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West Palm Beach Hotspot Voltaire Turns One, Celebrates Through the Weekend
Friday, August 24, 2018 at 9:02 a.m.
Bands and DJs will hit the WPB spot Thursday through Sunday. Oh, and there will be no cover and free drinks, too!
The Top Five South Florida Tattoo Parlors Offering Friday the 13th Deals
Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 8 a.m.
Although the exact origin of getting inked on Friday the 13th is unknown, it is speculated that Oliver Peck of Elm Street Tattoo in Dallas started the tradition of charging only $13 for tats on every Friday the 13th since 2001. If his name rings a bell, this is because Peck made the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008 for "Most Tattoos" drawn in 24 hours. How many did he ink, you ask? Exactly 415. We're hoping the last ones didn't come out too shaky. Here's a list of five tattoo parlors in Broward and Palm Beach counties that are keeping the tradition going strong.
Maguires Hill 16 Closing After Five Decades in Downtown Fort Lauderdale
Wednesday, January 4, 2017 at 2:56 p.m.
Maguires Hill 16, Fort Lauderdale's classic Irish bar, is scheduled to close Sunday night after 50 years in downtown Fort Lauderdale. The haunt that draws hordes every St. Patrick's Day and has been home to thousands of lovers, haters, fighters, and geniuses, has been purchased by a hospitality group, owner Jim Gregory says.
Lover of All Things '90s, Le Youth Comes to Rhythm & Vine
Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 8:59 a.m.
Give Le Youth a time machine, and it's clear where he'll go. "There was something cool about the '90s. the California-based, Ohio-born electronic musician, DJ, and producer says. "I think everyone knows what I am talking about." His bio describes his music as a "?'90s sounds refracted through a thoroughly...
Donovan, Headed for the Parker Playhouse Thursday, Gets No Respect
Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 8:44 a.m.
When I first heard the song "Mellow Yellow" on a good time oldies station, my reaction was, "Why haven't I ever heard this before?' It was a perfect blend of pop and cool, mixing folk and psychedelia After a little digging, I learned it was by Donovan. Perusing his catalog...
Ten Best Labor Day Weekend Parties in Broward and Palm Beach
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 9:12 a.m.
Labor Day is the first Monday of each September. It is meant to be a tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. Somewhere along the way, though, it transformed into a weekend bidding farewell to summer through pool parties, barbecues, and...
More Bars and Clubs Stories
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Arena Corner
The Aréna Corner is one of Budapest’s newest and most impressive office developments. It is situated on the corner of Hungária Boulevard and Kerepesi Road, in the immediate vicinity of the Stadionok metro station. For further information regarding renting here please get in touch with the contact person.
Árboc utca 6.
Árpád Center
The Árpád Center is situated on the corner of Árbóc Street and Visegrádi Street. The office building is easily accessible from the south side of town via Hungária Boulevard, from Buda via the Árpád Bridge, and from downtown via Váci Road. The Árpád Center can also easily be reached by public transport either by bus, tram or metro.
Árpád út 51.
Árpád Point Irodaház
The two-building office complex is situated in the immediate vicinity of the final station of metro line 3 at Újpest-Városközpont on Árpád Road; it was built in the framework of a special development. The 6-story office building offers almost 3,000 m2 of modern rental space. The site is exceptionally well situated; it lies in region of North Pest that saw the biggest office building developments in the past few years. Parking is available in underground parking facility beneath the building. The...
Átrium Park
Atrium Park office complex is located in the 13th district Budapest, Váci Road 45. The building is one of the most determining developments on the real estate market due to its exclusive appearance and technical contents. The complex is built up on a 61 400 sqm territory with 31 200 sqm office space. Beside office functions retail spaces, conference and fitness room were built on the ground floor of the building. The basic concept of the development: ...
Vármegye utca 3-5.
Ausztria Ház
The “A” category building is located in the center of Budapest in district V at No 3-5 Vármegye Street. It is easily accessible both on foot and by car. The office space is flexible and can be configured to meet the needs of the tenants. The units come complete with a small kitchen and toilettes.
Bajcsy Irodaház
The Bajcsy Office Building is located in the vicinity of Nyugati Railway Station in the block bordered by Bajcsi-Zsilinszky Road, Nyugati Square, Jókai Street and Podmaniczky Street. The office building is just a few steps away from the M3 metro station and the stop of trams No 4 and 6 at Nyugati Square. Further more, the building is accessible via a number of busses and trolleys from Nyugati Square and Podmaniczky Street.
Balance Building
This is one of the best offer on the Vaci Road.The BC99 Office offers very flexible conditions in terms of duration and rental fee as well. There is a stunning view onto the Buda hills from the rooms of the office space. The building is located close to the Duna Plaza shopping mall and the Arpad bridge and a restaurant makes the tenants' lives more comfortable with its catering service.
Balance Hall
Balance Hall is located on the popular Váci Street, which is easily accessible by car and public transport. Due to the conscious energy-efficient concept of the office building, operating costs are considerably lower. The office building will welcome new tenants on 7 floors and 15,500 square meters. Delivery of the office building is due in 2019 Q3.
1054 Budapest Szabadság tér 7.
Bank Center
One of the most up to par office buildings in Central Europe, which is located in the heart of Budapest’s downtown. The provided services strive for exceptional quality and include: conference rooms, a café, restaurants, a fitness room, diplomatic security service, a first class maintenance team, heating and air-conditioning with a 4-tube fan coil system, sprinkler system, connection possibilities with Matáv, Vivendi, and Pantel.
Baross u. 52.
Baross 52 Irodaház
Baross 52 Office Building is at Baross street, close to the József boulevard, in the heart of Budapest. There are two retail units in the ground floor, and there is an office in the back side of the Building, which can be a customer service office. There are seven office levels in the building, each can be fitted out to open space office, and however the current layout is middle corridor style with cellular offices. Each floor has its own social block area and kitchenette to ensure the ultimate...
Baross utca 91-95.
Baross Komplex Irodaház
The Baross Komplex Office Building is located on a street parallel with the outer Váci Road with good accessibility via public transport. The building was originally constructed in the 1950’s and was extensively modified after the year 2000, it is tastefully renovated, newly equipped and air-conditioned. The three-story building has a basement with storage facilities and an elevator. A big information technology company and commercial and service businesses are located in its vicinity. It is easily...
Bartók Béla út 43-47.
Bartók Ház
Bartók Ház was erected in 2003 on the land located at Budapest District XI, 43-47 Bartók Béla út. This “A” category office building has a central location and is easy to reach both driving or by public transport; several restaurants and other services are available in its surroundings.
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The construction industry gender pay gap has worsened
Key results from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA) 2019-20 reporting data are in, with mixed results for the construction industry.
Always one of the industries with a high gender pay gap*, the construction industry is now rated as having the second-highest pay gap at 26.1 per cent – an increase of .1 per cent since 2019. On average, this equates to a difference of $36,361 in total renumeration between males and females. Only financial and insurance services rank higher.
National Chair of the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC), Kristine Scheul, said the report card results are disappointing given how much discussion and work has been undertaken to turn it around.
“That in 2020 we’re faced with an increase in the gender pay gap speaks to how much more engagement needs to be undertaken with our stakeholders,” she said.
“As one of our key advocacy pieces, we’ve been focused on working within the industry to reduce the pay gap below the national average. To have it actually increase is disheartening but we are looking forward to continuing our work with industry to change the trajectory.”
Not all results for the industry were negative however, with flexibility in construction industry workplaces up 9.1pp to 64.6 per cent – being one of the strongest improvements across the board.
There has also been a marked increase to paid parental leave, with the construction industry having risen by 10.7 per cent from 25.2 per cent in 2016/17 to 35.9 per cent in 2020.
“While COVID has recently played a role in fast-tracking flexible workplace solutions, we are happy to see such a marked increase, especially when measured against other industries. The increase in paid parental leave is also a very welcome statistic,” said Scheul.
Across the board, there has been a marginal improvement in gender balance at top levels, with female CEOs increasing slightly to 18.3 per cent (up 1.2pp) and female representation on boards increased by 1.3pp to 28.1 per cent.
Additionally, women now comprise 39.9 per cent of all managers, with 44.7 per cent of manager appointments in 2019-20 going to women.
“We look forward to seeing both these figures increase,” said Scheul. “Not just within construction but across all industries. At NAWIC, we actively encourage all industry sectors to employ women in leadership and decision-making roles so that whole-of-industry policy and cultural change is achieved actively and purposefully.”
The WGEA data is based on 4,943 reports submitted in accordance with the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 for the reporting period 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.
Over four million employees in Australia are covered in this dataset, which accounts for more than 40 per cent of Australia’s workforce.
*The gender pay gap measures the difference between the average earnings of women and men, expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings. It is the difference between the pay of women and men, on average, across organisations, industries and the workforce as a whole.
Major bank will only finance highly energy-efficient buildings
Bank royal commission outcomes and the consequences for the built industry
Western Australia almost done with the downturn
Project bank accounts are happening but will your job have one?
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Flight attendants wearing PPE walk through the cabin on a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. (Photographer: James MacDonald/Bloomberg)
The Odds of Catching Covid on a Flight Are Slim
Faye Flam
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- If you decide to fly, the odds that you will pick up Covid-19 are low, according to one expert analysis. Despite the known dangers of crowded, enclosed spaces, planes have not been the sites of so-called superspreading events, at least so far.
That’s not to say flying is perfectly safe — safety is relative and subjective. But as restrictions continue to change, the only way to move forward through this long pandemic is to start thinking in terms of risk-benefit ratios. Very little is without risk, but perhaps some risks — such as flying — are small enough to warrant taking.
Arnold Barnett, a professor of management science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been trying to quantify the odds of catching Covid-19 from flying. He’s factored in a bunch of variables, including the odds of being seated near someone in the infectious stage of the disease, and the odds that the protection of masks (now required on most flights) will fail. He’s accounted for the way air is constantly renewed in airplane cabins, which experts say makes it very unlikely you’ll contract the disease from people who aren’t in your immediate vicinity — your row, or, to a lesser extent, the person across the aisle, the people ahead of you or the people behind you.
What Barnett came up with was that we have about a 1/4300 chance of getting Covid-19 on a full 2-hour flight — that is, about 1 in 4300 passengers will pick up the virus, on average. The odds of getting the virus are about half that, 1/7700, if airlines leave the middle seat empty. He’s posted his results as a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint.
The odds of dying of a case contracted in flight, he found, are even lower — between 1 in 400,000 and 1 in 600,000 — depending on your age and other risk factors. To put that in perspective, those odds are comparable to the average risk of getting a fatal case in a typical two hours on the ground.
The numbers all sound low enough, though Barnett says they are still high compared to the 1 in 34 million odds your flight will end in a deadly crash. He told me he wouldn’t fly right now because his age, 72, puts him at higher risk than the average American, and he says you have to consider the risk of adding to the problem by getting the virus and unknowingly passing it on to others.
Other experts have been mixed on whether they, personally, would fly. The Boston Globe recently reported that of 15 epidemiologists and infectious disease experts surveyed, 13 said they would not fly at this time — however it wasn’t clear whether they had any reason to get on a plane.
University of Massachusetts biology professor Erin Bromage says he is flying every week, as he advises federal, state and district courts on how to reopen while minimizing risks. Whereas many experts are taking a zero-tolerance for risk approach, he’s trying to find a middle ground — and helping others do it in a rational way.
Drawing on a background in industrial mechanics and pilot training (an injury forced him to switch career paths into biology), Bromage says that the air exchange system in planes is better than in hospitals, with the air in the cabin being completely replaced 30 times every hour. He agrees with MIT’s Barnett, though, that it’s possible to transmit the disease to or from your close neighbors.
He and Barnett both suggested that customers should, if possible, choose an airline, such as Jet Blue, that promises to keep the middle seat open. That cuts way back on the odds of getting or giving the virus. JetBlue also promises that solo travelers won’t have a neighbor in a two-seat row.
Real-world data bodes well for flying, too. Australia has been using contact tracing to investigate Covid transmission on hundreds of flights, and has found that while infected people got on planes, nobody got infected on a plane. Worldwide, there have been a couple of individual transmissions possibly linked to flights, but no superspreading-type events.
Assuming we’ll be living with this disease for months to come, we will need ways to separate low-risk activities from high-risk ones. Keeping informed of relative risks can help us do that. By worrying less about the relatively safer part of a trip — the actual flight — we can pay more attention to the potentially riskier parts, such as crowds and tightly packed lines at the airport.
Of course, we’re all obligated to avoid adding to the spread of the disease, and this means taking precautions in the air, such as wearing a mask and staying home if sick, and keeping a distance from others at the airport.
What happens at your destination matters too. Traveling around and mingling with distant contacts can increase the risk of spreading the virus more than mingling with a comparable number of people closer to home. So people can help themselves and others by driving their own cars to the airport and renting cars wherever they arrive, rather than taking taxis or ride-shares.
In the old normal, Bromage would wrap up his advisory duties and have dinner with the people he’s working with. Now, he just goes back to his hotel room. “It’s quite lonely,” he says. Like so much this year, it’s a compromise.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, Science and other publications. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology.
View Opinions From Business And Policy Experts On BloombergQuint
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YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A ROLLER COASTER ON A CRUISE SHIP, AND SANTA CLAUS JUST RODE IT
TURKU, FINLAND, Dec. 15, 2020 – Santa Claus took a break from his pre-Christmas festivities to venture down to Finland and take a test run on BOLT, the first-ever roller coaster at sea aboard Carnival Cruise Line’s new Mardi Gras which is being delivered at the Meyer Turku shipyard later this week.
With enthusiastic shrieks of delight and a few hearty “ho-ho-ho’s” echoing throughout the shipyard, Santa zipped along the 800-foot-long track featuring a hairpin curve around the ship’s iconic funnel, all while achieving speeds of up to 40 miles an hour. The all-electric coaster can accommodate two riders – or one Santa Claus and his bag of toys, perhaps – in motorcycle-like vehicles that race 187 feet above the water line, providing incredible views to the sea below.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I think a rollercoaster could be on a cruise ship. It’s something we’ll be talking about at the North Pole for a long time!” St. Nick said.
Built in partnership with Germany-based Mauer Rides, BOLT is a first-of-its-kind open-air attraction that take cruise industry innovation to new heights when the ship enters service in 2021 from Port Canaveral, Fla.
Vance Gulliksen
media@carnival.com
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EU leaders agree to reduce emissions after all-night talks
by: SAMUEL PETREQUIN, Associated Press
The bust of French statesman Robert Schuman, one of the founders of the European Union, is seen while environmental activists launch a hot air balloon during a demonstration outside of an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020. European Union leaders meet for a year-end summit that will address anything from climate, sanctions against Turkey to budget and virus recovery plans. Brexit will be discussed on the sidelines. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders reached a hard-fought deal Friday to cut the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by the end of the decade compared with 1990 levels, avoiding a hugely embarrassing deadlock ahead of a U.N. climate meeting this weekend.
Following night-long discussions at their two-day summit in Brussels, the 27 member states approved the EU executive commission’s proposal to toughen the bloc’s intermediate target on the way to climate neutrality by mid-century, after a group of reluctant, coal-reliant countries finally agreed to support the improved goal.
“Europe is the leader in the fight against climate change,” tweeted EU Council president Charles Michel as daylight broke over the EU capital city. “We decided to cut our greenhouse gas emissions of at least 55% by 2030.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the 21-hour summit during which the climate debate was a constant worry, had much to show for it. “It was worth having a sleepless night,” she said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, hailed Friday’s deal.
“It’s a very welcome announcement, one that inscribes itself in the efforts the secretary-general has called on member states, the groups of member states, to take,” Dujarric said.
Five years after the Paris agreement, the EU wants to be a leader in the fight against global warming. Yet the bloc’s leaders were unable to agree on the new target the last time they met in October, mainly because of financial concerns by eastern nations seeking more clarity about how to fund and handle the green transition.
But the long-awaited deal on a massive long-term budget and coronavirus recovery clinched Thursday by EU leaders swung the momentum.
Large swaths of the record-high 1.82 trillion-euro package are set to pour into programs and investments designed to help the member states, regions and sectors particularly affected by the green transition, which are in need of a deep economic and social transformation. EU leaders have agreed that 30% of the package — some 550 billion euros — should be used to support the transition.
Still, agreeing on common language was not an easy task. Negotiations were punctuated throughout the night by intense discussions in the plenary session and multiple chats in smaller groups on the sidelines.
Another delay in revising the EU’s current 40% emission cuts objective for 2030 would have been particularly embarrassing before the virtual Climate Ambition Summit marking five years since the Paris deal, and leaders worked to the wire to seal a deal.
The event on Saturday will be co-hosted by the U.K. with the United Nations and France.
French President Emmanuel Macron praised “a major signal” that will enable EU leaders “to bring in our wake our big international partners, especially the United States and China.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week he wants the U.K. to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 68% from 1990 levels by 2030 — a more ambitious goal than the EU’s.
Poland, which last year didn’t commit to the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality goal, and other eastern countries, including the Czech Republic and Hungary, largely depend on coal for their energy needs. They considered it unfair that all member states should be submitted to the same ambition without considering their respective energy mixes.
To win their approval, member states agreed that the new target should be delivered collectively. According to the Belgian Prime minister’s office, “leaders agreed that the cuts will be first achieved in sectors and countries where there is still plenty of room for improvement.”
In addition, the European Commission will take into account specific national situations when drawing up the measures. A progress report will be submitted to the European Council in the spring.
The accord also left the door open to member states to use gas or nuclear power as they drop fossil fuels. EU leaders agreed last year that nuclear energy would be part of the bloc’s solution to making its economy carbon neutral, and they reiterated Friday that they would respect member states’ rights to decide on their energy mix and to choose the most appropriate technologies to reach the goal.
According to a French official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting, Poland also obtained guarantees that the EU’s Emissions Trading System — a cap-and-trade scheme for industries to buy carbon credits covering about 40% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions — would be revamped. Poland wants the reform of the system to redirect more revenues to the poorer EU countries.
World leaders agreed five years ago in Paris to keep the global warming increase to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) by the end of the century. Under the Paris accord, countries are required to submit updated climate targets by the end of this year.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups have said the improved EU target is insufficient to properly tackle climate change.
“To increase the chances of limiting global heating to 1.5°C and avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown, Greenpeace is calling for at least a 65% cut in EU emissions from polluting sectors by 2030,” the NGO said.
Climate Action Network Europe regretted that the revised “net” target includes carbon sinks like reforestation, meaning that emitting sectors will need to decarbonize less to reach the new goal.
“As the Commission indicates itself in its 2030 Climate Target Plan, if the EU is successful in implementing the Commission’s biodiversity, carbon removals could represent up to 5% of emissions. In this case the real emissions reduction target would be as low as 50%,” the NGO said.
EU leaders also encouraged the commission to propose a carbon tax at the bloc’s borders for countries that did do not regulate CO2 emissions as strictly as the EU does.
Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this story.
Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate
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Human remains found in abandoned Durham County building
Durham County News
DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) – An investigation is underway after human remains were found in an abandoned building southeast of Durham, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies were called to the 2500 block of Carpenter Pond Road around 11 a.m. in reference to the remains.
“This investigation is in the beginning stages and no further information is available at this time,” the sheriff’s office said in a release.
If you know anything about this incident please contact the Sheriff’s Office at 919-560-0880
More Durham County News Stories
DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) - Mayors across the country are calling on President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to pass a stimulus package that includes recurring direct cash payments amid the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.
Durham Mayor Steve Schewel is one of 33 mayors across the country in support of guaranteed income.
Man injured in shooting in Durham
DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) - A man was injured in a shooting Thursday night in Durham, police said.
The shooting was reported along the 1400 block of Humphrey Street, Durham police said at 8:21 p.m.
Former NC Central star QB passing on his knowledge to the youth
by Todd Gibson / Jan 13, 2021
DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) -- Former North Carolina Central quarterback Malcolm Bell puts 11-year-old Hudson Pressley through his paces.
A sixth-grader at St. David's School in Raleigh, Pressley aspires to be what Bell was. The former Eagles star knows what it takes to get there.
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Net income for U.S. P&C industry for first nine months of 2016 down 26.8% compared to 9M 2015: A.M. Best
November 28, 2016 by Canadian Underwriter
The property and casualty industry in the United States reported a US$2.3 billion net underwriting loss in the first nine months of 2016 and a 26.8% decline in net income compared with the same period in 2015, according to preliminary financial results from ratings firm A.M. Best Company.
The Oldwick, N.J.-based company outlined the financial review in a new Best’s Special Report titled A.M. Best First Look – 3Qtr 2016 U.S. Property/Casualty Financial Results and released on Monday. The data was derived from companies’ statutory statements that were received as of Nov. 16, representing an estimated 96% of the total P&C industry’s net premiums written, A.M. Best said in a press release.
The ratings firm reported that the nine-month underwriting loss is the industry’s first in four years. As well, the industry’s reported combined ratio deteriorated 2.7 points from the prior-year period to 99.7, “marking the worst nine month period-to-period comparison in the last four years,” the release noted.
Despite the nine-month net income decline to US$32.1 billion from US$43.9 billion in the previous year, policyholders’ surplus reached a record US$676.6 billion at the end of September 2016, driven by modest unrealized capital gains, US$2.7 billion of contributed capital, reduced stockholder dividends and a considerable reduction in other surplus losses. Growth in net premiums written also continued in 2016 but, at 2.8%, was lower than the 4.5% and 3.3% increases reported in the first nine months of 2014 and 2015, respectively.
On Sept. 16, A.M. Best reported that the U.S. P&C industry posted a US$2.3 billion underwriting loss for the first six months of the year and a 3.5% decline year-over-year in net investment income. The impact of catastrophes, lower favourable loss reserve development and challenging market conditions continued to pressure insurers, the ratings firm said in a report in September.
Among the highlights of the 6M report:
The industry’s net income fell 29%, to US$21.5 billion through June 30, 2016, from US$30.2 billion last year;
The industry’s combined ratio through first-half 2016 deteriorated to 100% from 97.8% for the same period in 2015;
Realized capital gains declined 43.3% from their level for the first two quarters of 2015, to US$4.6 billion from US$8.1 billion;
Pre-tax operating income fell 22.2% for the six-month period to US$20.7 billion. Pre-tax return on revenue of 8.2% marked a sharp drop from 10.9% through the first half of 2015, and represented the lowest level of return on revenue at this point in a year since 9.3% in 2012; and
The industry’s direct premiums written (DPW) grew 3.8% from its prior-year level through June 30, 2016. Among the major lines of insurance, auto physical damage and private passenger auto liability saw the largest increases in DPW year-over-year, of 7.6% and 6.4%, respectively.
U.S. P&C insurance industry posts underwriting loss of US$2.3 billion in first half of 2016: A.M. Best
U.S. P&C insurers report US$4.7 billion net underwriting loss in 2016: Verisk Analytics
Higher catastrophe losses, lower investment income fuel reduced growth in underwriting gain for U.S. p&c insurance
Personal auto premiums for Q3 up 5% for Intact, personal property premiums up by 8%
A.M. Best Company
A.M. Best First Look - 3Qtr 2016 U.S. Property/Casualty Financial Results
Best's Special Report
combined ratio
direct premiums written
net premiums written
realized capital gains
underwriting loss
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Lavender Trails: Unexpected beauty hidden in Orrville
Emily Morgan
Wooster Daily Record
ORRVILLE A circular cement driveway leads to sided warehouses, nondescript commercial buildings and asphalt parking lots. An active railway stretches into the middle of a sprawling industrial park.
A giant monarch butterfly sculpture meets your eye as you round the second curve in the road. Behind it rows and rows of purple and white small budded flowers reach for the sky.
The unexpected sight nearly grabs you and pulls you into a gravel parking lot where, if the breeze is right, a light perfume scent hints that something relaxing awaits.
Suddenly, you’re in a lavender field where soft petals top colorful, sweet plants. The calming scent lightly adrift in the air isn’t fully experienced until you rub the flowers between your hands and breath in.
The blooming French and English lavender flowers on Collins Boulevard stand in stark contrast to their surroundings in the Orrville Industrial Park on the city’s north end.
Amy and Jim Duxbury, owners of Lavender Trails, began their unique adventure in 2018. A conversation with The Will Burt Company during its 100th anniversary led Jim Duxbury to lease a plot of land next to the company’s facility that previously was the dumping ground for concrete and rebar. Remnants of the previous tenant are still visible.
The Duxburys made the deliberate decision to plant their lavender flowers on a brownfield, a former industrial or commercial site where future use is affected by real or perceived environmental contamination. They cleared the land the first year, planted the lavender in 2019, and opened the fields to the public for the first time on July 1.
“It’s a nice juxtaposition. In the middle of the industry, you can find spots of beauty,” Amy Duxbury said.
The couple, both teachers at Orrville High School, originally had planned to open the fields for a two-day festival with vendors and food trucks. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic made it too risky to hold such a large gathering.
Appointments can be scheduled between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day through the end of the month or until the lavender runs out. Groups of 10 or fewer pay a flat fee of $20, which includes a bindle to store the lavender. Additional bindles can be purchased for $7 or $10.
Customers can also purchase pre-cut lavender bundles at the front table. Amy Duxbury also makes and sells small lavender wreaths and lavender-filled sachets. Lavender can be used to make potpourri, inside oil lamps, sewn into stuffed animals or pillowcases, or simply to make the house or car smell better.
Allure of lavender
Lavender Trails sits on four and a half acres. Eight different species of lavender — purple, white and pink shades — fill two acres. The majority of the flowers are French lavender but Amy Duxbury insisted on planting the light pink shade of English lavender. She also made a small garden featuring her daylilies.
“It helps me feel grounded,” she said of coming to the fields. “There’s something about coming out here, even in the middle of a pandemic … coming out here and seeing everything growing. It helps you figure out your place in the big scheme of things.”
The property also features a garden trail, a large butterfly statue for pictures, and a pollinator garden that attracts a variety of butterflies, moths, bees, dragonflies and praying mantis. Shane Family Honey in Dalton installed several bee colonies on-site and the Duxburys hope to sell lavender honey at the fields next summer.
The Duxburys hope to support local organizations through a portion of their admission fees. The couple had planned to work with area school districts but the uncertainty of the pandemic made it difficult to collaborate with the schools this year.
Instead, they reached out to The Up Side of Downs of Northeast Ohio, which will receive $5 from each admission fee. The nonprofit organization provides support, education, and advocacy for people with Down syndrome, their families and communities.
Donna Drouhard, 71, of Rootstown, learned about Lavender Trails through the organization and was an original member of the group. She brought her youngest daughter Clarissa, 32, who has Down syndrome, and her son, Matias, 37, along with his daughter Victoria, 10.
“I used to have lavender (sachets) in my drawers,” Donna Drouhard said.
The family jaunt took them to other local businesses — a pottery shop in Ravenna and the Smucker’s store in Orrville. It was Donna’s second visit to a lavender farm. She previously had visited DayBreak Lavender Farm in Streetsboro.
Loretta Kunkle, 62, of Doylestown, learned about Lavender Trails from a friend who had brought her daughter who is blind. It provided a wonderful experience for the young girl to “see” the fields through smell and touch. Kunkle loved the story behind the fields.
“Getting back and connecting is a big part of it,” Amy Duxbury said. “People out here are sitting, laughing, and relaxing. It’s a way to enjoy being together.”
Lavender Trails is located at 356 Collins Blvd., off of state Route 57.
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Teachers rally for sales tax increase to fund schools
Hundreds of Lee County School District employees gathered at the education center on Saturday to send a message to legislators that “enough is enough.”
Almost all of the demonstrators were members of the school district’s employee unions and wore matching blue shirts proclaiming “Make Our Schools A Priority.”
Spearheaded by the Florida Education Association, the campaign is asking for a one cent sales tax increase and an overhaul of what the association considers an antiquated tax exemption system.
The FEA estimates that over the next three years a one cent sales tax increase would generate $10.5 billion.
Mark Castellano, president of the FEA’s Island Coast Service Unit, was visibly aggravated at Saturday’s rally.
“Our legislators have continually talked the talk but have miserably failed to walk the walk,” he said. “The point of us being here today is to say to Governor Crist and the Florida Legislature it is time for them to get it that the system is broken.”
According to Castellano, Amendment 1 only succeeded in taking money from education and didn’t improve Florida’s tax code. He added that public education has experienced $2 billion worth of cuts since 2007 including $120 million in Lee County.
“Lee County already leads the state in unemployment and (is) leading the nation in foreclosures,” he said.
Nicole Savarese, a teacher at San Carlos Elementary, teaches children diagnosed with Autism and said she is concerned about the district cutting support personnel.
“They are threatening to cut support staff. We need them, they don’t fill glue or make copies, they co-teach with us,” she said. “If they cut those people it will be more like crowd management than instruction.”
In order to deal with an estimated $70 million worth of cuts in 2010 the district could eliminate many “above-the-formula” programs including art and music.
An art teacher at San Carlos Elementary, Bonnie Rogers, explained that art allows children to express themselves. She built a model of a robot and said if the arts are eliminated than the children will be like the mindless robot she held in her hand – spending all of the school day studying for standardized tests.
“That’s the age when kids discover their gifts and talents,” Rogers said. “They will be studying for the test all of the time and not exercising their creativity.”
Margaret Trunk and Karen Flanders, art teachers at Edison Park Elementary, said an entire generation of children could be deprived of art education if these cuts reach the classroom.
“There will be a whole generation of kids growing up without an adequate, well-rounded education,” Trunk said.
Superintendent James Browder and members of the school board addressed the crowd during the rally on Saturday morning.
Board Member Steven Teuber stressed that the legislature needs to relax statewide standards of the Class Size Amendment to free up money for the district. He said the state should allow districts to meet the requirements on a school basis and not through counting each classroom.
“We need to tell the legislators to stop the politics,” said Teuber. “We need parents, citizens and teachers to tell our politicians enough is enough.”
Last week 3,200 school district employees from St. Lucie County held a similar rally, but the Lee County rally was in the hundreds. On Feb. 28 district employees will take buses to Orlando for a larger rally at UCFArena.
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Why This Mexican Village Celebrates Juneteenth: Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southe
The morning before Juneteenth, Corina Harrington and her sister Miriam Torralba left San Antonio shortly after sunrise and headed south to Mexico, retracing a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery in the United States and fled to freedom south of the border.
The sisters arrived around midday at their father’s house in the ranching village of Nacimiento de los Negros in Coahuila, about three hours south of Eagle Pass. As afternoon drifted toward evening, the blue silhouettes of the Sierra Madres were all but obscured by clouds, as siblings, cousins, extended family members, and childhood friends kept arriving in twos, threes, or fours. They strolled over to the cool and swift Río Sabinas to swim in water as clear as any Hill Country stream. They politely tasted the dried and shredded meat of a mountain lion that one of their cousins shot on their dad’s nearby goat ranch, and they laughed and reminisced and readied for one of the most important days of the year in a village whose name literally means “Birth of the Blacks.”
“We never knew it was called Juneteenth,” Harrington, 45, said of the holiday commemorating the emancipation of Texas slaves in 1865. In Nacimiento, where Harrington was born and raised until she was seven and where she has returned nearly every summer since, the June 19 festival and reunion is known as el Día de los Negros, the Day of the Blacks.
Río Sabinas. Photograph by Wes Ferguson
Although few black people remain in northern Mexico, the region was once home to thousands who escaped slavery in the United States. Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829, an underlying factor in Texas’s declaration of independence seven years later. In 1836, there were an estimated 5,000 slaves in Texas, a number that ballooned by 1860 to 182,500—more than 30 percent of the state’s population.
Freedom lay just across the Rio Grande. Maria Esther Hammack, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, estimates that as many as 10,000 slaves followed a clandestine Southern Underground Railroad to Mexico. Most of them fled from Texas, but she’s found evidence of slaves escaping to Mexico from as far away as North Carolina.
The most famous refugee to escape Texas was a slave named Joe. Owned by William Barrett Travis, Joe was one of the only people spared following the battle of the Alamo. Hammack has also written about a Mexican man who was married to a black slave near Victoria. In 1848, they stole two horses and rode toward Mexico, but were intercepted near the Lavaca River by pursuers who hanged the husband and returned the widow to bondage.
The marker at the turnoff for Nacimiento.
Photograph by Wes Ferguson
Slave hunters roamed the southern border for runaways. In 1855, Texas Ranger James Callahan even led a 110-man raid across the Rio Grande to return escaped slaves living in Mexico. Turned back by the Mexican army, his men sacked and burned Piedras Negras before they fled back across the river. “The Rangers have this dark history,” Hammack said. “They were for-hire slave catchers.”
Harrington’s ancestors who settled Nacimiento were a band of people called the Negros Mascogos, in Spanish, or Black Seminoles in English. The group grew from runaway slaves who were given asylum in Spanish Florida and lived among the Seminoles until they were forcibly removed to Oklahoma. With few prospects in Oklahoma and the ever-present risk of being kidnapped by slave hunters and sold into bondage, they turned to Mexico.
Following the Civil War, several of Nacimiento’s Mascogos came back to the United States with their families in 1870 to serve as Indian scouts in the Army, first at Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass and eventually at Fort Clark in Brackettville. In 1876, though, the military ordered them to leave. Most returned to Nacimiento, but some remained in Brackettville, where Corralba’s grandfathers were born. Both men returned to Nacimiento and married Mexican women.
When Corralba’s mother was a child, she would sometimes visit the larger nearby town of Muzquiz, where she remembers other children whispering in Spanish, “Look, the blacks!” But as the Mascogos continue to marry into other local families or to leave for better opportunities in Texas, they are losing some of the features that helped them stand apart. “You see kids walking the streets, and they just look Mexican,” Harrington said.
A young girl running through the Juneteenth festivities in Nacimiento in her polka-dotted pioneer dress. Photograph by Wes Ferguson
On the morning of Juneteenth, Nacimiento’s festivities began with a trail ride through fields and thorny brushland still lush from recent rain. Afterward several hundred Mascogo descendants gathered under shade trees to barbecue and boil ears of corn over wood fires. The tribe’s traditional dishes—like soske, a corn-based drink, and a sweet potato bread called tetapún—were apparently saved for another day. Children recited songs passed down from their Mascogo ancestors, who sang in an English dialect that survives only in the lyrics of slave-era spirituals. Several women wore the long, polka-dotted pioneer dresses they believe to be traditional (disputed by others, who favor Seminole patterns). After perhaps another swim in the cool and clear Río Sabinas, the day would end with a village-wide “Dance of the Blacks.”
Once the Juneteenth festivities were over, a few hundred Mascogos would continue to wake up each morning in the village of Nacimiento. Most of the others would be gone again to Texas.
[https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/mexican-village-juneteenth-celebration/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Web+Social&utm_content=juneteenth&fbclid=IwAR2Xcaz9KjLUIZqXiJ5lvoYVvTZdqTRUJ6LFSzDyiBqzvv4x291mn2unPGw]
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My work in promoting and nurturing leadership roles for women reached a milestone this week with the publishing of a new book “Women Leading”.
I co-authored this book with Professor Amanda Sinclair, a friend and colleague.
Amanda was a Professor at Melbourne Business School for over 25 years. Her speciality was Diversity and Change. We met in 2001 when a mutual friend suggested Amanda would like to conduct research with me in my role as police commissioner. This research would require that Amanda would become a”fly on the wall” by sitting in on all my corporate meetings for several months. Naturally, in some quarters this was seen as very radical. However, such was Amanda's discretion and professionalism, she was soon accepted. We have been friends ever since since and have taught together presenting workshops for women.
We wrote this book for a range of reasons. Firstly, we wanted to celebrate the leadership of women over the centuries, we wanted to bring attention to the ingenious ways that women have found ways to lead, given their lack of access to formal positional authority.
We wanted to encourage women to continue to lead and claim the leadership roles and positions that they are rightly skilled, capable of and deserve to hold.
We wanted to share experience, insights and research we have gleaned from thousands of women and men on how to deal with change, difficult conversations, a crisis, how to influence and persuade, and to effectively manage people.
We wanted women to become comfortable with power – how to find it, use it and own it. To recognise that in a prominent leadership position their bodies will be judged, generally harshly. That they understand what factors and influences make them who they are, the stages and transitions of life and how to deal with them.
Finally, we wanted women to understand the risks in leadership and how to manage them, how to be resilient and how to flourish in their leadership work.
« Back to blog index
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The past, present and future of agricultural research
Researchers join government officials and other stakeholders to discuss collaborative research and development activities in Bangladesh.
By AFM Nazmul Alam
On November 13, 2020, researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI) held a virtual meeting to update Bangladesh’s Minister for Agriculture Md Abdur Razzaque on their organizations’ ongoing research activities regarding the development of sustainable, cereal-based farming systems.
The purpose of this event was to inform influential stakeholders of the implications of the impending transition to One CGIAR for collaborative research activities in Bangladesh and how CIMMYT will continue its support to the its partners in the country, including the government and other CGIAR centers. The event was chaired by CIMMYT’s Director General Martin Kropff, who called-in from CIMMYT’s headquarters in Mexico, and Razzaque, who attended the event as a special guest. Around 21 participants from various government offices including the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) were in attendance.
Speaking at the event, Razzaque thanked CIMMYT for its support in increasing maize and wheat production in Bangladesh — as the main source of germplasm for these two crops — which has been crucial for assuring food and income security and helping the country reach towards the Sustainable Development Goals. He expressed his gratitude for CIMMYT’s help in mitigating the threats posed by pests and diseases, and supporting climate information services which have enabled farmers to avoid crop losses in mung bean, and he requested that CIMMYT to intensify its research on cropping systems, heat- and disease-tolerant wheat varieties, and the introduction of technologies and farming practices to sustainably increase production and reduce wheat imports.
Martin Kropff gives an overview of CIMMYT research in Bangladesh during a virtual meeting with stakeholders. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Timothy J. Krupnik, CIMMYT’s country representative for Bangladesh, guided participants through the history of CIMMYT’s engagement in Bangladesh from the 1960s to the present and outlined the organization’s plan for future collaboration with the government. In addition developing wheat blast-resistant varieties, exchanging germplasm and seed multiplication programs for disease-resistant varieties, Krupnik described collaborative efforts to fight back against fall armyworm, research in systems agronomy to boost crop intensity and the use of advanced simulation models and remote sensing to assist in increasing production while reducing farm drudgery, expensive inputs, water and fuel use, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
He also highlighted efforts to create a skilled work force, pointing to CIMMYT’s collaboration with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) on appropriate agricultural mechanization and USAID-supported work with over 50 machinery manufacturers across the country.
“This historical legacy, alongside world-class scientists and committed staff, germplasm collection, global impact in farmer’s fields, next generation research and global network of partners have made CIMMYT unique,” explained Kropff during his closing remarks, which focused on the organization’s research and collaboration on climate-smart and conservation agriculture, high-yielding, stress- and disease-tolerant maize and wheat variety development, value chain enhancement, market development, precision agronomy and farm mechanization in Bangladesh.
He expressed his gratitude towards the Government of Bangladesh for supporting CIMMYT as an international public organization in the country, thus enabling it to continue delivering impact, and for recognizing the benefits of the transition to a more integrated network of international research centers through One CGIAR, under which CIMMYT and other centers will strengthen their support to the government to help Bangladesh achieve zero hunger.
Timothy J. Krupnik
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC)
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI)
Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI)
Asia / Bangladesh
One CGIAR, partnership, research
News 3 Sep 2019
CIMMYT and Indonesia’s agricultural research agency renew collaboration
The Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (IAARD) signed a memorandum of understanding with CIMMYT to reaffirm their research partnership for maize and wheat improvement.
Features 3 Dec 2019
Agricultural solutions to tackle humanity’s climate crisis
Science offers opportunity to curb greenhouse gas emissions related to agriculture and meet climate goals.
Critical reflections on COVID-19
FAO-led assessment details the pandemic’s impact on agri-food systems in Bangladesh and outlines possible recovery strategies.
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Dan Sutherland
Brandon Wales
Steven Harris
Emily Early
Matt Hartman
Scott Breor
Billy Bob Brown, Jr.
Bob Kolasky
Alaina Clark
Rick Driggers
Nicole Windham
Dallas Brown
Samuel Vazquez
David Epperson
Kerry Stewart
James Burd
Brian Gattoni
Joseph Croce
Patrice Ward
Keith Holtermann
Daniel Sutherland is the Chief Counsel for CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA is the nation’s risk advisor, working with partners to defend against today’s threats and collaborating to build more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future.
Mr. Sutherland’s office negotiates complex technology agreements, provides daily operational support to the largest cyber operations center in the civilian government, advocates the agency’s positions in litigation, drafts and negotiates legislation, and responds to audits and investigations. Mr. Sutherland has been engaged in many major cyber incidents of the past several years, including the OPM data breach, threats to the nation’s election infrastructure, and risks posed by the Kaspersky Lab and the resulting litigation (909 F.3d 463 (2018)). His office was integrally involved in the drafting and negotiation of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018, the National Cybersecurity Protection Act of 2014, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. In 2018, Mr. Sutherland stood up the Department’s Countering Foreign Interference Task Force, seeking to respond to nation-states that use social and traditional media to sow discord among the American public. He is active in bar association activities focused on building the legal profession’s proficiency in cybersecurity.
Mr. Sutherland’s position builds on a career focused on issues at the intersection of civil liberties and national security. In 2003, Mr. Sutherland was appointed by President Bush to serve as the first Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, where he built a civil liberties office and advised Secretaries Ridge and Chertoff on a range of security issues. His speech on the need for the government to engage with American Arab and Muslim communities appeared in the publication Vital Speeches of the Day. Mr. Sutherland has also served in the Senior National Intelligence Service where he coordinated the government’s efforts to prevent violent extremism; Wired referred to him as “one of the government’s point people on stemming the appeal of al-Qaida.”
In 2003, Mr. Sutherland was appointed as the first Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, where he built a civil liberties office and advised Secretaries Ridge and Chertoff on a range of security issues. Mr. Sutherland subsequently served in the Senior National Intelligence Service at the National Counterterrorism Center.
Mr. Sutherland started his federal career as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, where for 14 years he litigated cases in courts across the country. He is a graduate of the University of Louisville and University of Virginia School of Law.
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City of Clarksville offices to close Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Topic: Vinny Rottino
Nashville Sounds offense stalls in 4-1 loss to New Orleans Zephyrs
Alden Carrithers Extends His Team-Best Hitting Streak To 13 Games
Nashville, TN – Nashville’s offense was halted and the Sounds ran into a strong pitching performance on Monday night, as New Orleans grabbed a 4-1 win at First Tennessee Park.
New Orleans (1st, 3.00) and Nashville (4th, 3.85) both entered the game among league-leaders in team pitching, and the two staffs proved their dominance. Brad Mills notched his team-leading third straight quality start, but still suffered his fifth loss of the year. He tossed 7.0 innings with two runs on six hits. The left-hander induced three ground ball double plays, but also issued four walks.
Nashville Sounds get 6-2 win over New Orleans Zephyrs at First Tennessee Park
Right-Hander Kendall Graveman Allows Two Unearned Runs Over 7.0 Innings
Nashville, TN – Kendall Graveman delivered a stellar start for Nashville and the Sounds snapped their four-game losing skid with a 6-2 win over New Orleans at First Tennessee Park on Sunday.
The Sounds’ offense notched seven hits on the afternoon and helped the squad improve to 14-23 on the year. Matt Carson led the way by going 2-for-4 with three RBIs and Alden Carrithers pushed his hitting streak to 12 games. The support backed Graveman, who notched his second win of the season.
Nashville Sounds fall 7-5 in 18 innings to New Orleans Zephyrs
Play Longest Game Since 2006
Nashville, TN – It took five hours, 26 minutes, 18 innings and an infielder pitching for the New Orleans Zephyrs to finally edge the Nashville Sounds on Saturday night at First Tennessee Park.
The night marked the longest game Nashville has been a part of since losing a 24-inning affair, 5-4 with the Zephyrs at Greer Stadium on May 5th, 2006.
The Sounds fell behind early when former Sound Vinny Rottino took Sounds starter Barry Zito deep to give the Zephyrs a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning.
Sounds Sweep Zephyrs With 3-2 Win
Nashville, TN – The Nashville Sounds swept the New Orleans Zephyrs with a 3-2 victory on Tuesday evening at Greer Stadium in the finale of a four-game set. The win was Nashville’s fifth straight, which matches the club’s longest of the season from June 2nd-6th.
The sweep was Nashville’s first of the season and last since the Sounds swept New Orleans from April 24th-27th, 2010 at Zephyr Field.
The victory gave the Sounds a 12-4 season series win over the Zephyrs, which is also the best mark against an opponent since Nashville went 12-4 against the Round Rock Express (AAA-Astros) in 2007.
Nashville Sounds Baseball
Sounds Defeat Zephyrs Again, 8-2
De La Cruz Works Team-Leading 9th Quality Start To Pace Nashville
Nashville, TN – The Nashville Sounds earned their fourth straight win on Monday evening, defeating New Orleans by an 8-2 margin at Greer Stadium.
It marked the Sounds’ third win in three games against the Zephyrs this series. Nashville (36-42) has won 11 of its 15 meetings with New Orleans in 2011.
Right-hander Frankie De La Cruz (3-4) picked up the win as he turned in his team-leading ninth quality start of the year for the Sounds. He held the Z’s to two runs (one earned) while scattering seven hits over six innings. It was his third straight winning decision after opening the year with four consecutive losses.
Sounds Open Road Trip With 6-1 Victory In New Orleans
Metairie, LA – The Nashville Sounds opened their road trip with a 6-1 victory over the New Orleans Zephyrs on Saturday evening at Zephyr Field.
The win was the third in a row for Nashville (24-31), which continued its recent dominance in New Orleans. The Sounds have won 15 of their last 21 games played at Zephyr Field.
Left-hander Sam Narron (4-2) picked up his team-leading fourth victory by tossing 5 2/3 innings of scoreless, four-hit ball for the Sounds. With the effort, the lanky southpaw lowered his team-leading ERA to 3.13 through 11 outings. Narron walked three batters and struck out five in his 99-pitch effort and helped his own cause with a 2-for-3 night at the plate.
Sounds Win 8-7 In New Orleans With Go-Ahead Pinch-Hit Homer By Mike Rivera
Metairie, LA – With two outs in the top of the eighth inning, pinch-hitter Mike Rivera belted a go-ahead two-run homer over the left field wall to give the Nashville Sounds an 8-7 win over the New Orleans Zephyrs on Thursday night at Zephyr Field.
The win snapped a three-game losing streak for Nashville (7-8), and marked the first come-from-behind win this season. Nashville scored the first six runs of the game, but allowed seven unanswered by the Zephyrs before Rivera’s late homer.
Nashville Sounds.
Sounds Drop Series Opener To Zephyrs, 6-5
Metairie, LA – The Nashville Sound lost to the New Orleans Zephyrs, 6-5, on Tuesday night at Zephyrs Field in the opener of a four game set. With the loss, Nashville (6-7) has now dropped five of its last six games.
The Zephyrs took a quick 3-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning. The Zephyrs recorded three straight two-out singles, highlighted by a Josh Kroeger base hit to left field and Brandon Boggs fielding error that allowed all three runs to score.
