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Cisco Files to Patent to Enter the Search Engine Business
By Erik Sherman
Updated on: December 30, 2009 / 11:49 AM / MoneyWatch
One of the limitations of search engines such as Google (GOOG) or Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing that crawl the web looking for links is that they can only tell you about what they've finally come upon. That still leaves vast amounts of material as yet to be "discovered." A patent application from Cisco (CSCO) suggests a clever way to help update the engines -- and to make a manufacturer of network equipment an important part of yet another industry.
In June 2008, Cisco filed a patent application yet to be granted but published by the US Patent and Trademark Office on December 17, 2009. The title is Seeding search engine crawlers using intercepted network traffic. As the application notes, a web-crawling search engine has a basic limitation: it cannot index sites of which it doesn't yet know. Furthermore, it may never be able to reach pages that have not been introduced, either by direct input or by being connected to its existing structure of web pages, known as a web-graph.
And yet, people still use these pages. Cisco's claimed invention is to have network equipment such as "routers, multilayer switches or any other suitable device" examine data packets for HTTP requests that appear when a network user is looking to reach a resource on the web. The devices would strip out the URLs and pass them to the search engine, which would now know about the page and be able to add the new-to-it site to the web-graph.
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This seems like an elegant solution, because any page receiving any amount of traffic would seem to be one whose location should be known. Users going to those pages automatically provide the raw material that the engine needs.
From a business view, this could help open yet another network-connected industry to Cisco, whose desire for growth apparently knows no grounds. Given the ubiquity of its equipment, the company could become a critical source of the information that drives the ability of the search industry to ultimately make money. Of course, the possibilities come with potential issues. For example, to what degree could the company design equipment to deliver URL information to a given search engine company? What sorts of arrangements would it have to make with the organizations whose networks it helps power? Nevertheless, it seems like Cisco may have found yet another outlet for growth.
Image via stock.xchng user svilen001, site standard license.
First published on December 30, 2009 / 11:49 AM
Erik Sherman
Erik Sherman is a widely published writer and editor who also does select ghosting and corporate work. The views expressed in this column belong to Sherman and do not represent the views of CBS Interactive. Follow him on Twitter at @ErikSherman or on Facebook.
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A Wrinkle in Time: Physics, Metaphysics, The Power of Love, The Power of Mind
Yesterday Suzanne and I went to see A Wrinkle in Time. What an interesting movie! It’s based on the “un-adaptable” 1962 novel by Madeleine L’Engle, which is still in print.
Meg Murray (Storm Reid) is a thirteen year old girl. Her parents (Chris Pine and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are brilliant physicists who have been working on an astrophysical theory of tesseracts, which can wrinkle time and let one travel across the Universe. While exploring this theory, Meg’s father disappeared. It has been four years, and Meg is going through all the normal problems of adolescence. But she wants to find her father.
Meg’s younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), who is always referred to by both names for some reason, has made contact with a powerful entity known as Mrs. Whatsit, engagingly played by Reese Witherspoon. Mrs. Whatsit confirms that tesseracts are real and that Mr. Murry has “tessered” to a faraway part of the Universe. She suggests that Meg and Charles Wallace can find their father.
They encounter two others, the quote-spouting Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and the eldest of the group, Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey.) The three reveal themselves to be astral beings and they lead Meg, Charles Wallace, and Meg’s friend Calvin (who has a crush on Meg) to find Mr. Murry. Calvin has issues with his own father, so he looks forward to the adventure.
Along the way, they encounter such entities as the Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis.) It is revealed that their father has been captured by the It, an “evil” entity that, as Mrs. Which explains, “represents all of the greed, anger, pride, selfishness, and low self-esteem in the world.” It lives on a planet named Camazotz, which is where Mr. Murry is being held.
Meg’s determination to find her dad lands them all on Camazotz, where the Mrs. depart, saying that the energy of the It is diminishing their light. Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin are left to find Mr. Murry. But some strange things happen to Charles Wallace along the way, which only dissipate due to the persistent love of Meg.
Do they return to Earth? Is all well that ends well? How will the adventure end? For that, you’ll have to see the movie.
What do we learn from A Wrinkle in Time? Well, for one thing, the power of love to overcome the appearance of evil. Love is the most powerful force in the Universe.
For another thing, we learn of the power of a determined mind. The travelers land on Camazotz due to Meg’s insistence on finding her father. And it is by the force of her determination that they move through all the obstacles and traps the It sets up for them. A Wrinkle in Time reminds us of the power of mind.
And we have to walk through the storms, through the obstacles, through the traps, if we’re to achieve what we set out to achieve. We must be willing to face the It in our lives and keep on going. We must do what we are here to do, regardless of what it takes. We do so through the power of Love.
All in all, quite a fable for our times. We really enjoyed the movie and I would recommend seeing it. It’s an enjoyable couple of hours and you’ll feel quite inspired when you leave the theater.
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Erni Singerl
Birthday #11
Who is Erni Singerl? She is a female celebrity. She was born on Monday August 29th 1921, in Puch, Furstenfeldbruck, Bavaria, Germany,.
Freedom is the key to Erni's personality. Erni Singerl loves travel, adventure, variety and meeting new people, and she longs to experience all of life. She also loves to be involved in several things at the same time as long as she is not tied down to any one area. Change is constant in her world, requiring adaptability and courage.
With her upbeat and often inspiring personality, Erni Singerl makes friends easily and attracts people from all walks of life. She has a way with words and an uncanny ability to motivate others. Thus, Erni can be very successful and happy in sales, advertising, publicity, promotion, politics or any profession that requires communication skills and understanding of people.
Erni is multi-talented and possesses a variety of diverse abilities. However, discipline and focus are the true keys to her success. Without these, many of the tasks Erni begins will remain unfinished and she will fail to realize the true fruits of her abilities. With hard work and perseverance, however, the sky is the limit. Self-employment attracts Singerl powerfully, yet her challenge is to settle into one area to cultivate her ability sufficiently to earn a living and attain success. Once Erni Singerl finds her niche, the motivation and inspiration she supplies others with will bring her much in return, and she will find her friends and colleagues supporting and promoting her on the road to success.
She is often a late-bloomer and needs to experience life before she can truly know and commit to her heart's desire. Erni Singerl may be perceived as a wild child by adults and a source of concern by her family. However, she must not be obliged to hurry her choice of career or family. Erni's challenge is to learn the true meaning of freedom-from-within through her jurney. She should try to maintain an exercise program to keep her body in shape. The flexibility and durability of Singerl's body will promote security and confidence within her.
Erni Singerl is sensual and loves to taste all of life. Sex, food and other sensory experiences are essential to the enjoyment of hers. She finds it difficult to commit to one relationship, but once committed, she can be as faithful as an old dog. More...
More flavors to Erni's personality
Erni Singerl tends to be quite adaptable, and she finds it easy to fit into most social set ups and vocational fields.
There are no particular virtues that can cause an imbalance in Erni's personality and life, but she has to work hard and persistently to develop those special strengths that she desires to attain.
Learning to be wisely assertive is a major lesson to be taken by Erni Singerl throughout her life.
Tour Erni's menu and gain more insight into her personality traits, relationships, strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, compatibility with you and with others, and much more.
You and Erni
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Erni Singerl personality profile | © Copyright 2009-2020 Celebrities Galore and Master Numerologist Hans Decoz
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Max Julien Net Worth
How much is Max Julien Worth?
in Richest Celebrities › Actors
Random Celebrity
Max Julien net worth:
$300 Thousand
Max Julien Net Worth: Max Julien is an American actor who has a net worth of $300 thousand. Max Julien was born in Washington, D.C. in January 1945. He is best known for playing the role of Goldie in the movie The Mack. Julien started out his career Off-Broadway in Shakespeare-In-The-Park. He moved to Hollywood, California to pursue his acting career. He made his feature film debut in 1966 in the movie Brutes. In 1968 he starred in the movies Psych-Out, The Savage Seven, and Uptight. He starred in the film Getting Straight as Ellis in 1970 and as Goldie in The Mack in 1973. In 1974 he starred as J.P. Bushrod in the film Thomasine & Bushrod. Julien did not appear again until 1997 when he starred as Uncle Fred in the movie How to Be a Player. He has also appeared in episodes of the TV series Mod Squad, The Bold Ones: The Protectors, CBS Playhouse, The Name of the Game, and One on One. Julien also wrote and produced for the 1973 movie Cleopatra Jones and the 1974 film Thomasine & Bushrod. Julien's voice from The Mack has been sampled by many artists such as P. Diddy, Kid Rock, and Snoop Dogg.
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Max Julien
Net Worth: $300 Thousand
Date of Birth: Jan 1, 1945 (75 years old)
Profession: Actor, Screenwriter
Nationality: United States of America
All net worths are calculated through the combination of a robust methodology and a proprietary algorithm. The results are fact checked and confirmed by a team of editors and industry insiders. We work diligently to ensure that our numbers are the most accurate celebrity net worth data you will find anywhere on the internet.
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Does David Attenborough Still Film On Location? The 'Dynasties' Presenter Has Revealed Things Aren't Always Easy
By Sam Ramsden
Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
Sir David Attenborough has been at the forefront of bringing the fascinating world of wildlife into our homes for decades. In addition to providing an unmatched level of knowledge when it comes to nature, the national treasure also offers viewers some of the most spectacular animal footage in the world. But does David Attenborough still film on location?
Well, according to the Telegraph, Sir David has worked on location as recently as this year, during the filming of his BBC series, Attenborough and the Sea Dragon, which explored the new species of ichthyosaur found in the fossil beds of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. However, the veteran presenter did admit that once he's no longer able to meet the physical demands of filming, he will stand down.
During filming of Sea Dragon, the 92 year-old was asked repeatedly to walk up a steep spiral staircase, and when speaking about the experience, Attenborough said "I did it at least six times because of these bloody directors. 'Could you turn a little sooner?,' 'Could you look over here?,' 'Could you walk down the steps, as well as up?'" He continued, "If I can’t walk up and down steps any more, that will stop me. Yes, I do dread not working, although there are things I can do without running up steps six times — books to be written, things I’ve never got round to. But at the moment it seems to be all right."
BBC Earth on YouTube
What many Attenborough fans appreciate most about the TV presenter and environmental activist is of course his world-renowned narration. And although the Dynasties star is still wowing audiences, he did reveal earlier this year that once he can no longer find the right words, he will most likely retire from television. As reported by the Telegraph, Sir David said "I would like to think I would be able to detect when I couldn’t find the right words any more. If I think I’m not producing commentary with any freshness, or which is apposite or to the point, I hope I would be able to recognise it before someone else told me," and continued "I spend a lot of time fiddling with the words. I write a commentary, and feel it’s finished, then go back over it the next day and find it full of infelicities, clumsiness and redundancies. If I thought I was turning in substandard work, that would stop me."
The broadcasters latest BBC series, Dynasties, followed some of the world's most endangered species, and appeared to strike a cord with audiences due to the programme's intense footage and often emotional scenes.
In an interview with the i Paper, Dynasties series producer, Rosie Thomas, spoke about the difficulty of filming the BBC series. She said: "Most of the time we were on foot. When we’re out on location, we get up at 4am and then walk out to the chimpanzees to get to them there before dawn. We’d stick with them all day until we lost the light. Then we’d walk back and go home. On a good day, we’d walk at least eight kilometres, but on a bad day we could travel up to 24. Between the three of us in the crew each day, we’d carry about 80 kilograms of kit, in temperatures that were usually about 40C."
Dynasties is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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Suzuki’s new compact SUV spotted testing in Europe
May 16, 2014, 11:22 AM IST by Ranjan R. Bhat
A new compact SUV from Suzuki has been spotted in Europe undergoing trials. The unnamed SUV seems to be inspired by the funky iV-4 concept which was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, last year. The production model will break cover at the 2014 Paris Motor Show in October and is expected to be launched in the European markets by the second quarter of the next year.
With an overall length of 4,215mm and a wheelbase of 2,500mm, the production model will retain the dimensions of the iV-4 concept. The styling seems very similar to the bigger Grand Vitara SUV. Suzuki will offer a high level of personalisation with this car, as indicated by the name of the concept, which stands for Individuality Vehicle 4WD (four-wheel-drive).
The production model is likely to use the engine line-up from the SX4 S-Cross, which includes a petrol and diesel four-cylinder 1.6-litre units. It will also get the AllGrip four-wheel-drive system from the SX4 S-Cross.
This compact SUV will slot in between the Suzuki Jimny and the Grand Vitara in the company’s global markets and will compete with Nissan Juke, Renault Captur, Fiat 500X and the Peugeot 2008. Having burnt its hands with the Grand Vitara, it is very unlikely that Maruti Suzuki will bring this car to India. The company had unveiled the SX4 S-Cross at the 2014 Delhi Auto Expo which will be launched here early next year. This crossover will be priced around Rs 12 to 13 lakh and will compete with the Renault Duster and the Nissan Terrano.
Source: AutocarUK
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Grey's Anatomy And Station 19 Hits New Levels Of Danger And Sexiness With Crossovers
Britt Lawrence
Dec. 13. 2019 3:13 PM
Expect new levels of danger and sexiness when Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 team up for their next big crossover. Not too long ago, ABC announced that Grey’s Anatomy would be switching time slots, a move that now makes Station 19 the lead-in to the veteran medical drama, which recently celebrated 350 episodes!
Fans should probably get set for more tears and heartache when Grey’s Anatomy returns, at least as far as the immediate aftermath of that fall finale goes. The show’s midseason sendoff set the stage for a life-threatening crossover with Station 19. Ben, Blake, Casey, Chief Herrera, Helm, Jackson, Levi, and Nico were all in Joe’s Bar when disaster struck.
A car crashed into the bar, endangering the lives of fan favorites, not to mention various other patrons. Station 19's return in 2020 will apparently kick the big crossover off at full speed, while Grey’s Anatomy will keep the action going in Hour 2. Station 19’s Jason George, who's starred as Ben Warren across both series, teased the drama ahead, telling ET:
The crossover has been fun. It's been there's a new level of sexy that's coming in and a new level of danger. The first [episode of Station 19] is a crossover out the box where if you saw the winter finale of Grey's Anatomy, a car smashes through Joe's Bar. If you know Joe's Bar, it’s where everyone is sitting and drinking…
That they were! Now fans will have to endure the hiatus before finding out what happens next. Station 19 will be the one that directly picks up from the aftermath of the disaster, with emergency responders needed to keep things on track amidst the chaos. Grey’s Anatomy and its spinoff series are no strangers to dealing out heartbreaking crossovers.
Station 19 underwent some behind-the-scenes changes for Season 3, so there should be some differences in front of the camera. As for the two-hour crossover event, which is set to lead off a more intertwining set of episodes, it was apparently pretty intense to film. These crossovers take a lot of effort and the trend is everywhere! Giving some insight into what it took to do Station 19 and Grey’s Anatomy’s, Jason George said:
It's a two-hour block that's going to be ridiculous because it's crazy to shoot. I’ll tell you that everyday it's like, 'So where am I?' They're like, 'Well, you're at Grey's in the morning and Station 19 and then you're at Grey's in the afternoon.
That had to be hectic! The two-hour event is going to get fans excited and on the edge of their seats. Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 are already quite dramatic independently, but together, they are a united force of immense suspense. Jason George’s Ben was in Joe’s Bar, the very heart of the crossover’s action, so he will be front and center when Station 19 returns. There's not a whole lot of insight into how any of this is supposed to bring more sexiness, but we'll take his word for it.
Ben has had a lot going on this season on Grey’s Anatomy. He and wife Miranda Bailey learned they were expecting a baby earlier in Season 16. Sadly, in the fall finale, Bailey found out that she had lost their baby, and Ben later ended up going with Chief Herrera to the bar with a lot on his mind.
In the same episode, Chief Herrera learned from Bailey that his lymphoma had returned, so a lot of sadness has already taken place. The trailer for the Grey’s Anatomy/Station 19 crossover showed Bailey telling the authorities to get her husband out of the wreckage of the bar. I can't imagine what'll happen if things only get more dangerous from there.
Station 19 returns on Thursday, January 23, 2020, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Grey’s Anatomy will air directly after it at 9 p.m. ET. New episodes of both shows are part of this winter’s premieres.
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Nayanthara's next, with Nivin Pauly- Cinema express
Nayanthara's next, with Nivin Pauly
In addition to this upcoming Malayalam film, the popular actress might also be a part of a big-budget Kannada film
Express Features
@XpressCinema
Nivin Pauly, who's busy with Hey Jude and Richie, will next team up with Nayanthara for a Malayalam film. Titled Love Action Drama, the film will be directed by Dhyan Sreenivasan. According to a source, "It's a romcom and will have all the elements promised in the title."
The team is planning to start the shoot of the film by October in Chennai, with Alappuzha finalised as one of the main locations. The film, produced by Funtastic Films and M-Star, will have Aju Varghese in a pivotal role, with Shaan Rahman and Vivek Harshan handling the music and editing, respectively.
Meanwhile, Nayanthara is looking forward to the release of Aramm and Imaikka Nodigal. Rumours are rife that she might be part of the big-budget Kannada film, Kurukshetra. Also, unconfirmed reports suggest that she may play the role of Draupadi. Official confirmation is awaited.
Nivin Pauly Nayanthara
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Adelaide Key: A tribute to a life well-lived
What makes such a giving person?
Adelaide Key: A tribute to a life well-lived What makes such a giving person? Check out this story on citizen-times.com: http://avlne.ws/1pvqhoQ
ASH Published 12:00 a.m. ET Aug. 31, 2014 | Updated 12:06 a.m. ET Aug. 31, 2014
I was sitting in my office at Florida State University in the fall of 1996 when I got a call from a colleague at Western Carolina University. During the conversation, he told me about an opportunity that ultimately changed my life. He told me that WCU had received its first endowed professorship and it was to be in the area of special education and told me I might be a good fit for the job.
When you’re 47 years old and you’ve been at the same place for 20 years, you may well ask yourself “is this it?” or do I make at least one more move and maybe find a new adventure. I decided to take it one step at a time with the first step being submitting an application. As things turned out, I kept taking steps and ended up at Western in the fall of 1997, filling the university’s first endowed professorship.
When I applied for the position and subsequently joined the faculty at Western, I had never heard of Adelaide Key. But soon I learned the story about how the position came about. It seemed that as a child Adelaide had had some trouble in school due to having learning disabilities and ADHD. I don’t know exactly what kind of trouble she had, but it must have made an impact on her, because when John Bardo, the chancellor at WCU at the time, approached Adelaide about funding an endowed chair, she said she wanted to do something that would help kids with special needs and their teachers. So she gave the state two-thirds of a million dollars with the hope of making something good happen. I am the beneficiary of her generosity, and hopefully, the work I have done at Western over the last 17 years has helped to achieve at least part of the good that Adelaide had in mind.
It wasn’t too long after arriving in Cullowhee that I met Adelaide. Our first meeting was at a special luncheon and the two of us were introduced and seated together in a rather formal dining area, replete with white table clothes, shiny silverware and ice water filled glasses. We made a little bit of small talk, but it soon became obvious to both of us that this wasn’t the kind of environment either of us particularly favored. But here we were, and after a while we were enjoying our personal conversation and trying to be comfortable as we were both introduced with all sorts of embarrassing acclimations.
I won’t say that Adelaide and I became close friends, and certainly there are many who knew her better than me. But over the years, the other times when we met, we found a happy level of comfort in each other’s company, sort of like when you see a friendly neighbor you haven’t run into in a while. She always asked how I was doing, what I was working on and how my family was. And she herself was always forthright about what was going on with her, what she was happy about, and what concerned her.
Now as I think about Adelaide at the time of her death, I realize that her most important characteristic was that she was a giver. And, as the record shows, she was not second to many in her generosity. Reflecting on this fact has made me wonder why someone becomes so kind, so concerned about humanity, and so giving. Regretfully, I never put this question to Adelaide, but I think if I did, her answer would probably be that it just seems like the right thing to do, the right way to be. She clearly was not a person to adorn herself in a lot of material trappings, nor did she bask in the light of all the good she did. She was a straightforward person who had a rather clear idea of how the world should be, and she made a serious investment to help it become that way.
So here’s to you, Adelaide, for all you did for me and for so many others. I’m sorry that you have left this earth, but I am just as sorry that there aren’t a lot more like you around these days.
David L. Westling is Adelaide Worth Daniels Distinguish Professor of Special Education, Western Carolina University.
Read or Share this story: http://avlne.ws/1pvqhoQ
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NATHANS: To Free a Family (2012)
Posted 11/27/2013 Reviewed By James L. Roark
To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker by Sydney Nathans. Harvard University Press, 2012. Cloth, ISBN: 0674725948. $29.95.
In the decades before the Civil War, hundreds of slaves ran north to freedom every year. Putting a foot over the Mason-Dixon Line did not guarantee freedom, of course, but most that did lived as free persons, however insecurely. We know almost nothing about most of these fugitives’ journeys and lives. But with Sydney Nathan’s remarkable To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker, we have a fine-grained story of one woman’s escape, her new life in New England, and her unending efforts to recover the family she left behind.
Born in 1818, Mary Walker, “a slender light coloured woman with dark straight hair and lightest eyes inclining to blue” (9), was the slave of Duncan Cameron, one of the richest planters in North Carolina. Educated and refined, Mary became the personal servant of Cameron’s daughters, one of whom regularly visited a doctor in Philadelphia for her consumption. On one of these trips, Mary committed the sin of impudence and learned that as punishment Cameron planned to send her to his plantation in Alabama. Faced with the choice of being separated from her family and remaining a slave or separated from her family and living as a free woman, in August 1848 Mary slipped away into the free black community of Philadelphia. Seeking more security, she quickly made her way to Boston, where her life became intertwined with sympathetic whites and blacks who became her friends and protectors. The list is a who’s who of anti-slavery and abolition: William Still, Ellis Gray and Louisa Loring, Robert Gould Shaw, Harriet Jacobs, James McKim, Lewis Hayden, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell Phillips, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chauncey Wright, Laura Towne, Charlotte Forten, General O. O. Howard, and most especially Peter and Susan Lesley, a young couple who took Mary into their home and provided employment and sanctuary for twelve years. Only three letters survive from Mary herself, but her friends were scribblers, and their letters, diaries, and journals provide the rich evidentiary base that Nathan mines so effectively.
Mary Walker made her living as a skilled seamstress, caregiver, and companion for aging members of white families. But every step of her new life was shadowed by memories of her mother and three children, ages four to sixteen when she left, with whom she could not correspond lest the slave-catchers trace her and hunt her down. Several times Mary sought, with the help of northern friends who acted as intermediaries, to buy her family out of bondage, but nothing came of the efforts. Growing more desperate, she hired an agent to go to North Carolina to orchestrate her family’s escape. Disappointment followed disappointment, however, and in time her health suffered. One white friend observed: “. . . her heart is slowly breaking. She thinks of nothing else but her children. . .” (159). In 1855, her baptism in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church brought some relief from her troubles.
The outbreak of the Civil War increased both Mary’s anxiety and hope. She followed the progress of Union troops and cheered when the war for union also became a war for black freedom. In 1864 she took advantage of an extraordinary opportunity to join the band of northern reformers who sailed for the Sea Islands to participate in the uplift of ex-slaves. The experiment quickly soured, but shortly after she returned home, she learned that Union troops occupying North Carolina had found Agnes Walker and Bryant Walker, now both in their twenties. Mary’s mother had died and her oldest son Frank had escaped to New Jersey years before. Within three months, Agnes and Bryant arrived in Cambridge. Mary Walker had lived to see the reunion of her family seventeen years after her escape had shattered it. Their lives together were not all that Mary had dreamed of, but at least they were together for seven years before Mary’s death in 1872.
This is an exceedingly well-told tale. Nathans braids hundreds of disparate strands of evidence into an eloquent narrative. Through Mary Walker’s story, we can imagine the tortured lives of many other fugitives whose personal freedom came at the price of family disruption.
James L. Roark is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History at Emory University.
BLIGHT (ed.): My Bondage and My Freedom (2014)
By: John M. Rudy
Blight's ample notes and observations will offer imaginative professors innumerable ways to discuss with students how we read texts, what we can observe as historians, and when we should doubt the people of the past.
‹ Previous: PATCHAN: The Last Battle of Winchester (2013)
Next: "Destructionist and Capturer" ›
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Children learn life-saving skills in Laos
October 12, 2016 CHILDFUND AUSTRALIA CATEGORY Emergencies
One year on: thriving after floods in Laos
CATEGORY Emergencies
Teen survivor recalls cries of pain in Laos flood
The human loss of natural disasters
Today is the International Day for Disaster Reduction, with this year’s theme Live to Tell focusing on the importance of increasing risk awareness among the general public in order to save lives when disaster strikes. With the support of ChildFund, children in Laos are now learning life-saving skills for the future.
In the year 2016, we are witnessing a world where the number of disasters occurring has increased exponentially, and where almost 70 million children are affected annually. However, disaster risk management knowledge and practices are not growing at the same rapid pace.
As Robert Glasser, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), describes: “Despite many successes there are still far too many lives being lost in predictable events because of failures to deploy early warning systems, learn lessons from past events and to grasp the growing threat of climate change and its impact on extreme weather events including storms, floods and drought.”
With world leaders now working towards new targets within the Sendai Framework, more initiatives are underway to reduce mortality during, and after, disaster events. Key to this is providing local communities with the skills, knowledge and tools to mitigate risk.
For ChildFund Australia, including young people in this training process is absolutely vital. Not only is this a way to realise children`s rights to participate, but it builds resilience among youth and makes DRR efforts at a local level much stronger. This means the whole community can be better prepared to face disasters head-on when they do strike.
Nine-year-old Palay lives in Nonghet District, one of Laos’ most mountainous regions. Her village is home to around 500 families, and faces a range of extreme weather events every year including severe hail, floods and resulting landslides. Not only does this put lives at risk during the event, it can have a devastating impact on families over the long-term, causing homelessness, devastation to crops and livestock, and potentially severe food shortages.
Palay describes how floods in 2012 affected her family. “My house and most of the crops were damaged. Some of my ducks, chickens and cattle were dead and some floated away in the water current. Other families were affected too, and meant some people were living with starvation,” she says.
Daily life was hugely disrupted. “My family had difficulties cooking because we could not make a fire. And it was very hard to travel from one to another place, so I could not go to school,” Palay recalls. “We had no experience in preparing ourselves in an emergency, so every day my parents just tried to block the water from coming inside my house. They didn`t know what else to do.”
But just recently, Palay was one of 10 students from her local primary school taking part in a re-enactment of that terrible flood in 2012. Having already taken part in two other training sessions, Palay and around 80 other children were given the opportunity to put their newly acquired disaster management skills into action. This included conducting emergency drills, establishing first aid areas and working collaboratively, and to an agreed plan, to mitigate the risks of the ‘flood’ which had just occurred.
“I feel so happy that I had the opportunity to be involved in this ChildFund activity, and get ready to face a natural disaster using a real-life demonstration,” says Palay.
During the re-enactment, families from Palay’s village were trained on a range of techniques to prepare for possible floods, and ways in which they could reduce the extent of damage — both loss of life and destruction of property.
“The flooding of my house and other houses in the village has made me want to have much more knowledge so that I can rescue villagers, especially my own family. In 2012, I was still a little girl and never saw a natural disaster like a flood before, so I did not know how to help anyone,” says Palay.
She adds: “I have gained a lot of useful knowledge and can share it with other people who did not attend the training, so they too can prepare themselves for a disaster. I explain to my friends that our village is located in an area which is risky, so we must all be careful and be ready at any time.”
REGION Asia Pacific COUNTRY Laos FOCUS AREA Disaster Risk Reduction
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China aims to cut carbon intensity 60%-65% in national climate plan
Ma Tianjie
China's long-awaited climate plan gets broad welcome but there are few clues on the extent of post-2030 GHG emissions cuts
(Image by Aristocrats-hat)
China has mapped out how it will try and peak greenhouse emissions by 2030 or before, details that could have a major bearing on UN climate talks aimed at delivering a deal in Paris later this year.
The world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases “will work hard” to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030, Premier Li Keqiang said at a summit meeting with the French government in Paris ahead of the publication of its 'Intended Nationally Determined Contribution' (INDC) in Beijing and submission to the UN's climate arm.
The document said China plans to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy 60%-65% per unit of GDP by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, and reiterated a previously-announced aim that renewables should make up 20% of its primary energy supply by the same date.
The English language translation of the 20-page document said: "A one-thousand-mile journey starts from the first step".
It added that to reach its 2030 goals, China would need to build on actions already taken by introducing new, toughly-enforced laws and penalties and hasten sweeping changes to how it produces and consumes energy, goods and raw materials.
Analysts pointed out that the 60%-65% goal on cutting carbon intensity represented a major increase from previous commitments, but the rate at which emissions still rise, peak and then fall would be largely dependent on what happens to GDP in China.
"It will be interesting to see if China clarifies this further,” said Mark Kenber of the Climate Group.
Other analysts said the 60%-65% carbon intensity target reflected the advances already made by China to decarbonise its economy.
“Meeting this goal won’t be easy, but research shows that with a sustained commitment China can reach its target even before 2030. This commitment will benefit China and represents a serious and credible contribution to tackle climate change,” said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute.
However, Li Shuo of Greenpeace China said the targets outlined in the INDC were at the less ambitious end of the scale of what is possible in China.
“It does not fully reflect the significant energy transition that is already taking place in China,” he said, adding: “Given the dramatic fall in coal consumption, robust renewable energy uptake, and the urgent need to address air pollution, we believe the country can go well beyond what it has proposed today.”
Nick Mabey of consultancy E3G said the climate plan was a sign that China would pursue lower-carbon development, but that the country could do more. He added: "It must now integrate climate change actions into its ambitious development and economic reforms.”
Policies and targets that have already been announced, including last year’s promise to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, make up much of the document submitted to the UN.
Read China's climate action plan in full
In it, China highlights an unprecedented roll-out of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, shutdowns of coal-fired power plants and energy-guzzling factories, and a switch to cleaner-burning gas.
China has already achieved a 33.8% cut in carbon intensity on 2005 levels but details of the climate plan released today provide few clues on how fast emissions will fall after an emissions peak.
Even though much of China’s climate plan is made up of previously-announced policies related to energy use, it means the world's three highest emitting economies – China, US, and the EU – have published the climate action targets they are prepared to commit to under a new agreement reached in Paris.
But the document said little on the pathway for emissions cuts after 2030 and whether the country can, or will, drive down its emissions at a rate that would help the world avoid runaway climate change. China has so far rejected proposals by the EU to review emissions cuts every five years.
Commentators have also pointed out that China’s action on climate change is driven by genuine self-interest and is part of the government’s reform agenda, outlined in the Five-Year Plan, to restructure the Chinese economy, and address concerns about air pollution, energy security, and the adverse impacts of climate change.
Based on the 20% non-fossil fuel commitment in the INDC, China will have to build an additional 800-1,000 GW of zero-emission generation capacity by 2030 - about the same as the country's current coal-fired capacity and nearly as much as the total current installed capacity in the US energy sector.
Meeting climate reduction goals in the INDC will cost China over US$6.6 trillion (41 trillion yuan), the country's lead negotiator at UN climate talks said last week at a meeting with US counterparts.
This would involve heavy costs for energy-intensive industries, but could also provide huge economic benefits to sectors such as renewables, energy efficient equipment, environmental technologies, low-carbon vehicles and power grid infrastructure.
Following the publication of the INDC, other large emitters such as the US and the EU are likely to crank up the pressure on China to set up a robust rules-based system through common international accounting rules and reporting requirements, something that the central government in Beijing has rejected so far.
Ma Tianjie is chinadialogue managing editor in Beijing. Before joining China Dialogue, he was Greenpeace's Program Director for Mainland China. While at Greenpeace, he was a regular commentator on China's environmental challenges contributing to a range of media organizations. He holds a master’s degree in environmental policy from American University, Washington D.C.
G7 agrees to ditch fossil fuels by end of the century
The G7 backs a long-term decarbonisation goal and promises more help for countries vulnerable to climate change as UN talks make slow progress
China and EU sign landmark climate deal
A China-EU climate agreement signed late Monday could help pave the way to a GHG-reduction deal in Paris
Rich world’s emissions cuts fall well short as China prepares its climate plan
China’s lack of clarity post-2030 emissions cuts likely to draw flak from developed countries, but OECD nations will also have a lot to answer for, says research
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Models of China’s future emissions have got it wrong
Fergus Green
Thomas Spencer
Studies of China's emissions fail to take the country's economic shift into account, write Fergus Green and Thomas Spencer
Industrial facilities in China. The country's heavy industry will have a decreasing share of economic output as China diversifies into less energy-intensive sectors such as light manufacturing and services (Image by Zhu Ye / Greenpeace)
For the thousands gathered in Paris for the international climate change negotiations, China’s role in causing and combating climate change is one of the most hotly debated topics.
Earlier this year, the Chinese government publically committed to achieving “the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030”, and to making its “best efforts to peak early”. However, the vast majority of formal modelling studies of China’s future emissions find that for the country to peak by 2030, there must first be profound changes in climate and energy policy, leading many to doubt whether this commitment can be achieved.
A number of Chinese and international analysts, including Jiang Kejun at the Energy Research Institute and Ross Garnaut from the University of Melbourne, have argued that Chinese emissions are likely to peak before 2030. So why is there such disagreement, and who has the better grasp of the argument?
First, it is necessary to understand what has been driving Chinese emissions up, as well as how these variables are handled by modelling studies. From 2000–2013, China’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accelerated steeply. During this time, China’s economic model was marked by double-digit annual GDP growth and an exceptionally high investment share of GDP. This investment was largely directed toward property construction and heavy manufacturing industries that use large amounts of energy (e.g. steel, cement, aluminium); and an electricity system supplied mainly by coal-fired power stations.
The major driver of Chinese emissions has, therefore, been the industrial sector. When emissions from electricity production are attributed to the sector that consumes the electricity, that sector is responsible for 65% of emissions growth in China since 2000. China’s economy is unusual in this regard: industry plays a much larger role compared even with countries of comparable wealth per capita.
While many analysts think that this industry-heavy economic structure is not sustainable and that the Chinese economy will transition to a less industry-intensive structure—with hugely beneficial impacts for Chinese emissions—this kind of macroeconomic shift is difficult to model.
Most models used in climate policy assessments contain a large amount of detail on technologies for energy production and consumption, but take economic inputs largely as given. A recent paper by Michael Grubb and colleagues undertook a comprehensive review of modelled emissions scenarios for China.
The study found that most scenarios assume that technology has to do the bulk of the work in reducing Chinese emissions, through more energy efficient appliances and low-carbon energy supply.
However, by definition these models often exclude the possibility that the Chinese economy will transform in the coming decades. For example, the review found that the median estimate from these modelling scenarios for industry’s share of China’s energy demand in 2050 was over 50%. A huge number. This is at least 10-20 percentage points above industry’s share in countries of comparable income. This modelling precludes the potential that Chinese economic structure could be significantly different in 2050 compared with today.
Accordingly, the models do a poor job of predicting future emissions were China to experience significant and rapid structural economic changes.
The analysts who argue that China will peak its emissions early, by contrast, emphasise that China is undergoing a large-scale, rapid, and multidimensional shift in its economic structure. At the same time, China’s energy supply is becoming less emissions-intensive. This is the bone of contention between the modellers and the analysts.
Among the analysts camp, Green and Stern point to the unsustainability of China’s old economic growth model.
As they note, the central government has acknowledged the many problems and articulated a new growth strategy. They highlight data from 2014–15 that demonstrate the extent of structural change already occurring in China, which in their view has set the tone for the next decade.
The heavy industry-based growth model that prevailed in China from roughly 2000–2013 proved unsustainable in every possible sense. The environmental destruction—resulting in toxic air pollution estimated to kill 4,000 people per day—was untenable. But it was also unsustainable in an economic and financial sense.
As demand in the construction and heavy manufacturing sectors slowed and approached saturation point, continued investments by local governments and state-owned enterprises into those sectors has caused large accumulations of excess capacity. This means much capital was invested in unproductive assets generating weak returns. Since these unproductive investments were fuelled by debt from state-owned banks (total debt in the Chinese economy quadrupled from US$7 trillion in 2007 to US$28 trillion by mid-2014), China now faces a chronic problem of poor performing loans in its financial sector.
China’s new generation of leaders, which came to power in 2013, were quick to recognise these fundamental challenges and to articulate a new growth strategy for China. This new strategy —summarised as “better quality growth” — recognises that China’s growth rate must slow if China is to create a sustainable economic foundation, and transition toward an economy based on domestic consumption and on fostering more productive, higher-value industries in services and innovative sectors.
Reducing economic inequalities and low-carbon, environmentally sustainable development are central to the new growth model.
In the last two years, China’s economic structure has changed significantly. The GDP growth rate has fallen steadily from more than 10% in 2010 to less than 7% in the third quarter of 2015 (unofficial forecasts are even lower), as the construction boom slowed. Heavy industrial production in sectors such as steel and cement levelled-off and then fell significantly in the first three-quarters of 2015, while the service sector expanded.
Energy intensity
At the same time, China’s intra-industry energy conservation efforts continued to improve the energy efficiency of Chinese industries, and there were large expansions in non-coal energy sources (both capacity and actual electricity generation). Cumulatively, the effect has been profound: after growing 8-9% per year from 2000–13, China’s coal consumption stopped growing in 2014 and has fallen strongly in the first three quarters of 2015—by more than 5% year-on-year.
It could be that 2014 was the peak year in China’s CO2 emissions. We will not know for some time, but even if China’s emissions grow over the next decade, it is much more likely that growth will be flat and not the steep growth as projected in most modelling scenarios.
China’s leaders have confirmed that the official GDP growth target for the next five years will be 6.5%, though some suspect it will drop further. Economic activity will continue to shift away from heavy industrial investment and towards domestic consumption, services and higher-tech manufacturing. Energy efficiency will improve, meaning we can expect continued strong declines in the energy intensity of China’s growth. There’s good reason to expect the expansion of non-coal energy and a slow-down in overall energy demand—namely, China’s drive to reduce local air pollution and to create new sources of industrial growth through solar, wind and nuclear.
Vested interests
There are, or course, political, economic and administrative challenges that threaten to complicate this transition. Concerns from local officials and vested interests about falling aggregate demand, job losses and capital write-downs in old industries might slow government reforms and constrain the reallocation of labour and capital to growing sectors. Cheaper coal and a glut of coal-fired power stations could tempt local authorities and enterprises to ignore central mandates and establish coal conversion industries or provoke a resurgence in coal-fired electricity generation.
In a low energy-demand environment, competition for priority grid dispatch among high- and low-carbon electricity generators will intensify and grid operators could favour the former, despite the central government’s recent international pledge to prioritise the latter. China’s forthcoming 13th Five Year Plan provides a critical opportunity to design strong policies in these areas and increase enforcement capabilities to ensure risks are minimised.
Nonetheless, even if risks were to emerge, it is virtually unfathomable that China’s growth model, and its associated pace of GHG growth, will return to that of 2000–13. Despite what many of the models project.
Fergus Green is a policy analyst and research advisor to Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics.
Thomas Spencer is research fellow in climate and energy economics at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI).
The likely winners and losers from a Paris climate agreement
Low carbon technologies will only be a clear winner and fossil fuels a decisive loser after Paris if an agreement is suitably ambitious, writes Gerard Wynn
China’s coal conundrum
China’s revised energy data shows a commitment to greater transparency, say policy specialists
What is China's position at Paris climate talks?
Just days before the Paris summit, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua set out the country's position on the key issues
Why it’s time for solar thermal energy to shine and biofuels to bloom
As Paris climate talks debate curbs on coal, the world should embrace alternative technologies that are widely available, writes Prem Shankar Jha
Financing the transition to a low carbon economy
Nick Robins, co-director of UNEP Inquiry, explains why the financial sector has a historic opportunity to shape a green economy
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The Indo-Pacific Strategy of the US and Its Influence on Regional Security
Zhao Weibin
Researcher, PLA Academy of Military Science
In March 2017, Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of state in the United States Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, announced that the pivot to Asia was over. In October that year, at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sketched out two pillars for a new Indo-Pacific strategy: one was India, the other was expansion of the U.S.-Japan-India trilateral architecture to include Australia.
That November, during his visits to Asia, U.S. President Donald Trump frequently mentioned that the new administration would advance a free and open Indo-Pacific. In the National Security Strategy released the following month, notably in the section titled “The Strategy in a Regional Context,” the term “Asia-Pacific” was replaced by “Indo-Pacific,” which was said to be the first regional strategy, before other regions such as Europe, the Middle East and Africa. On July 30, 2018, at the Indo-Pacific Business Forum, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put forward America’s Indo-Pacific economic vision. On June 1, this year, the U.S. Department of Defense issued its Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, implementing an Indo-Pacific strategy through three “Ps” — preparedness, partnerships and promoting a networked region.
Compared with the strategy of rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific, the Indo-Pacific strategy has (1) shifted from engaging for purposes of regulation, to disengaging to provide a check and balance on China; (2) tried to rope India in and form a U.S.-Japan-India-Australia quadrilateral security dialogue; and (3) worked to build a larger-scale network of allies and partners.
The inheritance and further development from the pivot strategy includes the following three aspects:
First, the Indo-Pacific strategy continues to advance the “3-60 percent” deployment of military forces under which 60 percent of all U.S. Navy ships, two-thirds of fleet Marine forces, and 60 percent of overseas tactical-aviation assets are assigned to the theater.
Second, a distributed and networked military posture is taking shape. The U.S. is seeking more international agreements to get access to more bases, infrastructure and installations that can provide interconnected support. Capabilities on the first island chain are relatively reduced, while expeditionary forces, dynamic basing and special operations forces along the second island chain are reinforced.
Third, on the basis of the AirSea Battle concept, the U.S. Defense Department is developing new operational concepts such as multi-domain operations, distributed lethality, expeditionary advanced base operations and rapid raptor. It started testing them through the Indo-Pacific Command.
The previous regional strategy of the U.S. is “The United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region,” which was released in 1998. This East Asian strategy report defined China as an uncertain factor, with challenges, opportunities and limited threats. The theme of China-U.S. relations was comprehensive engagement, and the U.S. side held the initiative. Twenty years later, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy defines China as a revisionist power that challenges and undermines the international system. China ranks as the biggest long-term threat to the U.S. The theme of the Indo-Pacific strategy is great-power competition, and its tone is to counterbalance China’s rise in all respects and in multiple domains. It will have three negative effects as follows:
First, taking China as a strategic rival, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will lead to an Asian version of NATO. The Trump administration is working to construct a four-layer network of allies and partners to encircle China. The first layer is composed of five treaty allies — Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand. The second layer includes Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Mongolia. It is somewhat unusual to highlight the position of Mongolia in the regional strategy, indicating an American intention to further incorporate Northeast Asia into the overall architecture of the Indo-Pacific strategy. Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Pacific Islands constitute the third layer, covering India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga and the Compacts of Free Association countries. The fourth layer includes the United Kingdom, France and Canada. The U.S. thinks these Western allies identify themselves as “Pacific countries” that play a critical role in Indo-Pacific security affairs. The essence of “promoting a networked region” is to strengthen the interconnectivity between the U.S.-Japan-India-Australia quad with Indo-Pacific countries and organizations. It can be expected that China’s pursuit of partnerships rather than alliances, promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative and implementation of its going-out strategy will collide with the U.S. move to strengthen alliances and its maintenance of military hegemony. The structural contradictions will become more prominent.
Second, taking China as a strategic competitor, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will lead to a regional arms race. The United States maintains high vigilance about any challenge to its military superiority, continues to intensify the “third offset strategy” to maintain its technological advantages and announced its intent to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty to widen the capability gap. In particular, the U.S. wants to seize the opportunity to increase arms sales to allies and partners. For example, it is encouraging Japan to procure the F-35A, E-2D Hawkeye, Global Hawk UAS, MV-22 and Advanced Electronic Guides Interceptor System (AEGIS) Ashore, and to help advance Japan’s space, cyberspace and electromagnetic capabilities. It is urging South Korea to procure P-8 and advanced munitions, and to upgrade to PAC-3 missiles and F-16 fighters to increase interoperability with the U.S. military. It supports defense sales to India, involving P-8s, C-130Js, C-17s, AH-64s, CH-47s and M777 howitzers. India has agreed to a $2.1 billion purchase of MH-60R multirole sea-based helicopters and is considering purchasing F-16s, F/A-18Es, more P-8Is and Sea Guardian unmanned aircraft.
Third, taking China as a battlefield opponent, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will lead to potential military frictions and confrontations. At present there are two risks: (1) The U.S. military’s close-in sea and air reconnaissance activities. The nature of these activities is battlefield preparation. As they are becoming more frequent, they might induce accidental clashes of aircraft and ships; (2) Third-party factors. The Taiwan issue, maritime disputes and the Korean Peninsula issue might trigger serious crises and military confrontations between China and the U.S. Take the Taiwan issue, for example. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2017 suggested an elevation of U.S.-Taiwan exchanges; the FY2018 NDAA required normalizing the transfer of defense items and services to Taiwan; and the Taiwan Assurance Act of 2019 proclaims that Taiwan is a vital part of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy and suggests conducting regular sales and transfers of defense items to Taiwan. Recently, the Trump administration announced an $8 billion arms package for Taiwan featuring 66 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets and 75 General Electric engines and other support systems. The deal will be one of the largest of its kind in recent decades and the first time since 1992 that the U.S. has sold F-16Vs to Taiwan. All of these are dangerous moves that seriously damage the peace and stability of the Taiwan Straits region.
China is concerned about the exclusive and confrontational military alliance, a regional arms race and potential military friction. Intensifying a military presence and playing up military confrontations are not conducive to regional peace and stability. We hope the U.S. strategy will be a big circle of peace, cooperation and equality among countries in the region, rather than a small circle of cliques highlighting military confrontation.
Any international cooperation initiative should be conducive to tackling the deficits of governance, trust, peace and development, and should accommodate the common aspirations of the countries and peoples in the region. It should be open and inclusive, with the aim of promoting unity, cooperation and prosperity, rather than deliberately creating division and chaos. It should follow the trend of the times, which is peace and development, and give full consideration to the common security and common interests of countries in the region, rather than putting the interests of a few above those of the majority. It should uphold equality, mutual trust and win-win cooperation, rather than seeking absolute unilateral security by playing a zero-sum game, let alone letting one’s own security be based on the insecurity of other countries.
Indo-PacificAsia-Pacific
Ten Reasons the US Indo-Pacific Strategy is Doomed to Fail
Fan Gaoyue Guest Professor at Sichuan University, Former Chief Specialist at PLA Academy of Military Science
Indo-Pacific Strategy May Reshape Relations
Yang Wenjing Chief of US Foreign Policy, Institute of Contemporary International Relations
The Inaugural US-ASEAN Naval Exercises: A Clear Signal to China
Richard Javad Heydarian Philippine-based academic
Asia-Pacific Cannot Afford Medium-range Missile Competition
Li Zheng Assistant Research Fellow, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations
Potential Impact of U.S. Deployment of Intermediate-Range Missiles in Asia
Zhao Weibin Researcher, PLA Academy of Military Science
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Summer Series: House Guests -Blue Tiers, June 4-25, 2016
SUMMER SERIES: House Guests
COOP Gallery is pleased to present a series of exhibitions entitled House Guests. Running through the end of summer, COOP has asked four different curators or curatorial teams from around the region to take over our new space in the Wedgewood Houston neighborhood. For the second show, COOP has invited Good Weather from North Little Rock, Arkansas. See their press release below:
Moody Blues, (installation detail), dyed bed sheet and fleece snuggie, 2016.
Blue Tiers
June 4–25, 2016
Opening: June 4, 2016 from 6–9 pm
507 Hagan Street Nashville, TN 37203
Good Weather presents a solo exhibition by Martha Mysko that continues the layering of this invitation of occupation with an installation formed through and around a group show curated by Haynes Riley with works from Alika Cooper, Mark Dineen, Talon Gustafson, Tony Hope, and Dylan Spaysky.
More about the artists:
Martha Mysko (b. 1982 Baltimore, Maryland) has had solo exhibitions at MARC STRAUS (2012 and 2014) in New York, New York; Art-in-Buildings West 10th Window (2016) in New York, New York; Sadie Halie Projects (2015) in Brooklyn, New York; Good Weather (2014) in North Little Rock, Arkansas; and Culture Room (collaborative, 2013) in Brooklyn, New York. Two-person and group exhibitions include Rabbit Redux at Small Editions (2016); Re/Post at Storefront Ten Eyck (2015); The Body Metonymic: International Contemporary Sculpture at Oakland University Art Gallery (2014); On Deck at MARC STRAUS (2013); and Peekskill Project V (2012) at Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA). Martha received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2011. She currently lives and works in Pontiac, Michigan.
Alika Cooper (b. 1979 Agana, Guam) attended the California College of the Arts for her BFA and MFA. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Actual Size (Los Angeles), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), MULHERIN (Toronto), and Tracy Williams, Ltd. (New York). Her work has been in exhibitions at Richard Telles Fine Art (Los Angeles), Robert Blumenthal Gallery (New York), LAXART (Los Angeles), and Western Exhibitions (Chicago). Her work has been covered in Artforum, Frieze, and Flash Art. She recently was a panelist on Cheryl Donegan: Screening and Panel: Marjorie Keller’s Daughters of Chaos at the New Museum. She is the recipient of a grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. She was Artist-in-Residence at The Luminary (St. Louis) in spring 2014.
Mark Dineen (b. 1983 Elgin, Illinois) is a Detroit-based artist and educator. Through experimentation and iteration, he develops unconventional approaches to working with commonplace materials such as wood, plastic, leather, and cement. His work contrasts the logic and efficiencies of industrial production with the idiosyncratic nature of craft-based studio production. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Mark is also a director at Talking Dolls, an experimental design group based in Detroit, Michigan.
Talon Gustafson (b. 1977 Mokena, Illinois) was raised in Centennial, Wyoming and earned his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2010. He lives and works in New York City and is co-founder and writer for the online arts quarterly WOW HUH. Gustafson also owns and operates the apartment gallery Culture Room with Ashley Zangle.
Tony Hope (b. 1989 Redford, Michigan) lives and works in Livonia, Michigan.
Dylan Spaysky (b. 1981 Waterford, Michigan) lives and works in Hamtramck, Michigan. Selected exhibitions include Susanne Hilberry (Detroit), NGBK (Berlin), Cleopatra’s (Brooklyn), Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (Cleveland), and Clifton Benevento (New York).
More about the curator: Haynes Riley is an artist, curator, and designer with an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is founder and director at Good Weather in North Little Rock, Arkansas. While at the helm of Good Weather, Riley has organized twenty nine solo exhibitions and participated in NADA New York, Material Art Fair (Mexico City), ARTBandini Los Angeles, and 9/50: A Southeast Arts Presenters Summit at Atlanta Contemporary; and published artists’ books and editions that have been presented at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (Los Angeles), Detroit Art Book Fair, and VA/BF (Vancouver). Riley also founded Girl/Boy Gallery while participating in the Ox-Bow School of Art Fall Artist Residency; co-curated In All Kinds of Weather at Gallery Protocol (Gainesville); and co-curated Shades in Little Rock and curated In the Heat of the Night in Chicago through The Bedfellow’s Club. Riley has participated in residencies at Ox-Bow, ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, WZFR, and The Luminary. He lives and works in North Little Rock and Helena-West Helena, Arkansas.
Website: www.goodweathergallery.com
More about COOP COOP is a curatorial collective made up of artists, curators, thinkers, and professors who are committed to expanding Nashville’s dialogue with contemporary art by presenting challenging new or under-represented artists/artworks to our community. COOP is committed to exhibiting art of diverse media and content, with a goal to provide an alternative venue for artists free from the constraints of the retail market. COOP seeks to initiate a discourse between Nashville and art scenes across the country by inviting artists to show, develop projects, and interact with the Nashville community.
Website: www.coopgallery.org
For questions, please contact: Karen Seapker: karenseapker@gmail.com
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Photo: Nicolay Paus
Reducing poverty: The role of labour markets
Nepal has seen broad economic growth since the mid-80’s. There has been a real per capita income growth of 2 percent every year. In this period, poverty has decreased correspondingly. National living standard surveys show that poverty has been reduced all over the country, and that inequalities between the different castes and ethnic groups have diminished.
Lack of labour boosts wages
The steady economic growth, which in Nepal has continued independent of democracy, war and upheavals, is one of two main contributing factors to the poverty reduction. The second factor is labour migration.
Labour migration is not a new feature in Nepal. The poor have migrated for decades, primarily to India, where wages have been only marginally better than in Nepal. The new phenomenon is that the non-poor have started to migrate. The majority go to the Gulf States where wages are better than back home. There is now a steady inflow of money being sent from migrant workers to their families in Nepal.
-Increasing labour migration has caused a lack of labour in several sectors Nepal. Young, able men are no longer there to work on their farms. This has caused a need for labour in the agricultural sector, says Hatlebakk.
The money flowing in from migrant labourers has also spurred a greater demand for labour in the construction sector. An increasing share of Nepalese spend Gulf-money on houses, and the booming construction sector is now forced to pay more for unskilled labour than they did only a few years ago. This has contributed to a general increase in the wage level, and by that a reduction in poverty.
Countries facing big scale labour migration are sometimes hit hard by the negative consequences of brain drain. The majority who migrate to the Gulf states are young men who are better educated than the average Nepalese. Yet, Hatlebakk doubts that the increasing number of labour migrants represent a problem to Nepal’s ambitions of developing an industrial and technological sector of their own.
-Although the labour migrants have some degree of education, they are mainly unskilled. The skills they pick up abroad will be an asset when they return to their home country, says Hatlebakk.
Greasing the wheels for further decline
There are few signs that the Nepalese economy will come to a halt. The growing economy will most likely spur further decline in poverty. Yet, even quicker results in poverty reduction could be attained with targeted policies. Hatlebakk points to law and order as a continuous challenge, threatening stability and further economic growth. Kidnappings, mafia activities, corruption and numerous strikes make business activities risky.
Safety concerns is also on top of the agenda for poor Nepalese families, although on a different level. Completely lacking any of the welfare state’s safety nets, poor Nepalese families have little or no chances of coping with unforeseen events. Illness have far-reaching and dramatic consequences for the majority of Nepalese families. More often than not, they have to raise expensive loans to cover the costs of hospitalization.
-Subsidised hospital treatment will have positive effects far beyond the concrete medical problems. If you are not poor at the outset, illness may make you poor. Far too little foreign aid goes into the health sector in Nepal. There are few incentive problems related to serious illnesses, which means excellent possibilities for targeting, says Hatlebakk.
Targeted policies can also be an alternative in other sectors, like nutrition, employment and schooling, where Nepal can learn from India''''s experiences, positive and negative, with food subsidies and employment guarantees.
-Nepal can learn from India’s public safety nets. For the past decade, India has operated an employment guarantee for all rural households, and is now in the process of replacing food subsidies with a universal right to food, says Hatlebakk. Nepal shall not necessarily copy India, but learn from positive and negative impacts of these policies.
Yet, Nepal’s main challenge is also inextricably linked to India. Lack of electricity is a major impediment to industrial development in Nepal. Building transmission lines from India to Nepal could solve the problem, but the construction has proved difficult to realize.
-The poor quality of roads is also an issue, but donors have funded many projects over the past few years, and the standard is improving. The main challenge remains the planning and construction of transmission lines. This challenge has a clear political edge to it, and Nepal has always been very cautious in its relations to India. There has been little pressure, and any solution to what is actually one of Nepal’s main challenges seems far off, says Hatlebakk.
Magnus Hatlebakk
Senior Researcher; Coordinator: Poverty Dynamics
magnus.hatlebakk@cmi.no
Households, Livelihoods and Social and Political Transformation in Nepal
Also on this project:
Out of poverty with inclusive policy
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Adjunct Senior Fellow, Defense Program
Strategy and Business Development, Anduril Industries
View High-res Photo
Diem Salmon currently works at Anduril Industries, a defense technology company, and is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security (CNAS). Diem has worked in the national security field for over 10 years, including the private sector, non-profit, and Congress, with a specific emphasis on defense budgets and requirements. Currently at Anduril, Diem is responsible for shaping business investment to best serve the needs of the Department of Defense.
Prior to that, she was the Budget Director and Deputy Policy Director for the Senate Armed Services Committee. While there, Diem worked on five annual National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs) and navigated the committee and NDAAs through three separate budget deals. Her work at the committee included advocating for higher defense budgets, including the increase for FY 2018 and FY 2019, and passed legislation requiring the Department of Defense to reevaluate force design in light of the new National Defense Strategy. Diem was previously a Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation and worked at The Avascent Group, a management and strategy consulting firm.
Diem received a master’s degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with a concentration in International Economics and Strategic Studies. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine, the home of the anteater.
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H.R.4850 - Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2000106th Congress (1999-2000)
Rep. Stump, Bob [R-AZ-3] (Introduced 07/13/2000)
House - Veterans' Affairs | Senate - Veterans' Affairs
11/01/2000 Became Public Law No: 106-413. (TXT | PDF) (All Actions)
Array ( [actionDate] => 2000-07-24 [displayText] => Reported by the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. H. Rept. 106-783. [externalActionCode] => 5000 [description] => Introduced )
Array ( [actionDate] => 2000-10-12 [displayText] => Passed/agreed to in Senate: Passed Senate with amendments and an amendment to the Title by Unanimous Consent. [externalActionCode] => 17000 [description] => Passed Senate )
Array ( [actionDate] => 2000-10-17 [displayText] => [externalActionCode] => 19000 [description] => Resolving Differences )
Armed Forces and National Security
Text: H.R.4850 — 106th Congress (1999-2000)All Information (Except Text)
There are 7 versions: Public Law (11/01/2000)Enrolled BillEngrossed Amendment Senate (10/13/2000)Engrossed in House (07/25/2000)Referred in Senate (07/25/2000)Reported in House (07/24/2000)Introduced in House (07/13/2000)
Text available as:
Public Law No: 106-413 (11/01/2000)
[106th Congress Public Law 413]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
<DOC>
[DOCID: f:publ413.106]
[[Page 114 STAT. 1798]]
Public Law 106-413
To increase, effective as of December 1, 2000, the <<NOTE: Nov. 1,
2000 - [H.R. 4850]>> rates of compensation for veterans with service-
connected disabilities and the rates of dependency and indemnity
compensation for the survivors of certain disabled veterans.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of <<NOTE: Veterans'
Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2000.>> Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. <<NOTE: 38 USC 101 note.>> SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living
Adjustment Act of 2000''.
SEC. 2. <<NOTE: 38 USC 1114 note.>> INCREASE IN RATES OF DISABILITY
COMPENSATION AND DEPENDENCY AND INDEMNITY COMPENSATION.
(a) Rate Adjustment.--The Secretary of Veterans <<NOTE: Effective
date.>> Affairs shall, effective on December 1, 2000, increase the
dollar amounts in effect for the payment of disability compensation and
dependency and indemnity compensation by the Secretary, as specified in
subsection (b).
(b) Amounts To Be Increased.--The dollar amounts to be increased
pursuant to subsection (a) are the following:
(1) Compensation.--Each of the dollar amounts in effect
under section 1114 of title 38, United States Code.
(2) Additional compensation for dependents.--Each of the
dollar amounts in effect under sections 1115(1) of such title.
(3) Clothing allowance.--The dollar amount in effect under
section 1162 of such title.
(4) New dic rates.--The dollar amounts in effect under
paragraphs (1) and (2) of section 1311(a) of such title.
(5) Old dic rates.--Each of the dollar amounts in effect
under section 1311(a)(3) of such title.
(6) Additional dic for surviving spouses with minor
children.--The dollar amount in effect under section 1311(b) of
such title.
(7) Additional dic for disability.--The dollar amounts in
effect under sections 1311(c) and 1311(d) of such title.
(8) DIC for dependent children.--The dollar amounts in
effect under sections 1313(a) and 1314 of such title.
(c) Determination of Increase.--(1) The increase under subsection
(a) shall be made in the dollar amounts specified in subsection (b) as
in effect on November 30, 2000.
(2) <<NOTE: Effective date.>> Except as provided in paragraph (3),
each such amount shall be increased by the same percentage as the
percentage by which benefit amounts payable under title II of the Social
Security Act (42 U.S.C. 401 et seq.) are increased effective December 1,
2000, as a result of a determination under section 215(i) of such Act
(42 U.S.C. 415(i)).
(3) Each dollar amount increased pursuant to paragraph (2) shall, if
not a whole dollar amount, be rounded down to the next lower whole
dollar amount.
