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IASS-Logo-en Created with Sketch.
Contact & How to find us
Structure & Bodies
Fellow Programme
Early career development
Systemic Interdependencies
Democratic Transformations
Perceptions, Values, Orientation
Energy Systems and Societal Change
Governance for the Environment and Society
Forums: Science, Policy, Society
German-french Forum for the Future
Affiliate Scholars
The Directors
People at the IASS
Ilan Chabay
Prof. Dr. Ilan Chabay
Head of Strategic Research Initiatives and Programmes
ilan.chabay@iass-potsdam.de
IASS Projects
Knowledge, Learning and Societal Change Alliance (KLASICA)
Global Sustainability Strategy Forum
Ilan is Head of Strategic Science Initiatives and Programs and the knowledge, learning, and societal change research alliance (www.KLASICA.org) at IASS, where he has been since 2012. He is also Adjunct Professor in the School of Sustainability of Arizona State University (ASU) and works in alternate blocks of several weeks in Potsdam and in the ASU Barrett and O'Connor Washington DC Center. Over the past decade, his focus has been on understanding and facilitating processes of societal change toward just and equitable sustainable futures, including understanding scientific, local, and cultural knowledge systems for decision-making on common resources; characterizing the role in different cultural and socio-economic contexts of affective narratives of vision and identity in guiding and motivating collective behavior change; and the potential utility of narratives in modeling social dynamics. From 2013-2016, he co-led inter- and transdisciplinary research on decision making for ecological, social, and economic transformations in the Eurasian Arctic. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in major journals, books, and reports in both social and natural science and holds three patents. He serves on international advisory boards on affordable energy for humanity, environmental systems research, social dimensions of creativity and innovation, and integrated risk governance. He was Helmholtz Alliance Energy Trans professor at the University of Stuttgart Institute for Social Science (2012-2014), elected Honorary Member of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2012, and appointed Hasselblad Professor in sociology and applied IT in Gothenburg and Chalmers Universities, Sweden (2006-2011). He founded the New Curiosity Shop, a workshop in Silicon Valley (1984-2006), where he led design and production of interactive learning exhibitions for more than 230 museums, science centres, and corporations worldwide, including Disney and NASA. He was Associate Director of the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco (1982-83), consulting professor of chemistry at Stanford (1984-88). Ilan led research on Doppler-shift, Raman, and non-linear laser spectroscopy at the US National Institutes of Standards and Technology (1974-82) after receiving his Ph.D. in chemical physics (first measurements of molecular chirality with circular dichroism in the infrared) from the Univ. of Chicago and holding a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship in biophysical chemistry at the University of Illinois in Urbana (1972-1974).
The overarching frame of my research interests is understanding and facilitating societal transformations toward just, equitable, and sustainable futures. I am especially interested in how knowledge production, learning processes, and collective behavior change interact in diverse societies and how and why actors in communities move or fail to move toward sustainable futures in their terms. This is also the mission of the international research and action alliance on Knowledge, Learning, and Societal Change (www.KLASICA.org), which I lead. Identifying and understanding motivations and incentives of actors in moving toward or rejecting pathways to sustainable futures will provide new insights and data and will populate computational models that can support stakeholders in making informed and effective decisions on their futures.
Publications at the IASS
Zhang, Y., & Chabay, I. (2020). How “Green Knowledge” Influences Sustainability through Behavior Change. Theory and Policy Implications. Sustainability, 12(16): 6448. doi:10.3390/su12166448.
Renn, O., Chabay, I., van der Leeuw, S., & Droy, S. (2020). Beyond the Indicators: Improving Science, Scholarship, Policy and Practice to Meet the Complex Challenges of Sustainability. Sustainability, 12(2): 578. doi:10.3390/su12020578.
Chabay, I. (2020). Vision, identity, and collective behavior change on pathways to sustainable futures. Evolutionary and institutional economics review, 17(1), 151-165. doi:10.1007/s40844-019-00151-3.
IASS Series
Chabay, I., Droy, S., Patwardhan, A., Renn, O., & van der Leeuw, S. (2020). Global Sustainability Strategy Forum. Science and Business: Working together for sustainability, workshop summary, Potsdam, 22 - 24 March 2020. IASS Workshop Summary, March 2020.
Reports and further scientific publications
TWI2015 - The World in 2050(2020). Innovations for Sustainability. Pathways to an efficient and sufficient post-pandemic future. 3rd report. Laxenburg: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
Chabay, I., Koch, L., Martinez, G., & Scholz, G. (2019). Influence of Narratives of Vision and Identity on Collective Behavior Change. Sustainability, 11(20): 5680. doi:10.3390/su11205680.
Renn, O., Chabay, I., van der Leeuw, S., & Droy, S. (2019). Internationale Initiative für einen regionalen Nachhaltigkeitsansatz. The European: das Debatten-Magazin.
Cockerill, K., Glynn, P., Chabay, I., Farooque, M., Hämäläinen, R. P., Miyamoto, B., & McKay, P. (2019). Records of engagement and decision making for environmental and socio-ecological challenges. EURO Journal on decision processes, 7(3-4), 243-265. doi:10.1007/s40070-019-00104-6.
Bai, X., Begashaw, B., Bursztyn, M., Chabay, I., Droy, S., Folke, C., Fukushi, K., Gupta, J., Hackmann, H., Hege, E.-b., Jaeger, C., Patwardhan, A., Renn, O., Safonov, G., Schlosser, P., Skaloud, P., Vogel, C., van der Leeuw, S., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Changing the scientific approach to fast transitions to a sustainable world. Improving knowledge production for sustainable policy and practice. IASS Discussion Paper, Juli 2019.
Nakicenovic, N., Messner, D., Zimm, C., Clarke, G., Rockström, J., Aguiar, A. P., Boza-Kiss, B., Campagnolo, L., Chabay, I., Collste, D., Comolli, L., Gomez-Echeverri, L., Goujon, A., Grubler, A., Jung, R., Kamei, M., Kamiya, G., Kriegler, E., Kuhn, M., Leininger, J., Martin-Shields, C., Mayor-Rodriguez, B., Miller, J., Miola, A., Riahi, K., Schewenius, M., Schmidt, J., Skierka, K., Selomane, O., Svedin, U., & Yillia, P.(2019). TWI2050 - The World in 2050 (2019). The Digital Revolution and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative. Laxenburg, Österreich: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Chabay, I. (2019). Linking Narratives to Dynamics of Social Movements toward Sustainability. In Pre-reading material.
Chabay, I. (2019). Narratives, Networks, and Knowledge. Finding Pathways to Sustainable Futures. In Proceedings.
Bogardi, J. J., Chabay, I., & Kerekes, S. (2019). Uncertainty and Complexity. Scientific Challenges in Unterstanding the Unsustainable Present and Preparing for an Unknown Future. In Proceedings.
Okada, N., Chabay, I., & Renn, O. (2018). Participatory Risk Governance for Reducing Disaster and Societal Risks: Collaborative Knowledge Production and Implementation. International journal of disaster risk science, 9(4), 429-433. doi:10.1007/s13753-018-0201-x.
Chabay, I. (2018). Taking Time, Sharing Spaces: Adaptive Risk Governance Processes in Rural Japan. International journal of disaster risk science, 9, 464-471. doi:10.1007/s13753-018-0191-8.
Monographs, book chapters, special issues
van der Leeuw, S., Aguiar, A. P., Berg, L., Buscaglia, D., Busch, S., Chabay, I., Ebi, K., Goujon, A., Haberl, H., Messner, D., Miola, A., Murray, K., Muttarak, R., Nakicenovic, N., Popp, A., Puyana, J. M., Rauchenwald, V., Scheelbeek, P., Schmidt, J., Sellers, S., Svedin, U., Vafeidis, A., & Verburg, G. (2018). The Challenge Ahead. Non-linear Interactions in Current Societal Dynamics. In International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Ed.), TWI 2050 - The World in 2050. Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative (pp. 35-68). Laxenburg, Österreich: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Tetsu, S., Chabay, I., & Helgeson, J. (2018). Conclusion and Way Forward. In T. Sato, I. Chabay, & J. Helgeson (Eds.), Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems: Studies in Co-creating Integrated Knowledge Toward Sustainable Futures (pp. 409-416). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Tetsu, S., Chabay, I., & Helgeson, J. (2018). Introduction. In T. Sato, I. Chabay, & J. Helgeson (Eds.), Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems: Studies in Co-creating Integrated Knowledge Toward Sustainable Futures (pp. 1-10). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Chabay, I. (2018). Land degradation and restoration. In N. Castree, M. Hulme, & J. D. Proctor (Eds.), Companion to environmental studies (pp. 535-540). London; New York: Routledge.
Chabay, I. (2018). Sources and Uses of Knowledge in Co-designing Sustainable Futures in the Arctic. In T. Sato, I. Chabay, & J. Helgeson (Eds.), Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems: Studies in Co-creating Integrated Knowledge Toward Sustainable Futures (pp. 393-405). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Elected Honorary Member of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, May 2012, "in recognition of his manifold contributions to innovative forms of public understanding of science as well as teaching and learning."
Appointed Erna and Victor Hasselblad Professor of Public Learning and Understanding of Science 2006-2011 in the Sociology Department at the University of Gothenburg and in Applied information technology at Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden.
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1999: Alan B. Leviton Award for "Outstanding achievement in the science education of children and youth." The award cited the creativity, artistry, playfulness, and scientific integrity of Ilan's work and his long-standing commitment to science education.
Three patents awarded for games and toys based on scientific phenomena.
National Research Council & National Bureau of Standards (now National Institutes of Standards and Technology) Postdoctoral Fellowship Gaithersburg, MD, 1974 - 1975.
National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biophysical Chemistry, Chemistry Department, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1972 - 1974.
and subscribe to our bimonthly Newsletter.
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Singapore's SGX sees IPO business plunging on tough regional competition
The SGX had the smallest haul of new share sales among the region's four largest stock markets in 2015.
March 31, 2016 10:03 +08
Last year, the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) was far outsmarted by its regional peers who have been aggressively luring foreign as well as local firms.
Total listing on SGX, South-east Asia's biggest bourse, collected US$34mn and that was the lowest among the four major peers in the region.
A Bloomberg report says Singapore's primacy in initial public offerings in South-east Asia has come to an end. Singapore-listed firms raised US$366mn, its lowest in 14 years.
The amount was less than 10% of funds raised from Thailand's IPOs, just a third of Malaysia's and half of Indonesia's, the report said.
"The smaller South-east Asian exchanges have been promoting themselves as a listing venue," said Mr Pankaj Goel, co-head of South-east Asia investment banking at Credit Suisse Group. "It makes sense for Indonesian companies to list in Jakarta and for Thai companies to list on Thailand's stock exchange."
It is not because the quality of SGX services going down but the growing competitiveness of its regional peers leading to the scenario according to experts.
Indonesia, which has South-east Asia's biggest population and largest economy, plans to start an exchange dedicated to young technology companies, while Thailand's premier has highlighted the importance of the country's capital markets.
Jakarta's plan is to become the region's biggest stock exchange within five years.
The Philippine Stock Exchange has been successful in making multinational companies with operations in the country to list on the Manila exchange. Listing of the South Korean firm Phoenix Semiconductor in 2014 is an example.
Bursa Malaysia in July tweaked its listing rules to boost its attractiveness and cut compliance costs. Several Malaysian companies including palm oil producer Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd, billionaire T Ananda Krishnan's Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd and IHH Healthcare Bhd, Asia's biggest hospital operator, have already listed in Kuala Lumpur.
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Go to the database!
Allen Bingham
Allen grew up in northeastern Ohio and attended The Ohio State University (OSU), where he earned bachelors and masters degrees in biology and zoology with majors in aquatic sciences and fisheries biology, respectively. While at OSU, he met and married Diana Rigg. Their journey westward began with Allen’s post-graduate education at the University of Idaho, where Allen minored in statistics. That led to another move and a career of over 32 years with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Allen and Diana both delved part-time into their respective family histories while working and raising their son Samuel in Alaska. Upon retirement, they resettled in Washougal, Washington (not too far from Portland, Oregon). Their interest in family genealogy was rekindled and their research took off.
Allen’s 3rd great-grandmother, Ingibjörg Guðrún Klemensdóttir, emigrated from Iceland in 1875 with her 11-year-old daughter, Kristjana Margrét Guðmundsdóttir (Allen’s 2nd great grandmother), and her 9-year-old son, Jónas Steinn Guðmundsson. They emigrated shortly after the death of Guðrún’s husband, Guðmundur Einarsson. They initially tried to make a go of it in the (later abandoned) Markland settlement in Nova Scotia. In 1881, Kristjana married Henry Charles Howard in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Shortly thereafter, Henry and Kristjana, along with her mother Guðrún, resettled in New Jersey, USA.
Most of Allen’s ancestors were of Irish and English origin on both his father’s and mother’s sides. Frustratingly, researching his Irish roots has been a difficult and mostly fruitless undertaking. With the discovery of Icelandic Roots, the same cannot be said about his relatively distant Icelandic heritage (1/16 Icelandic!). This discovery strengthened an already keen interest in his own roots and finding out about his ancestors’ lives and times in Iceland and Nova Scotia.
Allen joined Icelandic Roots as a member in February 2020 and quickly explored everything he could find about his Icelandic ancestors. He started making suggestions to add more and more of his cousins of Icelandic descent to the database. All these suggestions led to his being granted editing rights (after being trained by IR volunteer Kristy Marston). As of April 2020, Allen has officially joined the volunteer team, specializing in researching and editing cemeteries in the database.
Database membership
Cousins Across the Ocean
Icelandic Roots is a non-profit, educational, heritage organization specializing in genealogy, history & traditions of our Icelandic ancestors.
Icelandic Roots2843 27th St S, Fargo, ND 58103 USA
© 2020 by Icelandic Roots
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Chase Ink Sponsored Content
How One Small Business Plans to Take On Big Soda
Trevor Ross wants everyone to eat and drink healthier, but he has even grander ambitions: He wants his business to be the biggest soda operation in the world.
Visit It All Adds Up to read more stories of Chase Ink cardmembers and learn how to get more for your business from your bottom line.
Trevor Ross never had plans to run his own business. The Austin-based founder of Live Soda, a soda business that makes natural health beverages, went to school for engineering and spent most of his career working at technology companies as a product manager. As he got more experience the idea of business ownership wasn’t such a wild idea. As well, in 2005 his sister passed away from cancer at 34 and that helped spur him into entrepreneurial action. “It altered my perspective on life and health and wellness,” says Ross.
As an engineer, Ross is used to fixing things and while he knew he couldn’t find a cure for cancer, he thought that by giving people heathier food items, including snacks with less sugar and more nutrients, he could at least help prevent the onset of certain diseases. His first business, protein bar business Boundless Nutrition, was a success - he sold it in 2016 - but he had grander plans.
In 2012, when he was running in store promotions for his protein bars, he came across Kombucha, a funny-tasting fermented drink that some say has health benefits, including cancer-related ones. He started drinking them on his breaks and while he liked the flavor, he knew others, including his soda-loving father, wouldn’t. That’s when the lightbulb went off. “If I could get my dad to replace his cola habit with Kombucha, then I could change the world,” he says.
Over the next several months, Ross created different drink recipes using spices, essential oils and extracts to create a health beverage that tasted great and would fool his father. And trick him he did. “He asked me to get him a soda, but I poured my drink in the glass instead,” he recalls. “He drank it and liked it.” Ross knew then that he was onto something.
Paying with points
It’s hard enough to create a soda-like drink at home, but it’s another to produce a variety of sodas for mass consumption. The biggest challenge? Buying all the equipment needed to create large batches of his beverage. While some money from his protein bar operation was used to fund his new venture, Live Soda, it wasn’t enough.
To help with the financial burden, Ross began using business credit card reward points, which he had been accumulating for years. To earn these points, he put as many businesses expenses as he could on his Chase Ink® business credit card. He then used those points to buy computers, televisions, plane ticket and even cash gift cards, which he would give to employees as a thank you for all of their hard work.
He continues to use his card for everything he buys, including for equipment purchases, such as hoses, pumps and other industrial items. Nearly everything is put on plastic. The only place that doesn’t take credit is his bottling business. “It would be nice if they did,” he says.
Ross thinks of his points almost like cash - when he has enough, and if he needs something, he’ll use them to buy the item. “There’s no big strategy around using points,” he says. “If I need something I’ll go get it. We have so many of them, that if something’s available we’ll use our rewards.”
Beating big soda
Over the last few years, Live Soda has grown into a formidable operation. He has 40 employees and while he doesn’t want to disclose revenues, he says they are doubling year-over-year. As exciting as that is for Ross, he has bigger goals. He wants everyone switch from traditional sodas to health drinks, just like his father did.
“We want to take on big soda,” he says. “It’s a lofty goal, but we want to bring down big soda. We want to offer people options and have people replace their soda with a natural drink that’s better for you.”
How can he take on the established players? By innovating, being smart with his money and being good to his employees. The business is constantly coming up with new flavors and products - it has nine kinds of Kombucha drinks and four vinegar ciders - and Ross is always finding ways to be efficient with his finances, including continuing to use points for purchases.
“We use our Chase Ink card for everything we can,” he says. “It’s a win-win because we get points for what we buy on it and then we can use those points for things we need in the office. It also speaks to our motto of innovation and to always question things. We believe in continuous improvement and being quick and nimble. That’s how we’ll take on the big guys.”
Learn more about Chase Ink small business credit cards.
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Why Behavior Design Is The Future of UX Design
Or why the coming behavioral science revolution will change product design as we know it.
By Jason Hreha@jhreha
It's a common sight: office walls covered in sticky notes with labels like "frugal Fran" and "adventurous Adam." In the past 10 years, there's been a flurry of interest in this type of empathetic user research, spurred by fashionable design firms like IDEO and Frog. However, while this type of research, filled with persona and "empathy" exercises, may make teams feel like they're doing valuable work, it actually does more harm than good. By elevating the impromptu self-reflection of users over concrete user-behavior data and behavioral science research, it's actually preventing teams from looking objectively and critically at the viability of their product plans. Here's why this type of design will die, and here's what will grow in its place.
The opaque mind
In order to understand why survey and question-based user research is largely futile, you need to understand something fundamental about human cognition: we're terrible at self-reflection. Most of our behavior is caused by factors out of our conscious control and awareness. A system in our brain, called the "left brain interpreter," then acts as the master storyteller. It creates a narrative out of these events, complete with causal explanations for why each thing occurred.
If you've ever asked yourself "why did I do that?", you've fallen victim to the left brain interpreter. The answer you produced may have sounded logical, but it was more of a convenient fiction than an objective fact. This is why survey and interview-driven user research, which focuses on asking people what they like and "why" they like it, is such an unproductive exercise. You'll get answers, but they probably won't be true. For example, users are likely to express their excitement for a new fitness product, and tell you about how they're really motivated to get in shape. However, they may not have set foot in a gym for the last 36 months. Their behavior tells you a lot more about their actual motivation than their flattering self report.
What do we do instead?
So if popular user research tools like surveying and interviewing are counterproductive, what should we do instead? Two things: perform iterations and design products from a behavioral science perspective..
Iteration is pretty straightforward. Your goal in any project should be to release something as quickly as possible, so that you can get real user behavior data. Fifty people you interview can say that they want a social network for their dogs, but what they do and what they say they'll do have little relation to one another. Build a quick version of what you're trying to create. Release it. Distribute it. Look at the data. Are people actually logging in? If so, how often? Which features are they using? We care about actual behavior--not verbal statements about potential behavior.
Behavioral science based design is new to most people. Simply, it's basing our product on behavioral science findings and principles. Over the past 75 years we've learned a massive amount about how people think and why they do what they do. It explains why Facebook is so addictive, why Snapchat is popular among young people, and how Instagram became one of the fastest growing apps in history. In future columns I'll go into the behavioral science behind these successes. But, for now, the important thing to understand is that by studying the behavioral sciences, you can learn why people really do what they do. Scientific studies offer us a better window into the human mind than self-serving conjecture, which is why behavioral science focused designers will outperform classically trained UX designers in the coming years.
At some point we'll look back and wonder how anyone ever built product with the unscientific practices of UX research and design, just as we look back on the folly of predicting people's behavior from the bumps on their heads.
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Lotus Temple, New Delhi: Experience the God here.
The Lotus temple is a place of worship and to meditate in New Delhi. At a time 1300 people can gather inside this world famous beautiful architecture, pray to God or meditate. Come here to witness the true religion called humanity.
Are you visiting New Delhi, India? Do not go back without visiting the Lotus Temple. It's the Bahai's house of worship but anyone can come, pray and meditate here. The Fariborz Sahba creation and the Flint & Neill structure looks like a Lotus Flowers in shape. Do you know, the Lotus Flower is a common symbol to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Islam? The unity in diversity for which India is known can be seen here.
No fee is charged. For people who are differently-abled wheelchair provided. It takes some 40-50 minutes to see in and around temple, learn about the architecture and the Bahai's faith and offer prayer. In the prayer hall of the temple, special prayer services are held 4 times throughout the day i.e. 10:00am, 12:00pm, 3:00pm and 5:00pm. Duration of prayer is 5minutes. In these time slots prayers from different religions are said out loudly. The information centre is a vast library of text, photographs and videos on Bahai's faith. Films in Hindi and English are shown from 5pm to 5.30pm everyday.
Children below 12 years of age are not allowed to enter the information centre. For taking photographs, permission required from administration. At the gate of the temple, volunteers will greet you and show you around.
After visiting Lotus Temple you can go to Kalkaji temple a place of worship for people of Hindu religion. Next to it is Nehru Place, the largest market of computers and electronic goods. World's top electronics brands have showrooms here. Also there are eateries and restaurants to fill your hunger appetite. For shopping of fashion wears etc you can go to Greater Kailash (GK) Market.
I prefer traveling in Metro Rail as its safe, offers less hassle and value for time. Nearest metro station to Lotus Temple is Nehru Place Metro Station. From here you can walk for 15 minutes to reach to temple or take an auto rickshaw or taxi.
New Delhi, India is well connected to the world. Flights, Buses and Trains run 24*7 to and from New Delhi.
By Air: People coming from abroad shall land at India Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) New Delhi. Domestic flights lands at Palam Airport.
By Rail: The capital New Delhi is well connected to railway network. The major Railway Stations in New Delhi are:
Old Delhi Railway Station
Anand Vihar Railway Station
By Bus: Delhi is well connected by road to all major cities of India. The major Inter State Bus Terminus in Delhi are
Maharana Pratap ISBT at Kashmere Gate, Delhi
Swami Vivekanand ISBT at Anand Vihar, Delhi
Vir Hakikat Rai ISBT at Sarai Kale Khan, Delhi
Once you reach to Delhi, further you can travel in a Metro Rail, City Bus, Taxi or Auto Rickshaw to reach to Lotus Temple.
Bahá'í House of Worship
Bahapur, Kalkaji
Tel: 26470526 | 26444029
In my knowledge, there are only two places in the world to meet to the God. The CERN labs and the Lotus Temple. Visiting to the later does not require understanding in Particle Physics. Here you can do many things in less time.
Learn about faith and religion.
Learn about Bahai's faith
See the beautiful architecture
See why Lotus is so cool
Offer prayer to God.
Meet to yourself (The Lotus Temple is know for pin drop silence)
Know about one of the World's Greatest Architect the Fariborz Sahba
Shop electronic goods at Nehru Place market and enjoy Indian delicacies.
Go and see another place of worship, the Kalkaji Temple
See the life and style of high society people of Delhi at Greater Kailash (GK) market and enjoy doing shopping. GK was my favorite Hangout for years.
Timings & Season
Best time to visit Delhi is from October till March. However, if you want to enjoy some budget stay in Delhi summers are advisable i.e. April to September. July and August or rainy months; parks and surrounding areas are full of greenery during monsoon weather.
Timing To Visit Lotus Temple
Winter: 9:00 am to 5:30 pm (Last Entry 5.00 pm. For winter)
Summer: 9:00 am to 7:00 pm (Last Entry 6.30 pm. For summer)
Timing to visit information centre:
Winter: 9:00 am to 5:15 pm
Summer: 9:00 am to 6:45 pm
Winter: 1st October to 31st March
Summer: 1st April to 30th September
Closed on all Mondays
The Lotus Temple or Bahai's temple, New Delhi has roots in Bahai's faith. This is mother temple in India for people of Bahai's faith and a popular tourist attraction. The temple has won several awards and recognitions in media for its architecture. The construction of the temple was completed on 13 November 1986 and opened for public from 24 December 1986. During 2001, the temple received more than 70 million visitors, a number higher than number of visitors to Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal in that year. On average, 8000 to 10000 people come here regularly. The Government of India has issued a 6.50 stamp in the honor of Lotus Temple on 25 June 1991.
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Unexpected Halt to Season Sharpens Rossi’s Appreciation for Fans
By Zach Horrall | Published: Jun 18, 2020
Just as the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season was set to get underway March 15 at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, the 2020 season was put on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cars were returned to shops, racetracks fell silent, and drivers experienced their first spring without racing in decades.
The unprecedented situation forced all non-essential workers into their homes for weeks, and it offered race drivers time to slow down and have a retrospective moment about their careers.
Alexander Rossi, the 2016 Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge winner, said the time off due to the pandemic offered him the opportunity to put everything into perspective and return to his passionate racing roots.
“Ultimately, once we kind of moved on from St. Pete, it became clear that this was a much bigger thing than just us and INDYCAR racing and sports, in general,” Rossi said. “There was something that everyone needed to take some time away and kind of reset, and it's given me a huge amount of appreciation for what we get to do every week.”
A big help was the INDYCAR iRacing Challenge, an iRacing series most NTT INDYCAR SERIES drivers competed in for six weeks at virtual racetracks around the world. While some drivers took it very seriously, Rossi and his friends took more of a low-key approach.
“You know, to be able to kind of just get back to the roots of why we all fell in love with motorsports, racing and laughing and being with your buddies, it's been a lot of fun,” he said.
Rossi also said taking everything into perspective helped him focus on who he races for – the fans.
When the 2020 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season opened June 6 at Texas Motor Speedway, it was a one-day show at the 1.5-mile oval, and no fans were in attendance. Rossi didn’t have to race without fans to know how much he would miss them.
“It's going to give us a huge appreciation for the fans,” Rossi said. “In talking to some of the (NASCAR) Cup guys, it's a weird experience, and I think that coming out of this we're all going to love being able to go to events again, love being able to share that with our fans and partners, and ultimately that's what I'm looking forward to the most.”
Rossi opened the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season with a disappointing 15th-place finish in the Genesys 300 at TMS, a race Rossi said he and his No. 27 Andretti Autosport team felt optimistic about in the moments leading up to the race.
Problems started on pit lane when they couldn’t get the car started due to an ECU issue. That resulted in him starting at the rear of the field. He then had to serve a pass-thru penalty in which he sped on pit road, forcing another penalty.
From there, the night was essentially lost as Rossi was several laps down and knew it would be nearly impossible to return to the lead lap. From there, Rossi and his team worked to salvage what they could. One positive the team took away from Texas was the team’s work on pit lane, which Rossi said they worked extensively to improve in the offseason.
“The fact we ended up 15th was better than nothing, and I think the one takeaway is that the NAPA / AutoNation team did really well in pit lane,” he said. “That was one of our big focuses in the offseason. This is a good step in the right direction.”
Now, Rossi has his sights set on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the GMR Grand Prix on the thrilling 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course. The race on Saturday, July 4 (live on NBC) will go down in the racing history books as a part of the first-ever INDYCAR-NASCAR tripleheader weekend.
While INDYCAR has shared the same racetrack on the same weekend with the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series at Texas Motor Speedway, never has the NTT INDYCAR SERIES shared a weekend with the NASCAR Xfinity Series, which will race in the Pennzoil 150 at the Brickyard on the road course after the GMR Grand Prix, and the NASCAR Cup Series, which will contest the Big Machine Hand Sanitizer 400 Powered by Big Machine Records Sunday, July 5 on the IMS oval.
Rossi, 28, has adapted well to oval racing after coming to INDYCAR from a brief tenure in Formula One. But five of his seven career wins have come on road courses, including his two wins of 2019, at Long Beach and Road America.
And while Rossi has never won on the IMS road course, he certainly has the success needed to give Honda its second win on the IMS road course and first since the inaugural GMR Grand Prix in 2014. In four starts, Rossi has three top-10 finishes, including a best finish of fifth in 2018.
And when he returns to the racetrack after a four-week break since the Genesys 300, he will still have that fresh mindset and appreciation for the opportunity he has to bring joy and entertainment to millions of race fans.
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| Supergreen
Supergreen Supergreen
supergreen®
Green architecture means more than energy-saving architecture. Green architecture is a constantly developing, broad scope concept. As Christoph Ingenhoven puts it: “We have realized buildings all over the world according to the highest certification standards. But we aim for a holistic commitment that reaches further. The challenge is to top the minimal required standards. What we also have to ask ourselves when building: What’s going on with spatial psychology? How do people feel in spaces? What can I do so that people feel good, feel safe and don’t get sick? Or can I even use architecture to heal people? All that is meant when we speak of supergreen®-architecture.
Holistic approach and responsibility
supergreen®, a term that ingenhoven architects has not only coined but also copyrighted, is a comprehensive concept. It entails an awareness of energy and resources, both in the design, construction and operation and in the realization of the building and its use. It includes the primary and secondary energy levels of the materials used, the equipment and building process and the use of resources over the building’s lifetime. It may, for example, mean the use of concrete whose components are comprised almost completely of recyclable material, and in turn, is also later recyclable. supergreen® is also comprehensive, as it combines innovative technical quality with an aesthetic ambition, based on clear, flexible and rational lay-outs and a modern, elegant design including pleasant and regenerative interiors. An aesthetically appealing interior design clearly counts as a relevant health feature.
This holistic approach is also an expression of a responsible attitude towards problems such as climate change and resource depletion. supergreen® is the answer that architects can and should give to the issue of globally limited natural resources. As buildings in many countries account for about one third of all consumed resources, sustainable building can make a crucial contribution to improving situation worldwide. In this light, it should be mentioned that supergreen® architecture entails a flexible architectural approach that provides solutions for all regions, climate zones and specific climatic conditions. This also holds for difficult tropical conditions, such as in Singapore.
Healthy Environments
To contribute to solving worldwide environmental problems is one thing. But the supergreen®-idea also reflects people’s growing demand for healthy environments in daily life. This includes healthy workstations, healthy rooms for study and research, healthy hotels and wellness resorts (of course), healthy shopping malls and transportation facilities such as train stops. Fresh air, a healthy interior climate, brightness, tranquility and a view we can enjoy from our workstation, spaces for communication and exchange and an appealing interior design. All of these conditions are desirable in every spatial situation of life. Therefore, the concept of supergreen®-architecture pursues a thoroughly humanist goal: It aims at an architecture that meets and addresses specific human needs.
As today’s demand for a healthy environment grows—especially healthy office environments—it is evident that for a growing number of international companies, sustainability is an important aspect of their corporate identities. Virtually all the office buildings that ingenhoven architects has planned over the last 30 years underline these ambitions. Each project—in some way or another–has aimed to raise the level of user comfort. Sometimes even blurring the traditional distinctions and borders between nature and the world of work, supergreen®-architecture aims to recreate some of the natural qualities and to integrate them in the working environment - stimulating and enhancing people’s creative potential in different ways.
supergreen® designs are not restricted to the world of work. When comparing streets and public places of today’s cities with those of some 30 or 40 years ago, it becomes clear that greenness is one of the most striking differences. Urban green today offers many new possibilities for the development of our cities. Take, for example ingenhoven achitects’ proposal for the design for Germany’s most exhibited public place, the “Schlossplatz” in downtown Berlin. The design envisaged a New York-like central park as the city’s green center and as a green alternative to the reconstruction of the historic castle. Currently, ingenhoven architects is also designing the urban center of the office’s home town of Düsseldorf (Kö-Bogen II) in a way that integrates green elements in an optically radically new urban concept. All this makes clear: supergreen® is a concept for worldwide city development and one for spaces both outside and inside buildings.
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Stewardship: Being Faithful Wherever God Calls Us
Part of of in
By Russell Jeung
Illustrations by Janice Chang
Sep 06, 2017 | 5 min read
232 0 Snaps
232 Snaps
Tu Shan’s silent desperation began to take its toll. As housing costs in the San Francisco Bay Area skyrocketed, he feared that he and his wife would no longer be able to afford to live there. Already living in cramped quarters, they barely could afford to clothe and feed their three children. Five years after resettling here as a refugee from the Kachin State of Burma, he had a minimum wage job working at a restaurant.
Unfortunately, his resettlement classes didn’t train him for the high-tech economy of San Francisco. In fact, his limited schooling couldn’t even prepare him for a service sector job cleaning up after the high tech workers. Without English skills, he — like thousands of refugees like him — seemed destined to an unstable future.
Just four miles away at her workplace in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunter’s Point neighborhood, Minnie Fong constantly questioned the meaning of work from a Christian perspective, often asking herself “Why am I here? What’s the impact of my work compared to doing direct ministry?” On a H1B visa, she came from the Philippines to get her MBA at UC Berkeley and has held different jobs since she’s graduated. Her current position, as vice president of new market operations for Imperfect Produce, neatly fits her skills in operations, but she works long hours and finds herself at an airport every two days.
“I struggle a lot with the meaning of work,” Minnie intimated. Even though her start-up was expanding rapidly and she had the huge responsibility of establishing new markets, she still wondered why God had placed her at Imperfect Produce, which fights food waste by selling vegetables too ugly for grocery stores.
Although a successful telecommunications manager, David Sein-Lwin’s career was much too stressful. The high-pressure work literally killed a coworker, who passed away from colon cancer at an early age. That wakeup call led David to quit his job and take some time to figure out his family’s next steps.
David used his newfound freedom and time to serve at his church, Oakland Burmese Mission Baptist Church (OBMBC). When he was 13 years old, the government junta took control of his father’s business, and his Chinese-Karen family had no means of income. A church sponsored his family to migrate to Pennsylvania, and David couldn’t fathom why they were so generous: “We had nothing; the church provided everything. They didn’t even know us, so why would these people help us?” A grateful recipient of hospitality, he promised himself, “If I had the opportunity to help in a similar situation, I would do the same.” So when a new, larger influx of refugees from Burma began to resettle in the Bay Area, David was ready.
Despite her busy schedule, Minnie took the time one night to cross the Bay Bridge and attend a training about refugees from the International Rescue Committee. She felt a deep empathy for refugees: “I don’t come close to what they go through, but I know what it’s like to live in a foreign country, not feel like you belong, and not have any support.” That night, when she heard about the needs of refugee families, she realized Imperfect Produce had jobs available that could provide a living wage.
Not only did Imperfect Produce pay more than minimum wage, but they offered benefits and free produce as well. Further, their workers didn’t need to know much English to pack boxes of produce. “It just made sense,” Minnie realized, to try hiring refugees to stabilize her work crews. “It’s a win-win for all parties.”
Later that month at OBMBC’s 10th anniversary dinner, David heard about the job openings at Imperfect Produce. Sharing the news with his congregation, he found widespread interest but also much fear and apprehension. Most of the men worked under the table in ethnic restaurants; leaving a steady job for a new one in a mainstream American corporation seemed too risky. Furthermore, being in an English-speaking environment seemed too daunting.
However, two bold applicants approached David, and he referred them to Imperfect Produce. Informed that they were coming, Minnie encouraged her human resources staff to offer them trial workdays. Even though the chill in the refrigerated warehouses was far from the humidity of Burma, the workers quickly completed their tasks. Imperfect Produce supervisors were ecstatic to get eager employees, and the Karen found the work easy and the pay substantial.
Once a few refugee workers got established at Imperfect Produce, Tu Shan wanted a job, too. Nervous, he approached David about applying. He assisted Tu Shan in filling out the online application, uploaded his permanent resident card and driver’s license identifications, and arranged a trial workday.
Tu Shan got the job, and has been at Imperfect Produce for a month now. He reports, “I’m very happy now that the income I get from this job helps pay for my child’s school expenses, and my rent payments.” Also, he gets so much free produce that the family rarely has to shop for groceries.
David continues to send refugee applicants from his church to the company. Being at the right place at the right time, he says, “It’s easy to get people; they just come to me and we talk about how they’re doing. If they need a job, I just gather their information, and Imperfect Produce is appreciative with the people we’re sending.” Currently, Karen refugees already make up one-third of Imperfect Produce’s operations staff after the first one was hired.
And Minnie is overjoyed that she’s been an answer to prayer of this community. “I can’t say how fulfilling it is when I hear about how happy they are, and what kind of impact this has for them. It’s not possible to live on minimum wage, and Imperfect Produce really values their workforce, so we make sure to pay a living wage.” Technology startups have gentrified the Bay Area, but some conscious enterprises such as Imperfect Produce have worked to ameliorate the negative impacts of capitalism.
Just as Imperfect Produce gathers ugly fruit and repackages it to create jobs and prevent food waste, God uses imperfect people — the church — to accomplish God’s perfect will as they steward their labor, time, and power.
In stewarding his labor, Tu Shan’s bravery and diligence now earns a decent income for his household. He’s proud to state, “I’m thankful to God for this new job. I worked in a restaurant before, but it required long hours and I didn’t get any benefits. I couldn’t go to church on Sunday because I had to work. Now, I can go to church on Sunday and I get to spend more time with my family.”
By making wise use of his time and faithfully serving, David Sein-Lwin has assisted dozens of refugee families in his community. “In terms of stewardship,” he maintains, “we have the responsibility to manage what God’s given us to do. In this particular situation, we are tasked to present this opportunity to people in need. I’m just an instrument of God to get people into jobs.”
Through the gift of her career position, Minnie Fong’s desire to make an impact for God has borne tangible fruit. Even as she constantly questions if she’s using the gifts she’s been given well, she recognizes, “God has gone before me and he has plans for me before I knew it. He placed me in this country. My work here is a blessing that I need to use wisely and to steward.”
Indeed, Asian Americans have much to steward — the blessings and hardships of migration and resettlement, the gifts and anxieties of family and work, and the high calling to be the church. In the United States, growing up involves becoming autonomous, but in Asia, maturity entails taking responsibility for others. As these three Asian Americans have been responsible with what they have given, God has interconnected them in amazing ways to bear fruits for the Kingdom.
Read the rest of the series
Russell Jeung is the author of “At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus Among My Ancestors and Refugee Neighbors” (Zondervan 2016), in which he recounts his family’s six generations in California, how they reflect the racialized history of Asians in the U.S., and how he has come to terms with his own Asian American Christian identity. He founded Stop AAPI Hate with Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council to counter surging Covid-19 racism.
Janice Chang is an illustrator/designer from Los Angeles who recently graduated from Art Center College of Design. She loves creating characters, people watching, eating and admiring food, stop-motions, ceramics, and last but not least, chips. Her work can be found at janicechangart.com.
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Scottish Enterprise
Report highlights priority 'actions' needed to boost Scotland's business performance
Report compiled by a Scottish team drawn from both the public and private sector taking part in two-year programme run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Scott McCulloch
Pic: DR
A report published today has outlined five key priority “actions” needed to help Scotland become one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative economies in the world.
The report, complied by a Scottish team drawn from both the public and private sector, comes from the work undertaken in a two-year programme run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The programme brought together a “large group of stakeholders to understand how effective Scotland’s support was in key areas for entrepreneurs,” and Scotland's performance was then “benchmarked against the world leading innovation-driven economies”.
The Scottish REAP team has been participating alongside groups from Finland, New Zealand, Spain, Mexico and China.
The Scottish REAP team found acquiring the skills to grow a successful, international business “is a significant challenge in Scotland”, and highlights need for improvement in five key areas.
The five priorities identified for “urgent action” are:
1) Acquiring the skills to grow a successful, international business is a significant challenge in Scotland.
2) The effectiveness of networks across the country and globally, which draw on the experience and knowledge of others, is an area for improvement.
3) Access to risk finance continues to be a barrier for many entrepreneurs.
4) The wider role of universities in educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, and using their alumni networks, is a key opportunity.
5) Scotland’s successful entrepreneurs have an important part to play as accessible role models, experienced mentors and visible leaders for business.
John Swinney, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, welcomed the findings.
He said: “The recommendations within the REAP Scotland report support the work the Scottish Government is doing to improve entrepreneurship and innovation in Scotland.
“Our vision of Scotland is of a world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation where businesses can develop and prosper.
“We are working hard in Government to support and empower the longstanding entrepreneurial spirit of the Scottish people.”
The Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Programme (REAP) was set up to help countries match innovation with entrepreneurship to drive economic growth.
REAP's Scottish team, supported and facilitated by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise.
Donna Chisholm, head of business innovation and growth sectors of Highlands and Islands Enterprise is chair of the Scottish REAP team and is supported by Simon Grey, chief executive of AWS Ocean Energy; Ian Ritchie, chairman of Iomart Plc; Jonathan Levie, Director of knowledge exchange at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Strathclyde; Jonathan Harris, editor of Young Company Finance; and Clive Reeves, collaborative funding manager at Scottish Enterprise.
Angel investor and chairman of Iomart Plc, Ian Ritchie, said: “Having supported early-stage entrepreneurial companies in Scotland for over 25 years, I welcomed the opportunity to join this effort and compare our performance with other regional economies across the world.
“We have learned from others and have identified key areas where we can improve our support of talented entrepreneurs with global ambitions.”
Professor Jonathan Levie, expert in entrepreneurship from the University at Strathclyde, said: “By learning from each other, and from best practice in other countries, Scottish universities can deliver the enterprising graduates employers are looking for.”
“The report is a call to action for all those with a desire to position Scotland as a world leading economy, through the success of the country’s entrepreneurs.
“In early autumn, further details of specific actions and a formal launch will be announced.”
The full report can be found here
John Swinney
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ICF Global Summit 2018
Economic Development Matchmaking
For public and private-sector organizations seeking new opportunities.
Economic Development Matchmaking at the ICF Summit is a unique networking opportunity to develop leads and build relationships with leading communities, organizations and businesses in the Intelligent Community movement. Similar to a "speed-dating" session, attendees will have the opportunity to schedule up to six 20-minute meetings with table hosts with the goal of exchanging contact information to continue developing the relationship after the Summit.
Scheduling Meetings
To schedule meetings, you must first be registered to attend Day 3 of the ICF Summit. Once you are registered, you will receive an email with an invitation to schedule meetings. If you are registered but have not received an email to schedule your meetings, please contact Matthew Owen at mowen@intelligentcommunity.org
Table Hosts
Below are the confirmed table hosts for Economic Development Matchmaking at ICF Summit 2018. Further tables will be added as hosts are confirmed.
Chiayi City, Taiwan
Chiayi is a provincial city of 270,000 in southcentral Taiwan, midway between Taichung and Tainan. Ninety-five percent of its economy is in the services sector – wholesale and retail, transportation and warehousing, and accommodation and food – which employs three-quarters of the workforce. After Chiayi was ranked as having the worst air quality in Taiwan in 2014, Mayor Twu Shiing-jer, a physician, dedicated his administration to improving life in the city in this and many other areas. What followed was a clean air initiative, a rollout of a broadband network with over 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the city, a new focus on digital education, and more. Read more
In the far northern nations of the world, people tend to cluster southward. Espoo, Finland's second largest city, lies on the border of its biggest city and national capital, Helsinki. In 1950, Espoo was a regional municipality of 22,000, which drew its name from the Swedish words for the aspen tree and for river. Today, Espoo is still a place on a river bordered by aspen trees. While it is an industrial city of 270,000, it retains its dispersed, regional nature, however, being made of up of seven population hubs arrayed along the border with Helsinki, where many of its citizens work. Read more
The Golden Horseshoe is the region that bends around the westernmost end of Lake Ontario in Canada. At the center of the horseshoe’s curve is Hamilton, a city of 520,000 known for industry, education and cultural diversity, having the third-largest foreign-born population in Canada. Located 70 kilometers southwest of Toronto (the 2014 Intelligent Community of the Year), Hamilton was once known as the Steel Capital of Canada, producing 60% of the nation’s steel. It is also a successful lake port city and operates an airport that saw passenger traffic grow tenfold from 1996 to 2002. A 30-year economic development plan begun in 2003 set the goal of creating a massive aerotropolis industrial park around that airport to capitalize on its success. Read more
Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
In 2011, the city of Ipswich published a 20-year economic development plan for its population of 195,000. It forecast the addition of 292,000 new residents, who will require an additional 120,000 jobs, and will live in a network of distinct communities interwoven with centers of employment, recreational facilities and green space. Because Ipswich offered affordable housing and an attractive lifestyle, its population has grown rapidly in the booming economy of 21st Century Australia. Read more
Tainan City, Taiwan
If you have ever eaten a bowl of instant noodles, you owe a debt to Momofuku Ando, founder of Nissin Foods and inventor of this staple of Asian fast food, who was born and raised in Tainan City. This city of 1.9 million was the historic capital of Taiwan and the cultural heritage of centuries remains one of Tainan’s most important assets that drives a thriving tourist industry. Tainan today, however, is about much more than the past. It is home to multiple science and technology parks including the Southern Taiwan Science Park, Tainan Technology Park and Shugu LCD Park. The tenant rolls are dominated by optoelectronics, integrated circuits, green energy and biotech companies, which together with more traditional manufacturing generate more than half of the city’s economic activity. Read more
Taoyuan, Taiwan
From the Taoyuan International Airport on its northwest corner to its mountainous and thinly populated southeast, Taoyuan is home to 2 million people and 47,000 companies including one-third of the nation’s top 500 manufacturers. By nourishing local innovation, attracting international entrepreneurs, and building an ever-growing infrastructure for clean energy production, Taoyuan is preparing its people, organizations and environment for global competition. Read more
Located midway between the two coasts of Canada, Winnipeg is the capital of a province rich in agricultural and natural resources. In the 21st Century, the city is pursuing economic growth by better connecting industry and education, while better equipping its large aboriginal population for opportunity. The city has pursued economic growth by connecting industry and education more systematically, and leveraging its indigenous geographical and cultural assets. A public-private R&D organization develops technologies and supply chains for high-performance composites based on agricultural materials, while there has been a programmatic attempt to equip its large aboriginal population with digital tools. Read more
Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for 170 years. The company is active around the globe, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of efficient power generation and power transmission solutions and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. With its publicly listed subsidiary Siemens Healthineers AG, the company is also a leading provider of medical imaging equipment – such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging systems – and a leader in laboratory diagnostics as well as clinical IT. In fiscal 2017, which ended on September 30, 2017, Siemens generated revenue of €83.0 billion and net income of €6.2 billion. At the end of September 2017, the company had around 377,000 employees worldwide. Read more
Becamex
Investment and Industrial Development Corporation ( Becamex IDC) was established in 1976, over 35 years of construction and development, Becamex IDC has now become a prestigious brand name in the field of investment and development of industrial, residential, urban and transportation infrastructure. Currently, Becamex IDC has 28 subsidiaries and joint efforts covering areas of securities, finance, insurance, banking, construction, trading, real estate, services, telecommunication - information technology , concrete production, construction materials, mining, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and education with charter capital of approximately 5.500 bil VND Read more
ICF Canada
ICF Canada is the first global representative office of its kind outside of ICF’s global headquarters. The purpose of ICF Canada is to promote the development of the Intelligent Community movement within Canada and by example, promote the goals of creating the best cities and educated workforce possible around the world through the criteria established by ICF. As a result, ICF Canada is positioned to respond to requests by Canadian communities of all sizes across the nation about the criteria, awards, conferences, workshops and any other activities of ICF and ICFF as well as work with its partners, ICF Institutes and intermediaries in Canada and around the world in their effort to help create the best communities possible for its citizens and for the country as a whole. Read more
ICF Taiwan
ICF Taiwan is the first global representative office of its kind in Asia. ICF Taiwan promotes the development of the Intelligent Community movement within Taiwan and by example, promote the goals of creating the best cities and educated workforce possible around the world through the criteria established by ICF. ICF Taiwan coordinates the participation of Taiwanese communities of all sizes across the nation in conferences, workshops and any other activities of ICF and ICFF as well as work with its partners, ICF Institutes and intermediaries in Taiwan and around the world in their effort to help create the best communities possible for its citizens and for the country as a whole. Read more
Global Institute for the Study of the Intelligent Community (Dublin, Ohio)
The Global Institute for the Study of the Intelligent Community was established in partnership with the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) to serve as a research institution to expand the world’s knowledge about the creation of Intelligent Communities. Through the Institute and our membership, we seek to expand understanding of successful community development and to equip local leaders with tools to build stronger communities. The Institute is currently one of two such organizations licensed through ICF. Each Institute focuses on educating and assisting communities in becoming proficient in the Intelligent Community Indicators – broadband, knowledge workforce, innovation, digital equality, sustainability, and advocacy. Read more
<<< Back to the Summit 18 Programme
Matthew Owen published this page in ICF Global Summit 2018 2018-04-27 11:42:49 -0400
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Unsung hero award for van hire boss after heart attack
Nearly 18 months ago a North Wales fleet manager was left needing emergency surgery after suffering a heart attack at the age of just 34.
But now Adrian Binnersley, who is originally from Wrexham, has scooped a national unsung hero award after being secretly nominated by his boss at Jolly Good Van Hire for his dedication to the company.
And he had no idea he had been put up for a British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association Industry Hero award until his name was read out at the ceremony.
Mr Binnersley, who moved to Buckley, Flintshire last year, said: “I was playing football six times a week. When I got home from football one day my wife said I looked pale.
“I went to Wrexham Maelor Hospital and tests showed I had had a heart attack. “They said I needed an operation the next day to have four stents put in where the arteries were blocked. They put it down to being hereditary.”
Mr Binnersley, a married father-of-two, said: “They said the award was because of my work. I have been with Mark Hughes, the company director, since the start.
“It was also because I had had a heart attack but yet that did not stop me from doing my job.”
Mr Binnersley, 36, who now runs Jolly Good Van Hire’s new branch in Deeside, said: “It is nice to receive the award. I just want to thank Mark for everything he has done and all the lads that I work with as well. They have all looked after me.”
Mark Hughes, director of Jolly Good Van Hire, said: “Adrian has worked for the company for five years. He works all the hours we ask him but he also goes back extra hours if there is an emergency.
“If someone needs a van then he will go and fetch one. He is a very dedicated member of staff and really puts in the effort to help people.”
Mr Hughes said: “Four weeks after his heart attack he was asking if he could return but I made him wait until eight weeks, which is what the doctors were recommending.”
Mr Hughes said: “I thought the BVRLA awards were an ideal way to show our appreciation of the work that Adrian does.
“He is always the first to volunteer and always there to help out. If I had told him before the awards ceremony he would have said he didn’t deserve the award.
“I am delighted that he had got the award, it is a fantastic achievement for him and is a recognition of all the hard work he does.”
Jolly Good Van Hire’s depots are at Wrexham, Shrewsbury, Deeside and Ely in Cambridgeshire are all open 7 days a week from 7am and no deposit is required. A 24-hour emergency service is also available.
For more information visit www.jollygoodvanhire.co.uk.
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HALACHIC ARBITRATION AND MEDIATION CENTRE
Director - Dayan Elimelech Vanzetta, שליט"א
Dayan Elimelech Vanzetta learnt at leading Yeshivos in Israel, where he studied a number of different areas of Halachah, and was ordained by the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Israel as well as important contemporary Halachic Authorities. Dayan Vanzetta enjoys a particularly close, and ongoing, relationship with many of today's leading Rabbonim, such as HaRav Asher Weiss, שליט``א; HaRav Noach Orlowek, שליט``א; HaRav Yirmiahu Kaganoff, שליט``א and others.
He is one of the Dayanim of the prestigious European Beth Din, under the leadership of Europe's leading halachic legislator, Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu, שליט"א. Moreover, he was the founding Rabbi of Ahavas Yisrael United Synagogue, a Senior Lecturer for US in The City, and, as of September 2017, the Rabbinical and Halachic authority for the United Synagogue Burial Society, working closely with the London Beth Din.
Dayan Vanzetta is often consulted by fellow Rabbis and Dayanim the world over on all aspects of Jewish Law.
In addition to his rabbinical activities, Dayan Vanzetta is a sought after trusted adviser for UHNW single and multi-family offices, due to his vast international experience in the banking and investment sectors, and currently works with a number of clients.
He previously occupied rabbinical positions in different countries and was the Secretary General of the Conference of European Rabbis between 2012 and 2014.
During his time in Chile, he had the privilege of sitting in Beth Din proceedings with HaRav Neta Tzvi Greenblatt, שליט``א, Av Beth Din of Memphis (Tennessee, USA), one of the greatest experts in Gittin in the world.
In addition to his rabbinical studies, the Dayan studied Economics, Politics and International Relations at the London School and Economics and Political Science (BSc Hons), Law at the University of Milan (Italy), is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators - the world's leading arbitration and mediation professional body, a Member of the London Institute of Banking and Finance, and is an accomplished linguist, being fluent in eight languages.
OUR ARBITRATORS AND MEDIATORS
Our Mediators and Arbitrators are Rabbinical Judges (Dayanim), with several years of international experience in Halachic Arbitration (Dinei Torah) and Mediation, who hold membership of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Our panel of Dayanim have learnt in leading Yeshivos, and are experts in a number different areas of Halachah. Moreover, they also have a solid University background.
We are able to offer Arbitration and Mediation either in the presence of a single Dayan, or before a full panel of three Dayanim, both of which are valid according to Torah and Civil law.
Our experts' extensive halachic knowledge, coupled with their interpersonal skills and worldly knowledge enable them to conduct effective Arbitration and Mediation in a timely, cost effective and productive manner.
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101 arrested and 19,000 stolen artefacts recovered in international crackdown on art trafficking
INTERPOL, Europol and World Customs Organization join forces during Operations Athena II and Pandora IV
More than 19,000 archaeological artefacts and other artworks have been recovered as part of a global operation spanning 103 countries and focusing on the dismantlement of international networks of art and antiquities traffickers.
101 suspects have been arrested, and 300 investigations opened as part of this coordinated crackdown. The criminal networks handled archaeological goods and artwork looted from war-stricken countries, as well as works stolen from museums and archaeological sites.
Seizures include coins from different periods, archaeological objects, ceramics, historical weapons, paintings and fossils. Facilitating objects, such as metal detectors were also seized.
These results were achieved during the global Operation Athena II, led by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and INTERPOL, which was carried out in synchronization with the Europe-focused Operation Pandora IV coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and Europol in the framework of EMPACT. Details of both Operations, which ran in the autumn of 2019, can only be released now due to operational reasons.
Online illicit markets
Law enforcement officers paid particular attention to the monitoring of online market places and sales sites, as the Internet is an important part of the illicit trade of cultural goods.
During what was called a ‘cyber patrol week’ and under the leadership of the Italian Carabinieri (Arma dei Carabinieri), police and customs experts along with Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO mapped active targets and developed intelligence packages. As a result, 8,670 cultural objects for online sale were seized. This represents 28% of the total number of artefacts recovered during this international crackdown.
Operational highlights
Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport just as the objects were about to depart for Istanbul, Turkey.
The Spanish National Police (Policia Nacional), working together with the Colombian Police (Policia Nacional de Colombia), recovered at Barajas airport in Madrid some very rare pre-Columbian objects illegally acquired through looting in Colombia, including a unique Tumaco gold mask and several gold figurines and items of ancient jewellery. Three traffickers were arrested in Spain, and the Colombian authorities carried out house searches in Bogota, resulting in the seizure of a further 242 pre-Columbian objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.
The investigation of a single case of online sale led to the seizure of 2,500 ancient coins by the Argentinian Federal Police Force (Policia Federal Argentina), the largest seizure for this category of items, while the second largest seizure was made by Latvian State Police (Latvijas Valsts Policija) for a total of 1,375 coins.
Six European Police forces reported the seizure of a hundred and eight metal detectors, demonstrating that looting in Europe is still an ongoing business.
Seizure by Chilean customs.
The Spanish National Police recovered a unique Tumaco gold mask.
Cultural objects seized in Italy.
A Menaion from 1760 was intercepted in Romania, as well as coins.
Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport.
Colombian authorities seized 242 objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.
Objects seized by Spain’s Guardia Civil.
Objects seized in the Czech Republic.
Protecting our cultural heritage
This is the second time that Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO have joined forces to tackle the illicit trade in cultural heritage. Given the global nature of this crackdown, a 24-hour Operational Coordination Unit (OCU) was run jointly by the WCO, INTERPOL and Europol. In addition to assisting with information exchanges and issuing alerts, the OCU also carried out checks against various international and national databases, such as INTERPOL’s database on Stolen Works of Art and Europol’s European Information System.
“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target.” Jürgen Stock, INTERPOL Secretary General
“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock. “If you then take the significant amounts of money involved and the secrecy of the transactions, this also presents opportunities for money laundering and fraud as well as financing organized crime networks,” added the INTERPOL Chief.
“Organized crime has many faces. The trafficking of cultural goods is one of them: it is not a glamorous business run by flamboyant gentlemen forgers, but by international criminal networks. You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons: we know that the same groups are engaged, because it generate big money. Given that this is a global phenomenon affecting every country on the planet – either as a source, transit or destination, it is crucial that Law Enforcement all work together to combat it. Europol, in its role as the European Law Enforcement Agency, supported the EU countries involved in this global crackdown by using its intelligence capabilities to identify the pan-European networks behind these thefts,” said Catherine de Bolle, Europol’s Executive Director.
“The operational success of Customs and its law enforcement partners offers tangible proof that international trafficking of cultural objects is thriving and touches upon all continents. In particular, we keep receiving evidence that online illicit markets are one of the major vehicles for this crime. However, online transactions always leave a trace and Customs, Police and other partners have established effective mechanisms to work together to prevent cross border illicit trade”, said Dr Kunio Mikuriya, WCO Secretary General.
Many activities carried out during the Operation were decided on and conducted jointly between customs and police at national level, with the support and participation of experts from the Ministries of Culture as well as from other relevant institutions and law enforcement agencies.
Payments stopped, three arrested in medical supplies fraud case
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Hunting a fugitive in a pandemic
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I’m a Married Queer Person. Here’s How ‘Religious Freedom’ Affects Me
By: Nico Lang
Two years ago I got married because I watched my mother die in front of me.