Sounds lose to Zephyrs
Zephyrs Edge Sounds In 14 Innings To Avoid Sweep
Nashville, TN – New Orleans catcher Brad Davis drew a bases-loaded walk from Sounds reliever Zack Segovia in the top of the fourteenth inning to give the visiting Zephyrs a 4-3 victory over Nashville on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon at Greer Stadium.
With the win, New Orleans avoided a season-opening sweep by the Sounds (3-1).
Sounds Close Out Season With 10-2 Loss
Katin Homers, Koshansky Extends Hit Streak To 18 For Nashville In Losing Effort
Metairie, LA – The Nashville Sounds wrapped up their 2010 slate on the short end of a 10-2 loss to the New Orleans Zephyrs in a Labor Day finale on Monday afternoon at Zephyr Field.
With the defeat, Nashville (77-67) split the four-game series with New Orleans but finished the year with an 11-5 victory in the season series against the Z’s.
Brendan Katin (2-for-3) drove in both Sounds runs on the afternoon and finished the year with 76 RBIs, second-most on the club.
First baseman Joe Koshansky went 1-for-4 on the day for Nashville to close out the year with an 18-game hitting streak, tied for the 6th-longest streak by a Pacific Coast League player all season and the best effort by a Sounds batter since Vinny Rottino hit in 24 straight in 2008.
Katin got the scoring started as he continued his late-season surge at the plate with a two-out solo homer to left in the top of the first inning to give the Sounds a 1-0 lead. «Read the rest of this article»
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Emily Adams Bode
Designer, Bode
The first female designer to show at NYFW Men’s, her use of thrifted materials evokes a unique nostalgia that has caught the industry’s eye and scored her a spot at Paris Fashion Week.
Emily Adams Bode is a menswear designer behind her eponymous brand Bode. First launched in 2016, Bode began as a couture studio producing pieces one by one in a way that resembled an artist’s output, but in 2018 Bode debuted became the first female designer to show at New York Men’s Week with a presentation. In June 2019, she staged her first runway show at Paris Fashion Week Men’s. Bode is lauded for her ingenious use of thrifted materials and rejigging of the American fashion vernacular.
Bode was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and, after studying in Switzerland, she moved to New York and graduated from Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College with a BA/BFA dual degree in menswear design and philosophy.
Her collections find their home in a concept or a muse that goes against notions of mass production and market briefs, and Bode often expresses a sentimentality for the past through the study of personal narratives and historical techniques. Each piece of clothing is tailor-made in New York and New Delhi, and the brand is stocked at over 30 retailers including Moda Operandi , Browns, MatchesFashion and Bergdorf Goodman.
In 2018, Bode was awarded runner-up in the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and the following year won the Emerging Designer of the Year title. Forbes also added her to their “30 Under 30” list in the Art & Style category.
Designer, Neil Barrett
Benjamin Alexander Huseby & Serhat Isik
Designers, GmbH
Hiroki Nakamura
Designer, Visvim
Founder, Ralph Lauren
instagram.com/bode
instagram.com/bodepersonal
bodenewyork.com
How To Engineer a Media Moment
Thebe Magugu First LVMH Prize Recipient From Africa
The CFDA Enters Its Tom Ford Era at 2019 Awards
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For Business Brokers
Thousands of buyers and sellers each month.
Unlimited free business-for-sale listings.
Huge discounts on premium listings.
Cupertino Business Brokers
Dr. Tom Necela
The Strategic Chiropractor LLC
The Strategic Chiropractor is a nationwide chiropractic practice broker that helps chiropractors to sell their practice, buy a business or transition.
Texas, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, & Wyoming
34 $0
Listings Total
Gary E Lotzer
NEXUS Business Brokerage
Specializing in representing buyers and sellers of lower mid-market US businesses, including Mergers, Acquisitions, Divestitures and associated Due Diligence.
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, & Utah
1 $250K
Daniel Wood
Drake Woodschoo
Investment Banking Consulting Firm. Mergers/Acquisitions
District of Columbia, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, & Wyoming
3 $13.8M
MEL LISITEN
LISITEN ASSOCIATES
LISITEN ASSOCIATES BUSINESS BROKERS has been in Business since 1982 SELLING PRIVATELY HELD COMPANIES AND BUSINESSES. RECENTLY, "USA TODAY" NAMED LISITEN ASSOCIATES THE NUMBER ONE BUSINESS BROKER IN NORTH AMERICA! MEL LISITEN has been in THE LICENSING BUSINESS for over 40 YEARS. LISITEN ASSOCIATES is the AWARD WINNING BUSINESS BROKERAGE EIGHT...
New York, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, & Vermont
161 $1.4B
David Fretty
David Michaels Brokerage
We Help Get Your Business SOLD!
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, & Wyoming
222 $86.3M
Step By Step Franchise Consulting, LLC
Helping our Clients through the entire buying process including all their Funding needs!! We also specialize in finding our clients Franchise/Business Opportunities that are E-2 Visa and EB-5 Visa Approved/Friendly for an Investment Green Card. Franchise Resales available in your area or through out the U.S. and Canada.
Georgia, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, & Wyoming
Steven D. Zimmerman, CBI, M&AMI, CBB, FIBBA
Restaurant Realty Company
Steven has personally sold over 1000 restaurants, bars and clubs, many commercial buildings and completed over 3000 restaurant, bar and club valuations since 1996. His real estate experience also includes sales, acquisitions, management and ownership of numerous properties throughout California including restaurants, hotels, apartment buildings...
Sunbelt of Arlington
SUNBELT | Middle Market & Powersports Listings | Mergers & Acquisitions. While specializing in the Powersports Industry vertical we are also experts in managing middle-market transactions across all industries including distribution, manufacturing, technology, finance, and other services. www.powersportslistings.com | www.sunbeltmm.com
19 $40.2M
Routes For Sale
Routes For Sale is an exclusive source for Buying or Selling a route. We are a discount broker that targets a niche market and... Route Sales only! We specialize in retail routes such as Arnold's Bread, Snyders, Wise Chips, FedEx, Boars Head, Martin's Bread, Voortman Cookies, Pepperidge Farm Cookies, Pepperidge Farm Bread, Snapple, Mission's,...
Sunbelt of Bakersfield
Welcome, Sunbelt Business Advisors & Brokers of Kern County is dedicated to providing the best possible venue for bringing buyers and sellers of businesses together. Our seasoned brokers provide professional and confidential brokerage services to buyers and sellers of businesses in Bakersfield and surrounding communities. In addition, Sunbelt...
Practice Sales & Practice Financing End-To-End Practice Transition Consultants Helping Healthcare Professionals Establish & Reinforce Practice Investments For Over 30 Years Our Practice Sales division offers nationwide practice listings. All practices for sale have been valuated and competitively priced. If you can’t find the practice you are...
California, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, & Wyoming
Sunbelt of Beverly Hills
Description not provided
Sunbelt of Sacramento
Prudens Business Advisors is an Elite Business Brokerage firm specializing in selling and acquisitions of businesses in Los Angeles, Orange County, and all other Southern California Locations. At Prudens Business Advisors, our team is comprised of the most professional and dedicated Business Advisors with many years of practical business...
Sunbelt of San Francisco #1
7 $7.6M
Roy Moss
Empire Business Solutions
Empire Business Solutions is a professional organization dedicated to the needs of our customers. As experienced M&A professionals, we completely understand the life span of a business. From start up through acquisition, merger or to presenting your business for sale, we have established our principles for success; *Strict confidentiality with...
10 $7M
Sunbelt of Riverside County (Corona)
14 $6.9M
Sunbelt of San Jose
Sunbelt of San Diego Coast
Sunbelt Business Brokers of San Diego has a team of professionals with over 50 years of business experience. Hal Janke, Pres., CBI, 33 years, (Certified and Licensed), What this means to you as a buyer or seller, is total peace of mind with many years of experience in all facets of our business industry. Here's a few of the hundreds of...
California, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, & Wisconsin
John J Moser
Sunbelt Business Brokers of Los Angeles & Whittier
Sunbelt Business Brokers of Los Angeles & Whittier is part of the Sunbelt Network, the World’s largest business brokerage operation. As part of a successful franchise company with over 30 years of experience in the business brokerage industry, Sunbelt has the expertise to guide you through the business buying and selling process. WHY MORE...
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A Very Strange Night Launching Anthony Scaramucci’s New Media Project
The Scaramucci Post is an advertising-supported, politically centrist news outlet distributed natively on social media platforms. "I see myself as a TV host," the Mooch said.
By Steven Perlberg
Steven Perlberg BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 3, 2017, at 9:14 a.m. ET
Steven Perlberg / BuzzFeed News
On Monday night, Anthony Scaramucci invited friends, publicists, and reporters to the basement of the Hunt & Fish Club, his swanky New York restaurant, to announce the launch of a cryptic new media venture, the Scaramucci Post.
The New York Times, The Guardian, The Hill, McClatchy, BuzzFeed News, and others wanted answers. What is the Scaramucci Post? Why does it tweet bizarre Twitter polls and endless emojis? After a day of horrific news coming out of Las Vegas, why do we care?
“I am looking you dead in the face and saying I don't know,” Scaramucci told reporters, when asked about what the new media project will be.
“I just want to make sure I’m describing this right as I use words,” one reporter in the scrum said. “If I describe it as a social media news platform—”
“Say Scaramucci has absolutely no idea what he’s doing,” he interjected, “and he has absolutely no idea what Scaramucci Post is.”
Even in half-jest, Scaramucci still sounded like a conventional digital media executive: The ScarPo is, in his telling, an advertising-supported, politically centrist, millennial-focused news outlet distributed natively on social media platforms. There will be livestreaming. There will be discussions with political influencers. And he may even hire reporters down the road.
“It’s a social media, Periscoping, experiential thing,” he said. “I may drop some articles on the Twitter feed that I like. No landing page. On Twitter, Instagram.”
These are…kind of the right buzzwords? And in true media launch form, Scaramucci even showcased his first advertiser, a new women’s sports site called Knockout Times. “If I get four or five more sponsors, I'll be converting this thing into a website,” he said.
As for editorial ethos: “I think that there’s a wide-open space in the middle that is not being served,” Scaramucci told reporters gathered around him. “It’s the Walter Cronkite space. It’s the space in the middle where there's a level of objectivity.”
Scaramucci was also asked about a recent BuzzFeed News report that he had told friends, in writing, that he wants to run for president or governor of New York someday. Scaramucci, whose correspondence was obtained by BuzzFeed News after he called the original report “fake news,” once again denied he has elected office ambitions. And anyway, he told me on Monday night that media was more his thing: “I see myself as a TV host.”
Since Scaramucci got booted from the White House after he told the New Yorker that Steve Bannon likes to “suck [his] own cock,” he has hosted an episode of TMZ’s live show; he went on The View alongside his actor doppelganger, Mario Cantone, and suggested that Bannon is a white nationalist; he announced the launch of the Scaramucci Post with a series of polls about just who the account should follow next, often selecting well-known people in the media; and he hosted this would-be party for a group of New York reporters in the basement of his own restaurant, a charade of sorts, where Scaramucci reflected on topics like gerrymandering and the moon landing.
Reporters weren’t quite sure what they had witnessed. We knew we were at the Hunt & Fish Club with Anthony Scaramucci. We knew that Scaramucci is working on some sort of media outlet.
And we understood, I think, that Scaramucci shrewdly knows the best way to keep the media’s attention is to become part of the media.
Steven Perlberg is a media and politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@buzzfeed.com.
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Alan Jones takes an axe to rugby ‘rubbish’
Rugby Australia’s attempt to revolutionise the game and fend off financial disaster has been savaged by its biggest critic.
It was described by Rugby Australia as the "largest and most comprehensive collection of rugby rights ever put to the market in Australia".
Alan Jones says it "looks like a show bag. And you know what they say about show bags".
The media heavyweight has continued his relentless criticism of the game's management in Australia by taking an axe to the broadcast offering unveiled by Rugby Australia CEO Rob Clarke this week.
In a savage column for The Australian, Jones took apart the new bells and whistles added to the game in an effort to entice a new TV partner piece by piece.
He described pitching a Rugby Championship including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina as "Alice in Wonderland stuff" given South Africa's desire to play all its matches in its own time zone and the decimation of Argentina after many of its players bolted to Europe.
Jones said the only internationals Rugby Australia could guarantee were against the All Blacks and even those negotiations are being threatened by RA's ultimatum NZ Rugby takes all five of our Super Rugby teams in a trans-Tasman competition.
He also took potshots at the State of the Union series, rugby's mooted version of rugby league's State of Origin.
"A rugby union version will be such a poor cousin in comparison to that of rugby league that it will only embarrass our game.
"Cheap knock-offs are cheap knock-offs. A knock-off Rolex looks shabby."
But he saved his biggest criticism for a Champions League-style Super Eight competition that would feature the best two teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, plus one each from South America and Japan, labelling it "the dumbest idea in the showbag" because of the difficulty of pulling it off in these COVID-impacted times.
"The people proposing this rubbish are on another planet," Jones said.
"It's as if there was a brainstorming meeting at Rugby Australia, but someone forgot to throw out the bad ideas.
"Much of what has been proposed to broadcasters by Rugby Australia for 2021 can only be described as 'dodgy'. It would have to be a dumb broadcaster to buy into any of it."
Despite Jones' view, Clarke is hoping the new additions will help soften the financial blow to a sport reeling from the end of its last broadcast deal, which was worth $285 million over five years.
Clarke said a number of broadcasters had shown interest in acquiring rugby's rights.
"We know that sporting broadcast rights have seen some challenging times in both Australia and in other markets around the world," he said.
"That said, I think rugby has an enormous amount to offer a broadcast partner and not just in the quantity of content we know have available as part of this rights package but the quality at every level from grassroots all the way through to test matches.
"We do know the rugby audience typically is a very defined audience with the ability, spending power to actually get behind the game and I think that has a lot of attractiveness to a range of broadcasters. I'm naturally an optimistic person so I'll say I'm hopeful we're going to get to a great result, I'll let you know in a month's time."
Originally published as Alan Jones takes an axe to rugby 'rubbish'
rugby australia
alan jones rugby australia
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Save Money & The Environment, One Battery at a Time
More than 3 billion batteries are thrown in the trash each year. CP Lab Safety launches the new ECO Battery Bin™, which tests popular consumer batteries for remaining life and provides convenient storage for dead batteries waiting to be recycled.
Novato, CA – October 20, 2014
CP Lab Safety, a lab and industrial supply company and manufacturer of the health-preserving ECO Funnel, announced today that it is introducing a new, eco-friendly product in its endeavor to make the world a healthier, safer place: the ECO Battery Bin™. The ECO Battery Bin™ is the latest innovation in the company's ongoing effort to promote proper disposal of hazardous waste.
President & CEO Kelly Farhangi described the new product by saying, "the ECO Battery Bin enables people to do the right thing without hardship. It's easy to toss a battery in the trash, but batteries need to be recycled if we are serious about protecting ourselves and our planet. The ECO Battery Bin makes it painless to get the most out of our batteries, and to separate the dead ones into a single, safe place."
According to the EPA, batteries are classified as hazardous waste and must be disposed of properly, such as through a certified recycling plant. The heavy metals contained in batteries include mercury, lead, cadmium and nickel. Left to decompose on landfills, these toxins leak out of discarded batteries, contaminating breathable air and sources of drinking water. However, more than 3 billion batteries are thrown in the trash each year, in the US alone. Placed end to end, the dead alkaline batteries in today’s landfills could circle the earth more than 6 times!
The ECO Battery Bin™ promotes higher yearly recycling rates for households and workplaces by providing a convenient place to drop off used batteries, reducing the tendency to illegally discard them in the waste basket. At the same time, the device allows users to test the remaining energy capacity of unpackaged batteries, preventing exponential waste of energy and money. The company began accepting orders in early October.
https://www.calpaclab.com/eco-battery-bin
About CP Lab Safety:
CP Lab Safety is a leading manufacturer of environmentally friendly laboratory safety products and maker of the original and patented ECO Funnel®. The company’s line of more than 3,000 products, including safety waste funnel systems, containers, and other safety equipment, is used by a broad range of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, industrial producers, and academic and government institutions worldwide. CP Lab Safety, based in Novato, CA, was founded in 1996 by Dr. Ron Najafi, inventor of ECO Funnel®. Dr. Najafi, a chemist and entrepreneur, is now Chairman & CEO of NovaBay Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE-AMEX:NBY). For more information, please visit www.cplabsafety.com.
Kelly Farhangi, President & CEO
info@cplabsafety.com
www.cplabsafety.com
Stay informed on CP Lab Safety:
Visit CP Lab Safety’s Website
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Home / About / News / Caltech Startup Aims to Make Solar Panels More Efficient
Caltech Startup Aims to Make Solar Panels More Efficient
Technology developed at Caltech seeks to improve the efficiency of solar panels by tweaking the architecture of the metal-grid layout of individual cells.
The technology, which is being marketed by a new startup company—ETC Solar, LLC—could potentially improve the output of solar panels by about 5 percent, regardless of the type of photovoltaic material used to make the panels. The translational technology was developed in the engineering and applied science lab of Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). JCAP is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Innovation Hub that aims to find new and effective ways to produce fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide.
On June 28, ETC Solar took first place at the DOE's 2018 Cleantech University Prize national collegiate business plan competition in Houston.
"To have been selected as a winner is a huge point of validation for the concept, both the innovation and also the impact," says Atwater, who is also a co-founder of ETC Solar. "It has helped us to make contacts with potential industrial partners and private equity investors,"
Other co-founders of ETC Solar include Atwater group member Thomas Russell, and Rebecca Saive, assistant professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and a visiting associate in Atwater's lab. The company beat out 22 other teams for the top prize of $50,000 with a simple solution to a longstanding problem in solar panel technology.
When sunlight strikes solar cells, it excites electrons in the cells that are then collected via a grid of metal filaments. This grid is printed on top of the solar cells, much like the circuits on a circuit board. Tiny though the filaments may be, they do cast a shadow on the surface of the solar cell, and this shadow reduces the overall efficiency with which the cell produces energy. ETC's design uses metal filaments that have a triangular-shaped cross-section, like a steep A-frame house roof. Instead of casting a shadow on the surface of the solar panel, the filaments reflect light toward the surface. The result is a so-called "effectively transparent contact," or ETC.
The ETCs, which measure about 15 microns high, are created by direct-etching grooves into a silicon wafer. The wafer is used to fabricate a mold that is placed onto a solar panel, and the grooves are then filled with a conductive ink. Once the ink cures, the mold can be peeled off, leaving the silver ETCs behind.
ETC Solar qualified for the Cleantech competition earlier this year by winning the regional FLOW competition, run by Caltech's Resnick Sustainability Institute (RSI). The company received a grant from RSI's Rocket Fund program, supported by six California utilities and San Diego-based Moxie Foundation, that helped accelerate the technology toward commercialization. The team's business plan was also honed through the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program, which provides scientists and engineers with resources to explore the commercialization of technology developed in academia. Caltech, USC, and UCLA received a $3.5 million grant in 2014 to establish an I-Corps "node," or hub, in Southern California.
Through the I-Corps program, representatives from ETC Solar traveled around the world, conducting 150 interviews with potential customers such as solar-cell manufacturers about the commercial needs of the solar-cell market. Those interviews revealed that the biggest problems faced by manufacturers relate to efficiency and cost, as the market has incredibly tight profit margins and is driven by market-share expansion.
"Manufacturers don't adopt early technologies that easily because they say, 'Well, my margins are so low I don't have room to take financial risks,'" Russell says.
Working with Caltech's Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships (OTTCP), Russell and his colleagues have attempted to overcome this hurdle by making the technology as market-ready as possible.
A prototype version of the ETC is expected to be completed in early 2019, when testing with industry partners will begin.
The research that led to the creation of the ETC was supported in part by the Engineering Research Center Program of the NSF; and in part by the DOE though the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium.
Robert Perkins
(626) 395‑1862
rperkins@caltech.edu
Thomas Russell (left) and Harry Atwater (right) Credit: Caltech
Thomas Russell (left) and Harry Atwater (right)
Credit: Caltech
engineering environment & sustainability materials science
> Professor Atwater Elected to National Academy of Inventors
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A. J. Green Net Worth
How much is A. J. Green Worth?
in Richest Athletes › NFL Players
A. J. Green Net Worth:
A.J. Green net worth: A.J. Green is an American professional football player who has a net worth of $18 million. A.J. Green was born in Summerville, South Carolina in July 1988. He is a wide receiver who was an All-American at Summerville High School. Green played his college football career at the University of Georgia where he was named the SEC Freshman of the Year and a First-team All-Freshman in 2008. He was also named First-team All-SEC in 2008 and 2009. Green was drafted #4 by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2011 NFL Draft and has played his entire career for Cincinnati. He was selected to the PFWA All-Rookie Team in 2011. Green has been selected to four Pro Bowls and is a two time Second-team All-Pro. He has been ranked in the Top 100 Players list from 2012 to 2015 coming in at #9 in 2014. In 2011 he signed a four year deal with the Bengals for $19.6 million.
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The U.S. Vice President and Foreign Policy
Modern vice presidents can trace much of their political influence to the broad reforms that Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale made to the second-highest elected office in the late 1970s.
Africa’s ‘Leaders for Life’
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to many of the world’s longest-ruling heads of state, but civil society and regional blocs may be slowing the trend of extending presidential terms in some areas.
Nigeria’s Battle With Boko Haram
Boko Haram, known for mass kidnappings, bombings, and other acts of terrorism, remains an enduring threat to northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin.
AGOA: The U.S.-Africa Trade Program
AGOA is the cornerstone of the U.S.-Africa trade relationship, but declining support has called the program’s value into question.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Algerian and Western counterterrorism efforts, along with an African-led peacekeeping force in Mali, have shifted the North African al-Qaeda franchise’s criminal and terrorist activities to remote ar…
Backgrounder by Zachary Laub and Jonathan Masters
The Dodd-Frank Act
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank"), signed into law in July 2010, is one of the most significant regulatory reform measures since the Great Depression.
Backgrounder by Steven J. Markovich Renewing America
South Africa’s Economic Fault Lines
South Africa in the post-apartheid period has registered steady growth, but mounting problems over inequality threaten the continent’s economic engine.
Backgrounder by Christopher Alessi
U.S. Trade Policy
Trade accounts for an increasing portion of the U.S. economy, and the Obama administration has embraced a ramped up export strategy. But debate persists over the merits of a vigorous free trade agend…
Backgrounder by Christopher Alessi and Robert McMahon
Africa in Transition
Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies
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ComSoc Technology News (CTN)
The Role of Academia in Beyond-5G Wireless Research
IEEE CTN
Emil Björnson, Linköping University
CTN Issue: July 2020
A note from the editors:
Summer is usually a time to pause, to reflect, to ponder, and to plan ahead. Even more so in a situation as exceptional as a pandemic. It is therefore fitting that we at CTN also take the opportunity and devote this summer issue to considerations that, while technically grounded on the field of wireless communications, are of a more philosophical nature. And we have found in Prof. Emil Björnson a superb contributor on the matter. The piece below touches on the role of academia in future wireless research, on the importance of models, and on candidate technologies for such research and such models. The issue of modeling, in particular, is of enormous relevance, not only because the scope of a piece of research is only as broad as the validity of the underlying models, but because the ongoing debates on the application of machine learning have much to do with our ability (or lack thereof) of properly modeling increasingly complex communication settings.
Enjoy and stay safe.
Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir and Angel Lozano, CTN Editors
Emil Björnson
Wireless technology is constantly evolving. Even if we tend to focus on the ten-year-long generational cycles, many of the major steps consist of software and hardware developments that occur in the middle of a generation. If you listen to the marketing and research papers, 5G is the solution to almost everything. From a technical perspective, this includes huge data speeds, extreme reliability, and support for a massive number of connected things. From a practical perspective, 5G is supposed to be the solution that all the verticals have been waiting for: a platform that can be software-configured to offer connectivity ideally suited for each specific industry or scenario.
In a few years, we will have a more sober view of what 5G really became and what it might evolve into during this decade. Most likely, we will only have taken a few steps towards satisfying future communication needs. In particular, we will be far from satisfying the original targets and new unanticipated use cases will arise. One can draw a parallel to the release of 3G in 2001: it was supposed to be the technology that delivered mobile video telephony to the masses [1], but it wasn’t until the emergence of application-layer platforms (such as FaceTime in 2010) that this use case took off. At that time, 4G had already been released. With this in mind, I believe that the exploratory 6G research that is now initiated should not be application-driven because we cannot know what the future applications will be! There are already plenty of “roadmap” articles speculating around various science-fiction-like 6G applications, but I think the boring truth is that most 6G applications will be roughly the same as those considered in 5G, but with better service requirements in terms of speed, reliability, and availability.
Academic 6G research should look for disruptive new technologies with the potential of greatly improving upon what 5G can achieve in the predictable future. The performance can be measured in different ways and the search often begins at the physical and architectural levels [2], which then dictates which software solutions are required. For example, if we want to greatly increase the peak data speeds then we need more bandwidth per user, which can either be achieved by reusing existing spectrum more efficiently (which requires interference suppression and spatial multiplexing techniques at the physical layer) or moving to new frequency ranges (which requires new hardware, deployment strategies, and adaptive beamforming to achieve a sufficient link budget). It is relatively easy to demonstrate such things with simple models that capture the basic phenomena, but it is a completely different thing to make a convincing case for a disruptive performance gain under practical conditions!
We Need to Talk About the Models
During the last decade, the research community was often stuck in the use of “tractable” models that lead to analytical expressions that are easy to interpret and prove the points that the authors want to make. It has been fairly easy to publish such results in scientific journals (which is helpful for those working under publish-or-perish pressure), but the contributions will hardly convince people in the industry. Similar concerns were raised a decade ago [2] when the rhetorical question “Is the physical layer dead?” was asked. The authors of that paper were raising concerns that academia is drifting too far away from practical systems in the search for elegant theory, thereby making itself irrelevant for the industry. Even if some of the remedies that were suggested in [2] have been adequately implemented, the fundamental problem still exists.
One example is the literature on millimeter-wave communications that contains numerous papers that analyze hybrid analog-digital beamforming over flat-fading channels, which is a set of practically inconsistent assumptions. The main reason for considering the millimeter-wave bands in 5G is that we can have access to much more bandwidth than in conventional sub-6 GHz bands, which has the consequence that the channels for sure will be frequency-selective. Importantly, the main drawback of hybrid beamforming only materializes in frequency-selective channels where the analog processing must be the same for the entire band even if the channel varies. Hence, even if an elegant theory can be developed for frequency-flat channels, it is impossible to make a convincing case for using hybrid beamforming unless frequency-selective channels are considered.
The lesson to learn is not that it was wrong to begin the analysis of millimeter-wave communications using the simple flat-fading assumption. It was probably necessary to gain basic insights and knowhow when the research topic was new. The real issue is that we never really moved on from this starting point to consider more realistic models that can provide more accurate insights (some researchers did, but most didn’t).
Another example of this issue is the obsession with using the uncorrelated fading model and matched filtering when analyzing Massive MIMO systems. The initial works that made these assumptions were instrumental in demonstrating the gain of having many more antennas than users in cellular networks. The research that followed should have considered more realistic models, but the initial assumptions continued to dominate since they lead to tractable analysis. The consequence is that the achievable performance over practical channels, which feature spatially correlated fading, has been underestimated. Figure 1 exemplifies this by showing the uplink spectral efficiency that can be achieved when using different numbers of antennas at the base station (the simulation setup is defined in Figure 4.24 in [3] but the exact details are not important here). There is one curve for uncorrelated fading with matched filtering and another curve for spatially correlated fading with optimal spatial processing. The difference between the curves is small when the number of antennas is small, thus rough but tractable models can be used to analyze such systems (as we have done for decades). However, the figure shows that a proper analysis of Massive MIMO, which is characterized by having at least 64 antennas, requires more detailed modeling. The reason for the large gap in Figure 1 is that so-called pilot contamination and other types of interference behave differently when using practical channel models, which have structural properties that can be exploited in the processing.
Figure 1: Comparison between the uplink spectral efficiency achieved in a cellular setup from [3] with a simple model (uncorrelated fading) and a more realistic model (correlated fading). The analysis of Massive MIMO with hundreds of antennas requires realistic models to get practically relevant results also when the number of antennas is large.
Even if the vast majority of papers used unrealistic models, millimeter-wave and Massive MIMO technologies made it into 5G since they are fundamentally sound techniques. It was the vision put forward by academia that prevailed rather than the analytical theory it developed. However, there were other technologies that were “5G-branded” by academia but didn’t live up to the expectations. A prime example is non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) [4], which essentially is a way to deal with interference over single-antenna channels (by using the code and power domains). Despite the huge research efforts dedicated to NOMA, the method didn’t make it into 5G because the spectral efficiency gains that can be achieved over multi-antenna channels (i.e., on top of Massive MIMO) vanish under practical conditions. This is not to say that NOMA lacks potential, but we need to start over by considering other design targets than long-term spectral efficiency. NOMA-like techniques can be relevant when services with heterogeneous requirements need to share the same spectrum [5].
We should not repeat such mistakes in this new decade. Hence, we need to first identify promising new disruptive technologies, possibly using simple models, and then gradually use more realistic modeling and assumptions to validate the initial results. There is no disgrace in observing that something that seemed promising at first didn’t perform well under more practical conditions. In fact, we should encourage the publication of such “negative” results! We shouldn’t take the correctness of models and results in published papers for granted or take it personally if someone proves that our hypothesis was wrong. In experimental research, a hypothesis must be confirmed ten times, or more, before it is considered proved. We must be better at acknowledging that slightly different assumptions might lead to different answers to the same question, both when it comes to mathematical analysis and numerical results. Maybe it is time to demand that the simulation code is published along with every paper that contains numerical results?
Candidate Physical-Layer Technologies for 6G
Several candidate physical-layer technologies for 6G have already been identified [6] and started to be hyped by the academic research community. Three examples are shown in Figure 2 and will be briefly described below.
Figure 2: Three prospective physical-layer technologies for 6G.
User-centric cell-free Massive MIMO: This is a distributed antenna system based on the vision of taking the many antennas in a 5G base station and spreading them over the coverage area. The name includes “Massive MIMO” since the same processing of the antenna signals is considered as in that technology [3], thus each user is jointly served by its surrounding antennas (no inter-cell interference exists). This is enabled by using an edge-cloud architecture where the antenna signals are co-processed in the cloud. The aim is to improve the uniformity of the data speeds over the coverage area by reducing the pathloss variations and interference [7], which are useful features in any frequency band. The basic technology features have been established in the literature, but the analysis has thus far been based on simple discrete-time models that implicitly assume perfect synchronization and negligible delay spread, which cannot be achieved in practice. Hence, there is a need for considering more realistic models in the future.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface: These are large but thin two-dimensional surfaces made of metamaterial that scatter the incident electromagnetic waves in a configurable manner [6]. Different parts of the surface incur different delays to the scattered signal, thereby synthesizing the scattering behavior of an arbitrarily shaped object of the same size. This feature can be utilized for full-duplex relaying, where the surface takes the signal from the transmitter and adjusts the delays to instantly beamform it towards the receiver. A potential benefit over conventional relaying technology is the low-power operation; instead of actively amplifying the signal, a large surface aperture is utilized to passively focus the signal. There are many visions for this technology, particularly for enabling 6G communications above 100 GHz, but it remains to find a truly convincing use case and to demonstrate that real-time reconfiguration is possible [8]. To fully understand how these surfaces behave in practice, we need to start from the first principles of electromagnetics to correctly model the interactions between electromagnetic waves and metamaterials.
Holographic radio: This is an attempt to build antenna arrays with an approximately continuous aperture using a limited number of transceiver chains [9]. The arrays can be implemented using metamaterials in a way that is reminiscent of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, but with the key differences that the transceiver is behind the surface and the diffraction rather than scattering is controlled. As indicated by the word “holographic”, the spatial beamforming is represented by the delay pattern configured on the array surface. This pattern can be recorded in a training phase that resembles holographic imaging [6]. The vision is to achieve arrays with unprecedented spatial resolution, which can be used for spatial multiplexing of the theoretically maximum number of signals per square-meter or precise positioning. Holographic radios also pave the way to implement much larger arrays than in 5G. To perform a detailed communication theoretic study of holographic radios, we must use electromagnetic models that accurately take mutual coupling and other hardware properties into account [10].
There is no guarantee that any of the aforementioned technology candidates will make it into 6G. Maybe I am just biased by my research interests, just as many others that put their favorite topics at the core of their 6G visions. What we truly need to do as a research community is to turn many stones to find the right technology candidates. For each one, we need to look beyond the initial hype and ask the fundamental scientific questions: 1) What is the closest competing technology that is existing or under development? 2) How much can the performance be improved compared to that technology and according to what metrics? 3) Are the results reproducible when considering more accurate models than today or in different simulations setups? This is how real, reproducible progress is made towards 6G. I sincerely hope that academia will play an essential role along the way.
I would like to thank Petar Popovski, Federico Boccardi, Angel Lozano, and Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir for their input.
OECD (2004), “Development of Third-Generation Mobile Services in the OECD,” OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 85, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/232562017400.
M. Dohler, R. Heath Jr., A. Lozano, C. Papadias, R. Valenzuela, “Is the PHY Layer Dead?,” IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 159-165, 2011.
E. Björnson, J. Hoydis, L. Sanguinetti, “Massive MIMO Networks: Spectral, Energy, and Hardware Efficiency,” Foundations and Trends® in Signal Processing: vol. 11, no. 3-4, pp. 154–655, 2017.
Y. Liu, Z. Qin, M. Elkashlan, Z. Ding, A. Nallanathan, and L. Hanzo, “Nonorthogonal Multiple Access for 5G and Beyond,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 105, no. 12, pp. 2347-2381, 2017.
P. Popovski, K. Trillingsgaard, O. Simeone and G. Durisi, “5G Wireless Network Slicing for eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC: A Communication-Theoretic View,” in IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 55765-55779, 2018.
E. Björnson, L. Sanguinetti, H. Wymeersch, J. Hoydis, T. Marzetta, “Massive MIMO is a Reality – What is Next? Five Promising Research Directions for Antenna Arrays,” Digital Signal Processing, vol. 94, pp. 3-20, November 2019.
H. Ngo, A. Ashikhmin, H. Yang, E. Larsson, and T. Marzetta, “Cell-free Massive MIMO versus small cells,” IEEE Transactions of Wireless Communications, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 1834-1850, 2017.
E. Björnson, Ö. Özdogan, E. Larsson, “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: Three Myths and Two Critical Questions,” arXiv, abs/2006.03377v1, 2020.
C. Huang, S. Hu, G. Alexandropoulos, A. Zappone, C. Yuen, R. Zhang, M. Di Renzo, M. Debbah, “Holographic MIMO Surfaces for 6G Wireless Networks: Opportunities, Challenges, and Trends,” IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, to appear.
R. Williams, E. De Carvalho, T. Marzetta, “A Communication Model for Large Intelligent Surfaces,” arXiv, abs/1912.06644v1, 2020.
Statements and opinions given in a work published by the IEEE or the IEEE Communications Society are the expressions of the author(s). Responsibility for the content of published articles rests upon the authors(s), not IEEE nor the IEEE Communications Society.
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Mexico, Canada set to square off in Under-17 WWC semifinal
Canada´s Jordyn Huitema (left) and Alison González Esquivel of Mexico have been two key players to reach the semifinals in the FIFA U-17 Women's World Championship.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – A place in the 2018 Under-17 Women’s World Cup Final will be at stake when Mexico and Canada square off in the semifinals on Wednesday at the Estadio Charrua in Montevideo.
It pits the first time that two Concacaf sides have ever met in the semifinal of a FIFA women’s youth tournament.
These two sides are already very familiar with each other, having played in the semifinals of the 2018 Concacaf Under-17 Women’s Championship last June in Bradenton, Florida.
In that semifinal encounter, Mexico emerged victorious 2-1 with goals from Annete Mendoza and Dania Jimenez, offsetting a strike from Teni Akindoju.
With these two Concacaf sides meeting in the semifinal, it ensures that a Concacaf team will advance to the final of the Under-17 Women’s World for just the second time in history. The United States accomplished the feat in 2008 in the inaugural edition of the Under-17 Women’s World Cup.
Wednesday’s affair will also be a battle of wits between two former Concacaf internationals, with former Mexico DF Monica Vergara leading the Tricolor and ex-Canada DF Rhian Wilkinson at the helm of the Canadians.
Mexico is coming off a dramatic 4-2 penalty shootout win over Ghana after the two teams had played to a 2-2 draw in regular time, while a late Jordyn Huitema goal helped Canada edge Germany, 1-0.
The winner will advance to Saturday’s final where it will meet the winner of Wednesday’s other semifinal between New Zealand and Spain.
See also: Canada Mexico 2018 Fifa Under-17 Women´s World Cup Jordyn Huitema Alison Gonzalez
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Vitalant Community Blood Drives
Australians on SE coast urged to flee as fire risk escalates
by: NICK PERRY, Associated Press
Posted: Jan 8, 2020 / 07:16 PM CST / Updated: Jan 9, 2020 / 01:59 AM CST
A firefighter manages a controlled burn near Tomerong, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in an effort to contain a larger fire nearby. Around 2,300 firefighters in New South Wales state were making the most of relatively benign conditions by frantically consolidating containment lines around more than 110 blazes and patrolling for lightning strikes, state Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
TOMERONG, Australia (AP) — Residents in the path of wildfires razing southeast Australia were urged to evacuate on Thursday if they don’t intend to defend their homes as hot and windy conditions are forecast to escalate the danger over the next two days.
The Rural Fire Service in New South Wales state has told fire-weary community meetings south of Sydney in the coastal towns of Nowra, Narooma and Batemans Bay that northwesterly winds were likely to once again drive blazes toward the coast. Vacationers have retreated to beaches and into the ocean in the area in recent weeks as destructive fires and choking smoke have encroached on the tourist towns, scorching sand dunes in some places.
In neighboring Victoria state, fire-threatened populations were urged to act quickly on evacuation warnings.
“We can’t guarantee your safety and we don’t want to be putting emergency services — whether it be volunteers or paid staff — we do not want to put them in harm’s way because people didn’t follow advice that was given,” Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said.
Temperatures in the threatened area were expected to reach into the mid-40s Celsius (more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit) on Friday, and conditions remained tinder dry.
“If you can get out, you should get out,” said Andrew Crisp, Victoria’s emergency management commissioner. “Because tomorrow is going to be a dangerous and dynamic day.”
The unprecedented fire crisis in southeast Australia that has claimed at least 26 lives since September, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and scorched an area twice the size of the U.S. state of Maryland has focused many Australians on how the nation adapts to climate change. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under withering criticism both at home and abroad for downplaying the need for his government to address climate change, which experts say helps supercharge the blazes.
Last year was Australia’s hottest and driest on record. The Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate monitoring, Karl Braganza, said while the country’s rainfall was expected to pick up a bit, it wouldn’t be enough to snuff out the blazes anytime soon.
“Unfortunately, we’re not looking at widespread, above-average rainfalls at this stage,” he said. “That’s really what we need to put the fires out fairly quickly. It is going to be a campaign, in terms of the fires. We are not looking at a short and sharp end to the event — it looks like something that we will have to persist with for some time.”
Along a main roadway in southern New South Wales, forests of evergreen eucalyptus trees have taken on a ghostly autumnal appearance, with golden leaves and blackened trunks. The forests appear devoid of any wildlife. Outside, it often smells like a campfire that has been recently snuffed out, and hazy waves of smoke drift past.
In many small towns, most homes appear untouched apart from one or two that have been razed to the ground, sometimes with only a chimney stack still standing. People have hung signs and banners thanking the volunteer firefighters they call “firies.” There are cars that are nothing more than burned-out chassis and wooden power poles that have been reduced to stumps. Not far from the communities, smoke can be seen rising from hills where the wildfires continue to rage.
Morrison has faced fierce backlash over what many Australians perceive as a slow, detached response to the wildfire crisis. On Thursday, he found himself on the defensive again over an awkward exchange he had with locals on fire-ravaged Kangaroo Island. In a video of his visit to the island, where an outback safari operator and his son were killed in the blazes, Morrison was seen telling locals: “Thankfully, we’ve had no loss of life.”
After he was corrected, he continued: “Yes, two, that’s quite right. I was thinking about firefighters, firstly.”
It was the latest in a string of gaffes for Morrison, who created a public uproar when he took a family vacation to Hawaii in the middle of the disaster. He has tried to strike a more compassionate image since, and earlier this week promised the government would commit an extra 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.4 billion) toward the fire recovery effort.
“Tomorrow’s going to be a very difficult day in the eastern states,” Morrison said during a news conference on Thursday. “Once again, I express my sincere condolences and sympathies to the families of all of those who have lost loved ones during the course of this terrible disaster. We will continue to remember them, but also their families in particular in what they need, in supporting them.”
The New South Wales government responded to the crisis on Thursday by announcing an additional AU$1 billion ($690 million) to be spent over the next two years on wildfire management and recovery.
The Australian disaster is seen by many as a harbinger for other countries of the future consequences of global warming.
Pope Francis has joined world leaders in expressing solidarity with the Australian people.
“I’d like to ask for you all to pray to the Lord to help the (Australian) people at this difficult moment, with these powerful fires. I’m close to the Australian people,” Francis said at the end of his general audience on Wednesday, drawing applause from congregants.
Associated Press journalists Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, and Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.
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COPYRIGHT | ART & ARCHITECTURE BOOKSHOP / antiquariaat / Richard Long: Heaven and Earth
Richard Long: Heaven and Earth
Richard Long, Clarrie Wallis
Tate Publishing, 2009
Exhibited across the globe, Richard Long, born in 1945, is one of Britain’s most important living artists. Long belongs to a generation of British sculptors who re-imagined the traditional materials and methods of their medium. His work, rooted in his deep affinity with nature, developed during solitary walks through landscapes around the world, from the Andes, to Africa, to the Mongolian steppes. Often geometric in shape, Long’s sculptures are always made with materials encountered during his walks. This fascinating book, extensively illustrated and designed in collaboration with the artist, surveys Long’s entire career, beginning with key early works including A Line Made By Walking (1967), A Ten Mile Walk (1968), Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (1969), A Sculpture Left By The Tide (1970) and A Circle In Africa (1978).
Categorie: antiquariaat
240 pagina's, 28 x 20,8 cm, geïllustreerd, paperback, Engels
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Arch City
'Real Housewives' star due back in court again
PATERSON, N.J. (AP) - One of the Real Housewives of New Jersey stars convicted of bankruptcy fraud this month is headed back to court.
PATERSON, N.J. (AP) � One of the Real Housewives of New Jersey stars convicted of bankruptcy fraud this month is headed back to court.
Joe Giudice (JOO'-dice) is set to appear in Passaic County court Wednesday on false identification charges. He is accused of using his brother's identity to obtain a driver's license while his own license was suspended for driving while intoxicated in 2010.
The Record reports that a Passaic County assistant prosecutor said at a hearing last month that the case will likely be resolved by a plea deal.
Giudice was sentenced to 41 months in prison on the federal bankruptcy fraud charges while his wife, Teresa, was sentenced to 15 months.
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But there were also challenges, the biggest of which was the skyrocketing number of homicides, which put Strickland in the awkward position — like Wharton before him — of having to explain why the bullets are still flying, why the people are still dying. The Orpheum Theatre's 220-seat lower gallery couldn't hold all of the people murdered in 2016, which was the deadliest year for homicides in the city's history. A group of trespassing protesters recently lay on Strickland's front yard in a "die-in" demonstration.
"There's no doubt the greatest challenge was the shameful homicide rate. It's way too high," he said. "And even though most people I talk to and my head tells me there's not really much we could have done to stem that tide this year, my heart still hurts every time I get these emails with these reports. It just drives me more and more to move as quickly as we can to implement our overall crime plan."
Asked whether the little girl and her mother were safer now than when he took office, Strickland was quick to reply: "No, but she will be."
Strickland said the city is in the process of implementing "good plans based on solid research and law enforcement experts," a reference to his Better Memphis Public Safety Plan, which he unveiled on the campaign trail and updated in recent weeks, and a plan crafted by Operation: Safe Community, a group of local stakeholders including government officials. In upcoming days, Strickland said, he also intends to unveil a number of ways the public can be involved in reducing crime.
"We've taken immediate steps: I've outlined those on retention and recruitment of police officers," he said. "The biggest step city government can take for those crime plans is more officers. More officers help us do community policing, data-driven policing, Blue CRUSH, the different agencies that we do — the gang unit and so forth. So, we're taking immediate action, but the unfortunate thing is that it takes time to implement those plans."
Over the course of the year, Strickland's answers to questions about violent crime and murders have followed a familiar pattern: condemnation, justification and a plea for patience. When the city hit 214 homicides in December, breaking the previous record set 23 years ago, Strickland called the homicide rate a "tragic, shameful spike," a crime that police are "least able to control," and said "all of us" have a responsibility to "do better." When the number of homicides surpassed the 2015 total of 161 in September, Strickland emphasized the "immediate action" the city was taking to hire more police officers. “But the results will, unfortunately, take some time because it’s not just a police problem ... it’s a societal problem." In June, as he unveiled new initiatives in response to the slaying of police officer Verdell Smith, Strickland said his administration was "doing everything it possibly can to address this situation,” and “no city can reduce homicides in five months.”
Strickland is hoping to reduce crime — including homicides — by increasing the ranks of the police, among other actions. To that end, he approved spending $400,000 on marketing that led to more than 2,000 police officer applications — far above the annual average of 500 — and 1,000 applications for the revived police service technician (PST) program. Historically, only a fraction of those applications will translate into hires. PSTs handle some non-violent incidents that would otherwise occupy police officers, and could be first in line to apply for training as officers.
The city has also significantly reduced its 911 hold times by hiring more dispatchers, among other actions. In October, the city reduced wait times to an average of 26.4 seconds — a 56 percent improvement in less than a year.
In his public safety plan, Strickland also said the administration "restored" health insurance subsidies for retirees younger than 65 in November, although that could be misleading: the administration is offering health reimbursement accounts as part of new high-deductible health insurance plans, but those are differently structured and not as valuable to retirees as the previous 70 percent subsidies. The loss of the subsidies was often cited as a reason for officers leaving or being unhappy with the department.
Much of Strickland's year was spent trying to make Memphis a safer city. Public safety will also dominate the conversation in 2017, although Strickland said he hopes he can also make headway on blight reduction and early literacy.
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Anonymous NBA Agent Argues League's Black Lives Matter Stance 'Really Hurt the Business'
ByJose Martinez
Jose is a contributing writer for Complex Media. @ZayMarty
Image via Getty/Kevin C. Cox
In an anonymous survey conducted by The Athletic, one NBA agent was critical of the league's decision to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement, calling it a "horrible look for the league." This agent claimed the players were "being manipulated" by the movement, which this person believed "really hurt the business."