(d) Special Rule.--The Secretary may adjust administratively,
consistent with the increases made under subsection (a), the rates of
disability compensation payable to persons within the purview of section
10 of Public Law 85-857 (72 Stat. 1263) who are not in receipt of
compensation payable pursuant to chapter 11 of title 38, United States
SEC. 3. <<NOTE: 38 USC 1114 note.>> PUBLICATION OF ADJUSTED RATES.
At the same time as the <<NOTE: Federal Register,
publication.>> matters specified in section 215(i)(2)(D) of the Social
Security Act (42 U.S.C. 415(i)(2)(D)) are required to be published by
reason of a determination made under section 215(i) of such Act during
fiscal year 2001, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall publish in the
Federal Register the amounts specified in subsection (b) of section 2,
as increased pursuant to that section.
Approved November 1, 2000.
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY--H.R. 4850:
HOUSE REPORTS: No. 106-783 (Comm. on Veterans' Affairs).
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 146 (2000):
July 25, considered and passed House.
Oct. 12, considered and passed Senate, amended.
Oct. 17, House concurred in Senate amendments.
WEEKLY COMPILATION OF PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS, Vol. 36 (2000):
Nov. 1, Presidential statement.
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Cobalt: Where will it come from?
As most cobalt investors know, pure-play cobalt projects are rare beasts. However, they do exist and so do a select number of pure-play cobalt exploration companies. To shed a bit of light on where these cobalt deposits can be found, I’ve asked Frank Santaguida, the VP Exploration of First Cobalt, to provide us with a guest blog post.
Anthony Milewski, CEO of Cobalt 27 Corp.
In 2016, over 120,000 tonnes of cobalt were produced globally. Half of that went into batteries to power computers, cell phones and electric vehicles. Demand for EVs is on the rise and several predictions have set the need for cobalt to triple to about 314,000t by about 2030. There is a looming production shortfall, yet with over 7,000,000 tonnes of cobalt resources in the world (according to the United States Geological Survey in 2017), the issue is not a lack of cobalt on the planet, but a shortage of primary cobalt production.
The problem we face is that most of the world’s cobalt, about 98% in 2016, is mined as a by-product from copper and nickel mineral deposits rather than as a primary metal. Without a change to the mineral processing infrastructure, an increase to cobalt production depends on expanding production of other metals to meet demands.
During my +25 years as a geologist, I have lived and worked in both Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo; where over 50% of world cobalt comes from as a secondary metal to copper in the large deposits there. We focused our mining and exploration efforts on copper with cobalt only considered as a bonus rather than a necessity.
Adding to the cobalt supply woes is the erratic production from DRC. World-class mining operations often have smaller, artisanal mines in their backyard worked by locals. These mines are smaller but are run by hand so high grading cobalt-rich and copper-rich ore is relatively easy. Work conditions are poor and safety standards sub-par so open and close quite readily. Many small local refineries count on this ore supply so, amazingly, when these mines are closed it affects the global production.
This is not simply an “Africa problem”. I also spent a lot of my time exploring for copper and nickel in Canada, Finland and Australia, where cobalt is forgotten in light producing these two metals.
Many copper and nickel deposits also contain gold, platinum and palladium, as well as cobalt. These higher value metals are recovered ahead of cobalt during processing. In deposits in Sudbury, Canada and in Mount Isa, Australia, a high amount of cobalt exists but is not effectively recovered, as the processing infrastructure is not in place. These mines will not able to produce cobalt until there are sufficient economic incentives to invest in new infrastructure.
So where then?
Few places in the world do exist where enough cobalt can be considered the primary production metal. Two of North America’s best starting points are aptly named: Cobalt.
More than 100 years ago, Canada’s first mining rush resulted in over 100 mines that produced 600 million ounces of silver, in Cobalt, Ontario. Cobalt, the metal, was also found, but was thrown away because the price was too low and there was a lack of demand. Even with this low interest more than 50 million pounds of cobalt was shipped during the Camp’s history that ended in 1989. Here, high grade narrow veins that contain 0.5 to 1.0 % cobalt extend several hundred meters are well known, but recently disseminated-style cobalt mineralization has been found that may be amenable to larger tonnages and bulk mining methods.
In the US, near another town called Cobalt, in Idaho, a 60km long belt contains many surface occurrences and a few test mines with cobalt and copper. Full-scale mining was active at one site from 1945 to 1966 at Blackbird. The average grade of cobalt at 0.6 to 0.7% cobalt in some of these deposits is economically comparable to some of the richest gold and copper mines in the world.
First Cobalt Corp. is one of a new breed of mining company, exploring for cobalt for cobalt’s sake. Our primary focus is on exploring both of these areas in Canada and US. New mines and processing facilities, like the one we own in Cobalt, Ontario, can be designed to produce material containing cobalt that is readily used by battery manufacturers.
We believe, like many others, the place to be for cobalt supply in the near future is right here in North America.
Frank Santaguida, VP Exploration
First Cobalt
About First Cobalt
First Cobalt aims to create the largest pure-play cobalt exploration and development company in the world. The Company controls over 10,000 hectares of prospective land covering over 50 historic mines as well as mineral processing facilities in the Cobalt Camp in Ontario, Canada. The First Cobalt Refinery is the only permitted facility in North America capable of producing battery materials.
First Cobalt seeks to build shareholder value through new discovery, mineral processing and growth opportunities, with a focus on North America. On March 14, 2018, the Company proposed a friendly, all-share acquisition of US Cobalt Inc. for its Iron Creek Project in Idaho, U.S. The transaction remains subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. This transaction is intended to further enhance First Cobalt’s position as a leading pure-play North American cobalt company.
Forward-Looking Information: Some of the posted entries on the CEO Corner may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions which involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied by them. Examples of forward looking information and assumptions include future estimates of the worldwide supply and demand for cobalt and other metals and the effect that these changes could have on the short term and long term price of cobalt and other metals on the world markets, statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Cobalt 27 including the net present value, metal recoveries, capital costs, operating costs, production, rates of return and payback. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our reports filed with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "expect", "projects", "plans", "anticipates" and similar expressions. These statements represent management's expectations or beliefs concerning, among other things, future operations and various components thereof affecting the economic performance of Cobalt 27. Undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements which are based upon management's assumptions and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including the business risks discussed above, which may cause actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted.
Links: Some of the posted entries on the CEO Corner may include links to 3rd party websites. Cobalt 27 has not reviewed all websites linked to or from this Site and is not responsible for the contents of any such websites. The inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by Cobalt 27 of the linked website or its content. Use of any such linked website is at the user's own risk.
For further information we refer you to our legal notice.
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Hong Kong needs to switch on to renewable energy
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Gilly Wong says as Asia forges ahead with solutions to meet energy needs, Hong Kong comes up short on forward-looking policies that promote renewable electricity sources
More renewables in Hong Kong - the idea sounds a bit implausible, doesn't it? Hong Kong is a small, densely populated territory with a large electricity habit. Renewables suck in subsidies, take up space and don't produce very much electricity - and when they do, it's at unpredictable times.
But, is it really such a bad idea? In last year's fuel-mix consultation, the government estimated that the price of electricity in Hong Kong was set to almost double, as we invest in a gas generation plant, and replace cheap coal with expensive gas. This will bring our power prices more in line with countries that are putting restrictions on coal use. Recent overseas experience suggests that renewable energy, in the right policy environment, gets cheaper as it matures. Prices of onshore wind in Brazil and Europe are now similar to those of fossil fuels; the price of large-scale solar power in Britain's recent power auction was just 25 per cent more than its gas-fired electricity.
Here in Hong Kong, solar output is wonderfully punctual, peaking just when we need it, on hot summer days. Also, renewables are an insurance policy against volatile fossil fuel prices. Over the past decade, natural gas prices in Asia have quadrupled.
The government last examined renewable electricity in 2002. According to its first-phase report on the potential applications of renewable energy in Hong Kong, our city could meet 17 per cent of its electricity demand if a proportion of developed land and open space (roads and airports) had solar panels installed. A further seven per cent of the electricity demand could be met by 1,000 well-situated wind turbines.
However, the report concludes that the scope for growth is limited - perhaps reaching two per cent in 2017, and three per cent by 2022. But these numbers now seem out of date. In response to the call for greener energy and rapid world development, CLP Power is investigating the feasibility of a 200MW offshore wind farm in Hong Kong's southeastern waters. HK Electric has also looked into offshore wind farms. Clearly, it's time for the government to update its analysis about the potential for renewables.
The scheme of control agreements, inked between the government and the city's two power suppliers, were developed with fossil fuels in mind. The power companies are rewarded on how many assets they build. Altering it for renewables might not be the most effective way to start. In the last agreement, the government encouraged the power companies to switch to renewables by providing an extra one per cent in their permitted rate of return in exchange for investment in these alternative sources, but progress has been uninspiring. Only about 0.1 per cent of the power they generate is from renewables.
Other places do not pay a return on how much capital is invested. Renewable developers compete against, or join with, energy companies to produce renewable electricity. They are rewarded through a predictable and usually subsidised price for the power they produce.
The price paid to generators of renewable energy in Europe is around HK$0.70 per kWh. This compares with the retail price we pay for electricity in Hong Kong of around HK$1.10 per kWh. One of the biggest obstacles to promoting renewable energy development is for outsider developers to access the power grid, the route to the market. Hong Kong has no law to regulate prices and contract terms for this.
Over the past decade, the growth in global renewable energy deployment has been astounding - a 20-fold growth in wind since 2000, and a 30-fold growth in solar power since 2005, mainly in Europe and the US. As Asian economies confront the problems of rising gas prices, environmental concerns and reliable, long-term energy sources, they are beginning to set out policies to promote renewable energy. Their experiences and success stories could provide us a better understanding of how to encourage the use of renewables in Hong Kong.
Taiwan aims to be self-sufficient in energy. In 2009, its government passed the Renewable Energy Development Act, aiming to expand renewable energy generation to 16 per cent of total capacity by 2025. Subsidies are paid as feed-in tariffs with different levels of support for solar power, onshore wind farms, offshore wind farms, biomass and hydro power. Taiwan currently has 530MW of onshore wind energy. The government is planning another 450 onshore and 600 offshore turbines so that, by 2030, wind generation capacity could reach 4,200MW.
Taiwan is also a major manufacturer of solar panels, and the government aims to expand their use domestically. The goal is to have 7.5 million residents using solar energy with a capacity of 4,500MW.
In December 2008, South Korea set out its plans to promote the renewable energy industry, particularly wind and solar. The target is for renewables to contribute 11 per cent of primary energy demand by 2025. By 2012, they accounted for 3.2 per cent of primary energy use.
Our government has set emission targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but still lacks the forward-looking policies to develop and promote renewable energy. Renewable energy sources are capital intensive. The scheme of control's current design isn't the right one to develop a renewable industry.
By contrast, we estimate that a feed-in-tariff support mechanism used to generate five per cent of Hong Kong's electricity and subsidised at European levels would add around 2.5 per cent to customer bills. As power companies meet the air quality emission-reduction targets, they may not be investing in the most appropriate long-term solutions for Hong Kong.
Elsewhere in Asia, countries are promoting a diversified energy policy, which includes renewables. Hong Kong probably needs to catch up.
More exciting still are initiatives that invite us to rethink what a modern, smart city should aspire to. One example is Masdar, in Abu Dhabi. It has integrated low-emission electric transport, solar panels and a town layout to reduce overheating, which together have massively cut the need for outside energy.
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The Far East - June 2014
In early post-war days in Japan when newly arrived Columban missionaries in the parish at Kumamoto were still struggling to find their feet, they were generously assisted in their efforts by an able and supportive Japanese diocesan priest, Fr Isamu Hirata. Ordained a few years before the war for Fukuoka Diocese, ‘Sam’ as Columbans affectionately christened him, found himself in a rather bizarre way involved in the conflict.
One of his voluntary weekly tasks was bearing very limited amounts of strictly rationed food and items of clothing to foreign nationals stranded in Japan since Pearl Harbour. Without hope of repatriation, they were confined for the duration of the war in a camp some miles away from Fukuoka City. Since many members of the camp’s population were Christian, Fr Sam was able to provide spiritual nourishment and comfort for souls as well as for bodies.
Over the previous decade and now more than ever, the military authorities had viewed with suspicion any contact with foreigners of any nationality. In spite of being aware of this reality, and knowing that sooner or later the blow must fall, Sam untiringly maintained his weekly routine. He was not surprised therefore when one morning, answering his door bell, he found himself under arrest and marched to the nearby headquarters of the dreaded Kempei, the notorious military police.
Almost immediately the interrogation by a viciously loutish officer began. Six or more hours later when no satisfactory answers were forthcoming, the questioner suddenly lost patience. Whipping out his pistol from its holster and aiming straight between Sam’s eyes he barked Korosu zo! (I’m going to kill you). "Ok", said Sam, "go ahead and shoot. But take it from me, if you kill me, my ghost will haunt you and your children and every single one of your descendents and kin till the end of the world."
Minutes later Sam found himself unceremoniously bundled through the door and out on to the street with a strict if somewhat superfluous warning to "come back, no more, no more; never to come back no more" - a prohibition he was more than happy to abide by.
And they tell you ghosts have no power? Sam used to smile as, without the faintest trace of rancour, he related this and other wartime episodes and experiences to enthralled listeners. A shame nobody ever committed them to paper.
Columban Fr Eamonn Horgan has celebrated 60 years of ordination; almost all of those years have been spent in Japan.
Read more from The Far East, June 2014
Mark Baird:
Sep 29, 2014 at 01:54 PM
Fr Jim was born in Rotorua, New Zealand, and in 1941 he went to the Holy Cross Seminary in Melbourne Australia and after his Ordination he was sent to Japan and served in 8 Parishes for 45 years. After his retirement he returned to Rotorua and outside St Michael’s Church he handed me his 8 notebooks. I have spent the last 7 years typing up his notes and when I wrote the book I wanted fidelity rather than style because the book is not meant to be read continuously for any length of time but piecemeal and meditatively.
Last Edit: 29 Sep, 2014, 02:11:35 by Columban Missionaries
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New legislation would criminalize extortion by foreign officials
By Jaclyn Jaeger2019-08-05T15:50:00+01:00
New legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would criminalize extortion by foreign officials, enabling the Department of Justice to indict such officials for demanding a bribe. The bill seeks to fill a gap in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits only the paying or offering of a bribe.
The Foreign Extortion Prevention Act was introduced on Aug. 2 by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), and Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.). The Act proposes to prevent the demanding of a bribe by amending 18 U.S. Code (USC), Section 201, the domestic bribery statute, rather than amending the FCPA.
“U.S. businesses abroad are regularly targeted by foreign extortionists,” Curtis said in a statement introducing the legislation. “Transnational kleptocrats hide under the veneer of officialdom and abuse their power to warp the regulatory environment, attempting to co-opt or eliminate legitimate job-creators and entrepreneurs who follow the rules.”
Curtis added: “The Foreign Extortion Prevention Act would protect U.S. businesses from these individuals by punishing the demand side of bribery. Currently, a business being extorted for a bribe can only say ‘I can’t pay you a bribe because it is illegal, and I might get arrested.’ This long-overdue bill would enable them to add, ‘and so will you.’ ”
New language would also be added to the amended Foreign Extortion Prevention Act: “The term ‘foreign official’ means any officer or employee (a) of a foreign government or any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof; (b) of a public international organization; or (c) any person acting in an official capacity for or on behalf of any such government or department, agency, or instrumentality, or for or on behalf of any such public international organization.”
Additionally, the amended 18 USC 201 would state that “the term ‘public international organization’ means (a) an organization that is designated by Executive Order pursuant to section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288); or (b) any other international organization that is designated by the President by Executive order for the purposes of this section, effective as of the date of publication of such order in the Federal Register.”
The amended 18 USC 201 would also add new language stating that, “whoever, being a foreign official or person selected to be a foreign official, otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for (1) being influenced in the performance of any official act; or (2) being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years or both.”
Complementary efforts
“Pursuing the extortionists is crucial to ending the entire system of international bribery,” Hudson said. “Even if a kleptocrat cannot be immediately extradited, a U.S. indictment serves as a play-by-play of the crime committed that can be used to support additional measures—such as sanctions—and can force transnational criminals to think twice before traveling abroad to spend their ill-gotten gains. Moreover, a U.S. indictment can help the forces of the rule of law in other countries to root out corruption by pressuring the domestic government in question to charge the individual.”
The Foreign Extortion Prevention Act seeks to bring U.S. laws in line with international best practices. Numerous countries—including the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland—have already criminalized foreign extortion.
In addition, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which maintains the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, published in 2018 a report, in which it examined whether public officials on the receiving end of sanctioned bribe schemes were criminally sanctioned or otherwise disciplined. The results were based on a survey sent to parties of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention seeking information on the “flip side” of 55 supply-side foreign bribery cases that had been concluded with sanctions being imposed on a briber by another party to the Convention.
Among the key findings of that report: Enforcement actions targeting public officials do take place, but the rate of sanctioning is not particularly high. According to the findings, at least one public official was sanctioned in only one fifth of the 55 cases covered by the survey.
Conflicting language
If Congress were to enact the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act, legal hurdles in prosecuting foreign officials who demand bribes would still exist. Some of those hurdles were discussed by Mike Koehler in his blog, The FCPA Professor.
One question, for example, is what would happen if what the foreign official demands or seeks “qualifies as a facilitation payment under the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions,” Koehler wrote. “The Foreign Extortion Prevention Act is silent on this relevant issue.”
Another question, he said, is what would happen if what the foreign official demands or seeks “qualifies as a reasonable and bona fide expenditure under the affirmative defense to the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions? Again, the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act is silent on this relevant issue.”
Nonetheless, the compliance and legal community should welcome the introduction of the Foreign Extortion Prevention Act as it could create a more balanced approach to enforcement.
Jaclyn JaegerJaclyn Jaeger is an editor with Compliance Week and has written on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal, enforcement, technology, and more.
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Foreign Extortion Prevention Act
Compliance resource
Common FCPA Compliance Program Failures
2019-01-15T14:24:31.267
Bribery Investigations From the FCPA to OFAC and Back
Second Circuit ruling limits scope of FCPA liability
Compliance officers and in-house counsel should take a close look at a recent Second Circuit decision that limits the scope of the FCPA liability.
More Anti-Bribery
SFO latest to investigate Glencore over bribery concerns
Glencore announced it is under investigation by the U.K. Serious Fraud Office over suspicions of bribery, making it the third investigation the multinational commodity trading and mining company is now facing.
Samsung Heavy Industries to pay $75M in foreign bribery case
Samsung Heavy Industries will pay total criminal penalties of $75.5 million to enforcement authorities in the United States and Brazil to resolve violations arising out of a bribery scheme in Brazil.
Alstom U.K. fined $20.8M for role in long-running bribery case
Alstom Network U.K., the British subsidiary of the French rail and power company, has been ordered to pay a total of £16.4 million (U.S. $20.8 million) for bribes it paid to win a contract to supply trams in Tunisia.
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Man arraigned in 2014 fatal crash
John Pinnock, 49, was charged with criminally negligent homicide after pickup lost a tire.
Man arraigned in 2014 fatal crash John Pinnock, 49, was charged with criminally negligent homicide after pickup lost a tire. Check out this story on DemocratandChronicle.com: http://on.rocne.ws/1RepLax
Published 8:23 p.m. ET May 6, 2015
A 49-year-old Farmington man was arraigned Wednesday by an Ontario County grand jury on a felony charge of criminally negligent homicide in connection with a fatal accident in August 2014.
John Pinnock is accused of recklessly causing the death of Harold Schutt, 57, of Clifton Springs on Aug. 12.
He also was arraigned on two counts of three-degree assault for allegedly causing injury to two other people in the accident.
A statement from the Ontario County Sheriff’s Office said Pinnock was driving a 2001 Dodge pickup on state Route 96 in Farmington when one of the front tires came off the truck and sailed into oncoming traffic.
The wayward tire caused a crash involving four other vehicles, and a fifth vehicle drove off the roadway to avoid debris.
Pinnock was remanded to Ontario County Jail. Bail was set at $5,000 cash or $10,000 bond.
The statement from Sheriff Philip Povero’s office said that a lengthy investigation included interviewing witnesses, accident reconstruction and a review of the truck’s inspection and repair records. Those findings were given to the Ontario County District Attorney’s office, and then presented to the grand jury.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rocne.ws/1RepLax
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The Supernatural Bros Prove Why They’re Legends With This Multi-Cast Pic
For over a decade, Supernatural has been filming in Vancouver, showing the rest of television how to do supernatural mysteries and brotherly in-fighting the right way. But what do brothers like less than anything else in the world? Having to share their stuff.
…Except for Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, of course, who proved once again why they’re two of the nicest guys on the tube by welcoming the casts of Lucifer and Legends of Tomorrow—all three shows are produced by Warner Bros. Television—to their studio with an adorable group photo.
In case you aren’t instantly familiar with all of these faces—Legends is a spin-off of Arrow and The Flash, but features new cast-members; and Lucifer hasn’t premiered yet, let alone spun off of anything—how about a roll call?
From left to right: Jensen Ackles (Supernatural); from Lucifer, Kevin Alejandro, Lauren German, Scarlett Estevez (in front), Lesley-Ann Brandt, and Tom Ellis; from Legends of Tomorrow, Dominic Purcell, Caity Lotz, Ciara Renee, Falk Hentschel, Franz Drameh, Arthur Darvill, Brandon Routh; and the moose himself, Jared Padalecki (Supernatural).
Just in time for the 11th season premiere of Supernatural on Space October 7 at 9e 6p. Hey, Lucifer has the whole “hell” thing going on, and in Legends they travel time and dimensions or something, so… Crossover?
Let’s all promise to make it happen before we graduate, okay best friends?
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A brief history of Apple’s misadventures in manufacturing: Part 1 [Cook book outtakes]
By Leander Kahney • 4:30 am, April 6, 2019
Steve Jobs built a highly automated Macintosh plant grandly called the "factory of the future."
Photo: Apple Maps
This post was going to be part of my new book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level, but was cut for length. Over the next week or so, we will be publishing several more sections that were cut, focusing mostly on Apple’s manufacturing operations.
Steve Jobs always had a deep fascination with automated factories. He was first exposed to them during a trip to Japan in 1983. At the time, Apple had just created a new floppy disk drive called Twiggy. During a visit to Apple’s factory in San Jose, however, Jobs became irate when he discovered the high failure rate of Twiggy drives Apple was producing. More than half of them were rejected. Jobs threatened to fire everyone who worked at the factory
Inspired by Alps and Ford
An alternative was to use a new 3.5-inch drive developed by Sony and manufactured by a small Japanese supplier called Alps Electronics. Forty years on, Alps remains a part of Apple’s supply chain. Jobs knew Yasuyuki Hirose, an engineer at Alps, who he had met at the West Coast Computer Faire, the early Silicon Valley personal computer expo where Apple debuted the Apple II.
In 1983, Jobs visited Alps’ factory in Japan. At the time, Japan was experiencing astounding economic growth, partly as a result of its factories, which churned out cars, microchips and Walkmans at astonishing speed.
According to Yasuyuki Hirose, a floppy disk drive engineer at Alps, “Steve was particularly interested in manufacturing processes. In 1983, he made a tour of automated factory in Furukawa and asked many questions.” (A few years later, when Jobs had opened an automated factory of his own, he invited Hirose to pay it a visit. “It was then that I realized what Steve had always wanted to do,” said Hirose.)
Jobs was impressed by Japan, a country he had a love affair with for his entire life. However, his drive to build automated factories may also partly have been inspired by one of Jobs’ American heroes: the car pioneer Henry Ford.
Ford’s cars changed the world not just through the technology they introduced, but also because they were inexpensive enough that they could be bought by the masses. In his drive to mass manufacture, Ford’s cars were assembled in vast factories, where assembly lines divided the manufacturing process into repeatable steps. As a result of his innovations, one of Henry Ford’s cars could be assembled in less than one hour.
Preorder Tim Cook book
Leander Kahney’s new book about Apple’s CEO will be released on April 16, but you can preorder it from Amazon today. “If you’re interested in a great overview of Tim’s still-ongoing tenure at Apple, Leander Kahney’s latest book is exactly what you need … I highly recommend it.” — Paul Thurrott
Automated Mac factory
It took just 26 minutes to build an entire Macintosh in the highly-automated manufacturing facility Apple opened in Fremont, California, in January 1984 — less than a year after Jobs’ trip to Japan.
Built over 120,000 square feet, the plant at 48233 Warm Springs Blvd cost $20 million, and was a showpiece of automated production, designed with the goal of producing up to one million units of the $2,495 Macintosh every single month.
“We have great respect for Japanese manufacturing,” said then-Apple president John Sculley. “We’ve decided to be a major player in manufacturing technology. In three years we want to be as good as the Japanese.”
When Apple had enough components in its inventory and manufacturing was in full swing, a new machine was rolling off the assembly line every twenty-seven seconds.
George Irwin, an engineer who helped plan the facility, which was compared to a giant Lego block factory due to having so many machines, each carrying out a different task, had the goal of reducing that to as little as thirteen seconds.
No other computer manufacturer was able to match this kind of output at the time. At Apple’s Dallas factory, an Apple IIe was produced every six minutes, and took significantly longer to assemble.
“Before Japan comes up to speed with computers, we want to stay ahead of the game,” Irwin told InfoWorld magazine in March 1984.
Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. in 1980.
Photo: Terrence McCarthy, used with permission.
How the automation worked
Each Macintosh was assembled from eight major components that could be cobbled together quickly and simply. Machines would travel around the factory suspended from the ceiling on the rich red tracks of an overhead carrier, and workers had twenty-two seconds or less to complete their role before it moved onto the next.
Apple made sure that no worker had to reach further than thirty inches for the parts they needed, which were delivered to each station on a three-foot-high automated guidance vehicle.
Five of these machines, each costing $30,000, roamed the factory floor. Their tasks were assigned by a Polaroid eye that scanned the storeroom and issued a command when it identified a component tray that needed to be transfered.
The trays themselves were filled from fifty-pound totes, at least four-thousand of which were stacked eighteen levels high at any one time.
The tote stacker, another automated delivery service, worked its way around the factory on a track, placing the totes in the right position.
Auto-insertion machines were used to mount circuits and modules on the logic boards, while around one-hundred and twenty Apple computers, mostly the Apple II and Apple III, where employed as terminals for processing accounting and inventory data.
Jobs’s unusual requests
Jobs asked that the machines be painted in bright, colorful hues, matching those of the striped Apple logo used at the time. But after spending so much time going over paint chips, then-Apple manufacturing director Matt Carter finally had them installed in the usual beige.
Jobs noticed this during one tour of the factory, writes his biographer, Walter Isaacson, and demanded that they be repainted in the colors he requested. Carter objected and explained that the paint could cause problems for precision machines, and this was proved correct when one of Apple’s most expensive machines, painted bright blue and later dubbed “Steve’s folly,” stopped working properly.
Carter quit as a result of the disagreement; “it took so much energy to fight him, and it was usually over something so pointless that I finally had enough,” he told Isaacson.
Carter was replaced by Debi Coleman, the Macintosh financial officer who had previously won the team’s annual award for the person who best stood up to Jobs, and soon enough, she, too, found herself involved in a disagreement over factory paint.
Jobs had asked Apple art director Clement Mok to relay his wishes that the factory walls be painted white.
“You can’t paint a factory pure white,” Coleman argued, “there’s going to be dust and stuff all over.”
“There’s no white that’s too white for Steve,” Mok replied.
Steve Jobs wanted his factory colorful and clean.
Photo: Terrence McCarthy, with permission.
Cleanliness is next to Jobsiness
Few company chairmen would obsess over the color of a factory and its machines like Jobs did with the Macintosh facility.
He also wanted it to be clean, and insisted this was a way to ensure, “a passion for perfection,” Isaacson writes. “I’d go out to the factory, and I’d put on a white glove to check for dust,” Jobs recalled. “I’d find it everywhere — on machines, on the top of the racks, on the floor.”
Jobs asked Coleman to get the factory cleaned up. “I told her I thought we should be able to eat off the floor of the factory,” Jobs continued. “She didn’t understand why.”
Automation in the purest sense
Very few of the tasks required human hands. The machines carried out more than 90 percent of the assembly process, with the workers intervening to fix any defects, such as replacing faulty components, or to carry out the jobs that required a human touch, like polishing the Apple logos affixed to each casing.
A stringent testing process known as the “burn-in cycle,” which consisted of turning each machine on and off every hour over twenty-four hours, was carried out to ensure each chip was working correctly.
“Other companies turn the computer on and just let their computer sit there,” Sam Khoo, a production manager at the Apple plant, explained to InfoWorld. “We cause more stress to the components by turning it off and on. This way the defective components will appear right away.”
The Fremont facility was “automation in the purest sense,” Irwin said. Fewer than ninety workers were required for each shift, and they were separated by mammoth machines and vast chasms of space that meant there was very little teamwork.
In an effort to prevent their jobs from becoming mundane and unbearable, which would undoubtedly lead to the high turnover of staff other factories suffered, Apple encouraged workers to rotate into other assembly and testing positions every six weeks. This helped maintain positive morale, and gave workers the opportunity to learn new positions and acquire new skills.
The Macintosh factory offered a glimpse at a future of computer production in which manufacturers could cut labor costs yet rapidly produce machines in numbers that were unimaginable just a few years earlier. But large-scale production of Apple computers and the Fremont facility wouldn’t last long.
Coming next: Steve Jobs makes the same mistakes at NeXT.
Luke Dormehl and Killian Bell contributed to this post.
Posted in: News, Newsstand, Top stories Tagged: Apple factories, Apple history, n2, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Tim Cook book, Tim Cook Outtakes
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Landis brings doping accusations to US television
Kirsten Frattini 2010-07-24T07:44:00Z
Further allegations against Armstrong
Floyd Landis looking fast on the way out. (Image credit: Jonathan Devich/epicimages.us)
Floyd Landis at the Tour of California. (Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Floyd Landis further exposed his allegations against Lance Armstrong’s use of performance enhancing drugs on national television in an interview aired on the American broadcast television network ABC News Nightline at 11:35 EST on Friday, July 23.
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For the first time on camera, Landis spoke to ABC News Nightline correspondent Neal Karlinsky in Bend, Oregon where he is currently racing in the Bend Memorial Clinic Cascade Cycling Classic from July 20-25.
"Look, at some point, people have to tell their kids that Santa Claus isn't real," Landis said. "I hate to be the guy to do it, but it's just not real."
Karlinsky opened with a series of questions pertaining to Landis’ accusations that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs during his career.
Asked if he saw Armstrong taking a blood transfusion more than once, Landis said, “Yes, multiple times.” Asked if he saw Armstrong using performance enhancing drugs Landis said, “At times yeah, at different training camps.” And when asked what specific substances, Landis said, “Well there is not a whole lot that helps. Like I said, there is EPO [Erythropoietin] you can use and you can use small amounts during the Tour de France if you need to monitor certain parameters that are better tested for or that are changed during blood transfusions.”
In May, Landis admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs throughout most of his professional cycling career, including his 2006 Tour de France victory. He was stripped of that title after testing positive for synthetic testosterone and vehemently denied doping for the last four years.
The confessions reached boiling point when he went on to make sweeping accusations against his previous teams and teammates of doping, including his former US Postal teammate Lance Armstrong and manager Johan Bruyneel in a series of emails sent to cycling officials and Cyclingnews.
Landis not only denied his positive test after the 2006 Tour de France, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to clear his name, established the Floyd Fairness Fund and wrote a book entitled Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour, published in 2007.
When asked if he is accusing Lance Armstrong of being a liar, Landis said, “I denied it as well. Yes, I suppose if that is the question, yes.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) special agent Jeff Novitsky is heading a criminal investigation that is primarily focused on the US Postal Service team. Landis is cooperating with a federal grand jury investigation where subpoenas have reportedly been issued to several former members of the US Postal Service team.
When asked if Lance Armstrong is a fraud, Landis said, “Well, it depends on what your definition of fraud is. I mean look, if he didn't win the Tour, someone else that was doped would have won the Tour. In every single one of those Tours."
Armstrong had denied all allegations and his previous criminal defense attorney, Tim Herman, argued that the seven-time Tour de France winner had undergone more than 300 anti-doping tests in his career, the most tested athlete in cycling and he has never failed one.
In the interview, Herman stated that Landis has no credibility and that Armstrong is "an athlete that comes along once every couple of generations. He is extremely focused. He's gifted physically in ways that are very unique and he is disciplined, dedicated. He's the hardest-working athlete I've ever been around...Landis is a confessed perjurer and he is a liar, and I think, as Lance said ... when you taste milk to see if it's sour, you take a first taste and you don't have to drink the whole carton to know it's all sour."
Others highlighted in the interview included Armstrong’s former teammate Frankie Andreu’s wife Betsy Andreu and former US Postal Service team soigneur Emma O’Reilly who worked for the team from 1998-2000.
Some of the footage of Landis used in the ABC News Nightline program was take during the Bend Memorial Clinic Cascade Cycling Classic, a six-stage race where ABC News was scheduled in advance to interview and film the controversial cyclist.
When asked why he chose to come forward to ABC News Landis said, “It’s about the truth. It’s about me feeling better for having mislead the public. I would like to take this opportunity to just say that I’m sorry for having lied. I’m glad I don’t have to lie. It was hard to do interviews where I was lying. I didn’t feel good about those.”
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Lloyd likes the mountainous Giro 2011 route
Stephen Farrand 2010-10-24T09:19:00Z
Australian hoping for second climber's jersey
Australia's Matthew Lloyd (Omega Pharma-Lotto) soloed to victory in stage six. (Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Matthew Lloyd (Omega Pharma - Lotto) won a stage earlier in the Giro d'Italia. (Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Matt Lloyd (Omega Pharma-Lotto) still wears green (Image credit: Stephen Farrand)
Australia's Matt Lloyd won the green climber's jersey at the 2010 Giro d'Italia and is almost certain to target it again in 2011 after seeing the route in detail at the official presentation in Turin.
Matthew Lloyd ready to be Evans' Alpine asset
Lloyd solos to stage win
Lloyd secures climber's green jersey
Lloyd's lightweight build means he is a pure climber and his eyes lit up when he saw the seven mountain finishes and the mountain time trial to Nevegal.
"The route looks pretty good, really good. It's going to be a deep and agonistic race," he told Cyclingnews.
"It's kind of fortunate for me because there are usually a lot of flat days early on in grand tours and then some big epic mountain stages in the last week that decide the overall classification. Next year the mountain stages at the Giro seem more spread out across the race and that is good for me and for going in long breakaways in the mountains, which is kind of my style of doing things."
"At the Tour de France every team has to ride to set up and protect a team leader throughout the race but on a route like this one, there are constant opportunities to try and win or get good things happening."
Lloyd is set to lead the Omega Pharma-Lotto team at the Giro d'Italia next year. Winning a stage and taking the green climber's jersey means he is considered one of the best pure climbers in the peloton.
"Yeah, I'll definitely be back in 2011. I'm not sure if I'll go for the green jersey, which is a good objective, or if I'll go for bigger and better things. We'll see," he said.
"This year's Giro has transformed my career. The Giro is one of the biggest races in the sport and has the history to make you a different rider. Everyone always told me I could do something and when it does happen, it feels good and it was nice it happened at the Giro."
Lloyd is based in Italy during the season, in the northern town of Varese. He is one of the last Australian riders to still be in Europe but will soon head home down under to enjoy the warmer winter.
"I'm buying a new apartment in Varese and as soon as that is all sorted out, I'll take off and be back home in Australia for the winter. I'll be starting the 2011 season at the Australian national championships and then the Tour Down Under. The season has only just finished but already the new one is on the horizon."
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Thousands of girls are aborted due to gender: Study finds couples from cultures in which sons are deemed more desirable are terminating female pregnancies
Illegal practice of sex-selection abortion is so prevalent that up to 5,000 females have disappeared from the latest national census, study suggests
In many cultures, sons are preferable for religious and economic reasons
Thousands of female foetuses have been killed due to gender-based abortion within some ethnic groups, the latest data reveals.
Official figures suggest as many as 4,700 females have disappeared from the latest national census records of England and Wales, raising fears that it indicates the illegal practice of sex-selection abortion has become prevalent in the UK.
Campaigners have reacted with concern to the research, calling for action to stop doctors carrying out these abortions and warning the practice 'will damage society'.
Thousands of female foetuses have been killed due to gender-based abortion, a study shows (stock picture)
In many cultures sons are deemed to be more desirable than daughters for religious or economic reasons, meaning couples seek to terminate pregnancies if they find out the child will be female.
A government investigation last year found no evidence that women born abroad and now living in the UK were opting to abort females.
But an analysis of the 2011 National Census has shown widespread discrepancies in the sex ratio of children in some immigrant families, which suggests girls are being aborted.
Some experts have argued that information on the sex of a child should be withheld from expecting parents until much later in the pregnancy, when abortions are much more difficult to obtain.
At present parents can find out their baby’s gender after 13 weeks, and in 2011 around one tenth of the 190,000 abortions performed in England and Wales took place at this stage.
Pope condemns the ‘horror’ of abortion and blames it on... Desperate footage emerges of midwives pushing on rape...
Sarah Wollaston, a Tory MP and GP, said the statistics suggest 'in some communities gender selection may be happening'.
She said: ‘We need to have very clear guidelines about this from the General Medical Council making it clear this practice is totally unacceptable and abhorrent.'
'Doctors need to understand that they’ll be struck off for carrying out abortions wholly on the grounds that a female is unwanted.
She said she is a strong supporter of women’s right to choose but that this practice reinforces a very misogynistic view that girls are less valuable than boys.
In Britain abortions are legal only where the mother’s physical or mental health would be risked by continuing the pregnancy, or where the child would suffer ‘seriously’ with physical or mental abnormalities if born.
This means the Abortion Act 1967 technically bans abortions on the grounds of the baby’s sex alone.
The practice is illegal in many other countries, including those where the practice is widespread. In parts of India and China there are now as many as 120 or 140 boys for every 100 girls despite a ban on gender-based abortion.
Anthony Ozimic, communications manager of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said the statistics could 'provide more evidence of the reality of eugenics in modern British medicine'.
At present, parents can find out their baby's gender after 13 weeks of pregnancy (stock picture)
He said: 'Britain could start to experience some of the ill-effects of gender imbalance seen in those immigrants' native countries.
'Lethal discrimination on the grounds of sex will result inevitably in damaging the common good of society.'
Analysis of data showed a trend within immigrant families for ‘accepting’ a female firstborn, but for a disproportionately high number of second babies being male – a phenomenon which would not occur naturally.
Experts suggested this could be two possible reasons for this, which are not mutually exclusive – either the practice of gender-based abortion or the practice of women continuing to have children until a son is born.
Christoforos Anagnostopoulos, a lecturer in statistics at Imperial College London, said the latter explanation might explain gender imbalances observed in two-child families. But it could not explain sex-ratio anomalies found in families of all sizes, particularly those with mothers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Dr Anagnostopoulos told The Independent: ‘The only readily available explanation that is consistent with a statistically significant gender shift of the sort observed in the census data is gender-selective abortion.
‘In the absence of a better theory, these findings can be interpreted as evidence that gender-selective abortion is taking place.’
It is not known whether sex-selective abortions are being carried out in the mothers’ home countries, or being done illegally in the UK.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: ‘Abortion on the grounds of sex selection is against the law and completely unacceptable.’
The Independent | News | UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper
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NEWS Mining & Exploration
EXPLORATION COMMENCES AT ARCTIC STAR’S TIMANTTI DIAMOND PROJECT IN FINLAND
Canadian diamond and mineral exploration company Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (Arctic Star) has announced the commencement of its diamond exploration program on its 100-percent owned T...
DEBMARINE PLANS WORLD'S BIGGEST OFFSHORE DIAMOND MINING VESSEL
Marine diamond prospecting and mining company Debmarine Namibia, a 50/50 joint venture between the Namibian government and De Beers, has announced plans for the construction of the worl...
MIR ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION CONCLUDES; ALROSA’S IVANOV SIGNS ORDER FOR DISCIPLINARY SANCTIONS AGAINST 24 EMPLOYEES
Following the conclusion of Russian governmental supervisory body Rostechnadzor’s investigations into the causes of the accident at the Mir mine in August earlier this year, Alrosa’s Pr...
THREE LARGE GEM-QUALITY DIAMONDS RECOVERED FROM ALROSA’S JUBILEE PIPE
Russian mining company Alrosa has announced the recovery of three large rough diamonds from its Jubilee (Yubileynaya) pipe at Aikhal Mining and Processing Division during the month of O...
DE BEERS’ VICTOR MINE CLOSING IN Q1 2109
De Beers has announced that its Victor mine in northern Ontario, Canada, will be closing in the first quarter of 2019.
NAMDEB’S LAND-BASED MINING IN NAMIBIA REACHING ITS END?
According to a report by the Namibian Sun, operations at Namdeb's four land mines in Oranjemund would come to a halt over the next few years.
PETRA Q1 FY 2018 PRODUCTION DOWN 4%
Diamond mining company Petra Diamonds Limited (Petra) has published an unaudited trading update covering production and sales for the first quarter of the company’s Financial Year from ...
STELLAR’S TONGO PROJECT AWARDED ENVIRONMENTAL LICENSE
Diamond development company Stellar Diamonds plc (Stellar), has confirmed that the company’s Tongo kimberlite development project (Tongo) in Sierra Leone has been awarded an Environment...
DE BEERS’ Q3 DIAMOND PRODUCTION: 9.2M CARATS
Diamond mining company De Beers reports diamond production for the third quarter of 2017 increased by 46 percent to 9.2 million carats.
34.17-CARAT YELLOW DIAMOND RECOVERED FROM ALROSA’S EBELYAKH ALLUVIAL DEPOSIT
Russian mining company Alrosa has announced that a 34.17-carat yellow diamond has been recovered by its subsidiary Almazy Anabara.
DEVELOPMENT OF ALROSA’S VERKHNE-MUNSKOE DEPOSIT PROGRESSES; COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION EXPECTED IN 2018
Russian diamond miner Alrosa has announced that the first ore from its Zapolyarny open-pit mine of Verkhne-Munskoe kimberlite field in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) has been delivered...
ALROSA’S IVANOV MEETS WITH ENDIAMA MANAGEMENT; ATTENDS PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION IN ANGOLA
Sergey Ivanov, President of Russian mining company, Alrosa, reportedly visited the Republic of Angola to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the new President of Angola.
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DAWN - image of the day - March 2016
17.03.2016 - Dawn LAMO Image 48 (PIA20403)
This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a portion of the southern rim of Jarovit Crater in the northern hemisphere of Ceres. Compacted material forms spurs along the upper part of the crater wall, near the center of the image.
The Dawn spacecraft took this image on Jan. 25, 2016, from its low-altitude mapping orbit, at a distance of about 240 miles (385 kilometers) from the surface. The image resolution is 120 feet (35 meters) per pixel.
Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.
For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
17.03.2016 - PIA20403
Lunar and Planetary Science and Exploration
Copyright © 2020 German Aerospace Center (DLR). All rights reserved.
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Red-light scofflaws will catch a break
NewsCrime + Public Safety
By Rick Orlov | rick.orlov@dailynews.com |
PUBLISHED: March 28, 2012 at 12:00 am | UPDATED: August 28, 2017 at 9:02 am
Los Angeles’ much-maligned red-light traffic camera program officially ends this week, after the Police Commission on Tuesday ordered a halt to collecting fines from violators caught on film.
Eight months after city officials ordered the cameras turned off, the commission voted 3-0 to formally stop collecting unpaid tickets as of Saturday.
People who already paid their tickets, however, will not receive refunds, officials said.
The program faced sharp criticism from the public and City Council members last year, amid questions on their effectiveness and ability to generate revenue for the city.
“It was completely wrong,” said Councilman Dennis Zine, who was among the council members calling for an end to the program. “It was strictly designed to bring in revenue and didn’t do anything for public safety.”
Other jurisdictions around the area, however, continue to use the cameras. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for example, uses them along the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley.
Last year after the Los Angeles City Council ended the program as of Aug. 1, it continued the contract with American Traffic Solutions for the purpose of continuing to collect unpaid tickets.
Revenues from the program have continued to decline and the Police Commission vote ends the contract with the Arizona-based vendor as of Saturday, with no additional extensions for processing outstanding tickets.
Councilman Mitch Englander, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, agreed with Zine.
“It wasn’t effective and was costing us more to enforce than we were getting back from it,” Englander said.
Police Commission member Alan Skobin said he believed it was time to shut the operation down.
“If you look at the revenue, this comes from the public,” Skobin said.
“Some people will decide to pay the tickets. Others will decide to put the money back into the economy in other ways.”
L.A. was the first local jurisdiction to repeal the program last year, which included tickets for people who made rolling right-hand turns when the light was red.
“We need to warn people that this applies only to the city of Los Angeles,” Zine said. “There are several other jurisdictions around the county that still have the red-light cameras and people can get tickets.”
The order was issued as other jurisdictions debate the value of the program.
The city of Hawthorne this month renewed its red-light cameras contract for two years in a split vote by council members who debated the cameras’ effect on public safety.
Like the controversy with L.A.’s cameras, critics of Hawthorne’s program cast doubt on whether or not the cameras stopped collisions at intersections, improved driver behavior and was cost-effective to the cities that used them.
But the council also made it easier for the city to end the contract with Redflex Traffic Systems, stipulating that the program can be stopped with 30-days notice.
“It is efficient,” said Capt. Keith Kauffman told the Hawthorne City Council. “Red-light violations are very difficult to enforce for policemen. You have to be able to see a violation occur with your own eyes at the same time that you’re watching the red phase of the light, a vehicle, and the limit line.
“For a policeman, that’s tough,” Kauffman said.
Glendale, on the other hand, voluntarily ended its program in February, citing two contradicting opinions issued by a state appeals court on the legality of red-light camera programs.
The program had been successful for the city – cutting the number of citations issued in half during the time that cameras were in use, said Sgt. Tom Lorenz.
Still, the program was not cost-effective, he said.
“It just became cumbersome to have an officer sit in an office all day, viewing videos, sending notices, going to court,” Lorenz said.
Metro uses 69 cameras on its county-wide system, including on the Valley’s Orange Line and its Blue and Gold train lines.
The Metro board is expected in May to hear a report on whether it should continue the program.
rick.orlov@dailynews.com
twitter.com/rickorlov
Sylmar-San Fernando Earthquake: 45 years ago Tuesday, 64 killed – Daily News
Rick Orlov
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RockNess: Fears grow for future of music festival after it is axed for second year running
THE festival, which was pulled last year "due to the addition of a number of events alongside the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games" has been axed for the second year in a row.
John Dingwall
Fatboy Slim with Carl Cox and Mylo at RockNess in 2006 (Image: Victoria Stewart)
FEARS are growing for the future of RockNess after the music festival was scrapped for the second year in a row.
The monster Highland weekender was last held on Clune Farm, Dores, on the banks on Loch Ness, in June 2013, when almost 30,000 people attended to catch a string of top-name acts.
It was pulled last year “due to the addition of a number of events alongside the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games” – though bosses said there were plans for a return in 2015.
Now, they’ve decided not to stage it this summer. Last night, an insider said: “It’s with great sadness that we’ve discovered RockNess will not take place in 2015.
“It’s hoped this isn’t the end of the festival and it will come back bigger and stronger next year but obviously there are concerns.
“There have been some terrific weekends at RockNess and the festival was the biggest of its kind in the Highlands.
“A lot of people will be very disappointed but the rumours had been flying around for years that the festival wasn’t getting the numbers it needed to thrive.
“Rather than continue to struggle financially and compete for the biggest names with the UK’s other festivals, it seems the organisers have decided to take a step back and regroup.”
The news comes despite the growing popularity of another Highland music festival, the Belladrum Tartan Heart weekender. It regularly sells out its 15,000 tickets and The Proclaimers are among this year’s headliners.
It also comes as T in the Park, now in its 22nd year, prepares to move from Balado, near Kinross, to Strathallan Castle.
While T thrived as Scotland’s biggest rock festival, the RockNess bill was often dominated by
dance acts.
It first took place in 2006 when Fatboy Slim took his Brighton Beach party to the Highlands. He returned to headline in 2008 and 2010.
The Chemical Brothers and Groove Armada were among the headliners in 2007 along with French dance legends Daft Punk.
Other top acts through the years have included The Prodigy, Kasabian, Paolo Nutini, Mumford & Sons and Deadmau5.
Try your hand at our daily entertainment quiz:
What confession did Katie Price make that could see her quitting Big Brother?
Katie Price (Image: Channel 5)
She has been double booked with another reality show
She delayed important surgery for next week to join the show
She doesn't like living in the public eye
Scottish festivals
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Kelly Jackson Higgins
Attackers Break Into UVA Database
Personal data on nearly 6,000 former and current faculty members at the University of Virginia was compromised
Hackers exploited a vulnerability in a University of Virginia Web application and gained access to personal data on nearly 6,000 former and existing faculty members there.
A Web design error apparently left a private database on "background pages" on the university's Website. Investigators believe the attackers got the information from a special-purpose Web application, in which the faculty information was mistakenly included in its database. The database contained names, Social Security numbers, and birth dates, and in the case of some faculty members, their race, marital status, tenure information, employment history, and other private information.
UVA's IT group first discovered the database on April 20, and removed it. It wasn't until a month later that they discovered the actual security breach after an unrelated Website defacement incident. During the period of May 20, 2005, and April 19, 2007, attackers gained access to personal records of nearly 6,000 faculty members who had worked at UVA from around 1990 to August 2003, as well as current faculty. Of the 6,000, 2,100 are now employed at the university.
IT officials at the university since have secured the application and removed the data that was breached. Like many other organizations in a long line of recent security breaches, UVA is offering free credit monitoring to the victims, as well as identity theft insurance.
James Hilton, UVA's vice president and CIO, said in a prepared statement that the attack was a sophisticated one. "The information could not be accessed through everyday Web browsing," he said. "To find it required a relatively sophisticated and intentional attack on the database."
The incident has prompted UVA to ramp up efforts it already had begun to remove Social Security numbers and other personal data from databases that can be reached via the Internet, according to Hilton. "The University is continually modifying its systems and practices to enhance the security of sensitive information and training its employees in data protection," he said in the statement.
— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading
Kelly Jackson Higgins is the Executive Editor of Dark Reading. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise ... View Full Bio
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Davis Polk represents a number of the largest and most innovative energy and utility companies across such sectors as oil and gas, renewable energy, coal, and electric power, as well as in mining and metals, in connection with the full range of litigation challenges that confront them, including criminal and regulatory investigations and enforcement actions, mass tort and products liability actions, antitrust and intellectual property matters, and securities and corporate governance litigation. We also routinely advise energy companies conducting independent investigations and compliance reviews.
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We successfully had class certification denied in the major consolidated litigation against Con Edison arising out of a 2007 steam explosion in midtown Manhattan, including actions by area businesses and high-rise buildings for cleanup costs, lost profits, and property damage, as well as actions by individuals for personal injury and emotional and psychological distress. As a result, over 300 separate cases, with total claimed damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars, were put before a single judge in one of the largest consolidated litigations in the New York state courts.
We have handled a number of significant internal investigations and criminal investigations of violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.S. Trading Sanctions, and securities laws on behalf of (confidential) energy-sector clients.
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Dazed100
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FashionOn the Rise
5July 2018
TextDominic Cadogan
LazoschmidlPhotography Andreas Karlsson
The design duo bringing sexy, homoerotic looks to Stockholm’s fashion scene
Founded by Josef Lazo and Andreas Schmidl, Lazoschmidl wants its designs – inspired by the likes of gay cruising and ABBA – to be accessible to all
Lazoschmidl logobriefs campaign8
When you think of Nordic fashion, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that it’s nothing more than clean, minimal designs and the odd chunky knit. While that is true of some of Stockholm Fashion Week’s labels, Lazoschmidl – one of its most exciting names – is going against the grain.
Founded by design duo and couple Josef Lazo and Andreas Schmidl, in short, the brand’s aesthetic is “conceptual menswear”. While you might be quick to label it as ‘camp’, and too extravagant to be worn by anyone who isn’t a gay man, you’d be wrong. Sure, there are the more risqué pieces too – a pair of jeans called ‘Ken’ have the back pockets cut-out to reveal a naked ass, or trousers embellished at the crotch to look like they’re leaking semen – but the pair want to make it accessible to everyone. “We say it’s menswear, but garments are not defined by that anymore, so it doesn’t matter,” Schmidl explains.
Coming from different education backgrounds – Lazo a more traditional design route, and Schmidl a less conventional art route – they say their differences are what keeps the label constantly exciting. Previous mash-ups have seen collections inspired by cruising, the Backstreet Boys, and ABBA. “Josef is behind the dream-driven part and I’m more into research, with an intellectual approach to fashion,” Schmidl tells us. Being in a relationship obviously helps too. “You already have a coded system of things, you know the other person’s likes and dislikes, and what you both like,” he continues.
Taking things at their own pace, the pair only debuted on the runway at Stockholm Fashion Week three seasons ago. Prior to that, they presented collections via limited-run zines that have seen them work with the likes of Bruce LaBruce and Doug Inglish – something they’re still keen to continue even with the addition of a runway show. “That’s our medium”, Schmidl says. “We want to create more than just garments. When we create the zine, the collection’s finished in a way.”
Following the release of Lazoschmidl’s Inglish-shot campaign, we spoke to Schmidl about the label and what to expect next.
How did you first meet?
Andreas Schmidl: We’ve known each other for ten years and it was actually through an online dating website – before apps. I always knew that my plan was to find a boyfriend to move to Sweden, so I met this Swedish guy but then he was living in London. So instead I was going back and forth to London actually all the time for the first five years and so that was fun.
First, I helped him put together his final collection and he also had to present it, so we decided on a book because I was into magazines. It was like a ‘do it yourself’ type of thing because his collection was based on many layers. The book was DIY with scissors and you had to cut the pages open to see the different layers.
What was the starting point for Lazoschmidl?
Andreas Schmidl: Josef was frustrated because he always wanted to become a fashion designer on his own, so one day I said: ‘let’s do a little collection together just for fun, just so we see how it goes’. You don’t need much money in the beginning to do a little collection of ten pieces – it was a one time project really. Then it was picked up by the press so we just went with the flow.
How do you work together to come up with the collections?
Andreas Schmidl: We start with the writing. I write up the collections so there’s like a story, a paragraph about some character, some space, some place and time, and then we write a list of outfits. Then we start designing from that.
We can pick the story we want and it connects things we like and things we’ve seen. We don’t have to look at others, so it’s like a little universe in itself. It’s also easier to fit in the design process, to check back and still see the same character, the same story or if we need to lose or add something. It gives us a framework for the design.
Masculinity and homoeroticism are big parts of your label. Why is that important?
Andreas Schmidl: We felt that it wasn’t really done. Now, because everyone is out and there’s an LGBTQ+ movement, people think we’re so strong, but I feel we’re not there yet. We’re much further behind than everyone pretends, so I felt that we needed to celebrate it and to show it, but with ease and not with a political agenda – enjoying it instead.
It’s more like helping people explore the thought around sexuality. Do I like it? Is it something for me? Am I free? Am I not free? What does my sexuality mean today? Also with the new generation of guys, they’re super open, they don’t care. They would make out with a boy and still be straight. When they come to the fittings, they want the sexiest outfits and you feel like that’s a new reality. It’s not about sexuality but sexuality, of course, is part of it. Maybe that’s the easiest way to trigger people. And from sexuality, the rest follows.
“The new generation of guys, they’re super open, they don’t care. When they come to the fittings, they want the sexiest outfits and you feel like that’s a new reality” – Andreas Schmidl
So the clothes are not just for men?
Andreas Schmidl: We don’t say it’s for girls, but obviously the designs can be easily adapted for a girl. One garment, for example, is called the ‘girlfriend’s jacket’, so it’s cut too narrow and too small, as if the boy stole her jacket after a one night stand. That could be a reality today, that’s how boys dress. So the girl can steal it back, in a way.
You only recently started presenting the collection catwalk shows. What made you start doing this?
Andreas Schmidl: In the beginning, we didn’t have runway shows and we didn’t want to do a regular lookbook because they all look ugly, to be honest. Who wants to see a jacket in front of a white screen? Since then, we have seen the runway show as a way to synchronise the looks in a new order.
We always try and place the looks into chapters, so you start thinking ’okay, this is the first chapter, these five boys are together.’ Then, the next and so on. It’s really fun too! There’s emotion, and the boys backstage, sometimes they flash each other their penises so they can have a harder, bigger penis on the runway – they totally go for it! It’s not planned, it’s just about the spirit.
What are your plans to grow the label in the future?
Andreas Schmidl: Of course we want to grow bigger, we’re both very ambitious. We started small to see how it works and we want to make it stronger, make it better, and work harder. The more publicity we get though, the more people expect from you and the harder it is to organise. People think there’s a lot of money but there’s not. Everything is self-financed.
I also think that’s the natural thing of fashion. In fashion today and out tomorrow, and it’s hard to battle. We’d rather be out tomorrow, than be boring. If we start creating clothes in a literal sense, like jeans and t-shirts for a mass market then there’s no point of us anymore. For us, the difficulty is how to keep on doing what we’re doing but reach a higher scale, and not print a slogan on a t-shirt.
@lazoschmidl
FashionOn the RiseQ+ABruce LaBruce
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Remove this filter Infectious disease: Zoonotic influenza
Zoonotic influenza (21)
Avian influenza virus (21)
Avian influenza in humans (21)
Zoonosis (21)
Influenza in humans, avian origin (21)
Influenza A (H9N2) (21)
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Influenza A(H7N9) virus (11)
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Cross-species avian influenza among mammalians - report of fatal avian influenza in New England harbour sealsArchived
ECDC comment - 2 Aug 2012
This academic article describes virological findings and pathological consequences of a strain of influenza A(H3N8) recently identified as part of the investigations of an outbreak of pneumonia among harbour seals in New England in the autumn.
Influenza A(H7N9) virus gains neuraminidase inhibitor resistance without loss of in vivo virulence or transmissibility
ECDC comment - 18 Dec 2013
Without baseline human immunity to the emergent avian influenza A(H7N9) virus, neuraminidase inhibitors are vital for controlling viral replication in severe infections.
FLURISK project proposes a model to rank animal influenza strains by their potential to infect humans
ECDC comment - 23 May 2014
The final report of the FLURISK project by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) proposes a risk assessment framework to rank animal influenza strains according to their potential to infect humans.
Zoonotic influenza
Circulating Avian Influenza viruses closely rlated to the 1918 virus Have pandemic potential
ECDC comment - 16 Jul 2014
A recent article by Watanabe et al. in the Cell Host & Microbe journal describes an attempt to assess the risk of emergence of pandemic influenza viruses closely related to the 1918 influenza virus.
Mutation of avian influenza A(H7N9): now highly pathogenic for poultry but risk of human-to-human transmission remains low
ECDC comment - 24 Feb 2017
The upsurge of human cases in China during the winter 2016-2017 due to A(H7N9) gives cause for concern.
Epidemiological update: A(H7N9) influenza virus, China, 19 December 2013
Epidemiological update - 19 Dec 2013
In March 2013, Chinese authorities announced the identification of a novel reassortant A(H7N9) avian influenza virus in patients in eastern China.
Influenza A(H7N9) virus
Epidemiological update: avian influenza A(H5N1), 8 January 2014
Epidemiological update - 8 Jan 2014
On 8 January 2014, Canada reported a fatal imported case of influenza A(H5N1) infection. This is the first confirmed human case of H5N1 in North America.
Epidemiological update A(H7N9) influenza, 6 February 2014
Epidemiological update - 6 Feb 2014
In March 2013, Chinese authorities announced the identification of a novel reassortant A(H7N9) influenza virus in patients in eastern China. Since then, human cases have continued to be reported, and as of 7 February 2014 (Figure 1), there have been 308 laboratory-confirmed cases: Zhejiang (122), Guangdong (54), Shanghai (42), Jiangsu (36), Fujian (19), Hunan (7), Jiangxi (5), Henan (4), Anhui (4) ,Beijing (3), Shandong (2), Hebei (1), Guangxi (2), Guizhou (1), Hong Kong (4) and Taiwan (2). In addition, the virus has been detected in one asymptomatic case in Beijing.
Very low public health threat related to outbreak of avian influenza A(H5N8) in turkeys in Germany
News - 12 Nov 2014
The risk of transmission of avian influenza A(H5N8) to the general public in the EU/EEA countries is extremely low.