One morning in July, I got a call from my grandmother saying my mother had a brain aneurysm, and she was in a coma. The next day I booked a plane ticket to Cincinnati. I sat with her in the hospital for a week, painting her toenails and taunting her in the hopes that she would wake up. I would tell her that all her favorite ghost hunting shows got cancelled and that Julia Roberts wasn’t that good of an actress.
But four days after she was checked into the same hospital I was born in, her doctor told me she wouldn’t be waking up. As her next of kin, I had to make a choice: to prolong her life by keeping her on oxygen or allow her to die a natural death. Six days after I first walked into her hospital room—not fully understanding the gravity of the situation until I saw her deceptively cherubic face hooked up to a snarl of translucent breathing tubes—I held her heavy hand as she gasped her last breath. She fought hard for it; she always was a fighter.
The situation was difficult, but the choice wasn’t. Twenty-five years earlier, my mother had given birth to two little boys who weren’t built to survive. Their bodies slowly swelled like fever balloons from a disease so rare no one else has ever had it. It’s as if they were being boiled from the inside.
She had to make the same decision—twice. One was two and a half years old when his tubes were disconnected, the other just six months.
I gave her the gift she had given them so many years before: a freedom from pain disguised as suspended animation. Her face may have looked peaceful lit up like silvery gossamer in the too-bright lights of the hospital room, but she knew there is no peace in purgatory.
I married my husband because I needed to know someone could make the same decision for me when the time came. The incidence of familial intracranial aneurysms is up to 20 percent: meaning that as many as one-fifth of people whose parents or immediate family members have a history of violent brain trauma will experience the same. It would be more than a year before I got test results back saying my brain map was perfectly ordinary—no abnormalities. But in the heat of funerals and answering condolence cards, we had to act quickly.
My husband and I got married at City Hall in October 2016, and the photos we took that day look more like the cover art for a somber indie band than a ceremony marking our eternal love and commitment. We knew we wanted to get married from our very first trip to Coney Island two years earlier, locking arms on the Electro Spin to keep from being hurled into space. It wasn’t, however, exactly how we pictured getting married.
I never expected to tell this story in public—or at all. It was something that only we and a few other people knew. It was private enough that nearly a year later, I proposed to him a second time—this time in front of close friends with a sand diamond my great aunt brought back from Saudi Arabia when I was no more than 10. Unpolished and the size of a pinky nail, the stone looked more like a perfectly round zit than a precious jewel, but I liked the object’s symbolism: Like every lasting relationship, it would take time and diligence to reveal its hidden radiance.
But the morning the Supreme Court sounded its verdict in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, everything changed—just as everything changed those many months before.
The ruling was neither the slam dunk conservatives in favor of so-called “religious freedom” had been hoping for nor the final blow LGBTQ people hoped would end the conversation. To mix sports metaphors, legal eagles claimed it was a punt. In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had treated Lakewood, CO baker Jack Phillips unfairly in weighing the 2012 case. They argued that the civil rights body’s verdict displayed unconstitutional bias against people of religious conviction.
Thus, the decision didn’t determine whether Phillips, who denied service to gay couple Jack Mullins and Charlie Craig on the basis of their sexual orientation, had the right to do so. That would be determined by future court rulings.
While the ruling was deemed “narrow” by advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, its interpretation has been divided. The Arizona Court of Appeals applied Masterpiece to uphold a nondiscrimination ordinance in Phoenix, but Liberty Counsel, the far-right law firm that defended Rowan County, KY clerk Kim Davis in court, viewed it as a mandate to begin chipping away at protections for LGBTQ people across the United States.
In truth, that work has already begun. Last December, the Supreme Court declined to take up Pidgeon v. Turner, in which plaintiffs argue that the same-sex spouses of Houston city employees are not entitled to partner benefits. That case, which was originally filed prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, has now been remanded to Texas lower courts for further consideration.
In the wake of the Masterpiece ruling, news outlets reported an East Tennessee hardware store—Amyx Hardware & Roofing Supplies in Grainger County—put back up a “no gays allowed” sign originally hung following the legalization of same-sex marriage. But in truth, that sign has been up all three years.
Meanwhile, a South Dakota lawmaker recently argued that businesses should have the right to deny service to other marginalized groups—like people of color.
When LGBTQ advocates won the right of all couples to be married in each of the 50 states following a decades-long struggle for equality, they successfully argued that all love is equal. The commitment between Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer, whose 44-year relationship formed the legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, is no different than the devotion shared by heterosexual partners. The only thing that separates the two is stigma. When Windsor proposed in 1967, Spyer wore a diamond pin in fear an engagement ring would out them. Coworkers at IBM thought Windsor was dating “Willy Spyer,” a fictional brother the two invented to prevent from being fired.
Even today, LGBTQ people can be terminated from their jobs in 28 states if they are discovered to be queer or transgender. After first-grade teacher Jocelyn Morfii posted photos of she and her wife getting married on Facebook, the Miami Catholic school where she taught sacked her within the week. The school’s principal called Morfii’s termination a “difficult and necessary decision.”
While advocates have eloquently argued for the dignity of queer love, what society has yet to catch up to is that our rights as married people deserve the same consideration.
When I got married two years ago, I did it because I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else but the incredibly kind, patient man who put together an unnecessarily elaborate dresser from IKEA for me just days after we met. He was my first date when I moved to New York City from Chicago in 2014. I hadn’t planned on dating anyone, but one day, a dog I was fostering from a rescue shelter had a violent seizure, and I didn’t know who else to call to help take her to the animal hospital. He was there, he kept being there, and that constancy grew into love.
Just as much of a consideration in that decision, though, were the 1,138 benefits that flow from marriage—which include rights of inheritance, tax deductions, insurance coverage, and rights of visitation in hospitals and emergency waiting rooms.
The day that my mother had a brain aneurysm, her partner of eight years wasn’t allowed in the room when her doctors forced a feeding tube down her throat. Her brain was bleeding internally, so she fought the medical professionals who were trying to help her as she lashed out in pain—like a hunted animal thrashing violently to prevent its capture. Because she and her partner weren’t married, he couldn’t be there to help calm her. So the doctors on duty placed her into a medically induced coma in order to insert the tube. She would never wake up from that coma.
The burden of the choice he never got to make has weighed heavy on him since: What if he had been present to say “no?” Would she still be alive?
These are decisions no one should ever have to make, and yet too often, the friends and family who know us best will be forced to act on our behalf: as powers of attorney, caregivers, and voices when we cannot speak for ourselves in times of emergency. Having that person is especially important for LGBTQ people, who experience disproportionate discrimination in nearly all facets of public life. When Tyra Hunter, a transgender woman who lived in Washington, D.C., was injured in a car accident in 1995, the medics refused her care after they sliced open her pants and discovered her anatomy wasn’t what they expected. She died in the hospital.
The morning that the Masterpiece ruling came down, I knew we were in for a long fight 23 years after her death. I knew that even if my husband and I did everything we could to ensure I would have someone there to advocate for me, we could take nothing for granted.
That day, I called my husband, my grandmother, and other members of my family and told them that if something ever happens to me, don’t send me to a religious hospital. Earlier this year, the Trump administration reshuffled the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, an office devoted to allowing people of faith to refuse service to LGBTQ people. Considering that one in six hospital beds in the U.S. are housed at Catholic medical centers, that decision could mean the difference between life and death in far too many cases: cases like Tyra Hunter’s and, in the wrong circumstances, maybe even cases like mine.
No matter what the religious right has argued in court, this discussion is not about cakes or flowers. It’s not even about love, really. It’s about the right of all of us to be treated equally under the law. It’s about whether I have the right to live and whether my legally wedded husband has the right to make that choice.
My mother’s death was the worst moment of my life. When I got the call that morning she was in a coma, all I could think about was the things I never got to tell her. My mother was a career survivor—of sexual assault, domestic violence, and cheating husbands—who raised me in a one-bedroom trailer with a half-collapsed roof. In order to make separate rooms for us, she had to bisect what was originally intended to be a living room using particle board. She gave everything to raise me, and all I wanted was the chance to acknowledge her sacrifice. I wanted to say, “I see you.”
The only thing I can imagine that’s worse than that is not getting to be in the room at all when it happened. I got to be the one sitting next to her, tightly gripping her hand in an unspoken pact. That’s the same thing we all deserve.
Illustration by Bronwyn Lundberg
Nico Lang
Nico Lang is a staff writer for INTO, covering news, politics, and global LGBTQ issues.
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Why is the Marine Stewardship Council hoarding its cash?
What is the NGO planning to do with its funds?
19 February 2020 12:55 GMT Updated 25 February 2020 14:31 GMT
By John Fiorillo
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has more than $41.8 million (€38.7 million) in cash reserves sitting in its accounts. Let me repeat that. The nonprofit fisheries certification group has more than $41.8 million in surplus cash stacking up in its coffers.
(Correction: Subsequent to the publishing of this column, the MSC wrote to clarify the group's position on its cash reserves, saying it does not hold $41.8 million in cash reserves. "The figure quoted in your article amounts to the net assets of the MSC Group, not cash held in the bank nor our organizational reserves. To see the MSC's full rebuttal, click here.)
You are probably asking yourself: Isn't that a lot of money for a nonprofit to stash away? Why does the MSC appear to be stockpiling money? Why isn’t it using that cash on sustainable seafood programs?
Those are all great questions. Let me try to answer them.
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First, how much do nonprofits typically keep in a rainy-day fund? According to the National Council of Nonprofits (NCN), less than 25 percent of the nonprofits it surveys annually had more than six months of cash in reserve, and the majority reported that they had less than three months of operating reserves on hand.
“Most nonprofits are small, less than a million dollars, and just don’t have the luxury of building up a large reserve fund,” said Rick Cohen, communications officer at NCN.
The MSC, of course, is larger, with an income of roughly $34 million (€31.4 million).
Total expenditures reported in its 2018/2019 annual report were $30.8 million (€28.5 million). If we use the NCN numbers, that would mean the MSC would hold about $15 million (€13.8 million) in reserves if it wanted a six-month backstop, and $23 million (€21.2 million) if it wanted nine months’ worth of reserves, as is the current MSC policy.
However, the MSC is holding between two and three times what the NCN says is typical, and almost $20 million (€18.5 million) more that its own guidelines require.
The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA), by comparison, reported roughly $15.8 million (€14.6 million) in income on its 2018 990 tax form. Its expenses exceeded $16.3 million (€15 million). It reported just over $1.17 million (€1 million), or about 7 percent of its annual expenses, in cash reserves.
“There are lots of reasons to build up a reserve fund that go beyond having a rainy-day fund,” said Cohen.
There is a benefit to building up a reserve if you are planning to launch a major initiative or are planning for an upcoming capital expenditure, he added.
Is there a plan for a portion of the MSC war chest, and if so, what is it?
The MSC says in its annual reports that holding reserves helps to protect it from potential fluctuations in income and expenditures, including the loss or withdrawal of certified products from the MSC program.
It is a fair point, because recently some MSC fisheries have been forced to withdraw from the program.
For example, the Northeast Atlantic mackerel fishery certification was suspended in March 2019. And the Atlantic menhaden fishery certification is under scrutiny after US regulators placed a moratorium on the 141,000 metric ton fishery for being out of compliance with management regulations. One can only imagine the financial pain that might be caused if a foundational fishery such as Alaska pollock or Alaska salmon were to pull out of the program.
Losses like these can hurt, but it is important to keep in mind that the MSC also continues to add fisheries on a regular basis.
Consider that in March 2013, the group had 198 fisheries certified. The number of certified fisheries, according to its 2018/2019 report was 361 -- an 82 percent increase.
The uncertainty caused by Brexit might also be a reason for a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom to build its cash reserves.
Perhaps the reserves are being built for an investment: say, a merger or broad partnership with the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), which might allay one of buyers' and seafood companies' complaints over the reams of paperwork required in certification.
After unveiling a joint standard for seaweed in 2017, the groups said they were considering future collaboration, starting with a joint standard for shellfish.
The MSC has come a long way from its days as a wobbly-legged toddler of an NGO. It is grown and mature now, so it makes sense that it has more money to manage.
These days, nearly 80 percent of its income is from logo licensing fees and only about 15 percent is from foundations and other donors, who, I wonder, might be looking at the cash reserves and asking why they are still cutting checks to the MSC.
There is nothing wrong with having savings; it's the prudent thing to do as an individual and a business entity.
But is the MSC holding too much in reserve? If so, why?
Any comments, complaints, retaliatory rants, please feel free to email me at john.fiorillo@intrafish.com.
Marine Stewardship Council
Rupert Howes
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The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has more than $41.8 million (€38.7 million) in cash reserves sitting in its accounts. Let me repeat that. The nonprofit fisheries certification group has more than $41.8 million in surplus cash stacking up in its coffers. (Correction: Subsequent to the publishi...
https://www.intrafish.com/opinion/why-is-the-marine-stewardship-council-hoarding-its-cash-/2-1-758524
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VIDEO: A look at MSF's Community Health Agents Programme
By Médecins Sans Frontières Jul 22, 2016
In October 2012, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began the Community Health Agents Programme (CHAP), consisting of 33 lay workers delivering door-to-door HIV Counselling and Testing in rural and peri-urban areas. By 2015, there were over 80 Community Health Agents (aka CHAPS) and services expanded to include screening for tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, health promotion, pregnancy testing, defaulter tracing, referral to health facilities, MMC recruitment, and condom distribution.
Results of HIV testing are recorded in a mobile app and sent to a central database. In 2015, MSF tested 56 183 people for HIV, with 1 682 new infections diagnosed; 11 914 people were screened for TB in the last three months of 2015 alone.
In this video we see how Babongile Luhlongwane, a Health Agent working in the Entumeni and Mbongolwane districts near Eshowe, wakes up every weekday morning to travel long distances, often by foot, to deliver HIV Counselling and Testing to people who seldom make it to distant public health facilities for medical checkups.
MSF’s Dr Vivian Cox explains the value of the CHAPS programme, and Babongile explains how people value the service she’s providing.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda geeks out on ‘His Dark Materials’
Posted: Jul 18, 2019 / 05:58 PM PDT / Updated: Jul 18, 2019 / 08:11 PM PDT
Lin-Manuel Miranda, left, and James McAvoy participate in the “His Dark Materials” panel on day one of Comic-Con International on Thursday, July 18, 2019, in San Diego. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Lin-Manuel Miranda says he agreed to being in the adaptation of “His Dark Materials” before he even knew what part he was being offered.
Miranda plays Lee Scoresby, a cowboy who flies hot air balloons and gets into bar fights, although he says he would have sharpened pencils to be part of the production.
He and his fellow castmates James McAvoy and Ruth Wilson debuted a trailer for the HBO and BBC series based on the Philip Pullman novels Thursday evening at Comic-Con in San Diego.
The big-budget 2007 feature film “The Golden Compass” also attempted to adapt Pullman’s material, but it was not well received by critics and disappointed at the box office.
“I thought it was time for the books to be liberated,” said producer Jane Tranter, who convinced New Line and Pullman to let her adapt them into a series.
She helped recruit Miranda to the project while he was in London filming “Mary Poppins Returns” and he had a very personal reason for feeling so passionately about the material.
“When my wife and I stated dating we read these books together,” Miranda said. “They’re in a really special place in my heart.”
The audience responded with a big “aw” to the story.
McAvoy, who plays Lord Asriel, was also a big fan of the material — so much so that he basically signed on in a single phone call from the casting director, who is a friend of his, just days before filming was set to begin.
Lyra actress Dafne Keen, on the other hand, didn’t know the source material when she booked the role. At just 14, she told the audience that it was because the books came out before she was born. But she tore through the three books and became a fan before production started.
But Miranda was by far the giddiest of the cast, excitedly asking permission to reveal his first scene.
“I literally come into this thing singing a duet with my demon, on a big hot air balloon, which was a fun way to enter the world,” Miranda said. “I can’t believe we get to go back to summer camp this summer for season two.”
HBO has yet to set a premiere date for the series.
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Present Mosquito-Borne Diseases:
Filariasis
Not present in Laos.
Zika Fever
Malaria Information
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease, most commonly transmitted by an infected Anopheles mosquito. The mosquito bite introduces the parasites from the mosquito's saliva into a person's blood.
In 2015, there were 214 million cases of malaria worldwide. Despite a need, no effective vaccine exists.
Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, fatigue, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases it can cause yellow skin, seizures, coma, or death.
When properly treated, people with malaria can usually expect a complete recovery. However, severe malaria can progress extremely rapidly and cause death within hours or days. In the most severe cases of the disease, fatality rates can reach 20%, even with intensive care and treatment.
The risk of disease can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites by using mosquito nets and insect repellents.
Additional information about Malaria from the World Health Organization.
Dengue Fever Information
Dengue fever is a tropical disease caused by the dengue virus and spread by several species of mosquito of the Aedes type.
Dengue is common in more than 110 countries with between 50 and 528 million people infected each year. The fatality rate is 1–5%.
The characteristic symptoms of dengue are sudden-onset fever, rash and headache. The alternative name for dengue is "breakbone fever" due to the associated muscle and joint pains.
Treatment depends on the symptoms. Hospitalization and intravenous hydration may be required.
Additional information about Dengue Fever from the World Health Organization.
Yellow Fever Information
Yellow fever is caused by the yellow fever RNA virus and is spread by the bite of an infected mosquito, most commonly one of the Aedes aegypti species.
Yellow fever causes 200,000 infections and 30,000 deaths every year. Since the 1980s, the number of cases of yellow fever has been increasing.
The infection causes fever, headache, muscle pain, nausea, and vomiting. In 15% of cases people enter a toxic phase of the disease leading to liver damage. The toxic phase is fatal in about 20% of cases.
No cure is known for yellow fever. Hospitalization is advisable and intensive care may be necessary. Vaccine against yellow fever exists and vaccination is highly recommended for those traveling to affected areas.
Additional information about Yellow Fever from the World Health Organization.
Japanese Encephalitis Information
The Japanese encephalitis virus belongs to the family Flaviviridae, part of the Japanese encephalitis serocomplex. Amongst the most important vectors of this disease are the mosquitoes Culex tritaeniorhynchus and Culex vishnui.
Japanese encephalitis is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in Asia, with up to 70,000 cases reported annually. Case-fatality rates range from 0.3% to 60% and depend on the population and age.
Most infections are asymptomatic, with fever and headache reported in some cases. Signs which develop during the acute encephalitic stage include neck rigidity, cachexia, hemiparesis and convulsions.
There is no direct treatment for Japanese encephalitis. If hospitalization is required, assistance can be given for feeding, breathing and seizure control. For prevention, in some countries there is a vaccine available.
Additional information about Japanese Encephalitis from the World Health Organization.
Filariasis Information
Filariasis (a.k.a. philariasis) is a parasitic disease caused by an infection with roundworms of the Filarioidea type. Mosquitoes are a common vector for this disease.
Filariasis affects over 120 million people in 73 countries throughout the tropics and sub-tropics. Currently there is no vaccine available.
The most visual symptom of filariasis is elephantiasis, which occurs when the parasites lodge in the lymphatic system. The subcutaneous worms present with rashes, urticarial papules and arthritis.
Broad spectrum antiparasitic medications are used to treat the disease.
Chikungunya Information
Chikungunya is an infection caused by the chikungunya virus. The virus is passed to humans by two species of mosquito of the genus Aedes.
Since 2013 local transmission has been identified in 45 countries with more than 1.7 million suspected cases. The mortality rate is a little less than 1 in 1,000, and the disease may cause long-term symptoms following acute infection.
Symptoms include high fever and severe joint pain, but virus isolation is needed for the most definitive diagnosis.
Currently, no specific treatment for chikungunya is available. Supportive care is recommended. There are no approved vaccines.
Additional information about Chikungunya from the World Health Organization.
West Nile Virus Information
The West Nile virus is an arbovirus of the Flavivirus genus in the Flaviviridae family. The main way it is spread is by various species of mosquitoes.
Approximately 80% of West Nile virus infections in humans are subclinical. About 1 in 5 people who are infected develop a fever with other symptoms, and about 1% of those result in a severe, sometimes fatal, neurologic illness.
The specific neurological diseases that may occur are West Nile encephalitis, West Nile meningitis, West Nile meningoencephalitis, which causes inflammation of the brain and also the meninges surrounding it, and West Nile poliomyelitis.
Unfortunately, no specific treatment is available for WNV infection. In severe cases the supportive care involves hospitalization, intravenous fluids and respiratory support.
Additional information about the West Nile Virus from the World Health Organization.
Zika Fever Information
Zika fever is an illness caused by the Zika virus. It is mainly spread via the bite of mosquitoes of the Aedes type, but it could also be transmitted sexually or through a blood transfusion. Infections in pregnant women can be spread to the baby.
As of 2016, the disease is occurring in regions of the Americas, in Africa, Asia, and in the Pacific. There is currently no specific treatment for Zika virus infection.
Most infected people show no symptoms. In some cases the symptoms may include fever, rash, conjunctivitis, joint pain and headache. Care is supportive with treatment of pain, fever, and itching.
Zika virus infections have been linked to rapid onset of muscle weakness caused by the immune system damaging the peripheral nervous system. The disease also spreads from mother to child in the womb and can cause microcephaly in the baby.
Additional information about the Zika Fever from the World Health Organization.
Laos is a high risk country. Avoid any bug bites by applying an insect repellent containing at least 20% DEET. Get the most efficient mosquito repellent:
DEET Information
DEET (N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide) is the most effective and common active ingredient in insect repellents.
At room tempreture it is a yellow oil; applied to the skin it provides protection against mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, chiggers, leeches, and many biting insects.
Applying higher concentrations of DEET lead to longer protection, with 100% offering up to 10 hours.
In higher concentrations, DEET may act as a skin irritant for some individuals. It is advisable to wash off the applied DEET after it is no longer needed.
Other tips for preventing bug bites
Cover exposed skin with appropriate clothing: long-sleeved shirts and long pants.
Use bed nets in areas where mosquito-borne diseases are common.
Research danger levels in advance and avoid times and places of peak exposure.
Additional information about DEET from the EPA.
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Wade Walters sentenced to 18 years and must repay millions in massive pain cream scheme
News Sports Southern Miss Life Opinion Obituaries E-Edition Legals
Job losses, tuition increases, budget reductions: JCJC , PRCC cope with state cuts
Ellen Ciurczak
Hattiesburg American
Jesse Smith, Jones County Junior College president, will take on a new role when school starts in August. Like other administrators and master's degree'd employees, he will become an academic coach to about 15 students.
"My purpose as a coach is to make sure (the students) are progressing in their courses, they are paying their bills, they are learning the soft skills needed to be employed," he said. "It's to put the finishing touches on the students so they can be a valuable worker."
Smith is putting the new academic coaching service in place in response to the college's tuition increase of $240 a semester due to state budget cuts.
"In order to maintain growth we have to retain students," Smith said. "What we have found through the orientation process is students like (the academic coach). They come here knowing they're not alone.
"This is a good fit for us. We feel good about it. We're increasing services and the quality of education for our students."
More:Layoffs, tuition increases possible at community colleges
Smith didn't feel so good about the state cutback of 5.4 percent or $1.96 million for 2017-18. It came after a series of three other cuts dating back to 2015, totaling more than $2.2 million.
In addition to raising tuition to $1,740 a semester, Smith had to lay off 15 workers and eliminate 15 positions through attrition to save $1.15 million. He also reduced operating budgets across the board.
"We have to show a strong financial position in order to be reaccredited and that is extremely difficult," he said. "That's why we raised tuition. That's why we're being very conservative.
"We don't want to jeopardize our reaccreditation position."
Legislative budget staff count at least 43 bills passed from 2012-2015 they believe decreased state tax revenue. Estimates forecast those bills reduced state tax revenue by as much as $287 million in the current budget year. Because of that decrease, Gov. Phil Bryant made reductions to many state agencies and education entities for FY2018.
More:Analysis: Tax cuts, economy weigh on MS revenues
"I can understand wanting to cut taxes to stimulate the economy and I agree on the concept," Smith said. "But the magnitude of those cuts and the timing of those cuts — the negative impacts are not going to be overcome."
Students at Pearl River Community College are feeling those negative impacts. President William Lewis raised tuition to $1,625 a semester — an increase of $200.
"We've had a decline in state revenue of more than 10 percent — $1.5 million-plus," Lewis said. "In order for us to accomplish a balanced budget, we've had to have the largest tuition increase we've had at our institution."
Lewis also eliminated 17 positions through contract non-renewals and attrition. In addition, he cut costs by moving some employees from a 12-month contract to a nine- or 10-month work assignment.
"We've tried to tighten our belt by limiting travel, being energy efficient in our operations," he said. "But we've been working in that mode for a number of years and the pickings are pretty slim."
Lewis said college officials have done the best they could to cope with the cutbacks.
"With the magnitude of the budget cuts this time, it has been a real challenge," he said. "Our employees and our board of trustees dug in to make things as good for our students as we possibly could.
"We trying to take a very positive approach to our budget right now and we believe we've landed in a pretty good place."
Smith is taking a positive approach as well.
"We can't control the external environment. It is quite a challenge," he said. "I'm skeptical of the direction the state is going, but I believe the community colleges are the answer to turning the state's economy around.
"I am optimistic about what we are doing on the campuses."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
JCJC
State cut for 2017-18: 5.4 percent
Dollar amount of cut: $1.95 million
Amount of tuition increase: $240
Tuition for 2017-18: $1,740/semester
Number of layoffs: 15
Jobs lost to attrition: 15
State cut for 2071-18: 10 percent
Dollar amount of cut: $1.5 million-plus
Jobs lost through attrition and non-renewals: 17
Amount saved through reducing length of contracts: $14,000
© 2021 www.hattiesburgamerican.com. All rights reserved.
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Rate of Liver Disease Twice as High in Ulcerative Colitis Patients
Conference | Digestive Disease Week
Study from DDW 2019 found that rates of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and nonalcoholic cirrhosis was more than double in patients with UC.
Benjamin Click, MD
Patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) may be at an increased risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NALFD), nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and nonalcoholic cirrhosis (NC), according to a study presented at Digestive Disease Week 2019.
In an analysis of more than 62,000,000, investigators from the Cleveland Clinic found that prevalence rates of NAFLD, NASH, and NC among patients with UC were more than double that of the general population.
After observing what appeared to be an increasing prevalence of liver disease in patients with UC in their own practices, investigators sought to determine if UC patients were at an increased risk of NAFLD, NASH, and NC.
"It's becoming an increasingly common finding in my clinical practice, it's also increasingly recognized that with ulcerative colitis the increased gut permeability and the inflammation that goes along with the disease process, as well as the medication we use that carry certain hepatotoxicity, may convey an increased risk for chronic liver disease in our patient populations," explained Benjamin Click, MD, study author and associate staff gastroenterologist at the Cleveland Clinic in an interview with MD Magazine.
Investigators used electronic health record data, obtained through a commercial database, from 26 major US heal care systems to identify patients with a diagnosis of UC from 1999 to 2018. Patients were identified with a Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine — Clinical Terms diagnosis of UC. Investigators used logistic regression of demographic and metabolic comorbidities to identify potential risk factors. Additionally, prevalence rates of first ever diagnosis of NAFLD, NASH, and NC after 30 days of UC diagnosis with the general population from the commercial database.
A total of 62,781,880 individuals were included within the database and investigators identified 125,380 (.2%) individuals with UC, 467,060 (0.74%) with NAFLD, 35,890 (0.06%) with NASH, and 169,700 (0.27%) with NC. The prevalence of NAFLD, NASH, and NC were significantly higher among individuals with UC than the general population group. In individuals with UC, 1.95% had NALFD, .23% had NASH, and 1.01% had a diagnosis of NC.
After comparing patients with UC patients with and without NAFLD, investigators found patients with NAFLD were more likely to be Caucasian with comorbid diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Investigators found no significant difference in sex or age when comparing patient groups.
UC patients with NASH were more likely to be Caucasian, 65 or older, with comorbid DM, obesity and HTN compared to patients without NASH. Investigators noted there was no significant sex differences. UC patients with NC were more likely to be males, African American, and elderly.
From their data, investigators concluded that the prevalence of NAFLD, NASH, and NC is significantly increased in UC compared to the general population. Within their conclusion, authors noted that additional studies were needed to assess the impact and interaction of IBD, medications, and the evolution of NAFLD.
“Patients with ulcerative colitis are at a significantly increased risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease compared to the general population is a critical take home point in terms of recognition and potentially treatment,” Click said.
This study, titled “Nonalcoholic liver disease significantly more prevalent in ulcerative colitis: a population-based study,” was presented at DDW 2019 in San Diego, CA.
Digestive Disease Week | News | Gastroenterology | Ulcerative Colitis
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21 September 2011,
21:38:00 UTC [1]
Ariane 5 ECA VA204
Kourou, ELA-3
87° West (2011-present)
North America, Latin America and the Caribbean
SES-2 is a communications satellite operated by SES World Skies. It was launched alongside the Arabsat-5C satellite.
The platform is home to the first hosted payload, a mechanism by which governmental entities can fly modules on commercial satellites.[3][4][5] It carries 24 active C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders of 36 MHz capacity. Six of the channels in each band can be cross-strapped to the opposite band, enabling new service capability. The SES 2 satellite generates approximately 5.0 kW of payload power and has two 2.3 m deployable reflectors.[6]
It also carries the Commercially Hosted InfraRed Payload (CHIRP) for the U.S. Air Force. CHIRP demonstrates infrared detection technologies from geosynchronous orbit for missile warning applications.[6]
SES 2, a communications satellite, was launched on 21 September 2011 from Centre Spatial Guyanais, Kourou at 21:38:00 UTC by an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. The satellite weighed 3200 kg and join four other Orbital Sciences-built spacecraft in the SES fleet to provide service for North America, Latin America and the Caribbean. It is stationed at 87° West longitude.[6]
It entered into commercial service on 27 October 2011 in the 87° West orbital location.[7]
This satellite is used to transmit the updating Othernet archive to the small lightweight Othernet receiver stations designed to eventually provide news, weather, educational and other media to communities with no access to the internet.[8]
^ "SES-2: Trajectory 2011-049A". NASA. 14 May 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2020. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^ "Spaceflight Now - Breaking News - Money-saving missile detection sensor powered on". spaceflightnow.com.
^ http://www.spacenews.com/military/120413-hosted-success-af-plans-follow-on.html
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 25 June 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2014. CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ a b c "SES-2: Display 2011-049A". NASA. 14 May 2020. Retrieved 18 June 2020. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^ "SES 2 at 87.0°W - LyngSat". lyngsat.com.
^ https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0770/0935/files/Dreamcatcher_V_3.03_SL_5.5_User_Manual_1.pdf?6506786568900441680
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Marmelo sets sights solely on Melbourne Cup
Posted by: AAP+ at 8:57am on 28/8/2019
Marmelo will head straight to Australia without another start to be prepared for another tilt at the Melbourne Cup
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Melbourne Cup runner-up Marmelo will head straight to Australia without another start to be prepared for another tilt at Australia’s most famous race.
Trainer Hughie Morrison has confirmed the last-start Prix Kergolay winner will not run in next month’s Irish St Leger.
“I think the plan is to give him a couple of weeks off – then go out to Australia at the same time he did last year, and then go straight to the Melbourne Cup,” Morrison said.
“It seemed to work well last year. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will again, but the horse is in good form.
“We left him in the Irish St Leger as an option, but I don’t think we will be going there unless there is a huge change of heart. If the race was in August then we might have gone there.”
Although Marmelo has appeared to appreciate a return to staying trips after failing to feature in two mile-and-a-half (2400m) Group One contests this season, the trainer believes his globe-trotting star can be as effective over that distance given the right conditions.
“He can be a mile-and-a-half horse. But he has to have soft ground to be competitive at that level over that trip – which he never gets,” he said.
Soft ground may be a necessity for Marmelo to compete at the top level over a mile and a half, but Morrison believes it is not vital for him to perform well over staying trips.
“The rain might have helped a bit last year in Melbourne. But it dried out like a sieve. They had two inches of rain, then it was gone.
“He is probably not an out-and-out Group One horse, but he does deserve to win one at that level over two miles.”
Marmelo is the $15 equal favourite for the 2019 Melbourne Cup at Ladbrokes alongside last year’s winner Cross Counter and Ebor winner Mustajeer.
Tags: Irish St Leger, Melbourne Cup
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State Supreme Court makes landmark ruling for court’s spousal privilege
by: Rachel Knapp
Posted: Sep 2, 2019 / 04:39 PM MDT / Updated: Sep 3, 2019 / 05:42 AM MDT
SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – There’s a huge shakeup in New Mexico’s court systems. The State Supreme Court ruled that husbands and wives can now testify against each other. The ruling follows a murder case where a man tried to block his wife from speaking out against him.
It means a massive restructuring for New Mexico courts. Until a new State Supreme Court ruling made last week, spouses could not testify against each other for what they said in private during their marriage.
In an opinion written by Chief Justice Judith Nakamura, she said in part: “This Court has a constitutional duty to ensure that the pursuit of truth is not unduly undermined by a procedural rule that has outlived its justification.”
The Chief Justice said it’s an old rule that needs to change to help in what she’s calling the pursuit of truth. But not all justices are on board with this ruling.
Justice Barbara Vigil said, “[Marriage] plays a significant role in protecting the privacy rights of married couples.”
“Well, I was disappointed,” said lawyer Steven Aarons.
Aarons is a criminal defense lawyer. He represented David Gutierrez II. Gutierrez was charged with the 2002 Clovis murder of Jose Valverde, who was found shot in the head in a boxcar.
Gutierrez was sentenced to life. That case sparked this landmark decision.
During the trial, Gutierrez tried to block his ex-wife and current wife from testifying. The state argued Gutierrez told the two about the murder, but the marital privilege stood in the way of that sought-after testimony.
“My concern is this case, it turns into somewhat into a he-said, she-said where the defendant’s former wives got together and testified against him,” said Aaron.
New Mexico will now be the only state without some sort of marital privilege in court. This applies to both civil and criminal cases filed as of August 30.
The justices also ruled to uphold the sentencing for Gutierrez. He will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.
New Mexico requires orientation as part of guardian reforms
AFR responds to house fire in NE part of town
More New Mexico News Stories
by KRQE Staff / Jan 15, 2021
RUIDOSO, N.M. (KRQE) – New Mexico State Police are investigating an officer-involved shooting in Ruidoso Friday. According to a NMSP tweet, the suspect was not hit by gunfire and is in custody
All officers involved are okay. Police are asking people to avoid the 200 block of Mockingbird in Ruidoso. Information is limited at this time, KRQE will provide updates as more information is released.
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – The New Mexico Economic Development Department is providing updates Friday, Jan. 15 on the new Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan application. The update is expected to start at 11:30 a.m. and KRQE News 13 will stream it on this page.
The PPP loan application will reopen to all lenders on January 19, 2021. According to a news release, 23,000 businesses in the state have already received PPP loans totaling $2.3 billion. It also states the average employee count for the loans is 11 and the average New Mexico loan is $98,630.
by Anna Padilla / Jan 15, 2021
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Check out community events happening Jan. 15 – Jan. 21 around New Mexico.
January 5, 12, 19, 26 - Bernalillo County’s Senior Comedy Workshop - The Bernalillo County Office of Senior and Social Services Albuquerque seniors will have the opportunity to flex their comedy skills through Bernalillo County’s Comedy Workshop. The free month-long virtual workshop will be hosted by comedian Jo Firestone, whose writing credits include The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Joe Pera Talks With You, High Maintenance, Shrill, and more. Those interested in participating can register at https://bit.ly/3nQSQNW.
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Senior Vasiljevic seals Miami’s 69-65 OT win over Syracuse
Posted: Mar 7, 2020 / 08:43 PM MST / Updated: Mar 7, 2020 / 06:52 PM MST
CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP)Miami Hurricanes senior guard DJ Vasiljevic launched the final shot of his home career and triumphantly raised his fist even before the ball swished through the net.
Vasiljevic’s two free throws with two seconds left in overtime Saturday sealed Miami’s 69-65 victory over Syracuse.
”I wanted everyone to know the game was over,” Vasiljevic said. ”I was a little emotional, I’m not going to lie. To get on that free throw line and score the last point, it means a lot.”
Syracuse forward Elijah Hughes, the leading scorer in the Atlantic Coast Conference, took a blow to the head and sat out after halftime. He played all 20 minutes in the first half and scored eight points.
”He was a little dizzy, a little blurry,” coach Jim Boeheim said.
Miami (15-15, 7-13 ACC) broke a three-game losing streak heading into the league tournament. Syracuse (17-14, 10-10) finished at .500 or worse in the conference for the fourth time in the past six years.
The Orange’s 14 losses are the most in the regular season Boeheim has had in his 44 years at Syracuse. And again, a big problem was shooting – the Orange made only 37 percent, and went 5 for 25 from 3-point range.
”We haven’t shot the ball well for a long time, so I don’t think it’s a surprise,” Boeheim said. ”We’re just not making enough shots to win.”
Isaiah Wong had 18 points, nine rebounds, four assists and three steals for Miami. The 6-3 freshman helped run the offense in place of an injured Chris Lykes, the Hurricanes’ leading scorer this season.
”I would like for Lykes to play,” Boeheim said. ”Wong is bigger and more difficult for us. Lykes is a really good player, but Wong is more of a concern because he’s bigger and gets to the basket.”
Vasiljevic made five 3-pointers to climb into second place on the school’s all-time list, and he scored 17 points. His sister and two best friends from his native Australia were part of the crowd.
Miami missed 12 consecutive shots against Syracuse’s zone early in the second half and went nearly eight minutes without a field goal before Vasiljevic sank three consecutive 3-pointers for a 39-all tie.
Afterward, Hurricanes coach Jim Larranagagrinned as he recalled Vasiljevic jump-starting the offense.
”My coaches were saying to me, `We just need to get the ball to DJ and let him shoot every shot,”’ Larranaga said.
The Hurricanes saved their best shooting for overtime, when they went 3 for 6. They shot 37 percent for the game.
Syracuse’s Joe Girard sank a 15-footer with 1 second left to make the score 56-all and force overtime, but the Orange’s first basket in the extra period came with 23 seconds left. They went 0 for 4 from 3-point range in overtime.
Marek Dolezaj led Syracuse with 17 points.
Hurricanes forward Keith Stone, operating in the middle of the Syracuse zone, dished out a season-high six assists.
”I don’t look at people when I pass,” Stone said. ”I tell them beforehand, ‘Just expect it. I’m not looking at you.”’
The Hurricanes had a season-high 18 assists.
SIDELINED
Lykes took an elbow to the nose in Wednesday’s loss to Virginia, suffered facial injuries and likely will miss the league tournament.
The Orange fell to 56-54 in the ACC in the past six seasons.
With the Hurricanes unlikely to make the postseason, they probably need to win one game in the league tournament to avoid a second consecutive losing season, which hasn’t happened to Larranaga since 1991-93 at Bowling Green.
Both teams will play in the ACC Tournament next week in Greensboro, North Carolina. Miami, seeded ninth, will play No. 8 Clemson in the first round Wednesday.
The Orange, seeded sixth, have a first-round bye. Hughes’ status for their first game is uncertain.
”He’s gotten hit in the head 20 times this year,” Boeheim said.
More AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketballand https://twitter.com/AP-Top25
Follow Steven Wine on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Steve-Wine.
Ole Miss aims to get back on track vs. skidding Georgia
Ole Miss and Georgia look to end losing skids that could go a long way toward ruining their seasons on Saturday afternoon when they meet in a Southeastern Conference game in Oxford, Miss.
The Rebels (6-5, 1-3 SEC) have lost four of their past five games after opening the season with five wins in six contests.
Marquette, St. John’s look to build off hard-fought wins
Marquette and St. John's will face each other Saturday afternoon in New York, with both Big East teams hoping to hit their stride as the season moves toward its second half.
The Golden Eagles (7-6 overall, 3-4 Big East) and Red Storm (7-6, 2-5) both are coming off victories at home on Tuesday that saw them fight off runs made by the opposition.
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Red Wings, Panthers look for positive reset after break
The Detroit Red Wings and Florida Panthers — two well-rested teams — will meet on Saturday night at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Fla.
Detroit has been off since losing 5-2 to the Arizona Coyotes on Sunday. Florida has been off since losing 6-1 to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday.
For the Red Wings, losing has become commonplace. They have lost four games in a row and 16 of 18 as they head toward what will likely result in their fourth straight year out of the playoffs.
This from a franchise that made the playoffs for 25 straight season starting in 1990 (1990-2004, 2005-16; skipping the 2004-05 campaign due to the NHL lockout) and winning Stanley Cup titles in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008.
If there was any good news for Detroit in its loss to Arizona, it was the return of starting goalie Jimmy Howard, who had missed 10 straight games due to a lower-body injury.
“Physically, I felt fine. I had fun being back out there,” said the 35-year-old Howard, who was named to the All-Star Game for the third time in his career last season.
This season, though, hasn’t been fun overall as Howard has gone 2-12-1 with a 4.02 goals-against average and an .887 save percentage.
The Red Wings also have backup goalie Jonathan Bernier, 31. He is 7-10-2 with a 3.24 GAA and an .897 save percentage.
Florida is expected to counter with backup goalie Chris Driedger, saving Sergei Bobrovsky for Sunday’s game against the Montreal Canadiens.
Driedger, 25, is 2-1-0 with a 1.69 GAA and a .948 save percentage. He had never started an NHL game prior to this season.
Florida’s offense is powered by winger Jonathan Huberdeau, who has scored a goal in three straight games. He tops the Panthers in assists (34) and points (48) and is tied with Brett Connolly for the team lead in goals (14).
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov is second on the team with 40 points.
It will be interesting to see how the Panthers perform on Saturday. They had that poor performance against Tampa Bay and then went into the Christmas break without an immediate chance to redeem themselves.
“It was a disappointing way to go into the break,” Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said.
The Panthers, who are 11-7-2 at home this season, should have a distinct advantage against the Red Wings.
Detroit, which is 4-12-2 on the road this season, lost 4-0 to the Panthers in Sunrise on Nov. 2. That was the teams’ only meeting so far this season, and Bobrovsky earned the shutout while Huberdeau had two goals and Barkov and Connolly had one each.
The Red Wings, who hired former captain Steve Yzerman as their general manager in April, are trying to rebuild the team into what it was when he led them to three Stanley Cup titles.
Yzerman knows it’s going to take quite a bit of time to turn things around, and it doesn’t help Detroit that its second-leading scorer, winger Anthony Mantha, was placed on injured reserve on Sunday due to an upper-body issue. He scored a career-best 25 goals last season.
Danny DeKeyser, considered Detroit’s top defenseman, is also out.
Meanwhile, the Panthers recalled defenseman Riley Stillman on Friday. He could help, especially if top-pair defenseman Aaron Ekblad — who is questionable with a shoulder injury suffered against the Lightning — is forced to sit out against Detroit.
Ekblad has missed just one game over the past three seasons.
More NHL Hockey Stories
Caps aim for season-opening sweep of Sabres
The Washington Capitals did not have much trouble scoring goals Thursday in their season-opening victory at Buffalo. They won't have long to wait for another chance to produce against the Sabres.
The Capitals, who prevailed 6-4 on Thursday, will play in Buffalo again on Friday. Washington and Buffalo will face each other four times over their first six contests in the abbreviated 56-game season.
Colorado defenseman Ian Cole has taken a young kid under his wing as he starts his 11th season in the NHL, dining with him often and going the extra mile to make sure his needs are met.
Of course, this is Cole's infant son, who was born over the summer.
LOS ANGELES (AP)Kirill Kaprizov scored his first NHL goal with 1:13 remaining in overtime and finished with three points as the Minnesota Wild rallied for a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings in the season opener for both teams Thursday night.
The 23-year-old Russian scored on a breakaway, putting the puck past Los Angeles goaltender Jonathan Quick. Kaprizov, the third Russian-born player to make his NHL debut with the Wild, also had a pair of assists. He was a fifth-round selection by Minnesota in 2015 before signing a two-year, entry-level contract last summer.
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Editorial: Salinas Police Chief
KSBW
Joseph W. Heston
SOURCE: KSBW
April 29, 2016Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin announced this week that he will retire from the force this October. He has served as Chief for four years, and has worked as a sworn police officer for 33 years.There is no denying that his is a tough job. Fighting crime and protecting the public is certainly a harder task in Salinas than it is say, in Carmel or Monterey.Our KSBW Editorial Board has not always agreed with Chief McMillin. In fact two years ago, we very publicly pressed him to name the officers involved in four fatal shooting incidents -- two of those incidents were particularly controversial. Finally, after six months, the city simply named the officers, and the public was able to see that nine different officers were involved, and none of them was involved in multiple incidents.But while we have disagreed with the Chief, we have agreed with him far more often than not. Some police chiefs are great administrators, but weak communicators. Some chiefs have strength in leading fellow officers, but fail in leading the community. Chief McMillin is strong and engaged in all these roles – and few police chiefs are as robust, fit, and skilled that they could step out on the street in an emergency and physically outperform many seasoned officers in the field. Chief McMillin truly stands always ready to serve and protect.McMillin’s decision to announce his retirement now is thoughtful and respectful. Thoughtful, in that it gives the city time to recruit his replacement; respectful, in that it shows how much he cares for his police force and his city.Our hope is that none try to reduce his legacy to “the Chief that had his gun stolen” – that recent misfortune of some crook wrenching out McMillin’s properly locked and secured police rifle from his car.We want Kelly McMillin to be remembered as an excellent law enforcement professional, nationally recognized in Washington D.C. with the U.S. Department of Justice describing him as having “courageous leadership,” and we think a local leader that offered innovation and transparency. Kelly is a good man with a good heart; he operates with honor and integrity.Chief McMillin: there’s much to still get done in the next six months; we’re glad you’re out there on the job for Salinas.
Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin announced this week that he will retire from the force this October. He has served as Chief for four years, and has worked as a sworn police officer for 33 years.
There is no denying that his is a tough job. Fighting crime and protecting the public is certainly a harder task in Salinas than it is say, in Carmel or Monterey.
Our KSBW Editorial Board has not always agreed with Chief McMillin. In fact two years ago, we very publicly pressed him to name the officers involved in four fatal shooting incidents -- two of those incidents were particularly controversial. Finally, after six months, the city simply named the officers, and the public was able to see that nine different officers were involved, and none of them was involved in multiple incidents.
But while we have disagreed with the Chief, we have agreed with him far more often than not. Some police chiefs are great administrators, but weak communicators. Some chiefs have strength in leading fellow officers, but fail in leading the community. Chief McMillin is strong and engaged in all these roles – and few police chiefs are as robust, fit, and skilled that they could step out on the street in an emergency and physically outperform many seasoned officers in the field. Chief McMillin truly stands always ready to serve and protect.
McMillin’s decision to announce his retirement now is thoughtful and respectful. Thoughtful, in that it gives the city time to recruit his replacement; respectful, in that it shows how much he cares for his police force and his city.
Our hope is that none try to reduce his legacy to “the Chief that had his gun stolen” – that recent misfortune of some crook wrenching out McMillin’s properly locked and secured police rifle from his car.
We want Kelly McMillin to be remembered as an excellent law enforcement professional, nationally recognized in Washington D.C. with the U.S. Department of Justice describing him as having “courageous leadership,” and we think a local leader that offered innovation and transparency. Kelly is a good man with a good heart; he operates with honor and integrity.
Chief McMillin: there’s much to still get done in the next six months; we’re glad you’re out there on the job for Salinas.
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Wichita State men’s basketball game against SMU rescheduled
Kansas heroin dealer linked to Mexican cartel sentenced
A 65-year-old man who was a major heroin dealer in the Kansas City area has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.
The Kansas City Star reports Dennis McLallen, of Overland Park, Kansas, also was ordered to pay an $850,000 judgment, which was the estimated amount of money he made from drug sales.
He admitted that he distributed more than 10 kilograms of heroin.
Investigators say McLallen and his wife were among 18 people charged after an investigation by federal agents and Kansas City and St. Louis police.
The 18 suspects included sources in Mexico who supplied drugs to McLallen.
He pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to distribute heroin, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to carry firearms during the commission of drug crime.
More Kansas Stories
Garden City police asking for public’s help to locate murder suspect
by KSN News / Jan 15, 2021
GARDEN CITY, Kan. (KSNW) - The Garden City Police Department is asking for the public's help Thursday to locate a 40-year-old suspect who is wanted for first-degree murder
According to Garden City police, 40-year-old Moses Joel Guerrero is 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighs 220 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. He has scars on the back of his head, the center chest, left arm, right arm, and the center of his forehead.
Lawmakers move to extend state of emergency through March
by Alec Gartner / Jan 14, 2021
TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) - The Kansas Senate passed extending the state of emergency in Kansas.
Lawmakers want to extend the disaster declaration for more than two months to March 31. If legislators don’t act, the declaration would end January 26.
300 Kansas National Guardsmen heading to Washington to help with inauguration
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) - National Guard troops and law enforcement are pouring into our nation's capital ahead of inauguration day. Many Kansans got the call to head out.
The guard said the District of Columbia National Guard sent a request for support.
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Anti-terror data centers criticized
A federal domestic security effort to help state and local law enforcement catch terrorists by setting up more than 70 information-sharing centers around the country has threatened civil liberties while doing little to combat terrorism, a two-year examination by a Senate subcommittee found.
The so-called fusion centers were created in 2003 after the Sept. 11 commission concluded that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies needed to collaborate more in counter-terrorism efforts.
Funded by federal grants, the fusion centers were intended to share national intelligence with state and local law enforcement and to analyze potential terrorist activity detected by police. Homeland Security Department officials have credited the centers for helping uncover terrorist plans, including a 2009 plot to bomb the New York subway.
But the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a 146-page report released Tuesday that reviewed intelligence reports from fusion centers between April 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, “could identify nothing that uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution any fusion center made to disrupt an active terrorist plot.”
Senate investigators concluded that Homeland Security liaisons to the centers “forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality -- oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”
The investigators also found that some local analysts had written inappropriate and potentially illegal reports about constitutionally protected activities of American citizens. Homeland Security officials prevented most from being disseminated.
The Homeland Security Department could not say for sure how much federal money had been spent on the centers, the subcommittee found, providing a range of $289 million to $1.4 billion.
Homeland Security officials took issue with the conclusions, saying they resulted from a “fundamentally flawed” investigation. “The committee report on federal support for fusion centers is out of date, inaccurate and misleading,” said spokesman Matthew Chandler.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has lauded the centers, which are located in nearly every major metropolitan area. In March 2010, Homeland Security Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis Caryn A. Wagner praised them as “the linchpin of the evolving homeland security enterprise.”
The Senate report rebuts statements by Homeland Security officials that the centers helped uncover terrorist plots, including a 2010 attempt to blow up a sport utility vehicle in Times Square, saying that the same work would have been done through previously existing channels.
One of the most significant terrorism cases in which officials have claimed a success for fusion centers was that of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan immigrant who traveled in 2009 from Colorado to New York City, where he has admitted that he planned to blow himself up on the subway around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Napolitano claimed in a speech in 2010 that “it was a fusion center near Denver that played the key role in ‘fusing’ the information that came from the public with evidence that came in following the suspect’s arrest by the FBI.”
But that claim was not true, the investigation found. The Colorado Information Analysis Center’s involvement consisted of checking a few public databases and addressing media inquiries. The crucial role, the report said, was played by Colorado state troopers assigned to the center who were also assigned to help the FBI. The report found that the troopers would have been doing what they did whether or not there was a fusion center.
In preparing the report, the committee reviewed intelligence that had been edited to protect classified information. Homeland Security officials said that these redactions limited the investigators’ ability to assess the usefulness of intelligence generated by local analysts.
One of the country’s largest federally funded fusion centers covers most of Southern California. The Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Norwalk has more than 80 full-time staff members and stitches together information from 166 law enforcement departments.
Deputy Chief Michael Downing, head of the LAPD’s counter-terrorism bureau, said his department had gotten “a lot of value” from the increased cooperation: “There’s a lot of white noise, but there are occasionally gold nuggets.”
In the last year, Downing said, the Norwalk-based center has helped start terrorism investigations by sharing information about Muslim extremist literature found in the back seat of a car during a traffic stop and about an individual who went into a youth group meeting at an Islamic center and tried to recruit young Muslims to “kill infidels.”
He did not know whether any of these cases had led to a conviction.
In some cases, the investigation found, fusion centers have also made embarrassing intelligence errors. Last year, for example, the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center in Springfield published a report asserting that a hacker in Russia had stolen an unknown number of user names and passwords to sensitive utility control systems and used that information to break into a local water district’s computerized control system.
In fact, the “hacker” was a utility employee who had accessed the system legitimately while on a family vacation, the report found.
A spokeswoman for the center, Monique Bond, would not comment on the report, but said, “Fusion centers and the information shared by local, state and federal agencies enhances law enforcement’s efforts in fighting everyday crime and homeland defense.”
The subcommittee report also pointed to fusion center reports on activities protected by the U.S. Constitution.
One draft intelligence report examined a reading list from a Muslim community group: “Ten Book Recommendations for Every Muslim.” Four were written by individuals with records in a U.S. intelligence counter-terrorism database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, known as TIDE.
“We cannot report on books and other writings of TIDE matches simply because they are TIDE matches,” wrote a Homeland Security reviewer of the draft report. “The writings themselves are protected by the 1st Amendment unless you can establish that something in the writing indicates planning or advocates violent or other criminal activity.” The report was not published.
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
brian.bennett@latimes.com
Brian Bennett previously covered the White House, national security and immigration in the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau, where he worked from 2010-18.
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Stranded in Tijuana
By: Latino USA
Originally published at Latino USA
(Photo by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell/Latino USA)
At the only shelter for unaccompanied minors in Tijuana, Mexico, teens are watching Pokemon on a television, playing video games, and blasting their favorite Bad Bunny songs. Many of these teens are thousands of miles from their families, after having traveled with the caravans of Central American migrants that made headlines late last fall. Now, they’re waiting for months for the opportunity to cross the border into the U.S. and apply for asylum.
Reporter Jesse Alejandro Cottrell takes us inside the only shelter in Tijuana for unaccompanied minors, and gets a look into the daily lives of these teenagers and what they face—as they await an uncertain future.
Unaccompanied minors take a boxing lesson with a visiting volunteer. (Photo by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell/Latino USA)
In the past, teens would only stay a few days at this shelter —ran by the YMCA— before crossing the border or reuniting with their families. However, over the course of the last few years the number of asylum-seekers admitted to the U.S. has dropped steadily. In the last few months, it’s slowed to a crawl.
The boys’ dormitory at the shelter. (Photo by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell/Latino USA)
At the YMCA shelter in Tijuana, the administrators work to regulate the stress and trauma of some of the unaccompanied minors as volunteer lawyers figure out their next steps. But now, they’re also worried about their safety outside the shelter’s walls. Last December, two of the teens staying there were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
An altar at the shelter for the two boys who were murdered last December. (Photo by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell/Latino USA)
This reporting was made possible in part by a grant from the California Endowment.
This Latino USA podcast was reported and produced by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell.
NPR’s Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa, produced by Futuro Media, is the longest running Latino-focused program on U.S. public media.
Trump Ramps Up Expulsions of Migrant Youth, Citing Virus
16 Migrants Test Positive for Coronavirus on Mexican Border
Guatemala to Resume Deportation Flights From US Next Week
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What are you looking for Book "The Early Computer Industry" ? Click "Read Now PDF" / "Download", Get it for FREE, Register 100% Easily. You can read all your books for as long as a month for FREE and will get the latest Books Notifications. SIGN UP NOW!
The Early Computer Industry
A comprehensive guide to why major companies with a heritage in electronics failed to establish themselves as leaders in the computer industry. Uses case studies to analyze the efforts of GE, RCA, English Electric, EMI and Ferranti to compete with business machine firms in the early mainframe computer market, primarily focusing on the USA's IBM and the UK's ICT. These case studies cover many important themes in enterprise organization and capabilities, and how the heritage which these firms came from was important to the performance of the corporation in a new and innovative market place. It critiques the value of economies of scope in productive and technical capabilities unless matched to equal competencies in customer understanding and market reach, and provides a guide to the both the business strategies and the technologies, which were fundamental to building our current information society.
Author : Anthony Gandy
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Uses case studies to explore why large scale electronics failed to win a leadership position in the early computer industry and why IBM, a firm with a heritage in the business machines industry, succeeded. The cases cover both the US and the UK industry focusing on electronics giants GE, RCA, English Electric, EMI and Ferranti.
Author : A. Gandy
The Computer Industry
Traces the emergence and development of the computer industry in the United States as seen in the economic, historical, and social context of its times from the early twentieth century to the present.
Genre : Computers
Author : Jeffrey R. Yost
Publisher : Penn State Press
The Emerging Market Of China S Computer Industry
Provides Western business people with the information they need to analyze market trends in the Chinese computer industry, and to understand the unwritten rules that are crucial to playing the Chinese business "game" successfully.
Author : Jeff X. Zhang
Publisher : Greenwood Publishing Group
Ibm S Early Computers
The challenges faced by IBM's research and development laboratories, the technological paths they chose, and how these choices affected the company and the computer industry.
Author : Charles J. Bashe
Publisher : Mit Press
The computer services industry has worldwide annual revenues of nearly a trillion dollars and employs millions of workers, but is often overshadowed by the hardware and software products industries. In this book, Jeffrey Yost shows how computer services, from consulting and programming to data analytics and cloud computing, have played a crucial role in shaping information technology -- in making IT work. Tracing the evolution of the computer services industry from the 1950s to the present, Yost provides case studies of important companies (including IBM, Hewlett Packard, Andersen/Accenture, EDS, Infosys, and others) and profiles of such influential leaders as John Diebold, Ross Perot, and Virginia Rometty. He offers a fundamental reinterpretation of IBM as a supplier of computer services rather than just a producer of hardware, exploring how IBM bundled services with hardware for many years before becoming service-centered in the 1990s. Yost describes the emergence of companies that offered consulting services, data processing, programming, and systems integration. He examines the development of industry-defining trade associations; facilities management and the firm that invented it, Ross Perot's EDS; time sharing, a precursor of the cloud; IBM's early computer services; and independent contractor brokerages. Finally, he explores developments since the 1980s: the transformations of IBM and Hewlett Packard; the offshoring of enterprises and labor; major Indian IT service providers and the changing geographical deployment of U.S.-based companies; and the paradigm-changing phenomenon of cloud service.