"They initially did a great job by putting the bubble together and they completely shit the bed with all this nonsense. They really hurt the business … All of this Black Lives Matter stuff … I think that the players are being manipulated into something that they don't really understand and I think it's a horrible look for the league and they need to be very clear about the organization, what they stand for," the agent said in response to a question about how the NBA handled the bubble and COVID-19.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski revealed on his podcast in late August that not every owner was enthusiastic about the idea of putting "Black Lives Matter" on the court during the season restart in Orlando. "Some are extremely supportive. Some less so. None of them publicly [critical]," Wojnarowski said, per Bleacher Report.
"But I do know [NBA commissioner] Adam Silver told them, 'Hey guys, this is what we're going to do to support our players," he added. "Our league is overwhelmingly comprised of African American players. This is important. This is a partnership."
The agent later implied that the lower than usual NBA Finals ratings had to do with their alignment with the Black Lives Matter movement, saying, "If that's what the NBA wants to align with, they're really hurting themselves … They're not helping the players, they're hurting the sport. When the ratings are down 30%, who are you helping?"
A reported 5.6 million viewers tuned in to watch the Los Angeles Lakers capture their 17th NBA title with a victory in Game 6 against the Miami Heat. In comparison, Game 6 of last year’s Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors pulled in 18.34 million viewers. Still, the decrease in viewership this year may not involve the league’s publicly stated social agenda.
That same night, Game 6 was competing against the weekly event known as Sunday Night Football, which drew 11.4 million viewers.
Other items to take into consideration include the level of competition. While LeBron James and maybe even Anthony Davis are household names, and represent the city of Los Angeles, is the casual basketball fan honestly intrigued to watch anyone on the Heat? Last year, the Finals viewership included the loyal fans from seemingly the entire city of Toronto, along with the added appeal of witnessing the Raptors topple Steph Curry and the Warriors’ dynasty.
The following Sunday, Fox said Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves had 10.2 million viewers, the highest ratings for a LCS game since 2017. This report hints a larger issue regarding the sports landscape where nearly all of the four major sports were overlapping. Typically, the Finals aren’t forced to compete for eyeballs against the MLB or NFL, but like everything else, the pandemic threw sports into disarray.
Another agent, however, took a different, more constructive approach to criticizing the NBA's work with the Black Lives Matter movement and social justice initiatives going forward. You can read that below.
"They were, how do I put this? I don’t want to throw my own league under the bus. For instance, the jersey with the slogan on the back, that was great, but why aren’t we selling those jerseys and donating the money to victims of police violence? Yeah, it’s great they have polling places, but a lot of places around arenas have impoverished people … Maybe it’s not stuff they haven’t done, but moving forward they have a responsibility to be those leaders in investing in the communities that these players grew up in and they came from and I hope this moment will help. The NBA has been the most progressive league, done the most, but they need to do more. I don’t know how I could have done better in Adam’s position. I can criticize him here but it’s a tough spot to be in."
White Antagonists Are Getting in the Way of Black Lives Matter
Until the Promise of All Lives Matter Is Fulfilled, We Must Assert That Black Lives Matter
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Street Art (Lonely Planet) Hardcover – April 18, 2017
An insider’s guide to discovering the world’s best urban art. From amazing wall murals to Banksy’s stencils and Invader’s mosaics, we showcase 140 creative hotspots across 42 cities and tell you how to find them, as well as introduce pioneering artists and interview those who shaped the movement.
Street art is now present in almost every city, town and village in the world, from Aachen to Zwolle. Its true audience is measured in the billions. And given that the first record of homo sapiens painting on walls is thought to date back around 40,000 years, it’s surprising that street art has taken so long to flourish.
Today, the proliferation of legal walls and organised festivals around the world makes it possible to encounter thought-provoking, transformative art in the most unexpected of places.
This visual guide to the world of street art takes in the scene in over 40 cities and includes interviews with some of the most prolific and well-known street artists, including Blek le Rat, FAILE and Faith47. And with hundreds of locations plotted and a special focus on 15 of the world’s most incredible street art festivals, this guide will help you discover artworks hidden in plain sight around the world.
About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world’s leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travellers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. The world awaits!
Lonely Planet guides have won the TripAdvisor Traveler’s Choice Award in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.
‘Lonely Planet. It’s on everyone’s bookshelves; it’s in every traveller’s hands. It’s on mobile phones. It’s on the Internet. It’s everywhere, and it’s telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.’ — Fairfax Media
‘Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.’ – New York Times
Cyrcle, lonely planet, streetart
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Development Action Group (DAG) was initiated by a group of activists in response to the destruction of and forced removals from Crossroads, an informal settlement in Cape Town, in 1986. This group gradually formalised into a leading, well-established and respected non-government organisation through working with various marginalised communities in the Western Cape, especially in the urban and human settlement sectors. It is currently governed by a Board of Directors as a Section 21 Company (established in 2003).
Over time DAG was increasingly asked to assist communities with accessing land, housing and tenure rights, among other basic human rights. As a founding member of the former national Urban Sector Network (USN) in 1988, DAG continued to be involved in issues of housing, urban development and local government, working on projects located throughout the Western Cape and on advocacy issues at a national scale.
By the early 1990’s DAG’s work shifted from tenure struggles to include poor people’s rights to participate in planning and developmental processes. During this period DAG established itself as a facilitator of development processes. By the mid-1990s DAG’s policy and research activities were well established – focusing on urban and regional planning studies – and the organisation was actively involved in the National Housing Forum through the USN where new housing policy was being developed. DAG’s work grew to include a variety of training programmes, partnerships with communities and several housing projects as well as with informal settlement upgrading projects in the Western Cape Province.
DAG has been an incubator for innovative urban sector initiatives such as the KUYASA Fund.
1999 DAG successfully established the KUYASA Fund, a microfinance organisation, to promote savings and provide micro-loans to the poor to support incremental housing processes through home improvements. This was to prove to banks that the poor are credit-worthy even if they lack formal-sector payslips or assets. The Fund now exists as a separate entity to DAG and challenges traditional banking thinking by adopting an innovative approach to end-user finance. Since 2000, when it granted its first loan to Khayelitsha resident Rose Siyanga, the Kuyasa Fund has been successfully building equity by providing housing loans to individuals. In so doing, it has changed the lives and improved the living conditions of more than 51,900 people that come from poverty-stricken backgrounds. For more information about Kuyasa Fund visit its website at www.thekuyasafund.co.za or telephone +27 (0)21 448 3144.
DAG has been instrumental in developing participatory housing strategies and plans, most notably the Western Cape Sustainable Human Settlements Strategy, in 2007. Between 2007 and 2009 DAG was represented on the task team to develop the enhanced People’s Housing Process (PHP) policy with the National Department of Housing. DAG is still represented on the task team to drive critical recommendations for the effective implementation of the PHP policy and formulation of guidelines. DAG has been elected as land and housing team leader nationally in this process.
DAG has a long track record in the urban sector with tangible results: 5,550 new houses built in people-driven projects with DAG’s support; direct assistance in securing land, infrastructure, housing and community services to more than 100 000 people in over 60 projects; the training of more than 2000 people from poor and marginalised communities in various aspects of housing and the production of more than 85 publications and other visual materials. DAG’s successful training programmes have reached provincial and local government officials in eight of the nine provinces of South Africa.
In 2008, following 14 years of active engagement in a transitional urban development and housing context, DAG paused to reflect upon its focus, direction and achievements to date. This moment of pause and reflection led to a strategic organisational shift that moved DAG beyond its largely project-based housing focus since 1994 towards a new urban agenda based on notions of a “new urban order” and theme that focused on a “Re-imagined City”. This trajectory was underpinned by an organisational emphasis on building democratic urban governance and new structures (“urban forums”) while, at the same time, consolidating DAG’s long history and track record in facilitating the delivery of community-driven affordable housing.
Key milestones along the DAG journey between 2009 and 2012 towards “a new urban order” and more democratic urban governance include: the co-hosting of the “Re-imagining the City” Conference in October 2010; the re-design and alignment of the DAG Community Leadership Programme (CLP) as an action-learning initiative; the successful co-hosting of a public meeting in June 2012 with 25 community partners involved in the CLP at the Good Hope Centre; the development and adoption of a Citizen’s Charter by more than 900 participants at the June 2012 Public Meeting; the drafting of a Concept Paper for a National Human Settlements and Urban Forum for the Department of Human Settlements, adopted by the latter in 2012; and establishment of an emerging network of CBO leaders from a range of largely informal settlement dotted across the Cape Metropolitan Area committed to the emerging DAG vision of a re-imagining Cape Town.
DAG continued to consolidate its role as a leader in PHP housing delivery when awarded a contract by the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements to undertake a large PHP Unblocking Project across a range of targeted areas in Khayelitsha. The scale and three-year timeframe for this housing project offered DAG a unique opportunity to demonstrate a housing construction and delivery approach as well as an emerging model that integrates a range of social investment strategies into a traditional PHP housing construction project. This innovative cost-recovery PHP Unblocking Project has the potential to become a replicable model of approach for other blocked PHP housing projects in Cape Town and elsewhere. It is receiving increasing attention and interest from the Department of Human Settlements (national and Western Cape) and from as far afield as the Eastern Cape.
DAG’s newly designed Vision 2020 programmes build on lessons and outcomes of the 2010-2012 period
DAG is leading Non-Profit Organisation that supports communities to strengthen community organising; enabling affordable housing, land and tenure security; resist evictions; and shape urban development policies. Our mission is to support and advocate for community led development addressing economic, social and spatial imbalances.
DAG is a registered Non-Profit Organisation: No. 006-194 NPO.
DAG is a Public Benefit Organisation: No. 930016961.
DAG is a Non-Profit Company without Members: No. 1993/006859/08.
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Enabling citizens to create change
Re-imagining neighbourhoods through facilitation
Financing a just city
Delivery of affordable housing
Learning and advocacy for change
Publications / Research
Contact DAG
Email: dag@dag.org.za
101 Lower Main Rd, Observatory, 7925, Cape Town, South Africa
The change we want to see
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Wrongful death lawsuit filed over actress Naya…
Wrongful death lawsuit filed over actress Naya Rivera’s drowning in Ventura County
FILE – In this May 5, 2017, file photo, Naya Rivera attends the 24th Annual Race to Erase MS Gala in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
PUBLISHED: November 18, 2020 at 11:57 p.m. | UPDATED: November 19, 2020 at 9:11 a.m.
VENTURA — A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed over the drowning of “Glee” actress Naya Rivera, who died this summer while boating with her 4-year-old son on a California lake.
The suit, filed Tuesday, blames Ventura County and managers of Lake Piru for her accidental death on July 8 at the lake northwest of Los Angeles. It was filed on behalf of her son, Josey Hollis Dorsey, by Ryan Dorsey — Rivera’s ex-husband and the boy’s father and guardian — and also on behalf of her estate.
Rivera, 33, had rented a pontoon boat on the lake. Her son was found sleeping and alone on the drifting boat later that afternoon.
Rivera’s body was found floating in a 30-foot-deep area of the lake five days later. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said Rivera’s body was most likely trapped in thick vegetation underwater for several days before floating to the top.
An autopsy report said Rivera was a good swimmer and listed her death as an accident.
But the lawsuit said negligence was involved. It said the pontoon boat lacked a safely accessible ladder, radio, rope, anchor or other equipment to keep swimmers from being separated from the boat.
It also didn’t have a life preserver or other flotation or lifesaving devices, according to the suit.
The man who rented Rivera the boat has said she declined a life vest, but he put one aboard anyway.
The suit also said there weren’t any signs in the area warning “of the lake’s strong currents, low visibility, high winds” and other dangers even though at least 26 people have drowned there since the lake opened in 1959.
“While Naya and Josey were swimming, the boat started to be carried away — likely by the current and wind, which gusted up to 21 mph that afternoon,” according to the lawsuit.
Inaccurate reports had said that Rivera boosted the boy back aboard the boat but he managed to get aboard by himself, according to the suit.
The boy heard Rivera cry for help as she struggled to get back to the boat before she disappeared, the suit said.
Rivera may not have known that her son had made it to the boat “but she surely knew that she was dying and would not make it back to her son,” the suit contends.
A call seeking comment from Ventura County wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday night. A county spokesperson declined to comment to Fox News, saying the county hadn’t been served with the lawsuit.
Rivera was born in Valencia and grew up in the city, graduating from Valencia High in 2005.
boating/yachting
Fatal and fiery crash in North Hills marks end of Van Nuys pursuit
Wildfire threatens homes in Thousand Oaks
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Home Bitcoin Nasdaq Plans to List Bitcoin Futures in 2019
Nasdaq Plans to List Bitcoin Futures in 2019
By Kem -
Nasdaq has recently announced their commitment to pursue Bitcoin futures, and is planning to introduce the contracts in the first quarter of 2019. The exchange operator was rumoured to be contemplating launching Bitcoin futures in 2017, however, operations were deferred in order to create a more unique offering.
Partnership with VanEck
The world’s second-largest stock exchange is entering a partnership with US investment firm VanEck to provide a range of cryptocurrency service offerings. VanEck’s director of digital asset strategy, Gabor Gurbacs, elaborated on the developments during the “Consensus: Invest” conference in New York last month, and stated during a panel discussion that the two companies will bring “a regulated crypto 2.0 futures-type contract” to investors.
While exact dates have not yet been announced, the contracts are expected to launch in Q1 2019, and are the result of extended work by both companies to ensure regulatory compliance. Bitcoin derivatives are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and Gurbacs also revealed that the firm “ran a few extra miles working with the CFTC to bring about new standards for custody and surveillance”.
The investment firm is also awaiting a final decision on its joint proposal for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), and VanEck submitted a proposal together with blockchain software and financial services firm SolidX earlier this year with a decision set to be made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) next year.
The SEC has decided to take an additional 60 days to consider permitting a rule change that would allow the Cboe BZX exchange and VanEck to list a “SolidX Bitcoin ETF” offering. The Commission has moved to take the full 240 days allowed to deliberate on the proposal, and as a result, a decision on the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin ETF proposal is set to be announced on February 27, 2019.
Set of regulated digital assets
Towards the end of 2017, Nasdaq had begun to indicate that it planned to launch BTC futures in 2018, however, the rollout was delayed to create “unique enough” offerings. The futures contract will be the first of a set of “transparent, regulated and surveilled” digital assets products to be launched as part of the partnership with VanEck, with Gabor Gurbacs revealing that the firm has been discussing futures with Nasdaq, MVIS Indices, and other market participants for close to 18 months.
He also noted that futures create an opportunity for bears to enter a market, however, the introduction of futures and various types of financial instruments are signs market maturity. “There is an increased regulatory and institutional drive towards greater transparency into the digital asset space, we hope to inspire greater confidence among investors and foster more fair and orderly digital asset markets”, he added.
According to Gurbacs, the new products will be more transparent and resilient than current offerings with the CFTC having already approved two crypto futures products. These include one from the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) and another by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and cash-settled Bitcoin futures contracts first entered the two platforms in December 2017.
In addition, the first physically delivered Bitcoin futures are set to launch in January 2019 on Bakkt, a digital assets platform created by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), operator of the New York Stock Exchange. The steady decline in prices and general stagnation of overall trading volumes has led many in the space to try and identify possible catalysts for a resurgence, and some see the Bakkt offerings as a potential trigger for the beginning of a positive uptrend. The Bakkt Bitcoin derivative will ensure that physical purchases of Bitcoin accompany each trade and will launch on January 24, 2019.
Featured Image via BigStock.
Reviewing EarnBet – A Decentralized, Profitable, and Fun Cryptocurrency Casino
Secure and Anonymize Your Bitcoin Transactions With MyCryptoMixer, The Most Effective Bitcoin Mixer of...
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C. T. Karim & Partners
Barristers & Advocates
C. T. Karim & Partners is a law firm, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, comprising of a group of qualified, experienced, dynamic and specialized lawyers dedicated in providing quality legal services in diversified areas of the law. The dedication, sincerity and commitment of our team members has helped us to attain considerable goodwill amongst our ever growing clientele since our inception. Although our firm's practice is very diversified, our primary focus and concentration remains banking, company, land and securities law. Our clientele comprises of some of the leading banks, financial institutions and insurance companies, multinational and national conglomerates, asset management companies, venture capital investment companies and merchant banks.
C. T. Karim & Partners is located in Motijheel, the commercial heart of Dhaka, which is also within the vicinity of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, Dhaka District Court and Chief Metropolitan Magistrates Court. Our library is equipped with updated journals, gazzettes and other reference books in order to enable our lawyers to familiarize themselves with the latest amendments in law and decisions of Bangladesh's apex court.
C. T. Karim & Partners focuses on providing one stop solution for local and foreign investors seeking to set up their business operations in Bangladesh. Our firm has successfully enabled a number of foreign investors to incorporate their business from scratch. We are equipped to address any queries relating to the investment law, companies law, securities law, property law, Foreign Exchange Regulations of Bangladesh Bank and other relevant legislation that are relevant for foreign investors. Our chamber is closely affiliated with leading merchant banks, auditor firms and tax consultants that helps our clients to carry on business in compliance with prevailing laws and regulations of the Bangladesh. The services of our chamber in this area extends to quasi-legal services (such as obtaining various permission, approvals and licenses required to be obtained from various government authorities) in addition to comprehensively handling company secretarial affairs with the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies & Firms and Securities & Exchanges Commission.
C. T. Karim & Partners aims to providing swift, accurate and quality driven legal solutions to its clients. At the outset, we seek to provide sufficient information, analysis and advise in order to enable our clients to make informed and pragmatic choices. In an attempt to shield our clients from the adversarial aspects of legal system and we always encourage our clients to opt for mediation and negotiation whenever possible. Our vision is to set a new benchmark for quality legal services in Bangladesh.
We are immensely proud and honored to announce that C. T. Karim & Partners is the first Bangladeshi law firm to have been inducted into the Asean Plus Group which aims to provide quality, responsive and integrated legal advice in the ASEAN regions.
"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
Civil & Commercial
Suite # 7D1, Paramount Heights (7th Floor)
65/2/1 Box Culvert Road
Purana Paltan, Dhaka - 1000, Bangladesh
karim@ctkpartners.com
© by C.T. Karim & Partners. All rights reserved.
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How China Is Closing In on Its Own Digital Currency
Sep 8, 2020 China, Closing, Currency, Digital
Not all the details are out, but according to new patents registered by the PBOC and official speeches, it could work something like this: Consumers and businesses would download a digital wallet onto their mobile phone and fill it with money from their account at a commercial bank — similar to going to an ATM. They then use that money — dubbed Digital Currency Electronic Payment, or DCEP — like cash to make and receive payments directly with anyone else who also has a digital wallet. Some questions remain, including the impact on Big Tech companies such as Ant Group Co. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. that already offer payment services.
2. Where is it being tested?
The PBOC gave the green light in April for some commercial lenders to conduct internal, hypothetical-use tests of the digital yuan in Suzou, Xiong’an, Chengdu and Shenzhen as well as the 2022 Winter Olympics venues in Beijing and Zhangjiakou. In August the Ministry of Commerce said tests would be rolled out to more cities including Beijing and Hong Kong, but gave no timetable. The tests allow selected users to convert between cash and digital money, check account balance, make payment and remittance. In Suzhou, some government employees have received transport subsidies in the form of digital currency, and McDonald’s in Xiong’an accepts payment with digital yuan, according to the Global Times newspaper. Didi Chuxing, China’s biggest ride-hailing company, is conducting an internal test on its platform, and food-delivery giant Meituan Dianping and streaming platform Bilibili Inc. are in talks with the PBOC for similar experiments.
No word. In late August, China Construction Bank Corp. made its digital currency wallet services temporarily available online to its customers — probably by accident. People could register a wallet for transactions in digital currency, the account was separate from the user’s regular CCB account, and there were daily and annual caps on amounts, according to Caijing magazine. The functions were soon removed from the mobile app. PBOC Governor Yi Gang said in May the trials are just part of “regular research work,” dialing back expectations. The mention of the Winter Games suggested 2022 as a possible target. Innovation regarding digital currencies also was mentioned in the grand plan to make Shenzhen, the technology hub next to Hong Kong, into a world-class city by 2025.
4. Aren’t most transactions already electronic?
Yes. China is increasingly a cashless society. Even street-food sellers in small towns will prefer to use a mobile payment app than make actual change. Such apps handled 53 trillion yuan ($7.8 trillion) of transactions in China in the first quarter of 2020, according to research firm Analysys. Ant’s Alipay handled more than half of that, followed by Tencent’s WeChat Pay with a third. The PBOC said all non-cash transactions (which also includes such things as credit, debit and stored-value cards, bank transfers and checks) totaled 3.8 quadrillion yuan in 2019. The trend is hardly unique to China: A central bank survey in Sweden found that only 13% of people in 2018 paid for their most-recent purchase in cash, down from 39% in 2010.
It’s hard to say. The PBOC’s digital wallet is just a wallet, probably with some features allowing people to pay for some retail services, whereas Alipay and WeChat Pay are deeply embedded in a whole world of social media, e-commerce, ride-hailing, bill-paying, investments and other functions. There’s no obvious reason why they couldn’t co-exist. But it’s unclear how they will work. The PBOC’s push comes as Ant is preparing to raise about $30 billion in what could become the largest initial public offering in history — money the company has said will help it diversify beyond the payments business. While it’s taken part in the PBOC’s research and development since 2017, Ant said in its IPO prospectus that it may “not be able to fit into the new changes,” and that it’s difficult to estimate what the impact of the DCEP will be on its business.
6. Why is the PBOC doing this?
The project was started by former PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, who retired in March 2018. He wanted to protect China from having to some day adopt a standard, like Bitcoin, designed and controlled by others. Having the ability to track money electronically as it changes hands would be useful in combating money laundering and other illegal activities. Facebook Inc.’s redesigned cryptocurrency project, called Libra, may have sped things up. Assuming it goes ahead, Libra could end up increasing the dollar’s dominance — and weakening China’s capital controls. As the head of the PBOC’s research bureau, Wang Xin, put it last year, that could have “economic, financial and even international political consequences.”
7. Is it a cryptocurrency?
Probably not. When we say cryptocurrency, we usually mean an offering such as Bitcoin that uses decentralized, online ledgers known as blockchain to verify and record transactions. It and others such as Ether support anonymous transfers without the need for a middleman — or a central bank. The wild volatility in their value, however, makes them ill-suited for use as a means of payment. Libra will be a set of cryptocurrencies, but so-called stablecoins, with each backed a real-life currency such as the dollar, euro or pound. Initially at least, Libra will be run by private companies including Facebook, Uber and Spotify. The PBOC will, of course, back the digital yuan, making it the opposite of decentralized. It’s also not certain that it will use blockchain, either.
8. Why not use existing coins?
China banned cryptocurrency exchanges and so-called initial coin offerings in 2017 amid a broad effort to cleanse risk from its financial system and clamp down on so-called shadow banking. They can still be traded, but through a slower, more restrictive process. Digital currencies also could provide a way to move money out of China, potentially adding to capital outflows that would undermine the yuan’s value. Even though Libra isn’t out yet, Chinese officials have called for oversight by monetary authorities. (Facebook’s website is banned in China, but many Chinese access it via a work-around called a virtual private network, or VPN.)
9. Why not use blockchain?
Researchers have expressed doubts about whether the technology would be able to support a large volume of simultaneous transactions. China’s annual Singles’ Day shopping gala in 2018 had payment demand peaking at 92,771 transactions per second, far above what Bitcoin’s blockchain could support, according to another central bank official, Mu Changchun.
The bank wants to “strike a balance” between anonymity and the need to crack down on financial crimes, Mu said, but it’s unclear what that means. The PBOC has said that user information won’t be completely exposed to banks. But user identities will likely be tied to individual wallets, giving authorities another window into people’s lives. PBOC Deputy Governor Fan Yifei suggested in an article in 2018 that banks may need to submit daily information on transactions and that there could be caps on transactions by individuals.
11. How will banks be affected?
Mainly in bookkeeping. Digital cash would have to be kept separate from regular savings, because it represents money in actual circulation (known in central banking parlance as M0), not the so-called demand deposits (M1) which banks use to lend out again to companies and households. Commercial lenders would deposit 100% worth of reserves at the central bank in exchange for digital currency, which it then distributes to retail users. The two-tier system also reduces the burden on the PBOC to perform due diligence, revamp IT systems and answer client requests.
Probably not immediately. As the PBOC’s digital money is designed to replace cash, it won’t have a big impact on the broad money supply, and thereby its effect on monetary policy will likely be neutral. If the digital currency is widely accepted and people are encouraged to hold more cash, bank deposits could decline, but the impact will be manageable, according to a 2018 article from the PBOC’s digital currency research institute. In a more distant future, the central bank might use digital currency to help steer the economy. Patent filings made public in October 2018 described a currency that would require banks making loans to input details about borrowers and interest rates before funds could be transferred. That could allow the PBOC to more proactively control bank lending and direct funding where it deems appropriate. Furthermore, should there be a need for China to turn to an unconventional monetary policy toolkit, digitized currency would allow it to apply negative rates even for people holding digital cash.
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Revolution – what happens when we have no electricity
September 17, 2012 by Diane Brunner
Revolution, the newest brainchild of J.J. Abrams, is going to change up how we think a post-apocalyptic show should be. In this new science fiction drama show for NBC, something caused electricity to stop working. Something we have lived with and been almost completely dependent on for over 100 years is simply gone, and we have to learn to work without it to survive.
The show will being fifteen years after this phenomenon with most areas ruled by warlords and militias since a central government can no longer work. The series is going to focus on one family, the Matheson’s, who have an item that might not only explain why the power went out around the world, but also could hold the key to reigniting it. Unfortunately such an item is extremely valuable so the family must elude all groups that want to posses such a thing for themselves. For those who stand the most to lose if the world regained the ability to flourish without them, they are the most dangerous.
http://youtu.be/JwfCRAtkYEI
Revolving around Charlie Matheson, a strong-willed young woman, and her brother Danny, Revolution looks to have some interesting twists. Charlie must reconnect with her estranged uncle Miles, a former U.S. Marine who is now living a hermetic life, in order to save Danny when a local militia leader kidnaps him. The pair join forces with some other survivors in an attempt to rescue Danny, overthrow the militia, and just maybe re-establish the USA. This journey will also allow them to explore what has happened to the world, and possibly, why the power failed to begin with. Of course, there is also the question of if they will be able to return from this expedition.
Revolution has some big names coming to the screen, both from big and small areas. Tracy Spiridakos from Being Human will assume the role of Charlie, while Memphis Beat’s Graham Rogers will play Danny. Billy Burke, Bella’s father from the Twilight Saga, is the estrange uncle Charlie must make amends with. Others from movies such as The Blind Side and Iron man will star in this series and what J.J. Abrams show would be complete without a Lost cast member? Elizabeth Mitchell will take on the role of Rachel Matheson.
So tune in Monday September 17 at 10 pm to see this new series take off. From the previews, it looks to be interesting to say the least. My only concern is they will create an awesome world with all kinds of twists and turns and give it an ending like Lost received. I hope that doesn’t happen and will be watching to find out.
Diane Brunner
I have been a gamer for over 20 years. My preference is RPG, fighter, action, adventure, defense, and strategy although I will play just about anything. I also prefer console to PC gaming. Depending on what interests me, I watch TV and movies. Some things every week or when its new and others as they catch my fancy. Here I prefer dramas, fantasy, sci-fi, and action. I also am an avid reader and writer.
Latest posts by Diane Brunner (see all)
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The Walking Dead – I Ain’t a Judas - February 27, 2013
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Join the StarCraft II Tournament Hosted by Kingston Technology
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Court Lets Cisco Systems Off the Hook for Helping China Detain, Torture Religious Minorities
Legal Analysis by Cindy Cohn and rainey Reitman
Chinese citizens who suffered forced detention, torture, and a panoply of brutal human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government have been engaged in a high profile court case against Silicon Valley mainstay Cisco Systems for many years. Those Chinese citizens suffered yet another indignity in a California court a couple of weeks ago: a district judge dismissed the case against Cisco without even giving them the chance to gather evidence on the key point where the court found them wanting. The court noted that even though Cisco may have designed and developed the Golden Shield system for the purpose of tracking, identifying and facilitating the capture of Chinese religious minorities, Cisco would not be held liable because it didn’t do enough in the U.S. to facilitate human rights abuses. EFF attempted to file an amicus brief in the case after oral argument, but it was rejected.
The case seems high tech—it's about Cisco’s Golden Shield, a set of sophisticated technologies that include specific purpose-built parts for persecution of the Falun Gong. But it’s actually fairly simple: at what point does a company that intentionally builds tools that are specially designed for governmental human rights abuses become liable for the use of those tools for their intended (and known) purposes?
No tech company should be held accountable when governments misuse general use products to engage in human rights abuses. This isn’t about bare routers or server logs. The case alleged and presented some strong early evidence that Cisco did far more – including:
A library of carefully analyzed patterns of Falun Gong Internet activity (or “signatures”) that enable the Chinese government to uniquely identify Falun Gong Internet users;
Highly advanced video and image analyzers that Cisco marketed as the “only product capable of recognizing over 90% of Falun Gong pictorial information;”
Several log/alert systems that provide the Chinese government with real time monitoring and notification based on Falun Gong Internet traffic patterns;
Applications for storing data profiles on individual Falun Gong practitioners for use during interrogation and “forced conversion” (i.e., torture);
It also included a presentation by Cisco to the Chinese authorities highlighting the special tools Cisco offered for persecuting what it called “Falun Gong evil religion.” Using such terms about any ethnic or religious group in an internal presentation regarding a government project should be a red flag for anyone concerned about human rights.
The court acknowledged these allegations, noting that the complaint alleges “individual features customized and designed specifically to find, track and suppress Falun Gong,” and that the tools were actually used for those purposes: “Golden Shield provided the means by which all the Plaintiffs were tracked, detained and tortured.” The complaint also alleged that much of Cisco’s work building the specific tools to target this religious minority was conducted from its San Jose offices.
In an ordinary lawsuit, those allegations, which are credible and in some places confirmed, would be enough to let a party get into the evidence phase of a case, passing a motion to dismiss. Think about federal criminal law, where all that is needed for a criminal conspiracy is an agreement to commit a crime and an overt act. Similarly, in patent and copyright law, the standard of “inducement” liability allows responsibility for someone else’s actions when someone “distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.” And there is no question that some Cisco’s “overt acts” and “affirmative expressions” to foster human rights abuses—like designing and developing Falun Gong identification and tracking modules—took place in San Jose.
In fact, the US government felt that there was a sufficient nexus to the U.S. to launch an indictment of Megaupload in Virginia based on far fewer connections to possibly illegal acts by its customers in the U.S. than Cisco had with its Chinese governmental customers. Good thing for Cisco that the Chinese government is just arresting, torturing and forcibly converting Falun Gong rather than committing copyright infringement.
So why is the standard so much higher for engaging in torture or forced conversion than it would be for bank robbing or patent or copyright infringement? The answer is that it shouldn’t be. The key law relied upon in the case, the Alien Tort Statute, requires, after a 2013 Supreme Court decision called Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, that plaintiffs show that the matter “touch and concern” the United States in order for the case to proceed here. The phrase that is not defined and courts have not yet developed a unified approach to it, but the District Court here apparently decided that since the actual human rights violations—the torture, forced conversions and arbitrary arrest—occurred in China, there wasn’t a sufficient nexus even though there were strong allegations that the specific technologies developed to target the Falun Gong for those abuses was intentionally and knowingly developed here.
We are deeply disappointed in the ruling and think the court got it wrong, as did an earlier court in Maryland. As our world becomes more networked, technology has the capacity to connect people worldwide to unlimited information and other people. But technological advances have also been abused by authoritarian regimes to repress people and to facilitate crimes against humanity. The Golden Shield in China has been a tool for social repression, censorship, surveillance like no other one earth, and China relied on it to hunt down, detain, imprison and “disappear” untold numbers of people.
As a great exporter of advanced technology, American companies like Cisco can’t plead ignorance about the ways in which our technology is used when they specifically and knowingly build the tools for those uses. And when a company like Cisco customizes and crafts technology for an authoritarian regime, it has a responsibility to consider the very human consequences of its actions. That’s why EFF has created guiding principles for technology companies to help them avoid assisting repressive governments. While the District Court here fell short short in holding companies accountable (it also failed to take into account a decision of the Ninth Circuit just days before that lowered the standard for holding companies like Cisco liable), we still have an opportunity to teach US companies to act in ways that respect and uphold human rights, both in the courts and elsewhere. Cisco may have blood on its servers, but other Silicon Valley companies can choose a different path.
10973373-0-28677.pdf
Surveillance Technologies
Doe I v. Cisco
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7 health systems join to form interstate alliance
Three of the largest health systems in New Jersey and four in Pennsylvania, totaling 25 hospitals, have formed an interstate consortium to work on quality, population health management, best practices, and medical research, according to a press statement from one of the health systems.
AllSpire Health Partners include hospitals that have been ranked by U.S. News and World Report within the top 10 in their states and more than 20 specialties considered to be the top 50 throughout the country.
New Jersey systems include Atlantic Health System, Hackensack University Health Network, and Meridian Health. In Pennsylvania, the systems are Lancaster General Health, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Reading Health System, and WellSpan Health.
Together, the systems cover more than 6 million people and produce $10.5 billion in revenue, making AllSpire the largest healthcare consortium in the country.
AllSpire plans to “address economies of scale, share best practices to improve health outcomes, and identify opportunities in the new era of healthcare delivery,” the press statement noted.
“I am looking forward to collaborating with my colleagues and their respective organizations on developing innovative models of care to improve everything for our patients and communities,” said John K. Lloyd, FACHE, president and CEO of Meridian Health.
This alliance follows a national trend of consolidation, according to Joel Cantor, director of the Center for State Health Policy, as reported by NJBIZ.COM. This trend is “driven in part by provisions of the Affordable Care Act that are intended to improve care coordination and outcomes in patients,” Cantor told NJBIZ.COM.
“[However,] hospital consolidation brings risks for health care consumers,” said Cantor. “Larger hospital systems can wield greater negotiating leverage over reimbursement rates with healthcare insurers, ultimately driving up prices and costs. While it does not appear from their public announcement that AllSpire has either the goal or corporate form needed to enter into price negotiations with payers, moving in that direction could happen in the future.”
Health System | Community Practice | News
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Brad Hobbs: Central Ohio’s ‘Bankable’ Restaurateur
By Betsy Hamm
Growing up in Youngstown, OH, Brad Hobbs’ first job was delivering pizza for Little Caesars, followed by a position at TGI Fridays. He knew right away that he would be spending the rest of his life in the restaurant business.
“The whole culture appealed to me,” he says.
Brad has worked at many restaurants and bars in Ohio, as well as Las Vegas. After settling in Columbus 14 years ago, he knew that he wanted to go into business for himself. Brad and his family live in the Olde Towne East neighborhood, where he aspired to open his first establishment, the Olde Towne Tavern – but he struggled to figure out how to cross the bridge from restaurant employee to owner. He was plagued by the long-held, and long-standing belief that banks don’t loan to restaurants because they are a risky endeavors. He exhausted all of his personal resources trying to determine how to get a loan, and finally stumbled on a surprise.
“I spoke to a gentleman who bluntly asked me if I had been to a bank. I sluffed it off and said, ‘From everything I’ve heard, banks don’t lend money,’” Hobbs says. “He was actually with Chase Bank.”
Hobbs talked with one of the man’s colleagues, who gave him the ins and outs on the small business lending process, and recommended Huntington Bank as a lender that commonly assists with capital for startups.
“We went into Huntington, and I was prepared,” Hobbs says. “Our business plan request was for $150,000, and Huntington agreed to loan us $75,000.”
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JKF airport halts flights after plane skids into snowbank
Published Sunday, January 05, 2014
A plane skidded into a snowbank on Sunday in freezing conditions at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, which temporarily ceased operations because of the icy conditions, officials said.
The airport was closed at 8:32 am (1332 GMT) after a Delta Airlines jet from Toronto slid into snow on a taxiway, officials including at the Port Authority, which manages the airport, said.
There were no injuries to the 35 people on board, according to ABC News.
The airport, which handles international and domestic flights and is one of the largest in the United States, will reopen at 11:30 am.
There were also delays at the nearby LaGuardia and Newark airports.
On Saturday, a small plane made an emergency landing on a highway in the Bronx borough of New York, injuring the pilot and two passengers, as the area battled a brutal cold snap.
The United States is in the midst of a brutal cold spell that has left at least a dozen people dead and seen some of the coldest weather in two decades.
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Alexander VII
A papacy that began with high hopes was soon marred by nepotism, nevertheless, Alexander VII (1599–1667) took strong stands on church matters and bequeathed to Rome and the world some of the most endearing baroque works.
Born Fabio Chigi in Sienna, Papal States, on February 13, 1599, the future Pope Alexander VII came from one of Sienna's more powerful families. His father was a nephew of Pope Paul V. Ill-health prevented the young Chigi from attending school, but he was taught first by his mother then a succession of tutors. At age twenty-seven he earned doctorates in philosophy, law, and theology from the University of Sienna.
Became Career Diplomat
Prior to being elected pope Chigi was a career ecclesiastical diplomat. In 1627 Pope Urban VIII appointed him as vice-legate of Ferrara. From there he became inquisitor of Malta and later nuncio in Cologne. In the latter post he participated in the negotiations that led to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years' War. Chigi, himself, protested those provisions he regarded as anti-Catholic and which Pope Innocent X would denounce in a Papal Bull. In 1651 Innocent named him as his secretary of state and in February 1652 he was elevated to the rank of cardinal. Following the death of Innocent X Cardinal Chigi was elected pope on April 7, 1655 over French opposition. He was crowned Alexander VII (honoring the twelfth-century pope Alexander III) on April 18, 1655.
Given his background many expected Alexander to be a dynamic pope, but that did not turn out to be the case. He began his reign by disavowing nepotism and ordering his predecessor's most trusted advisor, his widowed sister-in-law Olimpia Maidalchini (known as la papessa), to return to her native town of Orvieto. By 1656, however, Alexander had reversed his policy and, with the Curia's encouragement, brought his brother and nephews, one of whom was already a cardinal, to Rome. As these and other relatives accrued more power they sought to enrich themselves and the Chigi family.
Foreign Policy Established
Alexander inherited a number of church and foreign policy problems from his predecessor. From the very beginning his pontificate clashed with the policy of King Louis XIV of France and his prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin. There was no French ambassador to Rome until 1662 when the Duc de Crequi—also hostile to the papacy—was named. Seeking to weaken the Papal States, France supported the territorial claims of the Farnese and Este families. The pope was also excluded from participating in the 1659 Peace of the Pyrenees between France and Spain.
Relations went from bad to worse. Louis XIV accused the Vatican of violating diplomatic immunity and threatening the life of the French ambassador with Corsican troops. The Duc de Crequi was recalled and the papal nuncio expelled from Paris. Louis then occupied Avignon and Venaissin—both papal enclaves—and threatened to invade the Papal States. Alexander was forced to submit to the Treaty of Pisa in 1664, disband the Corsican guard and erect a monument in Rome commemorating his reconciliation with Louis.
Alexander's call for a crusade against the Turks at first went unheeded by France. He formed the Holy Alliance to halt the Turks' drive into Hungary, but was largely unsuccessful. When Louis XIV finally did consent to engage the Turks, he brought France into the alliance as a member of the Rhenish League. The European powers defeated the Turks at Raab on August 1, 1664, but Alexander's role had been diminished.
Alexander's relations with Spain were little better: the papal nuncio was not received, and after Alexander agreed to the king's nominees for diocesan posts, the king left the post vacant and appropriated the income. On the other hand Vatican relations with the Republic of Venice improved during Alexander's reign so that the Jesuits were allowed to return to that city. Another minor foreign-relations coup was the conversion of Sweden's Queen Christina. Following her abdication she relocated to Rome where Alexander, himself, confirmed her.
In 1656 Alexander reversed Innocent X's decree and allowed Chinese rites to be used by Jesuit missionaries in China. In 1659 he went a step further when he dispensed Chinese clergy from having to pray to the divine office in Latin.
The most important theological controversy of the age was Jansenism, a reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church based on the writings of Dutch theologian Cornelis Jansen (1585-1638). The controversy heated up during Alexander's reign. Alexander confirmed his predecessor's condemnation of Jansenism's five important propositions, notably the subservience of free will to God's grace. On October 16, 1656 in Ad Sanctam beati Petri sedem, he decreed that the five points were indeed taken from Jansen's posthumously published treatise, Augustinus. Jansenist's countered that the five points were heretical but were not found in the Augustinus. Since Jansenism's stronghold was in France the controversy became a point at which Alexander and Louis XIV could unite. At the king's request Alexander required all French clergy to reject Jansenism.
The Great Philosophical Debates
Alexander also engaged in the philosophical controversies of probabilism, probabiliorism and laxism. He remained neutral toward the first of these moral positions—the Jesuits supported it—in which a libertarian viewpoint is upheld regarding the lawfulness or unlawfulness of an action, even if the opposite viewpoint is more probable. Probabiliorism took a modified approach, stating that when the lawfulness or unlawfulness of an action was in doubt one should follow the opinion favoring liberty only when it was more probable than the opposing viewpoint. Many felt that probabilism would lead to laxism, where one follows the easiest moral course. Of this last system Alexander was deeply opposed. In 1665 and 1666 he condemned forty-five moral propositions he considered laxist.
Alexander continued the decorative work of his two predecessors and, indeed, commissioned work from sculptor, architect and painter, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini to enclose St. Peter's Square with two curved colonnades. During Alexander's reign Bernini also decorated the church St. Maria del Popolo, which became the church of the Chigi cardinals; the Scala Regia and the Chair of St. Peter. Alexander also encouraged other public works programs in Rome such as making the streets straighter and the piazzas broader.
Pope Alexander VII died on May 22, 1667 and was buried in a tomb designed by Bernini in St. Peter's Basilica.
Duffy, Eamon, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997.
John, Eric, ed., The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1964.
McBrien, Richard P., Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II, HarperCollins, 1997.
"Pope Alexander VII," Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01294a.htm (October 28, 2002).
Encyclopedia of World Biography
"Alexander VII ." Encyclopedia of World Biography. . Encyclopedia.com. 13 Jan. 2021 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
"Alexander VII ." Encyclopedia of World Biography. . Encyclopedia.com. (January 13, 2021). https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/alexander-vii
"Alexander VII ." Encyclopedia of World Biography. . Retrieved January 13, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/alexander-vii
Alexander Vi , Alexander VI Játiva, Spain August 18, 1503 Rome, Italy Pope "Once he became Pope Alexander VI, Vatican parties, already wild, grew wilder." Voltaire… Alexander Iii (pope) , Alexander III Considered one of the great medieval popes, Alexander III (c. 1100–1181) held the pontificate from September 7, 1159, until his death i… Alexander The Great , Alexander the Great Alexander the Great Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) was the king of Macedon, the leader of the Corinthian League, and the conq… Grover Cleveland Alexander , Alexander, Grover Cleveland 1887-1950 American baseball player Grover Cleveland Alexander serves as an icon for his generation of professional baseba… ALEXANDER , ALEXANDER ALEXANDER (c. 36–7 b.c.e.), son of *Herod and *Mariamne. As Herod's heir presumptive, Alexander was educated in Rome with his younger broth… Alexander Colins , Alexander Colins (älĕksäN´drə kôlăN´), c.1527–1612, Flemish sculptor. He brought European court mannerism to Germany, where he directed the sculpture…
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Home » Hollywood
Adriana Lima Instagram: 3 Photos to Check Out on Her 35th Birthday
By: Michela Lombardi - Published: June 12, 2016 at 9:00 am
Credits: Facebook/AdrianaLima
Do you ever watch the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and just stare awe-struck at the models? How could such perfect, gorgeous specimens even exist? How are their legs so long? How are their bodies so sculpted? We’ve all been there, looking at these Victoria’s Secret models, fully amazed and maybe even a little jealous. Adriana Lima is no exception. In fact, she’s a Victoria’s Secret veteran, as their longest running model after joining in 2000. She was also a spokesmodel for Maybelline between 2003 and 2010. Today is the Adriana Lima birthday, and if you were looking for Adriana Lima photos, we’ve got you covered! We raided the Adriana Lima Instagram to get you the best and most revealing Adriana Lima pics we could find.
Credits: Instagram/adrianalima
Lima was born on June 12, 1981, in Salvador, Brazil. She was never all that interested in modeling, but after a friend didn’t want to do a modeling contest on her own, Lima also entered and ended up winning Ford’s “Supermodel of Brazil” model search.
Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York and signed with Elite Model Management. Things quickly picked up for her and she did her first magazine cover for Marie Claire Brazil in 1998. As a runway model, she worked with every designer you can imagine, from Dendi to Emilio Pucci and Balmain. The list goes on and on and includes Jason Wu, Marc Jacobs, Versace, Vera Wang, and Miu Miu.
In 2006, Lima was ranked the fifth-highest paid supermodel, and in 2012, she was fourth on the Forbes top-earning models list. At that time, she made an estimated $7.3 million per year. In 2015, she topped that number with earnings of $9.0 million per year, getting her the number two spot on the Forbes list.
What she’s best known for, though, is her many years at Victoria’s Secret. She did her first fashion show for the company in 1999 and became one of the angels in 2000. Astonishingly, she opened the show for the fifth time in 2012, just two months after giving birth to her second child. For the 2008 Victoria’s Secret Fashion show, she wore the “Fantasy Bra,” which had 3,575 black diamonds, 117 certified one-carat white round diamonds, 34 rubies and two black diamond drops of 100 carats. The bra was valued at over $5.0 million. She wore the bra again in 2014 with fellow Victoria’s Secret Angel Alessandra Ambrosio.
Lima was engaged to Serbian NBA player Marko Jaric in June 2008 after just nine months of dating. The couple got married in 2009, and they have two daughters together: Valentina and Sienna. Sadly, on May 2, 2014, Lima and Jaric separated after five years of marriage, and the divorce was finalized in March 2016. Right now, it’s reported that the Adriana Lima boyfriend is a hunk named Joe, with whom she has been spotted kissing and holding hands in New York before the Met Gala.
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East London Advertiser > News > Health
Free school meals launched for Tower Hamlet’s youngest children
Kay Atwal
Published: 4:38 PM September 11, 2013 Updated: 6:23 PM December 7, 2020
Free school dinners have been launched today across Tower Hamlets for the borough’s youngest schoolchildren.
Tower Hamlets Council has now become one of the few local authorities to take the step of funding meals for all Reception and Year 1 pupils, to ensure they receive at least one hot and nutritious meal a day.
In March the council agreed the £2.76 million investment, which will fund the scheme for the next two academic years.
The Free School Meals scheme was launched at Bygrove Primary School in Poplar by Mayor of Tower Hamlets Lutfur Rahman. He said: “Nearly 4,000 children will benefit from this initiative, which is vital in helping to make sure our young people eat healthy meals.
“I am determined to do all I can to improve educational achievement and opportunities for young people in Tower Hamlets and we know that a healthy lunch is one of the keys to children learning better.”
The move will benefit 3,943 children over two years at 74 schools.
