior cinematic interpretation of the comic book is it.
Judge Dredd (1995):
Dredd 3D (2012):
action moviesBlu-rayscomic book moviesDreddDredd 3DJudge DreddKarl UrbanOlivia ThirlbyPete Travissci-fi moviesSylvester Stallone
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Could there be a catfight in Downing Street?
Marie Claire July 11, 2012 12:43 pm
Larry vs Freya - the Number 10 Downing Street cat wars Credit: Rex
George Osborne was reunited with his lost cat Freya, sparking fears of a fight with the Prime Minister's cat, Larry
George Osborne must have been delighted at finding his long-lost cat Freya, but there were concerns that there could be a cat fight at Number 10.
Since David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, there has been one cat who has had the run of Downing Street.
Larry the cat, a brown and white tabby, was brought in to chase mice in the famous residence and is loved by reporters and dignitaries alike.
A few weeks ago there were fears there could be a turf war between Larry and Freya, but new pictures show Freya prowling Downing Street and exploring her new surroundings – without upsetting Larry.
Freya, a large tabby (see pics) was a few months old when she went missing from the Chancellor’s home three years ago. Despite the Osbourne family’s attempt at finding her, they gave up hope.
But two weeks ago they received a phone call saying Freya was alive, and had been looked after by a neighbour who hadn’t seen the family’s lost cat posters.
After being reunited with the family, she was introduced to Larry, the Camerons’ cat.
A Treasury spokesman said recently: ‘She is settling in nicely and getting on well with family, staff and Larry.’
It’s official, this is still the fashion world’s favourite beach bag
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Gina Rodriguez on Being a Triple Threat, Latinx Representation, and Someone Great
Amanda EdwardsGetty Images
For those of us who fell in love with Gina Rodriguez after, like, one episode of the hit CW show Jane the Virgin—on which the 34-year-old actress has starred since 2014 and which is currently in its final season—it's natural to be a little sad that she won't be on our TVs every week anymore. But not too sad: Rodriguez has been handily taking over everything else in entertaining. Not only does she act, but she also directs and produces. Basically, you'll be seeing her around.
Starting this week, actually. Rodriguez stars in Someone Great alongside DeWanda Wise, Brittany Snow, and Lakeith Stanfield. It's the latest entry into Netflix's reigning rom-com renaissance, and hits the streaming site on April 19.
In anticipation of the hilarious new film—which you can watch an exclusive clip of below—Rodriguez spoke with MarieClaire.com about leaving Jane behind, how she's handling wedding planning (she's engaged to fellow actor Joe LoCicero), and her big plans for behind the camera.
She fell in love with the script for Someone Great early on.
"The script came to me right when my representation [transitioned], and I was in love with it so much that I hung on to it. I turned to my producing partner and I was like, 'I love this movie. We're doing this movie. I don't know who I'm getting [or] who my reps are going to be, but we're taking this movie to them and we're saying that this is what I'm doing next. Um, thank you and you're welcome.'
Kidding! I'm not that badass. It was more like, 'I really want to do this movie. It's so good!'"
She loves the representation happening in rom-coms.
"I have never been asked to be the lead in a rom-com outside of Jane (Jane is like an ongoing television rom-com) so, for me, it was really awesome. You know, as a Latina who seldom gets to just have a love story and be a normal girl, it was really exciting to me. I love romantic comedies. This one had a spin—the romance was between the girls, [between] her and her friends."
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Rom-Coms
She relates to her Someone Great character, Jenny...
"She chooses herself, and I specifically did the exact same thing when I moved out to Los Angeles. I chose myself, I chose my career, I chose my dreams and it was a big transition for me. So I vibed with [Jenny]."
DeWanda Wise, Gina Rodriguez, and Brittany Snow in Someone Great.
...and her character's relationship choices.
"I should have left this person back in New York, but I didn't. I led them to L.A. and then I left them, so you can just say I'm awful... No, no, no, no. I mean it was his choice also, but it was very important to me that he came on his own because I knew I was coming for me. What I love about Jenny in Someone Great is that she makes that decision before she leaves—she's a little smarter than I was."
She doesn't always have her shit together.
"You know, in our 30s it's, like, that's the real transitional years. That's when you're like, 'Oh shit, I gotta adult. I'm adulting! Okay!'
I think that was one of my draws to [Someone Great], because we don't ever show that side. We don't ever show that transition and the fears in those transitions and, like, being able to have your shit together but [also] be a mess at times. They're not mutually exclusive. It's wonderful to see and play somebody that makes silly, stupid decisions, but at the same time is a very on-track human being, career-wise, because we do that—I still do that."
Jane the Virgin forced her to grow up.
"I booked Jane when I was 29 and I turned 30, like, the second day of shooting our second episode. So, it was a crazy transition because I was finally seeing my dreams come true—something I had been working towards for 10 years...I feel like [adulthood] was forced on me because of Jane. That first season, I was averaging 16 hours a day [on-set], easy.
Rodriguez and her Jane The Virgin dad Rodrigo (played by Jaime Camil).
So it went from like, 'Oh, you've been a struggling actor,' to, 'Oh, you're going to work every day for the next eight months, for 16 hours a day—you better get your shit together. You better stay alive. So don't do anything stupid because you've got work to do and they'll sue you if you don't show up the next day.' So, it was a very forced transition, but I was ready for it. I was ready for that. It was time."
Getting married is a huge adulting move, which I'm about to do...eventually.
Plus, she's getting married!
"I feel like I'm currently going through [even more] transitions. Getting married is a huge adulting move, which I'm about to do...eventually. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into."
Happy Birthday to my King. ❤️
A post shared by Gina Rodriguez (@hereisgina) on Aug 9, 2018 at 6:48pm PDT
And about that Jane the Virgin spin-off...
"[The spinoff is] Jane's stories, that Jane writes. And they're juicy and it's going to have the same heart and the same roller-coasters and cliffhangers and it's just delicious. And now everybody knows the Telanovela tropes because of Jane, so [fans] get to live in that world with the spinoff very knowledgeable about it. It's like, 'This is how we see these kinds of stories now.'"
Is she nervous about filling the very talented shoes of Jane the Virgin's narrator, Anthony Mendez, as the narrator the spin-off series?
"I wasn't nervous [until you asked]! No, I'm kidding—I'm joking! I'm super nervous. He is the bomb. There is no comparison. I can't be compared to Anthony Mendez because he is outstanding, and a professional voiceover actor.
But that said, [the narration is] different. It's definitely different than you're used to hearing with Jane. At least I'm going to say...yeah...my voice is different for the spinoff a little bit. Yeah. It's not the Jane people are used to hearing."
Will she be writing any of the Jane the Virgin spinoff episodes?
"Absolutely not. Girl, I don't know how to write at all, but I definitely know character and storyline and I definitely know how to tell a story from a director's perspective. I will be directing for sure some of the spinoff. When it comes to story, I let Jennie [Snyder Urman, the series' creator] and Valentina [Garza, the series' writer] really crack the big cases. I'm working with talented writers, so I happily read the scripts and send [the writers] congratulations on how smart and brilliant they are—always are. Because I'm playing with giants here. There's no need to even touch anything Jennie or Valentina writes. They're so smart."
She plans to create more opportunities for Latinx artists.
Instead of sitting back and complaining there aren't enough opportunities, I'm just creating them.
"It is the reason why I got into the entertainment industry—to help create other stars, other artists, to help make dreams come true. It's like my love language. It really brings a lot of joy to be able to put people in positions of power and give them opportunity, create opportunity. That's definitely what I want to do in life—period.
Rodriguez in Someone Great.
Sarah Shatz/Netflix
It's finally happening and I could not be more thrilled and I just don't want it to end. I want to continue to spread more stories and put new people on, in front of, and behind the camera and create more opportunities. Instead of sitting back and complaining that there aren't enough, I'm just creating them. And then there's never anything to complain about, but always something to make and always something to create."
She understands the long path to "overnight" success.
"With my career, everyone was like, 'Oh my God, look at her. She just blew up.' And it's like, no, I had been acting for 10 years—or trying to and struggling. And it's the same with my producing.
Ten years ago, I told my best friend and producing partner that she would be running my company [I Can and I Will Productions] one day, and she was like, 'Alright, bench!' And I was like, 'No, I'm serious dude. One day.'
And then I made her an offer she couldn't refuse three years ago, and she came out to L.A. and she came and helped me create this, this Little Latino Engine That Could. It's very cool."
Someone Great premieres on Netflix April 19. Jane the Virgin's final season is airing now, Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. on The CW.
For more stories like this, including celebrity news, beauty and fashion advice, savvy political commentary, and fascinating features, sign up for the Marie Claire newsletter.
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Tom Holland Rescued Gina Rodriguez at the Oscars
Gina Rodriguez Uses Platform to Highlight Women
This Teen Wore Gina Rodriguez's Golden Globe Dress to Prom
A Sneak Peek of Gina Rodriguez as Carmen Sandiego
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NYSE:TGP - Teekay Lng Partners Earnings Date, Estimates & History
Adding Teekay Lng Partners, L.P.
Now: $15.76▼
MA: $13.88▼
Market Capitalization$1.25 billion
P/E Ratio20.75
Teekay Lng Partners (NYSE:TGP) Earnings History and Estimates Chart
The chart below shows up to four years of a company's earnings history. The dark blue line represents the company's actual earnings per share. The light blue area represents the range of Wall Street analysts' earnings estimates for each quarter.
Teekay Lng Partners (NYSE:TGP) Earnings Estimates
2019 EPS Consensus Estimate: $1.60
Number of Estimates
Low Estimate
High Estimate
Average Estimate
Q1 2019 1 $0.21 $0.21 $0.21
Teekay Lng Partners (NYSE TGP) Earnings History by Quarter
Consensus Estimate
GAAP EPS
Actual Revenue
Release Link
5/23/2019 3/31/2019 $0.33 $0.34 $0.49 $151.96 million $149.74 million View Listen
2/21/2019 12/31/2018 $0.34 $0.32 $0.64 $138.17 million $143.28 million View N/A
11/15/2018 9/30/2018 $0.34 $0.16 $0.08 $125.21 million $115.38 million View Listen
8/2/2018 6/30/2018 $0.26 $0.09 $0.23 $126.85 million $114.36 million View N/A
2/22/2018 Before Market $0.32 $0.35 $0.28 $111.54 million $122.00 million View N/A
11/9/2017 Q3 2017 $0.33 $0.23 $0.73 $102.10 million $102.82 million View N/A
8/3/2017 6/30/2017 $0.32 $0.20 $0.63 $103.31 million $99.91 million View Listen
5/18/2017 3/31/2017 $0.36 $0.22 $0.12 $104.31 million $101.18 million View N/A
2/23/2017 Q4 2016 $0.44 $0.22 ($0.56) $112.25 million $100.47 million View N/A
8/4/2016 Q2 2016 $0.29 $0.66 $0.79 $95.35 million $98.70 million View N/A
5/19/2016 Q1 2016 $0.32 $0.44 $1.34 $92.97 million $95.77 million View N/A
2/18/2016 Q4 2015 $0.51 $0.42 ($0.05) $102.83 million $103.43 million View Listen
11/5/2015 Q3 2015 $0.50 $0.34 $0.68 $101.00 million $98.18 million View N/A
8/6/2015 Q2 2015 $0.48 $0.32 $0.01 $100.30 million $98.24 million View N/A
5/14/2015 Q1 2015 $0.53 $0.45 $0.21 $104.61 million $97.33 million View N/A
11/6/2014 Q3 2014 $0.56 $0.50 ($0.07) $105.97 million $100.78 million View N/A
8/7/2014 Q2 2014 $0.50 $0.42 $0.35 $105.02 million $100.16 million View N/A
5/15/2014 Q1 2014 $0.54 $0.56 $0.54 $106.73 million $101.49 million View N/A
11/7/2013 Q3 2013 $0.57 $0.60 $0.86 $99.73 million $100.32 million View N/A
2/21/2013 Q4 2012 $0.55 $0.56 $0.71 View N/A
11/8/2012 Q3 2012 $0.56 $0.54 $0.58 View N/A
8/9/2012 Q2 2012 $0.49 $0.63 $0.68 View N/A
11/10/2011 Q3 2011 $0.45 $0.47 $0.47 View N/A
2/24/2011 Q4 2010 $0.49 $0.48 ($0.44) View N/A
11/13/2009 Q3 2009 $0.55 ($0.06) $0.61 View N/A
7/23/2009 Q1 2009 $0.36 $0.12 View N/A
2/12/2009 Q3 2008 $0.37 ($0.29) View N/A
(Earnings results data provided by Zacks Investment Research)
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Applications Open for Crime Prevention Funding – Deadline JULY 16
Nova Scotia communities, organizations and law enforcement agencies can apply for funding to help in their efforts to combat and address the impacts of crime and violence.
Funding through the Community Crime Intervention Initiative will support the development of programs and increased resources.
“Crime affects us all, it undermines our safety and our sense of security and it exploits our most vulnerable members of society,” said Justice Minister Mark Furey. “This funding can make a significant impact on the development of programming to support more resilient and stronger neighbourhoods.”
Funding will support initiatives that help address root causes of crime and violence, alleviate the impacts of crime and violence on communities and build community capacity to respond. Prevention and intervention initiatives are also eligible.
The deadline for applications is Tuesday, July 16. Applicants can receive multi-year funding, beginning in April 2020.
Funding comes from the Government of Canada’s Initiative to Take Action Against Gun and Gang Violence. The province is receiving $4,731,447 over five years.
Program investments for 2018-19 and 2019-20 include support for Halifax Regional Municipality’s community mobilization project to respond to violent or traumatic incidents and increase community resilience.
“We know that when violence occurs it not only impacts those directly involved, it impacts the community as a whole,” said Aisha Hum, Mulgrave Park Community Mobilization Team member. “Our holistic response works on mitigating the trauma and harm as a result of violence, so that healing can occur without festering conditions to further violence.”
Other programs supported through the fund include the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre’s Seven Sparks transition program, a bail supervision program run by the Mi’kmaq Legal Support Network and an integrated support model for survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking provided by the YWCA. The application form for funding is available at https://novascotia.ca/community-crime-intervention-initiative-fund/ .
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Coin-op Games
ACE Coin Equipment
JPM International
Patientline Games
Keno Krazy
Hangman 2
Publisher : JPM International
Platform : GamesNet, ItBox, Ind:E, FatBox, Nexus
OS : Windows, DirectX
Language : C
Game Engine : Maiden
Hangman 2 is a colourful cowboy-themed pub quiz game with instant cash prizes. It is a £20 jackpot multiple choice question and answer video SWP game. The game is based loosely on the traditional paper and pencil Hangman word game.
Choose your CLUE and attempt to solve the MYSTERY PHRASE before you're lynched! Choose a LETTER and answer QUESTIONS to add to the phrase. Complete the phrase to win POINTS. Progress along the points bar to win CASH PRIZES. Watch for MYSTERIES(?)! GOOD LUCK!
Get your name in the HALL OF FAME! The more questions you answer, the higher your ranking!
The game starts with the selection of a Hangman phrase. At the top of the screen there is a points trail, in the form of an undertaker's tape measure, with money bags placed along it. Each money bag has a different cash value, ranging in value from £1 to £20. The trail position of each money bag corresponds to the points needed to win the cash value shown on the bag.
The player's current points total is indicated by the position of an arrow on the points trail. The player's current win value is shown by the highest value money bag with a points value equal to, or exceeded by, the player's score.
Beneath the points trail, there are three WANTED posters. Each poster has a clue to a Hangman phrase, and a points value. To select a phrase, the player chooses one of the posters.
The player is then shown the main Hangman game screen. At the start of the game, the player's Hangman character has all six body parts missing.
The clue to the Hangman phrase is shown in green above the phrase itself. Each letter of the phrase is represented by a purple tile. Initially all the tiles are blank. At the bottom of the screen is a selection of three letters to choose from. Each letter has a different question category associated with it. The game has a total of seven question categories.
The player must choose one of the letters that they think is present in the Hangman phrase. There is a time limit for the selection, which is shown graphically by a shrinking red bar on the undertaker's tape measure at the bottom of the screen. If the player fails to make a selection within the time limit, one of the three letters is chosen at random.
If the selected letter is NOT in the phrase, the chosen letter drops through the trap door beneath it, and a limb, or other body part, is added to the Hangman character. The player must then choose again from a fresh set of letters.
If the selected letter is in the phrase, the game progresses to the question screen.
If the selected letter is a question mark (?), a mystery bonus round is awarded.
If the player currently has a cash win, they can choose to collect it at this point in the game by pressing COLLECT.
If the player's Hangman accumulates all six body parts, the Hangman is complete; the player is 'hanged', and the game ends.
On the question screen, the player is shown a question from their chosen category together with three alternative answers, only one of which is correct.
If the player selects the CORRECT answer, the game returns to the main game screen, and all occurrences of the previously selected letter are revealed in the phrase.
If the player selects an INCORRECT answer, and has one or more try again bullets remaining, they must try again.
The game ends if:
the player selects a wrong answer, and has no try again bullets remaining
the player fails to select an answer within the time limit
After successfully answering a question, the game returns to the main game screen. If at this point the Hangman phrase is complete, the game returns to the phrase selection screen. The points value of the completed phrase is then added to the player's points total, and the player chooses a new Hangman phrase.
In the MYSTERY BONUS round, the player is briefly shown four WANTED posters, each with a different bonus prize. The bonuses on offer can be positive or negative, but there is always at least one positive bonus available for the player to choose.
The wanted posters are turned over, and their bonus prizes hidden from view. The player must then watch closely as the four posters are shuffled. The player is asked to select one of the posters. The prize on the chosen poster is then revealed, and awarded to the player.
The possible POSITIVE bonuses are:
SPOT PRIZE - a cash value ranging from £1 to £10
TRY AGAIN - a try again bullet is added to the player's try again total (up to a maximum of three)
SUPER TRY AGAIN - two try again bullets are added to the player's try again total (up to a maximum of three)
EXTRA POINTS - free bonus points are added to the player's points total
ADD A LETTER - a letter in the phrase is revealed without the need for the player to answer a question
ADD LETTERS - up to three letters in the phrase are revealed without the need for the player to answer a question
COMPLETE PHRASE - the current phrase is automatically completed and the points for the phrase are awarded.
The possible NEGATIVE bonuses are:
LOSE TRY AGAIN - if the player has one or more try again bullets, one of them is removed
ADD A LIMB - a body part is added to the player's Hangman character
HANGED - all remaining missing body parts are added to the player's Hangman character, and the game ends
When the game ends, if the player has a high points total, they are shown their rank in the game's high score table, and asked to enter their initials. The high score table can be seen by pressing the HIGH SCORE button on the game's start screen.
Martin developed Hangman 2 using his Maiden game engine. The game utilises 800x600 graphics, and runs with Direct X on SWP platforms running Windows 95 or higher. Hangman 2 is a re-write of an earlier low resolution 8-bit graphics game that was developed for JPM's Impact video system. The original Impact game was developed for a bespoke cabinet with no touch screen. Martin's newer Hangman 2 benefited from running on superior hardware with 16-bit graphics capabilities. Frame rates were much higher (up to 60 frames/s, compared with less than 10 frames/s on the earlier game). This made the fast-paced card shuffles in the game's bonus feature a lot more playable. Animations were also much smoother. GamesNet, and all other subsequent SWP platforms, included a touch screen, which also added to playability.
Martin wrote the compression system that was used in the file format that he developed for the game's graphics. This enabled the total file size of the game to be kept to a minimum (under 10 MiB in the case of Hangman2). Keeping the game file size to a minimum was important in the early days of GamesNet, as hard drive space was at a premium then. It was also a requirement that games should be able to be uploaded to terminals in a reasonable time, using network connections that were a lot slower than would be acceptable today.
Hangman 2 on ItBox - January 2003
Martin's Hangman 2 was initially released on GamesNet in 1999. In 2000, it became one of the first games to launch on Leisure Link's SWP Showtime platform (later to be renamed ItBox). In 2002, Hangman 2 was one of the launch titles in JPM's GameBox game collection, a package of games designed for JPM's Proteus game platform. Hangman 2 was also subsequently released on all other major UK SWP platforms including Ind:E, Fatbox and Nexus.
As one of GamesNet's top-performing games for over 10 years, Martin's Hangman 2 ranks amongst the most successful SWPs ever developed.
Hangman 2 on Nexus - January 2004
Copyright © Martin W Ward 2015 - 2019
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Number of students exempt from vaccinations growing
Haleakala Waldorf School has highest rate of unvaccinated students in state
Kehaulani Cerizo
kcerizo@mauinews.com
Kaiser Permanente LPN Melody Quedding gives Maui High School sophomore Karl Matillano, 16, a meningitis booster vaccination Friday morning at Kaiser’s Maui Lani Medical Office in Wailuku. “That wasn’t bad,” Matillano said after receiving his shot. -- The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
HALIIMAILE — More than half of Haleakala Waldorf School’s 245-student population is unvaccinated, the highest amount of students at a single school in the state with exemption from vaccines required by the Hawaii Department of Health, according to recently released state data.
In addition, Haleakala Waldorf, with grade and high school campuses in Kula and Makawao, has the highest percentage of exemptions based on enrollment in the state. Out of the 245 students, 129, or 52.7 percent, are claiming exemptions, all of which are attributed to religious reasons, the report said.
Other Maui County public, private and charter schools with noteable amounts of unvaccinated kids at single locations were Kihei Charter (76-77 students of 624 total) and Kalama Intermediate (70 of 888 total) schools. High exemption percentages based on enrollment were Roots (41.5 percent of 53 total) and Montessori schools (37.1 percent of 181 total).
Local school administrators, parents and state officials are weighing in on the controversial subject of vaccination, where Hawaii’s total exemption numbers are increasing each year. Meanwhile, national reports of measles climbed Wednesday to its highest level in 25 years, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latest city among 22 states to be hit is Los Angeles, with more than 700 staff and faculty at two universities placed under quarantine last week. In some states, fines, threats of prosecution, mandatory vaccinations and other measures are being taken to combat the measles outbreak.
Hawaii’s public, private and charter schools are mandated to submit self-reported vaccination information to state DOH by Jan. 1 of each year. The department calculated this school year’s results, broken down by enrollment total and percentage of enrollment claiming either religious or medical exemption. For the 2018-19 school year, two of 51 total Maui County schools — Paia Elementary and Horizons schools — have yet to release reports.
Lincoln Wendorff, 4, picks out a sticker after getting vaccinated Friday morning at the Kaiser Permanente Maui Lani Medical Office in Wailuku. Unvaccinated students at a single school are highest in the state at Maui County’s Haleakala Waldorf School, where more than half of the student body has a religious exemption from state-mandated vaccines, according to a state Department of Health report on the 2018-19 school year. -- The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
After Haleakala Waldorf, the highest numbers of exempt students per count were at these schools: Honolulu County’s charter Hawaii Technology Academy with 111 exempt of 1,101 total; Kauai County’s public Kilauea Elementary School at 104 exempt out of 312 total; and Hawaii County’s charter Kona Pacific PCS at 83 exempt of 222 total.
Again after Haleakala Waldorf, the highest percentages of student enrollment claiming exemption per county were: Hawaii County’s private Malamalama Waldorf School / Kinderhale with 46.3 percent of 95 students; Kauai County’s charter Alakai O Kauai Charter School with 40 percent exempt of 130; and Honolulu County’s public Sunset Beach Elementary School with 18.9 percent exempt of 403.
State DOH Immunization Branch Chief Ronald Balajadia said the school report should be viewed in a bigger context, where more needs to be done to reduce increasing numbers of exemptions statewide.
“The bigger context is that we should be concerned there are increasing numbers of exemptions,” Balajadia said. He added that due to high rates of travel in and out of Hawaii, our community is especially vulnerable to illnesses that can be prevented with vaccination.
“The fact is, it just takes one person who is susceptible, regardless of which locations have the highest and who has the lowest,” he said Thursday.
Kaiser Permanente LPN Melody Quedding prepares a vaccination shot Friday. An online list of state Department of Health-mandated vaccines for Hawaii schools includes a schedule of age and grade-level requirements for public, private and charter schools. -- The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
‘A hot topic right now’
Kelly Brewer, Haleakala Waldorf School administrator, speculated about the reasons behind her school’s exemption numbers. It may be the result of parents going slower than the Hawaii vaccine schedule and others possibly deciding a vaccine stance prior to student enrollment.
“The school makes no statement on vaccines; there’s nothing that the parents are encouraged to do or not encouraged to do,” she said last week. “When our parents are making choices similar to other schools in our area, and perhaps in Maui in general, by the time they’ve come to us, they’ve made the heart of their immunization choices.”
Asked whether immunization choices would impact the health or safety others in the community, Brewer said the decision is up to each parent.
“The whole thing is a little bit of a hot topic right now, as far as what others are choosing to do and how it affects others in the community, we have no stance on this,” she said. “It is up to parents in consultation with their own physicians.”
All of the students claiming exemption at Haleakala do so for religious reasons, the state report said.
Cheryl Zarro, director of financial services at Kihei Charter School in South Maui, said that their numbers might be attributed to enrollment approaches, where siblings of an existing student are given priority over others. Typically if one student is claiming exemption, the others will be as well.
Kihei Charter complies with DOH vaccination reporting requirements, Zarro said, adding that she, herself, is supportive of vaccines and has vaccinated her children.
“There was a lot of misinformation in regards to people feeling like it (vaccination) causes problems,” she said. “I do think we have an element of that going on for some families who don’t remember how bad it can be, being sick, because they’ve had vaccination. Some children today don’t even know what polio looks like. . . . I believe we need to do all we can to keep our students healthy.”
Eric L. Dustman, head of Montessori School of Maui, said his Makawao school for 18-month-old to 8th-grade students complies with state rules and it works to inform families.
“As you would expect, great efforts are extended to ensure the safety, health and well-being of all students on our campus and elsewhere,” he said. “We ensure that all our policies and procedures are aligned with the Department of Health rules, and we work to educate our families to ensure their compliance.”
Melita Charan, head of Roots School, a preschool to 8th-grade institution in Haiku, said the school does not have an official stance on vaccination and did not reply to requests for feedback on the state DOH report.
Kalama Intermediate and Paia Elementary schools, along with Horizons Academy of Maui, did not respond to requests for comment on the report. Two schools, Lahainaluna and King Kekaulike high schools, shared vaccination exemption numbers Friday that were not yet tallied on the state website. Their exemption totals did not rank them in the top three for Maui County.
The state Department of Education deferred questions to the state DOH, saying it takes the health department’s lead when it comes to vaccination efforts, but said that rates were “relatively low” for its public schools.
“Religious and medical exemptions at DOE schools in Maui County are generally low at less than 10 percent with the only exception being Kula Elementary at 12.9 percent,” state DOE spokesman Derek Inoshita said last week.
Doctor calls report ‘pretty shocking’
Hawaii state law requires that all students meet immunization, physical exam and tuberculosis clearance requirements before they attend any public or private school. Immunizations required for school attendance include diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis; polio; MMR (mumps, measles, rubella); hepatitis B; hib (haemophilus influenzae type b for preschool attendance); and varicella (chickenpox). A number of vaccine doses are required by age and grade, as listed in a state DOH schedule online.
Parents and guardians may obtain exemptions from a physician for medical reasons, for example, if the immunization is medically contraindicated due to a stated cause. They may also get a religious exemption by filling out paperwork, which states that “the person’s religious beliefs prohibit the practice of immunization.” It cannot be based on objections to specific immunizing agents, the law said. The vast majority of exemptions in Hawaii cite religious reasons.
Kenneth B. Kepler, a Kihei-Wailea Medical Center doctor who has experience in internal medicine and pediatric work, said the reason for rising exemptions may be attributed to social influences more than religious beliefs.
“There is no major world religion that says vaccines are harmful,” he said last week.
“I think it has to do with the fact that we attribute our friends’ opinions to be very important and valid,” he added. “We see that in all aspects of life. . . . The other truth is that if you are exposed to someone who doesn’t vaccinate, you are more likely to not vaccinate yourself. That’s particularly true in social media.”
Kepler, the son of a local pediatrician and public health nurse, said there is “profound medical evidence” supporting vaccination, and is often frustrated with misstated medical information even in “good-meaning articles.” He traced some vaccination-linked-to-autism fears to a British medical journal that has since retracted the findings.
Another Maui doctor, Joel Friedman of Maui Health Network, who specializes in cranial-sacro therapy and homeopathy, said that his job is to “counsel parents regarding pro and con of vaccines” and let them decide what they feel is best for their child. “This is called informed consent and is a cornerstone of modern medicine,” he said.
“The conversation about childhood vaccinations has gotten very loud and very angry between the pro- and anti-vax proponents,” Friedman added, declining to elaborate on the topic.
Friedman instead suggested reading articles from nationally known vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s foundation.
Kepler, meanwhile, encourages everyone to follow all Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices guidelines on vaccinations, saying it’s especially important for those in health care.
“If you’re taking care of someone else, you have an ethical duty to keep them well. You wash your hands; if you’re sick you stay home; if you can prevent the flu, you get vaccinated.”
He also encouraged people to do research at CDC and ACIP, and added that the DOH report is insightful for parents.
“I think it can be valuable to people, sure,” he said. “If I knew there were 50 percent of children unimmunized, there is no way my kids would go that school. It’s pretty shocking.”
Measles at highest level in 25 years
All the while, measles in the U.S. has been climbing to its highest level in 25 years, with 695 cases reported by the CDC in 22 states this year as of Wednesday afternoon. The number reflects the highest annual total recorded since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.
Measles in most people causes fever, runny nose, cough and a rash all over the body. However, a very small fraction of those infected can suffer complications such as pneumonia and a dangerous swelling of the brain.
The CDC recommends the vaccine for everyone over a year old, except for people who had the disease as children. Those who have had measles are immune.
The vaccine, which became available in the 1960s, is considered safe and highly effective, and because of it, measles was declared all but eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. But it has made comebacks since then, including 667 cases in 2014.
Los Angeles in the most recent area hit by an influx of cases. More than 700 students and staff at University of California, Los Angeles and California State University, Los Angeles were placed under quarantine because they may have been exposed to measles and either have not been vaccinated or cannot verify they are immune, officials said last week.
National totals were 626 Monday and nearly 700 by Wednesday, making this the nation’s worst year for measles since 1994. There were 963 cases in 1994.
Roughly 75 percent of this year’s illnesses in the U.S. have been in New York state, mainly in two ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and suburban Rockland County. Most of those cases have been in unvaccinated people, according to the CDC.
There have been three measles-related deaths reported in the U.S. since 2000, the last one in 2015. The worst year for measles in modern U.S. history was 1958, with more than 763,000 reported cases and 552 deaths.
Going ‘down the rabbit hole’
Parents remain divided on the childhood vaccination topic, so much so that out of more than a dozen requests for comment, only one agreed to be on the record for vaccination stance. One father declined, citing worry over what other parent friends would think.
Kuau resident Valerie Petredis, a single mom of one student in Haleakala Waldorf and one in Montessori, described her vaccination position as moderate.
When her children were born, she said, she was looking for a pediatrician with a slower, more flexible vaccine schedule because she wanted her kids to have some but not all of the required shots. Eventually, Petredis said she was more open to vaccines and a balance of modern medicine.
“The people who choose not to vaccinate believe in nature’s way, and that their bodies are going to fight certain things, which is interesting,” she said. “Because we are in an age where we are not dealing with mass deaths due to crazy diseases.”
“There are so many conspiracy ideas,” Petredis added. “You can really go down the rabbit hole, thinking some puppeteer is positioning us for different reasons. For me, I try not to get too crazy because there’s a balance between modern medicine and the reality of diseases that are out there.”
* Kehaulani Cerizo can be reached at kcerizo@mauinews.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Call your Legislators
Nominate a Candidate
Our Revolution, St. Louis Chapter
DONATE 2018
Mobilize Missouri Endorses Michela Skelton
“The hard-working people of Mid-Missouri are tired of government that works only for the few, for the wealthy and for the well-connected. I’m running for state representative to stand up for working men and women, for seniors, for people with disabilities, for students, for teachers and for everyone in the 50th District who isn’t being heard in Jefferson City.”
This statement on Michela Skelton’s website echoes the core values that Mobilize Missouri embodies. It also serves as an appropriate introduction to our first endorsement of 2017: Michela Skelton for MO House District 50.
Skelton is the sole Democratic candidate running in the Aug. 8 special election for Missouri’s 50th House District. The district includes portions of Boone, Cole, Cooper and Moniteau counties. The election was set by former Gov. Jay Nixon after former Rep. Caleb Jones, R-Columbia, resigned to become deputy chief of staff to Gov. Eric Greitens.
We sat down with Michela to learn more about her and the upcoming election.
Q: If I had an opportunity to ask you to describe yourself before you decided to file, how would you have answered back then?
A: This is a really hard question, but I think the honest answer would be lost. When I was working for the Senate, I was prevented from participating in discussion of anything that could be perceived to be political and I’ve always been a very passionate and opinionated person. So while I loved being a wife and mother and an employee, my job had limited me so that I could not be a whole person with thoughts and ideas about how to make our world a better place. Leaving that job to work on the Bernie Sanders presidential primary campaign helped me to find myself and my voice again.
Q: You’ve been quoted saying, “I plan on winning this race by talking to everybody I absolutely can.” How does the special election change the way you approach that? What are you losing or gaining from having more than a year of campaign time cut out of your strategy?
A: I will definitely be short on time to talk to every potential voter, but I still intend on trying to knock on every door where I think someone is open to hearing from me. I also think it will inhibit my ability to reach out to non-voters to get them engaged for this election. But after the election is over in August, I’ll be right back out there again trying to reach anyone I missed between now and August. I’ll be getting new people registered to vote and engaged in the political process. Because after the August election is over, November of 2018 will be coming quicker than we’d like to think.
Q: You are running as Democrat. Are you able to identify a few key ways in which you deviate from the current national Democratic Party? From the current Missouri Democratic Party?
A: I think one of the few key ways I would deviate from the current national Democratic Party is that I do not believe focusing almost to the exclusion of all else on the advancement of the knowledge economy is going to be able to lift up all of those suffering in my district. I also think we need to be focusing on our moral values of compassion, equality, opportunity and justice for all and bring every policy prescription back to those basic ideals. One of the key ways I differ from the current, though evolving, Missouri Democratic Party is that rural areas and rural constituents are important for the future of our party and our state. We need to do better to hear and recognize the concerns of those people and spend more time and resources on engaging with those communities.
Q: From your website, “I will fight for the rights of workers to unionize and bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.” In the event that House Bill 91 (“Right to Work”) becomes law, what does your vision for “fighting for workers’ rights” look like?
A: My vision of fighting for workers’ rights would be about changing the narrative about the purpose and function of unions as the protectors of worker freedom and strength against corporate tyranny. Until the greater public recognizes what an important function unions and the workers that participate in them serve, it will be hard to turn back legislation like HB 91. I will also support efforts through ballot initiatives to restore the rights of workers through amendments to the Missouri Constitution.
Q: If you are elected, how do you plan to balance your personal beliefs with the needs and desires of your constituents? Do you feel capable of voting against your personal beliefs in a situation where the voters make their opposing opinion very clear?
A: As a representative, I will be elected to serve the varying needs and desires of my constituents. So long as the desires of my constituents do not conflict with the core principles of compassion, equality, and justice upon which I am basing my campaign I can and will set aside my personal beliefs and preferences to meet the needs and desires of my constituents.
Q: What is your biggest takeaway from your time working as Staff Attorney for the Missouri Senate?
A: Term limits have had the unfortunate side effect of taking the power of expertise out of the hands of long serving legislators and placing it with lobbyists. More often than not, when I was writing legislation as a nonpartisan staff person, I was working with the lobbyists because the Senators did not have the knowledge or expertise to grapple with complex issues especially in their first several terms.
Q: Why are you running for office?
A: I am running for office because I believe the voters of the 50th House District deserve are representative who is willing to return their phone calls and emails, be present in their communities, and actually serve their needs and interests rather than those of big-dollar donors and industry lobbyists. I think I have the knowledge and training to be an effective representative from the day I am elected.
Q: Why now?
A: When I was interviewed for the position at Senate Research, I was asked if I had ever thought about running for office. I said that I had when I was younger, but the currently hostile partisan environment convinced me that I didn’t want to. After working there for several years I realized that the reason the system was broken is because too many good people with the knowledge and skill to do a good job were afraid to put themselves out there and do the messy work of leading. I have seen up close and personal how the system is failing us and I want to be part of the change to make it better. If not me, who? If not now, when?
Q: The percentage of active and resident lawyers in Missouri compared to employment is less than 1%. Lawyers represent nearly 13% of all seats in the Missouri House. As a lawyer, how important do you think it is for the makeup of our policy makers to mimic that of the represented population?
A: I think it is very important for the makeup of our policy makers to mimic that of the represented population. However, because of term limits there is a need for more specialized knowledge about how the law works that I think is an important consideration in terms of the over representation by lawyers. I think considering the background and life experience and not just current occupation is also an important consideration in determining appropriate representation. There are huge barriers to a truly representative citizen legislature and many voices and life experiences get left out. We don’t currently have the support mechanisms in place to allow minimum wage workers, single parents, and those living in poverty to serve in the state legislature. The least we can do is elect people who are willing to listen to their stories and represent their needs just as they would for everyone else.
Q: What is something you’d like the people in St. Louis and Kansas cities to know about the people of Boone, Cole, Moniteau and Cooper counties?
A: There are so many more things that we all have in common than the things that make us different. We all want our children to succeed, to have a job that allows us to pay the rent or mortgage and put dinner on the table, and have a purpose in our lives that brings us joy and fulfillment. The more we can talk about those commonalities the easier it will be to stand together to make life better for everyone.
Q: If you could speak to Governor Greitens today as an elected official, what would you say to or ask of him?
A: When you do things that improve the lives of average Missourians, like opposing corporate welfare in the form of tax incentives for a sports arena, I will stand with you. But, when you do things that hurt average Missourians to benefit big corporate interests, like stripping the rights of workers to freely contract with their employers through a union or cutting funding for our community schools to pay for big corporate tax cuts, I will be loud in my opposition and be sure that every voter in my district knows how these policies will hurt us all.
Q: What’s one thing you wish every voter already knew about you by the time you arrive at their door?
A: I care about each and every person in this district and I want us all to succeed. The most important thing I can do as a representative is listen, and that is what my visit is all about.
Find out more about Michela and her run here.
January 30, 2017 / In Elections, State Representative / By admin / Comments Off on Mobilize Missouri Endorses Michela Skelton
Mobilize Missouri Local Candidate Endorsements August 6, 2018
Mobilize Missouri Announces Endorsements for State and Federal Candidates June 13, 2018
Fridays with An Activist: Damen Alexander, March for Our Lives STL Organizer April 6, 2018
Mobilize Missouri Local Candidate Endorsements
Mobilize Missouri has selected candidates for endorsement in advance of the August 2018 primary election.…
Mobilize Missouri Announces Endorsements for State and Federal Candidates
Fridays with An Activist: Damen Alexander, March for Our Lives STL Organizer
Photo courtesy of Niles Zee Photography An interview series with local activists about their work…
Paid for by Mobilize Missouri, Thomas Krenning, Treasurer.
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All Academic Music performances take place in the Dorothy Menker Theater unless otherwise noted. Chorale performances are reserved seating, all other performances are general admission.
Moraine Chorale and Chamber Singers
The Moraine Chorale celebrates its 22nd season performing five themed concerts, including Broadway music, patriotic, and holiday selections with a small chamber orchestra. The Chorale is a community-based choir with more than 60 members. The Chamber Singers is an ensemble featuring Moraine Valley students.
Summer 2019 Patriotic Concert
Saturday, July 27, 7:30 p.m.
The Great American Songbook
Saturday, Sept. 28, 7:30 p.m.
Merry Christmas Music
Saturday, Dec. 7, 7:30 p.m.
An Evening of Irish Music and Song
Featuring: Catherine O’Connell, vocalist; Jimmy Moore, guitar; Kathleen Keane, fiddle and penny whistle
Saturday, Feb. 29, 7:30 p.m.
Broadway/Pop/Motion Picture Spectacular!
Saturday, May 2, 7:30 p.m.
Summer Patriotic Concert
Saturday, July 25, 2020, 7:30 p.m.
Moraine Valley Jazz Ensemble
Swinging into their 23rd season, this 20-member big band explores a range of styles from the classic swing of Duke Ellington and Count Basie to soulful blues, burning Latin jazz and gritty funk. The band also features contemporary works by such composers as Bill Holman and Bob Florence and iconic vocal arrangements such as those performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.
Swingin’ Summer Jazz 2019!
Friday, July 26, 7:30 p.m.
Fall Concert
Performing Frank Sinatra and Count Basie's Sinatra at the Sands (1966)
Friday, March 6, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, May 1, 7:30 p.m.
Swingin' Summer Jazz
Friday, July 24, 2020, 7:30 p.m.
Moraine Valley Concert Band
The Moraine Valley Concert Band presents their 15th anniversary season with three themed concerts including a celebration of autumn, a performance of great movie themes and a concert of favorites curated by our talented band members. The band is comprised of over 50 students and community members who play woodwind, brass and percussion instruments.
Harvest Festival Music
Thursday, Nov. 21, 7:30 p.m.
Let's Go to the Movies!
Sunday, March 1, 3 p.m.
Band Member Favorites
Sunday, May 3, 3 p.m.
Moraine Valley Percussion Ensemble
This wonderfully entertaining ensemble presents their 15th anniversary season with three dynamic, high-energy performances featuring music styles performed on marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, drum set, timpani, bongos, congas, trash cans, cookware, cowbells and much more!
Percussion Holiday Spectacular
Thursday, Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.
The Wide World of Percussion
Moraine Valley Flute Choir
The Flute Choir explores flute music from a wide range of eras and styles. FREE ADMISSION.
Sounds That Go Bump in the Night
Friday, Oct. 11, 7 p.m.
John and Angeline Oremus Theater
Friday, March 27, 7 p.m.
Moraine Valley Community Orchestra
Student and community musicians of the Moraine Valley Orchestra delight audiences with classical music from the Baroque era to current times.
Sunday, Nov. 17, 3 p.m.
Sunday, April 26, 3 p.m.
Moraine Valley Jazz Combo
Comprised of both students and community members, the jazz combo celebrates a wide range of music styles such as jazz, funk, soul and Latin while exploring the art of small group improvisation.
Tuesday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m.
Tuesday, May 5, 7 p.m.
Free Faculty and Student Events
100 Years of the Big Beat: The Legacy of Art Blakey
Sunday, Sept. 22, 3 p.m.
Join our marvelous Moraine Valley Faculty Jazz Ensemble as they pay tribute to the incredible influence of legendary hard bop drummer Art Blakey and his iconic band the Jazz Messengers.
Music Student Recitals
Recital Hall (F120) and John and Angeline Oremus Theater
July 29, 6:30 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 4, 6:30 p.m.
Monday, Dec. 9, 6:30 p.m.
Friday, Feb. 28, 6:30 p.m.
Monday, May 4, 6:30 p.m.
Monday, July 27, 6:30 p.m.
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For my dear friend, Oliver Sacks.
Oliver Sacks was a dear friend with a brilliant brain and the road he traveled was not a familiar one. We will all miss this elegant, generous man who spoke in a language we have never heard before.
He was a hunter following the hidden pathways of the brain in his search for answers, cures, and reasons for diseases known and unknown.
Oliver and I met in 1991 when we were invited to address the U.S. Senate Committee On Aging. Oliver, who had a sly sense of humor, said, " Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I first want to express my gratitude for being allowed to testify before you today. I submitted some written testimony, but I think I may wing it."
And Senator Harry Reid replied, "That testimony that has been submitted in writing will be made part of the record. Please do wing it."
Over the next hour or so Oliver and I spoke about rhythm and music, and their remarkable powers to heal and influence the brain. Oliver provided patient stories and scientific research.
He explained that although medicine cannot offer most of his patients any decisive cure, their neurological functioning, no less than their morale, can beimmensely improved by music therapy. He referenced some patients who were featured in his 1973 book, "Awakenings," (which was later made into an award winning film starring Robin Williams).
I can still hear Oliver's riveting closing statement from our visit to Congress. "In summary, though the nervous system is sometimes compared to a computer, I think it is much more like an orchestra or a symphony. I think we are musical through and through, from the lowest levels of rhythm in our nerve cells to the highest levels."
Oliver and I also shared a deep Grateful Dead connection. One of his patients was a man named Greg who was unable to store new memories after a brain tumor destroyed his frontal lobe. Oliver discovered that the music of the Grateful Dead was able to penetrate the communication barrier ever so slightly and helped Greg reconnect with himself and his family. There is a movie adapted from Oliver's essay, "The Last Hippie" called "The Music Never Stopped" that I highly recommend viewing.
When he learned he had terminal cancer Oliver handled the news with a grace I can't fathom. He wrote a moving piece in the New York Times where he shared his deepest feelings about death's approach. Read the piece here.
We will all profoundly miss our warm friend, Oliver Sacks. Indeed we are winging it now, as we face the future without his guidance. His lasting influence on me, and on all of us, is immeasurable.
I agree with Oliver -- we are all musical through and through.
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Miles on the MBTA
And I'm going to ride all 1,280 of them
Non-MBTA Bus Systems
Submit Guest Post or Ask Me Anything
Last year I wrote an MBTA rap for a school project. It was...interesting. And I don't really mean good-interesting. One of the lines in the rap went "Eliot Station is right by Route 9/The middle of nowhere, on the D Line". However, I had never actually visited the station when I wrote that. Well, when I finally went there, I had the startling realization that...well, I wasn't too far off the mark, as it turns out.
The station's parking lot.
I came to this station on Lincoln Street, which has a nice T symbol at the end of it to let everyone know that's where Eliot is. The street ends with an entrance into the station's parking lot - it's official MBTA parking this time, with a whole 55 spaces! Okay, so that's not nearly enough. At least the station also has 16 bike spaces next to the parking lot, and 22 sheltered ones on the inbound platform. Another pedestrian entrance leads from Meredith Ave, on the other side of Eliot.
Um...I'm not sure if this complies with ADA standards...
The station is, as I said, "right by Route 9", and it has a few entrances from it. The first one leads to the inbound platform, and it's a very narrow path that goes right up a hill. Sure, it has a railing to help people get down, but I can't imagine someone like a senior using this entrance.
The footbridge over Route 9.
The outbound side has a staircase entrance down to the highway, but also, Eliot has a footbridge that actually goes over it. Paralleling the train tracks, the footbridge allows pedestrians to get over the massive road that would be impossible to cross otherwise. On the other side, people can descend a ramp to get to Route 9.
Looking down the platform.
Considering that the outbound platform is just a few benches, there's not much point in talking about it. The inbound side, on the other hand, has the classic D Line heated shelter, as well as...a glass shelter? Wait, no wooden one? But this glass one is so ugly! It's all scuffed up and has an awful metal bench inside! Well...that's a disappointment.
Woah! A double!
Station: Eliot
Ridership: It's certainly on the low end of the D Line's ridership spectrum, coming in at second-worst. Eliot's 814 riders per weekday almost certainly all go inbound, and fan in from the surrounding residential areas. And...I guess 55 of those people drive to the station, too.
Pros: Like many other D Line stations, Eliot has lots of entrances going everywhere, with the footbridge over Route 9 being especially useful. In terms of tranquility, Eliot gets a "somewhat" - although the platform is quite leafy, the highway nearby makes some unwelcome noise. Finally, the heated shelter on the inbound side is great, as always.
Cons: But the metal one is awful. For one thing, it's ugly, and for another, the bench must be so cold in the winter! (I wish I had sat on it to find out...) In addition, though not much can be done about this, the station doesn't seem to have enough parking. Perhaps more bike spaces could be added to encourage cycle commuters?
Nearby and Noteworthy: No, nothing much. The best thing you'll get is the nearby Sudbury Aqueduct, which people can walk along.
Final Verdict: 6/10
Noooooo! I thought all of the further-out D Line stations would have character, but this one has none! It's hardly even tranquil! Sure, it performs its duty as a station well, and I like the bridge over Route 9 a lot, but Eliot needs to step it up in the aesthetics department. Come on, Eliot, this is the D Line we're talking about!
Latest MBTA News: Service Updates
Labels: Green Line, Station reviews
James May 31, 2017 at 4:17 PM
I used this station recently and the ELIOT station signs are faded and peeling off.
Tweets by @milesonthembta
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Choir hits the right notes with charities
Published: 15:28 Sunday 23 August 2015
Members of a popular choir have hit the right note with charities across the country.
In the past year Kirkintilloch Male Voice Choir has helped raise a staggering £25,000 for numerous good causes.
Musical director Sally McLellan said: “We are delighted that we have reached this amount and the men in the choir should be very proud of their achievements”.
The amazing total was reached by the choir singing at events and concerts over the last 12 months, including Kirkintilloch Canal Festival, The Thomas Muir Festival, carol singing, appearing at Glasgow City Halls and a number of local concerts.
Some of the charities that have benefited from the choir’s talents are CHAS, Yorkhill Children’s Charity and the De Café scheme for dementia sufferers and their families in East Dunbartonshire.
Aileen McConnell, community campaigns manager for Yorkhill Children’s Charity, said: “KMVC has given outstanding support to Yorkhill Children’s Charity for several years – from performing in the City Halls at our annual Christmas Concert, to outdoor singing at the Kelvingrove Bandstand and pop up choirs at the Kirkintilloch Canal Festival and city centre shopping malls.
“The enthusiasm and generosity of the choir have brought smiles to the faces of thousands of people attending our events.”
The choir starts rehearsals for the new session on Monday, August 24, in the Park Centre, Kerr Street, Kirkintilloch, at 7.15pm. Potential new members would be welcome. Go along on the night or phone 0141 776 6058 or 0141775 2437. For more information log on at www.kmvc.co.uk
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YEMEN, Aden
Bridgwater, England
British Musuem, London, England
Charing Cross Hotel,London, England
Chinatown. London, England
Chippenham, England
Coliseum, London,England
Combe Martin, England
Compayne Gardens, West Hampstead, London, England
Davy's home- 32 Russell Rd Kensington,London,England
Dover, England
East Challacombe, England
Fellowship Club, London, England
Folkestone, England
Glastonbury, England
Globe ( Gielgud ) Theatre,London,England
Hampstead ( Penn ), England
Hampton Court Palace, England
House of Commons, London, England
Hygeia House, LOndon, England
Imai Studios,London.England
Kew Gardens, England
Kingsley Hall Community Centre, East End,London,England
Knightsbridge Hotel, London, England
Liverpool Station, London, England
London Airport, England
London Coliseum, London, England
London Underground, England
London Zoo, England
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London, England
Margaret Craske Dancing School, London,England
Marlborough, England
National Gallery, London, England
Newbury, England
Oxford Circus, London, England
Penbury Grove, England
Piccadilly, London, England
Piccadilly Theatre, London, England
Prince of Wales Theatre,London,England
Q Theatre, London, England
Queen's Hall, London, England
Reading, England
Regents Park, London, England
Rubens Hotel, London, England
Shepherd's Bush, London, England
Slough, England
Southampton, England
South Molton, England
Star & Garter Hotel,Richmond,London, England
Taunton, England
Victoria & Albert Musuem. London,England
Victoria Railway Station,London,England
Wells, England
Westminster Abbey, London,England
CANADA, Vancouver
PORTUGAL, Azores Islands
GIBRALTA
LEBANON, Beirut Airport
BELGIUM, Ostend
BULGARIA, Sofia
SERBIA, Belgrade
CEYLON,Colombo
FIJI, Nadi & Suva Airports
KIRIBATI - Kanton Island
MALAYASIA, Penang
SAUDI ARABIA, Mecca
U.A.E., Sharjah
OMAN, Muscat
The Globe Theatre, London ( now known as The Gielgud Theatre )
Shaftesbury Avenue, Westminster, London W1D 6AR, United Kingdom
Ivor Novello had invited Baba to see the current comedy in which he had a part. That evening Baba went with his group to see the play, "Proscenium" at the Globe Theater, and Novello gave Baba the box seats usually reserved for royalty. Honored by his presence, the entire cast bowed to Baba at the end of the show and Novello went to the box to receive Baba's embrace. Afterward, Novello introduced Phyllis and Zena Dare to Baba, and extended a cordial invitation to stay at his country house whenever Baba was back in England.
Lord Meher ; Vol.5,page 1932
The following images are from the interior of the theatre taken by Ian Grundy in 2012, see Flickr
Gielgud Theatre
Westminster, London
51.511611°N 0.133°WCoordinates: 51.511611°N 0.133°W
Grade II listed
W.G.R. Sprague
Delfont Mackintosh
973 on three levels
West End theatre
1906-1909 Hicks Theatre
1909-1994 Globe Theatre
www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/Theatres/gielgud_theatre.php
The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.
2 Notable productions
3 Recent and present productions
The theatre opened on 27 December 1906 as the Hicks Theatre in honour of actor, manager and playwright Seymour Hicks, for whom it was built. Designed by W.G.R. Sprague in Louis XVI style, the theatre originally had 970 seats, but over the years boxes and other seats have been removed. The theatre is a pair with the Queen's Theatre, which opened in 1907 on the adjacent street corner.
The first play at the theatre was a musical called The Beauty of Bath by Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton. My Darling, another Hicks musical, followed in 1907, followed by the successful London production of the Straus operetta, A Waltz Dream in 1908. An astonishing event occurred midway through the run of the theatre's next major work, The Dashing Little Duke (1909), which was produced by Hicks. Hicks' wife, Ellaline Terriss, played the title role (a woman playing a man). When she missed several performances due to illness, Hicks stepped into the role — possibly the only case in the history of musical theatre where a husband succeeded to his wife's role.[1]
In 1909, the American impresario Charles Frohman became sole manager of the theatre and renamed the house Globe Theatre and reopened with His Borrowed Plumes written by Winston Churchill's mother, Lady Randolph Churchill. Another "Globe Theatre", located on Newcastle Street, had been demolished in 1902 to make way for the Aldwych, and so the name became available. A number of notable productions ran at this Shaftesbury Avenue theatre and are listed below. Call It A Day by Dodie Smith opened in 1935 and ran for 509 performances, which was considered very successful for the slow inter-war years.
Terence Frisby's There's a Girl in My Soup, opening in 1966, ran for 1,064 performances at the theatre, a record that was not surpassed until Andrew Lloyd Webber's production of the Olivier Award-winning comedy Daisy Pulls It Off by Densie Deegan opened in April 1983 to run for 1,180 performances, the theatre's longest run.[2] In 1987 Peter Shaffer's play Lettice and Lovage was a hit with Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack, running for 2 years. The Globe was the home of a resident theatre cat named Beerbohm. The tabby's portrait still hangs in the corridor near the stalls. Beerbohm appeared on stage at least once in every production, forcing the actors to improvise. He always chose to occupy certain actors' dressing rooms while they were at the theatre, including Peter Bowles, Michael Gambon and Penelope Keith. Beerbohm was mentioned several times on Desert Island Discs, and he was the only cat to have received a front page obituary in the theatrical publication, The Stage. He died in March 1995 at the age of 20.[3]
Refurbished in 1987, with extensive work on the gold leaf in the auditorium, the theatre is particularly notable for its beautiful circular Regency staircase, oval gallery and tower. The theatre has presented several Alan Ayckbourn premieres, including 1990's Man of the Moment. More recently, Oscar Wilde's classic comedy, An Ideal Husband (1992) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2004) saw notable revivals.