The Effects Of Military And Other Government Spending On The Computer Industry
"Focusing on the early years of computer development (late 1940s to mid-1950s), this paper analyzes the role that government, especially the Department of Defense, played as a sponsor of university and corporate computer research-and-development efforts. The study examines the position of dominance the United States held in the computer industry by the late 1950s and retains today, attempting to analyze how much of this is due to early government support. The author suggests that, while U.S. dominance in the international computer market has eroded, it is not likely to lose that dominance in the near future."--Rand abstracts.
Genre : Computer industry
Author : Susan Schechter
Publisher : Santa Monica, CA : Rand Corporation
File : 38 Pages
ISBN-13 : IND:30000021402734
Keeping The U S Computer Industry Competitive
This book warns that retaining U.S. preeminence in computing at the beginning of the next century will require long-term planning, leadership, and collective will that cannot be attained with a business-as-usual approach by industry or government. This consensus emerged from a colloquium of top executives from the U.S. computer sector, university and industry researchers, and government policymakers. Among the major issues discussed are long-term, or strategic, commitment on the part of large firms in the United States; cooperation within and among firms and between industry, universities, and government; weaknesses in manufacturing and in the integration of research, development, and manufacturing; technical standards for both hardware and software manufacture and operation; and education and infrastructure (in particular, computer networks).
Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
Global Competitiveness Of U S Advanced Technology Industries
Genre : Competition, International
Author : United States International Trade Commission
ISBN-13 : UCSD:31822016958977
Programmed Inequality
In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. Marie Hicks's Programmed inequality explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones, and gender discrimination caused the nation's largest computer user - the civil service and sprawling public sector -- to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Programmed inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field has grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.
Author : Marie Hicks
Publisher : History of Computing
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Life’s Options exists to provide life-affirming support
before and after a pregnancy decision.
T H E T E A M
Thomas Lemmons- Chair
Tom’s current focus is Nimbus LTD, his entrepreneurial, start-up company at www.nimbusframe.com. Tom’s experience is in ITV and Streaming Media, Architecture, Software engineering & development. He has held VP and Director level positions and served as lead engineer/developer in the Interactive TV industry. He is able to think outside the box to implement particularly tricky systems and architectures.
Tom and his wife, DeeAnn have supported the ministry of Life’s Options Pregnancy center since moving to Evergreen in 2000. Tom has volunteered since 2008 as the IT support for the office and Kid’s Closet. He is pleased to serve on the board of Life’s Options Pregnancy Center as we strive to keep the ministry in Evergreen.
Michelle Schroeder
Michelle Schroeder was born in Harbor Beach, MI and raised in the Southwest suburbs of Chicago. She moved to Colorado in 1996 to attend Western State College where she earned a degree in Business. She received a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from Northern Arizona University in 2004. Michelle and her husband Barry have lived in Evergreen since 2006. She practiced Environmental Engineering until 2009 when they welcomed twin girls into their family. She has been a stay-at-home mom to their 3 daughters, Avery, Taylor and Payton, since 2009.
Elisabeth Pendley
Passionate about the rights and the welfare of children, Lis has joined the Board for a second time. Her legal knowledge, fundraising, and grant writing abilities will support Life’s Options in its drive to serve our mountain community.
Katrina Shaffer
Katrina Shaffer brings her love of family and Jesus, combined with over 30 years of engineering and business experience to the Life’s Options’ board. She and her husband of 30 + years, Steve attend Aspen Ridge Church where she was reminded of the board’s mission. For the last 15 years she has been part owner of a small business. Her experience with business growth and customer outreach transfers readily to Life’s Options’ goal of growing in Evergreen to reach women and families to provide support.
Jill Sneed
After leaving Life’s Options Pregnancy Center where she served as Executive Director for 12 years, Jill joined the Advancement team at Colorado Christian University. She has worked as the Executive Assistant to the VP of University Advancement since April of 2019. Jill received a degree in Sociology from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. Jill’s passions lie in mentoring, leadership and community. Jill graduated from Evergreen High School and has been living with her family in Evergreen for the past 25 years. Jill is married to her husband, Dave and has three adult children, one daughter-in-law and one son-in-law. She enjoys photography, skiing, hiking and spending time with her family and dogs.
Teri Sheffer
Born and raised in Glendale California, Teri volunteered for 10 years at the local Crisis Pregnancy Center, where she was trained by Care Net. Teri and her husband Daniel moved to Conifer in 2014 with their five children. She currently homeschools, and works on the board of their homeschool cooperative, planning field trips and school administration. Teri has over 20 years experience teaching VBS, Awana and Community Bible Study. She has heart for the lost and a love for life at every stage.
Wendy Kitting-
Client Services
Janine Payton-
Kids Closet Manager
Janine came to us as Kids Closet manager in March of 2017. After 10 years in retail, 6 as a Merchandise Manager with JCPenney in San Jose CA, Janine and her husband Don had 2 children. While raising their children Janine was very involved with the schools PTO and then the Education Foundation supporting the district. Don retired in 2015 and they moved here to Evergreen soon after. Janine is currently an active member of the Conifer Rotary Club and volunteers with the 285 Back Pack Project along with running the card ministry at her Church.
Dr. Karin Wollschlaeger
Medical Staff
Dr. Karin Wollschlaeger did her undergraduate studies at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, medical school at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada and a rotating internship at the Ottawa General Hospital in Ottawa, Canada. Following this she spent a year in Cambodia working with the NGO “World Relief” and then started her Ob/Gyn residency at the University of Chicago. This was followed by several years in private practice in Toronto and NY. She then moved into academic medicine at Mt. Sinai in NYC, then Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, NY followed by Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver where she has been for 8 years.
International mission work is one of her passions and she has done several trips to Ecuador, Peru, India, Nepal, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Sudan. This has led to the development of an OB/GYN resident, month long Global Health Elective to Arusha, Tanzania.
DeeAnn Lemmons- Bookkeeper
DeeAnn has been serving as a bookkeeper for the pregnancy center since 2008. Married to Tom Lemmons, they have raised their three children in the mountain communities. After graduating in 1991 from Oklahoma State University with a BS in Accounting, DeeAnn worked for AccountTemps and spent time as a stay at home mom. After moving to Colorado in 2000, DeeAnn worked as a para-educator for Marshdale Elementary, then as a small business bookkeeper in the mountain communities. She has worked with for-profits and nonprofits recording payroll, accounts payables, and accounts receivables. Tom & DeeAnn are passionate about the ministry of Life’s Options in our community.
LIFE’S OPTIONS PREGNANCY CENTER
We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe in the deity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father and is his personal return in power and glory.
We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful man, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is essential, and that this salvation is received through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and not as a result of good works.
We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by who’s indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life and to perform good works.
We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost.
We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Unexpected Encounter Leads to Special Oral History Interview
By SHARON SNYDER
Sometimes a chance encounter can result in something unexpected. That was the case last August when I visited Mesa Verde National Park. I was wearing my Los Alamos Ranch School shirt with the embroidered logo when I met a volunteer ranger in the park.
We were enjoying a nice conversation when she noticed the logo and said, excitedly, “My husband’s uncle was at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project!”
A Brief History of Fuller Lodge
By HEATHER MCCLENAHAN
Few buildings induce the wonder and awe that Fuller Lodge evokes in first-time visitors.
The majestic, three-story building of upright logs is the heart and soul of the community of Los Alamos. From its construction during the days of the Los Alamos Ranch School through today, it always has been.
The building was designed by John Gaw Meem, a famous Southwestern architect known today as the father of Santa Fe’s Style. He used the Big House, the Ranch School’s dormitory, which also had upright log construction, as his model.
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TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired - April 29, 2015) - Lundin Mining Corporation (“Lundin Mining” or the “Company”) (TSX:LUN)(OMX:LUMI) today reported net earnings of $83.3 million or net earnings attributable to Lundin shareholders (after deducting non-controlling interests) of $71.8 million ($0.10 per share) for the quarter ended March 31, 2015. Cash flows of $224.0 million were generated from operations in the quarter, not including the Company’s attributable cash flows from Tenke Fungurume.
Earnings for the three month period included a full quarter of operating and financial results from Candelaria, which was acquired in the fourth quarter of 2014 and Eagle, which was commissioned in the same period. Candelaria and Eagle generated operating earnings of $163.7 million and $56.1 million, respectively, in the current quarter.
Paul Conibear, President and CEO commented, “Our focus on delivering operational and cost efficiencies has resulted in very strong quarterly performance across the Company, and marks an excellent start to the year. During the first quarter, we achieved record copper and nickel production as well as record levels of operating cash flow, which reflects the positive contributions now being attained from our recent acquisitions.”
“Eagle performed at or above full design capacities for the entire quarter. Our focus now remains on the efficient transition of Candelaria into Lundin Mining and optimization of its production profile and continuing to deliver robust production, cash flow and earnings from our other operations to further contribute to our healthy balance sheet.”
Summary financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2015:
Operating earnings(1) 274.0 43.1
Net earnings 83.3 13.3
Net earnings attributable to Lundin shareholders 71.8 13.3
Basic and diluted earnings per share 0.10 0.02
Ending net debt position(2) 649.2 155.0
For the first quarter of 2015, all of the Company’s operations performed well, substantially meeting and in a number of cases performing better than guidance for production and cash costs.
Candelaria (80%): The Candelaria operations produced, on a 100% basis, 49,350 tonnes of copper, 583,000 ounces of silver, and 27,600 ounces of gold in concentrate, better than expectations as a result of higher throughputs and good metallurgical recoveries. Copper cash costs(1) of $1.20/lb for the quarter were particularly low due to lower diesel prices, mine and mill costs and favourable foreign exchange rates.
On March 24, 2015, abnormally heavy rainfall and flooding occurred in the Atacama Region, affecting power and access to the mine. There was a temporary suspension of mining and milling activities at the mine following the heavy rainfall, but no significant impact to the overall operations. There were no injuries to personnel nor significant damage at the mine site, but the surrounding communities were seriously affected by the floods. The Company has spent over $5 million to-date on relief efforts to help the communities and is expecting to continue to contribute to local relief and regional rebuilding efforts in a multi-year phased program of community investment.
Eagle (100%): Eagle’s operations continued to perform better than expected. Production of both nickel (7,306 tonnes) and copper (6,418 tonnes) exceeded expectations for the quarter with higher than expected throughput, grades and recoveries. Nickel cash costs of $1.45/lb were lower than full year guidance of $2.00/lb due to the strong production performance as well as lower ocean freight charges and targeted cost savings in response to nickel market conditions.
Neves-Corvo (100%): Neves-Corvo had an outstanding first quarter producing 15,488 tonnes of copper and 17,340 tonnes of zinc. Zinc and copper production exceeded the prior year comparable period by 21% and 22%, respectively. Higher head grades and recently implemented bulk mining in selective stockworks stopes contributed to the increase in copper production, while additional production from the Lombador orebody resulted in the increased zinc production. Copper cash costs of $1.39/lb for the quarter were lower than full year guidance ($1.80/lb) due to lower per unit mine costs and favourable foreign exchange rates.
Zinkgruvan (100%): Zinc and lead production at Zinkgruvan of 18,417 tonnes and 7,399 tonnes, respectively, largely met expectations but fell short of the comparable period in 2014 due to lower head grades. Cash costs for zinc of $0.42/lb were slightly higher than guidance ($0.38/lb) as higher per unit mine costs and lower by-product credit prices (lead and copper) were only partially offset by favourable foreign exchange rates.
Aguablanca (100%): Aguablanca had yet another strong quarter of operational performance with both nickel and copper production setting quarterly records as mining of the open pit neared completion and underground development continued. Current quarter production of 2,746 tonnes of nickel and 2,122 tonnes of copper exceeded both expectations and the prior year comparable period. Cash costs of $0.91/lb of nickel for the quarter were significantly below expectations and the prior year comparable period as mining of the open pit was extended much later into the first quarter than originally planned, and the operations benefited from favourable foreign exchange rates and lower maintenance costs.
Tenke (24%): Tenke operations continue to perform well. Lundin’s attributable share of first quarter production included 12,648 tonnes of copper cathode and 797 tonnes of cobalt in hydroxide. The Company’s attributable share of sales included 14,475 tonnes of copper at an average realized price of $2.66/lb and 901 tonnes of cobalt at an average realized price of $8.72/lb. Attributable operating cash flow from Tenke for the first quarter of 2015 was $41.1 million. Tenke operating cash costs for the first quarter of 2015 were $1.26/lb of copper sold, in-line with full year guidance. Cash distributions received by Lundin Mining in the quarter were $8.3 million, in-line with expectations. An additional $2.1 million was received from the Freeport Cobalt operations for total Tenke related cash distributions to the Company of $10.4 million.
Total production, including attributable share of Candelaria (80%) and Tenke (24%):
(tonnes) Q1 Total Q4 Q3 Q2 Q1
Copper 76,746 137,636 55,374 26,360 28,631 27,271
Zinc 35,757 145,091 36,464 37,958 37,202 33,467
Nickel 10,052 12,931 6,574 2,165 2,212 1,980
Lead 8,719 35,555 7,970 7,397 10,250 9,938
Operating earnings for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 were $274.0 million, an increase of $230.9 million in comparison to the first quarter of the prior year ($43.1 million). The increase was primarily due to the inclusion of Candelaria’s ($163.7 million) and Eagle’s ($56.1 million) operating results. Operating earnings were also positively impacted by favourable foreign exchange rates ($19.8 million), lower per unit operating costs ($17.9 million) and higher sales volumes ($12.1 million), partially offset by lower realized metal prices and price adjustments ($32.9 million) from our European operations.
Sales for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 were $531.5 million, an increase of $381.6 million in comparison to the first quarter of the prior year ($149.9 million). The increase was due to incremental sales from Candelaria and Eagle of $292.2 million and $88.4 million, respectively, and higher sales volumes ($39.4 million), partially offset by lower realized metal prices and price adjustments ($32.9 million).
Average London Metal Exchange (“LME”) metal prices for copper, nickel and lead for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 were lower (17%, 2% and 14%, respectively) than that of the comparable quarter in the prior year, while zinc prices were 2% higher.
Operating costs (excluding depreciation) for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 were $250.6 million, an increase of $150.4 in comparison to the first quarter of the prior year ($100.2 million). The increase was largely due to the incremental costs from Candelaria and Eagle of $128.5 million and $32.3 million, respectively.
Net earnings for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 were $83.3 million, an increase of $70.0 million in comparison to the first quarter of the prior year ($13.3 million). Net earnings were positively impacted by:
addition of Candelaria ($59.5 million) and Eagle’s first full quarter of operations ($13.4 million); and
foreign exchange gains of $17.3 million in the current year; partially offset by
interest expense associated with the senior secured notes ($19.1 million); and
higher tax expenses at the European operations.
Cash flow from operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 was $224.0 million, an increase of $196.4 million in comparison to the first quarter of the prior year ($27.6 million). The increase in cash flow is almost entirely attributable to the operating earnings from Candelaria ($163.7 million) and Eagle ($56.1 million), partially offset by higher income taxes paid ($36.4 million).
On March 25, 2015, the Company reported that mining and milling operations at its Candelaria and Ojos del Salado Mines had been temporarily suspended due to heavy rainfall and flooding that affected power and access to the site. Abnormal rains occurred in central and northern Chile, with the Copiapó region being particularly affected. Mining and milling operations re-commenced at the Candelaria mine the following day at half capacity, with ramp up to full production, and re-opening of the underground mines in the following days as regional roads and access to site were restored. The Company is pleased to report that there were neither injuries to personnel nor significant damage to operations, though many employees and their homes were seriously affected by the floods. The Company has been, and will continue to be, making substantial contributions to local relief and ongoing regional rebuilding efforts.
On April 7, 2015, the Company announced that maiden mineral reserves had been estimated on two recently discovered orebodies at Candelaria, known as Susana and Damiana, located to the immediate south and below the current open pit. The Company also re-estimated the total Candelaria open pit mineral reserves with refined economic parameters. Open pit reserves now include portions of the Susana and Damiana mineralization that are contained within the new open pit shell. Refer to the news release entitled “Lundin Mining Announces Maiden Mineral Reserve Estimates for Two New Orebodies at Candelaria” on the Company’s website (www.lundinmining.com).
Net debt position at March 31, 2015 was $649.2 million compared to $829.2 million at December 31, 2014.
The $180.0 million decrease in net debt during the quarter was attributable to operating cash flows of $224.0 million, distributions from Tenke of $8.3 million, and a $12.8 million withdrawal from restricted funds; this was partially offset by investments in mineral properties, plant and equipment of $63.9 million.
The Company has a revolving credit facility available for borrowing up to $350 million. As at March 31, 2015, the Company had no amount drawn on the credit facility. A letter of credit in the amount of $28.1 million (SEK 242 million) is outstanding.
Net debt at April 29, 2015 is approximately $630 million.
Production and cash cost guidance for 2015 have been adjusted to account for extended open pit production performance at Aguablanca, lower copper grades at Zinkgruvan, beneficial foreign exchange rates and lower by-product metal prices.
While Eagle and Candelaria first quarter cash costs were better than guided, Eagle has only been operating at full run rates for one quarter and Candelaria is in the process of a revision to the current mine plan. Therefore, re-assessment of cost guidance will occur later in the year once cost trends are better understood.
Guidance on Tenke’s copper production and cash costs have been updated to reflect the most recent guidance provided by Freeport.
Accordingly, our revised production and cash cost guidance for 2015 is as follows:
2015 Guidance Guidance(a) Revised Guidance
(contained tonnes) Tonnes C1
Cost Tonnes C1
Cost(b)
Copper Candelaria (80%) 130,000 - 135,000 $1.55/lb 130,000 - 135,000 $1.55/lb
Eagle 20,000 - 23,000 20,000 - 23,000
Neves-Corvo 50,000 - 55,000 $1.80/lb 50,000 - 55,000 $1.60/lb
Zinkgruvan 3,500 - 4,000 2,000 - 3,000
Aguablanca 4,500 - 5,000 5,500 - 6,000
Tenke (@24%)(c) 48,400 $1.31/lb 49,500 $1.26/lb
Total attributable 256,400 - 270,400 257,000 - 271,500
Zinc Neves-Corvo 68,000 - 73,000 68,000 - 73,000
Zinkgruvan 78,000 - 82,000 $0.38/lb 78,000 - 82,000 $0.35/lb
Total 146,000 - 155,000 146,000 - 155,000
Nickel Eagle 25,000 - 28,000 $2.00/lb 25,000 - 28,000 $2.00/lb
Aguablanca 5,800 - 6,500 $5.00/lb 7,000 - 7,500 $3.75/lb
Total 30,800 - 34,500 32,000 - 35,500
Lead Neves-Corvo 4,000 - 5,000 4,000 - 5,000
Zinkgruvan 27,000 - 30,000 27,000 - 30,000
(a) Guidance as outlined in our Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2014.
(b) Cash costs remain dependent upon exchange rates (forecast at EUR/USD:1.10, USD/SEK:8.25, USD/CLP:625) and metal prices (forecast at Cu: $2.70/lb, Zn: $0.95/lb, Pb: $0.80/lb, Ni: $6.25/lb, Co: $13.00/lb). Prior guidance forecast EUR/USD at 1.30, USD/SEK at 7.00, USD/CLP at 575, Cu at $3.00/lb, Zn at $1.05/lb, Pb at $1.00/lb and Ni at $8.00/lb.
(c) Freeport has provided 2015 sales and cash costs guidance. Tenke’s 2015 production is assumed to approximate sales guidance.
Capital expenditures for 2015 are expected to be $400 million (excluding Tenke), $390 million for sustaining capital and $10 million for expansionary capital. This is unchanged from the previous reduced guidance provided in the December 31, 2014 MD&A, as press released on February 18, 2015.
The Company estimates its share of expansion related initiatives and sustaining capital funding for 2015 at Tenke to be $90 million. All of the capital expenditures are expected to be self-funded by cash flow from Tenke operations.
Given lower metal prices, the Company is expecting lower cash distributions from Tenke in 2015 than originally guided ($30 - $40 million). Approximately $20 million is currently forecast to be received.
2015 Exploration Guidance
Total exploration expense for 2015 (excluding Tenke) is estimated to be $60 million, consistent with prior guidance. These expenditures will be principally directed towards near mine targets at Candelaria, with the remainder being invested to advance exploration activities at our existing mines and for existing South American and Eastern European exploration projects.
The Company reports that it will hold its annual meeting of shareholders at the St. Andrew’s Club & Conference Centre, 150 King Street West, 27th Floor (King Street/University Avenue) Toronto, Ontario, on Friday, May 8, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. Toronto time.
Lundin Mining Corporation (“Lundin”, “Lundin Mining” or the “Company”) is a diversified Canadian base metals mining company with operations in Chile, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, and the USA, producing copper, zinc, nickel and lead. In addition, Lundin Mining holds a 24% equity stake in the world-class Tenke Fungurume (“Tenke”) copper/cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (“DRC”) and in the Freeport Cobalt Oy business, which includes a cobalt refinery located in Kokkola, Finland.
Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information
Certain of the statements made and information contained herein is “forward-looking information” within the meaning of the Ontario Securities Act. This report includes, but is not limited to, forward looking statements with respect to the Company’s estimated annual metal production, cash costs, exploration expenditures, and capital expenditures, as noted in the Outlook section and elsewhere in this document. These estimates and other forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks and uncertainties relating to estimated operating and cash costs, foreign currency fluctuations; risks inherent in mining including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected geological formations, ground control problems and flooding; including risks associated with the estimation of mineral resources and reserves and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company’s expectations; the potential for and effects of labour disputes or other unanticipated difficulties with or shortages of labour or interruptions in production; actual ore mined varying from estimates of grade, tonnage, dilution and metallurgical and other characteristics; the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses, commodity price fluctuations; inability to successfully integrate the Candelaria operations or realize its anticipated benefits; uncertain political and economic environments; changes in laws or policies, foreign taxation, delays or the inability to obtain necessary governmental permits; and other risks and uncertainties, including those described under Risk Factors Relating to the Company’s Business in the Company’s Annual Information Form. Forward-looking information is in addition based on various assumptions including, without limitation, the expectations and beliefs of management, the assumed long term price of copper, nickel, lead and zinc; that the Company can access financing, appropriate equipment and sufficient labour and that the political environment where the Company operates will continue to support the development and operation of mining projects. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are advised not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Sophia Shane
Investor Relations North America
John Miniotis
Senior Manager, Corporate Development and Investor Relations
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Credit: File photo by Mitch Barrie/Flickr
Another Woman Attacked in Griffith Park
Dennis Romero May 21, 2014
For the second Wednesday morning in a row a woman was attacked in Griffith Park.
While last week's crime was described as an attempted sexual assault on a hiker, today's was said to be a robbery, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
At this point cops are saying that today's robbery didn't appear to have a sexual component, but …
… the situation is still under investigation, LAPD Officer Sally Madera told us.
Likewise, she said, any possible connection to last week's assault is still being probed. “There has been nothing stated as to a connection at this point,” Madera said. “It has not been determined.”
In both cases, the suspect was described as a Latino man in his 30s. Today's suspect was described only as a 30-year-old Spanish speaker in a “workout suit,” the officer told us.
Last week's crime, reported at 10 a.m. inside the park, involved a light-skinned suspect in his early- to mid-30s who is 5 feet, 7 inches, 150 pounds, according to the LAPD.
He had short brown hair and a mustache, police said. The suspect was wearing a polo shirt, jeans and hiking shoes and was carrying a backpack.
This morning's attack on a woman walking took place near an entrance to the park at Fern Dell Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard, police said.
The L.A. Fire Department was dispatched to the scene at 6:55 a.m. and took one patient to a hospital, the department's Katherine Main told us.
The victim was hurt after she became engaged in a “physical struggle” with the suspect, Madera said. The woman was stable at a hospital, she said.
The suspect, after speaking Spanish to the victim, attacking her and taking undisclosed property, fled on a bike, Madera said.
Send feedback and tips to the author. Follow Dennis Romero on Twitter at @dennisjromero. Follow LA Weekly News on Twitter at @laweeklynews.
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NSFW YouTube Freak Phenom Tonetta Comes to L.A. … Sorta
Chris Martins February 16, 2011
He's been called “the savior of lo-fi music.” He's been called “a pure artist.” He's been called a combination of “repulsion and intrigue.” Yeah, we're pretty sure Toronto-based YouTube star Tonetta has been called a lot of things — famous as he is for lip-syncing and gyrating to his own perverse songs whilst wearing panties and wigs — but we're stoked that the freak is coming to Los Angeles. Actually, his music and artwork (seen above) are — Friday at Showcave — but the exact whereabouts of the man himself on that night shall remain unknown. We'll let his record label, Black Tent Press, explain:
“Tony Jeffrey, known to you as Tonetta has encouraged that the live deployment of his musical persona be carried out by hand chosen international members of the musical community. The LA based band is lead by Brooks Nielson and Brian Stewart of the Growlers.”
So he won't be there, but that might be a good thing. Tonetta's essence is enough, as you'll probably gather from the videos below. Check out five totally NSFW, totally awesome Tonetta insta-classics:
More info on the show and art here, and Tonetta's latest album, 777 Vol. II, as well.
“G & B Showers”
“Celeb P Geldof”
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A Free Consultation: 718-829-7400
Offices in Bronx, New York and West Palm Beach, Florida
Call 24/7 For A Free Consultation: 718-829-7400
LAW LAVIN
Ice and Snow Accidents
Lead Pain Exposure
Train, Bus and Taxi Accidents
Zadroga Act
Thomas J. Lavin
John O’Halloran
Damien Rodriguez
Tom Lavin
MORE AUTOMOBILE RECALLS
It’s not even Labor Day, but automobile makers have already recalled more vehicles in 2014 than in any other year in history. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that 37.5 million cars, vans, and trucks have been recalled so far this year in the United States; the previous record was 30.8 million in 2004. Although faulty ignition switches on GM vehicles receive most of the media’s attention, Ford, Subaru, Nissan, Chrysler, Hyundai, Mazda, BMW, Toyota, Honda, Lexus and Kia have all announced recalls this year, according to the NHTSA. If you’re injured in New York City in a traffic accident, and the cause of your injury was a defect in one of the vehicles, you may have grounds for a product liability claim against the vehicle’s manufacturer. If you’re injured this way, speak at once to an experienced Bronx personal injury attorney.
The truth is, product liability claims are one reason for this year’s record number of recalls. Auto manufacturers are increasingly aware that design flaws and defectively-made products are eventually going to cost them in court, so they’ve become pro-active, sometimes recalling vehicles at the first sign of trouble. Still, the number of recalls this year is troubling because it means plenty of defective vehicles are still on the streets in New York City and across the nation.
If you or someone you love is injured in an accident with a defective vehicle in New York City, it’s important for you to speak to a good auto accident lawyer about your injury and your legal rights. An experienced product liability attorney can assess the specifics of your case, outline your legal options, and guide you through all the paperwork, filings, and legal hearings that will likely ensue. In the New York City area, be sure to have your case handled by an experienced Bronx auto accident attorney.
Thomas J. Lavin, Esquire, has been practicing law in New York since 1984. His practice focuses primarily on protecting the rights of the injured. Mr. Lavin graduated summa cum laude from Iona College in 1979 and earned his Juris Doctor degree from St. John’s University School of Law in 1983. The Law Offices of Thomas J. Lavin have provided legal help to more than 5,000 accident victims in thirty years of personal injury practice.
HOW TO SPOT NURSING HOME ABUSE AND NEGLIGENCE (WHAT FAMILIES MUST KNOW)
MISDIAGNOSIS IS MALPRACTICE
What Do I Need to Prove My Personal Injury Case?
Jurors and Social Media
The Law Offices of Thomas J. Lavin
3559 E Tremont Ave
North Office
2980 Bruckner Blvd
50 Main St 10th Floor
© 2021 by The Law Offices of Thomas J. Lavin. All rights reserved.
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Sitemap | Website and Search Engine Optimization by Social Firestarter, LLC
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<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-TDQHZW" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden"></iframe>
The Grand Island Independent
The Grand Island Independent Homepage
Sympathy Ideas
Evelyn M. Boro
ORD - Evelyn M. Boro, 96, of Ord passed away Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020, at the Community Memorial Health Center in Burwell.
Private Mass of Christian burial will be at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church. Father Scott Harter will celebrate the Mass. Burial will be at the Ord City Cemetery.
Memorials are suggested to the family's choice. Condolences may be sent to Ron Drudik, 213 N. 23rd St., Ord, NE 68862. Ord Memorial Chapel is in charge of arrangements.
For the health and safety of others social distancing and face masks are required for those attending.
Evelyn Marie was born Aug. 31, 1924, in the Maiden Valley area east of Ord to Anton J. and Mary (Moudry) Kluna. She was raised on the family farm, received her early education at Maiden Valley, and graduated from Ord High School in 1943.
Following high school, Evelyn was a clerk at the Dime Store and then worked as a clerk and bookkeeper at J.C. Penney. On June 19, 1946, she was united in marriage to Albin H. "Al" Boro at Ord. The couple spent their entire married life in Ord.
From October 1946 to 1948, Evelyn was the stenographer for the irrigation office before returning to J.C. Penney where she worked until November 1959. She began working at the city of Ord as a bookkeeper and computer operator in January 1960 and retired in May 1988.
Evelyn was a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church and the Altar Society. She enjoyed cooking, crocheting, sewing and completing crossword puzzles.
Survivors include a sister, Margie Swanek of Grand Island; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.
She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Al, who passed away Oct. 10, 2008; a brother and sister-in-law, Adrian and Connee Kluna; and one sister and two brothers-in-law, Wilma and Frank Drudik and Don Swanek.
To plant trees in memory, please visit our Sympathy Store.
Published by The Grand Island Independent on Nov. 24, 2020.
No memorial events are currently scheduled.
To offer your sympathy during this difficult time, you can now have memorial trees planted in a National Forest in memory of your loved one.
Funeral services provided by:
Ord Memorial Chapel - Ord
Your Email (will not be displayed)
Ron, So sorry for the loss of Evelyn. Al and Evelyn were neighbors of my parents for many years and I have a lot of fond memories of them. They were always kind and good people. Again my sympathy for your loss.
Sue Staab
©2020 Legacy.com All rights reserved.
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AEL U.S.: NYSE
American Equity Investment Life Holding Co.
Watchlist CreateAELAlert
AELUS
Last Updated: Jan 15, 2021 1:58 p.m. EST Real time quote
Volume: 269.82K 65 Day Avg: 1.27M
AEL Overview
Rev. per Employee $3.311M
P/E Ratio 3.25
Ex-Dividend Date Nov 24, 2020
% of Float Shorted 3.48%
Number of Ratings 9 Full Ratings
American Equity Investment Life upgraded to outperform from market perform at Raymond James
Jan. 15, 2021 at 7:37 a.m. ET by Tomi Kilgore
MassMutual’s Credit Rating Could Be Hurt by Invesco Stake
Oct. 14, 2020 at 10:42 a.m. ET by Barron's
American Equity Investment Life downgraded to market perform from outperform at Raymond James
Aug. 19, 2020 at 7:11 a.m. ET by Tomi Kilgore
American Equity Investment Lift stock price target cut to $29 from $32 at J.P. Morgan
Oct. 1, 2019 at 7:44 a.m. ET by Tomi Kilgore
American Equity Investment's stock falls after it ends talks over potential sale
Jun. 7, 2019 at 9:11 a.m. ET by Tomi Kilgore
Life Insurers’ Ratings Are at Risk as They Leave Debt Markets’ Safer Corners
Feb. 21, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. ET by Barron's
The bulls are aiming for new highs in the S&P 500
Aug. 9, 2018 at 11:33 a.m. ET by Lawrence G. McMillan
S&P 500 bulls are in control of the stock market — but watch these red flags
Jul. 12, 2018 at 9:45 a.m. ET by Lawrence G. McMillan
S&P 500’s chart is flashing negative
Jul. 5, 2018 at 1:51 p.m. ET by Lawrence G. McMillan
S&P 500 bears are getting the upper hand
Jun. 28, 2018 at 11:03 a.m. ET by Lawrence G. McMillan
Which way will the S&P 500 break out of this ever-tighter trading range?
Watch 2,750 on the S&P 500 to tell whether the stock market is about to climb
May. 24, 2018 at 10:06 a.m. ET by Lawrence G. McMillan
American Equity Investment Life upgraded to neutral from sell at UBS
May. 7, 2018 at 11:39 a.m. ET by Tomi Kilgore
American Equity Investment Life stock price target raised to $32 vs. $28 at JP Morgan
Jan. 2, 2018 at 7:18 a.m. ET by Ciara Linnane
Small-caps trail as ‘Trump trade’ fades, but these stocks can win big
Aug. 8, 2017 at 6:57 a.m. ET by Philip van Doorn
American Equity Investment Life Holding downgraded to neutral vs. overweight at J.P. Morgan
Life Insurers: Go Big or Go Home
Nov. 3, 2016 at 4:28 p.m. ET
American Equity Investment Life started at neutral with $24 stock price target at Credit Suisse
American Equity Investment upgraded to overweight from neutral at J.P. Morgan
Jun. 6, 2016 at 10:05 a.m. ET by Tomi Kilgore
13 small-cap stocks to help you fight inflation
Mar. 24, 2016 at 7:36 a.m. ET by Philip van Doorn
Robot Portfolio Chugs Along, Seeking to Regain Past Glory
Jan. 4, 2021 at 1:52 p.m. ET on GuruFocus.com
3 Stocks Trading Below the GuruFocus Value Line
Dec. 31, 2020 at 11:14 a.m. ET on GuruFocus.com
New Strong Sell Stocks for December 30th
The Hanover Insurance (THG) Stock Up Since Dividend Hike
AXIS Capital (AXS) to Share More Profits, Ups Dividend by 2.4%
Dec. 4, 2020 at 9:48 a.m. ET on Zacks.com
Selective Insurance (SIGI) Okays Buyback Program Worth $100M
Chubb (CB) Announces Share Repurchase Program Worth $1.5B
Aflac (AFL) Rewards Shareholders With 17.9% Dividend Hike
Nov. 20, 2020 at 9:51 a.m. ET on Zacks.com
American Equity (AEL) to Share More Profits, Ups Dividend by 6%
Sun Life (SLF) Q3 Earnings Rise Y/Y, Asset Management Grows
Nov. 5, 2020 at 10:06 a.m. ET on Zacks.com
American Equity (AEL) Q3 Earnings Lag Estimates, Revenues Top
Is American Equity Investment (AEL) Stock Undervalued Right Now?
American Equity (AEL), Brookfield to Ink Strategic Partnership
AIG Introduces Index Annuity Powered by GLB Rider Option
Are Investors Undervaluing American Equity Investment (AEL) Right Now?
American Equity (AEL) Up 40.5% in a Year: What's Driving It?
Oct. 8, 2020 at 10:39 a.m. ET on Zacks.com
A Trio of High Earnings Yield Stocks to Consider
Oct. 2, 2020 at 9:53 a.m. ET on GuruFocus.com
US Market Remains Significantly Overvalued to Begin October
Oct. 1, 2020 at 4:48 p.m. ET on GuruFocus.com
American Equity to Partner Varde Partners, Agam Capital
Sep. 29, 2020 at 10:57 a.m. ET on Zacks.com
American Equity (AEL) Up 1.4% Since Last Earnings Report: Can It Continue?
Sep. 4, 2020 at 11:31 a.m. ET on Zacks.com
American Equity Investment Life Holding Co. engages in the development and sale of annuity and life insurance products through its subsidiaries. It focuses on issuing fixed index and fixed rate annuities. The company was founded by David J. Noble on December 15, 1995 and is headquartered in West Des Moines, IA.
FBL Financial Group Inc. -0.87% $1.4B
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National Western Life Group Inc. Cl A -2.75% $745.39M
Kansas City Life Insurance Co. 1.15% $380.54M
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Plug Power surges 11% after topping sales forecast
Published: March 13, 2014 at 7:48 a.m. ET
Ben Eisen
FCEL
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Plug Power Inc. PLUG, -7.33% jumped more than 11% premarket Thursday following the fuel-cell company's fourth-quarter earnings report. The firm said it lost $28.9 million, or 28 cents a share, last quarter, compared with a loss of $8.5 million, or 22 cents a share, in the same quarter during the previous year. Adjusted losses narrowed to $8.0 million, or 8 cents a share, compared with $9.6 million, or 25 cents a share a year earlier. Revenue rose to $8.0 million from $5.9 million. The lone estimate compiled by FactSet, from Cowen & Company, was for adjusted losses of 8 cents a share on revenue of $7.4 million. The firm said orders for the 2014 fiscal year have already exceeded $60 million. Plug Power's shares have skyrocketed in recent sessions as investors become increasingly bullish on the prospects of fuel-cell makers. Ballard Power Systems Inc. BLDP, -9.06% was up 8% premarket Thursday while FuelCell Energy Inc. FCEL, -8.53% rose 6%.
Space investing is heating up, and a noted Tesla bull is planning an exchange-traded fund to invest in the sector. Space stocks gained in response on Thursday.
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Region selectorBR
Macquarie Lending acts as Lead Arranger and Provider of Finance to support acquisition of NEC Group by LDC
London, 16 January 2015
Macquarie Lending (Macquarie) has acted as Lead Arranger of debt financing for around £307 million acquisition of the NEC Group by LDC from Birmingham City Council.
Macquarie originated and structured the financing as a bespoke unitranche loan with a 6½ year maturity. Macquarie introduced RBS to the syndicate pre-closing with RBS also providing a working capital facility. Macquarie intends to retain a significant holding until maturity.
The NEC Group comprises the UK’s leading live exhibition, arena and conference venues; the National Exhibition Centre itself, the Genting Arena, the Barclaycard Arena (formerly the National Indoor Arena) and the International Convention Centre, as well as the NEC’s other commercial activities including The Ticket Factory, specialist catering business, Amadeus and the NEC’s third party venue management operations.
The NEC Group is the UK's premier venue for trade and consumer shows, with more than 140 events attracting 2.1 million visitors a year, as well as hosting significant political and trade conferences, some of the biggest music and comedy acts and various top class sporting events
Adam Joseph, Managing Director, Macquarie Lending, commented: “The NEC Group is a landmark asset in the UK, with a strong heritage in hosting world-class events as well as being a significant contributor to the West Midlands economy. The business and its venues are key to the wider development plans of Birmingham and Solihull Councils, centred around and linked to the airport expansion and City Centre and HS2 developments. Macquarie brings expertise in structuring and underwriting deals of this nature, as well as financing specialist assets in the real estate, hospitality, and corporate sectors.”
Martin Draper, Chief Executive Officer, LDC commented “Macquarie has played a key role in co-ordinating and as lead participant of our financing arrangements and has been instrumental in completing this deal. They worked alongside us in a very flexible way, within tight deadlines whilst still taking the time to understand the business, develop a bespoke financing structure and source appropriate co-lenders. We are looking forward to working with them going forward”
The transaction was structured to address the specific requirements of LDC as well as the unique nature of the underlying business.
Jones Day and Linklaters acted as legal advisors to Macquarie.
About LDC
LDC is the leading private equity company in the UK mid-market. LDC is part of the Lloyds Banking Group and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. It has completed over 485 investments and has ongoing interests in over 85 businesses in the UK.
With a UK regional network, LDC invests up to £100m in MBOs, IBOs and Development Capital transactions in a broad range of sectors including Construction & Property, Financial Services, Healthcare, Industrials, Retail & Consumer, TMT, Travel & Leisure and Support Services. Recent transactions include investments with Waterfall Services, Capital Economics, Eley Group, Adler and Allan, Clifford Thames, Anite Travel and Stroma. For further information visit www.ldc.co.uk.
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Parallels Introduces 'Switch to a Mac' Edition
Tuesday August 25, 2009 7:46 am PDT by Eric Slivka
Parallels today introduced the Parallels Desktop Switch to a Mac Edition, bundling tutorial and migration tools with the company's Parallels Desktop 4.0 software that allows Macs to run Windows in a virtual environment, allowing users to switch between OS X and Windows without the rebooting required by Apple's Boot Camp solution. As the product name implies, the new edition is targeted at Windows users making the switch to Mac, and provides them with tools to easily move their Windows applications and data to their new Mac and offers them more than two hours of video tutorials to ease the transition to Mac.
"The growth in switching is partially due to the ease-of-use and cool capabilities of the Mac," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. "However, users don't want to lose the data they have accumulated and the applications they are already familiar with. Building on our proven track record of Mac innovation, we have addressed this concern and made learning the new operating system even simpler through interactive on-demand tutorials. These are combined with intelligent moving tools and our industry-leading Parallels Desktop for Mac, which offers the greatest performance and stability for running Windows seamlessly on Mac."
Training materials include video, on-screen demonstration and written prompts developed from the perspective of a Windows user and are user-directed allowing users to focus on areas of most interest to them. Migration tools include a USB transfer cable and Parallels Transporter software that allows users to easily move their entire Windows system into the Parallels Desktop virtual machine on their Mac.
Parallels Desktop Switch to a Mac Edition is available today at a suggested retail price of $99.99.
Tag: Parallels
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ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF PENTECOST SEASON
the Fruit of the Mission to the Jews
The Repentance of Zacchaeus the Tax Collector
He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
He came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, "He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner." But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost."
When day came, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. There were more than forty who formed this conspiracy. They went to the chief priests and elders and said, "We have bound ourselves by a solemn oath to taste nothing until we have killed Paul. You, together with the Sanhedrin, must now make an official request to the commander to have him bring him down to you, as though you meant to investigate his case more thoroughly. We on our part are prepared to kill him before he arrives." The son of Paul's sister, however, heard about the ambush; so he went and entered the compound and reported it to Paul. Paul then called one of the centurions and requested, "Take this young man to the commander; he has something to report to him." So he took him and brought him to the commander and explained, "The prisoner Paul called me and asked that I bring this young man to you; he has something to say to you." The commander took him by the hand, drew him aside, and asked him privately, "What is it you have to report to me?" He replied, "The Jews have conspired to ask you to bring Paul down to the Sanhedrin tomorrow, as though they meant to inquire about him more thoroughly, but do not believe them. More than forty of them are lying in wait for him; they have bound themselves by oath not to eat or drink until they have killed him. They are now ready and only wait for your consent." As the commander dismissed the young man he directed him, "Tell no one that you gave me this information."
Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions." Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!" But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God."
Then he summoned two of the centurions and said, "Get two hundred soldiers ready to go to Caesarea by nine o'clock tonight, along with seventy horsemen and two hundred auxiliaries. Provide mounts for Paul to ride and give him safe conduct to Felix the governor." Then he wrote a letter with this content: "Claudius Lysias to his excellency the governor Felix, greetings. This man, seized by the Jews and about to be murdered by them, I rescued after intervening with my troops when I learned that he was a Roman citizen. I wanted to learn the reason for their accusations against him so I brought him down to their Sanhedrin. I discovered that he was accused in matters of controversial questions of their law and not of any charge deserving death or imprisonment. Since it was brought to my attention that there will be a plot against the man, I am sending him to you at once, and have also notified his accusers to state (their case) against him before you." So the soldiers, according to their orders, took Paul and escorted him by night to Antipatris. The next day they re turned to the compound, leaving the horsemen to complete the journey with him. When they arrived in Caesarea they delivered the letter to the governor and presented Paul to him. When he had read it and asked to what province he belonged, and learned that he was from Cilicia, he said, "I shall hear your case when your accusers arrive." Then he ordered that he be held in custody in Herod's praetorium.
He said to (his) disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Notice the ravens: they do not sow or reap; they have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them. How much more important are you than birds! Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your lifespan? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass in the field that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? As for you, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not worry anymore. All the nations of the world seek for these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides.
Acts 24:1-2a,3b,5-6,9-13,17-21
Five days later the high priest Ananias came down with some elders and an advocate, a certain Tertullus, and they presented formal charges against Paul to the governor. When he was called, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying, “most excellent Felix, we found this man to be a pest; he creates dissension among Jews all over the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazoreans. He even tried to desecrate our temple, but we arrested him.” The Jews also joined in the attack and asserted that these things were so. Then the governor motioned to him to speak and Paul replied, "I know that you have been a judge over this nation for many years and so I am pleased to make my defense before you. As you can verify, not more than twelve days have passed since I went up to Jerusalem to worship. Neither in the temple, nor in the synagogues, nor anywhere in the city did they find me arguing with anyone or instigating a riot among the people. Nor can they prove to you the accusations they are now making against me. After many years, I came to bring alms for my nation and offerings. While I was so engaged, they found me, after my purification, in the temple without a crowd or disturbance. But some Jews from the province of Asia, who should be here before you to make whatever accusation they might have against me-- or let these men themselves state what crime they discovered when I stood before the Sanhedrin, unless it was my one outcry as I stood among them, that 'I am on trial before you today for the resurrection of the dead.'"
Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
Two years passed and Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus. Wishing to ingratiate himself with the Jews, Felix left Paul in prison. Three days after his arrival in the province, Festus went up from Caesarea to Jerusalem where the chief priests and Jewish leaders presented him their formal charges against Paul. They asked him as a favor to have him sent to Jerusalem, for they were plotting to kill him along the way. Festus replied that Paul was being held in custody in Caesarea and that he himself would be returning there shortly. He said, "Let your authorities come down with me, and if this man has done something improper, let them accuse him." After spending no more than eight or ten days with them, he went down to Caesarea, and on the following day took his seat on the tribunal and ordered that Paul be brought in. When he appeared, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem surrounded him and brought many serious charges against him, which they were unable to prove. In defending himself Paul said, "I have committed no crime either against the Jewish law or against the temple or against Caesar." Then Festus, wishing to ingratiate himself with the Jews, said to Paul in reply, "Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and there stand trial before me on these charges?" Paul answered, "I am standing before the tribunal of Caesar; this is where I should be tried. I have committed no crime against the Jews, as you very well know. If I have committed a crime or done anything deserving death, I do not seek to escape the death penalty; but if there is no substance to the charges they are bringing against me, then no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar." Then Festus, after conferring with his council, replied, "You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go."
"Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come."
Acts 25:13b-14a,22-27
King Agrippa and Bernice arrived in Caesarea on a visit to Festus. Since they spent several days there, Festus referred Paul's case to the king. Agrippa said to Festus, "I too should like to hear this man." He replied, "Tomorrow you will hear him." The next day Agrippa and Bernice came with great ceremony and entered the audience hall in the company of cohort commanders and the prominent men of the city and, by command of Festus, Paul was brought in. And Festus said, "King Agrippa and all you here present with us, look at this man about whom the whole Jewish populace petitioned me here and in Jerusalem, clamoring that he should live no longer. I found, however, that he had done nothing deserving death, and so when he appealed to the Emperor, I decided to send him. But I have nothing definite to write about him to our sovereign; therefore I have brought him before all of you, and particularly before you, King Agrippa, so that I may have something to write as a result of this investigation. For it seems senseless to me to send up a prisoner without indicating the charges against him."
And the Lord replied, "Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute (the) food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed in coming,' and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant's master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful. That servant who knew his master's will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the servant who was ignorant of his master's will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
Acts 26:1-2a,6-10,12-19
Then Agrippa said to Paul, "You may now speak on your own behalf." So Paul stretched out his hand and began his defense. "King Agrippa, now I am standing trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors. Our twelve tribes hope to attain to that promise as they fervently worship God day and night; and on account of this hope I am accused by Jews, O king. Why is it thought unbelievable among you that God raises the dead? I myself once thought that I had to do many things against the name of Jesus the Nazorean, and I did so in Jerusalem. I imprisoned many of the holy ones with the authorization I received from the chief priests, and when they were to be put to death I cast my vote against them. "On one such occasion I was traveling to Damascus with the authorization and commission of the chief priests. At midday, along the way, O king, I saw a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my traveling companions. We all fell to the ground and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad.' And I said, 'Who are you, sir?' And the Lord replied, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Get up now, and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness of what you have seen (of me) and what you will be shown. I shall deliver you from this people and from the Gentiles to whom I send you, to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may obtain forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been consecrated by faith in me.' "And so, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
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Massacre on Gaza border reveals brutality of Israeli ruling class
Francesco Merli
While the attention of the international media is drawn to the threatened US airstrike on Syria, the Palestinian mobilisations for the right of return of refugees and the ruthless killing of demonstrators by the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) in the Gaza Strip continues.
The massacre carried out at the Gaza border by IDF snipers on 30th March – who killed 18 Palestinian demonstrators and injured several hundreds – and repeated on 6th April, is not an accident. It is the consequence of a conscious long-term strategy by the Israeli state aimed at strangling the livelihood of the more than 1.8 million Palestinians living in what can be effectively described as an open-air prison. This should not be taken as a polemical exaggeration: even UN Human Rights rapporteur John Dugard described Gaza as a “sealed-off, imprisoned and occupied territory”, of which Israel “appears to have thrown away the key”.
The recent scandal around the publication on social media of a video taken by an IDF soldier of a fellow sniper gunning down in December a Palestinian getting too close to the border fence is revealing – both of the IDF soldiers’ attitude and that of the Israeli government. The cheering at the sniper and the insults thrown at the wounded man – who may have succeeded in damaging the hated border fence before being killed – reveal inhuman and demented hatred at the “enemy” by the soldiers. But what is the background to all this? The ruthless attitude of the Israeli ruling class is represented by Defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said there were "no innocent" people in Gaza. He also commented: “The Gaza sniper deserves a decoration, and the photographer a demerit”, thus showing his utter contempt for Palestinian lives and at the same time his pique at being exposed by the insanity of his own soldiers, who fail to realise how their behaviour would not be regarded as monstrous.
The killing of 18 Palestinian demonstrators on 30 March was no accident, but part of a conscious strategy / Image: fair use
It is not by chance that this episode resonates with the witnesses’ reports and the pictures taken by the US Army and CIA torturers of fellow-torturers smiling for the camera while performing the worst type of abuses on unarmed prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. What these episodes have in common is not just the inhumane attitude of the material butchers, but the fact that the real responsibility for creating such monsters lies all the way up the chain of command, up to the highest levels of the army and the government in both cases. Occasionally, in order for the system to keep a resemblance of credibility, a few of these butchers are apprehended, tried and convicted, often labelled as criminal psychopaths and tossed away from public scrutiny, while the real instigators are left untouched.
The decision to deploy sharpshooters to enforce a no-go zone on the Gaza side of the border and to stop Palestinian attempts to breach into this zone during protests led inevitably to the massacres of Palestinian protesters on 30th March and 6th April, and to more massacres in the foreseeable future. The growing anger and determination of the Palestinian youth is finding a focal point in the movement around the “Great March of Return”, which will escalate towards the 70th Anniversary of the proclamation of the State of Israel (and the forced eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes) on 15th May.
Israel and Gaza
But what is the logic behind such a conduct on the part of the Israeli government? Who gains from all this?
Gaza has been for decades – from the point of view of the Israeli state – an open wound festering at its border. On paper, it would be a wiser policy to allow the Palestinian population some breathing space. After all, even minor but sustained concessions and the easing of the economic stranglehold over the Territories would produce under the present situation an immediate improvement in the conditions of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. But the whole foundation of Israeli capitalism would be threatened by a different course of action.
The Israeli capitalists base their survival strategy on dividing the Palestinian population in different camps and would be threatened by the formation of a unified struggle of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza with the 1.4 million Palestinians living within Israel. Even the slightest possibility that a connection could be established between the struggle of the Arab and Jewish working class within Israel against their capitalist government with the struggle of the Palestinians in the Territories would represent an existential threat to capitalism in Israel.
More than once and even now, the Palestinian population of the Territories has been used as a scapegoat to overcome internal divisions developing in Israeli society, with the ruling elite riddled by all sorts of corruption scandals and society polarised by rising inequality. Netanyahu’s aggressive anti-Palestinian policy is designed also to prevent his own demise, as he is trying to divert attention from the corruption scandals that have been plaguing his authority over the past years.
The Palestinian population of the Territories has been used as a scapegoat to overcome internal divisions developing in Israeli society / Image: fair use
The result is clear. More than three years after the Gaza shelling of 2014, living conditions in the Strip have seen no improvement, with unemployment at 29% in the Palestinian Authority, but above 44% in Gaza and well above 60% among the youth, according to the World Bank. 80% of the population rely on humanitarian aid to survive. Over 70% of Gaza’s population are refugees (according to the UN Relief and Works Agency) from land now within the borders of Israel, which explains how heartfelt is the demand to return posed by the present movement. But the sense of hopelessness among the Gaza population, especially the youth, cannot be conveyed by mere figures, when hopes are shattered by a daily routine of oppression, abuse and injustice to which there seems to be no end in sight.
On the other hand, why is not Israel just going for an all-out war against the Palestinians? The disproportion of military power between the two sides is staggering. The IDF could easily crush any resistance in a matter of days, if not hours. The option of just occupying militarily the Strip, however, was ruled out as not feasible by the late Ariel Sharon, surely not a friend of the Palestinians, who in 2005 implemented the decision of forcefully withdrawing the Israeli settlers, disengaging from Gaza and sealing off the borders. In fact, Sharon realised that while the IDF could easily crush the Palestinian militarily, it would be a completely different question to rule over an occupied Gaza, and it would be impossible to push out a significant part of the Arab population without openly committing genocide in front of the world.
Gaza is a strip of land about 40 km long and 6 to 12 km wide, squeezed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. It is the third most densely populated area enclosed in boundaries in the world (after Singapore and Hong Kong) with over 5,000 people per square km. An extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gaza's Palestinians. The population is expected to increase to 2.1 million in 2020. By that time, Gaza may be rendered unliveable, if present trends continue.
Due to the Israeli and Egyptian border closures and the Israeli sea and land blockade, the population is not free to leave or enter the Gaza Strip, nor is it allowed to freely import or export goods. Fishing has been restricted to up to 6 nautical miles. The Oslo Accords of 1993, which gave birth to the Palestinian Authority allowed fishing to take place within up to 20 nm.
Gaza depends on Israel for almost everything from food to medicines and hospital supplies, machinery and spare parts and fuel, energy and drinkable water. Israel controls Gaza’s telecommunication system, which could be shut down at any time. Deliberate cuts to electricity or water supply are a daily occurrence for which the people in Gaza pay a heavy price. Sudden closures of the border have an immediate impact and are often used by Israel as a blackmail weapon.
But there is another side to scarcity and misery. It strengthens the position of the Hamas leaders, whose patronage and charity structures are sometimes the only source of relief for the population.
The policies of the Israeli state are designed to feed a sense of desperation and helplessness in the population – especially the youth. This is the reason for the recurrent escalation in the level of mobilisation or military tension at the borders. The Hamas leaders can obviously count on a disproportionate reaction by the Israeli state to any friction or conflict arising, which helps them preserve their authority as the only force able to challenge Israel in the eyes of an important section of the people in Gaza. The very fact that the concrete possibility of being shot at and killed has not deterred the participation of tens of thousands of people in the demonstrations at the borders reveals the unbreakable determination of the Palestinian youth, which is also reflected in a rising pressure on the Hamas leadership to challenge the blockade.
The role of Hamas
The poisonous fruits of the Oslo Accords of 1993 are displayed before our eyes. The setting up of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was designed to be a trap for the Palestinians, to which the PLO and Fatah leadership, headed by Yasser Arafat obliged wilfully in exchange for a parody of semi-independent Palestinian state.
In reality, with the collaboration of the Palestinian leadership, the PA was turned more and more into a repressive proxy by Israel to keep the different Palestinian factions under check. Many Palestinians who were pushed into rebelling against a new form of oppression experienced Palestinian jails. The corruption of the leadership, constant Israeli intervention and the persisting misery for the majority of the Palestinian workers and youth exposed soon a different reality from the propaganda dreams of a bright future after the establishment of the PA.
The constant threats of Israeli intervention helped Hamas in consolidating its grip over Gaza / Image: public domain
On a capitalist basis, the West Bank and above all Gaza could never experience an economic development on their own, also because Israel would simply not allow it. Only a small layer of the Palestinian elite enjoyed the meagre benefits of the new situation. Arafat’s promise to turn Gaza into a Singapore of the Middle East sounds now to many Palestinians as a cruel joke. Interestingly the Hamas leaders – who don’t have any real alternative to offer – are now echoing the same promise.
In 2005 Sharon decided Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, but that did not mean for a moment that Israel decreased its pressure against the Palestinian population. The growing discontent against the PA and the Fatah leadership eventually brought about the 2006 election victory by the Islamic fundamentalist movement of Hamas, triggering the political division of the PA and the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is still continuing. The horrendous crimes of the two Gaza “Wars” of 2008-09 and 2014 showed what the so-called peace process under the wings of US and European imperialism meant in practice. The first, denominated by the Israeli army “Operation Cast Lead” saw 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed, not to speak of the thousands of injured and the destruction of large parts of the shaky Gaza infrastructure. The same scenario was repeated on even a bigger scale in 2014 (2,300 Palestinians and 73 Israelis killed). The very figures of the casualties are telling of the asymmetry of the firepower in these so-called wars.
The constant threats of Israeli intervention paradoxically helped Hamas in consolidating its grip over Gaza and achieve the internal suppression of most secular and socialist opposition. Now, 12 years later we are witnessing again the same mechanism at work.
The threat of Hamas has been skilfully used by the Israeli ruling class and by Netanyahu in particular as a means of consolidating their grip over society, after facing rising criticism and opposition to the austerity policies imposed by the government on the Israeli working class. Corruption scandals have undermined Netanyahu’s authority to a great extent and the still relatively small but significant demonstrations of tens of thousands of people over the past few months against the government policy on immigration and against corruption show that the potential for a stronger movement against the government exists.
The shooting of unarmed protesters in Gaza and the defiant attitude of the Palestinian youth has also undermined the credibility of the government.
The crisis of capitalism in Israel is creating the basis for further convulsions in the area, which will put on the agenda once again the need to unify the struggle of the Palestinians in Gaza and the Territories with the struggle of the working class and youth within Israel against the policy of austerity, war and class inequality ruthlessly imposed by the Israeli ruling elite.