It means the council is one of a handful of local authorities leading the way in offering free meals for primary school youngsters.
Since Tower Hamlets Council announced its plans in March, the idea has become a key part of the Government’s education policy.
In July a report commissioned by Education Secretary Michael Gove, entitled the School Food Plan, called for all primary pupils to be provided with free school meals, saying there was a clear link between good nutrition and strong academic performance.
The man tasked with rolling out the report’s actions is Myles Bremner, who has left his position as chief executive of national food growing charity Organic Garden to take on the role.
He said: “The School Food Plan recommended that Government should embark upon a rollout of free school meals for primary schools. We are delighted that boroughs including Tower Hamlets are leading the way in funding this important provision.
“There is robust evidence to show that having a school meal has a significant impact on children’s attainment and children’s health.”
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Occupy London’s Mile End Park camp gets Tower Hamlets eviction notice
Published: 7:00 AM May 2, 2012 Updated: 8:34 AM October 14, 2020
Protesters who set up an Occupy London camp in east London are claiming they’ve stopped rival youth gangs fighting.
The pitched tents in Mile End Park is where clashes have occurred in the past.
But now the 20 occupiers campaigning against global capitalism, who have been served notice to quit by Tower Hamlets council, say they have mediated between warring youths.
“We’re a buffer zone separating rival Somali and Bangladesh gangs,” claimed one campaigner calling himself Earthian.
“They try to fight and we’re in the middle. We have intervened and negotiated, persuading them that fighting wasn’t the way forward.”
The protesters originally set up camp on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral last year to highlight their campaign against the global monetary economy they blame for the world recession, before being evicted by a High Court order.
They went on to occupy land next to the Limehouse Link road tunnel link owned by the Home & Communities Agency before being moved on by an eviction order from Bow County Court.
A handful then switched to the nearby King Edward Memorial Park before community activists in Shadwell and Wapping who are running their own campaign to stop Thames Water’s ‘super sewer’ scheme churning up the park persuaded them to leave.
The Occupy protesters have been in Mile End Park since April 1, despite attempts by Tower Hamlets to boot them out.
A council spokesman said: “We have served a notice to quit to remove the protesters and will use legal proceedings to enforce it.
“Mile End Park is an open space used by the whole community and we want to ensure residents continue to enjoy it.”
The anti-capitalist protesters, however, claim they are not causing a nuisance and have support from people in the area.
But they insist the Occupy camp is peaceful and they won’t be confrontational if bailiffs turn up.
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The chemistry-lab wall
by Samantha Weinberg
The periodic table is a fixture on the chemistry-lab wall. Every schoolchild should know its crenellated shape, and be able to recite the top line, at least: hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium...But how many of us have given much thought to the essential importance of the 94 elements that occur in nature? As the blurb for the film project “94 Elements” says: “Together they make up everything in the world.” That could be overwhelming, but the man behind “94 Elements”, Mike Paterson, breaks it down with four-to-seven-minute films, each with a different author and its own story, showing how an element is used. For Carbon (atomic number 6), a West African film-maker explores the life of a diamond miner in Sierra Leone; Phosphorus (15) examines the use of white phosphorus in the Palestinian territories; in Gadolinium (64), Nino Kirtadze ventures inside an MRI machine in Tbilisi to look at image contrast. More than a series of films, “94 Elements” straddles several media, inviting us to participate via games, an app, Twitter and live commodity-price streams, and even to make our own mini-movies—a suitable ambition for a project about the very stuff of life.
~ SAMANTHA WEINBERG
94 Elements pfilm.co.uk/94elements.html; 94elements.com, from May 1st
SCIENCE AT A GLANCE
Codebreaker: Alan Turing's life and legacy (Science Museum, London, June 21st to June 2013). The story of Britain’s great codebreaker and father of computer science.
Transit of Venus (worldwide, June 5th). Venus passes in front of the sun – an event that will not be repeated for 105 years. To mark this once-in-more-than-a-lifetime moment, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, has a series of events and a free exhibition.
Carbon 12 (L'Espace Fondation EDF, Paris, May 4th to September 16th). Carbon is used in almost everything, from fuel to tennis racquets, but its impact is now being felt on earth, wind and sea. This exhibition looks at its relationship with climate science.
World Science Festival (New York, May 30th to June 3rd). Science meets the arts, with the likes of the Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy in conversation with the composer Philip Glass. Plus talks on psycholinguistics and a global cure for cancer. ~ SW
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AMZNGOOGWMTTGTSPLSAEOFDX
Wal-Mart and Google Get Creative with Product Delivery
Michael Teague Follow
| Friday, 29 March 2013 02:15 (EST)
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Google Inc. (GOOG), in tandem with an array of partners such as Target (TGT), Walgreens (WAG), Staples (SPLS) and American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (AEO), will be initiating an online/same-day delivery shopping service in San Francisco. The pilot program will also include some of that city’s excellent local businesses such as Blue Bottle Coffee and Nob Hill Foods.
In the past few months, Google has made two acquisitions in order to help it with this new endeavor: BufferBox Inc., a service involved in the delivery of items purchased online to physical drop off locations, as well as Channel Intelligence Inc., a web service used by retailers to increase internet sales.
The move is seen as yet another front in Google’s multi-layered competition with online retail monolith Amazon.com (AMZN). But Google is not the only company that is trying to create opportunities to chip away at some of Amazon’s share of that market.
Discount retail leader Wal-Mart is also doing its part, albeit in a more experimental form. The company has hatched a plan to use store customers to deliver products to its online buyers. As has been noted elsewhere, this would mark the company’s entry into the fray of the “crowd-sourcing” phenomenon.
Currently, the company uses Federal Express (FDX) for deliveries, and in five cities a pilot program with its own trucks called “Walmart to Go” for same-day deliveries.
Trade Commission-FREE with Tradier Brokerage
The company hopes that at least some of the legion of customers who visit its stores every day will be interested in signing up to drop off packages to online shoppers who might be on or near their routes home. In return, the customer would get a discount on his or her shopping bill to cover for the cost of gas, according to Wal-Mart’s U.S. chief executive Joel Andersen.
There is perhaps something a bit incongruous about a mega company like Wal-Mart using a lo-fi/underdog small-business tactic to help it compete with other mega-companies. Either way, not much can be said about this until there are some actual results against which the relative merits of such a program can be gauged.
There has been no indication as to how much of a discount participating customers will receive, or how such a discount would be calculated. Still, it is not hard to imagine that at least some shoppers would be more than happy to see a smaller total on their receipts, especially if this comes at little inconvenience to them.
But the Wal-Mart scheme has prohibitive legal and insurance liabilities built in that might make it suitable only to large metropolitan population centers.
Whatever their respective reasons, there is no question that Google and Wal-Mart stepping up their online retail efforts must be seen in the context of how both companies perceive their competition with Amazon.
For Wal-Mart, this is more directly related to the very basis of their business, namely selling products to people. Like other brick-and-mortar retailers, it has been hit hard by Amazon’s lower prices, better selection, used offerings, free shipping, and so on.
For Google, the question is perhaps more of a strategic one. Most of its profits come from the advertising space it sells through its free web search service. Meanwhile, there is plenty of indication that Amazon is finally trying to take advantage of some of the considerable range of motion it has in this area, in a way that could be a serious threat to Google, to the extent that Google’s own Android platform would not be safe.
Thus, for Google, the delivery service may simply be a way of diversifying its revenue streams, but it could just as well have to do with giving one of its biggest rivals one more thing to have to worry about. Given that 2013 is the year during which Amazon is slated to shift most of its e-commerce to third-party sellers, after a 2012 during which it vastly expanded its warehouses and shipping centers, it should be interesting to see how this plays out.
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Just back from his appearance at the prestigious Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, where he was hand selected to perform for Kevin Hart's Laugh OutLoud Network, Erik Rivera keeps making his mark on the stand-up comedy scene.
Since his Late Night debut on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a recognition that has been a springboard to many comedy greats, Rivera has become a familiar face on television. He was then chosen as one of the Top 100 comedians to be invited to perform in the re-launch of NBC’s Last Comic Standing.
In 2015 Erik got to cross off another comedy milestone when he recorded his debut 1 Hour Comedy Special, "I'm No Expert" which is available on iTunes & Amazon. Last year Rivera was cast to star alongside Brandon T Jackson and DeRay Davis in Oxygen's docu-series "Living With Funny" - a look at life off stage for the touring comedians. Recently he co-starred in CBS's most talked about episode of Superior Donuts, where they tackled the current state of immigration in the United States!
2019 is starting off with a bang as Erik will be featured in HBO/HBO Latino’s “Entre Nos” stand up comedy showcase, highlighting the nation’s funniest Latino comedians!
DPN TALENT
Lindsay Mass (Theatrical)
lindsay@dpntalent.com
Bass Schuler Entertainment
Chris Schuler
Scott Bass
I'm No Expert Promo
Erik on the Tonight Show
Headshots (Emily Sandifer)
I'm No Expert Promo Shot
© 2017 Erik Rivera(dot)com
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Jordan Moore-Taylor agrees new deal with Exeter
Centre-half signs on for City
We are pleased to announce that defender Jordan Moore-Taylor has agreed a contract extension with Exeter City Football Club.
The 20-year-old centre-half featured a total of 31 times for the first-team during 2013/14, in what has proven to be his breakthrough season as a pro, as well playing numerous games for the club’s Under-21 side and in the St Luke’s Challenge Cup.
Moore-Taylor, another of the Grecians’ Academy graduates, cemented his place in the first-team with some stellar defensive displays at the back end of the season. At the other end of the pitch, he also got his name on the scoresheet for the first team in Exeter’s 1-1 draw with Cheltenham in April.
Jordan was one of 11 players to have graduated from the Academy at the Cat & Fiddle to feature for the Grecians in Sky Bet League 2 last season.
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Our Western Letter.
Issue 11 and Volume 1894 15.
Our Western Letter. Chicago Office of FIRE AND WATER, 202-206 La Salle, Street. March 8, 1894. W. S. Reed & Co., the engineers of the new waterworks plant, intended for Kenosha, Wis., are of Chicago, and not Kenosha, as announced in the last issue. The youth, Michael Murphy, arrested on suspicion of being a World’s Fair fire-bug, seems to be a mere victim of circumstances, if not a hoped-for scape-goat in the premises. So far the evidence doesn’t pan out, except to expose him as a callous youth, with a hankering to be the first to give the alarm, which he has succeeded in doing at several of the recent mysterious blazes in the crumbling hulks that loom up as eve-sores in Jackson Park. Without friends or influence he might serve as an example of the vigilance of the park guards. Like a wounded snake, the Coughlin-Cronin murder case, has…
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Spain: Maritime Provinces
Keywords: maritime province |
Presentation of the Maritime Provinces
Flags of the Maritime Provinces
Index of the Maritime Provinces
Clickable map of the Maritime Provinces
The origin of the Maritime Provinces goes back to King Phillip III's Royal Order of 5 October 1607 that first divided Spain into the three Maritime Provinces of Ferrol, Cádiz and Cartagena, to order the different sea ports and their ships. In 1845, a Royal Decree established 36 Maritime Provinces, six overseas Provinces included. The Maritime Provinces went through many changes, by creation of new ones, merging of former ones, or suppression of former ones.
José Carlos Alegría, 5 November 1999
Flag of the Maritime Provinces
The Royal Decree issued in 1845 assigned a flag for each province, usually known as matricular or register flag, and ordered the merchant ships to fly the flag of their harbour's maritime province at masthead. That way it was possible to identify not only the ship's nation, but her local provenance, where it was registered.
The difference between the European provinces and those from overseas territories are that the first were rectangular flags, while the latter were swallow-tailed.
In 1923, the Register of Ships published the first colour chart with the flags of the Maritime Provinces.
The Maritime Provinces and their flags were presented in different issues of Banderas [ban], as follows;
- No. 7 (1983), by Luis Grávalos and José Luis Calvo (images) [g2c83c];
- No. 11 (1984), by Emil Dreyer [dry84a];
- No. 24-25 (1987), by Sebastián Herreros [hrr87a].
Register flags are the origin of flags of the Autonomous Communities of Galicia (Maritime Province of A Coruña) and of Cantabria (Maritime Province of Santander), of the islands of Gran Canaria (Maritime Province of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and Tenerife (Maritime Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife), and of the municipalities of Gijón, San Sebastián, Huelva (former, unofficial flag), Alicante, Bilbao, Vigo and Algeciras.
José Carlos Alegría, 10 November 1999
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Beyoncé and Jay-Z stay seated during Super Bowl national anthem performance: report
MIAMI - Music superstars Beyoncé and Jay-Z chose to remain seated during Demi Lovato's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl LIV.
The pair attended the game with their daughter Blue Ivy, who also stayed in her seat, according to TMZ.
In images obtained by the outlet, the musical family can be seen sitting during the performance while others stood.
Jay-Z's entertainment company Roc Nation holds a partnership with the NFL, giving him a say in what artists perform at major NFL events -- including the Super Bowl.
After the song, DJ Khaled stopped by and spoke with Jay-Z, which was also seen in TMZ's photos.
Jay-Z recently spoke to the New York Times about his partnership with the NFL, insisting that it was not made for economic gain, but instead to promote education surrounding social justice.
“As long as real people are being hurt and marginalized and losing family members, then yes, I can take a couple rounds of negative press,” he said of the backlash received for the partnership, which some say as a betrayal of Colin Kaepernick and his protests within the NFL.
“No one is saying he hasn’t been done wrong. He was done wrong,” Jay-Z said. “I would understand if it was three months ago. But it was three years ago and someone needs to say, ‘What do we do now -- because people are still dying?”
Fox News' Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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IPRA: Chicago cop who fatally shot Rekia Boyd should be fired
CHICAGO (STMW) - A disciplinary agency is recommending that a Chicago cop acquitted of criminal charges in the 2012 killing of a 22-year-old woman should be fired, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Dante Servin was off-duty early the morning of March 21, 2012, when he fatally shot Rekia Boyd.
The Independent Police Review Authority notified police Supt. Garry McCarthy of the recommendation on Wednesday, police said.
Servin argued with a group of people in the Douglas Park neighborhood on the South Side, authorities said. He said a man pulled a gun and approached his car. Servin said he was in fear for his life and fired over his shoulder at the group. Boyd was struck in the head and died the next day.
The city settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Boyd’s family. The man whom Servin said was armed was carrying only a cellphone, authorities said.
The Cook County state’s attorney charged Servin with involuntary manslaughter, but he was acquitted. Since the acquittal, civil rights groups have protested at Chicago Police Board hearings, calling for the city to fire Servin.
“Today the Independent Police Review Authority, Chicago’s external, civilian-led body that investigates all police-involved shootings, formally recommended that CPD separate Officer Dante Servin,” the Chicago Police Department said in a statement. “We take the use of force by our officers, and the recommendations of IPRA, extremely seriously and we will carefully review the matter.”
McCarthy has 90 days to review the recommendations before deciding whether Servin should be disciplined, said Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for McCarthy.
Servin stood trial in April, but the judge tossed out the case before the defense even presented a case.
The judge, Dennis Porter, said prosecutors brought the wrong charge against Servin. He went to trial on a charge of involuntary manslaughter, not first-degree murder.
Boyd was with friends about 1 a.m. on March 21, 2012, when they walked from Douglas Park to go to a liquor store.
Servin was driving after completing his shift on a second job. Servin, who earlier called 911 to complain about noise in the park, said he told Boyd and her friends to quiet down.
He said someone cursed and then Antonio Cross, 39, rushed toward his car with a gun.
Servin fired from his car over his left shoulder, hitting Cross in the hand. Boyd, who stood about 30 feet from Cross, was shot in the back of her head.
Even though Servin was acquitted on criminal charges, the city agreed to pay $4.5 million to Boyd’s family in a wrongful death suit. The city did not admit guilt.
The Chicago Police Board is scheduled to meet Thursday night, when IPRA’s recommendation to fire Servin is expected to be the main topic of discussion.
It’s unclear how McCarthy will respond to the recommendation.
But following Servin’s acquittal, McCarthy raised eyebrows in April when he told reporters Servin should never have been charged.
“Because of the way that played out, what you didn’t know is the defense and all the intricate details of that particular event. … If the details of that case were known, I think it would be a lot clearer” why no charges were warranted, McCarthy said at the time.
McCarthy would not discuss those details, though, saying he was waiting for IPRA to complete its investigation.
“I’d rather not [reveal those circumstances] because the investigation is not done by IPRA. … When that investigation is finished, we’ll be able to talk about it a little bit more in detail. If the trial had proceeded, those events would have come out. But you’ll see how it happened,” he said.
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Illinois holds on to beat Michigan St. 59-54
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Malcolm Hill scored 19 points and Illinois withstood a last-minute technical foul to beat Michigan State 59-54 on Saturday afternoon.
Kendrick Nunn added 14 points and Nnanna Egwu had 12 points and nine rebounds for the Fighting Illini (16-8, 6-5 Big Ten), winners of three straight games.
Denzel Valentine scored 16 points for the Spartans (15-8, 6-4) but fouled out after missing a 6-foot shot that would have given his team a 56-55 lead.
After the Fighting Illini were called for a technical, Michigan State got just two points from four free throws and Valentine missed his shot on the same possession. Hill converted four at the line in the final 15 seconds for Illinois.
The Spartans finished 7 of 18 on free-throw shooting.
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Terrell robbery attempt ends in crash
A robbery attempt ended with a 100-mile-per-hour police chase and a dangerous crash.
It started Thursday morning when the suspect targeted a convenience store and a 75-year-old owner who was ready for a fight.
It all started about 11:30 a.m. when the young man walked into a gas station convenience store in Terrell. He asked about using the bathroom then left.
Coming back turned out to be a big mistake.
Store owner Fahed Fatayri and his wife, Ititdal, were seated a few feet away from the cash register when the young man who'd been in the store minutes earlier returned.
This time, the young man came back with a mask over his face and a large handgun.
He demanded money and pointed his pistol at Itidal.
Much of what happened next was captured on the convenience store's security cameras.
"I stand up,” said Fahed. “I say, ‘I get for you.' I have my gun every time here. I go here. I pick up the gun. I tell him, 'Come on!' He go. He say he shoot my wife. When he go, I shoot him."
The would-be robber was shot in the buttocks just as he left the store and just as Terrell police were responding to the 911 call.
"He had not even gotten out of the general area of the location when we saw him enter the vehicle,” said Capt. A.D. Sansom with the Terrell Police Department.
The ensuing chase was east along Highway 80, and it reached speeds of over 100 miles an hour.
It ended near Wills Point when the suspect tried to cross the median into the westbound lane and flipped the car several times.
The suspect was ejected from the car during the crash.
He was flown via medical helicopter to Dallas in critical condition.
Terrell police did not release the suspect’s name because they are having trouble notifying family. However, FOX 4 is told he is a 22-year-old man from the Mineola area.
Tuesday was not the first time someone has tried, unsuccessfully, to rob Fahed during his 20 years in business.
"How many times have you been robbed when you had to pull your gun?" FOX 4’s Richard Ray said.
Fahed and his wife own the gas station and adjoining liquor store.
She was robbed once when Fahed was not there.
But Fahed, an immigrant from Syria, is not a man to be messed with.
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As our name suggestions, we aim to answer your questions about video games, no matter how big or small.
If you have an unanswered question, read of our frequently asked questions below and if they don’t help, simply fill in the form to email our editor.
What are age ratings?
Age ratings ensure that entertainment content, such as films, videos, DVDs, and computer and video games, is clearly labelled for the minimum age group for which it is suitable. Age ratings provide guidance to consumers to help them decide whether or not to buy a particular product.
Previously, in the UK, age ratings for computer and video games came under two complementary systems: the voluntary European PEGI system, which stands for Pan-European Games Information, and the mandatory BBFC system, which stands for British Board of Film Classification.
Now, PEGI is the sole system used for new games. PEGI is used and recognised throughout Europe and is supported by the European Commission. Many thousands of games have been PEGI-rated since the scheme was devised and introduced in early 2003.
Essentially, the PEGI rating on a game confirms that it contains content suitable for a certain age group and above. So, a 7 game is suitable for everyone who is seven or older while an 18-rated game is deemed suitable only for adults. It is not, however, a measure of who will enjoy the game or how difficult that game is.
When buying a game for anyone under the age of 18, always look at the age rating to check it is suitable for the intended end-user.
Why have age ratings?
Computer, console and handheld gaming is now a mass-market leisure activity, with millions of players throughout Europe. In the UK, at least one in three people played a video game in the last year. And many of these players are adults: in fact, the average age of games players is now between 33 and 36-years-old, depending on the source you go with.
While most games are suitable for players of all ages, there is a huge older market and, just like film and video, there are games that are only suitable for people over 18 years old.
It is not a massive proportion of games – in fact, some 26 of the 100 best-selling boxed titles released in the UK in 2017 were certified with the 18 recommendation – but it is important that parents and others buying games for children are aware of the content of the games. And that’s where age ratings come in.
PEGI age ratings are one type of information that can help players of all ages make the best choices about the games they play on their own and with their family.
What do the symbols mean?
Computer and video games are age-rated according to the PEGI (Pan-European Games Information) system, and all packaging is visibly marked, front and back, with the traffic light age bands 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18. The square symbols on the linked page are examples of the PEGI ratings.
Where necessary, icons found on the back of the box indicate the content to be found in the game: drugs, bad language, sexual, violence, discrimination or fear. These are called game descriptors and are also detailed on the PEGI website.
Everyone in the UK adheres to this system, including the major console manufacturers such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, as well as by publishers, developers and retailers.
Note that there are also historic ratings under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 where some games were referred to the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) and may have a BBFC rating, usually 15 or 18. Additionally, older games will have the black and white versions of the PEGI badges with a plus next to each number. This is only a labeling difference and still represents the same age criteria.
What are the legal penalties for someone who abuses the age rating system?
From the summer of 2012 the PEGI system has been effectively incorporated into UK law and the VSC has been designated as the body responsible for the age rating of video games under the PEGI system. Video games will be age rated at one or other of the following age levels.
You will see the age ratings marked on the sleeves.
Mandatory: It is important to note that the age ratings 12, 16 and 18 age ratings are mandatory and that it is illegal for a retailer to supply any game with any of these ratings to anyone below the specified age.
Advisory: The age ratings 3 and 7 are advisory only. The PEGI age ratings will enable parents and carers to make an informed choice when buying a game for their children.
Retailers have the obligation to train their staff properly in order to minimize the risk of breaking the law. If a member of staff supplies an age restricted product to someone under age it is the member of staff and the retailer who can be prosecuted. Responsible retailers have been training their staff on the subject of age restricted products under the VRA since 1985.
Is it possible for my child to become addicted to games?
Gaming is a hobby, like reading, listening to music or playing a sport. As with other hobbies, those participating in playing games can engage with it deeply and passionately. There is no conclusive research identifying a link between games themselves and addiction. In a few cases people have been known to play games excessively, but this is often likely to be down to the individual playing the game and not the content or medium. If you are concerned about the health of someone who is playing games excessively then you should consult your GP.
Millions of people play games because they enjoy them; and some people enjoy them more than others. Playing video games is simply another daily activity that can give people pleasure. In fact, UK gamers aged 16-49 spend most time surfing the internet (83% spending more than six hours a week) or watching TV (71% spending more than 6 hours a week). Only 24% spend more than six hours per week playing console or PC video games, less than the proportion who read books for that long (28%).
Games should be played as part of an active and healthy lifestyle and can have many beneficial effects. They help people of all ages to develop social skills such as collaboration and turn taking and nurture strategic thinking. Playing active technology and fitness games can also improve physical health, and offer other general health benefits that result from this.
However, regular breaks are vital for healthy game play. UKIE recommends that players should take regular breaks – at least five minutes every 45 – 60 minutes as a rule of thumb.
We recommend that parents use the parental controls systems available on all main games consoles to control how their children play games: parental controls can be used to restrict the amount of time spent playing games, limit internet access and control access to age appropriate content.
Can mobile games cause epilepsy?
The key point here is that the current research shows that video games don’t cause epilepsy but can trigger a seizure in the extremely small number of people, who already have Photosensitive Epilepsy. This is similar to how their condition could be triggered by watching television, disco lights, or light flickering through trees.
The Consumer Safety Unit of the governmental department formally known as the Department of Trade and Industry, together with the National Epilepsy Society, has carried out exhaustive study into this area, which found that epilepsy cannot be caused by playing computer games.
The report has shown that an extremely small number of people, who already have Photosensitive Epilepsy, might discover their condition by playing games, just as they could discover it by watching television, from disco lights, or light flickering through trees.
If you experience symptoms such as light-headedness, altered vision, eye or face twitching, jerking of arms or legs, disorientation, confusion, or momentary loss of awareness it is recommended that you immediately stop playing and consult a doctor.
Parents should watch for or ask their children about the above symptoms. Children and teenagers are more likely than adults to experience these seizures.
To reduce the risk of Photosensitive Epileptic seizures you can consult your doctor prior to playing video games if there is a history of Photosensitive Epilepsy in your family. Sitting farther from the television screen and playing in a well-lit room is also advisable as it to avoid playing when you feel drowsy or fatigued.
Are video games bad for my health?
Video games can sometimes falsely be perceived as a sedentary activity. However, our partnership with the Department of Health’s Change4Life Campaign indicates the positive role video games can play in promoting an active and healthy lifestyle.
Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus is sold with the Change4Life logo on the box. Following the success of the Nintendo Wii series, Microsoft have launched the Kinect console, where your body becomes the controller and a series of cameras and microphones recognize movement and voice to reproduce it on screen. Similarly, Sony have also released their own motion-sensitive PS3 Move controller meaning that the top three console manufacturers all have active gaming systems. Subsequently, the arrival of VR has bough about a new generation of games that demand physicality and movement from players.
Can playing mobile games cause Deep Vein Thrombosis?
Studies suggest that any situation in which someone spends hours sitting in one place can increase the risk of a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT). But this can happen with any stationary leisure activity – including watching television, listening to music or reading a book.
It is advised that prolonged periods of inactivity should be avoided whether you’re playing a game, reading a book, or taking a flight. Take regular breaks and move around to stimulate blood flow through to the extremities. You should also stop playing should you feel unwell and, if symptoms persist, consult a doctor.
Will computer games affect my child’s behavior?
There is no evidence to suggest that people’s behaviour is negatively affected by playing video games. For example, there is no conclusive evidence directly linking violence in individuals to the games they play. Academic studies in support of this statement include those published by the Harvard Medical School Centre for Mental Health, the Journal of Adolescent Health and the British Medical Journal.
Research undertaken by ULTRALAB at the Anglia Polytechnic has shown that children can very clearly distinguish the difference between violence in computer games and the types of violence they hear about on the news. Video games have been in the home for more than 20 years, and there has not been a single proven case that they are causing children to become violent.
Some games deal with adult themes in the same way that films, television programmers and books do. In each of these cases the PEGI age ratings will help families decide who is able to engage with what is happening on screen in a mature manner.
What are the health risks/side effects posed to regular gamer's ?
As with all hobbies, if games are played sensibly then there are no health risks posed to regular gamer’s.
Millions of people play games safely every day and playing video games is simply another daily activity that can give people pleasure. In fact, UK gamer’s aged 16-49 spend most time surfing the internet (83% spending more than six hours a week) or watching TV (71% spending more than 6 hours a week). Only 24% spend more than six hours per week playing console or PC video games, less than the proportion who read books for that long (28%).
The games industry takes the health and well-being of all consumers very seriously – especially children and has a number of measures in place to ensure that games can be enjoyed safely and sensibly. These include PEGI, robust age rating system, and we have parental controls on all consoles that help ensure adult games are not played by children.
And don’t forget to take an interest in the games that your children are playing and get an understanding of the content and technology they are using.
How can my family play games more healthily?
Video games, played appropriately can be a great addition to other activities you do as a family. Here are some key points to remember for parents:
The PEGI ratings system helps you make informed decisions about which video games to choose for your family
A PEGI rating gives the suggested minimum age that you must be to play a game due to the suitability of the content
As parents you can take direct control of what games your children play at home, how they play them and for how long through parental controls on video game systems
Choosing and playing video games as a family is the best way to understand and enjoy them together
The stories, worlds and characters in video games offer playful ways to engage with a wide range of subjects and fuels creativity, interests and imagination
To take advantage of these benefits our safe and sensible gaming tips for parents are as follows:
Engage: Find out what your children are playing and take an interest. Better still, join in the fun and play alongside them yourself!
Lighten up: Games should be played in well-lit rooms. Darkened rooms, where games are played on old CRT (cathode ray tube) TV sets, have been known to trigger epilepsy issues amongst some children.
Take breaks: Some games can be especially intense, so regular breaks are vital for healthy game play. Encourage your children to take regular breaks – at least five minutes every 45-60 minutes as a rule of thumb.
Use parental controls: In addition to clear age rating symbols and descriptor icons, all of today’s consoles offer parental controls. parental controls can be used to restrict the amount of time spent playing games, limit internet access and they allow control of access to age appropriate content.
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David from Formula O2 talks about his hustle to launch his product and how CrossFit has had an impact in and out of the gym.
by Peter Keller Dec 23, 2016
Peter: Hey, this is Peter from Fringe Sport again, and I’m privileged today to be talking with Dave Colina, the founder and president of Formula O2. I call it a natural recovery beverage. Is that what you call it, Dave?
David: Yeah. That works for sure.
Peter: Can you tell me a bit about yourself? What did I miss in that short intro?
David: Sure. Well, let’s see. I’m a Scorpio, I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners are great. We’re based out of Columbus, Ohio, and I grew up in Ohio. I’ve been here for 33 years now. I’ve been in Columbus since 2002. I went to school at Ohio state and graduated in ’06. And when I graduated, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I went to OSU, straight into business school there, their business program, so I made the decision when I was a senior in high school to study business, which, in retrospect, who knows what they want to do at 18, much less 22. But I knew I wanted to do something cool where I could leave an impact, leave my mark. A little dent in the universe kind of thing.
So after I graduated college, I looked for the best job where I could learn a lot really quickly. And I was given the opportunity to work at Nationwide Insurance. I was in their corporate strategy group for about two-and-a-half years and I learned a lot there that really helped me advance my career quickly, and also think about problems and what I wanted to do, and more importantly, what I didn’t want to do as I developed my career. After I did my stint there, I started to work in marketing. So I had the best, coolest job at the company, at 27, making a pretty solid living, and I found myself really unhappy. That was mainly because I felt that I had spent all this time developing this skill set in strategy and marketing that I was using to sell a product I wasn’t passionate about. It’s hard to get passionate about insurance. It’s a product people have to have but it isn’t tangible and it’s a pain in the butt.
I started to think about what I could do. I’m a cocky 27-year-old, I have 5 years under my belt, and I’m making a good amount of money. What can I start to play around with? I was working long hours, it was pretty demanding, and I was working out a lot in around 2009, 2010. I wasn’t doing CrossFit yet, but I was doing the higher intensity interval training and I was eating clean. I had this robust and active social life and I was fueling it with Red Bull and Gatorade. I was doing this non-profit project in the evening with some friends. One of the guys I met in this project was a doctor. We became close friends quickly and I asked him what he would drink. And he said he also drank a lot of Red Bull and Gatorade. We both found ourselves in this unique situation where we had this problem we needed to solve but we didn’t know what we wanted to solve it with. Dan and I started talking about what we could drink instead of all this stuff. We both drink coffee, and I still drink coffee, but I drink it in the mornings. And coconut water is great in theory but I’ve never had a taste for it. We thought why not try and make things for ourselves, something all natural, tastes really good, and serves these functions. So fast-forward about 4 years and we launched FormulaO2 in February 2014 and we’ve been at it ever since. So that’s the origin story. Turns out it’s not that easy to make a drink that are those exact specifications we wanted. But we’ve been really pleased with where we netted out.
Peter: One thing I want to mention here, you and I had connected through a mutual acquaintance and friend, and he sent me some of the Formula O2. We had it in the office and we were trying it, and we were all surprised at the drinkability. It was funny—I was used to some of the other beverages in this market, a lot of carbonated beverages and things like that. And I was really surprised that it takes very drinkable water with a little flavor to it. So that was kind of interesting.
David: It took us a long time to get that taste where we wanted it. That was another thing. Before I left my 6-figure job in corporate America, I wanted to make sure I was leaving it for the right reasons, and I wanted to be sure I could put my name behind a product that was the best possible product it could be. The formulation is what took the bulk of the four years, but the taste testing itself, we spent a good 9 months of perfecting the taste of the two products we have now. That’s not an easy task. There’s so much garbage out there now and there are so many too, that we said from the outset that we’re only going to do something that’s really good and really different. So that’s what we’ve been after ever since. So it’s always really gratifying to hear that sort of reaction to it, so thank you.
Peter: We chatted a bit about this before we started recording: it’s got 20 calories per 16oz. can. But one thing that was a little bit confusing in our office is that it’s got 19 grams of carbohydrates and 2 grams of sugar, but then 20 calories. That didn’t really seem to add up so walk me through that.
David: We use an all-natural plant and fruit based sweetener system that is composed of organic sugar, erythritol, stevia, and monk fruit. Most people are familiar with stevia, some are familiar with monk fruit, everybody is familiar with organic sugar, but a lot of people aren’t familiar with erythritol. Erythritol is a really cool ingredient because it’s one of very few sweeteners that is really good for diabetics because it doesn’t spike your insulin. So you use erythritol as a part of other flavorings and in our case, we use about 14 grams of erythritol. But erythritol is unique in that it doesn’t have the same traditional carb to calorie ratio that most of us are accustomed to. Most of us are accustomed to 1 carb equalling 4 calories, whereas with erythritol, one carb equals .2 calories. So we have a good amount of erythritol we have to list on the carbohydrate side of the equation on the nutrition facts panel, but erythritol only contributes a calorie or two to our calorie count. The rest of the calories are coming from the organic sugar and then the flavorings.
Peter: Cool. That does make sense. Just out of curiosity, what kind of insulin response is that going to have? Is that something you’re knowledgeable about?
David: It doesn’t have one. I’m not a doctor, but it’s not a sweetener that spikes insulin, which is why it’s good for diabetics.
Peter: Awesome. Cool. Talk to me about how you launched the product. You talked a bit about why you developed the product—but one other thing, you mentioned this 6-figure job working in marketing—are you full time on Formula O2 now? And how long have you been full time?
David: Oh yeah. I’ve been full time on O2 for about 4 years now. I left my marketing job at the end of 2011. New Year’s Eve was officially my last day. 2012, I was pretty much on my own. I saved up a decent amount of money but the beverage industry is really capital intensive. So a lot of that, I had saved up to get O2 off the ground, so I didn’t have a lot to live off of. As a result, I ended up doing some freelance work and I was teaching martial arts on the side, which got me into CrossFit, and I started coaching CrossFit as well. I was buying stuff on clearance at Target and selling it on Amazon. I was doing what I could to stay afloat, but I started to make a salary from O2 in late 2013. So I guess you could consider me full-time, 100% focused on O2 since it started paying my bills, in 2013.
Peter: Awesome. Tell us a bit about the launch and who your best customers are, that sort of thing.
David: We have found a really solid set of customers in CrossFit gyms and the types of folks who shop at Whole Foods stores. I would love to tell you that was the plan from the outset but we really just fell into that. So when we launched, I mentioned I had been coaching martial arts, and as part of that, I had people in Columbus who owned gyms and were connected into that community. Well, when we first did our production run, it was late January, early February of 2014. That timing is important because every year, in late February, early March, about 250,000 people come to Columbus for the Arnold Sports Festival. It’s a huge fitness and sports and nutrition industry event. As fate would have it, I have been a judge for the CrossFit portion of that event for a few years now, and I had been at the time as well. In fact, I was signed up to be a judge in that year, 2014. The timing worked out as such that we were getting our shipment of O2 in right around that same time.
So if you’re familiar with the Arnold, the booth costs are outrageously high, like 5 to $10,000 if you want a booth to launch a product there. We didn’t have that laying around, so I asked my buddy who was putting on the CrossFit portion of the event if I could bribe him with some free cases he could give to his athletes who were finishing on the podium in return for sneaking us in to set up a booth at the Arnold. And that’s exactly what we did. So our first official launch day was the first day of the Arnold in 2014. So I always joke that I’m sure I was the worst judge there because the entire time, I kept looking at our booth to see if people liked our drink. This was the first time anybody outside of our friends and family had tried it. You really don’t know until you’re in the market with something, how people are going to react to it. Your friends and family are going to tell you it tasted great no matter what. So we got to a point where it was go time and I had my girlfriend manning the booth at the time, and we were flying through product at such a rate that we ended up going through our entire weekend’s supply in the first four hours of the event. And that largely set the pace of us for the year, as well as the next few years as well.
One of the things I did when starting to launch O2, I was selling to anybody who would buy it. It was me driving around Ohio in my Prius, pitching it to anyone who would listen to me and selling cases to anyone who would buy it. I quickly realized these CrossFit gyms—we had I think 5 of the 6 that received O2 as a prize—they contacted me the next week to start carrying O2 at the gym. CrossFit became one of our first customers. So as I’m driving around, pitching to mom and pop gyms and more traditional gyms and convenience stores, I’m also seeing how much CrossFit gyms were selling and it was outrageous. We would have CrossFit selling 2, 3, 4, 5 times as much as a small grocery store. It would take me just as much time to drop off their order as it would to drop off to a convenience store, but the CrossFit gym would sell a bunch more and I was only one guy, so I had to focus on the channels that would drive the most revenue. So our launch was let’s throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks, and it quickly became apparent that CrossFit stuck and store like Whole Foods as well. That one, I planned for. I hoped for that one.
When we were making it, I wanted to sell at Whole Foods, so the first store it was sold at was right down the street from our office, which was the closest to where I lived at the time. I went in there with a backpack of O2 in the summer of 2014 and asked to talk to somebody I could pitch. A couple months later, we were in that store and approved in the entire mid-Atlantic region.
Peter: I love that hustle. So from an entrepreneurial standpoint and pushing the brand, what do the next 5 years look like for you guys?
David: 5 years sounds like a heck of a long time. I can tell you what next year and the year after looks like. We have so much upside to achieve just within CrossFit and Whole Foods, that that is where we’re going to double down. We’re in a few CrossFit boxes right now and as you know there are 8,000 in the US alone. We’re in 15 to 20 Whole Foods stores, of about 500 in the US. We haven’t even scratched the surface of our potential, so we’re going to continue to focus on those two channels, while exploring some other channels, like other fitness outlets and other brick and mortar outlets, and also online is going to be a big push for us as well. We’ve had a great response with some online initiatives we’ve been doing, business to consumer, and that’s something we’re going to really explore in 2017. Then after that, 2017-18, your guess is as good as mine.
Peter: You’re taking over the world. Cool. If people want to find our more, your website is DrinkO2.com. Who do you think is the best person to go there? Someone who owns a box and is looking at distributing, someone wanting to try the beverage? Who do you recommend? Or just everybody?
David: Somebody who is tired of the norm when it comes to energy, sports, and recovery drinks, and is looking for something new and healthy. Box owners are a huge focus of ours. I like to think we have the best customer service in the industry and know our box owners better than most out there, and can serve them better than most as a result. We always welcome box owners, but also people who are working out at home, or people trying to kick their Monster habit, or looking for a change from Gatorade. There’s a big market out there for a drink that’s clean, healthy, non-carbonated, and has a good dose of caffeine. That’s who we’re trying to deal to.
Peter: Awesome. I love it. That’s about what we’ve got time for. Is there anything else you’d like to say?
David: This has been a lot of fun and I look forward to getting to know you and your audience a little bit more and we’re excited to what that brings in ’17.
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4.7 Inch iPhone 6 Rear Case Leaked (Rumor)
8:59 am May 30, 2014 By Roland Hutchinson
We have seen various mockups of the 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch versions of Apple’s new iPhone 6, and now a photo has appeared online which is apparently of the rear casing of the iPhone 6.
The photo, which you can see below, was posted online by Australian Apple site Macfixit, and it appears to show the back of the new 4.7 inch version of Apple’s new iPhone.
The iPhone 6 is rumored to come with a new slimmer and more round design than the existing iPhone 5S, the handset will come with a range of new features and some updated hardware.
Both the 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch versions of Apple’s new iPhone are rumored to feature a resolution of 1704 x 960 pixels, the handset is also expected to feature a new 64-bit mo0bile processor that was designed by Apple, the Apple A8.
On top of that, Apple will launch a new camera in the iPhone 6, we are not sure if Apple will go for more megapixels or stick with an 8 megapixel camera, but it is said to feature a new sensor with Electronic Image Stabilization.
Software will play a big part in the iPhone 6, and Apple will launch iOS 8 at the same time, which will come with a range of new features including a new HealthBook applications for fitness and health tracking.
Apple are also rumored to be announcing a new Apple Home Automation platform at WWDC 2014, this will apparently feature heavily in the next generation Apple iPhone and also in the new Apple iWatch.
Source Macfixit, 9 to 5 Mac
Filed Under: Apple, Apple iPhone, Top News
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The material outcome of my Walking the Gray Area experience is a proposal of an open object rather than a closed one. I’ve worked with two different elements which I’ve tried to formalize in a very open way, for it is very important for me the necessary intervention of those who decide to use this object. My proposal is presented in a kit that includes a mocador de fer farcells with the formula of the Newton’s second law hand-embroidered, plus some ready-made elements that allow the user to apprehend the piece and give to the set a jewel functionality (provisional, variable or problematic).
The mocador de fer farcells (Catalan for a “scarf to make a bundle”) is now almost a relic of a past time, which while still manufactured as formerly, has lost its daily use. The mocador de fer farcells is a very local textile product, which can find many parallels in other cultures. It’s basically a square cloth of rectilinear patterns that is used primarily to transport and protect objects, possessions, goodies. Their functionality seems to me exquisite and shows a surprising potential for very precise usages served in a formal and very humble way. I think that this object, used to haul things, speaks of coming and going and the value we attach to objects. It reminds us the value of transit, mobility, a value that we’re apparently rediscovering now under hight words as globalization, but which has always been part of our more inner nature.
I’ve embroidered with gold thread the formula of the second law of Newtonian dynamics on the scarves. Newtonian physics has been overtaken by new scientific formulations of reality, but remains the physics we learn in school and the one we apply to our surrounding world. The formulation of the second law tells us how the net force on a particle is equal to the time rate of change of its linear momentum. I have used this formula of physics to represent my personal experience of being moved from a starting position, almost still, by the momentum that the project Walking the Gray Area carries on me.
Gemma Draper. February, 2010.
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Confronting Boko Haram
Cameroon’s military campaign against the Boko Haram insurgency started late but has met with partial success. To consolidate gains and bring lasting peace to the Far North, the government must now shift to long-term socio-economic development, countering religious radicalism and reinforcing public services.
For the last two-and-a-half years, Cameroon has confronted the insurgents of the Nigeria-born group Boko Haram. The conflict has already caused 1,500 deaths, and led to 155,000 displaced persons and 73,000 refugees. Although the first attacks occurred in March 2014, the jihadist group’s presence in Cameroon’s Far North region dates back to at least 2011. It has benefited from a network of local collaborators and has exploited vulnerabilities that the region shares with north-eastern Nigeria. While the first eighteen months of conflict were characterised by conventional warfare, the group has now switched to an asymmetric mode of attack. The Cameroonian government’s focus on a military response has been partly successful, but the structural problems that allowed this threat to arise have not been addressed. The fight against Boko Haram requires adapting and improving security structures, and long-term crisis resolution policies that will prevent a revival of this threat in a different form, and stop insecurity in the region reigniting.
The Far North is the poorest of Cameroon’s regions and has the lowest school enrolment rate. A combination of weak national integration and historic neglect by the state have for many years contributed to violence and the presence of smugglers in the region, with a proliferation of highway robbers, traffickers and petty criminals. It was vulnerable to this jihadist insurrection due to geographical and cultural overlap with north-eastern Nigeria, the presence of an intolerant version of Islam and the repercussions of the Chadian civil wars.
Boko Haram exploited these vulnerabilities to make the Far North a logistics base, a safe haven and a source of recruitment. The group has particularly gathered support among disaffected youth in districts adjacent to Nigeria through the use of ideological indoctrination, socio-economic incentives and coercion. Cameroonian security forces, starting in 2013, dismantled hidden weapon stockpiles and arrested Boko Haram leaders, pushing the group to threaten and eventually attack Cameroon directly. In the last two-and-a-half years, the Far North region has experienced at least 460 attacks and about 50 suicide bombings.
Cameroon’s government was slow to react against the Boko Haram menace, due to historic tensions with Nigeria, an aversion to intervening in what it perceived as its neighbour’s internal problem, and a fear of becoming a target. Despite these early lapses, the government was later able to put in place an effective military response. This response disrupted the group and guided the reaction of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), the sub-regional task force with which Cameroon was reluctant to associate at first. Nonetheless, the weak point of the Cameroonian response remains the lack of commitment to development initiatives and the absence of counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation programs. Indeed, some measures adopted after the Maroua attacks in July 2015, such as the ban on full-face veils, the closing of the border, restrictions on motorcycle taxis, and abuses by the military could radicalise a portion of the population, including women, and have already accentuated socio-economic vulnerabilities for many young people, leading some to join Boko Haram.
Despite the geographical distance, the war against Boko Haram has not only impacted the Far North. The conflict has reinforced President Paul Biya’s leadership and boosted the legitimacy of the nation’s defence forces with parts of the population. The war has nonetheless had a negative effect on the country’s economy and has created ethnic and social cleavages, as seen in the stigmatisation of the Kanuri people in the Far North, often indiscriminately associated with the jihadist group. More generally, the conflict highlights a deficit of representation, although without fundamentally threatening the legitimacy of the state: the gerontocratic political elite of the Far North is increasingly challenged by a very young population.
The fight against Boko Haram is a test for security cooperation and sub-regional solidarity. The intervention by Chadian armed forces both in Cameroon, and, alongside forces from Niger, in Nigeria has reduced the group’s conventional military capacities. Despite some mistrust, the countries in the region have been able to establish the MNJTF and Nigeria finally accepted that Cameroon may intervene on its territory. This new multilateral force has slowed down the frequency of suicide attacks in Cameroon and is currently engaged against a dissident faction of the group in the Lake Chad Basin. However, the MNJTF lacks funding and logistical resources.
In order to consolidate military gains against Boko Haram and bring back lasting peace in the Far North, Cameroon’s government must shift from a security-based approach to focus on socio-economic development and countering religious radicalism. Due to heavy losses during confrontations with the Cameroonian army, Boko Haram has concentrated most of its efforts for the last three months in the Cameroonian areas of the Lake Chad Basin (Darak and Hile Alifa), where it controls part of the fishing economy and illicit trafficking and continues to stage suicide attacks. This shift in Boko Haram’s centre of gravity calls for a reinforcement of the security package around Lake Chad, as well as measures to counter the group’s financing in that area. A long-term solution should see the return of the state, which would build on the role of civil society and the youth, as well as local elites and external partners to rebuild public services in a long-neglected region.
