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Aamir Khan’s Birthday Plans Revealed: Actor Has a Unique Way of Celebrating His 54th Birthday, Read on
Aamir, who has a cake-cutting tradition, was last seen on-screen in Thugs Of Hindostan alongside Amitabh Bachchan, Katrina Kaif and Fatima Sana Shaikh.
Published: March 14, 2019 11:18 AM IST
By India.com Entertainment Desk Email
Aamir Khan. Photo Courtesy: Instagram/aamirist.khan
Bollywood’s Mr. Perfectionist aka actor Aamir Khan is celebrating his birthday today, and as he turns 54, he has decided to combine fun and work. Aamir, who has starred in countless movies and was last seen in Thugs Of Hindostan alongside Amitabh Bachchan, will as per reports be heading abroad after cutting his birthday cake with the media.
According to Mid-Day, Aamir, who holds the customary cake-cutting ceremony with the media at his Bandra home, is headed to Northern Ireland where he will be attending the ongoing Belfast Film Festival. The festival promotes a diverse and dynamic programme of film events and outreach activity throughout the year.
He will also reportedly be in conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir, an India-born television producer, director and author based in the UK, on the 16th to discuss his body of work. Nasreen is best known for producing an annual season of Indian films for Britain’s Channel 4.
On the work front, Aamir was involved with production of Rubaru Roshni, a television film which he described as being very introspective in nature. The film revolves around the virtue of forgiveness and talks about the Khalistan movement, which was at its peak during 1984, and the November 2008 terror attack on Mumbai.
At a special screening of the film, which had been directed by Svati Chakravarty, Aamir, who was listed as the narrator, had spoken about how he came to agree to produce it.
“When Svati told me that I want to make a film on forgiveness, I said ‘I am on’, and that ‘we are producing it and you make it.’ That time, we didn’t know in which medium we will show it to the audience. I had no idea about whether we are going to release it theatrically or on digital platform, but I told Svati that ‘you must make this film’ and when it will be ready then, we will think of the medium,” NDTV had quoted him as saying then.
“When I saw the first cut of the film, it impacted me a lot and the first thought that came to my mind was that we hold grudge against someone over petty issues and in that situation, we hurt ourselves. In this film, we have shown people who have faced larger tragedies in their lives, but have been able to overcome them. It made me think about myself and all my relationships with people so, I found this film as very introspective in its nature,” he stated.
Rubaru Roshni was produced by Aamir and his wife Kiran Rao under the banner of Aamir Khan Productions.
Published Date: March 14, 2019 11:18 AM IST
Aamir KhanBelfast Film Festivalhappy Birthday Aamir KhanThugs of Hindostan
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Displaying Items By Tag: Infections
Japan To Alert Owners About Malware Infections
Owners of internet-connected devices in Japan that have been infected with malware may receive an alert from the government alert starting this week. The notification system is part of the government's efforts to boost cyber security in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics next year.
The research arm of the communications ministry launched a test in February to check the vulnerability of the Internet of Things in homes and offices. Experts targeted more than 200 million devices to see if they could detect malicious software.
Rubella Infections In Japan Highest Since 2013
Health officials say a total of 2,032 people have been infected with rubella, or German measles, in Japan this year through November 11th.
They say that's 21 times last year's figure and the first time since an outbreak in 2013 that the number has exceeded 2,000.
Rubella Infections Starting To Spread Across Japan
Health officials in Japan say nearly 2,000 people have contracted rubella, or German measles, this year.
The infections are spreading from the Tokyo metropolitan area to other parts of the country.
The National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo announced on Tuesday that 154 new cases were reported in the week up to November 4th, bringing the total to 1,884.
Health officials say more than 1,000 people have been infected with rubella, or German measles, in Japan this year. This is the first time since 2014 that the number of patients with the viral infection has topped 1,000.
The National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo announced on Tuesday that there were 151 new cases in the week to Sunday, bringing the total to 1,103.
Hospital Apologizes For Bacterial Infections
A university hospital in southwestern Japan says 15 inpatients were infected with drug-resistant bacteria over the past 2 years.
At a news conference on Friday, officials at Kagoshima University Hospital said the multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter and a similar strain of bacterium were detected in the patients between September 2016 and April 2018.
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Thinking About Cremation?
Community Memorial
Meloe Williams
October 28, 1966 ~ October 25, 2018 (age 51)
Meloe Williams, 51, of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania passed away October 25, 2018 at St. Lukes University Hospital-Fountain Hill Campus. She was born on October 28, 1966, in Brooklyn New York, to the late Amenta (Harris) and John Williams. In 1980, she attended Prospect Heights High School where she then had her first child, Jamillah Williams. She continued her education by completing her course of study at Thompson High School. Several years later, she met and married Radames Velez and from that union they had one child together. Her name is Amenta Velez.
Meloe pursued her career as a Licensed Physical Therapist and Certified Nurse's Assistant. She was a member of the Greyston Foundation, where she was known for her Artistic Talents. Meloe's Talents were many, she was an extremely accomplished painter, a skilled craftsman, a great listener, advisor, a beloved mother, grandmother, sister, community volunteer and friend who love to entertain. She was beautiful, smart, funny, independent and a strong person. She will be forever missed.
Meloe was preceded in death by her mother Amenta (Harris); her Father, John Williams; her Grandmother, Irene; her Grandfather, Clarence; 4 Aunts, Phyllis, Leslie, Debbie and Crystal; 3 Cousins, Shawn, Stephon Jr., Elijah and 2 Nieces, Autumn and Jianna. She leaves to mourn cherished memories to Radames Velez, 2 Daughters, Jamillah and Amenta; 2 Grandchildren, Jeremiah and Nevaeh; 2 Sisters, Kendra and Jania; 1 Brother, Keith; 2 Aunts, Coraline and Lynetta; 3 Uncles, Claude, Richard and Marlon; 1 Niece Jaileen; 4 Nephews, Keith, Aaron, Andrew and Andrew Jr.; and a host of 43 Cousins and lots of friends.
Funeral Services will take place on Friday at 1PM in the Funeral Home. Viewing begins at 12.
© 2019 Judd-Beville Funeral Home, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Funeral Home website by CFS
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Shop All Stressless By Ekornes
J & K Home Furnishings in Myrtle Beach, SC is an authorized dealer of Stressless By Ekornes Products. Ekornes ASA is the largest furniture manufacturer in the Nordic region and owns such brand names as Ekornes, Stressless and Svane. Stressless is one of the world's most famous furniture brands, and Ekornes and Svane are the best known brands in the Norwegian furniture market. Products are manufactured in Norway and marketed all over the world by a network of national and regional sales companies.
Ekornes' business concept is to offer products that, in terms of both price and design appeal to a broad audience. In addition, the group aims to develop and manufacture products offering excellent comfort and functionality.
So if you are looking for Stressless By Ekornes products in Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet, Litte River, Shallotte, Garden City, Sunset Beach, Holden Beach, Oak Island, Florence and Wilmington, or if you have any questions about Stressless By Ekornes products, please feel free to call us at (843) 249-1882 or simply stop by J & K Home Furnishings at any time and we would be glad to help you.
All Stressless By Ekornes Living Room
All Stressless By Ekornes Home Office
Ekornescollection
Stressless Capri
Stressless Live
Stressless Peace
Stressless Sofas
Stressless Wing Stressless Eagle
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Contractor Mesothelioma - £187,500
Mesothelioma Claims
Case Study: Contractor Mesothelioma Claim
The family of a man who passed away following exposure to asbestos during his working life has been awarded £187,500 in compensation thanks to JMW's industrial disease team.
Mr B was an Irish national who came to the UK in 1959 and developed mesothelioma after working in different workplaces where he was exposed to asbestos. He was made aware of JMW Solicitors via his local asbestos awareness support group. Mr B chose to make a claim for his disease with us and dealt with Andrew Lilley, head of industrial disease.
Mr B was a retired builder and was self-employed for most of his working life, being contracted onto various jobs. We took a detailed witness statement from him about his employment history, so that we could narrow down which work environments had exposed him to the asbestos that had caused him to contract mesothelioma.
Two employers had contributed to his asbestos exposure; a formwork company, for whom he was contracted to work on a rebuild and refurbishment of a railway station in West London in 1964/5, and a construction company for whom he carried out work on an asbestos-sheeting covered roof in 1974.
We also got details of his employment and national insurance history from HM Revenue and Customs, and copies of his medical records from his GP and the hospital that had diagnosed him with mesothelioma.
Letter of Claim
After tracing his former employers, Andrew sent letters of claim to both of these defendants’ insurance companies regarding Mr B’s claim, of which we were ultimately only able to secure one. We also discovered that the insurance company in question involved the ‘trigger’ litigation to avoid making compensation payouts on mesothelioma claims. Any compensation payout we were able to secure would depend on the results of the legal action, which was then being heard in the Supreme Court.
Mr B’s Death
Unfortunately at this point in the case, Mr B passed away and responsibility for his claim passed to his son. We obtained details of earnings and all costs arising as a direct result of Mr B’s illness, so that we could prepare a Schedule of Loss – a document highlighting all quantifiable losses that could be attributed to the illness – to help us determine an accurate compensation amount.
Andrew commissioned a desktop report on Mr B’s medical condition from a consultant chest physician, based on existing medical evidence, including a biopsy that had been conducted in Mr B’s lifetime. This report supported Mr B’s mesothelioma diagnosis, and Andrew was able to disclose it to the defendant’s insurer to support the claim along with a Schedule of Loss. We agreed a valuation with the insurers as to what Mr B’s claim was worth, which would be paid in the event that the decision in the Supreme Court was favourable.
After some rigorous negotiation with the insurer, we confirmed a figure of £187,500. Some months later, the result of the appeal in the Supreme Court was delivered in the favour of claimants. This meant that we were able to pursue the insurer for a payment of £187,500.
Mr B’s son and wife were delighted with the work we had done on the case and that we were able to bring Mr B’s claim to a satisfactory resolution.
If you or a loved one has contracted mesothelioma and you believe it is as a result of a job, either current or previous, speak to JMW Solicitors to find out if you can make a claim. Call us on 0800 054 6570 or fill in a contact form and we will call you back.
Back to Main Mesothelioma Claims Page
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Another Outstanding Financial Year for JMW
Jet2 silent despite holidaymakers’ admission to intensive care
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AMH levels assess ovarian reserveRandy Morris2016-12-12T17:29:52-05:00
AMH Ovarian Reserve
For the last several years, there has been a large amount of interest in a hormone called Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) as a measure of ovarian reserve. Some older studies referred to this hormone as Müllerian inhibiting substance (MIS) or factor (MIF). They are all names for the same hormone.
In men, AMH is produced only in the testicles and in womenit is produced only in the ovaries. This article will focus on using blood AMH levels as an indicator of ovarian reserve.
Ovarian reserve is a term used by fertility specialists to estimate a woman’s chances for having a healthy live born baby using her own eggs. To understand how AMH works as an indicator of ovarian reserve, it is important to first understand a little about how the eggs are stored in the ovary. Early in pregnancy, a female fetus starts to form eggs in her ovaries. Each egg is surrounded by a group of cells called granulosae cells. The eggs and its surrounding granulosae cells are collectively referred to as a follicle.
As the female fetus matures, more follicles are produced. At about the 20th week of pregnancy, the female fetus now has several million follicles. At that point however, the fetus stops making new follicles and the existing follicles start to degenerate. By the time a female is born, the number of follicles has dropped to only a few hundred thousand. After birth, the follicles continue to degenerate. This process of degeneration is constant and will continue until there are no follicles (eggs) remaining in the ovary.
Just prior to puberty, a woman’s follicles will start to develop to prepare for the initiation of ovulation, this is known as folliculogenesis. Folliculogenesis lasts for approximately 375 days. It coincides with thirteen menstrual cycles. The process is continuous so at any given moment, a woman will have follicles at various stages of development inher ovaries.
Follicle stages
Primordial – The only type of follicle present in the fetus.The majority of follicles in the adult ovary are in the primordial stage. The follicle size is very small and cannot be seen on ultrasound. The eggs are immature. Theses follicles are dormant and can remain dormant for up to 50 years in humans. These follicles do not respond to hormones. At some point, the primordial follicles are “awakened”. The process by which primordial follicles are awakened is poorly understood. AMH is not produced by primordial follicles.
Primary – Once a primordial follicle is awakened, itis known as a primary follicle. The egg has now started on a 375 day journey toward either ovulation or destruction. Primary follicles are not yet responsive to hormones. They are not seen on ultrasound and they do not produce AMH.
Secondary – Approximately 290 days of growth and development after the primordial follicle was awakened, the primary follicle will become a secondary follicle. At the end of this stage, the follicle starts to produce AMH and is referred to as a pre-antral follicle. While still too small to see on ultrasound, these follicles will now respond to hormones. A pre-antral follicle is about 0.2 mm in diameter and is about 65 days away from ovulation.
Antral – This stage lasts about 50 days. The egg and follicle are both growing and developing. Antral follicles are visible on ultrasound and range in size from 2-10 mm. Counting of the antral follicles during an ultrasound forms the basis of another test of ovarian reserve, the antral follicle count . At a given moment, a woman may have only a few antral follicles or a large number. This group of antral follicles is known as acohort. The size of the cohort will rarely exceed 50 or 60 follicles and is often less.
Antral follicles produce AMH as well as estrogen. Receptors on the surface of the granulosae cells of the antral follicle are very sensitive to hormone stimulation from the pituitary especially FSH (follicle stimulating hormone ). FSH causes the follicles to produce increasing amounts of estrogen. Both estrogen and FSH are necessary for continued development of the follicle. Typically, only one follicle from the group will become dominant and proceed towards ovulation, the rest will degenerate. The dominant follicle and the degenerating follicle have stopped producing AMH.
Pre-ovulatory – By 8-10 days before ovulation, one dominant follicle will have been selected for continued development. A pre-ovulatory follicle will eventually reach a size of 20 – 22 mm just prior to ovulation.
Remember this: AMH is produced solely in the granulosae cells of pre antral and antral ovarian follicles. Measuring the AMH levels gives an indication of the size of the cohort.
AMH decreases with age
As women age, the pool of primordial follicles shrinks due to degeneration. As a result, the number of follicles which are awakened from the dormant state decreases. As the size of the cohort of antral follicles decreases, the total amount of AMH produced by those follicles also decreases.Thus older women will have lower AMH levels than younger women.
Although women in each age group can have a range of AMH levels, the average AMH level in younger women is higher than the average level in older women. The older the group studied, the lower the average AMH.
A young woman with a very low AMH may have a similar level to an “average” older woman.
Age range 10th Percentile 50th Percentile
18-24.99 1.10 3.60
42 and over 0.09 0.50
An 18 year old woman who has an AMH of 1.0 has very poor ovarian reserve. compared to other women her age, an AMH less than 1.10 means that 905 of owmen her age have a better AMH level.
a 32 year old with an AMH of 2.1 would be considered average for age. 50% of women in her age category have a better AMH and 50% have a worse AMH.
A 40 year old woman with an AMH of 3.2 has a much better ovarian reserve than women her age.
Remember this: The number of antral follicles (the cohort) size, correlates with fertility potential. Young women, who normally have better fertility, will normally have a larger number of antral follicles visible on ultrasound and higher AMH levels.
AMH and ovarian reserve
The central concept for the measurement of blood levels of AMH to determine ovarian reserve is this: women with lower AMH levels have a lower ovarian reserve than women with high AMH levels. AMH is currently being used by fertility specialists to help predict women who may respond poorly to fertility medications and in general, couples who are less likely to be successful with fertility treatment.
AMH and fertility
Up until recently, most of the research into AMH involved women who had already been diagnosed with infertility. It was unclear whether AMH was a good predictor of pregnancy in women who were just starting to attempt pregnancy. A recent study found, however, that in a group of women without infertility, those with a low AMH became pregnant less frequently than those with a higher AMH.
AMH and fertility treatment
Women with poor ovarian reserve as evidenced by a low AMH do not respond to fertility medications as well as normal women. These women are known as “poor responders”. Even with the use of aggressive medication protocols using high doses of fertility medications, these women respond poorly, and as a result, have a high rate of treatments which are cancelled for poor or absent response.
Even when eggs are stimulated to develop, the quality ofthose eggs seems poorer. For example, in our IVF program, women with an AMH less than 0.5 do not reach embryo transfer 1/3 of the time. Women with an AMH level over two, however, will have an embryo transfer 99% of the time.
If we look only at women who were able to have an embryo transfer, women with an AMH less than 0.5 had a pregnancy rate of 18% but women with a level over 2.0 had a pregnancy rate of 45%. This argues strongly for abnormality in the eggs of women with poor ovarian reserve.
Remember this: A low AMH indicates a problem in both the quantity and quality of the remaining eggs.
Some other facts about AMH
AMH levels show much less fluctuation over the course of the menstrual cycle compared to other measures of ovarian reserve such as the FSH blood test. There is some fluctuation, however. The higher the AMH level that greater the percentage of fluctuation can be seen.
Obese women tend to have lower AMH levels. It is not clearwhy this occurs. It is known that obese women have poorer fertility than normal weight women; it is possible that the reason is due to poorer ovarian reserve.
Women with PCOS commonly have a large pool of antral follicles and therefore often have higher than normal AMH levels.
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Calls mount for compromise over unpopular HK bill
17-Jun-2019 Intellasia | AP | 6:00 AM
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam faced calls from both outside and within her government to delay extradition legislation that has spurred massive protests.
Some members of the Executive Council, Hong Kong’s Cabinet, said she should perhaps rethink plans to rush the bills’ passage. Meanwhile, a group of former senior government officials on Friday urged her not to force a confrontation by pushing ahead with the unpopular bills, which would allow Hong Kong suspects to be tried in mainland China.
“It can be said the government perhaps should consider other options,” said Bernard Chan, a leading member of the Executive Council. He said a delay might be one possibility.
One of the legislature’s pro-Beijing members, Michael Tien, said on Facebook that the bill was unneeded. “We’re the laughing stock of the world,” he said.
Many in Hong Kong fear the measures would undermine the former British colony’s legal autonomy. As of Friday afternoon, more than 30,000 people had signed a petition protesting the use of force by police during violent clashes with protesters on Wednesday.
More than 1,000 people joined a peaceful “mother’s protest” Friday evening in a downtown garden. Speakers at the rally called for Lam to step down while authorities braced for more protests over the weekend.
The standoff between police and protesters is Hong Kong’s most severe political crisis since the Communist Party-ruled mainland took control in 1997 with a promise not to interfere with the city’s civil liberties and courts.
It has also drawn criticism from US lawmakers and human rights groups, prompting Beijing to lash back with warnings against “interference” in its internal affairs. China’s foreign ministry said vice Foreign minister Le Yucheng summoned Robert Forden, the US Embassy’s deputy chief of mission, on Friday.
Le urged the US to treat Hong Kong “objectively and fairly,” the ministry said in a statement. It added that “China will respond further to the US’s actions.”
Hong Kong’s busy downtown area was calm Friday morning after days of protests by students and human rights activists. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets on Sunday, challenging Lam’s 2-year-old government, and protesters had kept up a presence through Thursday night, singing hymns and holding up signs criticising the police for their handling of the demonstrations.
Demonstrators say they are committed to preventing the government from enacting amendments they see as eroding the freedoms and protections promised when Britain ended its colonial rule of the city in 1997, handing sovereignty to Beijing.
The clashes Wednesday drew tens of thousands of mostly young residents and forced the legislature to postpone debate on the bill.
Pressure on the Hong Kong leader, caught between a restive public and Communist rulers in Beijing, is growing, said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Calls to amend the plan or for Carrie Lam to step down are coming from many sectors, including business leaders, he noted, adding that it’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing who will decide, not Carrie Lam.
“If the momentum continues to grow, then there is a high possibility that Xi Jinping might strike for a compromise and postpone the bill indefinitely,” Willy Lam said. “There’s a possibility Beijing might strike a compromise and the blame will be put on Carrie Lam.”
Police said they arrested 11 people on charges such as assaulting police officers and unlawful assembly during Wednesday’s protest. Police Commissioner Stephen Lo Wai-chung said 22 officers had been injured in the fracas and hospitals said they had treated 81 people for protest-related injuries.
Signs were posted Friday on the walls of a pedestrian bridge near the city’s government headquarters, including photocopies of the famed Associated Press “Tank Man” picture that became a symbol of resistance to China’s bloody suppression of student-led pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Other signs criticised the police for their use of force in fighting back against protesters.
The debris-strewn area around the building, which houses the Legislative Council, was blocked off by police while sanitation workers gathered rubbish and police officers checked identity cards before letting people into the area.
It is unclear how the local leadership might defuse the crisis, given Beijing’s strong support for the extradition bill and its distaste for dissent.
Anson Chan, a former chief secretary for Hong Kong, said Lam still could keep her post if she backs down.
“What the people are attempting to tell is that we are very worried about the consequences of passing the extradition bill, because no one will feel safe, even in their own beds, after passage of this bill,” Chan said in an interview.
“It places everybody’s individual freedom and safety at risk,” said Chan, who as chief secretary was the top local civil servant under former British Gov. Chris Patton.
Beijing has condemned the protests but so far has not indicated whether it is planning harsher measures. President Xi, China’s strongest leader in decades, has demanded that Hong Kong follow Beijing’s dictates, saying it would not tolerate the city becoming a base for what the Communist Party considers a foreign-inspired campaign to undermine its rule over the vast nation of 1.4 billion people.
Lam, the chief executive, declared that Wednesday’s violence was “rioting,” potentially raising severe legal penalties for those arrested for taking part. In past cases of unrest, the authorities have waited months or years before rounding up protest leaders. In April, nine leaders of a 2014 pro-democracy protest movement known as the “Umbrella Revolution” were convicted on public nuisance and other charges.
Hong Kong residents enjoy liberties denied to Chinese living in the mainland: June 4 brought one of the biggest vigils in recent years to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1989 protests in Beijing.
But many in the city worry their freedoms have been diminishing since Xi came to power in 2012.
The detention of several Hong Kong booksellers in late 2015 intensified concern over the territory weakening legal autonomy. The booksellers vanished before resurfacing in police custody in mainland China. Among them, Swedish citizen Gui Minhai is under investigation for allegedly leaking state secrets after he sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-quiet-now-prospect-021821714.html
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Claim construction from different case against different defendant applies in subsequent case
In a decision yesterday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's construction of a patent claim in an infringement case. However, the court vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment of noninfringement and remanded. The Federal Circuit held that a prior interpretation of the claim in a suit against a different alleged infringer required the claim construction adopted by the district court. The court declined to address a second issue of claim construction, namely whether the claim preambles were limiting, instead letting the district court address it in the first instance. The court further held it was error for the district court to deny the plaintiff's 56(f) motion, as the plaintiff had not had sufficient initial opportunity for discovery. The court also held that a direct conflict in the declarations in the summary judgment record was sufficient to produce a material fact dispute, making summary judgment inappropriate.More concerning Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. after the jump.Bancorp Services, L.L.C. owns a patent concerning a method and system to administer a specific type of life insurance policy that businesses purchase on the lives of their employees, knows as Business Owned Life Insurance ("BOLI") or Corporate Owned Life Insurance ("COLI") policies. A problem arises with the BOLI policies, where businesses have a problem reporting the cash surrender value of the policy, but this may be avoided by purchasing a stable value protected ("SVP") policy. This allows the owner of an SVP BOLI insurance policy to report a smoothed, guaranteed value, known as the "book value," in its accounting statements. The patent deals with calculating the differences between the book values and the market values of the policies to calculate the credits, which indicate how much the protected writer must guarantee and pay should the policy be paid out prematurely.Bancorp accused MetLife of infringing its patent. In February 2000, MetLife filed a declaratory judgment action, seeking a declaratory judgment of noninfringment and invalidity. The case was transferred to the Eastern District of Missouri where Bancorp had three other cases pending dealing with the same patent, and the case was stayed pending the outcome of an appeal in one of the other cases. After the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Bancorp in that case, Bancorp filed an infringement action against MetLife, which was consolidated with the transferred declaratory judgment action. The district court lifted the stay in February of 2005.No significant discovery had taken place in the declaratory judgment action before the stay was lifted. In April 2005, MetLife file a motion for summary judgment of noninfringement. In response, Bancorp filed a motion pursuant to Rule 56(f), seeking additional discovery, and also filed an opposition to the motion. The court denied Bancorp's motion request for additional discovery, and originally denied MetLife's motion, but upon request for reconsideration, granted the motion for summary judgment. As part of its order, the court adopted the Federal Circuit's construction of the term "calculating surrender value protected investment credits" from the earlier appeal. Bancorp appealed.The Federal Circuit unsurprisingly affirmed the district court's claim construction, given that it was the construction it had provided in the earlier case that was appealed. Interestingly, the court treated the issue as resolved, despite the fact that MetLife was not a party to that case, and thus issue preclusion would not apply to MetLife. Bancorp also contended that the district court erred in further limiting the claims through words in the claim preambles. The Federal Circuit refused to address this on appeal because the district court did not address the issue, and remanded the case to the district court to determine whether the preamble was limiting in the first instance.Notwithstanding its affirmance of the district court's claim construction, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment. The court held that Bancorp's Rule 56(f) motion should have been granted because Bancorp did not have adequate opportunity to conduct discovery in the infringement action. Because Bancorp filed the infringement action while the declaratory judgment action was stayed, and no discovery schedule had been set in the infringement action As stated by the court (internal citation omitted): "When, as here, there has been no adequate initial opportunity for discovery, a strict showing of necessity and diligence that is otherwise required for a Rule 56(f) requestion for additional discovery does not apply."Further, the court held that the district court erred in determining that Bancorp failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact even on the present record. There was a dispute between the witnesses as to whether MetLife's program performed the calculations that may have resulted in infringement. The direct conflict in the declarations amounted to a material fact that made summary judgment inappropriate. As a result, the court vacated the grant of summary judgment and remanded the case for further consideration.
To read the full decision in Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Bancorp Servs., L.L.C., click here.
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John Hoge
Music for games and film
John Hoge is a Florida-based composer of music for video games, film, and other multimedia. He graduated with a B.M. in Music Technology & Composition from Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA) in 2013. He currently works remotely for a California-based company called SomaTone Interactive , which specializes in music, sound design, voice-over production, and audio implementation for a wide variety of video game developers. John has worked on over 200 video game titles at SomaTone, and in so doing has developed a proficiency in many different styles and genres of music. He has a passion for orchestral music, but can work in almost any genre one might conceive.
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Motorcyclist injured, driver crashed into tree following hit and run
Westbound traffic has been detoured at 10th and Lime St. Monday afternoon after a hit-and-run resulted in the driver running into a tree.
Topeka Police Department responded to a call of a motorcycle accident at the intersection of SW 29th and Burlingame Rd. at 6:30 p.m.
According to TPD, the driver of the car fled the scene and was followed by a witness.
The driver then crashed into a tree on 10th and Indiana and is now in police custody with minor injuries.
The motorcyclist was taken to Stormont Vail and the extent of injury is unknown.
KSNT has crews on the scene and will update with more information.
Topeka Pilots to hold Summer Social, reveal big announcement
TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) - The Topeka Pilots are hosting an event Wednesday to meet with fans, show off their home stadium and announce some big news.
Wednesday evening, from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Pilots fans will get the opportunity to talk with staff and enjoy free food, free prize drawings and more.
Combat Air Museum teaches history of aviation while growing its future
by Reina Garcia / Jul 15, 2019
TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) - For over 40 years, the Combat Air Museum in Topeka has been educating people about military aviation history.
For this museum, the future of aviation is just as important as the past.
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KIZIMEDIA
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Home PHOTOS TOP 10 RECORDS List Of Top 10 Tallest Building In Africa.
List Of Top 10 Tallest Building In Africa.
1) Carlton Center, Johannesburg – 223 m (732 ft)
Located in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Carlton Center is the tallest building in Africa. This skyscraper was completed in 1973 and has 50 floors. It has been the tallest building in Africa for 41 years. The building was designed by the American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. It houses offices and shops.
2) Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca – 210 m (690 ft)
The Hassan II Mosque or Grande Mosquée Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco make the list thanks to its minaret. The minaret height is at 210 metres (690 ft). It is the tallest religious structure and the 7th largest in the world. The construction cost an estimated $400 – $700 million.
3) Ponte City Apartments, Johannesburg – 173 m (568 ft)
Ponte City Apartments is located in the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa. This 54-story building was built in 1975. It is the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa. The building has a cylindrical shape and has an open center. The sign on top of the building is the largest sign in the Southern hemisphere.
4) NECOM House, Lagos – 160 m (520 ft)
This 32-story building is located in Lagos, Nigeria. This skyscraper was completed in 1979. It houses the headquarters of NITEL. It was formerly known as NITEL Tower. The communication spire at the top of the tower serves as a lighthouse beacon for Lagos Harbor. It is the tallest building in Nigeria.
5) PSPF Commercial Towers, Dar es Salaam – 152.7 m (501 ft)
The PSPF Twin Towers (Tower A and B) is located in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and has 35 floors. It has a postmodern architectural style. The construction began on 2011 and was completed on 2014. The building has offices, retail stores and parking garage.
6) Marble Towers, Johannesburg – 152 m (499 ft)
The Marble Towers is located in the Central Business District of Johannesburg, South Africa. This 32-story skyscraper was built in 1973. It has 8-story parking garage attached to it.
7) Pearl Dawn, Durban – 152 m (499 ft)
Pearl Dawn is located in Durban, South Africa. It was open in 2010 and has 31 floors. This is a residential building, with a futurist architectural style. The façade color is dark blue.
8) South African Reserve Bank Building 150 m (490 ft)
The South African Reserve Bank building was opened in 1988. It is located in Pretoria in South Africa. This tall building has 38 floors. The tower block, basement and cantilever-supported auditorium used 80,000 cubic meters of concrete.
9) MetLife Center, Cape Town – 150 m (490 ft)
This 28-story modernist skyscraper is located close to the Cape Town International Convention Center in the City Bowl area of Cape Town, South Africa. The spired antenna on the building’s roof is 22 meters tall.
10) 88 on Field, Durban – 147 m (482 ft)
88 on Field was opened in 1985 and has 26 floors. It is located in Durban, South Africa. The building has six elevators up to 21st floor and two glass shuttle elevators for floors 21-24.
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From pancakes to burgers: Expect some changes at your local IHOP
The International House of Pancakes is no more.
Updated: 9:30 AM MDT Jun 11, 2018
By Dylan Hyman
IHOP, the place where countless late-night breakfast memories have been made, has announced a rather unexpected change.The International House of Pancakes is no more. Out with the hotcakes and in with the burgers. IHOP announced Monday that it will now be known as IHOb, The International House of Burgers. Yes, burgers! The California-based chain sent the internet into a tizzy after announcing that it would be changing its name last week. Twitter users spent days trying to guess what the “b” was going to stand for. A Twitter poll showed that most folks believed the “b” was for bacon. “We’re flippin’ from pancakes, pancakes, pancakes to burgers, burgers, burgers,” the chain announced on its Facebook page. For folks worried about missing their hotcakes, now-IHOb President Darren Rebelez says not to worry. “We’re always going to have pancakes on the menu, we’re always going to be IHOP,” Rebelez told Fox News. “But America loves burgers, and America loves IHOP and we thought this was a fantastic combination to bring America’s burgers to an iconic brand like IHOP.” At this point, it’s unclear how long the name change will be in effect. The company’s flagship location in Los Angeles will be the only one re-branded as IHOb. All of its other locations across the country will maintain the name IHOP, but will feature its new line of burgers.
IHOP, the place where countless late-night breakfast memories have been made, has announced a rather unexpected change.
The International House of Pancakes is no more. Out with the hotcakes and in with the burgers. IHOP announced Monday that it will now be known as IHOb, The International House of Burgers. Yes, burgers!
Internet quick to point out new IHOP logo looks similar to a tampon ad
The California-based chain sent the internet into a tizzy after announcing that it would be changing its name last week. Twitter users spent days trying to guess what the “b” was going to stand for. A Twitter poll showed that most folks believed the “b” was for bacon.
IHOb? What could it b? #IHOb
— IHOP (@IHOP) June 5, 2018
“We’re flippin’ from pancakes, pancakes, pancakes to burgers, burgers, burgers,” the chain announced on its Facebook page.
For folks worried about missing their hotcakes, now-IHOb President Darren Rebelez says not to worry.
“We’re always going to have pancakes on the menu, we’re always going to be IHOP,” Rebelez told Fox News. “But America loves burgers, and America loves IHOP and we thought this was a fantastic combination to bring America’s burgers to an iconic brand like IHOP.”
At this point, it’s unclear how long the name change will be in effect. The company’s flagship location in Los Angeles will be the only one re-branded as IHOb. All of its other locations across the country will maintain the name IHOP, but will feature its new line of burgers.
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RottenSys Malware Has Infected 5M Android Devices Since 2016
Posted by kobustechnologies On April 3, 2018
There's a new threat on the horizon, according to security researchers from Check Point. A group of hackers in China are busy building a massive botnet that so far, totals almost five million Android smartphones. The hackers are quietly taking control of these devices using a strain of malware known as "RottenSys."
While the malware is flexible and can be adapted to any number of purposes, in its present incarnation, it's being used to display copious numbers of advertisements. This generates a healthy revenue stream for the hackers, but that could be just the beginning. The researchers have found evidence that the hackers are gearing up for a campaign that could be much more far-reaching and damaging. According to Check Point: "This botnet will have extensive capabilities, including silently installing additional apps and UI automation."
RottenSys is fairly new to the malware ecosystem, first appearing in September 2016. So far, the hackers have spent most of their time simply spreading their creation to more devices. At current count, the number of infected Android phones stands at 4,964,460, and it grows by the day.
It wasn't until last month that RottenSys got an update that gave its owners the ability to take direct control of all the devices. Prior to that, they were happy to simply rake in ad revenue, which is estimated to exceed $350,000 a month.
Currently, the malware hasn't spread beyond the confines of China, but that could easily change as the hackers seek to add an increasing number of devices to their already massive botnet.
What makes RottenSys notable is the fact that it has managed to spread to so many devices in such a short period of time. As it turns out, the secret to the hackers' success has to do with the code it's built around, which includes both "Small", (an open source virtualization framework) and "MarsDaemon", which is a library that keeps apps "undead," which ensures that the malware's processes continue to operate even after users close them. This ensures that the ad-injection capacity cannot be disabled.
Only time will tell what the hackers have planned, but it can't be anything good. They'll have a formidable botnet to do damage with. Stay tuned.
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Skybound Games 'In Discussions' With Former Telltale Staffers About Completing The Walking Dead
Ethan Gach
Oct 19, 2018, 10:00am
Screenshot: Telltale, The Walking Dead
Skybound Games, which is currently finalising an agreement with Telltale Games to finish the final season of The Walking Dead, hopes to release episode three by the end of the year and have episodes one and two back up for sale later this month, according to comments by its CEO during an AMA on Reddit that took place yesterday.
“We’ll be back on sale as soon as possible, I’d hope we can do this by the end of October,” Ian Howe wrote in response to one commenter’s questions about when the final season’s completed episodes would be back up for purchase. They had been taken down at the end of September, less than two weeks after Telltale announced a majority studio closure.
As for episode three, which Kotaku previously reported was nearly complete, Howe said the team is aiming for a release sometime in 2018. “I fully expect Episode 3 to be this year and I’ll be very disappointed if we can’t make that happen,” he said.
Still, according to Howe’s responses, much of the series’ future remains up in the air. Howe confirmed that no one is currently working on any of the episodes and that the details of the deal between Skybound and Telltale, announced at New York Comic Con, are still being hammered out.
While the company has reached out to many former Telltale developers who were working on the game’s final season, it’s still being decided who may get rehired and what the terms of the contacts will be.
“At this stage, we’re still in discussions with various members of the team and I met over 40 of them last week to discuss our plans moving forwards,” Howe said. “They know what we’re trying to do and as soon as the lawyers have done their thing, we’ll be able to speak more openly.”
Howe said the people he’d been in contact with were “extremely enthusiastic” about possibly being able to come back and complete the game and that the only people who definitely wouldn’t be returning would be those who had already accepted offers to begin working elsewhere.
Howe did confirm previous reporting by Kotaku that the deal between Telltale and Skybound would involve former devs being hired by the latter, rather than them being rehired by the former.
When Telltale laid off 275 people in September without notice or severance, a discussion broke out in the gaming community about whether people should still buy the games, since none of the sales would be going to help those who originally created them.
Though the details of the current deal are not yet known, the involvement of Skybound Games, part of the company which created and licenses The Walking Dead series, does change the nature of these concerns.
This still wouldn’t be the same as Telltale receiving new funding to plow back into making games, but some members of its former staff may now have the opportunity to finish the games they had started, and receive payment for doing so.
“I think we need to have a really serious conversation about potentially starting a union.”
“I can’t go into details but the team will be working directly for Skybound to complete [the] game,” Howe said.
However, that arrangement comes with its own challenges, since Skybound is located in LA and many of the former Telltale developers were located in the San Francisco Bay area. “It’s not a commute that would be practical!” he said. “We’ll one way or another find a place for the team to work that’s practical for them.”
Kent Mudle, former Telltale employee and creative director on The Walking Dead: The Final Season, was also involved in the AMA. Along with Howe, he stressed to fans in the comments who were anxious about what the change in company ownership would mean that his intent was to stick as closely to the original plan as possible.
“We’re currently intending to make the game as it was planned to be made before Telltale shut down,” he said. “I am beyond pumped to get a chance to finish the season. I could not have hoped we’d be so lucky to have Ian and the rest of Skybound come in and give us this opportunity, for which I am extremely grateful.”
Meanwhile, design lead on The Walking Dead: The Final Season’s second episode, Emily Grace Buck, gave a frank talk about her experience at Telltale during the Sweden Game Conference in Skövde this week. Her presentation focused on the former Telltale employees who won’t be going back to work on any remaining projects and are now desperately searching for work after their health benefits ran out at the end of September.
“So I’m not going to say this is the only answer, or even necessarily the best answer, but especially in the United States, where your work is tied to your healthcare, I think we need to have a really serious conversation about potentially starting a union,” she said in the talk, according to a report by GamesIndustry.biz.
Conversations about how the video game industry can best ensure that those who work in it aren’t being taken advantage of have been ongoing for years, but recently bubbled up again due to the manner in which Telltale announced its mass layoffs.
One former employee has filed a class action suit against the company for violating the US federal and California WARN Acts, which require employers in most instances to provide their workers with 60 days notice before mass layoffs.
“We need to have a conversation,” Grace said later in her talk. “We need to talk about what our options are. We deserve a lot better than what happened at Telltale. Not just the Telltale devs, but everyone in the gaming community.”
bigcheez77 @bigcheez77
I'd be asking for upfront payment.
James @jamesh
Oct 19, 2018, 8:24pm
I'd ask for any money Telltale still owed me (unpaid wages, days off, entitlements, etc).
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History of Liberty June 2, 2019 by admin
Benjamin Franklin Personal Background
The pope is expected to celebrate Mass in front about 1.5 million faithful along Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway that Sunday. The prospective volunteers’ background check. The pope’s.
Eighteenth-century inventor Benjamin Franklin saw it the other way — “the rotten apple. good for individual and company shoutouts — will never replace a heartfelt personal message or quiet.
As Benjamin Franklin knew, social, behavioral and economic (SBE. lose $40 million in NSF and NIH research grants in this and subsequent years. Against this background, some in Congress have been.
Benjamin Franklin The Big Money is not in the buying or the selling. and our political processes more likely to be about party identity than personal character, one may well be excused for thinking.
For less than $5, you can gather timeless wisdom from classics like Dale Carnegie’s "How to Win Friends and Influence People," build your economic background with world. advice from US Founding.
Oct 29, 2009 · Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected as the nation’s 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the depths of.
Benjamin Franklin was America’s scientist, inventor, politician, philanthropist and business man. He is best known as one of our Founding Fathers and the only one who signed all three documents that freed America from Britain: The Declaration of Independence. The American Constitution and The Treaty of.
Quotes for Character Motivational Quotes > Character Quotes Character Quotes: Morales & Standard of Living Character quotes that will challenge your mind and inspire you to improve your life.
Time management is a problem that goes back to Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin’s false. You cannot control time by personal will. Someone who doesn’t come from a traditional business.
Scott Vigue, one of the largest franchisees in the Direct Energy System with One Hour Air franchises and Benjamin Franklin Plumbing franchises. interest of the brand overall and not in their own.
Did the American Founding Fathers study the case for Jesus Christ being a mythical figure? There is much evidence that Washington and Jefferson, among other famous and important figures of the day, were influenced by well-known French mythographers and "Jesus mythicists," such as.
But welfare has no principle, neither for him who receives it, nor for him who distributes it (one places it here, another there); because it depends on the material of the will, which is empirical, and therefore is incapable of the generality of a rule. Wohlfahrt aber hat kein Prinzip, weder für den, der sie empfängt, noch der sie austeilt (der eine setzt sie hierin, der andere darin.
Today, Think Tank asks about Benjamin Franklin, America’s founding grandfather. He’s been called the first American, but not always as a. but Adams had a sense from his Puritan background of.
UWIN ® is a consumer service resource that allows home services contractors to provide an extra level of protection and peace of mind to residential home service consumers. When you do business with a UWIN endorsed contractor, you will have a professional working in your home who has been drug tested, background checked, and properly trained.
Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 into a family of very modest means. Today, they’d probably be called lower middle class at best. His parents had just enough money to send him to school for a couple of years in hope that he could eventually join the clergy, but by the age of 10, he was done with school.
"Over 85% of our work is from personal recommendation. I think that speaks volumes and it’s something that we are extremely proud of." Paul Clark, Senior Partner
Roberta Maxwell, Actress: The Postman. Roberta Maxwell was born on June 17, 1941 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as Roberta Farnham Maxwell. She is an actress, known for The Postman (1997), Popeye (1980) and Brokeback Mountain (2005).
Despite his well-heeled background (he had attended a boarding school. Ms. Mead-Armor, after having the highest bid, retained some personal items, like his Benjamin Franklin cane. A few weeks.
His personal view, though, was that privacy is not an absolute. But while I personally come down on the side of privacy and Benjamin Franklin – ‘Those who would give up essential liberty, to.
He became a prisoner of war and was transferred to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was not uncommon for officers who were prisoners of war to be entertained en route to their places of detention, and Andre had dinner in Haverstraw, New York, at the home of a Mr. Hays.
Dr. Patrick Williams received his D.M.D. from the University of Florida College of Dentistry in 2001 and has been providing general dentistry to Floridians ever since. With a background in Physiology and Neurobiology, he remains at the forefront of dental technology and practice through continuing education with prestigious organizations such as the International Congress of Oral Implantologists.
Benjamin Franklin Contribution To Physics Walter Isaacson, biographer, journalist and head of the Aspen Institute, delivered the 43 rd annual Jefferson Lecture Monday night at the Kennedy. biographies of Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, Ancient Greek mathematician,physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, Benjamin Franklin (center) at work
Find U.S. Department of State programs for U.S. and non-U.S. citizens wishing to participate in cultural, educational, or professional exchanges.
And I want to say to the Prime Minister how much I appreciate your strong personal commitment to strengthening. And I got an opportunity to read the biography of Benjamin Franklin. He lived in the.
If you think about it, this is happening because there is no single software/tool that can store a job seeker’s profile data, store background check information. theft and related data loss.
Benjamin Miles "C-Note" Franklin, played by Rockmond Dunbar, is a fictional character from the American television series, Prison Break.The character was introduced as a prisoner in the pilot episode.The actor was promoted from a recurring guest star to a.
1820 History Usa Book Yet for someone wanting to share the history and legends of his ancestors. it the first state to do so in the contiguous. Book burning has a long and dark history. who wrote in his 1820–1821 play Almansor the famous admonition, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man. Mar 07, 2019 · Enacted in 1820 to
Kate Barry American Revolution Women were not allowed in the Army in the days of the American Revolution. So Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man and. the soldiers who were fighting the British used many different flags. Founding Fathers Of The European Union The publication of the information on this website marks the beginning of the end of
In the background of Spider-Man swinging. Tom Holland’s performance suggests a personal loss associated with that lesson. Yet, contrary to Peter’s passport’s exclusion of the name “Benjamin”, Peter.
His job is to empower members of minority communities to become active citizens in a city in which 44% of the population has a migrant background. Benjamin Franklin Village, once the US Army’s.
Berlin police said the doctor had sustained life-threatening injuries in the attack at the Benjamin Franklin campus of the. did not yet have information on the suspect’s background, history,
Item #: SCP-3313 Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3313 is, once recovered, to be kept in a high value containment chamber on floor 46 of Site-88.This chamber should utilize at least 2 of the extant overlapping Scranton Reality Anchor fields on that floor to suppress the reality altering effects of SCP-3313. Individuals are not allowed to come into direct physical contact.
Another way that the Enlightenment helped to shape the colonies was in terms of religion. With the Great Awakening came a new understanding of America’s early relationship to God and the Church.Instead of one all-powerful church that almost required membership, Protestant ideals based on Enlightenment principles of free will and freedom from institutions allowed people to choose.
American religious freedom, among other personal and public freedoms, has a long background in the lands from which the early colonists came. In 1413, St. Andrews University was founded in Scotland.
(1) Includes brokers, stockbrokers and personal producing general agents. (2) Includes career, multiline exclusive and home service agents. (3) No producers are involved.
In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes, a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. I would like to add a. Lindsay Institute for Innovations in Caregiving. For.
She is both a 20th and 21st century musical and cultural icon known the world over simply by her first name: Aretha. The reigning and undisputed “Queen Of Soul” has created an amazing legacy that spans an incredible six decades, from her first recording as a teenage gospel star, to her most recent RCA Records release, ARETHA FRANKLIN SINGS THE GREAT DIVA CLASSICS.