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Henry Ford College Hosts “John Loree: Active at 85” Art Exhibit Until Nov. 23 User Submitted
When: Thu., Nov. 3, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Mon., Nov. 7, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tue., Nov. 8, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Wed., Nov. 9, 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Thu., Nov. 10, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Mon., Nov. 14, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tue., Nov. 15, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Wed., Nov. 16, 9 a.m.-8 p.m., Thu., Nov. 17, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Mon., Nov. 21, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tue., Nov. 22, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. and Wed., Nov. 23, 9 a.m.-8 p.m. 2016
Email: sglazer@hfcc.edu
Henry Ford College (HFC) is hosting the “John Loree: Active 85” art exhibit from now until Wednesday, Nov. 23, in the Sisson Art Gallery of the MacKenzie Fine Arts Center (Building F) on the main campus. The Sisson Gallery hours are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. In addition, there will be two “Meet the Artists” receptions in the Sisson Art Gallery. The first is for the HFC community on Wednesday, Nov. 9, from 3:30 to 6 p.m., and the second is for the general public.
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5101 Evergreen, Dearborn Greater Dearborn Area MI 48126
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Henry Ford Community College MacKenzie Fine Arts Center (0.25 miles)
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Here’s how the government just made it easier for companies to rip you off
By James Dennin
The Senate voted Oct. 25 to end a major consumer safeguard designed to stop banks and other financial institutions from slipping certain language into the fine print when you sign “I agree” (or check a box digitally) when buying a product or service. The rule senators eliminated would have protected consumers by making it easier to sue companies over wrongdoing — like Wells Fargo’s opening of sham accounts or Equifax’s security breach.
The vote was a 50-50 tie, with the deciding vote cast by Vice President Mike Pence — and senators who voted to remove the protection included Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), as well as Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), up for reelection in 2018. On Nov. 1, President Donald Trump signed the resolution officially nullifying the rule.
Announced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in July 2016, the rule had banned the use of “binding arbitration clauses” in certain agreements. Binding or forced arbitration is when a consumer agrees to settle any legal disputes through an arbitrator selected by the company — instead of through the courts — thus waiving their right to join class-action lawsuits. Even users of Pokémon Go, for example, might not realize they have agreed not to sue the makers of the game (say, if they get injured while playing).
“Arbitration clauses in contracts for products like bank accounts and credit cards make it nearly impossible for people to take companies to court when things go wrong,” CFPB director Richard Cordray said in an announcement about the rule. “These clauses allow companies to avoid accountability by blocking group lawsuits and forcing people to go it alone or give up.”
The CFPB enacted the rule after commissioning a study comparing award outcomes from binding arbitration and class-action lawsuits. Over a five-year period studied, the lawsuits resulted in payouts to some 34 million consumers.
Arbitrators, or the other hand, awarded just $360,000 to 78 consumers — even though there were 1,000 cases during the two-year period. Consumer advocates say those large class-action payouts are necessary as a warning against predatory behavior.
Equifax CEO Richard Smith came under fire for continuing to use binding arbitration clauses. Carolyn Kaster/AP
“Just weeks after holding hearings on scandals of historic proportion, the Senate granted Equifax and Wells Fargo a ‘get out of jail free card,’” said Amanda Werner, of Americans for Financial Reform and Public Citizen.
“Rather than pass meaningful legislation to help the 145 million Americans harmed by the data breach, a slim Republican majority chose to take away our only chance at holding financial giants accountable.”
Critics of the CFPB rule said it went too far, and opened the door to frivolous lawsuits. Class-action lawsuits, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) told the Associated Press, pay out an average of just $32, while attorneys make millions.
Yet a 2010 paper from the American Bar Association found that of the $33 billion in class-action awards paid out in 2006 and 2007, lawyers pocketed about 15%. “So who does forced arbitration help?” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told the AP. “Wall Street banks and other huge corporations that never pay the price for cheating working people.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) expressed a similar sentiment on Twitter, calling the vote a “giant wet kiss to Wall Street.”
Unfortunately, there’s not much that consumers can do about binding arbitration agreements, which are common in a number of industries beyond financial services — and also often show up in employment agreements.
“Even if you found an arbitration clause, you couldn’t convince them to take it out,” Werner said, in a previous interview with Mic. “You could maybe opt out of using the product, but because they’re everywhere, you essentially have to opt out of the marketplace, which just isn’t realistic. The No. 1 thing folks can do is to support federal reforms in this area.”
Coincidentally, Equifax will also report its earnings for the most recent quarter on Wednesday. It’s expected to have earned about $1.49 per share, more than last year, according to Marketwatch: Ironically, the breach could actually help the company by boosting demand for its products and services.
Nov. 2, 2017, 7:08 a.m. Eastern: This story has been updated.
Sign up for the Payoff — your weekly crash course on how to live your best financial life.
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Bergson on Science and Philosophy
The following article appeared in Process Studies, pp. 29-43, Vol. 2, Number 1, Spring, 1972. Process Studies is published quarterly by the Center for Process Studies, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Used by permission. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.
Bergson not only maintains an irreducible dualism of the ways of knowing but also the absolute character of both.
One of the most crucial issues underlying much of contemporary philosophy is the relation of philosophy and science. Phenomenologists and ordinary language philosophers come down hard on the side of there being a radical difference between these two modes of knowing while pragmatically inspired philosophers stress their continuity. The extremes of the spectrum axe probably marked by those who totally reserve the term “knowledge” for philosophical claims while relegating science to the realm of the conventional and the fictional, and those who run philosophy out of court while proclaiming that science is the measure of all things. Between these two extremes there are almost as many positions on this issue as there are philosophers who seriously reflect on it.
One of the most important gambits in this range is the Kantian and post-Kantian “appearance and reality” dichotomy. Herein, scientific claims are construed as merely phenomenal while those of speculative philosophy, if there are to be any, will be noumenal in nature. Inasmuch as Bergson sometimes talks this way, he is usually assimilated into this “appearance and reality” tradition. It is this assimilation against which I shall argue in this paper. Although Bergson does call scientific knowledge “relative” and philosophical knowledge “absolute,” it will be my contention that it is fundamentally wrong to interpret this distinction in the Kantian spirit. When such is done not only is Bergson’s historical position radically misrepresented, but a position philosophically different from the Kantian is suppressed from the range of possible alternatives.
The locus classicus for the Kantian interpretation of Bergson’s position is the introductory paragraph of his Introduction to Metaphysics:
If we compare the various ways of defining metaphysics and of conceiving the absolute, we shall find, despite apparent discrepancies, that philosophers agree in making a deep distinction between two ways of knowing a thing. The first implies going all around it, the second entering into it. The first depends on the viewpoint chosen and the symbols employed, while the second as taken from no viewpoint and rests on no symbol. Of the first kind of knowledge we shall say that it stops at the relative; of the second that, wherever possible, it attains the absolute. (CM 159)
Throughout the course of this paper I shall argue that the proper interpretation of “relative” as it is used in this text bears not on the subjective notion of an object’s relation to a knower but on the objective factor of the object’s own relations. In other words, it is not Bergson’s point that science is relative rather than objective, but that it has to do with relations rather than essences.
The paper as divided into four parts. In the first I shall examine Bergson s specific attempt to disassociate himself from the Kantian tradition. In parts two and three I shall examine his particular analyses of the scientific and the philosophical ways of knowing respectively and in the fourth part his reintegration of them in a somewhat unified picture. In the conclusion I shall briefly sketch what I think are the major difficulties with his whole program.
I. Bergson on Kant
Far from claiming to be Kantian, Bergson at least claims to be diametrically opposed to the necessary relegation of human knowledge (either scientific or philosophical) to the sphere of the merely phenomenal. He is specifically concerned to disassociate himself from that dimension of Kantianism whereby there is no possibility of knowing the real structures of existing things, but only objects constituted by their relations to us. This radical restriction of all knowledge, Bergson contends, follows from an essentially fallacious presentation of certain philosophical problems. In an effort to restore knowledge to the sphere of the absolute, he gives three distinct (though related) refutations of Kantian relativism.
The first of these concerns the questions of the antinomies. According to Bergson. the unchecked speculations of the human mind, an essentially practical instrument, inevitably lead to philosophical problems which are and will remain insoluble because they are presented backwards. Kant rightly saw the problems to be insoluble; but precisely because he did not appreciate the error in their presentation, he arrived at the conclusion that all knowledge was relative and that the absolute was impossible of attainment. The Kantian arguments for the rejection of any absolute knowledge can be seen to dissolve, however, once the true cause of the antinomies is uncovered. This being accomplished, Bergson feels, it will be possible to recover human knowledge from the depths of relativism. The key is to appreciate the fact that the antinomies are not necessary but of man’s making: “They did not come from the things themselves but from an automatic transfer to speculation of habits contracted in action, and what a careless attitude of the intellect had done, an effort on the part of the intellect could undo; this for the human mind would be a liberation” (CM 71).
Bergson, however, obviously feels that the relativistic attitude toward knowledge is not so easily dispelled as this selection from Creative Mind might lead one to believe. He realized that although one of its proximate origins may lie in the antinomies, its roots in the Kantian philosophy go much deeper than this. In Creative Evolution he gives a more thorough analysis of the historical factors leading to Kantian relativism and the misunderstandings they involve.
He feels that the relativism of knowledge was implicitly contained in a confusion in scientific theory from the time of Galileo: “The idea of a science and of an experience entirely relative to the human understanding was therefore implicitly contained in the conception of a science, one and integral composed of laws: Kant only brought it to light” (CE 251). There are two factors involved in this conception: science is supposed to be uniquely one, and made up entirely of laws. Granting this description it can be argued that since a law is a relation, and a relation is essentially a comparison, it has objective reality only for an intelligence that represents to itself several terms at the same time. Hence, an experience made of laws, that is, of terms related to other terms, is an experience made of comparisons, which before we receive it. has already had to pass through an atmosphere of intellectuality (CE 2 1).
Bergson argues, however, that there is operative here a fundamental confusion between the generality of laws and that of genera. Though intelligence may be necessary to condition terms by relation to each other, we may conceive that in certain cases the terms themselves may exist independently. This being granted, there is a possibility of absolute knowledge:
And if besides relations of term to term, experience also presents to us independent terms, the living genera being something quite different from systems of laws, one-half, at least, of our knowledge bears on the “thing-in-itself,” the very reality. This knowledge may be very difficult, just because it no longer builds up its own object and is obliged, on the contrary, to submit to it; but however little it cuts into its object, it is into the absolute itself that it bites. We may go further: the other half of knowledge is no longer so radically relative, as certain philosophers say, if we can establish that it bears upon a reality of inverse order, a reality which we always express in mathematical laws, that is to say in relations that imply comparisons, but which lends itself to this work only because it is weighted with spatiality and consequently with geometry. It is the confusion of two kinds of order that lies behind the relativism of the moderns. (CE 251f)
In this paragraph he argues for the absolute character of both philosophical and scientific knowledge. One-half of our knowledge, the philosophical, can bear upon the absolute because it is not concerned with laws but with real genera. Even the other half, the scientific, is not completely relative because there is one aspect of reality which is geometrical and is the foundation for our mathematical laws. There are two distinct orders in reality and their confusion lies behind modern relativism.
This question of order brings Bergson to the third source of Kantian relativism, again founded on a misunderstanding. He maintains that the whole object of the Critique of Pure Reason is to explain how a particular order is superimposed on supposedly incoherent materials. Kant’s solution is that the mind imposes its form on the sensible manifold with the consequence that the order we find in things is the order which we ourselves put in them. This explanation has two results, both of which involve a “degradation” of human knowledge. Science would be legitimate but relative to our faculty of knowing, and metaphysics would be impossible since there would be no knowledge outside of science. Both conclusions subject the human mind to an unwarranted limitation. Bergson’s radical objection to this whole series of moves is that it rests on a positive idea of absolute disorder, an idea which he claims to be nonexistent. “Absolute disorder” is a mere expression by which one designates an oscillation of the mind between two different orders, in which case it is absurd to suppose that disorder logically and chronologically precedes order. The merit of Kantianism, for Bergson, has been to develop this natural illusion In all its consequences and to present it in systematic form. But it does rest on the illusion, and “once we dispel the illusion we immediately restore to the human mind, through science and through metaphysics, a knowledge of the absolute” (CM 65).
The Kantian analysis, however, is not without its value. It has an important negative role, inasmuch as it shows the direction which philosophy and science must follow if they are to avoid relativity. Kant prepared the way for a new philosophy which might have established itself on the grounds of a higher effort of intuition. Consciousness, by two darts of opposite direction, might be able to grasp from within and no longer perceive merely from without the two forms of reality, matter and mind. This twofold effort could enable us as far as possible to grasp the absolute. Moreover, “in the course of this operation, we should see intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out of the whole of mind, and intellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited but not relative” (CE 389). Hence, the Kantian analysis has a double negative yield. First, it points out the direction any scientific knowledge bearing upon the absolute would have to take. More importantly, however, it indicates the kind of knowing power necessary to make absolute metaphysical knowledge a possibility. Bergson considers this latter negative influence the greatest service Kant rendered to speculative philosophy: “He definitely established that if metaphysics is possible, it can be so only through an effort of intuition” (CM 140).
Such is Bergson’s analysis of Kantian relativism. A complete relativism of either mode of knowing, scientific or philosophical, he considers not only to be an unwarranted restriction of the human mind but also to be contrary to our fundamental experience. We know reality, not perfectly, not exhaustively, but reality nonetheless. Whatever partial knowledge we do have in either mode does have absolute value, does touch some real aspect of the world; for in the absolute we live and move and have our being. The knowledge we possess of it is incomplete, no doubt, but neither external nor relative: “it is reality itself, in the profoundest meaning of the word, that we reach by the combined and progressive development of science and philosophy” (CE 218).
Bergson, then, explicitly claims to be profoundly un-Kantian However, it is one thing for him to say this and quite another to give a philosophical account of its possibility. In the next section of this paper each of the two modes of knowing will be treated positively in order to indicate their particular objective referents and the claim concerning their absolute value. While he does maintain that both science and philosophy bear upon absolute reality, Bergson would be the first to uphold the fact that they are radically different ways of knowing radically different aspects of reality. Science and philosophy differ, then, both in object and in method. The object and method of science are inert matter and intellectual analysis, while those of philosophy are real duration and intuition. The two different ways of knowing bear upon two different aspects of the absolute. This will be brought out more dearly as we examine in a more positive and specific manner, first science, and then philosophy.
II. Scientific Knowledge
Science is essentially a function of the human intellect. i.e. discursive reason, and the intellect is essentially an instrument of action. Bergson maintains that the defining function of our intellect, as the evolution of life has fashioned it, is to be a light for our conduct, to make ready for our action on things. Its role is to foresee in a given situation the events favorable or unfavorable, which may follow thereupon. Thus, it instinctively selects in a given situation whatever is like something already known, and in applying the principle that “like produces like,” tries to get some prevision of future states. This pragmatic nature of the intellect tells us something about the objects with which it deals. The essential function of intelligence is therefore to see the way out of a difficulty in any circumstances whatever, to find out what is most suitable, what answers best the questions asked. Hence, “it bears essentially on the relations between a given situation and the means of utilizing it. . . . Where activity is directed toward manufacture, there knowledge necessarily bears on relations” (CE 166). Intellectual knowledge, then, is essentially rational. It is that way of knowing a thing which proceeds “by going all around it,” by relating it to other known reference points, rather than by “entering into it” (CM 159). And scientific knowledge is a function of this intellect. Science carries this faculty to its highest possible degree of exactitude and precision, but it does not alter its essential character (CE 34). Science, then, will be a relational analysis of reality.
Since it is the function of the intellect, and accordingly science, to grasp relations, the obvious point to be examined is the nature of these relations. Here Bergson issues an initial caution. The shift from a consideration of science as essentially relational to a consideration of science as merely relative is easily made once we start considering the intellect as a speculative faculty. We would then be tempted to take the general categories of the understanding for something absolute and inexplicable whose function would be some sort of unification (CE 167). In this context knowledge would become relative. If the intellect proceeds as it does simply because of a drive for unification, then the whole of our knowledge would seem to be relative to certain requirements of the mind that might have been entirely different from what they are. Then the claim would be made — for an intellect differently shaped, knowledge would have been different. Thus, intellect being no longer dependent on anything, everything becomes dependent on it; and so, having placed the understanding too high, we end by putting too low the knowledge it gives us. On Bergson’s account, then, knowledge becomes relative as soon as the intellect is made a kind of absolute (CE 168).
This relativistic conclusion can be avoided, he maintains, if we retain a proper view of intellect, i.e., as a tool for action rather than of pure speculation. If the intellectual form of man has been gradually modeled on the reciprocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material environment, if it is a mechanism of adjustment, how could it not reveal to us something of the very structure of these bodies? If we refer to this active pragmatic role of the intellect in the world, a role which does issue in success inasmuch as it does enable us to handle the real, it seems to follow that the relations the intellect deals with are real aspects of the world. Bergson will admit that a mind born to speculate or to dream might deform or transform the real or perhaps even create it. But, “an intellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute” (CE xxi). There seems to be a sort of communion of intellect and reality evidenced by the fact of fruitful action. The objects of the intellect — these relations — must be aspects of reality because in dealing with them the intellect meets with success.
Even more so than in individual actions is this evidenced by the great success of science, which is but intellect in macrocosmic proportions. The operations by which science isolates and explains a system cannot be altogether artificial. If it had no objective foundation, we could not explain why it is dearly indicated in some cases and impossible in others (CE 13). These do seem to be the facts of experience — the experience of successful action. They indicate that although science is relational, it is not relative. Bergson realizes, however, that this is hardly an explanation, but rather a fact of experience that calls for an explanation. It remains for him to outline the ontological structures that make possible the absolute value of such relational analysis.
Having put aside relativism, Bergson is now faced with the task of providing some sort of ontological guarantee of the correspondence of the structures of the intellect and at least some aspect of reality. He finds this guarantee in the dynamics of evolution:
Neither does matter determine the form of the intellect, nor does the intellect impose its form on matter, nor have matter and intellect been regulated in regard to one another by we know not what pre-established harmony, but intellect and matter have progressively adapted themselves one to the other in order to attain at least a common form. This adaption, moreover, has been brought about quite naturally, because it is the same inversion of the same movement which creates at once the intellectuality of the mind and the materiality of things. (CE 226)
Hence, between the logical structures of mind and the structures of matter there exists a harmony, proceeding not from any imposition of divine authority, but from the working out of the evolutionary process itself. The correspondence of the intellect and material reality does not have to be mysterious; it is due to their simultaneous genesis.
Bergson never tires of insisting that man is not something outside the stream of evolution but is himself a product of it, with the result that theory of knowledge and theory of life are inseparable. The one analysis of evolution will illumine both. It is, then, with a certain confidence that he attempts the rather prodigious task of explaining the simultaneous engendering of intelligence and material bodies: ~we are now, then, to attempt the genesis of intellect at the same time as the genesis of material bodies — two enterprises that are evidently correlative if it be true that the main lines of our intellect mark out the general form of our action on matter, and that the detail of matter is ruled by the requirements of our action” (CE 2040. Thus, intellectuality and materiality have been constituted, in detail, by reciprocal adaption; both are derived from a wider and higher form of existence. Bergson imaginatively replaces them in this context in order to “explain” their genesis.
On the basis of empirical analyses Bergson maintains that in the cosmological order there are two main currents, the organic and the inorganic, and that in the gnoseological order there are also two clearly defined powers, instinct (intuition being instinct become conscious) and intelligence (CE 203). Each of these dualisms (organic-inorganic, instinct-intelligence) derived from a more fundamental source; in the first case, the primordial flux, and in the second case, consciousness (CE 204). Ultimately, as soon as we abandon the prejudice that man is exempted from the implications of evolution, the flux and consciousness become identified as the one fundamental source of all reality. From this primal force, then, the same process has cut out both matter and intellect simultaneously, thus accounting for their evident agreement and defining their particular characteristics.
At the origin and heart of reality, then, is a creative impulse, and materiality is but an interruption of this movement. Matter is not another positive force, but the result of the “retardation” and consequent “extension” of the original impetus (CE 262). He says:
The whole of reality is an undivided advance forward to successive creations. It seems to us, then, that the complexity of the material elements and the mathematical order that binds them together must arise automatically when within the whole a partial interruption or inversion is produced. Moreover, as the intellect itself is cut out of the mind by a process of the same kind, it is attuned to this order and complexity, and admires them because it recognizes itself in them. (CE 237)
Hence, the same movement by which the vital force materializes itself, i.e., breaks itself up into objects excluding one another, brings the mind to form itself into intellect, i.e., into distinct concepts excluding one another. And the more matter is spatialized, the more consciousness is intellectualized. Moreover, this distention of the creative impulse involves a natural mathematical ordering of the extension, to which there corresponds the natural geometrization of the mind. Herein lies the ground of the absolute value of scientific analysis. There is a mathematical order in reality, a real spatialization, corresponding to the mathematical relations our intellect sets up. There is a correspondence because both factors have been simultaneously generated by “distention,” and confirmed by interaction. It is this which is the ontological foundation of science’s success: “Its success would be inexplicable, if the movement which constitutes materiality were not the same movement which, prolonged by us to its end. that is to say, to homogeneous space, results in making us count, measure. follow in their respective variations terms that are functions one of another” (CE 239). The intellect naturally tends toward space and mathematics, intellectuality and materiality being of the same nature and having been produced in the same way. This retardation of the creative forte, then, has a spatializing or mathematical effect on part of reality, and consequently on part of the mind. The absolute value and the success of a science of mathematical form is understandable inasmuch as matter already possesses everything necessary to adapt itself to our formulae (CE 240).
But has Bergson really proved too much? If reality has an inherent mathematical structure, and mans intellect is naturally geometrical, should not science be a complete and exhaustive account of reality? In accounting for the absolute character of scientific knowledge, hasn’t be eliminated the need for any other kind of explanation? Nothing could be further from Bergson’s mind. Two very important factors in his thought militate against drawing such a conclusion: first, the degree of correspondence he admits between the intellect and materiality; and secondly, the fact that it is only materiality that the intellect has reference to.
In the first place, he maintains that there is a certain correspondence between the intellect and inert matter, but not a congruity. Material reality does not go quite as far in this direction of isolation and geometrization as the intellect would have it go. Matter has a tendency to constitute isolated systems that can be treated geometrically, but it is only a tendency. Matter does not go to the end, and the isolation is never complete. If science does go to the end and isolate completely, it is for the convenience of study (CE 13). Intellect is very much in tune with matter, and this is why Bergson will even say that the physics and metaphysics of inert matter are very near each other. They are very near but they are not identical. Science, aspiring to the mathematical form, over-accentuates the spatiality of matter; its formulae are too precise and constantly in need of remaking. It is not the case of there being a definite system of mathematical laws at the base of nature, but rather the fact that mathematics represents simply the side to which matter inclines (CE 240). There seems to be some surd element (surd as far as science is concerned) even in material reality that makes it fall short of the absolute isolation and geometrization of the intellect and of science. This surd, of course, is the residual influence of the ever-present creative force whose retardation is matter.
This brings me to the second, and most important, restriction of science mentioned above. Science bears on reality itself; it has absolute value, but only with reference to the domain of inert matter. With regard to the fundamental principle in reality, the original creative force, science can have at best a completely relative value. It can and does treat this area of movement and life, but it necessarily treats it as if it were inert. In this instance, “the knowledge we arrive at becomes altogether relative to our faculty of action; it is no more than a symbolic verity” (CE 214). Hence, the intellect, and accordingly science, can never attain any knowledge of the life force as it is in itself. It can never have any absolute knowledge of the positive, creative current in reality. This latter is strictly the sphere of intuition and philosophy.
III. Philosophical Knowledge
Bergson insists that philosophy is not just generalized science. There were and are those who would maintain that the effort of the philosopher should be to embrace in one great synthesis the results of the particular sciences. His task would be to take possession of existing science and bring it to increasing degrees of generality, and to proceed from condensation to condensation, to what has been called the unification of knowledge (CM 122). This conception of philosophy Bergson feels to be injurious both to science and to philosophy. In the first place, this view of philosophy, proposed in the name of science and out of respect for science, is really quite insulting to the latter:
Here, if you like, is a man who, over a long period of time, has followed a certain scientific method and laboriously gained his results, who says to us: “Experience, with the help of reasoning, leads to this point; scientific knowledge begins here and ends there; such are my conclusions”; and the philosopher would have the right to answer: “Very well, leave it to me, and I’ll show you what I can do with it! The knowledge you bring me unfinished, I shall complete. What you put before me in bits, I shall put together. With the same materials, since it is understood that I shall keep to the facts that you have observed, with the same kind of work, since I must restrict myself as you did to induction and deduction, I shall do more and better than you have done.” Truly a very strange pretension! (CM 122)
The philosopher is, in effect, saying that the scientist is sort of an under laborer who can’t see even the more general scientific implications of what he’s doing, and must wait for the philosopher to generalize his results. Bergson feels that this whole outlook depreciates science. The scientist is certainly able to forge ahead and generalize his results; he has no need for the philosopher in this properly scientific task.
Secondly such a conception is degrading to philosophy. It should be clear, Bergson argues, that the reason why the scientist stops at a certain point along the road of generalization and synthesis is because beyond that point objective evidence and sure reasoning do not permit us to advance. Hence, in claiming to go farther in the same direction, the philosopher automatically implies that he is making arbitrary generalizations that go beyond the scope of the evidence: “To make of philosophy an ensemble of generalities which goes beyond scientific generalization, is to insist that the philosopher be content with the plausible” (CM 123). But Bergson maintains that such is hardly the lot of philosophy. It is not to be relegated to the merely plausible over-extension of the evidence, for philosophy is not a synthesis of particular sciences but a unique way of knowing reality.
It will be recalled that Bergson has maintained that reality itself is not simple, but is made up of two opposing currents, one being Just the negation or condensation of the other. Moreover, it is only with regard to the negative current, the sphere of inert matter, that science has any absolute value. When extended and applied to the positive principle of reality, science has only relative value inasmuch as it cannot absolutely lay hold of the real, but must “run around it” with its various symbolic interpretations. This positive aspect of reality — duration, life, spirit, the creative impetus itself — which is outside the grasp of science, is the real objective of philosophy. Just as science is at home in the sphere of inert matter, so philosophy is at home in the sphere of life. Each inquiry pertains to a different aspect of reality.
Moreover, not only does philosophy have its own distinct object, but obviously will demand a distinct method consonant with it. For as we saw earlier, the intellect is attuned to inert matter; and in the face of any instance of the creative aspect of the real, it can but “run around it” without ever grasping its reality. The method of philosophy, then, must be something different from this intellectual analysis; it must be a way of knowing that enables us to sympathize with the real, to be transported into it and coincide with it, instead of going all around it with our conceptual frameworks (CM 161). This Bergson calls intuition. And he concludes: “to metaphysics, then, we assign a limited object, principally spirit, and a special method, mainly intuition” (CM 37).
But what guarantee have we that this type of knowledge, this intuition, is possible? Putting aside the question of an intuition of things external for a moment, Bergson assures us that we have one fundamental intuition which is both clear and certain — the intuition of our own internal duration. It is in terms of this primary instance, in fact, that intuition is defined: intuition is the direct vision of the mind by the mind — nothing intervening, no refraction through the prism; it signifies first of all consciousness, but immediate consciousness, a vision that is scarcely distinguishable from the object seen, a knowledge which is contact and even coincidence” (CM 32). This claim of assurance with regard to the possibility of intuition, however, seems to greatly restrict the scope of philosophy. In view of this fundamental meaning of intuition, philosophy should be and is primarily defined as a “science of the mind” (CM 79). But philosophy so defined seems to be locked within the confines of human subjectivity, and hence unable to shed any light on the structure of reality in general. There doesn’t seem to be any ground for the extension of this absolute knowledge of the positive current in reality beyond the sphere of our own internal duration.
But again Bergson reminds us of evolution. We are not isolated from this cosmic process but are an element in it, and our internal duration is but an instance of that creative current that is running through all reality. Hence, since our duration is in communion with the positive current in all reality, our intuition is not so circumscribed as originally thought:
So the intuition of our duration. . . . puts us in contact with a whole continuity of duration which we should try to follow either downwardly or upwardly: in both cases we can dilate ourselves indefinitely by a more and more vigorous effort, in both cases transcend ourselves. In the first case, we advance toward a duration more and more scattered, whose palpitations, more rapid than ours, dividing our simple sensation, dilute its quality into quantity: at the limit would be the homogeneous, the pure repetition by which we shall define materiality. In advancing in the other direction, we go towards a duration which stretches, tightens, and becomes more and more intensified: at the limit would be eternity. Between these two extremes moves intuition, and this movement is metaphysics itself. (CM 187f)
This is the ontological structure that makes possible the absolute value of philosophical knowledge. On this basis it is possible to make the inference: “Such is my inner life and such also is life in general” (CE 281). Through intuition we can come into contact with and enter into that aspect of reality that is beyond the scope of science, the creative impulse itself in all its manifestations.
While this framework does claim to render possible the absolute value of a philosophical knowledge of external reality, it might be objected that it goes too far. If we are able to attain this intuition of our own duration, and this puts us in immediate contact with the durational current that is running through all reality, why isn’t our philosophy complete? It would seem that such an intuitional philosophy would completely mirror the positive aspect of reality. But again Bergson has a ready answer. He concedes that if this intuitional state could be sustained, we could attain this complete and exhaustive philosophy: intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond a few instants, would not only make the philosopher agree with his own thought, but also all philosophers with each other. . . . The object of philosophy would be reached if this intuition could be sustained and generalized” (CE 260f).
Unfortunately, however, such a sustained intuition does not seem to be possible. Man is not the vital current itself, hut this current already loaded down with matter. All that seems within his power is the attainment of a few “fleeting intuitions, which light up their object only at distant intervals” (CE 292). The good part of his philosophy is still made up of dialectic, which has both advantages and disadvantages. It does enable intuition to break itself up into concepts and so be communicated to other men, but it also introduces a certain arbitrary note into philosophical knowledge. But such is man’s lot — his philosophy (to use Bergson’s image) is like a tornado that touches solid ground only at distant intervals. Its life blood is intuition, but it is an intuition which is infrequently achieved and almost impossible to sustain. Hence, we can not expect of philosophy an exhaustive knowledge of reality of even absolute certitude: “In the realm of experience, on the contrary, with incomplete solutions and provisional conclusions it will achieve an increasing probability which can ultimately become the equivalent of certitude” (CM 45f). Such, then, is the object, method and limit of philosophical knowledge.
IV. Interrelationship of Science and Philosophy
To the degree that we have treated these two modes of knowing, science and philosophy, in isolation from one another, we have been untrue to the Bergsonian spirit. Neither operates in a vacuum but in the context of the other. Having seen the characteristics of each, we must now indicate their interrelationships and interdependences in order to appreciate his integral view of human knowing.
In the first place, philosophy does have a certain dependence upon science. In addition to the liberating view Bergson takes of technology, which would be an extrinsic contribution, science does play a role intrinsic to the working out of philosophy itself. The philosopher does not work in a void; even a cursory glance at the history of philosophy would point out that the masters of modern philosophy have been men who had assimilated all the material of the sciences of their time. Moreover, Bergson insists that the partial eclipse of metaphysics since the last half century has been caused more than anything else by the extraordinary difficulty the philosopher experiences today in making contact with a science already much too scattered (CM 200). In this spirit Bergson insists that “Metaphysics can not get along without the other sciences” (CM 168).
Nowhere is this dependence closer than in areas such as psychology and biology. Even the direct contact of the self with the self, the primary instance of intuition must be preceded by a great number of psychological analyses. The point is made even more forcefully with regard to evolution. If Spencer had begun by putting to himself the question of the hereditability of acquired characteristics, his evolutionism would, no doubt, have taken an altogether different form (CE 87). In this regard Bergson counsels the philosopher: “Nowhere is it clearer that philosophers cannot today content themselves with vague generalities, but must follow the scientists in experimental detail and discuss the results with them” (CE 87). And this points up one area wherein the philosopher would do well to emulate the scientist. In sharp contrast to philosophical theories, the scientific explanation gives evidence of a great deal of control and precision on the part of the scientist. This precision in fitting the explanation to the evidence should be carried over into philosophy: “The only explanation we should accept as satisfactory is one which fits tightly to its object with no space between them, no crevice in which any other explanation might equally well be lodged; one which fits the object only and to which alone the object lends itself” (CM 11). Then philosophy could progress.
Even more so, however, is science impregnated with metaphysical intuition. While science does tend to mold reality in fixed and static frameworks, the history of this very science itself is a series of creative advances forward, and these are the workings of intuition. Bergson’s favorite example of this is the ; introduction of the calculus: “It is my belief, in fact, that the idea of differential, or rather, fluxion, was suggested to science by a vision of this kind; metaphysical in its origins, it became scientific as it grew more rigorous, that is, expressible in static terms” (CM 33). It was an instance of creative intuition that suggested this substitution of a mathematics of becoming for the mathematics of the ready-made. It is true, Bergson admits, that it has been able to realize its marvelous applications only through the invention of certain symbols, and that, if the intuition we have just mentioned is at the origin of the invention, it is the symbol alone that intervenes in the application (CM 190f). But this is the way intuition operates in science: it effects certain creative break-throughs but then is immediately covered over by the static or symbolic translation of them. It is present, but it is “stopped up.” Occasionally it breaks through, and then science takes another stride forward to its next stop.
Bergson concludes, then, that science and philosophy need an intuition. A truly intuitive philosophy would realize the union so greatly desired of mathematics and science:
At the same time that it constituted metaphysics in positive science — I mean progressive and indefinitely perfectible — it would lead the positive sciences, properly speaking, to become conscious of their true bearing, which is often very superior to what they suppose. It would put more of science into metaphysics and more of metaphysics into science. Its result would be to re-establish the continuity between the intuitions which the various positive sciences have obtained at intervals in the course of their history, and which they have obtained only by strokes of genius. (CM 192)
In such an interaction, all our knowledge, both scientific and metaphysical, would be heightened; and the extent of our absolute knowledge greatly increased. Both aspects of reality would be within our grasp by the combined and progressive development of science and philosophy. Both ways of knowing commune in experience, which, together, they explain.
We have seen that Bergson not only maintains an irreducible dualism of the ways of knowing but also the absolute character of both. Both science and philosophy proceed by different methods and bear upon different aspects of the real; through the combined efforts of both we can grasp to some degree the material and immaterial dimensions of reality. Thus, in Bergson we have a position with regard to the relation of philosophy and science which is somewhere toward the middle of the spectrum sketched at the beginning of this paper. There remains, of course, the philosophically important question of its viability.
It seems to me that the Bergsonian position is radically vulnerable to several interrelated criticisms that have their origin in the work of C. S. Peirce and which have become almost contemporary commonplaces. On the most general level the target would be his designation of intuition as the primary source of philosophical understanding. In a set of papers belatedly gaining recognition as philosophical classics, Peirce submitted the concept of intuition to a sustained critique. ((The papers referred to are “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man” and “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” in volume five of C. S. Peirce: Collected Papers, edited by C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l931-35.))) His contention was threefold. First, even if we have intuitions we have no intuitive power of distinguishing an intuition from another cognition, thus nullifying their alleged role in grounding knowledge. Secondly, in fact we don’t have intuitions. And thirdly, neither scientific nor philosophical knowledge depends on our having them.
Toward establishing the first point Peirce puts forward a whole battery of arguments of differing texture. If we did have such a power of intuitively distinguishing our intuitions from other cognitions, surely there would be reasonable agreement among men as to which cognitions are intuitive; but, of course, history attests to the contrary. Moreover, the general psychological fact of perceptual supplementation renders it impossible in concrete to distinguish sharply between what we have seen and what we have inferred. From these and other considerations it seems to follow that even if we have intuitions, we have no power of intuitively distinguishing them from our other cognitions. On the second point Peirce argues in the Kantian spirit that all knowledge is interpretation, or, that there is no premise that is not itself a conclusion. In answer to the infinite regress objection that there must be a first, Peirce maintains that knowing is a process, processes are continuous, and continuous series do not have first members. To establish his third point Peirce invokes the pragmatic shift of concern from origins to consequences and argues that knowledge is justified not because it has an absolute foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy though not all at once.
Specifically, Peirce goes after the positing of an intuitive knowledge of the self. Here he attacks not only the strong claim of an intuition of the self but even the more mitigated claim of an introspective knowledge thereof. His argument is that the positing of such an intuition or introspection is unnecessary because all the facts of self-knowledge can be explained given only known faculties operating under conditions known to exist.
He argues that the knowledge of the self arises only in and by means of social interaction; specifically, as an hypothesis to account for ignorance and error. As the child becomes aware of ignorance it is necessary to suppose a self in which this ignorance can inhere, and the dawning of error can be explained only by supposing a self which is fallible. On this account self-knowledge is always in fact inferential, but the inferences have become so habitual to us that it has the appearance of an immediate intuition. He goes on further to argue against an introspective knowledge of the self. Introspection is actually a weaker claim than intuition since it involves not a total lack of mediation but simply a direct knowledge of the internal world not derived from external observation. But Peirce argues that since knowledge involves classification, and classification the possibility of significant identification and reidentification, and such identification is possible only with regard to publicly accessible objects, it follows that our classificatory predicates apply primarily to external objects and only in a derived or parasitic sense to internal objects. Our knowledge of ourselves is, then, not introspective but dependent on external observation
Now the obvious Bergsonian objection to this whole line of reasoning is that Peirce’s arguments are telling only against the claim to have an intuitive knowledge which is at the same time conceptual. But Bergson’s point, it will be argued, is that there is genuinely non-conceptual knowledge. i.e., knowledge by acquaintance. This objection, while in a sense appropriate, brings to the fore many of the difficulties Peirce is worried about. To the degree that Bergson comes down hard on the non-conceptual character of intuition, to that degree intuition seems to lack the determinateness needed to enable it to function epistemically in grounding or falsifying metaphysical claims or at least as revealing the appropriateness or inappropriateness of certain metaphors. On the other hand, to the degree that the intuition is determinate enough to function metaphysically in this fashion, it would seem to have to be conceptual and thus subject to the above critique.
Moreover, these criticisms of Peirce are of more than simply historical interest — they have become the truisms of contemporary philosophy. In contemporary terms, Bergson’s general adherence to intuition would be seen as a paradigm case of “the myth of the given” and his specific intuition of the self as committing him to either pre-linguistic knowledge or the possibility of a private language. This, of course, is not to say that Bergson is wrong, but it is to say that this whole cluster of problems surrounding Bergson’s doctrine of intuition will have to be cleared up for his position to earn a contemporary hearing.
CE — Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Mitchell. New York: Modern Library, 1944.
CM — Henri Bergson, Creative Mind, trans. Andison. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946.
Content retrieved from: https://www.religion-online.org/article/bergson-on-science-and-philosophy/.
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michael@michaelangelina.com
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Roxborough is a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of the United States city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Roxborough is bordered to the southwest, along the Schuylkill River, by the neighborhood of Manayunk, along the northeast by the Wissahickon Creek section of Fairmount Park, and to the southeast by the neighborhood of East Falls. Beyond Roxbrough to the northwest is Montgomery County. Roxborough’s zip code is 19128. Most of Roxborough is in Philadelphia’s 21st Ward.
Roxborough’s significance lay in its position in the centre of some of Lowland Scotland’s most agriculturally fertile areas, and its position upon the River Tweed, which allowed river transport of goods via the main seaport of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Its position also acted as a barrier to English invasion.
The town stood on a defensible peninsula between the rivers Tweed and Teviot, with Roxburgh Castle guarding the narrow neck of the peninsula. Nothing remains of the town except some ruined segments of castle ramparts. Its site lies to the south of modern Kelso and Floors Castle, which lie on the other side of the Tweed. The Duke of Roxburghe owns the site.
English and Scots forces repeatedly captured and recaptured the town during the Scottish Wars of Independence. Its final recapture in 1460 saw the town and castle destroyed. After this time the town never regained its importance because the final English capture of Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1482 left Roxburgh with little reason to exist.
Roxborough Boundaries
Its bordered by Andorra on the north, Manayunk and East Falls to the south, and Wissahickon Valley to the east. While the precise location of these borders are ambiguous, its reasonable to say that everything northeast of Manayunk Avenue up to Henry Avenue (Ridge Corridor), and everything north of Leverington are part of the borough
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My true passion for real estate & my ability to offer the absolute highest level of service in the industry is my strongest attribute to continued success.
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A resource for reliable information about significant people, places, events, and things in Minnesota history.
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War and Conflict
Before European Contact: Pre-1585
Colonization: 1585-1763
Revolution and a New Nation: 1754-1800
Expansion and Reform: 1792-1861
Civil War and Reconstruction: 1850-1877
Development of an Industrial United States: 1870-1920
Great Depression and World War II: 1920-1945
Post-World War II United States: 1945-1989
The United States in a New Global Age: 1980-Present
Carver County Ghost Towns map
Ghost towns convey a certain image, thanks to popular culture. Despite this portrayal, ghost towns are simply former towns, places settled and then abandoned for a variety of reasons. Every state in the United States has them and they are part of the history of a region, including Carver County.
In Carver County, there are around twenty-one ghost towns. Their names are Swede Lake, Hazelton, Helvetia/Hollywood, Hancock, Mound St. Clair, Purity, Camden, Hyde's Lake, Schnapesburg, Assumption, Benton, Dahlgren, West Union, San Francisco, Yorkville, Oberles Corners, Augusta, Bongards, Gotha, and Scandia. These towns were religious communities, immigrant communities, farming towns, river towns, or railroad towns. Sometimes towns only existed on paper, not in reality. A speculator or developer would buy land from the government very cheaply, divide it up into plots on a map, and try to sell the plots to build a town. Many times the speculator failed to sell, and the "paper town" only existed as a name on a map.
A town needs many things for success, but they all fall into five main categories. First is access to enough natural resources, such as water, good soil, hunting grounds, and trees. Second, access to transportation such as ferries, steamboats, trains, cars, wagons, or buses can help a town thrive or fail. Strong organization makes a town more likely to thrive. Another key factor is citizens invested in the town, with a variety of roles to play. Finally, luck plays a pivotal role. Towns faced with disease or natural disasters often have a hard time recovering and rebuilding.
Other factors besides bad luck can contribute to the failure of a town. Fear of the unknown, like an unfamiliar land or unknown people, or fear of the American Indians whose land they were taking, could make residents reluctant to stay. Even when immigrants settled communities with others from the same country, sharing a culture and way of life, that very lack of diversity sometimes proved problematic in the town's eventual success.
San Francisco, named for the California city, was an early Carver County town that ultimately failed. It was founded by William Foster in 1854. He purchased land along the Minnesota River, divided it into claim lots, built the first store and a warehouse, and tried to sell other plots. San Francisco was named the first county seat soon after. The first school opened 1857-1858 with teacher Levi Williams and 1859 saw the start of a ferry operation across the river. On May 11, 1858, a meeting held in William Foster's warehouse declared San Francisco an official town. Those attending elected town officials such as a Mayor and Justice of the Peace.
San Francisco faced problems though, which led to its eventual abandonment. One of the first, and most important, was the county seat being moved to Chaska in 1856, eliminating one of the key reasons people visited the town. Second, the town site was located below a series of rapids on the river which led to poor river travel and frequent flooding. In 1863, flooding washed away the warehouse and several other buildings. Many were not rebuilt as flooding was a consistent problem. When founded, San Francisco's boundaries extended to include the town of Hancock. Residents of this area separated into their own town in 1868, taking their businesses with them. Eventually, San Francisco's population dwindled, and the town site became private farmland. In the end, San Francisco lasted for about ten years.
The Iustus family (also spelled Justus) from Sweden founded the town of Swede Lake, or Gotaholm, in 1856, near Watertown, along the banks of Swede Lake. Settlers founded nearby Watertown the same year. The two towns were unaware of each other, despite being only about two to three miles apart, until Swede Lake resident Abraham Hokinson got lost one night. He wandered until he found shelter in Watertown, and told his community about the nearby town when he found his way home. As time went on, Watertown became the more successful community and Swede Lake residents moved to the neighboring town, merging the two.
The Town of Helvetia, built between Hollywood and Watertown townships, was named by residents after their homeland. John Buhler founded Helvetia in 1856; he also built the first store. Helvetia is the ancient name of Switzerland, chosen by the Swiss immigrants who settled the town. Eventually, to attract other residents besides the Swiss, the town was renamed Hollywood on April 5, 1860, for what settlers thought to be an abundance of holly bushes in the area. Resident Jacob Lahr opened a sawmill, and built a bridge over the Crow River for easier travel, in 1869. A post office was opened in 1875, run by resident Jacob Lahr. He was succeeded by a Mrs. Zahler and August Ninnemann, under whom the office moved to nearby Mayer in 1889.
With the good came the bad for Helvetia, or Hollywood. The name change did not attract enough new residents. Roadways did not develop beyond trails through the brush. Families had few resources and struggled to make it. To make things more complicated, on one side of the town was a band of Dakota, on the other a band of Anishinaabe (Ojibwe). While the two bands got along with the white settlers, they fought often amongst themselves with the town caught between. Finally, an outbreak of diphtheria occured in 1884, killing much of the town's population. The remaining residents decided to move a few miles away to the town of Mayer, joining the history of these two towns. The merged town officially became the Village of Mayer on June 28, 1900.
Two other communities, those of St. Clair and St. Lawrence (partially in Scott County, partially in Carver County), were "paper towns". St. Lawrence was laid out by William H. Stodder and Charles L. Pierson in November 1856. Like many towns of the time, it failed. Though the land was divided into plots for sale and development, no structures were ever built. St. Clair was platted on the south fork of the Crow River, in Camden Township, in January 1857. Speculators sold lots to people in the eastern United States, but none ever settled or erected structures in the town.
Some ghost towns still have residents or buildings. For example, Bongards is still home to Bongards Creameries, and Hollywood Township to the Hollywood Sports Complex. Other towns, like logging community West Union, have a church and homes. However, these ghost towns are not incorporated and have no civic institutions such as town officials or a post office. They exist mainly in history books and memories.
Gould, Heidi. "Ghost Towns of Carver County." MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society. http://www.mnopedia.org/place/ghost-towns-carver-county (accessed January 15, 2021).
© Minnesota Historical Society
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.
First published: April 29, 2013
"Ghost Towns ." Educational program. Carver County Historical Society.
Holcombe, Maj. R.I., ed. Compendium of History and Biography of Carver and Hennepin Counties, Minnesota. Chicago: Henry Taylor and Company, 1915.
Maravelas, Paul Scheftel. "The Gehl Farm in San Francisco Township, Carver County, with some notes on the village of San Francisco, the Little Rapids, and the Wahpeton Village at that place." Site study. Compiled by the Carver County Historical Society for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
Mayer Booster Club. History of Helvetia-Mayer and Community. Lester Prairie, MN: Lester Prairie News, 1936.
Thilquist, Susan . "In the Tracks of the Swedish Settlers in Carver County." Driving tour pamphlet. Waconia, MN: Carver County Historical Society, 1988.
Warner, George E. and Charles M. Foote. History of the Minnesota Valley: Carver County. Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Company, 1882. Republished 1986.
Watertown Centennial: 1856 . . .1956. Watertown, MN: Watertown Activities, Inc., 1956.
Carver County Historical Society. Ghost Towns.
http://www.carvercountyhistoricalsociety.org/ghost_towns.php
Carter, William. Ghost Towns of the West. Menlo Park, California: Lane Magazine & Book Co., 1971.
Carver County Statehood Centennial Committee.Carver County: Today and Yesterday. N.p.: 1958.
Egerstrom, Lee, Minnesota 2020. "Minnesota Ghost Towns Haunt 500 Endangered Small Cities." Daily Planet, September 26, 2007.
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/minnesota-ghost-towns-haunt-500-endangered-small-cities/
Kimball, Willis M. "Minnesota's Ghost Towns." Minneapolis Journal, May 29, 1932.
Lofstrom, Ted and Lynne VanBrocklin Spaeth. Carver County: A Guide to Its Historic and Prehistoric Places. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1978.
"Reviews and Notes: Local History Items." Minnesota History 13, no. 3 (September 1932): 295–346.
http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/13/v13i03p295-346.pdf
Serres, Chris, et. al. "Part 1: Minnesota's New Ghost Towns." Star Tribune, April 21, 2008.
http://www.startribune.com/part-1-minnesota-s-new-ghost-towns/17932454/?refer=y
Tremblay, Ruth and Lois Schulstad. Images of America: Carver County. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011.
Urbanski, Lawrence Eugene. "A study of the disappearance of town settlements in the twenty-eight southern counties of the state of Minnesota." Thesis paper, Saint Mary's College, 1950.
Ghost Towns. Ghost Towns of Minnesota.
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/mn/mn.html
Bongards' Creameries
Gehl-Mittelsted Farm
Private Schools in Carver County
Public Schools in Carver County
In 1900, the town of Hollywood/Helvetia officially merges with neighboring Mayer, ending the independent existence of one of Carver County's last failed "ghost" towns.
Signing of treaties at Traverse de Sioux and Mendota in July and August legally opens up the land in what becomes Carver County to white settlement.
William Foster founds the town of San Francisco, named for the city in California, where he had lived a short time.
An act of territorial legislature forms Carver County.
Carver County is officially declared a county.
The county seat is moved from San Francisco to Chaska.
The town of Swede Lake is founded in Carver County.
The Town of St. Lawrence is laid out, but is never built.
The town of Helvetia is founded.
The town of Mayer is founded.
The town of St. Clair is platted, but is never settled.
San Francisco is officially declared a town, despite no longer being the county seat.
Massive flooding occurs in San Francisco when the Minnesota River rises.
A diphtheria epidemic breaks out in town of Helvetia.
The towns of Helvetia (Hollywood) and Mayer officially merge and become Village of Mayer.
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Sin's Contemporary Significance
From Fallen: A Theology of Sin, Copyright © 2013 Edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson
by D. A. Carson
At first blush it may seem as if this volume has the ideal order rather badly reversed. Would it not be the part of wisdom to work through the biblical and theological material on sin before reflecting on its contemporary significance? Certainly a good case could be made for such a traditional ordering. So what defense can we offer for the fact that the editors in their wisdom have placed this essay first?
In fact, the editorial decision displays considerable insight—a kind of homiletical insight. A preacher may, of course, reserve the application of the message for the end of the sermon; alternatively, he may interweave application all through the sermon. On some occasions, however, that preacher is wise who sets the stage for the exegesis and biblical theology by displaying the relevance of the topic at the beginning of the address. Especially is this the case if for any reason the subject has become unpopular, or if it is often misconceived or induces cringe factors. In such cases, displaying the significance of the topic may constitute a compelling introduction to it.
It may be worthwhile to distinguish the topic’s intrinsic and contemporary significance. These two cannot, of course, be kept absolutely separate. Nevertheless, under its intrinsic significance we ought to recall what place sin holds in the Bible, in the entire structure of Christian thought; under its contemporary significance, we shall probe in what ways the Bible’s teaching on sin addresses some of the characteristics of our own age and historical location. The former is the more important heading, for it laps into the latter. Indeed, to outline ways in which sin is intrinsically important to a biblically faithful grasp of the gospel is to argue for its perennial significance and therefore is also to display its contemporary significance. Only then are we better positioned to reflect on ways in which a mature grasp of sin speaks prophetically and powerfully to our own cultural context.
Sin’s Intrinsic Significance
There can be no agreement as to what salvation is unless there is agreement as to that from which salvation rescues us. The problem and the solution hang together: the one explicates the other. It is impossible to gain a deep grasp of what the cross achieves without plunging into a deep grasp of what sin is; conversely, to augment one’s understanding of the cross is to augment one’s understanding of sin.
To put the matter another way, sin establishes the plotline of the Bible. In this discussion, the word sin will normally be used as the generic term that includes iniquity, transgression, evil, idolatry, and the like, unless the context makes it clear that the word is being used in a more restricted sense. In the general sense, then, sin constitutes the problem that God resolves: the conflict carries us from the third chapter of Genesis to the closing chapter of Revelation. Before the fall, God’s verdict is that everything he made is “very good.” We are not told how the Serpent came to rebel, but the sin of the first human pair introduces us to many of the human dimensions of sin. We find rebellion against God, succumbing to the vicious temptation to become like God, an openness to the view that God will not impose the sentence of death on sinners (and thus the implicit charge that God’s word cannot be trusted), defiance of a specific command (that is, transgression), the sacrifice of intimate fellowship with God, the introduction of shame and guilt, eager self-justification by blaming others, the introduction of pain and loss, and various dimensions of death. The fourth chapter of Genesis brings us the first murder, and the fifth chapter the refrain, “and then he died.” The following four chapters bring us the judgment of the flood and its entailments, but humanity is not thereby improved, as the eleventh chapter makes clear.
It would be easy to keep running through the drama of the Scripture’s story line, carefully observing the shape and depth of sin in the patriarchal period, in the years of the wilderness wanderings, in the time of the judges, in the decay of the Davidic monarchy, and in the malaise of the exile and the frequent sinful lapses among those who returned. Those whom Jesus confronts in his day are no better. The apostle Paul’s massive indictment against all humanity (Rom. 1:18–3:20) sets the stage for one of the deepest statements about what the cross achieved (3:21–26). Indeed, so much of what the triune God discloses of himself is revealed in the context of showing how each member of the Godhead contributes to the salvation of God’s elect—their salvation from sin. It is not for nothing that the very first chapter of the New Testament establishes that the child born of the Virgin Mary will be called “Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).1 Very little of the tabernacle/temple system of the old covenant makes sense unless one understands something of sin; certainly none of its antitype does, worked out with stunning care in the epistle to the Hebrews. Whether one considers the theme of God’s wrath or the particular objects of his saving love, whether God thunders from Sinai or
weeps over Jerusalem, whether we focus on individual believers or on the covenantal identity of the people of God, whether one stands aghast at the temporal judgments poured out on Jerusalem or stands in rapt anticipation of the glories of the new heaven and the new earth, the substratum that holds the entire account together is sin and how God, rich in mercy, deals with sins and sinners for his own glory and for his people’s good.
Sin “offends God not only because it becomes an assault on God directly, as in impiety or blasphemy, but also because it assaults what God has made.”2 Sin is rebellion against God’s very being, against his explicit word, against his wise and ordered reign. It results in the disorder of the creation and in the spiritual and physical death of God’s image bearers. With perfect justice God could have condemned all sinners, and no one could have justly blamed him. In reality, the Bible’s story line depicts God, out of sheer grace, saving a vast number of men and women from every tongue and tribe, bringing them safely and finally to a new heaven and a new earth where sin no longer has any sway and even its effects have been utterly banished.
In short, if we do not comprehend the massive role that sin plays in the Bible and therefore in biblically faithful Christianity, we shall misread the Bible. Positively, a sober and realistic grasp of sin is one of the things necessary to read the Bible in a percipient fashion; it is one of the required criteria for a responsible hermeneutic.
It may be helpful to lay out a handful of the theological structures that are shaped by what the Bible says about sin and that in turn shape our understanding of sin.
Sin Is Tied to Passages That Disclose Important Things about God
First, sin is deeply tied to any number of illuminating passages that disclose important things about God. Consider Exodus 34:6–7, where God intones certain words to Moses, who is hidden in a cleft of rock on Mount Sinai. Moses is neither permitted nor able to gaze directly on God; should he do so, he would die (33:20). He is permitted to see no more than the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God. But he is permitted and able to hear: God discloses himself to Moses supremely in words, and those words are simultaneously moving and puzzling (the italicized words draw attention to what is puzzling): “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” Here is the God who forgives “wickedness, rebellion and sin,” yet who “does not leave the guilty unpunished.” Is this some sort of strange dialectic? Alternating procedures, perhaps? The tension is not finally resolved until Calvary. Certainly the focus of this strange tension is sin.
Or consider the words of David after his seduction of Bathsheba and his cold-blooded arrangements to murder her husband. Brought low in brokenness and repentance, he not only begs God for mercy (Ps. 51:1) but tells him, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (v. 4). At one level, of course, this is blatantly untrue: David has sinned against Bathsheba, her husband, her child, his family, the military high command, and the nation as a whole, which he serves as chief magistrate. Yet there is something profound in David’s words. What makes sin sin, in the deepest sense, is that it is against God. We let ourselves off the hook too easily when we think of sins along horizontal axes only—whether the horizontal sins of socially disapproved behavior or the horizontal sin of genocide. What makes sins really vile, intrinsically heinous—what makes them worthy of punishment by God himself—is that they are first, foremost, and most deeply sins against the living God, who has made us for himself and to whom we must one day give an account. In other words, this psalm of repentance from sin discloses important things about sin’s relation to God.
Or we might remind ourselves of the fourth Servant Song, including the words:
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
and by his wounds we are healed. . . .
Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. (Isa. 53:4–5, 10)
Here is penal substitution by Yahweh’s own design, taking our suffering, our transgressions, our iniquities, our punishment, and our sin.
Again, once we recall how in John’s Gospel the word world commonly refers to the human moral order in deeply culpable rebellion against God (that is, the word world commonly means “this sinful world”), the words of John 3:16 shout matchless grace. God’s love for the world is to be admired not because the world is so big but because the world is so bad. God so loved this sinful world that he gave his one and only Son—and the context shows that the locus of this gift is not in the incarnation only but in Jesus being “lifted up” in death (cf. “lifted up” in vv. 14–15, and the consistent use of ὑψόω in John). The plan of redemption for this sinful world is driven by God’s undeserved love, most magnificently expressed in the gift of his Son, whose
death alone is sufficient to lift the sentence of condemnation (vv. 17–18). To reject such love—that is, to continue in sin—is to remain under the wrath of God (v. 36). Even this handful of verses says much about God, his character, his redemptive purposes, his love, and his wrath—and the axis around which these themes revolve is sin.
One could easily draw attention to hundreds of passages where similar dynamics prevail between God and sin, but I shall restrict myself to one more. Toward the end of his famous chapter on the resurrection, Paul raises two rhetorical questions in words drawn from Hosea 13:14: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). Then he answers his own questions: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (vv. 56–57). In other words, the death-dealing power of sin has been defeated by God’s resurrection of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, then, the display of what God has done, supremely in the resurrection of his Son, is occasioned by sin and all its brutal power.