Low risk to public health in the EU from low pathogenic avian influenza A(H7N7) viruses
News - 12 Feb 2015
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MacKay Creek upstream restoration 2015/16
Riparian areas are necessary in maintaining stream health and functioning. They provide shade during warm summer months, which reduces in-stream temperatures and creates a cool micro-climate necessary for fish health and wellness. The riparian zone also acts as a filtration system to remove urban runoff, chemicals and pollutants before they contaminate waterways. Healthy plant communities aide in providing bank stabilization through provision of root cohesion, which prevents excess amounts of sediment from entering the stream. In addition, stream-side vegetation provides food and habitat complexity for the aquatic ecosystem, as leaves, branches, and large wood often fall into the stream.
In the summer of 2015, Echo Ecological began working on a restoration project at MacKay Creek in North Vancouver, upstream of where initial estuary work had been completed through 2013-2015. This project focused on restoring the riparian zone surrounding MacKay Creek by removing the dense coverage of invasive species and re-planting the area with native vegetation. This area had been significantly disturbed, and was been used as a dump site for many years. Even though it was adjacent to the highly used North Shore Spirit Trail, it had been overlooked by the community and had become overgrown with a myriad of invasive plants.
This project worked in conjunction with another very prominent estuary restoration project that occurred along MacKay Creek in 2013/14 that was funded in part by the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. MacKay creek runs along the Kings Mill Walk, the North Shore Spirit Trail and Lower MacKay Creek Park, and multitudes of people utilize these amenities on a daily basis for biking, dog walking, wildlife viewing and recreation. MacKay Creek is also a prominent salmon spawning and rearing channel on the North Shore. Chum (Oncorhynchus keta), Coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and Pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) utilize this creek and have been increasing their returns since the weir was removed from the estuary in 2013. The goal of this project was to help maintain the health of the previously restored estuary, thus enhancing the area for both the community and wildlife species.
This site had previously been significantly degraded due to encroachment from waterfront heavy industry and upland urban development. The riparian area along the banks of MacKay Creek had been overrun by invasive species, resulting in poor habitat and little cover for in-stream salmonid populations. This project’s goal was to restore the riparian area surrounding MacKay Creek so that it would support habitat for salmonid populations and other estuarine and riparian wildlife species.
Battling against blackberry
From June to November 2015, we conducted and preformed invasive vegetation removal manually using small mechanical tools and hand tools such as brush cutters, shovels and rakes to minimize the impact to birds and wildlife present in the area.
Removing invasives by the tarp load
The project area was completely inundated with several invasive vegetative species including Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), English ivy (Hedera helix), Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) and field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis). These species are detrimental to riparian areas as they disrupt natural ecosystem processes by out-competing native vegetation, creating a monoculture which reduces the overall biodiversity of the area. A small patch of introduced giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) was also found on site. This was particularly concerning for wildlife and human health as the sap of giant hogweed contains photosensitive chemicals that can cause permanent and painful rashes if it comes into contact with exposed skin.
Volunteers working hard
Before invasive removal
After invasive removal
A total of 870 m3 of invasive vegetative matter, including leaves, stems and roots were removed from the project area. Ten truckloads of vegetation were taken off-site for high-heat composting. The District of North Vancouver generously provided this service to the project in-kind.
Following completion of invasive vegetation removal, native trees, shrubs and herbs were planted on site. Species were selected based on site conditions such as substrate and light availability. Wildlife value and cultural significance to First Nations were also considered in plant selection.
In order to increase survivability of the newly planted vegetation, a layer of soil amender (rich organic compost) was added to the site prior to planting. The soil amender was blown throughout the planting site over the course of a day to ensure consistent soil depth. The Pacific Bark Blowers added several inches of soil amender to our project site in order to restore much needed nutrients to the soil.
Planting the at project site occurred in two phases with one planting event occurring in October 2015 and the second planting event in March 2016. During the planting events a total of 2575 native plants were planted.
Lafarge Volunteers
BCIT student volunteers
Volunteers helping with the planting
To help us with this project, many volunteers lent their time and resources in hopes of restoring MacKay Creek back to its former ecological state. Students from Bodwell High School came out numerous times to help us battle against the invasive plants. The Ecological Restoration class at BCIT volunteered for a day during the planting event, aiding with the construction of beaver cages and invasive removal. Employees from the company Lafarge helped with the spring planting by putting numerous new native plants into the ground at their new MacKay home.
Beaver damage
Beaver exclosures
Beaver-tree exclosures made of galvanized steel fencing were constructed and placed around all newly planted trees, as well as many existing mature stream-side trees. This effort was undertaken to prevent the trees from becoming a food source for the local beaver population, which has been becoming increasingly prevalent along MacKay Creek in recent years.
Once the exclosures were successfully installed, a mulch layer was deposited around the site as a means of preventing invasives from re-establishing. Mulch minimizes the re-growth of invasive plants, but also allows the soil to retain more moisture and helps moderate the ground temperature. Mulch also increases the aesthetic of a planting area, as it creates a more natural look than bare soil.
This project was completed between June 2015 to the end of March 2016.
2000 m2 of land area were cleared of invasives (Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, field bindweed, giant hogweed and clematis)
A total of 207 trees, 1384 shrubs and 857 perennials/wetland plants were planted on site
~400 volunteer hours went into this project
To date, the habitat enhancement activities at MacKay Creek have been a success. Invasive vegetation and garbage has been removed from the project area, providing a safer and healthier area for native plants, birds, wildlife and humans. Many native plant species have been planted, further enhancing the area and improving ecosystem benefits. In addition to the advantages for fish populations, increased riparian health will also allow for small mammal species and numerous bird populations to have greater usage of this area. Existing and newly planted trees have been caged to protect them from beaver and human impacts, guaranteeing long-term protection and growth. All of these activities on the creek ensure it will be a greater long-term asset to the community. Improved ecological functioning will provide individuals with more wildlife viewing possibilities, and additional educational opportunities for years to come.
In future years we plan to expand the project area and continue with invasive vegetation removal and native species planting. This will provide local fish, birds and wildlife with opportunities to increase their range and have greater success finding shelter, food and nesting/rearing areas. We plan to continue to organize community outreach events to inform the public on the success of the project and how they can help it continue into the future.
This work would not have been possible without the help of our many wonderful partners.
Tara Matthews
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MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières
Liberia: Providing psychiatric care close to home
The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is expanding a free treatment program for people with mental health disorders in Liberia with activities beginning this month in the densely populated township of West Point in Monrovia.
The program, run in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and other partners, now provides outpatient care for about 1,350 people with mental health disorders or epilepsy in a total of five health facilities in Monrovia and other areas of Montserrado County. Epilepsy treatment is included as it is part of Liberia's national mental health strategy.
"Severe mental health disorders are found in every country, affecting about 2 to 3 percent of the population each year," said Dr. Gregory Keane, MSF mental health adviser. "People with untreated psychosis, severe depression, or other severe disorders may be less able to properly care for themselves or manage their daily lives. Families really struggle with how to respond when medical treatment is not available."
In the last 30 years, Liberians have endured two civil wars and an Ebola epidemic that claimed thousands of lives in the region, including a disproportionate number of health workers. Like many low-income countries, Liberia has limited medical services for people with mental health disorders, with one psychiatric hospital and only two psychiatrists.
However, the Ministry of Health has worked with MSF and other organizations to improve its strategy for delivering mental health care at the community level, Keane said. As part of this strategy, an MSF team is supervising and supporting nine mental health clinicians in primary health care centers in Bensonville, Bromley, Clara Town, Pipeline, and West Point. The clinicians, who have completed a six-month training, assess patients and provide treatment with ongoing support from an MSF psychiatrist, Hassan Nasser, and psychologist, Saima Zai.
It is critically important to help family and community members understand a person's condition and support their care to overcome social stigma and avoid harmful practices.
Demand is already high for mental health treatment in West Point, a crowded urban area with tens of thousands of people on a narrow coastal peninsula. MSF, the Ministry of Health, and the National Catholic Health Council are working in West Point's primary health care center, called Star of the Sea.
Previously, more than a quarter of the mental health patients in the neighboring area of Clara Town were residents of West Point. With treatment now available locally, more patients are expected.
"The population density in West Point is very, very high," said Justine Hallard, MSF project coordinator. "There is sometimes flooding in the area, so people are living in very hard conditions, in crowded dwellings. The stress can lead to a higher rate of mental disorders."
As in other locations, the mental health program in West Point relies heavily on local workers, called government community health volunteers, to visit patients and follow up by phone. With support from MSF, four volunteers from West Point visit patients at home, help families understand mental health conditions and encourage adherence to treatment.
"The government community health volunteers are really key to this effort," Hallard said. "If we increase the number of patients each month, it is thanks to the amazing work of these individuals. They know how to talk to people and build awareness of mental health, strengthening the role that families and communities play in supporting people who need care."
MSF supplies most of the psychiatric medications in the five participating health facilities. Across Liberia, however, people are not always able to obtain psychiatric medications, and supplies may be interrupted from time to time, leading patients to relapse. This is one of the main challenges that people with mental health conditions face in Liberia, according to Benjamin Ballah, general secretary of a Liberian organization that advocates for mental health services, Cultivation for Users' Hope.
"You find a lot of people living with mental illness," Ballah said. "Our complaint is about not supporting mental health as compared to other medical health. You cannot build a resilient health system without mental health."
According to Ballah, overcoming social stigma is the other major challenge. As an advocate, he tells people that he had a mental health condition, and with treatment, he was able to recover, complete his education, and work as a schoolteacher.
Patients with epilepsy also face challenges in society, but treatment can help. With support from MSF, clinicians assess epileptic patients and provide medications to control seizures, according to national and international guidelines. "There is a stigma when people cannot control their seizures and are not able to function normally," Hallard said. "Children who have epilepsy too often cannot go to school because they are stigmatized, and don't even play with other children. Now that they are on treatment, they are going back to school, and they can have a normal life."
MSF began working in Liberia in 1990 and provided medical care during the civil war years. In 2014, MSF returned to the country to respond to the West African Ebola epidemic. MSF currently runs a pediatric hospital, Bardnesville Junction Hospital, and the mental health program, which began in 2017.
MSF weitet Programm zur kostenfreien Behandlung von Personen mit psychischen Erkrankungen aus
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/news-stories/story/liberia-providing-psychiatric-care-close-home
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Thailand's election
Too hot for the generals
Yingluck Shinawatra cheerful embrace of the campaign trail
by R.C. | BANGKOK
WHEN it was announced at the beginning of May that Thailand's main opposition party, Pheu Thai, had picked the young, unknown and politically inexperienced sister of Thaksin Shinawatra to be its candidate for prime minister, some deemed it a silly, even bizarre, idea—not least some within Pheu Thai itself.
A month or so on, however, and the decision is looking like a stroke of genius. Ms Yingluck has taken the campaign by storm, generating enough buzz and excitement to build a handy lead in the polls over the incumbent Democrat Party, led by the prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. There is still something over two weeks to go until election day on July 3rd, but if she keeps up her present pace it's difficult to imagine the Democrat Party ever clawing its way back across the gap.
So how has Ms Yingluck managed it? To shine a little daylight on the magic, I joined her and her very large team for a day on the campaign trail in Thailand's deep (and largely Muslim) south. This is not natural Pheu Thai country—their heartland is in the rural north of the country—but she was mobbed nonetheless, even if only by her own supporters.
Of course, being the younger sister of Mr Thaksin gives her instant name recognition. The former prime minister, ousted in a coup in 2006 and now living in a self-imposed exile in Dubai, is the unofficial leader of the party; he picked his sister to lead the campaign because he could count on her loyalty. Ms Yingluck thus has a ready-made bond with the Pheu Thai base, including many of the “red shirts”. They still adore Mr Thaksin and see this whole election campaign as nothing less than a final push to get their hero back to Thailand. Warming to this theme, the egocentric Mr Thaksin was rash enough at the start to describe Ms Yingluck as nothing more than his “clone”. It's clear, however, that Ms Yingluck is rather more than the family android—and brings to the campaign her own qualities and attributes.
For a start, she is not quite the political ingénue that she seems. Although at 44 years old she has never held public office, she points out that she comes from an intensely political family; her father was an MP for Chiang Mai, their hometown in the north-west, and her brother was prime minister. She studied political science in Thailand and public administration at an American university. Politics, her friends claim, is in the blood.
Moreover, though might be relatively new to the game herself, she has surrounded herself with a very experienced team of older men who have been running her brother's various campaigns for years. Thus her very appealing freshness, youth and easy-going nature are finely balanced against a hard-nosed, slick and pragmatic campaign that organises every step she takes, every camera angle and every handshake. Not a word or a smile is wasted. As the first woman to run for prime minister in Thailand she also seems to be mobilising women to vote for the party. Her youthfulness appeals to the Facebook generation.
In sum, the naturalness and easy manner that Thais appreciate in Ms Yingluck is authentic—but the fact that it comes over so well is the result of a lot of sweat and forethought. I have covered many campaigns now both in rich and in developing countries, and Ms Yingluck's campaign is among the best choreographed and organised that I've seen. And, of course, it helps enormously that she is pretty (“hot” in Thai political-science jargon) and has a big smile—which is just the sort of thing that newspaper editors look for to brighten up their front page every morning.
The Democrat Party grumbles that it's just a circus, that in reality she is merely a lightweight and wholly unqualified to run the country. Which, of course, might well be true—but it misses the point entirely. She is the perfect early 21st-century political candidate, a beautiful fit for the modern mass media: telegenic, charismatic and very easy for voters to relate to. Her stump speech is short and to the point, just endlessly hammering home a few key populist economic policies that everyone can remember (free tablet PCs for school kids, rise in minimum wage, etc), and then it's back to loving the camera.
The Democrats, led by Oxford-educated technocrats, argue that their own economic message is, by contrast, deep and meaningful. Maybe, but they have failed to encapsulate it in slogans or phrases that people can pick up on. In truth, they have been completely wrong-footed by Ms Yingluck. At party headquarters all their managers hope for is that the Yingluck whirlwind will blow itself out (“the novelty will wear off”), after which they can then subject her half-baked policies to the scrutiny that they deserve. But by that time, I suspect, the election itself will be virtually upon us. In other words, they are out of time.
Even the army, her elder brother's main foe, now seems to be taking the prospect of a Yingluck government seriously. Rattled by her success perhaps, the army chief General Chan-ocha appeared on TV on June 14th to urge people to vote for “good people” come July 3rd. The army of course organised the coup against Mr Thaksin in 2006 and are widely considered to have had a hand in putting together the present Democrat-led government; the general was interpreted by some as warning the electorate against voting Pheu Thai. Ms Yingluck has promised to be conciliatory towards the army and her brother's other “establishment” opponents, if she is elected—but by any measure this seemed to be a considerable provocation.
Winning the election will be one thing, it seems, while actually being allowed to form a government could be quite another. For the moment however it is Ms Yingluck enjoying the “big mo”, as the Americans call it. Someday soon she might even prove too hot for the generals to handle.
More from Banyan
Farewell to Banyan, the blog
Japan's quantitative easing
A bigger bazooka
Gay rights in Singapore
On permanent parole
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We're Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists
Blue Ribbon Commission to Release Final Report on Commercial Nuclear Waste
Lauren Berlekamp
Earth Island Journal
By Adam Federman
Photo illustration by Nadia Khastagir /
Design Action
In February 2010, Tom Jiunta and a small group of residents in northeastern Pennsylvania formed the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC), an environmental organization opposed to hydraulic fracturing in the region. The group sought to appeal to the widest possible audience, and was careful about striking a moderate tone. All members were asked to sign a code of conduct in which they pledged to carry themselves with “professionalism, dignity and kindness” as they worked to protect the environment and their communities. GDAC’s founders acknowledged that gas drilling had become a divisive issue misrepresented by individuals on both sides and agreed to “seek out the truth.”
The group of about 10 professionals—engineers, nurses and teachers—began meeting in the basement of a member’s home. As their numbers grew, they moved to a local church. In an effort to raise public awareness about the risks of hydraulic fracturing or fracking they attended township meetings, zoning and ordinance hearings and gas-drilling forums. They invited speakers from other states affected by gas drilling to talk with Pennsylvania residents. They held house-party style screenings of documentary films.
Since the group had never engaged in any kind of illegal activity or particularly radical forms of protest, it came as a shock when GDAC members learned that their organization had been featured in intelligence bulletins compiled by a private security firm, The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR). Equally shocking was the revelation that the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security had distributed those bulletins to local police chiefs, state, federal and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and public relations firms. News of the surveillance broke in September 2010 when the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, James Powers, mistakenly sent an email to an anti-drilling activist he believed was sympathetic to the industry, warning her not to post the bulletins online. The activist was Virginia Cody, a retired Air Force officer. In his email to Cody, Powers wrote:
"We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies."
The tri-weekly bulletins featured a wide range of supposed threats to the state’s infrastructure. It included warnings about Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, pro-life activists and Tea Party protesters. The bulletins also included information about when and where groups like GDAC would be meeting, upcoming protests and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy. The raw data was followed by a threat assessment—low, moderate, severe or critical—and a brief analysis.
For example, bulletin no. 118, dated July 30, 2010, gave a low to moderate threat rating in reference to public meetings that anti-drilling activists planned to attend, and suggested that an “attack is likely … and might well be executed.” The threat assessment was accompanied by this note:
"The escalating conflict over natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania may define local fault lines and potentially increase area environmentalist activity or eco-terrorism. GDAC communications have cited Northeastern Pennsylvania counties, specifically Wyoming, Lackawanna and Luzerne, as being in real 'need of our help' and as facing a 'drastic situation.'"
Another bulletin referenced an August 2010 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assessment of the growing threat of environmental activism to the energy industry. Because of Pennsylvania’s importance in the production of natural gas, ITRR concluded an uptick in vandalism, criminal activity and extremism was likely.
Although the Pennsylvania scandal caused a brief public outcry, it was quickly brushed aside as an unfortunate mistake. In fact, the episode represents a larger pattern of corporate and police spying on environmental activists fueled in part by the expansion of private intelligence gathering since 9/11.
By 2007, 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget—or about $38 billion annually—was spent on private contractors. Much of this largesse has been directed toward overseas operations. But it is likely that some of that money has been paid to private contractors—hired either by corporations or law enforcement agencies—that are also in the business of spying on American citizens. As early as 2004, in a report titled The Surveillance Industrial Complex, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that the “U.S. security establishment is making a systematic effort to extend its surveillance capacity by pressing the private sector into service to report on the activities of Americans.” At the same time, corporations are boosting their own security operations. Today, overall annual spending on corporate security and intelligence is roughly $100 billion, double what it was a decade ago, according to Brian Ruttenbur, a defense analyst with CRT Capital.
The surveillance of even moderate groups like GDAC comes at a pivotal time for the environmental movement. As greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, opposition to the fossil fuel industry has taken on a more urgent and confrontational tone. Some anti-fracking activists have engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience and the protests against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline have involved arrests at the White House. Environmentalists and civil libertarians worry that accusations of terrorism, even if completely unfounded, could undermine peaceful political protest. The mere possibility of surveillance could handicap environmental groups’ ability to achieve their political goals.
“You are painting the political opposition as supporters of terrorism to discredit them and cripple their ability to remain politically viable,” says Mike German, an FBI special agent for 16 years who now works with the ACLU.
The Pennsylvania episode is not an isolated case. The FBI and Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Koch Brothers-backed lobbying group, have both taken an interest in anti-drilling activists in Texas. In the fall of 2011, according to an investigation by The Washington Post, the FBI was digging for information on the leader of Rising Tide North America, a direct action environmental group, because of his opposition to hydraulic fracturing.
Rising Tide has also been active in organizing protests against the Keystone XL pipeline. Ben Kessler, a Texas-based activist, told the Post that the FBI had received an anonymous tip to look into his activities. The agency also showed up at the office of Kessler’s philosophy professor, Adam Briggle, who teaches an ethics course that covers nonviolent civil disobedience and the history of the environmental movement. Briggle, who has been involved in organizing residents to impose tougher regulations on gas drilling in Denton, Texas, told the Post that, “it seemed like a total fishing expedition to me.”
About a month after he was approached by the FBI, Briggle received a notice from his employer, the University of North Texas, asking him to turn over all emails and other written correspondence “pursuant to City of Denton natural gas drilling ordinances and the ‘Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group,’” an organization Briggle founded in July 2011 whose mission is similar to that of GDAC. The university had received a request under the state’s Public Information Act and Briggle was forced to hand over more than 1,300 emails. He was later told that the request had been made by Peggy Venable, Texas Director of AFP.
Rising Tide activists had speculated that the anonymous tip came from one of the gas companies active in the region. Although there was no way to prove a connection between the FBI’s investigation and AFP’s mining of Briggle’s emails, both were viewed within the activist community as acts of intimidation. Briggle says, “The message is, you’re being watched.”
During the last decade, the FBI and, to a lesser extent, corporations have elevated the threat of eco-terrorism to a top priority even as environmentally motivated crimes have declined. In 2005, John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director, said the animal rights and environmental movements were “one of the FBI’s highest domestic terrorism priorities.” In the post-9/11 era, the outsourcing of intelligence gathering to private companies has ballooned, the bar for investigating domestic threats has been lowered and a premium has been placed on information sharing with the private sector.
“What changed after 9/11 was the lowering of the threshold for FBI investigations and the promulgation of these radicalization theories that while specifically written about Muslim extremists—the same theory that people move from ideas to activism to terrorism—justified increased surveillance against activists and against people who were just part of the environmental rights movement but had no association with violence or criminal acts,” says German of the ACLU.
Since 9/11, accusations of eco-terrorism have proliferated and a number of individuals and groups have been prosecuted under new laws, which have profoundly impacted the radical environmental movement. The broad crackdown and subsequent fear and paranoia that swept through activist circles have been referred to as the “Green Scare.”
“The shift was gradual,” Will Potter writes in Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege , “slowly merging the rhetoric of industry groups with that of politicians and law enforcement.”
In public, corporations have amplified the threat of eco-terrorism to influence legislation, such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. In private, meanwhile, they have hired firms to spy on environmental groups. About a month after 9/11, for example, the crisis communications firm Nichols Dezenhall (now Dezenhall Resources) registered a website called StopEcoViolence.com (now defunct), which served as a sort of faux watchdog group and source for media outlets including The New York Times. Around the same time, Dezenhall—described by Bill Moyers as the “Mafia of Industry”—was involved in corporate espionage. Along with two other public relations companies, Dezenhall hired a now-defunct private security firm, Beckett Brown International, to spy on environmental activists.
One of the targeted groups was Greenpeace. In 2011, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit charging that Dow Chemical, Sasol (formerly CONDEA Vista), the public relations firms and individuals working for Beckett Brown International (which was founded by former Secret Service officers) stole thousands of documents, intercepted phone call records, trespassed and conducted unlawful surveillance. In a story for Mother Jones, James Ridgeway revealed that the security firm obtained donor lists, detailed financial statements, Social Security numbers of staff members and strategy memos from several groups, and, in turn, “produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.” In February, a Washington, DC, court ruled that the claims of trespass and misappropriation of trade secrets could proceed.
More recently, according to a report in The Nation, the agricultural giant Monsanto contracted with a subsidiary of Blackwater, the private security firm, to gather intelligence on and possibly infiltrate environmental groups in order to protect the company’s brand name.
“This is the new normal,” says Scott Crow, an author and longtime environmental activist who was the subject of FBI and corporate surveillance for close to eight years beginning in 1999.
While the above cases involved corporations hiring private security firms to carry out black-ops against environmental groups, the Pennsylvania scandal may be the first time that a state agency has contracted with a private security firm to gather intelligence on lawful groups for the benefit of a specific industry. Although the ITRR bulletins were produced for the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, they were shared with PR firms, the major Marcellus Shale companies, and industry associations. For members of GDAC and other anti-drilling organizations, the revelations were profoundly troubling. Not only were they being lumped together with groups like Al-Qaeda, but the government agencies tasked with protecting the people of Pennsylvania were, in their view, essentially working for the gas companies. If a moderate group like GDAC wasn’t safe from the surveillance-industrial complex, it seemed nobody was.
“These systems and this type of collection is so rife with inappropriate speculation and error—both intentional and unintentional—that your good behavior doesn’t protect you,” German says.
Tom Jiunta, the founder of GDAC, says the ITRR bulletins had a chilling effect. Attendance at GDAC meetings declined and some members left the group altogether. Organizers assumed that their phones had been tapped and that their emails were being monitored, a common perception among anti-drilling activists. At meetings they would leave their cell phones outside or remove the batteries. Jiunta, who has a podiatry practice in downtown Kingston, began to take different routes to work because he was worried about being followed. “We kind of assume that we’re being watched,” he says. “Even now.”
Indeed, the intelligence gathering continues. Although the state canceled its contract with ITRR, the company still works for the natural gas industry, according to GDAC attorney Paul Rossi. “An employee with one of the gas companies has told me that he is willing to testify that ITRR is still conducting operations for the gas companies and they are focusing in on environmental groups,” Rossi says.
In 2010, GDAC filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and ITRR on First Amendment grounds. Because it’s a private company or a “non-state actor,” the judge ruled, claims against ITRR were dismissed. The terms of a settlement with the state have not been reached. (ITRR did not return requests for comment).
Like many of the activists I spoke with, Jiunta underscored the fact that he’s never been drawn to conspiracy theories. GDAC’s code of conduct was designed to weed out those whom Jiunta described as “wackos.” Jiunta admits that he was pretty naïve when he first got involved in anti-drilling activism; he would print out large stacks of information on fracking to bring to state senators, who politely told him not to waste their time. Now, his faith in the role of government has been shattered. “People worried about being on a watch list,” he told me. “It was shocking.”
In the wake of the surveillance scandal, Pennsylvania Homeland Security Director James Powers resigned and the state terminated its $103,000 no-bid contract with ITRR. Then-governor Ed Rendell called the episode “deeply embarrassing” and a one-day Senate inquiry was held. In testimony before the committee, Virginia Cody, the retired Air Force officer who had become a critic of gas drilling, said:
"For the first time in my life, I do not feel secure in my home. I worry that what I say on the phone is being recorded. I wonder if my emails are still being monitored."
The hearing sought to answer questions about how the contract was awarded, why citizen groups exercising their First Amendment rights were included, and, crucially, who received the information. Powers explained that the information was distributed to various chemical, agricultural and transportation companies mentioned in the bulletins. At least 800 individuals were on the distribution list. In the case of gas drilling activism he explained, “It [the bulletins] went to the security directors of the Marcellus Shale companies and DEP [Department of Environmental Protection].”
This is only partially true. A list of the individuals and groups who received the bulletins shows that industry associations and public relations firms that have nothing to do with protecting the state’s infrastructure were also included. For example, one of Powers’s key contacts on Marcellus-related activity was Pam Witmer, then head of the Bravo Group’s energy and environmental practice as well as president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council, a business advocacy group. The Bravo Group is a public relations and lobbying firm based in Pennsylvania. Its clients include Chief Oil and Gas, Southwestern Energy and People’s Natural Gas, all of which are deeply invested in Marcellus Shale production.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry lobbying group, was also on the distribution list. In 2010, the coalition signed a $900,000 lobbying contract with Ridge Global, a private security firm founded by Tom Ridge, former head of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. As part of its energy consulting services Ridge Global offers “advisory support for natural gas and other infrastructure security.” Ridge is just one of many former security officials who now have private consulting services. Others include John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff and Richard Clarke.
The blurring of public and private spying is what Dutch scholar Bob Hoogenboom calls “grey intelligence.” In a 2006, paper of the same name, Hoogenboom noted that in addition to well-known spy agencies like Military Intelligence, Section 6 (MI6) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), hundreds of private organizations involved in intelligence gathering have entered the market to meet corporate demand.
“The idea was to do for industry what we had done for the government,” Christopher James, a former MI6 officer who founded Hakluyt, a private intelligence company whose clients have included Shell and BP, told the Financial Times. Many corporations now have their own private intelligence networks, or “para-CIAs,” to gather information on consumers, critics and even their own shareholders. Wal-Mart, for example, has an office of global security headed by a one-time CIA and FBI official with a staff that includes former State Department security experts. As Eveline Lubbers writes in her recent book, Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists , “Because these business firms hire former spies and analysts from the ranks of government, the informal links with government intelligence increase.”
This is a global phenomenon. Corporations in Europe and Canada have also spied on environmental groups. In 2006, French energy giant Électricité de France (EDF), the world’s largest operator of nuclear reactors, hired Kargus Consultants, a private intelligence gathering agency run by a former member of the French secret service, to spy on Greenpeace. Kargus hacked into a lead Greenpeace organizer’s computer and compiled a dossier on the organization’s European campaign strategy. In 2011, a French court fined EDF 1.5 million euros and sent two of its employees to jail on charges of illegal spying.
Although it was not raised at the Pennsylvania Senate hearing, the ITRR bulletins also were shared with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In January, a Montreal paper reported that the RCMP itself has been tracking anti-shale gas activists in Quebec. The Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team, a branch of the RCMP, produced two reports that described the possibility of Canadian activists collaborating with “extremist” groups in the U.S., such as Earth First! and Occupy Well Street—an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street opposed to fracking. According to Jeff Monaghan, a researcher with the Surveillance Studies Center (SSC) at Queen’s University in Ontario, the Canadian government likely shares intelligence with the energy industry. Since at least 2005, the Canadian government has held biannual intelligence briefings to share sensitive information with the private sector. In 2007, Gary Lunn, former Minister of Natural Resources, admitted his agency had helped more than 200 industry representatives obtain high-level security clearances. “This enables us to share information with industry and their associations,” Lunn said at a pipeline security forum.
Similar arrangements have been uncovered in the UK. In 2009, it was revealed that the British police and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform had provided information about Climate Camp demonstrations to E.ON, the company that runs the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. E.ON also hired private security firms like Vericola and Global Open to spy on protesters; both companies are staffed by former intelligence agents.
The specter of environmental extremism has been used to justify information sharing between law enforcement and the private sector. Last year, Joe Oliver, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, warned that environmental groups “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”
“It’s the new politics of the petro-state,” says Monaghan, SSC. “Anything that’s remotely linked with direct action or nonviolent civil disobedience is being described as extremism, which is the new code word of security agencies.”
The fossil fuel industry’s targeting of its critics goes beyond mere surveillance. Natural gas drilling companies have also flirted with using the dark arts of psychological warfare, or “psy ops.” In comments recorded by an anti-drilling activist at a 2011 natural gas conference in Houston and leaked to CNBC, Matt Pitzarella, director of corporate communications at Range Resources, said Range had hired “several former psy ops folks” with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania [sic],” Pitzarella said.
At the same conference, Matt Carmichael, a public relations specialist with Anadarko Petroleum, referred to the anti-drilling movement as an “insurgency” and advised industry representatives to download the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual. “There’s a lot of good lessons in there and coming from a military background, I found the insight in that extremely remarkable,” he told his colleagues.
The oil and gas industry has good reason to feel besieged. Opposition to fracking, especially, is on the rise. New York State has in place a moratorium against the drilling technique, and legislators in California are considering a similar ban. A white paper prepared by FTI Consulting, a DC-based public relations firm with ties to the shale gas industry, recently warned:
"Environmental activists are looking to undermine the strategies and operations of energy companies … Adding to the activists’ momentum is the fact that a growing number of mainstream shareholders are supporting their proposals."
But given the absence of any physical attacks against drilling company assets, the industry’s view of its opponents smacks of paranoia. In August 2012, iJET International, a private security firm founded by a former National Security Agency (NSA) operative, issued a risk assessment of anti-drilling protests in New York State. In one of its daily intelligence bulletins distributed to corporate clients the firm observed:
"Protests against hydraulic fracturing have gained considerable momentum over the past few months … While most demonstrations have been peaceful, participants say they are hoping to intensify actions in hopes of disrupting operations at targeted facilities."
The U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Manual that was offered as suggested reading for shale gas industry representatives includes an appendix on Social Network Analysis, defined as “a tool for understanding the organizational dynamics of an insurgency.” In an age of digital networks and online activism, this often means using data-mining software, cyber surveillance and in some cases outright computer hacking to track opposition groups.
At the 2011 natural gas conference in Houston the CEO of Jurat Software, Aaron Goldwater, gave a presentation on the subject of data mining and stakeholder intelligence. In his presentation he emphasized the importance of knowing the communities you work in, of tracking and mapping relationships, and compiling a sophisticated database that includes all offline and online conversations. He pointed to the military as a model. “If you look at the people who are experts at it, which is the military, the one thing they do is gather intelligence,” he told the audience.
Corporations have already taken advantage of network forensic software to keep tabs on their own employees. The new technology, which allows companies to monitor an employee’s activity down to the keystroke, is one of the fastest growing software markets. There is a fine line, however, between data mining—which is perfectly legal though largely out of view—and cyber surveillance, or hacking.
While it is difficult to prove hacking, many activists are convinced their computers have been tampered with. Kari Matsko, a professional software consultant and director of the People’s Oil and Gas Collaborative in Ohio, says her computer was hacked after she began to push for tougher regulation of the natural gas industry.
Matsko got involved in environmental activism after hydrogen sulfide gas was released from a well site near her home. In 2008, she started helping a group of citizens who had filed a lawsuit against one of the larger energy companies in Ohio on grounds of nuisance violations and loss of property value. She spent many months doing research and collecting files related to the case, some of which she described as damning.
Because of her profession, Matsko has very strong computer security and says that prior to working on oil and gas issues she had never had problems with malware. But while assisting with the lawsuit Matsko’s computer was attacked by a sophisticated virus. Matsko was able to remove it and everything seemed fine. About a month later, though, she unsuccessfully tried to open the computer folder that contained the sensitive files related to the lawsuit. The files were either missing or corrupted. “I remember I was so terrified by it that I didn’t even tell people unless it was in person,” she says.
Other activists have described similar cyber security-related issues. Around the time the ITRR bulletins were made public, Jiunta told me, members of GDAC experienced persistent problems with their computers. “Everybody was getting suspicious,” he says. “I had computer issues. Some are still having issues.”
John Trallo, a 61-year-old musician and guitar instructor whose communications were also featured in the ITRR bulletins, has been an outspoken critic of shale gas development for several years. In 2007, Chief Oil and Gas offered him a signing bonus of $1,400 to lease his mineral rights. Trallo, who lives in a modest two-story home in northeastern Pennsylvania, refused. He’s been fighting the industry ever since.
“This is something that’s bigger in my life than I ever wanted it to be,” he says. “Five years ago, when I first started getting involved in this and I started talking to people, I would say to myself, ‘these people are a little crazy.’ Five years later, I sound like them.”
Immediately after the intelligence bulletins were made public Trallo’s computer became nearly unusable. Documents were corrupted and irretrievable; photos were disappearing and programs wouldn’t work. A relatively new machine with a high-end operating system, Trallo had it serviced at a Best Buy in nearby Muncy. He was told by the Geek Squad at Best Buy that a highly sensitive program that acts like a Trojan Horse had been installed on his computer. According to Trallo, “They said that the program monitors every key stroke, every email, everything you do on the computer.”
Nearly all of the activists I spoke with said the Pennsylvania Homeland Security revelations, while giving them pause, had not changed their behavior. They continue to speak out, to attend public meetings and to push for greater oversight of the industry. Still, “it leads to some scary possibilities in the future,” says Eric Belcastro, an organizer with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “I don’t sit around being paranoid about this stuff. I just try to do what I have to do and get along with my life. But I admit the playing ground is rough and I think people need to be careful.”
Even as corporations expand their surveillance of citizen-activists, they are seeking to obstruct public oversight of their own behavior. It’s a bit like a one-way mirror of democratic transparency—with corporations and law enforcement on one side looking in and activists on the other.
Pennsylvania is a case in point. In early 2012, legislators there passed “Act 13,” a set of amendments to the state’s Oil and Gas Act, which essentially stripped local municipalities of the authority to regulate drilling activity through zoning ordinances and other measures. The law also requires doctors who treat patients exposed to fracking chemicals to sign a confidentially agreement before receiving information about the substances. The gag rule would prevent them from sharing that information with the patient or even other doctors (GDAC’s current president, Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez, is challenging this provision).
Earlier this year, a bill was introduced into the Pennsylvania legislature that would make it a felony to videotape farming operations in Pennsylvania—so-called “ag-gag” legislation that has already passed in Utah and Iowa, and has been introduced in several other legislatures. Many of the ag-gag bills draw on language crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act.” Section D of the ALEC bill defines an animal or ecological terrorist organization in broad terms “as any association, organization, entity, coalition or combination of two or more persons” who seek to “obstruct, impede or deter any person from participating” not only in agricultural activity but also mining, foresting, harvesting and gathering or processing of natural resources. In recent years, ALEC has received considerable support from the natural gas industry
The proposed law has many anti-drilling activists worried. If such language were included in the bill (it is currently in committee and will be revised before it comes to the floor) it would greatly limit the ability of residents to photograph or video well sites, compressor stations, and pipeline development—all of which could be considered part of the “gathering or processing of natural resources.”
“It’s clearly legislation that could be easily expanded in any particular case to include folks like me who do whatever we can to get as close to some of these sites as we are able,” says Wendy Lee, a philosophy professor at Bloomsburg University who regularly photographs the industrial impacts of gas drilling and then posts them on her Flickr page.
Lee says that among anti-drilling activists there is a sense that 2013 is a do-or-die year. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is set to rule on the constitutionality of Act 13. As the drilling boom moves into ever more populated areas, activists are gearing up for more focused organizing and larger nonviolent protests. With tens of thousands of wells yet to be drilled, at least this much is clear: The industry will be watching closely.
Research support for this article was provided by The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
quebec monsanto climate change energy vericola terrorist hakluyt united states green peace psychological warfare global open pipelines fbi ijet international canada ontario aaron goldwater environmentalist anadarko keystone xl blackwater fracking france united kingdom tar sands fti consulting aclu nichols dezenhall terrorism jurat software texas europe eco-terrorist iowa range resources psy ops eco factory farming utah earth island journal department of homeland security americans for prosperity california new york ridge global xe al-qaeda rising tide cia genetically engineered foods dow chemical kargus pennsylvania american civil liberties great britain nuclear ohio tea party marcellus shale bravo group mi6
Stefanie Spear
The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, created by the Obama administration after it abandoned plans to establish a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, is expected to release its final report Jan. 26 on what to do with commercial “high level” nuclear waste—used, or “spent,” fuel—from nuclear reactors.
One of the many contentious issues the commission addressed is reprocessing, a series of chemical operations that separates plutonium and uranium from other nuclear waste in spent fuel to be used again in nuclear reactors. The separated plutonium also could be used to make nuclear weapons.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has long opposed reprocessing spent fuel. Not only would reprocessing fail to reduce the volume of nuclear waste requiring permanent disposal, it would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism and proliferation, divert resources from a permanent disposal program, and cost significantly more than disposing of spent fuel directly.
UCS has called on the blue ribbon commission to retain language from its July interim report concluding that “no currently available or reasonably foreseeable” technologies for reprocessing spent fuel have the potential to “fundamentally alter the waste management challenge this nation confronts over at least the next several decades, if not longer.” But the science group also has asked the commission to drop the draft report’s recommendation to continue taxpayer-funded research and development on reprocessing and plutonium-based reactor fuels.
“Instead of throwing more good money after bad by continuing to fund failed reprocessing projects, the government should encourage research and development to improve the current fuel cycle’s efficiency, rebuff industry requests to weaken plutonium storage and transport security standards, and begin a technically sound, politically fair process to site a permanent geologic repository,” said Edwin Lyman, a UCS senior scientist. “The tens of billions of dollars that electric utility ratepayers pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund should be spent only on the fund’s intended purpose—developing a geologic repository for direct disposal of spent fuel.”
The commission also is expected to recommend that the government establish a number of centralized interim high-level radioactive waste sites until a permanent underground geologic repository is built, a major objective of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and two industry trade groups, the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition. UCS maintains that until a permanent geologic repository is built, spent nuclear fuel rods should remain on site at operating nuclear plants in hardened dry casks.
“It is not apparent that siting a consolidated interim storage facility would be any easier politically to achieve than siting a [permanent] geologic repository,” Lyman said in written comments to blue ribbon commission, “and efforts to site an interim storage facility could distract from the far more important goal of finding a repository site.”
“Spent fuel can be managed safely at reactor sites for decades as long as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires plant owners to minimize safety and security risks,” said Lyman. “They can do that by moving spent fuel from vulnerable, overcrowded wet pools to safer dry storage casks, and enhancing security measures to protect the dry casks from terrorist attacks.”
In its recommendations to the NRC in light of the Fukushima accident last March, UCS called on the agency to require plant owners to transfer used rods from spent fuel pools to dry casks as soon as the rods are cool enough to move. The NRC is currently conducting a study of this proposal. UCS also has called for the NRC to release more information to the public about classified studies that it has conducted since the 9/11 attacks on the dangers posed by densely packed spent fuel pools.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading U.S. science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in Berkeley, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
nuclear waste nuclear waste disposal nuclear reactors nuclear waste fund union concerned scientists nuclear energy uranium nuclear energy asia obama adminstration spent fuel fukushima japan terrorism fuel rods nuclear regulatory commission plutonium
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By: Noah Dougherty on April 24th, 2019
Flexible Content & Tools: Part 3 - An Interview With an Elementary Educator
Personalized learning represents a shift in how we teach students, a reflection of our changing educational landscape, and an acknowledgement that the world we must prepare our students for is different than the one we grew up in. One of the biggest ways education has already changed is in the content and tools students engage with. This blog series is made up of interviews with education leaders who work with digital content, curricular resources, and instructional tools. It is meant to highlight ideas and perspectives we aren’t normally exposed to. In doing so, this series is meant to spark new ideas, discussions, and ultimately empower teachers and leaders.
Paul Emerich France is an elementary educator and writer. He advocates that when it comes to content and tools, 1) less is more and 2) teachers must strike a balance between a “one-size-fits-all” model and what he calls “hyper-individualization”.
If you could take on any superpower, what would it be and how would you use it to support yourself as a teacher or other teachers you’re working with?
I think most of the problems that need solving are systemic. If I could somehow get into the minds of policymakers, I would get them to start making decisions that are best for all kids. I would reform the education system in a way where schools were funded equitably and teachers are paid fairly. To me, it all comes back to equity.
We’ve seen huge changes in education over the last 10-15 years; how has your understanding of curriculum and curricular materials evolved over the course of your education career?
I’ve gone from a consumption mentality to a creation mentality. I used to be purely consumption, I would make the packets and we would do a lot of worksheets, and it didn’t take me long to realize that’s not best practice. I’m still consuming materials, but I’m doing so to create something new. For example, we all engage in a math task, and students have a math journal. They glue that task in their journal and the rest of the time is them showing their thinking and really writing about math. The kids are consuming to a certain degree, they’re consuming the math task, but they’re creating meaning out of them in their math journals, as opposed to a worksheet where they’re just filling in empty boxes.
Deeper Dive: Learn about how digital tools fit into the greater curriculum picture, and what to keep in mind when selecting digital tools for your classrooms and schools in our white paper, Guide to Selecting Curriculum to Support Personalized Learning - Phase 3
It sounds like it’s not just about a change in your understanding, but also helping kids to think differently. It’s about getting students to use fewer materials to go way more in depth.
It’s a much more challenging way to teach. My students this year are not used to this way of learning. I have to talk a lot about jumping in and taking a risk and being okay with it not being accurate right away. I still have to catch myself from falling into a trap when they’re not immediately right. I’ll be like, “I need to print out a worksheet!” But I know that’s not going to solve the problem; the problem is that there’s a conceptual gap that I need to address, and that’s going to take some time, and that’s okay.
How do student journals help you personalize learning?
I am of a mindset that personalization is a partnership between a student and the teacher. It’s the art of making learning meaningful to the individual, and I think that journaling is an amazing concrete artifact for what personalization should be. I give all students the same task and they manipulate it in a way that works for them in their journal. All the while, I’m able to give them individualized feedback, either by walking around and talking with them, pulling a small group, or conferencing with them one-on-one.
You’ve written about the risks of what you call “hyper-individualization” in PL. Can you talk more about this?
Think about it on a continuum. On one end is “one size fits all”, when every student has the same worksheet and you teach them in the exact same way. On the other end of the spectrum is that every student has a different worksheet or is on a different program at the same time. Education frequently poses this false choice; there’s nothing in between. I don’t think there’s a line that exists between them, it’s gray in the middle.
In a well-differentiated learning environment there is a healthy amount of individualization, which is really about equity. Every kid is able to get what they need to be successful. For example, let’s say I pose a multiplication word problem. My advanced kids might go straight to multiplication, but my kids who are still in more concrete learning stages can get out the blocks or draw pictures. There are all these ways for them to access the same task. It preserves equity and access and it doesn’t individualize in a way that splits kids up.
When you personalize, it’s important to ask the questions:
Is this equitable? Is it allowing every kid to get what they need?
Is it just? Is it removing barriers without creating new ones?
Related Resource: Check out our upcoming webinar, School Leader Habits for Promoting Next Gen Teaching and Learning Models
Imagine I’m giving you the superpower to see the future. What is the future of teaching ten years from now?
My hope is that we see it’s not about competition and comparison, it’s about actualizing agency in our kids. We don’t know what the world will look like in ten years, and the best thing I can do is help my students overcome the obstacles they face now, so that they can eventually be independent in overcoming future obstacles. It’s not about comparing ourselves to another person, or district or country, it’s about helping our kids become independent so that they can see how they contribute to their larger community. And in order to do that, they need to be able to solve problems on their own.
About Paul Emerich France
Paul France teaches third grade and is coming out with a new book on personalized learning later this year. He has written extensively on his approach to personalized learning and equity on his blog and has been featured in EdSurge and ASCD’s “Educational Leadership”. Paul previously worked for an EdTech startup in Silicon Valley. He is a National Board Certified Educator and has a master's degree in Language and Literacy from Roosevelt University and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
If you're looking for more learning and inspiration around personalized learning, content & curriculum, and classroom practices – including Personalized Learning Simulations to see PL from a student's perspective – join us at the Personalized Learning Summit 2019 May 14-16 in Atlanta, GA. The registration deadline is coming up next week, so register today to save your spot!
About Noah Dougherty
Noah Dougherty is a Senior Design Principal at Education Elements. He previously worked as a teacher, curriculum writer, instructional coach, and school leader. He began his teaching career in Prince George’s County, Maryland with Teach For America and continued with KIPP DC. He has taught middle school social studies, 8th grade ELA, English 12, AP Literature, high school journalism, and DC History. While at KIPP DC he wrote the middle school social studies curriculum, designed a blended professional development course on writing instruction, and supported personalized learning. As a school leader he coached eleven teachers on the ELA and social studies teams, leading to a 13-point gain in students earning a 4+ on the PARCC, more than doubling the portion of students passing from the previous year. Noah has also worked for DC Public Schools and LearnZillion on curriculum development initiatives. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. Noah grew up in Syracuse, NY and now lives in Washington, DC.
Connect with Noah Dougherty
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The Mad Farmer Poems (Paperback)
By Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan (Introduction by)
(GENERAL -)
This is the collection I keep close at all times and the one I'm most likely to hand to a friend in pain. It gives me perspective, grounds me, reminds me that there's love and light in a world that exhausts.
— From Shawn
During the otherwise quiet course of his life as a poet, Wendell Berry has become "mad" at what contemporary society has made of its land, its communities, and its past. This anger reaches its peak in the poems of the Mad Farmer, an open-ended sequence he's found himself impelled to continue against his better instincts. These poems can take the shape of manifestos, meditations, insults, Whitmanic fits and ravings--these are often funny in spite of themselves. The Mad Farmer is a character as necessary, perhaps, as he is regrettable.
Here are gathered the individual poems from Berry's various collections to offer the teachings of this amazing American voice. After the great success of the lovely Window Poems, Bob Baris of the Press on Scroll Road returns to design and produce an edition illustrated with etchings by Abigail Rover. James Baker Hall and William Kloefkorn offer poems here that also show how the Mad Farmer has escaped into the work of others. The whole is a wonderful testimony to the power of anger and humor to bring even the most terrible consequences into a focus otherwise impossible to obtain.
Wendell Berry, an essayist, novelist, and poet, has been honored with the T. S. Eliot Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, and the John Hay Award of the Orion Society. He lives with his wife on a farm in Henry County, Kentucky.
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
Publication Date: January 14th, 2014
American - General
Hardcover (November 1st, 2008): $25.00
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Aviation HR Law
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Probationary employees and dismissal – “suitability” standard applies
For organizations operating in the aviation industry probationary periods for new employees are common. The probationary period enables an employer to not only assess the employee’s skills, but also their character. This in turn permits the employer to determine whether the employee will work in harmony within the organization if hired permanently. During the probationary period an employer is permitted to dismiss a probationary employee without notice and without giving reasons, provided that the employer acts in good faith in its assessment of the employee. This is a much lower bar than the just cause threshold required for the dismissal of a permanent employee. The recent decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Langford v. Carson Air Ltd. (August, 2015)discusses the different standard for dismissal for probationary employees.
In Langford, the employee was hired in August of 2012 as a first officer with Carson Air Ltd. The employment contract between the parties included a six month probationary period. During that period, it came to the attention of the employer that the employee did not have proper licencing and medical examinations that would permit her to fly commercially. When this issue was raised with the employee, it appeared to management that she refused to take responsibility and claimed that the lack of certification was an administrative error. Management felt that the employee displayed poor judgement on another occasion when she brought her dog to work and left it unsupervised. The employer concluded that the employee would not fit into its operations and terminated the employment during the probationary period.
The employee brought an action against the employer claiming amongst other things wrongful dismissal. She sought damages that included pay in lieu of reasonable notice. In support of her claim of wrongful dismissal, the plaintiff adduced evidence demonstrating that she was a proficient pilot and in fact better than some at Carson Air.
The court noted that the termination was based not on the employee’s proficiency as a pilot, but instead her failure to fit in with other employees and the company operations generally. Borrowing from the decision in Jadot v. Concert Industries Ltd. (1997) (1998) the Court set out the standard for dismissing probationary employees as follows:
…the termination of a probationary employee during his or her probationary period can be based on a decision that the employee is unsuitable for the job. Such a conclusion must be a reasonable one and properly motivated, reached only after the employee has been given a fair opportunity to demonstrate his or her suitability.
Based on the evidence, the Court found that the employer made a reasonable business decision when it terminated the employment. The wrongful dismissal action was dismissed.
This decision is positive for employers as it validates the “trial period” that a probationary period is meant to provide. Employers may assess a probationary employee’s suitability, and provided that they are reasonable in that assessment, they can dismiss an unsuitable probationary employee with limited legal exposure.
For further information, please contact Amanda Sarginson at 613-940-2765 or Steven Williams at 613-940-2737.
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© 2018 Emond Harnden LLP. All Rights Reserved.
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CELEB COUPLES
Modern Family Killed Off Another Character in Its Final Season
by Chris Harnick | Thu., Jan. 16, 2020 7:52 AM
Modern Family is pulling out all the stops in the final season, from a trip to Paris to another shocking death. Yep, they went there. Again.
In the Wednesday, Jan. 15 episode, "Legacy," Phil (Ty Burrell) received some concerning news about his father Frank (Fred Willard) and paid him a visit. Viewers learned Frank was found wandering a grocery store and Phil worried his father had been gripped by dementia. He was wrong, but Frank eventually died off screen.
In the final scene, which you can see below, Phil asks Frank about the incident at the grocery store and quizzes his father about whether he ever wished he had another child to take over the family business.
"The answer is no, Phil, never. Because, well, you did take over the family business, didn't you? Keeping life light, making it fun for everybody," Frank said.
Modern Family Then and Now
"I learned from the best," Phil said.
In a confessional, Phil said, "When I was growing up, he was the cool dad," Phil said. "He was hip. He knew all the dances from Grease [and] he knew all the expressions—BFF: best friends forever, TMI: too much Information, BJ: blue jeans…We didn't do much that day, but it might have been one of the best days I've ever had with my dad. I just didn't know it would be the last."
Viewers then saw Phil giving his father's eulogy.
Sofia Vergara On Saying Goodbye to 11 Seasons of "Modern Family"
In season 10, the cast and crew of Modern Family teased a big death that would rock the family. It was Shelley Long's character DeDe Pritchett, the mother of Claire (Julie Bowen) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), and Jay's (Ed O'Neill) ex-wife.
"We gather [with the writers] at the beginning of the season and talk about the big arcs and things that we want to have happen — the milestone moments. It occurred to us that death is a giant part of the family experience and while Phil had lost his mother in a previous episode, we've never seen the entire family have to deal with such a loss. It seemed like an interesting thing to have happen," executive producer Steve Levitan said about the death last year.
Modern Family's final season continues on Wednesdays, 9 p.m. on ABC. Look for the family to take one last big trip to Paris in the February 12 episode.
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Donald Trump. File photo by Gage Skidmore, Wikipedia Commons.
Robert Reich: Impeach Trump Now – OpEd
June 9, 2017 Robert Reich 0 Comments
By Robert Reich
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) is already drafting articles of impeachment related to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, believing there’s enough evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice to begin an impeachment inquiry (not to mention Trump’s blatant violation of the Constitutions emoluments clause by profiting off his presidency, and much else).
But Democratic leaders are pushing back, warning there aren’t enough facts to justify an impeachment inquiry at this point, and, in any event, such an inquiry would politicize ongoing congressional investigations.
Historically, the three previous impeachment inquiries in the House (involving presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton) rested on less evidence of obstruction of justice than is already publicly known about Trump.
Comey’s testimony to Congress is itself more than enough – confirming that Trump demanded Comey’s loyalty, asked Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, repeatedly told Comey the FBI investigation was a “cloud” on his presidency, and asked Comey to declare publicly that Trump wasn’t an object of the investigation
In addition, we have Trump’s interview with Lester Holt on NBC and Trump’s subsequent meeting with Russian officials in the Oval Office. In both instances, Trump connected his firing of Comey with the Russian investigation.
Also bear in mind the obstructions of justice that caused the House to impeach previous presidents concerned issues far less serious than Trump’s possible collusion with a foreign power to win election.
Democratic leaders say they don’t want to talk about impeachment now because they’re worried about politicizing the current congressional investigations, which aren’t impeachment inquiries. Hello? Republicans have already politicized them.
The real reason Democratic leaders don’t want to seek an impeachment now is they know there’s zero chance that Republicans, who now control both houses of Congress, would support such a move. So why engage in a purely symbolic gesture?
Democratic leaders figure that between now and the midterm elections there will be even more revelations from non-partisan sources – future testimony by Trump operatives like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, early reports from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and leaks to the press – that will build the case, and fuel more public outrage.
That outrage will give Democrats a strong chance of taking back the House and maybe even the Senate. Then they’ll really impeach Trump.
I can’t argue with the political logic of Democratic leaders. And if their strategy will lead to Trump’s ouster sooner than any other way, I’m all for it.
But here’s the problem. It’s not clear America can wait for the midterm elections, followed by what’s likely to be a long and drawn-out impeachment investigation, followed by a trial in the Senate. (Note that none of the presidents listed above was ever convicted by the Senate and thrown out of office.)
With each passing day, Donald Trump becomes a greater danger to America and the world. We don’t have time.
The advantage of introducing a bill of impeachment now – even attempting to do so – is that such an action might itself galvanize the vast majority of Americans who want Trump out of office. It could mobilize and energize people around the most important immediate issue facing the country.
Never underestimate the power of a public aroused to action. It is worth recalling that Nixon resigned of his own accord before the House had even voted out an impeachment resolution. The American public demanded it.
← Ralph Nader: Obama, Launch Watchdogs In Washington – OpEd
Brexit Effect Could Hit Russia – OpEd →
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
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15 49.0138 8.38624 arrow 0 arrow 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.evolveandascend.com 300 1
Kate Harveston
Consciousness, Culture, Dreams, Life and Death, Science
Why Do the Dying Often See Deceased Loved Ones Before They Go?
Many spiritualists see death not as an ending, but rather a transition to a different plane or realm of existence. Throughout history, religious leaders have shared differing visions of what happens after death, but despite the claims of the faithful, much about death still remains a mystery. However, some experiences with death seem universal across... / READ MORE /
Consciousness, Culture, Modern World, Wellness
awareness, health, home, wellness, zen
Finding Peace: Your Home Space Can Make or Break Your Inner Zen
The world is full of stress, but you need one space that makes you feel calm and relaxed. Stress is a part of life, and sometimes it can be very overwhelming. However, for the sake of your health and peace of mind, it’s important to have a space that doesn’t add to your stress, so... / READ MORE /
How to Treat Your Body Like a Temple in 2018
When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, you probably had a resolution for 2018 in mind. If you’re like a lot of people, that resolution likely involved your health. Maybe you were determined to lose a certain amount of weight or take the steps to resolve a health issue that’s been plaguing you.... / READ MORE /
community, consciousness, kindness, mindfulness
Do Something Selfless in 2018
Art by Kent Macdonald “New Year, new me.” If this is the mantra you used to kick off 2018, then there’s no time like the present to follow through. Make a real change this year by making a new type of resolution, one that actually has very little to do with you. Instead of committing to... / READ MORE /
Why It’s Important to Try Holistic Healing First
Pain, injury and disease can be absolutely devastating to your lifestyle. When you’re constantly dogged by pain, it can feel next to impossible to achieve your previous level of happiness, contentment and fulfillment. It can feel like a struggle to even get out of bed in the morning, let alone accomplish your goals with enthusiasm.... / READ MORE /
consciousness, health, water, wellness
Today, I’m Grateful for the Benefits of Clean Water
When you always have access to basic living necessities, it’s easy to take them for granted, which means many of us rarely have to think about how important food and water are. Lately, I’ve been on a personal mission to pinpoint the many small things that I take for granted in my life, and to... / READ MORE /
art, consciousness, creativity, writing
The Healing Power of the Written Word
Many of us love writing, but did you know that writing can be super beneficial to your health? There’s a reason why your teachers probably made you write out all your notes while you were in school, and it wasn’t just to make your lives harder (at least, probably not). It’s because writing has a... / READ MORE /
cbd, entheogens, marijuana, marijuana use, pot
Misconceptions About Marijuana Debunked
If you asked people 30 years ago about marijuana, most of them would tell you it was terrible. It was a gateway drug that needed to be avoided at all costs. Only bad people used it, and it was a nuisance. No good could come from the drug, and it was best left untouched. Fast-forward... / READ MORE /
art, artistic, artistic expression, expression
What My Artistic Roots Mean to Me
Featured art Embroidery by Mana Morimoto “So, you’re going to be an English teacher, right?” was the first response I received once I declared my undergraduate major. Want to guess what that was? Yep, English. English teachers are a vital part of the education system, but it wasn’t my calling. “How will you make money,... / READ MORE /
commute, consciousness, wellness, zen
4 Tips to Help You Zen Out During Your Commute
Live in the moment. This is arguably the simplest yet hardest advice to follow. You might ask yourself: when do most people have the chance to live in the moment? You may think that your career depends on always thinking ahead, and while that is likely to be partially true, it is crucial that you... / READ MORE /
entheogens, marijuana, medical marijuana, thc
How Medical Marijuana Can Heal Men and Women Differently
We know that men and women are different — so much so that they’ve often been described as coming from completely different planets. While we do know that they both hail from planet Earth, we are still constantly discovering new ways that medicine affects the genders differently. This goes double for natural remedies like medical... / READ MORE /
consciousness, entheogens, intimacy, marijuana
New Marijuana Strain Could Improve Women’s Sex Lives
Featured art by Charlie Elms The topic of marijuana and sex goes back to the reefer madness days of the 1930s — it was common knowledge that smoking marijuana would turn you into some sort of sex-crazed fiend and that’s why you should avoid it. Of course, we’ve come a long way since those uninformed... / READ MORE /
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HomeThe Future of Artificial Intelligence: Top Ways It Will Impact Everyday Life
Intelligent Machines, Robotics, Automation, Transportation
/ Mar 09, 2017
GOAT: The Future of Robotics, Inspired by Nature
/Duncan Kingori
Technology has advanced far and wide over the years, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a tale that is yet to be unfolded. For example, operating the internet is proof that AI has come so far as to gratify most of our needs. By looking at the rate at which technological advancements are gaining the attention of the masses, it is safe to say that the future of AI is rather very bright.
Here are some ways in which this technology could affect everyday life in the years to come:
Automated Transportation
The transportation sector has certainly had the intervention of technology. However, the breakneck speed, which AI is taking, may soon allow for a lot of automated transportation.