In The Decades After The Civil War Most American Farmers
Zachary Taylor Death University Of Colorado
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U.S. Code > Title 34 > Subtitle V
U.S. Code > Title 34 > Subtitle V – Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Personnel
Chapter 501 Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance
Chapter 503 Law Enforcement Congressional Badge of Bravery
Chapter 505 National Blue Alert
Terms Used In U.S. Code > Title 34 > Subtitle V
Affidavit: A written statement of facts confirmed by the oath of the party making it, before a notary or officer having authority to administer oaths.
Annuity: A periodic (usually annual) payment of a fixed sum of money for either the life of the recipient or for a fixed number of years. A series of payments under a contract from an insurance company, a trust company, or an individual. Annuity payments are made at regular intervals over a period of more than one full year.
Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
Assets: (1) The property comprising the estate of a deceased person, or (2) the property in a trust account.
association: when used in reference to a corporation, shall be deemed to embrace the words "successors and assigns of such company or association" in like manner as if these last-named words, or words of similar import, were expressed. See 19 USC 2295
Attorney General: means the Attorney General of the United States. See 38 USC 1912
Beneficiary: A person who is entitled to receive the benefits or proceeds of a will, trust, insurance policy, retirement plan, annuity, or other contract. Source: OCC
Chambers: A judge's office.
Chief judge: The judge who has primary responsibility for the administration of a court but also decides cases; chief judges are determined by seniority.
Complaint: A written statement by the plaintiff stating the wrongs allegedly committed by the defendant.
conservation area: means the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area established pursuant to section 460ppp-2 of this title. See 26 USC 3127
Contract: A legal written agreement that becomes binding when signed.
Conviction: A judgement of guilt against a criminal defendant.
corporation: includes associations, joint-stock companies, and insurance companies. See 38 USC 1912
Corporation: A legal entity owned by the holders of shares of stock that have been issued, and that can own, receive, and transfer property, and carry on business in its own name.
county: includes a parish, or any other equivalent subdivision of a State or Territory of the United States. See 19 USC 2292
Donor: The person who makes a gift.
employee: shall include a full-time life insurance salesman who is considered an employee for the purpose of chapter 21. See 38 USC 1912
Entitlement: A Federal program or provision of law that requires payments to any person or unit of government that meets the eligibility criteria established by law. Entitlements constitute a binding obligation on the part of the Federal Government, and eligible recipients have legal recourse if the obligation is not fulfilled. Social Security and veterans' compensation and pensions are examples of entitlement programs.
Equitable: Pertaining to civil suits in "equity" rather than in "law." In English legal history, the courts of "law" could order the payment of damages and could afford no other remedy. See damages. A separate court of "equity" could order someone to do something or to cease to do something. See, e.g., injunction. In American jurisprudence, the federal courts have both legal and equitable power, but the distinction is still an important one. For example, a trial by jury is normally available in "law" cases but not in "equity" cases. Source: U.S. Courts
Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
Fair market value: The price at which an asset would change hands in a transaction between a willing, informed buyer and a willing, informed seller.
Felony: A crime carrying a penalty of more than a year in prison.
fiscal year: means an accounting period of 12 months ending on the last day of any month other than December. See 38 USC 1912
Fiscal year: The fiscal year is the accounting period for the government. For the federal government, this begins on October 1 and ends on September 30. The fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends; for example, fiscal year 2006 begins on October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006.
Fraud: Intentional deception resulting in injury to another.
including: when used in a definition contained in this title shall not be deemed to exclude other things otherwise within the meaning of the term defined. See 38 USC 1912
Indemnification: In general, a collateral contract or assurance under which one person agrees to secure another person against either anticipated financial losses or potential adverse legal consequences. Source: FDIC
individual: shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development. See 19 USC 2297
judicial district: means the districts enumerated in Chapter 5 of this title. See 38 USC 3681
Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
Majority leader: see Floor Leaders
Minority leader: See Floor Leaders
multilateral development banks: means the multilateral development institutions other than the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. See 26 USC 4218
officer: includes any person authorized by law to perform the duties of the office. See 19 USC 2291
person: shall be construed to mean and include an individual, a trust, estate, partnership, association, company or corporation. See 38 USC 1912
public lands: has the meaning stated in section 1702(e) of title 43. See 26 USC 3127
Public law: A public bill or joint resolution that has passed both chambers and been enacted into law. Public laws have general applicability nationwide.
Quorum: The number of legislators that must be present to do business.
Real property: Land, and all immovable fixtures erected on, growing on, or affixed to the land.
Recess: A temporary interruption of the legislative business.
Remainder: An interest in property that takes effect in the future at a specified time or after the occurrence of some event, such as the death of a life tenant.
Secretary: means the Secretary of the Treasury or his delegate. See 38 USC 1912
Secretary: means the Secretary of the Interior. See 26 USC 3127
Secretary of the Treasury: means the Secretary of the Treasury, personally, and shall not include any delegate of his. See 38 USC 1912
Service of process: The service of writs or summonses to the appropriate party.
State: shall be construed to include the District of Columbia, where such construction is necessary to carry out provisions of this title. See 38 USC 1912
stock: includes shares in an association, joint-stock company, or insurance company. See 38 USC 1912
taxable year: means the calendar year, or the fiscal year ending during such calendar year, upon the basis of which the taxable income is computed under subtitle A. See 38 USC 1912
taxpayer: means any person subject to any internal revenue tax. See 38 USC 1912
Testimony: Evidence presented orally by witnesses during trials or before grand juries.
trade or business: includes the performance of the functions of a public office. See 38 USC 1912
Trustee: A person or institution holding and administering property in trust.
United States: when used in a geographical sense includes only the States and the District of Columbia. See 38 USC 1912
vehicle: includes every description of carriage or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on land. See 19 USC 2294
writing: includes printing and typewriting and reproductions of visual symbols by photographing, multigraphing, mimeographing, manifolding, or otherwise. See 19 USC 2291
Yeboah Law Group, PA
Yeboah Law Group is a South Florida personal injury law firm located in For…
Percy Martinez Law Office
We practice all laws related to personal injury, some of these include: Wro…
The Frank Santini Law Firm
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U.S. Code > Title 2 > Chapter 29 - Capitol Police
U.S. Code > Title 28 > Part II > Chapter 33 - Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Code > Title 28 > Part II > Chapter 37 - United States Marshals Service
U.S. Code > Title 34 > Subtitle V - Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Personnel
CFR > Title 7 > Subtitle A > Part 1a - Law Enforcement Authorities
Alabama Code > Title 36 > Chapter 21 - Law Enforcement Officers Generally
Alabama Code > Title 36 > Chapter 22 - Sheriffs
Alabama Code > Title 36 > Chapter 23 - Constables
Alabama Code > Title 41 > Chapter 8A - Alabama Law Enforcement Planning Agency
Alabama Code > Title 41 > Chapter 27 - Alabama State Law Enforcement Agency
Alaska Statutes > Chapter 18.65 - Police Protection
Arizona Laws > Title 38 > Chapter 7 > Article 1 - Law Enforcement Officers Merit System
Arizona Laws > Title 41 > Chapter 12 > Article 3 - Division of Arizona Highway Patrol
Arizona Laws > Title 41 > Chapter 12 > Article 6 - Training and Education Division
Arizona Laws > Title 41 > Chapter 12 > Article 8 - Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board
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An egg a day – oviposition explained
How are our hens so productive?
More than a decade ago, we committed ourselves to developing laying hens that are able to produce 500 eggs per hen in 100 weeks of age. All over the globe we can clearly see a trend that egg producers are keeping their birds in production longer with every new generation of laying hens that we place in the market.
Although it seems pretty logical that we expect a bird to lay an egg per day, the processes behind egg production are not that simple. Have you ever wondered about the biological processes behind the formation of this superfood?
Copyright: Egg Signals, Roodbont
Producing an egg a day would not be possible without continuous ovulation. A female, day-old chick has more than 10.000 oocytes present in the left side of her ovary as the right side of the ovary already stops developing during the embryonic phase. Less than 10% of these oocytes will later in life accumulate yolk and grow out to an ovarian follicle.
The rate of follicle development, and therefore egg production, is highly efficient in commercial laying hens. When you look at the ovary of a sexual matured hen, it looks like a bunch a of white and yellow grapes in all different sizes. The first development of an oocyte into a white follicle can take several months into account. Once the follicle reaches a size of 6 mm or more, yellow yolk accumulates massively and rapidly: over the course of 6 to 12 days it can reach a diameter of more than 30 mm! The yolk is completed 24 hours prior to ovulation. The follicles reach ovulation in the order of which they embarked this process of rapid growth; this order is also known as the ’follicle sequence’. Within 1 hour after a hen has produced an egg (oviposition), the next mature follicle ovulates. In today’s commercial laying hens, the ovulation cycle takes a total of around twenty-four hours, resulting in birds that can produce an egg a day. In most of the ornamental birds, the ovulation cycle takes over 25 hours.
Ovulation is known as the process in which the yolk (ripe oocyte) is released from its follicle in the ovary and is received into the oviduct through its infundibulum. The infundibulum is the place where the fertilization could take place as it is the storage place for the spermatozoa.
The formation of the vitelline membrane around the yolk occurs in the infundibulum, and it separates the yolk from the albumen. The vitelline membrane contains high concentrations of antimicrobial peptides that form a very effective inner barrier against infection.
After the infundibulum, the ovum moves further along the oviduct via the magnum. The magnum is the longest part of the oviduct. Most of the albumen formation takes place in the magnum, this process lasts about 3 to 4 hours. The chalazae and albumen form around the yolk mass as it is propelled in a rotating motion by rhythmic peristalsis, resulting in the characteristic structure of the chalazae. The chalazae are made up of protein fibers which connect the yolk with the shell membrane, ensuring the central position of the yolk.
The albumen is not homogenous, different areas have different viscosities with the more liquid inner egg white, the thick egg white, the thick chalazae and the outer liquid egg white. This outer liquid egg white develops as the albumen becomes increasingly hydrated towards the end of the magnum.
After the magnus, the egg mass arrives in the Isthmus, this is where both the inner and outer shell membranes are formed. These membranes are closely spaced in most parts of the egg, but at the blunt side of the egg, they segregate to form the air chamber. Egg white cannot go through the membranes, but it does allow the exchange of gasses and minerals. By the time that the egg mass gets to the end of the isthmus, the first calcium salts have already been deposited onto the outer membrane. After the isthmus, the egg arrives in the uterus, also referred to as the shell gland.
The eggshell is formed in the uterus over a period of 19 to 20 hours by the secretion of an organic matrix of glycoproteins and mucopolysaccharides of the uterine wall. This process of calcification requires around 2 to 2.5 grams of calcium per egg. Around 2/3rd of the calcium required for the eggshell formation is absorbed from the intestine during the 20 hours of shell formation. The remaining 1/3rd of the calcium required is mobilized from the bone, and especially the medullary bone as the mobilization of the medullary bone is 10-times faster than that of cortical bone. The calcium that has been mobilized from the bone will be replenished as soon as the uterus is empty again. During this time period, the calcium, absorbed from the gut, is fully available for the formation of bone matrix.
At the end of the shell formation, the color pigments (mainly protoporhyrin IX) are added to the shell to give it their distinctive colors. The final step prior to the actual oviposition is the deposition of the cuticula, a waxy membrane composed of polysaccharides, lipids and over 50 proteins! The primary function of the cuticula is to prevent the penetration of microbes into the egg and to limit the evaporation of water from the egg. The oviposition, e.g. the actual deposition of the egg, is regulated by several hormones (oxytocin, arginine-vasotocin and prostaglandines). This hormone surge causes the fully formed egg to go through a 180-degree rotation. It is this rotation that causes the egg to be pushed into the vagina. In the vagina, mucus is secreted to smoothen the final oviposition. The release of the egg through the vagina, and finally the cloaca, lasts, on average, less than 1 minute! Within 60 minutes after the oviposition, the next ovulation will already take place, and the aforementioned process will repeat itself over again!
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James O'Brien's Immediate Response To Jeremy Corbyn Calling Off Brexit Talks
James O'Brien was left with his head in his hands after hearing the latest "groundhog day" on the Brexit talks.
The Labour leader's decision came after the prospect of a series of indicative votes including a customs union for goods was raised, leaving James despairing: "Oh, they still don't know what a customs union is!
"Or they think that because we're English, they think they can redefine what a customs union is."
Referring to where he are now, James said: "Just to remind you, we are live now on the radio, this isn't a tape from 12 weeks ago, this is breaking news.
"This is the same as the last three latest developments in British politics. It's Groundhog Day."
James O'Brien responded to Theo Usherwood's update on Jeremy Corbyn. Picture: LBC / PA
LBC's Political Editor Theo Usherwood confirmed: "Yes, we are where we were when Theresa May stood up outside Downing Street six years ago."
Mr Corbyn ended the Brexit talks, saying that talks have “gone as far as they can” because of “the increasing weakness and instability” of the Government.
He concluded "we have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us".
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Ian Hodkinson
About Ian Hodkinson
I served as a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF) for a total of 28 Years (24 Regular and 4 Full Time Reservist), specialising in the field of Human Resources and Welfare. Retiring in 2012, I am now working for the NHS as an Administrative Support Manager. I have had a lifelong passion for History, in particular Military History and began guiding tours whilst still serving in the RAF visiting Battlefields across Europe.
WWI and WWII, Bomber and Fighter Command in WWII
Favourite Tour
I don’t have a particular favourite tour as I find each and every tour and area visited holds a special meaning and significance.
The Battlefields, the Men and the Origins of WWI and WWII
I Would Recommend
That's a hard one. All the tours offer their own perspective and have particular interest to me. However, I never tire of visiting the Somme. The scale of the fighting, the tranquility of the area today and the many memorials - both personal and National lead to a feeling of intense emotion. As a result, I would recommend any visitor to Walk the Somme.
My Most Memorable Experience
Every tour and every Battlefield I have visited has been memorable. However, my first tour with a group (16) of RAF Personnel of differing ranks and ages was a highlight. Visiting Ypres and Passchendaele, whilst discussing the Air War and subsequent Ground actions, the heavens opened (it was late October). Up went a number of umbrella’s and after a little telling off from me, down came a number umbrella’s!!
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Christian Institute weighs in behind ‘conscience clause’
Published: 11:11 Friday 12 December 2014
The Christian Institute has welcomed the DUP’s bid to introduce a ‘conscience clause’ to equality legislation in order to protect Christians and those of faith.
The consultation on draft legislation follows several high profile examples of Christians being taken to court for their beliefs.
The latest case involves Ashers Baking Company in Northern Ireland which is being taken to court for declining to make a cake carrying the message ‘support gay marriage’ with a picture of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie embracing.
The bakery, owned by a Christian family, refused to make the cake because the message conflicted with their deeply held views.
Colin Hart, Director of The Christian Institute, which has been backing Ashers Baking Company, commented: “We welcome the fact that the DUP is looking into this vital issue. We have long called for the law to allow for ‘reasonable accommodation’ of people’s strongly held religious beliefs. Paul Givan MLA’s consultation is an important first step in the discussion on how best to protect religious liberty.
“For our part, we think the focus of the protection should be on family-run businesses, where the work is inseparable from the people behind the business. Whether it is a baker or a B&B, there ought to be a respect for their beliefs on those rare occasions where doing what the customer wants would force them into a moral compromise. In those circumstances, we think the law must respect their freedom of conscience.”
Ex-IRA bomber’s group to get cash from Lyra McKee’s book
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Nameless stamps of the Americas and Africa
Apr 1, 2016, 11 AM
This stamp has no country name, but no country other than Egypt has the Sphinx with a pyramid in the background.
The overprint is in the Semitic language called Ge’ez, and the portrait is of Emperor Melenik II, ruler of Ethiopia, where this stamp is from.
Following Brazil’s Bull’s-eye stamps are the smaller Goat’s-eyes, again with only a numeral and no country name.
This 1909 stamp carries the French “Ethiopiennes,” identifying it as from Ethiopia.
Not until 1866 did Peru issue stamps with the country name, and a design showing llamas.
The Turkish currency of “para” hints at this stamp’s origin, but it was issued for use in Egypt when it was a Turkish Suzerainty in 1866.
The national coat of arms is the only clue that this stamp is from the Dominican Republic. It is the nation’s first stamp, from 1865.
Peru’s first stamps, in 1857, were former issues of the mail-carrying Pacific Steam Navigation Co. (See initials in corners.)
One of Brazil’s first three stamps, of 1843, known as the Bull’s-eyes. The stamps in this issue do not have a country name printed on them.
Examples of stamps from Europe and Asia that do not have country names were addressed in previous Stamp Collecting Basics columns (March 21 and April 4 issues of Linn’s).
Fewer stamps were issued without a country name from the Americas and Africa, and these two continents will be discussed in this column, beginning with the stamp in the first illustration.
This 30-reis stamp is the first of the three stamps of 1843 that make up the first issue of Brazil (Scott 1-3) nicknamed the Bull’s-eyes.
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Similar but smaller stamps from Brazil issued from 1844 until 1866 have been dubbed Goat’s-eyes. One of these, a 280r stamp (Scott 39) issued in 1861, is shown in the second illustration.
These early Brazil stamps can be difficult to identify, as they lack not only a country name but also any currency name that might give a clue to origin, having only a denomination numeral.
Eventually, in 1866, Brazil began identifying itself, issuing a handsome set of stamps with the image of Emperor Dom Pedro II and a bold ribbon containing “Brazil” above his portrait.
A stamp with a coat of arms and Spanish words on the left and right sides is shown in the third image. If you have been studying countries’ coats of arms (you can find illustrations by entering “coat of arms worldwide” in your favorite online search engine), you might have figured out this stamp came from the Dominican Republic: Scott 1, issued in 1865.
Not until 1879 did the Dominican Republic issue its first stamp that included the country’s name.
The attractive blue stamp shown in the fourth illustration displays the vignette of a ship, with a denomination of 1 “rl” (for real), and “½ oz.” indicating that the stamp paid the rate for mail weighing no more than that amount.
So where is this stamp from?
The initials in the four corners are clues: “P.S.N.C.” stands for Pacific Steam Navigation Co., and this denomination of stamp and a second different one were produced beginning in 1847 for the company’s use on its mail-carrying steam vessels.
In 1857, wanting to start a national postal service, the Republic of Peru asked the PSNC to donate some of its remaining stamp stock, for use until the republic could produce its own issues.
The 1r stamp (Peru Scott 1) depicts PSNC’s S.S. Peru heading westward, and the 2r (for mail up to 1 oz., Scott 2) shows the S.S. Chile heading east. These issues were used for a very short time, from Dec. 1, 1856, to Feb. 28, 1857.
On March 1, 1858, Peru’s new national postal service issued its first stamps, showing a coat of arms but no country name. It took until 1866 for “Peru” to appear on stamps with an image of llamas (Scott 16).
Moving from the Americas to Africa, we find other nations whose stamps lack country names.
Seeing the stamp in the sixth image, it would be quite easy to make a wrong guess as to the source country. The Middle-Eastern overprints are on stamps that have denominations listed in “para,” and that little currency clue might lead you to the Ottoman Empire.
As it happens, this early stamp was issued when what we now know as Egypt was a Turkish suzerainty, meaning that Turkey was the predominant controlling nation within Egyptian territory. Thus, the first stamps of Egypt were issued by the Turks.
The 20-para stamp shown here is Egypt (Turkish Suzerainty) Scott 3, issued in 1866.
The following year, Egypt’s stamps still failed to be inscribed with the country’s name, but the post office supplied an excellent identifier by using the image of two of its unique and best-known landmarks: the Great Sphinx of Giza with the Pyramid of Khufu in the background.
These icons first appeared on a 5-piaster stamp, Scott 8, issued in 1867. The first stamp to bear the words “Postes Egyptiennes” (Scott 29) was issued in 1879.
It’s something of an understatement to say that the early stamps of Ethiopia are difficult to identify.
The attractive designs catch your eye, but it is unlikely you will have knowledge of the Ge’ez alphabet that appears on the stamps and overprints. Ge’ez is a Semitic language that is used in the liturgy of the Ethiopian church and also is one of the principal languages of the country.
The next-to-last illustration shows a stamp of Ethiopia (also known as Abyssinia) depicting Emperor Menelik II, overprinted with a word in the Ge’ez alphabet that says “bosta,” meaning post. The stamp is Scott 15, issued in 1902.
A stamp issued in 1909 is shown in the final illustration. It uses the European alphabet to refer to the issuing country in French as “Ethiopiennes.” The stamp is Ethiopia Scott 87, displaying an image of King Solomon’s Throne. The Ethiopian royal house traced its ancestry to King Solomon of Israel.
Certainly, there are many other stamps in addition to those mentioned in this column, and the two preceding ones, that do not carry the issuing country’s name.
Sometimes a wild guess will bring a correct identification, but easier ways to determine the country of origin include trying the tips that have been mentioned here.
Acquiring a stamp identifier book also can be very helpful. Linn’s Stamp Identifier is quite useful, with many stamp illustrations, and lists of unfamiliar inscriptions. Another option is to consult the illustrated stamp identifier found in the back of the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue.
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Pinarayi Vijayan – CPM Leader From Kerala
Pinarayi Vijayan
Pinarayi Vijayan Photo
Pinarayi Vijayan was the former State Secretary of the Kerala State Committee of the CPI(M) from 1998 to 2015 and Ex Minister of Kerala Electric Power and Cooperatives. Pinarayi is considered as one of the bold politicians in kerala, he is very famous for his political stands. Pinarayi was the longest serving party secretary for communist party of india marxist (cpm). Pinarayi was born in Kannur district of kerala, 21 March 1944 is the date of birth of Vijayan. At present he aged 71 years old, Kamala is the wife name of Pinarai Vijayan. Currently Vijayan is in the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Veena & Vivek are the two children’s of Pinarai Vijayan.
SNC Lavlin scandal was the one of the major incident happens in Pinarai vijayan political life. His political opponents used the lavlin issue and still he facing attacks from them. But Comrade Pinarai vijayan is facing all the issues with strong mind and he is expected as the next chief minister of kerala. House image of Pinarayi vijyan, social media celebrated fabricated images as his home. We have posted the real image of Mr. Vijayan here. He was Elected to Kerala Legislative Assembly in 1970, 1977, 1991 and 1996 years.
Pinarayi Vijayan political career started when he was young, he joined Communist Party in 1964. He was president and secretary of the Kerala Student’s Federation (KSF), this is the oldest name of SFI (Students Federation of India). pinaraayi vijayan was the former president of Kerala State Youth Federation (KSYF). Now he is very much active in social media, you can follow the official facebook page of Pinarayi Vijayan from https://www.facebook.com/PinarayVijayan. You can check the complete history of kerala political leader pinarai from here.
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One of These Women Could Be Our Next President
Call it the final stage of the resistance. This election season, a history-making, record-setting number of women are attempting to break that highest, hardest glass ceiling: the Oval Office.
The 2020 race has only just begun, but already it’s looking like a vastly different—and better—kind of playing field. For the first time in our nation's history, there is not just one, or even two, or a few, but a record-smashing, can you believe it six women running for president. At press time in mid-February, there were officially more women seeking the Democratic nomination than men: Four senators and one representative as well as spiritual leader Marianne Williamson. Marie Claire went to the Capitol to capture the historic moment by interviewing and photographing the female politicians vying to be leader of the free world. (We arrived right after the government shutdown ended—they had plenty to say about that.)
We asked these presidential hopefuls about their plans and policies, but what surprised us the most was when we asked them what questions they are asked that a man running for the highest office would never face. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is tired of the doubters who wonder whether a woman could win. “I’ve never heard anyone ask, ‘Can a man win?’” she says. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), an Iraq War veteran, gets: “Are you tough enough? Can you handle the heat?” Please. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is asked how she manages to campaign and parent at the same time. “I have one daughter, and I’ve been asked that about a hundred times,” she says. “All parents balance things, but dads don’t always get asked that.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is grilled, too, about how she balances family and work. “The truth is,” she says, “women have been working since the beginning of time, and we do it well. We can balance our family needs and the work we need to do.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) says she likes to turn the tables when people only ask her about so-called women’s issues: “My response is usually ‘I am so glad you would like to talk about women’s issues, so let’s talk about the economy.’”
Talk they will; the presidential primary debates begin in June. And when these women—a veteran, a former college professor, two ex-prosecutors, and several mothers—take the stage, we’ll be looking at the most representative and diverse candidate pool in history, one that reflects America’s population more accurately than ever before. It’s momentous, it’s exhilarating, and it’s about time. —Kayla Webley Adler
On what we need to do to move forward as a country:
“People have to look at each other and find the heart of America again.… I think what we need to remember is that there's so much more that unites us than tears us apart. And once we start thinking like that, then we can take on these big challenges that are in front of us, because, as a nation, we should be governing from opportunity right now, and not just chaos.”
On the question she gets asked that a male candidate would never be asked:
“People say things like, ‘Well, do you think you could really be in charge?’ ‘Do you think you could really win?’ I was asked that when I ran for the Senate in the year 2006. I was repeatedly asked, ‘Can a woman win?’ because two women before me hadn't won and they were very qualified for the job. But still, I would say to them, ‘You know, a woman got elected to the Senate from the state of Texas, so I think we can pull this off.’”
On the question she wishes she got asked more:
“‘What do you think we can do to move forward as a country? What are some ideas that can bring people together?’ Because so many of the questions you get asked are about dividing people, instead of things that can bring us to common ground, which is the only way we get to higher ground.”
On why more women should run for office:
“We need more women so we reflect the country that we are, but we also need more women because my experience has been they get results. Women in the Senate work better across the aisle. We introduce more bills together, we've been able to get more things passed, so my answer when people say ‘Hey, there's too much gridlock,’ my answer is: Elect more women.”
On her number-one issue:
“My number-one issue is how we make this country work, not just for this really little slice at the top, but how we make it work for everyone. Because I really believe that chances, that opportunities, shouldn't all just go to the children of those folks. It ought to go to all our kids.”
On her advice to young women:
“When I was running for Senate the first time, back in 2012, I would meet little girls and I always got down on their level and I would say, ‘My name is Elizabeth and I'm running for the Senate because that's what girls do.’ And then, we would make pinky promises to remember that. Now won't that be fun for president?”
“I wish I were asked about how we're going to make the big changes we need to make. Not the nibbles around the edge, not the here's a piece or here's a piece. But what's it gonna take to make this country really work? Not just for the rich and the powerful, what it's gonna take to make it work for everyone else.”
“I want all young women out there to know that you should never listen if someone tells you that you are too young, or that you need to stand aside and wait your turn. I've been told this throughout my life and I have known, as you should, that the most important qualification is what's in your heart, and how you desire to be of service and have a positive impact on those around you.”
On why she's running for president:
“I'm running for president because our country is being torn apart and I know that what we need now more than ever is aloha. Aloha is respect, it's compassion, it's love for others regardless of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion. Aloha is what can bring us together, because when we stand united there is no challenge we cannot overcome.”
“My number-one issue is ending counterproductive regime change wars, ending the new Cold War that we're facing, and making it so that we do not end up in a nuclear war that completely destroys our country and our future. We need to focus on making sure that we provide peace and prosperity for all people in this country.”
“What motivates me. I've served for 15 years in the Army National Guard, deployed twice to the Middle East, and continue to serve as a Major. I've seen firsthand the cost of war. I know who pays the price. This is why I fight so hard for peace, security, and freedom.”
“My number-one issue is making America work for working families. In particular, their needs in terms of economic support and equal access to opportunity. One of my signature initiatives is the Lift Act, which would give families making less than $100,000 a year a $6,000 tax credit that they can receive at up to $500 a month, because in America today, the majority of families are a $400 emergency away from complete catastrophe. And that's not how it should be.”
“What I want young women and girls to know is: You are powerful and your voice matters. You're going to walk into many rooms in your life and career where you may be the only one who looks like you or who has had the experiences you've had. But you remember that when you are in those rooms, you are not alone. We are all in that room with you applauding you on. Cheering your voice. And just so proud of you. So you use that voice and be strong.”
“More women should run for office, and more women are running for office, and this is so exciting. We have broken previous records—[we now have] more than 100 women in the United States Congress. And more women should run because women are leaders in their families, in their communities, in their neighborhoods, and in society. So we want to see those numbers reflected in the United States Congress, and that means not only that women should run, but that folks should support and encourage women to run for office. Because when we have an equal number of representatives in Congress—equal number meaning representative of who the population is as a whole—we will be better and stronger.”
“I want all young women and girls to know that their voice matters, that their view of the world may well be different, and if they aren't being heard, then they can't change the things that are necessary in their communities and in our country. So, be heard. Your voice truly matters.”
“My number-one issue is restoring this government to the hands of the people. If you are unwilling to have a direct democracy, unwilling to restore what's been lost in terms of giving that power back to the people, you will never be able to do the things that need to be done. You need an open government, you need to get money out of politics, you need to change the fact that the powerful interests control everything. And the way to do it is get money out of politics and give that power right back into the hands of Americans.”
“More women should run for office because our life experiences are different. We may see problems in our communities, in our states, in our country, that perhaps those here in Washington don't see. We all know Washington's broken, and if you want to fix it, you need to change the players list. You need to change who has a seat at the table, who's being heard, and who's able to work on solving our country's greatest problems.”
Photographs By Heather Hazzan. Hair and Makeup by Carrie LaMarca and Patti Nelson at The Artist Agency; On-set Production by Amelia Fogarty and Justin Gellerson; Special Thanks: Jeff Kent. Visual design by Morgan McMullen.
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Laura Dern and Mónica Ramírez on the Border Crisis
How a Caucus Is Different From a Primary
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What to Know About the Presidential Conventions
Everything We Know About Sen. Gillibrand's Husband
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Everybody Running for President In 2020
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What to Expect From Gillibrand's Platform
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Home Biology Genome sequencing
Gene sequencing
Knowledge of the nucleotide sequence of a gene provides important information about its structure, function, and evolutionary relationship to other similar genes in the same or different organisms. Thus, the development in the 1970s of relatively simple methods for sequencing DNA has had a great impact on genetics. Two basic methods for DNA sequencing have been developed: a chemical cleavage method (A. M. Maxam and W. Gilbert, 1977) and an enzymatic method (F. Sanger, 1981). A brief outline of the underlying principles follows.
Sequencing by chemical degradation
This method utilizes base-specific cleavage of DNA by certain chemicals.Four different chemicals are used in four reactions, one for each base. Each reaction produces a set of DNA fragments of different sizes. The sizes of the fragments in a reaction mixture are determined by positions in the DNA of the nucleotide that has been cleaved. A double-stranded or singlestranded fragment of DNA to be sequenced is processed to obtain a single strand labeled with a radioactive isotope at the 5′ end [1]Brown, T.A.: Genomes. Bios Scientific Publ., Oxford, 1999.. This DNA strand is treated with one of the four chemicals for one of the four reactions. Here the reaction at guanine sites(G) by dimethylsulfate (DMS) is shown. Dimethyl sulfate attaches a methyl group to the purine ring of G nucleotides. The amount of DMS used is limited so that on average just one G nucleotide per strand is methylated, not the others (shown here in four different positions of G). When a second chemical, piperidine, is added, the nucleotide purine ring is removed and the DNA molecule is cleaved at the phosphodiester bond just upstream of the site without the base. The overall procedure results in a set of labeled fragments of defined sizes according to the positions of G in the DNA sample being sequenced. Similar reactions are carried out for the other three bases (A, T, and C, not shown). The four reaction mixtures, one for each of the bases, are run in separate lanes of a polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Each of the four lanes represents one of the four bases G, A, T, or C. The smallest fragment will migrate the farthest downward, the next a little less far, etc. One can then read the sequence in the direction opposite to migration to obtain the sequence in the 5′ to 3′ direction (here TAGTCGCAGTACCGTA).
Sequencing by chain termination
This method, now much more widely used than the chemical cleavage method, rests on the principle that DNA synthesis is terminated when instead of a normal deoxynucleotide (dATP, dTTP, dGTP, dCTP), a dideoxynucleotide (ddATP, ddTTP, ddGTP, ddCTP) is used. A dideoxynucleotide (ddNTP) is an analogue of the normal dNTP. It differs by lack of a hydroxyl group at the 3′ carbon position. When a dideoxynucleotide is incorporated during DNA synthesis, no bond between its 3′ position and the next nucleotide is possible because the ddNTP lacks the 3′ hydroxyl group. Thus, synthesis of the new chain is terminated at this site. The DNA fragment to be sequenced has to be single-stranded [2]Brown, T.A.: Genomes. Bios Scientific Publ., Oxford, 1999.. DNA synthesis is initiated using a primer and one of the four ddNTPs labeled with 32 P in the phosphate groups or, for automated sequencing, with a fluorophore (see next plate). Here an example of chain termination using ddATP is shown [3]Strachan, T., Read, A.P.: Human Molecular Genetics. 2nd ed. Bios scientific Publishers,. Wherever an adenine (A) occurs in the sequence, the dideoxyadenine triphosphate will cause termination of the new DNA chain being synthesized. This will produce a set of different DNA fragments whose sizes are determined by the positions of the adenine residues occurring in the fragment to be sequenced. Similar reactions are done for the other three nucleotides. The four parallel reactions will yield a set of fragments with defined sizes according to the positions of the nucleotides where the new DNA synthesis has been terminated. The fragments are separated according to size by gel electrophoresis as in the chemical method. The sequence gel is read in the direction from small fragments to large fragments to derive the nucleotide sequence in the 5′ to 3′ direction. An example of an actual sequencing gel is shown between panel A and B.
Références [ + ]
1, 2. ↑ Brown, T.A.: Genomes. Bios Scientific Publ., Oxford, 1999.
3. ↑ Strachan, T., Read, A.P.: Human Molecular Genetics. 2nd ed. Bios scientific Publishers,
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Electronic CHANGE TOPIC
Home » Electronic properties » News » Two insulators produce highly-conductive interface
Two insulators produce highly-conductive interface
Berardi Sensale-Rodriguez from the University of Utah. Photo: Dan Hixson, University of Utah College of Engineering.
Engineers from the University of Utah and the University of Minnesota have discovered that interfacing two insulating oxide-based materials makes them highly conductive. This finding could lead to more power-efficient laptops and electric cars, and home appliances that don't need cumbersome power supplies. The engineers published their findings in a paper in APL Materials.
The team was jointly led by Berardi Sensale-Rodriguez, an electrical and computer engineering assistant professor at the University of Utah, and Bharat Jalan, a chemical engineering and materials science assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. They found that when two oxide compounds – strontium titanate (STO) and neodymium titanate (NTO) – interact with each other, the bonds between the atoms are arranged in a way that produces many free electrons. Rather ironically, STO and NTO are by themselves known as insulators – materials like glass – that are not conductive at all.
When they form an interface, however, the amount of electrons produced is a 100 times larger than possible with semiconductors. "It is also about five times more conductive than silicon [the material most used in electronics]," Sensale-Rodriguez says.
This innovation could greatly improve the efficiency of the power transistors that control the supply of electricity to items ranging from televisions and refrigerators to handheld devices, Sensale-Rodriguez says. Today, electronics manufacturers use a material called gallium nitride for the transistors in power supplies and other electronics that carry large electrical currents. But that material has been explored and optimized for many years, and likely cannot be made much more efficient. The interface between STO and NTO, however, can be at the very least as conductive as gallium nitride and likely will be much more conductive in the future.
"When I look at the future, I see that we can perhaps improve conductivity by an order of magnitude through optimizing of the materials growth," Jalan says. "We are bringing the possibility of high power, low energy oxide electronics closer to reality."
Power transistors that use this combination of materials could lead to smaller devices and appliances. Laptop computers, for example, could ditch the bulky external power supplies – the big black boxes attached to the power cords – in favor of smaller supplies that are instead built inside the computer. Such power transistors could also make large appliances that consume a lot of electricity, such as air conditioners, much more power efficient. And because there is less power wasted, these devices will not run as hot as before, says Sensale-Rodriguez, because wasted electricity usually dissipates as heat.
"It's fundamentally a different road toward power electronics, and the results are very exciting" he says. "But we still need to do more research."
This story is adapted from material from the University of Utah, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.
Metal and polymer combine to produce flexible conductive material
A new hybrid conductive material comprising liquid metal embedded in an elastic polymer can be bent and stretched at will.
Nanomaterial makes flexible electronics easier
conductive and transparent metal-coated nanofiber mats that are both could make flexible electronic devices easier to produce
10 August 2016Cordelia Sealy
New study points to answer for topological insulator puzzle
Scientists have discovered why the two best methods for probing the electronic states of topological insulators produce different results.
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ICMM: transformation from active mine to closure
The last thing on the minds of workers at the oldest-known mine on archaeological record some 43,000 years ago in Swaziland was what their mine might become long after their tools had been put away.
Fast forward to today, and the transformation from active mine to mine closure is a C-level business consideration with just as many consequences as traditional mining decisions such as mine planning, development and geology.
For Tom Butler - CEO of the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) – ensuring that mines have alternative uses post closure is an essential step in building and maintaining a company's social license to operate.
“The mines being built today are markedly different from those built not so long ago. The relationships that have been built with host communities are generally better and environmental performance much improved, but there is still lots to be done on building stakeholder and community relations.
“I think we need to take much more of a partnership model than we have done in the past. That means developing projects from the outset in a spirit of true partnership with surrounding communities, local government, and other economic actors,” says Butler.
The Council is meeting in Melbourne to coincide with IMARC, where over half of ICMM’s member CEOs will be speaking and sharing their perspectives on mining and the global sustainability issues facing the industry.
“It is the first time ICMM’s Council has met outside of Europe or the United States, and we recognise Australia as a centre of influence and excellence in responsible mining. Fourteen ICMM company members operate 190 mine sites in Australia,” says Butler.
According to the ICMM, responsible mine closure requires the active participation of local communities in the planning and implementation of actions, so that lasting benefits can be recognised.
Communities and local businesses grow up with dependence on the mine operation and the ceasing of operations has flow-on economic and social impacts. Thus, closure planning should be incorporated into the early stages of project development and operation.
As detailed in a 2016 report by the Mineral Policy Institute, Australia alone has 431 operating mines, 1,373 historic mines and 50,000 abandoned mines scattered across the country.
For Butler, designing alternative uses for those mines is a concrete example of how miners can engage in a partnership with local stakeholders.
Examples of this approach are varied in their uses and location:
Rainforest: Located in Cornwall, England the Eden Project was a china clay pit for over 160 years.
The project is now a popular tourist destination and research centre dominated by two huge enclosures that house thousands of plant species, including the largest ‘indoor’ rainforest.
Art galleries and health centre: the sister Wieliczka and Bochnia salt mines in Poland began operation in the 13th Century. Now UNESCO World Heritage Listed, both mines feature hundreds of kilometres of galleries with works of art, underground chapels and statues sculpted in the salt.
The mine also houses an underground post office, restaurant, cinema, tennis court, and sanatorium which offers allergy and asthma treatment.
Amusement Park: Salina Turda is a converted salt mine in Turda, Romania - one of the world's oldest, with historical references dating back to as early as 1075. It ran as a working mine to 1932, when it became a facility for storing cheeses and then a bomb shelter.
In 1992 it was transformed into an underground amusement park that features an amphitheatre, mini golf, ping pong tables, basketball courts, a bowling alley, a Ferris wheel and a carousel to name a few.
Hotel: Currently under construction the InterContinental Shanghai Wonderland, located in the Sheshan Mountain Range about 50 km from the city centre will become the first five-star hotel to be built in a quarry featuring extreme sports facilities and underwater rooms.
For Butler, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg but require equal buy-in from all stakeholders involved.
"Engaging in a true partnership – a partnership of equals – means being willing to give up a degree of control. The mining industry has not always been good at this in the past.
“I think we will need to adjust our approach on that score," says Butler who will be presenting on Mining’s current and future contribution to sustainable development at IMARC later this year.
Risk of losing social licence to operate
The 2017-2018 ‘top 10 business risks facing mining and metals’ survey published by professional services firm EY, ranks the loss of social license as one of the biggest risks to the industry today alongside cyber, resource replacement and digital effectiveness.
Butler agrees but with the nuance that gaining social licence for a new mine is often an equal if not greater challenge.
“Social licence – or community acceptance – spills over into societal acceptance which the industry needs if it is to continue to obtain finance, build projects and access markets on reasonable terms,” says Butler.
Organisations may be investing millions of dollars in sustainability and community investment initiatives, but there needs to be a shift from a reactive and compensation model of social investment to one that is far more strategic and collaborative.
“ICMM’s approach is to provide a non-competitive space for 27 CEOs of the world’s leading mining companies, and their teams, to discuss this and other challenges.
“We have made great progress over the 17 years since our founding, in terms of enhancing environmental and social performance.
"However, society’s expectations continue to evolve, which means that we, and the industry, need to be ready to continue to evolve as well,” says Butler.
Looking forward, the ICMM is setting aspirational goals and moving into a more collaborative mode to address them.
On the back of this year’s Council meeting in Melbourne, the organisation and its members will be collaborating with mobile equipment manufacturers to improve safety and to reduce diesel particulate and carbon dioxide emissions.
“We are developing three-year stakeholder engagement (plan) on critical topics, such as closure and community engagement.
"And we will continue our efforts to communicate better about what we and our members are doing to address these challenges, in a way that engages society,” concludes Butler.
Hear from Tom Butler and more than 250 mining leaders at IMARC at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre 29 October to 1 November 2018.
ICMM
IMARC
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By Jessica Corbett
In a decision that digital rights advocates called “a groundbreaking victory for Americans’ privacy rights,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that police generally must obtain a warrant before collecting cellphone records that can be used to track a person’s movements.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represented the petitioner, predicted the “historic” win “will have a ripple effect for privacy,” particularly as it applies to data held by third parties. As the group explained in a series of tweets, “It will help protect all sorts of digital information stored online, from emails to data from smart home appliances.”
Starting now, the government can no longer claim that just using technology like your cellphones means you've given up your Fourth Amendment rights. This is huge. #GetAWarrant pic.twitter.com/iIXvODUKpX
— ACLU (@ACLU) June 22, 2018
Nate Freed Wessler, the ACLU staff attorney who argued the case, discussed the ruling and what it could mean for future cases in a short video posted on Twitter:
ACLU attorney @NateWessler explains what today's major Supreme Court victory on cellphone location tracking means for your privacy rights. pic.twitter.com/S1i9H0Fuk7
Famed government whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted the decision was a “victory for ACLU—and America.”
The Supreme Court just ruled the government's decades-old practice of warrantlessly tracking your historical movements via cellphone records (CSLI) has in many cases violated the constitutional right to privacy. Major victory for @ACLU ― and America. #GetAWarrant #Carpenter pic.twitter.com/lqm4joMysm
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) June 22, 2018
Chief Justice John Roberts—joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—wrote the majority opinion (pdf), which explained: “Cellphones perform their wide and growing variety of functions by continuously connecting to a set of radio antennas called ‘cell sites.’ Each time a phone connects to a cell site, it generates a time-stamped record known as cell-site location information (CSLI). Wireless carriers collect and store this information.”
The case in question involved Timothy Carpenter, who was sentenced to serve more than 100 years in prison for multiple robberies in Michigan and Ohio. With a court order that has a lower standard than a warrant, investigators obtained more than four months of location records from Carpenter’s cellphone company, and used that information to build a case against him.
Considering that CSLI data “is detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled,” and that “individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements,” the court determined that “the government will generally need a warrant to access CSLI” to comply with the Fourth Amendment.
The narrow ruling, Roberts noted, does not apply to “other business records that might incidentally reveal location information” or “other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security.” He added that warrantless searches still may be conducted under “exigent circumstances.”
The Constitution Project called the ruling a “long-overdue advance for privacy rights” but also accused the court of “taking baby steps as tech sprints ahead.”
2/ SCOTUS needlessly punted on location tracking with real-time records, though the privacy impact is effectively the same. Citing our brief w/ @EFF, @BrennanCenter & more, SCOTUS noted that evolving tech means they’ll need to look at this in the future: https://t.co/0AxkIKLmNL pic.twitter.com/WibjK3qYLw
— The Constitution Project (@ConPro) June 22, 2018
The high court’s other four conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas—each wrote dissenting opinions. The ruling on Friday follows a 2014 decision in which the justices unanimously determined that police must obtain a warrant before they can search the cellphone of an arrested person.
Top Photo | New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announces that every police officer will be equipped with a smart phone by March 2016 during the New York City Police Foundation’s “State of the NYPD” breakfast, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, in New York. (Diane Bondareff/AP)
Common Dreams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
warrantless tracking
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Amazon Facial Rekognition App Sets Off Alarm Bells
Uncle Sam Wants Your DNA: The FBI’s Diabolical Plan To Create A Nation Of Suspects
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Mirage News World June 26, 2019 1:59 am AEST Date Time
Canada announces judicial appointments in province of Quebec
Comments Off on Canada announces judicial appointments in province of Quebec
From: Department of Justice Canada
The Honourable David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced the following appointments under the new judicial application process introduced on October 20, 2016. The new process emphasizes transparency, merit, and diversity, and will continue to ensure the appointment of jurists who meet the highest standards of excellence and integrity.
The Honourable Lucie Fournier, a Judge of the Superior Court of Québec for the District of Montréal, is appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal of Quebec. Madam Justice Fournier replaces Mr. Justice F. Doyon, who elected to become a supernumerary judge effective May 7, 2019.
The Honourable Benoît Moore, a Judge of the Superior Court of Québec for the district of Montréal, is appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal of Quebec. Mr. Justice Moore fills a new position allocated further to the Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1.
Justice Fournier was appointed to the Quebec Superior Court in Montréal in 2009. After completing her law degree at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1981, she was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1982.
She practised law in Montréal with Leduc, Lebel from 1982 to 1994 and with Lebel & Associés from 1994 to 2000. She then practised with Robinson, Sheppard, Shapiro until her appointment to the Superior Court of Québec.
She practised civil, banking, and commercial litigation, particularly in securities law, insolvency, and construction.
Justice Fournier also taught at the École de formation professionnelle du Barreau du Québec in the areas of contracts, securities, evidence and advocacy skills. She has been a frequent speaker, particularly on securities law, guarantees, procedure, and evidence.