To encourage development in the Far North, combat religious radicalism and reinforce state presence and public services
To the government of Cameroon:
Elaborate a development and economic relaunch program in the Far North by, as a priority:
improving assistance to internally displaced persons and victims of Boko Haram, as well as education opportunities and health infrastructure;
reopening the Cameroon-Nigeria border for heavy goods vehicles and traders, with security provided by military escorts, restoring and developing the road network and launching high labour-intensity construction projects; and
ensuring transparency and good governance of projects initiated in the Far North, in partnership with local populations, including youth and representatives of different ethnic communities.
To finance this program, allocate to the region a share of the budget of the triennial emergency plan and of the public investment budget and coordinate with countries of the Lake Chad Basin to ask for support from donors.
Create a program of awareness raising against religious radicalism, and a program of de-radicalisation in prisons.
Encourage the security services and judiciary to distinguish among members of Boko Haram taking account of the seriousness of their crimes and their level of involvement in the group, understanding that categories can overlap; ensure that suspects and detainees are treated fairly and in accordance with international law; and support the creation of a “restorative justice” program, including a social reintegration component for forced recruits, informants and low-level logisticians, not suspected of serious human rights abuses.
Arrange an official visit of the president, leaders of the opposition and civil society, to the departments of the Far North targeted by Boko Haram, and organise the next 20 May national parade in Maroua. This visit would be an opportunity to launch a social cohesion and intercommunal reinforcement program to counter the stigmatisation of communities perceived as being Boko Haram sympathisers.
To civil society, elected and traditional chiefs of the Far North:
Adopt a collective and inclusive approach to raising awareness on religious radicalism, including by taking into account cultural, gender and social particularities, and emphasising the need for dialogue tolerance and openness within families and in places such as Quranic schools, mosques, markets and prisons.
To countries of the sub-region:
Elaborate a medium-term development strategy for the Lake Chad Basin, coordinated with the Cameroonian development plan for the Far North and ask for support from donors for financing such plans.
To Cameroon’s donors:
Encourage the government’s development projects in the Far North, and coordinated initiatives in the sub-region for the development of the Lake Chad Basin, by guaranteeing 50 per cent financing, assuming suitable guarantees of the proper use of funds.
To improve the security response to the Boko Haram threat
Cut off Boko Haram funding sources while closely monitoring the livestock market in the Far North and economic activity in the Lake Chad region.
Block Boko Haram recruitment:
by improving cooperation between the Cameroonian armed forces and the local population. This can be achieved through civil-military operations and eradicating human rights violations perpetrated by security forces, notably by consistently sanctioning wrongdoers;
by lifting, on a case by case basis, restrictions which currently affect economic activity such as that on motorcycles; and
by putting in place a more efficient communication strategy through drawing on and supporting community-based radio stations, through the creation of awareness-raising shows on national channels, aired in local languages in the Far North, and through countering the promotion of violent radicalism on social networks.
Adapt security structures to respond to recent changes within Boko Haram, and improve the strategy against suicide attacks via collaboration with the local population and reinforced forward-looking intelligence.
Ensure better coordination between the three military operations in the Far North, including through the Multinational Joint Task Force, and reinforce cooperation with Nigeria and the other countries in the Lake Chad Basin.
Limit the usage of vigilante groups, and progressively demobilise them if Boko Haram continues to weaken.
Plan for the progressive return of better-equipped police and gendarmerie units along Cameroonian borders if Boko Haram continues to weaken.
Co-financing the preparing of the Multinational Joint Task Force for operations, adding an important component of training on human rights in wartime, while possibly making funding conditional on respect for human rights by armies of the region.
I.IntroductionThe security situation in Cameroon has deteriorated since Boko Haram’s bloody emergence in 2014. That came as a terrible shock in a country that up to that point had seen itself as a stable state in an unstable sub-region. The Far North – one of Cameroon’s ten administrative regions – is the theatre of this conflict that is sub-regional in scale. This report is the latest in a series of Crisis Group publications on the jihadist threat in the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin. It analyses Boko Haram’s impact on the Far North, the factors that have facilitated its breakthrough, its recruitment strategies, its alliances and its influence on the country. It also assesses the government’s responses and the repercussions of the conflict for the country. The report is based on documentary research and on more than 230 interviews carried out between January and October 2016 in Yaoundé and seventeen locations in the Far North. A Crisis Group analyst also spent time with the Cameroonian defence forces in March 2016 and visited the advanced positions of Operation Alpha and Operation Emergence 4 at the border with Nigeria.II.Far North: History of a Vulnerable RegionLocated between north-eastern Nigeria and south-western Chad, the Far North has historically acted as a channel for trade and transit between the three countries. With four million inhabitants spread across its 34,263 square kilometres, this Sahelian region is the most densely populated in Cameroon. In the 1990s, climate change and deep poverty in rural areas – home to 85 per cent of the population – exacerbated the competition for access to natural resources in a region already suffering intercommunal tensions and recurrent episodes of violence. Boko Haram highlighted and accentuated the structural problems.A.Far North: Between Violence and SmugglingEver since Cameroon became independent, the Far North has seen trafficking in weapons, fuel and drugs, and various types of violent banditry. This permanent insecurity follows a long history of looting and warfare in pre-colonial and colonial times across this region, whose effect on relations between communities remains evident. Around the 1980s, communal tensions were compounded by the phenomena of highway robbery, hostage-taking and conflicts over land.The first post-independence conflicts in the Far North were intercommunal – between the Kotoko and the Choa Arabs, between the Kotoko and the Massa, and between the Massa and the Musgum in Logone and Chari. They were frequently sparked by struggles for access to resources, particularly those between the Kotoko and the Choa Arabs. Insecurity in the area reached its highest levels between 1990 and 2010, with an influx of former combatants from the civil wars in Chad and the Central African Republic, who linked up with local bandits to form highway robbery gangs from the East to the Far North. The gendarmerie struggled to cope with this more violent and sophisticated banditry, leading the authorities to create the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) in 2001. Some highway robbers then turned to hostage-taking or joined up with poachers.The Far North is located at the meeting point of the frontiers with Nigeria and Chad, where there are significant price and currency differences and intense customs activities. It is an area with a long history of trafficking in a wide range of products: watered-down fuel (zoua-zoua), Tramol, cannabis or Indian hemp (a local drug), arms, medicines, stolen vehicles and spare parts. Trade routes, some of them longstanding, run alongside smuggling tracks, generating unusually dynamic business flows that extend from legal trade to informal trade in legal goods and the trafficking of illegal products.The Logone and Chari department sees substantial trafficking in light and small calibre weaponry, supplied from Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Libya. The Far North is both a market and a transit corridor – which explains the large number of weapons in circulation, as evidenced by the seizures made during police searches of Marou’s Dougoi district and Kousseri’s Mawak and Kodogo districts in 2014. All the region’s departments see trafficking in drugs, medicines, stolen cars and oil. Petrol trading is most significant in communities on the border with Nigeria, where petrol is subsidised. Tramol is often sold from Nigeria into the Far North, while cannabis grown in southern Cameroon is consumed in the Far North and also sold to Nigeria and neighbouring countries.B.A Region Vulnerable to Infiltration by Boko HaramCameroon’s Far North is closely related to north-eastern Nigeria in historical, religious, commercial, ethnic, socio-cultural and linguistic terms, sharing the Arab, Kanuri and Mandara vehicular languages. Rather than being separated by a frontier in the traditional sense, the two regions share a border area. The same ethnic groups – Kanuri, Glavda, Mandara, Choa Arab –, the same families, and sometimes the same villages are spread on both sides. Islamic culture is also a common trait, particularly as many Cameroonians study at Nigerian Quranic schools. Finally, they share a long history, including conquest by Usman Dan Fodio, coming from Sokoto in the 18th century, and important pockets of resistance to this conquest and others. These factors helped Boko Haram extend its reach into Cameroon.1.Dismal socio-economic indicators and absence of the stateIn the Far North, poverty, low school enrolment, social divisions and the weak presence of the state are factors that increase vulnerability. With 74.3 per cent of its population living below the poverty line – compared with a national average of 37.5 per cent – the Far North is Cameroon’s poorest region. Vulnerabilities are higher in rural areas, particularly in the localities on the border with Nigeria, with a poverty rate above 80 per cent in Fotokol, Kolofata and Mayo Moskota districts – those that are most affected by the conflict with Boko Haram. While the net school enrolment rate reached 84.1 per cent in 2014 at the national level, it is only 46 per cent in the Far North – and a mere 20 per cent in the border districts mentioned above. Moreover, behind these averages lie differences between communities: the Kanuri have a particularly low school enrolment rate.Due to many years of neglect of the Far North, the Cameroonian state is partly responsible for a lack of public investment, industrial development and the poor condition of health infrastructure and road networks. The state only invested in security to contain and then, in the 2000s, suppress the growing phenomenon of highway robbery – yet without destroying the smuggling networks that have benefited from corruption among customs officers and the security forces.Before the 2011 presidential election, local elites handed out identity cards to thousands of residents of frontier localities, irrespective of their nationality, hoping they would vote for the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM); this made it easier for criminals and non-Cameroonian members of Boko Haram to get identity documents.These failings left a section of the local population feeling abandoned. This is not a universally shared perception because, despite the weak presence of the state, the Far North is not under-represented in the government or the senior civil service – thanks to an informal policy of geopolitical balance that provides for appointments to be distributed among the elites of all ten regions. The vice prime minister, the finance minister and the speaker of the National Assembly come from the Far North. But the elite is getting old: most members of the government from the Far North are aged more than 60, while the median age of the national population is eighteen. There is an overt rift between generations; young people accuse their elders of pocketing the money earmarked for emergency plans for the region.2.A Sufi Islamic tradition under competitive pressureIn the Far North, Boko Haram has been able to take advantage of the presence of a “radical” or “fundamentalist” Islam. Muslims and Christians each represent about two fifths of the population, and animists a fifth. But this overall average conceals areas of Muslim concentration, such as Maroua and the localities neighbouring the Nigerian border such as Fotokol, Amchidé, Kerawa and Ashigashia.Syncretic and derived from Sufism, Islam in Cameroon is generally considered “tolerant”. Even so, fundamentalist strands have sunk local roots since the 1980s. In the Far North, the predominant Tijaniyya (Sufi) brotherhood now faces competition not only from a syncretic version of Sunniism – historically close to the political authorities, seen as moderate and mainly adhering to the Malekite tradition – but also from a radical or fundamentalist version of Sunniism – drawing its inspiration from Wahhabism and Salafism, it is promoted by preachers, spread through CDs and cassettes sold in markets or circulated via Bluetooth, Facebook or WhatsApp. Although the radical movements are weak in the Far North, they are pervasive in the frontier localities already mentioned, as well as in Maroua.The spread of fundamentalist Islam also owes something to the Ahali Suna movement, which in the 2000s embarked on the propagation of a literal interpretation of the Quran in Yaoundé and the Far North. Islam from north-eastern Nigeria, which many Cameroonian Muslims view as a nearby “Mecca”, is highly influential in the Far North: the local Tijaniyya remains under the influence of the Sufi brotherhoods in Yola, capital of the Nigerian state of Adamawa, while other branches of Sunnism have an allegiance to the leading modibo (marabouts – spiritual guides) in Maiduguri. The Nigerian modibo have always travelled around northern Cameroon and in 2014, their portraits were still on display in rural buses throughout the region.
Old imams are being confronted by some members of the young generation, who have studied in Nigeria, Sudan or the Middle East and have a deeper knowledge of the Quran and the Arabic language. Accusing the old generation of practising an Islam coloured by local traditions and innovations, they lobby to be given positions of responsibility in major mosques. These rifts reflect social factors: for many of these young returnees, appointment as imam offers the sole route to a position in society, because the state does not recognise their Islamic diplomas. That causes frustration, pushing them toward the establishment of their own mosques and greater radicalism in their sermons.
Well before the Boko Haram attacks, the Far North was prey to trafficking and banditry and was thus a security concern for the Cameroonian state. Inter-communal conflicts, often rooted in old ethnic rivalries and pre-colonial struggles, and instability in neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic, fuelled smuggling networks and accentuated this insecurity. Against a background of state neglect, socio-economic vulnerabilities emerged, including acute poverty, low school enrolment rates and social and generational divides. Subsequently, the outbreak of conflict has paralysed the regional economy, creating conditions for Boko Haram’s recruitment of thousands of youths.
III.Boko Haram’s Infiltration into Far North
A.Boko Haram Sinks Local Roots
While Nigerian jihadist groups have been able to exercise some modest influence in the Far North since 2004, Boko Haram only began to establish itself in the region in 2009. Then from 2014 onwards, as the government dismantled its local networks and cells, the jihadist movement staged head-on attacks against Cameroon.
1.2004-2013: Early traces evolve into an established presence
The first signs of Boko Haram in Cameroon date back at least to 2009. Its presence before then remains a subject of debate, mainly suggested by Nigerian sources. In September 2004, after clashing with the Nigerian police in Bama and Gwoza, several individuals who were later to become members of Boko Haram are believed to have fled and found refuge in the Cameroonian part of the Mandara Mountains, particularly in Gossi and Mayo Moskota. According to Nigerian state security services, Boko Haram’s interest in Cameroon dates back to 2006. Khaled al-Barnawi – who would later lead the jihadist group Ansaru, born of a split with Boko Haram in 2012 – reportedly recruited Cameroonians to join the Talibans in Nigeria and formed the sect’s first logistical network in 2007. In 2009, serious clashes between Boko Haram activists and the Nigerian security forces in Borno state resulted in the death of 800 members of the group, including its founder Mohammed Yusuf; some of those who escaped travelled through the Far North or spent time there.
During this period, Boko Haram was probably not seeking to proselytise or recruit in the Far North border communities, but mainly to take refuge there. But the Nigerian security services were already insisting that the group was using Cameroon as a rear base and had alerted the country’s authorities.
The first sermons by imams linked to Boko Haram in mosques in the Far North took place in 2010, while the first known cases of recruitment – by a few local Salafists drawn to the group – were in 2011. Mahamat Abacar Saley, for example, preached in mosques in the Goulfey district and later went on to recruit eight radicalised youths and to become Boko Haram’s “emir” in the Afadé area. There is proof that recruiters and logisticians from the group were in Mayo Tsanaga from 2011 onwards. Boko Haram’s proselytism initially relied on distributing Mohammed Yusuf’s sermons, on the sermons of local imams sympathetic to the sect and on visits by its preachers to areas along the border.
Cameroonians who had returned from their studies in Nigeria and Sudan – some of whom had become radicalised while they were abroad – also played a role. In Kerawa and Ganse, proselytism was mainly the work of young men returned from Bama in Nigeria who, during teaching sessions, called on their friends to reject Western education, the Constitution and the State. During the same period, Nigerian preachers linked to Boko Haram were touring the Mayo Sava and Mayo Tsanaga for baptism ceremonies – and some parents entrusted their children to them.
In 2012, tens of thousands of Nigerian refugees arrived at Zlevet, Kolofata and Fotokol. Some refugees stayed in Kerawa until 2014, when their attempts to impose their ideas on the population provoked a clash, and arms caches were discovered. Local sources reported that Boko Haram sympathisers were among them. In Kolo-fata, some refugees turned out to be recruiters, slipping into discussions among young people and encouraging the most suggestible ones to deepen their Islamic knowledge in Nigeria.
In 2012, incursions by fighters from Nigeria started and local cells were established in the Far North. Authorities treated the phenomenon as banditry, even though residents of Goulfey and Kousseri had informed them that it was Boko Haram. It was also in 2012 that the group demanded the shutdown of bars and application of Sharia in leaflets sent to the authorities and distributed to the population in Amchidé, Fotokol and Kousseri, and threatened traders and transport operators with reprisals unless they contributed to the financing of the jihad.
Boko Haram thus established the core of its logistics network in the Far North between 2010 and 2014, relying in particular on former smugglers and traffickers, traders and truckers who were offered large sums of money to act as logisticians or suppliers. Kousseri, the capital of the Logone and Chari department, was the main logistics hub: logisticians there arranged arms caches, currency exchange, the production of fake identity documents and printing of propaganda material. Mayo Sava, close to Boko Haram strongholds in Borno, was the main area for recruitment between 2012 and 2014. Fuel and food were delivered in Mayo Tsanaga and Diamaré. Boko Haram used the Mandara Mountains as a safe haven and food and fuel supply corridor.
2.2014-2016: Open conflict
Since March 2014, the Far North has been the theatre of open warfare. In the course of some fifteen battles, Boko Haram has mobilised hundreds of fighters, armoured vehicles and 4WD vehicles equipped with heavy weapons. After a phase of conventional conflict between March 2014 and June 2015, the group focused mainly on planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and then suicide attacks – whose frequency reached a peak in early 2016.
Cameroonian soldiers face an enemy who deploys multiple tactics: attacking in numbers that range from about 1,000 to just 10, using a wide range of operating modes and sometimes staging simultaneous attacks on towns in different departments. Since July 2015, the armed group, apparently weakened or having lost its capacity to launch frontal assaults, has combined ambushes and small strikes against army posts, looting raids and reprisals against vigilante groups (comités de vigilance) and those who collaborate with the army or the government. It has also multiplied suicide attacks. At first, Boko Haram committed large-scale massacres in communities it viewed as collaborating with the government, avoiding attacks on those where it had a base. But as it suffered setbacks and local populations rallied around the Cameroonian forces, attacks became indiscriminate.
The first clash dates from 2 March 2014: a Cameroonian soldier and six members of Boko Haram were killed in Wouri-Maro near Fotokol. Under pressure from Nigeria and facing incursions along the frontier, Cameroon began to dismantle Boko Haram’s arms caches. This led the jihadist movement – which probably had no political agenda or territorial expansion project in Cameroon at first – to harden its position. Boko Haram then multiplied attacks on border communities, while distributing leaflets calling on the population not to cooperate with the army. A spectacular attack on the Waza construction camp of the Chinese company Sinohydro in May 2014 finally pushed Cameroon into declaring war on Boko Haram and deploying 700 soldiers from the BIR as reinforcements in the Far North. In July 2014, the abduction of the deputy prime minister’s wife, members of his family and the mayor of the city of Kolofata led to the deployment of a further 3,000 troops.
Since March 2014, the conflict has left at least 125 dead and more than 200 wounded among the security forces and led to at least 1,400 civilian deaths. In the course of more than 100 attacks, Boko Haram is believed to have abducted more than 1,000 people, mainly women and girls: some have been used to stage suicide attacks, while others have been forcibly married to members of the group. The defence forces claim to have killed about 2,000 presumed members of the group and arrested at least 970.
Communities that neighbour Nigerian towns controlled by Boko Haram and Lake Chad islands have been the most affected by the jihadist group’s attacks. Some Nigerian towns controlled by Boko Haram – such as Banki, Dilbe, Bama, Gambaru and Ngoshi – were part of Cameroon in the colonial era and even after independence. The important trading towns of Amchidé and Fotokol, attacked because their geographical position could confer an operational advantage on Boko Haram, have been destroyed and emptied of three quarters of their inhabitants – who were killed or displaced. In 2014, Boko Haram was clearly seeking to take control of towns to add them to the caliphate it had proclaimed in Nigeria, and it even raised its flag above Kerawa, Ashigashia and Balochi, although it controlled them for barely a day.
The attacks have been carried out against areas with majority Muslim populations. Christians – of whom there are many in the Far North – were targeted in 2014 and 2015: during the February 2015 Fotokol massacre, the rebels said they were hunting for Christians, and churches were burnt down in Mayo Sava and Mayo Tsanaga. But these cases were few compared with the number of mosques burnt down, and of imams and Muslims killed in the name of the fight against Muslims regarded as unfaithful.
The places targeted have varied with the seasons. During the November-May dry season, the Logone and Chari department – and in particular the Lake Chad islands, Fotokol and Dabanga – has been the main target of attacks, because the rivers dry up during this period, while during the June-October rainy season, Mayo Sava and Mayo Tsanaga have been targeted. The rainy season has also given Boko Haram the opportunity to reinforce its bases and training camps on the border with Logone and Chari and to establish itself in the hard to reach Cameroonian islands of Lake Chad to recruit fighters. Boko Haram has taken advantage of the rise in water levels to traffic arms through the islands of Tchol, Goulfey and Darak or the unidentified seasonally submerged islets.
As far as battles are concerned – major offensives that can last for one or two days, with the aim of capturing a military base or a strategic location –, Boko Haram mobilised 250 to 800 fighters, and sometimes as many as 1,000, the majority Nigerians, but also Cameroonians and Chadians. Some fighters of Maghreb origin were killed during attacks on the BIR garrison in Fotokol and the motorised infantry brigade in Ashigashia. Battlefield commanders wore bulletproof vests and used walkie-talkie radios. The first wave of attack would be carried out by experienced fighters armed with RPGs, machine guns and AK-47s, using armoured vehicles, 4WD vehicles and pick-ups equipped with machine guns, usually driven by Chadians. They were followed by hundreds of “shouters” – young fighters armed with AK-47s, shouting Allahu Akbar, and advancing on motorbikes or on foot.
The army has been routinely targeted by conventional attacks, staged by 50 to 200 insurgents, while attacks on villages have involved as few as five to 50 fighters. Kidnappings have been commonplace. During the 565 Boko Haram incursions into Cameroon between January 2014 and September 2016 (including 464 attacks and abductions identified by Crisis Group), the army was targeted on 71 occasions (43 conventional attacks).
After having suffered defeats, and seeing the need to counter the mobility and capacity of the security forces to react quickly when under attack, Boko Haram began to plant IEDs. Since October 2014, the army has defused 37 IEDs in the Far North, while 24 have exploded as military vehicles went past and two have killed civilians. Suicide attacks have followed the same pattern as conventional attacks, the majority targeting frontier communities, markets and mosques and mainly killing civilians. None has targeted a church. Young girls have carried out most suicide attacks. Between July 2015 and October 2016, they left at least 290 dead and more than 800 wounded. There was a particularly large number of suicide attacks in January and February 2016.
B.Boko Haram Recruitment and Financing
1.Recruitment
Since at least as early as 2011, between 3,500 and 4,000 Cameroonians, overwhelmingly men, are believed to have joined Boko Haram as fighters, spiritual guides and logisticians. More have been sympathisers of the group, particularly when the conflict was at its peak. However, few rose to the leadership level.
The Cameroonians in Boko Haram are almost all young men who come from poor families and are little educated if at all. However, some sons of imams and traditional chiefs, some youths with high school education and the children of prosperous traders have been involved. Boko Haram has drawn on socio-economic motivations, ideology and religion, force and/or persuasion to secure recruits. In certain cases, a taste for adventure or a desire for personal revenge have played a role. Some people report the presence of women who have chosen to join the movement, working in logistics and intelligence. These are reportedly often wives or sisters of jihadists or women looking for a higher social status.
The main recruitments took place in 2013 and 2014. Although concentrated in border areas and the three most affected departments, they also concerned Maroua and probably towns further south, such as Yaoundé, the capital city, or Bertoua and Foumban, where Boko Haram recruiting agents have been reported.
Boko Haram has taken advantage of the local vulnerabilities outlined above. It has provided disenchanted youths seeking a sense of identity with a paid job, legitimised by religion, and has lured them with the promise of higher social status. It has also proved adept at exploiting inter-generational tensions, stirring up the resentment of young people toward their parents’ generation. Another important factor has been ethnic identity – which extends across modern national borders: shared social memory of the Kanem-Bornou and Wandala empires remains deeply anchored across the region, providing fertile ground for anti-Western ideologies to prosper. In a number of places, Boko Haram has recruited among the Kanuri community through existing links between families and within peer groups. However, Crisis Group research found no strong ethnic factor in Boko Haram’s strategic choices.
The vast majority of Cameroonian recruits have joined the sect for socio-economic reasons: Boko Haram provides them with a motorbike and a recruitment bonus ranging from 300 up to 2,000 dollars and promises salaries of between 100 and 400 dollars during the initial months – as well as a substantial sum of money to the family of any fighter killed in combat. Once recruited, new fighters are re-indoctrinated and drugged with Tramol, and paid only on the success of their operations. Promises of money are backed up with social ones: for most young men in the area, marriage is an essential ingredient of social success and Boko Haram often provided wives for its fighters by kidnapping hundreds of young girls.
In 2011, ideological recruitment campaigns got underway among Cameroonian students in Nigeria and among the Kanuri, Choa Arabs and Mandara in Cameroon itself. According to agents of the security forces who have interrogated members of Boko Haram, those who have been recruited on an ideological basis are intensely radicalised, almost cult followers of Abubakar Shekau, the presumed leader of Boko Haram. Members arrested two years ago continue to adhere to the sect’s ideology – which blends religious radicalism such as jihadist Salafism, takfirism and kadjirism with an anti-Western outlook. In proposing to create a caliphate, Boko Haram exploits folk memory of the ancient Kanem-Bornu Empire. While the majority of radicals were recruited early on, in 2o11, a further wave of young people joined the group after the caliphate had been proclaimed in 2014, thinking that Boko Haram was going to win the war.
Those kidnapped or forcibly recruited from 2012 onwards constitute a third group of recruits. Some individuals were indirectly pressured by radicalised friends into joining Boko Haram or opted to do so after coming under suspicion, or as a reaction against abuses committed by the army or the authorities’ lack of interest in the Far North. Others joined the sect after losing their means of livelihood – like motorcycle taxi drivers who had been prevented from working or people who had been engaged in cross-border trade.
At first, most recruits were ethnically Kanuri, but the pool has become more diverse, ranging from Islamicised ethnic groups such as the Choa Arabs, the Mandara, Kotoko and Hausa to the largely non-Muslim Kirdi ethnic groups such as the Maffa, Mada and Kapsiki. Kanuri’s vulnerability, rather than a Kanuri rebellion or their supposed desire to revive an old empire, explains why they form a large part of the recruits. Boko Haram took advantage of their tradition of rigorist Islam, poverty and low school enrolment rates, and of their links with north-eastern Nigeria through their proximity to the border, Quranic education ties and trade.
Fundamentally, people joined the group for a broad range of reasons. There is no simple model that explains how Boko Haram attracted recruits in Cameroon or that could prevent people from joining. In contrast to the situation in some other countries in conflict with jihadist groups, Cameroon’s populations do not question the legitimacy of the state, despite its weak presence in the Far North. This legitimacy is also reinforced by the alliance between the Biya regime and traditional chiefs who retain considerable influence over the local population. So the sort of anti-state rhetoric that plays well in north-eastern Nigeria does not resonate in the Far North; were it otherwise, Boko Haram probably would have attracted more recruits there.
2.Sources of funding
The payment of ransoms for the release of hostages – particularly foreigners – is one of Boko Haram’s main sources of funding. However, it remains a subject of controversy: the authorities involved usually deny having paid any ransoms to armed groups. On 19 February 2013, seven French citizens, including an employee of GDF-Suez, Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, were kidnapped in the Waza National Park (Logone and Chari); on 13 November 2013, a French priest was abducted in Nguetchewe (Mayo Tsanaga); on 19 April 2014, two Italian priests and a Canadian nun were kidnapped in Tchere (Diamaré); in May 2014, ten Chinese workers were abducted in Waza; and in July 2014, the wife of the vice prime minister and sixteen members of his inner circle – all Cameroonian – were kidnapped in Kolofata (Mayo Sava).
The Moulin-Fournier family was freed in November 2013 in return for a ransom payment reported by Cameroonian sources as $5 to 7 million and by Nigerian sources as $3.15 million together with the release of sixteen Boko Haram members who had been in detention in Cameroon, including logisticians who had already been tried and convicted. Similarly, the release of Father Vandenbeusch on 31 December 2013 reportedly led to the payment of a ransom and the freeing of Boko Haram members, including the prominent logistician Djida Umar. Cameroonian intermediaries allegedly secured the release of the Italian priests and the Canadian nun on 29 May 2014.
The release of 27 hostages – ten Chinese and seventeen Cameroonian members of the vice prime minister’s inner circle – on 10 October 2014 is said to have proved more costly. These hostages were considered so valuable that Boko Haram managed to extract a payment of FCFA3.2 billion ($5.7 million) – FCFA1.5 billion ($2.6 million) for the Chinese and FCFA1.7 billion ($3.1 million) for the vice prime minister’s family – together with the release of 31 of its members, including senior figures such as Abakar Ali.
These negotiations saw the sole contact for humanitarian purposes there has ever been between Boko Haram and the Cameroonian army – to arrange for the return of the bodies of dead soldiers. The group explained to negotiators that Shekau had attacked the house of the vice prime minister to take revenge for the failure to honour promises to release prisoners. During the negotiations, a Cameroonian member of parliament, acting as intermediary, was taken to Sambissa, in Nigeria, where he held talks with Shekau. The lamido of Kolofata and former hostages state that they were held in one of Boko Haram’s key Sambissa strongholds, commanded by Habib Mohammed Yusuf – the son of Mohammed Yusuf, according to the BIR. In all, at least 45 Boko Haram men were freed in exchange for 38 foreign and Cameroonian hostages who had been kidnapped in 2013 and 2014. The total value of ransom payments is estimated at a minimum of $11 million. Leading figures of the Far North – a member of the government, members of the parliament and traditional chiefs – acted as intermediaries and used their contact networks during the negotiations.
In Cameroon, Boko Haram has also raised funds by stealing cattle and selling them in the markets of the Far North and in Nigeria. Since 2013, the group has stolen at least 12,000 heads of cattle – worth around FCFA2 billion ($3.4 million) – and thousands of sheep and goats in the Far North. It has also grown richer by extorting money from local traders and those operating on the roads to Nigeria, or by asking for financial contributions to the jihad. Finally, it managed to establish itself in the Far North by building alliances with blamas (district chiefs) and lawans(second-ranking chiefs), traders and transport operators, smugglers and former highway bandits – and by setting up a leadership team for Cameroon.
In the Far North, depending on the place and time, Boko Haram has been a sectarian movement rejecting the state, a rebel movement inspired by religious ideas, a particularly violent criminal group – but above all, an undertaking relying on terrorist tactics. Today it seems to have lost its appeal to young people: the defeats it has suffered and the indiscriminate killings it has carried out have persuaded the vast majority – including the followers of fundamentalist Islam – that it is neither an incarnation of true Islam nor the way toward an alternative political and social order. The movement has thus lost many sympathisers in frontier communities. It has also been weakened by the destruction of its arms caches and a number of its supply lines.
In June 2016, the Cameroonian authorities estimated that fewer than 1,000 Cameroonians remained active members of Boko Haram. Since July 2015, the group has no longer controlled any territory in the country or staged attacks involving hundreds of fighters there. But it still maintains networks of alliances and support and continues to conduct suicide bombings and attacks by groups of ten to 50 rebels against civilians and military posts in the Cameroonian section of Lake Chad and the departments of Mayo Sava and Mayo Tsanaga.
C.The Impact of Boko Haram
1.Political and security consequences
Cameroon’s history has been marked by tensions between regional political elites. To some extent, this latest conflict has exposed such tensions in the Far North. The ruling CPDM and its ally, the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP), are dominant in the region and the war against Boko Haram has thus bolstered the popularity of President Paul Biya. Despite the inadequacy of the government’s social and economic interventions and the fact that Biya has not visited the Far North since the start of the conflict, many residents are grateful for the state’s newfound concern for the region. But the war has also aggravated rivalries between local political figures – as evidenced by the acrimony between the Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali and the Speaker of the National Assembly Cavaye Jibril, and the quarrels that broke out in the CPDM when its grassroots bodies were renewed in October 2015.
At the national and international levels, this war has strengthened the president. Despite some criticisms, many Cameroonians are satisfied with Biya’s response to Boko Haram. He has also gained credibility in diplomatic circles, particularly the French ones, through his personal involvement in efforts to secure the freedom of French hostages. In parallel, campaigns by private media favoured and funded by close associates of the president have reinforced an existing anti-French mood.
The war has not much influenced how the north and south of Cameroon perceive each other, even if, initially, southern observers thought this was a case of rebellion by northerners. Northern Cameroon has not suffered any erosion of its representation in the ranks of the government or the senior civil service. However, it has reinforced the feeling among officials that it is best to avoid being posted to the Far North.
The army has been the big winner from the war, despite suffering losses. It has earned the support of many Cameroonians who had previously blamed the military for repressing the democracy movement in the 1990s and the unrest of February 2008 and who for the first time have seen evidence of its effectiveness and usefulness. The credibility of the army has also been boosted in the eyes of international partners, who have enjoyed a cooperative relationship with their Cameroonian counterparts.
But although there have been incidental benefits for the president and the army, the fact that the Far North proved fertile terrain for Boko Haram reveals a deep crisis. Prospects for the region, populated in the majority by young people with limited economic opportunities, depend heavily on Yaoundé. But links with the capital and the “productive” south of Cameroon are seen as the fiefdom of an elderly elite whose position is increasingly challenged in the political, religious and social spheres.
2.Economic consequences
The struggle against Boko Haram puts great strain on Cameroon’s development objectives.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that between 2014 and 2015, security expenditure increased by some 1-2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) – that is FCFA189-378 billion ($320-640 million). But the overall economic impact was greater still.
The conflict has eroded the economic structures in the Far North, pushing tens of thousands who lived from trade with Nigeria into poverty or bankruptcy. Some moved to N’Djamena because of the insecurity and the closure of the border with Nigeria. The city of Kousseri, which used to be Cameroon’s second largest source of customs revenues from non-oil-related activity after Douala, was severely affected, as were important customs posts that are currently shut, such as Limani, Fotokol, Blamé, Blangoua and Dabanga.
The conflict and its consequences – the destruction of schools, hospitals, administrative buildings and, sometimes, entire villages, the theft of cattle and brutal halt to tourism – paralysed the local economy, which now accounts for only 5 per cent of Cameroon’s GDP, compared with 7.3 per cent before the conflict. The shortfall at the national level – the indirect economic cost – amounts to around $740 million a year, and thus $2.2 billion since 2014.
3.Social and intercommunal consequences
This conflict has had an impact on inter-communal dynamics, leading to the stigmatisation of the Kanuri, the ethnic group most heavily represented among the ranks of Boko Haram, although it has not triggered acts of violence against them. The Kanuri have been harassed by the security forces – often after being the target of far-fetched accusations. Residents of Kousseri have referred to displaced Kanuri fleeing violence as “Boko Haram” and refused to rent homes to them. In Maroua prison, Kanuri detainees have been regarded with mistrust by other prisoners and harassed by the security forces. Kanuri women, suspected of being suicide bombers, have been closely monitored.
The situation of women in general is worrying: those who manage to escape from Boko Haram are often rejected by the communities they come from. In contrast, the war against Boko Haram has not had a significant impact on relations between Christians and Muslims, although this was a serious risk. Similarly, Boko Haram violence generated few intercommunal tensions, except between Kanuri and Choa Arabs in Logone and Chari.
At present, Cameroon counts more than 155,000 internally displaced persons and 73,000 Nigerian refugees linked to the conflict with Boko Haram. The arrival of displaced populations has created tensions with host families, who for the most part also needed help, but these strains have eased since humanitarian NGOs are on the ground. In 2014 and 2015, Cameroon expelled more than 40,000 Nigerian refugees, the majority by force and often in conditions that failed to meet the requirements of international law – which angered the Nigerian authorities, particularly in August 2015. This troubled the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which drafted a tripartite agreement between Cameroun, UNHCR and Nigeria to facilitate refugees’ voluntary return. This has still not been signed, but the forced repatriations have ceased since 2016. The 73,000 remaining refugees live in the Minawao camp (59,000) and in host communities where their presence does not pose a particular problem.
IV.Responding to Boko Haram
A.The Government’s Security Response
Faced with Boko Haram, the government initially resorted to a strategy of denial. Out of negligence and because of historic tensions with its neighbour, but also to avoid being targeted by the jihadist group, up to 2013 it preferred to stay out of a problem that was perceived as internal to Nigeria. But once confronted by the movement’s more aggressive approach, it adopted relatively effective security measures. This response has been structured around Operation Alpha led by the BIR (BIR-Alpha) and Operation Emergence 4, led by the fourth inter-service military region (RMIA4, the regular army). The bilateral Operation Logone, carried out in 2015 by the Cameroonian and Chadian armed forces, was additional. The deployment of the Cameroonian sector of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in October 2015 constituted the final component of this security response.
Cameroon’s security response suffered from initial shortcomings, which cost dearly in soldiers’ lives: lack of, old or unreliable equipment (inappropriate bullet-proof vests, weapons that did not work, a shortage of night vision goggles), breakdowns in logistical support. A shortage of personnel and the weak operational capacity of the army caused major difficulties for troop rotation in Emergence 4: in 2014 and 2015, soldiers sometimes spent nine months in forward bases such as Mabass, Ldamang and Tourou without being relieved. There were also problems in the command structure: at first, there was little cooperation between Emergence 4 and BIR-Alpha.
Similarly, at the outset there was a notable lack of cooperation with local communities – a problem compounded by army abuses and the fact that the majority of deployed soldiers were southerners who did not understand the local languages. Human and electronic intelligence capacities were extremely limited. According to Amnesty International, the army committed numerous abuses and human rights violations against the populations in the Far North. The government denies this and insists that disciplinary measures were taken against “black sheep”. Crisis Group has witnessed abuses by the security forces in the region, but also a high degree of support for the army.
However, the disciplinary measures that have been taken are inadequate, given the extent of the cases identified by Amnesty International. Moreover, the government’s response has so far been limited to these measures and does not encompass official apologies or material compensation for the victims or their families that could reinforce social cohesion. Much is at stake when it comes to respect for human rights, because the exponential growth of abuses in the Far North could push some young people, caught between Boko Haram’s hammer and the army’s anvil, to join the jihadist group. This also risks jeopardising military cooperation between Cameroon and Western countries; that is what happened in Nigeria, whose army committed serious human rights violations.
Cameroon has managed to make up for lost ground quite effectively. In 2013 and 2014, small reinforcements were sent to the border area: 700 extra troops were deployed in June 2014, and 2,000 in August. BIR-Alpha was established in 2014 and Operation Emergence 3 – which later became Emergence 4 – was put into action in the same year. In August 2014, the government reorganised the structure of the military, establishing the Far North as the fourth inter-service military region and the fourth gendarmerie region (RG4). The incumbent generals were replaced with colonels who were originally from the area, a gendarmerie unit was specifically created in Kousseri, several brigades of motorised infantry were mobilised and the headquarters of the 41st motorised infantry brigade was transferred from Maroua to Kousseri.
Army equipment was improved too and cooperation between Emergence 4 and BIR-Alpha improved noticeably. The army launched numerous initiatives in support of the populations, such as the distribution of medicines and food, medical check-ups and work on local roads. Intelligence improved, in part thanks to the purchase of tactical drones and a Cessna surveillance aircraft, and to enhanced cooperation with Nigerian counterparts. Even the army’s communication was modernised: the defence ministry organised 24 visits to the front by journalists – which partly explains the current popularity of the army in the Cameroonian media.
Cameroon now has around 8,500 troops in the Far North region – a seventh of its defence forces’ manpower. Even so, the military response is lacking in some respects. The troops are still not adequately provided for. Emergence 4 remains under-manned, causing problems for troop rotations. Abuses continue, albeit probably less than hitherto. Some Emergence 4 soldiers have seen their promotions effectively frozen because they are not free to take the required training courses, while those who have remained in Yaoundé have been promoted. Since the creation of the MNJTF, Alpha and Emergence 4 have been able to officially carry out operations against Boko Haram in Nigeria, in collaboration with Nigerian troops. BIR-Alpha operations in Nigeria go under the name of “Arrow” and those of Emergence 4 are labelled “Tentacules”.
The shock caused by the first attacks in Cameroon, particularly those in Maroua, has led since July 2015 to the adoption of new administrative and security measures such as bans on the full face veil (burqa), on public gatherings and on the use of motorbikes, the imposition of a 6pm closing time for bars, numerous inspections and searches, the monitoring or even closure of mosques and the arrest of supposedly radical imams and the reinforcement of police and gendarmerie manpower for intelligence assignments. While these measures have mostly been accepted by the population, some initiatives, and the ensuing excesses, have stirred discontent. The anti-terrorist law that had been adopted much earlier, in December 2014, has so far been used more to pressure the opposition and civil society than against Boko Haram. The ban on wearing the burqa has led to numerous abuses by the police and gendarmerie in the Far North, including against women wearing the niqab, the hijab or the soudaré – a type of headscarf similar to the jilbab or the chadorthat is widespread in the area.
Detention is another tool of the security strategy. Since 2014, the security forces have arrested at least 970 presumed members of Boko Haram, mostly men, of whom 880 are still detained: 125 have been convicted and around 755 are awaiting trial in Maroua prison (about 680), Kousseri and Mora local jails, the main prison in Yaoundé and the General Directorate for External Research (DGRE). Among these prisoners are senior ideologues and operational commanders, on the one hand, and informers, forcibly recruited members and junior logisticians on the other. Boko Haram members in Maroua jail are incarcerated with common law detainees. Some prison authorities present this as a technique for de-radicalisation, but mixing the two categories of detainees carries the inverse risk that common criminals will become indoctrinated or that members who were initially less extreme will become more radicalised.
Furthermore, the judicial response has so far been limited to sanctions (punitive justice) and does not include a program for reintegration into society. Among the almost 1,000 presumed Boko Haram members in detention, the majority have only played minor roles in logistics or as informers, for financial reward, without being converted to the ideology of the jihadist group – or they have been arrested for failing to report suspects. Subjected to punitive judicial treatment, they fill up prisons and are at increased risk of radicalisation.
B.The Vigilante Groups: Effectiveness versus Risks
In Cameroon, self-defence groups and vigilante groups have existed since the 1960s, and in the Far North these vigilante groups were activated or created in July 2015, after the first suicide attacks. They have usually been activated by the authorities but there are cases where the populations have taken the initiative. They are placed under the authority of sub-prefects and traditional chiefs and generally provide local intelligence to the army, sometimes also operating checkpoints or forming self-defence militias. They have foiled about fifteen suicide attacks and helped to secure the arrest of about 100 Boko Haram members. In 2016, they became involved in some army operations against the jihadist group, including in Nigeria.
However, reliance on these committees does carry some risks. False accusations have been made to the security forces as a way of settling scores. Despite prior personal background checks, there have been cases of complicity between some committee members and Boko Haram, while others have engaged in extortion on religious grounds. For example, in Amchidé, Christian members of the first vigilante group set up by the BIR in 2014 made false accusations against Muslim residents and subjected them to extortion and blackmail. After six months, the committee was dissolved and formed again on a religious parity basis.
C.The Frailty of Development Initiatives
Confronted with Boko Haram, the government has announced development projects for the Far North but these remain limited in scale and implementation has been delayed. In June 2014, an emergency plan for the development of the north was published. But it is budgeted at a mere FCFA78.8 billion ($135 million) and it is not yet operational. Yet in a letter to the president’s office just months earlier, members of the government and senior officials originally from the north had estimated cost the development needs of the area at a minimum of FCFA1,600 billion ($2.8 billion). In March 2015, the government announced an emergency plan of FCFA5.3 billion ($9 million) for the construction of schools and hospitals in the Far North. Beyond the inadequacy of the allocated funding, this project has been the subject of accusations of embezzlement. Yet a second similar plan is being prepared.
Of the FCFA925 billion ($1.7 billion) of the Triennial Emergency Plan for the Acceleration of Growth and Employment, FCFA42 billion ($75 million) are allocated to the Far North.Similarly, in 2015, out of a national Public Investment Budget (BIP) of FCFA1,150 billion ($2 billion), only FCFA45.4 billion ($80 million) was reserved for the Far North – and that was an increase on the region’s share in 2014. Besides the government initiatives, the president has made donations to the populations of the Far North. The south of the country has also provided FCFA2.5 billion ($4.2 million) in support for the region as well as food supplies. But in relation to this, too, there have been allegations of embezzlement.
D.The Regional Response
Faced with the Boko Haram threat, in 2015 the states of the Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger) and Benin set up a multinational force of 8,700 soldiers and police drawn from all five countries. At the start of the crisis, Cameroon was wary of bilateral or sub-regional initiatives and in 2012, it did not grant cross-border hot pursuit rights to Nigeria – however, this did not prevent the latter from intervening twice, in Amchidé and Fotokol, in 2013. As the conflict intensified, Cameroon demanded hot pursuit rights from Nigeria in 2014 and, in cooperation with Chad, launched Operation Logone in January 2015. Indeed, Cameroonian soldiers often advanced as far as Gambaru and Banki in Nigeria and, from Cameroonian territory, bombarded Boko Haram positions in that country in 2014 and 2015. Cooperation with Nigeria has markedly improved since Muhammadu Buhari’s May 2015 accession to power in Abuja, to the point where the Cameroonian sector of the MNJTF is the only one that is operational. The two armies carry out coordinated operations and regularly exchange intelligence.
One week after Cameroon’s president had appealed on 7 January 2015 for international and regional solidarity, Chad offered to intervene on the territory of its neigh-bour. Chad has felt concerned since September 2014, when Boko Haram seized control of the road from Maiduguri to Fotokol and was threatening the Mora-Kousseri route – the two main supply corridors to N’Djamena. Cameroon and Chad established Operation Logone, composed of 2,500 soldiers from the Chadian Armed Forces for Intervention in Cameroon (FATIC) and units of the Cameroonian army. Chadian soldiers stationed in Maltam, Fotokol and Mora, who enjoyed hot pursuit rights, carried out offensives against Boko Haram in Nigeria. They fought alongside the Cameroonians on their soil in several cases, like during the February 2015 Boko Haram attack on a military base in Fotokol.
Although there was no official agreement, the understanding between the two countries envisaged that Cameroon would provide the fuel, food supplies and medical care for the Chadians. The former defence minister had hoped for the intervention of the Chadian troops and the local population welcomed it – but it was challenged by the military hierarchy. Cameroonian soldiers are wary of them following allegations of abuses against civilians in Nigeria. Having crossed into Cameroon through Kousseri in February 2015, Chadian troops left in November 2015.
At the sub-regional level, the MNJTF has been organised into three sectors: Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria. The Cameroonian sector (Sector 1) covers Mayo Sava, although it is formally empowered to eventually cover all three border departments. Originally conceived as an integrated force, the MNJTF is in fact a coordinated force – the Cameroonian contingent is formed entirely of Cameroonian soldiers, and Cameroon’s defence ministry is entirely responsible for its funding and logistics. The commander of the Cameroonian sector takes his orders from the regional commander of the MNJTF in N’Djamena, but in the day-to-day management of Sector 1, he is answerable to the head of Emergence 4. The MNJTF has no authority over BIR-Alpha and Emergence 4, but these two forces do cooperate with the MNJTF contingent – with which they carry out joint operations in Nigeria.
The establishment of the MNJTF raised expectations among Cameroonian troops who hoped to be paid as if they were on a UN operation. This subsequently led to disappointment and accusations that salaries were being stolen.