Presently, there are such means of commute - for example, self-driving cars. Even though technology may not allow for these cars to operate without a driver, the driver has, in fact, very little to do, as compared to in traditional car models.
Robot Friends
The thing with artificial intelligence is that it is made to be as human-like as possible. This means that given enough time to breed, the realization of robots as "friends" will soon be executed.
Roboticists around the world are attempting to develop humanoid robots. (Source: Pixabay)
Today, most of the robots that have been created are still emotionless and hard to relate to. Ideally, AI technology will allow robots to be programmed to read human emotions and develop their own feelings.
AI for Big Data
A lot of the operations in business set-ups involve hardcore number crunching. If technology can be considered useful at all, then it is expected that artificial intelligence will assist in tackling big data for such businesses.
People may no longer have to sit through sessions of sorting out all their MySQL transaction logs when a robot can quickly get it done, and probably much better than a human would. The reason is that as artificial intelligence strives so hard to reach human-like capacities, there are some features that may make robots better than humans.
One of the most significant applications of AI has been in blockchain, which has shown potential in solving a lot of big data problems. Storage and backing up of data will be a thing of the past if AI continues at the pace at which it is right now.
Swift Communication
Ever thought of a world with limitless communication? Well, AI has already introduced us to that space. A lot of the businesses today are involved with automation on a daily basis, without even knowing it. Email marketing, for example, allows for the delivery of messages to customers automatically. Companies get to save a lot of resources with such marketing campaigns.
On another note, real-time communication is now very possible and instantaneous at that. With the click of a button, you can converse with anyone in the world in real-time. Such technology, including chatbots and social media platforms, has become useful in the business world, making customer relations easier.
Better Medical Care
The greatest input that artificial intelligence could have in medical care will be in assisting with some of the medical tasks, like surgery, screening services, along with transplant and grafting processes. AI technology is likely to come in strongly with regard to creating substitute solutions that mimic body parts of humans to play a similar role.
One of the first robotic systems, da Vinci® Xi, developed to perform minimally-invasive surgical procedures. (Source: Marcy Sanchez/Wikimedia Commons)
While that may be a bit far-fetched for the moment, today, medical centers are already enjoying artificial intelligence in a different way - chatbots and mobiles apps have speeded up liaising and communication between medical experts, making the processes better and faster than before.
Improved Productivity in the Workplace
With AI, a lot of processes in a company will become simpler than they are right now. Firms today are capitalizing on machine learning automation in talent acquisition and employee recruitment. This renders organizations with a lot of insights on the candidates they hire, after thorough scrutiny. The human resource departments use automation processes like scheduling interviews with candidates and tracking down potential employees.
Other than this, there is a chance of higher productivity from humans when their work is made easier. Technically, robots can help solve heavy-duty tasks in the workplace, leaving employees with a manageable workload to handle. Issues like organization, data storage, record keeping, financial analysis, and IT (self-configurable software and hardware) will not be so much of a bother with automation software to handle them.
Top Image: Over the years, AI has made its way into the many, already-established industries. (Source: Pixabay)
https://hackernoon.com/what-to-expect-with-the-future-of-ai-technology-782aec311a54?gi=5bb7eb3baaca
https://readwrite.com/2019/03/27/future-of-artificial-intelligence-for-2020/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/vishalmarria/2019/01/11/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-in-the-workplace/
Duncan Kingori
Duncan Kingori has been in the writing profession for a decade now. He has experience writing informative articles and his work has been appreciated and published in many popular publications. His educational background in communication and public relations has given him a concrete base from which to approach different topics in various niches.Read More
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Valiant Heads to the City of Brotherly Love for Keystone Comic Con 2018!
by First Comics News on September 4, 2018 Valiant Heads to the City of Brotherly Love for Keystone Comic Con 2018!2018-09-04T11:09:48-07:00 - News
Next week, Valiant makes its way to Philadelphia for the inaugural Keystone Comic Con, an incredible weekend of fun for comics and pop culture fans!
On Friday, September 14th at 1:30 PM ET, join the publisher in the Keystone Theater of the Philadelphia Convention Center for VALIANT 101 AND BEYOND!
New to the Valiant Universe? There’s never been a better time to become a fan! Jump on board right here with a fun-filled introduction to the origins and adventures of Valiant’s greatest heroes – from past hits like HARBINGER to current bestsellers like X-O MANOWAR, and brand-new upcoming titles featuring FAITH, BLOODSHOT, LIVEWIRE, and more! Valiant has been hailed as the premier superhero publisher in comics today… Now, look no further than this panel to find out where to start!
PLUS: As part of the publisher’s recently announced #ValiantVisits initiative, a representative from Valiant’s dedicated and hardworking sales team will also be making pit stops at local comic shops throughout the greater Philadelphia area, including:
Atomic City Comics
Brave New Worlds
Fat Jack’s Comicrypt
Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse
Wade’s Comic Madness
From September 14th to September 16th, be sure to check in on Twitter with the hashtag #ValiantVisits all weekend long for photos and info about each store!
We’ll see you in the City of Brotherly Love!
https://www.firstcomicsnews.com/valiant-heads-to-the-city-of-brotherly-love-for-keystone-comic-con-2018/https://www.firstcomicsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/valiant-logo-600x257.pnghttps://www.firstcomicsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/valiant-logo-150x64.png 2018-09-04T11:09:48-07:00 First Comics NewsNews
Next week, Valiant makes its way to Philadelphia for the inaugural Keystone Comic Con, an incredible weekend of fun for comics and pop culture fans! On Friday, September 14th at 1:30 PM ET, join the publisher in the Keystone Theater of the Philadelphia Convention Center for VALIANT 101 AND BEYOND! New to...
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Morning Glory on the Vine
JONI MITCHELL is widely regarded as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of her generation. Her album Blue (1971) is often cited as one of the best albums of all time. Mitchell has won nine Grammys in various categories, including traditional pop, pop music, and lifetime achievement. Born in Canada, she now lives in her longtime home of Los Angeles.
"These drawings and writings, arranged so artfully and carefully, feel like an anchor in an increasingly unsteady world." -- The New Yorker
"A revelation for her devoted listeners, Morning Glory is a comforting and intimate look at what caught an artist's eye when she was at the peak of her chaparral mountain." -- Los Angeles Times
"Nearly 50 years (after putting the drawings in a binder), Mitchell's intimate gift was widely released for the first time . . . Titled Morning Glory on the Vine -- a line from Neil Young's "Motion Pictures (For Carrie)" -- the collection features more than 30 original watercolor paintings, handwritten lyrics and poems . . . Highlights of the book include the handwritten lyrics to "A Case of You" and "I'm a Radio" (later changed to "You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio" on 1972's For the Roses) and subtle portraits of James Taylor playing the piano and Judy Collins surrounded by flowers." -- Rolling Stone
"Joni Mitchell is a major painter . . . This is a book that she created as a Christmas present for her friends in 1971 and is now published for the first time. It is just a gorgeous, gorgeous book." -- Bill Goldstein, WNBC-TV
"Joni Mitchell figured out the perfect gift for the people who have everything." -- Washington Post
"The folk legend's astonishing duality is on full display in this exquisite compilation of dreamy watercolors, drawings, and handwritten lyrics." --O, The Oprah Magazine
"Joni Mitchell's decision to publish her handmade 1971 art & lyric book Morning Glory On The Vine reframed some of her most well-known work." -- Rolling Stone
"This handsomely produced oversized book, which includes lyrics of such classics as River and Woodstock as well as vibrant portraits of Graham Nash, Neil Young and Mitchell herself, is a must for her fans." -- Tampa Bay Times
"Like most anything Mitchell touches, her book is a stroke of genius... Morning Glory on the Vine bears fruits both retrospective and prospective, celebrating a lifetime of brilliant artistry... Joni Mitchell has been reclaiming, and affirming, her humanity (and ours) for five decades. Her latest masterwork continues, ever so genuinely, in that grounding and illuminating tradition." -- PopMatters
"There are probably few documents that evoke the halcyon Laurel Canyon of those years than this lovingly compiled book, which will be familiar to anyone who spent more than a few minutes staring at Mitchell's self-designed album covers of the era while "Ladies of the Canyon" or "Court and Spark" spun on the turntable." -- Variety
Home » Books » Music » Instruction & Study » General
Home » Books » Arts & Photography » Art » Individual Artist
Morning Glory On The Vine Books
Joni Mitchell Books
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Florida Conference archives to receive permanent home at Florida Southern College
July 21, 2006 News media contact: Tita Parham*
NOTE: This is one of a series of articles related to news from the “Witness With Power” 2006 Florida Annual Conference Event June 1-3 in Lakeland.
By J.A. Buchholz**
LAKELAND — Old hymnals, Bibles and records dating back to the early 1800s are just some of the many items included in the Florida Conference archives. Photo by Caryl Kelley, Photo #06-405.
LAKELAND — It’s been a long time coming, but a vote by delegates at the 2006 Florida Annual Conference Event last June approved the deal for a permanent home for the collection of items making up the conference’s archives.
Delegates approved a plan to house archival material at the Roux Library on the campus of Florida Southern College (FSC). An anonymous donor pledged $1 million to cover the costs of constructing a two-story addition to the library. It is proposed that the archives be housed on the first floor.
Mary Alice Massey, president of the conference’s board of trustees, said several plans to house the archives were developed over the years, but never materialized. She said the first can be traced to the “Claim the Flame” capital campaign launched in 1990. Its goal was to raise $6.4 million for eight projects, or priorities of the conference, including youth camp housing, maintenance and building improvements at the Life Enrichment Center (LEC) in Fruitland Park, a home for the archives and others. Massey said funds would have covered the cost of staffing and maintenance of an archives facility had they ever been raised.
Massey said one plan developed later called for building an archives center that would be connected to the existing Florida Conference Center in Lakeland. Another specified constructing a building at the LEC. Funding was again a problem in both scenarios.
When Florida Conference Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker became bishop of the conference he supported the cause for a permanent home for archives and appealed to every church in the conference to donate $100 toward the effort. “I think churches had other priorities,” Massey said.
Funding issues took a back seat when Dr. Anne B. Kerr, FSC’s 17th president, expressed an interest in having the archives at the college and the anonymous donor provided the money to make it happen.
“I’m real excited about it,” Massey said. “Right now the legal papers are being finished. We hope to break ground in the fall.”
Nell Thrift, the conference’s archivist, is also pleased with the decision. “I am delighted that Florida Southern College has invited the conference to house our archives in the new facility being built there,” she said. “It is an ideal situation, as the conference and college are so closely related. A shared facility offers advantages that a building of our own would not provide.”
LAKELAND — During the archives presentation at this year's annual conference event the ministry of churches celebrating significant anniversaries was recognized. Photo by Caryl Kelley, Photo #06-406.
Thrift said the building will house both the various archives collections of the college and the conference archives. She said the fact the college will provide the staffing, maintenance and major funding for the building is an added bonus.
“I see it as a research center that will be used by many people, including students at the college,” Thrift said. “In addition, there will be a museum area so that we can exhibit artifacts related to the Florida Conference. The visibility that our archives will have on the campus will enhance its use.”
Massey said FSC will definitely be an improvement over the commercial storage facility now housing the archives. Some archives are also being stored at the college in a small room that is not accessible to researchers.
“These do not have the climate control essential for preservation,” Thrift said. “The new building will enable us to meet the (Book of Discipline) requirement for safe storage of the records that we are charged with keeping and will make them accessible.”
Those items include information about churches that have closed, district conference records, records of conference boards and agencies, conference journals dating back to 1871, conference newspapers, files on all the churches in the conference and on many ministers, photographs of past and present ministers, personal papers of some past members of the conference and many other items, according to Thrift. She said the oldest item in the collection is the quarterly conference record of the Newnansville Methodist Episcopal Church, South, now First United Methodist Church, Alachua, from 1844.
“The Florida Conference has a rich heritage that should be shared,” Thrift said. “It is only by knowing our roots that we can understand the present and plan for the future. Churches, conference agencies and individuals will now have access to properly stored and catalogued materials that will enable them to explore the past.”
Massey has similar feelings. “People love history,” she said. “This is an important step.”
This article relates to Florida Conference Archives and the 2006 Florida Annual Conference Event.
**Buchholz is a staff writer for e-Review Florida United Methodist News Service.
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Beer Chevron Right
You Could Be Sipping on Beer and Wine at the NCAA Final Four as Soon as Next Season
The NCAA reversed its ban on alcohol at its sanctioned postseason events and talks to start serving beer and wine are already underway.
The college hoops season is only just getting started, but if you prefer watching college basketball with a beer in your hand, you may want to start looking ahead to the Final Four… of 2019. Yes, next season’s Final Four is seen as the most lucrative prize after a recent NCAA rule change has opened the way for alcohol to be sold at NCAA championship events – including the association’s highest profile events, the men’s and women’s college basketball championship tournaments known as March Madness.
Late last month, the NCAA’s Board of Governors rescinded its policy banning alcohol sales at NCAA-sanctioned postseason events, instead choosing to let each collegiate division decide on whether to allow alcohol sales individually. Though Division II and Division III, the leagues which encompass smaller schools, have not shown any immediate interest in allowing the sale of beer and wine, Division I, where the biggest names in collegiate athletics compete, reportedly jumped on the opportunity. Though Crain’s Detroit Business said it’s unclear whether beer and wine sales could be approved in time for this year’s March Madness tournament, the publication cited the Indianapolis Business Journal which reported that sports marketers believe that the beverages will almost certainly be available for the Final Four in 2019, with another source saying that preliminary talks are already underway to serve beer and wine throughout every round of both the men’s and the women’s hoops tournaments.
Meanwhile, basketball is only the largest NCAA-sanctioned event. Apparently, alcohol sales could feasibly be allowed during any NCAA postseason event that already provides the facilities for dispensing beer and wine. That means lacrosse, wrestling, volleyball and ice hockey could all likely see alcohol sales by next year according to these reports. The decision comes after a pilot program testing beer and wine sales at postseason events last year proved successful.
Additionally, though the NCAA’s decision only affects the events it runs, a number of major schools have also been moving forward selling beer and wine on their own. “Several of our Division I member schools are selling alcohol at their campus-sponsored, regular-season events,” Eric Kaler, president at the University of Minnesota and chairman of the Division I Board of Directors, told the Indianapolis Business Journal. “Moving toward alcohol sales at championships only makes sense from both a fan experience and safety perspective.”
After decades of schools distancing themselves from alcohol, a sea change has definitely been underway in the past few years when it comes to colleges, alcohol and sports. As we wrote about in September, a surprising number of colleges have even gotten their own officially-licensed beers in recent seasons, typically displaying things like the college’s nickname, colors or mascot. Now, if one of these teams makes it all the way to the postseason, who knows, you might even be able to toast the team’s beer while watching them compete for an NCAA title?
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House Passes Bill That Could Have Teens Facing 15 Years For Trying To Sext
Janet Burns Contributor
I cover labor, culture, drugs, AI, and more.
Third-time offenders would be fined and imprisoned for "not less than 35 years nor more than life."
In Washington as in life, certain roads may be paved with good intentions, but critics of a purportedly well-meaning new bill warn it would lead to major suffering for the very people it's meant to protect: U.S. teenagers.
Last week, the House of Representatives approved H.R.1761, also known as the "Protecting Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017," which builds on current law that makes teen-to-teen sexting a crime. Reportedly aimed at closing "loopholes" in child pornography legislation, the bill received support from all but two Republican congressmen, Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who voted against the bill along with 53 democrats.
Under the present law, any individual who violates its terms or conspires to do "shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 15 years nor more than 30 years." Second-time offenders, meanwhile, or those that have previously been convicted of related or (in some cases) arguably unrelated offenses under federal and/or military rules, would be fined and imprisoned "for not less than 25 years nor more than 50 years" under the law. Third-time offenders would be fined and imprisoned for "not less than 35 years nor more than life."
With the proposed changes, the revised law would read quite similarly to the old one, but with some added conditions which seemingly affect the scope of culpability for child pornographers of any age, including those persons involved in its transport or transmission, their guardians,or other potential collaborators. The newly defined circumstances surrounding such violations are:
“(1) that the person knows or has reason to know that such visual depiction will be (A) transported or transmitted using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce; (B) transported or transmitted in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce; or (C) mailed;
“(2) the visual depiction was produced or transmitted using materials that have been mailed, or shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer;
“(3) such visual depiction has actually been (A) transported or transmitted using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce; (B) transported or transmitted in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce; or (C) mailed; or
“(4) any part of the offense occurred in a territory or possession of the United States or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
Meaning, as The Stranger's Dan Savage explained, "It's not just sexting—actually sending or receiving sexts ... Your kid could get 15 years for attempting to send or receive a sext ... [or be] forced to take a plea deal offered by an overzealous prosecutor: probation, community service, and having to register as a sex offender for the rest of their life, which will make it impossible for your kid to get an education, find a job, or a place to live." Savage also reflected that even the latter outcome effectively amounts to "a social death sentence—just the threat of which has prompted more than one teenager to kill themselves."
See also: GOP Plan Calls Sexual Assault 'Preexisting;' Meanwhile, Men Are Sneaking Off Condoms For Sport
Addressing the purely digital side of such violations, another new section establishes, "Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, no criminal charge under subsection (a)(3) may be brought against an electronic communication service provider or remote computing service provider unless such provider has intentionally transmitted or caused to be transmitted a visual depiction with actual knowledge that such depiction is of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, nor may any such criminal charge be brought if barred by the provisions of section 2258B”--meaning that unwitting ISPs and the like would broadly be off the hook.
Former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner (C) exits federal court in Manhattan after pleading... [+] guilty to federal charges of transmitting sexual material to a minor in on May 19, 2017 in New York City. (Credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)
As Savage pointed out, research has suggested that—for better or worse, and despite laws already prohibiting the practice—the majority of teens have engaged in sexting, though most don't know it could land them in jail. A 2014 study by Drexel University, for one, found that more than half of undergrads who'd participated in an anonymous online survey admitted to sexting when they were teens, with almost 30% saying they'd included photos, and over 60% revealing they were unaware such acts violated child pornography laws.
This week, Reason editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown reported that House opponents have also been speaking out about the bill's dangers for youth populations. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, called the measure "deadly and counterproductive," and commented during a House debate over the issue, "While the bill is well intended, it is overbroad in scope and will punish the very people it indicates it is designed to protect: our children, [and] exacerbate overwhelming concerns with the unfair and unjust mandatory minimum sentencing that contributes to the overcriminalization of juveniles and mass incarceration generally."
According to Reason, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) also described the bill as "particularly appalling" during House discussions because it would explicitly subject teenagers who not only "engage in consensual conduct" to a mandatory minimum prison term of 15 years, but also those who try to. He continued, "That means if a teenager attempts to obtain a photo of sexually explicit conduct by requesting it from his teenage girlfriend, the judge must sentence that teenager to prison for at least 15 years for making such an attempt."
See also: New York Could Adopt 'Textalyzer' Device For Busting Distracted Drivers
As Reason reported, a statement of opposition filed by House dissenters further argued that subjecting young people and others to "substantial" mandatory prison sentences would be a huge disservice not just to teenagers, but to our country's justice system as a whole. "For far too long, the federal criminal justice system has relied on an unsustainable system of mass-incarceration that is largely driven by inflexible mandatory minimum sentencing," the congresspeople wrote. They continued,
Mandatory minimum penalties are applied inconsistently, contribute to unwarranted sentence disparity, disproportionate and excessively high sentences, and constitute neither a deterrent nor an effective law enforcement tool ... Minority communities across the country have been especially impacted by mandatory minimum sentences. In an effort to earnestly reconcile the lessons learned in recent years, it is necessary to begin eliminating mandatory minimum penalties.
Reason pointed out, "[The] FBI probably isn't about to start rounding up teen sexters in mass. But what will happen the next time ICE finds a racy image on a 17-year-old Mexican immigrant's phone?"
However, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), the pro-Trump freshman congressman who introduced the bill in March, emphasized that the loophole-tightening changes would help legislation align more closely with "[government's] moral obligation [to] defend the defenseless."
See also: Sperm-Halting 'Molecular Condoms' May Be The Future Of Male Birth Control
[h/t The Stranger]
[Edited to remove a Bible passage quoted by Rep. Johnson during the House's floor discussions, and to clarify H.R. 1761's proposed legislative changes at 11:38 pm EDT]
Janet Burns
I'm a freelance writer covering tech, media, science, and culture. My background includes the areas of writing, editing, and education, and I received Bachelor and Mast
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Welsh Flags and Banners
July 09, 2019 3 min read
The National Flag of Wales is universally known to all Welshmen and women and to many others around the world. Welsh flags images have consistently been judged as one of the most iconic flags of the world, not just being an arrangement of colours but that of a confident, fiery Welsh dragon – Y Ddraig Goch or the Welsh dragon flag! The Welsh national flag shows the Dragon as a red dragon passant (a passant being an animal shown as walking with the right front foot and its tail raised) on a green and white background. Its not only iconic but many believe that it is one of the oldest flags in the world.
Owain Glyndwr's Day
Celebration Days Wales
Cilmeri Holy Ground
Although Wales is part of the United Kingdom, to many it is strange that no part of the Welsh flag is represented in the Union Jack flag at all! An Act of parliament back in 1535 is the law which joined Wales to England, and at that time the St George’s Cross of England (the red cross on a white background) was adopted for the 'Kingdom of England' which, following the 1535 Act then included Wales. The first Union Flag was created in 1606, and it included parts of Scotland’s (the Saltire or Saint Andrew's Cross, a white X-cross on a blue background), and England's flags. In 1801 the current Union Flag (commonly called the Union Jack) was created, incorporating a further element to represent Ireland (the Saltire of St Patrick: a red X-cross on a white background). So, for historical and legal reasons going back to 1535, Wales has no separate representation in the Union Flag.
For all Welsh men and women, this is disappointing and even more so as to almost anybody, the Welsh flag is far superior to the Union Jack! Amazingly, it was not until 1959 that the Queen Elizabeth declared that ‘only the Red Dragon on a green and white flag should be flown on government buildings in Wales’. Here is a list of many other Welsh Flags, many of which are still flown in public today.
National Welsh Flags
Here are some of the older or even old Welsh flags...
Welsh Flag - Current from 1953 Welsh Flag - From 1807 to 1953
St David's Current St David's with Red Dragon
Royal Welsh Flags
Owain Glyndwr Powys Mathrafal Deheubarth
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Powys Fadog Gwynedd
Today it is common to see the flag of Owain Glyndwr flying all across Wales. The nationalist movement in Wales has always held Owain Glyndwr in high regard, but he is now a figure of mass culture in Wales, with statues and monuments alongside pub and street names commemorating him. Owain Glyndwr's Day, 16th September, commemorates the last native Welsh person to hold the title Prince of Wales.
Our company, FelinFach Natural Textiles is located in the heart of the Preseli area of Pembrokeshire near to Boncath. We design Welsh blankets, Welsh woollen blankets and throws which are traditionally woven at Welsh mills. We also design and make natural hand dyed yarn, cotton, silk and wool scarves and other handmade products. We are a proud supporter of the Campaign for Wool, Global Welsh and Wales International.
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Dana Barnaby
Mr. Barnaby is a TV and Film Director, Writer and Producer. Some of his most recent accomplishments include: Co-Creator, Exec-producer and Writer two forthcoming Web Series’, “The Motorcycle Diaries (TMD)” 2011 and “Remain Calm” 2010: Producer & Director for Angel, a music video for Alessia: Producer & Writer for Lincoln MKS Commercial: Producer, Writer & Director for the 2009 short film Passion (finalist in the International Ford Mustang Competition) and the Short Film Lemonade (Winner of "Audience Choice Award" - Whistler Film Fest.). In addition, Dana has worked on several music video’s for some of World’s best recording artists, of which include Nickleback, Shania Twain, Michael Buble, and U2. Mr. Barnaby has also Co-produced and Photographed the “Leo Award” nominated feature short film, “Three Rings”. The award nominations included: Best Cinematography and Best “Short” film. Dana began his television and film career in Calgary, Alberta over 18 years ago. Graduating with both a Broadcast Communication Associate degree and a film diploma, Mr. Barnaby began writing and producing television commercials for CFCN TV’s production house, White Iron Film & Video. In 1991, while still in school, Dana won his first Bessie Award for outstanding achievement in Commercial production while sharing a second Bessie (cinematographer) in 1996 for “Best TV Commercial Campaign” entitled “Children”, an Alberta Government Telephone television commercial. In 1993, Dana moved to Vancouver to further his experience in Film Production, becoming a member of the International Photographer’s Guild (IATSE 669), where he gained invaluable technical and operational knowledge of the film industry. Through extensive Camera assistant work programs and fourteen years of technical contracts on feature films, television series and Commercial production, Mr. Barnaby’s knowledge base has enabled him to successfully write, direct, produce and photograph independent film and Commercial projects. In 2007, Dana moved to Toronto to further pursue his career as a Commercial/TV Director and Screenplay Writer. Dana has over twenty-five years of experience in and around the music industry. Formally trained in Jazz and classical music, Mr. Barnaby is an accomplished singer and songwriter. He has toured through Japan, Canada and the Western United States, in both large ensembles and a high energy seven piece original “Ska” Band. “The Fabulous Hipstones”, toured western Canada from 1989 through 1993, in support of several Campus Radio chart toppers. As an integral part of the song writing and recording success of this band, Dana arranged and composed songs, along with the set up and mixing of “live” and studio performances. In September 2010, Dana launched a new music project entitled The Dick Jones Band, in which he is the principle songwriter and performer.
Send Friend request to Dana
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Tobias Berg among the top 10 of the best economists
Latest VWL-Ranking of the magazine Handelsblatt
The Handelsblatt published its current ranking on economic research in mid-September 2019. The ranking was compiled by the KOF (Konjunkturforschungsstelle) research institute of ETH Zurich and the University of Düsseldorf’s DICE (Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics). The results are divided into rankings for institutes and faculties, and rankings for individual scientists.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Berg, Associate Professor of Finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, ranks second among the leading economists at German universities. Tobias Berg ranks ninth in research performance for all German-speaking economists worldwide over the last five years. Tobias Berg conducts research in the field of financial intermediation and corporate finance, focusing on risk management, banking regulation and the real effects of financial intermediation.
In the "Ranking of under 40-year-olds“ category, three scientists from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management have also made the top 100: Professor of Microeconomics Prof. Dr. Sebastian Ebert, professor of Macroeconomics, Prof. Dr. Benjamin Born and also Tobias Berg.
"I am delighted to represent Frankfurt School along with my colleagues in such good positions in the Handelsblatt ranking," said Tobias Berg. "The Handelsblatt put particular emphasis on research in internationally renowned academic journals and that is exactly what we at the Frankfurt School are focusing on.“
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DHS Issues Two New Immigration Enforcement Memos
John Kelly, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has signed two new memoranda that implement two of President Trump’s recent immigration executive orders. The DHS memos call for, among other things, strict enforcement of immigration laws, stepped-up detentions and enhancement of expedited removal. As part of the new enforcement efforts, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will seek funding to hire 10,000 new officers and agents and the Border Patrol will seek funding to hire 5,000 new agents.
Among other things, the DHS memos clarify that:
Anyone who has committed any immigration violation is now at risk of being put into deportation proceedings.
Many more people will be detained under the new guidelines.
DHS will expand its 287(g) program to allow state and local police to identify and hand over suspected immigration violators.
DHS will expand its existing expedited removal program so that many more people will be immediately removed without a hearing unless they are an unaccompanied minor, intend to apply for asylum or have a fear of persecution or torture in their home country, or claim to have lawful immigration status. Previously, expedited removal only applied to people who were caught within 100 miles of the border within 14 days after entering the country. Now expedited removal will apply to people who have been in the United States for less than two years. A Federal Register notice will soon follow to make this change.
The executive orders and implementing memos do not affect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Below are details of the two memoranda:
Memo implementing “border security” executive order. A memorandum issued on February 20, 2017, from Mr. Kelly to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), ICE, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, among others, implements the “Border Security and Enforcement Improvements” executive order signed by President Donald Trump on January 25, 2017. The memo calls for detention of people arriving at the borders pending final removal determinations. The memo also ends “catch-and-release” policies and states that discretionary parole authority may be exercised only on a case-by-case basis and only for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. Among other things, the memo calls for a “surge” in deployment of immigration judges and asylum officers to interview recent border entrants and adjudicate their claims, and the establishment of “appropriate processing and detention facilities.”
The memo also orders immigration officers who determine that an arriving person is inadmissible to the United States under INA § 212(a)(6)(C) or (a)(7) to order the person removed “without further hearing or review” unless the person is an unaccompanied alien child, indicates an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution or torture or a fear of return to his or her country, or claims to have a valid immigration status within the United States or to be a citizen or national of the United States.
The memo states that as DHS works to expand detention capabilities, detention resources should be prioritized based on potential danger and risk of flight. The guidance “does not prohibit the return of an alien who is arriving on land to the foreign territory contiguous to the United States from which the alien is arriving pending a removal proceeding.”
The memo also calls for enlisting state and local law enforcement agencies and personnel to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Among other things, the memo also calls for identification and allocation of funding sources to build a wall along the southern border.
Memo implementing “public safety” executive order. A second memorandum also issued on February 20, 2017, from Mr. Kelly to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), ICE, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, among others, implements the “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” executive order signed by President Trump on January 25, 2017.
The memo states that with the exception of the June 15, 2012, memorandum entitled “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children,” and the November 20, 2014, memorandum entitled “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children and with Respect to Certain Individuals Who Are the Parents of U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents,’’ all existing conflicting directives, memoranda, or field guidance regarding the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and priorities for removal are immediately rescinded, including the November 20, 2014, memoranda entitled “Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants” and “Secure Communities.”
The memo states plainly that other than Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries, DHS “no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.” Among other things, the memo states that DHS personnel should prioritize for removal “criminal aliens” and those who: (1) have been convicted of any criminal offense; (2) have been charged with any criminal offense that has not been resolved; (3) have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense; (4) have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter before a governmental agency; (5) have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits; (6) are subject to a final order of removal but have not complied with their legal obligation to depart the United States; or (7) in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.
The memo also states that DHS “will no longer afford Privacy Act rights and protections to persons who are neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents.”
Meanwhile, in other news, there are rumors that a revised travel ban executive order will be issued shortly. Stay tuned.
Links to the executive orders and related fact sheets, the two DHS memos, press releases, and additional information are located here.
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ACID – Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability? – Information Systems Essay
ACID is an acronym that stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. This term is used to describe enterprise level database transactions and the goals that every system must strive to achieve. The ACID model is one of the oldest and most important concepts of database theory and no database that fails to meet any of the four goals is considered reliable.
Atomicity is an all-or-none proposition. Suppose you define a transaction that contains an UPDATE, an INSERT, and a DELETE statement. With atomicity, these statements are treated as a single unit, and thanks to consistency (the C in ACID) there are only two possible outcomes: either they all change the database or none of them do. As we discussed in class this is important in situations like bank transactions where transferring money between accounts could result in disaster if the server were to go down after a DELETE statement but before the corresponding INSERT statement. It would simply not be acceptable for a bank system to only debit an account as it would in this system.
Consistency guarantees that a transaction never leaves the database in a semi finished state. If one part of the transaction fails, all of the pending changes are rolled back, leaving the database as it was before you initiated the transaction. Again as we discussed in class, when you delete a customer record, you should also delete all of that customer’s records from associated tables. A properly configured database wouldn’t let you delete the customer record, if that meant leaving remains of a customer’s records in a table such as invoices.
Isolation keeps transactions separated from each other until they’re finished. Transaction isolation is generally configurable in a variety of modes. For example, in one mode, a transaction blocks until the other transaction finishes. In a different mode, a transaction sees obsolete data. Suppose a user deletes a customer, and before the customer’s invoices are deleted, a second user updates one of those invoices. In a blocking transaction scenario, the second user would have to wait for the first user’s deletions to complete before issuing the update. The second user would then find out that the customer had been deleted, which is much better than losing changes without knowing about it.
Durability guarantees that the database will keep track of pending changes in such a way that the server can recover from an abnormal termination. Hence, even if the database server is unplugged in the middle of a transaction, it will return to a consistent state when it’s restarted. The database handles this by storing uncommitted transactions in a transaction log. By virtue of consistency (explained above), a partially completed transaction won’t be written to the database in the event of an abnormal termination. However, when the database is restarted after such a termination, it examines the transaction log for completed transactions that had not been committed, and applies them.
Research Papers on ACID - Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability? - Information Systems Essay
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Extreme Execs
Sometime in Africa
My Worst Day
Another Term For Plus-Size Please?
Africa: Undiscovered
Forbes Woman Africa
On November 4, 2015, plus-size French model Clémentine Desseaux received a $90 gift from Christian Louboutin – a luscious new Rouge Velvet Matte lipstick from the French design house. Louboutin, known for its iconic red-soled heels, entered the beauty business in recent years.
The excited Desseaux posted a 15-second video on her social media account wearing the new lip color, which subsequently was reposted by the brand.
Within minutes, the online world was buzzing with excitement at what it assumed was the ground-breaking new campaign from the Louboutin brand featuring a plus-size model.
Although a false claim, it left a dark cloud hanging over the multi-billion dollar beauty industry – why is it not apparently accepting, yet, of curvier women?
The issue of plus-size models is one that has been highly debated and as a consequence has led to several hashtag campaigns on social media calling for the abolishment of the term. By definition, when a model wears a size greater than 12, she is considered ‘plus-sized’ in the fashion industry. For those against the term, the main argument is in the meaning of the word ‘plus’ which denotes a bigger size than average. Pressure from activists in previous years led to the dissuasion of size zero models who seemed to be the go-to clothes hangers for all major runway campaigns. In the sea of confusing body image messages bombarding women, something needed to be done.
The above paragraphs explain why Linda Ojoma Idegwu, a Nigerian fashion entrepreneur, was the woman to shake things up.
Instead of creating yet another campaign calling her fellow plus-size ‘sisters’ to stand together and fight the system, she decided on a different strategy.
Cue the creation of Dear Curves, which has now come to be a leading plus-size women’s fashion line in Nigeria. For Idegwu, the fight is much bigger than the banning of the term ‘plus-size’.
“I love my body and I am not afraid to be a size 16. I work out and I exercise but I feel being plus-size does not mean you are unhealthy. So I thought it was unfair that the media generalized all plus-size women as unhealthy. For me this is a movement, so it’s not just about clothes, I am very much pro-love and pro-curves and encouraging women to love themselves,” says Idegwu.
The idea was sown in 2012 but germinated a couple of years later after Idegwu tried her hand at different professions including working part time at a retail company in the United Kingdom (UK).
“At the time, it was a hobby. But leaving the UK, I saw there were so many fat-shaming and derogatory statements made about women who were plus-size and I found that very strange because I grew up in a culture where being curvy or plus-size was celebrated.”
In her early years, Idegwu, like every peppy teenager, had dreams of snaring the limelight. The burgeoning Nollywood industry at the time was a melting pot for youthful talent and like many of her peers, Idegwu was determined to leave her mark.
The young Idegwu even featured in a sitcom in Lagos called Twilight Zone but it was her love for fashion that would eventually set her on the course to international acclaim. Her Dear Curves brand has been featured in Vogue Italia and Huffington Post and other notable international publications. For Idegwu, her goal is simple – clothing for women with curves needs to be both fashionable and empowering.
This ethos is at the heart of everything she does. The company was started with £500 of Idegwu’s savings. She learned the sewing trade from her mother who also doubled as a teacher. Being the first of 10 siblings, Idegwu had to be independent from a very early age, which gave birth to her inner entrepreneur.
“Before going to the UK, while I was waiting for admission into school, I was doing my fashion business on the side. I was designing for men, I had a team of two people, where we did a bit of illustrations and created kaftans for men and that was very successful,” she says.
Being a plus-size model herself, Idegwu knows all too well the challenges of securing opportunities in the competitive world of modeling. Fashion retail has come a long way in terms of inclusion of plus-size models in fashion campaigns but the beauty industry still lags significantly behind in following this trend. For Dear Curves, the goal is to be an internationally-recognized brand encouraging women to love themselves no matter their size.
“I want to have a bigger percentage of the plus-size market. We do not have a stand-alone shop yet because we do not feel like we need it yet, but we have some concessions and boutiques who we work with because this is a contemporary affordable luxury brand,” she says.
With plans to expand across Nigeria and then in Ghana, currently, 76% of her orders are from customers in the United States where the average size is 14, according to Idegwu. Her brand is featured in the hit US series, Empire, and as the debate continues to rage on about the future of the plus-size model, Idegwu is now spearheading a new movement calling all women to embrace themselves – and their body type.
Related Topics:April 2016Clémentine DesseauxFrenchModelPlus Size
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Climate Explained: How Much Of Climate Change Is Natural? How Much Is Man-made?
How much climate change is natural? How much is man made?
As someone who has been working on climate change detection and its causes for over 20 years I was both surprised and not surprised that I was asked to write on this topic by The Conversation. For nearly all climate scientists, the case is proven that humans are the overwhelming cause of the long-term changes in the climate that we are observing. And that this case should be closed.
Despite this, climate denialists continue to receive prominence in some media which can lead people into thinking that man-made climate change is still in question. So it’s worth going back over the science to remind ourselves just how much has already been established.
Successive reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – mandated by the United Nations to assess scientific evidence on climate change – have evaluated the causes of climate change. The most recent special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees confirms that the observed changes in global and regional climate over the last 50 or so years are almost entirely due to human influence on the climate system and not due to natural causes.
First we should perhaps ask what we mean by climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines climate change as:
a change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.
The causes of climate change can be any combination of:
Internal variability in the climate system, when various components of the climate system – like the atmosphere and ocean – vary on their own to cause fluctuations in climatic conditions, such as temperature or rainfall. These internally-driven changes generally happen over decades or longer; shorter variations such as those related to El Niño fall in the bracket of climate variability, not climate change.
Natural external causes such as increases or decreases in volcanic activity or solar radiation. For example, every 11 years or so, the Sun’s magnetic field completely flips and this can cause small fluctuations in global temperature, up to about 0.2 degrees. On longer time scales – tens to hundreds of millions of years – geological processes can drive changes in the climate, due to shifting continents and mountain building.
Human influence through greenhouse gases (gases that trap heat in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide and methane), other particles released into the air (which absorb or reflect sunlight such as soot and aerosols) and land-use change (which affects how much sunlight is absorbed on land surfaces and also how much carbon dioxide and methane is absorbed and released by vegetation and soils).
What changes have been detected?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report showed that, on average, the global surface air temperature has risen by 1°C since the beginning of significant industrialisation (which roughly started in the 1850s). And it is increasing at ever faster rates, currently 0.2°C per decade, because the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have themselves been increasing ever faster.
The oceans are warming as well. In fact, about 90% of the extra heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases is being absorbed by the oceans.
A warmer atmosphere and oceans are causing dramatic changes, including steep decreases in Arctic summer sea ice which is profoundly impacting arctic marine ecosystems, increasing sea level rise which is inundating low lying coastal areas such as Pacific island atolls, and an increasing frequency of many climate extremes such as drought and heavy rain, as well as disasters where climate is an important driver, such as wildfire, flooding and landslides.
Multiple lines of evidence, using different methods, show that human influence is the only plausible explanation for the patterns and magnitude of changes that have been detected.
This human influence is largely due to our activities that release greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, as well sunlight absorbing soot. The main sources of these warming gases and particles are fossil fuel burning, cement production, land cover change (especially deforestation) and agriculture.
Weather attribution
Most of us will struggle to pick up slow changes in the climate. We feel climate change largely through how it affects weather from day-to-day, season-to-season and year-to-year.
The weather we experience arises from dynamic processes in the atmosphere, and interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans and the land surface. Human influence on the broader climate system acts on these processes so that the weather today is different in many ways from how it would have been.
One way we can more clearly see climate change is by looking at severe weather events. A branch of climate science, called extreme event or weather attribution, looks at memorable weather events and estimates the extent of human influence on the severity of these events. It uses weather models run with and without measured greenhouse gases to estimate how individual weather events would have been different in a world without climate change.
As of early 2019, nearly 70% of weather events that have been assessed in this way were shown to have had their likelihood and/or magnitude increased by human influence on climate. In a world without global warming, these events would have been less severe. Some 10% of the studies showed a reduction in likelihood, while for the remaining 20% global warming has not had a discernible effect. For example, one study showed that human influence on climate had increased the likelihood of the 2015-2018 drought that afflicted Cape Town in South Africa by a factor of three.
Adapting to a changing climate
Weather extremes underlie many of the hazards that damage society and the natural environment we depend upon. As global warming has progressed, so have the frequency and intensity of these hazards, and the damage they cause.
Minimising the impacts of these hazards, and having mechanisms in place to recover quickly from the impacts, is the aim of climate adaptation, as recently reported by the Global Commission on Adaptation.
As the Commission explains, investing in adaptation makes sense from economic, social and ethical perspectives. And as we know that climate change is caused by humans, society cannot use “lack of evidence” on its cause as an excuse for inaction any more.
The Rage And Tears That Tore A Nation
Motlabana Monnakgotla
Snapshots of the outrage against foreign nationals and protests against sexual offenders in South Africa in recent weeks, captured by FORBES AFRICA photojournalist Motlabana Monnakgotla.
As the continent’s second-biggest economy, South Africa attracts migrants from the rest of Africa. But mired in its own problems of unemployment and political instability, September saw a serious outbreak of attacks by South Africans on foreign nationals and foreign-owned businesses. And they have been ugly.
The spark that fueled the raging fire was in Pretoria, the country’s capital, when a taxi driver was shot dead by a foreign national who was selling drugs to a youngster in the central business district (CBD).
The altercation caused a riot and the taxi industry brought the CBD to a standstill, blocking intersections. It did not stop there; a week later, about 60 kilometers from the capital in Malvern, a suburb east of the Johannesburg CBD, a hijacked building caught fire, leaving three dead. As emergency services were putting out the fire, the residents took advantage and looted foreign-owned shops and burned car dealerships overnight on Jules Street.
A burned shop on Jules Street is one of the many shops that were looted. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
A cashier’s window smashed during a looting spree in Katlehong. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
The lootings extended to the CBD and other parts of Johannesburg.
To capture this embarrassing moment in South African history, I visited Katlehong, a township 35 kilometers east of Johannesburg, where the residents blocked roads leading to Sontonga Mall on a mission to loot the mall and the foreign-owned shops therein overnight.
Shop-owners and workers were shocked to wake up to no business.
Mfundo Maljingolo, a worker at Fish And Chips, was among the distressed.
“This thing started last night, people started looting and broke into the mall and did what they wanted to do. I couldn’t go to work today because there’s nothing to do; now, we are not going to get paid. The shop will be losing close to R10,000 ($677) today. It’s messed up,” said Maljingolo.
But South African businesses were affected too.
Among the shops at the mall is Webbers, a clothing and footwear store. Looters could not enter the shop and it was one of the few that escaped the vandalism.
Dineo Nyembe, the store’s manager, said she was in disbelief when she saw people could not enter the mall.
A worker cleans up after a liqour store was looted by Katlehong residents overnight. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
Car dealerships were among the businesses set alight on Jules Street. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
“We got here this morning and the ceiling was wrecked but there was no sign that the shop was entered, everything was just as we left it. Now, we are packing stock back to the warehouse, because we don’t know if they are coming back tonight,” lamented Nyembe, unsure if they would make their daily target or if they would be trading again.
Across the now-wrecked mall are small businesses that were not as fortunate as Webbers, and it was not only the shop-owners that were affected.
Emmanuel Nhlane’s home was robbed even as attackers were looting the shop outside.
“They broke into my house, I was threatened with a petrol bomb and I had to stand outside to give them a chance; they took my fridge, bed, cash and my VHS,” said Nhlane.
Rubble and dust on the streets of Katlehong after a night of looting at a local mall and its foreign-owned shops. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
Nhlane had rented out his yard to foreign nationals to operate a shop. He does not comprehend why his belongings were taken because he doesn’t own a shop. Now, it means that the unemployed Nhlane will not be getting his monthly rental fee of R3,700 ($250).
Far away, the coastal KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, was also affected as trucks burned and a driver was killed because of his nationality. This was part of a logistics and transport industry national strike.
Back in Johannesburg, I visited the car dealerships that were a part of the burning spree on Jules Street.
The streets were still ashy and the air still smoky, two days after the unfortunate turn of events.
Muhamed Haffejee, one of the distraught businessmen there, said: “Currently, we are still not trading.”
Cape Town, in the Western Cape province of South Africa, which hosted the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa from September 4 to 6, was also witness to protests by women and girls from all walks of life outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre, demanding that the leadership take action to end the spate of gender-based violence (GBV) in the country.
There were protests also outside Parliament. What set off the nationwide outcry was the shocking rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana, a 19-year-old film and media student at the University of Cape Town, inside a post office by a 42-year-old employee at the post office.
According to Stats SA, there has been a drastic increase of women-based violence in South Africa. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
Leader of the African National Congress Women’s League, Bathabile Dlamini, was also present outside the JSE. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
There was anger against the ghastly crimes and wave of GBV in the country that continues unabated. According to Stats SA, there has been a drastic increase of women-based violence in South Africa; sexual offences are up by 4.6%, from 50,108 in 2018 to 52,420 in 2019.
A week later, on a Friday, Sandton, Africa’s richest square mile and one of the biggest economic hubs, was shut down by hundreds of angry women and members of advocacy groups from across Johannesburg. They congregated by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), the cynosure of business, singing and chanting, to demand “a 2% levy on profits of all listed entities to help fund the fight against GBV and femicide”.
Among the protesters was Cebi Ngqinanbi, holding a placard that read: “I’m not your punching bag.”
“We came here to disrupt Sandton as the heart of Johannesburg’s economic hub. We want to make everyone aware that women and children are being killed every day in South Africa and they [Sandton] continue with business as usual, sitting in their offices with air-conditioners and the stock exchange whilst people on the ground making them rich are dying. That is why we are here, to speak to those that have economic power,” said Ngqinanbi.
She added that if women can be given economic power, they will be able to fend for themselves and won’t fall prey to abusive men, since most women stay in abusive relationships because men are more financially stable.
Amid the chanting and singing of struggle songs, Nobuhle Ajiti addressed the crowd and shared her own haunting experience as a migrant in South Africa and survivor of GBV. She spoke in isiZulu, a South African language.
“I survived a gang rape; I was thrown out of a moving car and stabbed several times. I survived it, but am I going to survive xenophobia that is looming around in South Africa? Will I able to share my xenophobia story like I can share my GBV story?” questioned Ajiti.
Addressing the resolute women outside was the JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King who received the memorandum demanding business take their plight seriously. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
Women hold up placards stating their grievences against GBV. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
She said as migrants, they did not wake up in the morning and decide to come to South Africa, but because of the hardships faced in their home countries, they were forced to come to what they perceived as the city of opportunities. And as a foreign national, she had to deal with both xenophobia and GBV.
“We experience institutionalized xenophobia in hospitals; we are forced to pay huge amounts for consultation. I am raped and I need medical attention and I am told I need to pay R5,000 ($250).
“As a mere migrant, where am I going to get R5,000? I get abused at home and the police officer would ask me where I’m from because of my accent, I sound Zimbabwean. What does my nationality have to do with my husband beating me at home or with the man that just raped me?” she asked.
Women stop traffic while they hold up placards stating their grievences against GBV. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
Addressing the resolute women outside was the JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King who received the memorandum demanding business take their plight seriously, from a civil society group representing over 70 civil society organizations and individuals.
The list of demands include that at all JSE-listed companies contribute to a fund to resource the National Strategy Plan on GBV and femicide, to be launched in November; transport for employees who work night shifts or work after hours; establish workplace mechanisms to provide support to GBV survivors as part of employee wellness, and prevention programs that help make workplaces safe spaces for all women.
Newton-King assured the protestors she would address their demands in seven days. But a lot can happen in seven days. Will there be more crimes in the meantime? How many more will be raped and killed in South Africa by then?
Nationwide outcry was setoff by shocking rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
What set off the nationwide outcry was the shocking rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana, a 19-year-old film and media student at the University of Cape Town Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla
How LinkedIn Is Looking To Help Close The Ever-Growing Skills Gap
As the job market has evolved, so too have the skills required of seekers. But when 75% of human resources professionals say a skills shortage has made recruiting particularly challenging in recent months, it would appear as though the workforce hasn’t quite kept pace. Now LinkedIn is stepping in to help close the gap.
On Tuesday, the professional social network announced the launch of a “Skills Assessments” tool, through which users can put their knowledge to the test. Those who pass are given the opportunity to display a badge that reads “passed” next to the skill on their profile pages, a validation of sorts that LinkedIn hopes will encourage skills development among its users and help better match potential employees with the right employers.
READ MORE | Not Just Equality, But Recognition Of Excellence
“We see an evolving labor market and much more sophistication in how recruiters and hiring managers look for skills. … We also see a changing learning market,” says Hari Srinivasan, senior director of product management at LinkedIn Learning. “The combination of those two made us excited about changing our opportunity marketplace to make the hiring side and the learning side work better together.”
So how exactly does it work? Let’s say a user wants to showcase her proficiency in Microsoft Excel. Rather than simply listing “Excel” in the skills section of her profile, she can take a multiple-choice test to demonstrate the extent to which she is an expert.
If she aces the test, not only will a badge verifying her aptitude will appear on her profile, but she will be more likely to surface in searches by recruiters, who can search for candidates by skill in the same way they might do so by college or employer. If she fails, she can take the test again, but she’ll have to wait a few months—plenty of time to develop her skillset.
The tool has been in beta mode since March, and while just 2 million people have used it—a mere fraction of LinkedIn’s 630 million members—early results seem promising. According to LinkedIn, members who’ve completed skills assessments have been nearly 30% more likely to land jobs than their counterparts who did not take the tests.
READ MORE | Challenging The Gender Divide
“This has been a really good way for members to represent what they know, what they are good at,” says Emrecan Dogan, LinkedIn group product manager.
While new to LinkedIn, the practice of assessing candidates’ skills has been a standard among hiring managers for decades. But when research commissioned by LinkedIn revealed that 69% of employees feel that skills have become more important to recruiters than education, LinkedIn felt as though this was the time to give job seekers the opportunity to prove themselves from the get-go.
As important as the hard skills that members can put to the test through LinkedIn’s new tool may be, Dawn Fay, senior district president at recruiting firm Robert Half, encourages those on both side of the job search not to forget the importance of soft skills. “You wouldn’t want to rule somebody in or out just based on how they did on one particular skill assessment,” she says.
“Have another data point that you can use, question people about how they did on something and see if it’s something that can feed into the puzzle to find out if somebody is going to be a good fit.”
-Samantha Todd; Forbes
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Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts
3CD/2BOOK
BCD 17329CD BCD 17329CD
"Appearing in Los Angeles were Joan Baez, Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, Country Joe McDonald, Richie Havens, Earl Robinson and Pete Seeger. The house band included members of Swampwater and Ry Cooder. Originally released on two LPs In addition, the fabulous 2017 set on Bear Family contains: Twenty never before released tracks! Bonus tracks include interviews with Judy Collins, Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe McDonald, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and Pete Seeger. Rare photos and never before seen stills from the Hollywood Bowl show film masters. Essays by Will Kaufman, Wenzel, and Sean Wilentz. Reproduction of the original 1972 TRO Concert Book includes historic and concert photos with music notations and lyrics. When Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, after a stubborn fifteen year bout with Huntington's Disease, a lot of people who had known him, worked with him, or just sung his songs felt a spontaneous desire to do something. A 'Tribute to Woody Guthrie' was planned for two performances at Carnegie Hall on January 20th, 1968. The list of artists joined Woody's own friends and peers with the next generation of songwriters and musicians just coming into their own. Appearing at the January concert were Judy Collins, Bob Dylan (in the first public appearance after his motorcycle accident in 1966 with members of The Band), Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger. Actors Will Geer and Robert Ryan narrated the program. Both performances were sold out an hour after tickets went on sale. Those fortunate enough to attend participated in one of the most exciting and remarkable musical experiences of all time. Two years later, eighteen thousand people attended the west coast Tribute which took place on September 12, 1970, at the Hollywood Bowl."
Other releases on BEAR FAMILY RECORDS
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Avoca Foreclosures
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How much can you save on a short sale in Bentonville, AR? The short sale process in Bentonville, AR, for a buyer can be very profitable if the situation includes a motivated seller and a cooperative lender. Find the best short sale homes and bank-approved listings available in Bentonville, AR, at Foreclosure.com today for as much as 75% off market value. There are currently 0 short sale homes in Bentonville, AR, available for potential sale right now. Get the most current list of short sale listings in Bentonville, AR — and the information and tools to buy them fast — at Foreclosure.com.
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Bentonville, Arkansas
Bentonville is the ninth-largest city in Arkansas, United States and the county seat of Benton County. The city is centrally located in the county with Rogers adjacent to the east. The city is the birthplace and world headquarters of Walmart, the world's largest retailer. It is one of the four main cities in the four-county Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is ranked 109th in terms of population in the United States with 463,204 residents in 2010, according to the United States Census Bureau. The city itself had a population of 35,301 at the 2010 Census, with an estimated population of 51,111 in 2018.
The area now known as Bentonville's first known use by humans was as hunting grounds by the Osage Nation who lived in Missouri. The Osage would leave their settlements to hunt in present-day Benton County for months at a time before returning to their families. White settlers first inhabited the area around 1837 and named their settlement "Osage". By this time, the Osage had ceased using the area for hunting, and the white settlers began to establish farms. Upon establishment of Benton County on September 30, 1836, Osage was deemed a suitable site for the county seat, and the town square was established as the home of county government the following year. Osage was renamed Bentonville in honor of Thomas Hart Benton, a senator from Missouri who strongly supported Arkansas statehood.
Early statehood and Civil War
Two years after Arkansas received statehood in 1836, thousands of Cherokee people from Georgia passed through Benton County as part of the Trail of Tears route to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.
There are currently 0 red-hot tax lien listings in Bentonville, AR.
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» Planetary Systems
Overview Of Meteor Showers
Last Updated on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 | Planetary Systems
Meteors can be seen at any time of the year, appearing on any part of the sky and moving in any direction. Such meteors are called sporadic and the mean sporadic rate is very low, no more than about ten per hour. Nevertheless, the flux of sporadics, averaged over a reasonable time span, is greater than the flux from any major stream averaged over the same time span. The major streams appear at well-determined times each year with the meteor rate climbing by two or three orders of magnitude. For example around 12 August meteors are seen at a rate of one or two per minute all apparently radiating from a fixed well determined point on the sky, called the radiant. This is the Perseid meteor shower, so named because the radiant of this shower lies in the Constellation of Persius. This behaviour is generally interpreted in terms of the Earth passing through a stream of meteoroids at the same siderial time each year. Olmstead [6] and Twining [7] are credited with first recognizing the existence of a radiant. Many of the well-known showers are rather consistent from year to year, but other are not. The best-known of these latter is the Leonids, where truly awesome displays are sometimes seen. For example, in 1966, tens of meteors per second were seen. Records show that such displays may be seen at intervals of about 33 years, with the displays of 1799, 1833 and 1966 being truly awesome, but good displays were also seen for example in 1866 and 1999. These early spectacular displays helped Adams [8], LeVerrier [9] and Schiaparelli [10], all in 1867, to conclude that the mean orbit of the Leonid stream was very similar to that of comet 55P/Tempel — Tuttlea,nd that 33 years were very close to the orbital period of this comet. Since then comet-meteor stream pairs have been identified for virtually all recognizable significant stream.
These simple facts allow a model of meteor showers and associated meteoroid streams to be constructed. Solid particles (meteoroids) are lost from a comet as part of the normal dust ejection process. Small particles are driven outwards by radiation pressure but the larger grains have small relative speed, much less than the orbital speed. Hence these meteoroids will move on orbits that are only slightly perturbed from the cometary orbit, hence in effect generating a meteoroid cloud about the comet which is very close to co-moving with the comet. As the semi-major axis of each meteoroid will be slightly different, each will have a slightly different orbital period, resulting in a drift in the epoch of return to perihelion. After many orbits this results in meteoroids effectively being located at all points around the orbit. With each perihelion passage a new family of meteoroids is generated, but, unless the parent comet is heavily perturbed, the new set of meteoroids will be moving on orbits that are almost indistinguishable from the preexisting set. Various effects, drag, collisions, sputtering, will remove meteoroids from the stream, changing them to be part of the general interplanetery dust complex and seen on Earth as Sporadic meteors.
An annual stream is thus middle-ages, with meteoroids having spread all around the orbit so that a shower is seen every year. In a very old stream where the parent comet may not still be very active, the stream is never very noticeable, but again constant each year. A very young stream on the other hand will only show high activity in certain years only since the cloud of meteoroids has had insufficient time to spread about the orbit.
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2 Florida businessmen tied to Rudy Giuliani arrested on campaign finance charges
By Michael Biesecker, Michael Balsamo, Larry Neumeister and Eric Tucker
2 men tied to Giuliani arrested on campaign charge
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida businessmen tied to President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have been arrested on a four-count indictment.
WASHINGTON - Two Florida businessmen tied to President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have been arrested on campaign finance violations resulting from a $325,000 donation to a political action committee supporting Trump's reelection.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested on a four-count indictment that includes charges of conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsification of records.
Parnas and Fruman were central to Giuliani's efforts to get government officials in Ukraine to investigate business dealings by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the war-torn former Soviet republic.
Records show that Parnas and Fruman used wire transfers from a corporate entity they controlled to make a $325,000 donation to the America First Action committee in 2018. But wire transfer records that became public through a lawsuit show that the corporate entity reported as making the transaction was not the true source of the money.
John Dowd, a lawyer for the men, hung up on an Associated Press reporter calling about the case.
The men, who were arrested at Dulles International Airport, were expected to appear later Thursday in federal court in Virginia. Two other men were charged in the case.
The indictment says Parnas and Fruman "sought to advance their personal financial interests and the political interests of at least one Ukrainian government official with whom they were working" and took steps to conceal it from third parties, including creditors. They created a limited liability corporation, Global Energy Producers, and "intentionally caused certain large contributions to be reported in the name of GEP instead of in their own names," according to the indictment.
Prosecutors charge that the two men falsely claimed the contributions came from a liquefied natural gas business. At that point, the company had no income or significant assets, according to the indictment.
The big PAC donation in May 2018 was part of a flurry of political spending tied to Parnas and Fruman, with at least $478,000 in donations flowing to GOP campaigns and PACs in little more than two months.
The money enabled the relatively unknown entrepreneurs to quickly gain access to the highest levels of the Republican Party, including face-to-face meetings with Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
The AP reported last week that Parnas and Fruman helped arrange a January meeting in New York between Ukraine's former top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, and Giuliani, as well as other meetings with top government officials.
Giuliani's efforts to launch a Ukrainian corruption investigation were echoed by Trump in his July 25 call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky. That conversation is now at the heart of a burgeoning congressional impeachment inquiry.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City and President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is shown in a file photo taken on February 13, 2019 in Warsaw, Poland. (Photo by Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A whistleblower complaint by an unnamed intelligence official makes reference to "associates" of Giuliani in Ukraine who were attempting to make contact with Zelensky's team, though it's not clear that refers to Parnas and Fruman. That could put the two men squarely in the middle of the investigation into Giuliani's activities.
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Trump vowing to sue 'every one' of his female accusers
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (FOX11/ AP) - Donald Trump on Saturday pledged postelection lawsuits against every woman who has accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior, and he charged Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party with orchestrating the allegations.
"Every one of these liars will be sued once the election is over," Trump said, adding, "I look so forward to doing that."
Trump's threat overshadowed his intended focus during a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, that was billed as a chance for the Republican nominee to lay out his agenda for his first 100 days in office. Trump promised to institute a hiring freeze on federal workers and to label China as a currency manipulator, but he first seized on the chance to once again try to discredit his accusers.
"Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign," he said.
Ten women have publicly accused Trump of unwanted advances or sexual assault in the weeks since a 2005 recording emerged in which the former reality TV star made sexually aggressive comments about women. Trump has denied all allegations while insisting some of the women weren't attractive enough for him to want to pursue.
Trump stuck to his belief the election is "rigged against him," repeated false concerns about widespread voter fraud and insisted Clinton should have been barred from running because of legal questions about her use of a private email system as secretary of state.
He also complained that a "corrupt" media is fabricating stories in order to make him "look as bad and dangerous as possible."
"They're trying desperately to suppress my vote and the vote of the American people," he said.
Amid Trump's struggles, Clinton has been displaying growing confidence and making direct appeals to voters "who may be reconsidering their support" for Trump following a string of sexual assault allegations and other troubles for the GOP nominee.