Beginning in 2000, Justice Moore was a professor with the Faculty of Law of the Université de Montréal, where he taught some 3,000 students. Over the course of his academic career, he was the Interim Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2014 to 2015 and Associate Vice Chancellor, Alumni Relations, Philanthropy and Partnerships, at the Université de Montréal, from 2016 until his appointment to the Superior Court of Québec on March 24, 2017. In 2006, he became the inaugural holder of the Chaire Jean-Louis Baudouin en droit civil.
Justice Moore has collaborated on several books, including Code civil du Québec-Annotations et commentaires, published annually by Éditions Yvon Blais; Droit des obligations, written with Didier Lluelles (3rd edition published in 2018 by Éditions Thémis); and the 8th edition of La responsabilité civile with Jean-Louis Baudouin and Patrice Deslauriers (published in 2014 by Éditions Yvon Blais). He has authored a number articles and has given numerous talks, in Canada and abroad, on civil law, including contract and family law. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Bordeaux, Liège, Lyon III, Montpellier, Paris II, Paris XIII, Tunis, and Keio in Tokyo. Since 2014, he has been the president of the Quebec section of the Association Henri-Capitant. In 2010, he was elected as a member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.
At the Superior Court level, more than 300 judges have been appointed since November 2015. These exceptional jurists represent the diversity that strengthens Canada. Of these judges, more than half are women, and appointments reflect an increased representation of visible minorities, Indigenous, LGBTQ2S and those who self-identify as having a disability.
The Government of Canada is committed to promoting access to justice for all Canadians. To improve outcomes for Canadian families, Budget 2018 will provide funding of $77.2 million over four years to support the expansion of unified family courts, beginning in 2019-2020. This investment in the family justice system will create 39 new judicial positions in Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
In addition, Budget 2018 provided funding for a further seven judicial positions in Saskatchewan and Ontario, at a cost of $17.1 million over five years.
The funding outlined in Budget 2018 comes on top of resources allocated under Budget 2017, which created 28 new judicial positions across the country.
In addition, the Government will invest $6 million over two years, beginning in 2018-2019, to support the judicial discipline process through which allegations of judicial misconduct are investigated. In this way, the Government will ensure that a robust process remains in place to allow Canadians to voice their concerns and submit complaints about judicial conduct to the Canadian Judicial Council and the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs.
Federal judicial appointments are made by the Governor General, acting on the advice of the federal Cabinet and recommendations from the Minister of Justice.
The Judicial Advisory Committees across Canada play a key role in evaluating judicial applications. There are 17 Judicial Advisory Committees, with each province and territory represented.
Significant reforms to the role and structure of the Judicial Advisory Committees, aimed at enhancing the independence and transparency of the process, were announced on October 20, 2016. Sixteen Judicial Advisory Committees have been reconstituted to date.
Tags:attorney-general, banking, Canada, civil law, Commissioner, Government, Investment, justice, Minister, Paris, President, Professor, resources, Tokyo, Tunis
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'Home Run Derby curse' remains a myth
Analysis shows All-Star production is tough to maintain regardless of slugfest participation
By Mike Petriello
"I hope my favorite player] doesn't get selected for the Home Run Derby," went much of baseball fandom last week before the participants were announced, "because it will screw up his swing and ruin his second half."Remember when [Joc Pederson hit 20 homers before the break in 2015, then 39
"I hope [my favorite player] doesn't get selected for the Home Run Derby," went much of baseball fandom last week before the participants were announced, "because it will screw up his swing and ruin his second half."
Remember when Joc Pederson hit 20 homers before the break in 2015, then 39 more in the Derby -- but then only six more for the remainder of the season, eventually being benched in September?
It's easy to blame the Derby for ruining Pederson's season. It's especially easy when you choose not to notice that after finishing off a streak of five homers in five days on June 3, he hit all of .175/.322/.308 in 36 more games before the Derby. In reality, Pederson's slump began weeks before the Derby ever arrived, not because of it. And despite the fact that there have been near-countless studies over the years showing that the Derby isn't the cause of (most) second-half downturns, plus many players themselves saying it's not real, the myth still persists.
:: Complete Home Run Derby coverage ::
• Play Derby Bracket Challenge for shot at WS tix
So let's add to the chorus and update the reply for 2017: No, the T-Mobile Home Run Derby (airing Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN) isn't going to ruin any of these sluggers' swings.
• Play the Home Run Derby game
Now that's not the same thing as saying that none of these eight hitters will have decreased production in the second half, because at least a few of them absolutely will. If you're judging these things merely on "number of home runs hit," then most of them will hit fewer simply because "first half" is a misnomer. Some teams will hit the break having played 93 games. Charlie Blackmon will have received about 400 plate appearances, and he's certainly not getting 400 more. They'll simply have fewer chances to hit home runs.
• Derby FAQ: Format, rules, more
But far more importantly, what we're talking about is a great example of selection bias. That is, the participants in the Home Run Derby have been chosen for this contest specifically because they've spent their first halves crushing baseballs at an elite level, in most cases far above their career baseline or any reasonable expectations -- numbers they can maintain for a few weeks or months, but generally not for a full season. If they come back to earth somewhat in the second half, that was almost certainly going to happen anyway, Derby or not.
Take, for example, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge. He's having a sensational season by any definition one could possibly think of, but think about what it would mean if he simply continued this pace for the rest of the year, finishing with the same .331/.449/.697 line he has now. It would be, without hyperbole, one of the 30 greatest hitting seasons in the history of modern baseball. Judge's .427 BABIP would be the highest ever, topping Babe Ruth. Judge is good; he's probably not that good.
That's the entire point, really. You can't simply take a player's first half and double it to get a full-season number. If you could, Alex Wood would go 20-0. Chris Sale would strike out 332 hitters. Great as they are, it's not going to happen. So if Judge hits "only" 20 homers in the second half after 29 (through Wednesday) in the first, it's not because of the Derby. It's because he's been so unbelievably good in the first half that it's unrealistic to expect him to maintain it. (And if, by some miracle, he does? Well, then the Derby definitely didn't hurt him.)
Think about it this way: If a player in the Derby hits fewer homers in the second half, you'll notice, and you'll suggest it's because of his participation in the event. But if a player not in the Derby improves his second-half dinger total, will anyone say it's because he wasn't a part of the contest? Of course not.
But OK, enough with theories. How about some numbers? Let's try to keep this simple. It's not whether Derby participants do worse in the second half; we know many do. It's about whether they do worse than non-Derby All-Stars.
As we said, many studies have looked at this before, so rather than go back many years to re-prove a point that's pretty well proven, let's keep it simple and stick to the last three years, with a very simple question. If that's not enough of a sample, well, this is again just adding on to previous evidence.
Did Derby participants underperform relative to other All-Stars?
No. Not in the past three years, where we're looking.
In 2014, when Yoenis Cespedes won in Minnesota, the eight Derby participants fell from a .373 first-half wOBA to .356 after the break, a not-insignificant 17-point drop. But all of the other All-Stars who hadn't been in the Derby fell even further, from .365 to .332 -- a steeper 33-point drop.
In 2015, when Todd Frazier won, the eight Derby participants dropped from a .380 first-half wOBA to a .341 second-half mark, a 39-point decline. Again, all of the non-Derby All-Stars fell back too, from .364 to .339. As a group, the post-break All-Stars all performed identically (hence .341 vs .339), but the Derby entrants had overperformed before the break.
In 2016, when Giancarlo Stanton topped Frazier, it was much the same story. The eight Derby entrants saw their wOBA drop from .367 to .330, again fueling the story that the Derby was at fault. But that 37-point drop was almost exactly mirrored by the 39-point drop from the non-Derby All-Stars, who went from .379 to .340.
A quick look at last 3 yrs shows that being in the HR derby doesn't hurt you any more than just being an All-Star:https://t.co/9LgxcH7phX pic.twitter.com/FKA5KYyV2m
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) July 7, 2017
As a group, All-Stars are likely to do less damage post-break -- not just Derby hitters. It's the nature of having a great first half.
So, what might happen to our participants? No one can tell the future, of course, but there is a way to test the premise. The respected Steamer projection system takes into account a player's past performance to output an expected future line, and by looking at what they've actually done so far in 2017 plus what's projected for the remainder of the season, we can look at 2017 projections for our eight sluggers.
These are almost uniformly below what the players are currently doing, but that's the point. If you come back here in October to check what actually happened, you'll get a better idea of how accurate these were -- and if the Derby really had any impact.
Aaron Judge: .299/.408/.607, .421 wOBA
Giancarlo Stanton: .273/.360/.556, .380 wOBA
Mike Moustakas: .271/.316/.533 .353 wOBA
Miguel Sano: .266/.361/.524, .370 wOBA
Charlie Blackmon: .304/.359/.535, .374 wOBA
Justin Bour: .278/.354/.518, .364 wOBA
Cody Bellinger: .250/.326/.548, .359 wOBA
Gary Sanchez: .279/.355/.506, .366 wOBA
(wOBA, or Weighted On-Base Average, is just like on-base percentage except it gives more weight to homers and extra-base hits than singles. The 2017 Major League average wOBA is .321.)
Remember, last year, when Mark Trumbo went from a monstrous .288/.341/.582 (.387 wOBA) first half to a more pedestrian .214/.284/.470 (.321 wOBA) second half, it's not because the Derby "broke" him. It's because that second half was far more in line with his career mark of .252/.305/.467 (.331 wOBA) than the out-of-character first half was.
You don't get to the Derby if you're not having a tremendous first half -- but that first half is often so good it's impossible to keep up. Remember that, when Judge or Bellinger or Moustakas doesn't have quite the same second half as they did in the first. It's not the Derby. It's expected.
On Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. ET, tune in to the 2017 All-Star Game presented by Mastercard live on FOX, and during the game visit MLB.com to submit your choice for the Ted Williams Most Valuable Player Award presented by Chevrolet via the 2017 MLB All-Star Game MVP Vote. The 88th All-Star Game, in Miami, will be televised nationally by FOX, in Canada by Rogers Sportsnet and RDS, and worldwide by partners in more than 160 countries via MLB International's independent feed. ESPN Radio and ESPN Radio Deportes will provide national radio coverage of the All-Star Game. MLB.com, MLB Network and SiriusXM will also provide comprehensive All-Star Week coverage. For more information, please visit allstargame.com.
Mike Petriello is an analyst for MLB.com and the host of the Statcast podcast. He has previously written for ESPN Insider and FanGraphs.
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21.03.2006 Regional News
Akwamuman PTA donates vehicle to school
Atimpoku (E/R), March 21, GNA - The Parents and Teachers Association(PTA) of the Akwamuman Secondary School, Atimpoku in the Asuogyaman District, had donated a Tata double-cabin pick-up valued at 150 million cedis to the school.
Presenting the vehicle at a ceremony, the chairman of the Association, Mr P.K. Amo, explained that it was meant to ease, in the interim, the acute transportation situation facing the school. He expressed concern that taxis were hired to rush students who suddenly fall sick to the hospital or to perform other essential duties in the daily running of the school. The chairman also said plans were far advanced to purchase a 53-seater-bus to completely solve the transportation problems facing the school. Mr Amo appealed to old students of the school and other philanthropists to donate in cash and kind to help address a number of nagging problems facing the school.
The Headmaster of the school, Mr Essah-Hienno, who received the vehicle, on behalf of the Board of Governors, thanked the P.T.A for its timely intervention towards solving the transportation problem facing the school.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's ChestSheet Music
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Caution: Construction Ahead - Healthcare Organizations Use Private Equity Investments to Support Innovation
December 5, 2016 / by Paul Kenney, CFA
As healthcare organizations look to drive down costs and improve care, they are increasingly looking at strategic private equity investments as another means of gaining access to new technology and efficiencies. Their efforts come amid a shifting landscape veering towards a fee-for-value model from the traditional fee-for-service one. This shift is fueling necessity for innovation as healthcare providers try to stay relevant and competitive. As they take the driver’s seat, this journey into private equity is not without its detours. Given all the competing goals of healthcare organizations, pursuing these efficiencies can feel similar to roadwork on a well-traveled highway – everyone agrees the gains will be beneficial and the work is necessary, but it comes at a cost, causes potential disruption, and takes time and effort. This balancing act is a central issue for any healthcare provider looking to pursue these strategies. In this paper, we focus on how different organizations, at various points along the path of strategic private equity investing, are navigating the issue of governance and their approach to investing for innovation. While each organization may enter into private equity with a different set of goals in mind, the benefits can be wide-ranging, as shown in the graphic below.
Much like road construction projects, private equity investment initiatives among healthcare organizations vary in size and scope -- with some organizations having substantial experience and others just beginning. Healthcare organizations have been gaining exposure to private equity by:
Direct investments in private companies, often led by the strategy/ innovation team within a healthcare organization
Becoming a strategic limited partner in a venture capital fund with active participation by the treasury/ investment office
Pursuing a combination of both paths
Most healthcare institutions face similar challenges when making a strategic investment in a private equity program, even though there is little dispute that the US healthcare industry needs to change — it currently accounts for over 17% of the GDP of the United States, compared to approximately 12% for France and 9% in the United Kingdom¹.
A primary challenge is the complex coordination that is needed to straddle the two very separate worlds of medicine and finance in order to optimize outcome. To this end, a robust governance structure can help ensure the effective implementation of procedures and processes and the efficient monitoring of the performance of stated objectives.
(¹Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
NEPC’s Takeaways
The relative infancy of the industry’s initiatives into private equity make gaining a broader industry perspective difficult in terms of best practices. That said, we present the following takeaways from our conversations with some leading healthcare providers:
Strategic investments in innovation–including the role of private equity investments–are evolving and specific to each organization: Execution strategies vary meaningfully, with approaches ranging from tentative, initial first steps, to bold and transformative initiatives.
Strategic investing is a part of the broader innovation strategy: Investing with outside organizations is one piece of the overall innovation solution designed to complement internal initiatives.
Direct investing in companies is increasingly the focus for large healthcare systems: Internal staff is driving this process with the goal of gaining access to technology, products and services aligned with organizational needs and priorities. Less emphasis is being placed on investments in private equity or venture capital funds to meet these needs.
Senior management is very active in overseeing direct investments: The clinical/patient side of the business is driving investment priorities with treasury, legal and other areas acting in supporting roles.
The role of the Board will likely increase over time: Board involvement within healthcare organizations varies with the Board often approving a budget for direct investments or delegating the decision-making process to senior management. Board oversight will likely increase with the growing impact from direct investments.
Measuring success is a work in progress: Usually, organizations have a keen insight into the goals and objectives of their strategic investing program with a strong linkage to their mission; however, measuring success is consistently noted as a challenge, particularly for more subjective, non-financial metrics.
Don’t go it alone, leverage the experience of others: A number of organizations said when seeking to find a specific solution, they prefer to undertake a direct investment in a company in partnership with other healthcare systems as it provides learning opportunities, synergies and helps avoid missteps.
Commitment and coordination: It is vital objectives are clearly defined, and both sides—medical and finance—are committed. Resources should be properly allocated and managed and key metrics should be identified early and measured and monitored. Coordination can be complex, given the need to straddle the two very separate worlds of medicine and finance in order to optimize outcome. To this end, sound governance paves the way for a well thought-out evaluation process and implementation plan.
Strategic Private Equity Programs for Healthcare Systems
Each healthcare organization has its own unique story of how its strategic investment program came into being. For one organization, innovation has been part of its investing culture for the past three decades and has continued to evolve; for another, its strategic investing initiative was fueled by an increasing number of opportunities for which additional resources were needed to assess them.
The following describes some of the ways in which private equity investments can differ among participants in the healthcare industry:
Type of Strategic Investment
Generally speaking, there are two styles to strategic investing: the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The top-down method involves an investment in a private equity or venture fund with a healthcare focus where the private equity sponsor is viewed as a strategic partner and can provide access to companies that have technology that may be of interest. In this instance, the healthcare organization seeks to invest in a private equity fund with exposure to companies with compelling products such as medical devices, which are aligned with the priorities of the healthcare organization; the treasury/ investment office of the healthcare provider often serves as the point of contact with the private equity manager.
On the other hand, the bottom-up approach is an internally driven process where a healthcare provider evaluates investments with the goal of identifying and investing in a company that can solve a clinical problem or fulfill a patient need, for instance, technology that facilitates the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients through telemedicine. In this case, the clinical side of the health system is responsible for identifying the need, the innovation/ strategy group is responsible for selecting and evaluating companies, with the treasury/ investment office playing a supporting role. This approach has become increasingly popular with larger healthcare systems.
Scope of Strategic Investment
Our conversations with industry participants show that the scale of strategic investments differs broadly. For instance, one organization emphasized innovations in digital technology; another balanced its focus between direct investments in an array of companies specializing in information technology, medical devices and drugs, invested in healthcare private equity funds with reputed managers, and worked with its own venture capital and innovation teams to build businesses around its intellectual property and license its proprietary technology.
Some organizations expressed a preference for partnering with others to address common challenges, for instance, creating a tool to facilitate the scheduling of patient appointments and follow-ups. Working with others creates a more robust evaluation of the product or solution being tested and can help support acceptance of the innovation in the marketplace.
Funding sources for these strategies are also varied. Investments using the top-down approach in private equity funds are most likely made through a portfolio or pool of assets within an established governance structure such as an investment committee, which oversees an endowment or operating pool.
For the bottom-up approach, internal investments are typically funded from the balance sheet or housed in a limited liability company or similar type of entity set up specifically for innovation-related initiatives; this entity is generally established with a set amount of capital and may be viewed as the equivalent of an internal private equity fund. As such, several of the healthcare systems we spoke to treated these direct investments as business decisions with those granting approval (usually a committee of five-to- 10 individuals) including senior executives—such as the dean of the medical school, the chief executive officer, the chief financial officer, the chief medical officer and/ or the leader of the strategy or innovation team—in the decision-making process.
Also, one organization noted grants as a source of funds, while another organization self-funded its strategic investments through the monetization of its intellectual capital.
It is worth noting that a few healthcare organizations sponsor private equity funds that third parties can invest in. Also, the term ‘fund’ can be used loosely and can describe internal funds or an internal pool of capital set aside for strategic investments.
Managing and Monitoring a Program
Integral to the oversight of any strategic private equity program is the evaluation and measurement of its effectiveness. Some organizations are watching over a few strategic investments, while others may be tasked with oversight of multiple investments/ projects in different stages of completion.
Measuring financial results can be straightforward when investments in a private equity fund are covered by a well-established governance structure supported by treasury staff and overseen by an investment committee. In this instance, fund performance can be compared to peers and industry benchmarks. Monitoring performance of investments in individual companies that are on the healthcare provider’s balance sheet is less uniform and is, in some cases, a work in progress. In one instance, the responsibility for venture-related investments fell under the CFO, while another grouped its direct investments into a separate business unit. Many of these initiatives are new and, therefore, have varying degrees of financial impact on the healthcare provider, which can influence the amount of structure in place.
Monitoring non-financial results relative to objectives is seen as a greater challenge. One interesting approach was the use of scorecards, with each investment ranked on a scale of one to 10 with different metrics; this approach was accompanied by a stoplight grading system. Another method was to evaluate the success of direct equity investments using case studies. Measuring the results for projects in various stages of their life cycle was noted as a particular challenge, as well as balancing the amount of time and resources associated with one or a handful of investments.
Concerns around potential conflicts of interest also came up. One individual expressed a desire to act as a facilitator to introduce the clinical/ technical teams involved with solving a problem to a company or select companies that were in the best position to resolve the issue. However, the individual did not want to be part of the decision-making team greenlighting the investments because of a potential conflict of interest and felt being removed from the approval process made his/ her work easier with external firms. Some healthcare providers are also mulling the addition of an independent, external party—for instance, board members or a consultant with relevant experience—to add value.
In terms of Board oversight, involvement in direct investments may not always be a requirement, but it may often include negotiating observer rights to access a Board seat. Overall, there is greater emphasis on gaining some form of Board access for direct investments than being involved in the governance of private equity funds.
Benefits of Strategic Investments in Innovation
Private equity investments to spearhead innovation offer the potential for more than just financial returns to the healthcare industry. The organizations we spoke with sought to align these investments to their mission; benefits they seek to achieve include:
i. Improved patient care and access to care, and enhanced customer engagement: Every point of contact with the patient is reviewed to assess how technology can be applied to improve scheduling of meetings, the process of follow-ups after procedures, and enhance the billing process to improve ease.
ii. Promoting professional growth of employees and the ability to recruit talent: The best and brightest medical minds often want to perform research and are eager to see that research successfully applied. To this end, an innovation program within a healthcare system can serve as a platform to attract and retain talent.
iii. Establishing equitable partnerships: One healthcare industry participant pointed out that its organization is in a position to provide revenue to a start-up firm and also help refine or enhance the start-up firm’s product. In turn, the healthcare organization seeks to share in the company’s financial success through an equity position that recognizes its value in the partnership.
iv. Gaining recognition and prowess: Developing a reputation for being able to apply and integrate new technology can help attract groups with know-how that can seek out the organization, further cementing its leadership position.
v. Financial growth and returns: While the financial benefit is a consideration for all healthcare providers, there are different return expectations. For instance, one group felt a return premium should be realized on direct investments, given the risk factors associated with a single investment; others had a lower return threshold if they also enjoyed some of the other benefits mentioned earlier.
Healthcare organizations are increasingly undertaking strategic investments in private equity as the industry seeks innovative solutions to improve care and reduce costs. To this end, a typical portfolio of venture capital companies may have one or two very successful investments, a meaningful number of investments with modest positive or negative results, and several companies that will fail. It is important that strategic investments made by a healthcare system be supported by a process that can tilt the odds of success in their favor. Also, there will be inevitable roadblocks that organizations will run into from time to time, underscoring the need to adapt and learn from mistakes in order to optimize outcomes.
We would like to thank the following organizations:
Inception Health (innovation arm of Froedtert Health)
Providence Ventures (part of Providence St. Joseph Health)
Various unnamed sources at healthcare systems that wished to remain anonymous
All investments carry some level of risk. Diversification and other asset allocation techniques do not ensure profit or protect against losses.
Download the "Healthcare Industry Innovated Through Private Equity Investing" Infographic here.
Topics: Healthcare, Private Equity, White Paper, Infographic, Governance
NEPC's 2019 Q1 Quarterly Market Thoughts Call
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Scientists develop new tool for detection of bowel disease
UK scientists have led an international effort to develop a new tool for detecting and diagnosing inflammatory bowel disease.
The Confocal Laser Endomicroscope (CLE) is a new kind of endoscope that can be used to inspect the wall of the gut.
It is so powerful that it enables clinicians to see the bacteria that are thought to trigger conditions such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
At present, patients have to undergo a biopsy, where a small sample of tissue is taken from the gut wall and analysed in the laboratory. But the new tool will allow doctors to observe the bacteria in situ.
Professor Alastair Watson, from the University of East Anglia, revealed: 'Bacteria within the wall of the gut are already believed to play an important role in the development of inflammatory bowel disease and we now have a powerful new tool for viewing this bacteria during routine colonoscopy.
'This new technique will allow the rapid identification of patients at risk or in the early stages of this common but distressing group of diseases.'
About one in every 350 people in the UK are affected by inflammatory bowel disease, which tends to develop when patients are in their late teens or early 20s.
Symptoms include abdominal pain, a change in bowel habits, weight loss and extreme tiredness.
Experts develop early meningitis detection tool
Scientists develop new understanding of Sars
New technique improves detection of arterial disease
Scientists uncover new subtype of bowel cancer
Scientists establish new route to cancer development
NI scientists develop new male infertility test
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Vice Chancellor's Portrait
Stunning new acquisition to the University Art Collection is a fitting send off to former Vice-Chancellor Caroline McMillen.
The Vice Chancellor with her portrait in the Great Hall
The portrait wall at the Great Hall has a new addition - a stunning work of our previous Vice-Chancellor Professor Caroline McMillen by Sydney based artist Sally Ryan. The portrait has a composition that takes in the view from New Space to the Town hall, signifying our significant move to the city, and a memento of Professor McMillen’s father, university colours from Queen’s University, Belfast, on her lap which signifies her enduring commitment to equity in education, as her father was enabled to attend university after WW2.
The artist has recently been represented in the Salon des Refuses in which she was awarded the People’s Choice Award. Additionally, Sally is a finalist in the prestigious Doug Moran Prize for Portraiture, a testimony to her talents and the strength of our portrait exemplifies that.
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SHIRLEY A. NeSMITH 1944-2010
SHIRLEY A. NeSMITH
Shirley Ann NeSmith, 66, a resident of the Riverside Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Newcomerstown, for the past few years, formerly of Gnadenhutten and Stow, passed away early Friday morning, Nov. 26, 2010, in the Riverside Manor care facility.
Shirley was born in Akron on March 5, 1944, a daughter of the late George Edward and Hazel Virginia Shomo Tate.
Following high school, she served in the Air Force at Hamilton AFB, California, during the Vietnam War.
She was employed as a fork lift operator with the former Stone Container Company, New Philadelphia, for 18 years. Shirley enjoyed spending time with her grandchildren, gardening, raising flowers, and raising animals.
In addition to her parents, Shirley was preceded in death by a brother-in-law, Henry "Hank" Czartoszewski of Canal Fulton.
Shirley is survived by two sons and two daughters, James V. (Belinda) NeSmith, Jr. and Scott R. NeSmith and fiancé Amy M. Ollis, all of Newcomerstown, Michele V. (Alan) Boreman of Gnadenhutten, and Shannon NeSmith of Uhrichsville; three grandchildren, Jay A. (Rachel) Boreman of Coshocton, Chastity N. (Justin) Hughes of Newcomerstown and Ricky A. Fries of Gnadenhutten; three great-grandchildren; two brothers, Albert Tate and Ronnie (Dorothy) Tate, all of Akron; two sisters, Linda Czartoszewski of Canal Fulton and Trudy Marchese of Canton; and numerous nieces and nephews.
Funeral services to celebrate Shirley's life were Nov. 29, 2010, in the Ourant Funeral Home, Newcomerstown. Ralph D. Maxwell Jr. conducted the services. Military graveside services, performed by the Newcomerstown Veterans' Honor Guard, and burial was Nov. 30 in the West Lawn Cemetery, Newcomerstown.
A memorial fund has been established for Shirley. Memorials may be made to the Shirley A. NeSmith Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 68, Newcomerstown, OH 43832.
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Inspiration for 'Super 30', Anand Kumar reveals he suffers from brain tumour!
Jul 11, 2019 10:04:57 PM (IST)
Hrithik Roshan's Super 30, a biopic of Patna-based mathematician Anand Kumar is all set to hit the big screen on July 12. However, a day before the film is released, Anand Kumar, who has come as a silver-lining in lives of many underprivileged kids by giving them free tutoring to crack the IIT entrance exam has revealed a piece of shocking news.
Anand Kumar has recently revealed that he is suffering from an acoustic neuroma, a brain tumour and he was in a hurry to get his biopic made as there is no certainty to his life.
"The film writer's wanted that I permit for the film as quickly as possible. You have no idea of life and death, so I wanted this biopic to be made while I am alive," he told ANI
He added, "In 2014, my situation was such that I was unable to hear from my right ear. I underwent a lot of treatments in Patna and it was after some tests that I came to know that 80-90 per cent of the hearing ability of my right ear has been destroyed."
He went on to say, "Then I checked into Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Delhi and the doctors performed rigorous investigation and did a number of tests. They then called me and told that I had no issues in my ear instead a tumour had been developed in the nerve which runs from ear to brain. And as soon I got to know this, as I lost consciousness."
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PIL filed seeking change of 'Bharat' movie title
ideal ice cream II
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Long awaited Dr. Vishnuvardhan Memorial to be built finally at Rs 11 Crore
SC L S ¦ Jul 01, 2019 08:19:11 PM (IST)
Mysuru: Veteran Sandalwood actor Late Dr. Vishnuvardhan’s memorial construction row has finally settled with the Karnataka High Court ordering a go ahead.
With the court verdict out on Monday, July 1, the Mysuru district administration has flagged off the Dr. Vishnuvardhan Memorial construction amid police protection.
After inaugurating the construction, Late Dr. Vishnuvardhan’s wife and veteran actress Bharati Vishnuvardhan spoke to media and said, “Finally the days have come to begin the memorial construction work. The journey was like a mother carrying her baby in the womb for nine-long-months amid various ups and downs in life and later giving birth. Such happiness can be equated with this situation.”
“I pray that the construction goes on without any hiccups. All the arrangements are in place. The cost of the memorial may sum upto Rs 11 Crore. The state government will be releasing the funds in a phased manner. This memorial will comprise a film institute, museum and more”, she added.
She said that the memorial would be dedicated to all Vishnu fans as it’s their property.
Meanwhile, his son-in-law Aniruddha Jatkar expressed his joy that the memorial would be built in Mysuru itself.
He said, “Dr. Vishnuvardhan’s dream was to be laid to rest in the same place and it has now come true. This will not only be a memorial but also a state model. We hope that the museum which will be built here will be one-of-its-kind in the state.”
“The memorial will have everything related to cinema right from acting school”, he added.
Thus the 10-year-long ordeal of Dr. Vishnuvardhan's family has been laid to rest with the memorial being built in Halalu village of Uddur town.
The district administration has cleaned 5 acres of land and begun the construction.
SDMIMD
ideal ice cream IX
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From anti-Americanism to European soft power: the geopolitics of Tintin
What's fascinating, when reading Hergé's series today, is how clearly its values evolve in line with a changing world.
By Michele Barbero
Who would have thought that Tintin would so easily become a social media star? After all, the protagonist of Hergé's comics is a pre-internet reporter, whose adventures around the world are set in a time that is long gone. But following the Brussels attacks, images of the young Belgian were suddenly all over the internet – picturing him lying on the ground, or in tears while reading the news (in a good old newspaper, of course).
Tintin remains dear to many Europeans, inside and outside Belgium. And if you think about it, there is no reason why he shouldn't be, since he has embodied the continent's values for half a century.
At first glance, Tintin represents a fairly straightforward message: the importance of selflessness and truth-seeking. But the 24 children's books, published mainly between the 30s and the 70s, are also filled with references to what Europeans thought about an ever-changing world. Some of these views still make us proud. Others, maybe, not so much.
According to Daniel Justens, who has authored two essays on the representation of language and geography in the series, Hergé's first editor, priest Norbert Wallez, “was deeply involved in a sort of Christian hyper-conservatism very close to the far right.” Nowadays, the stories written under his influence can be disturbing for how blatantly they pander to anti-communist and colonial stereotypes.
Certain scenes of the first episode, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930), are pure propaganda. At one point, a Bolshevik officer burns bundles of straw in an empty factory, so that the foreign observers outside (“English communists”) can be shown the smoke coming out of the chimneys and be fooled about the country's industrial productivity.
When it comes to colonialism, Hergé's early work is not exactly nuanced. In Tintin in the Congo (1931), the young European journalist teases the locals for their laziness, teaches maths to a class of black children and fights against a sorcerer who wants to keep his people in a state of ignorance to dominate them more easily.
“It is a controversial book,” says Oliver Dunnett, a researcher currently at Queen's University Belfast who has studied geopolitics and identity issues in Tintin. “In the UK, a commission for racial equality called for it to be banned from sale.”
But what's fascinating, when reading the entire series today, is how clearly its values evolve in line with world politics.
In the 70s, Hergé sent Tintin (not for the first time) to Latin America. There, again, he ends up among an indigenous population with an entirely different culture, the Arumbayas. But this time around, there are few traces of his old, patronising behaviour. At one point, a white man who's decided to live with the tribe even scolds Tintin for his lack of tact: “When travelling, you must adapt to local habits. Otherwise just stay at home!”
This evolution over time is not limited to the relations between Europe and developing countries. Hergé was a sponge. Not known for being a very political person, he often absorbed the dominant narrative on an issue and made it part of his comics, not necessarily in ways that we would approve of today.
He re-wrote stories, too. A first version of The Shooting Star, which appeared during World War II while Belgium was under Nazi occupation, featured villainous Jewish characters and an American expedition competing with Tintin's side. Hergé then retouched it for the Cold War era, and in the new version anti-Semite references were largely gone and the US had conveniently been replaced by a fictional country, the São Rico (Saint Rich).
The new name, however, and the fact that the American identity of the reporter's opponents is still hard to overlook, also suggest that something does remain (almost) unchanged throughout the series. Judging from his work, Hergé was not a fan of US-style big business.
During his endeavours Tintin meets all sorts of greedy tycoons, most of them from the United States. Some offer him money, in which he is totally uninterested. Others try to grow their fortunes with appalling indifference to morals. In The Broken Ear (1937), set in South America, the magnate Mr Trickler causes a war to lay his hands on an allegedly oil-rich area. A reference, as it often happens in the series, to real events: the Gran Chaco War fought in the '30s between Bolivia and Paraguay.
In contrast to such ruthless economic imperialism, Tintin stands as a beacon of European humanism, a model of sensibleness committed to stopping the vicious, violent cycle of local coups. When in a more recent story he helps reinstate ousted General Alcazar, the latter has to promise he will not allow any bloodshed by his men.
Hergé's eurocentrism survived under the US political and cultural hegemony of the second half of the century. When he takes his creature outside the earthly atmosphere, in a couple of volumes published in the '50s, the fictional scientific mission is entirely European: in this space race, there is little room for the almighty ally and protector. Once again, Tintin and his gang succeed. After all, this tireless man, who has reflected the continent's virtues and flaws for so many years, did deserve to be the first to walk on the Moon.
› Kezia Dugdale warns Brexit could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom
How a new expenses scandal has destroyed Emmanuel Macron's promise of clean politics
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Scotland needs its own immigration policy – here's how it would work
Sub-state immigration policies and autonomy work perfectly well in countries such as Canada and Australia.
By Stuart McDonald
Theresa May’s relentless obsession with the net migration target – prioritised over economic, educational, or even human rights concerns – is all the more surprising given the fact that it is such nonsense. For a number picked out of thin air prior to 2010, it is both remarkable and worrying that it became almost a sacred cow of British politics.
The net migration target (NMT) can be unpicked in many, many ways but it has been welcome to see a growing focus on the fact that a “one-size-fits-all” target for all nations and regions is just not appropriate. Clearly if the only migratory movements in the UK next year were that 900,001 people left Wales to head abroad and 1,000,000 migrants arrived looking to live in Maidenhead, this would not be good for Wales or the Prime Minister’s constituency – yet it would be the first time in eight years of trying that she had met her pet ambition.
We need to be much more sophisticated. Different parts of the UK have very different demographic and economic needs in terms of migration.
Since 2007, the Scottish National Party government at Holyrood has pursued a different population target – aiming for Scotland to match average population growth of other EU15 nations over the decade to 2017. The fact it is on course to succeed has been considerably aided by May regularly and spectacularly missing her own.
But what if May finally reduced net migration to the tens of thousands?
In 2014 the Office for National Statistics produced population projections for Scotland and the UK based on different migration scenarios. One “low net migration” scenario was 105,000 – so just outside the NMT. Even that narrow miss would see Scotland’s population almost stagnate over 25 years, barely mustering a overall population increase of 3,500 – 0.07 per cent – per year. So there is a real danger that May actually hitting or "exceeding" her target means population stagnation or even decline for Scotland. This is potentially disastrous when the population is ageing.
More generally, having migration policies in place so different geographical areas are able to attract human capital and the right labour to match skills shortages is surely in the interests of all. The UK system isn’t working well for too many parts of the UK. A very bureaucratic Tier 2 system is navigable for large companies with armies of immigration lawyers – and international firms can always rely on intra-company transfer rules. But for many small and medium-sized enterprises – a more significant part of Scotland’s economy – these are often expensive and unrealistic options, and it is no surprise that Scotland is home to fewer Tier 2 sponsors than its population size would suggest.
There is strong support for a new system, including both the Scottish Chamber of Commerce and Scottish Trade Unions Council. In the House of Commons the Scottish affairs committee, as well as the All Party Group on Social Inclusion, chaired by Chuka Umunna, have advocated bespoke immigration policies. And this week even in the House of Lords, two committees concluded there should be “maximum flexibility” for nations and regions and that there was “merit” in a specific system for Scotland (and London). Academics like Professor Jonathan Portes and think tanks such as the IPPR are supportive of the idea. But how could it be done?
With a little imagination, there are a bucket load of ways – many very helpfully set out in a recent paper by Professor Christina Boswell of the University of Edinburgh. Whether it’s applying different points thresholds for jobs in Scotland, a bespoke post-study work scheme, allowing Scotland a separate quota under the Tier 2 scheme, or a more flexible shortage occupation list, options are there which need not complicate administration or enforcement. Indeed, if there was political will at the UK level, there is no reason Scotland could not continue to allow free movement of EU nationals, which is what my party and I will continue to advocate for.
It’s worth remembering that sub-state immigration policies and autonomy work perfectly well in countries such as Canada and Australia. And the UK itself previously experimented with a post-study work visa applicable to graduates from Scottish universities (but curiously, not limited to Scottish employers) and currently there is a (very slightly) different list of shortage occupations for Scotland.
An immigration policy for Scotland is an idea whose time has come – and failure to listen could have serious consequences for Scotland’s population.
Stuart McDonald is the MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and the SNP's immigration spokesman
› Rock solid-arity: how fans and bands helped save Team Rock's music magazines
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Ochre Health Medical Centre Garran, ACT
Ochre Medical Centre Garran
2 Garran Place
Garran ACT 2605
Ochre Medical Centre Garran operates 6 days a week. Located in the Garran shops, the medical centre is also close to Canberra Hospital and the National Capital Hospital.
If the doctors are unavailable, you may contact CALMS (Canberra After Hours Locum Medical Service) on 1300 422 567 for an alternative arrangement.
Ochre Health is a private billing practice. Please ask our friendly reception team for more details. Please also note, we have systems in place to process your Medicare rebate claims on the spot.
Jennifer Garcia
3 Registered Nurses
Dr. Helen Morrison (MBBS DCH DRACOG) – General Practitioner / Medical Coordinator
Dr Morrison has been a local practitioner in the Canberra area for 25 years. Dr Morrison commenced at Ochre Health Calwell in October 2012.
Specialty interest areas: Men’s, women’s and children’s health and minor procedures
Dr Morrison is available for appointments all day Monday, Tuesday & Thursday and Wednesday & Friday mornings.
Dr Richard Radajewski (MBBS FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Dr Radajewski studied at the University of Sydney and completed his residency and internship at a range of Sydney hospitals, including Hornsby, Manly, Mona Vale and Westmead Children’s Hospital. While at the Children’s Hospital, Richard obtained a Diploma in Child Health. In 2011 Richard moved to Canberra working as a GP in Queanbeyan and as a Visiting Medical Officer for Queanbeyan Hospital. Richard joined Plaza Medical Centre Woden in 2012 and is now part of the Ochre Health Medical Centre Garran. Richard enjoys spending time with his family and staying active with bush walking, camping, skiing and swimming.
Specialty interest areas: Family Medicine, Children’s health and minor procedures.
Dr Radajewski is available for appointments all day Monday, Wednesday & Friday and Thursday mornings.
Dr. George Chan (MBBS MAMAS) – General Practitioner
George has been a General Practitioner for 25 years.
Specialty interest areas: Acupuncture and qualified diving medical examiner.
Dr Chan is available for appointments all day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday.
Dr Shannon Craft (MBBS FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Dr Craft is an experienced Canberra GP. She completed her MBBS from Adelaide in 1978 and her FRACGP in 1994.
Specialty interest areas: Antenatal care, Child health, Chronic Disease Management and Education in General Practice
Dr Craft is available for appointments all day Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday.
Dr Sunita Singh (FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Dr Sunita Singh studied MBBS (Tasmania) and DipRACOG. She has over 20 years experience in General Practice.
Specialty interest Areas: Antenatal care, Paediatrics and Women’s Health
Dr Singh is available for appointments all day Monday to Thursday and Friday mornings
Dr Patrick Leerdam (MBBS / FRACGP) – Medical Co-ordinator
Patrick joined Ochre Health Calwell after 21 years of running his own practice in Chifley. Patrick thrives on the challenge of general practice.
Specialty interest areas: Family medicine
Dr Leerdam is available for appointments till 1.30pm Monday & Thursday and all day Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday.
Dr Ann Richardson (MBBS, FRACGP)- General Practitioner
Ann moved to Ochre Health Medical Centres from Chiefley. She enjoys all aspects of General Practice but has a particular interest in skin and cancer management.
Ann enjoys the challenge of educating medical students.
Dr Richardson is available for appointments Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
Specialty interest areas: Skin care, General Practice
Dr Brenda Tait – General Practitioner
Dr Tait is available for appointments all day Tuesday & Thursday and Wednesday & Friday mornings.
Dr Richard Bate – General Practitioner
Dr Bate is available for appointments Monday & Tuesday mornings and all day Wednesday to Friday.
Dr. Cassandra Harris (BMedSci, Hons +1, MBBS) – General Practitioner
Dr Cassandra Harris has a scientific research background from Canberra.
She completed her training at the ANU then proceeded to work in the local area; most recently at the Airport General Practice.
Speciality interest areas: Dermatology and Obstetrics.
Dr Tang-Sheng Zeng (MBBS, PhD, FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Dr Zeng and his family have been living in Canberra for over 20 years. After completing his PhD studies at the University of Queensland, he worked at the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), The Canberra Hospital, Calvary Hospital, and Queanbeyan District Hospital, in addition to general practice. He speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin. Tang has a strong interest in Acute Care and currently also works at the Emergency Department outside his GP work. His personal interests include music, sport and gardening.
Specialty interest areas: General medicine and Acute Care.
Dr Tang-Sheng Zeng will be working Tuesdays, Wednesdays & Fridays.
Dr Jennifer Firman – General Practitioner
Jennifer’s bio will be updated soon.
Dr Bosco Wu (MBBS, BMedSci) – General Practitioner
Dr Wu is a local graduate of the ANU medical school. He completed his internship and residency years at the Canberra Hospital before moving to Port Macquarie to train in radiation Oncology in 2012. He did further training in Canberra Hospital and was awarded the Matthew Davey Memorial Prize for the most outstanding Junior Doctor in 2015. He was also awarded the ANU Medical School’s teacher of the year in 2017. In his spare time, Bosco enjoys football, cooking, and being a husband and father.
Specialty interest areas: Oncology, Preventative Health, Men’s Health
Dr Tara Frommer (MBBS, FRACGP, DCH) – General Practitioner
Tara studied at the University of Sydney and worked in many hospitals including Sydney Children’s Hospital, Orange, Coffs Harbour, Westmead and Auburn. Tara has worked in Paediatrics and completed a Diploma in Child Health. Furthermore she has extensive
experience in Women’s health and family planning having completed her National Certificate in Sexual and Reproductive Medicine and being trained in Im-planon and IUD insertion. Tara continues to do work in specialist family planning and emergency services.
Tara enjoys spending time with her young children, rock climbing, cycling, hiking and travelling.
Specialty interest areas: Children’s health, Women’s health, Minor procedures, Men’s Health, IUD insertion, Antenatal Care
Dr Abbir Ouban (MBBS, FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Following graduation, Dr Ouban went on to work at Liverpool Hospital in South Western Sydney, the designated major trauma centre for the region. During her time there, Dr Ouban worked in a number of different specialty areas including emergency medicine, palliative care, surgery, obstetrics and paediatrics.
Specialty interest areas: Women’s health, Antenatal care, Paediatrics, General medicine.
Dr Matthew Thompson (MBBS, BA, Grad Dip Education) – General Practitioner Registrar
Matt completed his internship and residency at The Canberra Hospital and Calvary Hospital. He has undertaken hospital rotations in Psychiatry, Urology, Infectious Diseases, Emergency, Paediatrics, Rehabilitation, Cardiothoracic surgery as well as some time as resident of the vascular team. Matt’s interest in General Practice stems from his background in education, practicing primary preventative medicine, educating patients and care-givers, providing continuity of care, and enjoying the variety General practice provides. Outside of work Matt enjoys all sports, particularly cricket and Australian Rules, although in his spare time you can find him reading news articles or watching some form of sport. He likes to remain active, enjoys travel and sharing time with good friends and family. He has recently taken up Javelin and trains at the AIS during the week with a specialist coach.
Specialty interest areas: family medicine, Sports medicine, Mental Health and Men’s health.
Dr Sharmila Sambandam (MBBS, BMedSc, FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Dr Sharmila Sambandam completed her medical degree at the Australian National University, graduating in 2012. She has since worked at the Canberra Hospital, where she has undertaken roles in emergency medicine, psychiatric medicine, women’s health, orthopaedics, geriatrics and general surgery. Dr Sambandam joined the Ochre Medical Centre Garran team in 2019 with special interests in; women’s health, including antenatal and postnatal care, contraception advice, and menopause management; children’s health; obesity management; mental health management and care plans; chronic disease management; and preventative health, including assistance with smoking cessation and lifestyle changes. In addition, Dr Sambandam helps her patients with Workers’ Compensation Cases and also performs minor procedures. In her spare time, she enjoys painting, cooking, and spending time with her two young children.
Dr Eu Jern Tan (BMedSci (Hons), MPhil, MBBS, FRACGP) – General Practitioner
Dr Tan graduated from his medical degree (MBBS) at the Australian National University, having previously studied a Bachelor of Medical Science and attained a Masters of Philosophy. He went on to work at the Canberra Hospital, working in a number of surgical rotations as well as working for some time in critical care medicine. Following this, he decided to further train as a General Practitioner, undergoing his GP training in rural regions such as Cootamundra before going on to obtain his fellowship with the RACGP. In his spare time, Eu Jern enjoys soccer and music.
Specialty interest areas: Sports medicine, Skin cancer medicine, Minor procedures, Chronic diseases, Aged Care
The town of Garran was named after Sir Robert Garran, a man who made numerous contributions to higher education in Canberra. Garran is located within the Woden District of Canberra and has a population of 3,198 (Census 2011). Many streets within Garran are named after Australian Artists. Garran has three primary schools and is home to Canberra Hospital.