In 1994, in anticipation of the 1997 opening of a reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the South Bank by Sam Wanamaker, the theatre was renamed the Gielgud Theatre in honour of British actor John Gielgud. In 2003, Sir Cameron Mackintosh announced plans to refurbish the Gielgud, including a joint entrance foyer, with the adjacent Queen's Theatre, facing on to Shaftesbury Avenue. Mackintosh's Delfont Mackintosh Theatres took over operational control of the Gielgud from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Theatres in 2006. The Delfont Mackintosh group also consists of the Noël Coward Theatre, Novello Theatre, Prince Edward Theatre, Prince of Wales Theatre, Queen's Theatre, and Wyndham's Theatre.
Work on the facade of the theatre started in March 2007 and the interior restoration, including reinstating the boxes at the back of the dress circle, was completed in January 2008. The theatre is one of the 40 theatres featured in the 2012 DVD documentary series Great West End Theatres, presented by Donald Sinden.[4]
Notable productions
Gertie Millar and Robert Evett in A Waltz Dream, 1908
1907: Brewster's Millions by Winchell Smith & Byron Ongley
1908: A Waltz Dream an operetta by Oscar Straus
1914: Kismet, a revival of Edward Knoblock's play, with Henry Daniell in his London debut.
1916: Peg O' My Heart by John Hartley Manners
1920: Fédora, a revival of the 1882 play by Victorien Sardou, with Basil Rathbone as Loris Ipanoff
1925: Fallen Angels by Noël Coward, starring Tallulah Bankhead
1931: The Improper Duchess by James B. Fagan, starring Yvonne Arnaud and Frank Cellier.
1935: Call it a Day by Dodie Smith
1939: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, with John Gielgud starring as well as directing
1942: The Petrified Forest by Robert Sherwood
1949: The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry, with Richard Burton in a supporting role
1960: A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, starring Paul Scofield
1966: There's a Girl in My Soup by Terence Frisby
1966: The Matchgirls by Bill Owen
1976: A season of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage
1978: The Rear Column by Simon Gray, starring Jeremy Irons, Barry Foster, Simon Ward and Clive Francis
1982: Design for Living by Noël Coward, starring Vanessa Redgrave
1983: Daisy Pulls It Off by Densie Deegan
1987: Lettice and Lovage by Peter Shaffer, starring Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack
1990: Man of the Moment by Alan Ayckbourn
1992: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
1995: Design for Living, starring Rachel Weisz
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Do it like Ibrahim (as)
Virtues of Dhul Hijjah
The Day of Arafah
Qurbani FAQ
Bringing Communities Closer in Sri Lanka
Muslim Aid and AmeriCares bridge links with Muslim and Tamil villages in Mutur
On Thursday 26th of February, a ‘Friendship Bridge’, built jointly by Muslim Aid and AmeriCares was opened to traffic between the Muslim village of Arafa Nagar and the predominately Tamil village of Amman Nagar. These two communities in Mutur were left displaced after 20 years of conflict where over 57,000 people were forced to flee their homes due to the bombings and gunfire.
In 2006, the communities of Arafa Nagar and Amman Nagar decided to return to restart their livelihoods. However, when they arrived back, they had to rely on boats or swim to cross the river. Their land was covered in debris, buildings were damaged and the water wells were dirty.
With the help of Muslim Aid starter kits, the people were able to clean up their land in order to start farming as well as build temporary shelters. Muslim Aid also helped to clean the well providing access to clean drinking water. Muslim Aid, AmeriCares and UMCOR were also able to help the returnees in restarting their livelihoods by providing small grants giving people the chance to start their own businesses.
The bridge was finally handed over to the communities on the 26th of February in a special ceremony. The bridge serves as a testament to empowering communities to work together for the future and linking them in a post conflict era.
"The new 19 metre bridge unites more than 300 ethnically diverse communities in the Arafa Nagar and the Amman Nagar villages,” said AmeriCares Sri Lanka Country Director Lisa Hilmi.
"Building bridges is always a challenge and this bridge has had its fair share of challenges" said Amjad Saleem, Muslim Aid Sri Lanka's "What is even more important however is building bridges between communities."
Before the bridge was built communities had to swim across the river (left)
Construction of the bridge (right)
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Music|Jay-Z and the Politics of Rapping in Middle Age
Jay-Z, circa 1995.CreditCreditThe LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Jay-Z and the Politics of Rapping in Middle Age
At 47, Jay-Z thinks about where he’s been, where he’s going and what he’s leaving behind. It’s all there on his latest album, “4:44.”
“Old school” still has some currency in hip-hop. It nods to forebears, styles and history. “Old” is a different story. “Old” means you’re past your prime. It means you have nothing new to say — and even if you did, who would want to listen? “Old” means maybe you know what’s new, but you want to do it the way you’ve always done it. So “old” also means fixed, settled, stuck.
By those standards, Jay-Z, at 47, might seem old. Standards are presumptuous, though, because, really, what do we know about “old” rappers? Only that they don’t rap as much as they used to. I mean, they’re still around — but as part of back-patting nostalgia (in concert or on HBO) or hosting the Grammys or cooking with Martha Stewart. Maybe they’ve still got it. But vital new music is secondary at best.
Despite a lot of lucrative distractions, Jay-Z is still a rapper, whose voice, apparently, still matters. “Apparently,” because I didn’t expect much from “4:44,” his 13th solo (or solo-ish) record that arrived, as heavily advertised, at the end of June.
But it’s better than good: a gorgeously produced stab at self-examination (it runs less than the length of a standard therapy session) that suggests a new direction for rap’s elder statesmen. It also demonstrates a way that certain black artists can reckon with middle age — by accepting the emotionalism, humor and self-criticism that come naturally to a current generation of younger rappers.
Anybody irritated by the posturing of Jay-Z’s previous album, “Magna Carta: Holy Grail” (2013), was likely put off by the prospect of more. If a major rapper arrives at his mid-40s and wants to give us a song that mentions fine wines and a serial-killer drug dealer, then drops the name of a fashion-designer-movie-director more than a dozen times (“Tom Ford”), maybe he should be hosting the Grammys, too.
It’s entirely possible that Jay-Z arrived to record “Magna Carta” aware that there’s not much of a road map for a rapper in his 40s, especially one whose body of work and reputation are great enough to haunt him. His clever, brash, kaleidoscopically grim 1996 debut, “Reasonable Doubt,” is as much a work of memoir of life in the street-level drug trade as it is an album.
On it, he raps with the impunity of a mafia don. It’s a distinction that’s always kept him seeming a little older than everybody else, while, eventually, holding his competitors’ youth against them. On songs like “Change Clothes,” with Pharrell, from 2003, and “Off That,” with a young-and-hungry Drake, from 2009, he was all too happy to display a cranky old-soul impatience, arguing that because he thinks he is grown up, his peers should, too.
“Y’all [epithet] acting way too tough/Throw on a suit, and get it tapered up,” he implored on “Change Clothes.”
But eventually that sense of superiority came to sound like an exercise. Rap is a language art, and no matter your age, you need something to say. The problem with “Magna Carta” wasn’t that Jay-Z was too old. It is that he sounded bored. The music was disconnected from life, and his materialism sounded passé even for hip-hop. Fashion, art, love, even philanthropy were spiked with a testy self-consciousness. The whole thing reeked of midlife crisis.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé with their daughter Blue Ivy in February.CreditKevin Mazur/Getty Images
“4:44” sounds like a consequence of that crisis. Maybe Jay-Z was bored in his 40s. Maybe he cheated on his wife, Beyoncé. He bought expensive stuff and maybe needed to brag about it. Maybe he was as skeptical and uncertain as we were about what such a person should be rapping about.
Then Beyoncé released “Lemonade,” and more or less told him. It arrived in the spring of 2016 and announced to the world that his sense of risk — as a former drug dealer, an entrepreneur and a womanizer — has a cost: her love.
It’s believable that Jay-Z really had run out of fresh ideas. But if he were going to keep making new records, “Lemonade” demanded at least a partial response to Beyoncé’s agony and the scope of her artistry.
The resulting album isn’t trying to match either. “Lemonade” is a fully processed, entirely emotional performance. “4:44” is Tony Soprano at his first couple of sessions with Dr. Melfi. He’s not totally sure why he’s here and is occasionally petty about it. Jay-Z acknowledges the pain he caused without entirely agreeing to own it.
It’s the production, by the longtime hip-hop and R&B producer No I. D., that most gives the album its psychology. He puts samples by the Alan Parsons Project, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, the Clark Sisters and Hannah Williams & the Affirmations to masterly use. Where Jay-Z is inclined to be passive, the music insinuates. It makes him seem more culpable, vulnerable, spiritual and transparent than he might even realize. No I. D. is a studio wizard. He’s also Dr. Melfi.
Jay-Z’s old creative and sexual promiscuity have been replaced by an act of commitment. No more women, just his wife. No more gluts of great producers, just this one. These are the new risks for him: monogamy, focus, trust. There are new existential concerns, too. The ambition here extends from his own plight to the straits of black people all over America. Nothing like a coherent thesis emerges, but he’s feeling his way toward if not a moral capitalism then the idea of who capitalism is for.
Jay-Z began his career talking about all the money he had and how he made it. Now, he’s aged into a man with time to think about what the money means, what else it can do. He has become wealthy, and wealth is money with dimension, vision and heirs.
Every time I’m reading a magazine and see one of those ads for a Patek Philippe watch, I take a second to wonder about the meaning of wealth. (This is a timepiece you take out a mortgage for.) The ads usually feature two or three generations of handsome white people, and the tag line is something obnoxiously poignant, like “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.”
It’s a mission statement about legacy and affluence that’s rarely mentioned in rap, which is sometimes pathologically obsessed with the optics of spending. Saving never comes up. Neither does nonmusical posterity. To be fair, what’s sexy about those?
Promiscuity is a rap subject. Paternity, not so much. Young men, understandably, aren’t too concerned with the future. New money tends to burn holes in pockets. Putting something away, having something to hand down, those tend to be old-person concerns. Certainly, other rappers have wills. But Jay-Z is actually ruminating about his. He’s wondering, too, whether your money’s doing all it can.
Jay-Z in 2007.CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times
On “4:44,” he gets churlish about that. In “The Story of O. J.,” he asks and answers, “You know what’s more important than spending money in a strip club? Credit.”
A line later, he is asking, regrettably, if we know why the Jews own all the property in America. His phrasing perpetuates one stereotype to emphasize another about black people and capital — that, compared with white people, they have none. His pointing this out at 47 requires you to know what he was like when he was 27, when the gentleman at the club was him.
Some of the risk of being an old rapper is that the old posturing won’t do. You actually have to stand for something. Jay-Z also has to reckon with where he has stood — with the Obamas on one hand but also cavalierly against womankind on the other. What does he make of his track record, his history, say, with women, and what will his children make of that?
Maybe this is why young rappers don’t rap old. The evolving nature of maturity can make you seem like a hypocrite.
This idea of legacy becomes a halting socioeconomic lecture on “4:44.” He’s working hard for his estate so that death won’t leave a hole. It will leave a whole. This is an ultrapractical view of the end of life that testifies to the sort of bootstrap conservatism that argues that because one black person has overcome the systemic and self-inflicted roadblocks to success, anyone can. These are his rags-to-riches racial politics. He’s made his black life matter, so should you.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in 2016.CreditLarry Busacca/PW/WireImage, via Getty Images
The emotional twist on “4:44” is that despite years of his rapping about the empire he’s built, he didn’t know its value until he almost lost the woman who helped build it. Maybe he was being too much of a man to notice. Not long after the album’s release, Jay-Z put out an awkwardly short companion video in which famous black men (and Aziz Ansari) discuss being lovers and fathers and living at an emotional disadvantage in relationships with women. It’s fascinating but also probably beside the point of his adultery. The video’s point is: We black men can talk about the difficulties of being black men. We can emote!
You saw something like that a couple of weeks ago on an episode of “The Bachelorette” when a suitor — one of the very last — named Eric sincerely warns Rachel that his life in Baltimore isn’t as posh as in some of the show’s European locations or as stable as those of the white men he is up against. Eric started as a cutup. But we are supposed to believe that Rachel has grown him up. And so his moving admission of mere circumstantial inferiority (he’s poor) was meant to enhance his worth as a man.
The beauty of Barry Jenkins’s romance “Moonlight” — some of it, anyway — is the way it didn’t have to work half as hard to let you see deep inside a character who over time graduates from impressionable child to impenetrable adult thug. You never lose sight of the emotional void that he winds up driving half the night to fill.
As popular culture archetypes, these used to be scary black men. But every once in a while, they’re granted a humanity that, with old-school rappers, is harder to come by. It’s not an art form that forgives weakness, concession or blame. It runs on burnishing and destroying egos. It thrives on the performance of flawless maximal authenticity and lyrical supremacy. Jay-Z doesn’t relinquish his ego on “4:44.” But on “Kill Jay-Z,” the rueful opening song, he contemplates the downsides of having such a strong one: “Die Jay-Z, this ain’t back in the days/You don’t need an alibi, Jay-Z/Cry Jay-Z, we know the pain is real/But you can’t heal what you never reveal.”
This is Jay-Z driving half the night, to some place we’ve never seen him go, perhaps to some place he’s never even been. But part of maturity — whether or not you’re a rapper — is being human enough to accept that the first step is getting in the car.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section AR, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Old Jay-Z’s New Risks. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
From Jay-Z to Prodigy, It’s Time to Talk About Hip-Hop’s Elders
The Man Behind the Music for Jay-Z’s Intimate ‘4:44’
Jay-Z Revels in the Catharsis of Confession on ‘4:44’
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Opinion|Marco Rubio: To Fight China on Trade, We Need More Than Tariffs
Op-Ed Contributor
Marco Rubio: To Fight China on Trade, We Need More Than Tariffs
By Marco Rubio
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
Workers loading a ship last week in Nantong in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province.CreditCreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images
After World War II, the United States helped build an international economic order on the assumption that free and fair trade benefits all partners. During the postwar years, the American economy was unmatched by any other country. The postwar boom was fueled not just by thriving domestic demand but also by trade, which opened a flow of wealth from the world’s consumers to American workers. Trade made America and our partners more prosperous and secure.
This basic case for trade still stands. When we exchange goods with other nations on equal terms, both countries benefit. Maintaining the conditions that make this possible is the purpose of the international economic order that we took great care to nurture. We need to take violations of this economic order seriously. We must enforce the rules. China, in pursuit of its goals of economic and regional dominance, has been among the most egregious rule breakers.
When China acceded to the World Trade Organization in 2001, the United States supported that decision for two reasons: We hoped to promote better access to China’s consumer markets for American companies immediately and, eventually, political liberalization within China.
Neither has materialized. While the Chinese people have pushed for a somewhat more open society, the Chinese government is becoming even more autocratic. And since peaking in 2003, imports of manufactured goods into China as a share of gross domestic product have steadily declined.
Instead of opening its doors to United States exports, China has thwarted competition at every turn. It has advanced Chinese state-planned businesses by stealing American intellectual property and has pressured foreign companies that want to enter the Chinese market to agree to “joint ventures” that facilitate theft and espionage. China has also bought up American assets to inflate the value of the dollar and make American exports more expensive. China has also tried to tilt the playing field in the United States by manipulating its currency, among other tactics.
“Free” trade with China has yielded some short-term benefits for consumers, in the form of lower prices, and for United States companies, in the form of higher profit margins.
But free trade has been devastating for American workers and manufacturing. The so-called China shock, the impact of China’s entry to the international trading system, wiped out more than 2.4 million American jobs from 1999 to 2011. Ignoring China’s trade violations reinforces the view among American workers that international trade is bad for them and their way of life.
President Trump is correct when he says that America has been taken advantage of. The federal government had the tools to better manage the start of trade with China, but our leaders chose not to use them. For example, in exchange for greater standing at the trade organization, China agreed to allow other countries to impose tariffs in response to sudden surges of Chinese imports, yet the United States did not impose them.
The United States government still has a host of tools to defend the national interest on matters of trade. The president’s proposed steel and aluminum tariffs, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, are just one example.
By themselves, these tariffs will not do enough to rein in China’s trade violations. Because the tariffs are broad and apply to many countries, they may not have much of an impact on the worst violators, including China. Tariffs like these penalize the production decisions companies made decades ago, so they will do more to increase the cost of business downstream, in the United States, than they will rewire the global economy to benefit American workers.
We should enforce the rules by taking additional actions against China. Last year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative announced its investigation of Chinese intellectual property theft under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. This authority allows for a wide range of actions. The Trump administration should push its boundaries.
For example, the government should impose duties on Chinese industries that benefit from stolen American intellectual property, and those penalties should be equivalent to the size of the economic loss faced by American producers. We should limit “joint ventures” with Chinese copycat companies and encourage our allies to do the same. We should prohibit Chinese investment in industrial categories where the Chinese have blocked American investment. And when the Chinese threaten retaliation and bring suit at the World Trade Organization, we should welcome the opportunity to have China publicly repudiate its anti-free trade practices.
These measures targeted at China are no less bold than Mr. Trump’s broad metals tariffs. Indeed, what I propose could do more to redirect trade flows to the United States.
The right trade policy for the United States is not a choice of unrestrained free trade or protectionism. “More Trade” or “Less Trade” isn’t the goal. The goal is better jobs and higher wages for American workers. Trade is a means to those ends.
I believe in the promise of free and fair trade, but to defend that principle against an adversary that has broken the rules with impunity, we have to be willing to fight with everything we’ve got — not just tariffs.
An earlier version of this article misidentified the law under which President Trump has authorized steel and aluminum tariffs. It is Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, not the Trade Act of 1974.
Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) is a Republican senator from Florida.
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NEW ZEALAND OIL & GAS ANNOUNCES TENDER OFFER
New Zealand Oil & Gas intends to buy back up to 40 million shares through a tender offer on 16 September 2016.
Details of the offer are set out in a letter to shareholders, which shareholders are being urged to consider.
The maximum price the company intends to pay in the tender is 55 cents, which is a premium of 13.5% to the 30-day weighted average market price and more than 14% above the average price paid by the company for shares purchased this year. Approval to buy back up to 64 million shares was obtained by more than 73% of shareholders who voted at a special meeting on 28 August 2015.
Acting chief executive Andrew Jefferies says the tender offer creates a liquidity event that should spur trading.
“The company has been buying back its shares this year but, because the shares trade in small volumes, it would take years to complete the buy back at current rates of progress.
“Shareholders who wish to sell will have the opportunity at a price that represents a premium to recent share trading.
“The buy back is part of the company's capital management that improves the efficiency of our balance sheet. All remaining shareholders benefit from that.
“The company is reviewing acquisitions of assets coming to market. The asset we understand best is our own, and therefore it makes sense to buy our shares when we see
value," Andrew Jefferies says.
New Zealand Oil & Gas intends to continue its on-market buy back program following the tender.
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Executive Legal Assistant
Emily Young, a Washington Native, spent her childhood in Germany and the Netherlands. She attended Syracuse University before transferring to the University of Michigan. Emily earned a BA in International Studies with an emphasis on Security, Norms, and Cooperation, and a minor in German Studies in the Winter of 2018.
She has had many unique experiences domestic and abroad throughout her academic career. Her experiences range from directing photography exhibits in Sicily to interning with the Prime Minister of New Zealand in their 2017 Campaign. Ms. Young's coursework in Human Rights and International Law has inspired her to explore the field of domestic law to create a positive impact on American society.
Currently, she is working under David Nacht as his Executive Assistant to attain an understanding of the intricacies of law and how it can be utilized to serve others. Emily would like to attend law school within the next few years.
Alisha Hawkins
Legal Assistant/Intake Coordinator
Alisha M. Hawkins was born in Southfield, Michigan. She earned her paralegal certificate in 2013 at Stautzenberger Institute, then earned her Associates Degree in Applied Business concentration Paralegal in 2016 from Stautzenberger College. Ms. Hawkins practiced under probate, personal injury, medical malpractice and collections/landlord-tenant law. She is a member in good standing with NALS and is a notary public. In her spare time, Ms. Hawkins enjoys spending time with loved ones.
Olivia Gorczyca
Olivia Gorczyca was born and raised in Michigan. She earned her BA in Spanish from Michigan State University in Spring 2017, and earned her Michigan Provisional Teaching Certificate in Spring 2018. Her language studies and studies in Spain have allowed her to work in a variety of fulfilling and challenging roles in her community. Her studies in language education as a part of Michigan State University's Teacher Preparation Program led her to develop a deep interest in educational equity and equality, and in the future she hopes to combine her experiences with education and law to work on behalf of education reform and policy. In her spare time, Olivia loves reading, cooking, and teaching herself new languages.
Kelly Christie
Office/Finance Manager
Kelly Christie earned her bachelor's in business administration in 1991 from Eastern Michigan University, where she was vice president of the Entrepreneur's Association. Kelly has over 15 years of experience as an administrator for a small law firm before joining NachtLaw. She currently handles the billing, bookkeeping and office management for the firm.
Dolores Brauer
Business Manager/Marketing Director
Dolores Brauer has been a member of the NachtLaw team since 2006. Dolores is a highly self-motivated and dependable professional with over 35 years of experience in leadership and business management. Dolores possesses multiple skills covering many fields, including business development, operations, sales, marketing and finance. Dolores is passionate about adding value to people, coaching them in personal growth and training them in developing their leadership skills. In her spare time, Dolores loves cooking, touring wineries, traveling and making new acquaintances.
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> Education
> For Educators
Sharing a Love of Science
Who are NASA's Earth and Space Science Explorers?
The middle school students who track weather to study its effect on bursting tree buds. And the scientist studying black holes in distant galaxies. But also the teacher whose class shares Earth science data with students around the world. And the engineer who designs robotic instruments to probe hard-to-reach planets. All of these people are Earth Explorers, Space Science Explorers or both. The Earth Explorers and Space Science Explorers series features NASA explorers, young and old, with many backgrounds and interests.
Charles Keeton is an astrophysicist who uses the Hubble Telescope to study dark matter. Image Credit: Charles Keeton
The years surrounding 1980 were exciting ones in space exploration. The Voyager probes were returning the first pictures from Jupiter and Saturn; the space shuttle program was beginning. The events amazed Charles Keeton, who is now a NASA-funded astrophysicist at Rutgers University.
From that time on, Keeton had a clear career path. "I think all along I knew I wanted to study space," Keeton says, "and here I am 30 years later doing it." During middle school and high school, he prepared for a career in science by taking advanced mathematics courses. In college, Keeton planned to study astronomy, but the university he chose to attend did not have a specific astronomy major. He majored in physics instead. "Physics was the right path to pursue along the way. I looked for opportunities to take astronomy classes and work on astronomy research as I was going."
When Keeton began considering research topics, dark matter caught his attention. Dark matter cannot be seen with visual telescopes. Scientists can detect it only indirectly in the X-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, there is enough evidence that dark matter does exist. "It's a huge puzzle. To learn that 80 percent of the mass in the universe is something we've never studied in physics (directly) is a little humbling but also pretty compelling. It means there's a great opportunity to learn more about what’s out there." Keeton decided to seize that opportunity.
Working with NASA's Hubble Telescope, Keeton uses gravitational lensing to study dark matter. Gravitational lensing is the effect of light from a distant galaxy being bent by the gravitational pull of the mass of another galaxy in front of it, as the light from the distant galaxy passes through it. Scientists can use this light-bending in research. "It can be used to study many different problems in astrophysics. It also lets me work with a wide range of research methods and research styles. I do some computer simulations. I do some analytical mathematical calculations. I do some telescope observations as well. Being able to mix it up like that is very appealing to me."
The first goal for Keeton and other scientists studying dark matter is to measure the amount of dark matter and its distribution. "We think that every galaxy is embedded in a large massive halo of dark matter. By now we have a pretty good set of hypotheses for how that dark matter is distributed around galaxies." Though they are working on investigating that distribution in even more detail, Keeton and others are looking ahead.
This composite of images was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The bluish cloud is dark matter detected by gravitational lensing. Image Credit: NASA
"The next step that I've been working on is to understand how dark matter is distributed on small scales," Keeton says. "The theory of dark matter predicts that not only should galaxies be embedded in dark matter halos but those halos should be full of hundreds or thousands of dwarf galaxies, clumps of dark matter that we may or may not see as visible galaxies." Currently, scientists have observed only a few dozen dwarf galaxies orbiting our own, far fewer than what is predicted.
In addition to doing his own research, Keeton is the Faculty Director for the Aresty Research Center for Undergraduates at Rutgers University, a position he is passionate about. He thinks it is vital to encourage students to engage science outside the classroom as well as for professors to bring current research into the classroom. In his current class, he tries to talk every day about some new discovery. "There's so much going on in planetary science, which is the focus of the course. It's a great opportunity for me to tell the students what's going on right now. It gives them a sense that science is a living endeavor ... and that we're still learning a lot. We use that then to talk about the process of science, about how scientists think about the world."
Keeton sees great value in astronomy. "A couple of years ago, I heard a prominent cosmologist asked why we as a society should spend money on astronomy when there are so many other pressing problems. This cosmologist said that the value of cosmology comes down to three words: 'we do wow.' That really sums it up for me. Astronomy inspires people. We live in an increasingly technological society, a society where a lot of the challenges we face demand scientific literacy, quantitative reasoning and critical thinking skills. We can use astronomy to get people excited and say this is what science is about, this is how scientists think about the world, this is why it's valuable to learn about science even if you're not going to become a scientist. I think if we can inspire people, get them excited, and get them comfortable with science, then that will pay dividends down the road."
Indeed, Keeton's enthusiasm for science is contagious. Like most scientists, Keeton enjoys his research, but he is also active in outreach. He loves to talk about his new discoveries or just learn about colleagues' projects. Besides his public outreach, he also visits his son's elementary school class on a regular basis to share the wonders of cosmology. He hopes the students will develop an early love for science, whether they become scientists or not.
Keeton has been lucky enough to follow his dreams, and he encourages others to do the same. "I think if you can find something you're interested in -- whether it's space or science or not science -- if you can find something that really excites you and put a lot of energy and passion into it, that will serve you well."
› Space Science Explorers Series
› NASA Career Resources
Brandi Bernoskie/Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thieves-cost-beekeepers-thousands.html
AnimalsWildlife Watch
Beekeepers hit hard by thefts of hives
In sophisticated night heists, thieves are stealing thousands of bees. Why?
Photograph by Lucas Foglia, National Geographic
Eighty percent of the world’s almonds are grown in California’s Central Valley. Honeybees trucked in by the billions to pollinate the trees are as essential as rain and sunshine. Without them, only a fraction of the acreage under self-pollinating almond varieties would produce nuts.
By Rene Ebersole
Photographs by Lucas Foglia
It was Wednesday night around dinnertime when Jeremy Kuhnhenn realized something was wrong. A few days earlier, in preparation for pollination season, he’d temporarily parked a truckload of more than 280 wooden boxes vibrating with buzzing bees on a grassy knoll overlooking a vista of citrus trees in McFarland, in California’s Central Valley. Now, standing on the hill, he felt ill, as if he might throw up—many of the boxes were missing.
Feverishly, he started counting. “I couldn’t think. I kept messing up the count,” he told me, sitting at a friend’s kitchen table the next morning, shaking his head. He’d hardly slept. “Over half of them were gone, 160 boxes”—days before California’s almond bloom, the biggest and most lucrative pollination event in the world. “Those thieves stole about $70,000 from me,” he said, tallying the insects, equipment, and lost pollination rental fees.
Each year between February and March, more than a million acres of almond orchards in the Central Valley burst into bloom, painting the region pastel pink and white. The area’s mild climate is ideal for cultivating almonds, as well as many other crops.
Kuhnhenn, 39—tattooed, with a brown beard, and wearing a black “Right To Bear Arms” T-shirt and jeans—is a commercial beekeeper from Bantry, North Dakota. Like many others in his profession, he makes the bulk of his living from an annual pilgrimage to the Central Valley, where his bees help pollinate the state’s almond crop. In the off-season, back home on his ranch, Bulldog Honey Farms, he manufactures about 80 pounds of summer honey. Wintertime is almond season, and he’d been preparing for the bloom all year. His hives were ready to move into position in the almond orchards. Now was that time, and a bunch of his bees were gone.
Kuhnhenn was distraught. How would he make up for the loss and pay the bills? “I’ve got some cows,” he said, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. “My wife is saying she’s gonna put up her Mustang GT.”
Rowdy Jay Freeman and his colleagues on the state’s Rural Crime Prevention Task Force respond to reports of bee thefts and many other agriculture-related crimes, including stolen farm equipment, fuel, metal, cargo, pesticides, and more.
He wanted to show me the crime scene. He climbed into his truck, and I followed in my rental car. We traced a long series of dirt roads, deeply rutted from heavy rain and truck traffic. Finally arriving at the hill, we walked across the grass to where his bees had been.
“They were right here,” he said, pointing at the ground. “You can see the pallet marks in the grass, and here in the dirt are tread marks from the forklift. It had smaller tires than mine.”
Whoever did this knew what he was doing, Kuhnhenn said, and had the right equipment.
Cattle raiding and horse thieving were common crimes in the Wild West, but bee rustling is a relatively new offense for the lawbooks. That’s thanks in large part to the increasing necessity and profitability of trucking billions of bees to vast commercial orchards in dire need of pollination, as well as a thriving international market for gourmet honey.
“It’s the perfect crime,” said Butte County police detective Rowdy Jay Freeman, a member of the state’s Rural Crime Prevention Task Force and a commercial apiarist himself. “You see a person in a white suit, and it looks like a beekeeper, but it could be a thief too—you’d never know.”
Throughout the almond bloom, beekeepers monitor their bee colonies’ health, looking out for mites, fungi, and disease that can wipe out a hive. In cold weather, beekeepers supplement the hives with syrup and pollen to keep the bees alive till the weather warms.
Big bee heists are making global headlines. In April 2016, a few weeks shy of blueberry pollination season, thieves struck one of the largest family apiaries in the Canadian province of Québec. The beekeeper, Jean Marc Labonte, told reporters the crooks made off with 180 hives worth an estimated $200,000. Of two likely suspects snagged by police, one was sentenced to nine months’ probation, including five months’ house arrest, and a $40,000 fine; the other was acquitted, according to reports by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and other outlets.
A few months later, in June, bandits absconded with some of the most valuable bees in Canada, belonging to a $7.1 million research project at the University of Laval aimed at breeding stronger honeybees resistant to some of the ailments, from mites to fungi, currently plaguing colonies around the globe.
Four out of the 30 stolen beehives were part of the Laval study. Hundreds of hours of research had been devoted to selectively breeding those particular colonies, University of Laval bee biologist Pierre Giovenazzo explained. “It’s difficult to put a price on it, but those hives were worth a lot,” he said.
Bees are not only a hot commodity for their pollination services—there’s big money in their honey too. One of Britain’s largest bee heists happened in February 2018 when 40 hives, containing millions of bees, were stolen from a family-run company, Beekeeper Honey, in Oxfordshire. The crime came on the heels of a Telegraph report about a spike in bee thefts in England and Wales.
Diane Roberts, a press officer with the British Beekeepers Association, stressed that bee thefts are not rampant but that a few happen every year. “The value of bees has gone up enormously,” she said, adding that some heists might be related to the type of bee stock—“like racehorses, the best bees are highly prized.”
New Zealand has become a major target for people hoping to cash in on the craze for manuka honey, a trendy sweetener valued for purported health benefits in the treatment of everything from colds to skin infections. Amber-colored manuka is produced by bees pollinating the flowers of the indigenous manuka shrub. An eight-ounce jar of manuka, dubbed “liquid gold,” sells for as much as $60 online. The global manuka market is exploding. Now valued at $940 million, it’s expected to reach $2.16 billion by 2025.
Thieves want both the raw honey and the hives, said New Zealand senior police sergeant Alasdair MacMillan. By his count, there have been more than 2,000 heists in New Zealand since 2016, with some possibly linked to organized crime. “The type and quantities being stolen indicate that a number of persons would need to be involved,” he said. “It takes lifting equipment, vehicles, beekeeping, an outlet for extraction—and of course a market.” Given the volume of manuka being stolen and high prices for the product in China and elsewhere, MacMillan said, it’s likely destined for the black market.
Perils of beekeeping
The domesticated western honeybee (Apis mellifera) is the superstar of the bee world. Out of roughly 20,000 bee species on Earth, more than 4,000 in the United States alone, this one little European species commands the spotlight. It is indeed an extraordinary creature. No other bee takes division of labor to such an extreme, with colonies comprising one queen and tens of thousands of workers thrumming along in perfect synchrony—a superorganism. En masse, they move by swarm. Individually, they navigate in fanciful figure eights. Their hives are like little factories, not only filling our cupboards with honey but also producing wax for candles and soap. What’s more, they pollinate a third of the produce on our plates—everything from apples, oranges, and blueberries to tomatoes, watermelons, and zucchini.
Steve Godlin is one of the commercial beekeepers in the Central Valley who had nearly a hundred of his own hives and as many more that he was brokering stolen this year. Factoring the value of the equipment, bees, and lost pollination fees, a stolen hive is worth about $350. Oftentimes, thieves steal hundreds in one swoop, wiping out much of a beekeeper’s annual income.
California almond season is the pollination Grand Prix. In roughly four weeks between February and March, when almond buds burst into pink and white petals, billions of honeybees buzz through the orchards collecting pollen and nectar for their hives and simultaneously pollinating about one million acres of almonds.
In the days leading up to the bloom, an estimated 85 percent of all the honeybees in the country are trucked into the valley. Budget hotels, Denny’s, and IHOPs overflow with rugged out-of-towners, sweaty and dirty from working with bees 24/7. A commercial apiarist makes a modest (and sticky) living traveling the country pollinating dozens of different crops, but it’s the almonds that pay mortgages and kids’ college loans.
Lately beekeepers are having a tough time supplying the high demand for their bees. With almonds priced at about $2.80 a pound, farmers are ripping out their raisin grapes and row crops and replacing them with almond trees. During the past 10 years, lands under almonds in California have grown from 825,000 to 1.33 million acres—a 61 percent rise, according to the state almond board.
In addition to trying to keep pace with the increasing almond acreage, beekeepers are struggling to prevent their colonies from succumbing to a multitude of maladies—mites, viruses, bacteria, fungi, pesticides—often simultaneously. Many apiarists say it’s never been so hard or expensive to raise and maintain healthy honeybee colonies. This year has been particularly arduous, with some beekeepers reporting as much as 85 percent losses.
Almond grower Daljit Rakkar (right) is helping run the Central Valley business established by his father, Gurcharan (left), who got his start in almonds as a farm laborer. Half the Rakkars’ 2,000 acres are planted with almonds, and the rest with a mix of pistachios and raisins.
Jeremy Kuhnhenn said about 75 percent of his bees died during the seven months between last year’s almond bloom and the end of honey season in early October. “I don’t know what caused it,” he said, looking out over the miles of farmland sloping from the hillside where his hives were stolen. “It could be a combination of a lot of stuff. I’m waiting on test results from some scientists. I had to buy bees to come out here with 1,500 hives for the almonds. Some of those hives died—I only had 830 left. Now I’m down 160 more.”
With such demand for honeybees, pollination fees have soared. Daljit Rakkar is a second-generation almond grower in Madera, California, whose father built an empire after starting out as a young laborer in the orchards. One afternoon at his family mansion, where two Mercedes-Benzes and a Maserati were parked in the driveway, Rakkar said his company has witnessed the dramatic increase in the cost of bee rentals. “When we first got started, the rental fee was five dollars a hive,” he said. “Now it’s $180 to $200. The standard is two hives per acre. We’ll spend $500,000 on bees this year.”
The opportunity for such high profits is unquestionably motive for theft. But here’s the thing: Not just anyone can make off with millions of stinging insects. More often than not, said detective Freeman, bee burglars are beekeepers. Some steal for a quick payday; others pinch some hives when they come up short trying to fulfill their contracts.
“The vast majority of beekeepers are good, hardworking people,” Freeman said. “But a small percentage of them are on the side of crime. They don’t have boundaries, and they’re looking to make a quick buck. Since the pollination prices have spiked, there have been hundreds of thousands of hives stolen in California.”
Beehive chop shops
Joe Romance, a beekeeper from North Dakota who splits the year between his home state, California, and Maine for the spring blueberry bloom, was furious when he heard that Kuhnhenn, “a young guy coming up in the business” had been robbed. Romance has been a victim too.
“When you go in the yard and see your bees are gone, you go crazy,” he said. “I think that’s the only time in my life when I could kill somebody—if I had a gun (which I don’t). It’s the worst feeling, because you’ve lost your crop, your farm, your everything—years of work, gone.”
In 2014, Romance got a call from one of his employees who’d discovered that more than a hundred hives were missing from the inventory. Romance drove up and down Kern County looking for the missing boxes, hoping the thief had been reckless enough to place them near a road. He didn’t find them. One day, he heard from a friend who said he’d met a guy offering some bees for rent and thought he’d seen some of Romance’s equipment at his place.
Accused of stealing hundreds of beehives throughout the Central Valley over several years, Pavel Tveretinov and an alleged accomplice, Vitaliy Yeroshenko, were arrested in 2017. Their preliminary trials are scheduled for this summer.
“It was a lucky break,” Romance said. He decided to go incognito to check things out. “I go over to the house with another friend who’s like six four, and we pretend we’re almond farmers,” he recounted. He was met by two men. “I said, ‘I’m paying $225 a hive’—top dollar. The price at the time was about $180. These guys were falling all over themselves saying they’d love to sell us some bees.”
While they talked, Romance looked around and realized what was going on. “It was a chop shop. They were grinding the brands off the boxes and painting over them,” he said. “That’s like branding over cattle—you can’t do that. Used to be a hanging offense! They were systematically stealing bees, painting the boxes, and reselling them.”
Romance called the sheriff. Later that evening the sheriff arrested one of the men, Gabino Jordan Peña, who worked for a nearby beekeeper named William Green. When Green got word that Peña had been pegged for stealing bees, he couldn’t believe it. He’d always considered Peña to be a good employee—he didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, went to church at least once a week. But Green soon came to the conclusion that Peña was likely swindling him too, even using his equipment and credit card to fund his operation.
Peña declared his innocence, said detective Richard Hudson, of the Kern County rural crime prevention task force, and his church raised money to bail him out of jail. A few days before he was scheduled to appear in court, Peña skipped town, possibly to Mexico, Hudson said.
It’s not uncommon for an employee to steal bees from the boss—bee crooks need to get training somewhere, Romance explained. “You don’t go to school or read a book to become a beekeeper. It’s a dirty, hot, stinging job. You have to have the chutzpah to do it.”
Ultimately, Romance said, the stolen bees were recovered and redistributed among Green, other victims, and himself.
Feeling the sting
Investigating bee crimes isn’t easy. “These cases are hard to crack because bees don’t have VIN numbers like cars, and we can’t track them by their DNA,” said detective Isaac Torres, a Fresno-based member of California’s rural crime prevention task force. Often the only witnesses at the crime scene would be an angry mob with stingers. Once while responding to a call, Torres’s partner, Andres Solis, got stung eight times in the head, and his face “swelled up like a balloon,” Torres said. Now Solis wears a beekeeper’s veil when investigating bee cases.
In 2017, Solis and Torres managed to crack one of the biggest hive heists in California history. For three years in a row, an unusually high number of bee crimes were reported throughout the Central Valley—200, 300, 400 hives at a time in many different locations. “We knew it had to be someone in the business,” Solis said. “They weren’t just any crooks. They really knew what they were doing.”
Buzz’s Bees, owned by California apiarist Buzz Landon, had eight hives stolen early in the 2019 season. The California Rural Crime Prevention Task Force recommends that beekeepers brand their boxes with their name and state-issued registration number, keep them where thieves have less access, and use technologies such as GPS trackers to help find stolen hives.
A few weeks after the almond bloom, the detectives investigated a report about a suspicious discovery: a vacant lot on the outskirts of Fresno with bee boxes in varied shapes, colors, and designs stacked and scattered about. At the scene, they found what appeared to be a chop shop, where boxes were being sanded, repainted, and stenciled with the name Allstate Apiaries Inc., a business operated by Pavel Tveretinov, who was on-site tending to the bees.
Officers arrested Tveretinov, a 51-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, and later an alleged accomplice, Vitaliy Yeroshenko, 48. As the investigation progressed, the detectives uncovered similar operations at two other locations. They say they recovered some 2,500 hives worth $875,000.
Word about the arrests spread quickly. Soon beekeepers from all over the country were calling to find out if their missing equipment was among the recovered stacks.
“It was like a spiderweb,” Torres said. “One person would go and ID their bees, then goes home and tells their friends they saw some equipment of theirs. Then they come and see someone else’s, and it kept going like that.”
Kamron Koehnen, a beekeeper in Butte County, California, recovered some of his 240 hives, all of which were uniquely branded with the numbers 42-14. “Every frame, every bottom, every lid, every pallet, everything was branded,” he said. “We’ve never sold a thing. If someone else has it, they either picked it up off the road or stole it.” Recently, Koehnen was informed by the investigators that some of his equipment was found in North Dakota, where Tveretinov was allegedly making honey in the off-season.
Almond farmers generally rent two hives per acre to ensure adequate pollination. Fees range from $180 to $220. When the almond bloom ends, beekeepers truck their bees to other locations across the U.S. to pollinate more than 90 crops, from apples and avocados to blueberries and cherries.
Fresno County Deputy District Attorney Ryan McGinthy confirmed that Tveretinov and Yeroshenko are still under investigation and that more charges could be forthcoming. Tveretinov now faces 12 felony counts, including receiving stolen property and grand theft. Yeroshenko is charged with 10 counts of receiving stolen property. Court records show their preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled for June 25. If found guilty, they could face prison time and thousands of dollars in fines. Both men maintain their innocence.
The California State Beekeepers Association offers a $10,000 reward for information resulting in the arrest and conviction of a bee rustler. Torres said apiarists should report thefts to authorities immediately and be vigilant to protect themselves against crime. That includes registering their hives with the state and minimizing opportunities for thieves to snatch equipment by placing hives away from access roads, behind locked gates when possible. Unique hive designs are easier to identify and recover after a theft. Some beekeepers are meticulous about branding every moving part in the hive. A growing number are taking advantage of technologies such as GPS trackers and camera systems that can send text alerts when hives are moved. “If this is your bread and butter, you’ve got to protect yourself,” Torres said. “I tell everyone to put GPS trackers on their hives.”
That’s just what Jeremy Kuhnhenn would like to do. But the units are pricey, as much as $130 apiece, he said, and right now money is especially tight. Back at Bulldog Honey Farms in North Dakota in March, all his cows were still in the barn, but there was extra space in the driveway. The loss of his hives meant he had to sell a 24-foot trailer and his wife’s 2010 Mustang to pay the bills. He also got a loan from the bank to keep things going while building back his bee colonies and preparing to make summer honey.
Next February, as the winter stillness settles over North Dakota, he’ll load his bees on a truck and again make the 1,800-mile trip southwest to California, where money grows on almond trees.
Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife crime and exploitation. Read more Wildlife Watch stories here, and learn more about National Geographic Society’s nonprofit mission at nationalgeographic.org. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.
Lucas Foglia's photographs have been widely exhibited and published in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Nazraeli Press recently released his third book, Human Nature . Follow him on Instagram.
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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2010/04/parting-the-waters.html
Parting the Waters
A source of conflict between Israel and its neighbors for decades, the Jordan River is now depleted by drought, pollution, and overuse. Could the fight to save it forge a path toward peace?
By Don Belt
Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin
This story appears in the April 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine.
For a biblical stream whose name evokes divine tranquillity, the Jordan River is nobody's idea of peace on Earth. From its rowdy headwaters near the war-scarred slopes of Mount Hermon to the foamy, coffee-colored sludge at the Dead Sea some 200 miles downstream, the Jordan is fighting for survival in a tough neighborhood—the kind of place where nations might spike the riverbank with land mines, or go to war over a sandbar. Water has always been precious in this arid region, but a six-year drought and expanding population conspire to make it a fresh source of conflict among the Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians vying for the river's life-giving supply.
All of which makes the scene one morning last July all the more remarkable. Accompanied by military escort, three scientists—an Israeli, a Palestinian, and a Jordanian—are standing knee-deep in the Jordan River. They are nearly 40 miles south of the Sea of Galilee, under the precarious ruins of a bridge that was bombed during the Six Day War of June 1967. The scientists are surveying the river for Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), a regional NGO dedicated to building peace through environmental stewardship. It's a scorching hot day in a former war zone, but if these men are concerned about the danger of heat stroke, getting clonked by a chunk of falling concrete, or stepping on a mine washed downstream by a flood, they're hiding it well.
"Hey, Samer," says Sarig Gafny, an Israeli ecologist in a floppy, green hat, "check this little fellow out." Samer Talozi, a tall, self-possessed young environmental engineer from Jordan, peers over his shoulder at the tiny invertebrate his Israeli colleague has scooped into a glass sample jar. "It lives!" he says with a laugh. "That is one tough crustacean!" A few yards away, Banan Al Sheikh, a stout, good-natured botanist from the West Bank, is absentmindedly wading upstream while focusing his camera on a flowering tree amid the tall reeds and other riparian species along the riverbank. "Watch your step, my friend," Gafny calls out after him, "and whatever you do, don't step on a bleeping mine."
Besides lethal munitions, this stretch of the Jordan River—perhaps 25 feet wide and a few feet deep—is so polluted that any sign of aquatic life is worth celebrating. Part of the reason is water scarcity: In the past five decades the Jordan has lost more than 90 percent of its normal flow. Upstream, at the Sea of Galilee, the river's fresh waters are diverted via Israel's National Water Carrier to the cities and farms of Israel, while dams built by Jordan and Syria claim a share of the river's tributaries, mostly for agriculture. So today the lower Jordan is practically devoid of clean water, bearing instead a toxic brew of saline water and liquid waste that ranges from raw sewage to agricultural runoff, fed into the river's vein like some murky infusion of tainted blood.
The fight over the Jordan illustrates the potential for conflict over water that exists throughout the world. We live on a planet where neighbors have been clubbing each other over rivers for thousands of years. (The word "rival," from the Latin rivalis, originally described competitors for a river or stream.) Worldwide, a long list of watersheds brims with potential clashes: between India and Pakistan over the Indus; Ethiopia and Egypt over the Nile; Turkey and Syria over the Euphrates; Botswana and Namibia over the Okavango. Yet according to researchers at Oregon State University, of the 37 actual military conflicts over water since 1950, 32 took place in the Middle East; 30 of them involved Israel and its Arab neighbors. Of those, practically all were over the Jordan River and its tributaries, which supply millions of people with water for drinking, bathing, and farming.
Armed confrontations over the Jordan date to the founding of Israel in 1948 and the recognition that sources of the country's needed water supply lay outside its borders. Its survival depended on the Jordan River, with its headwaters in Syria and Lebanon, its waters stored in the Sea of Galilee, and the tributaries that flow into it from neighboring countries.
Israel's neighbors face a similar situation. Their survival is no less at stake—which makes the line between war and peace here very fine indeed. In the 1960s Israeli air strikes after Syria attempted to divert the Baniyas River (one of the Jordan's headwaters in the Golan Heights), together with Arab attacks on Israel's National Water Carrier project, lit fuses for the Six Day War. Israel and Jordan nearly came to blows over a sandbar in the Yarmuk River in 1979. And in 2002 Israel threatened to shell agricultural pumping stations on the Hasbani, another of the headwaters in southern Lebanon.
Yet fights over water have also led to dialogue. "There are few major sources of water that don't cross one or more political boundaries," says Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli co-director of Friends of the Earth Middle East. "That creates a natural interdependence between countries." Sharing resources can actually be a path to peace, Bromberg says, because it forces people to work together. In the 1970s, for example, Jordan and Israel agreed on how to divvy up water even when the countries were officially at war. And cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians over water has continued even as other tracks of the peace process hit a wall.
"It seems counterintuitive, but water is just too important to go to war over," says Chuck Lawson, a former U.S. official who worked on Israeli-Palestinian water issues in the 1990s. "Regardless of the political situation, people need water, and that's a huge incentive to work things out."
One day last April, Bromberg led me to the natural spring that provides water to Auja, a Palestinian village of 4,500 people that climbs the barren hills a few miles west of the Jordan River near Jericho. Fed by winter rains, the spring was flowing from a small, boulder-strewn oasis, and we trekked along the narrow concrete trough that transports water to the village, several miles away. "Auja is totally dependent on this water for agriculture," Bromberg said. "As soon as this spring dries up, there'll be no more water for farming."
Part idealist, part political operative, Bromberg was born in Israel and raised in Australia, then returned to Israel in 1988 to help build peace in the region. By challenging his own country to share water equitably, Bromberg has rattled the cages of hard-line Israeli politicians who see water as a national security issue—and as a resource to guard jealously.
Since occupying the West Bank in 1967, Israel has built a few dozen settlements in the Jordan Valley, in addition to the 120 or so elsewhere in the West Bank. The settlers' water is provided by Mekorot, Israel's national water authority, which has drilled 42 deep wells in the West Bank, mainly to supply Israeli cities. (According to a 2009 World Bank report, Israelis use four times as much water per capita as Palestinians, much of it for agriculture. Israel disputes this, arguing that its citizens use only twice as much water and are better at conserving it.) In any case, Israel's West Bank settlements get enough water to fill their swimming pools, water their lawns, and irrigate miles of fields and greenhouses.
In contrast, West Bank Palestinians, under Israeli military rule, have been largely prevented from digging deep wells of their own, limiting their water access to shallow wells, natural springs, and rainfall that evaporates quickly in the dry desert air. When these sources run dry in the summer, Bromberg said, Auja's Palestinians have no choice but to purchase water from Israel for about a dollar a cubic yard—in effect buying back the water that's been taken out from under them by Mekorot's pumps, which also lower the water table and affect Palestinian springs and wells.
As Bromberg and I followed the Auja spring east, we passed a complex of pumps and pipes behind a barbed-wire fence—a Mekorot well, drilled 2,000 feet deep to tap the aquifer. "Blue and white pipes," Bromberg said. "This is what water theft looks like in this part of the world."
Israel's chief water negotiator, Noah Kinnarti, disagrees. Underground water knows no borders, he says, and points out that Israelis must also purchase the water they use. "Palestinians think any rain that falls in the West Bank belongs to them," he told me at his kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee. "But in the Oslo talks, we agreed to share that water. They just can't get their act together to do it."
FOEME began confronting these tough issues in 2001, during a period of intense Palestinian-Israeli violence. But by focusing first on ways to improve water quality, the NGO mobilized support and built trust through its Good Water Neighbors program, a grassroots education initiative. It's also working to establish a Jordanian-Israeli peace park on a midstream island. Perhaps most important, it has pressured governments to live up to the water-sharing commitments embedded in the region's peace agreements, seeking to make the Jordan River a model for the kind of cooperation needed to avert future water wars.
"People all over the world associate the Jordan River with peace," says Munqeth Mehyar, FOEME's co-director in Jordan. "We're just helping it live up to its reputation!"
When I returned to Auja in early May, its spring had been reduced to a trickle, leaving the village as dry as a fistful of talcum powder. The fields around it lay empty and exhausted, while on Auja's one plot of flat ground, boys were playing soccer amid a swirling dust cloud they were kicking up, chasing an old leather ball worn to the consistency of flannel.
I stopped by the home of an elderly farmer named Muhammad Salama. "We haven't had running water in my house for five weeks," Salama said. "So now I have to buy a tank of water every day from Mekorot to supply my family and to water my sheep, goats, and horses." He also has to buy feed for his animals because there is no water to irrigate crops. To meet these costs he is selling off his livestock, and his sons have taken jobs at an Israeli settlement, tending the tomatoes, melons, and other crops irrigated from the aquifer that is off-limits to Palestinian farmers. "What can we do?" he asked, pouring me a glass of Mekorot water from a plastic bottle. "It's not fair, but we're powerless to do anything about it."
It was a clear day, and from his front window we could see across the parched, brown valley all the way to the thin line of gray-green vegetation marking the path of the Jordan River. For a moment, its water seemed within reach. "But to get there I'd have to jump an electric fence, cross a minefield, and fight the Israeli army," Salama said. "I'd have to start a water war!"
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‘Why Was the Confederacy Founded? And Why Was the United States?’
By Jason Lee Steorts
About Jason Lee Steorts
Not all slippery slopes are slippery in the same way. You slide down some because you started out with an arbitrary distinction; you slide down others because you overlooked a sound distinction. It’s possible that removing Confederate monuments will result in our eventually dynamiting the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. But if so, we will have slid down the second kind of slope. To understand why, ask the questions above.
Alexander H. Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, had no doubt about the answers. Consider these words from his 1861 “Cornerstone” speech (which I thank my colleague Rick Brookhiser for bringing to my attention):
The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. . . .
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. . . .
. . . Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
Race slavery was essential to the purpose and self-understanding of the Confederacy, which was founded expressly to preserve the peculiar institution. It was not essential to the purpose and self-understanding of the United States, and the United States became truer to its founding principles when slavery was abolished (for reasons that I elaborated here). That doesn’t mean we should shrug off the moral enormity of certain Founders’ slave ownership. But it does mean that we can reject those Founders qua slaveholders even as we honor them for dedicating our nation to ideas that would not tolerate the enormity.
A couple of years ago, I said that my view of Confederate monuments was “not so much that they should cease to exist as that they never should have existed.” Perhaps some of them could be altered or re-contextualized in ways that acknowledge the moral chasm separating the Union from the Confederacy. But what I believe must cease to exist on public property, and should cease to exist on private property too, is any monument that romanticizes the Confederate cause or presents it as just or honorable or good.
Today, President Trump tweeted that “you can’t change history, but you can learn from it.” That is correct. The problem is that Confederate monuments as they exist today provide a miseducation. The most charitable thing, if not necessarily the most plausible, that can be said of Trump’s wish to preserve them is that he himself received that miseducation and has now joined the faculty.
Jason Lee Steorts is the managing editor of National Review.
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Aerosmith Nixes Concert After Steven Tyler's Fall
Singer goes down during "Love in an Elevator"
By Daniel Macht
Published Aug 6, 2009 at 2:02 AM | Updated at 9:41 PM PDT on Aug 6, 2009
Stephen Tyler was taken to a hospital after falling off a stage, and has postponed its next show.
Aerosmith has postponed a concert in Canada today following frontman Steven Tyler's hospitalization for falling off stage during a concert in South Dakota on Wednesday.
The 61-year-old singer hurt his head, neck and shoulder, a concert spokesman told The Associated Press. Video footage of the performance showed Tyler fall mid-spin from a catwalk after the sound system failed while the band performed "Love in an Elevator."
"He does a lot of dancing on the stage and he does a lot of stuff with his mike stand," said Mike Sanborn, a spokesman for the Buffalo Chip Campground, which hosted the Wednesday concert. "He put his stand down and twirled around and stepped backwards off the stage."
Tyler was rushed backstage by security. Guitarist Joe Perry later told the crowd the frontman had been taken to the hospital and the show was over, according to AP. A rep for the band said they were investigating the accident.
Aerosmith band members have dealt with a string of injuries on their latest tour. In June, Tyler contracted pneumonia, according to the AP. Last month, the singer injured his leg while jumping on stage, forcing cancellation of seven shows, Rolling Stone reported. Afterward, the band announced bassist Tom Hamilton would bail on the band's summer tour for "non-invasive surgery" (Joe Perry Project musician David Hull has since taken his place).
Guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford also sustained injuries recently. Whitford missed the first "handful" of shows of the tour after needing surgery for smashing his head on his Ferrari, Rolling Stone reported.
Perry may be healthy and fit now -- but he had knee surgery back in March 2008.
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After Losing 3 Relatives to Diabetes, One Teen Wants to Help People Build a 'Healthy Beat'
Avni Madhani, a high school student in California, started The Healthy Beat after multiple family members died due to complications related to Type 2 diabetes.Courtesy of Avni Madhani
Feb. 3, 2017, 3:06 PM UTC / Updated Feb. 3, 2017, 3:06 PM UTC
By Grace Lee
In October 2016, 16 year-old Avni Madhani’s maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and died that same month. Madhani's paternal grandfather had died from complications related to the disorder just the year before, and her uncle the year before that.
Avni Madhani, who coded and translated her website, aspires to be a doctor.Courtesy of Avni Madhani
They are not alone. In the United States, South Asian immigrants are seven times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than the general population, according to the New York University School of Medicine. But despite that risk, only two-thirds of South Asians had ever been screened for the disorder.
“It really made me wonder, ‘Why is one disease doing so much?’” Madhani, a high school junior in California, told NBC News. “You really start to think when it’s such a consistent streak, and that launched my research.”
Madhani is the founder of a website called The Healthy Beat, which she launched in early 2016. The goal of the site is to raise awareness of Type 2 diabetes and provide the public with nutritional information that could lead to a healthier lifestyle.
“It’s a largely preventable disease that’s caused by general unawareness,” Madhani, who aspires to be a doctor, said. “You can’t blame people for not knowing what they’re eating — society makes it that way. [The website] is an attempt to bridge that gap of knowledge and let them know what they’re eating.”
The site is armed with several tools that could aid that goal, including a calorie counter that includes many South Asian foods, a healthy weight guide, and a BMI calculator, all developed by Madhani, she said. She began gathering information in 2015, preparing a spreadsheet for the extensive bank of nutritional facts that has also become a prominent feature on her site.
Information on Avni Madhani's website, The Healthy Beat, is available in both English and Hindi.Courtesy of Avni Madhani
“When I was building my website I wasn’t old enough to take the community college courses so I had to read a lot of coursework books on my own,” she said.
The website is also available in Hindi, translated by Madhani herself. She’s hoping to increase traffic to her site from India, especially targeting those who don’t understand English.
“There isn’t really a comprehensive database for the South Asian population and this is surprising because as South Asians, we’re genetically pre-disposed to diabetes,” she said. “The Indian diet is very heavy in carbs and carbs break into glucose, which is why your blood sugar rises — and that’s why diabetes happens.”
Madhani said she is also at risk for the disease and that both her parents have pre-diabetes. Due to media coverage in the South Asian community, tens of thousands of people now visit her website on a daily basis, she added.
“It made me feel good because it’s finally known to the population for which it was targeted,” she said.
RELATED: Study Shows Decline in New Diabetes Cases, But Lacks Specific Data for Asian Americans
She hopes to continue spreading awareness in her community and even reach out to those who are seeking individual advice.
“It takes just six hours to understand what you’re eating, and you’ll be healthy for the next 60 years,” she said.
Follow NBC Asian America on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.
Grace Lee
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www.giolitti.it
via degli Uffici del Vicario 45
In 1849 a Piedmontese family arrived in Rome in the wake of French troops under the command of General Oudinot to overthrow the Roman Republic and the new resettlement Pope Pius IX.
Thus began their first form of catering supplying an army of 7000 men with fresh milk every day during the long stay in Rome from France.
150 years ago, Giuseppe and his wife Bernardina from Ciociaria, opened a shop in Piazza del Grillo selling its milk of own production coming from the Roman countryside.
In 1910, the awarded Dairy Shop Giolitti opened, in via della Consolazione, entrusted to his son Giovanni.
The success was such that soon it became a regular meeting point for noble families such as the Orsini, Locatelli, etc..
After the Via della Consolazione location other shops were opened, one per child.
In 1917 the "Testaccio" Shop was inaugurated in Via Amerigo Vespucci, which was given entrusted to his first son Nazzareno and then handed over to the younger brother Angelino.
In 1930, in Via del Vicario, another shop was opened, and entrusted to Nazzareno. This is to become the most famous location of the Giolitti family. Once the shop is established , Nazzareno leaves the management to his three children Alberto, Silvano and Franco.
In1980, Nazzareno Franchises the ‘Giolitti’ brand to spread the brand globally. The first locations are opened in Copenhagen, Seoul and New York and soon other locations are to be opened in Istanbul, Cairo and Dubai.
In 1990, besides the various activities, the new "Giolitti Catering" was inaugurated, which from the beginning is a success thanks to the undisputed quality, reliability and trustworthy name.
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Talking to Saipan
American lit in a Pacific outpost
HUMANITIES, May/June 2010, Volume 31, Number 3
P. F. Kluge encourages aspiring writers to use island life in their fiction.
Dirk Spennemann (www.ausphoto.net)
After more than twenty years, I still get nervous about meeting a class for the first time. Whether it’s a fiction writing seminar that meets for three hours or a fifty-minute session of “American Novel Since 1950,” I sense I’m about to confront an audience that is bound to exhilarate and disappoint me. And I may do the same to them. It’s like hosting a dinner party for strangers, a dinner destined to converge on me again and again. That is how I feel at Kenyon College, and that is what comes to me now on the island of Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, where I’ll be lecturing to adults on four classic American novels and offering a workshop on writing to high school kids.
Twenty minutes before class begins, I walk the paths in the American Memorial Park, which commemorates the World War II battle for Saipan. That was when America came here, following Spain, Germany, and Japan. I pass a Japanese pillbox, meander along the north end of the invasion beach. Beyond the fringing reef lies Tinian and the runways from which the Enola Gay departed on its mission to Hiroshima. Now, tourists—likely Chinese or Japanese—go parasailing over the lagoon. Through a grove of lacy, soft-needled ironwood trees, I come upon monuments to the three thousand Americans and the hundreds of Saipanese who died in 1944. The Japanese monuments are at the north end of the island, where the battle ended. Welcome back, I tell myself. I saw the islands as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1967, when Saipan was part of a U.S.-administered U.N. Trusteeship. I’ve returned about a dozen times since then. In 1986, Saipan and the other Northern Mariana Islands became a U.S. commonwealth, America's remotest and newest territorial acquisition and, quite possibly, its last.
Now I head for class, my pace more brisk and confident than I feel. It’s important to me—almost a matter of principle—that the class should be waiting for the teacher, that I should not be waiting for them. I’ve wondered how the books I’ve chosen will play here, how my professing will work. I have no power here. College audiences are captive and paying, attendance is taken, tests administered, grades given. Not here.
About thirty people confront me in the American Memorial Park auditorium. Some of them I’ve known for more than forty years and some are strangers. I introduce myself, talk about my Peace Corps days, go back to the times I wondered about living here, staying behind, making this place my literary territory. That didn’t happen, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering, from walking a few steps down the road not taken. I’ve set parts of three books on Saipan and a forthcoming novel, The Master Blaster, takes place here as well. I discuss how we’ll read the books I’ve chosen, considering what they say and how they say it. I address the nature of fiction, the way memory and imagination come together in a made-up story. I tell them to keep an eye on the author’s use of time, sense of place, choice of voice. Then, I turn to To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s one novel, the retrospective first-person voice she employs, the way it combines childlike spontaneity with adult wisdom and perspective and a tinge of sadness. The book, I warn them, is more shrewdly crafted than its many fans realize. I advise them to keep an eye out for the play of gender, race, and—always the trickiest of the three—class. And I return to my hotel wondering how it went and how it will go.
On Saipan the finest hours come at dawn and dusk. If you want to walk or run or just sit and think, you value the edges of the day. It’s dark when I step out on the balcony of my hotel, one block from the island’s “ginza,” its tourist zone. I look inland, toward the mountain ridge at the center of the island, spotting the first signs of the sunrise that is happening on the other side. In 1967, islanders lived in wooden houses, tin-roofed, that might include a wall, a foundation, a bullet-pocked cistern from Japanese times. They drove American jeeps, purchased for a dollar when the military moved on after the war. Now, I see cement block-and-stucco structures, air-conditioned, typhoon-proof, yet subject to the daily grind of heat and rain that smudges, stains, streaks, molds, and blisters. Local people still live close to the shoreline, but lawyers, doctors, and investors claim the island’s heights for mansions.
The fledgling commonwealth boomed in the late eighties and nineties. Property values skyrocketed as land was leased to hotels and garment factories; overnight there were millionaires by the dozen. Along with outside money came outside workers, thousands of them, from China, Bangladesh, Thailand, and the Philippines. Soon they outnumbered the locals: People compared Saipan to Kuwait. Those heady days are gone. Three dozen garment factories have closed, tourism declines, the government—strapped for cash, besieged by lawsuits and scandal—contemplates casino gambling and military garrisons relocated from Okinawa. I have no idea what will become of this last little America. No one else does either.
Class turns buoyant. I had feared some melt, but there are new faces at our second meeting. And voices. There’s lively talk. I question a scene in which Scout Finch disperses a lynch mob with ingenuous chat. It seems contrived, written with an eye on Hollywood. My students disagree: A kid is coming to the defense of a beloved father, they insist. I back off. And, after class, a woman points to a scene I’d stressed, where Scout—six or seven years old—senses the jury in a black-on-white rape case is going to convict an innocent man. Scout feels a sudden chill, a prickly feeling, a moment of quiet . . . menace. The student points out that Lee uses the very same language earlier in the novel, when a rabid dog lurches down the street where Atticus Finch and his children live. I hadn’t noticed that before. Well, the best class is one in which the professor learns something from a student. I like it when that happens. Only, please, not too often.
I don’t like to argue on behalf of a book’s “relevance” to an audience: i.e., what’s in it for me. But I hoped To Kill a Mockingbird would have something to say about Saipan, and I pointed out connections as they occurred: the tight weave of life in a small place or, as one student put it, “everybody knows your business.” In both places, there were divisions along lines of class and race, and jury trials subject to hometown decisions. And, most important, the presence of evil in likeable, pie-baking, churchgoing ladies right next door. It worked, I think, but now it’s Hemingway’s turn.
The Old Man and the Sea is a fish story. Fine. Is it more than a fish story? Too much more, perhaps? A passion play, a Christian allegory, with rituals, stigmata, images of crucifixion and resurrection? If so, does it succeed? To my surprise, my class buys it all, even the most strenuously allegorical elements. Santiago, Hemingway’s fisherman, is near the end of his life, they argue, so why begrudge him a few spiritual gestures? He’s an old man, and that’s what old men do, duh! What’s more, Hemingway’s straightforward style commands their attention, along with his obvious knowledge of fishing.
Around Saipan, fishing isn’t what it used to be. The lagoon is fished out; old timers tell me their secret pots have all been found and decimated. Beyond the reef, the ocean belongs to foreign tuna fleets. But when I ask if fishermen ever dialoged with their prey, as Hemingway’s Santiago does for three days, a local man, an old friend, tells me and the class, “We still do.” Offering a few words of thanks and apology before the kill.
Day by day, Saipan reclaims me. Waiting for sunrise, I eat papaya, tangerines, and watermelon. I follow with tapioca cooked in coconut sauce, peppery empanadas, and sometimes—I would only do this here—I go for a cylinder of cooked rice wrapped in seaweed and topped by a substantial slice of America’s favorite mystery meat. Spam sushi! I drink tuba, a juice that’s collected from the cut blossoms of a coconut palm. It starts out sweet and turns potent and spiky over time. Sometimes, during the day, I find my way to a Thai massage place in the hotel. Back home, at sixty dollars, a massage is a monthly treat. Here, at twenty bucks, I go twice weekly. Get five massages and the sixth is free. I always have something to look forward to. At night, when I’m thinking about how class went, I indulge in liquor marketed by an American lady who ferments coconuts and small bananas, infusing them with papaya, or banana, mango, coffee, or ginger. After all these years, and with all its problems—economic doldrums and depressing political conflicts—Saipan hits most of my buttons.
To meet my student writers, I climb Mount Olympus. That’s what Saipanese nicknamed the place—otherwise known as Mount Tapochau—back when it was the capital of the United Nations Trust Territory of Pacific Islands. What a place! What a history! After World War II, it was headquarters of the Naval Technical Training Unit, a secret CIA base that prepared infiltrators and saboteurs for missions in China and, possibly, Tibet, Indonesia, and Korea. When the CIA left in the fifties, the Trust Territory government inherited dozens of sturdy, airy, comfortable California-style houses, a social club, lawns, playing fields, and offices. When I pictured staying on Saipan back then, it was here that I pictured myself. Now the place belongs to the Commonwealth government and time has not been kind to it. Most of the houses I coveted have been roughly converted into offices and others are empty, doors ajar, screens rusted, trees in gutters and weeds in driveways. I’ve outlived the place I dreamed about.
Some twenty students have enrolled in the introductory story-writing class that will meet for four Saturdays. Twenty, I worry, is too many for a seminar format. But only twelve show up for the first session. Three others—two on the island Tinian, one on Rota—are linked by teleconferencing equipment that I have doubts about from the beginning. To begin, I thank them for their interest in writing, their willingness to test their talent in front of an audience. And, gently, I caution them that writing is a long odds game that requires—there’s no getting around it—work. Then I review the writing samples that some, not all, of them submitted. They were supposed to have read each others’ work in advance, online, but that didn’t happen. So it is left to me to be encouraging and critical. For the next week I require a sense-of-place exercise. And I strongly suggest that the place be Saipan. That is what they know and their readers don’t. They should use it.
Afterwards, three girls—likeable and attentive throughout—tell me that, sorry, they’re busy with lots of other things and don’t believe they’ll be coming back. The kid on screen on Rota, whose head was on the table most of the time, never reappears. But there’s one student who makes up for all of that. His paper would have gotten into my college seminar back home. His material was all too familiar, a twentysomething kid who’s burned out, ticked off, tired of it all. The piece was all attitude, from beginning to end, but he could definitely write. I invite him to the office for special encouragement, give him an inscribed copy of one of my novels, one writer to another. He thanks me as he leaves and, it turns out, never shows up again. It’s a lesson relearned: Talent is the main thing, but not the only one. For now I will settle for a few good kids. I will settle, if it comes to that, for one.
A major night with Huck and Jim. I’d been reminding the class that we should read books cumulatively, with an eye for connections. I compared Twain’s fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, with Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama, Huck’s father’s rabid racism with Robert E. Lee Ewell’s courtroom rant. And I return to my old standby: the presence of evil in good people and occasional good in evil ones. I ask the class to imagine an updated Huckleberry Finn lighting out to Saipan, America’s remotest territory. “What would he find?” I ask.
What follows is lively: A-bomb strips on Tinian, a Chinese casino, abandoned, and half-finished hotels on Saipan; Japanese pillboxes, boondock caves with war-littered mess kits, and sake bottles; deserted garment factories and barracks. And poker parlors! There are about two hundred poker parlors on Saipan, I’m told, and some anonymous, sinister genius has placed many of them next to laundromats, so you can use a roll of quarters to clean clothes—a sure thing—or take your chance on a jackpot. And the people! Twain’s tattered bush-league con men, the Duke and Dauphin, have dozens of recent counterparts out here: investors, tax avoiders, fugitives, hustlers, cultists, treasure hunters, the list goes on. The class is hard to contain. The outsiders’ dream of islands commingles, here, with the islanders’ vision of America.
After class, I’m usually wired, I can’t sleep, which is just as well, because there’s a party down the street, a loud band and I can’t complain because this is the residence of a local Catholic priest. So I endure what feels like a ten-minute version of “I Saw Her Standing There.” And then, “Proud Mary,” all about rolling, rolling, rolling on the river. Which returns me to Mark Twain. Next up is the novel’s ending, where Tom Sawyer reappears and takes over with pranks and capers that re-enslave Jim and demean Huck. Agony to read, after the noble stuff preceding. Necessary agony, maybe; the voyage can’t go on forever. Theirs or mine. Only one more week of class. As usual with me, I miss a place before I leave it, this not-quite America, this not-quite home.
Nine sense-of-place exercises arrive. Granted, there is awkwardness and cliché, a love of self-serving monologue situated on beaches and in malls. But, definitely, there are things I liked. A student on Tinian comes up with a deadpan opening line: “My name is Maria Stone and my life is anything but normal.” Another kid describes the selection of a walking stick to assist him on a tricky descent to a secret beach and comes up with a nifty throwaway line: “The sticks in the middle of the road have probably been overrun by some lost tourist’s rented four-wheeler or a local’s truck coming back from poaching coconut crabs.” A third describes the “puke green” restrooms at Banzai Cliff. “I never use these,” she writes. “I don’t know anybody who does.” Another student ventures into Saipan’s Duty-Free Shopping Mall, describing “hundred dollar heels that click off marble floors.” Good stuff.
Again and again, whenever I need a break—a change of pace or scene, or mood—I find my way to the north end of Saipan, an area called Marpi. It's the handsomest part of the island, and the most haunted, a realm of cliffs and caves and memories. This is where the battle ended, where the Japanese soldiers and civilians ignored pleas to surrender and leapt to their deaths, some plunging onto land from Suicide Cliff, the rest into water off of Banzai Cliff. The area bristles with peace monuments, many more than the Americans and Saipanese have erected in other places.
Then again, Japanese losses were ten times greater. After the battle, Marpi was where bombs and shells intended for use against Japan were stored. The Enola Gay changed that. About four thousand tons of unexploded ordnance were left on Saipan, much of it in Marpi, which was off-limits. Locals nonetheless trespassed to strip bronze and copper fittings off shells, to dig powder out for use in homemade bombs that would make fishing less of a gamble. Sometimes the bombs exploded: Approximately two thousand Saipanese were injured, sometimes killed, over the years. Today, the place has a sense of beauty, not tropical and balmy, but stark and menacing. When people picture a tropical island, they imagine a paradise, an Eden, out of contact with the rest of the world, untouched by history. Saipan is different. It's had plenty contact and a fair . . . or unfair . . . share of history. With more on the way.
Teach into your sixties and you develop, whether you deserve it or not, a curmudgeonly reputation. You can’t escape it, so you might as well make use of it. But there’s something about last classes that gets me. I know that the people before me will never be sitting together in the same room again. I also know that this means more to me than to them.
I always save Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried for the end of the course. It’s about war, which Saipan has ample memory of. It’s about the Vietnam War, which was firing up while I was a Peace Corps volunteer here. It’s about a writer’s struggle to engage turbulent memories and turn them into stories that endure. And it’s also about how writing keeps the dead alive and enlarges the ones who are living, if they read. It’s dodgy, full of fancy footwork about fiction, about how you invent—lie—to get at truths. The class, I’m pleased to see, gets it, sensing what is imperative about writing and reading seriously. I end not by teaching literature so much as professing it. There are people all through these islands, gifted and deep, witnesses to history. But unless they read, there will always be places, people, times that they cannot reach. And unless their stories are told, their death erases them. I tell this to the adults, in our last class, and to the student writers—the seven of them who are still on board—a week later. We had four meetings, eight hours in all, not enough to produce more than a rough draft vignette. Works in progress, one hopes. But they’ve learned what writing takes, planning and work and a sense of audience. I tell them to keep writing and, more important, reading. The writing is breathing out, the reading is breathing in. And I finish by thanking them for coming and staying. And they, some of them, say the same to me.
Jonathan Spence, 2010 Jefferson Lecturer
Nancy Crampton
The Thing (or Things) About Wendell Berry
Ungoverned Passion
Founding Father and ladies' man Gouverneur Morris flees revolutionary Paris to discover the delights of central Europe.
Meredith Hindley
The Grown-Up Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince author, a famous pilot, wrote for adults too.
Fire on the Walls
Texas looks at the land through the eyes of artist Alexandre Hogue.
Patricia Mora
World Beaters
In the early days of basketball, the girls from the Fort Shaw Indian School took on all comers.
Delia Cabe
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'Ozarks' Promise' to waive tuition for 372 OTC students seeking health care careers
The $3 million U.S. Department of Labor grant will waive tuition costs for eligible students over the next four years.
'Ozarks' Promise' to waive tuition for 372 OTC students seeking health care careers The $3 million U.S. Department of Labor grant will waive tuition costs for eligible students over the next four years. Check out this story on news-leader.com: http://sgfnow.co/2gcIPex
Claudette Riley, CRILEY@NEWS-LEADER.COM Published 6:05 p.m. CT Nov. 28, 2016
Mary Ann Rojas, director of workforce development for the city of Springfield, and Dr. Steve Bishop, OTC provost, announce a $3 million U.S. Department of Labor grant was awarded to Springfield's Workforce Development that will go towards waiving tuition for 372 OTC students seeking health care careers on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)Buy Photo
Citing the growing demand for health care workers, the city's Workforce Development partnered with Ozarks Technical Community College to repeatedly apply for millions of dollars in grants to provide training at little or no cost for individuals.
The partners announced Monday that the persistence paid off.
The city and OTC were awarded a $3 million America's Promise grant by the U.S. Department of Labor to provide tuition-free training and certifications in health-related occupations for 372 individuals over the next four years.
"This is the third attempt that we have made at a multi-million grant and we are so thankful to the Department of Labor and to all of our partners that it has finally come to fruition," said Mary Ann Rojas, director of workforce development for the city. "We made it."
Ozarks' Promise, as the grant-funded program will be known locally, is expected to significantly increase the number of registered nurses, nursing assistants, and behavioral support specialists working in the Springfield area in the next few years. The amount of time required for each program ranges from eight weeks to one and a half years.
"We are talking about jobs. We are talking about our economy. We are talking about our health care. All of this makes Springfield strong," said Mayor Pro-Tem Ken McClure. "...This is just an incredible shot in the arm."
The U.S. Department of Labor awarded a total of 23 grants and Springfield was the only community in Missouri to receive one. The funding for the grants comes from fees paid by employers who bring foreign workers in the U.S. under a temporary visa program.
A $3 million U.S. Department of Labor grant awarded to Springfield's Workforce Development that will go towards waiving tuition for 372 OTC students seeking health care careers. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)
Announcing the grant Monday at OTC, community leaders said the focus is providing unemployed, underemployed and "disadvantaged populations" with access to high quality, tuition-free education and training opportunities.
Eligible students admitted to the program will have their tuition waived at OTC. Both the college and city are expected to try and recruit individuals to apply.
"This is going to fund 372 students coming into our programs to graduate as nurses, behavioral health specialists or (nursing assistants) to go out and serve in our community," said Steven Bishop, provost and vice chancellor and academic affairs at OTC. "What this means to those students, their families, our communities and ultimately the people they serve goes way beyond anything you can put a price on."
The city and OTC received numerous letters of support in seeking the grant.
Bishop said the grant removes financial barriers for "deserving" students who are interested in health-related careers, which pay better than minimum wage. "Education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty."
Paul Thomlinson, Burrell Behavioral Health Vice President of Research and Quality Assurance, speaks about the affect a $3 million U.S. Department of Labor grant awarded to Springfield's Workforce Development that will go towards waiving tuition for 372 OTC students seeking health care careers will have on the health care industry in Springfield on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)
Steve Edwards, president and CEO of CoxHealth, said the Springfield area has a "paradoxical" pair of statistics — relatively low unemployment and yet a high poverty rate.
"When you put those two together, it doesn't make sense. Higher poverty levels should not be correlated with lower unemployment. What it means is the jobs we have aren't the highest paying jobs," he said. "Yet, at the same time, the demand for health care jobs are growing and they're well-paying jobs."
Edwards said providing the training so more individuals can move into those better-paying positions is good for the economy.
Paul Thomlinson, vice president of research and quality assurance at Burrell Behavioral Health, said the need for "in the trenches" behavioral support specialists has continued to grow.
"We could not be more excited that we'll have a targeted program that will produce folks who have been trained at a competency level," he said. "...This is an excellent opportunity for us to field folks very quickly and meet those behavioral health needs very quickly."
Mayor Pro Tem Ken McClure speaks about a $3 million U.S. Department of Labor grant awarded to Springfield's Workforce Development that will go towards waiving tuition for 372 OTC students seeking health care careers on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016. (Photo: Nathan Papes/News-Leader)
Mike Peters, vice president of governmental relations for Mercy Health Systems, said the pending retirements of many Baby Boomers and a higher life expectancy means demand for health care workers is on the rise.
He said jobs in health care are expected to grow 19 percent between now and 2024.
"Health care is the No. 1 employer in Greene County so how important is the awarding and receiving of this grant? Hundreds of people will receive the training they need to qualify for thousands of good-paying jobs available now and in the indefinite future," Peters said.
Federal grant
The $3 million grant will provide training opportunities at Ozarks Technical Community College for individuals seeking to enter the health care industry. Here are the programs involved:
• OTC associate of applied science in behavioral health support — The hands-on program includes 360 hours of practicum experience and prepares students for employment in behavioral health and substance-abuse treatment facilities. The accelerated program takes a year and a half. The beginning salary range is $28,000 to $33,000.
• OTC certified nursing assistant — Offered through the college's Center for Workforce Development, the eight-week program is certified by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. The program prepares students to work as nursing assistants in long-term care environments. Average hourly rates in the region range from $9 to $16.
• OTC associate of science in nursing — Designed to transition licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, to registered nurses, or RNs, in 36 weeks. The program prepares students to take the registered nursing exams. RNs can work in hospitals, physician officers, nursing care facilities, home health care services, government agencies and outpatient care centers. The average salary of an RN in Missouri is $56,950.
The grant was awarded to the city of Springfield's Workforce Development in partnership with Ozarks Technical Community College. But, they didn't seek the federal help on their own.
The following entities provided letters of support: Branson Area Chamber of Commerce, Burrell Behavioral Health, Citizens Memorial Health, Clark County Behavioral Health Center, CoxHealth, Mercy, Missouri Coalition for Community Behavioral Health, Oxford Healthcare, Ozark Region Workforce Development Board, Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce and the Springfield-Greene County Health Department.
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Decentralise elections to reduce cost –Williams
JOHNSON AYANTUNJI
Major General Ishola Williams (rtd) is a one-time head of Nigeria Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), where he retired 25 years ago. In this interview with JOHNSON AYANTUNJI, he talks about the state of the nation, Nigeria’s economic situation, Boko Haram, the military in governance and other sundry issues
How would you describe the state of Nigeria?
The Nigerian state today depends on the side with which you look at it. The economic situation, even the government admits from the recent statement of the Director-General of the Budget Office, Peter Akabueze that the government is in a serious financial crisis.
You can see that from a simple example of workers’ salary. In other countries, by this time of the year, workers would have been paid their salaries by the 15th of December due to the Christmas festivities. But I doubt if any Federal Government worker have been paid. To me too, every single month the government has to look for money to pay the workers. In such a system, like Akabueze said the government is in a serious financial crisis.
The second thing, which is the most serious, I do not know the economic rationale behind it. When APC was coming in, they promised that the pump price of PMS will be about N80 something or even less. They could bring it down to N40 something. What happened? They added N100 to it. In the recent budget speech, they are setting aside so much money for subsidy. So if you have increased the pump price, what are you paying subsidy for? What is the N100 you added since the last three years for?
According to the statement that I read, the President was reported to have said that if you increase the pump price of PMS and remove the subsidy the poor people will suffer. Meet any taxi driver in any part of Nigeria and what do they complain about? Many people used to drive their cars, they have abandoned their cars. They cannot afford to fuel it.
We are entering an election year it is just two months away to the 2019 general elections, what lies ahead?
What I will say is that number one, we spend too much money on elections, billions of naira on elections that you will do for one day. It is too much; therefore, we must find ways of reducing the cost. In doing that let us decentralise elections; let states be responsible for their own governorship and local government elections. Let them rig it, it is not the business of the Federal Government, if the states rig their own elections. That is what federalism is all about.
The second is that of logistics – it also reduces the cost of election security.
Everybody wants to take part in the election because of the allowances they get, the police, military, civil defence, immigration, Customs, you see all of them, for what? Do you know that in the UK and the US from which we copy, it is the Ministry of Home Affairs that conducts the elections – ministry staff. They have an election body in the UK, US, but you do not know.
Is that not to secure the election?
No! It is because we have created one body for elections in Nigeria. We should do the same for the states. It is because you have created one election body for governorship and federal election that makes INEC so prominent. So no matter what INEC does, it is going to be more and more difficult every year, unless you decentralise the elections completely.
Those are the advantages of decentralising the elections?
Yes! It is, apart from that it allows the people to be in control of their destinies.
APC, the government in power enjoyed a huge good will when it came in 2015, now PDP is saying that they have learnt their mistakes, other parties are saying they want to come in and chase away both parties. Also they are saying it is neither APC nor PDP, what is your take on this?
Like all of us know, what is the difference between APC and PDP? What is the difference between PDP and APC? We are all joking (laughs).
Most of the members of APC were PDP members before. In many cases now, those who were being set up by the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission), they run from PDP to APC. Everything about their cases, sort of die down. To me, there is no difference. What we should have is a coalition of all other parties, and find one single candidate among themselves.
Now the interesting thing in this: is that the two people that we can take very serious are the Vice Presidential candidates (Yemi) Osinbajo and Peter Obi – bright articulate, younger people than the presidents that they want to serve. I would have preferred both of them kicking out their bosses and contesting for an election.
Is that possible in Nigeria, looking at our primordial sentiments, ethnicity, religion and what have you?
People tend to assume that Nigerians are particular about religion and others. If Nigerians find a good candidate, they will vote. El Rufai is trying something in Kaduna State. He is a Muslim and he has chosen a Muslim woman to be his candidate. He told everybody to go to hell.
Who is the candidate now to challenge El Rufai?
Even the PDP, does not seem to have anybody, you do not hear about them. He chose his deputy from Southern Kaduna, where majority of them are Christians. We tend to assume that because the elites have sat down somewhere and decide what, it is not true. If two women should come up today, woman president, woman vice president, Nigerians will vote for them if they believe they are good.
Another gap we have not been able to fill is independent candidatures.
I wish we have room for independent candidates to challenge those who are in those parties. Neither APC nor PDP can be proud of what they have done so far.
A while ago, we were discussing about vote buying, prohibitive cost of obtaining nomination forms are some of the setbacks for good, competent people to come in….?
(cuts in) Some of the parties’ apparatchiks as they call them, say you do not allow just anybody to become president. By therefore putting such a huge amount before nominees, they now set a standard. But should the standard be set by money? Should it not be integrity, should not be incorruptibility, should it not be clean past records and so on and so forth.
That is what it should be and make it affordable. It is not necessarily that the person should be poor. It means that that man can take care of himself even if he were not a president. We all know how he has earned this money. That person too is not because he has stolen money from the public till. But the way we have done it in such a way that we want people who are very very rich to become the president.
Like people say, Buhari is incorruptible. Yes! But he did not pay for his nomination form, he did not pay N47million. The point is that unlike the president of the United States of America, Buhari does not feed himself, he does not buy his own clothes, he does not buy his own shoes.
In Aso Villa, everything is taken care of. The American president feeds himself; the American President buys his own clothes. If he uses the presidential plane for campaign, he pays. It does not happen in Nigeria.
In own case, how do we look at it? He has a pension as a former military Head of State, when he leaves office as a civilian president, he will be paid another pension. How do you reconcile the two?
We say we copy the American Constitution, but we spend more money on our presidency than the presidency in the United States.
Our National Assembly, same story. They are earning their own salaries and allowances, but they cannot pay the salaries and allowances of their workers who make the assembly run.
Are we alright as human beings? We are not Ok, especially people who run things at the government level.
If you were to be nominated as a presidential candidate and you cannot afford the nomination fees, what would you do?
If I cannot afford it, I will walk away. Let the whole world know that you cannot buy the presidency. You then tell the people what you think should be normal.
What if people pay for you?
I will refuse. I will refuse to be paid for to become president. If I am paid for, to become president, it looks as if I am being begged and when I become president, everything for me becomes free, what is my sacrifice of becoming president, it does not cost me anything, and everything for me is free. What do the people get in return from me?
On Wednesday, December 19, President Buhari was at the joint session of the National Assembly, to present the 2019 Budget proposal, right there the legislators depending on their parties, cheered while others jeered at him. The place became rowdy. This is the first time; such will happen in this country, what do you make of this?
It just shows that the APC regime has just created some precedents in the history of governance in Nigeria. First of all, when the president took over, it took him six months to appoint the ministers.
Two, even though people have previously been complaining of marginalisation, this one is too glaring.
Three, this is the first time a president will come out openly not once, not twice to announce that these people voted for me, I must take care of their interest because they are going to vote for me again.
This is also the first time the wife of a president will come out openly to tell Nigerians that her husband is not in charge. There is a cabal running the country, do not blame him for what is happening in the country. It is despicable. You have created some precedents.
We have only two formidable candidates – President Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar for the 2019 elections, who among the two in your own thinking Nigeria needs now?
With respect to Buhari, he has at least proved one thing that you can be a president and be incorruptible. That is a good precedent. Nobody has come out to say he is involved in this or that. The same with (Goodluck) Jonathan, nobody has accused him directly. He oversaw a corrupt regime. The same thing is being said by people about the incorruptible leader. He has proven one thing wrong that a fish gets rotten from its head. Nigeria has an incorruptible head, but the fish is still rotten.
How do you explain that?
How do you explain that? Even those who are close to him, it was by much pressure that he removed the former Secretary to Government of the Federation and who did he replace him with? The cousin or the nephew. The current SGF is closely related to Babachir Lawal. Up till today people hear about Babachir, EFCC, you just hear noise and everything dies down after a while.
A few months ago, there were some hues and cries that Osinbajo was alleged to have been involved in some deals. Before she resigned, there were allegations that Adeosun gave contracts to some members of the National Assembly, she said the president knew about it.
The military, your constituency which you still belong to, it is alleged that some retired generals – Ibrahim Babangida, Garba Wushishi, T. Y Danjuma and Aliyu Gusau with Olusegun Obasanjo – just sit somewhere and decide who becomes president. What do you say of this?
The situation is this. When the military gets involved in politics, for those who get involved, have to behave like politicians, do what politicians do in order to survive in politics. Only very few can get involved and come out just like that. The best time to do even when military is in politics, is to remain professional as much as possible or run away from it. The Nigerian situation is like that. The president is a god, and governors are semi gods and then local government chairmen, those ones are not even mini gods, they are servants to the semi gods. He can sack them or remove them any time. If you are not a person with disciplined mind, and with so much pressure from all sides, you get lost. Therefore, what happens is that every small thing, they bring to you, president must approve. Where is the delegation of power in the Nigerian system? Appointment of ordinary board members, the president must approve, Vice President cannot approve anything. The same with the governors. In some states, the governor will tell commissioners, you cannot approve more that N100,000. Why appoint the person a commissioner if you do not trust him with money? How can you do your job without responsibilities, without resources?
Some are of the view that the incursion of the military into politics from 1966 till 1999 did not do us any good. Do you share that view?
To a certain extent yes! What I tell people is that from my role as an observer in uniform because I was never in any political position. It is civilians that have to be blamed.
We do not have that level of discipline and integrity in Nigeria in which if you disagree with your boss, you walk away. With the military in government everybody started looking for appointments including the civil servants.
When anybody is sacked by the military, there are many people waiting to take over your appointment and ready to do whatever, good or bad, there is no way you can steal either as military governor or head of state without the civilians. The civil servants are not soldiers anyway; they can easily expose you. Since they are going to benefit why expose. The Nigerian system is if you share – then no problem.
It is just like the case of the PTF (Petroleum Trust Fund), people have said that Buhari himself has accepted that there were some corrupt activities in the PTF, but he was not corrupt. Where is the level of responsibility? If you now, consider what was happening then with what is happening now it is like exactly the way it is happening at the presidency.
What is so interesting in all of this is that nobody has come out to disprove it. Nobody is ready to admit that he worked in PTF and this is what happened. It is unprecedented because they were ‘chopping’ there. It was chop and let’s chop. That was why many years ago, somebody formed the “You Chop I Chop Party”. Only God knows what has happened to that party. It never got registered.
The Nigerian system of “chop and let’s chop” is nearly becoming a culture.
If you are stubborn like Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, you come out unscathed. The culture now is “chop I chop”, and if you do not want to chop, leave us alone.
The Late General Salihu Ibrahim a one-time Chief of Army Staff, in 1995 did say that the Nigerian Army is an Army of anything goes, does that still apply today?
What has happened is very sad. It is very sad in that when Obasanjo became president as a retired general, he had T. Y Danjuma, a retired general as minister of defence, at one time; he had General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau as the National Security Adviser (NSA).
What the three of them did was to send officers who had political exposure away, but they did not reform the military. So sacking those middle age and young people, who have been exposed politically, did not do us good.
Secondly too, at the level of planning strategies, at the level of learning strategies and direction for the military and things like that, we have failed completely.
It appeared that most of the people who hold those positions from the time of Obasanjo have forgotten what they learnt in training, in the places they went to and at work. Now they continue to write some papers, bring a committee together to do defence policies, all nonsensical.
When this President came in and said there is a need for reform of the security agencies, new security architecture, nothing done. The Police are still like 1944 after the second World War, our police have not changed in terms of structure. They continue to promote people AIG, DIG, DDT, nothing has changed. The same thing with the military, they are just promoting people, to do what, I do not know. Instead of doing the proper haul of the army, they are not doing so.
The other thing is that fundamentally, if you get back to your office do a little research on the Constitution of South Africa, what I call Chapter 11 of the Constitution of South Africa and see what it says about their security agencies and look at our own Constitution.
You will see a completely big difference. You will see why right from the constitutional frame work, to every other thing why we are suffering from insecurity today.
If we do not take immediate action, like somebody said, we are going to be like Mexico and Brazil. These people that you call cults, they are becoming gangs. They are discovering laboratories making all sorts of drugs. That is how they became big problems in those countries that the police can no longer handle them. They kill judges who are trying them; they kill police and kill soldiers in Mexico. They kill investigators handling their cases. They give you money and if you refuse to take it, you are killed. We will get to that stage if we do not take action immediately. Unfortunately, everybody is pretending as if nothing is happening. If you look at the present situations, it is unfortunate that the president is retired soldier, the Minister of Defence is retired soldier, the NSA is a retired soldier, the Minister of Interior is a former soldier. What again? Something is wrong with us in this country. We are not tackling the immediate problem.
What Obasanjo did in 1999, by sacking a lot of military officers, who were politically exposed, they went away with all the experience they had. That is why the military has not been able to defeat the Boko Haram insurgency.
No! No!! You see, we are not prepared to fight Boko Haram. The present situation is still like when Jonathan was there and left. We have not got the structure for dealing with Boko Haram. People keep talking about equipment, it is balder dash.
It is just like you, you possess certain skills, it is now left with whether you are interested in features writing, reporting, investigative journalism. There is a doctrinal frame work with which you need to work, that will now determine the kind of tools you need to work with. So it is in military. How do you want to fight? We must know what we want to fight and the equipment with which to fight.
Boko Haram is winning because they know how to fight and how to think better than our own soldiers. If we continue that way, one day Boko Haram will capture Maiduguri, if we are not careful. To me it appears Boko Haram is interested in Borno State, not any other place. You could see, the focus all these years has been on Borno State.
That is very interesting. Your last command was in the TRADOC. It appears our soldiers lack the necessary training?
I retired from the Army 25 years ago; to me it does not seem as if they are doing any thinking at all. It was one anonymous British man, who said: ‘If the world had no people in its land who can think and fight, then that land is finished’.
The soldiers of these days must be thinker fighters. How do I fight? You get the necessary input to design for you how to fight, including intelligent, solid intelligent.
If Boko Haram could over run a military position, intelligence is missing, up to the commanding officer. How come they did not stand up to fight till the last man? Do they do that? That means you have to talk about the morale of the soldiers. It is because of our integrity.
Other things have happened. In other climes; they would have just stepped down. You just go to the President and salute and say: ‘Sir, I have failed in my duties, let me go. I have tried my best. Let others come and try their best.’
Early this year, Nigeria paid for some Tucano war planes, and we are told they would only be ready for delivery in 2024.
If one wants to be funny about it, it is like you are saying, let us continue playing with Boko Haram, from 2020, we start dealing with you when we get the Tucano planes. The whole thing is that they will deliver one or two in 2020. The last one will be delivered in 2024, are we saying that we will finish the war by 2024.Or we finish them before that time.
The second thing is that: Are they war game drones. There are different types of drones today to be used to counter insurgency. Are they war game drones? This is quite cheaper, if it crashes, no body dies.
Why are we not going for that?
They say they are building some in Kaduna. Are they building drones that can carry weapon system? Or they are getting intelligence and they are not using them properly? These are the questions. I am not in the position to answer.
If you were to be contacted today, and they say ‘General Ishola Williams (rtd) we need your assistance’, what would you do?
I will sack so many people first, sack them and court martial them for corruption, doing that, I will restructure the whole thing, I will change the way we fight. In fact, Boko Haram will come and salute me after we finish with them.
Related Topics:Williams
Kehinde: Buhari’s extension of IGP Idris’ tenure dangerous
Nigeria can’t meet sugar production target – NSDC boss
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December 29, 1986 Issue
By Ian Frazier
The New Yorker, December 29, 1986 P. 33
PROFILES about 2 emigre Russian conceptual artists, Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid... The two began working in collaboration in 1965. Melamid is thing and stands with an athlete's slope. His hair & the frames of his glasses are thick and black; his hair looks slightly electrified. He is 41 years old & Komar is 43. When he is excited, his hands fly from his pockets & fill the air & his face is all mobility In the presence of a woman he considers extremely beautiful his eyes may shutter at the overload; he looks, he turns away, he puts one arm out to break his fall, he clutches at his heart. Shock is an emotion he registers in detail. Tells about his life. He emigrated to America from Russia via Israel in 1978. Today Melamid lives with his wife of 17 years & two children in Jersey City... Tells about their paintings, which have a strong Socialist Realism flavor. Often they paint Stalin: Stalin by a red-draped desk, smiling as he receives a book for revison from the muse of history, or an unlikely Soviet ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov in a white marshal's uniform dancing the part of Stalin... Tells how they met in a morgue at the Institute for Physical Culture in Moscow, where they went for anatomy drawing. They were born in the same hospital, grew up in the same neighborhood, but only met in art school. Tells about an outdoor art show they exhibited at which was bulldozed by the Soviet authorities... Tells how the writer joined the two artists on a trip to Paris, France and about a 1986 show at the Ronald Feldman Gallery. Tells about going to the 3 Roses Bar with Melamid, who said, "Our dealer told us today that from our show we sold paintings to Sylvester Stallone & Arnold Schwarzenegger. So we are selling well to musclemen--I do nots know why."
This article appears in the print edition of the December 29, 1986, issue.
Ian Frazier is a staff writer at The New Yorker and most recently published “Hogs Wild: Selected Reporting Pieces.”
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Archive for the ‘commentary’ Category
Meta-Games
It has famously been argued that the word game cannot be defined in a way that adequately captures the various senses in which it is used. I believe that, in everyday use, the term game most often means a system of contrived challenges properly imposed or undertaken for purposes of amusement. Hence, someone might assert something such as Love is not a game! But, even in lay-use, game can have other meanings. For example, when a person proceeds deceitfully or insincerely, he or she may be said to be making a game of things, without necessarily seeking amusement in proceeding in this way.
Economists and mathematicians applying themselves to problems of economics or proximate to those of economics can use the term so very broadly as to refer to any problem of optimization. But, most often, they mean a system in which multiple parties interact with the potential for one or more parties to advance an interest or something that is treated as an interest (such as reproduction). It is in this sense that I here use the term game .
The rules of games are often subject to to change, and those changes may be affected or effected by players of the governed game. There is thus a meta-game — a system in which multiple parties interact with the potential for one or more of them to advance an interest by changing the rules of the game; or, in the context of others trying to changing the rules, by preserving the rules. The concept of meta-games is hugely important for understanding social processes.
Of course, a meta-game might have its own meta-game — a meta-meta-game. For example, the determination of a legal frame-work might be the meta-game of the social processes that the frame-work governs, and a struggle over social values might be the meta-game of the determination of the frame-work and thus the meta-meta-game of those social processes. But it can be difficult — without necessarily being useful — to work-out an actual hierarchy.
Sometimes, all that we really need to recognize is that some activity is a meta-game of some other game, without concerning ourselves as to whether the other game is itself a meta-game. People might readily recognize meta-gaming in activities such as political lobbying, but they generally don't recognize it when it's effected by psychologists, by teachers, or by screen-writers.
I want to draw upon this notion of meta-games for at least one 'blog entry, but I will probably want to draw upon it for multiple entries, so I will leave this entry as infrastructure. And I may later and without notice rework it, in an attempt to improve it as infrastructure.
Tags: game theory, games, meta-games
Posted in commentary, communication, economics, public | No Comments »
Hyper-Vigilance and Feedback
Psychologists vary in precisely what they mean when using the term vigilant or hyper[-]vigilant to describe a personality type. What is common across notions and here relevant is an acute concern about — and sensitivity to — behavior by others that may carry information about intention, about propensity, or about capacity. Hyper-vigilance typically arises as an attempted adaptation in response to seriously hurtful experience; it is in any case a self-defense behavior more focussed on identifying hostile or otherwise threatening intentions, propensities, or capacities, and should be expected to be associated with other defensive behaviors and more generally with personality attributes that arise from injury.
Hyper-vigilance itself is not the same thing as paranoia. When there is an element of irrationality to hyper-vigilance as such, it is in an over-commitment of resources to the tasks of awareness or of interpretation. The hyper-vigilant may otherwise be for the most part rational in their interpretations of behavior. (And one cannot reasonably infer that there is an over-commitment of resources simply from the fact that a hyper-vigilant person is seeking greater awareness.) A paranoid systematically makes important inferences that are themselves unreasonable.
The skills of the hyper-vigilant (and, for that matter, the unreasonable inferential practices of the paranoid) aren't always employed for purposes of self-defense. People may be identified as well-intentioned or peculiarly talented, and cultivated as friends; people may be perceived as having concealed vulnerabilities, and quietly given protection.
When two people interact — whether either is hyper-vigilant or not and so long as they are at all social — they consciously or unconsciously each size-up the other. The behavior of each usually adjusts to anything learned in the present encounter, and that adjustment of behavior may then communicate something new to the other, causing a counter-adjustment on his or her part. When two people have complementary emotional responses each to the other, a feedback loop is creäted, and the responses amplify to some extent. These feedback loops can cause people to take relatively quick and markèd likings or dislikings each to the other.
When hyper-vigilant people interact, complementarity has a still more pronounced effect. They can move to attack or become friends or come to love or indeed fall in love with a speed that startles everyone — including the two people in the feedback loop if they've never considered the dynamic or if they haven't each discerned that the other is not merely ill- or good-willed but also hyper-vigilant. Because hyper-vigilance is a behavior of self-defense, it is likely to be accompanied by a suppression or masking of behaviors that would otherwise expose emotions or reveal defensive abilities or propensities, and hyper-vigilance itself would be one of those behaviors; additionally, a hyper-vigilant person may conceal vigilance to avoid censure (especially as hyper-vigilance is widely equated with paranoia). Thus one or both of two hyper-vigilant people may miss this important insight in the implicit challenge of reading the other, especially when vigilance is operating largely at an unconscious level.
Tags: feedback, hyper-vigilance, hypervigilance, love, relationships, romance, vigilance
Posted in commentary, epistemology, public | No Comments »
Responsible Voting
It was once socially accepted that people were not responsible for acts of a wide variety if the persons engaged in them while intoxicated, even if the intoxication were quite voluntary and the engagement active. Over time that attitude has eroded. After all, a person who chooses to be intoxicated chooses to engage in increased probability that he or she will effect those acts. If a person who chose to drink passes-out on the front lawn, drives his vehicle into a pedestrian, or beats his domestic partner, few people would insist that he didn't choose to do such a thing. And, should we meet one of those few people, we rightly suspect that they cannot be trusted to use intoxicants responsibly.
In response to the campaign of Bernard ( Bernie ) Sanders, a great many people embraced things that they called democratic socialism . They didn't actually agree amongst themselves as to what this term meant. Many of them insisted that democratic socialism weren't socialism, which insistence did not provoke as often as it should a question as to why then its name should contain socialism . The answer simply was that Sanders had long referred to what he advocated with this term; they were stuck with socialism if they held onto Sanders. Whether they admitted that democratic socialism referred to socialism or not, all of the folk calling for something by that name sought to neutralize the dire associations of socialism with various outcomes that had been observed when regimes had been identified by that label. And all of these folk, whether or not they acknowledged that they were referring to socialism, agreed that what they called democratic socialism would indeed be democratic.
That insistence has afforded them a rhetorical ploy for dealing not only with socialistic regimes that were never democratic, but with socialistic regimes that have lost popular support, such as that in Venezuela. Absenting that support, these regimes are said not to be democratic, and hence plainly not to represent whatever might properly be called democratic socialism . But when a socialistic regime is brought to power by democratic means, in a framework of law that was effected by democratic means, and then uses that law to take unpopular actions, to insist that the regime is undemocratic begins to resemble claiming that the neighbors passed-out on the lawn, driving their cars into pedestrians, or beating their domestic partners did not choose to do such things. Oh yes they did. And anyone who insists otherwise is to be regarded as dangerous with the relevant intoxicants, including ballots.
Indeed, for most of recent history, popular opinion was not treated as particularly important in application to America by most Americans who came to call for democratic socialism . They had earlier thought it perfectly democratic when the Democratic Party, democratically elected to majority control of both Chambers of Congress and to the Presidency, effected various measures that were in fact widely unpopular with the more general population. President Obama advised the Republicans to win some elections . When they did, so that the Democrats lost first the House of Representatives and then the Senate, he and most of these folk for democratic socialism held to the idea that his democratic election to the Presidency legitimized his actions in defiance both of the votes of the Congress and of popular opinion amongst the wider population. Popular opinion in Venezuela and elsewhere has emerged as ostensibly relevant to democratic socialism exactly and only because, once again, socialism — even socialism within a framework democratically effected — has devolved as it always will if allowed to persist. There is no magic in democracy.
The state is a terrible institution, to be checked by an institutional framework that resists its growth, instead of enabled to grow by fantasies that amateurs or experts can use it expansively to bring about a more humane world.
Tags: Bernie Sanders, democracy, democratic socialism, socialism
Posted in commentary, economics, ideology, public | No Comments »
A Passing Anniversary
I used occasionally to mention a girl-friend in unfiltered entries to this 'blog, but stopped doing so in 2013. The relationship had problems that I didn't and don't care to discuss here publicly — for her sake.
On 30 August 2013, without warning, she hanged our relationship, strangling, at the end of a rope. I don't know exactly when the relationship should be deemed to have died. I can say, to the day, when I reached acceptance of its death, but I don't imagine that, on the previous day, it might actually have been saved.
Tags: love, relationships, romance
Posted in commentary, personal, public | No Comments »
Vocal Cues
Many animals, across different classes, have two distinct sounds that may be classified as growls or as whines, respectively. The growls signal threat; the whines signal friendship or appeasement.
The bark of a dog is actually a combination of a growl with a whine; it is thus not a pure signal of aggression, as many take it to be; it is literally a mixed signal, perhaps indicating confusion on the part of the dog, perhaps signalling both that the dog is prepared to fight and that the dog would consider a peaceful interaction.
When women talk with men whom they find attractive, women tend to raise the pitches of their voices. Men tend to do something different when talking with women whom they find attractive; they mix deeper tones than they would normally use with higher tones than they would normally use. The deep tones are signals of masculinity, of being able to do what men are expected to do. The higher tones of men carry much the same significance as do the higher tones of women — with the additional point in contrast to the deep tones that the man does not mean to threaten the woman.
It amused me to reälize consciously that this behavior by men is at least something like barking. Then I grimly considered that some men are actually barking, telling the woman that he can be nice to her if she is nice to him, but will actively make things unpleasant if she is not. But at least it should typically be possible to disambiguate the threatening behavior, based upon where the low notes are used, and of course the choice of words.
Tags: barks, gender, growls, masculinity, signal, whines
Posted in commentary, communication, epistemology, public, sexology | No Comments »
Failing to Recognize an Inner Life
In its issue of 19 January 1924, Collier's published The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Edward Connell jr. This now quite famous story — repeatedly anthologized and adapted for film,[1] for radio, and for television — is of Sanger Rainsford, a big-game hunter.
At the start of the story, Rainsford and company are on a yacht, moving through foggy darkness in the Caribbean. In reference to their planned destination, a companion asserts Great sport, hunting.
The best sport in the world, agreed Rainsford.
For the hunter, amended Whitney. Not for the jaguar.
Don't talk rot, Whitney, said Rainsford. You're a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?
Perhaps the jaguar does, observed Whitney.
Bah! They've no understanding.
Even so, I rather think they understand one thing — fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death.
Rainsford dismisses this. The world is made up of two classes — the hunters and the huntees. Luckily, you and I are hunters. On this score, his luck does not hold.
Shortly after this conversation, he falls from the yacht as he goes to the railing to listen, having heard shots in the distance. He decides that his best chances for survival are in swimming in the direction of those shots. As he does so, he hears a cry from an animal that he does not recognize, except in-so-far as it is at the extremes of anguish and of terror. Then he hears yet another shot. Continuing to swim in that direction, he finds his way to an island. Thence, he makes his way to the hunter, General Zaroff.
Zaroff recognizes Rainsford by name, and expresses himself as pleased to think that he might now have a hunting companion. But Zaroff hunts men; as game; as the most dangerous game . The resulting argument between Rainsford and Zaroff is rather like the earlier argument between Whitney and Rainsford, with a terrible amplification. And, because Rainsford refuses to become a hunter of men, he is made the game. He is forced into a life-or-death contest that he never sought, against someone whose skills as a hunter are greater, and who additionally has assistance and weapons that Rainsford does not.
Hearing a sound that he has known — the howls and barks of a dog pack when on the hunt — Rainsford learns the fear of which Whitney had spoken; Rainsford comes to know how an animal at bay feels, because he is now an animal at bay.
I don't imagine any of you learning anything from this story about the perspective of the hunted. But there are as well the perspectives of hunters — the perspective of Zaroff, of course; but also the earlier perspective of Rainsford. Those of us who recoil at killing for sport find it easy to imagine Rainsford as a changed man, who has learned an important lesson, in a terrifying way. But Rainsford was capable of such change, because he is not a psychopath, not a sadist, nor too great a fool to learn. He was simply a man who was very mistaken. Perhaps better men would be better creatures of the same time and of the same place, but he was not truly a bad man.
Theunis Botha was guiding hunters who stumbled into a group of elephants. A female grabbed and lifted him by her trunk; she was shot, and fell, crushing him. My reäction to the story wasn't one of regret. But someone about whom I care (rather a lot) has written
I hope he suffered. I hope he felt every crush and the same sense of helpless panic animals feel when being chased, trapped and shot to death by well-armed hunters.
And I think — my God! — why? What good would such suffering do? It is unlikely that Mr Botha rejoiced in the fear and in the pain that he caused; rather, it is far more likely that, as with Rainsford before he met Zaroff, the fear and pain of the hunted did not register with him. If Botha were a man rather like Rainsford, here he had no time to learn from suffering. Can we recognize the inner life of Theunis Botha and still wish terrible punishment upon him for failing to recognize the inner lives of beasts?