"I know you may still have questions for me," Clinton said Friday in Cleveland. "I respect that. I want to answer them. I want to earn your vote."
Her campaign headquarters in New York was back up and running after an envelope containing a white powdery substance arrived on Friday, triggering an evacuation of the 11th floor. Police said initial tests showed the substance wasn't harmful, and Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin said four people who received a full medical examination reported no health issues and were released.
Clinton was also getting a campaign boost on Saturday from singer Katy Perry, who planned to push early voting during an event in Las Vegas. The pop icon has been a vocal Clinton backer and was the featured entertainment at the Democratic National Convention.
With the debates now behind them, Trump and Clinton have few natural opportunities to significantly alter the course the race, especially with early voting already underway in 34 states. Yet neither candidate wants to overlook any opportunity to secure a few more votes. Though he acknowledged the possibility he may lose, Trump said Friday he would keep up an aggressive schedule in the final days so that he could end the race with no regrets.
"I will be happy with myself," Trump said.
More than 4.4 million votes have already been cast. Data compiled by The Associated Press showed that Clinton appeared to be displaying strength in crucial North Carolina and Florida, and may be building an early vote advantage in Arizona and Colorado.
Trump appeared to be holding ground in Ohio, Iowa and Georgia, although those states would not be sufficient for him to win the presidency if he trails Clinton in Florida or North Carolina.
The symbolism of delivering his message in Gettysburg was not lost on Trump's aides, who said they chose the location because of its historical significance as the site of the battle that is seen as the turning point in the Civil War. It was also meant as a nod to President Abraham Lincoln's abolition of slavery and his efforts to expand the Republican Party tent.
Trump has often pointed to Lincoln as he's tried, with little luck, to expand his appeal with African-American voters and other minority groups. To Trump's dismay, many of those groups have written off his efforts as condescending and cynical, and he trails Clinton by wide margins among minority voters.
Pennsylvania has been a hotbed of campaigning by both candidates in the final days of the race. Trump was spending his second consecutive day in the state, while Clinton had two events of her own in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The AP analysis of the most competitive states rates Pennsylvania as leaning Democratic in the presidential race.
Lederman reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey in White Plains, New York, contributed to this report.
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There is no second thought in that Beyonce and Taylor Swift are amazing singers and performers. They are the most successful faces in music in the entire world. It is tough to compare both of them and judge who is more famous and a bigger brand but both have their individuality.
With 123 million followers on Instagram, Beyonce is definitely leading as Swift has 114 million followers. On the other hand, Taylor Swift is hugely popular on Twitter as she has more than 83 million followers whereas Beyonce has just 14.9 million followers. It is also because Beyonce isn’t much active on Twitter.
Coming to the net worth of both the singers, Beyonce’s net worth is $355 million in 2018 (Forbes) and Swift’s net worth is $320 million in the same year. Beyonce is considered to have greater vocal abilities than Taylor Swift. But Taylor’s concerts are sold out in the millions and her record to sell out a tremendously huge stadium in just 2 minutes, which has never been done by anyone else in history.
Who is a bigger personal brand; Beyonce or Taylor Swift? #PersonalBrandPoll #TaylorSwift #Beyonce
— Gaurav Gulati (@iGauravGulati) January 26, 2019
People worship Beyonce as Goddess whereas people love Taylor Swift just as an ordinary girl. As per a recent poll on Twitter, Taylor Swift is voted much higher than Beyonce in who’s a bigger brand. Beyonce is a great singer and already treated like a legend. Taylor Swift inspires us by achieving so much at such a young age.
It is not easy to compare them as Beyonce is a far better singer, has better vocals and overall power and range whereas Taylor is far superior songwriter and musician.
Public Speaking Can Help Your Personal Brand
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Michael O’Pray Prize 2017
This award for new writing on innovation and experimentation in the moving image is named in memory of the critic, historian and film programmer, Michael O’Pray. Over the course of his long and varied career, Mike was an impassioned and energetic champion of avant-garde cinema, highlighting the continuing influence of key figures from the past, while dynamically promoting contemporary talents in experimental film and video. In his writings, and in the many programmes he curated for Film and Video Umbrella and elsewhere, Mike always endeavoured to make radical, challenging, occasionally esoteric work accessible to a wider public – and it is with this in mind that the award seeks to encourage examples of imaginative, engaging writing that extols and advances this longstanding tradition of experimentation in film and video for a non-specialist audience.
Winners 2017:
For the inaugural year of the Michael O’Pray Prize, it has been decided to double the prize money and give two awards, to two young writers whose fluency, clarity and commitment to their subject stood out from a shortlist of other strong candidates. Congratulations to Lauren Houlton and Dan Ward, who as well as the sum of £500 each, were offered the opportunity to write a new text for Art Monthly. Both articles are now online - you can read Lauren Houlton's text here, and Dan Ward's text here.
The Panel:
Steven Bode, Director, FVU
Chris McCormack, Associate Editor, Art Monthly
Lucy Reynolds, Artist, Curator, Researcher and Senior Lecturer at University of Westminster
John Smith, Artist, Filmmaker and Professor of Fine Art at University of East London
The guiding presence behind Film and Video Umbrella in its early years (1985-1990), Michael O’Pray taught at UEL for over two decades, and was a regular contributor to the pages of Art Monthly.
Application Criteria:
The Prize is aimed at writers starting out in their careers, and who have had no more than three articles published in print or online. There is no age limit. Applicants have to be resident in the UK. We are not looking for academic dissertations, or specialist scholarly papers, couched in highly technical/theoretical language. The Prize instead seeks to discover and support new voices who can enliven and popularise discussion of the experimental spirit in film and video. Texts submitted should be no longer than 2,500 words, and should not have been previously published, in part or in whole. Texts submitted should be complete articles, rather than extracts, and should be print ready.
If you would like to be kept informed of future opportunities through FVU, please sign up to our mailing list here.
Image: Autograph, Smith/Stewart, 1997. Courtesy of the artists.
The Michael O’Pray Prize is a Film and Video Umbrella initiative, in partnership with Art Monthly. Supported by University of East London and Arts Council England.
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Article Contributed by Chris Marden | Published on Sunday, May 12, 2019
Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats brought their vintage rock and neo-soul show to the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans on May 3rd and 4th for a pair of spectacular double bill shows that coincided with the second weekend of city’s famed Jazz Fest. Each night featured a different group of legendary Crescent City musicians opening the show. Friday night featured the Foundations of Funk while Saturday's show started with the esteemed Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats wasted no time in getting the crowd up and dancing. Both their shows kicked off with “Shoe Boot” from their 2018 release “Tearing at the Seams” on the Stax label. The Denver based quintet proved why they are perennial festival circuit favorites. Playing over 200 shows a year on worldwide tours will undoubtedly take its toll in various forms, but it will also produce results that were evident both on stage and in song. The band is clearly hitting on all cylinders and the more collaborative efforts in writing and recording “Tearing at the Seams” seems to have paid dividends on record and on stage.
The bands highly energetic performance and overall soulful sound combined with Rateliff’s soothing vocals that lend itself to his interpersonal style of songwriting, have endeared them to an ever-growing legion of fans. When you mix in Otis Redding to Van Morrison influences and combine that with The Night Sweats driving rhythm and horn sections, the result is one of the most soulful and exciting bands that has deservedly garnished worldwide attention. Also endearing to fans is the band's commitment to social issues. From Rateliff’s own Marigold Project to multiple Farm Aid performances that enable this extremely hard-working band to capitalize on their success by giving back to those in need. The Night Sweats are Joseph Pope III on bass, Mark Shusterman on keys, Patrick Meese on drums, Luke Mossman on guitar. Andy Wild on tenor saxophone with Scott Frock on trumpet and Jeff Dazy on alto sax.
The Foundations of Funk kicked off the Friday night show with an hour-long set. The lineup consisted of The Meters’ rhythm section of Joseph "Ziggy" Modeliste on drums and George Porter Jr. on bass along with special guests Ivan Neville on keyboards. Dumstaphunk’s Tony Hall joined hometown hero Anders Osborne on guitar, rounding out the quintet. Modeliste and Porter Jr’s work with The Meters is often credited as the innovators of the New Orleans funk sound.
The Preservation Hall Jazz band featured on the Night Sweats 2017 “Live From Red Rocks” fired the crowd up on night two of the festivities.
The PHJB has dedicated itself for over 50 years in preserving and performing the cultural mix that is New Orleans. The recently renovated Saenger Theatre with it Greek and Roman statues and an utterly spectacular replica of the Florence sky at night complete with twinkling stars proved to be a reminder of the history of the Big Easy and its resolve after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Seeing the Preservation Hall Jazz Band grace the stage of the Saeger that was once submerged in over a foot of Katrina’s floodwaters, was proof how far the city has come and that the (Florentine) sky is the limit.
Check out more photos from Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats & Foundation of Funk.
The Meters
Joseph "Ziggy" Modeliste
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Think it’s too late to start over? Think again. Award-winning actress and activist Marlo Thomas shares what she learned from collecting the stories of 60 women who started over. Find out why she’s convinced it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.
The first lady of the Washington Press Corps reflects on her 60-year career and reveals…
Growing Bolder Minute: Building Dreams
The mission was gratifying yet overwhelming. But isn't taking on projects that are way too…
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See What Others Are Saying About Us! Wednesday, January 22, 2020
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"State and local government surplus sales are currently about 25 percent higher than they were in July, according to GovernmentAuctions.org . . . ."
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1991 Komatsu FD73-T5 Forklift: Lift Anything With Ease
Need help lifting those heavy crates? How about a hand picking up those boxes? Well fortunately for you, this next auction item can really help. The auction is for this 1991 Komatsu FD73-T5 forklift. This forklift may be 22 years old, but it still works almost as well as the day it was originally purchased. Sure it may not look as nice as it once did and it may be missing a few part, but it’s still pretty solid and works. There is a bit of damage to the emergency brake handle knob and door, but that seems to be all. It is highly recommended that you inspect this vehicle in person prior to placing your online bid. If you win this auction, you’ll also be responsible for the item’s removal so be aware of that. The current price for this forklift is exactly $1,000 with 2 online bids already placed and approximately 4 days remaining. Be sure to click here now in order to activate your 3 day free trial account!
Tags: 1991, FD73-T5, forklift, heavy machinery, Komatsu, Korman, machinery, surplus forklifts, surplus machinery, surplus tools, tools
Posted in Online Auction, Online Auction Items, Surplus
ACTIVATE Your FREE TRIAL Account NOW! | Permalink | Posted @ 11:37 AM
GovernmentAuctions.org, rather than directly offering items mentioned here for sale or auction, provides a huge database of information about government auctions and foreclosures.
1991 John Deere 2355 Tractor: Get The Job Done Quickly
Hyster S60XL Forklift: Pick Things Up and Put Them Down Again!
1994 Hyster Forklift: Lift It. Lift It Real Good.
Craftsman 150 PSI Air Compressor: It Doesn’t Suck
2003 Caterpillar NRR40 Forklift: Do You Even Lift, Bro?
2000 Clark ECG20 Sitdown Electric Forklift: Do You Even Lift?
1960 Adams Road Grader, Model 220: Do The Job Right
2002 Hyster Forklift Model E45XM2-27: It Lifts, Bro.
1994 JOHN DEERE 7400 TRACTOR: Get The Job Done Right
Dispense with warehouse issues with this super cheap forklift.
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/ 12/19/10–12/25/10 / 12/12/10–12/18/10 / 12/5/10–12/11/10 / 11/28/10–12/4/10 / 11/21/10–11/27/10 / 11/14/10–11/20/10 / 11/7/10–11/13/10 / 10/31/10–11/6/10 / 10/24/10–10/30/10 / 10/17/10–10/23/10 / 10/10/10–10/16/10 / 10/3/10–10/9/10 / 9/26/10–10/2/10 / 9/19/10–9/25/10 / 9/12/10–9/18/10 / 8/22/10–8/28/10 / 8/15/10–8/21/10 / 8/8/10–8/14/10 / 8/1/10–8/7/10 / 7/25/10–7/31/10 / 7/18/10–7/24/10 / 7/4/10–7/10/10 / 6/27/10–7/3/10 / 6/20/10–6/26/10 / 6/13/10–6/19/10 / 6/6/10–6/12/10 / 5/30/10–6/5/10 / 5/23/10–5/29/10 / 5/16/10–5/22/10 / 5/9/10–5/15/10 / 5/2/10–5/8/10 / 4/25/10–5/1/10/ 4/25/10 - 5/2/10 / 4/18/10 - 4/25/10 / 4/11/10 - 4/18/10 / 4/4/10 - 4/11/10 / 3/28/10 - 4/4/10 / 3/21/10 - 3/28/10 / 3/14/10 - 3/21/10 / 3/7/10 - 3/14/10 / 2/28/10 - 3/7/10 / 2/21/10 - 2/28/10 / 2/14/10 - 2/21/10 / 2/7/10 - 2/14/10 / 1/31/10 - 2/7/10 / 1/24/10 - 1/31/10 / 1/17/10 - 1/24/10 / 1/10/10 - 1/17/10 / 1/3/10 - 1/10/10 / 12/27/09 - 1/3/10 / 12/20/09 - 12/27/09 / 12/13/09 - 12/20/09 / 12/6/09 - 12/13/09 / 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S. 877 (114th)
S. 877 (114th): Police CAMERA Act
A bill to establish a pilot grant program to assist State and local law enforcement agencies in purchasing body-worn cameras for law enforcement officers.
Brian Schatz
Sponsor. Senator for Hawaii. Democrat.
This bill was introduced on March 26, 2015, in a previous session of Congress, but was not enacted.
“Congressman Tim Ryan Announces Support for Police CAMERA Act”
— Rep. Tim Ryan [D-OH13] on Apr 14, 2015
“Cardin, Mikulski Introduce Legislative Package to Restore Community Trust in Baltimore and Nationwide”
— Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D-MD] on Jun 18, 2015
S. 877 (114th) was a bill in the United States Congress.
GovTrack.us. (2020). S. 877 — 114th Congress: Police CAMERA Act. Retrieved from https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s877
“S. 877 — 114th Congress: Police CAMERA Act.” www.GovTrack.us. 2015. January 22, 2020 <https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s877>
Police CAMERA Act, S. 877, 114th Cong. (2015).
|url=https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s877
|title=S. 877 (114th)
|date=March 26, 2015
|quote=Police CAMERA Act
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Colours of Remembrance
Over the course of Period One, students watched an interview about an astonishingly emotive film titled ‘They shall not grow old’ made by Director, Peter Jackson, who is most well known as director of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit franchises.
‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ is a truly incredible commemoration to all the brave soldiers from World War 1; it reminds us all of how we shouldn’t and will never forget the sacrifices they made.
Jackson has taken the old silent, black and white, raw footage of real events from the trenches and brought them to life by colourising them with the remarkable cinematic effects we have today. He used forensic lip readers and voice actors to capture the regional accents particular to each regiment, thus making the film more genuine and authentic and giving us a sense that we can hear those lost voices from the past.
Jackson wanted to portray the real lives of these soldiers, not just tell a generic story about war. His aim was to show that these men, often seen in the grey grainy images of WW1 that are so common to us, were more than just soldiers. These men were sons, fathers, brothers, friends, people– who deserve to be remembered. They were people who found time to enjoy each others’ company and entertain each other with jokes, music and companionship as well as being men who missed their families and their homes and who feared what the next day would bring. Jackson said ‘I wanted to reach through the fog of time and pull these men into the modern world, so they can regain their humanity once more’.
In our tutor groups we drew inspiration from the film and created our own pieces of art work, inspired by these reinvigorated images. We took black and white photographs of the trenches and soldiers and added colour to them. We shared Jackson’s motivation to reach across the century and breath life into these old images. We feel this recognition of the individuality and humanity of the soldiers is a very important and poignant message that people should be aware of. Surely this is the true meaning of Remembrance.
The art pieces will be used to create an artistic war memorial here at Joseph Swan Academy to signify 100 years since the end of the Great War in 1918.
‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ can be seen in cinemas and on BBC2 at 9:30pm on Sunday at 9:30pm.
Written by Rosie,
Edited by Faith.
Colours of Remembrance The Bishop of Durham has led a dedication and renaming ceremony...
Colours of Remembrance On Wednesday 13th November, Grace College hosted its first Remembrance Tea,...
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10 Cardiff Pubs with a Bitta History
Wriggle rounds up the most historic boozers in the 'Diff
Wriggle Magazine Cardiff
Cardiff may have only become the capital city of Wales in 1905, but it’s awash with history. Where better to find out about the Cardiff of bygone days than from some of its oldest pubs? If only walls could talk…
1. The Rummer Tavern
This mock Tudor tavern is thought to be Cardiff’s oldest pub, and has been around since the early eighteenth century – in fact, you can find an old trading licence from the 1800s displayed on one of the walls. It’s named after a rummer, a large glass or cup used for wine in the olden days. It’s a warm and welcoming place, although staff and customers have reported ghostly sightings over the years. It’s believed that the pub is haunted by a sailor who died soon after finding his wife in bed with another man.
Find The Rummer Tavern at 14 Duke Street, Cardiff CF10 1AY.
2. The Goat Major
This locals’ favourite has been around since 1813, when it was simply called The Goat. In 1873, it was renamed The Bluebell, which is how it’s still known to many older Cardiffians, before it finally became The Goat Major in 1995. The name comes from the title given to the soldier responsible for looking after the Royal Regiment of Wales's mascot, a goat called Taffy, who sometimes pops into the pub to say hello. True story: Taffy’s a bit of a wild card and has on occasion been formally disciplined for his unruly behaviour.
Visit The Goat Major at 33 High Street, Cardiff CF10 1PU.
3. The Golden Cross
This Grade II listed building in the city centre dates back to 1903, although there has historically always been a pub on the site since 1849. As with many pubs, The Golden Cross has been the scene of much drama, none more so than when fascist leader Oswald Mosley attempted to hold a meeting there, but was met with violent opposition and forced to leave. Legend has it that during the Second World War, an American GI called Rock Marciano also caused a massive pub brawl and knocked out 100 Welshmen. It’s also rumoured that an old woman haunts the pub. Nowadays, The Golden Cross is a far less violent, more friendly place, in its capacity as a welcoming, accepting gay bar. There's regular live entertainment, including 'Retro Night' Mondays, and karaoke Wednesdays.
Investigate the haunting rumours yourself, or simply make yourself at home in the friendly, attitude-free pub at 283 Hayes Bridge Road, Cardiff CF10 1GH.
4. The Old Arcade
This city centre boozer was built in 1844, although the building appears on Cardiff maps from as early as 1610. Although now named The Old Arcade, it was originally called The Birdcage Inn because the landlord liked to make – you guessed it – birdcages and sell them from behind the bar. There’s a covered walkway that passes through from Church Street into the central market which has been running since the eighteenth century. The pub was refurbished in 2006 and is a popular spot for rugby fans.
Check out The Old Arcade at 14 Church Street, Cardiff CF10 1BG.
5. The Packet
Cardiff Bay’s awash with identikit bars and restaurants, so this charming little pub, The Packet, with its stained-glass windows, and character-filled interiors stands out from the crowd. It’s named after the packet ships that carried mail to and from British outposts and has been part of Tiger Bay's history since 1864. The pub was originally a hotel for sailors visiting the docks, and there’s an unwritten rule that if a sailor is in the venue when the tide is out they should be granted free lodging for the night.
Check it out at 95 Bute Street, Cardiff Bay CF10 5AB.
6. The Rompney Castle
This Rumney pub has a rich and fascinating history, and opened in 1871 as The Pear Tree. It was later bought by the American Consul based in Cardiff, who changed it to its current name - The Rompney Castle - as Rompney is how Rumney used to be known. When the Welsh Sunday Closing Act was introduced in 1881, people in Cardiff would travel to the pub because Rumney was then in Monmouthshire - at the time, a part of England - and this would cause chaos when revellers ‘returned’ to Wales. In fact, future Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, once said that Rumney was like hell on earth on a Sunday.
Romp your way over to The Rompney Castle at Wentloog Road, Rumney, Cardiff, CF3 3EB.
7. The Royal Oak
The Royal Oak in Adamsdown dates back to the late 1800s, and is still at the heart of the community today. At one point, it was run by a cousin of Welsh boxer Jim Driscoll, who trained in the boxing ring above the pub. Driscoll went on to win the Lonsdale belt in 1910, and this achievement is proudly displayed on the walls of the pub, alongside other boxing memorabilia. The pub was recently renovated, but has kept many of its original features, including stained-glass windows and high-backed pews.
Check out The Royal Oak at 200 Broadway, Cardiff CF24.
8. The City Arms
This building has been in use since 1610, although it’s not known when exactly it became a pub. It was once - somewhat worryingly - known as The Van of Flesh Tavern, because it was directly opposite Cardiff’s slaughterhouse and cattle market at that time. Then, when Cardiff was officially named as a city in 1905, the pub became The City Arms. The pub has retained much of its original charm, and the walls are decorated with old photographs, brewery memorabilia and cartoons by the infamous Gren – plus it’s rumoured that a poltergeist lurks in the shadows. At the height of Cool Cymru in the 1990s, it was a regular haunt for the likes of The Super Furries, Catatonia and The Manics.
Get your slice of musical history at 10 - 12 Quay Street , Cardiff, CF10 1EA.
9. The Mochyn Du
This popular watering hole next to Cardiff’s cricket grounds is full of character and its thatched roof, wood panelling and stone walls sets it apart from others in the city. The building was formerly a gatekeeper’s lodge, then was a pub in some shape or form before it became The Mochyn Du, named after a traditional Welsh folk song, in 2002. The Mochyn, as it’s known to regulars, is one of the few Welsh speaking pubs in the capital, but everyone is guaranteed a warm welcome. It’s the perfect spot to watch the rugby, as you can see from the walls which are adorned with photos and the framed shirts and boots of Welsh sporting heroes.
Check out The Mochyn Du at Sophia Close, Cardiff CF11 9HW.
10. The Old Market Tavern
Until recently, The Old Market Tavern on Trinity Street was known as the ‘little’ O’ Neill’s, but it started out as the New Market Hotel in 1840, with the building standing since the 1600s. The pub was famous for the exploits of its landlord Joe Holbrook, who also ran the local circus. The story goes that when he died, a circus elephant called Lily drank a pint in his memory. The stories don’t stop there: in 2007, Grease actress Olivia Newton-John discovered that her grandfather was once the pub landlord, and that her father was born there. Such fun!
Check out The Old Market Tavern at 20-21 Trinity Street, Cardiff CF10 1BH.
Thanks to Sarah Philpott from Vegging It for her great list, look out for her new recipe book coming out soon!
Published -28th November 2017
The 16 Best Coffee Shops & Cafes in Cardiff
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16 Sun Soaking Beer Gardens in Cardiff
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Cardiff's Best Gin Bars 2020
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9 of the Best Cardiff Restaurants To 'BYOB'
Saving money? Picky about which tipple you quaff? These BYOB-friendly spots will keep wallet-watchers and fussy drinkers smiling from ear to ear.
You Can Drink Cocktails around a Fire in a Yurt in Cardiff
Cardiff is full of amazing cocktail bars, but this particular gem offers something a little bit different... Read on to find out all about the magical Milgi.
9 Show-Stopping Hot Chocolates To Warm Up With In Cardiff
Hot chocolate season is definitely upon us, so grab your mittens, pull on your best coat and allow us to navigate you towards the Diff’s most irresistible hot chocs.
There's an Auvergnat Wine Tasting in the Castle Quarter Arcades this Weekend...
Here at Team Wriggle we can't get enough of the magnificent Wright's Wines – the opening of this natural wine emporium on the balcony of the Castle Quarter Arcades was the highlight of spring for us.
The Lansdowne's community beer-festival is back this weekend
From Friday 15th June to Sunday 17th June, the beer festival that officially kick-starts the summer in Cardiff is back.
12 places to get your caffeine fix in Cardiff
It’s International Coffee Day on 1 October so we’ve put together a list of the best places to get a cup of Joe. These babies are guaranteed to wake you up.
The 10 Best Happy Hour, Cocktail & Beer Deals in Cardiff
We've brought together the best beer, cocktails and everything-in-between deals for you to sip, slurp, pound and chug your way across Cardiff, all without breaking the bank.
Free cocktails in Cardiff this weekend!
FREE COCKTAILS KLAXON
Welsh craft breweries changing the Cardiff beer game
Since 1882, when the Brains family bought an old brewery on St Mary’s Street, Cardiff has been a city of beer. Here we have listed some of the best breweries in Cardiff
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Corey Taylor Says The New Slipknot Record Is Coming In 2019
Posted on February 15, 2018 by News Team
Get excited Slipknot fans! In a new interview with Musik Universe, Corey Taylor discussed the band’s new material, and when fans can expect it. Here’s what he had to say on the new music, “It’s impressive, that’s all I’m going to say about that. That’s all I would have wanted it to be. They send me stuff here and there and it’s funny because they tell me they do not want to send me anything until it’s over, so I’m patient and for now I’m have received 6 songs and they are really very good. They’re like that in demos and by demo I mean they’re probably longer than they’ll be at the end, because the goal is to extrapolate an idea as much as possible to cover all the possibilities. Then you have to work on them and turn them into something solid and fluid, and that’s where they are now. I am currently writing the lyrics for 3 of them and it’s dark, very dark. It’s actually, probably the most autobiographical lyrics I’ve written in years. I’ve been through a lot of obstacles in recent years and I’m writing about where I am now instead of writing about where I was. It’s very easy to go back to those things, impulsively, but now I’m writing from the point of view of a man who has grown up and seen a lot. I try to understand things.”
On when fans can expect the new record, he answered “Next year. By 2019, we should finish writing, enter the studio and be ready to go back on the road.”
This entry was posted in New Album Progress Updates, New Album Update, News and tagged 2019, Corey Taylor, new album, Slipknot, Update by News Team. Bookmark the permalink.
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Leverage Lost
The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era
John Kreidler
As the Twentieth Century approaches a finale, the arts in America exist in a vast array of styles, disciplines and organizational structures. The purpose here is to examine one major organizational component of the American arts scene, the nonprofit sector, as an organic system that has progressed through three distinct stages over the past century. Although the nonprofit arts world contains thousands of organizations populated by tens of thousands of artists, administrators, technicians, trustees and donors, few are aware of its systemic features, nor are there many knowledgeable about its origins and the influences that have shaped its evolution.
As with participants in most large organizational systems, the citizens of the nonprofit arts world find it difficult to perceive changes, even massive developments, that occur gradually. The natural tendency is to assume that the arts firmament is a fixed tableau, marked by an occasional meteor that leaves a momentary trace. It is widely believed within the arts community that nonprofit organizations are experiencing extreme financial pressure due to governmental funding reductions and a downturn in the American economy. These pressures are often described as temporary hardships that will soon fade, thereby enabling arts organizations to return to more normal conditions. Current government funding patterns and economic trends are certainly of consequence to nonprofit arts organizations, but by themselves these pressures do not fully account for the deep changes that are now becoming discernible in the nonprofit arts ecosystem.
Early in the twentieth century, astrophysicists learned that the universe is not static, but rather is expanding in every direction and subject to the interplay of immense forces. The nonprofit arts are also a complex and changing system, and as this system has gradually evolved, the defining trends and influences, like planets in a solar system, have occasionally aligned in ways that have produced striking new directions. The onset of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, and the Ford Foundation's major arts initiatives, beginning in the late 1950s, will be cited in this essay as decisive moments in the subsequent progression of the arts.
In any complex system, many plausible interpretations are possible of the most potent influences and the precise moments when major new directions have emerged. In the analysis that follows, just one interpretation, the author's, is offered of the evolution of the arts ecosystem over the past century. While this interpretation is sometimes supported by factual and anecdotal evidence, no effort is made to back every assertion with data. The point is to demonstrate that the unique history of American nonprofit arts organizations is due to the distinct American social, political and economic system, and that an appreciation of this broader system will be useful in any discourse on future evolution.
Part 1: The Pre-Ford Era Industrial Revolution to 1957
Classic economic theory predicts that, at a given price, consumers will demand a set amount of a good or service, which will be supplied by producers. The marketplace, then, is an ecosystem constantly seeking an equilibrium that embraces prices, supply, demand, and a host of other influences. Throughout the past century, the dynamics of the marketplace have had a fundamental influence on the development of commercial and nonprofit organizations that produce art in the United States.
Today, in part due to a movement that was set in motion by the Ford Foundation, the great majority of arts organizations operate as nonprofit corporations. As a result, it is easy to forget that the earlier prevalent model for arts organizations in the U.S. was that of the individual proprietorship. In the nineteenth century, many theaters, orchestras, opera companies, performing arts impresarios, and even some museums, operated as for-profit enterprises managed by individual owners. As with other commercial ventures, these proprietorships had to meet the test of the marketplace: to provide services responsive to market demand at a competitive price, or cease to exist. This seemingly straightforward and endlessly studied relationship of marketplace influences has always been complicated in the arts, however, by the willingness of American artists and other arts workers to accept deeply discounted compensation for their labor.
An illustration of this point is provided by Horace Lewis, a journeyman actor of the late nineteenth century. Horace's father, the assistant tax assessor for the City of Boston, did his best to dissuade his son from a career in theater, and even sent him to Europe for a year to find a higher calling. Upon his return, however, Horace took to acting as a full time profession. At this juncture, the elder Lewis legally disinherited his son, but Horace nevertheless remained an actor for the rest of his life.
Lewis' specialty was pantomime and character roles. In the early years of his career, he often appeared in touring productions with Edwin Booth, one of the leading actors of that time, though Booth's popular appeal had been tarnished by his brother's assassination of President Lincoln. In 1878, Lewis played Rosencrantz to Booth's Hamlet, and the Drunken Porter to Booth's MacBeth at the Pittsburgh Opera House.
Lewis married the actress Portia Albee in 1880, and thereafter formed a proprietary theater company, The Lewis Dramatic Party of Professional Artists, which toured New England, the upper Midwest, and the maritime provinces of Canada. Their three children, Walter, Harriet and Elise, grew up on stage. Life for the Lewis family was arduous. Theater touring entailed true hardships, and the pay and occupational status were low. Whereas an actor of Booth's renown made a comfortable living, the Lewis family had to be exceptionally resourceful to get by. On their small town touring circuit, urbane intellectual plays did not sell tickets, so many of their productions were melodramas and morality plays performed in churches, union halls, and other makeshift venues. Besides acting, they had to conduct much of their own publicity, backstage technical work and financial management. Ultimately, if audiences failed to materialize, there was no income.
In 1889, Lewis' son Walter, then a five year old child actor, fell into a canal in Redmond, Michigan and was rescued by a local bypasser, Mr. Carey. The next day, the Lewis company's production of The Count of Monte Cristo was dedicated to Mr. Carey, and much of the town attended the performance to pay homage to their home town hero. Little Walter Lewis began the evening by reciting the “Fouyar” scene from this play, which he had never before performed in public, in gratitude for his deliverance from certain death. Although there is no definitive evidence, subsequent legend has it that Horace Lewis staged his son's mishap as a publicity stunt to assure a full house.
At the core of Horace Lewis' life as an actor is a characteristic persistence, often bordering on compulsion, shared by many American artists and other arts workers, up to current times. Few artists, working in either the commercial or nonprofit arts sectors, achieve compensation or social status commensurate with their skills and levels of educational attainment. In many respects, the training and practice required of a professional musician, painter or actor are comparable to those of a physician, engineer or banker, and yet the disparity in income and status is enormous. Granted, some artists do attain high levels of income and prestige, but these are a very small fraction of the total profession. Throughout American history, most artistic occupations have been viewed with suspicion, and even in current times, art is often regarded as a form of self-indulgent recreation rather than real work.
In their pioneering 1966 book, The Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, economists William Baumol and William Bowen noted, “At the first recorded theatrical performance in the American colonies, the performers were arrested.” With regard to the position of the American performing artist in the mid-1960s, they went on to say:
In many ways...the working conditions of the performer fall below what might be considered reasonable standards. His exhausting tours, high professional expenses, frequent unemployment with its accompanying uncertainty, the rarity of paid vacations and the frequent lack of provision for retirement all add up to what most of us would consider a nightmare world were we suddenly plunged into it. This applies with special force to those associated with the dance, where earnings are lower and economic insecurity far greater than in the other performing arts.
Most performing artists are unlikely to starve, but society has not been overly generous in the compensation it has provided the artist in exchange for his contribution to the living arts. We have relied heavily on the willingness of the performer to perform, no matter what it costs him.
During his time, Horace Lewis, a religiously sincere man, understood his second class status. In 1879, he founded the “Church and Stage” movement, which sought to demonstrate that religion and drama were “...not antagonistic to each other, but working harmoniously together for the public welfare and moral improvement.” The Lewis company mounted a touring production of The Village Blacksmith by W.S. Gilbert, which was designed to illustrate this new harmony. The production was widely endorsed by Boston's leading clerics and opened at the Union Hall on Boylston Street, following an address by a minister. A review of this play noted, “The pecuniary results were not encouraging, but if Mr. Lewis takes this company on the road, the public will be sure of a good performance, well mounted, of a play both pure and lively."
Given Horace Lewis' good fortune to have been born into a fairly prominent Boston family, he could have easily chosen a profession that would have maintained his social and economic standing. Lewis, along with many thousands of artists throughout U.S. history, elected to become an actor in full knowledge of the likely sacrifices, but his choice was not illogical. Surely he sensed that the combined monetary and intangible rewards of acting were, from his perspective, adequate compensation. He must have believed that acting yielded greater financial and personal rewards than a career in tax assessing, or whatever line of work his father might have preferred.
In comparison to most occupations, artists and other arts workers (technical and management personnel) tend to accept a high measure of non-monetary rewards, that is, the gratification of producing art, as compensation for their work. By accepting these non-monetary rewards, artistic workers, in effect, discount the cash price of their labor. One way to conceive of the value of this discount is to estimate it as the difference between the wages that artists typically earn and the wages earned by workers with comparable skill levels.
In any attempt to understand the artistic ecosystem of the United States, it is of paramount importance to grasp the significance of discounted labor. Market prices and consumer demand have never fully accounted for the output of artistic goods and services produced by American artists and arts organizations. Indeed, artists and arts organizations often give little consideration to market demand and prices in their determinations of how much and what kinds of art they produce. Even chronic indifference of the market may not induce an artist to change the amount or character of the produced art. This behavior usually would be catastrophic for a farmer or manufacturer, but it is commonplace among artists and arts organizations.
In addition to discounted labor, several other factors were significant in the evolution of the arts in the pre-Ford era:
Education: Many recent studies of arts attendance at performances and exhibitions have found a high correlation between individual educational attainment and engagement in the arts. Indeed, educational attainment may be the strongest predictor of an individual's likelihood of becoming an arts consumer or an artist, and this correlation was probably as forceful in the pre-Ford era as it is today. The rise of public education during the industrial revolution surely contributed much to the development of both artistic labor and arts consumerism during that time.
The studies that link education to arts participation usually use grade levels as the measure of educational attainment. Thus, college graduates are far more likely to attend museums or become poets than high school dropouts. It is quite likely, however, that nonformal educational attainment also correlates closely with arts participation. For example, children who are encouraged to sing in the home are probably more inclined to sing or attend choral concerts as adults . In the 19th century, amateur and church-based choral ensembles flourished, and it is likely that this movement helped to stimulate public demand for the services of professional orchestras that were beginning to form in the latter decades of the nineteenth century.
Prosperity: Next to educational attainment, personal income may be the most potent predictor of arts participation. The transition of the United States from an agrarian to an industrial economy greatly increased the number of wealthy and middle class people. A larger proportion of the population became arts consumers, and some of the new wealth was used to amass unprecedented collections of art, which later became the basis for many American museums.
Societal Values: The values embedded in any society have much to do with the nature of artistic expression and the manner in which art is presented in public settings. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial society, coupled with new waves of immigration, opened the United States to broader world influences that moderated the tight strictures against public expressiveness characteristic of 17-18th century American society. Although at least some artistic professions remained on the edge of social respectability (dancing and acting remained notorious into the 20th century), artists gradually improved their standing over the course of the pre-Ford epoch. By the end of the 19th century, for example, Horace Lewis' theater company was performing plays in Protestant churches in New England, a venue that would have been off-limits in the early 1800's.
Demographic Change: As the U.S. population increased as a result of fertility and immigration during the industrial revolution, it was predictable that the number of artists and arts consumers would also increase; but demographic changes had other consequences as well. The massing of populations of artists and arts consumers in emerging metropolitan areas supported an intensity and quality of creative expression that could not have been sustained in the nation's more agrarian past. By the end of the 19th century, Philadelphia, for example, had well-established fine arts academies, music conservatories, a lively theater district and a prominent community of writers, whereas at the beginning of the century, the spectrum of artistic production had been narrower. A gradual concentration of artistic resources in metropolitan areas occurred throughout the pre-Ford era, and many would argue that the most populous city, New York, attained a critical mass of an altogether higher order. Throughout history, the emergence of urban areas has always been associated with significant qualitative developments in literature, architecture, visual arts and performing arts. Periclean Athens, Mayan Mexico, Elizabethan London, and Ming Dynasty China are examples of this phenomenon.
Leisure Time: Participation in the arts tends to vary, in some measure, according to the availability of leisure time. Progressively shorter work weeks were a pattern throughout the pre-Ford era and contributed to the founding of libraries, parks, museums, music halls, professional athletic leagues and a host of similar leisure time resources. According to economist Juliet Schor, shorter work weeks became almost as important as higher wages during the heyday of the American labor movement.
Implications of the Pre-Ford Era
The cumulative result of the changes in education, prosperity, demographics, societal values and leisure time that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century was an overall increase in the output, variety and quality of artistic goods and services. America began to produce more of its own art, and proportionally imported less. The economic model for producing this art, however, was quite distinct from the pattern that was prevalent in Europe during this period. Unlike Europe, there was very little governmental support of the arts, and little tradition of upper-class patronage. So for professional artists, there was usually no choice but to work for a profit and to accept deeply discounted wages.
The experience of American symphony orchestras provides one illustration of the evolution of arts organizations during the pre-Ford era. By the mid 19th century, musical literacy was relatively high among Americans. Children learned to sing and play instruments at an early age, and performance within families was a popular form of entertainment. Amateur choruses began to form, and some of these hired musicians for accompaniment. The musicians, in turn, formed themselves into orchestras, hired conductors and began to produce public concerts as proprietary organizations independent of the choral societies. Many orchestras continued to operate in this manner until the end of the 19th and early 20th century when a transition gradually was made to nonprofit organizations as the primary organizational model. In the nonprofit model, the orchestra came under the control of a lay board of directors, usually prominent citizens, which employed a professional conductor and manager. The conductors were given responsibility for hiring the musicians in the nonprofit orchestras, whereas the musicians had often controlled the proprietary orchestras in the early pre-Ford era. Whether operating as proprietary or nonprofit organizations, however, all orchestras remained heavily dependent on ticket sales in the marketplace for much of their income.
With the arrival of the twentieth century, proprietary arts organizations began to wane. According to Baumol and Bowen, the number of touring theater companies stood at 327 at the turn of the century, but declined to less than 100 by 1915. After 1932, the number never rose above 25. The traditional commercial forms of theater, vaudeville and circus declined or vanished in the face of the new medium of movies. Other performing arts forms were also affected by the new technologies of recorded music and radio, and ultimately by television. Some observers viewed these developments as the death of the live performing arts, and while it is evident that many proprietary performing arts organizations dissolved, it is not so clear that the overall output of arts goods and services was declining at all.
The fertile trends in education, prosperity, leisure, societal acceptance and demographics continued in the early 20th century, all of which favored strong demand for artistic goods and services, and growth in the number of artists. The new technologies of film, audio recording, radio and television, however, began to strip away from the old proprietary arts world the most popular and lucrative forms of production. Vaudeville became The Ed Sullivan Show and the custom easel painting became the mass produced offset print. Whereas broad-based audiences, comprised of both commoners and educated, well-to-do elites had once attended proprietary productions of Shakespeare, even in small towns and mining camps across the nation, in the twentieth century the commoners began to gravitate toward the movie houses and other new technologies, leaving only the elite to patronize an assortment of proprietary high art.
Given this substantially smaller base of customers, the laws of supply and demand would allow only one outcome: the high art sector had to diminish substantially in rough proportion to the diversion of demand toward the popularized new forms of art and entertainment, and the remaining high art consumers had to accept increased prices to maintain their favored art forms. In large measure, these increased prices took the form of organizational subsidies (donations), rather than user fees. Prior to the arrival of the new technologies, the basic model of the proprietary arts organization had served reasonably well. At this juncture in history, however, popular art continued to follow the proprietary pattern, while high art, cut off from much of its consumer base, started to adopt a new model: the subsidized nonprofit organization.
The nonprofit model remained at its core, however, a money-making enterprise. To this day, American nonprofit arts organizations derive, on average, about half of their income from sales revenues. The remainder of the necessary income, however, began to come from individual contributors, the majority of whom were well-educated, upper income connoisseurs who had an artistic, familial or social stake in the continuation of particular arts organizations. Also during the early 20th century, a few foundations, starting with the Carnegie Foundation, began to award a scattering of grants to nonprofit arts organizations, and local governments directed increasing support to publicly operated museums and performing arts halls.
By the end of the pre-Ford epoch (the late 1950s), the American arts ecosystem was characterized by a significantly reduced and still declining cadre of high art proprietorships, a small but steadily growing group of nonprofit and civic arts organizations, and a booming popular arts and entertainment sector operating commercially and reaping the advantages of a variety of technologies. More consumers were being served by these commercial and nonprofit systems of arts delivery than at any previous time in American history. In some artistic disciplines, notably the abstract expressionist painting movement that began in the late 1940s , the United States was at the forefront of international high art.
Part 2: The Ford Era 1957-1990 (Leverage Gained)
Despite the ample progress of the pre-Ford era in the production of both high and popular art, America had a hefty cultural inferiority complex by the late 1950s, by no means a new phenomenon in the nation's history. Our high art, in at least some circles, was not high enough, and too much of the artistic initiative had been conceded to the new populist technologies. The vigor of American culture was plainly visible and audible in its popular music, dance and television, but less evident in many high art disciplines.
In the 1960 presidential election, a strong undercurrent was the rejection of the low-brow 1950s style personified by Richard Nixon, in favor of the high-culture style epitomized by John Kennedy. During his presidency, Kennedy would distinguish his administration through widely publicized appearances by internationally renowned artists at the White House, and Mrs. Kennedy became the symbol of high international fashion. With the emergence of America as the world's post-war economic dynamo, there was an increasing mandate for comparable supremacy in the arts and culture, including cuisine and fashion.
Just as the mood of American culture was changing, a startling new invention appeared on the art scene: the arts grant. Invented by the Ford Foundation in the late 1950s, the arts grant was a vehicle for the long term advancement of individual nonprofit arts organizations, as well as a means for the strategic development of the entire nonprofit arts sector. As created by Ford, these grants were national in their distribution, and seen as a form of highly leveraged investment, rather than simple personalized charity.
Until the arrival of the Ford Foundation's broad vision of arts funding, virtually all cultural philanthropy had been vested with individuals, and generally lacking in any strategic intent. Most cultural philanthropy in the pre-Ford era consisted of individual patrons providing gifts to their favorite nonprofit arts organization, motivated by their love of art or sense of civic duty. While these gifts were often significant in the life of a given institution, they were rarely associated with a formally constructed plan for that institution's progression, and even less often with a grand scheme for systemic advancement of the entire arts field.
If anyone deserves credit for inventing the arts grant it is W. McNeil Lowry, the Ford Foundation's Vice President for the Arts from 1957 to 1976. Over a span of twenty years the Ford Foundation invested more than $400 million in:
The financial revitalization of existing major nonprofit arts institutions including elimination of debt, establishment of endowments and operating reserves, and support of building campaigns;
The establishment of new regional nonprofit arts organizations, especially theater and dance companies, to decentralize the arts beyond the city limits of New York;
The formation and advancement of a battery of arts service organizations, such as the Theater Communications Group, to promote broad sectors of the arts, and;
The enhancement of conservatories and visual art schools to generate a labor supply to complement the emergence of stronger, more decentralized and numerous arts institutions.
In addition to the already noted strategic goals of the Ford, it is highly significant that the Foundation viewed itself as a catalyst for these major developments, but not as the perpetual funder. The majority of Ford's grants were limited to less than five years duration and required matching support two to four times greater than the amount awarded by the Foundation. So, while Ford was attempting to increase the capacity of arts organizations to manage themselves on a fiscally sound basis and increase program output, the assumption was that other sources of money, both contributed and earned, would support long term maintenance. The concept of the matching grant, accordingly, was not merely to assemble additional funds to accomplish a specific purpose, such as a cash reserve for a museum; it was also a tactic intended to recruit new donors, who would continue a pattern of support long after Ford had moved on to other projects. This extended pattern of support was the most important form of leverage that Ford was seeking.
The leverage element of the Ford strategy succeeded brilliantly. Whereas only a few institutional funding sources had entered the realm of arts philanthropy in the pre-Ford era (notably Carnegie, Rockefeller and Mellon), a virtual cascade of foundations, corporations and governmental agencies now became active arts funders, and many of them, knowingly or unknowingly, emulated Ford's approach to institutional advancement and high leverage funding. The evolution of this new and highly pluralistic funding system for the arts had no precedent in the U.S. or any other nation. Even today, this institutional funding system, involving many hundreds of foundations, corporations and governmental agencies, remains unique in the world. Nor was this approach in any way limited to the domain of nonprofit arts organizations. Similarly vigorous applications of funding leverage were to be found in many other initiatives launched by Ford and other national funding sources during the 1960s, including the Johnson Administration's monumental “War on Poverty", which often required matching contributions from state and local government.
Borrowing from physics, Ford's influence on arts funding can be likened to a chain reaction. Ford's leadership, both by the example of its grants and through direct political advocacy, was highly instrumental in the formation of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA): a federal agency conceived during the Kennedy Administration and inaugurated in 1965 by the Johnson Administration. Major initiatives of the NEA, including its Treasury Funds, state block grants, and Challenge and Advancement programs, owe much to the Ford strategy of leverage, decentralization and institutional expansion. Moreover, from the beginning, the preponderance of NEA grants were made on a matching basis. The logic was, and remains, that the NEA would stimulate a broad and ever-expanding base of funding from individuals and institutional funders that would carry most of the weight of sustaining contributed income for the nonprofit arts economy.
The NEA's original legislation contained provisions for block grants to state arts agencies. Prior to 1965, only four states operated arts funding agencies. With the stimulus of the NEA's block grants, all states and territories had founded arts agencies by 1980. This growing snowball of state and federal arts funding, in turn, led to the formation of more than 3,000 local arts councils, a quarter of which were organized as units of local government while the remaining three quarters were formed as nonprofit organizations, often with some formal link to local government.
Aside from this pyramidal evolution of governmental funding, two other philanthropic branches grew from the Ford roots: foundation and corporate support of the arts. Foundation and corporate funding for the arts had been miniscule prior to the Ford era, and that which did exist was mostly motivated by the same drives that stimulated individual arts patrons: love of art and civic duty. The first to follow the Ford example were some of the large national foundations, but even greater numbers of regional and local foundations were to join the cultural funding movement by the mid 1970s. Many of these foundations would employ specialized staff to formulate funding strategies and analyze grant applications, again taking a cue from Ford, which was the first foundation to utilize professional staff for these purposes. By the end of the Ford era, the aggregate arts funding from foundations alone would surpass $1 billion per year, more than three times the amount spent by state and national governmental arts agencies.
The Evolution of Institutional Arts Funding
The corporate arts funding movement started somewhat later than the foundations and was spearheaded by a few national leaders including Exxon, Dayton Hudson, Philip Morris and AT&T. Although corporate funding did not attain the same level as foundations and government, and was more immersed in marketing agendas (and therefore less concerned with the strategic advancement of the arts), corporate funding was considered the fastest growing source of contributed income for the arts in the early 1980s.
Income Sources of 218 San Francisco Bay Area Nonprofit Arts Organizations, 1980
The result of the entry of government, foundation and corporate funding sources into the arts economy during the Ford era was quite dramatic. According to 1980 data collected on 218 nonprofit arts organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 45% of total income was earned and 55% came from all contributed sources. Of the contributed funds, 25% was provided by individual patrons, 18% by government, 7% by foundations and 4% by corporations Although similar figures are not available for the comparatively small sector of nonprofit arts groups in the pre-Ford era, it is evident that a strikingly different pattern must have prevailed. The preponderance of funds in that time were either earned through sales or donated by individuals. For the dominant sector of proprietary arts organizations in the pre-Ford era, as personified by the Lewis Dramatic Party of Professional Artists, virtually all income, by definition, had to be earned.
Besides helping to fuel expansion of the population of artists and arts organizations, the most significant effect of Ford era institutional funding was that it channeled the formation of new high art organizations into a nonprofit mode, rather than the proprietary mode that characterized the pre-Ford era. In the San Francisco Bay area, only 20-30 nonprofit arts organizations were in existence in the late 1950s, while a far greater number of theaters, musical ensembles, performing arts presenters and galleries were operating on a for-profit basis. By the late 1980s, at the end of the Ford era, the Bay Area contained approximately 1,000 nonprofit arts organizations, and far fewer proprietary arts organizations continued to operate. Commercial art galleries remained significant, though much of the vigor in contemporary visual art had gravitated to nonprofit galleries and artist-run spaces. Virtually no commercial theaters were operating, and almost all commercial performing arts presenting had ceased. The arts organization profile evident in the San Francisco Bay Area may be somewhat atypical, but high growth in the number of non-profits combined with a decline in the commercial high art sector appears to have been the pattern in all metropolitan regions in the U.S.
While the Ford Foundation and NEA deserve much credit for their early support of the nonprofit arts movement, by far the most significant factor in this movement's origin was the sudden arrival, in the 1960s, of a huge generation of Horace Lewis-style artists, technicians and administrators, driven not by funding or economic gain, but rather by their own desire to produce art.
The willingness of this new generation of arts workers to heavily discount its wages is borne out by various studies. Richard Harvey Brown of the University of Maryland's Survey Research Center notes that:
...government data on various artists occupations for 1970 and 1980 revealed that the number of art workers had increased by 48 percent, whereas their earnings during this period had decreased by 37 percent. In 1980, the average income of an artist living in Massachusetts was $13,008, of which only $4,535 was income earned from art. No other occupation has such highly trained people who must earn most of their penurious incomes outside their field.
A 1982 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, which compared 1971 to 1980 data, reinforces the picture of more arts workers and less compensation:
There are now over a million persons in the artist labor force. Figures for 1980 show that 1,020,000 people identified themselves as employed or unemployed actors; architects; authors; dancers; designers; musicians/ composers; painters/sculptors; photographers; radio-TV announcers; teachers of art, drama, and music in higher education; and other artists not elsewhere classified.
The artist labor force grew steadily from 1971 to 1980 and increased by 323,000 persons, or 46%. This is a higher rate of increase than the rate for all professional and technical workers, which was 40% in the same period.
The artist labor force is now about one-third female and two-thirds male as a result of women entering artist occupations at twice the rate of men during the decade of the 1970s. There are now two artist occupations which have a majority of females: dancers and painters/sculptors. In 1971, this was only the case for dancers.
The most chronic artist unemployment existed among actors, with rates during the decade ranging between 31% and 48%. As many as 10,000 actors were out of work in 1979.
Another NEA report, which examined the lives of visual artists in four major cities, provides some remarkable insights into the economic realities of this profession:
The median of artists' income from art sales, commissions, and grants or awards was $718 in 1978, and only 8.5 percent reported over $10,000. Even though all the artists had exhibited in the three-year period covered by the income question, over one-forth earned nothing at all from their art.
Most artists do not support themselves by selling their work. Median art income for the artists sampled was $718 in 1978. Median production costs were $1,450, approximately twice the median income. Not only do artists fail to make much money from their art, but they generally spend much more producing it than they make.
Since artists in general do not earn enough to support themselves through art, they receive the rest of their incomes from other sources, either by holding other jobs or by support from their households. Sixty percent worked at paying art-related jobs, with median income from those jobs of approximately $5,000. Over 63 percent of art-related jobs were part-time, and teaching jobs accounted for 62 percent of them.
Similar findings are cited for performing artists in a 1977 survey of performing arts union members commissioned by the AFL-CIO:
Most performing artists actually work considerably less than full time at their profession, primarily because not enough work is available. Only one-third of those for whom the arts is a principal profession managed to work full time in the arts in 1976, the year on which the survey focused.
Employment in the arts is very sporadic — with most performers working for multiple employers during the year. At best, only one in five worked for only one employer. It is not at all unusual for a performing artist to work for at least ten different employers.
Contrary to popular belief, when performing artists get other jobs, the jobs are more apt to be unrelated to the arts than they are to be related. Performers do not all get jobs as arts teachers or coaches — as is commonly thought. Instead, they are much more apt to get jobs in the service industries or in sales or clerical work.
A very substantial proportion of the performing artists report some unemployment during the year. Further, the proportion experiencing unemployment is much higher than occurs in the labor force as a whole.
Although median household income for performing artists is not out of line with the median for the nation as a whole (and in fact was slightly higher), considering the educational attainment of the performing artists, it was very much out of line with income received by other groups with similar education and training.
George C. Koch, a veteran employee of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Vice President of National Artists Equity, and himself a visual artist, summarizes the reality of being an artist:
I begin by dividing American society into two groups: artists and those whose education is comparable. Then I compare these two groups, and I find that American society makes five promises to the artist. First, artists will spend more time and money educating themselves while in the work force than will other workers with the same amount of education. They will spend more of their disposable income on continuing education because, throughout their life-times, they are constant learners.
Second, they will be unemployed more often. Third, their unemployment will last for longer periods of time. Fourth, in their lifetimes they will work less as artists — as dancers, painters, musicians - than their counterparts will work as analysts or managers. Finally, and not surprisingly, artists will earn less in their lifetimes than their colleagues in other occupations.
The Ford era generation of arts workers described by the foregoing statistics founded an unprecedented number of arts organizations, clearly not because of financial rewards or arts grants, but rather because they had the training and desire to produce art. This training and desire resulted from several broad influences that coincided at roughly the same moment: significant shifts in societal values, a peak in economic prosperity, the arrival of the massive baby-boom generation on American college campuses, the momentary ascendancy of liberal arts education, and a high water mark in leisure time.
Demographic Change: American fertility during and after World War II had much to do with the genesis of the Ford era. The era had truly arrived when the baby boom generation appeared in vast numbers on college campuses throughout the nation. This large, mostly white, and relatively affluent generation not only provided most of the discounted labor for the surge of arts production and formation of new nonprofit arts organizations, but also contributed substantially to the enlargement of consumer demand for the arts. In addition, this generation formed the bedrock labor supply for the massive expansion of the entire nonprofit sector of health, environmental, educational and social service organizations that were being founded concurrently.
Societal Values: Just as a shift toward more permissive and tolerant values had favored greater public expressiveness in the pre-Ford era, an even more pronounced shift developed in the late 1950's and early 1960s in reaction to the widely held perception of cultural inferiority that marked the post war years. This shift in favor of open expression (free speech, free art, free love) was accompanied by a complementary change in attitudes toward public service. The notion that work in public service was virtuous, in comparison to work in private enterprise, gained currency. John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural invocation to work for one's country was greeted with enthusiasm by many Americans, especially the young, who signed up for the Peace Corps, Vista or other public service work in government, the nonprofit sector, or volunteer groups.
Prosperity: In taking stock of this shift in values favoring public service and expressiveness, the influence of the exceptionally strong U.S. economy deserves much of the credit. While the Kennedy challenge of public service galvanized new idealism, it was easier to respond to this challenge in an economy in which multiple career options were available in the event that public service proved to be too much of a sacrifice. This general aura of prosperity may have also contributed to the willingness of large numbers of Americans to become consumers of the arts.
Education: Another planet that aligned at the beginning of the Ford era was the pinnacle of the American public education system, and a heightened emphasis on the liberal arts. A greater proportion of the population was enrolled in higher education than at any previous time and, according to some authorities, the quality of the public educational system reached its peak. It is also significant that, given the values and prosperity of this time, unprecedented numbers of college students chose to study the liberal arts. Comparative literature, drama, fine arts, art history, music and a host of other arts-related disciplines flourished.
Probably the majority of liberal arts students had no particular career ambition in these fields. The number of drama graduates in any given year, for example, substantially exceeded the supply of full time acting jobs in the entire nation. Still, at the time it was widely believed by students that any college degree, even in the arts, was a passport to an entry level job in some reasonably well-paid profession. Until the early 1970s, a seller's market prevailed for holders of undergraduate degrees, so one could afford to obtain a college degree for its own sake rather than committing oneself as an undergraduate to a business or technical degree. Thus, institutions of higher learning were producing legions of students, many of whom, whether they realized it or not, were becoming prepared to work in the nonprofit arts or to become arts consumers.
Leisure Time: Many books and articles in the late 1960's and early 1970s announced the arrival of a new era of leisure. Expectations were widespread that the U.S. would soon adopt a four day work week and concern was voiced for how Americans would utilize their expanded spare time: passively, in front of a television, or in more active, enlightening pursuits. According to economist Juliet Schor, leisure for the average working American reached an apogee in 1971. In some measure, this additional leisure probably contributed to the ability of people to engage in artistic endeavors and to become arts consumers.
Implications of the Ford Era
In summary, then, it was the sheer number of inspired and educated youth that provided the main fuel for the Ford Era. In an earlier time, this labor force probably would have founded a wave of new arts enterprises using the proprietary model that had been the only choice for Horace Lewis' generation. In the 1960's, however, the nonprofit model was available and convenient, besides fitting the contemporary anti-business ethos. Moreover, the nonprofit model had the benefit of heavy backing from the new circle of institutional arts funders led by the Ford Foundation, though many, probably the great majority, of start-up nonprofit arts organizations began without the prior commitment of a grant.
Although this period was largely driven by discounted labor, and secondarily by institutional funders, it could never afford to ignore consumer demand. As in all eras, much art was produced for its own sake with no concern for its consumer appeal. Nevertheless, the high arts in America, even with the advent of institutional funding and nonprofit organizations, continued to depend far more heavily on earned revenues than their counterparts in virtually all industrialized nations. In some European countries, government subsidies alone account for 80% or more of a typical organization's budget, and in some cases critics have argued that the incentive for attracting a large clientele base may have been eroded by over-subsidization.
In the U.S., by contrast, client-based revenues have remained critical to the survival of most nonprofit arts organizations, so as these groups proliferated in the Ford era, they tended to devote considerable energy to sales. Indeed, many government, foundation and corporate funding sources insisted on the development of a paying client base and often provided grants toward that end. Even without pressure from the funders and economic necessity, many arts organizations were imbued with the ethic of public service and willingly did their best to attract large followings. Thus, the Ford era was more than a partnership between nonprofit arts organizations and friendly funding sources that appreciated “high art.” It was also a period when the clientele of the high arts rebounded, in part driven by increased supply, but also by advances in education, societal values, economic prosperity and leisure time, the same factors that spawned the new generation of arts workers.
As the Ford Era evolved, however, it could be fairly said that most of the new consumer demand came from a relatively well-defined segment of the population: persons with high levels of formal education. This point has been confirmed by virtually all surveys of performing arts and museum audiences over the past three decades. Thus, though the nonprofit movement in the arts was partially founded on the ideal of public service, an unintentional result was that most of the beneficiaries came from a narrow band of society. What was true at the outset of the Ford Era was at least as true at the end. Most of the public obtained its arts and entertainment from commercial sources. While the nonprofit arts were expanding in organizational numbers and output, the big money and most of the technological innovation continued to reside in commercial broadcasting, musical recording, movie production, and a host of new home electronic media.
In 1993, McNeil Lowry, age 79, passed away in New York City. More than any other single individual of his time, he saw the potential and conceived the strategy for this three decade era. The arts and the nation benefited greatly from his leadership and skillful application of resources. While the history of the Ford era is too fresh to evaluate its lasting imprint, there has been no period of the arts in America that has surpassed its intensity.
Part 3: The Post-Ford Era 1990 to Present (Leverage Lost)
Just as abundant cheap labor and institutional funding were the defining elements of the Ford era, reversals in these two resources are now defining the Post-Ford Era. Despite the Ford era's remarkable successes in preserving and advancing American high art under the nonprofit banner, it was not an era that could be sustained.