Sin is deeply tied to any number of illuminating passages that disclose important things about God, and if about God, then about the salvation that God has wrought in Jesus Christ.
Sin Is Tied to the Work of Satan
Second, sin is radically tied to the work of Satan and of demonic forces. Otherwise put, sin has a cosmic/demonic dimension. The first human descent into sin is stimulated by the Serpent (Genesis 3), later identified as Satan himself (Rev. 12:9). The text in Genesis does not tell us how it happened that he first sinned, but the opening lines of Genesis 3 make it clear that, since he was made by God, the Serpent has no independent status akin to God’s but in darker hue. And since everything in the creation that God made was “very good” (1:31), one assumes that this was also true of the Serpent: when he was created, he was good. The obvious inference is that the Serpent had himself fallen at some point antecedent to the fall of Adam and Eve—an inference that Jude is prepared to draw (v. 6).
It follows, then, that sin has dimensions that stretch beyond the human race. I am not referring to the consequences of human sin that stretch beyond the human race—the corruption of the entire created order, the subjection of the created order to frustration, bondage, and decay (Rom. 8:20–21). Rather, I am referring to the sin of rebellious heavenly beings, of angels themselves. Although Scripture says relatively little about this wretched reality, the small windows it does provide into this antecedent fall are highly illuminating. Part of our own struggle is “against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12): there is a cosmic, indeed heavenly, dimension to the struggle, glimpsed again in the first two chapters of Job.
Three further characteristics of this angelic, nonhuman sin function in the Bible to provide something of a foil to the way human sin plays out: (1) the initial human sin infected the entire human race and brought down the wrath of God upon the entire human race; the initial angelic sin corrupted those who sinned, while the rest remained unaffected. Whether this fundamental difference in the way sin is structured in the two races turns on the nonorganic and nongenerating nature of angelic existence (according to Jesus, angels do not marry: Matt. 22:30) is nowhere made explicit. (2) In God’s grace, there has arisen a redeemer for fallen human beings but none for angels: “For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants” (Heb. 2:16; cf. 2:5). The horde of demons lives utterly without hope: they know there is an “appointed time” for their endless, conscious torment (Matt. 8:29; cf. Rev. 20:10). None of them discovers that the words “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28) are for them. At very least, the recognition of this truth ought to engender in redeemed men and women awestruck humility and gratitude at the sovereignty of grace. (3) No text depicts angels as having been made imago Dei, the way this claim is made of human beings (Gen. 1:26–27). Moreover, to sweep these three observations together, the culminating blessing for God’s redeemed image bearers, once their sin has been entirely done away with, is the beatific vision: they will see his face (Rev. 22:4)—unlike the highest order of angelic beings, who in the presence of God constantly cover their faces with their wings (Isa. 6:2; cf. Rev. 4:8).
There is at least one way in which the outcome of the sin of Satan and his minions is akin to the outcome of the sin of unregenerate, unrepentant human beings: it ends in eternal conscious suffering (Rev. 20:10; cf. 14:11). Satan does not stop being Satan and become wonderfully pure and holy when he is finally and forever consigned to the lake of fire. Forever he will be evil and will be punished. Similarly there is no scrap of biblical evidence that hell will be filled with purified human beings. Its denizens will still pursue self-justification rather than God’s justification, they will still love themselves while hating God, and they will continue to receive the punishment that is sin’s just due.
Sin Is Depicted in Many Ways
Third, so far I have primarily used the generic word sin, but sin is depicted by many words, expressions, and narrative descriptions. Sin can be seen as transgression, which presupposes laws that are being transgressed. Sometimes sin is portrayed as a power that overcomes us. Frequently sin is tied ineluctably to idolatry. Sin can be envisaged as dirt, as missing the target, as folly, as tied to the “flesh” (a notoriously difficult concept to capture in one English word), as unbelief, as slavery, as spiritual adultery, as disobedience. Sin is the offense of individuals, but it is profoundly social and multi-generational: the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation, and sins committed in the days of Hezekiah carry their own inescapable entailment in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The Bible frequently depicts sin in terms of the guilt of individuals; at other times it shows how the sins of some parties turn others into hopeless victims.
Some of the most powerful depictions of sin occur in narratives where the word is not used because it is not necessary to use it. One thinks, for example, of the description of the interchanges among Joseph’s brothers as they debate whether to kill him or sell him, and again as they lie to their father. More potently, the final major narrative in Judges depicts such soul-destroying, God-dishonoring corruption and decay that even the ostensible “good guys” in the story are shockingly obscene. One simply cannot make sense of the Bible without a profound and growing sensitivity to the multifaceted and powerful ways the Bible portrays sin.
Sin Is Enmeshed in Theological Constructions
Fourth, just as sin is depicted by many words, expressions, and narrative descriptions (the point I have just made), so also is it enmeshed in powerful theological constructions. These constructions are so numerous and rich that to treat them in any detail would demand a very long book. Here I can merely list a few such constructions, in no particular order of importance.
1) Anthropology. The first two chapters of the Bible depict sinless human beings; the last two depict transformed, forgiven, sin-free human beings. All the chapters in between depict or presuppose sinful human beings, with the exception of those that describe the humanity of Jesus and insist he is utterly without sin. For the rest of us, we read descriptions of our sinfulness that set out sin’s universality and sweep (e.g., Rom. 3:9–20) and its connection with Adam our federal head (e.g., Romans 5). Out of such evidence spring theological formulations that try to summarize what the Bible says in few words: we speak of original sin and total depravity, carefully explaining what we do and do not mean by such expressions. With the sole exception of Jesus the Messiah, we certainly mean not only that all human beings between Eden before the fall and resurrection existence in the new heaven and the new earth are not only sinful, but that sin is not an optional characteristic loosely tacked on to otherwise unblemished beings but a pervasive power and guilt and tragedy that define all human experience, crying out for grace.
2) The opening paragraphs of this essay point to some of the links between sin and soteriology. One might press on to pneumatology, especially the fundamental division of fallen humankind into those who are merely “natural” and those who have the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10b–15).3 The effect of the Spirit’s work is observable in all who have been born of God, even if the mechanisms are obscure (John 3:8). The Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23), which stands over against the acts of the flesh (vv. 19–21), which is another way of describing sin. At the moment I shall restrict myself to a few comments on just one element of God’s saving plan, namely, conversion. In the sociology of religion, as in popular parlance, conversion signals the change of allegiance from one religion to another. A Buddhist becomes a Muslim, or the reverse; a Taoist becomes a Christian, a Christian becomes an atheist, an atheist becomes a Hindu—in every case, we commonly say that the person has converted. We may even use the language of conversion when a person changes denominational allegiance: we speak of a Baptist converting to Roman Catholicism, or the reverse. In confessional Christianity, however, conversion has a much more precise focus. Phenomenologically, when a person truly becomes a Christian, he or she has changed religious allegiance, and so we may still use the conversion word-group in a purely descriptive fashion, but underlying the outward phenomenon is supernatural transformation. In biblical terminology, a person has passed from darkness to light, from death to life. That person has been born again, born from above; once-blind eyes now see, the lost sheep has been found, “natural” has been overtaken by supernatural. Relationally and forensically, a sinner has been reconciled to God; eschatologically, that person already belongs to the kingdom that has been inaugurated and consequently lives in the sure and certain hope of the transforming resurrection and the consummation of all things. The final outcome will be perfection, for no sin or taint of evil will be permitted in the new heaven and the new earth. In such usage, of course, conversion cannot rightly be applied to people when they swap religious allegiances. It can be applied only to those who become Christians in the strongest NT sense of that word. In short, the transformation inherent in conversion in this theological sense is inescapably tied to God’s plan and power to confront sin in an individual’s life and ultimately destroy it utterly.
3) Sanctification. For present purposes we shall exclude such categories as positional or definitional sanctification. That leaves us with the theological concept of growing in holiness—a notion that can be expressed in many ways without using the term sanctification. For example, in Philippians 3 Paul does not hold that he has already attained full maturity in Christ; rather, he presses on “to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (v. 12). What he strains toward, what lies ahead, is “the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (v. 14)—resurrection existence (vv. 11, 21), which is opposed to the “enemies of the cross of Christ,” whose “destiny is destruction” and whose “god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame” (vv. 18–19). Those who are “mature” should adopt Paul’s view, follow his example, and “live up to what we have already attained” (vv. 14–17). In other words, sanctification works now in Paul and in other believers the beginnings of what will finally be achieved in the ultimate glorification. That includes firm allegiance to the gospel that eschews all “confidence in the flesh” (v. 3) and is passionate for “the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith” (v. 9). In other words, sanctification is bound up with the “putting to death” of sin,4 with conformity to Jesus, with moral and spiritual transformation now in anticipation of the climactic transformation to come.
4) Sin and the law. John tells us that “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Although some have dismissed this pronouncement as a singularly shallow definition of sin, in fact it is painfully insightful once we remember whose law is in view. Conceptually this is not far removed from the dictum that whatever is not of faith is sin, once we recall who is to be the object of our faith; nor is it far removed from Jesus’ insistence that the most important command is to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, once we perceive that this is invariably the one command that is broken whenever we break any other command of God. Sin’s odium lies in its defiance of God.
Yet the relationship between sin and the law is complex. It runs along several axes. The first we have just articulated: sin is breaking God’s law and therefore defying God himself. This includes failing to do what God commands and doing what God prohibits. In the words of the General Confession, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.” Conceived along another axis, however, the law actually provokes sin, prompting it to lash out. In other words, sin is so rebellious of heart that commands and prohibitions, far from enabling sinners to overcome their sin, have the same effect as a rule does in the mind and heart of an immature teenager. Tweaked again, the law can be seen to operate not only on this psychological plane but along the axis of redemptive history: sin leading to death is abundantly present long before the giving of the law at Sinai (Rom. 5:13–14), such that when law is thought of as the revelation given through Moses, the law is relatively late on the scene. But another of its many functions is to establish complex structures of tabernacle/temple, priesthood, sacrificial system, and festivals such as Passover and Day of Atonement, all designed to establish trajectories taking us to Jesus, who is the ultimate temple, the ultimate priest, the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate Passover, the ultimate bloody offering on the final Day of Atonement. Thus the law brings in Jesus, who destroys sin; it brings us to the gospel, which alone is the power of God that brings salvation.5 The law has many roles in relation to sin, but it does not have the power to free the sinner from its enslaving power and its consequences.6
It would be easy to demonstrate sin’s links with every important theological constructio
n grounded in Scripture. As important as they are, the four I have mentioned barely introduce the possibilities. In other words, it is impossible to engage in probing, biblically faithful theological reflection without thinking deeply about sin.
Reflection on Sin Is Necessary to Understand Suffering and Evil
Fifth, another way to demonstrate the ubiquity of sin in all serious theological discussion is to outline its place in theological analysis that is rather more synthetic and second-order than the kinds of theological constructions I have mentioned so far. I shall provide only one example. On three or four occasions during the last eight or ten years, I have given a rather lengthy lecture on theodicy. I never called it that; it was always titled something like “How Christians Should Think about Suffering and Evil” or something of that order. What I tried to do was to sink six major pillars into the ground. These six pillars, taken together, provided (I said) an adequate foundation to support a distinctively Christian way of reflecting on evil and suffering. The six had to be taken together. One pillar by itself was totally inadequate, and even four or five pillars were dangerously weak and left the structure poorly supported.
The interesting thing is that all of the pillars have to do with sin. The first pillar I label “Lessons from the Beginning of the Bible.” This covers creation, in which God makes everything, institutes marriage, assigns human beings their responsibilities to reign under God, surrounds them with an idyllic setting and above all his own presence, and pronounces everything “good.” The narrative proceeds to the fall, to the onset of idolatry, sin and its short- and long-term effects (including both death and alienation from God), and the curses pronounced on the various parties and what they mean. The brutal fact is that human beings have forfeited their right to expect their creator-God to love and care for them, so that if he does so, it is because he is infinitely kinder than they deserve. Theological reflection on the way these themes are teased out across the Scriptures reminds us that all the wars, hatred, lust, covetousness, and all the transgression, idolatry, sin, and its grim consequences, spring from human rebellion. Even what we call “natural disasters” are first and foremost an implicit call to repentance (Luke 13:1–5). Far from being something God created, sin is rebellion against the creator-God. The implications for theodicy are many, starting with the fact that God does not owe us blessing, prosperity, and health. What he owes us is justice, which in itself guarantees our ruin. My point for the purpose of this essay, however, is that this pillar, this “fix” in the biblical landscape, is tightly bound up with sin. One cannot think long about the complexities of theodicy in a biblically faithful way without wrestling with what the Bible says about sin.
And that is just the first pillar. The second is “Lessons from the End of the Bible,” where we must think about hell, the new heavens and the new earth, resurrection existence, the New Jerusalem—a world where nothing impure will ever enter. One does not proceed very far before one recognizes that the discussion is again circling around the topic of sin. The third pillar is “The Mystery of Providence.” Here one wrestles not only with many texts that talk about God’s sovereignty but also with texts that talk about God’s sovereignty over a world highly charged with sin. It would be easy to work through all six pillars and summarize their contribution toward the support of a well-formed and biblically faithful theodicy, but the point, in every case, is that these pillars make no sense if one tries to abstract them from profound reflections on sin. In short, sin is ubiquitous in all serious theological discussion that takes its cues from Scripture.
To summarize: if we are to think realistically about the relevance of the doctrine of sin to today’s culture, we must begin with its intrinsic significance—the place sin holds within the matrix of biblically determined theological reflection.
Sin’s Contemporary Significance
Under this heading I shall focus on some of the ways in which a biblically faithful doctrine of sin addresses some of the characteristics of our own age and of our own historical location. I shall briefly mention three.
We Live in a Time of Extraordinary Violence and Wickedness
First, only thirteen years have elapsed since we closed out the bloodiest century in human history. There was not just one holocaust: add to the Nazi slaughter of Jews the Stalinist starvation of twenty million Ukrainians, the Maoist slaughter of perhaps fifty million Chinese, the massacre of between a quarter and a third of the population of Cambodia, tribal slaughter of Tutsis and Hutus, and various ethnic cleansings. How shall we calculate the damage, material and psychological, of terrorism in all its forms, of unrestrained consumerism, of all the damage done by drug abuse of many kinds, including alcoholism? The digital revolution that ushers in spectacular improvements in research, data handling, and communication also brings us access to instant porn, with untold damage done to man/woman relationships in general and to marriages in particular.7 Shall we add the cruelty of racism, the exploitation of the weak, and greed and laziness in all their forms?8 And what of those massive and ubiquitous sins that are primarily the absence of particular virtues—unholiness, impiety, prayerlessness, unloving hearts, ingratitude?
Despite the massive evidence that surrounds us on every side, many in our generation have come to think of themselves as essentially good people. Pollyannaish outlooks abound. If there are bad things in the world, they are primarily what other people do—other religions, other races, other political parties, other generations, other economic sectors, other subcultures. Doubtless every generation thinks of itself as better than it actually is, but in the Western world this generation has multiplied such moral blindness to the highest degree. For example, one of the reasons the founding fathers of the United States constructed a Constitution with division of powers and a system of checks and balances was that they believed steps had to be taken to curtail pervasive sin, especially the lust for power. By contrast, many in our society are not even aware of the dangers that lurk everywhere when one block or another of government or society gains too much sway.
In short, the first and most obvious contemporary significance to preaching a robust doctrine of sin is that it confronts the almost universal absence of such teaching. In other words, the firstcontemporary significance of biblical teaching on sin is not that it meshes nicely with contemporary worldviews and therefore provides a pleasant way into thoughtful interaction but precisely that it confronts the painfully perverse absence of awareness of sin.
Across the stream of redemptive history, this was one of the primary functions of the law: to bring conviction of sin. Although many preachers in the Reformed tradition have treated Galatians 3 as if it mandates that the way to preach the gospel to individuals is to begin with the law, assured that the law is our “guardian” (παιδαγωγός, Gal. 3:24) to bring us to see our need of Christ and of grace, careful examination of the context shows that the focus of the chapter is not on the role of the law in the conversion of the individual but on the role of the law in the drama of salvation history. If Paul’s understanding of the promise given to Abraham is correct (vv. 1–4), one may well ask why the law was given at all (v. 19). Why not run very quickly from promise to fulfillment? In various places Paul gives several complementary answers to that question, but part of the answer is that the law in Scripture “locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (v. 22). Yet the fact that the law covenant should reign for almost a millennium and a half shows how important it was to God to get across the persistence, repetition, heinousness, enslaving power, and odium of human sin and the utter incapacity of human beings to break free from it. How else will human rebels cry to God for grace and accept by faith what was promised? Not dissimilarly, a generation that is singularly unaware of its sin while being awash in sin desperately needs a robust doctrine of sin to begin to understand redemption.
Postmodernism’s Reluctance to Identify Evil
Second, today there are fewer books published defining and defending postmodernism than there were fifteen years ago. In Europe almost no one reads Michel Foucault anymore, let alone Jacques Derrida. Some American undergraduates are still prescribed toxic doses of postmodernism, but graduate students have increasingly turned away from the brew. As a sophisticated epistemological and cultural phenomenon, postmodernism in many parts of the Western world has passed its sell-by date. Yet nevertheless the detritus of postmodernism can be seen everywhere. Among the most noticeable pieces are those that are reluctant to identify evil, largely on the assumption that right and wrong, good and evil, are nothing more than social constructs. Such an environment may not appear to be the ideal cultural context for talking about sin. The related ill of moral relativism does not seem very conducive to virile reflection on what the Bible says about sin.
Once again, however, it is the need for it that makes biblical reflection on sin so desperately relevant. The deep cultural animus against the category of sin means that many preachers much prefer to talk about weaknesses, mistakes, tragedies, failures, inconsistencies, hurts, disappointment, blindness—anything but sin. The result is that biblical portrayal of God is distorted, as is his plan of redemption. Getting across what the Bible says about sin in this culture is, of course, extremely difficult. Looked at another way, that very difficulty is a measure of the need and therefore of the contemporary significance of robust treatments of sin.
The Supreme Virtue of the New Tolerance
Third, an array of issues has surfaced that cannot easily be addressed without a well-shaped biblical doctrine of sin. One of these is the current focus on tolerance—but a tolerance newly defined and newly positioned.9 It is the new positioning that captures our attention at the moment. In the past, tolerance in any culture was discussed relative to some broadly agreed or imposed value system, religious or otherwise. Once the value system was in place in the culture, questions inevitably arose about how far one might vary from it before facing legal, judicial, or other coercive sanctions. Within limits, many cultures have concluded that some degree of dissent may actually be a good thing; only the most despotic of regimes allow almost no tolerance for those who disagree. But that means that the value system itself is the important thing; the virtue of tolerance is parasitic on the value system itself. And any society, no matter how tolerant, draws limits somewhere.10 In much of the Western world at the moment, however, there is very little culture-wide consensus on right and wrong, good and evil, holiness and sin, while tolerance has been elevated to the highest spot in the moral echelon. It’s not that we have self-consciously taken that step; rather, for reasons I’ve tried to outline elsewhere, tolerance has become more important than truth, morality, or any widely held value system. Tolerance becomes the supreme good, the supreme god in the culture’s pantheon, in a sphere of existence that often argues by merest clichés11 and that has very few other widely agreed desiderata. The complicating irony is that those who hold tenaciously to the supreme virtue of this new tolerance are by and large extremely intolerant of those who do not agree with them.
My purpose in indulging in this excursus is to point out that the overthrow of this new intolerant tolerance depends hugely on finding a value system that cherishes something more than this new tolerance. It is difficult to hold a mature and sustained debate on, say, the wisdom or otherwise of providing for homosexual marriage in law when one side, instead of wrestling with issues of substance, dismisses the other side as intolerant and is cheered on in the culture for doing so. Unchecked, this new tolerance will sooner or later put many people in chains. For it to be challenged, there must be a cultural value system deemed more precious, a higher good, than the new tolerance itself. And one of the necessary ingredients for achieving this end is the reconstitution of a robust view of sin, and therefore of good and evil, in the culture.
From Fallen: A Theology of Sin, Copyright © 2013 by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson
Published by Crossway
To sum up: the contemporary significance of biblical teaching on sin is best grasped, first, when the place of sin within the Bible itself is understood, and, second, when we perceive how desperately our culture needs to be shaped again by what the Bible says about sin.
1 Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture references in this chapter are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® , NIV® . Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
2 Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 16.
3 Cf. Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2011), 80: “It is clear that with its antithesis between a ‘natural’ man and a ‘spiritual’ man, Scripture is not merely referring to a person who does and another who does not take Holy Scripture into account. Its pronouncement goes much deeper by positing the distinction between having and not having received the Spirit of God . . . (1 Cor. 2:12). This corresponds entirely with what Jesus himself said, that ‘unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God’ (John 3:5). If you agree that the kingdom of God is definitely not identical to the institutional church, but rules our entire world-and-life view, then Jesus’ declaration means that only one who has received the inner illumination of the Holy Spirit is in a position to obtain such a perspective on the whole of things, one that corresponds to the truth and essence of things.”
4 The old word, of course, is “mortification,” but that word has taken on such a different meaning that it is now almost unusable in the sense it had in the KJV.
5 For a useful and thought-provoking analysis of the different ways in which the apostle Paul analyzes the law, see Brian Rosner, Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God, NSBT (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, forthcoming).
6 It is very easy to skew these matters away from the subtle nuances of Scripture. I cannot resist citing extensively from Archibald Alexander, a passage to which Fred Zaspel has drawn my attention: Thoughts on Religious Experience (repr. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009), 336–38:
When persons are truly converted they always are sincerely desirous to make rapid progress in piety; and there are not wanting exceeding great and gracious promises of aid to encourage them to go forward with alacrity. Why then is so little advancement made? Are there not some practical mistakes very commonly entertained, which are the cause of this slowness of growth? I think there are, and will endeavour to specify some of them.
And first, there is a defect in our belief of the freeness of divine grace. To exercise unshaken confidence in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon is one of the most difficult things in the world; and to preach this doctrine fully without verging towards Antinomianism is no easy task, and is therefore seldom done. But Christians cannot but be lean and feeble when deprived of their proper nutriment. It is by faith that the spiritual life is made to grow; and the doctrine of free grace, without any mixture of human merit, is the only true object of faith. Christians are too much inclined to depend on themselves, and not to derive their life entirely from Christ.
There is a spurious legal religion, which may flourish without the practical belief in the absolute freeness of divine grace, but it possesses none of the characteristics of the Christian’s life. It is found to exist in the rankest growth, in systems of religion which are utterly false. But even when the true doctrine is acknowledged in theory, often it is not practically felt and acted on. The new convert lives upon his frames rather than on Christ, while the older Christian is still found struggling in his own strength and, failing in his expectations of success, he becomes discouraged first, and then he sinks into a gloomy despondency, or becomes in a measure careless. At that point the spirit of the world comes in with resistless force. Here, I am persuaded, is the root of the evil; and until religious teachers inculcate clearly, fully, and practically, the grace of God as manifested in the Gospel, we shall have no vigorous growth of piety among professing Christians. We must be, as it were, identified with Christ—crucified with him, and living by him, and in him by faith, or rather, having Christ living in us. The covenant of grace must be more clearly and repeatedly expounded in all its rich plenitude of mercy and in all its absolute freeness.
7 The essay by Robert Yarbrough in this volume makes many of the same points.
8 Cf. especially Brian Rosner, Greed as Idolatry: The Origin and Meaning of a Pauline Metaphor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).
9 Cf. D. A. Carson, The Intolerance of Tolerance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012).
10 For example, Western culture is extremely open to diverse sexual activity, but all Western countries draw the line at the practice of pedophilia.
11 Cf. especially Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Clichés (New York: Sentinel, 2012).
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Micky talks about "Good Times!" sessions & possible Nesmith live appearances during 50th Anniversary Tour
Micky was recently a featured performer on the Flower Power Cruise that departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 27 and visited Jamaica and The Bahamas. In this video filmed by Cindy Ferrier during a Meet & Greet event on the cruise, Micky spoke about The Monkees' 50th Anniversary and the group's upcoming new album, Good Times!
Here is a summary of Micky's comments:
Regarding The Monkees' 50th Anniversary Tour: "It looks like Nez is gonna, hopefully, join us on a couple [of concert dates]." (UPDATE 3/7/2016: Michael Nesmith confirmed via a post on Facebook that he will not be making any live appearances during the 50th Anniversary Tour.)
Michael has written a song that he is singing on the album. (Nesmith's announced songwriting contribution was the track "I Know What I Know." In a previous interview, Rhino's John Hughes explained that Nez wanted Micky to sing it, and so it is unknown if this is a different song in question or if Michael took the lead vocal on "I Know What I Know" after all.)
Michael provided harmony vocals and 12-string guitar during the recording sessions.
On the reworking of "Love to Love," the Neil Diamond song that was originally recorded in 1967 featuring Davy Jones on lead vocals: "We'll be singing along with Davy on that."
Peter's musical contributions to the album included playing harpsichord, organ, and banjo.
Peter is singing lead on a Gerry Goffin/Carole King song (which presumably is "Wasn't Born to Follow," another track that was previously announced as being part of the album).
Micky spoke of a Boyce & Hart song, which could be "Whatever's Right," also referenced earlier as being a candidate for Good Times! A backing track for the song was completed in August 1966 but it remained unfinished.
Micky has slightly confirmed what many of us fans have thought re Nez a appearance.
scott catton
Thanks a lot for shooting & posting this video,cindy,for those of us who couldn't make the cruise!MUCH APPRECIATED!!! :)
...also it would be really GREAT if glenn tilbrook & chris difford of the group SQUEEZE wrote a song for the new record as well since glen tilbrook is a monkees fan himself! :)
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Daytona Beach, FL. Montoya — Thursday media visit (+video)
2 комментария / News Montoya / От Foma
(Photo by Geoff Burke/Getty Images
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA, NO. 42 TARGET IMPALA SS met with members of the media at Daytona International Speedway and discussed racing at Daytona, the ‘Chase,’ NASCAR drug testing and other topics.
WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK FOR THIS WEEKEND?: «Survive. I think we have a good race car every week and this restrictor-plate racing is all about surviving. If we can survive this week and bring it home anywhere then I think we will be good. I think if you can get to the end of the race then you are probably going to be in the top-20. If you can get a top-20 at a restrictor-plate racing going into for the ‘Chase’ is not a bad thing. I know we have a fast car and we’ll see what happens. It’s all about points right now.»
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR TEAM IS AN UNDERDOG IN THE ‘CHASE’ RACE?: «No. I don’t really care how big or small the team is. If you have a big team and everybody works together then it’s a plus. You always hear that every crew chief has his way of doing things here and there and it never really relates too much. As long as we can come out every week with good cars and we’ve done that so it’s good. I still feel that we’re missing a little bit, I always say that actually, but we’re getting really close. We can run top-five, top-10 every week. Just want to get to a weekend and be the dominant car and if we can do that then I think you can get that ball rolling and get everybody on the team pumped up about that. Everybody is pumped up that we’re running well and really pumped up that we have a realistic chance of making the ‘Chase.’ Not by luck, but by pure speed. I think that’s very important and I think that if we can run a little bit better then people can start smelling wins. Then they are going to get even more excited.»
CAN YOU COMMENT ON WHAT DANICA PATRICK WOULD HAVE TO GO THROUGH TO RACE IN NASCAR AND DO YOU THINK SHE CAN RACE A STOCK CAR?: «I think she’s got the talent to do it, the ability to do it — it’s a hard challenge. Are people going to be patient enough for her to struggle — that’s the million dollar question. If she decided to come and somebody decides to hire her — are they willing to know that she is going to struggle sometimes. She might have some great weeks that she feels comfortable in the car and there are going to be weeks where she is going to run horrible. You look and the best example is Joey (Logano). You look at the pace that Joey (Logano) has in the Nationwide car and it’s incredible and you look at his pace in a Cup car and it’s nowhere near as good. I think if people are willing to accept that she doesn’t finish fifth — it’s very different. Open-wheel to this is very different. When you say she had a top-five in an Indy car race against a top-five here — it’s very different. A top-five here is like three wins in Indy car or something like that.»
IS THERE MORE PRESSURE GETTING INTO THE TOP-12 OR STAYING IN THE TOP-12?: «We are just trying to gain ground on everybody. There’s weeks, like last week, where the 00 (David Reutimann) got a lot of points. He was nowhere near running where he finished and that was frustrating because he closed the gap again. At the same time, a lot of Roush cars had a bad day and we closed the gap on them. I think I’m like 100 points away from fifth place with like 10 races to go. It’s all about numbers and averages and things. You know what average you need to have, it doesn’t matter who finishes in front or behind you, as long as you have that average then you are going to be in. We’ve been through the numbers over the past I don’t know how many years and the ‘Chase’ numbers and this and that. It’s simple. You have to run well, you have to be consistent and you have to be smart. If everything goes your way then you ought to be able to make it. At the same point, yeah, great making it, if we make it then I want to be in a position to say, ‘We had a go at it.’ We just didn’t make the ‘Chase’ and finish 12th — that would really suck.»
Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images
DO YOU BRING THE MENTALITY OF LOOKING AT POINTS FROM FORMULA ONE?: «Point are important in every series. A lot of guys that you get in here are guys that are winning races. When you’re winning races then you can have a bad weekend. If you finish first in one and 30th in another one then it averages out to like 12th or something with the points. It’s not bad, but when you’re finishing 10th and you have a 30th then it goes to 18th or something like that. It really hurts it. If our good weekends were to be a little bit better then it would be a lot easier. Then you can say, ‘I’m going for wins,’ but we’re not.»
HAVE YOU BEEN DRUG TESTED SINCE JEREMY MAYFIELD’S SUSPENSION?: «Yes, I got drug tested in Dover.»
HAS THE NASCAR DRUG TESTING POLICY INCREASED AND WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?: «It is what it is. Whether you like it or not, you have to do it. Just go with the flow and do it. They normally call you when you get out of the car after practice, but we finished practice early actually and I was actually peeing when they called me and I said, ‘Can I come back in like two hours so I can drink some water?’ They said, ‘No, you have to be with us here and you have to fill it at once.’ I thought this is going to be a while so I had like five bottles of water and just sit there until I could pee and then the next three hours I pee every 10 minutes — it really sucked. Sorry for the details, but it wasn’t too interesting.»
WERE THERE MORE PAPERS THAT YOU HAD TO SIGN?: «I don’t really remember. I thought Daytona was a little easier. Here, it’s like you need proof of who you are. I thought, I’m in a race suit — what proof? You know what I mean, it’s a little different.»
ARE YOUR CARS BETTER THAN THEY WERE LAST YEAR?: «Oh yeah, of course. Our cars are better. The reason in any sport, let’s not talk about this sport because you don’t want to talk any names, but let’s go Formula One. Do you think Lewis Hamilton that won the championship last year just forgot how to drive or do you think Jenson Button just out of the blue just learned how to drive? Drivers at this level — all the drivers are good. The good drivers are good whether they are here or Formula One, whatever, you name it. You need to have good equipment to win, it’s that simple. Is our equipment better than last year? Yeah, it’s a lot better. Can it be better? Yes, of course and we’re learning. We’re a small team, but we’re doing the best we can and we’ve shown everybody and I think shutting a lot of mouths that were saying that we were going to struggle and we’re going to suck — we’re good, you know.»
2 комментария к “Daytona Beach, FL. Montoya — Thursday media visit (+video)”
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Hillingdon London Borough Council
Business owners rubbish waste site plan
PLANS to build a waste transfer site on an industrial estate have been criticised by neighbouring business owners.
uploads-nov2 Image 2
The proposal by West London Commercial Properties is to develop the site at 47 Wallingford Road, Uxbridge. It would deal with approximately 60,000 tonnes of rubbish per year.
The waste would be brought in by refuse collection lorries, put into large loads and transported onwards to waste processing plants.
If agreed by Hillingdon Council, the transfer site would replace the existing bus and coach depot used by MCH and Wing Luxury Travel. But one neighbour, Dave Power, managing director of Powerflex, has written to the council to express his concerns.
He said: “I’m not happy about it. The estate infrastructure isn’t suitable for the size and volume of the lorries which will come down here.
“The surrounding area will suffer. Cowley Mill Road is not designed for 44 tonne trucks. There is a school, pedestrians, and a residential area all close to the estate. Pollution also has to be a consideration.”
All lorries to and from the site will have to use the southern end of Cowley Mill Road, in order to avoid the weight restricted Swan Bridge over the Grand Union Canal.
Those that do not use Slough Road out of the borough will follow St John’s Road and Rockingham Road to get to Mahjacks roundabout in Uxbridge town centre.
The planning submission states the intention is for the waste transfer site to serve as a catalyst for redevelopment of the estate, which it considers ‘not desirable in appearance’.
West London Commercial Properties did not get back to the Gazette before we went to press.
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Concrete barriers installed around Lee statue in Virginia
A statue from the Richmond Howitzers Monument in Richmond, Va., lies after being toppled Tuesday night, June 16, 2020, in Richmond, Va. The monument was erected in 1892 to commemorate a Richmond Civil War artillery unit, (Alexa Welch Edlund/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Concrete barriers were installed Wednesday morning around the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has been ordered to be removed from a prominent avenue in Virginia’s capital city, hours after demonstrators tore down a different Confederate monument.
Crews in Richmond began installing what appeared to be about 3-foot-tall (1-meter-tall) cement blocks along the sidewalk surrounding the statue on Monument Avenue, according to video obtained by news outlets. Gov. Ralph Northam announced earlier this month that the statue would be removed and placed in storage while its future was determined.
Lawsuits have been filed seeking to block the move.
The Virginia Department of General Services said it was erecting the barriers “to protect the safety of everyone speaking out to make their voices heard as well as the structure itself,” according to a statement from the agency.
The Lee statue, along with other monuments along the avenue and throughout the city, have been rallying points and sites of clashes with police during demonstrations that began more than two weeks ago following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck while he pleaded for air.
The addition of the barriers comes shortly after demonstrators in Richmond tore down another Confederate statue in the city Tuesday night, news outlets reported.
The Howitzers Monument located near Virginia Commonwealth University’s Monroe Park campus was toppled after protesters who spent the night marching in the rain used a rope to pull it down from its pedestal. The paint-splattered statue was seen face down on the ground as the rain continued overnight in Virginia’s capital city, according to a video from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
It’s the third Confederate statue, and the fourth monument, to be torn down by demonstrators in Virginia.
Statues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Confederate Gen. Williams Carter Wickham as well as of Christopher Columbus were toppled by demonstrators in recent weeks.
Protesters in Richmond started their march Tuesday night advocating for the removal of all Confederate statues, establishing a civilian review board over police actions and defunding the police, among other things, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
Before its toppling, the Howitzers Monument showed a Confederate artilleryman standing in front of a gun. It was erected in 1892 to memorialize the city’s Civil War artillery unit, according to the Encyclopedia of Virginia.
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Trump Administration wants to ban flavored E-cigarettes
by: Jessi Turnure
File – In this Aug. 28, 2019, file photo, a man exhales while smoking an e-cigarette. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
WASHINGTON, D.C. (NEXSTAR) — After the outbreak of vaping-related illness resulting in at least six deaths, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday his administration is working on new rules to stop of the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.
“We can’t allow people to get sick, and we can’t have our youth be so affected,” Trump said in the Oval Office alongside U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar and acting FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless. “People are dying with vaping so we’re looking at it very closely.”
Azar said in about two months, companies will have to remove flavored vaping products from store shelves.
To get back in front of customers, they will have to apply for FDA approval.
“It has to be in the public health interest for us to approve it to be on the market,” Azar said. “The Obama Administration had allowed them to be on the market even though they technically under law have to come in and get FDA approval.”
Getting approval may be difficult because Azar says vaping among teenagers is already at an all-time high.
“We are not going to let this generation become the one that flips us back to growing utilization of cigarettes,” said Azar.
E-cigarette companies agree they should only be used by adults.
But, in a statement, the American Vaping Association said: “destroying thousands of small businesses and sending ex-smokers back to smoking will do nothing to stop drug dealers from selling contaminated THC cartridges.”
Secretary Azar acknowledged companies may try to blocks the rules with a lawsuit.
“If they do they do, but what’s important is we’re here protecting the public health based on science, evidence and acting completely in conformity with the law.”
by Alexa Mencia, Joe Khalil / Jan 14, 2021
WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — Donald Trump on Wednesday became the first president in the U.S. to be impeached by the House of Representatives twice.
In a 232-197 vote, the Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Pres. Trump on a charge of "incitement of insurrection," one week after the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Ten of the president's fellow Republicans voted yes to the impeachment charge.
Steuben County reports 60 new COVID-19 cases, 739 active
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Tag: Women in the bible
Hannah and the first Magnificat : 1 Samuel 2
Hannah’s Magnificat
The Responsorial Psalm for December 22nd (Tuesday of Christmas week this year) is the Canticle from 1 Samuel, and although you will never have sung it before as a Sunday psalm, the words are oddly familiar. It is solidly reminiscent of the Magnificat, Our Lady’s chant of joy when she goes to see Elizabeth, which we also don’t use as often as we might, but it is much earlier in date. It is another chant of joy by a mother, but this one is voiced by Hannah, one of the great Mothers of Israel.
from left to right, Hannah, Penninah with children, and Elkanah
Women’s words?
I have to put in a disclaimer here, because of the culture in which the Bible was written and its great age. It is most likely that the words of both Hannah and Mary herself have been mediated through a male writer, and we have no way of knowing what is authentically women’s words and what is artistic recreation, but as I have said before, there is so little even ostensibly by women in the Bible, that we have to grasp at what we can get.
women singing, a rare picture
So I am taking both Hannah’s words and Mary’s in good faith as women’s words. Traditionally, her mother taught Mary to read, but we don’t actually know whether she was literate, and it’s very unlikely that Hannah was. So someone else must have written the words down; but they are given to us as women’s words, in the same way that Shakespeare’s heroines speak women’s words.
Familiar words, unfamiliar speaker
As I say, the most striking thing about Hannah’s words is how familiar they are, even to Christians who barely know Hannah’s name and story. Part of the narrative is prescribed reading just once in the three-year cycle of Sunday readings (Holy Family Year C). It finishes before Hannah’s prayer/song, but tells only a small part of the story even so. I know I’ve talked of Hannah before, but only briefly, as one of a group (Women’s voices in the Bible). Here I’d like to pursue her further, as she has a great story, which is worth studying.
Who is Hannah?
Hannah is one of the two wives of Elkanah. She has no child. Her barrenness is her defining characteristic at this stage in the story. Her co-wife is Penninah, who has several children, but even so Elkanah prefers Hannah. He goes up to Shiloh once a year, to make a sacrifice to God. Elkanah hands out parts of the sacrifice to all his family, so Penninah and her children all get some of it, but Hannah gets only one portion, because she has no children.
Hannah sad and Penninah just possibly flaunting
Penninah taunts Hannah, and this happens year after year. Hannah is reduced to tears and understandably does not want to take part in the meal; Elkanah indicates one possible aspect of the problem when he says to her with quite stunning insensitivity, ‘Hannah, why do you weep? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’
Childlessness in the early Old Testament
With all its limitations in approach (it’s always solely the wife’s fault or problem), the Bible in its early stories is surprisingly aware of the anguish that can be caused by involuntary childlessness. From Eve’s desire for another son after the death of Abel, to the unsavoury jealous byplay between Hagar and Sarah, one fertile, one barren, and the similar arguments between Leah and Rachel, which can only have been exacerbated by their being sisters, children are seen as not only God’s gift, a sign of favour which can be given or withheld, but the greatest gift, justifying almost anything.
Sarah and Hagar : Sarah by now has a child, but the comparison is still fertile versus barren
Lot’s daughters make him drunk so that they can have children by him, because there is no other man available. Tamar wants a child so much that she disguises herself as a prostitute and leads her father-in-law astray (she has twins). These women will do anything to get a child. There is a poignant moment in Genesis 35, where Rachel is delivering Benjamin : ‘In her difficult delivery the midwife said to her, ‘Do not be afraid; you have another son here”.
Leah with child and Rachel without
Rachel dies, and is mourned with great grief by Jacob, but there is no suggestion that the child was not worth all her suffering in her own eyes; her only fear is not having a son. Obviously, there is the practical viewpoint that a child will look after you when you are old and weak, but there is more to it, as a child-bearing woman in those days often didn’t make it to being old and weak.
Hannah prays for a child
So Hannah, like Sarah and Rachel, knows that only God has the power to give her the son she craves. After everyone has had dinner, she slips away from the hall, and goes to the temple. Eli the priest is sitting there by the door. Hannah weeps and prays, and then makes God a promise : if he will give her a son, she will give him back to God for the whole of his life, and his hair will never be cut (a symbol of this dedication). Then there is a fascinating little exchange between Eli and Hannah. She is praying under her breath; her lips can be seen to move but her voice cannot be heard. Eli ‘therefore supposed that she was drunk’, and upbraids her harshly. Hannah replies in a most dignified and impressive way. ‘And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD’ (King James 2000 Bible. Some of the other translations are more modern and colloquial, but the dignity is constant). She explains that she has been speaking from her grief and resentment. Eli does not apologise (look at the situation and who is speaking to whom here), but to his credit, he does answer respectfully and kindly : ‘Go in peace, and may God grant what you ask’. Interestingly, she doesn’t tell him what she is asking for, and he now behaves with tact. She goes back to the hall, her sadness relieved.
Hannah praying with grief and resentment
Samuel is born
Hannah with Eli (and the Ark of the Covenant)(top), then Hannah with Samuel (and a midwife)
The family returns home, Hannah conceives and bears a son, Samuel. The following year, she decides not to go on the annual pilgrimage because Samuel isn’t weaned yet, but she explains to her husband that when he is, she will bring him to Shiloh and present him to God in the temple, and leave him there. Elkanah says, ‘Do as you think fit’. We are told nothing about Hannah’s feelings, and it’s difficult to imagine them. She has longed for this child, but he will not be hers to keep even as briefly as usual. A ‘weaned child’, even in those days, is still quite little, easily able to fit on a lap (cf. Psalm 130/131:2). At this age, she gives Samuel up.
Hannah a real woman, not just a representer
In a way, it’s not Hannah’s feelings which are important here, because we aren’t thinking about her as an individual but as a representative of the heroic qualities she demonstrates. It’s just like in fairy stories, where again, the longing for a child is frequently an engine of the plot (Snow White, Tom Thumb, The Gingerbread Boy, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin and so on). None of these stories dwells on the yearning of the would-be parent(s). The situation is stated and we move on into the story. Hannah’s story takes us very quickly into the next stage. She longs for this child so much as to beg God for him, and at the same time she promises to give him up. Hannah is ready to give her son to God if she can only have a son to take away the reproach of her childlessness. This does not make her a self-obsessed monster lacking maternal feeling, it is to show first how good God is to her when asked, and second how generous he is (after giving up Samuel, Hannah goes on to have five more children, three of them sons). But what I find fascinating is the way the story is told and the tension between the events as they unroll and the human nature of the woman. Some of it we can glean from Hannah’s words, some from her actions and the way they are recounted.
look how little he is
Le style, c’est la femme
Unusually, we are given all Hannah’s words in direct speech. (I regret that we don’t have any answer to Elkanah’s first question, but it’s probably just as well.) We hear first what she says to God, where she is simple, passionate and direct as she makes her vow. She is full of grief and resentment, and she says so. This is a real relationship with God, person to person, which can cope with the stresses of reproach and challenge. Then Eli questions her and she answers him, again with simplicity and directness. Later she tells Elkanah what her plans are in relation to Samuel, and he agrees without any cavil. After Samuel is weaned, she takes him up to the temple, with various gifts. There is no evidence that Elkanah takes any part in this trip; Hannah is an impressively independent woman in context. She goes to Eli and reminds him, again with great simplicity and directness, of their previous meeting. Then she says the crucial sentence twice. ‘Now I make him over to the Lord for the whole of his life. He is made over to the Lord.’ (1 Sam 1:28)’. Then there is one more performative sentence (There she left him, for the Lord; alternative translation in several other versions, There he worshipped the Lord) and then there is her Magnificat.
Hannah’s heroic sacrifice
I find the simplicity and understatement of all this extremely moving. We have learned that Hannah is a woman of dignity and self-respect, and she is doing this because she has promised, not because anyone has made her. She is a strong woman with agency. We know that she loves her son. In another very touching detail later, we discover that each year when the family comes back for the annual sacrifice, she brings Samuel a new little tunic, having worked out how much bigger it needs to be this year. There is so much in that tiny detail, and you can imagine the love that would have been woven into the cloth and sewn into the seams.
Two women, two Magnificats
Hannah’s prayer starts, like Mary’s, with a declaration of God’s might. She quotes the psalms (God is a rock, there is none like him), and moves swiftly to a celebration of his power to turn everything upside down. Here the sequence is as in Mary’s Magnificat: we move from a statement of God’s power to his crushing of the powerful and raising the weak, the sated going hungry and the starving having their fill, the raising of the poor and humbling of the rich. Mary’s words are more individual and powerful. She is talking about what God has done for her, now, in this time; Hannah’s words are more general (and more repetitive), as she describes what God does and has done repeatedly through history. She also has one specific couplet which only makes sense if you know the context :’ the barren woman bears sevenfold,/ but the mother of many is desolate’. It comes in as another example of God’s reversal of the current order, but it is chilling. Hannah’s Magnificat is an Old Testament version, compared to the pure redemptive NT joy of Mary’s. Jesus refers to the barren only once, and on the way to the Crucifixion, where he speaks to the women of Jerusalem, and it’s a passage to show how dreadful things will be : ‘The days are coming when they will say,’Blessed are the barren” (Luke 23:29). This is a topsyturvey again, but a fearsome one.
Hannah’s Magnificat : form
We do not use all Hannah’s words in the Responsorial Psalm for December 22nd, because it is even longer than Mary’s Magnificat (and we omit parts of that, when we use it as a psalm), but we use all the parts which chime with Mary’s later version. We have the first four lines on God’s greatness, then the six-line stanza about turning things upside down, and the later lines which continue the same theme. It comes out as a psalm of four stanzas, a six-liner followed by a four-liner, twice. The Response is tweaked to emphasize the similarity between the two Magnificats : Hannah’s Response as prescribed is ‘My heart rejoices in the Lord, my Saviour’, given as v 1 of the psalm but in fact that is simply ‘My heart rejoices in the Lord’, and the reference to a Saviour is absent. Mary’s first lines, on the other hand, are ‘My soul magnifies the Lord,/ and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour ‘(Luke 1:46f), so we are definitely pushing the parallels here.
Mary rejoicing in God her Saviour
Giving it a tune
Setting it to music was difficult, but I think mainly because I would have liked to be able to do it so much better. Setting women’s words is a rare privilege for me, but there are various essential limitations when you are writing a tune for a Responsorial psalm, especially for a weekday. It can’t be too difficult to grasp or to sing. Technically, this one has unequal verses, which means the tune needs to have room to expand and contract. It seemed to fall naturally into a Handelian sort of shape, but the problem with that is that Handel is so much better at setting joyful women’s voices than anyone else (except Bach), so it’s embarrassing. There is some laughing in the tune (verse 1), and at one point the tune itself has to turn topsyturvey because the words need it to go up when the rest of the verses take it down (end of stanza 3). And I had to change the Response, because I first thought it started on an unaccented syllable (‘My’), but that didn’t work with the shape of the verse ending, so I had to allow the ‘my’ a certain stress. It felt right after that; Hannah is a strong woman, and her words have a characteristic directness. So I wasn’t satisfied with it when it was done, but at least it now has a tune and can be sung. And I had a chance to find out more about Hannah, and write about her, an early Christmas present I had not expected. Because she was worth it, definitely. Happy Christmas.
the joy of a baby….and music as well
© Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2020 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Keefe and Music for Mass with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Author Kate KeefePosted on 22nd December 2020 Categories WomenTags Christmas, Hannah, Magnificat, Mary, Women, Women in the bible, Women's VoicesLeave a comment on Hannah and the first Magnificat : 1 Samuel 2
Jesus and women; or the Bible and Bechdel
I should perhaps start by admitting that this blog is not about the psalms. It grew out of something that occurred to me while I was away from my day job and away from my various psalm books. I did have a New Testament though, and I wanted to work out an idea that it is Jesus who gives women a voice, because only when they are talking to him do their words get written down. It’s not even strictly Bechdel, because I want to talk about Jesus’ conversations with women, but it is all about the representation of women and Bechdel was the quickest way to indicate the area of discussion.
The Bible and Bechdel
Ruth is famously the only book of the Bible that comfortably passes the Bechdel test. Others have tried to find instances of two women talking, but not about a man, in other books of the Bible, but it’s often a considerable strain and leads to arguments about different interpretations of the test. We can all agree however that there are very few instances of women talking at all in the Bible, let alone named women, and this is, of course, because of the culture and time in which the Bible came to take shape.
The preferred stance of women in the Bible
There are a few conversations involving women that do not include Jesus, but they don’t pass the Bechdel test either : Peter and the maidservant, Herodias and her daughter, Mary and the angel at the Annunciation, another Mary and the angel(s) at the tomb. Mary and Elizabeth just squeezes in as a Bechdel because the babies aren’t born yet.
Jesus’ interaction with women
Sadly, the New Testament isn’t much better than the Old. Most women aren’t named, and they rarely speak, let alone to another woman and about something other than a man. The portrayal and evaluation of women are of their time and consequently shockingly limited. However, one area where there is considerable and significant difference is when you look at the narratives of Jesus’ direct relations with women, and also when you analyse his own speech. I think this is particularly significant because the Gospel writers would have been very careful about the words reported as coming from Jesus. There were usually several witnesses; Jesus’ own words were seen as important.
When you look at the proportion of narrative to direct speech in the Gospels, Jesus’ words seem even more precious. He didn’t leave letters like St Paul, whose own voice, even in translation, is so recognisable and familiar; he didn’t write any of the accounts of his life; all we have are some stories, some teaching, and snatches of conversation with the people he met, remembered and set down much later by other people. When you look at the variation between these words in the Gospels, frankly I think it’s surprising that they are so consistent. They are all we have.
Women talking to Jesus
When you consider the people Jesus talks to, remembering the culture of his day, it’s striking how many of them are women, and it’s very striking how often their words also are reported. Women’s words are rarely preserved (I’ve written about this before), but when they are talking with the Lord, the halo around his words sheds light also on theirs, and they are noted and remembered. It is indubitably true that there are far more male encounters with Jesus described in the Gospels, but when a women actually reaches Jesus and talks to him, he always deals with her as though her gender is not a big issue.
Thanks The woman with a haemorrhage
The classic example of this is the woman with a haemorrhage, the first woman to speak at all in Matthew’s Gospel (even if it’s to herself, Mtt 9). Her illness makes her ritually toxic, and her life has been miserable for twelve years, avoiding others and being shunned by them. We should have had her story at the beginning of July (13th Sunday B), but it’s an optional part of the Gospel and often left out in the reading (possibly still makes people a bit uncomfortable? It was years before I realised what it actually meant, I thought it was an unhealed wound), so I shall briefly recap. She has been bleeding for twelve years, has spent all her money on doctors and has only got worse. She has heard about Jesus, and manages to get near enough in the crowd to touch his cloak. That is all she wants, ‘for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his garment, I shall be made well’ ‘ (Mtt 9 21).
There are more details in Mark. The woman instantly knows that she is better as soon as she has touched Jesus’ robe. Jesus knows something has happened, turns around in the crowd and asks,’Who has touched my clothes?’ The disciples make fun of him: ‘You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask?’ So Jesus looks around to see who did it. The poor woman, with great courage, comes towards Jesus ‘in fear and trembling’ and falls at his feet and tells him ‘the whole truth’ (but Mark is, as always, in a hurry, so he doesn’t repeat what we know already). Jesus says to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction’ (Mark 5, cf also Luke 8). No criticism, no revulsion, no complaints, just a simple statement and a loving envoi. Apart from the word ‘daughter’, Jesus could have been talking to anybody.
a very early illustration of the story
Talking to women (shock horror)
This seems to be deliberate. Jesus doesn’t make a big deal of talking to women, even though it makes some of the apostles uncomfortable (‘Send her away, for she is crying after us’ Matthew 15 23, ‘They marvelled that he was talking with a woman’ John 4 27). He talks to anyone in front of him, male or female, child or adult, important or not, and he does it in the same way, which is also striking. He is simple and direct. He speaks with authority (notice how many people address him with an honorific (‘Lord’, ‘Teacher’, ‘Sir’) once the conversation is under way, but he is never patronising or dismissive to an individual, except once to Peter (‘Get behind me, Satan’ Mtt 16 23).
The woman taken in adultery
Just before Jesus steps in
The woman taken in adultery (John 8) is talked about by all the other people present, but only Jesus speaks to her, once he is alone with her. And he does not say much, but it’s almost as though he is inviting her to common ground with him: ‘Woman, where are they?’ (How would she know, or even care? Is this even said with a smile?) ‘Has no one condemned you?’ And she answers, ‘No one, Lord,’ with a surprising amount of poise and dignity for someone who has just been within inches of a nasty and painful death. Jesus gives her back her dignity by simply talking to her as a human being and asking a question she can answer. Then he saves her, by forgiving her and setting her free :’Neither do I condemn you; go and do not sin again’.
The way Jesus talks
The simplicity of Jesus’ tone is characteristic, and probably one of the things that made the apostles uncomfortable. He talks to women as though they were just other people (still not as common as it should be). When he mentions families or groups, he uses inclusive language,’mothers’ as well as ‘fathers’, ‘daughters’ as well as ‘sons’ (Mtt 10 35ff), and he often gives two or more parables at once, with one drawing on women’s experience (the yeast, the salt, lighting a lamp, hunting for a dropped coin etc). He’s not talking just to the men in his audience. ‘Two men will be in the field; one is
taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left’ (Mtt 24 40). Most unusually for his day, Jesus is naturally inclusive, in language and behaviour. Repeatedly he says ‘fathers and mothers’, ‘brothers and sisters’. Most attractively, he does not see this as a remarkable concession.
Mary and Martha, but two separate events
He is happy to engage even with a woman heckler (Luke 11 27); when others around him treat women dismissively, Jesus stands up for them. In Bethany he tells Martha that Mary is allowed to sit and listen to his teaching ( just as the disciples are), and I can’t help thinking that this was aimed at the disciples at least as much as at Martha. When the women who pour oil on his head (or his feet) are condemned by the people sitting with Jesus, he tells them to leave the anointer alone (Mk 14 6 (head), Mtt 26 10 (head)). In Luke’s account (Lk 7 (feet)), Jesus is the only person to speak to the woman herself, though there are many others there; and he does it twice, very deliberately.
the woman anointing Jesus’ feet with (unusually) another woman at the table
Women are people too
He is aware of the realities of women’s lives (grinding grain, setting lamps, looking after children) and appreciates their vulnerability (‘Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days!’ Lk 21 23), grieving even for those women who grieve for him on his way to be crucified (Lk 23 28). He uses a woman in labour as an image to describe how the apostles will move from sorrow to joy (Jn 16 21), an interesting choice of metaphor for an all-male group. He defends widows and women unwillingly divorced; we can even see him as a #MeToo pioneer: ‘every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Mtt 5 28).
Longer conversations
Note how the woman at the well is standing and talking, not crouching as so often
We have two or three precious slightly longer conversations with Jesus: the woman at the well (Jn 4), the Canaanite woman (Mtt 15), two separate conversations with Martha and Mary after Lazarus’ death (Jn 11). In every case, Jesus takes his interlocutor seriously and they have a real discussion (even though the Canaanite woman has to work for it). The woman at the well is a fascinating example, as she starts almost hostile but ends up as the evangeliser of the whole village, with Jesus’ full support.
Conversation in progress
Women in bulk
It is often difficult to be sure of the identity of the various women in the Gospel narrative. Several of them share names, and they are clearly seen by the various evangelists mostly in the lump, as it were. The Alleluia verse for Saint Mary McKillop (last week) summed this up beautifully: ‘Many women were there by the cross, watching from a distance, the same women who had followed Jesus and looked after him’. A variant of that verse is in every Gospel, and conveys more information than the writers meant, I suspect. These women emerge from the mass when they speak to Jesus, but flow back into it when out of his presence. He gives them a voice that can be heard and that gets written into the narrative.
Women as witnesses to the Gospel
The angels at the tomb talk to the women in the simple direct way that Jesus does. They have information to pass on, and they do so. A whole group of women goes back and faithfully passes on the message of the Resurrection to ‘the eleven and to all the rest’. But here we hit a snag : ‘But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense’ (Lk 24 11). Jesus has to appear to the apostles themselves later, ‘and he upbraided them for their hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen’ (Mk 16 14). The women do not speak nonsense. They are faithful messengers. Jesus is happy to give them the message to pass on. The problem lies in the ears of those who do not want to listen, like the unjust judge in the parable in Luke 18. Jesus encourages us not to lose heart. Who is the person who has to keep on asking and not give up? It’s a widow, the archetype in the Bible for female powerlessness; but Jesus defends and encourages her persistence. And she wins her case.
The Lord’s advice : just keep on asking
Author Kate KeefePosted on 17th August 2018 5th September 2020 Categories WomenTags Women in the bible, Women's VoicesLeave a comment on Jesus and women; or the Bible and Bechdel
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VIDEO: Van Halen premiere clip for new single, Tattoo
By Joe Bosso 10 January 2012
David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen want to 'Tattoo' you
Van Halen have premiered the video for Tattoo, the debut single from their long-awaited album, A Different Kind of Truth, the band's first full-length collection with singer David Lee Roth in 28 years.
The group didn't play Tattoo during their intimate show at the Cafe Wha? in New York City last week; instead, they performed a song called She's The Woman, which is also included on the new record.
The black-and-white clip for Tattoo was shot at The Roxy in Hollywood, where Van Halen were rehearsing for their world tour during the last few months of 2011. Tickets for the initial leg of the tour, which will kick off in Louisville, Kentucky on 18 February, go on VIP advance sale today (10 January) at 9am EST.
OK, so you've had a chance to check out the song. What's the verdict? Tell us what you think!