[1] See especially the classic movie version of 1932.
Tags: cruelty, hate, hatred, hunting
Posted in commentary, news, personal, public | No Comments »
There is a stock formula for political action that says that If the state may X for Y, then the state may X for Z! Usually, the state is euphemistically called we ; sometimes the person using the formula is instead honest enough instead to say the government .
Often, the X refers to spending. (Taxation is then only mentioned when the spending immediately involves continuation of a tax that was supposed to be temporary.) For example, after the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, after the Paris Peace Treaty of the Viet-Nam War, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the claims were that, since the United States could previously afford to spend as much money as it had on the military, now it could afford to spend that much money on expansion or introduction of welfare programmes of various sorts. However, sometimes there has been a different X. For example, within the movie Scarface (1932), it is declared that if the Governor of Oklahoma could declare military law to cartelize the petroleum industry forcibly, then military law could be used to effect extensive gun control through-out the nation.
There has been rather a lot of talk, since even before he took office, to the effect that Donald Joseph Trump were a dictator. I don't think that it's necessarily unreasonable to assert that he were just that, though he took office with exactly the powers that he'd inheritted from his immediate predecessor, which is to say that if President Trump were a dictator then so were President Obama. The Office of the President has become increasingly powerful over time, with each strong President picking-up where the last one left-off, and adding to the power of the Office, establishing precedents which the other branches have seldom effectively undone. But, whether the refrain is technically correct or not, it is that President Trump be a dictator. If Trump should leave office before the end of his term, then the refrain will become that President Michael Richard Pence were a dictator, as quite possibly he might be.
And if-and-when the Democrats retake the White House, the formula that I noted above will be used. It will more specifically be of the form If we could have a dictator who did Y, then we can have a dictator who does Z! where Y will correspond to the policies and programmes of the Trump or Pence Administration as refracted through the progressive lens, and Z will correspond to progressive policies and programmes, described in terms of their presumed outcomes. This formula will not be used much if at all before the General Election, but it will be used gleefully and self-righteously beginning on the very next day.
(I think it grossly implausible that the Republicans should hold the White House indefinitely; but the public is ever more disgusted with the results of a two-party system, so a Republican loss is not inevitably a Democratic victory.)
Tags: Barack Hussein Obama, Barack Obama, dictatorship, Donald Joseph Trump, Donald Trump, Obama
Posted in commentary, news, public | No Comments »
On the Meaning of Sexism
In a previous entry, I noted that the original definition of racism was a theory or an adherence to a theory that merit is in part intrinsically a function of race. It was exactly by analogy with the word racism that the word sexism was introduced in 1968, thus referring to a theory or an adherence to a theory that merit is in part intrinsically a function of sex.
Now, here is where matters get tricky. In any case in which one rejects sexism, it is regarded as an inappropriate response to the sex of people; and, in particular, the treatment is likely to be seen as unethical. A very great many folk employ the concept of unethical response to the sex of people as if that were the very definition of sexism . That notion is going to operationalize very much like the actual definition whenever and wherever the issue at hand is one of ethics and ethics actually call for neutrality — for a rejection of the relevance of sex to the issue. But nearly all of us regard people of one sex as better suited to some rôles that are of importance. For example, if I presume that sexism must refer to something unethical, then I am compelled either to associate sexism with something other than neutrality of a sort, or as a matter of justice to try to entertain thoughts of accepting a man as a potential spouse for myself. (People are led astray by the analogy with racism; the cases in which sex is relevant to selection loom larger because of the importance of reproduction.) And the substituted notion is not going to operationalize at all like the original definition exactly when someone believes that merit is a function of sex in a far wider range of cases than do folk such as I; then the substitution is going to get things almost perfectly twisted around. He or she will label anti-sexism as sexism and will label some sort of sexism — perhaps quite an intense sexism — as anti-sexism .
The spurning of a claim of relevance is the maintenance or adoption of indifference. This indifference is an equality of one sort — and we often see the words equal and equality used in antonymy to sexism — but it is not an equality of various other sorts. Advancement of a conflicting equality would itself be sexist. Such conflicting equalities can arise when the equality sought is equality of outcome. If people, regardless of sex, may be presumed to respond to a framework in essentially identical ways, and we observe markèdly different outcomes for one sex compared to those for another, then this difference is prima facie evidence that the framework is sexist. But if it is recognized that people of one sex behave differently in that framework, then the presumption that the framework is sexist does not follow from the mere presence of a difference. If we say that the different behaviors must be treated as of equal merit because otherwise a difference in outcomes emerges, then the merit that is ascribed to the behavior is treated as a function of the sex of the people who engage in that behavior; that prescription is itself intrinsically sexist.
For example, the rates at which men are arrested for, charged with, and convicted of criminal behavior of various sorts are much higher than the corresponding rates at which women are arrested, charged, and convicted. We cannot conclude simply from these differences that the system of criminal law is sexist, because it may be that men simply engage in that behavior more often; indeed, most of us are fairly sure that this latter case holds. If we insist that the behaviors themselves must be decriminalized in order to reduce the rates at which men are arrested, charged, and convicted, then we are inferring the relative merit of the behavior from the sexes of those who engage in it. The very same sort of analysis would apply to hiring practices and to the wages or salaries paid to those in various occupations.[1]
(Many people, including certainly me, would argue that an unfortunate sexism prior to whatever exists in the legal system is one factor contributing to greater criminality by men, but few-if-any people propose that part of an appropriate response would be an adjustive sexism, giving more tolerance to male criminalized behavior than to female criminalized behavior. Likewise, some of us assert that an unfortunate sexism prior to whatever exists in the jobs market is one factor leading to different career outcomes for women, but we don't propose an adjustive sexism attempting to compel employers to pay women more than the expected values of their marginal products.)
The confused presumptions that only an unethical discrimination can count as sexism and that sexism is found where there is some sort of inequality other than non-neutrality — an attention to sex — causes people in all sincerity to misapply the word sexism and to fail to see legitimate application of the word, perhaps to their own attitudes and actions. If substitutions of these sorts are not recognized by those who use the word sexism in accordance with its definition, then interactions will be characterized by mutual incomprehension, quite possibly enraged. Attempts to employ logic and facts won't be persuasive because one of the two groups will actively misunderstand a word central to any communication. Additionally, there are people who implicitly believe that ethical significance clings to symbols, such that by changing labels what was wrong may be made to be right and vice versa. In dealing with them, the principal point that ought to be made is not that words cannot be redefined, but that, if we should for any reason redefine sexism , then whatever case was made against what was originally called sexism isn't thereby logomantically transformed into a case against whatever is now to be called sexism , nor is a case against something that was originally called sexism somehow invalidated by ceasing to call it by that name.[2] Of course, there are also those who effect the substitution as a device of unconscious projection, and others who opportunistically seek to sow further confusion.
[1] In the absence of a coherent explanation otherwise, if any population really could be hired at bargain rates, then not only should we expect all members of that population to be hired before any members of any other population; we should expect employers to bid-up the wages and salaries of this less expensive population to the point that they matched those of other populations, before hiring any members of those other populations. If there is some occupation such that the cost of hiring workers for it is notably less than the expected values of their marginal products, then we should expect employers to increase their hirings for those occupations, and in doing so (each in competition with the others and in the face of otherwise ever more reluctant workers) to bid-up the wages or salaries of those workers until the difference disappears.
[2] The same principle of course applies to efforts to redefine racism .
Tags: definitions, sexism
Posted in commentary, communication, ethics, public | No Comments »
On Deductibility of Local Taxes
In my field of awareness, there has recently been more discussion than usual about deductibility of constituent-state taxes and of municipal taxes from income computed for purposed of Federal taxation. I think that most of the discussion has been fundamentally wrong-headed.
In the textbooks of middle-schools, of high-schools, and of introductory courses in college on civics, on politics, or on economics, there are discussions of various proposed guidelines for taxation, based on ostensible or insinuated theories of justice. One commonly offered theory is that people should be compelled to pay based upon supposed ability; another is that they should be compelled to pay based upon the amount of services that they receive from the state.[1] I've yet to see such a discussion in such a textbook that could withstanding much critical examination.
In any case, these homilies don't serve to explain how-and-why taxation is effected in the real world, except in-so-far as some of their prescriptions are invoked to argue for a tax of one sort, even as conflicting rationalizations are offered (often by the very same people) to argue for taxes of other sorts. Historically and to the present day, taxation has been fundamentally opportunistic. That which has been taxed is whatever seemed to be most readily taxable. Targets of convenience have been wealth or income that has been thought to be easily tracked and measured, difficult to relocate outside of the jurisdiction, or for the taxation of which there is wide-spread acquiescence if not support within the community. (It is with respect to that last aspect that textbook theories have their real relevance.)
The state is not satiated by some steady extraction of wealth from the community. When extractions are greater than were expected, the state will not return the surplus to the taxpayer as such, except under extraordinary pressure; and, here-to-fore, states have always moved towards attempting to extract as much tax from their communities as the communities will suffer. This tendency is natural, as the people who make-up the state generally see their positions within society improve as they have increasing command over resources; mechanisms that exist in sectors whose rewards are determined by markets which cause participants to identify and pursue efficiencies simply have no correspondents within the state; the state is able to cultivate dependencies in the wider population; and many people imagine a very extensive rôle for the state within society (especially those people who lose sight of the distinction between the state and its subjects). The state grows ever larger and becomes ever worse at the allocation of resources, and so seeks ever greater extractions.
When, within the jurisdiction of a constituent state or within a municipality, there is greater community resistance than elsewhere to taxation, there is less taxation than there otherwise might be. That difference is a target of opportunity for a federal state, whose jurisdiction encompasses a wider community. There is a mechanism for obtaining the acquiescence of that wider community without typically triggering a significantly intensified resistance on the part of the communities subjected to a federal surtax in the face of lower taxes by other entities. That mechanism involves allowing taxpayers to deduct what taxes they pay to those other entities from the calculated worth of something that the federal state taxes; because, in the face of those deductions, parts of the wider community become less resistant to rate increases.
Let's say that people in jurisdictions A, B, and C, which are all of roughly the same size, face a federal tax of 30% on income, and that people in jurisdictions A and B face a more local 10% tax on pre-tax income, while people in jurisdiction C face a no such tax. If the federal tax is increased to 1/3 on taxable income, but local income taxes are made fully deductible, then the people of jurisdictions A and B face no net increase in income tax, and so may acquiesce; the people in jurisdiction C may thus find themselves out-voted and their taxes increased by about 3%.
A great many people imagine what thus happens is that, given deductibility of more local taxes, people in jurisdictions with lower local taxes are force to subsidize those in jurisdictions with higher local taxes; but that conclusion is spurious. It would in some sense follow if the quantity or quality of goods and services delivered by the state were well correlated with the amount of resources that it extracts from the community, but there is no such correlation, except in transitory cases in which the state deliberately impairs performance to provoke acquiescence to greater extractions. The people paying lower taxes than they otherwise might are not getting something from those paying higher taxes than would be tolerated without the mechanism of deductibility. They are simply less victimized. One would be no less mistaken in claiming that people who live in other nations with lower income taxes are ipso facto subsidized by American taxpayers.
(For purposes of economic analysis of some sorts, tax-cuts and subsidies are equivalent, but those in the jurisdictions that are less taxed by the federal state have not received a tax cut, they have instead not been subjected to tax increases imposed elsewhere. And the aforementioned equivalence holds only if either there is no prior property in resources, or the state has a prior claim on whatever resources are involved. If no one has a claim prior to taxation and subsidization, then no one is paying taxes; they are being extracted from resources that are un-owned. If the state has a prior claim, then there are again no tax-payers; there are people who are granted more or less wealth or income belonging to the state. And, if there are no tax-payers, then the tax-payers subsidize no one.)
Eliminating the deductibility of other taxes would create greater resistance to federal taxes, as some who had previously not been subjected to higher levels then would be. But not everyone thus penalized would previously have been a supporter of imposing those levels on others. Innocent by-standers would be dragged into a fight; there could not be justice in that.
[1] When I say state , I don't necessarily mean one of the constituent states of a federation such as the United States. I certainly don't mean the jurisdicational area of one of those states, nor the inhabitants of such an area. A state is an organization that successfully claims an effective monopoly of some sort in the control of violence.
Tags: tax deductability, tax deductibility, taxation
Theories of Probability — Perfectly Fair and Perfectly Awful
I've not heard nor read anyone remarking about a particular contrast between the classical approach to probability theory and the Bayesian subjectivist approach. The classical approach began with a presumption that the formal mathematical principles of probability could be discovered by considering situations that were impossibly good; the Bayesian subjectivist approach was founded on a presumption that those principles could be discovered by considered situations that were implausibly bad.
The classical development of probability theory began in 1654, when Fermat and Pascal took-up a problem of gambling on dice. At that time, the word probability and its cognates from the Latin probabilitas meant plausibility.
Fermat and Pascal developed a theory of the relative plausibility of various sequences of dice-throws. They worked from significant presumptions, including that the dice had a perfect symmetry (except in-so-far as one side could be distinguished from another), so that, with any given throw, it were no more plausible that one face should be upper-most than that any other face should be upper-most. A model of this sort could be be reworked for various other devices. Coins, wheels, and cards could be imagined as perfectly symmetrical. More generally, very similar outcomes could be imagined as each no more probable than any other. If one presumes that to be no more probable is to be equally probable, then a natural quantification arises.
Now, the preceptors did understand that most or all of the things that they were treating as perfectly symmetrical were no such thing. Even the most sincere efforts wouldn't produce a perfectly balanced die, coin, or roulette wheel, and so forth. But these theorists were very sure that consideration of these idealized cases had revealed the proper mathematics for use across all cases. Some were so sure of that mathematics that they inferred that it must be possible to describe the world in terms of cases that were somehow equally likely, without prior investigation positively revealing them as such. (The problem for this theory was that different descriptions divide the world into different cases; it would take some sort of investigation to reveal which of these descriptions, if any, results in division into cases of equal likelihood. Indeed, even with the notion of perfectly balanced dice, one is implicitly calling upon experience to understand what it means for a die to be more or less balanced; likewise for other devices.)
As subjectivists have it, to say that one thing is more probable than another is to say that that first thing is more believed than is the other. (GLS Shackle proposed that the probability of something might be measured by how surprised one would be if that something were discovered not to be true.)
But most subjectivists insist that there are rationality constraints that must be followed in forming these beliefs, so that for example if X is more probable than Y and Y more probable than Z, then X must be more probable than Z. And the Bayesian subjectivists make a particular demand for what they call coherence . These subjectivists imagine that one assigns quantifications of belief to outcomes; the quantifications are coherent if they could be used as gambling ratios without an opponent finding some combination of gambles with those ratios that would guarantee that one suffered a net loss. Such a combination is known as a Dutch book .
But, while quantifications can in theory be chosen that insulate one against the possibility of a Dutch book, it would only be under extraordinary circumstances that one could not avoid a Dutch book by some other means, such as simply rejecting complex contracts to gamble, and instead deciding on gambles one-at-a-time, without losing sight of the gambles to which one had already agreed. In the absence of complex contracts or something like them, it is not clear that one would need a preëstablished set of quantifications or even could justify committing to such a set. (It is also not clear why, if one's beliefs correspond to measures, one may not use different measures for gambling ratios.) Indeed, it is only under rather unusual circumstances that one is confronted by opponents who would attempt to get one to agree to a Dutch book. (I don't believe that anyone has ever tried to present me with such a combination, except hypothetically.) None-the-less, these theorists have been very sure that consideration of antagonistic cases of this class has revealed the proper mathematics for use across all cases.
The impossible goodness imagined by the classical theorists was of a different aspect than is the implausible badness of the Bayesian subjectivists. A fair coin is not a friendly coin. Still, one framework is that of the Ivory Tower, and the other is that of Murphy's Law.
Tags: plausibility, probability, subjectivism
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U.S. Supreme Court allows full enforcement of Trump travel ban
The ban bars travel from six mostly Muslim countries
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries.
The justices, with two dissenting votes, said Monday that the policy can take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts. The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that Trump announced in September.
READ: Trump replaces 90-day travel ban
The ban applies to travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country. Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those courts said could not be excluded.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have left the lower court orders in place.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.
Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions “with appropriate dispatch.”
Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.
Mark Sherman, The Associated Press
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Home » Blog » National » With No Malls, No App-Based Economy, Kashmir Stuck At Where It Was 2 Decades Ago
With No Malls, No App-Based Economy, Kashmir Stuck At Where It Was 2 Decades Ago
The restaurants look the same as they did two or three decades ago and though the traffic has increased, there is very little other visual sign of change or economic progress.
Aakar Patel 16 June 2019
A paramilitary troop stands guard in a locality in Jammu and Kashmir.
I spent a few days in Srinagar this week, going there after a couple of years. I think it is important that readers know a little about what is going on there because it is disturbing. It is always strange to visit that state because the reality of Kashmir and its people hits you in the face when you are actually there. When you are away, you can get carried away by whatever narrative is spun on our news channels.
The first thing that one notices is how little has changed in Srinagar. The vast changes in the landscapes of Indian cities over the last 15 years are absent here. There are no multiplexes, not a single cinema hall and no malls. The restaurants look the same as they did two or three decades ago and though the traffic has increased, there is very little other visual sign of change or economic progress. Since the government in Delhi constantly cuts off the mobile services, there is no app-based economy in Srinagar. No Uber or Ola or the other things that we have become accustomed to for years now.
There are 403 news channels in India, but none in Kashmir. No local television news is allowed by the government because of the fear that it can cause trouble. Because the economy is not strong, there is not much corporate advertising. This means that the Kashmiri newspapers are dependent on the advertisements are given to them by the Delhi government, their biggest customer. Of course, the newspapers are not going to write against their biggest customer, and so the sentiment of the population is kept away from the front pages.
The day I was leaving, there was a headline in the newspapers which read: “Neither azaadi nor autonomy possible, says J&K governor”. The governor, a well-fed man named Satyapal Malik, said to Kashmir’s reporters that he wanted Kashmir’s young men to put down their guns and “join me for dinner.”
If azaadi and autonomy are already off his table, one does not know what he is going to serve them and why they would want to engage with him. The reality is that this government has no idea what to do in Kashmir and having thrown away democracy is again attempting to rule over the population through force.
The presence of the Indian paramilitary on the streets of Srinagar has become depressingly normal. Uniformed men carrying assault rifles and speaking Tamil, Bengali, Hindi and Punjabi keep watch over the locals. The number of our security forces men dying in Kashmir has risen in the last five years from 41 in 2015 to 88 in 2016, then 81, then 83 in 2017 and 95 last year. This year is not even halfway through and we have lost 67 soldiers already. Apparently, Pulwama and Balakot were instrumental in winning the election, but I wonder if many of us looked at what the result of all the drama actually was. As long as the killings happen far away from us, we seem to be fine with it.
I met 10 reporters in Srinagar the day I landed and as a reporter, I was able to freely speak to them about the situation. They said they no longer needed any specific instruction from the government to not write about certain issues. They instinctively knew what not to report. I have never seen a group of Indian reporters so afraid. At the airport, there was a booth for foreigners to register themselves when to land, which I do not see in any other state. Foreign reporters are more or less banned from Kashmir. Foreign channels that the locals prefer, like Al Jazeera and News TV (owned by the government of Iran), have been taken off air by Delhi.
Kashmir is currently ruled directly from Delhi and the instruction is to be strict. We know what this means, and it means that protests should be put down with extreme force and no mercy should be shown.
The dehumanising of Kashmiris has happened over a long period and is not the doing of this government alone and this is a fact. What we have done to them, we have been doing for three decades now. But it seems that we have not learned a thing. We blunder on, happy to sacrifice citizens and soldiers and talking about delusional things like bringing back normalcy when we are the ones who have made things abnormal in the first place.
Aakar Patel Aakar Patel J&K: Jammu & Kashmir Jammu and kashmir National
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Meet One of Italy's Few Female Cow Herders
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Because depending on where your desk is, the ass end of a cow might look pretty good right about now.
By Caterina Villa
The Daily Dose AUG 07 2018
Roberta Colombero’s life is one of hardship and dedication. Tending to a herd of cows using traditional methods means hard work, no fixed times and having to deal with whatever nature throws at you. Every summer the cows she and her mother and father own need to be moved to the mountains, the so-called transumanza. Then there’s the cheese they make and sell in a small shop year-round — cheese Roberta home-delivers.
What’s striking about Colombero, though, is not only the deep relationship she has with her animals — she milked her first cow when she was 3, and by the time she was 17, she was winning cow-milking contests — but also the fact that such a young girl might have chosen this way of life for herself. However, over the past few years in Italy, there’s been an increase in the number of young people from diverse paths of life who have made it back to the countryside.
“People from the city seem to have realized that they might own lots of things, but there is something else that is missing,” says Colombero, whose focus in her high school studies was everything and anything agricultural. ”Nowadays, it is important to understand that animals and nature are the ones that give us life.”
But while many of these young Italians flock to the countryside to tend to crops and orchards, they usually stay away from the mountains. Many alpine locations in Italy are by now abandoned, a phenomenon that began decades ago when people moved away to work in factories. Colombero’s wish, though, is to see more young people like her up in the Alps, taking care of the mountains — which, as far as her eye can see, is all she ever wants to do. A fact that should make the cows, and Colombero’s family, as happy as cows and family can be.
Caterina Villa, OZY AuthorContact Caterina Villa
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Home»FOIA in the courts!
FOIA in the courts!
At least 9 court cases, at all court levels, will shape and define the state's FOIA landscape
This has been a busy year for the Freedom of Information Act in Virginia's courts. From challenges to the residency requirement in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to the standoff in Onancock over an employment contract, citizens, activists and government took to the courts to right what they considered wrongs in the interpretation or application of FOIA.
At the federal level, two plaintiffs have been arguing for at least two years that the part of FOIA that says the law can be used only by citizens of Virginia (and media circulating in or broadcasting to Virginia) is unconstitutional.
The Department of Social Services denied Mark McBurney of Rhode Island certain records related to the child support enforcement action he filed against his ex-wife because he was not a Virginia citizen, though he had been a few years earlier.
Henrico County denied Roger Hurlbert's request for records related to real estate assessments for the same reason: he was a citizen of California, not Virginia.
The case went up to the 4th Circuit on a procedural issue before it was returned to the lower courts for consideration on the merits. The government defendants won at the trial level, and at oral arguments in late October, the plaintiffs' attorney faced stiff questioning from Judge Paul V. Niemeyer. In particular, he expressed doubt that Hurlbert had been prevented from practicing his common calling (his job) under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Virginia Supreme Court held that the State Corporation Commission is not subject to FOIA. The November decision capped a long-running dispute between the SCC and Chesapeake resident George Christian. The SCC gave Christian some of the records he asked for, but withheld others, noting that both of its responses were guided by internal rules related to the release of records, not by FOIA.
Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Leroy F. Millette Jr. wrote that FOIA did not apply to the SCC because it is a constitutionally established office. The Supreme Court indicated in two earlier decisions that the SCC was not subject to FOIA, but did not decide the issue directly until this case.
In Fairfax, Judge Leslie Alden ruled on several FOIA issues raised by a group of parent-activists against Fairfax County Public Schools. Fronted by plaintiff Jill Hill, the group argued the board members held a de facto meeting when they conducted a quick-fire exchange of email prior to a board meeting. Alden disagreed but said the board did violate FOIA when it allowed one of its members to participate in a closed session by phone. Alden also ruled that some of the school superintendent's emails should have been released. Nonetheless, Alden refused to impose any penalty. The Virginia Supreme Court said in December that it will review the ruling.
In Loudoun County, the local Board of Equalization is claiming that it acted properly when it escorted Beverly Bradford out of a meeting after hearing the click of her camera as she snapped a picture. Bradford sued for not being allowed to record the meeting, while the board argued Bradford did not seek prior permission to record and that her picture-taking disrupted the meeting. The Loudoun Board of Supervisors urged the BOE to settle the case and refused to pay for the BOE to hire outside counsel. Meanwhile, the BOE is seeking a court order that would require the supervisors to pay the BOE's legal bills.
A judge in Smyth County was called to review several records related to a former Saltville Town Council member. When the Saltville Publishing Company requested records of communication sent and received by the former member, both he and a town employee objected to the release, saying the records were personal and not related to the transaction of public business. In an unusual twist, the town sought a court declaration on whether the records could be released. Judge Isaac Freeman reviewed all the records in closed chambers and determined that yes, some of the records were personal and could be withheld, but others did have to do with the transaction of public business. Those had to be released.
In Onancock, on the Eastern Shore, the town manager (who doubles as the town attorney) refused a citizen's request to turn over an unredacted copy of his employment contract. Charles Landis requested the record to show that the town hired the manager, who did not live in Onancock, before changing its policy that used to prohibit hiring a manager who did not live locally.
Prince William County is suing the Department of Homeland Security over the release of records related to the illegal immigrants the county turns over to DHS. The federal FOIA request was prompted when an individual earlier turned over to the department, Carlos Martinelly Montano, was released and later killed a nun while driving drunk.
A federal judge in Norfolk ruled that voter registration applications must be disclosed. The judge said federal law trumps Virginia's restriction on access to the applications, which the advocacy group Project Vote sought after Norfolk State students complained their applications were rejected in 2008. VCOG has filed a friend of the court brief in support of the ruling.
Meanwhile, the FOIA dispute between the University of Virginia and the American Tradition Institute over access to former professor Michael Mann's email and records dragged on when a judge ruled in early November that Mann could intervene in the case.
ATI filed its FOIA request for Mann's records in January 2010. UVA initially responded that it would respond, but then did not. In May, a court ruled that UVA had 90 days to either release the records or to invoke any applicable exemptions. In a protective order, the judge also said at that time that ATI could privately view even the exempt records to determine if it wanted to challenge the exemption's use. Mann filed his motion to intervene toward the end of the 90-day period.
The judge's new ruling allows UVA to renegotiate the protective order and says the parties can pick a neutral third party to review potentially confidential records.
The case has drawn widespread attention, with the FOIA issue often getting obscured by debates about the underlying data -- climate change -- and academic expression.
UVA has not explained why it did not invoke any available exemptions when ATI's request was first made.
#VCOG daily #access news, 7/17/19: meeting of 5; board member terminated; 911 recordings; #ARCOS database #opengov… https://t.co/EqL986Ztw2 — 5 hours 7 min ago
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National Oil & Gas Skills Week Unveiled
THE UK’s burgeoning oil and gas industry, which employs upwards of 440,000 people and contributes billions to the economy, has unveiled plans for a nationwide initiative drawing people of all ages and from all walks of life together to discover what the oil and gas industry offers them.
National Oil & Gas Skills Week was unveiled today (Wednesday, June 25) by industry skills organisation OPITO. It will see everything from science, engineering and maths, specialist workshops and careers sessions to debates, interactive challenges and much more take place across the UK with events in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen Norwich and Great Yarmouth already confirmed. More are planned, including a number in London.
The Week, which has been welcomed by Energy Minister Fergus Ewing and Business Secretary Vince Cable, comes in response to the need to attract thousands of new recruits to the sector over the next three years, with tens of thousands more needed in the long term.
At its centre will be a Doors Open Day during which operators, drillers and companies throughout the Aberdeen supply chain will be asked to throw open their doors and let the public see the innovative jobs, techniques and technologies being used to push the boundaries of exploration and production.
“The UK oil and gas industry is a global success story, responsible for some of the most ground-breaking innovations and technologies the world has ever seen with the skills and expertise honed here in the North Sea exported around the globe,” said OPITO UK managing director John McDonald.
“This is the first time, however, that the industry has ever looked to do something of this size and scale to showcase those achievements, to redress the misconception that working in oil and gas means working offshore and to highlight the fantastic career opportunities the sector offers a wide range of people.
“The reality is that just 10% of jobs in the oil and gas industry are based offshore. We hope that through this large-scale event, we can help people understand where the opportunities are for them, and help the industry engage with all those it needs to target to fill the skills gap now and in the future.”
National Oil & Gas Skills Week will see a jam-packed programme of events take place throughout the UK for people of all ages:
Highlights of the schools programme include hands-on energy sessions for more than 600 pupils at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh and Glasgow Science Centre; as well as a pupil-student-professional speed networking event in Aberdeen to link young people with those studying for and working in their target careers. There will also be a ‘teach-the-teachers’ professional development session in the East of England to inform career advisors and provide an insight into new projects and likely employment opportunities.
The need to attract more women into the industry will be addressed with a Sticky Floors or Glass Ceiling workshop hosted by Edinburgh Napier University looking at the internal barriers which can hold women back. In addition to this, a Mechanics in Practice session with the Institute of Physics will aim to encourage the uptake of key science, technology, engineering and maths subjects among girls.
Subsea UK will stage a ‘Mobilising the Military’ event at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre on November 12th, aimed at helping the oil and gas industry access talented ex-servicemen and women; while the issues around the skills gap will come under the spotlight at The Great Crew Change Debate in Great Yarmouth on November 13th.
Energy Minister Fergus Ewing said: “The National Oil & Gas Skills Week will allow us all to understand current and future industry demands and we look forward to continue working with industry to develop the skilled workforce now and for the future. We have seen the recently published the Wood Commission, which recognises the importance of vocational education to help our young people better understand the world of work and to open up their future ambition and opportunities especially in sectors like energy. The Scottish Government has now provided £1 million for the establishment of industry-led Invest in Young People groups which will make crucial links between employers and education. We are also committed to working with local authorities and other partners to develop these groups.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “The oil and gas industry offers rewarding careers to ambitious people all over the country. As we rebalance our economy the Government is working closely with British firms to bridge skills gaps, boost opportunities within supply chains and help meet the technological challenges of the future.
“National Oil and Gas Skills Week will complement this long term-partnership with the industry by helping recruit a new generation of world-class technicians, scientists and engineers. As well as building successful and lucrative careers, newcomers to the sector could play a central role in maintaining Britain’s international standing, economic stability and energy security.”
OPITO is urging as many employers as possible to get involved and support Skills Week.
“We are looking for organisations engaged with the oil and gas industry across the UK – from operators and SMEs to education bodies, science centres, recruiters and trade associations - to get involved and help make National Oil & Gas Skills Week a success,” said Mr McDonald.
“There are a huge number of opportunities to support the week. This can be as simple as signing up to take part in Doors Open Day, deciding to run a small in-house event under the Skills Week banner or getting involved in sponsoring some of the activities.
“This is a very ambitious initiative but it has the potential to really challenge people’s perceptions of the oil and gas industry as something that doesn’t apply to them. It is the avenue for everyone from school pupils, graduates and teachers through to mid-career changers and those returning after a career break to see first-hand what the oil and gas industry can offer.”
“It is also the platform for industry to celebrate its achievements and for individual companies to showcase what they are doing, the opportunities they offer and the skills they need going forward.”
National Oil & Gas Skills Week will run from 11th – 14th November. For more information visit www.nationaloilandgasskillsweek.com
Stay up to date with OPITO news by subscribing to our newsletter
OPITO
OPITO is the global, not-for-profit, skills body for the energy industry.
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©OPITO 2019. Design by Art Department
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Conflict-of-Interest: NOW Magazine Cites NoJetsTO
posted by NationBuilder Support on November 29, 2014
NOW Magazine: John Tory Recuses Himself from Island Airport Debate TORONTO - John Tory will take no part in the debate over the proposed expansion of the island airport, and has resigned his seat on the board of Rogers Communications. The mayor-elect made the announcement in a press release late Friday afternoon that outlined how he intends to avoid potential conflicts of interest between his family's various business activities and his new role at City Hall. "Avoiding conflicts of interest is extremely important and that responsibility rests with me and my office," he said in the release. After seeking advice from lawyers and the city integrity commissioner, Tory said he plans to declare conflicts on anything arising from: his son's position as CEO of a private airline; his wife Barbara Hackett's property-fixing business; and his own continued involvement in Rogers. The mayor-elect's son, John A.D. Tory, operates Private Air Inc. out of Billy Bishop Airport, and has publicly backed a controversial plan to extend the airport's runway and allow jets to fly from the facility. According to the city lobbyist registrar, he is still an active lobbyist on the file. The expansion plan is expected to come back to council sometime next year, and the outcome of the vote will have a major impact on the future of the city’s waterfront. The decision to declare a conflict means that Tory will be unable to vote on the issue or take part in discussions about it at council. It also goes against his camp's initial statements on the subject – in April Tory's spokesperson told NOW the idea that his son's airline would force him to recuse himself was "ridiculous." The incoming mayor has also resigned from board of both Rogers and Metro Inc., but will retain a seat on the advisory committee of the Rogers Control Trust, which oversees Rogers' major transactions. He will also stay on as a trustee and director of "various Rogers family-related trusts and private boards," according to the release. Tory said he felt obligated to keep some of his Rogers positions because of a promise he made to Ted Rogers, the late president and CEO of the communications giant who was a good friend of Tory's. He died in 2008. "Before his death, I gave my word to Ted Rogers that I would act in this capacity so long as I was able, and out of a sense of moral obligation to my late friend, I do not intend to resign from these positions," Tory said, adding that he would declare a conflict on any issue involving a Rogers-controlled company. In addition to declaring conflicts, on the advice of integrity commissioner Valerie Jepson Tory said his office "has developed a framework for monitoring and proactively addressing any potential issues that could arise" from his and his family’s business interests. “ I am confident, and my legal counsel agrees, that these steps allow me to be in full compliance with the law and, in some cases, exceed its requirements,” he said. Shortly after Tory’s announcement, NoJetsTO, an activist group that opposes the island airport expansion, issued a press release of its own saying it "welcomes" his decision to declare a conflict on the jet issue but still has serious concerns about two of the mayor-elect's staffers who used to work for the Sussex Strategy Group lobbying firm. While at Sussex Vic Gupta, Tory's principal secretary, lobbied council members on behalf of Porter Airlines, the airport expansion plan's main proponent. Tory's chief of staff Chris Eby also worked at Sussex, but says he wasn't employed as a lobbyist. NoJetsTO, which also raised concerns about Tory's endorsement of pro-expansion council candidates during the municipal election, says it's concerned about the two staffers' "potential meddling" in the airport debate. “With two former Sussex lobbyists working as Tory’s senior staff, firm steps are needed to make sure they don’t influence city council behind the scenes,” said Norman Di Pasquale, the group's acting chair. “It’s not just John Tory; his staff has to stay out of the jets issue – period.” Source: NOW Magazine article, published 2014-11-28
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Sex, Prayer, and Sodom: The Lectionary for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
July 18, 2016 by Eric Smith
Sex, Prayer, and Sodom: The Lectionary for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost July 18, 2016 Eric Smith
Hosea and Gomer, from the Bible Historiale, 1372. Image in the public domain, taken from Wikipedia.
Hosea 1:2-10
What It’s About: Hosea has perhaps the most memorable opening section of any of the minor prophets, because it is there that the conceit of the whole book is introduced. Israel (the northern kingdom, to which Hosea’s prophecy is addressed) and its relationship to God is likened to Hosea’s relationship with his wife Gomer. Gomer, “a wife of whoredom,” was unfaithful to Hosea, in the same way (we are to understand) that Israel was unfaithful to God. This image is jarring and more than a little strange, particularly to our 21st-century ears. But the comparison serves Hosea’s message well, as he is able to put into immediate and visceral terms the kind of apostasy that Israel has been committing against God. To add to the effect, Gomer bears three children who are named in this passage, and they all bear symbolic names, meant to convey something about Israel’s apostasy. “God Sows,” “Not-Pitied,” and “Not-My-People” are living symbols and reminders of God’s judgment on Israel.
What It’s Really About: Although Hosea’s medium (marriage and family) is pretty…um…innovative, his message is pretty standard for the Hebrew prophets. Hosea is accusing the nation of falling away from their covenantal obligations to God, and forsaking their true partner. The overarching argument of the book (hinted at but not fully developed here) is that Israel must turn back toward God, and away from various idolatries and distractions, and re-engage with God as a faithful partner. For God’s part, God seems to be standing ready to reconcile, but grows angry at Israel’s ongoing infidelity.
What It’s Not About: There is much to critique about this passage, and indeed the whole book of Hosea, from a contemporary viewpoint. The book plays on misogynistic and androcentric notions of marriage and family, and even the NRSV’s “wife of whoredom” translation fails to be imbued with the slightest touch of feminism. (Several other translations use this phrase, while others use “prostitute,” and the KJV, somewhat ominously, pluralizes it to “wife of whoredoms”). The point of the comparison is not to understand Gomer or her motivations, difficult choices, or understandings of her sex work. Gomer is not meant to be understood; she is simply meant as infidelity personified. This is undoubtedly unfair to the historical Gomer (if there ever was such a person) and to other people forced into sex work by circumstance or other persons. Understanding Gomer might well have been a worthwhile thing for Hosea to do.
But beyond that, understanding Gomer and her motivations has important exegetical possibilities. If Gomer and her “whoredom” are meant to stand in for Israel and its infidelity, then shouldn’t we follow that trail all the way down? Gomer didn’t just wake up one day as a sex worker; a series of events led her to that place, and it’s very likely that it wasn’t an existence that she chose. If her situation is supposed to be structurally analogous to Israel’s, then might it be worthwhile to understand Israel’s apostasy in more three-dimensional terms? Did Gomer even want Hosea in her life? Did she and Hosea understand their relationship in the same terms, or did Hosea think one thing was going on and Gomer another? In the 21st century, “a wife of whoredom” is not nearly the uncomplicated metaphor that it must have seemed so many millennia ago.
Maybe You Should Think About: Religion is not a fidelity/infidelity calculation. We can’t really understand it as a binary condition, where people are either faithful to God or not. This, in addition to the misogynistic comparison, is where Hosea’s words fall flat. But it’s also why they are so compelling; we like to see things in binary, black-and-white ways. It might be worthwhile to play with this tension; what did Israel’s infidelity look like from Israel’s point of view? How did Hosea see it differently than the average Israelite did? And what does it mean to be faithful today?
What It’s About: What a marvelous, marvelous story–and what an insight into the theological mindset of the biblical authors. Here is the story of Abraham and God negotiating–in essence–over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. God has resolved to destroy it, because of its wickedness (This was before the incident in which the people of Sodom violated hospitality customs by asking to rape the visitors; the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah had more to do with garden-variety wickedness, and wasn’t predicated on homosexuality, as is often and erroneously assumed). From this opening negotiating position–“I will destroy it”–Abraham began to talk God down. First 50 righteous people, and then 45, and then 40, until God has agreed not to smite the city if as few as ten righteous people can be found there. Abraham seems to have intervened successfully with God, and we have here an important insight into the God who is being revealed in the Hebrew Bible: this God can be convinced of things.
What It’s Really About: This story is best viewed as an insight into the differences between how most 21st-century Christians see God, and the way biblical authors saw God. The God of Abraham was understood in terms that don’t quite mesh with our own theological views. Like many other deities in the ancient near east, the God of the Hebrew Bible was strikingly anthropomorphic; this God could feel human-like emotions, experience human events like surprise, and be deceived (see the Garden of Eden). In this story, we see God being convinced; God is initially angry and vows to destroy the place and its inhabitants. But Abraham reasons with God, appealing to God’s sense of justice and mercy, and in the end God relents to Abraham’s point of view. This is quite at odds with common 21st century understandings of God, in which God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and the will of God is a set thing which can either be known or not known, but not necessarily influenced.
What It’s Not About: This conversation comes before the infamous incident in which the Sodomites want to rape the visitors to Lot’s house (who were really angels). But, the “wickedness” of Sodom and Gomorrah are still in view here. It bears repeating here that most scholars now reject the characterization of the “sin of Sodom” as homosexuality; that is a poor reading of the text and an anachronistic one at that. The sin of Sodom was inhospitality; it was the violation of the norms that governed the way people were supposed to welcome guests. This has been said better elsewhere, but it is worth keeping in mind here.
Maybe You Should Think About: This story is an interesting way to think about intercessory prayer. What is it for? Does it work? How might it work? Does it work here in this story because Abraham is Abraham, or could anyone do this? And of course the flip side of that is theodicy: why is Abraham more merciful than God? Is God really like this, prone to punishment and capricious acts of violence? Or is this the ancient world-view expressing itself?
What It’s About: These words were addressed to people who were clearly living as a minority religious community within a much larger and more powerful cultural system. The tension between the small, nascent Christian community and the broader context of Roman Asia Minor is apparent; the author (scholars are divided over whether Paul wrote this letter) knows about threats from outside influences like philosophy, festivals, dietary habits, sabbath observance, angels and demons, and visions as competing religious options, and he (or she) is adjuring the congregation in Colossae to resist such influences.
What It’s Really About: The context seems to be one in which there is a distinctive Christian identity, but not one that has taken root sufficiently deeply to stand easily on its own. This is likely a late first-century context, either from Paul’s pen or someone else’s who wished to appropriate Paul’s authority to have his message heard. But in either case it is likely a very early glimpse into the kind of world Christians lived in, and the pressures they must have felt from family and friends to conform to the norms of the time. This was a major concern of the first generation or two of Christians: how to live in the world as distinctively Christian without alienating everyone. They didn’t always do this very well; Christians were the subject of several rumors over their secretive and strange behavior, and they were accused of being cannibals (eucharist doesn’t look too good to outsiders), committing incest (greeting their brothers and sisters with a kiss), and general secretiveness and oddness. It must have been a fine line to walk, to blend in while still maintaining identity.
What It’s Not About: The largest part of the warnings here come against what appear to be Jewish practices, not pagan ones. The festivals, sabbaths, moons, and so forth, and of course the talk of a spiritual circumcision (whatever that means) all point to a context where Judaism presents a strong rival to Christianity. Of course, many people wouldn’t have understood Judaism and Christianity to be different things in this period, but the author of the letter is trying to define Christian identity by opposing it to Jewish identity and its markers. The take-away is “don’t be like everyone else, but especially don’t be like the Jews.” This was a common message in early Christianity, but it’s a perilous one for people in the 21st century to mimic uncritically. Our circumstances are very different, starting with the fact that Christianity is not a small, isolated, and weak religious community, but a very large and strong one. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity is, and ought to be, very different today.
Maybe You Should Think About: How is living as a Christian person within society different than it was in the days this letter was written? In very, very many ways. It might be useful to reflect on those differences, as a way to contextualize Christianity in our own time and place–particularly as we continue to wring our hands about the decline of mainline Christianity in North America.
What It’s About: This is one of two places (the other being in Matthew) in the New Testament where Jesus institutes what is now known as the Lord’s Prayer. Here in Luke, it isn’t given any particular emphasis, but it leads right into more sayings about the graciousness of God, who, like a parent, wants to give us good things. It is followed by the “ask, seek, knock” saying, and then after that the teaching about parents wanting to give their children good things. Together, these passages form a unit on supplication and prayer, the effect of which is to lead us to think of God as gracious, giving, and receptive to our requests through prayer.
What It’s Really About: From the context of this story, it doesn’t seem that Jesus was intending to set liturgy that would hold for two thousand years, but that’s what he did. The character of the prayer, both here and in Matthew, has always struck me as offhand, and not really very grand. Jesus didn’t clear his throat, climb to a high place, and tell everybody to write this down. Instead, he was simply offering a template for prayer. I think Jesus would probably have been pretty surprised at how durable these particular words have been, and even at the tresspasses/sins/debts debate that seems to never go away. Jesus was probably more interested in instituting a mode of prayer than a particular, prescribed prayer.
What It’s Not About: Careful readers will note that this is not quite the version that you say in church. That version comes from the Didache, a later (but still early) non-canonical Christian document. That version, with its doxology, is a little better suited to worship, and it has reigned as the liturgical version for a long time.
Maybe You Should Think About: The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most familiar pieces of Christian scripture, so one of the best strategies for preaching it might be to de-familiarize it. Find an odd translation, or rearrange the order, or do something that causes people to stop and pay attention to what it’s saying rather than just following along in a rote way. Try, in other words, to help people hear this prayer again for the first time.
Rotting Summer Fruits: The Lectionary for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (and for this moment in American history)
July 25, 2016 Rich Fools and Divine Wisdom: The Lectionary for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost
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Jude 1:7
In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire
The Bofa on the Sofa
It bears repeating here that most scholars now reject the characterization of the “sin of Sodom” as homosexuality; that is a poor reading of the text and an anachronistic one at that. The sin of Sodom was inhospitality; it was the violation of the norms that governed the way people were supposed to welcome guests.
The destruction of Sodom had nothing to do with that incident with the angels. The destruction of Sodom was already going to happen before that. In fact, that is why the angels were sent there in the first place – to destroy it. So the destruction was not based on how they were treated when they got there.
Ezekiel tells us clearly why Sodom was destroyed. “”‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
The only extent to which this is “inhospitality” is that they are inhospitable to the poor and needy. Says nothing about not treating visitors according to local customs.
Inhospitable is just as inconsistent with the bible as is homosexuality.
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We operate from our offices based in Barnstaple, North Devon and have three divisions; namely Contracting, Pearce Property Services and Pearce Homes.
Our principal area of operation is Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset and represents destinations within two hours travelling distance from Barnstaple.
"Pearce Construction strives to be the leading construction and residential developer in its operating area, providing high quality workmanship and buildings, aiding the local economy and caring for the environment whilst remaining competitive and profitable."
The Company was formed in 1946 as R Harris and Son. In 1981 it was acquired by C H Pearce and Sons Ltd of Bristol changing its name in 1987 to the current name of Pearce Construction (Barnstaple) Ltd. In 2003 the Company was taken back into private ownership when it was purchased from the Pearce Group by the current management team. In 2008 the Company re-located to new purpose designed and built premises on the outskirts of Barnstaple.
We promote a health and safety culture throughout all that we do with the emphasis on risk assessment and safe systems of work carried out by suitably trained and competent personnel. All our Site Managers have attended the CITB five day Site Managers Safety Training Scheme and the Company carries a platinum standard certificate of commitment under the construction skills certification scheme. Our Safety Director & Safety manager hold a NEBOSH Certificate in Construction Safety and Health.
Quality is embedded in all our procedures and we are holders of the internationally recognised ISO9001:2015 certification.
The Company has in excess of 100 employees. The majority of these being tradesmen and site management based on sites across our area of operation with 25 staff at our offices in Barnstaple. In addition to this we have an approved supply chain of subcontractors and suppliers together with our own joinery works manufacturing bespoke joinery products.
As well as the extensive safety training carried out we also recruit up to six apprentices every year. Furthermore we support management training up to NVQ level 5. Our rolling training programme ensures that our personnel are competent, have the necessary skill sets and are fully conversant with current legislation and new initiatives. We have representation on the National Executive Board of The National Federation of Builders and on the Advisory Committee at North Devon College.
With an ever growing commitment needed from the business sector to environmental issues we ensure that all of our environmental policies and procedures are adhered to.
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2018 Monterey Open Championship
Tee Times & Scoring
Monterey Open
Duke’s Club Membership
Monterey City Am
A Legacy of Champions
The Monterey Open Championship has a rich and storied history dating back to 1926, when it was won by “Light Horse” Harry Cooper in an event that included most of the top golfers in the nation—including the reigning U.S. Amateur George Von Elm, and 1927 Ryder Cup team members “Wild” Bill Melhorn, Joe Turnesa, Johnny Golden, Al Watrous, Johnny Farrell, Leo Diegel, and Al Espinosa.
The tournament missed a few years during the Great Depression, and again during WWII, but otherwise remained a popular annual event on the Del Monte Golf Course calendar. Following the WWII death of a popular Monterey golfer, The Bud Brownell Memorial Trophy was crafted by Jo Mora for engraving the names of future winners.
After a brief hiatus (the tournament was not played from 1997-2003), Del Monte Golf Course resumed the event in 2004.
2018 Tournament Information
Schedule/Format
54-hole, stroke-play competition. The field will be cut to the top 40 players and ties for the final 18 holes.
All professional and amateur players are entered into the open/scratch flight. Amateurs must have a valid USGA Handicap index of 2.4 or below.
Friday, October 5, 2018 at 5:00 p.m., or the first 126 paid players. The last day to withdraw and receive a full refund is Friday, October 12.
$495 for Open professionals, $325 for PGA Class A and Associate Professionals in good standing, $325 for amateurs. Your entry fee includes green fees, sponsor gifts and complimentary on-course refreshments. Please make payment to Del Monte Golf Course by check, money order, or any major credit card for your entry into the 2018 Monterey Open Championship.
Play will be governed by the Head Golf Professional and Rules Committee at Del Monte Golf Course. All USGA Rules of Golf will be followed and a supplemental local rules sheet will be available. All questions will be settled by the Rules Committee, whose decision shall be final.
Registration will begin at 6:30 a.m. on October 15 in the Del Monte Pro Shop. Shuttles will be provided to the 10th tee every 15 minutes.
Practice Round
Practice rounds will be available October 8-14, 2018, for $50.00 including cart after 12:00 p.m. per player. Reservations can be made by calling the Del Monte Pro Shop at (831) 373-2700.
Pace of Play will be strictly enforced with a maximum time of 15 minutes average per hole. Penalties will be assessed for slow play.
Golf Cars/Caddies
The use of golf carts is not mandatory and caddies will be permitted in the Monterey Open Championship. Caddies do not have to carry the competitors’ clubs and will be permitted to use a golf cart, but both the player and the caddy are not permitted to ride in the golf cart at the same time. To schedule a caddie through Del Monte Golf Course, please contact Caddie Services (CSI) at (866) 903-9101.
Appropriate golf attire is required for all competitors. All professionals must wear slacks; caddies and amateurs may wear Bermuda-length shorts.
Previous Championship Results
Matt Pridey of Salinas shot a closing 8-under 64 to catch second-round leader Ian Maxwell and win the 2018 Monterey Open Championship by one stroke. Pridey finished with an impressive three-day total of 18-under 198. Maxwell, who started the day two ahead, shot a final-round 67. John Greco finished third with a closing 70. In addition to the $5,000 winner’s check, Pridey also earned a spot into the 2018 Taylormade Pebble Beach Invitational Presented by Dell Technologies at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill Golf Course, and The Links at Spanish Bay.
54-hole, stroke-play golf tournament, held on Del Monte Golf Course
For general inquiries,
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Cubs beat Dodgers 5-0 to reach 1st World Series since 1945
Sports | October 22, 2016
Andrew Seligman
Chicago Cubs relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman (54) celebrates after Game 6 of the National League baseball championship series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Chicago. The Cubs won 5-0 to win the series and advance to the World Series against the Cleveland Indians. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
CHICAGO — Cursed by a Billy Goat, bedeviled by Bartman and crushed by decades of disappointment, the Chicago Cubs are at long last headed back to the World Series.
Kyle Hendricks outpitched Clayton Kershaw, Anthony Rizzo and Willson Contreras homered early and the Cubs won their first pennant since 1945, beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0 Saturday night in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series.
The drought ended when closer Aroldis Chapman got Yasiel Puig to ground into a double play, setting off a wild celebration at Wrigley Field.
Seeking their first title since 1908, the Cubs open the World Series at Cleveland on Tuesday night. The Indians haven’t won since 1948.
“This city deserves it so much,” Rizzo said. “We got four more big ones to go, but we’re going to enjoy this. We’re going to the World Series. I can’t even believe that.”
Manager Joe Maddon’s team, deemed World Series favorites since spring training, topped the majors with 103 wins, then beat the Giants and Dodgers in the playoffs.
The Cubs took their 17th pennant. They had not earned a World Series trip since winning a doubleheader opener 4-3 at Pittsburgh on Sept. 29, 1945, to clinch the pennant on the next-to-last day of the season.
The eternal “wait till next year” is over. No more dwelling on a past history of failure — the future is now.
“We’re too young. We don’t care about it,” star slugger Kris Bryant said. “We don’t look into it. This is a new team. This is a completely different time of our lives. We’re enjoying it and our work’s just getting started.”
Hendricks pitched two-hit ball for 7 1/3 innings. Chapman got the final five outs, then threw both arms in the air and got mobbed by teammates and coaches.
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SAD 51 students raise money for children in Zambia
NORTH YARMOUTH — Although wearing hats in school is typically frowned upon, North Yarmouth Memorial School will make an exception on Friday, Feb. 18.
Students will be allowed to wear hats – if they pay a dollar. The funds will be used to help build a school study room in Zambia.
When they chatted online with children from the South African country last September, Maggi Alexander’s students were astonished to peer from their classroom into one thousands of miles away.
For the past six years Alexander, a fifth-grade teacher at North Yarmouth Memorial School, has involved her students in an effort to help Zambian children who have lost one or both parents. The endeavor was sparked when Alexander’s sister, Linda Wilkenson, started the Chikumbuso Women and Orphans Project in 2005.
Wilkenson, whose husband works for the World Vision organization, was in Zambia and “just saw a need for orphaned children to get schooling,” Alexander said.
Chikumbuso means remembrance, and the project was triggered by the impact of AIDS. At first a project geared toward widows, it has expanded to embrace orphans through a free school, as well as providing outreach to grandmothers and offering skill training to single mothers.
The program is based in Ng’ombe, in the Zambian city of Lusaka. The school started with 30 students and now has more than 10 times that number in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Alexander and her students at first raised funds for the project through a recycling program. They now raise enough money to send $180 a month to the school, $80 for food and $100 to pay a teacher’s salary.
And when Alexander heard about her sister’s desire to create a study room at the Zambian school, she decided to help that funding effort, too. She has asked students and staff throughout the school district to participate in the hat-wearing fundraiser, and she has approached companies about matching the money her school raises.
Alexander said she would like to raise $2,000.
The connection between the two schools is broadening through a pen-pal program and blogging. Alexander’s students write about books they are reading on a website with both the Zambian school and children from a school in Connecticut.
And there was the day last September, when the North Yarmouth and Zambian schools communicated via Skype, able to see each other face to face, classroom to classroom. Two of Alexander’s students, Matt Donahoe and Kelsey Sullivan, were fascinated by the experience, although they had trouble understanding the Zambian youths at times – not because of language, since they speak English, too, but because of delays in the Internet signal.
Donahoe and Sullivan both said the experience has been their favorite part of fifth grade and that they look forward to learning more about their new friends.
“It feels good to help someone else in a different place,” Sullivan said.
Donahoe noted that while American students sometimes grumble about going to school, their Zambian counterparts enjoy the experience, particularly since it’s a place where they can get food.
“School is like their favorite time of the day,” he said. “When the bell rings, they’re sad.”
Sidebar Elements
Kelsey Sullivan, left, and Matt Donahoe, fifth-graders at North Yarmouth Memorial School, are taking part in an effort to raise money for children in need at a school in Zambia. They use the Internet to bridge the distance between the two schools.
Bakery buys Flo the coffee truck
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Acclaimed Songwriter Justin Tranter Donates Recording Studio To The Chicago Academy for the Arts
Acclaimed Songwriter Justin Tranter Donates "The Justin Tranter Recording Studio" To The Chicago Academy for the Arts
THE STATE-OF-THE-ART RECORDING STUDIO UNVEILED AT A RIBBON CUTTING EVENT WITH JUSTIN, FACULTY MEMBERS AND STUDENTS LAST NIGHT
Photo cred: Timothy Hiatt / Getty Images
BB Gun Press
(Pictured above) Justin Tranter performs at The Justin Tranter Recording Studio Ribbon Cutting Event at The Chicago Academy for the Arts on September 20th, 2018.