The most obvious, though rarely acknowledged, reason that it could not last indefinitely was that the institutional money supply could not continue to grow. An early assumption of many arts funders, including Ford, was that high leverage funding would stimulate other sources of contributed income for the arts, most notably from government, that would provide a steady and expanding flow of revenues: the so-called “pump priming” or “seed funding” strategy. Meanwhile, government was using the same logic to justify its arts funding. Each year, the National Endowment for the Arts would partially argue the case for its appropriation bill in Congress by pointing out that each dollar of Federal funding of the arts would stimulate a many fold return in arts support from private sector funders. Similarly, state arts agencies would employ this same rationale in their annual appropriation processes. Over the years, many public funding agencies would commission economic impact studies that would attempt to demonstrate not only the leverage of governmental dollars on private sector contributions, but also the effects of public arts spending on commercial sector revenues and on the generation of sales and income tax revenues.
Today, the funding leverage concept continues to be advanced by many governmental arts agencies as a primary rationale for public support of the arts, even though much private sector and governmental arts funding has been on a downward trajectory for several years. Some private funders, as well, continue to operate matching grant and challenge grant programs that assume the potential for high leverage.
Any student of biological, physical or economic systems would immediately recognize the flaw in the logic of funding leverage, as it has been practiced not only in the arts, but also throughout the nonprofit sector. One of the fundamental tenets of systems studies is the “free lunch” principle: no system can depend on the unlimited growth of resources. The leveraged funding strategy of the Ford era can be likened to a chain letter, a Ponzi scheme, or any other pyramidal growth system. The initiators of chain letters and Ponzi schemes often claim that, for a small effort or investment, a virtually limitless return will be realized, and though initially this prophecy may appear to be feasible, inevitably all such arrangements must fail because resources are finite. In other words, there is no perpetual free lunch. Ultimately, funding leverage will become unsustainable.
Although reduced or stagnant funding from governmental and private sources is now a pervasive topic in the nonprofit arts world, the emergence of this trend has been fairly gradual, and it is commonly believed that the reductions are a temporary aberration of the economy. The state of the economy certainly does influence the resources available to many funders, as well as the buying power of arts consumers. Nevertheless, to singularly blame the economy for the substantial pressures now bearing on the nonprofit arts sector ignores the hard reality that for three decades the arts were able to rely on exponential growth in financial and labor resources, and now the chain reaction started in part by the Ford Foundation, with the best intentions and spectacular results, has arrived at a point of systemic purgatory.
While the loss of funding leverage may appear to be an overwhelming problem for nonprofit arts organizations, an even bigger, though less acknowledged, issue is the loss of labor leverage. The most elemental force in the massive growth of arts organizations in the early Ford years was the arrival of a large new generation of artists and other arts workers who were willing to support their work through discounted wages. The continuation of Ford Era nonprofit organizations is, therefore, fundamentally tied to the ongoing availability of this core resource. For two reasons, the outlook is not good for the sustainability of discounted labor: a significant portion of the veteran generation that founded the Ford era organizations is departing, and it is not being adequately replaced by a new generation of discounted labor.
The departure of the veterans is principally due to a simple axiom of aging: as one becomes older, the expectation of earning more increases. During the early Ford years in particular, tens of thousands of young people entered the arts with little thought of it being a career that would bring adequate compensation. The 1960's economy was so robust, the cost of living was so low, and job opportunities so abundant, that a young person with a college degree could easily become a writer, curator, dancer or lighting technician, often by holding a supplementary non-arts job, and still have the option of entering another profession if the arts proved to be unsatisfactory. As this generation of arts workers has aged, however, the expectation of making money has increased. In part, this higher expectation can be viewed as a natural characteristic of becoming older and desiring increased material comfort. In the case of the highly educated baby boom generation, however, this natural expectation may have been accentuated for arts workers by the exceptional financial success that has been achieved by many of their non-arts peers who have used their college educations to obtain high incomes.
As expectations of making money have been escalating for veteran arts workers, their actual wages have been increasing as well. The problem is that the expectations have increased at a faster rate than the actual levels of compensation. One of the common stories among young performing artists of the 1960s was their pilgrimage to a large city, usually New York, where they worked for almost no wages for a theater or dance company. In those years, an entry level job for a college graduate might be $5-8,000 for a position in teaching, accounting or management. For these young performing artists, however, survival was a matter of living in shared housing, earning money in a menial part time job, and maybe receiving assistance from parents. In New York City, many nonprofit performing arts organizations with annual production seasons learned how to supplement their workers' wages through periodic layoffs that made them eligible for state unemployment insurance. So, while these young performers were usually aware that their worth on the open job market was $5-8,000, they might accept little or no compensation with few regrets. In effect, they were donating all or most of the value of their labor to the dance or theater company in which they worked.
Today, these same arts workers are in their forties and fifties. At this point in their careers, they may be earning annual wages of $25-40,000, no longer living in shared housing, intolerant of periodic layoffs, and almost certainly receiving no help from their parents. Moreover, the open job market has far fewer opportunities for their skills, and the time for developing the qualifications to enter an alternative career is past or becoming short. For many of these veterans, the realities of acquiring equity in a house, saving for retirement, obtaining medical insurance, or helping their children through college have become grim. Given their levels of education, advanced skills and seniority, these veterans feel entitled to incomes more in the range of $50-75,000, and yet only a small fraction of them, especially in small and medium size arts organizations, are able to reach this expectation. The net effect, then, is that the veterans are giving up more income to work in the arts today than they were in the early years of the Ford era, and the pressure of their need for increased income is a major cause of their exodus from the field.
In the bygone days of the early Ford era, labor exerted its own form of leverage. Artists would start new organizations, which became magnets for yet other arts workers, even without strong economic incentives. As long as labor was inexpensive, new nonprofit organizations provided a platform for artistic labor to pursue its need to produce work. In the post-Ford era, however, it appears that this leverage has been lost, or at least diminished, with respect to a younger generation of arts workers. Fewer in this generation are majoring in the liberal arts, and for those who do, there is less often the desire to take a chance on a low paying career with minimal long term security. A more typical strategy among undergraduates is to prepare for highly paid occupations, and to work hard at getting an entry level position with good prospects for advancement. A corollary of this change in career perspective is that within the relatively small pool of young college graduates who are willing to work in the nonprofit arts sector, there is often a demand for higher starting wages. Ironically, it is not unusual to find cases in which veteran arts workers are leaving the field, and being replaced by younger, less experienced workers, who start at wages comparable to those of the departing veterans.
A problem that compounds the dual trends of reduced discounted labor and reductions in grant funding is the apparent slippage in public demand for the services of many nonprofit arts organizations. In recent years, much of the performing arts industry (operas, symphonies, theaters and dance companies) has reported lower audience results. Here is an instance in which the recession of the early 1990s may have had a significant impact; but it is also likely that several other trends, all of them likely to last well beyond the recession, are significant. In essence, these longer lasting trends are reversals in the very factors that gave rise to the Ford era:
Societal Values: The 1980s are widely viewed as a time when personal gain triumphed over the public good, and there is little doubt that the one-time credibility, if not prestige, of a career in public service was set back by the political scandals and anti-government invective of the last two decades. While the ethic of volunteerism remains a strong element in American life, it is now more often practiced as an adjunct to an otherwise successful career, rather than as a way of life that diminishes one's earnings.
The nonprofit arts sector has also received a public relations body blow from the spectacle of Congressional muckraking over the various controversial grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. At a time when “family values” are in ascendancy, it has become increasingly difficult to justify public spending on art that challenges the societal mainstream. In some ways, the arts have become discredited in the way that they were in Horace Lewis' day: not a place for virtuous people.
Prosperity: The erosion of favorable sentiments toward art and public service may also be related to long lasting changes in prosperity. In the post-Ford era, the average American no longer enjoys the premier standard of living in the world economy. Not only has total real income declined for Americans, but also disposable income: the money available for spending beyond the necessities of food, shelter and taxes. Less disposable income has obvious and direct implications for consumer demand for all forms of arts and entertainment.
Education: The pressures of a less bountiful economy and the retrenchment in attitudes toward the arts are compounded by changes in American public education. According to many authorities, overall literacy and educational attainment have slipped, and many arts education programs have been reduced or eliminated. Various campaigns have been mounted over the past 20 years, including those by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller and Getty Foundations, to improve arts education curricula and convince school districts of the fundamental place of the arts in a balanced education. These efforts have often been pitted, however, against the realities of less money for public education and greater emphasis on so-called “basic” subjects that are viewed as essential preparation for employment. The newly promulgated “Contract with America” proposes even greater emphasis within public education on employment skills.
These trends in general education and arts education are particularly worrisome for the arts because of their exceedingly long term impact. Whereas societal values and economic prosperity may shift over spans of several years, changes in the educational system tend to be more glacial, and the impact on individuals can be lifelong. Thus, if a child establishes no arts literacy, especially during the early primary school years, the likelihood of that child becoming an artist or an active participant in the arts may be significantly diminished.
Given that much of the baby boom generation graduated from the educational system at or near its pinnacle, one might suppose that this relatively affluent group would be a prime source of new and stable audience support for the arts in the 1990s, even if the participation of subsequent generations is being dampened by a weakened educational system. The book Megatrends 2000 predicts a strong upward trend in arts audiences in the 1990s resulting from the well-educated baby boom generation's arrival at its prime income earning years. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that this trend is materializing, and it is quite possible that the baby boom generation will be less engaged in the arts than their parents' generation.
Leisure Time: The problem of low arts demand within the baby boom generation, and subsequent generations as well, may be due, in part, to the decline in leisure time that began to appear in the early 1970s, but became more evident toward the end of the 1980s. Overall, leisure time in the U.S. has declined by about one-third for working individuals since 1971, with both men and women spending more time engaged in work. According to Juliet Schor, the U.S. and Japan are the only industrialized nations in which a decline in leisure has occurred over this period. Not only does this decline have implications for arts audiences, but also for the volunteer activity that artists and non-artists invest in arts organizations.
Judith Huggins Balfe examines this issue one step further in an article about the baby boom generation's audience patterns. She suggests that this generation is approaching its limited leisure time in a manner different from its parents' generation. Given the pressure of work, Ms. Balfe sees a reluctance within the baby boom generation to commit itself in advance to a schedule of leisure time activities. Thus, this generation is less likely to buy season tickets because it wants to retain freedom of choice and the opportunity to attend activities spontaneously. This generation also may be reluctant to purchase even a single ticket to a high art event that requires arrival at a set time, and constrains the audience to a silent, passive posture until the performance ends. Rather, the increasing preference may be shifting to forms of performance, such as comedy, literary salons and jazz, that are more interactive, flexible with regard to arrival and departure times, and less constraining on one's behavior during the course of the event.
Demographic Change: Whereas the sheer size of the baby boom generation had an influence on the number of artists and audience members available to support the nonprofit arts build-up of the Ford era, population dynamics of a different sort are shaping the post-Ford era. Post-Ford is a more racially diverse time, and many nonprofit organizations based on the high art perspectives of an educated elite are finding it difficult to adapt to a more multi-hued audience. Moreover, governmental funding sources, which are necessarily sensitive to the broad racial and gender landscape of the electorate, are also exerting pressure for greater diversity among nonprofit arts organizations.
Technology: Throughout the pre-Ford and Ford eras, new technologies exerted a constant pressure on the high arts, capturing through electronic media any art form and audience that might be commercially successful. This pattern has continued in the post-Ford era as the new wave of CD recordings, home video, and specialized cable broadcasting has competed with the old guard of performing, visual and literary high art.
Implications of the Post-Ford Era
From our present vantage point in the mid-1990s, it can now be seen that the Ford era was the result of a coincidence of several disparate factors: the idealism of the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, increased leisure, high prosperity, the genius of McNeil Lowry (combined with the plentiful resources of the Ford Foundation), trends on college campuses, and several other influences. In the past three decades, each of these trends has followed its own course. Is it any wonder, then, that the nonprofit arts sector, which boomed during the brief intersection of these trends, cannot comfortably assume that the status quo will prevail? There are numerous examples of far larger sectors of the American economy that ignored major systemic trends to their lasting detriment. Most forms of manufacturing, health care organizations and railroads are a few among the many cases. While it is likely that the various trends affecting the nonprofit arts sector will oscillate, for better and for worse, in the future, they may never again coincide in the fashion that launched the Ford Era.
The main point of this paper has been to examine the nonprofit arts sector as a complex organic system that has been shaped by at least a half dozen major trends over the past century. While in retrospect it may be possible to trace the confluent forces that led to the bounty of the Ford era, it is another matter entirely to predict how the ecosystem will evolve into the future. Any system affected by large-scale external influences must necessarily adjust its behavior or become extinct. Systems tend to be so complex, however, that prediction of their behavior is impossible. In recognition of the chaotic behavior of social, economic and environmental systems, an emerging view among planning authorities is to prepare for alternative futures, rather than betting everything on any single projection of the future.
There is, perhaps, one reasonably safe assertion that can be made about the near term direction of the nonprofit arts ecosystem: that for the present, the arts will have no choice but to adapt to the circumstances of less discounted labor and contributed income, and in some instances, flat or declining consumer demand as well. The most likely result will be an overall decline in the number of nonprofit arts organizations, along with a reduction in the production of program services: exhibitions, performances, and so forth. This near term prediction does not imply that every nonprofit arts organization will follow a declining course, but rather that the nonprofit arts system as a whole will have to come into equilibrium with reductions in these resources. Other nonprofit fields, including environmental, social service and educational organizations, which expanded rapidly in response to the growth of discounted labor and institutional funding in the 1960-1990 era, are experiencing similar declines.
Surely, the most vulnerable organizations are the small and medium size arts groups that have had the highest reliance on inexpensive labor and grants. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, more than 95% of the nonprofit arts groups fall into the small or medium size range using, as a rough standard, organizations with annual operating budgets of less than $1.5 million. Many, though by no means all, larger institutions have buffered themselves from some of the exigencies of the post-Ford environment through enhanced capitalization (buildings, cash reserves, equipment and endowments), reasonably adequate employee compensation, and multiple streams of contributed income from individual donors and institutional grants, complemented by dependable flows of earned revenues based on loyal audiences. For many of the major arts institutions, especially in the performing arts, audiences have tailed off in recent years, but given their diverse resource bases, large institutions can often manage their way through this hardship. Cuts are made in various cost categories, emphasis is devoted to increased earned and contributed income, endowments are bolstered, and the ship stays afloat.
For many small and medium size arts organizations, fine tuning of costs and income sources may not be enough. The departure of the founding generation of artists and administrators, and the subsequent inability of organizations to recruit employees of comparable skill and commitment, may be fatal. The loss of one or two key funding sources, usually in the form of previously reliable governmental or foundation grants, may have the same effect.
In a few instances, small, weakly capitalized arts organizations eventually declare legal bankruptcy, though the more common pattern is to retreat from a position of operating as a year-around organization, and instead operate from project to project as resources permit. Another tactic is to abandon operation as an independent nonprofit organization, and to function thereafter under the aegis of a nonprofit fiscal sponsor. Some attempts at merger are also in evidence, but examples of success are few in number.
All of these tactics for reducing fixed costs have in common one feature: a continued need for a supply of discounted labor, without which existence in any organizational structure is not possible. With the possible exceptions of the top echelon of orchestral musicians and a handful of superstars scattered throughout the performing, visual and literary arts, the compensation and status of the American artist are not substantially different from the pre-Ford days of the Lewis Dramatic Party of Professional Artists.
For those who came of age in the Ford era and became acclimatized to its nonprofit mode of operation, the realities of the post-Ford era may seem harsh or even hostile. For artists, administrators and board members, the operation of nonprofit arts organizations has become a thoroughly learned culture with deeply ingrained assumptions about values, ways of conducting business and sources of support. As with any established culture, it will not be an easy task to adapt to new circumstances. From an historical perspective, it can be seen that the American nonprofit model was always built upon the foundation of the earlier proprietary system, which required of arts workers a combination of personal economic sacrifice and the ability to attract paying customers. If the post-Ford era comes to resemble an earlier time when entrepreneurial skills were essential to survival, it is likely that many organizations founded in the Ford era will experience trouble making the necessary adjustments, or even discontinue operations rather than accept any compromise of refined high art standards that cannot be supported, at least partially, in the marketplace.
In the long worldwide history of the arts, artists have always found ways to pursue their work and audiences have found ways to see, hear and read it. The issue today is whether and how the model of the nonprofit arts organization, which has flourished for only a brief moment in the history of the arts, will continue to be a viable, versatile and publicly useful instrument for artistic production.
In considering this issue, those workers involved with the day-to-day operations of nonprofit arts organizations will increasingly have to ask a personally difficult, but fundamental, question, “How long will we be willing to carry on our work in the nonprofit arts in full knowledge of the ongoing necessity of sacrificing personal income?” In effect, an audit of the human resources of an arts organization, which revealed the likely career trajectories of current staffs and volunteers, along with an appraisal of the likely flow of new recruits, would provide a clearer understanding of sustainability than a financial audit.
Arts funders who have an abiding interest in the advancement of nonprofit arts organizations should be equally interested in the arts labor supply. In most instances, grant funding will not be sufficient to offset the value lost to arts organizations through labor attrition. Given the fragility of many nonprofit arts organizations, funders who pursue their usual role of using grants to influence production quality, audience size and composition, fundraising capacity, and financial stability may find that their interventions exert little positive influence. Worse yet, interventions made in the absence of a thorough understanding of the new systemic realities of nonprofit arts organizations, including the key issue waning of labor resources, may result in what systems experts call, “unintended consequences.” Trying to boost audiences, for example, may push an already stressed organization, that should be focused on reducing fixed costs, over the brink.
Although funders are sometimes potent enough to award grants that make a material difference in an organization's long term advancement, it is an open question whether any foundation, corporation or governmental agency, even a coalition of funders working together, could succeed with an intervention that would change the course of the entire arts ecosystem, in a fashion comparable to the Ford Foundation in the 1960s. The post-Ford environment has no single funding institution that could muster the singular impact of the Ford Foundation's ventures into national dispersal of the arts and building up entire sectors of the arts, such as regional theater and ballet companies. The post-Ford landscape of funders is so decentralized and pluralistic that any plausible cooperative effort would seem to have little chance of achieving broad systemic change.
Even in European countries in which governments have long been endowed with financial resources, public support, and statutory authority that have enabled them to engineer the dynamics of their arts ecosystem, this unilateral position of control is now eroding in the face of new trends in technology, population diversity, societal values and the global economy. For decades, many American arts leaders advocated quantum increases in governmental appropriations to follow the European example of heavy per capita subsidization. More often today, the Europeans are looking to the U.S. for clues about supporting the arts in a more pluralistic milieu of cultures and funding sources. A new wave of nongovernmental foundations, some of which are funding the arts, are presently growing in several western European countries.
Assuming that governmental and private arts funders could marshal resources comparable to those of the Ford Foundation in its heyday, there is no obvious leverage point in the post-Ford environment. Some funders are fond of the idea that massive improvements in arts education would help to reverse declines in audiences; but would enhanced education by itself be enough to offset negative public attitudes toward public service and artistic expression, declining leisure time, slippage in middle class prosperity, and the constant pressure of new entertainment technologies? Each of these trends is driven by massive forces in the American economy, society and political order that surround and dwarf the nonprofit arts. So, for those with the ambition of rivaling the legacy of McNeil Lowry, there may be no choice but to await a more favorable alignment of the planets, when a leverage point, once again, becomes manifest.
Although the moment may not be ripe for grand strategies, there is no cause to abandon all that arose during the Ford era. In comparison to the last years of the pre-Ford era (the decade following World War II), the high arts sector of the post-Ford era appears to be much larger and more robust. Enough nutrient remains in the nonprofit arts system to support the conviction that many Ford era organizations will make the necessary adjustments to the new conditions, and thereafter prosper and mature. Even in cases wherein nonprofit organizations cease operation, their resident artists may well continue to find other organizational structures to support their work, whether it is under the auspices of alternative non-profit or the other voluntary and proprietary organizational models that will continue to be available.
And who knows? A new planetary alignment could arise at any moment and define an era beyond post-Ford. While it is highly unlikely that the next age will be shaped by the same coincidence of forces that unleashed the boom of the Ford era, there is no reason to expect that the presently prevailing trends in resources, societal values, population dynamics, technology, education and leisure will become frozen in a permanent orbit. Paraphrasing John Milton in Paradise Lost, there is no need to be forever fallen if we awake and arise to the ever-evolving realities of the cultural ecosystem.
John Kreidler is Senior Program Executive at the San Francisco Foundation and oversees distribution of 100 grants a year valued at $2 million in a five county area around San Francisco.
1. Throughout this paper, an effort is made to describe the nonprofit arts world as a complex system. The approach used in this analysis owes much to the work of two noted systems authorities: Barry Richmond, President of High Performance Systems in Hanover, New Hampshire, publisher of a systems modeling program entitled “i think”; and MIT professor Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1990)
Baumol, William J. and William G. Bowen. Performing Arts, The Economic Dilemma (New York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), p.18. The performance was of a play entitled, “Ye Bare and Ye Cubb”, performed in Accomac, Virginia in 1665.
Ibid. p.81-83.
Quote from a playbill, circa 1879.
American Art Journal, June 7, 1879.
Classic microeconomic theory would take a different perspective. The value of artistic labor would be seen as the market price, that is, the price that buyers would be willing to pay.
Schuster, J. Mark Davidson. The Audience for American Art Museums (Washington: Seven Locks Press, 1991)
The term “high art” is used throughout this paper to denote forms of artistic expression that require formal education to acquire a degree of connoisseurship. The obverse would be “popular art” or “low art” forms that appeal to masses of people who acquire connoisseurship through their immersion in culture rather than through formal education.
Schor, Juliet. The Overworked American: the Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1991)
Op.cit p.28
One brief, but at moments illustrious, break in this pattern occurred during a time of supreme national emergency: the Great Depression of the 1930s. In this period of crisis, the Federal Government's Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired 44,000 artists in all disciplines and used them to establish hundreds of orchestras, theater companies and community music schools. Many of these artists were also put to work, either individually or in groups, to write local histories, create sculptures or easel paintings, and paint frescoes in public buildings. One of the most noteworthy features of this enormous project was that it not only absorbed the labor of a large number of unemployed artists, but also attempted to link the output of these artists to a broader, more populist, audience. The WPA made a point of bringing art into settings, including small towns and public buildings, where the arts were rarely seen. Hundreds of symphonies, theaters and arts schools were formed in locales that had little previous history of such institutions. However, in an episode that was to anticipate the harsh attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts more than 50 years later, the Congress abolished the WPA Theater Project in late 1938 in response to the Dies Committee's (U.S. House of Representatives) findings of communist influence, and the remainder of the WPA arts program quickly faded, until World War II brought its final demise.
In must industrialized nations, earned income forms a far smaller fraction of the total income needed to operate arts organizations. In some instances, government subsidies provide the majority of the operating income. See Milton C. Cummings, Jr. and J. Mark Davidson Schuster, eds. Who's To Pay for the Arts? The International Search for Models of Arts Support (New York, N.Y.: ACA Books, 1989).
Ironically, President Nixon, in the 1970s, was to become a strong supporter of high art through his approval of quantum budget increases for the National Endowment for the Arts. Throughout his administration, Mr. Nixon made a point of attending performing arts events and inviting artists to the White House.
Weber, Nathan and Loren Renz. Arts Funding: A Report on Foundation and Corporate Grantmaking Trends (New York, N.Y.: Foundation Center, 1993).
San Francisco Foundation. Artsfax 1981 (San Francisco, CA, 1981). 1991 data are used for this chart because that year falls in the middle years of the Ford era when broad diversification of contributed funding sources had already become a well established pattern.
Ibid
Myllyluoma, Jaana and Lester M. Salamon. The San Francisco Bay Area Nonprofit Sector: An Update (Baltimore, MD.: Institute for Policy Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, 1992).
Op. cit
Milton C. Cummings, Jr. and Richard S. Katz, eds. The Patron State: Government and the Arts in Europe, North America, and Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
A recent news release of the NEA claims that each dollar of Federal arts funding yields $11 of private sector contributions.
A Ponzi Scheme is an illegal form of fraud in which investors are promised high rates of return that are achieved in the short run by paying early investors with funds derived from later investors. The seemingly high rates of return achieved by the early investors serve as a magnate for later investors who believe that they too can become rich. Inevitably, many investors lose all or much of their committed resources. Systems theorists would use the term “positive feedback” to describe pyramidal growth schemes. Positive feedback is an inherently destabilizing characteristic of some systems.
Naisbitt, John and Patricia Aburdene. Megatrends 2000: Ten New Directions for the 1990's (New York: William Morrow and Co.,1990).
Op, cit
Balfe, Judith Huggins. “The Baby-Boom Generation: Lost Patrons, Lost Audience?” from Wyszomirski, Margaret Jane and Pat Clubb, eds. The Cost of Culture: Patterns and Prospects of Private Arts Patronage (New York, NY: ACA Books, 1989).
See, for example, Stacey, Ralph D. Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992).
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Bianca Andreescu, of Canada, reacts after defeating Belinda Bencic, of Switzerland, during the semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
Fans across Canada eager to cheer on Bianca Andreescu at US Open final
Ontario native takes on Serena Williams, and could become first Canadian to win a Grand Slam
Sep. 7, 2019 9:36 a.m.
Tennis lovers across Canada will gather around TV screens on Saturday to watch Bianca Andreescu take on Serena Williams in finals of the US Open.
If the 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., wins Saturday’s final match in New York City, she will be the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam title — one of the most prestigious accomplishments in professional tennis.
Andreescu has already clinched a record of sorts. Her semifinal win over Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic has attracted as many as 1.5 million viewers Thursday evening on TSN — the biggest U.S. Open audience ever for the Bell Media sports channel.
Tennis Canada is holding viewing parties in Toronto and Montreal, while sports bars nationwide will host less official gatherings.
Andreescu has racked up quite the fan base over the past year, with the likes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeting her congratulations.
READ MORE: Canada’s Bianca Andreescu advances to US Open final vs. Serena Williams
She’s also become a fan favourite among members of the Romanian-Canadian community, who say they’re proud to see one of their own shine on the world stage.
And Hazel McCallion, the high-profile former longtime mayor of Andreescu’s hometown, also counts herself among the fans.
The 98-year-old nicknamed “Hurricane Hazel” says she’ll be watching the 4 p.m. match from the comfort of her home.
Sagging B.C. Lions fall to 1-10 after 21-16 loss to Montreal
VIDEO: Andreescu beats Williams 6-3, 7-5 to become first Canadian U.S. Open singles champ
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Approved: November, 2015/Ammended: November, 2018
1. NAME OF ORGANIZATION
1.1 The name of this organization is the Hopewell Soccer Club.
2. PURPOSE OF ORGANIZATION
2.1 The purpose of the Hopewell Soccer Club (hereinafter HSC or the Club) shall be to develop, promote and administer the game of soccer for youth between the ages of 3 and 19 years of age; HSC will strive to elevate the standards of integrity, honor, loyalty, courage and honesty among the youth of our community and all others participating in the game of soccer.
2.2 The Hopewell Soccer Club is organized and operated exclusively for the above stated purpose, and other related non-profit purposes, and no part of any earnings or income shall inure to the benefit of, or be distributed to its members, officers or other private parties, except that HSC shall be empowered to pay reasonable compensation for services rendered and to make payments and distributions in furtherance of the purpose defined herein. Not withstanding any other provisions of this constitution, the Hopewell Soccer Club shall not carry on any other activities not permitted to be carried on by any organization exempt from federal income tax under Section 501 (C)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (26 USC 501 (C)(3) or corresponding provisions of any subsequent Federal Tax Law.
3. AFFILIATION
3.1 The Hopewell Soccer Club shall be an affiliate of the Western Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association hereinafter known as PA West and has been constituted as a Youth Soccer Association as defined in the USYSA (United States Youth Soccer Association) Constitution. HSC shall be subject to the authority of PA West, the United States Youth Soccer Association, hereafter known as USYSA and the Federation Internationale Football Association (hereafter known as FIFA).
4. GOVERNMENT
4.1 Hopewell Soccer Club shall be governed by its constitution, By-Laws, and Rules and Regulations. HSC shall retain its own autonomy, but will adhere to the Constitution, By-Laws and Regulations of PA West in all matters pertaining to interstate, regional, national and international competition, or in other competitions sponsored by the PA West.
5.1 Membership in HSC shall be open primarily to residents within the boundaries of Hopewell Area School District. However, any applicant outside of the Hopewell Area School District, but within the boundaries of PA West, shall be eligible for application of membership. Acceptance for membership of those applications outside of the Hopewell Area School District is subject to the approval of the In-House or Travel Coordinator.
5.2 The coach of each team officially registered with HSC for a given season's play, shall represent that team as the voting club member at the annual general meeting and any other special meetings. Each team is granted one vote. If a coach cannot be present, the President may accept written, electronic or phone votes. Any individual who coaches more than one registered team has the right to cast one vote for each team he/she represents.
5.3 The acceptance of membership obligates the member to comply with the provisions of the Constitution, the By-Laws and the Rules and Regulations of HSC. Penalties for violation thereof shall be imposed as provided in the By-Laws.
5.4 All teams, clubs and associations within the territorial jurisdiction of PA West who are not members of PA West shall be deemed non-affiliated organizations. Members representing HSC shall not play soccer games against non-affiliated organizations without prior approval and authorization of the Board of Directors of PA West.
6.1 Members shall pay a registration fee per session as set forth in the By-Laws.
7. BUSINESS YEAR
7.1 The Business Year shall begin on July 1 and end on June 30. The Constitution, By-Laws and Rules and Regulations shall be in effect during the entire twelve (12) months of the Business Year.
8. BOARD OF DIRECTORS
8.1 The government of HSC with the authority set out herein and in the By-Laws, shall be vested in a governing body known hereafter as the Board of Directors.
8.2 The officers of the Board of Directors shall be elected at the annual coaches meeting held in June each year. The Board shall be comprised of elected and appointed officers. Elected Officers must be residents of the Hopewell Area School District and will comprise the Executive Committee. Board positions will become available as follows.... President, Treasurer and Secretary will be elected on odd numbered years, Vice President and Registrar will be elected on even numbered years.
Elected Officers: Executive Committee
Registrar (In House)
Registrar (Travel)
Referee Assignor
The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors shall appoint officers to the following board positions according to the By-laws.
Appointed Officers:
Concession Stand Coordinator
Marketing/Fundraising Coordinator
Uniform Coordinator
8.3 Each elected and appointed officer, although acting individually in the best interest of HSC, is ultimately responsible to the Board of Directors for their actions.
8.4 All members of the Board of Directors, whether elected or appointed, are voting members for the purpose of conducting Club business or any issue set forth to the general membership for vote.
8.5 The Board shall meet as provided in the By-Laws.
8.6 All members of the Board of Directors, whether elected or appointed, shall serve 2 years from July 1 to June 30 (biennial) eg. 7/1/2015-6/30/2017.
8.7 The duties and responsibilities of the Board members both individually and collectively shall be as provided in the By-Laws.
8.8 Any vacancies occurring in the Board during the Business Year shall be filled by appointment of the Board of Directors and confirmed by a majority vote of the Board of Directors present. Such new Board members arising from vacancies shall continue in office until June 30 of the positions corresponding year.
8.9 Any member of the Board may be removed from office for cause, and relieved of all duties by a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors present in accordance with the By-Laws. Notice of the proposed removal must be cited in the minutes of the previous meeting of the Board of Directors.
9. GENERAL MEETING OF THE MEMBERSHIP
9.1 Voting membership is defined as described in Sections 5.2 and 8.4.
9.2 There shall be at least one annual coaches meeting of the voting membership. All voting members shall be notified of the annual coaches meeting at least 30 days prior to that meeting and that notice may be in the form of a Club newsletter and/or posting at the Club fields.
9.3 The annual election meeting, which shall be held at the coaches meeting during second half of the Spring Season, will be designated for election of the Board of Directors. (May/June)
9.4 The order of business at any general/coaches meeting shall follow Robert's Rules of Order:
Reading and acceptance of the Minutes of the previous general meeting
Open public discussion
9.5 Officers elected at the annual election during the coaches meeting shall take office on July 1.
9.6 Other general meetings of the voting membership, as may be required from time to time, may be called by the President.
10.1 The Constitution may be amended or repealed, in whole or in part, by a two-thirds vote of the board of directors as set forth in Section 8.4 of this Constitution.
11. BY-LAWS
11.1 By-Laws will be hereafter adopted and may be amended or repealed, in whole or part, in the manner provided therein.
12.1 The President, Vice President or the Treasurer must sign any check or draft disbursing funds of the Club.
12.2 In any instance in this Constitution, the By-Laws, and the Rules and Regulations, where a reference is made to gender in the paragraph, "he" shall be interpreted as "he or she.
13.1 13.1 Upon the dissolution of the HSC, the Board of Directors shall, after paying or making provisions for the payment of all liabilities, dispose of all assets of the Club exclusively for the purpose, or purposes, stated in Section 2.2 of the Constitution. All remaining assets shall be equally divided between the Men's and Women's Hopewell Soccer Boosters organization(s) of the Hopewell Area School District for the express purpose of administering youth soccer programs.
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‘Buc-ee’s Stadium at Kyle Field?’ No way, says Aggies’ AD
Sports // Aggies
Brent Zwerneman , Houston Chronicle Oct. 15, 2019 Updated: Oct. 15, 2019 8:24 p.m.
Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork has been on the job for four months after leaving Ole Miss, the Aggies’ opponent Saturday.
Photo: Dave McDermand, MBR / Associated Press
COLLEGE STATION — Ross Bjork chuckled at the suggested name high in the sky in maroon lights, spawned from a reporter’s question more loaded than a gussied-up gas station burrito: “Buc-ee’s Stadium at Kyle Field.”
“There are some things I learned quickly that are sacred,” said Bjork, four months on the job as Texas A&M’s athletic director. “Kyle Field is one of them.”
In other words that are music to many Aggies’ ears in a world of credit union and dot.com monikers adorning otherwise old-school stadiums, Kyle Field will stay “Kyle Field.”
The Aggies are, however, doing their best to keep up with the Joneses (and tides of crimson and others) in the cutthroat world of college athletics finances, prompting Bjork to remind fans they must keep propelling forward.
Perhaps meaning a few more brand names around the west side of campus to help pay the bills (and then some).
“I do think that there are some sponsor-activation things that you could do that are tasteful while still protecting the tradition,” he said Tuesday. “The key is ‘tradition with innovation.’ How do you blend those two?”
Bjork, 46, will try to blend the two worlds of his last year this weekend, when the Aggies play football at Mississippi. A&M swiped Bjork from Oxford, Miss., where he spent the previous seven years as a rising-star AD, to replace Scott Woodward, who returned home to LSU.
“It will be tough,” Bjork said of going back to the place where his two boys, an eighth-grader and third-grader, mainly grew up. “You have friends there, and you have relationships you built there for seven years. Then you’re coming in with the opposing team, and you want your new team to win.
“Those emotions will be tough. But it will be neat to see friends and things you helped get built, whether it’s facilities or programs.”
The Aggies (3-3, 1-2 SEC) are trying to get back on track following a 47-28 home loss to top-ranked Alabama last Saturday. Bjork strolled into a tidy situation at A&M in the “big two” sports: football and men’s basketball.
Football’s Jimbo Fisher, who won a national title at Florida State in 2013, had just wrapped up the first season of a 10-year contract. Just prior to his exit in the spring, Woodward fired basketball coach Billy Kennedy and replaced him with Buzz Williams from Virginia Tech.
Williams, a former A&M assistant under Billy Gillispie more than a decade ago, conducted his 10th practice with his new program Tuesday.
“We’re trying to get to the point where we can be really good in consecutive practices,” Williams said. “We’re starting to get there. We’re just not quite there yet. Everybody is new. Regardless of how old they are or where they came from or how long they’ve been at A&M, everything is new.
“Everything we do in practice, every day in a film session, every day in the weight room, it’s all new.”
Williams, who led Virginia Tech to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament last season, coaches his first official game at A&M on Nov. 6 against Northwestern (La.) State in Reed Arena. Though Bjork didn’t hire Williams, the two practically arrived together.
“We have two seasoned coaches in our two most high-profile sports,” Bjork said. “It helps my transition and my ‘take’ on the program to say look, I don’t have to worry about those coaches. They’re locked in contractually because the university felt that was important, and they’re seasoned, experienced, championship-level coaches.”
Bjork said his biggest task early is achieving “financial stability” in the department.
“Even though we have great resources here, every penny matters,” he said. “Every dollar matters. Every 100 dollars matter.”
A&M paid football coach Kevin Sumlin about $10 million to leave the Aggies two years ago before the expiration of his contract. A&M is paying Fisher $75 million over his 10 years. A&M paid Kennedy about $3.5 million to leave the Aggies last spring. A&M is paying Williams about $24 million over six years, starting now. It all adds up.
“Those sorts of transitional costs are pricey. The good thing is (A&M) had a plan,” Bjork said of the university’s preparing for the massive payments before his arrival last summer. “Our (department) CFO Jeff Toole had a plan, and our 12th Man Foundation had a plan. We have a plan, but the next couple of years are tight, so every penny matters.
“Now it’s all about how we can grow our revenues.”
Rest assured, Bjork added, growing those revenues won’t include a tacked-on name to Kyle Field.
brent.zwerneman@chron.com
twitter.com/brentzwerneman
Follow Brent on:
BrentZwerneman
Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.
Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He’s a four-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the San Antonio Express-News, including a second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione “secret newsletter” scandal in 2007.
His coverage of Texas A&M’s move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012. Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.
Aggies pick up commitment from four-star guard Jaxson Robinson
Texas A&M’s 13 early enrollees busy learning Jimbo Fisher’s language
Young's 27 points sends Iowa St. past Oklahoma St. 89-82
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Home » Insight » Italy and Europe: the integration dilemma
Italy and Europe: the integration dilemma
5 th July 2018
Macroeconomics & Risk
The new political landscape in Italy is hardly surprising: it has emerged from the convergence of both global tendencies and idiosyncratic factors.
Going forward, Italy’s short-term economic outlook includes some positive elements. However, material downside risks loom amid high policy uncertainty, both domestically and externally.
Italy’s long-term issues include the sustainability of its large public debt and more importantly, its poor growth prospects. Labour productivity growth has been on a downward trajectory since the early ‘90s.
Meanwhile, Spain has set a positive example in Europe, in light of the progress it has made since the financial crisis. Its economy has staged an outstanding recovery in recent years, benefiting from relatively early and broad-based reforms.
Conversely, the Italian situation is a symptom of deep-rooted malaise: it requires serious consideration and a credible and concerted response from both domestic and European politicians.
The European integration process needs to advance. European leaders will have to work to fix the shortcomings of the European project, providing a stronger political and fiscal underpinning to the single currency.
Italy’s recent political imbroglio reignited the debate over the European Union’s (EU) future and the viability of the European single currency within its current institutional framework.
The March 4 election produced a hung parliament, with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement emerging as the largest single party. The longest political stalemate in Italian postwar history ensued and in late May, the 5-Star Movement and the far-right League, in an attempt to form a coalition government, put forward well-known euro-sceptic candidate, Paolo Savona, for the delicate role of finance minister. Their candidate of choice sent shockwaves through financial markets and triggered the return of ‘redenomination risk’ – i.e. a higher perceived risk that Italy might exit the euro. A new populist government was subsequently sworn in on 1 June after President Sergio Mattarella agreed a revised slate of ministers.
Since then, the situation has normalised: the new populist government avowed that a plan to leave the euro has never been discussed, and other risks – most notably, concerning international trade tensions – have become more relevant for financial markets.
However, the situation in Italy remains fragile. Moreover, it is emblematic of the challenges the eurozone is facing in a new political era. This new political backdrop emphasises national sovereignty, has an inward looking approach and favours centrifugal forces, posing hurdles to European integration.
Divided politics: the Italian story
The new political landscape in Italy is hardly surprising, as it springs from the convergence of both global tendencies and idiosyncratic factors.
From a general perspective, populist parties have gained support in developed countries in reaction to some long-term trends, which have been exacerbated by the global financial crisis. Two such trends stand out in recent decades: there has been a steady decline in productivity growth and a fall in labour’s share of income in developed countries. Slower productivity growth means that living standards have continued to improve, but at a slower pace. At the same time, the distribution of growth benefits has become more uneven within developed countries, probably due to globalisation and automation, which is squeezing labour’s bargaining power and, in turn, labour’s share of income. The global financial crisis – the deepest recession since the great depression – and an ensuing slow and uneven recovery unleashed an already brewing broad-based malaise.
Italy’s double-dip recession – i.e. the global financial crisis in 2008, followed by the European Sovereign Debt Crisis in 2012/13 – was particularly severe, as the country was ill-equipped to deal with it in the first place. Italy had lost competitiveness since the early ‘90s, when productivity growth started its descent. At the same time, the international economic backdrop became more challenging for Italian exporters, as new actors such as China emerged. Domestic policies did not respond to these new challenges: they were the hostage of a typically short-lived political cycle (65 administrations have taken the helm since World War II, each one lasting for a little more than a year1), which favoured wasteful public spending and quick fixes rather than long-sighted structural reforms. In this context, public debt grew quickly, thereby reducing the fiscal space available at times of crisis. The devaluation lever was systematically and unsustainably deployed to provide a temporary boost to competitiveness, but it disappeared with the adoption of the euro.
Today, Italy is still feeling the effects of the double-dip recession: Italian real GDP is 5% below the levels that prevailed before the 2008 crisis (see chart 1). The unemployment rate has declined in the last few years, but at 11%, it is still high (see chart 2). Additionally, youth unemployment is elevated at about 30%.
Chart 1: Since the double-dip recession, real GDP has recovered in major eurozone countries, with the exception of Italy
Source: Reuters Datastream, based on national sources, as at Q1 2018
Chart 2: Unemployment rates have fallen since the 2008 crisis, but they are still high in the periphery
Source: Reuters Datastream, based on national sources, as at May 2018
Short-term positives and challenges
Going forward, the short-term economic outlook includes some positive elements, but material downside risks loom amid high policy uncertainty, both domestically and externally.
In the last couple of years, the recovery has accelerated somewhat: annual GDP growth came in at 1.5% in 2017, which, by recent Italian standards, is a decent number (see chart 3). However, this is still below the growth rates that are currently prevailing in the rest of the eurozone (the bloc grew by 2.4% in aggregate last year).
Chart 3: The Italian recovery has accelerated in recent years
Source: The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and the European Commission as at June 2018
The pick-up in activity has mainly relied on the synchronised upturn in global demand that started at the end of 2016 (see chart 4). As the Italian cycle is at an earlier stage of the business cycle, there is room for the recovery to continue. That said, as global growth has plateaued and become less synchronised, the Italian economy is expected to deliver a slightly softer performance this year. Importantly, increased uncertainty over international trade policies implies downside risk. As the US administration has ramped up its protectionist stance ahead of the upcoming November mid-term elections, there is a high likelihood of accidents that could disrupt international trade. An escalation of trade tensions would likely have a negative impact (initially via the confidence channel) on an export-oriented country – and Italian exports account for more than 30% of GDP.
Chart 4: Business investment and net exports have been the main drivers of faster growth in the last year and a half, reflecting the lift from a synchronised upswing in global demand
Source: ISTAT as at Q1 2018
The sustainability of Italy’s recovery seems limited should support from external demand falter. Indeed, the fundamentals for domestic demand are mixed. Real disposable income has improved slightly, reflecting improvements in the labour market and contained consumer inflation. Yet, the labour market is still weak. Employment has improved in recent years and it is edging back towards levels that prevailed before the crisis. However, the quality of jobs has deteriorated (job creation has been concentrated in part-time work, implying that the total number of hours worked in the economy is still about 5% off its pre-crisis levels). Furthermore, wage dynamics have been anaemic: nominal wage growth has remained at about 1% on an annual basis, a record low for the series. In real terms, annual wage growth has averaged 0.2% in the last ten years (nominal wage growth has averaged 1.6%, while consumer inflation has averaged 1.4%). More recently, the increase in energy prices is also set to weigh on real incomes. And although the sentiment around the new government is positive, there is still uncertainty about future prospects.
The European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) accommodative monetary policy has also contributed to Italy’s recovery in recent years. According to our estimates, the ECB’s Asset Purchase Programme has compressed Italian government yields across different maturities by between 70 and 80 basis points on average. In June, the ECB announced its plans to wind up its QE programme at the end of the year. Yet, the continuation of its reinvestment policy of maturing securities and a stronger forward guidance on rates – which states that rates will stay at their current levels through summer 2019, at least – implies that conditions will remain accommodative, thereby helping credit conditions.
Today, the main hurdle to credit expansion in Italy is the condition of the banking system, which is still burdened by a high amount of non-performing loans. The situation has improved in the last couple of years: net non-performing loans (correcting for provisions) have declined to €51bn (3% of GDP) from a peak of almost €90bn (more than 5% of GDP) in 2015-16.
The main risks for the Italian situation stem from domestic politics and policies. The new coalition populist government is inherently fragile. Its main political components are rooted in two parties that have different approaches, different goals, and a different electoral base. This could lead to inconsistent and ineffective government action and, more importantly, tensions within the coalition that could compromise the tenure of the government. In this respect, the risk of new elections sometime next year leading to renewed political instability is significant.
There are two main areas which could prove challenging for the current government: the relationship with European institutions, and, partially related to that, fiscal slippage (thereby, compromising the long-term sustainability of the country’s large public debt). Difficulties in dealing with these issues could become a source of tension within the coalition and trigger a crisis, particularly if opinion polls continue to signal a change in the balance of power within the coalition, with consensus shifting to the League at the expense of the Five Star Movement.
The new government is likely to have a more strained relationship with European institutions, compared to its predecessors. Indeed, leaders of the populist parties that now hold top positions in the government have stuck to their anti-establishment rhetoric in order to secure – or even strengthen – their support. However, the appointment of technicians to key roles in the government, namely the finance minister and the foreign minister, should act as a mitigating factor. Indeed, these appointments have already reassured financial markets about the intentions of the new government.
Importantly, initial rumblings about Italy’s euro membership have quickly dissipated and high-level government officials have stressed the country’s commitment to the single currency. This position makes sense in light of the ever-prevalent public support for the euro: according to recent polls, including the Eurobarometer, it stands at about 60%. This probably reflects the fact that households hold assets amounting to about €9.6tn, which makes a redenomination to the lira unpalatable. Public debt amounts to about €2.3tn and 70% of it is held domestically. In general, Italy has a solid net external international position (net international liabilities amounted to only around 7% of GDP in Q4 2017) (see chart 5). Therefore, it makes little sense for the country to exit the euro and renege on its external debt.
Chart 5: Italy’s net international investment position has improved in recent years
Source: Eurostat, Bank of Italy, and ISTAT as at Q1 2018
Long-term issues: Italy’s debt pile, fragile growth, poor competitiveness
That said, the evolution of Italian public finances will probably put pressure on the relationship between the government and European institutions. While it is unlikely that all of the fiscal measures promised by the coalition will come to pass in the upcoming budget, even a partial inclusion would lead to fiscal slippage. The main proposals of the coalition agreement point to higher spending or lower revenues: the universal guaranteed income, the introduction of a flat tax, the partial reversal of the pension reform introduced by the Monti government in 2011, and the avoidance of the VAT increase due in January 2019, which are jointly worth more than €100bn or 6% of GDP. In other words, fiscal slippage is likely, but it will probably be limited, due to European rules (there is a 3% GDP limit for fiscal deficit) and, more importantly, the pressure from financial markets.
Financial markets have already demanded greater compensation for holding Italian debt since the bumpy government formation a month ago, as they now perceive it as riskier. Indeed, Italy is running a high public debt of more than 130% of GDP and the path to sustainability is a very narrow one. We ran some simulations in order to get a sense of the sensitivity of debt sustainability. They suggest that under reasonable assumptions for nominal growth and the primary surplus (largely implying a continuation of recent trends), debt sustainability relies on the marginal borrowing rate staying below 3-3.5%. They also show that small changes in the key parameters could compromise the picture. While pressures from financial markets should limit the extent of fiscal slippage in the short term (the next budget is due in mid-October), the large debt overhang will continue to cast its shadow on medium- to long-term prospects given its fragile sustainability.
The main challenge for Italy is boosting its growth prospects, which are currently depressed by low productivity gains, low investment and a negative demographic profile.
Weak productivity is probably the main challenge for the country. While declining productivity growth has been a feature of developed markets across the board in the last two decades, the trend began earlier in Italy. Labour productivity growth has been on a descending trajectory since the early ‘90s. The global financial crisis in 2008 amplified this pre-existing trend: labour productivity has largely stalled over the last ten years.
In recent years, Italy has managed to improve its competitiveness within the eurozone, but this reflects adjustments in wages and prices (i.e. internal devaluation) rather than productivity gains. In turn, the current account balance has improved, reflecting both the increased attractiveness of Italian exports and weaker domestic demand on the back of softer income growth (see chart 6).
Chart 6: Evolution of Italy’s competitiveness, 1992-2019
Source: Hermes Investment, based on OECD data, as at May 2018. Note: RULC represents Relative Unit Labour Costs.
The Spanish alternative: a story of recovery
In Europe, Spain deserves special consideration as it stands out for the progress it has made in recent years. Its economy has staged an outstanding recovery, and its democracy has displayed some rare vibrancy.
Spanish real GDP growth has topped the developed markets’ league in the last few years, ticking in at above 3% on an annual basis since 2015. What’s more, having contracted by 10% peak-to-trough between 2008 and 2013, Spanish real GDP has recovered in recent years and it is now running about 3% above its pre-crisis levels (see chart 1). The labour market has also improved significantly: the unemployment rate has declined at a sustained pace in recent years and it is now running at 15.9% – a high level, but well below the 26% peak that it touched in May-August 2013 (see chart 2).
The reason for Spain’s success lies in the radical and relatively early moves that the country took to tackle the double-dip recession in 2008-2013. The 2008 recession in Spain heavily affected its banking sector as it featured the bust of a housing bubble. In 2012, the Spanish government mopped up its banking system with an EU bailout at a time when European rules allowed for it. In addition, policymakers managed to push through a set of structural reforms targeting the labour and product markets. They also pursued a gradual fiscal adjustment. This contributed to a boost in competitiveness through the nominal channel and allowed for some improvement in productivity growth (see chart 7).
Chart 7: Evolution of Spain’s competitiveness, 1992-2019
Source: Hermes Investment, based on OECD data, as of May 2018. Note: RULC represents Relative Unit Labour Costs.
Advancing European integration: the way forward
The Italian situation is a symptom of deep-rooted malaise: it requires serious consideration and a credible and concerted response from both domestic and European politicians.
Domestically, a combination of limited and targeted fiscal stimulus and structural reforms woauld be helpful. There are quite a few low-hanging fruit: the new government could make the judiciary system more efficient, simplify the tax system, and favour business creation and competitiveness in several sectors, services notably. Fiscal space should be used to lower taxes on labour and to spur investment in innovation, education and infrastructure. However, it is unclear whether the current Italian government has the political capital and the vision needed to pursue structural reform and targeted fiscal stimulus by implementing reforms that are unlikely to pay off in the short term. Indeed, the populist parties’ programme mainly emphasises spending rather than structural reforms. European institutions will probably adopt a somewhat more flexible approach towards Italy, allowing for a limited and temporary fiscal slippage and, possibly, offering a plan on immigration. However, it may just be too little, too late.
In general, despite making some progress since 2009, the gap between core and periphery countries within the eurozone has persisted – and significant convergence is still far away. This implies that the next crisis is likely to have a disparate impact across different member countries, thereby acting as an asymmetric shock. At present, there is no mechanism in place that can respond effectively to shocks hitting different countries unevenly.
This requires a concerted response: the European integration process needs to advance. European leaders will have to work to fix the shortcomings of the European project, providing a stronger political and fiscal underpinning to the single currency.
The general political backdrop in Europe looks challenging and much less supportive than it was only a few years ago. Populism and Euroscepticism are widespread. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel is not only facing opposition in parliament from the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfG), her already precarious coalition is also wavering as the Christian Democratic Union’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, is now joining the AfG in a race to the bottom on anti-immigration policies.
Disillusion about European institutions and a focus on migration issues have prevented Italy – the third-largest economy in the eurozone and a founding member of the European project – from making its contribution to the debate on deeper eurozone integration – a loss for both Italy and Europe.
That said, historically, the European integration process has leaped forward at times of crisis. Therefore, the materialisation of the populist threat may act as the catalyst this time. The presence of anti-establishment forces in the Italian government should be a reminder that the general malaise and disillusion should be taken seriously.
This was the backdrop against which the EU Council Summit took place at the end of June. The ambitious agenda included several items, most notably including advancing a roadmap for deepening the European Monetary Union. During the event, the migration issue, which is the focus of the populist debate in Europe and beyond, overshadowed more pressing decisions on further eurozone integration – a necessary development to deal with the next crisis, when it hits.
Following months of debate, which primarily involved French and German policymakers, the Council produced only limited and at times vague commitments concerning the completion of the banking union and the strengthening of the European Stability Mechanism. By contrast, there was no mention about the issue of a common fiscal capacity, and controversial decisions concerning the banking union (notably, with respect to a common deposit guarantee) were kicked down the road into an indefinite future. The Euro Summit statement was brief, it lacked details and it postponed further discussion until the December 2018 meeting.
In sum, the outcome of the two-day meeting lacked detail and it kicked controversial choices down the road. Yet, there is one overarching positive takeaway from the summit: against today’s complex political backdrop, there is still significant political capital backing the European project.
1“Italy’s election: obstacles and opportunities for investors,” published by Hermes Investment Management on 28 February 2018
Silvia Dall’Angelo
Senior Economist
Silvia joined Hermes in October 2017. As an experienced global economist, she is responsible for providing macroeconomic analysis and commentary, non-standard macroeconomic modelling, and developing relationships with key central banks and monetary authorities. Silvia previously spent 10 years at Prologue Capital Ltd, latterly as a global economist responsible for the team’s macroeconomic view. She holds a Master of Science in Economic and Social Sciences, as well as a Bachelor in Economic and Social Sciences, from Bocconi University in Italy.
Global economies in 2020 and beyond
Hermes Insights
Paul Voute, Head of European Business Development
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You are here: Home>Police History>The Great War>We Will Remember Them>Frederick James Webb
Frederick James Webb
Remembrance Poppy
Frederick James Webb was born in 1885 at Pitchplace near Guildford.
His father, Oliver James Webb (although many records show him as James Webb), was a Metropolitan Police Constable who served between the 22nd June 1863 and 10th November 1883 in the S or Hampstead Division. He married his mother, Annie Miller Beacher, on 11th October 1867 at Marylebone.
They had 8 children, 6 girls and 2 boys, all born in St Pancras except the youngest who was Frederick.
During the 1891 census the family are living at 4, Sparkes Row, Park Street, Guildford with father, Oliver now retired from the Police and employed as a Groom. In the 1901 census they are still living at the same address, father Oliver is working as a Farmers Stockman and Frederick as a Carman (deliveryman) working with the railway. Later in 1901 their father, Oliver, died aged 58.
Frederick married Florence Gritt on 13th April 1907 at Farncombe Surrey. He was still living at Guildford and employed as a Drayman. They had two sons, Frederick James was born in 1907 at Guildford and Harold Jack in 1909 at Guildford.
At the time of the 1911 census they were living at 5, Margaret Road, Guildford and Frederick was still working as a Drayman.
His Police Service Record has not survived and the reasons or circumstances of his joining the Hertford County Constabulary are not clear. However, based on General Order 58 of 26th February 1919 (see transcript further on) it is assumed he was Appointed as Police Constable 304 of E Division at Hitchin during July 1914.
Nothing further about his Police Service is known until after the outbreak of the War and he resigns his Appointment in order to enlist.
General Order 27 of 10th February 1915 Resignation.
Police Constable 304 Frederick John Webb, ‘E’, having submitted an application to resign his appointment as a Constable of the Hertford County Constabulary, for the purpose of enlisting in the Queens Royal West Surrey Regiment. His resignation is accepted, to take effect on 10th February 1915. Police Constable Webb will be paid up to and including 10th February 1915 and will be struck off the establishment of the Force from that date. If the Army Council decide that Police Constable Webb possesses qualifications not possessed by ordinary recruits the benefits provided under Section 2 (2) of the Police Constables (Naval and Military Services) Act 1914, will be extended to him.
No evidence of whether the Army Council did decide that Frederick possessed suggest qualities but the fact that he appears in General Order 118 of 21st July 1915, which is a list of 96 officers which included the Chief Constable, 43 Constables who were Army reservists who were recalled and 50 Constables and 2 Sergeants who volunteered for military service, then it may be safe to assume that they did. Frederick is shown as PC 304 Webb F.J. E Division, who enlisted in 5th Battalion, West Surrey Regiment on 11th February 1915.
Army Service.
His Army Service Record has not survived but from his Medal Index Roll Card, Medal Rolls, Commonwealth War Graves Commission records, Soldiers effects records, Soldiers died in the Great War transcript and a newspaper article the following is known:
Frederick James Webb joined the Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment) as Private G/4665 initially in the 1st Battalion. He landed in France on 27th August 1915. He was promoted to Sergeant and was serving in the 7th Battalion when he was killed in action on 10th August 1917. He was posthumously awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War and Victory medals.
Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment) Rough Register Of Recruits 1914-1917 also records that on 11th February 1915 an F.J. Webb, age 30 years 11 months, was Attested as Private 4665.
Soldiers died in the Great War 1914-1919 records that Sergeant G/4665 Frederick James Webb (born at Guildford, Surrey who was resident at and enlisted at Hitchin) of the 7th Battalion, Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment) was killed in action on 10th August 1917 in France & Flanders.
From Commonwealth War Graves Commission records:
In Memory of Sergeant Frederick James Webb G/4665, 7th Battalion, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment) who died on 10 August 1917 age 31. Husband of Florence Webb, of 91, Balmoral Road, Hitchin, Herts. Remembered with Honour Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.
As Frederick’s body was not recovered his death was presumed and he had authorised his effects to go to his sole heir, his wife Florence Webb.
Published on 27th July 1918 in the Hertford Mercury:
Hitchin.
Missing Sergeant.
News has been received by Mrs Webb, 26, Balmoral Road, Hitchin, that her husband Sergeant F.J. Webb, Royal Surrey Regiment, is presumed to have been killed on August 10, 1917, having been posted as missing on that date. Sergeant Webb joined up January 1915 and went to France about the middle of that year. He was twice wounded, and as a result of wounds received at the Battle of Loos he was in hospital for over twelve months. Prior to joining up Sergeant Webb was for a few months a Police Constable at Hitchin.
General Order 58 of 26th February 1919 announced, amongst many different payments to various widows and Police pensioners, that under The Police Factories etc. (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1917, the widow of PC 304 F.J. Webb E Division Hitchin had received £0 18s 0d as a refund of Rateable Deductions taken from his pay. This was because no pension was payable from Police Funds as she was already receiving a War Pension. The amount represented payments made over a period of 3 years 1 month of service.
The Electoral Rolls of 1919 – 1920 record that Florence Webb is living at 26, Balmoral Road, Hitchin and in 1922 – 1926 at 91, Balmoral Road, Hitchin.
Hitchin (109)
Ernest Frederick James Hawthorne
Frederick Clarke
George Tatham
Henry Blows
Henry Camp
Henry James Wilson
Herbert (Bertie) George Dolley
Joseph Walter Clark
Leonard Ernest Dolley
Stanley Ralph Appleby
Walter Pepper
William James Walton Kendall
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Oersta Volda Airport
Car Hire Oersta Volda Airport
Mo-Fr 0800-1600
Sa-Su closed
Torvmyrane 4, 6160
Hertz at Oersta Volda Airport
Oersta is a town in Norway's More og Romsdal county, found in the west of the country. The town has a bustling atmosphere and is known for having three shopping malls and more than 60 shops and cafes. This energetic street life combined with its vibrant art scene make it a popular holiday destination. Take a trip to the Oersta Art Gallery by hiring a car from Oersta Volda Airport. As well as taking a look at the permanent exhibitions you can also view work by the world famous Olav Strømme, who originated from Oersta.
For a memorable experience, rent a car from Oersta Volda Airport and visit The Ivar Aasen Centre. The centre focuses on literature and language, and was named after the writer Ivar Aasen who created New Norwegian. This language is based on dialects from all over the country. The stunning building that houses the centre even won the most prestigious architectural award in the county. Head to the Oersta Ski Centre where people of all ages and abilities can try their hand at skiing. There is even the option of cross country skiing and parts of the tracks are lit so you can even ski after dark.