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Federal and local leaders invite the community to remember 1997 flood; celebrate groundbreaking on federal project
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, and the Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Board of Authority invite the public to a 1997 Flood Commemoration and Groundbreaking Ceremony at
1 p.m., Monday, April 17.
The ceremony will take place on the 20th anniversary of the day the Red River crested in Fargo and Moorhead during the historic flood of 1997. The event will remember the flood and include a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of federal construction for the Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Area Flood Risk Management Project (diversion project). Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney; Moorhead Mayor Del Rae Williams; and Col. Sam Calkins, St. Paul District commander, will officiate at the ceremony. Senators, Congressmen and Governors from North Dakota and Minnesota have also been invited to attend.
“For over 20 years, we’ve all experienced the unbelievable stories of heartache and heroism from the floods of 1997 and 2009, along with the impact they have made upon the lives of citizens in Fargo-Moorhead and the surrounding area,” said Mayor Mahoney. “Our people have waited patiently for many years for this moment and now the wait is finally over. We are officially breaking ground on the project that will keep us safe from flooding.”
"As we commemorate fighting the historic flood of 1997, we also realize the flood of 2009 crested even higher in Fargo and Moorhead," said Calkins. "We're committed to building a project that prevents catastrophic flooding."
The event will be outdoors from 1-2 p.m. at the future site of the diversion project’s inlet control structure. The structure will be near the intersection of County Roads 17 and 16 south of Horace, North Dakota. (In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will be moved to the Fargodome.)
The Diversion Project includes a 30-mile long diversion channel in North Dakota. The plan also includes a 12-mile long southern embankment, 19 highway bridges, four railroad bridges, three gated control structures and two aqueduct structures. The project will provide protection from flooding for 230,000 people and 70 square miles of existing infrastructure in the communities of Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo, Horace and Harwood.
The St. Paul District awarded a $46 million contract on Dec. 6, 2016, to construct the diversion inlet control structure. The Corps’ contractor, Ames Construction, Inc., from Burnsville, Minnesota, began operations at the site in February.
Website: http://www.fmdiversion.com
Twitter: @FMDiversion
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Posted on June 22, 2015 by Pomeroy Daily Sentinel
Wolfe gets probation, fine in farm fraud case
COLUMBUS — A federal court judge sentenced a Meigs County man Monday to probation and more than $1 million in restitution in connection with defrauding a crop disaster assistance program.
Judge Gregory L. Frost sentenced Christopher T. Wolfe, 53, on Monday in U.S. District Court in Columbus to three years probation and $1.33 million restitution. Wolfe could have received up to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the government’s Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP).
Wolfe, along with co-defendants Terry J. McNickle, 51; Mark D. Wolfe, 41; and Joey L. Jerrell, 43, all of Racine; and Michael L. Johnson, 62, of Portland, were indited in May 2014 on charges of conspiracy, theft of public monies, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering.
According to the May 2014 indictment, Christopher T. Wolfe allegedly recruited co-conspirators to enroll in NAP. The co-conspirators would allegedly apply for payments and turn them over to Christopher T. Wolfe after keeping a portion for themselves.
In January, the five entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to defraud the United States in exchange for dismissal of the other charges. Previously, McNickle received three years probation and restitution in the amount of $464,780.50. Mark Wolfe received 2.5 years probation was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $100,000, minus the proceeds from the sale of the John Deere tractor,
Jerrell was sentenced to three years probation. His judgment also included restitution in the amount of $432,216, to be paid jointly and severally with co-defendant Christopher T. Wolfe, and forfeiture of property set forth in the forfeiture allegation.
The status of Johnson’s sentencing is still unknown at press time.
NAP provides financial assistance to producers of non-insurable crops when low yields, loss of inventory or prevented planting occur due to a natural disaster. Payments are limited to $100,000 per crop year per individual or entity.
Hi! A visitor to our site felt the following article might be of interest to you: Wolfe gets probation, fine in farm fraud case. Here is a link to that story: http://www.mydailysentinel.com/news/367/agencies-push-water-patrol-plans
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Antonio Mancini
Mancini was born in Rome; he was active there and in Paris and Naples. He painted genre subjects and portraits.
Paintings by Antonio Mancini
Adieu Paris ('The Customs')
On his first visit to Paris in 1875 Mancini signed a contract to supply pictures to a leading dealer, Goupil & Cie. On a second visit to the French capital in 1877, cut short by a mental breakdown – he never returned – Mancini delivered five paintings to Goupil, including this work. It shows an e...
Aurelia Ciommi was a favourite model for Mancini in Rome, posing for some 25 paintings. Her nickname was La Cornacchia (The Crow), expressive of her sharp and animated features. Here, she seems to reveal for our delectation an austere and elegant Renaissance portrait bust of a woman in white marb...
On a Journey
An old man seated in a train carriage is interrupted in his reverie by our arrival with its hope that the boredom of a long journey will be alleviated. The painting is a character study of a uniquely modern experience, train travel, for which the model was Mancini’s father, Paolo, formerly a tail...
The Marquis del Grillo
The Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo (1849–1922) was a courtier to the Italian Queen Mother, Margherita, a painter in his own right, and a benevolent patron to Mancini. The portrait, one of Mancini’s most ambitious, was painted in Rome in 1889 and intended for the Paris Universal Exhibition t...
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Justice Department Issues Attack On Democrats To Shield Trump Taxes
Cody Fenwick
June 16 | 2019
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Despite a lawful and orderly request from Congress to hand over President Donald Trump’s tax returns, the Treasury Department has steadfastly refused to do so, in clear violation of the law that says the secretary “shall” follow any such directive.
The legal justification for this move has been transparently partisan (and indeed, personal) from the beginning — the administration is simply trying to protect the president. But on Friday, late in the afternoon, the Justice Department released an opinion purporting to justify Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s disobedience.
To support the aggressive posture, the opinion, signed by the Office of Legal Counsel’s Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel, essentially attacked Democrats, saying that Congress’s stated reasons for requesting the returns “were pretextual and that its true aim was to make the President’s tax returns public.”
In other words, it accused House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) of lying. When he had requested the returns, he has said they were for the purpose of reviewing the policy of automatic IRS audits of presidents.
Mnuchin “quite reasonably, concluded that Chairman Neal had not articulated the real reason for his request,” the opinion said.
But it shouldn’t really matter anyway, because the law doesn’t say that Neal needs a legitimate purpose to obtain someone’s tax returns. It simply gives him the power to request the returns and says the department “shall” turn them over. It’s not ambiguous at all.
Still, the Office of Legal Counsel opinion claimed that constitutionally, Congress can’t force the administration to expose confidential information without a legislative purpose.
However, even if the dubious claim about this constitutional limitation on a duly enacted law were correct, it’s simply not true that there’s no legislative purpose to having either the Ways and Means Committee review the returns or for them to be made public. Congress might want to consider a law that would make any presidential candidate release his or her taxes. Or it might want to tighten up conflict of interest rules surrounding the president. Having Trump’s tax returns — and indeed, having them available publicly — would serve a legitimate legislative interest in these and other possible scenarios.
And regardless, the administration’s claim that it has standing to review whether Congress’s reasons for taking a certain course of action are legitimate flies in the face of its own legal arguments in other cases. In both the travel ban case and the citizenship Census question case, both of which went before the Supreme Court, the administration argued that its own patently pretextual reasons for taking these actions were irrelevant, and all that mattered was that the executive branch had the power to act as it did. So when it comes to the executive branch, the administration says its true motives don’t matter; in the case of Congress, however, officials think they can disobey lawmaker’s lawful demands if they’re made with bad intentions.
In the travel ban and citizenship question cases, the arguments were highly dubious, given the clearly nefarious and discriminatory purposes these actions served. But there’s no greater principle at stake in keeping Trump’s tax returns private. There’s simply a government doing its best to protect the leader — no matter the cost to law and constitutional order.
The opinion does have an odd response to these arguments. It acknowledges that the courts likely would not second-guess Congress’s motives for requesting for the tax returns, but it still holds that is appropriate for Mnuchin to do so, given that the executive branch is responsive to the people. But this seems to suggest that, if Neal were to sue Mnuchin or the administration to comply with the directive, the courts would likely side with Congress.
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Community Central Bank Corporation Announces Continued Concern for CEO
Sept. 22, 2010, 3:46 PM UTC / Source: GlobeNewswire
MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich., Sept. 22, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Community Central Bank Corporation (Nasdaq:CCBD), the holding company for Community Central Bank, announced today continued concern for Dave Widlak, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation, who has been reported as missing since late Sunday or early Monday. The police are conducting their investigation and have not advised Community Central of anything that hasn't already been released to the public.
Ray Colonius, Chief Financial Officer, was appointed interim CEO, subject to regulatory approval. Mr. Colonius, speaking on behalf of the Corporation stated, "we are all terribly upset and concerned regarding Mr. Widlak's disappearance. The Bank has found no evidence of anything missing and we are conducting business as usual, but are very concerned about the safety of our friend, Dave Widlak."
Depositors of the bank can continue to access their money and accounts remain insured up to $250,000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Community Central Bank participates in the FDIC's Transactional Account Guarantee Program, which guarantees all noninterest-bearing transaction accounts for the entire amount of the account.
Community Central Bank Corporation is the holding company for Community Central Bank in Mount Clemens, Michigan. The Bank opened for business in October 1996 and serves businesses and consumers across Macomb, Oakland, Wayne and St. Clair counties with a full range of lending, deposit, trust, wealth management, and Internet banking services. The Bank operates four full service facilities, in Mount Clemens, Rochester Hills, Grosse Pointe Farms and Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. Community Central Mortgage Company, LLC, a subsidiary of the Bank, operates locations servicing the Detroit metropolitan area, and Central and Northwest Indiana. River Place Trust and Community Central Wealth Management are divisions of Community Central Bank. Community Central Insurance Agency, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Community Central Bank.
CONTACT: Community Central Bank Corporation Ray Colonius (586) 783-4500
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A coronavirus vaccine is being developed in record time. But don't expect that technology to speed up flu vaccines — yet.
Bart JansenUSA TODAY
Imagine generating a vaccine for the novel coronavirus from your immune system.
The virus that causes COVID-19 has swept the globe with about 1.3 million infections and 70,000 deaths through Sunday evening.Development of a widely available vaccine can take a year or more while a virus continues its rampage.
Key to the race to develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus is a technology that uses the virus' genetic code to essentially persuade your body to make its own vaccine.
This technique is faster than egg-based manufacturing, which produces the majority of annual flu vaccines and led to delays in distributing a vaccine for H1N1 during the 2009 pandemic.
And it's enabling a possible vaccine for the new coronavirus to be developed in record time.
Coronavirus updates: Get the latest in USA TODAY's live blog
“It’s quicker to get started,” said Clem Lewin, who is working on vaccine candidates for the manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur. “All you need is the blueprint for the protein."
Testing still will take time. Scientists must determine whether any of several vaccine candidates fight the virus effectively. If so, they need to determine the proper dose. This tinkering is what could take a year or more.
When the first potential vaccine from the manufacturer Moderna was injected into people on March 16, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he believed the coronavirus vaccine was being developed at a record pace. It took 63 days to go from identifying a virus’s genetic sequence to testing a vaccine in people.
Scrambling egg-based production
Several manufacturers pursuing a vaccine for the latest coronavirus have been aided by a technological innovation.
The method that Moderna, Sanofi and others are pursuing is different from traditional vaccinations, in which a weakened or dead version of the virus is introduced into the body, triggering it to create antibodies that would attack the live virus should the person be exposed to it.
In the new approach, pieces of messenger RNA that hold the chemical template of a spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 virus are injected into a human, said Mark Slifka, a professor of viral immunology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon.
The spikes are what the virus uses to attach to a human cell — the first step in sickening someone.
In response to the injection of those molecules, the cells in the body produce the spike protein encoded by that mRNA. That triggers the body to mount an immune response to that viral protein, just as in traditional vaccines.
“Essentially, the patient makes their own vaccine,” says the narrator of a Moderna video about the vaccine. “This cuts out the middleman.”
Fauci said volunteers would be given two injections of the potential coronavirus vaccine, the second after 28 days. The doses are 25 milligrams, 100 milligrams and 250 milligrams, he said.
“The individuals will be followed for one year — both for safety and whether it induces the kind of response that we predict would be protective,” Fauci said.
Moderna, the manufacturer conducting the initial tests, projected the first commercially available vaccine in 12 to 18 months. A corporate filing March 23 said CEO Stephane Banceltold Goldman Sachs “it is possible that under emergency use, a vaccine could be available to some people, possibly including healthcare professionals, in the fall of 2020.”
Why change the menu from reliable eggs?
Most flu vaccines are produced from fertilized chicken eggs, a decades-old process that takes four to five months. The mRNA process is much faster.
Delays in producing an H1N1 vaccine spurred health officials to urge development of other technologies, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
“It’s a state-of-the-art technology — for the 1950s,” Luciana Borio, then director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, said at a 2018 conference on the 100th anniversary of the Spanish flu pandemic.
A New England Journal of Medicine review of the response to H1N1 found that 78 million doses of the vaccine were eventually produced for 70 countries worldwide, but only after two waves of the illness worldwide.
“The most serious operational shortcoming ... was the failure to distribute enough influenza vaccine in a timely way,” the report said. The cause: distribution problems, "a shortfall in global vaccine-production capacity and technical delays due to reliance on viral egg cultures for production.”
Developing a vaccine is laborious, said Harvey Fineberg, a former president of the U.S. Institute of Medicine and former dean of the public-health faculty at Harvard University.
One step is confirming that a possible vaccine doesn't cause bad reactions in patients. Then scientists examine how much vaccine is required for an antibody response. And they must verify the vaccine actually protects against infection, which is why it's ideal to test during an outbreak.
All those steps come after scientists identify the genetic sequence to target for a vaccine.
“It’s like saying, 'I’ve got my architectural plans — my house must be ready to move into,'” Fineberg said. “There are a lot of things you need to do between now and being ready to open the door.”
Manufacturers work with government
The manufacturers pursuing coronavirus vaccines are working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency.
Moderna is working on 13 potential vaccines. Sanofi is working on two candidates: an mRNA candidate with the company Translate Bio and another option in collaboration with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency.
Other companies are pursuing other technologies. GlaxoSmithKline is working with China-based Clover Biopharmaceuticals through a different process to produce a cell-based vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson, which is working on several possible vaccines, announced last week it would invest $1 billion for vaccine research, development and testing. The company said it could produce 1 billion doses of a vaccine when the time comes.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said $3.5 billion in the coronavirus spending package will help develop manufacturing technologies to ensure a robust, agile, U.S.-based supply chain of vaccines, therapeutics, and active pharmaceutical ingredients.
“The biggest challenge we face in the United States is not developing a vaccine, tricky as that step is,” Coons said in a statement. “It’s that we lack the domestic manufacturing capacity to quickly produce a vaccine once it’s proven and deliver it to the American people.”
Lewin of Sanofi said the global health emergency spurred manufacturers to try different technologies.
“We and all the other manufacturers are working as quickly as possible to accelerate these programs while ensuring the vaccine is safe and effective,” Lewin said. “It isn’t business as usual for anybody.”
What about changes to flu vaccines?
The technology used to develop a coronavirus vaccine won’t affect the annual flu vaccine because they are different viruses requiring different approaches. But even before the pandemic, steps were underway to hasten changes to the flu vaccine.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in September calling on manufacturers to move away from egg-based vaccines because of “critical shortcomings,” including the months they take to produce. The order anticipated a pandemic more lethal than the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 675,000 Americans.
William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, said one reason to change vaccine production is that growing the vaccine in eggs allows mutations that make it less effective.
“People were working on this already,” Schaffner said. “That sort of commitment, a presidential commitment, plus the moneys that go with it, really put the pedal to the metal for future research.”
Egg-based vaccine manufacturing has been reliable. Developing another process would require a multimillion-dollar investment in an industry with small profit margins, Schaffner said.
“Moving away from egg-based production is not like flipping a switch,” he said. “I’m sure all the manufacturers are all thinking about this, but how and how quickly they do it is another matter.”
Other options include cell-based and recombinant processes. A cell-based vaccine is grown in a mammal's cells, such as kidney cells from monkeys or dogs, rather than in a hen's eggs. A recombinant vaccine is created synthetically from the DNA, or genetic instructions, of a protein from the flu virus. The DNA is then combined with a baculovirus, which infects invertebrates.
Other changes could address vaccine delivery, perhaps moving from injections to pills or skin patches, Schaffner said.
A loftier goal is to develop what is called a “universal vaccine,” which could last five years at a time. Such a vaccine could be administered any time of year during a doctor's visit, rather than just in the fall.
Doing that would require changing how the vaccine attacks the flu virus, which is shaped like a sphere with lollipops protruding from it. Vaccines so far have targeted the candy at the end of the lollipop, which changes every year.
A vaccine that targets the stem of the lollipop could offer protection for years, Shaffner said. “If you get vaccinated, you’re vaccinated against a whole series of different influenza viruses,” Schaffner said.
The coronavirus pandemic has come during a severe flu season. This year’s vaccine is about as effective as usual, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of cases through Feb. 8. The study found the severity for people up to 49 years old including hospitalizations was worse than other recent seasons, including the severe year of 2017-2018.
“Current influenza vaccines are providing substantial public health benefits," said the study in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. "However more effective vaccines are needed."
Contributing: Elizabeth Weise
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Estrogen in Cosmetics
By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDReviewed by April Cashin-Garbutt, MA (Editor)
There are several cosmetics that contain steroidal and non-steroidal estrogens. This includes products like shampoos, creams and placental extracts. Much of these are phytoestrogens. These may cause harm to users especially among children and those using these for long periods of time. These environmental estrogens may work together with the body’s own estrogen to increase the risk of breast cancer.
Local uses of estrogen as creams etc.
A German pharmaceutical drug company, formulated a similar product as Emmenin to treat symptoms of menopause like vaginal dryness etc. It was only until 1941 when estrogen therapy was finally approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of menopausal symptoms.
In 1938, British scientists obtained a patent on a newly formulated nonsteroidal estrogen, diethylstilbestrol (DES) that was cheaper and more powerful than the previously manufactured estrogens. Soon it was found that DES could cause vaginal and vulvar cancer among unborn baby girls of the women who used this product.
FDA regulation
It was on 9th of September in 1993 that the Food and Drugs Administration decreed that not all locally or topically applied hormone-containing drug products that are available over –the-counter for human use are recognized as safe and effective. The FDA said that there is a lot of misbranding and mislabelling of these products.
The rule accompanying this finding stated that that any use of natural estrogens in a cosmetic product makes the product an unapproved new drug. It states that any cosmetic using the term "hormone" in the text of its labelling or in its ingredient statement automatically implies it is a drug and thus needs regulatory procedures for approval.
Estradiol appears to help in female SARS-CoV-2 infection
Menopause age not associated with heart disease finds study
War of sugars - estrogen provides protection in COVID-19
Misbranding is also possible if products claiming to contain placental extract claim to have been prepared from placentas from which the hormones and other biologically active substances have been removed and the extracted substance consists principally of protein. The FDA recommends that this substance be identified by a name other than "placental extract" and describing its composition more accurately because consumers associate the name "placental extract" with a therapeutic use of some biological activity.
What environmental estrogens are likely to be present in cosmetics?
These include names like:
Parabens – These are used extensively as a preservative in low amounts (0.1-0.3% by weight per ingredient). Types include butylparaben, ethylparaben, isobutylparaben, methylparaben, propylparaben.
Placental Extracts – these contain hormones estrogen, estrone, and progesterone as contaminants. They are found in shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers and astringents, body and skin creams.
UV Screens – these are UV protection creams and photo-stabilizers. They are used in high amounts of 2-15% by weight per ingredient. Many commonly used UV-screens are absorbed by the skin and get access to the blood stream. They are found in sunscreens, perfumes, hair sprays, shampoos, conditioners, styling gels, facial creams, foundations, moisturizers, lipsticks, liquid hand soaps, body wash, insect repellants, nail polish and polish remover, and aftershave and shaving creams. The harmful chemicals in UV screens are benzophenone-1, benzophenone-2, homosalate, octinoxate, oxybenzone, sulisobenzone, and 4-MBC (this is used in Europe but not in the United States).
All users are advised to read the labels carefully. The ingredients are listed in decreasing order by weight on all personal care products. This should guide choices. Users are advised to choose products that do not have environmental estrogens.
ecommons.library.cornell.edu/.../..._Cosmetics_Estrogen_Connection.pdf
www.cosmeticsandtoiletries.com/.../2658561.html?mobi=y
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/dl/cosmetics.pdf
www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/downloads/Dirty-dozen-backgrounder.pdf
http://ebookbrowse.com/infosheet-estrogen-cosmetics-pdf-d323361252
All Estrogen Content
What is Estrogen?
What Does Estrogen Do?
Estrogen Types
Estrogen in Medicine
Dr. Ananya Mandal
Dr. Ananya Mandal is a doctor by profession, lecturer by vocation and a medical writer by passion. She specialized in Clinical Pharmacology after her bachelor's (MBBS). For her, health communication is not just writing complicated reviews for professionals but making medical knowledge understandable and available to the general public as well.
Mandal, Ananya. (2019, April 19). Estrogen in Cosmetics. News-Medical. Retrieved on January 15, 2021 from https://www.news-medical.net/health/Estrogen-in-Cosmetics.aspx.
Mandal, Ananya. "Estrogen in Cosmetics". News-Medical. 15 January 2021. <https://www.news-medical.net/health/Estrogen-in-Cosmetics.aspx>.
Mandal, Ananya. "Estrogen in Cosmetics". News-Medical. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Estrogen-in-Cosmetics.aspx. (accessed January 15, 2021).
Mandal, Ananya. 2019. Estrogen in Cosmetics. News-Medical, viewed 15 January 2021, https://www.news-medical.net/health/Estrogen-in-Cosmetics.aspx.
Androgen deprivation strategies could help mitigate SARS-CoV-2 infection
Potential new method of breast cancer treatment using androgen receptor
Fluctuating estrogen levels could make alcohol more rewarding to women
BMA reports on the challenges of menopause for working female doctors
Reprimo gene may play a role in menopause-related weight gain
Female reproductive hormones may be protective against COVID-19
Estrogen modestly protective against COVID-19?
Tofu nutrients called isoflavones could lower heart disease risk
Increased risk of uterine cancer linked to 24 gene variants
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LGC Capital Completes Acquisition of Initial Strategic Interest in Licenced Australian Medical Cannabis Company - Little Green Pharma
LGC Capital Ltd
MONTREAL, Oct. 12, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - LGC Capital Ltd. (TSXV: LG) ("LGC") is pleased to announce that it has today completed the acquisition of stage one of its strategic interest in licenced Australian Medical Cannabis company Habi Pharma Pty Ltd of Perth, Australia, doing business as "Little Green Pharma", as announced on September 26, 2017 and October 5, 2017. On October 5, 2017, the Company announced that the TSX Venture Exchange had authorized LGC to proceed to the closing of the transaction and this transaction has now been completed.
At the closing, LGC subscribed for 2,161,091 shares of Little Green Pharma, representing an initial 4.99% of its issued and outstanding shares. As consideration for the shares, LGC paid AUD $432,218 and issued 5,660,000 LGC common shares to Little Green Pharma at a deemed issue price of $0.11 per share. LGC, subject to certain Australian regulatory and other approvals, can now move towards increasing its interest in Little Green Pharma up to 19.03%.
About Little Green Pharma:
Little Green Pharma is one of the few companies in Australia to be granted a licence to cultivate and produce Medical Cannabis within Australia.
Little Green Pharma (www.lgpharma.com.au) has advised LGC that it plans to commence cultivation and production of one of the first clean locally-grown Medical Cannabis products for use solely within Australia, giving hope and relief to those suffering from certain debilitating illnesses. Little Green Pharma's patented technology aims to control the medicinal cannabis particle size encapsulated in the liposomes to optimise the bio-availability so the cannabinoids are readily absorbed into the bloodstream. This enables the resulting preparation to achieve desired therapeutic results with significantly lower cannabinoid doses, when compared to other forms of medicinal cannabis. Little Green Pharma's patented process significantly reduces production costs, enabling Little Green Pharma to be more competitive in the market.
The Australian Medical Cannabis Market:
Little Green Pharma has advised LGC that Australia passed federal legislation in 2016 aimed at permitting the use of Medicinal Cannabis via a tightly-controlled licensed medical prescription system.
In March 2016, The White Paper, entitled Medicinal Cannabis in Australia: Science, Regulation & Industry, was developed by the University of Sydney Business School's Community Placement Program. Its publication followed the news that the Australian Government would shortly allow the cultivation of cannabis in Australia for medical or scientific purposes.
As the first-ever White Paper that analyses the medicinal cannabis industry in Australia, the paper examines international experiences and approaches, supply chain economics, quantities of cannabis required and potential regulatory dynamics. It also serves as a framework for the industry to commence engaging key stakeholders such as the Australian Government and the medical community.
The University of Sydney summary of the White Paper can be viewed via the below link:
http://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2016/03/29/legalising-medicinal-cannabis-would-create--100-million-industry.html
The White paper can be viewed at:
http://mgcpharma.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/mgc_whitepaper_final-sml.pdf
Highlights of the White Paper:
Australia would need to produce 8,000 kg of medicinal cannabis per year to service the existing market.
Australian market currently estimated to be worth AUD $100 million to AUD $150 million per annum, and is likely to grow significantly in the next decade.
Medical Cannabis has the potential to help tens of thousands of patients suffering from a wide range of medical conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy, Cancer, and Severe and Chronic Pain.
Up to 51,000 square metres of greenhouse space - almost three times the size of the Sydney Cricket Ground - would be needed to produce the amount of cannabis required to meet demand.
Further investment stages of the Little Green Pharma acquisition:
As previously announced, the subscription agreement between LGC and Little Green Pharma provides that subject to the issuance by Little Green Pharma of shares to various third parties, LGC will subscribe for a further 752,937 shares of Little Green Pharma for cash consideration of AUD $150,587, so as to maintain its shareholding in Little Green Pharma of 4.99%. In addition, subject to certain Australian regulatory approvals, which are currently in progress, and subject to approval by Little Green Pharma in its sole discretion, LGC may further subscribe, at its option, for additional shares of Little Green Pharma in order to increase its shareholding to a maximum of 19.03%. In the event that this option is exercised, LGC will subscribe for a maximum of 4,585,972 shares of Little Green Pharma for maximum cash consideration of AUD $917,194.
Note: On October 11, 2017, the Bank of Canada's daily average exchange rate for the Australian dollar was AUD $1.00 = CAD $0.9728.
About LGC (www.lgc-capital.com):
LGC Capital Ltd. is a Canadian incorporated public company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV: LG). LGC's objective is to become a diversified business group with core business divisions that provide shareholders with exposure to a diverse range of businesses, products and services.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements with respect to LGC Capital Ltd. ("LGC"), its investment in Little Green Pharma, and LGC's operations, strategy, investments, financial performance and condition. These statements generally can be identified by use of forward-looking words such as "may", "will", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intends", "believe" or "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. The actual results and performance of LGC, including its proposed investment in Little Green Pharma, could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Some important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include, among other things, general economic and market factors, competition, government regulation and the factors described under "Risk Factors and Risk Management" in LGC's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2016, as filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). The cautionary statements qualify all forward-looking statements attributable to LGC and persons acting on its behalf. Unless otherwise stated, all forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and LGC has no obligation to update such statements, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws.
Information Relating to Little Green Pharma:
All information contained in this press release relating to Little Green Pharma has been provided to LGC by Little Green Pharma. LGC has relied upon this information without having made independent inquiries as to its accuracy or completeness and assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracy or incompleteness of such information.
Caution Regarding Press Releases
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE LGC Capital Ltd
For further information: Please contact: Company & Media Contacts, Canada contact: John McMullen, Chief Executive Officer, Tel.: (416) 803-0698, Email: [email protected]; London contact: Anthony Samaha, Chief Financial Officer, Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7440 0640; Investor Relations contact: Dave Burwell, The Howard Group Inc., Tel.: (403) 221-9015, Toll Free: 1-888-221-0915, Email: [email protected]
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Star Wars' History At The Oscars
It's May the 4th and what would May the 4th be like if we didn't do a Star Wars article? In celebrating 40 years of Star Wars and with this being the first May the 4th since Next Best Picture has been around, I felt it would be fitting if we took you on a ride through the Star Wars series' history with the Oscars.
Click below to read more.
"A New Hope"
When "A New Hope" came out in 1977 it was unlike anything else the world had ever seen before in the history of film. This was reflected at the Oscars with 10 Nominations, 6 competitive wins and 1 Special Achievement Oscar.
Best Art Decoration-Set Decoration
Best Original Score
Special Achievement
Best Supporting Actor - Alec Guinness
Best Original Screenplay - George Lucas
Best Director - George Lucas
The one glaring miss here was a nomination for Best Cinematography. When you think of "Star Wars" there are so many iconic shots which come to mind...
Now, I can personally deal with the miss of a nomination here but in retrospect, with so many nominations, it's hard to understand why it missed. The film also missed on a Best Makeup Oscar which was given out in 1964 and 1968 as Special Achievement Oscars, so why could it not get one here? Surely it was deserving, as evidenced by its impact on thousands of future filmmakers who have referenced its landmark effects since. The success of "Star Wars" at the Oscars in 1977 can be most compared to "Mad Max: Fury Road" which also won 6 competitive Oscars from 10 nominations, none of which were in the above the line categories. Each win was wholly deserved and ever since then, the Star Wars series has been struggling to reach these levels of Oscar glory again.
The only question one must ask here is if you were a voting member, would you still give "Annie Hall" Picture and Director over "Star Wars." I think we can all mostly agree that Woody Allen deserved to win Original Screenplay and I would also argue that it deserved to win Best Picture as well. Best Director however, I go back and forth on. George Lucas' vision was so ahead of its time here and really struck a chord with people that if he were nominated today, I wonder if today's voting body would have gone for him. It's tough to say. What do you all think?
Should Have Gotten Nominations For: Best Cinematography & Best Makeup
"The Empire Strikes Back"
As said before, Star Wars has since struggled to do as well at the Oscars as it did with "A New Hope." By most accounts, "The Empire Strikes Back" is the best film of the series even though at the time it was not hailed as such. It was said to be too dark and did not make as much money nor garner as much acclaim as its predecessor had. The Academy saw fit to reward it as such:
Now, this is where I will argue that "The Empire Strikes Back" is the absolute peak of the Star Wars series in terms of sheer cinematic quality on both a filmmaking level and a thematic level. It completely deserved a Best Director nomination for Irvin Kershner and a Best Picture nomination as well. And the cinematography? It's even more astonishing that "The Empire Strikes Back" could not get a nomination much like "A New Hope" could not.
But that is probably not even the most criminal miss here. The one that stings the most is the Supporting performance by Harrison Ford as the iconic Han Solo. Here, in "The Empire Strikes Back" Ford completely owned the character and thus the movie, making his "demise" at the end of the film that much more tragic. Without "The Empire Strikes Back" its unlikely that Han Solo would have gone on to be the iconic character that he became and most that credit is attributed to Ford's charismatic performance.
Should Have Gotten Nominations For: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor & Best Cinematography
"Return Of The Jedi"
And now we come to the divisive third film in the original trilogy. There are many who consider "Return Of The Jedi" the best in the series but there are many more who don't. It's an adequate film that suffered from too much hype, despite giving fans a very satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. In 1983, "Return Of The Jedi" received nominations for:
Best Sound Effects Editing
Even though this film was more popular with the Academy when it came to overall nominations, the film managed only one win for a Special Achievement Oscar for its Visual Effects, which had come a long way since the 1977 original's visual effects. However, with no competitive wins it was clear that steam had run out for the series in regards to the Academy recognition. While I would not personally take any of these wins/nominations away, I also would not add any nominations/wins to its Academy haul other than once again a mention for the Makeup & Hair Styling. By this point, the award had been handed out since 1981, but in 1983 no award was given. Why was "Return Of The Jedi" not at least considered for this? It's a mystery.
Should Have Gotten Nominations For: Best Makeup & Hair Styling
"The Phantom Menace"
And this is where it gets fun. 1999 came. The hype for "The Phantom Menace" was at a fever pitch. The film came out and was a huge disappointment critically even though the anticipation drove the box office to what is now an astonishing $1 billion plus in worldwide sales. People looking to make excuses for the film's shortcomings were able to justify its three Academy Award nominations:
Considering how bad the film was and is regarded by many today, it's astonishing that it managed to get the nominations it did. But that's my 2017 self talking. In 1999, I'm sure these were all justified, but not as justified as what actually happened on Oscar night. For the first time ever, a Star Wars film lost Visual Effects "The Matrix" which also went on to win "The Phantom Menace's" other nominations for Sound and Sound Effects Editing plus a Best Film Editing win to boot. It was clear at this point that unless George Lucas could somehow turn the series around and bring the series back to its former glory, that the Academy was also done with giving the series wins of any kind.
"Attack Of The Clones"
But George Lucas didn't make the series better. In fact, he made it worse. "Attack Of The Clones" was released in 2002 to even worse reviews and less of a reaction from the Academy with only one nomination for...you guessed it.
Now to be fair, I would not take any of the nominations for "The Phantom Menace" or "Attack Of The Clones" away, but if the Academy could have given these two films a Special Achievement Oscar (Much like the Razzies) for the "Worst" in anything, these two films would be more than deserving. Hayden Christensen famously made us all not care anymore for the once beloved Darth Vader and his on-screen chemistry (Or lack thereof) with Natalie Portman was laughably bad with horrendous dialogue from George Lucas. With no one to tell the powerful filmmaker "no" when he seriously needed to hear it, he created two films back to back that very nearly killed the franchise and to a certain extent, did for millions of fans around the world.
"Revenge Of The Sith"
The proof is in the pudding. Despite bringing the story of Anakin Skywalker to a dramatic conclusion with darker themes and moments that would give many skeptical fans the ammunition they needed to somewhat forgive George Lucas to a certain degree, "Revenge Of The Sith" performed much like "Attack Of The Clones" at the Oscars with only one nomination:
Best Makeup & Hair Styling
Finally! The Star Wars series made it into the Makeup & Hairstyling category with a nomination. In a shocking turn however, it missed out for the first time ever with its Visual Effects and "Revenge Of The Sith" arguably has some of the best of the series. Perhaps the Academy still could not forgive Lucas for the first two films in his prequel trilogy. While "Revenge Of The Sith" got a lot right, it still suffered from Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman's terrible acting and on-screen chemistry, a complicated plot that no child could possibly understand and other ridiculous moments which betrayed Star Wars fan's trust (What do you mean Padme lost the will to live?! What does that even mean?!?!!?). After 2005, we would not see another Star Wars film until....
Should Have Gotten Nominations For: Best Visual Effects
"The Force Awakens"
The first Star Wars film under Disney and the first to not have any direct involvement from George Lucas after selling the rights off to Disney, "The Force Awakens" was a triumph both critically, commercially and announced to the world that it was ok to love Star Wars again. The Academy responded kindly with 5 nominations.
Shockingly no wins though. Many felt that on Oscar night, the Academy would be ready to reward what is now the biggest film of all time with at least one win. The Visual Effects team had won the VES and the BAFTA leading up to the ceremony so it made sense to predict that Star Wars would return back to the Visual Effects category wins with "The Force Awakens." However, it was not meant to be. In one of the most shocking Oscar upsets ever, most people's number 5 pick "Ex-Machina" won the category over other heavy hitters such as "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "The Revenant." Many people said that it was due to vote splitting. Some argued it was because "Ex-Machina" was so beloved by the Academy and was not going to win its other category for Best Original Screenplay over "Spotlight" and that this would be the only place to reward it then. Who knows? What was also very odd about this year was how hard people campaigned and pushed to have "The Force Awakens" get a Best Picture nomination with the Critics Choice Awards going so far as to retroactively include it in their nominations leading up to the Oscars. It was also not meant to be, for as enjoyable as "The Force Awakens" is, there are still those detractors out there who proclaimed the plot resembled "A New Hope" too closely as a means to lure old fans back to the series and assure them that the series was in good hands once again. I suppose it worked and even though it did not translate into any Oscar wins, the upcoming "The Last Jedi" film will be the deciding factor in how the Academy now feels overall about the series.
"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"
"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" is unique in that it is the first spin-off film in the Star Wars series and performed at the Academy just about as well as any blockbuster film would with two technical nominations.
While not performing as well as "The Force Awakens" it also did not make as much money, nor was it as big of a hit both critically and with Academy members. While it did not fare as poorly as the last two prequel films did, "Rogue One: A Star Wars" story performed just about as well as you could expect from what is now a very crowded field every year in the tech categories. Just because you're Star Wars, does not mean you're automatically going to get a ton of nominations any more. There is a higher level of quality that needs to be reached and although there are some who say "Rogue One" is their favorite Star Wars film of all time, with weak characterization and a storyline that mostly could have been left on the cutting room floor until the film's second half, "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" has its fair share of problems. The nominations it received here were deserved though as the series continues to advance visual effects with its digital character recreations of General Tarkin and Princess Leia and the film's climatic battle more than deserved that Sound Mixing nod. I am going to maybe throw a mention out there though to cinematographer Greig Fraser who might have possibly shot the best overall looking Star Wars film yet with striking cinematography that was respectful to the world that Lucas had built but also managed to carve out its own identity for itself visually. I personally would have given him the nomination for this over "Lion." But that's just me. What would you have done?
It will be interesting to see where the series goes in the future in regards to the spin-off films and how they will fare with the Academy. But that's it for the Star Wars films and their history at the Oscars. We still have "The Last Jedi" to look forward to later on this year. Will it do as well as "The Force Awakens" did? I've asked for your opinion on many of these films and how they did with the Oscars but now I want to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Thank you and "may the force be with you."
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Minhaj.ORG Literature Education
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Interfaith dialogue generates goodwill
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Source: http://regionalinterfaith.org.au
Published in Interfaith News - Oceania News 15Aug 2011 Written by Administrator
By Hussain Mohi-ud-Din Qadri
Today's global crisis is multifaceted in nature. It is fast impacting the world economically, politically, socially and religiously, leading to chaos, hatred and violence. Therefore, the need for dialogue between religions is imperative to ward off the dangers of civil unrest and violence.
Every religion has its own peculiar language and traditions, which give birth to the fundamental values to humanity leading to betterment of the society. These values play the role of a guide and reform the collective ethos of a society.
Owing to the information explosion, the world has become a global village where happenings in one part of the world have their bearing on the rest of the world.
The tools used for dissemination of information cause positive or negative attitudes among the followers of different religions and cultures besides performing their educative and informative roles.
Therefore, the need to foster positive understanding and interaction among all religions has increased manifold, especially in view of the peculiar nature of threats posed to global order and peace.
None of the past efforts has helped.
Mughal emperor Akbar the Great tried to bring Muslims and Hindus together by contriving his own Din-e-Elahi (Divine Religion). This was an unnatural way of integration, which met its ultimate failure.
Likewise, the philosophy of amalgamating 'Ram' (Hindu God) and 'Raheem' (Muslim God) could not succeed.
The reason for the failure of these efforts was their unrealistic approach, which was seen as an attempt to eliminate the identities of both religions by superimposing a uniform religious structure.
Realistic Philosophy
Islam offers a realistic philosophy of dialogue among different religions and faiths.
It accepts the ideological diversity.
The policy of tolerance, respect and love can be worked out only when one respects and accepts the diversity of opinions, creeds and ideologies held by others.
There is no need to eliminate differences for construction of a good society. It is important to understand contradictions and lack of uniformity in order to build a peaceful and mutually harmonious society.
The respect for other religions and creed can only be created after one has thoroughly understood the differences and diversity. This forms the basis on which different sects and religions can be brought together.
The important principle Islam has worked out in this regard suggests the need for creation of harmony among people and not religions, because differences between religions are natural and cannot be wished away.
The world needs to grasp and implement this principle as a way out of our present-day predicaments. The followers of every religion have their unique set of creed and beliefs and no one has the right to denounce them under any pretext.
The commonalities among religions can be emphasised by understanding their differences. There are so many shared areas such as education, anatomy, social and welfare services, climate change, social security, science and technology, multiculturalism and peace, which call for concerted efforts through global partnerships and alliances.
Islamic history is replete with the examples of inter-faith harmony. Islam has been a strong proponent of dialogue and engagement among different religions and civilisations.
The first Islamic State, established by the founder of Islam, where followers of three religions lived together, was a perfect example of harmony and peaceful coexistence based on mutual respect.
The British encyclopedia Britannica writes about this realistic approach, stating, "Islam achieved stunning successes in the first phase because the followers of other religions lived their life with complete religious independence during the period of Islamic Government."
The followers of different religions and faiths need to join their forces and open the doors of dialogue and interaction to live peacefully and eliminate terrorism and extremism.
We need to understand that the threat to global peace comes from non-state actors who want to impose their highly bigoted and radicalised version of religions on others. They use the fair name of religions to justify their otherwise unjustifiable actions. We can defeat these people if we launch interfaith dialogue as a structured movement at the global level and build bridges among people.
This process of interfaith presents us with the only road ahead on the path of abiding peace, harmony and development.
Hussain Mohi-ud-Din Qadri is President, Supreme Council and Federal Council of Minhaj-Ul-Quran International and a member of the Board of Governors, Minhaj University, Lahore, currently in Melbourne for his PhD in Economics. He is the son of Dr Muhammad Tahir Ul Qadri, an internationally renowned thinker and scholar.
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Greg Fleming sits in his white sedan, its tires only about a foot above the Cashie River, on a gravel road so low that the waves from a ski boat
A Shorter Route to Nowhere
The Sans Souci Ferry is one of the last of its kind, a scavenger hunt of a destination that you’ll find if you’re dedicated. Or a local. Or lost.
Greg Fleming sits in his white sedan, its tires only about a foot above the Cashie River, on a gravel road so low that the waves from a ski boat could wash water over it.
A yellow gate stops absentminded drivers from following the road into the river. About 240 yards away, on the other side of the Cashie, a man walks out of a shack, and a diesel engine rumbles to life. A small white ferry starts pulling itself across, following a dripping steel cable that emerges from the water.
“I did not know this was here,” Greg says. He’d been dutifully following his GPS from Windsor to Pinetown, which is odd, because this ferry, the Sans Souci Ferry, isn’t really on the way between the two places. Greg is five miles upstream from the bridge he probably should be crossing. So let’s just say it: Greg is lost.
“Now that I’m looking at it,” he says of the approaching ferry, “I’m not sure if I trust it.”
The ferry operator will later assure me that he’s never witnessed a car falling off the ferry, although he tells a story of a former operator who forgot to tie the ferry to a post on the shore 20 years ago; a pickup truck’s tires effectively spun the ferry out from under it, dropping truck and driver into the shallow water. The operator also says people ask him how often the cable is replaced (every few years), and whether it has ever snapped (not on his watch).
Greg doesn’t know this, so he slowly edges his car over a metal ramp onto the ferry. “This is crazy,” he says.
It’s not that crazy. The Sans Souci Ferry, in swampy southern Bertie County, is one of only three remaining cable-guided ferries left in North Carolina. Once, they were lifelines.
The Ferry is now mostly a carnival ride, because it’s not on the way from anywhere to anywhere. It’s not on most state maps. It’s tucked away, hidden somewhere in eastern North Carolina’s quilt of thick woods and fields of wheat, tobacco, and clary sage, on a bend in the Cashie River where cypress knees poke above the surface of the calm water.
The operator today is a laid-back Phil Baker, who says, “There’s nothing here to generate anything other than being laid-back.” Most of the time, he sits on a recliner inside the ferry-keeper’s shack, watching television. “If it wasn’t for TV, yeah, I’d probably go out of my mind,” he says. Point taken. Sans souci is French for “carefree,” after all.
Greg has now completed the five-minute trip across the Cashie and continued on his way, still puzzled. He’s not alone: 18-wheelers sometimes show up, also led here by GPS. They can’t cross, but dump trucks can, if they’re empty. A Rolls-Royce came last year. Once, a church brought people to be baptized at the end of the boat ramp next to the ferry. Europeans, historians, and ferry fans come. They all ride for free.
Meta Lavern Hyman crosses two or three times a day; right now, she’s taking mail to her cousin. “I thank God for this here,” she says.
She’s a local, so she’s content to talk through the trip, ignoring the unhooking and rehooking of chains, the cable that rises out of the water when the ferry starts across, the ramp that comes down a few yards from shore, cutting through the dark water. This is not a secret. It is not a relic. This is not a thing to cross off a checklist, or an experience to brag about. To Lavern, the ferry is merely what it’s supposed to be: a shorter route. She drives off, but she’ll be back.
This story was published on Nov 17, 2015
Jeremy Markovich
Jeremy Markovich is a digital manager, writer, and the host of Our State's podcast, Away Message.
1 Destination Dining Guide: The Triangle
2 Destination Dining Guide: Eastern North Carolina
3 Pumpkin Pie Pancakes
4 Destination Dining: Triad Restaurant Guide
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“Exquisite Editions” at The National Print Museum, Dublin
Over in Dublin there is a very lively print museum where there are inspirational workshops for children and adults to learn about the creative processes involved in the making of a book surrounded by the type and presses collected together from letterpress print shops.
At present there is an exhibition which runs round the gallery above this active print shop entitled Exquisite Editions. Around thirty books are displayed which have come from active presses around the world who continue to use presses such as those on show in the museum striving for the highest possible standards and using high quality materials.
The books have been selected by a Dublin printer, Jamie Murphy, who has his own press The Salvage Press where he creates his own very finely printed editions. This is a version of The Battle of Maldon with wood engravings by Simon Brett.
There are showcases for the display and hanging above each is a description of the press involved in the making of the book on show and the details of the book itself. It has been curated with great care and obvious love for the many ways in which books can come into being.
We were delighted that Jamie Murphy chose Angela Lemaire’s A Christmas Sequence which was photographed at the show and put on Facebook so that we may share it with you here.
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The FinCEN Files · Global Banks Defy U.S. Crackdowns By Serving Oligarchs, Criminals, and Terrorists
Global Banks Defy U.S. Crackdowns By Serving Oligarchs, Criminals, and Terrorists
Credit: ICIJ / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images
by ICIJ
Secret U.S. government documents reveal that JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and other big banks have defied money-laundering crackdowns by moving staggering sums of illicit cash for shadowy characters and criminal networks that have spread chaos and undermined democracy around the world.
The records show that five global banks — JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon — kept profiting from powerful and dangerous players even after U.S. authorities fined these financial institutions for earlier failures to stem flows of dirty money.
U.S. agencies responsible for enforcing money laundering laws rarely prosecute megabanks that break the law, and the actions of authorities barely slow the flood of plundered money that washes through the international financial system.
In some cases the banks kept moving illicit funds even after U.S. officials warned them they’d face criminal prosecution if they didn’t stop doing business with mobsters, fraudsters, or corrupt regimes.
JPMorgan, the largest U.S.-based bank, moved money for people and companies tied to the massive looting of public funds in Malaysia, Venezuela, and Ukraine, the leaked documents reveal.
The bank moved more than $1 billion for the fugitive financier behind Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal, the records show, and more than $2 million for a young energy mogul’s company that has been accused of cheating Venezuela’s government and helping cause electrical blackouts that crippled large parts of the country.
JPMorgan also processed more than $50 million in payments over a decade, the records show, for Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for President Donald Trump. The bank shuttled at least $6.9 million in Manafort transactions in the 14 months after he resigned from the campaign amid a swirl of money laundering and corruption allegations from his work with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
Tainted transactions continued to surge through accounts at JPMorgan despite the bank’s promises to improve its money laundering controls as part of settlements it reached with U.S. authorities in 2011, 2013 and 2014.
In response to questions for this story, JPMorgan said it was legally prohibited from discussing clients or transactions. It said it has taken a “leadership role” in pursuing “proactive intelligence-led investigations” and developing “innovative techniques to help combat financial crime.”
HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon also continued to wave through suspect payments despite similar promises to government authorities, the secret documents show.
🔗About This Investigation
The FinCEN Files is a 16-month-long investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, BuzzFeed News and more than 400 international journalists in 88 countries, including those from OCCRP and its network of member centers.
The leaked documents, known as the FinCEN Files, include more than 2,100 Suspicious Activity Reports written by banks and other financial players and submitted to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the records were gathered as part of U.S. congressional committee investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, while others were gathered following requests to FinCEN from law enforcement agencies.
BuzzFeed News obtained a trove of U.S. bank records that identify more than $2 trillion in transactions between 1999 and 2017 flagged by financial institutions’ internal compliance officers as possible money laundering or other criminal activity — including $514 billion at JPMorgan and $1.3 trillion at Deutsche Bank.
Those Suspicious Activity Reports filed with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reflect the concerns of watchdogs within banks and are not necessarily evidence of criminal conduct or other wrongdoing.
Though a vast amount, $2 trillion is just a drop in a far larger torrent of dirty money gushing through banks around the world. The FinCEN Files represent less than 0.02% of the more than 12 million suspicious activity reports that financial institutions filed with the agency between 2011 and 2017.
Credit: U.S. Government The facade of the United States Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C.
FinCEN and its parent, the Treasury Department, did not answer a series of questions sent last month by ICIJ and its partners. FinCEN told BuzzFeed News that it does not comment on the “existence or non-existence” of specific suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Days before the release of the investigation by ICIJ and its partners, FinCEN announced that it was seeking public comments on ways to improve the U.S. anti-money laundering system.
The cache of suspicious activity reports — along with hundreds of spreadsheets filled with names, dates and figures — flag bank clients in more than 170 countries who were identified as being involved in potentially illicit transactions.
Along with sifting through the FinCEN Files, ICIJ and its media partners obtained more than 17,600 other records from insiders and whistleblowers, court files, freedom-of-information requests and other sources. The team interviewed hundreds of people, including financial crime experts, law enforcement officials and crime victims.
BuzzFeed News said some of the secret records were requested as part of U.S. congressional investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Others were gathered by FinCEN following requests from law enforcement agencies.
Rinse, Profit, Repeat: How a Small Team of Estonians Turned a Danish Bank into a Laundromat
New documents show a group of bankers actively helped their clients skirt money laundering regulations by running offshore companies for them.
The FinCEN Files show banks moving cash through their accounts for people they can’t identify, failing to report transactions with all the hallmarks of money laundering until years after the fact, even doing business with clients enmeshed in financial frauds and public corruption scandals.
Authorities in the U.S., who play a leading role in the global battle against money laundering, have ordered big banks to reform their practices, fined them hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars, and held threats of criminal charges over them as part of so-called deferred prosecution agreements.
A 16-month investigation by ICIJ and its reporting partners shows that these headline-making tactics haven’t worked. Big banks continue to play a central role in moving money tied to corruption, fraud, organized crime and terrorism.
“By utterly failing to prevent large-scale corrupt transactions, financial institutions have abandoned their roles as front-line defenses against money laundering,” Paul Pelletier, a former senior U.S. Justice Department official and financial crimes prosecutor, told ICIJ.
He said banks know that “they operate in a system that is largely toothless.”
🔗Holding Bankers Accountable
Why haven’t seemingly big financial penalties done more to change bank behavior?
John Cassara, a financial crime expert who worked as a special agent assigned to FinCEN from 1996 to 2002, said penalties paid by the big banks may sound large but that they’re a tiny fraction of profits. And the money isn’t paid by the bankers who should be held accountable, he said — it’s paid by shareholders.
BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, received the biggest fine of all in 2014, when it was forced to pay $8.9 billion in the face of evidence that it helped shift billions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to American sanctions. This wasn’t a deferred prosecution. The bank agreed to accept a criminal conviction, and to force out 13 staffers.
For BNP Paribas, the priority was in keeping its license to process dollar transactions from being permanently taken away. U.S. regulators did bar it for a year.
After the deal was announced, the bank’s share price rose 4 percent.
James S. Henry, a New York-based economist, attorney and author who has been investigating the world of dirty money since the 1970s, said American enforcement actions over the past two decades have had some impact on large banks’ behavior — at least compared to an earlier era when they operated with few restraints.
But he said it’s going to take “more prosecutorial will and international collaboration” to force change.
“We have to put some senior executives who are in charge of this stuff at risk,” Henry said. “And that means fines and/or jail.”
Five of the banks that appear most often in the FinCEN Files — Deutsche Bank, Bank of New York Mellon, Standard Chartered, JPMorgan and HSBC — repeatedly violated their official promises of good behavior, the secret records show.
In 2012, London-based HSBC, the largest bank in Europe, signed a deferred prosecution deal and admitted it had laundered at least $881 million for Latin American drug cartels. Narcotraffickers used specially shaped boxes that fit HSBC’s teller windows to drop off the huge amounts of drug money they were pushing through the financial system.
Under the deal with prosecutors, HSBC paid $1.9 billion and the government agreed to put criminal charges against the bank on hold and dismiss them after five years if HSBC kept its pledge to aggressively fight the flow of dirty money.
During that five-year probationary period, the FinCEN Files show, HSBC continued to move money for questionable characters, including suspected Russian money launderers and a Ponzi scheme under investigation in multiple countries.
Yet the government allowed HSBC to announce in December 2017 that it had “lived up to all of its commitments” under its deferred prosecution pact — and that prosecutors were dismissing the criminal charges.
HSBC declined to answer questions about specific customers or transactions. HSBC said ICIJ’s information is “historic and predates” the end of its five-year deferred prosecution deal. During that time, the bank said, it “embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its ability to combat financial crime. …HSBC is a much safer institution than it was in 2012.”
HSBC noted that in deciding to release the bank from the threat of criminal charges, the government had access to reports from a monitor who reviewed the bank’s reforms and practices.
The Department of Justice declined to answer specific questions but issued a statement:
“The Department of Justice stands by its work, and remains committed to aggressively investigating and prosecuting financial crime — including money laundering — wherever we find it.”
‘Everyone is Doing Badly’
Money laundering isn’t a victimless crime.
The free flow of dirty cash helps sustain criminal gangs and destabilize nations. And it is a driver of global economic inequality. Laundered funds are often shunted between accounts owned by obscure shell companies registered in secretive offshore tax havens, allowing elites to hide massive sums from law enforcement and tax authorities.
Banks in the FinCEN Files frequently processed transactions for companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions and did so without knowing the ultimate owner of the account. Corporate account holders often provided addresses in the U.K., the U.S., Cyprus, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Switzerland. At least 20 percent of the reports contained a client with an address in one of the world’s top offshore financial havens, the British Virgin Islands.
ICIJ’s analysis found that in half of the reports the banks lacked information about one or more entities behind the transactions. In more than 680 reports financial institutions asked for more information about entities and on more than 160 occasions other banks didn’t respond. Some banks or branches in countries such as Switzerland cited local secrecy laws to deny the information.
Estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime indicate that $2.4 trillion in illicit funds are laundered each year — the equivalent of nearly 2.7 percent of all goods and services produced annually in the world. But the agency estimates that authorities detect less than 1 percent of the world’s dirty money.
“Everyone is doing badly,” David Lewis, executive secretary of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, a partnership of governments around the world that sets anti-money laundering standards, acknowledged in an interview.
His organization’s country-evaluation reports — which dig into how well banks and government agencies meet anti-money-laundering laws and regulations — show lots of box-checking but little practical progress. Many countries seem more concerned with looking good on paper than actually cracking down on money laundering, he said.
Even an association of the world’s biggest banks complained last year that regulators focus on “technical compliance” rather than whether systems “are really making a difference in the fight against financial crime.”
The aftermath of a 2003 suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed seven people. Victims and their survivors sued Arab Bank, claiming it aided the attack by moving money for terrorists.
A Bombing in Jerusalem
For some financial institutions, the problem client is another bank.
One early morning in 2003 Steven Averbach was on the No. 6 bus in Jerusalem, when a man rushed to board as the bus pulled away.
“There were too many things out of place” with the man, recalled Averbach, who grew up in New Jersey but immigrated to Israel.
The man wore the typical garb of an Orthodox Jew, but his “tipped shoes” didn’t fit with the Orthodox sect dress, and his jacket was bulging. In his right hand was a device that looked like a doorbell.
Averbach, a former chief weapons instructor for the Jerusalem police force, drew his sidearm. As the ex-cop turned to face the man, “he detonated himself,” Averbach later testified in a video deposition.
The blast killed seven and wounded 20 others, leaving Averbach paralyzed from the neck down. He died in 2010. By then, he and his family were plaintiffs in a lawsuit in the U.S. accusing a Jordanian financial institution, Arab Bank, of moving funds that helped bankroll terrorists involved in the bus bombing and other attacks.
The FinCEN Files show that as the litigation was casting a shadow over Arab Bank, it was benefiting from a working relationship with a much bigger, more influential bank: Standard Chartered.
The U.K.-headquartered bank helped Arab Bank clients access the U.S. financial system after regulators found deficiencies in Arab Bank’s money laundering controls in 2005 and forced it to curtail money-transfer activities in the U.S.
Standard Chartered continued its relationship with Arab Bank even after American authorities put Standard Chartered on notice that it must stop processing transactions for suspect clients.
New York regulators concluded in 2012 that Standard Chartered had “schemed with the Government of Iran” for nearly a decade to push through $250 billion in secret transactions, reaping “hundreds of millions of dollars in fees” and leaving “the U.S. financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes.”
This pattern of conduct cost Standard Chartered nearly $670 million in penalties in the second half of 2012 as part of two deferred prosecution agreements and other deals with New York and U.S. authorities.
Despite its official pledges to stay away from suspect customers, Standard Chartered processed 2,055 transactions totaling more than $24 million for Arab Bank customers between September 2013 and September 2014, the FinCEN Files show.
Then, in late September 2014, Standard Chartered got another reason to back away from Arab Bank: A Brooklyn jury in the Jerusalem bus bombing case found Arab Bank liable for knowingly supporting terrorism by transmitting money disguised as charitable donations for the benefit of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization.
More than a year later, compliance staffers at Standard Chartered sent FinCEN a SAR acknowledging the bank’s dealings with Arab Bank even after the verdict and expressing concerns about “potential terrorist financing.”
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Standard Chartered shifted nearly $12 million more in transactions for Arab Bank customers from just after the verdict until February 2016, according to a follow-up report in the FinCEN Files. Many wires referred to “charities,” “donations,” “support,” or “gifts,” the bank said. The follow-up report noted that the payment records raised concern about “illicit activities” potentially funded “under the guise of charity.”