September 21, 2018 (Los Angeles, CA) - Last night, Golden Globe and Grammy nominated songwriter Justin Tranter returned to the school that saved their life years ago. Tranter made a donation to The Chicago Academy for the Arts to fund a state-of-the-art recording studio and hire a part-time music teacher for the next three years. "The Justin Tranter Recording Studio" was officially unveiled at a celebratory ribbon cutting event at the school yesterday evening with friends, family, current students, and faculty members in attendance.
The event featured students demonstrating the studio's capabilities and inspired speeches from Tranter, Jason Patera (Head of School at The Chicago Academy for the Arts), Rose Colella (Chair of the Music Department at the Chicago Academy for the Arts) and Jack Murray (Studio Manager & Director of Recording Arts and Commercial Music). To conclude the special occasion, Tranter performed several songs alongside present Academy students and a local string trio.
This gift funds the conversion of three underutilized rooms, including a classroom and an office, into a cutting-edge three-room recording and production facility. The studio houses a control room, a tracking room and a four-station music production classroom. All of which contain top-of-the-line music software and hardware for the students to use. Additionally, the donation is funding a part-time teacher to lead a "Contemporary Writing and Production" elective course that will debut this fall. For more information on Tranter and The Academy, visit HERE:
https://www.chicagoacademyforthearts.org/justin-tranter-story
"There's no point in having privilege unless you pay that privilege forward," Tranter said about the donation. "Now that I've followed my dreams and have had financial privilege, I want to pay that forward as much as possible. Not only will this give students an amazing way to make music, but it also creates a very employable skill - engineering - for students going to The Academy."
As a student at The Academy, Tranter also created the AIDS Benefit: a student-run variety show that helps raise awareness and advocacy for HIV/AIDS. The event will host it's 22nd annual presentation this evening, September 21st, 2018. Since its inception, The Academy students have raised tens of thousands of dollars for AIDS research, support, care and organizations.
2018 has been an extremely busy time for the songwriter. Not only did they become the only songwriter nominated for both 'Song of the Year' at the GRAMMYS® with 'Issues' by Julia Michaels and 'Best Original Song' at the Golden Globes® with 'Home' from Ferdinand performed by Nick Jonas, but they also won "Songwriter of The Year" at the 2018 BMI Pop Music Awards for the second consecutive year. Along with "Songwriter of the Year," Tranter also took home four more BMI Pop Music Awards that night, for co-writing Imagine Dragons' "Believer", Linkin Park's "Heavy", Julia Michaels' "Issues" and Maroon 5's "Cold" and was recently nominated for 'Songwriter of the Year' for Spotify's Secret Genius Awards.
Tranter's 2018 co-writing credits include Imagine Dragons' "Natural", Julia Michaels' "Jump", Shea Diamond's "Kesha Complexion", Leon Bridges "Beyond", Cardi B's "Thru Your Phone" and Janelle Monáe's "Make Me Feel". In 2017 alone, Tranter landed four Top 10 smashes at Pop Radio and by year-end, the maverick garnered "Songwriter of the Year" at the BMI Pop Awards and stood out as "the only pop songwriter to land two songs on Variety's 'HitMakers' Most Consumed List'". They are currently in the studio working with Bebe Rexha and Gwen Stefani, among many others.
www.instagram.com/tranterjustin
twitter.com/justtranter
Source BB Gun Press
Follow us: @Pressparty on Twitter / Pressparty on Facebook.
BB Gun Press: Profile Page
September 21, 2018 8:10pm ET by Pressparty
justin tranter, bbgun press, new york, bb, gun, press
Shortlink to this content: http://bit.ly/2PX4s10
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Nominations open for the Roy Proctor Lifetime Achievement Award
Guest post from Annette Smith, Roy Proctor Award Selection Committee
The Roy Proctor Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to an Optimist or Optimists for lifetime service to the Pacific Northwest District. This award recognizes individuals who have given outstanding and ongoing service to the District. It is not intended for the hundreds of outstanding Optimists who serve their clubs and communities but do not participate at the district level. The award is intended to honour a living individual, or individuals, rather than to be a memorial award.
Award recipients must meet all three of the following criteria:
1. Having given at least 10 years of service to the District, which does NOT need to include having served as a district officer; AND
2. Having built a new club or having consistently brought in new members over his Optimist career or having served as District Foundation Representative; AND
3. Having provided inspiration and motivation to fellow Optimists.
A selection committee comprised of previous Roy Proctor Award winners meets annually at the Third Quarter District Meeting to choose the recipient(s), whose award(s) will be presented at the District Convention. The selection committee chooses from nominees submitted by Pacific Northwest District Optimists.
Nominations for the Roy Proctor Award are now open. All nominations must be received by May 1, 2012. Send written nominations describing how the nominee meets the foregoing criteria to Annette Smith (annettesmith@shaw.ca) on or before May 1.
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The Port Townsend Farmers Market kicks off with an annual goat parade. The tradition has been an opening day staple since the market moved uptown in 2003. (Jefferson County Farmers Market) Last year’s Port Townsend Farmers Market kicked off with the annual goat parade. The 2017 farmers market will continue the tradition, which has been an opening day staple since the market moved to its uptown location in 2003. (Jefferson County Farmers Market)
Jefferson commissioners asked for help on farmers market restrooms
Port Townsend city manager highlights Lodging Tax Advisory Committee plans
by Jeannie McMacken
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 2:13pm
NewsCounty CommissionJefferson County
PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County Farmers Markets Director Amanda Milholland asked the Jefferson commissioners Monday for help in constructing an uptown restroom on county property for visitors to the Port Townsend Saturday Farmers Market.
The popular food and crafts market, which opens its 27th season on April 6, is held in front of the Jefferson County Community Center on Tyler Street between Lawrence and Clay streets.
It’s been at that location for the past 15 years, and Milholland said it’s become a destination for locals as well as visitors.
“The uptown Port Townsend Farmers Market is the largest of our three markets,” Milholland said. “It’s been voted one of the leading markets in the state. On summer Saturdays we have between 2,500 and 3,500 people in attendance. It is a really big part of our local economy.”
Milholland said she expects about 70 businesses to participate on Saturdays this year.
“It is an important business incubator and creates jobs for a lot of people in our county,” she said. “We can do so much to be a welcoming place, but it needs a collaborative effort with your help.
“We need a public restroom option for people uptown.”
Currently, the market rents the community center restrooms during the season and pays an annual fee for its customers to use their dumpsters.
Milholland said that the option is not sufficient anymore because the market continues to grow.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve rented two port-a-potties to reduce community use of the center and uptown business restrooms and make it so the farmers market can be more self-sufficient.”
But she finds the solution to be fundamentally flawed.
“We can’t keep them up there all week,” she said. “Good Man Sanitation brings them in on Friday and takes them away every Monday. There’s still some people who are uncomfortable using port-a-potties. In addition, we pay for additional hours to open the rec center’s restrooms.
“It’s not the same as having a permanent restroom to provide to visitors, vendors and the public. ”
She admits that during a busy market day, it’s hard to keep up with the hand sanitizer.
Milholland said food vendors have handwashing stations in their booths and that most craft vendors can use their neighbor’s stations, but the market is growing and needs a solution.
She told commissioners it was “time to work together to make a long-term plan to make the farmers market location an effective one for our community, and local businesses and vendors depend on it.”
Commissioner Kate Dean said it was important to support the farmers market, and Commissioner Greg Brotherton described some new restrooms that were installed in downtown Portland, Ore., that cost $100,000.
Port Townsend City Manager David Timmons said the Port Townsend Lodging Tax Advisory Committee (LTAC) has been discussing restrooms in town.
“LTAC has committed $50,000 for 5 years for the projects and is looking to install them near the ferry terminal, on Taylor Street, and uptown,” Timmons said. “We talked about it in the context of the community center uptown near transit stops.”
Timmons said the committee is looking to go the prefabricated route.
“But they still require the associated infrastructure to be put in place,” he said. “They are typically treated horribly so they have to be built to stand up to a lot of use.”
He said that he hoped the county would be open to discussing locating the restrooms on county property.
“We are in the process of looking at designs and other issues like traffic control to help the situation. We see this as investing in the market and our economic development.”
Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Jeannie McMacken can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at [email protected].
Volunteers sought for Clallam advisory boards
Port Angeles schools chief wants to keep June 14 graduation
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Lessons I think the guy in the fedora just wi...
“I think the guy in the fedora just winked at me.”
You're at a bar with a friend. There's a man who's been looking at you, and he just blinked one eye. You think he did it for you and you don't know how to respond, so you tell your friend about it.
(someone) just (did something)
One of the uses of "just" is to express that something happened very recently. It can mean a few minutes before:
I'm sorry, he just walked out to go get lunch.
Or immediately before:
What did he just say?
Or it can mean a few years:
Mankind has just started to study ways to understand and control DNA.
But in any case, "just" means a short time before.
a guy
A "guy" is a man. It's a casual word.
You use this word instead of "man" when you're talking to your friends or in a casual situation like at a party. The person you're talking about can either be someone that you know, or someone who you don't know but don't have high respect for.
For a stranger who seems older and more respectable, "man" or even "gentleman" are more polite.
Note that you can use the plural form, "guys", when you're talking to a group of men or women:
Great job today, guys. Keep up the good work.
But "guy" (singular) always refers to a man.
(someone) in the (something)
You can talk about what a person is wearing with "in the ___":
the woman in the blue skirt
the kid in the gray hoodie
You can also identify someone with "with the ___":
the man with the big glasses
a fedora
A "fedora" is a kind of hat. It has a narrow brim going all around the head.
Fedoras were most popular in the mid-1900's.
wink at (someone)
When someone briefly closes one eye while looking at you with the other eye, they may be "winking at" you. Winking is a gesture that suggests that the winking person is sharing some kind of secret with you.
People sometimes use a wink to suggest that there's some kind of sexual attraction between them and the person they're winking at.
You can also wink at someone to show that you're lying to another person. For example, you might tell your brother that the dinner he cooked was really good, while winking at your brother's children to show that it actually wasn't very good.
appearance dating at a bar or club
“It's about this seemingly normal suburban couple who are actually undercover ...”
“That region holds a special place in my heart.”
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Welsh Wonder
by Lee Williams
This article appeared in Pitchcare Magazine Issue 83
0 Welsh Wonder
Set in scenic countryside in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan, Wenvoe Castle Golf Club is long recognised as one of the finest challenges of golf in Wales. On a very cold morning late in January, Lee Williams met up with the club's recently appointed Head Greenkeeper Lucy Sellick.
As I approach the course, the first thing to hit you is the beautiful old castle building, which is now the clubhouse, pro shop and greenkeeper's sheds. Waiting for me in the old courtyard is Lucy Sellick, who gives me a warm welcome and, with the threat of rain, she immediately takes me out for a tour of the course on the Toro Workman, before we sit down in her office for a brew and chat about all things turf.
Lucy has been in the industry since she left school and has never looked back. She explains: "I still remember the day now. It was my sixteenth birthday when my next-door neighbour, who was building a golf course at that time (Virginia Park Golf Club, Caerphilly), knocked on the door. He asked me would I like to earn some money and I excitedly replied yes please. I was straight in at the deep end; I helped lay turf on the driving range during the build and also used to go before school to pick up golf balls. As soon as I left school, I started full-time on the new nine-hole golf course as an apprentice greenkeeper where, over the next nine years, I worked my way up to first assistant."
Lucy then took a position as a qualified greenkeeper at the prestigious Celtic Manor Resort Golf Club in Newport, South Wales. "I spent nine years working at Celtic Manor, and I'm proud of the fact I had a hand in building the new course in readiness for the 2010 Ryder Cup." She then moved on to Saltford Golf Club in Bristol as deputy course manager where she had a one-hundred-mile round trip a day, and was averaging over 31,000 miles a year, which she did for almost ten years. To do that kind of mileage every day shows a lot of dedication. I asked what her motivation was: "I absolutely love my job. I loved the course; the members were great and it was such a wonderful course where I also played some nice golf. However, I thought it was time to look for a position closer to home." I asked how she came to be at Wenvoe Golf Club. "It was a strange scenario, as I had applied for the head greenkeeper job at Llanishen Golf Club first, which was closer to home than this. I was on a shortlist of two and I didn't get it, but then the head greenkeeeper, who was previously here, got the Llanishen job. Wenvoe found out I was looking, and they got in touch with me, which was quite nice. After a few conversations and an interview with the Chairman of the Greens and the President, I was offered the position, which took some time to sink in."
Lucy is keen on training and is always looking at ways she can improve as a greenkeeper. She currently holds NVQ Levels 2, 3 and 4 in Sportsturf Management, spraying certificates PA 1, 2 and 6, 360 excavator licence, chainsaw cross-cutting and felling licence and, on top of all that, she took a course in Conservation Environmental Management fourteen years ago, which is now serving her well. She explains: "I just had that feeling greenkeeping was going to go that way, plus I love the outdoors. It was interesting building dry stone walls, hedge laying, learning about ecology, wetlands and woodlands. It's now come to fruition as ecology and looking after the environment is prevalent in the industry. I'm now looking to do a course possibly on the agronomy side of the job." I admire the fact that Lucy is always willing to learn and is not afraid to ask questions of fellow greenkeepers if she doesn't have the answers.
Lucy and her team, (left to right): Steve Webb, Ty Garland, Ben Rees and Laurence Walter
Lucy thanks her granddad for inspiring her to get involved in working outdoors. "He was a parkie cutting grass. I think a bit of that rubbed off on me, but he was also in the forces, so I was all geared up ready to join the navy. The opportunity to work at Celtic Manor blew me away with what I got to do there. I enjoyed working with Mark Harper when I was at Virginia Park Golf Club, and being part of the South West section, speaking with Paul Worster and many other industry professionals have helped and supported me along the way."
Lucy has a small team to help her with the day to day maintenance of the 18 hole, 6208-yard, par 72 parkland course plus practice hole. This includes Steve Webb, First Assistant, 39 years' service with qualifications including: Level 3 Sportsturf, spraying PA 1, 2 and 6, 360 excavator licence and chainsaw licence. Laurence Walter, Assistant with 49 years' service and NVQ Level 2 in Sportsturf and spraying PA 1, 2 and 6 under his belt; Ben Rees, Apprentice Greenkeeper with 3 years' service and currently studying towards an NVQ Level 2; Ty Garland, who works part-time and was the former Head Greenkeeper, who has served the club for an unbelievable 48 years. "Ty will hate me for this, but I think he is over 70 now. He comes in on Tuesdays and Fridays and each time he pops his head around the door and says "Fairways as normal" to which I reply "Yes please Ty". Once he has cut the fairways, he cleans off the mower and greases it up. He's just amazing and it means I don't have to worry about the fairways all summer. All the lads do a great job and I couldn't do it without them."
Lucy tells me about the general soil profile of the course. "It mainly consists of clay, with quite a high rock content on the front nine holes, so aeration is a no go on those fairways. Greens are a mixed bag; a few were rebuilt and, topdressing over the years, means there is a good 5 inches of sand on them, which is good. When I first came here, I struggled with thatch on the greens to around 50mm and I'm still working out which are good and which are bad. It's still part of my learning process, but we haven't seen a temporary green yet and we've played on frost."
Summer was a real struggle for Lucy and the team with an irrigation system in need of an upgrade. "The system is older than me at forty-seven years old now. Some greens have triple heads and they're just awful. They were the bane of my life throughout the hot summer and created constant problems; we were doing a lot of the watering manually, but luckily we managed. There is definitely some major investment needed, to the point where I want to say to the club 'let's drop all the winter projects and re-invest in new heads on the greens, install new PVC pipes and generally give it a good overhaul'; at present, we are just constantly fixing leaks."
During summer, the greens are cut daily at 3mm with an old Toro 3250 Greensmaster and run over with the Tru Turf roller to improve ball speed and roll. In the winter, the height of cut is lifted to 5mm and only cut when needed (which has been a lot with the growth we have had this winter). Lucy likes to run the tractor-mounted GreenTek sarel roller over the greens and, once a month, she will use the Toro Procore with 8mm tines at a depth of 4 inches. Then, three times a year they will use the
Verti-Drain 7316 at a depth of 8 inches. In Autumn, they pulled out 5 inch cores and replaced with an 80/20 rootzone mix. The team brush the greens with a tractor mounted V brush rather than choosing to scarify (with the heat we had last summer); this flicks all the unwanted debris from the base of the greens.
Whilst out on the course, I noticed a lot of disruption from worm casts and birds, and asked if this is a big problem. "Yes; worms and worm casts are a big concern, I have just started to look at! I'm currently investigating a product called Angus Downcast, which I'm being advised on by Ray Hunt from ALS. I'm tempted to use it this year, with a turf hardener leading up to winter, but it's something I need to speak to Ray more about. At the moment, it's just a matter of switching the greens every morning."
With more and more fungicides being removed from the market, Lucy would like to incorporate more bent grasses into the greens. "The greens are 60% bent, 30% poa annua and the other 10% is a bit of everything. You can just see the poa knocking off now and I just think it would be good to fill those gaps a little bit more, especially with the way it's going with pesticides. We are going to have to get a bit more protection through species rather than relying on chemicals."
Lucy is currently using up a stockpile of fertiliser that she inherited from the previous head greenkeeper and, once this has been used, she will look to put a fertiliser programme together. "I have just bought a winter tonic of SeaAction Liquid Seaweed and Turf Hardener for the greens and I'm just waiting for a spray window. In the next month or two, I will sit down and look at the brochures in the office to see what the best options are available before making my decisions based around price, products, reliability and agronomic advice."
Lucy has a combination of everything when it comes to machinery. "Some of it has been purchased outright and some on hire purchase. We have a mixed fleet of ages in the shed which looks good but, on the other hand, it's not so good. My four biggest pieces of kit are less than three years old, then I have a ten-year-old greens mower and a Toro Workman. I'm not complaining though as there are definitely people worse off than me. It's something I will I need to sit down with the club and work out in the future."
Lucy likes to have regular talks with her staff about training and health and safety. "We regularly have little chats on various aspects of the job and share ideas. When new machinery comes in, we all have compliance training from the dealer whilst they go through all the features of the machine. We have a dynamic risk assessment process so all staff know where they can and can't go working; this is made up of red, amber and green zones. I feel, training wise, we are all pretty much up to speed."
Lucy believes there are too many clubs taking advantage of passionate greenkeepers. "Most love their job and hate to leave on a Friday with the course not looking its best, so if you are understaffed, the first thing you are going to do is make up that shortfall. There's a lot of stressed, overworked greenkeepers out there, and there shouldn't be. I think there
are still too many people who don't recognise the skill and the professionalism within greenkeeping. The only way to get members to understand what we do is through education, e.g. by inviting them down to the sheds to look around and get involved. Since I have been here, I have had the Greens Chairman, General Manager and Captain in to look at the problems first hand, rather than discuss it in the clubhouse, which better exposes them to our problems."
Lucy is quite active within BIGGA. "I'm Chairman of the South Wales section and I sit on regional boards, so for me, promoting the industry is way up there. I believe we need to encourage more young people into our industry; regardless of gender."
The current clubhouse is on the site of a former castle which was built in the early 1700s. There is still speculation that, a Wenvoe Castle known to exist in the mid-1500s, was its predecessor and reputed to have been burned down by Owain Glyndwr, a potent Welsh nationalist who led the rebellion against the occupying English forces at that time.
The buildings and land forming the golf course were owned by the Thomas family who accumulated wealth and significant influence as they gradually passed from affluence to extravagance fuelled by a desire to be both Members of Parliament and landscapers on a grand scale. It is possible that, at that time, the early seeds of a golf course were beginning to emerge with records showing the area of the front nine holes was known as 'The Gathers' and the back nine aptly called 'The Lawns'.
The Thomas family eventually paid the price for their extravagant lifestyle and, in 1774, were forced to sell land and property and Wenvoe Castle passed into the hands of Peter Birt who made his personal fortune from coal and canals in Yorkshire. Mr Birt immediately set about dismantling the buildings on the site, rebuilding in its place a mansion house with castellated battlements with the front of the new 'castle' measuring some 374 feet long. This was the only mansion house built in Wales that was designed by Robert Adams. The Birt family married into the Jenner family, who later became involved in the creation of the golf course.
However, in 1910 there was a severe fire which destroyed almost all of the Birt-built Wenvoe Castle, with only the East Pavilion, the Stables and Archway Tower remaining intact. These remaining buildings are still enough to provide the elegance and grace of a Country Mansion House and enjoy protection as a Grade II Listed Building.
The buildings took on a new lease of life as a clubhouse when the golf course was opened in July 1936 by the Rev. Hugh Jenner, the club's first president and benefactor over many years.
The outbreak of World War II had a dramatic effect on the golf course. The top floor of the clubhouse was requisitioned, and the back nine holes were ploughed up and commanded to produce cereals. By early 1941, club meetings were cancelled because of air raids and blackouts and this fear was not without justification as bombs actually fell on the fifth fairway causing considerable damage.
After the war, it took some considerable time to regain the land for golfing purposes, and it was not until 1956 that the full 18 holes finally came back into play and, by 1958, a water supply had been installed to every green.
Over the years, improvements to the course have been carefully planned and implemented. A demanding layout has been developed through the planting of significant numbers of trees, particularly on the back nine holes. Additional bunkers were strategically placed to supplement the natural hazards such as the lakes. The result demands good course management by the player and a stern but fair and enjoyable test of golf. Adjustment of the tees has enabled the length of the course to be maximised, and the course has now been extended to championship standard of 6544 yards from the back tees.
What's in the shed
Toro 3250
Toro 3250 - 8 Blade units
Toro 5010-H
Toro HDX
Toro Workman
Kubota tractor with front loader
Toro Pro Core
Verti-Drain 7316
TY-Crop Dresser
Hardi sprayer
Tru Turf roller
Vortex blower
Sweep-N-Fill brush
GreenTek Sarel roller
Women in turfcare
In an era of equality, we at Pitchcare don't wish to be seen as singling out females in the industry. However, in a male-dominated profession, we wanted to ask Lucy how she feels about it.
How do you find being a woman in a male dominated industry?
Most in the industry have been welcoming
I believe I have had to work harder and prove myself
Don't be put off by the few negative comments out there
You could say we work smarter
Have you experienced any adversity whilst in the job towards yourself?
People's perceptions - this is where we need to be visible
When enquiring about lift capacity on tractors, I was asked 'what colour do you want it in love'? I found this unprofessional and answered not yours
In interviews, I have always been asked, 'can you lift heavy things?' and 'I know we shouldn't ask but do you have children?'
Do you enjoy the Job?
I love the job! Therefore, I hate that so many women are missing out on this great industry
What are your thoughts on getting more women interested in working in the industry?
I don't think it's just women. There seems to be a whole recruitment shortage and taking away 50% of the population makes it harder. The turf industry needs to push the sector as a whole. I believe most greenkeepers fall into the industry because they played golf, or a family member did the job ... not many grew up wanting to be greenkeepers. Again, this is where visibility comes into it and I think TV coverage of tournament set-ups may be helping
What advice do you have for any women who are interested in a career in groundsmanship?
Give it a try! Clubs are screaming out for volunteers or seasonal help, which is a great place to start. Then, if you enjoy it, look at it becoming a career. There is lots of information and contacts out there that would help, but don't be put off
Too good a profession to be missing out
I hope seeing me on the surface - someone who they can relate to - provides motivation
Read Getting Personal with Lucy here
Share & Support the Turfcare Industry
Contact Kerry Haywood
kerry@pitchcare.com
Contact Peter Britton
peter@pitchcare.com
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© 2019 Maxwell Amenity Ltd - Pitchcare.com is a trading name of Maxwell Amenity Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales. Company number: 2152566 - VAT number: GB100105700 - Webpage generated by octavia 936d4344
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PSLS • DLC & Patches • News • PS4 News, Trophies, Reviews, and More
Batman: Arkham Knight Batgirl DLC Will Take Place in an Ocean-Themed Amusement Park, Will Be Called “A Family Matter”
Mark LabbeTuesday, July 07, 2015
Some details about the upcoming piece of Batman: Arkham Knight DLC Batgirl: A Family Matter have just been released, including information on the content’s setting and Batgirl’s abilities.
Talking with Entertainment Weekly, WB Games Montreal Design Producer Justin Vazquez explained that the DLC will take place in a large, ocean-themed park called Seagate Amusement Park — an area that the Joker has filled with traps.
We wanted to recreate the feeling of being trapped in a bizarre and unique open environment playing a game of cat and mouse with the Joker.
Vazquez also mentioned that while Batgirl won’t be as physically powerful as Batman, she will be able to hack into things, allowing her to solve unique puzzles and even take down bad guys.
Hacking is really what separates her from the other characters. It’s a gameplay mechanic with which the player can create situations for Batgirl to really shine. Our intention was that Batgirl should be less powerful than Batman, but that Batgirl plus hacking could give her opportunities do things that not even Batman can pull off.
Batgirl: A Family Matter will release for free for Season Pass owners on July 14, and will be available on July 21 at the price of $6.99 for everyone else.
[Source: Entertainment Weekly]
Tags: Batman, Batman: Arkham, Batman: Arkham Knight, Justin Vazquez, Rocksteady Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, WB Games Montreal
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James Crooks
As a child, I remember the old Grand National series which preceded the Winston Cup, back when they used to race 3 or 4 times a week at tracks all over the country. These were the times when Richard Petty ran up the bulk of his 200 wins. Back in those days, my friends and I were all fans of King Richard. In a lot of ways, I still am.
I became a dedicated fan of NASCAR when R.J. Reynolds came along and changed the sport I was already enamored with. The Winston Cup was born, and the sport started to grow. I was still a kid then, but I started following drivers other than the King, such as David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Bobby and Donnie Allison, and a few others. I became a fan of Cale, mostly because he was from my native South Carolina. Back in those days, I didn’t become a diehard fan of only one driver though. I just loved the sport for what it was becoming, and wanted more than anything to become one of these hard-bitten heroes on the track.
Back in the days before cooling helmets and power steering, these guys were rough and strong. Working in conditions that would incapacitate most people, these boys went at it for hours in unbelievable heat, strong-arming their cars around the track with brute force. The diminutive NASCAR driver had not yet come along. It took not only brains, but brawn to handle the race cars of yesteryear.
I always liked the drivers who said what was on their minds. Back in the day, that was, well, pretty much everyone. These were guys who worked hard, played hard, and, by Golly, lived hard. They often drove to the tracks, pulling their cars behind them, and then drove home after the race. There were no motor homes, no elaborate haulers, and most of the drivers were happy for an impromptu meet and greet before or after a race.
This was before the days of agents, handlers, or all the people who keep the great unwashed public away from the hot commodity, the race car driver. It would be impossible today for drivers to do what guys like Petty, Pearson, Yarborough, et al could do back in the day. It’s not a kinder, gentler world when it comes to NASCAR fans, even today with the actual attendance numbers so low. Now, don’t get me wrong, the average NASCAR fan today is much nicer, gentler, and kinder than are probably fans of other major sport. Most of the fans, male or female, are bigger than the drivers are these days!
Smaller drivers, with modern conveniences, are the way of today. First of all, a smaller driver saves weight, which is very important in a race situation. Less weight equals more speed. That’s a given. Unfortunately, it seems that with smaller drivers, there are smaller personalities.
Maybe I’m wrong, but today’s average driver, crew chief, official, president, etc. is lacking in personality. There are exceptions. Thankfully, in today’s NASCAR, some people are not afraid to speak their minds. Earnhardt Jr., for example, says what he thinks from time to time. So does Tony Stewart, whom I’m going to miss as a driver. Kevin Harvick does so as well. The Busch brothers are great examples, but I can only stomach so much of them. Sorry, but I’m telling the truth here. Sometimes there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Sometimes there is too much of anything.
Since Winston left the sport, my heart, as a fan, has been broken many times. I was never and am not a fan of the Chase. In my opinion, it drives sponsorship away, just when the sport needs it the most. I am all for safety, for the drivers, crew, officials and fans. The improvements NASCAR has made in terms of safety over the last decade and a half are laudable. We love hard racing, but I never want to see anyone get hurt, or God forbid, dead. SAFER barriers, HANS, etc. are all brilliant improvements to our sport.
The initial COT, or Car of Tomorrow was a disaster. It might have been safer, but it really flirted with the concept of IROC racing, which, when it was a novelty, was entertaining, but I don’t know anyone who really wanted to see more of it.
Bill France Sr. was smart enough to invent a commodity that would sell tickets, and it did. Fortunately, Bill Jr. was smart enough to realize that the status quo was working and didn’t implement any major changes. The changes that Bill Jr. brought were hotly contested at the time, but pale in comparison to what happened next, which was the ascension of Brian France to CEO.
The Chase has been messed up ever since it started. I think it’s better now that it was in its original incarnation, but there is a lot lacking, in my opinion. The TV networks only cover basically the Chase cars, and maybe some of the top five during any given race, but there are a lot of cars out there who never get the benefit of a camera shot unless they are involved in a wreck.
I’m not an advertising person, but I’m guessing that sponsors hate it when their car or driver never gets a mention on TV. It makes sponsors think that their advertising dollars might be better spent elsewhere.
I love this sport, and have nearly as early as I can remember. I love the pageantry of it, I love that there is such respect for the military. I love the fans. I love the traditions. I love it all.
I just wish that the powers-that-be hadn’t committed some sort of suicide by thinking that the only way to make this sport better is to change what’s been working for decades. Sometimes, change is good. We all, on some level, know that. But change just for the sake of change is rarely good. I think NASCAR has proven that in the last decade or so.
Should Santa grant me a wish, which he should, because I’ve been an exceptionally good boy this year (except when I was being bad), I wish that Brian France would go back to NFL marketing, or MLB or where ever the heck his last job was before coming back to a sport he doesn’t seem to know or appreciate.
I’m not trying to write a hit piece on Brian France, but the France family controls NASCAR. They control it absolutely. I just think it’s a shame to see a legacy squandered away that took a grandfather and father to build.
It’s Christmas time; my favorite time of the year. It’s a season for giving, and I hope each and every one who reads this will take a little time and be thankful for what and whom you have, and to think about your friends, neighbors, and family who might not have as much as they need. If you can help out someone, please do. I don’t have much, but I feel like it’s important to do what you can for those who need more than me.
The 2017 season is just around the corner. Buck up, my friends! Eventually the mess we have mired ourselves in will probably sort itself out. Either NASCAR survives or it will become forgotten. My goal is that we always strive for better races, better cars, and a better governing body. We all make mistakes. Let’s fix them and move on.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from me to all of you!
Email James
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2MATCH URL: https://assets.rappler.com/8FCAA507A60C4EA38AA533FF662DA938/img/0B76F3FBE34949BABE322691C15E228C/national-canvassing-bol-comelec-day-2-jan252019-002.jpg
Comelec: Bangsamoro Organic Law 'deemed ratified'
The historic vote creates the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, a more powerful political entity that allows the Bangsamoro people a chance at genuine self-governance
Pia Ranada
@piaranada
Published 8:18 PM, January 25, 2019
Updated 10:41 PM, January 25, 2019
BANGSAMORO PLEBISCITE. The ballot boxes containing election results from Isabela City, Basilan, are processed during the canvassing of Bangsamoro plebiscite results in Intramuros, Manila on January 25, 2019. Photo by Inoue Jaena/Rappler
MANILA, Philippines – Opening a new chapter in their history, the people of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) voted to ratify the law creating a new Bangsamoro region.
A majority of ARMM voters chose to approve the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) or Republic Act 11054 on Monday, January 21.
On Friday evening, January 25, the National Plebiscite Board of Canvassers (NPBOC) announced the official results of the plebiscite, saying the BOL was "deemed ratified."
The Comelec, sitting as the NPBOC, also proclaimed that Cotabato City "shall form part" of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), while the City of Isabela (in Basilan) "shall not form part" of the BARMM.
The results for the entire ARMM are as follows:
“YES” to ratifying Bangsamoro Organic Law - 1,540,017 votes
“NO” to ratifying Bangsamoro Organic Law - 198,750 votes
Here are the results for Cotabato City and Isabela City who were asked if they would want to join the BARMM:
Cotabato City - Yes: 36,682 | No: 24,994
Isabela City - Yes: 19,032 | No: 22,441
Ratification means the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or BARMM. It will replace the ARMM, which has been called a “failed experiment” because of its dependence on the national government in Metro Manila and accusations of corruption and mismanagement.
ARMM is composed of 5 provinces: Basilan (excluding Isabela City), Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao (excluding Cotabato City), Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi.
The BARMM, meanwhile, will have more powers and will receive an annual unconditional budget allocation, some P60 billion to P70 billion, from the national government – making it more independent and reducing the need for regional officials to “beg” for funding from Manila.
It will also have a parliament, to be composed of representatives from the current ARMM provinces, additional territories that voted to join BARMM, and representatives for women, Christians, and indigenous peoples.
Expanded territory
The BARMM will also be at least one city larger than the ARMM. Cotabato City, the so-called “crown jewel” and main urban hub of the Bangsamoro region, voted to join the BARMM on Monday. (READ: How Cotabato was won)
Twice before, Cotabato City had refused to join ARMM – voting “no” in 1989 and again in 2001.
The hard-won victory of the BOL in the city, however, is being contested by its mayor, Cynthia Guiani Sayadi, the most powerful voice opposing the city’s inclusion in the BARMM.
HISTORIC VOTE. A Moro woman casts her vote in a polling precinct in Simuay Junction Central Elementary School in Simuay, Sultan Kudarat on January 21, 2019, day of the plebiscite for the Bangsamoro Organic Law. Photo by Manman Dejeto
Cotabato City's vote, however, does not affect the ratification of the BOL as only a majority of ARMM votes are required for the law's approval.
Because of BOL's ratification, a second plebiscite will be held on February 6 in Lanao del Norte (except Iligan City) and 67 barangays in North Cotabato. Six municipalities in Lanao del Norte and 67 barangays in North Cotabato will be asked if they want to join the BARMM.
However, even if they say yes, their mother local government units will also have to agree to their joining the BARMM. This requirement was among the more contentious provisions in the BOL.
Sulu votes 'no'
Despite the BOL's landslide victory in most provinces in ARMM, island province Sulu voted against the BOL ratification.
Sulu Governor Abdusakur "Toto" Tan II has filed a petition before the Supreme Court to declare the BOL unconstitutional. He claims Sulu should be allowed to opt out of the BARMM by voting "no," instead of its votes being lumped together with the rest of ARMM.
He also asserted that the Bangsamoro Parliament to be created by the BOL violates the principle of separation of legislative and executive powers stated in the Constitution. The Bangsamoro law states that the chief minister and Cabinet of the Bangsamoro government will be chosen from members of the parliament.
Despite Sulu's "no" vote, it will still become part of BARMM because the BOL states all ARMM provinces votes are to be taken as one, instead of per province.
Hopes for peace
The BOL is a culmination of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s 40-year struggle for autonomy, including on-and-off talks with the government spanning the administration of 4 presidents.
Finally, under the administraiton of Benigno Aquino III, the MILF signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), which would lay the foundation for the BOL.
A previous version of the BOL, called the Bangsamoro Basic Law, was already being deliberated in Congress on Aquino’s last year in power when the Mamasapano massacre derailed its passage.
Duterte, Mindanao’s first president, resumed efforts with the MILF, this time involving one faction of rival group Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). In July 2018, he signed the BOL.
Many Moros have pinned their hopes for peace in Mindanao on the BOL. Clashes between the MILF and government troops have claimed 120,000 lives. With its passage, the MILF will now have to fulfill its promise of decommissioning their 30,000 soldiers and firearms. – with Paterno Esmaquel II/Rappler.com
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Filed under:ARMM•Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao•Bangsamoro Organic Law•Bangsamoro plebiscite news•Bangsamoro plebiscite
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Yes…Yes…YES: The Best Movie Orgasms Of All Time
Photo: Moviestore Collection/Shutterstock.
Thirty years ago, Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) gave us the best movie orgasm of all time, over a pastrami sandwich (mustard and pickle on the side) at New York’s Katz’s Deli. Over at the next table, an older lady deadpans, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
It’s the most iconic line in When Harry Met Sally, a movie penned by Nora Ephron and filled with some of the most memorable dialogue of all time (“Baby fish mouth;” “Too much pepper in my paprikash;” “He’s never going to leave her;” “Men and women can’t be friends,” are just a few notable examples), a cry for sexual liberation that took a lighthearted comedy moment and made it subversive.
The first on-screen female orgasm featured in a non-pornographic narrative film can be traced by to 1933, when then-Hedwig Kiesler (who would become Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr) starred in Ecstasy, a Czech-Austrian movie directed by Gustav Machatý. In the scene in question, the camera zooms in on Kiesler’s face, showing her character, Eva, in the throes of passion with her lover. It was instantly controversial, and the film was condemned by American censor Joseph Breen as "highly — even dangerously — indecent.”
That attitude — that a woman’s sexual fulfillment is somehow wrong, or dirty — is still deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche. Depictions of female pleasure are still few and far between, and the subject of mass cultural debate. More often than not, orgasm scenes are included to cater to the male gaze, rather than as a real-life depiction of a woman enjoying a sexual encounter. Of the ones that have made it into the zeitgest, the vast majority feature white cis-women, having sex with white male partners. And the double standard that values male pleasure at the expense of a woman’s is still very much alive.
That’s why When Harry Met Sally still holds up today. That scene is about a woman telling a clueless man that he knows so little about women’s pleasure that he can’t tell when it’s fabricated for his own enjoyment. And yet, it’s also a subtle nod to the women in the room who rarely get that kind of overwhelming climax. This is the kind of thing we can aspire to, and deserve. Even if it’s brought on by a really good pastrami sandwich.
Ahead, we take a look at the some of the most memorable movie orgasms of all time. Go ahead, enjoy!
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Barbarella, 1968
Who’s Moaning? Jane Fonda as Barbarella, silver-clad space traveler
The Technique: Fonda’s eyes remain perpetual saucers of surprise, as she navigates this unexpected technological marvel. As the music gets faster and more intense, she increasingly looks like she’s about to pass out.
Directed by Fonda’s then-husband, French filmmaker Roger Vadim, Barbarella was revolutionary in its portrayal of a woman’s sexuality, though undeniably filtered through the male gaze. As an agent sent by Earth’s president on a space mission to retrieve Doctor Durand Durand, Barbarella is captured and placed inside the Excessive Machine, an organ-like contraption built to stimulate women until they die from the force of their orgasms. Machine: 0; Jane Fonda: 1.
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When Harry Met Sally, 1989
Who’s Moaning? Meg Ryan as Sally Albright
The Technique: Ryan leans into the slow build up, starting with low rumbles, a couple of “Oh gods,” before catching her breath, and then giving into the moans, finishing off with a couple of loud “Yes!” screams, before bringing it all back down to Earth. A masterpiece.
“Most women at one time or another have faked it.” Nora Ephron’s immortal words have become so ubiquitous to pop culture that it’s easy to forget how subversive they were back when the film first premiered. Billy Crystal’s stunned face and increasingly uncomfortable mannerisms, while funny, demonstrate how little men know/think about women’s pleasure. “I’ll have what she’s having,” indeed.
40 Days and 40 Nights, 2002
Who’s Moaning? Shannyn Sossamon as Erica Sutton
The Technique: An orchid!!!
40 Days and 40 Nights is ostensibly about male pleasure. Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett) makes a vow to give up sex for Lent, thereby depriving himself of the release of an orgasm. But even as his dreams are populated with fields of boobs, this abstinence makes him more cognizant of the need to give pleasure to others, in this case, Erica. Never has an orchid been so sexy. Still, though, all that from a light touch from a flower??? I’m still not convinced.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, 2008
Who’s Moaning? Kristen Bell as TV star Sarah Marshall
The Technique: A whole lot of moaning.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall follows Peter Bretter’s (Jason Segel) sad and often embarrassing quest to get over his girlfriend, who dumps him for bad boy British singer Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). In this particular scene though, both Sarah and Peter fake orgasms with their respective partners in an effort to make the other jealous through their very thin adjoining hotel walls. And thus, the sex-off is born.
Bruce Almighty, 2003
Who’s Moaning? Jennifer Aniston as Grace Connelly
The Technique: To be fair to Grace, she was just going about her beauty business when Bruce decided to try out his powers on her body, so she’s understandably surprised as she’s thrown about the room in ecstasy. This is an obviously male perspective on female pleasure.
When anchorman Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) is passed up for a promotion, he basically calls out God for not doing his/her job. So, God is basically like, ‘Can you do better?’ and hands over the powers of the universe to Bruce, thereby making him a deity of sorts. And what better use of one’s powers than to give one’s girlfriend a surprise bathroom orgasm — is something no one asked, ever. Men, do not do this!
Easy A, 2010
Who’s Moaning? Emma Stone as Olive Penderghast
The Technique: What doesn’t she do? Banging on the wall, jumping on the bed, punching a guy in the stomach to hear him scream — Olive is committed to her craft.
Partially inspired by that scourge of high school English class, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Easy A tells the story of Olive Penderghast’s (Stone) rise to high school popularity and notoriety, as she fakes sleeping with unpopular boys to increase their status — and her myth. Of course, it all eventually backfires, but you have to admire her technique.
American Pie, 1999
Who’s Moaning? Tara Reid as Victoria “Vicky” Lathum
The Technique: This scene is big on the back arches and loud cries of pleasure, as Kevin makes up for his “shit-head” behavior to her by giving Vicky some “Tornado Tongue” action.
American Pie was about four boys making a pact to lose their virginity on prom night, but one of its most subversive and controversial scenes involved Vicky receiving oral sex from her boyfriend in her childhood bedroom while her parents wait for her to come down to dinner. She’s coming, guys.
Monster’s Ball, 2001
Who’s Moaning? Halle Berry as Leticia Musgrove
The Technique: This is the opposite of a fun sex scene — it’s raw, and full grief, and Berry gives it her all.
There’s a lot to take issue with in this movie, especially the iffy power dynamics between Leticia (Berry), and correctional officer Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton). And yet, this is the movie that earned Berry her Academy Award in 2002, making her the first and only Black woman to win Best Actress to this day. It’s also the rare scene showing a Black woman in the throes of passion.
Blue Valentine, 2010
Who’s Moaning? Michelle Williams as Cindy Heller
The Technique: This is a sweet, sweet scene. Cindy and Dean’s relationship is in its nascent stages, and his desire to give her pleasure is completely selfless. For now.
This particular scene infamously almost earned the film a NC-17 rating, which implies “extreme pornographic content.” That decision was contested by star Ryan Gosling in an interview: "There's plenty of oral sex scenes in a lot of movies, where it's a man receiving it from a woman — and they're R-rated. Ours is reversed and somehow it's perceived as pornographic.” We stan!
The Miseducation of Cameron Post, 2018
Who’s Moaning? Chloe Grace Moretz as Cameron Post
The Technique: This is a girl discovering her sexuality in the backseat of a car during prom, knowing full-well that she could be discovered at any second. It’s furtive, and exciting — until it very abruptly ends.
What makes Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron post so special in the canon of films addressing the dark truths about gay conversion camps is that it highlights the good times as well as the bad. And the scene early on in the film showing Cameron and her lover enjoying a prom night interlude is undoubtedly an enjoyable one, even if it’s the catalyst for some disturbing actions. What’s more, it’s an all-too-rare movie directed by a LGBTQ+ woman that openly depicts a queer woman enjoying sex.
The Back-Up Plan, 2010
Who’s Moaning? Jennifer Lopez as Zoe
The Technique: JLo is not playing around. There’s grasping of shirt collars, clenched eyelids, and at least six consecutive “Oh”s. And it all happens on top of a CHEESE BARREL!
The Back-Up Plan is an extremely forgettable movie, but J-Lo’s scene is seared into my brain. A woman enjoying a healthy sex life even as she’s made the decision to be a mother independently of any man? Get it, girl!
Ecstasy, 1933
Who’s Moaning? Hedy Lamarr as Eva Hermann
The Technique: The scene is largely silent, but you don’t need noise to convey, well, ecstasy.
Released in Germany and banned in the United States, Ecstasy was the first non-pornographic movie to prominently feature a woman’s orgasm. Hedy Lamarr became notorious for starring in the film, and almost lost out on a Hollywood contract because Louis B. Mayer disapproved. Luckily, she eventually won him over, and went on to become a famous movie star — and the inventor of Wi-Fi technology.
Mary, Queen of Scots, 2018
Who’s Moaning? Saoirse Ronan as Mary, Queen of Scots
The Technique: There is no room for Ronan to hide in this scene. The camera stays squarely on her face as we watch it contort with the ecstasy of her first real sexual encounter.
This scene in Josie Rourke’s Mary, Queen of Scots is a crucial addition to the movie orgasm canon, if only because of what comes after. Having received the best oral sex of her life, Mary (Ronan), asks her lover Henry Darnley (Jack Lowden) if she can reciprocate, and he turns her down. Talk about a royal move — she gets pleasured with no strings attached! It’s a moment designed for the female gaze, showcasing a woman’s pleasure, from her perspective.
What was so great about having that moment when Henry (Jack Lowden) goes down on her is that it’s purely for her,” Ronan told Refinery29 about that moment. “That’s a sexual revelation purely for her. It’s not to perform her duty, it’s not to give anything back to anyone else or to the state. It’s for her. It was so important to see this young girl experience this pleasure, probably for the first time, and have that be a real sort of revelation. It was just another element to her humanity.”
Best Women Orgasm Scenes In Movie History, Sex Scenes
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Edward I 'Longshanks' (r. 1272-1307)
Born in June 1239 at Westminster, Edward was named by his father Henry III after the last Anglo Saxon king (and his father's favourite saint), Edward the Confessor.
Edward's parents were renowned for their patronage of the arts (his mother, Eleanor of Provence, encouraged Henry III to spend money on the arts, which included the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey and a still-extant magnificent shrine to house the body of Edward the Confessor). As a result, Edward received a disciplined education - reading and writing in Latin and French, with training in the arts, sciences and music.
In 1254, Edward travelled to Spain for an arranged marriage at the age of 15 to 9-year-old Eleanor of Castile. Just before Edward's marriage, Henry III gave him the duchy of Gascony, one of the few remnants of the once vast French possessions of the English Angevin kings.
Gascony was part of a package which included parts of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the King's lands in Wales to provide an income for Edward. Edward then spent a year in Gascony, studying its administration.
Edward spent his young adulthood learning harsh lessons from Henry III's failures as a king, culminating in a civil war in which he fought to defend his father. Henry's ill-judged and expensive intervention in Sicilian affairs (lured by the Pope's offer of the Sicilian crown to Henry's second son, Edmund) failed, and aroused the anger of powerful barons including Henry's brother-in-law Simon de Montfort.
Bankrupt and threatened with excommunication, Henry was forced to agree to the Provisions of Oxford in 1258, under which his debts were paid in exchange for substantial reforms; a Great Council of 24, partly nominated by the barons, assumed the functions of the King's Council.
Henry repudiated the Provisions in 1261 and sought the help of the French king Louis IX (later known as St Louis for his piety and other qualities). This was the only time Edward was tempted to side with his charismatic and politically ruthless godfather Simon de Montfort - he supported holding a Parliament in his father's absence.
However, by the time Louis IX decided to side with Henry in the dispute and civil war broke out in England in 1263, Edward had returned to his father's side and became de Montfort's greatest enemy.
After winning the battle of Lewes in 1264 (after which Edward became a hostage to ensure his father abided by the terms of the peace), de Montfort summoned the Great Parliament in 1265 - this was the first time cities and burghs sent representatives to the parliament. (Historians differ as to whether de Montfort was an enlightened liberal reformer or an unscrupulous opportunist using any means to advance himself.)
In May 1265, Edward escaped from tight supervision whilst hunting. On 4 August, Edward and his allies outmanoeuvred de Montfort in a savage battle at Evesham; de Montfort predicted his own defeat and death 'let us commend our souls to God, because our bodies are theirs ... they are approaching wisely, they learned this from me.'
With the end of the civil war, Edward worked hard at social and political reconciliation between his father and the rebels, and by 1267 the realm had been pacified.
In April 1270 Parliament agreed an unprecedented levy of one-twentieth of every citizen's goods and possessions to finance Edward's Crusade to the Holy Lands. Edward left England in August 1270 to join the highly respected French king Louis IX on Crusade.
At a time when popes were using the crusading ideal to further their own political ends in Italy and elsewhere, Edward and King Louis were the last crusaders in the medieval tradition of aiming to recover the Holy Lands.
Louis died of the plague in Tunis before Edward's arrival, and the French forces were bought off from pursuing their campaign. Edward decided to continue regardless: 'by the blood of God, though all my fellow soldiers and countrymen desert me, I will enter Acre ... and I will keep my word and my oath to the death'.
Edward arrived in Acre in May 1271 with 1,000 knights; his crusade was to prove an anticlimax. Edward's small force limited him to the relief of Acre and a handful of raids, and divisions amongst the international force of Christian Crusaders led to Edward's compromise truce with the Baibars.
In June 1272, Edward survived a murder attempt by an Assassin (an order of Shi'ite Muslims) and left for Sicily later in the year. He was never to return on crusade.
Meanwhile, Henry III died on 16 November 1272. Edward succeeded to the throne without opposition - given his track record in military ability and his proven determination to give peace to the country, enhanced by his magnified exploits on crusade.
In Edward's absence, a proclamation in his name delcared that he had succeeded by hereditary right, and the barons swore allegeiance to him. Edward finally arrived in London in August 1274 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Aged 35, he was a veteran warrior ('the best lance in all the world', according to contemporaries), a leader with energy and vision, and with a formidable temper.
Edward was determined to enforce English kings' claims to primacy in the British Isles. The first part of his reign was dominated by Wales. At that time, Wales consisted of a number of disunited small Welsh princedoms; the South Welsh princes were in uneasy alliance with the Marcher lords (feudal earldoms and baronies set up by the Norman kings to protect the English border against Welsh raids) against the Northern Welsh based in the rocky wilds of Gwynedd, under the strong leadership of Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, Prince of Gwynedd.
In 1247, under the Treaty of Woodstock, Llywelyn had agreed that he held North Wales in fee to the English king. By 1272, Llywelyn had taken advantage of the English civil wars to consolidate his position, and the Peace of Montgomery (1267) had confirmed his title as Prince of Wales and recognised his conquests.
However, Llywelyn maintained that the rights of his principality were 'entirely separate from the rights' of England; he did not attend Edward's coronation and refused to do homage. Finally, in 1277 Edward decided to fight Llywelyn 'as a rebel and disturber of the peace', and quickly defeated him. War broke out again in 1282 when Llywelyn joined his brother David in rebellion.
Edward's determination, military experience and skilful use of ships brought from England for deployment along the North Welsh coast, drove Llywelyn back into the mountains of North Wales. The death of Llywelyn in a chance battle in 1282 and the subsequent execution of his brother David effectively ended attempts at Welsh independence.
Under the Statute of Wales of 1284, Wales was brought into the English legal framework and the shire system was extended. In the same year, a son was born in Wales to Edward and Queen Eleanor (also named Edward, this future king was proclaimed the first English Prince of Wales in 1301).
The Welsh campaign had produced one of the largest armies ever assembled by an English king - some 15,000 infantry (including 9,000 Welsh and a Gascon contingent); the army was a formidable combination of heavy Anglo-Norman cavalry and Welsh archers, whose longbow skills laid the foundations of later military victories in France such as that at Agincourt.
As symbols of his military strength and political authority, Edward spent some £80,000 on a network of castles and lesser strongholds in North Wales, employing a work-force of up to 3,500 men drawn from all over England. (Some castles, such as Conway and Caernarvon, remain in their ruined layouts today, as examples of fortresses integrated with fortified towns.)
Edward's campaign in Wales was based on his determination to ensure peace and extend royal authority, and it had broad support in England. Edward saw the need to widen support among lesser landowners and the merchants and traders of the towns. The campaigns in Wales, France and Scotland left Edward deeply in debt, and the taxation required to meet those debts meant enrolling national support for his policies.
To raise money, Edward summoned Parliament - up to 1286 he summoned Parliaments twice a year. (The word 'Parliament' came from the 'parley' or talks which the King had with larger groups of advisers.) In 1295, when money was needed to wage war against Philip of France (who had confiscated the duchy of Gascony), Edward summoned the most comprehensive assembly ever summoned in England.
This became known as the Model Parliament, for it represented various estates: barons, clergy, and knights and townspeople. By the end of Edward's reign, Parliament usually contained representatives of all these estates.
Edward used his royal authority to establish the rights of the Crown at the expense of traditional feudal privileges, to promote the uniform administration of justice, to raise income to meet the costs of war and government, and to codify the legal system.
In doing so, his methods emphasised the role of Parliament and the common law. With the able help of his Chancellor, Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Edward introduced much new legislation.
He began by commissioning a thorough survey of local government (with the results entered into documents known as the Hundred Rolls), which not only defined royal rights and possessions but also revealed administrative abuses.
The First Statute of Westminster (1275) codified 51 existing laws - many originating from Magna Carta - covering areas ranging from extortion by royal officers, lawyers and bailiffs, methods of procedure in civil and criminal cases to freedom of elections.
Edward's first Parliament also enacted legislation on wool, England's most important export at the time. At the request of the merchants, Edward was given a customs grant on wool and hides which amounted to nearly £10,000 a year. Edward also obtained income from the licence fees imposed by the Statute of Mortmain (1279), under which gifts of land to the Church (often made to evade death duties) had to have a royal licence.
The Statutes of Gloucester (1278) and Quo Warranto (1290) attempted to define and regulate feudal jurisdictions, which were an obstacle to royal authority and to a uniform system of justice for all; the Statute of Winchester (1285) codified the policing system for preserving public order.
Other statutes had a long-term effect on land law and on the feudal framework in England. The Second Statute of Westminster (1285) restricted the alienation of land and kept entailed estates within families: tenants were only tenants for life and not able to sell the property to others. The Third Statute of Westminster or Quia Emptores (1290) stopped subinfeudation (in which tenants of land belonging to the King or to barons subcontracted their properties and related feudal services).
Edward's assertion that the King of Scotland owed feudal allegiance to him, and the embittered Anglo-Scottish relations leading to war which followed, were to overshadow the rest of Edward's reign in what was to become known as the 'Great Cause'.
Under a treaty of 1174, William the Lion of Scotland had become the vassal to Henry II, but in 1189 Richard I had absolved William from his allegiance. Intermarriage between the English and Scottish royal houses promoted peace between the two countries until the premature death of Alexander III in 1286.
In 1290, his granddaughter and heiress, Margaret the 'Maid of Norway' (daughter of the King of Norway, she was pledged to be married to Edward's then only surviving son, Edward of Caernarvon), also died.
For Edward, this dynastic blow was made worse by the death in the same year of his much-loved wife Eleanor (her body was ceremonially carried from Lincoln to Westminster for burial, and a memorial cross erected at every one of the twelve resting places, including what became known as Charing Cross in London).
In the absence of an obvious heir to the Scottish throne, the disunited Scottish magnates invited Edward to determine the dispute. In order to gain acceptance of his authority in reaching a verdict, Edward sought and obtained recognition from the rival claimants that he had the 'sovereign lordship of Scotland and the right to determine our several pretensions'.
In November 1292, Edward and his 104 assessors gave the whole kingdom to John Balliol or Baliol as the claimant closest to the royal line; Balliol duly swore loyalty to Edward and was crowned at Scone.
John Balliol's position proved difficult. Edward insisted that Scotland was not independent and he, as sovereign lord, had the right to hear in England appeals against Balliol's judgements in Scotland.