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Spotlight on Refugees
Jessica Cox: The World at My Feet
Humanity & Inclusion is the new name of Handicap International
Yemen conflict marks 4 years of horror
Ban Landmines
Disability Treaty
Stop Bombing Civilians
Humanity & Inclusion condemns the recent use of antipersonnel mines in Myanmar
Handicap International strongly condemns the use of antipersonnel mines by the Myanmar armed forces in recent weeks on the border with Bangladesh. These weapons kill and maim victims who are almost exclusively civilians. The Ottawa Treaty bans these barbaric weapons.
The organization calls on the Myanmar government to immediately cease the use of these barbaric weapons. We also call on the international community to vigorously condemn these recent uses and to put pressure on the Burmese authorities to give up the use of this weapon.
A number of concordant testimonies collected by the Landmine Monitor, Amnesty International, and Reuters report on the recent laying of antipersonnel mines by Myanmar's armed forces at various locations on the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
"The recent use of antipersonnel mines by the Myanmar army is taking place in a context of crisis with devastating consequences for civilians," said Anne Héry, Handicap International's director of advocacy. “These weapons kill and maim, causing injuries among the most difficult to care for, and have lasting consequences, with the social consequences for the victim. All use of mines must cease and everything must be implemented to provide assistance to victims.”
Sixty-three countries and territories around the world are still contaminated by mines and explosive remnants of war. These weapons can kill and cause injuries and permanent disabilities for decades following a conflict. Globally, more than three-quarters of landmine victims are civilians and one-third are children.
According to International Campaign to Ban Landmines, an organization co-founded by Handicap International, which works to eradicate landmines around the world, Myanmar is one of the few states with North Korea and Syria still using antipersonnel mines. In 2015, 159 people were victims of these weapons, and more than 250 in 2014. Also in 2015, at least 6,461 people were killed or injured by mines and explosive remnants of war, according to the 2016 Landmine Monitor report.
The acquisition, production, stockpiling, and use of anti-personnel mines is prohibited by the Ottawa Treaty which was adopted 20 years ago on the initiative of the ICBL. 163 States Parties, more than 80 percent of the world’s countries, represent the Ottawa Treaty. Myanmar has yet to adopt the Treaty.
ABOUT HANDICAP INTERNATIONAL
Handicap International is an independent international aid organization. It has been working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster for 35 years. Working alongside persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, our action and testimony are focused on responding to their essential needs, improving their living conditions, and promoting respect for their dignity and basic rights. Handicap International has set up development programs in more than 60 countries and intervenes in numerous emergency situations. Offices in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States work constantly to mobilize resources, jointly manage projects and to increase the impact of the organization’s principles and actions. Handicap International is one of six founding organizations of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997; and the winner of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2011. Handicap International takes action and campaigns in places where “living in dignity” is no easy task.
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Jarratt in Sussex County, Virginia — The American South (Mid-Atlantic)
Jarratt's Station
By Bernard Fisher, May 9, 2009
1. Jarratt's Station Marker
Jarratt's Station. . On 8 May 1864 Jarratt's Station, a nearby depot on the Petersburg Railroad, was the subject of a Union cavalry raid. Brig. Gen. August V. Kautz led his division on a series of raids in early May to cut the railroad from Petersburg to Weldon, North Carolina. Kautz's cavalry tore up the road in several locations, destroyed bridges, and burned the depot at Jarratt's Station on 8 May. The raids slowed the flow of supplies to Lee's army in Richmond and Petersburg. . This historical marker was erected in 1991 by Department of Historic Resources. It is in Jarratt in Sussex County Virginia
On 8 May 1864 Jarratt's Station, a nearby depot on the Petersburg Railroad, was the subject of a Union cavalry raid. Brig. Gen. August V. Kautz led his division on a series of raids in early May to cut the railroad from Petersburg to Weldon, North Carolina. Kautz's cavalry tore up the road in several locations, destroyed bridges, and burned the depot at Jarratt's Station on 8 May. The raids slowed the flow of supplies to Lee's army in Richmond and Petersburg.
Erected 1991 by Department of Historic Resources. (Marker Number UM-12.)
Location. 36° 48.795′ N, 77° 28.001′ W. Marker is in Jarratt, Virginia, in Sussex County. Marker is at the intersection of Jarratt Avenue and South Halifax Road, on the right when traveling west on Jarratt Avenue. Touch for map. Marker is in this post office area: Jarratt VA 23867, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within 10 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies. Old Halifax Road (approx. 0.3 miles away); Sussex County / Greensville County (approx. 4.1 miles away); Jones Chapel Methodist Church
2. Jarratt's Station Marker (facing west)
(approx. 5.6 miles away); Double Bridges (approx. 6.8 miles away); Nottoway River Crossings (approx. 7 miles away); Memorial League WWI Memorial (approx. 8.8 miles away); Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (approx. 9.1 miles away); Sussex County / Dinwiddie County (approx. 9.2 miles away).
Categories. • Railroads & Streetcars • War, US Civil •
3. Jarratt's Station Marker (facing east)
By Bernard Fisher, January 17, 2011
4. Nearby wartime home of William Nicholas Jarratt
More. Search the internet for Jarratt's Station.
Credits. This page was last revised on June 16, 2016. This page originally submitted on May 11, 2009, by Bernard Fisher of Mechanicsville, Virginia. This page has been viewed 1,199 times since then and 16 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3. submitted on May 11, 2009, by Bernard Fisher of Mechanicsville, Virginia. 4. submitted on January 18, 2011, by Bernard Fisher of Mechanicsville, Virginia.
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Worland in Washakie County, Wyoming — The American West (Mountains)
Trail of the Whispering Giants
Indian Brave #36 Worland, Wyoming
By Barry Swackhamer, June 4, 2016
1. Trail of the Whispering Giants Marker
Trail of the Whispering Giants. Indian Brave #36 Worland, Wyoming. Carved in 1980 out of a Douglas Fir harvested in the Big Horn Mountains, Washakie County, Wyoming. This statue is one of 67 works by Peter Toth that are located throughout the United States and Canada honoring the American Indians; in particular the Shoshone, Arapaho, and Sioux tribes native to Wyoming. . This historical marker was erected by City of Worland. It is in Worland in Washakie County Wyoming
Carved in 1980 out of a Douglas Fir harvested in the Big Horn Mountains, Washakie County, Wyoming. This statue is one of 67 works by Peter Toth that are located throughout the United States and Canada honoring the American Indians; in particular the Shoshone, Arapaho, and Sioux tribes native to Wyoming.
Erected by City of Worland.
Location. 44° 1.02′ N, 107° 57.338′ W. Marker is in Worland, Wyoming, in Washakie County. Marker is at the intersection of Big Horn Avenue (U.S. 16) and North 10th Street (U.S. 20), on the right on Big Horn Avenue. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 1027 Big Horn Avenue, Worland WY 82401, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Other nearby markers. At least 7 other markers are within 5 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies. Welcome to Worland, Wyoming (within shouting distance of this marker); Pioneer Square (about 300 feet away, measured in a direct line); C.H. "Dad" Worland (approx. 1.2 miles away); Worland Sugar Factory (approx. 1.2 miles away); Worland: Original Town Site
2. Indian Brave #36 and Trail of the Whispering Giants Marker
(approx. 1.2 miles away); Jim Bridger Historic Trail (approx. 2.2 miles away); Colby Mammoth Kill Site (approx. 4.4 miles away).
1. Peter Wolf Toth - Wikipedia. Toth completed his first sculpture, of stone, in La Jolla, California in February 1972... Thereafter, he decided to embark upon a journey to create a sculpture in each state. His second sculpture was located in Sand Run Metropolitan Park in his hometown of Akron, Ohio; which has since been destroyed and not replaced. (Submitted on September 16, 2016, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.)
2. Peter Wolf Toth - David Schumaker. Photographs of each of the statues in the Trail of the Whispering Giants. (Submitted on September 16, 2016, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.)
Categories. • Arts, Letters, Music •
More. Search the internet for Trail of the Whispering Giants.
Credits. This page was last revised on September 16, 2016. This page originally submitted on September 16, 2016, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California. This page has been viewed 336 times since then and 4 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3. submitted on September 16, 2016, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
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Live Feed TV's Top 5 Podcast TV Reviews Premiere Dates Scorecard TV Ratings
Late Night Lately: Conan Visits Greenland, Bill Hader Talks 'It,' Hosts Mock #Sharpiegate
8:00 AM 9/7/2019
by THR Staff
The Hollywood Reporter's Late Night Lately rounds up the best sketches and guests with a look at what's to come next week.
TBS; NBC; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Hollywood Reporter's Late Night Lately is a one-stop shop for all of the most memorable moments of late-night TV, coming to you each Saturday morning to ease you into your weekend.
So pour your coffee, set your DVR for the week and sit back. Below are a few of the week's best, funniest and strangest late-night moments that you can't afford to miss.
This week: Conan O'Brien's latest travel special features Greenland, following President Donald Trump's apparent interest in purchasing the country. Bill Hader, after learning that It actor Finn Wolfhard originally asked for Hader as his adult counterpart in the sequel, told Jimmy Fallon that the young actor must be the most powerful person in Hollywood. And several hosts go after Trump's "#Sharpiegate" after he displayed a seemingly doctored map of Hurricane Dorian's path.
— Compiled by Jennifer Konerman
Conan Travels to Greenland to Investigate Trump's Real Estate Plans
Courtesy of Team Coco
In the latest installment of Conan Without Borders, Conan O'Brien follows up on President Trump's expression of interest in purchasing Greenland by traveling there and speaking to locals about their opinions on becoming part of the United States. This overseas adventure was teased by Conan in a tweet last month, "I may have to go to Greenland now and kick the tires on this deal."
At the top of the show, Conan declares, "As the elder statesman of late night, what if I negotiated the [Greenland] deal?" He adds, "I have as much, if not more, negotiating experience as Trump. I mean, come on, an 11 o'clock time slot on TBS? You don't just get that, ladies and gentleman."
Upon arriving in the capitol city of Nuuk, Conan introduces himself to locals with the greeting, "Hi, I'm here to buy your country." Conan asks a woman who acts as his tour guide about her interest in Trump purchasing Greenland, and she responds that she's not excited. "What's wrong with us? We're a great country," Conan says. "But you're all fat," she replies. Conan proceeds to explain what a "terrible" misconception that is about Americans. "Only 90 percent of Americans are fat," he jokes.
Conan later eats local food, such as seal meat, and during the meal asks some children whether Trump is talked about in school and if the potential Greenland purchase is considered a joke. When they say that it is, Conan exclaims, "You think I'd travel all this way for a joke?" before confirming that's exactly what he did. Conan goes on to work with a realtor to get Greenland on the market, and Parliament members to begin negotiations.
"I don't like most of Trump's ideas, I think this might be a good one," Conan tells a group of high school students. He gifts them a hat emblazoned with the words, "Make America Greenland Also."
Heading north after failing to seal the deal on the purchase of Greenland, Conan marvels at icebergs while out on the water. Before his flight home, he buys some waterfront property — a mini iceberg.
'It: Chapter Two': Bill Hader Jokes About Finn Wolfhard's Power in Hollywood
Andrew Lipovsky/NBC
Bill Hader joked that his It co-star Finn Wolfhard is the most powerful person in Hollywood when he stopped by The Tonight Show.
The actors star as the adult and teenage versions, respectively, of Richie Tozier in It: Chapter Two. "When they asked them, 'Who do you want to play you in the sequel?' cause they all grow up, he said he wanted me to," Hader said about Wolfhard. "My agent sent me a little clip of him saying that and I was like, 'Oh, that's nice."'
Hader said that he had a meeting with director Andy Muschietti just a few months later. "I was like, 'This Finn kid's super powerful,'" he said before he compared Wolfhard's power to the Game of Thrones character Joffrey Baratheon. "Like, 'Bring him to me. Bring me the man who played Stefon! I want him to play me in the movie.'"
The Barry star later spoke about his need for a stunt double on set of It: Chapter Two. He admitted that while most of his co-stars did their own stunts, he had to use a stunt double for a simple running scene. "There's a part where we had to run from the clown. I ran four feet and I pulled my groin muscle," he said. "They had to get my stunt guy just to run."
Hosts Take On Trump's "Insane" Seemingly Doctored Hurricane Map
Courtesy of ABC; CBS; Comedy Central
Late night hosts got in on "#Sharpiegate" on Wednesday, going after President Trump for displaying a doctored map of Hurricane Dorian's path.
Trump initially claimed on Sunday, Sept. 1, that the hurricane was expected to hit Alabama "(much) harder than anticipated," though by that point official forecasts had the storm missing the state entirely. Shortly after Trump's tweet, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, responded that the state would not be impacted.
On Wednesday, the president took his claim to a new level, holding up a doctored map in the Oval Office. The map displayed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's model from late August that showed the storm possibly hitting the Florida panhandle, but Trump's map featured a small, black circle extending the western bound of the impact through Alabama that appeared to be drawn in Sharpie. (Subsequent reporting on the map quoted unnamed administration officials as claim that Trump himself had drawn the circle.)
Stephen Colbert opened The Late Show by poking fun at Trump's map. The host joked that Trump is our "Weather Tracker in Chief" before he shared a clip of the president stating that the hurricane is hard to forecast because it's "erratic."
"Erratic, slow, powerful and destructive. It's like looking in a mirror," Colbert said with a Trump impression.
He added that the doctored map breaks Title 18 U.S. Code 2074, which says "it's illegal to knowingly falsely represent a forecast or warning issued by the Weather Bureau." "We finally caught Trump doing something wrong. Mr. President, you're going to weather jail," he joked. "Because of the fact that the president misinterpreted where the water would go, I'm calling this scandal 'Water-Gate.'"
Jimmy Kimmel compared Trump's map to the original one. "He's not even trying to hide the lies anymore. Not only do we have fake news, we now have fake weather, too," continued the host. "I'm hoping we get fake sports because I want to see the Mets win the World Series."
"He really must think we're a bunch of idiots. I bet he thinks, 'Hey, they let me be president. Let's see what other dumb crap they'll go for,'" concluded Kimmel.
"Did he draw with a Sharpie?" Trevor Noah laughed. "What is life right now? I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm impressed that Trump can locate Alabama on a map, but still."
The host then reiterated that Trump changed the map with a Sharpie "to make himself look right."
"And he thought we wouldn't notice," he said. "All the lines are in white and then there's just this one black line."
After zooming in on Trump's map, Seth Meyers joked, "After this, I have to wonder if his high school report card was legit." A fake report card, which was altered to make F's appear as A's, then appeared onscreen.
Later in the segment, Meyers told his audience that Joe Biden leads Trump by nine points in Wisconsin for the upcoming presidential election. "When Trump heard that, he updated the hurricane map again," said the host before a new altered map showed the hurricane's path reaching to Wisconsin.
Pete Buttigieg Talks Debate Strategy
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS
Pete Buttigieg knows that he has to stand out in the upcoming debates if he's going to stand any chance of being the 2020 Democratic nominee.
"Now that it's starting to winnow down, people are starting to look for the contrasts. It will be important for me to convey how I'm different from the others," Buttigieg told Stephen Colbert during an appearance on The Late Show on Thursday. Referencing the fact that his policy ideas are less left-leaning than some of his fellow candidates, he added, "It's not just a matter of style, it's a matter of approach."
The next debate, for which just 10 candidates qualified, will take place Sept. 12. The latest HarrisX and YouGov polls have Buttigieg garnering 4 percent and 6 percent support, respectively, behind Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The South Bend, Indiana, mayor also addressed his openness to speaking about his Episcopalian faith on the campaign trail with Colbert, himself a Roman Catholic, during his appearance on the CBS show. "I think Democrats have been a little allergic to talking about faith," Buttigieg said. Acknowledging that Democrats have perhaps been loath to suggest they wouldn't treat people of all faiths equally in office, he added, "at the same time, as we see figures on the right fly in the face not just of my values but their own. It reminds me of the parts of scripture that speak about hypocrisy. I think we have an obligation to call that out," he said.
'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' Raising Money for ALS Research After Staffer Diagnosed
ABC/Randy Holmes
Jimmy Kimmel announced this week that his ABC show is raising money for ALS research, to find a cure and help patients diagnosed with the progressive neurodegenerative disease.
"One of our longtime and most beloved co-workers has been diagnosed with ALS," Kimmel said in a video announcing the fundraising drive. "To support him and to support others affected by this terrible disease, our gang here at Jimmy Kimmel Live! is raising money for ALS research and to help patients who have ALS."
He explained that they regularly ask audience members to make donations and shared the website where anyone can contribute. Kimmel added that he is offering one winner and a guest to attend a taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which includes free round-trip flights and three nights in a hotel. After the taping, Kimmel will draw a portrait of the winner.
"I happen to be working on a portrait right now of one of my favorite subjects," Kimmel said before it was revealed that he was drawing a nude portrait of his sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez.
Late Night Lineup: Sept. 8-14
Monday, September 9
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stops by.
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IFRS Foundation and the IASB
IASB and IFRS Interpretations Committee
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IASB Board member history
IASB Board membership
IFRS Interpretations Committee
International Accounting Standards Board (IASB)
The table below is a historical summary of all past members of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and its predecessor body, the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC). Biographies for each member are set out below the table and can be accessed by scrolling, or clicking on the person's name in the table.
Term began
Term ended
Hans Hoogervorst July 2011 - Chairman June 2011 -
Sue Llyod January 2014 - Vice-Chair November 2016 -
Ian Mackintosh July 2011 June 2016 Vice-Chairman June 2011 - June 2016
Sir David Tweedie January 2001 June 2011 Chairman 2001 - June 2011
Thomas E Jones January 2001 June 2009 Vice Chairman 2001 - 2009. After retiring as a Board member he became Adviser to the Trustees and the Chairman.
Rika Suzuki July 2019 -
Tadeu Cendon July 2019 -
Nick Anderson September 2017 -
Jianqiao Lu August 2017 -
Ann Tarca July 2017 -
Tom Scott April 2017 -
Françoise Flores January 2017 - Part-time
Gary Kabureck April 2013 -
Mary Tokar January 2013 -
Martin Edelmann July 2012 -
Chungwoo Suh July 2012 -
Takatsugu (Tak) Ochi July 2011 June 2019
Darrel Scott October 2010 -
Elke König July 2010 December 2011 Stepped down early on being appointed as President of the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin).
Paul Pacter July 2010 December 2012
Amaro Luiz de Oliveira Gomes July 2009 June 2019
Patrick Finnegan July 2009 June 2016 Was reappointed for a second term but retired early.
Patricia McConnell July 2009 June 2014 Although eligible, Patricia McConnell informed the Trustees she did not wish to be considered for reappointment for a second term.
Prabhakar Kalavacherla January 2009 June 2013
Stephen Cooper August 2007 July 2017 Part time through January 2009. Full-time thereafter
Wei-Guo Zhang July 2007 June 2017
Philippe Danjou November 2006 October 2016
Jan Engström May 2004 June 2014
John T Smith September 2002 June 2012
Mary E Barth January 2001 June 2009 Part-time. After retiring as a Board member she became Academic Advisor to the IASB
Hans-Georg Bruns January 2001 June 2007 Was liaison to German standard setter
Anthony T Cope January 2001 June 2007
Robert P Garnett January 2001 June 2010
Gilbert Gelard January 2001 June 2010 Was liaison to French standard setter
Robert H Herz January 2001 June 2002 Left IASB to become chairman of FASB
James J Leisenring January 2001 June 2010 Was liaison to US standard setter
Warren McGregor January 2001 June 2011 Was liaison to Australian and New Zealand standard setters
Patricia O'Malley January 2001 June 2007 As a Board member, was liaison to Canadian Standard-Setter. After retiring as a Board member she became IFRIC Co-ordinator.
Harry K Schmid January 2001 March 2004
Geoffrey Whittington January 2001 June 2006 Was liaison to UK standard setter
Tatsumi Yamada January 2001 June 2011 Was liaison to Japanese standard setter
Biographies of all IASB members current and past (alphabetical)
Nick Anderson joined the Board from Janus Henderson Investors in the UK in September 2017. He was a member of the UK Accounting Standards Board from 2007 to 2013 and a founding member of the Corporate Reporting Users’ Forum (CRUF).
Mary E Barth
Mary Barth was one of the original IASB members appointed in 2001. As a part-time Board member, she retained her position as the Joan E Horngren Professor of Accounting and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Stanford University, Graduate School of Business (GSB). Professor Barth's research focuses on financial accounting and reporting issues, particularly topics of interest to accounting standard setters. Her research is published in a variety of journals and has won several awards, including the Wildman Medal Award, the Competitive Manuscript Award and, on two occasions, the Best Paper Award of the Financial Accounting and Reporting Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA). She has been an Associate Editor of The Accounting Review and is on the Editorial Boards of several other academic journals. Professor Barth also has won the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Distinguished Teaching Award and the PhD Faculty Distinguished Service Award. She is active in the AAA, having served as Vice President and as Chair of several committees. Prior to joining the IASB, Professor Barth's accounting standard setting activities included serving as a member of the Accounting Standards Executive Committee of the American Institute of CPAs and the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford in 1995, she was an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and an audit partner in Arthur Andersen & Co. Professor Barth holds an AB from Cornell University, an MBA from Boston University, and a PhD from Stanford University.
Hans-Georg Bruns
Dr. Hans-Georg Bruns was appointed to the IASB in January 2001 and served through June 2007. Prior to then, he had been Chief Accounting Officer of DaimlerChrysler AG, a position he held since 1996 and in which he was particularly responsible for all accounting and disclosure activities related to the merger between Daimler and Chrysler. He was at the company since 1982, first as director responsible for the former Daimler-Benz annual report and annual general meeting, and from 1993 as vice president for investor relations and US accounting. In that year he was in charge of introducing US GAAP at Daimler-Benz and head of the project for listing the company's shares at the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to joining Daimler-Benz, he held various financial positions at Volkswagen AG, including a year in Mexico. He took his doctor's degree at the University of Mannheim after gaining an MBA at the University of Munster. Between 1982 and 2001, Hans-Georg Bruns was a member of various accounting and finance committees, including Chairman of the Group Financial Statements team of the German Accounting Standards Committee (1998-2001), and Chairman of the Schmalenbach Institute for Business Administration (2000-2001). He has lectured in international accounting and value-based management at the University of Stuttgart.
Tadeu Cendon
Tadeu Cendon joined the Board in July 2019 from PwC Brazil Accounting and Consulting Services, where he worked as Partner responsible for providing accounting advice to audit teams and multinational companies reporting under IFRS Standards. He also served as the Director for Professional Development at the Brazilian Institute of Independent Auditors (IBRACON).
Stephen Cooper was appointed as a part-time Board member in August 2007, while concurrently serving as Managing Director and head of valuation and accounting research at UBS Investment Bank. In January 2009, his appointment was changed from part-time to full-time. Mr Cooper brings practical experience as an active analyst on accounting and valuation matters and will play an important role in engaging the investment community in the standard-setting process. He has been recognised as a leader in his field and voted top European Valuation and Accounting analyst by Extel and Institutional Investor magazine in each of the last 10 surveys. In his capacity at UBS, Mr Cooper advises UBS's equity research analysts and institutional clients on valuation and accounting issues. As a member of the Corporate Reporting User Forum and a member of the IASB's Analyst Representative Group (now Capital Markets Advisory Committee) and Financial Statement Presentation working group, Mr Cooper has been actively involved in the IASB's work.
Anthony T Cope
Anthony T. Cope, CFA, former director of fixed income credit research and a senior vice president and partner of Wellington Management Company was appointed to the US Financial Accounting Standards Board effective 1 July 1993. He served on the FASB until his appointment to the IASB in 2001. Mr. Cope had been a security analyst since 1963 (at Wellington since 1969) specialising in financial securities. Mr. Cope had been active in various capacities with the Boston Security Analysts Society (President) and the CFA Institute, for which he had served as a director and a member of its Financial Accounting Policy Committee. In 1992, he was awarded the CFA Institute's Distinguished Service Award. Mr. Cope holds a master's degree from Cambridge University.
Philippe Danjou
Philippe Danjou, director of the accounting division of the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF), the French securities regulator, joined the IASB in November 2006. Mr Danjou graduated from HEC, then qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Registered Statutory Auditor, and rose to be an audit partner with Arthur Andersen & Co. (Paris). He was also Executive Director of the French Ordre des Experts Comptables (OEC) from 1982 until 1986. Mr Danjou was a member of the International Auditing Practices Committee and a technical advisor to the French delegate to the former International Accounting Standards Committee, the predecessor to the IASB. While at the AMF, he has served on the IASB's Standards Advisory Council, as an observer at the Committee on Auditing of the European Commission, as a member of IOSCO's Standing Committee 1 on Multinational Accounting and Disclosure, and the Financial Reporting Committee of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESRFin).
Martin Edelmann
Before joining the Board, Martin Edelmann was a senior adviser at German consultancy firm zeb/rolfes.schierenbeck.associates (Zeb). He previously served as a member of the German Accounting Standards Board from 2006 until 2011. He is a former Head of Group Reporting at Deutsche Bank AG, where he was responsible for internal and external reporting activities between 1997 and 2011. Mr Edelmann was a member of the Accounting Working Group of the German Banking Association for 14 years and served as Chairman from 2004-2011.
Jan Engström
Jan Engström was appointed to the IASB in May 2004 and was reappointed to a second five-year term effective May 2009. Before joining the IASB, he served with the Volvo Group for more than thirty years in various senior positions, both in his native Sweden and in Latin America. A member of the Volvo Group Management Board for ten years, he served as Chief Financial Officer (1993-1998) and Chief Executive Officer of Volvo Bus Corporation (1998-2003). Previously he was the CFO, Volvo do Brasil (1981-1985), and CFO, Volvo Truck Corporation (1985-1993).
Patrick Finnegan
Patrick Finnegan was appointed to the IASB as of 1 July 2009. Prior to joining the Board, he was Director of the Financial Reporting Policy Group, CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity. In that capacity he led a team at CFA Institute responsible for providing user input into the standard-setting activities of the IASB, FASB, and key regulatory bodies. CFA Institute is a global, not-for-profit association for investment professionals and has nearly 100,000 members. He has also co-ordinated the work of the CFA Institute's Corporate Disclosure Policy Council, which reviews and comments on financial reporting policy initiatives around the world. Before joining the CFA Institute in 2008, Mr Finnegan worked at Moody's Investors Service, where he served as a managing director in Moody's Corporate Finance Group and as a senior analyst in Moody's Financial Institutions Group. He was reappointed for a second term in July 2014 but retired early in June 2016.
Françoise Flores
Françoise Flores was appointed to the IASB as part-time member as of 1 January 2017. Françoise Flores served as Chief Executive Officer of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) and Chairman of EFRAG’s Technical Expert Group (TEG) until April 2016. Before joining the Board in 2017, she had returned to work as a partner at accountancy firm Mazars in Paris, France.
Robert P Garnett
Robert P Garnett was appointed to the IASB in January 2001. Immediately before then, he was Executive Vice-President: Finance for Anglo American plc, one of the world's largest mining companies. He was a member of the South African Accounting Practices Board and served as a committee member on IASC's project on extractive industries. Mr Garnett qualified as a chartered accountant with Peat Marwick Mitchell in 1972, subsequently acting as Technical Director of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (1982-1984). Following a return to the practising profession as a partner in Arthur Andersen's financial consulting practice in Johannesburg (1984-1987), he joined a Southern African venture capital group to head its investment management operations, primarily in health care and pharmaceuticals (1987-1991). As a member of the Investment Analysts Society of Southern Africa, his next move was as General Manager of Finansbank, then a leading South African merchant bank (1991-1994). After that he joined Anglo American with responsibilities in both London and Johannesburg.
Gilbert Gelard
Gilbert Gelard was appointed to the IASB in January 2001. His professional career has covered a wide range of aspects of financial reporting, auditing and standard-setting. After graduating from Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC), the leading French business school, in 1963, he joined Arthur Andersen & Co. He qualified as a French chartered accountant and auditor in 1975. From 1973 to 1987, he was the chief accounting officer of two large French industrial groups, one engaged in publishing and the media, the other in oil and gas. He joined the French Professional Institute in 1987, and was in charge of technical and international affairs until 1995. During that period, he was active in FEE, the European professional body, dealing there with European accounting matters, and took various initiatives to upgrade accountancy in Eastern Europe and Africa, while also representing France on the IASC Board from 1989-2001. He returned to the auditing profession in 1995, joining KPMG France, in charge of the Professional Practice department. Mr Gelard was a member of the French standard-setting body (CNC) from 1997 until his appointment to the IASB. He has written many articles and books on accounting matters and is a frequent lecturer in universities and speaker at conferences, being able to communicate in several languages.
Robert H Herz
Robert H Herz was appointed to the IASB in January 2001. He left the IASB in June 2002 to become the Chairman of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board. Prior to joining the IASB he had been PricewaterhouseCoopers North America Leader of Professional, Technical, Risk and Quality, responsible for professional matters, technical accounting and auditing policy and issue resolution, risk management and quality relating to assurance services. He was also a member of the Global Oversight Board of PricewaterhouseCoopers; the PricewaterhouseCoopers US Board of Partners and President of the PwC Foundation. Prior to the merger, he was Coopers & Lybrand's National Director of Accounting and SEC Services. Mr Herz has served as a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Emerging Issues Task Force and Financial Instruments Task Force. He was Chairman of the AICPA SEC Regulations Committee and is a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association; the New York Stock Exchange's International Capital Markets Advisory Committee; AICPA Council and the AICPA Group of 100, and the SEC Practice Section Executive Committee. He is both a US Certified Public Accountant (having won the gold medal on the CPA exam) as well as a UK Chartered Accountant. An American, Mr Herz also spent eight years in England and three years in Argentina.
Mr Hoogervorst began his initial term on 1 July 2011, succeeding Sir David Tweedie on his retirement as chairman of the IASB at the end of June 2011. Mr Hoogervorst was previously the chairman of the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), the Dutch securities and market regulator, chairman of the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and co-chair of the Financial Crisis Advisory Group (FCAG), an independent body of senior leaders formed to advise accounting standard-setters on their response to the global financial crisis. Mr Hoogervorst holds a Masters degree in modern history (University of Amsterdam, 1981) and a Master of Arts degree in international relations (Johns Hopkins University school of advanced international relations, majoring in international economics and Latin American studies). Mr Hoogervorst's initial term expired in June 2016, he was reappointed for a second term.
Thomas E Jones was appointed as a member and Vice Chairman of the IASB in January 2001. He has nearly 40 years of experience in various aspects of international financial reporting. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in the United Kingdom while working with Peat Marwick Mitchell. By 1980, he had held various senior financial positions in Brussels and in Italy. In those positions, he had responsibility for financial reporting in various European countries including Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and Portugal. From 1980, he was with Citicorp, which operates in over 100 countries, first as chief accounting officer and then as principal financial officer. Before joining the IASB he served successively as a vice-chairman and member of the Executive Committee of the IASC Board (1998-2000) and as Chairman (2000-1). From 1995 to 2001 he was an IASC Board member representing the International Association of Financial Executives Institutes. He also served as a Trustee of the Financial Accounting Foundation, which oversees the activities of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), as Chairman of the Financial Executive Institute's Corporate Reporting Committee, and as a member of the FASB's Emerging Issues Task Force.
Mr Kabureck served as the Chief Accounting Officer for Xerox Corporation from 2001 (and from 2003 also as a Corporate Vice President). Prior to joining Xerox in 1985, Mr Kabureck spent ten years working with one of the international audit firms. He is also an active member of Financial Executives International (FEI) and has served on a range of other advisory boards, including to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Mr Kabureck earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Bridgeport, holds a Masters of Business Administration, and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Prabhakar Kalavacherla
Prabhakar Kalavacherla ('PK') was appointed to the as a full time member as of 1 January 2009 for the period ending on 30 June 2013. Mr. Kalavacherla, born in India, was a partner at KPMG LLP serving both as reviewing partner for IFRS financial statements and filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He has worked extensively in India and in Europe and has specialised in technology and biotechnology. Mr Kalavacherla is a member of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the American Institute of CPAs. Mr Kalavacherla holds a masters degree in accountancy with distinction from California State University-Chico.
Elke König
Dr Elke König is a former member of the executive board and chief financial officer (CFO) of Hannover Re Group (Germany). She began her first term on the IASB on 1 July 2010. Dr König has served as a senior financial executive in the insurance industry. From 2002 to 2009 she served as CFO of Hannover Re Group, a leading international reinsurance group. Previously she spent twelve years as a member of the senior management of Munich Re, with specific responsibility for the group's accounting and controlling activities. She is currently serving in non-executive capacities as chairperson of Hannover Finanz GmbH and as a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Hypothekenbank Actiengesellschaft. Dr König has been a member of the CFO Forum of European insurers, where she has been actively engaged in the IASB's project on insurance contracts. Although her her term was due to expire on 30 June 2014, Ms König stepped down with effect from 31 December 2011 on being appointed as President of the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin), the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.
James J Leisenring
James J Leisenring was appointed a member of the International Accounting Standards Board, to be its liaison member to the FASB, in January 2001. At the time of his appointment Jim Leisenring was Director of International Activities at the FASB. He joined the staff of the FASB in 1982 as director of research and technical activities and became Chairman of the Emerging Issues Task Force when it was formed in 1984. Mr. Leisenring was appointed as a member of the FASB in October 1987 and was appointed its vice chairman in January 1988. He served as chairman of the FASB Derivatives Implementation Group and the FASB Financial Instruments Task Force. He was also a member of the International Joint Working Group on Financial Instruments. Mr. Leisenring also served as chairman of the G4+1 group of standard setters and as a member of the IAS 39 implementation group. Prior to joining the FASB, he was a partner and director of accounting and auditing for Bristol, Leisenring, Herkner & Co. of Battle Creek, Michigan, a firm that is now a part of Plante & Moran. He served as chairman of the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of CPAs and has been a member of several other Institute committees. From 1964 to 1969 he was a member of the faculty of Western Michigan University. Mr. Leisenring received his BA from Albion College and an MBA from Western Michigan University. Mr. Leisenring is a member of the Accounting Hall of Fame.
Sue Lloyd
Sue Lloyd was appointed to the IASB as of 1 January 2014; in October 2016 she was appointed Vice-Chair of the IASB as off 1 November 2016. Ms Lloyd was a Senior Director of Technical Activities at the IASB and responsible for leading the technical staff in the development of new IFRSs. Ms Lloyd is originally from New Zealand and a former member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board. Before joining the IASB's staff as Director of Capital Markets, with responsibility for the IASB’s work to reform the accounting for financial instruments, she held various senior positions within the banking sector in the United Kingdom and in Australasia.
Jianqiao Lu
Dr Jianqiao Lu was appointed to a five-year term as a full-time member of the IASB as of 1 August 2017. Before joining the IASB, Dr Lu was Director of the Accounting Regulatory Department of the Chinese Ministry of Finance and in charge of Chinese accounting standard-setting. He represented the China Accounting Standards Committee on the IASB's Accounting Standards Advisory Forum (ASAF) and regularly contributed to the meetings of the IASB's Emerging Economies Group (EEG). Dr Lu is also known for his important contributions to the work of the Asian-Oceanian Standard-Setters Group (AOSSG).
Amaro Luiz de Oliveira Gomes
Amaro Gomes was appointed to a five-year term as a full-time member of the IASB as of 1 July 2009. Before joining the IASB, Mr Gomes was Head of Financial System Regulation Department of the Central Bank of Brazil. In that capacity, he played a leading role in the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in Brazil. (All listed companies and all banks are required to prepare and publish consolidated financial statements in full compliance with IFRSs starting in 2010.) At the Central Bank of Brazil, Mr Gomes was responsible for drafting regulatory proposals on such matters as Basel II implementation, money laundering, accounting and auditing, microfinance, and prudential requirements. From 2004 to 2009, he served on the Accounting Task Force of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Before joining the Central Bank, Mr Gomes was an auditor with one of the international audit firms. He is co-author of a book Accounting for Financial Institutions.
Ian Mackintosh
Ian Mackintosh began his initial term on 1 July 2011, as inaugural vice-chairman of the IASB. Mr Mackintosh is a former chief accountant of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and has more than 30 years experience of national and international accounting standard-setting. He was previously chairman of the UK Accounting Standards Board and chairman of the group of national accounting standard-setters, a body in which more than 20 national and regional accounting standard-setting organisations participate. He was a member, and later Deputy Chairman, of the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB), as well as chairing its Urgent Issues Group. Mr Mackintosh has substantial public sector experience, having chaired both the Australian Public Sector Accounting Standards Board and the IFAC Public Sector Committee.
Patricia McConnell
Patricia McConnell joined the IASB as of 1 July 2009. She is former Senior Managing Director, Equity Research, Accounting and Tax Policy Analyst, Bear Stearns & Co. In a 32-year career in Bear Stearns' Equity Research group, Ms McConnell established herself as one of the leading analysts in the United States on issues related to accounting. Institutional Investor magazine ranked her the leading analyst in the United States on accounting and tax matters for 16 consecutive years from 1991 to 2006. Throughout her career, she has been an active participant in accounting standard-setting activities as a member of the IASB's Standards Advisory Council, the International Accounting Standards Committee (the IASB's predecessor body), the CFA Institute's Corporate Disclosure Policy Council, and the New York Society of Security Analysts.
Warren McGregor
Warren McGregor was appointed to the International Accounting Standards Board in January 2001. Before joining the Board, he was a founding Director of Stevenson McGregor, a boutique accounting practice specialising in financial reporting and accounting standards. Prior to that, he was for 10 years the Executive Director of the Australian Accounting Research Foundation (AARF), the body that until 30 June 2000 was responsible for providing technical support to the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) in the development of Australian Accounting Standards. From 1983 to 1999, he attended meetings of the IASC as Technical Adviser to the Australian delegation. He was Chairman of the IASC's Insurance Steering Committee. Warren was a founding member of the G4+1 Group of national accounting standard setters.
Takatsugu (Tak) Ochi
Takatsugu (Tak) Ochi joined as a member of the IASB from 1 July 2011. Mr Ochi was previously Assistant General Manager, Financial Resources Management Group of Sumitomo Corporation. He was also a member of the IFRS Interpretations Committee, Secretary-General of the Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) Taskforce for early adoption of IFRS and an adviser to the Accounting Standards Board of Japan (ASBJ). He studied Economics at Kobe University, Japan.
Prior to joining the IASB in January 2001, Tricia O'Malley was the first full-time Chair of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants' Accounting Standards Board, starting in October 1999. Before that appointment, she was a partner in the National Assurance and Professional Practice Group of KPMG where she consulted with partners and staff on complex client accounting issues. Tricia was a member of CICA's Emerging Issues Committee from its inception in 1988 until 1997, when she was appointed Vice Chair of the Accounting Standards Board. In her role as Vice Chair, Tricia represented the Canadian Board at the meetings of the 'G4+1' and the Financial Instruments Joint Working Group of national standard setters. She was chair of the Ontario Securities Commission's Financial Disclosure Advisory Board from 1992 to 1999, has been a member of the Independent Advisory Committee on Accounting and Auditing Matters of the Auditor General of Canada (since 1993), and is a Past President of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association.
Paul Pacter
Mr Pacter brought significant experience as a standard-setter, both at the IASB and at the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). He previously served as Deputy Director of Research at the FASB and as Executive Director of its parent foundation, was Vice Chairman of the Advisory Council to the US Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB), and more recently led the development of the International Financial Reporting Standard for SMEs (IFRS for SMEs), as well as numerous other projects on behalf of the IASB. Mr Pacter has extensive experience in global financial reporting, particularly in Asia and the United States. Since 2000, in addition to his IASB responsibilities Mr Pacter was a part-time Director in Deloitte's Global IFRS Office and a specialist in Chinese accounting standards, and has developed and managed the popular IAS Plus financial reporting website. Upon joining the IASB, Mr Pacter will resign from his role at Deloitte. Mr Pacter graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University and received his PhD from Michigan State University in 1967. He is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive). He won the Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award at the University of Connecticut.
Harry K Schmid
Harry K Schmid was appointed to the IASB in January 2001. He was born in Zurich (Switzerland), spent the first 23 years of his life in Zurich, where after a commercial high school diploma he worked during four years as costing specialist for an import company of petroleum products. He joined the Nestle Group in 1955 and remained with them for 42 years until his retirement in 1997. He worked with Nestle in the USA, Peru, and Chile. Transferred to the company headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1973, he first was operational controller for South America and afterwards for South East Asia and then became the head of corporate accounting and reporting for the Nestle Group, being promoted to Senior Vice President. He was member of the Swiss Accounting Standard Setter (FER) for many years; a member of the IASC Board from 1995 to 2000 representing the Swiss Federation of Industrial Holding Companies; and a member of IASC's Standing Interpretations Committee. He acted as chairman of an accounting expert group of the Swiss Federation, as well as chairman of a similar group of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT).
Darrel Scott
Darrel Scott was formerly CFO of the FirstRand Banking Group, one of the largest financial institutions in South Africa. He had responsibility for both statutory and regulatory financial reporting under the Basel II Accords and served on various Governance, Risk, Operation and Strategic Committees of the Group. Mr Scott was also a member of the IASB’s International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC), a position from which he resigned to become an IASB member, and was formerly a member of the IFRS Foundation’s Standards Advisory Council (SAC), now called the IFRS Advisory Council. Mr. Scott joined the IASB as a board member in October 2010.
Tom Scott has been an academic in the field of accounting at various universities in Canada since the late 1970s. Most recently, he acted as a Director and Professor of Accounting at the School of Accounting and Finance, University of Waterloo, Canada. He also served as a member of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board from 2003 to 2011. Mr Scott joined the IASB as a board member in April 2017.
John T. Smith
John T. Smith was appointed to the IASB in September 2002 as a part-time Board member. He became a full-time member on 1 July 2007. Mr Smith was a partner in Deloitte & Touche (USA), serving as national director of accounting policies and standards. Mr. Smith represented Deloitte & Touche on the Emerging Issues Task Force of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). He was a member of the FASB's Derivatives Implementation Group (DIG) and Financial Instruments Task Force. He also served on the former International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC), Standing Interpretations Committee (SIC), and as chairman of IASC's IAS 39 Implementation Guidance Committee. He regularly makes presentations on accounting matters, particularly financial instruments and hedging activities.
Chungwoo Suh
Dr Suh served as an advisor to the Korea Accounting Standards Board (KASB) and was a Professor of Accounting at Kookmin University, Seoul before joining the Board. He served as Chairman of the KASB between 2008 and 2011, has a Ph.D in Accountancy from the University of Illinois, and an MBA from Seoul National University. Dr Suh has served as a member of various committees, including the IFRS Advisory Committee, Korea Exchange Listing Committee and Committee for Corporate Governance.
Rika Suzuki
Before joining the IASB in July 2019, Rika Suzuki was the IFRS Leader and Assurance Partner of PwC Aarata LLC in Japan, where she provided advice on accounting and reporting issues under IFRS Standards, Japanese GAAP and US GAAP. She also supervised reviews of IFRS transition and application for large multinationals and other listed companies. Ms Suzuki was a member of the Accounting Standards Board of Japan (ASBJ)’s Special Committee for IFRS Implementation. She also chaired the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (JICPA)’s Working Groups for Japan’s Modified International Standards (JMIS) and Revenue Recognition.
Ann Tarca
Professor Tarca joined the IASB from the University of Western Australia. She served as a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) from 2014 to 2017 and was Research Director for the AASB from February 2017. She was an academic fellow of the IFRS Foundation from 2011 to 2012. Her first term expires 30 June 2022.
Mary Tokar has been the global leader for KPMG’s International Financial Reporting Group, leading the firm's dialogue with the global accounting regulatory and standard-setting communities. Having worked with engagement teams and clients around the world in their transition to and application of IFRS, she has gained extensive experience in the application of IFRSs in both developed and emerging economies. Previously, Ms Tokar worked at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the Senior Associate Chief Accountant, International, in the Chief Accountant’s Office. Ms Tokar was a member of the IFRS Interpretations Committee between 2001 and 2007. Her second term expires 30 June 2022.
Sir David Tweedie
Sir David Tweedie became Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board as of 1 January 2001, a position he held until his retirement from the Board at the end of June 2011 when he was succeeded by Mr Hans Hoogervorst. Sir David was educated at Edinburgh University (BCom 1966, PhD 1969) and qualified as a Scottish Chartered Accountant in 1972. He was Technical Director of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland 1978-1981) and National Research Partner of KMG Thomson McLintock 1982 - 1987 and National Technical Partner of KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock (1987-1990). In 1990 he was appointed the first full-time Chairman of the (then) newly created Accounting Standards Board, a position he held until 2000. He was also Chairman of the Urgent Issues Task Force. He has received a number of honorary degrees and professional awards, including the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales's Founding Societies Award (1997), and the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting's CIMA Award (1998). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Lancaster International Centre for Research in Accounting (ICRA), the University of Bristol, and the University of Edinburgh. He was knighted in 1994 for his services to the Accounting Profession.
Geoffrey Whittington
Professor Geoffrey Whittington was one of the original IASB Board Members appointed in January 2001. He studied at the London School of Economics and subsequently trained in London as a Chartered Accountant. He then spent ten years in the Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge, where he took a PhD degree in economics and published two research monographs. He also taught at Fitzwilliam College (Cambridge), Edinburgh University, and University of Bristol, where he also served as Head of the Department of Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. In 1994 he was elected Distinguished Academic of the Year by the British Accounting Association, and in 1998 he was awarded an honorary D.Sc. (Social Sciences) by the University of Edinburgh. Professor Whittington's public activities have included advising the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth (1974-5) and the Office of Fair Trading (1977-1983), membership of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1987-96), and the Advisory Body on Competition in Telecommunications (1997-8). He was a member of the Research Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales from 1975-1979, and of its Technical Committee from 1980 to 1990, serving also as Chairman of the Accounting Standards Steering Committee's Working Party on the application of current cost accounting to value-based businesses. He was also Professorial Research Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. From 1990 to 1994, he was Academic Advisor to the UK Accounting Standards Board (ASB), and from 1994 was a voting member of the Board. In December 2000, he was appointed CBE for services to the Accounting Standards Board. After his term at the IASB ended in 2006, he again became a member of the ASB.
Tatsumi Yamada
Tatsumi Yamada was appointed to the International Accounting Standards Board in January 2001. Until his appointment, he was a Partner of the Japanese affiliated firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was also a member of the Business Accounting Deliberation Council and the Financial System Council on Insurance subcommittee. In addition he was a member of the Executive Committee of the IASC and a member of the Japanese delegation at the Board of IASC. Mr Yamada represented Japan on the Financial Instruments Joint Working Group of Standard Setters and was a member of the former IAS 39 Implementation Guidance Committee. In 1990-3, he was seconded to Corporation Finance Research Institute (COFRI), as manager in charge of Research and Development of Financial Accounting Standards, which involved a working knowledge of International Accounting Standards, US GAAP and UK Financial Reporting Standards. Previously he had worked for the Sumitomo Corporation in Japan and the UK. Mr Yamada was visiting lecturer on International Accounting Standards at Seijyo University in 1997-98. He has published several books on accounting issues, including tax-effect accounting, accounting for financial instruments and accounting for pensions. Tatsumi Yamada's term ended on 30 June 2011.
Wei-Guo Zhang
Wei-Guo Zhang began a five-year term as a member of the IASB on 1 July 2007. Prior to then, he was Chief Accountant and Director General of the Department of International Affairs of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). He joined the CSRC as its Chief Accountant in 1997. While at the CSRC, Dr Zhang has had experience in a number of national and international standard-setting, and regulatory activities. Since 2002, Dr Zhang has been a member of Standing Committee No.1 on Accounting, Auditing and Disclosure of the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). He has also been a member of the China Accounting Standards Committee since 1998 and the China Auditing Standards Committee since 2004. Before joining the CSRC, Dr Zhang was Head of the Department of Accounting at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE), where he also received his PhD in economics. His (second) term expired 30 June 2017.
Death of Thomas E. Jones, former Vice-Chairman of the IASB
The members of the IASB and staff of the IFRS Foundation have released condolences on the death of Thomas E. Jones, former Chair of the IASB's predecessor body, the IASC and the first Vice-Chairman of the IASB.
IASB publishes updated list of IFRS learning resources
The IASB maintains a list of IFRS Learning Resources available to accounting academicians, students and others - most of them free of charge. The list has recently be updated.
Sir David Tweedie inducted into Accounting Hall of Fame
Sir David Tweedie, former chairman of the IASB, was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame on 5 August 2013. Sir David's induction occurred at the American Accounting Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California. The Accounting Hall of Fame is located at Ohio State University and has honored 90 accountants since its inception in 1950.
Elke König to step down as member of the IASB
The IASB has announced that effective 31 December 2011 Elke König is stepping down from the IASB.
The IAS Plus Interviews – Hans Hoogervorst, New IASB Chairman
Hans Hoogervorst has taken over the Chairmanship of the IASB from Sir David Tweedie. In an extensive interview with Robert Bruce he talks about how wants to shape the IASB of the future.
The Bruce Column — The changing of the guard
After a decade under Sir David Tweedie the IASB has a new Chairman. Robert Bruce, our resident regular columnist, assesses the prospects for change under the new Hans Hoogervorst regime.
Changing of the guard at the IASB
Today sees the changing of the guard at the IASB.
The IAS Plus Interviews – Sir David Tweedie, outgoing IASB Chairman
After ten years working to bring harmony and order in world financial reporting, Sir David Tweedie is standing down as Chair of the IASB. In a special interview with Robert Bruce for IAS Plus, Sir David Tweedie talks about his achievements, his battles, and his hopes for the future.
The Bruce Column — Clarity and thought in Brussels
Financial reporting should, everyone agrees, bring about maximum transparency.
Trustees appoint Hans Hoogervorst to succeed Sir David Tweedie
The Trustees of the IFRS Foundation, the oversight body of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), today announced the appointment of Hans Hoogervorst as chairman and Ian Mackintosh as vice-chairman of the IASB.
The Bruce Column – Hans Hoogervorst and Ian Mackintosh: Some insights into their thinking
The much anticipated announcement that when Sir David Tweedie steps down from his ten year tenure as Chairman of the IASB at the end of June next year it will indeed be Hans Hoogervorst who takes over as Chairman with Ian Mackintosh as his Deputy means that the Tweedie tradition of independence and pragmatism will be upheld.
IASB Chairman's thoughts on principle-based standards
IASB Chairman Sir David Tweedie recently delivered the Ken Spencer Memorial Lecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Robert Herz reappointed as FASB Chairman
The Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation have reappointed Robert H Herz as Chairman of the US Financial Accounting Standards Board for a second five-year term that begins 1 July 2007.
Trustees make two Board member appointments
The Trustees of the IASC Foundation, under which the IASB operates, have appointed Dr Zhang Wei Guo, Chief Accountant and Director General of the Department of International Affairs of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, to membership on the IASB for a five-year renewable term beginning 1 July 2007. The Trustees also reappointed John Smith, currently a part-time IASB member, to a full-time Board position for a second five-year term also beginning 1 July 2007.
Current IASB board members
Overview of the structure of the IFRS Foundation and IASB
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Digitalisation lessons from other functions
Rob Gray, December 31, 2019
With HR apparently lagging behind on the digitalisation journey, we asked leaders of other functions to share their experiences and advice
When it comes to digital transformation, it seems most organisations still have a long way to go. According to the third edition of Deloitte’s Digital Disruption Index, published in January 2019, an alarming 28% of senior leaders classify their organisations as still being in the early stages of development.
And when it comes to the digitalisation journeys of individual functions, progress in HR is perhaps even more sluggish than most. An October 2018 Harvard Business Review article, headlined ‘HR Leaders Need Stronger Data Skills’, argued that while HR leaders are working hard to develop and recruit people who advance digital transformation across their organisations, most have struggled to advance their own digital competencies. Concerns that HR is beset by a digital skills gap are given further credence by the Global Leadership Forecast survey, which found that HR leaders lag far behind other professionals in their ability to operate in a highly digital environment and to use data to guide business decisions.
This can’t be put down to lack of opportunities, given the HR software market is on course to exceed $10 billion by 2022, according to a Grand View Research report.
The resources, it seems, are there for the taking. But HR is trailing behind other functions in successfully exploiting the opportunities that digital technology brings.
So it stands to reason that HR should be taking inspiration from other functions that are further along on the journey. Here, three function heads share their experiences of digital transformation in their business areas and offer some lessons for HRDs to apply to their own.
Luboš Libiak, head of procurement, MallGroup
“I am primarily responsible for procurement of our goods not for resale, with a team of eight and €120 million annual spend. We’re also helping out in our direct goods for resale area, with a purchasing volume of around €400 million.
"As a company that has grown through mergers and acquisitions, this created an environment where legacy systems were not fully in sync and there were different processes for doing similar things across different parts of the business. People would spend days working on repetitive manual tasks that weren’t bringing much value.
"First, we wanted to simplify the process and make it more efficient. This meant not simply doing a copy and paste of our current, inefficient process into a digital tool – something businesses need to think about a lot if there’s an expectation to improve.
"Secondly we needed to gain transparency and wanted to act based on data, not just on gut feeling. Thirdly we wanted synergies throughout the process, not only in procurement but in finance and the rest of the organisation.
"What worked well – but at the same time was one of our biggest challenges – was getting buy-in from our internal stakeholders. We didn’t want them just to sit at the table, but rather to have a supporting, consulting capacity that we could utilise to ensure we encompassed most of the use cases and didn’t forget anything important. When it comes to digital transformation, it’s key that cross-functional teams are set up and involved from the very beginning. Moreover, you also benefit from another view or approach to tackling the issue.
"Having a very robust solution is of course the desired end state. However, in terms of time to implement a digital transformation, you might want to split this up into a couple of waves. Then not only can the supplier meet the requested deadlines, but your team can also provide the necessary support.
"You must have a very clear vision of what the goal is and how to get there but be able to change course when circumstances change. This happens a lot during digital transformations.
Also, think about how the technology will evolve. Many companies are replacing big suites with platforms that are easier to connect with each other, and often provide enough capability to help you move from where you are towards your end-state process.”
Suky Baines, head of finance transformation, Transport for Wales
“Transport for Wales, a not-for-profit company wholly owned by the Welsh government, is responsible for the development of a high-quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network. This includes a £5 billion investment in the Wales and Borders rail service over the next 15 years.
"We wanted to streamline our processes and be able to access data wherever the location, to improve efficiencies. To do this we started with a discovery phase consisting of workshops with the key users affected by transformation changes within the organisation.
"In conjunction with our consultants, we were able to scope out the requirements with our targeted planned ‘go live’ dates. We then ran a procurement exercise using the scoping document to source suppliers for the work, enabling us to determine the required budget.
"We used Agile methodology in the project, involving key users so we could make the decisions as a group. The main challenge that can arise in such a project is that users will always have different requirements. Some may even be resistant to change, though fortunately we did not experience that. It’s crucial to meet everyone’s needs in one solution.
"Using Agile project methodology helps you arrive at decisions quicker. Key to this is managing the project with a plan of assigned tasks to ensure you meet your timelines. There will always be some areas throughout the implementation that will make you question how you will use the system differently.
"We measured success with ROI and key metrics around efficiency, and of course by happy end-users and the benefits they have seen from using the system.
"One of the most enduring challenges is ensuring that planning goes beyond the first three to five months. It’s vital to have a strategic vision to help evolve your initial phase. But I’d caution against trying to do too much too soon – phase your programme of implementation. Have a detailed plan, don’t overlook your data and do ensure compliance with the GDPR legislation.
"Also remember that digital transformation affects every area of the business and requires teams to co-ordinate and collaborate. To successfully lead digital transformation leaders must be intentional in building a digital culture, including changing legacy technology and structures that hinder transformation.
"Encourage collaboration across departments with strong communication. When all departments are aligned, a strong company culture forms, allowing for a successful and confident transition.”
William Douglas, chief marketing officer EMEA, JLL
“I’m a member of JLL’s EMEA board and have global responsibility for brand. We have 217 people in marketing across 21 countries in the EMEA region, including a pan-EMEA marketing leadership team. We deliver business line marketing, digital marketing, marketing communications and creative services to our EMEA business, which employs around 12,500 people.
"Digital transformation, in my opinion, is too broad a term and can feel a bit overwhelming or generic. We started our digitalisation journey in marketing by focusing on our mundane analogue problems, such as how to reach our target audience more effectively and gain insights into their needs, and looking for digital solutions that are attractive not only because they are fast, but because the tracking is far superior to analogue approaches.
"We worked with a number of external partners on this, including technology providers, digital media consultants and data and analytics consultants. This space is not short on consultants trying to help, and some prove more valuable than others. I would recommend looking for partners offering specific solutions and who are prepared to grind out a dedicated solution for you. Avoid wide-ranging digital consulting projects.
"Speaking generally, digital marketing has had a rollercoaster journey in terms of measuring and selling its own success. At the beginning, because measurement in such a specific way was so new and exciting, there were teams set up to spend time putting together huge dashboards on digital metrics that nobody understood, and which didn’t easily correlate to a commercial outcome. In addition, there was a cycle of overselling where the rest of the business leaders – often outside of the marketing function – started to question the validity of the measurements.
"I, and many other marketing leaders, took a stand a few years ago to simplify and scale back how and what we measure to focus on the most commercially relevant metrics.
"I think this is normal and to be expected when data that you’ve never had before comes flooding in; people have a tendency to over-report it and connect things that don’t necessarily connect. But it does settle.
"My advice would be to control the technology directly. Though IT is an important partner, you can’t be fighting for budget priority. You need to have direct budget responsibility for the supporting tech.
"You’ve also got to be prepared for people to not like what they hear. Getting your hands on more data and uncovering new insights is all well and good, but some people are happy not to know. Be aware that change in one part of the business usually doesn’t happen in isolation. Eventually it touches everyone and not everyone is prepared for this at first.”
This piece appeared in the October 2019 HR Technology Supplement
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Carolina Larriera, Contributor
Economist, based in Brazil, worked for the United Nations, partner of late Sergio Vieira de Mello
The Olympics And World Humanitarian Day Should Remind Us Of The Same Universal Ideals
08/19/2016 08:57 am ET Updated Aug 20, 2017
2016 Rio Olympics - Christ the Redeemer - 30/07/2016. Members of the Olympic refugee team including Yusra Mardini from Syria (C) pose in front of Christ the Redeemer. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
As we near the closing of the first ever Olympics in South America, the Summer Olympic Games of Rio 2016, the world also celebrates, on August 19, the values of humanitarian action. How can we link the Olympic spirit and World Humanitarian Day?
Thirteen years ago, in 2003, a suicide attack against the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad during the Iraq War resulted in 22 deaths and numerous seriously injured. As a United Nations civil servant, I suffered the attack in my own skin, since I was working at the building that was targeted. Even while I survived the building's explosion and collapse, the horror of the wounded and the dead will be with me forever. Among the fatal victims was my partner, Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the United Nations (UN) mission, with a career dedicated to the displaced and refugees, and a native of Rio de Janeiro. The brutality and scale of the attack prompted the UN to consecrate August 19 as World Humanitarian Day. The weight of this experience compels me to ponder on the bond between the celebration of Rio 2016 and humanitarian values.
The Olympic Games, with its glitz and controversy, have traditionally been cause of frantic polemics and debate. On one hand, there is a giddy and naïve approach towards celebration. On the other, the critical stance decries that the Games often function as a distraction or, at worst, are used as concealment to hide structural injustices, poverty and corruption. Others, more moderate, underscore that the Olympics are never about sports alone, but are actually about humanity itself: a promising vehicle for surmounting obstacles and for the development of people, their values, and education, far beyond manipulation.
The inspiring character of Olympism is palpable, for example, in the personal narratives like that of marathoner Vanderlei de Lima, legitimately picked to light up the Rio 2016's Olympic pyre. In Athens 2004, Vanderlei was unfairly stripped of the gold medal when a spectator deliberately interrupted his final dash to the finish line. Beyond the incident, which allowed his followers to catch up to him and take the lead, demoting him to the bronze, Silva ran the last meters in a show of joy and emotion, using gestures that are, to this day, a hymn to sportsmanship, Olympism and life.
Humanitarianism works for all humanity without distinction or discrimination, under the idea that all men deserve respect and have equal dignity, combating human suffering. Therefore, humanitarianism is the perfect antithesis of the "us versus them" dichotomy, often seen in fanaticism, nationalism, and discriminatory processes. In fact, the principle of dignity and equality of humanitarianism is present in all major religions: only a fanatical, misguided and forced vision of religion leads to terrorism.