V.A Route out of Crisis
Although Boko Haram appears weakened this year – or at least has been described as weaker – it remains a danger for the populations in the Far North and a threat to the Cameroonian state and the security forces. Internal divisions undermining the group for a long time were exposed in August 2016 with Islamic State’s nomination of Abu Musab al-Barnawi as its new leader (Wali) in West Africa – a nomination challenged by Abubakar Shekau. But the rift between Shekau and Barnawi does not imply that Boko Haram will cease its activities in Cameroon. In fact, the opposite is true: there is a serious risk that Cameroon will see a worsening spiral of violence, particularly in the Lake Chad area – Hile Alifa, Darak and Makary – and in Mayo Sava, Mayo Tsanaga and along the Waza road, as the growing number of attacks since June 2016 indicates. After two years of conflict, it has become increasingly difficult for Boko Haram to attract recruits on an ideological basis in the Far North, which could lead the group to increase the scale of forced recruitment.
Across the Far North, the state is often present only in the form of the security forces and customs officers. Besides the specific technical or material issues, this also reflects a general problem of representation. The Cameroonian model for integrating peripheral regions by co-opting the male and elderly local elite has reached its limits – as in other regions – due to the poor management of resources and because the population is rising fast. This widening gulf between the way Cameroon is governed and the expectations of the public has exacerbated the social and economic vulnerability of young people in the region, leaving them exposed to the financial incentives proffered by Boko Haram.
Faced with development and social cohesion problems that the current conflict poses in the long term, the state should reinforce its presence in the region, concentrating on the improvement of public services and on the support and facilitation of economic activities. A visit by the president of Cameroon, and leaders of the opposition and civil society to the affected departments of the Far North could serve as the launchpad for a major drive to build public infrastructure and development projects. These should be accompanied by a program to reinforce social cohesion and intercommunal relations, as part of an inclusive approach that favours initiatives emerging from civil society and the public. The next 20 May National Day parade could take place in Maroua.
A.Social and Economic Priorities
The campaign against Boko Haram requires a strong social and economic dimension to counter the group’s recruitment efforts, and projects that will be launched need to be managed properly and in a transparent manner. The first priority must be the revival of trade with Nigeria, with permission granted for commercial vehicles to resume journeys between Maiduguri and the Far North – and that will mean providing security escorts on dangerous routes. It is important to complete National Highway N°1 between Maroua and Kousseri, and to bring the road network up to standard, in order to better connect the Far North departments with the two other regions of northern Cameroon, given the substantial scale of local trade.
The second priority should be support for farming and fishing around Lake Chad, and on the fertile land of Mayo Danay, Mayo Kani and Mayo Tsanaga. This should be supplemented with the launch of labour-intensive projects to support local production of rice, millet and sorghum. The third priority should be the promotion of microcredit, targeting the Kanuri community among others – but access to credit should be conditional on enrolling children in school.
The fourth priority is to relaunch industry in the Far North and North by overhauling the way it is managed; Cameroon’s external partners should also support public enterprises and small and medium businesses. This means that the state will need to increase Far North’s share of the public investment budget and triennal emergency program. Partner countries and financial institutions should also step up their support for the Far North, because this region represents one sixth of Cameroon’s population but is the least developed, and thus most at risk of being bogged down in a cycle of ongoing conflict.
On a social and cultural level, the state should rapidly increase and improve education and health services in the Far North and deploy incentives or even compulsion to encourage parents to overcome any social reservations and send their children to school; priority should be given to the most vulnerable communities. This should be complemented with support for local community radio stations and the extension of the reach of national Cameroonian broadcasters, with programs in Kanuri, Hausa, Fulfulde and Arab, to foster a sense of national inclusiveness and broadcast programs warning against religious radicalism in languages that local people can understand.
The state should also encourage and support displaced populations who wish to return and protect the properties of those who do not yet plan to go home, and do so in accordance with the parameters set out under the tripartite agreement between Cameroon, Nigeria and UNHCR.Finally, units should be created to support former hostages and former members of Boko Haram.
To counteract religious radicalism, besides the measures already envisaged in the previous Crisis Group report on Cameroon, the social affairs ministry should encourage parents to lift the taboo surrounding Boko Haram by discussing the issue with their children. Following the example set by experiments with de-radicalisation programs in Nigerian prisons, and with the support of external partners and the consent of local communities, the Cameroonian government should provide programs, on a case-by-case basis, for those Boko Haram members who would like to reintegrate into society after serving a jail term appropriate to the seriousness of their crimes. These programs should be open as a priority to Boko Haram members who were forcibly recruited and to deserters, while distinguishing between informers or those who provided small practical services and ideologists or leaders of the sect.
The security and judicial authorities should generally try to distinguish between Boko Haram members according to the gravity of the crimes they are accused of and the extent of their involvement in the group – even though it is not always easy to draw these distinctions – and to treat suspects and detainees fairly and in accordance with international law. A program of “restorative justice” could be envisaged; it would be based on confessions, work for the community, education about the dangers of religious radicalism and ideologies advocating violence, vocational training, socio-economic reintegration projects and, where necessary, short prison terms. It would be necessary to differentiate between forcibly recruited members, informers and those who provided minor practical assistance (forcibly recruited or not) but are not suspected of involvement in serious crimes such as torture, murder, forced disappearances etc. on the one hand, and leaders, ideologists and fighters who chose to join the movement, as well as all those suspected of committing serious abuses on the other. In order to do this, the current anti-terrorism law could be amended.
Finally, the state should continue to put in place programs to educate communities about the need to avoid stigmatising former Boko Haram members who have reintegrated into society; it should also reinforce trade between the Far North and southern Cameroon, and other types of exchanges, like cultural and sporting activities, that bring the two regions together. To implement all these measures, the government should allocate a significant share of the budget to the Far North.
B.Security Issues
In overall terms, Cameroon’s security response has been effective, thanks in part to the serious efforts undertaken since 2014 as well as improved coordination with neighbouring countries. But if the government is to restore lasting peace in the region, it needs to remedy a number of frailties in its approach and some strategic errors. Three aspects stand out.
The security forces, or any other state authority, should always be aware of the consequences that their actions may have for the populations and weigh up the risk that these will meet with rejection, undermine the legitimacy of the state, or generate intercommunal tensions. Greater respect for human rights will be crucial. And to achieve that, it is essential that soldiers and police guilty of abuses are subjected to disciplinary measures and that these measures are publicly announced. That also means stepping up campaigns to inform the populations about security forces actions and taking their views into account.
Next, the government must ensure that the fight against Boko Haram neither generates potentially dangerous tensions within the security forces, nor that these assume a role that is incompatible with democracy. That involves taking special measures to ensure fairness in the pay and promotions of soldiers, particularly those deployed to the front. The technological modernisation of the Cameroonian army poses a question about the role it will play once the Boko Haram crisis is over. With 60,000 troops and henceforth well equipped, the army could be too large for peaceful times, while military equipment maintenance costs could have an impact on public investment. The government should plan a freeze on army recruitment for some time – except for those members of vigilante groups who meet the age and educational criteria – and then restart recruitment at a pre-war pace once budget resources permit.
As Boko Haram becomes weaker, the government should plan for the gradual return of police and gendarmerie to border areas– albeit in better-equipped units – to replace the elite military garrisons. These police should be trained to respect human rights in the specific context of rebellion, the fight against terrorism and operations among a traumatised population.
Finally, the vigilante groups have played an effective role in the fight against Boko Haram, but they pose a problem in the long term. They can lead to a privatisation of security, a slippage in standards or the excessive reinforcement of the powers of traditional chiefs – who exercise a degree of control over the committees. There is also a risk that some members facing economic problems could veer into criminality. Thus, it is important to limit reliance on vigilante groups, and to plan for their gradual dissolution and the socio-economic reintegration of their members
VI.Conclusion
The violence generated by Boko Haram in the Far North is a phenomenon unprecedented in Cameroon’s recent history. While the risk of losing control of territory in the region was real, the response of the Cameroonian government, combined with intervention by the Chadian army and the reorganisation of the Nigerian army, brought a halt to the territorial expansion of the group – which suffered heavy losses and saw its conventional military capacity reduced. But the underlying problems that had left the Far North region particularly vulnerable persist: poverty, low school enrolment rates, social and generational divides, intercommunal tensions and the weak connection with the rest of the country. Moreover, despite its relative success at the most intense stage of the conflict, the army finds itself in a weak or even impotent position when confronted with low-intensity attacks and cross-border raids, cattle theft and everyday looting
Over the long term, the Far North risks getting bogged down in a low-intensity conflict, fuelled by alliances of convenience between jihadists, traffickers and other opportunists in a Sahel that is prey to multiple conflicts. This would push back the chances of substantial development in the region and increase its vulnerability. It would also force the government to maintain a costly military deployment for a long period, which would jeopardise growth and development perspectives for the country, weakening it further.
(c) 2016 International Crisis Group
Boko Haram & Fulani Jihadists
Rebels launch attacks on Central African Republic’s capital
DRC: Former warlord Lumbala arrested on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity
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New Guidance Document on the scope of the EU ABS Regulation
News from: 18.12.2020
The Commission adopted Guidance document C(2020)8759 on the scope of application and core obligations of Regulation (EU) No 511/2014 (EU ABS Regulation).
ABS post-2020: What is needed?
The 10th anniversary of the Nagoya Protocol is an occasion to reflect on the implementation and effectiveness of the international regulations on access to genetic resources and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out...
Forest of the year 2020
For the ninth time, the Bund Deutscher Forstleute awards the title "Forest of the Year". The 2020 award goes to the Ivenacker Oaks in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Job advertisement
The Information and Coordination Centre for Biodiversity is seeking reinforcement in the field of animal genetic resources.
Invasive species: public participation started
The EU Regulation No. 1143/2014 requires the implementation into national law. The action plans for the priority pathways of invasive species are now available for comment.
Policy options for DSI from a scientific point of view
With a white paper on potential DSI policy options, scientists contribute to the current debate. They explain why open access to genetic sequence data is essential for any of the options.
Statement by the Scientific Advisory Board on Biodiversity and Genetic Resources on the future arable farming strategy of the BMEL
Contributing to the discussion paper published by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the members of the advisory board have drafted ten additional recommendations for more biodiversity in arable farming.
Fifth Global Biodiversity Report published
The Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) regularly reports on the global status of biodiversity and analyzes the steps taken by the global community to conserve and sustainably use...
Stable construction support for pig breeding farms
Sow keeping farms can receive subsidies for stable buildings. The support is also possible for breeding farms. Applications can be submitted to the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) at www.ble.de/stallumbau until 15th...
New podcast on nature and species conservation
Nature conservation is the protection and restoration of species and ecosystems. Its purpose is to sustain the biodiversity of life on Earth, which is being lost at a rate unprecedented in the past 65 million years.
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A123 Files for Bankruptcy
Lithium-ion battery maker gives up the ghost, to sell auto business to Johnson Controls.
Jeff St. John October 16, 2012
Struggling lithium-ion battery maker A123 filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, putting the status of its proposed $465 million bailout by China's Wanxiang -- as well as its $249 million in federal loans -- in question.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company also said it planned to sell its automotive battery business to Johnson Controls for $125 million, though the deal could be subject to competing bids in the bankruptcy process.
That move, announced on A123’s website, would appear to put an end to a proposal from Chinese auto parts giant Wanxiang Group Corp. to invest $465 million in A123, which would have given it an 80-percent stake in the company. A123 announced Monday that it had missed a debt payment to Wanxiang and Tuesday's announcement of a deal with Johnson Controls would leave other buyers with only A123's grid-scale storage and small-scale consumer electronics businesses.
Tuesday’s filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware marks a sorry end for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-out and would-be U.S. lithium-ion battery powerhouse. A123 has been fighting for survival after a $67 million recall of its automotive batteries and problems for key battery customer Fisker Automotive.
A123 got a $249 million DOE grant, along with $100 million in state tax credits, to build its battery plant in Livonia, Michigan. That has opened it up to attacks from political opponents of the Obama administration’s multi-billion-dollar green energy programs, calling the deal a giveaway of taxpayer money. Tuesday’s bankruptcy filing will no doubt increase those attacks, adding it to a long list of companies that received federal funds only to declare bankruptcy later on -- the best known example being solar company Solyndra.
At the same time, A123 is not Solyndra, which has sold off its factories for pennies on the dollar. In particular, the potential for Milwaukee, Wisc.-based Johnson Controls to take over A123's automotive battery assets and IP, which include in-development, next-generation battery chemistries as well as controls and software smarts, is a welcome sign.
Indeed, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit founded and chaired by former Republican lawmakers, praised the role of federal funding for green technology in a Tuesday statement on A123's bankruptcy, calling it not a failure of the model but an indication of "how far U.S. advanced battery innovation has come and how much farther it has to go to become globally competitive."
Asia dominates the world's advanced battery markets today. LG Chem produces batteries for the Chevy Volt and the Opel Ampera, the EU version of the Volt, while Leaf batteries are assembled by Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), a joint venture between Nissan, NEC and NEC Energy Devices. A123 is an investor and battery supplier to Fisker Automotive (A123 lost the Volt contract to LG). Tesla's Model S uses batteries and battery packs from Panasonic. Earlier this year, Sony declared that it will produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and start selling them by the middle of the decade. U.S.-based lithium-ion maker Boston-Power is both building batteries in China and selling them to Chinese automaker Beijing Electric Vehicle Co.
A123 customers include Fisker Automotive, General Motors, BMW, SAIC Motor Corp., Tata Motors and Smith Electric Vehicles. A123’s battery defects did end up playing a role in problems for key customer Fisker, which has stopped work at its Delaware factory and faced problems meeting the terms of its own $529 million federal loan.
Transportation remains A123's most important line of business, although its grid storage business has been growing in the past year or so, with installations and orders that added up to 100 megawatts by the end of 2011, much of it in partnership with AES Energy Storage.
A123 had assets of $459.8 million and debt of $376 million as of Aug. 31, according to its bankruptcy filing. The court documents state that Fisker and AES Energy Storage were its two biggest customers, accounting for about 26 percent and 24 percent of total revenue in 2011, respectively.
A123 reported a second-quarter 2012 loss of $82.9 million, compared with a loss of $55.4 million in the same period last year. That comes on top of a $125 million loss in the first quarter, more than double the loss from the same quarter last year.
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Matthew T. Mangino: No one is above the law
Aug 24, 2018 at 9:13 AM Aug 24, 2018 at 9:13 AM
The President of the United States can and should be indicted.
The President of the United States can and should be indicted. This week, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and trusted advisor pleaded guilty to tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations, and implicated the president in criminal activity.
Michael Cohen said under oath in open court that he acted “in coordination with, and at the direction of, a candidate for federal office” and “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.”
Prosecutors allege that” hush-money” payments Cohen arranged for Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels broke the legal limit on individual donations to a political campaign and violated the law banning corporations from giving directly to a candidate.
According to Politico, candidates are permitted to make unlimited contributions to their own campaign, but that money must go through their campaign committee. Cohen facilitated the payments through an outside company, not the campaign — an unlawful act.
During the Watergate investigation, a memorandum prepared for Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski concluded that there was no legal bar to indicting President Richard Nixon. The memorandum concluded, “As we understand it, the conclusions regarding indictment of an incumbent president reached by the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney’s office, and this office, are all consistent: There is nothing in the language or legislative history of the Constitution that bars indictment of a sitting president.”
Some Constitutional experts have argued that the president should have immunity. If the president were indicted he would be burdened by pretrial matters, the preparation for trial and the commitment of weeks or months in a courtroom.
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley suggested in a recent Washington Post piece immunity for the president “ignores a couple practical considerations. First, it is highly unlikely that a president would be tried, let alone convicted, while in office … Even when sentenced, appeals can take years.”
In May 1998, a distinguished constitutional scholar Ronald W. Rotunda reached the conclusion that a sitting president can be sued or indicted. According to The Atlantic, Rotunda confidentially advised then-independent counsel Kenneth Starr that President Bill Clinton could be indicted. “The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed the state(ment) that no one is ‘above the law,’” Rotunda wrote.
Starr’s team concluded that “(I)t is proper, constitutional and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties.”
Walter Dellinger, a former assistant attorney general and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, writing for the New York Times, cited Clinton v. Jones. President Clinton had long fought to stop a civil suit brought against him by Paula Jones. The case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The entire court agreed that the fact that a federal court’s exercising of its constitutional power to hear a case “may significantly burden the time and attention of the chief executive is not sufficient to establish a violation of the Constitution.”
Dellinger concluded that “the mere indictment of a president would not meet the stringent standard in Clinton v. Jones for presidential immunity from ordinary legal processes.”
The argument that an indictment would be too demanding on a sitting president is further blunted by the 25th Amendment that allows a president to voluntarily transfer powers of his office to the vice-president for a limited period of time.
When asked if a sitting president can be indicted Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said. “(T)he Department of Justice has in the past, when the issue arose, opined that a sitting president cannot be indicted.”
The opinion of the Department of Justice is not precedent. The position of the DOJ can change and Rosenstein himself could change the scope of the Mueller investigation. Trump can be indicted. The question is will some prosecutor take the unprecedented action of indicting a sitting president to affirm the notion that no one is above the law?
— Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader - Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses
Author(s): Jordana Moore Saggese (Editor)
Photography & Art | Coming Soon
The first comprehensive collection of the words and works of a movement-defining artist.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) burst onto the art scene in the summer of 1980 as one of approximately one hundred artists exhibiting at the 1980 Times Square Show in New York City. By 1982, at the age of twenty-one, Basquiat had solo exhibitions in galleries in Italy, New York, and Los Angeles. Basquiat's artistic career followed the rapid trajectory of Wall Street, which boomed from 1983 to 1987. In the span of just a few years, this Black boy from Brooklyn had become one of the most famous American artists of the 1980s. The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader is the first comprehensive sourcebook on the artist, closing gaps that have until now limited the sustained study and definitive archiving of his work and its impact.
Eight years after his first exhibition, Basquiat was dead, but his popularity has only grown. Through a combination of interviews with the artist, criticism from the artist's lifetime and immediately after, previously unpublished research by the author, and a selection of the most important critical essays on the artist's work, this collectionprovides a full picture of the artist's views on art and culture, his working process, and the critical significance of his work both then and now.
Publisher : University of California Press
Imprint : University of California Press
Publication date : March 2021
Availability date : April 2021
Author : Jordana Moore Saggese (Editor)
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Katy Perry reveals the most important thing in her life (Ld)
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Hollywood’s number of women directors rose in 2020: Study
By Glamsham Editorial
Women directors comprise 16 per cent of filmmakers calling the shots on the 100 highest-grossing Hollywood films in 2020, according to a study from the Center For The Study Of Women In Television And Film at San Diego State University. This is a four per cent jump from 2019, and a dramatic 12 per cent jump only two years ago.
“Women accounted for 16 per cent of directors working on the top 100 grossing films in 2020, up from 12 per cent in 2019 and four per cent in 2018,” the study said, adding: “Women comprised 18 per cent of directors working on the top 250 films in 2020, up from 13 per cent in 2019 and 8 per cent in 2018.”
“The percentages of women directing top 100 and top 250 films represent recent historic highs and also reflect two consecutive years of growth,” the seven-page study noted.
If one takes into account female technicians in other creative fields of filmmaking besides directors, who worked in the top 100 grossing Hollywood films of 2020, the figures are even better, according to the study available at the Center’s official website.
“Women comprised 21 per cent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 100 grossing films in 2020, up from 20 per cent in 2019. Women working in these roles on the top 250 grossing films experienced a slight increase from 21 per cent in 2019 to 23 per cent in 2020,” said the study.
Among highest grossers that opened in 2020 was Patty Jenkins’ Christmas release “Wonder Woman 1984”, starring Gal Gadot, which was also one of the most-talked about Hollywood releases of the year. That apart, Cate Shortland’s “Black Widow”, starring Scarlett Johansson, was ready for release in 2020 although the film is now scheduled to open in April this year owing to last year’s lockdown.
Last year also saw the release of Cathy Yan’s “Birds Of Prey”, starring Margot Robbie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez and Ewan McGregor. Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland”, starring Frances McDormand, is another heroine-centric release made by a woman director that was much-talked about.
In 2020, when there was a total closure of cinema theatres globally for most of the year owing to Covid lockdown, the number of women technicians involved with ‘Watched At Home’ films makes for interesting statistics, too.
Women accounted for nine per cent of directors working on the watched at home films, besides 12 per cent of writers, 15 per cent of executive producers, 31 per cent of producers, 19 per cent of editors, and three per cent of cinematographers working on such films, said the study, which included films released digitally for the first time.
The annual report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film is supervised by Center director Dr. Martha Lauzen.
Although there has been an upward swing in women being employed as technicians in Hollywood, there is still a long way to go. The percentages in the Top 250 Films With No Women In Any Creative Role is still staggering. For instance, going by the study, 80 per cent of films in the list had no women directors, 73 per cent had no women writers, 41 per cent had no women executive producers, 26 per cent had no women producers, 72 per cent had no women editors, 94 per cent had no women cinematographers.
“The majority (67 per cent) of films employed fewer than five women in the above roles,” the study concluded. –ians/vnc/vnc
Chloe Zhao
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Home :: WMD :: Library :: News :: United Kingdom :: 2017 :: March ::
U.K. Troops Arrive In Estonia To Bolster NATO Force
The Estonian military says 130 British soldiers are arriving in the country as part of NATO's efforts to bolster its forces near the alliance's eastern border with Russia.
"The battle group led by the United Kingdom is placed here at the request of Estonia and a shared decision of NATO allies in order to strengthen the alliance's defense capabilities," Estonian defense spokesman Simmo Saar said on March 17.
The spokesman said the troops, due to arrive late on March 17, will be based in the northern city of Tapa, to be joined by some 50 French soldiers on March 20.
A total of 800 British troops and 300 French soldiers will be stationed in Tapa by mid-April.
They are expected to take part in the Spring Storm training maneuvers with Estonian forces in May.
NATO is beefing up its presence in Eastern Europe, deploying four multinational battalions to the Baltic states and Poland on a rotational basis in an effort to reassure eastern members in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia.
NATO troops from the United States, Britain, Canada, and Germany are leading the force.
Separately, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on March 17 said the alliance sees "no imminent danger" of a conventional military assault in the Baltic region.
Stoltenberg added, though, that "we are worried" about Russia's actions and possible intentions, but at the same time "it is important that we do not dramatize the situation."
Based on reporting by AFP, AP, The Times, and The Baltic Times
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/uk-troops-arrive -in-estonia-to-bolster- nato-force/28376167.html
Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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Blog | Dec. 10, 2015
Global Witness welcomes new Board Chair and non-executive directors
As part of a long-planned process to expand its existing governing board, Global Witness is delighted to announce the appointment of a new Chair and two additional non-executive directors.
Mark Stephens, one of the UK’s top media lawyers and a board member of numerous non-profit organisations, will Chair the expanded board. He will be joined by Samuel Nguiffo, Director of the Centre for Environment and Development, the lead native environmental NGO in the Congo Basin focusing on forestry, mining, land and climate change. Global Witness’ board will continue to expand over the coming year. For more detail on the members of Global Witness’ Board of Directors, click here.
Since it was established in late 1993, Global Witness has been led by its three founders, and has grown from an organisation that started with a few donations from friends and got its first laptop from a rubbish container, to almost 100 staff based out of offices in London and Washington DC, with an anticipated budget of £9 million ($14 million) in 2016. It has pioneered a whole new area of work – identifying and focusing on the so-called “natural resource curse” - and is one of the most effective organisations in this field.
Earlier this year Gillian Caldwell took over from Gavin Hayman as Global Witness’ Executive Director, and has embarked on exciting plans to build on the organisation’s success, with an initial special focus on enhancing the organisation’s communications and multi-media capacity and innovative uses of technology to advance its campaigns work.
“This is an incredibly exciting moment in Global Witness’ history,” said Patrick Alley, one of the organisation’s co-founders. “Not only do the new board members bring fantastic experience and knowledge which will be invaluable, but they will continue the evolution that has taken us from a start-up to a leading global NGO. Their role will be critical to enhancing our governance, and in building Global Witness’ campaigning and financial strength going forward. We are incredibly excited to have the opportunity to work with them and with Gillian to ensure Global Witness expands it’s track record of delivering systems-changing impact.”
Global Witness co-founders Patrick Alley, Simon Taylor and Charmian Gooch remain fully engaged in Global Witness’ work.
Impact page
20 Years of Creating Change
From alerting the world to blood diamonds to halting forest destruction deals: Global Witness investigations have changed the world.
Welcome to Gillian Caldwell - our new CEO
Today is the first day in an exciting new chapter for Global Witness.
Meet the Global Witness Board of Directors.
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Blog | July 24, 2019
Three challenges from Global Witness for the new Prime Minister
Climate breakdown Corruption & money laundering Forests
Today, Boris Johnson takes office as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Whilst Brexit will no doubt continue to dominate political discourse for the foreseeable future this is also a critical moment for many of the issues we at Global Witness are championing, not least saving our world from climate disaster. As the doors to number 10 swing open to a new occupant we lay down three important challenges that may determine the future of the country and its impact on the wider world:
1. Stop subsidising fossil fuels
Amidst the chaos of the twilight of Theresa May’s premiership, a largely symbolic but politically significant step forward was taken on climate change. The target of zero-net greenhouse emissions by 2050 was short of what the science dictates, but more ambitious than expected. So now the new government needs to develop the policy that maps out a credible path to that 2050 target. One dirty secret the Government is rarely keen to talk about is the issue of UK public subsidy of fossil fuels, both at home and abroad.
Earlier this year, the European Commission identified the UK as the largest provider of fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, providing 12 billion euros of subsidy. This is public cash that should be used to help manage a transition away from fossil fuel extraction , particularly in UK regions dependent on oil and gas, rather than providing tax breaks for oil and gas corporations to carry on prospecting for yet more oil and gas. Our colleagues at Oil Change International have demonstrated how this can be done in a way that protects workers and communities as well as the climate.
The UK also subsidises pollution abroad. Research conducted by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), CAFOD and others shows that over the last seven years, 97% of all support provided by UK Export Finance (the UK’s export credit agency which underwrites loans and insurance for export deals) went to fossil fuels. An analysis by Carbon Brief shows that the £4.8 billion total UKEF support for fossil fuel projects from 2010-16 is almost equal to the UK’s total spend on its International Climate Fund for a similar period, 2011-17, which came to £4.9 billion. This means the UK is undermining its own international climate change mitigation efforts and its credibility by supporting fossil fuel projects.
The ongoing subsidy of fossil fuels severely undermine the UK’s efforts to claim an international leadership role on the issue of climate change. This year, we gave evidence to a committee of MPs who agreed with us, and called for an end to taxpayer support for overseas fossil fuels ventures by 2021. If the UK is successful in its application to host the UN climate change talks in 2020 (COP26), then this hypocrisy will come under intense scrutiny. For the good of the climate and our international standing on the world stage, it is time to bring the UK’s subsidy regime in line with the climate science by bringing fossil fuel subsidy to an end. Is Mr. Johnson up to the challenge?
2. Don’t turn the UK into a bargain basement economy – shut the door to dirty money for once and for all
Whilst progress in stemming the enormous tide of dirty money flowing into, and through, the UK has been made in the past few years there is still some way to go. The noises have been good but as yet it’s been more words than action. Under the surface murmurings of whether Brexit will require new and less regulated investment have been audible, stoking fears that efforts to combat dirty money will be stalled.
It is absolutely vital that any retreat is resisted. To roll the red carpet back out for the world’s corrupt and criminal would be to reinforce the suffering felt by victims of corruption – the perpetrators of which have so often turned to the UK to hide and move the proceeds of their illicit activity. A key test of whether the new Prime Minister will promote the rule of law or stand for investment at any cost will be how he prioritises bringing transparency to the UK property market.
It’s been more than three years since we were first promised a public register that would name the individuals who are the owners of overseas companies that buy UK property – removing the veil of anonymity so often used by the corrupt to launder money into UK property. Last week we took a step closer, when the government responded to a Parliamentary committe, but legislation has yet to be tabled to make this a reality. With the hard work done, our challenge to Mr. Johnson is to ensure legislation for this measure is tabled immediately and allowed to safely pass into law.
It’s also fundamental that progress is made on the role of the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies; cleaning up at home doesn’t simply mean outsourcing the facilitation of corruption outside of mainland Britain. Last year Parliament required all of the British Overseas Territories to bring in their own public registers of beneficial ownership, while just recently the British Crown Dependencies announced they would voluntarily take similar action. Since that vote leadership in the Overseas Territories have spent more time arguing against the need for transparency than working to make it happen, whilst the government has done little (publicly at least) to suggest it is supporting these efforts. The new government must not allow the Overseas Territories to wriggle out of their obligation to ensure company ownership transparency, nor the Crown Dependencies to shirk from their promise to implement the EU's Fifth Anti-Money Laundering that requires beneficial ownership transparency.
3. Use the UK’s Environment Bill as a chance to halt global deforestation
With the UK’s climate preparations currently leaving much to be desired, the Environment Bill the new PM inherits contains an historic opportunity to substantially raise environmental standards, especially when it comes to deforestation, not just for the UK but across the globe.
If the PM is serious about tackling climate change, he must get serious about deforestation. He should use the Bill as an opportunity to tackle the emissions associated with the UK’s consumption and imports and the mass deforestation both of these drive. In order to satiate UK consumers’ appetites for imported commodities like beef, palm oil and timber, a land mass more than half the size of the UK itself is needed to grow them. And more than 40% of that land mass is located in countries with weak protections for human rights and the environment.
These imports not only destroy forests crucial for fighting climate breakdown but also carry grave human rights risks. In 2017, agribusiness was the biggest driver for attacks against land and environmental defenders across the globe. Mr. Johnson should use the Environment Bill to help end these patterns: laying a path that requires companies to conduct mandatory due diligence on their investments and supply chains to eliminate deforestation and reduce emissions.
While there's a lot of chat about the back bench opposition the new PM will have to deal with when it comes to Brexit, he will also have to address a growing disquiet from the Tory backbenchers on the environment. There are some in the Conservative ranks leading a growing movement against fracking, and others have echoed concerns on the UK's global footprint on deforestation across the globe. As we speed towards climate breakdown and public concern for our environment grows, the political and planetary benefits of creating a landmark Environment Bill could be enormous.
These three challenges represent just a selection of what’s needed for the UK to take forward an ambitious agenda that stands up for both people and planet. Global Witness continues to fight on all fronts to make the world a better place for everyone and we will be watching closely the movements of Mr. Johnson to see whether the UK will help or hinder this fight.
General/out of hours media enquiries
EU must tackle deforestation linked to imports of agricultural commodities
On the International Day of Forests Global Witness calls on the EU to finally deliver on its commitments to halt deforestation
Who lives in a home like this? We might soon find out……
The UK moves one step closer on the slow path to property market transparency
UK Government climate targets branded ‘laughable’ as UK Export Finance supports new oil refineries abroad
The near-simulanteous announcement of the IPCC's report on how time is running out to stop climate change, and new UK Export Finance support for oil and gas abroad has been labelled “staggering.”
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The Greater Milwaukee Committee is a private sector civic organization whose mission is to contribute to the cultural and economic base of the Milwaukee Metropolitan area. The organization was formed in the late 1940s and is comprised of leaders in business, the professions, labor, education and philanthropy, nonprofit community development.
Currently led by president Julia Taylor and chair David Lubar (2019-20), the GMC has committed to building on its past success and to making Milwaukee the best community to live, learn, work, and play.
The GMC has three key pillars: innovation and talent, economic prosperity, and vibrancy of place. Within these initiatives, task forces and committees that have helped, among other things, build the new Bradley Tech, transform Bradford Beach, develop Well City Milwaukee, promote stable funding for buses and other forms of transit, link and leverage K-12 education with employer needs through the Regional Workforce Alliance and more.
The GMC was a primary catalyst in the creation of the Milwaukee Water Council, which is actively working with businesses, academia and government to develop the water-related cluster we have to make the Milwaukee region the “Silicon Valley” of fresh water. More recently, the GMC began working with the Cultural Alliance to develop Creativity Works!, an effort to stimulate the region’s creative economy and leverage innovation, as well as the Talent Dividend, an initiative to increase the region’s income base through higher educational attainment levels.
Today, you can find our work reflected in a set of initiatives that ensures Milwaukee is the best place to live, learn, work, play and stay.
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GNJ News Archive
Renowned Youth Speaker Laurie Polich Short will take the stage at IGNITE 2016. Photo provided.
Finding Faith in Life’s Darkness at IGNITE
July 1, 2016 | By Josh Kinney
jkinney@gnjumc.org
| GNJ News, Next Generation Ministries
Laurie Polich Short feels written. During her most painful moments, she continued to trust God when her life seemed shrouded in darkness. Despite agony, heartache, confusion and disappointment, today Short would never consider a redo of her story. To her, life feels literary, as if she’s a character in a book. That happens to be the case with her latest book, “Finding Faith in the Dark” which will be among several topics Short will speak on at the IGNITE youth conference in Wildwood this fall.
Short, a youth specialties speaker and author of over 14 books for youth workers and students is a small groups pastor at Ocean Hills Covenant Church in Santa Barbara, CA. Last month, Short took to the Main Stage at the popular Christian music festival Creation, in Mt. Union, Pa. Now her sights are set on IGNITE, where she will share her compelling story and powerful lessons of faith with over 1,000 youth, grades 6-12, from Greater New Jersey and the surrounding region.
Known from her past books and speaking engagements by her maiden name, Polich, Short’s relatively recent marriage plays a pivotal and powerful role in her personal testimony.
“Sometimes I think we wait too long to share our testimonies,” Short said. “People are never looking at you more than when you’re struggling and going through a rough time.” Short had always hoped to get married and become a mom, and at age 42, she was engaged. But her plans fell apart when her fiancé and his ex-wife made amends and got back together.
“My world collapsed, and I didn’t understand why this was happening to me,” she said. “I felt like God didn’t care and had abandoned me.” Although Short played a positive role in a story of reconciliation and redemption between her former fiancé and his ex-wife, she faced the brunt of colossal heartbreak.
“I used to have it out with God. I felt like he was being mean,” Short exclaimed. “Yet all along it was as if he was telling me not to worry, to tell my story anyway, reminding me he was in charge of how people responded, and that my story wasn’t over yet.”
Through loss and disappointment, Short held on to the verses of Isaiah 50:10-11: “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment.”
Instead of turning away, Short pressed into God with a morsel of shaken faith. “We don’t get to pick our scripts,” she said, “but we have the choice of how to respond.” Responding by grappling for faith in the dark, Short grew and matured, feeling called to step out in trust. A few years later, she fell in love with her husband, Jere Short, and his young son, Jordan. She became a wife and mom all at once.
“God is never done,” she said. “We put up limits and we shouldn’t. Our stories can still be amazing. He can do beautiful things and have wonderful things ahead for us. We need to realize our stories aren’t over.”
Having learned so much, Short knew pain connected people and was inspired to share her story and the stories of others through writing a book detailing faith when life takes unexpected turns. Largely story-driven, the book includes a theological perspective so readers can not only identify and share their experiences but learn. A video curriculum to accompany the book has been implemented so readers can meet the book’s characters, including Short.
“The book is about what it’s like to make choices right where you are,” she said, sharing how her brokenness made her eventual celebration far greater than she could’ve ever imagined.
“Now, I would never redo my story. It’s amazing that God had all of this for me,” Short said, “and, I still got to be a mom!”
Knowing that the point of a story is a character’s transformation, Short felt joy when the conflict was over, but knew it was the conflict that changed the person.
“Sometimes we get to the point of doubt and discouragement and say, well, I’ve waited long enough. But that’s when we have to hang on,” she said.
Primarily an active speaker who is learning to write, Short’s IGNITE topics will feature finding faith in the darkness of difficulties, as well as love, sex, and dating.
Deepen Faith
Messages from the Bishop
The Relay
Bishop's Relay Column
Next Generation Ministries
Stewardship Foundation
Miracles Everywhere
Annual Conference Coverage
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Myanmar team to join World Cup Qualifiers in 2021»
Myanmar defender Thein Than Win (red) tries to tackle the ball against Japanese midfielder Doan during the World Cup Qualifier at Thuwunna Stadium in Yangon on 10 September 2019. Photo: AFC
Myanmar national football team will jointhree World Cup qualifiers in March and June 2021, according to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
Team Myanmar has three games left to play and will face against Japan national team in the qualifiers in March. Next, the home game against Kyrgyzstan will also be played in March and away match against Tajikistan is scheduled for June.
Owing to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Myanmar national footballers have not been able to train yet and only had to train for a short time in March. The Myanmar national team will be coached by German Coach Antonio Hey for the qualifiers.
Due to this year’s postponement of the World Cup Qualifiers amidst pandemic, the Myanmar team has to play for four consecutive months in a row in 2021. Next year, the Myanmar national team will also compete in ASEAN level tourney named Suzuki Cup, and it will be held in December 2021.
The ASEAN Suzuki Cup is formerly scheduled to be held at the end of 2020, but it has been postponed due to the pandemic. —Lynn Thit (Tgi)
JFA invites ASEAN women players to join 2021 WE League
2021 New Year Message from President U Win Myint (1…
Myanmar anti-corruption officials join 16th ASEAN-PAC
SSB officials join 37th ASSA Board Meeting
Pigeon pea price shows downtick as India halts purchasing
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Reflecting on a Nonprofit’s Impact and Evolution
Founded in 1876, the Boys’ Club of New York (BCNY) is one of the oldest organizations dedicated to supporting youth in the country. It has also been a part of Valentino Carlotti’s life since he was a child growing up in New York City. Val is the global business partner for the Investment Banking and Merchant Banking Divisions at Goldman Sachs.
“I took advantage of all the programs at the Club, athletic teams, mentorship, academic programs, and spent hours having tremendous fun,” said Val. “It’s near and dear to my heart, I cherish those memories and experiences.” BCNY today offers academic opportunities through an independent school placement program, as well as athletics, summer jobs, internships and mentorship with the goal of encouraging young people ages 6 through 21 to seek the highest standards of scholarship, moral development and physical achievement.
An Executive Committee member of the nonprofit’s Board of Trustees for the last 10 years and a “Boys’ Club boy,” as the nonprofit refers to its alumni, Val has remained active in supporting BCNY into his adult years.
“The Boys’ Club speaks to the importance of developing the whole individual and walking that walk on a day-to-day basis – building men of high moral value, of character,” Val explained.
“My parents imbued me with a mindset that anything you want to do in the world is yours to do, and that when you decide to focus on something, you have all the capacity you need to master it,” Val said. He remembers fondly one of the first times he used a computer at a BCNY clubhouse in the 1980s – when computers were still difficult to come by.
Today, the nonprofit continues to evolve, and differentiates itself through the depth and breadth of its programs, which include a focus on providing access to the arts and culture through art, music, literature and dance as well as computer science, coding and technical training.
“In addition to providing academic scholarships and school placements to high-performing students, we try to hold the fort on these important pillars of child and human development,” Val noted. “We’ve also given a lot of thought to how to adapt to demographic shifts, so as not to let the physical space of our clubhouses be a limiting factor in bringing services to those who need them.”
Val hopes that in the future, the Boys’ Club of New York will develop an even bigger voice as a thought leader in the youth development space given its history and practice serving young men in New York.
For his dedication to the nonprofit over many years, Val received the Boys’ Club of New York’s Harriman Award for Civic Leadership at a ceremony on May 17.
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What is a substantial meal? Tier 2 rules for pubs and restaurants in December 2020
What you need to know about drinking and eating out in December.
Grace Walsh December 1, 2020 1:30 pm
There was a time last year when the idea of a scotch egg saving pubs and restaurants from closing would have been met with bewilderment - but not in 2020.
When it comes to what is a substantial meal in pubs and restaurants under the new tier system when lockdown ends on December 2, there has been much confusion so far.
Under the new rules set by the government for December 2020, pubs and restaurants reopening in tier 2 local lockdown areas can only serve alcohol to customers if it comes with a ‘substantial meal’. But what is a ‘substantial meal’? Well, according to one government minister, this can include a single scotch egg.
Environment Secretary George Eustice responded positively when he was asked about the inclusion of the deli snack in a conversation about the new rules for bars, pubs and restaurants with LBC earlier this week:
“I think a Scotch egg probably would count as a substantial meal if there were table service,” Mr Eustice said. “Often that might be as a starter, but yes, I think it would.”
Whether the minister meant that the scotch egg would be served in addition to a main meal or with a side dish is not entirely clear, but a spokesperson for the prime minister soon disputed the idea that it could constitute a substantial meal. In a quick statement, they said, “Bar snacks do not count as a substantial meal.”
So with scotch eggs ruled out for pubs and restaurants wanting to serve pints, what do you have to eat to be allowed alcohol when venues can re-open from December 2nd onwards?
What is a substantial meal?
Substantial meals are defined as: “a full breakfast, main lunchtime or evening meal” in the government’s Covid-19 Winter Plan, but there hasn’t been any specific advice on what exact dishes make up these meals quite yet.
Under the new regulations, a substantial meal has to be delivered with table service or eaten “at a counter or other structure which serves the purposes of a table.”
This isn’t the first time there has been confusion over what a ‘substantial meal’ is. The same issue was raised under the previous three tier system and at the time it was suggested by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick that a substantial meal is something that “you would expect to have as a midday meal or an evening meal”.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has also offered their point of view on the matter and suggested, “It would be difficult to argue that a single sausage roll or a snack pork pie constitutes a main meal, whereas if it was served plated with accompaniments such as vegetables, salad, potatoes, it could be considered substantial.”
So there we have it! Ultimately of course, it’s down to hospitality venues to dictate what counts as a substantial meal as they’re required to serve one by law to stay open.
How many drinks can you have with a substantial meal?
The government hasn’t laid out any guidance over how many drinks are allowed with a substantial meal and it’s likely to be up to the venue to decide what is appropriate.
However, venues have to serve food alongside their drinks and despite the original nature of the venue, they have to “operate as if they were a restaurant”. So basically, if you finish your food you can’t order any more drinks afterwards.
Naturally for many people, keen to get back into pubs and bars with friends over the festive season, the new rules pose more questions than answers. Alistair Kerr from The Campaign For Pubs told Sky News that landlords would have to offer a “common sense policy” and would not “endorse unsociable drinking”.
But with hospitality venues suffering immensely this year and continuing to make losses under the new restrictions, which sees limitations on trading through their busiest month of the year, he said that some would allow customers to order multiple drinks at a time where appropriate to cover the costs.
Under the new hospitality rules for tiers one and two, the previous 10pm closing time has been extended to 11pm with final orders coming in one hour before.
Can I stay and order drinks after eating my meal?
Unfortunately it looks like customers will have to leave the venue after they have finished their meals.
According to the trade body Hospitality UK, it’s up to each individual venue to decide what is reasonable behaviour in each circumstance under the new restrictions. For example, diners will likely be able to order their drinks before the food arrives but won’t be able to order another drink after their plates have been cleared away.
The idea behind it is to limit the time that people can spend with those outside their households and therefore, to limit the amount of time and opportunities that coronavirus has to spread. It’s just one of the measures that has been put in place for December, before the Christmas lockdown rules come into place, to allow people to gather together for the festive season without potentially risking further lockdowns down the line including one in January and throughout 2021.
On the plus side, however, it also gives people a rough time scale of how long they can expect to spend in a pub or restaurant after the new restrictions and won’t be surprised when they are asked to finish up.
Is a sandwich a substantial meal?
Previous statements issued by the government would suggest that a sandwich on its own does not make up enough of a substantial meal, as a Cornish pasty on its own doesn’t make the cut. This would suggest that much like a Cornish pasty, a sandwich served with chips, a salad or another side dish would constitute a substantial meal and be allowed with alcohol.
However, there currently isn’t any specific guidance on what exact dishes will be allowed so it’s very much up to the pubs, bars and restaurants to dictate what is and isn’t allowed under the new rules.
Is a pizza a substantial meal?
A whole pizza, like that served in a restaurant, would constitute a substantial meal especially if it is only being eaten by one person. This means that those looking to head to the pub for a couple of slices and a pint will be in luck in many places around England after the lockdown ends.
In some cases, even just an extra large slice could constitute a substantial meal if it’s big enough to be had on its own as a lunchtime or evening meal. If not, it’s likely to have to be served with a significant side dish or as a starter to a larger course of meals.
Luckily though, if a whole pizza doesn’t take your fancy, then there are some rules which suggest you can share some substantial meals with a friend depending on how many people are sharing.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has said that “a platter or dishes designed to be shared could constitute a meal for a couple of people, sharing a single meal or plate of food between a group would unlikely to be deemed as a substantial meal.”
The rules also say that one household or support bubble can have a meal indoors together, but the Rule of Six does apply to those who have to eat outside.
Is soup a substantial meal?
Much like the rules for sandwiches, a bowl of soup would likely be considered a substantial meal if it was served as part of a larger dish – such as with bread on the side – or a set of courses as a starter.
So ultimately, it’s entirely up to the restaurants, bar or pub to decide what makes up a substantial meal and whether they decided it’s appropriate to serve alcohol under the new government guidelines for tier 2 restrictions.
When are the BBC education programmes on TV during lockdown? How kids can watch from home
Support bubbles in national lockdown: What are the rules?
Can grandparents see their grandchildren now and help with childcare?
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Oxford wards
UPDATE: The Oxfordshire Green Party submitted a response. Then in November 2018, the Boundary Commission accepted our proposal for 7 wards. The final decision will be announced in February 2019.
The Local Government Boundary Commission for England is consulting on new ward boundaries for Oxford. In Oxford people in each ward elect two councillors to represent us on Oxford City Council. They serve the people within their ward.
Because the number of voters in each ward has changed, the Boundary Commission is doing a review to set out new ward boundaries with almost the same number of voters in each ward. They have produced a draft proposal for new ward boundaries, based on what they heard from the council and the Labour Party. We now have until 13 August 2018 to respond to the consultation, telling them what they have got wrong and how to improve on the draft.
Anyone working or living in Oxford can take part in the consultation. The Oxfordshire Green Party wants your help in designing our response. Please leave your suggestions below.
The Boundary Commission wants to know how well the proposed wards do 3 things:
Does it reflect the community boundaries as understood by people in Oxford? The wards should not cut a community in two. Ideally they bring together communities who are linked. (For example, Donnington and Iffley Village are part of the same Church of England parish.)
Is it convenient to administer? Do people come together at the same places (community centres, pubs, shops etc.)? Do the transport routes bring people together or separate one area from another?
Are there the same number of registered electors in each ward?
We have the data on the number of voters in each area, so we need your help on 1 and 2. We need suggestions backed up by evidence that supports your changes.
In the map below, you can see the draft boundaries from the Boundary Commission (in red). Overlaid on that (in green) is a proposed alternative for 3 wards prepared by our Green councillors for a council committee. These proposals were judged by officials as fine. They improve on the draft. But they were voted down by Labour councillors, in a tradition dating back to 1812.
Breaks community
Fits community
Evidenced
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Man arrested on suspicion of rape
By Hereford Voice,
November 20, 2020 in Police & Crime
Hereford Voice 85
Hereford Voice
A full and thorough investigation has been launched and a Hereford man arrested on suspicion of rape after an incident in the city yesterday afternoon (Thursday 19 November).