In 1294, Balliol lost authority amongst Scottish magnates by going to Westminster after receiving a summons from Edward; the magnates decided to seek allies in France and concluded the 'Auld Alliance' with France (then at war with England over the duchy of Gascony) - an alliance which was to influence Scottish history for the next 300 years.
In March 1296, having failed to negotiate a settlement, the English led by Edward sacked the city of Berwick near the River Tweed. Balliol formally renounced his homage to Edward in April 1296, speaking of 'grievous and intolerable injuries ... for instance by summoning us outside our realm ... as your own whim dictated ... and so ... we renounce the fealty and homage which we have done to you'.
Pausing to design and start the rebuilding of Berwick as the financial capital of the country, Edward's forces overran remaining Scottish resistance. Scots leaders were taken hostage, and Edinburgh Castle, amongst others, was seized. Balliol surrendered his realm and spent the rest of his life in exile in England and Normandy.
Having humiliated Balliol, Edward's insensitive policies in Scotland continued: he appointed a trio of Englishmen to run the country. Edward had the Stone of Scone - also known as the Stone of Destiny - on which Scottish sovereigns had been crowned removed to London and subsequently placed in the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey (where it remained until it was returned to Scotland in 1996). Edward never built stone castles on strategic sites in Scotland, as he had done so successfully in Wales - possibly because he did not have the funds for another ambitious castle-building programme.
By 1297, Edward was facing the biggest crisis in his reign, and his commitments outweighed his resources. Chronic debts were being incurred by wars against France, in Flanders, Gascony and Wales as well as Scotland; the clergy were refusing to pay their share of the costs, with the Archbishop of Canterbury threatening excommunication; Parliament was reluctant to contribute to Edward's expensive and unsuccessful military policies; the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk refused to serve in Gascony, and the barons presented a formal statement of their grievances.
In the end, Edward was forced to reconfirm the Charters (including Magna Carta) to obtain the money he required; the Archbishop was eventually suspended in 1306 by the new Gascon Pope Clement V; a truce was declared with France in 1297, followed by a peace treaty in 1303 under which the French king restored the duchy of Gascony to Edward.
In Scotland, Edward pursued a series of campaigns from 1298 onwards. William Wallace had risen in Balliol's name and recovered most of Scotland, before being defeated by Edward at the battle of Falkirk in 1298. Wallace escaped, only to be captured in 1305, allegedly by the treachery of a fellow Scot and taken to London, where he was executed.
In 1304, Edward summoned a full Parliament (which elected Scottish representatives also attended), in which arrangements for the settlement of Scotland were made. The new government in Scotland featured a Council, which included Robert the Bruce. Bruce unexpectedly rebelled in 1306 by killing a fellow counsellor and was crowned king of Scotland at Scone. Despite his failing health, Edward was carried north to pursue another campaign, but he died en route at Burgh on Sands on 7 July 1307 aged 68, succeeded by his son, Edward II.
According to chroniclers, Edward requested that his bones should be carried on Scottish campaigns and that his heart be taken to the Holy Land. However, Edward was buried at Westminster Abbey in a plain black marble tomb, which in later years was painted with the words Scottorum malleus (Hammer of the Scots) and Pactum serva (Keep troth).
Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Exchequer paid to keep candles burning 'round the body of the Lord Edward, formerly King of England, of famous memory'.
Image: Edward I of England with his brother-in-law, Alexander III, on his right hand side. The Royal Arms of Scotland can be seen above Alexander's head
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Russia tests nuclear-tipped missile interceptor (VIDEO)
© mil.ru
The Russian military has successfully tested a short-range ballistic missile interceptor designed to destroy incoming nuclear warheads with a nuclear explosion in the air. These missiles are used in Moscow’s anti-ballistic missile system.
The A-135 ABM system protects Russia’s capital and its surroundings from a possible nuclear missile attack. It consists of phased-array radar, a command center, and launchers that release two types of interceptor missiles, the long-range 51T6 and the short-range 53T6.
On Friday, Russia’s strategic missile forces and air and missile defense forces jointly tested a 53T6 missile at the Sary Shagan test range in Kazakhstan. Of course, the missile, which has been dubbed Gazelle by NATO, didn’t have a nuclear warhead like those in the 68 silos around Moscow.
“During the test, the ABM system interceptor successfully performed its task and hit a provisionary target,” Deputy Commander of the Air and Missile Defense Andrey Prikhodko said.
The video of the test was provided by the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Russian military tests interceptor missiles once or twice a year to confirm their combat readiness.
The 10-meter-long rocket reportedly can deliver a 10-kiloton nuclear tip a distance of up to 80 kilometers at a speed of three kilometers per second.
Russia is currently developing a new interceptor missile that is now approaching a phase that requires intensive test launches, according to Russian military officials. Dubbed the Nudol, most information about the long-range projectile is classified.
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May 30, 2018; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Washington Capitals at T-Mobile Arena. © Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports / Reuters
Check out the latest news and stories on the NHL, which is a professional hockey league in North America. The NHL was established in 1917 in Montreal, Canada. Get news and details about the founding of the NHL and its predecessor, the National Hockey Association (NHA). Today, the NHL is headquartered in New York and consists of 31 teams from the US and Canada. Don’t miss the news and updates on NHL games, standings, teams like the Vegas Golden Knights and the Washington Capitals, as well as players like Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.
Russian NHL star tumbles off fire truck during Blues Stanley Cup parade (VIDEO)
St. Louis Blues forward Ivan Barbashev was sent flying off a parade fire truck while celebrating the historic Stanley Cup win with his teammates.
‘St. Louis is rocking’: Wild celebrations as Blues seal historic Stanley Cup win (VIDEO)
St. Louis erupted in celebration after the Blues claimed their first NHL title in the franchise’s history, defeating the Boston Bruins 4-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals on Wednesday night.
St. Louis Blues claim their 1st Stanley Cup after 51 seasons, longest wait in NHL history
The St. Louis Blues have claimed their first Stanley Cup ever by defeating the Boston Bruins 4-1 in game 7 in Boston.
Local newspaper prematurely congratulates St. Louis Blues on NHL Stanley Cup win
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper has apologized for congratulating the St. Louis Blues on winning their first-ever Stanley Cup before game number six against the Boston Bruins, which the team then went on to lose.
‘Not in love with the coco?’ NHL star Kuznetsov denies drug use as ‘cocaine’ video appears online
Russian Washington Capitals star forward Evgeny Kuznetsov has denied using illicit drugs after a video of him sitting beside two lines of white powder circulated online, prompting the NHL franchise to investigate the episode.
‘Accept defeat with honor’: Ovechkin wife hits out after Russia world championship defeat
The wife of Russian NHL star Alexander Ovechkin has told fans “to accept defeat with honor” in an apparent riposte to criticism of the team following their world championship semifinal exit at the hands of Finland.
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Gregory L. Skidmore
Governmental and Internal Investigations
Intellectual Property and Technology
Harvard Law School, J.D., cum laude, 2005
Duke University, B.A., summa cum laude, 2002; Phi Beta Kappa
Greg Skidmore helps clients solve their toughest problems both in the courtroom and in the boardroom. His clients include large corporations, small businesses and individuals in a range of industries, including health care, telecommunications and media, manufacturing, retail, finance and energy.
Greg has represented clients in court in more than 20 states, eight federal Courts of Appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has argued and won cases for clients at every stage of litigation, including dispositive motions, class certification, trial and appeal. He also represents clients in investigations by federal and state enforcement agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and state attorneys general.
Greg has particular experience in antitrust law. He assists clients in obtaining antitrust clearance for mergers and acquisitions, represents clients in antitrust litigation, and advises clients on antitrust compliance matters. In the past year, he has served as antitrust counsel in mergers with a combined value of more than $8 billion.
Before joining Robinson Bradshaw, Greg was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington, D.C.
Charlotte Business Journal, Charlotte’s Forty Under 40, 2019
Business North Carolina, Legal Elite, antitrust, 2019
DC Super Lawyers, Rising Star, business litigation and antitrust litigation, 2014-16
The Legal 500 U.S., 2015
Law Clerk, The Honorable Julia S. Gibbons, U.S. Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit
Lead national counsel defending a Fortune 20 telecommunications company in a series of cases alleging False Claims Act and other claims related to the alleged under-collection of certain government taxes. To date, have achieved complete dismissals of claims, through appeal, in Massachusetts, Georgia, Minnesota, Iowa and the District of Columbia.
Successfully defended a national gas distributor against claims in federal court alleging unfair business practices and related claims. The case settled on very favorable terms while our client’s motion for summary judgment was pending.
Successfully defended a national water treatment company in a False Claims Act action.
Represented a national oil and gas company in multiple litigations across the country.
Trial counsel for a government contractor in a three-week AAA arbitration arising out of a dispute over a U.S. Army contract worth $6 billion. The panel unanimously ruled in favor of the client and awarded damages.
Trial counsel in Colorado federal court for three-week jury trial. Final judgment entered in favor of clients.
Antitrust (Merger Review)
Regularly represents clients in obtaining antitrust clearance for significant transactions. Representative transactions include:
Fresenius Medical Care, the world's largest provider of dialysis products and services, in its $2 billion acquisition of NxStage Medical, a leading medical device company.
Raycom Media, Inc. in its $3.65 billion merger with Gray Television. Devised a pre-planned divestiture package that streamlined the Department of Justice review process and allowed for a timely closing of the transaction.
The $2.15 billion sale of Sound Physicians, a hospitalist company, to a consortium led by Summit Partners. Transaction was cleared without the issuance of a Second Request.
Fresenius Medical Care in its acquisition of an equity interest in Humacyte Inc. Achieved early termination of the Hart-Scott Rodino waiting period, which allowed the transaction to close in less than 30 days.
Fresenius Medical Care in its sale of its laboratory division to the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services.
Fresenius Medical Care in multiple acquisitions of dialysis clinics.
Antitrust (Litigation)
Defends a large poultry manufacturer against antitrust claims brought in North Carolina federal court.
Successfully argued to defeat class certification in an antitrust case where plaintiffs sought more than $2 billion in damages.
Won a motion to dismiss a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that a settlement agreement resolving patent litigation concerning the drug AndroGel® violated the antitrust laws.
Defeated on a motion to dismiss antitrust claims related to the drug ACTOS® by a putative class seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Won a motion for summary judgment that dismissed all antitrust claims brought against the subsidiary of one of the nation's largest aviation companies.
Government Enforcement and Investigations
Regularly represents clients in internal investigations related to, among other things, intellectual property and trade secrets, competition issues and employee theft.
Represents clients in a range of industries in confidential investigations and enforcement proceedings brought by the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and attorneys general in more than a dozen states.
Represented a major pharmaceutical manufacturer in negotiating settlements and consent decrees with the Federal Trade Commission and 48 state attorneys general to resolve multibillion-dollar litigation.
Business Advice and Counseling
Regularly advises clients on strategies to minimize legal risks in all aspects of business.
Represents a Grammy-winning music group.
Represents an Emmy-nominated television producer in business matters.
Successfully argued for affirmance of an order dismissing a False Claims Act matter on standing grounds. Phone Recovery Servs., LLC v. Verizon of New England, Inc., 480 Mass. 224 (2018).
Obtained an order affirming the dismissal of a False Claims Act matter and denying leave to replead. Phone Recovery Servs., LLC v. Verizon Washington, DC, Inc., --- A.3d ---- (D.C. 2018).
Successfully argued for affirmance of a district court order in an ERISA matter. Solis v. Malkani, 638 F.3d 269 (4th Cir. 2011).
Successfully obtained an order affirming the dismissal of an ERISA complaint for lack of standing. Malkani v. Clark Consulting, Inc., 441 F. App'x 164 (4th Cir. 2011).
In case of first impression, successfully argued that landowners could not use a routine provision to terminate their oil and gas leases. Koonce v. Chesapeake Exploration, L.L.C., 47 N.E.3d 876 (Ohio App. 2016).
After being retained on appeal, obtained a reversal of a district court ruling that an oil and gas lease held by the client had terminated for failure to conduct operations, and judgment was entered for the client. Henry v. Chesapeake Appalachia, L.L.C., 739 F.3d 909 (6th Cir. 2014).
Successfully argued for reversal of a district court order dismissing as untimely a petition for writ of habeas corpus. Terry v. Gaetz, 339 F. App’x 646 (7th Cir. 2009).
In a case of first impression, obtained ruling that District of Columbia courts, like federal courts, require a plaintiff to allege an injury-in-fact to have standing. Grayson v. AT&T Corp., 15 A.3d 219 (D.C. 2011) (en banc).
Robinson Bradshaw Guides Verizon to Win in Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Greg Skidmore Quoted on Antitrust Matter in Business Journal
Greg Skidmore Honored Among Charlotte's 40 Under 40
Robinson Bradshaw Represents Fresenius in $2 Billion Acquisition of NxStage Medical
Twenty Robinson Bradshaw Attorneys Named 2019 Legal Elite
Robinson Bradshaw Guides Verizon to Win in False Claims Act Case
Robinson Bradshaw Guides Fresenius Through Antitrust Review of Two Transactions Totaling $2.3 Billion
Law360 Highlights Robinson Bradshaw's $3.65 Billion Deal
Robinson Bradshaw Represents Raycom in $3.65 Billion Merger
Greg Skidmore Comments on Sports Logo Debate in Law360
Greg Skidmore Quoted in Law360 Article on Sports Trademark Controversy
Robinson Bradshaw Adds Experienced Litigator to Charlotte Office
Hot Topics for North Carolina Antitrust Lawyers and In-House Counsel
Robinson Bradshaw
101 N. Tryon St., Suite 1900
Effective Strategies for Litigation Management
Byron's South End
101 W. Worthington Ave. #110
Strategies for Litigation Management and Prevention
101 N. Tryon St.
SCOTUS Gives Whistleblowers Longer to Sue Under the False Claims Act
DOJ Releases Cooperation Credit Guidelines in False Claims Act Investigations
New Hart-Scott-Rodino Filing Thresholds for 2019
FTC Provides Guidance on Sharing Information in Merger Negotiations
The N.C. Identity Theft Protection Act in the Age of Phishing
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Litigation Advisory Committee
North Carolina Bar Association, Antitrust and Complex Business Disputes Law Section, Section Council
CMS Foundation, Board Member, 2018-present
Dilworth Elementary School, Board Member, 2018-19
Duke Charlotte, Board Member, 2017-present
Duke University, Reunion Committee, 2017
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Window To Paris
Window To Paris (1995)
Agnes Soral as Nicole
Serguej Dontsov as Nikolai
Yuri Mamin
Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Rated NR No Particularly Offensive Content
| Roger Ebert
Housing space is at a premium in Russia, and the young man is happy to be assigned a room in an apartment already filled with as many people as one of those crowded warrens in "Crime and Punishment." What amazes him is how many pianos there are in the apartment. "We work at the factory," a resident helpfully explains. That means they have more pianos than they need - but not enough, of course, food, clothing or vodka.
One night the new boarder, a teacher whose name is Nikolai, sees a ghostly visitor in the apartment. The others see her, too, and explain that she is an old woman, looking for her cat, which has gone missing ever since her death. Where is the cat? Its disappearance holds a clue to the movie's comic premise, which is that by stepping through a mirror in the old woman's room, you can be magically transported from St. Petersburg to Paris.
Paris is of course everything St. Petersburg is not: a consumer paradise where the shelves of the stores are bursting with bounty.
Soon Nikolai and the others are moving back and forth between Russia and France almost as a daily commute. And the director, Yuri Mamin, is making jokes that I imagine resonate a great deal more deeply, and even painfully, in Russia than in France - or America.
Things are not running well in Russia. The old days of top-down management have been replaced by indifferent anarchy, and although a class may be interrupted by a shipment of computers, there is not necessarily a reason for the computers, or anything to teach on them, or with them, and they may be headed for a fate similar to the pianos (which are used to conceal contraband groceries). In Paris, on the other hand, there is bounty everywhere, and the movie underlines the plight of the Russian visitors, who focus so single-mindedly on the material.
As a story device, the magical mirror is promising. But Mamim doesn't do much with it - certainly nothing as biting and satirical as he might have. There is a subplot involving a French neighbor who doesn't like the noise of the visiting Russian party animals, and another subplot involving a French woman who visits Russia, and some sight gags based on everybody getting drunk. When Nikolai's students go on strike, he bribes them with a trip to Paris, and when they want to stay, he delivers a heartfelt speech about their duty to their country.
As an example of the direction the movie might have taken, consider the moment when a visiting Russian explains why France is so far ahead of his motherland: "We held off the Mongol hordes for them, so they had the luxury of developing." Yes, perhaps, but what then? And did they develop in such a wonderful way after all? Is Russia such a grim place that there are no jokes to be made about the ways in which France might be flawed? Looking at the movie, I felt marooned in one of those lightweight multinational comedies of the 1970s, like "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," in which most of the jokes were based on national characteristics I didn't much care about.
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RORY BACKS ROYAL BRITISH LEGION’S HANDY VANS SERVICE
Rory has welcomed The Royal British Legion’s launch of the first Handy Vans Service in Cumbria.
This service, which is delivered free of charge, gives home repairs and maintenance to eligible Armed Forces personnel, veterans and their families, dependents or carers, allowing them to remain safe in their homes. It is available to both serving and ex-serving personnel and will be delivered in Cumbria by Neil Pantin from Carlisle, who is the first fitter to be employed by the Legion in the county. There are now 23 Royal British Legion Handy Vans operating across the UK, and it is one of the many services supported by funds raised by the annual Poppy Appeal in Cumbria.
Mr Pantin said, “Our aim is to help people live independently in their own homes – a lot of tradesman might not want to come out to change a light bulb or fix a tap, put up a shelf or fit a grab rail, but it’s those smaller jobs that give people the freedom to remain safe and independent in their own homes. I’ve seen the service work in other cities and people are so appreciative and I’ve met some amazing ex-servicemen and women along the way. I’m excited now to be replicating that service in Cumbria.”
Commenting on this, Rory said: “We owe our soldiers and veterans the most profound debt of gratitude and I very much welcome the news that Handy Vans in coming to Cumbria. The Royal British Legion does the most fantastic work in supporting our Armed Forces Community and I would like to pay a huge tribute to them and to Neil, for bringing this service to Cumbria and for all that they do”.
← ULLSWATER’S WARTIME FRENCH CONNECTION TO BE COMMEMORATED WATCH RORY’S INTERVIEW WITH SOPHY RIDGE →
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Coyote women claim tourney title
Larry Moritz @larrymortiz1
Members of the Kansas Wesleyan women’s soccer team knew Friday night’s match would not be their last. That wasn’t an excuse to let up this late in the season.
The Coyotes, who guaranteed themselves a playoff berth by winning the regular season conference title, followed it up with a postseason championship as well. Kansas Wesleyan defeated Oklahoma Wesleyan 2-0 in the title match of the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament at Graves Family Sports Complex.
It was Kansas Wesleyan’s second win over Oklahoma Wesleyan in less than two weeks — both on the same field, both by the same score.
“Beating the same team twice in the same season is so difficult with the scouting reports and films you have nowadays,” Wesleyan head coach Kat Benton said. “It just shows the resilience of our women to be able to rise and play the game regardless of the occasion.
“They’ve been doing what they’ve done all year and that’s execute in pressure moments and defend like hell.”
“This is just another goal we’ve set for ourselves,” said junior forward Taylor Veloz. “We set it, we met it and we’re going on, keeping on.”
Friday’s match was played in bitter cold, with the temperature at 21 degrees at the start of the match with a wind chill of 10.
“Nothing can stop us,” Veloz said. “We’ve been through tough challenges this season and a little cold isn’t going to do anything to us.”
The Coyotes won their 14th consecutive match to improve to 17-2-2 overall, but also picked up their eighth consecutive shutout. In 15 matches against conference opponents, including the postseason tournament, Kansas Wesleyan has given up a total of three goals.
“It’s been a great team effort and I’m really proud of the team,” Wesleyan goalkeeper Daisy Bingham said. “We’ve been defending really well together.
“The main aspect tonight was together — we press together, we defended together and we attack together. I think that’s how we succeeded tonight and during our winning streak.”
The Coyotes had only one shot on goal in the first 25 minutes of the match, but it did the trick. Veloz played a direct kick from near the left sideline into the box and a header from Michelle Rodriguez put Kansas Wesleyan up 1-0 only 13 minutes into the match.
“We treat that one like a corner because it was right by the line,” Veloz said. “I just played the ball hoping somebody would get a head on it. Luckily Michelle Rodriguez did.
“From my view it kind of dipped and I saw a little head go up. It was a little surreal in the moment.”
Bingham had a pair of diving saves in the final 20 minutes of the first half to keep the score at 1-0. It was still a one-goal margin when Oklahoma Wesleyan, with 10 minutes remaining in the second half, had four corner kick opportunities in a span of less than three minutes.
“Our staff has been working relentlessly and (assistant coach) Henrik Sohn is in charge of our goalkeepers and back line,” Benton said. “They played a perfect game tonight. They had to to keep Oklahoma Wesleyan off the board.
“Every single game in our non-conference, if you look back on it, we got scored on in set pieces. It became a focus for us to defend set pieces and know if we hunker in, get to the ball first and have a mentality to win the ball, we’ll be successful. We haven’t conceded on a set piece in conference or in the postseason yet.”
“That was very nerve wracking,” Bingham said. “Especially when you are up 1-0 and just make sure you keep the shutout because you don’t want to give them anything.”
After Oklahoma Wesleyan (13-5-1) came up empty on the four corner kicks, the Coyotes capitalized on their next opportunity. A crossing pass from Michelle Pena found Veloz in stride and she poked it past the Eagles goalkeeper for the 2-0 lead with six minutes remaining.
“We practice that cross and that shot before games,” Veloz said. “We set up the long ball to the cross and then the cross into the middle.
“I got a foot on it and it was great. That’s the clincher.”
It was the clincher for the Coyotes, who won their eight KCAC tourney title in the last 14 years. Now they wait until Monday to learn where and when they will open the national tournament, and who they will face in the opening round.
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UCSD wins control of Alzheimer’s study
(UCSD)
By Gary Robbins
UC San Diego won a major legal battle Friday against the University of Southern California when a judge ruled that control of a landmark project on Alzheimer’s disease belongs to the La Jolla school.
The decision addressed the heart of a lawsuit that has gained international attention since UC San Diego filed it early this month, largely because it’s rare for such disagreements in the academic world to reach the courtroom.
The dispute also has been colored by shades of a mounting rivalry between UC San Diego, a research powerhouse that has long been the elite higher-education campus in this region, and USC, a well-heeled institution with ambitions of achieving greatness in biomedicine by taking over or collaborating with scientific centers in San Diego.
“We never wanted to resort to legal action, but when all reasonable requests to return what is the rightful property of UC San Diego were ignored, there was no alternative,” Dr. David Brenner, vice chancellor for health sciences, said in a statement. “We are pleased with today’s decision and believe it indicates the strength of our overall case.”
Left unresolved Friday was UC San Diego’s request for monetary damages based on its accusations that USC, Dr. Paul Aisen and other defendants conspired to illegally transfer the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study to the Los Angeles-based university. Aisen resigned in June from UC San Diego, where he had overseen the study since 2007, to become founding director of an Alzheimer’s institute that USC was establishing in the Sorrento Valley neighborhood.
In recent weeks, the two sides have argued about who owns the database for the $100 million, nationwide project.
UC San Diego, which has overseen the study for nearly a quarter of a century, said it still retains the government funding — an assertion backed by the National Institutes of Health.
Aisen and USC officials have countered that it’s academic tradition for departing faculty members to transfer their research to their new employer. They presented supporting statements from several researchers taking part in the Alzheimer’s project.
After Friday’s hearing, USC attorney Glenn Dassoff told journalists that USC and Aisen’s interest in the study “is real, genuine, and unfortunately was not addressed today. This is not over.”
In an email Friday night, Aisen wrote: “We all lose here. Science and public health lose when research is torn from the investigators with the passion, knowledge and skill to assure its success.”
In the courtroom, San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith Hayes said she will issue a preliminary injunction early next week that requires USC to surrender custody of the Alzheimer’s project.
She told USC not to manipulate data from the study or make any other changes to the database, which involves details of lab research and clinical trials from dozens of sites across the country.
As the next step, the two universities and their lawyers will negotiate the choice of a “special master” to supervise the process of USC restoring full control of the database to UC San Diego. This phase will involve an independent expert on bioinformatics who can determine whether there has been tampering of information in the database.
Dan Sharp, an attorney representing UC San Diego on behalf of the UC Regents, said USC will start returning the data next week.
“How long it takes will depend on what we find in terms of what they’ve done with the (computer) system, changes they may have made,” he added.
Dassoff, the USC attorney, said while his party disagrees with Hayes’ findings, “we’ll reflect on the decision and I’m sure that (we’ll) approach any settlement discussions in good faith.”
During the hearing, Hayes offered to refer the opposing sides to a settlement judge, with the aim of negotiating an end to the lawsuit instead of proceeding to a jury trial.
UC San Diego alleges that Aisen, USC and up to two dozen other defendants colluded to commit a range of violations, including contract interference, breach of duty of loyalty by employee, commission of computer crimes and civil conspiracy.
Brenner, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla and others at the university have said the defendants have harmed their school’s reputation. Aisen and his new employer have denied any wrongdoing.
In the past year, USC has reached out to at least three life-science institutions in San Diego to explore a purchase, merger or other types of collaboration. None of those inquiries has resulted in a partnership.
During an interview earlier this month, USC Provost Michael Quick said his university’s envisioned footprint in San Diego could include freestanding institutes, academic consortia and joint ventures with targeted companies.
“The 20th century was dominated by physics. The 21st will be dominated by biomedical sciences,” Quick said. “We have to be at places where the conversations (in life sciences) are the best, and San Diego is one of those places.”
He said about 50 biomedical companies have been spun out of USC in the past decade, but that they tend to leave for San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area because those locations already have hubs featuring prominent research-oriented universities, independent biomedical institutes, a concentration of biotech firms and various services to support the whole infrastructure.
Being in San Diego can help USC learn how this is done — and how to replicate that success in Los Angeles, Quick said.
“The last thing that we want San Diego to feel is that USC is being threatening. ... People will see that we will be good partners, should we continue to grow down there. We want to be part of the San Diego community,” Quick said.
UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla also expressed goodwill during a recent interview.
“I wouldn’t rule out a collaboration (with USC) in the future,” Khosla said. “You can’t take the difference we’re having and imply that there’s bad blood between us.”
On measures of reputation in the life sciences, UC San Diego bests USC.
The San Diego campus received $390 million in National Institutes of Health funding last year, compared to USC’s $180 million. U.S. News & World Report ranked UC San Diego’s medical school 17th in the nation for research and put USC’s in a three-way tie for 31st.
But in endowment funds, which can bolster faculty pay, UC San Diego’s $752 million is dwarfed by USC’s $4.5 billion, and USC’s fundraising machine far outstrips that of the La Jolla-based university.
Gary Robbins
Strong rip currents expected at San Diego County beaches Monday and Tuesday
Forecasters warn San Diego beach-goers about strong rip currents
4.9 earthquake in Ridgecrest lightly felt in San Diego County
The temblor is part of normal seismicity pattern from the 7.1 main shock on July 5
Excessive heat warning issued for eastern edge of San Diego County
Temperatures to hit mid-90s across San Diego’s inland valleys and foothills
Oceanographers mark seven-decade survey of the California Current
It’s one of the oldest and most extensive surveys of California’s ocean
Salk Institute scientists get to the root of plant growth
Gene that controls how deep roots grow could be used in Salk Institute climate initiative, making crops hardier
DDT contaminants in marine mammals may threaten California condor recovery
Chemicals called endocrine disrupters may reduce the bird’s reproductive success
Scripps Research-led group gets $129 million grant for HIV vaccine
Multi-stage vaccine intended to train immune system to prevent HIV infection
California to face more extreme wet and dry seasons in the future
The state will see bigger and wetter storms as atmospheric rivers get stronger due to climate change
UCSD gets $20M gift to operate Simons Observatory in Chile to explore early universe
Astrophysicists are trying to zoom in on massive clusters of galaxies which are difficult to see
UCSD to send ‘mini-brains’ to International Space Station for neural disease research
The research also is meant to find ways to keep space travelers healthy
This week’s back-to-back quakes unlikely to trigger the ‘Big One’ in Southern California
UC San Diego scientists say the Ridgecrest temblors are too far from the San Andreas fault to be a threat
7.1 earthquake unexpectedly hits Southern California one day after 6.4 temblor
Scientists say there is a small chance that an even larger quake will follow
USC pays UCSD $50M, and gives the school an apology, for raiding its Alzheimer’s program
UCSD says it has fully recovered from USC’s takeover of the program
USC to pay UCSD $50M and apologize for raiding its Alzheimer’s research program
USC says its behavior, which led to a lawsuit, did not align with the school’s ethics and standards
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Dallas Rent Trends
Apartments in Dallas
Apartments for Rent in Dallas, TX - 3,836 Rentals available
Apex Design District
120 Turtle Creek Blvd, Dallas, TX 75207
The Woods Of Five Mile Creek
6010 South Westmoreland Road, Dallas, TX 75237
Axis At Wycliff
4343 Congress Ave, Dallas, TX 75219
Maple District Lofts
5415 Maple Ave, Dallas, TX 75235
See current rent specials
Hidden Oaks Apartment Homes
9236 Church Rd., Dallas, TX 75231
AVANT On Market Center
1955 Market Center Blvd, Dallas, TX 75207
Hunter's Hill
18081 Midway Rd, Dallas, TX 75287
The Manhattan Apartments
18331 Roehampton Drive, Dallas, TX 75252
Chatham Court & Reflections
7825 Mccallum Blvd., Dallas, TX 75252
11440 Mccree Road, Dallas, TX 75238
5050 Capitol Ave, Dallas, TX 75206
Sedona Ranch
2749 Northaven Rd., Dallas, TX 75229
Preston Village Apartments
18909 Lloyd Circle, Dallas, TX 75252
The District At Greenville Apartments
11911 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75243
The ICON At Ross
1707 N Hall St, Dallas, TX 75204
Ivy Urban Living
4211 Cabell Drive, Dallas, TX 75204
Windsor West Lemmon
3650 Cedarplaza Lane, Dallas, TX 75209
7900 At Park Central
7900 Churchill Way, Dallas, TX 75251
Gates De Provence
3613 Frankford Road, Dallas, TX 75287
Highland Hills Apartments
5850 Highland Hills Rd, Dallas, TX 75241
Odin Management
Timberglen Apartments
3773 Timberglen Rd, Dallas, TX 75287
Alta Trinity Green
990 Singleton Blvd, Dallas, TX 75212
Trinity Square
4350 Trinity Mills Rd., Dallas, TX 75287
Gaines Investment Trust
10951 Stone Canyon Road, Dallas, TX 75230
Fath Management Co.
Preston Bend
18790 Lloyd Drive, Dallas, TX 75252
Anterra Management Corporation
Studio Apartments in Dallas
1 Bedroom Apartments in Dallas
Pet Friendly Apartments in Dallas
Luxury Apartments in Dallas
Cheap Apartments in Dallas
Dallas Apartments under $500
Dallas Apartments under $1000
Renter's Guide to Dallas
Located in the northern part of Texas, Dallas is one of the Lone Star State’s major cities. It contains part of five counties and is home to some of the country’s biggest employers and corporations.
Dallas is mostly known for its top-notch sports teams, its vibrant dining and cultural scene, its bustling economy, and its highly rated suburbs, which offer families a great place to raise their kids in a safe, secure and healthy environment.
Dallas is a highly urban city, with a busy downtown area, a flourishing economy, and an endless stream of things to do and see. With family-filled suburbs, youthful, artsy neighborhoods, and plenty of properties for rent and for purchase, it offers a little something for everyone.
Dallas is the third-biggest city in Texas and the ninth-biggest in the U.S. When combined with its westerly counterpart Fort Worth, it is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the entire nation. Population-wise, Dallas has 1.3 million residents – nearly 1 million less than Houston. It encompasses 385 square miles of land.
Dallas is about 230 miles from Houston – right around four hours away by car. From Austin, Dallas is only about 190 miles, and from Fort Worth, it’s just over 30 miles. Dallas is home to two airports: Dallas Love Field and Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Both offer flights across the country and the world.
Like most cities in Texas, Dallas offers a fairly warm climate with very mild winters, save for a few snow and ice storms occasionally seen in January and February. The average temperature in the summer ranges from 89 to 96, while the fall and spring are more temperate, hovering between the high 50s and the high 60s.
Dallas, TX Demographics
Total Population1,300,122
Female 644,344
Male 655,778
Cost of Living in Dallas, TX
The cost of living in Dallas is fairly low, especially compared to some of the nation’s larger cities. In fact, its cost of living index is just 33 percent lower than that of New York City.
Dallas offers a wide array of options when it comes to public transport. The Dallas Area Rapid Transit system offers buses, rail services, commuter trains, trolleys, streetcars, and vanpooling/carpooling. Day passes run from $2.50 to $10, and monthly passes between $40 and $160. Dallas commuters spend an average of 53 hours in traffic each year, making it the 11th-most congested city in the nation.
A meal for two in an inexpensive Dallas restaurants averages $45. A regular cappuccino runs from just under $4 and a domestic, draft beer is about $4.50. Some of the city’s hottest restaurants include The Porch, Sambuca and The Rustic. If you're into steaks, try Nick & Sam's Steakhouse at 3008 Maple Ave in Oak Lawn.
Dallas residents pay an average of $142 a month on utilities - including water, electricity, heating and garbage pick-up - for a 915 sq. ft. apartment. This comes in just under the national average of $147 per month.
Average Rent in Dallas, TX
Dallas, TX Average Rental Price, July 2019$1,208/mo
Dallas, TX Apartment Rent Ranges
$501-$7005%
Dallas, TX Rent Trends
Dallas, TX $1,059 $1,096 $1,108 $1,115 $1,143 $1,153 $1,156 $1,157 $1,190 $1,208
Average rent values on this page are aggregated from data from the following zip codes: 7500175116751377520175202752037520475205752067520775208752097521075211752127521475215752167521775218752197522075223752247522575226752277522875229752307523175232752337523475235752367523775238752407524175243752447524675247752487524975251752527525375254752707528775390
Check out the average rent prices in Dallas by neighborhood.
Living in Dallas
If you’re considering moving to Dallas, take a minute to learn about what life is like in this big Texas city.
As with any city, living in Dallas has its pros and cons. Some of the positives? It has a flourishing economy, which means lots of jobs and opportunities for all ages and industries. It also has a varied landscape of neighborhoods and communities, making it easy to find a niche that’s all your own. Its sports teams, entertainment venues, and cultural opportunities are top-notch.
As for cons, Dallas does have a few. For one, parking and getting around in general can be difficult. Traffic is high in Dallas proper, and most businesses offer only pay-to-park or valet options. This can get expensive.
Things to do in Dallas
Some of the city’s main attractions hold historical value, like Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository, where JFK was assassinated in 1961. Other top attractions include Six Flags, the Dallas Zoo, and Reunion Tower, which overlooks the entire city.
Sports are big in Dallas, and the city is home to professional teams in football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer. These teams include the Texas Rangers, Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Stars, and FC Dallas.
Dallas is a very child-friendly city, offering a zoo, the Dallas World Aquarium, a Legoland Discovery Center, and even a Medieval Times center, where you can see knights joust in a medieval-style tournament. There is also the Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park that’s open year-round.
Dallas couples have loads of date-night options. They can see a band at the House of Blues, play a fun round of golf at Top Golf, take in some classical music at the Dallas Symphony, or see an indie movie at the Angelika theater. The W Hotel offers a great romantic place to stay the night.
If you’re on a tight budget, try one of Dallas’ many free attractions, like Klyde Warren Park, which boasts large-scale chess, reading areas, a children’s park, ping pong, croquet, live music, and more. The Dallas Museum of Art is admission-free, and you can also hop on the M-Line Trolley and take a vintage trolley line through some of the city’s best shops.
The Texas State Fair is by far the biggest annual event in Dallas. With rides, games, food, fun and entertainment, people flock from all over the state to experience it. It’s also home to the Texas Star, a 212-foot ferris wheel and the tallest of its kind in all of North America.
Dallas is a cultural powerhouse. Check out one of the many Dallas Summer Musicals productions, read the Dallas Morning News, settle in at the Dallas Public Library, or find out how things work at the world-renowned Perot Museum. There are also dozens of museums, including the Sixth Floor Museum and the George W. Bush Presidential Library, and a stunning arboretum and botanical garden. In 2014, PropertyShark ranked Dallas the No. 15 city for culture in the U.S.
Aside from Klyde Warren, Dallas is home to dozens of top-notch parks and recreational areas. The Katy Trail is a favorite for local runners, while White Rock Lake Park offers kayaking and 9 miles of hiking, biking and running trails. The Trinity River Audubon Center is another great place, especially if you want to check out the local flora and fauna.
As for shopping, the Galleria and NorthPark Center are Dallas’ top shopping destinations. The Bishop Arts district is a great place to look for all things fun and funky, while the Allen Premium Outlets are a smart stop if you need a good bargain.
Dallas Employment & Economy
Dallas has a flourishing economy, and its major industries include defense, financial services, technology, telecommunications and transportation. It is home to 43 percent of Texas’ tech employees. The city serves as the headquarters for many national and international brands, including Exxon Mobil, AT&T, American Airlines, Kimberly-Clark, Southwest Airlines, JC Penney, and Texas Instruments.
Dallas, TX Households
Total Number of Households497,622
Family 285,891
Non-family 211,731
Children 159,359
No Children 338,263
Median Housing Costs Per Month$978
Education in Dallas
Dallas is home to more than 300 public schools, 89 private schools, and dozens of colleges and universities. For kindergarten through 12th grade, most Dallas students are served by Dallas ISD. As for higher education, Dallas boasts the University of Dallas, Southern Methodist University, Dallas Baptist University, UNT Dallas, UT Dallas, Texas Woman’s University and more.
Dallas, TX Education Statistics
No High School12%
Tips for Renting in Dallas
Dallas offers tenants certain rights, including the protection from landlord retaliation. The city even has an ordinance on the books – “Retaliation Against Tenants Prohibited” – and offers a city attorney for any renters who feel they have been retaliated against. Before moving to Dallas, make sure you familiarize yourself with the Rights as a Tenant section on the Dallas City Hall website.
New Dallas residents should also note: life in Dallas is not like the Texas living you see in movies. Dallas is a highly-urban city, and living in Dallas proper can actually look more like New York than the farms and tumbleweeds you might be expecting!
Most Expensive Rental
The Taylor Uptown $1,535 - $9,939
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Pegasus Villas $440 - $1,100
RENTCafé is your one-stop shop for finding a great new apartment in Dallas, TX. Easily search through a wide selection of apartments for rent in Dallas, TX, and view detailed information about available rentals including floor plans, pricing, photos, amenities, interactive maps, and thorough property descriptions. Property owners and managers are one click away, so feel free to contact them and find out all you need to know about the apartment you’re interested in. Browse Dallas, TX apartments with rents starting from $672 and submit your rental application today!
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Newsline - September 12, 2002
September 12, 2002 00:00 GMT
PUTIN WARNS GEORGIA OVER TOLERATION OF CHECHEN 'TERRORISM'...
Addressing a meeting of military and law enforcement officials in Sochi on 11 September, President Vladimir Putin warned the Georgian leadership that if it fails to take effective measures to prevent "bandits" from launching attacks on Russian territory from bases in Georgia, Russia will avail itself of its right -- guaranteed by the UN Charter -- to take appropriate action in self-defense either on its own or collectively, Russian news agencies and Caucasus Press reported. He said that "today nobody can deny...that those who had a hand in the terrorist attacks in the United States one year ago and the perpetrator of [the 1999] apartment bombings in Russia have taken refuge in Georgia," Interfax reported. Putin instructed the General Staff to provide proposals on whether it is possible and expedient to launch strikes on terrorists bases in Georgia that have been reliably identified in intelligence operations, Reuters reported. Putin did not specify a time frame within which he expects the Georgian leadership to comply with his demand to neutralize the Chechen militant presence. "Vremya novostei" reported on 12 September that the chief of the General Staff, General Anatolii Kvashnin, has already drafted the plan of a potential Russian operation in the Pankisi Gorge. According to Kvashnin's plan, the operation would be spearheaded by the 42nd Motorized Division -- currently deployed in Ingushetia -- and detachments of the Federal Border Guard Service, special-task units of Military Intelligence (GRU), and the theater air wing. LF/VY
...APPEALS TO UN, OSCE
In an 11 September missive addressed to the United Nations and the OSCE and carried by strana.ru, President Putin noted that Russia has largely succeeded in destroying the "terrorist infrastructure" created in Chechnya "with the support of the criminal [Chechen] regime" and is now beginning to reduce its military presence there. He claimed that peace is gradually returning to Chechnya, the economy is recovering, and preparations are in progress to adopt a new constitution and elect new republican and local authorities. But some Chechen militants have taken refuge in Georgia where, Putin claimed, they have the support of that country's leadership. Putin noted that Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in 1999 rejected Russian proposals to cooperate in order to prevent Chechen militants infiltrating Georgia and repeatedly denied their presence on Georgian territory until he was constrained to admit it. Putin claimed Shevardnadze did not react "constructively" to Putin's letter of 3 September calling for joint military action against the Chechens in the Pankisi Gorge. Putin accused Georgia of blatantly violating the UN Security Council's antiterrorism resolution No. 1373 and argued that Georgia must be made to comply with its international obligations. Putin said Russia might be constrained to resort to its right under UN Security Council resolution No. 1368 and the UN Charter to individual or collective self-defense and will act "in strict accordance with international law" to neutralize the "terrorist threat," if Georgia fails to do so. LF
RUSSIAN, CHECHEN OFFICIALS ENDORSE PUTIN'S WARNING...
Dmitrii Rogozin, who chairs the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, expressed his approval of Putin's 11 September statement, which he construed as "the final warning to the Georgian leadership," Interfax reported. Chechen administration head Akhmed-hadji Kadyrov termed Putin's statement "a forced and necessary step" that, he predicted, the international community will understand and approve, Interfax reported. Kadyrov too accused Shevardnadze of "failing to take a single step" to neutralize the threat posed by Chechen militants in Pankisi. Chechen Prime Minister Stanislav Ilyasov similarly expressed approval of Putin's statement, arguing that "terrorists must be destroyed on any territory, on the ground, in the air, and if necessary under water," ITAR-TASS reported. He added that Shevardnadze's protection of Chechen "terrorists" disqualifies him from acting as a mediator between representatives of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and the pro-Moscow Chechen leadership. (For Georgian reaction to Putin's statement, see "Transcaucasus and Central Asia.") LF
...AS DOES SPS
The Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) expressed support for President Putin's statement on Georgia, RIA-Novosti reported on 12 September. "One should accustom world public opinion and the United States to the idea that it is impossible to destroy terrorism on the territory of Georgia through consultations," said Deputy Duma Speaker and SPS leader Irina Khakamada. She added that Putin's statement is a warning and an offer to help resolve a problematic situation. VY
PROSECUTOR ASKS GREAT BRITAIN AND GEORGIA TO EXTRADITE BEREZOVSKII AND HIS AIDE...
Speaking in Samara, Deputy Prosecutor-General Vladimir Kolesnikov said his office has nearly completed its investigation into LogoVAZ, which was formerly Russia's largest automobile dealer and which was controlled by now-disgraced oligarch Boris Berezovskii, Russian news agencies reported on 11 September. Kolesnikov said that the investigation has uncovered information that in 1994-95, Berezovskii and his associates -- particularly his aide Badri Patarkatsishvili -- allegedly fraudulently misappropriated 2,033 automobiles belonging to the company for their personal enrichment. Kolesnikov said that the prosecutor-general is calling on Great Britain and Georgia -- where Berezovskii and Patarkatsishvili, respectively, now reside -- to expedite the extradition of the two men so that they can be interrogated. Kolesnikov added that the investigation also raised serious questions relating to Samara Oblast Governor Konstantin Titov, who will also face questioning. VY
...AS MEDIA SPECULATES ON POSSIBLE POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS BEHIND THE CASE
Kolesnikov's statement can be best explained by the ongoing tension between Russia and Georgia and by the fact that Patarkatsishvili is now an adviser to Georgian President Shevardnadze, gazeta.ru editorialized on 12 September. The website said that Kolesnikov has a reputation for sensational pubic statements that never amount to anything, including a promise to investigate presidential Chief of Staff Aleksandr Voloshin that was never fulfilled. Meanwhile, grani.ru -- which belongs to Berezovskii -- reported on 12 September that the oligarch's lawyers have not been informed of any request to Great Britain for his extradition. VY
DUMA SET TO UNDERMINE COMMUNIST REFERENDUM EFFORT...
Seven of the nine factions on the State Duma Council voted on 10 September to accelerate consideration of a key amendment to Russia's law on referendums, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported on 11 September. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) plans to collect 2 million signatures in order to compel a referendum on several key economic and social policies (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 23 August 2002). The proposed amendment would forbid holding referendums during the year immediately preceding parliamentary or presidential elections. According to "Nezavisimaya gazeta," the KPRF is counting on protection from the law on basic guarantees of citizens' electoral rights, which states that amendments to electoral legislation do not apply to elections or referendums that have already been scheduled. However, centrist Duma factions have reportedly agreed to amend the law on basic guarantees so as to grant retroactive force to changes in legislation on referendums. LB
...HANDING YABLOKO AND SPS POTENTIAL BARGAINING CHIP
The effort to thwart the Communist-backed referendum may give the Yabloko and SPS factions political leverage that they do not normally enjoy. "Nezavisimaya gazeta" noted on 11 September that the law on referendums is a federal constitutional law, which means that amendments to it must be approved by a two-thirds majority (300 votes) rather than by a simple majority of 226 deputies. Reaching the 300-vote threshold would almost certainly require the support of SPS and Yabloko, since the Communist and Agrarian factions oppose efforts to alter the law on referendums. "Nezavisimaya gazeta" speculated that in exchange for the cooperation of Yabloko and SPS in scuttling the Communist referendum, the Kremlin might be forced to support changes in the law on alternative service or even a constitutional amendment to require direct elections of Federation Council deputies. LB
NEXT ELECTION CYCLE MAY BE 'FUN' OR 'BORING'...
No consensus emerged from a scenario-spinning session featuring prominent Moscow political consultants on 10 September, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported on 11 September. Some experts shared Politika Foundation head Vyacheslav Nikonov's view that the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections will be "fun," while others agreed with Andrei Fedorov of the Foundation for Political Research and Consulting, who said they will be "boring." In particular, views differed concerning the prospects of Duma Speaker Gennadii Seleznev's new Party of Russia's Rebirth (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 9 September 2002). Yelena Bashkirova, president of the ROMIR polling firm, suggested that Seleznev's party "has already altered the [political] market." But Sergei Markov, head of the Institute for Political Research, recalled the sorry fate of the Bloc of Ivan Rybkin in 1995. Then-Duma Speaker Rybkin's political venture -- conceived as a center-left counterpart to then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's center-right Our Home Is Russia -- failed to attract prominent allies and attracted just 1 percent of the party-list vote. LB
...BUT EITHER WAY, PUTIN SEEN AS KEY PLAYER
Several participants in the 10 September Moscow meeting of political consultants agreed that President Putin, the overwhelming favorite to win the 2004 presidential election, will also play a key role during the Duma elections scheduled for December 2003, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported on 11 September. Andrei Fedorov went so far as to say, "Everything presented on the market of political forces [in the Duma campaign] will have the president's stamp." Aleksei Kara-Muza of the Center for Theoretical Problems of Russian Reform suggested that Putin's stance will determine which parties on the political right gain representation in parliament because the 225 Duma seats awarded according to proportional representation are distributed only among political parties that win at least 5 percent of the party-list vote. Kara-Muza also noted that Putin has not yet chosen a favorite among various pro-presidential groups such as Unified Russia or the People's Party of the Russian Federation. LB
WILL CLASH BETWEEN CENTER AND REGIONS DOMINATE NEXT PARLIAMENTARY CAMPAIGN?
The main fault line in next year's Duma elections will run not between left and right but between the center and regional authorities seeking "payback" for the first two years of Putin's presidency, according to Georgii Satarov, head of the INDEM think tank and a longtime adviser to former President Boris Yeltsin. In an interview published in the 9 September issue of "Kommersant-Vlast," Satarov noted that regional elites seeking to deny the Kremlin's "party of power" a majority in the Duma have powerful administrative resources at their disposal during election campaigns, ranging from control over regional media to outright vote rigging. Aleksandr Dynkin, deputy director of the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), similarly predicted at a 10 September gathering of political consultants in Moscow that next year's parliamentary elections might be marked by a "governors' betrayal" of the Kremlin, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" reported on 11 September. LB
CENTRAL ELECTION COMMISSION CHAIRMAN BACKS SIMULTANEOUS REGIONAL AND FEDERAL ELECTIONS
Holding gubernatorial elections on the same day as nationwide parliamentary or presidential elections would save money, increase turnout, and avoid the "endless chain of elections that is starting to get irritating," according to Central Election Commission (TsIK) Chairman Aleksandr Veshnyakov, "Vremya MN" reported on 11 September. Veshnyakov emphasized that the TsIK will not require regional authorities to set elections concurrently with parliamentary or presidential balloting and is merely reminding regional authorities that the option exists under Russia's law on basic guarantees of the electoral rights of citizens. "Vremya MN" speculated that the Kremlin is the true source of Veshnyakov's initiative. The presidential administration's ability to influence regional races would presumably grow if the Kremlin could push its favored gubernatorial candidates while using federal leverage on behalf of Unified Russia during the Duma campaign or of Putin during the presidential race. LB
DUMA REJECTS PROTEST OF U.S. IONOSPHERE EXPERIMENTS
In its opening session on 11 September, the Duma rejected a draft resolution addressed to President Putin that called for Russia to protest the U.S. High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), polit.ru reported. HAARP is project to study the ionosphere in order to identify ways to use it for civilian and military communications and surveillance systems. One element of the program is the use of a powerful transmitter to excite the ionosphere in order to study it. Communist deputies believe that HAARP potentially represents a new global arms race in the area of geophysical weaponry. "It cannot be excluded that such experiments could become the launching platform for geophysical, geological, and biological cataclysms on a global scale," the resolution read. The resolution would have called on Putin to hold a Security Council session on HAARP and would have asked the Foreign Ministry to raise the issue at the UN. The resolution garnered 188 of the necessary 226 votes, and a similar resolution addressed to the UN Security Council was rejected by the same vote. RC
11 SEPTEMBER: BIRTHDAY OF THE FOUNDER OF SOVIET SECRET POLICE
11 September marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of Feliks Dzerzhinskii, founder of the Soviet secret police, RosBalt and "Izvestiya" reported on 12 September. "Izvestiya" described Dzerzhinskii as a person who choose security over freedom. An impoverished Polish nobleman who once dreamed of becoming a priest, Dzerzhinskii became a fanatic in the mold of Osama bin Laden, a man who was willing to commit terror for the sake of goals he believed were noble, the daily continued. Dzerzhinskii organized the Red Terror in order to combat injustice and was a man who saved children by killing adults, the paper said. "Dzerzhinskii has never left us. He remains in our hearts, souls, and minds," "Izvestiya" concluded. VY
CHECHEN ADMINISTRATION HEAD'S PRESS SECRETARY WOUNDED
Unidentified gunmen broke into the home in Gekhi of writer Lechi Yakhyaev late on 10 September and shot and seriously wounded him, Interfax reported the following day. Yakhyaev is Chechen administration head Kadyrov's press secretary. Kadyrov attributed the attack to Yakhyaev's professional activities, while Chechen Security Council Secretary Rudnik Dudaev said the motive was robbery, according to ITAR-TASS. LF
ARMENIA OPPOSED TO POSSIBLE U.S. ATTACK ON IRAQ
Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian told journalists in Yerevan on 11 September that the Armenian government believes a U.S. attack on Iraq would have "negative consequences" for the countries of the region, RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau reported. He added that such an attack could endanger personnel at Armenia's embassy in Baghdad and the small Armenian community in Iraq. LF
AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT HECKLED IN GYANDJA
President Heidar Aliev, accompanied by his son Ilham, traveled on 12 September to Gyandja, Azerbaijan's second-largest city, which is plagued by an almost total breakdown of its infrastructure and by massive unemployment, to open a new Olympic complex there, Turan reported. Alluding to those problems in his address, Aliev claimed that much has been done to improve gas and electricity supplies to the city. A group of protesters forced their way through the security cordon and interrupted his address. LF
AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT SIGNS DECREE ON PRIVATE SECTOR
On 11 September Aliev signed a decree on increasing state support for private business, Turan and Interfax reported. He instructed the government to draft within two weeks proposals for reducing and simplifying tax rates as of 1 January 2003 and to revise the tariffs paid by private businesses for the use of gas, water, electricity, and state-owned road-, rail-, and air-transport companies. Aliev also called for 250 billion manats ($51 million) to be allocated in the 2003 state budget for the development of private business and asked the government to make suggestions for raising additional non-budgetary funds for the same purpose. LF
GEORGIAN PRESIDENT REJECTS PUTIN'S ACCUSATIONS AS UNFOUNDED
At a special press briefing on 12 September, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin's threat of military action against "bandits" in the Pankisi Gorge as biased and one-sided, Caucasus Press reported. Shevardnadze said Putin made no mention of how and why the Chechen militants took refuge in Pankisi, stressing that the problem was not of Georgia's making. Shevardnadze admitted that Georgia cannot completely control traffic across the Georgian-Chechen border but denied that Russia is capable of doing so either. He claimed that except for 30-40 "criminals," all Chechens have already left Pankisi. Georgian National Security Minister Valeri Khaburzania downplayed Putin's statement, telling the independent television station Rustavi-2 that Russia has made similar threats in the past, Caucasus Press reported. Khaburzania again affirmed Georgia's readiness to "cooperate" with Russia over Pankisi, but not to launch a joint military operation there. LF
SOUTH OSSETIA APPEALS TO RUSSIA TO PREVENT NEW AGGRESSION
In a statement addressed to President Putin, the president and parliament of the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia expressed concern at media reports that Chechen fighters have made their way from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge to the borders of South Ossetia, Caucasus Press reported on 12 September. They appealed to Putin not to permit new bloodshed in South Ossetia. The parliament asked President Eduard Kokoyty to declare a general mobilization. Earlier on 12 September Kokoyty rejected as untrue media reports that he had already done so the previous day. On 11 September, Georgian National Security Ministry spokesman Nika Laliashvili denied that Chechen terrorists could have made their way from the Pankisi Gorge to South Ossetia, Interfax reported. LF
RUSSIAN PARLIAMENTARIAN ACCUSES KAZAKHSTAN OF ILLICIT PRODUCTION OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL
The Kazakh copper monopoly Kazakhmys is engaged in the unauthorized production of the strategic material osmium-187, which can be used to produce nuclear weapons, Russian State Duma Security Committee member Viktor Ilyukhin (Communist) told Interfax on 11 September. He added that couriers apprehended in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Volgograd were found to be in possession of samples of osmium-187 that could be proved to have originated in Kazakhstan. LF
KYRGYZ PROTESTERS SIGNAL READINESS TO NEGOTIATE WITH LEADERSHIP
In a message to President Askar Akaev, participants in a protest march from southern Kyrgyzstan to Bishkek on 11 September listed the conditions under which they are prepared to meet with a representative appointed by Akaev to discuss the possibility of abandoning that undertaking, Interfax, akipress.org, and RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reported. The protesters, who remain in the southern town of Kara-Kul, some 400 kilometers from Bishkek, demand that release nine march participants detained by police in Djalalabad be released and the criminal cases brought against them closed. They also insist that police return five cars used to transport food for the marchers that they confiscated. The marchers are demanding that Akaev resign and that those responsible for the killing of five protesters in Aksy in March be brought to justice. LF
AUTHORITIES STEP UP PRESSURE ON KYRGYZ MARCHERS
Meanwhile the Kyrgyz authorities continued to mobilize public organizations to pressure the marchers to quit, Interfax and RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reported. According to Prime Minister Nikolai Tanaev's press office, some 10,000 people from across the country have signed an appeal addressed to the marchers calling on them to unite in the face of international and domestic religious extremism. The appeal, whose author is not known, warns marchers not to be misled by unnamed forces seeking to manipulate public anger over the Aksy killings for their own political ends. LF
KYRGYZSTAN, RUSSIA DISCUSS EXPANDING ECONOMIC COOPERATION
Prime Minister Tanaev met in Moscow on 11 September with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kasyanov to discuss prospects for expanding bilateral economic cooperation, ITAR-TASS and akipress.org reported. The talks focused specifically on possible Russian participation in the construction of two hydroelectric power stations, the export of electricity to Russia, the joint development of the Djerui and Taldybulak gold deposits -- which according to the Economist Intelligence Unit each contain an estimated 50 tons of ore -- and setting up joint ventures in Kyrgyzstan to process meat, fruit, and vegetables. LF
11 SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARY MARKED IN SOUTH CAUCASUS, CENTRAL ASIA
Armenia's top leadership, including President Robert Kocharian, attended a memorial service in Yerevan, and Catholicos Garegin II officiated in a special service at Echmiadzin, RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau reported. In Baku, President Heidar Aliev met with U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson to present condolences and reaffirm Azerbaijan's readiness for continued cooperation with the antiterrorism coalition, Turan reported. In Tbilisi, the Georgian parliament observed a minute of silence and unanimously passed a resolution expressing support for U.S. efforts to eradicate terrorism, Caucasus Press reported. In Astana, U.S. Ambassador Larry Napper held a press conference at which he expressed gratitude for Kazakhstan's support and solidarity, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reported. In Bishkek, U.S. and other allied troops attended a remembrance ceremony at their base at the Manas International Airport, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reported. In Ashgabat, city residents thronged to the U.S. Embassy to pay their respects, according to turkmenistan.ru. In Tashkent, U.S. Ambassador John Herbst and Uzbekistan's Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov attended a memorial ceremony. LF
BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT ORDERS CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL LIBRARY...