Beyond this discussion, and on the occasion of World Humanitarian Day, it is important to think about what the Olympics will leave us after the curtain draws this weekend.
For the first time in history, a multinational group of athletes, with no other common denominator than that of being refugees, will compete in the arena. While in Sydney 2000 the athletes of Timor-Leste (a nation in whose struggle for independence Sergio and I participated) paraded under the white Olympic flag because they did not yet have an officially recognized country, the athletes from Congo, Syria, and other places were forced to flee their own to save their lives, and beg to be accepted elsewhere under asylum.
That is why not every antagonistic or confrontational stance turns into terrorism, exclusion or wars. Sport, as the virtuous expression of human self-improvement, honors standing in direct contact with another in the context of values and respect, to seek becoming a better person.
Humanitarianism and Olympism share the universal ideals of respect and dignity. Their opposites, terrorism, prejudice and violence are today our main challenges. Perhaps we should see in Olympism and the principles of humanitarianism a tool for reconciliation between peoples and a solution to these conflicts. Hopefully, the practice of these ideals will take us, in a not too distant future, to Games where the presence of a refugee team is a pleasant memory of the past, and of a period that has since then, been long overcome.
Impact World Humanitarian Day United Nations Olympics Rio 2016
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Home News ‘It’s fratricide’: Meghan McCain weighs in on reports of Democratic Party infighting
‘It’s fratricide’: Meghan McCain weighs in on reports of Democratic Party infighting
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Pundits on both sides of the aisle are sharing their opinions on reported rifts between Democratic leaders and a far-left group of largely freshman lawmakers in the House of Representatives.
In a segment of ABC’s “The View,” co-host Meghan McCain encouraged the factions to continue their feud.
“For me, as a Republican, I was texting memes to to my friends, ‘Let them fight. Let them all fight it out.'”
She went on to praise House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asserting that she “deserves respect from younger generations.”
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https://scopenewsonline.com/
Chris Agee is an American journalist with more than 15 years of experience in a variety of newsrooms. After a wide-ranging career in print and broadcast media, he served as managing editor of Western Journalism from 2013 to 2017. During that period, the news outlet became one of the 100 most visited websites in the world. In 2018, he founded Informed Media Group with the goal of providing "information without an agenda." In addition to creating stellar content for third-party publishers, IMG currently operates two of its own properties, Scope News and The Extract. Chris Agee lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife and son.
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ArcelorMittal Investing $160M at Burns Harbor
Wednesday, May 15th 2019, 4:18 PM EDT
(photo courtesy of ArcelorMittal)
BURNS HARBOR - Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal has announced plans to invest more than $160 million in its Burns Harbor steel mill. Our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana report the steelmaker's investment will focus on several areas within the facility over the next several years.
The investment includes improvements to the facility's hot mill, an in-line temper mill, new cranes and a new basic oxygen furnace vessel, according to the publication.
"Steelmaking reliability will be enhanced with the installation of replacement vessels," John Mengel, vice president and general manager of the plant, told The Times. "Our product offerings will include higher strength and heavier gauge hot-roll products enabled by larger and stronger coiling equipment. Investment at the pickle lines will enhance packaging and shipping while the addition of a temper mill to the continuous heat treat line will improve quality. Finally, enhanced mill control features and quality monitoring equipment will help with the delivery of quality plate products to our customers."
The town of Burns Harbor has granted property tax abatements for the new investment.
The announcement comes a week after ArcelorMittal detailed plans to invest nearly $20 million to rebuild the No. 2 coke battery at the Burns Harbor plant. In March, the company said it would invest another $140 million into the 80-inch hot strip rolling mill at the facility.
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Category: Apologetics
Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? What Does the Science Say?
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Sankagiri, located in Salem district, is about 68 km from Yercaud. It is home to a magnanimous fort, which is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Built in the 15th century by the Vijayanagar rulers, the fort served as a British tax storage facility and was once an important military base for Tipu Sultan, the legendary ruler of the kingdom of Mysore. Only one side of the hill on which the fort is situated is scalable as the others are too steep to climb. Sankagiri Fort has two temples, two mosques, a well, a granary and administrative buildings constructed during British rule. Noted Tamil chieftain and freedom fighter Dheeran Chinnamalai, who bravely fought against the British East India company was hanged here on July 31, 1805, during the Indian Independence movement. Dheeran was the son of Rathina Sakarai, who was the adopted son of Kotravel Kaminda Mandradiyar, a chieftain of the Kongu region.
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Buhari’s Foreign Trips Not Frivolous, Says Minister
Ardent Reader, News Freak, Socio-Political Commentator, Archaeologist & Pro-Democrat.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said foreign trips embarked upon by President Muhammadu Buhari since he assumed office over six months ago are critical to the implementation of his administration’s key policies of enhancing security, jump-starting the economy, creating jobs and fighting corruption.
In a statement issued on Friday in Abuja, by his special assistant, Mr. Mohammed said all the trips have not been frivolous as speculated, adding that they have started yielding fruits in terms of turning the tide in the fight against the insurgents who have been most active in the North-east, attracting investments in the range of billions of dollars, and securing global support for the administration’s anti-corruption fight.
He pointed out that most of President Buhari’s trips – to Nigeria’s neighbouring countries of Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, as well as to Germany, the US, France and the UN – were devoted to rallying regional and global support for the war against terrorism.
Apart from rallying global support for the country’s wars on terror and graft or seeking foreign investments, the Minister stressed that it is important that Nigeria leverages President Buhari’s brand, a high integrity quotient and an embodiment of committed and dedicated leadership, to further Nigeria’s relevance and visibility on the global stage.
He further explained that Buhari had embarked on the trips under a very stringent budget, cutting his delegations to numbers far below what his predecessors used to travel with, while even the trimmed entourage had received reduced allowances on the occasions that the host governments have provided accommodation and feeding.
Lai Mohammed
Minister of Information and Culture
President Muhammadu Buhari
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Nine lawmakers of the Imo state House of Assembly have decamped to the All Progressives Congress, APC, following Hope Uzodinma's election victory at the...
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The Rise in Opioid Overdose Deaths
On mobile browsers, best viewed in landscape.
Our physical and mental health reflects the health of our relationships with others. Studies show that social networks influence the behavior of their members, affecting whether they are obese or fit, happy or sad. The stark fact is that socially isolated people and others without social support die younger. Even among people with adequate social support, health status is connected to the health of their friends, family, and coworkers.
The ongoing opioid epidemic is the biggest public health crisis since HIV and AIDS came onto the scene over three decades ago. The causes of the crisis are myriad, as documented by Sam Quinones's powerful book Dreamland and recently highlighted by the Chairman’s Office of the Joint Economic Committee. But against this complex backdrop, we know that it is not simply good or bad luck that determines who succumbs to opioid addiction.
The Social Capital Project is exploring the relationship between having an unhealthy associational life and dying from several causes that suggest social disrepair. These “deaths of despair,” to use the evocative phrase of Anne Case and Angus Deaton, include those from opioid and other drug overdoses, as well as those from suicides and alcoholic liver disease. The Project is also assessing the social disrepair caused by the opioid crisis—the collateral damage to families, communities, and institutions as a result of these drugs.
Unintentional Opioid Overdose Deaths, 2011-20151
Click for an enlarged dynamic 1979-2015 map with the ability to zoom (Opens in a new window. May be a delay in loading.)
Source: United States Department of Health and Human Services (US DHHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NCHS, Compressed Mortality File (CMF) 1979-1998 and Multiple Cause of Death (MCD) 1999-2015 on CDC WONDER Online Database. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd9.html and http://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd-icd10.html.
Map powered by Leaflet and Leaflet.Minicharts.
The Social Capital Project has compiled new data on the opioid crisis as part of this research. We created a visualization showing how the epidemic spread across the country and worsened between 1979 and 2015 using mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In contrast to most coverage of the crisis, which has displayed the geography of drug overdose deaths generally, our maps are the first we are aware of that present deaths from unintentional opioid overdoses specifically, and the first to include deaths prior to 1999. (Opioid mortality where death was intentional or where the intent was ambiguous is unavailable before 1999 via the CDC data tool we used.)
The map above shows unintentional opioid death rates by county from 2011 to 2015. Clicking the image opens an interactive dynamic map displaying opioid deaths between 1979 and 2015. Each iteration of the map aggregates five years of data (four from 1995 to 1998, due to a change in the way the CDC coded mortality in 1999). Pressing the “play” triangle in the pop-out version cycles through time from 1979-1983 to 2011-2015. Alternatively, the user may use the slider to select a period.
Each county is shaded in one of six colors. The data for many counties is suppressed for confidentiality reasons because the number of opioid deaths is so small. Those counties are greyed out. The other five colors represent quintiles of the 2011-2015 crude opioid death rate across counties. The lightest shade (ignoring counties with suppressed data) indicates a county’s opioid overdose mortality rate for a given period would put it in the bottom fifth of non-suppressed counties in 2011-2015. The darkest shade indicates a mortality rate high enough that only 20 percent of non-suppressed counties were that bad off in 2011-2015. These quintiles do not change as the maps displayed in the pop-out version cycle from 1979-1983 to 2011-2015. Clicking a county in the pop-out version of the map displays the opioid overdose mortality rate per 100,000 people. The displayed rate updates dynamically as the years represented by the map change. (In years where a county’s data were suppressed by CDC, the label will display “null”.)
The map below drills down on specific states, which may be chosen from the drop-down menu.
Unintentional Opioid Overdose Deaths, by State1
Unintentional Opioid Overdose Deaths
Crude Rate per 100,000 Population
Suppressed 0 4.9 7.2 9.9 13.8+
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Mexico New Jersey New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Maps powered by Leaflet and Leaflet.Minicharts.
The charts below display the national trend in mortality from all drugs and from opioids specifically, with the first chart showing mortality rates and the second the number of deaths. Click the circle next to a variable to deselect one and focus on the trend of the other.
Rate of Unintentional Drug Overdose Deaths, 1968-20152
Source: United States Department of Health and Human Services (US DHHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NCHS, Compressed Mortality File (CMF) 1968-1998 and Multiple Cause of Death (MCD) 1999-2015 on CDC WONDER Online Database. The change in opioid deaths from 1998 to 1999 partly reflects a change in CDC coding. See end note 1. Accessed at https://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd8.html, http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd9.html and http://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd-icd10.html.
Total Unintentional Drug Overdose Deaths, 1968-20152
Look for more data on the opioid crisis, as well as our report on deaths of despair and social disrepair, in the near future.
1. Estimates for each period are multi-year crude mortality rates from unintentional opioid overdoses (including licit and illicit opioids). Beginning with the 1989 data, CDC suppresses death counts (and thereby rates) for counties with fewer than ten deaths in a given period, out of confidentiality concerns. By combining years, rates are suppressed for fewer counties. In 1999, the Tenth Revision mortality codes were introduced to the International Classification of Disease (ICD-10), replacing the Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes. We generally combine five years’ of county data for each period, except that we combine four years’ of data from 1995 to 1998 because of the discontinuity created by the switch to ICD-10 codes. Each period shares a year with the previous and subsequent periods, except that due to the discontinuity, the 1995-1998 and 1999-2003 periods do not overlap. By comparing maps for 1998 (based on ICD-9 codes) and 1999 (based on ICD-10 codes), we confirmed that little of the difference between the 1995-1998 and 1999-2003 maps is due to the discontinuity.
CDC does not suppress death counts prior to 1989; for consistency with the more recent estimates, we code the rates for 1979-1983, 1983-1987, and 1987-1991 as suppressed if a county had fewer than ten deaths. We retained county death rates the CDC deemed “unreliable” because there were ten to nineteen deaths. Age-adjusted rates are not provided by CDC WONDER for such counties, necessitating our use of crude rates. Generally, there is minimal difference between crude and age-adjusted rates for drug and opioid overdoses. Opioid deaths are identified from 1979 to 1998 by IDC-9 code E850.0 (Opiates and related narcotics). From 1999 to 2015, opioid deaths are identified as those with underlying cause-of-death codes X40-X44 and multiple-cause-of-death codes T40.0, T40.1, T40.2, T40.3, T40.4, and T40.6.
2. The charts show the annual age-adjusted mortality rate (and number of deaths) from unintentional overdoses involving either all drugs or opioids specifically (licit and illicit). Overall drug overdose deaths are identified from 1968 to 1978 as those with ICD-8 codes E850-E859; opioid deaths are those with ICD-8 code 853.0. Drug overdose deaths between 1979 and 1998 are categorized under ICD-9 codes E850-E858. Opioid deaths are identified from 1979 to 1998 by IDC-9 code E850.0. From 1999 to 2015, drug overdose deaths are those with underlying-cause-of-death ICD-10 codes of X40-X44; opioid deaths are the subset of those with multiple-cause-of-death codes T40.0, T40.1, T40.2, T40.3, T40.4, and T40.6.
Permalink: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2017/8/the-rise-in-opioid-overdose-deaths
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Home Manchester Flying Tiger Turns 106
Flying Tiger Turns 106
Sara Grillo
Photo by Sara Grillo
WHITING – It’s not every day a tiger turns 106 – a Flying Tiger that is.
Bill Laun and some of his 69th DRS crew in Kunming, China. (Photo courtesy Claudia Celmer)
A sunny room at Aristacare at Whiting where Bill Laun lives was packed with his friends from the community who came out to celebrate the milestone, as well as two service members from Fort Dix and fellow veterans from Whiting VFW Post #8745. Marcy Viano, who works at Aristacare, said around 90 people were expected to show up to his June 4 birthday party, and a separate BBQ just for residents would be thrown at a later date.
“Everybody has a day in the sun – this is his day,” said Viano.
Bill Laun during WWII. (Photo courtesy Claudia Celmer)
Flying Tigers is a nickname for what was borne out of the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force during World War II, made up of fighter pilots from the U.S. Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps, and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault, a retired U.S. Air Corps officer who had worked in China since 1937.
These Flying Tiger planes, which were used in aerial clashes against the Japanese, were one of the most recognizable combat aircrafts of their time because their noses were carefully painted to look like a shark’s mouth and face.
Although he didn’t fly the planes, Laun was in the “prop shop” and part of the 69th Depot Repair Squadron (DRS), a group of 350 men that provided repair and maintenance for the 14th Air Force of the U.S. Army Air Corps at a 3-mile base in Kunming, China. These unsung heroes – which included auto mechanics, welders, engine repairmen, supply officers and parachute specialists – were tasked with supplying the air support necessary to keep the planes running.
Bill Laun had a surprise visit from children of Chinese men the Flying Tigers saved. (Photo by Sara Grillo)
“He can tell you anything about a prop you want to know,” said Charlene Fontaine,” Executive Director of the Flying Tigers 69th DRS Association. She said Laun was part of the crew that drove 1,800 miles on Burma Road, through narrow roads, hairpin turns and steep drop-offs, to bring supplies to the base in Kunming. Out of the 350 men in the squadron, there are only 13 she is aware of who are still alive today.
“Flying Tigers are part of the 14th Air Force. I was a propeller specialist. I kept them flying. We stopped the Japs from coming into India. If they got into India, we would have probably lost the war,” said Laun.
The shark-faced planes played an important role in keeping Burma Road open for transporting supplies during the war, and also supporting the 14th Air Force’s mission of driving the Japanese out of China. If not for their efforts, China, and perhaps the whole planet, might be a different place today.
Bill Laun with fellow veterans from Whiting VFW Post #8745. (Photo by Sara Grillo)
Laun’s birthday party also held a surprise visit from children of some of the Chinese men the Flying Tigers saved, who traveled all the way from Washington D.C., Pennsylvania and Virginia to honor the veteran and show their appreciation for his role in protecting their country during the war. They showed a video of the last Flying Tigers reunion held in Philadelphia in 2013. Laun was the oldest Flying Tiger at that reunion, celebrating his 102nd birthday. The youngest member at that time was 91.
Laun was completely surprised by the visitors, who came bearing two gifts: a banner written by a famous Chinese scholar that translates in English to “been there, done that, seen it all,” and a crystal plaque that reads “Flying Tiger Bill Laun – Our Hero, Thank You.”
“The reason we are here is because 70-some years ago you guys went there for our parents and our country and you are not forgotten,” said Bruce Yen.
Bill Laun embraces the son of a Chinese man the Flying Tigers saved. (Photo by Sara Grillo)
Laun’s cousin, Claudia Celmer, said that Bill has always loved planes, even when he wasn’t inspecting them, as well as collecting little model trains. He also loves holidays and entertaining. She said when she was helping him clean out his house to move, they found all kinds of frozen hors d’oeuvres ready to go in case company stopped by.
“I always say anybody that meets Bill, falls in love with him. He has that kind of personality,” said Celmer.
While working for a printing company after the war, he lost his right arm, but she said even that never slowed him down. He loves gardening and has two tomato plants out back that Celmer brought him, which he tends to.
Fontaine, whose father was also a Flying Tiger in the 69th DRS, recalled Laun’s love of woodworking, and said he made clocks and furniture from scratch. Although he did not have children of his own, she said he “adopted” many, such as herself, along the way. “He was one of those sweet guys that you wanted to stay close to and hug.”
At his birthday party, he was hoping to drink German white wine, but settled for some red, which he enjoyed with his birthday cake.
Aristacare
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Sara Grillo served as the Assistant News Editor/Writer at Micromedia Publications in 2017. She has lived in numerous areas within Monmouth and Ocean Counties for the past 9 years. Grillo studied Journalism and Communication Arts at Ramapo College and has held positions in Marketing, Public Relations and Sales prior to writing for Micromedia. She left in October of 2017 to pursue creative writing.
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UN Information Centres in sub-Saharan Africa launch 16 websites
May 17, 2007 • Top Stories
Sixteen United Nations Information Centres (UNICs) in sub-Saharan Africa, marking World Information Society Day, today launched new websites in an effort to bring the work of the United Nations closer to its local constituencies around the continent.
The Information Centres in sub-Saharan Africa provide communications services to a total of 34 countries and are part of a network of United Nations information offices in over 60 capitals around the world. They are crucial players in promoting United Nations priority issues at the national level.
The websites were designed as a collaborative project by the information technology teams of the Information Centres Service of the Department of Public Information at United Nations Headquarters and the United Nations Regional Information Centre in Brussels, Belgium. UNIC Pretoria will be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and updating of the sites, in partnership with the individual UNICs.
In addition to news generated by United Nations Headquarters, the United Nations country teams and the UNICs themselves, the websites in Africa also host translations into more than 20 national languages of key United Nations documents, as well as a variety of links to United Nations system websites, programs and key events.
The new websites are part of the expansion of web-based information on the United Nations to as wide an audience as possible, particularly in developing countries. The entire United Nations system, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated in his message marking World Information Society Day, is committed to supporting the linkage between information and communications technology, and development.
Encouraging all stakeholders “to do their part to connect young people and to create a truly open, inclusive and development-oriented information society”, the Secretary-General called for the production of suitable technologies, applications and services to facilitate wide access to information and communications technology.
To view the new UNIC websites, please visit:
http://accra.unic.org
http://antananarivo.unic.org
http://asmara.unic.org
http://brazzaville.unic.org
http://bujumbura.unic.org
http://dakar.unic.org
http://daressalaam.unic.org
http://harare.unic.org
http://lagos.unic.org
http://lome.unic.org
http://lusaka.unic.org
http://maseru.unic.org
http://ouagadougou.unic.org
http://pretoria.unic.org
http://windhoek.unic.org
http://yaounde.unic.org
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Home | Education Worldwide | Education in the United Kingdom |
Special Education in the United Kingdom
"Special Educational Needs" is an umbrella term for an aspect of UK school education focusing on students primarily with learning difficulties and/or disability. In school documents, it is abbreviated to 'SEN' or 'SEND' - these abbreviations are also used in Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Singapore. It is also commonly interchanged with 'Inclusion' and 'Narrowing the Gap' as broad terminology. The term covers specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia and ADHD, pervasive disorders such as autism and physical disability such as visual impairment and hearing impairment. It may also describe a need for gifted education.
SEN policy and provision is a devolved matter with each of the countries of the United Kingdom having separate systems under separate governments: the UK Government is responsible for education in England, the Scottish Government is responsible for education in Scotland, the Welsh Government is responsible for education in Wales and the Northern Ireland Executive is responsible for education in Northern Ireland.
Across the UK school education systems, provision for SEN is widely varied with a 'mixed economy' of 'learning support' teams based in mainstream schools, specialist schools offering permanent placements and pupil referral units offering temporary placements for students subject to formal exclusion and requiring further assessment.
However, there are common practices found across the country. All schools are legally obliged to maintain an SEN Coordinator post or equivalent position. It is the only mandatory position other than the headteacher / principal position. There is also an SEN Code of Practice, updated in 2014, which provides legally-binding guidance on how provision should be shaped and maintained.
‹ History of Public Schools in the United Kingdom up Universities in the United Kingdom ›
Academic Ranks in the United Kingdom
Education Rankings in the United Kingdom
Education Stages in the United Kingdom
Education in England
Education in Northern Ireland
Education in Scotland
Education in Wales
Faith Schools in the United Kingdom
Funding for Education in the United Kingdom
Home Education in the United Kingdom
Public Schools in the United Kingdom
Universities in the United Kingdom
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Joshua C. Needle, Attorney at Law
Josh in Caricature
Shepherd v. Greene (1986) 185 Cal.App.3d 989 [230 Cal.Rptr. 233]
[No. B015653.
Court of Appeals of California, Second Appellate District, Division Five.
September 23, 1986.]
JUDITH SHEPHERD et al., Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. BROWNE GREENE et al., Defendants and Appellants.
(Opinion by Eagleson, J., with Ashby, Acting P. J., and Hastings, J., concurring.) {Page 185 Cal.App.3d 990} COUNSEL
Greene, O'Reilly, Broillet, Paul, Simon, McMillan, Wheeler & Rosenberg, Charles B. O'Reilly and Janice M. Corsino for Defendants and Appellants.
Joshua C. Needle for Plaintiffs and Respondents. OPINION EAGLESON, J.
The main issue here is whether an aggrieved party's request for trial after arbitration tolls the time period allowed to the prevailing party to seek correction and confirmation of a State Bar arbitration award. We hold that it does and affirm the trial court judgment.
Facts and Procedural Background
Judith and Richard Shepherd (Shepherd) were referred by their attorney, Needle, to Browne Greene, Greene, O'Reilly, Broillet, Paul, simon, McMillan, Wheeler & Rosenberg (Greene), attorneys at law. Greene filed a medical malpractice action against Kaiser Permanente Health Plan on behalf of Shepherd. Prior to suit, Shepherd agreed, in writing, to compensate Greene for professional services in the sum of 40 percent of any recovery obtained, plus a sum equal to expenses incurred by Greene in the preparation of the case.
The matter was ultimately settled before trial for $650,000. Before distribution of these funds, Needle, now representing Shepherd in what was to become a fee dispute with Greene, wrote Greene and advised him that his proposed 40 percent fee of $260,000 contravened Business and Professions Code section 6146. fn. 1, fn. 2 {Page 185 Cal.App.3d 992}
Shepherd and Greene could not agree on the proper fee allocation. The dispute was submitted to mandatory but nonbinding State Bar arbitration. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6200 et seq.) On December 27, 1984, State Bar arbitrators awarded Shepherd $101,450 plus interest from July 9, 1984, against Greene. This award was
served on the parties on January 3, 1985.served on the parties on January 3, 1985.
On February 1, 1985, 29 days later, Greene expressed his dissatisfaction with the award by filing a civil complaint against Shepherd pursuant to Business and Professions Code section 6204, subdivision (b). He claimed that Shepherd had waived the fee limitation found in MICRA. He further alleged that Shepherd "breached the written agreement by failing to pay or permit payment to be made to [Greene] of $101,350 of the monies due and owing" under the written retainer agreement. fn. 3 Shepherd's demurrer to the complaint was sustained without leave to amend, and a judgment of dismissal entered thereon.
Greene ultimately appealed from this judgment of dismissal. In an unpublished opinion in 2d Civ. No. B015650, the appellate court affirmed the trial court and concluded that "notwithstanding the terms of the parties' retainer agreement, [Greene] is entitled to only those attorneys' fees provided for under section 6146." The court based its decision on Waters v. Bourhis (1985) 40 Cal.3d 424 [220 Cal.Rptr. 666, 709 P.2d 469], which, as pertinent here, held that the provisions of section 6146 are mandatory and cannot be waived by a client.
Before Greene filed his notice of appeal but after entry of the trial court order dismissing the complaint, Shepherd filed a separate petition to correct and confirm arbitration award in superior court. The petition was dated April 26, 1985, some 113 days after service of the arbitration award. Shepherd claimed that the "arbitrators made an evident miscalculation of figures." Greene, as respondent, filed written opposition to the petition. The matter was heard, and on May 13, 1985, the court granted Shepherd's application to correct and confirm the arbitration award. A judgment based thereon was signed and filed on June 4, 1985, in favor of Shepherd and against Greene in the total sum of $137,969.95, together with interest at 10 percent until payment of judgment, and costs. The propriety of that judgment is the subject of this appeal. {Page 185 Cal.App.3d 993}
Discussion I
Greene first contends that Shepherd's petition to correct and confirm the arbitration award is time-barred because it was filed 113 days after service of the arbitrators' award. He notes that a discontented party to an arbitration proceeding must file objections to the award, either by his own petition to vacate or correct or by response to a petition to confirm, within 100 days of the service of the award. (Code Civ. Proc., §§ 1288, 1288.2; Davis v. Calaway (1975) 48 Cal.App.3d 309, 311 [121 Cal.Rptr. 570].)
[1a] Shepherd argues that Greene's act of seeking a trial after arbitration by filing a superior court complaint 29 days after the mailing of the notice of the award placed the award in a state of suspension. We agree and conclude that the 100-day period in Code of Civil Procedure section 1288 is tolled from the time the complaint seeking trial after arbitration is filed until a final adjudication of the superior court action. Since such an adjudication did not occur here until the appellate decision became final, Shepherd's intervening petition to correct and confirm the award was not untimely. fn. 4
The State Bar arbitration format is clear. [2] In the case of nonbinding arbitration, the award is advisory only. It becomes binding, however, unless one of the parties seeks a trial after arbitration within 30 days after mailing of notice of the arbitrators' award. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6203, subd. (b).) Until a trial after arbitration is concluded in the trial court, or in the appellate court if that be the choice of an aggrieved party, the arbitrators' award is consigned to judicial limbo.
It remains in limbo forever if the trial after arbitration results in a judgment on the merits. The resulting judgment becomes the operative instrument between the parties. Where, as here, an aggrieved party is unable
to state a cause of action as a matter of law, the award is resurrected and becomes subject to correction and
to state a cause of action as a matter of law, the award is resurrected and becomes subject to correction and confirmation in accordance with Code of Civil Procedure section 1285 et seq. (See Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6203, subd. (b).)
Until one of the above contingencies occurs, the twin notions of impracticability and futility toll the running of the 100-day period. fn. 5 The facts in {Page 185 Cal.App.3d 994} the instant case illustrate the wisdom of this principle. Judgment was entered on Shepherd's petition to correct and confirm the award before the time had passed for Greene to appeal the dismissal of his postarbitration complaint. If, after that appeal was filed, the court had reversed rather than affirmed the dismissal, the earlier ruling on Shepherd's petition would have been a nullity. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6204, subd. (d).) In light of this principle--that judgment in the plenary action completely preempts the arbitration award and any confirmation thereon--judicial efficiency dictates that the parties await completion of the trial after arbitration before filing a petition to correct and confirm the award. Tolling the 100-day statute while the plenary action remains unresolved is the only way to protect both parties' right to file such a petition.
[1b] Accordingly, Shepherd's petition was not time-barred. The award was served on January 3, 1985. When Greene filed suit on February 1, 1985, he temporarily stopped the running of the statute after only 29 days had elapsed. The statute did not begin to run again until after the appellate decision became final on May 29, 1986, which occurred 30 days after its filing date. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 24(a).) Therefore, Shepherd's petition, which was filed before Greene had even filed his appeal, was premature. However, since Greene has had a full hearing on the merits of the arbitration matter, he is not prejudiced by our affirmance of the ensuing judgment.
Greene next contends that even if Shepherd's petition is considered timely, it was error to grant correction of the arbitration award because no miscalculation was apparent on its face. Shepherd rejoins that a court may make such a correction if there appears "... an evident miscalculation of figures ...." (Code Civ. Proc., § 1286.6), and that the miscalculation here was obvious.
The appellate record does not contain the award, the arbitration record, or a transcript of the proceedings below. Thus, we have nothing to review except a one-page judgment.
[3] "'A judgment or order of the lower court is presumed correct. All intendments and presumptions are indulged to support it on matters as to which the record is silent, and error must be affirmatively shown. This is not only a general principle of appellate practice but an ingredient of the constitutional doctrine of reversible error.' [Citations.]" (Denham v. Superior Court (1970) 2 Cal.3d 557, 564 [86 Cal.Rptr. 65, 468 P.2d 193], italics in original.) {Page 185 Cal.App.3d 995}
Disposition The judgment of June 4, 1985, is affirmed. Ashby, Acting P. J., and Hastings, J., concurred.
FN 1. Section 6146 is one of the provisions of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA). It specifies, in part, that "[a]n attorney shall not contract for or collect a contingency fee for representing any person seeking damages in connection with an action for injury or damage against a health care provider based upon such person's alleged professional negligence in excess of the ... limits" provided for in that section. In substance, these limits are 40 percent of the first $50,000 recovered, 338 percent of the next $50,000, 25 percent of the next $100,000, and 10 percent of any recovery in excess of $200,000.
FN 2. The appellate record is sparse. But, at this point in time, Needle apparently could not calculate the correct fee under MICRA because he did not know what expenses Greene had incurred. Needle's letter basically voiced objection to the $260,000 and requested Greene to compute his fees in accordance with MICRA.
FN 3. Again, because of the inadequate appellate record, we are not sure what transpired. In context, it appears that Greene made a client disbursement but retained more of the settlement funds than he was entitled to under MICRA. For this reason, the arbitrators' award decreed that he was indebted to Shepherd.
FN 4. Code of Civil Procedure section 1049 states that an action "is deemed to be pending from the time of its commencement until its final determination upon appeal, or until the time for appeal has passed ...."
FN 5. We analogize to the body of case law which recognizes impracticability and futility as implied exceptions to mandatory five-year dismissals for failure to prosecute an action. (Christin v. Superior Court (1937) 9 Cal.2d 526 [71 P.2d 205, 112 A.L.R. 1153]; 6 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (3d ed. 1985) § 140, p. 444 and cases cited therein.) Code of Civil Procedure section 583.340, enacted in 1984, codifies the former case law.
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What’s next in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump
G5 Sahel leaders to meet after deadly Niger attack
Published on 14.12.2019 at 16h54 by AFP
G5 Sahel leaders will meet Sunday for an emergency summit in Niger to coordinate their response to a Jihadist attack on an army camp that killed 71 military personnel, Mali and Niger said
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the assault, in which hundreds of jihadists on Tuesday attacked the camp near the border with Mali with shells and mortars.
“Yesterday our neighbour Niger buried 71 of its soldiers who died by the bullets of those who want to spread chaos,” Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita told an audience in Bamako on Saturday.
“We will not fail in our solidarity with Niger and tomorrow my brothers of the G5 Sahel and I will go to Niamey and we will consult together,” he said.
The G5 Sahel, an anti-jihadist task force, comprises Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Chad.
The Niger presidency confirmed the summit to AFP.
The attack in Inates in the western Tillaberi region was the deadliest on Niger’s military since Islamist militant violence began to spill over from neighbouring Mali in 2015, and dealt a blow to efforts to roll back jihadism in the Sahel.
Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou raced back in the night from a security and development conference in Egypt to chair a meeting of the National Security Council in Niamey. Three days of national mourning were declared.
Militant violence has spread across the vast Sahel region, especially in Burkina Faso and Niger, after it began when armed Islamists revolted in northern Mali in 2012.
Tuesday’s attack prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to postpone a meeting scheduled for next week in the southwestern French town of Pau, where he and five presidents from the Sahel were due to discuss security in the region.
The talks will now take place early next year.
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Blog What Does a Baldrige Award-Winning Company Look Like?
What Does a Baldrige Award-Winning Company Look Like?
In 2015, four organizations received the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for their commitment to performance excellence. The winners were from four different categories, including small business, education, health care, and nonprofit. See below for some highlights on these organizations’ achievements:
MidwayUSA: This outdoor and recreational sport equipment firm improved its employee satisfaction and engagement rate from 76 percent in 2004 to 83 percent in 2015. By integrating customer satisfaction data into their performance improvement system, MidwayUSA’s customer approval ratings have topped 90 percent since 2006. This is the second time this company received the Baldrige award (also in 2009.)
The Charter School of San Diego (CSSD): Students who are at risk of never receiving a high school diploma enter CSSD, and the school has maintained student and parent satisfaction levels of close to 100%. Up to 98% have graduated or returned to a traditional high school, and the school has retained between 80–90% of its instructional staff for the past six years.
Charleston Area Medical Center Health System: This organization has been ranked in the top 5 percent for quality inpatient service, in the top 10 percent for outpatient satisfaction, and in the top 10 percent for patient safety. It is the biggest provider of uncompensated care in West Virginia, and has consistently lowered its re-admissions since 2011.
Mid-America Transplant Services: This organization built the nation’s first standalone organ recovery facility. It has been ranked as a national leader in number of transplanted donated organs and outperforms the national industry benchmark for missed organ referrals. Since 2012, they have reduced the cost per donor for in house cases from $7,000 to under $4,000 (when performed in a hospital, the service can cost around $20,000.)
All Baldrige Award winners exemplify what it means to be dedicated to their employees and their customers. These four organizations above know what it means to continuously seek improvement and provide the best quality service possible. Read more about the recipients, and for more details about the criteria for the Baldrige award, see their official webpage. The updated Baldrige criteria will also be covered in the next edition of Juran’s Quality Handbook, which will be released later this year. If your company is interested in applying for the Baldrige award and isn’t sure where to begin, take a look at our Organization Health Check and contact us today.
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Suffolk 2018/19
An effective fire and rescue service will identify and assess the full range of foreseeable fire and rescue risks its community faces. It will target its fire prevention and protection activities to those who are at greatest risk from fire. It will make sure businesses comply with fire safety legislation. When the public calls for help, the fire and rescue service should respond promptly with the right skills and equipment to deal with the incident effectively. Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service’s overall effectiveness is good.
Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service is good at understanding the risk of fire and other emergencies in its area. It learns about risk using various methods. It works well with the public. It uses what it finds out to make an effective integrated risk management plan (IRMP). It effectively collects information about high-risk sites. But it needs to make sure that all operational staff are familiar with their local risk sites.
The service requires improvement to the way it prevents fires and other risks. It makes good use of volunteers and other organisations to promote community safety. But its operational staff do limited work in this area.
It also requires improvement to how it protects the public through fire regulation. The service approaches enforcement in a supportive way. It works well with enforcement partners. But it doesn’t make full use of its enforcement powers.
Suffolk FRS is good in the way it responds to fires and other emergencies. It has a range of emergency response vehicles and trained firefighters to provide a flexible response to emergencies. It uses dynamic mobilisation to send the quickest resources to incidents. But the service isn’t always achieving its response targets. The service uses its live incident mapping to effectively communicate with the public about incidents. Fire control staff give fire survival guidance to callers effectively.
The service is good at responding to national risks. During a major incident, staff know how to get national resources and additional resources from neighbouring services. But staff don’t have access to up-to-date cross-border risk information. The service does a variety of exercises with other agencies. It is well prepared for terrorist incidents. It should conduct cross-border exercises with all of its neighbours.
Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service is good at understanding the risk of fire and other emergencies. But we found the following area in which it needs to improve:
The service should ensure that all operational staff are familiar with their local risk sites.
The service has a good understanding of local and community risk. It makes effective use of a wide range of data to produce an accurate and clear risk profile. Most of its data comes from Suffolk Observatory, which provides a comprehensive and up-to-date collection of data from across the county. This includes data on crime and community safety, population, economy and employment, housing, environment, and deprivation. The service uses this data along with its own incident data, as well as data it obtains from other organisations (such as medical oxygen providers and care providers).
The service works closely with Suffolk County Council’s knowledge and intelligence hub, and the council’s adult social care, building control and housing teams. They all share data and information and carry out joint activity. In this way, they have a common understanding of risk, based on the most up-to-date information available.
The service uses modelling software to make sure that it has the right resources, in the right place. External consultants also help the service to map risk and demand. This ensures that the service can effectively respond to current risk. It can also adapt to respond to emerging future risks.
In April 2019, the service consulted on its new IRMP, which covers the period 2019–2022. It used a variety of ways to consult with the public. These included posting social media and online video messages, advertising in the local press, sending mail shots, and speaking to people at local supermarkets.
According to data given by the service, the video messages had more than 20,000 views; the social media posts generated more than 5,000 online interactions; and the events in retail centres resulted in 800 face-to-face conversations. In total, the service received 284 formal consultation responses. According to data given by the service, this was a reduction in responses from its previous IRMP consultation of 3,000. The service feels that this is because it carried out early consultation on broad proposals this time. It plans to consult further on detailed proposals in the coming months, to allow for implementation of its proposals in early 2020.
In addition to its formal consultations, the service also works well with its local community. This work includes regular contact with groups such as Ipswich & Suffolk Council for Racial Equality, and Ipswich & Suffolk Bangladeshi Community. The service also recruits volunteers from within the community. During our inspection, we saw how a volunteer from the Syrian community had helped to forge links with the service. Previously, this community had been hard to reach.
The service’s IRMP is developed in line with national guidance.
We were pleased to see how the service’s ‘golden thread’ work (linking daily activity to strategic direction) has raised awareness among staff of how their daily activity contributes to its strategic direction, and how this is directed by the IRMP.
The service uses a five-step approach to its integrated risk management planning:
It assesses and understands local risk.
It reviews current fire service arrangements for managing risk.
It assesses the resources that are available to continue managing risk.
It resets arrangements to manage risk, and considers current arrangements and finance.
It monitors, audits and reviews the arrangements.
The service uses its clear understanding of local and community risk to produce the Suffolk Strategic Assessment of Risk. The current version covers the period 2018–2021. This document sets out the service’s assessment of risk, and its arrangements for managing that risk. It identifies how it will respond to:
national risks (identified in national risk assessment and register);
county risks (identified in community risk register); and
service-level risks.
The IRMP also clearly states how the service will use its people, equipment and resources to complete prevention, protection and response activities. Finally, the service’s annual statement of assurance details how it is performing against its IRMP.
The service has a programme of visits to high-risk sites. It visits these sites to make sure that firefighters have access to up-to-date risk information. A central risk information team assesses new and complex buildings. Firefighters carry out revisits and assessments of less complex buildings. Site-specific risk information (SSRI) is collected and then added to a database. Crews showed that they can access this information via mobile data terminals during an incident. We found SSRI information to be generally up to date and subject to regular review.
The service’s system for collecting risk information is robust. But risk-site familiarisation by local crews was inconsistent. Many staff (particularly on-call staff) told us that they didn’t carry out any familiarisation visits or training exercises at these sites. The service should make sure that all operational staff are familiar with their local risk sites.
The service has effective arrangements to collect and share information about local events. Members of fire service staff attend safety advisory groups. For example, during our inspection the service was planning for Latitude Festival, a national music festival held annually in Suffolk. Fire staff are involved in the planning stages of such events and are on site throughout them. They pass information that they receive to operational staff and officers who would attend if an incident occurred.
The service has an effective system for communicating general risk information. It gives this information to firefighters in a range of ways. They include face-to face handovers between watches, briefings at the start of shifts and drill sessions, and safety alerts and significant information notes. The service also uses handover folders at stations, so that staff who aren’t present for a briefing in person have a single point of reference for risk information. Staff also confirmed that all risk information and outcomes from debriefs are available electronically and via a smartphone app.
Effectiveness, efficiency and people 2018/19 – Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service
The service should ensure it allocates enough resources to target prevention work at people most at risk, and increase the number of home fire safety checks it carries out. It should also ensure that all prevention activities are monitored and quality assured.
The service should better evaluate its prevention work, so it understands all the benefits more clearly.
The service effectively sets out its prevention strategy in its community risk management statement 2019–2022. It supports this with an up-to date action plan. The statement sets out a clear framework of how the service will carry out prevention activity, as well as protection and response, to “make communities safer” and support its aim of “living safely and ageing well in Suffolk”. The strategy is in line with national requirements.
The service aims to target activity to those most at risk. It has identified the following groups as being at the greatest risk from fire in the home:
single adult households;
lone parent households with dependent children;
people with physical disabilities;
people with mental health conditions;
people who smoke or drink heavily; and
people who face significant deprivation.
Operational wholetime staff carry out safer homes visits (home fire safety checks). These include fire safety activities such as identifying and reducing fire risks and fitting fire alarms. Specialist prevention staff and volunteers carry out enhanced safer home visits. These are known as safe and well visits. These visits also include welfare-related activities, such as advising on health prevention, social welfare, home security, crime reduction, and how to avoid slips, trips and falls.
The service has a risk-based approach to safer homes visit requests. It only carries out visits to those who are at higher risk. It sends fire safety advice to those who aren’t assessed as high risk and signposts them to other sources of information such as its website. The service makes effective use of referrals from the Suffolk Information Partnership (SIP), targeting the work of prevention teams to those most at risk. The service also makes referrals back to partners, for them to offer additional support.
In the year to 31 March 2018, the service carried out 1,310 safer homes visits. This equates to 1.7 visits per 1,000 population. This is much lower than the England rate of 10.4. It is a reduction from 2,987 over the same time period in 2017.
In the year to 31 March 2018, the service carried out 61.8 percent of its checks at households occupied by an elderly person, and 12.1 percent at households occupied by a person declaring a disability. This compares to the England rate of 54.1 percent and 24.7 percent respectively. As noted above, the service has identified people with disabilities as being among those who are at greatest risk from fire in the home. The service should make sure that it is targeting its safer homes visits (and other prevention activity) to all of its identified high-risk groups.
Staff told us that they don’t have any specific targets for completion of prevention activity. Managers said that a lack of accurate and reliable information and data made it difficult for them to quality assure or performance manage prevention work.
The service hasn’t done much evaluating of its prevention activity, although an externally commissioned evaluation of the #itcanwait road safety initiative has been completed. This is detailed below. As a result, the service doesn’t fully understand the benefits of its prevention activity.
The service is very successful at working with children and young people. It does this through initiatives such as Emergency Services Cadets and Fire Stars, as well as the work of school liaison officers. It runs a joint cadet scheme with Suffolk Constabulary. Fire Stars is a firefighting-related health, fitness and mentoring scheme.
School liaison officers are firefighters who work in schools in their spare time. They carry out prevention work, offer one-to-one mentoring, and are positive uniformed role models. Currently, three secondary schools fund school liaison officers. The service is looking to expand this offering to other schools.
The service also runs a fire-setter intervention scheme with 12 trained fire-setter counsellors. They work with children who have “an unhealthy fascination with fire” to try to tackle fire-setting behaviour.
Safeguarding is a clear priority for the service. Staff have been trained accordingly. Those who we interviewed showed a good understanding of how to identify vulnerability, and how to make safeguarding referrals. We saw evidence of these referrals being made. Staff consider the folders that are carried on all fire engines to be a good source of guidance and information in relation to vulnerability and safeguarding.
Operational staff told us that the prevention work they are involved in is limited to home fire risk checks, school visits and attending community events such as fetes.
Recently, the service issued local risk profiles to stations. It did this to help the stations target their prevention work. Also, each watch now has a prevention lead to help co-ordinate more prevention activity on stations. These initiatives aren’t yet routine, and so they don’t yet give evidence of any benefits or improvement. We look forward to seeing how this work progresses.
According to data given by the service, it has 20 active volunteers. They work with specialist prevention staff to support the service in carrying out safer home visits and prevention campaign events. By recruiting volunteers from diverse backgrounds, the service is able to better target the community’s diverse needs.
The service offers a variety of accessibility tools on its website to make its information more accessible. These include translation services, bigger font sizes and colour filters.
In addition to working with other agencies through SIP, the service also works with a variety of other organisations and charities to help prevent fires and keep people safe. These include Lofty Heights (a not-for-profit social enterprise), The Royal British Legion Poppy Calls, and REACT (Reactive Emergency Assessment Community Team). The area’s Rotary clubs support the service’s prevention work.
Partners spoke highly of the role that the service plays as part of the Suffolk RoadSafe Partnership Board with Suffolk Constabulary, Suffolk County Council, the East of England Ambulance Service, Highways England, and the police and crime commissioner. However, the operational crews we interviewed told us that they never get involved in road safety initiatives.
The aim of the RoadSafe Partnership is to make Suffolk’s roads safer for all, and to reduce the number of people who are killed or seriously injured. It has identified its main groups of concern as motorcyclists; young drivers under the age of 24; and pedestrians (especially school-age children in deprived areas).
Road safety initiatives include the FireBike project, Biker Down training course and Braking Point. Braking Point is a project aimed at pre-drivers. It encourages good behaviour that is linked to the so-called ‘Fatal Four’ (inappropriate speed; using a mobile phone while driving; not wearing a seat belt; and drink driving).
The service has also developed its own road safety initiative, called #itcanwait. As with the Braking Point project, it focuses on drivers’ mobile phone use. The initiative aims to make young people (aged between 15 to 18 years) aware of the dangers of using a mobile phone while driving.
The service told us that the RoadSafe Partnership reached approximately 2,000 year 11 students in 2017/18. To date, it has offered two sessions of the #itcanwait initiative and has commissioned an external evaluation before running any further sessions.
The service should assure itself that its risk-based inspection programme prioritises the highest risks and includes proportionate activity to reduce risk. It should also include appropriate monitoring and evaluation.
The service should assure itself that its use of enforcement powers prioritises the highest risks and includes proportionate activity to reduce risk.
All fire and rescue services must promote fire safety, which includes fire protection. They should assess fire risks in buildings and, where necessary, require landlords and building owners to comply with fire safety legislation. It is up to each fire and rescue service to decide how many assessments it carries out each year. But each must have a locally determined, risk-based inspection programme (RBIP). And each must have a management strategy for enforcing the regulations.
Suffolk FRS has a protection strategy. This is part of its community risk management statement 2019–2022. It is supported by a risk-based inspection policy, an enforcement policy and an up-to date action plan. These documents set out a clear framework as to how the service will offer its protection activity alongside prevention and response. The strategy and supporting policies are aligned to statutory guidelines such as the Fire and Rescue National Framework for England, so that the service meets its obligations under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The service uses them to prioritise its activities based on risk.
The number of audits that the service has carried out on known premises has reduced year on year since the year to 31 March 2014 (from 1,150 to 294 over the same time period in 2018). The rate of audits per 100 known premises in the year ending 31 March 2018 was 0.6. This is lower than the England rate of 3.0 over the same time period.
The service saw a reduction in competent dedicated inspectors from 21 as at 31 March 2013 to eight as at 31 March 2017. However, this figure has increased to 15 as at 31 March 2019. Currently, the service allocates only eight inspections to inspectors every month. This number of inspections, along with an increase in staffing, means that the service has some additional capacity to carry out more inspection activity. It has a plan in place to do so.
Recently, the service updated its definition of high-risk premises. As at 1 April 2019, the service defines ‘high-risk premises’ as “large premises (sleeping) with complex evacuation strategies and/or sleeping unfamiliar”. The service uses a premises management system to collate building information (including risk score and risk rating). The system then generates audits by order of risk.
The system’s data is inaccurate. These inaccuracies are leading to duplication and the manual allocation of inspections. Therefore, the service can’t confirm that the audits it is carrying out are in line with its RBIP. The service is aware of this and has invested in improvements to its premises management system. The new system was undergoing user testing at the time of inspection.
The number of audits where the service deemed the premises to be unsatisfactory has increased to 29 percent in the year to 31 March 2018 but remains below the England average of 32 percent. This may suggest that the service isn’t targeting its audit work at the highest-risk premises. The service should make sure that its premises management system is fit for purpose, and that it supports the RBIP in effectively targeting high-risk premises.
The service has set itself a target of auditing all of its high-risk premises over a three-year period. As at 31 March 2019, it has identified 683 high-risk premises. In the year to 31 March 2019, it had audited 218 high-risk premises. If the service continues to carry out a similar number of high-risk audits annually, it is likely that it will nearly reach its target.
The service received 587 building regulation consultations in the year to 31 March 2019. Of these, the service completed 96.3 percent within the required timeframe.
Suffolk FRS has a well-trained and qualified protection team. The service has a memorandum of understanding with Essex Fire and Rescue Service’s fire engineering department to assist with complex cases. A member of the protection team is nearing completion of a fire engineering degree, which will allow them to offer this support internally in the future. Operational officers receive training and carry out compliance checks at lower-risk, less complex premises. This helps the service to identify any further areas of non-compliance, and to include them in its programme of audits.
Protection officers are available day and night. They will respond to fire safety concerns that are brought to the service’s attention.
The service prefers to take a supportive approach, based on informal action, to seek compliance with fire safety legislation. Data suggests that the level of enforcement that the service takes is low: it has brought just three prosecutions since the year ending 31 March 2011.
In the year to 31 March 2018, the service issued:
81 informal notices;
two enforcement notices (under article 30 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005);
nine prohibition notices (under article 31 of the Order);
no alterations notices; and
no prosecutions (under article 32 of the Order).
While we recognise the desire to promote compliance, we still expect services to use their formal enforcement powers where necessary. This applies particularly in cases where there is significant risk to life, or where building managers may be reluctant to work with services to improve building safety. When we interviewed staff during our inspection, some told us that they feel Suffolk FRS doesn’t use its enforcement powers effectively.
The service gives regular training to make sure that inspectors’ enforcement and prosecution skills are refreshed and remain current.
The service works closely with enforcement partners. These include Suffolk County Council’s housing and environmental health departments, Suffolk Trading Standards and Suffolk Constabulary. They carry out joint visits and enforcement action, and share risk information. An example of effective joint action is the service’s ‘impact days’. Inspecting officers from the service work with housing officers to carry out joint inspections. They target high-risk sleeping accommodation located above commercial premises. During our inspection, we also saw evidence of the service’s inspecting officers attending a police-led, multi-agency operation, in which several vulnerable people were identified and given support.
The service has a call-challenge and non-attendance policy to automatic fire alarms. This is in line with national guidance. In the year ending 31 March 2019, the service received 2,578 unique automatic fire alarms. It didn’t attend 881 (34.2 percent) of these. It will, of course, attend if it receives confirmation of a fire.
In addition, the service has a policy to work with those premises that generate the most unwanted fire signals. This is in order to reduce future call-outs. During our inspection, staff weren’t applying this policy consistently.
The service uses its website to share information with businesses about fire safety regulations, enforcement and prosecution. The service is also a member of the New Anglia Better Business for All (BBfA) Steering Group, New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, and New Anglia Growth Hub. These all offer opportunities for the service to talk to and work with local businesses.
The service has a dedicated business engagement officer. Most of their time is taken up with planning and running the impact days, and working with businesses through the service’s primary authority scheme. This leaves little time to carry out activities such as business seminars and other direct business engagement.
The chief fire officer is the chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council’s protection and business safety committee. The service is also a member of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s national trailblazer groups. It is involved in creating the institute’s fire safety inspector and fire engineer apprenticeship standards, which are in development.
The service’s response strategy is outlined in its Response Statement 2019–2022. The statement sets out to give a proportionate response to the risk identified in the service’s IRMP. The service does this by maintaining a range of emergency response vehicles and trained firefighters who can respond to its identified risk.
In the year to 31 December 2018, the service attended 5,335 incidents. This figure has remained relatively stable over the last three years. It equates to 7.0 incidents per 1,000 population. This is lower than the England rate of 10.4 over the same period.
The service has a combined fire control with Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service. This single fire control handles all 999 calls for both services. Its staff are well trained and knowledgeable.
Suffolk FRS uses dynamic mobilising. Its mobilising system identifies the quickest resource available to send to incidents. There is an effective system to update mobilisation times. It uses information about closed roads and other factors affecting response times to make sure that dynamic mobilising is accurate.
In the year to 31 March 2019, the overall on-call fire engine availability was 91.6 percent and the overall wholetime fire engine availability was 100 percent.
The service uses an on-call crewing reserve to support on-call availability. The service has allocated a group of nine wholetime staff to a 42-hour-week day duty shift pattern. This group can be sent to any station within Suffolk during the day (when need is greatest), to keep on-call fire engines available. The service also uses any surplus wholetime staff to supplement the on-call crewing reserve. It makes decisions about where to send staff in line with its pre-planned emergency response plan, and it plans three months in advance. Staff can react to changes daily, moving to different locations throughout the day if required. The service uses its degradation plan not only for exceptional circumstances, but also for day to-day management of resources.
All new firefighters, both wholetime and on-call, attend the same training. The service offers training for wholetime firefighters in a single block. On-call firefighters attend the same courses as wholetime firefighters, but they take modules. This form of training offers more flexibility, given that on-call firefighters have other primary employment. The service gives all operational staff ongoing training according to the same training plan. And it gives wholetime firefighters additional training for specialist roles (for example, water rescue and boat training).
The Home Office collects and publishes data on response times by measuring the time between a call being made and the first fire engine arriving at the scene. This offers consistent data across all 45 services. However, services measure their own response times in a range of different ways.
In the year to 31 March 2018, the service had the fourth slowest average response time to primary fires of all predominately rural services (11 minutes 0 seconds). However, this is an improvement from 11 minutes 30 seconds in the year ending 31 March 2017. The improvement is mainly as a result of a reduction in the average drive time to primary fires.
The service’s IRMP contains time-based emergency response standards. The time is calculated from the time of alerting the fire engine. The service aims to respond as follows:
It aims to have the first fire engine at a primary fire within 11 minutes, for 80 percent of incidents.
It aims to have the secondary fire engine at a primary fire within 16 minutes, for 80 percent of incidents.
It aims to have the first fire engine at a road traffic collision within 13 minutes, for 80 percent of incidents.
In the year ending 31 March 2019, the service wasn’t achieving these standards. It met them in 66.9 percent, 72.9 percent and 73.3 percent of incidents respectively.
The service is reviewing these response standards as part of the latest IRMP consultation.
The service makes use of a flexible response to incidents. Its normal response is a standard fire engine with a crew of four or five. It also has a light rescue pump based at Wrentham, which can respond with a crew of two. The service uses reduced crewing at on-call stations, enabling the stations to mobilise an engine with a crew of three when necessary. Whenever a reduced crew is mobilised, the service sends additional resources to make sure that it has enough firefighters and commanders, in line with national guidance.
The service has carried out a gap analysis against national operational guidance (NOG). And it plays a leading regional role in the implementation of NOG across local services. The service has a plan in place to adopt NOG across the region by 2020. During reality testing at stations, firefighters showed good knowledge, understanding and practical application of breathing apparatus procedures in line with NOG.
Staff at fire control allocate resources to incidents. They do this based on pre-determined attendances. During our inspection, fire control staff used their professional judgment to increase or decrease the pre-determined attendance, based on information they received from callers.
Incident commanders at all levels demonstrated the knowledge and understanding to enable them to command fire service assets assertively, effectively and safely. They had working knowledge of NOG and showed effective decision making, using the decision control process.
Incident commanders make effective use of the service’s support materials. These include command packs, checklists, analytical risk assessments, safe person report forms, and message and decision logs.
The service has an effective system to make sure that incident commanders at all levels keep their command competence. As well as undergoing regular refresher training, they complete an incident command re-assessment every two years. The service carries out assessments for more senior level 3 and level 4 commanders regionally, at Essex Fire and Rescue Service.
Incident commanders told us they had the support of senior leaders to use operational discretion and step outside guidance where appropriate, and following a suitable risk assessment. Through its debrief process, the service has an arrangement to review incidents that involve the use of operational discretion.
The service makes good use of live incident mapping on its website to communicate information about incidents to the public. The mapping is automatically populated from the service’s mobilising system. Fire control or on-call crewing reserve staff then add updates, using information they receive from crews at an incident. Fire control staff can remove incidents from public view if an incident is deemed to be sensitive or confidential. The service also gives additional information to the public, including safety messages from incidents, through social media. Responding officers give this information 24 hours a day.
The service has a robust referral process. It can immediately refer urgent safeguarding issues that are identified at incidents. Staff showed a good understanding of how to identify vulnerability, and how to make a safeguarding referral. They could give examples of having done this at incidents.
During our inspection, fire control staff effectively communicated fire survival guidance to the public. Staff access this guidance from within the mobilising system. It is in line with national guidance, and tailored to specific premises, based on risk.
The service has an effective system for carrying out hot debriefs of small-scale incidents. Crews discuss what has gone well, and any learning, immediately after an incident, usually while still at the scene. Crews then complete a safe person report form or an operational assurance, monitoring and debrief form, and submit it to the operational assurance team. These forms were being completed and submitted. The service monitors the level of completion of these forms. It is seeing improvements in the numbers being submitted.
Larger-scale and more complex incidents are also subject to a more formal debrief. The operational assurance officer decides whether this is needed. The officer has a limited capacity to monitor incidents and arrange debriefs. As a result, it isn’t clear whether the officer is identifying all incidents that need a formal debrief. The service should make sure that the operational assurance officer’s improvements continue, and that there are systems in place to support them.
The service collates and shares learning from all incidents with staff. It does this through information notes on the service’s intranet and a staff smartphone app. There are monthly operational assurance updates. The operational assurance officer completes and circulates incident debrief information notes for notable incidents. Recently, the service has added an operational assurance ‘must read’ section to its training record system. Staff must record when they have read this debrief information.
During our inspection, there was an example of an incident debrief information note for a silo incident in February 2019.
All learning from incidents (both internally and nationally) is discussed at the service’s operational assurance board. The operational assurance manager allocates and tracks any actions that arise from these discussions. As the tracking is done manually, the service can’t confirm how many of the actions have been completed and how many are still outstanding. The service should make sure that all learning from operational incidents is being actioned, so that it leads to operational improvements.
During our inspection, there was an example of the service sharing learning from a high-bay racking warehouse incident through the national operational learning process.
Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service is good at responding to national risks. But we found the following areas in which it needs to improve:
The service should ensure its operational staff have good access to relevant and up-to-date risk information. This should include cross-border risk information.
The service should make sure it participates in a programme of cross-border exercises, sharing the learning from these exercises.
The service has good arrangements to supplement resources in the event of a major incident or other extraordinary need, such as a flood. These include arrangements for the mobilisation of multi-agency resources and national assets. During our inspection, there was evidence of when this mobilising of national assets had been used, most recently in response to a large flood in Suffolk in 2017. The service set up an effective strategic holding area for incoming national resources.
Staff showed a good understanding of what would constitute a major incident. They also showed good understanding of their responsibilities, and how to request additional resources, including national assets, when needed.
The service has well established multi-agency response plans for high-risk premises, including control of major accident hazards (COMAH) sites and a nuclear establishment within the county.
The service has mutual aid arrangements with its neighbouring services to support an effective cross-border operational response. However, there was evidence that cross-border exercises were infrequent. The service should make sure that there is a programme of regular cross-border exercises.
Where a cross-border exercise has taken place, there was effective sharing of learning between services. This resulted in the updating of procedures in both services.
Staff could show how to access cross-border risk information on mobile data terminals. However, the majority of cross-border risk information that we sampled was found to be out of date. The service should work with its neighbouring services to make sure that cross-border risk information is up to date.
The service uses analogue radios, whereas some of its neighbouring services use digital radios. The two systems are incompatible, and this incompatibility hinders joint working. The services are aware of the impact this has on their ability to work together. They switch all radios to analogue as a short-term fix, and are exploring a longer-term solution.
The chief fire officer is the current chair of the Suffolk Resilience Forum. Other officers play active roles. This has resulted in effective working with multi-agency partners. It also ensures that the service plays a leading role in the planning and organising of joint training and exercises.
During our inspection, there was evidence of a variety of multi-agency exercises taking place. In the last 12 months, exercises have involved a COMAH site, a shopping complex, and a simulated collision involving a nuclear device. These have been both table-top and physical exercises and covered the emergency and recovery phases of incidents. The service and partners have also tested the setting up and running of strategic and tactical co-ordination groups.
Incident commanders showed good knowledge and understanding of Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles.
The service is well prepared to form part of a regional response to a marauding terrorist attack. During our inspection, there was evidence of the service having carried out a regional exercise in 2018 and having trained staff. Fire control staff were well prepared to deal with calls to this type of incident. They could show how they would give ‘Run, Hide, Tell’ safety advice to callers who reported such incidents.
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