Shortly after 2pm West Mercia Police received a report that a woman in her 20s had been approached by a man in the St James’ Road area and that she had been attacked and sexually assaulted. Officers were quickly in the area, searches were carried out and as part of our enquiries a 32-year-old local man was arrested on suspicion of rape. He currently remains in police custody.
Detective Chief Inspector Emma Whitworth said:
“An investigation has been launched into this incident and we’re appealing for help from members of the public as our enquiries continue. Additional officers are in the area to both carry out enquiries and offer reassurance. We understand this incident will be concerning to the wider community and we would like to reassure people that our detectives are carrying out a detailed investigation and we have put additional resources in the local area.
“The arrest was made quickly after the reports were made to officers. We’d like to thank the members of the public who stopped to help the victim. She is currently being supported.”
Anyone with information should ring West Mercia Police on 101 quoting reference 340i of 19 November or report online under the Tell Us About section. Alternatively, information can be passed to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
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Interview with theatre producer Kenny Wax
Kenny Wax (pic: Alastair Muir)
©ALASTAIR MUIR CONTACT alastair@alastairmuir.com
Kenny Wax started his career as an usher at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane at the beginning of the run of Miss Saigon in 1989. As his latest production in a string of stage hits opens in the West End for the Christmas season, Sandra Deeble talks to the Hadley Wood producer about penguins, heist capers and a Great British Bake Off musical
Mr Popper's Penguins
‘Everyone loves penguins,’ says Kenny Wax, the day after his latest musical, Mr Popper’s Penguins, opened in New York. ‘I don’t produce anything that I don’t want to see myself. I produce because I love that particular project.’
He’s due to go to America to see the show at the New Victory Theatre with his family during half-term. And after that it will come much closer to home, to the Finchley Artsdepot, before moving to the Criterion Theatre in the West End for the Christmas season. But today, we’re in his office in Shaftesbury Avenue, with a perfect view of the Palace Theatre, home to Les Misérables. The walls of Kenny’s office are covered with posters and photographs from his shows. It’s an impressive line-up: Top Hat, The Gruffalo, Hetty Feather, The Play That Goes Wrong, Aspects of Love, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, We Are Going On A Bear Hunt, The Tiger Who Came to Tea..
So what are the skills needed in order to become an award-winning theatre producer? What’s the trick when it comes to creating a top-notch show?
Taking a pause before he speaks, Kenny says, ‘Putting the right people together. You put designers and directors with the composers and lyricists and once you’ve got it all together you shake it up and put it on the table and wait for it to settle.’ As he describes the process, he is visibly fizzing. There is a joyous and infectious enthusiasm about this man.
Mr Popper’s Penguins is based on an American children’s book of the 1950s that was made into a 2011 film with Jim Carrey. It’s a tale about a painter and decorator who dreams of going to the Antarctic. One day, a packing crate arrives on his doorstep and when Mr Popper opens it, a penguin waddles out. A big hit on the cards? ‘It’s a gorgeous hour,’ says Kenny, eyes shining.
Putting people together is something that first interested Kenny when he came to London from Cheshire to do business studies at the Polytechnic of Central London. He thought he might go into human resources. But a year out at the Dixons head office, with much of his time spent inputting staff absences into a database, made him think that his talents lay elsewhere.
He’d always loved musical theatre. He didn’t want to perform – although he was in a school production of HMS Pinafore and once played an Oompa Loompa in Manchester – but he could see a way of combining his interest in business with musicals. It was a good time to start.
‘It was the eighties,’ he recalls. ‘And it was the decade of the mega-musical, particularly this one,’ he says, gesturing out of his office window at the Les Mis sign. ‘I came to London at a time when Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber were in their absolute heyday. There was Phantom, Cats, Evita and Miss Saigon.’
Working as an usher at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane when Miss Saigon was just beginning its run, Kenny got to meet Mackintosh.
‘Cameron was kind to me in the early years,’ he says. ‘He gave me a chance to go and chat to him and now I always do that with people’.
Kenny has offered full-time jobs to several of the interns who spend three months with his company, doing everything from running auditions to propping shows.
Out of all of his shows, does he have a favourite? ‘Top Hat will always be incredibly dear to me,’ he says. ‘The show was nominated for seven Olivier awards and won three. Part of the inspiration came from seeing Me and My Girl with Robert Lindsay and Emma Thompson in 1985. Top Hat had the same sentimentality as Me and My Girl.’
The Comedy About a Bank Robber at The Criterion
The story of how Irving Berlin’s three daughters granted Kenny permission to produce a stage show of the Astaire and Rogers film is the stuff of dreams. He almost met the sisters before a snowstorm swept in and closed down New York. He then had a telephone ‘audition’ with them on speakerphone with their first question being, “So, why did you choose these songs?”
‘When they heard my response, they knew that I had done my preparation,’ Kenny says, ‘I had drafted a structure of a stage show and I’d brought in some of the great Berlin classics to up the hit count.’
He’s seen the show in Sweden and Japan, and next summer Potters Bar will be Puttin’ On the Ritz, as the amateur rights have just been released. ‘I will definitely go and see it in Potters Bar,’ says Kenny.
Did Strictly Come Dancing help with the popularity of Top Hat? ‘We certainly benefitted.’ Pursuing my thinking along TV lines: could there be a musical the Great British Bake Off? ‘Probably. And Mel Giedroyc calls herself a crazy fan of the Gone Wrong shows.’
We Are Going on A Bear Hunt - Kenny Wax & Nick Brooke
The Play That Goes Wrong is currently playing in Paris, Budapest, Broadway and Melbourne. You can see it at the West End Duchess Theatre. Peter Pan Goes Wrong is on at the Apollo.
While someone once gave him the friendly advice that live theatre was not going to be around in the future, Kenny Wax seems to be on a roll. ‘If something is good, people will absolutely go and see it,’ he notes.
He clearly has great intuition about what will work. With another successful production, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery, currently at the Criterion Theatre, Kenny describes how in early meetings about the show, people weren’t sure about the idea of a heist caper.
‘I remember putting my foot down and saying “It’s got to be a comedy about a bank robbery”. You fight for these things.’
Kenny generously offers me tickets for The Comedy About A Bank Robbery and I go to see it with my mum. It’s very, very funny and full of tricks. On a Tuesday night, sitting in the beautiful, intimate Criterion, it certainly seems that West End theatre is in rude health. It’s a full house, and I realise afterwards why – laughing out loud for a couple of hours is fantastically uplifting exercise for body and soul. It’s half-term and the audience is full of families. Children, parents and grandparents are all enjoying the fast-moving, visual comedy with wonderful plays on words. As my mum said, ‘There’s something happening every single minute!’
You might think that Kenny Wax is starry, given that he’s a friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber (he recently invited him to see England play at Wembley), and that on his office walls there are photographs of superstar director and producer J J Abrams and childhood favourite Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz.
But he is very modest and extremely likeable. He loves spending time with his family and they all play lots of sport at home in Hertfordshire. He tells me, with the perfect timing of a seasoned commuter, that the journey from Hadley Wood to Piccadilly is 50 minutes.
He has been producing musical theatre now for several decades, but his energy and enthusiasm are akin to someone just starting out. Can he believe how things have turned out, since he first worked as an usher? Could a young person today, I ask, go from showing people to their seats to producing a string of award-winning shows? Is it all hard work, or is there an element of luck involved?
Kenny pauses again and then quotes something he once heard and still likes (and that I later find out is attributed to the Seneca, the Roman philosopher).
‘Luck,’ he says, ‘is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’
Kenny’s top Herts theatres
Gordon Craig Theatre
Hertford Theatre
Radlett Centre
And pre-show dining
Thompson’s, St Albans
The Sun at Northaw
The Fox at Willian
Lussmans, St Albans
Wicked Lady, Wheathamstead
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Wellness Industry
Healthy Living + Travel
HealthPeople
Sports Stars Discuss How to Stay Healthy While Traveling
Five sports stars share their secrets for staying healthy on the road
Craig Oliver 1 year ago
Staying healthy while on the road can be a challenge. Not every trip is going to automatically include having fun and losing weight like the Movara Fitness Resort trip we shared previously here on Healthy Living + Travel. While traveling can be an amazing experience, this doesn’t mean that you have to let go of your fitness goals in the process.
Take a leaf out of these five sports stars’ books when it comes to staying healthy while traveling.
As one of the most recognizable faces of tennis, Maria Sharapova says that she’s almost never at her Florida home. Because of rigorous training schedule and tournaments, the five-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s highest-earning female athletes travels every week. So what’s her secret for staying healthy while traveling? The tennis star shared three things with Coveteur — discipline, hydration, and a little lavender oil.
“I stick to a clean diet of lean proteins and vegetables, stay hydrated, get a lot of sleep, and stick to my normal routine wherever possible,” Sharapova says, despite her candy addiction and hectic schedule. Her disciplined lifestyle means sticking to her diet and making sure to go for a walk or jog shortly after arriving at a tournament city, just to get used to the air.
On the other hand, hydration is an important part of fitness for Sharapova so much so that she usually drinks half a liter of water before breakfast. Moreover, to battle jet lag, she recommends drinking water right before takeoff, throughout the flight, and upon arriving at the hotel.
Lastly, Sharapova admits that one wellness product she can’t live without when traveling is lavender oil. Aside from smelling good, it has been proven to eliminate nervous tension, relieve pain, and enhance blood circulation, all of which can contribute to a healthier trip.
Basketball superstar LeBron James has logged in 17 seasons in the NBA. His accomplishments include competing in ten NBA finals, and four NBA Championships. Now that the four-time MVP is at an age when a lot of NBA players are beginning to think about retirement, James is showing no signs of slowing down. He’s known as one of the first major players to switch workout focus from strength and weight training to movement and flexibility. James extends this emphasis on longevity and holistic training to his travels with the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
One of the major health adjustments he credits for his team’s performance in recent months was more sleep while traveling in between games. Instead of flying out to the next city right after a game, the Cavs have taken a routine of staying overnight in a city before hitting the road the next day. “We’re old, man,” James jokes in an interview with ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. He added, “Whenever we get a chance to stay over for the night this season, we have to do that.”
Often an overlooked aspect of health and fitness, sleep has been proven to be a crucial factor for maintaining healthy body weight, encouraging recovery after workouts, as well as regulating energy, hunger, and stress. Aside from its benefits for diet and exercise, something as simple as getting adequate sleep, especially when traveling, lowers risks of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart failure.
Sorel Mizzi
With $11,897,290 in live tournament earnings and several podium finishes in European and American poker tournaments, professional poker player Sorel Mizzi ranks fourth in Canada’s all-time money list as of December 2017. As a mind sport, poker doesn’t necessarily require physical fitness from its players. However, Mizzi points out that good diet and regular exercise help him remain focused on the game. The habits also make him feel better about himself and his sport, especially during tournaments.
In Mizzi’s interview with PartyPoker, he describes that his fitness journey began with a ten-day detox program. The process helped him lose 20 pounds and made him decide to live a healthier lifestyle for good, saying, “I decided I didn’t want to put crap inside my body anymore because it makes me miserable.”
Traveling makes it very tempting to get takeout food or binge-eat in restaurants, and Mizzi admits that the old him would’ve given in to those cravings without a second thought. Today, he shares that he’s much more disciplined with his diet and workout routines, citing that he’s never missed a gym session during the main event at the recently concluded WPT Vienna. According to Mizzi, the combination of healthy food and adequate exercise made a major difference to his mental clarity, helping him focus on every hand instead of zoning out in between plays.
Kate Richardson-Walsh
Kate Richardson-Walsh capped off a stellar career in women’s field hockey in 2016, when she led Great Britain’s team to a gold finish in the Rio Olympic Games. Richardson-Walsh made her international debut for both England and Great Britain in 1999, and since then has gone on to make 375 appearances for her country. She earned 19 medals, 49 goals, and played as the captain of the British women’s field hockey team for 13 years.
Currently, the British record-holder serves as the patron of Women’s Sport Trust and is on the Athletes’ Commission for the European Olympic Committees. Despite retirement and the absence of organized training, Richardson-Walsh revealed in an interview with The Telegraph that flexibility and dedication is key to maintaining her health and fitness.
“It’s important to be willing to train at different times in the day, whenever your schedule allows,” shared Richardson-Walsh. For instance, while traveling back and forth between meetings and holidays, she makes sure to train whatever time of the day she can. “Learning that discipline, to fit things in whenever you can, is a big help,” said the sportswoman.
American professional stock car racing driver Jimmie Johnson got his start in the world of motor sport at just four years old. He has since earned seven championships in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and 83 career race wins. On top of his racing achievements, Johnson is also a triathlete, with an intense training regimen of endurance swims, runs, and bikes.
Just like his Chevrolet SS, Johnson admits not being able to perform his best unless he’s gassed up on carbs, protein, and plant-based foods. He told Stack Magazine in an interview that being on the road all the time means having to eat the right food, something he hadn’t always paid attention to. In his younger days, Johnson describes, “I was a single guy traveling on the road and eating whatever was in front of me.” That all changed when he got serious about his fitness in 2007, after learning more about how nutrition, training, and performance all tie together “not just for how you look, but how you feel and how you recover.” In addition to lots of vegetables and fruits, Johnson also recommends drinking lots of water.
Did you like these tips, or do you have any star-recommended tips for fitness while traveling? Let us know in the comments section.
Craig Oliver December 5, 2019
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Craig Oliver
As Editor-in-Chief of Healthy Living + Travel, Craig Oliver is passionate about the ability of health, wellness and travel to enrich our lives. With an expertise in media & marketing, he has over twenty-years experience building brands and driving growth in the wellness, travel, lifestyle and luxury industries.
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VISIT SPAS OF AMERICA
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©2020 Healthy Living + Travel
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Welcome to doing things differently
At Heartland Bank, we’re on a mission to improve the lives of Kiwis by making money work for them. We believe banking shouldn’t be hard. We’re always working to integrate innovative new technology that enables you to live and bank the way you want.
Heartland backs next generation of All Blacks
Heartland Bank has entered into a partnership with the Auckland Rugby Union to sponsor the region’s top-tier secondary schools competitions.
Heartland Bank Deputy CEO, Chris Flood, said the partnership is important for the bank because it views sport as an essential part of education, which it is passionate about supporting.
“We are thrilled to be the competition partner this year. Heartland Bank is a proud supporter of grassroots rugby, having sponsored a number of first XV teams across the country through the Heartland Trust. This partnership with Auckland secondary schools rugby takes this one step further,” said Mr Flood.
The arrangement covers the boy’s 1A, 1B and girl’s 1st XV competition, which this year features eight teams.
“The talent pool within Auckland at school level is the envy of much of the country and the 1A competition is often seen as the pre-eminent schools competition in the world.”
Auckland Rugby Union CEO Jarrod Bear said he is excited about the potential of the partnership going forward.
“The support of Heartland Bank is greatly valued. Auckland Rugby sees this as an opportunity to further enhance the role of rugby within schools. Rugby is an outstanding vehicle to teach a multitude of life skills to students.”
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Saxon Homes
In April of 1953, the Columbia Housing Authority (CHA) opened Saxon Homes, a low-income housing project. The development was named for Celia Dial Saxon, who was born into slavery in Columbia in 1857. Saxon proved herself a persistent learner, graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1877 during the Reconstruction era. Saxon taught school in Columbia for fifty-five years. She advocated for women and children by helping to organize the State Federation of Colored Women, the Phyllis Wheatley branch of the Y.W.C.A., and the Williams Home for Orphans in Cayce. She died in 1935.
Celia Dial Saxon, 1920s. From "A True Likeness, The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts: 1920-1936." ©The Estate of Richard Samuel Roberts, by permission of Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc.
The 400 Saxon apartments ranged from one bedroom to five bedrooms, and included a gas range, indoor plumbing, a space heater, a refrigerator, electric lights, and modern (for the time) bathrooms. The complex consisted of sixty-four buildings, most of which were garden-style apartments. The project was intended to be modern in every respect, featuring up-to-date appliances and accessible recreational facilities. CHA provided a daycare center at Saxon Homes, and Benedict College provided daycare staff. Initially opened for families only, former residents remember Saxon Homes especially for its role in fostering family values and community solidarity.
The apartments were demolished in September of 2000, and the Columbia Housing Authority worked with the Cultural Council of Richland and Lexington Counties to create “The Door Project: Connecting the Past to the Future.” The project rescued doors from Saxon Homes and converted them into public art displayed throughout Columbia. A new public housing community called Upper and Lower Celia Saxon was constructed on the site of the old Saxon Homes in May 2001.
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Aug. 30 1918.
OPNAV 696
The President request the following message to be quoted for your information:
The President. The following was adopted by the New York State Federation of Labor now in session at Rochester New York.
Where as the New York State Federation of Labor is now assembled in its fifty-fifth annual meeting in the City of Rochester on this day, Tuesday August 27th 1918 and awaits the transaction of its first item of business, be it RESOLVED That solemnly realizing that the first and chief business to occupy the attention and energies of the American people in the war we are engaged in to uphold and extend the heritage of liberty achieved for us by our God-fearing forefathers and thus prove our right to that inheritance we the delegates of the trade and labor unions of the Empire State gathered here in their name and to do their will do herewith declare that the first business of this convention is to dedicate its work to the winning of the war for freedom and to give voice again to the explicit trust we have in the leadership of our supreme civil executive and military commander in chief PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON and be it further resolved that as a pledge of our purpose to devote ourselves and the work of this convention to the promotion of the speedy winning of the war and the security of international justice and peace this minute of our proceedings be forwarded forthwith to the President of the United States at Washington with out respectful request that he authorize its transmission to General Pershing1 of the American Army in France and to Admiral Sims in command of the American Naval Forces in European continental waters period Signed Edward A. Bates Secretary New York State Federation of Labor unquote 696.
Source Note: Cy, DNA, RG 45, Entry 517B.
Footnote 1: Gen. John J. Pershing, Commander, American Expeditionary Force.
Naval Procurement
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Skull Discovered on Mount Hood Belongs To 19-Year-Old Woman Reported Missing
A partial human skull detected decades ago by the United States Forest Service workers atop Mount Hood, Ore. was matched through DNA analysis to a missing young woman.
The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office is requesting the public for help in the decades-old cold case of 19-year-old Wanda Ann Herr, who vanished in the late 1970s.
Investigators are anticipating the information will aid in determining what led to the demise of Herr. According to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office, the mystery was initiated in 1986 when two Forest Service workers stumbled upon the partial skull with a number of bone fragments and one tooth near Government Camp off US 26.
Authorities released a sketch and physical reconstruction in 2017. But no other important insights were garnered until 2019 when they carried out DNA phenotyping or the procedure of determining an individual's appearance and ancestry from DNA.
The skull had been in the woods for an estimated decade. The case impeded until 2008 when a state police forensic anthropologist made a reassessment of the skull.
The sheriff's office is currently appealing to the public for help in determining how exactly she passed away. According to a press release, "Cold case detectives continue working to piece together more of Herr's background and story, including what led to her disappearance and death," reported Oxygen.
It took investigators until 2008, following the initial finding of the skull piece, to specify it had belonged to a young woman.
Also Read: Missing Mother Who Mysteriously Disappeared 2 Years Ago Found Floating Alive at Sea
According to the sheriff's office, "This new info, combined with extensive genealogical research, soon revealed a likely name for the young woman: Wanda Ann Herr, born in 1957," reported Newser.
They added it confirmed the finding with Herr's surviving siblings' DNA. They stated Herr grew up in a different household and could have been residing in the Portland suburb of Gresham's group home when she vanished sometime following June 1976.
With the new data that emerged, an imaging specialist developed a facial reconstruction through clay. Officials stated the reconstruction prompted leads but eventually resulted in no progressive momentum.
The remains were archived and re-curated at the Clackamas County Medical Examiner's Office in 2005.
In 2008, almost 22 years following the initial discovery, the State Forensic Anthropologist with the Oregon State Police Dr. Nici Vance, reevaluated the skull.
The Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office had an opportunity to begin DNA analysis on over 100 sets of unidentified remains in 2019. The Mount Hood skull is one of them.
According to the sheriff's office in a statement, "The intensive genetic analysis revealed far more detail about the subject: The skull belonged to a female of Northern European descent with fair skin, hazel/brown eyes, brown hair, and some freckles. This new info, combined with extensive genealogical research, soon revealed a likely name for the young woman: Wanda Ann Herr, born in 1957," reported Oregonlive.
When Herr vanished, she resided in a group home in Portland, Gresham, during the time.
Related Article: Man Cuts Teenage Cousin's Body Parts, Buries Remains in Different Locations
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Hobby Bunker Forums
→ HISTORIC INFORMATION & ARCHIVE
→ WEBSITES
→ ANCIENT TO PRE WWII
that's all brother
Started by Guest_sammy719_* , Jun 20 2015 10:24 AM
Post #1 Guest_sammy719_*
Guest_sammy719_*
Help us Save a Piece of History
The transport aircraft that led the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France more than 70 years ago has been rediscovered in an aircraft boneyard in Wisconsin. Believed lost to history, the airplane was slated to be cut apart and remanufactured as a modern turbo-prop. The Commemorative Air Force (CAF) is launching a Kickstarter funding campaign to save and restore the plane to flying condition.
Five hours before the D-Day beach landings began, That’s All, Brother led a formation of more than 800 aircraft that dropped 13,000 paratroopers behind enemy lines. Historic film, shot as the airplane departs on its D-Day mission, shows it was equipped with an early form of airborne radar to guide the invasion force to the drop zone. The aircraft was named That’s All, Brother as a personal message to Adolf Hitler that, with the Allied invasion of Europe, his plans were done.
CAF has negotiated for the opportunity to acquire That’s All, Brother from Basler Turbo Conversions of Oshkosh, Wis. The company had purchased the airframe to convert into a modern BT-67 turboprop and was unaware of its lineage until a researcher alerted them to its huge historical significance.
As part of the agreement the CAF must complete its purchase of That’s All, Brother by August 31. With the deadline approaching, the CAF has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the remaining funds to rescue this noteworthy aircraft.
“This is a modern miracle,” said CAF President/CEO Stephan C. Brown. “The aircraft was within weeks of being torn apart, when its serial number 42-92847 was traced and it turned out to be the actual lead aircraft for the D-Day invasion.”
After returning from the initial drop of 101st Airborne Division paratroopers on D-Day, That’s All, Brother towed a glider to Normandy, carrying essential supplies and men of the 82nd Airborne Division into the heart of the battle. The aircraft remained on combat status throughout the European campaign, participating in Operation Market Garden, the relief of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and the crossing of the Rhine River. After the war it passed through sixteen civilian owners and its story was forgotten.
The CAF plans to faithfully restore That’s All, Brother to airworthy condition, representing its exact configuration on D-Day. The airplane will be a “flying classroom”, allowing school children and other visitors to board the aircraft and sit in the original paratrooper seats. Inside the darkened plane, hidden speakers and sensors will carry people back in time to the night of June 5-6, 1944.
“We want to bring this world class artifact back to the public as part of the CAFs mission to educate future generations about the legacy and values of those who fought for freedom in World War II,” Brown said.
The aircraft will be based in Dallas as an iconic centerpiece of CAF’s new national aviation museum attraction. It will also be available to attend major national commemoration events, airshows and flyovers. The CAF also plans to fly the aircraft to Europe in the summer of 2019 to participate in the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the last opportunity for living veterans to attend a major commemoration event.
The Kickstarter fundraising page can be accessed via: www.ThatsAllBrother.org
Full Media Kit, including photos and videos of the plane, old and new
Film footage showing That’s All Brother departing for the D-Day invasion
Video narrated by actor Dale Dye (Band of Brothers)
Hi All, just read and watched a video on the lead plane of the Normandy drops, I can't believe it actually survived the War!!!! just thought it was a great story and I will donate what I can to save this beauty and hope to see her fly during the 75th aniversary in 2019...Sammy
Post #3 Guest_Spitfrnd_*
Guest_Spitfrnd_*
Wow, an impressive piece of history indeed Sammy. The CAF does great work BTW.
Post #4 Firebat
Firebat
Location:Florida USA
What an Icon.....If I had to pick my main interest in WWII and collecting it would be the D-Day Airborne operation.
Since I was a little kid.....I was enthralled when I saw the Longest Day I think I was about 8 years old.
It was the Airborne that attracted me the most.
please check out the link below the original post of the film shot of the plane, it's great to be able to watch the video of the plane before it's take off, I'm not posting to take up funds for this operation but you know if we can buy a toy soldier for 60 bucks a pop I'll certainly save up a few nickles and dimes to do my part, plus there are different packages if you donate 25 dollars you get this 100 you get a different package deal, etc. I like the 101 dollar deal as you get a large colored photo of the plane once completed, a commerative patch, some other stuff but the best is there will be a plaque located in the plane to all the donators that helped fund this project and to know my name is in the 1st plane that lead the Normandy jump will make me feel somewhat connected to it...Sammy
Back to ANCIENT TO PRE WWII
Hobby Bunker (ip.board pro sense) (Import)
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Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Covering Trump, Anchoring 17 Hours a Week (Q&A)
7:05 AM PST 1/19/2018 by Jeremy Barr
Rob Kim/Getty Images
The host, who gives Barack Obama credit when it's due, doesn't want to bother with a Trump interview.
Neil Cavuto is, to some degree, a company man. In his 30-minute conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, the Fox News original mentioned "my Fox bias" multiple times. But he also stands out at the network. As a veteran business journalist who is willing to opine when warranted, he's something of a hybrid of the network's straight-news anchors and opinion hosts. He's broken with some of his news-side colleagues by saying publicly that he's not interested in participating in the bake-off to land an interview with Donald Trump.
Cavuto is also a work-horse. Starting Saturday, Cavuto has a new two-hour show (CAVUTO Live) that will bring his total anchoring time each week to 17 hours — even more than the 15 hours that NBC's Hoda Kotb is putting in every week. Cavuto chatted with THR about the first year of the Trump presidency and the evolution of the network he's worked for since 1996, when it began.
In trying to pin down Trump's economic positions, Cavuto compared himself to Peter Falk's character in Columbo. "I liken my approach to doing my job to that character, where you're scratching your head and saying, 'Well, wait a minute. You said this and now you're doing this.' And I try to get beyond what the others are trying to focus on."
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Did you pay attention to Wednesday night's Fake News Awards? What'd you think?
I just think they're a little silly. I don't think they're something that's befitting the president of the United States. I can understand his frustration. Even our most popular presidents have had problems with the press ...
There was a dueling event in Washington, D.C., focusing on the First Amendment and coverage of the Trump administration. These events have become sort of a cottage industry during the first year of his presidency, as people have been talking more about the freedom of the press.
I will say that whatever distaste many in the media might have for the president, they've got to be careful, too. You know, presidents will bristle at critical coverage, but that doesn't mean you need to bristle back 24/7. You can be above the fray by just calling it as you see it. We've done the same with the president — we commended him on some good things and we call him on bad things. I think fair is fair. So the media shouldn't get all haughty and holier-than-thou either, but nor does that justify the leader of the free world getting petty.
Where is the line between covering the president aggressively and reporters "going over their skis," as some, including [Fox News anchor] Bret Baier and [Fox News executive] Jay Wallace, have called it?
Well, I think it's in looking at what's going on. It doesn't have to be all negative all the time, nor does it have to be all positive all the time. I don't want to make it too simplistic. But I feel that we have, what, three news networks, three business networks, we're on 24/7 — I think we have time to get in all of the above. ... Whether you like the president, dislike the president, it's incumbent on all of us is just to be fair to the news that is.
Some in conservative media and in the administration have made the case that Trump deserves the credit for the success of the economy recently. Others say that it's mostly thanks to Barack Obama. In this polarized media landscape, has it become mandatory to pick one or the other?
I think we're very careful here — I'm obviously expressing my bias, and particularly on my various shows, including this new one — not to do that. And to just let the chips fall where they may. Again, look at the facts. ... I see it through that prism. I mention the good and the bad. I mentioned the good with Barack Obama, and I guess I ticked off some Fox viewers. Conversely, I mentioned the bad. ... I really don't have an agenda either way.
Did you get any blowback from the White House for saying that you don't want to interview the president?
I got a little. I'll just keep it at that. Obviously people say, "Oh, good luck, you weren't going to get him anyway." But I have no ill will toward the president or his administration. We cover this administration all the time. He makes news. His policies make news. So, I don't think it's necessary that I [pursue] an interview with him. I think all the interviews he's done at Fox News have all made news. I think anytime the president speaks, he makes news. So, I don't need to add myself to the chorus.
How are your relationships with the opinion hosts at the network? Have those ever been strained by some of the more controversial comments that have been made, including Sean Hannity's remarks about former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore?
We all get along just fine here. Obviously, it's a huge sandbox, and there are people doing different things who work for these shows, especially in the opinion programming. They freely admit it, state it. I will say I have no agenda to be pro- or anti-Trump. ... Where I fault news organizations, of any sort, on the right or the left, if it's all one way, that's a problem. If you're obsessed with, "The president curses," just as if you are not obsessed with it, you've got to balance it out. You've got to get a sense of what happened and why, and step back, without an agenda.
We in the media are very thin-skinned sometimes. We get very offended. And I can understand, the president says, "Oh, you're [fake news]." And then you bristle at that, and it gets in your head. And, all of a sudden, you're acting the very way the president says you act. I always think you should try to be above that fray. Don't take the bait — be above the bait.
Jeremy Barr
jeremy.barr@thr.com jeremymbarr
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"He did a great job last year winning region," Hedrick said. "He put them in a position to be contenders year in and year out so I'm very appreciative of coach Noble."
Hedrick brings more than 10 years of basketball experience to his position. He was a varsity assistant and JV boys coach at Wando, an assistant at Seneca and the head coach at Midland Valley high schools. He's in his second year at Pendleton where he will continue to serve as the football team's defensive coordinator.
When the opportunity came to return to coaching basketball, Hedrick couldn't help but jump at the chance; especially for Pendleton.
"Truthfully Pendleton is a wonderful community," Hedrick said. "The administration is wonderful to work for and this is another opportunity to serve the community and get even more involved."
Hedrick didn't get a chance to officially meet his team until last Monday. After they met, they immediately got to work.
"First thing we did was get them in the weight room with the football and baseball teams," Hedrick said. "It's been fast but it's been a lot of fun."
Prior to their trip to McCormick the Bulldogs only had three practices. In that time Hedrick installed a few basic offensive and defensive principles. Then the Bulldogs went 2-2 in their games over the weekend.
More than the games themselves, with McMormick being more than 70 miles away from Pendleton, Hedrick and his team got a chance to bond.
"Anytime you get on a bus and spend the day together you learn a lot about the kids," Hedrick said. "We got a chance to eat, sit down and learn about each other, which was the most important outcome of the trip."
There will be some holes to fill for next season. The Bulldogs lose their two top players to graduation: All-Region 1-AAA performers Jamal Blakely and Sidney Mattison. In total, eight seniors have departed from the program.
The cupboard isn't completely bare, however, as all-region junior guard Bobby Spear is returning and Hedrick said he has liked what he's seen from Matthew Walker, Jet Hammes and Jeremy and Jacob Smith.
"We've got a lot of guys that're coming up on JV and a few guys with experience," Hedrick said. "It's good having a new group with a new coach so we can all grow together."
Hedrick also has help in Phillip Blake, a varsity assistant last year who remained on staff and will also be the JV coach this upcoming season. The two have built a strong relationship thus far and Hedrick has relied on him heavily in his short time as head coach.
"The first thing I did was sit down with him and talk about each player," Hedrick said. "He's been great and I'm very blessed to have him on the staff this year."
As summer continues, Hedrick looks forward to putting his imprint on the next era of Pendleton basketball.
"We're going to be great stewards of the Pendleton community," Hedrick said."I'd say to the community to come out and support. I want to make this a fun environment for people in the stands and kids on the court."
Kennington Smith is the new high school sports reporter for the Independent-Mail. You can connect with Kennington on Twitter @SkinnyKenny_ or email him at kennington.smith@independentmail.com
Wren makes history as it gets ready to host Ridge View in Upper State championship Brothers Harrison and Nick Morgan reflect on final season as football teammates with Wren Wren tops Greenville 17-7 to advance to Upper State title game Here is the schedule for the third round of the Upper State football playoffs Upstate athletes who have signed National Letters of Intent to play collegiate sports
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Transportation STEM Camp is Inspiring Middle School Students
by Lawrence Daniel | Aug 2, 2017 | Articles
A transportation STEM camp is inspiring middle school students with hands on experience and new ideas about careers.
Middle school students listened to many speakers at the final ceremony of the Middle School Transportation S.T.E.M. Camp at Washburn. The students spent two weeks living on the Washburn University campus, and participating in daily activities. The camp was free with a grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation and was run by Washburn’s Department of Education.
The 25 students who attended the camp were carefully selected through an application process.
“We targeted, for the most part, Topeka Public Schools, but we have a real broad range of students,” said Cherry Steffen, chair of the Washburn Department of Education. “We had an application process and about 60 applicants for our 25 spots. The students had to turn in an application. They had to write for us a few sentences, but they had to tell us why this was good for them. And then we had a committee who actually selected the 25 chosen.”
“They did robotics, they built rockets, they built solar cars, they built salt-powered cars. They built boats that were run with an electric motor,” said Steffen, “so all of these different modes of transportation. They also spent some time at Washburn Tech looking into careers in transportation.
“Our big goal is for them to be made more aware of careers in transportation and what’s available. So Washburn Tech, they explored things that don’t require a college degree necessarily, but are S.T.E.M. jobs, transportation oriented, and they’re things that they can strive to do, so we really want to give them a broad range.”
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The Puerto Rico Department of Housing, San Juan, PR, Should Strengthen Its Capacity To Administer Its Disaster Grants
2020-AT-1002
2020-AT-1002.pdf
We audited the Puerto Rico Department of Housing (PRDOH) in accordance with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General’s (HUD OIG) goal to review disaster funding and based on a congressional request for HUD OIG to conduct capacity reviews for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria grantees. Our audit objectives were to determine whether the PRDOH had the capacity to (1) administer its Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) grants in accordance with applicable regulations and requirements and (2) whether it had in place financial and procurement policies and procedures that promote the expenditure of funds and the acquisition of goods and services in accordance with Federal requirements.
The PRDOH should strengthen its financial and procurement capacity to administer its CDBG-DR grants in accordance with applicable regulations and requirements. Specifically, it could strengthen its capacity by (1) improving its financial controls, (2) improving its processes for preventing duplication of benefits, (3) improving its procurement controls, and (4) continuing to increase its staffing. Strengthening its capacity would help ensure that the PRDOH properly administers more than $19 billion in CDBG-DR funds in accordance with applicable requirements.
The PRDOH did not follow Federal and its own procurement requirements when it acquired goods and services. As a result, HUD had no assurance that purchases totaling $416,511 were reasonable, necessary, and allowable.
We recommend that HUD require the PRDOH to (1) develop adequate procedures outlining steps for tracking monthly grant expenditures and reprogramming funds and program income and develop and implement a financial management system for its 2008 CDBG-DR grant, (2) review and update its policies and procedures to prevent duplication of benefits, (3) review and update its procurement policies and procedures, and (4) continue to fill its vacancies. In addition, HUD should require the PRDOH to submit supporting documentation showing compliance with procurement requirements and that $416,511 were reasonable and necessary costs or reimburse the program $55,010 from non-Federal funds and cancel $361,501 of CDBG-DR obligations.
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Companies in the Sports Business
Allianz becomes official Olympic sponsor in 2021
Sports business I 09/19/2018
Only German company: Insurer follows Alibaba, Coca-Cola or Visa
From 2021, Allianz will be a partner of the International Olympic Committee. The company will advertise for the first time at the Winter Games in Beijing 2022. The Munich-based insurance group expects this to lead to increasing interaction with new target groups.
Laura Dahlmeier will run in front of Allianz advertising boards at the Olympic Games in the future.
The German insurance group Allianz will support the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the future. The partnership will come into force in 2021 and it is planned to last until the end of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. According to media reports, Allianz will pay between 500 and 600 million euros to the IOC. The insurer will then be a so-called "top sponsor" of the IOC.
These are the sponsors of the Olympic Games
Allianz to offer insurance solutions to the IOC
Like the other sponsors, including Alibaba, Toyota and Visa, Allianz can use the Olympic logo for advertising purposes. Together with the IOC, it also wants to offer "innovative and integrated insurance solutions for the Olympic Movement and the Organizing Committees of the Olympic Games". These will also be available to the national Olympic Committees worldwide as well as to the respective Olympic teams and athletes. This should include fleet, property and casualty insurance.
"Allianz is present worldwide with a business model based on trust. With this partnership, we are creating a foundation that is supported by mutual trust," says IOC President Thomas Bach.
The stars of the Winter Olympics 2018 in pictures
Page 1 of
Younger audience via the Olympic Channel
The main purpose of the partnership for Allianz is to appeal to a younger audience. Especially through the IOC's digital channels, such as the Olympic Channel, young people are to be addressed directly and their insurance needs explained.
"One of the reasons for our commitment to the IOC is that we also want to be increasingly perceived as a partner by the younger generation," says Jean-Marc Pailhol, Head of Group Market Management at Allianz. Allianz will in future be the only German company to advertise at the top sponsor level of the IOC.
Sign up now: The ISPO.com News Ticker
Sign up for the ISPO.com News Ticker now and subscribe to all News and Top-Stories from ISPO.com.
Allianz starts at the Winter Games 2022 in Beijing
Allianz is also positioning itself in the growing Chinese market. In 2022, the Winter Olympics will take place in Beijing, the first major event with Allianz as top sponsor. However, the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo are not yet part of the portfolio. Since 2006, the insurance group has also been a sponsor of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).
They are the name sponsor of the football stadium Allianz Arena in Munich and own 8.33 percent of the shares of the German soccer team FC Bayern Munich. In total, Allianz has the naming rights for seven football stadiums worldwide.
Digital Sports: Esports on the Path to the 2024 Olympics
Sports market
Everything about Sports business
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Triathlete Elmar Sprink: Second Chance Thanks to Donor Heart
Sport as a Cultural Technique Against Diseases of Civilization
People in the Sports Business
Avalanche Accident: Bodies of Lama and Auer Recovered
Climbing I 04/18/2019
Climbing stars Lama and Auer killed in Canada by avalanche
The climbers David Lama and Hansjörg Auer were caught and killed by an avalanche in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. On Easter Sunday, rescue teams were able to recover the bodies of the two Europeans and their American companion Jess Roskelley.
David Lama at ISPO Munich 2019 about two months before his death.
It is now certain that Austrian mountaineers David Lama and Hansjörg Auer, together with their American comrade Jess Roskelley, were caught and killed by an avalanche in the Canadian Rocky Mountains on April 16.
On Sunday, rescue teams were able to recover the bodies of the three climbers. At first this was not possible due to the danger of avalanches. This was announced in a press release by the state operator of the Canadian national parks, Parks Canada.
„Parks Canada expresses our sincere condolences to their families, friends and loved ones. We would also like to highlight the impact this has had on the narrow local and international climbing communities. Our thoughts are with families, friends and all those affected by this tragic incident,“ the agency said in an email statement.
The authorities had previously assumed that the climbers had died. However, the Austrian Foreign Ministry did not want to confirm the death until the bodies had been recovered and identified.
Lama's parents publish statement
The father of JessRoskelley, John Roskelley,said in an interview with Spokesman Review that the trio had climbed a difficult route on the eastern side of Howse Peak known as M16.
Howse Peak is located in Banff National Park and, at 3295 metres, is the highest mountain in the Waputik Mountains, a sub-region of the Canadian Rockies. The misfortune apparently occurred during the descent.
Lama's parents published a statement on his official website on Friday: „David lived for the mountains and his passion for climbing and mountaineering has shaped and accompanied us as a family. He always followed his path and lived his dream. We will accept what has now happened as part of it.“
Lama was born in Innsbruck in 1990 as the son of a Nepalese and a Tyrolean and is considered one of the greatest stars of the climbing scene. In 2012, he managed the first free ascent of the compressor route on the Cerro Torre. In 2018 he succeeded in the first ascent of the 6895 metre high Lunag Ri in Nepal over the west pillar.
Hansjörg Auer, born in 1984, became famous for his free solo ascent of the Marmolada south face in the Dolomites. Jess Roskelley had been the youngest climber to climb Mount Everest.
Death of climbers shocks alpinist community
The death of the three top climbers caused great grief and horrified reactions in the alpinist community.
„We accept the loss that unexpectedly occurs in return for the bonds of friendship created by the experience of living in the majesty of nature,“ wrote US rock climber Conrad Anker on Facebook.
Hansjörg Auer: Obituary to a boundlessly helpful "egoist"
David Lama: "A life is perfect when you try everything."
Everything about Climbing
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The Amalfi Coast is the stretch of coast, located south of the Sorrento Peninsula, overlooking the Gulf of Salerno and it is bordered to the west and east from Positano from Vietri sul Mare.
It is a stretch of coastline famous around the world for its natural beauty, home to major tourist sites. It takes its name from the town of Amalfi, the central nucleus of the Coast, not only geographically but also historically.
The Amalfi Coast is known for its heterogeneity: each of the countries of the Coast has its own character and its traditions.
The Amalfi Coast is with no doubt one of the most fascinating, loved and famous coast in Italy.
It has always attracted tourists from all over the world to admire its extraordinary beauty. The enchanting pearls set in the bay are all different but of equal beauty: Amalfi, Positano, Vietri, Maiori, Minori, Ravello, Praiano and many others.
The discovery of the Amalfi Coast as a tourist destination dates back to the late ‘800, when the wake of the suggestions described by artists and poets became a international phenomenon.
To savour the wonders of the coast it is sufficient to be guided by instinct. The scenarios are so evocative that the charms of small towns are easily accessible.
The Amalfi Coast is a world cultural heritage belonging to UNESCO.
The Amalfi coast has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The Coast had its maximum splendour in the era of ancient Rome where the Roman patricians decide to establish their residence in various locations, so a lot of villas are scattered all along the coast.
After the Roman Empire a second period of historical importance was when Amalfi became one of the Maritime Republic with Pisa, Genoa and Venice.
This history has become a tradition still visible in the famous regattas, a folk historical event celebrated throughout the world.
The Divine Coast is one of the most sought after by people all over the world, just to mention Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, sites of superb scenic beauty as well as treasure chests filled with history.
Thermal Baths in Tuscany
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Home / Blog / Florida Supreme Court disbars lawyer for, inter alia, making agreement with defendant for payment to make the case “go away” while representing victim
Florida Supreme Court disbars lawyer for, inter alia, making agreement with defendant for payment to make the case “go away” while representing victim
Hello everyone and welcome to this Ethics Alert blog (with a corrected title) which discusses the recent the Florida Supreme Court Order which upheld a referee’s report and disbarred a Florida lawyer for, inter alia, making an agreement with a defendant in a criminal matter for payment to make the criminal case “go away” while representing the victim in the same case. The case is: The Florida Bar v. Mark F. Germain, SC12-1981 and SC12-2289 (July 8, 2014) and the Order is here: https://www.floridasupremecourt.org/clerk/dispositions/2014/07/12-1981_12-2289.pdf.
According to the referee’s report, which was adopted by the Florida Supreme Court, Jeffrey Bowman was arrested in Lake County, Florida on or about July 1, 2011, following an alleged domestic battery on Bonnie DePaolo. Bowman was later released and ordered to have no contact with DePaolo as a condition of his pretrial release. An Assistant State Attorney met DePaolo on the day of Bowman’s bond hearing and she said that she was very upset that Bowman was bonding out of jail.
According to testimony by the lawyer, Bowman was the subject of a 2007 injunction regarding DePaolo and she also went to the hospital after the incident for the injuries Bowman allegedly caused. DePaolo’s sister, Rita Hazlett, testified that, while DePaolo was staying with, a Sheriff’s deputy came to her house to warn her that Bowman had threatened to kill her and that he came into her yard, angry and waving a gun.
In early July 2011, the lawyer agreed to represent DePaolo, the victim in the matter. The lawyer then called the defendant, Bowman, and requested a meeting at a restaurant in order to make it “all go away.” Bowman testified that they discussed getting his belongings back and dropping the prosecution for “cash.” Bowman did not agree to this, and the settlement was not finalized.
The lawyer then called attorney John Bruce Bowman, the brother of Bowman, and suggested to him that Bowman pay a “substantial” amount of money to avoid prosecution. Attorney Bowman told him that the suggestion was extortion and he would not be a part of it. Attorney Bowman later reviewed a settlement agreement that was negotiated between Bowman and the lawyer. He also stated that the lawyer never discussed a civil settlement or claim and that the telephone call was about “saving money with a criminal lawyer and getting money to resolve a criminal matter.”
The lawyer testified that the content of the proposed settlement agreement was in an e-mail he sent to Jeffrey Bowman and attorney Bowman; however, attorney Bowman apparently never received a copy of any e-mail because of a “faulty e-mail address”. The lawyer also did not have DePaolo’s medical bills at the time of the agreement, which later exceeded $3,000.00.
The lawyer tried to resolve the criminal case before a July 14, 2011 meeting between the Assistant State Attorney and DePaolo so that Bowman would not have to “spend money” on a criminal defense attorney. The lawyer testified that he was aware of the Bar rules prohibiting compensating people to drop criminal charges and that he did not call the Florida Bar Hotline during the preparation of the agreement.
The lawyer then prepared a settlement agreement in which DePaolo would sign an Intent Not to Prosecute and “in good faith make every effort to ensure that there is no prosecution.” The agreement also contained the following statement: “I, attorney Mark F. Germain, hereby acknowledge receipt of $1,500 from Jeffrey ALLEN BOWMAN on behalf of BONNIE DEPAOLO as compensation for the concessions made herein.” (emphasis supplied). The agreement was signed July 10, 2011, by both the lawyer and DePaolo; however, the lawyer never received the $1,500.00 from Jeffrey Bowman.
Soon after the agreement was signed, the lawyer called attorney James Hope, who was his supervising attorney for probation imposed in a previous Bar matter, regarding the agreement. “Mr. Hope dissuaded (the lawyer) from using the language in paragraph three, but (the lawyer) continued to press as to why he thought the language was appropriate. Mr. Hope told (the lawyer), ‘I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.’ (The lawyer) then admitted that the agreement was not a proposal, and that he had already signed it.”
The referee found that the lawyer did not competently in representing DePaolo, including the failure to obtain an injunction, which would have “greater enforceability and consequences for violation than a ‘no contact’ order from first appearance (an order prohibiting contact with Ms. DePaolo as a condition of pretrial release). He also waived her ability to seek personal injury damages, without knowing what those damages were, and then encouraged settlement for a sum of money far below the actual costs she incurred for medical treatment.”
The referee also found “(the lawyer) also discouraged the criminal prosecution of the ‘perpetrator’ in this case, which prosecution may have resulted in further protections and restitution for Ms. DePaolo. He attempted to negotiate a settlement which was beneficial to Jeffrey Bowman and detrimental to Bonnie DePaolo, and he attempted to extort funds from Jeffrey Bowman in exchange for a declination of prosecution. In addition to the harm this caused to Ms. DePaolo, Respondent ultimately interfered with the State’s prosecution of Jeffrey Bowman by negotiating terms encouraging Ms. DePaolo’s non-participation as a witness in the case.”