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International Offshore Jurisdiction Spotlight - Belize as an Offshore Financial Center
Global Offshore Environment in Belize
Why Choose Belize as an Offshore Tax Haven
Belize continues to be one of the Central America’s premier destinations for offshore company formations opportunities. The country offers many tax advantages to both businesses and individuals looking to form an offshore company for either personal or commercial use.
Belize, a former British colony has a parliamentary democracy, similar to Canada, with a long history of tolerance as well as political and financial stability. The country’s legal system is founded upon English Common Law with English as the official language. The Belize government and the country’s financial institutions both continue to offer attractive financial packages to foreign investors looking to invest form a company.
Those seeking offshore banking and corporate infrastructure in a stable, affordable jurisdiction close to the United States will find Belize a perfect location that will satisfy all their financial and offshore needs. It offers visitors and residents a great climate, a vibrant and inclusive culture as well as a high level of political and economic freedom.
Benefits of Starting an Offshore Business in Belize
Speedy and simple incorporation for fast reaction to financial planning needs (one hour incorporation)
Total exemption from all forms of local taxation including Stamp Duty
IBC's headquartered in Belize pay no taxes on profits earned outside the country
Only one Shareholder is required – there is no public record of the Shareholder
IBCs require only one Director who could be a corporation
No residency or citizenship requirements for Directors of offshore companies
Meetings of Shareholders and/or Directors may be held in any country, at any time and they may attend meetings by proxy
No requirement to file accounts or to have accounts audited; public filing limited to certificate of incorporation, memorandum and articles of association, registered office and name and address of registered agent; companies in Belize are not required to have publicly accessible records.
Capital may be expressed in any currency
No minimum paid up capital requirements
Offshore business activities are exempted from exchange control in Belize.
IBCs may be used for financial management, investment holding, ship or property ownership, share ownership of other companies, leasing of assets, copyrighting and/or licensing, as well as general commercial trading
Ease of transfer of companies to and from Belize
Modern, flexible legislation for mutual funds, insurance and trusts
No double taxation treaties with any other country
Companies are not required to file an annual tax return
The US dollar is widely accepted for business purposes in Belize; there is a flat rate of exchange for the US and Belize dollars: US$1 for $2 Belize
English is the official language in Belize, though it is possible to incorporate an International Business Corporation (IBC) in any language in the nation; many Chinese language IBCs are incorporated in Belize
Incorporated companies in Belize have the same legal powers as an individual
The legal system in Belize is based on English Common Law and simple for anglo-based countries to understand
Companies in Belize can maintain bank accounts in other popular tax havens
Traditionally very welcoming for expatriates
Under Belize's retired persons' incentive program, foreigners who are over 45 years old and have a monthly income of at least US$2,000 are exempt from Belize's income tax.
Real estate is still very affordable in Belize; a person can buy a lot in a planned community in Belize's Cayo District for just US$25,000; a home with all the modern amenities can be built in such a community for just US$100,000
Belize has one of the world's most pleasant climates; the average low temperature in the nation is 75° Fahrenheit in January and the average high temperature is 80° Fahrenheit in July
Belize is a popular destination for yachting and water sports; in addition to 450 offshore islands and the Belize Barrier Reef, the country is a popular destination for scuba diving and deep sea fishing
Click on the tab below to read more General Information about Belize...
In-Depth Information about Belize
Belize is located on the Caribbean seaboard of Central America between Mexico and Guatemala. It has an area of approximately 9,000 square miles. The island is 174 miles at its longest point and 68 miles at its widest. Belmopan has been the capital of the country, since 1970.
Belize became a British colony in 1862 and by the early 1900's Belize had grown to nearly 40,000 inhabitants. A powerfully destructive hurricane hit the island in 1931 and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure hurting the economy so badly that the residents began to become politically frustrated, which led to a call for independence.
In 1954 England gave the residents of Belize voting rights which were extended to all adults, and by 1961, they agreed establish a timeframe to make Belize politically independent. In 1973, the colony's name was changed from British Honduras to Belize and on September 21, 1981, Belize's Independence was finally declared.
Belize is now a parliamentary democracy similar to Canada or the UK and is one of the most stable nations in Latin America. It has never suffered a military coup, a revolution, or guerrilla warfare. Queen Elizabeth II is Belize's head of state which is retained largely for ceremonial purposes with much of the powers being deferred to the Prime Minister and his/her cabinet that are made up of the dominant political party in Parliament.
Belize has a free and open economy system that has undergone a shift toward privatization of public industries. Belize’s government recently nationalized Belize Electric Limited (BEL), the nation's largest utility, and the telephone company, Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL).
Belize's economy is based on oil exports, fishing, agriculture, and tourism. There is a modern banking system and five large commercial banks that give customers access to all the modern financial and banking services.
There are several major commercial banks in the Belize, which offer a full range of domestic and offshore services. The local currency is the Belize dollar which is tied to the US dollar at an exchange rate of BZ$2.00=US$1.00.
There are excellent telecommunications: cell phone service, international cellular roaming service, high speed DSL, and full access to the Internet are widely available in Belize.
Airlines connect with major international routes through Miami, Houston and New Orleans. All major courier companies service Belize. Direct flights to Belize are available from several major U.S. cities, including Dallas, New York, Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles.
Language, Population and Culture
English is the official language of the country and all official documents and business transactions are conducted and written in English, as well as courts and government offices.
Though English is the official language, most people in Belize speak Spanish on a daily basis. The culture is mix of Spanish together with British influences coming in the form of political and economic institutions. Most residents of Belize are of mixed Maya and Spanish ancestry as well as a large minority of Creoles (mixed African and European heritage). Similarly, there is now a substantial North American expatriate community that has developed in recent years due to the of ease of immigration from the United States and Canada.
With a population of 334,297 inhabitants, Belize has the lowest population density in Central America. Though the country's population growth rate is 2% which is one of the highest in the western hemisphere and is the second highest in the region.
Belize's legal system guarantees and protects basic individual rights such as freedom of speech and religion. Although the country is politically stable, it has suffered from a high rate of violent crime and drug trafficking in recent years, which the government is seeking to address.
Exchange Control
There are no exchange controls for any and all offshore business, banking and financial related activities in Belize.
Type of Law
As a former British colony, Belize’s legal system as well as their contract and commercial law is based off of English Common Law, which is supplemented by local legislation. Similarly, the court system is also based off of the English style together with the final Court of Appeal being the Privy Council in England.
Principal Corporate Legislation
Offshore corporations in Belize are regulated under the International Business Companies Act of 1990, which was amended in 2000.
It normally takes one business day to incorporate an International Business Corporation (IBC) in Belize provided the name is available. There is no requirement to reveal beneficial ownership to government authorities, and no annual report is required, but companies are required to maintain a registered office in the country. Offshore business can be carried out in a tax-free environment though IBC’s cannot carry on business with residents of Belize or own local real estate. An IBC must have at least one shareholder and one director; though there is no requirement for these individuals to be residents.
An Belize based IBC is not required to pay any tax on all operations conducted outside the country. Though there is a Business Tax on any enterprise that earns more than US$75,000 a year, but this tax does not apply to IBCs if all income earned is generated outside the country.
Similarly, self-employed individuals that earn more than US$20,000 a year are subject to pay the Business Tax if that revenue comes from activities within Belize; however the Business Tax does not apply to all foreign sourced income.
All firms that generate income from business activities in Belize have to get a Certificate of Clearance from the Income Tax Department. The Certificate is not required for IBCs as long as the company’s business activities are offshore.
Belize Offshore Products from Offshore-Protection.com
Visit the pages below for more information and/or to set up Belize-based offshore businesses:
Belize International Business Company Formation
8,867 square mi (22,966km2)
340,844 (2014 estimate)
Belize dollar (BZD)
Unitary, parliamentary,
GDP (PPP) 2012 Estimate
US $2.999 billion
Per capita US $8,753
0.732 - high (84th)
IEF (2014)
57.3 (102nd)
CST (UTC−6)
Official Language
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Baseball Camps Home
Trojan Baseball
Prospect Showcase
Tiny Trojans
Youth Skills Camp
High School Hitting Camp
Travis Hergert
Facilities and Directions
Visit NIACC Baseball Site
Back to NIACC Sports Camps
Shawn Schlechter
Before he became a coach at NIACC, from 2010-12, Shawn played for the Trojans and attended NIACC to pursue a degree in Business Sports Management.
When done playing, Schlechter became a student assistant for the NIACC baseball program for the 2013 season. The 2013-14 season, Shawn became a full time assistant coach in the 2013-14 season.
Schlechter is in charge of the catchers and outfielders while also assisting with offense and recruiting.
During the 2010-2013 summers, Shawn coached Minnesota Legion baseball. He spent two summers assisting in his hometown of Burnsville, and the following two summers assisting in the city of Apple Valley. All four teams made State Tournament appearances.
Outside of coaching baseball, Shawn works in the Student Housing Division at NIACC.
Schlechter became the head baseball coach at Garner-Hayfield/Ventura in the 2016 season.
Will Arnold
Former Central Michigan standout Will Arnold joined the NIACC baseball coaching staff in the fall of 2016.
Arnold joined the Central Michigan staff as an undergraduate student assistant during the 2013 season and upon graduation was named the volunteer assistant. He worked with catchers and assisted with hitters at CMU.
During Arnold's time here he has helped six All-MAC players and one All-Region player, along with one draft pick (Pat MacKenzie).
A Mount Pleasant, Mich., native, Arnold was named Co-Mr. Baseball by the Michigan High School Coaches Association in 2008 following a star senior season for Mount Pleasant High School.
Over his final two seasons as a Chippewa he started 112 games and earned a spot on the All-MAC team in 2012 after leading the Chippewas in RBI, walks, putouts and fielding percentage. He led a pitching staff from behind the plate that had seven players drafted in those two years.
After his college career, Arnold played for the Washington Wildthings and the Road Warriors of the Frontier League in 2013. In 2014 he played for the Taos Blizzard of the Pecos League, before leaving to coach the USA Baseball's Tournament of Stars, which selects the best 18U players in the country to represent the USA in international games.
Arnold has also been the Head Coach of the CM Stars, a local 18u baseball team the last two years. He has led them to the Palomino World Series in California the past two years, to continue their streak of five straight appearances.
NIACC - Baseball Camps powered by My Online Camp
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Gulfport, Mississippi
2400 34th St., Gulfport, MS 39501
632 Time Saver Ave., Harahan, LA 70123
Gulfport, Mississippi Moving Companies
North American Van Lines: The Best of Gulfport Moving Companies
As the second largest city in Mississippi, Gulfport makes for a warm and exciting place to call home. Like its name suggests, it sits right on the Gulf of Mexico, boasting miles of beaches and lots of family-fun water sports. After sustaining heavy damage from Hurricane Katrina, Gulfport has been revitalized by its coastal attractions and U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet.
Gulfport has a population of approximately 70,000, according to the 2012 U.S. Census. If you move here, you’ll notice that the city also brings in thousands of tourists each year, who add to the adventurous atmosphere.
Located in the Deep South, Gulfport experiences a warm climate that residents rave about. Temperatures reach 90s in the summer and average 50s in the mild winter.
Activities and attractions in Gulfport
With the city’s size comes a spectrum of exciting activities. Embrace the 62 miles of stunning shoreline, including the largest man-made beach in the world (26 miles), take the kids jet skiing, or go aqua cycling with your friend. You can even rent a Catamaran for a day on the water. If you consider yourself an animal lover, be sure to check out the Institute for Marine Mammal Research.
Gulfport has a number land adventures as well. There are excellent museums, such as Alice Moseley Folk Art & Antique Museum and Bay St. Louis Mardi Gras Museum. Children have a blast at Lynn Meadows Discovery Center, where they’ll find a range of hands-on exhibits.
Throughout the year, Gulfport hosts several events, including the Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, Smokin’ the Sound, which is speedboat racing, and Cruisin’ the Coast, a week of displaying vintage cars.
Moving to Gulfport
When relocating to your new home in the Mississippi, let North American Van Lines do the heavy lifting. By choosing North American as your Gulfport moving company, you’ll have access to 2,700 drivers, 380 international agents and a long list of available services, including full-service packing, self-pack material sales and box and furniture inventory.
Conveniently for flyers, the nearest airport is Gulfport-Biloxi International, located only 6 miles away. If you’re driving, Gulfport sits just south of the intersection between Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 49.
The professionals at North American know how tough a transition to a new city can be, so don’t hesitate to contact an agent today.
Reviews from mississippi Customers
The crew who packed and loaded was outstanding, especially Charles who worked on both ends of the delivery process. Charles was exceptional.
Service Areas in mississippi
Ocean-Springs, mississippi
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This Man Is Attempting to Swim From Tokyo to San Francisco to Raise Awareness for Plastic Pollution
By Kelly Wang
A partnership between Seeker and Discovery has announced The Swim, a new expedition featuring long-distance swimmer Ben Lecomte. Ben Lecomte, the first man to swim across the Atlantic Ocean without a kickboard in 1998, will be embarking on this epic swim from Tokyo to San Francisco in just over a week, making this the first citizen science expedition of its kind.
The Swim, produced in association with Nomadica Films, will follow Ben as he sets off on his attempt to complete a 5,500-mile long swim across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to raise awareness of the impact of pollution on the health of our oceans. Seeker, the number one most-engaged science publisher on social media in the U.S., will follow this six-month journey broadcasting updates across multiple platforms with live video feed from the boat that will accompany the swimmer. Ben’s journey will be available to watch on Discovery GO in the form of short-form social videos, weekly Instagram Stories, and weekly TV swim updates on Discovery, culminating with a feature-length documentary in 2019.
Ben Lecomte and the crew will be working in collaboration with 27 scientific institutions, collecting over 1000 samples along the way to learn about the challenges faced by our oceans, interacting with 2500 students on a citizen science program with the Ocean Institute throughout the 180-day mission. Part of Ben’s journey will take him through The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic and other floating trash in a mass drift between Hawaii and California that now stretches some 600,000 square miles.
Ben Lecomte shared in a press statement: “the mission of my historic swim is to bring to light the current state of our oceans. The research we collect during ‘The Swim’ will ultimately help us better protect our oceans and I’m excited to partner with Seeker and Discovery to bring this expedition and our findings to the world.”
So why is this important? From the microbeads in some of our favorite cosmetic brands to the bottles, cans, bags, lids, and straws from our love affair with all things disposable, the amount of plastic dumped into our oceans is reaching a critical state. More than eight million tons of plastic are dumped into our oceans each year. Plastic has been found in the bodies of animals up to seven miles deep, highlighting that plastic dumping is not just an eyesore on the surface.
Plastic pollution is known to cause difficulties for numerous marine animals, most notably sea turtles, seals and sea lions, seabirds, fish, and whales and dolphins. But plastic disrupts more than just individual animals, unbalancing delicate marine ecosystems as well. Aquatic microorganisms are mistaking plastic particles for food, so the impact of plastic in our oceans starts at the very beginning of our food chains and threatens them all the way through. It’s estimated that around 700 different marine species are directly threatened with extinction due to our plastic waste – something none of us should take lightly.
Join us in wishing Ben luck for The Swim and be sure to tune in with Seeker and Discovery to see how he is doing!
To learn more about how you can help reduce the amount of plastic you produce, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign.
Image Source: The Swim
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Home � Disney World Discounts , Military Discounts � 2010 "Armed Forces Salute" Discount For The Military At The Walt Disney World Resort
2010 "Armed Forces Salute" Discount For The Military At The Walt Disney World Resort
For 2010 Disney has launched its "Armed Forces Salute" discount program for active and retired military personnel and their immediate families.
From Jan 3rd to Jul 31st active and retired military personnel or their spouses may purchase Disney’s 4-Day Military Promotional Base Tickets for $99, plus tax, for themselves and up to five additional family members or friends for use at Walt Disney World Resort.
All tickets are non-transferable and must be used by Sept. 30, 2010. Tickets are not valid for the following blockout dates: March 27, 2010, to April 9, 2010, for all Walt Disney World theme parks; and July 3 to July 4, 2010, for the Magic Kingdom park.
Active and Retired Military personnel can also qualify for Disney Resort Room Discounts of up to 40% off rack rates during the same timeframe and blockout dates.
To get the full set of details regarding Disney’s 4-Day Military Promotional Tickets, or to make room reservations, military personnel may call 407/939-7830 or participating U.S. military base ticket offices. Information is also available at www.disneyworld.com/military.
Tags: Disney World Discounts , Military Discounts
0 comments to "2010 "Armed Forces Salute" Discount For The Military At The Walt Disney World Resort"
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GYPSY Remake Is Back On Track With Amy Sherman-Palladino
February 08, 2019 / Christopher Peterson
One of Broadway's most beloved Golden Age masterpieces is heading back to the big screen via THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who is in final negotiations to take the reigns of a film reboot of GYPSY.
According to an exclusive report this week at Deadline, multiple Emmy Award winner Sherman-Palladino will direct a new feature film adaptation of the 1959 Broadway classic by Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. New Regency is set to finance, with Joel Silver attached to produce.
As recently as 2016, the Richard Lagravenese-penned script was on track to be produced starring Broadway/Hollywood legend Barbra Streisand in the central role of Madame Rose, with direction by Barry Levinson, but the project did not proceed as a result of STX Entertainment withdrawing as distributor and co-financier.
GYPSY was previously presented on the silver screen in an iteration starring Rosalind Russell in 1962, as well as a hit small screen adaptation headlined by recent Tony Award winner Bette Midler in 1993.
Further details are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
February 08, 2019 / Christopher Peterson/
Broadway, Film
Startup Building Industry-First ...
A High School in the Philippines is ...
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David Sarasohn: The Republican wave and the CIA torture report
By David Sarasohn | For The Oregonian/OregonLive
wyden.JPG
Sen. Ron Wyden speaks during a press conference at SolarWorld's Hillsboro location in October. Wyden has long sought the public release of the CIA's report on torture.
(Mark Graves/The Oregonian)
By David Sarasohn
In the Republican sweep that was the 2014 elections — at least outside Oregon — there may have been one winner who didn't hold an election night victory celebration.
The CIA.
Normally, of course, the CIA only competes in foreign elections.
But this time the CIA — and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, perhaps its most prominent and active critic in Congress — had a lot on the line.
Early this year, the Senate Intelligence Committee completed a 6,300-page report on CIA "enhanced interrogation" — sometimes described by less euphemistic observers as torture. According to multiple reports, the study concludes that the interrogation was both more brutal and less productive than the CIA has always claimed.
"Americans are going to be very disturbed and upset when they read it," said Wyden last week. "The fact that the CIA is pushing this so hard is a sign that they think the report is going to embarrass someone."
The report was supposed to be released shortly, as soon as the CIA and the Senate agree on certain "redactions" — editing to protect national security.
That was in the spring. Then the report was due to be released during the summer. In a rare effort, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough flew to California to negotiate redactions with Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has been more tolerant of the CIA than Wyden, but is standing firmer now. The Los Angeles Times recently stated the report would be out this month, but that's been said before.
This can all make you wonder about the attitude of the constitutional scholar who is currently president, for whom the CIA reportedly works. On that subject, Wyden will say only that he's spoken with the president on the issue a number of times.
"The main question, what's so important, is whether the unprecedented demands of the CIA will be accepted," said Wyden. The redactions the agency wants, he declares, are "just ludicrous."
Still, the report has not appeared, and now there's another urgency.
"I think it needs to happen," said Wyden, "before we get out this year."
At the end of this year, control of the Senate shifts to the Republicans. The chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee goes to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who has been called the CIA's best friend in the Senate. On the issue of transparency of the intelligence operation, Burr has said, "I personally don't believe that anything that ever goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly."
Burr has declared that the killing of Osama bin Laden was partly due to information acquired from enhanced interrogation, although other sources, and possibly the unreleased report, reject that claim.
As of January, negotiations between the Senate and the CIA about what should and shouldn't be made public are likely to be very different.
Wyden's decade-long campaign against secrecy, surveillance and enhanced interrogation took another blow Election Day: His closest ally on the issue, Mark Udall of Colorado, was defeated for re-election. The loss is considerable, said Wyden; "I feel much as I did when Russell Feingold (the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act) left the Senate."
Still, Wyden says he won't be alone; he says his aims are also supported by some younger senators, such as his re-elected junior colleague from Oregon, Jeff Merkley, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.
Yet Udall's defeat actually opens up a possibility. In the seven weeks he remains a senator, with literally nothing to lose, Udall can with immunity place anything he wants in the Congressional Record — such as the complete, unredacted version of the Intelligence Committee report.
This idea came up as soon as Udall was declared defeated. Thursday, Udall told The Denver Post that he would "keep all options on the table," and that "trying to run out the clock ... is not an option. The truth will come out."
Wyden has pursued the issue as a senator in the minority during most of the George W. Bush administration, and starting in January, will do so again. But the material in the Senate Intelligence Committee report, about what the United States did — and what it did or didn't get out of it — could change the discussion significantly. And the time for its being released might be running out.
"The whole point of this is that this not happen again," said Wyden. "You need to have a public accounting."
Otherwise, the whole idea of congressional and public oversight of what's done in the name of the United States name could end up being redacted.
David Sarasohn's column appears on Wednesdays and Sundays. He blogs at davidsarasohn@blogspot.com and can be reached at davidsarasohn50@gmail.com.
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Decision No. 838-A-1993
APPLICATION by Pelican Narrows Air Services Ltd. for suspension of Licence No. 900063 in respect of the authority to use fixed wing aircraft in Group B.
File No. M4205/P124-4-1
Docket No. 931606
Pelican Narrows Air Services Ltd. (hereinafter the Licensee) has applied to the National Transportation Agency for the suspension set out in the title. The application was received on November 22, 1993.
Under Licence No. 900063, the Licensee is authorized to operate a Class 4 Charter domestic service using fixed wing aircraft in Groups A and B, from a base at Pelican Narrows, Saskatchewan.
The Agency has reviewed the application and considers it appropriate to suspend Licence No. 900063 in respect of the authority to use fixed wing aircraft in Group B.
Licence No. 900063 in respect of the authority to use fixed wing aircraft in Group B is hereby suspended pursuant to subsection 75(2) of the National Transportation Act, 1987, R.S.C., 1985, c. 28 (3rd Supp.) (hereinafter the NTA, 1987).
To reinstate the suspended service, the Licensee is hereby required to file an application by no later than December 2, 1994. When the Agency is satisfied, based upon material on file or from information specifically requested from the Licensee, that the Licensee is Canadian, holds a Canadian aviation document (operating certificate) and has filed a valid certificate of insurance, the Agency shall reinstate that portion of the licence which is suspended.
With respect to the request to suspend the service until spring of 1994, the Licensee may file an application whenever it is willing and able to reinstate the service.
Alternatively, if no application is filed, the Licensee is required to show cause, by no later than December 2, 1994, why its licence in respect of the authority to use fixed wing aircraft in Group B should not be cancelled pursuant to subsection 75(1) of the NTA, 1987, as failure to meet any of the above requirements would give reasonable grounds to the Agency to believe that, in respect of the service using fixed wing aircraft in Group B authorized under Licence No. 900063, the Licensee ceases to have the qualifications necessary for the issuance of the licence and/or has contravened section 98 of the NTA, 1987.
This Decision shall form part of Licence No. 900063 and shall remain affixed thereto as long as the said Decision is in force.
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Tower of Barracuda, Malaysia, 2009
There is a large resident school of barracuda near Sipadan Island, Malaysia.These wonderfully social creatures form large schools during the daylight hours as a defense against predators that dissolve at dusk when they leave to hunt. They often choose different objects to encircle and swim slowly around. I watched as the school formed a carousel around a diver above me. The barracuda made a few turns around the diver and then began to flow like a living river back to toward the coral reef. As I was photographing, I began to see patterns emerge like free form sculpture. Some people see a question mark, others see an exclamation point, I see a world of weightless geometry.”
Location: Sipadan Island, Malaysia
David Doubilet was only nine years old when he first looked underwater with a mask. Almost sixty years after that eureka moment, he is the doyenne of ocean photography, a master craftsman who combines technology and art to create extravagantly beautiful photographs of coral reefs, shipwrecks, and sharks that make us see the ocean in a new way.
With more than 70 stories under his belt, Doubilet is also the most published photographer in National Geographic; a member of the Society’s Pristine Seas project; and the recipient of numerous awards, including “Picture of The Year” and the prestigious Lennart Nilsson Prize.
Speaking from New York, shortly after getting back from the Arctic, he describes how a picture of the Earth from space inspired him to take his camera underwater; why shooting pictures of fish is like being a paparazzi; and how he tries to combine art and environmentalism to make us care about the ocean and the threat from global warming.
Tell us a bit about your early life and how you got into underwater photography.
I was nine years old, and as New York City children, we were always sent to summer camp in the Adirondacks. I hated it. I had asthma. I didn’t want to climb mountains. I didn’t like riding or archery. So they sent me down to the lake, where these two fearsome, 14 year-old counselors said to me, “Go under the dock and clean out some of the branches,” knowing full well that there was a giant spider down there called a dock spider that was the size of a butter plate. They figured that would scare the hell out of me and be a bit of fun for them. They gave me a blue, French squale mask, which I molded to my face. Then I put my head underwater—and my life changed.
I was transfixed by the way the light curved, the green of the water, the dancing light rays across the green algae. I went back to our summer home in New Jersey and began to dive there. I had a pair of green “Frankie-the-Frogman” fins, my blue squale mask, and a snorkel with a mouthpiece made of something resembling cast iron. My father, who was a surgeon in New York, brought back an anaesthesiologist’s bag from the hospital, and we made an underwater camera with an old mask and a Brownie Hawkeye camera, which you could manipulate through the walls of the bag. The initial pictures I made were beyond abstract. But I was in heaven.
In The Silent World, a book I basically injected it into my head under the covers at night in New York, Cousteau wrote a wonderful piece about his first vision underwater, very much like my dock moment in the Adirondacks. He was at a beach near Toulon, France. He didn’t want to dive. He had no interest in the water. Then he put his face underwater and “civilization vanished with one last bow.”
The way water transforms terrestrial vision has powered me through my life. Once you go below the surface, that thin molecular curtain dividing land and water vanishes and [things are] imbued with a light that behaves like no other light on the planet.
Talk a bit about your artistic process and the kind of gear you use.
These days it’s the product of an incredible digital revolution. Between the Brownie Hawkeye and the digital camera was a time of great experimentation for me. At Nat Geo, I started with a story on garden eels that was done with a remote camera. I began to develop a photographic language that translated into underwater journalism. I was the inheritor of the work of Bates Littlehales, who developed the ocean-eye camera, and Louis Marden. It was a way of bringing the underwater world into people’s minds and opening their eyes to the sea.
The difference between underwater photography and journalism is that [in the former,] you have to make a picture that not only tells a story, but also transcends the basic needs of journalism. It has to go into the realm of art to open people’s minds. To make the kind of pictures I want, in a world where most things are smaller than your hand and you can’t see more than 100 feet usually, it’s like trying to do a story on London in perpetual fog and never seeing the buildings. That’s what shooting that underwater is—living in a bubble 100 feet in diameter, at best.
You also have a very short time, especially if you go deep because you have to decompress. A lot of stories I’ve done, I’ve had 15 minutes a day in front of a subject. You can’t repeat the dive and it can take all day to get that 15 minutes, everything from carting a tank to maintaining the camera and getting to the dive site.
You’re basically a swimming studio. You have a camera in an underwater housing about the size of a small microwave; two lights, sometimes three. You re like paparazzi. You have to craft light around the subject and the subject is constantly moving. Unlike celebrities, though, fish don’t want to have their picture taken. I have a million pictures of fish heading south, showing their rear ends and fins. [Laughs] It’s like trying to shoot sports photography at night, with a flash. There’s no comparison to any other photographic milieu.
What inspires you in your work, David?
Number one, this is an entirely new world: a world that, photographically, is 70 years old, from the time Cousteau invented the aqualung and people began to breathe and swim underwater and take the time to look around. It’s also a world where life is not only infinite but also very finite. The most inspirational picture that opened my eyes and, I hope, the world’s eyes, was not an underwater picture but the photo by former Commander William Anderson called “Earth Rise,” taken on Apollo 8 as they went around the side of the moon on Christmas Eve, 1969. He looked out this tiny window and there was a sliver of moon. Rising like another moon was the Earth, blue and perfect, like a sapphire against the velvet background of space. That picture is the grandest portrait of humanity and the place where we live. It’s blue because it is mostly water.
Today, the planet is heating up due to global climate change. My wife, Jennifer, and I just got back from the Arctic on an expedition called Artists for the Arctic. We saw the shrinking Arctic Ocean, where polar bears are starving. The other front, of course, is the tropics. The most complex of all environments and certainly the most visually varied, with the highest biodiversity, is the coral reef. All that has a lot of threats going forward: rising sea level and temperature; and acidification of the ocean, which very much affects the polyp, this tiny creature the size of an infant’s fingernail that constructs its calcium carbonate house. In an acidic ocean, it’s not going to be able to do that. So, we’re looking at a world that’s rapidly changing but we’re only just beginning to learn what that world is about. That’s what drives me. It’s a combination of being an environmentalist; and light and art. Our main desire is to open people’s eyes to the sea.
Angelita, Mexico, 2012
Fabrice Guerin
Mermaid, Japan, 2018
Reiko Takahashi
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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/europe/greenland/pictures-national-kayaking-championship-heritage.html
Photograph by Kiliii Yuyan
Colorful, Danish-influenced architecture peppers the landscape in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.
TravelPicture Stories
How Greenlanders preserve their heritage through kayaking
After centuries of colonization, Greenlanders are returning to their Inuit roots as they forge a new national identity.
By Abby Sewell
Cloaked in sealskin suits, a flock of kayakers cuts across a steely expanse of frigid water. A close observer might catch signs of modernity in the vessels’ construction and the kayakers’ attire, but from a distance, the image appears timeless.
The world’s largest island, Greenland is a territory of Denmark, with its own government and a large degree of autonomy from the kingdom. Since Greenlanders voted for self-rule in 1979, they have been striving to forge a post-colonial identity. The signs of Danish influence endure, from the Scandinavian-style buildings painted in bold primary colors to the movement from a subsistence economy to a modern market system. But it also includes a revival of one of the most important aspects of the island’s Inuit legacy: the kayak.
Kayaks were once essential to the Inuit people of this region, who used them to hunt seals and other sea mammals for sustenance. Today, the kayak is a symbol of national identity in a modern nation seeking to preserve its heritage, displayed through the annual Greenland National Kayaking Championship.
The kayak is believed to have migrated eastward from Russia and across North America, reaching Greenland as many as 4,000 years ago. There, the locals developed their own style of vessels— constructed from driftwood and sealskin—and their own method of piloting them.
Greenland’s kayakers are particularly known for their proficiency in “rolling” a capsized vessel to emerge once again upright on the water. One of their essential tools is the tuilik, a dry suit made of sealskin that seals around the face and wrists and around the opening of the kayak to prevent water from seeping in.
“Greenland kayaking is very important because it’s considered the origin of modern kayaking,” says Christopher Crowhurst, president of Qajaq USA, the American chapter of the Greenland Kayak Association.
In the mid-20th century, British kayaking enthusiast Ken Taylor brought back a kayak from Greenland that became the model for a new generation of sea kayaks. The new commercially produced kayaks were made from fiberglass but incorporated many of the traditional design elements.
As the popularity of Greenland kayaking spread abroad, Greenlanders themselves organized to revive and preserve the sport at home. In 1984, a group of young Greenlanders formed Qaannat Kattuffiat, a national kayaking association with chapters in villages and towns throughout the territory. The association organizes a national championship competition each year that draws kayakers from around the island and abroad. Enthusiasts take to the seas in vessels made the traditional way, each one handcrafted to fit the body of the owner.
A fin whale swims off the coast of Greenland, where summer is prime whale watching season.
This year, photographer Kiliii Yuyan, documented the championship. A traditional kayak builder of Nanai (Siberian native) heritage, Yuyan has traveled extensively in Arctic regions and curious to visit Greenland for years.
“It was interesting to see how well they’ve really brought back their heritage, their Inuit history, into the sort of globalized modern life that they live now,” he says. “Kayaking is not only a national sport. In a lot of ways, it’s one of the primary symbols of Greenland—a sense of national identity through kayaking.”
How to visit: The National Kayaking Championships are held in a different town every year. The capital is worth a visit year-round—walk through the charming old harbor, visit Greenland’s National Museum, and learn more about Inuit culture at the Nuuk Art Museum.
A large iceberg with an arch serves as a temporary tourist attraction in Ilulissat ice fjord. The red sailboat seen here belongs to a local guide, who adds visual interest to tourist photographs.
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Penshaw Monument
Climb Penshaw Hill for brilliant views National Trust Images / John Millar
Stunning views from this 70-foot high monument
Visitors at Penshaw Monument, Sunderland, a Doric temple commemorating the 1st Earl of Durham, Governor-General of Canada. National Trust Images / John Millar
Tours to the top
Every weekend and bank holiday from 6 April to 29 September, we open the spiral staircase for special 'tours to the top'. How do you get there? Come and find out...
More things to do at Penshaw
Discover Penshaw Monument
This grand monument was built in 1844 in memory of John George Lambton, the first Earl of Durham. At 30 metres (98 ft) long, 16 metres (52 ft) wide and 20 metres (66 ft) high, it is rather impressive and well worth a visit. You can enjoy far-reaching views and some peace and quiet.
Walk in Penshaw Woods
Explore Penshaw Wood where, among the trees, you can leave the hustle and bustle of daily life behind. Its a great place to explore whether you're alone with your thoughts, walking your dog, enjoying a family outing or discovering wildlife.
Tour to the Top 2019 - 20th/21st July and 27th/28th July
+ 3 other dates
+ other times
Enjoy the magnificent views of the North East from the top of Penshaw Monument, climbing up through the secret staircase.
Tours to the Top - 3rd and 4th Aug 2019
+ 1 other date
Enjoy the magnificent views of the North East from the top of Penshaw Monument, climbing to the top through the secret staircase.
Manor house associated with the family of George Washington, first president of the USA
Durham Coast
County Durham's coastline has emerged from a polluted industrial past to become a haven for wildlife
Souter Lighthouse and The Leas
A marvel of its age
A Georgian landscape garden forged in an industrial past
Seaton Delaval Hall
A place of great theatre and drama
George Stephenson's Birthplace
Birthplace of the world-famous railway engineer
Keep up to date with the latest news on facebook
Free car parking available off Chester Road (A183)
Toilet facilities available in nearby Harrington Country Park
Dogs welcome. Please keep on a lead when stock is grazing
Monument roof top open seasonally to pre-booked visitors
Access to monument roof top by steep spiral staircase
3.3 foot (1m) minimum height requirement for roof top visits
On top of Penshaw Hill sits the Earl of Durham's Monument.
Better known as the Penshaw Monument, this 70 foot high monument is a replica of the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens and can be seen for miles around. It is considered to be Wearside's most beloved landmark, even appearing on the badge of Sunderland Football Club.
penshaw.monument@nationaltrust.org.uk
Chester Road, Penshaw, Tyne & Wear, DH4 7NJ
See Sustrans website for local cycle routes
Penshaw Monument is a short walk from Penshaw village
Chester-le-Street 5 miles
On the A183, one mile from the A19
Parking: Limited parking is available at the bottom of Penshaw Hill. There is further parking nearby at Herrington Country Park
A number of buses stop at or near the base of Penshaw Hill, including the 2, 2A and 78. Please be aware bus routes will vary.
Tour prices, per person
Adult N/A £5.00
Child N/A £5.00
Tours to the Top Free to NT members. £5.00 for non members.
Countryside Dawn to dusk
Monument tours Closed
Monument tours 10:00 - 17:00
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Chesterfield high school student rewarded for license plate design
One of the license plates being considered.
By Brian Tynes | March 14, 2018 at 11:11 AM EDT - Updated August 14 at 8:40 AM
CHESTERFIELD, VA (WWBT) - A student from Chesterfield County will be honored Thursday for his design of a new Virginia license plate.
Nick Short's design of an anti-distracted driving license plate is one of eight proposals currently being voted on.
The Department of Motor Vehicles and AAA partnered for the Take Action Against Distraction campaign.
Short, a student at Lloyd C. Bird High School and Chesterfield Career and Technical Center, will be awarded $300 Thursday at 9 a.m. for being a finalist in the competition.
Voting on the designs continues online through March 20.
Copyright 2018 WWBT NBC12. All rights reserved.
Digital Content Producer
Brian Tynes is a digital producer for NBC12. He is originally from Jackson, MS, and graduated with a degree in journalism from Louisiana Tech University in 2005.
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Massive Fire Guts Dallas' Landmark Ambassador Hotel
115-year-old building was being renovated into residences with shops, restaurants and a rooftop pool
Published May 28, 2019 at 12:46 PM | Updated at 1:35 PM EDT on May 29, 2019
Cleanup Continues Day After Fire at Dallas Hotel
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/national-international/Fire-at-Ambassador-Hotel-in-Dallas-510500241.html
The cleanup continues Wednesday morning for crews at the site of the former Ambassador Hotel in Dallas. (Published Wednesday, May 29, 2019)
Dallas' landmark Ambassador Hotel is no more, consumed first by flames Tuesday morning before the remaining shell was brought down by a wrecking ball that night.
Firefighters with Dallas Fire-Rescue arrived at the former luxury hotel at 1312 South Ervay Street at about 1:30 a.m. to find the six-story building engulfed in flames.
As plumes of thick smoke billowed over Interstate 30 blinding drivers well before dawn Tuesday, more than 100 firefighters attacked the inferno in the dark.
DFR used multiple ladder pipes, engine master streams and ground lines to try to put the fire out, but the flames were too strong and moved too quickly to be contained. I'm in shock. Brokenhearted. Disappointed.Jim Lane, Ambassador developer
The building collapsed in stages, Dallas Fire-Rescue said, leaving behind just a shell of the facade that was too dangerous to leave standing. A wrecking ball was brought in Tuesday afternoon to knock down the remaining portions of the walls.
Only a caretaker, living in a trailer on site, was at the property when the fire started. The man told NBC 5 someone knocked on the door of his trailer at 1:05 a.m. and told him to get out. He said he walked outside, saw the flames, grabbed his dog and ran. No injuries were reported.
The six-story hotel was undergoing renovations first begun in 2017 to add residences, shops, restaurants, a swimming pool and a speakeasy bar. NBC 5's Ken Kalthoff toured the building in 2017, shooting several 360-degree videos of the rooms, rooftop and entry prior to renovation. See the tours here.
The damage was so extensive that investigators said they may never be able to determine what sparked the fire.
Embers from the fire started a secondary fire on the roof of a nearby building on Harwood Street. Firefighters were able to quickly put out that fire.
Several roads in the immediate area of the hotel were closed after the fire. As of Wednesday, those included Gano Street, Bellview Street, Browder Street, Griffin Street and Blakeney Street.
Roads closed in Dallas due to Ambassador Hotel Fire. #DFWTraffic@nbcdfwpic.twitter.com/FIYQLmJQI5
— Samantha Davies (@SDaviesNBC5) May 29, 2019
Ambassador's History
A local architect designed and built the Ambassador Hotel, originally the Majestic Hotel and later the Park Hotel, in 1904 in Dallas' Cedars neighborhood. The hotel took its current name in 1932, after a major renovation to the building’s exterior, according to a landmark designation report. During it's heyday, it hosted three United States presidents -- Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson. In the 1950s the building was converted to a residential retirement hotel and in 1965 it received it's designation as a Texas State Landmark. In 1981 it was sold and the new owner returned the building to its former elegance as a hotel. In 1993 it was again sold with the new owner's intent on establishing the Institute in Basic Life Principles -- a home to help troubled Dallas youth.
On April 4, 2019, the building, which sits adjacent to Dallas Heritage Village, was added to the National Register of Historic Places after being nominated by the Texas Historical Commission.
Developer Jim Lake, who has been working on the project, said he was "in shock, brokenhearted and disappointed" after losing the building and that they had recently received approval to change the street configuration around the building, which was one of the holdups with the project.
Lake said Tuesday he would start over on a new project on the property. It would still bare the name Ambassador and he'd try to reuse as many salvageable building materials as possible, but it will not be the Ambassador Hotel built in 1904.
"You can't recreate history. History is history. It will never be reclaimed," Lake said. "We can tell the story in whatever comes next."
Remembering the Ambassador
Many people who either lived in the area or once had a personal connection to the building came out to see the damage for themselves Tuesday afternoon.
It's really sad. There's so much history in that building.Joel Christopherson
Joel Christopherson, who said he worked as a volunteer at the Ambassador when he was a teenager, recalled the basement, in particular, which was once used as a speakeasy.
"There's an old tunnel in the basement where there was gambling," he said. "They would run across the street and go to the stables to get away from police."
Those old stables have since been renovated into the tap room of the neighboring Four Corners Brewery.
"I like the fact that we actually still have a piece of the Ambassador sitting right here on our property," said Four Corners Owner Steve Porcari.
The promise of a new life for that landmark at the edge of the downtown skyline was driving much of the revitalization energy in the surrounding Cedars neighborhood. City leaders know it's a loss.
"You lose that potential that could've been there," said Mark Doty, Dallas' Chief Planner Historic Presevation Officer. "If we had had that building restored what maybe that could've done to the neighborhood around it."
The surrounding business owners are still committed to moving forward. But they'll do it with a hole in the very history they're trying to save.
"I think everything will be OK," Porcari said. "It's just, it was such a cool building. It's hard to see it go."
NBC 5'S Eline de Bruijn, Tim Ciesco, Alice Barr, Maria Guerrero and Frank Heinz contributed to this report.
Flames consumed Dallas' historic Ambassador Hotel early Tuesday morning, leaving behind only a shell of the 115-year-old landmark building.
(Published Tuesday, May 28, 2019)
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Gallery Place "Mosquito" Swatted Down
Device pulled after age discrimination complaints
By P.J. Orvetti
Published Oct 4, 2010 at 9:44 AM | Updated at 11:49 AM EDT on Oct 4, 2010
Receive the latest local updates in your inbox
“The Mosquito” is dead.
Dave Moss was passing through the Gallery Place Metro station last month when he heard what he called “a constant, dull but annoying, high-pitched series of beeps.” The sound was coming from a device installed at the station to much fanfare earlier this year by Moving Sound Technologies.
The device emits an irritating tone set at 17.5 kilohertz, which only people between the ages of 13 and 25 should be able to hear. At the time of installation, the company’s president told the Washington Post, “The bottom line is that the Mosquito is installed where 13- to 25-year-olds aren't supposed to be. Adults just walk through the sound.”
Besides his odd notion of when adulthood begins -- 25-year-olds are military officers and can be elected to Congress -- his follow-up comment was even stranger. The device was popular with skateboard parks, tennis courts, and playgrounds -- all spots where one would expect to find teenagers and young adults.
Moss, however, does not even fit the intended age range. He’s 28. He said of the sound, “Its purpose is to make you feel agitated and leave the area.”
Moss, and members of the National Youth Rights Association, filed a complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights, alleging age discrimination. The city agency asked Moving Sound Technologies to voluntarily remove the Mosquito pending the conclusion of its investigation. The company pulled it out, and has no current plans to put it back.
“I think that in many ways society is going in reverse on how we deal with our young people,” Moss said. “It used to be ‘seen and not heard,’ then it was not seen and not heard, and now it seems to be not seen, not heard and must endure sonic warfare if they try to go outside.”
Moss said even the name of the device “literally implies that young people are pests.”
Hal Levy of the youth rights group said, “The Gallery Place Mosquito was especially outrageous because it attacked a busy Metro station.” He works near Gallery Place and uses the station often. “Thankfully, D.C. law recognizes that it's vital to treat people of all ages equally.”
Moss agreed. He said, “I encourage young people to remember that if you think you're being discriminated against, then there's a good chance that you are and that you can probably do something about it.”
Follow P.J. Orvetti on Twitter at @PJOinDC
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Adv Enzyme Regul. 2011;51(1):13-25. doi: 10.1016/j.advenzreg.2010.09.008. Epub 2010 Oct 28.
Diphosphoinositol polyphosphates: what are the mechanisms?
Shears SB1, Gokhale NA, Wang H, Zaremba A.
Inositol Signaling Group, Laboratory of Signal Transduction, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH, DHHS, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA. Shears@niehs.nih.gov
In countries where adulthood is considered to be attained at age eighteen, 2011 can be the point at which the diphosphoinositol polyphosphates might formally be described as "coming of age", since these molecules were first fully defined in 1993 (Menniti et al., 1993; Stephens et al., 1993b). But from a biological perspective, these polyphosphates cannot quite be considered to have matured into the status of being independently-acting intracellular signals. This review has discussed several of the published proposals for mechanisms by which the diphosphoinositol polyphosphates might act. We have argued that all of these hypotheses need further development.We also still do not know a single molecular mechanism by which a change in the levels of a particular diphosphoinositol polyphosphate can be controlled. Yet, despite all these gaps in our understanding, there is an enduring anticipation that these molecules have great potential in the signaling field. Reflecting our expectations of all teenagers, it should be our earnest hope that in the near future the diphosphoinositol polyphosphates will finally grow up.
10.1016/j.advenzreg.2010.09.008
Synthesis of diphosphoinositol polyphosphates
These metabolic reactions account for the synthesis of diphosphoinositol polyphosphates in both yeasts and mammalian cells. In the abbreviations of the chemical structures, “Ins” indicates the myo-inositol skeleton. The number of monophosphates around the inositol ring is denoted as a suffix after the ‘P’. The prefixes denote the number of diphosphates (PP). The schematic shows reactions catalyzed by the IP5K (also known as IPK1; black arrow), the IP6Ks (green arrows), and the Vip1/PPIP5Ks (blue arrows). The position of the diphosphate at the 1-position is an arbitrary choice between the two available options, namely, the 1- and 3-positions (see text for details). So as to simplify the figure, the reactions catalyzed by the DIPP phosphatases are not shown.
Adv Enzyme Regul. ;51(1):13-25.
Evidence that diphosphoinositol polyphosphates transphosphorylate proteins in intact cells?