The civil verdict against Arab Bank was overturned on appeal, and the bank settled with nearly 600 victims and victims’ relatives for an undisclosed amount.
In a statement, Arab Bank told ICIJ it “abhors terrorism and does not support or encourage terrorist activities.” The bank said the allegations date back nearly 20 years to a time when anti-money-laundering laws, tools and technologies were different.
“In every country where it operates, Arab Bank is in good standing with government regulators and complies with anti-terrorism and money laundering laws,” the bank said. The 2005 U.S. regulatory limits against the bank were formally lifted in 2018.
Standard Chartered told the BBC that it “initiated account closure” in connection to Arab Bank shortly after the jury verdict.
“This process can take time in some cases,” the bank said, “but in all cases the bank continues to fulfil its regulatory obligations” while exiting accounts.
Arab Bank said it “enjoys a longstanding relationship with Standard Chartered” that “continues today.” Standard Chartered no longer processes U.S. dollar transactions for Arab Bank, but it still provides other banking services.
Credit: Sadiq Asyraf/AP Protesters hold portraits of Jho Low illustrated as a pirate during a protest in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in April 2018.
Rewards and Risks
Why do banks move suspect money? Because it’s profitable.
Banks charge fees as money spins through the webs of accounts often maintained by corrupt users of the financial system. JPMorgan, for example, scored an estimated $500 million in revenues as chief banker to Bernie Madoff, according to filings in the bankruptcy case spawned by the collapse of his multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Dealing with shady customers does carry risks. JPMorgan paid $88.3 million in 2011 to settle regulators’ claims that it had violated economic sanctions against Iran and other countries under U.S. embargoes. Treasury officials hit the bank with a “cease and desist” order in 2013 that described “systemic deficiencies” in its anti-money-laundering efforts, noting the bank had “failed to identify significant volumes of suspicious activity.”
In January 2014, the bank paid $2.6 billion to U.S. agencies to settle investigations over its role in Madoff’s scheme. Madoff pleaded guilty and is serving a 150-year sentence in federal prison. JPMorgan continued to move money for people involved in alleged financial crimes, the FinCEN Files show.
Among them: Jho Low, a financier accused by authorities in multiple countries of being the mastermind behind the embezzlement of more than $4.5 billion from a Malaysian economic development fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB. He moved just over $1.2 billion through JPMorgan from 2013 to 2016, the records show.
Low first gained notoriety for partying with Paris Hilton, Leonardo DiCaprio and other celebrities. One night at a club on the French Riviera, he got into a bidding war over a cache of Cristal champagne — winning the contest with a 2 million-euro bid, according to “Billion Dollar Whale,” a bestselling book about the 1MDB swindle.
He was first outed by media reports in early 2015 as a key figure in the 1MDB scandal. Singapore issued a warrant for his arrest in April 2016. He remains at large.
JPMorgan also moved money for companies and people tied to corruption in Venezuela that have helped create one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. One in three Venezuelans is not getting enough to eat, the UN reported this year, and millions have fled the country.
One of the Venezuelans who got help from JPMorgan was Alejandro “Piojo” Isturiz, a former government official who has been charged by U.S. authorities as a player in an international money-laundering scheme. Prosecutors allege that between 2011 and 2013 Isturiz and others solicited bribes to rig government energy contracts. The bank moved more than $63 million for companies linked to Isturiz and the money laundering scheme between 2012 and 2016, the FinCEN Files show. Isturiz could not be reached for comment.
The secret records show that JPMorgan also provided banking services to Derwick Associates, an energy firm that won billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to repair Venezuela’s failing electricity grid.
A 2018 analysis by the Venezuelan chapter of the nonprofit group Transparency International concluded that Derwick Associates failed to deliver the power capacity expected — and overbilled the Venezuelan government by at least $2.9 billion.
Alejandro Betancourt was in his 20s when he co-founded Derwick with a younger cousin. News articles and Internet postings from 2011 raised allegations about Derwick. The company later filed a lawsuit that claimed it was the victim of a smear campaign that falsely accused it of being part of a “criminal group.” The suit was settled on undisclosed terms.
Derwick used accounts at JPMorgan to move at least $2.1 million in 2011 and 2012 and the bank processed other transactions of undisclosed amounts for Derwick and its managers at least into 2013.
In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department charged a senior Derwick executive, Francisco Convit Guruceaga, in an alleged $1.2 billion bribery and money-laundering scheme. Betancourt was cited in the criminal complaint as an unnamed co-conspirator, the Miami Herald later reported.
A lawyer for Betancourt said: “My client denies any wrongdoing.” Convit’s attorney declined to comment.
In a general statement, JPMorgan noted that in 2014 it acknowledged a need to improve anti-money laundering controls and has since invested heavily toward this effort.
“Today, thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars are devoted to helping support law enforcement and national security efforts,” the bank said.
Reputed Russian organized crime “Boss of Bosses” Semion Mogilevich, seen here in a 2001 photo released by the FBI.
‘Boss of Bosses’
Often, the secret files show, banks handling cross-border transactions have little idea who they’re dealing with — even when they’re shifting hundreds of millions of dollars.
Take the case of a mysterious shell company called ABSI Enterprises. ABSI sent and received more than $1 billion in transactions through JPMorgan between January 2010 and July 2015.
This amount included transactions through a direct bank account with JPMorgan, which ABSI closed in 2013, and through so-called correspondent banking arrangements, in which a bank with significant U.S. operations, such as JPMorgan, allows foreign banks to process U.S. dollar transactions through its own accounts.
Compliance watchdogs based at the bank’s Ohio operations hub tried to determine ABSI’s actual owner in 2015 after a Russian news site reported that a similarly-named shell company — which JPMorgan’s records indicated was the parent of ABSI — was linked to underworld figure Semion Mogilevich.
Mogilevich, who is featured in the Netflix documentary series “World’s Most Wanted,” is known as the “Boss of Bosses” of Russia’s mafia groups. When the FBI put him on its Top Ten Most Wanted list in 2009, it said his criminal network was involved in weapons and drug trafficking, extortion and contract murder. The beefy, chain-smoking Ukrainian favors car bombs, The Guardian once reported.
The bank compliance officers searched in vain through their files on the shell company, unable to determine who was behind the firm or its true purpose.
While those details still remain unclear, JPMorgan had plenty of reasons to examine ABSI years earlier: it operated as a shell company in Cyprus, then a major money laundering center, and it was moving hundreds of millions of dollars.
Through a spokesperson, Mogilevich said he had no knowledge of ABSI. He has previously said: “I am not a leader or an active participant of any criminal group.”
Credit: Seth Wenig/AP Disgraced political consultant and international lobbyist Paul Manafort, center, arrives at court in New York in June.
The Mighty Dollar
BuzzFeed News used FinCEN Files SARs in 2018 to publish stories revealing secret payments to shell companies controlled by Manafort, who is now serving a federal prison sentence in home confinement in a case based largely on these transactions.
A former U.S. Treasury Department official, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, in January pleaded guilty to conspiring to unlawfully disclose Suspicious Activity Reports. She faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. BuzzFeed News has not identified her as its source.
FinCEN and other U.S. agencies play an outsized role in anti-money laundering efforts around the world, largely because money launderers and other criminals share the same goal as many bank customers who operate across borders: turning their money into U.S. dollars, the de facto global currency.
An elite group of mostly U.S. and European banks with large operations in New York pocket fees for the work, drawing on their privileged access to the U.S. Federal Reserve. Going through these banks’ U.S. operations is also the only way to move dollars between account holders in different countries.
American law entrusts banks with frontline responsibility to prevent money laundering, even though their financial incentives run entirely in the direction of keeping money — dirty or clean — moving. While banks are empowered to stop a transaction if it appears to be shady, they’re not necessarily required to do so. They simply have to file a SAR.
FinCEN, which has roughly 270 employees, collects and sifts through more than 2 million new SARs from financial institutions each year. It shares information with U.S. law enforcement agencies and with financial intelligence units in other countries.
Credit: Frank Franklin II/AP Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards leaves a U.S. Federal court in New York in 2019. Edwards, a senior Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has been accused of leaking confidential Suspicious Activity Reports to a journalist.
Inside big banks, systems for sniffing out illicit cash flows rely on overworked, under-resourced staffers, who typically work in back offices far from headquarters and have little clout within their organizations. Documents in the FinCEN Files show compliance workers at major banks often resort to basic Google searches to try to learn who’s behind transfers involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
Banks frequently file SARs only after a transaction or customer becomes the subject of a negative news article or a government inquiry — usually after the money is long gone.
In interviews with ICIJ and BuzzFeed, more than a dozen former HSBC compliance officers called into question the effectiveness of the bank’s anti-money laundering programs. Some said the bank didn’t give them enough to do beyond cursory looks at large flows of cash — and that when they requested information, HSBC branches outside the U.S. often ignored them.
“They would say: ‘Sure, we’ll get back to you.’ But they’d never get back,” recalls Alexis Grullon, who worked for HSBC in New York from 2012 to 2014.
In a lawsuit filed in 2019 in federal court in New York, Standard Chartered Bank employees claimed they were threatened, harassed, and fired if they objected to illegal transactions.
Julian Knight and Anshuman Chandra claim in the suit that the bank forced them out of management jobs after they cooperated with an FBI probe probe of transfers for sanctioned entities from Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Myanmar.
Standard Chartered, the suit claims, engaged in a “highly sophisticated money laundering scheme,” altering the names of parties on transaction documents and creating a technological workaround that let illegal transactions slip undetected through the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.
Chandra, who worked in the bank’s Dubai branch from 2011 to 2016, concluded that the sanctions-busting helped bankroll terror attacks “that killed and wounded soldiers serving in the U.S.-led coalition, as well as many innocent civilians.”
The suit says the scheme allowed the bank to profit from the “high premium” that Iran and its operatives were willing to pay to convert Iranian rials into dollars.
“You can run a show like this probably for a few months without being caught if it’s a small group running it within the bank,” Chandra said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “But something like this happening over a period of years and coming into billions of dollars — someone at the top should have asked the question: How are we making this money?”
Chandra and Knight claim the bank acknowledged only a fraction of its violations in its 2012 deferred prosecution deal and lied about when illegal transactions had stopped.
Standard Chartered declined comment on the lawsuit claims. In court papers, the bank called the allegations implausible and meritless.
After several extensions of its probationary period, the bank in 2019 paid $1.1 billion more for continuing violations of sanctions against Iran and other countries and agreed to extend deferred prosecution another two years.
Credit: Creative Commons Riot police in Kyiv during anti-government protests in February 2014.
Ukraine, JPMorgan, and the Kleptocrats
Olesia Zhukovska, 21, took a bullet in the fight against corruption in Ukraine.
During the regime of President Viktor Yanukovych, billions of dollars were smuggled out of the country — channeled through far-off accounts at some of the world’s biggest banks.
Demonstrators protested their leaders’ tilt toward Russia and high-level corruption that was wrecking the country’s economy, its schools, and its health system. Ukrainians were dying, patient advocates said, because money intended for life-saving medicines and equipment was being stolen by insiders.
Zhukovska, a nurse, said she couldn’t afford the $3,000 bribe needed to get a job in an urban hospital. She worked instead at a decrepit rural health center with no heat, no medicines — “Nothing.”
In December 2013, she joined anti-government rallies in Kyiv, volunteering to treat demonstrators beaten by baton-swinging government forces.
She was sorting bandages on February 20, 2014, when a sniper’s bullet tore into her neck. It hit less than an inch, she says, from her carotid artery.
As an ambulance rushed her to the hospital, she tweeted: “I am dying.”
It was the day of what became known as the “Snipers’ Massacre.” Zhukovska survived, but dozens were killed by police who rained fire on protesters.
Zhukovska’s tale of struggle and pain is similar to those of average people around the world who suffer as corrupt politicians and their cronies enrich themselves with the help of name-brand global banks.
Yanukovych and Chief of Staff Andriy Klyuyev fled to Russia in 2014. Both are wanted by Ukrainian authorities and are under U.S. sanctions that accuse them of embezzling public funds and subverting Ukrainian democracy.
An investigation later found that Activ Solar, an energy group run by Klyuyev’s family, made off with hundreds of millions of dollars in purported loans from government-owned banks. Its assets were funnelled into a network of offshore companies controlled by the family, according to a Ukraine Financial Intelligence Unit report.
The Activ Solar affair was part of an orgy of corruption under Yanukovych that included a sale of Ukraine’s presidential palace, the Mezhyhirya estate, at a rock-bottom price to Klyuyev’s brother, Serhiy. The palace — with a zoo and a replica Spanish galleon for cruises on the Dnieper River — became a symbol of the regime’s decadence.
As always, corrupt proceeds need a place to hide. On the way, most pass through Lower Manhattan.
Credit: Alexander Welscher/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images An administrative building of the ABLV Bank in Riga, Latvia, in 2018.
Lingerie and Knee Boots
In January 2010, as Yanukovych was winning the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election, someone incorporated a new company at the U.K. Companies House. The company, NoviRex Sales LLP, claimed to be in the “domestic appliances” business. Its paperwork suggested something else.
NoviRex Sales listed its official address as a former nail salon in Cardiff, Wales.The same address was used by hundreds of other companies registered at Companies House. The company’s owners were two other companies, both incorporated in the British Virgin Islands without visible owners and both “owners” of thousands more companies at Companies House — many registered to the shop in Cardiff.
Records show NoviRex’s listed owners also had companies linked in news reports to suspected bid-rigging and other corrupt acts, much of it centering on Ukraine.
The FinCEN Files show NoviRex soon began firing off payments of astonishing variety, size and frequency. Some of the reasons NoviRex for payments: $200,000 for “lingerie” from a British Virgin Islands company; $34,000 for “keyboard stickers” from a Hong Kong firm; almost $400,000 on “knee-boots,” also involving a Hong Kong company.
Yet as NoviRex moved millions of dollars through the global banking system, its financial statements — available online from Companies House — indicated it was basically moribund, spending less than $2,500 per year.
NoviRex sent all its payments from banks in notorious money laundering centers, including Latvia’s ABLV Bank. To move dollars internationally, the company needed a global institution with access to the U.S. Federal Reserve System.
NoviRex needed JPMorgan Chase.
JPMorgan Chase provided ABLV with a U.S. dollar account in New York, allowing the Latvian bank to offer dollar accounts to its own customers, including NoviRex.
In the early 2000s, even as banks faced new obligations under the 2001 USA Patriot Act to carefully check their foreign banking partners, JPMorgan ramped up business supplying dollar accounts to foreign banks. By 2003, it had become the global leader in correspondent banking, processing payments for the clients of 3,500 banks around the world, helping bring JPMorgan’s overall daily dollar transaction volume to more than $2 trillion in 46 countries.
In 2004, FinCEN warned global banks about Eastern European banks and their shell company customers, reporting that $4 billion in suspicious transactions had been reported since 1996.
European Regulators Failed to Spot Suspicious Money Flooding Through Latvia’s Banks
Leaked data show international banks flagged more transactions to U.S. authorities from Latvia than Switzerland.
In 2005, the year Jamie Dimon was named JPMorgan’s CEO, FinCEN warned that Latvian banks and their “sizable” non-Latvian customer base “continue to pose significant money laundering risks.
“Many of Latvia’s institutions do not appear to serve the Latvian community, but instead serve suspect foreign private shell companies,” FinCEN said. Latvia’s 23 banks then held about $5 billion in “nonresident” deposits, mainly from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
This was JPMorgan’s market.
In allowing a transfer, a correspondent bank deducts the amount from the account of the sending bank and credits the account of the receiving bank.
By granting foreign banks access to dollars, JPMorgan was opening the system’s doors to their customers, including shell companies like NoviRex.
In return for this gatekeeping power, and the fees it brings, U.S. law requires banks to monitor each transaction cleared on foreign banks’ instructions and to vet those banks.
A later probe would find that 90 percent of ABLV customers were deemed “high risk” by ABLV itself, primarily because they were shell companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions.
Some of these shells were moving billions of dollars later traced to corruption in Ukraine. U.S. regulators concluded ABLV had institutionalized money laundering as “a pillar of the bank’s business practices,” aggressively peddled money-laundering schemes to clients, and produced fraudulent documentation of “the highest quality” to support these schemes — all the while bribing Latvian officials to prevent threats to its business model.
Two financial crime experts who reviewed NoviRex’s transactions at ICIJ’s request said the signs of money laundering were clear. NoviRex had behaved like no legitimate business ever would.
“If I was at JPMorgan and I saw this, I’d be thinking: ‘This is horrendous,’” said former U.K. police detective Martin Woods. “What normal company buys computers, lingerie and buckets?”
NoviRex had moved more than $188 million in transactions via JPMorgan by early 2014.
Pulling Out
By the end 2014, JPMorgan had terminated correspondent accounts of about 500 foreign banks. That included some in Latvia, according to a banking trade group official there.
In a December 2014 report to shareholders, the bank acknowledged “mistakes made and lessons learned from our experiences in foreign correspondent banking.”
“Every company makes mistakes (and we’ve made a number of them), but the hallmark of a great company is what it does in response,” Dimon, the CEO, wrote in a cover letter. He didn’t mention Ukraine or Latvia, or ABLV or NoviRex.
Nor did he mention that, shortly before the pullout, U.S. regulators had issued a scathing appraisal of JPMorgan’s money laundering safeguards and ordered the bank to review its correspondent banking practices.
By then, Ukraine’s treasury had been looted, JPMorgan’s fees pocketed. JPMorgan’s treasury-services group, the parent of its correspondent-banking business, reported $4.13 billion in revenue in 2013. Dimon’s total compensation in 2014 was $20 million.
The NoviRex story might have ended there, but the U.S. Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian election interference and other issues relating to President Donald Trump and his associates.
One of those associates was Paul Manafort, onetime chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Manafort had also served as a consultant and lobbyist for Ukraine’s former president, Yanukovych. The FinCEN Files show staff at JPMorgan’s Ohio compliance office became concerned about press reports from Ukraine about secret payments to Manafort-controlled shell companies disguised as payments for computer equipment.
The bank noted that NoviRex had made such payments.
As scrutiny of Manafort’s foreign dealings intensified, JPMorgan filed more SARs detailing — years after the fact — millions of dollars paid to the consultant, his associates, and their businesses.
At Manafort’s 2018 trial, NoviRex’s name surfaced as one of a handful of shell companies used by Ukrainian oligarchs to channel payment for lobbying to Manafort’s own shell companies.
In all, NoviRex secretly paid nearly $4.2 million to Manafort’s consulting operation on behalf of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions, according to government exhibits in his trial.
Manafort was ultimately convicted of bank fraud, failure to report a foreign bank account and other crimes. In court, his former business partner, Rick Gates, revealed that Klyuyev, Yanukovych’s right-hand man, was behind NoviRex.
In all, the FinCEN Files show, JPMorgan transmitted 706 transactions totaling at least $230 million for NoviRex from 2010 to 2015. That never came up during the trial.
In 2018, FinCEN declared JPMorgan’s former customer, ABLV, a “primary money laundering concern” that had moved “billions of dollars” for Ukrainian tycoons accused of looting state assets. FinCEN barred U.S. banks from providing ABLV access to U.S. correspondent accounts — a step known in financial circles as the “death penalty.” It is now in liquidation, and some of its bankers have been arrested by Latvian authorities.
An ABLV representative said an auditor is reviewing ex-clients and their transactions and the bank “cannot publicly comment regarding any specific legal or natural persons.”
Credit: OCCRP HSBC’s Hong Kong office.
A Global Ponzi Scheme
Money streamed in from corners of the globe from low-income families willing to sink modest savings into an investment they hoped would change their lives. With the click of a keyboard, it went through the New York operations of global banking giant HSBC and on to accounts at HSBC’s sprawling Hong Kong offices.
Like others taken in by what became known as the World Capital Market Ponzi scheme, Reynaldo Pacheco, 44, of Santa Rosa, California, promoted the deal to family and acquaintances. When the WCM scheme began to unravel, one of the unlucky investors had him killed.
Three men kidnapped him and beat his head with rocks, leaving him dead in a creekbed. Thousands of victims lost an estimated $80 million in the scheme.
The FinCEN Files show that HSBC continued shifting money for the WCM investment fund at a time when authorities in three countries were investigating the company, and that the bank’s internal watchdogs knew it was an alleged Ponzi scheme. More than $30 million tied to WCM flowed through the bank in 2013 and 2014 — when HSBC was on probation in a deferred prosecution deal with U.S. authorities.
Even after U.S. securities regulators won a restraining order freezing the company’s assets, WCM’s account at HSBC Hong Kong stayed active. According to court documents filed by the scam’s victims, WCM drained more than $7 million from the account during the following week, drawing its balance to zero.
WCM wasn’t the only company tied to criminal activities that moved money through HSBC in the five-year probation that came with the bank’s $1.9 billion deferred prosecution. The bank’s Hong Kong office, for example, processed more than $900 million in transactions involving shell companies linked in court records and media reports to alleged criminal networks, an ICIJ analysis found.
American prosecutors and other officials have praised deferred prosecution deals and other types of money laundering settlements as effective tools for ensuring big banks follow the law and stop serving criminals.
When authorities announced Standard Chartered’s deferred-prosecution deal in 2012, an FBI official declared: “New York is a world financial capital and an international banking hub, and you have to play by the rules to conduct business here.”
But the FinCEN Files show that five of the banks that appear most often — HSBC, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Bank of New York Mellon — continued moving cash for suspect people and companies in the wake of deferred prosecution agreements and other big enforcement actions.
Four of those banks signed non-prosecution or deferred prosecution deals in the past 15 years relating to money laundering. The only bank of the five that hasn’t been the subject of a non- or deferred prosecution agreement is Deutsche Bank. Instead, it reached a $258 million civil settlement in 2015 after regulators found it had moved billions of dollars on behalf of Iranian, Libyan, Syrian, Burmese and Sudanese financial institutions and other entities sanctioned by the U.S.
Bank of New York Mellon was among the first big banks to pay a large penalty to U.S. authorities for anti-money-laundering failures. In 2005, two years before its merger with Mellon Financial, Bank of New York paid $38 million and signed a non-prosecution agreement after a federal probe concluded that it had allowed $7 billion in illicit Russian money to flow through its accounts. Media reports said investigators believed that Mogilevich, Russia’s reputed “Boss of Bosses,” was behind some of the transactions.
Even as it has avoided big money laundering enforcement actions in recent years, Bank of New York Mellon has continued doing business with suspect figures.
Credit: World Economic Forum/Creative Commons Oleg Deripaska at the 2011 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The FinCEN Files show that the bank moved more than $1.3 billion in transactions between 1997 and 2016 tied to Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire and longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin.
Since 2008, Deripaska has been the subject of media reports alleging ties to organized crime.
When U.S. authorities announced sanctions against him in 2018, they said he had been previously accused of threatening the lives of corporate rivals, bribing a Russian government official and ordering the murder of a businessman.
Deripaska denies committing financial crimes. In 2019 the Trump administration lifted sanctions on three companies linked to him. U.S. sanctions on Deripaska himself remain, though he’s suing to overturn them.
“BNY Mellon takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system seriously, including filing Suspicious Activity Reports,” the bank said in a statement. “As a trusted member of the international banking community, we fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations, and assist authorities in the important work they do.”
Something for Nothing: Ukrainian Oligarch Dmytro Firtash Profited From Bailout Loans
Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash diverted almost $200 million of loans meant to stop his bank from collapsing.
One striking pattern revealed by ICIJ’s analysis of the leaked records is the willingness of multiple banks to process transactions for the same risky clients.
Deutsche Bank also shuffled more than $11 billion in transactions between 2003 and 2017 for companies Deripaska controlled.
The records also indicate that Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered helped Odebrecht SA — a Latin American construction firm behind a massive foreign bribery case — move $677 million from 2010 from 2016. Deutsche Bank played a role in transactions involving more than $560 million of that amount.
Then there’s Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who is wanted on criminal charges in the U.S. In 2014, U.S. prosecutors unsealed an indictment accusing him of bribing officials in India in an effort to secure a mining deal. U.S. news outlets also have reported claims that Firtash played a role in Trump’s effort to dig up dirt in Ukraine on his 2020 reelection opponent, Joe Biden.
Firtash, who says he began his climb in business trading Ukrainian powdered milk for Uzbek cotton after the fall of the Soviet Union, lives in exile in a mansion in Vienna, where he is fighting extradition.
When it comes to banking, Firtash and companies tied to him found open doors at many of the industry’s big institutions.
All five big banks handled transactions for companies controlled by Firtash, the FinCEN Files show. And the records indicate that all five approved transactions tied to Firtash after U.S. authorities had forced them to pay fines and pledge to work harder to vet suspect clients.
Among these banks, JPMorgan moved the most money for companies controlled by Firtash by far — shuffling hundreds of transactions totalling nearly $2 billion between 2003 and 2014.
Credit: Creative Commons Dmytro Firtash appearing on Ukrainian television in 2015.
JPMorgan and the other banks should have been aware of Firtash’s questionable history as far back as 2010, when a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable linked Firtash to Mogilevich.
In 2011, a lawsuit filed in Manhattan by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko provided a road map. It named specific accounts at four banks allegedly used by Firtash, and accused him, Mogilevich and Manafort of laundering illicit funds. The suit claimed accounts at the New York offices of JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, and Bank of New York Mellon were being used to shift stolen funds to the U.S. and then back to Ukraine.
Despite the allegations, these five banks continued to handle transactions involving companies controlled by Firtash, the FinCEN Files show.
The lawsuit was dismissed in 2013, in part because Tymoshenko and her lawyers weren’t able to provide enough specifics of the transactions.
Firtash has denied wrongdoing, telling Bloomberg Businessweek that he’s the victim of “a special machine of propaganda organized against me.”
He told the magazine that Tymoshenko was “wrong in everything. She lies all the time. In order to money launder, you need to have dirty money to start with. I always had clean money.”
In a statement, his attorney said Firtash “has never had any partnership or other commercial association with Semion Mogilevich” and would not answer ICIJ queries because they are “reliant on the unlawful and criminal disclosure” of SARs.
Credit: Creative Commons An ornate Deutsche Bank branch in Germany, 2005.
‘Tricks and Cunning’
It sounded like something out of a spy novel.
Deutsche Bank employees instructed clients from Iran and other hot spots to lace their payment messages with code words that would trigger special handling. One executive urged workers to employ “tricks and cunning” to avoid detection by American authorities.
These tricks of the trade were exposed in a November 2015 announcement by New York banking regulators. Deutsche Bank, state officials said, had been caught shifting nearly $11 billion between 1999 and 2006 on behalf of Iran, Syria, and other countries under U.S. sanctions.
Under the $258 million settlement with the state and the Federal Reserve, Deutsche Bank agreed to reform its practices and fire employees involved in the sanctions-evasion operation.
In a statement, Deutsche Bank framed the deal as old news.“The conduct ceased several years ago, and since then we have terminated all business with parties from the countries involved,” the bank said.
Yet a month after the settlement was announced, Deutsche Bank was working behind the scenes to move money for a company linked to Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian billionaire who, U.S. prosecutors later alleged, was engaged in a massive laundering scheme that funnelled cash into the American heartland.
The leaked records show Deutsche Bank moved $240 million from December 2015 to May 2016 for a BVI-registered shell company that according to U.S. court filings was controlled by Kolomoisky and a business partner.
A lawsuit filed last year in Delaware state court alleges Kolomoisky used the shell company, Claresholm Marketing Ltd., to help pull off a “series of brazen fraudulent schemes” via PrivatBank, a Ukrainian institution the and a partner controlled until the end of 2016. The bank’s new owners claim in the suit that Kolomoisky and his associates siphoned away billions of dollars through sham loans and laundered it through investments in the U.S.
In July, New York regulators reached another money laundering settlement with Deutsche Bank. This time, the bank agreed to pay $150 million in penalties related to its dealings with convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and with two non-U.S. banks involved in money laundering scandals.
A month later, U.S. prosecutors filed civil forfeiture complaints in federal court in Florida that included allegations of thievery and money laundering against Kolomoisky similar to the claims in the Delaware lawsuit.
Prosecutors say much of the money allegedly stolen from PrivatBank between 2008 to 2016 ended up in U.S. investments such as commercial real estate in Texas and Ohio; steel plants in Kentucky, West Virginia and Michigan; and a cellphone factory in Illinois.
Kolomoisky did not respond to questions from ICIJ. His attorney said in August that, “Mr. Kolomoisky emphatically denies the allegations in the complaints filed by the Department of Justice.”
In Delaware, lawyers for Kolomoisky’s businesses said the state court lawsuit fails to show any crimes. Kolomoisky has also filed a defamation action against PrivatBank in Ukraine, claiming the bank has falsely accused him of fraud and other wrongdoing.
Deutsche Bank declined to answer questions about its dealings with Kolomoisky, saying it was legally restricted from commenting on clients or transactions.
The bank told ICIJ that it has acknowledged “past weaknesses” and “learnt from our mistakes.” It said it has “systematically tackled” these issues.
“We are a different bank now,” it said.
Contributors: Michael Hudson, Dean Starkman, Simon Bowers, Emilia Diaz-Struck, Tanya Kozyreva, Will Fitzgibbon, Sasha Chavkin, Spencer Woodman, Ben Hallman, Karrie Kehoe, Fergus Shiel, Kyra Gurney, Richard H.P. Sia, Amy Wilson-Chapman, Tom Stites, Joe Hillhouse, Delphine Reuter, Agustin Armendariz, Margot Williams, Hamish Boland Rudder, Antonio Cucho, Gerard Ryle, Mago Torres, Miriam Pensack, Scilla Alecci, Jelena Cosic, Miguel Fiandor, Michael Sallah.
Prevezon Holdings: The Black Money Collector
Hunter Biden Partner Secured Millions for Fund from Businessman with Reputed Organized Crime Ties
As a Slovenian Tycoon’s Empire Crumbled, His Bank Accounts Swelled
How an Irrepressible Serbian Arms Dealer Found a Conduit to Saudi Arabia through Qatar
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OECD Home MigrationImmigrant integration policies have improved but challenges remain
Immigrant integration policies have improved but challenges remain
09/12/2018 - Many countries have made important improvements in integrating immigrants and their children into the labour market and day-to-day life of their country. However, many challenges remain and much of the potential that migrants bring with them remains unused, hampering both economic growth and social inclusion, according to a new joint OECD-EU report.
Settling In 2018: Indicators of Immigrant Integration finds that the proportion of highly educated immigrants has grown in virtually all OECD and EU countries, rising by 7 percentage points over the past decade in both areas. At the same time, in all countries, most immigrants express a strong sense of belonging to their host-country, with more than 80% reporting feeling close or very close to this country.
“Countries have made important improvements in their policies to foster the integration of immigrants and their children into education, the labour market and the social life of their country,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Nevertheless, much remains to be done to maximise the still untapped potential of migrants to contribute economically and socially to their recipient countries.”
“Making immigrant integration work is absolutely vital for our economies and societies as a whole,” said European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos. “We need to make sure that all those who have a right to stay and live in our societies, become full and equal participants. Not only on paper but also in reality.”
Despite some improvements, immigrants have often not managed to translate higher overall education levels into better labour market outcomes. Immigrants’ relative poverty is also today more widespread than a decade ago, further widening the gaps with the native-born. Around 14% of all foreign-born people in the EU report facing discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, nationality or race. The report also notes that almost a third of non-EU migrants in Europe state that most inhabitants of their neighbourhoods share their ethnic background.
Educational attainment levels and outcomes of youth with immigrant parents have also increased in most countries over the past decade – both in absolute terms and relative to their peers with native-born parents. This is evident in better educational outcomes and higher resilience at age 15, in lower levels of school dropout rates and higher educational attainment. However, immigrant children continue to lag behind their peers with native-born parents, notably in Europe, while the reverse is the case in only a few non-EU OECD countries such as Canada.
While immigrant men have a 3 percentage points higher employment rate than native-born men across the OECD, immigrant women have a 1 percentage point lower rate than their native-born peers, amounting to a full 6 point gap in Europe. Gaps between immigrant and native-born women are especially wide in Belgium and France, at 14 percentage points, and in the Netherlands, at almost 17 points. When employed, immigrant women are also more often in part-time and low-skilled jobs – notably in Southern Europe (except Portugal), as well as in Chile, Korea and Slovenia, where over 30% of employed immigrant women are in low-skilled jobs.
Following an overall increase in their share over the past decade, women now account for the majority of immigrants living in OECD and EU countries. The report also finds that the widespread inactivity and part-time employment of immigrant women is often involuntary, more often than for their native-born peers.
Settling In 2018: Indicators of Immigrant Integrationpresents a detailed international comparison of the outcomes of immigrants and their children and their evolution over time, for all European Union and OECD countries as well as selected G20 countries. 74 indicators cover key dimensions of integration, including employment, education, housing, health, civic engagement and social inclusion. There is a special focus on young people with immigrant parents and on gender issues.
The report is available at http://www.oecd.org/migration/indicators-of-immigrant-integration-2018-9789264307216-en.htm.
For more information, journalists should contact the OECD Media Division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 97 00).
Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.
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But the change helped boost the overall proportion of men in those schools from 43.1 percent to 45.7 percent, one of the biggest shifts among the nation’s 50 states during a time when the figure nationally rose from 42.7 percent to 43.6 percent.
Leading the way in New Jersey in welcoming more men were mostly two-year colleges, as well as some of the state's smallest schools: Georgian Court University, a 2,300-student Roman Catholic liberal arts school founded by the Sisters of Mercy that was traditionally all women; Eastwick College, a 1,400-student nursing school in Nutley, Ramsey and Hackensack; and Raritan Valley, Warren County and Sussex County community colleges.
Some larger colleges in and around the state stirring increased interest among men include Rowan University in Glassboro, William Paterson University in Wayne, New York University and Northeastern University in Boston.
More:What's new at New Jersey college campuses this fall
More:New Jersey colleges with lowest, highest average student debt after graduation
More:'Back to School' commercials make me squirm, and I graduated 46 years ago
Bucking the trend slightly was Rutgers University, the flagship in New Jersey’s public university system. Across Rutgers' three campuses, 46.7 percent of the roughly 69,000 students were men in 2016, down slightly from 47 percent in 2006.
Other schools countering the shift — and continuing to see more women in the classrooms — included a mix of traditionally male-heavy tech schools and liberal arts universities.
For instance, both Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken and New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark remain more than 70 percent male but are seeing that number drop. Among the others enrolling a rising percentage of women were Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City, Thomas Edison State University in Trenton and Drexel University in Philadelphia.
The analysis covered all colleges and universities in New Jersey that award degrees, plus the 25 most popular out-of-state schools for New Jersey residents.
Despite recent enrollment gains by men, three-quarters of those schools still had more female students, even when including all-male Jewish rabbinical schools.
Here's a list of the schools:
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Fiction Review The Classics Club
The Classics Spin #13: “Cold Sassy Tree”
It’s time to report back on The Classics Spin #13, as explained in my post.
Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy Tree
Dell, 1984; rpt. 1994
ISBN: 0–385–31258-X
On July 5, 1906, Grandpa Blakeslee instructs his grandson, 14-year-old Will Tweedy, to summon relatives to a family meeting. Grandpa then informs the family that he intends to marry Miss Love Simpson. The announcement causes a scandal in the town of Cold Sassy, Georgia, since Grandma Blakeslee has been dead only three weeks and Miss Simpson is half Grandpa’s age, and a Yankee. In Cold Sassy Tree Will narrates how the scandal played out in this small town. Along the way he paints a vivid picture of what life was like in rural Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century, with highlights such as the arrival of automobiles and the social tension between the “lintheads” who work in the cotton mills and the merchants and professionals who live on their own side of the tracks.
Will lets us know on the opening page that he’s telling the story eight years after the fact. Given Will’s age at the time of the events (14) and his first-person narration, I expected Cold Sassy Tree would be a typical coming-of-age story. The point of this type of story is to let readers know what the narrator has learned from the experience. The novel does eventually turn in that direction, although it starts out with maddening slowness. I almost gave up on the book early because all the goofy humor quickly wore thin.
In coming-of-age stories there are two set topics young characters must learn about: death and sex. Will learns about death early, not only because of his grandmother’s death but also because of the precariousness of life in a time before antibiotics. He slowly comes face-to-face with the fact of sexuality in the undercurrents of all the scandalous talk of the town’s residents. (It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Grandpa Blakeslee is only 59 when his first wife dies.) Will also begins to realize his own sexuality in the attraction he feels but cannot initially explain to one of the young mill workers at school.
By the end of the novel Will has matured enough to know that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in Cold Sassy managing the family’s general store, despite Grandpa’s entreaties: “Well, in the matter of my future, I meant to have mine” (p. 390). On the novel’s last page he lets us know that, even though he went off to college, he still keeps a treasure box holding his journal and several tokens representing his early life in Cold Sassy.
I rate this book three stars out of five.
© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown
Tags Olive Ann Burns
← HarperCollins to Publish Found Novel by Late Michael Crichton → Last Week’s Links
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Current: National Black Council of School Board Members
National Black Council of School Board Members
The National Black Council of School Board Members (NBC) serves in an advisory capacity to the NSBA in matters affecting NSBA’s policy and program issues and serves to foster an organizational culture based on sound education research, assessment, and evaluation principles. The purpose of NBC is to promote quality education for all students with emphasis on the problems and successes of Black students.
A listing of the NBC Board of Directors is available here, and a map of NSBA's regions is available here. Read NBC's bylaws.
Members receive access to several exclusive benefits, including:
Virtual networking: The NBC online community provides a central location to access reports and research, a discussion forum to connect with school members across the country around issues impacting Black students, and an event calendar.
Content and research: Webinars, podcasts, and other resources provide timely content and research updates.
Conferences: NBC members receive a discount upon registering for the NBC meal event at the NSBA Annual Conference.
The National Black Council of School Board Members (NBC) has several membership offerings from which to choose:
Membership Offerings
Regular membership (voting rights) includes any elected or appointed local school board member or state board of education member within the United States and its off-shore territories. Dues for regular members are $75 annually.
Associate membership (non-voting rights) is open to administrators, educators, and citizens-at-large. Dues for associate members are $50 annually.
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Home Publications Response to Consultation on Regulations of Technical Capability Notices
22 May, 2017 Javier Ruiz Privacy
Response to Consultation on Regulations of Technical Capability Notices
The Open Rights Group is responding to this consultation despite the fact that we were not consulted directly. We believe that the narrow obligations for the Secretary of State to consult set out in Section 253 (6) of the Act do not necessarily preclude a broader process that involves civil society. There is a large degree of public interest in these Regulations, as evidenced in the media response to the publication of the draft text online by the Open Rights Group.
Moreover, given the substantial expansion of the organisations potentially covered by these Regulations, as discussed below, we believe that the Secretary of State likely has an obligation to consult much more broadly as many more types of organisations could be directly affected, including universities or hospitals. It is possible that this consultation does not comply with the requirements in Section 253(6). If the Secretary of State believes that only traditional telcos will be covered, this should be made clear.
Overall concerns about the security of telecommunications systems grow every day, The WannaCry ransomware – which appeared two weeks after we published the leaked document – highlights why we should be striving to uplift our security capability as a nation. We know the Home Office – and the men and women in the security and intelligence services – take these concerns very seriously and think hard about the balance of privacy, security and access to communications. However, communications surveillance and security nowadays impact the majority of the population, and we need a much broader debate with input beyond a small number of telecoms companies. That is why the Open Rights Group published the leaked Home Office consultation into technical capability notice regulations and is engaging in this consultation.
Throughout the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 concerns were raised about powers that could see telecoms companies forced to weaken the security of their products. The result is that British tech companies could have trust in their businesses undermined.
Lack of implementation of privacy obligations
The draft Regulations focus on the requirement that any demands are “technically feasible”, but this is not the only obligation in the Act. There are no proper explanations for how the process of issuing a TCN should implement the General duties in relation to privacy in Section 2 of the Act. These include considering the public interest in the integrity and security of telecommunication systems and postal services, and any other aspects of the public interest in the protection of privacy.
The Regulations could explain that in the making of a TCN there should be a process of analyses and consultations, with safeguards to make sure that the risks to customers of any obligations are properly weighed.
Section 2 of the Act also requires consideration to any other obligations of public law. This could include reporting obligations to report breaches under Section 105B of the Communications Act 2003[1]. The Regulations should include a process whereby a telecom operator could do this without breaking its secrecy obligations.
Given the highly technical nature of the TCNs, it is unclear how Judicial Commissioners are going to be supported to make a decision under Section 254.
The IP Act considerably widen the scope of organisations potentially covered by the obligations to implement a TCN. Webmail, social media, cloud hosts and over the top communications providers may be covered and the Regulations should provide more clarity as to how the new regime will operate[2]. This includes private providers, such as schools, universities, hospitals and hotels. It also includes overseas providers. It is particularly worrying for companies providing security and privacy products, that need the trust of their customers. VPN providers, for instance, or companies offering encryption technologies, could be compelled to provide facilities to remove the very things they are selling.
Telecommunication service means any service that consists in the provision of access to, and of facilities for making use of, any telecommunication system. For the purpose of the Act, this service does not have to be provided by the person who actually offers it to the customers. In other words, the subcontractors are not exempt from the obligations imposed by the Regulations and the Act, even though the services they are offering and managing might not be their own. The subsequent paragraph 12 adds that “facilitating the creation, management or storage of communications transmitted, or that may be transmitted” by any telecommunication services falls into “telecommunication service.” Thus, an organisation may become a “telecommunication operator” if their business involves e.g. offering e-mail accounts (which does not have to be developed in house) and data/file storage or management service. The role of subcontractors should be clarified.
The Act also extends TCNs from interception to the acquisition of communications data, including bulk, and equipment interference, also bulk. The extension to communications data is problematic because there is no minimum threshold for the size of the operator, while the other powers require a minimum of 10,000 customers. We are deeply concerned that this mean TCNs could be imposed on a wide range of organisations and institutions, forcing them to install and maintain surveillance capabilities. These powers should be narrowed.
Black boxes Russian style
We are particularly concerned about requirements in Schedule 2 Part 1, related to acquisition to communications data.
“10. To install and maintain any apparatus provided to the operator by or on behalf of the Secretary of State for the purpose of enabling the operator to obtain or disclose communications data, including by providing and maintaining any apparatus, systems or other facilities or services necessary to install and maintain any apparatus so provided.”
Section 253 (5) of the Act makes reference to “obligations relating to apparatus owned or operated by a relevant operator”. This was not understood as an obligation to install black box equipment. This appears to be similar to the Russian SORM system that gives the authorities of that country direct access to private telecoms’ systems, with the difference that operators in the UK may not be expected to pay for the equipment.[3]
Given that there are over half a million requests for communications data, plus an unknown volume of bulk data on calls and SMS obtained obtained every year, we believe that these brand new black boxes will become central to the new surveillance regime in the UK post-IP Act. This is before “internet connection records” become routine. Therefore we believe that this requires a lot more explanation and extra safeguards, as there will be little a telecoms provider can do – or know – in case of abuse.
Equipment interference back doors
The extension of TCNs to equipment interference is new and a major source of concern. Under the Intelligence Services Act, state agencies have been able to hack into devices, but there was no obligation on ISPs to create and maintain capabilities for that purpose.
This is truly uncharted territory, and we can barely imagine what this could mean in practice. From documents leaked by Edward Snowden in relation to the NSA TURBINE programme, we know that hacking can involve interception and modification of large volumes of internet traffic[4]. We also know that GCHQ Computer Network Exploitation has included Capability against Cisco routers in the Pakistan Internet Exchange which afforded access to almost any user of the internet inside Pakistan, and to re-route selected traffic across international links towards GCHQ’s passive collection systems[5].
With the Regulations, these capabilities would not require covert operations, but would be maintained by the ISPs themselves.
Regulation of hacking activities themselves contain certain safeguards, such as an obligation to remove any “implants” after use. It is unclear what if any safeguards would operate here, but we are concerned about permanent capabilities.
Missed opportunity to clarify the removal of end-to-end encryption
Many times during the passing of the Act we were told that future proofing legislation meant pushing the details to Regulations and Codes of Practice, but unfortunately understanding remains patchy. This is nowhere more true than in relation to the powers to remove end-to-end encryption.
We are concerned about the potential for limitations to personal security that could result from technological limitations to encryption, most recently raised in Amber Rudd’s comments about WhatsApp, and hinted in the Conservative manifesto promise to remove safe spaces for terrorists online. As we have now seen, vulnerabilities and backdoors can get hacked or leaked. Weaker encryption for all means the majority of the population are more at risk from the few.
We believe that it is unacceptable that the Regulations do not provide the public with absolute clarity as to the operations of the technical obligations on operators to remove end-to-end encryption.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/51474/ofcom-guidance.pdf ↩
http://www.cyberleagle.com/2017/05/back-doors-black-boxes-and-ipact.html ↩
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/libe/dv/soldatov_presentation_/soldatov_presentation_en.pdf ↩
https://cryptome.org/2014/03/nsa-turbine-turmoil.pdf ↩
https://theintercept.com/2015/06/22/gchq-reverse-engineering-warrants/ ↩
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01865 234225 (fax 01865 234228)
sabrina.harris@paediatrics.ox.ac.uk
Over 100 review authors
More than 50 reviews
This group is headed up by Professor G. Hollander who specialises in the molecular and cellular control of thymus development and function.
Group Head Biography
Prof. Georg A Holländer was trained in both Paediatrics and Experimental Immunology in Switzerland and the U.S. He held academic positions at Harvard Medical School, Boston, U.S. and the University of Basel, Switzerland, before he joined the University of Oxford, UK (2010). He is interested in the development and function of the immune system in health and disease. His particular scientific focus concerns the molecular and cellular control of thymus development and function.
The thymus constitutes the primary lymphoid organ for the development and selection of T lymphocytes, a cell type critical for the function of the adaptive immune system. The thymus is composed of different cell types and only their correct differentiation and architectural organisation ensure a normal function. Several genetic disorders and acquired pathologies have been identified that effect not only the regular development, but also the function of the thymus. To study the physiology of thymic development and to further characterise the pathologies that evolve as a consequence of damage to the thymus the laboratory has developed mouse models to study apparent thymic development and function. The Holländer laboratory is jointly run with facilities and resources both at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, and the Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel.
Immunology, Development, Genetics, Thymus, Epithelial Cells, Autoimmunity, Immunodeficiency
Hoffmann and Action Medical Research Professor of Developmental Medicine
PA to Professor Hollander
NIHR Clinical Lecturer
DPhil Student
Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel
Jesus College
Wellcome Trust D.Phil Programme in Infection Immunology and Translational Medicine
Professor Chris Ponting, Programme Leader MRC Functional Genomics Unit
Professor Lars Fugger, Professor of Neuroimmunology
Professor Primo Schär, Molecular Genetics, University of Basel
Professor Bruce Blazar, University of Minnesota
Professor Ivan Martin, Tissue Engineering, University of Basel
Professor Yousuke Takahama, Institute for Genome Research, University of Tokushima
Professor Hiroshi Kawamoto, Riken Research Centre for Allergy and Immunology, Yokohama City
Related research themes
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By Felicia & TK | Music | July 27, 2009 |
Adam “MCA” Yauch announced last week that he has cancer. The tumor is highly treatable and located in his salivary gland. Unfortunately, The Beastie Boys will be cancelling all tour dates going forward, as well as postponing their new album release Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1. The original release date of September 15th has been pushed back indefinitely while Yauch undergoes treatment. As for the tour dates, headlining stints at Lollapalooza, All Points West and Austin City Limits Festivals are also cancelled. From your Pajiba fans, screw everything else and focus on getting better. We wish you a speedy recovery!
My favorite Beastie Boys song of all time: “Get It Together” feat. Q-Tip
In related news, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs will replace the Beastie Boys at Lollapalooza Saturday August 8. As much as I am bummed out by the Beastie Boys’ cancellation as well as the reason behind it, I have to admit I almost simultaneously cried and peed when I heard the replacement news. I was trying to finagle tickets to the sold out Minneapolis show a few months ago and wasn’t able to get them. I’m really digging their new stuff and I can’t wait! And I’m prepared for the comments saying, “The Beastie Boys are a way bigger act than the YYYs. There is no way they could draw the same amount of people as the Beasties!” So you can probably save it because I don’t give a shit.
Jay-Z has been named as the replacement for the Beastie Boys at the All Points West Festival in New Jersey. Jay-Z’s next album, Blueprint 3, will be released next month. Other festivals are still working on replacing the spots left open by the Beastie Boys. Speaking of Jay-Z actually, his new track “Run This Town,” featuring Rihanna and Kanye West, has been “leaked” (is anything accidentally leaked anymore? Seriously?). You can give it a listen here (h/t to Pitchfork). I have to say — it’s not bad, although after it’s gerrillionth time being heard on the radio, I’ll probably want to bury all three of them in fire ants.
—Felicia/TK
Reader/Eloquent TylerDFC (pictured left*) has a great site, RUFKM, that runs a consistently entertaining series called “13 Stupid Questions,” where they pepper random bands with, well, stupid questions, usually to awesome results. Last week’s ratcheted things up to “extra awesome” after a bizarre mix-up involving Nikki Sixx (of Mötley Crüe) and lycra-worshipping metal-satirists Steel Panther. Check it out here, it will brighten your day.
Jane’s Addiction has canceled the Australian portion of their tour due to an elbow injury to drummer Stephen Perkins. The last tour date for Jane’s will be a headlining slot at Lollapalooza. They are expected to make that show, but seriously? Is Lollapalooza 2009 cursed or something??
File this sumbitch under strange, yet fascinating. Anita Baker, eight-time Grammy-award-winning R & B singer, is apparently teaming up with Snoop Dogg for — get this — a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “Give Me Your Love (Love Song).” which is off the Superfly soundtrack (one of my all-time favorite soundtracks, by the way). If there was ever a song for some getting down, this is one of them. And now — Snoop and Anita Baker. I feel like I should be angry, but instead I’m genuinely curious.
One of the great and current unanswered questions in life is: Why the hell did Sugar Ray make another album??? On top of that, the title of the new album is Music for Cougars. Even more dick baggy is that they cover an unreleased Weezer song called “Love Is the Answer” on the album. Speaking of Weezer, they are almost finished recording a new album and will release a deluxe edition of Pinkerton in the near future. I know for many of you think that Weezer lost any and all credibility with The Red Album, but being associated in any way with Sugar Ray brings it to a new level.
Here’s a quickie Monday Afternoon Playlist. Have a good week, folks.
Felicia: So I know I was listening to Ida Maria a few months ago and many of you found her single “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” annoying, but now I have the full album Fortress ‘Round My Heart and I’m listening to her again. The full album is short and sweet, filled mostly with fast paced danceable tunes. One of the two ballads, “In the End,” even has a Feist feel to it. “Stella” is the song that’s been in heaviest rotation for me this past week though. Who doesn’t love a song about a hooker named Stella?
Sean: I’ve been listening to the Rotten In Denmark EP from indie rocker Davey La. It’s simple, flowing, and mature pop-rock that could teach limp acts like Coldplay and The Fray a thing or two about passion in songwriting. A Brit based in Manhattan, Davey’s current recording his full-length debut, which I will one day review and probably gush about, because that’s what I do. You should pick the EP up on iTunes; the solo in “Fires” is what hooked me, but I’d rather introduce you to “Ichi Ni San Shi, Go!” because it’s just a lot of fun.
TK: There are many reasons to love DC-based Thievery Corporation. One of those is their 2006 album, Versions, containing remixes of other artists’ tracks. “Angels,” by Wax Poetic featuring Norah Jones, was already a fantastic song, but their remix really brought Jones’s voice to the forefront of the track, and added some trippy echo effects and a throbbing bassline. It’s a gorgeous rendition.
Boo: “Fucking Boyfriend,” The Bird and the Bee: Because I suddenly find myself on the market, and I need one. Or a vibrator. Whichever is cheaper.
By the way — the number one album in the United States this week is Daughtry’s Leave This Town. Others in the top five? Hannah Montana has been there since April, and the new Now That’s What I Call Music has been there oh fuck it I’ve lost the will to live good-bye cruel world tell my wife I love her…
Music News is brought to you each Monday by TK and Felicia. Cram it.
My Dad is Killer
Dead Horse, Meet Stick
TK Burton is the Editorial Director. You may email him here or follow him on Twitter.
Review Round-Up: All The Horror Movies We've Reviewed This October
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The Birth of the RAF, 1918
The World's First Air Force by Overy, Richard Code: 56560 Format: Paperback / 160 pages Publication date: 01/03/2019 Availability: Available. Usually dispatched 1-3 business days Price: AU $22.99
The dizzying pace of technological change in the early 20th century meant that it took only a little over ten years from the first flight by the Wright Brothers to the clash of fighter planes in the Great War. A period of terrible, rapid experiment followed to gain a brief technological edge. By the end of the war the British had lost an extraordinary 36,000 aircraft and 16,600 airmen. The RAF was created in 1918 as a revolutionary response to this new form of warfare - a highly contentious decision (resisted fiercely by both the army and navy, who had until then controlled all aircraft) but one which had the most profound impact, for good and ill, on the future of warfare. Richard Overy's superb new book shows how this happened, against the backdrop of the first bombing raids against London and the constant emergency of the Western Front. The RAF's origins were as much political as military and throughout the 1920s still provoked bitter criticism. Published to mark the centenary of its founding this is an invaluable book, filled with new and surprising material on this unique organization.
Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS
Country of publication: UNITED KINGDOM
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The Medical Centre, Heol yr Onnen, Pencoed CF35 5PF
Dr G V Price · Dr J A Crane · Dr G A Preest · Dr O R Thomas · Dr E Garfield
Pencoed Medical Centre
How do I make a private appointment with a Specialist?
Having discussed the matter with your GP, you will be given the name of a specialist (or you may already have someone in mind). If you are financing the consultation through insurance cover, you will need to check with the company that your policy covers the consultation and any further treatment (operation, hospital stay etc). Of course, this doesn't matter if you are financing the private treatment yourself. Most private consultations in our area are with specialists who do their NHS work in the Princess of Wales Hospital, Bridgend. This hospital has a private clinic called "The Bridgend Clinic" (01656 754323). You must telephone the Bridgend clinic to make your appointment - we do NOT make private appointments on your behalf. The reason for this is that you can choose an appointment time that suits you best. If you wish to see a specialist who does private work at SPIRE in Croescadarn Rd, Pentwyn, Cardiff (029 2073 5515) you can do this even if you are not a member of SPIRE. As a rough guide, most private consultations cost between £100 - £150 (This does not include any further treatment or investigations).
Another option is The Vale private clinic in Cardiff or Sancta Maria Hospital in Swansea
How do I get a "Sick note"?
For the first 7 days of your illness, you need to supply a "self certificate". This is a certificate that you fill in yourself and is not completed by your Doctor. You can obtain a self certificate from your employer or from the surgery reception desk. Alternatively, you may fill in the form online and see further information about what to do when you are sick by clicking here.
If you've been off for more than 7 days, then you'll need what is now called a "Fit note". This is usually supplied by the treating Doctor and doesn't necessarily have to be your GP. It could be supplied by an A&E Doctor if you've been seen there, a hospital Doctor if you've recently been an in-patient, or a Doctor who has been seeing you in an out patient clinic about the condition that is keeping you from work. This Doctor should issue the note for the anticipated duration of your illness and may issue further notes at subsequent appointments or follow ups.
If you've been ill for 7 days and not been seen by another Doctor, then you will need to be seen by your GP to obtain a fit note. Please note that we can only back date notes if you've already been seen by another Doctor and we're in receipt of written confirmation of that consultation. We don't necessarily need to see you to reissue a fit note and we sometimes conduct reviews over the phone.
When you are well enough to return to work, you may go back (even if your fit note is for a longer duration). Please note also that you do not need a "signing off note". When you're well enough to return, you simply go back to work. If you are not able to return to your usual duties but able to go back to reduced hours, amended duties or a phased return, let the Doctor know and they can indicate this on the Fit note
For more information, visit the DWP website at Department for Work and Pensions. Our receptionists will be happy to advise you whether you need a note and how to get it.
How do I arrange a blood test?
Provided you've already seen a Doctor and they've agreed that a blood test is necessary, you will need to make an appointment with a Health Care Assistant for this to be done. Blood tests are normally conducted in the mornings and the samples taken by courier to hospital at lunchtime.
We only perform blood tests that are requested by our own GPs, so if a specialist at a clinic or outpatient appointment have requested a blood test, they will normally arrange for this to be done at the hospital.
Most blood test results are back within 72 hours, but there are a few more unusual or less common blood tests that take a lot longer. Test results are available between 14.00 and 17.00. Please note that we receive the results of blood tests arranged by our own GPs. If your blood test or investigation has been arranged by a hospital Doctor, they will get their own results first so you should direct any queries to them.
How do I arrange an X Ray
X-ray requests are made by GPs. If you live in RCT area, you will be given a form for the Royal Glamorgan radiology department. If you live in Pencoed, you will be given a form for The Princess of Wales radiology department. You take the form to the relevant hospital, usually on a weekday morning, and they will arrange for the X-ray to be taken. At the time of writing, these results take around 2-3 weeks to return to the surgery. Ultrasound and other scans are by appointment only, so the a GP will usually send the form off to the relevant hospital and you will be sent an appointment in the post.
If an imaging investigation has been arranged by a hospital Doctor, the result will usually go to them in the first instance. The X-ray department will not issue results to patients over the phone and any enquiries about results should be directed at the Doctor who ordered the test in the first instance (whether that is one of our own GPs or a hospital Doctor)
X Rays and imaging
I want to make a complaint
All complaints should be directed to our Practice Manager, Mrs Joanne Carter, in the first instance. Joanne's contact details can be found on our Admin or Contact page. You may contact Joanne by phone or in writing. We do not deal with complaints via social media. Social media, by its very nature, is not confidential and we feel that there are constraints with, for example Twitter character numbers, that make this an inappropriate means of dealing with this sort of enquiry. We welcome genuine complaints and causes for concern, however, malicious and unsubstantiated comments about us on social media will not be tolerated and patients may be asked to leave the practice if there is an irreconcilable breakdown in our relationship as a result.