President Alyaksandr Lukashenka on 11 September ordered that the construction of a new building for the National Library in Minsk begin on 1 November and concluded by 1 September 2005, Belapan and Belarusian television reported. According to the Belarusian president, the new library facilities should become not only a "gigantic book repository" but also a "supermodern center of knowledge" and a symbol of Belarusian statehood. "There is a willingness today to build [the library], beginning from its director [and ending with] the president. But, pardon my saying, the devil only knows if the future authorities will be willing to build it.... [Therefore], it is we who should build this library," Lukashenka said at a meeting with architects and designers. "You should organize an ideal construction site.... You should instruct our builders how to build beautifully and in a civilized manner, without using Soviet technologies," he added. JM
...SENDS LETTER TO BUSH OVER 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 ATTACKS
Belarusian television reported on 11 September that Lukashenka has sent a message to U.S. President George W. Bush in connection with the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. "We are ready to continue constructive cooperation with the United States and other countries to achieve the final victory over international terrorism," the network quoted from Lukashenka's letter. JM
BELARUSIAN OPPOSITION DEMONSTRATOR JAILED FOR 15 DAYS
A court in Minsk on 11 September imposed a 15-day jail sentence on Zmitser Dashkevich, an activists of the Youth Front organization, for his part in an unauthorized demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy in Minsk on 8 September, Belapan reported. Dashkevich and 10 other Youth Front activists protested Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal to incorporate Belarus into the Russian Federation. Dashkevich argued in the court that during the demonstration he was acting in line with the Belarusian Constitution, which obliges Belarusian citizens to defend their country's sovereignty. Judge Tatsyana Paulyuchuk, however, did not heed the argument. JM
TRADERS STRIKE, DEMAND BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT'S OUSTER
Valery Levaneuski, the chairman of the strike committee of Belarusian outdoor-market traders, told Belapan on 12 September that some 110,000 vendors throughout Belarus took part in a strike the previous day. The protesters, apart from demands to reduce the administrative and financial pressure on small businesses, also demanded that President Lukashenka resign. "For the last eight years Alyaksandr Ryhoravich [Lukashenka] has engaged us in idle talks. He promises to meet traders halfway, but in actual fact he stifles them. What do we need such a president for?" Levaneuski told RFE/RL's Belarusian Service. JM
UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT NOT TO DISCUSS IMPEACHING PRESIDENT...
The Verkhovna Rada on 12 September approved an agenda for its second session that began earlier this month, UNIAN reported. In particular, the legislature plans to adopt a budget for 2003 as well as to discuss a Tax Code, a Labor Code, and bills on the Cabinet of Ministers and the post of president. Deputies did not support a motion to initiate the impeachment of President Leonid Kuchma during the current session (only 152 out of the 405 deputies registered in the session hall voted to include this proposal in the agenda). JM
...OR LIFTING TYMOSHENKO'S IMMUNITY
Parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn has decided to return to the Prosecutor-General's Office its request to lift deputy Yuliya Tymoshenko's parliamentary immunity in connection with a criminal investigation against her (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 22 August and 9 September 2002), UNIAN reported on 12 September. Lytvyn told the Verkhovna Rada that the request needs to be elaborated and better substantiated. He added that in its present form, the request does not abide by the Ukrainian Constitution or legislation. Tymoshenko, who insisted that the request be considered by the parliament during the current session, commented that "the president and his retinue have not yet managed to pressure the necessary number of deputies" into voting to lift her immunity and allow her arrest. JM
OUR UKRAINE EXPECTS OVER 1,000 DELEGATES AT DEMOCRATIC FORUM...
Our Ukraine anticipates that more than 1,000 delegates will take part in its democratic forum in Kyiv on 14-15 September, UNIAN reported on 11 September, quoting Our Ukraine lawmaker Oleh Rybachuk. Rybachuk said invitations to participate in the forum have been sent to parliamentarians, regional councilors, and organizations, including 62 political parties. President Kuchma has been invited as a delegate to the forum, while Premier Anatoliy Kinakh, cabinet ministers, and regional administration heads have been asked to participate as guests. JM
...WHILE YUSHCHENKO, LYTVYN MULL FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY
Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko and parliamentary speaker Lytvyn met on 11 September to discuss the creation of a parliamentary majority that could run a coalition government, UNIAN reported. Their meeting was reportedly attended by Tymoshenko, the leader of the opposition Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc. Yushchenko refused to meet with representatives of the so-called "nine" -- comprising nine pro-presidential parliamentary groups (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 11 September 2002). Yushchenko said he "had the impression" that Lytvyn understood Our Ukraine's position regarding the formation of a parliamentary majority. Yushchenko added that no democratic majority will be created if Our Ukraine is presented with "ultimatums." JM
MORE THAN 15,000 CANDIDATES REGISTERED FOR ESTONIA'S LOCAL-COUNCIL ELECTIONS
The National Election Commission announced on 11 September that a total of 15,176 candidates have been registered for the local-council elections on 20 October, BNS reported. The local election commissions are required to register candidates until 15 September and finalize lists by 18 September. There are a total of 3,273 seats in 241 town and local-government councils in the country. More than 70 percent of the candidates (11,046) are running on party tickets, 4,012 as members of 249 electoral alliances, and 118 persons as independents. There are 1,292 candidates from 10 political parties and one election alliance, as well as six independents competing for the 63 seats on the Tallinn City Council. SG
WORLD BANK AUTHORIZES PREVIOUSLY POSTPONED $20 MILLION LOAN TO LATVIA
The Finance Ministry announced on 11 September that the World Bank has approved disbursing a $20 million loan to Latvia for supporting economic reforms in Latvia, BNS reported. The loan is not intended for specific projects but is part of a multiyear structural-reforms loan program, which Latvia was among the first countries to receive. Latvia received a $40 million loan in 2000 and was to receive another $40 million last year, but this sum was later reduced to $20 million because of the state's delays in implementing some reforms, and was subsequently halted after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) objected to the high projected deficit in Latvia's 2001 budget. The government later reached a compromise with the IMF and the World Bank and the $20 million loan was authorized. SG
LITHUANIAN PRESIDENT VISITS UNITED STATES
Valdas Adamkus participated in ceremonies in New York on 11 September commemorating the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, ELTA reported. Adamkus met the same day with members of the American Jewish Community and spoke with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen about the controversial issue regarding visas for Kaliningrad Oblast residents. Adamkus opened his four-day U.S. visit in Chicago on 9 September by participating in a roundtable at Northwestern University's Center of International Relations and Comparative Studies and also addressed the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. The next day he met with organizers of U.S. Environment Protection Agency's program to support the Baltic countries. Adamkus was scheduled to give a speech to the UN General Assembly on 12 September. SG
IMF OPTIMISTIC ABOUT POLISH ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Susan Schadler, who headed an International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission that visited Poland earlier this month, forecast at a news conference in Warsaw on 11 September that Poland will post GDP growth of 1 percent in 2002, 2.5 percent in 2003, and 5 percent in 2004-06 provided that Premier Leszek Miller's cabinet keeps tight controls on spending and reduces the budget deficit, "Rzeczpospolita" reported. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Grzegorz Kolodko said on 12 September that he expects GDP to grow by 1.2 percent this year, PAP reported. JM
POLISH GERMANS SET UP COORDINATION BODY
German minority organizations in Silesian Province -- the Reconciliation and Future group, the German Social-Cultural Association, and the Union of German Youth -- have set up a Council of Upper Silesian Germans, PAP reported on 11 September. "This is one of the breakthrough moments in the history of Silesia's German minority. The council was planned as an initiative uniting Poland's Germans so that we don't just sit around drinking tea but take more part in public life," Reconciliation and Future head Dietmar Brehmer told journalists. The council will be chaired by the German minority's chaplain, Father Konrad Wersch. JM
CZECH GOVERNMENT APPROVES FIELD HOSPITAL'S PULLOUT FROM AFGHANISTAN...
The government on 11 September approved the withdrawal of the Czech military field hospital stationed in Afghanistan by the end of 2002, CTK and AP reported. At the same time, the cabinet approved the extension of the mission of the Czech antichemical/antibacteriological unit in Kuwait until the end of 2003. Finally, the government decided to extend Czech military participation in the KFOR mission in the Balkans through 2003. All the decisions require the approval of the parliament. Also on 11 September, CTK reported that the first group of the joint Czech-Slovak KFOR battalion left for Kosova on the same day. The battalion will operate under British command. It includes about 400 Czech and 100 Slovak soldiers. MS
...APPROVES DRAFT BILL ON EU PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS
At its 11 September meeting, the Czech government also approved a draft bill for the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, CTK reported. The cabinet expects the Czech Republic to join the EU that year. Candidates for the body must be at least 21 years old and must be permanent residents -- although not necessarily citizens -- of the Czech Republic. Elected EU parliament deputies will serve five-year terms. The country's president, members of the cabinet, parliamentary deputies and senators, judges, and the ombudsman are barred from running in the elections. The draft bill must still be debated in the parliament's two chambers. MS
DID POSSIBLE CZECH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE CONCEAL KSC MEMBERSHIP?
The daily "Pravo" on 12 September reported that Jaroslav Bures, considered a possible Social Democratic Party candidate for president, was a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC) between 1986-89, CTK reported. Bures, who is a former justice minister and currently serves as deputy justice minister, did not include his KSC membership on his curriculum vitae. He told "Pravo" that he did not conceal the fact, but that no one asked him whether he was a KSC member when his candidacy for the post of justice minister was vetted. He added that he had intended to reveal his former KSC membership if he were selected as the Social Democratic Party's presidential candidate. "Pravo" said Bures joined the KSC in order to further his professional career, and Bures told the daily he left the party immediately after the overthrow of the communist regime in November 1989. MS
SLOVAKIA COMMEMORATES SEPTEMBER 2001 EVENTS...
"Slovakia and its citizens feel that they are a firm part of a large coalition of solidarity [with the United States]," Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said at a commemoration of the 11 September terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to CTK. Dzurinda said that those events have taught Slovakia to be "more sensitive" to any sign of intolerance, racism, xenophobia, violations of human rights, violence, populism, and nationalism. He mentioned that Slovakia has dispatched an engineering unit to Afghanistan and has supported NATO operations in Kosova. President Rudolf Schuster, who attended the ceremony, said that Slovakia "never wished to be just a passive consumer of the security [extended by NATO]." U. S. Ambassador to Slovakia Ronald Weiser said the United States will never forget that Slovak support came at the moment when it was needed most. MS
...BUT POSTPONES DECISION ON SUPPORT FOR MILITARY ACTION IN IRAQ
Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan on 11 September told TASR that before his country makes a decision on whether to support military action against Iraq, it will wait for an official U.S. decision to be made public. "Thus far, the United States has been holding intensive consultations with its European allies," but has not produced an official statement on the issue, Kukan said. He conceded that the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein represents a potential threat and emphasized that "it would be irresponsible to let [Hussein] make the most" of that threat. MS
SLOVAKIA, HUNGARY AGREE ON NEED TO AMEND STATUS LAW
Slovak Deputy Prime Minister Pal Csaky and the new chairman of the Hungarian Office for Hungarians Abroad, Balint Pataki, agreed on 11 September in Bratislava on the need to amend the Status Law, TASR reported. They both said that the law, which came into force in Hungary in January 2001, should be so amended as to reflect the recommendations of the European Commission for Democracy and Law -- better known as the Venice Commission. A spokesman for Csaky said the current Slovak government will no longer deal with the issue, and agreement with Budapest on how to amend the law should be reached by the next Slovak cabinet. MS
SLOVAK POLICE WANT TO QUESTION FORMER PREMIER'S GERMAN FRIEND AND FINANCIER
Police Vice President Jaroslav Spisak told TASR on 11 September that Slovak police would like to question German businessman Peter Ziegler. Ziegler the previous day revealed that he loaned former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar more than $900,000 to finance the reconstruction of a villa Meciar owns in Trencianske Teplice (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 11 September 2002). Meciar has thus far refused to answer police questions on the affair. MS
HUNGARIANS COMMEMORATE 11 SEPTEMBER...
Members of parliament on 11 September observed a minute of silence before regular business in tribute to the victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hungarian media reported. At another commemoration in Buda Castle, Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy said that what happened in New York a year ago also happened to Hungarians, and "we have not forgotten that since." He said that America is a symbol to Hungary, "a symbol of the rule of law, free trade, and of home-loving people who believe in themselves." U.S. Ambassador Nancy Goodman Brinker spoke about the heroic work performed by firefighters, police, and volunteer workers in New York. The U.S. flag that was brought to Budapest from the Pentagon for the occasion was then hoisted. In the evening, a twin tower of light modeled on the New York World Trade Center was beamed skyward from Budapest's Gellert Hill. MSZ
...AS FOREIGN MINISTER HESITANT ON UNILATERAL MILITARY ACTION IN IRAQ
Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs on 10 September told "The New York Times" in Budapest that Hungary would not like to see any military operation in Iraq without UN authorization, "Nepszabadsag" reports. He said Hungary also wants international supervision to prevent Iraq from acquiring the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. Kovacs said, "The latter represents a bigger threat to world security than the former." One of the basic goals of Hungarian foreign policy is Euro-Atlantic integration and that in this composition both "European" and "Atlantic" carry identical weight, he remarked. MSZ
HUNGARIAN OPPOSITION CRITICIZES VETTING BILLS
Justice Minister Peter Barandy on 11 September outlined in parliament the government's two vetting bills, saying the aim of the bill on making public the state-security past of persons who hold public posts is to promote transparency in public life and close this chapter of the past, Hungarian media reported. Accordingly, the bill is designed to reveal whether public political figures worked for the secret services at the Interior Ministry between December 1944 and February 1990, Barandy explained. He said the rights of persons figuring in state-security documents must be balanced with the need for transparency and the demands of past and present national security. A second bill stipulates the establishment of a State Security Services Historical Archive, Barandy said. The opposition slammed both bills as being unacceptable. FIDESZ Deputy Ervin Demeter complained that those who pursued law enforcement activity in 1956-57 are meant to be removed from the bill, "as that would affect former Prime Minister Gyula Horn." MSZ
COMMISSION TRACES DISAPPEARANCE OF HUNGARIAN OFFICIAL'S DOCUMENT
The missing document on Gabor Szalay, a Free Democrat political state secretary at the Economy Ministry, was taken from the Interior Ministry in 1995 by the then-head of the ministry's data-processing department, Hungarian Television reported on 11 September, citing Imre Mecs, chairman of the parliamentary commission investigating government officials' secret-service pasts. Mecs said this person is now the office manager of the panel of vetting judges, adding that it is still unclear where the document was taken. Szalay admitted last week that he collaborated with communist-era counterintelligence between 1978-88 (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 9 September 2002). MSZ
KOSOVARS MARK 11 SEPTEMBER WITH CANDLELIGHT VIGIL
Official commemorations of the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States took place in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Prishtina, and Belgrade on 11 September, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported. Several leaders from the region, including Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, attended ceremonies in New York. In Kosova, where ethnic Albanians regard Americans as their liberators from Serbian rule in 1999, ordinary citizens turned out to light candles in the streets of many towns. President Ibrahim Rugova and Michael Steiner, who heads the UN civilian administration (UNMIK), agreed that 11 September will henceforth be known as Remembrance Day in Kosova, Hina reported. In Sarajevo, Muslim women survivors of the 11 July 1995 Srebrenica massacre gathered with 50 representatives of Serbia's Women in Black, an NGO that opposed former President Slobodan Milosevic's wars against his neighbors, AP reported. Gordana Mugosan of Women in Black said that "11 September and 11 July are linked because those were attacks against civilians; those were terrorist acts." In Cetinje, Montenegrin NGOs honored the victims at the building that housed the U.S. Embassy to the Kingdom of Montenegro prior to 1918. PM
INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVERS ARRIVE IN MACEDONIA
The Warsaw-based OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) will monitor the 15 September parliamentary elections with more than 800 election observers, "Dnevnik" reported on 12 September. Michael Meyer, the ODIHR mission's political analyst, said the observers have already been briefed. An unspecified number of polling stations throughout the country will be monitored from the opening until the counting of the votes. Most election observers will leave the country on 17 September. In related news, NATO spokesman Craig Ratcliff said members of NATO Task Force Fox, together with Macedonian police, will continue to patrol throughout the country. The Atlantic alliance also provided a number of additional helicopters for use in the event of an emergency. UB
NATO OPTIMISTIC ON MACEDONIAN ELECTIONS
A spokesman for the Atlantic alliance said in Brussels on 12 September that NATO condemns the recent killing of a Macedonian policeman near Tetovo but believes that the elections will be free and fair, Reuters reported. He added that "the only possible response is for people to answer through the ballot box and refuse to allow this unrepresentative minority to drag Macedonia down into a spiral of violence." There have been almost daily reports of isolated cases of violence in recent weeks, most coming from police sources. Not all reports have been independently confirmed, nor is it clear whether any or all were politically or ethnically motivated. PM
MACEDONIAN CENSUS TO TAKE PLACE IN NOVEMBER
The State Census Commission has reviewed preparations for the census to be held between 1 and 15 November 2002, "Utrinski vesnik" reported on 11 September. The census was due to be held in May 2001, but was delayed several times because of the unrest. According to the Ohrid peace agreement that ended the insurgency, the quantitative division of jobs in the public sector will be decided based on the results of the census. The last population count was conducted in 1994. However, Macedonia's ethnic Albanians questioned the results, according to which they make up some 23 percent of Macedonia's population. UB
MONTENEGRIN STATE MEDIA CHIEFS RESIGN
Following the recent all-party agreement on the rules for the 20 October parliamentary elections and a number of related issues, the heads of state-run radio and television, as well as of the state-run daily "Pobjeda," resigned, AP reported from Podgorica on 12 September (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 11 September 2002). Radovan Miljanic, who had been editor in chief of Radio Montenegro since 1998, said: "I am leaving my post convinced it is the only way to safeguard the dignity of my profession." The news agency reported that President Milo Djukanovic agreed with the opposition that his supporters in the top media posts should quit in the interest of calm in the run-up to the elections. PM
KOSTUNICA'S PARTY DEFENDS HIS REMARKS ON REPUBLIKA SRPSKA
Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) gave its endorsement on 11 September to recent remarks made by the president in the Serbian border town of Mali Zvornik, which some Bosnian officials regard as expressing a claim to Bosnian territory, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 11 September 2002). Kostunica said that he has regarded the Republika Srpska "all along as part of the family that is dear and close to us, even if it is temporarily separated. But it will always be ours and in our hearts." Dragan Marsicanin, who is DSS vice president and Kostunica's campaign manager in his bid for the Serbian presidency, said he is not familiar with Kostunica's remarks. Marsicanin added, however, that annexing the Republika Srpska is in Serbia's "historic interest." He stressed that "there is nothing controversial for us in this, even if it is [for Bosnia]. This is the goal that we aim for." In Sarajevo, Bosnian Presidency candidate Haris Silajdzic sent a letter to foreign ambassadors and to Paddy Ashdown, the international community's high representative, saying that Kostunica's remarks show that he has territorial pretensions toward Bosnia. PM
SERBIA GOES AHEAD WITH KEY HIGHWAY PROJECT
The Serbian government announced on 11 September that it will continue construction of the 150-kilometer highway linking Nis with the Macedonian border in the spring of 2003, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported. The project is estimated to cost just under $250 million, of which Greece will contribute nearly $100 million. In related news, the Belgrade railway authorities (ZTP) said that "for technical reasons" they have delayed plans to resume rail links to Macedonia via Kosova. PM
DEVOTED SERBIAN BASKETBALL PLAYERS
Serbia continues to fete the Yugoslav men's basketball team, which recently returned to the country after winning its second consecutive World Basketball Championship title, "Vesti" reported on 12 September (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 9 and 10 September 2002). Players Vlade Divac, Predrag Stojakovic, and Dejan Bodiroga called on Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle to express in their "own names, as in the name of all the basketball team, their loyalty and devotion to the Serbian Orthodox Church," RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported. Elsewhere, representatives of an organization of Milosevic supporters brought the team his greetings and congratulations. It is not clear how the players reacted. PM
CASHIERED CROATIAN POLICE TOLD TO MOVE
Police in central Zagreb cleared away a group of their former colleagues who have been protesting their dismissal under a government reform plan for the past six months, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reported on 11 September. The ouster followed a recent incident in which some of the protesters hurled eggs at Prime Minister Ivica Racan during the visit of his Slovenian counterpart Janez Drnovsek. PM
ROMANIA MARKS 11 SEPTEMBER
In Bucharest on 11 September, President Ion Iliescu, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu, and other officials addressed an international conference titled "Solidarity Against Terrorism" and expressed Romania's determination to contribute to the struggle and, as Iliescu put it, "to fulfill at whatever costs its pledges within the strategic partnership with the U.S.," RFE/RL's Bucharest bureau reported. A minute of silence was observed the same day at cabinet and presidential staff meetings and Iliescu sent a telegram of condolence to his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush. At an evening concert at Bucharest's main concert hall, U.S. Ambassador Michael Guest presented a symbolic U.S. flag to Iliescu as a sign of gratitude for Romania's support following the 9/11 attacks. A plaque carries the inscription: "Together in remembrance, united in resolve." MS
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CHAIRMAN PRIMES ROMANIAN MINISTER ON LETTER
European Parliament Chairman Patrick Cox met in Brussels on 11 September with Romanian European Integration Minister Hildegard Puwak, Romanian Radio reported. Cox told Puwak that in the letter he is preparing to send to the Romanian parliament, he will not propose "solutions" to the controversy concerning Romania's agreement with the United States pertaining to the International Criminal Court (ICC) (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 2 August 2002). He said he intends only to outline "general observations" reflecting the European Union's position. Cox said the European Parliament "cannot dictate to a sovereign people" how its legislature should handle the matter. He also said he hopes "wisdom will prevail in making possible a joint European position" on the ICC. Puwak told Romanian radio that in the discussion with Cox, "no link was made" between the "accession dialogue" and the ICC dispute. EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said after meeting with Puwak on 11 September that he believes that, following the European Council's meeting in Brussels next month and the EU summit in Copenhagen in December, the EU will "send a clear [positive] signal" to Romania on the matter. MS
ROMANIAN PRESIDENTIAL COUNSELOR WANTS XENOPHOBIC TV CHANNEL OFF THE AIR
Presidential Counselor Corina Cretu said on 11 September that the National Council of Television must "take measures" against the private television channel Oglinda TV (OTV), Mediafax reported. Cretu criticized, in particular, OTV's talk show "Dan Diaconescu Live," saying the talk show "has been turned into an instrument of hatred, intolerance, racism, and anti-Semitism." According to Cretu, the show has become "a platform for the dissemination of incitement to violence [and] attacks on democratic values and on the institutions of the state based on the rule of the law." She said moderator Diaconescu's "passivity, lack of professionalism, and bad faith" in failing to counter guests who present such opinions on the show demonstrates that OTV is "pursuing cheap sensationalism and breaking the country's laws." Cretu's statement came after Greater Romania Party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor was interviewed on the program. MS
MOLDOVA COMMEMORATES 11 SEPTEMBER
A ceremony marking the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States was held in central Chisinau on 11 September, RFE/RL's Chisinau bureau reported. A letter President Vladimir Voronin sent one day earlier to his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush was read out. Voronin said in the letter that Moldova shares the grief of U.S. citizens and that "from the very start, Moldova has rallied behind the international coalition against terrorism." U.S. Ambassador Pamela Hyde Smith expressed her country's determination to root out terrorism. A special commemoration service led by Moldovan Orthodox Church Metropolitan Vladimir was conducted at the Chisinau Christmas Cathedral. The Moldovan cabinet began its meeting that day with a minute of silence in honor of the victims of the attack. MS
IMF MISSION STARTS MOLDOVAN VISIT
A mission of experts from the International Monetary Fund began an eight-day visit to Moldova on 11 September, RFE/RL's Chisinau bureau reported. The experts are to examine Moldova's implementation of stipulations of a standby agreement on a $146 million loan to the country covering 2001-03. Moldova has received the first $36 million tranche of that loan. An agreement on a low-interest loan intended to reduce poverty is also to be examined. MS
BULGARIAN PRESIDENT OPENS UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING ON INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
President Georgi Parvanov opened the UN Security Council meeting on international terrorism on 11 September and read the council's declaration against terrorism, BTA reported. Bulgaria holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council. The same day, Parvanov attended ceremonies in New York at the United Nations as well as the former site of the World Trade Center marking the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. On the sidelines of the UN ceremony, Parvanov held talks with Danish Prime Minster Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Parvanov also held a videoconference with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. The talks focused on Bulgaria's bid for NATO accession and the possible military intervention in Iraq. UB
BULGARIA COMMEMORATES 11 SEPTEMBER
In memory of the victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Bulgarian parliamentarians held a minute of silence at the beginning of the 11 September plenary debate, mediapool.bg reported. In a letter addressed to U.S. President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Simeon Saxecoburggotski assured him of Bulgaria's support for the international antiterrorism coalition. "Expressing our deep respect for the memory of the victims of 11 September and the grief for their families, we cannot but also voice our great admiration of the selflessness and heroism of ordinary Americans, who stood as one against the threats and devoted all their strength to repairing the damage," the letter says. U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria James Pardew and representatives of the Bulgarian government and political parties participated in a memorial service at Sofia's Aleksandr Nevskii Cathedral. The sermon was delivered by Bulgarian Orthodox Church Patriarch Maksim. UB
PUBLIC OPINION, UNIONS, AND NATIONALISM IN THE THREE EASTERN SLAVIC STATES
The public disagreement in recent months over the future of the Belarus-Russia Union gives rise to two questions. First, what value do opinion polls and public sentiment have in the three eastern Slavic states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus on issues such as unions with neighboring states if those expressions of popular preference have little relationship to the realm of the possible and elites are unwilling to implement them? Second, how can new unions be formed when all three eastern Slavic states understand their relationship to one another differently?
Since the disintegration of the USSR in December 1991, there have been countless opinion polls conducted by Belarusian and Ukrainian organizations as well as Western governments and institutions that deal with foreign-policy preferences. These polls invariably register strong support in all three eastern Slavic countries for some form of union. In Russia and Belarus this support is evenly distributed throughout the population, while in Ukraine it is confined to its eastern regions.
But, can these sentiments be translated into policy? The gap between the common people and the elites that dates back to the USSR has grown, rather than shrunk, in the post-Soviet era. Ruling elites still feel they have the sole right to control issues of "national security" (i.e., foreign policy, the military, control over the security forces). In all three countries the militaries, which are mainly geared toward dealing with external threats, have been downsized, while internal-security forces have grown disproportionately.
These internal security forces are under the control of the executive and their focus is on dealing with internal "threats," such as that emanating from citizens who might wish to increase their level of political influence. Internal "threats" are seen as more threatening than external ones, despite all the rhetoric about a Western and NATO threat to Belarus and Russia or a Russian threat to Ukraine.
The ruling elites in the three eastern Slavic states take little heed of domestic opinion on most matters, especially on foreign policy. The local population understands this perfectly well. Opinion polls indicate low levels of perceived political effectiveness, and declining participation in civil society (e.g., membership in NGOs, parties, demonstrations, etc.,) throughout the 1990s.
What use then do opinion polls have in determining state policies, particularly in areas of "national security?" It would seem very little. Russian, Ukrainian, or -- as we now see -- even Belarusian elites are not going to implement the policies that logically follow from their citizens' preferences as reflected in opinion polls.
Second, the growing dispute between Belarus and Russia over their union project, launched in 1996, has failed to resolve the dilemma of what kind of union is to be created. Russia's view of its ideal relationships with Belarus and Ukraine differs considerably from its view of its optimum relationships with other former Soviet states. Belarus and Ukraine are not "foreign" in Russian eyes, but temporarily separated regions of one spiritual-cultural space within which Russia is the "elder brother" and the Russian language the language of modernity and culture, in contrast to the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, which Russians consider remnants of the village and the past. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been willing to go along with this conception, thereby reinforcing the Russian view of Belarusians as essentially the same people. In addition, Belarus and Russia have adopted variations of the Soviet Belarusian and Soviet anthems, respectively.
Eleven years of defending Ukrainian sovereignty vis-a-vis Russia and the outside world have forced Russians to begrudgingly realize that Ukraine is different from Belarus. This is something Putin has understood, and he has adopted different policies toward Ukraine. The only political forces in Ukraine that have supported a union with Russia and Belarus are on the extreme left (the Communists, Progressive Socialists, Slavic Unity, etc.,). No member of any centrist political group in Ukraine, which are President Leonid Kuchma's main support base, supports Ukraine's membership of the Russia-Belarus Union.
The reasons for these conflicting views of what kind of "union" is to be built are to be found in Soviet nationalities policies that helped entrench among non-Russians a twin allegiance to their republics and to the USSR. Belarus and Ukraine were unique among the former non-Russian republics in that they even had United Nations representations and small foreign ministries. Russia was different. It had no republican institutions until 1990 and Russians therefore identified with the USSR as their "homeland," not the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
Prior to 1917, Russia did not have a developed sense of national identity nurtured within an independent nation-state, and the blurring of Russian-Soviet identity therefore added to an overall confused identity, particularly toward the eastern Slavs. In contrast, Serbia had a nation-state throughout most of the 19th century and republican institutions within Yugoslavia. Some Western scholars have therefore characterized Russian ethnic nationalism as "weak," as seen in the lack of Russian diaspora mobilization, unlike Serbian nationalism in Yugoslavia.
The Russian understanding of a union with Belarus and Ukraine is closer to the tsarist view of Belarusians and Ukrainians being "Russians" who should simply be absorbed into Russia. But to Belarusian and Ukrainian elites, including those on the extreme left, such a proposal is worse than the policy of sblizhenie (drawing together) that was the cornerstone of Soviet nationality policy during the final years of the USSR.
Allegiance to their Soviet republican territory and borders is strongly entrenched among the Belarusian and Ukrainian elites and public. Separatist movements have been nonexistent or weak and pure Russian nationalist groups have never been able to obtain public support in Belarus or Ukraine. In Ukraine, Russian nationalist groups did not obtain more than 2 percent of the vote in the 1998 and 2002 elections.
In answer to Putin's referendum proposals on a merger of Belarus and Russia, Lukashenka has ruled out any steps that would "liquidate" Belarus as a country, even though opinion polls in both states support such a step. Lukashenka's views on the ideal union are similar to those of the extreme left in Ukraine; that is, a new confederal USSR where republics would enjoy more sovereignty than in the former Soviet Union. But this is not what Putin has in mind. Lukashenka's defense of his country's sovereignty vis-a-vis Russia and domestic supporters of Putin's proposals is consequently making him sound increasingly like his nationalist opponents.
Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies and adjunct staff in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto.
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Revamped Perm-36 Museum Emphasizes Gulag's 'Contribution To Victory'
By Mikhail Danilovich
Robert Coalson
Perm-36 is located in a forest about 75 kilometers from the city of Perm. It served as a labor camp for criminals and political prisoners throughout most of the Soviet period, until 1988. In 1992, a group of academics and activists created the Museum of Political Repressions there.
PERM, Russia -- The Perm-36 gulag museum in the forests of Western Siberia is under new management -- and it's easy to feel the difference when touring the new team's recently opened first exhibition.
The new presentation is devoted not to the repressive forced-labor practices of the Stalin era, but to timber production at the camp and its contribution to the Soviet victory in World War II.
"During times of great tribulations, during times of profound decisions for the country and the fate of the people, no one remained indifferent," Perm Oblast Culture Minister Igor Gladnev said at the exhibition's opening on July 9. "And this is precisely the main factor, thanks to which we achieved the main victory in the history of humanity. Today we are experiencing a deficit of faith, a deficit of unity. And these are not just pretty words -- we must bring them to some practical form."
"So, glory to the heroes," he concluded. "Glory to those who fought, who laid down their lives in the name of our great victory and the preservation of our country."
PHOTO GALLERY: Perm-36 -- The Gulag Camp Frozen In Time
Perm-36: The Gulag Camp Frozen In Time
Visitors to the Perm-36 museum in the Urals can stroll through a well-preserved prison camp of the Gulag system established by Soviet leader Josef Stalin. But despite the authenticity of the site, the museum's new curators are downplaying the camp's role in the repressions of the Stalin era. (Photos by Tom Balmforth, RFE/RL)
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In March, however, local officials under conservative Governor Viktor Basargin took over the museum after the Perm-36 group was labeled a "foreign agent" by the government.
"We don't want to take sides," the museum's new head of exhibitions, Yelena Mamayeva, said shortly after being appointed. "We're trying to talk more about the architectural complex [of the camp], and not to get involved in assessing specific people who served sentences there, and assessing Stalin, and so on. Because right now this is not quite politically correct."
'Balanced, Objective' View Of Gulags
The tour guide at the revamped exhibition emphasized that the prisoners were criminals and "dissidents who were involved in anti-Soviet activity." One woman who toured the display said that "all the emphasis" was on criminals and "people who carried out sabotage during the war."
"They even said that some criminals would have anti-Soviet tattoos done so that they could become 'political' prisoners because, supposedly, the conditions for them were better," said the woman, who asked not to be named.
In fact, the vast majority of political prisoners in Stalin's gulag were sentenced on trumped-up charges. They were thrown in together with common criminals, who were often given authority over them by the guards and sometimes sadistically brutalized the politicals.
Local Soviet-educated historian and former Communist Party of the Soviet Union member Mikhail Suslov also addressed the opening of the new exhibition.
"I am surprised that I do not see either in the press or in journalistic pieces anything about how the prisoners lived," he said. "After all, they performed concerts and made shows. During the war years alone, more than 100,000 shows were organized at prison facilities. They had libraries -- that is, there was a cultural life in the camps, but now they are showing us a somewhat different picture. I propose that we historians need to work to create a balanced, objective picture of what happened."
'Justifying The Gulag'
The figure of 100,000 shows performed in the camps during the war years might be accurate, says Viktor Shmyrov, a founder of the original Perm-36 museum who was not invited to the opening, but the vast majority of them were not "cultural" events but were forcibly staged propaganda events.
Shmyrov says historians like Suslov are "justifying the gulag."
"And this is monstrous," Shmyrov told RFE/RL's Russian Service. "This can go very far. What can I say -- portraits of Stalin are already appearing in the streets of the city."
Viktor Shmyrov: "What can I say -- portraits of Stalin are already appearing in the streets of the city."
Local pensioner Mikhail Plekhanov toured the exhibition and decided that "the conditions for the condemned were acceptable" and "the state had the right to use the labor of prisoners."
"About this small exhibition, I can only say one thing," Plekhanov added. "The forest is an asset of our Motherland that was particularly valuable during the war. First, timber was needed for defense, for trenches and shelters. Secondly, it was needed for rebuilding. It was very interesting for me to visit this place and see how the people who gave us this timber lived."
Shmyrov says, to take one figure, 20 percent of the camp's prisoners died during 1943. Historian Vitaly Mingalev gives similarly appalling mortality figures for the nearby Ponyshlag camp, which held 6,700 prisoners in mid-1943: in July 1944, 139 prisoners died; in August, 309; in September, 276.
Shmyrov's group has found a note written by a Ponyshlag administrator in the spring of 1944: "Almost half of the beds have no mattresses or blankets and the prisoners have to sleep on bare boards...without undressing. About half of the prisoners have worn-out shoes, and many of them have practically no clothes or shoes at all."
Exhibition director Mamayeva opened the revamped museum with a personal anecdote.
"My great-grandmother was in the category of those specially resettled," she told the gathering. "In the 1940s-50s, when she had two small children to take care of and her husband was at the front, she committed theft. She carried away some grain in her shoes. She was sentenced to 10 years, which she served at a timber camp."
"When we were putting together this exhibition," Mamayeva continued, "and we were carrying the logs, we got a sense of how hard the work was. But it is important to note that the timber firms hired workers not only from among the locals but also signed labor agreements with the labor camps to hire prisoners. And they had to pay both types [of workers]. So it is not justified to speak about 'slave labor.' At the same time -- there was no compensation for either type of worker for the difficulty of the work."
"But that was our region's contribution to victory," she concluded.
Written by Robert Coalson based on reporting by Mikhail Danilovich in Perm. RFE/RL Moscow correspondent Tom Balmforth contributed from Perm
Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL who covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe.
CoalsonR@rferl.org
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Bolton Says U.S. Seeks 'Behavior' Change From Iran, Not Regime Change
August 22, 2018 05:03 GMT Updated August 22, 2018 08:26 GMT
U.S national-security adviser John Bolton gives a press conference with the Israeli prime minister at the latter's office in Jerusalem on August 20.
White House national-security adviser John Bolton says the United States is not seeking to topple Iran's government, but says Washington does want authorities in Tehran to change their behavior.
"Just to be clear, regime change in Iran is not American policy. But what we want is massive change in the regime's behavior," Bolton told a news conference on August 22 in Jerusalem, where he held talks with Israeli leaders.
Bolton, who has in the past suggested the U.S. government should push for a change in government in Iran, said in May that regime change was not part of the Trump administration's policy.
Bolton also warned on August 22 that the United States will respond "very strongly" if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces use chemical weapons in an offensive to retake Idlib Province.
Separately, in an interview with Reuters published earlier on August 22, Bolton said the United States will continue to push for full withdrawal of Iran's military from Syria in talks with Russia over the Syrian civil war.
Bolton said Washington was maintaining a contingent of several thousand U.S. soldiers in Syria in part out of its concern that Iranian fighters in the country pose a threat to U.S. ally Israel.
"Our interests in Syria are to finish the destruction of the [Islamic State's] territorial caliphate and deal with the continuing threat of ISIS terrorism, and to worry about the presence of Iranian militias and regular forces," he said. "And those are the issues that keep us there."
Bolton is due to meet with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, in Geneva on August 23 in the first official follow-up to a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump last month at which they discussed the U.S. and Israeli demand that Iranian forces withdraw from Syria.
Bolton told Reuters that Putin informed Trump at the summit that Russia cannot force the Iranian troops to leave.
"But he also told us that his interest and Iran's were not exactly the same [in Syria]. So we're obviously going to talk to him about what role they can play" at the upcoming meeting, Bolton said.
"We're going see what we and others can agree in terms of resolving the conflict in Syria. But the one prerequisite there is the withdrawal of all Iranian forces back in Iran," he said.
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It’s not just the backstop!
2 February, 2019 by Richard
Fifteen failures in Theresa May’s deal
Theresa May is working on the assumption that the only problem with her Brexit deal is the “backstop” (or safety net) provisions to avoid a hard border in Ireland – something the government agreed to 14 months ago and has been trying to wriggle out of ever since. But that is, for many of us, not the main problem (if indeed it is a problem) with her deal. There are plenty of major problems that she wants us to ignore. Let’s have a look at some of them.
1. Wasting vast amounts of money
The Leave Campaign promised that Brexit would save lots of money that would all go to the NHS. In fact, it’s costing a fortune! It’s not just the £39 billion “divorce settlement”, it’s the much bigger loss of tax revenues to the British exchequer caused by the economic consequences of Brexit which are made even worse by the government’s intention of ultimately leaving not just the EU but the single European market and the customs union too. A report by the NIESR, an independent economic think tank, shows that by 2030, GDP will be around 4 per cent lower than it would have been had the UK stayed in the EU (rising to 5.5 per cent, or £140 billion a year, in the event of a no-deal Brexit). The cost of Brexit will be far higher than any savings from our EU contribution. That contribution – the two per cent of public spending that we carry out jointly at EU level – itself often saves us money at national level by pooling resources or avoiding duplication, such as on research programmes or technical agencies like the air safety agency.
2. Losing any say on EU rules, even though we will still follow many of them
Under May’s deal, our access to the European market will depend on “level playing field” provisions covering “state aid, competition, social and employment standards, environmental standards, climate change and relevant tax matters”. On all of these the UK will in practice have to follow EU rules, while no longer having a say on them. The agreement also specifies that UK participation in any EU programmes, will be “subject to the conditions set out in the corresponding Union [legal] instruments”, set by the EU, not jointly agreed ones. There will no longer be British ministers around the table taking those decisions. Above all, Britain will be completely absent from the place where the future of our continent will be shaped.
3. Losing trade deals with countries around the world that we currently have via the EU
Under May’s plans, we will exit all our existing trade deals, including the one with Japan that entered into force this month creating the world’s largest free trade area. We would have to re-negotiate them all, in a hurry, negotiating alone as Britain without the clout of the world’s largest market that we had when we negotiated jointly as EU. And of course we will not be a part of those those currently being negotiated, such as the EU-Australia agreement.
4. Weakening our security
Under the deal, there will merely be “cooperation” rather than “participation” in Europol and Eurojust, on cyber-security threats, international efforts to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Our participation in the European Arrest Warrant will end and be replaced by “streamlined procedures” yet to be negotiated.
5. Leaving the Galileo satellite system
We finance this useful technology by spreading the huge costs among 28 countries. Years of UK investment in Galileo will be thrown away, leaving us facing the costly option of setting up a separate system, as the government recently announced with apparent relish.
6. Taking our farmers out of the common agricultural market in Europe
The EU is the destination for the bulk of UK farmers’ exports. The Common Agricultural Policy currently provides the bulk of farmers’ incomes and means there are equivalent levels of subsidy across Europe. Are we going to subsidise less (and see our farmers unable to compete) or more (and see them excluded from European markets for unfair competition)? Is this the beginning of the end for some of our much loved landscapes, such as the Yorkshire Dales or the Lake District, as their farms close down? Read more here.
7. Failing to spell out how to leave the Common Fisheries Policy.
Under international law (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), we will still have to negotiate with our neighbours on managing fish stocks, agreeing limits and quotas. And if we try to avoid that, other EU countries have already said they will reduce their take of our exports (we export most of the fish we catch). Read more here.
8. Ending Free movement, rather than using its safeguards.
Free movement is reciprocal – so ending it removes rights from nearly two million Brits currently living in other EU countries and from all Brits who might have wanted to benefit from this in the future, especially young people. The rights of UK citizens to live, work, and study in 27 other countries, are being dismissed at a stroke. It’s also a misplaced target: if Theresa May wants to reduce migration to the UK, she should have the honesty to say that most migration to Britain comes from outside the EU, entirely under UK rules, which she controlled as Home Secretary for six years. And perhaps mention that EU freedom of movement is not an unconditional right, it comes with obligations (such as to find work or be self-sufficient) which she never enforced. Read more here.
9. Ruling out continued UK participation in EU Agencies
The agreement removes the UK from the European Medicines Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and the European Air Safety Agency, allowing only for “the possibility of cooperation”. (This is in contrast to the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism, where the UK can be a “Participating State”). These joint technical agencies are not just a way of saving money by pooling resources – their authorisations are crucial for allowing products onto the European market. If we’re outside, our firms will be bottom of the queue.
10. Dropping out of the mutual recognition of driving licences.
There is merely a reference to “the Parties should consider complementary arrangements to address travel by private motorists.”
11. Weakening UK citizens’ rights.
Leaving the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights is a strange way of recognising the UK’s long track record in protecting human rights!
12. Having less say on sanctions against those who violate international rules.
We will be able to join, but not decide on, EU sanctions. EU trade sanctions are a powerful tool, as the EU is the world’s largest market. From outside, we will no longer have a say on how that tool is used.
13. Losing out in dispute arbitration
The agreement accepts that disputes between the UK and the EU on the agreement will be settled by an independent arbitrator, whose decisions will “be binding” and must defer to the Court of Justice of the EU, the “sole arbiter of Union law” (despite Theresa May’s previous red line), whenever it is a matter of interpreting the EU’s rules. So, the UK will still be subject to the Court’s judgements, but there will no longer be a British judge helping to make them.
14. Jeopardising Gibraltar’s status
Gibraltar’s position will be under threat as the necessary further negotiation puts Britain in a vulnerable negotiating position where Spain has a veto on our future trade deal with the EU.
And, last, but not least:
15. Accepting a “Blind Brexit”
We will be leaving without any clarity or guarantees on a host of crucial issues which will only be settled after we’ve left, when we have far less leverage in the negotiations. There is no binding agreement yet on any of the following:
access to the EU market for our financial services (insurance and banking). Loss of the current high level of access will cost us jobs, income and therefore tax revenue.
digital rules and access, crucial for e-commerce and to reduce barriers to trade by electronic means. Even if we do eventually get full access, it will be conditional on following EU rules and is no substitute for jointly running the system, as we do now
arrangements allowing data to continue to flow freely, vital for our economy and for our shared security
the right of UK citizens to practice their profession elsewhere in Europe. At best, we might simply maintain the current right for our citizens to do that. It is, however, more likely to result in less ability to do so, given the government’s intention to restrict freedom of movement
specific arrangements for gas and electricity interconnectors and supplies
access for freight operators, buses and coaches
arrangements to take part in EU programmes like Horizon 2020 and Erasmus
cooperation with Euratom, which we’re also pulling out of for no good reason. Read more here
visa-free travel to the EU for holidays and business trips
continued sharing of security data like DNA, passenger records and fingerprints to fight crime and terrorism
the “Framework Participation Agreement” yet to be negotiated, on UK participation in civilian and military crisis management missions abroad.
Prev:Hey UK, the EU’s watching you!
Next:Rebutting Mike Hookem
Annie Hawksley
2 February, 2019 at 4:02 pm
My husband owns a small bus company which relies on cycling holidays by coach into the EU for more than half of its turnover.
We have a 2019 programme all set up, booked in and ready to go. Just one little snag – we have no idea whether or not we will have a valid operating licence in order to fulfil our bookings.
My husband and I have worked hard for more than twenty years to get where we are. Now we’re watching it potentially failing through absolutely no fault of our own. We know we’re not alone in this. But that doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking.
And you and your friends voted Remain, no doubt.
Juliet Davies
11 February, 2019 at 1:44 am
I’ve yet to meet anyone who runs a business who supports Brexit. After nearly three years of writing letters to MPs, marching, signing petitions, posting on facebook and Twitter, generally making a nuisance of myself, I have pretty much given up. I despair of those I speak to who don’t give a sh*t about the money my husband’s business has already lost (he imports goods from mainly Belgium, the post-ref tanking £ has hit him hard, and now he also needs to pay a consultant to handle his imports paperwork), and in my business the loss of confidence in construction has had a major impact. And there’s my planned retirement to Spain probably gone…
So why don’t we stay in? Do you still believe the nonsense of “the will of the people” when granting what they willed is so damaging?
3 February, 2019 at 7:05 am
The role of government is to make sound decisions for the people and the country. (That’s why we voted for you) With the knowledge we now have about leaving the EU the government should step up to the plate and be honest with the people, they should explain that it is not a good for the UK leave the EU and revoke article 50. The the referendum vote was based on misinformation and false promises, We already have the best deal. Don’t throw it away
Exactly so. Mr Corbett,PLEASE explain this to Mr Corbyn. It appears that he understands none on this!
C Butty
He understands just fine. A referendum, however ridiculous, is the Tory party’s baby. They initiated it. They carried it out. They ‘negotiated’ withdrawal.
They involved the whole UK in the Tory party’s internal feud. Her Majesty’s loyal opposition are merely continuing their version of something that has nothing to do with/been forced upon them. They must do so, however distasteful to you. If you want to get angry with anyone, chose the engineers whose sewer-farm this is.
It’s obvious he doesn’t understand, otherwise he wouldn’t say things like poverty and the environment are more important than constitutional issues (!) He is way out of his depth.
Peter Bareau
Missed out lower investment in UK, continued business uncertainty, destruction of some exporting businesses, risks to our Union, lesser power leverage and threat to our UN Security Council seat, continued divisiveness in Britain, and many more.
Peter Sain ley Berry
3 February, 2019 at 12:03 pm
Most excellent piece, Richard.
I have given up hope that the UK government is capable of acting rationally. It uses the flawed referendum as a means of expressing an orgy of atavism to the despair of its friends and international colleagues. There is no strategy except to indulge in wishful thinking of a Brittanic dominance that was already out of date 100 years ago. We excoriate Maduro for ruining his country, but cannot see how the same disregard for facts and the same choking embrace of ideology is ruining ours.
Excellent article. Just such a shame Corbyn is acting the mad midwife to Mays right wing brexit disaster. And thus forcing millions of Labour voters to green, Lib Dem or SNP. This probrexit stance is going to destroy a once great and decent party
Billy Spencer
Just wondering if Jeremy Corbin has seen this ?
Asking for a friend who can’t understand why England is doing this.
Quite an unbalanced article saying nothing of the benefits of leaving the EU .
Andy Gee
Billy Spencer – It would be good, in the interests of so=called balance, if you could give just one teeny little example of the benefits of leaving the EU. Hint – none of the brexiteer loons can manage one real example.
Harold Thimbleby
Do tell! What are the TRUE Brexit benefits? None of the 2016 promises stand.
Philip Karpeles
8 March, 2019 at 1:59 pm
Which are?
Maggie Kennedy
There are no benefits.
Alan Dewar
So obviously ridiculous to continue with Mays rigid body language ,(policies included).
Graham Moss
Brilliant summary, thanks.
But to convince the unconvinced, these points need to be written as if we’ve already left (eg we will be able to use our driving licences).
This is for two reasons
1 Positives sell
2 Brexiters are already living in their moment.
Stuart Brown
Well it’s too late for me. I’ve moved my company to Estonia. 95% of my turnover comes from EU-financed contract work, plus I cannot deal with the contradiction of working on EU free trade agreements (which I do) while not being an EU citizen. Regardless of my voting persuasion, there is no for of Brexit that works for me – so how could the Prime Minister promise “a country that works for everyone”? I am utterly fed up of politicians promising what they must know to be undeliverable.
Vieilledent
Thanks Richard for this limpid but detailed reminder. We as Group Europe are still interested in listening to you when the time is good. Regards Catherine
Tristram Charnley
Plus EHIC, and mobile roaming, but hey, blue passports!
Paul Atherton
15 March, 2019 at 9:59 pm
No one has ever truthfully explained the benefits of leaving.
The only clear promise was written on the side of a bus and the day after the referendum the Brexiteers, notably Nigel Farage and Ian Duncan-Smith, queued up to denounce it as a lie.
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Pyongyang: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has received a personal letter with “excellent” and “interesting” content from US President Donald Trump, Pyongyang’s state media said on Sunday.
“After reading the letter, the Supreme Leader of the Party, the state and the armed forces said with satisfaction that the letter is of excellent content,” the Korean Central News Agency said, referring to its leader.
“Appreciating the political judging faculty and extraordinary courage of President Trump, Kim Jong-un said that he would seriously contemplate the interesting content,” it added.
The KCNA did not disclose when and how the letter was delivered to Kim, reports Yonhap News Agency.
The letter appears to be in response to the one Kim sent to Trump recently in time for the anniversary of their first-ever summit in Singapore last June.
Trump had described Kim’s letter as “beautiful” and “very warm”. He also emphasized that the relationship between them remains strong and that “something will happen that’s going to be very positive”.
The exchange of correspondence between the leaders renewed hopes for a resumption of denuclearization talks which have stalled since the breakdown of their second summit in February. (IANS)
Also Read: Kim Jong-un To Meet Vladimir Putin In Russia
TagsKim Jong-un
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Familia falters in 9th inning, Mets blow World Series opener
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) Jeurys Familia finally cracked, at a terrible time for the New York Mets.
Matt Harvey had his chance to hold the lead, too.
And after two of their best pitchers botched Game 1, before an error by the captain wrecked it, the Mets find themselves in a World Series hole that hasn't been easy to escape.
A savior all season for the National League champs, Familia gave up a tying homer to Alex Gordon on a 97 mph fastball with one out in the ninth inning Tuesday night. David Wright's error at third base in the 14th inning set up the Kansas City Royals, who won 5-4 on Eric Hosmer's sacrifice fly off 42-year-old Bartolo Colon.
''I wanted to make it go away and I made it in the middle and up,'' Familia said. ''Everybody knows that if you make a mistake, you pay for it.''
Gordon's long drive to straightaway center field was a stunning blow off a lights-out reliever who was on a serious roll.
''He doesn't give up home runs. So we were all shocked by it. We liked where we were at,'' Mets manager Terry Collins said. ''Their team, one of the things we know about them is they're never down and out. We've got to put them away. We've got to do a better job.''
Familia had converted 21 consecutive save opportunities - including five in the playoffs - since coughing up a late lead in the rain against San Diego on July 30.
That was no doubt the nadir of New York's storybook season. The next day, the Mets traded for slugger Yoenis Cespedes and started a home sweep of Washington that wiped out their three-game deficit in the NL East.
Familia was a huge reason the Mets won their first pennant in 15 years, coming through in several pressure-packed situations this postseason. Three of his playoff saves required more than three outs, including two spotless innings to protect a one-run lead in the deciding Game 5 of the Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In fact, Familia had yielded only two hits and two walks in eight scoreless outings covering 9 2-3 innings this postseason.