The graphic depicts one particular site on AP3B1 (colored blue) that, in vivo, casein kinase II can mono-phosphorylate, thereby priming it to be transphosphorylated by PP-InsP5 (AP3B1 has other potential phosphorylation sites () that are not illustrated here). Panel a illustrates that Azevedo et al., () heterologously expressed AP3B1 in a kcs1Δ strain of S. cerevisiae. The protein was then extracted and incubated with [32P]PP-InsP5 in vitro (“assay input”). The [32P] (colored red) was transferred from PP-InsP5 to AP3B1 (“assay output”) which can only have occurred if AP3B1 were to have already been mono-phosphorylated by casein kinase II in vivo. Panels b, c depict two alternative explanations for the outcome of separate experiments in which AP3B1 was expressed in either wild-type or vip1Δ S. cerevisiae, which respectively contain either normal or elevated levels of PP-InsP5. AP3B1 was then extracted and incubated with [32P]PP-InsP5 in vitro (“assay input”). Little or no [32P] was transferred from [32P]PP-InsP5 to AP3B1 (“assay output”). There are two explanations for that result. Either (panel b) the AP3B1 was already transphosphorylated (colored black) in vivo, as argued by Azevedo et al., (), or (panel c) as we alternately propose, the AP3B1 may not have been monophosphorylated by casein kinase II in vivo. The data do not distinguish between these two possibilities.
Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural
Inositol Phosphates/chemistry
Inositol Phosphates/metabolism*
Signal Transduction/physiology
Inositol Phosphates
ZIA ES080046-24/NULL/Intramural NIH HHS/United States
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2.2.2 A second diagram
This first representation can be developed in the way shown in Figure 11.
4.2 Stakeholder analysis
Figure 3 illustrates the range of stakeholders who could have an interest in health-related community social marketing programmes.
3.5 Consumer behaviour models
Many theorists have developed models of consumer behaviour. Some of these focus on the factors which influence behaviour (such as the model in Figure 1). Others emphasise the stages which consumers go through as they make their decisions to engage in a particular behaviour. Many adopt the ‘belief–feeling–behavioural intentio
The theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour
The extended Fishbein model, based on the theory of reasoned action, includes the following components to explain behaviour.
Attitude to the behaviour comprising:
a. The strength of the expectancy (beliefs) that the act will be followed by a consequence.
b. The value of that consequence to the individual.
This is the basic expectancy value approach. Returning to our previo
3.4 The importance of understanding attitudes
One of the most important phenomena for a social marketer to understand is that of ‘attitudes’. Having said this, this is not a straightforward issue as there is much disagreement about the nature of attitudes, how they are formed, and how they determine our behaviour. Attitude theory research is a key focus for consumer behaviour theorists and derives from the field of psychology.
There are many definitions of attitude, for example, ‘the predisposition of the individual to evalua
3.3 The importance of understanding motivation
Personal characteristics in Figure 1 combine both psychological and personal factors. Two important factors which drive behaviour are motivation and attitudes.
MacFadyen et al. (1998) (see Author(s): The Open University
3.2 The factors which influence consumer behaviour
A large number of factors influence our behaviour. Kotler and Armstrong (2008) classify these as:
Psychological (motivation, perception, learning, beliefs and attitudes)
Personal (age and life-cycle stage, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality and self concept)
Social (reference groups, family, roles and status)
Cultural (culture, subculture, social
Andraesen (1995) states that for the social marketer ‘consumer behaviour is the bottom line’ (p. 14). In order to understand how to develop programmes that will bring about behavioural change we need to understand something about the nature of behaviour. The consumer behaviour literature typically borrows from the fields of sociology, psychology and social anthropology amongst others. There is a vast, and growing, body of knowledge on the subject and a few of the main elements will be dis
2.4 Reasons against social marketing
Arguments against the use of social marketing can be based on the following:
Cost – Social marketing programmes can cost considerable amounts of money. Criticisms of these expenditures are heightened as they are often financed by public money in times of resource constraints and therefore have a high opportunity cost. A related issue is that of the problems involved in assessing the success of these programmes. The long term nature of behavi
2.3 Reasons for social marketing
Your thoughts should already have suggested reasons why social marketing can be an effective approach to dealing with social problems and issues. We will now consider some of these and also arguments against the use of marketing within this context. Three key reasons for adopting a social marketing approach are:
The power of marketing – The power of marketing principles and techniques in the hands of the commercial sector cannot be denied. M
2.2 So how can social marketing be defined?
The definition offered by Kotler, Roberto and Lee (2002, p. 5) is a useful one:
The use of marketing principles and techniques to influence a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, modify or abandon a behaviour for the benefit of individuals, groups or society as a whole.
Social marketing relies on voluntary compliance rather than legal, economic or coercive forms of influence.
2.1 Definitions of marketing
Before we focus on ‘social marketing’ we should clarify the nature of ‘marketing’ as both an academic discipline and a management practice.
Kotler and Armstrong (2008, p. 5) define marketing as follows:
Marketing is human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes.
Two key issues are highlighted by this definition:
1 Course overview
Never before have social issues been more at the centre of public and private debate than at the present. From concerns about sustainability and the future of the planet to the introduction of smoking bans, from actions to combat ‘binge drinking’ and childhood obesity to programmes designed to prevent the spread of AIDS in developing countries, there is a growing recognition that social marketing has a role to play in achieving a wide range of social goals. In the UK, for example, the Nat
After studying this course, you should be able to:
describe and explain the meaning and nature of social marketing
analyse social marketing problems and suggest ways of solving these
recognise the range of stakeholders involved in social marketing programmes and their role as target markets
assess the role of branding, social advertising and other communications in achieving behavioural change.
Course image: Author(s): The Open University
Anderson, E.S., Grude, K., Haug, T. and Turner, J.R. (1990) Goal directed project management, London, Kogan Page.
Anthony, R.N., and Young, D.W. (1999) Management Control in Non-profit Organizations, 6th edn, Boston, MA, Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
Elbeik, S. and Thomas, M. (1998) Project Skills, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.
There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to
This course has focused on planning a project. At this stage you may find it useful to recap on the learning objectives introduced at the beginning of the course and to think about some of the issues associated with them.
You should now be able to develop plans with relevant people to achieve the project's goals. This will involve identifying and finding ways of including the appropriate people in the project.
You should be abl
8 Drawing up the implementation plan
Once the detailed planning and risk assessments have been carried out, you are ready to assemble your implementation plan. A typical implementation plan, including diagrams and charts where appropriate, will contain:
a description of the background to the project;
its goals and objectives in terms of intended outputs and/or outcomes;
the resource implications (budget, personnel – including any training requirements – a
7.7 Planning for quality
Having considered estimating for time and for costs, the third dimension of projects – quality needs to be considered. The need to achieve a particular level of quality may mean that more time must be spent completing certain tasks or that more resources must be made available for a particular purpose. Once the time and cost estimates have been made, review them to ensure that this estimate will allow an outcome of the right quality.
Many organisations have corporate quality assurance
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Triangle Midsegment Properties
This video explains how a midsegment is the line segment connecting the midpoints of two sides of a triangle. Since a triangle has three sides, each triangle has three midsegments. A triangle midsegment is parallel to the third side of the triangle and is half of the length of the third side. Another important set of polygon midsegment properties to be familiar with are trapezoid midsegment properties. (2:01)
Where Does Affordable Housing Money Come From? Understanding the flow of investment in City Heights
With inflation outpacing wage increases along with the economic downturn in recent years, the need and demand for affordable housing units has skyrocketed. In the last decade development firms have increasingly tried to provide affordable housing units, but the obstacle is how much funding and incentives do they receive for these types of units? This proposal analyzed the affordable housing situation in City Heights by looking at the sources of funding for affordable housing developments, how i
Learn with Pictures and Video S4 #9 - Japanese Expressions and Words for the Classroom 2
Walking into a Japanese classroom for the first time is a bit scary, especially if you’re the teacher and aren’t from Japan! For your job, you have to train some colleagues in Japanese on what you do best, but it won’t be productive if you can’t understand their questions. You can only hope you’ll be [...]
Soil "MovieTrailer"
Many of my students don't get really excited for our Soil Lesson, so I made a movie Trailer to hopefully get them a little more excited before we actually start the lesson.
Thanks to the Luck Stone Boscobel Plant for my tour of their rock quarry! I had an awesome time!
Thanks to the Young Scientist for the awesome lesson on soil. My kids loved making the layers of soil on your notecards!
Grammatica werkbladen
Je vindt hier de grammaticale Uitleg en Oefeningen bij:
toekomende tijd;
voltooid tegenwoordige;
vergelijkende en overtreffende trap;
aantal en eventuele.
Sean Penn meets with Hugo Chavez
Actor Sean Penn holds meetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas.
The Language of Algebra
This site provides a brief review of many aspects of algebraic language and use, from symbol sets and fractions to exponents and factoring. Intended as a reference for students already familiar with algebra, it is the first section of the online text Introductory Statistics: Concepts, Models, and Applications. This resource is part of the Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/quantskills/
Game Theory and Social Networks
Game Theory and Social Networks - UNSPECIFIED Keywords:UNSPECIFIED
Politics and Genocide: Rwanda (African Studies Seminar)
Dr Omar McDoom (London School of Economics) looks at a single community in southern Rwanda, using spatial mapping, in order to understand why some people chose to kill during the violence and others did not.
The Fischer Lecture: Human Rights and the Law in South Africa (African Studies Seminar/Rhodes House
George Bizos SC, human rights lawyer and defense barrister for Nelson Mandela, gives the 2011 Bram Fischer lecture at the Rhodes House, Oxford.
Solving One-Step Equations
Equations are fundamental to Algebra, and solving one step equations is necessary for students in order to learn how to solve two-step equations, and other multi-step equations. This video clip explains the difference between an equation and an expression. (1:15)
Robots autónomos
SENSORES PARA ROBOTS MOVILES. NAVEGACION. LOCALIZACION. PROGRAMACION DE CONDUCTAS.
Author(s): MIGUEL ÃNGEL CAZORLA
IDS Big Question for Development, March 2011 - Andrea Cornwall and Pauline Latham MP interviewed.
In celebration of International Women's Day. IDS' Big Question for Development interviewed Andrea Cornwall (Director, Pathways of Womens Empowerment) and Pauline Latham MP (International Development Select Committee) on what this day means for Women around the world.
Elon Unscripted - Rebecca Salazar
Elon student Rebecca Salazar describes life on campus and offers advice to enrolling students.
How Can Robots Get Our Attention?
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that they can program a robot to understand when it gains a human's attention and when it falls short. Aaron Bobick, professor and chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech's College of Computing, discusses why it's important for robots to understand social convention, if they are going to successfully interact with humans. The research was performed using the robot Simon, from the Socially Intelligent Machines la
2.4 Project status reports
Project status reports are regular and formal. You will need to decide how often they are necessary – depending on the size and nature of the project, it might be weekly, monthly or quarterly. In some situations reports might need to be hourly, if a problem is causing serious concern and has the potential to delay progress seriously. Daily reports might be necessary if there are implications for arranging work for the following day.
The degree of risk involved, and the time it would t
4 Central Oregon: The New OSU-Cascades Campus
See plans for the new OSU-Cascades Campus in Bend, Oregon.
Animation Careers : Careers in Computer Animation
Careers in computer animation are varied, as they can range from small-scale commercials to huge feature animation movies, but knowledge of the major animation software is required for any project. Find a career as a computer animator with helpful information from a writer, director and animator in this free video on cartoon animation. (01:32)
15281B-Jamay
FORMATIC - Paris 2011 : Atelier 3 - Questions/Débat (audio)
FORMATIC - Paris 2011 : Questions, débat.
Intervenants : MASSIOT Marc - DOUALLY Yvan - MIZERA Dominique - LELEU Jérôme
Conférence enregistrée lors du congrès international FORMATIC PARIS 2011. Atelier TIC et pratiques innovantes au service de la formation des professionnels de la santé.
Réalisation, production : Canalu UN/3S, CERIMES.
SCD Médecine.
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Meet Mark Milley, Trump's Pick For Joint Chiefs Chairman The Army general has a voracious appetite for history — and Boston sports teams. If approved by the Senate, the 60-year-old Massachusetts native will take the helm next summer.
Meet Mark Milley, Trump's Pick For Joint Chiefs Chairman
December 8, 20183:16 PM ET
Tom Bowman
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley speaks on a panel during the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting on Oct. 5. Allison Shelley/Getty Images hide caption
Allison Shelley/Getty Images
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley speaks on a panel during the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting on Oct. 5.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, the service's top officer who was nominated Saturday by President Trump to be the next Joint Chiefs chairman, is a rarity among senior military officers. He did not attend one of the service academies, but is an Ivy League graduate.
And he played on Princeton's hockey team.
If approved by the Senate, the 60-year-old officer from Massachusetts is expected to take the helm next summer from another Massachusetts native, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford. But that could all happen sooner. After announcing Milley, Trump tweeted, "Date of transition to be determined."
Milley was at times considered a long shot for Joint Chiefs chairman, who serves as the top military adviser to the president. Others in contention included Adm. John Richardson and Air Force Gen. David Goldfein. Sources say some of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' aides this week were still betting on Goldfein.
Milley is a chatty, quick-witted, barrel-chested officer who seemed to click with Trump. At times they could be seen laughing together, or sharing a joke.
President Trump shakes hands with Milley during a Rose Garden event with the Army Black Knights football team of the U.S. Military Academy on May 1. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption
President Trump shakes hands with Milley during a Rose Garden event with the Army Black Knights football team of the U.S. Military Academy on May 1.
During a Medal of Honor presentation in June, Trump pointed to Milley, seated in the front row.
"A very good negotiator, Gen. Mark Milley," Trump said. "I could see in his eyes when I talk about the cost of those bombs. He's good at throwing them, but he's also good at pricing them. Right? I see it."
A voracious appetite for history
The general has a voracious appetite for history, especially military history — and Boston sports teams. On a trip to the Mideast region in 2015 , and appearing before soldiers, Milley traded barbs with those who thought New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was involved in "Deflategate."
On that same trip, stopping in Baghdad, he pressed senior Iraqi officers to move faster in their fight against ISIS, repeatedly asking for a timetable to take back the city of Mosul. Not long after, Milley insisted — over objections from local officers — on traveling to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inspecting a camp of U.S. and international peacekeepers that was under occasional attack by ISIS fighters.
Trump Picks Heather Nauert, Former Fox News Anchor, As U.N. Ambassador
Milley was key in getting some of those troops moved farther south to a less dangerous camp on the Sinai Peninsula.
The general will engage anyone who will listen about history. A Japanese battle flag hangs inside his house, Quarters 1, at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, in Arlington, Va. It was grabbed by his Marine father who fought in the Pacific during World War II, hopping through the islands of Kwajalein, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima.
Milley can swiftly shift from talking about World War II to the Battle of Bunker Hill to the Korean War to the Afghanistan War. All seemingly without taking a breath. At times, even other Army generals will privately groan about Milley's constant history lessons; it leaves little time for current business.
The general earned tabs as an Army Ranger and a Green Beret, and he has extensive combat experience, taking part in operations in Panama, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan — where he once served as the No. 2 officer.
Milley has been Army chief of staff since 2015, where his job is to make sure the Army is trained and equipped. He had this to say at his Senate confirmation hearing: "Our fundamental task is to win, to win in the unforgiving crucible" of combat.
He told the senators that the Army has a variety of tasks, including humanitarian assistance and training local forces in other countries.
Milley looks on during a meeting with the leadership of China's People's Liberation Army in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2016. Mark Schiefelbein/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
Mark Schiefelbein/AFP/Getty Images
Milley looks on during a meeting with the leadership of China's People's Liberation Army in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2016.
"But our very reason for being, the very core of what it means to have an Army, it's to win and to win decisively in ground combat against the enemies of our country so that the American citizens can enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Officials told NPR that among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Milley is particularly focused on the North Korean threat, making sure Army troops are trained for any possible contingencies.
Milley said at a conference last year that a "full blown war on the Korean Peninsula will be horrific by any stretch of the imagination."
But Milley said that North Korea possessing a nuclear missile capable of striking the U.S. would be unacceptable.
"It would be horrible, there's no question about it, but so would an intercontinental ballistic missile striking Los Angeles or New York City," he said. "That would be equally horrible."
Correction Dec. 9, 2018
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Army Gen. Mark Milley lives at Fort McNair. In fact, he lives at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Arlington, Va.
general mark milley
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Children in 'Opportunity Area' have improved outcomes
15 February 2019 by Hannah Crown
Children in the most deprived area of the country have seen a huge improvement in their outcomes at the end of the EYFS following a major programme of targeted Government investment.
In West Somerset, which has been ranked 324th out of 324 on the social mobility index for two years running, 35 per cent of children on free school meals demonstrated a good level of development at the end of the EYFS in 2016, the lowest figure in the country. The same cohort are now at 68 per cent.
The area is one of 12 ‘Opportunity Areas’ which each receive £6m to find ways to tackle their particularly high levels of disadvantage. Nine of these have specific early years priorities, with West Somerset’s being that ‘every child has a great start in life'.
The figures were revealed yesterday at a Westminster Education Forum seminar on social mobility. Julia Ridge, the Opportunity Area lead for West Somerset said, ‘It is really difficult for organisations to offer services [in West Somerset]. If you want to go to the cinema it is 25 miles [away]. If you want to go to a swimming pool it is the same. There is no dual carriageway. There is one train [a steam train] which runs in the summer.’ Local bus routes were also very expensive, she added, and two adult training centres had also closed down.
Speaking to a school and FE-focused audience, Ms Ridge did not give further details on how the Reception outcomes had been achieved, but policy documents reveal that the project aims to use ‘evidence-based interventions such as the Talkboost programme’, which helps to promote speech and language development, and programmes such as Peers Early Educational Partnership (PEEP), to help parents develop skills to support their children’s early learning and social and emotional development.
It also aims to improve the assessment of children’s development in the early years by education and health professionals and improve access to children’s services for parents of children from birth through to Reception.
In Stoke-on-Trent, another Opportunity Area with a focus on improving outcomes in the EYFS, one-third of the population are in the 10 per cent of the most deprived in England and just a quarter of young people go to university, according to Liz Barnes, co-chair of the local opportunity area partnership board.
One local focus was encouraging the parents of disadvantaged two-year-olds to take up their nursery places. ‘It is the most deprived children that are not taking up that support’ she said.
She added, ‘whatever we do it should be sustainable – too many interventions are about the here and now. .. If we are talking about two-year-olds we need to see the impact on [them as] 16-year-olds. Are we going to be keep tracking them? I hope so.’
Professor Barnes added that local groups and councils were saying 'we know what needs to be done, we have just run out of money. We have had to push back and say it us not the Opportunity Areas' job to pick up local authority projects and give them money.'
Hannah Streatfeild, the Department for Education’s deputy director of the Opportunity Areas programme, said there were two overarching aims: to achieve the outcomes set out by the Opportunity Areas and to learn from what works and scale it up.
She said ‘It’s a bottom-up programme to ensure we have the right people around the table to have conversations about the need of young people and also to ensure there is a focused plan.’
In Ipswich, where a focus is self-regulation and resilience, Ms Streatfeild said, ‘Outcomes at Key Stage 2 are below the national average. So we are looking at ways for schools to involve parents learning in school and at home.’
She described one outcome of the project being a text message system to reduce children’s unauthorised absences by providing ‘behavioural nudges’. She added ‘This is not the school against the parent, this is the school working with the parent and providing the support that might be needed.’
Opportunity Areas were launched in 2017 as a three-year programme. Those with early years priorities are Derby, East Cambridgeshire, Hastings, Ipswich, North Yorkshire, Norwich, Oldham, Stoke on Trent and West Somerset.
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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred dances around doping appeals process concerns
By Christian Red
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred discusses baseball’s collective bargaining agreement. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
Baseball's drug-testing program has caught numerous cheaters this season – including the sons of two former Yankees, Marlins' Dee Gordon and Royals' Raul Mondesi Jr. – despite public criticism from pitchers Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello that the program has flaws and changes need to be made.
With baseball's collective bargaining agreement set to expire after this season, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday that while players "are able to voice whatever opinions they have," baseball and the Players Association will enter the bargaining process with proposals "designed to improve and strengthen what we regard to be the best performance-enhancing drug policy in professional sports."
Both Verlander and Porcello took aim at players who test positive being able to continue playing while the appeals process plays out to a conclusion (first-time offenders of baseball drug policy receive an 80-game suspension). "In my opinion, if you've tested positive, you have an advantage and you should be off the field," Verlander told the Detroit Free Press after Gordon got banned.
"We're in a bargaining year. I think it's important that (players like Verlander and Porcello) make sure their certified bargaining representative in the Major League Baseball Players Association is aware of their opinions," said Manfred at MLB's Park Avenue offices after the quarterly owners meetings ended. "In terms of the program, we constantly improve that program. One of the areas that you can approve is the science gets better. It is true that the windows of detection – the period of time in which you can detect a substance in somebody's body — have been improved. It's just science getting better. We're still running at a positive rate on the tests of less than one half of one percent."
Manfred added that he believes the program is effective, but he said that contrary to some tweets by the media that announcements of more positive drug tests are imminent, "there's not some big additional group of positives sitting out there, I can tell you that."
"Positive drug tests — good news, bad news — you never want a player to test positive. On the other hand, we do know that performance-enhancing drugs are a constant temptation and when you catch somebody, it's validation of the fact that we have an effective program," said Manfred.
The commissioner even took umbrage with speculation made by the media or the public that a player is doping when no evidence exists. On ESPN earlier this year, Cubs ace Jake Arrieta's hot start earned him some critical comments with regard to his dominance on the mound.
"I learned a lot about performance-enhancing drugs over a very long period of time. It was not a voluntary undertaking," said Manfred. "But it was one that was necessary. If I've learned anything over that period of time, it is you cannot, cannot make a judgment as to whether somebody's using a performance-enhancing drug based on changes in performance or physical appearance. It's simply unfair speculation. People get better, and to speculate it's because of performance-enhancing drugs is literally baseless speculation. There's one way to know — did he test positive or did he not? That kind of speculation — I've found it to be distasteful."
Manfred said there have been 12 labor meetings so far in advance of negotiating a new CBA, and that some of the issues that have been discussed are pace of play and the replay system.
rob manfred
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Archives|AT LUNCH WITH: Seal;From a Crucible Of Early Pain Comes the Gold Of Stardom
AT LUNCH WITH: Seal;From a Crucible Of Early Pain Comes the Gold Of Stardom
By ROBIN FINN JUNE 5, 1996
THE artist formerly known as Sealhenry Samuel and now best known for his pop madrigal "Kiss From a Rose," the triple Grammy-winning ballad from the "Batman Forever" soundtrack, twiddled his ebony chopsticks with anticipatory zest but finally decided to forgo lunch. Almost.
He had just flown from the West Coast, and his appetite was between time zones; his jaw was still recovering from a major dental offensive that included the extraction of three teeth and root canal work on a fourth.
Seal, a self-described "homebody," who divides his time between London, Los Angeles and whatever mountain offers the best snowboarding, that increasingly popular form of downhill surfing, was in Manhattan to prepare an episode of "MTV Unplugged." In between dates with Tyra Banks, the supermodel who is a decade younger than he ("But women mature faster than men," the smitten singer protested), Seal recorded his version of "Unplugged," broadcast on MTV last night before an invitation-only audience of 400 at Brooklyn's Majestic Theater.
The 33-year-old Seal, who was born poor in London and unwanted by his Nigerian parents, described his reaction to the invitation from "Unplugged" as "one of initial joy," adding: "First the Grammys and then, this." What a coup: acceptance by the mainstream and the fast lane in one fell swoop, and Seal tends to be an acceptance addict.
But right after the excitement about performing for "Unplugged" came nervousness, especially when his first two weeks of Los Angeles rehearsal time were pre-empted by the ravages of dental surgery.
"My throat was so swollen I couldn't sing, which was even more frightening than the pain in my jaw," Seal said.
"The painkiller I was on had such a negative effect on my emotions that I found myself being rude to people, and I am never rude to people," he said. "I mean, I actually felt I had to seclude myself; I couldn't even be at rehearsal with my band because I had this nasty edge to me," said Seal, who winnowed alcohol and narcotics from his diet more than three years ago, "because I got bored with that kind of altered state."
The musician came to lunch at Kokachin, the restaurant in his midtown hotel, the Omni Berkshire Place, restored to eloquent gregariousness and armed with a handful of hard candies for throat therapy.
Dressed head to toe in rock-star black, plenty of it leather, Seal folded his 6-foot-4-inch frame into a beige banquette. Formal yet a touch rococo, the surroundings were much like his music: unmistakably seductive but unfailingly sincere.
Women swoon for him simply because, somewhere in that voice, there's the promise that he's a swooner, too -- and they're right. When Seal disclosed that his interest in Ms. Banks, a model he could not forget since he saw her from afar four years ago, was now requited, he practically levitated above the table: "I've found somebody new in my life who's just wonderful at the moment; the endorphins are freaking out, left, right and center." He beamed.
Seal wrote his award-winning "Kiss From a Rose" eight years ago in London, with his voice his only instrument; he can't remember his specific inspiration for the song except that he was certainly broke and probably brokenhearted at the time. He's hard pressed even to remember its wistful lyrics -- the song was never his favorite.
That distinction goes to "Prayer for the Dying," a lyrical meditation on death; Seal released it as the single from his second album, "Seal Redux," in 1994, in defiance of record industry warnings "that it wasn't poppy enough and that I should lighten up, but sometimes you have to go by what you believe in and not what's necessarily commercially viable."
Seal was sufficiently body-proud to appear fully, if discreetly, nude on the cover of that second album -- its message hinged on vulnerability. Still, he said his weight of 215 is 5 pounds above his supreme "fighting weight." He can't blame the heft of dreadlocks for those extra pounds. Seal shaved off his imposing hairdo four years ago and now keeps his cranium in close-to-cueball condition with daily, self-administered trims.
"Of course, when you're touring, it's important to get yourself extremely fit," added Seal, who trims his physique with sessions of aggressive snowboarding ("I can catch air") and sedate tennis outings across the net from Beverly Hills neighbors like Regis Philbin and bona fide tennis pros like Boris Becker and Andre Agassi.
Seal grew up glued to the BBC's exhaustive Wimbledon coverage, and this year he gave the rights to his song "Bring It On" to the men's tennis tour as a promotional vehicle to draw kids to the game. He calls himself "useless at tennis, but quite emphatic about it."
If there's an overriding message to Seal's multilayer lyrics and ornate orchestrations, it's an insistence on the innate human capacity to heal. With his rags-to-riches professional success and forlorn, forbidding childhood, he happens to know all about that. Abandonment, brutality and death were childhood leitmotifs for Seal, and when lupus left its calling card in the form of a spray of scars across his face at 23, the specter of an incurable disease joined that list.
In his late 20's, he was floored by anxiety attacks with dual roots -- fear of death and fear of failure -- but he feels it was his early childhood that provided the pain he later channeled into his musicianship.
"I believe that in all forms of art there has to have been some initial adversity: that is what makes art, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "And it's not something you outlive: once you experience it, it's always with you. It forms part of your makeup; probably it's the reason for your makeup."
Shortly after he was born, Seal's mother sent him off to Essex, not far from London, to live with a white foster family, and then, when he was 4 and happy, she swooped back into his life and took him to London. The two did not, he recalled, get on. When he was 6, she was deported, and he was sent to live with his father, Francis Samuel, a man he admired but who seemed to hate him. His father beat him with whips, belts and fists, whatever was handy; he wanted him to become a doctor or lawyer. When Seal started singing, it was ground for more beatings.
With encouragement from a teacher, Seal performed for an audience for the first time at his school's parent-teacher association night when he was just 11, very a cappella, very unplugged, "and as 'fraidied up as you could get." The song he chose was Johnny Nash's "Bright Sunshiny Day," the most optimistic song on the radio and a precursor of more than a few of his own.
When he was 15, Seal ran away from home; when he went back later in his teens, it was to transport his father's ashes to Nigeria. He has barely spoken to his mother since.
"Bitter" is the word he uses to describe his parents. "Not bitter" is how he describes himself. "Time is a healer, and I was always able to see light at the end of the tunnel," said Seal, who occasionally supplements time's impact with visits to a London faith healer. "I have absolutely nothing to be bitter about now."
Once Seal hooked up with Adamski, a maestro of the technodisco beat, after a chance meeting on New Year's Eve in 1989, his decade of scrambling in obscurity ended. They released a pulsating dance hit, "Killer," in 1990.
Then fame came Seal's way with the respected Trevor Horn as producer, respectable Warner Brothers as distributor and a father figure, Bob Cavallo, as manager.
"Crazy," the single from his debut album, "Seal," in 1991, not only scored on the British and American airwaves, but also found its way onto television as the sultry backdrop to a beer commercial. The Grammys wanted him to perform. Spike Lee wanted his songs as movie fodder. He was not just on his way, but ensconced.
A version of this article appears in print on June 5, 1996, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: AT LUNCH WITH: Seal;From a Crucible Of Early Pain Comes the Gold Of Stardom. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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Europe|Out of East Germany via Bulgaria
Out of East Germany via Bulgaria
By NICHOLAS KULISH MARCH 25, 2008
The Bulgarian border with Greece near Chepintsi today. An estimated 4,500 people tried to flee Communist countries through what they thought would be a less-guarded frontier. Credit Nikolay Doychinov for The New York Times
MUNICH — Two dangling strands of barbed wire have haunted Olaf Hetze for over a quarter century, since his failed attempt to escape from the Communist bloc, not by going over the Berlin Wall but around it by a little-known route through Bulgaria.
Mr. Hetze still believes that he and his girlfriend, Barbara Hille, might have made it if he had managed to cover their tracks better, trimming the loose ends after cutting the top wire of a border fence. If he had, Mr. Hetze said in an interview at his home in Munich earlier this year, he might never have seen the shooting stars of tracer bullets arcing across the night sky, or had to watch his girlfriend twist in the air and fall to the ground, blood rushing out of a life-threatening wound to her shoulder.
But the dangling wire was far from the only reason they failed.
Thanks to the work of a dedicated German researcher, the full extent of the escape attempts through Bulgaria, and the danger, is just now coming to light. At least 4,500 people tried to escape over the Bulgarian border during the cold war, estimated the researcher, Stefan Appelius, a professor of political science at Oldenburg University. Of those, he believes that at least 100 were killed, but no official investigation has ever been undertaken.
Olaf and Barbara Hetze, now married with two grown sons, had decided their escape would be easier away from the attention of the security forces in their native East Germany. They would make their getaway in Bulgaria, a choice vacation destination in the east, with sunny Black Sea beaches and breathtaking mountain scenery, where they hoped to cross into non-Communist Greece.
“They had the southern mentality,” Mr. Hetze recalled. “Everything seemed more relaxed.” And technologically, he said, Bulgaria’s border controls were “nowhere near” as sophisticated as Germany’s.
What Olaf Hetze and Barbara Hille could not have known is that thousands of their East German compatriots had the same thought. And the Bulgarian government, with the active engagement of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, was ready to defend its borders.
Mr. Appelius’s investigation of escapes through Bulgaria, described by experts as previously all but undocumented, is trailblazing and almost entirely self-financed. Hans-Hermann Hertle, who leads research into deaths along the Berlin Wall at the Center for Research on Contemporary History in Potsdam, said that he was impressed with Mr. Appelius’s work and that the center hoped to cooperate with him on Bulgaria once their study of the wall was complete.
Mr. Appelius stumbled upon this history in 2005 when he was researching German government archives and came across the autopsy report of a young German man killed in Bulgaria.
“I was really shocked about this,” he said. “I never heard about such a case before. And I thought, if there was one case of this sort, there were probably more of them, too.”
The stories he uncovered are harrowing. For instance, a young couple from Leipzig were killed in 1975 by a tremendous hail of bullets, the man shot 37 times and the woman 25 times, all at close range. The last known fatality, 19-year-old Michael Weber, was killed on July 7, 1989, barely four months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Helped by volunteers in Bulgaria but stymied, Mr. Appelius said, by the reluctance of authorities there to dig up unflattering history, he has found concrete evidence of 845 such escape attempts, including 18 fatalities where he has been able to clearly document the identities of the victims. Mr. Appelius said he based his estimate of more than 100 fatalities and 4,500 attempted crossings in part on interviews with Bulgarian pathologists and former border guards.
Mr. Appelius estimated that 160 people made it to the West.
By comparison, the research center in Potsdam says that 134 people were killed trying to escape at the Berlin Wall, though the research is continuing and that figure is contested by those who say it should be higher. Over all, experts say, more than 1,000 people died trying to flee over the East German border.
The Stasi tried to cover up some border deaths in Bulgaria, sealing coffins and declaring that the dead had been killed in traffic accidents. And until 1975, Bulgarian authorities often hastily buried the bodies of victims in the border zones where they fell. The current Bulgarian government has not been forthcoming, and the German government has not pressed it to open up.
“It’s not just German citizens, but people from lots of other countries, Czechs, Poles,” said a worker at a Bulgarian military hospital in Sofia who helped Mr. Appelius by hunting through archived autopsy reports. He declined to give his name for fear of losing his job. Access to the files was cut off in February 2007 after an article by Mr. Appelius appeared.
It was such an article that caught Barbara and Olaf Hetze’s attention. It revived memories of their ordeal, “sending an ice-cold chill down our backs,” they wrote to Mr. Appelius in June 2006.
Olaf and Barbara Hetze tried to breach the Bulgarian border; he was 20, she was 22. Credit Cliff Serna for The New York Times
In September 1978, Barbara was at a party in a discothèque, where she was asking boys in her disarming manner if any of them had an extra motorcycle helmet. Olaf Hetze, it turned out, had two. They began riding together in the mountainous area near Dresden that Germans call the Saxon Switzerland.
In many ways, Ms. Hille and Mr. Hetze could not have been more different. She came from a family opposed to the East German government. His stepfather was a party secretary.
But Mr. Hetze was disenchanted. He had worked on a site where a blast furnace for metal had not been completed in time for the official unveiling. Officials trucked in finished steel and rerouted steam to make the furnace appear operational. “Behind the curtains, that was the planned economy,” Mr. Hetze said. He resolved to leave if he could.
Ms. Hille was deeply hurt that the government would not allow her to pursue a career in historic preservation because of her politics. Still, she was unsure and a little afraid when Mr. Hetze asked her to flee with him. Ultimately she decided the risk was worth it.
The couple — she was 22 and he was 20 when they made their attempt — were not foolhardy. They agreed that if they were discovered, they would follow instructions and believed that at worst, they could end up in jail.
They tried to make their escape through the Rhodope Mountains along the Greek border, an area where, legend has it, Orpheus was born.
“It was a public secret,” said Bozhidar Hadzhidiev, 64, a Bulgarian living near the border who said he was helping Mr. Appelius because he wanted a fuller accounting of his government’s crimes. “All the people knew that young Germans were coming to cross the border.”
If the Bulgarian border defenses lacked the latest technology, they more than made up for that with an army of conscripted guards and informants. The deck was stacked against the Hetzes; even maps of the area near the border were purposefully incorrect or incomplete.
A plainclothes policeman stopped and questioned them when they were 15 miles from the border. They said they had gotten lost on their way to go hiking, but decided to leave their car, an East German Trabant, in an unobtrusive spot in the town of Rudozem. For the next two nights, they made their way on foot, sleeping in the heat of the day and walking in the clear nights.
They studied the patrols at what they thought was the border crossing for 24 hours before deciding at 11 p.m. on the clear, starry night of Aug. 17, 1980, to make their escape.
Mr. Hetze cut through the top wire of the fence because he had noticed electric cables at the bottom, possibly for an alarm signal. He then boosted Barbara over the fence. With a running start he dove over himself, without first cutting off the excess wire hanging down, visible in photographs kept in their Stasi file.
The oversight would hardly have mattered if they had crossed the border and were safely into Greek territory. But they were still on the Bulgarian side of the border and had actually entered a forbidden border zone where soldiers were permitted to fire.
“We heard warning signals from far away, the howling of sirens,” Mr. Hetze said. They heard the barking of dogs and ran through a riverbed to try to hide their scent. “When I turned around I saw some tracer ammunition flying by us and at the same time I saw my wife rising up into the air, her body stretched out horizontally, and then falling flatly into the river,” Mr. Hetze said.
He stayed by her side, tearing his shirt into makeshift bandages. When the border guards caught them, they fired bullets into the ground at his feet, and let their guard dog sink its teeth into his thigh.
Each was sentenced to two years and five months in prison. Ms. Hille was released after a little over a year. The West German government paid a bounty — about $75,000 in today’s dollars, one expert estimated — to free her from East Germany.
When Mr. Hetze was released the following year, and his freedom also purchased by the West German government, Ms. Hille was so excited she left a houseguest sitting at the dinner table to catch a train to the West German city of Giessen, and the intake center where she also had been processed.
She found him at the center, in the same blue jeans with holes in the leg from the dog bite.
Correction: March 27, 2008
A map on Tuesday with an article about efforts to escape from the Communist bloc during the cold war by way of a little-known route through Bulgaria misspelled the name of the country’s capital. It is Sofia, not Sophia.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: The Cold War’s Back Door: Out of East Germany via Bulgaria. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
A Dangerous Route FEB. 24, 2015
The Eastern Bloc Remembered MARCH 14, 2008
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49ers 2019 schedule: Let’s take a sneak peak
Four road games will be against teams that made this season's playoffs, including No. 1 seed New Orleans
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) is sacked by San Francisco 49ers outside linebacker Ahmad Brooks (55) in the second half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
By Cam Inman |
PUBLISHED: December 31, 2018 at 6:54 am | UPDATED: December 31, 2018 at 8:57 am
SANTA CLARA — No time like the end of a 12-loss season to immediately look ahead for the 2019 49ers. Here are their upcoming opponents, with dates and times to be announced in April:
Atlanta Falcons (7-9): Jinxed as this season’s Super Bowl host, they ended 7-9 but on a three-game win streak. Coach Dan Quinn, who got his NFL start on the 49ers, is expected to make some staff changes and perhaps the 49ers poach from that.
Carolina Panthers (7-9): They won 23-3 in the 2017 opener at Levi’s Stadium, Kyle Shanahan’s debut as 49ers coach. Carolina tied with Atlanta at 7-9 in the NFC South.
Cleveland Browns (7-8-1): Baker Mayfield, who threw a NFL-rookie-record 27 touchdowns, makes his Levi’s Stadium debut with a new coach, perhaps Mike McCarthy, who was the 49ers 2005 offensive coordinator before his Packers tenure.
Green Bay Packers (6-9-1): Aaron Rodgers is 1-2 when visiting his childhood team that spurned him in the 2005 draft, and he’ll have a new coach this time.
Pittsburgh Steelers (9-6-1): We’ll keep the lights on for you, this time. A pair of power failures occurred at Candlestick Park in the Steelers’ last visit to the 49ers, who won that 2011 game 20-3.
Los Angeles Rams (13-3): The two-time reigning NFC West champs scored 41, 39 and 48 points in their three wins over the Shanahan-coached 49ers since 2017.
Seattle Seahawks (10-6): A 26-23 loss to the host 49ers on Dec. 16 is their only defeat in the past seven games as they head into Saturday’s NFC wild-card game at Dallas.
Arizona Cardinals (3-13): Two of this season’s three wins came against the 49ers. What will they do with the No. 1 overall draft pick and how will it impact the 49ers at No. 2?
New Orleans Saints (13-3): Drew Brees led them to this season’s No. 1 seed for the NFC playoffs. In the 49ers’ last visit to the Big Easy, they won in overtime in 2014.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-11): Coach Dirk Koetter got fired a month after routing the 49ers 27-9. The Buccaneers are scheduled to play in London, so perhaps the 49ers go back there for the first time since 2013.
Baltimore Ravens (10-6): John Harbaugh took a page out of brother Jim’s 2012 playbook with the 49ers by inserting a dual-threat quarterback (Lamar Jackson) for a late-season run to the playoffs.
Cincinnati Bengals (6-10): The 49ers’ last visit in 2011 ignited an eight-game win streak. This year’s Bengals: 4-1 start, 6-10 overall.
Washington (7-9): Will Alex Smith’s be back at quarterback after this month’s complications from a fractured leg?
Greg Papa on his 49ers and KNBR gigs, a ‘new chapter’ and Raider Nation
49ers reach deadline deal with kicker Robbie Gould
Republican fundraising email features darkened Kaepernick image, report says
Tony Romo: 49ers, Raiders could be really good — or not
49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo: ‘I’m good to go, finally,’ as training camp nears
Los Angeles Rams (13-3): Committing four turnovers in the first five possessions doomed the 49ers’ season-ending visit Sunday in a 48-32 loss.
Seattle Seahawks (10-6): The 49ers won at home this month to snap a 10-game losing streak to the Seahawks but a win in Seattle hasn’t happened since 2011.
Arizona Cardinals (3-13): A new coach will inherit an eight-game win streak on the 49ers, who haven’t won in Arizona since 2013.
Cam Inman
More in San Francisco 49ers
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Stuart C. Harvey Jr.
Non-Executive Chairman
As President and COO of Piper Jaffray, Stuart led operations of the firm’s global investment banking, equity, public finance, fixed income and asset management businesses. Stuart re-joined Piper Jaffray in 2015, having previously served as Managing Director of the firm’s investment banking group from 1993 to 2003. In the years between his time at Piper Jaffray, Stuart built and led considerable transformation, value creation and liquidity events across multiple industries.
Stuart was the most senior business strategist and ultimately, CEO of Elavon Global Acquiring Solutions, Inc., a global payments processor and subsidiary of U.S Bancorp, where he led considerable transformation across the business and directed the company’s international expansion which culminated in its nomination as a Top 5 Global Payments Processor by the Nielsen Report.
Stuart held the role of Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Ceridian Corporation, a provider of human capital management and services. During his tenure at Ceridian, he spear-headed major transformation across the company, including the development of advanced SaaS-based service offerings that heightened operational and sales efficiency resulting in noteworthy improvements to the company’s financial performance and growth.
Specifically, in 2012, he directed Ceridian’s acquisition and integration of Dayforce Corporation, a workforce management company, and led Ceridian subsidiary, Comdata, which managed fleet and corporate card payment services. He went on to successfully secure the operational split and sale of Comdata in 2014 for US $3.45 billion dollars.
Stuart holds a bachelors’ degree from St. John’s University, a Juris doctorate from the George Washington University School of Law and a Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Trustwave Holdings, Inc. and the Board of Trustees of Saint John’s University.
Joel Leonoff
Joel Leonoff serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. Before that, he was President and CEO of Paysafe Group, a company which he originally founded in 1997.
Joel is an entrepreneurial leader and a visionary with a proven track record of managing high-growth technology companies, having served as CEO, COO and CFO of privately and publicly traded companies for nearly twenty years. In 1997, Joel founded SureFire Commerce Inc., which merged with the Optimal Group in 2003 to form Optimal Payments.
In 2011, Optimal Payments merged with Neovia Inc. (NETELLER) and the company later completed the acquisition of the Skrill Group in August 2015 to form the Paysafe Group, which was a highly successful FTSE 250 Public Company prior to being purchased by CVC and Blackstone in late 2017.
Joel has previously created the e-commerce powerhouse BCE Emergis through the merger of Mpact Immedia Ltd with Bell Canada Enterprises in the late 1990's.
Joel also served as Group Operations Director and COO of Partygaming Plc, a FTSE listed company. Joel is a Chartered Accountant with a Bachelor of Commerce Degree (James McGill Award) and has a Graduate Diploma in Public Accountancy (C.D. Mellor Award) from McGill University.
Philip McHugh
Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer
Philip McHugh joined Paysafe in June 2019 as its CEO.
With extensive experience of the global banking and payments industries, Philip has an executive leadership career spanning more than 20 years. Before Paysafe, he worked for TSYS, a global payments provider, where he was responsible for heading up their merchant solutions division. During his time at TSYS, McHugh played an instrumental role in growing TSYS’ overall revenues and profits by over 30%. His specific achievements included the acquisition and full integration of two businesses – Cayan and iMobile3; and the creation of a more dynamic, results-driven product delivery and technology culture, including the upgrade of TSYS’ integrated platforms and the market launch of its Vital smart POS product lines.
Prior to TSYS, McHugh spent over ten years working for Barclays in London where he held several senior roles, including Global CFO of Barclaycard and CEO of Barclaycard Business Solutions. During his time with Barclaycard, he was part of the leadership team that more than doubled the size of the business over a five-year period through the implementation of various growth initiatives. These included the rapid expansion of the US business, and the transformation of the UK payments businesses through new platform investments and the introduction of virtual credit card and contactless solutions, ultimately helping Barclaycard to regain its position as the number one card issuer in the UK.
Before Barclays, McHugh spent ten years with Citi (formerly Citigroup) working in both Latin America and the U.S. His accomplishments while at Citi included leading multiple card portfolios in Brazil (Diners, Platinum, AAdvantage), running the company’s data analytics and successfully leading the finance function for Citi’s International Personal Banking division.
McHugh has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and an MBA from the University of South Carolina.
Martin Brand
Martin Brand is a Senior Managing Director in the Private Equity Group at Blackstone where he leads Blackstone’s private equity investments in financial institutions and co-leads private equity investments in technology. In addition, he is a member of the Investment Committee of Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities funds.
Since joining Blackstone in 2003, Martin has been involved in the execution of the firm's investments in Optiv, JDA, Viva, NCR, First Eagle Investment Management, Kronos, Ipreo, Knight Capital Group, Lendmark, Exeter Finance, BankUnited, PBF Energy, Performance Food Group, Travelport, New Skies, Cine UK, NHP, Kabel BW, Kabelnetz NRW, Primacom, and Sulo.
Before joining Blackstone, Martin worked as a derivatives trader with Goldman Sachs in New York and Tokyo, and with McKinsey & Company in London.
Martin received a BA/MA in Mathematics and Computation, First Class Honors, from Oxford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is a director of Kronos, Ipreo, Exeter Finance, Stearns, First Eagle Investment Management, and Lendmark. Martin serves on the Board of Directors of the Park Avenue Armory and the Watermill Center. He is a Trustee of the American Academy Berlin.