© 2021 Pencoed Medical Centre |
Disclaimer & Legal
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Home » Headlines » Science » Ceres and the mysterious case of the missing craters
Ceres and the mysterious case of the missing craters
By Rocio Mateos / Thursday, 28 Jul 2016 08:59AM
Scientists have found out there are not any big craters in dwarf planet Ceres’ surface. Instead, there are only craters of small size, which is a rare condition for the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Studying data from NASA’s Dawn mission, such as high-resolution images of the surface, researchers realized the biggest craters in Ceres, named Kerwan and Yalode, are about 175 miles (from 270 to 280 km) wide. Ceres is 587 miles (945 km) across, so those impact craters are not exactly big. Ceres’ surface has a wonderful composition with water ice underneath, for the lack of bigger craters.
It came as a surprise for scientists that after 4.5 billion years, there are only small impact craters on Ceres’ surface, while larger ones have disappeared. Image Credit: NASA
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, led by Simone Marchi, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, scientists attributed cryovolcanoes and the dwarf planet’s surface.
Models created by researchers do not match reality
The team made a statistical modeling of collisions of large bodies with Ceres with computer simulations. Since the dwarf planet formed, it should have between 10 and 15 craters greater than 250 miles (400 km) in diameter, and at least another 40 craters larger than 60 miles (100 km) wide.
The actual surface of Ceres only show 16 craters larger than 60 miles, and there are no impact craters larger than 175 miles across.
Researchers have come with the theory that Ceres originally formed farther out in the solar system, later migrating to the asteroid belt. However, if this were the case, that would not explain the lack of massive craters, because it is believed that Ceres formed in the early days of the solar system, necessarily making it a victim of the constant collisions that identified those rough times.
The disappearing of Ceres’ largest craters is still to be defined as astronomers and scientists try to understand what could make that happen. Image Credit: Daily Mail
According to images provided by the Dawn spacecraft, there seem to be three broad depressions across the dwarf planet’s surface. These depressions are over 500 miles wide, and they could be impact craters that have been filled in and smoothed. “Whatever the process or processes were, this obliteration of large craters must have occurred over several hundred millions of years,” Marchi said in a news release published by the NASA.
Apparently, Ceres have been smoothing over time because of the ice it is believed to be contained on its surface. As ice is less dense than stone, the smoothing process is quicker.
Salt has also been found as part of the subsurface composition of the dwarf planet. The mineral is a low-density material, that, just as ice, allows the surface to smooth and soften in a shorter period. Salt has been spotted at the center of the Occator Crater, and after some analysis scientists found that it might be left over from a frozen subsurface ocean.
Dwarf planet #Ceres should have huge impact basins, but doesn't. @NASA_Dawn asks why: https://t.co/3H6HTULL4thttps://t.co/bqvkV0kpG2
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) July 26, 2016
When the cryovolcanoes that are around Ceres’s surface erupt, they are releasing water from the frozen ocean. It is possible that, through the years, eruptions made materials on the surface to flow, “patching” impact craters. The smaller holes that the dwarf planets currently has would be the result of more recent impacts on the surface generated by the cryovolcanoes.
Ceres seems to be very different from Vesta, and the giant asteroid Dawn visited before Ceres. With a 300-mile-wide surface, the asteroid is covered in impact craters, including a large one that occupies most of its surface.
“The ability to compare these two very different worlds in the asteroid belt — Vesta and Ceres — is one of the great strengths of the Dawn mission,” Marchi said.
Source: NASA – Jet Propulsion Laboratory
German researchers discover an in-nose antibiotic to fight deadly infections
Caffeine powder & green tea extracts could be killing you
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Commentary: Contract extension is expected, but no reason to hesitate any longer to re-sign Schmetzer
By Aaron Levine
Schmetzer's contract is set to expire at the end of this season
We start tonight with the "Seattle Process." Which in general, is akin to the speed of a slug.
This apparently can also be applied to contract negotiations between the Sounders and their current head coach, Brian Schmetzer.
If you’ve missed it, Schmetzer’s current deal is set to expire at the end of this season. And while an extension is very much expected, it’s still worth asking the question, “What are we waiting for?” After all, Schmetzer now holds the highest winning percentage in the playoffs than any head coach in Major League Soccer history. He’s led Seattle to both its titles in 4 ½ years, and they’re still in the running to win a third this season.
I would be shocked if a new agreement wasn’t reached. But if this year has taught me anything, making assumptions isn’t the way to go.
And simply assuming that Schmetzer will be back, just because he’s born and bred in the Pacific Northwest, and because his name is synonymous with the Sounders organization, could be a dangerous tact. This new contract needs to be reflective of the incredible success he’s had, rather than relying on any hometown discount because of where he’s from.
Schmetzer is deserving of being the highest-paid coach in the league. And even though it’s not the best time to be asking for a raise in any profession, there’s no doubt in my mind that there would be a team out therewilling to pay market value if he ended up walking away.
If anyone would understand that, it’s two of the newer members of the ownership group, who have become synonymous with Seattle Sports. At $35 million a year, Russell Wilson’s hardly playing for peanuts for the Seahawks. And even Ken Griffey Junior spent a number of years away after basically forcing the Mariners to trade him away.
When you have that special person – athlete or coach - it transcends circumstance. Sigi Schmid was a Hall of Fame coach – he had talent on his teams too – but he still never won a title in Seattle. Schmetzer already has two – and he’s working on more.
Right now, the Sounders are three wins away from another championship. With each playoff win, it’s my opinion that Schmetzer’s price tag goes up. Win a third title, and someone should offer him a blank check. It would behoove this organization to get an extension done now – and not tomorrow and not after this season is done. Don’t let other suitors come calling – don’t give him a single thought about entertaining a different deal.
We’ve said it before, but Brian Schmetzer is the best story out there – the hometown kid who coaches his hometown team and wins multiple titles.
There's no reason to believe the Sounders don't want him back or that he doesn't want to stay. Therefore, there’s no reason to hesitate. Sign pen to paper and give us some certainty to what’s expected to be inevitable.
Justice Dept. internal watchdog investigating agency's role in response to Capitol riot
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DANTE MARVIN
Youngster whose motto “there are no disabilities, only abilities” is a powerful advocate for other disabled children
“I think my worst injury was when I broke both legs on Christmas Day – but it’s hard to remember as I have had 92 broken bones in total you know!”
Dante Marvin reveals this astonishing fact with a grin on his face. It sums up the indomitable spirit of a youngster who inspires everyone he meets with his remarkable zest for life.
The 11-year-old was born with brittle bone disease and scoliosis. He has spent most of his young life in and out of hospital for treatment, including painful rod replacement surgery in his legs.
But Dante, from Liverpool, refuses to let it get him down. He tells everyone he meets: “There are no disabilities, only abilities.”
He first became involved with the children’s charity Variety when his mum Rachel asked for help to buy a new wheelchair.
During the home visit, Dante dazzled the assessor with his optimistic outlook and she asked him to speak at an event.
His motto was a key mantra of his speech, which was such a success he now speaks regularly to audiences of adults to raise awareness while encouraging them to dig deep for the cause, helping to raise £30,000 for a Sunshine Bus.
Dante also visits other seriously ill and disabled children in hospital, not only bringing light and laughter to the wards, but also identifying children who could benefit from Variety’s support. He petitions the charity on their behalf for equipment such as lightweight wheelchairs. And he’s even been known to do it when undergoing treatment himself.
“I don’t like to see other children sad or upset. I just feel the need to try and cheer them up,” says Dante. “I tell them to try not to worry, and that they are in the right place.I reckon I have helped millions cheer up. I hope so!”
Variety’s North West development director Lyn Staunton said: “Dante has so much passion to change the perception of how the world looks at young wheelchair users – in his words a wheelchair is only a means of transport.”
Mum Rachel says: “I don’t know anyone like Dante. Even simple little tasks like climbing the stairs to bed take so much effort – up to 30 minutes. Of course, we offer to carry him but he insists on doing it himself.
“He goes through so much and is an incredibly brave little boy. Yet when he is in pain and in hospital, his first thought is still for all the other children and not himself.”
Dante adds: “I am lucky, I have the best mum in the world. My message to others is be resilient, be brave and never give up. And just because you are disabled, you are no different to anyone else. Never forget that.”
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(-) Zimbabwe (2)
(-) SIM Card Registration (2)
Zimbabwe threatening privacy rights with new SIM registration database
The Zimbabwean government extended its reach into the private lives of its citizens this week by promulgating a new law establishing a central database of information about all mobile telephone users in the country. The Statutory Instrument 142 of 2013 on Postal and Telecommunications (Subscriber Registration) Regulations 2013, gazetted last Friday, raises new challenges to the already embattled rights to privacy and free expression in Zimbabwe, increasing the potential that the repressive…
The Right to Privacy in Zimbabwe
This Universal Periodic Review (UPR) stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI), the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School (IHRC), the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum(the Forum), and the Digital Society of Zimbabwe (DSZ).
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Home Private Equity News & Analysis Funds HQ raises its largest-ever fund of funds vehicle amid Asia push
HQ raises its largest-ever fund of funds vehicle amid Asia push
The German fund of funds manager gathered $150m more than its original target for Fund VIII.
Carmela Mendoza
HQ Capital has held a final close on its eighth global fund of funds.
The firm raised $750 million, surpassing its $600 million target after roughly a year in market.
HQ expected a final close on Auda Capital VIII by the end of Q1 this year, as previously reported.
“There was additional interest from new LPs in the end, given the market sell off”, HQ Capital managing director and head of global private equity Stephen Wesson told Private Equity International. “If you have capital now, it’s a great time to get it into the hands of PE managers to take advantage of the opportunity.”
Limited partners in the fund are a mix of existing and new institutional investors, who are predominantly Europe-headquartered, he added.
Fund VIII is double the size of its 2015-vintage predecessor, Auda Capital VII. Fund IV, a 2005-vintage, North America-focused fund, raised $402 million for its main fund and $351 million for co-investments, according to PEI data.
Approximately 70 percent of the fund is earmarked for primary investments in the small and mid-cap space, 20 percent in secondaries and 10 percent in co-investments.
While 15 percent of the capital has been called, 70 percent of the capital has been committed. The remainder will be used to back additional managers, selective co-investments and secondary transactions, over the next 12 months, Wesson said.
Capital raised for vehicle will be invested globally, with about half set for Asia, the region with the highest investor demand, according to Wesson. PEI reported in November that more than half of the fund was earmarked for Asia, which had slightly adjusted when the firm wrapped up fundraising last week.
On investor demand for Asia, Wesson noted the firm has seen “pretty steady interest from its clients.” He added that the view from the firm’s clients is that the region is a growth story with less private equity capital and attractive opportunities with the right managers.
“There will be some back and forth with the US-China trade from a political standpoint. However, from a business formation and growth perspective, the firm does not see the opportunity ending,” he said.
The firm previously backed funds managed by Shanghai-based ClearVue Partners, Trilantic Capital Partners Europe and Mandarin Capital Partners, according to PEI data.
The firm is also seeing interesting opportunities in co-investments and secondaries amid the market dislocation. Wesson noted a priority for the firm’s PE team is “to assess the development of the specific portfolio companies as a result of covid-19 to identify opportunities to invest”
These co-investment opportunities, which are typically no fee and no carry for HQ Capital’s LPs, include taking existing businesses that are in good shape and putting in additional capital “to take advantage of market dislocation to do something offensively”, he said.
HQ will be targeting companies in the healthcare, business services and consumer-oriented space, among others.
In the secondaries market, the firm is focused on smaller deals of between $10 million and $50 million, with sellers that need liquidity as well as those repositioning their portfolios for strategic reasons.
On generating returns in amid the market downturn, he noted HQ Capital is focused on creating diversified portfolios for its LPs.
“We are not trying to hit home runs. We are trying to provide a premium to the public markets and do that year in and year out,” he said.
HQ had $9.9 billion of assets under management as of the first quarter of 2020, according to the firm’s website.
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Corvidia Therapeutics Raises $26M in a Series A Financing, Led by Sofinnova Partners and Apple Tree Partners
Company Announces Licensing Agreement with AstraZeneca
Corvidia Therapeutics
Feb 17, 2016, 04:10 ET
BOSTON, Feb. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Corvidia Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on the development of precision cardiovascular therapies, announced today that it has raised $26 million in a Series A financing, co-led by seed-investor Sofinnova Partners, and Apple Tree Partners.
Concurrent with the financing, Corvidia has licensed a clinical stage compound from AstraZeneca to develop and commercialize as its lead therapeutic (COR-001). Funds from the Series A financing will be used to progress COR-001 into Phase I/II clinical trials during 2016, as well as to advance the company's preclinical pipeline.
Corvidia was co-founded by serial entrepreneur and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Davidson, M.D. Dr. Davidson, a recognized expert in the field of cardiology, previously served as Chief Medical Officer of Sofinnova-backed Omthera Pharmaceuticals, and was instrumental in the successful acquisition of that company by AstraZeneca in 2013 for $443 million. Joining Dr. Davidson at Corvidia are Co-founders Rahul Kakkar M.D. and Matt Devalaraja, Ph.D., both of whom previously worked in AstraZeneca's Emerging Innovations Unit, where they developed the science behind genome-guided cardiovascular therapies. Ram Aiyar Ph.D., MBA, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the National Institutes of Health and BioHealth Innovation, completes Corvidia's founding team.
Commenting on today's news, Dr. Davidson stated, "Our ability to complete this significant Series A financing with such high-quality investors is a testament to the promise of our technology and expertise of our management team, positioning Corvidia as a leader in the field of precision medicine as applied to cardiovascular diseases. With these funds, we aim to drive each of our assets through clinical trials and validate our precision medicine approach."
Graziano Seghezzi, Partner at Sofinnova Partners, and Corvidia's board member commented, "Given Omthera's success, we were strongly in favor of teaming up once again with Dr. Davidson. The seed funding that Sofinnova Partners provided allowed for Corvidia's inception, for the pipeline crafting and for the eventual structuring of the Series A. We are pleased to continue to support Corvidia and this latest financing represents a major step for the future advancement of novel, cardiovascular therapeutics."
Seth Harrison, M.D., Managing Partner of Apple Tree Partners, noted, "In our years of start-up investing we have not seen a better team than the group that Michael Davidson has assembled from AstraZeneca and the NIH. We are thrilled to be able to support Corvidia with our capital resources and company building experience, and look forward to working with Sofinnova Partners, AstraZeneca, and management to create the first great precision cardiovascular medicine company."
COR-001, a monoclonal antibody initially developed by MedImmune, AstraZeneca's global biologics research and development arm, was previously in a Phase 1 study for a different indication. It was repurposed by AstraZeneca's Emerging Innovations Unit, Scientific Partnering and Alliances (SP&A), prior to licensing to Corvidia. "This is another example of the strong entrepreneurial culture within AstraZeneca, where we push the boundaries of science to explore new therapeutic uses for our compounds. We will continue to divest or out-license assets where we believe it will help accelerate the development of new medicines." said Kumar Srinivasan, Vice President, SP&A, Innovative Medicines Unit, AstraZeneca.
In conjunction with the financing, Seth Harrison and Adrien Lemoine, Executive Director, Corporate Development for AstraZeneca, will join Graziano Seghezzi and Michael Davidson on Corvidia's Board of Directors.
About Sofinnova Partners
Sofinnova Partners is a leading European venture capital firm specialized in Life Sciences. Based in Paris, France, the firm brings together 12 highly experienced investment professionals from all over Europe, the US and China. The firm focuses on paradigm shifting technologies alongside visionary entrepreneurs. Sofinnova Partners seeks to invest as a founding and lead investor in start-ups and corporate spin-offs, and has backed nearly 500 companies over more than 40 years, creating market leaders around the globe. Today, Sofinnova Partners has over €1.5 billion under management. For more information, please visit: www.sofinnova.fr
About Apple Tree Partners
Apple Tree Partners (ATP) is a venture capital firm that invests in pharmaceuticals, biotech, medtech, and healthcare services. Founded in 1999, with a history of well-known successes, ATP closed its current capital pool of $1.5 billion in 2012 and is actively funding healthcare innovation. ATP starts companies, or invests in existing companies, with commitments as high as $250 million. The firm is headquartered in New York City, with satellite offices in Princeton, NJ, Cambridge, MA, and Los Altos, CA. For more information, please visit: www.appletreepartners.com
About Corvidia Therapeutics
Based in Boston, MA, Corvidia is a biotechnology company pioneering the next generation of cardiovascular therapies. Leveraging functional genomics, the company's founding team has decoded previously unrecognized genetic susceptibilities within general cardiovascular populations. Corvidia's pipeline programs precisely identify patients with unique sensitivity to specific biologic pathways, potentially allowing for the rapid development of therapies targeting those pathways. For more information, please visit: www.corvidiatx.com
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160217/334364LOGO
SOURCE Corvidia Therapeutics
http://www.corvidiatx.com
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Rail News Home Passenger Rail
Rail News: Passenger Rail
FTA recognizes DART's FEIS for Orange Line project
Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s (DART) Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Northwest Corridor recently received the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) Outstanding Achievement Award for excellence in environmental document preparation.
The FEIS provided environmental clearances for the first nine miles of a new Orange Line that’s under construction. The line will branch from the Green Line in northwest Dallas through Irving to Las Colinas in 2011 and Belt Line Station in 2012, then be extended to DFW International Airport by 2013.
The Orange Line is part of largest light-rail project under construction in North America, according to DART. Along with the completion of the 28-mile Green Line in December 2010 and five-mile Blue Line extension from Garland to Rowlett in December 2012, DART is on pace to nearly double its light-rail network to 90 miles by 2013.
Established as a best practice, the FTA’s award recognizes exemplary efforts in preparing environmental documents that meet prevailing requirements and reduce paperwork.
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Wilson president Barbara Mistick is a top 'influencer'
CHAMBERSBURG - Wilson College President Barbara K. Mistick has been chosen as a recipient of the 2017 Women of Influence award, an annual Central Penn Business Journal program recognizing 30 of the midstate’s top women leaders.
The Women of Influence Award goes to women leaders who are influential in their companies, industries and communities; and have solid reputations based on their experience, integrity, leadership and accomplishments, according to CPBJ. Judges chose Mistick, who was nominated by the Harrisburg law firm Rhoads & Sinon, for her leadership and achievements at Wilson, as well as her contributions to the community.
“I am honored and humbled to be included among such an inspiring group of women in the midstate region,” said Mistick. “Women in leadership are not always recognized for their achievements, so I want to thank Central Penn Business Journal and the other sponsors for the Women of Influence awards program. I’m also grateful to Rhoads & Sinon for nominating me for this distinction.”
Read: Learn how gerrymandering is done in Pa.
Mistick joined Wilson College on July 1, 2011. One her first actions was leading an initiative to transform the chronically under-enrolled institution, resulting in the expansion of coeducation and the creation of the Wilson Today plan, which set out five key areas of focus to improve Wilson’s enrollment levels. Wilson Today includes a “value plan” that has reduced or kept tuition steady for the past seven years and created a first-of-its-kind student loan buyback plan.
Mistick has also led an initiative to transform the campus, renovating three residence halls and constructing a new academic quad and main entrance for the institution. In addition, she successfully completed a $12 million fundraising campaign for the award-winning renovation and expansion of the John Stewart Memorial Library, reopening the building after four years of closure.
Under Mistick’s leadership, Wilson College has increased total enrollment from 695 students in fall 2012 to 1,098 students last fall —the largest class in Wilson’s history—and has added eight undergraduate programs, along with seven graduate programs.
Read: Women share experiences coming to America
“Wilson College's transition to a coeducational institution, followed by its subsequent growth, is a testament to Dr. Mistick's leadership and vision as president of Wilson,” said Drake Nicholas, an attorney with Rhoads & Sinon.
Prior to her unanimous appointment as Wilson’s president, Mistick was president of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where she provided strategic leadership and operational oversight of the Pittsburgh public library system, which serves approximately 1.2 million people.
Mistick has a doctorate in management from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Business, a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Carlow College in 1990.
As an award winner, Mistick will be recognized at an event to be held June 26 at the Hilton Harrisburg, as well as in the June 30 issue of CPBJ.
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A New York Times report on a massive cinematic installation by Russian film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky inspired by the life of Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Lev Landau grabbed our attention. With 13 feature-length films, performance and much else, it’s about to open in Paris, a police permit pending.
After the premiere season of DAU — a 24 hours a day, seven days a week multiple theatre experience of 13 feature-length films, video streaming, talks and performances — was postponed in Berlin, the Paris opening has been cancelled this week pending the granting of a police permit. Will it go ahead, let alone go to London in April?
DAU, the creation of Russian film director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, was originally planned to be a large-scale film about the life of Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist and free love exponent Lev Landau. 700 hours of film was initially shot in the Ukraine in 2009-11 on a massive live-in set — a very realistic version of a 1950s theoretical physics institute in which the performers precisely lived out their roles, apparently without scripts. The film features one professional actor, hundreds of non-professionals and thousands of extras plus celebrities from a range of fields including Marina Abramovic, Peter Sellars, Romeo Castellucci, theoretical physicists David Gross and Carlo Rovelli and, as Landau, one of Europe’s leading young conductors, Teodor Currentzis. The installation includes its 13 feature length films, personalised interactive additional story lines and performers living out Soviet-era lifestyles.
The sheer scale of the work as described is breathtaking, let alone the magnitude of its evolution as revealed in the London Review of Books by novelist James Meek. We’re waiting for DAU!
Discover more about DAU on the project’s website.
Top image credit: Still from DAU
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SEASON WRAP: Devils season comes to end as NHL plots playoff plan
Tom Canavan
The New Jersey Devils' season came to an end on Tuesday after the NHL abandoned the rest of the regular season and announced plans to head straight into the playoffs with 24 teams.
Only seven teams were left out of the postseason under the plan commissioner Gary Bettman unveiled to resume the season later this summer. It has been paused on March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Devils had a 28-29-12 record in a regular season that saw both coach John Hynes and general manager Ray Shero fired.
“It is disappointing being left out,” interim general manager Tom Fitzgerald said in a video conference call Tuesday. “But you know what? We we respect the league’s decision on this. And, you know, it is what it is.”
Fitzgerald said management has not informed either him and interim coach Alain Nadreddine whether they would be retained in their current roles next season. He said the team will continue to prepare for the draft, which probably won't be held until after the playoffs end.
The postseason may last the entire summer, provided there are no setbacks.
A lottery will be held June 26 to determine the top three picks. They Devils have the second best record among the seven teams who did not qualify. They could draft anywhere from first to ninth.
New Jersey has had the No. 1 overall pick twice in the last three years, taking centers Nico Hischer and Jack Hughes.
New Jersey may also get Arizona and Vancouver's first-round draft picks. They would get Arizona's if the Coyotes don't get a top-three pick. They would get Vancouver's first-round pick if they make the playoffs.
Arizona and Vancouver are among the 16 teams that have to play in a best-of-5 series to qualify for the final 16. Whether that counts as making the playoffs remains to be determined.
“I have read tweets that it’s not going to be considered the playoffs,” Fitzgerald said. “So like I said before, I think the league’s going to a hard job and to accommodate 31 teams and their liking. Not every team is happy. Not every team. We all accept what’s going on here.”
The Devils had only themselves to blame for missing the playoffs for the seventh time in eight years. They got off to a bad start and never recovered.
“It just tells you there’s any lessons when the puck drops October, whatever Game 1, you’re gonna be ready to play and every game counts,” Fitzgerald said.
Under the league plan, teams can start training in July. Fitzgerald say the Devils will be allowed to bring some players in during that time. He plans to have exit interview remotely in the next month.
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InterviewsNovember 2013
Pippa Evans & Sanderson Jones interview: How great thou aren’t
Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, founders of the Sunday Assembly, talk to Stephen Tomkins about godless church
In the March issue of Reform, we had a review of the first meeting of the Sunday Assembly – a surprising idea from the comedians Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones: a church for people who don’t believe in God.
Since then, they have spread their branches as far as New York and Melbourne, and by the end of their first year expect to have 35 congregations. They have received 1,600 requests from people who want a local branch near them. The London meeting sees between 200 and 600 people on a Sunday. They are currently on a crowdfunded tour of three continents, “40 Dates and 40 Nights”.*
A success story like this may or may not mean they have divine anointing. What it certainly means is that godless church is a movement worth paying attention to. What exactly is it, why is it, and what does it reveal about the changing shape of faith in our world? Reform met the pair in, of all places, a club for retired variety performers in Covent Garden, for some interfaith dialogue.
*http://sundayassembly.com/40dates
For a lot of western Christians today, the faith may be great, but they draw the line at going to church. You do it the other way round – yes to church, no to faith. Why?
Pippa Evans: Is that true of most Christians? I know a lot of people who go to church – Christian church – not because they believe in God but because they want the community. To me the strength of the church is the community. The reason we do it is to offer the option that doesn’t involve the praying and the godliness.
Sanderson Jones: You get some mild hand-wringing about: “What can we learn from the success of the Sunday Assembly?” “Obviously we’re not clearly communicating the message well enough,” or: “We just haven’t got the whole Jesus thing over to people.” But I think that however much you get that over, if there’s a load of people who don’t believe in God, then that’s a stumbling block. There are a lot of people who still want to have the community and all the great things that churches do.
Is there something that churches can learn from the success of the Sunday Assembly?
PE: I don’t know. We’ve taken so much from the church! Our background is performance, so we know how to put on a show. I think that’s why we’ve been successful in putting together Sunday Assembly. But it’s amazing how many people get in touch saying: “I had this idea but I didn’t know how to go about it,” or “I never got round to it.” So I think the secret of the Sunday Assembly is a lot of people have had this idea, it’s just that we were the people to put it together.
SJ: A lot of humanist organisations and atheists have been battling for so long with an idea, but have no idea how to turn it into a community. So I reckon they’ve probably got more to learn from us than church. It’s not like this is our skill set. Apparently some vicars go to schools to learn how to do it!
PE: But we do have bits of the skills. I think comedy’s been a great training ground.
SJ: If you want to teach people how to lead services, they should go to a stand-up comedy session and hit the open mike circuit and learn how to engage people who don’t feel they have to be there.
Is the Sunday Assembly modelled upon anything?
SJ: We got inspiration from many places.
PE: But the basic format is a church service/school assembly.
SJ: And TED talks. And just trying to make it an emotional experience, you know. It’s entertaining but it’s not entertainment. There is a serious moral purpose to it. Except we don’t really like saying the words “serious moral purpose”. But underneath it all, this is life, we get a tiny little blip of consciousness – at least that’s what I think – and imagine how thrilling it would be if we could look back and say we helped people make the most of it. That would be amazing.
Did you have experience of Christian church in your younger days?
PE: I went to church till I was 17. What I call “classic church” when I was a kid – with a proper old-school vicar with a white dress. Then I had a friend at school who went to a happy-clappy church, so I started going to the youth group, and from the age of 11 to 17 I was proper into church, got baptised, preached on Haven Green, ran the Sunday school. Then I started questioning, and I just stopped believing in God. And when I left I realised it wasn’t God that I missed or Jesus, it was church. I really missed church.
So you’re trying to recapture that community?
PE: It’s just basically nostalgia! I still love going to church with my parents. I feel really awkward during prayers and communion, but I love the fact that I know everyone there.
Sanderson, you haven’t had the same background.
SJ: Well, I went to chapel five times a week at school, but in that slightly reluctant: “I’m going to sing any word which could possibly be taken rudely a little bit louder and slightly resent it,” way. My mother was very religious so I went to church a lot up until the age of 10. But I’d already started to have doubts; then when my mum died I stopped going to church at all. That meant that for me, not believing in God was not an academic issue – it was all bundled up into: “What is life? Where’s my mum?” It became a very emotional issue and that’s why I connect to being alive so strongly.
What made you feel that you wanted this community/event?
SJ: About six years ago I left a Christmas carol concert, and thought: “I like so many of the bits of it, it’s such a shame that at the centre there is something I don’t believe in.” But I love the singing, I love the community, I love the stories, I love the wanting to improve yourself and help other people. And I thought how cool would it be if at the middle was a celebration of being alive. Because that for me is as transcendental as any religious experience. Give me half a minute and nothing much to worry about, and I think I can have a personal relationship with being alive. Which would look very similar to someone having a mystical relationship with God.
You have a “community mission”. What form does that take?
PE: We’ve got a really great team of people working for us to find projects to join in on. The idea was to get people to help make Sunday Assembly work, and then go and help existing projects in the local community and then start our own projects. We had our harvest festival: we collected tins and gave them to the foodbank. Then in October we don’t have a Sunday service in London, we’re going to clean up an area. We’re working on it, Steve.
Has there been a high point?
PE: The first one not being a complete flop was amazing. And the “Wonder & Joy” shows – what we call the Pentecostal Sunday Assembly.
SJ: Pentecostal humanism! We invented it. Everyone was screaming and shaking their arms around.
PE: The idea was to get to secular mass hysteria by the end of it. We got there, almost. There was one time they wouldn’t stop screaming which was really exciting. Everyone got this wonderful buzz and then left.
Is the hysteria ironic or genuine?
SJ: I genuinely feel that. I genuinely feel that excited.
Have you had much flak?
PE: We’ve had a lot of people recently saying we’re going to go to hell. So tell your readers: “We already know!”
SJ: A lot of atheists have given us a lot of abuse on Twitter, because apparently the way we don’t believe in God is not the right way to not believe in God.
Do you get why some atheists are upset?
PE: I suppose, because we’re not campaigning for atheism, it probably feels closer to church than to atheism as we know it. When we did the first Sunday service a couple of very militant atheists came along who were quite angry that it wasn’t like a rally. We tried to explain that Sunday Assembly is about celebrating being alive. Sunday Assembly is about what we can all do together regardless of whether you believe in God or not. What we all have in common is life. Our aim was that anybody should be able to come to a Sunday Assembly and not feel ostracised by what they believe in.
SJ: On the other side, there’s a lot of people who might have had very bad experiences with religion. It’s one thing for me – who last went to church in earnest aged 10 and had quite a few years to go through different levels of relationship with religion – to finally get to a place of seeing good things about it; but if you’ve been abused by a priest, if you’ve been brought up in a Mormon family and not had connections with the outside world, I can imagine you might go: “Oh yeah? I think I’ll reserve my judgment on anything which smells like church!”
PE: There’s a big debate we’re having at the moment about Christmas. We both love Christmas.
SJ: Really want to sing hymns.
PE: I will sing any Christmas carol and I won’t mind about the lyrics. To me they’re just words, in the same way as – an example that Sanderson often uses – you wouldn’t not look at a painting of Jesus, just because you don’t believe in Jesus.
SJ: And also people sing these pop songs, like: “I need a hero.” Do you? Do you need a hero right now till the morning is light?
So you haven’t been around quite long enough to have your first church splits yet, but you can see where they come from.
PE: We have. We don’t want to be in charge of everyone, but if someone goes to Sunday Assembly here and someone goes to Sunday Assembly in Newcastle, we want them to have a similar experience. So we wrote some guidelines, but Birmingham felt like they were too controlling so they split. What are they called now?
SJ: The Birmingham Secular Fellowship.
PE: It is very much like that scene in Life of Brian
SJ: I think it’s really healthy. The great thing about there not being a heaven and hell is that it never takes on existential threats.
Are you an event or a movement?
PE: That’s an interesting question. I think we’re a movement. We didn’t know we were going to be a movement. It’s happened very quickly. We seem to be running a movement. How did that happen? I’m not sure our agents are very happy.
SJ: I never did earn much money for my agent anyway.
I feel it really ought to be possible to discuss atheism without mentioning You Know Who. What do you think of the public profile of atheism today?
SJ: It’s in a very interesting place at the moment. Atheism’s so big. There are certain strands within it which are more accepting of things like community and the power of the irrational and the emotional. There are even people who are looking at religion as not necessarily just, as Richard Dawkins put it, a parasite. For me it’s a shame that I even have to use the word “atheism”.
PE: Yep. I find it dull, really dull, as a topic. It’s not a badge I particularly want to wear. I’m not fighting for atheism, I’m trying to get a community together. I find talking about atheism dull.
Does it matter to you at all as a positive thing then? Is it a good thing if someone puts religious belief behind them and embraces “the infinite emptiness”?
SJ: I would say: “The infinite richness of this one life lived more than is possible to anyone who thinks they’ve got anything happening afterwards”. Like when you’re in a restaurant and you’re having something which is just sensational, and the closer you get to the end of it the better it tastes, and you’re savouring every single thing because it’s all you’ve got.
So it does matter.
SJ: For me, I find that I get so much from thinking of the luck that we have in being alive. I think there are just as many nice and happy people who are religious. But life lived without religion can be utterly fantastic
This article was published in the November 2013 edition of Reform.
Simon Jenkins: Godless places
Behold, the winner of the worst ever title for a Christian CD is…
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An outstanding life: John Cyril James Matthews
By The Pharmacy Guild of Australia - August 28, 2019
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia notes with sadness the passing of Mr John Matthews — an outstanding community pharmacist, businessman, mentor and community leader.
The National President of the Guild, George Tambassis, said John Matthews had an extraordinary life and contributed immensely to the world of pharmacy, pharmaceutical wholesaling, and politics in NSW.
“He was in many ways a revered elder statesman of community pharmacy — a wily character with a strategic mind and a genial nature. He is remembered very fondly by many in the Guild community,” Mr Tambassis said.
The President of the NSW Branch of the Guild, David Heffernan, said: “John Matthews had an enduring and significant impact on the world of community pharmacy, maintaining his influence and providing wise counsel to those he mentored for many years.”
Among his many achievements, Mr Matthews is credited with being the father of the pharmacy location rules, through a proposal he developed in the 1970s that approvals to dispense Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines should be controlled by the government on the basis of need in the area, providing efficiencies for government and economies of scale for local pharmacies.
It wasn’t until 1991 that the department of health implemented the core elements of his proposal to form the original location rules in the first Community Pharmacy Agreement – rules which continue to benefit consumers today.
Born 11 February 1928, the Hon. John Cyril James Matthews was a member of the NSW Branch of the Pharmacy Guild from 1967 until 1982, and in 2005 was made an Honorary Life Member.
A pharmacy graduate of the University of Sydney, Mr Matthews worked as a pharmacist in Bathurst, and in 1965 he was elected to Bathurst City Council and subsequently became the Mayor.
In 1973 he became a member of the State executive of the Liberal Party, becoming the State party’s treasurer in 1979.
He was elected to the NSW Legislative Council as a Liberal member in 1981 and in 1984 he became Opposition Finance Spokesman, a position he held until 1987. He left the Legislative Council in 1991.
He joined the board of Australian Pharmaceutical Industries in 1975, becoming Chair in 1982 and retiring in 2001.
He will be remembered as a pharmacist, distinguished civic leader of Bathurst and servant of the people of New South Wales.
In his erudite history of the Pharmacy Guild, Stephen Greenwood summed up John Matthews thus: “The Hon John Matthews stands out as one of pharmacy’s true heroes. His early leadership in the Guild and later in politics, as Chair of API, enabled pharmacy to prosper and the community to benefit from his far-sighted understanding of innovative professional services.”
The Pharmacy Guild extends condolences to Mr Matthews’ family. A funeral will be held in Sydney on Tuesday 3 September.
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Home » AD Appoints Marisol Fernandez as President of Industrial and Safety Division - US
AD Appoints Marisol Fernandez as President of Industrial and Safety Division - US
AD, the $41 billion contractor and industrial products wholesale buying/marketing group, announced today that Marisol Fernandez will join AD as president, Industrial and Safety Division - U.S. effective May 13, 2019.
Fernandez comes to AD from Bunzl where she held the position of regional vice president with responsibility for its growing U.S. portfolio of safety businesses.
"I am pleased to welcome Marisol to the AD organization after successful careers with Bunzl, Essendant, and Grainger,” said Jack Templin, president, Industrial Business Unit and chief programs officer. “Over the past 5 years, AD Industrial & Safety members more than doubled their sales, and on top of that we recently completed mergers with IDC-USA from the bearing and power transmission industry and IDI, a Canadian industrial and safety group. And I believe Marisol’s 20-year track record of performance and integrity in the industrial and safety channel makes her well suited to lead the division to continued growth. Marisol is a strong addition to the AD family and we are thrilled to have her on the team.”
In this position, Fernandez will be responsible for all AD operations in the Industrial and Safety Division in the United States including business strategy, member/supplier relations, and overall financial results. In collaboration with key stakeholders, she will manage and execute AD’s ongoing growth plans for the division.
Fernandez holds an MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and has several certifications in project management. She is also a Six Sigma Black Belt and proudly served our country as a member of the United States Air Force. In addition, Fernandez is actively engaged with the Industrial Supply Association where she serves in a leadership capacity for the Women Industrial Supply Executives (W.I.S.E.) Network Group and currently serves as an executive committee member on its board of directors. She joins the growing ranks of multi-lingual AD associates as someone who is fluent in both English and Spanish.
“I am honored to join the ranks of the AD organization. AD’s mission, values and customer-centric approach resonates across our industry," said Fernandez. "I am excited about working closely with our elite team of associates, strong independent distributors and supplier partners to build upon AD’s history of success. I believe in our purpose and am committed to helping our members to continue to outperform their competition. Together, We Win!”
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AD’s Marisol Fernandez Accepts Impact Award from Women Industrial Supply Executives (W.I.S.E.)
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A Doug Hopkins Biopic Is in the Works
iPOTUS 2: Eight Songs for Joe Biden's Inauguration
State Balladeer Dolan Ellis On Using Common Sense
Robrt L. Pela
| Under the Sun |
Robrt L. Pela | March 23, 2020 | 7:00am
Dolan Ellis has held on to his title of state balladeer for 54 years.
New Times Archive
Dolan Ellis had been thinking a lot about the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s awful, of course,” said Arizona’s state balladeer, in a phone call from his North Scottsdale home. “But I’m also seeing people pulling together for a change. I’m seeing a bigger awareness that’s there’s more to life than getting ahead. That life has to have quality, emotional stability, and serenity. That’s what folklore is all about: how people do things, how they use their own skills, and the folkie way of being self-sufficient.”
Ellis knows folkies and folklore. The 85-year-old singer-songwriter helped launch the folk music revival of the early 1960s with The New Christy Minstrels, the Grammy-winning group he cofounded and to which he lent his 12-string guitar and baritone skills. He left the group after winning gold records lost its shine.
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“I quit because it wasn’t what I wanted,” he remembered of leaving the Minstrels. “I settled in Arizona and continued my writing and exploring and performing at a local club. Governor Sam Goddard used to come see my show and bring his son Terry with him. Terry had braces on his teeth.”
It was Terry Goddard’s dad who dubbed Ellis the official state balladeer of Arizona. “It’s an unsolicited government appointment,” Ellis explained of the designation he’s held for 54 years. “I have held this title at the pleasure of the last 13 governors.”
Born on a Kansas farm, Ellis said he always knew he’d live in Arizona. “I don’t mean to be woo-woo about it, but even as a kid I knew. Maybe it was all the Roy Rogers movies we’d go see on Saturday mornings, those silver screen heroes riding the wild west.”
He hung around Kansas long enough to get a degree in journalism from Baker University, then moved here to work in television. Pretty quickly, he decided he didn’t like TV. “There was more pressure in that industry than I like to live with," he said. "I stayed for a year, then I quit and became a folk singer in a coffee house in Scottsdale.”
Ellis figured he didn’t know anyone in Arizona, so he could do whatever he wanted with his life here. He’d always loved music. His older brother was a jazz trumpet player who played Jellyroll Morton and Jack Teagarden recordings and built Ellis a drum kit with tin cans and pot lids.
“The jazz world was a little too fast for me. It was very dark back then, with a lot of drugs. I didn’t want to live in that element. And if you were gonna make any money playing jazz, it was in places like the Playboy Club. I didn’t want to wear a tuxedo and bow tie to work every night. That sounded awful. I liked comfortable clothing and the desert and camping. So I followed folk rather than jazz.”
In college, Ellis became smitten with folk music. “I’d go hang out at the FM station,” he remembered. “Only weirdoes listened to FM in those days. This station had all these 78 RPM records of Leadbelly and John Jacob Niles and Ed McCurdy, all the old folk singers.”
Once in Arizona, he witnessed a world in transition. It was the late 1950s, and the last days of the Old West (“When people did business by handshake,” he said) were segueing into what Ellis called “the new southwest,” where everyone seemed devoted to something they called “progress,” and where everything was booming.
He began traveling the state, introducing himself to old-timers who’d settled here long ago, cowboys and ranchers and Natives. He went to roundups and pow-wows and reservations and rodeos, photographing everything, then went home and wrote songs about it.
In 1996, Ellis founded the Arizona Folklore Preserve, an archive and performance space in Ramsey Canyon. His photographs of our southwestern olden days are there. So, at least once a month, is a performance by Ellis.
“What happened was I went into the Scottsdale Library one day in about 1986, looking for their archive of Arizona folk music and folklore,” Ellis explained. “And there was nothing there. Oh, I think they had some Burl Ives records and some photographs of Pete Seeger. But I probably knew 100 folk singers at the time who’d spent their lives collecting stuff and writing things about Arizona history, and about our folk music, and none of it was there.”
Ellis figured Arizona needed a place where folkies could celebrate the folk lifestyle. He found a rundown ranch in Ramsey Canyon that had been vacant for years. “We built a stage in there, and it seated 30 people or so. I did shows for free for about five years, and whatever money we took in, we banked. Then we set up a 501(c)(3) and got a new, bigger building started.”
Folk acts now come from all over the world to perform at the Preserve. But maybe not, in these days of social distancing, for a little while. Ellis said he wasn’t worried about the long-term effect of the Preserve’s hiatus. But he thought it was ironic that the venue will have to temporarily shut down in the face of a pandemic.
“Right now, we all need to be using common sense to get out of this mess, and while we’re having to hunker down,” he believed. “Common sense is really the basis of a folk lifestyle—how to make do with what you have, how to get along, how to work in harmony in the situation you find yourself in.”
He paused to let out a sigh. “These days are just crazy,” he said. “I don’t know where it’s all leading, but I guess we’re about to find out. What the hell.”
Robrt L. Pela has been a weekly contributor to Phoenix New Times since 1991, primarily as a cultural critic. His radio essays air on National Public Radio affiliate KJZZ's Morning Edition.
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‘Stag’ Moves Off 105.1
After 25 years at the station he refers to simply as “the NYC station at 105.1 MHz,” Jim Stagnitto has a new gig — director of engineering for WNYC Radio.
“I refer to my old station that way because it’s been so many different formats and call letters. I started there in 1983 when it was Bonneville’s Beautiful Music station WRFM, and left it as Clear Channel’s Hip Hop Power 105,” Stagnitto wrote in an e-mail to Radio World. “… I’ve been there so long and through so many changes, that the electricians at [the Empire State Building] and [4 Times Square], who normally label the power panels with the stations call letters, simply labeled them ‘STAG 105.’ I was the only constant!”
Stagnitto’s new responsibilities include overseeing all the technical operations of WNYC-FM-AM. He is reporting to Steve Shultis, the former DOE at WNYC, who was promoted to chief technology officer.
He joins WNYC Radio at an exciting time as the broadcasting is moving from its studios at the New York city Municipal Building on Centre Street to new state-of-the-art facilities in SoHo, on Varick Street. The new facility will have five studio clusters, including a performance studio and a 3,500-square-foot auditorium, as well as production facilities for some network shows that originate at WNYC, such as “On The Media” and “Studio 360.”
“I’m proud and very happy to be joining an extremely talented group of people at a very exciting time,” Stagnitto wrote.
EMF Installs Custom Antenna in San Juan
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WMGG Has Turned on All-Digital AM
Tampa-area station is the first since the FCC changed its rules
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You are at:Home»English»Community News»Politics»JA Millennial on Change in the Trump Era
JA Millennial on Change in the Trump Era
Posted On January 26, 2017 Politics
By MATTHEW ORMSETH, Rafu Contributor
(Published Jan. 21, 2017)
Donald J. Trump lost the Asian American and the youth vote, but one prominent young JA cast his vote for the newly inaugurated president: Jeremy Yamaguchi, the Placentia city councilmember and former mayor who at 22 became the youngest mayor in city history.
Yamaguchi, now 28, said it was Trump’s business background and willingness to commit political iconoclasm to bring about change that won him over, along with voters across the country.
“Donald Trump is the change this country has probably needed for a while,” he said. “People were tired of hearing things and not having anything done, tired of being told one thing and getting a different thing. I think Donald Trump was a response to that.”
Growing up, Yamaguchi’s family owned an industrial insulation business, and the afternoons he spent there after school afforded him a look into how government policies affect small businesses.
Yamaguchi identifies as a fiscal conservative, but calls himself a “millennial conservative” when it comes to social issues.
“There’s a silent millennial conservatism push that realizes that the older generations of Republicans have a tendency to eat their own,” he said. “If you’re not the cookie-cutter representation of a Republican, they want nothing to do with you.”
For example, millennial conservatives have friends who are gay, he said, something older generations of conservatives still consider taboo.
“To go out and ask a Republican millennial to go against their friend in order to hold the party line, I think is silly,” he said.
Yamaguchi’s backing of Trump raised eyebrows in his family, most of which is “liberal Democratic,” he said. Family members were concerned by Trump’s exclusionary rhetoric, but most of their concerns were about “his perceptions, versus his policies.”
“From my perspective, I think JAs are very sensitive when it comes to social and personal issues,” he said. “I think that the voting record on a macro level…shows that people in the JA community vote for how they feel, instead of looking at the business side.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that — it’s just Democrats do a lot better job of it,” he added.
Exit polls show that only 29 percent of Asian Americans voted for Trump, compared to 65 percent for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Many JAs were quick to condemn the president-elect when he equivocated over the incarceration of JAs during World War II in a 2015 interview with Time, and again this past November when a prominent Trump supporter said that the camps offered legal precedent for a registry of Muslim citizens.
“We must not use the wrongdoing perpetrated against Japanese Americans during World War II as a justification for the mistreatment of Muslim Americans,” the Japanese American Citizens League wrote in a statement.
Asked whether he would implement a registry of Muslim citizens after the Paris terrorist attacks last November, Trump told NBC News he “would certainly implement that. Absolutely.”
Yamaguchi said concerns about Trump’s promises to implement discriminatory practices of the same ilk as the wartime camps are overblown, and that the president-elect lacks the authority to roll out those practices, even if he wanted to.
“I think it’s rhetoric,” he said. “We have a lot of checks and balances in place, and that’s not going to happen again. Maybe the fear this time would be a Middle Eastern group held without cause, but I think he’s got more checks and balances on him than they had in the ’40s, for sure.”
“And with the media and the transparency of the Internet, it’s a lot harder to do stuff like that without public scrutiny,” he added.
Yamaguchi was encouraged by Trump’s picks for his Cabinet, many of whom have backgrounds in business, but said he’s “kind of torn” about their lack of political experience.
“He’s definitely brought in some new faces to politics, which is good and bad,” he said. “I welcome the change from the party bosses and the establishment.
With that being said, Yamaguchi found Trump’s irreverence for time-honored political formalities off-putting, and said he wishes the president-elect would be “a little more of a statesman.”
“The rules of decorum are kind of going out the window with Trump,” he said. “When there’s a bit of variance in the respect for office, that’s when I want to look the other way. It doesn’t matter if it’s the office of mayor or the office of president — they all deserve respect.”
But he also said Trump’s brash style and disregard for the rules of the game could bring about more immediate change.
He pointed to Trump’s showdown with Boeing over the cost of Air Force One as evidence that he plans to follow through on promises to cut wasteful spending and run the country more like a business.
In December, Trump tweeted that the plane’s “costs are out of control, more than $4 billion.” “Cancel order!” he added.
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg met with Trump in January, and reported that the company is working “to provide a better airplane at a lower cost.”
“That to me shows responsibility and action, almost immediately,” Yamaguchi said. “If he can already influence change before he’s even in office, then I think he’s on the right track to bring businesses back and restart the economy.”
Lieu Co-authors Article of Impeachment Charging Trump with Incitement of Insurrection
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Joey D. Richards
Victories against Stephen F. Austin have been few and far between for the Abilene Christian men’s basketball team.
The Lumberjacks even pulled off a stunning comeback in the previous meeting Jan. 23 in Nacogdoches, scoring eight unanswered points in the final 26 seconds to beat the Wildcats 61-60.
But ACU managed a little payback Tuesday night, beating SFA 72-58 in a Southland Conference game at Moody Coliseum.
“Obviously it was gut punch a month ago,” ACU coach Joe Golding said. “It was all over SportsCenter. That’s the only place these seniors have never won at. So, we’ll never be able to forget that. That’s the one thing they’ll never be able to accomplish. So, to have the opportunity to get them back today, we feel better (but) not great. We’ll never forget that one down there at SFA. But we feel better.”
And the Wildcats, now 2-6 against SFA since rejoining the Southland Conference the 2013-14 season, should be feeling better. They won their third straight game since a 75-66 loss to Southeastern Louisiana at Moody – a game that came just two days after starters Jalone Friday and B.J. Maxwell were kicked off the team for violating school rules.
ACU (24-6 overall, 13-4 Southland) also surpassed the school record for wins in the regular season set in 1979-80. That 1979-80 team ended up going 27-5 and reaching the NAIA national tournament. It’s still the school mark for wins in a season.
The Wildcats, who lead third-place New Orleans (17-11, 12-5) by a game, can clinch the No. 2 seed in the Southland Conference with either a Southeastern Louisiana victory over New Orleans on Wednesday night or a win over Incarnate Word on Saturday in ACU’s regular-season finale.
That No. 2 seed is a very big deal, too, because the top two teams get double byes to the conference tournament semifinals. Sam Houston State has already nailed down the regular-season title.
“We got back to protecting home court,” said Golding, whose team is 12-2 at home this season. “That’s important, and again we control our own destiny. No matter what happens (Wednesday night), we’re still in control Saturday.”
Senior trio shines
ACU’s three seniors – Jaylen Franklin, Jaren Lewis and Hayden Farquhar – got the job done Tuesday night. Franklin had a double-double – scoring a game-high 16 points to go with 10 assists. He also had seven rebounds. Farquhar, a 6-foot-7 Throckmorton grad, followed with 15 points off the bench, while Lewis had 13 points, five rebounds and two steals.
“I tell you what, man, Jay Frank and Jaren and Farquhar have done an incredible job leading our team,” Golding said. “They’re three incredible seniors, who are playing the best basketball of their careers. That’s what you want. You want them to play their best at the very end of it."
Kevon Harris and Shannon Bogues led SFA (14-15, 7-10) with 14 points each. The Lumberjacks went into the game 14-1 against the Wildcats since Feb. 9, 1981. ACU's previous win was a 69-60 decision Jan. 7, 2017, at Moody.
Farquhar has stepped up and played well since the loss of 6-9 center Friday, the team’s leading scorer at 13.3 points per game. Farquhar has averaged 13 points in the four games since Friday’s departure.
ACU got a big game from freshman guard Damien Daniels on Tuesday, too. Daniels had 10 points, three assists and seven rebounds in 15 minutes off the bench.
“Farq is shooting the skin off the ball right now, and Damien’s a great defensive player,” Franklin said. “He’s good at finding teammates. He’s coming along.”
Daniels is likely the heir apparent to the starting point guard spot after Franklin finishes his career this season. He’ll have some big shoes to fill, as Franklin proved once again against SFA.
“Jay Frank, he’s been a good player his whole career here,” said Golding, a starting point guard for the Wildcats in the late ’90s. “A long story short, he’s kind of changed from his freshman year, being a guy who scored all the time to taking over the point guard position as a sophomore. He really took it over his junior and senior years. He trusts his teammates. When he does that and gets the ball moving and we’re hitting some shots, it makes it easier to score.”
Good ball movement is one reason the Wildcats are 3-1 since losing two starters. ACU had 18 assists in Tuesday’s win.
“Since this group’s been together, that’s one thing we’ve done,” Golding said. “We’re really moved the ball really well. This group has done a great job of that.”
Franklin isn’t surprised the team is playing well, despite the loss of Friday and Maxwell.
“When we lost Jalone and B.J., the mindset was the next people up,” Franklin said. “We’ve got a talented group.”
One last Moody moment
Franklin, Lewis and Farquhar will play their last home game against Incarnate Word at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Moody Coliseum. It’s the last game before the Wildcats play in their first Southland Conference tournament as a DI program March 13-17 in Katy.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun to celebrate those guys,” Golding said. “I’m looking forward to it. They deserve it. We’re going to have a lot of fun and celebrate them.
“They’ve had great careers. They’re going to be talked about here for a long time. We were one of the worst Division I programs in the country (four years ago), and where they have our program right now is incredible. They’re probably not celebrated enough around here.”
Franklin admitted that last game at Moody means a lot to him.
“Saturday is going to hit me hard,” he said. “I’m going to be emotional. I’m sure Jaren is going to be emotional, and Coach (Golding) and Hayden are going to be emotional. We’re making history now, and we’ve got to fight for history and keep going.”
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Digital vision mu...
Digital vision must include preservation, argues British Library chief executive
The chief executive of the British Library, Lynne Brindley, has challenged the UK government that it must include preservation in its vision of a ‘Digital Britain’. In a speech to policy makers and government officials, she argued that digitising and preserving the country’s collective memory is a ‘critical public service’. She also emphasised the role that she believes the British Library can play in carrying out these tasks and ensuring ‘digital literacy for all’.
In October last year the British prime minister published an article called ‘Digital Britain is a necessity’. In this article he argued that access to digital communications and information are essential for business success and for enriching the country’s social, cultural and educational landscape, as well as helping with social mobility and inclusion. He called for the right policies to be developed to equip the country to be innovative, prosperous and productive in the digital future.
Brindley noted that several strong steps are already being taking towards this goal and added that the British Library, ‘which has a core responsibility for the organisation of information and knowledge’, can make a core contribution to an inclusive national digital strategy.
‘The British Library can help deliver a truly digital future for Britain by growing faster its role as custodian of Digital Britain’s collective memory – acquisition of digital content, ensuring its sustainability and its continuing access and long-term preservation – a critical public service that acts as a springboard for research, new forms of creativity and knowledge creation,’ she said. ‘Without such effort and investment future researchers and citizens will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st Century, and without such guaranteed long-term commitment to preservation, our content and creative industries will be inhibited in their global market success.’
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U.S. Regulatory News
GRAINS-Corn, soy firm after benign USDA data as market looks ahead to U.S.-China trade deal
By Karl Plume
* USDA raises U.S. corn, soy production outlook
* USDA demand outlook in question ahead of U.S.-China trade deal
* Wheat turns down as U.S. winter crop acres near expectations (Rewrites throughout with updated U.S. Department of Agriculture supply/demand estimates, adds quote, updates prices, changes byline, changes dateline from LONDON)
CHICAGO, Jan 10 (Reuters) - U.S. corn and soybean futures were steady to higher on Friday as investors looked past revised U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) supply-and-demand projections and focused on improved prospects for exports to China, which is due to sign an interim trade deal with the United States next week.
The USDA data, released during Friday’s trading session, showed modest changes to crop production and stocks but did not include the agency’s outlook for post-trade deal demand from China.
The USDA’s eagerly awaited estimates for 2019 U.S. corn and soybean production also remained uncertain after the agency said it would resurvey farmers in five northern states where poor weather left many acres unharvested.
“This report is not a game changer,” said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities in West Des Moines, Iowa.
“We were handcuffed going into the report with larger supplies around the world with improved weather in South America and hopes of some better demand from China. We come out of the report looking at the same thing,” he said.
Chicago Board of Trade March corn was 2 cents higher at $3.85-1/4 a bushel by 11:55 a.m. CST (1755 GMT), reversing a pre-report drop to $3.76-1/2 a bushel, the lowest since Dec. 13.
March soybeans gained a penny to $9.44-1/2 after dropping shortly after the USDA data release to a three-week low of $9.35-1/2.
CBOT March wheat fell 2-3/4 cents to $5.59-1/2 a bushel. The contract peaked at $5.68-1/2 a bushel ahead of the report, which was the highest for a most-active contract since August 2018. (Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Additional reporting by Nigel Hunt in London and Naveen Thukral in Singapore, Editing by Maju Samuel and Grant McCool)
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Canada lynx no longer threatened by extinction: U.S. wildlife agency
By Laura Zuckerman
PINEDALE, Wyo. (Reuters) - The Canada lynx, a wild cat found in just a handful of mostly western U.S. states as well as Canada, no longer needs federal protection from extinction in the Lower 48 states, U.S. wildlife officials said on Thursday, sparking an outcry from conservationists.
FILE PHOTO: A lynx climbs a hill after crossing the finish area during the first training run for the men's Downhill race of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, British Columbia, February 10, 2010. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
The finding is one step in a process that will see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally propose removing Canada lynx from the federal endangered and threatened species list. There is no timeline for when such a plan would be floated, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Strickland told Reuters in an email.
Conservationists said it was mystifying how the Trump administration determined the lynx has recovered and should be delisted since the Fish and Wildlife Service doesn’t know how many of the wild cats there are where they are protected in the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere.
Conservationists say stripping protections from Canada lynx, listed in 2000 in the Lower 48 states, would lead to its demise where it is found in parts of Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Montana and Washington. The lynx is not considered imperiled where it is found in Alaska or Canada.
“This spells disaster for lynx,” Michael Garrity, head of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, said by telephone.
The Montana-based Alliance is one of several conservation groups that have sued to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to broaden restrictions on activities such as logging, mining and snowmobiling where they take place on public lands and are likely to harm lynx.
The reclusive wild feline, about twice the size of a domestic house cat, is known for its solitary nature, and disproportionately long legs and large paws that make it well-adapted to hunt in deep mountain snows for its preferred prey, the snowshoe hare.
Although climate change, including decreased mountain snowpack, is “an important factor” affecting Canada lynx, they are not at risk of extinction from climate change in the foreseeable future, U.S. wildlife managers said in a statement.
The agency’s Strickland conceded that the number of Canada lynx in the Lower 48 was unknown but said efforts by federal land managers and others to lessen destruction or modification of lynx habitat have reduced threats.
“We believe these measures have adequately protected the species to the point where it no longer needs protection,” she said in an email.
Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Sandra Maler
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