''By no means do you feel like it's automatic against this team no matter who's out there on the mound. We've seen it all postseason. There's no lead that's safe,'' Wright said. ''They're going to do what they can to scratch and claw, and that's what they did tonight.''
Familia was called on early again at Kauffman Stadium and retired Mike Moustakas on a grounder with runners at the corners to end the eighth, momentarily preserving a 4-3 lead.
The closer set down Salvador Perez to start the ninth, then quick-pitched on a 1-1 count - something Familia likes to do on occasion.
This time, Gordon was ready. His home run was the first tying shot in the ninth inning or later of a World Series game since Scott Brosius connected for the New York Yankees against Arizona in 2001.
''The at-bat before with Salvy, I saw him quick-pitch. I wasn't expecting that and I wanted to make sure when I got in the box I was ready to hit,'' Gordon said. ''He tried to quick-pitch me and left the ball right there to hit.''
Familia, who allowed six homers in 78 innings during the regular season, might have had a cushion if Harvey had shut down the resilient Royals. The star right-hander was given a 3-1 lead, but squandered it in the sixth inning.
He permitted a leadoff double and a single before Hosmer's first sacrifice fly made it a one-run margin. Lorenzo Cain stole second and Harvey went after Moustakas with first base open and two outs.
Moustakas made the Mets pay with a tying single to center.
''I didn't feel great. I didn't have my good stuff,'' Harvey said. ''There's a lot of disappointment in giving up those runs because in my mind if I hadn't done that, obviously the game wouldn't have dragged on as long as it did.''
New York went back in front on Hosmer's uncharacteristic error at first base in the eighth, but was unable to close it out.
''It seemed like a roller-coaster ride, for sure,'' Wright said. ''Every time it seemed like we got momentum, they crawled right back.''
Wright was caught stealing in the ninth and struck out with a chance to put the Mets ahead in the 11th. And when it was finally over after 5 hours, 9 minutes, New York was in a precarious position: The loser of Game 1 has dropped 11 of the last 12 World Series and 16 of the past 18.
''I think we still have our normal confidence. We realize it's a seven-game series. There's no panic whatsoever,'' Harvey said.
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Sevier County, UT – Car Runs Off Road on Interstate 70, Driver Medi-Vacced
By Utah Legal News Accident News 1 dead, 1 injured in crash on I-70, Apolonia Galegos, Bombole Mbenga, Car accident on I-70 near Joseph, Car Runs Off Road on Interstate 70, Driver Medevaced, Fatal car accident on I-70, I-70 rollover accident near Joseph, Sevier County
Sevier County, UT (March 30, 2019) – A very serious accident occurred in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 70 in Sevier County on March 27th. The crash is reported to have taken place at 7:10 in the morning.
Emergency responders and police were called to the scene of a crash that involved a 1999 Mercedes Benz that had gone off the side of the freeway. The incident occurred on I-70 near the town of Joseph.
A statement from the Utah Highway Patrol indicated that the Mercedes was traveling east when it suddenly veered off the left side of I-70, causing the driver to overcorrect her steering to the right. The Mercedes then rolled and crashed into a tree, which ejected the driver through the windshield. The vehicle then caught air and sailed over the driver and finally came to a stop upside down.
The driver, whom the police identified as 19-year-old Apolonia Galegos of Aurora, Colorado was airlifted to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo. According to the UHP Galegos was not wearing her seatbelt at the time of the accident.
Police also identified Bombole Mbenga of Englewood, Colorado as the 19-year-old passenger in the Mercedes who was able to drag herself out of the wrecked vehicle and try to flag down help for her friend. Mbenga was medically transported to Sevier Valley Hospital in Richfield. Her injuries are not life-threatening.
The UHP released a statement saying that the wreck may have been due to the driver falling asleep at the wheel.
We offer our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Apolonia Galegos during this difficult time. Our thoughts are also with Bombole Mbenga as we wish her a full and speedy recovery.
Highway Accidents in Sevier County
The state of Utah saw a very small decrease in the number of accident fatalities from 2016 to 2017 with only 272 deaths, nine fewer than the previous year. Accidents that occur on highways have a much greater potential for being disastrous and ending in catastrophic injuries and even death. This is mainly due to the high volume of automobiles that are extremely close to one another and traveling at higher rates of speed.
When someone sustains an injury of any magnitude from a car accident in which they were a passenger, Utah allows the victim to seek financial compensation for the various damages that they may have endured. These damages can include things such as hospital stays, doctor visits, physical therapy, lost wages due to missed work, and pain and suffering.
At Siegfried & Jensen, we have over three decades of experience in helping our clients receive the remuneration to which the law entitles them and in helping them put their lives back together. Our professional team of personal injury attorneys is among the most reputable in Utah and is proud of the extensive knowledge and commitment that we apply across all of our personal injury cases.
If you or someone you love has been injured in a car accident, please reach out to the qualified Utah personal injury attorneys at the offices of Siegfried & Jensen to schedule your free, no-obligation consultation with us by calling 801-845-9000 today.
Note: This post was created specifically using secondary sources. It is to be used independently from Siegfried & Jensen. Our staff has not independently confirmed the information used within these sources and, if anything appears incorrect, please reach out and inform us so that we can promptly make corrections as needed.
Disclaimer: At Siegfried & Jensen, we intend to honor the victims of horrific Utah accidents and inform the public about how to avoid these accidents and what can be done in the event of one. Please do not use this information as legal or medical advice.
West Valley City, UT – Man Dies in Fiery Collision on I-215
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South Jordan, UT – 4-Year-Old Child Killed In Rear-End Accident On Bangerter Hwy and 10400 South- Updated
South Jordan, UT (February 13, 2019) – A 4-year-old boy lost his life on Wednesday, January 30, in a... read more
St. George, UT – Collision At The Intersection Of Red Cliffs Drive And Mall Drive Causes Injuries
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Salt Lake City, UT – Man Killed in Fiery Crash On I-15 At 400 S
Salt Lake City, UT (June 1, 2019) – Sources have confirmed that the driver of a commercial truck died... read more
Midvale, UT – Crash At Union Park Ave At 1000 East 6700 South Results In Injuries
Midvale, UT (March 4, 2019) – Police and emergency medical crews reported to an accident Monday just before 6... read more
Salt Lake City, UT – Victim Injured In Crash At 800 East Just South Of 2100 South
Salt Lake City, UT (March 22, 2019) – Salt Lake City Police and first responders reported to the scene... read more
Murray, UT- Pedestrian Injured By Semi-Truck on I-15 Near 6000 South
Murray, UT ( February 11, 2019) – A man is left critically injured after being struck by a semi-truck... read more
Park City, UT – Child Injured At Utah Ski Resort After Fall
Park City, UT (February 25, 2019) – Emergency medical responders reported to an accident on Saturday evening involving an... read more
Salt Lake City, UT – 2000 East Sunnyside Ave Motorcycle And Car Collide, Result In Injuries
Salt Lake City, UT (March 19, 2019) – Around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Salt Lake City police and first responders... read more
Salt Lake City, UT – Car Accident Involving Pedestrian Occurred At 500 East And 500 South In Downtown Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City, UT (February 28, 2019)- The Salt Lake City responded to an accident Wednesday shortly before 5:30... read more
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How to Make an Appointment
After-Hours and Emergency Care
Issues and Concerns
Resources for Health Information
Find a Community Referral
Parenting from a Distance
Guide for Faculty/Staff and Administration
The Counseling Center staff is made up of licensed Clinical Social Workers, Psychologists, and Psychiatrists, and we train interns in social work, counseling, and psychology. We are committed to the emotional, physical and spiritual development of undergraduate and graduate students. All staff and interns have been trained to address a wide range of presenting concerns, though we each have unique clinical interests and specialties.
Sherri Ettinger, PhD, LICSW
Sherri began working in the Simmons Counseling Center in the fall of 2000. Sherri received her BA in Sociology and Women's Studies at Brandeis University and her MSW and PhD at the Smith College School for Social Work. Prior to joining the staff at Simmons, Sherri worked with teenage parents at Children's Hospital; on a trauma team at Judge Baker Children's Center; and in the Counseling Center at Wheaton College. She is a member of the adjunct faculty at Smith College, School for Social Work, where she taught Clinical Practice and a course on GLBT identities for a number of years. Sherri has worked with adolescents and young women for 25 years, focusing on life-transitions, self-development, and resilience. Areas of particular interest include sexual identity, trauma, eating problems, parenting, and the impact of oppression on development and self-esteem. In addition to providing clinical services to Counseling Center clients, Sherri supervises interns and serves on various committees at Simmons.
Psychiatric Consultant
Donna Mathias, MD
Donna, the consulting psychiatrist at the Counseling Center, is an integral part of our counseling team. As the psychiatric consultant, Donna meets with staff and clients to develop counseling plans appropriate to clients' needs, with a special emphasis on the role that medication can play in assisting clients to cope more effectively with their concerns.
Staff Social Worker
Lisa Corrin, EdM, LICSW
Lisa is a graduate of Simmons School of Social Work and Harvard Graduate School of Education. Lisa joined the Counseling Center first as a graduate intern in 2002 and then joined the staff in 2005. Her professional experience includes a leadership role in an educational setting where she provided support to families, faculty and young children. She also has experience with women's health issues and worked with individuals and groups to assist with adjustment to and management of chronic and life threatening illnesses. Lisa offers an integrative approach to help students who struggle with a variety of concerns including depression, anxiety, adjustment and identity issues, as well as loss and grief and family and relationship issues.
Elizabeth Alvarez-Nyante, MSW, LICSW
Elizabeth is a graduate of Simmons School of Social Work, and also attended Simmons as an undergraduate. Elizabeth joined the Counseling Center first as a graduate intern in 2005 and returned as a staff member in 2013. She returns to Simmons to continue in her interest of young adult development, feminist theory and trauma. Her professional experience includes a background in community mental health (South End Community Health Center, Advocates, and Wayside Metro West). Over the past 7 years she has worked with children, adolescents and adults struggling with depression, anxiety, as well as loss and trauma. In addition to providing clinical services to Counseling Center clients, Elizabeth supervises interns and is a member of the adjunct faculty at the Simmons School for Social Work.
Bianca Blakesley, MSW
Bianca is a graduate of Smith College School for Social Work. She has prior clinical experience as a family worker at Faulkner Hospital inpatient psychiatric unit, and completed her second placement at the Simmons counseling center. In her practice, Bianca uses a trauma-informed approach and integrates psychodynamic, relational and social justice frameworks into therapy. She has interest and experience working with young adults with a variety of concerns including: trauma, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, family conflict, and gender, sexuality and racial/ethnic identity development. Her goal is to help each individual client move towards healing and liberation in their lives through a warm, curious and collaborative approach. Bianca believes it is a privilege to listen when others share their stories, and honors the unique strengths of each person she encounters.
Seana Peterson, MSW, LCSW
Seana Peterson, MSW, LCSW is a recent graduate of Smith College School for Social Work. She received her B.A. in Communications and Gender Studies from Northwestern University. Her past clinical experience includes providing individual, family, and group therapy for adolescents and young adults navigating depression, anxiety, trauma, and psychosis. She completed graduate training at the Simmons University Counseling Center and is thrilled to return as a staff member. Seana has an interest in exploring the many challenges related to college and emerging adulthood, including race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality identity formation, stress management, relationships, and issues related to oppression/bias. As a counselor, Seana values curiosity, transparency, creativity and humor as pathways to healing.
Staff Psychologist
Angela M. Borges, PhD
Angela holds a doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Boston College. She has done counseling with underrepresented groups since 2007, specializing in the effects of trauma across the lifespan and the psychological impact of societal oppression. She has experience working with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, food and substance addiction issues, and many other mental health challenges. Previously, she worked as a domestic violence victim advocate. She is the co-author of a number of peer-reviewed publications on violence prevention and intervention and the intersection of social justice and mental health issues and has worked as a consultant on these issues with local colleges and agencies. Angela is also a Lead Trainer with Prevention Innovations at the University of New Hampshire, where since 2003 she has helped adapt the Bringing in the Bystander© sexual assault prevention program for more than 35 national and international non-profit organizations, universities, and military organizations.
Counseling Center Interns
Lilian Beatriz Lopes de Andrade Click to Open
Lilian is a second-year Mental Health Counseling student at Boston College. As a licensed Clinical Psychologist in Brazil, she has worked with children and adults in outpatient and in a school setting. Lilian’s research and clinical interests revolve around identity development, multiculturalism, critical theory and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives. Lilian is bilingual and bicultural and speaks Portuguese and English. In the US, she has worked as part of an In-Home Therapy team, as a Therapeutic Training and Support and Therapeutic Mentor for families and youth. In this field she experienced working with strength-based wraparound services and supporting families with resources and accessing care. Cultural competence and multicultural perspectives are highly important to Lilian’s practice. With that framework in mind she focuses on supporting clients in their growth, focusing on resilience, creative living and keeping in mind the intersection of race, ethnicity, class, religion, disability, and sexuality. Her personal interests are languages and art expression such as poetry, films, music and dance.
Siloh Cermak Click to Open
Siloh Cermak is a 2nd year mental health counseling student at Saybrook University, and received their BA in political economy and sustainable agriculture from The Evergreen State College. They have a long history of community organizing, and are inspired by the resilience and healing of collective trauma that is borne through construction of a shared story and resistance, in the endless ways that work can take place. Siloh's clinical experience and interests include working with young adults navigating interpersonal and systemic trauma, connections between individual and community mental, physical, and spiritual health, LGBTQ+ issues and coming out, and addiction and substance use. In their spare time, they play with their great pyrenees pup, practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and listen to many, many podcasts.
Laura Gonzalez Click to Open
Laura Gonzalez is a third-year Ph.D student in Counseling Psychology at Boston College. She received her B.A. in Communication from Texas A&M University and her M.A. in Mental Health Counseling from Boston College. Her most recent clinical experience includes working at a community mental health center, where she worked with adolescents and adults facing depression, anxiety, relationship concerns, family conflict, traumatic experiences, and questions about identity. Laura has also worked at an eating disorder treatment center, as an advocate at a domestic violence program, with survivors of human trafficking, and with young adults who have been impacted by international acts of terrorism. Her clinical and research interests center around issues related to trauma and immigration, particularly how oppression and marginalization shape these experiences for young adults. In her spare time, Laura enjoys reading, biking around Boston, and attempting to watercolor.
Annie Hamilton Click to Open
Annie is a second-year MSW student at Boston University where she is completing a dual degree in Clinical Social Work and Public Health. She completed her BA at Wellesley College where she majored in Economics and Women and Gender Studies. During Annie's first year clinical placement, she worked in the Niteo program for young adults managing major mental health conditions at the BU Psychiatric Rehab Center. Before returning to school for her Master's degrees, Annie worked in non-profit fundraising and spent her free time volunteering on the Boston Area Rape Crisis Hotline. Annie's clinical interests include utilizing a Liberation Health Model to provide client-centered care to young adults. She loves biking, running, and talking about Harry Potter.
Noor Ibrahim Click to Open
Noor is a second year MSW student at the Boston College School of Social Work. She received her BA in English from Douglass College and her MEd in Secondary English Education from Rutgers University. Her clinical experience includes providing wellness support in a transitional home for adults with mental health challenges, serving as a case manager for students with disabilities, and serving as an after-hours crisis support staff member for college students. Prior to pursuing a career in social work, Noor worked in Higher Education for over a decade, with experience in Residential Life, Academic Advising, teaching, programming and assessment. As the “neuro-architect” for her clients, Noor believes in helping others change their neuropathways towards more healthy and productive tendencies. Noor’s clinical interests include working with marginalized students by connecting them to their strengths and relationships. In her free time, Noor enjoys hiking, camping, reading non-fiction, and listening to Oprah’s Soul Sessions podcast.
Chomba Muwele Click to Open
Chomba Muwele is a second-year Mental Health Counseling student at Boston College. She received her B.S. from the University of San Francisco where she majored in Kinesiology, Psychology, and Child and Youth Studies. Her previous experiences involve supporting intercultural/cross-cultural programs and interning at a health clinic associated with the San Francisco Department of Health. Her clinical interests include identity formation, such as the navigation and influence of multiple intersecting identities, working with underserved populations, first-generation students, multiculturalism, immigration, and resiliency. In her free time, Chomba enjoys watching mystery thrillers, dancing, and exploring new restaurants.
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Government guarantee is meaningless – The Lisbon Treaty "will lead to a common defence" – Ó Snodaigh
24 September, 2009 - by Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD
Speaking outside the Department of Foreign Affairs this morning Sinn Féin spokesperson on European Affairs Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD said “The Lisbon Treaty is crystal clear – Article 28 directly states that the Treaty ‘will lead to a common defence’ and no amount of guff from government spokespersons changes that fact one iota. The government’s guarantee on neutrality is meaningless. It won’t stop a common defence. It won’t stop the creation of mini-military alliances acting in the name of the EU and with EU resources. It won’t stop the government using even more tax payers’ money to support the EU Defence Agency. I would call on anyone who supports neutrality to reject this treaty out of hand.”
Deputy Ó Snodaigh said:
“Contrary to the claims of Fianna Fáil and their supporters on the yes side, the Lisbon Treaty is crystal clear on the issue of a common defence policy. Article 28, which is one of the most readable articles in the Treaty states that Lisbon, ‘will lead to a common defence’. This is the first time that an EU Treaty will definitively state that there will be a common defence. The article then goes on to outline what that means in practice.
“The Treaty states that the common defence must be NATO compatible.
“The Treaty places new financial obligations on member states to contribute to a new start up fund; to progressively improve military capabilities; to provide rapid access to funds; and to support the European Defence Agency. In Sinn Féin’s view these obligations will lead to an increase in military spending by this state.
“The Treaty also includes a new provision for the creation of mini-military alliances, which may embark on military missions. While an Irish government may choose not to send Irish troops on such missions, they will happen in the name of the EU and use the resources of the EU.
“The Treaty also significantly expands the list of permissible military missions beyond the traditional mandate of peacekeeping and humanitarian aid. These include joint disarmament missions; assistance to non-EU countries in combating terrorism; and military advice and assistance. The first two additions were the justifications used for the US led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, while the third can mean anything to anyone at any time.
“All of these provisions significantly undermine the positive neutrality of this state and draw us into a common defence. While Irish troops can only be deployed abroad with the consent of the Irish government, neutrality is about much more than what a state does with its defence forces. It is about the alliances a state is part of and the obligations that those alliances place on you.
“If you are opposed to an EU common defence, or if you are uncomfortable with the common defence framework that the Lisbon treaty outlines the on October 2nd your only choice is to Vote No.’ ENDS
Note to editor: Below is a list and text of Lisbon treaty Articles relevant to issues of defence policy and neutrality:
Article 11 (TEU) “The Unions competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Unions security, including the progressive framing of a common defence.”
Article 25b(d)(3) (TEU) “The Council shall adopt a decision establishing the specific procedures for guaranteeing rapid access to appropriations in the Union budget for urgent financing of initiatives in the framework of the common foreign and security policy.”
Article 25(d)(3)(TEU) “Preparatory activities... which are not charged to the Union budget shall be financed by a start-up fund made up of Member State’ contributions....”
Article 28 (a)(1) (TEU) “The common security and defence policy shall be an integral part of the common foreign and security policy. It shall provide the Union with an operational capacity drawing on civilian and military assets.”
Article 28(b)(2) (TEU) “The common security and defence policy shall include the progressive framing of a common Union defence policy. This will lead to a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously so decides. It shall in that case recommend to Member States the adoption of such a decision in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.”
Article 28(c)(3)(TEU) “Member States shall make civilian and military capabilities available to the Union for the implementation of the common security and defence policy.”
Article 28A(c)3 (TEU) “member states shall undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities.”
Article 28A(c)(7) (TEU)“Commitments and cooperation in this area shall be consistent with commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.”
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Morgan criticises Ernst and Young Report
Speaking today following the release of the Ernst and Young quarterly eurozone forecast which predicts Irish GDP performance will leap from its current position of 15th this year to 2nd in 2011, Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Finance Arthur Morgan has criticised the positive outlook for the economy being taken by Ernst and Young, especially when they forecast that any medium-term economic recovery in Ireland will be largely jobless.
Deputy Morgan said:
“Ernst and Young attribute the economic recovery that Ireland will experience next year to being pro-active in reducing costs, namely in wages and public services. But the State will be burdened with a crippling unemployment rate, we will be losing a generation of young people to emigration and poverty will increase as people become further indebted and unable to afford day-to-day living.
“The report shows that Ireland is set to end 2010 with a 13.8% unemployment rate and Ireland will have an average annual unemployment rate of 12.6% until 2014. Economic recovery in statistical terms may be on course, but in terms of our human capital and the resources and talent that they bring, the lack of job creation will stunt economic growth in the long-term.
“Furthermore the Government’s reaffirmed commitment to impose €3 billion in public sector cuts in next December’s budget, as announced by the Taoiseach yesterday, will hit low and middle-income workers the hardest. The Government are employing deflationary policies that will inevitably reduce our competitiveness in the long-term.
“This governance with blinkers on that neglects job creation and stimulus, the economic governance of austerity, will not only increase unemployment and social dislocation, but it will also increase public debt.”
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More homeowners long to sell short
Nov 26, 2008 at 12:01 AM Nov 26, 2008 at 12:13 PM
Short sell is the latest buzzword for selling a home for less than what is owed the lender. “It’s an option for people who are trying to avoid foreclosure but can’t stay in a home,” said Bob Campbell, executive director of the Rockford Area Affordable Housing Coalition. “If they don’t have any equity built up in the house and they’ve suffered a job loss, divorce ... it gives them an option to move on without a foreclosure on their credit report.”
Bob Campbell, executive director of the Rockford Area Housing Coalition, said the number of home foreclosures has been on the rise each year for the past five years.
“But to jump from 170 foreclosures to 310 (82 percent) in one year is a pretty big increase,” he said of the number of foreclosures over the past two years.
The spike is yet another sign of a struggling housing market gripping the Rock River Valley.
Many homeowners are attempting to make “short sells,” rather than enter into foreclosure, a procedure by which the lender either takes title to or forces the sale of the borrower’s property to satisfy a debt, Campbell said.
A short sell is made when the homeowner owes the lender more than the home is worth, and the lender has agreed to accept a discounted payoff to release the homeowner from the mortgage. The difference between what is left on the mortgage and what the house actually sold for is typically paid by the homeowner’s private mortgage insurance.
“It’s a hit on a person’s credit, but it’s better than foreclosure,” he said.
Campbell led a workshop Tuesday informing area Realtors about the short-sell process.
Whitehead Realtor Maria Haun, who has sold two houses as short sells and has two more listed as such, attended.
“It helps the (seller) get out from under a mortgage rather than go to foreclosure, but it does take the approval of the lender,” she said. “It’s not a quick process.”
Gambino Realtor Jim Barbagallo said a short sell can be good for the seller and the buyer.
He recently helped a young couple sell a year-old house valued at $131,000 for $122,900, a price agreed upon by the lender.
“It took us a month to get three offers all at $122,900,” he said.
The lender held out for three months before agreeing to sell the house at the reduced price. Despite the wait, Barbagallo said, it was better than the alternative.
“If he had walked away, it would have sat vacant for 12 months, and it would have deteriorated. And it would have sold at $75,000 to $80,000 on a good day.”
According to the Rockford Area Association of Realtors, 150 homes in Winnebago, Boone and Ogle counties are listed as short sells. The average list price is $122,968, the cheapest being $23,000 and the most expensive, $524,000.
Over the past 400 days, 76 deals have been short sells.
While a short sell is an alternative to foreclosure, Barbagallo said sellers are advised to seek legal counsel before going that route.
Chris Green can be reached at cgreen@rrstar.com or (815) 987-1241.
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Angie Thomas on Her Latest Novel: On the Come Up
This blog was featured on 02/07/2019
Read more by She Writes
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas took the country by storm with her award-winning 2017 debut novel, The Hate U Give, which went on to become a major motion picture late last year.
Now after much anticipation, she’s back with a follow up novel: On the Come Up, set to be released later this month. Like The Hate You Give, it’s set in a fictional, underprivileged inner-city neighborhood that’s predominantly black. But while her first novel focused on current social issues, On the Come Up goes deeply personal for Thomas, drawing likeness to her own upbringing.
On Inspiration for Her Latest Novel
“When I started the book, I thought about what was the most traumatic thing in my life,” says Thomas. “And fortunately for me, it wasn’t losing a friend like Starr did, but unfortunately it was that experience of my mom losing her job and my family going into that crisis mode.”
In addition to her mother's unemployment, Thomas was bullied at school and as a result, began suffering mental health issues. Her mother pulled her from school and began overseeing her education while also looking after her own sick mother.
“Yeah, it was a challenge,” Thomas goes on. “We were living off the benefits my grandmother received and, even with that, there were days when we didn’t know if we’d have enough food. So, this book was definitely from my own experience.”
This excerpt was originally published on The Guardian. Read the full interview here.
On Rejection
Like most authors, Thomas experienced her share of rejection along the road to publishing. She credits a strong community of published and aspiring authors for the support she needed to persevere. She now returns the favor, cheering on all the writers out there who feel like they'll never break through:
“Rejection is always hard, and a lot of rejection is really hard,” she says. “But what helped me was the community of unpublished authors out there on the internet, so you can connect and you can weep and mourn together. And I always had to remind myself that it only takes one yes to change everything. That’s what I tell aspiring writers now. I know writers who had 500 rejections, and more than that – but you just have to keep going and hope that you do get that one yes.”
On Characters
Besides location, other parallels exist between Thomas’ two books. Starr and Bri are both strong, independent characters, but they are also very different.
“I compare Bri and Starr to Biggie and Tupac,” laughs Thomas. “Without the beef! Tupac was very community-orientated, and that’s how Starr is. But Bri, similar to Biggie, she’s about making it, she’s about seeing her dreams come to life. She’s about trying to save her family, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So that’s where they’re different, but they’re similar in the fact that they are both powerful young women who know they have voices, and they both understand how they can use those voices to affect an entire generation.”
“Someone recently asked me, did I think that Starr and Bri would get along? I think they would have their little clashes every now and then, but they would get along because both of them care deeply about others, and about their families and their community, and they can find common ground on that. It’s just they have different approaches to address the things that affect them.”
On Inspiring Activism & Positivity
Thomas has been credited for inspiring young activists through her work, which takes a positive approach to highly sensitive topics. Here she speaks about aligning books with acts of resistance.
“Rudine Sims Bishop [the author and educator] says that books are either mirrors, windows or sliding-glass doors, and that’s important in the act of resistance. You need that mirror to see yourself, to know what you can be and know what you are. And then you need that window to see into someone else’s life so you can understand what’s happening around you in the world that you may not notice at first glance. And you need the sliding-glass door so that you can step into someone else’s life and walk in with some empathy and use that empathy to make yourself heard. So yeah, I think books play a huge role in resistance. They play a huge role in opening people’s eyes and they’re a form of activism in their own right, in the fact that they do empower people and show others the lives of people who may not be like themselves.”
Read on for more about Angie Thomas’ writing background and life here, where we pulled together the most important things you should know about Angie as an author.
Photo Credit: Anissa Hidouk
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The women of D-Day: The journalists, drivers and codebreakers who played a vital role in the war effort
By Helen Johnson
Monday, 03 June, 2019, 12:03
June 6 marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the day in 1944 when Allied forces in World War II invaded France from offshore, resulting in the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Millions of men were involved in the World War Two war effort, with many of those involved in D-Day itself - but women also played crucial roles in the historic day of June 6 1944.
The invasion of Normandy
By the beginning of 1944, over two million men and women were in Britain preparing for the invasion of Normandy.
These people were primarily from Britain, America and Canada, but also came from other countries, including Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands, serving as combat soldiers, paratroopers, sailors, aircrew or in support and logistical roles.
The D-Day landings involved over 5,000 vessels and ships, almost 11,000 aeroplanes and over 160,000 ground troops.
D-Day Dames
The D-Day Dames were a group of American women journalists who made history reporting on the events of D-Day.
This group of women, alongside other women war correspondents, would gather in London in anticipation of the Normandy landings, with the D-Day Dames fighting to overcome the ban on women going to the front lines during the Second World War.
In order to get to Normandy, one of these members, Martha Gellhorn, smuggled herself onto a hospital ship and locked herself in a toilet, becoming the first woman to report on the invasion.
Gellhorn had been married to well-known author Ernest Hemingway, but their marriage had broken down by the time D-Day approached.
Hemingway tried to block Gellhorn by getting his own war accreditation for Colliers, which was a magazine that she had long worked for.
However, Gellhorn made it into Colliers with her first despatch from Normandy, marking a huge turning point for women reporting directly from warzones.
These women, which included Margaret Bourke White, Ruth Cowan for the Associated Press, Katherine Coyne of the Herald, Lee Carson, Mary Welsh, reached front lines and sent reports from Normandy, before entering newly liberated Paris and later visiting concentration camps across Europe.
During World War Two, Bletchley Park, which was made up of mostly women, used sophisticated code breaking techniques to feed crucial information to Allied forces in the critical months, weeks and days leading up to D-Day.
This secret operation included women such as Mavis Batey, a Codebreaker who made breakthroughs into Germany’s Secret Service Enigma, which provided a vital stream of intelligence for the Allies.
A new exhibition at Bletchley Park marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day (Photo: Andy Stagg, courtesy Bletchley Park Trust)
On D-Day itself, the Codebreakers were able to send on intelligence to front-line commanders in Normandy in less than three hours after intercepting anenemy message.
The group of workers at Bletchley Park are now being celebrated at a new exhibition at the venue, which marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
David Kenyon, Research Historian at Bletchley Park and author of Bletchley Park and D-Day(Yale University Press, 2019), said: “This exhibition portrays the vital link between the men and women at Bletchley Park, and their counterparts on the battlefield, and shows how goodintelligence could make the difference on the beaches of Normandy between life and death,success and failure.”
The Yorkshire Driver
June Denby, aged 95 from Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, was a Driver during World War Two, following in the footsteps of her army father.
“In those days you didn’t need to pass a driving test, you had to have L-plates, as the test was suspended from 1939.”
“I tried to join the Flying Corps and the Wrens but I was too young for both, you had to be 18-and-a-half, so I went to Droitwich and did my basic training.
“I did ambulance driving and lorry driving, and then I said I’d like to go abroad if needed, so was sent to London where I drove people from the War Office before going to Virginia Water in April 1944, taking officers to various camps – we never knew where we were going.”
Ms Denby, who explains that “we knew right from the outset that D-Day was coming,” notes that in regards to her being a female driver, “Being a woman didn’t make any difference, we were all drivers, I don’t feel I stood out particularly, drivers were drivers.
“I remember being in convoys where there were only two or three women, but it didn’t matter.
“I don’t think we ever really considered or realised what a contribution we were making, we just took it for granted.”
June Denby, aged 95 from Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, was a Driver during World War Two, following in the footsteps of her army father (Royal British Legion)
Ms Denby, who also worked in Normandy during the war, has been taken back to France as part of a trip with the Royal British Legion.
The former driver adds that, “‘There weren’t many women in Normandy and it often surprises other veterans when they see my medals, so it’s lovely that the Legion are able to arrange this trip and I feel I’m being recognised for my contribution.”
This article was originally published on our sister site, Yorkshire Evening Post.
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The Goblin-Miners
That same night several of the servants were having a chat together before going to bed.
‘What can that noise be?’ said one of the housemaids, who had been listening for a moment or two.
‘I’ve heard it the last two nights,’ said the cook. ‘If there were any about the place, I should have taken it for rats, but my Tom keeps them far enough.’
‘I’ve heard, though,’ said the scullery-maid, ‘that rats move about in great companies sometimes. There may be an army of them invading us. I’ve heard the noises yesterday and today too.’
‘It’ll be grand fun, then, for my Tom and Mrs Housekeeper’s Bob,’ said the cook. ‘They’ll be friends for once in their lives, and fight on the same side. I’ll engage Tom and Bob together will put to flight any number of rats.’
‘It seems to me,’ said the nurse, ‘that the noises are much too loud for that. I have heard them all day, and my princess has asked me several times what they could be. Sometimes they sound like distant thunder, and sometimes like the noises you hear in the mountain from those horrid miners underneath.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said the cook, ‘if it was the miners after all. They may have come on some hole in the mountain through which the noises reach to us. They are always boring and blasting and breaking, you know.’
As he spoke, there came a great rolling rumble beneath them, and the house quivered. They all started up in affright, and rushing to the hall found the gentlemen-at-arms in consternation also. They had sent to wake their captain, who said from their description that it must have been an earthquake, an occurrence which, although very rare in that country, had taken place almost within the century; and then went to bed again, strange to say, and fell fast asleep without once thinking of Curdie, or associating the noises they had heard with what he had told them. He had not believed Curdie. If he had, he would at once have thought of what he had said, and would have taken precautions. As they heard nothing more, they concluded that Sir Walter was right, and that the danger was over for perhaps another hundred years. The fact, as discovered afterwards, was that the goblins had, in working up a second sloping face of stone, arrived at a huge block which lay under the cellars of the house, within the line of the foundations.
It was so round that when they succeeded, after hard work, in dislodging it without blasting, it rolled thundering down the slope with a bounding, jarring roll, which shook the foundations of the house. The goblins were themselves dismayed at the noise, for they knew, by careful spying and measuring, that they must now be very near, if not under the king’s house, and they feared giving an alarm. They, therefore, remained quiet for a while, and when they began to work again, they no doubt thought themselves very fortunate in coming upon a vein of sand which filled a winding fissure in the rock on which the house was built. By scooping this away they came out in the king’s wine cellar.
No sooner did they find where they were, than they scurried back again, like rats into their holes, and running at full speed to the goblin palace, announced their success to the king and queen with shouts of triumph.
In a moment the goblin royal family and the whole goblin people were on their way in hot haste to the king’s house, each eager to have a share in the glory of carrying off that same night the Princess Irene.
The queen went stumping along in one shoe of stone and one of skin.
This could not have been pleasant, and my readers may wonder that, with such skilful workmen about her, she had not yet replaced the shoe carried off by Curdie. As the king, however, had more than one ground of objection to her stone shoes, he no doubt took advantage of the discovery of her toes, and threatened to expose her deformity if she had another made. I presume he insisted on her being content with skin shoes, and allowed her to wear the remaining granite one on the present occasion only because she was going out to war.
They soon arrived in the king’s wine cellar, and regardless of its huge vessels, of which they did not know the use, proceeded at once, but as quietly as they could, to force the door that led upwards.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Chapter 23
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Chris Webber Flashed Signs Of Greatness With Washington
by Ryan Jones • April 19, 2018
Twenty-five years later, it’s almost impossible to imagine a career like Chris Webber’s beginning the way Chris Webber’s career began.
The No. 1 overall pick in 1993, traded on draft night. The 1994 Rookie of the Year, traded just weeks into his second NBA season. A transcendent talent just one year into a 15-year contract, already looking for a new start in his career. For Webber, that fresh start came in Washington, and those who remember his four-year run in D.C. are still wondering, What if?
To set the stage: After that single ROY season with Golden State, Webber decided he’d had enough of playing out of position and a difficult relationship with Warriors coach Don Nelson. So he sat out the start of the ’94-95 campaign, forcing Golden State’s hand. The Warriors sent him to Washington, and for the first time in ages, the Bullets—no, they weren’t the Wizards yet, not for a few more years—were a franchise with reason to hope.
That hope wore No. 2—which was later changed to No. 4—below that iconic reach-for-the-sky Bullets logo on a clean sea of red. And while it took him some time to get rolling, by the end of his first season in D.C., Webber had reminded everyone why he was one of the League’s most promising young players. Strong, rangy, versatile and deceptively athletic for a player his size, Webber still looked every bit the generational talent—the guy who could redefine the role of an NBA power forward. Reunited with his old Fab Five teammate Juwan Howard, Webber averaged 20.1 points and 9.6 rebounds on a team that struggled to just 21 wins.
Webber missed most of the ’95-96 season with injuries, giving his third year in Washington the feel of yet another new beginning. He made the most of it, averaging just over 20 points and 10 boards in ’96-97, the first of six seasons in which he’d average at least 20 and 10. His best season as a Bullet was also the team’s best season in Webber’s D.C. stint, as they improved to 44 wins and earned a spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Their first-round opponent? The No. 1-seeded Chicago Bulls.
Needless to say, it wasn’t a fair fight, and Webber would have to wait for a return to the Western Conference—where he’d have his greatest personal and team success in Sacramento—to experience playoff glory. In the meantime, there was one last season in Washington, in which Webber’s 22 points and 9 boards weren’t quite enough to lift the team to a playoff spot. Unable to take the next step as a franchise, and with Webber dealing with minor off-court issues, Washington ultimately sent him to the Kings in the summer of ’98.
His legacy in the Nation’s Capital? Four-season averages of 20.9 points, 9.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists and flashes of the Hall of Fame-caliber talent that hadn’t quite yet reached the level of true greatness. But those flashes looked cool as hell.
Ryan Jones is a Contributing Editor at SLAM. Follow him on Twitter at @thefarmerjones.
Photos via Getty Images and Mitchell & Ness.
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Fred VanVleet Has Been Proving People Wrong His Entire Life
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St Olaf's Church
Sastamala, Finland
The St. Olaf's Church in Tyrvää is a late medieval stone church built probably in 1510-1516.
Archeologists have found evidences that the church site has been a spiritual place even in 1000 BC. The settlement has concentrated to the Vanhankirkonnimemi area during the end of Iron Age. There may have been two wooden churches before the present one built in the 14th century. The St. Olaf's Church was probably extended in the 17th century by local family of Nuutila.
When the new wooden church was completed in 1855, St. Olaf's church was abandoded for one hundred years. The church was well known of it's unique interior, until it was burnt down by a pyromaniac in 1997. The church was rebuilt by local people and the interior paintings were created by painters Kuutti Lavonen and Osmo Rauhala.
Finnish National Board of Antiquities has named the church site as national built heritage.
Medieval churches in Finland
Religious sites in Finland
Middle Ages (Finland)
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Kallialan kirkkotie 32-124, Sastamala, Finland
See all sites in Sastamala
Founded: 1510-1516
Category: Religious sites in Finland
Historical period: Middle Ages (Finland)
www.sastamalanseurakunta.fi
sastamala.smartpage.fi
4.6/5 (based on Google user reviews)
Interesting Sites Nearby
Sastamala Church (4,5 km)
Automobile and Tractor Museum (4,7 km)
Nuutajärvi Glass Factory (43,4 km)
Kanta-Loimaa Church (53,2 km)
Ikaalinen Church (46,8 km)
The Church of St. Catherine (23,4 km)
Mikko Jokinen (7 months ago)
Nähtävyytenä huippu! Kannattaa poiketa. Uimarantakin on!
Juhana Saloma (7 months ago)
Hieno paikka.
Esko Piranen (7 months ago)
Historiallinen kohde viimeiseltä tuhannelta vuodelta. Tutustuminen arvoinen kohde.
Raija Hänninen (10 months ago)
Ihana vanha kivikirkko 1500-luvulta, kauniilla paikalla järvenrannalla
Alisa Emilia (10 months ago)
Hieno kirkko, hienolla paikalla! Kannattaa käydä, kesällä ihan mahtava
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Photo from Flickr, copyright Alexxx1979
Historic Site of the week
Church of the Savior on Blood
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood is one of the main sights of St. Petersburg. The church was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and was dedicated in his memory. Construction began in 1883 under Alexander III, as a memorial to his father, Alexander II. Work progressed slowly and was finally completed during the reign of Nicholas II in 1907. Funding was provided by the Imperial family with the support of many private donors.
Architecturally, the Cathedral differs from St. Petersburg's other structures. The city's architecture is predominantly Baroque and Neoclassical, but the Savior on Blood harks back to medieval Russian architecture in the spirit of romantic nationalism. It intentionally resembles the 17th-century Yaroslavl churches and the celebrated St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
The Church contains over 7500 square metres of mosaics — according to its restorers, more than any other church in the world. The interior was designed by some of the most celebrated Russian artists of the day — including Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov and Mikhail Vrubel — but the church's chief architect, Alfred Alexandrovich Parland, was relatively little-known (born in St. Petersburg in 1842 in a Baltic-German Lutheran family). Perhaps not surprisingly, the Church's construction ran well over budget, having been estimated at 3.6 million roubles but ending up costing over 4.6 million. The walls and ceilings inside the Church are completely covered in intricately detailed mosaics — the main pictures being biblical scenes or figures — but with very fine patterned borders setting off each picture.
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the church was ransacked and looted, badly damaging its interior. The Soviet government closed the church in the early 1930s. During the Second World War when many people were starving due to the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi German military forces, the church was used as a temporary morgue for those who died in combat and from starvation and illness. The church suffered significant damage. After the war, it was used as a warehouse for vegetables, leading to the sardonic name of Saviour on Potatoes.
In July 1970, management of the Church passed to Saint Isaac's Cathedral (then used as a highly profitable museum) and proceeds from the Cathedral were funneled back into restoring the Church. It was reopened in August 1997, after 27 years of restoration, but has not been reconsecrated and does not function as a full-time place of worship; it is a Museum of Mosaics. Even before the Revolution it never functioned as a public place of worship; having been dedicated exclusively to the memory of the assassinated tsar, the only services were panikhidas (memorial services). The Church is now one of the main tourist attractions in St. Petersburg.
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Launch of the 10th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas
Submitted by leannem on Fri, 06/21/2019 - 10:07
June 21, 2019 by leannem
21 June 2019, Noumea, New Caledonia - A special launch this week marks the countdown to the 10th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas to be hosted in New Caledonia from 20 to 24 April, 2020 - the theme of which is “Nature Conservation Action for a Resilient Pacific”.
Announced in Noumea, New Caledonia, the 10th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas is a significant nature conservation event for the Pacific islands region.
It will result in a framework to help strategically plan conservation efforts in the region over a five year period to ensure all partners work collectively towards achieving the Pacific needs – it’s a framework that is developed by the Pacific, for the Pacific and implemented in partnership with the Pacific.
The actions under this framework are needed now more than ever as the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) highlights around one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.
“Our country is particularly committed to its biodiversity and its sustainable conservation. That is why my Government is committed to making the preservation of marine biodiversity a new model of sustainable growth,” presented HE Philippe Germain, President of the Government of New Caledonia.
“This conference, which guides Pacific biodiversity conservation programs, is a major event in the Pacific, as 2020 will be the year of the UN's decade of biodiversity. 2020 will also be the year of the entry into force of the Paris Agreement, a crucial and symbolic step.”
The conference will be hosted at the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia in April next year bringing together all stakeholders from across the Pacific island region. It will also review the current Framework for Nature Conservation and Protected Areas 2014 – 2020 which was endorsed at the 2013 Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas in 2013 by over 800 participants.
The conference is being coordinated by the Government of New Caledonia, SPREP and the Pacific Islands Roundtable for Nature Conservation for which the Oceania Regional Office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature is the current Chair.
Next year, it is hoped the conference will see a stronger drive to halt the loss of biodiversity across the region. A huge challenge ahead given the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20% mostly since 1990. Over 40% of amphibian species and almost 33% of reef forming corals are under threat.
“Unfortunately, ongoing loss of biodiversity in the Pacific contributes to the high levels of global loss reported by recent assessments. Across the Pacific, governments are still failing to protect critical ecosystems and the biodiversity within them, and the region is losing its mangroves and forests through unsustainable logging and coastal development,” said Mr Kosi Latu, Director General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
“This compounds the impacts on coral reefs that are already declining as a result of climate change, reefs that are vital for food security, tourism and coastal protection. The theme highlights the need for urgent and real ‘action’ now, and the need to think beyond what we are doing at the moment, which is not enough.”
The launch of the 10th Pacific Islands Conference on Nature Conservation and Protected Areas was held on 20 June at the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea.
Should you wish to find out more about the premiere nature conservation gathering of the Pacific please visit www.pacificnatureconference.com or please email [email protected]
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PhD Oral Defence Public Seminar (EPD)
03 Aug 2017 1.00 PM to 3.00 PM Think Tank 22 (SUTD Building 2, Level 3, Room 2.311)
PhD Candidate: Mr Zhixiang Huang
Pillar: Engineering Product Development (EPD)
Supervisor: Associate Professor Hui Ying Yang
Lithium-ion batteries have come a long way from its inception to widespread deployment in a multitude of applications, ranging from micro electronic devices to large scale deployment such as grid energy storage and electric vehicles. However, the story of this technology is far from ending as technology continues to improve and demand higher portable energy storage. Despite decades of research and development, the technology remains bogged down by high cost, insufficient energy storage capacity, and safety. Motivated by these issues, the work set out in this thesis strived to contribute incremental knowledge and understanding of materials that are able to move the technology forward.
A systematic study of several novel conversion (MoO2 and CoS2) and alloy (SnS2 and SnSe2) based materials with intrinsic high lithium storage capacities was carried out. These materials were incorporated into carbonaceous materials such as CNTs and graphene through a rational design and synthesis process to obtain hierarchical nanostructured composites. The synthetic strategies proved to be successful where the composites exhibited enhanced electrochemical properties when used as anodes in Lithium-ion batteries. Regarding battery safety, thermoresponsive polymer was developed to act as an in situ cell shut down mechanism. At high temperatures, the polymer melts to form an insulating film that prevents further flow of Li-ions. Optimisation and improvements were made through the incorporation of thermally and electrically conductive CNTs as well as deposition of the additive via 3D printing. Through these methods, rapid battery shutdown was achieved using low additive loading.
Huang ZhiXiang was granted his BEng Degree in Engineering Science Programme (ESP) with a specialization in Energy Systems from National University of Singapore (NUS) in June 2013. Shortly after, he joined Airbus Singapore and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) as a PhD candidate in Engineering Product Development under the Industrial Postgraduate programme scholarship in September 2013. He is currently under the supervision of Professor Yang Hui Ying. His research interest focuses on nanostructured materials and the study of electrochemistry for energy storage applications.
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Guitarist Earl Slick: Where Lennon and Bowie come together
Posted Oct 7, 2016
By Dan Poorman
Earl Slick
Earl Slick is best known for his work with David Bowie and John Lennon & Yoko Ono.
(Marita Madeloni (Provided))
Earl Slick remembers exactly what he was doing when he received the news of John Lennon's death on December 8, 1980.
"I was wrapping up Christmas presents," the 64-year-old guitarist said in a phone interview. "It was surreal. I was getting ready to make a trip to New York, because I was living in Los Angeles at the time. We had made plans to meet up."
By "we," Slick means himself and Lennon. He had gotten to know the Beatle quite well just a few months before his murder--in the studio, during the recording of "Double Fantasy," Lennon's seventh and final release as a solo artist (with Yoko Ono). Slick's guitar is on most of the record's 14 tracks.
But "Double Fantasy" is not the only iconic album on which Slick appears. In fact, over the course of 42 years, the Brooklyn-born rocker has recorded and toured with such acts as The New York Dolls, ex-Stray Cats Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker (as Phantom, Rocker and Slick), The Cure's Robert Smith, actor Tim Curry, Buddy Guy, The Yardbirds and the "Thin White Duke" himself, David Bowie.
Slick worked on six studio albums with Bowie, and played on what would become the recently deceased artist's final live tour, "A Reality Tour." It was during the recording of 1975's "Young Americans"--Bowie's ninth LP--that he met John Lennon.
On Saturday, October 8, Slick will perform the music of both these rock giants with a collective of Syracuse all-stars for BeatleCUSE Productions, Inc. and Clear Path For Veterans' "'Heroes' & Lennon's 76th Birthday," a one night-only concert event at The Palace Theater. The show will celebrate the legacies of both Bowie and Lennon, with a focus on the 45th anniversary of Lennon and Ono's visit to Syracuse and the would-be 76th birthday of Lennon.
"We're trying to make people aware of the influence John Lennon and David Bowie had on each other," local musician and BeatleCUSE director Paul Davie said. Slick, he added, is an ideal special guest headliner because he is "the perfect bridge" between the two legends.
"[In 1975], Bowie brought Lennon into the studio to record 'Across The Universe.' They were friends," Davie said. "That was the first song Earl ever played for David Bowie in the studio. He happened to be right there when John came in, then [Bowie and Lennon] did 'Fame.' Earl really walked into a magical moment."
Slick on Lennon
In the flurry of his storied career as both a member of Bowie's band and a solo artist, Slick said he actually had forgotten much of his encounter with Lennon during the recording of "Young Americans." It was only when he arrived at The Hit Factory in New York to record "Double Fantasy" that he remembered their first meeting, Slick noted.
"I got my gear up to the studio early. I said, 'Let me get there first so at least I'm chilled out by the time John gets here,'" Slick recounted. "I walk in there, and there's no engineer, no band, but there's John Lennon sitting in the middle of the room with his guitar. It was exactly what I was trying to avoid. He said, 'Nice to see you again,' and I'm going, 'Huh?'"
As it turned out, though, Slick said, chatting one-on-one with Lennon was "the best thing that could have happened."
"In time, the memories started coming back," Slick remembered. "It became an ongoing joke. Every once in a while, he'd be doing a take, and he'd go, 'Hey, you remember me now?' We just hit it off."
Slick said that Lennon's solo work cut through the early '70s "androgynous glitter period" and struck him "right between the eyes."
"There was a lot of dark stuff on John's albums that appealed to me. George [Harrison] was always positive and John was the doomsayer. I really needed to hear that kind of stuff, like 'Working Class Hero' and 'Jealous Guy,'" Slick said, noting his and Lennon's similar lower-working class upbringings in Red Hook and Liverpool respectively. "My whole attraction to John, besides the dark stuff, was the rock 'n' roll part of him. The attitude, the irreverence, the way he played guitar--John had angst. He really beat the crap out of the thing. He had so much fuel when he played rhythm, and that paired well with me when I played lead, when we were cutting the tracks."
Slick said his experience recording "Double Fantasy" was a particularly satisfying one.
"I don't consider doing that record 'sessions,'" he said. "John brought us all in there because he liked being in a band, and that was what it felt like when we recorded it. The producer wasn't there telling us what to do while John was sitting in the corner. I was the only guy in there that couldn't read [notation], and John wanted that. He needed one guy in there that could be more on that street level. [Producer] Jack Douglas referred to me as 'The Wild Card.'"
Slick on Bowie
Bowie, Slick noted, was also a thrilling collaborator. He said that the singer, whom he affectionately called "Boss," was especially considerate of Slick's distinctive blues-based navigation of the guitar when he was brought on to replace longtime Bowie sideman Mick Ronson on the 1974 "Diamond Dogs" tour.
"He said, 'You know what? Do it your way. There'll be a couple signature licks in there that I'll need, but for the most part, I like the way you play, so play what you play,'" Slick said. "The 'Boss' thing was always a joke, because he never treated me like an employee or a minion. David's idea was to get out of me what I do.
I am not that diverse of a player. No matter what I do, I just approach the guitar a certain way. It's the only way I know how to do it, and it's the only way I want to do it. In our live performances, David gave me a whole lot of space. When we were making records, if he didn't have any ideas, he'd say, 'You got anything?'"
Bowie released his final studio album, "Blackstar," just two days before he succumbed to liver cancer in January of this year. Both the recording of this album and Bowie's illness were kept secret, which compelled "Blackstar" producer Tony Visconti to post on Facebook: "'He made 'Blackstar' for us, his parting gift.'"
Slick said that, while Bowie's passing shocked him, his gifting of the album did not.
"Nothing David did ever surprised me, because you never knew what he was going to do," Slick said. "He was predictably unpredictable, and so am I. That's why it worked between the two of us. Predictability bores me to death."
"'Heroes' & Lennon's 76th Birthday" starts at 7 p.m. at The Palace Theater. Earl Slick will jam with local acts Grupo Pagan featuring Kevin McNamara, Screen Test, The Barndogs, The Ripcords, Jamie Notarthomas & Friends, The Fabcats, Mike Fedorchuk of Magical Mystery Tour and Sheela Tucker of Brass Inc.
Onondaga Nation Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, who began a friendship with Lennon and Ono after their visit in October of 1971 during their "This Is Not Here" art exhibit at The Everson Museum, will make an appearance. Davie will also screen a pre-recorded interview with Grammy Award-winning artist, producer and frequent Beatles collaborator Klaus Voormann. Davie said Voormann "fondly remembers being in Syracuse," particularly the post-exhibit party at the Hotel Syracuse, where public figures like Ringo Starr, Phil Spector and Allen Ginsberg all mingled in the same room.
Tickets to "'Heroes' & Lennon's" are on sale at Ish Guitars in Syracuse, The Ridge in Chittenango and online until 12 a.m. Saturday for $25. Tickets will also be sold at the door for $30. Proceeds will benefit both BeatleCUSE and Clear Path For Veterans.
"You don't have to be a hardcore Beatles fan to enjoy this show, of course because we've got about 40 minutes of David Bowie songs," Davie said. "Just having all these local all-star bands together makes for world-class music right here in Syracuse. Anyone should enjoy that."
© 2019 Advance Media New York. All rights reserved (About Us).
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Media New York.
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Abu Dhabi launches region’s first sustainability-focused accelerator
Glesni Holland January 23, 2018, 2:54 pm January 23, 2018
A startup accelerator initiative between Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, Masdar, and the international oil and gas company, BP, was relaunched at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, ADSW 2018, and is now accepting applications from local and international entrepreneurs.
Successful Catalyst applicants will be those developing innovative products and solutions that are potentially patentable, with priority given to UAE-based startups.
The initiative, known as ‘The Catalyst,’ is based at Masdar City free zone in Abu Dhabi, and is the region’s first sustainability-focused startup accelerator. It prioritises businesses at the commercialisation stage, offering expenditures, training, mentoring and office space. It is also collaborating with the Masdar Institute, part of the Khalifa University of Science and Technology, and the core tenant of Masdar City.
According to WAM, successful applicants will be those developing innovative products and solutions that are potentially patentable, with priority given to UAE-based startups.
During the initiative’s unveiling at ADSW last week, it was revealed that The Catalyst will run in two cycles per year – split into two phases. The first three-month phase is devoted to scouting up to 50 applicants. The second phase of up to four months involves choosing startups from a 10-strong shortlist, deploying the capital and hands-on training and support.
The Masdar-BP joint venture hopes to select up to six startups per cycle per year. Licensing will be managed through the Masdar City free zone, recently voted “best free zone for startup support” and “best free zone for renewable energy” by the Financial Times’ fDi magazine.
“The Catalyst completes our comprehensive portfolio of services catering to businesses of all sizes, from large corporations to startups and individual entrepreneurs,” said Mohamed Al Fardan, Director of Masdar Free Zone. “With homegrown clean-tech businesses now emerging in the UAE, as well as other accelerator initiatives such as CLIX at ADSW and Krypto Labs here at Masdar City, now is the time to relaunch the Catalyst to further incentivise the business ecosystem in sustainability taking root in the Middle East and international markets.”
According to The Catalyst’s CEO Cinar Kurra, the initiative’s main vision is to help build a robust startup ecosystem focused on sustainability within the emirate.
“The track record of Masdar as a global renewable energy leader, the experience of BP as one of the world’s leading integrated energy companies, as well as the access to clean-tech partnerships provided by the Masdar Institute and the support of the Masdar free zone are distinct advantages of the Catalyst’s business model,” Kurra added.
Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Cinar Kurra featured3 green technology innovation krypto labs Masdar City Mohamed Al Fardan startups tahawultech Technology The Catalyst UAE
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