Peter Christodoulo
Peter Christodoulo is a Partner with Francisco Partners and focuses on investments in the application software and financial technology sectors.
Prior to joining Francisco Partners in 2008, Peter was an Associate with Thomas H. Lee Partners in Boston. Earlier in his career Peter was an Analyst in the Technology Investment Banking Group of Credit Suisse Securities in New York and involved in several start-up companies.
As well as serving on the Paysafe Board of Directors, Peter also serves as a director on the boards of 2Checkout, Allston Trading, Betterment, Dynamo, NMI and is also involved in FP’s investments in Capsilon and Prosper Marketplace. He previously served on the boards of eFront, City Index, PayLease, Paymetric and SmartFocus.
Walt Macnee
Walt Macnee is vice chairman, Mastercard Worldwide. Much of his work in this role has focussed on financial inclusion for the billions of people around the world without access to basic financial services. Macnee founded the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and is a director of the Mastercard Impact Fund.
Previously, Macnee was president of Mastercard’s International Markets with responsibility for building all aspects of Mastercard’s issuance and acceptance businesses in over 200 countries. Before that, he was president of the Americas Region and served as president of Mastercard Canada from 2001 to 2004.
Macnee has also served as executive vice president of Cards and Collections at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In that position, he was responsible for overall management of the bank’s credit card business and national collections.
Before that he spent 18 years with Toronto Dominion Bank, as a corporate and investment banker in New York and Houston, and as a retail banker based in Toronto. In his last position as senior vice president, he ran the VISA business and personal lending.
He earned his undergraduate degrees at Queen’s University and has a Master's in Business Administration (MBA) from York University. He currently serves as the Chair of Convergence Finance; Chair of the Queen’s University Centre for Social Impact; Chair of Antibe Therapeutics; and Chair of the digital platform “Yroo.”
Eli Nagler
Eli Nagler is a Managing Director in the Private Equity Group at Blackstone, where he focuses on investments in the financial services and technology sectors. Since initially joining Blackstone in 2007, Eli has been involved in the execution of the firm’s investments in over ten separate transactions, including Alight Solutions, BankUnited, Bayview Asset Management, Lendmark Financial Services, Paysafe, and Vivint.
He also serves as a Director of Lendmark Financial Services. Before rejoining Blackstone after the completion of an MBA, Eli worked at the United States Treasury Department in the Office of Capital Markets.
Eli received an AB magna cum laude from Harvard College and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a John L. Loeb Fellow. He is also a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Peter Rutland
Peter is a Partner at CVC, he joined in 2007. Peter is Co-Head of CVC's Financial Services Group. He is based in London.
Prior to joining CVC, he worked for Advent International since 2002. Prior to working at Advent, Peter worked for Goldman Sachs in the Investment Banking Division. Peter holds an MA Degree from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from INSEAD.
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The Durrells in Corfu
Man in an Orange Shirt
The Child in Time
The Manners of Downton Abbey
To Walk Invisible The Brontë Sisters
Close ×All Shows »
Explore Downton Abbey: The Exhibition
Just Announced: Downton Abbey: The Exhibition is coming to Boston!
Downton Abbey: The Exhibition is coming to Boston, opening June 15, 2019 for a limited engagement. See the first-ever fully immersive Downton Abbey experience at The Castle at Park Plaza, located at 130 Columbus Ave. Tickets are now available to purchase at www.downtonexhibition.com.
The Exhibition will connect fans with their favorite characters, costumes, locations and historic events of the era, as well as showcase never-before-seen footage.
Visitors will be transported on an incredible journey through the grand home of Downton Abbey as the exhibition peers into the world of the Crawleys and those that served them below stairs. From Mrs. Patmore’s hectic kitchen and the gossip-fuelled servants’ quarters, to the family’s glamorous dining room and Lady Mary’s bedroom, fans will get the chance to walk through some of the series’ most recognizable and beloved sets. Visitors will even come up-close to over 50 of the show’s official costumes worn by their favorite actors including Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville and Dame Maggie Smith!
“This is a unique opportunity to step into Downton Abbey – to wander through the sumptuous rooms the family inhabit, the kitchen and servants quarters below stairs and to get right up close to many of the iconic costumes and props,” said Gareth Neame, Managing Director of Carnival Films and executive producer of Downton Abbey.
Downton Abbey: The Exhibition will also provide a fascinating look at all aspects of the post-Edwardian period in which Carnival Films’ popular TV series is set and offer an in-depth insight into the remarkable historic events which would go on to shape the world. From World War I to the Roaring Twenties, visitors will have the chance to learn about British society, culture and fashion.
Downton Abbey: The Exhibition is brought to you by NBCUniversal International Studios and Imagine Exhibitions.
Stay tuned for more information about Downton Abbey: The Exhibition, and the next stop in its US tour.
See images from The Exhibition below!
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Ben Quayle Got a Job
Matthew Hendley | June 25, 2013 | 7:00am
Despite (false) claims that Obamacare killed all the available jobs, in addition to burdensome government regulations and red tape, former Republican Congressman Ben Quayle has found gainful employment.
Quayle has joined the Clark Hill PLC law firm and will be the "Senior Director in the firm's Government and Public Affairs Group," according to the firm, which sounds a lot like "lobbyist."
The announcement was made by another one of the firm's attorneys, Charlie Spies, who ran the pro-Mitt Romney "super PAC" Restore Our Future, also known as "the largest super PAC in history."
Voters gave Quayle the boot from Congress last year after his first term, as Quayle decided to attempt a primary battle with then-freshman Congressman David Schweikert in Congressional District 6.
The other option for Quayle could have been to run in CD-9, where he likely would have defeated the eventual Republican nominee, Vernon Parker, in a primary. That would have put him against now-Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, who ended up beating Parker by about 4 percentage points.
A statement from his new law firm makes Quayle's stay in Congress sound a lot better than it was:
While in Congress, Quayle was a member of the Committee on the Judiciary, and Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. He also served on the Committee on Homeland Security, and the Committee on Science, Space and Technology. During his tenure, Quayle quickly gained the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. He was instrumental in passing patent reform during the last Congress. In addition, he focused on regulatory reform that would make American companies more competitive in the global marketplace.
The most memorable moments of Quayle's brief career in Washington were probably on the campaign trail, including the memorable ad from his first run for Congress, in which he stated, "Barack Obama is the worst president in history."
His former gig writing for TheDirty.com just never went away, and his last campaign involved an apparent scandal about congressional skinny-dipping in Israel.
Between all that, Quayle -- who promised to "knock the hell" out of Washington" -- managed to complain about President Obama with some regularity. To his credit, one of his bills -- about penalties for people who make tunnels under the border -- did get signed into law, which is more than guys like Congressman Trent Franks, who hasn't gotten one of his bills inked by the president in his decade in Congress.
One of Quayle's former staffers is now the campaign manager for Republican Congressional candidate and former ASU quarterback Andrew Walter, who's looking to defeat Sinema next year.
Send feedback and tips to the author.
Follow Matthew Hendley on Twitter at @MatthewHendley.
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Lib Dem Julian Huppert hopes to debate ban on fisting and watersports porn
Joseph McCormick December 11, 2014
A ban on the production of certain types of porn in the UK will be the subject of a debate in the House of Commons, if a Lib Dem MP who opposes it gets his way.
Brought in by the Audiovisual Media Services regulation 2014 last week, the ban states that any online paid-for porn such as Video on Demand (VoD) must adhere to the same rules set out for those producing DVDs.
Those rules are set out by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC), and ban producers from depicting acts such as fisting, female ejaculation and face-sitting in porn for paid consumption.
Julian Huppert is pushing for the ban to be debated in Parliament, saying that the government should not prevent any adult from watching legal and consensual sex.
He argues that rather than moral objection, the choice to ban the depiction of acts should be based on “consent” and “genuine risk”.
Mr Huppert said: “It means that all video-on-demand services that originate from the UK can’t show various acts, such as spanking.”
“To me the case for banning things should be driven by issues around consent, and around genuine risk, not about whether we happen to like things or not.”
A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said: “The legislation provides the same level of protection to the online world that exists on the high street in relation to the sale of physical DVDs.
“In a converging media world these provisions must be coherent and the BBFC classification regime is a tried and tested system of what content is regarded as harmful for minors.”
Mr Huppert has tabled an Early Day Motion, which would ensure the topic was debated in the House of Commons, and calls for the regulations to be annulled.
A face-sit protest has been planned for Friday at Westminster against the new rules.
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5 Reasons Private Investigators Have Great Job Security
by Scott Fulmer
Private investigators like to complain. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. How hard is it to put a check in the mail? Maybe it’s because we have so much time to think and philosophize about life and our chosen occupation while sitting on surveillance for hours. One of the main topics at conventions as well as on the newsgroups these days is whether or not the private investigator occupation is a dying industry. While there is some shrinking and consolidating of markets within the private investigation trade, I submit that it is not a dying industry. Consider these 5 reasons . . .
1. The Government Says Otherwise . . .
They say the two biggest lies are ‘the check is in the mail’ and ‘I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help you.’ Having said that, the U.S. government projects positive growth in the private investigation industry. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the “employment of private detectives and investigators is projected to grow 11 percent from 2012 to 2022.” Of course, this is in line with the projected growth of all occupations in the U.S. but it is growth nonetheless. The question is, will you be part of this growth?
2. The Era of Nationwide PI Firms
As the words of a 1979 song by the Texas rock band ZZ Top go, “I’m bad…I’m nationwide.” There has been and continues to be a trend over the last couple of decades, especially in the insurance defense market, away from the small mom and pop P.I. firms that dominate the industry towards large regional and nationwide private investigation firms. While this topic is worthy of an article all its own, it is often cited as evidence of the dying industry argument. I’ve heard private investigators decry the loss of market share to these nationwide firms. In almost all cases these larger nationwide private investigation firms are owned by private investigators who started out as a single P.I. (a mom and pop) and grew from there. Much of the growth was due to sound business practices while some has occurred due to mergers and acquisitions. These nationwide firms in turn employ other private eyes across the region or nation as employees or contractors to conduct investigative work. It is, at the very least, evidence that, while certain markets within the private investigation industry may be shrinking or consolidating, there is still a demand for insurance defense surveillance.
3. The Niche Market Survives (The Generalist Decries)
There will always be a demand for highly skilled experts trained in specific investigative fields. Further evidence that private investigation is not a dying industry. Fields such as forensic accounting, wrongful death, infidelity investigations and TSCM are in demand. The question then becomes what do you specialize in? For example, you don’t get up one day and say, ‘I think I’ll specialize in homicide investigations and blood splatter analysis.’ This type of work is primarily conducted by private investigators who have spent a good deal of time as homicide detectives with their state or local police departments before becoming a private eye. They require experience and specialized training. My point is there will always be a market for unique investigative specialties that provide value to clients. The secret is to find your niche market and become an expert. Coincidentally, there is an excellent article in the one of the recent PI News Roundup Newsletters addressing specific increases and decreases in certain investigative markets. You can find it here: Increases and Decreases in Investigation Type Inquiries and Views from 2012 to Present. I highly recommend reading it.
I would add that, with some exceptions (and there are exceptions), attempting to be a “full service firm” is tantamount to being a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none.’ The term ‘Expert’ denotes a comprehensive knowledge or skill in a particular field. You will need to be an expert to survive in the future. If I want a pi who deals with death and injury causation I call Colorado private investigator Dean Beers. If I need a nursing home abuse investigator I call Texas private investigator Kelly Riddle. These private eyes literally wrote the book on those niche investigations. What will your niche be?
4. Changes in Technology (Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Changes in Methodology)
When television sets began to be mass produced in the early 1950’s there was some concern in Hollywood that television would spell the end of the motion picture industry. After all, why go out to see a movie when you could just watch one at home on your TV. Likewise, it has been suggested that the advent of security cameras was supposed to discontinue the need for security officers and, to some extent, private investigators that specialize in insurance fraud. That hasn’t happened. For starters, someone has to monitor those cameras. Plenty of retail outlets have both cameras and security officers. Security cameras do not necessarily act as a deterrent towards bad behavior. If they did, no one would ever rob a convenience store. Similarly, even with cameras prevalent in the work place employees still engage in workers comp fraud. Security cameras cannot be everywhere. But a private investigator with a camera can be just about anywhere.
With that in mind, consider the approach of these two companies. The first, an international petrochemical company with refineries throughout the world and retail stores in your neighborhood. The second, a transit utility in one of the ten largest cities in the U.S.
The petrochemical company refines and distributes oil and gasoline to consumers through thousands of retail stores in the U.S. You may have purchased gasoline at one of their stores. I recently spoke at length with their director of claims. In an effort to lower costs, injuries and reduce litigation, they have placed security cameras inside and outside their gas stations. This includes cameras inside their walk-in coolers, refrigerated units and back room areas in an effort to observe customers, employees and vendors. The cameras have allowed them to resolve most of their workers comp and liability fraud issues without using a private investigator. However they still hire private eyes from time to time for complex cases that involve serious litigation.
The transit utility uses security cameras on their buses and handicapped vans in an effort to observe drivers and riders. Yet, they still use private investigators to conduct surveillance in an effort towards settling workers comp and liability claims.
5. The Rise of Social Media (End of Opportunity for the Private Investigator)
It’s been said that prostitution is the oldest profession with spying the second oldest. With that in mind, it doesn’t take much to see that neither infidelity nor spying seems to ever go out of business. Infidelity investigations, and by extension, child custody investigations are flourishing. Yet, another reason why the private investigator is not a dying industry.
When it comes to social media is the glass half full or half empty? It depends on your perspective. Cheap commercially available tracking devices and outdated “info providers” on the internet have furthered the ability for the average person to find at least some information. Many private eyes bemoan the fact that the internet has made it easier for clients to bypass private investigators altogether and find the information they’re looking for themselves. This may be true if you’re an inexperienced private eye that can do no more than cut and paste Facebook status updates and call that a background investigation.
The reality is that social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and AshleyMadison.com have been a boon to the P.I. industry. According to a couple of studies at the University of Missouri, excessive use of social media has actually increased the opportunities for affairs or dalliances with old high school boyfriends or college girlfriends. Enter the private eye.
Bonus Reason Why It's Not a Dying Industry
If prostitutes and spies are the two oldest occupations, surely lawyers are the third oldest. As Shakespeare wrote in King Henry IV, part II, “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.” As long as there’s a legal industry there will be a need for private investigators. But just as attorneys specialize in specific areas of the law, they are looking for private investigators who specialize as well. You wouldn’t want a bankruptcy attorney to defend you in a criminal case. Lawyers don’t want a private investigator that specializes in searching for birth mothers to handle their capital murder case. The niche strikes again.
In conclusion, there will always be a need for what President Theodore Roosevelt called “The man (or woman) who is actually in the arena…who does actually strive to do the deeds” There will always be a need for shoe leather; for the private eye. There will always be a need for someone to do the surveillance, to ask the questions, to serve the process, to follow the subject, to look for listening devices, to plant the GPS tracker, to verify, interrogate, inspect, monitor, photograph, videotape and investigate.
Yes, the industry is changing. The question is will you change with it? My son plays games on a Nintendo Wii. Prior to that we had the Nintendo 64 and the Super Nintendo. The Nintendo Company was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. The original product? Playing cards. They didn’t enter the video game market until 85 years later in 1974. My point is you have to be in tune with the market and technology and able to respond and adapt to changes. The test of time will be how good you are at what you do and whether or not you bring value to your client.
Scott B. Fulmer is a licensed Utah private investigator and President/CEO of intellUTAH. He has conducted complex investigations for high-profile clients in the private sector and at the state and federal levels, including sensitive national security background investigations involving federal agencies, presidential appointees of the George W. Bush administration, and members of the intelligence community.
He has a BA in Criminal Justice and has written numerous articles on investigative and surveillance techniques that have appeared in PInow.com and other industry publications. Mr. Fulmer is an in-demand speaker with a unique method of storytelling that will engage your audience. He writes a popular weekly blog, The Utah Gumshoe, chronicling the “plucky deeds, daily musings and quiet reflections of a Utah private eye.” He is a decorated combat veteran of the Gulf War. Mr. Fulmer lives along the Wasatch Front with his wife and three children where he is currently at work on a book about surveillance methodology. You may contact him at [email protected]
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~ Santa Margarita Shipwreck ~
“Our Lady of SANTA MARGARITA,” sank in1622 40 miles west of Key West (a total of 6 Galleons of 28 sank from the Fleet), off the Florida Keys on a reef within sight of the Atocha, Havana bound for Spain. She was found in 1626 by Spanish salvagers, they recovered roughly half her treasure. Here Galleons were filled with all types of Treasure: Gold Chains, 166,574 Silver 8 Reales, Copper, 550 Silver Ingots (over 10,000 lbs), over 9,000 oz of Gold Bars, Discs, Chains & Bits) of what was registered (there was much more in contraband to avoid the 20% tax). She never made it out of Vera Cruz to Havana – to join the Fleet of the Tierra Firme (mainland Fleet). “Our Lady of SANTA MARGARITA,” sank in1622 40 miles west of Key West (a total of 6 Galleons of 28 sank from the Fleet), off the Florida Keys on a reef within sight of the Atocha, Havana bound for Spain. She was found in 1626 by Spanish salvagers, they recovered roughly half her treasure. Here Galleons were filled with all types of Treasure: Gold Chains, 166,574 Silver 8 Reales, Copper, 550 Silver Ingots (over 10,000 lbs), over 9,000 oz of Gold Bars, Discs, Chains & Bits) of what was registered (there was much more in contraband to avoid the 20% tax). She never made it out of Vera Cruz to Havana – to join the Fleet of the Tierra Firme (mainland Fleet).
Her Treasure was so enormous that it took 2 months to load the Galleons full (in summer of 1622 in what is now Panama City). She set sail on September 4th, 1622 (6 weeks behind schedule) only two days later on the 6th, she was pushed onto the coral reefs by a severe hurricane (approx.. 40 miles west of Key West). There was 142 Crew & Passengers that drowned quickly as her hull was ripped apart.
Authorities in Spain dispatched (5) Five more ships after receiving the news from other surviving ships in efforts to salvage both the “Santa Margarita” and here sister ship the “Atocha,” which had also run aground near the Santa Margarita.
Due to the Galleons sitting in 55” of ocean and then a second hurricane hitting (further scattering the treasure) the following month made salvage efforts even more hindered. With the help of Indian Slaves over a course of years, almost half the treasure was recovered from the Santa Margarita. This was mainly accomplished, crudely enough, by sending slaves down in a brass makeshift diving bell (with a window on the sie). Many of these efforts ended in the death for the slaves (up to 50%).
Spain’s shipwrecked treasure caused nothing short of devastation to the it’s finances, where were in dire need to fund their 30 years war. This forced them to borrow money and sell off Galleons to raise the much needed funds. Although the Spanish recovery efforts were somewhat successful over 10 years, they never did find the Atocha!
Finally, after 12 years of searching the Santa Margarita was finally discovered in 1980 by Mel Fisher (Treasure Salvors), producing here Gold and Rare Muzo Emeralds. Most of the Gold and Silver coins were minted between 1598 to 1621 (there were also earlier dates, even as far back as the early 1500’s on board). Treasure is still being brought up to this day. Recently, in 2008 Blue Water Recovery found more gold bars, chains and even a solid gold Chalice, as well as a lead box full of pears (16,184 pearls to be exact), totaling over $16 Million to date.
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Posts tagged with "Trump Organization"
Allen Weisselberg (left) and Donald Trump. (Photo source: Screen shot from MSNBC)
Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is granted immunity by federal prosecutors in Cohen probe
Just when President Donald Trump might have thought it was safe to look at the news again, Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity by New York federal prosecutors in their investigation into the POTUS’s former personal attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen—in which Trump already has been implicated, The Wall Street Journal and MSNBC reported on August 24.
Cohen pleaded guilty on August 22 to violating campaign finance laws at Trump’s direction, when he paid hush money to prevent the stories of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, two women who allegedly had extramarital affairs with Trump, from going public during Trump’s 2016 campaign.
According to the Journal’s report, Weisselberg was called to testify before a federal grand jury in the investigation last month—however, the details of that testimony remain unknown. It is unclear whether the CFO knew, or talked about, Trump’s knowledge of the payments.
However, a former Trump organization executive told the news outlet that Trump would sometimes point out to him how loyal Weisselberg had been to him for decades.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment to the Journal about Weisselberg’s role in the investigation—and a spokesperson for the Trump Organization didn’t respond either.
According to the news outlet, “The subpoena illustrates that investigators are seeking input from Trump’s closest colleagues in the Trump Organization, particularly those with knowledge of the company’s financial dealings.”
The Huffington Post reported on August 24 that “No one knows Trump’s finances better than Weisselberg.” Aside from Trump himself, the HuffPost said, Weisselberg is the longest-serving employee of the Trump Organization. He has worked for the company since the 1970s, beginning as an accountant with Fred Trump, the president’s father, and working his way up to chief financial officer.
A poll of registered voters released by Fox News on August 23 shows approval of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is at 59%, up 11 points from July. What’s more, 40% expect the probe will find President Donald Trump committed criminal or impeachable offenses.
Research contact: @foxnewspoll
This entry was posted in Politics and tagged 57% of American voters want investigation to continue, Alan Weisselberg, Already testified to Grand Jury, CFO, Content of testimony is unknown, Fox News poll, Granted immunity in Cohen investigation, Huffington Post, MSNBC, NY federal prosecutors, Trump Organization, Wall Street Journal on August 24, 2018 by Poll-Vaulter.
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Business minister promises to examine staff buy-out for Stornoway Talk Talk call centre
Business minister Jamie Hepburn has pledged to consider a staff buy-out of Stornoway’s Talk Talk call centre in a bid to save 59 jobs.
Tributes paid to Mark Hollis: One of music’s great innovators
Tributes have been paid to “trailblazing” singer-songwriter Mark Hollis, frontman of the band Talk Talk, following his death at the age of 64.
Nicola Sturgeon pledges to help Stornoway TalkTalk workforce
Nicola Sturgeon has pledged to explore “all options” to help the 59 workers facing redundancy as a result of the closure of the Talk Talk call centre in Stornoway.
Thousands of people’s personal data breached as photo-sharing app is hacked
Thousands of people have had their private personal data leaked after a popular photo-sharing website was hacked.
Talk Talk cyber attack: Millions of accounts could have been accessed
Police are investigating a “significant and sustained cyber attack” on the TalkTalk website, the telecoms company has revealed.
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Updated February 5, 2018
Boys’ basketball: Oxford Hills holds off Cheverus
The Vikings build a 14-point lead before the Stags make a late charge.
By Paul BetitSpecial to the Press Herald
Oxford Hills survived a late-game rally to pull out a 51-48 victory against Cheverus in a Class AA North boys’ basketball game Monday night.
Chris St. Pierre scored 15 of his game-high 17 points in the second half to help the Vikings (11-6) nail down their sixth consecutive win.
Atreyu Keniston scored 15 points for Oxford Hills, which opened the season by losing four of its first six games.
The Vikings held a 14-point lead with less than four minutes left before the Stags (6-10) closed within three points.
“It’s disconcerting in that we thoroughly controlled the entire game until the last few minutes,” Oxford Hills Coach Scott Graffam said.
“We’ve won a lot of close games where we’ve done the exact same thing.”
Oxford Hills committed eight of its 15 turnovers in the fourth quarter, which helped Cheverus climb back into the game.
“I’m proud of my guys,” Cheverus Coach Ryan Sirois said. “They kept battling and we had a shot at the end.
The Stags actually got the ball back with 3.8 seconds left but were unable to make a tying 3-pointer.
“I’m proud of the grit they showed,” said Sirois. “I wish we could have gotten off to a better start.”
The Stags hit just 4 of 21 shots in the first half.
Oxford Hills built a 15-11 lead in the first quarter, primarily on the inside play of Keniston and Colton Carson, who scored six of his eight points during the quarter.
The Stags, who were unable to finish anything inside early on, managed to remain close despite making just three of their nine shots during the first quarter.
“They were way more physical than we were and we couldn’t answer that challenge in the first half,” Sirois said.
“When you play a team like Oxford Hills, who are disciplined and physical, you’ve got to bring it or that’s going to happen.”
The Vikings also had trouble scoring during the second quarter, making only one of their first 11 shots.
But they finished the first half with a rush. Keniston and Carson each scored a basket in the final 35 seconds to propel them into a 21-13 lead.
St. Pierre stepped up during the third quarter, scoring nine points to help Oxford Hills take a 32-26 lead into the fourth. The Vikings, who made 9 of 10 free throws in the final quarter, moved into a 42-28 lead with 3:30 left to play.
Cheverus held a 15-4 scoring edge over the next 21/2 minutes, to close within three points with less than a minute left. Will Dieterich and Janek Lukska each made two free throws over the next 20 seconds to propel the Vikings into a 50-43 lead with 33.9 seconds left.
Tobias Ephron led the Stags with 13 points, scoring five of those points during their late-game run.
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Developers’ Contract Terminated
Oct. 3, 2017, 6:28 a.m.
Malaysian company TOP SYMPHONY (Fiji) Limited’s contract to develop the much-talked about multi-million dollar Waila City, Nausori, has been terminated.
Acting chief executive officer of Housing Authority, Isikeli Navuda, made the revelation while making submissions before the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament yesterday.
Mr Navuda said there had been no progress on the ground for the last four years.
He said the company had failed to provide figures of the market value of the project.
He said this had brought the problem of affordability for the authority.
Mr Navuda said if the project could not sell in the market than the authority would run into problems. He said a public statement on the issue would be released at a later date.
Mr Navuda said they were in the process of working on a new master plan for the development of Waila City.
The company could not be contacted to comment.
Minister for Local Government, Housing and Environment, Parveen Kumar said he would comment today.
This article was first published in the Fiji Sun on September 2, 2016.
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80 Best Hollywood Movies That Should Be On Every Movie Buff's List
Krithika Madhavan | Apr 26, 2019
If you're a cinephile like me and your idea of chilling includes your laptop and a tub of ice cream, then we have some good news for you. It's true that we have very little time and so many movies to binge, but if you do one movie night for a year, you might be able to catch up on all the greatest films in the world. Yes! We did this math for you.
So, we compiled a list of the best Hollywood movies to watch that you can put on your list right away. Some of them are cult classics and others will simply make you feel great. So, fire up some popcorn, get set to binge on these!
Crime And Thriller Movies
RomCom Movies
Here is the list of best Hollywood movies everyone should watch in their lifetime :
Hollywood Horror Movie List
There is something about horror movies that makes them an incredibly thrilling experience. Put in some great direction and background score and the vibe is set for a night of absolute terror-filled fun. So check out our list of must watch Hollywood movies in the horror genre!
1. Psycho
An American psycho-horror film made way back in the 1960s is the story of Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, and a series of totally twisted events in his life. The story opens with a girl stealing money from her employer and running away with her boyfriend. They happen to then arrive at motel that Bates manages. Bate's character is disturbing and twisted, adding to the thrill of the film. Made by Alfred Hitchcock, the master of crime and intrigue films, Psycho is a must watch for anyone who loves dark twisted stories.
Watch it here
2. The Exorcist
If horror is your genre, then watching this 1973 horror flick is like a right of passage. It's like if you love Bollywood and you haven't watched Sholay! The Exorcist was a chartbuster horror film back when it was released. It's not as slick in graphics, make-up etc as modern day horror films, but we can guarantee that even today, it's sinister enough to send a shiver down your spine.
You won't be able to go to the loo alone after you watch this. Based on a real-life story, the movie is all about exorcism. When young Regan starts acting odd by speaking different languages and behaving erratically, her mother seeks medical help. They then find out that she is possessed. Watch the film to find out what happens next.
3. The Conjuring
Another horror hit, based on a true story, The Conjuring is about a family that moves into a new house and experiences paranormal activities. How they get out of the situation with the help of priests who help them get rid of the evil spirit forms the whole story. One of the must watch English movies for thrills, you won’t regret watching it.
4. The Grudge
Another one for all horror movie lovers, this one will give you chills worse than a Siberian winter and will make you want to sleep with all the lights on. A story about a family that moves into a new house which already has spirits residing in it. How they deal with the supernatural activities on a day to day basis forms the plot.
5. Annabelle: Creation
Years and years after his daughter's tragic death, a man traps his little girl's soul in a doll. Then the doll reaches a family and makes their life not so exciting. A series of haunted events, based on a true story will surely give you sleepless nights if you're up for it!
6. Saw
On its release, Saw became the second all-time Halloween favourite after The Exorcist. It also marked the shift to more modern and realistic horror stories. Saw was horrendously gruesome, peppered with plot twists, and the first of the six more films that followed in the franchise.
The film opens with two men -- Adam and Gordon played by Lea Whannell (also the writer of the story) and Cary Elwes waking up to find themselves in a gritty and dirty old bathroom with a dead man between them. A series of clues and riddles reveal that their captor is the Jigsaw killer. But that's only the beginning of what follows -- a dark, twisted and gory couple of hours filled with horror.
7. The Devil Inside
If your appetite for horror isn't satisfied, line up this really god-awful but much-enjoyed horrorama. A woman goes through a series of exorcisms just to figure out the mystery behind exorcisms her mother went through during which she supposedly bumped off three people. We know it sounds ridiculous as a plot, but watch it. There's enough horror crap to delight any buff of the genre.
8. Insidious
Yet another movie franchise that never fails to give some bone-deep chills, Insidious is one horror movie that absolutely has to be on your must watch English movies list if it isn’t already. It follows the story of a little boy whose soul is stuck in the world of the dead while a malicious demon soul pursues it. However, the reality is more twisted than it appears and will definitely leave you surprised.
9. The Nun
Yet another prelude to The Conjuring, The Nun has everything that makes for the perfect horror movie. How? A desolate village in old Romania, an ancient abbey full of nuns surrounded by a graveyard, bells that tinkle in the night, and two characters to face it all. Do we need to persuade you more to watch it?
10. The Shining
If you love yourself some psychological horror then The Shining is the movie for you! Adapted from Stephen King’s novel, the movie is a masterpiece in itself. A family of three are boarded up for the Maine winter in the massive Overlook Hotel with nothing but each other for company. But they’re not alone. As the winter progresses, the horrors of The Overlook unfold and present a horrific debacle to the Torrance family.
Hollywood Comedy Movie List
Now that we’ve rounded up our list of horror movies for you to binge, now is the time for some light mood comedy! So we bring you some of the top hollywood movies in the comic genre. So grab a tub of popcorn and get ready to have a great time while bingeing these movies!
11. American Pie
A total slapstick movie about one of the biggest obsessions for young people -- losing virginity. It involves a group of college people and their hilarious experiences exploring sexuality.
12. Nappily Ever After
A coming of age story for single women. Nappily Ever After is a delightful feel-good romantic comedy about a Black woman named Violet who is in her 30s and her journey of self-discovery. Originally, a novel by Trisha R. Thomas, the story opens with Violet, a perfectionist and a successful ad exec with a perfect life and a perfect boyfriend. Her dominating mother plays a big role in how what Violet considers sacred in her life. One day, however, when her relationship collapses, she feels thrown off track. Her pursuit to cope occurs over a series of different hairstyles she tries, that ultimately reveal to her who she truly is and what she truly wants. Super relatable, funny and heartwarming, the film is a must-watch.
13. Baywatch
If you are one of those people who loved the original Baywatch series, and you like Priyanka Chopra, then you should definitely watch this movie with your girl gang. It's about bay watchers who are not only lifeguards on the beach but also crime-busters. You will totally love our Desi girl's performance in this one.
14. Bad Teacher
A story about a seventh-grade teacher who is dumped by her sugar daddy. You will not regret watching this Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake starrer.
15. The Dictator
Probably the best hollywood movie when it comes to comedy, this one is bound to have you in splits! Watch the hilarious experience of a god-awful dictator who has to survive a few weeks in America.
16. Mean Girls
A Lindsey Lohan starrer, this movie has been every teenage girl's favourite. A story about a group of girls who control and manipulate the social landscape of their high school. It will remind you of all the cliques you encountered in high school.
17. Marley & Me
Aaah, back to sweeter films. Everyone really swears by this dog movie. And even though Marley, the dog is central to the story, the film is as much about him as it is about the couple who adopts this mischievous pup. Watch their lives unfold as they take care of him and fall in love with each other in the process.
18. The Internship
When you see Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson together on screen, you know you're most likely to spend an evening laughing. They play two out-of-job salesmen Billy and Nick who decide that the only option they have is to catch up with time and join the digital world. But since they know little about technology, they figure they have to start at the bottom. As luck would have it, they manage to win two precious internship spots at Google, where, if they have to secure a future, they must beat some tech-savvy geniuses who are half their age.
19. Hitch
Charming as ever, Will Smith plays the role of a 'date doctor' in New York, a modern day matchmaker who helps people to successfully get the girl or guy they want. But then one day, he meets society page columnist who doesn't quite fall for his charms as readily as he hopes. Meanwhile, his client bungles his way into the heart of a millionairess. Watch the two odd love stories unfold in this immensely enjoyable romantic comedy.
20. Tortilla Soup
A Mexican American family comedy-drama that follows the life of three daughters living with their father who was once a chef, but due to a tragedy, has now lost his sense of smell and taste. Their little daily troubles and the deep love and care they share as a family forms the central theme for the film.
Hollywood Drama Movie List
These are the movies that are at their iconic best, and should be in your watch-list if you’re a serious cinephile. So stack these up these must watch Hollywood movies on your watch queue and get ready for stories that celebrate everything from love to family!
21. The Parent Trap
A super cute story of identical twins who were separated at birth, and raised by their divorced parents. The parents, Nick and Elizabeth have the custody of one child each. One day, however, both girls land up at the same school camp. While Hallie was raised in America, Annie was raised in England. When they meet at the camp, they figure that they've been kept in the dark all their lives by their parents. Eager to meet the other parent, they decide to swap places. Not just that, they decided to bring their parents back together. A classic teenage chick-flick you can watch at any age and still find charming!
22. Hachi: A Dog's Tale
If you love dogs then here is a disclaimer - You are going to cry, like a lot. A story about a dog who is abandoned and then rescued by a family. How he proves his loyalty to his family forms the plot. It's cute, it speaks loyalty and affection and it's everything that a dog lover will relate to.
23. The Reader
When a teenager falls in love with an older woman, you know an interesting story unfolds no matter what happens. With glimpses of the WW2 and a serious story that unfolds, this movie is great if you love Kate Winslet.
24. The Pursuit Of Happiness
Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a San Fran salesman who struggles his way through life making a livelihood for himself and his 5-year-old son. Watch this film on how a single father raises his child and finds happiness despite all odds.
25. Munich
A dark movie based on real events when Israelis were attacked by a Palestinian terrorist group known as the Black September Organisation. Gripping from the first scene to the last, it has some really tense moments where you will just go - 'what the hell'. Watch this movie to know what we're talking about.
26. Troy
Based on the ancient Greek love story between the Prince of Troy and Helen, the Queen of Sparta that lead to a big war. Extravagantly made, elaborate in costumes and sets, Troy had a super duper cast of Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom and other Hollywood superstars.
27. The Stripper
From the glorious Eastman Kodak colour days of the 60s, this film was quite a shocker when it released. For the first time, people got a glimpse into the real lives of Las Vegas' famous strippers, revealing their struggles and triumphs. The film faced a lot of controversies as it was seen to show strippers in kinder light which American society at the time thought was immoral.
28. Jewel
A super cute movie which talks about the bond between a mother, and her daughter who suffers from down syndrome. A touching tale of hardships and how the two women rise above it all.
29. Breakfast at Tiffany's
This movie holds a hallowed spot in the Hollywood film industry and is a beautifully shot film that should be on the top of your binge-watching list. An academic award-winning movie starring Audrey Hepburn, it is a story of an expensive escort living in New York who falls in love with a rich older man. How her life unfolds with that man is what forms this iconic movie.
Watch it here.
30. Love & Other Drugs
A story about a man who was always lucky with women. He then meets a girl with Parkinson's syndrome and ends up falling in love with her. But as they get closer, they start to question the intensity of their relationship.
Hollywood Crime And Thriller Movie List
When you watch a movie about crimes, it always sends a chill down your spine. The reason crime movies are so popular is because they explore the depths of human psyche in a manner that no other genre can. So check out our list of the absolute cult crime and thriller movies, you won’t be disappointed!
31. London Has Fallen
An action movie about back to back terror attacks that happen after the death of the British Prime Minister. Good masala, timepass film. Not quite as brilliant as the Die Hard type of movies, but pretty good and kind of squeezes its way into top Hollywood action movie lists.
32. The Client
Ooooh, another meaty thriller from John Grisham that became a movie. Joel Schumacher, the man who Batman Forever, A Time To Kill and bunch of other blockbusters directs Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in this legal drama thriller where a boy witnesses a murder and hires a lawyer (played brilliantly by Susan Sarandon) to protect him from the mafia. Tommy Lee Jones plays the district attorney bent on getting the boy to testify so he can take down the mafia finally.
33. Anaconda
You couldn't possibly have come this far in life without watching this monster movie! Anaconda, and its subsequent franchise centres around a gigantic Amazonian water snake that attacks unsuspecting people and gobbles up boats and what not! Totally worth every bit of masala peanuts that you would be munching while watching this.
34. Desperado
Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek not only reek hotness on screen but also pull of hair-raising stunts and action in this mid-Western style film about a man who goes around seeking vengeance against people who have murdered his girlfriend. Don't miss Quentin Tarantino in supporting cast.
35. Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom
Another Steven Spielberg blockbuster from the '90s where Indiana Jones, a legendary archaeologist arrives in India to track down a precious stone. Shot partly on location and partly at studios in Hollywood, the film can annoy you with American stereotypes about Indians (eg Amrish Puri eating monkey brains as a delicacy) or streets filled with cows and snake charmers, but it's still a super fun watch. And Harrison Ford was still young in this film, and a total dish!
36. The Godfather
What happens when Marlin Brando and Al Pacino come together on screen? They make a legendary movie. Touted as one of the world's greatest movies of all times, this film not only won a truckload of Oscars but has wowed generations after generations, and people from all over the world. A mob drama on the life and times of an Italian American crime family, and how they deal with everything around them. Women often score points with men when they declare they've watched and loved The Godfather!
37. Casino
A Robert De Niro movie often referred to as an epic American crime drama. This movie is about a mafia associate and his infamous trip to Las Vegas. He is appointed for a job there which he really really loves but one that eventually lands him in trouble. How he gets out of the whole situation forms the rest of the story.
38. A Clockwork Orange
A Stanley Kubrick masterpiece made way ahead of its time. The story revolves around Alex and his "Droogs" who spend their nights getting high at a place. One day, Alex gets jailed for beating the Cat Lady to death, he submits to a behavior modification technique to earn his freedom. Watch the film to see how he deals with the consequences. Set up in a dystopian future, this movie isn't for only those who enjoys esoteric or 'way-out-there' cinema. We know that doesn't sound very promising but trust us, it's a super super cool cult film, and totally worth all the hype.
39. Copycat
An intense and gripping thriller about a psychologist, played by Sigourney Weaver, who specializes in the study of serial killers. One day, there's an attempt made on her life. She turns to a San Francisco cop played by Holly Hunter to help her solve the mystery.
40. The Wolf Of Wall Street
One of the most amazing Leonardo movies, after Titanic, of course. Again, based on a real-life person who was known to be a badass broker on Wall Street. Through his story, the film traces the murky, crazed, extravagant and extraordinary lives of people who play the stock market.
Hollywood Romantic Movie List
There is something about romance that strikes the heart’s strings like no other. If you’re in the mood for some serious movie bingeing and want to have all those warm and fuzzy feelings, then do check out our list of romantic Hollywood movies that are bound to make you smile with that fond joy!
41. Titanic
Well, who does not know about this unsinkable ship? This movie not only is an Oscar-winning masterpiece but is also known for the stellar performances by the star cast Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet. From amazing graphics to actually seeing the ship sink, this movie will give you goosebumps every minute. Watch it to believe it.
42. Cruel Intentions
An American teen romantic drama which was a huge box office success. It's the story of Annette who unknowingly becomes embroiled in her two friend's sexual adventures when she writes an article in Seventeen magazine about wanting to save herself for the man she marries. How she deals with it all becomes the story. It has all the high school drama you would expect in a teen film, along with a few explicit moments. It's the film that made Sarah Michelle Geller a big teen star.
43. La La land
Hollywood's very own millennial musical starring none other than Ryan Gosling. It's a story about two people who get together to do what they love. How they deal with their passion and the mounting love between the two, forms the plot. This movie was a huge box office hit and you will definitely not regret watching it!
44. A Walk To Remember
A super romantic movie that will make you wish you had a real love story too. Before you get to the real deal, you should know that it will make you cry hard. A story about a classic bad boy who falls for the silent one in his school. How they deal with their love and her illness forms the plot.
45. Before We Go
It's a story of a street musician Nick who meets a girl called Brooke at a station as one of them misses their train. Their conversations about their long-held fears make up the storyline.
46. Candy Jar
A sweet love story about a high school girl who falls in love with a wealthy guy and finds out that they have a lot in common despite their differences.
47. 50 First Dates
One of those cute romantic movies that have been everyone's favorite for the longest time. A story of a girl with partial memory loss who falls in love with a guy who has to remind her every day that she is in love with him.
48. Just Go With It
A super cute rom-com starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler. Sandler plays a dentist who lies to his girlfriends about being married, just so he can get out of the eventual commitment. But then one day, he gets serious about a woman he's dating. To propose, he has to go through an elaborate charade of having a wife and children that he has to leave. To cut a long story short, they all end up on a vacation together, and much hullabaloo ensues. A fun movie if you're in the mood to chill!
49. You've Got Mail
This is the quintessential romantic film that perfectly captured the magic of onscreen couple Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Directed and written by Nora Ephron, the woman who also wrote Sleepless in Seattle and Julie & Julia, You've Got Mail is a must must watch. It's sweet, sentimental, and reaffirms your belief in the thought that everyone will find love one day. Sometimes, you only have to look right before you.
50. To All The Boys I've Loved Before
Another Netflix rage in recent times, this movie will take you back to high school and make you remember all those boys YOU ever loved. A story about Lara Jane who writes one letter for every boy she ever loved and they are accidentally posted. What forms the plot is how all those boys react to her. You definitely don't want to miss this one.
Hollywood RomCom Movie List
There is a reason why everyone loves RomComs. Not only are they super fun to watch, but they’ve got just the hint of romance that’s enough to hook you into the movie right until the end. If you love to binge romcom movies as much as we do, then you definitely need to check out our list of romcom movies!
51. Sex And The City
A holy Bible for all the single ladies, the two movies (the first and the sequel) feature four women and their lives, love pursuits, and friendship. Continuing the SATC series, if you are curious to know what happens in the life of Carrie and her besties then this movie will be your answer. If you're planning a ladies night out then this movie should be on the top of your watch list.
52. Friends With Benefits
Two friends who indulge in casual sex? Well, you sure will be curious to know what happens between them, right? Watch this super cute rom-com to know how the story unfolds when two best friends decide to just have sex and nothing more.
53. The Kissing Booth
A Netflix original, this movie had everyone going gaga for the longest time. It is one of the cutest high school romance movies where a girl comes face to face with her high school crush. She has a pact with one of her best friends and the guy turns out to be his brother. How she manages to have a sneaky love story forms the plot. One of the best hollywood movies to watch, you should not miss it for the world!
54. Crazy, Stupid Love
Another Ryan Gosling rom-com with a series of twists and 'woah' moments. The story of a man who teaches a friend how to live life after a nasty divorce. You definitely don't want to miss this one.
55. He's Just Not That Into You
A bible for all the single ladies, this movie will crack all the dating codes for you. Or at least make you laugh at them. You want to watch this fabulous movie which talks about the lives of these characters and what really happens in their dating life. This will not only give you cue to the real-time millennial dating but will make up for a fun girls night in movie time!
56. Valentine's Day
The romance that happens in different people's lives in different cities and different time zones. This is a multi-starrer rom-com that tries to be in the same league as The Holiday and Love Actually. Doesn't quite make it, but it's not that bad either.
57. Made in America
One day, a young girl, Zora Matthews (played by Nia Long) discovers that she was born through artificial insemination. As she goes on a search for her father, she's even more startled to find that he's white! Whoopi Goldberg plays the role of Zora's mother while Ted Danson plays the part of her father. It's a sweet film, and Goldberg is always a delight to watch.
58. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
It is rightly said that if its meant to happen, then it will happen. Andie and Benjamin end up courting each other, but for entirely different reasons. Benjamin is challenged by his co-workers to make Andie fall in love with him, while Andie is dating Benjamin only to make him fall out of love with her in 10 days. Watch the movie to find out how the two of them inevitably end up being together, despite all odds!
59. 10 Things I Hate About You
They say people will do everything for love, and this movie depicts just that. Cameron really wants to date Bianca, but she isn’t allowed to date until her sister goes out for dating, so Cameron sets up an arrangement which turns out well for everyone in the end. If the plot wasn’t good enough already, then the ever-charming Heath Ledger will give you enough reasons to watch this gem!
60. Bridget Jones’s Diary
Now this a story about Bridget who makes it her new year resolution to find love despite all odds. She first falls for her boss, who’s a known casanova, but ends up realising that her true love lies elsewhere, with an entirely different person. So follow Bridget as she makes resolutions after resolutions in her diary and how her journey for love finally turns out to be.
Hollywood Science Fiction Movie List
Now this section is for all of you out there who love watching science fiction movies. Not only are they extremely fun to watch, but they also give you something to think about. So run those brain cells and enjoy these cult science fiction movies!
61. E.T The Extra-Terrestrial
A personal favourite, this movie is all things super cute and adorable. A story of an extraterrestrial alien who gets lost on Earth and finds the meaning of being home through his friendship with a boy called Elliot. This Steven Spielberg classic talks about love, care, and loyalty in the cutest way possible. Just be prepared with a box of tissues. There's magic, there's logic and there is a little Drew Barrymore in the movie as a surprise element. Watch it to know what we're talking about.