The referee also found that “(the lawyer) was misleading during the Bar’s investigation of this matter. For example, he prepared two affidavits for Ms. DePaolo, which were at best self-serving testimony, and were not accurate. During the hearing, Ms. DePaolo could not even read portions of the Affidavits, and it was clear that the contents were not her testimony. These affidavits were prepared at critical points in the disciplinary process. (The lawyer) also gave deposition testimony that was not accurate.”
After listing the Bar Rules that the lawyer violated, including 4-1.1, 4-1.7(a)(2), 4-3.4(b), 4-8.4(a), and 4-8.4(d), applying the Florida Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions, mitigation and aggravation, and case law, the referee recommended that the lawyer be held in contempt of his probation and permanently disbarred. In a one page Order, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the referee’s findings and found the lawyer in contempt; however, the Court reduced the permanent disbarment to a 5 year disbarment.
Bottom line: This is a somewhat bizarre set of facts to say the least and, according to the referee’s report, the lawyer apparently knew that what he was doing was a violation of the Bar rules. He will now have 5 plus years to think about it.
Let’s be careful out there.
Disclaimer: this Ethics Alert blog is not an advertisement and does not contain any legal advice and the comments herein should not be relied upon by anyone who reads it.
By Martindale Admin | Published July 30, 2014 | Posted in Attorney discipline, Florida Lawyer Ethics and Professionalism, Joe corsmeier, Joseph Corsmeier, Lawyer disbarment, Lawyer discipline, Lawyer ethics, Lawyer Ethics and Professionalism, Lawyer lack of competence, Lawyer lack of diligence, Lawyer sanctions | Tagged Attorney Ethics, Bar ethics rules, corsmeier, Florida Bar, Florida Bar discipline, joseph corsmeier, lawyer discipline
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Entrada > News > ESE teacher in a study on "burnout" in health professionals
ESE teacher in a study on "burnout" in health professionals
Carla Serrão coordinates a study that points out a strong percentage of physiotherapists in "situation of physical exhaustion and psychological fatigue"
More than 40% of Portuguese physiotherapists are in a situation of physical exhaustion and psychological fatigue due to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in the workplace.
The number is advanced by a nationwide study, developed and coordinated by Carla Serrão from the Escola Superior de Educação do Politécnico do Porto and by Ivone Duarte from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto | CINTESIS - Center for Research in Health Technologies and Services (FMUP / CINTESIS).
The aim of this unprecedented work was to assess the impact of COVID-19 on health professionals, assessing the role of resilience in depression, anxiety and "burnout". Of the 511 physical therapists who answered the online questionnaire in May, 42% admit to being in "burnout", a percentage higher than that of other national and international studies, which point to 10 to 30%. In this sample, 52% of physical therapists treat patients in person, 35% are in inpatient services and 18% work directly with patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Half of the physiotherapists are working in the private sector.
The study, which included more than 2000 health professionals (doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, psychologists) concluded that more than half had high levels of personal "burnout" and "burnout" associated with work; 33% had anxious symptoms, 29% depressed symptoms and about 37% had symptoms associated with stress.
According to Carla Serrão "these results are indicative that the pandemic has exacerbated some problems in terms of mental health, with a particular emotional impact on health professionals who were in the direct provision of care".
For the researcher, this pandemic context was a period of great uncertainty. "During the first wave, the demands placed on health professionals were intense and the success of public health results depended, to a large extent, on the proper and effective functioning of these teams.
However, these results show the effect of cumulative stress factors. , the result of exposure to biological factors, the extension of work shifts, the lack of human and material resources, responsibilities and the need to make decisions. "
"These results are alarming and require intervention at different levels (primary, secondary and tertiary prevention), with differentiated care at the level of mental health taking into account the intensity and duration of the symptoms", clarifies, also warning that the Psychological resilience is shown to be a protective factor against "burnout", intervention in this domain is considered a priority. "
"Health institutions should offer professionals programs for the development of socio-emotional competences, self-care, self-compassion and stress management. Scientific evidence allows highlighting the usefulness of third generation cognitive-behavioral therapies, namely, programs based on Mindfulness, in response to chronic stress, depression and anxiety. "
Master in Health Psychology, PhD in Psychology, professor at Escola Superior de Education of P.PORTO since 2002, Carla Serrão is the Coordinator of the Higher Professional Technical Course in Gerontological Support Technologies and Services.The main areas of research developed over the last years include Sexual Education, Health Promotion, Health Literacy , Gender Equality, Aging, Palliative and End of Life Care.
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Pershing Square’s Ackman Pushes for Change in CP Rail Management
Published on December 30, 2011 at 12:18 pm by Renee Ann Butler in Hedge Funds
Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman built up a 12.2% activist stake in Canadian Pacific Railway (CP), known affectionately as “CP Rail,” back in October. He said “that CP Rail shares are undervalued and an attractive investment, and that it expected ‘to engage in discussions’ with the Calgary-based company about a wide swath of its business.”
Ackman Working with CP Rail to Increase Shareholder Value
Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square, is an activist hedge fund, meaning that it buys positions in companies that are large enough to give the fund a say in the company’s operations, then he pushes for changes that will incraese shareholder value. There were rumors for a little while that Ackman would sell the railroad, which the savvy fund manager quickly put to rest. “We don’t think the company should be sold,” said Ackman. “This is not a case where we’re pushing to sell the company. We don’t think that’s a good way to optimize the outcome for shareholders.” In turn, CP Rail told employees it is “open to the views of its shareholders.” It said, “We will speak with Pershing Square to hear their input into our plan, already targeted at realizing greater efficiency and improved service reliability.”
The Issue of CP Rail’s Management
One of the maor issues on Ackman’s agenda was the railroad’s management. By early November, it was reported that Ackman had his sights set on CP Rail’s Fred Green. “Green, who has worked for CP Rail for 31 years and took over as chief executive in 2006, is blamed for tolerating a culture that critics cite as the key reason why CP Rail’s performance lags behind the US and Canada’s six other Class I railroads.” Now, it appears Ackman has earmarked his champion.
Canada’s the Globe and Mail reports that Ackman is looking for “retired railway legend” Hunter Harrison get CP Rail back on track. Harrison “led a widely admired turnaround of Canadian National Railway (CP Rail’s main rival) from 2003 to 2009 as CEO, and before that at Illinois Central Railroad.” Evidently, Ackman is hoping Harrison can do the same ting at CP Rail. Ackman had used a similar strategy when he took an activist stake in department store J.C. Penney & Co. (JCP) and recruited ex-Apple exec Ron Johnson to head the company’s turnaround, a move he refers to as “one of the most significant contributions that we have ever made to any company.”
Bill Ackman Pershing SquareCanadian Pacific Railway Ltd (CP)Fred GreenHunter Harrison
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Amended Its Filing in Canadian Pacific Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Raised Stake In Canadian Pacific Railway $CP... Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Bought More $ALEX Bill Ackman: Invest in the Business You Can Own Forever Hedge Fund Performance In November Icahn v. Ackman – How $4.5M Turned Into Almost $9M
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Technology might help save sports during COVID-19
Sport has contributed to society in many ways by bringing people and communities together. However, the pandemic put a sudden stop to that and devastated an industry that once thrived on human interaction. With many venues temporarily closed, the future of sport might seem bleak… But all is not lost.
In the UK, a country known for their love of sports, trial games are currently taking place in various stadiums across the country. The goal is opening up the stadiums at a safe capacity adhering to COVID-19 safety measures and precautions.
This endeavor is supervised by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), along with Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA), along with numerous tech companies bringing what they know to the table, all to allow fans to continue enjoying sports during COVID-19.
“Their major question and challenge is: what can be done to safely embed social distancing into the match-day operation? Each stadium is different and each one needs different solutions,” says Will Durden, director at Momentum Transport Consultancy.
The answer is apparently the use of data analytics, 3D imaging, contact tracing and simulations to map out, predict and organize everything that goes into a stadium. From the routes people take to their seats, how far away each ‘safety bubble’ is from the other, the path from the entrance to the ticket booth, the snack vendor or to the bathroom.
With each stadium being unique in its architecture, a plan will need to be customized. By using large amounts of old footage, AI is able to observe and analyse the movements of people in the stadium and conclude the best paths people should take to stay away from each other at all times.
The software being used can identify bottlenecks and areas of possible congestion around the stadium, and using contact racing apps exclusive to the stadium, people can be notified of anything that goes on. When one orders food from the app, they will be notified of when it is ready, and the rate of orders will be done to prevent long ques.
People who wish to watch sports during covid-19 can be confident that the avenue they choose has been created for their safety. With such technologies being driven by the passion of sports fans, it is exciting to see how such inventions will shape sports events in the not-so-distant future.
90-minute COVID-19 testing device
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Lisa Kurbiel
Head of Secretariat, Joint SDG Fund
lisa.kurbiel [at] un.org
As Head of the Joint SDG Fund, Lisa Kurbiel promotes partnerships with Governments, UN entities, civil society, academia and the private sector to design and implement integrated policy approaches and financing vehicles to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. She previously served as UNICEF Chief of Advocacy and Partnerships in Kenya and UNICEF Social Policy Specialist in Somalia and Mozambique.
Vivalda Poggiali
Programme Specialist, Joint SDG Fund
vivalda.poggiali [at] un.org
Nenad Rava Phd/MDes
Head of Programmes, Joint SDG Fund
nenad.pava [at] un.org
Nenad (Ned) Rava has 20+ years of professional experience in Strategic Development focusing on Systemic Design, Strategic Foresight, Social Innovation, Policy and Institutional Change, Learning, Leadership and Stakeholder Dialogue. He has facilitated complex systems change on 60+ initiatives led by, amongst other, the UN, the World Bank, and the EU. Ned works on coherence and integration across “silos” and has contributed to: Business Innovation (Platforms, Incubators, Labs, SMEs, Social Enterprises), Social Policy (Education, Healthcare, Social Protection), Public Administration Reform and Decentralization, Local Economic and Community Development, International and Regional Cooperation, and Democratic Governance.
Ned has BSC in Management, MA and PhD in Comparative politics, and Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation. He has produced 50+ strategic publications and designed and delivered over 100 training and educational programs. Most recently, Ned published a chapter on Systemic Policy Design in the “Handbook of Systems Sciences” in 2020 and the chapter on Platforming Methodology will feature in the forthcoming “Dynamic Future-Proofing: Integrating Disruption in Everyday Business”.
Massimiliano Riva
Investment Advisor, Joint SDG Fund
Massimiliano.Riva [at] un.org
Max is responsible for contributing to the United Nations work on sustainable and innovative finance. In late 2019 he joined the Joint SDG Fund as Investment Advisor to set up new approaches and schemes that can result in better and higher financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There he manages one of the largest UN grant facilities in support of SDG finance in developing countries. Max is a sustainable finance advisor by background, with +15 years of experience in the public and private sector. He accumulated expertise in areas such as guarantees, inclusive finance, export credit, impact investing, green/SDG bonds and sector resource mobilization strategies. In his career he facilitated a wide range of partnerships on sustainable trade and finance, providing advisory services on the ground to +30 countries-across all continents. He co-authored several publications on the same. Max has a Master in Economics and International Policies from ASERI and a Degree in Economics from the Bocconi University. Max is keen to meet and collaborate with colleagues and partners to unlock much needed resources for sustainable development and trigger a more efficient, effective and equitable allocation of resources in-countries.
Elizabeth Paturzo
elizabeth.paturzo [at] un.org
Elizabeth works for the United Nations Joint SDG Fund in communications by advocating and promoting the Sustainable Development Goals. She is the lead focal point in communications for 96 joint programmes. Before joining the Fund, she worked at UNICEF Kenya as a communications specialist in the communications, advocacy and partnerships section. Previously worked with UNICEF USA in events fundraising and logistics. She worked emergency response in Greece during the refugee crisis.
Elaine Smith Genser
Partnership Development Consultant, Joint SDG Fund
elaine.genser [at] undp.org
Elaine works at the United Nations Joint SDG Fund on engagement and partnerships development. Before working in the social sector in 2011, she worked for 20years as a trader and research sales manager at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan. In 2013 she was elected Young Global Leader (YGL) of the World Economic Forum. She holds a BBA from Univ. Mackenzie, an MBA from Univ. Sao Paulo-FIA, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Owner/President Management Program (OPM). She completed executive programs in leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Gov't, Yale School of Mgm't, and Saïd Business School at Oxford University.
Elaine was the Manager of the Global Future Council of Financial and Monetary Systems and was Community Lead for Banking and Capital Markets at the World Economic Forum from 2015-2018. Then, she worked two years at the World Bank Group in the Global Engagement & Partnerships, advising on the development and implementation of strategy and contributing to the thinking and formulation of financial vehicles for corporate partnerships and philanthropy. She also consulted with the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) on efforts to highlight the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Women Owned Business.
Deqa Jama
Social Media Consultant, Joint SDG Fund
deaqa.jama [at] undp.org
Deqa Jama is a communications professional with over seven years of experience using a diversified skill set covering concept work; campaign management; digital analysis; integrated messaging strategy; and partnerships, stakeholders and audience engagement and management. Having spent the last three years in policy, advocacy and global development, Deqa has most recently worked in communications for policy and research at the International Growth Centre, a global development economics research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to joining the IGC, she worked for UN-Habitat Somalia, Unicef Kenya and Unicef Eastern and Southern Africa. Her areas of interest include human rights and social impact.
Nomindari Enkthur
Portfolio Management Consultant (Asia, Europe, Middle East), SDG Finance
nomindari.enkthur [at] un.org
Nomindari (Nomie) is a young professional primarily concerned about the role of financial sector mobilization in sustainable development. She joined the UN Joint SDG Fund in March 2020 as Portfolio Management Consultant with the main role to support a portfolio of 40 countries in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa in their implementation and monitoring of SDG financing-focused joint programmes. Before joining the Fund, she served as CEO of the Mongolian Sustainable Finance Association. Since 2013, she closely worked with policy makers and international partners to help banks in Mongolia and Cambodia integrate sustainability considerations into their lending decisions and product design. Besides, she worked as a consultant with IFC, UNEP, UNICEF, GIZ and Partners Group on a number of projects related to portfolio emissions calculation, green taxonomy development, green finance mobilization, ESG integration, and capacity building. For her contribution in sustainable development, she was recognized by the European Commission as one of the Global Young Leaders for Development of 2017. In 2018, she was also selected as one of the 5 young sustainable business innovators by the Business for Peace Foundation. Nomindari holds a master’s degree in Sustainability Management from Columbia University in New York and is a Fulbright Awardee.
Maria Eduarda Berenguer
Portfolio Management Consultant (Africa and Latin America), SDG Finance
Maria.Berenguer [at] undp.org
Brazilian native, currently living in Paris where I recently graduated from my Master in Environmental Policy at SciencesPo. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering and before coming to France I had the opportunity to work for the private sector in Brazil and for the Inter-American Development Bank in Barbados. At the IDB I specially supported projects, across Latin American and the Caribbean, to leverage finance for MSMEs and low-income households to build resilience to climate change. During my last work experience with the Institute for Climate Economics in Paris I managed research projects focused on the role of financial regulation in supporting the transition towards a low-carbon economy.
Heidi Simpson
Portfolio Management Consultant, SDG Finance
Heidi.simpson [at] undp.org
Heidi is fully committed to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is eager to, through her position at the Joint SDG Fund, collaborate with colleagues and partners to achieve this goal. In 2019 she joined the Joint SDG Fund as a law student intern. She transitioned to a position as a Portfolio Management Associate in 2020. In her role, she provides support to countries as they implement grants from the Joint SDG Fund in an effort to create a more sustainable world by 2030. Throughout her career she has been an advocate for human rights in two continents, with a special focus in improving human rights conditions in North Korea. She has a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Linguistics from Tulane University. She is currently pursuing a Juris Doctor from St. John’s University School of Law with an expected graduation date of 2021. She is also the Executive Articles Editor of the New York International Law Review and has published several recent decision articles.
Mark Filipovic
Portfolio Management Consultant, Integrated Social Protection
mark.filipovic [at] undp.org
Mark is a Management Consultant for the Joint SDG Fund's Integrated Social Protection portfolio. He was previously with Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, a child protection non-profit based in New York City, assisting with communications, advocacy and development. Mark also served as a Graduate Consultant for the International Peace Institute, where he studied new technologies being trialed in crisis zones to protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid. Prior to his engagements at the global level, Mark worked in the private sector for Canadian start-up Blue-Zone Technologies, where he pioneered a sustainable solution to recycle a class of toxic pharmaceutical waste from health care facilities.
Mark is a Master of International Affairs graduate of Columbia University (Human Rights Policy, United Nations Studies). He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University (Marketing, Finance) and an Executive Certificate from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (International Advocacy).
Christoph Majewski
Web-Development Consultant, Joint SDG Fund
contact [at] spreadlab.com
Christoph has 17+ years of professional experience as a Full-Stack-Webdeveloper and Web-Designer. He has served as a consultant with the UNDP since 2012 and provided web-programming services for the MDG Achievement Fund, Sustainable Development Goals Fund and the Joint SDG Fund. Christoph is responsible for the development and design of the corporate digital platforms, monitoring and reporting gateways and the digital communication campaign websites.
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AICPA issues personal financial planning standards
The AICPA on Tuesday issued additional authoritative guidance for CPAs who offer personal financial planning services.
The AICPA Statement on Standards in Personal Financial Planning Services covers all aspects of the planning process—from obtaining information to communicating and implementing recommendations. The standards, which will take effect July 1, require complete transparency on factors such as compensation and potential conflicts that could influence client decision-making.
The vast majority of state boards of accountancy adopt AICPA standards, giving them the force and effect of law. Therefore, even CPAs who are not members of the AICPA need to be aware of the AICPA standards that their state board of accountancy has adopted.
“CPAs, through state licensure and professional oversight, must meet the highest bar of competency, objectivity, and integrity,” said Lyle K. Benson, CPA/PFS, who chairs the executive committee of the AICPA Personal Financial Planning (PFP) Section. “These standards provide a clear road map for achieving that benchmark in a rapidly evolving practice area. They are built on the cornerstone of the CPA profession—the public interest—and enhance the consistency and rigor that CPAs are known for in the financial planning discipline.”
Growth in areas such as estate, retirement, risk management, and investment planning helped drive the need for the additional authoritative standards. Membership in the AICPA PFP Section has increased 32% over the past five years—growth that tracks national trends. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the number of personal financial advisers will increase 27% nationwide between 2012 and 2022.
The standards are based on, and will supersede, the AICPA Statement on Responsibilities in Personal Financial Planning Practice, which was first adopted in 1992. Questions about the new rules can be directed to the AICPA PFP Division staff.
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Two conflicts, two victims
Israel is under genuine existential threat from a variety of Arab sources. Yet the Palestinians are right to feel victimized.
By ALEX SINCLAIR
arab protest 88
There is no such thing as "the Middle East Conflict." There are in fact two conflicts, with two different victims. The first conflict is between Israel and the Arabs; the second is between Israel and the Palestinians. In the first conflict, the victim is Israel; in the second, it is the Palestinians. The failure to understand this fact lies at the heart of the region's battered hopes and its bleak prognosis for peace. In the first conflict, between Israel and the Arabs, Israel faces a genuine existential threat. That is, Israel faces enemies who wish Israel to disappear from the face of the earth, who take delight in the murder of innocent Israelis (and often Jews around the world too), and who have no interest in peace with what they call "the Zionist entity." These enemies include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah; and Khaled Mashal of Hamas. From the perspective of most Israelis, their genocidal intentions, which they make no attempt to hide, are simply the continuation of the century-old Arab unwillingness to grant the Jewish people self-determination in a portion of their historical homeland. There have always been Arabs who have wanted to drive the Jews into the sea. Israel is a tiny Jewish state nestled in an Arab world dozens of times its size, and many of those Arabs simply deny its right to exist. Israel is a victim of these genocidal intentions and actions. In the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israel is the victim. FROM THE Palestinians' perspective, though, it is they who face the genuine existential threat. They are the only people in the Middle East who are currently denied their right to self-determination; Israel, for all the talk of peace since the days of Oslo, still controls their lives in innumerable ways, and continues to build neighborhoods in the belt around Jerusalem that seriously diminish any chance for Palestinian territorial contiguity; and the international community, including the Arab states, while they sometimes make a lot of supportive noises, have never come close to doing anything to make the State of Palestine a reality. Meanwhile, ordinary Palestinians live in desperate economic conditions, often unable to visit relatives or go to work because of Israeli security blockades, and receive what they perceive as collective punishment from Israel for the actions of a few extremists. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Palestinians are the victims. So here you have the problem. Israelis see the Middle East through the prism of the Israeli-Arab conflict; the Arabs see the Middle East through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the Israelis, through their prism, they are correct in thinking that they are the victims; for the Arab world, through their prism, they are correct in thinking that the Palestinians are the victims. And a conflict in which each side thinks that it is the victim is unlikely to be resolved. THE RECENT war in Lebanon can only be understood fully and deeply through the prism of this "double victimhood." From Israel's perspective, the attack by Hizbullah took place over an internationally-recognized border, from a country with which Israel has no territorial disputes, from territory which Israel withdrew from to international acclaim only six years ago. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, Hizbullah was, in the eyes of many Israelis, put to the test: if their argument with Israel was only about the security zone which Israel had controlled within Lebanese territory, then, logically, once Israel withdrew from that zone to the border, Hizbullah should lose its raison d' tre and become defunct. Hizbullah did not do that; it built up its weapons and continued to attack Israel, and this latest and most devastating attack proved to Israel that Hizbullah will never accept Israel's right to exist, and is therefore an enemy that must be taken on and destroyed before it can pose a more terrible threat. Events since the cease-fire have done nothing to alter this perception. From the perspective of the Arab world, Hizbullah stands up for Palestinian rights as no moderate Arab leader has been able to do, and might succeed in wringing concessions out of Israel that Mahmoud Abbas, Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah can only dream of. Israel's over-reaction to the kidnapping and its subsequent attack on Lebanon prove that it is an aggressive neighborhood bully who will never grant the Palestinians the right to self-determination. Thus Arabs do not understand why the international community does not step in to guarantee those rights and stop Israel. AND THE tragedy is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians are correct. Israel is under genuine existential threat from a variety of Arab sources, and Israelis are right to feel victimized by this threat. And the Palestinians have not yet been granted self-determination and are right to feel victimized by their status vis- -vis Israel. How, then, can the Middle East conflict be resolved? Only by resolving both Middle East conflicts simultaneously. In Israel, unilateralism is dead: Israel can't withdraw from the West Bank (thus trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) because the Israeli-Arab conflict will remain open; withdrawal from the territories will only leave Hamas within rocket range of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran won't make peace with Israel (thus solving the Israeli-Arab conflict) as long as there is no resolution for the Palestinians. The only viable way forward at this stage is for the international community to create a bold multilateral peace initiative, backed by a serious Marshall-Plan-like rebuilding package, in which the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts are resolved simultaneously. This means that Israel must accept the Geneva Accords (which the majority of its population is probably ready to do), but with a cast-iron international guarantee that its withdrawal from the West Bank will coincide with peace and diplomatic relations with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran and the disarming of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizbullah; and the entire Arab world must be pressured to make peace and establish diplomatic relations with Israel, with an international guarantee that this peace will coincide with the establishment of a Palestinian State. With a creative and sensitive timetable, with appropriate international diplomacy, and with a global understanding of the justified feeling of victimhood on both sides, this might just be possible. But it will only be possible if the world commits to solving the Israeli-Palestinian and the Israeli-Arab conflicts together. The writer is is Chair of the Education Department and Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.
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Despite House Resolution, US Military Still Helping Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen
AFP 02/18/2019
Abu Dhabi (AFP) – The US is still supporting the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen, an American army general told AFP Sunday, days after lawmakers voted to end involvement in Riyadh’s war effort.
The US continues to “provide support to the coalition, in particular to help them… be discriminative in targeting and to minimise the risk of civilian causalities”, said Major General David C. Hill, deputy commander of US Army Central.
The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to direct President Donald Trump to end within 30 days all participation in hostilities “in or affecting Yemen”, where Washington supports the Saudi-led coalition against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
The US has been providing bombs and other weapons, as well as intelligence support, to the coalition, but announced in November it was ending refuelling of Saudi warplanes.
The World Health Organisation says some 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition intervened in 2015, but rights groups state the death toll could be five times as high.
The White House maintains close relations with Riyadh, but the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi’s Istanbul consulate in October has been followed by lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle increasingly pushing back.
Should the Senate pass the resolution on Yemen, it could force Trump to issue the first veto of his tenure.
In other comments to AFP on the sidelines of a military exhibition in Abu Dhabi, Hill said US Central Command remains focused on fighting Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group in the Middle East.
“I believe that the end of the physical caliphate doesn’t mean the end of ISIS” he said, using an alternative acronym for IS.
“We will continue to work closely with our partners across the region here to do just that.”
The US is set to pull its soldiers out of Syria after allied Kurdish-led forces capture IS’ last holdout in the war-torn country, nearly five years after the jihadists proclaimed a “caliphate” across large swathes of the country and neighbouring Iraq.
In December Trump shocked allies when he announced he would withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria because IS had already been “beaten”.
The withdrawal plan is set to be accelerated after a victory announcement.
“We are conducting a withdrawal from Syria… but I am confident that we remain postured to continue fighting against ISIS,” Hill told AFP.
Featured Photo: “A child carries corrugated metal from the site of a reported airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni capital Sanaa in January (AFP Photo/MOHAMMED HUWAIS).”
Filed Under: Yemen
AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth coverage of the events shaping our world from conflicts to politics, economics, sports, entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, science and technology. Headquartered in Paris, France, and founded in 1835, Agence France Presse is the third largest news agency in the world, after the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. It has bureaus in 150 countries.
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Tag: moving forward in a relationship
Counselling Articles Events and Workshops Sex and Relationship Advice
“Understanding the three stages of relationship so you don’t get stuck”
[Note – This is the transcript of the facebook live video shown above].
Three stages of relationship
Relationships move through three predictable stages. If you, like most people, are not aware of this, you are bound to end up confused and disheartened. Honestly, you will probably be confused and disheartened at some point regardless, but if you understand that relationships naturally move through these three stages, and if you understand the nature of each stage, and what it asks of you, you will be far better equipped to deal with what is coming.
Each stage of the relationship journey presents you with certain developmental tasks, and you can’t effectively move to the next stage until you’ve accomplished the tasks at the previous. People get “stuck” at a certain stage of relationship because they don’t recognize what the relationship is asking of them, and they resist moving forward into the unknown and intimidating territory ahead, pining instead for the easy love and good times that came previously. The bad news is that there’s no going back to easier and sweeter times. The good news is that if you successfully navigate the next stage, you will be poised to make a kind of “homecoming” or a return to what you enjoyed previously, but with more maturity, more depth, and more richness. You’re likely to have some emotional scars and war-wounds, but they will take on a special significance and will be worn proudly.
Backward or forward?
In the introduction to my book, The Re-Connection Handbook for Couples, I state – “The search for re-connection might have us gazing wistfully backward whence we came, looking for something familiar, something we believe we lost when we took a wrong turn somewhere. But true re-connection is not sentimental, nor is it necessarily repair or reclaiming (although it might include elements of both). We re-connect at a new point on the path, at a place we’ve not been before. Real re-connection is less about getting something back, and more about finding our way forward. Perhaps most accurately it has flavors of both; we arrive at a place that feels familiar and is yet unknown.”
As we look at the three stages of relationship this statement will become even more clear and meaningful.
The first stage: Falling in Love
The first stage of relationship is Falling in Love, also called the honeymoon stage, or the age of innocence. At the Falling in Love stage, differences between partners are ignored, invisible, glorified, or minimized. Compatibility is emphasized. Connection and bonding is the theme at this stage.
The voice of the Falling in Love stage says things like –
“I need you.”
“We’re perfect together.”
“We are one.”
“We’re meant for each other.”
“You complete me.”
“You’re my soul mate.”
“Our differences make us better.”
“We get along so well.”
“We have so much in common.”
“We’re so lucky.”
Each stage presents us with tasks. These tasks are crucial for our continued development and growth, and they’re a prerequisite for effectively moving to the next stage.
Developmental tasks at the first stage
Developmental tasks at the Falling in Love stage include –
Opening your heart to another
…and generally yielding to love and attraction.
Many potent hormones and neuro-chemicals help us accomplish these tasks at this stage. It’s called “Falling in Love” for a reason: If we are able to let ourselves go, gravity takes care of the rest. This letting go, opening up, connecting, and loving comes easily for many, but not for everyone. Some people have to make an effort to “fall”!
Most adults, not all but most, have some experience with the Falling in Love stage because it happens more or less automatically. As attachment theory advocates rightly say, “We’re wired for connection”.
Some couples therapy and marriage counselling attempts to keep you at this first stage and tries to shepherd you back to blissful communion. But from my point of view, the Falling in Love stage never lasts forever, nor is it designed to. Difficulty must follow. Everyone who’s read a fairy tale knows this.
The second stage: Disillusionment and Trouble
I call the second stage of relationship Disillusionment and Trouble. This is where many relationships end, sometimes for good reasons, but very often simply because we are unable to successfully complete the tasks that are required, and we waste our energy trying to return to better days. This stage is when most couples call me for counselling.
The Disillusionment and Trouble stage is when the differences between us show up and become a problem. You’re a night owl and your partner is a morning person. You discover that you have different sexual styles or appetites. In-laws become unbearable. There’s an affair or infidelity. Differences in parenting philosophies, in money management, work ethic, communication styles, attachment styles, preferences, desires, and needs all become glaringly apparent.
Maybe you discover deceit or manipulation at this point. Maybe your partner pretended to be someone they aren’t (maybe you did).
Confronting your illusions in love
Disillusionment is a double edged sword. On the one hand, the illusions of the Falling in Love stage are very beautiful, and the bonds that are formed there are real and will be an important resource for you both as you navigate this next difficult chapter. On the other hand, illusions mask the truth, and when they crumble, the truth, not always pretty, floods in. I encourage you to treat your own illusions with tenderness. They have been necessary; not an error, not a mistake. But now, it’s time to reconcile your disillusionment and attend to the tasks at hand.
One of the primary tasks that the Disillusionment and Trouble stage requires of us is discernment. Will we carry on with this relationship or will we end it? This is when we confront our non-negotiables, and discover the real meaning of the popular word “boundaries”. Ending a relationship that was previously a delight is painful, but it is sometimes the only way we can keep our self-respect and our integrity. Sometimes ending the relationship is the right option at this stage. Some people gain clarity about this quickly; others struggle for a long time.
The voice of the Disillusionment and Trouble stage says things like –
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“I feel so much doubt and hopelessness.”
“We used to be so good together.”
“My heart aches.”
“I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m disappointed.”
“I’m broken.”
“The trust is gone.”
“I don’t know who my partner is anymore.”
“Is it me or is it them?”
“Is this a healthy relationship?“
“Are we good together?”
“I’ve lost myself in this relationship.“
Developmental tasks at the second stage
Tasks at this stage include –
Confronting, tolerating, and managing differences
Facing hard truths
Emotional differentiation (There’s a chapter on emotional differentiation in The Re-Connection Handbook for Couples. You can download a free sample on my website.)
This stage is necessarily marked by confrontation. To do what this stage asks, you will find yourself confronting your partner. This is difficult for many people; not so difficult for others. You’ll also need to confront yourself: your own blind spots, manipulations, and deceptions. Your own decision making, and responsibility, your own integrity.
Developing independence in relationship
The earlier Falling in Love stage is about strength in togetherness, in merging. It’s about dependence. The Disillusionment and Trouble stage reminds you that you are indeed two distinct individuals. It’s about claiming independence. This is a tricky stage, because claiming independence within a relationship usually threatens the relationship, at least in its former version where dependence was implicitly or explicitly celebrated.
If we decide to stay in the relationship, we must keep sight of the emotional commitment and the radical acceptance we practiced in the earlier Falling in Love days, but we must also now acknowledge the space between us, the unbridgeable gap, and the need to be a sovereign and integrous individual in the relationship, not just a “partner” or one half of a whole. This is where co-dependent tendencies really come to the forefront and will need to be addressed.
To make things even more difficult, partners don’t always enter this stage together. In fact it is very common for one partner to begin advocating for independence and autonomy while the other is still in the highly enmeshed, dependent stage. Moving from dependence to independence in a relationship feels disorienting and even painful for some people. For others, it can be a relief.
The key to getting through the Disillusionment and Trouble stage is to recognize it as a stage and to keep going. If you can accomplish the tasks associated with this – differentiating from your partner, navigating conflict, standing up for yourself, pursuing personal interests – while maintaining emotional commitment, you might then proceed to the “Homecoming” stage that follows. But if you continually resist the Disillusionment and Trouble stage, if you fail to recognize that it is a necessary stage of development for people and for relationships, and you dig your heals in and insist on the blind love of the Falling in Love stage, you might remain stuck here for a very long time. It’s not uncommon for people to be stuck here for years. If your relationship ends at this stage, and you never successfully recognize it and navigate through it, you will likely repeat it with new partners.
Recognizing and respecting differences in relationship
Moving through the Disillusionment and Trouble stage means either resolving or managing, and ideally coming to honour and respect differences between you and your partner. It means coming through disappointment and doubt, and sometimes mistakes or wrongdoing, with a much fuller understanding of who your partner really is, and maybe of who you really are. It may also mean a period of grieving what has been lost.
Once you’ve been through it successfully you look back on the process and you feel the pain of it, but you recognize that it was worth it, and maybe even that it was unavoidable and necessary. Many clients have described this experience to me after a few months or maybe a year of couples therapy.
Here’s an example of a couple entering the Disillusionment and Trouble stage –
Two ways of crossing the street
I was working with a new client couple by telephone. We’ll call them Joshua and Samantha. I had asked them for a specific example of a recurring conflict in their relationship. They rather sheepishly told me that they argue about how to cross the street. I assured them that even petty sounding conflicts hold the seed to greater understanding and even reconciliation, which is true; there is some wisdom in the saying “How we do something is how we do everything”.
Joshua wants to cross the street at the intersection, in accordance with the pedestrian signal. Samantha prefers to look both ways, then jaywalk mid-block rather than go to the intersection and wait for a light. Joshua felt that Samantha was putting his safety at risk by jaywalking, and this made him indignant and superior feeling. Samantha felt controlled by Joshua, and this made her angry and defiant. I could tell we’d hit a goldmine of personal and interpersonal issues and I wanted to help them find the value in it. I asked both of them to brainstorm as many possible solutions to this problem as they could, to really press their imagination. They came up with a few, but there was one, very obvious to me, that did not occur to either of them.
“How about Joshua goes to the crosswalk as per his preference, Samantha jaywalks as per her preference, and you meet up on the other side of the street in a minute or so?”
Neither Joshua nor Samantha, out of all the possible solutions, had imagined this possibility. Why not? Joshua was in the stage one relationship mode of believing that all decisions needed to be made together. Any autonomous move by either partner was seen as a threat to the partnership. Samantha too had not imagined that they could exercise their autonomy without terrible consequence. Even though she felt controlled by Joshua, she resorted to anger and defiance rather than imagining the two of them crossing the street (or presumably doing many other things) as individuals according to their own needs and preferences. This is the epitome of being stuck at the first stage of relationship, and it’s a great example of the sort of everyday circumstances that push us toward entering stage two.
As we continued to work together over a few months of weekly calls it was fascinating to see how this one example revealed so many core beliefs, so many unexamined dynamics, and, appropriately, so much disillusionment and trouble. I felt a lot of satisfaction helping this particular couple move from stage one into stage two. That’s what was happening here: a grinding progress from the falling in love stage where everything is about “togetherness”, into the Disillusionment and Trouble stage where things inevitably break down. Remember, Joshua and Samantha, when asked to brainstorm, couldn’t even imagine crossing the street on their own, in their own ways, and meeting on the other side. That illustrates just how all-encompassing that first stage of relationship can be, and how difficult, and in a way how counter-intuitive the move forward into stage two is.
What worked in stage one no longer works in stage two. That’s why my clients often describe a feeling of “banging their head against the wall”. You need the bond that you formed in stage one to help get you through stage two, but stage one skills won’t reconcile the troubles at stage two. This move nearly always includes serious self-confrontation and soul-searching, as well as new ideas, new understandings, new behaviours, and ultimately new breakthroughs.
And then you come home.
Stage three: Homecoming
The Homecoming stage is equal parts coming home to yourself and coming home to your partner. A love and respect for your partner co-exists with a love and respect for yourself. You’ve been through an initiation together, and now you are more mature. You bear wounds and scars from the journey, but they have mostly healed and you are simultaneously more strong and more tender than ever.
The Homecoming stage happens more or less spontaneously when you have sufficiently attended to the tasks of the Disillusionment and Trouble stage. Some people are pleasantly blind-sided by the Homecoming stage, even bewildered. It’s a hard thing to imagine when you’re up to your neck in disillusionment and trouble, but it is there somewhere around the corner.
The Homecoming stage marks a kind of “coming full circle”. Former versions of dependence and independence now reconcile to become interdependence. There’s a lot of talk in popular culture about interdependence in relationship and why it is a good thing, but you don’t just decide one day to become interdependent. You enter the stage of interdependence in relationship only after you have successfully fulfilled the tasks of both dependence and independence.
The Homecoming stage is loving, like the Falling in Love stage, but it is a more mature kind of love, based upon a fuller recognition and reconciliation of the reality of your relationship, including its limits. Illusions have been exposed and resolved, so this stage is more resilient and more sustainable than either of the former.
Homecoming is marked especially by a deep respect; for yourself, for your partner, and for the difficult process you have successfully navigated. From the Homecomimg perspective, the early stage of Falling in Love couldn’t embody much real respect because you hadn’t yet seen the worst of yourself and your partner show up in the relationship. If there was respect before, it was based more on surfaces or fantasies than on real lived experience.
Moving into the Homecoming stage is the reward for all your hard work and perseverance at recognizing, reconciling, tolerating, or managing differences. But not all differences are reconcilable, tolerable, or manageable… and that’s OK; it has to be. If you choose not to accept certain differences (and that’s absolutely the right choice sometimes) or if you are unable to do so, this stage will not be attainable in this particular relationship, and that’s a difficult but necessary fact to come to terms with. Not all relationships get a homecoming.
The story of Eros and Psyche
Here I want to briefly touch upon the classic Greek myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche is a woman whom the Gods demand be sacrificed. She’s taken to a cliff where she falls. It turns out to be a fall into love. The wind carries her to Eros, the god of sexual/erotic love. Psyche becomes Eros’s lover, and she lives blissfully for a time. But the love affair has a catch: She mustn’t ever actually SEE Eros. He comes to her at night, in the dark. She can never know him fully. Eventually she becomes dissatisfied with this arrangement. She wants to know her lover. So she tricks him and lights a lamp. Here is where the Disillusionment and Trouble stage begins.
Psyche is banished from her lover, and she must accomplish a series of seemingly impossible tasks. Each time, just as all hope is lost, help comes from some unimaginable source. Eventually she beats all odds, accomplishes her tasks, and is whisked to Mount Olympus where she is rejoined with her lover Eros, but now in the form of a god herself. She has been transformed.
The symbolic relevance in this story to the three stages of relationship is uncanny. In fact, the relationship journey, in the stages I’ve laid out, bears clear resemblance to the Hero’s Journey as told in many forms: An innocent and naive protagonist leaves their familiar home, finds trouble, miraculously accomplishes seemingly impossible tasks, and then returns home initiated, transformed, matured, often scarred or wounded, and ultimately, now a gift to others in their community.
I’ve sketched out this three-stage model of relationships to give you a map for identifying where you are on this journey, where you are going, and some insights on what you might need to do to get there. But the map is not the terrain. If you want help navigating the real challenges of this terrain in your relationship, request a client information package and see if my services might be a good fit for you.
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Justice Schanfarber
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Tags attachment theory and relationships, attchachment in relationships, developmental model of relationships, falling in love, moving forward in a relationship, relationship problems, relationship stages, relationship trouble, relationship video, stuck relationship
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35 U.S.C. § 284 › Judicial Discretion › Enhanced Damages
Responses to Infringement Letters Can Reduce Risk of Willful Infringement
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP on 7/2/2020
In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc.,1 the Supreme Court held that 35 U.S.C. Section 284 provides for enhanced damages in egregious cases...more
The Halo Effect – Making Angels Out of Infringers?
McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP on 6/12/2017
Historically, patent owners have pled willful infringement in an effort to support the collection of enhanced damages from an infringer. Typically, if there was willful infringement the damages were enhanced and often...more
Enhanced Patent Damages in the Wake of Halo May Not Be So Easy to Come By
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP on 3/29/2017
Background - Last year, in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 136 S. Ct. 1923 (2016), the Supreme Court weighed in on the question of enhanced damages in patent cases and rejected the then-existing...more
Intellectual Property Law - October 2016
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP on 10/26/2016
Federal Circuit After Stryker/Halo - Why it matters: On June 13, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the consolidated cases of Stryker Corp. v. Zimmer, Inc. and Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc. and, as...more
Federal Circuit Remands Issue of Enhanced Damages for Determination Whether this was an Egregious Case of Misconduct Beyond...
Harness, Dickey & Pierce, P.L.C. on 9/24/2016
In WesternGeco LLC v. Ion Geophysical Corp., [2013-1527, 2014-1121, 2014-1526] (September 21, 2016), the Federal Circuit, on remand from the Supreme Court after Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., vacated the...more
Intellectual Property Bulletin - Summer 2016
Fenwick & West LLP on 8/19/2016
Supreme Court Expands Discretion to Award Enhanced Damages for Patent Infringement and Eliminates the Federal Circuit’s ‘Seagate Test’ - In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court...more
In Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics, Supreme Court Strikes Down Seagate Test for Enhanced Damages Under Section 284 of the...
Williams Mullen on 7/22/2016
Patent infringement plaintiffs and defendants alike fret over enhanced damages: Section 284 of the Patent Act, the basis for enhanced damages, provides that a court may grant a damages award up to three times actual damages....more
Supreme Court 2015-2016 Intellectual Property Case Review
Brooks Kushman P.C. on 7/14/2016
At the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2015 term came to a close. The Court issued written decisions in three intellectual property cases during that term, the same number of cases as during the previous term,...more
Halo Recognizes that Not All Infringers are Angels
In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 579 U.S. — (2016), the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s two-step Seagate test for the award of enhanced damages under 35 USC 284, holding that the aware of...more
The New Willfulness Paradigm
McDermott Will & Emery on 6/29/2016
The Supreme Court of the United States traced two centuries of analysis related to enhanced damages in patent cases to conclude that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s two-part test, announced nearly a decade...more
Federal Circuit Patent Updates - June 2016
WilmerHale on 6/28/2016
Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee (No. 2015-446, 6/20/16) (Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan) - June 20, 2016 12:49 PM - Breyer, J. Affirming Federal Circuit decision that the...more
Halo V Pulse: High Court Relaxes Standard For Enhanced Patent Damages
Ladas & Parry LLP on 6/23/2016
On June 13, 2016 Chief Justice Roberts delivered a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Halo v. Pulse on the question of when enhanced damages can be awarded for patent infringement. This decision reversed...more
Supreme Court Lowers the Bar for Willfulness and Provides Major Win to Patent Holders
Farella Braun + Martel LLP on 6/20/2016
On June 13, 2016, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in two consolidated cases (Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker Corp. v. Zimmer) effectively lowering the standard for obtaining enhanced damages in...more
Supreme Court Abolishes Federal Circuit’s Test for Willfulness
Morrison & Foerster LLP on 6/17/2016
On June 13, 2016, in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 579 U.S. ___ (2016), the Supreme Court unanimously abrogated the Federal Circuit’s 2007 decision in In re Seagate Tech., LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir....more
High Court Relaxes Standards for Enhanced Damages in District Court Patent Litigation
BakerHostetler on 6/17/2016
On June 13, 2016, in a much-anticipated joint holding in Halo/Stryker, [1] the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Federal Circuit’s rigid test for willful infringement under Seagate and conferred discretion on district...more
Supreme Court Clears the Path for More Enhanced Damages Awards in Halo
McCarter & English, LLP on 6/17/2016
In recent years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the Federal Circuit’s strict tests concerning monetary relief in patent cases in favor of more fluid standards that commit discretion to the district courts. In...more
Supreme Court Relaxes Standard for Willful Infringement – Higher Risk of Enhanced Damage Awards May Require Clients to Reassess...
In a unanimous opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the prevailing Seagate test for finding willful infringement in patent cases – a finding for which a “court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found...more
Supreme Court Unanimously Overturns Rigid Seagate Test in Favor of a Discretionary Test for Awarding Enhanced Damages
Goodwin on 6/16/2016
Section 284 of The Patent Act provides that in a case of infringement, courts “may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed.” Under Seagate, to be entitled to enhanced damages under § 284, a patent...more
Halo’s Aura: How the Supreme Court’s Halo Decision Will Impact Patent Damages and Influence Pre-Litigation Conduct
Foley Hoag LLP on 6/16/2016
Patent infringers take note: clever defenses by ingenious litigation counsel may come too late to save you from an award of exemplary damages. On Monday, June 13, in Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker Corp. v....more
US Supreme Court Adds to District Court's Ability to Award Enhanced Patent Damages
Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP on 6/16/2016
On June 13, the US Supreme Court handed down an important unanimous decision relaxing the standard for an award of enhanced patent damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284. See Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 579 U.S....more
Litigation Alert: Supreme Court Expands Discretion to Award Enhanced Damages for Patent Infringement and Eliminates the Federal...
This week in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., the United States Supreme Court changed the law regarding when enhanced damages should be awarded in patent infringement cases, by eliminating the two-part test...more
Halo v. Pulse (2016): Supreme Court Relaxes Standard for Obtaining Enhanced Damages For Patent Infringement
Latham & Watkins LLP on 6/16/2016
Patent owners will more likely seek enhanced damages; accused infringers no longer insulated by “attorney’s ingenuity” after the fact. Summary - The Federal Circuit’s 2007 Seagate decision raised the bar for...more
Supreme Court Clarifies Enhanced Damages Standard for Patent Cases
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP on 6/16/2016
If you read one thing ... - The Supreme Court discarded the Federal Circuit’s heightened Seagate standard for awarding enhanced damages under the Patent Act. - The new standard increases the chance of an...more
Halo Removed the Stranglehold of "Objective Recklessness" on Enhanced Damages for Patent Infringement
Womble Bond Dickinson on 6/16/2016
Although under the Patent Act, “a court may increase the damages [for patent infringement] up to three times,” 35 U.S.C. § 284, enhanced damages awards are infrequent. For nearly a decade, the Federal Circuit’s en banc...more
Supreme Court Adopts More Flexible Standard For Enhanced Damages For Willful Infringement
Foley & Lardner LLP on 6/15/2016
In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s two-part Seagate test for awarding enhanced damages under 35 USC § 284, finding that both the substantive requirement for...more
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