Buy DVD here
62. 2001: A Space Odyssey
One of the most progressive science fiction works by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clark, it is a story about evolution. The main protagonist and other astronauts are sent on a space mission, but suddenly their space ship's computer system shuts down mysteriously. This causes intense tension between people and forms a mind-boggling story through space and time.If you love watching sci-fi then you don't want to miss out on this masterpiece.
63. Interstellar
This movie is known as Christopher Nolan's best ever work. A sci-fi hit with a big cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain that form a team of explorers who travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival. Just don't watch Interstellar and Gravity back to back. Not a good idea, at all!
64. Men in Black
This classic Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones starrer is a fun sci-fi adventure film about secret agents and their hilarious adventures. The first in the franchise, this one deals with their project to save Earth from an evil alien under the guise of a gorgeous woman.
65. Inception
Ever wondered what a dream inside a dream feels like? The movie revolves around Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who is a thief skilled at stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious of unsuspecting people.
66. The Martian
The Martian is a movie that celebrates human strength in its very best form. When Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) is on his mission to Mars, he is presumed dead and is left behind. What Mark awakes to is being stranded far away from home, but he perseveres to find a way to connect back with scientists on Earth.
When an ordinary father has to protect himself and his two children from a sudden and equally terrifying alien invasion, all hell breaks loose. Adapted from the story by H.G. Wells, the graphics and sound effects of this movie is nothing less than amazing. Follow Tom Cruise on his attempt to protect himself and his kids in this absolutely best alien invasion film.
68. Gravity
This Sandra Bullock and George Clooney starrer is all you need to make your weekend (if you love sci-fi, that is). Bullock and Clooney are astronauts who are on a mission. But things take a serious turn when Bullock is the only crew member alive, and it is up to her to make her way back to Earth.
69. Star Wars
Now this one has a cult following of its own, and for its own reasons. Join Luke Skywalker on his interspace adventures as he struggles to fight off malicious forces in the depths of the interspace. He has a formidable enemy, and he has to rely on the force within him to make things right.
70. The Matrix
There is a reason why Matrix has been deemed as the absolute cult classic when it comes to sci-fi movies. When Neo gets to choose between reality and illusion, his world is changed forever and becomes a series of constant battle against the machines. With amazing graphics, this is one of the most visually dazzling sci-fi movies ever.
Hollywood Fantasy Movie List
Now this is our favourite section, and that’s why we’ve reserved it for the last. Fantasy movies instantly teleport you into an entirely different universe, and that’s why we love them so immensely. So watch out for these fantasy movies, for they will definitely blow your mind!
71. Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets
A popular poll told me that this is one of the best Harry Potter movies ever made, so I had to add this to the list. The second novel in the series has Harry and his friends battling an evil mysterious snake that has been killing children in the school. It's unlikely that you've not seen this already. Ideally, we would suggest you watch all Harry Potter films back to back over a weekend! And call us, we're all Potterheads here and would be happy to watch them all again!
72. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle
A brand new Jumanji adventure with a cooler concept. A story of 5 teenagers who enter the game only to find one stone that will save their life. So, if you loved the Robin Williams version then you will totally love this one too.
73. Scooby-Doo: The Movie
If you were a big fan of this animated big doggo then you must totally add this movie to your list. It's cute and a laughter riot. Catch the Scooby gang unveil a new set of mysteries in this epic comedy movie.
74. Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
Lord of The Rings is one of those series that defies all boundaries of fantasy. Vivid and detailed, watch Frodo’s journey into the unknown as he and his friends begin to find the dark lord. Why, you ask? Well, Frodo happens to be in the possession of a ring that everyone wants for their own keeping, and he must protect it from the dark forces.
75. The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
Have you ever wished that you could magically transport yourself into a magical land at the blink of an eye? Well, this movie is about four siblings who seek asylum at a house far removed from the damage of war. Their days of extreme boredom soon turn into intense adventure as they discover the magical world of Narnia, along with a lot of surprises!
76. Maleficent
They say that every sinner has a past, and that not everyone is born evil. This movie is about a rift between two neighbouring kingdoms, the difference being that one is magical while the other is physical. Follow Maleficent’s side of the story as the unexplained villain of the classic Sleeping Beauty, and you will know that things aren’t always what they seem to be.
77. Jumanji
Ever wondered what would happen if you’d go inside the game you were playing? Well, that is exactly what happens when four teenagers decide to play a game from an old video console that they’ve never heard of. Follow them as they struggle to survive on this very real adventure, just like the players in the game!
78. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
If you love Harry Potter then there is no doubt that you would love this one as well. In a time much before Voldemort reigned terror, there was yet another dark wizard who was whipping up trouble. Watch how Newt Scamander, a wizard who specialises in magical beasts accidentally unleashes them in olden New York and how he inevitably ends up involved in the tiff with Grindelwald himself.
79. Alice In Wonderland
We’ve all read and enjoyed the book by Lewis Carroll, so why not enjoy this dark adaptation on screen as well? Watch Alice as she traverses through the topsy turvy universe of Wonderland and how she understands where her heart lies. With iconic actors such as Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anne Hathaway, this one should definitely be in your watch list!
80. Oz, The Great And Powerful
In this prequel to ‘The Wizard Of Oz’, watch how Oz’s journey from a common man to the great wizard he is revered for. James Franco has beautifully played the role of Oz, and the amazing graphics will literally transport you to the land of Oz in a way that would eventually make you nostalgic of childhood memories.
Now that you have our absolute favourite list of movies for you to binge on, go ahead and make your weekends awesome!
Movie posters: IMDB
This story was updated in January 2019.
Krithika Madhavan
Features Writer, POPxo
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Posted on February 12, 2017 by John Hinderaker in Immigration, Liberals
Is It “Deeply Offensive” to Enforce the Law?
It is, apparently, if the law relates to immigration. At Penn State, someone put up posters urging students and others to report violations of the immigration laws. This is the poster:
Is it a civic duty to report illegal aliens? That is certainly a defensible position. In general, citizens should cooperate with law enforcement. But Penn State’s administration didn’t see it that way:
“The posters are unsigned and appear to be designed to provoke anger, fear and hate. The university finds them deeply offensive,” Penn State said in a statement.
Is enforcing the law really a sign of “anger, fear and hate”? And why, exactly, is it offensive to suggest that citizens should cooperate in enforcing federal law? How did it happen that the American establishment became overwhelmingly, and enthusiastically, in favor of illegal immigration?
The university said in its statement about the posters that officials wanted to emphasize “that every student on this campus has earned the right to be here based on their [sic] academic qualifications and hard work.”
Hmm. Is there anything in the poster about academic qualifications and hard work? Not that I noticed. Whether a student has a right to be at Penn State (or anywhere else in the U.S.) depends in part, of course, on our immigration laws.
“Penn State is enriched by students and scholars from around the world and we will continue our work on providing a climate of inclusion for all, regardless of country of origin,” the university said.
But the poster says nothing about country of origin. It is fine to have a “climate of inclusion for all,” but if “all” includes people who are present in the United States illegally, it shouldn’t come as a shock if they are caught and deported. Does Penn State’s administration mean to suggest that it deliberately harbors illegal aliens, thereby aiding and abetting violations of federal law? I think that is the clear implication. Does Penn State receive federal funding?
We are living in a very bizarre era, in which large numbers of otherwise-respectable people consider it a point of moral superiority to commit, or aid in the commission of, federal crimes. This largely explains why Donald Trump is now our president.
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WATCH: First David Bowie Statue Unveiled In Aylesbury
26 March 2018, 12:21 | Updated: 26 March 2018, 12:31
See the footage of the Andrew Sinclair-created artwork, which was unveiled on Sunday.
The first ever David Bowie statue was unveiled in Aylesbury's Market Square on Sunday (25 March).
Watch a clip of the footage above, courtesy of the Bowie Statue Twitter account.
After two years of planning, the Earthly Messenger statue was finally revealed- with fans gathering in Ayelsbury where the icon first unveiled his Hunky Dory album and later played one of his early shows as Ziggy Stardust at the town's Friars venue.
Fans and celebrities turned out to mark the occasion, with 80s musician and songwriter Howard Jones unveiling the statue and the town of Aylesbury being re-named Aylesbowie for the day thanks to a Change.org petition.
I don't live in Aylesbury today.. town is called Aylesbowie today due to unveiling of David Bowie statue! #davidbowie #aylesbowie #aylesbury
A post shared by Helen (@hpsaucy77) onMar 25, 2018 at 5:17am PDT
Meanwhile, Ricky Gervais recently reflected on his relationship with the Heroes icon, telling Radio X's Gordon Smart that David Bowie didn't really exist.
Watch our video below:
When asked by Radio X's Gordon Smart if he was ever starstruck after becoming friends with the late icon, he replied: "It's funny because with Bowie, I sort of had to remind myself.
"Once you got to know him and you're having a laugh and he's a normal bloke, and he is a normal bloke..."
The actor, writer, producer, director and comedian added: "In fact, the first time I went to his apartment in New York the doorman said, 'Ah you're here to see Mr. Jones'.
"I went, 'Yeah, course I am'. David Bowie doesn't really exist. I saw Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones was my mate, and Mr. Bowie was my hero and you don't equate the two.
"You don't keep thinking, 'That's David Bowie!' I think some people think of me talking to David Bowie and he's still got the Ziggy stripe on, and he's talking about aliens and stuff.
"And he's not. He's talking about bananas and pasta, you know what I mean?"
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Central Japan Railway’s Tests Shinkansen hits 360 kp/h2 months before
Chinese Contractor Ready For Kumasi-Bechem Railway Project2 months before
Cooperate With Russia and Japan on Railway Sector2 months before
16 Jul 2019 Tue
Ana Sayfa > World > Asia > WB has Provided Loan to Indian Railway Freight Corridor
WB has Provided Loan to Indian Railway Freight Corridor
06 June 2011 Monday, 07:15
Indian Railways to Manufacture Trainsets Running at 160 km/h
Indian Railways to Set up $5 billion Fund for Developments
Railways to Roll out Enterprise Resources Planning Project
The World Bank has provided a $975m loan to Indian Railways to build the eastern-dedicated freight corridor, a freight-only rail line that will help faster movement of raw materials and finished goods between the northern and eastern parts of India.
The corridor will also allow Indian Railways to free up capacity and better serve the large passenger market in this densely populated region.
The World Bank fund will cover a route length of 1,130km out of a total corridor length of 1,839km. The project is planned to be implemented in three phases.
The project will help increase the capacity of these freight-only lines by raising the axle-load limit from 22.9t to 25.0t and allowing the goods trains to run at a speed of 100km/h.
The freight corridor is part of India’s first Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) initiative and is being built on two main routes – the western and the eastern Corridors.
Currently, these routes account for 16% of India’s railway network but carry more than 60% of its total rail freight. The new dedicated freight corridors will ease congestion on the routes as well as reduce travel time for passenger trains.
india railway loans indian railway corridors indian railway news world bank loans for railway sector
Peru wants China to Help Finance a Railway Project
Inauguration of the Nice Côte d’Azur Urban Light-Rail Extension
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Home » Oil & Gas Production » Oil and Gas » Petroleum Business » Petroleum Land Titles
Petroleum Land Titles
Friday, March 3, 2017 Oil & Gas Production, Oil and Gas, Petroleum Business
This article is not intended to make you into either a surveyor or landman, but some familiarity with the principles of petroleum land titles is useful to anyone in the business. After oil is removed from the ground it is sold and dealt with just like any other item of personal property, but while still in the ground it is governed by the rules governing real estate transactions. In the United States, the surface owner generally has title to all air rights over the land and all minerals under the land, including oil and gas. In some foreign countries the government retains title to minerals, and the landowner has only surface rights. Oil and gas are also subject to a unique characteristic not applicable to other minerals-they can travel without regard for legal boundaries.
A landowner owns all oil produced on his land even if the reservoir extends under another person's land and he is draining oil from the entire reservoir. Of course, the well, must reach bottom on his own land, and he cannot slant or directional drill to reach bottom on someone else's property. Thus, a landowner is subject to being deprived of his oil if his reservoir extends as far as a well on someone else's property. The principal defense to this is to drill an "offset well" to recover one's own oil or gas before it is lost ("pooling" and "unitization" are other answers, but they are beyond the scope of this discussion).
The horizontal well has changed the way people look at land boundaries. Now the boundaries are regulated in many states; however, in some states they are not. The directional driller's job is to not exceed the legal boundary. He does this by giving accurate directional surveys to the consultant on location and by following a preset directional chart. One foot could cause a legal problem if it were drilled into another person's boundary. A cement plug may be all that is necessary, but do not count on anything concerning regulation being simple. Politics plays a.big part in drilling wells. Sometimes it comes down to how the regulator feels that day.
Ownership of land is determined by finding the original grant from the sovereign to a private owner and then tracing each transfer down to the present. Most states west of the Mississippi were originally federal territories with the land owned by the federal government. Titles in these states will generally start with a federal grant. Texas was never a federal territory, and all land titles in Texas trace back to a grant from the King of Spain, the Republic of Mexico, the Republic of Texas, or the State of Texas. The title then changes hands through various transfers, such as deeds, wills, intestate inheritances, tax sales, and mortgage foreclosures. A transfer may cover the entire property or it may include only a portion, such as the transfer of part or all of the minerals to one person, with surface rights left to another.
There are other documents that are not transfers but that do affect title such as mortgages, oil and gas leases, easements, etc. Almost all of these transfers are evidenced by a document that is recorded in the county where the land lies. The documents are a public record and thus give notice to anyone who seeks to determine title to a tract of property. Some transfers, however, such as an intestate inheritance (an inheritance by law from a person who left no will) or title obtained by adverse possession (title obtained by using the land and claiming ownership for a specified number of years) are not represented by a document. Such unrecorded transfers are always a challenge to the landman.
The landman or other title examiner can save a lot of time by obtaining an abstract of title prepared by an abstract company. An abstract of title is a book or file that contains copies or summaries of every recorded document affecting title to a particular tract. However, since the abstractor will not interpret the documents, the title examiner must know what the documents mean.
Because title is normally conveyed in writing, it is important to have a method of describing land area, so that the land conveyed by title can be determined on the ground. There 'are two basic methods of describing land areas:
The rectangular survey
The metes and bounds description.
The rectangular survey is the simplest method to deal with. It was adopted by the United States Government shortly after the Revolutionary War and applied to almost all lands owned by the federal government west of the Appalachians. It is thus the system used in most of the oil producing states in the Rocky Mountain-Prairie area except for Texas. Texas entered the Union as a republic and was never a federal territory, therefore the federal system does not apply there.
Figure 1. Example of a Rectangular Survey
In the rectangular survey the surveyor lays out a northsouth principal meridian and an east-west baseline to form a cross. He then measures off townships of 36 square miles each, 6 miles on a side (see Figure 1). The east-west measurement is then counted in units called ranges, and the north-south measurement is counted in units called townships. Thus, if you start at the intersection of the meridian and the baseline and want to describe the location of a township that is 3 units north and 2 units to the east (Figure 1) it would be described as Township 3 North, Range 2 East or simply- T3N, R2E.
Figure 2. Numbering Order of the Section of a Township
Each township is then divided into 36 sections of one square mile each (640 acres), which are numbered 1 to 36 in the manner shown in Figure 2. A section can then be described simply by referring to a section number. The sections are not subdivided in the original survey but are easily subdivided by the owner into halves, quarters, etc. (See Figure 3.) Thus, the shaded area in Figure 3 consisting of 80 acres can be described as the north half of the southwest quarter, section eight, Township 3 North, Range 2 East. This is written N 1/2 of SW 1/4, Section 8, T3N, R2E.
Figure 3. Example of ways a section can be subdivided
A metes and bounds description is simply one laid out on the ground using:
Physical monuments (e.g., a river, a tree, a rock, a concrete marker)
Directions (e.g., North 30° East)
Distances.
This is a difficult system to deal with because many early surveys were inaccurate to start with and the monuments have long since disappeared. This is the system used in most of Texas, although Texas has its own form of rectangular survey in the more recently settled areas. To make matters more confusing, in Texas everything is not traced to one federal government but to four different sovereigns, each with different methods of granting and describing land. Many early grants cover tens of thousands of acres in poorly described metes and bounds surveys, which sometimes use monuments such as trees that no longer exist. See Also: Basic Terms of an Oil and Gas Leases
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National Grid would boost revenues by $19.6M in settlement with R.I. regulators
Alex Kuffner Journal Staff Writer kuffneralex
Jun 6, 2018 at 2:53 PM Jun 6, 2018 at 3:56 PM
The settlement filed with the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission would initially give the state’s dominant utility less than half of what it requested seven months ago, but the company would make some more money through rate increases phased in over the second and third years of the proposed agreement.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Under a three-year settlement plan filed Wednesday for approval by state regulators, National Grid would raise additional revenues of $19.6 million in the first year through changes to its gas and electric distribution rates.
The settlement, filed with the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission, would initially give the state’s dominant utility less than half of what it requested seven months ago, but the company would make some more money through rate increases phased in over the second and third years of the proposed agreement.
An apples-to-apples comparison of the settlement to National Grid’s original proposal that was filed last November is difficult because of a number of developments: amendments to federal tax law; the change from a one-off increase in rates to a multi-year plan; and the factoring in of costs to modernize the Rhode Island electric grid.
But one way is to compare the total additional revenues from distribution fees that National Grid would receive under the settlement to what the company would have received under its revised offer that included savings from the Trump administration’s tax overhaul: $82.9 million versus $137.5 million.
By that measure, the utility would receive about 60 percent of what it requested.
Another way of comparing is to look at ratepayer impacts. National Grid did not release the bill impacts after revising its proposal to account for the tax savings, but its initial plan would have required a 6-percent increase in the typical residential electric bill and a 5-percent increase in the gas bill.
In the first year of the settlement, the residential electric bill would go up by 4.1 percent. Additional increases of 0.7 percent and 0.4 percent would follow in years two and three.
For gas customers, bills would actually decrease by 0.2 percent in the first year, but then go up by 1.5 percent in year two and 0.9 percent in year three.
Gov. Gina Raimondo expressed satisfaction with the agreement.
“My obvious preference is no rate increase,” she said in a statement. “However, I’m pleased that if this settlement is approved by the PUC, a significant portion of the proposed modest rate increase will be directed to make new investments in energy infrastructure, clearing the way for a more resilient, more efficient, cleaner and more renewable energy future.”
The agreement was reached through negotiations between the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers — the state agency that acts as the ratepayers’ advocate — National Grid and a host of other parties, including the state Office of Energy Resources, the Navy and the nonprofit Acadia Center.
The settlement includes new performance incentives for system efficiency and integration of renewable energy distributed throughout the state. It also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Not only does it address those key priorities raised by the public and interested parties during the review process, but it also reflects the shared energy goals we have with the State of Rhode Island,” Timothy Horan, president of National Grid in Rhode Island, said in a statement. “Together, we are committed to promoting more renewable forms of energy, providing greater assistance to income-eligible customers, and modernizing the grid.”
The grid-modernization portion of the plan would cost ratepayers an additional $13.6 million over three years. It calls for investments in support of electric vehicles, energy storage and electric heat and advanced metering that will help manage the peaks and troughs of energy demand.
“The settlement includes several changes to the utility business model, which should begin to change the incentives for National Grid — away from traditional capital investments and towards outcomes that benefit consumers and the environment,” Mark LeBel, staff attorney for the Boston-based Acadia Center, wrote in comments to the PUC.
The distribution rate case was the first filed by National Grid in five years. Distribution rates do not reflect changes in the commodity prices of electricity or natural gas. Those prices are adjusted through separate dockets with the PUC.
When National Grid files rate proposals in response to changes in energy costs, the PUC has little room to make changes because larger trends in commodities markets are at play. But proposals for distribution rates offer far more room for revision.
The company says it needs additional revenues from its 497,000 electric customers and 267,000 gas customers in Rhode Island to cover increases in operating costs, including health care, labor and equipment, as well as investments in cybersecurity.
Under the settlement, the cumulative rate increases for businesses and industrial energy users would be lower than for most residential customers.
The biggest benefits would be realized by low-income Rhode Islanders. They would see a 15.7-percent drop in their electric bills in the first year and a 22.3-percent drop in their gas bill. Modest increases would follow in the remaining years of the plan.
— akuffner@providencejournal.com
On Twitter: @KuffnerAlex
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This #GivingTuesday, Make a Wise Investment in ORPHANetwork
Ted Wille answers why the non-profit organization is worthy of his investments
Ted Wille, Retired Chief Operating Officer AMERIGROUP Corporation
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (PRWEB) November 25, 2018
Ted and Gail Wille have invested $10,000 with ORPHANetwork, providing a matching gift for the non-profit organization’s Caring Through The Crisis #GivingTuesday campaign. “Giving Tuesday provides an opportunity each year where individuals that work hard, stop their daily lives for a brief moment and give of themselves to help someone else,” Wille adds, “And that feels good!”
“I invest in ORPHANetwork because it is a high-impact organization, rescuing and changing the lives of children in Nicaragua through the local church.” Wille continued, “They have a four-star Charity Navigator rating because they measure everything they do, and they get results for the children by eliminating malnourishment, providing after-school education and job skills so that cycles of poverty can be broken.”
Wille invested his talents in the world of healthcare for decades. With two Master's degrees and vast industry experience, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of AMERIGROUP Corporation for seven years. Prior to AMERIGROUP, he served as a Vice President for Sentara Health System and President of Optima Health. For the past 14 years, Wille has served ORPHANetwork as its Board Chairman, utilizing his business development acumen and his passion for serving those in need, to guide the faith-based organization to expand its reach to 20,000 vulnerable and orphaned children in Nicaragua.
About ORPHANetwork’s #GivingTuesday campaign:
ORPHANetwork’s Caring Through The Crisis goal is to raise $40,000 to ensure its programs can continue to provide Hope and a Future to the 20,000 orphaned and vulnerable children they serve. On April 18, 2018, protests against social security reform unexpectedly brought the peace and progress Nicaragua had experienced over the past few decades to an abrupt halt. Today more than 200,000 people are without jobs in what was already the poorest Spanish-speaking country in the world. Thanks to Mr. Wille’s investment, all gifts up to $10,000 are matched now through November 27th.
About #GivingTuesday:
#GivingTuesday is a global giving movement that has been built by individuals, families, organizations, businesses and communities in all 50 states and in countries around the world. This year, #GivingTuesday falls on November 27. #GivingTuesday harnesses the collective power of a unique blend of partners to transform how people think about, talk about, and participate in the giving season.
Katie Beasley
ORPHANetwork
@ORPHANetwork
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By BARBARA BOWEN, PSC President
CUNY students demanded full funding during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge in March.
More than a month after Amazon’s decision to withdraw its plan for a New York City headquarters, debate continues to rage over the willingness of State and City governments to pledge $3 billion in public money in exchange for Amazon’s promises of private economic development. But the debate also continues to be blind to a resource much closer to home. The most powerful engine of economic development for New York State is not Amazon, Google or any other corporation. It is an institution that already has deep roots in city neighborhoods and an unequaled record of advancing the poor and working class. Unlike Amazon, it is fully unionized. Better yet, it generates knowledge rather than profits. Its mission involves redistributing wealth rather than concentrating it at the top. And it will never leave New York City.
ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE
To PSC members, the identity of the resource is obvious. CUNY, with its half-million students, is responsible for enabling more people to rise out of poverty than any other university in the United States. CUNY leads the nation in fostering both individual and intergenerational economic mobility. According to economist Raj Chetty’s comprehensive 2017 study of the economic benefit of attending college (“Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility”), CUNY lifts nearly six times more people from the lowest income bracket to middle-class or higher incomes than all of the Ivy League colleges plus Duke, Stanford, M.I.T. and the University of Chicago – combined.
Nearly half of CUNY undergraduates come from families whose annual income is less than $20,000. More than 60 percent come from families with annual incomes under $30,000. Three-quarters are black, Latino or Asian. While some CUNY students are from middle-income families, the majority live in or close to poverty. For most, CUNY is the only realistic chance of building a good life within a political system that sets them up to fail.
All of us who work at CUNY, however, know that CUNY has always been about more than expanding the economy or even changing individual lives. It is about equipping students to think critically about the causes of inequality even as they tackle its effects in their own lives. At its best, CUNY has the potential to reimagine the economy, not just reduce its savageness. But CUNY’s impact on economic mobility for both individuals and their communities is undeniable. For students who are able to stay in college and graduate, a CUNY degree has economic reverberations that are still measurable two generations later.
We are right to resist reducing CUNY to a machine for increasing the tax base, but the statistics are revealing in a debate on economic development. The Social Security Administration reports that lifetime earnings for men with bachelor’s degrees are $900,000 higher than for those with high school degrees, and earnings for women are $630,000 higher. Last year alone CUNY graduated more than 50,000 students. Given that eight in 10 CUNY graduates are still living in New York State a decade after graduation, their income differential translates into millions of dollars of additional tax revenue every year for the city and state. It also means greater spending power in local communities, lower expenditures on social services, lower public health costs and lower expenditures on criminal justice and public assistance.
Collectively, CUNY graduates pump billions of dollars every year into the state and local economy, far more than was dreamed of by Amazon or any other corporation. Add to this the tax revenue and intellectual capital generated by CUNY’s 45,000 faculty and staff, and you begin to take the measure of the university’s economic contribution to New York.
Yet as we experience on a daily basis, CUNY is being systematically and deliberately starved of public funding. One result is that only a fraction of students graduate. Thus only a fraction receive the full benefit of the state and city’s initial investment in their education. Just 6 percent of CUNY community college students graduate in two years, and only 26 percent of four-year college students in four years.
PUBLIC DEFUNDING
Poverty is undoubtedly the largest reason CUNY students struggle to graduate, but the lack of investment by city and state governments is a close second. A good public college education costs money. New York has largely made the decision not to invest. And CUNY’s current Board of Trustees refuses to challenge that decision.
The city’s investment in CUNY has risen under Mayor de Blasio, but it still falls below the amount needed. Meanwhile Albany slashed per-student support for CUNY’s four-year colleges by nearly 20 percent between 2008 and 2018. To cover the gap, CUNY increased tuition by 46 percent over the same decade and increased its reliance on exploited adjunct labor. Full-time salaries are also far from competitive, but CUNY balances its budget on the backs of students and adjuncts.
The union’s sustained pressure on the State Legislature has yielded incremental improvements and saved CUNY from the worst of budget cuts. In 2016 PSC advocacy beat back a proposed half-billion-dollar cut proposed by Governor Cuomo. But the state and city must do much more.
FUND CUNY
Investment in CUNY is a wage justice issue and a racial justice issue. It is also a matter of economic development. The $3 billion in tax breaks for Amazon came from a combination of city laws designed to provide huge tax breaks for businesses that locate in certain areas and discretionary funding from the state, especially through Governor Cuomo’s Excelsior Jobs Program. Without changing a single law, the $1.2 billion promised to Amazon from the Excelsior Jobs Program could be redirected to CUNY. The idea is not far-fetched. While private corporations have mixed records of delivering on promised job creation, CUNY is a proven engine of economic development, a proven creator of jobs and an essential contributor to the state’s intellectual infrastructure.
No investment would repay New York more than a major investment in CUNY. The value of enabling CUNY to thrive goes well beyond dollars in the economy, but in purely economic terms it is also profound. The ASAP program at the community colleges has shown that an added investment per student in a structured and supportive program more than doubles the graduation rate. Adding $1.2 billion to CUNY’s budget would virtually guarantee that the graduation rate throughout the university would double. CUNY students would be able to take the classes they seek and get the advising they need. Part-time faculty would receive equal pay for equal work. Full-time faculty would have time to support every student in the class. College libraries would begin to restock their shelves. Labs would have equipment for every student in a class. Tuition would stop rising and even begin to fall to levels affordable for working-class students.
Governor Cuomo loves to enjoin us to think big about spending billions on airports, bridges and tunnels. Both he and Mayor de Blasio urged New York to think big about committing $3 billion to Amazon. And all the time they were missing the economic powerhouse hidden in plain sight. It is not too late for New York to think big about CUNY.
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The UK's 50 largest employee owned companies in 2016
RM2 does the research for the Employee Ownership Top 50 in partnership with the Employee Ownership Association (EOA); a list of the largest fifty private employee-owned companies in the UK. You can download the infographic by clicking the link below.
Download the Employee Ownership Top 50 2016 PDF
The combined revenue of the top 50 employee-owned companies is £22.6 billion.
Revenue of the top 50 increased by 6.3% year-on-year.
Over the last three years, the combined sales of the top 50 have increased by 10.2%. The UK economy as a whole grew by 7.7% over the same period.
Five of the largest 100 private companies [1] in the UK are employee-owned. John Lewis Partnership is the largest private company employer in the UK. One in seven people employed in the largest 100 private companies in the UK are employee owners.
The combined workforce of the top 50 employee-owned companies is 175,000. This represents 0.8% of the private sector workforce in the UK [2]. Employee numbers increased by 5.3% year-on-year.
Over the last three years, the combined employee numbers of the top 50 have increased by 15.1%. Employment in the UK economy as a whole grew by 5.8% over the same period.
The combined operating profit [3] of the top 50 is £1.35 billion [4]. This was an increase of 10.9% on the previous year.
The top 50 are conservatively financed. Only 15 have net borrowings. Most have cash reserves.
Value added per employee, which is a measure of productivity, increased by 1.5% year-on-year. Productivity in the UK economy as a whole is flat.
Ground rules:
Criteria for inclusion: Companies must be incorporated in the UK as companies limited by shares, unquoted, independent and at least 25% owned by employees on a broad basis. Companies may have non-UK holding companies if the UK companies are operationally independent and the non-UK holding companies are at least 75% owned by employees. Shares from joint ventures and associate companies are excluded.
Criteria for exclusion: The list does not cover quoted companies, the performance of which is tracked by the UK Employee Ownership Index. In businesses constituted as industrial and provident societies and as community interest companies, employee ownership can be hard to ascertain from published sources so, in such cases, we have relied on a business's membership of EOA as evidence of employee ownership. The list excludes companies limited by guarantee and partnerships such as lawyers and accountants.
Data collection: Several sources were used, including internet searches, lists of EOA members, Companies House searches and professional advisers active in the sector. Figures for employee numbers and revenues are taken from companies’ latest published annual accounts at Companies House as at 19 May 2016. Estimates of the percentage of employee ownership in each company were sourced from the companies’ own websites or EOA or press reports, corroborated where possible from annual returns.
Disclaimer: Employee ownership data is not systematically published by companies so the list may not be accurate. Nominations for inclusion and corrections should be sent to operations@rm2.co.uk
Definition of terms: Operating profit or EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Productivity is defined as value added per employee. Value added is defined as EBITDA plus total wages. Debt is defined as the sum of bank loans and overdrafts, other short term finances and other long term finances minus cash.
[1] Sunday Times Top Track 100 2016
[2] Excluding employees in the public sector and self-employed
[3] EBITDA, meaning earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation
[4] On a like-for-like basis
Back to EO Top 50
Key Employee Share Plan
All Employee Share Plans
Employee Ownership Trusts
Partner Companies:
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David Olusoga OBE.
David Olusoga OBE sends his congratulations to everyone involved in Rooley Moor Neighbourhood Forum on delivering their Sharing Heritage project, which was supported by national lottery players via the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
David is the Honorary President of Rooley Moor Neighbourhood Forum and has become a familiar face on British television screens. He is an expert on military history, race and slavery and members of the forum participated in one of the episodes of his BBC, “Black and British: A Forgotten History” series, which gave the inspiration for the project.
David says, “I first became involved with the forum whilst filming an episode for the Black & British series, which included the Cotton Famine Road on Rooley Moor near Rochdale.
At the time it stuck me that this stunningly beautiful area has a fascinating mixed and varied history including weaving wool and cotton before and after the industrial revolution, quarrying, coal mining, manufacturing munitions, the list goes on. Many reminders of this history, such as the Cotton Famine Road, have been left on the landscape and it is reflected in the buildings and architecture of the area.
It was the people who impressed me the most. Rochdale saw the birth of the Co-operative Pioneer Movement, which helped forge social change that was reflected in the attitudes and actions of Rochdale people during the American Civil War. That steadfast honesty seems to have passed down through the generations and it was clear to me that people really cared about the area and were proud of its history and heritage.
Through this National Lottery Heritage Fund supported project, members of the forum have left a lasting legacy. The forum website has become a resource that future generations can explore; there are four visitor interpretation boards in various locations and view finders on top of two of the most prominent hills. All of the signs have QR codes that take you to various History and Heritage pages of the website when they are scanned. The boards also link to four heritage trails where people can print their own copy of the route and download GPX files. The heritage trails are short walks that can be joined together to accommodate walkers of varying abilities.
Congratulations to the whole community for pulling it all together, I’m proud to have been involved!”
About David Olusoga OBE
David graduated from University of Liverpool’s Department of History before going on to study broadcasting at Leeds Trinity University. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester.
About Rooley Moor Neighbourhood Forum
Rooley Moor Neighbourhood Forum is a registered charity, charity number 1165601. For more information about the forum please see our website: https://www.rmnf.org.uk
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Using money raised by the National Lottery, we Inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive and lasting change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk
Follow @HeritageFundUK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #NationalLotteryHeritageFund
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Eight U.S. senators write to John Horgan over B.C. mining pollution
The dispute stems from Teck Resources’ coal mines in B.C.’s Elk Valley
A coal mining operation in Sparwood, B.C. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh)
Eight U.S. senators say Canadian mines in B.C. are endangering cross-border rivers through a combination of poor environmental assessments and inadequate monitoring.
“We remain concerned about the lack of oversight of Canadian mining projects near multiple transboundary rivers that originate in B.C. and flow into our four U.S. states,” says a June 13 letter signed by the senators and addressed to B.C. Premier John Horgan.
The senators are from Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.
The letter fans a long-running dispute over pollution from coal mines in the southern part of the province.
While previous U.S. worries have been expressed by bureaucrats, this letter comes from politicians and extends the concerns to B.C.’s northern border with Alaska.
“They’re concerned that B.C.’s regulatory system for mining just isn’t keeping the water clean,” said Lars Sanders-Green, who speaks for a coalition of 35 environmental groups.
“The Americans are seeing the same problem that we’re seeing, which is that B.C.’s mining laws are ancient.”
A B.C. government spokesman was not immediately available for comment. The province has signed agreements on transboundary waters with Alaska, Montana and Washington.
The dispute’s roots are in the Elk Valley coal mines owned by Teck Resources in southern B.C. Digging coal releases selenium, an element healthy in trace amounts, but one that can cause gastrointestinal disorders, nerve damage, cirrhosis of the liver and death in large doses. In fish, it causes reproductive failure.
A 2018 report found all five waterways flowing into the transboundary Koocanusa reservoir have selenium levels at the maximum or above B.C.’s drinking water guidelines. Two are four times higher.
Selenium levels in the Elk and Fording rivers are 70 times those in the Flathead River, which doesn’t get runoff from Teck’s five mines.
University of Montana researchers have found Elk River stations near the mines are reporting levels 50 times what’s recommended for aquatic health. Near the city of Fernie, B.C., readings are 10 times that level.
In 2017, Teck was fined $1.7 million over the selenium.
READ MORE: Teck to compensate Sparwood residents for dust
Last year, U.S. members of a panel that regulates cross-border waterways accused their Canadian counterparts of blocking the release of damning new data about the pollution.
The senators who signed the letter, both Republicans and Democrats, want Canada to do better.
They note U.S. agencies have already begun to address concerns over B.C.’s mines. Monitoring of water coming from Canada has been increased and American Indigenous bands have joined in to address contamination risks.
“Members of Congress … have called for oversight and accountability measures in shared transboundary watershed equivalent to those on the U.S. side,” the letter says.
“Alaska, Washington, Idaho and Montana have tremendous natural resources that need to be protected against impacts from B.C. hard rock and coal mining.”
The Americans want stronger decision-making on mine construction, better environmental reviews and more research to plug data gaps and monitor long-term effects.
Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
Prince Harry champions mother’s cause: clearing land mines
Threats charge against Surrey’s Jaspal Atwal stayed
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Litvinenko investigation gains momentum
British detectives are continuing their investigation into the death of the former Russian security officer Aleksandr Litvinenko. Andrey Lugovoy, who met Litvinenko in November, is among the people they're expected to question.
It's not clear how long it might take Scotland Yard investigators, who arrived in Moscow yesterday, to do their work, but according to the Russian foreign ministry, the SO15 team will have visas for as long as necessary.
Andrey Lugovoy has confirmed he is ready to talk to Scotland Yard. He spoke to Russia Today exclusively from a Moscow hospital, where he's undergoing tests for radiation poisoning.
“I'll talk to British investigators when they want me to. My lawyer says there are certain international procedures, according to which I should be correctly invited and then my evidence will be documented. I don't like the way the British press involved me in the case, but I can't comment more on it now, before I talk to the police,” he said.
Meanwhile friends of Litvinenko are urging the British investigators to question another ex-agent, Mikhail Trepashkin, saying he holds “key evidence” in the case, and they say his life is now in danger.
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Pushing through pain: Opioid alternative helps new moms recover from C-sections
Marc Kovac More Content Now
May 9, 2019 at 6:27 AM May 9, 2019 at 6:32 AM
Katrina Bowman has dealt with a lot in her 16 years as a surgery nurse.
So when her blood pressure started rising one day last year, about seven months into a pregnancy that had included severe preeclampsia, she knew it was time to call the doctor and get things checked out.
Her daughter, Kinley, was delivered via cesarean section a short time later, about two months earlier than expected.
For many new moms facing comparable health issues, C-sections are a necessity. But for Bowman, 37, it was the preferred choice for delivery.
“I wanted a C-section,” said Bowman, a nurse at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s probably the surgical nurse in me. ... Surgery is my life. It seemed more controlled and planned out.”
What she didn’t want, however, were copious amounts of prescription opioids for the pain that comes with cutting through skin and muscle.
Enter the “On-Q Pain Relief System,” informally called the “pain ball” by those in the know. The pain ball delivers a nonaddictive, numbing anesthetic through a catheter directly to surgical incisions. It’s one of a number of opioid alternatives being used to help moms who have had C-sections deal with post-surgery discomfort.
Bowman was up and moving within 24 hours of giving birth. “It was amazing,” she said.
When Dr. Anita Somani started her obstetrics/gynecology practice more than 25 years ago, expectant mothers weren’t thinking as much about opioids and the addiction issues that dominate today’s headlines. Now, they’re more aware of the dangers, and they don’t want to expose their babies to unnecessary narcotics when breastfeeding.
Those concerns can be taken too far, said Somani, who practices through Comprehensive Women’s Care and performs deliveries and other operations at Riverside.
“Most studies show that if you only take (opioids) for seven days and you don’t get refills, you’re less likely to then become addicted,” Somani said. “It’s the people who are getting multiple prescriptions, they tend to become more dependent.”
State officials have implemented a number of changes in recent years to shift guidelines and better monitor narcotics prescriptions, ultimately reducing the number of painkillers provided to patients. For five years running, such prescriptions have declined; there were 225 million fewer doses dispensed between 2012 and 2017, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Doctors have changed their approach to pain treatment, too.
“We prescribe less narcotics, and our patients are using less narcotics,” Somani said. “That’s the goal, to adequately treat pain without creating a situation where someone becomes dependent.”
In simple terms, opioids attach to receptors in the body, providing relief. The pain is still there, “it just makes you not care about the pain,” said Megan Little, a nurse and territory manager for Georgia-based Avanos Medical, the maker of On-Q. “It doesn’t directly treat the pain sensors or block pain signals. ... It more treats the mental aspect of the body and providing that sedation and relaxation.”
If narcotics are used over time, it takes higher doses to achieve the same effect for some patients, she said.
But the pain ball uses an anesthetic, rather than an opioid, that is designed to be nonaddictive. A thin catheter delivers the medicine into incision areas, with medication flowing directly into muscle and tissue through tiny holes. The device is carried in a small bag, and patients remove the catheter themselves after a few days.
The device has been in use for about 20 years for different types of surgeries. Somani is among Columbus, Ohio area doctors who in more recent years have adopted it for most of her C-section mothers.
There was a time when it was standard for Somani to prescribe 40 pills — a supply for about 10 days — to her C-section patients. Today, the total is closer to 20 pills, or a five-day supply, in part thanks to the use of the pain ball.
“We’ve cut it in half,” she said. “I won’t say never, but it’s very rare that someone calls back” for a refill.
For her C-section patients, the first five days after surgery are often the hardest, Somani said. The On-Q helps numb the pain for about five days, and she prescribes painkillers for the next five. Often, her new moms don’t use the pain pills.
That was the case for Bowman, who lives in Lancaster, Ohio, with her husband, Zach.
Bowman, who spent nearly two months at Riverside in early 2018 (about two weeks dealing with her own blood pressure and other issues, and more than five weeks while Kinley remained in the neonatal intensive-care unit), said she was well aware of the dangers of opioid overuse. But she said she didn’t think a lot about painkillers and C-sections until she gave birth herself.
The resulting pain? Bowman described it as similar to a charley horse in your leg that won’t go away.
“They literally cut your abdominal muscles, so any muscles that you have to sit up and move are gone,” she said. “You can’t even stand up. ... You can’t move. And if you do move, it just hurts.”
Bowman has assisted in placing pain ball catheters for years, so she was familiar with the setup and the benefits. After her surgery, with the help of an On-Q, she was up and moving quickly, allowing her to bond with and breastfeed her daughter without relying on opioids.
“It’s a great alternative,” she said.
-- Marc Kovac is a reporter for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. He can be reached at 330-541-9400 or mkovac@dispatch.com
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Sir Peter Fahy appointed as Chief Executive Officer
Retrak has appointed Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy as their new Chief Executive Officer. Sir Peter will take over from Retrak’s current CEO Diarmuid ONeill, who has helped the organisation grow exponentially over the previous seven years.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, David King, said today: “We are delighted that Sir Peter Fahy is joining Retrak as our CEO. Throughout his career he has shown huge commitment to the welfare and involvement of young people.”
David added: “His proven leadership and passion for transforming street children’s lives will accelerate Retrak towards our vision of a world where no child is forced to live on the street.” Sir Peter will take up his post of CEO in November.
Sir Peter was interviewed by a panel made up of both the board and senior staff as well as street children presently in Retrak’s Uganda’s programme. Involving street children in the recruitment of senior staff is a unique approach to ensure Retrak puts children at the heart of what it does.
Sir Peter said: “I know Retrak from my voluntary work with them with teams of GMP staff and colleagues from the Fire Service traveling to Uganda and Ethiopia to work with street children there. It is a great charity rescuing hundreds of children every year and with the potential to grow further. It fits in well with my interest in child protection and child welfare issues in this country. I am very excited by this new challenge.” Read more about what Sir Peter said about his appointment here.
On the current CEO, David said: “Diarmuid is an inspiring and visionary leader. His commitment, drive and leadership have enabled Retrak to massively increase our impact on the lives of street children. He lives out our values of boldness, excellence, respect and innovation in all aspects of his work. As chair I could not have asked for a better CEO to work with.”
Diarmuid said: “Sir Peter will put the spotlight on street children who are typically invisible when it comes to policy makers and donors the world over. It will bring much needed focus and attention to a group of highly vulnerable children who are often ignored. We are all very excited at Peter’s appointment.”
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Photo credit: Clive Barda
Garsington Opera announces extended 2017 season
Katy Wright
Deputy Editor, Classical Music
3:30, 16th January 2017
Garsington Opera’s 2017 season will see the company present four productions and a large community opera for the first time in its history.
The season will begin on 1 June with a new production of Handel’s Semele, which will be conducted by Jonathan Cohen and directed by Annilese Miskimmon in collaboration with designer Nicky Shaw. Starring Heidi Stober in the title role, the cast will also include Robert Murray, Christine Rice and Christopher Ainslie. As part of the Garsington Opera for All programme, the production will be screened free of charge in Skegness, Ramsgate, Burnham-on-Sea and Grimsby.
The Philharmonic Orchestra will launch its five year partnership with Garsington with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Jonathan McGovern and Andrea Carroll will sing the title roles, with Paul Gay as Golaud, Susan Bickley as Geneviève and Brian Bannatyne-Scott as Arkel. Jac van Steen will conduct, and Michael Boyd will direct.
The season includes two revivals: Martin Duncan’s 2011 production of Rossini’s Il turco in Italia, which will feature Mark Stone, Sarah Tynan, Katie Bray and Quirijn de Lang, and will be conducted by David Parry; and John Cox’s 2005 take on Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, which will be recreated for Wormsley’s opera pavilion. Joshua Bloom will sing the title role, with Jennifer France as Susanna, Kirsten MacKinnon as the Countess, Duncan Rock as the Count and Marta Fontanals-Simmons as Cherubino.
The season will conclude with Silver Birch, a large-scale work for a professional cast with local community participants of all ages, commissioned by Garsington Opera from leading British composer Roxanna Panufnik and librettist Jessica Duchen. The professional roles will be performed by Sam Furness, Victoria Simmonds, Darren Jeffery, Bradley Travis, Sarah Redgwick and James Way. Douglas Boyd will conduct the Garsington Opera Orchestra, and Karen Gillingham will direct.
The season runs from 1 June to 30 July. Public booking opens 28 March.
www.garsingtonopera.org
Subscribe to Opera Now magazine in print, digital or bundle format now to get more news, features and information. Click here for more details on our fantastic offers!
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Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee
Obama's 2012 insurance policy?
It's remarkable how many of the Republicans in the '12 mix are spectacularly unelectable
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2010/09/30/obama_2012_republicans/
Steve Kornacki
October 1, 2010 12:06AM (UTC)
What may be most notable in the new Gallup poll on the 2012 Republican presidential race is the significant distance between Mitt Romney, who leads the crowded pack with 19 percent, and the next candidate without obvious and glaring general election liabilities. Just consider the results:
Romney 19%
Sarah Palin 16%
Mike Huckabee 12%
Newt Gingrich 9%
Ron Paul 7%
Tim Pawlenty 3%
With the disclaimer that anything is possible (and the obligatory acknowledgement that many Democrats didn't believe until the very end in 1980 that Ronald Reagan could ever actually win the Whitre House), it's hard to imagine Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich or Paul winning a general election in 2012, even if the economy hasn't improved significantly. They just carry too much baggage, and nominating one of them would likely produce something like what we're now seeing in Delaware, where a radioactive GOP nominee is about to cost the GOP a seat it would otherwise win.
I can't remember so many poiosnous general election prospects near the top of the GOP field at this stage in any recent contest. Last time around, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and (sort of) Romney were all near the top of the pack early. All of them passed the November electability test. (Sure, McCain fell flat against Barack Obama, but that was more a testament to the political climate; that same race in the climate of, say, 2004, could well have produced a different result.) Back in the 2000 cycle, the big GOP fish included George W. Bush, Elizabeth Dole and McCain. For 1996, we had Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, and in 1988, George H.W. Bush, Dole and Kemp. Sure, there were some toxic prospects in these cycles (Dan Quayle figured prominently in '96 talk and actually ran -- briefly -- in '00), but in each race had more than one general election heavyweight out front early. Not so for 2012.
Moreover, as NBC's First Read noted this morning, Romney's grip on the frontrunner's slot is unusually tenuous. The GOP's conservative base is markedly cooler to him than it was to McCain at this point in the '08 cycle and Dole at this point in the '96 cycle, even as that same base seems to be warming up even more to Palin, Gingrich and Huckabee. Factor in the most alarming GOP Senate primary results this year -- a Republican electorate in Delaware that willfully committed political suicide, for instance -- and it's fair to questions the assumption that the GOP primary electorate of 2012 will be as pragamtic as it's been in the past. Don't forget: the last time the Republican base was as angry at its own establishment as it is now was in the late '70s. Back then, the favorite of the restive right for the next GOP nomination also happened to be the next-in-line guy: Reagan. But Romney, to borrow a tired expression, is no Ronald Reagan. To the New Right of the late '70s, Reagan was practically a god. To the Tea Party, though, Romney is just a somewhat likable, extremely ambitious office-seeker.
This should provide at least a little comfort to Barack Obama. I've written before that his 2012 fate will rest on the economy. If it improves significantly between now and then, he'll win, no matter whom the GOP nominates. And if it doesn't, he'll be in serious trouble. But the evolution of the GOP in the Obama era suggests a third possibility: that the economy will be weak enough to give the GOP a winnable race in 2012 -- but that they'll nominate a candidate who's incapable of taking advantage of it.
Steve Kornacki is an MSNBC host and political correspondent. Previously, he hosted “Up with Steve Kornacki” on Saturday and Sunday 8-10 a.m. ET and was a co-host on MSNBC’s ensemble show “The Cycle.” He has written for the New York Observer, covered Congress for Roll Call, and was the politics editor for Salon. His book, which focuses on the political history of the 1990s, is due out in 2017.
MORE FROM Steve Kornacki • FOLLOW stevekornacki
2012 Elections Barack Obama War Room
"This is the end of my presidency"
Trump tries to blame Obama for 2016
Biden expected to make 2020 announcement
Democrats must act before it's too late
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Tag Archive hub
Posts tagged "hub"
Feb,2018
anxiety, depression, hub, mental health, Wellbeing
Wellbeing Hub
A new service has been set up to help people manage their mental health and wellbeing.
The Wellbeing Hub, run by Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP), pledges to support people with common mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression.
The service will operate from GP surgeries, as well as in the community so that people can receive support in their own home. The team will also be able to refer to patients to hospital if necessary. Experienced mental health nurses, psychological therapists and psychiatrists are already offering assessments and therapy to hundreds of local people as part of the new service.
One service user, who wished to remain unnamed, said: “I honestly think I would’ve slipped through the net had I not sought guidance from The Wellbeing Hub.”
“The service has been a lifeline for me and I can’t thank them enough for their support.”
One in six people in England experienced a common mental health disorder in the last week, with one in four people experiencing a mental health problem at some point in their lifetime.
The Wellbeing Hub has been introduced to offer quality, effective and timely services for people experiencing a range of mental health issues.
The Wellbeing Hub is available to anyone over 16-years-old in South Cheshire and Vale Royal who would like support in managing their emotional health and wellbeing.
To contact the hub, please call 01606 555263 (Crewe) or 01606 555211 (Winsford) and for more information search ‘Wellbeing Hub’ online at www.cwp.nhs.uk
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House approves oil spill bill; stalled in Senate
WASHINGTON - The House has approved a bill to boost safety standards for offshore drilling and remove a liability cap for oil spills, but a partisan fight in the Senate will likely delay action on a response to the Gulf oil spill until Congress returns from its summer recess.
Democratic leaders hailed the House bill, approved Friday, as a comprehensive response to the devastating oil spill. They said it would increase drilling safety and crack down on polluting oil companies, such as BP.
Companies with significant workplace safety or environmental violations over the preceding seven years would be banned from new offshore drilling permits, and whistleblower protections would be extended to oil and gas workers who report hazardous conditions or other problems.
The measure was approved, 209-193.
Republicans and some-oil state Democrats opposed the bill, calling it a federal power grab that would raise energy prices and kill thousands of American jobs because of the liability provision and new fees to be imposed on oil and gas production.
Despite the House action, final approval of oil spill and energy legislation remains in doubt.
The House adjourned for its summer recess shortly after the vote, so Congress won't be able to approve a final bill until at least September. And Senate approval is anything but certain.
Democratic leaders conceded this week that they might not have the necessary 60 votes to advance their legislation, given the opposition of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has introduced a bill that tightens restrictions on offshore drilling and promotes energy efficiency, electric cars and the use of natural gas in trucks.
Reid, a Nevada Democrat, offered the bill after he realized he couldn't get 60 votes for more sweeping legislation that would have put a cap on carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.
But Democrats don't yet see 60 votes for the watered-down bill, either.
Meanwhile, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., the main sponsor of the House bill, said it would be a tribute to the 11 oil rig workers who were killed when the BP well exploded in April. The bill would create strong new safety standards for offshore drilling, end the revolving door between government regulators and industry and hold BP and other oil companies accountable for accidents, Rahall said.
Rahall said the legislation would end a "trust-but-don't-verify" attitude about safety where drilling plans were rubber stamped by federal regulators and industry often wrote its own rules.
The House bill includes a provision sponsored by Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., that would modify a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, so that some drilling permits could be approved on a rig-by-rig basis if the Interior Department determines a rig meets new safety requirements. The drilling moratorium imposed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar would remain in effect, and Salazar would retain power over whether to approve a permit.
The bill also would remove the current $75 million cap on economic damages to be paid by oil companies after major spills and increases to $300 million the financial responsibility offshore operators must demonstrate in most cases. And it would create new "conservation" fees on oil and natural gas extracted from land or water controlled by the federal government.
Those provisions prompted sharp criticism from Republicans.
Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington state, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, called the new fees on oil and gas production a "$22 billion energy tax" that would cost jobs and raise energy prices. Republicans also complained that lifting the liability cap would prevent all but the largest oil companies from offshore drilling because they won't be able to get insurance.
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COUNCIL'S $98.91 MILLION BUDGET TO DRIVE LOCAL ECONOMY AND JOBS GROWTH
12 June: Key infrastructure projects and initiatives to help drive the regional economy and generate local jobs growth headline Scenic Rim Regional Council's $98.91 million Budget for 2019-20.
Key infrastructure projects and initiatives to help drive the regional economy and generate local jobs growth headline Scenic Rim Regional Council's $98.91 million Budget for 2019-20.
Mayor Greg Christensen said the Budget, adopted at a Special Meeting of Council today, continued to build on Council's core commitments to sustainable service delivery, its strategic focus on the renewal of public spaces and support for employment growth while maintaining overall ratepayer revenue increases at just 1.8 per cent in line with the national Consumer Price Index.
Council's 2019-20 Budget features $13.13 million for initiatives under its Vibrant and Active Towns and Villages program with $10.72 million, including a Queensland Government contribution of $5 million for the expansion of the Beaudesert Business Park in Enterprise Drive.
"I am excited to be able to pursue this project as it offers a strong opportunity for the activation of new and novel employment prospects for both our existing workforce to escape from the commuter trap and for our young people as they move from high school," Cr Christensen said.
"This 11-hectare business park will be an expansion of the existing business park and when fully developed will be a significant contributor to our regional economy, supporting larger scale enterprises at the Bromelton State Development Area."
The Beaudesert Business Park is a landmark project that will provide added momentum to the revitalisation of the Beaudesert Town Centre which has been allocated $1.75 million in Council's 2019-20 Budget.
The Budget also reflects Council's commitment to its focus on the upgrade and renewal of key infrastructure, with $16 million allocated to the Scenic Rim's network of roads and bridges which help to drive the regional economy.
"This will include 13 road projects and eight bridge replacements, some of which will be possible only with matching funding from the Australian Government," Cr Christensen said.
Council's $36.70 capital works program in 2019-20 includes $11.98 million for roads, $530,000 for drainage, $754,000 for footpaths, $4.08 million for bridges, $1.25 million for Council facilities and, $13.13 million for the Vibrant and Active Towns and Villages program.
Council's operational expenditure of $80 million, including depreciation, provides for its wide range of services and community facilities in addition to environmental programs, community grants, grants for sporting and active recreational groups and funding for the Be Healthy and Active program to be extended from a six-month program to run throughout the year in 2019-20.
"Our Budget recognises co-investment from the State and Federal governments for a number of projects, both operational and capital. Grants, both operational and capital, in 2019-20 will collectively deliver $13.25 million to our region," Cr Christensen said.
Council has budgeted to collect a net amount of $55 million through rates and charges and for most rates categories has capped minimum rate increases to just one per cent. This is consistent with Council's objective to slow the increase in its minimum rate threshold, particularly for principal place of residence and rural principal place of residence properties.
"For an owner-occupied residence on the minimum general rate of $1,215 this represents an increase of $12 annually or 23 cents per week," Cr Christensen said.
"Around 32 per cent of residential properties, including principal and non-principal place of residence, will not experience an increase in general rates in 2019-20. The Rate in the Dollar for principal place of residence properties will reduce a further 3.78 per cent which is back to the lowest value for five years."
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The CDC advises: Don’t swallow the water in a hotel swimming pool
Parasites and bacteria cause most of the swimming-related disease outbreaks
Kyle Plantz
7:00am, May 18, 2018
WATER WOES Hotel pools, public parks and water playgrounds were some of the venues that caused a lot of swimming-related disease outbreaks in 2000–2014.
vgabusi/iStockphoto
It’s vacation season — time for swimming pools, hot tubs and water parks. But you might want to think twice before getting wet, says a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
From 2000 to 2014, public health officials from 46 states and Puerto Rico reported 493 outbreaks associated with treated recreational water, resulting in more than 27,000 illnesses and eight deaths, according to a report in the May 18 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Hotel pools and hot tubs were the setting for about a third (32 percent) of the outbreaks, followed by public parks (23 percent), club/recreational facilities (14 percent) and water parks (11 percent).
Most of the infections were from three organisms that can survive chlorine and other commonly used disinfectants: Cryptosporidium, a parasite that can cause gastrointestinal problems;
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Next to its solar twins, the sun stands out
Its subtly different chemistry from its ‘solar twins’ may be due to having rocky planets
Lisa Grossman
12:00pm, August 3, 2018
THE RAINBOW CONNECTION Comparing observations of the sun in many wavelengths of light (shown here in a set of observations from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory) with those of sunlike stars shows that our home star is surprisingly unique.
GSFC Visualization Studio/SDO/NASA
BOSTON — Many sunlike stars are eerie clones, but ours is an individual. A study of solar twins reveals that the sun’s chemical makeup is surprisingly different from that of its nearby peers, while those stars are almost identical to one another. Since a star and its planets are made from the same materials, that may mean the exoplanets orbiting those stars come in just a few flavors. It also could point to a new way to discover stars with solar systems more like ours.
Astronomer Megan Bedell of the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City and her colleagues studied the elements in 79 “solar twins” — stars with nearly the same temperature, gravity and iron content as the sun. The stars had been observed with the HARPS planet-hunting telescope in Chile, which measures stars’ spectra, or the rainbow of light emitted across different wavelengths. Subtle shifts in the light can reveal an orbiting planet. Spectra can also reveal the abundance of specific elements that make up a star.
“This dataset is really a treasure trove for abundance analyses,” Bedell told the Cool Stars 20 meeting on July 30.
Bedell’s team measured the abundances of 30 elements to 2 percent precision, higher than previous studies had been able to achieve, and confirmed that some elements vary with a star’s age (SN: 10/1/16, p. 25). That was what they expected — younger stars probably formed from clouds of dust and gas that had been polluted with more heavy elements from supernova explosions.
But the ratios of certain elements that are key to planet formation, such as carbon to oxygen or magnesium to silicon, were nearly identical across the stars in the survey. Stars and their planets form from the same original cloud of gas and dust, so the star’s chemistry represents what its planets are made of. The relative amounts of magnesium and silicon in a planet can determine everything from whether a planet has a rocky crust to if it has plate tectonics to what kind of minerals it forms (SN: 5/12/18, p. 28).
Earlier studies had suggested that there was enough variety in stars’ compositions for an exotic zoo of exoplanets. But with this group of stars, Bedell’s team found the opposite.
“Past studies have said that there is a lot of diversity from star to star, so there should be a lot of diversity among planets,” Bedell says. “We’re seeing a lot of the same.”
But not when it comes to the sun. The team found that the sun’s elements come in subtly different proportions. For example, the sun is missing about four Earth masses worth of rocks and metals — the very elements that the planets are made of. That result could be because of the solar system: The elements are missing from the sun because they’re locked up in the planets, Bedell says. There’s another, less savory possibility: The other stars might contain more rocky elements because they once had planets, and ate them.
Only a minority — 7 to 20 percent — of the stars measured by Bedell’s team matched the sun. No planets have been found orbiting those stars. “Of course that doesn't mean that they don't have planets, just that we can't see them yet,” Bedell says. Searching for other stars that share this shortage of rock and metal elements could help astronomers find other solar systems like our own.
The work “shows that we can do high precision abundance measurements, which are vital” for figuring out a planet’s composition based on its star, says exogeologist Cayman Unterborn of Arizona State University in Tempe, who was not involved in the study. He thinks there’s still room for exotic exoplanet compositions to exist, though — other stars that aren’t twins of the ones in this group could have different chemistries.
“The fact that the sun is depleted relative to these stars is VERY interesting, though, especially since some element abundances are pretty critical for planetary evolution,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Worth exploring!”
M. Bedell. The chemical homogeneity of sunlike stars in the solar neighborhood. Cool Stars 20, Boston, July 30, 2018.
M. Bedell et al. The chemical homogeneity of sunlike stars in the solar neighborhood. arXiv:1802.02576. Posted February 7, 2018.
L. Grossman. The recipes for solar system formation are getting a rewrite. Science News. Vol. 193, May 12, 2018, p. 28.
C. Crockett. Anna Frebel digs a young universe. Science News. Vol. 190, October 1, 2016, p. 25.
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Home/Minority Report/User Reviews/spiderwing
Review of Minority Report
Based on Steven Spielberg's international blockbuster film and the first of his films to be adapted for television, Minority Report follows the partnership between a man haunted by the future and a cop haunted by her past, as they race to stop the worst crimes before they happen.
Show Episodes (10) Show Reviews (57) Lists (418) Events Listings News Recaps
spiderwing
by spiderwing
Sep 22, 2015 9:11PM EDT
First episode review.
Great concept! Probably one of the best Dick has ever come up with. The script for the pilot is terrible, however. Slick special effects which could be implemented worse (they don't really get in the way) and likely soak up the budget.
The characters are neither hateful nor delightful. They might grow on me given time, but I don't expect them to get a full season of development.
Full disclosure - I adore time travel shows. Although (as has been pointed out in other reviews) this is as much an espionage show as it is a time travel show, I really enjoy that angle. This particular show has it's own spin on time travel, and does a reasonably good job of exploring various facets of it. At the end of the first season there are still a couple of possibilities which haven't been touched on, but they do play around with it at least a bit. The characters are intriguing, but slow to develop. It's fun to see the actors portray characters who are acting, and they avoid dwelling on it too much (because that could end up feeling like looking down an hall of mirrors). The science is a bit weak. Causality, quantum physics, antimatter, computer networks... all are cheerfully bent, folded and mutilated in the interests of creating a good story. Although, at the end of season 1, we're not completely sure about causality because we don't know anything about the future beyond what the characters tell each other, so we only get glimpses of what happens with that... Neither what the protagonists expect to happen nor what actually happens with regards to paradox are ever spelled out, though there is some allusion to it. This both keeps the story from being too dumbed down (if you're an SF fan, you know what they're talking about) or too slowed down (if you're not an SF fan you wont' get bored by it, though you might get a bit confused). It has plenty of grim, gritty and dark to go around, but the characters are (mostly) likeable. I'm looking forward to the next season (fingers crossed).
I heard good things about the series and so I searched out the movies - I found them painful. Completely self-indulgent cheese-whiz, celebrating an obnoxious know-it-all. The series, however, is something else. The protagonist of the movies is barely present (due to the actor having other commitments), so what would be the supporting cast gets the limelight - for the WHOLE SEASON. Each of them has strengths and weaknesses, and when the original Librarian rejoins the team he's been humanized enough that it comes together well (he still knows everything, but he's taken a half step back from full on Marty Stu) I'm really enjoying the show. Sorry that Bob Newhart has been written out of it. I hope it will get a second season.
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What's OnArts and Entertainment
Comedy Festival show is family event for Jason
Comedian Jason Cook is delving into the family album for his first one-man show in years.
By Tom Patterson
Thursday, 27 June, 2019, 12:49
Jason Cook as a youngster with his family
Pictures of My Family is the latest addition to the South Tyneside Comedy Festival line-up at The Customs House, South Shields, this summer.
Festival director Jason said his writing has long been inspired by his family - including the hit sitcom Hebburn, which ran for two series and a Christmas special on the BBC in 2012 and
Jason has since gone on to create Murder on the Blackpool Express and Death on the Tyne.
Jason said: “For years my comedy has been all about my family but I recently found a whole bunch of pictures from when I was younger and each one has a hilarious story attached to it.
“I really want people to come and listen to the stories about my amazing, extraordinary and everyday family.”
Pictures of My Family, which starts at 8.30pm on Saturday, July 27, will be Jason’s third appearance at the festival, now in its third year.
He is also appearing alongside Carl Hutchinson in the sold-out show, Cook and Hutchinson Have Literally No Plans Whatsoever, on Saturday, July 13, at 8pm, and with Glen Roughead in
Roughead and Cook on Saturday, July 27, at 7pm, where the pair sing songs about everything from mortgages to Metros.
The other acts appearing during the South Tyneside Comedy Festival are Adam Rowe, The Kagools, Gavin Webster, Scott Bennett, Tom Stade and Jo Caulfield.
For full listings and to book tickets, priced from just £7, contact the box office
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As Shift’s General Counsel and Senior Advisor, John focuses on the role of the legal profession in the implementation of the Guiding Principles in their role as business advisors.
John F. Sherman III
General Counsel, Senior Advisor & Secretary | Boston
John is an internationally recognized thought leader on this subject. He chairs the business and human rights working group of the International Bar Association. He writes frequently in professional and academic journals, and is a sought-after speaker at legal conferences and workshops, advocating for lawyers’ role in ensuring companies do business with respect for human rights. John is a founder of the IBA CSR Committee, and was its co-chair from 2008 to 2010.
From 2008 to 2011, John was part of the central team advising the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Business and Human Rights John Ruggie. Based on his prior corporate experience, John helped shape how human rights due diligence – a core concept of the Guiding Principles – could be incorporated into existing business systems, including governance, enterprise risk management, compliance and ethics, safety and environmental management and dispute resolution.
Since 2011, John has also been a Senior Program Fellow at the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. From 2008 through 2010, John was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Since 2009, John has been an Executive Fellow at the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University.
Prior to his work on the Guiding Principles, John was deputy general counsel of National Grid, where he had senior and executive level responsibilities for litigation, antitrust, health, safety and environmental law, corporate governance, enterprise risk management, and ethics and compliance. He represented the company at the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights (BLIHR), and was a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the International Institute of Conflict Prevention and Dispute Resolution.
Prior to joining National Grid, John clerked for the federal district court in Atlanta, and practiced commercial litigation and antitrust law at a Boston law firm. John is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College. He is a US national.
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Tom Perrotta Talks Leftovers (Not Last Night’s Meal)
January 20, 2012 | Books & Authors
Tom Perrotta has written seven novels: The Leftovers, The Abstinence Teacher, Little Children, Joe College, Election, The Wishbones, and Bad Haircut. Both Little Children and Election were made into award-winning films.
Tom’s latest book, The Leftovers, has won numerous awards and mentions from almost every publication from Oprah’s O magazine to the New York Times. The cover of the book was featured as one of the best book covers of 2011.
The cover’s striking, vivid imagery immediately draws you into a compelling narrative. It’s the story of the rapture, but not the one of the Christian Left Behind series. Instead, this is the agnostic rapture; one cataloging a family’s struggles after large scale disappearances change the world. In this version, who is missing seems to be completely random. HBO is currently working with him to turn the book into a new series.
I interviewed Tom in a nondescript government building in downtown Nashville. (Tennessee taxpayers can be certain that tax dollars are not being wasted on lavish offices!)
Tom is an agnostic, so I was particularly interested in why Tom chose to write about a rapture-like event. He talked about death and loss and how as we age and others pass away, we all can feel left behind.
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A long walk with Kenneth White
by Ian Bell
October 28, 2009 | by Ian Bell
Some day, sooner or later, someone will get around to admitting that you cannot write a haiku properly in English. It doesn’t work. The language does not take well to syllabic verse-forms, not least when filched from ideographic Japanese, even if we can all count out the 17 syllables required. What looks easy is, in fact, all-but impossible in a culture whose poetry, whose natural voice, is stubbornly accentual. So why bother?
Kenneth White will do you pages filled with haiku after haiku. The little, imagistic things, and variants of them, seem to come easily to him. That may the problem. Put aside, for a moment, the story of the Scots “intellectual nomad”, the theoretical armour he calls “geopoetics”, and the gathering movement to grant White the sort of reputation in his native land that he enjoys in France. Think about the poetry.
You can sketch a lineage. There are traces of the Black Mountain school, of late modernism, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams and the first culprit, Ezra Pound, his “Imagism” and his confessedly botched Cantos. There is that declamatory style, even when White is being self-effacing, that has its roots in Walt Whitman. There is an affinity with the Zen exoticism of someone like Gary Snyder. You can hear faint echoes of Kenneth Rexroth, catch the usual nod (in this sort of company) to Rimbaud, the bow to Prevert.
What you don’t hear often, to take some near-random examples, is anything that chimes with typical British prosody. White owes next to nothing to Auden, to the influences that shaped a Larkin, a Heaney, a Dunn, or a MacCaig. His is what they used to call vers libre (as in the old joke: who let it escape?). He verges on mysticism, given half a chance. Most recent Scots and Irish poetry, the successful variety at least, has been fundamentally empiricist. You could call it a matter of taste, but the difference of opinion has sometimes resembled a running battle.
Let The Bird Path, White’s Collected Longer Poems (1989), fall open. Here, in the middle of the page, is stanza 6 of a poem called ‘Cape Breton Uplight’. I cannot reproduce its scattered, unjustified lines, but they go as follows: “At the edge of the world/in the emptiness/maintaining the relations/the primordial contact/ the principles by which/reality is formed/on the verge of the abstract”. Any good?
It has a certain rhetorical force, I’ll grant, but it is a windy sort of rhetoric. It strains after profundity, but it relies – indeed concludes with – abstraction. This is less a matter of what the poet “means” than the way the language is deployed. It represents, it seems to me, the pose of the poet, not the making of poetry. You could live without it.
Declamatory poets have coincided rarely with British tastes in the last century or so. We don’t do Mayakovsky, or even Frank O’Hara. In English – Gaelic is a different matter – Dylan Thomas was the last one truly to pull it off, but Thomas was vastly more technically-accomplished, in a traditional sense, than White. Proponents of the latter’s work would no doubt say that this is entirely irrelevant, that White isn’t interested in rhyming stanzas or pentameter, and that there is no reason why he should be in the 21st century. They’re right, of course. The toughness and visual intensity of a William Carlos Williams did not require the old props, after all. But what does White give us instead?
One argument says that his work is of a piece, that his “poem-books” are complemented and extended by his “prose-books” (essays) and his “way-books” (travel-writing). Fair enough. But if his poems are unsatisfactory affairs, composed in a style that might have done for a San Francisco bookshop in the early sixties but seeming hackneyed and contrived now, then we have a problem with sum and parts. Try this one, from Handbook for the Diamond Country, a collection of 30 years’ worth of shorter poems first published in France in 1983 and in Britain in 1990. It is called ‘No Four-Star Hotel’ and its epigram says “My neighbour was Van Gogh”. It reads, in its entirety:
Sardines and rice rice and sardines with a red tomato rice and sardines sardines and rice with a red tomato
It is less a poem than a gesture. You could claim, possibly, that it is evocative or atmospheric. You could note that its imagistic style isn’t actually modern in any important sense, given its debt to Pound’s two-line attempted haiku ‘In a Station of the Metro’ (“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/Petals on a wet, black bough.”), a poem published before the First World War. But I could make another claim: it is lazy, empty, and not very good. Where poetry is concerned, neither is White.
One final quotation, from a poem entitled ‘The House of Insight’, was perhaps the single verse that sealed the argument for this reviewer. It runs: “taking off the clothes of the mind/and making love/to the body of reality”. It could almost be a parody, pretentious, silly and clichéd simultaneously. White in person is a charming and unassuming man, but that’s the sort of stuff people write when they are 16 and cringe over, if they are lucky, when they are 17.
Why, then, the simultaneous publication of three more of White’s books in English, two from Polygon and one from Alba, with the implicit argument that White is too important to be overlooked in Britain? He has won all sorts of prizes in France, after all, and has Kenneth White will do you pages filled with haiku after haiku held the chair of 20th Century Poetics at the Sorbonne. His International Institute of Geopoetics (we’ll get to that) has eight centres in various countries, Scotland included. Last year, Birlinn, having taken over Polygon, made it the imprint’s first act to publish Open World, White’s latest version of his collected poems. Some people are certainly committed to his work.
The trouble with finding an audience for White is that it has been tried before, and not so very long ago. It was Edinburgh’s Mainstream who published handsome editions of The Bird Path and the autobiographical “transcendental travelogue” Travels in the Drifting Dawn in 1989, followed by Handbook for the Diamond Country and the difficult-to-classify memoir The Blue Road in 1990. They did not make a great deal of difference to White’s reputation.
In France, living these days in Brittany, he is about as distinguished a writer as it is possible to be. Indeed, Le Nouvel Observateur once described him as “the foremost living English language poet”, though perhaps they meant the foremost poet in English they had heard of. Even here, large claims are made for him by some of the few people who really know his work. These days it is sometimes claimed that he is being given, or is about to be given, his due at last. Yet if the poetry doesn’t satisfy, what is there for a new or sceptical reader?
WHITE was born in Gorbals in 1936, son of a railway worker, but raised from his teenage years on the west coast, near Largs. It was in the nearby countryside that he had the poet’s classic, mind-expanding contact with nature, an affinity for which has been the hallmark of so much of his writing and his conceptual work. At Glasgow University he gained a first in French and German and later he did some teaching, but by the early 1960s, as Travels in the Drifting Dawn describes, he had made contact with “underground London” and the likes of Alex Trocchi. In 1966 he published his first book of verse, The Cold Wind of Dawn, yet only a year later he had quit Britain.
He found British poetry limited and circumscribed, prose still more tedious. At this distance in time it is possible to say that he made a bet and it paid off. As a writer and teacher France and Europe were for him. Teaching in Paris led, in due course, to that professorship at the Sorbonne.
Meanwhile, his doctoral thesis on “The Intellectual Nomad” had also persuaded him of a Nietszchean need to wander in the wider world. He became an inveterate traveller, a walking theory of a sort that is, still, more French than Scottish. That thesis was the beginning of geopoetics.
Geopoetics. We can count ourselves lucky that he did not call it biocosmopoetics, as he once intended. That might have scared more than the horses. As it is, Geopoetics – Place, Culture, World, the little pamphlet from Alba, and The Wanderer and his Charts – Essays on Cultural Renewal should probably glut most people’s appetite for an elaborate reinterpretation of European intellectual history that accords neatly with White’s pessimism over the modern world.
Geopoetics “contains ecology, ecology does not contain geopoetics”. It does not think much of the state we are in, culturally, and looks for a central concern that can reunite all strands of modern society and open up a new cultural “space”. White believes that the earth itself will do nicely for that.
What we have with him are meditations, spread across the range of his work, on “the state of the human being in the universe, the relationship between human being and the planet Earth, presence in the world”. He wants, he says, “intelligent”, “sensitive” and “subtle” contact between us and our corner of the cosmos.
Along the way, White gives free rein to his habit of defining words – “world”, “culture”, “poetics” itself – in ways that tend to suit his purpose. Harshly, you could also say that he plays fast and loose with cultural history. Fans might say he makes brilliant intuitive leaps across eras, disciplines and intellectual works. For my money, his approach is a sort of pick and mix, magpie reasoning that makes almost any sort of thesis possible once you have selected your vocabulary, decided who and what was historically important, and made the choices that will get you to the conclusion you want to reach. It is not as rigorous as White wants us to think it is.
This is especially true when he rummages around in philosophy. He is looking for a means by which society can enter a new era, a genuine post-modernism. He wants us to envisage the drive of western civilisation towards “progress”, a notion he does not much trust, as a metaphorical motorway. But every thinker he summons – and he neatly avoids those who might prove problematical – is yoked to this schematic and rather shop worn notion. If the philosophy and history of ideas teaches anything, it is the complexity of intellectual change. It is not a straight line petering out in our present decadence, not a depiction of cultural history that effectively says “Next stop the renaissance”, or “Passengers for Descartes Central, please have your tickets ready”.
It would have been interesting to have seen what White would have made of Thomas Kuhn’s conception of the history of science as a series of paradigm shifts, of sudden seismic movements. You could apply the same idea to culture, after all, but it would not have accorded with White’s romantic attachment – to be fair, he utterly denies romanticism – to the figure of the “Outgoer”, the figure on the fringes making the deep connections with the world.
To be fair yet again, his ideas are not entirely without merit. It is perfectly true to say that many areas of modern science, leaving conventional language behind, now also talk in terms of poetics as the only viable way to express their sense of the universe. It is also right, in my book, to talk of the limits of politics as an instrument for change. But White has arrived at a complicated theoretical construct that will seem attractive to some people because of its apparently multiple applications, from art to ecology by way of social change. Yet that, and a very French taste for the grandiose unifying theory, is the real problem.
Geopoetics is like one of those improbable multi-purpose tools you see advertised on TV, the ones that are supposed to solve every household problem and turn out to solve none. At his most sweeping, White is talking about changing the nature of human society, altering the way in which culture operates and is understood, and saving the planet while we are at it. By its very nature, his multi-purpose tool is not going to do the jobs it is supposed to do. These unifying theories never have. Complexity, in art or nature, always counts against them.
Yet to be fair to White for a third time, it works for him, at least in his prose, though perhaps for him alone.
Reading the theoretical stuff, that was always the suspicion. Geopoetics seems, at bottom, like a personal credo, worked up from a youthful fascination with the relationship the wandering Nietzsche and the itinerant Rimbaud had with the world, how it affected the thought of the former and the poetry of the latter, and how it might be attuned to White’s own responses. It is one man’s way of doing art and I doubt many others could bring the same intensity to it after the decades White has spent finding paths in the world. That said, while his poetry does not convince me in anything like the way I am supposed to be impressed, his travel writings, his “way-books”, of which Across the Territories – Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa (Polygon) is the latest, are a different matter.
White doesn’t have much faith in the novel, believing the form to be more or less exhausted. As a rule, I’m suspicious of the familiar claim (can’t come up with a plot, eh?), but I believe White. His accounts of his many travels are, for me, a case of a writer finding his perfect form, insightful, personal and luminously written. In the case of something like The Blue Road, his account of a pilgrimage to Labrador, it hardly matters, in any case, that he is not writing fiction. The book, dialogue and all, has most of the qualities of a novel.
Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa is geopoetics in execution, not theory. This is where all the stuff about the human in sensitive and subtle contact with the world begins to make a useful kind of sense. The writing is tight, too, in contrast with an awful lot of the verse. Whether in Orkney or Polynesia, Scandinavia or North America, White possesses, first, the sort of eye for detail that is an obvious necessity for a travel writer. Yet he has something more. It resembles the cliché of the “sense of place”, but it is more a man’s sense of himself in a place, attentive not just to what he is seeing and hearing, but alert to his own responses. The world, particularly the natural world, seems to spread around him. It is the real point of geopoetics, after all.
Of Corsica: “As is probably obvious enough by this time, I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That’s because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self.”
He’s wrong, of course. Novelistic invention may be “horribly autistic” – poetry isn’t so very different, we may guess – but the glory of the novel is the interplay between imagination and reality. It says something about White that he doesn’t get this, but it is his stubborn attachment to reality that makes him such a good travel writer.
Even when you disagree with the geopoeticist’s interpretations of history, you can grant that his sense of it is another dimension he brings to his accounts of his journeys. In ‘Travels in a Sea of Vodka’, one of the best pieces in Across the Territories, he writes of the great plain of Poland, the “vast expanse of fields that must at one time have been a wild, wan, glacier-scrubbed wilderness – nomad lands, crossed by all kinds of migrating peoples: Goths, Vandals, Huns, Avars, Scythians, Sarmatians, Magyars, Mongols, Tartars, Slavs… Crosses all along the road. Graveyards with myriads of red lights flickering on the tombs. A beetroot factory belching smoke into the pale purple sky . . . Night falls early on the North Euro-pean Plain.”
Putting aside the fact that, inevitably, some of the passage was “imagined”, you can see the essentials of White’s elaborate theory emerge from the drifts of intellectual dross. When the connections are made between man, landscape and history in this fashion sparks fly. You do not have to buy the whole geopoetics package to see it, and it is probably best if you don’t.
The writer himself is none too certain, in any case, that his theory matches his ambition. In The Wanderer and his Charts he wonders, near the end, whether “a real turning of the times” is in fact possible. The answer from geopoetics is a mere “perhaps”. So what does the fuss amount to?
“At the very least,” White writes, “it presents itself as a beautiful gesture (a final gesture of sentient-intelligent humanity?) and as the most interesting thing around.” Not quite, but it does present us with some of the finest travel-writing there is around.
GEOPOETICS. WE CAN COUNT OURSELVES LUCKY THAT HE DID NOT CALL IT BIOCOSMOPOETICS, AS HE ONCE INTENDED.
The Skating Minister
by Duncan Thomson
Publish and be charmed
by Jennie Erdal
Volume 1 – Issue 1 – Editorial
SRB Diary: Boredom
by Todd McEwen
Letter from elsewhere
by Alasdair Reid
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Going For Broke
by Ian Fraser
November 16, 2012 | by Ian Fraser
It was intended as a memorial to the Scots who died in the Napoleonic Wars. But it wasn’t long before the incomplete replica of the Parthenon on Calton Hill was labelled ‘Edinburgh’s disgrace’. This was because the so-called National Monument was left half-finished, with just twelve Doric columns before the money ran out in 1829. However, the ersatz temple doesn’t seem that ignominious any more. Perhaps it is time to transfer the epithet to two Edinburgh-based institutions that are perhaps more deserving of the name – HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Both were founded nearly one century before the abortive memorialising of the Hanoverians. For most of their existence they were reasonably civilised firms. During the 1980s and 1990s both the Bank of Scotland, headquartered on the Mound, and RBS, headquartered on St Andrew Square, were well-managed, innovative and reputable. After undergoing internal ‘cultural revolutions’, involving job losses, greater use of technology, and the centralisation of decision making and credit processes, both banks were able to successfully outpace their English rivals in terms of profits growth, without losing sight of the interests of customers and staff.
As Ray Perman writes in Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked The Best Bank in Britain, the banks were actually trusted by their customers. When the Bank of Scotland adopted its ‘A Friend for life’ slogan in 1984 Perman claims ‘it was not greeted with cynicism. People believed it meant it, and more importantly, it did.’ But around the turn of the millennium both of Scotland’s two big banks started to lose sight of their raison d’être. To a greater or lesser extent, they broke the cardinal rules of banking that had seen them through the best part of three centuries. Both banks were responding to wider opportunities and threats in banking and the financial markets at the time, together with the onset of an increasingly laissez-faire approach to regulation that was introduced by Margaret Thatcher, but was also fervently championed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
A critical moment came in 1999-2000, when the two Edinburgh-based banks fought tooth and nail for the right to buy their poorly managed but much larger English rival, National Westminster Bank. In the end, the Royal walked off with the prize, paying £20 billion. This takeover instilled a feeling of inviolability in the bank’s recently appointed chief executive Fred Goodwin, who had been brought up in Paisley’s Ferguslie Park, and had risen to the top of RBS via a law degree at Glasgow University, the accountancy firm Touche Ross and the Clydesdale Bank. As older managers were forced out, salesmanship, spivvery and profits growth became its driving force.
At the Bank of Scotland, this was especially true following its September 2001 tie-up with Yorkshire-based former building society Halifax. Just like Goodwin, the HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby was convinced of his own brilliance. It wasn’t long before the pay and benefits packages paid to the likes of Goodwin and Crosby broke through the £2 million a year barrier. The banks were determined to grow at almost any cost, and HBOS took a ‘cheap and cheerful’, ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ approach to financial products. The bank didn’t really seem to care if it was burdening people and the economy with debt they could ill afford or that the underlying assumption that underpinned its behaviour (that UK house prices were now on a permanent upwards trajectory) was a fallacy. Staff were rewarded for sales, not service and shareholders were being rewarded with an inflated share price. Treasury divisions were transformed into profit centres and the shuffling of complex derivatives which were poorly understood by the banks’ boards of directors became a fast-growing part of their business.
As the recession of 1990-93 disappeared into the rear-view mirrors of these bankers’ Mercedes, Lamborghinis and Ferraris, and the Rover-driving ‘Captain Mainwarings’ who had been through the pain of that difficult period drifted into retirement, a dangerous collective amnesia set in. The forgetfulness and complacency was reinforced by reassuring claims from the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan that volatility had been eliminated from the global financial markets as a result of wondrous new financial innovations like derivatives and ‘credit default swaps’. And Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown gave confidence with repeated claims that the Labour government had banished boom and bust. A drowsy numbness pained the bankers’ sense.
At the RBS, the determined manner in which Goodwin melded NatWest’s businesses together with those of RBS meant he was lionised in the City. He started to believe his own hype. Pacman-like, he stalked under-performing financial institutions round the world, in the hope of executing ‘mercy killings.’ By this, he meant buying them, sacking their managements and restoring them to financial health. He also became increasingly unpleasant towards his lieutenants. Rather than face the consequences of trying to argue with him, talented RBS executives decided they could no longer bear working there and made themselves scarce. Few of those who remained dared challenge him.
Meanwhile Goodwin allowed himself to become seduced by the ‘myth of unlimited liquidity’ – the idea that the torrent of cheap money, and cheap funding, unleashed by the credit bubble, would go on flowing forever. He therefore saw nothing wrong with managing RBS on a wafer-thin capital layer or of allowing the bank to become ‘over-leveraged’, City-speak for under-capitalised and too dependent on external borrowings. In their quixotic pursuit of ever higher returns, both RBS and HBOS massively grew the balance sheet by piling into risky lending, other speculative deals and proprietary trading in the financial markets. When the credit markets started to dry up as a result of massive fraud in the subprime mortgage market in July 2007, both banks were left perilously exposed.
RBS had to some extent been even crazier than HBOS. Despite warnings, Goodwin ploughed ahead with a €72 billion takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro in October 2007. Goodwin and colleagues became so obsessed with proving this unprecedentedly complex deal – which they shared with Spanish bank Santander and Belgian bank Fortis – could be done, that no-one bothered to ask the obvious question, should they be doing it? In the end both RBS and HBOS would almost certainly have gone bankrupt, which would have led to customers losing their deposits, more than 230,000 employees losing their jobs, and financial mayhem in the United Kingdom, had not the Labour government stepped in at the last minute to rescue them from the consequences of their own folly. At the time Gordon Brown chose to single Fred Goodwin out for special blame – it helped divert attention away from his own economic mismanagement and pivotal role in the bank’s near demise – but I would argue that the former directors of HBOS are no less worthy of opprobrium, and perhaps also prosecution, than the boy from Paisley.
In Hubris, Perman, a former Financial Times correspondent who also ran Scottish Financial Enterprise, an industry lobby group, reveals that in the early Noughties some members of the HBOS board had serious concerns about the bank’s behaviour in the UK mortgage market but failed to intervene. When the bank started offering 125% loan-to-value residential mortgages in November 2006, it was, Perman writes, ‘to the mute astonishment of some board members’. What he does not reveal was who was mute and why they bit their tongues. Given that their role is to look after the interests of shareholders, surely these individuals ought to be named and shamed.
Such insane lending would have been unthinkable at the old Bank of Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s. Although it was at the time a slightly boring institution, it proved itself capable of delivering consistently strong financial performance whilst adhering to what Perman calls ‘Presbyterian’ principles. In 1985, ‘the Bank was riding high, but instead of gloating or greed there was a rectitude bordering on Calvinism’. Much of this culture emanated from the Bank of Scotland’s former chief executive Sir Bruce Pattullo, who ran the bank from between 1979 to 1998, and its former chairman Sir Tom Risk. Pattullo had a habit of reminding people that the 300-year-old bank, the institution itself, was more important than the individuals who worked there. Writing in the Scotsman to celebrate the bank’s tercentenary, Pattullo said: ‘Mistakes are more likely to occur in corporate life, especially in a bank, where one individual is anxious to achieve too much in too short a space of time. There is no substitute for good old-fashioned common sense.’
The words seem to have been forgotten soon after Pattullo retired in 1998. Perman charts Bank of Scotland’s disastrous tie-up with the right-wing, American, television evangelist Pat Robertson. His extremist and bigoted views triggered a furore and account closures in Scotland. Having eaten humble pie, the chief executive responsible for the ill-starred alliance, Peter Burt, then had the misfortune to be beaten by Good-win to the NatWest prize. On the rebound, Burt’s attempts to forge alliances with other banks including Abbey National turned to dust. Perhaps more out of desperation than genuine ardour, he opted for a merger with the Halifax. Led by James Crosby and Lord Stevenson, it already had a polyester-suited culture of salesmanship and was using the singing branch manager Howard Brown in its adverts. Unsurprisingly, the marriage turned out to be made in hell, not heaven.
Perman describes with aplomb some of the wilder excesses HBOS’s retail and corporate banking arms, capturing the cynical mind-set of its Crosby-led management and the internal chaos that ensued. In particular he highlights that the 15% to 20% annual growth targets laid down by Crosby and his co-directors were ‘startlingly demanding’. One of its biggest problems was that while the merged bank’s corporate governance and risk management procedures were ‘very elaborate’, as Perman explains, ‘they did not work’.
Perman shies away from probing the well-documented instances when HBOS broke FSA regulations but also, probably, the criminal law. These included how it encouraged customers who were taking out so-called ‘self-certified’ loans to lie about their income, and how it imposed known embezzlers on between fifty and two hundred small and medium-sized corporate borrowers, with devastating results. Nor does Perman mention the infamous HBOS board meeting, held at the bank’s Mound headquarters (now a museum) prior to its September 2008 collapse, at which senior insiders allege that Crosby’s successor as chief executive, Andy Hornby, and HBOS’s head of corporate lending, Peter Cummings, got into a fight. One version is that Hornby had his hands clasped around Cummings’ throat in an apparent attempt to throttle the pugnacious Glaswegian. Other directors are said to have had to call security to calm things down.
Former HBOS insiders insist the fisticuffs were triggered by Cummings’ refusal to risk lending even more money to property developers and other flaky corporate borrowers, who by that stage were already toiling under collapsing asset values and intolerable debt burdens, and therefore even less likely to repay the loans than those people to whom he had lent in 2007. Even he, it seems, had decided it was time to take the foot off the accelerator. But it was much too late. To have had any chance of survival given its dependence on a now non-existent resource – wholesale funding – the bank was kaput. What is astonishing is how Hornby and Goodwin seem to been have so shielded from the reality that many others could see clearly.
In his conclusion, Perman writes: ‘The sales culture had been creeping in [since before the merger with Halifax], dependence on wholesale funding had been increasing and most pernicious of all, the growth imperative had become ingrained. The Bank believed that if it stopped growing it would lose its independence. So it made a Faustian bargain…’ Bank of Scotland is today little more than a trading name within the enlarged Lloyds Banking Group. RBS is a ward of the state that may yet have to be fully nationalised. The tumble weed isn’t quite blowing through Goodwin’s folly at Gogar-burn yet, but it is beginning to feel decidedly empty. On a day-to-day basis, what remains of Goodwin’s empire is being gradually dismantled by the new chief executive, Stephen Hester, from Bishopsgate in London.
RBS seems to be living on borrowed time. Hester is nervously awaiting news of the costs of a string of criminal and civil actions dating back to Goodwin’s years of excess, mainly in the US, UK and continental Europe. Some have suggested the fines and damages arising from these could kill the bank, leaving the government with little choice other than to opt for a third bailout. That might be extremely difficult to justify politically. Having squandered our trust, these banks could take more than a generation to regain it. And whatever else comes out of ‘Edinburgh’s Disgrace, Mk II’, one’s main hope is that everyone with an interest in the future of the UK economy – including regulators, politicians and financial journalists – is extremely wary of any banker who is impatient for growth.
HUBRIS: HOW HBOS WRECKED THE BEST BANK IN BRITAIN
Ray Perman
BIRLINN, PP232, £20, ISBN: 9781780270517
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